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<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=On New Democracy|author=Mao Zedong|published_date=1940|source=[https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_26.htm Marxists Internet Archive]|audiobook=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poaptIiXHy8 Marxist-Leninist Theory]}}<br /> <br /> ==== '''I. WHITHER CHINA?''' ====<br /> A lively atmosphere has prevailed throughout the country ever since the War of Resistance began, there is a general feeling that a way out of the impasse has been found, and people no longer knit their brows in despair. Of late, however, the dust and din of compromise and anti-communism have once again filled the air, and once again the people are thrown into bewilderment. Most susceptible, and the first to be affected, are the intellectuals and the young students. The question once again arises: What is to be done? Whither China? On the occasion of the publication of ''Chinese Culture,'''''[1]''' it may therefore be profitable to clarify the political and cultural trends in the country. I am a layman in matters of culture; I would like to study them, but have only just begun to do so. Fortunately, there are many comrades in Yenan who have written at length in this field, so that my rough and ready words may serve the same purpose as the beating of the gongs before a theatrical performance. Our observations may contain a grain of truth for the nation's advanced cultural workers and may serve as a modest spur to induce them to come forward with valuable contributions of their own, and we hope that they will join in the discussion to reach correct conclusions which will meet our national needs. To &quot;seek truth from facts&quot; is the scientific approach, and presumptuously to claim infallibility and lecture people will never settle anything. The troubles that have befallen our nation are extremely serious, and only a scientific approach and a spirit of responsibility can lead it on to the road of liberation. There is but one truth, and the question of whether or not one has arrived at it depends not on subjective boasting but on objective practice. The only yardstick of truth is the revolutionary practice of millions of people. This, I think, can be regarded as the attitude of ''Chinese Culture.''<br /> <br /> ==== '''II. WE WANT TO BUILD A NEW CHINA''' ====<br /> For many years we Communists have struggled for a cultural revolution as well as for a political and economic revolution, and our aim is to build a new society and a new state for the Chinese nation. That new society and new state will have not only a new politics and a new economy but a new culture. In other words, not only do we want to change a China that is politically oppressed and economically exploited into a China that is politically free and economically prosperous, we also want to change the China which is being kept ignorant and backward under the sway of the old culture into an enlightened and progressive China under the sway of a new culture. In short, we want to build a new China. Our aim in the cultural sphere is to build a new Chinese national culture.<br /> <br /> ==== '''III. CHINA'S HISTORICAL CHARACTERISTICS''' ====<br /> We want to build a new national culture, but what kind of culture should it be?<br /> <br /> Any given culture (as an ideological form) is a reflection of the politics and economics of a given society, and the former in turn has a tremendous influence and effect upon the latter; economics is the base and politics the concentrated expression of economics.'''[2]''' This is our fundamental view of the relation of culture to politics and economics and of the relation of politics to economics. It follows that the form of culture is first determined by the political and economic form, and only then does it operate on and influence the given political and economic form. Marx says, &quot;It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.&quot;'''[3]''' He also says, &quot;The philosophers have only ''interpreted'' the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to ''change'' it.&quot;'''[4]''' For the first time in human history, these scientific formulations correctly solved the problem of the relationship between consciousness and existence, and they are the basic concepts underlying the dynamic revolutionary theory of knowledge as the reflection of reality which was later elaborated so profoundly by Lenin. These basic concepts must be kept in mind in our discussion of China's cultural problems.<br /> <br /> Thus it is quite clear that the reactionary elements of the old national culture we want to eliminate are inseparable from the old national politics and economics, while the new national culture which we want to build up is inseparable from the new national politics and economics. The old politics and economics of the Chinese nation form the basis of its old culture, just as its new politics and economics will form the basis of its new culture.<br /> <br /> What are China's old politics and economics? And what is her old culture?<br /> <br /> From the Chou and Chin Dynasties onwards, Chinese society was feudal, as were its politics and its economy. And the dominant culture, reflecting the politics and economy, was feudal culture.<br /> <br /> Since the invasion of foreign capitalism and the gradual growth of capitalist elements in Chinese society, the country has changed by degrees into a colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. China today is colonial in the Japanese-occupied areas and basically semi-colonial in the Kuomintang areas, and it is predominantly feudal or semi-feudal in both. Such, then, is the character of present-day Chinese society and the state of affairs in our country. The politics and the economy of this society are predominantly colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal, and the predominant culture, reflecting the politics and economy, is also colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal.<br /> <br /> It is precisely against these predominant political, economic and cultural forms that our revolution is directed. What we want to get rid of is the old colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal politics and economy and the old culture in their service. And what we want to build up is their direct opposite, ''i.e.,'' the new politics, the new economy and the new culture of the Chinese nation.<br /> <br /> What, then, are the new politics and the new economy of the Chinese nation, and what is its new culture?<br /> <br /> In the course of its history the Chinese revolution must go through two stages, first, the democratic revolution, and second, the socialist revolution, and by their very nature they are two different revolutionary processes. Here democracy does not belong to the old category-- it is not the old democracy, but belongs to the new category--it is New Democracy.<br /> <br /> It can thus be affirmed that China's new politics are the politics of New Democracy, that China's new economy is the economy of New Democracy and that China's new culture is the culture of New Democracy.<br /> <br /> Such are the historical characteristics of the Chinese revolution at the present time. Any political party, group or person taking part in the Chinese revolution that fails to understand this will not be able to direct the revolution and lead it to victory, but will be cast aside by the people and left to grieve out in the cold.<br /> <br /> ==== '''IV. THE CHINESE REVOLUTION IS PART OF THE WORLD REVOLUTION''' ====<br /> The historical characteristic of the Chinese revolution lies in its division into the two stages, democracy and socialism, the first being no longer democracy in general, but democracy of the Chinese type, a new and special type, namely, New Democracy. How, then, has this historical characteristic come into being? Has it been in existence for the past hundred years, or is it of recent origin?<br /> <br /> A brief study of the historical development of China and of the world shows that this characteristic did not emerge immediately after the Opium War, but took shape later, after the first imperialist world war and the October Revolution in Russia. Let us now examine the process of its formation.<br /> <br /> Clearly, it follows from the colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal character of present-day Chinese society that the Chinese revolution must be divided into two stages. The first step is to change the colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal form of society into an independent, democratic society. The second is to carry the revolution forward and build a socialist society. At present the Chinese revolution is taking the first step.<br /> <br /> The preparatory period for the first step began with the opium War in 1840, ''i.e.'', when China's feudal society started changing into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal one. Then came the Movement of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Sino-French War, the Sino-Japanese war, the Reform Movement of 1898, the Revolution of 1911, the May 4th Movement, the Northern Expedition, the War of the Agrarian Revolution and the present War of Resistance Against Japan. Together these have taken up a whole century and in a sense they represent that first step, being struggles waged by the Chinese people, on different occasions and in varying degrees, against imperialism and the feudal forces in order to build up an independent, democratic society and complete the first revolution. The Revolution of 1911 was in a fuller sense the beginning of that revolution. In its social character, this revolution is a bourgeois-democratic and not a proletarian-socialist revolution. It is still unfinished and still demands great efforts, because to this day its enemies are still very strong. When Dr. Sun Yat-sen said, &quot;The revolution is not yet completed, all my comrades must struggle on&quot;, he was referring to the bourgeois-democratic revolution.<br /> <br /> A change, however, occurred in China's bourgeois-democratic revolution after the outbreak of the first imperialist world war in 1914 and the founding of a socialist state on one-sixth of the globe as a result of the Russian October Revolution of 1917.<br /> <br /> Before these events, the Chinese bourgeois-democratic revolution came within the old category of the bourgeois-democratic world revolution, of which it was a part.<br /> <br /> Since these events, the Chinese bourgeois-democratic revolution has changed, it has come within the new category of bourgeois-democratic revolutions and, as far as the alignment of revolutionary forces is concerned, forms part of the proletarian-socialist world revolution.<br /> <br /> Why? Because the first imperialist world war and the first victorious socialist revolution, the October Revolution, have changed the whole course of world history and ushered in a new era.<br /> <br /> It is an era in which the world capitalist front has collapsed in one part of the globe (one-sixth of the world) and has fully revealed its decadence everywhere else, in which the remaining capitalist parts cannot survive without relying more than ever on the colonies and Semi-colonies, in which a socialist state has been established and has proclaimed its readiness to give active support to the liberation movement of all colonies and semi-colonies, and in which the proletariat of the capitalist countries is steadily freeing itself from the social-imperialist influence of the social-democratic parties and has proclaimed its support for the liberation movement in the colonies and semi-colonies. In this era, any revolution in a colony or semi-colony that is directed against imperialism, ''i.e.,'' against the international bourgeoisie or international capitalism, no longer comes within the old category of the bourgeois-democratic world revolution, but within the new category. It is no longer part of the old bourgeois, or capitalist, world revolution, but is part of the new world revolution, the proletarian-socialist world revolution. Such revolutionary colonies and semi-colonies can no longer be regarded as allies of the counter revolutionary front of world capitalism; they have become allies of the revolutionary front of world socialism.<br /> <br /> Although such a revolution in a colonial and semi-colonial country is still fundamentally bourgeois-democratic in its social character during its first stage or first step, and although its objective mission is to clear the path for the development of capitalism, it is no longer a revolution of the old type led by the bourgeoisie with the aim of establishing a capitalist society and a state under bourgeois dictatorship. It belongs to the new type of revolution led by the proletariat with the aim, in the first stage, of establishing a new-democratic society and a state under the joint dictatorship of all the revolutionary classes. Thus this revolution actually serves the purpose of clearing a still wider path for the development of socialism. In the course of its progress, there may be a number of further sub-stages, because of changes on the enemy's side and within the ranks of our allies, but the fundamental character of the revolution remains unchanged.<br /> <br /> Such a revolution attacks imperialism at its very roots, and is therefore not tolerated but opposed by imperialism. However, it is favoured by socialism and supported by the land of socialism and the socialist international proletariat.<br /> <br /> Therefore, such a revolution inevitably becomes part of the proletarian-socialist world revolution.<br /> <br /> The correct thesis that &quot;the Chinese revolution is part of the world revolution&quot; was put forward as early as 1924-27 during the period of China's First Great Revolution. It was put forward by the Chinese Communists and endorsed by all those taking part in the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle of the time. However, the significance of this thesis was not fully expounded in those days, and consequently it was only vaguely understood.<br /> <br /> The &quot;world revolution&quot; no longer refers to the old world revolution, for the old bourgeois world revolution has long been a thing of the past, it refers to the new world revolution, the socialist world revolution. Similarly, to form &quot;part of&quot; means to form part not of the old bourgeois but of the new socialist revolution. This is a tremendous change unparalleled in the history of China and of the world.<br /> <br /> This correct thesis advanced by the Chinese Communists is based on Stalin's theory.<br /> <br /> As early as 1918, in an article commemorating the first anniversary of the October Revolution, Stalin wrote:<br /> <br /> The great world-wide significance of the October Revolution chiefly consists in the fact that''':'''<br /> <br /> 1) It has widened the scope of the national question and converted it from the particular question of combating national oppression in Europe into the general question of emancipating the oppressed peoples, colonies and semi-colonies from imperialism;<br /> <br /> 2) It has opened up wide possibilities for their emancipation and the right paths towards it, has thereby greatly facilitated the cause of the emancipation of the oppressed peoples of the West and the East, and has drawn them into the common current of the victorious struggle against imperialism;<br /> <br /> 3) ''It has thereby erected a bridge between the socialist West and the enslaved East,'' having created a new front of revolutions ''against'' world imperialism, extending from the proletarians of the West, through the Russian Revolution, to the oppressed peoples of the East.'''[5]'''<br /> <br /> Since writing this article, Stalin has again and again expounded the theory that revolutions in the colonies and semi-colonies have broken away from the old category and become part of the proletarian-socialist revolution. The clearest and most precise explanation is given in an article published on June ''3o,'' 1925, in which Stalin carried on a controversy with the Yugoslav nationalists of the time. Entitled &quot;The National Question Once Again&quot;, it is included in a book translated by Chang Chung-shih and published under the title ''Stalin on the National Question.'' It contains the following passage:<br /> <br /> Semich refers to a passage in Stalin's pamphlet ''Marxism and the National Question,'' written at the end of 1912. There it says that &quot;the national struggle under the conditions of ''rising'' capitalism is a struggle of the bourgeois classes among themselves&quot;. Evidently, by this Semich is trying to suggest that his formula defining the social significance of the national movement under the present historical conditions is correct. But Stalin's pamphlet was written before the imperialist war, when the national question was not yet regarded by Marxists as a question of world significance, when the Marxists' fundamental demand for the right to self-determination was regarded not as part of the proletarian revolution, but as part of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. It would be ridiculous not to see that since then the international situation has radically changed, that the war, on the one hand, and the October Revolution in Russia, on the other, transformed the national question from a part of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a part of the proletarian-socialist revolution. As far back as October 1916, in his article, &quot;The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up&quot;, Lenin said that the main point of the national question, the right to self-determination, had ceased to be a part of the general democratic movement, that it had already become a component part of the general proletarian, socialist revolution. I do not even mention subsequent works on the national question by Lenin and by other representatives of Russian communism. After all this, what significance can Semich's reference to the passage in Stalin's pamphlet, written in the period of the ''bourgeois-''democratic revolution in Russia, have at the present time, when, as a consequence of the new historical situation, we have entered a new epoch, the epoch of ''proletarian'' revolution? It can only signify that Semich quotes outside of space and time, without reference to the living historical situation, and thereby violates the most elementary requirements of dialectics, and ignores the fact that what is right for one historical situation may prove to be wrong in another historical situation.'''[6]'''<br /> <br /> From this it can be seen that there are two kinds of world revolution, the first belonging to the bourgeois or capitalist category. The era of this kind of world revolution is long past, having come to an end as far back as 1914 when the first imperialist world war broke out, and more particularly in 1917 when the October Revolution took place. The second kind, namely, the proletarian-socialist world revolution, thereupon began. This revolution has the proletariat of the capitalist countries as its main force and the oppressed peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies as its allies. No matter what classes, parties or individuals in an oppressed nation join the revolution, and no matter whether they themselves are conscious of the point or understand it, so long as they oppose imperialism, their revolution becomes part of the proletarian-socialist world revolution and they become its allies.<br /> <br /> Today, the Chinese revolution has taken on still greater significance. This is a time when the economic and political crises of capitalism are dragging the world more and more deeply into the Second World War, when the Soviet Union has reached the period of transition from socialism to communism and is capable of leading and helping the proletariat and oppressed nations of the whole world in their fight against imperialist war and capitalist reaction, when the proletariat of the capitalist countries is preparing to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism, and when the proletariat, the peasantry, the intelligentsia and other sections of the petty bourgeoisie in China have become a mighty independent political force under the leadership of the Communist Party of China. Situated as we are in this day and age, should we not make the appraisal that the Chinese revolution has taken on still greater world significance? I think we should. The Chinese revolution has become a very important part of the world revolution.<br /> <br /> Although the Chinese revolution in this first stage (with its many sub-stages) is a new type of bourgeois-democratic revolution and is not yet itself a proletarian-socialist revolution in its social character, it has long become a part of the proletarian-socialist world revolution and is now even a very important part and a great ally of this world revolution. The first step or stage in our revolution is definitely not, and cannot be, the establishment of a capitalist society under the dictatorship of the Chinese bourgeoisie, but will result in the establishment of a new-democratic society under the joint dictatorship of all the revolutionary classes of China headed by the Chinese proletariat The revolution will then be carried forward to the second stage, in which a socialist society will be established in China.<br /> <br /> This is the fundamental characteristic of the Chinese revolution of today, of the new revolutionary process of the past twenty years (counting from the May 4th Movement of 1919), and its concrete living essence.<br /> <br /> ==== '''V. THE POLITICS OF NEW DEMOCRACY''' ====<br /> The new historical characteristic of the Chinese revolution is its division into two stages, the first being the new-democratic revolution. How does this manifest itself concretely in internal political and economic relations? Let us consider the question.<br /> <br /> Before the May 4th Movement of 1919 (which occurred after the first imperialist world war of 1914 the Russian October Revolution of 1917), the petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie (through their intellectuals) were the political leaders of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. The Chinese proletariat had not yet appeared on the political scene as an awakened and independent class force, but participated in the revolution only as a follower of the petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie. Such was the case with the proletariat at the time of the Revolution of 1911.<br /> <br /> After the May 4th Movement, the political leader of China's bourgeois-democratic revolution was no longer the bourgeoisie but the proletariat, although the national bourgeoisie continued to take part in the revolution. The Chinese proletariat rapidly became an awakened and independent political force as a result of its maturing and of the influence of the Russian Revolution. It was the Communist Party of China that put forward the slogan &quot;Down with imperialism&quot; and the thoroughgoing programme for the whole bourgeois-democratic revolution, and it was the Communist Party of China alone that carried out the Agrarian Revolution.<br /> <br /> Being a bourgeoisie in a colonial and semi-colonial country and oppressed by imperialism, the Chinese national bourgeoisie retains a certain revolutionary quality at certain periods and to a certain degree--even in the era of imperialism--in its opposition to the foreign imperialists and the domestic governments of bureaucrats and warlords (instances of opposition to the latter can be found in the periods of the Revolution of 1911 and the Northern Expedition), and it may ally itself with the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie against such enemies as it is ready to oppose. In this respect the Chinese bourgeoisie differs from the bourgeoisie of old tsarist Russia. Since tsarist Russia was a military-feudal imperialism which carried on aggression against other countries, the Russian bourgeoisie was entirely lacking in revolutionary quality. There, the task of the proletariat was to oppose the bourgeoisie, not to unite with it. But China's national bourgeoisie has a revolutionary quality at certain periods and to a certain degree, because China is a colonial and semi-colonial country which is a victim of aggression. Here, the task of the proletariat is to form a united front with the national bourgeoisie against imperialism and the bureaucrat and warlord governments without overlooking its revolutionary quality.<br /> <br /> At the same time, however, being a bourgeois class in a colonial and semi-colonial country and so being extremely flabby economically and politically, the Chinese national bourgeoisie also has another quality, namely, a proneness to conciliation with the enemies of the revolution. Even when it takes part in the revolution, it is unwilling to break with imperialism completely and, moreover, it is closely associated with the exploitation of the rural areas through land rent; thus it is neither willing nor able to overthrow imperialism, and much less the feudal forces, in a thorough way. So neither of the two basic problems or tasks of China's bourgeois-democratic revolution can be solved or accomplished by the national bourgeoisie. As for China's big bourgeoisie, which is represented by the Kuomintang, all through the long period from 1927 to 1937 it nestled in the arms of the imperialists and formed an alliance with the feudal forces against the revolutionary people. In 1927 and for some time afterwards, the Chinese national bourgeoisie also followed the counter-revolution. During the present anti-Japanese war, the section of the big bourgeoisie represented by Wang Ching-wei has capitulated to the enemy, which constitutes a fresh betrayal on the part of the big bourgeoisie. In this respect, then, the bourgeoisie in China differs from the earlier bourgeoisie of the European and American countries, and especially of France. When the bourgeoisie in those countries, and especially in France, was still in its revolutionary era, the bourgeois revolution was comparatively thorough, whereas the bourgeoisie in China lacks even this degree of thoroughness.<br /> <br /> Possible participation in the revolution on the one hand and proneness to conciliation with the enemies of the revolution on the other-- such is the dual character of the Chinese bourgeoisie, it faces both ways Even the bourgeoisie in European and American history had shared this dual character. When confronted by a formidable enemy, they united with the workers and peasants against him, but when the workers and peasants awakened, they turned round to unite with the enemy against the workers and peasants. This is a general rule applicable to the bourgeoisie everywhere in the world, but the trait is more pronounced in the Chinese bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> In China, it is perfectly clear that whoever can lead the people in overthrowing imperialism and the forces of feudalism can win the people's confidence, because these two, and especially imperialism, are the mortal enemies of the people. Today, whoever can lead the people in driving out Japanese imperialism and introducing democratic government will be the saviours of the people. History has proved that the Chinese bourgeoisie cannot fulfil this responsibility, which inevitably falls upon the shoulders of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> Therefore, the proletariat, the peasantry, the intelligentsia and the other sections of the petty bourgeoisie undoubtedly constitute the basic forces determining China's fate. These classes, some already awakened and others in the process of awakening, will necessarily become the basic components of the state and governmental structure in the democratic republic of China, with the proletariat as the leading force. The Chinese democratic republic which we desire to establish now must be a democratic republic under the joint dictatorship of all anti-imperialist and anti-feudal people led by the proletariat, that is, a new-democratic republic, a republic of the genuinely revolutionary new Three People's Principles with their Three Great Policies.<br /> <br /> This new-democratic republic will be different from the old European-American form of capitalist republic under bourgeois dictatorship, which is the old democratic form and already out of date. On the other hand, it will also be different from the socialist republic of the Soviet type under the dictatorship of the proletariat which is already flourishing in the U.S.S.R., and which, moreover, will be established in all the capitalist countries and will undoubtedly become the dominant form of state and governmental structure in all the industrially advanced countries. However, for a certain historical period, this form is not suitable for the revolutions in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. During this period, therefore, a third form of state must be adopted in the revolutions of all colonial and semi-colonial countries, namely, the new-democratic republic. This form suits a certain historical period and is therefore transitional; nevertheless, it is a form which is necessary and cannot be dispensed with.<br /> <br /> Thus the numerous types of state system in the world can be reduced to three basic kinds according to the class character of their political power: (1) republics under bourgeois dictatorship; (2) republics under the dictatorship of the proletariat; and (3) republics under the joint dictatorship of several revolutionary classes.<br /> <br /> The first kind comprises the old democratic states. Today, after the outbreak of the second imperialist war, there is hardly a trace of democracy in many of the capitalist countries, which have come or are coming under the bloody militarist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Certain countries under the joint dictatorship of the landlords and the bourgeoisie can be grouped with this kind.<br /> <br /> The second kind exists in the Soviet Union, and the conditions for its birth are ripening in capitalist countries. In the future, it will be the dominant form throughout the world for a certain period.<br /> <br /> The third kind is the transitional form of state to be adopted in the revolutions of the colonial and semi-colonial countries. Each of these revolutions will necessarily have specific characteristics of its own, but these will be minor variations on a general theme. So long as they are revolutions in colonial or semi-colonial countries, their state and governmental structure will of necessity be basically the same, ''i.e.'', a new-democratic state under the joint dictatorship of several anti-imperialist classes. In present-day China, the anti-Japanese united front represents the new-democratic form of state. It is anti-Japanese and anti-imperialist; it is also a united front, an alliance of several revolutionary classes. But unfortunately, despite the fact that the war has been going on for so long, the work of introducing democracy has hardly started in most of the country outside the democratic anti-Japanese base areas under the leadership of the Communist Party, and the Japanese imperialists have exploited this fundamental weakness to stride into our country. If nothing is done about it, our national future will be gravely imperilled.<br /> <br /> The question under discussion here is that of the &quot;state system&quot;. After several decades of wrangling since the last years of the Ching Dynasty, it has still not been cleared up. Actually it is simply a question of the status of the various social classes within the state. The bourgeoisie, as a rule, conceals the problem of class status and carries out its one-class dictatorship under the &quot;national&quot; label. Such concealment is of no advantage to the revolutionary people and the matter should be clearly explained to them. The term &quot;national&quot; is all right, but it must not include counter-revolutionaries and traitors. The kind of state we need today is a dictatorship of all the revolutionary classes over the counter-revolutionaries and traitors.<br /> <br /> The so-called democratic system in modern states is usually monopolized by the bourgeoisie and has become simply an instrument for oppressing the common people. On the other hand, the Kuomintang's Principle of Democracy means a democratic system shared by all the common people and not privately owned by the few.<br /> <br /> Such was the solemn declaration made in the Manifesto of the First National Congress of the Kuomintang, held in 1924 during the period of Kuomintang-Communist co-operation. For sixteen years the Kuomintang has violated this declaration and as a result it has created the present grave national crisis. This is a gross blunder, which we hope the Kuomintang will correct in the cleansing flames of the anti-Japanese war.<br /> <br /> As for the question of &quot;the system of government&quot;, this is a matter of how political power is organized, the form in which one social class or another chooses to arrange its apparatus of political power to oppose its enemies and protect itself. There is no state which does not have an appropriate apparatus of political power to represent it. China may now adopt a system of people's congresses, from the national people's congress down to the provincial, county, district and township people's congresses, with all levels electing their respective governmental bodies. But if there is to be a proper representation for each revolutionary class according to its status in the state, a proper expression of the people's will, a proper direction for revolutionary struggles and a proper manifestation of the spirit of New Democracy, then a system of really universal and equal suffrage, irrespective of sex, creed, property or education, must be introduced. Such is the system of democratic centralism. Only a government based on democratic centralism can fully express the will of all the revolutionary people and fight the enemies of the revolution most effectively. There must be a spirit of refusal to be &quot;privately owned by the few&quot; in the government and the army; without a genuinely democratic system this cannot be attained and the system of government and the state system will be out of harmony.<br /> <br /> The state system, a joint dictatorship of all the revolutionary classes and the system of government, democratic centralism--these constitute the politics of New Democracy, the republic of New Democracy, the republic of the anti-Japanese united front, the republic of the new Three People's Principles with their Three Great Policies' the Republic of China in reality as well as in name. Today we have a Republic of China in name but not in reality, and our present task is to create the reality that will fit the name.<br /> <br /> Such are the internal political relations which a revolutionary China, a China fighting Japanese aggression, should and must establish without fail; such is the orientation, the only correct orientation, for our present work of national reconstruction.<br /> <br /> ==== '''VI. THE ECONOMY OF NEW DEMOCRACY''' ====<br /> If such a republic is to be established in China, it must be new-democratic not only in its politics but also in its economy.<br /> <br /> It will own the big banks and the big industrial and commercial enterprises.<br /> <br /> Enterprises, such as banks, railways and airlines, whether Chinese-owned or foreign-owned, which are either monopolistic in character or too big for private management, shall be operated and administered by the state, so that private capital cannot dominate the livelihood of the people: this is the main principle of the regulation of capital.<br /> <br /> This is another solemn declaration in the Manifesto of the Kuomintang's First National Congress held during the period of Kuomintang-Communist co-operation, and it is the correct policy for the economic structure of the new-democratic republic. In the new-democratic republic under the leadership of the proletariat, the state enterprises will be of a socialist character and will constitute the leading force in the whole national economy, but the republic will neither confiscate capitalist private property in general nor forbid the development of such capitalist production as does not &quot;dominate the livelihood of the people&quot;, for China's economy is still very backward.<br /> <br /> The republic will take certain necessary steps to confiscate the land of the landlords and distribute it to those peasants having little or no land, carry out Dr. Sun Yat-sen's slogan of &quot;land to the tiller&quot;, abolish feudal relations in the rural areas, and turn the land over to the private ownership of the peasants. A rich peasant economy will be allowed in the rural areas. Such is the policy of &quot;equalization of landownership&quot;. &quot;Land to the tiller&quot; is the correct slogan for this policy. In general, socialist agriculture will not be established at this stage, though various types of co-operative enterprises developed on the basis of &quot;land to the tiller&quot; will contain elements of socialism.<br /> <br /> China's economy must develop along the path of the &quot;regulation of capital&quot; and the &quot;equalization of landownership&quot;, and must never be &quot;privately owned by the few&quot;; we must never permit the few capitalists and landlords to &quot;dominate the livelihood of the people&quot;; we must never establish a capitalist society of the European-American type or allow the old semi-feudal society to survive. Whoever dares to go counter to this line of advance will certainly not succeed but will run into a brick wall.<br /> <br /> Such are the internal economic relations which a revolutionary China, a China fighting Japanese aggression, must and necessarily will establish.<br /> <br /> Such is the economy of New Democracy.<br /> <br /> And the politics of New Democracy are the concentrated expression of the economy of New Democracy.<br /> <br /> ==== '''VII. REFUTATION OF BOURGEOIS DICTATORSHIP''' ====<br /> More than 90 per cent of the people are in favour of a republic of this kind with its new-democratic politics and new-democratic economy; there is no alternative road.<br /> <br /> What about the road to a capitalist society under bourgeois dictatorship? To be sure, that was the old road taken by the European and American bourgeoisie, but whether one likes it or not, neither the international nor the domestic situation allows China to do the same.<br /> <br /> Judging by the international situation, that road is blocked. In its fundamentals, the present international situation is one of a struggle between capitalism and socialism, in which capitalism is on the downgrade and socialism on the upgrade. In the first place international capitalism, or imperialism, will not permit the establishment in China of a capitalist society under bourgeois dictatorship. Indeed the history of modern China is a history of imperialist aggression, of imperialist opposition to China's independence and to her development of capitalism. Earlier revolutions failed in China because imperialism strangled them, and innumerable revolutionary martyrs died, bitterly lamenting the non-fulfilment of their mission. Today a powerful Japanese imperialism is forcing its way into China and wants to reduce her to a colony; it is not China that is developing Chinese capitalism but Japan that is developing Japanese capitalism in our country; and it is not the Chinese bourgeoisie but the Japanese bourgeoisie that is exercising dictatorship in our country. True enough, this is the period of the final struggle of dying imperialism--imperialism is &quot;moribund capitalism&quot;.'''[7]''' But just because it is dying, it is all the more dependent on colonies and semi-colonies for survival and will certainly not allow any colony or semi-colony to establish anything like a capitalist society under the dictatorship of its own bourgeoisie. Just because Japanese imperialism is bogged down in serious economic and political crises, just because it is dying, it must invade China and reduce her to a colony, thereby blocking the road to bourgeois dictatorship and national capitalism in China.<br /> <br /> In the second place, socialism will not permit it. All the imperialist powers in the world are our enemies, and China cannot possibly gain her independence without the assistance of the land of socialism and the international proletariat. That is, she cannot do so without the help of the Soviet Union and the help which the proletariat of Japan, Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Italy and other countries provide through their struggles against capitalism. Although no one can say that the victory of the Chinese revolution must wait upon the victory of the revolution in all of these countries, or in one or two of them, there is no doubt that we cannot win without the added strength of their proletariat. In particular, Soviet assistance is absolutely indispensable for China's final victory in the War of Resistance. Refuse Soviet assistance, and the revolution will fail. Don't the anti-Soviet campaigns from 1927 onwards '''[8]''' provide an extraordinarily clear lesson? The world today is in a new era of wars and revolutions, an era in which capitalism is unquestionably dying and socialism is unquestionably prospering. In these circumstances, would it not be sheer fantasy to desire the establishment in China of a capitalist society under bourgeois dictatorship after the defeat of imperialism and feudalism?<br /> <br /> Even though the petty Kemalist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie '''[9]''' did emerge in Turkey after the first imperialist world war and the October Revolution owing to certain specific conditions (the bourgeoisie's success in repelling Greek aggression and the weakness of the proletariat), there can be no second Turkey, much less a &quot;Turkey&quot; with a population of 450 million, after World War II and the accomplishment of socialist construction in the Soviet Union. In the specific conditions of China (the flabbiness of the bourgeoisie with its proneness to conciliation and the strength of the proletariat with its revolutionary thoroughness), things just never work out so easily as in Turkey. Did not some members of the Chinese bourgeoisie clamour for Kemalism after the First Great Revolution failed in 1927? But where is China's Kemal? And where are China's bourgeois dictatorship and capitalist society? Besides, even Kemalist Turkey eventually had to throw herself into the arms of Anglo-French imperialism, becoming more and more of a semi-colony and part of the reactionary imperialist world. In the international situation of today, the &quot;heroes&quot;' in the colonies and semi-colonies either line up on the imperialist front and become part of the forces of world counter-revolution, or they line up on the anti-imperialist front and become part of the forces of world revolution. They must do one or the other, for there is no third choice.<br /> <br /> Judging by the domestic situation, too, the Chinese bourgeoisie should have learned its lesson by now. No sooner had the strength of the proletariat and of the peasant and other petty bourgeois masses brought the revolution of 1927 to victory than the capitalist class, headed by the big bourgeoisie, kicked the masses aside, seized the fruits of the revolution, formed a counter-revolutionary alliance with imperialism and the feudal forces, and strained themselves to the limit in a war of &quot;Communist suppression&quot; for ten years. But what was the upshot? Today, when a powerful enemy has penetrated deep into our territory and the anti-Japanese war has been going on for two years, is it possible that there are still people who want to copy the obsolete recipes of the European and American bourgeoisie? A decade was spent on &quot;suppressing the Communists&quot; out of existence, but no capitalist society under bourgeois dictatorship was &quot;suppressed&quot; into existence. Is it possible that there are still people who want to have another try? True, a &quot;one-party dictatorship&quot; was &quot;suppressed&quot; into existence through the decade of &quot;Communist suppression&quot;, but it is a semi-colonial and semi-feudal dictatorship. What is more, at the end of four years of &quot;Communist suppression&quot; (from 1927 to the Incident of September 18, 1931), &quot;Manchukuo&quot; was &quot;suppressed&quot; into existence and in 1937, after another six years of such &quot;suppression&quot;, the Japanese imperialists made their way into China south of the Great Wall. Today if anyone wants to carry on &quot;suppression&quot; for another decade, it would mean a new type of &quot;Communist suppression&quot;, somewhat different from the old. But is there not one fleet-footed person who has already outstripped everyone else and boldly undertaken this new enterprise of &quot;Communist suppression&quot;? Yes, Wang Ching-wei, who has become the new-style anti-Communist celebrity. Anyone who wishes to join his gang can please himself; but wouldn't that turn out to be an added embarrassment when talking big about bourgeois dictatorship, capitalist society, Kemalism, a modern state, a one-party dictatorship, &quot;one doctrine&quot;, and so on and so forth? And if, instead of joining the Wang Ching-wei gang, someone wants to come into the &quot;fight Japan&quot; camp of the people but imagines that once the war is won he will be able to kick aside the people fighting Japan, seize the fruits of the victory of the fight against Japan and establish a &quot;perpetual one-party dictatorship&quot;, isn't he just daydreaming? &quot;Fight Japan!&quot; &quot;Fight Japan!&quot; But who is doing the fighting? Without the workers and the peasants and other sections of the petty bourgeoisie, you cannot move a step. Anyone who still dares to try and kick them aside will himself be crushed. Hasn't this, too, become a matter of common sense? But the die-hards among the Chinese bourgeoisie (I am referring solely to the die-hards) seem to have learned nothing in the past twenty years. Aren't they still shouting: &quot;Restrict communism&quot;, &quot;Corrode communism&quot; and &quot;Combat communism&quot;? Haven't we seen &quot;Measures for Restricting the Activities of Alien Parties&quot; followed by &quot;Measures for Dealing with the Alien Party Problem&quot; and still later by &quot;Directives for Dealing with the Alien Party Problem&quot;? Heavens! With all this &quot;restricting&quot; and &quot;dealing with&quot; going on, one wonders what kind of future they are preparing for our nation and for themselves! We earnestly and sincerely advise these gentlemen: Open your eyes, take a good look at China and the world, see how things stand inside as well as outside the country, and do not repeat your mistakes. If you persist in your mistakes, the future of our nation will of course be disastrous, but I am sure things will not go well with you either. This is absolutely true, absolutely certain. Unless the die-hards among the Chinese bourgeoisie wake up, their future will be far from bright--they will only bring about their own destruction. Therefore we hope that China's anti-Japanese united front will be maintained and that, with the cooperation of all instead of the monopoly of a single clique, the anti-Japanese cause will be brought to victory; it is the only good policy-- any other policy is bad. This is the sincere advice we Communists are giving, and do not blame us for not having forewarned you.<br /> <br /> &quot;If there is food, let everyone share it.&quot; This old Chinese saying contains much truth. Since we all share in fighting the enemy, we should all share in eating, we should all share in the work to be done, and we should all share access to education. Such attitudes as &quot;I and I alone will take everything&quot; and &quot;no one dare harm me&quot; are nothing but the old tricks of feudal lords which simply will not work in the Nineteen Forties.<br /> <br /> We Communists will never push aside anyone who is revolutionary; we shall persevere in the united front and practice long-term co-operation with all those classes, strata, political parties and groups and individuals that are willing to fight Japan to the end. But it will not do if certain people want to push aside the Communist Party. it will not do if they want to split the united front. China must keep on fighting Japan, uniting and moving forward, and we cannot tolerate anyone who tries to capitulate, cause splits or move backward.<br /> <br /> ==== '''VIII. REFUTATION OF &quot;LEFT&quot; PHRASE-MONGERING''' ====<br /> If the capitalist road of bourgeois dictatorship is out of the question, then is it possible to take the socialist road of proletarian dictatorship?<br /> <br /> No, that is not possible either.<br /> <br /> Without a doubt, the present revolution is the first step, which will develop into the second step, that of socialism, at a later date. And China will attain true happiness only when she enters the socialist era. But today is not yet the time to introduce socialism. The present task of the revolution in China is to fight imperialism and feudalism, and socialism is out of the question until this task is completed. The Chinese revolution cannot avoid taking the two steps, first of New Democracy and then of socialism. Moreover, the first step will need quite a long time and cannot be accomplished overnight. We are not utopians and cannot divorce ourselves from the actual conditions confronting us.<br /> <br /> Certain malicious propagandists, deliberately confusing these two distinct revolutionary stages, advocate the so-called theory of a single revolution in order to prove that the Three People's Principles apply to all kinds of revolutions and that communism therefore loses its ''raison d'être.'' Utilizing this &quot;theory&quot;, they frantically oppose communism and the Communist Party, the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies, and the Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia Border Region. Their real purpose is to root out all revolution, to oppose a thoroughgoing bourgeois-democratic revolution and thoroughgoing resistance to Japan and to prepare public opinion for their capitulation to the Japanese aggressors. This is deliberately being fostered by the Japanese imperialists. Since their occupation of Wuhan, they have come to realize that military force alone cannot subjugate China and have therefore resorted to political offensives and economic blandishments. Their political offensives consist in tempting wavering elements in the anti-Japanese camp, splitting the united front and undermining Kuomintang-Communist co-operation. Their economic blandishments take the form of the so-called joint industrial enterprises. In central and southern China the Japanese aggressors are allowing Chinese capitalists to invest 51 per cent of the capital in such enterprises, with Japanese capital making up the other 49 per cent; in northern China they are allowing Chinese capitalists to invest 49 per cent of the capital, with Japanese capital making up the other 51 per cent. The Japanese invaders have also promised to restore the former assets of the Chinese capitalists to them in the form of capital shares in the investment. At the prospect of profits, some conscienceless capitalists forget all moral principles and itch to have a go. One section, represented by Wang Ching-wei, has already capitulated. Another section lurking in the anti-Japanese camp would also like to cross over. But, with the cowardice of thieves, they fear that the Communists will block their exit and, what is more, that the common people will brand them as traitors. So they have put their heads together and decided to prepare the ground in cultural circles and through the press. Having determined on their policy, they have lost no time in hiring some &quot;metaphysics-mongers&quot;'''[10]''' plus a few Trotskyites who, brandishing their pens like lances, are tilting in all directions and creating bedlam. Hence the whole bag of tricks for deceiving those who do not know what is going on in the world around them--the &quot;theory of a single revolution&quot;, the tales that communism does not suit the national conditions of China, that there is no need for a Communist Party in China, that the Eighth Route and the New Fourth Armies are sabotaging the anti-Japanese war and are merely moving about without fighting, that the Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia Border Region is a feudal separatist regime, that the Communist Party is disobedient, dissident, intriguing and disruptive--and all for the purpose of providing the capitalists with good grounds for getting their 49 or 51 per cent and selling out the nation's interests to the enemy at the opportune moment. This is &quot;stealing the beams and pillars and replacing them with rotten timbers&quot;,--preparing the public mind for their projected capitulation. Thus, these gentlemen who, in all apparent seriousness, are pushing the &quot;theory of a single revolution&quot; to oppose communism and the Communist Party are out for nothing but their 49 or 51 per cent. How they must have cudgelled their brains ! The &quot;theory of a single revolution&quot; is simply a theory of no revolution at all, and that is the heart of the matter.<br /> <br /> But there are other people, apparently with no evil intentions, who are misled by the &quot;theory of a single revolution&quot; and the fanciful notion of &quot;accomplishing both the political revolution and the social revolution at one stroke&quot;; they do not understand that our revolution is divided into stages, that we can only proceed to the next stage of revolution after accomplishing the first, and that there is no such thing as &quot;accomplishing both at one stroke&quot;. Their approach is likewise very harmful because it confuses the steps to be taken in the revolution and weakens the effort directed towards the current task. It is correct and in accord with the Marxist theory of revolutionary development to say of the two revolutionary stages that the first provides the conditions for the second and that the two must be consecutive, without allowing any intervening stage of bourgeois dictatorship. However, it is a utopian view rejected by true revolutionaries to say that the democratic revolution does not have a specific task and period of its own but can be merged and accomplished simultaneously with another task, ''i.e.'', the socialist task (which can only be carried out in another period), and this is what they call &quot;accomplishing both at one stroke&quot;.<br /> <br /> ==== '''IX. REFUTATION OF THE DIE-HARDS''' ====<br /> The bourgeois die-hards in their turn come forward and say: &quot;Well, you Communists have postponed the socialist system to a later stage and have declared, 'The Three People's Principles being what China needs today, our Party is ready to fight for their complete realization.' '''[11]''' All right then, fold up your communism for the time being.&quot; A fearful hullabaloo has recently been raised with this sort of argument in the form of the &quot;one doctrine&quot; theory. In essence it is the howl of the die-hards for bourgeois despotism. Out of courtesy, however, we may simply describe it as totally lacking in common sense.<br /> <br /> Communism is at once a complete system of proletarian ideology and a new social system. It is different from any other ideology or social system, and is the most complete, progressive, revolutionary and rational system in human history. The ideological and social system of feudalism has a place only in the museum of history. The ideological and social system of capitalism has also become a museum piece in one part of the world (in the Soviet Union), while in other countries it resembles &quot;a dying person who is sinking fast, like the sun setting beyond the western hills&quot;, and will soon be relegated to the museum. The communist ideological and social system alone is full of youth and vitality, sweeping the world with the momentum of an avalanche and the force of a thunderbolt. The introduction of scientific communism into China has opened new vistas for people and has changed the face of the Chinese revolution. Without communism to guide it, China's democratic revolution cannot possibly succeed, let alone move on to the next stage. This is the reason why the bourgeois die-hards are so loudly demanding that communism be &quot;folded up&quot;. But it must not be &quot;folded up&quot;, for once communism is &quot;folded up&quot;, China will be doomed. The whole world today depends on communism for its salvation, and China is no exception.<br /> <br /> Everybody knows that the Communist Party has an immediate and a future programme, a minimum and a maximum programme, with regard to the social system it advocates. For the present period, New Democracy, and for the future, socialism; these are two parts of an organic whole, guided by one and the same communist ideology. Is it not, therefore, in the highest degree absurd to clamour for communism to be &quot;folded up&quot; on the ground that the Communist Party's minimum programme is in basic agreement with the political tenets of the Three People's Principles? It is precisely because of this basic agreement between the two that we Communists find it possible to recognize &quot;the Three People's Principles as the political basis for the anti-Japanese united front&quot; and to acknowledge that &quot;the Three People's Principles being what China needs today, our Party is ready to fight for their complete realization&quot;; otherwise no such possibility would exist. Here we have a united front between communism and the Three People's Principles in the stage of the democratic revolution, the kind of united front Dr. Sun Yat-sen had in mind when he said: &quot;communism is the good friend of the Three People's Principles.&quot;'''[12]''' To reject communism is in fact to reject the united front. The die-hards have concocted absurd arguments for the rejection of communism. Just because they want to reject the united front and practice their one-party doctrine.<br /> <br /> Moreover, the &quot;one doctrine&quot; theory is an absurdity. So long as classes exist, there will be as many doctrines as there are classes, and even various groups in the same class may have their different doctrines. Since the feudal class has a feudal doctrine, the bourgeoisie a capitalist doctrine, the Buddhists Buddhism, the Christians Christianity and the peasants polytheism, and since in recent years, some people have also advocated Kemalism, fascism, vitalism,'''[13]''' the &quot;doctrine of distribution according to labour&quot;,'''[14]''' and what not, why then cannot the proletariat have its communism? Since there are countless &quot;isms&quot;, why should the cry of &quot;Fold it up !&quot; be raised at the sight of communism alone? Frankly, &quot;folding it up&quot; will not work. Let us rather have a contest. If communism is beaten, we Communists will admit defeat in good grace. But if not, then let all that stuff about &quot;one doctrine&quot;, which violates the Principle of Democracy, be &quot;folded up&quot; as soon as possible.<br /> <br /> To avoid misunderstanding and for the edification of the die-hards, it is necessary to show clearly where the Three People's Principles and communism do coincide and where they do not.<br /> <br /> Comparison of the two reveals both similarities and differences.<br /> <br /> First for the similarities. They are to be found in the basic political programme of both doctrines during the stage of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in China. The three political tenets of the revolutionary Three People's Principles of Nationalism, Democracy and the People's Livelihood as reinterpreted by Dr. Sun Yat-sen in 1924 are basically similar to the communist political programme for the stage of the democratic revolution in China. Because of these similarities and because of the carrying out of the Three People's Principles, the united front of the two doctrines and the two parties came into existence. It is wrong to ignore this aspect.<br /> <br /> Next for the differences. (1) There is a difference in part of the programme for the stage of the democratic revolution. The communist programme for the whole course of the democratic revolution includes full rights for the people, the eight-hour working day and a thorough agrarian revolution, whereas the Three People's Principles do not. Unless these points are added to the Three People's Principles and there is the readiness to carry them out, the two democratic programmes are only basically the same and cannot be described as altogether the same. (2) Another difference is that one includes the stage of the socialist revolution, and the other does not. Communism envisages the stage of the socialist revolution beyond the stage of the democratic revolution, and hence, beyond its minimum programme it has a maximum programme, ''i.e.,'' the programme for the attainment of socialism and communism. The Three People's Principles which envisage only the stage of the democratic revolution and not the stage of the socialist revolution have only a minimum programme and not a maximum programme, ''i.e.,'' they have no programme for the establishment of socialism and communism. (3) There is the difference in world outlook. The world outlook of communism is dialectical and historical materialism, while the Three People's Principles explain history in terms of the people's livelihood, which in essence is a dualist or idealist outlook; the two world outlooks are opposed to each other .(4) There is the difference in revolutionary thoroughness. With communists, theory and practice go together, ''i.e.;'' communists possess revolutionary thoroughness. With the followers of the Three People's Principles, except for those completely loyal to the revolution and to truth, theory and practice do not go together and their deeds contradict their words, ''i.e.,'' they lack revolutionary thoroughness. The above are the differences between the two. They distinguish communists from the followers of the Three People's Principles. It is undoubtedly very wrong to ignore this distinction and see only the aspect of unity and not of contradiction.<br /> <br /> Once all this is understood, it is easy to see what the bourgeois die-hards have in mind when they demand that communism be &quot;folded up&quot;. If it does not mean bourgeois despotism, then there is no sense to it at all.<br /> <br /> ==== '''X. THE THREE PEOPLE'S PRINCIPLES, OLD AND NEW''' ====<br /> The bourgeois die-hards have no understanding whatsoever of historical change; their knowledge is so poor that it is practically nonexistent. They do not know the difference either between communism and the Three People's Principles or between the new Three People's principles and the old.<br /> <br /> We Communists recognize &quot;the Three People's Principles as the political basis for the Anti-Japanese National United Front&quot;, we acknowledge that &quot;the Three People's Principles being what China needs today, our Party is ready to fight for their complete realization&quot; and we admit the basic agreement between the communist minimum programme and the political tenets of the Three People's Principles. But which kind of Three People's Principles? The Three People's Principles as reinterpreted by Dr. Sun Yat-sen in the Manifesto of the First National Congress of the Kuomintang, and no other. I wish the die-hard gentlemen would spare a moment from the work of &quot;restricting communism&quot;, &quot;corroding communism&quot; and &quot;combating communism&quot;, in which they are so gleefully engaged, to glance through this manifesto. In the manifesto Dr. Sun Yat-sen said: &quot;Here is the true interpretation of the Kuomintang's Three People's Principles.&quot; Hence these are the only genuine Three People's Principles and all others are spurious. The only &quot;true interpretation&quot; of the Three People's Principles is the one contained in the Manifesto of the First National Congress of the Kuomintang, and all other interpretations are false. Presumably this is no Communist fabrication, for many Kuomintang members and I myself personally witnessed the adoption of the manifesto.<br /> <br /> The manifesto marks off the two epochs in the history of the Three People's Principles. Before it, they belonged to the old category; they were the Three People's Principles of the old bourgeois-democratic revolution in a semi-colony, the Three People's Principles of old democracy, the old Three People's Principles.<br /> <br /> After it, they came within the new category; they became the Three People's Principles of the new bourgeois-democratic revolution in a semi-colony, the Three People's Principles of New Democracy, the new Three People's Principles. These and these alone are the revolutionary Three People's Principles of the new period.<br /> <br /> The revolutionary Three People's Principles of the new period, the new or genuine Three People's Principles, embody the Three Great Policies of alliance with Russia, co-operation with the Communist Party and assistance to the peasants and workers. Without each and every one of these Three Great Policies, the Three People's Principles become either false or incomplete in the new period.<br /> <br /> In the first place, the revolutionary, new or genuine Three People's Principles must include alliance with Russia. As things are today, it is perfectly clear that unless there is the policy of alliance with Russia, with the land of socialism, there will inevitably be a policy of alliance with imperialism, with the imperialist powers. Is this not exactly what happened after 1927? Once the conflict between the socialist Soviet Union and the imperialist powers grows sharper, China will have to take her stand on one side or the other. This is an inevitable trend. Is it possible to avoid leaning to either side? No, that is an illusion The whole world will be swept into one or the other of these two fronts, and &quot;neutrality&quot; will then be merely a deceptive term. Especially is this true of China which, fighting an imperialist power that has penetrated deep into her territory, cannot conceive of ultimate victory without the assistance of the Soviet Union. If alliance with Russia is sacrificed for the sake of alliance with imperialism, the word &quot;revolutionary&quot; will have to be expunged from the Three People's Principles, which will then become reactionary. In the last analysis, there can be no &quot;neutral&quot; Three People's Principles; they can only be either revolutionary or counter-revolutionary. Would it not be more heroic to &quot;fight against attacks from both sides&quot;'''[15]''' as Wang Ching-wei once remarked, and to have the kind of Three People's Principles that serves this &quot;fight&quot;? Unfortunately, even its inventor Wang Chingwei himself has abandoned (or &quot;folded up&quot;) this kind of Three People's Principles, for he has adopted the Three People's Principles of alliance with imperialism. If it is argued that there is a difference between Eastern and Western imperialism, and that, unlike Wang Ching-wei who has allied himself with Eastern imperialism, one should ally oneself with some of the Western imperialists to march eastward and attack, then would not such conduct be quite revolutionary? However, whether you like it or not, the Western imperialists are determined to oppose the Soviet Union and communism, and if you ally yourself with them, they will ask you to march northward and attack, and your revolution will come to nothing. All these circumstances make it essential for the revolutionary, new and genuine Three People's Principles to include alliance with Russia, and under no circumstances alliance with imperialism against Russia.<br /> <br /> In the second place, the revolutionary, new and genuine Three People's Principles must include co-operation with the Communist Party. Either you co-operate with the Communist Party or you oppose it. Opposition to communism is the policy of the Japanese imperialists and Wang Ching-wei, and if that is what you want, very well, they will invite you to join their Anti-Communist Company. But wouldn't that look suspiciously like turning traitor? You may say, &quot;I am not following Japan, but some other country.&quot; That is just ridiculous. No matter whom you follow, the moment you oppose the Communist Party you become a traitor, because you can no longer resist Japan. If you say, &quot;I am going to oppose the Communist Party independently&quot;, that is arrant nonsense. How can the &quot;heroes&quot; in a colony or semi-colony tackle a counter-revolutionary job of this magnitude without depending on the strength of imperialism? For ten long years, virtually all the imperialist forces in the world were enlisted against the Communist Party, but in vain. How can you suddenly oppose it &quot;independently&quot;? Some people outside the Border Region, we are told, are now saying &quot;Opposing the Communist Party is good, but you can never succeed in it.&quot; This remark, if it is not simply hearsay, is only half wrong, for what &quot;good&quot; is there in opposing the Communist Party? But the other half is true, you certainly can &quot;never succeed in it&quot;. Basically, the reason lies not with the Communists but with the common people, who like the Communist Party and do not like &quot;opposing&quot; it. If you oppose the Communist Party at a juncture when our national enemy is penetrating deep into our territory, the people will be after your hide; they will certainly show you no mercy. This much is certain, whoever wants to oppose the Communist Party must be prepared to be ground to dust. If you are not keen on being ground to dust, you had certainly better drop this opposition. This is our sincere advice to all the anti-Communist &quot;heroes&quot;. Thus it is as clear as can be that the Three People's Principles of today must include co-operation with the Communist Party, or otherwise those Principles will perish. It is a question of life and death for the Three People's Principles. Co-operating with the Communist Party, they will survive; opposing the Communist Party, they will perish. Can anyone prove the contrary?<br /> <br /> In the third place, the revolutionary, new and genuine Three People's Principles must include the policy of assisting the peasants and workers. Rejection of this policy, failure whole-heartedly to assist the peasants and workers or failure to carry out the behest in Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Testament to &quot;arouse the masses of the people&quot;, amounts to preparing the way for the defeat of the revolution, and one's own defeat into the bargain. Stalin has said that ''&quot;in essence,'' the national question is a peasant question&quot;.'''[16]''' This means that the Chinese revolution is essentially a peasant revolution and that the resistance to Japan now going on is essentially peasant resistance. Essentially, the politics of New Democracy means giving the peasants their rights. The new and genuine Three People's Principles are essentially the principles of a peasant revolution. Essentially, mass culture means raising the cultural level of the peasants. The anti-Japanese war is essentially a peasant war. We are now living in a time when the &quot;principle of going up into the hills&quot; '''[17]''' applies; meetings, work, classes, newspaper publication, the writing of books, theatrical performances--everything is done up in the hills, and all essentially for the sake of the peasants. And essentially it is the peasants who provide everything that sustains the resistance to Japan and keeps us going. By &quot;essentially&quot; we mean basically, not ignoring the other sections of the people, as Stalin himself has explained. As every schoolboy knows, 80 per cent of China's population are peasants. So the peasant problem becomes the basic problem of the Chinese revolution and the strength of the peasants is the main strength of the Chinese revolution. In the Chinese population the workers rank second to the peasants in number. There are several million industrial workers in China and several tens of millions of handicraft workers and agricultural labourers. China cannot live without her workers in the various industries, because they are the producers in the industrial sector of the economy. And the revolution cannot succeed without the modern industrial working class, because it is the leader of the Chinese revolution and is the most revolutionary class. In these circumstances, the revolutionary, new and genuine Three People's Principles must include the policy of assisting the peasants and workers. Any other kind of Three People's Principles which lack this policy, do not give the peasants and workers whole-hearted assistance or do not carry out the behest to &quot;arouse the masses of the people&quot;; will certainly perish.<br /> <br /> Thus it is clear that there is no future for any Three People's Principles which depart from the Three Great Policies of alliance with Russia, co-operation with the Communist Party and assistance to the peasants and workers. Every conscientious follower of the Three People's Principles must seriously consider this point.<br /> <br /> The Three People's Principles comprising the Three Great Policies --in other words, the revolutionary, new and genuine Three People's Principles--are the Three People's Principles of New Democracy, a development of the old Three People's Principles, a great contribution of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's and a product of the era in which the Chinese revolution has become part of the world socialist revolution. It is only these Three People's Principles which the Communist Party of China regards as &quot;being what China needs today&quot; and for whose &quot;complete realization&quot; it declares itself pledged &quot;to fight&quot;. These are the only Three People's Principles which are in basic agreement with the Communist Party's political programme for the stage of democratic revolution namely, with its minimum programme.<br /> <br /> As for the old Three People's Principles, they were a product of the old period of the Chinese revolution. Russia was then an imperialist power, and naturally there could be no policy of alliance with her; there was then no Communist Party in existence in our country, and naturally there could be no policy of co-operation with it; the movement of the workers and peasants had not yet revealed its full political significance and aroused people's attention, and naturally there could be no policy of alliance with them. Hence the Three Peoples Principles of the period before the reorganization of the Kuomintang in 1924 belonged to the old category, and they became obsolete. The Kuomintang could not have gone forward unless it had developed them into the new Three People's Principles. Dr. Sun Yat-sen in his wisdom saw this point, secured the help of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of China and reinterpreted the Three People's Principles so as to endow them with new characteristics suited to the times; as a result, a united front was formed between the Three People's Principles and communism, Kuomintang-Communist cooperation was established for the first time, the sympathy of the people of the whole country was won, and the revolution of 1924-27 was launched.<br /> <br /> The old Three People's Principles were revolutionary in the old period and reflected its historical features. But if the old stuff is repeated in the new period after the new Three People's Principles have been established, or alliance with Russia is opposed after the socialist state has been established, or co-operation with the Communist Party is opposed after the Communist Party has come into existence, or the policy of assisting the peasants and workers is opposed after they have awakened and demonstrated their political strength, then that is reactionary and shows ignorance of the times. The period of reaction after 1927 was the result of such ignorance. The old proverb says, &quot;Whosoever understands the signs of the times is a great man.&quot; I hope the followers of the Three People's Principles today will bear this in mind.<br /> <br /> Were the Three People's Principles to fall within the old category, then they would have nothing basically in common with the communist minimum programme, because they would belong to the past and be obsolete. Any sort of Three People's Principles that oppose Russia, the Communist Party or the peasants and workers are definitely reactionary; they not only have absolutely nothing in common with the communist minimum programme but are the enemy of communism, and there is no common ground at all. This, too, the followers of the Three People's Principles should carefully consider.<br /> <br /> In any case, people with a conscience will never forsake the new Three People's Principles until the task of opposing imperialism and feudalism is basically accomplished. The only ones who do are people like Wang Ching-wei. No matter how energetically they push their spurious Three People's Principles which oppose Russia, the Communist Party and the peasants and workers, there will surely be no lack of people with a conscience and sense of justice who will continue to support Sun Yat-sen's genuine Three People's Principles. Many followers of the genuine Three People's Principles continued the struggle for the Chinese revolution even after the reaction of 1927, and their numbers will undoubtedly swell to tens upon tens of thousands now that the national enemy has penetrated deep into our territory. We Communists will always persevere in long-term co-operation with all the true followers of the Three People's Principles and, while rejecting the traitors and the sworn enemies of communism, will never forsake any of our friends.<br /> <br /> ==== '''XI. THE CULTURE OF NEW DEMOCRACY''' ====<br /> In the foregoing we have explained the historical characteristics of Chinese politics in the new period and the question of the new-democratic republic. We can now proceed to the question of culture.<br /> <br /> A given culture is the ideological reflection of the politics and economics of a given society. There is in China an imperialist culture which is a reflection of imperialist rule, or partial rule, in the political and economic fields. This culture is fostered not only by the cultural organizations run directly by the imperialists in China but by a number of Chinese who have lost all sense of shame. Into this category falls all culture embodying a slave ideology. China also has a semi-feudal culture which reflects her semi-feudal politics and economy, and whose exponents include all those who advocate the worship of Confucius, the study of the Confucian canon, the old ethical code and the old ideas in opposition to the new culture and new ideas. Imperialist culture and semi-feudal culture are devoted brothers and have formed a reactionary cultural alliance against China's new culture. This kind of reactionary culture serves the imperialists and the feudal class and must be swept away. Unless it is swept away, no new culture of any kind can be built up. There is no construction without destruction, no flowing without damming and no motion without rest; the two are locked in a life-and-death struggle.<br /> <br /> As for the new culture, it is the ideological reflection of the new politics and the new economy which it sets out to serve.<br /> <br /> As we have already stated in Section 3, Chinese society has gradually changed in character since the emergence of a capitalist economy in China; it is no longer an entirely feudal but a semi-feudal society, although the feudal economy still predominates. Compared with the feudal economy, this capitalist economy is a new one. The political forces of the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat are the new political forces which have emerged and grown simultaneously with this new capitalist economy. And the new culture reflects these new economic and political forces in the field of ideology and serves them. Without the capitalist economy, without the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and without the political forces of these classes, the new ideology or new culture could not have emerged.<br /> <br /> These new political, economic and cultural forces are all revolutionary forces which are opposed to the old politics, the old economy and the old culture. The old is composed of two parts, one being China's own semi-feudal politics, economy and culture, and the other the politics, economy and culture of imperialism, with the latter heading the alliance. Both are bad and should be completely destroyed. The struggle between the new and the old in Chinese society is a struggle between the new forces of the people (the various revolutionary classes) and the old forces of imperialism and the feudal class. It is a struggle between revolution and counter-revolution. This struggle has lasted a full hundred years if dated from the Opium War, and nearly thirty years if dated from the Revolution of 1911.<br /> <br /> But as already indicated, revolutions too can be classified into old and new, and what is new in one historical period becomes old in another. The century of China's bourgeois-democratic revolution can be divided into two main stages, a first stage of eighty years and a second of twenty years. Each has its basic historical characteristics: China's bourgeois-democratic revolution in the first eighty years belongs to the old category, while in the last twenty years, owing to the change in the international and domestic political situation, it belongs to the new category. Old democracy is the characteristic of the first eighty years. New Democracy is the characteristic of the last twenty. This distinction holds good in culture as well as in politics.<br /> <br /> How does it manifest itself in the field of culture? We shall explain this next.<br /> <br /> ==== '''XII. THE HISTORICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CHINA'S CULTURAL REVOLUTION''' ====<br /> On the cultural or ideological front, the two periods preceding and following the May 4th Movement form two distinct historical periods.<br /> <br /> Before the May 4th Movement, the struggle on China's cultural front was one between the new culture of the bourgeoisie and the old culture of the feudal class. The struggles between the modern school system and the imperial examination system,'''[18]''' between the new learning and the old learning, and between Western learning and Chinese learning, were all of this nature. The so-called modern schools or new learning or Western learning of that time concentrated mainly (we say mainly, because in part pernicious vestiges of Chinese feudalism still remained) on the natural sciences and bourgeois social and political theories, which were needed by the representatives of the bourgeoisie. At the time, the ideology of the new learning played a revolutionary role in fighting the Chinese feudal ideology, and it served the bourgeois-democratic revolution of the old period. However, because the Chinese bourgeoisie lacked strength and the world had already entered the era of imperialism, this bourgeois ideology was only able to last out a few rounds and was beaten back by the reactionary alliance of the enslaving ideology of foreign imperialism and the &quot;back to the ancients&quot; ideology of Chinese feudalism; as soon as this reactionary ideological alliance started a minor counter-offensive, the so-called new learning lowered its banners, muffled its drums and beat a retreat, retaining its outer form but losing its soul. The old bourgeois-democratic culture became enervated and decayed in the era of imperialism, and its failure was inevitable.<br /> <br /> But since the May 4th Movement things have been different. A brand-new cultural force came into being in China, that is, the communist culture and ideology guided by the Chinese Communists, or the communist world outlook and theory of social revolution. The May 4th Movement occurred in 1919, and in 1921 came the founding of the Communist Party of China and the real beginning of China's labour movement--all in the wake of the First World War and the October Revolution, ''i.e.'', at a time when the national problem and the colonial revolutionary movements of the world underwent a change, and the connection between the Chinese revolution and the world revolution became quite obvious. The new political force of the proletariat and the Communist Party entered the Chinese political arena, and as a result, the new cultural force, in new uniform and with new weapons, mustering all possible allies and deploying its ranks in battle array, launched heroic attacks on imperialist culture and feudal culture. This new force has made great strides in the domain of the social sciences and of the arts and letters, whether of philosophy, economics, political science, military science, history, literature or art (including the theatre, the cinema, music, sculpture and painting). For the last twenty years, wherever this new cultural force has directed its attack, a great revolution has taken place both in ideological content and in form (for example, in the written language). Its influence has been so great and its impact so powerful that it is invincible wherever it goes. The numbers it has rallied behind it have no parallel in Chinese history. Lu Hsun was the greatest and the most courageous standard-bearer of this new cultural force. The chief commander of China's cultural revolution, he was not only a great man of letters but a great thinker and revolutionary. Lu Hsun was a man of unyielding integrity, free from all sycophancy or obsequiousness; this quality is invaluable among colonial and semi-colonial peoples. Representing the great majority of the nation, Lu Hsun breached and stormed the enemy citadel; on the cultural front he was the bravest and most correct, the firmest, the most loyal and the most ardent national hero, a hero without parallel in our history. The road he took was the very road of China's new national culture.<br /> <br /> Prior to the May 4th Movement, China's new culture was a culture of the old-democratic kind and part of the capitalist cultural revolution of the world bourgeoisie. Since the May 4th Movement, it has become new-democratic and part of the socialist cultural revolution of the world proletariat.<br /> <br /> Prior to the May 4th Movement, China's new cultural movement, her cultural revolution, was led by the bourgeoisie, which still had a leading role to play. After the May 4th Movement, its culture and ideology became even more backward than its politics and were incapable of playing any leading role; at most, they could serve to a certain extent as an ally during revolutionary periods, while inevitably the responsibility for leading the alliance rested on proletarian culture and ideology. This is an undeniable fact.<br /> <br /> The new-democratic culture is the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal culture of the broad masses; today it is the culture of the anti-Japanese united front. This culture can be led only by the culture and ideology of the proletariat, by the ideology of communism, and not by the culture and ideology of any other class. In a word, new-democratic culture is the proletarian-led, anti-imperialist and anti-feudal culture of the broad masses.<br /> <br /> ==== '''XIII. THE FOUR PERIODS''' ====<br /> A cultural revolution is the ideological reflection of the political and economic revolution and is in their service. In China there is a united front in the cultural as in the political revolution.<br /> <br /> The history of the united front in the cultural revolution during the last twenty years can be divided into four periods. The first covers the two years from 1919 to 1921, the second the six years from 1921 to 1927, the third the ten years from 1927 to 1937, and the fourth the three years from 1937 to the present.<br /> <br /> The first period extended from the May 4th Movement of 1919 to the founding of the Communist Party of China in 1921. The May 4th Movement was its chief landmark.<br /> <br /> The May 4th Movement was an anti-imperialist as well as an anti-feudal movement. Its outstanding historical significance is to be seen in a feature which was absent from the Revolution of 1911, namely, its thorough and uncompromising opposition to imperialism as well as to feudalism. The May 4th Movement possessed this quality because capitalism had developed a step further in China and because new hopes had arisen for the liberation of the Chinese nation as China's revolutionary intellectuals saw the collapse of three great imperialist powers, Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary, and the weakening of two others, Britain and France, while the Russian proletariat had established a socialist state and the German, Hungarian and Italian proletariat had risen in revolution. The May 4th Movement came into being at the call of the world revolution, of the Russian Revolution and of Lenin. It was part of the world proletarian revolution of the time. Although the Communist Party had not yet come into existence, there were already large numbers of intellectuals who approved of the Russian Revolution and had the rudiments of Communist ideology. In the beginning the May 4th Movement was the revolutionary movement of a united front of three sections of people--communist intellectuals, revolutionary petty-bourgeois intellectuals and bourgeois intellectuals (the last forming the right wing of the movement). Its shortcoming was that it was confined to the intellectuals and that the workers and peasants did not join in. But as soon as it developed into the June 3rd Movement, '''[19]''' not only the intellectuals but the mass of the proletariat, the petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie joined in, and it became a nation-wide revolutionary movement. The cultural revolution ushered in by the May 4th Movement was uncompromising in its opposition to feudal culture; there had never been such a great and thoroughgoing cultural revolution since the dawn of Chinese history. Raising aloft the two great banners of the day, &quot;Down with the old ethics and up with the new!&quot; and &quot;Down with the old literature and up with the new!&quot;, the cultural revolution had great achievements to its credit. At that time it was not yet possible for this cultural movement to become widely diffused among the workers and peasants. The slogan of &quot;Literature for the common people&quot; was advanced, but in fact the &quot;common people&quot; then could only refer to the petty-bourgeois and bourgeois intellectuals in the cities, that is, the urban intelligentsia. Both in ideology and in the matter of cadres, the May 4th Movement paved the way for the founding of the Communist Party of China in 1921 and for the May 30th Movement in 1925 and the Northern Expedition. The bourgeois intellectuals, who constituted the right wing of the May 4th Movement, mostly compromised with the enemy in the second period and went over to the side of reaction.<br /> <br /> In the second period, whose landmarks were the founding of the Communist Party of China, the May 30th Movement and the Northern Expedition, the united front of the three classes formed in the May 4th Movement was continued and expanded, the peasantry was drawn into it and a political united front of all these classes, the first instance of Kuomintang-Communist co-operation, was established. Dr. Sun Yat-sen was a great man not only because he led the great Revolution of 1911 (although it was only a democratic revolution of the old period), but also because, &quot;adapting himself to the trends of the world and meeting the needs of the masses&quot;, he had the capacity to bring forward the revolutionary Three Great Policies of alliance with Russia, co-operation with the Communist Party and assistance to the peasants and workers, give new meaning to the Three People's Principles and thus institute the new Three People's Principles with their Three Great Policies. Previously, the Three People's Principles had exerted little influence on the educational and academic world or with the youth, because they had not raised the issues of opposition to imperialism or to the feudal social system and feudal culture and ideology. They were the old Three People's Principles which people regarded as the time-serving banner of a group of men bent on seizing power, in other words, on securing official positions, a banner used purely for political maneuvering. Then came the new Three People's Principles with their Three Great Policies. The co-operation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and the joint efforts of the revolutionary members of the two parties spread the new Three People's Principles all over China, extending to a section of the educational and academic world and the mass of student youth. This was entirely due to the fact that the original Three People's Principles had developed into the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and new-democratic Three People's Principles with their Three Great Policies. Without this development it would have been impossible to disseminate the ideas of the Three People's Principles.<br /> <br /> During this period, the revolutionary Three People's Principles became the political basis of the united front of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and of all the revolutionary classes, and since &quot;communism is the good friend of the Three People's Principles&quot;, a united front was formed between the two of them. In terms of social classes, it was a united front of the proletariat, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie. Using the Communist ''Weekly Guide,'' the Kuomintang's ''Republican Daily News'' of Shanghai and other newspapers in various localities as their bases of operations, the two parties jointly advocated anti-imperialism, jointly combated feudal education based upon the worship of Confucius and upon the study of the Confucian canon and jointly opposed feudal literature and the classical language and promoted the new literature and the vernacular style of writing with an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal content. During the wars in Kwangtung and during the Northern Expedition, they reformed China's armed forces by the inculcation of anti-imperialist and anti-feudal ideas. The slogans, &quot;Down with the Corrupt officials&quot; and &quot;Down with the local tyrants and evil gentry&quot;, were raised among the peasant millions, and great peasant revolutionary struggles were aroused. Thanks to all this and to the assistance of the Soviet Union, the Northern Expedition was victorious. But no sooner did the big bourgeoisie climb to power than it put an end to this revolution, thus creating an entirely new political situation<br /> <br /> The third period was the new revolutionary period of 1927-37. As a change had taken place within the revolutionary camp towards the end of the second period, with the big bourgeoisie going over to the counter-revolutionary camp of the imperialist and feudal forces and the national bourgeoisie trailing after it, only three of the four classes formerly within the revolutionary camp remained, ''i.e.'', the proletariat, the peasantry and the other sections of the petty bourgeoisie (including the revolutionary intellectuals), and consequently the Chinese revolution inevitably entered a new period in which the Communist Party of China alone gave leadership to the masses. This period was one of counter-revolutionary campaigns of &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot;, on the one hand, and of the deepening of the revolution, on the other. There were two kinds of counter-revolutionary campaigns of &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot;, the military and the cultural. The deepening of the revolution was of two kinds; both the agrarian and the cultural revolutions were deepened. At the instigation of the imperialists, the counter-revolutionary forces of the whole country and of the whole world were mobilized for both kinds of campaigns of &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot;, which lasted no less than ten years and were unparalleled in their ruthlessness; hundreds of thousands of Communists and young students were slaughtered and millions of workers and peasants suffered cruel persecution. The people responsible for all this apparently had no doubt that communism and the Communist Party could be &quot;exterminated once and for all&quot;. However, the outcome was different; both kinds of &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; campaigns failed miserably. The military campaign resulted in the northern march of the Red Army to resist the Japanese, and the cultural campaign resulted in the outbreak of the December 8th Movement of the revolutionary youth in 1935. And the common result of both was the awakening of the people of the whole country. These were three positive results. The most amazing thing of all was that the Kuomintang's cultural &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; campaign failed completely in the Kuomintang areas as well, although the Communist Party was in an utterly defenceless position in all the cultural and educational institutions there. Why did this happen? Does it not give food for prolonged and deep thought? It was in the very midst of such campaigns of &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; that Lu Hsun, who believed in communism, became the giant of China's cultural revolution<br /> <br /> The negative result of the counter-revolutionary campaigns of &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; was the invasion of our country by Japanese imperialism. This is the chief reason why to this very day the people of the whole country still bitterly detest those ten years of anti-communism.<br /> <br /> In the struggles of this period, the revolutionary side firmly upheld the people's anti-imperialist and anti-feudal New Democracy and their new Three People's Principles, while the counter-revolutionary side under the direction of imperialism, imposed the despotic regime of the coalition of the landlord class and the big bourgeoisie. That despotic regime butchered Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Three Great Policies and his new Three People's Principles both politically and culturally, with catastrophic consequences to the Chinese nation.<br /> <br /> The fourth period is that of the present anti-Japanese war. Pursuing its zigzag course, the Chinese revolution has again arrived at a united front of the four classes; but the scope of the united front is now much broader because its upper stratum includes many members of the ruling classes, its middle stratum includes the national bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie, and its lower stratum includes the entire proletariat, so that the various classes and strata of the nation have become members of the alliance resolutely resisting Japanese imperialism. The first stage of this period lasted until the fall of Wuhan. During that stage, there was a lively atmosphere in the country in every field politically there was a trend towards democracy and culturally there was fairly widespread activity. With the fall of Wuhan the second stage began, during which the political situation has undergone many changes, with one section of the big bourgeoisie capitulating to the enemy and another desiring an early end to the War of Resistance. In the cultural sphere, this situation has been reflected in the reactionary activities of Yeh Ching, '''[20]''' Chang Chun-mai and others, and in the suppression of freedom of speech and of the press.<br /> <br /> To overcome this crisis, a firm struggle is necessary against all ideas opposed to resistance, unity and progress, and unless these reactionary ideas are crushed, there will be no hope of victory. How will this struggle turn out? This is the big question in the minds of the people of the whole country. Judging by the domestic and international situation, the Chinese people are bound to win, however numerous the obstacles on the path of resistance. The progress achieved during the twenty years since the May 4th Movement exceeds not only that of the preceding eighty years but virtually surpasses that achieved in the thousands of years of Chinese history. Can we not visualize what further progress China will make in another twenty years? The unbridled violence of all the forces of darkness, whether domestic or foreign, has brought disaster to our nation; but this very violence indicates that while the forces of darkness still have some strength left, they are already in their death throes, and that the people are gradually approaching victory. This is true of China, of the whole East and of the entire world.<br /> <br /> ==== '''XIV. SOME WRONG IDEAS ABOUT THE NATURE OF CULTURE''' ====<br /> Everything new comes from the forge of hard and bitter struggle. This is also true of the new culture which has followed a zigzag course in the past twenty years, during which both the good and the bad were tested and proved in struggle.<br /> <br /> The bourgeois die-hards are as hopelessly wrong on the question of culture as on that of political power. They neither understand the historical characteristics of this new period in China, nor recognize the new-democratic culture of the masses. Their starting point is bourgeois despotism, which in culture becomes the cultural despotism of the bourgeoisie. It seems that a section (and I refer only to a section) of educated people from the so-called European-American school '''[21]''' who in fact supported the Kuomintang government's &quot;Communist suppression&quot; campaign on the cultural front in the past are now supporting its policy of &quot;restricting&quot; and &quot;corroding&quot; the Communist Party. They do not want the workers and the peasants to hold up their heads politically or culturally. This bourgeois die-hard road of cultural despotism leads nowhere; as in the case of political despotism, the domestic and international pre-conditions are lacking. Therefore this cultural despotism, too, had better be &quot;folded up&quot;.<br /> <br /> So far as the orientation of our national culture is concerned, communist ideology plays the guiding role, and we should work hard both to disseminate socialism and communism throughout the working class and to educate the peasantry and other sections of the people in socialism properly and step by step. However, our national culture as a whole is not yet socialist.<br /> <br /> Because of the leadership of the proletariat, the politics, the economy and the culture of New Democracy all contain an element of socialism, and by no means a mere casual element but one with a decisive role. However, taken as a whole, the political, economic and cultural situation so far is new-democratic and not socialist. For the Chinese revolution in its present stage is not yet a socialist revolution for the overthrow of capitalism but a bourgeois-democratic revolution, its central task being mainly that of combating foreign imperialism and domestic feudalism. In the sphere of national culture, it is wrong to assume that the existing national culture is, or should be, socialist in its entirety. That would amount to confusing the dissemination of communist ideology with the carrying out of an immediate programme of action, and to confusing the application of the communist standpoint and method in investigating problems, undertaking research, handling work and training cadres with the general policy for national education and national culture in the democratic stage of the Chinese revolution. A national culture with a socialist content will necessarily be the reflection of a socialist politics and a socialist economy. There are socialist elements in our politics and our economy, and hence these socialist elements are reflected in our national culture; but taking our society as a whole, we do not have a socialist politics and a socialist economy yet, so that there cannot be a wholly socialist national culture. Since the present Chinese revolution is part of the world proletarian-socialist revolution, the new culture of China today is part of the world proletarian-socialist new culture and is its great ally. While this part contains vital elements of socialist culture, the national culture as a whole joins the stream of the world proletarian-socialist new culture not entirely as a socialist culture, but as the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal new-democratic culture of the broad masses. And since the Chinese revolution today cannot do without proletarian leadership, China's new culture cannot do without the leadership of proletarian culture and ideology, of communist ideology. At the present stage, however, this kind of leadership means leading the masses of the people in an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal political and cultural revolution, and therefore, taken as a whole, the content of China's new national culture is still not socialist but new-democratic.<br /> <br /> Beyond all doubt, now is the time to spread communist ideas more widely and put more energy into the study of Marxism-Leninism, or otherwise we shall not only be unable to lead the Chinese revolution forward to the future stage of socialism, but shall also be unable to guide the present democratic revolution to victory. However, we must keep the spreading of communist ideas and propaganda about the Communist social system distinct from the practical application of the new-democratic programme of action; we must also keep the communist theory and method of investigating problems, undertaking research, handling work and training cadres distinct from the new democratic line for national culture as a whole. It is undoubtedly inappropriate to mix the two up.<br /> <br /> It can thus be seen that the content of China's new national culture at the present stage is neither the cultural despotism of the bourgeoisie nor the socialism of the proletariat, but the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal New Democracy of the masses, under the leadership of proletarian-socialist culture and ideology.<br /> <br /> ==== '''XV. A NATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND MASS CULTURE''' ====<br /> New-democratic culture is national. It opposes imperialist oppression and upholds the dignity and independence of the Chinese nation. It belongs to our own nation and bears our own national characteristics. It links up with the socialist and new-democratic cultures of all other nations and they are related in such a way that they can absorb something from each other and help each other to develop, together forming a new world culture; but as a revolutionary national culture it can never link up with any reactionary imperialist culture of whatever nation. To nourish her own culture China needs to assimilate a good deal of foreign progressive culture, not enough of which was done in the past. We should assimilate whatever is useful to us today not only from the present-day socialist and new-democratic cultures but also from the earlier cultures of other nations, for example, from the culture of the various capitalist countries in the Age of Enlightenment. However, we should not gulp any of this foreign material down uncritically, but must treat it as we do our food--first chewing it, then submitting it to the working of the stomach and intestines with their juices and secretions, and separating it into nutriment to be absorbed and waste matter to be discarded--before it can nourish us. To advocate &quot;wholesale westernization&quot; '''[22]''' is wrong. China has suffered a great deal from the mechanical absorption of foreign material. Similarly, in applying Marxism to China, Chinese communists must fully and properly integrate the universal truth of Marxism with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution, or in other words, the universal truth of Marxism must be combined with specific national characteristics and acquire a definite national form if it is to be useful, and in no circumstances can it be applied subjectively as a mere formula. Marxists who make a fetish of formulas are simply playing the fool with Marxism and the Chinese revolution, and there is no room for them in the ranks of the Chinese revolution. Chinese culture should have its own form, its own national form. National in form and new-democratic in content--such is our new culture today.<br /> <br /> New-democratic culture is scientific. Opposed as it is to all feudal and superstitious ideas, it stands for seeking truth from facts, for objective truth and for the unity of theory and practice. On this point, the possibility exists of a united front against imperialism, feudalism and superstition between the scientific thought of the Chinese proletariat and those Chinese bourgeois materialists and natural scientists who are progressive, but in no case is there a possibility of a united front with any reactionary idealism. In the field of political action Communists may form an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal united front with some idealists and even religious people, but we can never approve of their idealism or religious doctrines. A splendid old culture was created during the long period of Chinese feudal society. To study the development of this old culture, to reject its feudal dross and assimilate its democratic essence is a necessary condition for developing our new national culture and increasing our national self-confidence, but we should never swallow anything and everything uncritically. It s imperative to separate the fine old culture of the people which had a more or less democratic and revolutionary character from all the decadence of the old feudal ruling class. China's present new politics and new economy have developed out of her old politics and old economy, and her present new culture, too, has developed out of her old culture; therefore, we must respect our own history and must not lop it off. However, respect for history means giving it its proper place as a science, respecting its dialectical development, and not eulogizing the past at the expense of the present or praising every drop of feudal poison. As far as the masses and the young students are concerned, the essential thing is to guide them to look forward and not backward.<br /> <br /> New-democratic culture belongs to the broad masses and is therefore democratic. It should serve the toiling masses of workers and peasants who make up more than 90 per cent of the nation's population d should gradually become their very own. There is a difference of degree, as well as a close link, between the knowledge imparted to the revolutionary cadres and the knowledge imparted to the revolutionary masses, between the raising of cultural standards and popularization. Revolutionary culture is a powerful revolutionary weapon for the broad masses of the people. It prepares the ground ideologically before the revolution comes and is an important, indeed essential, fighting front in the general revolutionary front during the revolution. People engaged in revolutionary cultural work are the commanders at various levels on this cultural front. &quot;Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement&quot;; '''[23]''' one can thus see how important the cultural movement is for the practical revolutionary movement. Both the cultural and practical movements must be of the masses. Therefore all progressive cultural workers in the anti-Japanese war must have their own cultural battalions, that is, the broad masses. A revolutionary cultural worker who is not close to the people is a commander without an army, whose fire-power cannot bring the enemy down. To attain this objective, written Chinese must be reformed, given the requisite conditions, and our spoken language brought closer to that of the people, for the people, it must be stressed, are the inexhaustible source of our revolutionary culture.<br /> <br /> A national, scientific and mass culture--such is the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal culture of the people, the culture of New Democracy, the new culture of the Chinese nation.<br /> <br /> Combine the politics, the economy and the culture of New Democracy, and you have the new-democratic republic, the Republic of China both in name and in reality, the new China we want to create.<br /> <br /> Behold, New China is within sight. Let us all hail her!<br /> <br /> Her masts have already risen above the horizon. Let us all cheer in welcome!<br /> <br /> Raise both your hands. New China is ours!<br /> <br /> ==== '''''NOTES''''' ====<br /> 1. ''Chinese Culture'' was a magazine founded in January 1940 in Yenan; the present article appeared in the first number.<br /> <br /> 2. See V. I. Lenin, &quot;Once Again on the Trade Unions, the Present Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin&quot;, ''Selected Works,'' Eng. ed., International Publishers, New York, 1943, Vol. IX, p. 54.<br /> <br /> 3. Karl Marx, &quot;Preface to A ''Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy&quot;, Selected Works of Marx and Engels,'' Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1958, Vol. I, p. 363<br /> <br /> 4. Karl Marx, &quot;Theses on Feuerbach&quot;, ''Selected Works of Marx and Engels,'' Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1958, Vol. II, p. 405.<br /> <br /> 5. J. V. Stalin, &quot;The October Revolution and the National Question&quot;, ''Works,'' Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1953, Vol. IV, pp. 169-70.<br /> <br /> 6. J. V. Stalin, &quot;The National Question Once Again&quot;, ''Works,'' Eng. ed., FLPH Moscow, 1954, Vol. VII, pp. 225- 27.<br /> <br /> 7. V. I. Lenin, &quot;Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism&quot;, ''Selected Works'' Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1950, Vol. I, Part 2, p. 566.<br /> <br /> 8. These anti-Soviet campaigns were instigated by the Kuomintang government following Chiang Kai-shek's betrayal of the revolution. On December 13, 1927, the Kuomintang murdered the Soviet vice-consul in Canton and on the next day its government in Nanking issued a decree breaking off relations with Russia, withdrawing official recognition from Soviet consuls in the provinces and ordering Soviet commercial establishments to cease activity. In August 1929 Chiang Kai-shek, under the instigation of the imperialists, organized acts of provocation in the Northeast against the Soviet Union, which resulted in armed clashes.<br /> <br /> 9. After World War I the British imperialists instigated their vassal Greece to commit aggression against Turkey, but the Turkish people, with the help of the Soviet Union, defeated the Greek troops in 1922. In 1923, Kemal was elected President of Turkey. Stalin said:<br /> <br /> A Kemalist revolution is a revolution of the top stratum, a revolution of the national merchant bourgeoisie, arising in a struggle against the foreign imperialists, and whose subsequent development is essentially directed against the peasants and workers, against the very possibility of an agrarian revolution. (&quot;Talk with Students of the Sun Yat-sen University&quot;, ''Works,'' Eng. ed., FLPH Moscow, 1954, Vol. IX, p. 261.)<br /> <br /> 10. The &quot;metaphysics-mongers&quot; were Chang Chun-mai and his group. After the May 4th movement, Chang openly opposed science and advocated metaphysics, or what he called &quot;spiritual culture&quot;, and thus came to be known as a &quot;metaphysics-monger&quot;. In order to support Chiang Kai-shek and the Japanese aggressors, he published an &quot;Open Letter to Mr. Mao Tse-tung&quot; in December 1938 at Chiang Kai-shek's bidding, wildly demanding the abolition of the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army and the Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia Border Region.<br /> <br /> 11. See the manifesto of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the establishment of Kuomintang-Communist co-operation, issued in September 1937.<br /> <br /> 12. See Dr. Sun Yat-sen, ''Lectures on the Principle of People's Livelihood,'' 1924, Lecture II.<br /> <br /> 13. ''Vitalism'' was an exposition of Kuomintang fascism, a hotchpotch ghostwritten by a number of reactionary hacks for Chen Li-fu, one of the notorious chiefs of Chiang Kai-shek's secret service.<br /> <br /> 14. The &quot;doctrine of distribution according to labour&quot; was a high-sounding slogan shamelessly put forward by Yen Hsi-shan, warlord and representative of the big landlords and big compradors in Shansi Province.<br /> <br /> 15. &quot;Fight Against Attacks from Both Sides&quot; was the title of an article written by Wang Ching-wei after his betrayal of the revolution in 1927.<br /> <br /> 16. J V. Stalin, &quot;Concerning the National Question in Yugoslavia&quot;, a speech delivered in the Yugoslav Commission of the E.C.C.I., March 30, 1925. Stalin said''':'''<br /> <br /> ... the peasantry constitutes the main army of the national movement, . . . there is no powerful national movement without the peasant army, nor can there be. That is what is meant when it is said that, ''in essence,'' the national question is a peasant question. (''Works'', Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1954, Vol. VII, pp. 71-72 )<br /> <br /> 17. The &quot;principle of going up into the hills&quot; was a dogmatist gibe against Comrade Mao Tse-tung for his emphasis on rural revolutionary bases. He makes use of the expression to explain the importance of the role played by the rural revolutionary bases.<br /> <br /> 18. The modern school system was the educational system modelled on that of capitalist countries in Europe and America. The imperial examination system was the old examination system in feudal China. Towards the end of the 19&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; century, enlightened Chinese intellectuals urged the abolition of the old competitive examination system and the establishment of modern schools.<br /> <br /> 19. The June 3rd Movement marked a new stage in the patriotic movement of May 4. On June 3, 1919, students in Peking held public meetings and made speeches in defiance of persecution and repression by the army and police. They went on strike and the strike spread to the workers and merchants in Shanghai, Nanking, Tientsin, Hangchow, Wuhan and Kiukiang and in the provinces of Shantung and Anhwei. Thus the May 4th Movement grew into a broad mass movement in which the proletariat, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie all participated.<br /> <br /> 20. Yeh Ching was a renegade Communist who became a hired hack in the Kuomintang secret service.<br /> <br /> 21. The spokesman of the so-called European-American school was the counterrevolutionary Hu Shih.<br /> <br /> 22. Wholesale westernization was the view held by a number of westernized Chinese bourgeois intellectuals who unconditionally praised the outmoded individualist bourgeois culture of the West and advocated the servile imitation of capitalist Europe and America.<br /> <br /> 23. V. I. Lenin, &quot;What Is to Be Done?&quot;, ''Collected Works,'' Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1961, Vol. V, p. 369.<br /> <br /> [[Category:Library works by Mao Zedong]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:A_Comment_On_The_Statement_Of_The_CPUSA&diff=76030 2024-09-30T12:47:07Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=A comment on the statement of the CPUSA|author=Communist party of China|written in=March 8, 1963|publisher=Renmin Ribao|type=Newspaper|source=https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/polemic/cpusa.htm}}<br /> <br /> On January 9 of this year, the Communist Party of the United States of America issued a statement&lt;ref&gt;Communist Party of the United States of America, ''On the Ideological Position of the Communist Party of China.'' New York. January 9, 1963.&lt;/ref&gt; publicly attacking the Communist Party of China. Certain comrades of the CPUSA have also made a number of other attacks on the Chinese Communist Party in recent months.<br /> <br /> The CPUSA statement was particularly vicious in slandering the Chinese Communist Party for the position it took on the Caribbean crisis. It said that the Chinese Communist Party had advocated “a policy leading to thermonuclear war”, and that “this pseudo-Left dogmatic and sectarian line of our Chinese comrades dovetails with that of the most adventurous U.S. imperialists and gives the latter encouragement”.<br /> <br /> What kind of talk is this? People cannot help being amazed that U.S. Communists should utter such shameful slanders.<br /> <br /> The position of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people on the Caribbean crisis was very clear. We supported the five just demands of the Cuban Revolutionary Government, we were against putting any faith in Kennedy’s sham “guarantee”, and we were against imposing “international inspection” on Cuba. From the outset we directed the spearhead of our struggle against U.S. imperialism, which was committing aggression against Cuba. We neither advocated the sending of missiles to Cuba, nor obstructed the withdrawal of so-called offensive weapons. We opposed adventurism, and we also opposed capitulationism. We would like to ask: What was wrong with this correct position of ours? How can it be described as “a policy leading to thermonuclear war”? What was there about it that “dovetails” with the line of U.S. imperialism?<br /> <br /> It is not hard to see that there is a line which does dovetail with that of U.S. imperialism. On the question of the Caribbean crisis, certain leaders of the CPUSA direct the spearhead of their struggle, not against U.S. imperialism, the criminal aggressor against Cuba, but against the Chinese Communist Party, resolute supporter of Cuba. In this respect, aren’t they really cheek by jowl with the most adventurous U.S. imperialists?<br /> <br /> Since you describe the Chinese comrades, who resolutely oppose U.S. imperialism, as being “pseudo-Left”, we would like to ask: What do you consider to be the genuine Left? Can it be that those using the sovereignty of another country as a counter for political bargaining with U.S. imperialism are to be considered the genuine Left? To act in that way is indeed to be through-and-through pseudo-Left, or rather, genuinely Right.<br /> <br /> It is no accident that certain leaders of the CPUSA have attacked the Chinese Communist Party on the question of the Caribbean crisis. This action is a reflection of their completely wrong understanding of U.S. imperialism and their completely incorrect class stand.<br /> <br /> For a considerable period, certain leaders of the CPUSA, in their reports and statements, have been doing their utmost to prettify U.S. imperialism, to prettify Kennedy, the U.S. imperialist chieftain, and to affirm their loyalty to the U.S. ruling class.<br /> <br /> They spoke highly of Kennedy’s idea of the “New Frontier”, which extends U.S. spheres of influence over all six continents, saying that “to speak of a New Frontier, as Kennedy does, is good”.&lt;ref&gt;Gus Hall’s report to the National Committee of the CPUSA, ''Political Affairs'', February 1961&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> They praised Kennedy’s Inaugural Speech, which called on the people of the United States to make sacrifices to promote the cause of U.S. imperialism, saying that it was “a possible opening on the road to peace”.&lt;ref&gt;''The Worker'', January 29, 1961&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> They sang the praises of Kennedy’s State of the Union message of 1961, where he proclaimed the dual tactics of counter-revolution in the words, “The American eagle holds in his right talon the olive branch, while in his left is held a bundle of arrows”, and said it was “welcomed by the overwhelming majority of the American people”.&lt;ref&gt;''The Worker'', February 5, 1961&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> They held that the Kennedy Administration’s “main mass support” is “the working class, the Negro people and the peace forces”, and they wished for “a shift in policy... in the direction of peace and democracy” on the part of the Kennedy government.&lt;ref&gt;Policy Statement by Gus Hall, ''The Worker'', July 16, 1961&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> From Kennedy’s 1962 State of the Union message, in which he announced the stepping up of armaments to realize the U.S. goal of world domination, they drew the conclusion that the Kennedy Administration “can be compelled to yield to the pressures from the people”.&lt;ref&gt;''Political Affairs'', February 1962&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> They described Kennedy’s action supporting the Rockefeller group in its attack on the Morgan group during the 1962 incident concerning steel prices as having “awakened anew the anti-monopoly tradition of Americans” and “rendered a great service”.&lt;ref&gt;''The Worker'', April 22, 1962&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Commenting on Kennedy’s 1963 State of the Union message in which he expressed the intention of using nuclear blackmail to establish “a world of order” led by the United States, they played up his statement that “we seek not the world-wide victory of one nation or system but a world-wide victory of man” and described this deceitful rubbish as Kennedy’s “recognition of world realities”, which “most people were happy to hear” and which inspired “hopefulness”.&lt;ref&gt;''The Worker'', January 20, 1963&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> They said that they would “any day and every day” take an oath not to advocate using violence to overthrow the U.S. government. When someone asked, “If the Soviet Union attacked the U.S. whom would you support?”, the answer was, “I would defend my country if I thought it was being attacked . . .”.&lt;ref&gt;''The Worker'', February 24, 1963&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Statements of this sort by certain leaders of the CPUSA, prettifying U.S. imperialism and affirming their loyalty to it, have nothing in common with the Marxist-Leninist conclusions about U.S. imperialism set forth in the Moscow Declaration and the Moscow Statement.<br /> <br /> Presenting a scientific analysis of U.S. imperialism, the Moscow Declaration and the Moscow Statement clearly point out that U.S. imperialism is the greatest international exploiter, the centre of world reaction, the chief bulwark of modern colonialism, the international gendarme, the main force of aggression and war, and the enemy of the people of the world.<br /> <br /> Under the cover of “peace” and “disarmament” U.S. imperialism is stepping up arms expansion and war preparation. It is preparing for wars of all types, for all out nuclear war as well as for limited wars, and it is already waging “special warfare”. In order to suppress and sabotage the national-democratic revolutionary movement and to promote neo-colonialism all over the world, and especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America, U.S. imperialism is using dual counter-revolutionary tactics  —  using the dollar and armed force both alternately and simultaneously  —  and is employing the revisionist clique of Yugoslavia as its special detachment for this purpose. U.S. imperialism is voraciously plundering the wealth of many countries, not even sparing its own allies. Since World War II, U.S. imperialism has taken the place of German, Japanese and Italian fascism and rallied around itself all the most reactionary and decadent forces of the world. Today it is the most parasitic, most decadent and most reactionary of all capitalisms. It is the main source of aggression and war.<br /> <br /> From the reactionary nature of U.S. imperialism, from its policies of aggression and war and from world realities, more and more people everywhere are coming to see ever more clearly that U.S. imperialism is the most ferocious enemy of all oppressed people and nations, the common enemy of the people of the world and the chief enemy of world peace.<br /> <br /> Some leaders of the CPUSA will probably say they do not deny that U.S. imperialism is perpetrating criminal aggression and waging war in various parts of the world. When they mention these criminal activities, however, they always hasten to add that these evils are not the work of the president of the United States, but of the “ultra-Rights”, or are done by the president under the pressure of the “ultra-Rights”. They have described the former U.S. president, Eisenhower, and the present president, Kennedy, as being “sober-minded”, “realistic” and “sensible”. These leaders of the CPUSA often speak of “two power centers in Washington, one in the White House, the other in the Pentagon”, and speak of “the Pentagon generals and admirals and their coalition partners among the ultra-Rights, the Republican leaders and Wall Street” as forces independent of the White House. We should like to ask: Do the leaders of the CPUSA still accept the Marxist-Leninist theory of the state and admit that the U.S. state apparatus is the tool of monopoly capital for class rule? And if so, how can there be a president independent of monopoly capital, how can there be a Pentagon independent of the White House, and how can there be two opposing centres in Washington?<br /> <br /> Let us consider, for instance, the present U.S. president, Kennedy. He is himself a big capitalist. It is he who ordered the armed invasion of Cuba in 1961, and who ordered the military blockade and war provocations against Cuba in 1962. It is he who has carried on the inhuman “special war” in southern Vietnam, who has used the “United Nations force” to suppress the national liberation movement in the Congo, and who has organized “special forces” in a frantic effort to crush the national-democratic revolutionary movement in various Latin American countries. Every year since he became president, Kennedy has greatly increased U.S. military spending. Kennedy’s 1963-64 budget calls for military expenditures of over $60 billion, or over 30 per cent more than the $45.9 billion for military expenditures provided in Eisenhower’s 1959-60 budget. These facts show that the Kennedy Administration is still more adventurous in pursuing policies of aggression and war.<br /> <br /> In trying so hard to portray Kennedy as “sensible”, are not these CPUSA leaders serving as willing apologists for U.S. imperialism and helping it to deceive the people of the world?<br /> <br /> The fact that certain leaders of the CPUSA are so eager to prettify U.S. imperialism and so eager to affirm their loyalty to the ruling class of the United States recalls to mind Browder’s revisionism, which existed in the CPUSA for some time. This renegade from the working class, Browder, denied Lenin’s basic thesis that imperialism is parasitic, decaying and moribund capitalism, and denied that U.S. capitalism is imperialist in its nature, maintaining that it “retains some of the characteristics of a young capitalism” and would play a progressive role and be a force for world peace for a long time. Why don’t these leaders of the CPUSA stop and consider: What is the difference between your present embellishment of U.S. imperialism and Browder’s revisionism?<br /> <br /> It is obvious that differences of principle exist in the international communist movement today as to how to appraise and how to deal with U.S. imperialism, the arch enemy of the people of the world.<br /> <br /> We have always held that, basing ourselves on Marxism-Leninism and taking things as they really are, we must constantly expose the reactionary nature of U.S. imperialism, constantly expose the policies of aggression and war pursued by U.S. imperialism, including its government leaders, and clearly point out that U.S. imperialism is the chief enemy of the people of the world. We must ceaselessly carry on revolutionary propaganda among the masses of the people, arm them ideologically, enhance their revolutionary staunchness and vigilance, and mobilize them in waging the struggle against U.S. imperialism.<br /> <br /> However, there are certain persons who, while calling themselves Marxist-Leninists, do their utmost not only to prettify U.S. imperialism, but also to stop others from unmasking it. They smear revolutionary propaganda against U.S. imperialism as being nothing but “curses”, “vilification”, “verbal weapons”, “incantations”, “cardboard swords”, etc., etc. And they add, “vituperation alone, however just, will not weaken imperialism”. In the eyes of these persons, aren’t all the revolutionary propaganda undertaken by Communists since the time of the ''Communist Manifesto,'' all the writings of Marx and Engels exposing capitalism, all Lenin’s works exposing imperialism, the Moscow Declaration and the Moscow Statement jointly drawn up by the Communist Parties of the world  —  aren’t they all only “cardboard swords”? These persons completely fail to understand that once the theory of Marxism-Leninism grips the masses of the people a tremendous material force is generated. Once armed with revolutionary ideas, the masses of the people will dare to struggle and to seize victory, and they will accomplish earth-shaking feats. What then is the purpose of these persons in opposing the exposure of imperialism and in opposing revolutionary propaganda of any kind? It can only be to prevent the people from waging a revolutionary struggle against imperialism. Clearly, such a stand is completely contrary to Marxism-Leninism.<br /> <br /> We have always held, moreover, that we must rely on the masses of the people to wage a tit-for-tat struggle against imperialism and its running dogs. This is the basic lesson the Chinese people have drawn from their 120 years of struggle against imperialism and its running dogs. It is also the common lesson which all oppressed nations and people of the world have drawn from their struggles against imperialism and its running dogs. The imperialists and the reactionaries in every country use every available means and method against the revolutionary people. It is therefore imperative for the revolutionary people of all countries to study and master every means and method of struggle that can hurt the enemy and protect and develop their own forces. Examples are: to oppose the counter-revolutionary united front of imperialism and its running dogs by a revolutionary united front of the masses against imperialism and its running dogs, to oppose dual counter-revolutionary tactics with dual revolutionary tactics, to counter a war of aggression with a war of self-defence, to counter negotiation with negotiation, to oppose counter-revolutionary propaganda with revolutionary propaganda, etc. That is what we mean by “tit for tat”. Experience has demonstrated that only thus can we temper and expand the forces of the people, accumulate and enrich our revolutionary experience and win victory for the revolutionary cause. And only thus can we puncture the arrogance of imperialism, stop imperialist aggression and safeguard world peace.<br /> <br /> Certain persons, however, deliberately misrepresent and attack our view that a tit-for-tat struggle has to be waged against imperialism, charging that we are opposed to negotiations with the imperialists. Following them, the CPUSA in its statement also misrepresents and attacks this view of ours without any valid grounds. Actually, these persons are not unaware that the Chinese Communist Party has consistently approved of negotiations between socialist and imperialist countries, including summit meetings of great powers, in order to settle international disputes peacefully and relax international tension. They are also aware that the Chinese government has made positive efforts and important contributions to this end.<br /> <br /> Why then do these persons keep on distorting and attacking this correct stand of ours?<br /> <br /> The basic reason is that there is a difference of principle between them and us on the question of the fundamental policy for fighting imperialism and defending world peace. We place our confidence in the great strength of the masses. We hold that in fighting imperialism and defending world peace we should rely mainly on the unity and struggle of the people of all countries, and on the concerted struggle of the socialist camp, the international working class, the national liberation movements and all peace-loving forces. In contrast, these persons have no confidence in the masses and pin their hopes not on the unity and struggle of the masses, but mainly on the “reason” and “goodwill” of the imperialists and on talks between the heads of two great powers. They are infatuated with the idea of summit meetings and laud them as marking “a new stage”, “a turning point in the history of mankind” and opening “a new stream in world history”.<br /> <br /> In their opinion, the course of history and the fate of mankind are determined by two great powers and two “great men”. In their opinion, the statement that all countries are independent and equal irrespective of size is an empty phrase, and the hundred and more countries in the world ought to allow themselves to be ordered about by these two great powers. In their opinion, the statement that the masses are the makers of history is another empty phrase, and every matter under the sky can be settled if the two “great men” sit together. Isn’t this great-power chauvinism? Isn’t this the doctrine of power politics? Does this have anything in common with Marxism-Leninism? Actually, there is nothing new about this view, it has been copied from the renegade Browder. Browder said long ago that the “alliance” of the two greatest powers in the world “will be a great fortress for the collective security and progress of all peoples in the post-war world”, and that “the future of the world” depended upon the “friendship, understanding and cooperation” of the two greatest powers.<br /> <br /> With an ulterior purpose, the statement of the CPUSA referred to Taiwan, Hongkong and Macao. It said that the Chinese comrades were “correctly, not following the adventurous policy in Taiwan, Hongkong and Macao that they advocate for others. Why this double standard approach?”<br /> <br /> We know from what quarter they have learned this ridiculous charge. And we know, too, the purpose of the person who manufactured it.<br /> <br /> Here we should like to answer all those who have raised this matter.<br /> <br /> For us there never has been a question of a “double standard”. We have only one standard, whether in dealing with the question of Taiwan, whether in dealing with the questions of Hongkong and Macao, or whether in dealing with all international questions, and that standard is Marxism-Leninism, proletarian internationalism, the interests of the Chinese people and of the people of the world, the interests of world peace and the revolutionary cause of the people of all countries. In international struggles we are opposed both to adventurism and to capitulationism. These two hats can never fit our heads.<br /> <br /> Inasmuch as some persons have mentioned Taiwan, Hongkong and Macao, we are obliged to discuss a little of the history of imperialist aggression against China.<br /> <br /> In the hundred years or so prior to the victory of the Chinese revolution, the imperialist and colonial powers  —  the United States, Britain, France, Tsarist Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal  —  carried out unbridled aggression against China. They compelled the governments of old China to sign a large number of unequal treaties  —  the Treaty of Nanking of 1842, the Treaty of Aigun of 1858, the Treaty of Tientsin of 1858, the Treaty of Peking of 1860, the Treaty of Ili of 1881, the Protocol of Lisbon of 1887, the Treaty of Shimonoseki of 1895, the Convention for the Extension of Hongkong of 1898, the Treaty of 1901, etc. By virtue of these unequal treaties, they annexed Chinese territory in the north, south, east and west and held leased territories on the seaboard and in the hinterland of China. Some seized Taiwan and the Penghu Islands, some occupied Hongkong and forcibly leased Kowloon, some put Macao under perpetual occupation, etc., etc.<br /> <br /> At the time the People’s Republic of China was inaugurated, our government declared that it would examine the treaties concluded by previous Chinese governments with foreign governments, treaties that had been left over by history, and would recognize, abrogate, revise or renegotiate them according to their respective contents. In this respect, our policy towards the socialist countries is fundamentally different from our policy towards the imperialist countries. When we deal with various imperialist countries, we take differing circumstances into consideration and make distinctions in our policy. As a matter of fact, many of these treaties concluded in the past either have lost their validity, or have been abrogated or have been replaced by new ones. With regard to the outstanding issues, which are a legacy from the past, we have always held that, when conditions are ripe, they should be settled peacefully through negotiations and that, pending a settlement, the ''status quo'' should be maintained. Within this category are the questions of Hongkong, Kowloon and Macao and the questions of all those boundaries which have not been formally delimited by the parties concerned in each case. As for Taiwan and the Penghu Islands, they were restored to China in 1945, and the question now is the U.S. imperialist invasion and occupation of them and U.S. imperialist interference in China’s internal affairs. We Chinese people are determined to exercise our sovereign right to liberate our own territory of Taiwan; at the same time, through the ambassadorial talks, between China and the United States in Warsaw we are striving to solve the question of effecting the withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Taiwan and the Taiwan Straits. Our position as described above accords not only with the interests of the Chinese people but also with the interests of the people of the socialist camp and the people of the whole world.<br /> <br /> Why is it that after the Caribbean crisis this correct policy of ours suddenly became a topic of discussion among certain persons and a theme for their anti-China campaign?<br /> <br /> These heroes are apparently very pleased with themselves for having picked up a stone from a cesspool, with which they believe they can fell the Chinese. But whom has this filthy stone really hit?<br /> <br /> You are not unaware that such questions as those of Hongkong and Macao relate to the category of unequal treaties left over by history, treaties which the imperialists imposed on China. It may be asked: In raising questions of this kind, do you intend to raise all the questions of unequal treaties and have a general settlement? Has it ever entered your heads what the consequences would be? Can you seriously believe that this will do you any good?<br /> <br /> Superficially, you seem to agree with China’s policy on Hongkong and Macao. Yet, you compare it with India’s liberation of Goa. Anyone with a discerning eye can see at once that your sole intention is to prove that the Chinese are cowards. To be frank, there is no need for the Chinese people to prove their courage and staunchness in combating imperialism by making a show of force on the questions of Hongkong and Macao. The imperialists, and the U.S. imperialists in particular, have had occasion to sample our courage and staunchness. Shoulder to shoulder with the Korean people, the finest sons and daughters of the Chinese people fought for three years and shed their blood on the battlefields of Korea to repulse the U.S. aggressors. Don’t you feel it “stupid” and “deplorable” on your part to taunt us on the questions of Hongkong and Macao?<br /> <br /> We know very well, and you know too, that you are, to put it plainly, bringing up the questions of Hongkong and Macao merely as a fig-leaf to hide your disgraceful performance in the Caribbean crisis. But all this is futile.<br /> <br /> There is an objective criterion for truth, just as there is for error. What is right cannot be made to look wrong, nor can wrong be made to look right. To glory in your shame will not add to your prestige. How can the correct policy of the Chinese people on the questions of Hongkong and Macao be mentioned in the same breath with your erroneous policy on the Caribbean crisis? How can such a comparison help you to whitewash yourselves? Our resolute defence of our sovereignty in the matter of Taiwan is completely consistent with our resolute support of the Cuban people in defending their sovereignty during the Caribbean crisis. How can this be described as having a “double standard”?<br /> <br /> We say to these friends who are acting the hero, it is you, and not we, who really have a “double standard”. With regard to the U.S. imperialists, one day you call them pirates and the next you say they are concerned for peace. As for revolutionary Cuba, you say that you support her five demands for safeguarding her independence and sovereignty, but on the other hand you try to impose “international inspection” on her. With regard to the Sino-Indian boundary dispute, you speak of “fraternal China” and “friendly India” on the one hand, but on the other you maliciously attack China and support the Indian reactionaries in diverse ways. As for Hongkong and Macao, while you ostensibly speak for China, you are actually stabbing her in the back. Are you not applying a “double standard” in all your actions? Is this not a manifestation of dual personality?<br /> <br /> The Chinese Communists and the Chinese people and the Communists and people of the United States are fighting on the same front against U.S. imperialism. We highly esteemed Comrade William Z. Foster, builder of the CPUSA and outstanding leader of the U.S. proletariat. We have not forgotten that the U.S. Communists represented by him warmly supported us Chinese people in the difficult years of our revolution and laid the foundation for friendship between the Chinese and the U.S. Parties and between the Chinese and American peoples. U.S. Communists are now being savagely persecuted by the U.S. government; we have great sympathy for them in their difficult position. In a statement issued a year ago, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party condemned the U.S. government for its outrageous persecution of the U.S. Communists. The Chinese people also launched a mass movement in support of the U.S. Communist Party. But, for reasons beyond us, the leaders of the CPUSA did not think it worthwhile to inform its members and the people of the United States of the support given to the U.S. Party by the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people.<br /> <br /> The leaders of the CPUSA assert that they are conscious of their international obligations in the heartland of the world’s most powerful and arrogant imperialism. We will of course be glad if they indeed have a correct understanding of their obligations. In the United States, there is a powerful working class, there are extensive democratic and progressive social forces, and there are many fair-minded and progressive people in the fields of science, art, journalism, literature and education. In the United States, there are large-scale workers’ struggles, there is the ever growing struggle of the Negro people, and there is the movement for peace, democracy and social progress. In the United States, there is a broad social basis for a united front against monopoly capital and against the U.S. imperialist policies of aggression and war. And there are not a small number of genuine Communists, both inside and outside the Communist Party of the United States, who firmly adhere to Marxism-Leninism and oppose revisionism and dogmatism.<br /> <br /> The leaders of the CPUSA can show that they really understand their international obligations and are fulfilling them, if they carry on and enrich the revolutionary tradition of Comrade Foster; if they identify themselves with the masses, rely on them and do arduous revolutionary work among them; if they combat the corrosive influence of the bourgeoisie and the poison of reformism in the working-class movement and eliminate the revisionist influence of the Lovestones and Browders from their ranks; and if they develop the revolutionary struggle of the American people against their imperialist ruling class and co-ordinate this struggle in the heartland of U.S. imperialism with the international fight of all people against U.S. imperialism. The Chinese people and the people throughout the world have the highest hopes for the working class and the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists of the United States.<br /> <br /> Today, the urgent task confronting the Communists of all countries is to unite the people of the whole world, including the American people, in the broadest possible united front against imperialism headed by the United States. The great slogan “Workers of All Countries, Unite!” inspires the people of the socialist countries and the proletariat of all countries, inspires the oppressed people and nations throughout the world, and rallies them all to fight shoulder to shoulder in the common struggle against imperialism headed by the United States.<br /> <br /> We Communists throughout the world must unite. We must unite on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism and on the basis of the Moscow Declaration and tile Moscow Statement and direct the spearhead of our struggle against the imperialists headed by the United States. We must carry through to final victory the great cause of the people of all countries for world peace, national liberation, democracy and socialism.<br /> &lt;references /&gt;<br /> [[Category:Library documents from China]]<br /> [[Category:CPUSA]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:The_Juche_Philosophy_is_an_Original_Revolutionary_Philosophy&diff=76029 2024-09-30T12:47:07Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=The Juche Philosophy is an Original Revolutionary Philosophy|author=Kim Jong Il|written in=July 26, 1996|published_location=DPRK|type=Article|source=http://www.korean-books.com.kp/KBMbooks/en/work/leader2/20221115162408.pdf}}<br /> <br /> An opinion has recently been raised that some of our social scientists had expressed a wrong view contrary to our Party's idea in explaining the Juche philosophy, and that this view had been disseminated abroad as well.<br /> <br /> These social scientists still attempt to explain the basic principles of the Juche philosophy from the point of view of the general law of the development of the material world, instead of explaining them in the direction of clarifying the law of social movement. The proponents of this view say that their argument is aimed at proving that the Juche philosophy is a new development also of Marxist materialistic dialectics. In explaining and propagating the Juche philosophy we do not need to convince people that the Juche philosophy is a new development of Marxist materialistic dialectics. It is true that our Party has not taken a dogmatic approach to Marxist materialistic dialectics but analysed it from the point of view of Juche and has given new explanations to a number of problems. However, some development of materialism and dialectics dose not constitute the basic content of the Juche philosophy.<br /> <br /> The Juche philosophy is an original philosophy which has been evolved and systematized with its own principles. The historic contribution made by the Juche philosophy to the development of philosophical thoughts lies not in its advancement of Marxist materialistic dialectics, but in its clarification of new philosophical principles centred on man.<br /> <br /> The Marxist philosophy raised the relationship between material and consciousness, between being and thinking, as the fundamental question of philosophy and proved the primacy of material, the primacy of being and, on this basis, elucidated that the world is made of material and changed and developed by the motion of material. The Juche philosophy has raised the relationship between the world and man, and man's position and role in the world, as the fundamental question of philosophy, clarified the philosophical principle that the man is the master of everything and that he decides everything and, on this basis, illuminated the absolutely correct way of shaping man's destiny. The Marxist philosophy raised as its major task the clarification of the essence of the material world and the general law of its motion, whereas the Juche philosophy has raised as its important task the elucidation of man's essential characteristics and the law of social movement, man's movement. Therefore, the Juche philosophy is an original philosophy which is fundamentally different from the preceding philosophy in its task and principles. That is why we should not understand the Juche philosophy as a philosophy that has developed materialistic dialectics, nor should we attempt to prove the originality and advantages of the Juche philosophy by arguing one way or the other about the essence of the material world and the general law of its motion which were clarified by the Marxist philosophy. You cannot explain the Juche philosophy in the framework of the preceding philosophy because it is a philosophy that has clarified new philosophical principles. If you attempt to do so, you will not only fail to prove the originality of the Juche philosophy, but instead make it obscure and fail to understand the essence of Juche philosophy correctly.<br /> <br /> Having defined the essential qualities of man of the first time in history, the Juche philosophy has held up man as the best qualified and most powerful being in the world and advanced a new idea on the world that the world is dominated and transformed by man.<br /> <br /> The new outlook on the world established by the Juche philosophy dose not deny the world outlook of dialectical materialism. The Juche philosophy regards the world outlook of dialectical materialism as its premise. The Juche view of the world that the world is dominated and transformed by man is inconceivable separately from the materialistic dialectical understanding of the essence of the objective material world and the general law of its motion. From the idealistic view that the world is something mysterious you cannot draw the conclusion that man dominates the world, and from the metaphysical view that the world is immutable you cannot infer that man can transform the world. The Juche view of the world that the world is dominated and transformed by man can only be established when the materialistic dialectical understanding of the world that the world is made of material and ceaselessly changes and develops is recognized. In spite of a number of limitations and immaturities of the Marxist materialistic dialectics, its basic principles are scientific and valid. That is why we say that the Juche philosophy regards materialistic dialectics as its premise.<br /> <br /> That the world outlook of the materialistic dialectics is the premise for the Juche philosophy does not mean that the Juche philosophy has merely inherited and developed the materialistic dialectics. Although it would be impossible to acquire a scientific understanding of the world and transform it without the materialistic dialectical understanding of the objective material world, you cannot draw the conclusion that man is the master of the world and plays a decisive role in transforming the world simply from the proposition of materialism that the world is made of material and from the dialectical principle that the world ceaselessly changes and develops. Only on the basis of the clarification of man's essential qualities which distinguish man radically from all the other material beings can man's outstanding position and role as the master of the world capable of transforming the world be clarified. Only on the basis of man's essential qualities as a social being with independence, creativity and consciousness as scientifically clarified by the Juche philosophy has the basic principle that man is the master of the world and plays the decisive role in transforming the world been clarified. By establishing the Juche outlook on social history, the Juche view of history, on the basis of the man-centred philosophical principle, the Juche philosophy has overcome the limitations of the preceding socio-historical view and effected a radical change in the socio-historical view and standpoint.<br /> <br /> Marxist philosophy established socio-historical view of dialectical materialism, historical materialism, through the application of the general law of the development of the material world to social history. Of course, we do not deny the historic merit of historical materialism. Historical materialism made an important contribution to defeating the reactionary and unscientific socio-historical view which was based on idealism and metaphysics. In addition, since man lives in the objective material world and society is inseparably linked with nature, the general law of the development of the material world acts on social phenomena. However, if you overlook the social movement being governed by its own law and apply the general law of the development of the material world mechanically to social phenomena, you cannot avoid acquiring a one-sided understanding of social history.<br /> <br /> The social movement changes and develops according to its own law. The social movement is the movement of man who dominates and transforms the world. Man transforms nature to dominate and transform the objective material world. By transforming nature man creates material wealth and material conditions for his life. Transforming nature and creating material wealth is the endeavour to satisfy people's social demands and this work can only be done through people's social cooperation. People transform society to improve and perfect the relations of social cooperation. It is man who transforms both nature and society. While transforming nature and society, man transforms and develops himself continuously. The domination and transformation of the world by man are realized after all through the transformation , society and himself, and the popular masses are the motive force of this undertaking. The popular masses create all the material and cultural wealth of society and develops social relations. The social movement, the driving force of which is the popular masses, has characteristics which are different from those of the motion of nature. In nature motion takes place spontaneously through the interaction of material elements which exist objectively, whereas the social movement is caused and developed by the volitional action and role of the driving force. Therefore, if you apply the principles of materialistic dialectics which explain the general law of the development of the material world mechanically to social history, you cannot clarify correctly the essence of society and the law of social movement. The major limitation of the materialistic conception of history is that it failed to correctly expound the peculiar law of the social movement and explained the principles of the social movement mainly on the basis of the common character of the motion of nature and the social movement in that both of them are the motion of material. Marxist materialistic conception of history broke down society into social being and social consciousness and attached determining significance to the social being; it also broke down the social structure into productive force and production relations, foundation and superstructure, and attached decisive significance to material production and economic relations. This means an unaltered application of the principle of materialistic dialectics to society, the principle that the world is of material and changes and develops in accordance with the general law of the motion of material． The world, viewed by the founders of Marxism when applying the general law governing the material world to social history, is an integrity of not only nature but also man and society in that they are material beings. If you consider man as a part of the world, a material integrity, not as a social being with independence, creativity and consciousness, and apply the general law of the movement of the material world to social history, you cannot avoid seeing the socio-historical movement as a process of the history of nature.<br /> <br /> Of course, society, too, changes and develops in accordance with a certain law, not by man's own will. But the action of law in society is fundamentally different from that of the law of nature. In nature the law works spontaneously regardless of man's activity, but in society the law works through man's independent, creative and conscious activities. Some of the laws of society governs every society in general irrespective of social systems, and some of them governs a particular society. Because all the social laws work through man's activity, they may work smoothly or their actions may be restrained or limited depending on man's activity. When I say that social laws function through man's activity, I do not deny the objective character of social laws and possible spontaneity in the social movement. If a certain socio-economic condition is created, a social law corresponding to it functions inevitably and therefore it assumes an objective character as a natural law does. Spontaneity in the social movement is due to a relatively low level of man's independence, creativity and consciousness and to the absence of the social system under which people can display them to the full. With the growth in man's independence, creativity and consciousness and with the establishment of the social system which ensures a full display of these qualities, man will work better in keeping with the objective laws and the range of spontaneity will narrow. Social development is the process of the development of the masses' independence, creativity and consciousness. With the growth in these qualities and with the consummation of the social system capable of meeting their requirements, the society will develop more and more through the purposeful and conscious activities of the popular masses. This means that the law peculiar to the social movement, which changes and develops by the volitional action and role of the driving force, will work on a full scale.<br /> <br /> Although the founders of Marxism established the materialistic dialectical concept of social history by applying the general law of the development of the material world to social history, they themselves came across many problems in the practical social movement, problems which could not be resolved only by the general law of the development of the material world. So they attempted to overcome the one-sidedness of the materialistic dialectical concept of social history by advancing some theories, for example, that although social consciousness emerges as the reflection of the material and economic conditions, it reacts on these conditions and that although politics is defined by the economy, it reacts on the economy. However, the Marxist materialistic concept of history is, in essence, a view on social history which considers the common character of the motion of nature and the social movement as the main factor. This theory was unable to avoid the limitation of identifying the process of social development with that of natural history.<br /> <br /> The fundamental difference between the Juche philosophy and the preceding philosophy results, in the final analysis, from a different understanding of man.<br /> <br /> The Marxist philosophy defined the essence of man as the ensemble of social relations, but it failed to correctly expound the characteristics of man as a social being. The preceding theory explained the principle of the social movement mainly on the basis of the general law of the development of the material world, because it failed to clarify the essential qualities of social man. For the first time, the Juche philosophy gave a perfect elucidation of the unique qualities of man as a social being.<br /> <br /> As clarified in the documents of our Party, man is a social being with independence, creativity and consciousness and nobody has expressed doubt about it. However, some social scientists maintain a wrong view in understanding how man became a social being with these qualities. Regarding the question of man's essential characteristics as the issue of the level of his development as a material being, they still assert that the origin of man's independence, creativity and consciousness should be sought in the diversity of the material components and the complexity of their combination and structure. This is, in fact, a view regarding man's essential qualities as the extension of natural and biological attributes, as their development and consummation. When talking about man as an organism, one can consider him in comparison with other organisms, or discuss the characteristics of his biological components and their combination and structure. However, the man who is deliberated by the Juche philosophy is not only a highly developed organism but also lives and works with independence, creativity and consciousness which no other creatures have acquired. The origin of man's essential qualities must be sought not in the development of his features common with those of other material beings but in the characteristics unique to him. Man has acquired independence, creativity and consciousness, because he is a social being who forms a social collective and lives and works in asocial relationship. These qualities of man are social attributes which are formed and developed through the socio-historical process of his working in the social relationship. Of course, these qualities of his would be inconceivable without his highly developed organic body. In the sense of his highly developed organic body, man can be said to be the highest product of evolution and the most developed material being. However, if man had not formed a social collective and had not lived and worked in the social relationship, he could not have developed as an independent, creative and conscious being no matter how developed his organic body may be. Without physical life man cannot have social and political integrity. However, it is not man's physical life itself that gives birth to his social and political integrity. Likewise, without his developed organic body his independence, creativity and consciousness would be inconceivable, but his biological characteristics themselves do not produce his social attributes. Man's social attributes can take shape and develop only through the process of his emergence and development as a social being, in other words, through the process of the historical development of his social activity and his social relationship. The history of social development is the history of development of man's independence, creativity and consciousness. This means that man's independence, creativity and consciousness are social attributes which are formed and developed socially and historically. Therefore, the philosophical consideration of man must start from the fact that man is a social being.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, some of our social scientists argue about the material components and their combination and structure, and relate them to man's essential qualities, preaching that the biological factors constitute the major content of the Juche philosophy. Their argument is a deviation that explains the Juche philosophy within the framework of Marxist dialectical materialism. It is only an attempt to justify the wrong evolutionary view which regards man's essential qualities as the development and consummation of biological attributes.<br /> <br /> Regarding man's essential qualities, it is important to have a correct understanding of the social being. The founders of Marxism, while raising the question of man's essence in social relationship, used the phrase social being as a concept meaning the material conditions and economic relations of social life which exist objectively and are reflected on social consciousness. Since they regarded man as a component of productive forces, as the ensemble of social relations, the phrase social being they used implied man as well. However, they did not use it as one having the particular meaning that defines man's essential qualities. Systematizing the Juche philosophy, we used the term social being as one having the particular meaning that defines man's essential qualities.<br /> <br /> In the theory of the Juche philosophy man is the only social being in the world. Some social scientists, however, still insist that social wealth and social relations should also be included in the social being, obscuring the difference between man and social wealth and social relations. Social wealth and social relations are created and developed by man. Therefore, they cannot be included together in the concept that defines man's essential qualities. When referring to the Marxist philosophy, the phrase social being can, of course, be used as the founders of Marxism meant. But, if we understand the term social being in its conventional meaning when referring to the Juche philosophy, it will result in obscuring the understanding of man's essential qualities. The Juche philosophy is a new philosophy which has its own system and content, so its categories must not be understood in the conventional meaning.<br /> <br /> One of the main reasons why these social scientists have committed a deviation in explaining and propagating the Juche philosophy is that they have not studied philosophical problems from the point of view of the requirement of revolutionary practice.<br /> <br /> Theory must be based on practice and serve practice. A theory divorced from practice cannot correctly elucidate truth and is of no use. The great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung always studied philosophical problems proceeding from the demand of revolutionary practice and evolved the Juche philosophy in the course of giving scientific answers to urgent ideological and theoretical problems arising in revolutionary practice. Our Party has generalized the rich and profound experiences of revolutionary practice, systematized the Juche philosophy in a comprehensive way and developed it in depth. Revolutionary practice is a struggle to realize independence for the popular masses and it is the masses who carry out the struggle. Therefore, it is important in the study of philosophy to reflect the demands and aspirations of the popular masses correctly, evolve the theory by generalizing their experiences of struggle and make it the theory of the popular masses themselves. In the exploitative society the reactionary ruling class makes use of philosophy for defending and rationalizing their reactionary ruling system, trying to make it the monopoly of the philosophers who act as spokesman in their interests. They consider the popular masses to be ignorant people who have nothing to do with philosophy. With a viewpoint and attitude that the popular masses are the masters of everything and the wisest people, our Party has evolved the Juche philosophy by reflecting their demand and aspirations and generalizing their struggle experiences, further developed it in depth and made it their weapon of struggle. This is the reason why the Juche philosophy is an absolute truth which meets the people's desire for and aspirations to independence and a popular philosophy which the masses easily understand and regard as their own weapon of struggle. However, some of the social scientists are arguing about the questions which are of little practical significance in illuminating the road of shaping the destiny of the popular masses. We study philosophy essentially for the purpose of clarifying the principles and methodology by which to develop the society and shape the destiny of the popular masses. The development of society is guided by politics and it is none other than the Juche philosophy which clarifies the basic principles of politics which lead social development in the most straight way. In this sense, the Juche philosophy can be called a political philosophy.<br /> <br /> Some social scientists say that they have explained the Juche philosophy as a philosophy which developed the dialectical materialism of Marxism in order to present the Juche idea to suit the characteristic of the external world. We must give a clear understanding of the Juche philosophy as a new revolutionary philosophy, not as a mere development of the preceding philosophy. It is a mistake to explain the Juche philosophy within the framework of the preceding philosophy on the grounds that it is presented to suit the characteristic of the external world or to disseminate the Juche philosophy with ideas which do not accord with the fundamental principle of the Juche philosophy. Moreover, why should we argue about questions which are of no political importance and hardly of any theoretical and practical significance, shutting eyes to the demand of reality in the international arena, when internationally we have many theoretical and practical questions which urgently await correct answers to be given on the basis of the principles of the Juche philosophy? In presenting the Juche idea to the external world, we must explain correctly in relation to actual problems that the Juche philosophy is thoroughly an original philosophy and a new revolutionary philosophy. We must get rid of such a deviation not only in external dissemination but also in the research, study and education on the Juche philosophy. The Juche philosophy is a revolutionary philosophy and political philosophy of our Party which illuminates the philosophical basis of the Juche idea and fundamental principles of the revolution. How to approach the Juche philosophy does not merely concern philosophical theories, but is related to the viewpoint and attitude towards the Party's ideology. We must accept the Party's ideology as the absolute truth, defend it resolutely and keep it as a revolutionary conviction, and thus understand, interpret and propagate the Juche philosophy correctly. We must feel a great pride and confidence in having such a great political philosophy as the Juche philosophy, deeply understand its principles and apply them fully to the practical activities of the revolution and construction. We must analyse and judge all the social phenomena thoroughly on the basis of the principles of the Juche philosophy and dynamically accelerate the revolution and construction by uniting the popular masses solidly around the Party and enhancing the role of the motive force as the Juche philosophy requires.<br /> <br /> Our scientists and people must study and follow the Juche philosophy, but they must also know the philosophical ideas of Marxism-Leninism. The social scientists in particular must be well acquainted with the preceding philosophy. In studying the preceding philosophy, it is important to distinguish limitations and immaturity, along with progressive and positive aspects. Only when we know correctly not only its historical achievements but also limitations of the period and ideo-theoretical immaturity can we prevent deviations of dogmatic attitude towards preceding theories and acquire a deep understanding of the originality and superiority of the Juche philosophy. Social scientists must study and master the Juche philosophy and on this basis and in the light of its principles, pay deep attention to seeing clearly the limitations and immaturity of the preceding philosophy along with its merits.<br /> <br /> In addition, we must strictly guard against all heterogeneous trends of philosophy which are contrary to the Juche philosophy and ensure the purity of the Juche philosophy. The Juche philosophy is the most advantageous and viable philosophy which reflects the demand of the revolutionary practice and the truthfulness and validity of which have been proved by revolutionary practice. The fact that the Juche philosophy is attracting more attention on the international arena and the followers of the Juche idea are increasing in number clearly demonstrates that the Juche philosophy gives absolutely correct answers to the questions of revolutionary practice. Our social scientists must have an unshakable conviction of the scientific accuracy, truthfulness, originality and superiority of the Juche philosophy and analyse and judge all the philosophical theories with the Juche philosophy as a guideline, thus preventing infiltration of any heterogeneous trend of philosophy into the Juche philosophy. All the social scientists must study the Juche philosophy in depth and breadth and propagate it in line with the Party's intention and, by doing so, exalt its greatness and further increase its attraction.<br /> <br /> [[Category:Library works by Kim Jong Il]]<br /> [[Category:Library]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about Juche]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:The_Cuban_Five_and_US_Terrorism&diff=76028 2024-09-30T12:47:06Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=The Cuban Five and US Terrorism|author=[[Alicia Jrapko]]&lt;br&gt;[[Michael Parenti]]|published_date=2006-12-11|type=Article|source=https://truthout.org/article/parenti-and-jrapko-the-cuban-five-and-us-terrorism}}<br /> <br /> '''''The Cuban Five and US Terrorism''''' is an article written by [[United States of America|Statesian]] political scientist [[Michael Parenti]] and [[Argentine Republic|Argentine]] political activist [[Alicia Jrapko]] on 11 December 2006.<br /> <br /> == Text ==<br /> December 2006 marks five years since the Cuban Five were sentenced to prison.<br /> <br /> In 2001, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino and Ren González were unjustly convicted of engaging in &quot;espionage conspiracy&quot; and other charges, and sentenced to terms ranging from 15 years to double life. In fact, they committed no act of espionage against the United States. What they were doing was monitoring Cuban-exile terrorist groups in the USA in an attempt to track and prevent terrorist attacks against Cuba.<br /> <br /> It has been eight years since the five men were arrested. And through all that time, &quot;anti-Castro&quot; right-wing terrorist groups have continued to operate with impunity in this country. And the corporate media continue to hail them as &quot;anti-Castro militants&quot; and &quot;freedom fighters,&quot; while leaving their nefarious deeds unreported.<br /> <br /> Since 1959 Cuba has been subject to threats, sanctions, invasion, sabotage, and terrorist attacks upon its soil resulting in 3,478 deaths - all organised from within the United States by terrorist groups that are financed, organised, and sheltered by the US national security state.<br /> <br /> The US government arrested the Cuban Five for sending information to Havana about terrorist plots and actions being planned against Cuba. Needless to say, the United States wanted these groups to remain anonymous and free to continue their campaigns of destruction.<br /> <br /> The judge who convicted the Five actually admitted the existence of these terror groups. On 14 December 2001, when Judge Lenard sentenced Ren González to 15 years in prison, she stated: &quot;As a further special condition of supervised release, the defendant is prohibited from associating with or visiting specific places where individuals or groups such as terrorists, members of organisations advocating violence, and organised-crime figures are known to be or frequent.&quot; Acknowledging that the terrorist groups were part of the established political landscape in Florida, Judge Lenard did not seem to see a problem. The problem was González's gathering information on them.<br /> <br /> Since December 2001, voices demanding the immediate freedom of the Cuban Five have been multiplying around the world. The growing international movement for freedom of the Five was recently described by Gerardo Hernández, in a message sent by him to solidarity groups around the world that were commemorating the eighth anniversary of the arrests.<br /> <br /> Gerardo, who was sentenced to an outrageous two terms of life in prison, plus 15 years, wrote in his message, &quot;When I remember back on what happened that 12 September, the first thing that comes to my mind are the words of the FBI agent, who in the middle of his efforts to try to turn us into traitors, said: 'Cuba will do nothing for you. Nobody will do anything for you.' How far off were he and his fellow officials, to imagine what has developed over these years in the struggle to free the Five (to be honest, not even we, the Five, could have imagined!). I will not have enough time to tell him about all the examples of support and affection that come to us from the Cuban people and from all our compañeros from around the world.&quot;<br /> <br /> In defence of this cause, today there are 288 committees in 97 countries. In addition, on 27 May 2005, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations Human Rights Commission declared the detentions of the five Cubans to be arbitrary and urged the US government to take immediate measures to resolve this situation.<br /> <br /> On 30 August 2005, six thousand worldwide personalities, including 9 Nobel Prize winners, sent an open letter to the United States attorney general, demanding immediate freedom for the prisoners.<br /> <br /> On 11 January 2006, Amnesty International sent a letter to the government of the United States, stating that the refusal to grant visas to Olga Salanueva and Adriana Pérez, wives of Ren González and Gerardo Hernández, was an additional punishment, contrary to proper treatment of prisoners and their families. The letter also raised questions about the guarantee of due process in the Miami trial.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the White House continues to tolerate the existence of anti-Cuban terrorists on US soil. In March 2005, the well-known dangerous terrorist of Cuban origin, Luis Posada Carriles, entered the United States illegally. Today he is detained in El Paso, Texas, not because of the crimes he committed in several countries, including the United States itself, but only because of his illegal entry. Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, another terrorist who freely walks the streets of Miami, are responsible for the 1976 bombing of the Cuban commercial airliner that killed 73 innocent people.<br /> <br /> In November 2005, Santiago Ivarez and Osvaldo Mitat, two confederates of Posada Carriles who helped him enter the US by boat, were arrested. Their arrest was not for aiding and abetting a terrorist (as it should have been) but for the lesser charge of illegal possession of weapons.<br /> <br /> In June 2006, another scandal came to light in Miami when Jos Antonio Llama, a former director of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) threatened several of his former criminal accomplices with illegal action, accusing them of defrauding him. In an open statement to the Miami media, Llama revealed that in a secret meeting in 1992 in Naples, Florida, CANF created a paramilitary group. He accused the group of failing to repay him a loan of almost $2 million. The loan was to buy eight ships, one helicopter, a high-speed motorboat, and ten planes for terrorist acts against Cuba. Even after revealing this, Llama was not questioned by US authorities.<br /> <br /> In April 2006, Cuban-born Roberto Ferro was arrested for illegal possession of an arsenal of 1,571 weapons at his house in Upland, California. In his statements, Ferro confessed to being a member of the anti-Cuban terrorist organisation Alpha 66. Yet US authorities did nothing to find out why Ferro had this arsenal in his home. And no investigation was made of his links to any terrorist organisation.<br /> <br /> In January 2002, a few months after the 11 September attacks, Bush announced in his State of the Union address, &quot;First, we will shut down terrorist camps, disrupt terrorist plans, and bring terrorists to justice. [...] My hope is that all nations will heed our call, and eliminate the terrorist parasites who threaten their countries and our own.&quot; If the White House were really interested in fighting terrorism, it would shut down the anti-Cuban terrorist camps in South Florida and bring Posada Carriles and his accomplices to justice for the murders they have committed.<br /> <br /> Instead, the Cuban Five, who have broken no US law, who possessed no weapons, and who committed no act of terror, sabotage, or espionage, are languishing in prison for defending their homeland by attempting to monitor US-sponsored terrorism.<br /> <br /> [[Category:Library works by Alicia_Jrapko]]<br /> [[Category:Library works by Michael Parenti]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about Cuba]]<br /> {{DEFAULTSORT:Cuban_Five_and_US_Terrorism}}</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Brazilian_Communist_Party/Yet_more_on_the_so-called_World_Anti-Imperialist_Platform&diff=76027 2024-09-30T12:47:06Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Yet more on the so-called World Anti-Imperialist Platform|author=[[Ivan Pinheiro|Ivan Pinheiro]]|published_date=June 3, 2023|source=[https://revistaopera.com.br/2023/06/03/ainda-sobre-a-chamada-plataforma-mundial-antiimperialista/ Revista Opera]}}<br /> <br /> Over a month ago, I shared information with my circle of contacts about the emergence of an eclectic [[World Anti-imperialist Platform|World Anti-Imperialist Platform]] (WAP), which was created in October last year and which, in just seven months, has already held four international meetings, with an average attendance of 25 organizations, including [[Communism|communist]], [[Social democracy|social democratic]] and [[Nationalism|nationalist]] parties, collectives and movements, some of which were also created recently. As far as the [[Communist party|CP]]&lt;nowiki/&gt;s are concerned, few have any links with the [[International Communist Movement]], which holds its annual meetings ([[International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties|IMCWP]]&lt;nowiki/&gt;s) and has the Solidnet portal as a unitary source of information and coordination.<br /> <br /> Surprised by the presence of the [[Brazilian Communist Party]] (PCB) at the event, I said:&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;There is a demand for a collective debate that communists cannot postpone: what is [[imperialism]] today? And it can only be resolved properly if it is preceded by another decisive debate: what has [[People's Republic of China|China]]'s so-called '[[market socialism]]' become? Without this, we can't understand, as a collective, the war in [[Ukraine]] or [[Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva|Lula]]'s spectacular visit to China.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Having learned about this initiative by reading critical notes about it, published by Communist Parties with which I identify with&lt;ref&gt;https://lavrapalavra.com/2023/04/11/plataforma-mundial-anti-imperialista/&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TZftjO92X7k3MpP9iwoAC0mneyG21W44/view?usp=drivesdk&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;https://pelosocialismo.blogs.sapo.pt/pc-do-mexico-nota-sobre-la-reuniao-em-241005&lt;/ref&gt;, I searched the archives of this platform to understand its political objectives and, to my surprise, I discovered that the PCB officially participates in its meetings. The first three were held, respectively, in Paris (October 2022), Belgrade (December 2022) and Caracas (March 2023), with party leaders taking part in the second, virtually, and the third, in person, represented by its General Secretary.<br /> <br /> In the [[Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela|Venezuelan]] capital, President [[Nicolás Maduro]]'s party ([[United Socialist Party of Venezuela|PSUV]]) hosted the event and the International Commission of a so-called [[People's Democracy Party]] from [[Republic of Korea|South Korea]], the organization that created and coordinates the platform, chaired the event.<br /> <br /> The PCV ([[Communist Party of Venezuela]]), with which the PCB has historically enjoyed fraternal relations, was not invited to take part in the Caracas meeting, which it probably wouldn't attend, both because of its political line and because it is the victim of persecution and an attempt by the ruling party itself to revoke its registration.<br /> <br /> Although to date no information has been published in the PCB's media about the party's participation in this articulation, which dates back to December 2022, the party's International Relations Secretary took part in person, on April 13 and 14 (more than 50 days ago), in the WAP's fourth international meeting, held this time in Seoul (South Korea), as can be seen in the platform's publicity material.<br /> <br /> The host and leader of this fourth meeting was exactly the same People's Democracy Party from South Korea, which had already chaired the one held in Caracas, and about which I still don't have enough information, apart from the perception of its mistaken understanding of the current state of imperialism, the close relationship and solidarity with [[Russian Federation|Russia]] and China, the defense of the reunification of [[Korea]] and the reading of a summary of the conclusions of its recent 3rd Congress (which was also attended by the IR Secretary of the PCB), and whose main theme seems to have been the definition of the &quot;Theory of the Revolution of the 21st Century&quot;, described in the following terms:&lt;blockquote&gt;“Twenty-first century revolution theory is ‘people-centred combined with advanced science. ‘People-centred’ refers to 21st-century political revolutions, while ‘Advanced science’ refers to 21st-century scientific revolution. The aim of the 21st-century political revolution is to build politics for the people and by the people.”&lt;ref&gt;https://wap21.org/?p=3344&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The aims of my messages on the WAP, comrades, are to contribute to making clear the need for the debates I have suggested and to provoke a collective reflection on this radical change in the PCB's stance on international relations and its understanding of the character of the war in Ukraine, taking into account the current resolutions of its recent [[Library:16th Congress of the Brazilian Communist Party|16th Congress]]&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|title=Resolutions of the 16th Congress of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB)|url=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:16th_Congress_of_the_Brazilian_Communist_Party#The_communist_movement_and_international_solidarity|quote=130. The PCB respects the diversity of opinions existing in the current International Communist Movement and seeks to establish a dialogue with all communist parties of the world, to exchange evaluations about the ongoing political processes and coordinate common actions against the bourgeois offensive. However, the PCB must privilege approximations and political actions with the parties of the revolutionary block, which are articulated in spaces such as the European Communist Initiative and the International Communist Review, preserving our political autonomy.}}&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|title=Resolutions of the 16th Congress of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB)|url=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:16th_Congress_of_the_Brazilian_Communist_Party#The_communist_movement_and_international_solidarity|quote=134. China assumes a growing regional importance in Asia, with a global geopolitical and economic protagonism. In the last 40 years, the reduction of poverty in China has impacted more than 70% on the reduction of global poverty. The country is led by a communist party that understands itself as faithful to Marxism-Leninism, directing a long-lasting historical process of socialist transition. It is up to the PCB to seek further study and deepening about these experiences, as well as intensifying cultural and political interchange with the Chinese Communist Party, as a way to better understand it. Despite the absence of a closed position about the socialist character or not of these countries, our Party must defend China against the attacks of imperialism and the orientalist, racist and anti-communist propaganda produced by western media monopolies.}}&lt;/ref&gt; and the only political note released publicly to date by the Central Committee on the war in Ukraine&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|author=National Political Commission of the Central Committee of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB)|title=Political Declaration on the military crisis in Ukraine|url=https://pcb.org.br/portal2/28478}}&lt;/ref&gt;, from which it is enough to quote a brief passage to realize the incoherence with the platform's political line:&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;The interests of the [[United States of America|US]] and Russian bourgeoisies are evident in this struggle to share out the [[Capitalism|capitalist]] world, and war is not in the interest of the [[Proletariat|workers]].&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;However, from what can be seen in the political declarations of its already four meetings, the main reason for the creation of this recent organization is its unrestricted and unconditional support for Russia's so-called &quot;special operation&quot; in Ukraine and China, given that, denying [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]]'s studies on the subject, its [[anti-imperialism]] is only partial, against aggressive powers, as can be seen in this and various conclusions of the platform:&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Russia and China are not aggressive imperialist powers but, on the contrary, are targeted by our enemies because they stand in the way of the USA’s complete global domination.&quot;&lt;ref&gt;https://wap21.org/?p=2607&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In this way, the fight against imperialism comes down to the form of its exercise and not its nature, thus creating the illusion that the peaceful side of the powers in dispute will never resort to the force of their weapons, except for their own defensive purposes or out of mere humanitarian solidarity with weaker countries. This selective anti-imperialism goes as far as the recent Seoul Declaration of the WAP, approved by the organizations present, which hides the main contradiction between [[capital]] and [[labour]] and thus disarms the proletariat worldwide, by stating verbatim:&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;The primary contradiction in the world today is that between the US-led Nato imperialist bloc and the mass of suffering humanity.&quot;&lt;ref&gt;https://wap21.org/?p=3416&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;I don't have any information about where the decision in favor of the PCB joining this international platform took place, whether in the party's National Political Commission or in the Central Committee's meeting, from which I left in June last year, in a reserved letter to its members in which I explained my reasons for remaining in the party.<br /> <br /> But we need to be aware of some issues that may not have been correctly considered by the comrades who decided to promote this surprising political turn.<br /> <br /> One of my concerns is that repeated participation in this platform will lead us further and further away from the [[Revolution|revolutionary]] camp of the Communist Parties with which we decided to align ourselves at the 13th Congress of the PCB (2005)&lt;ref&gt;https://fdinarcoreis.org.br/fdr/2013/01/22/resolucoes-do-xiii-congresso-do-pcb/&lt;/ref&gt;, a position ratified at the recent 16th Congress (2021).<br /> <br /> In fact, as can be seen from the list of organizations participating in the platform, not only the parties of this revolutionary camp are missing, nor do the overwhelming majority of the parties that make up the [[International Communist Movement]] (ICM), including those that, despite our differences, deserve respect for their trajectories and the political weight they still enjoy in their respective countries. There are parties that only attended one of the first meetings, probably to find out about it, and never returned. In our country, apart from the PCB, the only other party that has participated in the WAP is the [[Communist Party of Brazil|PCdoB]].<br /> <br /> By the way, the evidence that all the airfare and accommodation costs of the delegates from the organizations attending these meetings are fully covered by their main stakeholders and the frenetic pace of a world event on average every two months, on different continents, should serve as food for thought and study as to what the primary reason is for the creation and financing of this platform, which is oriented against Marxism-Leninism and in uncritical and unrestricted defence of the strategic interests of powers competing for world hegemony in the imperialist chain, of which they are a part.<br /> <br /> Another aspect that needs to be considered is the risk that the initiative to create this eclectic platform could consolidate into a kind of anti-imperialist international (selective and, as we have seen, not so much [[Anti-capitalism|anti-capitalist]]), which could end up resulting in a split in the International Communist Movement.<br /> <br /> In a party that declares itself to be founded on [[democratic centralism]], it is worrying that its militants seem to be unaware of the PCB's participation in this articulation, let alone the political reasons that inspired it. After all, these world meetings are not clandestine, so much so that they take place in public places and are widely publicized in the media, including the list of organizations present, the full names, photographs and statements of the participants.<br /> <br /> Democratic centralism is a two-way street. Only the leadership that practices it has the political authority to demand it!<br /> <br /> When there is a lack of information and debate and disagreements are resolved only by disciplinary means, by silencing, &quot;canceling&quot; or &quot; suppressing&quot; comrades and, even more so, when important decisions are taken by a few, in the complicit and opportunistic silence of the majority of their peers and behind the collective's back, it is time to review and rectify the methods of leadership. Before it's too late!<br /> <br /> == Notes ==<br /> &lt;references /&gt;</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Brazilian_Communist_Party/Letter_to_the_ICM:_How_the_PCB%27s_Central_Committee_violates_the_resolutions_of_the_16th_Congress&diff=76026 2024-09-30T12:47:06Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>Comrades,<br /> <br /> {{Library work|title=Letter to the ICM: How the PCB's Central Committee violates the resolutions of the 16th Congress|author=Provisional Coordination of the National Movement in Defense of the<br /> Revolutionary Reconstruction of the PCB|written in=August 22, 2023|published_date=August 28, 2023|source=[https://emdefesadocomunismo.com.br/como-o-comite-central-do-pcb-viola-as-resolucoes-do-xvi-congresso/ Em Defesa do Comunismo]}}<br /> <br /> We have tried to continue our positive intervention in the [[class struggle]], even in the midst of a complex party restructuring process, without being held hostage to petty quarrels and confusionist attacks by the Central Committee of the [[Brazilian Communist Party]] (the PCB's CC). That’s why, until now, we hadn’t issued any communiqué to [[Revolution|revolutionary]] parties outside Brazil about the PCB’s current crisis. But now, in the face of the latest attacks and provocations, we feel obliged to drill down into all ''violations of the resolutions of our [[Library:16th Congress of the Brazilian Communist Party|16th Congress]] by the PCB's CC'' which, added to the persecutory purges without any respect even for our statutory procedures, resulted in the split of the Party.<br /> <br /> Published in five languages, the document called The PCB and the class struggle in Brazil&lt;ref&gt;https://pcb.org.br/portal2/30748&lt;/ref&gt;, signed by the PCB’s CC on August 17, is a second attempt to poison the Communist and Workers’ Parties around the world with lies. The first attempt was through a note issued by the PCPE (Partido Comunista de los Pueblos de España or [[Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain]])&lt;ref&gt;http://www.solidnet.org/article/CP-of-the-People-of-Spain-ASUNTO-EN-DEFENSA-DE-LA-SOBERANIA-DEL-COMITE-CENTRAL-DEL-PARTIDO-COMUNISTA-BRASILENO/&lt;/ref&gt; and signed by only another organization, the PCUSA ([[Party of Communists USA]]), which had no significant repercussions in Brazil or in the international communist movement. It’s no coincidence the fact that both organizations took part in the structuring of the [[World Anti-imperialist Platform|World Anti-Imperialist Platform]], an international body that has worked to divide the international communist movement, bringing together organizations that defend a [[Tailism|tailist]] stance towards Russia in the [[Imperialism|inter-imperialist]] war that is currently taking place on Ukrainian territory, as well as defending [[Stagism|stagist]] conceptions, which postpone the tasks of the socialist revolution of the [[proletariat]] to a distant horizon, while nurturing illusions regarding a “multipolar [[capitalism]]” that would supposedly result from the defeat of [[North Atlantic Treaty Organization|NATO]] in Ukraine.<br /> <br /> As regards the [[proletarian internationalism]], the PCB’s 16th Congress defined, back in 2021, an unequivocal policy: a policy of ''revolutionary demarcation against [[reformism]] and stagism''. In a thesis called Program of struggles to implement the socialist strategy in Brazil&lt;ref&gt;https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F_5SvtoZsxCyfsp6dx1gek0kMYEoDTvX/view&lt;/ref&gt;, the PCB’s 16th Congress consolidated the following understandings (bold ours):&lt;blockquote&gt;“123) The '''inter-imperialist tensions and the struggle between capitalist nations for hegemony mean that the danger of a new armed conflict on an international scale is ever closer'''. In this sense, it is up to communists to step up the fight against a new imperialist war now, showing that '''the peoples of the world have nothing to gain from a bloody battle on behalf of their [[Bourgeoisie|bourgeoisies]]'''. On the contrary, they must focus their efforts towards '''transforming wars between nations into wars against their ruling classes''', winning political power for the working people and building [[communism]], the only hope for true peace between peoples.<br /> <br /> 129) We need to '''strengthen the revolutionary bloc within the international communist movement''', which meets annually at the [[International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties]]. […].<br /> <br /> 130) [...] the PCB should prioritize the development of political actions with and getting closer to '''the parties of the revolutionary bloc, which are organized in spaces such as the [[European Communist Initiative]] and the [[International Communist Review]]''', while preserving our political autonomy.”&lt;/blockquote&gt;Two years after the 16th Congress, using this “political autonomy” as an argument, the current Central Committee directly violates the 16th Congress resolutions on proletarian internationalism, not only failing to promote actions and closer relations with the parties of the aforementioned bloc, but also moving nearer towards the World Anti-Imperialist Platform, a bloc that attacks, on a daily basis, the parties comprising the revolutionary bloc of the international communist movement. The very 16th Congress, even prior to the eruption of the war, defined with precision the ''inter-imperialist'' nature of the tensions that lead to growing military conflicts between the major capitalist powers, directly or indirectly. However, no sooner had the inter-imperialist war actually begun than these resolutions became dead letter. Just as the [[Second International]] and German [[social democracy]] tore up their resolutions on the question of imperialist war in the face of World War I, the PCB’s Central Committee today tears up the resolutions of the 16th Party Congress in the name of siding with [[Chauvinism|social-chauvinist]] and stagist parties in defense of Russian expansionism and militarism.<br /> <br /> It is no surprise, therefore, that this violation of our Congress resolutions has created a wave of outrage and revolt among communist militants. But it is not only within the framework of our proletarian internationalism that the PCB’s CC is failing to comply with the resolutions of the 16th Congress: the CC has also deviated from these resolutions in an increasingly scandalous way when it comes to the Party’s national tactics. To verify the veracity of these assertions, all one has to do is compare the Party’s congressional resolutions to the note issued on August 17!<br /> <br /> The resolutions of the PCB’s 16th Congress state the following:&lt;blockquote&gt;“35) [...] However, the socialist strategy shapes the character of the immediate struggle, that is, the strategy subordinates the tactics and not the other way round. [...] In the current stage of the class struggle, bourgeois offensive, and proletarian defensiveness, this means '''not giving ground to stagist conceptions, which postpone the struggle for socialism until after a stage of struggle against reaction'''. On the contrary: we participate in the resistance struggles, pointing to the socialist restructuring of society through the establishment of People’s Power as the only way out of the current crisis.<br /> <br /> 97) In order to form this [Anti-Capitalist and Anti-Imperialist] Front, we must '''prioritize dialogue with the political and social forces that have positioned themselves, on the countless fronts of struggle, in open opposition to the bourgeois state''' and its class oppression, even those that today are still reluctant to embrace the idea of a movement with an anti-capitalist character.<br /> <br /> 122) [...] In the case of elections where the second round presents a polarization between reactionary and reformist candidates, it will be up to us to assess in each specific case the possibility of critical support, '''highlighting from the outset that we will be in opposition to the future class conciliation government'''.”&lt;/blockquote&gt;Well then: eight months into the Lula-Alckmin government, in which several attacks on the working class have already been approved, the Central Committee still refuses to offer a precise characterization of its stance towards the government, avoiding a forceful statement of opposition like it’s avoiding the plague. This can be clearly seen in the declaration of August 17 itself, full of democratic demagogy which, in view of the emergence of the [[Far-right politics|far-right]], relegates the socialist tasks of the proletariat to the distant future, and summarizes the tasks of the working class as “tackling the extreme right and the [[Neo-fascism|neo-fascist]] hordes”. But even in this area, truth be told, the PCB made no progress, and this “tackling” was purely rhetorical, as was the supposed “plebiscite” in defense of certain reforms. Perhaps this explains why the Party’s CC regrets – thus revealing all its illusions regarding the class character of the conciliation government – that the government has made “no call to the popular masses to face the forces of the right”. But the PCB’s CC can’t overcome its tailist inclination and come on its own to the obvious conclusion: that the government doesn’t and won’t do this precisely because it is a government committed to a bourgeois program (not just a “[[Neoliberalism|neoliberal]]” one, as the document states, revealing its ideological debasement) and based precisely on a right-wing parliamentary majority!<br /> <br /> The contradiction is striking: for the PCB’s CC, “the Brazilian political scene has been marked by a relentless struggle for democratic freedoms, the fight against neo-fascism, and the affirmation of the banners of struggle of the proletarian and popular forces”. However, they claim that the moment is characterized by the “difficulty of promoting more robust advances in the intensification of the class struggle”. At the same time, they admit that the predominant political forces in the working class refuse to ask the masses to join in the struggle. What the PCB tries to paint in gold as a period of “struggle without truce” would be much better defined, after all, as a period of “truce without struggle”, a period ''of the most complete ideological and practical surrender''. By omitting this fact, the PCB seeks to hide its own ideological and practical surrender to social democracy. And, to top it off, they give us the following vague and undefined statement that “there is also a set of norms in Brazil that have been put in place by the Bolsonaro government to regulate social life, which have not yet been dismantled”, almost insinuating that Brazil is currently experiencing a situation of institutional abnormality or legal curtailment of the freedoms of organization, demonstration, and struggle of the working class – a completely exaggerated picture of the national situation, painted in order to justify the rejection of socialist revolutionary agitation in the name of democratic legalist agitation. The CC ends its note by stating that “our political tactics is subordinated to the socialist strategy” without even realizing that this supposed socialist strategy is not expressed in ''any other passage of the note''. Like the old social-democratic parties, the PCB’s CC believes that socialism is just a nice word to recite on holidays and to use at the end of political notes, but with no impact on the party’s tactics at all.<br /> <br /> It is clear, therefore, that the PCB’s Central Committee speaks the truth when it says that the whole crisis experienced by the Party is the result of “the emergence of a fractionalist group made up of the losers of the 16th Congress”. What the CC is hiding is that this “fractionalist group made up of the losers of the 16th Congress” is precisely comprised of the opportunist majority of the Central Committee, which kept quiet and was defeated at the 16th Congress on all fundamental political issues, and which subsequently made an even deeper turn to the right. And that, since this turn of events met with resistance among the communist militants, this anti-Leninist faction that took over the Party was forced to ''implode the PCB by purging hundreds'' of leaders and grassroots activists from the Party and its affiliated organizations (some in summary proceedings and others without even being notified of the reasons for their expulsion).<br /> <br /> Because it is going against the truth, the resolutions of the 16th Congress, and the fundamental principles of [[Marxism–Leninism|Marxism-Leninism]], the PCB’s CC has no choice but to use the weapons of confusion, defamation, and cynicism. They resort to personal slander and indecent insinuations because it is the only line of argument left to those who cannot base their own opportunistic politics on our Congressional resolutions. While all over the country hundreds of militants and dozens of party organizations announce their split with this Central Committee and join the effort for the Revolutionary Reconstruction of the PCB, the CC claims that everything is just an internet thing!<br /> <br /> Since the beginning of this serious crisis within the PCB, triggered by purges in direct conflict with the Party’s statute, we have defended the convening of the 17th (Extraordinary) Congress as the only means for a unitary solution to our crisis. Said Congress, in the spirit of Leninist [[democratic centralism]], would involve the entire communist militancy, all the people who proudly raise the banner of the PCB in the midst of the popular struggles. Meanwhile, the CC acted to deepen the split by purging and dissolving bodies, refusing various requests for a unitary Congress and stating that “this fractionalist group wants to allow non-militants and people from outside the party to take part in a forthcoming congress”. In other words, it is labelling as “non-militants” all the militancy of the [[Union of Communist Youth]] (UJC), the [[Classist Unity|trade union collective]] and the other party collectives (the [[Minervino de Oliveira Black Collective]], the [[Ana Montenegro Classist Feminist Collective]] and the [[LGBT Communist Collective]]).<br /> <br /> With its divisive stance and its recurrent lies, the CC is becoming increasingly more discredited among the communist militancy. With its refusal to convene a unitary congress, the fraction that has taken over the Party leadership reveals all its fear of some of the main tenets of Leninist democratic centralism: debate, criticism, and self-criticism, thus acknowledging the fear that its opinions will remain minority positions among the communist militancy, as they were at the 16th Congress. The initiative, called “Brazilian Communist Party – Revolutionary Reconstruction” ('''PCB-RR'''), is just a necessary expression of resistance to the Party split planned by an anti-Leninist group and endorsed by the majority of the PCB’s CC, which would rather liquidate the Party and reduce it to ashes than lose its bureaucratic command.<br /> <br /> With its note of August 17, the CC threw a spanner in the works of any hope of reconciliation through a Unitary Congress and the reversal of the expulsions. The note makes it clear why this split is inevitable. If this CC is incapable of resolving the party crisis through a Unitary Congress, the communist militancy will organize the 17th (Extraordinary) Congress of the PCB with their own hands!<br /> <br /> We therefore invite all comrades from Communist and Workers’ Parties around the world to read our '''Manifesto in Defense of the Revolutionary Reconstruction of the PCB'''&lt;ref&gt;https://medium.com/@reconstrucaorevolucionaria/manifesto-in-defense-of-the-revolutionary-reconstruction-of-the-pcb-4b00e5be6fdb&lt;/ref&gt;, in which the causes and perspectives of the crisis of the Brazilian communist movement are detailed and discussed with the thoroughness demanded by scientific socialism, without resorting to the phraseology and demagoguery that characterizes the political note of the PCB’s CC of August 17. On this occasion, we also would like to express our desire to establish an open dialogue and fraternal relations with the Communist and Workers’ Parties that make up the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties (thereby formalizing our interest in participating in this initiative, as well as in Solidnet), and we are at your disposal for any further clarifications.<br /> <br /> '''Brazil, August 22, 2023'''<br /> <br /> '''Provisional Coordination of the National Movement in Defense of the Revolutionary Reconstruction of the PCB'''<br /> <br /> == External links ==<br /> &lt;references /&gt;</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Curriculum_of_the_Basic_Principles_of_Marxism-Leninism_Part_1&diff=76025 2024-09-30T12:47:06Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Part 1|image=https://www.lunaoi.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/curriculum-ebook-cover.jpg|author=Translated by Luna Nguyen|publisher=Banyan House|edition_date=April 1, 2023|type=Textbook|isbn=9798987931608 |source=[https://www.lunaoi.com/product/the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-marxism-leninism-preorder/?sync-done Luna Oi website]}}<br /> <br /> CURRICULUM OF THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MARXISM-LENINISM <br /> Part 1<br /> The Worldview<br /> and Philosophical Methodology<br /> of Marxism-Leninism<br /> Translated by: Luna Nguyen<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> CURRICULUM OF<br /> THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MARXISM-LENINISM<br /> PART 1<br /> THE WORLDVIEW AND PHILOSOPHICAL METHODOLOGY OF<br /> MARXISM-LENINISM<br /> For University and College Students<br /> Not Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought<br /> FIRST ENGLISH EDITION<br /> Translated and Annotated by Luna Nguyen<br /> Foreword by Dr. Vijay Prashad<br /> Introduction by Dr. Taimur Rahman<br /> Edited, Annotated, and Illustrated by Emerican Johnson<br /> Proofread by David Peat<br /> Additional Contributions and Editorial Support by Iskra Books<br /> Published in association with The International Magazine<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> LICENSE<br /> <br /> This work is licensed under a<br /> Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.<br /> You are free to:<br /> Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format<br /> Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material<br /> The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.<br /> Under the following terms:<br /> Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and<br /> indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any<br /> way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.<br /> NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.<br /> ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distrib-<br /> ute your contributions under the same license as the original.<br /> No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological mea-<br /> sures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.<br /> The full text of this license is available at:<br /> https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> “Step by step, along the struggle, by studying Marxism-<br /> Leninism parallel with participation in practical activities,<br /> I gradually came upon the fact that only socialism and<br /> communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the<br /> working people throughout the world from slavery.”<br /> - Ho Chi Minh<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> = SUPPORT FOR THIS WORK =<br /> Translating, annotating, and typesetting this book has taken three years, which<br /> would not have been possible without the support of our supporters on GoFundMe.<br /> GoFundMe is also the reason we are able to make the digital version of this entire text<br /> available for free online. We would therefore like to recognize all of our supporters:<br /> Zach L. Jake B. Katia S. Jimi C.<br /> Kathryn S. Matthew S. Manuel V. Luiza S.<br /> Timothy P. Joshua E. Sarah K. Sarah F.<br /> De'Vonte T. Corey K. Aidan M. Danion S.<br /> Douglas H. Justin F. Blake P. Liam H.<br /> Ayodele E. Jesse T. Patrick O. Mendel A.<br /> Stephanie P. Christopher R. Daniel H. Marcos F. T.<br /> Bryan D. Helios A. C. Ryan P. Peter L.-D.<br /> Jeff H. Michael M. Matthew P. Abby L.<br /> Matheus G. P. Ellenore M. Duy V. Erin P.<br /> Luke F. Jason T. Georgio M. Astor C.<br /> Ayo E. Michael E. Noah B. Alex E.<br /> David B. G. Heath H. Ian H. Simon L.<br /> Joel V. Boyles B. Jackson M. Andrew H.<br /> Jake B. Ashley C. Karen N. Robert D.<br /> K. Masunungure Daniel S. Mckenzie P. Chandler F.<br /> Daniel A. Aadil B. Julianna D. P. Audrey M.<br /> Ville I. Joshua R. Kyle R. Larry V. K. III<br /> Ariel G. Maximilian H. Peter F. Zero P.<br /> Aaron L. John P. Josh P. Daniel G.<br /> Jason T. John M. Kayla D. Dmitri S.<br /> Crescenzo P. Matthew L. Lindsay H. Jeremy A. C.<br /> Antonio R. Glenn A. Adam M. Anthony M.<br /> Roger W. Edward C. Dennis C. Amiad H.<br /> Hunter S. Caitlin B. Griffin M. Mat C.<br /> Joseph Z. B. Aaron W. Nicholas H. Pastor J.<br /> Cam S. Benjamin S. Brandon H. Richard M.<br /> Adam K. Michael C. Ashley E. Robert D.<br /> Olga C. Megan B. Simon C. Alexandria J.<br /> Roberto P. Manuel G. F. Jonis F. Darsius ACAB<br /> Gerard D. Sam W. John G. Anna N.<br /> Voltie M. James H. Eric R. Anthony Z.<br /> Kaylee C. Kevin P. Audrin T. Joshua B.<br /> Edil F. Calum S. Nam T. Kyril W.<br /> Zeke T. Jesse R. Orhan M. Morgan H.<br /> Gideon S. Taylor H. Ross P. Tarana I.-M.<br /> Saumya I. Siddharth P. Sam P. Dirk K.<br /> Jason G. A., Jr. Melinda K. Jillian R. Jacob N.<br /> Richard H. Shane F. Derric A. Robyn M.<br /> Lachlainn H. Marc G. Blaine H. The Slopstache<br /> There is still plenty of work to be done to complete the translation of this entire<br /> curriculum. If you would like to financially support our efforts, you can support us at:<br /> BanyanHouse.org<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> = DEDICATION AND GRATITUDE =<br /> This book is dedicated to all the backers of the GoFundMe campaign that raised<br /> the funds to allow me to translate this text. What I initially believed would be a<br /> straightforward three-month process of translating ended up taking over three years of<br /> not just translation but also research, study, review, annotation, editing, proofreading,<br /> peer review, and more - with the incredible support of a full team of talented comrades -<br /> in order to make sure that everything would be digestible and intelligible for audiences<br /> outside of Vietnam. So, sincerely, thank you to everyone who backed this project for<br /> your patience, support, and encouragement.<br /> Thank you to my husband and comrade, Emerican Johnson, who helped me<br /> throughout the translation process, and who did such a fantastic job editing, annotating,<br /> and illustrating this text. He was my constant dialectical companion as we grappled<br /> together with the spirit and meaning of the writings of Marx, Lenin, and Engels that are<br /> the bedrock of this text.<br /> Thank you, also, to Iskra Books for the absolutely vital work they have done in helping<br /> us to edit this book and hold it to a high standard. We literally could not have done it<br /> without you. In particular, thank you to Ben Stahnke for organizing and cheerleading<br /> us through to the end, and to David Peat, for the painstaking, meticulous, and no-doubt<br /> frustrating work of proofreading our very, very, very imperfect writing!<br /> Thanks also to The International Magazine, who have provided guidance and<br /> suggestions throughout the process of developing this translation. I have had the<br /> opportunity to work with The International Magazine on various projects and I can<br /> recommend no better monthly periodical for internationalist communists to learn about<br /> socialist movements around the world.<br /> We owe a great deal of gratitude to Dr. Vijay Prashad and Dr. Taimur Rahman<br /> for taking the time to read through our translation and, in addition to providing<br /> their feedback and encouragement, also taking the time to write the foreword and<br /> introduction to the text. I know that you are both extremely busy with your own<br /> important literary, academic, and political work, so this assistance is so very much<br /> appreciated.<br /> Finally, I would like to thank the Vietnamese intellectuals and experts who have<br /> done such an amazing job at taking hundreds of texts and distilling them down into the<br /> original volume which I have translated here. The elegance and precision with which<br /> they have been able to capture the essence of Marxism-Leninism is a monumental<br /> contribution to the workers of the world, and I only hope my translation does their work<br /> justice.<br /> March, 2023<br /> Luna Nguye<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> = FOREWORD =<br /> In December 1998, Fidel Castro addressed the Young Communist League’s 7th<br /> Congress in Havana, Cuba. The Soviet Union and the Communist state system in<br /> Eastern Europe had collapsed, which greatly weakened the cause of socialism. Not<br /> only was Cuba hit hard by the loss of its major trading partners and political ally, but<br /> socialists in general were penalised by the lethal argument made by the imperialist<br /> sections that “socialism had been defeated.” After 1991, Fidel revived the phrase “Battle<br /> of Ideas,” which was had been used in The German Ideology by Marx and Engels. To<br /> the Young Communists, Fidel said:<br /> We must meet, in the heat of the battle, with the leading cadres to discuss,<br /> analyse, expand on, and draft plans and strategies to take up issues and elaborate<br /> ideas, as when an army’s general staff meets. We must use solid arguments to talk<br /> to members and non-members, to speak to those who may be confused or even to<br /> discuss and debate with those holding positions contrary to those of the Revolution<br /> or who are influenced by imperialist ideology in this great battle of ideas we<br /> have been waging for years now, precisely in order to carry out the heroic deed<br /> of resisting against the most politically, militarily, economically, technologically<br /> and culturally powerful empire that has ever existed. Young cadres must be well<br /> prepared for this task.<br /> Bourgeois ideology had tried to sweep aside its most fundamental critique – namely<br /> Marxism – by saying that “socialism had been defeated” and that Marxism was now<br /> obsolete. Marxist criticisms of the “casino of capitalism” – as Fidel called it – were being<br /> set aside both inside and outside the academy, with neoliberal policy confident enough<br /> to ignore each and every criticism. Fidel argued that young communists must learn the<br /> fundamentals of Marxism – including both dialectical and historical materialism – and<br /> must learn this in a way that was not religious thinking but would allow them to become<br /> “new intellectuals” of the movement, not those who repeat dogma but who learn to<br /> understand the conjuncture and become “permanent persuaders” for socialism (the two<br /> phrases in quotations are from Gramsci’s prison notebooks). The general ideological<br /> confidence of the cadre was not clear, and that confidence and their clarity needed to be<br /> developed in a project that Fidel called the Battle of Ideas.<br /> During this period, communists around the world conceded that the demise of the<br /> Soviet Union had created a serious dilemma for the left. Not only were we penalised<br /> by the argument that “socialism has been defeated,” but our own arguments to explain<br /> the turbo-charged drive toward globalisation and neoliberalism and to make the case<br /> for a socialist alternative were not strong enough. One indication of that weakness<br /> was the 2001 World Social Forum meeting held in Brazil, which promoted the slogan<br /> – Another World is Possible, a weak slogan in comparison to a more precise slogan,<br /> such as – Socialism is Necessary. Young people drifted into our ranks in this decade,<br /> angered by the wretched social conditions created by the permanent austerity of<br /> neoliberalism, but bewildered about how to transform the political environment. The<br /> lack of Marxist political education was felt by socialist forces across the world, which<br /> is why many parties around the world began to revive a conversation about internal<br /> political education for cadre and active engagement with other social forces regarding<br /> the pressing issues of our time. Fidel called these two processes – internal education for<br /> the Party and external engagement on the dilemmas of humanity – the Battle of Ideas.<br /> In line with this broad direction, the government of Vietnam worked with the national<br /> publishing house Sự Thật (The Truth) to develop a curriculum for universities and<br /> colleges in the country. They developed this order of study along five subject areas:<br /> Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Marxist-Leninist Political Economy, Scientific Socialism,<br /> Vietnamese Communist Party History, and Ho Chi Minh Thought. This project worked<br /> to educate an entire population that would be able to understand the world in a rational<br /> and factual manner, outside the illusions of bourgeois ideology. Four years later,<br /> Communist Party of Vietnam adopted a resolution to take this work forward, and –<br /> under the leadership of Professor Nguyễn Viết Thông – produced this textbook that<br /> brought together the many themes of Marxism into focus for the introductory student<br /> and cadre. A book such as this is never easy to create, since it must introduce a form of<br /> thought that is critical of the foundations of bourgeois ideology – so it is a critique – but<br /> at the same time it provides a worldview to understand the actual world in which we<br /> live – so it is a science. The text must, therefore, show how bourgeois thought is partial<br /> and at the same time how socialist thought, creatively applied, will allow one to have<br /> a firmer grip of reality and be able to participate in fighting to transcend the obstinate<br /> facts of human indignity that are reproduced by capitalism. No manual such as this<br /> is without its flaws and without its limitations, but no education can start without a<br /> manual such as this one. The Vietnamese comrades have done a great service to the left<br /> movement by producing a text such as this, which can be used for study and then used<br /> as a model to develop similar texts in different parts of the world.<br /> Ho Chi Minh, whose interpretation of Marxism and whose ideas about the Vietnamese<br /> Revolution, are all over this text once said: “Study and practice must always go together.<br /> Study without practice is useless. Practice without study leads to folly.” There can be no<br /> better injunction to get to work, to study and develop one’s theoretical armour and to<br /> use that theory as the guide to one’s work in the Battle of Ideas and in the battle for the<br /> streets, because this unity between theory and action is indeed praxis (thực tiễn), not just<br /> practice, but conscious human activity. That is what Fidel encouraged in his lectures on<br /> the Battle of Ideas.<br /> Dr. Vijay Prashad.<br /> 5 March 2023<br /> Caracas, Venezuel<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> = PREFACE TO THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION =<br /> The text of this book constitutes part one of a four-part curriculum on Marxism-<br /> Leninism developed and published by the Ministry of Education and Training of<br /> Vietnam. This curriculum is intended for students who are not specializing in the<br /> study of Marxism-Leninism, and is intended to give every Vietnamese student a firm<br /> grounding in the political philosophy of scientific socialism.<br /> The entire curriculum consists of:<br /> Part 1: Dialectical Materialism (this text)<br /> Part 2: Historical Materialism<br /> Part 3: Political Economy<br /> Part 4: Scientific Socialism<br /> In Vietnam, each part of the curriculum encompasses one full semester of mandatory<br /> study for all college students. Each part builds upon the previous, meaning that this text<br /> is the foundation for all political theory education for most college students in Vietnam.<br /> However, it is important to note that this is not the first encounter with dialectical<br /> materialism which Vietnamese students wil have had with these ideas, because<br /> Vietnamese students also study dialectical materialism, historical materialism, political<br /> economy, and scientific socialism from primary school all the way through high school.<br /> As such, the text of this book - in and of itself - would probably seem overwhelmingly<br /> condensed to most foreign readers who are new to studying dialectical materialism.<br /> Therefore, we have decided to extensively annotate and illustrate this text with the<br /> information which would have been previously obtained in a basic Vietnamese high<br /> school education and/or provided by college lecturers in the classroom.<br /> It is our desire that these annotations will be helpful for students who hope to learn<br /> these principles for application in political activity, but we should also make it clear to<br /> academic researchers and the like that our annotations and illustrations are not present<br /> in the original Vietnamese work.<br /> We hope that this book will be useful in at least three ways:<br /> • As a comprehensive introductory textbook on dialectical materialism and for self-<br /> study, group study, classroom use, cadre training, etc.<br /> • As a quick and easy to reference handbook for reviewing the basic concepts<br /> of dialectical materialism for students of theory who are already familiar with<br /> dialectical materialism.<br /> • As a companion book for further reading of theory and political texts rooted in<br /> dialectical materialist philosophy.<br /> Also, please note: because this book is intended to be used as a quick reference and<br /> handbook for further study, there are many instances where we duplicate references,<br /> quotations, and other such information. We hope that this repetition may be an aid for<br /> study by reinforcing important concepts and quotations.<br /> This book - Part 1 of the curriculum, which focuses on the universal philosophical<br /> system of dialectical materialism - serves as the foundation of all political theory and<br /> practice in the Vietnamese educational system as well as in the Communist Party of<br /> Vietnam and other organizations such as the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, the<br /> Women’s Union, the Farmer’s Union, the Worker’s Union, etc. Dialectical materialism<br /> is the framework for theory and practice as well as the common lens through which<br /> Vietnamese socialists relate, communicate, and work together.<br /> This book focuses almost exclusively on the written works of three historical figures:<br /> Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels... who initially developed the universal philosophy<br /> of dialectical materialism by synthesizing various pre-existing philosophical, political,<br /> economic, and historical tendencies including the idealist dialectical system of Georg<br /> Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the political economics of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, the<br /> materialist positions of Ludwig Feuerbach, and countless others.<br /> ...and Vladimir Illyich Lenin, who further developed and defended dialectical<br /> materialism, expanded the analysis of imperialism, demonstrated how to apply<br /> dialectical materialism to local material conditions specific to Russia at the turn of the<br /> 20th century, and made many other important contributions to dialectical materialist<br /> theory and practice.<br /> Obviously, there are countless other writers, revolutionaries, philosophers, and<br /> scientists who have contributed to dialectical materialism and scientific socialism.<br /> This book focuses primarily on Marx, Engels, and Lenin, because these figures laid<br /> the foundations and formulated the basic principles of the philosophy of dialectical<br /> materialism and the methodology of materialist dialectics which are most universally<br /> applicable in all endeavors.<br /> It is our desire that translating this important work into English will lead to further<br /> study, understanding, and appreciation of dialectical materialism as an applied<br /> philosophy which socialists can find value in returning to periodically. At the end of<br /> the book, we offer a glossary of terms which doubles as an index, appendices with<br /> summaries of important concepts and principles, and an afterword, in which we offer<br /> advice for further study and application of dialectical materialism.<br /> At the time of publication, we are already in the process of translating and annotating<br /> Part 2 of this curriculum, which focuses on historical materialism, with the hopes<br /> of eventually releasing the full curriculum. Once it is complete, it will also be made<br /> available at BanyanHouse.org - where we also invite questions, constructive feedback, and<br /> suggestions.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> = INTRODUCTION =<br /> Just a generation ago, Vietnam was the site of the most brutal war of the 20th century.<br /> More tonnage of bombs were dropped on the Vietnamese people than were dropped<br /> by all sides combined throughout the Second World War. In addition, countless acts<br /> of cruelty were used to scorch the very soil of the nation. By the end of Vietnam’s<br /> Resistance War Against Imperialist USA (known to the world as “the Vietnam War”),<br /> Agent Orange, napalm, and unexploded munitions had left a land deeply scarred and a<br /> people traumatised by decades of death and murder. The impression one had was that<br /> although Vietnam had won the war, it was so badly devastated that it could not hope to<br /> win the peace. But, miraculously, Vietnam is winning this war today, as the Vietnamese<br /> economy has become one of the fastest growing in the world and quality of life for the<br /> people is improving at a pace which could scarcely have been predicted in 1975.<br /> No one could have imagined that Vietnam would turn around so dynamically and<br /> rapidly. How did they achieve this economic miracle? How could this nation - so<br /> recently devastated by imperialism and war - possibly be able to reconstruct, revive,<br /> rejuvenate, and rebuild? That story is now unfolding before our eyes.<br /> Vietnam’s development has not come without hardship, struggle, setbacks, and<br /> mistakes. The people of Vietnam have had to learn hard lessons through struggle and<br /> practice to develop and strengthen ideological and theoretical positions. In this manner,<br /> the philosophical development of Vietnam deserves study and attention from socialists<br /> around the world. To outsiders, Vietnam can appear to be rife with contradictions. As<br /> depicted by Western journalists, Vietnam is simultaneously a success story driven by<br /> capitalist markets and a failing socialist state. Every victory is chalked up to private<br /> enterprise, while every setback is attributed to socialism. In this sense, the media has<br /> failed to understand the essential character of the core contradictions which drive the<br /> development of Vietnam politically, socially, and economically.<br /> Luna Nguyen has used social media and played an incredibly important role in<br /> helping the English speaking world understand the complexities of such contradictions<br /> that beguile so many academics and experts. She has helped to give an insider’s<br /> perspective on her own country’s path of development towards socialism.<br /> Nguyen’s translation of Part 1 of this influential work, Introduction to the Basic<br /> Principles of Marxism-Leninism, a textbook studied by university and college students<br /> across Vietnam, is yet another big step in the direction of making Vietnam’s<br /> understanding of their own country’s development available to the English reading<br /> world.<br /> For me, as an outsider, it is fascinating not only to see how deeply Vietnamese society<br /> takes an interest in European philosophical development (referencing Hume, Hegel,<br /> Descartes, Marx, Engels, and so many other Europeans, almost as if they are figures<br /> seated in some ancient monastery in Fansipan), but, even more importantly, how they<br /> have assimilated that knowledge into the wider context of their own history, society, and<br /> culture. The textbook truly comes alive in all the parts where these ideas are shown to be<br /> relevant to Vietnam itself. For instance, the textbook stands out with discussions of Ho<br /> Chi Minh’s concept of “proletarian piety,” which artfully blends elements of Vietnamese<br /> culture with Marxist concepts of class consciousness, or the story of Chi Pheo, who<br /> stands as a sympathetic stand-in for the interpretation of the unique characteristics of<br /> the Vietnamese Lumpenproletariat. The book itself is an instance of the dialectic of the<br /> universal and the particular, the abstract and the concrete.<br /> Just as importantly, it shows that, in Vietnam, Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh<br /> Thought are not mere perfunctory rituals that are repeated like a learnt formula for this<br /> or that exam; but that although the Vietnamese political economy in its current form<br /> certainly contains contradictions which must be negated in the process of building the<br /> lower stage of socialism, the government remains seriously committed to the goals,<br /> theory, and practice of Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought.<br /> Hence, I highly recommend this book, not merely because it is a well-illustrated and<br /> easy-to-read book on the principles of dialectical materialism, but more importantly<br /> because it offers an insight into how the Vietnamese government collects and synthesises<br /> the philosophical developments that are, on the one hand, the collective legacy of all of<br /> humanity, and, on the other hand, the concrete manifestations of a revolutionary theory<br /> of (and for the oppressed yearning for) freedom in every corner of the world.<br /> March, 2023<br /> Dr. Taimur Rahm<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> = EDITOR’S NOTE =<br /> Working on this project has been one of the most illuminating experiences of my life.<br /> In translating this work, Luna has opened a door for English speakers into the wide<br /> world of Vietnamese scholarship and pedagogy as it relates to socialist theory and<br /> philosophy.<br /> Luna and I have done our best to capture the original meaning and spirit of the text.<br /> Furthermore, as we have mentioned elsewhere, our annotations and illustrations are<br /> intended only to contextualize and expand on the core information of the original text<br /> similarly to the class/lecture setting for which the curriculum is intended.<br /> In their lives, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were never able to finish clarifying and<br /> systematically describing the philosophy of dialectical materialism which their work<br /> was built upon. Engels attempted to structurally define the philosophy in Dialectics of<br /> Nature, but unfortunately that work was never completed since he decided to prioritize<br /> publishing the unfinished works of Marx after his untimely death.<br /> I believe that this text is a great step forward in that work of systematically describing<br /> the philosophical system of dialectical materialism and the methodological system<br /> of materialist dialectics. I also believe it’s worth noting how the Vietnamese scholars<br /> who crafted this curriculum have embedded the urgent necessity of action - of creative<br /> application of these ideas - throughout the text in a way that I find refreshing and<br /> reflective of the works of Marx and Engels themselves.<br /> As the text will explain, dialectical materialism is a universal system of philosophy<br /> which can be utilized to grapple with any and every conceivable problem which we<br /> humans might encounter in this universe. In Vietnam, dialectical materialism has been<br /> used to delve into matters of art, ethics, military science, and countless other fields of<br /> inquiry and endeavor. It is my hope that this book will, likewise, lead to a wider and<br /> fuller understanding and (more importantly) application of dialectical materialism in the<br /> Western world.<br /> March, 2023<br /> Emerican Johnson<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> = A MESSAGE FROM THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE =<br /> The International Magazine began in 2020 to connect international socialist movements<br /> and to strengthen the voice of oppressed people across the globe. We have been<br /> following the work of Vietnamese communists in their unique path towards peace,<br /> prosperity, and the construction of socialist values with a keen eye and much interest.<br /> It is with this spirit of international solidarity and a deep desire to learn from and share<br /> wisdom from our comrades around the world that we celebrate the release of this<br /> First English Edition of The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-<br /> Leninism Part 1: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism.<br /> Ho Chi Minh once said: “In order to build socialism, first and foremost, we need to<br /> have socialist people who understand socialist ideology and have socialist values.”<br /> To this end, Vietnamese communists have expended tremendous resources building<br /> a curriculum on Marxist-Leninist philosophy and analysis which includes dialectical<br /> materialism, materialist dialectics, scientific socialism, historical materialism, and<br /> political economy. These topics are taught in primary and secondary schools and are<br /> mandatory subjects for all students attending public universities in Vietnam. Beyond<br /> that, Vietnam offers free degrees to students who wish to study Marxist theory<br /> and philosophy and Ho Chi Minh Thought (defined as the application of Marxist<br /> philosophy to the unique material conditions of Vietnam). In this manner, Vietnam has<br /> demonstrated a steadfast commitment to developing “socialist people” “with socialist<br /> values.”<br /> We are, therefore, extremely excited to have worked with Luna Nguyen on the<br /> translation and annotation of Part 1 of the Vietnamese university curriculum on the<br /> worldview and philosophical methodology of Marxism-Leninism into English, which<br /> will make this unique perspective of socialist theory available to comrades around the<br /> world for the first time.<br /> After having read through this volume, which outlines the fundamentals of dialectical<br /> materialism and materialist dialectics, we find the most important lesson to be the<br /> relationship between theory and practice. According to the Vietnamese scholars who<br /> authored the original text, Marxist-Leninist philosophy must be considered a living,<br /> breathing philosophy which requires application in the real world - through practice - in<br /> order to be made fully manifest.<br /> We hope that readers of this volume will carry forward this guidance through practice<br /> which suits your material conditions, wherever you are in the world.<br /> If you would like to learn the perspective of socialists from other nations around the<br /> world, we invite you to visit our website at InternationalMagz.com - the home of The<br /> International Magazine online. There, you will find articles written by comrades from a<br /> wide variety of backgrounds and nationalities with a clear bias towards anti-capitalism,<br /> anti-fascism, and anti-imperialism!<br /> In solidarity,<br /> The Editorial Team of The International Magazine<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> = NOTES ON TRANSLATION =<br /> Vietnamese is a very different language from English, which has presented many<br /> challenges in translating this book. Whenever possible, I have tried to let the “spirit” of<br /> the language guide me, without altering the structure, tone, and formatting of the book.<br /> One thing you will likely notice right away: this book is highly condensed! This is<br /> because most Vietnamese students are already familiar with these concepts. We have<br /> added annotations to try to make the book more digestible for those of you who are new<br /> to Marxism-Leninism, and these annotations are explained on the next page.<br /> I have worked hard to try to make the language in this book consistent with the<br /> language used in popular translations of works from Marx, Lenin, etc., that would<br /> be familiar to English-language students of Marxism-Leninism. That said, different<br /> translators have been translating these texts into English for over a century, such that<br /> different word choices have been used to relate the same concepts, and even Marx,<br /> Engels, and Lenin used different terms to describe the same concepts in many instances<br /> (not to mention the fact that Marx and Engels wrote primarily in German, whereas<br /> Lenin wrote primarily in Russian).<br /> As such, I have made it my first priority to keep the language of this translation<br /> internally consistent to avoid confusion and, again, to match the spirit of the original<br /> text as much as possible. As a result, you may find differences between the translation<br /> choices made in this text and other translations, but it is my hope that the underlying<br /> meaning of each translation is properly conveyed.<br /> <br /> March, 2023<br /> <br /> Luna Nguyen<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> = GUIDE TO ANNOTATIONS =<br /> This book was written as a textbook for Vietnamese students who are not specializing<br /> in Marxism-Leninism, and so it is meant to be a simple and condensed survey of<br /> the most fundamental principles of dialectical materialism to be used in a classroom<br /> environment with the guide of an experienced lecturer. That said, a typical Vietnamese<br /> college student will already have been exposed to many of the concepts presented herein<br /> throughout twelve years of primary and secondary education. As such, in translating<br /> and preparing this book for a foreign audience who are likely to be reading it without<br /> the benefit of a lecturer’s in-person instruction, we realized that we would need to add a<br /> significant amount of annotations to the text.<br /> These annotations will take the following forms:<br /> <br /> • Short annotations which we insert into the text itself [will be included in square<br /> brackets like these].<br /> <br /> {{Quote|Longer annotations which add further context and background information will be included in boxes like this.|}}<br /> <br /> <br /> We have also added diagrams to our annotations, as well as a detailed glossary/index and appendices, which are located in the back of the book. We hope these will resources will also be of use in studying other texts which are rooted in dialectical materialist philosophy.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> = ORIGINAL VIETNAMESE PUBLISHER’S NOTE =<br /> In 2004, under the direction of the Central Government, the Ministry of Education<br /> and Training, in collaboration with Sự Thật [Vietnamese for “The Truth,” the name of<br /> a National Political Publishing House], published a [political science and philosophy]<br /> curriculum for universities and colleges in Vietnam. This curriculum includes 5 subjects:<br /> Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Marxist-Leninist Political Economy, Scientific Socialism,<br /> Vietnamese Communist Party History, and Ho Chi Minh Thought. This curriculum has<br /> been an important contribution towards educating our students - the young intellectuals<br /> of the country - in political reasoning, so that the next generation will be able to<br /> successfully conduct national innovation.<br /> With the new practice of education and training, in order to thoroughly grasp the<br /> reform of the Party’s ideological work and theory, and to advocate for reform in both<br /> teaching and learning at universities and colleges in general, on September 18th, 2008,<br /> the Minister of Education and Training, in collaboration with Sự Thật, have issued a new<br /> program and published a textbook of political theory subjects for university and college<br /> students who are not specialized in Marxism - Leninism with Associate Professor and<br /> Doctor of Philosophy Nguyen Viet Thong as chief editor. There are three subjects:<br /> Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism<br /> Curriculum of Ho Chi Minh Thought<br /> Curriculum of the Revolutionary Path of the Communist Party of Vietnam.<br /> Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism was compiled by a collective<br /> of scientists and experienced lecturers from a number of universities, with Pham<br /> Van Sinh, Ph.D and Pham Quang Phan, Ph.D as co-editors. This curriculum has been<br /> designed to meet the practical educational requirements of students.<br /> We hope this book will be of use to you.<br /> April, 2016<br /> NATIONAL POLITICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE - SỰ TH<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> = ORIGINAL VIETNAMESE PREFACE =<br /> To implement the resolutions of the Communist Party of Vietnam, especially the 5th<br /> Central Resolution on ideological work, theory, and press, on September 18th, 2008, The<br /> Ministry of Education and Training has issued Decision Number 52/2008/QD-BGDDT,<br /> issuing the subject program: The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism for Students<br /> Non-Specialised in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought. In collaboration<br /> with Truth - the National Political Publishing House - we published the Curriculum of<br /> the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism for Students Non-Specialised in Marxism-<br /> Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought.<br /> The authors of this text have drawn from the contents of the Central Council’s<br /> previous programs (Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Marxist-Leninist Political Economy,<br /> and Scientific Socialism) and compiled them into national textbooks for Marxist-Leninist<br /> science subjects and Ho Chi Minh Thought, as well as other curriculums for the Ministry<br /> of Education and Training. The authors have received comments from many collectives,<br /> such as the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics and Administration, the Central<br /> Propaganda Department, as well as individual scientists and lecturers at universities<br /> and colleges throughout the country. Notably:<br /> Associate Professor To Huy Rua, Ph.D, Professor Phung Huu Phu, Ph.D, Professor<br /> Nguyen Duc Binh, Professor Le Huu Nghia, Ph.D, Professor Le Huu Tang, Ph.D,<br /> Professor Vo Dai Luoc, Ph.D, Professor Tran Phuc Thang, Ph.D, Professor Hoang<br /> Chi Bao, Ph.D, Professor Tran Ngoc Hien, Ph.D, Professor Ho Van Thong, Associate<br /> Professor Duong Van Thinh, Ph.D, Associate Professor Nguyen Van Oanh, Ph.D,<br /> Associate Professor Nguyen Van Hao, Ph.D, Associate Professor Nguyen Duc Bach,<br /> PhD. Pham Van Chin, Phung Thanh Thuy, M.A., and Nghiem Thi Chau Giang, M.A.<br /> After a period of implementation, the contents of the textbooks have been<br /> supplemented and corrected on the basis of receiving appropriate suggestions from<br /> universities, colleges, the contingent of lecturers of political theory, and scientists.<br /> However, due to objective and subjective limitations, there are still contents that need to<br /> be added and modified, and we would love to receive more comments to make the next<br /> edition of the curriculum more complete.<br /> MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> = &lt;u&gt;Table of Contents&lt;/u&gt; =<br /> Introduction to The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism<br /> <br /> :I. Brief History of Marxism Leninism<br /> <br /> ::1. Marxism and the Three Constituent Parts<br /> <br /> ::2. Summary of the Birth and Development of Marxism-Leninism<br /> <br /> :II. Objects, Purposes, and Requirements for Studying the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism<br /> ::1. Objects and Purposes of Study <br /> ::2. Some Basic Requirements of the Studying Method<br /> ::Excerpt from Modifying the Working Style<br /> <br /> Chapter I: Dialectical Materialism<br /> :I. Materialism and Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> ::1. The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving<br /> Basic Philosophical Issues.<br /> ::2. Dialectical Materialism - the Most Advanced Form of Materialism<br /> :II. Dialectical Materialist Opinions About Matter, Consciousness,<br /> and the Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness<br /> ::1. Matter <br /> ::2. Consciousness <br /> ::3. The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness<br /> ::4. Meaning of the methodology<br /> <br /> Chapter 2: Materialist Dialectics<br /> :I. Dialectics and Materialist Dialectics<br /> ::1. Dialectics and Basic Forms of Dialectics<br /> ::2. Materialist Dialectics<br /> :II. Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics<br /> :1. The Principle of General Relationships<br /> :2. Principle of Development<br /> :III. Basic Pairs of Categories of Materialist Dialectics<br /> ::1. Private and Common<br /> ::2. Reason and Result<br /> ::3. Obviousness and Randomness<br /> ::4. Content and Form<br /> ::5. Essence and Phenomenon<br /> ::6. Possibility and Reality <br /> <br /> :IV. Basic Laws of: Materialist Dialectics<br /> ::1. Law of Transf:ormation Between Quantity and Quality<br /> ::2. Law of Unification and Contradiction Between Opposites<br /> ::3. Law of Negation of Negation<br /> <br /> Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism<br /> :1. Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness<br /> :2. Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth<br /> Afterword<br /> Appendices<br /> :Appendix A: Basic Pairs of Categories Used in Materialist Dialectics<br /> :Appendix B: The Two Basic Principles of Dialectical Materialism<br /> :Appendix C: The Three Universal Laws of Materialist Dialectics<br /> :Appendix D: Forms of Consciousness and Knowledge<br /> :Appendix E: Properties of Truth<br /> :Appendix F: Common Deviations from Dialectical Materialism<br /> Glossary and Index[[File:Index-24_1.jpg | thumb | center |“Great Victory for the People and Army of South Vietnam!”]]<br /> <br /> == &lt;sub&gt;INTRODUCTION TO THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MARXISM-LENINISM&lt;/sub&gt; ==<br /> =='''I. BRIEF HISTORY OF MARXISM-LENINISM'''==<br /> <br /> ==='''1. Marxism and the Three Constituent Parts'''===<br /> <br /> Marxism-Leninism is a system of scientific opinions and theories which were built by Karl Marx&lt;ref&gt;Karl Marx, 1818-1883 (German): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, political economist, founder of scientific socialism, leader of the international working class.&lt;/ref&gt; and Friedrich Engels&lt;ref&gt;Friedrich Engels, 1820-1895 (German): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, leader of the international working class, co-founder of scientific socialism with Karl Marx.&lt;/ref&gt;, and defended and developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin&lt;ref&gt;Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1870-1924 (Russian): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, defender and developer of Marxism in the era of imperialism, founder of the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union, leader of Russia and the international working class&lt;/ref&gt;. Marxism-Leninism was formed and developed by interpreting reality as well as building on preceding ideas. It provides the fundamental worldview* and methodology of scientific awareness and revolutionary practice. It is a science that concerns the work of liberating the proletariat from all exploitative regimes with the ambition of liberating all of humanity from all forms of oppression.<br /> <br /> Marxism-Leninism is made up of three basic theories which have strong relationships with each other. They are: ''Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism'', ''Marxist-Leninist Political Economics'', and ''Scientific Socialism''.<br /> <br /> ''Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism'' studies the basic principles of the movement and development of nature, society and human thought. It provides the fundamental world-view and methodology of scientific awareness and revolutionary practice. <br /> <br /> Based on this philosophical worldview and methodology, ''Marxist-Leninist Political Economics'' studies the economic rules of society, especially the economic rules of the birth, development, and decay of the capitalist mode of production, as well as the birth and development of a new mode of production: the communist mode of production. <br /> <br /> ''Scientific Socialism''** is the inevitable result of applying the philosophical worldview and methodology of Marxism-Leninism, as well as Marxist-Leninist Political Economics, to reveal the objective rules of the socialist revolution process: the historical step from capitalism into socialism, and then communism.<br /> == ==<br /> {{reflist}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote| &lt;u&gt;'''Annotation 1'''&lt;/u&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; A worldview encompasses the whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about ourselves as human beings, and about life and the position of human beings in the world.<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;**&lt;/nowiki&gt; The word “science,” and, by extension, “scientific” in Marxism-Leninism has specific meaning. Friedrich Engels was the first to describe the philosophy which he developed with Marx as “Scientific Socialism” in his book Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.<br /> However, it should be noted that the English phrase “scientific socialism” comes from Engels’ use of the German phrase “wissenschaftlich sozialismus.”<br /> <br /> “Wissenschaft” is a word which can be directly translated as “knowledge craft” in German, and this word encompasses a much more broad and general concept than the word “science” as it’s usually used in English. <br /> <br /> In common usage, the word “science” in English has a relatively narrow definition, referring to systematically acquired, objective knowledge pertaining to a particular subject. But “wissenschaft” refers to a systematic pursuit of knowledge, research,<br /> theory, and understanding. “Wissenschaft” is used in any study that involves systematic investigation. And so, “scientific socialism” is only an approximate translation of “wissenschaftlich sozialismus.” So, “scientific socialism” can be understood as a body of theory which analyzes and interprets the natural world to develop a body of knowledge, which must be constantly tested against reality, with the pursuit of changing the world to bring about socialism through the leadership of the proletariat|}}<br /> Even though these three basic theories of Marxism-Leninism deal with different subjects, they are all parts of a unified scientific theory system: the science of liberating the proletariat from exploitative regimes and moving toward human liberation.<br /> <br /> ==='''2. Summary of the Birth and Development of Marxism-Leninism'''===<br /> <br /> There have been two main stages of the birth and development of Marxism-Leninism:<br /> <br /> 1. ''Stage of formation and development of Marxism'', as developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.<br /> <br /> 2. ''Stage of defense and developing Marxism into Marxism-Leninism'', as developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.<br /> <br /> '''''a. Conditions and Premises of the Birth of Marxism'''''<br /> {{Quote| &lt;u&gt;'''Annotation 2'''&lt;/u&gt;<br /> <br /> The following sections will explain the conditions which led to the birth of Marxism. First, we will examine the Social-Economic conditions which lead to the birth of Marxism, and then we will examine the theoretical premises upon which Marxism was<br /> built. Later, we will also discuss the impact which 18th and 19th century advances in natural science had on the development of Marxism<br /> |}}<br /> - ''Social-Economical Conditions''<br /> <br /> Marxism was born in the 1840s. This was a time when the capitalist mode of production was developing strongly in Western Europe on the foundation of the industrial revolution which succeeded first in England at the end of the 18th century. Not only did<br /> this industrial revolution mark an important step forward in changing from handicraft cottage industry capitalism into a more greatly mechanized and industrialized capitalism, it also deeply changed society, and, above all, it caused the birth and development of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> <br /> {{Quote| &lt;u&gt;'''Annotation 3'''&lt;/u&gt;<br /> <br /> Marx saw human society under capitalism divided into classes based on their relation to the means of production. <br /> ''Means of production'' are physical inputs and systems used in the production of goods and services, including machinery, factory buildings, tools, and anything else used in producing goods and services. Capitalism is a political economy defined by private<br /> ownership of the means of production.<br /> <br /> Within the framework of Dialectical Materialism, all classes are defined by internal and external relationships [see The Principle of General Relationships, p. 107]; chiefly, classes are defined by their relations to the means of production and to one another.<br /> The ''proletariat'' are the working class - the people who provide labor under capitalism, but who do not own their own means of production, and must therefore sell their labor to those who do own means of production: the ''bourgeoisie''. As the owners of the<br /> means of production, the bourgeoisie are the ruling class under capitalism.<br /> <br /> According to Marx and Engels, there are other classes within the capitalist political economy. Specifically, Marx named the ''petty bourgeoisie'' and the ''lumpenproletariat''. Marx defined the petty bourgeoisie as including semi-autonomous merchants, farmers, and soon who are self-employed, own small and limited means of production, or otherwise fall in between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> In the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'', Marx described the petty bourgeoisie as:<br /> <br /> *. . . fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. . . The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be replaced in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.<br /> <br /> Vietnam’s Textbook of History for High School Students gives this definition of the<br /> petty bourgeoisie in the specific context of Vietnamese history:<br /> <br /> *The petty bourgeois class includes: intellectuals, scientists, and small business owners, handicraftsmen, doctors, lawyers, and civil servants. The vast majority of contemporary intellectuals before the August Revolution of 1945, including students, belonged to the petty bourgeoisie. In general, they were also oppressed by imperialism and feudalism, often unemployed and uneducated.<br /> <br /> *The petty bourgeoisie were intellectually and politically sensitive. They did not directly exploit labor. Therefore, they easily absorbed revolutionary education and went along with the workers and peasants. <br /> <br /> *However, the intelligentsia and students often suffer from great weaknesses,such as: theory not being coupled with practice, contempt for labor, vague ideas, unstable stances, and erratic behavior in political action.<br /> <br /> *Some other petty bourgeoisie (scientists and small businessmen, freelancers, etc.) were also exploited by imperialism and feudalism. Their economic circumstances were precarious, and they often found themselves unemployed and bankrupt. Therefore, the majority also participated in and supported the resistance war and revolution. They are also important allies of the working class.<br /> <br /> *In general, these members of the petty bourgeoisie had a number of weaknesses: self-interest, fragmentation, and a lack of determination. Therefore, the working class has a duty to agitate and spread propaganda to such members of the petty bourgeoisie, organize them, and help them to develop their strong points while correcting their weaknesses. It is necessary to skillfully lead them, make them determined to serve the people, reform their ideology, and unite with the workers and peasants in order to become one cohesive movement. Then, they will become a great asset for the public in resistance war and revolution.<br /> <br /> Marx defined the “lumpenproletariat” as another class which includes the segments of society with the least privilege - most exploited by capitalism - such as thieves, houseless people, etc.<br /> <br /> In the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'', Marx defined the lumpenproletariat as:<br /> “The ‘dangerous class’ (''lumpenproletariat''), the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society.” Marx did not have much hope for the revolutionary potential of the lumpenproletariat, writing that they “may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.”<br /> <br /> Political Theories, an official journal of the Ho Chi Minh National Institute of Politics, discussed the lumpenproletariat in the specific context of Vietnamese revolutionary history:<br /> <br /> *It should be noted that Marxism-Leninism has never held that the historical mission of the working class is rooted in poverty and impoverishment. Poverty and low standards of living make workers hate the regime of capitalism, and causes disaster for workers, but the basic driving force behind the revolutionary struggle of the working class lies in the very nature of capitalist production and from the irreconcilable contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> *Moreover, it should not be conceived that a class is capable of leading the revolution because it is the poorest class. In the old societies, there were classes that were extremely poor and had to go through many struggles against the ruling class, but they could never win and keep power, and did not become the ruling class of society.<br /> <br /> *History has proven that the class that represents newly emerging productive forces which are able to build a more advanced mode of production than the old ones can lead the revolution and organize society into the regime they represent. Fetishizing poverty and misery is a corruption of Marxism-Leninism. . .<br /> <br /> *The very existence of the lumpenproletariat is strong evidence of the inhumane nature of capitalist society, which regularly recreates a large class of outcasts at the bottom of society.<br /> <br /> In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, millions of Vietnamese people were forced to leave their homes in rural farmlands to work for plantations and factories which were owned by French colonialists. These workers were functionally enslaved, being regularly physically abused by colonial masters, barred from any education whatsoever, and receiving only the bare minimum to survive. As a result, under French colonial rule, about 90% of Vietnamese were illiterate and the French aimed to indoctrinate<br /> Vietnamese people into believing that they were inferior to the French.<br /> <br /> The French colonialists also worked with Vietnamese landlords to exploit peasants in rural areas. Those peasants received barely enough to survive and, like the plantation slaves, were prohibited from receiving education. Because Vietnamese peasants and<br /> colonial slaves composed the majority of workers while being so severely oppressed and living in conditions of such abject poverty, it was difficult to fully distinguish between the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat in Vietnam during the colonial era.<br /> <br /> During this time, Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese communists developed the philosophy of “Proletarian Piety.” The word “piety,” here, is a translation of the Vietnamese word hiếu, which originally comes from the Confucianist philosophy of “filial piety.” Filial piety demanded children to deeply respect, honor, and obey their parents. Through the concept of Proletarian Piety, Ho Chi Minh adapted this concept to proletarian revolution, calling for communists to deeply love, respect, and tirelessly<br /> serve the oppressed masses. This philosophical concept sought to unite the proletariat, lumpenproletariat, and petty bourgeoisie into one united revolutionary class. Even some feudal landlords and capitalists - who were, themselves, oppressed by the col-<br /> onizing French - were willing to fight for communist revolution and were welcomed into the revolutionary movement if they were willing to adhere to the principle of proletarian piety. The working class and peasantry would lead the revolution, the more<br /> privileged classes would follow, and all communist revolutionists would serve the oppressed masses through sacrifice and struggle.<br /> <br /> During this period, many novels were written and circulated widely which featured main characters who were members of the lumpenproletariat or enslaved by the French, such as Bỉ Vỏ, a story about a beautiful peasant girl who was forced to become<br /> a thief in the city, and Chí Phèo, the story of a peasant who worked as a servant in a feudal landlord’s house who was sent to prison and became a destitute alcoholic after being released. The purpose of these stories was to show the cruelty of the colonialist-capitalist society of Vietnam in the 1930’s and to inspire proletarian piety, including empathy and respect for the extreme suffering and oppression of the lumpenproletariat, peasantry, and colonial slaves. These stories also presented sympathetic views of intellectuals and members of the petty bourgeoisie: for instance, in the novel Lão Hạc, the son of a peasant leaves to work for a French plantation and the father never sees him again. The aged peasant becomes extremely poor and sick without the support of his son, and the only person in the village who helps him is a teacher, representing the intellectual segment of the petty bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> The writers of these novels were communists who wanted to promote the principles of proletarian piety. Rather than looking down on the most oppressed members of society, and rather than sewing distrust and contempt for the petty bourgeoisie, Vietnamese communists inspired solidarity and collaboration between all of the oppressed peoples of Vietnam to overthrow French colonialism, feudalism, and capitalism. Proletarian piety was crucial for uniting the divided and conquered masses of Vietnam and<br /> successfully overthrowing colonialism. Note that these strategies were developed specifically for colonial Vietnam. Every revolutionary struggle will take place in unique material conditions&lt;ref&gt;Material conditions include the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base of human society, objective social relations, and other externalities and systems which affect human life and human society. See Annotation 79, p. 8,&lt;/ref&gt;, and the composition and characteristics of each class will vary over time and from one place to another. It is important for revolutionists to carefully apply the principles of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics to accurately analyze class conditions in order to develop strategies and plans which will most suitably and efficiently lead to successful revolution.<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> The deep contradictions* between the socialized production force** and the capitalist relations of production*** were first revealed by the economic depression of 1825 and the series of struggles between workers and the capitalist class which followed.{{Quote| &lt;u&gt;'''Annotation 4'''&lt;/u&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; See: ''Definition of Contradiction and Common Characteristics of Contradiction'', p. 175<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;**&lt;/nowiki&gt; In Marxism, “socialization” is simply the idea that human society transforms<br /> labor and production from a solitary, individual act into a collective, social act. In other words, as human society progresses, people “socialize” labor into increasingly complex networks of social relations: from individuals making their own tools, to<br /> agricultural societies engaged in collective farming, to modern industrial societies with factories, logistical networks, etc.<br /> <br /> The production force is the combination of the means of production and workers within any society. The “Socialized Production Force,” therefore, is a production force which has been socialized - that is to say, a production force which has been organized into collective social activity. Under capitalism, the “Socialized Production Force” consists of the proletariat, or the working class, as well as means of production which are owned by capitalists.<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;***&lt;/nowiki&gt; Marx and Engels defined “relations of production” as the social relationships that human beings must accept in order to survive. Relations of production are, by definition, not voluntary, because human beings must enter into them in order to receive material needs in order to survive within a given society. Under capitalism, the relations of production require the working class to rent their labor to capitalists to receive wages which they need to procure material needs like food and shelter. This is an inherent contradiction because a small minority of society (the capitalist class) own the means of production while the vast majority of society (the working class) must submit to exploitation through wage servitude in order to survive.<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> Examples of such early struggles include: the resistance of workers in Lyon, France in 1831 and 1834; the Chartist movement in Britain from 1835 to 1848; the workers’ movement in Silesia (Germany) in 1844, etc. These events prove as historical evidence that the proletariat had become an independent political force which pioneered the fight for a democratic, equal, and progressive society.<br /> {{Quote| &lt;u&gt;'''Annotation 5'''&lt;/u&gt;<br /> <br /> Annotation 5<br /> Here are some brief descriptions of the early working class movements mentioned<br /> above:<br /> <br /> :'''Resistance of Workers in Lyon, France:'''<br /> <br /> In 1831 in France, due to heavy exploitation and hardship, textile workers in Lyon revolted to demand higher wages and shorter working hours. The rebels took control of the city for ten days. Their determination to fight is reflected in the slogan: “Live<br /> working or die fighting!”<br /> <br /> This resistance was brutally crushed by the government, which supported the factory owners. In 1834, silk mill workers in Lyon revolted again to demand the establishment of a republic. The fierce struggle went on for four days, but was extinguished in<br /> a bloody battle against the French army. About 10,000 insurgents were imprisoned or deported.<br /> <br /> :'''The Chartist Movement in Britain:'''<br /> <br /> Chartism was a working class movement in the United Kingdom which rose up in response to anti-worker laws such as the Poor Law Amendment of 1834, which drove poor people into workhouses and removed other social programs for the working poor. Legislative failure to address the demands of the working poor led to a broadly popular mass movement which would go on to organize around the People’s Charter of 1838, which was a list of six demands which included extension of the vote and granting the working class the right to hold office in the House of Commons.<br /> <br /> In 1845, Karl Marx visited Britain for the first time, along with Friedrich Engels, to meet with the leaders of the Chartist movement (with whom Engels had already established a close relationship). After various conflicts and struggles, Chartism ultimately began to decline in 1848 as more socialist-oriented movements rose up in prominence.<br /> <br /> :'''Workers’ Movement in Silesia, Germany:'''<br /> <br /> In June, 1844, disturbances and riots occurred in the Prussian province of Silesia, a major center of textile manufacturing. In response, the Prussian army was called upon to restore order in the region. In a confrontation between the weavers and troops, shots were fired into the crowd, killing 11 protesters and wounding many others. The leaders of the disturbances were arrested, flogged, and imprisoned. This event has gained enormous significance in the history of the German labor movement. In particular, Karl Marx regarded the uprising as evidence of the birth of a German workers’ movement. The weavers’ rebellion served as an important symbol for later generations concerned with poverty and oppression of the working class in German society.<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> It quickly became apparent that the revolutionary practice of the proletariat needed the guidance of scientific theories. The birth of Marxism was to meet that objective requirement; in the meantime, the revolutionary practice itself became the practical premise for Marxism to continuously develop.<br /> <br /> - ''Theoretical Premises''<br /> <br /> The birth of Marxism not only resulted from the objective requirement of history, it was also the result of inheriting the ''quintessence''* of various previously established frameworks of human philosophical theory such as German classical philosophy, British classical political economics, and utopianism in France and Britain.<br /> <br /> {{Quote| &lt;u&gt;'''Annotation 6'''&lt;/u&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt;In the original Vietnamese, the word ''tinh hoa'' is used, which we roughly translate to the word ''quintessence'' throughout this book. Literally, it means “the best, highest, most beautiful, defining characteristics” of a concept, and, unlike the English word ''quintessence'', it has an exclusively positive connotation. ''Quintessence'' should not be confused with the universal category of ''Essence'', which is discussed on p. 156 {Around annotation 155 for this wiki} <br /> |}}<br /> <br /> German classical philosophy, especially the philosophies of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel &lt;ref&gt;Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770 - 1831 (German): Philosophy professor, an objective idealistic philosopher - representative of German classical philosophy&lt;/ref&gt; and Ludwig Feuerbach &lt;ref&gt;Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804 - 1872 (German): Philosophy professor, materialist philosopher&lt;/ref&gt;, had deeply influenced the formation of the Marxist worldview and philosophical methodology.<br /> <br /> {{Quote| &lt;u&gt;'''Annotation 7'''&lt;/u&gt;<br /> <br /> German classical philosophy was a movement of ''idealist'' philosophers of the 18th and 19th centuries. Idealism is a philosophical position that holds that the only reliable experience of reality occurs within the human consciousness. Idealists believe that<br /> human reason is the best way to seek truth, and that consciousness is thus the only reliable source of knowledge and information.<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> One of Hegel’s important achievements was his critique of the metaphysical method.<br /> <br /> {{Quote| &lt;u&gt;'''Annotation 8'''&lt;/u&gt;<br /> <br /> Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that attempts to explain the fundamental nature of reality by classifying things, phenomena, and ideas into various categories. Metaphysical philosophy has taken many forms through the centuries, but one common shortcoming of metaphysical thought is a tendency to view things and ideas in a static, abstract manner. Metaphysical positions view nature as a collection of objects and phenomena which are isolated from one another and fundamentally unchanging. Engels explained the problems of metaphysics in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':<br /> <br /> The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms - hese{sic} were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of Nature that have been made during the last 400 years. But this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast<br /> whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life. And when this way of looking at things was transferred by Bacon and Locke from natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow, metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last century.<br /> <br /> Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) is considered the father of empiricism, which is the belief that knowledge can only be derived from human sensory experience [see Annotation 10, p. 10]. Bacon argued that scientific knowledge could only be derived through inductive reasoning in which specific observations are used to form general conclusions. John Locke (1632 - 1704) was another early empiricist, who was heavily influenced by Francis Bacon. Locke, too, was an empiricist, and is considered to be the “father of liberalism.”<br /> <br /> Engels was highly critical of the application of metaphysical philosophy to natural science. As Engels continues in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':<br /> <br /> :To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes - ideas - are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. . . For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another; cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other. At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound common sense. Only sound common sense, respectable<br /> fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things, it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the tree.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism stands in contrast to metaphysics in many ways. Rather than splitting the world into distinct, isolated categories, Dialectical Materialist philosophy seeks to view the world in terms of relationships, motion, and change. Dialectical Materialism also refutes the hard empiricism of Bacon and Locke by describing a dialectical relationship between the material world and consciousness [see: ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88].<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> For the first time in the history of human philosophy, Hegel expressed the content of dialectics in strict arguments with a system of rules and categories.<br /> <br /> {{Quote| &lt;u&gt;'''Annotation 9'''&lt;/u&gt;<br /> <br /> Dialectics is a philosophical methodology which searches for truth by examining contradictions and relationships between things, objects, and ideas. Ancient dialecticians such as Aristotle and Socrates explored dialectics primarily through rhetorical discourse between two or more different points of view about a subject with the intention of finding truth.<br /> <br /> In this classical form of dialectics, a thesis is presented. This thesis is an opening argument about the subject at hand. An antithesis, or counter-argument, is then presented. Finally, the thesis and antithesis are combined into a synthesis, which is an<br /> improvement on both the thesis and antithesis which brings us closer to truth.<br /> <br /> Hegel resurrected dialectics to the forefront of philosophical inquiry for the German<br /> Idealists. As Engels wrote in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':<br /> <br /> :Hegel’s work’s greatest merit was the taking up again of dialectics as the highest form of reasoning. The old Greek philosophers were all born natural dialecticians, and Aristotle, the most encyclopaedic of them, had already analyzed the most essential forms of dialectic thought.<br /> <br /> Hegel’s great contribution to dialectics was to develop dialectics from a simple method of examining truth based on discourse into an organized, systematic model of nature and of history. Unfortunately, Hegel’s dialectics were idealist in nature. Hegel believed that the ideal served as the primary basis of reality. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels strongly rejected Hegel’s idealism, as well as the strong influences of Christian theology on Hegel’s work, but they also saw great potential in his system of dialectics,<br /> as Marx explained in ''Capital (Volume 1)'':<br /> <br /> :The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.<br /> |}}<br /> Starting with a critique of the mysterious idealism of Hegel’s philosophy, Marx and Engels inherited the “rational kernel” of Hegelian dialectics and successfully built materialist dialectics.<br /> <br /> {{Quote| &lt;u&gt;'''Annotation 10'''&lt;/u&gt;<br /> <br /> In order to understand the ways in which the critique of Hegel’s philosophy by Marx and Engels led to the development of dialectical materialism, some background information on materialism - and the conflicts between idealist and materialist philosophy in the era of Marx and Engels - is needed.<br /> <br /> Materialism is a philosophical position that holds that the material world exists outside of the mind, and that human ideas and thoughts stem from observation and sensory experience of this external world. Materialism rejects the idealist notion that<br /> truth can only be sought through reasoning and human consciousness. The history and development of both idealism and materialism are discussed more in the section ''The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues'' on page 48.<br /> <br /> In the era of Marx and Engels, the leading philosophical school of materialism was known as ''empiricism''. Empiricism holds that we can ''only'' obtain knowledge through human sense perception. Marx and Engels were materialists, but they rejected empiricism<br /> (see Engels’ critique of empiricism in Annotation 8, p. 8).<br /> <br /> One reason Marx and Engels opposed the strict empiricist view was that it made materialism vulnerable to attack from idealists, because it ignored objective relations and knowledge that went beyond sense data. The empiricist point of view also provided<br /> the basis for the ''subjective idealism'' of George Berkeley [see Annotation 32, p. 27] and the ''skepticism'' of David Hume. Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism is empiricist in that it supports the idea that humans can only discover knowledge through direct sense experience. Therefore, Berkeley argues, individuals are unable to obtain any real knowledge about abstract concepts such as “matter.”<br /> <br /> Similarly, David Hume’s radical skepticism, which Engels called “agnosticism,” denied the possibility of possessing any concrete knowledge. As Hume wrote in ''A Treatise on Human Nature'': “I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look<br /> upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another.” Hume’s radical skepticism lay in his empiricist belief that the only source of knowledge is sense experience; but Hume went a step further, doubting that even sense experience could be reliable,<br /> adding: “The essence and composition of external bodies are so obscure, that we must necessarily, in our reasonings, or rather conjectures concerning them, involveourselves {sic} in contradictions and absurdities.”<br /> <br /> Later, in the appendix of the same text, Hume argues that conscious reasoning suffers from the same unreliability: “I had entertained some hopes (that) the intellectual world . . . would be free from those contradictions, and absurdities, whichseem to<br /> attend every explication, that human reason can give of the material world.”<br /> <br /> Engels dismissed radical skepticism as “scientifically a regression and practically merely a shamefaced way of surreptitiously accepting materialism, while denying it before the world.” Engels directly refutes radical skepticism in ''Socialism: Utopian and<br /> Scientific'':<br /> <br /> :. . . how do we know that our senses give us correct representations of the objects we perceive through them? . . . whenever we speak of objects, or their qualities, of which (we) cannot know anything for certain, but merely the impressions which they have produced on (our) senses. Now, this line of reasoning seems undoubtedly hard to beat by mere argumentation. But before there was<br /> argumentation, there was action. . . And human action had solved the difficulty long before human ingenuity invented it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we turn to our own use these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perception.<br /> <br /> This concept of determining the truth of knowledge and perception through practical experience is fundamental to dialectical materialist philosophy and the methodology of materialist dialectics, and is discussed in further detail in Chapter 3, p. 204.<br /> <br /> Another weakness of empiricism is that it denies the objectiveness of ''social relations'', which cannot be fully and properly analyzed through sensory experience and observation alone. Marx saw that social relations are, indeed, objective in nature and can<br /> be understood despite their lack of sensory observability, and that doing so is vital in comprehending subjects such as political economy, as he observes in ''Capital Volume I'':<br /> <br /> :(The true) reality of the value of commodities contrasts with the gross material reality of these same commodities (the reality of which is perceived by our bodily senses) in that not an atom of matter enters into the reality of value. We may<br /> twist and turn a commodity this way and that - as a thing of value it still remains unappreciable by our bodily senses.<br /> <br /> In other words, Marx pointed out that no amount of sense data about a commodity will fully explain its value. One can know the size, weight, hardness, etc., of a commodity, but without analyzing the social relations and other aspects of the commodity<br /> which can’t be directly observed with the senses, one can never know or understand the true value of the commodity. The materialism of Marx and Engels acknowledges the physical, material world as the ''first basis'' for reality, but Marx and Engels also understood that it was vital to account for other aspects of rational knowledge (such as social relations). Marx and Engels believed that empiricist materialism had roughly the same flaw as idealism: a lack of a connection between the material and consciousness. While the idealists completely dismissed sense data and relied exclusively on reasoning and consciousness, the empiricists dismissed conscious thought to focus solely on what could be sensed.<br /> <br /> It is important to note that, while Marx and Engels rejected ''empiricism'', they did not reject ''empirical knowledge'' nor ''empirical data'' which is collected from scientific observation [see Annotation 216, p. 210]. On the contrary, empirical data was key to the works of Marx and Engels in developing dialectical materialism. As Lenin explained: “(Marx) took one of the economic formations of society – the system of commodity production – and on the basis of a vast mass of data which he studied for not less than twenty-five years gave a most detailed analysis of the laws governing this formation and its development.” And so, the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels served to bridge the gap between idealism and materialism. They believed that our conscious thoughts are derived from material processes, but that consciousness can also influence the material world. This is discussed in more detail in the section “''Materialism and Dialectical Materialism''” on page 48 {beginning of chapter 1}<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> Marx and Engels also criticized many limitations of Feuerbach’s methodology and viewpoint* - especially Feuerbach’s prescriptions for how to deal with social problems - but they also highly appreciated the role of Feuerbach’s thought in the fight against<br /> idealism and religion to assert that nature comes first, and that nature is permanent and independent from human willpower.<br /> <br /> {{Quote| &lt;u&gt;'''Annotation 11&lt;/u&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; Viewpoint, point of view, or perspective, is the starting point of analysis which determines the direction of thinking from which problems are considered. Marx and Engels were critical of Feurbach’s hyper-focused humanist viewpoint.<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> Feuerbach’s atheism and materialism offered an important foundation for Marx and Engels to develop from an idealist worldview into a materialist worldview, which led them directly to developing the philosophical foundation of communism<br /> <br /> {{Quote| &lt;u&gt;'''Annotation 12&lt;/u&gt;<br /> <br /> Ludwig Feuerbach was one of the “Young Hegelians” who adapted and developed the ideals of Hegel and other German Idealists. Feuerbach was a humanist materialist: he focused on humans and human nature and the role of humans in the material world. Like Marx and Engels, Feuerbach dismissed the religious mysticism of Hegel.<br /> <br /> Importantly, Feuerbach broke from Hegel’s religious-mystical belief that humans descended from supernatural origins, instead describing humans as originating from the natural, material world.<br /> <br /> Feuerbach also distinguished between the objectivity of the material external world and the subjectivity of human conscious thought, and he drew a distinction between external reality as it really exists and external reality as humans perceive it. Feuerbach believed that human nature was rooted in specific, intrinsic human attributes and activities. As Feuerbach explains in The Essence of Christianity: “What, then, is the nature of man, of which he is conscious, or what constitutes the specific distinction, the proper humanity of man? Reason, Will, Affection.”<br /> <br /> Feuerbach explained that the actions of “thinking, willing, and loving,” which correspond to the essential characteristics of “reason, will, and love,” are what define humanity, continuing: “Reason, Will, Love, are not powers which man possesses, for he is nothing without them, he is what he is only by them; they are the constituent elements of his nature, which he neither has nor makes, the animating, determining, governing powers - divine, absolute powers - to which he can oppose no resistance.”<br /> <br /> In his Collected Works, Feuerbach further explains that materialism is supported by the fact that nature predates human consciousness:<br /> <br /> :Natural science, at least in its present state, necessarily leads us back to a point when the conditions for human existence were still absent, when nature, i.e., the earth, was not yet an object of the human eye and mind, when, consequently, nature was an absolutely non-human entity ( absolut unmenschliches Wesen). <br /> :Idealism may retort: but nature also is something thought of by you ( von dir gedachte). Certainly, but from this it does not follow that this nature did not at one time actually exist, just as from the fact that Socrates and Plato do not exist for me if I do not think of them, it does not follow that Socrates and Plato did not actually at one time exist without me.<br /> <br /> Marx and Engels were heavily influenced by Feuerbach’s materialism, but they took issue with Feuerbach’s sharp focus on human attributes and activities in isolation from the external material world. As Marx wrote in Theses on Feuerbach: “The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that. . . reality. . . is conceived only in the form of the object. . . but not as sensuous human activity.”<br /> <br /> “Sensuous human activity” has a very specific meaning to Marx; it grew from two conflicting schools of thought:<br /> <br /> The idealists believed the external world can only be understood through the active subjective thought processes of human beings, while the empiricist materialists believed that human beings are passive subjects of the material world. Marx synthesized these contradicting ideas into what he called “sensuous activity,” which balanced idealist and materialist philosophical concepts.<br /> <br /> According to Marx, humans are simultaneously active in the world in the sense that our conscious activity can transform the world, and passive in the sense that all human thoughts fundamentally derive from observation and sense experience of the material world (see Chapter 2, p. 53). So, Marx and Engels believed that Feuerbach was mis-guided in defining human nature by our traits alone, portraying “the essence of man”<br /> <br /> as isolated from the material world and from social relations. In addition, Feuerbach’s humanism was based on an abstract, ideal version of human beings, whereas the humanism of Marx and Engels is firmly rooted in the reality of “real men living real lives.” As Engels wrote in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy: He (Feuerbach) clings fiercely to nature and man; but nature and man remain mere words with him. He is incapable of telling us anything definite either about real nature or real men. But from the abstract man of Feuerbach, one arrives at real living men only when one considers them as participants in history. . . The cult of abstract man, which formed the kernel of Feuerbach’s new religion, had to be replaced by the science of real men and of their historical development. This further development of Feuerbach’s standpoint beyond Feuerbach was inaugurated by Marx in 1845 in The Holy Family.1<br /> <br /> Marx and Engels believed that human nature could only be understood by examining the reality of actual humans in the real world through our relationships with each other, with nature, and with the external material world. Importantly, it was Marx’s critique of Feuerbach which led him to define political action as the key pursuit of philosophy with these immortal words from Theses on Feuerbach: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> The British classical political economics, represented by such economists as Adam Smith2 and David Ricardo3, also contributed to the formation of Marxism’s historical materialist conception [see p. 23].<br /> <br /> Smith and Ricardo were some of the first to form theories about labor value in the study of political economics. They made important conclusions about value and the origin of profit, and about the importance of material production and rules that govern economies. However, because there were still many limitations in the study methodology of Smith and Ricardo, these British classical political economists failed to recognise the historical characteristic of value*; the internal contradictions of commodity production**; and the duality of commodity production labor***.<br /> <br /> 1 The Holy Family is a book co-written by Marx and Engels which critiqued the Young Hegelians, including Feuerbach.<br /> <br /> 2 Adam Smith, 1723 - 1790 (British): Logic professor, moral philosophy professor, economist.<br /> <br /> 3 David Ricardo, 1772 - 1823 (British): Economist.<br /> <br /> Introduction<br /> <br /> 15<br /> <br /> {{Quote| &lt;u&gt;'''Annotation 13&lt;/u&gt;<br /> * Historical Characteristic of Value<br /> <br /> Marx generally admired the work of Smith and Ricardo, but saw major flaws which undermined the utility of their classical economic theories. Perhaps chief among these flaws, according to Marx, was a tendency for Smith and Ricardo to uphold an ahistoric view of society and capitalism. In other words, classical economists see capitalism as existing in harmony with the eternal and universal laws of nature, rather than seeing capitalism as a result of historical processes of development [see Annotation 114, p.<br /> <br /> 116]. Marx did not believe that the economic principles of capitalism resulted from nature, but rather, from historical conflict between different classes. He believed that the principles of political economies changed over time, and would continue to change into the future, whereas Smith and Ricardo saw economic principles as fixed, static concepts that were not subject to change over time. As Marx explains in The Poverty of Philosophy:<br /> <br /> Economists express the relations of bourgeois production, the division of labour, credit, money, etc. as fixed, immutable, eternal categories. . . Economists explain how production takes place in the above mentioned relations, but what they do not explain is how these relations themselves are produced, that is, the historical movement that gave them birth. . . these categories are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products.<br /> <br /> ** Internal Contradictions of Commodity Production<br /> <br /> In Marxist terms, a commodity is specifically something that has both a use value and a value-form (see Annotation 14, p. 16), but in simpler terms, a commodity is anything that can be bought or sold. Importantly, capitalism transforms human labor into a commodity, as workers must sell their labor to capitalists in exchange for wages.<br /> <br /> Marx pointed out that contradictions arise when commodities are produced under capitalism: because capitalists, who own the means of production, decide what to produce based solely on what they believe to be most profitable, the commodities that are being produced do not always meet the actual needs of society. Certain commodities are under-produced while others are over-produced, which leads to crisis and instability.<br /> <br /> *** Duality of Commodity Production Labor<br /> <br /> In Capital, Marx describes commodity production labor as existing in a duality - that is to say, it exists with two distinct aspects:<br /> <br /> First, there is abstract labor, which Marx describes as “labor-power expended without regard to the form of its expenditure.” This is simply the expenditure of human energy in the form of labor, without any regard to production or value of the labor output.<br /> <br /> Second, there is concrete labor, which is the aspect of labor that refers to the production of a specific commodity with a specific value through labor.<br /> <br /> Marx argues that human labor, therefore, is simultaneously, an activity which will produce some specific kind of product, and also an activity that generates value in the abstract. Marx and Engels were the first economists to discuss the duality of labor, and their observations on the duality of labor were closely tied to their theories of the different aspects of value (use value, exchange value, etc.), which was key to their analysis of capitalism.<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> Smith and Ricardo also failed to distinguish between simple commodity production and capitalist commodity production*, and could not accurately analyse[sic] the form of value** in capitalist commodity production.<br /> <br /> {{Quote| &lt;u&gt;'''Annotation 14&lt;/u&gt;<br /> <br /> * '''Commodity Production'''<br /> <br /> Simple commodity production (also known as petty commodity production) is the production of commodities under the conditions which Marx called the “Simple Exchange”<br /> <br /> of commodities. Simple exchange occurs when individual producers trade the products they have made directly, themselves, for other commodities. Under simple exchange, workers directly own their own means of production and sell products which they have made with their own labor.<br /> <br /> Simple commodity production and simple exchange use what Marx referred to as<br /> <br /> “C→M→C mode of circulation” [see Annotation 60, p. 59]. Circulation is simply the way in which commodities and money are exchanged for one another.<br /> <br /> '''C→M→C stands for:<br /> '''<br /> Commodity → Money → Commodity<br /> <br /> So, with simple commodity production and simple exchange, workers produce commodities, which they then sell for money, which they use to buy other commodities which they need. For example, a brewer might make beer, which they sell for money, which they use to buy food, housing, and other commodities which they need to live.<br /> <br /> In the C→M→C mode of circulation, the producers and consumers of commodities have a direct relationship to the commodities which are being bought and sold. The sellers have produced the commodities sold with their own labor, and they directly consume the commodities which they purchase with the money thus obtained.<br /> <br /> Capitalist commodity production and capitalist exchange, on the other hand, are based on the M→C→M’ mode of circulation.<br /> <br /> M→C→M’ stands for:<br /> <br /> Money → Commodity → More Money<br /> <br /> Under this mode of circulation, capitalists spend money to buy commodities (including the commodified labor of workers), with the intention of selling commodities for MORE MONEY than they began with. The capitalist has no direct relationship to the commodity being produced and sold, and the capitalist is solely interested in obtaining more money.<br /> <br /> Capitalist commodity production, therefore, uses the M→C→M’ mode of circulation, in which capitalists own the means of production and pay wages to workers in exchange for their labor, which is used to produce commodities. The capitalists then sell these commodities for profits which are not shared with the workers who provided the labor which produced the commodities.<br /> <br /> ** '''Value-Form'''<br /> <br /> This is one of the most important, and potentially most confusing, concepts in all of Marx’s analysis of capitalism. Marx explains these principles at length in Appendix of the 1st German Edition of Capital, Volume 1, but here are some of the fundamentals:<br /> <br /> <br /> One of Marx’s key breakthroughs was understanding that commodities have many different properties which have different effects in political economies.<br /> <br /> Just as Commodity Production Labor exists in a duality of Concrete Labor and Abstract Labor (see Annotation 13, p. 15), commodities themselves also exist in duality according to Marx:<br /> <br /> Commodities have both “use-value” and “value.”<br /> <br /> Use-Value (which corresponds to Concrete Labor) is the commodity’s tangible form of existence; it is what we can physically sense when we observe a commodity. By extension, use-value encompasses how a commodity can be used in the material world.<br /> <br /> Value, or the Value-Form, is the social form of a commodity, which is to say, it represents the stable relationships intrinsic to the commodity [see Content and Form, p.147].<br /> <br /> Note that this relates to the dialectical relationship between the material and the ideal [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88].<br /> <br /> Value-forms represent relational equivalencies of commodities, i.e.: 20 yards of linen {{=}} 10 pounds of tea<br /> <br /> These relational equivalencies are tied to the equivalent labor value (see Annotation 15 below, and Annotation 26, p. 23) used to produce these commodities. The value-form of a commodity is the social form because it embodies relational equivalencies: 1. The value-form represents the relationship between the commodity and the labor which was used to produce the commodity.<br /> <br /> 2. The value-form represents the relationship between a commodity and one or more other commodities.<br /> <br /> As Marx explains in Appendix to the 1st German Edition of Capital: “Hence by virtue of its value-form the (commodity) now stands also in a social relation no longer to only a single other type of commodity, but to the world of commodities. As a commodity it is a citizen of this world.”<br /> <br /> Understanding the social form of commodities - the value-form - was crucial for Marx to develop a deeper understanding of money and capitalism. Marx argued that classical economists like Ricardo and Smith conflated economic categories such as<br /> <br /> “exchange value,” “value,” “price,” “money,” etc., which meant that they could not possibly fully understand or analyze capitalist economies.<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> British classical political economists like Ricardo and Smith outlined the scientific factors of the theories of labor value* and contributed many progressive thoughts which Marx adapted and further developed.<br /> <br /> Annotation 15<br /> <br /> * Adam Smith and David Ricardo revolutionized the labor theory of value, which held that the value of a good or service is determined by the amount of human labor required to produce it.<br /> <br /> 18<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Thus, Marx was able to solve the contradictions that these economists could not solve and he was able to establish the theory of surplus value*, scientific evidence for the exploitative nature of capitalism, and the economic factors which will lead to the eventual fall of capitalism and the birth of socialism.<br /> <br /> Annotation 16<br /> <br /> * David Ricardo developed the concept of surplus value. Surplus value is the difference between the amount of income made from selling a product and the amount it costs to produce it. Marx would go on to expand on the concept of surplus value considerably.<br /> <br /> Utopianism had been developing for a long time and reached its peak in the late 18th century with famous thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon1, François Marie Charles Fourier2 and Robert Owen3. Utopianism sought to elevate the humanitarian spirit and strongly criticised capitalism by calling attention to the misery of the working class under capitalism. It also offered many far-ranging opinions and analyses of the development of human history and laid out some basic foundational factors and principles for a new society. However, Utopianism could not scientifically address the nature of capitalism. It failed to detect the Law of Development of Capitalism4 and also failed to recognise the roles and missions of the working class as a social force that can eliminate capitalism to build an equal, non-exploitative society.<br /> <br /> Annotation 17<br /> <br /> The early industrial working class existed in miserable conditions, and the political movement of utopianism was developed by people who believed that a better world could be built. The utopianists believed they could create “a New Moral World” of happiness, enlightenment, and prosperity through education, science, technology, and communal living. For instance, Robert Owen was a wealthy textile manufacturer who tried to build a better society for workers in New Harmony, Indiana, in the USA.<br /> <br /> Owen purchased the entire town of New Harmony in 1825 as a place to build an ideal society. Owen’s vision failed after two years for a variety of reasons, and many other wealthy capitalists in the early 19th century drew up similar plans which also failed.<br /> <br /> Utopianism was one of the first political and industrial movements that criticized the conditions of capitalism by exposing the miserable situations of poor workers and offering a vision of a better society, and was one of the first movements to attempt to mitigate the faults of capitalism in practice.<br /> <br /> 1 Claude Henri de Rouvroy Saint Simon, 1760 - 1825 (French): Philosopher, economist, utopianist activist.<br /> <br /> 2 Charles Fourier, 1772 - 1837 (French): Philosopher, economist, utopianist activist.<br /> <br /> 3 Robert Owen, 1771 - 1858 (British): Utopianist activist, owner of a cotton factory.<br /> <br /> 4 The Law of Development of Capitalism referenced here is the Theory of Accumulation/Surplus Value, which holds that the capitalist class gains wealth by accumulating surplus value (i.e., profits) and then reinvesting it into more capital to gain even further wealth; thus the goal of the capitalist class is to accumulate more and more surplus value which leads to the development of capitalism. Over time, this deepens the contradictions of capitalism. This concept is related to the M→C→M mode of circulation, discussed in Annotation 14, p. 16, and is discussed in detail in Part 3 of the book this text is drawn from (Political Economy) which we hope to translate in the future.<br /> <br /> Introduction<br /> <br /> 19<br /> <br /> Annotation 17 (continued)<br /> <br /> Unfortunately, the utopianists were not ideologically prepared to replace capitalism, and all of their attempts to build a better alternative to capitalism failed. Marx and Engels admired the efforts of the utopianist movement, and studied their attempts and failures closely in developing their own political theories, concluding that the utopianists failed in large part because they did not understand how capitalism developed, nor the role of the working class in the revolution against capitalism.<br /> <br /> As Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:<br /> <br /> (The) historical situation also dominated the founders of Socialism. To the crude conditions of capitalistic production and the crude class conditions correspond crude theories. The solution of the social problems, which as yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, the Utopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain. Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was the task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, wherever it was possible, by the example of model experiments. These new social systems were foredoomed as Utopian; the more completely they were worked out in detail, the more they could not avoid drifting off into pure phantasies.<br /> <br /> Engels is explaining, here, that - in a sense - the utopian socialists were victims of arriving too early. Capitalism had not yet developed enough for its opponents to formulate plans based on actual material conditions, since capitalism was only just emerging into a stable form. Without a significant objective, material basis, the utopians were forced to rely upon reasoning alone to confront capitalism.<br /> <br /> In this sense, the early historical utopianists fell into philosophical utopianism in its broader sense - defined by the mistaken assertion that the ideal can determine the material [see Annotation 95, p. 94]. In believing that they could build a perfect society based on ideals and “pure fantasy” alone without a material basis for development, the utopians were, in essence, idealists. As Engels explained: “from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism.” Engels concluded that in order to successfully overthrow capitalism, revolution would need to be grounded in materialism:<br /> <br /> “To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.”<br /> <br /> The humanitarian spirit and compassionate analysis which the utopians embodied in their efforts to lay out concrete features of a better future society became important theory premises for the birth of the scientific theory of socialism in Marxism.<br /> <br /> - Natural Science Premise:<br /> <br /> Along with social-economic conditions and theory premises, the achievements of the natural sciences were also foundational to the development of arguments and evidence which assert the correctness of Marxism’s viewpoints and methodology.<br /> <br /> Annotation 18<br /> <br /> Natural science is science which deals with the natural world, including chemistry, biology, physics, geology, etc.<br /> <br /> 20<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Three major scientific breakthroughs which were important to the development of Marxism include:<br /> <br /> • The law of conservation and transformation of energy scientifically proved the inseparable relationships and the mutual transformation and conservation of all the forms of motion of matter in nature.<br /> <br /> • The theory of evolution offered a scientific basis for the development of diverse forms of life through natural selection.<br /> <br /> • Cell theory was a scientific basis proving unity in terms of origins, physical forms and material structures of living creatures. It also explained the development of life through those relationships.<br /> <br /> These scientific discoveries led to the rejection of theological and metaphysical viewpoints which centered the role of the “creator” in the pursuit of truth.<br /> <br /> Annotation 19<br /> <br /> For centuries in Europe, natural science and philosophy had been heavily dominated by theological viewpoints which centered God in the pursuit of truth. Descartes, Kant, Spinoza, and many other metaphysical philosophers who developed the earliest theories of modern natural science centered their religious beliefs in their philosophies.<br /> <br /> These theological viewpoints varied in many ways, but all shared a characteristic of centering a “creator” in the pursuit of philosophical and scientific inquiry.<br /> <br /> Together, the law of conservation and transformation of energy, the theory of evolution, and cell theory provided an alternative viewpoint which allowed scientists to remove the “creator” from the scientific equation. For the first time, natural scientists and philosophers had concrete theoretical explanations for the origin and development of the universe, life, and reality which did not rely on a supernatural creator.<br /> <br /> Marx and Engels closely observed and studied the groundbreaking scientific progress of their era. They believed strongly in materialist scientific methods and the data which they produced, and based their analysis and philosophical doctrines on such observations. They recognized the importance and validity of the scientific achievements of their era, and they developed the philosophy of Dialectical Materialism into a system which would help humans study and understand the whole material world.<br /> <br /> In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels explained that ancient Greek dialecticians had correctly realized that the world is “an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away.”<br /> <br /> Engels goes on to explain that it was understandable for early natural scientists to break their inquiries and analysis down into specialized fields and categories of science to focus on precise, specific, narrow subject matters so that they could build up a body of empirical data. However, as data accumulated, it became clear that all of these isolated, individual fields of study must somehow be unified back together coherently and cohesively in order to obtain a deeper and more useful understanding of reality.<br /> <br /> Introduction<br /> <br /> 21<br /> <br /> Annotation 19 (continued)<br /> <br /> As Engels wrote in On Dialectics:<br /> <br /> Empirical natural science has accumulated such a tremendous mass of positive material for knowledge that the necessity of classifying it in each separate field of investigation systematically and in accordance with its inner inter-connection has become absolutely imperative. It is becoming equally imperative to bring the individual spheres of knowledge into the correct connection with one another. In doing so, however, natural science enters the field of theory and here the methods of empiricism will not work, here only theoretical thinking can be of assistance.<br /> <br /> As science grows increasingly complex, a necessity develops for a philosophical and cognitive framework which can be used to make sense of the influx of information from disparate fields. In Dialectics of Nature, Engels explains how dialectical materialism is the perfect philosophical foundation for unifying scientific fields into one cohesive framework :<br /> <br /> Dialectics divested of mysticism becomes an absolute necessity for natural science, which has forsaken the field where rigid categories sufficed, which represent as it were the lower mathematics of logic, its everyday weapons.<br /> <br /> So, Marx and Engels developed Dialectical Materialism not in opposition to science, but as a way to make better use of scientific data, and to analyze the complex, dynamic, constantly changing systems of the world in motion. While distinct scientific discoveries and empirical data are invaluable, each data point only provides a small amount of information within a single narrow, specific field of science. Dialectical Materialism allows humans to view reality - as a whole - in motion, and to examine the interconnections and mutual developments between different fields and categories of human knowledge.<br /> <br /> These scientific principles confirmed the correctness of the dialectical materialist view of the material world, with such features as: endlessness, self-existence, self-motivation, and self-transformation. They also confirmed the scientific nature of the dialectical materialist viewpoint in both material processes and thought processes.<br /> <br /> Annotation 20<br /> <br /> Endlessness refers to the infinite span of space and time in our universe. Self-existence means that our universe exists irrespective of human consciousness; it existed before human consciousness evolved and it will continue to exist after human consciousness becomes extinct. Self-motivation and Self-transformation refer to the fact that motion and transformation exist within the universe independent of human consciousness.<br /> <br /> Engels wrote of the scientific nature of the dialectical materialist viewpoint in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:<br /> <br /> Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this proof with very rich materials increasingly daily, and thus has shown that. . . Nature works dialectically and not metaphysically; that she does not move in the eternal oneness of a perpetually recurring circle, but goes through a real historical evolution.<br /> <br /> 22<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism In conclusion, the birth of Marxism is a phenomenon which is compatible with scientific principles; it is the product of the social-economic conditions of its time of origin, of the human knowledge expressed in science at that time, and it is also the result of its founders’ creative thinking and humanitarian spirit.<br /> <br /> b. The Birth and Development Stage of Marxism<br /> <br /> Marx and Engels initiated the birth and development stage of Marxism from around 1842~1843 through around 1847~1848. Later, from 1849 to 1895, Marxism was developed to be more thorough and comprehensive, but in this early period of birth and development, Marx and Engels engaged in practical activities [Marx and Engels were not just theorists, but also actively supported and participated with various revolutionary and working class organizations including the Chartists, the League of the Just, the Communist League, the International Workingmen’s Association, etc.] and studied a wide range of human thought from ancient times on through to their contemporaries in order to methodically reinforce, complement and improve their ideas.<br /> <br /> Many famous works such as The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (Marx, 1844), The Holy Family (Marx and Engels, 1845), Thesis on Feuerbach (Marx, 1845), The German Ideology (Marx and Engels, 1845-1846), and so on, clearly showed that Marx and Engels inherited the quintessence [see Annotation 6, p. 8] of the dialectical and materialist methods which they received from many predecessors. This philosophical heritage led to the development of the dialectical materialist viewpoint and materialist dialectics.<br /> <br /> Annotation 21<br /> <br /> There is a subtle, but important, distinction between Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics. This will be explained further in chapters I (p. 48) and II (p. 98).<br /> <br /> With works such as The Poverty of Philosophy (Marx, 1847) and The Manifesto of the Communist Party (Marx and Engels, 1848), Marxism was presented as a complete system of fundamental views with three theoretical component parts.<br /> <br /> Annotation 22<br /> <br /> According to Lenin, the three component parts of Marxism (and, by extension, of Marxism-Leninism) are:<br /> <br /> 1. The Philosophy of Marxism: Including Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism<br /> <br /> 2. The Political Economy of Marxism: A system of knowledge and laws that define the production process and commodity exchange in human society.<br /> <br /> 3. Scientific Socialism: The system of thought pertaining to the establishment of the communist social economy form.<br /> <br /> These are discussed in more detail in Chapter 2, p. 38.<br /> <br /> In the book The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx proposed the basic principles of Dialectical Materialism and Scientific Socialism,* and gave some initial thoughts about surplus value. The Manifesto of the Communist Party laid the first doctrinal foundation of communism. In this book, the philosophical basis was expressed through the organic unity between the economical viewpoint and socio-political viewpoint.<br /> <br /> Introduction<br /> <br /> 23<br /> <br /> Annotation 23<br /> <br /> * Scientific Socialism is a series of socio-political-economic theories intended to build socialism on a foundation of science within society’s current material conditions [see Annotation 79, p. 81]. Scientific Socialism is the topic of Part 3 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.<br /> <br /> The Manifesto of the Communist Party outlined the laws of movement in history,* as well as the basic theory of socio-economic forms.<br /> <br /> Annotation 24<br /> <br /> * The laws of movement in history are the core principles of historical materialism, which is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.<br /> <br /> The basic theory of socio-economic forms dictates that material production plays a decisive role in the existence and development of a society, and that the material production methods decide both the political and social consciousness of a society.<br /> <br /> Annotation 25<br /> <br /> Social consciousness refers to the collective experience of consciousness shared by members of a society, including ideological, cultural, spiritual, and legal beliefs and ideas which are shared within that society. This is related to the concept of base and superstructure, which is discussed later in this chapter.<br /> <br /> The Manifesto of the Communist Party also showed that for as long as classes have existed, the history of the development of human society is the history of class struggle.<br /> <br /> Through class struggle, the proletariat can liberate ourselves only if we simultaneously and forever liberate the whole of humanity. With these basic opinions, Marx and Engels founded Historical Materialism.<br /> <br /> By applying Historical Materialism to the comprehensive study of the capitalist production method, Marx made an important discovery: separating workers from the ownership of the means of production through violence was the starting point of the establishment of the capitalist production method. Workers do not own the means of production to perform their labor activities for themselves, so, in order to make income and survive, workers have to sell their labor to capitalists. Labor thus becomes a special commodity, and the sellers of labor become workers for labor-buyers [the proletariat and capitalist class respectively]. The value that workers create through their labor is higher than their wage. And this is how surplus value* is formed. Importantly, this means that the surplus value belongs to people who own the means of production - the capitalists - instead of the workers who provide the labor.<br /> <br /> Annotation 26<br /> <br /> Surplus value is equal to labor value (the amount of value workers produce through labor) minus wages paid to workers. Under capitalism, this surplus value is appropriated as profit by capitalists after the products which workers created are sold.<br /> <br /> 24<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism So, in discovering the origin of surplus value, Marx pointed out the exploitative nature of capitalism [because capitalists essentially steal surplus labor value from workers which is then transformed into profits], though this exploitative nature is concealed by the money-commodity relationship.<br /> <br /> Annotation 27<br /> <br /> Under capitalism, a worker’s labor is a commodity which capitalists pay for with money in the form of wages. Workers never know how much of their labor value is being withheld by employers, which conceals the nature of capitalist wage-theft.<br /> <br /> The theory of surplus value was deeply and comprehensively researched and presented in Capital1 by Marx and Engels. This work not only paves the way to form a new political-economic theory system based on the working class’s viewpoint, it also firmly consolidates and develops the historical-materialist viewpoint through the theory of socio-economic forms.<br /> <br /> Annotation 28<br /> <br /> Karl Marx explained that the goal of writing Capital was “to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society.” By “laws of motion,” Marx refers to the origins and motivations for change within human society. Historical materialism holds that human society develops based on internal and external relationships within and between aspects of society. Historical materialism is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.<br /> <br /> According to the theory of socio-economic forms [which is the basis of historical materialism], the movements and developments of human society are natural-historical processes based on dialectical interactions between forces of production and relations of production; between infrastructure basis [commonly referred to as “base” in English]<br /> <br /> and superstructure.<br /> <br /> Annotation 29<br /> <br /> The forces of production consist of the combination of means of production and workers within society. Under capitalism, the production force consists of the proletariat (working class) and means of production which are owned by the bourgeoisie (capitalist class).<br /> <br /> Marx viewed society as composed of an economic base and a social superstructure. The base of society includes the material relationships between humans and the means of productions and the material processes which humans undertake to survive and transform our environment. The superstructure of society includes all components of society not directly relating to production, such as media institutions, music, and art, as well as other cultural elements like religion, customs, moral standards, and everything else which manifests primarily through conscious activity and social relations.<br /> <br /> 1 Das Kapital: Karl Marx’s most important contribution to political economy. It is composed of four volumes. It is the work of Marx’s whole career and an important part of Engels’ career, as well. Marx started writing Das Kapital in the 1840s and continued writing until he died (1883). Das Kapital I was published in 1867. After Marx’s death, Engels edited and published the second volume in 1885 and the third volume in 1894. The Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the USSR edited and published Das Kapital IV, also known as Theories of Surplus-Value, in the 1950s, long after the death of Marx and Engels.<br /> <br /> Introduction<br /> <br /> 25<br /> <br /> Annotation 29 (continued)<br /> <br /> In the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx explained: In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material forces of production.<br /> <br /> The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society - the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.<br /> <br /> CULTURE<br /> <br /> MEDIA<br /> <br /> RELIGION<br /> <br /> GOVERNMENT<br /> <br /> EDUCATION<br /> <br /> SUPERSTRUCTURE<br /> <br /> BASE<br /> <br /> CLASS RELATIONS<br /> <br /> COMMODITIES<br /> <br /> MEANS OF PRODUCTION<br /> <br /> POLITICAL ECONOMY<br /> <br /> NATURE<br /> <br /> The base of society includes material-based elements and relations including political economy, means of production, class relations, etc. The superstructure includes human-consciousness-based elements and relations including government, culture, religion, etc.<br /> <br /> In other words, Marx argued that superstructure (which includes social consciousness) is shaped by the infrastructural basis, or base, of society. This reflects the more general dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness, in which the material, as the first basis of reality, determines consciousness, while consciousness mutually impacts the material [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88]. So, the base of society - being material in nature - determines the superstructure, while the superstructure impacts the base. It couldn’t possibly be the other way around, according to the dialectical materialist worldview, because the primary driving forces of conscious activity are rooted in material needs.<br /> <br /> 26<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism The theory of socio-economic forms proves that the materialist viewpoint of history is not just a hypothesis, but a scientifically-proven principle.<br /> <br /> Annotation 30<br /> <br /> As Lenin explains in What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats:<br /> <br /> Now - since the appearance of Capital - the materialist conception of history is no longer a hypothesis, but a scientifically proven proposition. And until we get some other attempt to give a scientific explanation of the functioning and development of some formation of society - formation of society, mind you, and not the way of life of some country or people, or even class, etc. - another attempt just as capable of introducing order into the “pertinent facts” as materialism is, that is just as capable of presenting a living picture of a definite formation, while giving it a strictly scientific explanation -until then the materialist conception of history will be a synonym for social science. Materialism is not ‘primarily a scientific conception of history’. . . but the only scientific conception of it.<br /> <br /> Capital is Marx’s main work which presents Marxism as a social science by illuminating the inevitable processes of birth, development, and decay of capitalism; the replacement of capitalism with socialism; and the historical mission of the working class - the social force that can implement this replacement. Marx’s materialist conception of history and proletarian revolution continued to be developed in Critique of Gotha Programme (Marx, 1875). This book discusses the dictatorship of the proletariat, the transitional period from capitalism to socialism, and phases of the communism building process, and several other premises. Together, these premises formed the scientific basis for Marx’s theoretical guidance for the future revolutionary activity of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> Annotation 31<br /> <br /> When Marx refers to a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” he does not mean “dictatorship” to mean “totalitarian” or “authoritarian.” Rather, here “dictatorship” simply refers to a situation in which political power is held by the working class (which constitutes the vast majority of society). “Dictatorship,” here, refers to full control of the means of production and government. This stands in contrast to capitalism, which is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, in which capitalists (a small minority of society) have full control of the means of production and government.<br /> <br /> c. The Defending and Developing Stage of Marxism<br /> <br /> - Historical Background and the Need for Defending and Developing Marxism In the late 19th century and early 20th century, capitalism developed into a new stage, called imperialism. The dominant and exploitative nature of capitalism became increasingly obvious. Contradictions in capitalist societies became increasingly serious - especially the class struggles between the proletariat and capitalists. In many colonised countries, the resistance against imperialism created a unity between national liberation and proletarian revolution, uniting people in colonised countries with the working class in colonial countries. The core of such revolutionary struggles at this time was in Russia.<br /> <br /> The Russian proletariat and working class under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party became the leader of the whole international revolutionary movement.<br /> <br /> Introduction<br /> <br /> 27<br /> <br /> During this time, both capitalist industry and natural sciences developed rapidly.<br /> <br /> Some natural scientists, especially physicists, lacked a grounding in materialist philosophical methodology and therefore fell into a viewpoint crisis. Idealist philosophers used this crisis to directly influence the perspective and activities of many revolutionary movements.<br /> <br /> Annotation 32<br /> <br /> Imperialism<br /> <br /> Lenin defined imperialism as “the monopoly stage of capitalism,” listing its essential characteristics as “finance capital (serving) a few very big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist associations of industrialists” and “a colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up.”<br /> <br /> Subjective and Empiricist Idealism<br /> <br /> In the late 19th century, natural scientists were exploring various philosophical bases for scientific inquiry. One Austrian physicist, Ernst Mach, attempted to build a philosophy of natural science based on the works of German-Swiss philosopher Richard Avenarius known as “Empirio-Criticism.” Empirio-Criticism, which also came to be known as Machism, has many parallels with the philosophy of George Berkeley.<br /> <br /> Berkeley (1685 - 1753) was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose main philosophical achievement was the formulation of a doctrine which he called “immaterialism,” and which later came to be known as “Subjective Idealism.” This doctrine was summed up by Berkeley’s maxim: “Esse est percipi” - “To be is to be perceived.” Subjective Idealism holds that individuals can only directly perceive and know about physical objects through direct sense experience. Therefore, individuals are unable to obtain any real knowledge about abstract concepts such as “matter”.<br /> <br /> The philosophy of Empirio-Criticism, which was developed by Avenarius and Mach, also holds that the only reliable human knowledge we can hold comes from our sensations and experiences. Mach argued that the only source of knowledge is sense data and “experience,” but that we can’t develop any actual knowledge of the actual external world. In other words, Mach’s conception of empirio-criticism holds all knowledge as essentially subjective in nature, and limited to (and by) human sense experience.<br /> <br /> Mach’s development of Empirio-Criticism (which can also be referred to as empirical idealism or Machism) was therefore a continuation of Berkeley’s subjective idealism.<br /> <br /> Both Berkeley’s Immaterialism and Empirio-Criticism are considered to be subjective idealism because these philosophies deny that the external world exists - or otherwise assert that it is unknowable - and, as such, hold that all knowledge stems from experiences which are essentially subjective in nature.<br /> <br /> Mach argued that reality can only be defined by our sensual experiences of reality, and that we can never concretely know anything about the objective external world due to the limitations of sense experience. This stands in direct contradiction to dialectical materialism, which holds that we can develop accurate knowledge of the material world through observation and practice. Whereas Berkeley developed subjective idealist theological arguments to defend the Christian faith, Mach employed subjective idealism for purely secular purposes as a basis for scientific inquiry.<br /> <br /> 28<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 32 (continued)<br /> <br /> Note: all quotations below come from Lenin’s book: Materialism and Empirio-Criticism .<br /> <br /> Vladimir Lenin strongly opposed Empirio-Criticism and, by extension, Machism, which was becoming popular among communist revolutionists in the late 19th century, because it pushed forward idealist principles which directly opposed the core tenets of dialectical materialism.<br /> <br /> Lenin believed that revolutionaries should be guided not by idealism, but by dialectical materialism. He believed that Empirio-Criticism and Machism consisted of mysticism which would mislead political revolutionaries.<br /> <br /> Lenin outlined Machian arguments against materialism:<br /> <br /> The materialists, we are told, recognise something unthinkable and unknowable - ’things-in-themselves’ - matter ‘outside of experience’ and outside of our knowledge [see: Annotation 72, p. 68]. They lapse into genuine mysticism by ad-mitting the existence of something beyond, something transcending the bounds of ‘experience’. . . When they say that matter, by acting upon our sense-organs, produces sensations, the materialists take as their basis the ‘unknown,’ nothingness; for do they not themselves declare our sensations to be the only source of knowledge?<br /> <br /> Lenin argued that this new form of Machist subjective idealism was, in fact, simply a rehashing of “old errors of idealism,” disguised and dressed up with new terminology.<br /> <br /> As such, Lenin simply reiterated the longstanding, bedrock dialectical materialist arguments against idealism [see Annotation 10, p. 10]. He was especially upset that contemporary Marxists of his era were being swayed by Machist Empirio-Criticism because he found it to be in direct conflict with dialectical materialism, writing: “(These) would-be Marxists… try in every way to assure their readers that Machism is compatible with the historical materialism of Marx and Engels.”<br /> <br /> Lenin goes on to describe the work of philosophers such as Franz Blei, who critiqued Marxism with Machist arguments, as “quasi-scientific tomfoolery decked out in the terminology of Avenarius.” He saw Empirio-Criticism as completely incompatible with communist revolution, since idealism had historically been used by the ruling class to deceive and control the lower classes. In particular, he believed that Machist idealism was being used by the capitalist class to preach bourgeois economics, writing that “the professors of economics are nothing but learned salesmen of the capitalist class.”<br /> <br /> Lenin was deeply concerned that prominent Russian socialist philosophers were adopting Machist ideas and claiming them to be compatible with Marxism, writing: The task of Marxists in both cases is to be able to master and adapt the achievements of these ‘salesmen’. . . and to be able to lop off their reactionary tendency, to pursue your own line and to combat the whole alignment of forces and classes hostile to us. And this is just what our Machians were unable to do, they slavishly follow the lead of the reactionary professorial philosophy.<br /> <br /> Lenin further explains how Empirio-Criticism serves the interests of the capitalist class:<br /> <br /> Introduction<br /> <br /> 29<br /> <br /> Annotation 32 (continued)<br /> <br /> The empirio-criticists as a whole. . . claim to be non-partisan both in philosophy and in social science. They are neither for socialism nor for liberalism. They make no differentiation between the fundamental and irreconcilable trends of materialism and idealism in philosophy, but endeavor to rise above them. We have traced this tendency of Machism through a long series of problems of epistemology, and we ought not to be surprised when we encounter it in sociology.<br /> <br /> In the conclusion of the same text, Lenin explains why communists should reject Empirio-Criticism and Machism with four “standpoints,” summarized here: 1. The theoretical foundations of Empirio-Criticism can’t withstand comparison with those of dialectical materialism. Empirio-Criticism differs little from older forms of idealism, and the tired old errors of idealism clash directly with Marxist dialectical materialism. As Lenin puts it: “only utter ignorance of the nature of philosophical materialism generally and of the nature of Marx’s and Engels’<br /> <br /> dialectical method can lead one to speak of ‘combining’ empirio-criticism and Marxism.”<br /> <br /> 2. The philosophical foundations of Empirio-Criticism are flawed. “Both Mach and Avenarius started with Kant (see: Annotation 72, p. 68) and, leaving him, proceeded not towards materialism, but in the opposite direction, towards Hume and Berkeley (see: Annotation 10, p. 10). . . The whole school of Mach and Avenarius is moving more and more definitely towards idealism.”<br /> <br /> 3. Machism is little more than a relatively obscure trend which has not been adopted by most scientists; a “reactionary (and) transitory infatuation.” As Lenin puts it: “the vast majority of scientists, both generally and in this special branch of science. . . are invariably on the side of materialism.”<br /> <br /> 4. Empirio-Criticism and Machism reflect the “tendencies and ideology of the antagonistic classes in modern society.” Idealism represents the interests of the ruling class in modern society, and is used to subjugate the majority of society. Idealist philosophy “stands fully armed, commands vast organizations and steadily continues to exercise influence on the masses, turning the slightest vacillation in philosophical thought to its own advantage.” In other words, idealism is used by the ruling class to manipulate our understanding of the world, as opposed to materialism (and especially dialectical materialism) which illuminates the true nature of reality which would lead to the liberation of the working class.<br /> <br /> At this time, Marxism was widely disseminating throughout Russia, which challenged the social positions and benefits of capitalists. In reaction to Marxism, many ideological movements such as empiricism, utilitarianism, revisionism, etc. [see: Appendix F, p. 252]<br /> <br /> rose up and claimed to renew Marxism, while in fact they misrepresented and denied Marxism.<br /> <br /> In this context, new achievements of natural science needed to be analyzed and summarized in order to continue the authentic development of Marxist viewpoints and methodologies. Theoretical principles to fight against the misrepresentation of Marxism needed to be developed in order to bring Marxism into the new era. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin would fulfill this historical requirement with his theoretical developments.<br /> <br /> 30<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism<br /> <br /> - The Role of Lenin in Defending and Developing Marxism.<br /> <br /> Lenin’s process of defending and developing Marxism can be separated into three periods: first, from 1893 to 1907; next, from 1907 to 1917; and finally from the success of the October socialist revolution in 1917 until Lenin’s death in 1924.<br /> <br /> From 1893 to 1907, Lenin focused on fighting against populists1. His book What the Friends of the People are and How They Fight Against the Social Democrats (1894) criticized the serious mistakes of this faction in regards to socio-historical issues and also exposed their scheme of distorting Marxism by erasing the boundaries between Marxism’s materialist dialectics and Hegel’s idealist dialectics. In the same book, Lenin also shared many thoughts about the important roles of theory, reality, and the relationship between the two.<br /> <br /> Annotation 33<br /> <br /> The populist philosophy was born in Russia in the 19th century with roots going back to the Narodnik agrarian socialist movement of the 1860s and 70s, composed of peasants who rose up in a failed campaign against the Czar. In the late 19th century, a new political movement emerged rooted in Narodnik ideas and a new party called the Socialist Revolutionary Party was formed. The political philosophy of this movement, now commonly translated into English as “populism,” focused on an agrarian peasant revolution led by intellectuals with the ambition of going directly from a feudal society to a socialist society built from rural communes. This movement overtly opposed Marxism and dialectical materialism and was based on subjective idealist utopianism (see Annotation 95, p. 94).<br /> <br /> With the book What is to be Done? (1902), Lenin developed Marxist viewpoints on the methods for the proletariat to take power. He discussed economic, political, and ideological struggles. In particular, he emphasized the ideological formation process of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> Annotation 34<br /> <br /> In What is to be Done?, Lenin argues that the working class will not spontaneously attain class consciousness and push for political revolution simply due to economic conflict with employers and spontaneous actions like demonstrations and workers’<br /> <br /> strikes. He instead insists that a political party of dedicated revolutionaries is needed to educate workers in Marxist principles and to organize and push forward revolutionary activity. He also pushed back strongly against the ideas of what he called “economism,” as typified by the ideas of Eduard Bernstein, a German political theorist who rejected many of Marx’s theories.<br /> <br /> 1 Populist faction: A faction within the Russian revolution which upheld an idealist capitalist ideology with many representatives such as Mikhailovsky, Bakunin, and Plekhanov. Populists failed to recognise the important roles of the people, of the farmers and workers alliance, and of the proletariat. Instead, they completely centered the role of the individual in society. They considered the rural communes as the nucleus of “socialism.” They saw farmers under the leadership of intellectuals as the main force of the revolution. The populists advocated individual terrorism as the primary method of revolutionary struggle.<br /> <br /> Introduction<br /> <br /> 31<br /> <br /> Annotation 34 (continued)<br /> <br /> Bernstein opposed a working class revolution and instead focused on reform and compromise. He believed that socialism could be achieved within the capitalist economy and the system of bourgeois democracy. Lenin argued that Bernstein and his economist philosophy was opportunistic, and accused economists of seeking positions within bourgeois democracies to further their own personal interests and to quell revolutionary tendencies. As Lenin explained in A Talk With Defenders of Economism: The Economists limited the tasks of the working class to an economic struggle for higher wages and better working conditions, etc., asserting that the political struggle was the business of the liberal bourgeoisie. They denied the leading role of the party of the working class, considering that the party should merely observe the spontaneous process of the movement and register events. In their deference to spontaneity in the working-class movement, the Economists belit-tled the significance of revolutionary theory and class-consciousness, asserted that socialist ideology could emerge from the spontaneous movement, denied the need for a Marxist party to instill socialist consciousness into the working-class movement, and thereby cleared the way for bourgeois ideology. The Economists, who opposed the need to create a centralized working-class party, stood for the sporadic and amateurish character of individual circles. Economism threatened to divert the working class from the class revolutionary path and turn it into a political appendage of the bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Vietnam, published by the National Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, defines opportunism, in this context, as “a system of political opinions with no direction, no clear path, no coherent viewpoint, leaning on whatever is beneficial for the opportunist in the short term.”<br /> <br /> Lenin critiques opportunist socialism - referring to it as a “critical” trend in socialism<br /> <br /> - in What is to be Done? :<br /> <br /> He who does not deliberately close his eyes cannot fail to see that the new<br /> <br /> “critical” trend in socialism is nothing more nor less than a new variety of opportunism. And if we judge people. . . by their actions and by what they actually advocate, it will be clear that “freedom of criticism” means “freedom for an opportunist trend in Social-Democracy, freedom to convert Social-Democracy into a democratic party of reform, freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into socialism.”<br /> <br /> The first revolution of the Russian working class, from 1905 to 1907, failed. Lenin summarized the reality of this revolution in the book Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (1905). In this book, Lenin explains that the capitalist class in Russia was actively engaged in its own revolution against Czarist feudalism. In this context of this ongoing bourgeois revolution, Lenin deeply developed Marxist concepts related to revolutionary methodologies, objective and subjective factors that will affect the working class revolution, the role of the people, the role of political parties etc.<br /> <br /> 32<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 35<br /> <br /> From 1905 to 1907, Russia was beset by political unrest and radical activity including workers’ strikes, military mutinies, and peasant uprisings. Russia had just suffered a humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese war which cost tens of thousands of Russian lives without any benefits to the Russian people. In addition, the economic and political systems of Czarist Russia placed a severe burden on industrial workers and peasant farmers.<br /> <br /> In response, the Russian proletariat rose up in various uprisings, demonstrations, and clashes against government forces, landlords, and factory owners. In the end, this revolutionary activity failed to overthrow the Czar’s government, and the Czar remained firmly in power until the communist revolution of 1917.<br /> <br /> Lenin wrote Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution in 1905 in Geneva, Switzerland. In it, he argues forcefully against the political faction within the Russian socialist movement that came to be known as the “Mensheviks.” The Mensheviks, as well as the Bolsheviks (Lenin’s contemporary faction) emerged from a dispute within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which took place in 1903.<br /> <br /> In the same text, Lenin argued that the Mensheviks misunderstood the forces that were driving revolutionary activity in Russia. While the Mensheviks believed that the situation in Russia would develop along similar lines to previous revolutionary activity in Western Europe, Lenin argued that Russia’s situation was unique and that Russian Marxists should therefore adopt different strategies and activities which reflected Russia’s unique circumstances and material conditions.<br /> <br /> Specifically, the Mensheviks believed that the working class should ally with the bourgeoisie to overthrow the Czar’s feudalist regime, and then allow the bourgeoisie to build a fully functioning capitalist economy before workers should attempt their own revolution.<br /> <br /> Lenin, on the other hand, presented a completely different analysis of class forces in Russia. He believed the bourgeoisie would seek a compromise with the Czar, as both feudal and bourgeois classes in Russia feared a proletarian revolution.<br /> <br /> It’s important to note that Russia’s industrial workforce was very small at this time, and most Russians were peasant farmers. The Mensheviks believed Russian peasants would not be useful in a proletarian revolution, which is why they argued for allowing capitalism to be fully established in Russia before pushing for a working class revolution. They believed it was prudent to wait until the working class became larger and more dominant in Russia before attempting to overthrow capitalism. They believed that the peasant class would not be useful in any such revolution.<br /> <br /> In contrast, Lenin believed that the peasants and industrial workers would have to work together to have any hope of a successful revolution. He further argued that an uprising of armed peasants and workers, fighting side by side, would be necessary for overthrowing the Czar.<br /> <br /> From 1907 to 1917, there was a viewpoint crisis among many physicists. This strongly affected the birth of many idealist ideologies following Mach’s Positivism that attempted to negate Marxism [See: Annotation 32, p. 27]. Lenin summarized the achievements of natural science as well as historical events of the late 19th century and early 20th century in his book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909). By giving the classical definitions of matter, proving the relationships between matter and consciousness and between social existence and social consciousness, and pointing out the basic rules of conscious-<br /> <br /> Introduction<br /> <br /> 33<br /> <br /> ness, etc., Lenin defended Marxism and carried it forward to a new level. Lenin clearly expressed his thoughts on the history, nature, and structure of Marxism in the book The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (1913). He also talked about dialectics in Philosophical Notebooks (1914-1916) and expressed his thoughts about the proletarian dictatorship, the role of the Communist Party, and the path to socialism in his book The State and Revolution (1919).<br /> <br /> The success of the October revolution in Russia in 1917 brought about a new era: the transitional period from capitalism to socialism on an international scale. This event presented new theoretical requirements that had not existed in the time of Marx and Engels’<br /> <br /> time.<br /> <br /> In a series of works including: “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920), Once Again on the Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin (1921), The Tax in Kind (1921), etc., Lenin summarized the revolutionary practice of the people, continued defending Marxist dialectics, and uncompromisingly fought against eclecticism and sophistry.<br /> <br /> Annotation 36<br /> <br /> In Anti-Dühring, Engels identifies the historical missions of the working class as: 1. Becoming the ruling class by establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> 2. Seizing the means of production from the ruling class to end class society.<br /> <br /> Eclecticism is an incoherent approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject, applying different theories in different situations without any consistency in analysis and thought. Eclectic arguments are typically composed of various pieces of evidence that are cherry picked and pieced together to form a perspective that lacks clarity. By definition, because they draw from different systems of thought without seeking a clear and cohesive understanding of the totality of the subject and its internal and external relations and its development over time, eclectic arguments run counter to the comprehensive and historical viewpoints [see p. 116]. Eclecticism bears superficial resemblance to dialectical materialism in that it attempts to consider a subject from many different perspectives, and analyzes relationships pertaining to a subject, but the major flaw of eclecticism is a lack of clear and coherent systems and principles, which leads to a chaotic viewpoint and an inability to grasp the true nature of the subject at hand.<br /> <br /> Sophistry is the use of falsehoods and misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, and with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. This kind of bad faith argument has no place in materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics must, instead, be rooted in a true and accurate understanding of the subject, material conditions, and reality in general.<br /> <br /> Simultaneously, Lenin also developed his Marxist viewpoint of the factors deciding the victory of a social regime, about class, about the two basic missions of the proletariat, about the strategies and tactics of proletarian parties in new historical conditions, about the transitional period, and about the plans of building socialism following the New Economic Policy (NEP), etc.<br /> <br /> 34<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 37<br /> <br /> The early 1920s were a period of great internal conflict in revolutionary Russia, with various figures and factions wanting to take the revolution in different directions.<br /> <br /> As such, Lenin wrote extensively on the direction he believed the revolution should be carried forth to ensure lasting victory against both feudalism and capitalism. He believed that the October, 1917 revolution represented the complete defeat of the Czar, however he believed the proletarian victory over the bourgeoisie would take more time. Russia was a poor, agrarian society. The vast majority of Russians under the Czar were poor peasants. Industry - and thus, the proletariat - was highly undeveloped compared to Western Europe. According to Lenin, a full and lasting proletarian victory over the bourgeoisie could only be won after the means of production were properly developed. In Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution, Lenin wrote: This first victory [the October, 1917 revolution] is not yet the final victory, and it was achieved by our October Revolution at the price of incredible difficulties and hardships. . . We have made the start. . . The important thing is that the ice has been broken; the road is open, the way has been shown.<br /> <br /> So, Lenin knew that the victory over the Czar and feudalism was only a partial victory, and that more work needed to be done to defeat the bourgeoisie entirely. He believed the key to this victory over the capitalist class would be economic development, since Russia was still a largely agrarian society with very little industrial or economic development compared to Western Europe:<br /> <br /> Our last, but most important and most difficult task, the one we have done least about, is economic development, the laying of economic foundations for the new, socialist edifice on the site of the demolished feudal edifice and the semi-demolished capitalist edifice.<br /> <br /> Lenin’s plan for rapidly developing the means of production was his New Economic Policy, or the NEP. The New Economic Policy was proposed to be a temporary economic system that would allow a market economy and capitalism to exist within Russia, alongside state-owned business ventures, all firmly under the control of the working-class-dominated state. As Lenin explains in Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution:<br /> <br /> At this very moment we are, by our New Economic Policy, correcting a number of our mistakes. We are learning how to continue erecting the socialist edifice in a small-peasant country.<br /> <br /> He continues later in the text:<br /> <br /> The proletarian state must become a cautious, assiduous and shrewd “busi-nessman,” a punctilious wholesale merchant - otherwise it will never succeed in putting this small-peasant country economically on its feet. Under existing conditions, living as we are side by side with the capitalist (for the time being capitalist) West, there is no other way of progressing to communism. A wholesale merchant seems to be an economic type as remote from communism as heaven from earth. But that is one of the contradictions which, in actual life, lead from a small-peasant economy via state capitalism to socialism.<br /> <br /> Introduction<br /> <br /> 35<br /> <br /> Annotation 37 (continued)<br /> <br /> Personal incentive will step up production; we must increase production first and foremost and at all costs. Wholesale trade economically unites millions of small peasants: it gives them a personal incentive, links them up and leads them to the next step, namely, to various forms of association and alliance in the process of production itself. We have already started the necessary changes in our economic policy and already have some successes to our credit; true, they are small and partial, but nonetheless they are successes. In this new field of “tui-tion” we are already finishing our preparatory class. By persistent and assiduous study, by making practical experience the test of every step we take, by not fearing to alter over and over again what we have already begun, by correcting our mistakes and most carefully analyzing their significance, we shall pass to the higher classes. We shall go through the whole “course,” although the present state of world economics and world politics has made that course much longer and much more difficult than we would have liked. No matter at what cost, no matter how severe the hardships of the transition period may be - despite disaster, famine and ruin - we shall not flinch; we shall triumphantly carry our cause to its goal.<br /> <br /> With these great works dedicated to the three component parts of Marxism [see Annotation 42, p. 38], the name Vladimir Ilyich Lenin became an important part of Marxism. It marked a comprehensive developing step from Marxism to Marxism-Leninism.<br /> <br /> d. Marxism-Leninism and the Reality of the International Revolutionary Movement<br /> <br /> The birth of Marxism greatly affected both the international worker movements and communist movements. The revolution in March 1871 in France could be considered as a great experiment of Marxism in the real world. For the first time in human history, a new kind of state - the dictatorship of the proletariat state (Paris Commune) was established.<br /> <br /> Annotation 38<br /> <br /> The Paris Commune was an important but short-lived revolutionary victory of the working class which saw a revolutionary socialist government controlling Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871.<br /> <br /> During the brief existence of the Paris Commune, many important policies were set forth, including a separation of church and state, abolishment of rent, an end to child labor, and the right of employees to take over any business which had been abandoned by its owner. Unfortunately, the Paris Commune was brutally toppled by the French army, which killed between 6,000 and 7,000 revolutionaries in battle and by execution.<br /> <br /> The events of the Paris Commune heavily influenced many revolutionary thinkers and leaders, including Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and was referenced frequently in their works.<br /> <br /> In August 1903, the very first Marxist proletariat party was established - the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. It was a true Marxist party that led the revolution in Russia in 1905. In October 1917, the victory of the socialist revolution of the proletariat in Russia opened a new era for human history.<br /> <br /> 36<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism In 1919, the Communist International* was held; in 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic was established. It marked the alliance of the proletariat of many countries.<br /> <br /> With the power of this alliance, the fight against Fascism not only protected the achievements of the proletariat’s revolution, but also spread socialism beyond the borders of Russia. Following the lead of the Soviet Union, a community of socialist countries was built, with revolutions leading to the establishment of socialism in the following countries [and years of establishment]: Mongolia [1921], Vietnam [1945], the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [1945], Yugoslavia [1945], Albania [1946], Romania [1947], Czechoslovakia [1948], East Germany [1949], China [1949], Hungary [1949], Poland<br /> <br /> [1956], and Cuba [1959].<br /> <br /> Annotation 39<br /> <br /> * The First International, also known as the International Workingmen’s Association, was founded in London and lasted from 1864-1876. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were key figures in the foundation and operation of this organization, which sought better conditions and the establishment of rights for workers.<br /> <br /> The Second International was founded in Paris in 1889 to continue the work of the First International. It fell apart in 1916 because the members from different nations could not maintain solidarity through the outbreak of World War I.<br /> <br /> The Third International, also known as the Communist International (or the ComIntern for short), was founded in Moscow in 1919 (though many nations didn’t join until later in the 1920s). Its goals were to overthrow capitalism, build socialism, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. It was dissolved in 1943 in the midst of the German invasion of Russia in World War II.<br /> <br /> These great historical events strongly enhanced the revolutionary movement of the working class all around the whole world. The people awakened and encouraged the liberation resistance of many colonised countries. The guiding role of Marxism-Leninism brought many great results for a world of peace, independence, democracy, and social progress.<br /> <br /> However, because of many internal and external factors, in the late 1980s, the socialist alliance faced a crisis and fell into a recession period. Even though the socialist system fell into crisis and was weakened, the socialist ideology still survived internationally.<br /> <br /> The determination of successfully building socialism was still very strong in many countries and the desire to follow the socialist path still spread widely in South America.<br /> <br /> Nowadays, the main feature of our modern society is fast and varied change in many social aspects caused by technology and scientific revolution. But, no matter how quickly and diversely our society changes, the nature of the capitalist production method never changes. So, in order to protect the socialist achievements earned by the flesh and blood of many previous generations; and in order to have a tremendous development step in the career of liberating human beings, it is very urgent to protect, inherit and develop Marxism-Leninism and also innovate the work of building socialism in both theory and practice.<br /> <br /> The Communist Party of Vietnam declared: “Nowadays, capitalism still has potential for development, but in nature, it’s still an unjust, exploitative, and oppressive regime.<br /> <br /> The basic and inherent contradictions of capitalism, especially the contradictions between the increasing socialization of the production force and the capitalist private<br /> <br /> Introduction<br /> <br /> 37<br /> <br /> ownership regime, will never be solved and will even become increasingly serious. The feature of the current period of our modern society is: countries with different social regimes and different development levels co-exist, co-operate, struggle and compete fiercely for the interests of their own nations. The struggles for peace, independence, democracy, development, and social progress of many countries will still have to cope with hardship and challenges but we will achieve new progress. According to the principles of historical development, human beings will almost certainly go forward to socialism.” 1<br /> <br /> Annotation 40<br /> <br /> Historical materialism is the application of dialectical materialist philosophy and materialist dialectical methodology to the analysis of human history, society, and development. The principles of historical materialism, as developed by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, indicate that human society is moving towards socialism and will almost certainly - in time - develop into socialism, and then proceed towards a stateless, classless form of society (communism). These principles of historical materialism were initially formulated and discussed in several books by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, including:<br /> <br /> • The German Ideology, by Marx and Engels<br /> <br /> • Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, by Marx and Engels<br /> <br /> • Karl Marx, by Lenin<br /> <br /> The Communist Party of Vietnam has also declared:<br /> <br /> “In the opinion of the Vietnam Communist Party, using Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought as the foundation for our ideology, the guideline for our actions is an important developmental step in cognition and logical thinking2. Achievements that the Vietnamese people have gained in the war to gain our independence, in peace, and in the renovation era, are all rooted in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought.<br /> <br /> Therefore, we have to ‘creatively apply and develop Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought in the Party’s activities. We have to regularly summarise reality, complement and develop theory, and soundly solve the problems of our society.’”3<br /> <br /> Annotation 41<br /> <br /> Ho Chi Minh Thought refers to a system of ideas developed by Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese communists which relate to the application of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and methodology to the specific material conditions of Vietnam during the revolutionary period.<br /> <br /> There is no universal road map for applying the principles of Marxism-Leninism.<br /> <br /> How the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism should be applied will vary widely from one time and place to another. This is why Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese communists had to develop Ho Chi Minh Thought: so that scientific socialism could be developed within the unique context of Vietnam’s particular historical development and material conditions.<br /> <br /> 1 Delegate Document of the 11th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.<br /> <br /> 2 Delegate document of the 9th national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.<br /> <br /> 3 Delegate document of the 10th national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.<br /> <br /> 38<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 41 (continued)<br /> <br /> It is the duty of every revolutionary to study Marxism-Leninism as well as specific applied forms of Marxism-Leninism developed by revolutionaries for their own specific times and places, such as: Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam), Mao Zedong (China), Fidel Castro and Che Guevera (Cuba), etc. However, it must be recognized that the ideas, strategies, methodologies, and philosophies developed in such particular circumstances can’t be applied in exactly the same way in other times and places, such as our own contemporary material conditions.<br /> <br /> The Renovation Era refers to the period of time in Vietnam from the 1980s until the early 2000s during which the Đổi Mới (renovation) policies were implemented. These policies restructured the Vietnamese economy to end the previous subsidizing model (which was defined by state ownership of the entire economy). The goals of the Renovation Era were to open Vietnam economically and politically and to normalize relations with the rest of the world. The Đổi Mới policies were generally successful and paved the way to the Path to Socialism Era which Vietnam exists in today. The goals of the Path to Socialism Era are to develop Vietnam into a modern, developed country with a strong economy and wealthy people, which will allow us to transition towards the lower stage of communism, which Lenin called “socialism.”<br /> <br /> And, finally: “We have to be consistent with Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought. We have to creatively apply and develop the ideology correspondingly with the reality in Vietnam. We have to firmly aim for national independence and socialism.”<br /> <br /> ==II. OBJECTS, PURPOSES, AND REQUIREMENTS FOR STUDYING==<br /> <br /> THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MARXISM-LENINISM<br /> <br /> ===1. Objects and Purposes of Study===<br /> <br /> The objects of study of this book, The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism, are the fundamental viewpoints of Marxism-Leninism in its three component parts.<br /> <br /> Annotation 42<br /> <br /> Remember that a viewpoint is the starting point of analysis which determines the direction of thinking and the perspective from which problems are considered. Also remember that Marxism-Leninism has three component parts:<br /> <br /> 1. The Philosophy of Marxism:<br /> <br /> Including Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism 2. The Political Economy of Marxism:<br /> <br /> A system of knowledge and laws that define the production process and commodity exchange in human society.<br /> <br /> 3. Scientific Socialism<br /> <br /> The system of thought pertaining to the establishment of the communist social economy form.<br /> <br /> These objects of study stand as the viewpoints - the starting points of analysis - of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and the three component parts of which it’s composed.<br /> <br /> Introduction<br /> <br /> 39<br /> <br /> In the scope of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy [the first component part of Marxism-Leninism], these objects of study are:<br /> <br /> • Dialectical Materialism - the fundamental and most universal worldview and methodologies which form the theoretical core of a scientific worldview*. [See Part 1, p. 44]<br /> <br /> • Materialist Dialectics - the science of development, of common relationships, and of the most common rules of motion and development of nature, society and human thought. [See Chapter 2, p. 98]<br /> <br /> • Historical Materialism - the application and development of Materialism and Dialectics in studying social aspects. [Historical materialism is the topic of Part 2<br /> <br /> of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.]<br /> <br /> Annotation 43<br /> <br /> * Remember that Scientific in Marxism-Leninism refers to a systematic pursuit of knowledge, research, theory, and understanding [see Annotation 1, p. 1]. Note, also, that Worldview refers to the whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about humans ourselves, and about life and the position of human beings in the world. This is discussed in more detail on page 44.<br /> <br /> Thus, a scientific worldview is a worldview that is expressed by a systematic pursuit of knowledge of definitions and categories that generally and correctly reflect the relationships of things, phenomena, and processes in the objective material world, including relationships between humans, as well as relationships between humans and the world.<br /> <br /> In the scope of Marxist-Leninist Political Economics [the second component part of Marxism-Leninism], the objects of study are:<br /> <br /> • The theory of value and the theory of surplus value.<br /> <br /> • Economic theory about monopolist capitalism and state monopolist capitalism.<br /> <br /> • General economic rules about capitalist production methods, from the stage of formation, to the stage of development, to the stage of perishing, which will be followed by the birth of a new production method: the communist production method.<br /> <br /> Annotation 44<br /> <br /> Marxist-Leninist political economics is the topic of Part 3 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.<br /> <br /> In the scope of Scientific Socialism [the third component part of Marxism-Leninism], the objects of study are:<br /> <br /> • The historical mission of the working class and the progression of a socialist revolution.<br /> <br /> • Matters related to the future formation and development periods of the communist socio-economic form.<br /> <br /> • Guidelines for the working class in implementing our historical mission.<br /> <br /> 40<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism The purposes of studying The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism are: to master Marxist-Leninist viewpoints of science, revolution, and humanism*; to thoroughly understand the most important theoretical foundation of Ho Chi Minh Thought, the revolutionary path, and the ideological foundation of the Vietnam Communist Party. Based on that basis, we can build a scientific worldview and methodology and a revolutionary worldview; build our trust in our revolutionary ideals; creatively apply them in our cognitive and practical activities and in practicing and cultivating morality to meet the requirements of Vietnamese people in the cause of building a socialist Vietnam.<br /> <br /> Annotation 45<br /> <br /> * The humanism of Marxism-Leninism differs greatly from the humanism of Feuerbach discussed in Annotation 12, p. 13. Marxist-Leninist humanism concerns itself with the liberation of all humans. As Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto:<br /> <br /> “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”<br /> <br /> ===2. Some Basic Requirements of the Studying Method===<br /> <br /> There are some basic requirements for studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism:<br /> <br /> First, Marxist-Leninist theses were conceptualized under many different circumstances in order to solve different problems, so the expressions of thought of Marxist-Leninists can vary. Therefore, students studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism must correctly understand its spirit and essence and avoid theoretical purism and dogmatism.<br /> <br /> Annotation 46<br /> <br /> Marxism-Leninism should be understood as an applied science, and application of this science will vary based on material conditions. As Engels wrote in a personal letter in 1887, remarking on the socialist movement in the USA: “Our theory is a theory of evolution, not a dogma to be learned by heart and to be repeated mechanically. The less it is drilled into the Americans from outside and the more they test it with their own experience. . . the deeper will it pass into their flesh and blood.”<br /> <br /> As an example, Lenin tailored his actions and ideas specifically to suit the material conditions of Russia under the Czar and in the early revolutionary period. Russia’s material conditions were somewhat unique during the time of Lenin’s revolutionary activity, since Russia was an agrarian monarchy with a large peasant population and a relatively undeveloped industrial sector. As such, Lenin had to develop strategies, tactics, and ideas which suited those specific material conditions, such as determining that the industrial working class and agricultural peasants should work together. As Lenin explained in The Proletariat and the Peasantry: Thus the red banner of the class-conscious workers means, first, that we support with all our might, the peasants’ struggle for full freedom and all the land; secondly, it means that we do not stop at this, but go on further. We are waging, besides the struggle for freedom and land, a fight for socialism.<br /> <br /> Obviously, this statement would not be specifically applicable to a society with highly developed industry and virtually no rural peasants (such as, for instance, the modern-day USA), just as Lenin’s remarks about the Czar would not be specifically applicable to any society that does not have an institution of monarchy.<br /> <br /> Introduction<br /> <br /> 41<br /> <br /> Annotation 46 (continued)<br /> <br /> As another example, take the works of Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh Thought is defined by the Communist Party of Vietnam as “a complete system of thought about the fundamental issues of the Vietnam revolution.” In other words, Ho Chi Minh Thought is a specific application of the principles of Marxism-Leninism to the material conditions of Vietnam.<br /> <br /> One unique aspect of Vietnam’s revolution which Ho Chi Minh focused on was colonization. As a colonized country, Ho Chi Minh realized that Vietnam had unique challenges and circumstances that would need to be properly addressed through revolutionary struggle. Another unique aspect of Vietnam’s material conditions was the fact that the colonial administration of Vietnam changed hands throughout the revolution: from France, to Japan, back to France, then to the USA. Ho Chi Minh was able to dynamically and creatively apply Marxism-Leninism to these shifting material conditions. For instance, in Founding of the Indochinese Communist Party, written in 1930, Ho Chi Minh explains some of the unique problems faced by the colonized people of Indochina (modern day Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) and proposes solutions specific to these unique material conditions:<br /> <br /> On the one hand, they (the French) use the feudalists and comprador bourgeoisie (of Vietnam) to oppress and exploit our people. On the other, they terror-ize, arrest, jail, deport, and kill a great number of Vietnamese revolutionaries. If the French imperialists think that they can suppress the Vietnamese revolution by means of terror, they are grossly mistaken. For one thing, the Vietnamese revolution is not isolated but enjoys the assistance of the world proletariat in general and that of the French working class in particular. Secondly, it is precisely at the very time when the French imperialists are frenziedly carrying out terrorist acts that the Vietnamese Communists, formerly working separately, have united into a single party, the Indochinese Communist Party, to lead the revolutionary struggle of our entire people.<br /> <br /> During this period, the nations of Indochina were predominantly agricultural, prompting Ho Chi Minh to suggest in the same text that it would be necessary “to establish a worker-peasant-soldier government” and “to confiscate all the plantations and property belonging to the imperialists and the Vietnamese reactionary bourgeoisie and distribute them to the poor peasants.” Obviously all of these considerations are specific to the material conditions of Indochina under French colonial rule in 1930.<br /> <br /> By 1939, the situation was changing rapidly. Ho Chi Minh was operating from China, which was being invaded by fascist Japan. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the Japanese imperial army would come to threaten Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. As such, Ho Chi Minh wrote a letter to the Indochinese Communist Party outlining recommendations, strategies, and goals pertaining to the precipitating material conditions. At that time, France had not yet been invaded by Germany, but Ho Chi Minh was very aware of the looming threat of fascism both in Europe and in Asia.<br /> <br /> He realized that rising up in revolutionary civil war against the French colonial administration would give fascist Japan the opportunity to quickly conquer all of Indochina, which is why he made the following recommendations in a letter to the Communist Party of Indochina in 1939:<br /> <br /> 42<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 46 (continued)<br /> <br /> Our party should not strive for demands which are too high, such as total independence, or establishing a house of representatives. If we do that, we will fall into the trap of fascist Japan. For now, we should only ask for democracy, freedom to organize, freedom to hold meetings, freedom of speech, and for the release of political prisoners. We should also fight for our party to be organized and to operate legally.<br /> <br /> Once France fell to Germany in 1940, Indochina was immediately handed over to Japanese colonial rule. The Japanese army was brutal in its occupation of Vietnam, and the French colonial administrators surrendered entirely to the Japanese empire and helped the Japanese to administer all of Indochina. Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam in January of 1941 and participated directly with the resistance struggle against Japan until 1945, when the situation once again changed dramatically due to the Japanese military’s surrender to allied forces and withdrawal from Vietnam. He immediately took advantage of this situation and held a successful revolution against both the Japanese and French administrators. In the Declaration of Independence for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh wrote:<br /> <br /> After the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies, our whole people rose to re-gain our national sovereignty and to found the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.<br /> <br /> The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese and not from the French. The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has abdicated. Our people have broken the chains which for nearly a century have fettered them and have won independence for the homeland.<br /> <br /> As France began to make their intentions clear that they would be resuming their colonialist claim to Indochina, Ho Chi Minh began preparing the country for a new chapter in revolutionary struggle. In his 1946 letter to the people of Vietnam, entitled A Nationwide Call for Resistance, Ho Chi Minh wrote: We call everyone, man and woman, old and young, from every ethnic minority, from every religion, to stand up and fight to save our country. If you have guns, use guns. If you have swords, use swords. If you have nothing, use sticks.<br /> <br /> Everyone must stand up and fight.<br /> <br /> As these historical developments illustrate, Ho Chi Minh was able to creatively and dynamically apply the principles of Marxism-Leninism to suit the shifting material conditions of Vietnam, just as Lenin had to creatively and dynamically apply these principles to the emerging situation in Russia in the early 20th century. So is the task of every student of Marxism-Leninism: to learn to apply these principles creatively and dynamically to the material conditions at hand.<br /> <br /> Second, the birth and development of Marixst-Leninist theses is a process. In that process, all Marixst-Leninist theses have strong relationships with each other. They complement and support each other. Thus, students studying each Marxist-Leninist thesis need to put it in proper relation and context with other theses found within each different component part of Marxism-Leninism in order to understand the unity in diversity [see: Annotation 107, p. 110], the consistency of every thesis in particular, and the whole of Marxism-Leninism in general.<br /> <br /> Introduction<br /> <br /> 43<br /> <br /> Third, an important goal of studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism is to understand clearly the most important theoretical basis of Ho Chi Minh Thought, of the Vietnam Communist Party and its revolutionary path. Therefore, we must attach Marxist-Leninist theses to Vietnam’s revolutionary practice and the world’s practice in order to see the creative application of Marxism-Leninism that President Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnam Communist Party implemented in each period of history.<br /> <br /> Fourth, we must study the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism to meet the requirements for a new Vietnamese people in a new era. So, the process of studying is also the process of self-educating and practicing to improve ourselves step-by-step in both individual and social life.<br /> <br /> Fifth, Marxism-Leninism is not a closed and immutable theoretical system. On the contrary, it is a theoretical system that continuously develops based on the development of reality. Therefore, the process of studying Marxism-Leninism is also a process of reflection: summarizing and reviewing your own practical experiences and sharing what you’ve learned from these experiences in order to contribute to the scientific and humanist development of Marxism-Leninism. In addition, when studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism, we need to consider these principles in the proper context of the history of the ideological development of humanity. Such context is important because Marxism-Leninism is quintessentially1 the product of that history.<br /> <br /> These requirements have strong relationships with each other. They imbue the studying process with the quintessence of Marxism-Leninism. And more importantly, they help students apply that quintessence into cognitive and practical activities.<br /> <br /> 1 See Annotation 6, p. 8.<br /> <br /> 44<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism PART I<br /> <br /> THE WORLDVIEW AND PHILOSOPHICAL METHODOLOGY<br /> <br /> OF MARXISM - LENINISM<br /> <br /> Worldview refers to the whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about humans ourselves, and about life and the position of human beings in that world. Our worldview directs and orientates our life, including our cognitive and practical activities, as well as our self-awareness. Our worldview defines our ideals, our value system, and our lifestyle. So, a proper and scientific worldview serves as a foundation to establish a constructive approach to life. One of the basic criteria to evaluate the growth and maturity of an individual or a whole society is the degree to which worldview has been developed.<br /> <br /> Methodology is a system of reasoning: the ideas and rules that guide humans to research, build, select, and apply the most suitable methods in both perception and practice. Methodologies can range from very specific to broadly general, with philosophical methodology being the most general scope of methodology.<br /> <br /> Annotation 47<br /> <br /> Tran Thien Tu, the vice-dean of the Department of Marxist-Leninist Theoretical Studies at the Le Duan Political Science University in Quang Tri, Vietnam, defines three degrees of scopes of Methodology. They are, from most specific to most general: 1. Field Methodology<br /> <br /> The most specific scope of methodology; a field methodology will apply only to a single specific scientific field.<br /> <br /> 2. General Methodology<br /> <br /> A more general scope of methodology; a general methodology will be shared by various scientific fields.<br /> <br /> 3. Philosophical Methodology<br /> <br /> The most general scope of methodology, encompassing the whole of the material world and human thought.<br /> <br /> Worldview and philosophical methodology are the fundamental knowledge-systems* of Marxism-Leninism.<br /> <br /> Annotation 48<br /> <br /> * In the original Vietnamese, the word lý luận is used, which we roughly translate to the phrase “knowledge-system” throughout this book. Literally, lý luận is a combination of the words lý lẽ, which means “argument,” and bàn luận, which means “to infer.”<br /> <br /> The full meaning of lý luận is: a system of ideas that reflect reality expressed in a system of knowledge that allows for a complete view of the fundamental laws and relationships of objective reality.<br /> <br /> The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism 45<br /> <br /> Marxist-Leninist worldview and philosophical methodology emerge from the quintessence [see Annotation 6, p. 8] of dialectical materialism, which itself developed from other forms of dialectics, which in turn developed throughout the history of the ideological development of humanity.<br /> <br /> Materialism is foundational to Marxism-Leninism in two important ways: Dialectical Materialism is the ideological core of a scientific worldview.<br /> <br /> Historical Materialism is a system of dialectical materialist opinions about the origin of, motivation of, and the most common rules that dominate the movement and development of human society.<br /> <br /> Dialectics are also foundational to Marxism-Leninism, specifically in the form of Materialist Dialectics, which Lenin defined as “the doctrine of development in its fullest, deepest and most comprehensive form, the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge.”1<br /> <br /> Lenin also defined Materialist Dialectics as “what is now called theory of knowledge or epistemology.”2 [Note: Epistemology is the theoretical study of knowledge; for more information see Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, p. 204.]<br /> <br /> Annotation 49<br /> <br /> For beginning students of Marxism-Leninism, distinguishing between Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics may at first be confusing. Here is an explanation of each concept and how they relate to one another:<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> Matter<br /> <br /> Consciousness<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> Human<br /> <br /> ature<br /> <br /> Movement<br /> <br /> S<br /> <br /> N<br /> <br /> oc<br /> <br /> +<br /> <br /> iet<br /> <br /> Change<br /> <br /> y<br /> <br /> +<br /> <br /> Development<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism is a scientific understanding of matter, consciousness and the relationship between the two. Dialectical Materialism is used to understand the world by studying such relationships.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics is a science studying the general laws of the movement, change, and development of nature, society and human thought.<br /> <br /> 1 The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1913.<br /> <br /> 2 Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.<br /> <br /> 46<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 49 (continued)<br /> <br /> Understand the World<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> Change the World<br /> <br /> Relationship between Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics.<br /> <br /> And so, we use Dialectical Materialism to understand the fundamental nature of reality. This understanding is used as a basis for changing the world, using Materialist Dialectics to guide our activities. We can then reflect on the results of our activities, using Dialectical Materialism, to further develop our understanding of the world.<br /> <br /> As Marxist-Leninists, we utilize this continuous cycle between studying and understanding the world through Dialectical Materialism and affecting change in the world through Materialist Dialectics with the goal of bringing about socialism and freeing humanity.<br /> <br /> It is also important to understand the nature of dialectical relationships.<br /> <br /> A dialectical relationship is a relationship in which two things mutually impact one another. Dialectical materialism perceives all things in motion [see Mode and Forms of Existence of Matter, p. 59] and in a constant state of change, and this motion and change originates from relationships in which all things mutually move and change each other through interaction, leading to development over time.<br /> <br /> Thoroughly understanding the basic content of the worldview and methodology of Marxism-Leninism is the most important requirement in order to properly study the whole theory system of Marxism-Leninism and to creatively apply it into cognitive and practical activities in order to solve the problems that our society must cope with.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism 47<br /> <br /> Ho Chi Minh training cadres in 1959.<br /> <br /> EXCERPT FROM<br /> <br /> MODIFYING THE WORKING STYLE<br /> <br /> BY HO CHI MINH<br /> <br /> Training is a must. There is a proverb: “without a teacher, you can never do well;” and the expression: “learn to eat, learn to speak, learn to pack, learn to unpack.”<br /> <br /> Even many simple subjects require study, let alone revolutionary work and resistance work. How can you perform such tasks without any training?<br /> <br /> But training materials must be aimed at the needs of the masses. We must ask: after people receive their training, can they apply their knowledge immediately? Is it possible to practice right away?<br /> <br /> If training is not immediately practical, then years of training would be useless.<br /> <br /> Unfortunately, many of our trainers do not understand this simple logic. That’s why there are cadres who train rural people in the uplands in the field of “economics!”<br /> <br /> In short, our way of working, organizing, talking, propagandizing, setting slogans, writing newspapers, etc., must all take this sentence as a model:<br /> <br /> “From within the masses, back into the masses.”<br /> <br /> No matter how big or small our tasks are, we must clearly examine and modify them to match the culture, living habits, level of education, struggling experiences, desire, will, and material conditions of the masses. On that basis we will form our ways of working and organizing. Only then can we have the masses on our side.<br /> <br /> Otherwise, if you just do as you want, following your own thoughts, your subjectivity, and then force your personal thoughts upon the masses, it is just like “cutting your feet to fit your shoes.” Feet are the masses. Shoes are our ways of organizing and working.<br /> <br /> Shoes are made to fit people’s feet, not the other way around.<br /> <br /> 48<br /> <br /> ==Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism CHAPTER I==<br /> <br /> DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism, one of the materialist foundations of Marxism-Leninism, uses the materialist worldview and dialectical methods to study fundamental philosophical issues. Dialectical Materialism is the most advanced form of Materialism, and serves as the theoretical core of a scientific worldview. Therefore, thoroughly understanding the basic content of Dialectical Materialism is the essential prerequisite to study both the component principles of Marxism-Leninism in particular, and the whole of Marxism-Leninism in general.<br /> <br /> ==I. MATERIALISM AND DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM==<br /> <br /> ==1. The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues==<br /> Philosophy is a system of the most general human theories and knowledge about our world, about ourselves, and our position in our world.<br /> <br /> Philosophy has existed for thousands of years. Philosophy has different objects of study depending on different periods of time. Summarizing the whole history of philosophy, Engels said: “The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being1.”<br /> <br /> So, philosophy studies the relations between consciousness and matter, and between humans and nature.<br /> <br /> In philosophy, there are two main questions:<br /> <br /> Question 1: The question of consciousness and matter: which came first; or, to put it another way, which one determines which one?<br /> <br /> In attempting to answer this first question, philosophy has separated into two main schools: Materialism, and Idealism.<br /> <br /> Question 2: Do humans have the capacity to perceive the world as it truly exists?<br /> <br /> In answer to this second question, two schools: Intelligibility - which admits the human cognitive capacity to truly perceive the world - and unintelligibility - which denies that capacity.<br /> <br /> Materialism is the belief that the nature of the world is matter; that matter comes first; and that matter determines consciousness. People who uphold this belief are called materialists. Throughout human history, many different factions of materialists with various schools of materialist thought have evolved.<br /> <br /> Idealism is the belief that the nature of the world is consciousness; consciousness precedes matter; consciousness decides matter. People who uphold this belief are called idealists. Like materialism, various factions of idealists with varying schools of idealist thought have also evolved throughout history.<br /> <br /> 1 Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Friedrich Engels, 1886.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 49<br /> <br /> Idealism has cognitive origins and social origins.<br /> <br /> Annotation 50<br /> <br /> Cognitive origin refers to origination from the human consciousness of individuals.<br /> <br /> Social origin refers to origination from social relations between human beings.<br /> <br /> So, idealism originates from both the conscious activity of individual humans as well as social activity between human beings.<br /> <br /> These origins are unilateral consideration and absolutization of only one aspect or one characteristic of the whole cognitive process.<br /> <br /> Annotation 51<br /> <br /> Unilateral consideration is the consideration of a subject from one side only.<br /> <br /> Absolutization occurs when one conceptualizes some belief or supposition as always true in all situations without exception.<br /> <br /> Both unilateral consideration and absolutization fail to consider the dynamic, constantly changing, and interconnected relations of all things, phenomena, and ideas in our reality.<br /> <br /> Idealism originates from unilateral consideration because idealists ignore the material world and consider reality only from the perspective of the human mind. It also originates from absolutism because idealists absolutize human reasoning as the only source of truth and knowledge about our world without exception.<br /> <br /> As Lenin wrote in On the Question of Dialectics: “Philosophical idealism is a unilateral development, an overt development, of one out of many attributes, or one out of many aspects, of consciousness.”<br /> <br /> Historically, idealism has typically benefitted the oppressive, exploitative class of society. Idealism and religions usually have a close relation with each other, and support each other to co-exist and co-develop.<br /> <br /> Annotation 52<br /> <br /> Idealists, in absolutizing human consciousness, have a tendency to only give credence to the work of the mind and ignore the value of physical labor. This has been used to justify class structures in which religious and intellectual laborers are given authority and privilege over manual laborers.<br /> <br /> This situation has also led to the idea that mental factors play a decisive role in the development of human society in particular and the whole world in general. This idealist view was supported by the ruling class and used to justify its own power and privilege in society. The dominant class has historically used such idealist philosophy as the justifying foundation for their political-social beliefs in order to maintain their ruling positions.<br /> <br /> 50<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 52 (continued)<br /> <br /> Marx discusses this tendency for rulers to idealistically justify their own rule in The German Ideology:<br /> <br /> The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think.<br /> <br /> Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristoc-racy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an ‘eternal law.’<br /> <br /> Marx goes on to explain how the idealist positions of the ruling class tend to get embedded in historical narratives:<br /> <br /> Whilst in ordinary life every shopkeeper is very well able to distinguish between what somebody professes to be and what he really is, our historians have not yet won even this trivial insight. They take every epoch at its word and believe that everything it says and imagines about itself is true. This historical method which reigned in Germany, and especially the reason why, must be understood from its connection with the illusion of ideologists in general, e.g. the illusions of the jurist, politicians (of the practical statesmen among them, too), from the dogmatic dreamings and distortions of these fellows; this is explained perfectly easily from their practical position in life, their job, and the division of labour.<br /> <br /> In history, there are two main forms of idealism: subjective and objective.<br /> <br /> Subjective idealism asserts that consciousness is the primary existence. It asserts that all things and phenomena can only be experienced as subjective sensory perceptions while denying the objective existence of material reality altogether.<br /> <br /> Objective idealism also asserts the ideal and consciousness as the primary existence, but also posits that the ideal and consciousness are objective, and that they exist independently of nature and humans. This concept is given many names, such as “absolute concept”, “absolute spirit,” “rationality of the world,” etc.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 51<br /> <br /> Annotation 53<br /> <br /> Primary existence is existence which precedes and determines other existences.<br /> <br /> Idealists believe that consciousness has primary existence over matter, that the nature of the world is ideal, and that the ideal defines existence.<br /> <br /> Materialists believe the opposite: that matter has primary existence over the ideal, and that matter precedes and determines consciousness.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism holds that matter and consciousness have a dialectical relationship, in which matter has primary existence over the ideal, though consciousness can impact the material world through willful conscious activity.<br /> <br /> The primary existence of matter within Dialectical Materialism is discussed further in The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88.<br /> <br /> Willful activity ( willpower) is discussed in Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.<br /> <br /> The key difference between subjective and objective idealists is this: Subjective idealists believe that there is no external material world whatsoever - that what we imagine as the material world is merely illusory - and that all reality is created by consciousness, whereas objective idealists believe that there is a material world outside of human consciousness, but it exists independently of human consciousness; therefore (according to objective idealists), since humans can only observe the world through conscious experience, the material world can never be truly known or observed by our consciousness.<br /> <br /> In opposition to Idealism, Materialism originated through practical experience and the development of science. Through practical experience and systematic development of human knowledge, Materialism has come to serve as a universally applicable theoretical system which benefits progressive social forces and which also orients the activities of those forces in both perception and practice.<br /> <br /> Annotation 54<br /> <br /> Materialism benefits progressive social forces by showing reality as it is, by dispelling the idealist positions of the ruling class, and by revealing that society and the world can be changed through willful activity.<br /> <br /> Materialism guides progressive social forces by grounding thought and activity in material reality, enabling strategies and outcomes that line up with the realities of the material world. For instance, we must avoid utopianism [see Annotation 17, p. 18]<br /> <br /> in which emphasis is placed on working out ideal forms of society through debate, conjecture, and conscious activity alone. Revolution against capitalism must, instead, focus on affecting material relations and processes of development through willful activity.<br /> <br /> As Engels pointed out in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific: “The final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.”<br /> <br /> 52<br /> <br /> ==2. Dialectical Materialism - the Most Advanced Form of Materialism==<br /> In human history, as human society and scientific understanding have developed, materialism has also developed through three forms: Primitive Materialism, Metaphysical Materialism, and Dialectical Materialism.<br /> <br /> Primitive Materialism is the primitive form of materialism. Primitive materialism recognizes that matter comes first, and holds that the world is composed of certain elements, and that these were the first objects, the origin, of the world, and that these elements are the essence of reality. These Primitive Materialist concepts can be found in many ancient materialist theories in such places as China, India, and Greece. [These Primitive Materialist elemental philosophies are discussed more in Matter, p. 53] Although it has many shortcomings, Primitive Materialism is partially correct at the most fundamental level, because it uses the material of nature itself to explain nature.<br /> <br /> Metaphysical Materialism is the second basic form of Materialism. This form of materialism was widely discussed and developed in Western Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. During this time, the metaphysical method of perceiving the world was applied to materialist philosophy. Although Metaphysical Materialism does not accurately reflect the world in terms of universal relations [see p. 108] and development, it was an important step forward in the fight against idealist and religious worldviews, especially during the transformational period from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in many Western European countries.<br /> <br /> Annotation 55<br /> <br /> Metaphysical materialism was strongly influenced by mechanical philosophy, a scientific and philosophical movement popular in the 17th century which explored mechanical machines and compared natural phenomena to mechanical devices. Mechanical philosophy led to a belief that all things - including living organisms - were built as (and could theoretically be built by humans as) mechanical devices. Influenced by this philosophy, metaphysical materialists came to see the world as a giant mechanical machine composed of parts, each of which exists in an essentially isolated and static state.<br /> <br /> Metaphysical materialists believed that all change can exist only as an increase or decrease in quantity, brought about by external causes Metaphysical materialism contributed significantly to the struggle against idealistic and religious worldviews, especially during the historical transition period from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in Western European countries. Metaphysical materialism also had severe limitations; especially in failing to understand many key aspects of reality, such as the nature of development through change/motion and relationships.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism is the third basic form of materialism. It was founded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and defended and developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as well as many of his successors. By inheriting the quintessence of previous theories and thoroughly integrating contemporary scientific achievements, Dialectical Materialism immediately solved the shortcomings of the Primitive Materialism of ancient times as well as the Metaphysical Materialism of modern Western Europe. It reaches the highest development level of materialism so far in history.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 53<br /> <br /> By accurately reflecting objective reality with universal relations and development*, Dialectical Materialism offers humanity a great tool for scientific cognitive activities and revolutionary practice. The Dialectical Materialist system of thought was built on the basis of scientific explanations about matter, consciousness, and the relationship between the two.<br /> <br /> Annotation 56<br /> <br /> * Materialist Dialectical methodology explains the world in terms of relationships and development. This is discussed in Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics, p. 106.<br /> <br /> ==II. DIALECTICAL MATERIALIST OPINIONS ABOUT MATTER, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MATTER AND CONSCIOUSNESS==<br /> <br /> ==1. Matter==<br /> <br /> a. Category of “Matter”<br /> <br /> Matter is a philosophical subject which has been examined for more than 2,500 years.<br /> <br /> Since ancient times, there has been a relentless struggle between materialism and idealism around this subject. Idealism asserts that the world’s nature, the first basis of all existence, is consciousness, and that matter is only a product of that consciousness.<br /> <br /> Conversely, materialism asserts that nature, the entirety of the world, is composed of matter, that this material world exists indefinitely, and that all things and phenomena are composed of matter.<br /> <br /> Before dialectical materialism was born, materialist philosophers generally believed that matter was composed of some self-contained element or elements; that is to say some underlying substance from which everything in the universe is ultimately derived.<br /> <br /> In ancient times, the five elements theory of Chinese philosophy held that those self-contained substances were metal - wood - water - fire - earth; in India, the Samkhya school believed that they were Pradhana or Prakriti 1 ; in Greece, the Milesian school believed they were water (Thales’s2 conception) or air (Anaximene’s3 conception); Heraclitus4<br /> <br /> believed the ultimate element was fire; Democritus5 asserted that it was something called an “atom,” etc. Even as recently as the 17th-18th centuries, conceptions about matter belonging to modern philosophers such as Francis Bacon6, Renes Descartes7, Thomas Hobbes8, Denis Diderot9, etc., still hadn’t changed much. They continued following the same philosophical tendency as ancient philosophers by focusing their studies of the material world through elemental phenomena.<br /> <br /> 1 According to the Samkhya school, Pradhana is the original form of matter in an unmanifested,indifferentiated state; Prakriti is manifested matter, differentiated in form, which contains potential for motion.<br /> <br /> 2 Thales, ~642 - ~547 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, politician.<br /> <br /> 3 Anaximene, ~585 - ~525 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher.<br /> <br /> 4 Heraclitus, ~540 - ~480 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, founder of ancient dialectics.<br /> <br /> 5 Democritus, ~460 - ~370 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, naturalist, a founder of atom theory.<br /> <br /> 6 Francis Bacon, 1561 - 1626 (British): Philosopher, novelist, mathematician, political activist.<br /> <br /> 7 Rene Descartes, 1596 - 1650 (Fench): Philosopher, mathematician, physicist.<br /> <br /> 8 Thomas Hobbes, 1588 - 1679 (British): Political philosopher, political activist.<br /> <br /> 9 Denis Diderot, 1713 - 1784 (French): Philosopher, novelist.<br /> <br /> 54<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism These conceptions of matter which were developed by philosophers before Marx’s time laid a foundation for a tendency to use nature to explain nature itself, but that tendency still had many shortcomings, such as: oversimplification of matter into fictitious<br /> <br /> “elements;” failure to understand the nature of consciousness as well as the relationships between matter and consciousness; failure to recognize the significance of matter in human society, leading to a failure to solve social issues based on a materialist basis, etc.<br /> <br /> Annotation 57<br /> <br /> Here are further explanations of these shortcomings of early materialists: Oversimplification of matter into fictitious “elements”<br /> <br /> Due to a lack of understanding and knowledge of matter, metaphysical materialists created erroneous conceptions of “elements” which do not accurately describe the nature of matter. By using such an erroneously conceived system of non-existing elements to describe nature, metaphysical materialists were prevented from gaining real insights into the material world which delayed and hindered scientific progress.<br /> <br /> Failure to understand the nature of consciousness as well as the relationships between matter and consciousness<br /> <br /> Many early materialists believed that consciousness was simply a mechanical byproduct of material processes, and that mental events (thoughts, consciousness) could not affect the material world, since these events were simply mechanically determined by the material world.<br /> <br /> As a first principle, Dialectical Materialism does hold that consciousness is created by matter. However, Dialectical Materialism also holds that consciousness can influence the material world through conscious action. This constitutes a dialectical relationship.<br /> <br /> As Lenin explains in Materialism and Empirio-criticism: “Consciousness in general reflects being—that is a general principle of all materialism. . . social consciousness reflects social being.”<br /> <br /> Whereas early materialists erroneously held that consciousness is simply an “accidental” byproduct of matter, Dialectical Materialism holds that consciousness is a characteristic of the nature of matter. As Engels wrote in the notation of Dialectics of Nature: That matter evolves out of itself the thinking human brain is for mechanism a pure accident, although necessarily determined, step by step, where it happens.<br /> <br /> But the truth is that it is the nature of matter to advance to the evolution of thinking beings, hence this always necessarily occurs wherever the conditions for it (not necessarily identical at all places and times) are present.<br /> <br /> Dialectical materialism also breaks from early materialism by positing that consciousness has a dialectical relationship with matter. Consciousness arises from the material world, but can also influence the material world through conscious action.<br /> <br /> In other words, mental events can trigger physical actions which affect the material world.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 55<br /> <br /> Annotation 57 (continued)<br /> <br /> As Marx explains in Theses on Feuerbach:<br /> <br /> The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbst-veränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice. . . Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.<br /> <br /> Put more simply, we as humans are capable of “revolutionary practice” which can<br /> <br /> “change the world” because our consciousness allows us to “change circumstances.”<br /> <br /> This is discussed further in Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.<br /> <br /> Failure to recognize the significance of matter in human society, leading to a failure to solve social issues based on a materialist basis Dialectical materialists believe that matter exists in many forms, and that human society is a special form of existence of matter. Lenin referred to the material existence of human society as social being, which stood in contrast with human society’s social consciousness. Social being encompasses all of the material existence and processes of human society.<br /> <br /> As Lenin wrote in Materialism and Empirio-criticism: Social being is independent of the social consciousness of men. The fact that you live and conduct your business, beget children, produce products and exchange them, gives rise to an objectively necessary chain of events, a chain of development, which is independent of your social consciousness, and is never grasped by the latter completely. The highest task of humanity is to comprehend this objective logic of economic evolution (the evolution of social life) in its general and fundamental features, so that it may be possible to adapt to it one’s social consciousness and the consciousness of the advanced classes of all capitalist countries in as definite, clear and critical a fashion as possible.<br /> <br /> Early materialists failed to recognise the relationship between matter and consciousness - as Lenin puts it, specifically, between social being and social consciousness. Thus in contemplating social issues, these early materialists were unable to find proper materialist solutions.<br /> <br /> These shortcomings resulted in a non-thorough materialist viewpoint: when dealing with questions about nature, the early materialists had a strong materialist viewpoint but when dealing with social issues, they “slipped” into an idealist viewpoint.<br /> <br /> 56<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 58<br /> <br /> Lenin explains this concept of “slipping into” idealism through a non-thorough materialist viewpoint in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: “Once you deny objective reality, given us in sensation, you have already lost every one of your weapons against fideism, for you have slipped into agnosticism or subjectivism - and that is all fideism wants.”<br /> <br /> Note: fideism is a form of idealism which holds that truth and knowledge are received through faith or revelation. Subjectivism is the centering of one’s own self in conscious activities and perspective; see Annotation 222, p. 218.<br /> <br /> In the same work, Lenin upholds that objective reality can be known through sense perception:<br /> <br /> We ask, is a man given objective reality when he sees something red or feels something hard, etc., or not? [. . .] If you hold that it is not given, you. . . inevitably sink to subjectivism. . . If you hold that it is given, a philosophical concept is needed for this objective reality, and this concept has been worked out long, long ago. This concept is matter. Matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.<br /> <br /> Lenin also explains that proper materialism must recognize objective/absolute truth: To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth.<br /> <br /> A failure to recognize the existence of such objective, absolute truth, according to Lenin, constitutes “relativism,” a position that all truth is relative and can never be absolutely, objectively knowable.<br /> <br /> It is unconditionally true that to every scientific ideology (as distinct, for instance, from religious ideology), there corresponds an objective truth, absolute nature. You will say that this distinction between relative and absolute truth is indefinite. And I shall reply: yes, it is sufficiently ‘indefinite’ to prevent science from becoming a dogma in the bad sense of the term, from becoming something dead, frozen, ossified; but it is at the same time sufficiently ‘definite’ to enable us to dissociate ourselves in the most emphatic and irrevocable manner from fideism and agnosticism, from philosophical idealism and the sophistry of the follow-ers of Hume and Kant. Here is a boundary which you have not noticed, and not having noticed it, you have fallen into the swamp of reactionary philosophy. It is the boundary between dialectical materialism and relativism.<br /> <br /> In other words, while proper materialism must contain a degree of relativistic thinking sufficient to challenge assumptions and reexamine perceived truth periodically, materialists must not fall into complete relativism (such as that espoused by Hume and Kant) lest they fall into idealist positions. Ultimately, Absolute Truth - according to Lenin - constitutes the alignment of conscious understanding with objective reality (not to be confused with Hegel’s notion of Absolute Truth; see Annotation 232, p. 228).<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 57<br /> <br /> Annotation 58 (continued)<br /> <br /> Lenin recognized the development of Marx and Engels as “modern materialism, which is immeasurably richer in content and in comparably more consistent than all preceding forms of materialism,” in large part because Marx and Engels were able to apply materialism properly to social sciences by taking the “direct materialist road as against idealism.” He goes on to describe would-be materialists who fall to idealist positions due to relativism and other philosophical inadequacies as “a contemptible middle party in philosophy, who confuse the materialist and idealist trends on every question.”<br /> <br /> Lenin warned that a failure to hold a thoroughly materialist viewpoint leads philosophers to become “ensnared in idealism, that is, in a diluted and subtle fideism; they became ensnared from the moment they took ‘sensation’ not as an image of the external world but as a special ‘element.’ It is nobody’s sensation, nobody’s mind, nobody’s spirit, nobody’s will - this is what one inevitably comes to if one does not recognise the materialist theory that the human mind reflects an objectively real external world.”<br /> <br /> In other words, idealist conceptions of sensation inject mysticism into philosophy by conceiving of sensation as otherworldly, supernatural, and detached from material human beings with material experiences in the material world.<br /> <br /> The development of natural sciences in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries (especially the inventions of Roentgen1, Becquerel2, Thomson3 etc.), disproved the theories of “classical elements” such as fire, water, air, etc. [see Primitive Materialism, p. 52].<br /> <br /> These innovations led to a viewpoint crisis in the field of physical science. Many idealists used this opportunity to affirm the non-material nature of the world, ascribing the roles of supernatural forces to the birth of the world.<br /> <br /> Annotation 59<br /> <br /> Lenin discussed this viewpoint crisis extensively in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Here Lenin discusses relativist reactions to new breakthroughs in natural science, which led even scientists (who proclaimed to be materialists) to take idealist positions: We are faced, says Poincaré [a French scientist], with the “ruins” of the old principles of physics, “a general debacle of principles.” It is true, he remarks, that all the mentioned departures from principles refer to infinitesimal magnitudes; it is possible that we are still ignorant of other infinitesimals counteracting the undermining of the old principles. . . But at any rate we have reached a “period of doubt.” We have already seen what epistemological deductions the author draws from this “period of doubt:” “it is not nature which imposes on [or dictates to] us the concepts of space and time, but we who impose them on nature;” “whatever is not thought, is pure nothing.” These deductions are idealist deductions. The breakdown of the most fundamental principles shows (such is Poincaré’s trend of thought) that these principles are not copies, photographs of nature, not images of something external in relation to man’s consciousness, but products of his consciousness. Poincaré does not develop these deductions consistently, nor is he essentially interested in the philosophical aspect of the question.<br /> <br /> 1 Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, 1845-1923 (German): Physicist.<br /> <br /> 2 Henri Becquerel, 1852-1908 (French): Physicist.<br /> <br /> 3 Sir Joseph John Thomson, 1856-1940 (British): Physicist, professor at London Royal Institute.<br /> <br /> 58<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 59 (continued)<br /> <br /> Lenin concludes by stating that the non-thorough materialist position has lead directly to these idealist positions of relativism:<br /> <br /> The essence of the crisis in modern physics consists in the breakdown of the old laws and basic principles, in the rejection of an objective reality existing outside the mind, that is, in the replacement of materialism by idealism and agnosticism.<br /> <br /> With this historical background, in order to fight against the distortions of many idealists and to protect the development of the materialist viewpoint, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin simultaneously summarized all the natural scientific achievements in late 19th and early 20th century and built upon Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ thought to develop this definition of matter:<br /> <br /> “Matter is a philosophical category denoting objective reality which is given to man in his sensations, and which is copied, photographed, and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.”<br /> <br /> Lenin’s definition of matter shows that:<br /> <br /> First, we need to distinguish between the definition of “matter” as a philosophical category (the category that summarizes the most basic and common attributes of all material existence, and which was defined with the objective of solving the basic issues of philosophy) from the definition of “matter” that was used in specialized sciences (specific and sense-detectable substance).<br /> <br /> Second, the most basic, common attribute of all kinds of matter [and under both definitions listed in the previous paragraph] is objective existence, meaning matter exists outside of human consciousness, independently of human consciousness, no matter whether humans can perceive it with our senses or not.<br /> <br /> Third, matter, with its specific forms, can cause and affect mental events in humans when it directly or indirectly impacts the human senses; human consciousness is the reflection of matter; matter is the thing that is reflected by human consciousness.<br /> <br /> Lenin’s definition of matter played an important role in the development of materialism and scientific consciousness.<br /> <br /> First, by pointing out that the most basic, common attribute of matter is objective existence, Lenin successfully distinguished the basic difference between the definition of matter as a philosophical category and the definition of matter as a category of specialized sciences. It helped solve the problems of defining matter in the previous forms of materialism; it offered scientific evidence to define what can be considered matter; it layed out a theoretical foundation for building a materialist viewpoint of history, and overcame the shortcomings of idealist conceptions of society.<br /> <br /> Second, by asserting that matter was “objective reality,” “given to man in his sensations,”<br /> <br /> and “copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations,” Lenin not only confirmed the primary existence of matter and the secondary existence of consciousness [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88] but he also affirmed that humans had the ability to be aware of objective reality through the “copying, photographing and reflection of our sensations” [in other words, sense perceptions].<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 59<br /> <br /> b. Mode and Forms of Existence of Matter<br /> <br /> According to the dialectical materialist viewpoint, motion is the mode of existence of matter; space and time are the forms of existence of matter.<br /> <br /> Annotation 60<br /> <br /> Mode refers to the way or manner in which something occurs or exists. You can think of mode as pertaining to the “how,” as opposed to the “what.” For example, the mode of circulation refers to how commodities circulate within society [see Annotation 14, p. 16]; mode of production refers to how commodities are produced in society. So, mode of existence of matter refers to how matter exists in our universe.<br /> <br /> Form comes from the category pair [see Basic Pairs of Categories of Materialist Dialectics, p. 126] of Content and Form [see p. 147]. Form refers to how we perceive objects, phenomena, and ideas. So, form of existence of matter refers to the ways in which we perceive the existence of matter [explained below] in our universe.<br /> <br /> - Motion is the Mode of Existence of Matter<br /> <br /> As Friedrich Engels explained: “Motion, in the most general sense, conceived as the mode of existence, the inherent attribute of matter, comprehends all changes and processes occurring in the universe, from mere change of place right up to thinking.”<br /> <br /> According to Engels, motion encompasses more than just positional changes. Motion embodies “all the changes and processes happening in this universe;” matter is always associated with motion, and matter can only express its existence through motion.<br /> <br /> Annotation 61<br /> <br /> In Dialectical Materialist philosophy, “motion” is also known as “change” and it refers to the changes which occur as a result of the mutual impacts which occur in or between subjects through the negation of contradictions. Motion is a constant attribute of all things, phenomena, and ideas (see Characteristics of Development, p. 124).<br /> <br /> Because matter is inseparable from motion (and vice versa), Engels defined motion as the mode of matter - the way or manner in which matter exists. It is impossible for matter in our universe to exist in completely static and unchanging state, isolated from the rest of existence; thus matter exists in the mode of motion. Over time, motion leads to development as things, phenomena, and ideas transition through various stages of quality change [see Annotation 117, p. 119].<br /> <br /> Matter exists objectively, therefore motion also exists objectively. The motion of matter is self-motion1.<br /> <br /> Annotation 62<br /> <br /> It is important to note that “matter,” in the philosophical sense as used in dialectical materialist phlosophy, includes all that is “objective” (external) to individual human cosnciousness. This includes objective phenomena which human senses are unable to detect, such as objective social relations, objective economic values, etc. Objectiveness is discussed more in Annotation 108, p. 112; objective social relations are discussed more in Annotation 10, p. 10.<br /> <br /> 1 In the original Vietnamese, the word tự vận động is used here, which we roughly translate to the word self-motion throughout this book. Literally, tự vận động means: “it moves itself.”<br /> <br /> 60<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 62 (continued)<br /> <br /> In Dialectics of Nature, Friedrich Engels discussed the properties of motion and explained that motion can neither be created nor destroyed. Therefore, motion can only change form or transfer from one object to another. In this sense, all objects are dynamically linked together through motion:<br /> <br /> The whole of nature accessible to us forms a system, an interconnected totality of bodies, and by bodies we understand here all material existence extending from stars to atoms. . . In the fact that these bodies are interconnected is already included that they react on one another, and it is precisely this mutual reaction that constitutes motion. It already becomes evident here that matter is unthinkable without motion. And if, in addition, matter confronts us as something given, equally uncreatable as indestructible, it follows that motion also is as uncreatable as indestructible. It became impossible to reject this conclusion as soon as it was recognised that the universe is a system, an interconnection of bodies.<br /> <br /> In other words, every body of matter is in motion relative to other bodies of matter, and thus matter is inseparable from motion. Motion results from the interaction of bodies of matter. Because motion and matter define each other, and because motion can only exist in relation to matter and matter can only exist in relation to motion, the motion of matter can be described as “self-motion,” because the motion is not created externally but exists only within and in relation to matter itself. Engels further explains that if this were not true - if motion were external to matter - then motion itself would have had to have been created external to matter, which is impossible: To say that matter during the whole unlimited time of its existence has only once, and for what is an infinitesimally short period in comparison to its eternity, found itself able to differentiate its motion and thereby to unfold the whole wealth of this motion, and that before and after this remains restricted for eternity to mere change of place - this is equivalent to maintaining that matter is mortal and motion transitory. The indestructibility of motion cannot be merely quantitative, it must also be conceived qualitatively; matter whose purely mechanical change of place includes indeed the possibility under favourable conditions of being transformed into heat, electricity, chemical action, or life, but which is not capable of producing these conditions from out of itself, such matter has forfeited motion; motion which has lost the capacity of being transformed into the various forms appropriate to it may indeed still have dynamis but no longer energeia, and so has become partially destroyed. Both, however, are unthinkable.<br /> <br /> So, motion can change forms and can transfer from one material body to another, but it can never be created externally from matter, and neither motion nor matter can be created or destroyed in our universe. Thus, matter exists in a state of “self-motion;”<br /> <br /> motion can never externally be created nor externally applied to matter.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 61<br /> <br /> Annotation 62 (continued)<br /> <br /> To put it another way, motion results from the fact that all things, phenomena, and ideas exist as assemblages of relationships [see The Principle of General Relationships, p. 107], and these relationships contain opposing forces. As Lenin explained in his Philosophical Notebooks:<br /> <br /> The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their<br /> <br /> ‘self-movement,’ in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the ‘struggle’ of opposites.<br /> <br /> Based on the scientific achievements which occurred in his lifetime, Engels classified motion into 5 basic forms: mechanical motion (changes in positions of objects in space); physical motion (movements of molecules, electrons, fundamental particles, thermal processes, electricity…); chemical motion (changes of organic and inorganic substances in combination and separation processes…); biological motion (changes of living objects, or genetic structure…); social motion (changes in economy, politics, culture, and social life).<br /> <br /> These basic forms of motion are arranged into levels of advancement based on the level of complexity of matter that is affected.<br /> <br /> Engels’ Basic Forms of Motion in Relation to Matter<br /> <br /> Basic Form of<br /> <br /> Material Effects<br /> <br /> Motion<br /> <br /> Mechanical Motion<br /> <br /> Changes in positions of<br /> <br /> ↑<br /> <br /> objects in space<br /> <br /> Movements of molecules,<br /> <br /> ↑<br /> <br /> electrons, fundamental<br /> <br /> Less Advanced<br /> <br /> Physical Motion<br /> <br /> particles, thermal<br /> <br /> Less Complex<br /> <br /> processes, electricity, etc.<br /> <br /> Advancement<br /> <br /> Changes of organic and<br /> <br /> Complexity<br /> <br /> of Motion<br /> <br /> Chemical Motion<br /> <br /> inorganic substances<br /> <br /> in combination and<br /> <br /> of Matter<br /> <br /> separation processes, etc.<br /> <br /> More Advanced<br /> <br /> Biological Motion<br /> <br /> Changes of living objects,<br /> <br /> More Complex<br /> <br /> or genetic structure, etc.<br /> <br /> ↓<br /> <br /> Changes in economy,<br /> <br /> Social Motion<br /> <br /> politics, culture, social<br /> <br /> ↓<br /> <br /> life, etc.<br /> <br /> The basic forms of motion each affect different forms of matter, but these forms of motion do not exist independently from each other; they actually have strong relationships with each other, in which the more advanced forms of motion develop from lower forms of motion; the more advanced forms of motion also internally include lower forms of motion. [I.e., biological motion contains chemical motion; chemical motion contains physical motion; etc.]<br /> <br /> 62<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Every object exists with many forms of motion, but any given object is defined by its most advanced form of motion. [I.e., living creatures are defined in terms of biological motion, societies are defined in terms of social motion, etc.]<br /> <br /> By classifying the basic forms of motion, Engels laid out the foundation for classification and synthesization of science. The basic forms of motion differ from one another, but they are also unified with each other into one continuous system of motion. Understanding this dialectical relationship between different forms of motion helped to overcome misunderstandings and confusion about motion.<br /> <br /> Annotation 63<br /> <br /> In Dialectics of Nature, Engels clears up a great deal of confusion and addresses many misconceptions about matter, motion, forces, energy, etc. which existed in both science and philosophy at the time by defining and explaining the dialectical nature of matter and motion.<br /> <br /> When Dialectical Materialism affirmed that motion was the mode of existence - the natural attribute of matter - it also confirmed that motion is absolute and eternal. This does not mean that Dialectical Materialism denies that things can become frozen; however, according to the dialectical materialist viewpoint, freezing is a special form of motion, it is motion in equilibrium and freezing is relative and temporary.<br /> <br /> Motion in equilibrium is motion that has not changed the positions, forms, and/or structures of things.<br /> <br /> Freezing is a relative phenomenon because freezing only occurs in some forms of motion and in some specific relations, it does not occur in all forms of motion and all kinds of relations. Freezing is a temporary phenomenon because freezing only exists for a limited period of time, it cannot last forever.<br /> <br /> Annotation 64<br /> <br /> Equilibrium can exist at any advancement of motion. Lenin discussed equilibrium as it pertains to the social form of motion in discussing an equilibrium of forces existing in Russia in 1905 in this article, An Equilibrium of Forces: 1) The result to date (Monday, October 30) is an equilibrium of forces, as we already pointed out in Proletary, No. 23.<br /> <br /> 2) Tsarism is no longer strong enough, the revolution not yet strong enough, to win.<br /> <br /> 3) Hence the tremendous amount of vacillation. The terrific and enormous increase of revolutionary happenings (strikes, meetings, barricades, committees of public safety, complete paralysis of the government, etc.), on the other hand, the absence of resolute repressive measures. The troops are wavering.<br /> <br /> 4) The Tsar’s Court is wavering (The Times and the Daily Telegraph) between dictatorship and a constitution.<br /> <br /> The Court is wavering and biding its time. Strictly speaking, these are its correct tactics: the equilibrium of forces compels it to bide its time, for power is in its hands.<br /> <br /> The revolution has reached a stage at which it is disadvantageous for the counter-revolution to attack, to assume the offensive.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 63<br /> <br /> Annotation 64 (continued)<br /> <br /> For us, for the proletariat, for consistent revolutionary democrats, this is not enough. If we do not rise to a higher level, if we do not manage to launch an independent offensive, if we do not smash the forces of Tsarism, do not destroy its actual power, then the revolution will stop half way, then the bourgeoisie will fool the workers.<br /> <br /> 5) Rumour has it that a constitution has been decided upon. If that is so, then it follows that the Tsar is heeding the lessons of 1848 and other revolutions: he wants to grant a constitution without a constituent assembly, before a constituent assembly, apart from a constituent assembly. What kind of constitution? At best (for ’the Tsar) a Constitutional-Democratic constitution.<br /> <br /> This implies: achievement of the Constitutional-Democrats’ ideal, skipping the revolution; deceiving the people, for all the same there will be no complete and actual freedom of elections.<br /> <br /> Should not the revolution skip this granted constitution?<br /> <br /> - Space and Time are Forms of Existence of Matter<br /> <br /> Every form of matter exists in a specific position, with specific space particularity (height, width, length, etc.), in specific relation (in front or behind, above or under, to the left or right, etc.) with other forms of matter. These positional relations exist in what we call space. [Space is defined by positional relations of matter.]<br /> <br /> On the other hand, the existence of matter is also expressed in the speed of change and the order in which changes occur. These changes occur in what we call time. As Engels wrote: “For the basic forms of all existence are space and time, and a being outside of time is as absurd as an existence outside space.” Matter, space, and time are not separable; there is no matter that exists outside of space and time; there is also no space and time that exist outside of matter’s motion.<br /> <br /> Annotation 65<br /> <br /> Space and time, as the forms of matter, i.e.: the ways in which we perceive the existence of matter. We are only able to perceive and understand material objects as they exist within space and time.<br /> <br /> Space and time, as forms of existence of matter, exist objectively [see Annotation 108, p. 112], and are defined by matter. [Space is defined by the positional relations between material objects; time is defined by the speed of change of material objects and the order in which these changes occur.] Space has three dimensions: height, width, length; time has one direction: from the past to the future.<br /> <br /> c. The Material Unity of the World<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism affirms that the nature of the world is matter, and the world is unified in its material properties. [In other words: the entire universe, in all its diversity, is made of matter, and the properties of matter are the same throughout the known universe.]<br /> <br /> 64<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism The material nature of the world is proven on the following basis: First, there is only one world: the material world; the material world is the first existence [i.e., it existed before consciousness], it exists objectively, and independently, of human consciousness.<br /> <br /> Second, the material world exists eternally, endlessly, infinitely; it has no known beginning point and there is no evidence that it will ever disappear.<br /> <br /> Third, all known objects and phenomena of the material world have objective relations with each other and all objects and phenomena exist in unity with each other. All of them are specific forms and structures of matter, or have material origin which was born from matter, and all are governed by the objective rules of the material world. In the material world, there is nothing that exists outside of the changing and transforming processes of matter; all of these processes exist as causes and effects of each other.<br /> <br /> Annotation 66<br /> <br /> The most important thing to understand here is that every object and phenomenon in the universe arises as matter, all material objects and phenomena are dynamically linked to one another in an infinite chain of causes and effects and changes and transformations, all governed by the material laws of our reality. This understanding is the material foundation of dialectical materialism.<br /> <br /> ==2. Consciousness==<br /> <br /> a. The Source of Consciousness<br /> <br /> According to the materialist viewpoint, consciousness has natural and social sources.<br /> <br /> Annotation 67<br /> <br /> Consciousness arises from nature, and from social activities and relations.<br /> <br /> Natural refers to the material world. Without the material world of matter, material processes, and the evolution of material systems - up to and including the human brain<br /> <br /> - consciousness would never have formed.<br /> <br /> Social activities and relations also contributed to the development of consciousness.<br /> <br /> The social processes of labor and language were also prerequisites for the development of conscious activity in human beings.<br /> <br /> - Natural Source of Consciousness<br /> <br /> There are many factors that form the natural sources for consciousness, but the two most basic factors are human brains and the relationship between humans and the objective world which makes possible creative and dynamic reflection.<br /> <br /> About human brains: consciousness is an attribute of a highly organized form of matter, which is the brain. Consciousness is the function and the result of the neurophysiological activities of human brains. As human brains evolved and developed over time, their neurophysiological activities became richer, and, as these activities progressed, consciousness developed further and further over time. This explains why the human evolution process is also a process of developing the capacity for perception and thinking. Whenever human neurophysiological activities don’t function normally because of damaged brains, our mental life is also disturbed.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 65<br /> <br /> About the relationship between humans and the objective world which made possible creative and dynamic reflection: The relationship between humans and the objective world has been essential for as long as humans have existed. In this relationship, the objective world is reflected through human senses which interact with human brains and then form our consciousness.<br /> <br /> Consciousness exists as a dynamic set of relationships between the external material world, human sense perception, and the functions of the human brain.<br /> <br /> Reflection is the re-creation of the features of one form of matter in a different form of matter which occurs when they mutually impact each other through interaction. Reflection is a characteristic of all forms of matter.<br /> <br /> There are many forms and levels of reflection such as [from more simple to more complex]: physical and chemical reflection, biological reflection, mental reflection, creative and dynamic reflection, etc.<br /> <br /> Annotation 68<br /> <br /> Change is driven by mutual impacts between or within things, phenomena, and/or ideas. Any time two such subjects impact one another, traces of some form or another are left on both interacting subjects. This characteristic of change is called reflection.<br /> <br /> The concept of reflection, first proposed by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, has been advanced through the work of various Soviet psychologists, philosophers, and scientists (including Ivan Pavlov, Todor Pavlov, Aleksei Leontiev, Lev Vygotsky, Valentin Voloshinov, and others), and is used as a basis for scientific inquiry up to this day by mainstream researchers in Cuba, Vietnam, China, and Laos. The information provided below is somewhat simplified and generalized to give the reader a basic familiarity with the theory of reflection and the development of reflection in nature.<br /> <br /> Dialectical materialist scientists have developed a theory of the development of evolution of forms of reflection, positing that forms of reflection have become increasingly complex as organic processes and life have evolved and grown more complex over time.<br /> <br /> 66<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 68 (continued)<br /> <br /> The chart below gives an idea of how different forms of reaction have evolved over time:<br /> <br /> Development of Forms of Reflection<br /> <br /> Human Society<br /> <br /> Dynamic and Creative<br /> <br /> Reflection<br /> <br /> Human Beings<br /> <br /> (consciousness)<br /> <br /> Sentient Organisms<br /> <br /> Mental Reflection<br /> <br /> (conditioned reflexes)<br /> <br /> Simplest Organisms<br /> <br /> Biological Reflection<br /> <br /> Organic Matter<br /> <br /> (induction, excitation,<br /> <br /> unconditioned reflexes)<br /> <br /> Inorganic Matter<br /> <br /> Physical and Chemical<br /> <br /> Reflection<br /> <br /> This chart outlines the basic development tendency of Forms of Reflection in matter which lead from inorganic matter, to life, to human consciousness and society.<br /> <br /> Obviously, not all subjects develop completely along the path outlined above. Thus far, to our knowledge, only human beings have developed entirely to the level of consciousness and society. It is also unknown whether, or how, human society may develop into some future, as-yet-unknown, form.<br /> <br /> Physical and chemical reflection is the simplest form of reflection, dealing with the ways in which inorganic matter is reflected in human consciousness. Physical and chemical reflection is the reflection of mechanical, physical, and chemical changes and reactions of inorganic matter (i.e., changes in structures, positions, physical-chemical properties, and the processes of combining and dissolving substances). Physical and chemical reactions are passive: when two objects interact with each other physically or chemically, they do not do so consciously.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 67<br /> <br /> Annotation 69<br /> <br /> Reflection occurs any time two material objects interact and the features of the object are transferred to each other. Below are some very simplified illustrations to relate the basic idea of the physical reflection of material objects.<br /> <br /> Physical Reflection: Change in Position<br /> <br /> Reflection as Change in Position:<br /> <br /> (1)<br /> <br /> 1. Round Object moves towards Square Object.<br /> <br /> 2. Round Object impacts Square Object.<br /> <br /> 3. Square Object changes position; Round Object<br /> <br /> (2)<br /> <br /> “bounces” and reverses direction.<br /> <br /> 4. Thus, Square Object’s change in position reflects<br /> <br /> the motion of Round Object (and vice-versa). Traces<br /> <br /> of both contradicting objects are reflected in the<br /> <br /> (3)<br /> <br /> respective motion and position of each object.<br /> <br /> Physical Reflection: Change in Structure<br /> <br /> (1)<br /> <br /> Reflection as Change in Structure:<br /> <br /> 1. Round Object moves toward Square Object.<br /> <br /> 2. Round Object impacts Square Object.<br /> <br /> (2)<br /> <br /> 3. Structural changes (traces) occur in both Round<br /> <br /> and Square Object as a result of impact.<br /> <br /> 4. These changes constitute structural, physical<br /> <br /> (3)<br /> <br /> reflection.<br /> <br /> Chemical Reflection: Single Replacement<br /> <br /> Chemical Reflection:<br /> <br /> 1. Atom C is attached to Atom B.<br /> <br /> (1)<br /> <br /> A<br /> <br /> B<br /> <br /> +<br /> <br /> C<br /> <br /> 2. Atom C detaches from Atom B and transfers to<br /> <br /> attach to Atom A.<br /> <br /> 3. This is a process of chemical reflection, in which both molecules mutually reflect one another after<br /> <br /> (2)<br /> <br /> A<br /> <br /> + B<br /> <br /> C<br /> <br /> a process of chemical reaction (one molecule loses<br /> <br /> Atom C while the other gains Atom C).<br /> <br /> As dialectical materialists, we must strive to develop our understanding of the reflections of physical and chemical changes and reactions so that our conceptions reflect the material world as accurately as possible. For example: we must not ascribe consciousness to physical processes. Example: a gambler who comes to believe that a pair of dice is “spiteful” or “cursed” is attributing conscious motivation to unconscious physical processes, which is an inaccurate ideological reflection of reality.<br /> <br /> 68<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Biological reflection is a higher, more complex form of reflection [compared to physical reflection]. It deals with reflection of organic material in the natural world. As our observations of biological processes have become more sophisticated and complex [through developments in natural science, the development of better tools for observation such as microscopes and other technologies, and so on], our conscious reflections of the natural world have also become more complex.<br /> <br /> Biological reflection is expressed through excitation, induction, and reflexes.<br /> <br /> Excitation is the reaction of simple plant and animal life-forms which occurs when they change position or structure as a direct result of physical changes to their habitat [i.e., a plant which moves toward the sun throughout the day].<br /> <br /> Induction is the reaction of animals with simple nerve systems which can sense or feel their environments. Induction occurs through unconditioned reflex mechanisms.<br /> <br /> Annotation 70<br /> <br /> Unconditioned reflexes are characterized by permanent connections between sensory perceptions and reactions. Such reactions are not learned, but simply occur automatically based on physiological mechanisms occurring within the organism. An example of an unconditioned reflex response would be muscles in the leg twitching at the response of a tap on the knee. Such responses are purely physiological and are never learned (“conditioned” into us) - these reactions are simply induced physiologically.<br /> <br /> Mental reflections are reactions which occur in animals with central nervous systems.<br /> <br /> Mental reflections occur through conditioned reflex mechanisms.<br /> <br /> Annotation 71<br /> <br /> Conditioned reflexes are reactions which are learned by organisms. These responses are acquired as animals learn to associate previously unrelated neural stimuli to elicit a particular reaction. The Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov famously developed our understanding of conditioned responses by ringing a dinner bell shortly before giving dogs food. After a few repetitions, dogs would begin to salivate upon hearing the dinner bell being rung, even before any food was offered. Any dog which did not receive this conditioning would not salivate upon hearing a dinner bell. This is what makes it a learned, conditioned response - a type of mental reflection.<br /> <br /> Dynamic and creative reflection is the most advanced form of reflection. It only occurs in matter that has the highest structural level, such as the human brain. Dynamic and creative reflection is done through the human brain’s nervous physiological activities whenever the objective world impacts human senses. This is a kind of reflection that actively selects and processes information to create new information and to understand the meaning of that information. This dynamic and creative reflection is called consciousness.<br /> <br /> Annotation 72<br /> <br /> Remember Lenin’s definition of matter from Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: “Matter is a philosophical category denoting objective reality which is given to man in his sensations, and which is copied, photographed, and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.”<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 69<br /> <br /> Annotation 72 (continued)<br /> <br /> An intrinsic property of matter is that it can be sensed by human beings, and through this sensation, reflected in human consciousness. Thus, all forms of matter share the characteristic of being able to be reflected in the human mind.<br /> <br /> Criticizing Karl Pearson, who said that it was not logical to maintain that all matter had the property of being conscious, Lenin wrote in brackets: “But it is logical to suppose that all matter possesses a property which is essentially kindred to sensation: the property to reflect.” Understanding the concept of dynamic and creative reflection is critical to understanding the role of consciousness and the ideal in Dialectical Materialism. In particular, reflection differentiates Dialectical Materialism from the idealist form of dialectics used by Hegel [see Annotation 9, p. 10]. As Marx famously wrote in Capital Volume I:<br /> <br /> My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the Idea,’ he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos [craftsman/artisan/creator] of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea.’ With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.<br /> <br /> In other words, Hegelian idealism saw human consciousness as defining the material world. Dialectical Materialism inverts this relationship to recognize that what we conceive in our minds is only a reflection of the material world. As Marx explains in The German Ideology, all conscious thought stems from life processes through reflection: Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.<br /> <br /> Marx and Engels argued that consciousness arose from the life-processes of human beings. Life-processes are processes of motion and change which occur within organisms to sustain life, and these processes have a dialectical relationship with consciousness: the processes of life, therefore, reflect consciousness, just as consciousness reflects human life-processes. Conscious activities (such as being able to hunt, gather, and cook food, build shelter, and so on) improve the life-processes of human beings (by improving our health, extending our life-spans, etc.); and as our life-processes improved, our consciousness was able to develop more fully. As a concrete example of the dialectic between life processes and consciousness, it is now widely believed by scientists that the advent of cooking and preparing food (conscious activity) improved the functioning of the human brain1 (a life process) which, in turn, developed human consciousness, and so on. Life-processes thus determine how consciousness reflects reality, while consciousness impacts back on life-processes, reflecting the dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness [see p. 88] and between practical activities and consciousness [see Annotation 230, p. 226].<br /> <br /> 1 Source: “Food for Thought: Was Cooking a Pivotal Step in Human Evolution?” by Alexandra Rosati, Scientific American, February 26, 2018.<br /> <br /> 70<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 72 (continued)<br /> <br /> Because consciousness arose from life-processes of human beings in the material world, we know that the material world is reflected in our consciousness. However, these reflections do not determine the material world, and do not mirror the material world exactly [see Annotation 77, p. 79]. It is also important to understand that, since life-processes in the material world predate and determine consciousness, consciousness can never be a first basis of seeking truth about our world. As Marx further explains in The German Ideology:<br /> <br /> Since the Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas, in fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attribute an independent existence, as the real chains of men (just as the Old Hegelians declared them the true bonds of human society) it is evident that the Young Hegelians have to fight only against these illusions of consciousness. Since, according to their fantasy, the relationships of men, all their doings, their chains and their limitations are products of their consciousness, the Young Hegelians logically put to men the moral postulate of exchanging their present consciousness for human, critical or egoistic consciousness, and thus of removing their limitations. This demand to change consciousness amounts to a demand to interpret reality in another way, i.e. to recognise it by means of another interpretation.<br /> <br /> In other words, Hegelian idealism makes the critical mistake of believing that the ideal - consciousness - is the first basis of reality, and that anything and everything can be achieved through mere conscious activity. Marx, on the other hand, argues that<br /> <br /> “life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life,” and that we must understand the ways in which reality is reflected in consciousness before we can hope to affect change in the material conditions of human beings: In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here [in the materialist perspective] we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.<br /> <br /> So, the work of the Dialectical Materialist is not to try to develop Utopian conceptions of reality first, to then proceed to try and force such purely ideal conceptions onto reality (see Annotation 17, p. 18).<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 71<br /> <br /> Annotation 72 (continued)<br /> <br /> Rather, we must understand the material basis of reality, as well as the material processes of change and motion which govern reality, and only then can we search for ways in which human beings can influence material reality through conscious activity.<br /> <br /> As Marx explains, the revolutionary must not be fooled into believing we can simply conceive of an ideal world and then replicate it into reality through interpretation and conscious thought alone. Instead, we must start with a firm understanding of material conditions and, from that material basis, determine how to build our revolutionary movement through conscious impact of material relations and processes of development in the material world.<br /> <br /> As Marx wrote in The German Ideology: “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” This distinction may seem subtle at first, but it has massive implications for how Marx suggests we go about participating in revolutionary activity. For Marx, purely-idealist debates and criticisms are an unproductive waste of time:<br /> <br /> The Young-Hegelian ideologists, in spite of their allegedly ‘world-shattering’<br /> <br /> statements, are the staunchest conservatives. The most recent of them have found the correct expression for their activity when they declare they are only fighting against ‘phrases.’ They forget, however, that to these phrases they themselves are only opposing other phrases, and that they are in no way combating the real existing world when they are merely combating the phrases of this world. The only results which this philosophic criticism could achieve were a few (and at that thoroughly one-sided) elucidations of Christianity from the point of view of religious history; all the rest of their assertions are only further embellishments of their claim to have furnished, in these unimportant elucidations, discoveries of universal importance.<br /> <br /> Marx also discusses the uselessness of idealist conjecture: Moreover, it is quite immaterial what consciousness starts to do on its own: out of all such muck we get only the one inference that these three moments, the forces of production, the state of society, and consciousness, can and must come into contradiction with one another, because the division of labour implies the possibility, nay the fact that intellectual and material activity - enjoyment and labour, production and consumption - devolve on different individuals, and that the only possibility of their not coming into contradiction lies in the negation in its turn of the division of labour. It is self-evident, moreover, that ‘spectres,’ ‘bonds,’<br /> <br /> ‘the higher being,’ ‘concept,’ ‘scruple,’ [terms for idealist conceptions] are merely the idealistic, spiritual expression, the conception apparently of the isolated individual, the image of very empirical fetters and limitations, within which the mode of production of life and the form of intercourse coupled with it move.<br /> <br /> What Marx means by this is that we should focus on the material processes and conditions of society if we intend to change society, because idealist speculation, conjecture, critique, and thought alone, at the individual level, will never be capable of affecting revolutionary change in our material world.<br /> <br /> 72<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 72 (continued)<br /> <br /> Instead, we must focus on the material basis of reality, the material conditions of society, and seek revolutionary measures which are built upon materialist foundations.<br /> <br /> Only by understanding material processes of development, as well as the dialectical relationship between consciousness and matter, can we reliably and effectively begin to impact reality through conscious activity. This begins with the recognition that conscious thought itself is a reflection of material reality which developed and results from life-processes of material motion and processes of change within the human brain.<br /> <br /> This concept of reflection, pioneered by Marx and Engels, was significantly developed by V. I. Lenin in his response to Machian positivists who posited that what we perceive is not truly reality [see Annotation 32, p. 27]. In his Philosophical Notebooks, Lenin wrote: “Life gives rise to the brain. Nature is reflected in the human brain.”<br /> <br /> In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin further defined the relationship between matter and consciousness through reflection.<br /> <br /> LENIN’S PROOF OF THE THEORY OF REFLECTION<br /> <br /> In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin offered the following arguments to back up the theory of reflection.<br /> <br /> 1) Things exist independently of our consciousness, independently of our perceptions, outside of us, for it is beyond doubt that alizarin [a chemical substance which was newly discovered at time of writing] existed in coal tar yesterday and it is equally beyond doubt that yesterday we knew nothing of the existence of this alizarin and received no sensations from it.<br /> <br /> Lenin is saying that the material world must exist outside of and independent from our consciousness. He cites as evidence the discovery of a chemical substance which until recently we had no sensory perception of, noting that this substance must have existed long before we became aware of it through sensory observation.<br /> <br /> 2) There is definitely no difference in principle between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, and there can be no such difference. The only difference is between what is known and what is not yet known. And philosophical inventions of specific boundaries between the one and the other, inventions to the effect that the thing-in-itself is “beyond” phenomena (Kant) or that we can or must fence ourselves off by some philosophical partition from the problem of a world which in one part or another is still unknown but which exists outside us (Hume) - all this is the sheerest nonsense, [unfounded belief], trick, invention.<br /> <br /> Lenin is referencing a centuries-old debate about whether or not human beings are capable of having real knowledge of a “thing-in-itself,” or if we can only perceive phenomena of things (characteristics observable to our senses). The “thing-in-itself” refers to the actual material object which exists outside of our consciousness. So the question being posed is: can we REALLY have knowledge of material objects outside of our consciousness, or does consciousness itself act as a barrier to ever REALLY knowing anything about material objects and the material world outside of our consciousness?<br /> <br /> Immanuel Kant argued that we can never know the true nature of the material world, writing: “we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances,<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 73<br /> <br /> Annotation 72 (continued)<br /> <br /> confess thereby that they are based upon a thing-in-itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something.” This idea that the senses could not be trusted to deliver accurate knowledge - and thus, the “thing-in-itself” is essentially unknowable - was carried forward by later empiricists such as Bacon and Hume [see Annotation 10, p. 10]. In Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Marx and Engels refute this notion, arguing that practice allows us to discover truth about “things-in-themselves:”<br /> <br /> The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical crotchets is practice - namely, experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and making it serve our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end to the Kantian ungraspable “thing-in-itself”.<br /> <br /> Lenin expanded on this argument, explaining that the phenomena of objects which we observe with our senses do accurately reflect material objects, even though we might not know everything about these objects at once. Over time, as we learn more and more about material objects and the material world through practice and repeated observation, we more fully and accurately come to understand “things-in-themselves, as he writes in Empirio-Criticism and Materialism:<br /> <br /> 3) In the theory of knowledge, as in every other branch of science, we must think dialectically, that is, we must not regard our knowledge as readymade and unalterable, but must determine how knowledge emerges from ignorance, how incomplete, inexact knowledge becomes more complete and more exact.<br /> <br /> Here, Lenin further elaborates on the dialectical nature of knowledge: we must simultaneously accept that our knowledge is never perfect and unchanging, but we must also recognize that we are capable of making our knowledge more exact and complete over time. To further defend his ideas about reflection, Lenin cited Czech philosopher Karl Kautsky’s argument against Kant:<br /> <br /> That I see green, red and white is grounded in my faculty of sight. But that green is something different from red testifies to something that lies outside of me, to real differences between the things. . . The relations and differences between the things themselves revealed to me by the individual space and time concepts are real relations and differences of the external world, not conditioned by the nature of my perceptive faculty. . . If this were really so [i.e., if Kant’s doctrine of the ideality of time and space were true], we could know nothing about the world outside us, not even that it exists.<br /> <br /> Lenin followed from Marx and Engels that, in order to further develop our understanding and knowledge of the material world, it was necessary to engage in practice<br /> <br /> [see Annotation 211, p. 205]. Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific: The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we [use] these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perceptions. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must<br /> <br /> 74<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 72 (continued)<br /> <br /> also be wrong, and our attempt must fail. But if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is positive proof that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves.<br /> <br /> Notice that Engels is careful to use the words so far: “its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves.” Engels does not argue that human understanding of the material world is infallible: mistakes are often made. But over time, as such mistakes are discovered and our understanding improves, our knowledge of the material world develops. This is only possible if the phenomena of objects which we observe - the reflections within our consciousness - do actually and accurately represent material reality. Lenin elaborated on this necessity to constantly update and improve dialectical materialist philosophy as new information and knowledge became available: Engels, for instance, assimilated the, to him, new term, energy, and began to employ it in 1885 (Preface to the 2nd ed. of Anti-Dühring) and in 1888 (Ludwig Feuerbach), but to employ it equally with the concepts of ‘force’ and ‘motion,’<br /> <br /> and along with them. Engels was able to enrich his materialism by adopting a new terminology.<br /> <br /> Engels provided further elaborations on how practical experience and mastery of the material world refutes the notion that it is impossible to have real knowledge of the material world in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy: The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical fancies is practice, viz., experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and using it for our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end of the Kantian incomprehensible or ungraspable. . . The chemical substances produced in the bodies of plants and animals remained just such things-in-themselves until organic chemistry began to produce them one after another, whereupon the thing-in-itself became a thing for us, as for instance, alizarin [a dye which was originally plant-based], which we no longer trouble to grow in in the field, but produce much more cheaply and simply from coal tar.<br /> <br /> So, dialectical materialism holds that there is a material world external from our consciousness; that conscious thoughts are reflections of this material world; that we can have real knowledge of the material world through sensory observation; and that our knowledge and understanding of the material world is best advanced through practice in the material world.<br /> <br /> - Social Sources of Consciousness<br /> <br /> There are many factors that constitute the social sources of consciousness. The most basic and direct factors are labor and language.<br /> <br /> Labor is the process by which humans interact with the natural world in order to make products for our needs of existing and developing. Labor is also the process that changes the human body’s structure [i.e., muscles developing through exercise].<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 75<br /> <br /> Annotation 73<br /> <br /> In Dialectics of Nature, Engels describes the dialectical relationship between labor and human development:<br /> <br /> Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source - next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.<br /> <br /> Before the first flint could be fashioned into a knife by human hands, a period of time probably elapsed in comparison with which the historical period known to us appears insignificant. But the decisive step had been taken, the hand had become free and could henceforth attain ever greater dexterity; the greater flexibility thus acquired was inherited and increased from generation to generation.<br /> <br /> Thus the hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour.<br /> <br /> Only by labour, by adaptation to ever new operations, through the inheritance of muscles, ligaments, and, over longer periods of time, bones that had undergone special development and the ever-renewed employment of this inherited finesse in new, more and more complicated operations, have given the human hand the high degree of perfection required to conjure into being the pictures of a Raphael, the statues of a Thorwaldsen, the music of a Paganini.<br /> <br /> But the hand did not exist alone, it was only one member of an integral, highly complex organism. And what benefited the hand, benefited also the whole body it served.<br /> <br /> Labor also allows us to discover the attributes, structures, motion laws, etc., of the natural world, via observable phenomena.<br /> <br /> Annotation 74<br /> <br /> We discover truth about the natural world through labor - through physical practice in the material world. See the discussion of practice in Annotation 211, p. 205.<br /> <br /> All of these phenomena, through our human senses, impact our human brains. And through brain activity, knowledge and consciousness of the objective world are formed and developed.<br /> <br /> Language is a system of material signals that carries information with cognitive content. Without language, consciousness could not exist and develop.<br /> <br /> The birth of language goes hand in hand with labor. From the beginning, labor was social. The relationships between people who perform labor processes require them to have means to communicate and exchange thoughts. This requirement caused language to arise and develop along with the working processes. With language, humans not only communicate, but also summarise reality and convey experience and thoughts from generation to generation.<br /> <br /> 76<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 75<br /> <br /> From Dialectics of Nature:<br /> <br /> It has already been noted that our simian ancestors were gregarious; it is obviously impossible to seek the derivation of man, the most social of all animals, from non-gregarious immediate ancestors. Mastery over nature began with the development of the hand, with labour, and widened man’s horizon at every new advance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto unknown properties in natural objects. On the other hand, the development of labour necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual. In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other. Necessity created the organ; the undeveloped larynx of the ape was slowly but surely transformed by modulation to produce constantly more developed modulation, and the organs of the mouth gradually learned to pronounce one articulate sound after another.<br /> <br /> Comparison with animals proves that this explanation of the origin of language from and in the process of labour is the only correct one. The little that even the most highly-developed animals need to communicate to each other does not require articulate speech. In its natural state, no animal feels handicapped by its inability to speak or to understand human speech. It is quite different when it has been tamed by man. The dog and the horse, by association with man, have developed such a good ear for articulate speech that they easily learn to understand any language within their range of concept. Moreover they have acquired the capacity for feelings such as affection for man, gratitude, etc., which were previously foreign to them. Anyone who has had much to do with such animals will hardly be able to escape the conviction that in many cases they now feel their inability to speak as a defect, although, unfortunately, it is one that can no longer be remedied because their vocal organs are too specialised in a definite direction. However, where vocal organs exist, within certain limits even this inability disappears. The buccal organs of birds are as different from those of man as they can be, yet birds are the only animals that can learn to speak; and it is the bird with the most hideous voice, the parrot, that speaks best of all. Let no one object that the parrot does not understand what it says. It is true that for the sheer pleasure of talking and associating with human beings, the parrot will chat-ter for hours at a stretch, continually repeating its whole vocabulary. But within the limits of its range of concepts it can also learn to understand what it is saying.<br /> <br /> Teach a parrot swear words in such a way that it gets an idea of their meaning (one of the great amusements of sailors returning from the tropics); tease it and you will soon discover that it knows how to use its swear words just as correctly as a Berlin costermonger. The same is true of begging for titbits.<br /> <br /> First labour, after it and then with it speech - these were the two most essential stimuli under the influence of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man, which, for all its similarity is far larger and more perfect. Hand in inevitably accompanied by a corresponding refinement of the organ of hearing, so the development of the brain as a whole is accompanied by a refinement of<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 77<br /> <br /> Annotation 75 (continued)<br /> <br /> hand with the development of the brain went the development of its most immediate instruments - the senses. Just as the gradual development of speech is all the senses. The eagle sees much farther than man, but the human eye dis-cerns considerably more in things than does the eye of the eagle. The dog has a far keener sense of smell than man, but it does not distinguish a hundredth part of the odours that for man are definite signs denoting different things. And the sense of touch, which the ape hardly possesses in its crudest initial form, has been developed only side by side with the development of the human hand itself, through the medium of labour.<br /> <br /> So, the most basic, direct and important source that decides the birth and development of language is labor. Language appeared later than labor but always goes with labor.<br /> <br /> Language and labor were the two main stimulations affecting the brains of the primates which evolved into humans, slowly changing their brains into human brains and transforming animal psychology into human consciousness.<br /> <br /> PRECISION GRIP<br /> <br /> POWER SQUEEZE GRIP<br /> <br /> Combination of thumb and fith digit are critical to controlling and manipulating objects within one hand during precision and power squeeze grips used during tool making and tool use Fifth digit stabilizes<br /> <br /> FPL and EPB<br /> <br /> hammerstone<br /> <br /> active<br /> <br /> and core during<br /> <br /> tool making<br /> <br /> FPL not strongly<br /> <br /> active<br /> <br /> OP, first DI, and FPB<br /> <br /> active just before<br /> <br /> FCU, FDM, and ADM<br /> <br /> strike in dominant<br /> <br /> active in dominant<br /> <br /> hand<br /> <br /> and non-dominant<br /> <br /> hands during<br /> <br /> Most muscles<br /> <br /> tool making<br /> <br /> of thumb have<br /> <br /> larger moment<br /> <br /> arms than in Pan<br /> <br /> OP and AP muscles<br /> <br /> have large cross<br /> <br /> sectional area and<br /> <br /> potential torque<br /> <br /> EPB and independent FPL<br /> <br /> Fifth digit anchors<br /> <br /> more frequent in humans than<br /> <br /> hand during power<br /> <br /> other primates<br /> <br /> squeeze grip<br /> <br /> This diagram is based on work from an article titled “Evidence in Hand: Recent Discoveries and the Early Evolution of Human Manual Manipulation1.” Modern research has discovered strong evidence2 that the human hand evolved along with tool use, in line with Engels’ analysis in Dialectics of Nature .<br /> <br /> 1 Written by Professor Tracy L. Kivell and published in The Royal Society.<br /> <br /> 2 Stone Tools Helped Shape Human Hands by Sara Reardon, published in New Scientist Magazine.<br /> <br /> 78<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 76<br /> <br /> It is also worth noting that, just as human consciousness derived from labor and language and social activity, so too did society itself arise from language and labor, as Engels explained in Dialectics of Nature:<br /> <br /> The reaction on labour and speech of the development of the brain and its attendant senses, of the increasing clarity of consciousness, power of abstraction and of conclusion, gave both labour and speech an ever-renewed impulse to further development. This development did not reach its conclusion when man finally became distinct from the ape, but on the whole made further powerful progress, its degree and direction varying among different peoples and at different times, and here and there even being interrupted by local or temporary regression. This further development has been strongly urged forward, on the one hand, and guided along more definite directions, on the other, by a new element which came into play with the appearance of fully-fledged man, namely, society.<br /> <br /> In other words, these factors of human’s physical nature and human society have a dialectical relationship with one another. Elements of human nature - in particular labor and language - led to the development of human society, which in turned played a key role in the development of human language and labor.<br /> <br /> Language<br /> <br /> Labor<br /> <br /> Human Nature<br /> <br /> Human Society<br /> <br /> Human language and human labor mutually develop one another through a dialectical process to develop human nature. Simultaneously, human nature and human society mutually develop one another through a dialectical process.<br /> <br /> Elements of human nature - in particular labor and language - led to the development of human society, which in turned played a key role in the development of human language and labor.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 79<br /> <br /> b. Nature and Structure of Consciousness<br /> <br /> - Nature of Consciousness<br /> <br /> Consciousness is the dynamic and creative reflection of the objective world in human brains; it is the subjective image of the objective world. [See discussion of dynamic and creative reflection on p. 68]<br /> <br /> The dynamic and creative nature of reflection is expressed in human psycho-physiological activities when we receive, select, process, and save data in our brains. Within the human brain, we are able to collect data from the external material world. Based on this information, our brain is capable of creating new information, and we are able to analyze, interpret, and understand all of this information collectively within our consciousness.<br /> <br /> The dynamic and creative nature of reflection is also expressed in several human processes:<br /> <br /> • The creation of ideas, hypotheses, stories, etc.<br /> <br /> • The ability to summarize nature and to comprehend the objective laws of nature.<br /> <br /> • The ability to construct models of ideas and systems of knowledge to guide our activities.<br /> <br /> Consciousness is the subjective image of the objective world. Consciousness is defined by the objective world in both Content and Form [see Annotation 150, p. 147]. However, consciousness does not perfectly reflect the objective world. It modifies information through the subjective lenses (thoughts, feelings, aspirations, experiences, knowledge, needs, etc.) of humans. According to Marx and Engels, ideas are simply “sublimates [transformations] of [the human brain’s]. . . material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises.”1<br /> <br /> Annotation 77<br /> <br /> In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels refer to ideas somewhat poetically as “the phantoms formed in the human brain,” and explains that ideas arise directly from material human life processes [see Annotation 72, p. 68]. Lenin makes it very clear in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism that consciousness is not a mirror image, or exact reproduction of reality, quoting Engels:<br /> <br /> The great basic question of all philosophy,” Engels says, “especially of modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being,” of “spirit and nature.” Having divided the philosophers into “two great camps” on this basic question, Engels shows that there is “yet another side” to this basic philosophical question, viz., “in what relation do our thoughts about the world surrounding us stand to this world itself? Is our thinking capable of the cognition of the real world? Are we able in our ideas and notions of the real world to produce a correct reflection of reality?” “The overwhelming majority of philosophers give an affirmative answer to this question,” says Engels, “including under this head not only all materialists but also the most consistent idealists.<br /> <br /> 1<br /> <br /> The German Ideology, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1846.<br /> <br /> 80<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 77 (continued)<br /> <br /> Of extra importance is Lenin’s footnote to the above passage, regarding what he pur-ports to be Viktor Chernov’s mistranslation of Engels:<br /> <br /> Fr. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, etc., 4th Germ. ed., S. 15. Russian translation, Geneva ed., 1905, p. 12-13. Mr. V. Chernov translates the word Spiegelbild literally (a mirror reflection) accusing Plekhanov of presenting the theory of Engels “in a very weakened form” by speaking in Russian simply of a “reflection” instead of a “mirror reflection”. This is mere cavilling. Spiegelbild [mirror reflection] in German is also used simply in the sense of Abbild [reflection, image].<br /> <br /> Here, Lenin reaffirms and clarifies Engels’ idea that consciousness is not a perfect, exact duplicate of reality; not a “mirror image.” This, however, does not contradict the fact that we can obtain real knowledge of the real world in our consciousness, and that this knowledge improves over time through practice and observation. Indeed, Lenin’s passage on practice cited first in this annotation directly follows the above passage in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.<br /> <br /> See: Natural Source of Consciousness, p. 64, and Annotation 32, 27.<br /> <br /> Consciousness is a social phenomenon and has a social nature. Consciousness arose from real life activities. Consciousness is always ruled by natural law and by social law.<br /> <br /> Annotation 78<br /> <br /> Natural law includes the laws of physics, chemistry, and other natural phenomena which govern the material world. Consciousness itself can never violate natural law as it arises from the natural processes of the natural world.<br /> <br /> Social law includes the objective and universal relationships between social phenomena and social processes. Human society was created through labor, and this labor was performed in very specific material relations between humans and the natural world.<br /> <br /> Note: social law is a key concept of historical materialism, which is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.<br /> <br /> In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx explains how social existence and social laws govern the consciousness of individuals: In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.<br /> <br /> The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.<br /> <br /> Consciousness is determined by the social communication needs of human beings as well as the material conditions of reality.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 81<br /> <br /> Annotation 79<br /> <br /> The term material conditions refers to the external environment which humans inhabit. Material conditions include the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base1 of human society, and other objective externalities and systems which affect human life and society. Note that material conditions don’t refer to physical matter alone, but also include objective social relations and phenomena. In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx argues that “neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life.”<br /> <br /> Consciousness is dynamic in nature, constantly learning and changing flexibly. Consciousness guides humans to transform the material world to suit our needs.<br /> <br /> Annotation 80<br /> <br /> Consciousness and material conditions have a dialectical relationship with one other, just as the base of society and the superstructure have a dialectical relationship with one other [see Annotation 29, p. 24]. Consciousness arises from material conditions, though conscious activity can affect material conditions.<br /> <br /> As Marx explains in Capital Volume I:<br /> <br /> At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose.<br /> <br /> In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx explains how the development of material conditions eventually leads to conscious activity which will in turn lead to changes in society:<br /> <br /> At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms - with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.<br /> <br /> As Marx further explains, material conditions must first be met before such revolutionary social changes can be made through conscious activity: No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.<br /> <br /> 1 See Annotation 3, p. 2 and Annotation 29, p. 24.<br /> <br /> 82<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism<br /> <br /> - Structure of Consciousness<br /> <br /> Consciousness has a very complicated structure, including many factors which have strong relationships with each other. The most basic factors are knowledge, sentiment and willpower.<br /> <br /> Annotation 81<br /> <br /> As with the concept of reflection (see Annotation 68, p. 65), the analysis of the structure of consciousness which follows is rooted in ideas first proposed by Marx, Engels and Lenin, and later developed through the work of various Soviet psychologists, philosophers, and scientists including Ivan Pavlov, Todor Pavlov, Aleksei Leontiev, Lev Vygotsky, Valentin Voloshinov, and others, and is used as a basis for scientific inquiry and development up to this day. According to Where is Marx in the Work and Thought of Vygotsky? by Lucien Sève (2018), much of this work, such as the groundbreaking work of Lev Vygotsky, has been heavily “de-Marxized,” stripped of all aspects of Marxism and, by extension, dialectical materialism, in translation to English.<br /> <br /> Knowledge constitutes the understanding of human beings, and is the result of the cognitive process. Knowledge is the re-created image of perceived objects which takes the form of language. Knowledge is the mode of existence of consciousness and the condition for consciousness to develop.<br /> <br /> Annotation 82<br /> <br /> Marx and Engels discussed the relationship between language and consciousness extensively in The German Ideology, explaining that language - the form of knowledge which exists in human consciousness - evolved dialectically with and through social activity, and that consciousness also developed along with and through the material processes that gave rise to speech:<br /> <br /> From the start the ‘spirit’ is afflicted with the curse of being ‘burdened’ with matter, which here makes its appearance in the form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in short, of language. Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men, and for that reason alone it really exists for me personally as well; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men.”So, language, physical speech organs, and human society all developed in dialectic relations with one another. Since language is the form of knowledge in human consciousness, this means that knowledge arose directly from these dialectical processes: Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all. Consciousness is at first, of course, merely consciousness concerning the immediate sensuous environment and consciousness of the limited connection with other persons and things outside the individual who is growing self-conscious.<br /> <br /> The fact that knowledge has a language-form in human consciousness is also important to understand because it shows that consciousness arose dialectically as, and through, social activity, and indeed, language and social activity gave rise to consciousness as a replacement for animal instinct in our relations with nature.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 83<br /> <br /> Annotation 82 (continued)<br /> <br /> Man’s consciousness of the necessity of associating with the individuals around him is the beginning of the consciousness that he is living in society at all. This beginning is as animal as social life itself at this stage. It is mere herd-consciousness, and at this point man is only distinguished from sheep by the fact that with him consciousness takes the place of instinct or that his instinct is a conscious one.<br /> <br /> And, as language and social activity dialectically developed through one another, human society became complex enough to give rise to human societies and human economies:<br /> <br /> This sheep-like or tribal consciousness receives its further development and extension through increased productivity, the increase of needs, and, what is fundamental to both of these, the increase of population. With these there develops the division of labour…<br /> <br /> Knowledge can be separated into two broad categories: knowledge of nature, and knowledge of human society. Each of these categories of knowledge reflects its corresponding entity in the external world.<br /> <br /> Annotation 83<br /> <br /> Each category of knowledge reflects a corresponding entity in the external world.<br /> <br /> It’s also important to note that human society and nature have a dialectical relationship with each other and mutually impact one another, and, by extension, knowledge of nature and knowledge of human society also dialectically influence one another. So these categories of knowledge are not isolated from one another but rather dynamically shape and influence each other continuously through time.<br /> <br /> Based on levels of cognitive development, we can also classify knowledge into categories of: daily life knowledge and scientific knowledge, experience knowledge and theory knowledge, emotional knowledge and rational knowledge.<br /> <br /> 84<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 84<br /> <br /> The following information is from the Marxism-Leninism Textbook of Students Who Specialize in Marxism-Leninism, released by Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training: Daily Life and Scientific Knowledge<br /> <br /> Knowledge<br /> <br /> Daily Life Knowledge<br /> <br /> Scientific Knowledge<br /> <br /> of Nature<br /> <br /> of Nature<br /> <br /> of Nature<br /> <br /> Dialectical<br /> <br /> Dialectical<br /> <br /> Dialectical<br /> <br /> Relationship<br /> <br /> Relationship<br /> <br /> Relationship<br /> <br /> Knowledge<br /> <br /> Daily Life Knowledge<br /> <br /> Scientific Knowledge<br /> <br /> of Human Society<br /> <br /> of Human Society<br /> <br /> of Human Society<br /> <br /> Less Developed<br /> <br /> More Developed<br /> <br /> Daily Life Knowledge is the knowledge we acquire in our daily lives to deal with our daily tasks. From our interactions with nature and human society, we cultivate life experience and our understanding of every aspect of our daily lives in relation to human society and nature.<br /> <br /> Scientific Knowledge arises from Daily Life Knowledge: as our daily lives become more complex, we develop a need to understand the material world and human society more deeply and comprehensively. Scientific Knowledge is thus a developed system of knowledge of nature and human society. Scientific Knowledge can be tested and can be applied to human life and activity in useful ways.<br /> <br /> Experience and Theory Knowledge:<br /> <br /> Knowledge<br /> <br /> Experience Knowledge<br /> <br /> Theory Knowledge<br /> <br /> of Nature<br /> <br /> of Nature<br /> <br /> of Nature<br /> <br /> Dialectical<br /> <br /> Dialectical<br /> <br /> Dialectical<br /> <br /> Relationship<br /> <br /> Relationship<br /> <br /> Relationship<br /> <br /> Knowledge<br /> <br /> Experience Knowledge<br /> <br /> Theory Knowledge<br /> <br /> of Human Society<br /> <br /> of Human Society<br /> <br /> of Human Society<br /> <br /> Less Developed<br /> <br /> More Developed<br /> <br /> Experience Knowledge is cultivated from direct observation of nature and human society. This kind of knowledge is extremely diverse, and we can apply this kind of knowledge to guide our daily activities.<br /> <br /> Theory Knowledge arises from Experience Knowledge. Theory Knowledge is composed of abstract generalizations of Experience Knowledge. Theory Knowledge is more profound, accurate, and systematically organized than Experience Knowledge and gives us an understanding of the laws and dynamics of nature and human society.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 85<br /> <br /> Annotation 84 (continued)<br /> <br /> Emotional and Rational Knowledge:<br /> <br /> Knowledge<br /> <br /> Emotional Knowledge<br /> <br /> Rational Knowledge<br /> <br /> of Nature<br /> <br /> of Nature<br /> <br /> of Nature<br /> <br /> Dialectical<br /> <br /> Dialectical<br /> <br /> Dialectical<br /> <br /> Relationship<br /> <br /> Relationship<br /> <br /> Relationship<br /> <br /> Knowledge<br /> <br /> Emotional Knowledge<br /> <br /> Rational Knowledge<br /> <br /> of Human Society<br /> <br /> of Human Society<br /> <br /> of Human Society<br /> <br /> Less Developed<br /> <br /> More Developed<br /> <br /> Emotional Knowledge is the earlier stage of cognitive processing. Emotional Knowledge comes directly to us from our human senses. We obtain emotional knowledge when we use our human senses to directly learn things about nature and human society. Emotional Knowledge is usually manifested as immediate cognitive responses such as pleasure, pain, and other such impulses.<br /> <br /> Rational Knowledge arises from Emotional Knowledge. It is a higher stage of cognitive processing, involving abstract thought and generalization of emotional knowledge.<br /> <br /> Rational Knowledge is usually manifested as definitions, conjectures, judgments, etc.<br /> <br /> See also: Principle of Development, p. 119; Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, p. 204.<br /> <br /> Sentiment is the resonant manifestation of human emotions and feelings in our relationships. Sentiment is a special form of reality reflection [see Annotation 68, p. 65].<br /> <br /> Whenever reality impacts human beings, we feel specific sensations and emotional reactions to those impacts. Over time, these specific sensations and emotions combine and dialectically develop into generalized human feelings, and we call these generalized feelings sentiment. Sentiment expresses and develops in every aspect of human life; it is a factor that improves and promotes cognitive and practical activities.<br /> <br /> Annotation 85<br /> <br /> As Marx explains in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844: “Man as an objective, sensuous being is therefore a suffering being - and because he feels that he suffers, a passionate being. Passion is the essential power of man energetically bent on its object.” Marx further elaborates that sentimental emotion is essential to human nature:<br /> <br /> “The domination of the objective essence within me, the sensuous eruption of my essential activity, is emotion which thereby becomes the activity of my nature.”<br /> <br /> Depending on the subjects that are perceived, as well as our human emotions about them, sentiments can be manifested in many different forms such as: moral emotion, aesthetic emotion, religious emotion, etc.<br /> <br /> 86<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 86<br /> <br /> Moral Emotion is the basic manifestation of moral consciousness at an emotional level. For example: when we see people helping other people, we have positive emotional responses, yet when we see people harming other people, we have negative emotional responses. (Source: Nguyen Thi Khuyen of the National Institute of Administration of Vietnam)<br /> <br /> Aesthetic Emotion refers to the the resonant feelings which arise from our interaction with beauty, sadness, comedy, etc., in life and in art. For example: when humans encounter beauty, we feel positive emotional responses. When humans encounter ugliness, we feel negative emotional responses. When we witness pain, we feel sympathetic feelings of pain and a desire to help. When we witness comedy, we feel humor-ous emotions ourselves. (Source: Textbook of General Aesthetic Studies from the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam)<br /> <br /> Religious Emotion is the human belief in supernatural or spiritual forces which can’t be tested or proved through material practice or observation. However, belief in these forces can give human beings emotional responses such as hope, love, etc. (Source: Pham Van Chuc, Doctor of Philosophy, Central Theoretical Council of the Communist Party of Vietnam)<br /> <br /> These are just a few illustrative examples; there are many other ways in which human emotion and sentiment can manifest.<br /> <br /> Willpower is the manifestation of one’s own strength used to overcome obstacles in the process of achieving goals. Willpower is a dynamic aspect of consciousness, a manifestation of human consciousness in the material world.<br /> <br /> Annotation 87<br /> <br /> An unnamed poem by Ho Chi Minh, written in 1950 for the Revolutionary Youth Pioneers, addresses the phenomenon of willpower:<br /> <br /> Nothing in this world must be difficult<br /> <br /> The only thing that we should fear is having a waivering heart We can dig up mountains and fill the sea<br /> <br /> Once we’ve willfully made a firm decision<br /> <br /> Today, this poem serves as the lyrics for anthem of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union (formerly the Revolutionary Youth Pioneers).<br /> <br /> Willpower arises from human self-awareness and awareness of the purposes of our actions. Through this awareness and through willpower, we are able to struggle against ourselves and externalities to successfully achieve our goals. We can consider willpower to be the power of conscious human activity; willpower controls and regulates human behaviors in order to allow humans to move towards our goals voluntarily; willpower also allows humans to exercise self-restraint and self-control, and to be assertive in our actions according to our views and beliefs.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 87<br /> <br /> Annotation 88<br /> <br /> In Dialectics of Nature, Engels explains how willpower developed in human beings as we separated from animals through the development of consciousness: “The further removed men are from animals, however, the more their effect on nature assumes the character of premeditated, planned action directed towards definite preconceived ends.”<br /> <br /> In Capital Volume I, Marx explains how willpower uniquely allows humans to consciously change our own material conditions to suit our needs according to pre-conceived plans:<br /> <br /> Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be.<br /> <br /> The true value of willpower is not only manifested in strength or weakness, but is also expressed in the content and meaning of the goals that we try to achieve through our willpower. Lenin believed that willpower is one of the factors that will create revolutionary careers for millions of people in the fierce class struggles to liberate ourselves and mankind.<br /> <br /> 88<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 89<br /> <br /> In “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder, Lenin explains how revolutions are born from the collective willpower of thousands of people: History as a whole, and the history of revolutions in particular, is always richer in content, more varied, more multiform, more lively and ingenious than is imagined by even the best parties, the most class-conscious vanguards of the most advanced classes. This can readily be understood, because even the finest of vanguards express the class-consciousness, will, passion and imagination of tens of thousands, whereas at moments of great upsurge and the exertion of all human capacities, revolutions are made by the class-consciousness, will, passion and imagination of tens of millions, spurred on by a most acute struggle of classes. Two very important practical conclusions follow from this: first, that in order to accomplish its task the revolutionary class must be able to master all forms or aspects of social activity without exception (completing after the capture of political power - sometimes at great risk and with very great danger - what it did not complete before the capture of power); second, that the revolutionary class must be prepared for the most rapid and brusque replacement of one form by another.<br /> <br /> All of these factors [knowledge, sentiment, and willpower] which, together, create consciousness, have dialectical relationships with each other. Of these factors, knowledge is the most important, because it is the mode of existence of consciousness, and also the factor which guides the development of all the other factors, and it also determines how the other factors manifest.<br /> <br /> ==3. The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness==<br /> <br /> The relationship between matter and consciousness is dialectical. In this relationship, matter comes first, and matter is the source of consciousness; it decides consciousness. However, consciousness is not totally passive, it can impact back to matter through the practical activities of human beings.<br /> <br /> Annotation 90<br /> <br /> Engels explained in Dialectics of Nature that “matter evolves out of itself the thinking human brain,” which means that matter must necessarily come prior to consciousness.<br /> <br /> As Marx explains in Capital Volume I, matter determines conscious activity: The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 89<br /> <br /> Annotation 90 (continued)<br /> <br /> However, it’s important to remember that the relationship between matter and consciousness is dialectical, and that conscious activity - through the combination of willpower and labor - can also impact the material world; social change arises through the combined willpower of many human beings. See: Annotation 80, p. 81.<br /> <br /> a. The Role of Matter in Consciousness<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism affirms that:<br /> <br /> • Matter is the first existence, and that consciousness comes after.<br /> <br /> • Matter is the source of consciousness, it decides consciousness.<br /> <br /> We know that matter determines consciousness because consciousness is the product of the high-level-structured matter such as the human brain. Consciousness itself can only exist after the development of the material structure of the human brain. Humans are the result of millions of years of development of the material world. We are, therefore, products of the material world. This conclusion has been firmly established through the development of natural science, which has given us great insight into the long history of the Earth and of the evolution of living organisms, including human beings.<br /> <br /> All of this scientific evidence stands as the basis for the viewpoint: matter comes first, consciousness comes after [see Annotation 114, p. 116].<br /> <br /> We have already discussed the factors which constitute the natural and social sources of consciousness:<br /> <br /> • Human brains<br /> <br /> • Impacts of the material world on human brains that cause reflections<br /> <br /> • Labor<br /> <br /> • Language<br /> <br /> [See Annotation 72, p. 68 and Annotation 73, p. 75]<br /> <br /> All of these factors also assert that matter is the origin of consciousness.<br /> <br /> 90<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 91<br /> <br /> B<br /> <br /> A<br /> <br /> !<br /> <br /> D<br /> <br /> E<br /> <br /> C<br /> <br /> MATERIAL BASIS OF CONSCIOUSNESS<br /> <br /> The material basis of consciousness is rooted in the following phenomena: A. The material structure of the human brain.<br /> <br /> B. Impacts from the material world cause reflections in human consciousness.<br /> <br /> C. Human Labor - physical process which dialectically develops consciousness.<br /> <br /> D. Human Speech - physical process which dialectically develops consciousness.<br /> <br /> E. Evolution of human brains and consciousness through material processes of the material world.<br /> <br /> For more information, see: Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.<br /> <br /> Consciousness is composed of reflections and subjective images of the material world, therefore the content of consciousness is decided by matter [see Annotation 68, p. 65] . The development of consciousness is determined by natural laws and by social laws1 as well as the material environment which we inhabit. All of these factors which determine consciousness are material in nature. Therefore, matter determines not only the content but also the development of consciousness.<br /> <br /> b. The Role of Consciousness in Matter<br /> <br /> In relation to matter, consciousness can impact matter through human activities.<br /> <br /> When we discuss consciousness we are discussing human consciousness. So, when we talk about the role of consciousness, we are talking about the role of human beings. Consciousness in and of itself cannot directly change anything in reality. In order to change reality, humans have to implement material activities. However, consciousness controls every human activity, so even though consciousness does not directly create or change the material world, it equips humans with knowledge about objective reality, and based on that foundation of knowledge, humans are able to identify goals, set directions, develop plans, and select methods, solutions, tools, and means to achieve our goals. So, consciousness manifests its ability to impact matter through human activities.<br /> <br /> The impact of consciousness on matter can have positive or negative results.<br /> <br /> 1 For a discussion of the material basis of social laws, see Annotation 10, p. 10, Annotation 78, p. 80, and Annotation 79, p. 81.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 91<br /> <br /> Annotation 92<br /> <br /> “Positive” and “negative,” in this context, are subjective and relative terms which simply denote “moving towards a goal” and “moving away from a goal,” based on a specific perspective.<br /> <br /> From the perspective of revolutionary communism, “positive” can be taken as moving towards the end goal of the liberation of the working class from capitalist oppression and the construction of a stateless, classless society. Likewise, “negative” can be taken as moving away from that goal. See: Annotation 114, p. 116.<br /> <br /> Humans have the ability to overcome all challenges in the process of achieving our goals and improving our world, so long as our conscious activities meet the following criteria:<br /> <br /> • We must perceive reality accurately.<br /> <br /> • We must properly apply scientific knowledge, revolutionary sentiments, and directed willpower.<br /> <br /> • We must avoid contradicting objective laws of nature and society.<br /> <br /> Successfully achieving our goals and improving the world in this manner constitutes the positive outcome of human consciousness.<br /> <br /> On the contrary, if human consciousness wrongly reflects objective reality, nature, and laws, then, right from the beginning, our actions will have negative results which will do harm to ourselves and our society.<br /> <br /> Therefore, by directing the activities of humans, consciousness can determine whether the results of human activities are beneficial or harmful. Our consciousness thus determines whether our activities will succeed or fail and whether our efforts will be effective or ineffective.<br /> <br /> By studying the matter, origin, and nature of consciousness, as well as the relationships between matter and consciousness, we can see that:<br /> <br /> • Matter is the source of consciousness1.<br /> <br /> • Matter determines the content and creative capacity of consciousness2.<br /> <br /> • Matter is the prerequisite to form consciousness3.<br /> <br /> • Consciousness only has the ability to impact matter, and this impact is indirect, because it has to be done through human material activities within material reality4.<br /> <br /> 1 See: Annotation 72, p. 68.<br /> <br /> 2 See: Annotation 90, p. 88.<br /> <br /> 3 See: The Role of Matter in Consciousness, p. 89.<br /> <br /> 4 See: The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88.<br /> <br /> 92<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism DETERMINES<br /> <br /> MATTER<br /> <br /> CONSCIOUSNESS<br /> <br /> IMPACTS<br /> <br /> Matter determines consciousness while consciousness impacts matter indirectly through human activity.<br /> <br /> The strength with which consciousness can impact the material world depends on:<br /> <br /> • The accuracy of reflection of the material world in consciousness1.<br /> <br /> • Strength of willpower which transmits consciousness to human activity2.<br /> <br /> • The degree of organization of social activity3.<br /> <br /> • Material conditions in which human activity occurs4.<br /> <br /> Annotation 93<br /> <br /> The importance of organization in determining the outcomes of human social activity is one of the most important concepts of Marxism-Leninism and is discussed frequently by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and nearly every other important communist revolutionary in history. Marx explains the connections between social organization and conscious human activity in Capital Volume I [see Annotation 80, p. 81].<br /> <br /> ==4. Meaning of the methodology==<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism builds the most basic and common methodological5 principles for human cognitive and practical activities on the following bases:<br /> <br /> • The viewpoint of the material nature of the world [ matter comes first, consciousness comes after].<br /> <br /> • The dynamic and creative nature of consciousness6.<br /> <br /> • The dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness7.<br /> <br /> 1 See:Annotation 68, p. 65.<br /> <br /> 2 See: Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.<br /> <br /> 3 See: Annotation 93, below.<br /> <br /> 4 See: Annotation 10, p. 10.<br /> <br /> 5 For discussion of the meaning of methodology, see Methodology, p. 44.<br /> <br /> 6 See: Nature of Consciousness, p. 79.<br /> <br /> 7 See: The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 93<br /> <br /> All cognitive and practical activities of humans originate from material reality and must observe objective natural and social laws, however, our activities are capable of impacting the material world through dynamic and creative conscious activity. [See The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88].<br /> <br /> Annotation 94<br /> <br /> The above paragraph summarizes an important methodological concept which is critical for undestanding the philosophical framework of Dialectical Materialism.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism, as a philosophy, synthesizes earlier materialist and idealist positions by recognizing the fact that the material determines consciousness, while consciousness can impact the material world through willful activity.<br /> <br /> From this philosophical basis, the methodology of Materialist Dialectics has been developed to provide a deeper understanding of dialectical development, which is rooted in contradiction and negation within and between subjects. Materialist Dialectics is the subject of Chapter 2, p. 98.<br /> <br /> According to this methodological principle [i.e., the Principle of the Dialectic Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness], if we hope to succeed in accomplishing our goals in the material world, then we must simultaneously meet two criteria: 1. We must ensure that our knowledge reflects the objective material world as much as possible, respecting the objective natural and social laws of the material world.<br /> <br /> 2. We must simultaneously recognize the dynamic and creative nature of our conscious activity.<br /> <br /> When we say that human activities originate from material reality and must observe objective natural and social laws we mean that human knowledge must originate from the material world. This means that if we hope to be successful in our activities, we should respect the natural and social laws of the material world.<br /> <br /> This means that in our human perception and activities, we must determine goals, and set strategies, policies, and plans which are rooted firmly in objective material reality.<br /> <br /> Humans have to take objective material reality as the foundation of our activities and plans, and all of our activities must be carried out in the material world. Humans have to examine and understand our material conditions and transform them in ways that will help us to accomplish our goals.<br /> <br /> When we talk about impacting the material world through dynamic and creative conscious activity, we mean we must recognize the positive, dynamic, and creative roles of consciousness. We must recognize the role human consciousness plays in dynamically and creatively manifesting our will in the material world through labor. Impacting the material world through conscious activity at a revolutionary scale requires humans to respect and understand the role of scientific knowledge; to study laboriously to master such knowledge; and then to propagate such knowledge so to the masses to develop public knowledge and belief so as to guide the people’s action.<br /> <br /> 94<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Moreover, we also have to voluntarily study and practice1 in order to form and improve our revolutionary viewpoint2 and willpower3 in order to have both scientific and humanitarian activity guidelines.<br /> <br /> To implement this principle [i.e., the Principle of the Dialectic Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness], we have to avoid, fight against, and overcome the diseases of subjectivism4 and idealism5 through such errors as:<br /> <br /> • Attempting to impose idealist plans and principles [which are not rooted in material conditions] into reality.<br /> <br /> • Considering fantasy, illusion, and imagination instead of reality.<br /> <br /> • Basing policies and programs on subjective desires.<br /> <br /> • Using sentiment as the starting point for developing policies, strategies, etc.<br /> <br /> On the other hand, in cognitive and practical activities, we also have to fight against empiricism6, which disregards scientific knowledge and theories, and which is also very conservative, stagnant and passive.<br /> <br /> Annotation 95<br /> <br /> Understand the Role<br /> <br /> Laboriously Study<br /> <br /> Propogate Knowledge<br /> <br /> and Importance of Knowledge<br /> <br /> and Master Knowledge<br /> <br /> to Masses<br /> <br /> Process of Developing Revolutionary Public Knowledge<br /> <br /> Developing revolutionary public knowledge must be preceded by mastery of knowledge and a firm grounding in the role and nature of knowledge.<br /> <br /> In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels makes a scathing critique of idealist socialist revolutionary thought, writing:<br /> <br /> To all these [idealist socialists], Socialism is the expression of absolute truth7, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power. And as an absolute truth is independent of time, space, and of the historical development of man, it is a mere accident when and where it is discovered. With all this, absolute truth, reason, and justice are different with the founder of each different school. And as each one’s special kind of absolute truth, reason, and justice is again conditioned by his subjective understanding, his conditions of existence, the measure of his knowledge and his intellectual training, there is no other ending possible in this conflict of absolute truths than that they shall be mutually exclusive of one another.<br /> <br /> 1 See: Annotation 211, p. 205.<br /> <br /> 2 See: Annotation 114, p. 116.<br /> <br /> 3 See: Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.<br /> <br /> 4 See: Annotation 222, p. 218.<br /> <br /> 5 See: The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues, p. 48.<br /> <br /> 6 See: Annotation 10, p. 10.<br /> <br /> 7 See: Annotation 232 and The Properties of Truth, on p. 228.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 95<br /> <br /> Annotation 95 (continued)<br /> <br /> Here, Engels points out the absurdity of the idea that some abstract, purely ideal<br /> <br /> “truth” could liberate workers in the material world. Engels continues on, explaining how such idealist socialism could never lead to meaningful revolutionary change: Hence, from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence, a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion: a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition; a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed the more definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.<br /> <br /> In other words, idealist revolutionary movements only tend to result in endless debate and meaningless theories which are divorced from objective reality and material conditions. Such theories and idealist constructions do not lead to effective action in the real world. Socialism must become real (i.e., based in objective material conditions and praxis1 in the real world) to affect change in the material world, as Engels explains elsewhere in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific [see Annotation 17, p. 18].<br /> <br /> In Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx lays out an excellent case study of the failings of incoherent, idealist socialism. He begins by quoting the Gotha Program, which was an ideological program which the German Workers Party hoped to implement. In this text, Marx cites the Gotha Program line by line and offers his materialist critique of the idealist principles presented. In the following passage, Marx refutes some key errors caused by idealism and offers materialist correction:<br /> <br /> Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power. . . But a socialist program cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that lone give them meaning. And insofar as man from the beginning behaves toward nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labor, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labor becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth. The bourgeois have very good grounds for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labor; since precisely from the fact that labor depends on nature it follows that the man who possesses no other property than his labor power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor. He can only work with their permission, hence live only with their permission.<br /> <br /> 1 See: Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness, p. 204.<br /> <br /> 96<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 95 (continued)<br /> <br /> Here, Marx points out the importance of having a firm understanding of the material reality of labor and its relation to the material, natural world. Marx points out that the idea that labor, alone, is the source of all wealth is an idealist notion of the bourgeoisie, a false consciousness [see Annotation 235, p. 231] which prevents proper material analysis and props up the capitalist viewpoint. A failure to grasp the truth of the material basis of reality weakens the socialist position, and any movement built on such weak idealist foundations will lead to failure in trying to bring about revolutionary change.<br /> <br /> We have already discussed the shortcomings of empiricism in Annotation 10, p. 10, but it might be helpful to see another case study, this time from Engels, pointing out the flaws of empiricist analysis in his text Anti-Dühring. Engels begins by quoting the empiricist Eugen Dühring, who wrote:<br /> <br /> Philosophy is the development of the highest form of consciousness of the world and of life, and in a wider sense embraces the principles of all knowledge and volition. Wherever a series of cognitions or stimuli or a group of forms of being come to be examined by human consciousness, the principles underlying these manifestations of necessity become an object of philosophy. These principles are the simple, or until now assumed to be simple, constituents of manifold knowledge and volition. Like the chemical composition of bodies, the general constitution of things can be reduced to basic forms and basic elements. These ultimate constituents or principles, once they have been discovered, are valid not only for what is immediately known and accessible, but also for the world which is unknown and inaccessible to us. Philosophical principles consequently provide the final supplement required by the sciences in order to become a uniform system by which nature and human life can be explained. Apart from the fundamental forms of all existence, philosophy has only two specific subjects of investigation - nature and the world of man. Accordingly, our material arranges itself quite naturally into three groups, namely, the general scheme of the universe, the science of the principles of nature, and finally the science of mankind. This succession at the same time contains an inner logical sequence, for the formal principles which are valid for all being take precedence, and the realms of the objects to which they are to be applied then follow in the degree of their subordination.<br /> <br /> Engels then proceeds to critique this empiricist worldview, showing that it does not properly reflect the material world and amounts to idealism in its own right: What [Dühring] is dealing with are therefore principles, formal tenets derived from thought and not from the external world, which are to be applied to nature and the realm of man, and to which therefore nature and man have to conform.<br /> <br /> But whence does thought obtain these principles? From itself?<br /> <br /> No, for Herr Dühring himself says: the realm of pure thought is limited to logical schemata and mathematical forms (the latter, moreover, as we shall see, is wrong). Logical schemata can only relate to forms of thought; but what we are dealing with here is solely forms of being, of the external world, and these forms can never be created and derived by thought out of itself, but only from the external world. But with this the whole relationship is inverted: the principles are<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism<br /> <br /> 97<br /> <br /> Annotation 95 (continued)<br /> <br /> not the starting-point of the investigation, but its final result; they are not applied to nature and human history, but abstracted from them, it is not nature and the realm of man which conform to these principles, but the principles are only valid in so far as they are in conformity with nature and history. That is the only materialist conception of the matter, and Herr Dühring’s contrary conception is idealistic, makes things stand completely on their heads, and fashions the real world out of ideas, out of schemata, schemes or categories existing somewhere before the world, from eternity - just like a Hegel.<br /> <br /> Lenin also heavily criticized empiricism in his work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, which we discuss at length in Annotation 32, p. 27.<br /> <br /> 98<br /> <br /> ==Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism CHAPTER 2==<br /> <br /> MATERIALIST DIALECTICS<br /> <br /> Materialist dialectics is one of the basic theoretical parts that form the worldview and philosophical methodology of Marxism-Leninism. It is the “science of common relations” and also the “science of common rules of motion and development of nature, society, and human thoughts. . . Dialectics, as understood by Marx, and also in conformity with Hegel, includes what is now called the theory of knowledge, or epistemology.”1<br /> <br /> [Note: Epistemology is the theoretical study of knowledge; for more information see Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, p. 204.]<br /> <br /> ==I. DIALECTICS AND MATERIALIST DIALECTICS==<br /> <br /> ==1. Dialectics and Basic Forms of Dialectics==<br /> <br /> a. Definitions of Dialectics and the Subjective Dialectic<br /> <br /> In Marxism-Leninism, the term dialectic refers to regular relationships, interactions, transformations, motions, and developments of things, phenomena, and processes in nature, society and human thought.2<br /> <br /> There are two forms of dialectic: the objective dialectic and the subjective dialectic. The objective dialectic is the dialectic of the material world, while the subjective dialectic is the reflection of objective dialectic in human consciousness. [See Annotation 68, p. 65].<br /> <br /> According to Engels, “Dialectics, so-called objective dialectics, prevail throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics (dialectical thought), is only the reflection of the motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into higher forms, determines the life of nature.”3<br /> <br /> Annotation 96<br /> <br /> Dialectics is an umbrella term which includes both forms of dialectical systems: subjective and objective dialectics.<br /> <br /> Objective dialectics are the dialectical processes which occur in the material world, including all motion, relationships, and dynamic changes which occur in space and time.<br /> <br /> Subjective dialectics, or dialectical thought, is a system of analysis and organized thinking which aims to reflect the objective dialectics of the material world within human consciousness. Dialectical thinking has two component forms: dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics [see Annotation 49, p. 45].<br /> <br /> 1 Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.<br /> <br /> 2 See Annotation 9, p. 10.<br /> <br /> 3 Dialectics of Nature, Friedrich Engels, 1883.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 99<br /> <br /> Subjective dialectics is the theory that studies and summarises the [objective] dialectic of nature into a system with scientific principles and rules, in order to build a system of methodological principles of perception and practice. Dialectics is opposed to metaphysics - a system of thought which conceives of things and phenomena in the world in an isolated and unchanging state [See Annotation 8, p. 8].<br /> <br /> b. Basic Forms of Dialectics<br /> <br /> Dialectics has developed into three basic forms and levels: ancient primitive dialectics, German idealist dialectics, and the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism.<br /> <br /> Ancient primitive dialectics is the earliest form of dialectics. It has developed independently in many philosophical systems in ancient China, India and Greece.<br /> <br /> Chinese philosophy has two major forms of ancient primitive dialectics:<br /> <br /> • “Changing Theory” (a theory of common principles and rules pertaining to the changes in the universe)<br /> <br /> • The “Five Elements Theory” (a theory of the principles of mutual impact and transformation of the five elements of the universe) of the School of Yin-Yang. [See: Primitive Materialism, p. 52]<br /> <br /> In Indian philosophy, Buddhist philosophy is a quintessential [see Annotation 6, p.<br /> <br /> 8] form of ancient primitive dialectics, which includes such concepts as “selflessness,”<br /> <br /> “impermanence,” and “predestination.”<br /> <br /> An ancient, primitive form of dialectics also developed in Ancient Greek philosophy.<br /> <br /> Friedrich Engels wrote: “The old Greek philosophers were all born natural dialecticians, and Aristotle, the most encyclopaedic of them, had already analyzed the most essential forms of dialectic thought… This primitive, naive, but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away.”1<br /> <br /> Engels also wrote of Greek dialectics: “Here, dialectical thought still appears in its pristine simplicity, as yet undisturbed by the charming obstacles which the metaphysicists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - Bacon and Locke in England, Wolff in Germany - put in its own way. . . Among the Greeks - just because they were not yet advanced enough to dissect and analyse nature - nature is still viewed as a whole, in general. The universal connection of natural phenomena is not proved in regard to particular; to the Greeks it is the result of direct contemplation.”2<br /> <br /> Annotation 97<br /> <br /> Engels, here, is explaining how the ancient Greek dialecticians were correct to view nature as a cohesive system, a “whole, in general,” which they determined through direct observation of the natural world. The major shortcoming of this ancient Greek form of dialectics was a lack of inquiry into the specific processes and principles of nature. Engels laments that seventeenth and eighteenth century metaphysicists took us backwards by disregarding this view of nature as a cohesive, general whole.<br /> <br /> 1 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels, 1880.<br /> <br /> 2 The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.<br /> <br /> 100<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Ancient, primitive dialectics had an accurate awareness of the dialectical characteristic of the world but with its primitive and naive perspective, it still lacked evidence-based forms of natural scientific achievements.<br /> <br /> Jumping forward to the late 16th century, natural sciences started developing rapidly in Europe. Scientists began deeply analysing and studying specific factors and phenomena of nature which led to the birth of modern European metaphysical analysis. In the 18th century, metaphysics became the dominant methodology in philosophical thought and scientific study. However, when natural scientists moved from studying each subject separately to studying the unification of all those subjects in their relationships, the metaphysical method proved insufficient. Thus, European scientists and philosophers had to transition into a more advanced system of thought: dialectical thought.<br /> <br /> The classical German idealist dialectics were founded by Kant and completed by Hegel.<br /> <br /> According to Engels: “The second form of dialectics, which is the form that comes closest to the German naturalists [natural scientists], is classical German philosophy, from Kant to Hegel.” 1<br /> <br /> Annotation 98<br /> <br /> Engels discusses this history, and the shortcomings of the metaphysical philosophy of his era, in The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring. First, Engels explains why early modern natural scientists initially did not feel constrained by their adherence to metaphysics, since inquiries in the initial revolution of scientific study were limited to the narrow development of specific fields of inquiry by necessity:<br /> <br /> Empirical natural science has accumulated such a tremendous mass of positive material for knowledge that the necessity of classifying it in each separate field of investigation systematically and in accordance with its inner inter-connection has become absolutely imperative.<br /> <br /> Engels goes on to explain that at the time he was writing, enough knowledge had been accumulated within specific, distinct fields that it becomes necessary to begin studying the connections and overlaps between different fields, which called for theoretical and philosophical foundations:<br /> <br /> It is becoming equally imperative to bring the individual spheres of knowledge into the correct connection with one another. In doing so, however, natural science enters the field of theory and here the methods of empiricism will not work, here only theoretical thinking can be of assistance.<br /> <br /> Unfortunately, natural scientists were held back by the existing metaphysical theoretical foundations which were dominant at the time as, according to Engels, “theoretical thinking is an innate quality only as regards natural capacity. This natural capacity must be developed, improved, and for its improvement there is as yet no other means than the study of previous philosophy.”<br /> <br /> Metaphysical theory and formal logic were in common use by natural scientists at the time. As Engels explained in On Dialectics and Dialectics of Nature, metaphysics and formal logic could never be as useful as dialectical analysis for examining and unifying concepts from wide-ranging dynamic systems of overlapping fields of inquiry.<br /> <br /> 1 The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 101<br /> <br /> Annotation 98 (continued)<br /> <br /> Unfortunately, dialectics had not yet been suitably developed for use in the natural sciences before the work of Marx and Engels in developing dialectical materialism, as Engels explained in On Dialectics:<br /> <br /> Formal logic itself has been the arena of violent controversy from the time of Aristotle to the present day. And dialectics has so far been fairly closely investigated by only two thinkers, Aristotle and Hegel. But it is precisely dialectics that constitutes the most important form of thinking for present-day natural science, for it alone offers the analogue for, and thereby the method of explaining, the evolutionary processes occurring in nature, inter-connections in general, and transitions from one field of investigation to another.<br /> <br /> The Idealist Dialectics of Hegel [see Annotation 9, p. 10] constituted a major development of dialectics, but the idealist nature of Hegelian dialectics made them unsuitable for natural scientists, who therefore discarded “Old-Hegelian” dialectics and were thus left without a suitable dialectical framework. Again, from On Dialectics: The year 1848, which otherwise brought nothing to a conclusion in Germany, accomplished a complete revolution there only in the sphere of philosophy<br /> <br /> [and] the nation resolutely turned its back on classical German philosophy that had lost itself in the sands of Berlin old-Hegelianism. . . But a nation that wants to climb the pinnacles of science cannot possibly manage without theoretical thought. Not only Hegelianism but dialectics too was thrown overboard - and that just at the moment when the dialectical character of natural processes irre-sistibly forced itself upon the mind, when therefore only dialectics could be of assistance to natural science in negotiating the mountain of theory - and so there was a helpless relapse into the old metaphysics.<br /> <br /> Engels goes on to explain that, having rejected Hegel’s dialectics, natural scientists were set adrift, cobbling together theoretical frameworks from the works of philosophers which were plagued by idealism and metaphysics, and which were therefore not suitable for the task of unifying the disparate fields of natural sciences together: What prevailed among the public since then were, on the one hand, the vapid reflections of Schopenhauer, which were fashioned to fit the philistines, and later even those of Hartmann; and, on the other hand, the vulgar itinerant-preacher materialism of a Vogt and a Büchner. At the universities the most diverse variet-ies of eclecticism competed with one another and had only one thing in common, namely, that they were concocted from nothing but remnants of old philosophies and were all equally metaphysical. All that was saved from the remnants of classical philosophy was a certain neo-Kantianism, whose last word was the eternally unknowable thing-in-itself, that is, the bit of Kant [see Annotation 72, p. 68] that least merited preservation. The final result was the incoherence and confusion of theoretical thought now prevalent.<br /> <br /> Engels explains that this lack of a proper dialectical materialist framework had frustrated natural scientists of his era:<br /> <br /> 102<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 98 (continued)<br /> <br /> One can scarcely pick up a theoretical book on natural science without getting the impression that natural scientists themselves feel how much they are dominated by this incoherence and confusion, and that the so-called philosophy now current offers them absolutely no way out. And here there really is no other way out, no possibility of achieving clarity, than by a return, in one form or another, from metaphysical to dialectical thinking.<br /> <br /> After explaining that Hegel’s system of dialectics came closest to meeting the needs of contemporary science, Engels explains why Hegelian dialectics were ultimately rejected by the scientific community:<br /> <br /> Just as little can it be a question of maintaining the dogmatic content of the Hegelian system as it was preached by the Berlin Hegelians of the older and younger line. Hence, with the fall of the idealist point of departure, the system built upon it, in particular Hegelian philosophy of nature, also falls. It must however be recalled that the natural scientists’ polemic against Hegel, in so far as they at all correctly understood him, was directed solely against these two points: viz., the idealist point of departure and the arbitrary, fact-defying construction of the system.”<br /> <br /> In other words, it was the idealism and the unworkable structuring of Hegelian dialectics that prevented its adoption by natural scientists. Engels finally explains how Marx was able to modify Hegel’s idealist dialectics into a materialist form which is suitable for empirical scientific inquiry:<br /> <br /> It is the merit of Marx that. . . he was the first to have brought to the fore again the forgotten dialectical method, its connection with Hegelian dialectics and its distinction from the latter, and at the same time to have applied this method in Capital to the facts of an empirical science, political economy.<br /> <br /> These Classical German philosophers [Kant, Hegel, etc.1] systematically organized idealist dialectics into formal philosophies. Of particular note was Hegel’s belief that the dialectical process would eventually lead to an “absolute idea.” This foundational belief in an “absolute idea” is what chiefly defines Hegelian dialectics as idealist in nature [see Annotation 98, p. 100].<br /> <br /> Hegel believed that the subjective dialectic is the basis of the objective dialectic. [In other words, Hegel believed that dialectical thought served as the objective dialectics of the material world.]<br /> <br /> According to Hegel, the “absolute idea” was the starting point of all existence, and that this “absolute idea,” after creating the natural world, then came to exist within human consciousness.<br /> <br /> Engels wrote that in Hegelian dialectics: “... spirit, mind, the idea, is primary and that the real world is only a copy of the idea.”2<br /> <br /> 1 Kant’s “transcendental dialectic” was used to critique rationalism and pure reason, but was not a fully developed dialectical system of thought. Hegel’s idealist dialectics were more universal in nature. See Annotation 9, p. 10.<br /> <br /> 2 The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, On Dialectics, Friedrich Engels, 1878.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 103<br /> <br /> Annotation 99<br /> <br /> In the above quoted passage, Engels was explaining why Hegelian dialectics were unsuitable for use in natural sciences. Here is a longer excerpt: First of all it must be established that here it is not at all a question of defending Hegel’s point of departure: that spirit, mind, the idea, is primary and that the real world is only a copy of the idea. . . We all agree that in every field of science, in natural as in historical science, one must proceed from the given facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms and the various forms of motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science, too, the inter-connections are not to be built into the facts, but to be discovered in them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment.<br /> <br /> The German idealists (most notably Hegel) built an idealist system of dialectics organized into categories and common laws along with a strict logic of consciousness.<br /> <br /> Lenin stated that: “Hegel brilliantly divined the dialectics of things (phenomena, the world, nature) in the dialectics of concepts.”1<br /> <br /> Annotation 100<br /> <br /> What Lenin means, here, is that Hegel inadvertently and unconsciously discovered the concept of reflection [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. Hegel intuitively understood that the material world was reflected in human consciousness, and, by extension, subjective dialectics (dialectical thought) reflected objective dialectics (of the material world).<br /> <br /> Hegel’s error was an inversion of the ideal and the material. As Marx later pointed out in the Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital Volume I, it is the material which precedes the ideal, and not the other way around:<br /> <br /> My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the Idea,’ he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos [craftsman/artisan/creator] of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea.’ With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.<br /> <br /> Engels also quoted and emphasized Marx’s thoughts [in the Old Preface to An-ti-Dühring, citing another quote of Marx from the Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital Volume I, further quoted in Annotation 100 above]: “The mystification which dialectics suffers in Hegel’s hands by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.”2<br /> <br /> 1 Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich. Lenin, 1914.<br /> <br /> 2 Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital Volume I, Karl Marx, 1873.<br /> <br /> 104<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 101<br /> <br /> In the Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, Engels explains some of the contemporary currents of science and philosophy of his era. Engels explains that Hegelian philosophy had been dismissed by a newer current of natural scientists who dismissed “the idealist point of departure and the arbitrary, fact-defying construction of the system.” In other words, the natural scientists rejected Hegelianism because it was both idealist and was not built on a foundation of objective facts.<br /> <br /> Engels points out, however, that Marx “was the first to have brought to the fore again the forgotten dialectical method” of Hegel.<br /> <br /> The dialectical method was forgotten in the sense that the natural scientists ignored and dismissed dialectics along with the rest of Hegel’s philosophy. So, Engels is pointing out that one of the great contributions of Marx was salvaging the dialectical method from Hegel while rejecting the idealist and non-fact-based characteristics of Hegelian philosophy.<br /> <br /> Marx, according to Engels, proved that the dialectical method could be separated from idealism by “[applying the dialectical method] in Capital to the facts of an empirical science, political economy.” This was the origin of dialectical materialism: the resurrection of the dialectical method and the development of a dialectical method in a materialist and scientific form.<br /> <br /> The idealist characteristics of classical German dialectics and Hegelian philosophy was a limitation that needed to be overcome [so that it could be utilized for scientific inquiry]. Marx and Engels overcame that limitation and in so doing developed materialist dialectics. This system of dialectics is the most advanced form of dialectics in the history of philosophy to date. It is the successor of previous systems of dialectics, and it arose as a critique of the classical German dialectics.<br /> <br /> Engels said: “Marx and I were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious dialectics from German idealist philosophy and apply it in the materialist conception of nature and history.”1<br /> <br /> ==2. Materialist Dialectics==<br /> <br /> a. Definition of Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> Materialist dialectics have been defined in various ways by many prominent Marxist-Leninist philosophers.<br /> <br /> Engels defined materialist dialectics as: “nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society, and thought.”2<br /> <br /> Engels also emphasized the role of the principle of general relations.3 As John Burdon Sanderson Haldane noted in the 1939 preface to Dialectics of Nature: “In dialectics they<br /> <br /> [Marx and Engels] saw the science of the general laws of change.”4<br /> <br /> 1 Anti-Dühring, The 1885 Preface, Friedrich Engels, 1878.<br /> <br /> 2 Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.<br /> <br /> 3 See p. 107.<br /> <br /> 4 Dialectics of Nature, Friedrich Engels, 1883.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 105<br /> <br /> Lenin emphasized the important role of the principles of development1 (including the theory of cognitive development) in the dialectics that Marx inherited from Hegelian philosophy.<br /> <br /> Lenin wrote: “The main achievement was dialectics, i.e., the doctrine of development in its fullest, deepest, and most comprehensive form, the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge that provides us with a reflection of eternally developing matter.”2<br /> <br /> b. Basic Features and Roles of Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> There are two basic features of the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism: First, the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism is a system of dialectics that is based on the foundation of the scientific materialist viewpoint.<br /> <br /> Annotation 102<br /> <br /> Remember that scientific in Marxism-Leninism refers broadly to a systematic pursuit of knowledge, research, theory, and understanding [see Objects and Purposes of Study, p. 38]. Remember also that materialism in Marxism-Leninism has specific meaning as well, which differentiates it from other forms of materialism [see Dialectical Materialism - the Most Advanced Form of Materialism, p. 52]. Here, materialism includes an understanding that the material is the first basis of reality, meaning that the material determines the ideal (though human consciousness can impact the material world through willpower and labor [see Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79]). Materialism is also built upon scientific explanations (rooted in empirical data and practice, i.e. systematic experimentation and observation) of the world. And finally, remember that viewpoint is the starting point of inquiry [see Annotation 11, p. 12].<br /> <br /> Thus, a scientific materialist viewpoint is a perspective which begins analysis of the world in a manner that is both scientifically systematic in pursuit of understanding and firmly rooted in a materialist conception of the world.<br /> <br /> Note: Materialist Dialectics contains Twelve Basic Pairs of Categories, Two Basic Principles and Three Universal Laws. These are summarized, respectively, in Appendix A (p.<br /> <br /> 246), Appendix B (p. 247), and Appendix C (p. 248), and explained in depth throughout the rest of this chapter.<br /> <br /> In this way, materialist dialectics fundamentally differs from the classical German idealist dialectics, and especially differs from Hegelian dialectics3 (as these dialectics were founded on idealist viewpoints).<br /> <br /> Moreover, it also has a higher level of development compared to other dialectical systems of thought found in the history of philosophy going back to ancient times. Such previous forms of dialectics were fundamentally based on materialist stances, however the materialism of those ancient times was still naive, primitive and surface-level.<br /> <br /> Second, the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism unifies dialectical materialist viewpoints and materialist dialectical methodology, so it not only explains the world, but is also a tool humans can use to perceive and improve the world.<br /> <br /> Every principle and law of Marxist-Leninist materialist dialectics is both: 1 See Annotation 117, p. 119.<br /> <br /> 2 The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1913.<br /> <br /> 3 See Annotation 98, p. 100.<br /> <br /> 106<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism 1. An accurate explanation of the dialectical characteristics of the world.<br /> <br /> 2. A scientific methodology for perceiving and improving the world.<br /> <br /> By summarizing the general interconnections and development of all things - every phenomenon in nature, society and human thought - Marxist-Leninist materialist dialectics provides the most general methodological principles for the process of perceiving and improving the world. They are not just objective methodological principles; they are a comprehensive, constantly developing, and historical methodology.<br /> <br /> This methodology can be used to analyze contradictions [see Annotation 119, p. 123]<br /> <br /> in order to find the basic origins and motivations of both motion and developmental processes. Therefore, materialist dialectics is a great scientific tool for the revolutionary class to perceive and improve the world.<br /> <br /> With these basic features, materialist dialectics plays a very important role in the worldview and philosophical methodology of Marxism-Leninism. Materialist dialectics are the foundation of the scientific and revolutionary characteristics of Marxism-Leninism and also offer the most general worldview and methodology for creative activities in scientific study and practical activities.<br /> <br /> ==II. BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MATERIALIST DIALECTICS==<br /> <br /> Annotation 103<br /> <br /> HUMAN SOCIETY<br /> <br /> INDIVIDUAL<br /> <br /> PRINCIPLE OF<br /> <br /> PRINCIPLE OF<br /> <br /> GENERAL RELATIONSHIPS<br /> <br /> DEVELOPMENT<br /> <br /> (ALL THINGS,<br /> <br /> RELATIONSHIPS<br /> <br /> PHENOMENA, AND IDEAS<br /> <br /> DRIVE DEVELOPMENT<br /> <br /> ARE RELATED)<br /> <br /> SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY<br /> <br /> NATURE<br /> <br /> PRINCIPLE OF GENERAL RELATIONSHIPS<br /> <br /> AND PRINCIPLE OF DEVELOPMENT<br /> <br /> The Principle of General Relationships and the Principle of Development are the most basic principles of materialist dialectics. These two principles are dialectically related to one another.<br /> <br /> The following sections will outline the Principle of General Relationships and the Principle of Development, which are the most fundamental principles of materialist dialectics. These two concepts are closely (and dialectically) related:<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 107<br /> <br /> ==1. The Principle of General Relationships==<br /> <br /> a. Definition of Relationship and Common Relationship<br /> <br /> Annotation 104<br /> <br /> The Principle of General Relationships describes how all things, phenomena, and ideas are related to one another, and are defined by these internal and external relationships The Principle of Development relates to the idea that motion, change, and development are driven by internal and external relationships.<br /> <br /> These two principles are dialectically linked: any given subject is defined by its internal relationships, and these same relationships drive the development of every subject.<br /> <br /> Note: The foundation of the principles of Materialist Dialectics were laid out by Engels in Dialectics of Nature. Engels began working on Dialectics of Nature in February, 1870 and had to stop in 1876 to work on Anti-Dühring. He then restarted work on Dialectics of Nature in 1878 and continued working on it until 1883, when Karl Marx died.<br /> <br /> Engels felt that it was more important to try and put together Marx’s great unfinished works, Capital Volumes 2, 3, and 4, and so stopped working on Dialectics of Nature once again. So, unfortunately, Engels died before this seminal work on Materialist Dialectics could be completed, and what we have instead is an unfinished assemblage of notes.<br /> <br /> What follows in the rest of this book is a cohesive system of Materialist Dialectics which was built upon the foundations laid out by Engels in Dialectics of Nature and many other works of political and scholarly writing from various sources. This is the system of Materialist Dialectics studied by Vietnamese students and applied by Vietnamese communists today.<br /> <br /> Because this text comes from predominantly Vietnamese scholarship and ideological development, we have had to translate some terms into English which are not derived from the “canon” of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. In some cases, various terms have been consolidated into one concept. For example: Engels used the term “interconnection”<br /> <br /> (German: innern Zusammenhang, literally: “inner connections”) in Dialectics of Nature, but Vietnamese political scientists use the term “relationship.” Where Engels uses the term “motion” (German: Bewegung) modern Vietnamese communists tend to use the word “development.” Wherever this is the case, we have chosen to use the words in English which most closely match the language used in the original Vietnamese of this text.<br /> <br /> In materialist dialectics, the word relationship refers to the regulating principles, mutual interactions, and mutual transformations which exist between things, phenomena, and ideas, as well as those existing between aspects and factors within things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> Annotation 105<br /> <br /> Throughout this book, phenomenon/phenomena simply refers to anything that is observable by the human senses.<br /> <br /> Materialist dialectics examines relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas and within things, phenomena, and ideas. A relationship which occurs between two separate things or phenomena is referred to as an external relationship. A relationship which occurs within a thing or phenomenon is referred to as an internal relationship.<br /> <br /> 108<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 105 (continued)<br /> <br /> These terms are relative; sometimes a relationship may be internal in one context but external in a different context. For example, consider a solar system: When considering a solar system as a whole, the orbit of a moon around a planet may be considered as an internal relationship of the solar system. But when considering the moon as an isolated subject, its orbit around a planet may be seen as an external relationship which the moon has with the planet.<br /> <br /> Internal and External Relationships<br /> <br /> The diagram above illustrates different types of relationships: Object 1 has its own internal relationships (A), and, from its own perspective, it also has external relationships with Object 2 (B). From a wider perspective, the relationship between Object 1 and Object 2 (B) may be viewed as an internal relationship.<br /> <br /> This system of relationships (between Object 1 and Object 2) will also have external relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas (C).<br /> <br /> Relationships have a quality of generality, which refers to how frequently they occur between and within things, phenomena, and ideas. When we refer to general relationships, we are usually referring to relationships which exist broadly across many things, phenomena, and ideas. General relationships can exist both internally, within things, phenomena, and ideas, and externally, between things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> The most general relationships are universal relationships: these are relationships that exist between and within everything and all phenomena, and they are one of the two primary subjects of study of materialist dialectics. [The other primary subject of study is the Principle of Development; see page 119.]<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 109<br /> <br /> Annotation 106<br /> <br /> Universal Relationships<br /> <br /> ALL THINGS,<br /> <br /> PHENOMENA, AND IDEAS<br /> <br /> Y<br /> <br /> MORE GENERAL<br /> <br /> ALIT<br /> <br /> General Relationships<br /> <br /> MANY THINGS,<br /> <br /> PHENOMENA,AND IDEAS<br /> <br /> GENER<br /> <br /> LESS GENERAL<br /> <br /> Unique Relationships<br /> <br /> SPECIFIC THINGS,<br /> <br /> PHENOMENA, AND IDEAS<br /> <br /> Generality of Relationships in Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> The discussion of generality of relationships can seem confusing at first. What’s important to understand is that generality is a spectrum ranging from the least general relationships ( unique relationships, which only occur between two specific things/phenomena/ideas) and the most general relationships ( universal relationships, which occur between or within all things/phenomena/ideas).<br /> <br /> Of particular importance in the study of materialist dialectics are universal relationships which exist within and between all things, phenomena, and ideas [see below].<br /> <br /> Translation Note: In the original Vietnamese, the word “universal” is not used. Instead, the compound term “phổ biến nhất” is used, which literally means “most general.” In Vietnamese, this phrasing is commonly used to describe the concept of “universal” and it is thus not confusing to Vietnamese speakers. For this translation, we have opted to use the word “universal” because we feel it is less confusing and better explains the concept in English.<br /> <br /> The universal relationships include (but are not limited to):<br /> <br /> • Relationships between basic philosophical category pairs (Private and Common, Essence and Phenomenon, etc.).1<br /> <br /> • Relationships between quantity and quality.2<br /> <br /> • Relationships between opposites.3<br /> <br /> Together, in all forms of relationships in nature, society and human thought (special, general, and universal) there is unity in diversity and diversity in unity.<br /> <br /> 1 See Private and Common, p. 128; Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156.<br /> <br /> 2 See Annotation 117, p. 119.<br /> <br /> 3 See Annotation 190, p. 181.<br /> <br /> 110<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 107<br /> <br /> Principle of General Relationships<br /> <br /> According to Curriculum of the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism For University and College Students Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought: “ Materialist dialectics upholds the position that all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in mutual relationships with each other, regulate each other, transform into each other, and that nothing exists in complete isolation. That is the core idea of the Principle of General Relationships.”<br /> <br /> From this Principle, we find the characteristics of Diversity in Unity and Unity in Diversity; the basis of Diversity in Unity is the fact that every thing, phenomenon, or idea, contains many different relationships; the basis of Unity in Diversity is that many different relationships exist - unified - within each and every thing, phenomenon, and idea.<br /> <br /> Diversity in Unity<br /> <br /> There exist an infinite number of diverse relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas, but all of these relationships share the same foundation in the material world.<br /> <br /> An infinite diversity of relationships exist within the unity of the material world.<br /> <br /> The material world is not a chaotic and random assortment of things, phenomena, and ideas. Rather, it is a system of relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas. Likewise, since the material world exists as the foundation of all things, phenomena, and ideas, the material world is thus the foundation for all relationships within and between things, phenomena, and ideas. Because all relationships share a foundation in the material world, they also exist in unity, even though all relationships are diversified and different from one another.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 111<br /> <br /> Annotation 107 (continued)<br /> <br /> UNIVERSAL RELATIONSHIP<br /> <br /> INFINITELY DIVERSE MANIFESTATIONS<br /> <br /> UNITY IN DIVERSITY<br /> <br /> Universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas manifest in infinitely diverse ways.<br /> <br /> Unity in Diversity<br /> <br /> When we examine the universal relationships that exist within and between all different things, phenomena, and ideas, we will find that each individual manifestation of any universal relationship will have its own different manifestations, aspects, features, etc. Thus even the universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in infinite diversity.<br /> <br /> Paraphrased From: Curriculum of the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism For University and College Students Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought<br /> <br /> b. Characteristics of Relationships<br /> <br /> Objectiveness, generality, and diversity are the three basic characteristics of relationships.<br /> <br /> - The Characteristic of Objectiveness of Relationships According to the materialist dialectical viewpoint, relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas have objective characteristics.<br /> <br /> 112<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 108<br /> <br /> In materialist dialectics, objectiveness is an abstract concept that refers to the relative externality of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Every thing, phenomena and idea exists externally to every other thing, phenomena, and idea. This means that to each individual subject (i.e., each individual thing/phenomena/idea), all other things, phenomena, and ideas are external objects.<br /> <br /> EXTERNAL TO<br /> <br /> EACH OTHER<br /> <br /> ALL OTHER THINGS,<br /> <br /> ALICE<br /> <br /> PHENOMA, AND IDEAS<br /> <br /> All things, phenomena, and ideas have the relative characteristic of objectiveness .<br /> <br /> All together, the collection of all things, phenomena, and ideas in the universe create the external reality of any given subject. So, objectiveness is relative. In the case of human beings, every individual person exists as an individual subject to which all other things, phenomena, and ideas (including other human beings) have objective characteristics.<br /> <br /> Alice and Bob are external to one another; each is objective from the other’s perspective.<br /> <br /> Of course, objectiveness is always relative. Something might be external from a certain perspective but not from another perspective. For example, say there are two people: Bob and Alice. From Bob’s perspective, Alice has objective characteristics. But from Alice’s perspective, Bob would have objective characteristics.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 113<br /> <br /> Annotation 108 (continued)<br /> <br /> RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN<br /> <br /> BOB AND ALICE<br /> <br /> OBJECTIVE TO<br /> <br /> BOTH ALICE AND BOB<br /> <br /> ALICE<br /> <br /> BOB<br /> <br /> The relationship between Alice and Bob has objective characteristics to both Alice and Bob.<br /> <br /> As all relationships are inherently external to any given subject (even subjects which are party to the relationship), relationships also have objective characteristics.<br /> <br /> Whenever two things, phenomena, or ideas have a relationship with one another, they form a pair. The relationship is inherent to this pair and external to any subject which exists outside of the pair. The mutual interaction and mutual transformation which occurs to the things, phenomena, or objects within the pair as the result of the relationship are inherent and objective properties of the pair.<br /> <br /> Annotation 109<br /> <br /> Translation note:<br /> <br /> In the original Vietnamese text, the word for “objective” is “khách quan.” This is a compound word in which “khách” means “guest,” and “quan” means “point of view.”<br /> <br /> Therefore, “khách quan” literally means “the guest’s (or outsider’s) point of view.”<br /> <br /> Thus we translate this to “objectiveness/objective,” the characteristic of being viewed from the outside.<br /> <br /> The word “inherent” in the original Vietnamese is “vốn có.” This is another compound word: “vốn” is a shortened form of the word “vốn dĩ,” which means “by or through nature,” “naturally,” and “intrinsically.” “Có” means “to have” or “to exist.”<br /> <br /> “Vốn có” thus means “already existing naturally” or “already there, through nature.”<br /> <br /> So we use the word “inherent” to mean “existing intrinsically or naturally within, without external influence.”<br /> <br /> Human beings can’t change or impact external things and phenomena - and the relationships between them - through human will alone. Humans are limited to perceiving relationships between things and phenomena and then impacting or changing them through our practical activities.<br /> <br /> 114<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism<br /> <br /> - The Characteristic of Generality of Relationships<br /> <br /> According to the dialectical viewpoint, there is no thing, phenomenon, nor idea that exists in absolute isolation from other things, phenomena and ideas.<br /> <br /> Annotation 110<br /> <br /> Although all things, phenomena, and ideas have the characteristic of externality and objectiveness to all other things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 108, p. 112], this does not mean that they exist in isolation. Isolation implies a complete lack of any relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas. On the contrary, according to the Principle of General Relationships [see p. 107], all things, phenomena, and ideas have relationships with all other things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> Simultaneously, there is also no known thing, phenomenon, nor idea that does not have a systematic structure, including component parts which in turn have their own internal relationships. This means that every existence is a system, and, moreso, is an open system that exists in relation with other systems. All systems interact and mutually transform one another.<br /> <br /> Annotation 111<br /> <br /> As explained above, a systematic structure is a structure which includes within itself a system of component parts and relationships. It has been postulated by some scientific models that there may be some “fundamental base particle” (quarks, preons, etc.), which, if true, would mean that there is a certain basic material component which cannot be further broken down. However, this would not contradict the Principle of Materialist Dialectics of General Relationships (which states that all things, phenomena, and ideas interact with and mutually transform one another - see Annotation 107, p. 110).<br /> <br /> - The Characteristic of Diversity of Relationships<br /> <br /> In addition to affirming the objectiveness1 and generality2 of relationships, the dialectical viewpoint of Marxism-Leninism also emphasizes the diversity of relationships. The characteristic of diversity is defined by the following features:<br /> <br /> • All things, phenomena, and ideas have different relationships. Every relationship plays a distinct role in the existence and development of the things, phenomena, and ideas which are included within.<br /> <br /> • Any given relationship between things, phenomena, and ideas will have different characteristics and manifestations under different conditions and/or during different periods of motion and/or at different stages of development.<br /> <br /> Annotation 112<br /> <br /> One of Marx’s most critical observations was that things are defined by their internal and external relationships, including human beings. For example, in Theses on Feuerbach, Marx wrote that “the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations.” It is only through relationships - through mutual impacts and transformations - that things, phenomena, and ideas (including human beings and human societies) change and develop over time.<br /> <br /> All of these relationships - which both define and transform all things, phenomena, and ideas in existence - exist in infinite diversity [see Annotation 107, p. 110].<br /> <br /> 1 See Annotation 108, p. 112.<br /> <br /> 2 See p. 108.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 115<br /> <br /> Annotation 112 (continued)<br /> <br /> Just as things, phenomena, and ideas change and transform through the course of relations with one another, the nature of the relationships themselves also change and develop over time.<br /> <br /> Characteristics refer to the features and attributes that exist internally within a given thing, phenomena, or idea.<br /> <br /> Manifestation refers to how a given thing, phenomena, or idea is expressed externally in the material world.<br /> <br /> For example, a ball may have the characteristics of being made of rubber, having a mass of 100 grams, and having a melting point of 260℃. It may manifest by bouncing on the ground, having a spherical shape, and having a red appearance to human observers.<br /> <br /> If ten such balls exist, they will all be slightly different. Even if they have the same mass and material composition, they will have slightly different variations in size, shape, etc. Even if each ball will melt at 260℃, the melting will manifest differently for each ball - they will melt into slightly different shapes, at slightly different speeds, etc.<br /> <br /> Relationships also have characteristics and manifestations. For example, the moon’s orbit around the Earth is a relationship. It has characteristics such as the masses of each related body, forces of gravity, and other factors which produce and influence the orbit. The same orbital relationship also has manifestations such as the duration of the moon’s orbit around the Earth, the size of its ellipse, the orbit’s effects on the tides of the Earth’s ocean, etc.<br /> <br /> Characteristics and Manifestation correspond, respectively, to the philosophical category pair of Content and Form, which is discussed in section page 147.<br /> <br /> Therefore, no two relationships are exactly the same, even if they exist between very similar things, phenomena, and ideas and/or in very similar situations.<br /> <br /> It is also important to note that the characteristic of diversity also applies to things, phenomena, and ideas themselves. In other words, every individual thing, phenomenon, and idea in existence also manifests differently from every other thing, phenomenon, and idea in existence, even if they seem quite similar.<br /> <br /> c. Meaning of the Methodology<br /> <br /> Based on the objective and popular characteristics of relationships, we can see that in our cognitive and practical activities, we have to have a comprehensive viewpoint.<br /> <br /> Having a comprehensive viewpoint requires that in the process of perceiving and handling real life situations, humans have to consider the internal dialectical relationships between the component parts, factors, and aspects within a thing or phenomenon. We also need to consider the external mutual interactions they have with other things, phenomena, and ideas. Only on such a comprehensive basis can we properly understand things and phenomena and then effectively handle problems in real life. So, the comprehensive viewpoint is the opposite of a unilateral and/or metaphysical viewpoint [see Annotation 51, p. 49] in both perception and practice.<br /> <br /> 116<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Lenin said: “If we are to have true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all of its facets, its connections, and ‘mediacies [indirect relationships].’”1<br /> <br /> Annotation 113<br /> <br /> THE SUBJECT EXISTS<br /> <br /> AS A COLLECTION OF<br /> <br /> INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL<br /> <br /> RELATIONSHIPS<br /> <br /> COMPREHENSIVE VIEWPOINT<br /> <br /> The comprehensive viewpoint sees the subject in terms of all of its internal and external relationships.<br /> <br /> Consider a factory. A factory exists as a collection of internal relationships (between the workers, between machines, between the workers and the machines, etc.) and external relationships (between the factory and its suppliers, between the factory and its customers, between the factory and the city, etc.). In order to have a comprehensive viewpoint when examining the factory, one must consider and understand all of the internal and external relationships which define it.<br /> <br /> The diversified characteristic of relationships [see Annotation 107, p. 110] shows that in human cognitive and practical activities, we have to simultaneously use a comprehensive viewpoint and a historical viewpoint.<br /> <br /> Having a historical viewpoint requires that, in perceiving and handling real life situations, we need to consider the specific properties of subjects, including their current stage of motion and development. We also need to consider that the exact same methods can’t be used to deal with different situations in reality - our methods must be tailored to suit the exact situation based on material conditions.<br /> <br /> Annotation 114<br /> <br /> While the comprehensive viewpoint focuses on internal and external relationships of subjects, the historical viewpoint focuses on the specific properties of subjects - especially the current stage of motion and development. In order to have a proper historical viewpoint, we must study and understand the way a subject has developed and transformed over time. To do this, we must examine the history of the subject’s changes over time, hence the term “historical viewpoint.” In addition, it’s important to understand that no two situations which we might encounter will ever be exactly the same.<br /> <br /> This is because the component parts and relationships that make up any given situation will manifest differently.<br /> <br /> 1 Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 117<br /> <br /> Annotation 114 (continued)<br /> <br /> So, in order to properly deal with situations, we have to understand the component parts and relationships of examined subjects as well as their histories of development so that we can develop plans and strategies that are suitable to the unique circumstances at hand.<br /> <br /> For example, it would be disastrous if communists today tried to employ the exact same methods which were used by the Communist Party of Vietnam in the 20th century to defeat Japan, France, and the USA. This is because the material conditions and relationships of Vietnam in the 20th century were very different from any material conditions existing on Earth today. It is possible to learn lessons from studying the methods of the Vietnamese revolution and to adapt some such methods to our modern circumstances, but it would be extremely ineffective to try to copy those methods and strategies - exactly as they manifested then and there - to the here and now.<br /> <br /> In order to come up with suitable and effective solutions to deal with real life problems, we must clearly define the roles and positions of each specific relationship that comes into play, and the specific time, place, and material conditions in which they exist.<br /> <br /> Annotation 115<br /> <br /> UNDERSTAND ROLES AND POSITIONS<br /> <br /> OF RELATIONSHIPS AND PROPERTIES<br /> <br /> OF SUBJECTS<br /> <br /> UNDERSTAND DEVELOPMENT OF<br /> <br /> RELATIONSHIPS AND PROPERTIES<br /> <br /> OF SUBJECTS OVER TIME<br /> <br /> HISTORICAL VIEWPOINT<br /> <br /> A historical viewpoint focuses on the roles and positions of relationships and properties of subjects as well as their development over time.<br /> <br /> The role of a relationship has to do with how it functions within a system of relationships and the position refers to its placement amongst other subjects and relationships.<br /> <br /> Consider once again the example of the factory [see Annotation 113, p. 116]. In addition to its internal and external relationships, the factory also has various roles - it functions within various systems and from various perspectives. For instance, the factory may have the role of financial asset for the corporation that owns it, it may have the role of place of employment for the surrounding community, it may have the role of supplier for various customers, etc.<br /> <br /> 118<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 115 (continued)<br /> <br /> The factory is also positioned among other subjects and relations. If it’s the only employer in town then it would have a position of great importance to the people of the community. If, on the other hand, if it’s just one of hundreds of factories in a heavily industrialized area, it may have a position of much less importance. It may have a position of great importance to an individual factory worker who lives in poverty in an economy where there are very few available jobs, but of less importance to a freelance subcontractor for whom the factory is just one of many customers, and so on.<br /> <br /> These positions and roles will change over time. For example, the factory may initially exist as a small workshop with a small handful of workers, but it may grow into a massive factory with hundreds of employees. It is vital to understand this Principle of Development, which is discussed in more detail on the next page.<br /> <br /> In summary, proper dialectical materialist analysis requires a comprehensive and historical viewpoint - we must consider subjects both comprehensively in terms of the internal and external relationships of the subject itself as well as historically in terms of roles and positions of subjects, as well as their relationships, material conditions, and development over time.<br /> <br /> So, in both perception and practice, we have to avoid and overcome sophistry and eclectic viewpoints.<br /> <br /> Annotation 116<br /> <br /> Sophistry is the use of falsehoods and misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, and with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. This kind of bad faith argument has no place in materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics must, instead, be rooted in a true and accurate understanding of the subject, material conditions, and reality in general.<br /> <br /> Eclecticism is an incoherent approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject, applying different theories in different situations without any consistency in analysis and thought. Eclectic arguments are typically composed of various pieces of evidence that are cherry picked and pieced together to form a perspective that lacks clarity. By definition, because they draw from different systems of thought without seeking a clear and cohesive understanding of the totality of the subject and its internal and external relations and its development over time, eclectic arguments run counter to the comprehensive and historical viewpoints. Eclecticism is somewhat similar to dialectical materialism in that it attempts to consider a subject from many different perspectives, and analyzes relationships pertaining to a subject, but the major flaw of eclecticism is a lack of clear and coherent systems and principles, which leads to a chaotic viewpoint and an inability to grasp the true nature of the subject at hand.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 119<br /> <br /> ==2. Principle of Development==<br /> <br /> a. Definition of Development<br /> <br /> According to the metaphysical viewpoint, development is simply a quantitative increase or decrease; the metaphysical viewpoint does not account for qualitative changes of things and phenomena. Simultaneously, the metaphysical viewpoint also views development as a process of continuous progressions which follow a linear and straightforward path.<br /> <br /> Annotation 117<br /> <br /> In materialist dialectics, it is important to distinguish between quantity and quality.<br /> <br /> Quantity describes the total amount of component parts that compose a subject.<br /> <br /> Quality describes the unity of component parts, taken together, which defines the subject and distinguishes it from other subjects.<br /> <br /> Both quantity and quality are dynamic attributes; over time, the quantity and quality of all things develop and change over time through the development of internal and external relationships. Quantity and quality itself form a dialectical relationship, and as quantity develops, quality will also develop. A given subject may be described by various quantity and quality relationships.<br /> <br /> Example 1:<br /> <br /> Quantity: 1 = Quality: Football Player<br /> <br /> Quantity: 11 = Quality: Football Team<br /> <br /> In the process of development, Quantity Change leads to Quality Change A single football player, alone, has the quantity value of 1 football player and the quality of a football player. Eleven football players on a field would have the quantity value of 1 and will develop the quality of a football team. This subject, football team, is composed of the same component parts as the subject football player, but the quantity change and other properties (being on a field, playing a game or practicing, etc.) change the quality of the component parts into a different stable and unified form which we call a football team.<br /> <br /> 120<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 117 (continued)<br /> <br /> The relationship between quantity and quality is dynamic:<br /> <br /> If one of the players doesn’t show up for practice, and there are only ten players on the field, it might still have the quality of football team, but in a live professional game there will be a certain threshold - a minimum number of players who must be present to officially be considered a team. If this number of players can’t be fielded then they will not be considered a full team and thus won’t be allowed to play.<br /> <br /> Likewise, if there are only one or two players practicing together in a park, they would probably not be considered a football team (though they might be described in terms of having the quality of being on the same team).<br /> <br /> Example 2:<br /> <br /> Quantity: 1 O + 2 H atoms<br /> <br /> Quantity: Billions of H2O Molecules<br /> <br /> Quantity: ~5,000 Drops of Water<br /> <br /> Quality: Water<br /> <br /> Quality: Drop of Water<br /> <br /> Quality: Cup of Water<br /> <br /> DEVELOPMENT: QUANTITY CHANGE LEADS TO QUALITY CHANGE<br /> <br /> All of these have the quality of water because of the molecular quantities of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, however, from the perspective of volume, quantity changes still lead to quality changes.<br /> <br /> The properties of quantity and quality are relative, depending on the viewpoint of analysis.<br /> <br /> A single molecule of water has a quantity of one in terms of molecules, but it still retains the quality of “water” because of the quantities of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms per molecule which, in this stable form, give it the quality of water.<br /> <br /> A drop of water might have a quantity of many billions of molecules, but it would still have the quality of “water.” It would also now assume the quality of a “drop.”<br /> <br /> When you combine enough drops of water, you will eventually have a quality shift where the “drops” of water combine to form another quality - i.e., a “cup” of water.<br /> <br /> The quantity change leads to a change in quantity; we would no longer think of the water in terms of “drops” after the quantity rises to a certain level.<br /> <br /> In terms of temperature and physical properties, if the water is heated to a certain point it will boil and the water will become steam. The quantity of water in terms of drops wouldn’t change, but the quantity-value of temperature would eventually lead to a quality value change from “water” to “steam.”<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 121<br /> <br /> Annotation 117 (continued)<br /> <br /> Example 3:<br /> <br /> INFANT BABY TODDLER CHILD<br /> <br /> TEEN<br /> <br /> ADULT<br /> <br /> OLD AGE<br /> <br /> CORPSE<br /> <br /> AS QUANTITY OF AGE INCREASES, QUALITY CHANGES<br /> <br /> The same human being will undergo various quality changes as age quantity increases over time.<br /> <br /> As humans age and the quantity of years we’ve lived builds up over time, our “quality” also changes, from baby, to child, to teenager, to young adult, to middle age, to old age, and eventually to death. The individual person is still the same human being, but the quality of the person will shift over time as the quantity-value of age increases.<br /> <br /> Metaphysical vs. Dialectical Materialist Conceptions of Change QUANTITY CHANGE<br /> <br /> METAPHYSICAL CONCEPTION OF CHANGE:<br /> <br /> LINEAR, QUANTITY ONLY<br /> <br /> QUANTITY CHANGE<br /> <br /> QUALITY SHIFT<br /> <br /> MATERIALIST DIALECTIC CONCEPTION OF CHANGE:<br /> <br /> FLUID, DYNAMIC, QUANTIY + QUALITY<br /> <br /> Metaphysics only consider linear properties of quantity change; Materialist Dialectics takes quantity changes and quality shifts into consideration when considering change over time.<br /> <br /> Because the metaphysical perspective tries to define the world in terms of static, isolated subjects, only quantity is considered and quality shifts are not taken into account.<br /> <br /> Thus, metaphysical logic sees development as linear, simple, and straightforward. Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, sees development as a more complicated, fluid, and dynamic process involving multiple internal and external relationships changing in quantity and quality over time.<br /> <br /> 122<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism In contrast to the metaphysical viewpoint, in materialist dialectics, development refers to the motion of things and phenomena with a forward tendency: from less advanced to more advanced, from a less complete to a more complete level.<br /> <br /> Annotation 118<br /> <br /> In materialist dialectics, motion (also known as change) is the result of mutual impacts between or within things, phenomena, and ideas, and all motion and change results from mutual impacts which themselves result from internal and external relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas. Any given motion/change leads to quantity changes, and these quantity changes cumulatively lead to quality changes [see Annotation 117, p. 119]. Grasping this concept - that development is driven by relations - is critically important for understanding materialist dialectics.<br /> <br /> EXTERNAL<br /> <br /> RELATIONSHIPS<br /> <br /> INTERNAL<br /> <br /> RELATIONSHIPS<br /> <br /> Internal/External Relations<br /> <br /> Change/development leads<br /> <br /> Quantity changes lead to<br /> <br /> drive change/development.<br /> <br /> to quantity changes.<br /> <br /> quality shifts.<br /> <br /> The concept of “change” in materialist dialectics centers on internal and external relationships causing mutual impacts which lead to quantity changes which build into quality shifts.<br /> <br /> This process, taken in total, is referred to as development. Development represents the entire process in which internal and external change/motion leads to changes in quantity which in turn lead to changes in quality over time. The process of development can be fast or slow, complex or simple, and can even move backwards, and all of these properties are relative. Development has a tendency to develop from less advanced to more advanced forms. The word tendency is used to denote phenomena, development, and motion which inclines in a particular direction. There may be exceptional cases which contradict such tendencies, but the general motion will incline towards one specific manner. Thus, it is important to note that “development” is not necessarily<br /> <br /> “good” nor “bad.” In some cases, “development” might well be considered “bad,” or unwanted. For example, rust developing on a car is typically not desired. So, the tendency of development from lower to higher levels of advancement implies a “forward motion,” though this motion can take an infinite number of forms, depending on the relative perspective. Development can also (temporarily) halt in a state of equilibrium<br /> <br /> [see Annotation 64, p. 62] or it can shift direction; though it can never “reverse,” just as time itself can never be “reversed.”<br /> <br /> For example, during a flood, water may “develop” over the land, and as the flood-waters recede this may alternatively be viewed as another “forward” development process of recession - a development of the overall “flooding and receding” process.<br /> <br /> The flood is not actually “reversing” - the development is not being “undone.” Flood water may recede but it will leave behind many traces and impacts; thus it is not a true<br /> <br /> “reversal” of development.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 123<br /> <br /> Annotation 118 (continued)<br /> <br /> Development Process of a Flood<br /> <br /> t<br /> <br /> essionec elopmenevlood R<br /> <br /> Development Process of Flood Recession<br /> <br /> ess of D<br /> <br /> Flood and F Proc<br /> <br /> Both flooding and flood recession are development processes with the same forward tendency.<br /> <br /> Flood recession may appear to be a “reversal,” but it is in fact forward development.<br /> <br /> The false belief that development can be reversed is the root of conservative and reactionary positions [see Annotation 208, p. 202].<br /> <br /> Development can be considered positive or negative, depending on perspective.<br /> <br /> Some ecosystems have natural flood patterns which are vital for sustaining life. For a person living in a flood zone, however, the flood would most likely be considered an unwanted development, whereas flood recession would be a welcomed development.<br /> <br /> It is important to note that the definition of development is not identical to the concept of “motion” (change) in general. It is not merely a simple quantitative increase or decrease, nor a repetitive cyclic change in quantity. Instead, in materialist dialectics, development is defined in terms of qualitative changes with the direction of advancing towards higher and more advanced levels. [See diagram Relationship Between Motion, Quantity/Quality Shifts, and Dialectical Development, Annotation 119, below]<br /> <br /> Development is also the process of creating and solving objective contradictions within and between things and phenomena. Development is thus the unified process of negating negative factors while retaining and advancing positive factors from old things and phenomena as they transform into new things and phenomena.<br /> <br /> Annotation 119<br /> <br /> A contradiction is a relationship in which two forces oppose one another. Although a contradiction might exist in equilibrium for some amount of time [see Annotation 64, p.<br /> <br /> 62], eventually, one force will overcome the other, resulting in a change of quality. This process of overcoming is called negation. In short, development is a process of change in a subject’s quantity as well as negation of contradictions within and between subjects, leading to quality shifts over time.<br /> <br /> 124<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism<br /> <br /> b. Characteristics of Development<br /> <br /> Every development has the characteristics of objectiveness,1 generality,2 and diversity.3<br /> <br /> The characteristic of objectiveness of development stems from the origin of motion.<br /> <br /> Annotation 120<br /> <br /> Remember that, in materialist dialectics, objectiveness is the relative characteristic that every subject has of existing and developing externally to all other subjects [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. Since motion originates from mutual impacts which occur between external things, objects, and relationships, the motions themselves also occur externally (relative to all other things, phenomena, and objects). This gives motion itself objective characteristics.<br /> <br /> RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN<br /> <br /> MOTION, QUANTITY/QUALITY SHIFTS, AND DIALECTICAL DEVELOPMENT<br /> <br /> MOTION<br /> <br /> QUANTITY SHIFT<br /> <br /> QUALITY SHIFT<br /> <br /> DIALECTICAL DEVELOPMENT<br /> <br /> Dialectical Development consists of Quantity and Quality Shifts, which in turn derive from motion.<br /> <br /> Development is derived from motion as a process of quality shifting which arise from quantity changes which arise from motion [see Annotation 117, p. 119]. Since development is essentially an accumulation of motion, and motion is objective, development itself must also be objective.<br /> <br /> The Principle of Development states that development is a process that comes from within the thing-in-itself; the process of solving the contradictions within things and phenomena. Therefore, development is inevitable, objective, and occurs without dependence on human will.<br /> <br /> Annotation 121<br /> <br /> The “thing-in-itself” refers to the actual material object which exists outside of our consciousness [see Annotation 72, p. 68]. Development arises from motion and self-motion [see Annotation 62, p. 59] with objective characteristics. Although human will can impact motion and development through conscious activity in the material world<br /> <br /> [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88], motion and development can and does occur without being dependent on human will. Human will is neither a requirement nor prerequisite for motion and development to occur.<br /> <br /> 1 See: Annotation 108, p. 112.<br /> <br /> 2 See: Annotation 106, p. 109.<br /> <br /> 3 See: Annotation 107, p. 110.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 125<br /> <br /> Development has the characteristic of generality because development occurs in every process that exists in every field of nature, society, and human thought; in every thing, every phenomenon, and every idea and at every stage* of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Every transformation process contains the possibility that it might lead to the birth of a new thing, phenomenon, or idea [through a change in quality, i.e. development].<br /> <br /> Annotation 122<br /> <br /> In materialist dialectics, “stage” (or “stage of development”) refers to the current quantity and quality characteristics which a thing, phenomenon, or object possesses.<br /> <br /> Every time a quality change occurs, a new stage of development is entered into.<br /> <br /> Development has the characteristic of diversity because every thing, phenomenon, and idea has its own process of development that is not totally identical to the process of development of any other thing, phenomenon, or idea. Things and phenomena will develop differently in different spaces and times. Simultaneously, within their own processes of development, things, phenomena, and ideas are impacted by other things, phenomena, and ideas, as well as by many other factors and historical conditions. Such impacts can change the direction of development of things, phenomena, and ideas. They can even temporarily set development back, and/or can lead to growth in one aspect but degeneration in another.<br /> <br /> Annotation 123<br /> <br /> Because development has the characteristic of generality and the characteristic of diversity, the principle of diversity in unity and unity in diversity also applies to development [see: Annotation 107, p. 110].<br /> <br /> c. Meaning of the Methodology<br /> <br /> Materialist dialectics upholds that the principle of development is the scientific theoretical basis that we must use to guide our perception of the world and to improve the world. Therefore, in our perception and reality, we have to have a development viewpoint.<br /> <br /> According to Lenin: “dialectical logic requires that an object should be considered in development, in change, in ‘self-movement.”1<br /> <br /> This development viewpoint [which holds that all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly developing, and that development is thus unavoidable] requires us to overcome conservatism, stagnation2, and prejudice, which are all opposed to development.<br /> <br /> Annotation 124<br /> <br /> Conservatism and prejudice are mindsets which seek to prevent and stifle development and to hold humanity in a static position. Not only is this detrimental to humanity, it is also ultimately a wasted effort, because development is inevitable in human society, as in all things, phenomena, and ideas. Therefore, we must avoid and fight against such stagnant mindsets.<br /> <br /> According to this development viewpoint, in order to perceive or solve any problem in real life, we must consider all things, phenomena, and ideas with their own forward 1 Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921. See also: Mode and Forms of Matter, p. 59.<br /> <br /> 2 See Annotation 62, p. 59.<br /> <br /> 126<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism tendency of development taken in mind. On the other hand, the path of development is a dialectical process that is reversible and full of contradictions. Therefore, we must be aware of this complexity in our analysis and planning. This means we need to have a historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116] which accounts for the diversity and complexity of development in perceiving and solving issues in reality.<br /> <br /> Annotation 125<br /> <br /> Materialist dialectics requires us to consider the complexity and constant motion of reality. By comparison, the metaphysical viewpoint (which considers all things, phenomena, and ideas as static, isolated entities which have linear and simple processes of development) stands as a barrier to understanding this complexity and incorporating it into our worldview. Thus, it is vital that we develop comprehensive and historical viewpoints which acknowledge the diversity and complexity of reality.<br /> <br /> In summary, as a science of common relations and development, Marxist-Leninist materialist dialectics serve a very important role in perception and practice. Engels affirmed the role of materialist dialectics in this passage:<br /> <br /> “An exact representation of the universe, of its evolution, of the development of mankind, and of the reflection of this evolution in the minds of men, can therefore only be obtained by the methods of dialectics, with its constant regard to the innumerable actions and reactions of life and death, of progressive or retrogressive changes.”<br /> <br /> Lenin also said: “Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their concrete development, but not a patchwork of bits and pieces.”1<br /> <br /> ==III. BASIC PAIRS OF CATEGORIES OF MATERIALIST DIALECTICS==<br /> <br /> Category* is the most general grouping of aspects, attributes, and relations of things, phenomena, and ideas. Different specific fields of inquiry may categorize things, phenomena, and/or ideas differently from one another.<br /> <br /> Annotation 126<br /> <br /> * Translation note: In Vietnamese, the word “phạm trù” is used here, which translates in this context more closely to the English philosophical term “category of being,”<br /> <br /> which means “the most general, fundamental, or broadest class of entities.” “Category of being” is sometimes simplified in English-language philosophical discourse to “category,” which we have chosen to do here for ease of reading and to better reflect the way it reads in the original Vietnamese.<br /> <br /> Every science has its own systems of categories that reflect the aspects, attributes, and basic relations that fall within its scope of study. For example, mathematics contains the categories “arithmetic,” “geometry,” “point,” “plane,” and “constant.” Physics contains the categories of “mass,” “speed,” “acceleration,” and “force,” and so on. Economics includes “commodity,” “value,” “price,” “monetary,” and “profit” categories.<br /> <br /> Every such category reflects only the common relations found within the specific fields that fall within the scope of study of a specific science.<br /> <br /> 1 Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 127<br /> <br /> Categories of materialist dialectics, on the other hand, such as “matter,” “consciousness,”<br /> <br /> “motion,” “contradiction,” “quality,” “quantity,” “reason,” and “result,” are different.<br /> <br /> Categories of materialist dialectics reflect the most general aspects and attributes, as well as the most basic and general relations, of not just some specific fields of study, but of the whole of reality, including all of nature, society and human thought.<br /> <br /> Every thing, phenomenon, and idea has many properties, including: a reason for existing in its current form, a process of motion and change, contradictions, content, form, and so on. These properties are aspects, attributes, and relations that are reflected in the categories of materialist dialectics. Therefore, the relationship between the categories of specific sciences and categories of materialist dialectics is a dialectical relationship between the Private and the Common [see Private and Common, p. 128].<br /> <br /> Annotation 127<br /> <br /> The categories of specific sciences are limited to the scope of study, while the categories of materialist dialectics encompass all things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> Unlike the categories contained within specific scientific fields, the philosophical categories of materialist dialectics can be used to analyze and define all things, phenomena, and ideas. The categories of specific scientific fields and the materialist dialectical categories have a Private/Common dialectical relationship [discussed on the next page].<br /> <br /> As a science of general relations and development, materialist dialectics summarizes the most general relations of every field of nature, society, and human thought into basic category pairs: Private and Common, Reason and Result, Obviousness and Randomness, Content and Form, Essence and Phenomenon, Possibility and Reality.<br /> <br /> 128<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 128<br /> <br /> Every individual materialist dialectical category has a dialectical relationship with another materialist dialectical category. Thus, all categories in materialist dialectics are presented as category pairs. So, a category pair is simply a pair of categories within materialist dialectics which have a dialectical relationship with one another.<br /> <br /> Note that the this formalized system of category pairs reflects many decades of work by Vietnamese philosophical and political scientists based on the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other socialist thinkers. Also note that these are not the only category pairs that can be discussed; there are potentially an infinite number of categories which can be used in materialist dialectical analysis. However, universal category pairs, which can be applied to analyze any and all things, phenomena, and ideas, are much fewer and farther between. That said, the universal category pairs discussed in this book are the ones which have most often been used by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other prominent materialist dialecticians.<br /> <br /> ==1. Private and Common==<br /> <br /> a. Categories of Private and Common<br /> <br /> The Private Category encompasses specific things, phenomena, and ideas; the Common Category defines the common aspects, attributes, factors, and relations that exist in many things and phenomena.<br /> <br /> Within every Private thing, phenomenon, and idea, there exists the Common, and also the Unique. The Unique encompasses the attributes and characteristics that exist in only one specific thing, phenomenon, or idea, and does not repeat in any other things, phenomena, or ideas.<br /> <br /> Annotation 129<br /> <br /> PRIVATE CATEGORY<br /> <br /> COMMON CATEGORY<br /> <br /> The Private category includes<br /> <br /> specific individual things,<br /> <br /> phenomena and ideas.<br /> <br /> The Common category<br /> <br /> includes aspects, factors, and<br /> <br /> relations that exist in many<br /> <br /> things, phenomena, and<br /> <br /> APPLE A<br /> <br /> APPLE B<br /> <br /> ideas. For example, say there<br /> <br /> are two apples: Apple A and<br /> <br /> TWO PRIVATE APPLES<br /> <br /> APPLES IN COMMON<br /> <br /> Apple B. Apple A is a specific<br /> <br /> individual object. Apple B is another distinct, separate object. In that sense, both apples are private apples, and fall within the Private category.<br /> <br /> However, both Apple A and Apple B share common attributes. For instance, they are both fruits of the same type: “apple.” They may have other attributes in common: they may be the same color, they may have the same basic shape, they may be of similar size, etc. These are common attributes which they share. Thus, Apple A and Apple B<br /> <br /> will also fall within the common category, based on these common attributes.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 129<br /> <br /> Annotation 129 (continued)<br /> <br /> Apple A and Apple B will also have unique attributes. Only Apple A has the exact molecules in the exact place and time which compose Apple A. There is no other object in the world which has those same molecules in that same place and time. This means that Apple A also has unique properties.<br /> <br /> PRIVATE<br /> <br /> OBJECT B<br /> <br /> B<br /> <br /> PRIVATE<br /> <br /> OBJECT A<br /> <br /> A<br /> <br /> COMMON OF A AND B<br /> <br /> COMMON OF A, B, AND C<br /> <br /> C COMMON OF B AND C<br /> <br /> PRIVATE<br /> <br /> OBJECT C<br /> <br /> COMMON OF A AND C<br /> <br /> DIAGRAM OF PRIVATE AND COMMON ATTRIBUTES<br /> <br /> All private subjects have attributes in common with other private subjects.<br /> <br /> The Common and Private categories have a dialectical relationship. The Common contains the Private, and the Private contains the Common. Every private subject has some attributes in common with other private subjects, and common attributes can only exist among private subjects. Thus every thing, phenomenon, and idea in existence contains internally within itself dialectical relationships between the Private and the Common, and has dialectical Private/Common relationships externally within other things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> A<br /> <br /> ALL OTHER<br /> <br /> THINGS, PHENOMENA, AND IDEAS<br /> <br /> IN THE UNIVERSE<br /> <br /> COMMON ATTRIBUTES<br /> <br /> UNIQUE ATTRIBUTES<br /> <br /> OF PRIVATE OBJECT A<br /> <br /> OF PRIVATE OBJECT A<br /> <br /> DIAGRAM OF UNIQUE AND COMMON ATTRIBUTES<br /> <br /> All private subjects have attributes in common with other private subjects.<br /> <br /> It is also true that every private subject contains within itself Unique attributes which it does not share with any other thing, phenomenon, or idea. For example, Mount Everest is unique in that it is 8,850 meters tall. No other mountain on Earth has that exact same height. Therefore, the private subject “Mount Everest” has unique properties which it does not share with any other subject, even though it has other attributes in common with countless other private entities.<br /> <br /> 130<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 129 (continued)<br /> <br /> UNIQUE<br /> <br /> COMMON<br /> <br /> Alice is the only human being in the universe<br /> <br /> Alice shares personhood with Bob.<br /> <br /> with all the specific traits, characteristics,<br /> <br /> From a humanity-encompassing perspective,<br /> <br /> and relationships of Alice.<br /> <br /> Alice and Bob constitute an internal relationship<br /> <br /> In this sense, Alice is unique from any<br /> <br /> of humanity.<br /> <br /> given perspective.<br /> <br /> Alice simultaneously contains<br /> <br /> the unique, private, and common.<br /> <br /> ALICE<br /> <br /> BOB<br /> <br /> RELATIONSHIP<br /> <br /> PRIVATE<br /> <br /> Alice and Bob have a unique relationship, though<br /> <br /> Alice is a different person from Bob.<br /> <br /> their relationship also contains the private<br /> <br /> From her perspective, she has an<br /> <br /> and the common.<br /> <br /> external relationship with Bob.<br /> <br /> All things, phenomena, and ideas contain the unique, the private, and the common.<br /> <br /> Whenever two individual subjects have a relationship with one another, that relationship is a unique relationship in the sense that it is a relationship that is shared only by those two specific subjects; however, there will also be common attributes and properties which any such relationship will share with other relationships in existence. This recalls the principle of Unity in Diversity and Diversity in Unity [see Annotation 107, p.<br /> <br /> 110]. So, every thing, phenomenon, and idea contains the Common and the Unique and has unique and common relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> This category pair is very useful in developing a comprehensive viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116]. Remember that a comprehensive viewpoint indicates an understanding of the internal and external relations of a given subject. This means that in order to develop a comprehensive viewpoint, you must know the private aspects of each individual relation, component, and aspect of the subject, and you must also study the commonalities of the subject as well. It’s also important to study a variety of private information sources or data points to look for commonalities between them. In other words, if you want to have a proper comprehensive viewpoint [see Annotation 113, p. 116] about any subject, you have to find and analyze as many private data points and pieces of evidence as possible.<br /> <br /> For example: If a person only ever saw one apple, a green apple, then that person might believe that “all apples are green.” This conclusion would be premature: the person is attempting to make an assumption about the Common without examining enough Privates. This is a failure of mistaking mistaking the Private for the Common which stems from a lack of a comprehensive viewpoint.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 131<br /> <br /> Annotation 129 (continued)<br /> <br /> Now, let’s take a look at an example of how the “Unique” can become “Common,”<br /> <br /> and vice-versa:<br /> <br /> 1947<br /> <br /> TODAY<br /> <br /> KALASHNIKOV’S<br /> <br /> KALASHNIKOV’S<br /> <br /> PROTOTYPE AK-47<br /> <br /> PROTOTYPE AK-47<br /> <br /> UNIQUE:<br /> <br /> UNIQUE:<br /> <br /> Only AK-47<br /> <br /> Only first prototype AK-47<br /> <br /> PRIVATE:<br /> <br /> PRIVATE:<br /> <br /> A specific object<br /> <br /> A specific object<br /> <br /> COMMON:<br /> <br /> COMMON:<br /> <br /> Shares features with other rifles<br /> <br /> Shares features with other AK-47s<br /> <br /> (and with other rifles)<br /> <br /> Private/Common<br /> <br /> Development of Kalashnikov’s Prototype AK-47<br /> <br /> “Unique” things, phenomena, and ideas can become “common” through development processes (and vice-versa).<br /> <br /> In 1941, a Soviet soldier named Mikhail Kalashnikov was in the hospital after being wounded in the Battle of Bryansk. Another soldier in the hospital said to Kalashnikov, “why do our soldiers only have one rifle for two or three of our men, while the Germans have automatics?” To solve this problem, Kalashnikov designed the AK-47<br /> <br /> machine gun. When he finished making the first prototype, it was the only AK-47 in the world.<br /> <br /> At this precise moment, the AK-47 was simultaneously Unique, Private, and Common.<br /> <br /> It was Unique because it was the first and only AK-47 in the world, and no other object in the world had those properties. It was Private because it was a specific object with its own individual existence. It was Common - even though it was the only existing prototype - because it shared Common features with other rifles, and with other prototypes. It was the only AK-47 in existence.<br /> <br /> 132<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 129 (continued)<br /> <br /> Soon, however, the Soviet Union began manufacturing them, and they became very common. Now there are millions of AK-47s in the world. So, today, that prototype machine gun remains simultaneously Unique, Private, and Common, with some slight developments:<br /> <br /> It remains Private because it is a specific object with its own individual existence.<br /> <br /> Even though it is no longer the only AK-47 in existence, it remains Unique because it is still the very first AK-47 that was ever made, and even though there are now many other AK-47s, there is no other rifle in the universe that shares that same unique property. It remains Common because it still shares common features with other rifles and other prototypes, but it now also shares commonality with many other AK-47 rifles. It is no longer Unique for having the properties of an AK-47 in and of itself.<br /> <br /> If someone were to destroy Kalashnikov’s prototype AK-47, the Private of that object would no longer exist - it would remain only as an idea, and the Private would transform to whatever becomes of the material components of the rifle. The Unique would also no longer remain specifically as it was before being destroyed. However, there would still be many other AK-47s which would share common features related to that prototype; for instance, that they were all designed based on the prototype’s design.<br /> <br /> Translator’s Note: The words “Private,” “Common,” and “Unique” may seem un-usual because they are direct translations from the Vietnamese words used to describe these concepts in the original text. Various other words have been used by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other materialist dialecticians when discussing the underlying concepts of these philosophical categories. For instance, in most translations of Lenin, his discussion of such topics is typically translated into English using words such as<br /> <br /> “universal,” “general,” “special,” “particular,” etc.<br /> <br /> Example (from Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks): “Language in essence expresses only the universal; what is meant, however, is the special, the particular. Hence what is meant cannot be said in speech.” Here, “universal” refers to that which is Common in all things, phenomena, and ideas, and “special/particular” refers to the Private - s pecific individual things, phenomena, and ideas - along with their Unique properties.<br /> <br /> Here are excerpts from Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks discussing these concepts: (‘It?’ The most universal word of all.)<br /> <br /> Who is it? I. Every person is an I.<br /> <br /> Das Sinnliche? It is a universal, etc., etc. ‘This??’ Everyone is ‘this.’<br /> <br /> Why can the particular not be named? One of the objects of a given kind (tables) is distinguished by something from the rest. . .<br /> <br /> Leaves of a tree are green; John is a man; Fido is a dog, etc. Here already we have dialectics (as Hegel’s genius recognised): the individual is the universal. . .<br /> <br /> And a naïve confusion, a helplessly pitiful confusion in the dialectics of the universal and the particular - of the concept and the sensuously perceptible reality of individual objects, things, phenomena.<br /> <br /> Further, the ‘subsumption’ under logical categories of ‘sensibility’ (Sensibil-ität), ‘irritability’ (irritabilität) - this is said to be the particular in contrast to the universal!! - and ‘reproduction’ is an idle game.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 133<br /> <br /> Annotation 129 (continued)<br /> <br /> Marx, too, discussed these concepts using words which are commonly translated into English using different terms. For example, in Capital: The general form of relative value, embracing the whole world of commodities, converts the single commodity that is excluded from the rest, and made to play the part of equivalent – here the linen – into the universal equivalent.<br /> <br /> Here, “general form” refers to the commonalities of form that exist between all commodities. The “single commodity” refers to a private commodity; a specific commodity that exists separately from all other commodities. And when referring to a “universal equivalent,” Marx is referring to equivalence which such a commodity has in common with every other commodity.<br /> <br /> The rest of this passage continues as a materialist dialectical analysis of the Private, Common, and Unique features and aspects of commodities: The bodily form of the linen is now the form assumed in common by the values of all commodities; it therefore becomes directly exchangeable with all and every of them. The substance linen becomes the visible incarnation, the social chrysalis state of every kind of human labour. Weaving, which is the labour of certain private individuals producing a particular article, linen, acquires in consequence a social character, the character of equality with all other kinds of labour.<br /> <br /> The innumerable equations of which the general form of value is composed, equate in turn the labour embodied in the linen to that embodied in every other commodity, and they thus convert weaving into the general form of manifestation of undifferentiated human labour. In this manner the labour realised in the values of commodities is presented not only under its negative aspect, under which abstraction is made from every concrete form and useful property of actual work, but its own positive nature is made to reveal itself expressly. The general value form is the reduction of all kinds of actual labour to their common character of being human labour generally, of being the expenditure of human labour power. The general value form, which represents all products of labour as mere congelations of undifferentiated human labour, shows by its very structure that it is the social resumé of the world of commodities. That form consequently makes it indisputably evident that in the world of commodities the character possessed by all labour of being human labour constitutes its specific social character.<br /> <br /> We have chosen to use the terms “Private,” “Common,” and “Unique” in the translation of this text because they most closely match the words used in the original Vietnamese. In summary, it is important to realize that you may encounter the underlying concepts which are related by these words using various phrasings in the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc.<br /> <br /> b. Dialectical Relationship Between Private and Common<br /> <br /> According to the materialist dialectical viewpoint: the Private, the Common and the Unique exist objectively [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. The Common only exists within the Private. It expresses its existence through the Private.<br /> <br /> 134<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 130<br /> <br /> The Common can’t exist as a specific thing, phenomenon, or idea. However, every specific thing, phenomenon, or idea exists as a private subject which has various features in common with other private things, phenomena, and ideas. We can therefore only understand the Common through observation and study of various private things, phenomena, and ideas. For example, a human can’t perceive with our senses alone the Common of apples. Only by observing many private apples can begin to derive an understanding of what all private apples have in common.<br /> <br /> The Common does not exist in isolation from the Private. Therefore, commonality is inseparable from things, phenomena, and ideas. The Private only exists in relation to the Common. Likewise, there is no Private that exists in complete isolation from the Common.<br /> <br /> Annotation 131<br /> <br /> No commonality can possibly exist outside of private things, phenomena, and ideas because commonality describes features which different things, phenomena, and ideas share. No private thing, phenomenon, or idea can possibly exist absolutely without commonality because there is no thing, phenomenon, or idea that shares absolutely no features with any other thing, phenomenon, or idea.<br /> <br /> The Private category is more all-encompassing and diverse than the Common category; Common is a part of Private but it is more profound and more “essential” than the Private. This is because Private is the synthesis of the Common and the Unique; the Common expresses generality and the regular predictability of many Privates.<br /> <br /> Annotation 132<br /> <br /> The Private encompasses all aspects of a specific, individual thing, phenomenon, or idea; thus it encompasses all aspects, features, and attributes of a given subject, including both the Common and the Unique. In this way, the Private is the synthesis of the Common and the Unique.<br /> <br /> Common attributes require more consideration, effort, and study to properly determine, because multiple private subjects must be considered and analyzed before common attributes can be confidently discovered and understood. They offer us a more profound understanding of the essence [see Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156]<br /> <br /> and nature of things, phenomena, and ideas because they offer insights into the relationships between and within different things, phenomena, and ideas. As we discover more commonalities, and understand them more deeply, we begin to develop a more comprehensive perspective of reality. We begin to develop an understanding of the laws and principles which govern relations between and within things, phenomena, and ideas, and this gives us the power to more accurately predict how processes will develop and how things, phenomena, and ideas will change and mutually impact one another over time.<br /> <br /> Under specific conditions, the Common and the Unique can transform into each other<br /> <br /> [See Annotation 129, p. 128].<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 135<br /> <br /> The dialectical relationship between Private and Common was summarised by Lenin:<br /> <br /> “Consequently, the opposites (the individual as opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects.<br /> <br /> Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, ideas) etc.”1 [Note: “individual and universal” here refer the same underlying concepts of “Private and Common” (respectively); see translator’s note on p. 132].<br /> <br /> c. Meaning of the Methodology<br /> <br /> We must acknowledge and recognize the Common in order to study the Private in our cognitive and practical activities. If we fail to acknowledge the Common, then whenever we attempt to understand and comprehend any Private thing, phenomenon or idea, we will make mistakes and become disoriented. To understand the Common we have to study and observe the Private because the Common does not exist abstractly outside of the Private.<br /> <br /> 1 On the Question of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.<br /> <br /> 136<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 133<br /> <br /> Our understanding of Common attributes arise from the observation and study of private things, phenomena, and ideas. At the same time, developing our understanding of Commonalities between and within Private subjects deepens our understanding of their essential nature [see: Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156].<br /> <br /> Study and observe Private subjects<br /> <br /> to discover Common attributes<br /> <br /> PRIVATE<br /> <br /> COMMON<br /> <br /> A specific, individual subject<br /> <br /> Attributes which many privates share<br /> <br /> Consider Common attributes to develop<br /> <br /> deeper understanding of Private subjects<br /> <br /> Dialectical Analysis Through Private and Common<br /> <br /> Dialectical analysis of private and common characteristics involves observing private subjects to determine common attributes and considering common attributes to gain insights about private subjects.<br /> <br /> It is impossible to know anything at all about the Common without observing Private subjects, and attempting to understand Private subjects without taking into consideration the attributes and features which they have in Common with other Private subjects will lead to incomplete and erroneous analysis.<br /> <br /> In addition, we must identify the Common features and attributes of every specific Private subject we study. We must avoid being dogmatic, metaphysical, and inflexible in applying our knowledge of commonalities to solve problems and interpret the world.<br /> <br /> Annotation 134<br /> <br /> Dogmatism and Revisionism in Relation to the Private and Common Dogmatism is the inflexible adherence to ideals as incontrovertibly true while refusing to take any contradictory evidence into consideration. Dogmatism stands in direct opposition to materialist dialectics, which seeks to form opinions and conclusions only after careful consideration of all observable evidence.<br /> <br /> Dogmatism typically arises when the Common is overemphasized without due consideration of the Private. A dogmatic position is one which adheres to ideals about commonalities without taking Private subjects into consideration.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 137<br /> <br /> Annotation 134 (continued)<br /> Dogmatism can be avoided by continuously studying and observing and analyzing Private subjects and taking any evidence which contradicts erroneous perceptions of<br /> <br /> “false commonalities” into consideration. This will simultaneously deepen our understanding of the Private while improving our understanding of the Common. For example: Sally might observe a few red apples and arrive at the conclusion: “all apples are red.” If Sally is then presented with a green apple, yet refuses to acknowledge it by continuing to insist that “all apples are red,” then Sally is engaging in dogmatism.<br /> <br /> According to Vietnam’s Curriculum of the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism For University and College Students Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought, the opposite of Dogmatism is Revisionism. Revisionism occurs when we overestimate the Private and fail to recognize commonalities. In failing to recognize common attributes and features between and within things, phenomena, and ideas, the Revisionist faces confusion and disorientation whenever they encounter any new things, phenomena, and ideas, because they lack any insight into essential characteristics of the subject and its relations with other subjects.<br /> <br /> For example: if Sally has spent a lot of time studying a red apple, she may start to become confident that she understands everything there is to know about apples. If she is then presented with a green apple, she might become confused and disoriented and draw the conclusion that she has to start all over again with her analysis, from scratch, thinking: “this can’t possibly be an apple because it’s not red. It must be something else entirely.” Sally can avoid this revisionist confusion by examining the other common features which the red and green apples share before making any conclusions.<br /> <br /> Metaphysical Perception of the Private and Common<br /> <br /> The metaphysical position attempts to categorize things, phenomena, and ideas into static categories which are isolated and distinct from one another [see Annotation 8, p. 8]. In this way, the metaphysical perception ultimately fails to properly understand the role of both the Private and the Common. Categories may be arranged in taxonom-ic configurations based on shared features, but ultimately every category is seen as distinct and isolated from every other category. This perspective severs the dialectical relationship between the Private, the Common, and the Unique, and thus leads to a distorted perception of reality. As Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific: The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms - these were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of Nature that have been made during the last 400 years. But this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life. And when this way of looking at things was transferred by Bacon and Locke from natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow, metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last century.”<br /> <br /> 138<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 134 (continued)<br /> <br /> In other words, Engels points out that separating and dividing Private subjects into distinct and isolated categories without acknowledging the dialectical nature of the Private and the Common leads to severe limitations on what we can learn about the world. Instead, we have to examine things, phenomena, and ideas in relation to one another, which must include the analysis of Commonalities.<br /> <br /> Rather than divide subjects into distinct, separate categories, materialist dialectics seek to examine Private subjects as they really exist: as a synthesis of Unique and Common attributes; and simultaneously to examine commonalities as they really exist: as properties which emerge from the relations of Private objects.<br /> <br /> In our cognitive and practical activities, we must be able to take advantage of suitable conditions that will enable transformations from the Unique and the Common (and vice versa) for our specific purposes.<br /> <br /> Annotation 135<br /> <br /> In advancing the cause of socialism, revolutionaries must work to transform our Unique positions into common positions. For instance, the process of developing revolutionary public knowledge [see Annotation 94, p. 93] begins with studying and understanding revolutionary knowledge. Initially, this knowledge will be unique to the socialist movement. By disseminating the knowledge to the public, we hope to transform this knowledge into common knowledge.<br /> <br /> Likewise, we hope to transform other common things, phenomena, and ideas back towards the Unique. For instance, the capitalist mode of production is currently the most common mode of production on Earth. In order to advance humanity towards communism, we must transition the capitalist mode of production from the Common towards the Unique, with the ambition of eventually eliminating this mode of production altogether.<br /> <br /> ==2. Reason and Result==<br /> <br /> a. Categories of Reason and Result<br /> <br /> The Reason category is used to define the mutual impacts between internal aspects of a thing, phenomenon or idea, or between things, phenomena, or ideas, that bring about changes.<br /> <br /> The Result category defines the changes that were caused by mutual impacts which occur between aspects and factors within a thing, phenomenon, or idea, or externally between different things, phenomena, or ideas.<br /> <br /> Annotation 136<br /> <br /> Translation note: the Vietnamese words for “reason and result” can also be translated as “cause and effect.” We have chosen to use the words “reason and result” to distinguish materialist dialectical categories from metaphysical conceptions of development.<br /> <br /> In metaphysics [see Annotation 8, p. 8], any given effect is seen to have a single cause.<br /> <br /> In materialist dialectics, we instead examine the mutual impacts which occur within and between subjects through motion and development processes.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 139<br /> <br /> Annotation 136 (continued)<br /> <br /> Metaphysical Cause and Effect<br /> <br /> EFFECT<br /> <br /> EFFECT<br /> <br /> A<br /> <br /> B<br /> <br /> C<br /> <br /> CAUSE<br /> <br /> CAUSE<br /> <br /> CAUSE<br /> <br /> Development in Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> A<br /> <br /> B DEVELOPMENT C<br /> <br /> D<br /> <br /> SYNTHESIS<br /> <br /> OF A AND B<br /> <br /> REASON<br /> <br /> RESULT<br /> <br /> NEW REASON<br /> <br /> In the metaphysical conception of cause and effect, (A) causes effect (B), then effect (B) causes effect (C), and so on. Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, uses the model of development (see Annotation 117, p. 119), wherein objects (A) and (B) mutually impact one another, resulting in development (C). (C) will then have relations with other things, phenomena, and/or ideas, and the mutual impacts from these new relations will become the reasons for future results. Consider the following example: Metaphysical Cause and Effect<br /> <br /> Development in Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> DEVELOPMENT<br /> <br /> SYNTHESIS<br /> <br /> REASON<br /> <br /> RESULT<br /> <br /> NEW REASON<br /> <br /> Metaphysical vs. Materialist Dialectical conceptions of frying and eating an egg.<br /> <br /> 140<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 136 (continued)<br /> <br /> In the metaphysical “cause and effect” model, putting an egg in a hot pan is the cause which results in the effect of producing a fried egg. The egg being fried has the effect of the egg now being suitable for eating, which is the cause of the egg being eaten by a hungry person.<br /> <br /> This is a simplification of the metaphysical conception of causes and effects, since metaphysics does recognize that one cause can have branches of multiple effects, but the essential characteristic of the metaphysical conception of causality is to break down all activity and change in the universe into static and distinct episodes of one distinct event causing one or more other distinct events.<br /> <br /> In contrast, the materialist dialectical model of development holds that every result stems from mutual impacts which occur relationally between things, phenomena, and ideas, and that the resulting synthesis - the newly developed result of mutual impacts<br /> <br /> - will then have new relations with other things, phenomena, and ideas, and that these relations will become new reasons for new results through mutual impact.<br /> <br /> In this example, the egg and the hot pan will mutually impact each other. The frying pan will become dirty and need to be washed (the result of putting an egg in the frying pan); meanwhile, the egg will become a fried egg, which is fit for human consumption (the result of being cooked in the frying pan). The fried egg will then have a relationship with a hungry human, and this relationship will be a new reason which will lead to further results (i.e., the human eating and digesting the egg).<br /> <br /> So, the key difference between the classical metaphysical conception of causality and the materialist dialectical model of development is that metaphysics focus more on individual events in time whereas materialist dialectics focus on the relations and mutual impacts between things, phenomena, and ideas over time.<br /> <br /> b. Dialectical relationship between Reason and Result<br /> <br /> The relationship between Reason and Result is objective, and it contains inevitability: there is no Reason that does not lead to a Result; and likewise, there is no Result without any Reason.<br /> <br /> Reasons cause Results, which is why Reason always comes before Result, and Result always comes after Reason.<br /> <br /> A Reason can cause one or many Results and a Result can be caused by one or many Reasons.<br /> <br /> When many Reasons lead to a single Result, the impacts which lead to the Result are mutual between all things, phenomena, and ideas at hand. These mutual impacts can have many relational positions or roles, including: direct reasons, indirect reasons, internal reasons, external reasons, etc.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 141<br /> <br /> Annotation 137<br /> <br /> As stated in the previous annotation, Reasons which lead to Results stem from mutually impacting relations between things, phenomena, and ideas. There is no way for one subject to affect another subject without also being affected itself in some way.<br /> <br /> Reasons can take many forms, including (but not limited to): Direct Reasons are Reasons which stem from immediate relations, with no intervening relations standing<br /> <br /> between the Reason and Result.<br /> <br /> For example, dropping a coffee cup causes an im-<br /> <br /> mediate relationship between the cup and the ground,<br /> <br /> and that relation leads directly to the Result of the<br /> <br /> coffee cup breaking to pieces.<br /> <br /> Indirect Reasons are Reasons which have interven-<br /> <br /> ing relations between a Reason and a Result.<br /> <br /> For example, the dropped coffee cup above may<br /> <br /> have smashed into pieces directly because it hit the<br /> <br /> ground, but it may also have indirect Reasons. The per-<br /> <br /> son holding the cup may have been frightened because<br /> <br /> she heard a loud noise, and the loud noise was caused<br /> <br /> by a car backfiring, and the car backfiring was caused<br /> <br /> by the driver not maintaining his car engine.<br /> <br /> In materialist dialectical terms, the driver’s relation-<br /> <br /> ship with his car would be an indirect Reason for the<br /> <br /> car backfiring; the relationship between the car (which<br /> <br /> backfired) and the person holding the coffee cup<br /> <br /> would be the direct Reason for dropping the cup; and<br /> <br /> the cup’s relationship with the ground would be the<br /> <br /> direct reason for the cup smashing. At the same time,<br /> <br /> the driver’s relationship with his car would be an indi-<br /> <br /> rect Reason for the Result of the coffee cup smashing to<br /> <br /> pieces.<br /> <br /> Internal Reasons are Reasons which stem from in-<br /> <br /> ternal relations that occur between aspects and factors<br /> <br /> RUST!<br /> <br /> within a subject.<br /> <br /> For example, if a building collapses because the steel<br /> <br /> structure within the building rusts and fails, then that could be viewed as an internal Reason for the collapse.<br /> <br /> External Reasons are reasons which stem from<br /> <br /> external relations that occur between different things,<br /> <br /> phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> For example, if a building collapses because it is<br /> <br /> smashed by a wrecking ball, then that could be viewed<br /> <br /> as an external Reason for the collapse.<br /> <br /> 142<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 137 (continued)<br /> <br /> All of these roles and positions can be viewed relatively. From one viewpoint, a Reason may be seen as internal, but from another viewpoint, it might be viewed as external. For example, if a couple has a disagreement which leads to an argument, the disagreement may be seen as an external Reason from the perspective of each individual within the couple. But to a relationship counselor viewing the situation from the outside, the disagreement may be seen as an internal Reason which leads to the couple (a subject defined by the internal relationship between the husband and wife) arguing.<br /> <br /> From one perspective, a government official ordering a building to be torn down may be seen as the direct Reason for the Result of the building being torn down. But from a different perspective, one can see many intervening relations: complaints from local residents may have led to the government official making the order, the order would be delivered to a demolition crew, the demolition crew would assign a crew member to operate a wrecking ball, the crew member would operate the wrecking ball, the wrecking ball would smash the building. All of these can be seen as intervening relations which constitute indirect reasons leading up to the direct Reason of the wrecking ball smashing the building. Choosing the right viewpoint during analysis is critical to make sure that Reason and Result relations are viewed properly and productively, and care must also be taken to ensure that the correct Reasons are attributed to Results (see Reason and Result, p. 138).<br /> <br /> Likewise, a Reason can cause many Results, including primary and secondary Results.<br /> <br /> Annotation 138<br /> <br /> Primary Results are Results which are more direct and predictable.<br /> <br /> Secondary Results are Results which are indirect and less predictable.<br /> <br /> For example, an earthquake may have primary Results such as the ground shaking, buildings being destroyed, etc. Secondary Results from the earthquake might include flights being rerouted from local airports, shortages at grocery stores, etc.<br /> <br /> In the motion of the material world, there is no known “first Reason” or “final Result.”<br /> <br /> Annotation 139<br /> <br /> With our current understanding of the universe, it is uncertain what might have caused the creation of all existence. Was it the Big Bang? If so, did the Big Bang have some underlying reason? There is also no way to know if there will ever be a “final Result.” Will the heat death of the universe occur, and if so, will that end all transpiring of relations which would end the cycle of development - of Reasons and Results?<br /> <br /> As of now, we do not have solid answers to these questions. If and when answers arise, it is possible that the materialist dialectical framework will need to be updated to reflect new scientific knowledge, just as Marx, Engels, and Lenin have updated materialist dialectics in the past [see Annotation 72, p. 68]. What’s important to understand in the meantime is that within our realm of human experience and understanding, for all practical purposes, every Result which we live through and observe has some underlying Reason, and will itself lead to one or more Results.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 143<br /> <br /> Engels said: “we find upon closer investigation that the two poles of an antithesis<br /> <br /> [see Annotation 200, p. 192], positive and negative, e.g., are as inseparable as they are opposed, and that despite all their opposition, they mutually interpenetrate [are mixed together]. And we find, in like manner, that cause and effect are conceptions which only hold good in their application to individual cases; but as soon as we consider the individual cases in their general connection with the universe as a whole, they run into each other, and they become confounded when we contemplate that universal action and reaction in which causes and effects are eternally changing places, so that what is effect here and now will be cause there and then, and vice versa.”1<br /> <br /> Annotation 140<br /> <br /> In the above passage, Engels is simply explaining that since all things, phenomena, and ideas are relationally linked and inter-related [see Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics, p. 106], the mutual impacts and processes of change which lead to development (the reasons and results which transpire between all things, phenomena, and ideas) are also all linked and inter-related. What might be viewed as a Reason is also a Result of one or more prior Reasons, just as every Result is also a Reason for future Results.<br /> <br /> c. Meaning of the Methodology<br /> <br /> Because the relationship between Reason and Result is objective and inevitable, we can’t ignore the relationship between Reason and Result in our perception and practice.<br /> <br /> In reality, there is no thing, phenomenon or idea that can exist without any underlying Reason or Reasons; and vice versa, there is no Reason that does not lead to any Result.<br /> <br /> Annotation 141<br /> <br /> In political activity, it is important to remember that every interaction within every relationship will lead to mutual impacts which will cause change and development; in other words, everything we choose to do will be the Reason for one or more Results.<br /> <br /> We must be aware of unintended or unpredicted Results from our activities.<br /> <br /> Reason-Result relationships are very complicated and diverse. Therefore, we must accurately identify the types of Reasons [direct, indirect, internal, external, etc.] so that we can come up with proper solutions which are suitable for the specific situation in both perception and practice. A Reason can lead to many results and, likewise, a Result can be caused by many Reasons, which is why we must have a comprehensive viewpoint and a historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116] in our perception of reality so we can properly analyse, solve and apply Reason-Result relationships.<br /> <br /> Annotation 142<br /> <br /> It is critical to understand that there may be many events or relationships which might be falsely ascribed as Reasons for a given Result (and vice-versa).<br /> <br /> For example: in 1965, the United States of America officially declared war on North Vietnam after the so-called “Gulf of Tonkin Incident,” in which Vietnamese forces supposedly fired on a United States Navy ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident is often described as the “cause” or the “Reason” that the Vietnam War began.<br /> <br /> 1 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels, 1880.<br /> <br /> 144<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 142 (continued)<br /> <br /> However, the real “Reason” why the USA declared war on North Vietnam had to do with the underlying contradiction between capitalist imperialism and communism in Vietnam. This contradiction had to be resolved one way or another. The United States of America willfully decided to try to negate this contradiction by instigating war, and this was the true reason the war began. In fact, the so-called “Gulf of Tonkin Incident”<br /> <br /> never even occurred as described - the attack on the USA’s ship never really occurred.<br /> <br /> A document released by the Pentagon in 2005 revealed that the incident was completely fabricated. So, saying that the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” was the Reason for the war is nonsensical, since it’s an event which never even occurred in reality.<br /> <br /> Understanding the true nature of Reason and Result is very important for making decisions and choosing a path forward in political action. Attributing the wrong Reason to a Result, or misunderstanding the Results which stem from a Reason, can lead to serious setbacks and failures. Therefore, it is vital for revolutionaries to properly identify and understand the actual Reasons and Results which drive development.<br /> <br /> ==3. Obviousness and Randomness==<br /> <br /> a. Categories of Obviousness and Randomness<br /> <br /> Annotation 143<br /> <br /> In Vietnamese, the words for these categories are “tất nhiên” and “ngẫu nhiên,”<br /> <br /> which respectively translate to “obvious” and “random.” In socialist literature, various words have been used by different authors to convey the underlying meaning of these categories (Engels, for instance, used the terms “necessary” and “accidental” to mean<br /> <br /> “obvious” and “random,” respectively). We have chosen to use words which closely match the Vietnamese used in the original text, but the reader should be aware that these same concepts may be described using many different words in various English translations of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, etc.<br /> <br /> The Obviousness category refers to events that occur because of the essential [see Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156] internal aspects of the material structure of a subject. These essential internal characteristics become reasons for certain results under certain conditions: the Obvious has to happen in a certain way, it can’t happen any other way.<br /> <br /> Annotation 144<br /> <br /> Obviousness can only apply to material subjects in the material world and results which are certain to happen based on the material laws of nature. Obviousness arises from the internal aspects, features, and relations of physical objects. Paper will burn under certain specific conditions, due its internal material structure. If those conditions (i.e., temperature, the presence of oxygen, etc.) exist, then paper will catch fire predictably. In other words, paper will obviously burn under certain circumstances due to its internal composition,.<br /> <br /> The Randomness category refers to things that happen because of external reasons: things that happen, essentially, by chance, due to impacts from many external relations. A Random outcome may occur or it may not occur; a Random outcome could happen this way or it could happen that way.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 145<br /> <br /> Annotation 145<br /> <br /> As we discussed above, paper will burn if it reaches a certain temperature - that much is obvious. If your friend holds paper over the flame of the lighter, the paper will burn - that’s obvious. But you can’t be certain whether your friend will actually hold the paper to the flame or not. This demonstrates Randomness. Whether your friend will ultimately hold the paper to the flame or not depends on an external relation which is not defined by the internal structure of the paper, and which can’t be predicted with the same predictability as obvious events which are rooted in internal material aspects.<br /> <br /> b. Dialectical relationship between Obviousness and Randomness<br /> <br /> Obviousness and Randomness both exist objectively and play an important role in the motion and development of things and phenomena. Obviousness plays the decisive role.<br /> <br /> Annotation 146<br /> <br /> Obviousness plays the decisive role simply because Obviousness is far more predictable and the laws which govern material phenomena are essentially fixed. We can’t change the laws of physics, the nature of chemical reactions, etc.<br /> <br /> Obviousness and Randomness exist in dialectical unity; there is no pure Obviousness, nor pure Randomness. It is obvious that Randomness shall occur in our universe, however Obviousness clears a path through this Randomness.<br /> <br /> Annotation 147<br /> <br /> Our universe is incredibly complex and there are many different potential external relations which could impact any given situation, such that some degree of Randomness is always present in any situation; in other words, the presence of Randomness can be seen as Obvious.<br /> <br /> In 1922, Ho Chi Minh identified objective internal characteristics of the working class of France and its colonies. He wrote: “The mutual ignorance of the two proletariats gives rise to prejudices. The French workers look upon the native as an inferior and negligible human being, incapable of understanding and still less of taking action. The natives regard all the French as wicked exploiters. Imperialism and capitalism do not fail to take advantage of this mutual suspicion and this artificial racial hierarchy to frustrate propaganda and divide forces which ought to unite.”<br /> <br /> In this example, Ho Chi Minh identifies prejudice as an obvious outcome of mutual ignorance. The prejudice arises as a matter of course from internal objective aspects of the two proletarian groups. As long as French and native workers remain ignorant of one another, prejudice will arise. The specific forms which this prejudice will take, however, and their resulting impacts and developments, will be more or less Random because there are many external factors (including the external impacts of the capitalist class, which seeks to take advantage of these prejudices) which can’t be predicted.<br /> <br /> Therefore, it is necessary for political revolutionaries to account for both random and obvious factors in confronting such prejudice. Ho Chi Minh’s suggestion for overcoming these difficulties was concise and to-the-point: “Intensify propaganda to overcome them.” Only by negating the internal aspects of mutual ignorance through education and propaganda could communists hope to negate the resulting prejudice.<br /> <br /> 146<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism As Engels said: “One knows that what is maintained to be necessary [ obvious] is composed of sheer accidents, and that the so-called accidental [ random] is the form behind which necessity hides itself - and so on.”1<br /> <br /> Obviousness and Randomness are not static properties: Randomness and Obviousness continuously change and develop over time. Under specific conditions, Obviousness and Randomness can transform into each other: Obviousness can become Random and Randomness can become obvious.<br /> <br /> Annotation 148<br /> <br /> Randomness can be introduced to an obvious situation: it may be obvious that a mineshaft will collapse, until human beings come along and intervene by repairing the structural integrity of the mineshaft. It may seem Random whether a city’s economy will grow or shrink, until a volcano erupts and buries the city in lava and ash, making it obvious that the economy will not grow because the city no longer exists.<br /> <br /> Most situations are in a flux, as Obviousness and Randomness dialectically develop and change over time, with outcomes becoming more or less obvious or Random over time. It is vital that we, as political revolutionaries, are able to distinguish between Obviousness and Randomness and to leverage this understanding to our advantage.<br /> <br /> c. Meaning of the Methodology<br /> <br /> Basically, in our perception and reality, we have to base our plans, strategies, and actions as much as possible on the Obvious, not the Random. However, we must not ignore Randomness, nor try to separate the Obvious from the Random. When faced with situations which seem very Random, we must find ways to develop Obviousness. When faced with what seems obvious, we must keep an eye out for Randomness. Obviousness and Randomness can mutually transform, so we need to create suitable conditions to hinder or promote such transformation to suit our purposes.<br /> <br /> Annotation 149<br /> <br /> We must always remember that no situation is purely obvious, nor purely Random, and to take this into account in all of our planning and activity.<br /> <br /> A skyscraper made from heavy steel beams may seem quite sturdy and stable; it may appear obvious that the structure will remain stable and sound for decades. However, it is still important for engineers to periodically confirm that the steel is still sound through testing and observation. Engineers must also be prepared for Random events like lightning, earthquakes, storms, etc., which may affect the seemingly obvious structural integrity of the building.<br /> <br /> Likewise, when faced with extremely complex situations which seem completely Random, we must seek out (or bring about) the obvious. Wildfires are extremely chaotic and difficult to predict. However, firefighters can rely on certain obvious patterns and natural laws which govern the spread of fire. By digging trenches, lighting counter-fires, spraying water, and other such actions, firefighters can bring wildfires under control. This illustrates how humans are able to make situations less Random by bringing about an increasing amount of Obviousness over time through practical activity.<br /> <br /> 1 Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Friedrich Engels, 1886.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 147<br /> <br /> ==4. Content and Form==<br /> <br /> a. Categories of Content and Form<br /> <br /> The Content category refers to the sum of all aspects, attributes, and processes that a thing, phenomenon, or idea is made from.<br /> <br /> The Form category refers to the mode of existence and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Form thus describes the system of relatively stable relationships which exist internally within things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> Annotation 150<br /> <br /> Content and Form can be difficult to comprehend at first because the ways in which Content and Form manifest and interact can vary wildly depending on the subject being discussed and the viewpoint from which the subject is being considered.<br /> <br /> Content represents the component things, materials, attributes, features, etc., which, together, make up a thing, phenomenon, or idea. You can think of it as the “ingredients” from which a subject is made.<br /> <br /> Form refers to a stable system of internal relationships which compose a thing, phenomenon, or idea, as well as the mode of existence and development [see Annotation 60, p. 59] of those relations.<br /> <br /> Remember that from a dialectical materialist perspective, everything in our universe is defined by internal and external relations. If a thing, phenomenon, or idea has internal relations which are relatively stable, then it has a Form.<br /> <br /> We would not call all of the assorted ingredients which are used to make a cake “a cake” unless they have been assembled together and baked into the stable form which we interpret as “a cake.” Once a portion is removed from the cake, the portion itself assumes a new stable form which we call “a slice of cake.” The slice of cake will maintain its relatively stable form until being eaten, discarded, or otherwise transitioning into some other form. It is only considered a “slice of cake” for as long as it maintains its own specific stable form.<br /> <br /> Stability itself is also relative: a “spray” of water may only last for a few seconds but we can still conceive of it as having Form. On the other hand, a mountain has a set of stable internal relations (a Form) which might last for millions of years.<br /> <br /> We can think of Form as having two aspects: inner Form and outer Form.<br /> <br /> Inner form refers to the internal stable relations which we have already discussed.<br /> <br /> Outer form is how an object “appears” to human senses.<br /> <br /> In this book, we are primarily concerned with the inner Form of subjects, however, in other contexts (such as art and design), the outer Form plays a more prominent role.<br /> <br /> Now, let’s identify some of the common viewpoints from which Content and Form might be considered.<br /> <br /> 148<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 150 (continued)<br /> <br /> Material vs. Ideal<br /> <br /> When discussing the material - i.e., objective systems and objects1 - discussion of Content and Form is more straightforward.<br /> <br /> Material<br /> <br /> With material things and phenomena, the Content is what the thing is made out of: the physical parts, aspects, attributes, and processes that compose the subject. For example, the Content of a wooden chair might be the wood, nails, paint, and other materials which are used to create the chair.<br /> <br /> CONTENT<br /> <br /> INNER FORM<br /> <br /> OUTER FORM<br /> <br /> BACK REST<br /> <br /> SUPPORTS<br /> <br /> “A CHAIR”<br /> <br /> SEAT<br /> <br /> NAILS HOLD<br /> <br /> 4 LEGS<br /> <br /> WOOD TOGETHER<br /> <br /> A material object can be described in terms of content, inner form, and outer form.<br /> <br /> The inner Form of a material object refers to stable internal relations which compose the object. The stable relationship between the wood and the nails - the nails bind the wood together, the wood is cut in certain patterns, the paint adheres to the wood through physical and chemical bonds, etc. Stability is, again, relative - over time, the paint will chip and flake, the wood will rot, the nails will rust, etc. Dialectical processes of change will eventually reduce the chair into something other than a chair (i.e., through rotting, burning, disassembly, etc.), but as long as the internal relations maintain the Form of a chair we conceive of it as a chair.<br /> <br /> The outer Form of a material object refers to the way it appears to human consciousness. Its shape, aesthetics, etc.<br /> <br /> Ideal<br /> <br /> With the ideal - i.e., abstract ideas and concepts - discussion of Content and Form becomes more complicated. As Vietnam’s Marxism-Leninism Textbook for Students Who Specialize in Marxism-Leninism explains:<br /> <br /> Many times, human consciousness has difficulty in trying to clearly define the Content of a subject - especially when the subject is an abstract idea. We often mistake Content with inner Form. Usually, in this situation, there is a strong combination and intertwining between both Content and Form. In such a situation, the Form can be referred to as the “inner Form,” or the “Content-Form.”<br /> <br /> With physical things and phenomena, this type of Form usually belongs to a very specific Private, it doesn’t exist in any other Private, it is the Unique [see Annotation 129, p. 128].<br /> <br /> 1 See Annotation 10, p. 10 and Annotation 108, p. 112.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 149<br /> <br /> Annotation 150 (continued)<br /> <br /> The reason the inner Form of physical objects usually exists in Private as the Unique is because the stable internal relations of any given physical object are equivalent to the specific material components which distinguish one physical object from all other physical objects. In other words, if you have two chairs which are exact copies of each other, made from the same kind of wood, cut into the same shape, using the same type and configuration of fasteners, etc., they are still not the exact same object. The internal relations of one chair are what make it that chair and distinguish it from all other objects in the universe. The outer Form of these chairs may have many commonalities (they look similar, they have the same color, etc.), but the inner Form is what distinguishes one chair from the other.<br /> <br /> However, within the realm of abstract ideas, there are also Forms which many abstract Privates share. In the context of abstract ideas, we call this kind of Form the “outer Form,” the “form-Form,” or the “common Form.”<br /> <br /> When we try to define the Content of a subject which is an abstract idea, our consciousness usually tries to answer the question: “what is the subject?”<br /> <br /> This is usually a simple matter. Take, for example, the abstract idea of “freedom.”<br /> <br /> When we try to think of the Content of freedom we can answer it pretty easily. What is the subject of freedom? It is the condition which allows humans to follow their own will, it is the absence of external coercion, etc., etc.<br /> <br /> But, when we try to define the Form of an abstract idea, our consciousness tries to answer the question: “how is the subject?” -- this is when we have to define the mode of existence (the Form) of that subject.<br /> <br /> This is where things get more complicated. The mode of existence of an abstract idea can usually be considered to be language, since our ideas are usually expressed through language, but it can take on other modes of existence as well, such as visual media (paintings, photographs), physical motions of the human body (body language, dance), etc. This is how the field of art studies is concerned with the philosophical categories of Content and Form.<br /> <br /> Content and Form in Art<br /> <br /> Many readers may already be familiar with the subject of Content and Form from studying art, design, communications, and related fields. At first glance, the definitions of Content and Form may seem different from what we’ve been discussing so far.<br /> <br /> This is because art concerns itself with abstract ideas expressed through various Forms of physical representations.<br /> <br /> These physical representations may include physical objects (photographs, paintings, sculptures), performed and/or recorded physical activities (dance, music, theater, film), human language recorded in stable physical Forms of written language (novels, poems, stories) or spontaneously performed oral language (storytelling, impromptu spoken-word poetry).<br /> <br /> 150<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 150 (continued)<br /> <br /> Because the study of art is primarily concerned with interpreting and understanding ideas expressed through these physical manifestations, art is concerned with the stable inner relations of the ideas which artists imbue within their works of art - much more than the stable inner relations of the physical components of the object.<br /> <br /> According to the Vietnamese art textbook Curriculum of General Aesthetics: What is the Form of a work of art? Form is the way to express the Content of an artwork. Form and Content within a work of art have a strong unity with each other and they regulate each other. Form is the organization, the inner structure of the Content of an artwork. Therefore, Form is the way that the Content expresses itself, and that way is described by two features. We must ask: First: what expresses the Content of a work of art?<br /> <br /> Second: how is it expressed?<br /> <br /> Art exists when two conditions are met: first, there must be a subject with an outer Form. Second, an artist must convey aesthetic meaning, or humanization, of that subject. This aesthetic meaning is the Content.<br /> <br /> So, in studying works of art, we are less concerned with the physical content of the artwork (the canvas, paint, etc.) than we are with the abstract content of the artwork (the ideas which the artist imbues within the artwork).<br /> <br /> As for Form, the inner Form of art represents the stable internal relations which compose the art (both ideal, i.e., the stable internal relations of the abstract ideas imbued within the art by the artist, as well as physical, i.e., the stable internal relations of the physical media of the art).<br /> <br /> The outer Form of art represents how our human senses perceive the art, such as composition techniques, the use of color, etc.<br /> <br /> The chart below breaks down the differences in a general, non-artistic viewpoint of physical objects and processes in materialist dialectical terms (i.e., the viewpoint an engineer might have), as compared with the artistic viewpoint of physical objects and processes (which an art critic might have). Some fields, such as designing products for human use, might draw from both viewpoints.<br /> <br /> Content and Form of Physical Objects and Processes<br /> <br /> GENERAL VIEWPOINT<br /> <br /> ART VIEWPOINT<br /> <br /> CONTENT<br /> <br /> What it’s made of<br /> <br /> Inner/aesthetic meaning<br /> <br /> (the “stuff” it’s made of)<br /> <br /> (the “ideas” it’s made of)<br /> <br /> INNER FORM Stable internal relations between Stable internal relations within the work internal parts/attributes/features<br /> <br /> (physical media, actors in a play, etc.)<br /> <br /> OUTER FORM How it appears to human senses<br /> <br /> How it appears to human senses<br /> <br /> (shape, color, etc.)<br /> <br /> (composition, aesthetics, etc.)<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 151<br /> <br /> Annotation 150 (continued)<br /> <br /> Content and Form in Specific Artistic Media<br /> <br /> Every medium of art will interpret Content and Form in its own way. For example: Literature is a specific art discipline which deals with recorded human language in the Form of writing. In written literature, the Content would be the ideas expressed in a piece of writing; what the words say. The inner Form would be the way the ideas relate to each other - i.e., story structure, pacing, character development, etc. The outer form would be the physical format of the writing - i.e., manuscript, magazine article, paperback book, ebook, etc.<br /> <br /> Painting is a specific art discipline in which pigments are applied to objects to create images which convey ideas and emotions. In painting, the Content would be the meaning which an artist embodies in a work of art. The inner Form would include the stable internal relations within the artwork (i.e., the bonds and mixtures between the pigments, the canvas, etc.), while the outer Form would be how the artwork appears to human senses (composition, aesthetics, etc.). Generally speaking, the creator of the art will have to make decisions about the inner Form (i.e., selection of oil vs. acrylic vs. wa-tercolor, selection of shade, tint, and hue, physical brush strokes, etc.) so as to produce the desired outer Form (the way the finished artwork will appear to viewers).<br /> <br /> Theater is a specific art discipline in which human beings perform physical actions and use their voices to convey ideas to an audience. In theater, the Content includes the ideas which are being presented, such as the script, the musical score, the story, the performance choices of actors, costumes, props, etc. The inner Form would include the stable relations between the members of the cast, the director, the physical stage, the lighting, etc., and the outer Form would be the way the play appears to the audience.<br /> <br /> These are just some examples. Each medium of expression will have its own variations in how Content and Form are considered.<br /> <br /> Engels described the manifestation of Content and Form in Dialectics of Nature: The whole of organic nature is one continuous proof of the identity or inseparability of form and content. Morphological and physiological phenomena, form and function, mutually determine one another. The differentiation of form (the cell) determines differentiation of substance into muscle, skin, bone, epithelium, etc., and the differentiation of substance in turn determines difference of form.<br /> <br /> Content and Form are discussed frequently in analysis of human social systems and objective relations which occur within society. For example, Marx made many criticial insights into economics by analyzing and explaining the form of value [see Annotation 14, p. 16] under capitalism.<br /> <br /> Indeed, the entire capitalist system can be viewed in terms of content and form. The current form of human civilization is capitalism. That is to say, capitalism is the stable set of relations and characteristis of the current political economy which dominates the planet. The content of capitalism includes all the components of the base and superstructure, including the various classes (capitalists, working class, etc.), the means of production, government institutions, corporate institutions, etc. All of these elements are configured together into the relatively stable form which we call “capitalism.”<br /> <br /> 152<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 150 (continued)<br /> <br /> Other Viewpoints of Content and Form<br /> <br /> Of course, there are many other viewpoints for discussing Content and Form of abstract ideas. Every philosophical field will have its own unique ways of utilizing Content and Form analysis. One example is the concept of Content and Form in legal philosophy. Vietnamese legal expert Dinh Thuy Dung writes: The law has internal and external forms:<br /> <br /> The inner Form is the internal structure of the law, the relationships and the connections between the elements constituting the law. The inner Form of the law is called the legal structure, which includes the constituent parts of the legal system such as the branch of law, legal institutions, and legal norms.<br /> <br /> The outer Form is the manifestation, or mode of existence, of the law. In other words, the outer Form of the law is how we view and understand the law [i.e., who enforces the law and what repercussions will occur if we violate the law].<br /> <br /> Based on the outer Form of the law, one can know how it exists in reality, and where and to whom it applies. The external Form of the law is also approached in relation to its Content.<br /> <br /> According to this understanding, the Content of the law includes all the elements that make up the law, while the Form of the law is understood as the elements which contain or express the Content.<br /> <br /> If you understand that the Content of the law is the will of the state, then the legal Form is the way of expressing the will of the state.<br /> <br /> There are countless other ways in which Content and Form can be used to analyze and understand things, phenomena, and ideas. We hope that these examples have given you a better idea of the various ways in which Content and Form can be used to understand the world. In general, socialist texts deal with the inner Form of things, phenomena, and ideas. That is to say, the inner relations which compose the subject being considered. The outer form - how things appear to our senses - tends to be less relevant in analysis of human social systems, though it is often important in consideration of specialized fields of revolutionary activity such as aesthetics, propaganda, etc.<br /> <br /> b. Dialectical relationship between Content and Form<br /> <br /> Content and Form have a strong dialectical relationship with one other. There is no Form that does not contain any Content. Simultaneously, there is no Content that does not exist in a specific Form. The same Content can manifest in many Forms and a Form can contain many Contents.<br /> <br /> The relationship between Content and Form is a dialectical relationship in which Content decides Form and Form can impact Content.<br /> <br /> Annotation 151<br /> <br /> For example, if you want to make a table, and all you have available are wood and nails, then that Content (the wood and the nails) will determine the Form the table ends up taking. You are going to end up with a wooden table, and it will therefore have to have certain characteristics of Form.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 153<br /> <br /> Annotation 151 (continued)<br /> <br /> When Content changes, the Form must change accordingly. If, instead of wood, you have iron, then the table you end up building will have a much different Form. Form can also influence the Content, but not nearly as much as Content determines Form. For instance, if you have wood and nails, but you develop a technique for building a table that doesn’t need any nails, then the result (a wooden table without any nails) would be an example of a development in Form reflecting as a change in Content.<br /> <br /> The main tendency of Content is change. On the other hand, Form is relatively stable in every thing and phenomenon. As Content changes, Form must change accordingly.<br /> <br /> However, Content and Form are not always perfectly aligned.<br /> <br /> Annotation 152<br /> <br /> Since all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly changing, it stands to reason that the internal components (things, phenomena, and ideas, and their relations) which compose the Content of a subject will constantly be undergoing processes of change and development. Thus, we say that the tendency of Content is change. Since the Form is based on the internal relations of the components of Content, it stands to reason that a change in Content will lead to change in Form. These kinds of changes in Content and Form also occur through the dialectical process: changes in quantity lead to changes in quality [see Annotation 117, p. 119].<br /> <br /> NEW WOOD<br /> <br /> WEAKENED WOOD<br /> <br /> ROTTEN<br /> <br /> QUANTITY<br /> <br /> QUANTITY<br /> <br /> FRESH PAINT<br /> <br /> CHANGE<br /> <br /> WORN PAINT<br /> <br /> CHANGE<br /> <br /> PEELED PAINT<br /> <br /> CONTENT<br /> <br /> NEW NAILS<br /> <br /> RUSTY NAILS<br /> <br /> RUSTED NAILS<br /> <br /> QUANTITY CHANGE OF CONTENT<br /> <br /> LEADS TO QUALITY SHIFT OF FORM<br /> <br /> FORM<br /> <br /> QUALITY<br /> <br /> QUALITY<br /> <br /> SHIFT<br /> <br /> SHIFT<br /> <br /> NEW WOODEN CHAIR<br /> <br /> WOBBLY WOODEN CHAIR<br /> <br /> BROKEN CHAIR<br /> <br /> Quantity changes in Content lead to quality shifts in Form.<br /> <br /> As soon as a wooden chair is finished being built, the paint is already beginning to degrade. The wood is already beginning to rot. The iron nails are already beginning to rust. These changes may be imperceptibly slow - they may even take centuries to occur, if the chair is kept in a hospitable environment - but the changes are occurring, quantitatively, over time, none-the-less.<br /> <br /> Eventually, changes in quantity will lead to changes in quality. At some point, the chair might weaken and begin to wobble whenever it’s sat in. Human beings might recognize this quality and begin to think of it as a “wobbly chair.” The chair might degrade to the point where it can’t be safely used at all, in which case it will have quality shifted into a “broken chair.” If the chair is repaired, that would represent another quality shift. If it is used for firewood, that would be another quality shift.<br /> <br /> 154<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 152 (continued)<br /> <br /> Keep in mind that changes in Form do not directly cause changes in Content. If you disassemble a wooden chair into the constituent wood and nails, the wood and nails remain more or less unchanged. But if you burn a wooden chair, it’s the change in Content which leads to the change in Form from “chair” to “pile of ash.”<br /> <br /> Form simply represents the stable relationships between the component parts of the subject’s Content. The only way to change Form is to change those inner relations, or to change the components which are relating. There is no way to change Form without changing the Content, and changing the Content changes the Form by definition.<br /> <br /> Content determines Form, but Form is not fully decided by Content, and Form can impact back on Content. If a Form is suitable with its Content, it can improve the development of its Content. If a Form is not suitable with its Content, it can constrain the development of its Content.<br /> <br /> Annotation 153<br /> <br /> The dialectical relationship between Content and Form is somewhat similar to the dialectical relationship between the material and the ideal (see Matter and Consciousness, p. 88). Just as the material world determines consciousness while consciousness impacts the material world, the Content of a subject determines the Form while the Form impacts the Content.<br /> <br /> Suitability describes the applicability of a subject for a specific application or role.<br /> <br /> Whether or not something is “suitable” or not can be highly subjective (i.e., which music would be “suitable” to play at a party), or it can be more objective (i.e., what kind of batteries to use with an electronic device).<br /> <br /> We might say that hardwood is “suitable” Content for the Form of a chair because it is durable, strong, relatively inexpensive, and long-lasting. It might be “unsuitable” to have a chair made of hardwood if it is to be used as an office chair, because the hard surfaces might cause strain and discomfort. However, we can utilize conscious activity to adjust and develop suitability between Content and Form. Changing the Content by adding cushioning or padding might make the Content and Form more suitable with each other. Similarly, changing the Form by designing contours and adding adjusta-bility to the chair might make the Content and Form more suitable with each other for their intended application as an office chair.<br /> <br /> If a Form is not suitable with the Content, it restrains the development of the Content. Just think of a shovel (Form) made of wood (Content), which will degrade very rapidly over time, vs. a shovel (Form) made of steel (Content) which will last much longer. This works in both directions. Consider the Content of drinking cups: a porce-lain cup might last for a long time and even develop positively over time (by acquiring a desirable patina), while a cup made out of mild steel would not be desirable, as it would be highly prone to rust from extended use containing liquids.<br /> <br /> c. Meaning of the Methodology<br /> <br /> Content and Form always have a dialectical relationship with each other. Therefore, in our perception and practice, we must not try to separate Content and Form, nor should we solely focus on one and ignore the other.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 155<br /> <br /> Because Content determines Form, whenever we are considering a thing, phenomenon, or idea, we must base our consideration first on its Content. If we want to change a thing or phenomenon, we have to change its Content first.<br /> <br /> In reality, we must promote the positive impact of Form on Content by making the Form fit the Content. Likewise, we must also change the Form that is no longer suitable with its Content and therefore constrains the development of its Content.<br /> <br /> Annotation 154<br /> <br /> In any analysis, it is very important that we carefully consider whether or not Content and Form are suitable with each other in our own projects and activities. We can learn a lot about suitability from observation and practice (see Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, p. 204) and improve suitability through conscious activity.<br /> <br /> Marx believed that it is vital to consider Content and Form when analyzing human society and political economy. One of his core critiques of political economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo was a failure to consider Content and Form when it comes to value, commodities, and money. He discusses this extensively in Capital Volume 1, as in this excerpt:<br /> <br /> The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000<br /> <br /> years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both.<br /> <br /> Marx, here, is saying that studying the economy is more difficult than studying the human body because it can’t be physically observed and dissected. Rather, we have to rely on abstraction, which leaves us prone to making many more mistakes in analyzing Content and Form.<br /> <br /> But in bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour – or value-form of the commodity – is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in micro-scopic anatomy.<br /> <br /> Marx’s analysis of capitalism relies to great extent upon recognizing the commodity-form of the product (Content) of labor. Labor existed long before capitalism. Labor has existed for as long as humans have worked to change our own material conditions.<br /> <br /> But under capitalism, labor specifically takes on the Form of a commodity which is bought by capitalists. This becomes the basis for Marx’s entire critique of capitalism.<br /> <br /> Obviously, there is much more to Marx’s use of Content and Form in analyzing capitalism and human society, but this should hopefully give you some idea of the importance of Content and Form in analysis of human society and revolutionary activity.<br /> <br /> 156<br /> <br /> ==5. Essence and Phenomenon==<br /> <br /> a. Categories of Essence and Phenomenon<br /> <br /> The Essence category refers to the synthesis of all the internal aspects as well as the obvious and stable relations that define the existence, motion and development of things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> The Phenomenon category refers to the external manifestation of those internal aspects and relations in specific conditions.<br /> <br /> Annotation 155<br /> <br /> Understanding Essence and Phenomena can be challenging at first, but it is very important for materialist dialectical analysis.<br /> <br /> Essence should not be confused with Form. Form represents the stable internal relations of the component content of a subject, whereas Essence represents the synthesis of all internal aspects as well as all obvious and stable attributes which define the existence, motion, and development of a subject.<br /> <br /> Phenomena are simply external manifestations of a subject which occur in specific conditions.<br /> <br /> The Essence of a subject is not dependent on conditions, whereas in different conditions, the same subject will exhibit different Phenomena. For example, COVID-19<br /> <br /> is, essentially, a specific virus strain. That is to say, all of the internal aspects and stable relations that define the existence, motion, and development of COVID-19 are synthesized as a virus which we call COVID-19.<br /> <br /> The Phenomena of COVID-19 which we can observe in patients would include symp-toms such as fever, coughing, trouble breathing, etc.<br /> <br /> The Essence of a cloud is water vapor in the atmosphere: that is the synthesis, the coming-together, of all the internal stable relations and aspects which will determine how a cloud exists, moves, and develops over time.<br /> <br /> The Phenomena of clouds are all the things we can sense: the appearance of big fluffy white things in the air, shadows on the ground, and, sometimes, rain.<br /> <br /> Essence defines Phenomenon: the internal attributes and stable relations will produce the Phenomena which we can observe. A cloud is not essentially defined as a fluffy white thing in the air; that is just the appearance a cloud has to our human senses in certain specific conditions.<br /> <br /> b. Dialectical relationship between Essence and Phenomenon<br /> <br /> Essence and Phenomenon both exist objectively as two unified but opposing sides.<br /> <br /> The unity between Essence and Phenomenon: Essence always manifests through Phenomena, and every Phenomenon is always the manifestation of a specific Essence. There is no pure Essence that exists separately from Phenomena and there is no Phenomenon that does not manifest from any kind of Essence.<br /> <br /> When Essence changes, Phenomena also change accordingly. When Essence appears, Phenomena also appear, and when Essence disappears, Phenomena also disappear.<br /> <br /> Therefore, Lenin said: “The Essence appears. The appearance is essential.”1<br /> <br /> 1 Philosophical Notebooks, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914-16.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 157<br /> <br /> The Opposition of Essence and Phenomenon: Essence is that which defines a thing, Phenomenon, or idea, while Phenomena are diversified and conditional. Essence is internal, while Phenomena are external. Essence is relatively stable, while Phenomena continuously change.<br /> <br /> Annotation 156<br /> <br /> Essence and Phenomenon are simultaneously unified and opposite because neither can exist without the other, yet they have completely opposite features from one another.<br /> <br /> Discussing the Essence and Phenomena of physical objects is relatively straight-forward. The Essence will typically encompass the physical object or system itself. For example, a car engine is essentially a machine; that is to say, the synthesis of all the internal aspects (the engine parts) as well as the obvious and stable relations (the relations between the parts of the engine; how they are assembled and work together in the engine system) that define the existence, motion and development of the engine (the way it works) are what essentially make it a car engine. All of these essential characteristics are internal, relatively stable, and remain the same regardless of the condition of the engine (i.e., they continue to exist whether the engine is turned on, turned off, inoperable, etc.).<br /> <br /> The Phenomena of the car engine are all the things that we can sense from it, but this can vary a great deal depending on conditions. When the car engine is turned off, it will be silent. It may be cool to the touch. It will be at rest. If the engine is turned on, the parts will move, it will become hot, it will make noise. In some situations it might smoke or even catch on fire. All of these Phenomena are conditional, unstable, and external to the engine itself.<br /> <br /> With ideas and abstract thought, Essence and Phenomenon becomes more difficult to determine and analyze. Lenin discussed this in his Philosophical Notebooks, beginning with a quote from Hegel:<br /> <br /> Dialectics in general is “the pure movement of thought in Notions“ (i.e., putting it without the mysticism of idealism: human concepts are not fixed but are eternally in movement, they pass into one another, they flow into one another, otherwise they do not reflect living life.<br /> <br /> Knowing that Hegel was an idealist, Lenin wanted to strip all idealism from his conception of dialectics, and thus made it clear that “the pure movement of thought”<br /> <br /> simply refers to the fact that human thoughts are constantly changing, always in motion, within the living human mind, writing:<br /> <br /> The analysis of concepts, the study of them, the “art of operating with them”<br /> <br /> (Engels) always demands study of the movement of concepts, of their interconnection, of their mutual transitions).<br /> <br /> This is a description of materialist dialectical analysis of human thought. We must understand that human thoughts are always in motion, always developing, and always mutually impacting other thoughts.<br /> <br /> 158<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 156 (continued)<br /> <br /> In particular, dialectics is the study of the opposition of the Thing-in-itself, of the essence, substratum, substance - from the appearance, from “Being-for-Others.” (Here, too, we see a transition, a flow from the one to the other: the essence appears. The appearance is essential.) Human thought goes endlessly deeper from appearance to essence, from essence of the first order, as it were, to essence of the second order, and so on without end.<br /> <br /> This is where Lenin introduces the concept of Essence and Phenomenon (or “appearance,” as Lenin puts it) as simultaneously oppositional and in unity. Essence refers to the qualities and nature of the “thing-in-itself” (its internal components, relations, etc.) while Phenomena represents “being-for-others” (that which external observers can sense or witness of a subject). However, as Lenin notes, Essence and Phenomena have a dialectical relationship with each other - a “flow from the one to the other.” The Essence “appears” by exuding Phenomena which we can sense.<br /> <br /> Conscious thoughts also have Essence and Phenomena of their own. With thought, the development from Essence to Phenomena is constant and inevitable. The Essence of each thought leads to thought-Phenomena which develop in turn into the Essence of new thoughts in a constant flow.<br /> <br /> In this sense, Essence and Phenomenon of abstract thought is somewhat different from Essence and Phenomenon of physical objects, but physical objects can have this same dialectical pattern of development. For example, the emissions from the engine of a car can be considered Phenomena of the engine, but as these Phenomena build up in the air (along with the emissions from many other cars), they can develop into a physical subject with a new Essence of its own, which we call “air pollution.”<br /> <br /> We can also think of the light which comes from the sun. The light itself can be thought of as Phenomena of the sun, but the light energy can be captured by a solar panel and converted into energy, creating a new subject with its own Essence which we would describe as “solar energy.” In this sense, it is possible for Phenomena to have Phenomena. If you witness light waves in the desert which cause an optical illusion, then the illusion is a Phenomenon of the light waves (the light waves being the Essence which exuded the Phenomenon of illusion), and the light waves are the Phenomena of the sun (the essential subject which exudes the Phenomena of the light waves).<br /> <br /> Essence and Phenomena can also be contextual. In some contexts, physical objects which have their own Essence (and Phenomena) may be the Phenomena of some other entity. For example, archaeologists can’t observe prehistoric civilizations directly.<br /> <br /> They can only study the things which are left behind. In this sense, we can think of an archaeological artifact, like a stone tool, as a Phenomenon of a prehistoric civilization.<br /> <br /> The tool has its own Essence and Phenomena, but it is also itself a Phenomenon. A single stone tool can’t tell archaeologists much about an ancient civilization, however, archaeologists can gather many Phenomena (tools, structural ruins, nearby animal bones and seeds, human remains, etc.) to look for patterns which reveal more insights about the Essence of the prehistoric civilization which exuded those Phenomena.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 159<br /> <br /> Annotation 156 (continued)<br /> <br /> Dialectics in the proper sense is the study of contradiction in the very essence of objects: not only are appearances transitory, mobile, fluid, demarcated only by conventional boundaries, but the essence of things is so as well.<br /> <br /> Lenin, here, points out that proper analysis hinges on understanding the Essence of a subject, since the Phenomena are fleeting and subject to change. Most notably, we should look for contradictions within the subject (see Definition of Contradiction and Common Characteristics of Contradiction, p. 175), because contradictions are what drive dialectical development of a subject over time.<br /> <br /> c. Meaning of the Methodology<br /> <br /> If we want to be accurately aware of things, phenomena, and ideas, we must not just stop at studying their Phenomena, we have to study their Essence. Only through examining many Phenomena of a subject can we fully and correctly understand the Essence of said subject.<br /> <br /> Annotation 157<br /> <br /> With physical objects, we must study the Phenomena to know anything about a subject, since Phenomena is, by definition, that which we can observe. Only through systematic, repeated observations can we come to understand the Essence of the object which exudes the Phenomena. Because Phenomena can change based on conditions, we must observe Phenomena under various conditions in a systematic way. This is the basis of all scientific inquiry.<br /> <br /> This is also true for analyzing aspects of human society. To understand a social system, we must observe its Phenomena systematically over time and look for patterns which form under various conditions. We must also keep in mind that social systems develop and change over time, and so the Essence might develop with or without changes in certain Phenomena. For example, the phenomena of the United States of America have changed significantly over the years. The national flag, military uniforms, seals, and other iconography have changed throughout the history of the USA.<br /> <br /> Similarly, there have been many presidents, and the government and constitution have also been through many changes. That said, the essential nature of the USA’s political economy has not changed significantly since its foundation; the USA has been a capitalist bourgeois democracy since the beginning and remains so to this day. Regardless of which bourgeois-dominated political party holds power in the white house and congress - Whig, Republican, Democrat, or otherwise - the essential nature of the USA as a capitalist bourgeois democracy has remained the same.<br /> <br /> According to Lenin: “Human thought goes endlessly deeper from appearance to essence, from essence of the first order, as it were, to essence of the second order, and so on, without end. ”1 On the other hand, Essence is what defines a thing, phenomenon, or idea. Therefore, in our perception and practice, we must recognize a thing, phenomenon, or idea based on its Essence, not its Phenomena, to evaluate it correctly, and after that, we can make fundamental improvements.<br /> <br /> 1 Philosophical Notebooks, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914-16.<br /> <br /> 160<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 158<br /> <br /> For example: Thousands of years ago, people observed that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west everyday. Based on these Phenomena, many human civilizations developed the belief that the Essence of our solar system was that the earth was the center of the universe and the sun rotated around it. Today, thanks to scientific observation and practice, we have proven that the sun is the center of the solar system and that the earth is rotating around it, which is totally opposite to what many believed hundreds of years ago. In this case, the initially observed Phenomena were misleading, and it was only by getting a better grasp of the essential nature of the solar system that we could better comprehend its functioning.<br /> <br /> It is usually easy to observe Phenomena (since they are defined by being observable) but it’s also easy to misunderstand relationships between Essence and Phenomena.<br /> <br /> Sometimes people get a false perception of Essence from real Phenomena, such as believing the Sun revolves around the Earth. Sometimes people attribute the wrong Phenomena to Essences as well, such as believing that all poor people are lazy.<br /> <br /> Phenomena can easily be mistaken for essence. For example, bourgeois liberal political parties often portray themselves as being pro-worker and therefore exhibit phenomena such as rhetoric, slogans, propaganda, and even platform positions which appeal to workers. These phenomena may confuse many into believing that they are workers’ parties when, in reality, they are essentially dominated by the capitalist class.<br /> <br /> The reverse can also occur. For example, workers may be fooled into believing that a ruthless capitalist politician or celebrity is “working class at heart,” falsely believing that the capitalist’s class position is merely a phenomenon when in fact it is essential.<br /> <br /> Understanding true Essence based on real Phenomena is one of the most important aspects of analysis. It is the primary realm of science. In politics, misunderstanding or mischaracterizing Essence and Phenomena can reinforce false beliefs about the way society works which can lead to promulgation of dangerous and reactionary ideologies like neoliberalism and fascism amidst the working class. For this reason, we must avoid examining Phenomena alone. We have to dive deep to discover and understand the essential nature of things, phenomena, and ideas in our analysis.<br /> <br /> ==6. Possibility and Reality==<br /> <br /> a. Categories of Possibility and Reality<br /> <br /> The Possibility category refers to things that have not happened nor existed in reality yet, but that would happen, or would exist given necessary conditions.<br /> <br /> The Reality category refers to things that exist or have existed in reality and in human thought.<br /> <br /> b. Dialectical Relationship Between Possibility and Reality<br /> <br /> Possibility and Reality have a unified and inseparable relationship: Possibility can transform into Reality and Reality contains new Possibility; any given Possibility, under specific conditions, can transform into Reality.<br /> <br /> Given specific conditions, there could be one or many possibilities for the development of any given thing, phenomenon, or idea: practical Possibility, random Possibility, obvious Possibility, abstract Possibility, near Possibility, far Possibility, etc.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 161<br /> <br /> Annotation 159<br /> <br /> EXCERPT FROM MARXISM-LENINISM TEXTBOOK OF STUDENTS<br /> <br /> WHO SPECIALIZE IN MARXISM-LENINISM<br /> <br /> Editor’s notes in [brackets]<br /> <br /> Reality has many aspects. It also has many tendencies of development. These aspects and tendencies of Reality have different roles and positions in the development process of Reality. For example, manifesting any given Possibility into Reality requires us to change a specific subject from one status to a different status. Some subjects are easier to transform and others are more difficult to transform. Some require us to change quality, others only require quantity changes [see Annotation 117, p. 119].<br /> <br /> Because Reality has many aspects and tendencies of development, it is useful to classify Possibility. There are at least four types of Possibility, in two separate categories.<br /> <br /> [The categorization below draws a distinction between the obvious and the practical.<br /> <br /> The obvious is that which will certainly occur. If you drop an object, it will obviously fall.<br /> <br /> The practical is that which we certainly could make occur through human will. If you are holding an object, you could practically drop it.]<br /> <br /> Obvious Possibility and Random Possibility [see: Obviousness and Randomness, p. 144].<br /> <br /> Obvious Possibility refers to Possibility that will happen, because conditions to make it happen are set in place so that the Possibility developing into Reality is unavoidable.<br /> <br /> [If the conditions arise for a hurricane to form, it eventually becomes obvious that a hurricane will form.]<br /> <br /> Random Possibility is Possibility which may or may not happen depending on how external factors develop, our actions, the actions of others, etc. [Whether or not a hurricane may develop on any given day is, from our human perspective, random, since we do not have any technology to cause or prevent the development of hurricanes. Other events may be more or less random. We can, for instance, prepare for an incoming hurricane to minimize the risk of harm to human communities.]<br /> <br /> Second, based on the practical relationships between subjects, we have: Practical Possibility vs. Abstract Possibility:<br /> <br /> Practical Possibility means that conditions in Reality which could make something happen are already in place. [If you have all the ingredients, knowledge, and equipment needed to make a pie, you could make a pie. The material conditions are in place.]<br /> <br /> Abstract Possibility is Possibility which may become Reality in the future but the conditions which would make this Possibility become Reality have not yet developed.<br /> <br /> [It is an abstract Possibility that you could make a pie, even if you don’t have the tools, ingredients, or knowledge. It is possible, in the abstract, that you could buy the ingredients and equipment and learn the necessary skills to make a pie. Near Possibility simply refers to Possibility which may become Reality in the shorter term, far Possibility refers to things which may happen in a more distant future, relative to the subject being discussed.]<br /> <br /> 162<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism In social life, in order to transform a Possibility into Reality, there must be objective conditions and subjective factors. Subjective factors include the ability of humans to change Possibility into Reality. Objective conditions refer to the situations needed to make such a change occur. [In other words, humans are able to subjectively change possibility into reality, but only when the objective circumstances exist in the external world.]<br /> <br /> c. Meaning of the Methodology<br /> <br /> We must base our perception and practice on Reality.<br /> <br /> Lenin said: “Marxism takes its stand on the facts, and not on possibilities. A Marxist must, as the foundation of his policy, put [forth] only precisely and unquestionably demonstrated facts.”1<br /> <br /> However, in our perception and practice, we also need to comprehensively recognize possibilities which could arise from Reality. This will allow us to develop methods of practical operation which are suitable to changes and developments which might occur.<br /> <br /> We must actively make use of subjective factors in perception and practice to turn Possibility into Reality whenever it would serve our purposes.<br /> <br /> Annotation 160<br /> <br /> This idea is perhaps best exemplified in the traditional Vietnamese proverb: “you can’t just open your mouth and wait for fruit to drop into your mouth.” We have to actively apply our will, through practice and labor, to develop the best possibilities into manifested Reality. See more about subjective factors in Annotation 207, p. 202.<br /> <br /> ==IV. BASIC LAWS OF MATERIALIST DIALECTICS==<br /> <br /> Laws are the regular, common, obvious, natural, and objective relations between internal aspects, factors, and attributes of a thing or phenomenon or between things and phenomena.<br /> <br /> There are many types of laws in this world and they all have different prevalence, reach, characteristics, and roles in regard to the motion and development processes of things and phenomena in nature, society, and human thought. So, it is necessary to classify different laws for humans to understand and apply them effectively into practical activities. Classifying laws based on prevalence, we have: private laws, common laws, and universal laws [see: Private and Common, p. 128].<br /> <br /> Private laws are laws that only apply to a specific range of things and phenomena. For example: laws of mechanical motion, laws of chemical motion, laws of biological motion, etc.<br /> <br /> Common laws are laws that apply to a broader range of subjects than private laws, and they impact many different subjects. For instance: the law of preservation of mass, the law of preservation of energy, etc.<br /> <br /> Universal laws are laws that impact every aspect of nature, society, and human thought. Materialist dialectics is the study of these universal laws.<br /> <br /> If we classify laws based on the reach of impact, we will have three main groups: laws of nature, laws of society, and laws of human thought.<br /> <br /> 1<br /> <br /> To N. D. Kiknadze, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, written after November 5, 1916.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 163<br /> <br /> Laws of nature are laws that arise in the natural world, including within the human body. They are not products of human conscious activities.<br /> <br /> Laws of society are the laws of human activity in social relations; these laws only apply to the conscious activities of humans, yet they are still objective.<br /> <br /> Annotation 161<br /> <br /> We have already discussed how relations between human beings are objective [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. By extension, the human relations which compose human societies are objective, and thus, any laws which govern objective human relations must also be objective.<br /> <br /> Marx’s assertion that human social relations are objective is critical to understanding his work. Marx pointed out that social relations may not be “physical,” in the sense that they can’t be observed directly with human senses, but that they still have an objective character - they exist externally to a given subject, and they have objective impacts on reality. For instance, the class relations between the capitalist class and the working class result in objective manifestations in reality, such as wealth accumulation, modes of circulation, etc.<br /> <br /> Laws of human thought are laws of the intrinsic relationships between concepts, categories, judgments, inference, and the development process of human rational awareness.<br /> <br /> As the science of common relations and development, materialist dialectics studies the universal laws that influence the entire natural world, human society, and human thought, all together as a whole.<br /> <br /> These universal laws are:<br /> <br /> • The law of transformation between quantity and quality.<br /> <br /> • The law of unification and contradiction between opposites.<br /> <br /> • The law of negation of negation.<br /> <br /> Annotation 162<br /> <br /> Each of these laws is considered universal because they apply to all things, phenomena, and ideas, and all the internal and external relations thereof, in human perception and practice. All things, phenomena, and ideas change and develop as a result of mutual impacts and relationships in accordance with these universal laws. On a fundamental level, materialist dialectics is the study of these universal laws and their utility.<br /> <br /> ==1. Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality==<br /> <br /> The law of transformation between quantity and quality is a universal law which concerns the universal mode of motion and development processes of nature, society, and human thought.<br /> <br /> Annotation 163<br /> <br /> Remember that mode refers to how something exists, functions, and develops [see Annotation 60, p. 59]. The universal mode of motion and development processes thus refers to how all things, ideas, and phenomena move, change, and develop.<br /> <br /> 164<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 163 (continued)<br /> <br /> Friedrich Engels defined the law of transformation between quantity and quality in Dialectics of Nature:<br /> <br /> The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy).<br /> <br /> In other words, quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas lead to quality shifts.<br /> <br /> The universal mode of motion and development processes follows the law of transformation between quantity and quality, which states:<br /> <br /> Qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of the quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and, ideas; and, vice versa: quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> Annotation 164<br /> <br /> Put simply: quantity changes develop into quality changes, and quality changes lead to quantity changes [see Annotation 117, p. 119]. We say that these changes to quantity and quality occur on the “inevitable basis” of one another because quality changes always, invariably, arise from quantity changes, and, likewise, quantity changes always, invariably, arise from quality changes.<br /> <br /> Just as quantity shifts lead to quality shifts, it is also true that quality shifts lead to quantity shifts. For example, if you have 11 donuts, then add 1 donut, you now have 1<br /> <br /> dozen donuts. If you add 12 more donuts, you would then have 2 dozen.<br /> <br /> Another example of quality shift leading to quantity shift would be a pond filling with rain water. Once enough drops of water collect and the pond is considered full<br /> <br /> - that is to say, once it is considered to be “a pond” of water - we will no longer think of the pond in terms of “drops.” We would think of the pond as “filled,” “overfilled,”<br /> <br /> “underfilled,” etc.<br /> <br /> Note that both of these examples are related to our human perceptions and understanding of the material world. The material world does not change based on our perceptions, nor how we classify the quantity or quality of a given subject. There are also objective aspects related to quality shifts leading to quantity shifts. For example, if we adjust the quantity of the temperature of a sheet of paper to the point of burning, and the paper burns, then the quantity of paper would be reduced from one sheet to zero sheets. In other words, the quality shift arising from temperature quantity increase (i.e., the paper burning into ash) results in a quantity shift in how many pieces of paper exist (from one sheet to zero sheets). However, even this is ultimately a subjective assessment rooted in human consciousness, since we subjectively think in terms of<br /> <br /> “sheets of paper,” and the concept of a “sheet of paper” is essentially a classification rooted in human consciousness. It is merely an abstract way of perceiving and considering the quantity and quality of the material subject which we think of as “paper.”<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 165<br /> <br /> The law of transformation between quantity and quality is an inevitable, objective, and universal relationship that repeats in every motion and development process of all things, phenomena, and ideas in nature, human society, and human thought.<br /> <br /> a. Definitions of Quality and Quantity<br /> <br /> - Definition of Quality<br /> <br /> Quality refers to the organic unity which exists amongst the component parts of a thing, phenomenon, or idea that distinguishes it from other things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> Annotation 165<br /> <br /> Note: we have already given basic definitions of quantity and quality in Annotation 117, p. 119. What follows are more comprehensive philosophical definitions of quality and quantity. Our world exists as one continuity of matter. All things and phenomena in our universe exist essentially as one unified system - namely, the entity which we call “the universe.” This unified nature of existence is extremely difficult for human beings to comprehend. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel pointed out that, in this sense, the unity of “pure being” is indistinguishable from “nothingness.” In Science of Logic, Hegel noted that if we try to comprehend pure material existence, as a whole, without distinguishing any component thing or phenomenon from any other, then all is incomprehensible. Human consciousness needs to delineate and distinguish the component parts of this unified system from each other in order to make sense of it all.<br /> <br /> Pure light and pure darkness are two voids which are the same thing. Something can be distinguished only in determinate light or darkness. . . [F]or this reason, it is only darkened light and illuminated darkness which have within themselves the moment of difference and are, therefore, determinate being.<br /> <br /> The human mind has evolved to perceive various things, phenomena, and ideas as differentiated. Quality is the basis on which we perceive subjects as distinct from one another. Every thing, phenomenon, and idea is composed of internal components and relations. The unity of these internal components and relations is what we refer to as quality. For example, a human being’s quality refers to the unity of all the internal components and relationships of which the human being is composed (i.e., the cells, organs, blood, etc., as well as the thoughts, memories, etc., which make the human) in unity. Quality is also a subjective phenomenon: a reflection of the material world in human consciousness [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. Therefore we may conceive of various qualities for the same subject. We can think of 12 donuts as “a box of donuts,” “a dozen donuts,” or as 12 individual donuts. We could consider a building as “one apartment building” or “forty apartments,” depending on the viewpoint of analysis.<br /> <br /> So, objective and inherent attributes form the quality of things, phenomena, and ideas, but we must not confuse quality and attribute with one another. Every thing, phenomenon, and idea has both fundamental and non-fundamental attributes. Only fundamental attributes constitute the quality of things, phenomena and ideas. When the fundamental attributes change, the quality also changes. The distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental attributes of things, phenomena, and ideas must depend on the purpose of the analysis; the same attribute may be fundamental when analyzing with one purpose but non-fundamental when analyzing with another purpose.<br /> <br /> 166<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 166<br /> <br /> Whether or not an attribute is considered “fundamental” depends entirely on conscious perspective. For example, one baker may consider chocolate chips to be “fundamental” for baking cookies while another baker may not. This subjective characteristic of what might be considered “fundamental” or not is reflected in how we consider quality. If you are trying to determine how much water you need to fill a swimming pool, you may think of a pool in terms of size (i.e., “this is an Olympic sized pool”), but if you just want to go for a swim, you are likely to just think in terms of the water level (i.e., “the pool is empty, we can’t swim”).<br /> <br /> If you are planning the construction of a school and want to know how many classrooms it will need, you might think in terms of “classrooms of students.” But if you are considering funding for a school year, you might consider the total number of students.<br /> <br /> The quality of a thing, phenomenon, or idea is determined by the qualities of its component parts.<br /> <br /> Annotation 167<br /> <br /> Qualities are composed of qualities, combined, in unity. “A swimming pool” may consist of a certain amount of concrete in a specific configuration combined with 5,000<br /> <br /> gallons of water. A car may be composed of a body, an engine, four tires, etc. Each individual component exists as a quality - a unity of component attributes - in and of itself.<br /> <br /> Quality is also determined by the structures and connections between component parts which manifest in specific relations. Therefore, distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental attributes is also relative.<br /> <br /> Annotation 168<br /> <br /> It’s not just the component parts of a subject which define its quality, but also the relations of those component parts. For instance, a quantity of wood and nails configured in one set of structural relations may have the quality of a chair, whereas the same component parts arranged with different structures and relations may have the quality of a table. In this sense, quality can be thought of as a synthesis of the Content and Form [see Content and Form, p. 147] of a thing, phenomenon, or idea from a certain perspective.<br /> <br /> For example, if we see two shoes, we may think of each shoe as an individual qualitative object (two shoes). On the other hand, we may think of the shoes, together, as a single qualitative “object” in terms of its utility and in terms of synthesis of content and form (“a pair of shoes”), so much so that if one shoe is lost then the remaining shoe is considered useless and discarded as trash.<br /> <br /> Because there are countless ways in which quality - the configuration and relations and composition of constituent parts of any given subject - can manifest, we must recognize that quality itself, based on the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental attributes, is a relative and subjective phenomenon of human consciousness.<br /> <br /> Any given subject will have multiple qualities, depending on the relations which exist between and within that subject and other subjects.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 167<br /> <br /> Annotation 169<br /> <br /> Any thing, phenomenon, or idea may be perceived from various different perspectives which would cause us to consider it as having different qualities. A single shoe may be considered as: a shoe, 3 pounds of leather, half of a pair, etc., depending on its internal and external relations and the perspective of the person considering the shoe.<br /> <br /> We can’t consider things, phenomena, and ideas apart from quality. Quality exhibits a subject’s relative stability.<br /> <br /> Annotation 170<br /> <br /> Remember that quality is the way in which the human mind conceives of the world as a collection of distinct things, phenomena, and ideas. These perceptions of quality are purely relative, but they are important, because they are what allow us to develop an understanding of the complicated system of things, phenomena, and ideas which make up our universe. In our perception, quality represents the relative stability of a thing, phenomenon, or idea which makes it a subject that we can consider and analyze in and of itself. Understanding how we distinguish between different subjects is crucial in developing a scientific understanding of the world which is rooted in observation and practice.<br /> <br /> - Definition of Quantity<br /> <br /> Quantity refers to the amount or extent of specific attributes of a thing, phenomenon, or idea, including but not limited to:<br /> <br /> • The amount of component parts.<br /> <br /> • Scale or size.<br /> <br /> • Speed or rhythm of motion.<br /> <br /> A thing, phenomenon, or idea can have many quantities, with each quantity determined by different criteria. [i.e., a car may be measured by many criteria of quantity, such as: length in meters, weight in kilograms, speed in kilometers per hour, etc.]<br /> <br /> Quality and quantity embody two different aspects of the same subject. Both quality and quantity exist objectively [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. However, the distinction between “quality” and “quantity” in the process of perceiving things, phenomena, and ideas has only relative significance: an attribute may be considered “quantity” from one perspective but “quality” from another perspective.<br /> <br /> Annotation 171<br /> <br /> If you are filling a box with a dozen donuts, then once you add the 12th donut, one<br /> <br /> “dozen” may represent the quality which you seek. From the perspective of a customer buying donuts for a party, “dozen” may represent the “quantity.” In other words, you need to make an order (quality) of three dozen donuts (quantity). And the manager of the store, at the end of the day, may tally twenty orders (quantity) as the day’s sales goal (quality). Quantity and quality, therefore, are both considered relatively, based on perspective and the purpose of analysis at hand.<br /> <br /> 168<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism<br /> <br /> b. Dialectical Relationship Between Quantity and Quality<br /> <br /> Every thing, phenomenon, and idea exists as a unity of two aspects: quality and quantity. Quantity and quality do not exist separate from one another. Quantity and quality dialectically and mutually impact one other. Changes in quantity lead to changes in quality. However, not every change in quantity will cause a change in quality.<br /> <br /> Annotation 172<br /> <br /> In order for quantity change to lead to quality change, a certain amount must be met.<br /> <br /> This amount is called the threshold, which is explained further below in this section.<br /> <br /> A threshold may be exact and known (i.e., it takes exactly 12 donuts to make a dozen donuts) or it may be relative and unknown (i.e., a certain quantity of air inflated into a balloon may cause it to burst, but the exact, specific quantity of air may be relative to other factors such as air temperature and may be unknown to the observer until the balloon actually bursts).<br /> <br /> With any given subject, there will be a range of quantity changes which can accumulate without leading to change in quality. This range is called the quantity range.<br /> <br /> Q uantity range is defined as a relationship between quantity and quality: the range of intervals in which the change in quantity does not substantially change the quality of a given subject. Within the limits of a quantity range, the subject retains the same quality.<br /> <br /> Annotation 173<br /> <br /> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12<br /> <br /> A Donut<br /> <br /> QUANTITY RANGE<br /> <br /> A Dozen Donuts<br /> <br /> QUALITIES<br /> <br /> The quantity range is a range of quantities between quality shifts.<br /> <br /> Quantity range can be thought of as the range of quantities which exists between thresholds. For instance, between the qualities of “one donut” and “one dozen donuts,”<br /> <br /> there is a quantity range of 10 donuts (2 donuts through 11 donuts) which can be added before the quality shifts to “one dozen donuts.” You can keep adding additional donuts, up to the quantity of 11 donuts, without reaching the threshold of quality shift to “one dozen donuts.” This is the quantity range between the qualities of donut and one dozen donuts. Again, the quantity range is relative to the perspective and the nature of analysis. One person may only be concerned with “dozens of donuts,” while another may consider the quality of “half dozens,” which would consider a quality shift to<br /> <br /> “one half-dozen donuts” to occur once the sixth donut (quantity) is added.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 169<br /> <br /> Motion and change usually begins with a change in quantity. When changes in quantity reach a certain amount, quality will also change. The amount, or degree, of quantity change at which quality change occurs is called the threshold.<br /> <br /> Annotation 174<br /> <br /> Note that the threshold is an approximate range. At a<br /> <br /> certain quantity, a glass may be considered “half full”<br /> <br /> and at another certain quantity, after passing the thresh-<br /> <br /> old, the glass will be considered “full,” though there may be a wide range of quantities at which the glass would be<br /> <br /> THRESHOLD OF<br /> <br /> considered to have the quality of being “full,” depending<br /> <br /> A GLASS OF WATER<br /> <br /> on perspective and purpose of analysis.<br /> <br /> When quantity change meets a threshold, within necessary and specific conditions, quality will change. This change in quality, which takes place in the motion and development process of things, phenomena, and ideas, is called a quality shift.<br /> <br /> QUANTITY<br /> <br /> QUANTITY<br /> <br /> QUALITY<br /> <br /> INCREASE<br /> <br /> INCREASE<br /> <br /> SHIFT<br /> <br /> HALF A CUP<br /> <br /> A FULL CUP<br /> <br /> OF WATER<br /> <br /> QUANTITY RANGE<br /> <br /> OF WATER<br /> <br /> QUALITIES<br /> <br /> A quality shift occurs when a quantity changes beyond a threshold, leading to a change in quality.<br /> <br /> Quality shifts inevitably occur as transformations in the development processes of things, phenomena, and ideas. Qualitative changes can be expressed or manifested through many forms of quality shifts which are determined by the contradictions, characteristics and conditions of a given subject, including such characteristics as: fast or slow, big or small, partial or entire, spontaneous or intentional.<br /> <br /> Annotation 175<br /> <br /> Quality shifts are inevitable because there is no thing, phenomenon, nor idea which can exist statically, forever, without ever undergoing change. Eventually, any given subject will undergo quality shifts, even if such transformation may take millions of years to occur.<br /> <br /> Quality shifts can take various forms, depending on the nature of internal and external relationships, contradictions, and mutual impacts. For instance, a river may dry up or it may flood depending on internal and external relations and characteristics, but it will not simply flow at the same level forever without ever undergoing any quality shifts.<br /> <br /> 170<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 175 (continued)<br /> <br /> The rate and degree of quality shifts can vary considerably based on such internal and external factors, and may be “spontaneous,” that is to say, without human intervention, or may be the result of the intentional, conscious action of human beings.<br /> <br /> Quality shifts mark the end of one motion period and the start of a new motion period.<br /> <br /> Annotation 176<br /> <br /> ANATOMY OF DEVELOPMENT<br /> <br /> A) Quantity Range<br /> <br /> C) Period of Motion<br /> <br /> 1<br /> <br /> 2<br /> <br /> 3<br /> <br /> 4<br /> <br /> B) Quality Shift<br /> <br /> The Quantity Range (A) refers to the range of quantities between two qualities in the process of development. The Quality Shift (B) refers to the point at which quantity accumulates to the point of changing the Quality of the developing subject. The Period of Motion (C) includes both the quantity range and the quality shifts themselves.<br /> <br /> Period of motion refers to the development which occurs between two quality shifts, including the quality shifts themselves.<br /> <br /> Period of motion differs from quantity range because quantity range only includes the range of quantity change which can occur between quality shifts, without including the quality shifts themselves.<br /> <br /> For example, a period of motion for a cup filling with water from a half cup would include all of the change which occurs from the cup being half full to the cup becoming entirely full. The quantity range of this same process would only include the quantities of water that stand between half-full and full, where the cup is neither considered to be<br /> <br /> “half full” or “full” but somewhere in between, i.e., between quality shifts.<br /> <br /> Quality shift represents discontinuity within the continuous development process of things and phenomena. In the material world, all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly undergoing continuous sequences of quantitative changes leading to quality shifts, creating an endless line of nodes, showing how all things, phenomena, and ideas move and develop to increasingly advanced degrees [see illustration on p. 121 for a visualization of this “endless line of nodes”].<br /> <br /> As Friedrich Engels summarised: “merely quantitative changes beyond a certain point pass into qualitative differences.”1<br /> <br /> 1 Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 171<br /> <br /> Annotation 177<br /> <br /> Processes of change and development in our universe are continuously ongoing.<br /> <br /> Whenever a quality shift occurs, it represents a brief discontinuity in the sense that we perceive a definite and distinct transformation from one thing, phenomenon, or idea into another; in other words, we can distinguish between the mode of existence of the thing, phenomenon, or idea before and after the quality shift.<br /> <br /> Take, for example, the “lifespan” of a house. A human being could easily distinguish between the empty land which exists before the house is built, the construction site which exists as it’s being built, and the house itself once construction is completed. In reality, this process of change is continuous, but to our human perception, each quality shift represents a definite and distinct period of change and discontinuity in terms of our perception of the “thing” which is the house.<br /> <br /> This is related to the historic perspective of things, phenomena, and ideas, in which we recognize the continuity of existence between different stages of development of things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 201, p. 195].<br /> <br /> When a quality shift occurs, there is an impact on the quantity. Quality impacts quantity in a number of ways, including [but not limited to]:<br /> <br /> • Changing the structure, scale, or level of the subject.<br /> <br /> • Changing the rhythm or speed of the motion and development of the subject.<br /> <br /> In summary, dialectical unity between quantity and quality exists in every thing, phenomenon, and idea. A gradual quantitative change [through the quantity range] will eventually meet the threshold, which will inevitably lead to a qualitative change through quality shift. Simultaneously, the new quality will mutually impact the quantity, causing new quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas. This process takes place continuously, forming the fundamental and universal mode of movement and development processes of all things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> Annotation 178<br /> <br /> Transformation between quantity and quality is the mode of movement and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas, because it reflects the way in which human consciousness perceives movement and development.<br /> <br /> So, it is important to understand that there is no material manifestation of quantity and quality. They are simply mental constructs which reflect the ways in which we observe and understand change, motion, and development of things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> Transformation processes in the material world are fully fluid and continuous, but our consciousness perceives change in stages of development. Quality simply reflects how we distinguish one subject from another subject, as well as how we recognize the transformation process (and stages of development) of a single subject over time.<br /> <br /> There is no specific point, metaphysically distinct point at which a “puppy” becomes an “adult dog,” but human beings will distinguish between a puppy and an adult dog, or recognize at a certain point that a puppy has “become” an adult dog, based on observation of quality.<br /> <br /> 172<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 178 (continued)<br /> <br /> QUALITY SHIFT OF A SINGLE SUBJECT OVER TIME<br /> <br /> QUALITY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TWO SUBJECTS<br /> <br /> Quality refers to the differences which are distinguished in human consciousness between one subject and another, or changes in a subject’s form over time.<br /> <br /> There is no metaphysically distinct point at which a “puppy” becomes an “adult dog,” but human beings will distinguish between a puppy and an adult dog, or recognize at a certain point that a puppy has “become” an adult dog, based on observation of quality. We create categories which reflect quality to organize and systematically understand the world around us, and to distinguish between different subjects, and to distinguish between different stages of development of a given subject.<br /> <br /> We can also distinguish differences of quality between different subjects: we can distinguish a cat from a dog, and we can distinguish one dog from another dog. These distinguishing attributes constitute differences in quality. Note that this conception of differentiation of things, phenomena, and ideas into qualities which constantly change and develop over time is fundamentally distinct from metaphysical categorization, which seeks to divide all things, phenomena, and ideas into static, perpetually unchanging categories (see Annotation 8, p. 8).<br /> <br /> Distinction within the human mind is reflected in the concept of quantity and quality. If we do not observe quality differences between subjects, then we would not be able to distinguish between different subjects at all. If we could not recognize the quality shifts of any given subject, then we would not be aware of change or motion at all.<br /> <br /> c. Meaning of the Methodology<br /> <br /> Every thing, phenomenon and idea has characteristics of quality and quantity which mutually impact and transform one another. Therefore, in perception and practice, we need to understand and take into account the law of transformation between quantity and quality in order to have a comprehensive viewpoint of things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 114, p. 116].<br /> <br /> Quantitative changes of things, phenomena and ideas inevitably lead to qualitative<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 173<br /> <br /> changes in all things, phenomena, and ideas. Therefore, in our perception and practice, as we plan and enact change in our world and in human society, it is necessary to gradually accumulate changes in quantity in order to make changes in quality. At the same time, we must recognize and make use of the fact that quality shifts also lead to changes in quantity.<br /> <br /> Annotation 179<br /> <br /> We have to understand and utilize the law of transformation between quantity and quality in our activities. For instance, if a group of activists hopes to address hunger in their community, they have to realize that they can’t immediately enact a quality shift which solves the entire problem of hunger across the city instantaneously. Instead, the activists must recognize that quantity shifts lead to quality shifts through stages of development. In planning and acting, they may need to set certain development targets, predict thresholds at which quality shifts will occur, etc.<br /> <br /> For instance, the first goal for these activists may be to provide free lunches to houseless people in a particular park every weekend. If they can accomplish this, then they will not have completely eliminated hunger in the city, but they will have reached a threshold - a quality shift - in that nobody in that specific park will be hungry at lunch time on weekends. From there, they can continue to build quality shifts through accumulation of changes in quantity, one stage of development at a time.<br /> <br /> Quality shifts leading to quantity shifts must also be recognized and utilized in our planning and activities. For example, once an effective strategy is developed for eliminating hunger in one park through quantity changes leading to quality shifts, this strategy can then be implemented in other parks. Thus the quality shift of “eliminating hunger in one park” can lead to a quantity shift: “eliminating hunger in two parks, three parks, etc.,” until the quantity shift of “eliminating hunger in parks” leads to the quality shift of “eliminating hunger in all the parks in the city.” This entire process of enacting quantity changes to lead to quality shifts, and accumulating quality shifts to change quantity, are all focused toward the ultimate goal of achieving the quality shift of “eliminating hunger in the entire city.”<br /> <br /> In short, it’s vital for us to understand the ways in which quantity and quality mutually impact each other so that we can formulate plans and activities which will lead to motion and development which accomplish our goals, step by step, through one stage of development at a time.<br /> <br /> Changes in quantity can only lead to changes in quality provided the quantity accumulates to a certain threshold. Therefore, in practice, we need to overcome impatient, left-sided thought. Left-sided thinking refers to thinking which is overly subjective, idealistic, ignorant of the laws which govern material reality. Left-sided thinking neglects to acknowledge the necessity of quantity accumulation which precedes shifts in quality, focusing instead on attempting to perform continuous shifts in quality.<br /> <br /> On the other hand, we must also recognize that once change in quantity has reached a threshold, it is inevitable that a quality shift will take place. Therefore, we need to overcome conservative and right-sided thought in practical work. Right-sided thinking is the expression of conservative, stagnant thought that resists or refuses to recognize quality shifts even as changes in quantity come to meet the threshold of quality shift.<br /> <br /> 174<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 180<br /> <br /> “Right-sided thinking” and “left-sided thinking” are Vietnamese political concepts which are rooted in the ideas of Lenin’s book: Leftwing Communism: an Infantile Disorder. In Vietnamese political philosophy, “left-sided thinking” is a form of dogmatic idealism which upholds unrealistic conceptions of change and development. Left-sided thinkers don’t have the patience for quantity accumulation which are prerequisite to quality shifts, or expect to skip entire stages of development which are necessary to precipitate change in the real world. An example of left-sided thinking would be believing that a capitalist society can instantly transition into a stateless, classless, communist society, skipping over the transitions in quantity and quality which are required to bring such a massive transformation in human society to fruition.<br /> <br /> “Right-sided thinking,” on the other hand, is conservate resistance to change.<br /> <br /> Right-sided thinkers resist quality changes to human society; they either want to preserve society as it exists right now, or reverse development to some previous (real or imagined) stage of development. Right-sided thinkers also refuse to acknowledge quality shifts once they’ve occurred, idealistically pretending that changes in material conditions have not occurred. For example, right-sided thinkers may refuse to recognize advances which have been made in the liberation of women, or even attempt to reverse those advances in hopes of returning to previous stages of development when women had fewer freedoms. Here is a practical example of these concepts in use, from the Vietnam Encyclopedia, published by the Ministry of Culture and Information of Vietnam:<br /> <br /> Opportunism is a system of political views that do not follow a clear direction nor a clear line, do not have a definite stance, and are inclined toward the immediate personal gain of the opportunist. In the proletarian revolutionary movement, opportunism is a politics of compromise, reform, and unprincipled collaboration with the enemy which run contrary to the basic interests of the working class and the working people. In practice, opportunism has two main trends, stemming from right-sided thinking and from left-sided thinking, respectively: Right-wing opportunism is reformist, favors undue compromise, and aims to peacefully “convert” capitalism into socialism while abandoning the struggle for meaningful victory of the working class. Right-wing opportunism, typified by Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky, has its origins in the Workers’ Parties of the Second International era and exists to this day.<br /> <br /> Left-wing opportunism is a mixture of extremism and adventurism, dogmatism, arrogance, subjectivity, cults of violence, and disregard for the objective situation.<br /> <br /> Both “right” and “left” opportunism push the workers’ movement to futile sacrifice and failure.<br /> <br /> Quality shifts are diverse and plentiful, so we need to promote and apply quality shifts creatively and flexibly to suit the specific material conditions we face in a given situation. This is especially true in changing human society, as social development processes depend not only on objective conditions but also on subjective human factors. Therefore, we need to be active and take the initiative to promote the process of converting between quantity and quality in the most effective way.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 175<br /> <br /> Annotation 181<br /> <br /> Put simply, we have to use our human will and labor to actively promote quantity changes which lead to quality changes, and quality changes which lead to quantity changes, which move us towards our goal of ending all forms of oppression in human society. This will involve not just objective factors1 (i.e., material conditions which are necessary to accomplish something), but subjective factors2 as well (factors which we, as a subject, are capable of impacting directly).<br /> <br /> ==2. Law of Unification and Contradiction Between Opposites==<br /> The law of unification and contradiction between opposites is the Essence of dialectics<br /> <br /> [see: Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156]. According to Lenin: “In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the Essence of dialectics, but it requires explanations and development.”3 According to the law of unification and contradiction between opposites, the fundamental, originating, and universal driving force of all motion and development processes is the inherent and objective contradiction which exists in all things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> Annotation 182<br /> <br /> In other words, contradiction (defined further in the next section) is the force which serves as the fundamental, originating, and universal force which drives all motion and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> Contradiction is a fundamental driving force because it is the most basic driving force which all other forms of motion and development are based upon.<br /> <br /> Contradiction is the originating driving force because all motion and development arises from contradiction.<br /> <br /> Contradiction is the universal driving force because all things, phenomena, and ideas -<br /> <br /> without exception - are driven to motion and development by contradiction.<br /> <br /> a. Definition of Contradiction and Common Characteristics of Contradiction<br /> <br /> - Definition of Contradiction<br /> <br /> In dialectics, the concept of contradiction is used to refer to the relationship, opposition, and transformation between opposites which takes place within all things, phenomena, and ideas, as well as between all things, phenomena, and ideas. This dialectical concept of contradiction is fundamentally different from the metaphysical concept of contradiction. The metaphysical concept of contradiction is an illogical conception of opposition without unity and without dialectical transformation between opposites.<br /> <br /> Annotation 183<br /> <br /> A contradiction is, fundamentally, just a type of relationship. In a contradictory relationship, two things, phenomena, and/or ideas mutually impact one another, resulting in the eventual negation of one subject and the synthesis of the negator and the negated into some new form.<br /> <br /> 1 See Annotation 108, p. 112.<br /> <br /> 2 See Annotation 207, p. 202.<br /> <br /> 3 Summary of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.<br /> <br /> 176<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 183 (continued)<br /> <br /> The metaphysical concept of contradiction is considered illogical because it establish-es no connection between that which is negated and the resulting synthesis.<br /> <br /> METAPHYSICAL CONTRADICTION<br /> <br /> -Contradicting subjects are isolated and distinct<br /> <br /> -Complete negation of one subject by the other<br /> <br /> -Negation ends contradiction once and for all<br /> <br /> In the metaphysical conception of contradiction, the negated “disappears” and is not represented in the resulting synthesis.<br /> <br /> Metaphysical contradiction presents contradicting subjects as isolated from one another and completely distinct, when in reality the relationship between the negated and the negator essentially defines the contradiction. The negated subject is seen as completely negated; that is to say, it is conceived of as essentially “disappearing” into the synthesized result of the contradiction. In this sense, this metaphysical conception of negation is inaccurate in that it is represented as a complete, terminating process.<br /> <br /> In the above example, once the fox eats the rabbit, the rabbit is considered “gone”<br /> <br /> after a terminal negation process (see Annotation 196, p. 188) ends the contradiction.<br /> <br /> CONTRADICTION IN MATERIALIST DIALECTICS<br /> <br /> -Contradicting subjects are defined by their relationship<br /> <br /> -Negated subject impacts negator; characteristics carried forward<br /> <br /> -Contradiction and negation cycle continues forever<br /> <br /> The materialist dialectical conception of contradiction recognizes that contradicting subjects are defined by their relationship and that the synthesis of the contradiction carries forward attributes and characteristics from both the negator and the negated.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 177<br /> <br /> Annotation 183 (continued)<br /> <br /> Materialist dialectical contradiction recognizes that every contradiction is defined by the relationship between the negated and the negator. Materialist dialectics also recognizes that attributes and characteristics of the negated subject are carried forward into the synthesized subject [see Annotation 203, p. 198]. Materialist dialectics also recognizes that contradiction continues indefinitely, as the negated becomes negated again, and so on, continuously, forever [see Negation of Negation, p. 185].<br /> <br /> In the example on the previous page, the fox consuming the rabbit constitutes a negation process in which the fox takes on characteristics from the rabbit (i.e., nutritional and energy content, any diseases which may be carried forward to the fox, etc.).<br /> <br /> Contradiction arises from opposition which exists within or between things, phenomena, and ideas. The concept of opposing “sides’’ refers to such aspects, properties, and tendencies of motion which oppose one another, yet are, simultaneously, conditions and premises of the existence of one another. Examples include:<br /> <br /> • Negative charge and positive charge within atoms.<br /> <br /> • Anabolism and catabolism within living organisms [anabolism refers to the growth and building up of molecules within an organism, while catabolism refers to the digestion and breaking down of molecules within an organism].<br /> <br /> • Production and consumption as socioeconomic activities.<br /> <br /> • Trial and error which leads to cognitive development.<br /> <br /> Annotation 184<br /> <br /> All of the above forms of contradiction drive motion and development. These processes exist in unity and opposition. For example, in political economics, production is driven by consumption and consumption is facilitated by production. Even though these are fundamentally opposite forces (production adds to the total quantity of products, while consumption reduces the total quantity of products), they can’t exist without one another, and they drive each other forward. This is the dialectical nature of contradiction as the driving force of all motion and development as defined in materialist dialectics.<br /> <br /> - The General Properties of Contradictions<br /> <br /> Contradiction is objective and universal. According to Friedrich Engels: “If simple mechanical change of position contains a contradiction, this is even more true of the higher forms of motion of matter, and especially of organic life and its development. We saw above that life consists precisely and primarily in this - that a being is at each moment itself and yet something else. Life is therefore also a contradiction which is present in things and processes themselves, and which constantly originates and resolves itself; and as soon as the contradiction ceases, life, too, comes to an end, and death steps in.<br /> <br /> We likewise saw that also, in the sphere of thought, we could not escape contradictions, and that, for example, the contradiction between man’s inherently unlimited capacity for knowledge and its actual presence only in men who are externally limited and possess limited cognition finds its solution in what is - at least practically, for us - an endless succession of generations, in infinite progress.”1<br /> <br /> 1 Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1877.<br /> <br /> 178<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 185<br /> <br /> Here, Engels is explaining how contradiction is the driving force in both material and conscious processes of motion and development. The process of life is a process of contradiction - all organic life forms must consume organic matter so that they can produce growth and offspring, must produce certain molecules and metabolic processes so that they can consume nutrients, and so on. Once these contradictory processes stop, as Engels says, “death steps in” (though even death is a transition forward).<br /> <br /> Conscious motion and development are also rooted in contradictory forces. Engels points out the contradiction between humanity’s seemingly infinite capacity for learning with the seemingly infinite amount of knowledge which can be obtained in the world. This great contradiction drives a seemingly endless process of expanding human knowledge, collectively, over countless generations.<br /> <br /> Contradictions are not only objective and universal, but also diverse and plentiful.<br /> <br /> The diverse nature of contradictions is evident in the fact that every subject can include many different contradictions and that contradictions manifest differently depending upon specific conditions. Contradictions can hold different positions and roles in the existence, motion, and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. These positions and roles include [but are not limited to]:<br /> <br /> • Internal and external contradictions<br /> <br /> • Fundamental and non-fundamental contradictions<br /> <br /> • Primary and secondary contradictions<br /> <br /> Annotation 186<br /> <br /> Internal contradictions are contradictions which exist in the internal relations of a subject, while external contradictions exist between two or more subjects as external relations.<br /> <br /> For example: a sports team might have internal contradictions between players, between the players and the coach, between the coach and management, etc. External contradictions might exist between the team and other teams, between the team and league officials, between the team and the landlords who own the team’s practice space, etc.<br /> <br /> A fundamental contradiction is a contradiction which defines the Essence of a relationship [see Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156]. Fundamental contradictions exist throughout the entire development process of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea. A non-fundamental contradiction exists in only one aspect or attribute of a thing, phenomenon, or idea. A non-fundamental contradiction can impact a subject, but it will not control or decide the essential development of the subject. Whether or not a contradiction is fundamental is relative to the point of view.<br /> <br /> For example: the fundamental contradiction of one nation engaged in war against one another might be the war itself. There will exist many other contradictions; one nation at war might have a trade dispute with a third nation which is not participating in the war. From the “war perspective,” this contradiction is non-fundamental, as it does not define the essential characteristic of the nation at war (though from the perspective of a diplomat charged with ending the trade dispute, the war may be seen as a non-fundamental contradiction while the dispute would be seen as fundamental).<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 179<br /> <br /> Annotation 186 (continued)<br /> <br /> In the development of things, phenomena, and ideas, there are many development stages. In each stage of development, there will be one contradiction which drives the development process. This is what we call the primary contradiction. Secondary contradictions include all the other contradictions which exist during that stage of development. Determining whether a contradiction is primary or secondary is relative: it depends heavily upon the material conditions and the situation.<br /> <br /> For example: when restoring an old car that doesn’t run any more, a mechanic may consider the primary contradiction to be the non-functioning engine. There may be many secondary contradictions which contribute to the problems with the car’s engine problems. The battery may be dead, the spark plugs may need to be bad, the tires may need replacement, the timing belt may be loose, etc. Those are all secondary contradictions which do not define the stage of development which is “repairing the engine.”<br /> <br /> Some of these secondary contradictions may need to be resolved (such as replacing the spark plugs) before the primary contradiction can be fully addressed; others, such as a cracked windshield, may not need to be addressed before the primary contradiction can be dealt with.<br /> <br /> On the other hand, a secondary contradiction may become the primary contradiction: if a mechanic resolves every problem with the engine except for one bad spark plug, then the bad spark plug will shift from being a secondary contradiction to being the primary contradiction: the bad spark plug is now the primary reason the car won’t start and this stage of development can’t be completed.<br /> <br /> Within all the various fields of inquiry, there exist contradictions which have a diverse range of different properties and characteristics.<br /> <br /> Annotation 187<br /> <br /> Different fields of study will focus on different forms of contradictions, and any given thing, phenomenon, or idea may contain countless contradictions which can be analyzed and considered for different purposes. For example, consider a large city, which might contain far too many contradictions to count. Civil engineers may focus primarily on contradictions in traffic patterns, the structural integrity of bridges and roads, ensuring that buildings are safe and healthy for inhabitants, etc. Utilities departments will focus on contradictions related to sewage, electrical, and sanitation systems. The education system will focus on contradictions which prevent students from achieving success in schools.<br /> <br /> All of these various methods of analysis may focus on specific forms of contradictions, though there will also be overlap. For instance, designing a school bus system will require the education system and civil engineers to discover and grapple with contradictions which might be hindrances for transporting students safely to school.<br /> <br /> b. Motion Process of Contradictions<br /> <br /> In every contradiction, the opposing sides are united with each other and opposed to each other at the same time. The concept of “unity between opposites” refers to the fact that a contradiction is a binding, inseparable, and mutually impacting relationship which exists between opposites.<br /> <br /> 180<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 188<br /> <br /> Contradictions are binding and inseparable because they hold a relationship together.<br /> <br /> If two opposing things, phenomena, or ideas simply separate, then contradiction, by definition, no longer exists. For example, an economy is bound together by the contradiction of production and consumption; if production exists without consumption (or vice-versa), it can’t be considered to be an economy.<br /> <br /> Contradictions are said to be mutually impacting because any time a contradiction exists between two opposing sides, both sides are mutually impacted for as long as the contradiction exists and develops. Of course, it is possible for two opposing sides to separate from one another; for example, a factory which produced buggy whips may have failed to find consumers after the invention of the car. Thus, there would exist a situation in which production exists without consumption. In this situation, the termination of the contradiction between production and consumption leads to a new contradiction: the factory will now be in the midst of a crisis which will require it to either provide a different product or go out of business.<br /> <br /> Thus we see that production and consumption can’t be separated from one another without leading to a change in the essential nature of the relationship and the opposing subjects, and we see that the opposing sides mutually impact one another (a change in consumption will affect production, and vice-versa).<br /> <br /> In any given contradictory relationship, each oppositional side is the premise for the other’s existence. Unity among opposites also defines the identity of each opposing side.<br /> <br /> Lenin wrote: “The identity of opposites (it would be more correct, perhaps, to say their<br /> <br /> ‘unity,’—although the difference between the terms identity and unity is not particularly important here. In a certain sense, both are correct) is the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature (including mind and society).”1<br /> <br /> Annotation 189<br /> <br /> Here, Lenin is explaining that identity and unity are (more or less) the same concept when it comes to understanding the nature of contradiction between opposites. In material processes of nature, social processes, and processes of consciousness, we perceive and define oppositional forces by recognizing mutually exclusive and contradictory tendencies within and between things, phenomena, and ideas. In other words, whenever we think of an oppositional relationship, we define it in terms of the opposition.<br /> <br /> WAR<br /> <br /> DISEASE<br /> <br /> ECONOMY<br /> <br /> OPPOSING SIDES<br /> <br /> HUMAN BODY VS. PATHOGENS<br /> <br /> PRODUCTION VS. CONSUMPTION<br /> <br /> CONTRADICTORY RELATIONSHIPS<br /> <br /> ARE DEFINED AND UNIFIED BY OPPOSITION<br /> <br /> War, disease, and economy are all examples of unity in contradiction.<br /> <br /> 1<br /> <br /> On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 181<br /> <br /> Annotation 189 (continued)<br /> <br /> When we think of a war, we think of the contradictions which exist between the opposing nations. When we think of a disease, we define it by the oppositional forces between the ailment and the human body. When we think of an economy, we think of the oppositional forces of production and consumption within the economy.<br /> <br /> In other words, the identity of contradictory relationships is defined by the unity of the opposing sides with one another.<br /> <br /> The concept struggle of opposites refers to the tendency of opposites to eliminate and negate each other. There exist many diverse forms of struggle between opposites. Struggle can manifest in various forms based on:<br /> <br /> • The nature of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea.<br /> <br /> • Relationships within a thing, phenomenon, or idea (or between things, phenomena, and ideas).<br /> <br /> • Specific material conditions [see Annotation 10, p. 10].<br /> <br /> The process of unity and struggle of opposites inevitably leads to a transformation between them. The transformation between opposites takes place with rich diversity, and such transformations can vary depending on the properties of the opposite sides as well as specific material conditions.<br /> <br /> Annotation 190<br /> <br /> Opposing sides, by definition, oppose one another. If forces or characteristics which exist within or between things, phenomena, or ideas do not oppose one another, then they are not, by definition, opposites. Thus, it can be understood that opposing sides have a tendency to struggle against one another. It is this very struggle which defines two sides as opposites, and as contradictory.<br /> <br /> Lenin explained that some contradicting opposite sides can exist in what he described as equilibrium, but that this is only ever a temporary state of affairs, as exemplified in his article An Equilibrium of Forces.<br /> <br /> [See Annotation 64, p. 62 for relevant text and more info on equilibrium.]<br /> <br /> Clearly, Lenin sees that this equilibrium of contradictory forces is not permanently sustainable. Indeed, no equilibrium of contradictory forces can be permanent. Eventually, one opposing side will overtake the other, and eventually, any given contradiction will result in one opposing side overcoming the other.<br /> <br /> According to the law of unification and contradiction between opposites, the struggle between two opposing sides is absolute, while the unity between them is relative, conditional, and temporary; in unity there is a struggle: a struggle in unity. According to Lenin: “The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.”1<br /> <br /> 1 On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.<br /> <br /> 182<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 191<br /> <br /> “Absolute” and “Relative” are philosophical classifications which refer to interdependence. That which is absolute exists independently and with permanence. That which is relative is temporary, and dependent on other conditions or circumstances in order to exist.<br /> <br /> So Lenin’s point is that unity exists temporarily in any given pair of opposing sides, as the unity only exists as long as the opposing sides are opposing one another. As soon as one side eliminates or negates the other, the unity subsides. However, opposition is considered absolute, because it is opposition which drives motion and change in all things, phenomena, and ideas through contradictory processes of opposing sides.<br /> <br /> In the same text quoted in the passage above, On the Questions of Dialectics, Lenin notes:<br /> <br /> The distinction between subjectivism (skepticism, sophistry, etc.) and dialectics, incidentally, is that in (objective) dialectics the difference between the relative and the absolute is itself relative. For objective dialectics there is an absolute within the relative. For subjectivism and sophistry the relative is only relative and excludes the absolute. . .<br /> <br /> Such must also be the method of exposition (i.e., study) of dialectics in general. . . To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., with any proposition: the leaves of a tree are green; John is a man: Fido is a dog, etc. Here already we have dialectics (as Hegel’s genius recognised): the individual is the universal.<br /> <br /> The individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes) etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs, the concepts of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say: John is a man, Fido is a dog, this is a leaf of a tree, etc., we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other.<br /> <br /> In other words, we must understand that in materialist dialectics, the absolute and the relative exist within one another; in other words, the absolute and the relative have a dialectical relationship with one another in all things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> Relative unity refers to the nature of unity between contradictory subjects. Contradictory subjects are unified in the sense that any given contradiction is essentially defined by the contradiction between two subjects. Thus, the two subjects are unified in contradiction. However, this unity is relative in the sense that this unification is temporary (the unity will end upon negation and synthesis) and relative (i.e., defined by the relationship between the two contradicting subjects).<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 183<br /> <br /> Annotation 191 (continued)<br /> <br /> Absolute struggle refers to the fact that contradiction, negation, and synthesis will go on forever; in this sense, contradictory processes are absolute because such struggle exists permanently; struggle has no set beginning or end point, and exists independently of any specific thing, phenomenon, or idea.<br /> <br /> A<br /> <br /> B<br /> <br /> RELATIVE UNITY<br /> <br /> Relationships define contradictions;<br /> <br /> are temporary and relative.<br /> <br /> C<br /> <br /> D<br /> <br /> E<br /> <br /> F<br /> <br /> ABSOLUTE STRUGGLE<br /> <br /> Development through contradiction<br /> <br /> is permanent and constant.<br /> <br /> Relative Unity refers to the temporary and relative nature of specific relationships which define and unify specific contradictions; Absolute Struggle refers to the permanent, constant nature of development through contradiction.<br /> <br /> A<br /> <br /> B<br /> <br /> RELATIVE UNITY<br /> <br /> ABSOLUTE STRUGGLE<br /> <br /> DIALECTICAL RELATIONSHIP<br /> <br /> BETWEEN RELATIVE UNITY AND ABSOLUTE STRUGGLE<br /> <br /> The relationship between relative unity and absolute struggle defines and drives change, motion, and development through contradiction.<br /> <br /> This applies to contradictions. The relative unity and the absolute struggle between opposing sides have a dialectical relationship with one another. The permanent absoluteness of struggle - the fact that all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly undergoing processes of change through contradictory forces - can only manifest in the relative unity of opposing sides, which can only exist through the temporary existence of conditional relations between opposing sides.<br /> <br /> 184<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism The interaction that leads to the transformation between opposites is a process. At the beginning, contradictions manifest as differences and then develop into two opposing sides. When the two contradictions are fiercely matched and when the conditions are ripe, they will transform each other, and finally, the conflict will be resolved. As old contradictions disappear, new contradictions are formed and the process of mutual impact and transformation between opposites continues, which drives the motion and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas. The relationship, impact and transformation between opposites are the source and driving force of all movement and development in the world. Lenin affirmed: “Development is the ‘struggle’ of opposites.”1<br /> <br /> Annotation 192<br /> <br /> Any given process of development - that is to say, of transformation or motion - can be seen as a struggle between opposites. Various forms of struggle can exist simultaneously for any given subject, and the way we interpret struggle can depend on our point of view.<br /> <br /> For an engineer, a car moving along a road might be seen as a struggle between the power generated by the engine against the mass of the car itself and the friction of the tires on the ground. The driver of the car might see the process in terms of the struggle between the driver and the environment as they navigate across town avoiding accidents and following traffic laws.<br /> <br /> An organism’s life can be seen as a struggle between the organism’s life processes and its environment, or it might be seen as a struggle of contradictory forces within the organism itself (i.e., forces of consumption of nutrition vs. forces of expending energy to survive, forces of disease vs. forces of the organism’s immune system, etc.).<br /> <br /> Materialist dialectics requires us to identify, examine, and understand the opposing forces which drive all development in our universe. Only through understanding such contradictions can we intercede and affect changes in the world which suit our purposes.<br /> <br /> For example, in order to fight against capitalism and other forms of oppression, we must first understand the contradictory forces which exist within and between those oppressive social structures. Only then can we determine how we might best apply our will, through labor processes, to dismantle such oppressive structures. We might do this by exacerbating existing contradictions within oppressive structures, by introducing new contradictions, by negating contradictions which inhibit our own progress, etc.<br /> <br /> c. Meaning of the Methodology<br /> <br /> Given that contradictions are objective and universal, and that they are the source and driving force of movement and development, it is therefore necessary to detect, recognize, and understand contradictions, to fully analyze opposing sides, and to grasp the nature, origin and tendencies of motion and development in our awareness and practice.<br /> <br /> Lenin said: “The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts… is the essence… of dialectics.”2<br /> <br /> 1 On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.<br /> <br /> 2 On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 185<br /> <br /> Annotation 193<br /> <br /> In other words, materialist dialectics is simply a system of understanding the world around us by viewing all things, phenomena, and ideas as collections of relationships and contradictions which exist within and between all things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> Since contradictions exist with such rich diversity, it is necessary to have a historical point of view [see Annotation 114, p. 116] - that is, to know how to analyze each specific type of contradiction and have appropriate methods for resolving them. In our perception and practice, it is necessary to properly distinguish the roles and positions of different types of contradictions in each situation and condition; we must also distinguish between different characteristics which contradictions might have in order to find the best method of resolving them.<br /> <br /> Annotation 194<br /> <br /> The historical viewpoint is vital because in order to fully understand any given contradiction, we must understand the process of development which led to its formation.<br /> <br /> For example, before a car engine can be repaired, we must first find out what caused the engine to stop working to begin with. If the car is out of fuel, we must determine what caused it to run out of fuel. Did the driver simply drive until the fuel tank was empty, or is there a hole or leak in a fuel line, in the tank, etc.?<br /> <br /> It is vital to know the history of development of a given pair of opposing sides, as well as the characteristics and other properties of both opposing sides, to fully understand the contradiction. Since all conscious activity (like all processes of motion and change) ultimately derives from the driving force of contradiction, it is vital for us to develop a historical and comprehensive perspective of any contradictions we hope to affect through our conscious activities.<br /> <br /> ==3. Law of Negation of Negation==<br /> <br /> The law of negation of negation describes the fundamental and universal tendency of movement and development to occur through dialectical negation, forming a cyclical form of development through what is termed “negation of negation.”<br /> <br /> a. Definition of Negation and Dialectical Negation<br /> <br /> The world continuously and endlessly changes and develops. Things, phenomena, and ideas that arise, exist, develop and perish, are replaced by other things, phenomena, and ideas; one form of existence is replaced with another form of existence, again and again, continuously, through this development process. This procedure is called negation.<br /> <br /> All processes of movement and development take place through negation. From certain perspectives, negations can be seen as end points to the development (and thus, existence) of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea [which we can think of as “terminal negations;” see Annotation below]. But from other perspectives, negations can also create the conditions and premises for new developments. Such negations, which create such conditions and premises for the development of things and phenomena, are called dialectical negation.<br /> <br /> 186<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 195<br /> <br /> Negation refers to any act of motion or transformation which arises from contradiction. Specifically, negation is what occurs when one opposing side completely overcomes the other. Nothing in our universe can transform or move all by itself, without any contradiction. Thus, negation drives all development and motion of all things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 119, p. 123]. There are various forms of negation, and the same negation process may be seen to take different forms depending on viewpoint of analysis [see Annotation 11, p. 12, and Annotation 114, p. 116], as depicted in the diagram below.<br /> <br /> NEGATION<br /> <br /> Things, phenomena, and ideas arise, exist, develop, perish, and are replaced STAGES OF<br /> <br /> QUALITY<br /> <br /> DEVELOPMENT<br /> <br /> SHIFTS<br /> <br /> A<br /> <br /> B<br /> <br /> C<br /> <br /> DIALECTICAL<br /> <br /> NEGATION<br /> <br /> DEVELOPMENT<br /> <br /> REPLACEMENT<br /> <br /> CONTINUES<br /> <br /> NEGATION<br /> <br /> INDEFINITELY<br /> <br /> VIEWPOINT OF “A”<br /> <br /> END OF<br /> <br /> DEVELOPMENT<br /> <br /> A<br /> <br /> OF “A”<br /> <br /> TERMINAL<br /> <br /> NEGATION<br /> <br /> An overview of various forms of negation as they relate to dialectical development.<br /> <br /> Dialectical negation occurs when the end of development leads directly to some new development process. Dialectical negation occurs through quality shifts [see Annotation 117, p. 119], which, themselves, occur through negation of opposite sides.<br /> <br /> REPLACED BY<br /> <br /> SWORDS<br /> <br /> FIREARMS<br /> <br /> REPLACEMENT NEGATION PERSPECTIVE<br /> <br /> OF MILITARY WEAPONS<br /> <br /> Replacement negation refers to the replacement of one thing, phenomenon, or idea with another through dialectical negation.<br /> <br /> Translation Note: The terms “terminal negation” and “replacement negation” do not appear in the original Vietnamese text. We chose to assign terms to these concepts for clarity.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 187<br /> <br /> Annotation 195 (continued)<br /> <br /> Replacement negation occurs when one thing, phenomenon, or idea takes the place of another. Replacement negation is always a dialectical process, where one subject is replaced gradually by another. Replacement may be relatively fast or slow, but it is never instantaneous - nothing can pop in and out of existence instantaneously. For example: swords were gradually replaced by firearms as the primary weapons of war over the course of many centuries. Today, swords have been completely replaced by firearms on the battlefield. This was a process of replacement negation - weapons are still used in war, but the type of weapon used has been completely replaced. Development continues, even though development of swords as battle weapons has essentially ended.<br /> <br /> ROMAN SWORD<br /> <br /> ANGLO-SAXON<br /> <br /> RENAISSANCE<br /> <br /> 19th CENTURY<br /> <br /> END OF MILITARY SWORD<br /> <br /> SWORD<br /> <br /> SWORD<br /> <br /> CAVALRY SWORD<br /> <br /> DEVELOPMENT<br /> <br /> TERMINAL NEGATION PERSPECTIVE OF SWORD DEVELOPMENT<br /> <br /> Terminal negation refers to the end of a specific cycle of development.<br /> <br /> Terminal negation is what happens when development completely ends for a given thing, phenomenon, or idea. For example, from one viewpoint, the development of swords as weapons of war can be seen as having ended - having been terminally negated - due to the innovation of firearms. In essence, swords are no longer developed, nor implemented, in modern warfare.<br /> <br /> Replacement negation and terminal negation must be considered in relative terms.<br /> <br /> From one viewpoint, we can see the rise of firearms as the underlying reason for the terminal negation of military use of swords. Today, no army on Earth uses swords as primary battlefield weapons and militaries no longer develop sword technology for battlefield use. However, from another viewpoint, the development of battlefield weapons has continued on long after the end of the primacy of swords, and it could be said that firearms have replaced swords as the primary battlefield weapon.<br /> <br /> Consider the death of a human being. From one perspective, death is a terminal negation - the person’s consciousness has ended, and no further development of consciousness will occur for that individual. From other perspectives, development continues.<br /> <br /> The individual may have had children who will continue their familial lineage, they may have contributed ideas which will continue to impact other people for centuries to come, and so on. In that sense, replacement negation may be viewed as dialectical negation. For example, someone studying modes of transportation in the history of the USA may see the process of steam locomotives replacing horses, and then cars replacing steam locomotives, as processes of dialectical negation from the overarching perspective of the transportation system.<br /> <br /> 188<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Materialist dialectics is concerned with all forms of negation, but focuses primarily on dialectical negation. Therefore, materialist dialectics is not just a theory of transformation in general, but fundamentally a theory of development Annotation 196<br /> <br /> All transformation is driven by negation. Development is a process, specifically, of dialectical negation, which is a specific form of transformation in which an end of development creates the conditions for new development, either through internal quality shifts or through replacement by some external subject.<br /> <br /> Materialist dialectics is primarily concerned with dialectical negation (which drives development) because it is development which brings forth continuous change in our world. Terminal negations and other forms of transformation which do not drive further development are of limited utility, and can only represent certain limited viewpoints [i.e., the viewpoint of that which is terminated].<br /> <br /> From a broader perspective, nearly all “terminations” are replaced in some way or another by some other form of development. For instance, even when a person dies, although the consciousness of that person may terminate, there will be continuous impacts which will be carried forward from the deceased person’s lifetime of consciousness, as well as from the developments which arise from the death itself.<br /> <br /> This dialectical definition of negation differs greatly from metaphysical conceptions of development [see Annotation 201, p. 195], which are essentially viewed as terminal.<br /> <br /> From the metaphysical perspective, all things, phenomena, and ideas are viewed as separate from one another; therefore negations are viewed as terminal processes which bring development processes to their ends.<br /> <br /> “A Vase”<br /> <br /> “No Vase”<br /> <br /> Metaphysical Perspective of Terminal Negation<br /> <br /> The metaphysical perspective of terminal negation views negation as an essentially terminal process representing the end point of the existence of a static and isolated thing, phenomenon, or idea.<br /> <br /> In the above example, the metaphysical framework would present smashing a vase with a hammer as a terminal negation from the perspective of the observer. Once the vase is smashed, the vase is considered to no longer exist, and the broken shards are not considered to be “a vase” any more. Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, view<br /> <br /> “the shards” as merely a developed form of the vase; a transition to a new stage of development; the negation was only terminal from the perspective of the vase itself.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 189<br /> <br /> Annotation 196 (continued)<br /> <br /> Excerpt From Vietnam’s High School Freshman Civic Education textbook: Metaphysical and dialectical negation share one commonality: they both see development as the replacement of an old subject with a new subject. However, metaphysical negation happens when outside forces impact on a subject, deleting completely the existence of the old subject. According to this metaphysical perspective, the old subject and the new subject which replaces it do not have any connection.<br /> <br /> Dialectical negation fundamentally differs from metaphysical negation because it views development as a process of internal development. Dialectical negation does not view complete erasure or deletion of any former subject; instead, dialectical development sees the older subject, which is replaced (negated), as the premise or basis of existence for the new subject.<br /> <br /> Comparison Examples:<br /> <br /> Metaphysical Negation<br /> <br /> Dialectical Negation<br /> <br /> The house was impacted by the external force of an earthquake, which caused it to collapse, due to internal characteristics of the house itself (which could not withstand the forces of the The earthquake<br /> <br /> earthquake). The debris from the collapsed house will be cleared destroyed the house.<br /> <br /> away, and will continue to develop. The space where the house stood will also continue to develop in some way, with the<br /> <br /> earthquake and the resulting collapse serving as the basis for this further development.<br /> <br /> The external force of water caused erosion by transferring material Water eroded the<br /> <br /> away from the mountain, due to the internal characteristics of the mountain.<br /> <br /> mountain’s composite material. The water, the material which was washed away, and the mountain will all continue to develop. The erosion process will be the basis for this further development.<br /> <br /> The external force of the nail caused the tire to permanently deflate, due to the internal characteristics of the tire, which could not The car has a new tire withstand running over a nail. This served as the basis for further because it ran over a<br /> <br /> development: the old tire was removed and will be disposed of, nail.<br /> <br /> which will serve as the basis for further development (i.e., the tire may be recycled or sent to a landfill); the removal of the tire serves as the basis for the further development of a new tire being installed.<br /> <br /> The seed went through a process of negation as a sprout grew, through various stages of development, into a plant, facilitated by When you add<br /> <br /> outside forces (such as water, nutrition, sunlight, etc. - the seed water, sunlight, and<br /> <br /> would not grow in isolation) as well as the internal characteristics nutrition to a seed,<br /> <br /> of the seed itself; the seed served as the basis of the sprout’s it will grow into a<br /> <br /> development. The sprout then served as the basis for the growth of plant.<br /> <br /> a seedling, and the seedling served as the basis for the growth of a fully grown plant. All of this development was driven by negation processes as quantity shifts gradually led to quality shifts through those various stages of development.<br /> <br /> As you can see from the examples above, the metaphysical perspective focuses on external forces affecting a given subject and views every development process as terminal, with a beginning, middle, and end. The metaphysical perspective thus views negation as a termination of the subject (and, by extension, of development).<br /> <br /> 190<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 196 (continued)<br /> <br /> Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, views development as a continuous and never-ending process of mutual impact, negation, and further negation of each negation. A comprehensive and historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116] must thus be sought to fully comprehend development and negation processeses.<br /> <br /> Dialectical negation has two basic characteristics: objectivity and inheritance.<br /> <br /> Dialectical negation is objective because negation arises from contradictions which exist between two opposite sides. These opposing sides may exist within a thing, phenomenon, or idea, but the opposing sides are still, by definition, externally opposed to one another from the perspective of either side.<br /> <br /> Annotation 197<br /> <br /> Though any given negation may be viewed as terminal from a certain perspective, materialist dialectics is most concerned with processes of development wherein the end of one stage of development creates the conditions for further development [see Annotation 117, p. 119].<br /> <br /> Therefore, every development is simultaneously an internal and an external process, depending on perspective. Development processes may, from certain perspectives, be seen to take place within a subject or between two subjects, but they are always external (and, therefore, objective - see Annotation 108, p. 112) from the perspective of either opposing side while simultaneously internal to the relationship.<br /> <br /> For example: The relationship between a husband and wife may be seen as an internal process of development of “the marriage” from the perspective of a marriage counselor. However, from their own perspectives, each “opposing side” (i.e., the husband and the wife) see one another as external to each other.<br /> <br /> Therefore, the development of a marriage may be seen as an internal process, but the mutual impacts and negations which occur within the relationship are objective and external forces from the perspective of either opposing side.<br /> <br /> This is important because it means that all development and all negation are essentially objective processes; therefore no entity has complete, omniscient control over any development process. We must, therefore, understand the nature of development and negation in order to be able to properly plan and affect change in our world.<br /> <br /> Dialectical negation is, therefore, the result of the process of resolving inevitable contradictions within a subject [i.e., a relationship] itself. Dialectical negation allows for the old to be replaced by the new, thereby creating trends of development. Therefore, dialectical negation is also self-negation.<br /> <br /> Annotation 198<br /> <br /> To reiterate: from the perspective of either opposing side, development is an external, objective process. From the perspective of the contradictory relationship, processes of development are internal processes of self-negation. Thus, dialectical negation is both an objective process which no entity can completely control, while, simultaneously, an internal process of self-negation and self-development.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 191<br /> <br /> Annotation 198 (continued)<br /> <br /> If two nations go to war, either nation may view the war as an objective, external development process, but from a wider perspective, the war is an internal development process of the diplomatic relationship between the two warring nations. This is drasti-cally different from the metaphysical perspective, which views any negation process as a purely external process of development wherein one subject is permanently deleted from existence, then replaced by another subject [see Annotation 196, p. 188]. From the metaphysical perspective, a war is simply a conflict between two distinct and separate nations, and the conclusion of the war is a terminal negation which ends development of the war. From the materialist dialectical perspective, on the other hand, the end of the war would be seen as the basis of future development of the relationship between the two formerly warring nations.<br /> <br /> Dialectical negation also has an inheritance characteristic: when one opposing side negates another, the remaining side inherits factors from the negated side which are suitable with present conditions.<br /> <br /> Annotation 199<br /> <br /> Every negation process arises from contradictions between two opposing sides.<br /> <br /> Within any such negation process, we can think of one side as the “negator” and the other side as the “negated.” Negation, like all relational processes, leads to mutual impact between both sides [see Annotation 136, p. 138]. Therefore, the negated will impact the negator; in other words, the negated side will be somehow reflected in the negator [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. This means that the negator will inherit and carry forward certain attributes, factors, and characteristics which it receives from the negated side.<br /> <br /> Again, consider a war between two nations. Even if one nation completely conquers and subjugates the other in total victory, the victorious nation will still inherit certain factors from the defeated nation. Which factors are inherited will depend on the conditions. The victorious nation may pick up some cultural aspects from the defeated nation, such as cuisine, fashion, etc., they may incorporate tactics and strategies which they observed the defeated enemy using on the battlefield, and so on. The point is that the victorious nation will be impacted in some way by the defeated nation.<br /> <br /> The factors which are adopted will be suitable with the present conditions. Take, for example, a car breaking down due to engine failure. This can be seen as an opposing relationship between the car itself and the car’s owner. If the present conditions are suitable [i.e., the owner has the funds and resources available, and the desire to repair the car], then the car may be repaired and continue operating for years to come. If, on the other hand, conditions aren’t suitable [i.e., the owner does not have the funds or resources or the owner no longer wants the car], then the car may be sent to the scrap-yard.<br /> <br /> As another example, if a fox eats a rabbit, it will inherit certain characteristics from the rabbit. It will inherit nutrition from the rabbit’s body. It may also inherit other characteristics, such as a disease the rabbit was carrying, if the conditions of the fox’s biological composition are suitable [i.e., if the disease can be transferred from the rabbit to the fox].<br /> <br /> 192<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Dialectical negation is not a complete negation [i.e., deletion] of the old. Rather, dialectical negation is a continuity of growth in which the old develops into the new. In processes of dialectical negation, “the new” forms and develops on its own [see Annotation 62, p. 59], through the process of filtering out unsuitable factors, while retaining suitable content. Vladimir Lenin described dialectical negation as:<br /> <br /> “Not empty negation, not futile negation, not skeptical negation, vacillation and doubt is characteristic and essential in dialectics - which undoubtedly contains the element of negation and indeed as its most important element - no, but negation as a moment of connection, as a moment of development, retaining the positive, i.e., without any vacilla-tions, without any eclecticism.”1<br /> <br /> Annotation 200<br /> <br /> The passage from Lenin above comes from Clemence Dutt’s popular English translation of one of Lenin’s notebooks. Below is our translation from the Vietnamese version of this text from the original text of this book, which we hope might be somewhat easier to understand:<br /> <br /> Dialectical negation is not empty negation, it’s not negation without any thoughts, it’s not skeptical negation, it’s not hesitation. Skepticism is not a feature of the essence of the dialectic - of course, dialectics include the negative, it even plays as one of the important factors of a given subject - no, it is negation as the moment of development. Dialectical negation retains the positive, meaning there is no hesitation, there is no eclecticism.<br /> <br /> In order to understand what Lenin is saying here, we should first understand what Lenin is responding to. The above notes are referring to the chapter titled “The Absolute Ideal” within Hegel’s Science of Logic [see note at the end of this Annotation]. In this chapter, Hegel recounts various critiques of dialectics and counters them.<br /> <br /> Skepticism, here, refers to the tendency to address all human knowledge with doubt.<br /> <br /> Philosophical skepticism never moves past two questions: 1. “Is this knowledge true?”<br /> <br /> 2. “Will human beings ever obtain true knowledge?” Skeptics of this nature engage in a sort of metaphysical inquisition in which every thesis that is ever encountered is immediately and utterly refuted and thus “negated” in the metaphysical sense of termination [see Annotation 196, p. 188].<br /> <br /> Eclecticism refers to philosophical and ideological conceptions which draw from a variety of theories, styles, and ideas in an unsystematic manner. Lenin contends that dialectical negation is non-eclecticist because it rises above mere rhetorical combativeness and “total negation.” [This concept is explained more below within this annotation.]<br /> <br /> With all this in mind, we see that Lenin is refuting the notion that dialectics are and can only be negative in nature. The metaphysical-skeptic conception of dialectics holds that negation takes the form of rhetorical arguing and refutation, in which one idea is presented, and a second idea is offered to counter the first idea, which completely and totally negates the first idea. According to this argument, dialectics is, therefore, a totally negative process.<br /> <br /> 1 Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 193<br /> <br /> Annotation 200 (continued)<br /> <br /> THESIS<br /> <br /> ANTITHESIS<br /> <br /> THESIS<br /> <br /> ANTITHESIS<br /> <br /> SYNTHESIS<br /> <br /> Inaccurate “Fully Negative” View of Dialectics<br /> <br /> A common misperception of dialectical development is that it is “fully negative,” insomuch as the initial thesis (initial subject) is completely negated by the antithesis (impacting subject). In fact, characteristics from both the thesis and antithesis are carried forward into the synthesis.<br /> <br /> In the chapter from Science of Logic which Lenin is responding to in the referenced text, Hegel is arguing that the conception of dialectics as only negative - i.e., a system of thinking in which counter-arguments are presented to completely negate initial arguments - is inaccurate. Hegel explains that when one opposing side negates another, it thereafter “contains in general the determination of the first [opposing side] within itself.” In other words, after one opposing side negates another, it retains features and aspects from the opposing side which was negated. Lenin found this particular point to be so important that he wrote “this is very important for understanding dialectics”<br /> <br /> in the margin of his notebook.<br /> <br /> The reason both Hegel and Lenin found this idea, that the “negator” contains elements of the “negated” after negation [see Annotation 231, p. 227], is that this counters the accusation that dialectics are “only negative.” This is why Lenin’s notes highlight the importance of the negator “retaining the positive” after negation. Lenin is pointing out the importance of the retention of features of the negated in the negator because it is this retention which prevents dialectical development from becoming a purely negative process.<br /> <br /> THESIS<br /> <br /> ANTITHESIS<br /> <br /> SYNTHESIS<br /> <br /> Accurate “Retention” View of Dialectics<br /> <br /> In materialist dialectics, it is understood that negation is a process of retention: characteristics from both the thesis (initial subject) and antithesis (impacting subject) are retained in the resulting synthesis<br /> <br /> We must also understand what Lenin means when he refers to “skepticism” in his notes. Lenin, here, is referring to the philosophical view that we can never know whether or not our beliefs are true. This belief was popularly known as Machism, or Empirio-Criticism, in Lenin’s time (see Annotation 32, p. 27).<br /> <br /> 194<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 200 (continued)<br /> <br /> A common critique of dialectics is that it is an inherently skeptical system of thought, since dialectics is seen as a process of presenting counter-arguments to suppositional arguments. Lenin, in his notes, presents the idea that such skepticism is “not a feature of dialectics” precisely because nothing is ever completely, totally, and entirely negated. In other words, the accusation that dialectical analysis is essentially skeptical is rooted in the mistaken notion that one opposing side (i.e., a counter-argument) completely negates the original supposition. In fact, according to materialist dialectics, the negator always retains features and aspects from the negated side, which counters this critique. Thus, dialectical development, which occurs through dialectical negation, is a process of forward motion - not a process of “vacillating” back and forth from one position to another - and there is no skeptical “hesitation” preventing forward progress.<br /> <br /> This same idea (that the negator retains features from the negated) also counters another common critique of materialist dialectics: that dialectical analysis is simply a system of rhetorical sophistry [see Annotation 36, p. 33] and eclecticism.<br /> <br /> Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that is completely unsystematic, drawing from a variety of theories, styles, and ideas without any cohesive and all-encompassing philosophical framework.<br /> <br /> Some critics claim that dialectics must be eclecticist and sophistic in nature. These critics claim that dialectics is simply rhetorical disputation in which any given supposition is counter-argued, and that this counter-argument is negation. But materialist dialectics defines negation as one contradicting side overtaking the other while retaining traces and characteristics from the negated side - it is in no way simply an act of rhetorical dispute or refutation.<br /> <br /> In summary, materialist dialectics upholds that nothing is ever completely and utterly deleted or erased from existence through negation. Instead, any time one opposing side negates another, aspects of the negated side are inherited by the negating side.<br /> <br /> Note: For reference, here is Hegel’s passage which Lenin is referring to from Science and Logic in the cited notes above:<br /> <br /> ...a universal first, considered in and for itself, shows itself to be the other of itself.<br /> <br /> Taken quite generally, this determination can be taken to mean that what is at first immediate now appears as mediated, related to an other, or that the universal appears as a particular. Hence the second term that has thereby come into being is the negative of the first, and if we anticipate the subsequent progress, the first negative.<br /> <br /> The immediate, from this negative side, has been extinguished in the other, but the other is essentially not the empty negative, the nothing, that is taken to be the usual result of dialectic; rather is it the other of the first, the negative of the immediate; it is therefore determined as the mediated - contains in general the determination of the first within itself. Consequently the first is essentially preserved and retained even in the other. To hold fast the positive in its negative, and the content of the presupposition in the result, is the most important part of rational cognition; also only the simplest reflection is needed to furnish conviction of the absolute truth and necessity of this requirement, while with regard to the examples of proofs, the whole of Logic consists of these.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 195<br /> <br /> Therefore, dialectical negation is the inevitable tendency of progression of the inner relationship between the old and the new. It is the self-driving assertive force of all motion and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> b. Negation of Negation<br /> <br /> In the perpetual movement of the material world, dialectical negation is an inexhaustible process. It creates a development tendency of things from lower level to higher level, taking place in a cyclical manner in the form of a “spiral.”<br /> <br /> Annotation 201<br /> <br /> The concept of the “spiral” form of development in dialectical materialist philosophy stands in contrast to the metaphysical conception of “linear” development.<br /> <br /> Metaphysical Conception of Linear Development<br /> <br /> The metaphysical viewpoint holds that development is more or less a straight line: as one subject is negated, it is replaced by another. This subject will then be negated by another, and so on, in what is essentially conceived of as a straight line of development<br /> <br /> [see Annotation 196, p. 188].<br /> <br /> Metaphysical Line Development:<br /> <br /> Complete Replacement<br /> <br /> SODA<br /> <br /> Raw Aluminium<br /> <br /> COMPLETE<br /> <br /> Soda Can<br /> <br /> REPLACEMENT<br /> <br /> SODA<br /> <br /> COMPLETE<br /> <br /> Soda Can<br /> <br /> REPLACEMENT<br /> <br /> Recycled Aluminum<br /> <br /> The metaphysical “line development” model sees an initial form as being “replaced” or entirely negated into a completely distinct entity.<br /> <br /> In the above example, metaphysical line development simply sees raw aluminum as being negated and “replaced” in the real world. Once the aluminum can is created, the<br /> <br /> “raw aluminum” as a metaphysical entity is considered no longer to exist. Likewise, when the soda can is transformed into recycled aluminum, the can is considered “replaced,” and is no longer considered to have a metaphysical existence.<br /> <br /> This conception of metaphysical line development directly contradicts the materialist dialectical concept of historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116].<br /> <br /> 196<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 201 (continued)<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialist Conception of Development<br /> <br /> The dialectical materialist conception of cyclical development stems from essential attributes of dialectical negation processes:<br /> <br /> 1. In every dialectical negation, the negating side inherits features and characteristics from the negated side.<br /> <br /> 2. When the negating side is, itself, negated (i.e., negation of the negation), the new negating side will retain features and aspects of the old negator.<br /> <br /> 3. This development process will continue indefinitely, so that negation is not simply a straight line of complete negation, but rather takes the shape of a “spiral” of negations of negations which always inherit features from previous forms.<br /> <br /> Note that this conception of development as a spiral is simply an abstraction to help understand the essential characteristics of dialectical development and to distinguish this form of development from metaphysical conceptions of “linear development.”<br /> <br /> In the example below, we see a depiction of the spiral development of aluminum through various stages of development. After raw aluminum is mined from the Earth, it begins a repeating spiral development process of being refined into usable goods, then recycled into raw material.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectical Spiral Development<br /> <br /> Metaphysical Line Development<br /> <br /> 5. Used Aluminum Foil<br /> <br /> DEVELOPMENT<br /> <br /> 6. Makeshift Antenna<br /> <br /> NEVER ENDS<br /> <br /> 1. Raw Aluminum<br /> <br /> x axis:<br /> <br /> SODA<br /> <br /> Useful Products<br /> <br /> 2. Soda Can<br /> <br /> 3. Aluminum Foil<br /> <br /> 4. Recycled Aluminum<br /> <br /> 7. Landfill Waste<br /> <br /> y axis:<br /> <br /> Raw Materials<br /> <br /> The “Spiral Development” model of materialist dialectics sees every stage of development as a higher form of the previous stage which carries forward characteristics from previous stages.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 197<br /> <br /> Annotation 201 (continued)<br /> <br /> The illustrated example on the previous page plots the spiral development of aluminum as it cycles between stages defined as raw materials and refined products. Another perspective might depict development differently. For example, if we are examining development in terms of external relations between aluminum other elements, the development pattern would look different. In reality, all subjects have countless internal and external relations and development processes which can be examined.<br /> <br /> The “raw aluminum” stage of development pictured in the illustration is not truly the beginning of this development process; there were millions of years of development which occurred before it was first discovered by humans. Similarly, the landfill will not be the end of this development process; there will be continued development forever for as long as motion in the universe continues.<br /> <br /> This is a simplified and abstract model of development of aluminum. A more accurate representation might show any number of interim steps between each step depicted in the graphic above. For example: it must also be recognized that in reality the molecules of aluminum which the development process began with will be scattered and mixed with other subjects throughout the development process, and various other complexities exist in terms of the mutual impacts of internal and external relationships.<br /> <br /> Determining the amount of detail to include or exclude in materialist dialectical analysis is crucial: too much detail and analysis might become unwieldy; too little detail and analysis might become too abstract and idealized to be useful in the real world. So, the idea of development as a spiral should not be taken literally; it is simply a way of conceptualizing the differences between dialectical negation and development as opposed to “straight-line” development upheld by metaphysical conceptions of negation and development, always carrying forward traces of previous stages of development.<br /> <br /> In the chain of negations that make up the development processes of things, phenomena, and ideas, each dialectical negation creates the conditions and premises for subsequent developments. Through many iterations of negation, i.e., “negations of negations,” dialectical negation will inevitably lead to a forward tendency of motion.<br /> <br /> Annotation 202<br /> <br /> The forward tendency of motion describes the tendency for things, phenomena, and ideas to move from less advanced to more advanced forms through processes of motion and development.<br /> <br /> As a reminder, “lower level” and “higher level,” i.e., “less advanced” and “more advanced,” should not be taken to have any connotations of “good” and “bad,” nor of<br /> <br /> “desirable” and “undesirable,” nor even of “less complex” and “more complex.”<br /> <br /> Development from “lower levels” to “higher levels” is simply a shorthand for understanding the fact that development processes always move “forward,” that is to say, development can never happen in reverse, just as time itself can never be reversed. For example, society in Italy will never go back to the civilization of the Roman empire. It is conceivable that Italian society could develop to be more similar to Ancient Rome, but it would be impossible for Roman society to ever take on the exact characteristics of the Roman Empire ever again.<br /> <br /> 198<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Cyclicality of development processes usually takes place in the form of a spiral, which is another result of “negation of negation.” Negations of negations lead to a development cycle in which things, phenomena, and ideas often undergo two fundamental negations carried through three basic forms. Through this negation pattern, basic features of the initial form are ultimately inherited by the “third form,” but at a higher level of development.<br /> <br /> Annotation 203<br /> <br /> Dialectical development tends to take place through a cyclical pattern in which development is carried through a triad of forms which develop through a pair of dialectical negation processes:<br /> <br /> Initial Form<br /> <br /> Contradicting<br /> <br /> (”Assertion”)<br /> <br /> Subject<br /> <br /> 1st Negation<br /> <br /> Second Form<br /> <br /> Contradicting<br /> <br /> (“Negation”)<br /> <br /> Subject<br /> <br /> 2nd Negation<br /> <br /> Third Form<br /> <br /> Third Form resembles<br /> <br /> (”Unity”)<br /> <br /> initial form at a higher<br /> <br /> level of development<br /> <br /> The cyclical pattern of development is an abstract pattern of dialectical change over time.<br /> <br /> The graphic above illustrates this cyclical pattern, in which: 1. The initial form (the Assertion) begins the pattern. Contradiction within the initial subject or between it and another subject leads to the first negation.<br /> <br /> 2. The first negation leads to a second form (the Negation). This second form inherits some features or characteristics from the initial form.<br /> <br /> 3. The second form then encounters opposition, which leads to a second negation.<br /> <br /> 4. The second negation leads to a third form (Unity), which retains the features or characteristics of the second form, but now more closely resembles the first, initial form, only at a higher level of development.<br /> <br /> Imagine a new car (initial form) crashes into another car (contradicting subject). The new car is dialectically developed (negated) into a second form: a wrecked car. This second form is now contradicted by a new subject - a recycling center - and negated into a third form: new steel. The third form possesses characteristics of the first form, but in a more developed form: after being recycled, the resulting steel it is newly made, in good condition for sale, etc., similarly to the first form of the new car.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 199<br /> <br /> Annotation 203 (continued)<br /> <br /> INITIAL FORM<br /> <br /> FIRST NEGATION CONTRADICTING SUBJECT<br /> <br /> (NEW CAR)<br /> <br /> (WRECK)<br /> <br /> (ANOTHER CAR)<br /> <br /> SECOND NEGATION<br /> <br /> SECOND FORM<br /> <br /> (RECYCLING)<br /> <br /> CONTRADICTING SUBJECT<br /> <br /> (WRECKED CAR)<br /> <br /> (RECYCLING CENTER)<br /> <br /> THIRD FORM<br /> <br /> (NEW STEEL)<br /> <br /> In this example, a new car goes through a cyclical pattern of development in which the third form (new steel) possesses characteristics of the first form (a new car).<br /> <br /> Keep in mind that this is relative to one’s perspective. If you consider the wrecked car to be the first form, then the steel would be the second form. The new steel will then need to be developed in some way (melted, hammered, cut, etc.) in order to be processed into some new product. From this perspective, the third form (i.e., molten steel) will have characteristics of the first form (i.e.: “unrefined”).<br /> <br /> According to Marx and Engels, the development of capitalism from feudalism assumed this cyclical pattern:<br /> <br /> THESIS + ANTITHESIS<br /> <br /> PATRICIANS<br /> <br /> + PLEBIANS<br /> <br /> SYNTHESIS<br /> <br /> + NEW ANTITHESIS<br /> <br /> FEUDAL<br /> <br /> (NEW THESIS)<br /> <br /> + PEASANTS<br /> <br /> LORDS<br /> <br /> SYNTHESIS<br /> <br /> +<br /> <br /> CAPITALIST<br /> <br /> WORKING<br /> <br /> NEW ANTITHESIS<br /> <br /> +<br /> <br /> (NEW THESIS)<br /> <br /> CLASS<br /> <br /> CLASS<br /> <br /> REVOLUTION<br /> <br /> AD INFINITUM<br /> <br /> ?<br /> <br /> MATERIALIST DIALECTICAL<br /> <br /> DIALECTICAL DEVELOPMENT<br /> <br /> DEVELOPMENT PROCESS<br /> <br /> OF CLASS STRUCTURE<br /> <br /> The development of class structure is a dialectical process in which different classes synthesize to form the next era of class society. For example, the capitalist class emerged primarily as a synthesis of the feudal lords and peasants of the medieval era.<br /> <br /> 200<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 203 (continued)<br /> <br /> Note that this is only an abstract description of a tendency of dialectical development; exceptions can and do occur. Presumably, the development of communism as a stateless, classless society would constitute the negation of the “Class Society” form of human civilization. The Post-Class stage of development which follows would, itself, be a higher form - a unity - of pre-class human civilization, carrying forward traces from the Class Society stage of development.<br /> <br /> Also note that determining which form is the “first” or “initial” pattern is entirely relative. Using the example of the development of class society: from one perspective, the Patricians may be seen as the initial form, but from another perspective the Plebe-ians might be considered the initial form. This depends entirely on the viewpoint and purpose of analysis. These conceptions of “spirals of development” and the pattern of<br /> <br /> “three forms through two negations” are, in essence, models which describe general tendencies and patterns of development and which help us understand the basic characteristics of dialectical negation and development.<br /> <br /> Lenin describes this cycle of dialectical development as going “[f]rom assertion to negation - from negation to ‘unity’ with the asserted - without this, dialectics becomes empty negation, a game, skepsis [examination, observation, consideration].”1<br /> <br /> Annotation 204<br /> <br /> Here, “assertion” simply refers to the initial form of a dialectical development cycle.<br /> <br /> The negation is the second form, and the “unity” is the third form, which resembles the first form (the assertion) at a higher stage of development. So, in this quotation, Lenin is simply recounting the “three steps” of a typical dialectical development cycle, and indicating that it is necessary to recognize this process, which is rooted in the inheritance of properties of prior forms through development into ever-higher forms, to prevent dialectics from becoming “empty negation,” or otherwise falling prey to the critiques that dialectics are purely negative, skeptical, and eclectic in nature [see Annotation 200, p. 192 and Annotation 36, p. 33].<br /> <br /> The law of negation of negation generalizes the pervasive nature of development: dialectical development does not take the form of a straight path, but rather in the form of a spiral path. Lenin summarised that this path is “[a] development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis (‘the negation of the negation’), a development, so to speak, that proceeds in spirals, not in a straight line…”2 The tendency to develop in a spiral curve demonstrates the dialectical nature of development; i.e., the cycle of inheritance, repetition, and progression. Each new round of the spiral appears to be repeating, but at a higher level. The continuation of the loops in a spiral reflects an endless progression from lower levels to higher levels of things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> In short, the law of negation of negation in materialist dialectics reflects the dialectical relationship between the negative and the assertion [i.e., the second and first forms of a dialectical development cycle; see Annotation 203, p. 198] in the development process of 1 Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.<br /> <br /> 2 Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 201<br /> <br /> things, phenomena and ideas. Dialectical development is driven by dialectical negation; in the development of all things, phenomena, and ideas, the new is the result of inheriting characteristics from prior forms. This process of inheritance, repetition, and progression through negation leads to cyclical development. Engels wrote: “what is the negation of the negation? An extremely general - and for this reason extremely far-reaching and important - law of development of nature, history, and thought.”1<br /> <br /> Annotation 205<br /> <br /> In the same text quoted above, Engels elaborates that dialectical development is composed of “processes which in their nature are antagonistic, contain a contradiction; transformation of one extreme into its opposite; and finally, as the kernel of the whole thing, the negation of the negation.”<br /> <br /> c. Meaning of the Methodology<br /> <br /> The law of negation of negation is the basis for correct perception of the tendency of motion and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Development and motion processes do not take place in a straight line; rather, it is a winding, complex road, consisting of many stages, and each process can be broken down into many different sub-processes. However, it must be understood that this complexity of development is only the manifestation of the general tendency to move forward [see Annotation 118, p.<br /> <br /> 122]. It is important to understand the nature of motion and development so that we can systematically change the world according to our revolutionary viewpoint. In order to consciously impact the development of things, phenomena, and ideas, we need to know their characteristics, nature, and relationships so that we can influence their motion and development in the direction that suits our purposes. We must comprehend and leverage the tendency of forward movement - in accordance with a scientific and revolutionary worldview - in order to effectively and systematically change the world.<br /> <br /> Annotation 206<br /> <br /> Understanding the forward tendency of motion is vital for cultivating a worldview which is both scientific and revolutionary. Such a worldview is scientific because it recognizes the material reality that all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly undergoing change and development. Nothing in our universe is static, and all things are connected and defined by internal and external relationships (which are also constantly developing). Furthermore, this development progresses with a forward tendency, meaning that no process can be completely “reversed.” For example, you can clean rust from a car [which would be forward progress], but you can’t reverse the temporal process of rust.<br /> <br /> Once we understand that all things, phenomena, and ideas in our universe are constantly developing and moving forward, we can then begin to find ways to impact motion and development systematically to consciously change the world around us. This is the foundation of a revolutionary worldview, since revolutionary change requires us to leverage and influence development processes to suit our needs and revolutionary ambitions. Thus, materialist dialectics are an applied system of observation and practice through which we seek to understand development processes and consciously impact them to suit our needs.<br /> <br /> 1 Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.<br /> <br /> 202<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism According to the rule of negation of negation, in the objective world, the new must inevitably come to replace the old. In nature, the new develops according to objective laws. In social life, new things arise from the purposeful, self-conscious, and creative actions of human beings. Therefore, it is necessary to leverage subjective factors as we seek to consciously impact the development of things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> Annotation 207<br /> <br /> Subjective factors are factors which we, as a subject, are capable of impacting. This may seem confusing, since we have previously established that all external things, phenomena, and ideas have objective relationships with all other things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 108, p. 112], meaning that any given subject is external to every other subject, and thus no subject can directly and completely control the motion and development of any other subject.<br /> <br /> However, from the perspective of any given individual, there are certain things, phenomena, and ideas [as well as processes of motion and development] which we can impact. For example, if I see an apple on a table, the apple is objective to me. I can’t simply will the apple to move with my consciousness alone. However, I can impact the apple through conscious activity - I can consciously will my hand to pick up the apple and move it to another location.<br /> <br /> Thus, factors which an individual can consciously impact are subjective factors. As revolutionists, we must focus on subjective factors. In other words, we must concen-trate on that which we are capable of changing, since our purpose is to change the world.<br /> <br /> Focusing on factors which we can’t impact is a waste of time; we must simply determine what can be changed and then determine the most efficient and effective ways of impacting development processes and changing the world.<br /> <br /> As revolutionists, we must have faith that we can introduce the “new,” faith in the success of the “new,” we must support the “new,” and fight for the victory of the “new.”<br /> <br /> Therefore, it is necessary to overcome conservative, stagnant, and dogmatic thoughts which restrain the development of the “new” and resist the law of negation of negation.<br /> <br /> Annotation 208<br /> <br /> Change is inevitable. All things, phenomena, and ideas undergo processes of motion and development. Any philosophy, ideology, or strategy which attempts to restrain motion and development is doomed to failure because change can neither be halted nor restrained. Thus, our strategies and actions must align with the material reality that change is inevitable, and we must seek to change the world by impacting processes of development and motion rather than attempting to reverse, restrain, or halt such processes.<br /> <br /> Ideologies which erroneously strive to restrict change and development include rigidity (see Annotation 222, p. 218) and conservativism (see Annotation 236, p. 233).<br /> <br /> In the process of negating the old we must leverage the principle of inheritance with discretion: we must encourage the inheritance of factors that are beneficial to our goals as we simultaneously attempt to filter out, overcome, and reform factors which would negatively impact our goals.<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> 203<br /> <br /> Annotation 209<br /> <br /> If we understand the principle of inheritance, we can impact inheritance processes which derive from negation. For example, when repairing a car, we can seek out parts of the car which do not function properly or which do not suit the use-case of the car and add or replace parts which are more suitable.<br /> <br /> In the same way, we can impact inheritence processes in our revolutionary political activities. We can seek to inherit characteristics from previous stages of development of our political organizations, social institutions, culture, etc., while simultaneously seeking to prevent the inheritence of traits and characteristics which are unsuitable for our revolutionary purposes. Over time, we can attempt to impact the inheritance of traits and aspects which are more conducive to our purposes while limiting and filtering out traits and aspects which are hindrances.<br /> <br /> In an article titled “New Life” written in 1947, Ho Chi Minh wrote about the dialectical relationship between the new and the old in building a new society, writing: Not everything old must be abandoned. We do not have to reinvent everything. What is old but bad must be abandoned. What is old but troublesome must be corrected appropriately. What is old but good must be further developed. What is new but good must be done.<br /> <br /> . . . Growing up in the old society, we all carry within us more-or-less bad traces of the old society in terms of our ideas and habits. . . Habits are hard to change.<br /> <br /> That which is good and new is likely to be considered bad by the people because it is strange to them. On the contrary, that which is evil yet familiar is easily mistaken as normal and acceptable.<br /> <br /> Ho Chi Minh understood the principles of development very well, as well as the difficulties we will face as revolutionaries as we try to change ourselves and our society.<br /> <br /> We must strive to develop a similar understanding as we move forward and attempt to affect the development of our world through practice and struggle.<br /> <br /> 204<br /> <br /> ==Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism CHAPTER 3==<br /> <br /> COGNITIVE THEORY OF DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM<br /> <br /> In Marxism, epistemological reasoning (or epistemology) is the foundation of dialectics. Dialectical materialist epistemology is a theory of applying human cognitive ability to the objective world through practical activities. It explains the nature, path and general laws of the human process of perceiving truth and objective reality to serve human practical activities.<br /> <br /> Annotation 210<br /> <br /> Epistemology is the theoretical study of knowledge. It also deals with the philosophical question of: “how do we know what is true?”<br /> <br /> Throughout history, philosophers have tried to determine the nature of truth and knowledge. In the era of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, there was an ongoing dispute between the materialists, who believed that truth could only be sought through sense experience of the material world, and the idealists, who believed that truth could only be sought through reasoning within the human mind.<br /> <br /> Marx and Engels developed the philosophical system of dialectical materialism to resolve this dispute. Dialectical materialism upholds that the material and the ideal have a dialectical relationship with one another: the material determines the ideal, while the ideal impacts the material [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88].<br /> <br /> However, it’s important to understand that Marx and Engels didn’t develop the system of dialectical materialism simply to understand the world. As Marx wrote in Theses on Feuerbach:<br /> <br /> The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.<br /> <br /> So, Marxist dialectical materialist epistemology is developed specifically to enable human beings to not only perceive truth and objective reality, but to then be able to apply our conscious thought, through practical activity, in order to bring about change in the world.<br /> <br /> ==1. Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness==<br /> <br /> a. Praxis and Basic Forms of Praxis<br /> <br /> Praxis includes all human material activities which have purpose and historical-social characteristics and which transform nature and society. Unlike other activities, praxis is activity in which humans attempt to materially impact the world to suit our purposes.<br /> <br /> Praxis activities define the nature of human beings and distinguish human beings from other animals. Praxis is objective activity, and praxis has been constantly developed by humans through the ages.<br /> <br /> Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism 205<br /> <br /> Annotation 211<br /> <br /> In English, the words “practice” and “praxis” are often distinguished from one another. “Practice” is often used to refer to human activity which provides more information about the world around us and improves our knowledge and understanding, whereas “praxis” often refers to conscious human activity which is intended to change the world in some manner. In their original German, Marx and Engels used the same German word - Praxis - to refer to both concepts. Similarly, in the original Vietnamese text of this book, the same word - thực tiễn - is used for both “practice” and “praxis.”<br /> <br /> One reason that these concepts are so closely related is that all conscious activity serves both rolls by simultaneously telling us more about reality and consciously changing reality in some way. For example, by pushing a heavy stone, you may be able to move the stone a small amount - constituting praxis - while simultaneously learning how heavy the stone is and how difficult it is to move - constituting practice. The main point of distinction, therefore, is intention. Virtually all conscious activity is practice, but only activity which has purpose and historical-social characteristics might be considered praxis:<br /> <br /> Purpose simply describes a goal or desired outcome; specifically: a desired change in nature or human society. Activities with historical-social characteristics are activities which contribute in some way to the development of human society.<br /> <br /> In this translation, we use “practice” and “praxis” interchangably to mean “conscious activity which improves our understanding, and which has purpose and historical-social characteristics.” You are likely to find these words used differently (as described above, or in other ways) in other texts. Engels explains the importance of practice/praxis in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific: The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we [use] these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perceptions. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail. But if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is positive proof that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves.<br /> <br /> Marx wrote in Theses on Feuerbach that “the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice [German: revolutionäre Praxis].” Engels further expounds upon this concept in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, writing:<br /> <br /> The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical fancies is practice [original German: Praxis], viz., experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and using it for our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end of the Kantian incomprehensible or ungraspable.<br /> <br /> 206<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 211 (continued)<br /> <br /> Praxis defines the nature of human beings because human beings are (to our present knowledge) the only beings which undertake actions with conscious awareness of our desired outcomes and comprehension of the historical development of our own society, which distinguishes human beings from all other animals. Praxis is objective activity, meaning that all praxis activities are performed in relation to external things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 108, p. 112].<br /> <br /> Praxis has been constantly developed by humans through the ages, meaning that as we learn more about the nature of reality, of human society, and the laws of nature, we are able to develop our praxis to become more efficient and effective.<br /> <br /> Praxis activities are very diverse, manifesting with ever-increasing variety, but there are only three basic forms: material production activities, socio-political activities, and scientific experimental activities.<br /> <br /> Material production activity is the first and most basic form of praxis. In this form of praxis activity, humans use tools through labor processes to influence the natural world in order to create wealth and material resources and to develop the conditions necessary to maintain our existence and development.<br /> <br /> Socio-political activity includes praxis activity utilized by various communities and organizations in human society to transform political-social relations in order to promote social development.<br /> <br /> Scientific experimental activity is a special form of praxis activity. This includes human activities that resemble or replicate states of nature and society in order to determine the laws of change and development of subjects of study. This form of activity plays an important role in the development of society, especially in the current historical period of modern science and technological revolution.<br /> <br /> Annotation 212<br /> <br /> The three basic forms of praxis activities listed above obviously do not include all forms of human activity, as praxis only includes activities which have purpose and historical-social characteristics.<br /> <br /> Material production activity has a very clear purpose: to improve the material conditions of an individual human being or a group of human beings. Material production activity has historical-social characteristics because developing material conditions for human beings leads directly to the development of human society. For example, as food production increases in terms of yield and efficiency, society can support a larger number of human beings and a wider range of human activities, which leads to the development of human society.<br /> <br /> Socio-political activity has the purpose of promoting social development, which is obviously inherently historical-social in nature. An example of socio-political activity would include any sort of political campaign, liberation struggle, political revolutionary activity, etc.<br /> <br /> Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism 207<br /> <br /> Annotation 212 (continued)<br /> <br /> Scientific experimental activity has the purpose of expanding our understanding of nature and human society, which leads directly to historical-social development in a variety of ways. For example, improving our scientific understanding of medicine through scientific experimental activity leads to longer lives and improved quality of life. Improving our scientific understanding of chemistry through scientific experimental activity leads to all sorts of materials which improve the quality of life and enable human beings to solve a variety of social problems.<br /> <br /> In order to qualify as praxis activity, a given human activity must have a purpose and it must have historical-social characteristics. For instance, drawing is not always praxis in the sense of the word used in this text, but it would be praxis if it would qualify as material production activity (i.e., making art in order to sell, so as to make a living) or if the art is made with the intention of invoking social change.<br /> <br /> Every basic praxis activity form has an important function, and these functions are not interchangeable with each other. However, they have close relationships with each other and different praxis activity forms often interact with each other. In these relationships, material production is the most important form of praxis activity, playing a decisive role in determining other praxis activities because material production is the most primitive activity and exists most commonly in human life. Material production creates the most essential, decisive material conditions for human survival and development. Without material production there cannot be other praxis activities. After all, all other praxis activities arise from material production praxis and all praxis activities ultimately aim to serve material production praxis.<br /> <br /> Annotation 213<br /> <br /> Without material production activity, human beings would not be able to live at all.<br /> <br /> Thus, material production activities make all other forms of human activities possible.<br /> <br /> In addition, the primary reason we participate in socio-political activity is to ensure material security (food, water, shelter, etc.) for members of society, which ultimately relies on material production activity. Therefore, the primary reason we engage in scientific experimental activity is to improve material production activities in terms of efficiency, yield, effectiveness, etc<br /> <br /> Of course, we engage in scientific experimental activity and material production activity for other reasons (art, entertainment, recreation, etc.), but these activities require that material security be secured first for those participating in the production and consumption of such products. In other words, material production activity is a prerequisite for all other forms of activity, since without some measure of material security humans cannot survive.<br /> <br /> 208<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 213 (continued)<br /> <br /> DETERMINES<br /> <br /> Material Production Activity<br /> <br /> All Other Activity<br /> <br /> IMPACTS<br /> <br /> Material production activity has a dialectical relationship with all other praxis activity, with material production activity determining, while being impacted by, all other forms of praxis activity.<br /> <br /> Thus, material production activity has a dialectical relationship with other forms of praxis activities, in which material production activity determines both socio-political and scientific experimental activity while socio-political and scientific experimental activity impact material production activity.<br /> <br /> b. Consciousness and Levels of Consciousness<br /> <br /> The dialectical materialist perspective sees consciousness as a process of reflecting the objective world within the human brain on a practical basis to create knowledge about the objective world. Consciousness is a self-aware process that is productive and creative.<br /> <br /> This view stems from the following basic principles:<br /> <br /> • The dialectical materialist worldview acknowledges that the material world exists objectively and independently of human consciousness.<br /> <br /> • The dialectical materialist worldview recognizes the following human abilities:<br /> <br /> ₋ To perceive the objective world.<br /> <br /> ₋ To reflect the objective world into the human mind, which enables human subjects to learn about external objects. [see Annotation 66, p. 64]<br /> <br /> ₋ To admit that there are no material things nor phenomena which are unrecog-nizable, but only material things and phenomena that humans have not yet recognised. [see The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues, p. 48]<br /> <br /> Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism 209<br /> <br /> The dialectical materialist worldview affirms that conscious reflection [see Annotation 67, p. 64] of the objective world is a dialectical, productive, self-aware, and creative process. This reflection process develops from the unknown to the known, from knowing less to knowing more, from knowing less profoundly and less comprehensively to knowing more profoundly and more comprehensively.<br /> <br /> Annotation 214<br /> <br /> The above principle (that human knowledge develops from less, and less comprehensive, to more, and more comprehensive states) stands in contrast to various other philosophical systems of belief, including:<br /> <br /> Hegel’s Absolute Idealism upholds a belief in an “absolute ideal” which constitutes an ultimate limit or “end point” of knowledge which humanity is moving towards.<br /> <br /> Dialectical materialism upholds that there is no such absolute ideal and thus no such terminal end point of human understanding. [See Annotation 234, p. 230]<br /> <br /> As Engels wrote in Anti-Dühring:<br /> <br /> If mankind ever reached the stage at which it should work only with eternal truths, with results of thought which possess sovereign validity and an unconditional claim to truth, it would then have reached the point where the infinity of the intellectual world both in its actuality and in its potentiality had been exhausted, and thus the famous miracle of the counted uncountable would have been performed.<br /> <br /> Fideism, which is the belief that knowledge is received from some higher power [i.e., God]. Fideism upholds that all knowledge is pre-existing, and that humanity simply receives it from on high. Dialectical materialism, on the other hand, argues that knowledge is developed over time through dialectical processes of consciousness and human activity.<br /> <br /> Positivism, or empiricist materialism, which holds that there are hard limits to human knowledge, or that human knowledge - which can only be obtained from sense data<br /> <br /> - can’t be trusted. Dialectical materialism upholds that all things and phenomena can be known and understood, and that sense data can be trusted as an objective reflection of reality. For more information about skepticism about human sense data as well as positive and empiricist materialism, see Annotation 10, p. 10, and Annotation 58, p. 56].<br /> <br /> The dialectical materialist worldview considers praxis as the primary and most direct basis of consciousness, and as the motive and the purpose of consciousness, and as the criterion for testing truth. [See: The Relationship Between Praxis and Consciousness, p. 216]<br /> <br /> 210<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 215<br /> <br /> Given the above principles - that human consciousness exists independently from the material world yet is capable of accurately perceiving and reflecting the material world, and that knowledge develops over time through a synthesis of consciousness and practical activity - we can conclude that consciousness is a self-aware process which is productive and creative.<br /> <br /> Consciousness is productive and creative in the sense that conscious processes, in conjunction with practical experience and activity in the material world, leads to the development of knowledge and practical experience which allows humans to develop our understanding of the world as well as our own material conditions through the application of knowledge to our own labor activities.<br /> <br /> Next, we will examine different ways of categorizing conscious activities as they pertain to developing knowledge and practical understanding of our world.<br /> <br /> From the dialectical materialist point of view, consciousness is a process of development. Consciousness develops from empirical consciousness to theoretical consciousness; and from ordinary consciousness to scientific consciousness.<br /> <br /> Annotation 216<br /> <br /> In dialectical materialist philosophy, all systems of relation exist as processes of development in motion [see Annotation 120, p. 124]. Thus, consciousness can be defined as a system of relations between human brain activity and two forms of data input:<br /> <br /> • Sense experience: observations of the external world detected by our senses.<br /> <br /> • Knowledge: information which exists in the human mind as memories and ideas.<br /> <br /> Consciousness is thus a process of the development of knowledge through a combination of human brain activity and human practical activity in the physical world (i.e., labor).<br /> <br /> In the section below, we will explore different forms of consciousness, the development of consciousness, and the relationship between consciousness and knowledge.<br /> <br /> Note that these are abstractions of consciousness and knowledge, meant to help us understand how knowledge and consciousness develop over time. Thought processes are extremely complex, so we seek to develop a fundamental understanding of how consciousness develops and how knowledge develops because these processes are fundamental to the development of human beings and human societies.<br /> <br /> Just as consciousness is a process of developing knowledge through brain activity, consciousness itself also develops over time. The development of consciousness can be considered based on the criteria of concrete/abstract and of passive/active.<br /> <br /> Consciousness develops from a state of direct and immediate observation of the world which results in concrete knowledge to a higher stage which constitutes a more abstract and general understanding of the world. We call consciousness which is focused on direct, immediate, concrete, empirical observation of the world empirical consciousness, and we call consciousness which is focused on forming abstract generalizations about the world theoretical consciousness.<br /> <br /> Annotation 216 (continued)<br /> <br /> Concrete<br /> <br /> Abstract<br /> <br /> →<br /> <br /> develops into<br /> <br /> Empirical Consciousness<br /> <br /> Theoretical Consciousness<br /> <br /> Empirical consciousness is a process of collecting data about the world, which we call knowledge. We can gather two forms of knowledge through empirical consciousness: ordinary knowledge, and scientific knowledge.<br /> <br /> Directly Observed<br /> <br /> Systematically Derived<br /> <br /> →<br /> <br /> develops into<br /> <br /> Ordinary Knowledge<br /> <br /> Scientific Knowledge<br /> <br /> Ordinary knowledge is the knowledge we accumulate through our everyday experiences in the world. Scientific knowledge is gathered through more systematic scientific observations and experiments. Scientific knowledge usually develops from ordinary knowledge, as we begin to seek a more formal and systematic understanding of the things we witness in our daily lives.<br /> <br /> According to Themes in Soviet Marxist Philosophy, edited by T. J. Blakely: Ordinary knowledge notes what lies on the very surface, what happens during a certain event. Scientific knowledge wants to know why it happens in just this way. The essence of scientific knowledge lies in the confirmed generalization of facts, where it becomes necessary rather than contingent, universal instead of particular, law-bound, and can serve as a basis for predicting various phenomena, events and objects. . .<br /> <br /> The whole progress of scientific knowledge is bound up with growth in the force and volume of scientific prediction. Prediction makes it possible to control processes and to direct them. Scientific knowledge opens up the possibility not only of predicting the future but also of consciously forming it. The vital meaning of every science can be expressed as follows: to know in order to predict and to predict in order to act.<br /> <br /> An essential characteristic of scientific knowledge is that it is systematic, i.e., it is a set of information which is ordered according to certain theoretical principles.<br /> <br /> A collection of unsystematized knowledge is not yet science. Certain basic premises are fundamental to scientific knowledge, i.e., the laws which make it possible to systematize the knowledge. Knowledge becomes scientific when the collection of facts and their descriptions reach the level where they are included in a theory.<br /> <br /> Theoretical consciousness arises from conscious reflection on accumulated knowledge, as human beings seek to develop general and abstract understanding of the underlying principles of processes we experience in the world. Once general principles of natural and social law are established, human beings then test those general conclusions against empirical reality through further observation (i.e., through empirical consciousness).<br /> <br /> 212<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 216 (continued)<br /> <br /> Thus, there is a dialectical relationship between empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness, as one form leads to another, back and forth, again and again, continuously.<br /> <br /> Empirical and theoretical consciousness have a dialectical relationship in which empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness lead to and mutually develop one another.<br /> <br /> Consciousness also develops from passive and surface-level observation and understanding of the world (i.e., simply considering what, where, and when things happen) to more active pursuit of the underlying meaning of the world (i.e., trying to understand how and why things happen).<br /> <br /> Consciousness which passively observes the world, directly, in daily life is referred to as ordinary consciousness. Ordinary consciousness often develops into more active consciousness. This active pursuit of understanding through systematic observation and indirect experiences (i.e., experiences that do not occur in daily activity - such as scientific experimentation) is referred to as scientific consciousness.<br /> <br /> Passive and Direct<br /> <br /> Active and Indirect<br /> <br /> →<br /> <br /> develops into<br /> <br /> Ordinary Consciousness<br /> <br /> Scientific Consciousness<br /> <br /> These concepts will be discussed in further detail below.<br /> <br /> Empirical consciousness is the stage of development of consciousness in which perceptions are formed via direct observations of things and phenomena in the natural world, or of society, or through scientific experimentation and systematic observation. Empirical consciousness results in empirical knowledge.<br /> <br /> Empirical knowledge has two types: ordinary empirical knowledge (knowledge obtained through direct observation and in productive labor) and scientific empirical knowledge (knowledge obtained by conducting scientific experiments). These two types of knowledge can be complementary, and can enrich one other.<br /> <br /> Theoretical consciousness is the indirect, abstract, systematic level of perception in which the nature and laws of things and phenomena are generalized and abstracted.<br /> <br /> Empirical consciousness and Theoretical consciousness are two different cognitive stages but they have a dialectical relationship with each other. In this dialectical relationship, empirical consciousness is the basis of theoretical consciousness; it provides theoretical consciousness with specific, rich material [i.e., knowledge]. Empirical consciousness is linked closely to practical activities [since practical activity in the material world<br /> <br /> Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism 213<br /> <br /> is the chief method of gathering knowledge through empirical consciousness], and forms the basis for checking, correcting, and supplementing existing theories and summarizing, and generalizing them into new theories. However, empirical consciousness is still limited in that empirical consciousness stops at the description and classification of data obtained from direct observation and experimentation. Therefore, empirical consciousness only brings understanding about the separate, superficial, discrete aspects of observed subjects, without yet reflecting the essence of those subjects nor the underlying principles or laws which regulate those subjects.<br /> <br /> Therefore, empirical consciousness, alone, is not sufficient for determining the scientific laws of nature and society. To determine such laws and abstractions, theoretical consciousness must be applied. So, theoretical consciousness does not form spontaneously, nor directly from experience, although it is formed from the summation of experiences.<br /> <br /> Annotation 217<br /> <br /> The knowledge we gain from our daily activity often inspires scientific inquiry and more systematic observation, which can yield scientific knowledge which will enrich and improve our daily practice and allow us to experience daily life with a deeper understanding of what we’re experiencing. Thus, the ordinary knowledge we gain through daily practice can enrich and yield scientific knowledge (and vice versa).<br /> <br /> Empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness have a dialectical relationship with each other in which empirical consciousness provides the basis for theoretical consciousness. Theoretical consciousness attempts to derive general abstractions and governing principles from empirical knowledge which is gained through empirical consciousness. Once theoretical principles, generalities, and abstractions are determined, they are then tested against reality through empirical consciousness (i.e., practical observation and systematic experimentation) to determine if the theory is sound.<br /> <br /> THEORETICAL<br /> <br /> CONSCIOUSNESS<br /> <br /> Empirical consciousness and theoretical<br /> <br /> consciousness have a dialectical relationship<br /> <br /> with one another. Our observations of the<br /> <br /> EMPIRICAL<br /> <br /> CONSCIOUSNESS<br /> <br /> material world lead to conscious activity which<br /> <br /> we then test in reality through conscious<br /> <br /> activity, and so on, in a never-ending cycle of<br /> <br /> dialectical development.<br /> <br /> For example, a farmer may notice that plants grow better in locations where manure has been discarded - an act of empirical consciousness. The farmer might then form the theory that adding manure to the soil will help plants grow - an act of theoretical consciousness. This theory could then be tested against reality by mixing manure into the soil and observing the results, which would be another act of empirical consciousness.<br /> <br /> The farmer may then theorize that more manure will help plants grow even more - another act of theoretical consciousness - continuing the cycle of testing and observing.<br /> <br /> 214<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 217 (continued)<br /> <br /> This dialectical relationship between ordinary and theoretical consciousness is what allows human beings to develop and improve knowledge through practical experience, observation, and theoretical abstraction and generalization of knowledge.<br /> <br /> Theoretical consciousness is relatively independent from empirical consciousness.<br /> <br /> Therefore, theories can precede expectations and guide the formation of valuable empirical knowledge. Theoretical consciousness is what allows human beings to sort and filter knowledge so as to best serve practical activities and contribute to the transformation of human life. Through this process, knowledge is organized and therefore enhanced, and develops from the level of specific, individual, and solitary knowledge to a higher form of generalized and abstract knowledge [what we might call theoretical knowledge].<br /> <br /> Annotation 218<br /> <br /> Knowledge which comes from empirical observations (empirical consciousness) is empirical knowledge. Theoretical knowledge is a product of theoretical consciousness. Over time, as repeated and varied observations are made through theoretical consciousness activities, knowledge becomes more generalized and abstract; this general and abstract knowledge is what we call theoretical knowledge.<br /> <br /> Note that empirical and theoretical knowledge can be ordinary or scientific in nature; if the knowledge arises passively from daily life activities, it will be ordinary knowledge, regardless of whether or not it is empirical or theoretical in nature. If, on the other hand, the knowledge arises from methodological measurement and/or systematic observation, then it is scientific knowledge.vSo far, we have discussed ways of understanding consciousness based on the criteria of directness vs. abstractness. Next, we will discuss another way of looking at consciousness, based on the criteria of passiveness vs. activeness.<br /> <br /> Ordinary consciousness refers to perception that is formed passively and directly from the daily activities of humans. Ordinary consciousness is a reflection of things, phenomena, and ideas, with all their observed characteristics, specific details, and nuances. Therefore, ordinary consciousness is rich, multifaceted, and associated with daily life. Therefore, ordinary consciousness has a regular and pervasive role in governing the activities of each person in society.<br /> <br /> Scientific consciousness refers to perception formed actively and indirectly from the reflection of the characteristics, nature, and inherent relationships of research subjects.<br /> <br /> This reflection takes place in the form of logical abstraction. These logical abstractions include scientific concepts, categories, and laws. Scientific consciousness is objective, abstract, general, and systematic, and must be grounded in evidence.<br /> <br /> Scientific consciousness utilizes systematic methodologies to profoundly describe the nature of studied subjects as well as the principles which govern them. Therefore, scientific consciousness plays an increasingly important role in practical activities, especially in the modern age of science and technology.<br /> <br /> Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism 215<br /> <br /> Annotation 219<br /> <br /> Logical abstraction refers to an understanding of the underlying rules which govern things, phenomena, and ideas which underly objective processes, relationships, and characteristics. Logical abstraction is the result of scientific inquiry. Over time, our understanding of the rules which govern the things, phenomena, and ideas in our lives become more reliable and applicable in practical activities. This attainment of understanding and practical ability through scientific practice is scientific consciousness.<br /> <br /> Ordinary and scientific consciousness are two different qualitative steps of cognitive processes which, together, allow humans to discover truth about our world. Ordinary and scientific consciousness have a strong dialectical relationship with each other. In this relationship, ordinary consciousness precedes scientific consciousness, as ordinary consciousness is a source of material for the development of scientific consciousness.<br /> <br /> Although it contains the seeds of scientific knowledge, ordinary consciousness mainly stops at the reflection of superficial details, seemingly random events, and non-essential phenomena [see Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156]. Ordinary consciousness, therefore, cannot transform effortlessly into scientific consciousness. To develop ordinary consciousness into scientific consciousness, we must go through the process of accurate summarizing, abstracting, and generalization using scientific methods. Likewise, once scientific consciousness has been developed, it impacts and pervades ordinary consciousness, and therefore develops ordinary consciousness. Scientific consciousness therefore enhances our everyday passive perception of the world.<br /> <br /> ?<br /> <br /> ORDINARY CONSCIOUSNESS<br /> <br /> SCIENTIFIC CONSCIOUSNESS<br /> <br /> Ordinary consciousness refers to the passive observation of reality which takes place in our daily lives. Scientific consciousness refers to the systematic application of consciousness to solve specific problems in a methodological manner.<br /> <br /> 216<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 220<br /> <br /> For example, before developing scientific consciousness of farming, a farmer might go through daily life having no idea what makes plants grow to be larger and more healthy and might have no idea how to avoid common problems such as pests. After developing scientific consciousness of farming through scientific experimentation and other systematic methodologies, the farmer will look at things differently in daily life activities. They may see signs of pest infestation and immediately recognize it for what it is, and they may see other indications that plants are unhealthy and know exactly what to do to remedy the situation.<br /> <br /> In this way, scientific consciousness enhances ordinary consciousness. Meanwhile, ordinary consciousness - passive observation of the world during daily activities - will lead to scientific consciousness by inspiring us to actively seek understanding of the world through scientific consciousness.<br /> <br /> c. The Relationship Between Praxis and Consciousness<br /> <br /> Praxis serves as the basis, driving force, and purpose of consciousness. Praxis serves as the criterion of truth by testing the truthfulness of our thoughts. [See Annotation 230, p.<br /> <br /> 226]<br /> <br /> Praxis is able to serve these roles because reality is the direct starting point of consciousness; it sets out the requirements, tasks, and modes of consciousness, as well as the movement and development tendencies of consciousness. Humans have an objective and inherent need to explain the world and to transform it.<br /> <br /> Annotation 221<br /> <br /> Remember that the material world defines consciousness while consciousness allows us to impact the material world through conscious activity [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88]. Consciousness itself arose from the physical needs of the material world [see The Source of Consciousness, p. 64], and these physical needs continue to serve as the basis and driving force for all conscious activities, as we must act consciously to survive.<br /> <br /> Our inherent need to explain the world and to transform it arises from our material needs to eat, seek shelter, cure and prevent disease, and so on. These physical needs, which stem from the material world, drive conscious activity and lead to the development of consciousness and knowledge.<br /> <br /> Therefore, humans must necessarily impact things in the material world through our practical activities in order to survive. The impacts of our practical activities on the world cause things and phenomena to reveal their different properties, including their internal and external relationships [for example, hitting a rock will tell you properties about the rock; attempting to build something out of wood will provide data about the wood, etc.]. In this manner, praxis produces data for consciousness to process, and also helps consciousness to comprehend nature and the laws of movement and development which govern the world.<br /> <br /> Scientific theories are formed on the basis of the dialectical relationship between practical activity and consciousness. For example: mathematics developed to allow us to count and measure things for practical activities such as agriculture, navigation, and<br /> <br /> Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism 217<br /> <br /> building structures. Marxism also arose in the 1840’s from the practical activities of the struggles of the working class against the capitalist class at that time. Even recent scientific achievements arise from practical needs and activities. For example, the discovery and decoding of the human genome map was born from practical activities and needs, such as the need to develop treatments for incurable diseases. In the end, there is no field of knowledge that is not derived from reality. Ultimately, all knowledge arises from and serves practice. Therefore, if we were to break from reality or stop relying on reality, consciousness would break from the basis of reality that nurtures our growth, existence and development. Also, the cognitive subject cannot have true and profound knowledge about the world if it does not follow reality.<br /> <br /> Practice also serves as the basis, driving force, and purpose of consciousness because, thanks to practical activities, our human ability to measure and observe reality improves increasingly over time; our logical thinking ability is constantly strengthened and developed; cognitive means become increasingly developed. All of these developments “extend” the human senses in perceiving the world [for example, by developing new tools to measure, perceive, and sense the world such as telescopes, radar, microscopes, etc.].<br /> <br /> Reality is not only the basis, the driving force, and the purpose of discovering truth but also serves as the standard of truth. Reality also serves as the basis for examining the truthfulness of the cognitive process [i.e., we can test whether our thoughts match material reality through experimentation and practice in the real world]. This means that practice is the measure of the value of the knowledge we gain through perception. At the same time, practice is constantly supplementing, adjusting, correcting, developing, and improving human consciousness. Marx said: “The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth - i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice.”1<br /> <br /> Thus, practice is not only the starting point of consciousness and a decisive factor for the formation and development of consciousness, it is also a target where consciousness must always aim to test the truth. To emphasize this role which practice plays, Lenin said: “The standpoint of life, of practice, should be first and fundamental in the theory of knowledge.”2<br /> <br /> The role of practice in consciousness requires that we always grasp the practical point of view. This point of view requires that we derive our ideas from practice, our ideas must be based on practice, and our ideas must deeply explore practice. In our conscious activities, we must attach a lot of importance to the summarization of practice<br /> <br /> [i.e., developing theoretical knowledge through theoretical consciousness which reflects practical experience]. Theoretical research must be related to practice, and learning must go hand in hand with practicing. If we diverge from practice, it will lead to mistakes of subjectivism, idealism, dogmatism, rigidity, and bureaucracy.<br /> <br /> 1 Theses On Feuerbach, Karl Marx, 1845.<br /> <br /> 2 Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1908.<br /> <br /> 218<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 222<br /> <br /> Subjectivism occurs when one centers one’s own self and conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test one’s own perceptions against material and social reality. Subjectivists tend to believe that they can independently reason their way to truth in their own minds without practical experience and activity in the material world. Related to subjectivism is solipsism, a form of idealism in which one believes that the self is the only basis for truth. As Marxist ethicist Howard Selsam wrote in Ethics and Progress: New Values in a Revolutionary World: “If I believe that I alone exist and that you and all your arguments exist only in my mind and are my own creations then all possible arguments will not shake me one iota. No logic can possibly convince<br /> <br /> [the] solipsist.”<br /> <br /> Idealism has a strong connection with a failure to incorporate practical activity into theoretical consciousness, since idealism holds that conscious activity is the sole basis of discovering truth.<br /> <br /> Dogmatism occurs when one only accounts for commonalities and considers theory itself as the sole basis of truth rather than practice [see Annotation 239, p. 235]. Dog-matists ignore practical experience and considering pre-established theory, alone, as unalterable truth. This results in a breakdown of the dialectical relationship between theoretical consciousness and empirical consciousness, which arrests the development process of knowledge and consciousness.<br /> <br /> Rigidity is an unwillingness to alter one’s thoughts, holding too stiffly to established consciousness and knowledge, and ignoring practical experience and observation, which leads to stagnation of both knowledge and consciousness.<br /> <br /> Bureaucracy arises when theory becomes overly codified and formalized, to the extent that practical considerations are ignored in favor of codified theory. Bureaucracy can be avoided by incorporating practical experience and observations continuously into the development of practical systems and methodologies so that theory and practice become increasingly aligned over time to continuously improve efficiency and effectiveness of practical activities in the material world.<br /> <br /> On the contrary, if the role of practice is absolutized [to the exclusion of conscious activity], it will fall into pragmatism and empiricism.<br /> <br /> Annotation 223<br /> <br /> In this context, pragmatism refers to a form of subjectivism [see Annotation 222, above] in which one centers one’s own immediate material concerns over all other considerations. For example, workers may place their own immediate needs and desires above the concerns of their fellow workers as a whole. This may offer some temporary gains, but in the long run their lack of solidarity and class consciousness will be detrimental as workers collectively suffer from division, making all workers more vulnerable to exploitation and ill treatment by the capitalist class.<br /> <br /> Empiricism is a faulty form of materialism in which only sense experience and practical experience are considered sources of truth. This is opposed to the dialectical materialist position that the material determines consciousness, while consciousness impacts the material world through conscious labor activity. [See The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88]<br /> <br /> Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism 219<br /> <br /> Thus, the principle of the unification of practice and theory must be the basic principle in practical and theoretical activities. Theory without practice as its basis and criterion for determining its truthfulness is useless. Vice versa, practice without scientific and revolutionary theory will inevitably turn into blind practice. [As Ho Chi Minh once said:<br /> <br /> “Study and practice must always go together. Study without practice is useless. Practice without study leads to folly.”]<br /> <br /> ==2. Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth==<br /> <br /> a. Opinions of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin about the Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth<br /> <br /> Annotation 224<br /> <br /> The section below outlines and explains the Universal Law of Consciousness, which holds that consciousness is a process of dialectical development in which practical activity leads to conscious activity, which then leads back to practical activity, in a continuous and never-ending cycle, with a tendency to develop both practical and conscious activity to increasingly higher levels.<br /> <br /> In his Philosophical Notebook, Lenin generalized the dialectical path towards the realization of truth as development from vivid visualization to abstract thinking, and then from abstraction back to practice. This process, according to Lenin, is the dialectical path towards the realization of truth, and the realization of objective reality.<br /> <br /> According to this generalization, the dialectical path towards the realization of truth (“truth,” here, referring to a correct and accurate reflection of objective reality) is a process. It is a process that starts from “vivid visualization” (emotional consciousness) to<br /> <br /> “abstract thinking” (rational consciousness).<br /> <br /> Annotation 225<br /> <br /> Given that consciousness has a material basis, and that practical activities are the driving force of consciousness [see Annotation 230, p. 226], it follows that we must strive to align our conscious thoughts and ideas with the material world. The more accurately we can reflect reality in our consciousness, the more effectively and efficiently our practical activities can become.<br /> <br /> For example, through learning more about the mechanical, material, and physical processes which take place inside of an automobile engine, the more we can improve engines to make them more efficient and effective for practical applications.<br /> <br /> Lenin explained that consciousness develops from “emotional consciousness” to “rational consciousness.” Thought about a subject begins at a base level of consciousness that is rooted in emotional and sense-oriented conscious activity, i.e, “vivid visualization,” which then leads to rational, abstract reflection.<br /> <br /> By “vivid visualization,” Lenin is referring to the active, real-time experience of seeing (and hearing, smelling, and otherwise sensing) things and phenomena in the world.<br /> <br /> When a person experiences something through practical activity, the first conscious activity will tend to occur at the emotional and sensory level - in other words, the conscious activities which occur simultaneously along with practical activities. Only after this initial period of emotional consciousness will one be able to reflect on the experience on a more rational and abstract level.<br /> <br /> 220<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 225 (continued)<br /> <br /> For example, if a zoologist in the field sees a species of bird they have never encountered before, their first conscious activity will be at the sensory-emotional level: they will observe the shape, coloration, and motion of the bird. They may feel excitement, happiness, and other emotions. This is emotional conscious activity.<br /> <br /> This emotional conscious activity will then develop into rational conscious activity, as the zoologist may begin to consider things more abstractly, attempting to interpret and understand this experience through reason and rational reflection, asking such questions as: “Where does this bird nest? What does it feed on? Is this a new discovery?” and so on.<br /> <br /> Such abstractions are not the end point of a cognitive cycle, because consciousness must then continue to develop through practice. It is through practice that perception tests and proves its own correctness so that it can then continue on to repeat the cycle.<br /> <br /> This is also the general rule of the human perception of objective reality.<br /> <br /> Annotation 226<br /> <br /> Thus there is a dialectical relationship between emotional consciousness (linked to practical activity) and rational consciousness (linked to purely conscious activity).<br /> <br /> This dialectical relationship is a cycle, in which one engages in practical activity, which leads to emotional consciousness, which leads to rational consciousness, which then leads back to practical activity to test the correctness of the conclusions of rational conscious activity.<br /> <br /> We call this cycle of development of consciousness the cognitive process.<br /> <br /> COGNITIVE PROCESS CYCLE<br /> <br /> The cognitive process is a continuous cycle which describes the dialectical development of consciousness and practical activity.<br /> <br /> The cognitive process is explained in more detail below.<br /> <br /> Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism 221<br /> <br /> - Development From Emotional Consciousness to Rational Consciousness Emotional consciousness is the lower stage of the cognitive process. In this stage of cognitive development, humans use - through practical activity - use our senses to reflect objective things and phenomena (with all their perceived specific characteristics and rich manifestations) in human consciousness. During this period, consciousness only reflects the phenomena [i.e, phenomena, as opposed to essence - see Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156]<br /> <br /> - the external manifestations - of the perceived subject. At this stage, consciousness has not yet reflected the essence - the nature, and/or the regulating principles - of the subject.<br /> <br /> Therefore, this is the lowest stage of development of the cognitive process. In this stage, consciousness is carried out through three basic phases: sensation, conception, and symbol-ization.<br /> <br /> Human sensation of an objective thing or phenomenon is the simplest, most primitive phase of the emotional consciousness stage of the cognitive processes, but without it there would not be any perception of objective things or phenomena. Every human sensation of objective things and phenomena contains objective content [see Content and Form, p. 147], even though it arises as subjective human conscious reflection. Sensation is the subjective imagining of the objective world. It is the basis from which the next phase of emotional consciousness - conception - is formed.<br /> <br /> Conception is a relatively complete reflection within human consciousness of objective things and phenomena. Conception is formed on the basis of linking and synthesizing sensational experiences of things and phenomena [i.e., sensation]. Compared with sensation, conception is a higher, fuller, richer form of consciousness, but it is still a reflection of the outward manifestations of objects. Conception does not yet reflect the essence, nature, and regulating principles of the perceived subject.<br /> <br /> Symbolization is the representation of an objective thing or phenomenon that has been reflected by sensation and conception. It is the most advanced and most complex phase of the stage of emotional consciousness. At the same time, it also serves as the transitional step between emotional consciousness and rational consciousness. The defining characteristic of symbolism is the ability to reproduce symbolic ideas of objective things and phenomena within human consciousness. Symbolization describes the act of recreating the outward appearances of material things and phenomena within human consciousness, which is the first step of abstraction, and thus the first step towards rational consciousness.<br /> <br /> 222<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 227<br /> <br /> Here is an example of the three phases of the emotional consciousness stage of the cognitive process:<br /> <br /> EMOTIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS STAGE<br /> <br /> of the COGNITIVE PROCESS<br /> <br /> “CAKE”<br /> <br /> 1. SENSATION<br /> <br /> 2. CONCEPTION<br /> <br /> 3. SYMBOLIZATION<br /> <br /> 1. Sensation: Jessica senses a cake in the window of a bakery. She sees the frosting, the shape of the cake, and the decorations which adorn the cake. She smells the cake. During this phase, objective data about the cake is received into her consciousness, developing into an immediate and subjective sense perception of the cake. The beginnings of this cognitive activity will be purely sensory in nature; she may have been thinking of other things as she walked by the bakery, but the sight and smell of the cake, upon registering in her mind, will lead to the beginning of a new cognitive process cycle.<br /> <br /> 2. Conception: Jessica begins to conceive of the cake in her mind more fully. She will associate the immediate sense experiences of seeing and smelling the cake with other experiences she has had with cake, and a complete mental image and concept of the cake will form in her mind.<br /> <br /> 3. Symbolization: The word “cake” may now form in her mind, and she may begin thinking of the cake more abstractly, as “food,” as a “temptation,” and in other ways. This is the beginning of abstraction in Jessica’s mind, which will then lead to rational conscious activities.<br /> <br /> Note that all of these phases of emotional consciousness activity may take place very quickly, perhaps in a fraction of a second, and may coincide with other conscious activity (i.e., Jessica may simultaneously be thinking of a meeting she’s running late to and any number of other things). At this point, Jessica will transition to the rational consciousness stage of the cognitive process , which is explained in more detail below.<br /> <br /> By the end of the emotional stage of the cognitive process, consciousness has not yet reflected the essence - the nature, regulating principles, etc. - of the perceived subject.<br /> <br /> Therefore, at the emotional stage, consciousness is not yet able to properly interpret the reflected subject. That is to say, emotional conscious activity does not meet the cognitive requirements to serve practical activities, including the need to creatively transform the objective world. To meet these requirements, emotional consciousness must develop into rational consciousness.<br /> <br /> Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism 223<br /> <br /> Rational consciousness is the higher stage of the cognitive process. It includes the indirect, abstract, and generalized reflection of the essential properties and characteristics of things and phenomena. This stage of consciousness performs the most important function of comprehending and interpreting the essence of the perceived subject. Rational consciousness is implemented through three basic phases: definition, judgment, and reasoning.<br /> <br /> Definition is the first phase of rational consciousness. During this phase, the mind begins to interpret, organize, and process the basic properties of things and phenomena at a rational level into a conceptual whole. The formation of definition is the result of the summarization and synthesis of all the different characteristics and properties of the subject, and how the subject fits into the organized structure of knowledge which exists in the mind. Definition is the basis for forming judgments in the cognitive process.<br /> <br /> Judgment is the next phase of rational consciousness, which arises from the definition of the subject - the linking of concepts and properties together - which leads to affirmative or negative ideation of certain characteristics or attributes of the perceived subject.<br /> <br /> According to the level of development of consciousness, judgment may take one of three forms: unique judgment, general judgment, and universal judgment [see Annotation 105, p. 107]. Universal judgment is the form of judgement that expresses the broadest conception of objective reality.<br /> <br /> Reasoning is the final phase of rational consciousness, formed on the basis of synthesizing judgments so as to extrapolate new knowledge about the perceived subject. Before reasoning can take place, judgments must be transformed into knowledge. A judgment can be transformed into knowledge through one of two logical mechanisms: deductive inference (which extrapolates the general from the specific), and inductive inference (which extrapolates the specific from the general).<br /> <br /> 224<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 228<br /> <br /> Here is an example of the three phases of the rational consciousness stage of the cognitive process, continuing from our previous example of the emotional consciousness stage [see Annotation 227, p. 222].<br /> <br /> RATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS STAGE<br /> <br /> of the COGNITIVE PROCESS<br /> <br /> HEALTH<br /> <br /> CAKE<br /> <br /> “CAKE!”<br /> <br /> THIS CAKE LOOKS<br /> <br /> TIME<br /> <br /> CAKE<br /> <br /> “cake<br /> <br /> CAKE<br /> <br /> ” “CAKE”<br /> <br /> MONEY<br /> <br /> DELICIOUS!<br /> <br /> 1. DEFINITION<br /> <br /> 2. JUDGMENT<br /> <br /> 3. REASONING<br /> <br /> 1. Definition: Jessica’s conception of the cake will transition into the rational conscious activity of definition. Jessica will begin to define the concept of the cake more wholly and concretely, summarizing and synthesizing all of the features and characteristics of the cake into a cohesive mental reflection of the cake. The word “cake” may become more pronounced and defined in Jessica’s consciousness, prompting her to think of the object which she defines as a “cake” more fully and rationally.<br /> <br /> 2. Judgment: Jessica will begin to form basic judgments about the cake. “That cake looks good,” “that cake smells good,” and so on. Next, these judgments will begin to transform into knowledge through inductive or deductive inferences. An inductive inference might be: “I generally enjoy eating cakes, therefore, I might enjoy eating this cake!” An example of a deductive inference might be: “This cake looks very delicious, therefore, there might be other delicious things in this bakery!”<br /> <br /> 3. Reasoning: Processes of inductive and/or deductive inference will begin to transform Jessica’s judgments into the form of knowledge. For instance, she may now possess such knowledge as: “This bakery has delicious looking cakes, this is a cake I would like to eat,” and so on. With this newly acquired knowledge, Jessica can begin reasoning; that is to say, she can begin making rational conclusions and decisions. She might conclude: “I will go into this bakery and buy that cake.”<br /> <br /> Note that this is not the “end” of the cognitive process, because the final phase of the reasoning stage of the cognitive process (reasoning) will lead directly into a new cycle of the cognitive process. In this example, Jessica might engage in the practical activity of checking her watch to see the time, which will begin a new cycle of cognitive process, beginning with the sensation phase of the emotional stage as the visual sense data of her watch and carrying through to the final reasoning phase of the rational stage, and so on.<br /> <br /> Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism 225<br /> <br /> Annotation 228 (continued)<br /> <br /> It should also be noted that this is merely an abstraction of the cognitive process; in reality, the human mind is incredibly complex, capable of carrying out a variety of cognitive processes simultaneously. At any given moment, a person might be considering various different subjects, and each different subject might be at a different stage of the cognitive process. This abstract model of the cognitive process is presented to help us comprehend the component functions of consciousness more easily in the wider context of dialectical materialist philosophy.<br /> <br /> Specifically, this model of the cognitive process is intended to help us understand how human consciousness leads to “truth.” And “truth,” here, refers to the alignment of human consciousness with the material world, so that our perceptions and understanding of the world is accurate and representative of actual reality.<br /> <br /> - The Relationship Between Emotional Consciousness, Rational Consciousness, and Reality Emotional consciousness and rational consciousness are stages that make up the cognitive cycle. In reality, they are often intertwined within the cognitive process, but they have different functions. If emotional consciousness is associated with reality, and with the impact of sense data received from observing the material world, and is the basis for cognitive reason, then rational consciousness, based on higher cognitive understanding and abstraction, allows us to understand the essence, nature, regulating principles, and development processes of things and phenomena. Rational consciousness helps direct emotional consciousness in a more efficient and effective direction and leads to more profound and accurate emotional consciousness.<br /> <br /> Annotation 229<br /> <br /> In other words, considering a subject at the level of rational consciousness allows us to then view the same subject, at an emotional consciousness level, with more depth and awareness.<br /> <br /> For example, the more time we have spent rationally considering something like a bicycle, the more quickly and accurately we can examine a bicycle at the level of emotional consciousness. If someone is looking at a bicycle for the first time, they might not be able to distinguish its component parts or functions. On the other hand, if someone has spent more time considering bicycles at the level of rational consciousness, they may be able to immediately and rapidly understand and process a bicycle at the emotional conscious level, so that they can perceive and comprehend the different parts of a bicycle, as well as their functions, immediately and at the emotional-sensory level.<br /> <br /> However, if we stop at rational consciousness, we will only have knowledge about the subjects we perceive, but we still won’t really know if that knowledge is truly accurate or not. In order to be useful in practical activity, we must consciously determine whether knowledge is truth [i.e., whether the knowledge accurately reflects reality]. In order to determine the truth of knowledge, consciousness must necessarily return to reality.<br /> <br /> Consciousness must use reality as a criterion - a measurement - of the authenticity of knowledge gained through purely cognitive processes. In other words, all consciousness is ultimately derived from practical needs, and must also return to serve practical activities.<br /> <br /> 226<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 230<br /> <br /> CONSCIOUS<br /> <br /> PRACTICAL<br /> <br /> ACTIVITIES<br /> <br /> ACTIVITIES<br /> <br /> MUTUAL DEVELOPMENT<br /> <br /> The dialectical relationship between consciousness and practical activities means that conscious activities develop practical activities, and vice versa, in a continuous feedback loop.<br /> <br /> One of the fundamental principles of dialectical materialism is that the material determines the ideal, and the ideal impacts the material [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88]. The fact that the material determines consciousness is reflected in the fact that material needs led to the development of consciousness, and conscious activity stems from material needs [see Social Sources of Consciousness, p. 74].<br /> <br /> The fact that the ideal impacts the material is reflected in the fact that consciousness must always return to the service of practical activities; as our consciousness develops (along with knowledge), our ability to impact and transform the material world becomes more efficient and effective.<br /> <br /> THEN WE IMAGINE<br /> <br /> BETTER WAYS<br /> <br /> OF DOING THINGS<br /> <br /> THEN PRACTICAL<br /> <br /> EXPERIENCE TELLS US<br /> <br /> IF THOSE IDEAS ARE VIABLE<br /> <br /> The dialectical relationship between consciousness and practical activity is what drives the development of humanity. We imagine better ways of doing things, then test those ideas against reality through practical activity.<br /> <br /> This dialectical relationship between consciousness and practical activity is thus cyclical. Conscious activity arises from practical activity, and returns to practical activity, in an endless process of developing both conscious ability as well as practical ability.<br /> <br /> Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism 227<br /> <br /> Therefore, it can be seen that the general, cyclical nature of the process of movement and development of consciousness develops from practice to consciousness - from consciousness to practice - from practical activity to the continued process of cognitive development, and so on. This process is repeated continuously, without end. The development level of consciousness and practice in the next cycle are often higher than in the previous cycle, and the cognitive process gradually develops more and more accuracy, as well as fuller and deeper knowledge about objective reality.<br /> <br /> The universal law of consciousness [see Annotation 224, p. 219] is also a concrete and vivid manifestation of the universal laws of materialist dialectics, including: the law of negation of negation, the law of transformation between quantity and quality and the law of unity and contradiction between opposites. The process of cognitive motion and development, governed by these general laws, is the process of human progress towards absolute truth [see Annotation 232, p. 228].<br /> <br /> Annotation 231<br /> <br /> The universal law of consciousness is governed by the three universal laws of materialist dialectics:<br /> <br /> The Law of Negation of Negation dictates that the new will arise from the old, but will carry forward characteristics from the old. This is reflected in the universal law of consciousness in that conscious activity arises from practical activity. This conscious activity then develops into improved practical activity, and so on, in a never-ending cycle of development. Throughout this development process, characteristics of previous cycles of cognitive and practical activities are carried forward and transferred on to newer cycles of cognitive and practical activities.<br /> <br /> The Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality recognizes that quantity changes develop into changes in quality, and vice versa. This is reflected in the universal law of consciousness in the development of both conscious and practical activities.<br /> <br /> Conscious development also develops from quantitative changes to quality changes, and vice versa. For example, once a person accumulates a certain quantity of knowledge, the quality of their knowledge will change. For example, once a person has learned the function of every component part of a car engine, they will have a quality shift in their understanding of car engines - they will now have competency of the functioning of the engine as a whole. This is also true of practical activities. A quantity of practical experience will lead to quality shifts in practical ability. For example, once a person has practiced riding a bicycle enough that they can reliably ride the bicycle without falling, we would say that the person “knows how to ride a bicycle,” which represents a quality shift from the state of “learning how to ride a bicycle.”<br /> <br /> The Law of Unity and Contradiction Between Opposites states that all things, phenomena, and ideas are defined by internal and external contradictions. This is reflected in the universal law of consciousness by the fact that practical needs serve as the basis for conscious activity, and that cognitive processes serve, in essence, to negate contradictions between consciousness and material reality through practical experience. In other words, the cognitive process is defined by a never-ending process of contradiction between the material and the ideal, as human beings seek to negate contradictions between our conscious understanding of the world and our practical experiences in search of truth - the accurate alignment of consciousness with the material world.<br /> <br /> 228<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism<br /> <br /> b. Truth, and the Relationship Between Truth and Reality<br /> <br /> - Definition of Truth<br /> <br /> All cognitive processes lead to the creation of knowledge, which is what we call human understanding of objective reality. But not all knowledge has content consistent with objective reality, because consciousness exists as the subjective reflection of objective reality in the human mind. The collective cognitive practice of all of humanity throughout history, as well as the cognitive practice of each individual human being, has demonstrated that the knowledge which people have gained and are gaining is not always consistent with objective reality. On the contrary, there are many cases of misalignment between consciousness and reality, and even complete contradiction between human thought and objective reality.<br /> <br /> Within the theoretical scope of Marxism-Leninism, the concept of truth is used to refer to knowledge which is aligned with objective reality. This alignment is tested and proven through practice. In this sense, the concept of truth is not identical with the concept of “knowledge,” nor with the concept of “hypothesis.” According to Lenin: “The coincidence of thought with the object is a process: thought (= man) must not imagine truth in the form of dead repose, in the form of a bare picture (image), pale (matte), without impulse, without motion…”1<br /> <br /> Annotation 232<br /> <br /> Here, Lenin is dispelling Hegel’s conception of “absolute truth,” which is not to be confused with Lenin’s concept of “absolute truth” as “objective truth” which aligns consciousness with objective reality [see Annotation 58, p. 56]. For Hegel, “absolute truth” was the idea that there will eventually be some end point to the process of rational consciousness at which we will finally arrive at some final stage of knowledge and consciousness. This rational end point of consciousness, at which the dialectic ends and all contradictions are negated, is Hegel’s “absolute truth.”<br /> <br /> Lenin is also pushing back against the metaphysical conception that all “truths” exist as static categories of information which do not change. Instead, Lenin points out that seeking truth - i.e., aligning consciousness with material reality - is a never-ending process, in particular because reality is constantly developing and changing. Thus, the alignment of consciousness with reality - the pursuit of truth - is a living and dynamic process which will never end, since the development of reality will never end.<br /> <br /> - The Properties of Truth<br /> <br /> All truths are objective, relative, absolute, and concrete.<br /> <br /> The objectivity of truth is the independence of its content from the subjective will of human beings. The content of knowledge must be aligned with objective reality, not vice versa. This means that the content of accurate knowledge is not a product of pure subjective reasoning. Truth is not an arbitrary human construct, nor is truth inherent in consciousness. On the contrary, truth belongs to the objective world, and is determined by the objective world. The affirmation of the objectivity of truth is one of the fundamental points that distinguishes the concept of absolute truth of dialectical materialism from the concept of absolute truth of idealism and skepticism - the doctrines that deny the objective existence of the physical world and deny the possibility that humans are able to perceive the world.<br /> <br /> 1 Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.<br /> <br /> Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism 229<br /> <br /> Annotation 233<br /> <br /> The Dialectical Materialist conception of objective truth stands in contrast to idealism, which states that conscious reasoning alone leads to truth, and that the subjective ideal determines material reality [see Annotation 7, p. 8].<br /> <br /> This objectivity of truth also refutes skepticism, which states that truth is essentially undiscoverable, because human consciousness is ultimately unreliable and incapable of accurately reflecting material reality [see Annotation 32, p. 27].<br /> <br /> Distinction must also be drawn between the concept of absolute truth as it is understood in dialectical materialist philosophy and the conception of absolute truth in Hegel’s idealist dialectics. Dialectical materialism defines absolute truth as “objective truth;” that is to say: a complete alignment between objective reality and human consciousness (as compared to relative truth, which is a partial alignment between consciousness and objective reality).<br /> <br /> Hegel, on the other hand, views absolute truth as a final point at which human consciousness will have achieved absolute, complete, and final understanding of our universe (see Annotation 232, p. 228) with the ideal serving as the first basis and primary mechanism for bringing absolute truth to fruition.<br /> <br /> Truth is not only objective, but also absolute and relative. Absolute truth [see Annotation 58, p. 56] refers to truth which reflects a full and complete alignment of consciousness and reality. Theoretically, we can reach absolute truth. This is because, in the objective world, there exists no thing nor phenomenon which human beings are completely incapable of accurately perceiving. The possibility of acquiring absolute truth in the process of the development of conscious understanding is theoretically limitless. However, in reality, our conscious ability to reflect reality is limited by the specific material conditions of each generation of humanity, of practical limitations, and by the spatial and temporal conditions of reflected subjects. Therefore, truth is also relative.<br /> <br /> 230<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 234<br /> <br /> Dialectical materialist philosophy recognizes that it must be theoretically possible to know everything there is to know about a given subject, since we are theoretically capable of accurately perceiving, sensing, and measuring all data which pertains to a subject. However, dialectical materialism also recognizes the practical limitations of human beings. As Engels writes in Anti-Dühring:<br /> <br /> If mankind ever reached the stage at which it should work only with eternal truths, with results of thought which possess sovereign validity and an unconditional claim to truth, it would then have reached the point where the infinity of the intellectual world both in its actuality and in its potentiality had been exhausted, and thus the famous miracle of the counted uncountable would have been performed.<br /> <br /> But are there any truths which are so securely based that any doubt of them seems to us to be tantamount to insanity? That twice two makes four, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, that Paris is in France, that a man who gets no food dies of hunger, and so forth? Are there then nevertheless eternal truths, final and ultimate truths.<br /> <br /> Certainly there are. We can divide the whole realm of knowledge in the traditional way into three great departments. The first includes all sciences that deal with inanimate nature and are to a greater or lesser degree susceptible of mathematical treatment: mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, physics, chemistry. If it gives anyone any pleasure to use mighty words for very simple things, it can be asserted that certain results obtained by these sciences are eternal truths, final and ultimate truths; for which reason these sciences are known as the exact sciences. But very far from all their results have this validity. With the introduction of variable magnitudes and the extension of their variability to the infinitely small and infinitely large, mathematics, usually so strictly ethical, fell from grace; it ate of the tree of knowledge, which opened up to it a career of most colossal achievements, but at the same time a path of error. The virgin state of absolute validity and irrefutable proof of everything mathematical was gone forever; the realm of controversy was inaugurated, and we have reached the point where most people differentiate and inte-grate not because they understand what they are doing but from pure faith, because up to now it has always come out right. Things are even worse with astronomy and mechanics, and in physics and chemistry we are swamped by hypotheses as if attacked by a swarm of bees. And it must of necessity be so. In physics we are dealing with the motion of molecules, in chemistry with the formation of molecules out of atoms, and if the interference of light waves is not a myth, we have absolutely no prospect of ever seeing these interesting objects with our own eyes. As time goes on, final and ultimate truths become remarkably rare in this field.<br /> <br /> Relative truth is truth which has developed alignment with reality without yet having reached complete alignment between human knowledge and the reality which it reflects.<br /> <br /> To put it another way, relative truth represents knowledge which incompletely reflects material subjects without complete accuracy. In relative truth, there is only partial alignment - in some (but not all) aspects - between consciousness and the material world.<br /> <br /> Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism 231<br /> <br /> Annotation 235<br /> <br /> False consciousness is consciousness which is incorrect and misaligned from reality.<br /> <br /> Discovering and rooting out false consciousness is one of the primary concerns of dialectical materialism, as false consciousness can be a serious impediment to human progress. The term “false consciousness” was first used by Friedrich Engels in a personal letter to Franz Mehring in 1893 (a decade after the death of Karl Marx), and in this letter Engels uses the term interchangeably with the word “ideology”* to describe conscious thought processes which do not align with reality: Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, indeed, but with a false consciousness. The real motives impelling him remain unknown to him, otherwise it would not be an ideological process at all. Hence he imagines false or apparent motives. Because it is a process of thought he derives both its form and its content from pure thought, either his own or that of his predecessors. He works with mere thought material which he accepts without examination as the product of thought, he does not investigate further for a more remote process independent of thought; indeed its origin seems obvious to him, because as all action is produced through the medium of thought it also appears to him to be ultimately based upon thought. The ideologist who deals with history (history is here simply meant to comprise all the spheres – political, juridical, philosophical, theological – belonging to society and not only to nature), the ideologist dealing with history then, possesses in every sphere of science material which has formed itself independently out of the thought of previous generations and has gone through an independent series of developments in the brains of these successive generations. True, external facts belonging to its own or other spheres may have exercised a co-determining influence on this development, but the tacit pre-supposition is that these facts themselves are also only the fruits of a process of thought, and so we still remain within that realm of pure thought which has successfully digested the hardest facts.<br /> <br /> Although the term “false consciousness” is not found in writing until after Marx’s death, the concept underlying the term “false consciousness” is found often in the works of Marx and Engels. For instance, in The Holy Family, Marx and Engels explain how communist, class conscious workers have been able to break free of false consciousness of capitalist society:<br /> <br /> They (the communist workers) are most painfully aware of the difference between being and thinking, between consciousness and life. They know that property, capital, money, wage-labor and the like are no ideal figments of the brain but very practical, very objective products of their self-estrangement.<br /> <br /> This allusion to “the difference between being and thinking” recurs again and again in the works of Marx and Engels.<br /> <br /> 232<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 235 (continued)<br /> <br /> Lenin also discussed the concept of false consciousness extensively, and argued that dialectical materialism was the key to negating the false consciousness of the working class, writing in What the “Friends of the People” Are: It never has been the case, nor is it so now, that the members of society conceive the sum-total of the social relations in which they live as something definite, integral, pervaded by some principle; on the contrary, the mass of people adapt themselves to these relations unconsciously, and have so little conception of them as specific historical social relations that, for instance, an explanation of the exchange relations under which people have lived for centuries was found only in very recent times. Materialism removed this contradiction by carrying the analysis deeper, to the origin of man’s social ideas themselves; and its conclusion that the course of ideas depends on the course of things is the only one compatible with scientific psychology. Further, and from yet another aspect, this hypothesis was the first to elevate sociology to the level of a science.<br /> <br /> Note that this convention of using the word “ideology” to mean “false consciousness” has never been common, and Marx and Engels both used the word “ideology”<br /> <br /> more often in its more usual sense of “a system of ideas,” but it is still occasionally encountered in socialist literature, as Joseph McCarney explains in Marx Myths and Leg-ends:<br /> <br /> Marx never calls ideology ‘false consciousness’. Indeed, he never calls anything<br /> <br /> ‘false consciousness’, a phrase that does not occur in his work. . . The noun is almost always accompanied by an epithet such as ‘German’, ‘republican’, ‘political’<br /> <br /> or ‘Hegelian’, or by a qualifying phrase, as in ‘the ideology of the bourgeoisie’ or<br /> <br /> ‘the ideology of the political economist’. More typical in any case is the adjectival usage in which such varied items as ‘forms’, ‘expressions’, ‘phrases’, ’conceptions’, ‘deception’, and ‘distortion’ are said to have an ‘ideological’ character. Even more distinctive is the frequency, amounting to approximately half of all references in the relevant range, of invocations of the ‘ideologists’, the creators and purveyors of the ideological forms.<br /> <br /> “Relative truth” and “absolute truth” do not exist separately, but have dialectical unity with each other. On the one hand, “absolute truth” is the sum of all “relative truths.” On the other hand, in all relative truths there are always elements of absolute truth.<br /> <br /> Lenin wrote that “absolute truth results from the sum-total of relative truths in the course of their development; [...] relative truths represent relatively faithful reflections of an object existing independently of man; [...] these reflections become more and more faithful; [...] every scientific truth, notwithstanding its relative nature, contains an element of absolute truth.”1<br /> <br /> 1 Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1908.<br /> <br /> Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism 233<br /> <br /> Correct realization of the dialectical relationship between relative and absolute truth plays a very important role in criticizing and overcoming extremism and false consciousness in perception and in action. If we exaggerate the absoluteness of the truth of knowledge which we possess, or downplay its relativity, we will fall into the false consciousness of metaphysics, dogmatism, conservativism, and stagnation.<br /> <br /> Annotation 236<br /> <br /> Intentional or unintentional exaggeration of the absoluteness of truth - i.e., considering our knowledge to be more complete and/or aligned with reality than it actually is<br /> <br /> - leads to incorrect viewpoints and mindsets, including:<br /> <br /> Metaphysics is a philosophical system which seeks truth through the systematic categorization of knowledge [see Annotation 8, p. 8]. This is a flawed method of seeking knowledge because it considers truth to be essentially static and unchanging, and upholds the erroneous notion that truth can be systematically broken down into discrete, isolated categories. In addition to being fundamentally incorrect about the nature of truth and knowledge, it leads to the incorrect presumption that such static categorization of knowledge can lead to truth at all. Metaphysics fails to see truth and consciousness as a process, and instead sees truth as a static assembly of categorized facts and data.<br /> <br /> Dogmatism occurs when one only accounts for commonalities and considers theory itself as the sole basis of truth. Dogmatism inherently overstates the absoluteness of knowledge, as dogmatic positions uphold certain theoretical principles as complete, inviolable, and completely developed. This explicitly denies the continuously developing process of advancing knowledge and consciousness.<br /> <br /> Conservativism includes any position that seeks to prevent change, or to undo change to return to an earlier state of development. Such positions deny the continuous development of consciousness, knowledge, and practice, and incorrectly assert incorrect positions; or mistake relative truth for absolute truth.<br /> <br /> Stagnation is an inability or unwillingness to change and adapt consciousness and practice in accordance with developing material conditions. Stagnation can stem from, or cause, overstatement of absolute truth in theory and forestall necessary development of both consciousness and practical ability.<br /> <br /> On the contrary, if we exaggerate the relativity of the truth of knowledge which we possess, or downplay its absoluteness, we will fall into relativism, thereby leading to subjectivism, revisionism, sophistry, and skepticism.<br /> <br /> 234<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 237<br /> <br /> Relativism is the belief that human consciousness can only achieve relative understanding of the world, and that truth can therefore never be objectively discovered.<br /> <br /> Relativism is, thus, the overstatement of the relative nature of truth and the denial of the existence of absolute truth. Relativism leads to such incorrect viewpoints and mindsets as:<br /> <br /> Subjectivism: which occurs when one centers one’s own self and one’s own conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test their own perceptions against material and social reality [see Annotation 211, p. 205]. This position denies that truth can be discovered in the external material world, falsely believing that absolute truth stems only from conscious activity.<br /> <br /> Revisionism: a failure to recognize and accept commonalities in conscious activity, focusing only on the private [see Private and Common, p. 128]. Revisionism leads to constant and unnecessary reassessment and reevaluation of both knowledge and practice.<br /> <br /> Revisionism, thus, is a position which overstates the relativity of truth and ignores truths which are more fully developed towards absoluteness.<br /> <br /> Sophistry: the use of falsehoods and fallacious arguments to deceive [see Annotation 116, p. 118]. Sophistry is, thus, the intentional denial of truth and the intentional mischaracterization of truths as either overly relative or as not truths at all.<br /> <br /> Skepticism: the belief that truth is essentially undiscoverable, because human consciousness is ultimately unreliable and incapable of accurately reflecting material reality [see Annotation 200, p. 192]. By denying that truth is discoverable at all, skepticism explicitly rejects absolute truth and declares that all truth is relative and unreliable.<br /> <br /> In addition to objectivity, absoluteness, and relativity, truth also has concreteness. The concreteness of truth refers to the degree to which a truth is attached to specific objects, in specific conditions, at a specific point in time. This means that all accurate knowledge always refers to a specific situation which involves specific subjects which exist in a specific place and time. The content of truth cannot be pure abstraction, disconnected from reality, but it is always associated with certain, specific objects and phenomena which exist in a specific space, time, and arrangement, with specific internal and external relationships. Therefore, truth is associated with specific historical conditions. This specificity to time, place, relations, etc., is what we call concreteness.<br /> <br /> Knowledge, if detached from specific historical conditions, will fall into pure abstraction. Therefore, it will not be accurate - it will not align with reality - and such knowledge cannot be considered truth. When emphasizing this property, Lenin wrote: “Truth is always concrete, never abstract.”1 Mastering the principle of the concreteness of truth has an important methodological significance in cognitive and practical activities. It is required that consideration and evaluation of all things and phenomena must be based on a historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116]. In developing and applying theory, we must be conscious of specific historical conditions. According to Lenin, Marxism’s nature, its essence, lies in the concrete analysis of specific situations; Marx’s method is, above all, to consider the objective content of the historical process in a specific time.<br /> <br /> 1 Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.<br /> <br /> Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism 235<br /> <br /> Annotation 238<br /> <br /> In other words, Marxism is rooted in seeking truth by examining reality from a historical and comprehensive viewpoint. For more information, see Annotation 114, p.<br /> <br /> 116.<br /> <br /> - The Role of Truth in Reality.<br /> <br /> In order to survive and develop, humans must conduct practical activities. These activities involve transforming the environment, nature, and human society. At the same time, through these activities, humans perform - knowingly or unknowingly - the process of perfecting and developing our conscious and practical abilities. It is this process that helps human cognitive activities develop. Practical activities can only be successful and effective once humans apply accurate knowledge of objective reality to our practical activities. Therefore, truth is one of the prerequisites that ensure success and efficiency in practical activities.<br /> <br /> The relationship between truth and practical activities is a dialectical relationship which serves as the basis for the movement and development of both truth and practical activity: truth develops through practice, and practice develops through the correct application of truth which people have gained through practical activities.<br /> <br /> Annotation 239<br /> <br /> PRACTICAL<br /> <br /> TRUTH<br /> <br /> ACTIVITIES<br /> <br /> MUTUAL DEVELOPMENT<br /> <br /> Truth and Practical Activities have a dialectical relationship in which truth develops through practice, and practice develops through the correct application of truth.<br /> <br /> Practice only develops when truth about the universe is consciously applied to practical activities. For example, farm output increases as we learn more truth about the way crops grow and how land can be properly managed. Simultaneously, truth can only be developed through practical activity, as all ideas and knowledge must be tested through methodological observation, experimentation, and other forms of practical activity.<br /> <br /> A theory is an idea or system of ideas intended to explain an aspect, characteristic, or tendency of objective reality. Theories are not inherently truthful; holding incorrect theories constitutes false consciousness. Practice (or praxis) is purposeful conscious activity which improves our understanding of the world. Theory and practice have a dialectical relationship with one another which, if understood, helps us to discover truth.<br /> <br /> 236<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Annotation 239 (continued)<br /> <br /> TRUTH<br /> <br /> Truth and practical activities mutually develop one another over time.<br /> <br /> This dialectical relationship between theory and practical activities means that we must never favor theory over practice, nor practice over theory, but that we must rather balance development of theoretical understanding as we engage in practical activities to test our knowledge against reality and to develop our practice with ever-advancing understanding of the world. As practice and theory develop one another, our understanding of objective reality comes closer and closer to truth.<br /> <br /> In Theses on Feuerbach, Marx summarizes the relationship between theory and practice, writing:<br /> <br /> The problem of the external world is here put as the problem of its transformation: the problem of the cognition of the external world as an integral part of the problem of transformation: the problem of theory as a practical problem.<br /> <br /> Here, Marx explains that theory is concerned with solving the “problem” of transforming the external world through practice, and that “cognition of the external world” is required to solve the “problem of transformation. In other words, we must improve our theory in order to improve our practical ability to transform our world, and we learn about the world (thus improving our theory) through those practical activities.<br /> <br /> Marx also writes in Theses on Feuerbach that:<br /> <br /> The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory, but it is a practical question. In practice man must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power. . . of his thinking.<br /> <br /> This point is key for understanding the dialectical relationship between practice and theory: in order to be useful, theory must be proven through practice. Thus, we must seek to develop our practice through theory, and our theory through practice.<br /> <br /> Engels summarizes these ideas a bit more colorfully in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:<br /> <br /> Before there was argument there was action. . . In the beginning was the deed<br /> <br /> . . . And human action had solved the difficulty long before human ingenuity invented it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.<br /> <br /> Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism 237<br /> <br /> Engels wrote in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy of the uselessness of what might be called “pure theory,” divorced from practice, and the sort of radical skepticism which refutes that any practical knowledge can ever really be obtained by human beings:<br /> <br /> There is yet a set of different philosophers - those who question the possibility of any cognition, or at least of an exhaustive cognition of the world. . . The most telling refutation of this (scepticism and agnosticism) as of all other philosophical crotchets, is praxis, namely experiment and industry.<br /> <br /> It is practice, according to Engels, which proves the merit and utility of theory.<br /> <br /> Through experiment and industry - through practical activities in the material world<br /> <br /> - we can test our ideas and dialectically develop both theory and practice. Lenin built upon these ideas in his own work, writing in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: The materialist theory, the theory of the reflection of objects by our mind, is here presented with absolute clarity: things exist outside us. Our perceptions and ideas are their images. Verification of these images, differentiation between true and false images, is given by practice.<br /> <br /> Here, Lenin explains how only a proper understanding and application of the dialectical relationship between theory and practice can lead to the negation of false consciousness [see Annotation 235, p. 231] and the dialectical development of both practice and theory. Simply arguing and debating about ideas without relating them directly to practice will never lead to truth, nor will such pure-theory argumentation develop theory or practice in any meaningful way.<br /> <br /> This brings to mind another line from Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach: The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.<br /> <br /> The philosophy of dialectical materialism and the system of materialist dialectics are designed specifically to produce action and to avoid such “scholastic questions” and<br /> <br /> “pure-theory argumentation.”<br /> <br /> Ho Chi Minh summarized these ideas perhaps most clearly and precisely of all in the very title of his article: Practice Generates Knowledge, Understanding Advances Theory, Theory Leads to Practice:<br /> <br /> Knowledge comes from practice. And through practice, knowledge becomes theory. That theory, again, has to be put into practice. Knowledge advances not just from thought to theory, but, above all, from applying theory to revolutionary practice. Once the world’s law is fully grasped as theory, it is critical to put that theory into practice by changing the world, by increasing production, and by practicing class struggle and struggling for national self-determination. This is a continuous process of obtaining knowledge.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 238<br /> <br /> “If Uncle Ho says we will win, we will win!” - Propaganda poster from the 30th anniversary of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (1984).<br /> <br /> 239<br /> <br /> ==AFTERWORD==<br /> <br /> If it seems that this book has come to an end somewhat abruptly, it’s because this is really just the first of four major sections of the full volume from which this text is drawn.<br /> <br /> If you are reading this afterword after reading the entirety of the preceding contents, then congratulations, you have completed the equivalent to a full semester’s coursework for a class on dialectical materialist philosophy which all Vietnamese college students are required to take!<br /> <br /> The next sections in this curriculum, each covered in the original full volume, include: Part 2: Historical Materialism<br /> <br /> This section covers the definition and basic principles of historical materialism, which is the field of work dedicated to applying dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics to human history and human society. In the West, historical materialism and dialectical materialism are often conflated, but this is in error. Historical materialism is an applied field of dialectical materialist philosophy and materialist dialectical methodology which is used in the pursuit of understanding and interpreting human history.<br /> <br /> Part 3: Political Economy<br /> <br /> This section condenses the three cardinal volumes of Capital by Karl Marx and covers three primary doctrines:<br /> <br /> 1. The doctrine of value.<br /> <br /> 2. The doctrine of surplus value.<br /> <br /> 3. The doctrines of monopolist capitalism and state monopolist capitalism.<br /> <br /> Political Economy, in this course, can be considered the application of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics to the analysis and understanding of the capitalist mode of production from the perspective of the socialist revolutionary movement.<br /> <br /> Part 4: Scientific Socialism<br /> <br /> This section relies on an established understanding of dialectical materialism, historical materialism, and political economy as a foundation for developing socialist revolution. The three chapters of this section on Scientific Socialism are: 1. The Historical Mission of the Working Class and the Socialist Revolution 2. The Primary Social-Political Issues of the Process of Building a Socialist Revolution 3. Realistic Socialism and Potential Socialism<br /> <br /> Moving Forward<br /> <br /> We are already working on the translation of Part 2 of this curriculum, and we hope to complete it as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we believe this book provides the reader with enough of a foundation to continue studying and to begin applying the principles of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics in political struggle.<br /> <br /> We highly discourage readers from self-study in isolation, just as we discourage individual political action. The best way to study socialism is alongside other socialists.<br /> <br /> 240<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Depending on where you live, you may be able to find political education resources provided by communist parties, socialist book clubs, or other organizations. If such resources aren’t available, it should be fairly easy to find study groups, workshops, and affinity groups online where you can study with like-minded comrades. Of course, socialist revolution requires more than just study, as we hope this book has thoroughly explained.<br /> <br /> Theory must be coupled with practice. As Ho Chi Minh wrote: “If you read a thousand books, but you fail to apply theory into practice, you are nothing but a bookshelf.”<br /> <br /> To avoid atrophying into the proverbial bookshelf, we encourage you to go out into the world and apply these ideas creatively and collectively with other socialists. Dialectical materialism is a philosophy that was developed from the ground up for application in the real world. Dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics provide a functional model of reality, a way of looking at highly complicated systems, with all their dynamic internal and external relations. Dialectical materialist philosophy demands that we see human systems as processes in motion. In order to fully comprehend such dynamic processes, we must engage with them, which is why Ho Chi Minh taught that “we are not afraid to make mistakes; we would only be afraid of making mistakes if we were not determined to correct them.”1<br /> <br /> As we mentioned in the foreword, many socialists in the West suffer from a lack of practical engagement. Far too many socialists fall into utopianism, idealism, and social chauvinism and we believe this largely stems from failures to test ideas against reality through praxis. We hope that this book has impressed upon the reader that simply arguing about pure theory is a useless and futile pursuit. Indeed, sparring verbally over such<br /> <br /> “scholastic questions,” as Marx described them, is counter-productive. Marx and Engels defined such failure to engage in theory as “critical criticism” - that is to say, criticism for the sake of criticism. As Marx and Engels wrote in The Holy Family, such critical criticism is futile, as we will never think our way to revolution: According to Critical Criticism, the whole evil lies only in the workers’ “thinking”. It is true that the English and French workers have formed associations in which they exchange opinions not only on their immediate needs as workers, but on their needs as human beings. In their associations, moreover, they show a very thorough and comprehensive consciousness of the “enormous” and “immeasurable” power which arises from their co-operation. But these mass-minded, communist workers, employed, for instance, in the Manchester or Lyons workshops, do not believe that by “pure thinking” they will be able to argue away their industrial masters and their own practical debasement. They are most painfully aware of the difference between being and thinking, between consciousness and life. They know that property, capital, money, wage-labour and the like are no ideal figments of the brain but very practical, very objective products of their self-estrangement and that therefore they must be abolished in a practical, objective way for man to become man not only in thinking, in consciousness, but in mass being, in life.<br /> <br /> Critical Criticism, on the contrary, teaches them that they cease in reality to be wage-workers if in thinking they abolish the thought of wage-labour; if in thinking they cease to regard themselves as wage-workers and, in accordance with that extravagant notion, no longer let themselves be paid for their person. As absolute 1 Revolutionary Ethics, Ho Chi Minh, December 1958. As absolute idealists, as ethereal beings, they will then naturally be able to live on the ether of pure thought.<br /> <br /> Engels expressed his frustration with such endless, utopian, idealist debates in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:<br /> <br /> Hence, from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence, a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion: a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition; a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed the more definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.<br /> <br /> Engels concludes by punctuating why he and Marx had developed dialectical materialism as a praxis-oriented philosophical foundation for scientific socialism: “To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.” We hope that the readers of this text will seek out real bases for your development in theory and praxis, and we trust that you will quickly discover that developing practice develops theory, and vice-versa.<br /> <br /> Remember that Marx and Engels, themselves, were not just theorists who scribbled down their thoughts in an “scholarly” vacuum. They were revolutionists themselves, highly engaged in political struggle and, in so struggling, they risked their lives and freedom over the course of many decades. This struggle is what led to the change and development of their ideas over time. The same can be said for every other successful socialist revolutionary in history.<br /> <br /> Vo Nguyen Giap, the great general who led Vietnam’s military forces through resistance wars against fascist Japan, colonialist France, and the imperialist USA, describes how he applied such principles on the battlefield in his book People’s War, People’s Army: During the Resistance War, owing to constant fighting, the training of our troops could not be carried out continuously for a lengthy period but only between battles or campaigns. We actively implemented the guiding principles ‘To train and to learn while we fight.’ After the difficult years at the beginning of the Resistance War, we succeeded in giving good training to our army. The practical viewpoint in this training deserves to be highlighted. The content of training became most practical and rich. Training was in touch with practical fighting: the troops were trained in accordance with the next day’s fighting, and victory or defeat in the fighting was the best gauge for the control and assessment of the result of the training. On the basis of gradual unification of the organisation and its equipment, the content of training in the various units of the regular army was also systematised step by step.<br /> <br /> Here, Vo Nguyen Giap has provided a concrete example of the dialectical relationship between theory and practice, and their inseparability. This fundamental aspect of dialectical materialist philosophy demands that we think and act like scientists to change the world, rather than simply speculating and imagining ineffectually like armchair philosophers. As Marx wrote in Theses on Feuerbach “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” We encourage you to apply what you learn in this and other books to change the world.<br /> <br /> 242<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Advice on Further Study<br /> <br /> As you advance in your studies of socialist literature and theory, we offer the following advice:<br /> <br /> First, you must recognize that the specific language used by revolutionary leaders and thinkers may vary widely across time and around the world. Fashions in language develop over time, and many contributions - like the text you’ve just read - come to us through translation from countless languages. This is why we believe it critical to develop an understanding of the spirit of the ideas of any particular text, and not to get bogged down in semantics and terminology. Liberal ideologists have done much to distract and divert intellectual energy with endless metaphysical altercation over the<br /> <br /> “proper” usage of this or that word. We caution strongly against this attitude, which makes us susceptible to sophistry, opportunism, and the sewing of undue conflict and division amidst the working class. We have pointed out various instances where Marx, Engels, and Lenin used different language to describe the same concepts. We also offer the reminder that Marx, Engels, and Lenin were writing in different languages at different times, just as socialists around the world have different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. As socialism is an international movement, we must stress the importance of avoiding linguistic barriers by engaging with one another in good faith and testing conflicting ideas and interpretations of theory against one another through practice instead of getting bogged down with “critical criticism.”<br /> <br /> Next, we encourage students of socialist philosophy to always keep in mind that the doctrines and philosophies of revolutionary figures are products of the times and places in which they were conceived. It would be a mistake to view the works of any revolutionary figure as a road map or a set of instructions to follow by rote. Even Marx and Engels changed and developed their own ideas over the decades they were active, as they addressed in the 1872 preface to The Communist Manifesto: The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” (See The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International Working Men’ s Association, 1871, where this point is further developed.) Further, it is self-evident that the criticism of socialist literature is deficient in relation to the present time, because it comes down only to 1847; also that the remarks on the relation of the Communists to the various opposition parties (Section IV), although, in principle still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political situation has been entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.”<br /> <br /> Afterword<br /> <br /> 243<br /> <br /> Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Ho Chi Minh also frequently took pains to point out that their revolutionary theories were devised specifically to suit the particular objective conditions of their own respective times and places. For example, in What is to be Done, Lenin discusses the question of secrecy in revolutionary activity. Lenin recognizes that secrecy is not always necessary, such as in the more liberal social democracies which existed in Europe in his era. In Russia, however - with its autocratic monarchy - material conditions called for more covert activity:<br /> <br /> In countries where political liberty exists the distinction between a trade union and a political organisation is clear enough, as is the distinction between trade unions and Social-Democracy. The relations between the latter and the former will naturally vary in each country according to historical, legal, and other conditions; they may be more or less close, complex, etc. (in our opinion they should be as close and as little complicated as possible); but there can be no question in free countries of the organisation of trade unions coinciding with the organisation of the Social-Democratic Party. In Russia, however, the yoke of the autocracy appears at first glance to obliterate all distinctions between the Social-Democratic organisation and the workers’ associations, since all workers’ associations and all study circles are prohibited, and since the principal manifestation and weapon of the workers’ economic struggle - the strike - is regarded as a criminal (and sometimes even as a political!) offence.”<br /> <br /> Ho Chi Minh was even more explicit about the requirement to tailor theory to current and local material conditions in a speech to the Communist Party of Vietnam in 1950: Studying Marxism-Leninism is not just a matter of repeating the slogan ‘workers of the world, unite’ like a parrot. We must unify Marxism-Leninism with the reality of Vietnam’s revolution. Talking about Marxism-Leninism in Vietnam is talking about the specific guidelines and policies of the Communist Party of Vietnam. For example, our priority now is: great solidarity!<br /> <br /> In a 2001 document, the Communist Party of Vietnam explained how Ho Chi Minh tailored lessons learned from prior revolutionaries to the specific material conditions of revolutionary Vietnam:<br /> <br /> Ho Chi Minh’s thought is. . . the creative application and development of Marxism-Leninism to the specific conditions of our country. Ho Chi Minh learned profound lessons from Lenin and the Russian October Revolution, but he did not simply use those lessons as a template, nor did he just copy that foundation. Instead, he absorbed the spirit of Marxism-Leninism. Lenin’s thesis allowed Ho Chi Minh to see what was necessary for the Vietnamese people - the path of national liberation. Ho Chi Minh had creative arguments that contributed to enriching Marxism-Leninism in the issue of national liberation revolution, building a new democratic regime and the transitional path to socialism in an Eastern, semi-feudal colony which was still very backward: Vietnam.<br /> <br /> As you find your own revolutionary path, you must carefully examine the objective conditions of your own time and place, and work collectively and collaboratively with your fellow revolutionists to decide how theory and lessons gleaned from history apply to your own circumstances. And, of course, you must test the validity of your conclusions against reality through practice.<br /> <br /> 244<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Creative Application of Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics Finally, we implore you to apply dialectical materialism creatively. Don’t look at this (or any other) book as a set of static instructions. Dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics are living, breathing systems of thought which benefit from the ideas and imagination of comrades working and struggling together. Seek the spirit of these ideas, study revolutionary theory and history, then apply what you learn in your daily life.<br /> <br /> Combat dogmatism and avoid arguments over pure theory. Determine what works and what doesn’t through activity in the real world, and apply what you learn from practical experience to your theoretical development. Over time, you will begin to see how practice and theory impact and develop one another. When you are struggling with a particular problem in revolutionary practice, you will find yourself reading theory in a new light, discovering information and ideas which might be applicable to your immediate circumstances. And as you study theory, you will find that it also impacts your practice, giving you tools and perspective and methodologies for action which you might never have imagined on your own.<br /> <br /> We have tried to make this book a useful companion for further study. We have also made the digital version available for free online. If you have found it useful, we hope you will share it freely and widely.<br /> <br /> In Closing<br /> <br /> One last time we would like to thank Dr. Vijay Prashad and Dr. Taimur Rahman for their wonderful insights on our translation, and to acknowledge the monumental work of the Vietnamese scholars who wrote and revised the original text from which this volume is drawn. We also want to recognize once more the donors and supporters who have given us the precious resource of time to translate and annotate this work. Finally, we want to thank the teams at the Iskra Books and The International Magazine, who have provided invaluable editing and peer review services, promotion, and guidance.<br /> <br /> You can find all their publications, respectively, at:<br /> <br /> IskraBooks.org<br /> <br /> InternationalMagz.com<br /> <br /> If you would like to download the free digital version of this book, support future translation work, or if you would like to get in touch, you can visit our website: BanyanHouse.org<br /> <br /> We will leave you, now, with the immortal words of the Manifesto: WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!<br /> <br /> YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS.<br /> <br /> In Solidarity,<br /> <br /> - Luna Nguyen, Translator &amp; Annotations<br /> <br /> - Emerican Johnson, Editor, Illustrator, &amp; Annotations<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Afterword<br /> <br /> 245<br /> <br /> “Marxism-Leninism - Long Live the Victories” - a demonstration to welcome the liberation army in the South of Vietnam on April 30, 1975.<br /> <br /> 246<br /> <br /> ==Appendix A==<br /> <br /> BASIC PAIRS OF CATEGORIES USED IN MATERIALIST DIALECTICS<br /> <br /> This is a summary of the basic pairs of universal categories and their characteristics which are discussed in depth starting on p. 126.<br /> <br /> Private<br /> <br /> Common<br /> <br /> A specific item, event, or process.<br /> <br /> The properties that are shared between<br /> <br /> Private things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> Private is commonly referred to in literature as Special/Specific while Common is commonly called General.<br /> <br /> Note: When an aspect or characteristic is not held in common with anything else in existence, it is considered Unique. The Unique can become Common, just as the Common can become Unique. Example: a Unique design for an object may be replicated, making it Common. A type of item that is Common may gradually disappear until there is only one example left, making it Unique. See p. 128.<br /> <br /> Reason<br /> <br /> Result<br /> <br /> Mutual impact between things, phenome-<br /> <br /> The change caused by a Reason.<br /> <br /> na, or ideas which causes each to change.<br /> <br /> Reason and Result may be referred to as Cause and Effect, respectively, though this should lead to confusion with metaphysical conceptions of cause and effect. Note: Reasons can be Direct or Indirect. See p. 138<br /> <br /> Obviousness<br /> <br /> Randomness<br /> <br /> Refers to events that always and predict-<br /> <br /> Events caused by external impacts and<br /> <br /> ably happen due to factors of internal<br /> <br /> interactions which are thus not completely<br /> <br /> material structure.<br /> <br /> predictable.<br /> <br /> Obvious may be referred to as Necessary, while Randomness may be referred to as Accidental. See p. 145.<br /> <br /> Content<br /> <br /> Form<br /> <br /> What something is made of.<br /> <br /> The shape that contains content.<br /> <br /> Ways in which Content and Form are discussed and perceived can can vary wildly depending on the subject being discussed and the viewpoint from which the subject is being considered. See p. 145.<br /> <br /> Essence<br /> <br /> Phenomena<br /> <br /> Features that make something develop a<br /> <br /> The expression of the essence in certain<br /> <br /> certain way.<br /> <br /> conditions.<br /> <br /> See p. 156.<br /> <br /> Possibility<br /> <br /> Reality<br /> <br /> What may happen, or might exist, in the<br /> <br /> What is happening, or what exists, at the<br /> <br /> future, if certain developments take place.<br /> <br /> present moment.<br /> <br /> See p. 160.<br /> <br /> 247<br /> <br /> ==Appendix B==<br /> <br /> THE TWO BASIC PRINCIPLES OF DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM<br /> <br /> The Principle of General Relationships<br /> <br /> This principle states that:<br /> <br /> “Materialist dialectics upholds the position that all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in mutual relationships with each other, regulate each other, transform into each other, and that nothing exists in complete isolation.”<br /> <br /> From this Principle, we find the characteristics of Diversity in Unity and Unity in Diversity; the basis of Diversity in Unity is the fact that every thing, phenomenon, and idea contains many different relationships; the basis of Unity in Diversity is that many different relationships exist - unified - within each and every thing, phenomenon, and idea.<br /> <br /> The Characteristic of Diversity in Unity is derived from the fact that there exist an infinite number of diverse relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas, but all of these relationships share the same foundation in the material world.<br /> <br /> The Characteristic of Unity in Diversity is derived from the fact that when we examine the universal relationships that exist within and between all different things, phenomena, and ideas, we will find that each individual manifestation of any universal relationship will have its own different manifestations, aspects, features, etc. Thus even the universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in infinite diversity.<br /> <br /> The Principle of Development<br /> <br /> This principle states that:<br /> <br /> “Development is a process that comes from within the thing-in-itself; the process of solving the contradictions within things and phenomena. Therefore, development is inevitable, objective, and occurs without dependence on human will.”<br /> <br /> The Characteristic of Objectiveness of Development stems from the origin of motion.<br /> <br /> Since motion originates from mutual impacts which occur between external things, objects, and relationships, the motions themselves also occur externally (relative to all other things, phenomena, and objects). This gives motion itself objective characteristics.<br /> <br /> The Characteristic of Generality of Development stems from the fact that development occurs in every process that exists in every field of nature, society, and human thought; in every thing, every phenomenon, and every process and stage of these things and phenomena.<br /> <br /> The Characteristic of Diversity of Development stems from the fact that every thing, phenomenon, and idea has its own process of development that is not totally identical to the process of development of any other thing, phenomenon, or idea.<br /> <br /> 248<br /> <br /> ==Appendix C==<br /> <br /> THE THREE UNIVERSAL LAWS OF MATERIALIST DIALECTICS<br /> <br /> The Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality<br /> <br /> The law of transformation between quantity and quality is a universal law which concerns the universal mode of motion and development processes of nature, society, and human thought. The law was formulated by Friedrich Engels in Dialectics of Nature, and states that:<br /> <br /> “In nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion.”<br /> <br /> See more on p. 163.<br /> <br /> The Law of Unification and Contradiction Between Opposites The law of unification and contradiction between opposites is the essence of dialectics.<br /> <br /> It states, as formulated by V. I. Lenin in Summary of Dialectics:<br /> <br /> “The fundamental, originating, and universal driving force of all motion and development processes is the inherent and objective contradiction which exists in all things, phenomena, and ideas.”<br /> <br /> See more on p. 175.<br /> <br /> The Law of Negation of Negation<br /> <br /> The law of negation of negation describes the fundamental and universal tendency of movement and development to occur through a cyclical form of development through what is termed “negation of negation.” Formulated by Friedrich Engels in Anti-Dühring, it states:<br /> <br /> “The true, natural, historical, and dialectical negation is (formally) the moving source of all development--the division into opposites, their struggle and resolution, and what is more, on the basis of experience gained, the original point is achieved again (partly in history, fully in thought), but at a higher stage.”<br /> <br /> See more on p. 185.<br /> <br /> 249<br /> <br /> ==Appendix D==<br /> <br /> FORMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND KNOWLEDGE<br /> <br /> Consciousness refers to the self-aware, productive, and creative motion and activity of the human brain. Practical activity is the most direct basis, motive, and purpose of consciousness, and is the criterion for testing truth. See: The Relationship Between Praxis and Consciousness, p. 216.<br /> <br /> Knowledge is the content of consciousness. Knowledge includes data about the world, such as ideas, memories, and other thoughts which are derived by direct observation and practical activities in the material world, through scientific experiments, or through abstract reflection of practical and scientific activities which occur within consciousness.<br /> <br /> Consciousness and Knowledge have a dialectical relationship with one another: knowledge is developed within consciousness, and consciousness develops to higher levels as knowledge is accumulated and tested against reality (which also develops knowledge itself). In this manner, consciousness and knowledge develop into higher forms over time in individual consciousness and human society. Thus, consciousness and knowledge can be considered as existing in various forms which represent stages of development in dialectical processes of development.<br /> <br /> Note that the development processes of knowledge and consciousness are dialectical in nature, not linear. For example, after empirical consciousness develops into theoretical consciousness, theoretical consciousness will then impact empirical consciousness, developing empirical consciousness into a higher stage of development. This is true for all development processes related to empirical and theoretical consciousness. These development processes and forms of consciousness and knowledge are explained in more detail in Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, starting on page 204.<br /> <br /> Forms of Consciousness<br /> <br /> Consciousness is a process of the development of knowledge through a combination of human brain activity and human practical activity in the physical world (i.e., labor).<br /> <br /> The development of consciousness can be considered on the criteria of concrete/abstract and of passive/active. For more information, see Annotation 216, p. 210.<br /> <br /> Empirical Consciousness<br /> <br /> Theoretical Consciousness<br /> <br /> Develops Into<br /> <br /> Concrete process of collecting data about<br /> <br /> Abstract reflection on accumulated<br /> <br /> the world, aka Knowledge.<br /> <br /> →<br /> <br /> knowledge; leads to general understand-<br /> <br /> ings of natural/social law.<br /> <br /> Ordinary Consciousness<br /> <br /> Scientific Consciousness<br /> <br /> Develops Into<br /> <br /> Passive process of observing the world,<br /> <br /> Active pursuit of understanding through<br /> <br /> directly, in daily life activities.<br /> <br /> →<br /> <br /> systematic observation and indirect<br /> <br /> experiences.<br /> <br /> 250<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Appendix D (continued)<br /> <br /> The Cognitive Process<br /> <br /> The Cognitive Process is a model developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin which represents the dialectical path of consciousness to truth. For more information, see Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth on page 219.<br /> <br /> Emotional Consciousness<br /> <br /> Rational Consciousness<br /> <br /> Develops Into<br /> <br /> Lower stage of the cognitive process in<br /> <br /> Higher stage of the cognitive process<br /> <br /> which humans use our senses to reflect<br /> <br /> which includes indirect, abstract, and gen-<br /> <br /> phenomena of objective things in con-<br /> <br /> eralized reflection of essential properties<br /> <br /> sciousness through practical activity.<br /> <br /> of things and phenomena.<br /> <br /> Phase 1: Sensation<br /> <br /> Phase 1: Definition<br /> <br /> Most primitive phase of emotional con-<br /> <br /> First phase of rational consciousness,<br /> <br /> sciousness, in which senses detect objec-<br /> <br /> in which the mind begins to rationally<br /> <br /> tive things and consciousness subjectively<br /> <br /> interpret, organize, and process the basic<br /> <br /> imagines reflections of those things.<br /> <br /> properties of things and phenomena.<br /> <br /> Phase 2: Conception<br /> <br /> Phase 2: Judgment<br /> <br /> Relatively complete reflection within<br /> <br /> The next phase of rational consciousness,<br /> <br /> consciousness of sensed objects which do<br /> <br /> in which concepts and properties of sub-<br /> <br /> not yet reflect the essence, nature, and<br /> <br /> jects are linked together. Judgment can<br /> <br /> regulating principles of the perceived.<br /> <br /> be: Unique, General, or Universal.<br /> <br /> Phase 3: Symbolization<br /> <br /> Phase 3: Reasoning<br /> <br /> The most advanced phase of Emotional<br /> <br /> The final phase of rational consciousness,<br /> <br /> Consciousness, in which symbolic ideas<br /> <br /> formed on the basis of synthesizing judg-<br /> <br /> of reflected objects form, which is the<br /> <br /> ments so as to extrapolate new knowl-<br /> <br /> first step of abstraction and thus the first<br /> <br /> edge about the perceived subject through<br /> <br /> step towards rational consciousness.<br /> <br /> deductive or inductive inference.<br /> <br /> Forms of Knowledge<br /> <br /> For more information see Annotation 218, p. 214.<br /> <br /> Ordinary Knowledge<br /> <br /> Scientific Knowledge<br /> <br /> Knowledge accumulated through<br /> <br /> Knowledge from methodological mea-<br /> <br /> passive activity in daily life.<br /> <br /> surement/systematic observation.<br /> <br /> Empirical Knowledge<br /> <br /> Ordinary<br /> <br /> Scientific<br /> <br /> Individual and isolated<br /> <br /> Empirical Knowledge<br /> <br /> Empirical Knowledge<br /> <br /> knowledge from sense<br /> <br /> Individual/isolated knowledge<br /> <br /> Individual and isolated knowledge<br /> <br /> observations.<br /> <br /> from sense observations in passive<br /> <br /> accumulated through methodological<br /> <br /> daily life activity.<br /> <br /> measurement/systematic observation.<br /> <br /> Theoretical Knowledge<br /> <br /> Ordinary<br /> <br /> Scientific<br /> <br /> Abstract and generalized<br /> <br /> Theoretical Knowledge<br /> <br /> Theoretical Knowledge<br /> <br /> knowledge.<br /> <br /> Abstract and generalized knowl-<br /> <br /> Abstract and generalized knowledge<br /> <br /> edge in passive daily life activity.<br /> <br /> accumulated through methodological<br /> <br /> measurement/systematic observation.<br /> <br /> Appendix<br /> <br /> 251<br /> <br /> ==Appendix E==<br /> <br /> PROPERTIES OF TRUTH<br /> <br /> Truth is the alignment of consciousness with objective reality. All truths are objective, relative, absolute, and concrete. Truths also have characteristics of concreteness and abstractness.<br /> <br /> Objectivity: The content of truth is external to the subjective will of human beings.<br /> <br /> The content of knowledge must be aligned with objective reality, not vice versa. This means that the content of accurate knowledge is not a product of pure subjective reasoning but is objective in nature.<br /> <br /> Absoluteness: Absolute truth1 is derived from the complete alignment between objective reality and human consciousness. The possibility of acquiring absolute truth in the process of the development of conscious understanding is theoretically limitless. However, in reality, our conscious ability to reflect reality is limited by the specific material conditions of each generation of humanity, of practical limitations, and by the spatial and temporal conditions of reflected subjects. Therefore, truth is also relative.<br /> <br /> Relativity: Relative truth is truth which has developed alignment with reality without yet having reached complete alignment. To put it another way, relative truth represents knowledge which incompletely reflects material subjects without complete accuracy.<br /> <br /> In relative truth, there is only partial alignment - in some (but not all) aspects - between consciousness and the material world.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Relationship Between Absolute and Relative Truth: Relative truth and absolute truth do not exist separately, but have dialectical unity with each other. On the one hand, “absolute truth” is the sum of all “relative truths.” On the other hand, in all relative truths there are always elements of absolute truth.<br /> <br /> Concreteness: The concreteness of truth refers to the degree to which a truth is attached to specific objects, in specific conditions, at a specific point in time. This means that all accurate knowledge always refers to a specific situation which involves specific subjects which exist in a specific place and time. The content of truth cannot be pure abstraction, disconnected from reality, but it is always associated with certain, specific objects and phenomena which exist in a specific space, time, and arrangement, with specific internal and external relationships. Therefore, truth is associated with specific historical conditions. This specificity to time, place, relations, etc., is concreteness.<br /> <br /> Abstractness: Abstract knowledge is knowledge which is not attached (or less attached) to specific times, places, relations, etc. Some degree of abstraction is necessary to develop theoretical understanding of general laws and the nature of objective reality, but care should be taken knowledge does not become completely detached from specific historical conditions, as this will result in pure abstraction. Knowledge which is purely abstract will not align with reality, and such knowledge cannot be considered truth.<br /> <br /> 1 Note: Absolute Truth in dialectical materialist philosophy should not be confused with Hegel’s conception of Absolute Truth as a final point at which human consciousness will have achieved absolute, complete, and final understanding of our universe.<br /> <br /> 252<br /> <br /> ==Appendix F==<br /> <br /> COMMON DEVIATIONS FROM DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM<br /> <br /> Throughout the history of the development of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics, there have been many philosophical and methodological deviations which have derived from incorrect analysis, interpretation, and a failure to properly link theory and practice. Below are descriptions of some of the more common deviations which the reader should be aware of.<br /> <br /> Bureaucracy: An expression of dogmatism which arises when theory becomes overly formalized, to the extent that practical considerations are ignored in favor of codified theory.<br /> <br /> Conservativism: A mindset which seeks to prevent and stifle development and to hold humanity in a static position. Not only is this detrimental to humanity, it is also ultimately a wasted effort, because development is inevitable in human society, as in all things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> Dogmatism: A breakdown of the dialectical relationship between theoretical consciousness and empirical consciousness, which arrests the development process of knowledge and consciousness. Usually the result of: failure to seek commonalities; considering theory itself as the sole basis of truth rather than practice; ignoring practical experience and considering pre-established theory, alone, as unalterable truth.<br /> <br /> Eclecticism: An approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject; the philosophical error of inconsistently applying different theories and principles in different situations.<br /> <br /> Empiricism: A broad philosophical position which holds that only experience (including internal experience) can be held as a source of knowledge or truth. Though nominally opposed to idealism, it is considered a faulty (or naive) form of materialism, since it sees the world as only unconnected, static appearances and ignores the reality of dialectical (changing) relationships between objects.<br /> <br /> Idealism: A philosophical position which holds that the only reliable experience of reality occurs within human consciousness. Idealists believe that relying on human reason exclusively or as a first basis is the best way to seek truth. Various forms of idealism exist, broadly broken down into subjective idealism, which denies the existence of an external objective world, and objective idealism, which accepts that an external objective world exists, but denies that knowledge can be reliably gained about it through sense perception.<br /> <br /> Opportunism: A system of political opinions with no direction, no clear path, no coherent viewpoint, leaning on whatever is beneficial for the opportunist in the short term.<br /> <br /> Revisionism: A failure to recognize and accept commonalities in conscious activity, focusing only on the private. Revisionism leads to constant and unnecessary reassessment and reevaluation of both knowledge and practice. Revisionism, thus, is a position which overstates the relativity of truth and ignores truths which are more fully developed towards absoluteness.<br /> <br /> Rigidity: An unwillingness to alter one’s thoughts, holding too stiffly to established consciousness and knowledge, and ignoring practical experience and observation, which leads to stagnation of both knowledge and consciousness.<br /> <br /> Appendix<br /> <br /> 253<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> (continued)<br /> <br /> Skepticism: The belief truth is essentially undiscoverable, because human consciousness is ultimately unreliable and incapable of accurately reflecting material reality. By denying that truth is discoverable at all, skepticism explicitly rejects absolute truth and declares that all truth is relative and unreliable.<br /> <br /> Solipsism: A form of idealism in which one believes that the self is the only basis for truth.<br /> <br /> As Marxist ethicist Howard Selsam wrote in Ethics and Progress: New Values in a Revolutionary World: “If I believe that I alone exist and that you and all your arguments exist only in my mind and are my own creations then all possible arguments will not shake me one iota. No logic can possibly convince [the] solipsist.”<br /> <br /> Sophistry: The use of falsehoods and misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, and with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. This kind of bad faith argument has no place in materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics must, instead, be rooted in a true and accurate understanding of the subject, material conditions, and reality in general.<br /> <br /> Subjectivism: The centering of one’s own self and conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test one’s own perceptions against material and social reality. Subjectivists tend to believe that they can independently reason their way to truth in their own minds without practical experience and activity in the material world.<br /> <br /> Utilitarianism: An ethical philosophical theory founded by Jeremy Bentham which seeks to maximize “utility,” which is considered to be a metaphysical property embodying “benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness.” Karl Marx dismissed utilitarianism as overly abstract, in that it reduces all social relationships to the single characteristic of “utility.” He also viewed utilitarianism as metaphysically static and tied to the status quo of current society, since utilitarianism does not address class dynamics and views all relations in the current status quo of society, making utilitarianism an essentially conservative theory. Marx also pointed out that Utilitarianism essentially views individuals as private individuals, not as social individuals, and seeks to work out solutions to the practical problems of human society through reasoning alone without examining material conditions and processes, and without taking into consideration practice and development, writing:<br /> <br /> “The whole criticism of the existing world by the utility theory was. . . restricted within a narrow range. Remaining within the confines of bourgeois conditions, it could criticise only those relations which had been handed down from a past epoch and were an obstacle to the development of the bourgeoisie. . . the economic content gradually turned the utility theory into a mere apologia for the existing state of affairs, an attempt to prove that under existing conditions the mutual relations of people today are the most advantageous and generally useful.”<br /> <br /> 254<br /> <br /> ==GLOSSARY &amp; INDEX==<br /> <br /> Absolute Truth<br /> <br /> Absolute Truth can refer to:<br /> <br /> 1. The recognition that objective and accurate truth can be drawn from sense perception of the material world along with labor and practice activities in the material world. The opposite of this position is Relativism. See p. 56, 94, 194, 228-229, 232-234.<br /> <br /> 2. Hegel’s notion of Absolute Truth: that there will eventually be some end point of to the process of rational consciousness at which point humanity will arrive at a final stage of knowledge and consciousness. See p. 228.<br /> <br /> See also: Relative Truth, Relativism, Stagnation, Truth.<br /> <br /> Absolutization<br /> <br /> To hold a belief or supposition as always true in all situations and without exception. See p. 49.<br /> <br /> Abstract Labor<br /> <br /> The abstract conception of expenditure of human energy in the form of labor, without taking into account the value of labor output. When the value of labor output is taken into consideration, it is referred to as concrete labor.<br /> <br /> See p. 15, 17.<br /> <br /> Adam Smith<br /> <br /> (1723-1790) British logic professor, moral philosophy professor, and economist. Along with David Ricardo, Adam Smith was one of the founders of political economy, which Marx both drew from and critiqued in his analysis and critique of capitalism. See p. 14, 155.<br /> <br /> Ahistoric Perspective<br /> <br /> A perspective which considers aspects of human society without due consideration of historical processes of development. For example, Adam Smith and David Ricardo viewed political economy ahistorically, viewing capitalism as a static, universal, and eternal product of natural law rather than seeing capitalism as a product of historical processes of development which would change and develop over time. See p. 116.<br /> <br /> Base<br /> <br /> Also known as: Economic Base; Economic Basis. The material processes which humans undertake to survive and transform our environment to support our ways of living. In the dialectical relationship between base and superstructure, the base refers to the relationship which humans have with the means of production, including the ownership of the means of production and the organization of labor. See p. 23. See also: Superstructure.<br /> <br /> Biological Motion<br /> <br /> One of the five basic forms of motion described by Engels in Dialectics of Nature. Biological motion refers to changes and development within living objects and their genetic structure. See p. 61.<br /> <br /> Biological Reflection<br /> <br /> A complex form of reflection found within organic subjects in the natural world and expressed by excitation, induction, and reflexes. See p. 65.<br /> <br /> Bourgeoisie<br /> <br /> The owners of the means of production and the ruling class under capitalism; also known as the capitalist class. See p. 3, 23, 30, 41, 50, 63, 96. See also: Proletariat, Petty Bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> Bureaucracy<br /> <br /> An expression of dogmatism which arises when theory becomes overly formalized, to the extent that practical considerations are ignored in favor of codified theory. See p. 217-218.<br /> <br /> 255<br /> <br /> C→→M→→C<br /> <br /> C = A Commodity<br /> <br /> M = The Money Commodity<br /> <br /> The mode of circulation described by Marx as occurring under pre-capitalist economies of simple exchange, in which the producers and consumers of commodities have a direct relationship to the commodities which are being bought and sold. The sellers have produced the commodities with their own labor, and they directly consume the commodities which they purchase.<br /> <br /> See also: M→C→M’<br /> <br /> Marx called this mode of circulation “simple commodity production.”<br /> <br /> See p. 16.<br /> <br /> Capitalism<br /> <br /> The current stage of human political economy, defined by private ownership of the means of production. Referenced throughout.<br /> <br /> Capitalist Class<br /> <br /> See: Bourgeoisie<br /> <br /> Capitalist Commodity The capitalist mode of production which utilizes the M→C→M’ mode of Production<br /> <br /> circulation, in which capitalists own the means of production and pay wages to workers in exchange for their labor, which is used to produce commodities.<br /> <br /> Capitalists then sell these commodities for profits which are not shared with the workers who provided the labor. See p. 15.<br /> <br /> Category<br /> <br /> The most general grouping of aspects, attributes, and relations of things, phenomena, and ideas. Different specific fields of inquiry may categorize things, phenomena, and/or ideas differently from one another. See p. 126.<br /> <br /> Category Pair<br /> <br /> A pair of philosophical categories within materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics tend to focus on universal category pairs which can be used to examine the characteristics, relations, and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Examples of category pairs include: private and common; content and form; reason and result; essence and phenomena. See p. 127.<br /> <br /> Characteristics<br /> <br /> The features and attributes that exist internally - within - a given thing, phenomena, or idea. See p. 115.<br /> <br /> Chemical Motion<br /> <br /> Changes of organic and inorganic substances in processes of combination and separation. See p. 61.<br /> <br /> Chemical Reflection<br /> <br /> The reflection of mechanical, physical, and chemical changes and reactions of inorganic matter (i.e., changes in structures, position, physical-chemical properties, and the processes of combining and dissolving substances).<br /> <br /> See p. 65-66.<br /> <br /> Circulation<br /> <br /> The way in which commodities and money are exchanged for one another.<br /> <br /> See p. 16.<br /> <br /> Commodity<br /> <br /> In Marxist political economy, commodities include anything which can be bought and sold, with both a use value (i.e. it satisfies a need of any kind) and a value-form (aka. ‘Exchange value’ and understood as the average socially necessary labour time needed to produce this object). Under capitalism, more and more human activity and production is ‘commodified’ (mediated through market exchange). See p. 15, 87, 133.<br /> <br /> Common<br /> <br /> See: Private and Common<br /> <br /> 256<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Common Laws<br /> <br /> Laws (of nature and/or human society) that are applicable to a broader range of subjects than private laws, and which impact many different subjects. For instance: the law of preservation of mass, the law of preservation of energy, etc. See p. 162.<br /> <br /> Comprehensive<br /> <br /> A viewpoint which seeks to consider the internal dialectical relationships Viewpoint<br /> <br /> between the component parts, factors, and aspects within a thing or phenomenon, and which considers external mutual interactions with with other things, phenomena, and ideas. Dialectical materialist philosophy demands a comprehensive basis in order to fully and properly understand things and phenomena in order to effectively solve problems in real life and develop humanity towards communism. See p. 115, 172, 235.<br /> <br /> Conception<br /> <br /> A relatively complete reflection within human consciousness of objective things and phenomena. See p. 221-22.<br /> <br /> Concrete Labor<br /> <br /> The production of a specific commodity with a specific value through labor.<br /> <br /> When labor is considered without the consideration of output value, it is referred to as abstract labor. See p. 15, 17.<br /> <br /> Conditioned Reflex<br /> <br /> Conditioned reflexes are reactions which are learned by organisms. These responses are acquired as animals associate previously unrelated neural stimuli with a particular reaction. See p. 66, 68.<br /> <br /> Consciousness<br /> <br /> The dynamic and creative reflection of the objective world in human brains; the subjective image of the objective world which is produced by the human brain. See p. 68-69, 70.<br /> <br /> Content<br /> <br /> See: Content and Form.<br /> <br /> Content and Form<br /> <br /> Content is the philosophical category which refers to the sum of all aspects, (Category Pair)<br /> <br /> attributes, and processes that a thing, phenomenon, or idea is made from.<br /> <br /> The Form category refers to the mode of existence and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Form thus describes the system of relatively stable relationships which exist internally within things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> Content and Form have a dialectical relationship with one another, in which content determines form and form impacts back on content. See p. 115, 147-155, 166.<br /> <br /> Contradiction<br /> <br /> A contradiction is a relationship in which two forces oppose one another, leading to mutual development. See p. 123, 159, 163, 169, 175-191.<br /> <br /> Consciousness<br /> <br /> The self-aware, productive, creative motion and activity of the human brain.<br /> <br /> See p. 216, 249.<br /> <br /> Conservativism<br /> <br /> Also referred to as Prejudice; a mindset which seeks to prevent and stifle development and to hold humanity in a static position. Not only is this detrimental to humanity, it is also ultimately a wasted effort, because development is inevitable in human society, as in all things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 125, 233.<br /> <br /> David Hume<br /> <br /> (1711 - 1776) Scottish philosopher who developed radical skepticism as a philosophy of empiricist rejection of human knowledge. See p. 11, 29, 56, 72-73.<br /> <br /> David Ricardo<br /> <br /> (1772 - 1823) British economist who, along with Adam Smith, was one of the key figures in the development of Political Economy which was a basis for much of the work of Marx and Engels. See p. 14, 18, 155.<br /> <br /> Glossary &amp; Index<br /> <br /> 257<br /> <br /> Deductive Inference<br /> <br /> Logical inference which extrapolates from the general to the specific. See p.<br /> <br /> 224.<br /> <br /> Definition<br /> <br /> The first phase of rational consciousness. During this phase, the mind begins to interpret, organize, and process the basic properties of things and phenomena at a rational level into a conceptual whole. See p. 224.<br /> <br /> Development<br /> <br /> The change and motion of things, phenomena, and ideas with a forward tendency: from less advanced to more advanced; and/or from a less complete to a more complete level. See p. 38, 45-46, 52, 55, 61, 65, 76-96, 105-107, 114-118, 119-127, 131-132, 138-140, 143, 147, 154, 155-165, 169-175, 177-181, 183-207, 210, 213, 216-223, 225-229, 233, 235-237.<br /> <br /> Development<br /> <br /> A viewpoint which considers that, in order to perceive or solve any problem Viewpoint<br /> <br /> in real life, we must consider all things, phenomena, and ideas with their own forward tendency of development taken in mind.<br /> <br /> Dialectic; Dialectical; In Marxism-Leninism, the term dialectic (adjective: dialectical) refers to Dialectics<br /> <br /> regular and mutual relationships, interactions, transformations, motions, and developments of things, phenomena, and processes in nature, society and human thought. “Dialectics” refers to a dialectical system. See p. 3, 9-11, 47.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Materialism A universal philosophical and methodological system which forms the theoretical core of a scientific worldview. Dialectical Materialism was first developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels with the express goal of achieving communism. Dialectical Materialism has since been defended and developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as well as many others. See: p. 3, 6, 10-11, 19-21, 27-30, 33, 38, 45-47, 48-97, 101, 104, 204, 209, 226, 228, 230-232, 237.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Negation<br /> <br /> A stage of development in which a new subject arises from a contradiction between two previous subjects; dialectical negation is never an endpoint of development, as every dialectical negation creates conditions for further development and negation. See p. 123, 175-176, 183, 185-195, 197-202, 227.<br /> <br /> Dialectical Relationship A relationship in which two things, phenomena, or ideas mutually impact one another, leading to development and negation. See p. 47, 51, 62.<br /> <br /> (Characteristic of)<br /> <br /> The characteristic which all things, phenomena, and ideas share, dictating Diversity<br /> <br /> that no two subjects (and no two relationships between any two subjects) are exactly the same, even if they exist between very similar things, phenomena, and ideas and/or in very similar situations. See p. 114-115, 125.<br /> <br /> Diversity in Unity<br /> <br /> The universal principle which states that even though all relationships are diverse and different from one another, they also exist in unity, because all relationships share a foundation in the material world. See p. 109-110, 125, 130.<br /> <br /> Dogmatism<br /> <br /> An inflexible adherence to ideals as incontrovertibly true while refusing to take any contradictory evidence into consideration. Dogmatism stands in direct opposition to materialist dialectics, which seeks to form opinions and conclusions only after careful consideration of all observable evidence. See p.<br /> <br /> 136-137, 174, 217-218, 233.<br /> <br /> Duality of Labor<br /> <br /> The Marxist economic concept which recognizes labor as having two intrinsic and inseparable aspects: abstract labor and concrete labor. See p. 15.<br /> <br /> 258<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Dynamic and Creative The most advanced form of reflection, which only occurs in matter that has Reflection<br /> <br /> the highest (known) level of structural complexity, such as the human brain.<br /> <br /> See p. 68-69, 79.<br /> <br /> Eclecticism<br /> <br /> An approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject; the philosophical error of inconsistently applying different theories and principles in different situations. See p. 32-33, 101, 118, 192, 194.<br /> <br /> Economic Base<br /> <br /> See: Base<br /> <br /> Economism<br /> <br /> Economism is a style of political activism, typified by the ideas of German political theorist Eduard Bernstein, which stresses directing the struggle towards short-term political/economic goals (such as higher wages for workers) at the expense of the larger socialist revolutionary project. See p.<br /> <br /> 30.<br /> <br /> Eduard Bernstein<br /> <br /> (1850 - 1932) German political theorist who rejected many of Marx’s theories. See p. 30, 174.<br /> <br /> Emotional<br /> <br /> The lower stage of the cognitive process. In this stage of cognitive Consciousness<br /> <br /> development, humans, through practical activities, use our senses to reflect objective things and phenomena (with all their perceived specific characteristics and rich manifestations) in human consciousness. See p. 219-224.<br /> <br /> Empirical<br /> <br /> Empirical consciousness is the stage of development of consciousness Consciousness<br /> <br /> in which perceptions are formed via direct observations of things and phenomena in the natural world, or of society, or through scientific experimentation and systematic observation. Empirical Consciousness results in Empirical Knowledge. See p. 210-214.<br /> <br /> Empirical Knowledge Knowledge which results from processes of empirical consciousness and which is characterised by rich and detailed, but still incomplete, understanding of phenomena. It can be utilized for practical ends, but still falls short of full theoretical analysis and comprehension. See p. 212-214.<br /> <br /> Empiricism<br /> <br /> A broad philosophical position which holds that only experience (including internal experience) can be held as a source of knowledge or truth. Though nominally opposed to idealism, it is considered a faulty (or naive) form of materialism, since it sees the world as only unconnected, static appearances and ignores the reality of dialectical (changing) relationships between objects.<br /> <br /> See p. 9-12, 29, 94, 96-97, 100, 218.<br /> <br /> Empirio-criticism<br /> <br /> A more developed form of empiricism, proposed by Ernst Mach, which holds that sense data and experience are the sole sources of knowledge and that no concrete knowledge of the external material world can ever be obtained due to the limitations of human senses. See p. 26-29, 32, 54, 55-57, 68.<br /> <br /> Epistemology<br /> <br /> The theoretical study of knowledge. It primarily deals with the philosophical question of: “how do we know what we know?” See p. 45, 98, 204.<br /> <br /> Ernst Mach<br /> <br /> (1838 - 1916) Austrian physicist who attempted to build a philosophy of natural science based on the works of German philosopher Richard Avenarius’ philosophical system of Empirio-Criticism. See p. 27-29, 32, 52, 72, 193.<br /> <br /> Glossary &amp; Index<br /> <br /> 259<br /> <br /> Equilibrium<br /> <br /> A state of motion in which one or more subjects are not undergoing changes in position, form, and/or structure. Equilibrium is only ever a temporary stasis of development which will eventually yield to motion, development, and/or negation. See p. 62-63, 122-123, 181.<br /> <br /> Essence<br /> <br /> See: Essence and Phenomena<br /> <br /> Essence and<br /> <br /> The Essence category refers to the synthesis of all the internal aspects as Phenomena (Category well as the obvious and stable relations that define the existence, motion Pair)<br /> <br /> and development of things and ideas. The Phenomena category refers to the external manifestation of those internal aspects and relations in specific conditions. Essence always determines which phenomena appear, but phenomena do not always accurately reflect essence in human perception; in other words, it is possible to misinterpret phenomena, leading to a misunderstanding of essence, or to mistake phenomena for essence. See p.<br /> <br /> 156-160.<br /> <br /> Exchange Value<br /> <br /> A quantity relationship which describes the ratios of exchangeability between different commodities, with Marx’s famous example of 20 yards of linen being equivalent in exchange value to one coat. Through analysis Marx shows that in reality the thing being compared is the amount of socially necessary labour required to make the commodities being compared. See p.<br /> <br /> 15, 18.<br /> <br /> Excitation<br /> <br /> Reactions of simple plant and animal life-forms which occur when they change position or structure as a direct result of physical changes in their habitat.<br /> <br /> See p. 66, 68.<br /> <br /> External Contradictions See: Internal and External Contradictions.<br /> <br /> False consciousness<br /> <br /> Forms of consciousness (ideas, thoughts, concepts, etc.) which are incorrect and misaligned from reality. Equated with ‘ideology’ by Engels, it refers to an idealistic, dogmatic perspective which will inevitably result in errors of analysis and therefore practice. See p. 231-233, 237.<br /> <br /> First International<br /> <br /> Also known as the International Workingmen's Association; was founded in London and lasted from 1864-1876. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were key figures in the foundation and operation of this organization, which sought better conditions and the establishment of rights for workers. See p. 35<br /> <br /> (Basic) Forms of Motion Engels broke motion down into five basic forms which are dialectically linked; the different forms of motion differ from one another, but they are also unified with each other into one continuous system of motion.<br /> <br /> Understanding this dialectical relationship between different forms of motion helped to overcome misunderstandings and confusion about motion and development. See p. 61-62.<br /> <br /> Form<br /> <br /> See: Content and Form.<br /> <br /> Form of existence of<br /> <br /> The ways in which we perceive the existence of matter in our universe; matter<br /> <br /> specifically, matter in our universe has the form of existing in space and time. See p. 59.<br /> <br /> Form of Value<br /> <br /> See: Value-Form<br /> <br /> Forward Tendency of The tendency for things, phenomena, and ideas to move from less advanced Motion<br /> <br /> to more advanced forms through processes of motion and development.<br /> <br /> See p. 197.<br /> <br /> 260<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Friedrich Engels<br /> <br /> (1820-1895) a German theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, leader of the international working class, &amp; co-founder of scientific socialism with Karl Marx. Referenced throughout.<br /> <br /> Fundamental and<br /> <br /> A fundamental contradiction defines the essence of a relationship.<br /> <br /> Non-Fundamental<br /> <br /> Fundamental contradictions exist throughout the entire development process Contradictions<br /> <br /> of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea. A non-fundamental contradiction exists in only one aspect or attribute of a thing, phenomenon, or idea. A non-fundamental contradiction can impact a subject, but it will not control or decide the essential development of the subject. See p. 178-179.<br /> <br /> (Characteristic of)<br /> <br /> A universal characteristic which holds that all things, phenomena, and ideas Generality<br /> <br /> interact and mutually transform one another. See p. 108-109, 111, 114, 124-125.<br /> <br /> General Relationship<br /> <br /> Relationships which exist broadly across many things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> General relationships can exist both internally, within things, phenomena, and ideas, and externally, between things, phenomena, and ideas.<br /> <br /> See p. 106-110, 114.<br /> <br /> Generality<br /> <br /> Relationships can exist with across a spectrum of generality; this spectrum (of relationships)<br /> <br /> ranges from the least general relationships ( unique relationships - which only occur between two specific things/phenomena/ideas) to the most general relationships ( universal relationships - which occur between or within all things/phenomena/ideas). See p. 109.<br /> <br /> George Berkeley<br /> <br /> (1685 - 1753) An Anglo-Irish philosopher whose main philosophical achievement was the formulation of a doctrine which he called “immaterialism,”<br /> <br /> and which later came to be known as “Subjective Idealism.” This doctrine was summed up by Berkeley’s maxim: “Esse est percipi” - “To be is to be perceived.” See p. 11, 27, 29.<br /> <br /> George Wilhelm<br /> <br /> (1770 - 1831) German philosophy professor &amp; objective idealistic Friedrich Hegel<br /> <br /> philosopher; developed the system of idealist dialectics which Marx and Engels used as a basis for developing materialist dialectics. See p. 8-11, 29, 69-71, 97, 98, 100-105, 132, 157, 165, 182, 192, 193-194, 209, 228.<br /> <br /> Historical Materialism The application of materialist dialectics and dialectical materialism to the study of human history. See p. 21-23, 27, 36, 38, 45, 80.<br /> <br /> Historical Viewpoint<br /> <br /> A viewpoint which demands that subjects be considered in their current stage of motion and development, while also taking into consideration the development and transformation of the subject over time. See p. 116-118, 125-126, 143, 185, 234.<br /> <br /> Idealism<br /> <br /> A philosophical position which holds that the only reliable experience of reality occurs within human consciousness. Idealists believe that human reason exclusively or as a first basis is the best way to seek truth. See p. 8-12, 26-29, 48-51, 53, 56-58, 69-70, 96, 101-102, 104, 157, 174, 209, 218, 228.<br /> <br /> Immanuel Kant<br /> <br /> (1724 - 1804) German philosopher who developed a system of idealist dialectics which were later completed by Hegel and whose metaphysical philosophies of epistemology and rationalism served as the basis for later empiricists such as Bacon and Hume. See p. 20, 29, 56, 72-74, 100-102, 205.<br /> <br /> Induction<br /> <br /> The reaction of animals with simple nervous systems which can sense or feel their environments. Induction occurs through unconditioned reflex mechanisms. See p. 66, 68.<br /> <br /> Glossary &amp; Index<br /> <br /> 261<br /> <br /> Inductive Inference<br /> <br /> Logical inference which extrapolates from specific observations to general conclusions. See p. 223-224.<br /> <br /> Intelligibility<br /> <br /> The human cognitive capacity to accurately perceive the external material world. See p. 48.<br /> <br /> Internal Contradictions See: Internal and External Contradictions.<br /> <br /> Internal and External Internal contradictions are contradictions which exist within the internal Contradictions<br /> <br /> relations of a subject, while external contradictions exist between two or more subjects as external relations. See p. 178-179.<br /> <br /> Judgment<br /> <br /> The phase of rational consciousness which arises from the definition of the subject - the linking of concepts and properties together - which leads to affirmative or negative ideation of certain characteristics or attributes of the perceived subject. See p. 223.<br /> <br /> Karl Marx<br /> <br /> (1818-1883) German theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, political economist, founder of scientific socialism, and leader of the international working class. Referenced throughout.<br /> <br /> Knowledge<br /> <br /> The content of consciousness; data about the world, such as: ideas, memories, and other thoughts which are derived through direct observation and practical activities in the material world, through scientific experiments, or through abstract reflection of practical and scientific activities which occur within consciousness.<br /> <br /> Labor Value<br /> <br /> The amount of value which workers produce through labor. See p. 14, 17-18, 23.<br /> <br /> Law of Negation of<br /> <br /> A universal law of materialist dialectics which states that the fundamental Negation<br /> <br /> and universal tendency of motion and development occurs through a cycle of dialectical negation, wherein each and every negation is, in turn, negated once more. See p. 163, 185, 195, 198, 200, 201, 202, 227.<br /> <br /> Law of Transformation The universal law of dialectical materialism which concerns the universal Between Quantity and mode of motion and development processes of nature, society, and human Quality<br /> <br /> thought, which states that qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of the quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and, ideas, and, vice versa, quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 163-165, 172-173, 227.<br /> <br /> Law of Unification and The universal law of dialectical materialism which states that the Contradiction Between fundamental, originating, and universal driving force of all motion and Opposites<br /> <br /> development processes is the inherent and objective contradictions which exists in all things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 163, 175, 181.<br /> <br /> Law of Development of Also known as Theory of Accumulation and Theory of Surplus Value. The Capitalism<br /> <br /> dynamic through which the capitalist class gains wealth by accumulating surplus value (i.e., profits) and then reinvesting it into more capital to gain even further wealth; thus the goal of the capitalist class is to accumulate more and more surplus value which leads to the development of capitalism.<br /> <br /> See p. 18.<br /> <br /> Laws<br /> <br /> In dialectical materialism, laws are the regular, common, obvious, natural, objective relations between internal aspects, factors, and attributes of a thing or phenomenon or between things and phenomena. See p. 162.<br /> <br /> 262<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Laws of Nature<br /> <br /> Laws that arise in the natural world, including within the human body (and are never products of human conscious activities). Such law includes the laws of physics, chemistry, and other natural phenomena which govern the material world. See p. 162, 213.<br /> <br /> Laws of Society<br /> <br /> Laws of human activity in social relations; such laws are unable to manifest beyond the conscious activities of humans, but they are still objective.<br /> <br /> See p. 162-163.<br /> <br /> Laws of Human<br /> <br /> Laws which govern the intrinsic relationships between concepts, categories, Thought<br /> <br /> judgments, inference, and the development process of human rational awareness. See p. 163.<br /> <br /> Life-Process<br /> <br /> Processes of motion and change which occur within organisms to sustain life.<br /> <br /> See p. 69-72, 79, 88.<br /> <br /> Ludwig Feuerbach<br /> <br /> (1804 - 1872) German philosophy professor, materialist philosopher; Marx and Engels drew many of their ideas from the works of Feuerbach (whom they also criticized). See p. 8, 11-13, 21, 55, 74, 80, 114, 205, 237.<br /> <br /> M→→C→→M’<br /> <br /> The mode of circulation described by Marx as existing under capitalism, in which capitalists spend money to buy commodities (including the commodified labor of workers), with the intention of selling those commodities for more money than they began with. The capitalist has no direct relationship to the commodity being produced and sold, and the capitalist is solely interested in obtaining more money. See p. 16. See also: C→M→C<br /> <br /> Machism<br /> <br /> See: Empirio-Criticism.<br /> <br /> Manifestation<br /> <br /> How a given thing, phenomenon, or idea is expressed externally in the material world. See p. 115.<br /> <br /> Marxism-Leninism<br /> <br /> A system of scientific opinions and theories focused on liberating the working class from capitalism and achieving a stateless, classless, communist society. The core ideas of this system were first developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, then defended and further developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. See. p. 1.<br /> <br /> Material Conditions<br /> <br /> The material external environment in which humans live, including the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base of human society, objective social relations, and other externalities and systems which affect human life and human society. See p. 6, 22, 40-42, 70-72, 80-81, 87, 92-95, 116-118, 161, 174, 179, 181, 206-207, 210, 229.<br /> <br /> Material Production<br /> <br /> Material production activity is the first and most basic form of praxis. In Activity<br /> <br /> this form of praxis activity, humans use tools through labor processes to influence the natural world in order to create wealth and material resources and to develop the conditions necessary to maintain our existence and development. See p. 206-208.<br /> <br /> Materialism<br /> <br /> A philosophical position that holds that the material world exists outside of the mind, and that human ideas and thoughts stem from observation and sense experience of this external world. Materialism rejects the idealist notion that truth can only be sought solely through reasoning and human consciousness. See p. 10-13, 48.<br /> <br /> Glossary &amp; Index<br /> <br /> 263<br /> <br /> Materialist Dialectics<br /> <br /> A scientific system of philosophy concerned with motion, development, and common relationships, and with the most common rules of motion and development of nature, society, and human thought. See p. 10, 21, 45-47, 98-202, 227, 237.<br /> <br /> Matter<br /> <br /> A philosophical category denoting things and phenomena, existing in objective external reality, which human beings access through our sense perceptions. See p. 26, 27, 32, 48, 51-52, 53-69, 72, 88-95, 97, 103, 164-165.<br /> <br /> Means of Production<br /> <br /> Physical inputs and systems used in the production of goods and services, including: machinery, factory buildings, tools, equipment, and anything else used in producing goods and services. See p. 2-3, 7, 14-16.<br /> <br /> Mechanical Motion<br /> <br /> Changes in positions of objects in space. See p. 61.<br /> <br /> Mechanical Philosophy A scientific and philosophical movement popular in the 17th century which explored mechanical machines and compared natural phenomena to mechanical devices, resulting in a belief that all things - including living organisms - were built as (and could theoretically be built by humans as) mechanical devices.<br /> <br /> Mental Reflection<br /> <br /> Reactions which occur in animals with central nervous systems. Mental reflections occur through conditioned reflex mechanisms through learning.<br /> <br /> See p. 65, 68, 224.<br /> <br /> Metaphysical<br /> <br /> Metaphysical materialism was strongly influenced by the metaphysical, Materialism<br /> <br /> mechanical thinking of mechanical philosophy, which was a scientific and philosophical movement which explored mechanical machines and compared natural phenomena to mechanical devices. Metaphysical materialists believed that all change can exist only as an increase or decrease in quantity, brought about by external causes.<br /> <br /> Metaphysics<br /> <br /> A branch of philosophy that attempts to explain the fundamental nature of reality. Metaphysical philosophy has taken many forms through the centuries, but one common shortcoming of metaphysical thought is a tendency to view things and ideas in a static, abstract manner. Generally speaking, metaphysics presents nature as a collection of objects and phenomena which are isolated from one another and fundamentally unchanging. See p. 52.<br /> <br /> Methodology<br /> <br /> A system of reasoning: the ideas and rules that guide humans to research, build, select, and apply the most suitable methods in both perception and practice. Methodologies can range from very specific to broadly general, with philosophical methodology being the most general scope of methodology.<br /> <br /> See p. 44.<br /> <br /> Mode<br /> <br /> The way or manner in which something occurs or exists. See p. 19-20.<br /> <br /> Mode of Existence of Refers to how matter exists in our universe; specifically, matter exists in our Matter<br /> <br /> motion in a mode of motion. See p. 59.<br /> <br /> Motion<br /> <br /> Also known as “change;” motion/change occurs as a result of the mutual impacts which occur between two things, phenomena, or ideas in relation with one another. See p. 23, 47, 59-63. 74, 106-107, 122-127, 145, 163-165, 169-173-186, 197, 201-202.<br /> <br /> 264<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Motion in Equilibrium Motion in equilibrium is motion that has not changed the positions, forms, and/or structures of things. Motion in Equlibrium is only ever temporary in nature; all motion will eventually lead to changes in position, form, and/or structure.<br /> <br /> See p. 62.<br /> <br /> Narodnik<br /> <br /> Agrarian socialist movement of the 1860s and 70s in the Russian Empire, composed of peasants who rose up in a failed campaign against the Czar.<br /> <br /> See p. 29-30.<br /> <br /> Natural law<br /> <br /> See: Laws of Nature.<br /> <br /> Natural Science<br /> <br /> Science which deals with the natural world, including chemistry, biology, physics, geology, etc. See p. 13, 19, 26, 103.<br /> <br /> Negation<br /> <br /> The development process through which two contradicting objects mutually develop one another until one is overtaken by the other. In dialectical materialism, negation takes the form of dialectical negation. See p. 123, 175-176, 183, 185-202.<br /> <br /> New Economic Policy Also known as the NEP; this early Soviet policy was devised as Vladimir Illyich Lenin to be a temporary economic system that would allow a market economy and capitalism to exist within Russia, alongside state-owned business ventures, all firmly under the control of the working-class-dominated state. See p. 33-34.<br /> <br /> Objective Dialectics<br /> <br /> The dialectical processes which occur in the material world, including all of the motion, relationships, and dynamic changes which occur in space and time.<br /> <br /> See p. 98, 102-103, 182.<br /> <br /> Objective Existence<br /> <br /> Existence which manifests outside of and independently of human consciousness, whether humans can perceive it or not. See p. 50, 58, 228.<br /> <br /> Objective Idealism<br /> <br /> A form of idealism which asserts that the ideal and consciousness are the primary existence, while also positing that the ideal and consciousness are objective, and that they exist independently of nature and humans. See p. 50.<br /> <br /> Objectiveness<br /> <br /> An abstract concept that refers to the relative externality of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Every thing, phenomena and idea exists externally to every other thing, phenomena, and idea. This means that to each individual subject, all other subjects exist as external objects. See p. 111-114, 124.<br /> <br /> Obviousness<br /> <br /> See: Obviousness and Randomness<br /> <br /> Obviousness and<br /> <br /> The philosophical category of Obviousness refers to events that occur Randomness<br /> <br /> because of the essential internal aspects of a subject which become reasons (Category Pair)<br /> <br /> for certain results in certain conditions: the obvious has to happen in a certain way, it can’t happen any other way. The Randomness category refers to things that happen because of external reasons: things that happen, essentially, by chance, due to impacts from many external relations. A random outcome may occur or it may not occur, and may occur in many different ways. Obviousness and Randomness have a dialectical relationship with one another. See p. 144-146.<br /> <br /> Opportunism<br /> <br /> A system of political opinions with no direction, no clear path, and/or no coherent viewpoint, focusing on whatever actions or decisions might be beneficial for the opportunist in the short term. See p. 174.<br /> <br /> Glossary &amp; Index<br /> <br /> 265<br /> <br /> Opposites<br /> <br /> Such aspects, properties and tendencies of motion which oppose one another, yet are, simultaneously, conditions and premises of the existence of one another.<br /> <br /> See p. 61, 175-179, 181, 184, 190, 227.<br /> <br /> Ordinary<br /> <br /> Perception that is formed passively, stemming from the daily activities of Consciousness<br /> <br /> humans. See p. 210-216.<br /> <br /> Period of Motion<br /> <br /> Development which occurs between two quality shifts, including the quality shifts themselves. See p. 170.<br /> <br /> Perspective<br /> <br /> See: Viewpoint.<br /> <br /> Petty Bourgeoisie<br /> <br /> Semi-autonomous merchants, farmers, and so on who are self-employed, own small and limited means of production, or otherwise fall in between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Also called the petite bourgeoisie. See p. 3-6.<br /> <br /> Petty Commodity<br /> <br /> See: Simple Commodity Production.<br /> <br /> Production<br /> <br /> Phenomena<br /> <br /> Anything that is observable by the human senses. See p. 156. See also: Essence and Phenomena.<br /> <br /> Physical Motion<br /> <br /> Motion of molecules, electrons, fundamental particles, thermal processes, electricity, etc., in time and space. See p. 61.<br /> <br /> Physical Reflection<br /> <br /> Reflection which occurs any time two material objects interact and the features of the objects are transferred to one other. See p. 67-68.<br /> <br /> Point of View<br /> <br /> See: Viewpoint.<br /> <br /> Populism<br /> <br /> The political philosophy of the Narodnik movement; this political philosophy was focused on bringing about an agrarian peasant revolution led by intellectuals with the ambition of going directly from a feudal society to a socialist society built from rural communes. Populism overtly opposed Marxism and dialectical materialism and was based on subjective idealist utopianism.<br /> <br /> See p. 30.<br /> <br /> Positivism<br /> <br /> The belief that we can test scientific knowledge through scientific methods, and through logic, math, etc.; positivism tends to overlap significantly with empiricism in theory and practice. See p. 32, 209.<br /> <br /> Possibility<br /> <br /> See: Possibility and Reality.<br /> <br /> Possibility and Reality The philosophical category of Possibility refers to things that have not (Category Pair)<br /> <br /> happened nor existed in reality yet, but that would happen, or would exist given necessary conditions.<br /> <br /> The philosophical category of Reality refers to things that exist or have existed in reality and in human thought.<br /> <br /> See p. 160-162.<br /> <br /> Practice<br /> <br /> See: Praxis.<br /> <br /> Pragmatism<br /> <br /> Pragmatism refers to a form of subjectivism in which one centers one’s own immediate material concerns over all other considerations. See p. 218.<br /> <br /> Praxis<br /> <br /> Conscious activity which improves our understanding, and which has purpose and historical-social characteristics. Used interchangeably with the word “practice” in this text. See p. 205-206, 235.<br /> <br /> Prejudice<br /> <br /> See: Conservatism.<br /> <br /> 266<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Primary and Secondary In the development of things, phenomena, and ideas, there are many Contradictions<br /> <br /> development stages. In each stage of development, there will be one contradiction which drives the development process. This is what we call the primary contradiction. Secondary contradictions include all the other contradictions which exist during that stage of development. Determining whether a contradiction is primary or secondary is relative, and it depends heavily upon the material conditions and the situation being analyzed.<br /> <br /> See p. 178-179.<br /> <br /> Primary Existence<br /> <br /> Existence which precedes and determines other existences; materialists believe that the external material world is the primary existence which determines the ideal, while idealists believe that human consciousness (“the ideal”) is the primary existence from which truth is ultimately derived. See p. 50-51.<br /> <br /> Primitive Materialism An early form of materialism which recognizes that matter is the primary existence, and holds that the world is composed of certain elements, and that these were the first objects - the origin - of the world, and that these elements are the essence of reality. This was later developed into Metaphysical Materialism and, later, Dialectical Materialism. See p. 52.<br /> <br /> Principle of General<br /> <br /> A principle of dialectical materialism which states that all things, phenomena, Relationships<br /> <br /> and ideas are related to one another, and are defined by these internal and external relationships. See p. 106-107, 110, 114.<br /> <br /> Private<br /> <br /> See: Private and Common<br /> <br /> Private and Common The Private philosophical category encompasses specific things, phenomena, (Category Pair)<br /> <br /> and ideas; the Common philosophical category defines the common aspects, attributes, factors, and relations that exist in many things and phenomena.<br /> <br /> Private and Common are relative in nature and have a dialectical relationship with one another. See p. 128-138.<br /> <br /> Private Laws<br /> <br /> Laws which apply only to a specific range of things and phenomena, i.e.: laws of mechanical motion, laws of chemical motion, laws of biological motion, etc. See p. 162.<br /> <br /> Production Force<br /> <br /> The combination of the means of production and workers within human society. See p. 6, 23, 36.<br /> <br /> Proletariat<br /> <br /> The people who provide labor under capitalism; the proletariat do not own their own means of production, and must therefore sell their labor to those who do own means of production; also called the Working Class. See also: Bourgeoisie, Petty Bourgeoisie. See p. 1-8, 22-23, 25-26, 29-31, 33-35, 40-41, 63, 231.<br /> <br /> Quality<br /> <br /> The unity of component parts, taken together, which defines a subject and distinguishes it from other subjects. See p. 119-121.<br /> <br /> Quality Shift<br /> <br /> A change in quality which takes place in the motion and development process of things, phenomena, and ideas, occurring when quantity change meets a certain perceived threshold. See p. 124, 153, 164, 168-174.<br /> <br /> Quantity<br /> <br /> The total amount of component parts that compose a subject. See p. 119-121.<br /> <br /> Quantity range<br /> <br /> The range of quantity changes which can accumulate without leading to change in quality related to any given thing, phenomenon, or idea. See p.<br /> <br /> 168-171.<br /> <br /> Glossary &amp; Index<br /> <br /> 267<br /> <br /> Quintessence<br /> <br /> Original Vietnamese word: tinh hoa. Literally, it means “the best, highest, most beautiful, defining characteristics” of a concept, and, unlike the English word quintessence, it has an exclusively positive connotation. See p. 8, 21, 43, 45, 52.<br /> <br /> Randomness<br /> <br /> See: Obviousness and Randomness.<br /> <br /> Rational Consciousness The higher stage of the cognitive process, which includes the indirect, abstract, and generalized reflection of the essential properties and characteristics of things and phenomena. This stage of consciousness performs the most important function of comprehending and interpreting the essence of the perceived subject. See p. 219-225.<br /> <br /> Reason<br /> <br /> See: Reason and Result<br /> <br /> Reality<br /> <br /> See: Possibility and Reality.<br /> <br /> Reason and Result<br /> <br /> The Reason philosophical category is used to define the mutual impacts (Category Pair)<br /> <br /> between internal aspects of a thing, phenomenon or idea, or between things, phenomena, or ideas, that bring about changes.<br /> <br /> The Result philosophical category defines the changes that were caused by mutual impacts which occur between aspects and factors within a thing, phenomenon, or idea, or externally between different things, phenomena, or ideas.<br /> <br /> Not to be confused with the metaphysical concept of “cause and effect,”<br /> <br /> which attributes a single cause to any given effect. See p. 138-144.<br /> <br /> Reasoning<br /> <br /> The final phase of rational consciousness, formed on the basis of synthesizing judgments so as to extrapolate new knowledge about the perceived subject. See p. 223-225, 228-229.<br /> <br /> Reflection<br /> <br /> The re-creation of the features of one form of matter in a different form of matter which occurs when they mutually impact each other through interaction.<br /> <br /> See p. 64-75, 79-80, 90-92, 103, 165, 208-211, 214-215, 219-224, 228, 232, 237.<br /> <br /> Relative and Absolute “Absolute” and “Relative” are philosophical classifications which refer to interdependence:<br /> <br /> That which is absolute exists independently and with permanence.<br /> <br /> That which is relative is temporary, and dependent on other conditions or circumstances in order to exist.<br /> <br /> See p. 56, 233. See also: Absolute Truth, Relative Truth, Relativism, Truth.<br /> <br /> Relative Truth<br /> <br /> Truth which has developed alignment with reality without yet having reached complete alignment between human knowledge and the reality which it reflects; knowledge which incompletely reflects material subjects without complete accuracy. See p. 230, 232. See also: Absolute Truth, Relative and Absolute, Relativism, Truth.<br /> <br /> Relativism<br /> <br /> A position that all truth is relative and that nothing can ever be absolutely, objectively known; that only Relative Truth can be found in our existence.<br /> <br /> See p. 56-58, 233-234. See also: Absolute Truth, Relative and Absolute, Relative Truth, Truth.<br /> <br /> 268<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism René Descartes<br /> <br /> (1596 - 1650) French metaphysical philosopher who developed early methods of scientific inquiry. See p. 20, 53.<br /> <br /> Result<br /> <br /> See: Reason and Result.<br /> <br /> Richard Avenarius<br /> <br /> (1843 - 1896) German-Swiss philosopher who developed a system of subjective idealism known as “Empirio-Criticism.” See p. 27-29.<br /> <br /> Rigidity<br /> <br /> An unwillingness to alter one’s thoughts, holding too stiffly to established consciousness and knowledge, and ignoring practical experience and observation, which leads to stagnation of both knowledge and consciousness.<br /> <br /> See p. 217-218.<br /> <br /> Robert Owen<br /> <br /> (1771 - 1858) Wealthy Welsh textile manufacturer who tried to build a better society for workers in New Hampshire, Indiana, in the USA by purchasing the town of New Harmony in 1825. Owen’s vision failed after two years, though many other wealthy capitalists in the early 19th century were inspired by Owen to try similar plans, which also failed.<br /> <br /> Scientific<br /> <br /> An adjective which describes methodologies, approaches, and practices of gaining knowledge and insight which are methodological and/or systematic in nature. See p. 1-2.<br /> <br /> Scientific<br /> <br /> Conscious activities which actively gather information from the Consciousness<br /> <br /> methodological and/or systematic observations of the characteristics, nature, and inherent relationships of research subjects. Scientific consciousness is considered indirect because it takes place outside of the course of ordinary daily activities. See p. 58, 210, 212, 215-216.<br /> <br /> Scientific Experimental Human activities that resemble or replicate states of nature and society Activity<br /> <br /> in order to determine the laws of change and development of subjects of study. This form of activity plays an important role in the development of society, especially in the current historical period of modern science and technological revolution. See p. 206-208.<br /> <br /> Scientific Materialist<br /> <br /> A perspective which begins analysis of the world in a manner that is both Viewpoint<br /> <br /> scientifically systematic in pursuit of understanding and firmly rooted in a materialist conception of the world. See p. 105.<br /> <br /> Scientific Socialism<br /> <br /> A body of theory and knowledge (which must be constantly tested against reality) focused on the practical pursuit of changing the world to bring about socialism through the leadership of the proletariat. See p. 1-2, 21, 37-39.<br /> <br /> Scientific Worldview<br /> <br /> A worldview that is expressed by a systematic pursuit of knowledge that generally and correctly reflects the relationships of things, phenomena, and processes in the objective material world, including relationships between humans, as well as relationships between humans and the world. See p. 38-39, 44-45, 48.<br /> <br /> Second International<br /> <br /> Founded in Paris in 1889 to continue the work of the First International; it fell apart in 1916 because members from different nations could not maintain solidarity through the outbreak of World War I. See p. 35, 174.<br /> <br /> Self-motion<br /> <br /> In the original Vietnamese, the word “tự vận động.” Literally meaning: “it moves itself.” See p. 59-60, 124.<br /> <br /> Sensation<br /> <br /> The subjective reflection of the objective world in human consciousness as perceived through human senses. See p. 27, 56-58, 68-69, 72, 85, 221-222.<br /> <br /> Glossary &amp; Index<br /> <br /> 269<br /> <br /> Sensuous Human<br /> <br /> A description of human activity developed by Marx which acknowledges Activity; Sensuous<br /> <br /> that all human activity is simultaneously active in the sense that our Activity<br /> <br /> conscious activity can transform the world, as well as passive in the sense in that all human thoughts fundamentally derive from observation and sense experience of the material world. See p. 13.<br /> <br /> Simple Commodity<br /> <br /> What Marx called the “C→M→C” mode of circulation.<br /> <br /> Production<br /> <br /> See p. 16-18.<br /> <br /> Simple Exchange<br /> <br /> When individual producers trade the products they have made directly, themselves, for other commodities. See p. 16-17.<br /> <br /> Social Being<br /> <br /> The material existence of human society, as opposed to social consciousness.<br /> <br /> See also: Base. See p. 24, 54-55.<br /> <br /> Social Consciousness<br /> <br /> The collective experience of consciousness shared by members of a society, including ideological, cultural, spiritual, and legal beliefs and ideas which are shared within that society, as opposed to social being. See p. 22, 24, 32, 54-55, 80. See also: Superstructure.<br /> <br /> Social Motion<br /> <br /> Changes in the economy, politics, culture, and social life of human beings.<br /> <br /> See p. 61-62.<br /> <br /> Socialization<br /> <br /> The idea that human society transforms labor and production from a solitary, individual act into a collective, social act. In other words, as human society progresses, people “socialize” labor into increasingly complex networks of social relations: from individuals making their own tools, to agricultural societies engaged in collective farming, to modern industrial societies with factories, logistical networks, etc. See p. 6, 36.<br /> <br /> Socialized Production A production force which has been socialized - that is to say, a production Force<br /> <br /> force which has been organized into collective social activity. See p. 6.<br /> <br /> Socio-Political Activity Praxis activity utilized by various communities and organizations in human society to transform political-social relations in order to promote social development. See p. 206-208.<br /> <br /> Solipsism<br /> <br /> A form of idealism in which one believes that the self is the only basis for truth.<br /> <br /> See p. 218.<br /> <br /> Sophistry<br /> <br /> The use of misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s’ dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians.<br /> <br /> See p. 32-33, 56, 118, 182, 194.<br /> <br /> Stage of Development The current quantity and quality characteristics which a thing, phenomenon, or object possesses. Every time a quality change occurs, a new stage of development is entered into. See p. 24, 39, 125, 173-174, 179, 190, 196-197, 200, 212, 221.<br /> <br /> Stagnation<br /> <br /> An inability or unwillingness to change and adapt consciousness and practice in accordance with developing material conditions. Stagnation can stem from, or cause, overstatement of absolute truth in theory and forestall necessary development of both consciousness and practical ability. See p. 125, 218, 233.<br /> <br /> See also: Rigidity.<br /> <br /> 270<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Struggle of Opposites The tendency of opposites to eliminate and negate each other.<br /> <br /> See p. 61, 181, 184.<br /> <br /> Subjective Factors<br /> <br /> Factors which, from the perspective of a given subject, that same subject is capable of impacting. See p. 162-163, 175, 202.<br /> <br /> Subjective Dialectics; A system of analysis and organized thinking which aims to reflect the Dialectical Thought<br /> <br /> objective dialectics of the material world within human consciousness.<br /> <br /> Dialectical thinking has two component forms: dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics. See: p. 98-99, 103.<br /> <br /> Subjective Idealism<br /> <br /> Subjective idealism asserts that consciousness is the primary existence and that truth can be obtained only or primarily through conscious activity and reasoning. Subjective idealism asserts that all things and phenomena can only be experienced as subjective sensory perceptions, with some forms of subjective idealism even explicitly denying the objective existence of material reality altogether. See also: Empirio-Criticism, Objective Idealism.<br /> <br /> See p. 26-27, 50.<br /> <br /> Subjectivism<br /> <br /> A philosophical position in which one centers one’s own self and conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test their own perceptions against material and social reality. See p. 56, 182, 217-218, 233-234.<br /> <br /> Suitability<br /> <br /> The applicability of a subject for a specific application or role. See p. 154.<br /> <br /> Superstructure<br /> <br /> The ideal (non-material) components of human society, including: media institutions, music, and art, as well as other cultural elements like religion, customs, moral standards, and everything else which manifests primarily through conscious activity and social relations. See p. 23. See also: Base.<br /> <br /> Surplus Value<br /> <br /> The extra amount of value a capitalist is able to secure by exploiting wage-labourers (by paying workers less than the full value of their labour).<br /> <br /> Workers will spend part of their workday reproducing their own labour-power (through earning enough to eat, secure shelter and other cultural needs) and the rest of the time will be spent producing surplus value which is then appropriated by the capitalist as profit. See p. 18, 22-23, 39.<br /> <br /> Symbolization<br /> <br /> The representation of an objective thing or phenomenon in human consciousness which has been reflected by sensation and conception. See p.<br /> <br /> 221-222.<br /> <br /> Systematic Structure<br /> <br /> A structure which includes within itself a system of component parts and relationships. See p. 114.<br /> <br /> Theoretical<br /> <br /> The indirect, abstract, systematic level of perception in which the nature and Consciousness<br /> <br /> laws of things and phenomena are generalized and abstracted.<br /> <br /> See p. 210-214, 217-218.<br /> <br /> Theoretical Knowledge Knowledge which is abstract and generalized, resulting from theoretical conscious activities which include repeated and varied observations. See p.<br /> <br /> 214, 217.<br /> <br /> Theory<br /> <br /> An idea or system of ideas intended to explain an aspect, characteristic, or tendency of objective reality. See p. 235.<br /> <br /> Theory of<br /> <br /> See: Law of Development of Capitalism.<br /> <br /> Accumulation/Surplus<br /> <br /> Value<br /> <br /> Glossary &amp; Index<br /> <br /> 271<br /> <br /> Thing-in-Itself<br /> <br /> The actual material object which exists outside of our consciousness, as it exists outside of our consciousness. See p. 72-74, 101, 158.<br /> <br /> Third International<br /> <br /> Also known as the Communist International (or the ComIntern for short); founded in Moscow in 1919, its goals were to overthrow capitalism, build socialism, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. It was dissolved in 1943 in the midst of the German invasion of Russia in World War II. See p.<br /> <br /> 35.<br /> <br /> Three Component Parts The three essential elements of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, first identified of Marxism-Leninism<br /> <br /> by Lenin in The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism.<br /> <br /> 1. The Philosophy of Marxism.<br /> <br /> 2. The Political Economy of Marxism.<br /> <br /> 3. Scientific Socialism.<br /> <br /> See p. 21, 32, 34, 38.<br /> <br /> Threshold<br /> <br /> The amount, or degree, of quantity change at which quality change occurs.<br /> <br /> Truth is primarily discovered through labor and practice in the physical world. See p. 120, 168-169, 171, 173.<br /> <br /> Truth<br /> <br /> A correct and accurate conscious reflection of objective reality. See p. 9-10, 49, 56, 70, 75, 94-96, 194, 204, 209, 215-219, 225-237. See also: Labor, Practice.<br /> <br /> Unconditioned Reflex Reactions which are not learned, but simply occur automatically based on physiological mechanisms occurring within an organism, characterized by permanent connections between sensory perceptions and reactions. See p. 66, 68.<br /> <br /> Unilateral<br /> <br /> The consideration of a subject from one side only. See p. 49.<br /> <br /> Consideration<br /> <br /> Unintelligibility<br /> <br /> A philosophical position which denies the human cognitive capacity to accurately perceive the external material world. See p. 48.<br /> <br /> Unique Relationship<br /> <br /> The least general form of relationship, which only occur between two specific things/phenomena/ideas. See p. 109, 130.<br /> <br /> Unity in Diversity<br /> <br /> A concept in materialist dialectics which holds that within universal relationships exist within and between all different things, phenomena, and ideas, we will find that each individual manifestation of any universal relationship will have its own different manifestations, aspects, features, etc.<br /> <br /> Thus even the universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in infinite diversity. See p. 42, 110-111, 114, 125, 130.<br /> <br /> Universal Law of<br /> <br /> A universal law which holds that consciousness is a process of dialectical Consciousness<br /> <br /> development in which practical activity leads to conscious activity, which then leads back to practical activity, in a continuous and never-ending cycle, with a tendency to develop both practical and conscious activity to increasingly higher levels. See p. 219.<br /> <br /> Universal Laws<br /> <br /> Laws that impact every aspect of nature, society, and human thought.<br /> <br /> Materialist dialectics is the study of these universal laws. See p. 15, 162-163, 227.<br /> <br /> Universal Relationship The most general kind of relationship; relationships that exist between and within every thing and all phenomena; along with development, universal relationships are one of the two primary subjects of study of materialist dialectics. See p. 80, 108, 109, 111, 165.<br /> <br /> 272<br /> <br /> Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Use Value<br /> <br /> A concept in classical political economy and Marxist economics which refers to tangible features of a commodity (a tradable object) that can fulfill some human requirement or desire, or which serve a useful purpose. See p. 15-18, 95.<br /> <br /> Utopianism<br /> <br /> 1. A political and philosophical movement which held the belief that “a New Moral World” of happiness, enlightenment, and prosperity could be created through education, science, technology, and communal living. See p. 18.<br /> <br /> 2. The idealist philosophical concept which mistakenly asserts that the ideal can determine the material, and that ideal forms of society can be brought about without regard for material conditions and development processes. See p. 8, 17-18, 30, 94.<br /> <br /> Value-Form<br /> <br /> Also known as “form of value;” the social form of a commodity. Under capitalism, through the exchange of qualitatively different commodities, the money form of value is established as the general equivalent which can functionally be exchanged for all other values; money is therefore the most universal value-form under capitalism. See p. 15, 17, 155.<br /> <br /> Viewpoint<br /> <br /> Also known as point of view or perspective; the starting point of analysis which determines the direction of thinking from which phenomena and problems are considered. See p. 12, 20-21, 23, 25, 26, 30, 32-33, 38-39, 55-59, 62, 64, 89, 93-94, 105, 111, 114-120, 122, 125-126, 130, 143, 147, 150, 172, 185-188, 195, 200-201, 233-235. See also: Comprehensive Viewpoint, Historical Viewpoint.<br /> <br /> Viewpoint Crisis<br /> <br /> A situation in which a specific viewpoint can’t be settled on, found, or agreed upon. See p. 26, 32-33.<br /> <br /> Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 -1924) A Russian theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, defender and developer of Marxism in the era of imperialism, founder of the Bolsheviks, the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union, leader of Russia and the international working class. Referenced throughout.<br /> <br /> Working Class<br /> <br /> See: Proletariat<br /> <br /> Worldview<br /> <br /> The whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about humans ourselves, and about life and the position of human beings in the world. See p. 1, 11, 37-39, 44-45, 48, 52, 96, 138, 201, 208-209, 218, 234. See also: Scientific Worldview.<br /> <br /> P U B L I S H I N G<br /> <br /> For centuries, the banyan tree has been the symbol of<br /> <br /> communal life in Vietnam.<br /> <br /> Traditionally, the entrance to a village is graced by a large and ancient banyan tree. It is in the shade of these trees that villagers gather to socialize, draw water from wells, and make collective decisions together. The drooping accessory trunks represent the longevity of villagers - and of the village itself -<br /> <br /> while the arching canopy represents the safety and protection of the village. The shape of the banyan tree is seen in the full moon, which casts peaceful light across the Earth to guide travelers in the dark of night.<br /> <br /> Vietnam’s revolution against Japanese fascism and French colonialism began in 1945 beneath the cover of the Tân Trào Banyan Tree, which still stands in the city of Tuyên Quang.<br /> <br /> It is in this deep-rooted, humanistic spirit of collective action that we founded Banyan House Publishing. We hope to deliver volumes which will inspire action and change throughout the village that is our world.<br /> <br /> Visit us at:<br /> <br /> BanyanHouse.org<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> CURRICULUM OF THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MARXISM-LENINISM<br /> <br /> VIETNAM’S TEXTBOOK ON DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM<br /> <br /> CURRICULUM OF<br /> <br /> “In order to build socialism, fi rst and foremost, we need to have P<br /> <br /> socialist people who understand socialist ideology and have THE BASIC PRINCIPLES<br /> <br /> art 1: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism socialist values.”<br /> <br /> OF MARXISM-LENINISM<br /> <br /> These are the immortal words of Ho Chi Minh, who helped guide Vietnam through decades of revolution against French colonialism, Japanese fascism, and American imperialism. These Part 1<br /> <br /> words reverberate today in the classrooms of Vietnamese high schools and colleges, where students are required to study a full The Worldview<br /> <br /> curriculum of socialist theory rooted in the foundational works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.<br /> <br /> and Philosophical Methodology<br /> <br /> of Marxism-Leninism<br /> <br /> Now, for the fi rst time, the materials used to train Vietnamese students in the core ideological system of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics is available to the English speaking Translated by: Luna Nguyen<br /> <br /> world through Luna Nguyen’s groundbreaking translation of Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism, Part 1: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism.<br /> <br /> This text, originally produced by Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training for use in universities, provides a brief history of Marxism-Leninism as well as thorough explanations of the principles and laws of dialectical materialism, materialist dialectics, and the cognitive theory of dialectical materialism.<br /> <br /> The fi rst English edition is brought to you by Banyan House Publishing in collaboration with Iskra Books and The International Magazine. We have done our best to deliver a textbook which is highly optimized for collective training as well as self-study and for use as a companion piece for further reading.<br /> <br /> The book includes an original glossary, appendices, and illustrations and annotations by Emerican Johnson as well as a foreword by Dr. Vijay Prashad and introduction by Dr. Taimur Rahman.<br /> <br /> [[Category:Library documents from Vietnam]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Serving_the_Few&diff=76024 2024-09-30T12:47:06Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Serving the Few|author=Michael Parenti|publisher=|published_date=1995|type=Journal article|source=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/10402659508425880|display_title=yes}}<br /> <br /> '''''Serving the Few''''' is an article by [[United States of America|Statesian]] political scientist [[Michael Parenti]], published in [[Peace Review|''Peace Review'']] in 1995.<br /> <br /> == Text ==<br /> There are those who criticise U.S. foreign policy for its blunders and incoherence. To be sure, Washington policymakers are sometimes frustrated by unintended consequences, taken by surprise, or thwarted by forces beyond their control. They are neither infallible nor omnipotent. But neither are they the fools some people take them to be. Overall, U.S. foreign policy has been remarkably successful in undermining popular revolutions and buttressing conservative free-market regimes in every region of the world.<br /> <br /> Many Americans recognise that politicians often lie, that they loudly proclaim a dedication to the people while quietly serving powerful interests. But when it comes to U.S. foreign policy, many of us retreat from that judgement. Suddenly we find it hard to believe that U.S. leaders deceptively pursue repressive policies abroad, policies that have little to do with peace, democracy, and social justice.<br /> <br /> On the infrequent occasions where the political mainstream and major media debate foreign policy, criticism goes no further than operational questions: Are our leaders relying too much (or too little) on military force? Are they failing to act decisively? Will the policy prove too costly? Rarely, if ever, do they examine basic policy premises.<br /> <br /> Instead, they assume the United States has a right to intervene in other nation's affairs to restore order, thwart aggression, fight terrorism, or whatever. It is taken as given that this country resists unjust aggression but never practices it, that other nations not the U.S. cause conflicts, that leftist revolutionaries are dangerous but rightist reactionaries usually are not (and that defining what ''is'' a leftist or a rightist is unnecessary), and that something called &quot;stability&quot; is more important than revolutionary change and popular agitation.<br /> <br /> Actually, U.S. policy serves mostly the favoured few rather than the common people at home or abroad. From Argentina to Zaire, from East Timor to the Western Sahara, U.S.-sponsored counterrevolutionary campaigns of attrition, have taken millions of lives, with tens of millions wounded, maimed, displaced, exiled, or emotionally shattered. Yet one hears hardly a word about this hidden holocaust in what passes for U.S. political discourse.<br /> <br /> We are told that the U.S. must demonstrate its resolve, must constantly display its strength, flex its muscles, and thereby act like a great superpower. This will prevent us from being pushed around by some small upstart nation (an argument used to justify everything from the pulverisation of Vietnam to the massacre of Iraq). Any failure to apply our power, we hear, undermines our credibility and invites aggression. One wonders why U.S. leaders feel endlessly motivated to show what everyone is already painfully aware of: that the U.S. is the world's strongest military power.<br /> <br /> Some say the need arises from a macho insecurity that generations of U.S. leaders have psychologically suffered in common. Presidents do often engage in macho posturing to convince people they are decisive and forceful. The key enforcement instrument of state power, the military, is built on machismo—with all its attendant emphasis on toughness, domination, and violence. But macho feelings do not themselves explain U.S. policies of forceful intervention.<br /> <br /> If the U.S. global military apparatus arises merely from the macho need to dominate, then why do U.S. leaders want to dominate some nations rather than others? Machismo fails to explain why Washington sides so consistently with landowners, military autocrats, and transnational corporate interests rather than with workers, peasants, students, and egalitarian reformers.<br /> <br /> Most macho posturing allows presidents to show their &quot;toughness&quot; and decisive leadership. It helps improve their ratings. When early in his presidency, President Bill Clinton launched a homicidal air strike against Iraq, he was flexing his image muscles, showing how he was no wimp and could use lethal force when &quot;necessary.&quot; The goal is not macho indulgence per se but getting reelected. If crossdressing in skirt and heels would guarantee reelection, Clinton and every other male politician would throw machismo to the wind and dress themselves accordingly.<br /> <br /> Political leaders know that a show of force rallies the public around the flag, since the people have been made to believe that the nation's survival and their own security depends on such force. Yet most ordinary citizens want to avoid combat; instead they must be drafted. Even most volunteers join the army not from a macho desire to kill and be killed but rather seek a career opportunity or some means of support. Rather than being impelled by their testosterone, most soldiers have to be ordered into battle under threat of severe sanctions.<br /> <br /> Often we are told that the U.S. not only has a right to intervene abroad but an obligation. It is said that &quot;we must accept the responsibilities thrust upon us.&quot; Yet who has thrust this obligation upon us, and why the U.S. must meddle in every corner of the world, remains unclear. In 1992, President George Bush announced that the U.S. was &quot;the world leader&quot; and that other countries expected us to act as such. Each White House occupant, unable to clean up our waterways or develop rational energy systems or provide jobs and decent housing for millions at home, proclaims himself the leader of the entire world.<br /> <br /> But in practice, being &quot;world leader&quot; means that the U.S. will maintain the global system of free market investment and profit accumulation. The U.S. must bring resistant elements to heel, using every form of control and attrition to keep various peoples within the client-state fold. Those who seek alternatives must be made to cry &quot;uncle,&quot; as President Ronald Reagan once said about revolutionary Nicaragua. And indeed it did, along with revolutionary Ethiopia and Mozambique, after enough years of U.S.-sponsored battering.<br /> <br /> One repeatedly hears that U.S. leaders oppose communist countries because they lack political democracy. But successive administrations in Washington have supported some of the world's most repressive regimes, which have regularly practiced torture, intimidation, assassination, and mass arrests. Washington has also supported some of the worst right-wing counterrevolutionary rebel cut-throats: Savimbi's UNITA in Angola, RENAMO in Mozambique, the mujahideen in Afghanistan, and even (in the 1980s) the Pol Pot lunatics in Cambodia.<br /> <br /> Consider the case of Cuba. We're told that decades of U.S. hostility towards Cuba—including embargo, sabotage, and invasion—have resulted from our distaste for Castro's autocratic government and from our concern for the freedoms of the Cuban people. But why this sudden urge to &quot;restore&quot; Cuban liberty? In the decades before the 1959 Cuban Revolution, successive U.S. administrations backed a brutally repressive autocracy headed by General Fulgencio Batista.<br /> <br /> The significant but unspoken difference was that Batista was a comprador leader who kept Cuba wide open to U.S. capital penetration. In contrast, Castro eliminated the private corporate control of the economy, nationalised U.S. holdings, and renovated the class structure more equally and collectively: that's what makes him so insufferable.<br /> <br /> Far from supporting democracy around the world, the U.S. national security state since World War II has actively destroyed progressive democratic governments in some two dozen countries. In justifying the 1973 overthrow of Chile's democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, Henry Kissinger argued that when pressed to choose between the economy and democracy, we must save the economy. More precisely, Kissinger wanted to save the ''private big corporate'' economy.<br /> <br /> In two short years, Allende's Popular Unity government noticeably shifted the gross national income away from wealthy elites who lived off interest, dividends, and rents, and towards those who lived off wages and salaries. In Allende's Chile, the rich had their consumer goods rationed, and were expected to pay taxes for the first time. Some of their holdings and businesses were nationalised. Meanwhile, the poor benefitted from public works employment, literacy programmes, worker cooperatives, and a free half-litre of milk each day for every child.<br /> <br /> A few of Chile's radio and television stations began offering a view of public affairs that differed from the ideological monopoly of the nation's business-owned media. Far from endangering democracy, Allende's Popular Unity government was endangering the privileged oligarchs by expanding democracy. What alarmed leaders like Kissinger was not that social democratic reforms were failing but that they were succeeding. The trend towards politico-economic equality had to be stopped. In the name of saving Chile's democracy, the CIA and the White House destroyed it, instituting a fascist dictatorship that tortured, executed, and &quot;disappeared&quot; thousands, and suppressed all opposition media, political parties, labour unions, and peasant organisations.<br /> <br /> Immediately after the military coup, General Motors, which had closed its plants Allende's election, resumed operations, demonstrating how much more comfortable Big Capital is with fascism than social democracy. Far from rescuing the economy, the CIA-sponsored coup provoked an era of skyrocketing inflation and national debt, with drastic increases in unemployment, poverty, and hunger.<br /> <br /> Official Washington cannot reveal to the American people that its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions really make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals. Instead we are told that our nation's security is at stake. But people do not always believe that mini-powers like Cuba, Panama, or Nicaragua, or a micro-power like Grenada, really threaten our survival. So during the Cold War we were told that these nations were merely instruments of Soviet world aggrandisement. For decades, &quot;Soviet expansionism&quot; served as the justification for U.S. interventionism.<br /> <br /> But why does U.S. global interventionism continue well after the USSR and the Warsaw Pact military alliance have dissolved and the Cold War has been declared to be over? As CIA Director Robert Gates admitted, &quot;The threat to the United States of deliberate attack from that quarter has all but disappeared for the foreseeable future.&quot;<br /> <br /> Officials are now trying to convince us that new enemies suddenly have emerged. Former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney announced that the Soviet Union had not been the only threat; the world was full of other dangerous adversaries that he apparently had previously overlooked. Now we discovered that troubles could arise from within Third World countries themselves, even without any Soviet instigation.<br /> <br /> U.S. policymakers and their dutiful, corporate-dominated media mouthpieces have alerted us to the mortal peril posed by international terrorists, Islamic fanatics, narcokiller cartels, nuclear madmen, and Third World Hitlers. The few remaining communist governments such as Cuba and North Korea are no longer instruments of Moscow but rather evils in their own right.<br /> <br /> For decades, we thought we needed our enormous navy to protect us from the USSR. Now, with that threat gone, chief of naval operations Admiral Trost, explained that we nevertheless still need an enormous navy. The navy, he said, must go to trouble spots and &quot;show the flag&quot;—vintage imperialist terminology for the practice of sending battleships to foreign ports to intimidate restive populations with a display of strength.<br /> <br /> The ships do not show the flag so much as they show their guns: the long-range ones that can lob death and destruction many miles inland. We used to call such displays &quot;gunboat diplomacy.&quot; Today, it's less likely to be a gunboat or battleship than a naval task force with aircraft carriers, fighter bombers, missiles, and helicopter gunships.<br /> <br /> Trots has also argued that we needed a powerful navy for &quot;local and regional conflicts.&quot; It was the self-anointed task of the U.S. to police a troubled world. But why? For whose benefit and at whose expense was the policing done? Officials do not usually tell us that their job is to protect global transnational corporations from egalitarian social movements. Instead they use coded terms such as &quot;local and regional conflicts.&quot; When all else fails, they talk about defending &quot;our interests&quot; abroad, a catch-all phrase that justifies almost any action.<br /> <br /> During the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton vowed to chart a new course for our nation's future, reminding us that we must have the &quot;courage to change.&quot; But once elected, Clinton remained in lockstep with his conservative Republican predecessors, pushing for increased U.S. military spending, flaunting the U.S. as a global superpower, and vowing that &quot;U.S. interests&quot; around the world will be supported by military force when necessary.<br /> <br /> Like his predecessors, Clinton allowed no critical examination of what those interests might be. As a member of the corporate-dominated, elite policymaking bodies—Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Conference, and the Trilateral Commission, Clinton is—ideologically and personally—part of the inner circle of power, not one to rock the boat, let alone change its course.<br /> <br /> Some critics view the U.S. military establishment as nothing but a wasteful boondoggle. They often view U.S. foreign policy as stupid. But what may be costly and misguided for one class interest (ordinary citizens and taxpayers) may be rewarding and productive for another (defence contractors and military brass). This might explain why U.S. military spending remains at a level far above the height of Cold War levels (even after adjusting for inflation).<br /> <br /> Essentially, military spending happens to be one of the greatest sources of domestic capital accumulation. It constitutes a form of public expenditure that business likes very much. When the government spends funds on the not-for-profit sector of the economy—such as the postal service, publicly-owned railroads, or public hospitals—it demonstrates how the public can create goods, services, and jobs, and expand the tax base, without the need for private gain by corporate investors. Such spending competes with the private market.<br /> <br /> In contrast, a defence contract is like any other business contract, only better. The taxpayers' money covers all production risks. Unlike refrigerator manufacturers who must worry about selling their refrigerators, weapons manufacturers have a product that already has been contracted, complete with guaranteed cost overruns. The government also picks up most of the research and development costs of manufacturing the product.<br /> <br /> Military spending opens up a potentially limitless area of demand. How much military security or supremacy is enough? There are always new weapons to be developed and updated. Furthermore, most military contracts are awarded without competitive bidding, so arms manufacturers pretty much get the price they ask for. Hence, it's tempting to develop ever more elaborate and costly weapons and supplies, that will be ever more profitable. No wonder defence contractors enjoy a rate of return substantially higher than usually available on the civilian market. No wonder corporate leaders have not rushed to cut military spending. Why dismantle their limitless, low risk, high profit, multibillion dollar cornucopia? Arms-spending bolsters the corporate private sector, even as it impoverishes the not-for-profit public sector.<br /> <br /> These, then, comprise the two basic reasons why the U.S. assiduously remains an armed superpower even in the absence of a real enemy: First, keeping the world safe for global capital accumulation requires a massive military establishment. Second, a massive military constitutes a source of immense capital accumulation.<br /> <br /> U.S. Americans should understand how, in the name of peace, militarists wage a perpetual silent war against the peoples of the world. We should understand that we have an interest in ending defence-industry welfarism. And we should realise that we gain nothing by supporting a global interventionism that plunders the world's resources of the world and accumulates profits for the few, while impoverishing the many at home and abroad.<br /> [[Category:Library works by Michael Parenti]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:85_Billionaires_and_the_Better_Half&diff=76023 2024-09-30T12:47:05Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=85 Billionaires and the Better Half|author=Michael Parenti|published_date=2014-02-18|type=Article|source=https://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/02/18/85-billionaires-and-better-half|display_title=yes}}<br /> <br /> '''''85 Billionaires and the Better Half''''' is an article by [[Michael Parenti]].<br /> <br /> == Text ==<br /> [[File:Urban slum hanoi.png.jpg|center|thumb|An urban slum in Hanoi, Viet Nam. (Photo: Flickr / United Nations / Creative Commons)]]<br /> The world's 85 richest individuals possess as much wealth as the 3.5 billion souls who compose the poorer half of the world's population, or so it was announced in a report by Oxfam International. The assertion sounds implausible to me. I think the 85 richest individuals, who together are worth many hundreds of billions of dollars, must have ''far more wealth'' than the poorest half of our global population.<br /> <br /> How could these two cohorts, the 85 richest and 3.5 billion poorest, have the same amount of wealth? The great majority of the 3.5 billion have no net wealth at all. Hundreds of millions of them have jobs that hardly pay enough to feed their families. Millions of them rely on supplements from private charity and the public assistance when they can. Hundreds of millions are undernourished, suffer food insecurity, or go hungry each month, including many among the very poorest in the United States.<br /> <br /> &quot;The number of people living in poverty is growing at a faster rate than the world's population. So poverty is spreading even as wealth accumulates. It is not enough to bemoan this enormous inequality, we must also explain why it is happening.&quot;<br /> <br /> Most of the 3.5 billion earn an average of $2.50 a day. The poorest 40 percent of the world population accounts for just 5 percent of all global income. About 80 percent of all humanity live on less than $10 a day. And the poorest 50 percent maintain only 7.2 percent of the world's private consumption. How exactly could they have accumulated an amount of surplus wealth comparable to the 85 filthy richest?<br /> <br /> Hundreds of millions live in debt even in &quot;affluent&quot; countries like the United States. They face health care debts, credit card debts, college tuition debts, and so on. Many, probably most who own homes—and don't live in shacks or under bridges or in old vans—are still straddled with mortgages. This means their net family wealth is negative, minus-zero. They have no propertied wealth; they live in debt.<br /> <br /> Millions among the poorest 50 percent in the world may have cars but most of them also have car payments. They are driving in debt. In countries like Indonesia, for the millions without private vehicles, there are the overloaded, battered buses, poorly maintained vehicles that specialise in breakdowns and ravine plunges. Among the lowest rungs on the 50 percent are the many who pick thru garbage dumps and send their kids off to work in grim, soul-destroying sweatshops.<br /> <br /> The 85 richest in the world probably include the four members of the Walton family (owners of Wal-Mart, among the top ten super rich in the USA) who together are worth over $100 billion. Rich families like the DuPonts have controlling interests in giant corporations like General Motors, Coca-Cola, and United Brands. They own about forty manorial estates and private museums in Delaware alone and have set up 31 tax-exempt foundations. The super rich in America and in many other countries find ways, legal and illegal, to shelter much of their wealth in secret accounts. We don't really know how very rich the very rich are.<br /> <br /> Regarding the poorest portion of the world population—whom I would call the valiant, struggling &quot;better half&quot;—what mass configuration of wealth could we possibly be talking about? The aggregate wealth possessed by the 85 super-richest individuals, and the aggregate wealth owned by the world's 3.5 billion poorest, are of different dimensions and different natures. Can we really compare private jets, mansions, landed estates, super luxury vacation retreats, luxury apartments, luxury condos, and luxury cars, not to mention hundreds of ''billions'' of dollars in equities, bonds, commercial properties, art works, antiques, etc.—can we really compare all that enormous wealth against some millions of used cars, used furniture, and used television sets, many of which are ready to break down? Of what resale value if any, are such minor durable-use commodities, especially in communities of high unemployment, dismal health and housing conditions, no running water, no decent sanitation facilities, et cetera? We don't really know how poor the very poor really are.<br /> <br /> Millions of children who number in the lower 50 percent never see the inside of a school. Instead they labour in mills, mines, and on farms, under conditions of peonage. Nearly a billion people are unable to read or write. The number of people living in poverty is growing at a faster rate than the world's population. So poverty is spreading even as wealth accumulates. It is not enough to bemoan this enormous inequality, we must also explain why is it happening.<br /> <br /> But for now, let me repeat: the world's richest 85 individuals do not have the same amount of accumulated wealth as the world's poorest 50 percent. They have vastly more. The multitude on the lower rungs—even taken as a totality—have next to nothing.<br /> [[Category:Library works by Michael Parenti]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:On_the_shortcomings_of_party_work_and_measures_to_eliminate_Trotskyist_and_other_double-dealers&diff=76022 2024-09-30T12:47:05Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Report by Joseph Stalin to the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|author=Joseph Stalin|spoken on=March 3, 1937|type=Speech|source=[http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/MB37.html#s0 Marx2mao]}}<br /> <br /> Comrades, it can be seen from the reports and the discussion on them at the Plenum that we are dealing here with the following three basic facts: <br /> <br /> First, the wrecking and diversive spying work of the agents of foreign countries, among whom the Trotskyites played an active enough role, affected to some degree or other all or almost all our organizations, both economic, administrative and Party. <br /> <br /> Second, the agents of foreign countries among the Trotskyites penetrated not only into the lower organizations but also into some responsible positions. <br /> <br /> Third, some of our leading comrades, both in the center and in the localities, were not only unable to recognize the real faces of these wreckers, diversionists, spies and murderers, but they were so careless, complacent and naive that not infrequently they themselves assisted the agents of foreign powers to get into various respollsible positions. <br /> <br /> These are three indisputable facts which naturally arise from the reports and the discussion on them. <br /> <br /> == Political Carelessness ==<br /> How can it be explained that our leading comrades, who have a rich experience of struggle against every kind of anti-Party and anti-Soviet trend, proved to be so blind and naive in this case that they were unable to recognize the real face of the enemies of the people, were unable to discern the wolves in sheep's clothing, were unable to tear the mask from them?<br /> <br /> Can it be stated that the wrecking and diversional -- spying -- work of the agents of foreign powers who were busy on the territory of the U.S.S.R. could be something unexpected and unprecedented for us? No, this cannot be stated. This is shown by the wrecking acts in various branches of national economy during the past ten years, starting with the Shakhty period, which are set out in official documents. <br /> <br /> Can it be stated that we have lately had no warning signals and forewarning directives about the wrecking, spying or terroristic activity of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite agents of fascism? No, this cannot be stated. There were such signals, and Bolsheviks have no right to forget them. <br /> <br /> The foul murder of Comrade Kirov was the first serious warning showing that the enemies of the people will practice duplicity and, in doing so, will disguise themselves as Bolsheviks, as Party members, so as to worm their way into our confidence and open a path for themselves into our organizations. <br /> <br /> The trial of the &quot;Leningrad Center&quot;, like the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial, provided new foundations for the lessons arising from the fact of the foul murder of Comrade Kirov. <br /> <br /> The trial of the &quot;Zinoviev-Trotskyite bloc&quot; extended the lessons of the previous trials, plainly showing that the Zinovievites and Trotskyites unite around themselves all the hostile bourgeois elements, that they had become the spying and diversionist -- terroristic -- agency of the German secret police, that double-dealing and concealment are the only means by which the Zinovievites and Trotskyites can penetrate into our organizations, that vigilance and political keenness are the truest means of preventing such penetration, for the liquidation of the Zinovievite-Trotskyite gang. <br /> <br /> The Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. in its closed letter of January 18, 1935, regarding the foul murder of Comrade Kirov, gave a resolute warning to the Party organizations against political complacency and parochial gaping. It says in the closed letter: &lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;We must put an end to opportunist complacency arising from the mistaken presupposition that in proportion to the growth of our forces the enemy will grow ever tamer and more inoffensive. Such a presupposition is basically wrong. It is a belch of the Right deviation, which assured everyone that the enemies would quietly creep into socialism, that in the long run they would become real socialists. It is not the business of the Bolsheviks to rest on their laurels and stand around gaping. It is not complacency that we need but vigilance, real Bolshevik revolutionary vigilance. It must be remembered that the more desperate the position of the enemies, the more willing they will be to seize on extreme measures as the only measures of doomed people in their struggle against Soviet power. We must remember this and be vigilant.&quot; &lt;/blockquote&gt;So signals and warnings were given.<br /> <br /> What did these signals and warnings call for?<br /> <br /> They called for the liquidation of the weakness of Party organizational work and the conversion of the Party into all impregnable fortress into which not a single double-dealer could penetrate.<br /> <br /> They called for putting a stop to the underestimation of Party political work and making a resolute turn in the direction of strengthening such work to the utmost, in the direction of strengthening political vigilance.<br /> <br /> And what happened? The facts have shown that our comrades took in these signals and warnings with more than stiffness.<br /> <br /> This is eloquently shown by all the facts which we know from the sphere of the campaign for verifying and exchanging Party documents.<br /> <br /> How can it beexplained that these warnings and signals did not produce the proper action? How can it be explained that our Party comrades in spite of their experience of struggle against anti-Soviet elements, in spite of a whole series of warning signals and forewarning directives, proved to be politically shortsighted in the face of the wrecking and spying diversive work of the enemies of the people?<br /> <br /> Is it that our Party comrades have become worse than they were before, have become less conscientious and disciplined? No, of course not.<br /> <br /> Is it that they haze begun to degenerate? Again no. Such a supposition is completely unfounded.<br /> <br /> Then, what is the matter? Whence arises such gaping, carelessness, complacency, blindness?<br /> <br /> The fact is that our Party comrades, carried away by economic campaigns and by enormous successes on the front of economic construction, simply forgot some very important facts which Bolsheviks have no right to forget. They forgot one fundamental fact from the sphere of the international position of the U.S.S.R. and did not notice two very important facts which apply directly to the present wreckers, spies, diversionists and murderers sheltering behind the Party card and disguised as Bolsheviks.<br /> <br /> == Capitalist Encirclement ==<br /> What are these facts which our Party comrades forgot, or which they simply did not notice? <br /> <br /> They forgot that Soviet power has conquered only one-sixth of the world, that five-sixths of the world is in the possession of capitalist powers. They forgot that the Soviet Union is in the conditions of capitalist encirclement. It is an accepted thing to talk loosely about capitalist encirclement, but people do not want to ponder upon what sort of a thing this capitalist encirclement is. <br /> <br /> Capitalist encirclement -- that is no empty phrase; that is a very real and unpleasant feature. Capitalist encirclement means that here is one country, the Soviet Union, which has established the socialist order on its own territory and besides this there are many countries, bourgeois countries, which continue to carry on a capitalist mode of life and which surround the Soviet Union, waiting for an opportunity to attack it, break it, or at any rate to undermine its power and weaken it. <br /> <br /> Our comrades forgot this fundamental fact. But it is that precisely which determines the basis of relations between the capitalist encirclement and the Soviet Union. <br /> <br /> Take for example the bourgeois states. Simple-minded people may think that extremely good relations reign between them, as between states of the same type. But only simpleminded people can think so. In reality the relations between them are far from being those of good neighbors. It has been proved as plainly as two and two make four that the bourgeois states shower their spies, wreckers, diversionists and sometimes murderers on each other, behind their frontiers; give them instructions to worm themselves into the factories and institutions of these states, to create their own network there and &quot;in case of necessity&quot; to smash them from the rear so as to weaken them and undermine their power. Such is the case at the present time. <br /> <br /> Such, too, has been the case in the past. Take for example the countries of Europe at the time of Napoleon the First. France at that time was swarming with spies and diversionists from the camp of the Russians, Germans, Austrians and English. And, at the same time, England, the German states, Austria, and Russia had behind their lines no fewer spies and diversionists from the French camp. Agents of Great Britain twice made attempts on the life of Napoleon, and several times roused the peasants of the Vendee in France against the government of Napoleon. And what was Napoleon's government? A bourgeois government which had strangled the French Revolution and retained only those results of the revolution which were profitable to the big bourgeoisie. Needless to say, Napoleon's government did not remain indebted to its neighbors. It also undertook its own diversional measures. Such was the case in the past, 130 years ago. Such is the case now, 130 years after Napoleon the First. France and England at the present day are swarming with German spies and diversionists and on the other hand, Anglo-French spies and diversionists in turn are at work in Germany. America is swarming with Japanese spies and diversionists, and Japan with American. <br /> <br /> Such is the law of relations between bourgeois states. <br /> <br /> The question must be put: why should the bourgeois countries be gentler and more neighborly to the Soviet socialist government than they are to bourgeois states or their own type? Why should they send fewer spies; wreckers, diversionists and murderers behind the frontiers of the Soviet Union than they send behind the frontiers of bourgeois countries which are akin to them? Where did you get this from? Will it not be truer, from the point of view of Marxism, to suppose that the bourgeois states must be sending twice or three times as many wreckers, spies, diversionists and murderers behind the lines of the Soviet Union than behind those of any bourgeois state? <br /> <br /> Is it not clear that as long as capitalist encirclement exists there will be wreckers, spies, diversionists and murderers in our country sent behind our lines by the agents of foreign slates? <br /> <br /> Our Party comrades forgot about all this, and having forgotten were caught unawares. <br /> <br /> This is why the spying and diversive work of the Trotskyite agents of the Japanese and German secret police was completely unexpected by some of our comrades. <br /> <br /> == Present-Day Trotskyism ==<br /> To proceed in carrying on a struggle against the Trotskyite agents, our Party comrades did not notice, they overlooked the fact, that present-day Trotskyism is no longer what it was, let us say, seven or eight years ago; that Trotskyism and the Trotskyites have passed through a serious evolution in this period which has utterly changed the face of Trotskyism; that in view of this the struggle against Trotskyism and the method of struggle against it must also be utterly changed. Our Party comrades did not notice that Trotskyism has ceased to be a political trend in the working class, that it has changed from the political trend in the working class which it was seven or eight years ago, into a frantic and unprincipled gang of wreckers, diversionists, spies and murderers acting on the instructions of the intelligence services of foreign states. <br /> <br /> What is a political trend in the working class? A political trend in the working class is a group or a party which has its own definite political face, platform and program, which does not and cannot hide its views from the working class but, on the contrary, openly and honestly carries on propaganda for its views in full view of the working class, does not fear to show its political face to the working class, does not fear to demonstrate its real aims and tasks to the working class but, on the contrary, goes to the working class with open visor to convince it of the correctness of its views. In the past, seven or eight years ago, Trotskyism was one of such political trends in the working class, an anti-Leninist trend, it is true, and therefore profoundly mistaken, but nevertheless a political trend. <br /> <br /> Can it be said that present-day Trotskyism, the 1936 Trotskyism, let us say, is a political trend in the working class? No, this cannot be said. Why? Because the present-day Trotskyites are afraid to show their real face to the working class, are afraid to disclose their real aims and tasks to it, and carefully hide their political face from the working class, fearing that if the working class should learn of their real intentions it will curse them as an alien people and drive them from it. This in reality explains how it is that the chief method of Trotskyite work is now not open and honest propaganda of its views among the working class, but the masking of its views, servile and fawning praise for the views of its opponents, a false and pharisaical trampling of its own views in the dirt. <br /> <br /> If you remember, Kamenev and Zinoviev at the trial in 1936 strenuously denied that they had any political platform. It was fully possible for them to develop their political platform at the trial. But they did not do so, declaring that they had no political platform. There can be no doubt that both of them were lying when they denied that they had a platform. Even the blind can now see that they had their political platform. But why did they deny the existence of any political platform? <br /> <br /> Because they were afraid to disclose their real political face, they were afraid to demonstrate their real platform for the restoration of capitalism in the U.S.S.R., fearing that such a platform would arouse revulsion in the working class. <br /> <br /> At the trial in 1937, Piatakov, Radek and Sokolnikov took a different line. They did not deny that the Trotskyites and Zinovievites had a political platform. They admitted that they had a definite political platform, recognized and unfolded it in their testimony. But they unfolded it not to call on the working class, not to call on the people to support the Trotskyite platform, but in order to curse it and brand it as an anti-people's and anti-proletarian platform. <br /> <br /> The restoration of capitalism, the liquidation of the collective farms and state farms, the restoration of the system of exploitation, an alliance with the fascist forces of Germany and Japan to bring war against the Soviet Union nearer, a struggle for war and against the policy of peace, the territorial dismemberment of the Soviet Union, giving the Ukraine to the Germans and the maritime provinces to the Japanese, the preparation of the military defeat of the Soviet Union if enemy slates should attack it, and, as a means of achieving these tasks, wrecking, diversion, individual terrorism against the leaders of the Soviet government, espionage for the benefit of the Japanese and German fascist forces --such was the political platform of presentday Trotskyism which was set forth by Piatakov, Radek and Sokolnikov. <br /> <br /> Naturally the Trotskyites could not but hide such a platform from the people. from the workings class. And they hid it not only from the working class but also from the Trotskyite rank and file, and not only front the Trotskyite rank and file but even from the leading group of the Trotskyites, consisting of a small handful of 30 or 40 people. When Radek and Piatakov asked Trotsky's permission to call a small conference, 30 or 40 people, to inform them of the character of this platform, Trotsky forbade them, saying it was inexpedient to talk of the real nature of the platform even to a small group of Trotskyites as such an &quot;operation&quot; might cause a split. <br /> <br /> &quot;Political figures&quot; hiding their views and their platform not only from the working class but also from the Troskyite rank and file, and not only from the Trotskyite rank and file, but from the leading group or Trotskyites -- such is the face of present-day Trotskyism. <br /> <br /> But it follows from this that present-day Trotskyism can no longer be called a political trend in the working class. Present-day Trotskyism is not a political trend in the working class but a gang without principle, without ideas, of wreckers, diversionists, intelligence service agents, spies, murderers, a gang of sworn enemies of the working class, working in the pay of the intelligence services or foreign states. <br /> <br /> Such is the indisputable result of the evolution of Trotskyism in the past seven or eight years. <br /> <br /> Such is the difference between Trotskyism in the past and Trotskyism at the present time. <br /> <br /> The mistake of our Party comrades is that they did not notice this profound difference between Trotskyism in the past and Trotskyism at the present time. They did not notice that the Trotskyites have long since ceased to be people devoted to an idea, that the Trotskyites have long since turned into highway robbers, capable of any foulness, capable of all that is disgusting, to the point of espionage and the outright betrayal of their country, if only they can harm the Soviet government and Soviet power. They did not notice this and were therefore unable to reconstruct themselves in time to wage battle against the Trotskyites in a new and more regular manner. This is why the abominable work of the Trotskyites of late years was a complete surprise for some of our Party comrades. <br /> <br /> To proceed. Finally, our Party comrades did not notice that there is an important difference between the present-day wreckers and diversionists, on the one hand, among whom the Trotskyite agents of fascism play &quot;an active part&quot;, and the wreckers and diversionists of the time of the Shakhty trial, on the other hand. <br /> <br /> In the first place, the Shakhty and Industrial Party wreckers were people openly alien to us. They were in greater part former owners of factories, former managers for the old employers, former shareholders of old joint-stock companies, or simple bourgeois specialists who were openly hostile to us politically. None of our people had any doubt about the authenticity of the political face of these gentlemen. And the Shakhty wreckers themselves did not conceal their distaste for the Soviet system. <br /> <br /> The same cannot be said of the present-day wreckers and diversionists, the Trotskyites. The present-day wreckers and diversionists, the Trotskyites, are mostly Party people with a Party card in their pocket, and consequently people who formally are not alien to us. <br /> <br /> Whereas the old wreckers went against our people, the new wreckers on the contrary cringe to our people, laud them, lick their boots, in order to worm their way into their confidence. As you see, the difference is essential. <br /> <br /> In the second place, the strength of the Shakhty and Industrial Party wreckers was that to a greater or lesser degree they possessed the necessary technical knowledge, while our people, not possessing such knowledge, were forced to learn from them. This circumstance gave a great advantage to the wreckers of the Shakhty period, made it possible for them to do their wrecking work freey and unhindered, made it possible for them to deceive our people ''technically.'' <br /> <br /> This is not so with the present-day wreckers, with the Trotskyites. The present-day wreckers have no technical superiority over our people. On the contrary, our people are better trained technically than the present-day wreckers, than the Trotskyites. During the time from the Shakhty period to our own days, tens of thousands of genuine, technically strong Bolshevik cadres have grown up among us. One could mention thousands and tens of thousands of Bolshevik leading figures technically developed in comparison with whom all such people as Piatakov and Livshitz, Shestov and Boguslavsky, Muralov and Drobnis are empty windbags and mere tyros from the point of view of technical training. In this case, what does the strength of the present-day wreckers, the Trotskyites, consist of? Their strength lies in the Party card, in the possession of a Party card. This strength lies in the fact that the Party card gives them political trust and opens the doors of all our institutions and organizations to them. <br /> <br /> Their advantage lies in the fact that holding a Party card and pretending to be friends of the Soviet power they tricked our people ''politically'', misused their confidence, did their wrecking work furtively, and disclosed our secrets of state to the enemies of the Soviet Union. This &quot;advantage&quot; is a doubtful one in its political and moral values, but still it is an &quot;advantage&quot;. This &quot;advantage&quot;, in reality, explains the fact that the Trotskyite wreckers, as people with a Party card having access to all places in our institutions and organizations, were a real windfall for the intelligence services of foreign states. <br /> <br /> The mistake of some of our Party comrades is that they did not notice, did not understand all this elifferellce between the old and the new wreckers between the Sllakhty wreckers and the Trotskyites, and not noticing this, they were unable to reconstruct themselves in tinle so as lo wage battle against the new wreckers in a new way. <br /> <br /> == The Seamy Side of Economic Success ==<br /> Such are the basic facts from the sphere of our international and internal situation, about which many of our party comrades forgot, or which they did not notice.<br /> <br /> This is why our people were taken by surprise by the events of the last few years as regards wrecking and diversion. <br /> <br /> It may be asked: But why did our people not notice all this, why did they forget about all this? Where did all this forgetfulness, blindness, carelessness and complacency come from? <br /> <br /> Is it an organic defect in the work of our people? No, it is not an organic defect. It is a temporary phenomenon which can be rapidly liquidated by some efforts on the part of our people. <br /> <br /> Then what is the matter? <br /> <br /> The matter is that our Party comrades have been totally absorbed in economic work in recent years, have been engrossed to the limit in economic successes, and being engrossed in all these things forgot about all else, threw aside all else. <br /> <br /> The matter is that being carried away by economic successes they began to regard this as the beginning and end of everything, and simply gave up paying attention to small things as the international position of the Soviet Union, capitalist encirclement, strengthening of the political work of the Party, struggle against wrecking, etc., supposing all these questions to be second-rate and even third-rate matters. <br /> <br /> Successes and achievements are, of course, a great thing. Our successes in the sphere of socialist construction are truly enormous. <br /> <br /> But successes, like everything else under the sun, have their seamy side. Among people who are not very skilful in politics big successes and big achievements not infrequently give rise to carelessness, complacency, self-satisfaction, overweening self-confidence, swell-headedness and bragging. You cannot deny that braggarts have lately developed among us tremendously. It is not surprising in these circumstances of big and serious successes in the sphere of socialist construction that feelings of boastfulness are created, feelings of showy demonstration of our successes, and feelings are created for underestimating the strength of our enemies, feelings of overestimation of our own strength, and as a result of all this political blindness appears. <br /> <br /> I must here say a few words about the dangers connected with successes, about the dangers connected with achievements. <br /> <br /> We know by experience of the dangers connected with difficulties. For a number of years we have been fighting against such kinds of dangers, and I must say not without success. Among people who are not staunch, dangers connected with difficulties not infrequently give rise to downcast feelings, distrust in their own forces, feelings of pessimism. And, on the contrary, when it is a matter of fighting against the dangers which arise from difficulties, people are tempered in this struggle and emerge from the struggle really granite Bolsheviks. <br /> <br /> Such is the nature of the dangers connected with difficulties. Such are the results of overcoming difficulties. <br /> <br /> But there is another kind of danger, the danger connected with successes, the danger connected with achievements. Yes, yes, comrades, dangers connected with successes, with achievements. These dangers consist in the fact that among people little skilled in politics and not having seen much, the condition of successes -- success after success, achievement after achievement, the overfulfilment of plans after the overfulfilment of plans --gives rise to feelings of carelessness and self-satisfaction, creates an atmosphere of showy triumphs and mutual congratulations which kill the sense of proportion and dull political instinct, take the spring out of people and impel them to rest on their laurels. <br /> <br /> It is not surprising that in this narcotic atmosphere of swell-headedness and self-satisfaction, this atmosphere of showy demonstrations and loud self-praise, people forget some essential facts which are of first-grade significance for the fate of our country; people begin to miss seeing such unpleasant facts as capitalist encirclement, the new forms of wrecking, the dangers connected with our successes, etc. <br /> <br /> Capitalist encirclement? A mere bagatelle! What significance can some capitalist encirclement or other have if we fulfil and surpass our economic plans? The new forms of wrecking, the struggle against Trotskyism? Mere details! What significance can all these trifles have when we fulfil and surpass our economic plans? The Party statutes, the election of Party organs, the reporting of the Party leaders to the mass of the Party members -- is there really any need for all this? Is it worth while worrying about all these trifles at all if our economy grows and the material situation of the workers and peasants becomes ever better and better? Mere details! We overfulfil the plans, our Party is not bad, the Central Committee of the Party is also not bad -- what else do we need? They are funny people sitting there in Moscow in the Central Committee of the Party. They invent some kind of questions, talk about some wrecking or other, don't sleep themselves, and don't let other people sleep. <br /> <br /> This is an example plain to see of how easily and &quot;simply&quot; some of our inexperienced comrades are infected with political blindness as the result of a dizzying rapture in economic successes. <br /> <br /> Such are the dangers connected with successes, with achievements. <br /> <br /> Such are the reasons why our Party comrades are carried away by economic successes, have forgotten facts of an international and internal character which are of real importance for the Soviet Union, and have not noticed a whole series of dangers surrounding our country. <br /> <br /> Such are the roots of our carelessness, forgetfulness, complacency, and political blindness. <br /> <br /> Such are the roots of the shortcomings in our economic and Party work. <br /> <br /> == Our Tasks ==<br /> How are we to liquidate the shortcomings in our work? What must be done in order to do this? <br /> <br /> It is necessary to carry out the following measures: <br /> <br /> 1. First and foremost the attention of our Party comades who get bogged on &quot;current questions&quot; in one department or another must be turned towards the big political questions of both international and internal character.<br /> <br /> 2. The political work of our Party must be raised to the proper level making the main task that of the political training and Bolshevik steeling of the Party, Soviet and economic cadres.<br /> <br /> 3. It should be explained to our Party comrades that the economic successes. The significance of which is undoubtedly very great and which we shall also strive for in the future, day after day, year after year, are nevertheless not the whole of our socialist construction.<br /> <br /> It should he explained that the seamy sides connected with economic successes and expressed in self-satisfaction, in carelessness, in the deadening of political intuition, can be liquidated only if economic successes are combined with the successes of Party construction and the developed political work of our Party. <br /> <br /> It should be explained that economic successes themselves, their stability and duration, wholly and fully depend on the successes of Party organizational and Party political work, that without this condition economic successes may prove to be built on sand. <br /> <br /> 4. It should be remembered and never forgotten that as long as capitalist encirclement exists there will be wreckers, diversionists, spies, terrorists, sent behind the frontiers of the Soviet Union by the intelligence services of foreign states; this should be remembered and a struggle should be carried on against those comrades who underestimate the significance of the fact of capitalist encirclement, who underestimate the strength and significance of wrecking. <br /> <br /> It should be explained to our Party comrades that no economic successes whatsoever, no matter how great they are, can annul the fact of capitalist encirclement and the results arising therefrom. <br /> <br /> The necessary measures must be taken to give our comrades, both Party and non-Party Bolsheviks, the possibility of getting acquainted with the aims and tasks, with the practice and technique of the wrecking, diversionist and espionage work of the foreign intelligence services. <br /> <br /> 5. It should be explained to our Party comrades that the Trotskyites, who represent the active elements in the diversionist, wrecking and espionage work of the foreign intelligence services, have already long ceased to be a political trend in the working class, that they have already long ceased to serve any idea compatible with the interests of the working class, that they have turned into a gang of wreckers, diversionists, spies, assassins, without principles and ideas, working for the foreign intelligence services. <br /> <br /> It should be explained that in the struggle against contemporary Trotskyism, not the old methods, the methods of discussion, must be used, but new methods, methods for smashing and uprooting it. <br /> <br /> 6. The difference between the present-day wreckers and the wreckers of the Shakhty period should be explained to our Party comrades. It should be explained to them that whereas the wreckers of the Shakhty period misled our people in the sphere of technique, utilizing their technical backwardness, the present-day wreckers with a Party card in their possession deceive our people by utilizing the political trust shown towards them as Party members, utilizing the political carelessness of our people. <br /> <br /> To the old slogan of the mastery of technique which corresponded to the Shakhty period there must be added the new slogan calling for the political training of cadres, the mastery of Bolshevism and the liquidation of our political trustfulness, a slogan which fully corresponds to the present period we are now passing through. <br /> <br /> The question may be asked: Was it not possible ten years ago, at the time of the Shakhty period, to advance both slogans simultaneously, i.e., the first slogan regarding the mastery of technique and the second slogan regarding the political training of cadres? No, it was not possible. Things are not done that way in the Bolshevik Party. At the turning points of the revolutionary movement, some basic slogan is always advanced as the key slogan in order, by catching on to it, to draw in the whole chain. That is what Lenin taught us: find the main link in the chain of our work, lay hold of it, draw it in, in order through it to draw in the whole chain and go forward. The history of the revolutionary movement shows that this is the only correct tactic. <br /> <br /> In the Shakhty period, the weakness of our people lay in their technical backwardness. Technical questions and not political ones were our weak spots at that time. As far as our political attitude towards the wreckers of that time was concerned, it was perfectly clear that it was the attitude of Bolsheviks towards politically alien people. We liquidated this technical weakness of ours by advancing the slogan regarding the mastery of technique and by educating tens and hundreds of thousands of technically steeled Bolshevik cadres during the past period. <br /> <br /> It is a different question now when we have technically developed Bolshevik cadres and when the part of wreckers is played not by openly alien people in possession of technical superiority over our own people, but by people in possession of Party membership cards and enjoying all the rights of Party membership. The weakness from which our people suffer now is not technical backwardness, but political carelessness, blind faith in people who have come by chance into possession of Party membership cards, the failure to check up on people not according to the political declarations they make, but according to the results of the work they do. The key question now facing us is not the liquidation of the technical backwardness of our cadres, for in the main this has already been done, but the liquidation of the political carelessness and political trustfulness in wreckers who have by chance obtained possession of Party membership cards. <br /> <br /> Such is the fundamental difference between the key question in respect to the struggle for cadres in the period of the Shakhty days and the key question of the present period. <br /> <br /> That is why ten years ago we could and should not have issued both the slogans together, namely, the one regarding the mastery of technique and the one regarding the political training of cadres. <br /> <br /> This is why the old slogan of the mastery of technique must now be supplemented by the new slogan of the mastery of Bolshevism, the political training of cadres and the liquidation of our political carelessness. <br /> <br /> 7. We must destroy and cast aside the rotten theory that with every advance we make the class struggle here of necessity would die down more and more, and that in proportion as we achieve successes the class enemy would become more and more tractable. <br /> <br /> This is not only a rotten theory but a dangerous one for it lulls our people, leads them into a trap, and makes it possible for the class enemy to rally for the struggle against the Soviet government. <br /> <br /> On the contrary, the further forward we advance, the greater the successes we achieve, the greater will be the fury of the remnants of the broken exploiting classes, the sooner will they resort to sharper forms of struggle, the more will they seek to harm the Soviet state and the more will they clutch at the most desperate means of struggle, as the last resort of doomed people. <br /> <br /> It should be borne in mind that the remnants of the broken classes in the U.S.S.R. are not alone. They have the direct support of our enemies beyond the bounds of the U.S.S.R. It would be a mistake to think that the sphere of the class struggle is limited to the bounds of the U.S.S.R. While one end of the class struggle has its operation within the bounds of the U.S.S.R., its other stretches to the bounds of the bourgeois states surrounding us. The remnants of the broken classes cannot but be aware of this. And precisely because they are, they will continue their desperate assaults in the future. <br /> <br /> This is what history teaches us. This is what Leninism teaches us. <br /> <br /> We must remember all this and be on our guard. <br /> <br /> 8. We must destroy and cast aside another rotten theory according to which the individual who is not always engaged in wrecking and who even occasionally shows successes in his work cannot be a wrecker. <br /> <br /> This strange theory exposes the naivete of its authors. No wrecker will engage in wrecking all along the line if he wants to avoid being exposed in the shortest possible time. On the contrary, the real wrecker has from time to time to show successes in his work, for this is his only means of keeping himself going as a wrecker, of winning the confidence of people and of continuing his wrecking work. <br /> <br /> I think that this question is clear and requires no further explanation. <br /> <br /> 9. We must destroy and cast aside the third rotten theory, to the effect that the systematic fulfilment of economic plans reduces wrecking and its consequences to naught. <br /> <br /> Such a theory can only have one purpose, namely, to titillate the self-esteem of our departmental officials, to lull them and to weaken their struggle against wrecking. <br /> <br /> What is the meaning of &quot;the systematic fulfilment of our economic plans&quot;? <br /> <br /> First, it has been proved that all our economic plans are below normal because they do not take account of the tremendous reserves and possibilities lying hidden in our national economy. <br /> <br /> Second, the general fulfilment of the economic plans by the commissariats as a whole does not mean that the plans are also fulfilled by certain very important branches. On the contrary, the facts go to show that quite a number of commissariats, which fulfil or even more than fulfil the economic plans for the year, systematically fail to fulfil the plans in several very important branches of the national economy. <br /> <br /> Third, there can be no doubt that had the wreckers not been exposed and thrown out, the position in respect to the fulfilment of economic plans would have been far worse. This is something which the short-sighted authors of the theory under review need to remember. <br /> <br /> Fourth, the wreckers usually adapt the main part of their wrecking work not to the peace-time period, but to that of the eve of war or of war itself. Suppose we were to lull ourselves with the rotten theory of &quot;the systematic fulfilment of the economic plans&quot;, and were not to touch the wreckers. Do the authors of this rotten theory appreciate what a tremendous amount of harm the wreckers would do to our country in case of war, if we were to allow them to remain inside the body of our national economy, sheltered by the rotten theory of &quot;the systematic fulfilment of economic plans&quot;? <br /> <br /> Is it not clear that the theory of &quot;the systematic fulfilment of economic plans&quot; is a theory advantageous to the wreckers? <br /> <br /> 10. We must destroy and cast aside the fourth rotten theory to the effect that the Stakhanov movement is the chief means for liquidation of wrecking. <br /> <br /> This theory has been invented so as to divert the blow from the wreckers with a noise of chatter about Stakhanov workers and the Stakhanov movement. <br /> <br /> In his report, Comrade Molotov quoted a whole number of facts which go to show how the Trotskyites and non-Trotskyite wreckers in the Kuznets and Don Basins abused the confidence of our politically careless comrades, systematically led the Stakhanov workers a dance, placed spokes in their wheels, so to speak, artificially created a whole number of obstacles preventing their working successfully and finally succeeded in disorganizing their work. <br /> <br /> What could the Stakhanov workers do alone if the way capital construction was carried on by the wreckers in the Don Basin, let us say, led to a gap between the slowly moving prepatory work of coal mining and all the other fields of the work? <br /> <br /> Is it not clear that the Stakhanov movement itself is in need of our effective aid against all the various machinations of the wreckers so as to speed things on and to fulfil its great mission? Is it not clear that the struggle against wrecking for its liquidations and the gaining of the upper hand over wrecking is the necessary condition for the Stakhanov movement to blossom out to the full? I think that this question is also clear and in no need of further comment. <br /> <br /> 11. We must destroy and cast aside the fifth rotten theory to the effect that the Trotskyite wreckers possess no more reserve, that they are mustering their last reserves. <br /> <br /> This is untrue, comrades. Only naive people could invent such a theory. The Trotskyite wreckers have their reserves. These consist first and foremost of the remnants of the smashed exploiting classes in the U.S.S.R. They consist of a whole number of groups and organizations beyond the bounds of the U.S.S.R. and hostile tot he Soviet Union. <br /> <br /> Take, for example, the Trotskyite counter-revolutionary Fourth International, two-thirds of which is made up of spies and subversive agents. Isn't this a reserve? Is it not clear that this international of spies will select forces to do the spying and wrecking work of the Trotskyites? <br /> <br /> Or take, for example, the group of the rascal Sheflo in Norway, who provided a haven for the arch-spy Trotsky and helped him to do harm to the Soviet Union. Isn't this group a reserve? Who can deny that this counter-revolutionary group will continue in the future to render services to the Trotskyite spies and wreckers? <br /> <br /> Or take, for example, the Souvarine group in France, a group of rascals like Sheflo. Isn't this a reserve? Can it be denied that this group of scoundrels will also help the Trotskyites in their espionage and wrecking work against the Soviet Union? <br /> <br /> All these ladies and gentlemen from Germany, all the Ruth Fischers, Maslovs and Urbans who have sold themselves body and soul to the fascists -- aren't they reserves for the espionage and wrecking work of the Trotskyites? <br /> <br /> Or take, for example, the well-known gang of American writers headed by the notorious racketeer Eastman, all these gangsters of the pen who live by slandering the working class of the Soviet Union -- aren't they reserves for Trotskyism? <br /> <br /> No, the rotten theory that the Trotskyites are mustering their last forces must be cast aside. <br /> <br /> 12. Finally, we must destroy and cast aside still another rotten theory to the effect that since we Bolsheviks are many while the wreckers are few; since we Bolsheviks have the support of tens of millions of people while the Trotskyite wreckers can be numbered in tens and units, then we Bolsheviks can afford to pay no attention to such a handful of wreckers. <br /> <br /> This is incorrect, comrades. This more than strange theory has been invented so as to bring solace to certain of our leading comrades who have failed in their work by reason of their inability to carry on a struggle against the wrecking, to lull their vigilance and to make it possible for them to sleep in peace. <br /> <br /> It is, of course, true that the Trotskyite wreckers have the support of isolated individuals, while the Bolsheviks have the support of tens of millions of people. But it lay no means follows from this that the wreckers are not able to inflict very serious damage on us. It does not at all need a big number of people to do harm and to cause damage. Tens of thousands of workers have to be set to work to build a Dnieprostroy, but it requires not more than a few dozen men to blow it up. Several Red Army corps may be necessary to win a battle during war time. But it only needs a few spies somewhere in the army headquarters or even in a divisional staff to steal the plan of operations and pass it on to the enemy for this gain to be lost. Thousands of people are required to build a big railway bridges but a few people are sufficient to blow it up. Tens and hundreds of such examples could be quoted. <br /> <br /> Consequently, we must not comfort ourselves with the fact that we are many, while they, the Trotskyite wreckers, are few. <br /> <br /> We must bring about a situation where there is not a single Trotskyite wrecker left in our ranks. <br /> <br /> This is how the matter stands with the question of how to liquidate the shortcomings in our work, common to all our organizations, economic and Soviet administrative and Party. Such are the measures necessary for the liquidation of these shortcomings. <br /> <br /> As regards the Party organizations in particular and the defects in their work, the measures necessary to liquidate these shortcomings are stated in sufficient detail in the draft resolution submitted for your consideration. I therefore think there is no need to enlarge here on this aspect of the question. <br /> <br /> I would like to say just a few words on the question of political training and raising the level of our Party cadres. <br /> <br /> I think that if we are able, if we succeed in giving ideological training to our Party cadres from top to bottom and steeling them politically so that they can find their bearings with ease in the internal and international situation, if we succeed in makings of them fully mature Leninists and Marxists capable of solving the questions of the leadership of the country without making serious mistakes, then we can thereby solve nine-tenths of all our tasks. <br /> <br /> How do things stand with regard to the leading forces of our Party? <br /> <br /> In our Party, if we have in mind its leading strata, there are about 3,000 to 4,000 first rank leaders whom I would call our Party's corps of generals. <br /> <br /> Then there are 30,000 to 40,000 middle rank leaders who are our Party corps of officers. <br /> <br /> Then there are about 100,000 to 150,000 of the lower rank Party command staff who are, so to speak, our Party's non-commissioned officers. <br /> <br /> The task is to raise the ideological level and political vigor of these command cadres and to introduce among them fresh forces awaiting promotion, and thus expand the ranks of our leading forces. <br /> <br /> What does this require? <br /> <br /> First and foremost, we must make the proposal to our Party leaders beginning with secretaries of our Party units to the secretaries of regional and republican Party organizations to select, during a definite period, two individuals, two Party functionaries each capable of being able to act as their effective deputies. <br /> <br /> The question may be asked: Where are we to get these two deputies for each one, if we have no such people, no workers who correspond to these requirements? This is incorrect, comrades. We have tens of thousands of capable and talented people. It only needs to know them and to promote them in time so that they should not remain in their old places too long and begin to rot. Seek and ye shall find. <br /> <br /> Further, four-month ''Party courses'' must be established in each regional center to give secretaries of units Party training and to re-equip them. The secretaries of all primary Party organizations (units) should be sent to these courses and then when they finish them and return home their deputies and the most capable members of the primary Party organizations should be sent to these courses. <br /> <br /> Further, to re-equip politically the first secretaries of the district organizations, eight-month ''Lenin courses'' must be established in the U.S.S.R., in, say, ten of the most important centers. <br /> <br /> The first secretaries of district and regional Party organizations should be sent to these courses, and then when they finish them and return home their deputies and the most capable members of the district and regional organizations sent there. <br /> <br /> Further, six-month ''courses for the study of history and the Party's policy'' under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union must be set up to achieve the ideological re-equipment and political improvement of secretaries of the town Party organizations. The first and second secretaries of town Party organizations should be sent to these courses and then when they have finished them and return home the most capable members of the town Party organizations should be sent there. <br /> <br /> Finally, a six-month ''conference on questions of internal and international policy'' under the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. must be established. <br /> <br /> The first secretaries of divisional and provincial organizations and the Central Committees of the national Communist Parties should be sent here. These comrades should provide not one but several persons really capable of replacing the leaders of the Central Committee of our Party. This should and must be done. <br /> <br /> I conclude, comrades. <br /> <br /> We have thus outlined the main defects in our work, including those which are common to all our organizations, economic, administrative and Party, and also those which are specificall peculiar to Party organizations only-- defects made use of by the enemies of the working class for their diversionist and wrecking, espionage and terrorist work. <br /> <br /> We have further outlined the chief measures to be taken to render harmless and liquidate the diversive, wrecking, espionage and terrorist assaults of the Trotskyite fascist agents of the foreign intelligence services. <br /> <br /> The question arises: Can we carry through all these measures, do we possess all the necessary possibilities for this? Undoubtedly we can. We can, because we have at our disposal all the means necessary for the realization of these measures. <br /> <br /> What do we lack? We lack only one thing: the readiness to liquidate our own carelessness, our own complacency, our own political short-sightedness. <br /> <br /> There is the rub. Cannot we who have overthrown capitalism, in the main built socialism, and raised aloft the great banner of world communism, get rid of this ridiculous and idiotic disease? <br /> <br /> We have no reason to doubt that we shall certainly get rid of it, given, of course, that we will it. We will get rid of it, not just in an ordinary manner but in a Bolshevik fashion, in real fashion. <br /> <br /> And when we get rid of this idiotic disease, we can say with complete confidence that we fear no enemies from within or without, we fear none of their assaults, for we shall shatter them in the future, as we are doing now and as we have done in the past. <br /> <br /> == Concluding Speech ==<br /> Comrades, I spoke in my report about the basic questions of the matter under discussion. The discussion has shown that we now have complete clarity, have an understanding of our tasks, and that there is a readiness to liquidate the shortcomings of our work. But the discussion has also shown that there are some concrete questions of our organizational-political practice on which we have not as yet a completely clear understanding. Of these questions, I have counted seven.<br /> <br /> Allow me to say a few words on these questions.<br /> <br /> 1. It is to be supposed that all have now understood and have realized that to become excessively engrossed in economic campaigns and economic successes while underestimating and forgetting Party political problems leads up a blind alley. Consequently it is necessary to turn the attention of our workers toward Party political questions, so that economic successes will be combined with and accompany successes in Party political work.<br /> <br /> How in practice is the task of strengthening the Party political work, the task of freeing the Party organizations from economic details to be carried out? As can be seen from the discussion, some comrades are prone to draw the incorrect conclusions that we should now get away altogether from economic work. At any rate, there were voices sounding this note: &quot;Well, now, thank God, we shall be rid of economic matters, now we can busy our selves with Party political work.&quot;<br /> <br /> Is this conclusion correct? No, it is not. When our Party comrades, carried away with economic successes, moved away from politics, this was an extreme which cost us big sacrifices. If some of our comrades, taking up the task of strengthening Party political work, now think of moving away from economy, this will be the other extreme, which will cost us no fewer sacrifices. You must not jump from one extreme to another. You must not separate politics from economy, just as we cannot move away from politics.<br /> <br /> For convenience in study, people usually separate the methodological questions of economy from the questions of politics. But this is done merely from the standpoint of method, artificially, only for the convenience of study. But in life, on the contrary, politics and economy are in practice inseparable. They exist together. And he who thinks to separate economy from politics in our practical policy, to strengthen economic work at the cost of belittling political work or, contrariwise, to strengthen political work at the cost of belittling economic work, will inevitably find himself up a blind alley.<br /> <br /> The particular point in the draft resolution on the freeing of Party organizations from economic details and the strengthening of Party political work does not mean moving away from economic work and economic leadership. It means, simply, no longer to permit the practice of supplanting and usurping economic organs, among them especially agricultural organs, by our Party organizations. Consequently, it is necessary to master the method of Bolshevik leadership of economic organs, which lies in systematically helping these organs, systematically strengthening them and guiding economy, not over the heads of these organs but through them. The economic organs, and in the first place the agricu1tural organs, must be given the best people.<br /> <br /> These organs must receive fresh staffs, consisting of the best workers capable of carrying out the tasks assigned to them. Only after this work has been done will it be possible to count on the Party organizations being completely freed from economic details. This is a serious matter, of course, and requires a certain length of time. But until it is done, the Party organizations, for a definite short period, will still have to occupy themselves closely with agricultural affairs, with all their details: plowing, sowing, harvesting, etc.<br /> <br /> 2. A few words about wreckers, diversionists, spies, etc. It is now clear for all, I think, that the present-day wreckers and diversionists, no matter what flag they use to cover themselves, the Trotskyite or the Bukharin flag, have long since ceased to be a political trend in the working class movement, that they have turned into a gang of professional wreckers, diversionists, spies and murderers, devoid of principles and ideas. Of course, these gentlemen will have to be smashed and ruthlessly uprooted as enemies of the working class, as traitors to our country. This is clear and does not require further explanation.<br /> <br /> But here is the question -- how to carry out in practice the task of smashing and uprooting the German-Japanese agents of Trotskyism. Does this mean that we should strike and uproot not only the real Trotskyites, but also those who wavered at some time toward Trotskyism, and then long ago came away from Trotskyism; not only those who are really Trotskyite agents for wrecking, but also those who happened once upon a time to go along a street where some Trotskyite or other had once passed? At any rate, such voices were heard here at the plenum. Can we consider such an interpretation of the resolution to be correct? No, we cannot consider it to be correct.<br /> <br /> On this question, as on all other questions, there must be an individual, differentiated approach. You must not measure everyone with the same yardstick. Such a sweeping approach can only harm the cause of struggle against the real Trotskyite wreckers and spies.<br /> <br /> Among our responsible comrades there are a certain number of former Trotskyites who left Trotskyism long ago, and now fight against Trotskyism not worse but better than some of our respected comrades who never chanced to waver toward Trotskyism. It would be foolish to vilify such comrades now.<br /> <br /> Among our comrades there are also those who always stood against Trotskyism ideologically, but in spite of this kept up personal contacts with individual Trotskyites, which they did not delay in liquidating as soon as the actual visage of Trotskyism became clear to them. It is, of course, not a good thing that they did not break off their personal friendly connections with individual Trotskyites at once, but belatedly. But it would be silly to lump such comrades together with the Trotskyites.<br /> <br /> 3. What does it mean -- to select workers correctly, and to distribute them correctly at work?<br /> <br /> This means to select workers, in the first place, according to a political criterion -- that is, are they worthy of political trust? And, in the second place, according to a practical criterion -- that is, are they suitable for such and such concrete work?<br /> <br /> This does not mean to convert a business-like approach into a &quot;business man's&quot; approach in which people are interested in the practical qualities of workers, but are not interested in their political physiognomy.<br /> <br /> This does not mean to convert a political approach into the single and all-embracing approach in which people are interested in the political physiognomy of workers, but are not interested in their practical qualifications.<br /> <br /> Can it be said that this Bolshevik rule is carried out by our Party comrades? Unfortunately, it cannot be said. It has already been spoken of here at the plenum. But not everything was said. The fact is that this well-tried rule is violated right and left in our practice and, moreover, in the grossest way. Most frequently, workers are selected not according to objective criteria, but according to accidental, subjective, narrow and provincial criteria. Most frequently so-called acquaintances are chosen, personal friends, fellow townsmen, people who have shown personal devotion, masters of eulogies to their patrons, irrespective of whether they are suitable from a political and a business-like standpoint.<br /> <br /> Naturally, instead of a leading group of responsible workers, a family group, a company, is formed, the members of which try to live peacefully, not to offend each other, not to wash their dirty linen in public, to eulogize each other and from time to time to send inane and nauseating reports to the center about successes.<br /> <br /> It is not difficult to understand that in such conditions of kinship there can be no place either for criticism of the shortcomings of the work, or for self-criticism by the leaders of the work.<br /> <br /> Naturally, such conditions of kinship create a favorable environment for generating bootlickers, people without any sense of dignity, and therefore having nothing in common with Bolshevism.<br /> <br /> Take, for example, Comrades Mirzoyan and Vainov. The former is secretary of the regional Party organization in Kazakstan; the latter is secretary of the Yaroslav regional Party organization. These people are not the most backward workers in our midst. And how do they select workers?<br /> <br /> The former dragged along with him from Azerbaijan and the Urals, where he formerly worked, into Kazakstan thirty or forty of his &quot;own&quot; people, and placed them in responsible positions in Kazakstan.<br /> <br /> The latter dragged along with him from the Donbas, where he formerly worked, to Yaroslav a dozen or so of his &quot;own&quot; people also, and also placed them in responsible positions. Consequently, Comrade Mirzoyan has his own crew. Comrade Vainov also has his.<br /> <br /> Was it really impossible to select workers from the local people, being guided by the well-known Bolshevik rule on the selection and placing of people? Of course, it was possible. Why then did they not do so? Because the Bolshevik rule for the selection of workers excludes the possibility of a narrow parochial approach, excludes the possibility of workers being selected according to criteria of kinship and being &quot;one of the gang&quot;. In addition, when selecting personally devoted people as workers, these comrades evidently have wanted to create for themselves conditions which give them a certain independence both of the local people and of the Central Committee of the Party.<br /> <br /> Let us suppose that Comrades Mirzoyan and Vainov, owing to some circumstances or other, are transferred from their present place of work to some other place. How should they act in such a case regarding their &quot;tails&quot;? Will they really have to drag them along once more to their new place of work?<br /> <br /> This is the absurdity resulting from the violation of the Bolshevik rule on the correct selection and distribution of workers.<br /> <br /> 4. What does it mean -- to verify workers, to check up on the fulfilment of tasks?<br /> <br /> To verify workers means to check up not on their promises and declarations, but on the result of their work.<br /> <br /> To verify the fulfilment of tasks means to check up on them, not only in the office and not only according to formal reports, but first and foremost to check up on them at their place of work, according to the actual results of fulfilment.<br /> <br /> Do we need such a verification in general? Undoubtedly we do. We need it, in the first place, because only such a check-up will make it possible to know a worker, to determine his real qualities. We need it, in the second place, because only such a verificalion will make it possible to determine the good qualities and shortcomings of the executive apparatus. We need it, in the third place, because only such a check-up will make it possible to determine the good qualities and shortcomings of the tasks themselves.<br /> <br /> Some comrades think that people can only be checked up on from above, when the leaders check up on subordinates, on the results of their work. This is not true. Check-up from above is necessary, of course, as one of the effective measures for verifying people and checking up the fulfilment of tasks. But verification from above does not exhaust by far the whole business of verification. There is still another kind of verification, the check-up from below, in which the masses, the subordinates, verify the leaders, point out their mistakes, and show the way of correcting them. This kind of verification is one of the most effective methods of checking up on people.<br /> <br /> The rank-and-file members verify their leaders at meetings of active Party workers, at conferences and congresses, by listening to their reports, by criticizing defects, and finally by electing or not electing some or other leading comrades to the leading Party organs. Precise operation of democratic centralism in the Party as demanded by our Party statutes, unconditional electiveness of Party organs, the right to put forward and to withdraw candidates, the secret ballot and freedom of criticism and self-criticism -- all these and similar measures must be carred into life, in order to facilitate the check-up on, and control over, the leaders of the Party by the rank-and-file Party members.<br /> <br /> The non-Party masses check their economic, trade union and other leaders at meetings of non-Party active workers, at all kinds of mass conferences, where they hear reports of their leaders, criticize defects and indicate ways or correcting them. Finally, the people check leaders of the country during the elections to the Soviet Union organs of power, through universal, equal, direct and secret ballot.<br /> <br /> The task is to link up the check from above with that from below.<br /> <br /> 5. What does it mean to train cadres on the basis of their own mistakes?<br /> <br /> Lenin taught that one of the surest means of correctly training and educating Party cadres, of correctly training and educating the working class and the masses of the working people, is to disclose conscientiously the mistakes<br /> <br /> of the Party, to study the causes that have given rise to these mistakes, and to indicate the paths necessary for overcoming these mistakes.<br /> <br /> Lenin said:&lt;blockquote&gt;The attitude of a political party toward its own mistakes is one of the most important and surest criteria of the seriousness of the party, and of how it fulfils, in practice, its obligations toward its class and toward the masses of working people. To admit a mistake openly, to disclose its reasons, to analyze the conditions which gave rise to it, to study attentively the means of correcting it -- these are the signs of a serious party; this means the performance of its duties, this means educating and training the class and, subsequently, the masses.&lt;/blockquote&gt;This means that the Bolsheviks are in duty bound not to gloss over their mistakes, not to dodge the question of their mistakes, as often happens with us, but honestly and openly to admit their mistakes, honestly and openly to indicate the way of correcting these mistakes, honestly and openly to correct them.<br /> <br /> I would not say that many of our comrades undertake this business with satisfaction. But, if the Bolsheviks really wish to be Bolsheviks they must find sufficient manliness in themselves openly to admit their mistakes, to reveal their causes, to indicate the way of correcting them, and thereby to give the Party cadres correct training and correct political education.<br /> <br /> For it is only on this path, only by open and honest self-criticism, that Bolshevik cadres really can be educated, that real Bolshevik leaders can be educated.<br /> <br /> Two examples will illustrate the correctness of Lenin's thesis.<br /> <br /> Let us take, as one example, our mistakes connected with the building up of the collective farms. You remember, I imagine, the year 1930, when our Party comrades thought of solving the very complicated question of transferring the peasantry to the building of collective farms in some three to four months, and when the Central Committee of the Party found itself compelled to put a check upon comrades who were being carried away. This was one of the most dangerous periods in the life of our Party. The mistake lay in this: that our Party comrades forgot the voluntary character of the building of collective farms, forgot that the peasants must not be transferred to the collective farm path by administrative pressure, forgot that the building of collective farms required not several months, but several years of careful and well-planned work.<br /> <br /> They forgot all this, and did not want to admit their mistakes. You remember, I imagine, that the directions of the Central Committee regarding dizziness from success, and that our comrades in the localities should not leap ahead, ignoring the actual state of affairs, were met with hostility. But this did not prevent the Central Committee from going against the stream, and turning our Party comrades onto the right road. Well, then?<br /> <br /> It is now clear to everybody that the Party achieved what it wanted by turning our Party comrades onto the right road. We now have tens of thousands of splendid peasant cadres engaged in the building of collective farms, and in their leadership these cadres grew up and were trained on the basis of the mistakes of 1930. But we would not now have had these cadres had not the Party then recognized these mistakes and corrected them in time.<br /> <br /> The other example is from the field of industrial construction. I have in mind our mistakes in the Shakhty wrecking period. Our mistakes lay in the fact that we did not take into account all the dangers of the technical backwardness of our cadres in industry, that we put up with this backwardness, and thought of developing socialist industrial construction on a wide scale with the inimically-inclined specialists, dooming our economic cadres to play the part of poor commissars for the bourgeois specialists.<br /> <br /> You remember, I imagine, how unwilling our economic cadres were to recognize their mistakes at that time; how unwilling they were to recognize their own technical backwardness, and with what difficulty they assimilated the slogan &quot;Master Technique&quot;. Well, then, the facts go to show that the slogan &quot;Master Technique&quot;, had its effects, and produced its good results. We now have tens and hundreds of thousands of splendid Bolshevik economic cadres, who have already mastered technique and are advancing our industry. But we would not now have these cadres had the Party not risen to the occasion, in the face of the obduracy of the business executives who did not want to admit their technical backwardness, had not the Party then recognized its mistakes and corrected them in time.<br /> <br /> Some comrades say that it is not advisable to speak openly of one's mistakes, since the open admission of one's mistakes may be construed by our enemies as weakness and may be utilized by them.<br /> <br /> This is rubbish, comrades, downright rubbish. The open recognition of our mistakes and their honest rectification can, on the contrary, only strengthen our Party, raise its authority in the eyes of the workers, peasants, and working intellectuals, and increase the strength and power of our state. And this is the main thing. As long as we have the workers, peasants and working intellectuals with us, all the rest will settle itself.<br /> <br /> Other comrades say that the open admission of our mistakes can lead, not to training and consolidating our cadres, but to weakening and disconcerting them; that we must spare and take care of our cadres; that we must spare their self-esteem and tranquility. To this end they proposed to slur over the mistakes of our comrades, to weaken the vigor and the criticism and, still better, to disregard these mistakes. Such a line is not only fundamentally incorrect, but also dangerous in the highest degree -- dangerous, first and foremost, for the cadres whom they want to &quot;spare&quot; and &quot;take care of&quot;.<br /> <br /> To spare and preserve cadres by slurring over their mistakes means certainly to ruin these very cadres. We would surely have ruined our collective farm Bolshevik cadres had we not revealed the mistakes of the year 1930, and had we not trained them on the basis of these mistakes. We would certainly have ruined our industrial Bolshevik cadres had we not revealed the mistakes of our comrades in the Shakhty wrecking period, and had we not trained our industrial cadres on the basis of these mistakes. He who expects to spare the self-esteem of our cadres by slurring over their mistakes ruins both the cadres and their self-esteem, for by slurring over their mistakes he facilitates the repetition of new and perhaps more serious mistakes which, one may presume, will lead to the complete downfall of the cadres, to the detriment of their &quot;self-esteem&quot; and &quot;tranquillity&quot;.<br /> <br /> 6. Lenin taught us not only to teach the masses, but also to learn from them.<br /> <br /> What does this mean?<br /> <br /> It means, first, that we leaders must not become conceited; and we must understand that if we are members of the Central Committee or are People's Commissars, this does not mean that we possess all the knowledge for giving correct leadership. An official position by itself does not provide knowledge and experience. This is still more the case in respect to a title.<br /> <br /> This means, second, that our experience alone, the experience of leaders, is insufficient to give correct leadership; that, consequently, it is necessary that one's experience, the experience of leaders, be supplemented by the experience of the masses, by the experience of the rank-and-file Party members, by the experience of the working class, by the experience of the people.<br /> <br /> This means, third, that we must not for one moment weaken, and still less break, our connection with the masses.<br /> <br /> This means, fourth, that we must pay careful attention to the voice of the masses, to the voice of the rank-and-file members of the Party, to the voice of the so-called &quot;small men&quot;, to the voice of the people.<br /> <br /> What does it mean -- to lead correctly?<br /> <br /> This does not at all mean sitting in one's office and compiling instructions.<br /> <br /> To lead correctly means:<br /> <br /> First, to find a correct solution of the question. But a correct solution cannot be found unless account is taken of the experience of the masses, who test the results of our leadership on their own backs.<br /> <br /> Second, to organize the operation of the correct solution which, however, cannot be done without direct aid from the masses.<br /> <br /> Third, to organize a check on the fulfilment of this decision. which, again, cannot be done without the direct aid of the masses.<br /> <br /> We leaders see things, events and people from one side only; I would say, from above. Our field of vision, consequently, is more or less limited.<br /> <br /> The masses, on the contrary, see things, events and people from another side; I would say, from below. Their field of vision, consequently, is also in a certain degree limited. To receive a correct solution to the question these two experiences must be united. Only in such a case will the leadership be correct.<br /> <br /> This is what it means not only to teach the masses, but also to learn from them.<br /> <br /> Two examples to illustrate the correctness of this thesis of Lenin:<br /> <br /> It happened several years ago. We members of the Central Committee had discussed the question of improving the situation in the Don Basin. The draft of measures presented by the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry was clearly unsatisfactory. The draft was returned to the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry three times. Three times we received different drafts from the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry. And still they could not be considered satisfactory. Finally we decided to call in several workers and rank-and-file economic and trade union officials from the Don Basin.<br /> <br /> For three days we conversed with these comrades. And all of us, members of the Central Committee, had to recognize that only they, the rank-and-file workers, these &quot;small people&quot;, had succeeded in providing us with a correct solution. You remember, I imagine, the well-known decision of the Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars regarding the measures for increasing the output of coal in the Don Basin. Well, this decision of the Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars, which was admitted by all our comrades to be a correct and even notable decision, was suggested to us by simple people from below.<br /> <br /> Another example I have in mind is the example of Comrade Nikolayenko.<br /> <br /> Who is Nikolayenko? Nikolayenko is a rank-and-file member of the Party. She is an ordinary &quot;little person&quot;. For a whole year she gave warning signals as to the bad situation in the Kiev Party organization, exposed the prevalence of family favoritism, the narrour and provincial approach to workers, the suppression of self-criticism and the predominance of Trotskyist wreckers. She was shunned as though she were an annoying fly. Finally, in order to rid themselves of her, they expelled her from the Party.<br /> <br /> Neither the Kiev organization nor the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine helped her to achieve the truth. It was only the interference of the Central Committee of the Party that helped to unravel this confused knot. And what emerged after the examination of the affair? It emerged that Nikolayenko was right, while the Kiev organization was wrong. Neither more nor less. And who is this Nikolayenko? She was not, of course, a member of the Central Committee. She was not a People's Commissar, nor the secretary of the Kiev Regional organization. She was not even secretary of some Party cell. She was only a simple rank-and-file Party member.<br /> <br /> As you see, simple people sometimes prove to be far nearer to the truth than some highly placed institutions.<br /> <br /> One could give tens and hundreds of such examples.<br /> <br /> Thus it turns out that our experience alone, the experience of the leaders, is still by far inadequate for the guidance of our affairs. In order to guide correctly, the experience of the leaders must be supplemented by the experience of the Party masses, by the experience of the working class, by the experience of the toilers, by the experience of the so-called &quot;small people&quot;.<br /> <br /> And when is this possible?<br /> <br /> It is possible only if the leaders are closely connected with the masses, if they are bound up with the Party masses, with the working class, with the peasantry, with the working intellectuals.<br /> <br /> Contacts with the masses, the strengthening of these contacts, readiness to listen to the voice of the masses -- in this lie the strength and impregnability of Bolshevik leadership.<br /> <br /> It may he taken as a rule that so long as Bolsheviks keep contacts with the broad masses of the people, they will be invincib1e. And, contrariwise, it is sufficient for Bolsheviks to break away from the masses and lose contact with them, to become covered with bureaucratic rash, for them to lose all their strength and become converted into nonentities.<br /> <br /> In the system of mythology of the ancient Greeks there was one famous hero, Antaeus, who, as mythology declares, was the son of Poseidon, the God of the Sea, and Gaea, the Goddess or the Earth. He was partictuarly attached to his mother, who bore him, fed him and brought him up so that there was no hero whom this Antaeus did not vanquish. He was considered to be an invincible hero. Wherein lay his strength? It lay in the fact that every time he was hard-pushed in a struggle with an opponent, he touched the earth, his mother, who had borne him and fed him, and thus regained new strength.<br /> <br /> But, nevertheless, he had a weak spot -- the danger of being separated, in some way, from the earth. His enemies took account of this weakness of his, and waited for him. And an enemy was found who took advantage of this weakness and vanquished him. This was Hercules. But how did Hercules defeat him? He tore him from the earth, raised him into the air, deprived him of the possibility of touching the earth, and thus throttled him in the air.<br /> <br /> I think that Bolsheviks remind us of Antaeus, the hero of Greek mythology. Like Antaeus, they are strong in keeping contact with their mother, with the masses, who bore them, fed them and educated them. And as long as they keep contact with their mother, with the people, they have every chance of remaining invincible.<br /> <br /> This is the key to the invincibility of Bolshevik leadership.<br /> <br /> 7. Finally, still another question. I have in view the question of the formal and heartless bureaucratic attitude of some of our Party comrades toward the fate of individual Party members, toward the question of expelling members from the Party, or the question of restoring the rights of Party membership to those who have been expelled.<br /> <br /> The fact is that some of our Party leaders suffer front lack of attention to people, to Party members, to workers. Furthermore, they do not study the Party members, do not know what is close to their hearts, and how they are growing, do not know workers in general. They have, therefore, not an individual approach to Party members, to Party workers. And just because they have not an individual approach when appraising Party members and Party workers, they usually act at random, either praising them wholesale, without measure, or crushing them, also wholesale, and without measure, expelling thousands and tens of thousands from the Party.<br /> <br /> Such leaders try, in general, to think in tens of thousands, not to worry about &quot;units&quot;, about individual Party members, about their fate. They think it a mere bagatelle to expel thousands and tens of thousands of people from the Party, comforting themselves by the fact that our Party is 2,000,000 strong, and that tens of thousands of people expelled cannot change anything in the position of the Party.<br /> <br /> But, only people who in essence are profoundly anti-Party can have such an approach to members of the Party.<br /> <br /> As the result of such a heartless attitude toward people, toward Party members and Party workers, discontent and bitterness are artificially created in a section of the Party, while the Trotskyite double-dealers adroitly seize hold of such embittered comrades and skilfully drag them after themselves into the morass of Trotskyite wrecking.<br /> <br /> The Trotskyites, by themselves, were never a big force in our Party. Call to mind the last discussion on Trotskyism in our Party in 1927. This was a genuine Party referendum. Out of 854,000 Party members, 730,000 members voted at that time. Among them, 724,000 Party members voted for the Bolsheviks, for the Central Committee of the Party, against the Trotskyites, and 4,000 Party members, or about one-half of one per cent, voted for the Trotskyites, while 2,600 members of the Party refrained from voting.<br /> <br /> There were 123,000 members who did not participate in the voting. They did not participate either because they were away from home, or because their shift was at work when the vote was taken. If, to the 4,000 who voted for the Trotskyites, we add all those who refrained from voting, on the assumption that they also sympathized with the Trotskyites, and if to this total we add, not one-half of one per cent of those who did not take part in the voting -- as should be done by right -- but five per cent of those who did not participate -- that is, about 6,000 Party members -- we obtain about 12,000 Party members who sympathized with Trotskyism to some extent or other. Here you see the total forces of the Trotskyite gentlemen.<br /> <br /> Add to this the fact that many out of this number became disillusioned with Trotskyism and left it, and you get a conception of the insignificance of the Trotskyite forces. And if, in spite of this, the Trotskyite wreckers nevertheless have some reserves or other around our Party, it is because the incorrect policy of some of our comrades on the question of expulsion from the Party and reinstatement of expelled people, the heartless attitude of some of our comrades toward the fate of individual Party members and individual Party workers, artificially engender a number of discontented and embittered people, and thus create these reserves for the Trotskyites.<br /> <br /> A large numberer are expelled for so-called passivity. What is passivity? It is considered, we discover, that if a member of the Party has not mastered the Party program, he is &quot;passive&quot;, and due for expulsion. But this is not right, comrades. The statutes of our Party cannot be interpreted so pedantically. To master the Party program one needs to be a real Marxist, a tested and theoretically trained Marxist. I do not know whether many Party members will be found by us in the Party who have already mastered our program, have become genuine Marxists, theoretically trained and tried. If we were to go further along this path, we should have to leave only intellectuals and learned people in general in the Party. Who wants such a Party? We have the Leninist formula about Party membership which is verified, has stood all tests. According to this formula, a Party member is one who accepts the Party program, pays membership dues and works in one of its organizations.<br /> <br /> Note that Lenin's formula does not speak about mastering the program, but of accepting the program. These are two entirely different things. There is no need to prove Lenin was right here and not our Party comrades who vainly mouthed about mastering the program. It is obvious by itself. If the Party took the standpoint that Party members can be only those comrades who have already mastered the program and have become theoretically trained Marxists, it would not have formed thousands of Party circles in the Party, hundreds of Party schools where the Party members are taught Marxism and are helped to master our program. It is quite clear that if the Party organizes schools and circles among the Party members, it is because it knows that the Party members have not yet succeeded in mastering the Party program, have not yet succeeded in becoming theoretically trained Marxists.<br /> <br /> Consequently, to correct our policy on the question of membership of the Party and expulsion from the Party, it is necessary to put an end to the present blockheaded interpretation of the question of passivity.<br /> <br /> But we have still another error in this field. The fact is that our comrades do not recognize the mean between two extremes. It is sufficient for a worker, a Party member, to commit some small offense, to be late two or three times at a Party meeting, not to pay membership dues for some reason or other, and in a flash he is thrown out of the Party.<br /> <br /> No interest is taken in the degree of his offense, the cause of his non-appearance at the meeting, the cause of the nonpayment of membership dues. The bureaucracy of this is simply unparalleled. It is not difficult to understand that, precisely as the result of such a heartless policy, splendid skilled workers, excellent Stakhanovites, have been thrown out of the Party. And was it impossible, before expelling them from the Party, to give a warning, and if this had no effect, to censure them, or administer a reprimand, and, if this had no effect, to set a period for reformation, or in the extreme case to reduce to the position of a candidate, but not expel them with a sweep of the hand from the Party?<br /> <br /> Of course it was possible.<br /> <br /> But this requires an attentive attitude to people, to the Party members, to the fact of Party membership. And this is exactly what some of our comrades lack.<br /> <br /> It is high time to put a stop to this outrageous practice, comrades.<br /> [[Category:Library works by Joseph Stalin]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about revisionism]]<br /> [[Category:Speeches]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about the Soviet Union]]<br /> [[Category:Library documents from the Soviet Union]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Juche_idea:_answers_to_hundred_questions&diff=76021 2024-09-30T12:47:05Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Juche idea: answers to hundred questions|author=Foreign languages publishing house, Pyongyang|published_date=2012|type=Pamphlet|source=https://juche007-anglo-peopleskoreafriendship.blogspot.com/2014/04/juche-idea-answers-to-hundred-questions.html}}<br /> <br /> === 1. What is the Juche idea? ===<br /> The Juche idea is, in a word, an ideology that the masses of the people are the master of the revolution and construction and they have the strength to push them. In other words, it is an ideology that man is the master of his destiny and he has the power to carve out his destiny.<br /> <br /> === 2. How was the Juche idea established? ===<br /> The Juche idea was established by President Kim Il Sung [Juche 1(1912)-Juche 83(1994) ], founding father of socialist Korea.<br /> <br /> He set out on the road of struggle to liberate Korea from Japanese military rule (1905-1945) in the mid-1920s and found the truth that constituted me starting points of the Juche idea in the process of exploring a new path for the Korean revolution.<br /> <br /> He established the idea on the basis of experiences and lessons in the revolutionary struggle at the meeting of leading personnel of the Young Communist League and the Anti-Imperialist Youth League held in Kalun in June Juche 19(1930).<br /> <br /> === 3. What are the starting points of the Juche idea? ===<br /> One of the starting points of the Juche idea is that the master of the revolution is the popular masses and the revolution can emerge victorious when they are educated, organized and mobilized.<br /> <br /> The other one is that one should carry out the revolution according to one’s faith and on one’s own responsibility, not with someone’s approval or directive, and solve all the problems arising in the revolution in an independent and creative way.<br /> <br /> === 4. How was the Juche idea developed? ===<br /> The Juche idea was developed comprehensively by leader Kim Jong Il.<br /> <br /> He defined that the Juche idea mainly consists of the philosophical principle, the socio-historical principle and the guiding principles. As he systematized the Juche idea into an integral whole and enriched it with profound principles and propositions it is widely accepted as the great ideology guiding the cause of independence for humankind.<br /> <br /> === 5. What does the Juche idea indicate in the philosophical principle? ===<br /> In the philosophical principle the Juche idea sheds light on its basic principle and the intrinsic features of man and explains his position and role in the world. On the basis of it, it elucidates the man-centred outlook on the world, standpoint and attitude to the world.<br /> <br /> === 6. What is the fundamental question of philosophy raised by the Juche idea? ===<br /> The Juche idea puts forward man’s position and role in the world as the fundamental question of philosophy.<br /> <br /> As the origin of the world was explained materialistically by Marxism, the Juche idea newly raises the relationship between the world and man, the position and role of man in the world, as the fundamental question of philosophy and gives a scientific answer to it.<br /> <br /> === 7. What is the basic principle of the Juche idea? ===<br /> The basic principle of the Juche idea is that man<br /> <br /> is the master of everything and decides everything.<br /> <br /> All the systems and contents of the Juche idea are based on the philosophical principle that man is the master of everything and decides everything.<br /> <br /> === 8. What does it mean that man is the master of everything? ===<br /> That man is the master of everything is the principle that refers to the position man takes in the world.<br /> <br /> It means that he is the master of both the world and his destiny.<br /> <br /> That man is the master of the world means that he is the dominator and transformer of the world who makes it serve him according to his will and demand, not being subject to the world that surrounds him.<br /> <br /> That man is the master of his destiny means that he is a being who is responsible for his destiny and shapes it in the way he wants.<br /> <br /> === 9. What does it mean that man decides everything? ===<br /> That man decides everything is the principle that<br /> <br /> explains the role man plays in transforming the world.<br /> <br /> It means that he plays a decisive role in transforming the world and carving out his destiny.<br /> <br /> That man plays a decisive role in transforming the world means that man is a key factor among those that affect the transformation and development of the world.<br /> <br /> That man is very instrumental in shaping his destiny means that his role is a decisive factor among those that influence his destiny.<br /> <br /> === 10. What is the relationship between the principles that man is the master of everything and he decides everything? ===<br /> The principles that man is the master of everything and decides everything are closely interrelated as they define the position of master man takes in the world and the decisive role he plays in transforming and developing the world.<br /> <br /> Man’s position in the world as its master is guaranteed by his role in transforming and developing the world and his decisive role in transforming and developing the world is decided by his position as the master of the world.<br /> <br /> As man is the most developed and powerful being who takes the master’s position in the world he plays a decisive role in transforming and developing the world and as he is a decisive actor in transforming and developing the world he steadily enhances his position as the master of the world and expands his control of the world.<br /> <br /> === 11. What is the social being clarified by the Juche idea? ===<br /> In philosophical consideration of man the Juche idea starts from the fact that man is a social being.<br /> <br /> That man is a social being means that he is a being who forms a social group and lives and works in the social relationship.<br /> <br /> In the Juche idea the term social being is an original meaning that defines the intrinsic features of man.<br /> <br /> === 12. What are the intrinsic features of man defined by the Juche idea? ===<br /> The Juche idea has newly defined the intrinsic features of man from a point of view that man is a social being.<br /> <br /> The intrinsic features defined by the Juche idea are independence, creativity and consciousness.<br /> <br /> These are the qualities peculiar to man that no other material beings can have.<br /> <br /> === 13. What is independence? ===<br /> Independence is an attribute of social being who wants to live and develop as the master of the world and his destiny.<br /> <br /> With independence man opposes all sorts of restrictions and subjugation in nature and society and makes everything serve him.<br /> <br /> Man does not resign himself to the restrictions of nature and social subjugation but opposes them. He wants to live free from them and works to this end.<br /> <br /> He harnesses nature to create conditions needed for his life and changes natural things and phenomena into means useful for his livelihood. He also transforms society to make it serve the life of community better.<br /> <br /> === 14. Why is independence the life and soul for man? ===<br /> Independence is the life and soul for man. When independence is referred to as man’s life and soul it means the social and political integrity. The physical life is what keeps man alive as a biological organism, whereas the social and political integrity is what keeps him alive as a social being.<br /> <br /> For man, a social being, the social and political integrity is more precious than the physical life. If he is deserted by society and loses political independence, he is like a dead man as a social being even though he is alive physically.<br /> <br /> === 15. What is creativity? ===<br /> Creativity is an attribute of social being who transforms the world and shapes his destiny purposefully and consciously.<br /> <br /> By dint of creativity, man transforms nature and society to make them more useful and beneficial to him by changing the old into the new.<br /> <br /> Man breeds new varieties of animals and plants, invents new machines and instruments, develops new ideas and knowledge and establishes a new social system by transforming things and phenomena in the world that surrounds him on the basis of understanding them. New things and happenings come into being by the activities of man who changes the old into the new.<br /> <br /> He makes not only quite new things but what is needed for his life by transforming nature and society on the level he has already reached. In other words, he changes the useless and harmful things in nature and society into the useful and beneficial ones and makes what is less useful and beneficial more useful and beneficial.<br /> <br /> Creativity is not the special quality of some individual persons, but a mode of activity peculiar to man, a social being.<br /> <br /> === 16. What is consciousness? ===<br /> Consciousness is an attribute of social being that determines all his activities to understand and reshape the world and himself.<br /> <br /> By means of consciousness man understands the world and the law that governs its movement and transforms and develops nature and society in line with his demand.<br /> <br /> Man conceives the plan of his action through thought before starting cognition and transformation. Conceiving and planning are the first process of all the activities to cognize and transform and are a key factor that ensures the purposeful cognition and practice. In other words, the cognition and practice of man are the process of conceiving an idea and making a plan and putting them into practice. This shows that all the activities conducted by man are consciously controlled actions.<br /> <br /> When man encounters a series of the problems and situations in the course of cognition and transformation he neither sits idle nor goes on with what he is doing without proper measures. He copes with them positively and adjusts and controls all his activities so that he can achieve the goals of his activities.<br /> <br /> === 17. How are independence, creativity and consciousness interrelated? ===<br /> Independence, creativity and consciousness, the intrinsic features of man, are closely related with each other.<br /> <br /> Independence is a factor that brings into play creativity. Man transforms the world and carves out his destiny purposefully and consciously because he wants to live and develop as the master of the world and his destiny free from the restrictions and subjugation of nature and society.<br /> <br /> Creativity ensures the realization of independence. Man can translate independence into reality as he has creativity. The fuller he gives play to creativity the better he can put independence into practice.<br /> <br /> Consciousness is a prerequisite for independence and creativity.<br /> <br /> It ensures the display of independence and creativity. It regulates all the moments and processes of human activities and governs the level and degree of the exhibition of independence and creativity.<br /> <br /> === 18. Why are independence, creativity and consciousness called social attributes? ===<br /> Independence, creativity and consciousness are the social attributes that are formed and developed in the socio-historical course.<br /> <br /> They are not given to man by nature. They are unthinkable apart from man’s highly developed organism, but the organism itself does not produce them.<br /> <br /> Independence, creativity and consciousness did not exist in any embryonic form before society came into being. Man could possess them in the course of forming a social community and living in it. They are the requirements and reflection of social life and social practice.<br /> <br /> They develop constantly as social life and social practice do.<br /> <br /> === 19. What is the essence of the world defined by the Juche idea? ===<br /> The Juche idea has newly provided a man-centred outlook on the world.<br /> <br /> The essence of the world the Juche idea has expounded is that the world is dominated and transformed by man.<br /> <br /> === 20. What does it mean that the world is dominated by man? ===<br /> That the world is dominated by man means that nature and society are the objects which are in the service of translating his demand for independence and interests into reality.<br /> <br /> Man is a special being who is superior and the most powerful in the world. There is no relation of dominating and being subject to between all the material beings that comprise nature and society, but a simple one of being dependent on and restricting each other. The relationship between man and the surrounding world, however, is not the one of being simply dependent on and restricting each other, but that of dominating and being subject to.<br /> <br /> That the world is dominated by man does not necessarily mean that all the things and phenomena in the world are actually dominated by man. There are still myriads of things and phenomena in the world that are out of human domination. More and more of them will be put under human control as the demand for independence and creative ability of man grow with the development of human history.<br /> <br /> === 21. What does it mean that the world is transformed by man? ===<br /> That the world is transformed by man means that the world becomes the object that is transformed and used in line with man’s demand by his purposeful and conscious activities.<br /> <br /> The transformation of the world by man is not the change of the world in general but the development of the world that man carries out himself in line with his demand for independence and interests. Only man has a creative capacity to transform the world and the world is transformed and developed into the one that serves man only by man’s positive action and role.<br /> <br /> That the world is transformed by man does not mean that all the changes in the world are actually made by man. There are an awful lot of motions and changes of material beings in the world that happen spontaneously free from human action. The scope of man’s transformation of the world, however, steadily expands as man develops into a more powerful being and his role is enhanced.<br /> <br /> === 22. What is the law that guides the change and development of the world defined by the Juche idea? ===<br /> The Juche idea has newly defined the law that guides the change and development of the world with man as the central factor. The Juche idea-defined law guiding the change and development of the world is that of domination and transformation of the world by man. It means that the world is transformed by man’s positive activities in the direction of serving him and in line with the way he develops.<br /> <br /> === 23. What does it mean that the world is transformed by man’s positive activities? ===<br /> It means that the world is developed into the one for man by his independent, creative and conscious activities. This has indicated a factor of the change and development of the world.<br /> <br /> The world is transformed by man’s positive activities, for man is the only transformer of the world.<br /> <br /> The world does not change into the one for man on its own and any being except man cannot transform the world. Only when man correctly understands and exploits the essence of the world and the law governing its movement and transforms the surrounding world in keeping with his demand can the world develop into the one for him.<br /> <br /> === 24. What does it mean that the world is transformed in the direction of serving man? ===<br /> It means that the world is transformed in such a way as to serve man’s independence better. This has specified the direction of the world development.<br /> <br /> The reason why the world is transformed in the direction of better serving man’s independence is that to realize independence is the basic purpose of human activities and man’s demand for independence continues to grow.<br /> <br /> The direction of the world transformation is determined by the aim of activities of man, the only dominator and transformer of the world. The key goal of human activities is just to put independence into reality. So all the human activities to transform the world are conducted in the direction of achieving<br /> <br /> such a basic purpose.<br /> <br /> === 25. What does it mean that the world is transformed in the way man develops? ===<br /> It means that the level and tempo of the world transformation always keep pace with those of human development. This has referred to the level and speed of the world development.<br /> <br /> The reason why the world is changed in keeping with human development is that man develops further and enhances his role higher in the process of transforming the world.<br /> <br /> Man transforms nature and develops society and himself at the same time. While man’s role grows bigger in transforming the world by developing himself, the level of the world transformation gets higher and its speed gets faster.<br /> <br /> === 26. What are the standpoint and attitude towards the world specified by the Juche idea? ===<br /> The Juche idea has newly defined the man-centred standpoint and attitude towards the world. The standpoint and attitude towards the world explained by the Juche idea have two contents: one is those towards the world that started from the interests of man and the other is those towards the world development that are based on human activities.<br /> <br /> === 27. What does it mean that the world is approached by starting from human interests? ===<br /> It means approaching the world with a view to making the world serve man better.<br /> <br /> The standpoint and attitude towards the world that stem from human interests are those that analyze, appreciate and deal with all the things and phenomena with human interests as criterion.<br /> <br /> Man’s cognition and transformation of the world are not for their own sake but are intended to meet his interests. So in all the processes of cognition and practice a wide range of things and phenomena in the world should not be seen only as objective beings but be analyzed, appreciated and dealt with human interests as standard.<br /> <br /> === 28. What is the fundamental requirement in approaching the world by starting from human interests? ===<br /> The standpoint and attitude of approaching the world starting from human interests contain two basic requirements.<br /> <br /> One is that defending man’s independent rights and interests in all the activities should be put forward as the supreme principle and the other is that all the problems arising in cognition and practice should be subordinated to translating man’s independent demand and interests into reality.<br /> <br /> === 29. What does it mean that the development of the world is approached on the basis of human activities? ===<br /> It means approaching the world development from a viewpoint of positive activities of man who transforms the world purposefully and consciously in accordance with his will and demand.<br /> <br /> The standpoint and attitude of approaching the world development on the basis of human activities are those of viewing the world in the light that the world can develop into the one for man only by his positive activities.<br /> <br /> The world can never be transformed to the benefits of man apart from his positive activities. The world transformation can only be possible by his positive activities. So man’s positive activities are very fundamental in viewing the world development.<br /> <br /> === 30. What is the basic requirement in seeing the world development on the basis of human activities? ===<br /> The standpoint and attitude of seeing the world development on the basis of human activities have two basic requirements.<br /> <br /> One is that training man to be a more powerful being should be regarded as the first process in all the activities to transform nature and society and the other is that all the problems arising in cognition and practice should be solved in such a way as to enhance man’s creative role.<br /> <br /> === 31. What does the Juche idea indicate in its socio-historical principle? ===<br /> The socio-historical principle of the Juche idea defines the essence of society, the driving force of history, the essential characteristics of the socio-historical movement and the leader’s position and role in the socio-historical movement.<br /> <br /> === 32. What is society and what does it consist of? ===<br /> The Juche idea has shed new light on the essence of society with man as the central figure.<br /> <br /> Society, in a word, is a community of people. It is a community in which people live with social wealth by forming social relationship.<br /> <br /> Society, too, is a realm of the world that exists objectively along with nature. But it is a special realm of the world different from nature. The fact that society is a community of people is its fundamental characteristic distinct from nature.<br /> <br /> Society consists of man, social wealth and social relationship.<br /> <br /> === 33. Why is man a main component of society? ===<br /> Man is a main component of society.<br /> <br /> Society was formed along with human emergence.<br /> <br /> There had been only nature in the world before the birth of man. The appearance of man added society to the world. All the social happenings that are distinct from natural ones are generated by man and they are detailed expressions of human life and activities. Without man society can neither exist nor develop.<br /> <br /> === 34. What is social relationship and why is it an essential condition for the existence and development of society? ===<br /> Social relationship is the way in which people are connected in social life. People are connected with each other in a form of relationship starting from their demand for shaping their destiny. The connection between people is just social relationship.<br /> <br /> The reason why social relationship is an essential condition for the existence and development of society is that society, a community of people, can be formed and developed only in social relationship. Only when people live and work with social connection can they form society and develop it by displaying the might of community.<br /> <br /> === 35. Why is man the master of social wealth? ===<br /> Man is the master of social wealth.<br /> <br /> It is because social wealth is created by man and serves him.<br /> <br /> Social wealth is created by man. As a matter of fact, he is restricted by the existing material and spiritual wealth. He can lead a material life as social being when he has means of production and other material wealth. He can also enjoy an ideological and cultural life peculiar to social being when they possess social ideologies, science and other spiritual assets. All this social wealth is made by man. Without man no social wealth can be created.<br /> <br /> === 36. Why is man the master of social relationship? ===<br /> Man is the master of social relationship. It is because social relationship is established and developed by man.<br /> <br /> Man forges social relations on his own initiative and transforms them constantly for his existence and development. Of course, social relationship has a great effect on human life and activities. Man, however, does not simply adapt himself to social relationship but transforms it to satisfy his demand.<br /> <br /> === 37. What is the driving force of history defined by the Juche idea? ===<br /> The issue of the driving force of history is the question of the performer who starts and pushes the socio-historical movement purposefully and consciously.<br /> <br /> The Juche idea has defined that the driving force of history is the popular masses, giving a scientific solution to who the driving force of the socio-historical movement is.<br /> <br /> That the popular masses are the main agent of history means that they are at the centre of history and the social movement is conducted by them. In other words, they are the performers of the socio-historical movement.<br /> <br /> === 38. What are the popular masses? ===<br /> The popular masses are a social group formed with the working people as the core on the basis of the commonness of demand for independence and<br /> <br /> creative activities.<br /> <br /> A main component of the popular masses is the working people. They are the classes and strata that substantially contribute to social development through creative activities. In this sense, the popular masses are called the working people. The class composition of the popular masses does not remain unchanged but changes in the process of socio-historical development.<br /> <br /> The main criterion for determining whether he or she is a member of the popular masses is not his or her social and class background but his or her ideology. The ideological basis that integrates people from all walks of life into the popular masses is socialist ideology and the idea of loving the country, the nation and the people.<br /> <br /> === 39. Why are the popular masses the makers of history? ===<br /> The popular masses are the makers of history because all the socio-historical movements are started and carried out by them.<br /> <br /> It is them who advocate social development and push it in any era. Motivated by their intrinsic need to live as the master of the world and their destiny free from all sorts of subjugation and restrictions, they start the socio-historical movement to put independence into reality in all the fields of social life. As they have inexhaustible creative strength—wisdom, talents and a rich wealth of experience—they can push ahead with the socio-historical movement.<br /> <br /> === 40. What is the independent driving force of history explained by the Juche idea? ===<br /> If the popular masses are to take the position and play a role as the main agent of history they should be an independent driving force of history.<br /> <br /> The independent driving force of history is the popular masses who carve out their destiny independently and creatively.<br /> <br /> The driving force of history and the independent driving force of history have similarity in that both are the creators of history and performers of historical development, but they are distinguished from each other with regard to whether they shape<br /> <br /> their destiny independently and creatively or not.<br /> <br /> The popular masses, the main agent of history, develop uninterruptedly along with socio-historical development and become the independent driving force of history in a certain stage of socio-historical development.<br /> <br /> === 41. What is an important condition for the popular masses to evolve into the independent driving force of history? ===<br /> The emergence of the progressive working class is an important condition for the popular masses to evolve into the independent driving force of history.<br /> <br /> The working class is a class that has put forward a high demand of providing complete independence for the popular masses and has a strong revolutionary ability to translate it into reality.<br /> <br /> Its demand is to lead an independent and creative life free from all sorts of subordination and restrictions and its historic mission is to provide complete independence for not only workers but all other members of society, the popular masses. The working class is endowed with a high sense of collectivism and is strong in respect of unity, sense of organization and revolutionary character. So the popular masses could emerge as the independent driving force of history since the working class appeared in history.<br /> <br /> === 42. What is an essential guarantee for the popular masses to evolve into the independent driving force of history? ===<br /> The popular masses should be integrated into a whole with the revolutionary army as the core and mainstay. This is an essential guarantee for them to evolve into the independent driving force of history.<br /> <br /> Their struggle to advance history and carve out their destiny is a process of standing face to face with hostile forces including the reactionary rulers and a fierce face-off between the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary armed forces. That is why a revolutionary party and people must have the revolutionary armed forces that can destroy the counter-revolutionary violence.<br /> <br /> Only when the popular masses unite with the revolutionary armed forces can they keep their existence, overthrow the outdated state and social system that rely on the counter-revolutionary force, establish an advanced state and social system and defend it firmly.<br /> <br /> After all, when they are united as one with the revolutionary army as the core the popular masses can take the position and play a role as the independent driving force of history.<br /> <br /> === 43. What is the key factor for the popular masses to be the independent driving force of history? ===<br /> The key factor for the popular masses to be the independent driving force of history is the leadership of a prominent leader and a revolutionary party.<br /> <br /> The popular masses are the maker of history. But only when they are led correctly can they hold the position and play a role as the main agent of the historical development. How the popular masses are awakened in a revolutionary way and united into the organized force and how they take their responsibility and fulfil their mission depend on whether they are led properly or not. Only under the correct leadership of a party and leader can they be the independent driving force of history who shapes history and their destiny independently and creatively.<br /> <br /> === 44. What is the essential characteristic of the socio-historical movement explained by the Juche idea? ===<br /> The Juche idea has defined the principle that the popular masses are the main agent of social history. On the basis of this it has delineated the principle that the socio-historical movement is the independent, creative and conscious movement of the popular masses. This is the essential characteristic of the socio-historical movement defined by the Juche idea.<br /> <br /> === 45. What does it mean that the socio-historical movement is the independent movement of the popular masses? ===<br /> It means that the socio-historical movement is a movement the popular masses launch by themselves<br /> <br /> to defend independence and put it into reality. In other words, it is the movement of the popular masses to free themselves from all sorts of subordination and restrictions and live and develop independently as the master of the world and their destiny.<br /> <br /> === 46. Why is the socio-historical movement called the independent movement of the popular masses? ===<br /> The reason why the socio-historical movement is the independent movement of the popular masses is that they are the independent beings for whom independence is the nature.<br /> <br /> The popular masses want to live independently free from all sorts of subjugation and restrictions. Independence is the life and soul for them and defending it is their vital right not to be deprived of. So they do not tolerate their independence to be infringed upon or restrained but fight ceaselessly in all the spheres of social development to defend it and translate it into practice.<br /> <br /> === 47. Why is human history called the history of the struggle of the popular masses for independence? ===<br /> Human history is the history of the popular masses’ struggle for independence.<br /> <br /> The popular masses have struggled consistently throughout human history to free themselves from social subjugation and natural restrictions. The socio-historical movement of the popular masses is conducted in various forms in different historic periods and its contents vary. Though the socio-historical movement has been conducted in various and complicated forms and it has been a process with a great many events of different characters, all this is intended to defend independence of the popular masses and translate it into reality.<br /> <br /> === 48. In what form is the independent movement of the popular masses conducted? ===<br /> As the movement of the popular masses is a struggle to provide them with conditions for leading an independent life it is launched in the three sectors of human activities—transformations of society, nature and man.<br /> <br /> Their struggle should be carried out in an all-round way in all the realms of society, nature and human transformations.<br /> <br /> === 49. What is the struggle to transform society? ===<br /> The struggle for society transformation is a striving of the popular masses to provide themselves with social and political conditions for leading an independent life free from class and national subjugation.<br /> <br /> If they are to live and develop independently, they must overthrow the outdated social system which rides roughshod over independence. Only when they replace the old social system with the one that provides them with independence can they become the master of society and their destiny and live independently.<br /> <br /> === 50. What is the struggle for transforming nature? ===<br /> The struggle to transform nature is an endeavour of the popular masses to create material conditions for an independent life free from the restrictions of nature.<br /> <br /> If they are to live and develop independently, they must work to produce material wealth by harnessing nature. Only when they transform and conquer nature can they free themselves from its restrictions and prepare material conditions for an independent life.<br /> <br /> === 51. What is the struggle to remould man? ===<br /> It is the struggle of the popular masses to create ideological and cultural conditions for leading an independent life free from the fetters of the outdated ideology and culture. .<br /> <br /> Only when they are free from the shackles of outdated ideology and culture and possess independent ideological consciousness and sound culture can they carve out their destiny by themselves and live and work as genuine independent beings.<br /> <br /> === 52. What order does the independent movement of the popular masses have? ===<br /> The independent movement of the popular masses is conducted in historical order according to the stage of social development.<br /> <br /> The primary question arising in their independent movement is the society transformation for translating their socio-political independence into reality. ,<br /> <br /> To put their socio-political independence into practice means to make the popular masses the master of state and society free from all sorts of social fetters. If man is socially subjected and his socio-political independence is infringed upon he is destined to be a slave with his dignity and value encroached upon. So the question of paramount importance arising in the struggle for independence is to realize socio-political independence.<br /> <br /> In socialism where the society transformation has been carried out the issue of transforming nature and man comes to the fore and is translated into reality.<br /> <br /> === 53. Why does the struggle of the popular masses for independence assume an international character? ===<br /> The struggle of the popular masses for independence assumes an international character.<br /> <br /> It means that it is waged on an international scale. In other words, their struggle for independence is a process in which all the countries, nations and peoples in the world launch the struggle for independence jointly in firm unity.<br /> <br /> The reason why their struggle for independence has an international character is that the imperialists are allied internationally with the common interests in trampling down their independence and that the oppressed nations and peoples in the world have similarity in the historic status and interests.<br /> <br /> === 54. What does it mean that the independent stand should be maintained in the revolution and construction? ===<br /> As the socio-historical movement is the independent movement of the popular masses the independent stand should be adhered to in the revolution and construction to defend their independence.<br /> <br /> It means that the popular masses should deal with the problems arising in the revolution and construction according to their own judgment and decision and solve them by their own efforts.<br /> <br /> === 55. How is the independent stand exhibited? ===<br /> The independent stand is exhibited in exercising the right and taking responsibility as the master of the revolution and construction.<br /> <br /> That the popular masses exercise the right as the master of the revolution and construction means that they tackle all the problems arising in the revolution and construction according to their own independent judgment and decision and in line with their own interests.<br /> <br /> That they take responsibility as the master of the revolution and construction means that they take responsibility for all the problems arising in the revolution and construction and resolve them by their own efforts.<br /> <br /> === 56. What does it mean that the socio-historical movement is the creative movement of the popular masses? ===<br /> It means that the socio-historical movement is the movement through which the popular masses transform and change nature and society actively with their own creative wisdom and efforts. In other words, it is the struggle through which the popular masses do away with all the old things encroaching upon and restricting independence and develop the new with their creative ability.<br /> <br /> === 57. Why is the socio-historical movement called the creative movement of the popular masses? ===<br /> It is because the popular masses are the creative beings with creativity as their nature.<br /> <br /> They want to remove all the old and create the new. Their demand comes from their aspiration after independence. They conduct creative activities for transforming nature and society uninterruptedly to achieve their demand for independence. Also, as they have creative ability to transform nature and society they can successfully launch the creative activities for nature and society transformations. So the socio-historical movement is carried out by creative activities of the popular masses.<br /> <br /> === 58. Why is human history called the popular masses’ history of creation? ===<br /> Human history is the history of creation of the popular masses.<br /> <br /> It means the history in which new social wealth is increased and socio-historical changes and progress are made by creative activities of the popular masses.<br /> <br /> Since the beginning of human history the popular masses have tried to conquer nature and made things needed for their existence and development with creative labour and achieved social progress by their creative activities that change the old.<br /> <br /> All of progress and changes made by humankind throughout its history are the fruition of their creative struggle.<br /> <br /> === 59. What are the characteristics of the creative movement of the popular masses? ===<br /> One of the characteristics of their creative movement is that it accompanies struggle.<br /> <br /> Their creative activities are a struggle to wipe out the old and make the new in line with their demand. Only their struggle can do away with the old and create the new. In particular, the process of replacing the old social system with a new one accompanies a fierce class struggle.<br /> <br /> The other characteristic of their creative movement is that it is a process of developing themselves into more powerful beings.<br /> <br /> The process of their creative struggle is a course in which they transform nature and society and at the same time raise their creative ability.<br /> <br /> === 60. What does it mean that the creative stand should be maintained in the revolution and construction? ===<br /> As the socio-historical movement is the creative one of the popular masses they should always adhere to the creative stand in their efforts to transform nature and society.<br /> <br /> Maintaining the creative stand in the revolution and construction means that all the problems arising in the resolution and construction are solved by making the most of creativity of the popular masses and in accordance with the actual conditions of their country.<br /> <br /> === 61. What does it mean that the socio-historical movement is the conscious movement of the popular masses? ===<br /> It means that the socio-historical movement is pushed by the conscious struggle of the popular masses. In other words, it is the movement through which they conduct creative activities purposefully and consciously to meet their demand for independence.<br /> <br /> === 62. Why is the socio-historical movement called the conscious movement of the popular masses? ===<br /> It is because the popular masses are conscious beings with consciousness as their nature.<br /> <br /> Activities conducted by a social being as the dominator and transformer of the world are ensured by consciousness. Man conducts all his activities to understand and transform the world and himself purposefully and consciously in line with his demand and objective law. The activities the popular masses conduct to cognize and transform nature and society are just the expression of their consciousness. Therefore, the socio-historical movement is started and pushed by their conscious struggle.<br /> <br /> === 63. Why is human history called the history of the conscious struggle of the popular masses? ===<br /> Human history is the history of the conscious struggle of the popular masses.<br /> <br /> In the initial periods of human history the people’s ideological and cultural level was very low and accordingly spontaneity was mostly predominant in the socio-historical movement.<br /> <br /> The popular masses have steadily raised their ideological, conscious, scientific, technological and cultural levels in the long process of conquering nature and developing productivity. In the course of this, the scope of spontaneity has diminished gradually and the scope of purposefulness and consciousness has widened in the socio-historical movement.<br /> <br /> === 64. What role does independent ideological consciousness play in the socio-historical movement? ===<br /> Independent ideological consciousness reflects the intrinsic demand of the popular masses. It is the consciousness of man as the master of his destiny and the will to carve out his destiny by himself.<br /> <br /> Independent ideological consciousness plays a decisive role in the socio-historical movement and the revolutionary movement.<br /> <br /> It means that independent ideological consciousness is a key factor that determines all the people’s roles in the revolution and construction.<br /> <br /> It enables the people to fight for victory in the revolution with a correct class standpoint and display a strong will and fighting spirit.<br /> <br /> === 65. What does it mean that the people’s ideology should be regarded as the key factor in the revolution and construction? ===<br /> As the revolutionary movement is a conscious movement the people’s ideology should always be regarded as fundamental in the revolutionary<br /> <br /> struggle and construction work.<br /> <br /> Considering the people’s ideology as the key in the revolution and construction means solving all the problems by attaching paramount importance to the ideological factor and enhancing the role of ideological consciousness.<br /> <br /> To attach paramount importance to the ideological factor is to pay primary attention to the people’s ideology and make all the conditions affecting the revolution and construction ripe by relying on the ideological factor.<br /> <br /> Solving all the problems by raising the role of ideological consciousness means dealing with all the problems arising in the revolution and construction by way of stimulating the people ideologically, not in technical, businesslike or administrative way.<br /> <br /> === 66. What is the position and role a leader takes and plays in the socio-historical movement? ===<br /> The Juchc idea has newly delineated the position and role a leader takes and plays in the socio-historical movement, the revolutionary movement.<br /> <br /> According to it, a leader holds the absolute position and plays a decisive role in the development of history and the revolutionary struggle.<br /> <br /> === 67. What does it mean that the leader takes the absolute position in the development of history and the revolutionary struggle? ===<br /> It means that he, as the centre of the driving force of revolution and a socio-political organism, is in a special position that nobody can take the place of.<br /> <br /> === 68. What is the absolute position a leader takes in the development of history and the revolutionary struggle? ===<br /> It, in a word, is the centre of socio-political organism.<br /> <br /> The leader is the centre of unity that integrates the party, the army and the people together into a socio-political organism. In other words, he is the centre of ideological cohesion, organizational unity and moral obligation-based unity of the party, the army and the people.<br /> <br /> He is the centre of leadership that commands the activities of a socio-political organism in a unified manner. As the centre controlling the living activities of an individual is the brain the centre ensuring the living activities of the socio-political organism that consists of a host of people is the leader, the top brain of it.<br /> <br /> === 69. What does it mean that the leader plays a decisive role in the development of history and the revolutionary struggle? ===<br /> It means that he plays a decisive role in carving out the destiny of the popular masses, the driving force of revolution.<br /> <br /> === 70. What is the content of a decisive role played by the leader in the development of history and the revolutionary struggle? ===<br /> The leader establishes and develops the guiding ideology of the revolution and indicates the path of the revolution to the popular masses.<br /> <br /> He leads the revolution to victory by building up the driving force of the revolution and enhancing its<br /> <br /> role steadily.<br /> <br /> He also solves the issue of his successor correctly to make it possible to achieve ultimate victory of the revolution.<br /> <br /> === 71. What does the Juche idea teach in its guiding principles? ===<br /> The Juche idea has explained the guiding principles to be maintained in the revolutionary movement in a comprehensive way. Its guiding principles refer to maintaining the independent stand, applying creative methods and putting main emphasis on ideology in the revolution and construction.<br /> <br /> === 72. What is the principle of maintaining the independent stand? ===<br /> The principle of maintaining the independent stand helps the popular masses take the position as the master of the revolution and construction.<br /> <br /> It requires establishing Juche in ideology, pursuing independence in politics, achieving self-support in the economy and adhering to<br /> <br /> self-reliance in national defence.<br /> <br /> === 73. What does the establishment of Juche in ideology mean? ===<br /> The principle of establishing Juche in ideology is the guiding principle of applying independence to the sector of ideology.<br /> <br /> Establishing Juche in ideology means ensuring that the popular masses are aware that they are the master of the revolution and construction, think about and do everything with the revolution in their country at the centre and take the standpoint and attitude of solving all the problems with their own wisdom and efforts.<br /> <br /> === 74. Why does Juche have to be established in ideology? ===<br /> The reason why Juche has to be established in ideology is that the revolution and construction are the activities the people conduct consciously.<br /> <br /> Only when Juche is established in ideology can it be established in all the fields including politics, the economy and national defence.<br /> <br /> This also helps the party and people in each country carry out not only the revolution in their country but the world revolution successfully.<br /> <br /> === 75. What should be done to establish Juche in ideology? ===<br /> To establish Juche in ideology the popular masses should arm themselves with independent revolutionary ideology and the lines and policies of their party.<br /> <br /> They also must be well versed in their own things. This means that they should be well aware of their country.<br /> <br /> It is important to have a high sense of national dignity and revolutionary pride in establishing Juche in ideology.<br /> <br /> It is also imperative to develop national culture and raise the cultural and technical level of the popular masses.<br /> <br /> Flunkeyism and all other outdated ideologies should be rejected.<br /> <br /> === 76. What does it mean to maintain independence in politics? ===<br /> Maintaining independence in politics is the guiding principle of translating independence into politics.<br /> <br /> Maintaining independence in politics means administering politics that defends national independence and sovereignty and the interests of the people and relies on the strength of the people.<br /> <br /> === 77. Why does independence have to be maintained in politics? ===<br /> Politics is very important in social life. Political independence is the first symbol and the foremost life of an independent sovereign state. And the revolutionary struggle is, first of all, to provide political independence for the popular masses.<br /> <br /> === 78. What should be done to maintain independence in politics? ===<br /> To adhere to independence in politics a government for the people should be established.<br /> <br /> Only when the popular masses have the government that serves them and become the genuine master of state and society can they achieve political independence and lead an independent and creative life.<br /> <br /> To hold fast to independence in politics one’s own political force should be built. To this end, it is imperative to strengthen’ the party, the guide of the revolution, achieve unity between the leader, the party, the army and the people and rally all the people closely around the party and the leader with the revolutionary army as the core.<br /> <br /> It is also important to adopt one’s own guiding ideology, work out lines and policies independently according to one’s own decision and put them into practice.<br /> <br /> Complete independence and equality should be exercised in foreign relations.<br /> <br /> === 79. What does it mean to enhance self-support in the economy? ===<br /> Achieving self-support in the economy is the guiding principle of applying independence to the economic sector.<br /> <br /> Carrying out the principle of achieving self-support in the economy means building the self-supporting national economy. To build the self-supporting national economy means to construct the economy that does not rely on others, but develops on its own.<br /> <br /> === 80. Why does the self-supporting principle have to be maintained in the economy? ===<br /> The self-supporting economy makes it possible for a country to consolidate its independence, live independently, establish Juche in ideology, maintain independence in politics, achieve self-reliance in national defence and provide the people with an affluent material and cultural life.<br /> <br /> It also helps it get rid of national inequality, achieve its comprehensive development, promote economic cooperation with other countries on the principle of complete equality and mutual benefits and provide against the economic plunder by the imperialists.<br /> <br /> === 81. What should be done to build the self-supporting national economy? ===<br /> The construction of the self-supporting economy necessitates adherence to the self-reliant principle in the economic construction.<br /> <br /> The economy should be developed in a diverse and comprehensive way.<br /> <br /> It is also important to provide latest technologies for the economy and train a great number of technical personnel.<br /> <br /> Bases that produce raw materials and fuel with locally available resources should be built.<br /> <br /> === 82. What does it mean to carry out the principle of adhering to self-reliance in national defence? ===<br /> Holding fast to self-reliance in national defence is the guiding principle of applying independence to the sector of national defence.<br /> <br /> To carry out the principle of maintaining self-reliance in national defence means to defend the country with one’s own efforts. In other words, it means that each country has to build the strong military power with which to defend the country with its own efforts and solve all the problems arising in the construction of national defence and military activities in line with the interests of the people and the actual conditions of the country.<br /> <br /> === 83. Why does the principle of maintaining self-reliance in national defence have to be carried out? ===<br /> Self-reliance in national defence is one of the main symbols for an independent sovereign state. As long as imperialism exists the country without the self-defensive military might cannot actually be a completely sovereign state.<br /> <br /> Self-reliance in national defence is a military guarantee for the country’s political independence and economic self-support. Only when a country adheres to the self-reliant principle in national defence can it repulse imperialist aggression and intervention, achieve political independence and economic self-support and defend the social system and the people’s safety.<br /> <br /> === 84. What should be done to carry out the principle of self-reliance in national defence? ===<br /> It is essential to build the self-defensive armed forces to<br /> <br /> carry out the principle of self-reliance in national defence.<br /> <br /> It is also important to establish an all-people and nationwide defence system. To this end, it is necessary to turn the whole army into an army of cadres, update it, arm the entire population and make the whole country a fortress.<br /> <br /> It is imperative to give fall play to the political and ideological superiority of the revolutionary armed forces.<br /> <br /> The self-reliant defence industry should be built and the rear should be strengthened.<br /> <br /> === 85. What are the creative methods? ===<br /> The creative methods are to rely on the popular masses and do things in accordance with the actual conditions.<br /> <br /> The methods make it possible to step up the revolution and construction remarkably by giving the fullest play to the people’s role, revolutionary enthusiasm and creative initiative.<br /> <br /> === 86. What does it mean to rely on the popular masses? ===<br /> To rely on the popular masses means to solve all the problems arising in the revolution and construction by relying on their strength and making the most of their creativity.<br /> <br /> === 87. Why do the revolution and construction have to be pushed by relying on the popular masses? ===<br /> It is because the popular masses are a key player in pushing the revolution and construction.<br /> <br /> It is the popular masses with an inexhaustible creative ability who play a decisive role in carrying out the revolution and construction. Only when one relies on the popular masses can one solve any problem successfully and push the revolution and construction.<br /> <br /> === 88. What is important in carrying out the revolution and construction by relying on the popular masses? ===<br /> An important thing in carrying out the revolution and construction by relying on the popular masses is to work out lines and policies by representing the demand and aspirations of the masses and make<br /> <br /> them their own affairs that they have to deal with.<br /> <br /> The other one is to rally the popular masses into a political force.<br /> <br /> It is also necessary to oppose all sorts of the old that hampers innovation.<br /> <br /> It is important to conduct mass movements on a large scale.<br /> <br /> Revolutionary methods of work should also be established.<br /> <br /> === 89. What does it mean to do things in accordance with the actual conditions? ===<br /> It means solving all the problems creatively in accordance with the actual situation that changes and develops and the specific conditions of the country.<br /> <br /> === 90. Why do the revolution and construction have to be carried out in line with the actual conditions? ===<br /> It is because the revolution and construction are carried out in different periods and in specific environment of each country.<br /> <br /> In the revolution and construction there is no right way that suits both all the ages and all the countries.<br /> <br /> Therefore, all the problems should always be solved creatively in keeping with the actual conditions by starting from the reality.<br /> <br /> === 91. What is important in carrying out the revolution and construction in line with one’s own specific situation? ===<br /> An important thing in pushing the revolution and construction in line with one’s own actual conditions is to take subjective and objective conditions in the revolution of one’s country into full consideration and work out lines, policies, strategies and tactics according to them.<br /> <br /> It is also important to approach the established theories properly. When approaching prepositions and formulas of the previous theories one should study what requirements of the times they reflected and from what premises they came and apply them to meet one’s own specific reality according to one’s own characteristics.<br /> <br /> It is also necessary to explore new principles and ways to carry out the revolution and construction in line with the historical conditions of the times and one’s own specific situation.<br /> <br /> It is important to approach other’s experience critically and creatively.<br /> <br /> === 92. What is the principle of placing the main stress on ideology? ===<br /> Giving priority to the ideological transformation and political work constitutes the principle of placing the main emphasis on ideology.<br /> <br /> The principle guarantees the principles of maintaining the independent stand and applying the creative methods in the revolution and construction.<br /> <br /> === 93. What does it mean to give priority to the ideological transformation? ===<br /> It means placing above all other work the training of people into genuine social beings by transforming their ideological consciousness.<br /> <br /> === 94. Why should priority be given to the ideological transformation? ===<br /> Because it is essential in remoulding the people into genuine social beings.<br /> <br /> The ideological transformation is also more difficult than the improvement of material life and the cultural and technical development.<br /> <br /> The ideological transformation is a serious revolution.<br /> <br /> === 95. What does it mean to give precedence to political work? ===<br /> It means arming the popular masses with the party’s lines and policies ahead of other work and arousing their revolutionary enthusiasm so that they wage the revolutionary struggle and construction work successfully with a high degree of consciousness and positiveness.<br /> <br /> === 96. Why does precedence have to be given to political work? ===<br /> It is because political work is an indispensable need for successfully pushing the revolution and construction.<br /> <br /> As the revolution and construction are carried out by people their success depends on how work among people is conducted.<br /> <br /> Work among people is, in essence, political work and work with people’s ideology.<br /> <br /> So, priority should be given to political work that stimulates the people’s ideology in order to carry out the revolution and construction successfully.<br /> <br /> === 97. What is important in applying the principle of giving precedence to political work? ===<br /> It is important to properly combine the administrative, technical and economic affairs with political work while giving precedence to it.<br /> <br /> Main emphasis should be placed on political and moral incentives and material incentive should be combined with them properly.<br /> <br /> Political work should be relied on scientific and revolutionary methods.<br /> <br /> It should be conducted by way of persuasion and education and in diverse forms and methods.<br /> <br /> It should also be conducted by the popular masses themselves.<br /> <br /> It should be closely combined with revolutionary practice.<br /> <br /> === 98. What is the historic position of the Juche idea? ===<br /> The Juche idea is a perfect revolutionary idea that has reached the highest stage in the development of revolutionary ideas.<br /> <br /> Fundamentally different from other previous philosophies, the Juche idea is based on the man-centred philosophical principle and shows the most correct way for carving out man’s destiny.<br /> <br /> It explains all the contents of the revolutionary outlook on the world comprehensively and perfectly.<br /> <br /> It is a great idea that represents the present age and the whole historical period.<br /> <br /> It gives perfect answers to all the problems arising in revolutionary practice at present when the popular masses are fighting for national liberation and class and human emancipation after emerging as the master of history and their destiny.<br /> <br /> It also deals with the issues of future society where independence of the popular masses will have been fully provided throughout the world.<br /> <br /> === 99. How have the study and dissemination of the Juche idea been conducted over the world? ===<br /> Teachers and students at a teacher training college in Mali formed a group for studying Comrade Kim Il Sung’s works, the first Juche idea study group in the world, in April Juche 58(1969).<br /> <br /> Since then national and regional organizations for studying the Juche idea had been formed throughout the world. Against this background the International Institute of the Juche Idea was inaugurated in April Juche 67(1978).<br /> <br /> At present there are more than 1 000 study groups and 27 national committees in some 110 countries as well as four regional organizations in four continents.<br /> <br /> The International Institute of the Juche Idea has a pyramid-typed system for studying and disseminating the idea.<br /> <br /> Activities for studying and disseminating the Juche idea have been conducted worldwide on the basis of the well-functioning system.<br /> <br /> The Board of the International Institute of the Juche Idea decided at the 13th enlarged meeting of its executive committee in April Juche 100(2011) to hold the World Conference on the Juche Idea in Pyongyang, the DPRK, home to the Juche idea, in commemoration of the Day of the Sun (April 15) in Juche 101(2012) to mark the hundredth birthday of President Kim Il Sung.<br /> <br /> === 100. What is the significance of the World Conference on the Juche Idea? ===<br /> The World Conference on the Juche Idea will contribute greatly to commemorating the hundredth birthday of President Kim Il Sung, who had performed brilliant exploits in the history of human thought by establishing the immortal Juche idea, as a great event in human history and a great political festival.<br /> <br /> It will be a historic occasion that extols the great exploits President Kim Il Sung had performed in the Korean revolution and the cause of making the world independent under the banner of the Juche idea and will prove that the validity and vitality of the Juche idea are being inherited by Songun politics developed and enriched by leader Kim Jong Il.<br /> <br /> It will be of great help to invigorating the activities of the Juche idea study organizations and followers throughout the world and stimulating the study and disseminating of the idea.<br /> [[Category:Library works about the DPRK]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about Juche]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Full_text_of_Xi_Jinping%27s_speech_on_the_CPC%27s_100th_anniversary&diff=76020 2024-09-30T12:47:05Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>''By [[Xi Jinping]], general secretary of the [[Communist Party of China]] (CPC) Central Committee, Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission''<br /> <br /> {{Library work|title=Full text of Xi Jinping's speech on the CPC's 100th anniversary|author=Xi Jinping|published_date=2021-07-01|type=Speech|source=[https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Full-text-of-Xi-Jinping-s-speech-on-the-CCP-s-100th-anniversary Nikkei Asia ]}}<br /> <br /> Comrades and friends,<br /> <br /> Today, the first of July, is a great and solemn day in the history of both the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the [[People's Republic of China|Chinese]] nation. We gather here to join all Party members and Chinese people of all ethnic groups around the country in celebrating the centenary of the Party, looking back on the glorious journey the Party has traveled over 100 years of struggle, and looking ahead to the bright prospects for the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.<br /> <br /> To begin, let me extend warm congratulations to all Party members on behalf of the CPC Central Committee.<br /> <br /> On this special occasion, it is my honor to declare on behalf of the Party and the people that through the continued efforts of the whole Party and the entire nation, we have realized the first centenary goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. This means that we have brought about a historic resolution to the problem of absolute poverty in China, and we are now marching in confident strides toward the second centenary goal of building China into a great modern [[Socialism|socialist]] country in all respects. This is a great and glorious accomplishment for the Chinese nation, for the Chinese people, and for the Communist Party of China!<br /> <br /> Comrades and friends,<br /> <br /> The Chinese nation is a great nation. With a history of more than 5,000 years, China has made indelible contributions to the progress of human civilization. After the Opium War of 1840, however, China was gradually reduced to a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society and suffered greater ravages than ever before. The country endured intense humiliation, the people were subjected to great pain, and the Chinese civilization was plunged into darkness. Since that time, national rejuvenation has been the greatest dream of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation.<br /> <br /> To save the nation from peril, the Chinese people put up a courageous fight. As noble-minded patriots sought to pull the nation together, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, the Reform Movement of 1898, the Yihetuan Movement, and the Revolution of 1911 rose one after the other, and a variety of plans were devised to ensure national survival, but all of these ended in failure. China was in urgent need of new ideas to lead the movement to save the nation and a new organization to rally revolutionary forces.<br /> <br /> With the salvoes of Russia's October Revolution in 1917, [[Marxism–Leninism|Marxism-Leninism]] was brought to China. Then in 1921, as the Chinese people and the Chinese nation were undergoing a great awakening and Marxism-Leninism was becoming closely integrated with the Chinese workers' movement, the Communist Party of China was born. The founding of a communist party in China was an epoch-making event, which profoundly changed the course of Chinese history in modern times, transformed the future of the Chinese people and nation, and altered the landscape of world development.<br /> <br /> Since the very day of its founding, the Party has made seeking happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation its aspiration and mission. All the struggle, sacrifice, and creation through which the Party has united and led the Chinese people over the past hundred years has been tied together by one ultimate theme-bringing about the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.<br /> <br /> To realize national rejuvenation, the Party united and led the Chinese people in fighting bloody battles with unyielding determination, achieving great success in the new-democratic revolution.<br /> <br /> Through the Northern Expedition, the Agrarian Revolutionary War, the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, and the War of Liberation, we fought armed counter-revolution with armed revolution, toppling the three mountains of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism and establishing the People's Republic of China, which made the people masters of the country. We thus secured our nation's independence and liberated our people.<br /> <br /> The victory of the new-democratic revolution put an end to China's history as a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society, to the state of total disunity that existed in old China, and to all the unequal treaties imposed on our country by foreign powers and all the privileges that imperialist powers enjoyed in China. It created the fundamental social conditions for realizing national rejuvenation.<br /> <br /> Through tenacious struggle, the Party and the Chinese people showed the world that the Chinese people had stood up, and that the time in which the Chinese nation could be bullied and abused by others was gone forever.<br /> <br /> To realize national rejuvenation, the Party united and led the Chinese people in endeavoring to build a stronger China with a spirit of self-reliance, achieving great success in socialist revolution and construction.<br /> <br /> By carrying out socialist revolution, we eliminated the exploitative and repressive feudal system that had persisted in China for thousands of years, and established socialism as our basic system. In the process of socialist construction, we overcame subversion, sabotage, and armed provocation by imperialist and hegemonic powers, and brought about the most extensive and profound social changes in the history of the Chinese nation. This great transformation of China from a poor and backward country in the East with a large population into a socialist country laid down the fundamental political conditions and the institutional foundations necessary for realizing national rejuvenation.<br /> <br /> Through tenacious struggle, the Party and the Chinese people showed the world that the Chinese people were capable of not only dismantling the old world, but also building a new one, that only socialism could save China, and that only [[Socialism with Chinese Characteristics|socialism with Chinese characteristics]] could develop China.<br /> <br /> To realize national rejuvenation, the Party united and led the Chinese people in freeing the mind and forging ahead, achieving great success in reform, opening up, and socialist modernization.<br /> <br /> We established the Party's basic line for the primary stage of socialism, resolutely advanced reform and opening up, overcame risks and challenges from every direction, and founded, upheld, safeguarded, and developed socialism with Chinese characteristics, thus bringing about a major turn with far-reaching significance in the history of the Party since the founding of the People's Republic of China. This enabled China to transform itself from a highly centralized planned economy to a socialist market economy brimming with vitality, and from a country that was largely isolated to one that is open to the outside world across the board. It also enabled China to achieve the historic leap from a country with relatively backward productive forces to the world's second largest economy, and to make the historic transformation of raising the living standards of its people from bare subsistence to an overall level of moderate prosperity, and then ultimately to moderate prosperity in all respects. These achievements fueled the push toward national rejuvenation by providing institutional guarantees imbued with new energy as well as the material conditions for rapid development.<br /> <br /> Through tenacious struggle, the Party and the Chinese people showed the world that by pursuing reform and opening up, a crucial move in making China what it is today, China had caught up with the times in great strides.<br /> <br /> To realize national rejuvenation, the Party has united and led the Chinese people in pursuing a great struggle, a great project, a great cause, and a great dream through a spirit of self-confidence, self-reliance, and innovation, achieving great success for socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era.<br /> <br /> Following the Party's 18th National Congress, socialism with Chinese characteristics entered a new era. In this new era, we have upheld and strengthened the Party's overall leadership, ensured coordinated implementation of the five-sphere integrated plan and the four-pronged comprehensive strategy, upheld and improved the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, modernized China's system and capacity for governance, remained committed to exercising rule-based governance over the Party, and developed a sound system of intraparty regulations. We have overcome a long list of major risks and challenges, fulfilled the first centenary goal, and set out strategic steps for achieving the second centenary goal. All the historic achievements and changes in the cause of the Party and the country have provided the cause of national rejuvenation with more robust institutions, stronger material foundations, and a source of inspiration for taking greater initiative.<br /> <br /> Through tenacious struggle, the Party and the Chinese people have shown the world that the Chinese nation has achieved the tremendous transformation from standing up and growing prosperous to becoming strong, and that China's national rejuvenation has become a historical inevitability.<br /> <br /> Over the past hundred years, the Party has united and led the Chinese people in writing the most magnificent chapter in the millennia-long history of the Chinese nation, embodying the dauntless spirit that Mao Zedong expressed when he wrote, &quot;Our minds grow stronger for the martyrs' sacrifice, daring to make the sun and the moon shine in the new sky.&quot; The great path we have pioneered, the great cause we have undertaken, and the great achievements we have made over the past century will go down in the annals of the development of the Chinese nation and of human civilization.<br /> <br /> Comrades and friends,<br /> <br /> A hundred years ago, the pioneers of Communism in China established the Communist Party of China and developed the great founding spirit of the Party, which is comprised of the following principles: upholding truth and ideals, staying true to our original aspiration and founding mission, fighting bravely without fear of sacrifice, and remaining loyal to the Party and faithful to the people. This spirit is the Party's source of strength.<br /> <br /> Over the past hundred years, the Party has carried forward this great founding spirit. Through its protracted struggles, it has developed a long line of inspiring principles for Chinese Communists and tempered a distinct political character. As history has kept moving forward, the spirit of the Party has been passed on from generation to generation. We will continue to promote our glorious traditions and sustain our revolutionary legacy, so that the great founding spirit of the Party will always be kept alive and carried forward.<br /> <br /> Comrades and friends,<br /> <br /> We owe all that we have achieved over the past hundred years to the concerted efforts of the Chinese Communists, the Chinese people, and the Chinese nation. Chinese Communists, with comrades Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao as their chief representatives, have made tremendous and historic contributions to the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. To them, we express our highest respect.<br /> <br /> Let us take this moment to cherish the memory of comrades Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, and other veteran revolutionaries who contributed greatly to China's revolution, construction, and reform, and to the founding, consolidation, and development of the Communist Party of China; let us cherish the memory of the revolutionary martyrs who bravely laid down their lives to establish, defend, and develop the People's Republic; let us cherish the memory of those who dedicated their lives to reform, opening up, and socialist modernization; and let us cherish the memory of all the men and women who fought tenaciously for national independence and the liberation of the people in modern times. Their great contributions to our motherland and our nation will be immortalized in the annals of history, and their noble spirit will live on forever in the hearts of the Chinese people.<br /> <br /> The people are the true heroes, for it is they who create history. On behalf of the CPC Central Committee, I would like to pay my highest respects to workers, farmers, and intellectuals across the country; to other political parties, public figures without party affiliation, people's organizations, and patriotic figures from all sectors of society; to all members of the People's Liberation Army, the People's Armed Police Force, the public security police, and the fire and rescue services; to all socialist working people; and to all members of the united front. I would like to extend my sincere greetings to compatriots in the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and in Taiwan as well as overseas Chinese. And I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to people and friends from around the world who have shown friendship to the Chinese people and understanding and support for China's endeavors in revolution, development, and reform.<br /> <br /> Comrades and friends,<br /> <br /> Though our Party's founding mission is easy to define, ensuring that we stay true to this mission is a more difficult task. By learning from history, we can understand why powers rise and fall. Through the mirror of history, we can find where we currently stand and gain foresight into the future. Looking back on the Party's 100-year history, we can see why we were successful in the past and how we can continue to succeed in the future. This will ensure that we act with greater resolve and purpose in staying true to our founding mission and pursuing a better future on the new journey that lies before us.<br /> <br /> As we put conscious effort into learning from history to create a bright future, we must bear the following in mind:<br /> <br /> We must uphold the firm leadership of the Party. China's success hinges on the Party. The more than 180-year-long modern history of the Chinese nation, the 100-year-long history of the Party, and the more than 70-year-long history of the People's Republic of China all provide ample evidence that without the Communist Party of China, there would be no new China and no national rejuvenation. The Party was chosen by history and the people. The leadership of the Party is the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics and constitutes the greatest strength of this system. It is the foundation and lifeblood of the Party and the country, and the crux upon which the interests and wellbeing of all Chinese people depend.<br /> <br /> On the journey ahead, we must uphold the Party's overall leadership and continue to enhance its leadership. We must be deeply conscious of the need to maintain political integrity, think in big-picture terms, follow the leadership core, and keep in alignment with the central Party leadership. We must stay confident in the path, theory, system, and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics. We must uphold the core position of the General Secretary on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole, and uphold the Central Committee's authority and its centralized, unified leadership. Bearing in mind the country's most fundamental interests, we must enhance the Party's capacity to conduct sound, democratic, and law-based governance, and ensure that it fully exerts its core role in providing overall leadership and coordinating the efforts of all sides.<br /> <br /> We must unite and lead the Chinese people in working ceaselessly for a better life. This country is its people; the people are the country. As we have fought to establish and consolidate our leadership over the country, we have in fact been fighting to earn and keep the people's support. The Party has in the people its roots, its lifeblood, and its source of strength. The Party has always represented the fundamental interests of all Chinese people; it stands with them through thick and thin and shares a common fate with them. The Party has no special interests of its own-it has never represented any individual interest group, power group, or privileged stratum. Any attempt to divide the Party from the Chinese people or to set the people against the Party is bound to fail. The more than 95 million Party members and the more than 1.4 billion Chinese people will never allow such a scenario to come to pass.<br /> <br /> On the journey ahead, we must rely closely on the people to create history. Upholding the Party's fundamental purpose of wholeheartedly serving the people, we will stand firmly with the people, implement the Party's mass line, respect the people's creativity, and practice a people-centered philosophy of development. We will develop whole-process people's democracy, safeguard social fairness and justice, and resolve the imbalances and inadequacies in development and the most pressing difficulties and problems that are of great concern to the people. In doing so, we will make more notable and substantive progress toward achieving well-rounded human development and common prosperity for all.<br /> <br /> We must continue to adapt Marxism to the Chinese context. Marxism is the fundamental guiding ideology upon which our Party and country are founded; it is the very soul of our Party and the banner under which it strives. The Communist Party of China upholds the basic tenets of Marxism and the principle of seeking truth from facts. Based on China's realities, we have developed keen insights into the trends of the day, seized the initiative in history, and made painstaking explorations. We have thus been able to keep adapting Marxism to the Chinese context and the needs of our times, and to guide the Chinese people in advancing our great social revolution. At the fundamental level, the capability of our Party and the strengths of socialism with Chinese characteristics are attributable to the fact that Marxism works.<br /> <br /> On the journey ahead, we must continue to uphold Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development, and fully implement the Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. We must continue to adapt the basic tenets of Marxism to China's specific realities and its fine traditional culture. We will use Marxism to observe, understand, and steer the trends of our times, and continue to develop the Marxism of contemporary China and in the 21st century.<br /> <br /> We must uphold and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics. We must follow our own path-this is the bedrock that underpins all the theories and practices of our Party. More than that, it is the historical conclusion our Party has drawn from its struggles over the past century. Socialism with Chinese characteristics is a fundamental achievement of the Party and the people, forged through innumerable hardships and great sacrifices, and it is the right path for us to achieve national rejuvenation. As we have upheld and developed socialism with Chinese characteristics and driven coordinated progress in material, political, cultural-ethical, social, and ecological terms, we have pioneered a new and uniquely Chinese path to modernization, and created a new model for human advancement.<br /> <br /> On the journey ahead, we must adhere to the Party's basic theory, line, and policy, and implement the five-sphere integrated plan and the four-pronged comprehensive strategy. We must deepen reform and opening up across the board, ground our work in this new stage of development, fully and faithfully apply the new development philosophy, and foster a new pattern of development. We must promote high-quality development and build up our country's strength in science and technology. We must ensure it is our people who run the country, continue to govern based on the rule of law, and uphold the core socialist values. We must ensure and enhance public wellbeing in the course of development, promote harmony between humanity and nature, and take well-coordinated steps toward making our people prosperous, our nation strong, and our country beautiful.<br /> <br /> The Chinese nation has fostered a splendid civilization over more than 5,000 years of history. The Party has also acquired a wealth of experience through its endeavors over the past 100 years and during more than 70 years of governance. At the same time, we are also eager to learn what lessons we can from the achievements of other cultures, and welcome helpful suggestions and constructive criticism. We will not, however, accept sanctimonious preaching from those who feel they have the right to lecture us. The Party and the Chinese people will keep moving confidently forward in broad strides along the path that we have chosen for ourselves, and we will make sure the destiny of China's development and progress remains firmly in our own hands.<br /> <br /> We must accelerate the modernization of national defense and the armed forces. A strong country must have a strong military, as only then can it guarantee the security of the nation. At the point that it was engaged in violent struggle, the Party came to recognize the irrefutable truth that it must command the gun and build a people's military of its own. The people's military has made indelible achievements on behalf of the Party and the people. It is a strong pillar for safeguarding our socialist country and preserving national dignity, and a powerful force for protecting peace in our region and beyond.<br /> <br /> On the journey ahead, we must fully implement the Party's thinking on strengthening the military in the new era as well as our military strategy for the new era, maintain the Party's absolute leadership over the people's armed forces, and follow a Chinese path to military development. We will take comprehensive measures to enhance the political loyalty of the armed forces, to strengthen them through reform and technology and the training of competent personnel, and to run them in accordance with the law. We will elevate our people's armed forces to world-class standards so that we are equipped with greater capacity and more reliable means for safeguarding our national sovereignty, security, and development interests.<br /> <br /> We must continue working to promote the building of a human community with a shared future. Peace, concord, and harmony are ideas the Chinese nation has pursued and carried forward for more than 5,000 years. The Chinese nation does not carry aggressive or hegemonic traits in its genes. The Party cares about the future of humanity, and wishes to move forward in tandem with all progressive forces around the world. China has always worked to safeguard world peace, contribute to global development, and preserve international order.<br /> <br /> On the journey ahead, we will remain committed to promoting peace, development, cooperation, and mutual benefit, to an independent foreign policy of peace, and to the path of peaceful development. We will work to build a new type of international relations and a human community with a shared future, promote high-quality development of the Belt and Road Initiative through joint efforts, and use China's new achievements in development to provide the world with new opportunities. The Party will continue to work with all peace-loving countries and peoples to promote the shared human values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy, and freedom. We will continue to champion cooperation over confrontation, to open up rather than closing our doors, and to focus on mutual benefits instead of zero-sum games. We will oppose hegemony and power politics, and strive to keep the wheels of history rolling toward bright horizons.<br /> <br /> We Chinese are a people who uphold justice and are not intimidated by threats of force. As a nation, we have a strong sense of pride and confidence. We have never bullied, oppressed, or subjugated the people of any other country, and we never will. By the same token, we will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate us. Anyone who would attempt to do so will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.<br /> <br /> We must carry out a great struggle with many contemporary features. Having the courage to fight and the fortitude to win is what has made our Party invincible. Realizing our great dream will require hard work and persistence. Today, we are closer, more confident, and more capable than ever before of making the goal of national rejuvenation a reality. But we must be prepared to work harder than ever to get there.<br /> <br /> On the journey ahead, we must demonstrate stronger vigilance and always be prepared for potential danger, even in times of calm. We must adopt a holistic approach to national security that balances development and security imperatives, and implement the national rejuvenation strategy within a wider context of the once-in-a-century changes taking place in the world. We need to acquire a full understanding of the new features and requirements arising from the change to the principal contradiction in Chinese society and the new issues and challenges stemming from a complicated international environment. We must be both brave and adept in carrying out our struggle, forging new paths and building new bridges wherever necessary to take us past all risks and challenges.<br /> <br /> We must strengthen the great unity of the Chinese people. In the course of our struggles over the past century, the Party has always placed the united front in a position of importance. We have constantly consolidated and developed the broadest possible united front, united all the forces that can be united, mobilized all positive factors that can be mobilized, and pooled as much strength as possible for collective endeavors. The patriotic united front is an important means for the Party to unite all the sons and daughters of the Chinese nation, both at home and abroad, behind the goal of national rejuvenation.<br /> <br /> On the journey ahead, we must ensure great unity and solidarity and balance commonality and diversity. We should strengthen theoretical and political guidance, build broad consensus, bring together the brightest minds, and expand common ground and the convergence of interests, so that all Chinese people, both at home and overseas, can focus their ingenuity and energy on the same goal and come together as a mighty force for realizing national rejuvenation.<br /> <br /> We must continue to advance the great new project of Party building. A hallmark that distinguishes the Communist Party of China from other political parties is its courage in undertaking self-reform. An important reason why the Party remains so vital and vibrant despite having undergone so many trials and tribulations is that it practices effective self-supervision and full and rigorous self-governance. It has thus been able to respond appropriately to the risks and tests of different historical periods, to ensure that it always remains at the forefront of the times even as profound changes sweep the global landscape, and to stand firm as the backbone of the nation throughout the process of meeting various risks and challenges at home and abroad.<br /> <br /> On the journey ahead, we must keep firmly in mind the old adage that it takes a good blacksmith to make good steel. We must demonstrate greater political awareness of the fact that full and rigorous self-governance is a never-ending journey. With strengthening the Party politically as our overarching principle, we must continue advancing the great new project of Party building in the new era. We must tighten the Party's organizational system, work hard to train high-caliber officials who have both moral integrity and professional competence, remain committed to improving Party conduct, upholding integrity, and combating corruption, and root out any elements that would harm the Party's advanced nature and purity and any viruses that would erode its health. We must ensure that the Party preserves its essence, color, and character, and see that it always serves as the strong leadership core in the course of upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era.<br /> <br /> Comrades and friends,<br /> <br /> We will stay true to the letter and spirit of the principle of One Country, Two Systems, under which the people of Hong Kong administer Hong Kong, and the people of Macao administer Macao, both with a high degree of autonomy. We will ensure that the central government exercises overall jurisdiction over Hong Kong and Macao, and implement the legal systems and enforcement mechanisms for the two special administrative regions to safeguard national security. While protecting China's sovereignty, security, and development interests, we will ensure social stability in Hong Kong and Macao, and maintain lasting prosperity and stability in the two special administrative regions.<br /> <br /> Resolving the Taiwan question and realizing China's complete reunification is a historic mission and an unshakable commitment of the Communist Party of China. It is also a shared aspiration of all the sons and daughters of the Chinese nation. We will uphold the one-China principle and the 1992 Consensus, and advance peaceful national reunification. All of us, compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, must come together and move forward in unison. We must take resolute action to utterly defeat any attempt toward &quot;Taiwan independence,&quot; and work together to create a bright future for national rejuvenation. No one should underestimate the resolve, the will, and the ability of the Chinese people to defend their national sovereignty and territorial integrity.<br /> <br /> Comrades and friends,<br /> <br /> The future belongs to the young people, and our hopes also rest with them. A century ago, a group of young progressives held aloft the torch of Marxism and searched assiduously in those dark years for ways to rejuvenate the Chinese nation. Since then, under the banner of the Communist Party of China, generation after generation of young Chinese have devoted their youth to the cause of the Party and the people, and remained in the vanguard of the drive to rejuvenate the nation.<br /> <br /> In the new era, our young people should make it their mission to contribute to national rejuvenation and aspire to become more proud, confident, and assured in their identity as Chinese people so that they can live up to the promise of their youth and the expectations of our times, our Party, and our people.<br /> <br /> Comrades and friends,<br /> <br /> A century ago, at the time of its founding, the Communist Party of China had just over 50 members. Today, with more than 95 million members in a country of more than 1.4 billion people, it is the largest governing party in the world and enjoys tremendous international influence.<br /> <br /> A century ago, China was in decline and withering away in the eyes of the world. Today, the image it presents to the world is one of a thriving nation that is advancing with unstoppable momentum toward rejuvenation.<br /> <br /> Over the past century, the Communist Party of China has secured extraordinary historical achievements on behalf of the people. Today, it is rallying and leading the Chinese people on a new journey toward realizing the second centenary goal.<br /> <br /> To all Party members,<br /> <br /> The Central Committee calls on every one of you to stay true to our Party's founding mission and stand firm in your ideals and convictions. Acting on the purpose of the Party, you should always maintain close ties with the people, empathize and work with them, stand with them through good times and bad, and continue working tirelessly to realize their aspirations for a better life and to bring still greater glory to the Party and the people.<br /> <br /> Comrades and friends,<br /> <br /> Today, a hundred years on from its founding, the Communist Party of China is still in its prime, and remains as determined as ever to achieve lasting greatness for the Chinese nation. Looking back on the path we have travelled and forward to the journey that lies ahead, it is certain that with the firm leadership of the Party and the great unity of the Chinese people of all ethnic groups, we will achieve the goal of building a great modern socialist country in all respects and fulfill the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation.<br /> <br /> Long live our great, glorious, and correct Party!<br /> <br /> Long live our great, glorious, and heroic people!&quot;<br /> [[Category:Library works by Xi Jinping]]<br /> [[Category:Library documents from China]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Orientalism&diff=76019 2024-09-30T12:47:04Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Orientalism|author=Edward Said|published_date=1978|type=Book|isbn=0 7100 0040 5|source=[https://annas-archive.org/md5/7f43dae180a3f72e0bfd0ed9e1670bed anna's archive]}}<br /> <br /> == '''''Acknowledgments''''' ==<br /> I have been reading about Orientalism for a number of years, but most of this book was written during 1975-1976, which I spent as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California. In this unique and generous institution, it was my good fortune not only to have benefited agreeably from several colleagues, but also from the help of Joan Warmbrunn, Chris Hoth, Jane Kielsmeier, Preston Cutler, and the center's director, Gardner Lindzey. The list of friends, colleagues, and students who read, or listened to, parts or the whole of this manuscript is so long as to embarrass me, and now that it has finally appeared as a book, perhaps even them. Nevertheless I should mention with gratitude the always helpful encouragement of Janet and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Noam Chomsky, and Roger Owen, who followed this project from its beginning to its conclusion. Likewise I must gratefully acknowledge the helpful and critical interest of the colleagues, friends, and students in various places whose questions and discussion sharpened the text considerably. Andre Schiffrin and Jeanne Morton of Pantheon Books were ideal publisher and copy editor, respectively, and made the ordeal (for the author, at least) of preparing the manuscript an instructive and genuinely intelligent process. Mariam Said helped me a great deal with her research on the early modern history of Orientalist institutions. Apart from that, though, her loving support really made much of the work on this book not only enjoyable but possible.<br /> <br /> E. W. S.<br /> <br /> New York<br /> <br /> September-October 1977<br /> <br /> They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented.<br /> <br /> --Karl Marx, ''The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte''<br /> <br /> The East is a career.<br /> <br /> --Benjamin Disraeli, ''Tancred''<br /> <br /> == '''Preface to the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition''' ==<br /> Nine years ago, in the spring of 1994, I wrote an afterword for ''Orientalism'', which, in trying to clarify what I believed I had and had not said, I stressed not only the many discussions that had opened up since my book appeared in 1978, but also the ways in which a work about representations of &quot;the Orient&quot; lends itself to increasing misrepresentation and misinterpretation. That I find the very same thing today more ironic than irritating is a sign of how much my age has crept up on me, along with the necessary diminutions in expectations and pedagogic zeal that usually frame the road to seniority. The recent deaths of my two main intellectual, political, and personal mentors, Eqbal Ahmad and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod (who is one of the work's dedicatees) have brought sadness and loss, as well as resignation and a certain stubborn will to go on. It isn't at all a matter of being optimistic, but rather of continuing to have faith in the ongoing and literally unending process of emancipation and enlightenment that, in my opinion, frames and gives direction to the intellectual vocation.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, it is still a source of amazement to me that ''Orientalism'' continues to be discussed and translated all over the world, in thirty-six languages. Thanks to the efforts of my dear friend and colleague Professor Gaby Peterberg, now of UCLA, formerly of Ben-Gurion University in Israel, there is a Hebrew version of the book available, which has stimulated considerable discussion and debate among Israeli readers and students. In addition, a Vietnamese translation has appeared under Australian auspices; I hope it's not immodest to say that an Indochinese intellectual space seems to have opened up for the propositions of this book. In any case, it gives me great pleasure to note as an author who had never dreamed of any such happy fate for his work that interest in what I tried to do in my book hasn't completely died down, particularly in the many different lands of the &quot;Orient&quot; itself.<br /> <br /> In part, of course, that is because the Middle East, the Arabs, and Islam have continued to fuel enormous change, struggle, controversy and, as I write these lines, war. As I said many years ago, ''Orientalism'' is the product of circumstances that are fundamentally, indeed radically, fractious. In my memoir, ''Out of Place'' (1999), I described the strange and contradictory worlds in which I grew up, providing for myself and my readers a detailed account of the settings that I think formed me in Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon. But that was only a very personal account that stopped short of all the years of my own political engagement that started after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, a war in whose continuing aftermath (Israel is still in military occupation of the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights) the terms of struggle and the ideas at stake that were crucial for my generation of Arabs and Americans seem to go on. Nevertheless, I do want to affirm yet again that this book and, for that matter, my intellectual work generally have really been enabled by my life as a university academic. For all its often noted defects and problems, the American university--and mine, Columbia, in particular--is still one of the few remaining places in the United States where reflection and study can take place in an almost-utopian fashion. I have never taught ''anything'' about the Middle East, being by training and practice a teacher of the mainly European and American humanities, a specialist in modern comparative literature. The university and my pedagogic work with two generations of first-class students and excellent colleagues has made possible the kind of deliberately meditated and analyzed study that this book contains, which for all its urgent worldly references is still a book about culture, ideas, history, and power, rather than Middle Eastern politics ''tout court''. That was my notion from the beginning, and it is very evident and a good deal clearer to me today.<br /> <br /> Yet ''Orientalism'' is very much a book tied to the tumultuous dynamics of contemporary history. I emphasize in it accordingly that neither the term Orient nor the concept of the West has any ontological stability; each is made up of human effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other. That these supreme fictions lend themselves easily to manipulation and the organization of collective passion has never been more evident than in our time, when the mobilizations of fear, hatred, disgust, and resurgent self-pride and arrogance--much of it having to do with Islam and the Arabs on one side, &quot;we&quot; Westerners on the other--are very large-scale enterprises. ''Orientalism''&lt;nowiki/&gt;'s first page opens with a 1975 description of the Lebanese Civil War that ended in 1990, but the violence and the ugly shedding of human blood continues up to this minute. We have had the failure of the Oslo peace process, the outbreak of the second intifada, and the awful suffering of the Palestinians on the reinvaded West Bank and Gaza, with Israeli F-16's and Apache helicopters used routinely on defenseless civilians as part of their collective punishment. The suicide bombing phenomenon has appeared with all its hideous damage, none more lurid and apocalyptic of course than the events of September 11 and their aftermath in the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. As I wrote these lines, the illegal and unsanctioned imperial invasion and occupation of Iraq by Britain and the United States proceeds, with a prospect of physical ravagement, political unrest, and more invasions that are truly awful to contemplate. This is all part of what is supposed to be a clash of civilizations, unending, implacable, irremediable. Nevertheless, I think not.<br /> <br /> I wish I could say, however, that general understanding of the Middle East, the Arabs, and Islam in the United States has improved somewhat, but alas, it really hasn't. For all kinds of reasons, the situation in Europe seems to be considerably better. In the United States, the hardening of attitudes, the tightening of the grip of demeaning generalization and triumphalist cliche, the dominance of crude power allied with simplistic contempt for dissenters and &quot;others&quot; has found a fitting correlative in the looting, pillaging, and destruction of Iraq's libraries and museums. What our leaders and their intellectual lackeys seem incapable of understanding is that history cannot be swept clean like a blackboard, clean so that &quot;we&quot; might inscribe our own future there and impose our own forms of life for these lesser people to follow. It is quite common to hear high officials in Washington and elsewhere speak of changing the map of the Middle East, as if ancient societies and myriad peoples can be shaken up like so many peanuts in a jar. But this has often happened with the &quot;Orient,&quot; that semi-mythical construct, which, since Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in the late eighteenth century, has been made and remade countless times by power acting through an expedient form of knowledge to assert that this is the Orient's nature, and we must deal with it accordingly. In the process the uncountable sediments of history, which include innumerable histories and a dizzying variety of peoples, languages, experiences, and cultures, all these are swept aside or ignored, relegated to the sand heap along with the treasures ground into meaningless fragments that were taken out of Baghdad's libraries and museums. My argument is that history is made by men and women, just as it can also be unmade and rewritten, always with various silences and elisions, always with shapes imposed and disfigurements tolerated, so that &quot;our&quot; East, &quot;our&quot; Orient becomes &quot;ours&quot; to possess and direct.<br /> <br /> I should say again that I have no &quot;real&quot; Orient to argue for. I do, however, have a very high regard for the powers and gifts of the peoples of that region to struggle on for their vision of what they are and want to be. There has been so massive and calculatedly aggressive an attack on the contemporary societies of the Arab and Muslim for their backwardness, lack of democracy, and abrogation of women's rights that we simply forget that such notions as modernity, enlightenment, and democracy are by no means simple and agreed-upon concepts that one either does or does not find, like Easter eggs in the living room. The breathtaking insouciance of jejune publicists who speak in the name of foreign policy and who have no live notion (or any knowledge at all) of the language of what real people actually speak has fabricated an arid landscape ready for American power to construct there an ''ersatz'' model of free market &quot;democracy,&quot; without even a trace of doubt that such projects don't exist outside of Swift's Academy of Lagado.<br /> <br /> What I do argue also is that there is a difference between knowledge of other peoples and other times that is the result of understanding, compassion, careful study and analysis for their own sakes, and on the other hand knowledge--if that is what it is--that is part of an overall campaign of self-affirmation, belligerency, and outright war. There is, after all, a profound difference between the will to understand for purposes of coexistence and humanistic enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control and external enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control and external dominion. It is surely one of the intellectual catastrophes of history that an imperialist war confected by a small group of unelected U.S. officials (they've been called chicken hawks, since none of them ever served in the military) was waged against a devastated Third World dictatorship on thoroughly ideological grounds having to do with world dominance, security control, and scarce resources, but disguised for its true intent, hastened, and reasoned for by Orientalists who betrayed their calling as scholars. The major influences on George W. Bush's Pentagon and National Security Council were men such as Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, experts on the Arab and Islamic world who helped the American hawks think about such preposterous phenomena as the Arab mind and centuries-old Islamic decline that only American power could reverse. Today, bookstores in the United States are filled with shabby screeds bearing screaming headlines about Islam and terror, Islam exposed, the Arab threat, and the Muslim menace, all of them written by political polemicists pretending to knowledge imparted to them and others by experts who have supposedly penetrated to the heart of these strange Oriental peoples over there who have been such a terrible thorn in &quot;our&quot; flesh. Accompanying such warmongering expertise have been the omnipresent CNNs and Fox News Channels of this world, plus myriad numbers of evangelical and right-wing radio hosts, plus innumerable tabloids and even middlebrow journals, all of them recycling the same unverifiable fictions and vast generalizations so as to stir up &quot;America&quot; against the foreign devil.<br /> <br /> Even with all its terrible failings and its appalling dictator (who was partly created by U.S. policy two decades ago), were Iraq to have been the world's largest exporter of bananas or oranges, surely there would have been no war, no hysteria over mysteriously vanished weapons of mass destruction, no transporting of an enormous army, navy, and air force 7000 miles away to destroy a country scarcely known even to the educated American, all in the name of &quot;freedom.&quot; Without a well-organized sense that these people over there were not like &quot;us&quot; and didn't appreciate &quot;our&quot; values--the very core of traditional Orientalist dogma as I describe its creation and circulation in this book--there would have been no war.<br /> <br /> So from the very same directorate of paid professional scholars enlisted by the Dutch conquerors of Malaysia and Indonesia, the British armies of India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, West Africa, the French armies of Indochina and North Africa, came the American advisers to the Pentagon and the White House, using the same cliches, the same demeaning stereotypes, the same justification for power and violence (after all, runs the chorus, power is the only language they understand) in this case as in the earlier ones. These people have now been joined in Iraq by a whole army of private contractors and eager entrepreneurs to whom shall be confided everything from the writing of textbooks and the constitution to the refashioning of Iraqi political life and its oil industry. Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest ''mission civilizatrice''.<br /> <br /> One specifically American contribution to the discourse of empire is the specialized jargon of policy expertise. You don't need Arabic or Persian or even French to pontificate about how the democracy domino effect is just what the Arab world needs. Combative and woefully ignorant policy experts, whose world experience is limited to the Beltway, grind out books on &quot;terrorism&quot; and liberalism, or about Islamic fundamentalism and American foreign policy, or about the end of history, all of it vying for attention and influence quite without regard for truthfulness or reflection or real knowledge. What matters is how efficient and resourceful it sounds, and who might go for it, as it were. The worst aspect of this essentializing stuff is that human suffering in all its density and pain is spirited away. Memory and with it the historical past are effaced as in the common, dismissively contemptuous American phrase, &quot;you're history.&quot;<br /> <br /> Twenty-five years after its publication, ''Orientalism'' once again raises the question of whether modern imperialism ever ended, or whether it has continued in the Orient since Napoleon's entry into Egypt two centuries ago. Arabs and Muslims have been told that victimology and dwelling on the depredations of empire is only a way of evading responsibility in the present. You have failed, you have gone wrong, says the modern Orientalist. This of course is also V. S. Naipaul's contribution to literature, that the victims of empire wail on while their country goes to the dogs. But what a shallow calculation of the imperial intrusion that is, how summarily it scants the immense distortion introduced by the empire into the lives of &quot;lesser&quot; peoples and &quot;subject races&quot; generation after generation, how little it wishes to face the long succession of years through which empire continues to work its way in the lives of, say, Palestinians or Congolese or Algerians or Iraqis. We allow justly that the Holocaust has permanently altered the consciousness of our time: Why do we not accord the same epistemological mutation in what imperialism has done, and what Orientalism continues to do? Think of the line that starts with Napoleon, continues with the rise of Oriental studies arid the takeover of North Africa, and goes on in similar undertakings in Vietnam, in Egypt, in Palestine and, during the entire twentieth century in the struggle over oil and strategic control in the Gulf, in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Afghanistan. Then think contrapuntally of the rise of anticolonial nationalism, through the short period of liberal independence, the era of military coups, of insurgency, civil war, religious fanaticism, irrational struggle, and uncompromising brutality against the latest bunch of &quot;natives.&quot; Each of these phases and eras produces its own distorted knowledge of the other, each its own reductive images, its own disputatious polemics.<br /> <br /> My idea in ''Orientalism'' is to use humanistic critique to open up the fields of struggle, to introduce a longer sequence of thought and analysis to replace the short bursts of polemical, thought-stopping fury that so imprison us in labels and antagonistic debate whose goal is a belligerent collective identity rather than understanding and intellectual exchange. I have called what I try to do &quot;humanism,&quot; a word I continue to use stubbornly despite the scornful dismissal of the term by sophisticated postmodern critics. By humanism I mean first of all attempting to dissolve Blake's mind-forg'd manacles so as to be able to use one's mind historically and rationally for the purposes of reflective understanding and genuine disclosure. Moreover, humanism is sustained by a sense of community with other interpreters and other societies and periods: strictly speaking, therefore, there is no such thing as an isolated humanist.<br /> <br /> This is to say that every domain is linked to every other one, and that nothing that goes on in our world has ever been isolated and pure of any outside influence. The disheartening part is that the more the critical study of culture shows us that this is the case, the less influence such a view seems to have, and the more territorially reductive polarizations like &quot;Islam v. the West&quot; seem to conquer.<br /> <br /> For those of us who by force of circumstance actually live the pluri-cultural life as it entails Islam and the West, I have long felt that a special intellectual and moral responsibility attaches to what we do as scholars and intellectuals. Certainly I think it is incumbent upon us to complicate and/or dismantle the reductive formulae and the abstract but potent kind of thought that leads the mind away from concrete human history and experience and into the realms of ideological fiction, metaphysical confrontation, and collective passion. This is not to say that we cannot speak about issues of injustice and suffering, but that we need to do so always within a context that is amply situated in history, culture, and socioeconomic reality. Our role is to widen the field of discussion, not to set limits in accord with the prevailing authority. I have spent a great deal of my life during the past thirty-five years advocating the rights of the Palestinian people to national self-determination, but I have always tried to do that with full attention paid to the reality of the Jewish people and what they suffered by the way of persecution and genocide. The paramount thing is that the struggle for equality in Palestine/Israel should be directed toward a humane goal, that is, coexistence, and not further suppression and denial. Not accidentally, I indicate that Orientalism and modern anti-Semitism have common roots. Therefore, it would seem to be a vital necessity for independent intellectuals always to provide alternative models to the reductively simplifying and confining ones, based on mutual hostility, that have prevailed in the Middle East and elsewhere for so long.<br /> <br /> Let me now speak about a different alternative model that has been extremely important to me in my work. As a humanist whose field is literature, I am old enough to have been trained forty years ago in the field of comparative literature, whose leading ideas go back to Germany in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Before that I must mention the supremely creative contribution of Giambattista Vico, the Neapolitan philosopher and philologist whose ideas anticipate and later infiltrate the line of German thinkers I am about to cite. They belong to the era of Herder and Wolf, later to be followed by Goethe, Humboldt, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Gadamer, and finally the great twentieth-century Romance philologists Erich Auerback, Leo Spitzer, and Ernst Robert Curtius. To young people of the current generation the very idea of philology suggests something impossibly antiquarian and musty, but philology in fact is the most basic and creative of the interpretive arts. It is exemplified for me most admirably in Goethe's interest in Islam generally, and Hafiz in particular, a consuming passion that led to the composition of the ''West-Ostlicher Diwan'', and it inflected Goethe's later ideas about ''Weltliteratur'', the study of all the literatures of the world as a symphonic whole that could be apprehended theoretically as having preserved the individuality of each work without losing sight of the whole.<br /> <br /> There is a considerable irony to the realization, then, that as today's globalized world draws together in some of the lamentable ways I have been talking about here, we may be approaching the kind of standardization and homogeneity that Goethe's ideas were specifically formulated to prevent. In an essay published in 1951 entitled &quot;Philolgie der Weltliteratur,&quot; Erich Auerbach made exactly that point at the outset of the postwar period, which was also the beginning of the Cold War. His great book ''Mimesis'', published in Berne in 1946 but written while Auerbach was a wartime exile teaching Romance languages in Istanbul, was meant to be a testament to the diversity and concreteness of the reality represented in Western literature from Homer to Virginia Woolf; but reading the 1951 essay one senses that for Auerbach the great book he wrote was an elegy for a period when people could interpret texts philologically, concretely, sensitively, and intuitively, using erudition and an excellent command of several languages to support the kind of understanding that Goethe advocated for his understanding of Islamic literature.<br /> <br /> Positive knowledge of languages and history was necessary, but it was never enough, any more than the mechanical gathering of facts would constitute an adequate method for grasping what an author like Dante, for example, was all about. The main requirement for the kind of philological understanding Auerbach and his predecessors were talking about and tried to practice was one that sympathetically and subjectively entered into the life of a written text as seen from the perspective of this time and its author (''eingefullen''). Rather than alienation and hostility to another time and another different culture, philology as applied to ''Weltliteratur'' involved a profound humanistic spirit deployed with generosity and, if I may use the word, hospitality. Thus the interpreter's mind actively makes a place in it for a foreign Other. And this creative making of a place for works that are otherwise alien and distant is the most important facet of the interpreter's philological mission.<br /> <br /> All this was obviously undermined and destroyed in Germany by National Socialism. After the war, Auerbach notes mournfully, the standardization of ideas, and greater and greater specialization of knowledge, gradually narrowed the opportunities for the kind of investigative and everlastingly inquiring kind of philological work that he had represented, and, alas, it's an even more depressing fact that, since Auerbach's death in 1957, both the idea and practice of humanistic research have shrunk in scope as well as in centrality. The book culture based on archival research as well as general principles of mind that once sustained humanism as a historical discipline have almost disappeared. Instead of reading in the real sense of the word, our students today are often distracted by the fragmented knowledge available on the internet and in the mass media.<br /> <br /> Worse yet, education is threatened by nationalist and religious orthodoxies often disseminated by the mass media as they focus ahistorically and sensationally on the distant electronic wars that give viewers the sense of surgical precision but that in fact obscure the terrible suffering and destruction produced by modern &quot;clean&quot; warfare. In the demonization of an unknown enemy, for whom the label &quot;terrorist&quot; serves the general purpose of keeping people stirred up and angry, media images command too much attention and can be exploited at times of crisis and insecurity of the kind that the post-9/11 period has produced. Speaking both as an American and as an Arab I must ask my reader not to underestimate the kind of simplified view of the world that a relative handful of Pentagon civilian elites have formulated for U.S. policy in the entire Arab and Islamic worlds, a view in which terror, preemptive war, and unilateral regime change--backed up by the most bloated military budget in history--are the main ideas debated endlessly and impoverishingly by a media that assigns itself the role of producing so-called &quot;experts&quot; who validate the government's general line. I should also note that it is far from a coincidence that General Sharon of Israel, who in 1982 led the invasion of Lebanon in order to change the Lebanese government, killing 17,000 civilians in the process, is now a partner in &quot;peace&quot; with George W. Bush, and that in the United States at least there has been not enough dissent from the dubious thesis that military power alone can change the map of the world.<br /> <br /> Reflection, debate, rational argument, moral principle based on a secular notion that human beings must create their own history have been replaced by abstract ideas that celebrate American or Western exceptionalism, denigrate the relevance of context, and regard other cultures with derisive contempt. Perhaps you will say that I am making too many abrupt transitions between humanistic interpretation on the one hand and foreign policy on the other, and that a modern technological society that, along with unprecedented power, possesses the internet and F-16 fighter jets must in the end be commanded by formidable technical-policy experts like Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Perle. (Neither man will do any actual fighting since that will be left to less fortunate men and women.) But what has really been lost is a sense of the density and interdependence of human life, which can neither be reduced to a formula nor be brushed aside as irrelevant. Even the language of the war is dehumanizing in the extreme: &quot;We'll go in there take out Saddam, destroy his army with clean surgical strikes, and everyone will think it's great,&quot; said a congresswoman on national television. It seems to me entirely symptomatic of the precarious moment in which we are living that when Vice President Cheney made his hard-line speech on August 26, 2002, about the imperative to attack Iraq, he quoted as his single Middle East &quot;expert&quot; in support of military intervention against Iraq an Arab academic who, as a paid consultant to the mass media on a nightly basis, keeps repeating his hatred of his own people and the renunciation of his background. Moreover, he is backed in his efforts by the military and Zionist lobbies in the United States. Such a ''trahison de clercs'' is a symptom of how genuine humanism can degenerate into jingoism and false patriotism.<br /> <br /> That is one side of the global debate. In the Arab and Muslim countries the situation is scarcely better. As Roula Khalaf argues, in an excellent ''Financial Times'' essay (September 4, 2002), the region has slipped into an easy anti-Americanism that shows little understanding of what the United States is really like as a society. Because the governments are relatively powerless to affect U.S. policy toward them, they turn their energies to repressing and keeping down their own populations, which results in resentment, anger, and helpless imprecations that do nothing to open up societies where secular ideas about human history and development have been overtaken by failure and frustration, as well as by an Islamism built out of rote learning, the obliteration of what are perceived to be other, competitive forms of secular knowledge, and an inability to analyze and exchange ideas within the generally discordant world of modern discourse. The gradual disappearance of the extraordinary tradition of Islamic ''ijtihad'' has been one of the major cultural disasters of our time, with the result that critical thinking and individual wrestling with the problems of the modern world have simply dropped out of sight. Orthodoxy and dogma rule instead.<br /> <br /> This is not to say that the cultural world has simply regressed on one side to a belligerent neo-Orientalism and on the other to blanket rejectionism. The recent United Nations World Summit in Johannesburg, for all its limitations, did in fact reveal a vast area of common global concert whose detailed workings on matters having to do with the environment, famine, the gap between advanced and developing countries, health, and human rights, suggest the welcome emergence of a new collective constituency that give the often facile notion of &quot;one world&quot; a new urgency. In all this, however, we must admit that no one can possibly know the extraordinarily complex unity of our globalized world, despite the reality that, as I said at the outset, the world does have a real interdependence of parts that leaves no genuine opportunity for isolation.<br /> <br /> The point I want to conclude with now is to insist that the terrible reductive conflicts that herd people under falsely unifying rubrics like &quot;America,&quot; &quot;the West,&quot; or &quot;Islam&quot; and invent collective identities for large numbers of individuals who are actually quite diverse, cannot remain as potent as they are, and must be opposed, their murderous effectiveness vastly reduced in influence and mobilizing power. We still have at our disposal the rational interpretive skills that are the legacy of humanistic education, not as a sentimental piety enjoining us to return to traditional values or the classics but as the active practice of worldly secular discourse. The secular world is the world of history as made by human beings. Human agency is subject to investigation and analysis, which it is the mission of understanding to apprehend, criticize, influence, and judge. Above all, critical thought does not submit to state power or to commands to join in the ranks marching against one or another approved enemy. Rather than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the slow working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any abridged or inauthentic mode of understanding can allow. But for that kind of wider perception we need time and patient and skeptical inquiry, supported by faith in communities of interpretation that are difficult to sustain in a world demanding instant action and reaction.<br /> <br /> Humanism is centered upon the agency of human individuality and subjective intuition, rather than on received ideas and approved authority. Texts have to be read as texts that were produced and live on in the historical realm in all sorts of what I have called worldly ways. But this by no means excludes power, since on the contrary what I have tried to show in my book have been the insinuations, the imbrications of power into even the most recondite of studies.<br /> <br /> And lastly, most important, humanism is the only, and I would go so far as to say, the final resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history. We are today abetted by the enormously encouraging democratic field of cyberspace, open to all users in ways undreamed of by earlier generations either of tyrants or of orthodoxies. The worldwide protests before the war began in Iraq would not have been possible were it not for the existence of alternative communities across the globe, informed by alternative news sources, and keenly aware of the environmental, human rights, and libertarian impulses that bind us together in this tiny planet. The human, and humanistic, desire or enlightenment and emancipation is not easily deferred, despite the incredible strength of the opposition to it that comes from the Rumsfelds, Bin Ladens, Sharons, and Bushes of this world. I would like to believe that ''Orientalism'' has had a place in the long and often interrupted road to human freedom.<br /> <br /> E. W. S.<br /> <br /> New York<br /> <br /> May 2003<br /> <br /> == '''Introduction''' ==<br /> <br /> === '''I''' ===<br /> On a visit to Beirut during the terrible civil war of 1975-1976 a French journalist wrote regretfully of the gutted downtown area that &quot;it had once seemed to belong to ... the Orient of Chateaubriand and Nerval.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Thierry Desjardins, ''Le Martyre du Liban'' (Paris: Plon, 1976), p. 14.&lt;/ref&gt; He was right about the place, of course, especially so far as a European was concerned. The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences. Now it was disappearing; in a sense it had happened, its time was over. Perhaps it seemed irrelevant that Orientals themselves had something at stake in the process, that even in the time of Chateaubriand and Nerval Orientals had lived there, and that now it was they who were suffering; the main thing for the European visitor was a European representation of the Orient and its contemporary fate, both of which had a privileged communal significance for the journalist and his French readers.<br /> <br /> Americans will not feel quite the same about the Orient, which for them is much more likely to be associated very differently with the Far East (China and Japan, mainly). Unlike the Americans, the French and the British--less so the Germans, Russians, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, and Swiss--have had a long tradition of what I shall be calling ''Orientalism'', a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in European Western experience. The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. Yet none of this Orient is merely imaginative. The Orient is an integral part of European ''material'' civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles. In contrast, the American understanding of the Orient will seem considerably less dense, although our recent Japanese, Korean, and Indochinese adventures ought now to be creating a more sober, more realistic &quot;Oriental&quot; awareness. Moreover, the vastly expanded American political and economic role in the Near East (the Middle East) makes great claims on our understanding of that Orient.<br /> <br /> It will be clear to the reader (and will become clearer still throughout the many pages that follow) that by Orientalism I mean several things, all of them, in my opinion, interdependent. The most readily accepted designation for Orientalism is an academic one, and indeed the label still serves in a number of academic institutions. Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient--and this applies whether the person is an anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philologist--either in its specific or its general aspects, is an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism. Compared with ''Oriental studies'' or ''area studies'', it is true that the term ''Orientalism'' is less preferred by specialists today, both because it is too vague and general and because it connotes the high-handed executive attitude of nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century European colonialism. Nevertheless books are written and congresses held with &quot;the Orient&quot; as their main focus, with the Orientalist in his new or old guise as their main authority. The point is that even if it does not survive as it once did, Orientalism lives on academically through its doctrines and theses about the Orient and the Oriental.<br /> <br /> Related to this academic tradition, whose fortunes, transmigrations, specializations, and transmissions are in part the subject of this study, is a more general meaning for Orientalism. Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between &quot;the Orient&quot; and (most of the time) &quot;the Occident.&quot; Thus a very large mass of writers, among whom are poets, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and imperial administrators, have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, &quot;mind,&quot; destiny, and so on. ''This'' Orientalism can accommodate Aeschylus, say, and Victor Hugo, Dante and Karl Marx. A little later in this introduction I shall deal with the methodological problems one encounters in so broadly construed a &quot;field&quot; as this.<br /> <br /> The interchange between the academic and the more or less imaginative meanings of Orientalism is a constant one, and since the late eighteenth century there has been a considerable, quite disciplined--perhaps even regulated--traffic between the two. Here I come to the third meaning of Orientalism, which is something more historically and materially defined than either of the other two. Taking the late eighteenth century as a very roughly defined starting point Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient--dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient. I have found it useful here to employ Michel Foucault's notion of a discourse, as described by him in ''The Archaeology of Knowledge'' and in ''Discipline and Punish'', to identify Orientalism. My contention is that without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage--and even produce--the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period. Moreover, so authoritative a position did Orientalism have that I believe no one writing, thinking, or acting on the Orient could do so without taking account of the limitations on thought and action imposed by Orientalism. In brief, because of Orientalism the Orient was not (and is not) a free subject of thought or action. This is not to say that Orientalism unilaterally determines what can be said about the Orient, but that it is the whole network of interests inevitably brought to bear on (and therefore always involved in) any occasion when that peculiar entity &quot;the Orient&quot; is in question. How this happens is what this book tries to demonstrate. It also tries to show that European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self.<br /> <br /> Historically and culturally there is a quantitative as well as a qualitative difference between the Franco-British involvement in the Orient and--until the period of American ascendancy after World War II--the involvement of every other European and Atlantic power. To speak of Orientalism therefore is to speak mainly, although not exclusively, of a British and French cultural enterprise, a project whose dimensions take in such disparate realms as the imagination itself, the whole of India and the Levant, the Biblical texts and the Biblical lands, the spice trade, colonial armies and a long tradition of colonial administrators, a formidable scholarly corpus, innumerable Oriental &quot;experts&quot; and &quot;hands,&quot; an Oriental professorate, a complex array of &quot;Oriental&quot; ideas (Oriental despotism, Oriental splendor, cruelty, sensuality), many Eastern sects, philosophies, and wisdoms domesticated for local European use--the list can be extended more or less indefinitely. My point is that Orientalism derives from a particular closeness experienced between Britain and France and the Orient, which until the early nineteenth century had really meant only India and the Bible lands. From the beginning of the nineteenth century until the end of World War II France and Britain dominated the Orient and Orientalism; since World War II America has dominated the Orient, and approaches it as France and Britain once did. Out of that closeness, whose dynamic is enormously productive even if it always demonstrates the comparatively greater strength of the Occident (British, French, or American), comes the large body of texts I call Orientalist.<br /> <br /> It should be said at once that even with the generous number of books and authors that I examine, there is a much larger number that I simply have had to leave out. My argument, however, depends neither upon an exhaustive catalogue of texts dealing with the Orient nor upon a clearly delimited set of texts, authors, and ideas that together make up the Orientalist canon. I have depended instead upon a different methodological alternative--whose backbone in a sense is the set of historical generalizations I have so far been making in this Introduction--and it is these I want now to discuss in more analytical detail.<br /> <br /> === '''II''' ===<br /> I have begun with the assumption that the Orient is not an inert fact of nature. It is not merely ''there'', just as the Occident itself is not just ''there'' either. We must take seriously Vico's great observation that men make their own history, that what they can know is what they have made, and extend it to geography: as both geographical and cultural entities--to say nothing of historical entities--such locales, regions, geographical sectors as &quot;Orient&quot; and &quot;Occident&quot; are man-made. Therefore as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West. The two geographical entities thus support and to an extent reflect each other.<br /> <br /> Having said that, one must go on to state a number of reasonable qualifications. In the first place, it would be wrong to conclude that the Orient was ''essentially'' an idea, or a creation with no corresponding reality. When Disraeli said in his novel ''Tancred'' that the East was a career, he meant that to be interested in the East was something bright young Westerners would find to be an all-consuming passion; he should not be interpreted as saying that the East was ''only'' a career for Westerners. There were--and are--cultures and nations whose location is in the East, and their lives, histories, and customs have a brute reality obviously greater than anything that could be said about them in the West. About that fact this study of Orientalism has very little to contribute, except to acknowledge it tacitly. But the phenomenon of Orientalism as I study it here deals principally, not with a correspondence between Orientalism and Orient, but with the internal consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient (the East as career) despite or beyond any correspondence, or lack thereof, with a &quot;real&quot; Orient. My point is that Disraeli's statement about the East refers mainly to that created consistency, that regular constellation of ideas as the pre-eminent thing about the Orient, and not to its mere being, as Wallace Stevens's phrase has it.<br /> <br /> A second qualification is that ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied. To believe that the Orient was created--or, as I call it, &quot;Orientalized&quot;--and to believe that such things happen simply as a necessity of the imagination, is to be disingenuous. The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony, and is quite accurately indicated in the title of K. M. Panikkar's classic ''Asia and Western Dominance''.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;K. M. Panikkar, ''Asia and Western Dominance'' (London: George Allen &amp; Unwin, 1959).&lt;/ref&gt; The Orient was Orientalized not only because it was discovered to be &quot;Oriental&quot; in all those ways considered commonplace by an average nineteenth-century European, but also because it ''could be''--that is, submitted to being''--made'' Oriental. There is very little consent to be found, for example, in the fact that Flaubert's encounter with an Egyptian courtesan produced a widely influential model of the Oriental woman; she never spoke of herself, she never represented her emotions, presence, or history. ''He'' spoke for and represented her. He was foreign, comparatively wealthy, male, and these were historical facts of domination that allowed him not only to possess Kuchuk Hanem physically but to speak for her and tell his readers in what way she was &quot;typically Oriental.&quot; My argument is that Flaubert's situation of strength in relation to Kuchuk Hanem was not an isolated instance. It fairly stands for the pattern of relative strength between East and West, and the discourse about the Orient that it enabled.<br /> <br /> This brings us to a third qualification. One ought never to assume that the structure of Orientalism is nothing more than a structure of lies or of myths which, were the truth about them to be told, would simply blow away. I myself believe that Orientalism is more particularly valuable as a sign of European-Atlantic power over the Orient than it is as a veridic discourse about the Orient (which is what, in its academic or scholarly form, it claims to be). Nevertheless, what we must respect and try to grasp is the sheer knitted-together strength of Orientalist discourse, its very close ties to the enabling socio-economic and political institutions, and its redoubtable durability. After all, any system of ideas that can remain unchanged as teachable wisdom (in academies, books, congresses, universities, foreign-service institutes) from the period of Ernest Renan in the late 1840s until the present in the United States must be something more formidable than a mere collection of lies. Orientalism, therefore, is not an airy European fantasy about the Orient, but a created body of theory and practice in which, for many generations, there has been a considerable material investment. Continued investment made Orientalism, as a system of knowledge about the Orient, an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness, just as that same investment multiplied--indeed, made truly productive--the statements proliferating out from Orientalism into the general culture.<br /> <br /> Gramsci has made the useful analytic distinction between civil and political society in which the former is made up of voluntary (or at least rational and noncoercive) affiliations like schools, families, and unions, the latter of state institutions (the army, the police, the central bureaucracy) whose role in the polity is direct domination. Culture, of course, is to be found operating within civil society, where the influence of ideas, of institutions, and of other persons works not through domination but by what Gramsci calls consent. In any society not totalitarian, then, certain cultural forms predominate over others, just as certain ideas are more influential than others; the form of this cultural leadership is what Gramsci has identified as ''hegemony'', an indispensable concept for any understanding of cultural life in the industrial West. It is hegemony, or rather the result of cultural hegemony at work, that gives Orientalism the durability and the strength I have been speaking about so far. Orientalism is never far from what Denys Hay has called the idea of Europe,&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Denys Hay, ''Europe: The Emergence of an Idea'', 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968).&lt;/ref&gt; a collective notion identifying &quot;us&quot; Europeans as against all &quot;those&quot; non-Europeans, and indeed it can be argued that the major component in European culture is precisely what made that culture hegemonic both in and outside Europe: the idea of European identity as a superior one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures. There is in addition the hegemony of European ideas about the Orient, themselves reiterating European superiority over Oriental backwardness, usually overriding the possibility that a more independent, or more skeptical, thinker might have had different views on the matter.<br /> <br /> In a quite constant way, Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible ''positional'' superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand. And why should it have been otherwise, especially during the period of extraordinary European ascendancy from the late Renaissance to the present? The scientist, the scholar, the missionary, the trader, or the soldier was in, or thought about, the Orient because he ''could be there'', or could think about it, with very little resistance on the Orient's part. Under the general heading of knowledge of the Orient, and within the umbrella of Western hegemony over the Orient during the period from the end of the eighteenth century, there emerged a complex Orient suitable for study in the academy, for display in the museum, for reconstruction in the colonial office, for theoretical illustration in anthropological, biological, linguistic, racial, and historical theses about mankind and the universe, for instances of economic and sociological theories of development, revolution, cultural personality, national or religious character. Additionally, the imaginative examination of things Oriental was based more or less exclusively upon a sovereign Western consciousness out of whose unchallenged centrality an Oriental world emerged, first according to general ideas about who or what was an Oriental, then according to a detailed logic governed not simply by empirical reality but by a battery of desires, repressions, investments, and projections. If we can point to great Orientalist works of genuine scholarship like Silvestre de Sacy's ''Chrestomathie arabe'' or Edward William Lane's ''Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians'', we need also to note that Renan's and Gobineau's racial ideas came out of the same impulse, as did a great many Victorian pornographic novels (see the analysis by Steven Marcus of &quot;The Lustful Turk&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Steven Marcus, ''The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth Century England'' (1966; reprint ed., New York: Bantam Books, 1967), pp. 200-19.&lt;/ref&gt;).<br /> <br /> And yet, one must repeatedly ask oneself whether what matters in Orientalism is the general group of ideas overriding the mass of material--about which who could deny that they were shot through with doctrines of European superiority, various kinds of racism, imperialism, and the like, dogmatic views of &quot;the Oriental&quot; as a kind of ideal and unchanging abstraction?--or the much more varied work produced by almost uncountable individual writers, whom one would take up as individual instances of authors dealing with the Orient. In a sense the two alternatives, general and particular, are really two perspectives on the same material: in both instances one would have to deal with pioneers in the field like William Jones, with great artists like Nerval or Flaubert. And why would it not be possible to employ both perspectives together, or one after the other? Isn't there an obvious danger of distortion (of precisely the kind that academic Orientalism has always been prone to) if either too general or too specific a level of description is maintained systematically?<br /> <br /> My two fears are distortion and inaccuracy, or rather the kind of inaccuracy produced by too dogmatic a generality and too positivistic a localized focus. In trying to deal with these problems I have tried to deal with three main aspects of my own contemporary reality that seem to me to point the way out of the methodological or perspectival difficulties I have been discussing, difficulties that might force one, in the first instance, into writing a coarse polemic on so unacceptably general a level of description as not to be worth the effort, or in the second instance, into writing so detailed and atomistic a series of analyses as to lose all track of the general lines of force informing the field, giving it its special cogency. How then to recognize individuality and to reconcile it with its intelligent, and by no means passive or merely dictatorial, general and hegemonic context?<br /> <br /> === '''III''' ===<br /> I mentioned three aspects of my contemporary reality: I must explain and briefly discuss them now, so that it can be seen how I was led to a particular course of research and writing.<br /> <br /> 1. ''The distinction between pure and political knowledge''. It is very easy to argue that knowledge about Shakespeare or Wordsworth is not political whereas knowledge about contemporary China or the Soviet Union is. My own formal and professional designation is that of &quot;humanist,&quot; a title which indicates the humanities as my field and therefore the unlikely eventuality that there might be anything political about what I do in that field. Of course, all these labels and terms are quite unnuanced as I use them here, but the general truth of what I am pointing to is, I think, widely held. One reason for saying that a humanist who writes about Wordsworth, or an editor whose specialty is Keats, is not involved in anything political is that what he does seems to have no direct political effect upon reality in the everyday sense. A scholar whose field is Soviet economics works in a highly charged area where there is much government interest, and what he might produce in the way of studies or proposals will be taken up by policymakers, government officials, institutional economists, intelligence experts. The distinction between &quot;humanists&quot; and persons whose work has policy implications, or political significance, can be broadened further by saying that the former's ideological color is a matter of incidental importance to politics (although possibly of great moment to his colleagues in the field, who may object to his Stalinism or fascism or too easy liberalism), whereas the ideology of the latter is woven directly into his material--indeed, economics, politics, and sociology in the modern academy are ideological sciences--and therefore taken for granted as being &quot;political.&quot;<br /> <br /> Nevertheless the determining impingement on most knowledge produced in the contemporary West (and here I speak mainly about the United States) is that it be nonpolitical, that is, scholarly, academic, impartial, above partisan or small-minded doctrinal belief. One can have no quarrel with such an ambition in theory, perhaps, but in practice the reality is much more problematic. No one has ever devised a method for detaching the scholar from the circumstances of life, from the fact of his involvement (conscious or unconscious) with a class, a set of beliefs, a social position, or from the mere activity of being a member of a society. These continue to bear on what he does professionally, even though naturally enough his research and its fruits do attempt to reach a level of relative freedom from the inhibitions and the restrictions of brute, everyday reality. For there is such a thing as knowledge that is less, rather than more, partial than the individual (with his entangling and distracting life circumstances) who produces it. Yet this knowledge is not therefore automatically nonpolitical.<br /> <br /> Whether discussions of literature or of classical philology are fraught with--or have unmediated--political significance is a very large question that I have tried to treat in some detail elsewhere.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;See my ''Criticism Between Culture and System'' (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, forthcoming).&lt;/ref&gt; What I am interested in doing now is suggesting how the general liberal consensus that &quot;true&quot; knowledge is fundamentally nonpolitical (and conversely, that overtly political knowledge is not &quot;true&quot; knowledge) obscures the highly if obscurely organized political circumstances obtaining when knowledge is produced. No one is helped in understanding this today when the adjective &quot;political&quot; is used as a label to discredit any work for daring to violate the protocol of pretended suprapolitical objectivity. We may say, first, that civil society recognizes a gradation of political importance in the various fields of knowledge. To some extent the political importance given a field comes from the possibility of its direct translation into economic terms; but to a greater extent political importance comes from the closeness of a field to ascertainable sources of power in political society. Thus an economic study of long-term Soviet energy potential and its effect on military capability is likely to be commissioned by the Defense Department, and thereafter to acquire a kind of political status impossible for a study of Tolstoi's early fiction financed in part by a foundation. Yet both works belong in what civil society acknowledges to be a similar field, Russian studies, even though one work may be done by a very conservative economist, the other by a radical literary historian. My point here is that &quot;Russia&quot; as a general subject matter has political priority over nicer distinctions such as &quot;economics&quot; and &quot;literary history,&quot; because political society in Gramsci's sense reaches into such realms of civil society as the academy and saturates them with significance of direct concern to it.<br /> <br /> I do not want to press all this any further on general theoretical grounds: it seems to me that the value and credibility of my case can be demonstrated by being much more specific, in the way, for example, Noam Chomsky has studied the instrumental connection between the Vietnam War and the notion of objective scholarship as it was applied to cover state-sponsored military research.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Principally in his ''American Power and the New Mandarins: Historical and Political Essays'' (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969) and ''For Reasons of State'' (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973).&lt;/ref&gt; Now because Britain, France, and recently the United States are imperial powers, their political societies impart to their civil societies a sense of urgency, a direct political infusion as it were, where and whenever matters pertaining to their imperial interests abroad are concerned. I doubt that it is controversial, for example, to say that an Englishman in India or Egypt in the later nineteenth century took an interest in those countries that was never far from their status in his mind as British colonies. To say this may seem quite different from saying that all academic knowledge about India and Egypt is somehow tinged and impressed with, violated by, the gross political fact--and yet ''that is what I am saying'' in this study of Orientalism. For if it is true that no production of knowledge in the human sciences can ever ignore or disclaim its author's involvement as a human subject in his own circumstances, then it must also be true that for a European or American studying the Orient there can be no disclaiming the main circumstances of ''his'' actuality: that he comes up against the Orient as a European or American first, as an individual second. And to be a European or an American in such a situation is by no means an inert fact. It meant and means being aware, however dimly, that one belongs to a power with definite interests in the Orient, and more important, that one belongs to a part of the earth with a definite history of involvement in the Orient almost since the time of Homer.<br /> <br /> Put in this way, these political actualities are still too undefined and general to be really interesting. Anyone would agree to them without necessarily agreeing also that they mattered very much, for instance, to Flaubert as he wrote ''Salammbo'', or to H. A. R. Gibb as he wrote ''Modern Trends in Islam''. The trouble is that there is too great a distance between the big dominating fact, as I have described it, and the details of everyday life that govern the minute discipline of a novel or a scholarly text as each is being written. Yet if we eliminate from the start any notion that &quot;big&quot; facts like imperial domination can be applied mechanically and deterministically to such complex matters as culture and ideas, then we will begin to approach an interesting kind of study. My idea is that European and then American interest in the Orient was political according to some of the obvious historical accounts of it that I have given here, but that it was the culture that created that interest, that acted dynamically along with brute political, economic, and military rationales to make the Orient the varied and complicated place that it obviously was in the field I call Orientalism.<br /> <br /> Therefore, Orientalism is not a mere political subject matter or field that is reflected passively by culture, scholarship, or institutions; nor is it a large and diffuse collection of texts about the Orient; nor is it representative and expressive of some nefarious &quot;Western&quot; imperialist plot to hold down the &quot;Oriental&quot; world. It is rather a ''distribution'' of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts; it is an ''elaboration'' not only of a basic geographical distinction (the world is made up of two unequal halves, Orient and Occident) but also of a whole series of &quot;interests&quot; which, by such means as scholarly discovery, philological reconstruction, psychological analysis, landscape and sociological description, it not only creates but also maintains; it ''is'', rather than expresses, a certain ''will'' or ''intention'' to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world; it is, above all, a discourse that is by no means in direct, corresponding relationship with political power in the raw, but rather is produced and exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power, shaped to a degree by the exchange with power political (as with a colonial or imperial establishment), power intellectual (as with reigning sciences like comparative linguistics or anatomy, or any of the modern policy sciences), power cultural (as with orthodoxies and canons of taste, texts, values), power moral (as with ideas about what &quot;we&quot; do and what &quot;they&quot; cannot do or understand as &quot;we&quot; do). Indeed, my real argument is that Orientalism is--and does not simply represent--a considerable dimension of modern political-intellectual culture, and as such has less to do with the Orient than it does with &quot;our&quot; world.<br /> <br /> Because Orientalism is a cultural and a political fact, then, it does not exist in some archival vacuum; quite the contrary, I think it can be shown that what is thought, said, or even done about the Orient follows (perhaps occurs within) certain distinct and intellectually knowable lines. Here too a considerable degree of nuance and elaboration can be seen working as between the broad superstructural pressures and the details of composition, the facts of textuality. Most humanistic scholars are, I think, perfectly happy with the notion that texts exist in contexts, that there is such a thing as intertextuality, that the pressures of conventions, predecessors, and rhetorical styles limit what Walter Benjamin once called the &quot;overtaxing of the productive person in the name of ... the principle of 'creativity,' &quot; in which the poet is believed on his own, and out of his pure mind, to have brought forth his work.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Walter Benjamin, ''Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism'', trans. Harry Zohn (London: New Left Books, 1973), p. 71.&lt;/ref&gt; Yet there is a reluctance to allow that political, institutional, and ideological constraints act in the same manner on the individual author. A humanist will believe it to be an interesting fact to any interpreter of Balzac that he was influenced in the ''Comedie humaine'' by the conflict between Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier, but the same sort of pressure on Balzac of deeply reactionary monarchism is felt in some vague way to demean his literary &quot;genius&quot; and therefore to be less worth serious study. Similarly--as Harry Bracken has been tirelessly showing--philosophers will conduct their discussions of Locke, Hume, and empiricism without ever taking into account that there is an explicit connection in these classic writers between their &quot;philosophic&quot; doctrines and racial theory, justifications of slavery, or arguments for colonial exploitation.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Harry Bracken, &quot;Essence, Accident and Race,&quot; ''Hermathena'' 116 (Winter 1973): 81-96.&lt;/ref&gt; These are common enough ways by which contemporary scholarship keeps itself pure.<br /> <br /> Perhaps it is true that most attempts to rub culture's nose in the mud of politics have been crudely iconoclastic; perhaps also the social interpretation of literature in my own field has simply not kept up with the enormous technical advances in detailed textual analysis. But there is no getting away from the fact that literary studies in general, and American Marxist theorists in particular, have avoided the effort of seriously bridging the gap between the superstructural and the base levels in textual, historical scholarship; on another occasion I have gone so far as to say that the literary-cultural establishment as a whole has declared the serious study of imperialism and culture off limits.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;In an interview published in ''Diacritics'' 6, no. 3 (Fall 1976): 38.&lt;/ref&gt; For Orientalism brings one up directly against that question--that is, to realizing that political imperialism governs an entire field of study, imagination, and scholarly institutions--in such a way as to make its avoidance an intellectual and historical impossibility. Yet there will always remain the perennial escape mechanism of saying that a literary scholar and a philosopher, for example, are trained in literature and philosophy respectively, not in politics or ideological analysis. In other words, the specialist argument can work quite effectively to block the larger and, in my opinion, the more intellectually serious perspective.<br /> <br /> Here it seems to me there is a simple two-part answer to be given, at least so far as the study of imperialism and culture (or Orientalism) is concerned. In the first place, nearly every nineteenth-century writer (and the same is true enough of writers in earlier periods) was extraordinarily well aware of the fact of empire: this is a subject not very well studied, but it will not take a modern Victorian specialist long to admit that liberal cultural heroes like John Stuart Mill, Arnold, Carlyle, Newman, Macaulay, Ruskin, George Eliot, and even Dickens had definite views on race and imperialism, which are quite easily to be found at work in their writing. So even a specialist must deal with the knowledge that Mill, for example, made it clear in ''On Liberty'' and ''Representative Government'' that his views there could not be applied to India (he was an India Office functionary for a good deal of his life, after all) because the Indians were civilizationally, if not racially, inferior. The same kind of paradox is to be found in Marx, as I try to show in this book. In the second place, to believe that politics in the form of imperialism bears upon the production of literature, scholarship, social theory, and history writing is by no means equivalent to saying that culture is therefore a demeaned or denigrated thing. Quite the contrary: my whole point is to say that we can better understand the persistence and the durability of saturating hegemonic systems like culture when we realize that their internal constraints upon writers and thinkers were ''productive'', not unilaterally inhibiting. It is this idea that Gramsci, certainly, and Foucault and Raymond Williams in their very different ways have been trying to illustrate. Even one or two pages by Williams on &quot;the uses of the Empire&quot; in ''The Long Revolution'' tell us more about nineteenth-century cultural richness than many volumes of hermetic textual analyses.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Raymond Williams, ''The Long Revolution'' (London: Chatto &amp; Windus, 1961), pp. 66-7.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Therefore I study Orientalism as a dynamic exchange between individual authors and the large political concerns shaped by the three great empires--British, French, American--in whose intellectual and imaginative territory the writing was produced. What interests me most as a scholar is not the gross political verity but the detail, as indeed what interests us in someone like Lane or Flaubert or Renan is not the (to him) indisputable truth that Occidentals are superior to Orientals, but the profoundly worked over and modulated evidence of his detailed work within the very wide space opened up by that truth. One need only remember that Lane's ''Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians'' is a classic of historical and anthropological observation because of its style, its enormously intelligent and brilliant details, not because of its simple reflection of racial superiority, to understand what I am saying here.<br /> <br /> The kind of political questions raised by Orientalism, then, are as follows: What other sorts of intellectual, aesthetic, scholarly, and cultural energies went into the making of an imperialist tradition like the Orientalist one? How did philology, lexicography, history, biology, political and economic theory, novel-writing, and lyric poetry come to the service of Orientalism's broadly imperialist view of the world? What changes, modulations, refinements, even revolutions take place within Orientalism? What is the meaning of originality, of continuity, of individuality, in this context? How does Orientalism transmit or reproduce itself from one epoch to another? In fine, how can we treat the cultural, historical phenomenon of Orientalism as a kind of ''willed human work''--not of mere unconditioned ratiocination--in all its historical complexity, detail, and worth without at the same time losing sight of the alliance between cultural work, political tendencies, the state, and the specific realities of domination? Governed by such concerns a humanistic study can responsibly address itself to politics ''and'' culture. But this is not to say that such a study establishes a hard-and-fast rule about the relationship between knowledge and politics. My argument is that each humanistic investigation must formulate the nature of that connection in the specific context of the study, the subject matter, and its historical circumstances.<br /> <br /> 2. ''The methodological question''. In a previous book I gave a good deal of thought and analysis to the methodological importance for work in the human sciences of finding and formulating a first step, a point of departure, a beginning principle.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;In my ''Beginnings: Intention and Method'' (New York: Basic Books, 1975).&lt;/ref&gt; A major lesson I learned and tried to present was that there is no such thing as a merely given, or simply available, starting point: beginnings have to be made for each project in such a way as to ''enable'' what follows from them. Nowhere in my experience has the difficulty of this lesson been more consciously lived (with what success--or failure--I cannot really say) than in this study of Orientalism. The idea of beginning, indeed the act of beginning, necessarily involves an act of delimitation by which something is cut out of a great mass of material, separated from the mass, and made to stand for, as well as be, a starting point, a beginning; for the student of texts one such notion of inaugural delimitation is Louis Althusser's idea of the ''problematic'', a specific determinate unity of a text, or group of texts, which is something given rise to by analysis.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Louis Althusser, ''For Marx'', trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969), pp. 65-7.&lt;/ref&gt; Yet in the case of Orientalism (as opposed to the case of Marx's texts, which is what Althusser studies) there is not simply the problem of finding a point of departure, or problematic, but also the question of designating which texts, authors, and periods are the ones best suited for study.<br /> <br /> It has seemed to me foolish to attempt an encyclopedic narrative history of Orientalism, first of all because if my guiding principle was to be &quot;the European idea of the Orient&quot; there would be virtually no limit to the material I would have had to deal with; second, because the narrative model itself did not suit my descriptive and political interests; third, because in such books as Raymond Schwab's ''La Renaissance orientale'', Johann Fuck's ''Die Arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts'', and more recently, Dorothee Metlitzki's ''The Matter of Araby in Medieval England''&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Raymond Schwab, ''La Renaissance orientale'' (Paris: Payot, 1950); Johann W. Fuck, ''Die Arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts'' (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1955); Dorothee Metlitzki, ''The Matter of Araby in Medieval England'' (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977).&lt;/ref&gt; there already exist encyclopedic works on certain aspects of the European-Oriental encounter such as make the critic's job, in the general political and intellectual context I sketched above, a different one.<br /> <br /> There still remained the problem of cutting down a very fat archive to manageable dimensions, and more important, outlining something in the nature of an intellectual order within that group of texts without at the same time following a mindlessly chronological order. My starting point therefore has been the British, French, and American experience of the Orient taken as a unit, what made that experience possible by way of historical and intellectual background, what the quality and character of the experience has been. For reasons I shall discuss presently I limited that already limited (but still inordinately large) set of questions to the Anglo-French-American experience of the Arabs and Islam, which for almost a thousand years together stood for the Orient. Immediately upon doing that, a large part of the Orient seemed to have been eliminated--India, Japan, China, and other sections of the Far East--not because these regions were not important (they obviously have been) but because one could discuss Europe's experience of the Near Orient, or of Islam, apart from its experience of the Far Orient. Yet at certain moments of that general European history of interest in the East, particular parts of the Orient like Egypt, Syria, and Arabia cannot be discussed without also studying Europe's involvement in the more distant parts, of which Persia and India are the most important; a notable case in point is the connection between Egypt and India so far as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain was concerned. Similarly the French role in deciphering the Zend-Avesta, the pre-eminence of Paris as a center of Sanskrit studies during the first decade of the nineteenth century, the fact that Napoleon's interest in the Orient was contingent upon his sense of the British role in India: all these Far Eastern interests directly influenced French interest in the Near East, Islam, and the Arabs.<br /> <br /> Britain and France dominated the Eastern Mediterranean from about the end of the seventeenth century on. Yet my discussion of that domination and systematic interest does not do justice to (''a'') the important contributions to Orientalism of Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and Portugal and (''b'') the fact that one of the important impulses toward the study of the Orient in the eighteenth century was the revolution in Biblical studies stimulated by such variously interesting pioneers as Bishop Lowth, Eichhorn, Herder, and Michaelis. In the first place, I had to focus rigorously upon the British-French and later the American material because it seemed inescapably true not only that Britain and France were the pioneer nations in the Orient and in Oriental studies, but that these vanguard positions were held by virtue of the two greatest colonial networks in pre-twentieth-century history; the American Oriental position since World War II has fit--I think, quite self-consciously--in the places excavated by the two earlier European powers. Then too, I believe that the sheer quality, consistency, and mass of British, French, and American writing on the Orient lifts it above the doubtless crucial work done in Germany, Italy, Russia, and elsewhere. But I think it is also true that the major steps in Oriental scholarship were first taken in either Britain and France, then elaborated upon by Germans. Silvestre de Sacy, for example, was not only the first modern and institutional European Orientalist, who worked on Islam, Arabic literature, the Druze religion, and Sassanid Persia; he was also the teacher of Champollion and of Franz Bopp, the founder of German comparative linguistics. A similar claim of priority and subsequent pre-eminence can be made for William Jones and Edward William Lane.<br /> <br /> In the second place--and here the failings of my study of Orientalism are amply made up for--there has been some important recent work on the background in Biblical scholarship to the rise of what I have called modern Orientalism. The best and the most illuminatingly relevant is E. S. Shaffer's impressive ''&quot;Kubla Khan&quot; and The Fall of Jerusalem'',&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;E. S. Shaffer, &quot;''Kubla Khan&quot; and The Fall of Jerusalem: The Mythological School in Biblical Criticism and Secular Literature, 1770-1880'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).&lt;/ref&gt; an indispensable study of the origins of Romanticism, and of the intellectual activity underpinning a great deal of what goes on in Coleridge, Browning, and George Eliot. To some degree Shaffer's work refines upon the outlines provided in Schwab, by articulating the material of relevance to be found in the German Biblical scholars and using that material to read, in an intelligent and always interesting way, the work of three major British writers. Yet what is missing in the book is some sense of the political as well as ideological edge given the Oriental material by the British and French writers I am principally concerned with; in addition, unlike Shaffer I attempt to elucidate subsequent developments in academic as well as literary Orientalism that bear on the connection between British and French Orientalism on the one hand and the rise of an explicitly colonial-minded imperialism on the other. Then too, I wish to show how all these earlier matters are reproduced more or less in American Orientalism after the Second World War.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless there is a possibly misleading aspect to my study, where, aside from an occasional reference, I do not exhaustively discuss the German developments after the inaugural period dominated by Sacy. Any work that seeks to provide an understanding of academic Orientalism and pays little attention to scholars like Steinthal, Muller, Becker, Goldziher, Brockelmann, Noldeke--to mention only a handful--needs to be reproached, and I freely reproach myself. I particularly regret not taking more account of the great scientific prestige that accrued to German scholarship by the middle of the nineteenth century, whose neglect was made into a denunciation of insular British scholars by George Eliot. I have in mind Eliot's unforgettable portrait of Mr. Casaubon in ''Middlemarch''. One reason Casaubon cannot finish his Key to All Mythologies is, according to his young cousin Will Ladislaw, that he is unacquainted with German scholarship. For not only has Casaubon chosen a subject &quot;as changing as chemistry: new discoveries are constantly making new points of view&quot;: he is undertaking a job similar to a refutation of Paracelsus because &quot;he is not an Orientalist, you know.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;George Eliot, ''Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life'' (1872; reprint ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1956), p. 164.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Eliot was not wrong in implying that by about 1830, which is when ''Middlemarch'' is set, German scholarship had fully attained its European pre-eminence. Yet at no time in German scholarship during the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century could a close partnership have developed between Orientalists and a protracted, sustained ''national'' interest in the Orient. There was nothing in Germany to correspond to the Anglo-French presence in India, the Levant, North Africa. Moreover, the German Orient was almost exclusively a scholarly, or at least a classical, Orient: it was made the subject of lyrics, fantasies, and even novels, but it was never actual, the way Egypt and Syria were actual for Chateaubriand, Lane, Lamartine, Burton, Disraeli, or Nerval. There is some significance in the fact that the two most renowned German works on the Orient, Goethe's ''Westostlicher Diwan'' and Friedrich Schlegel's ''Uber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier'', were based respectively on a Rhine journey and on hours spent in Paris libraries. What German Oriental scholarship did was to refine and elaborate techniques whose application was to texts, myths, ideas, and languages almost literally gathered from the Orient by imperial Britain and France.<br /> <br /> Yet what German Orientalism had in common with Anglo-French and later American Orientalism was a kind of intellectual ''authority'' over the Orient within Western culture. This authority must in large part be the subject of any description of Orientalism, and it is so in this study. Even the name ''Orientalism'' suggests a serious, perhaps ponderous style of expertise; when I apply it to modern American social scientists (since they do not call themselves Orientalists, my use of the word is anomalous), it is to draw attention to the way Middle East experts can still draw on the vestiges of Orientalism's intellectual position in nineteenth-century Europe.<br /> <br /> There is nothing mysterious or natural about authority. It is formed, irradiated, disseminated; it is instrumental, it is persuasive; it has status, it establishes canons of taste and value; it is virtually indistinguishable from certain ideas it dignifies as true, and from traditions, perceptions, and judgments it forms, transmits, reproduces. Above all, authority can, indeed must, be analyzed. All these attributes of authority apply to Orientalism, and much of what I do in this study is to describe both the historical authority in and the personal authorities of Orientalism.<br /> <br /> My principal methodological devices for studying authority here are what can be called ''strategic location'', which is a way of describing the author's position in a text with regard to the Oriental material he writes about, and ''strategic formation'', which is a way of analyzing the relationship between texts and the way in which groups of texts, types of texts, even textual genres, acquire mass, density, and referential power among themselves and thereafter in the culture at large. I use the notion of strategy simply to identify the problem every writer on the Orient has faced: how to get hold of it, how to approach it, how not to be defeated or overwhelmed by its sublimity, its scope, its awful dimensions. Everyone who writes about the Orient must locate himself vis-a-vis the Orient; translated into his text, this location includes the kind of narrative voice he adopts, the type of structure he builds, the kinds of images, themes, motifs that circulate in his text--all of which add up to deliberate ways of addressing the reader, containing the Orient, and finally, representing it or speaking in its behalf. None of this takes place in the abstract, however. Every writer on the Orient (and this is true even of Homer) assumes some Oriental precedent, some previous knowledge of the Orient, to which he refers and on which he relies. Additionally, each work on the Orient ''affiliates'' itself with other works, with audiences, with institutions, with the Orient itself. The ensemble of relationships between works, audiences, and some particular aspects of the Orient therefore constitutes an analyzable formation--for example, that of philological studies, of anthologies of extracts from Oriental literature, of travel books, of Oriental fantasies--whose presence in time, in discourse, in institutions (schools, libraries, foreign services) gives it strength and authority.<br /> <br /> It is clear, I hope, that my concern with authority does not entail analysis of what lies hidden in the Orientalist text, but analysis rather of the text's surface, its exteriority to what it describes. I do not think that this idea can be overemphasized. Orientalism is premised upon exteriority, that is, on the fact that the Orientalist, poet or scholar, makes the Orient speak, describes the Orient, renders its mysteries plain for and to the West. He is never concerned with the Orient except as the first cause of what he says. What he says and writes, by virtue of the fact that it is said or written, is meant to indicate that the Orientalist is outside the Orient, both as an existential and as a moral fact. The principal product of this exteriority is of course representation: as early as Aeschylus's play ''The Persians'' the Orient is transformed from a very far distant and often threatening Otherness into figures that are relatively familiar (in Aeschylus's case, grieving Asiatic women). The dramatic immediacy of representation in ''The Persians'' obscures the fact that the audience is watching a highly artificial enactment of what a non-Oriental has made into a symbol for the whole Orient. My analysis of the Orientalist text therefore places emphasis on the evidence, which is by no means invisible, for such representations ''as representations'', not as &quot;natural&quot; depictions of the Orient. This evidence is found just as prominently in the so-called truthful text (histories, philological analyses, political treatises) as in the avowedly artistic (i.e., openly imaginative) text. The things to look at are style, figures of speech, setting, narrative devices, historical and social circumstances, ''not'' the correctness of the representation nor its fidelity to some great original. The exteriority of the representation is always governed by some version of the truism that if the Orient could represent itself, it would; since it cannot, the representation does the job, for the West, and ''faute de mieux'', for the poor Orient. &quot;Sie konnen sich nicht vertreten, sie mussen vertreten werden,&quot; as Marx wrote in ''The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte''.<br /> <br /> Another reason for insisting upon exteriority is that I believe it needs to be made clear about cultural discourse and exchange within a culture that what is commonly circulated by it is not &quot;truth&quot; but representations. It hardly needs to be demonstrated again that language itself is a highly organized and encoded system, which employs many devices to express, indicate, exchange messages and information, represent, and so forth. In any instance of at least written language, there is no such thing as a delivered presence, but a ''re-presence'', or a representation. The value, efficacy, strength, apparent veracity of a written statement about the Orient therefore relies very little, and cannot instrumentally depend, on the Orient as such. On the contrary, the written statement is a presence to the reader by virtue of its having excluded, displaced, made supererogatory any such ''real thing'' as &quot;the Orient.&quot; Thus all of Orientalism stands forth and away from the Orient: that Orientalism makes sense at all depends more on the West than on the Orient, and this sense is directly indebted to various Western techniques of representation that make the Orient visible, clear, &quot;there&quot; in discourse about it. And these representations rely upon institutions, traditions, conventions, agreed-upon codes of understanding for their effects, not upon a distant and amorphous Orient.<br /> <br /> The difference between representations of the Orient before the last third of the eighteenth century and those after it (that is, those belonging to what I call modern Orientalism) is that the range of representation expanded enormously in the later period. It is true that after William Jones and Anquetil-Duperron, and after Napoleon's Egyptian expedition, Europe came to know the Orient more scientifically, to live in it with greater authority and discipline than ever before. But what mattered to Europe was the expanded scope and the much greater refinement given its techniques for receiving the Orient. When around the turn of the eighteenth century the Orient definitively revealed the age of its languages--thus outdating Hebrew's divine pedigree--it was a group of Europeans who made the discovery, passed it on to other scholars, and preserved the discovery in the new science of Indo-European philology. A new powerful science for viewing the linguistic Orient was born, and with it, as Foucault has shown in ''The Order of Things'', a whole web of related scientific interests. Similarly William Beckford, Byron, Goethe, and Hugo restructured the Orient by their art and made its colors, lights, and people visible through their images, rhythms, and motifs. At most, the &quot;real&quot; Orient provoked a writer to his vision; it very rarely guided it.<br /> <br /> Orientalism responded more to the culture that produced it than to its putative object, which was also produced by the West. Thus the history of Orientalism has both an internal consistency and a highly articulated set of relationships to the dominant culture surrounding it. My analyses consequently try to show the field's shape and internal organization, its pioneers, patriarchal authorities, canonical texts, doxological ideas, exemplary figures, its followers, elaborators, and new authorities; I try also to explain how Orientalism borrowed and was frequently informed by &quot;strong&quot; ideas, doctrines, and trends ruling the culture. Thus there was (and is) a linguistic Orient, a Freudian Orient, a Spenglerian Orient, a Darwinian Orient, a racist Orient--and so on. Yet never has there been such a thing as a pure, or unconditional, Orient; similarly, never has there been a nonmaterial form of Orientalism, much less something so innocent as an &quot;idea&quot; of the Orient. In this underlying conviction and in its ensuing methodological consequences do I differ from scholars who study the history of ideas. For the emphases and the executive form, above all the material effectiveness, of statements made by Orientalist discourse are possible in ways that any hermetic history of ideas tends completely to scant. Without those emphases and that material effectiveness Orientalism would be just another idea, whereas it is and was much more than that. Therefore I set out to examine not only scholarly works but also works of literature, political tracts, journalistic texts, travel books, religious and philological studies. In other words, my hybrid perspective is broadly historical and &quot;anthropological,&quot; given that I believe all texts to be worldly and circumstantial in (of course) ways that vary from genre to genre, and from historical period to historical period.<br /> <br /> Yet unlike Michel Foucault, to whose work I am greatly indebted, I do believe in the determining imprint of individual writers upon the otherwise anonymous collective body of texts constituting a discursive formation like Orientalism. The unity of the large ensemble of texts I analyze is due in part to the fact that they frequently refer to each other: Orientalism is after all a system for citing works and authors. Edward William Lane's ''Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians'' was read and cited by such diverse figures as Nerval, Flaubert, and Richard Burton. He was an authority whose use was an imperative for anyone writing or thinking about the Orient, not just about Egypt: when Nerval borrows passages verbatim from ''Modern Egyptians'' it is to use Lane's authority to assist him in describing village scenes in Syria, not Egypt. Lane's authority and the opportunities provided for citing him discriminately as well as indiscriminately were there because Orientalism could give his text the kind of distributive currency that he acquired. There is no way, however, of understanding Lane's currency without also understanding the peculiar features of ''his'' text; this is equally true of Renan, Sacy, Lamartine, Schlegel, and a group of other influential writers. Foucault believes that in general the individual text or author counts for very little; empirically, in the case of Orientalism (and perhaps nowhere else) I find this not to be so. Accordingly my analyses employ close textual readings whose goal is to reveal the dialectic between individual text or writer and the complex collective formation to which his work is a contribution.<br /> <br /> Yet even though it includes an ample selection of writers, this book is still far from a complete history or general account of Orientalism. Of this failing I am very conscious. The fabric of as thick a discourse as Orientalism has survived and functioned in Western society because of its richness: all I have done is to describe parts of that fabric at certain moments, and merely to suggest the existence of a larger whole, detailed, interesting, dotted with fascinating figures, texts, and events. I have consoled myself with believing that this book is one installment of several, and hope there are scholars and critics who might want to write others. There is still a general essay to be written on imperialism and culture; other studies would go more deeply into the connection between Orientalism and pedagogy, or into Italian, Dutch, German, and Swiss Orientalism, or into the dynamic between scholarship and imaginative writing, or into the relationship between administrative ideas and intellectual discipline. Perhaps the most important task of all would be to undertake studies in contemporary alternatives to Orientalism, to ask how one can study other cultures and peoples from a libertarian, or a nonrepressive and nonmanipulative, perspective. But then one would have to rethink the whole complex problem of knowledge and power. These are all tasks left embarrassingly incomplete in this study.<br /> <br /> The last, perhaps self-flattering, observation on method that I want to make here is that I have written this study with several audiences in mind. For students of literature and criticism, Orientalism offers a marvelous instance of the interrelations between society, history, and textuality; moreover, the cultural role played by the Orient in the West connects Orientalism with ideology, politics, and the logic of power, matters of relevance, I think, to the literary community. For contemporary students of the Orient, from university scholars to policymakers, I have written with two ends in mind: one, to present their intellectual genealogy to them in a way that has not been done; two, to criticize--with the hope of stirring discussion--the often unquestioned assumptions on which their work for the most part depends. For the general reader, this study deals with matters that always compel attention, all of them connected not only with Western conceptions and treatments of the Other but also with the singularly important role played by Western culture in what Vico called the world of nations. Lastly, for readers in the so-called Third World, this study proposes itself as a step towards an understanding not so much of Western politics and of the non-Western world in those politics as of the ''strength'' of Western cultural discourse, a strength too often mistaken as merely decorative or &quot;superstructural.&quot; My hope is to illustrate the formidable structure of cultural domination and, specifically for formerly colonized peoples, the dangers and temptations of employing this structure upon themselves or upon others.<br /> <br /> The three long chapters and twelve shorter units into which this book is divided are intended to facilitate exposition as much as possible. Chapter One, &quot;The Scope of Orientalism,&quot; draws a large circle around all the dimensions of the subject, both in terms of historical time and experiences and in terms of philosophical and political themes. Chapter Two, &quot;Orientalist Structures and Restructures,&quot; attempts to trace the development of modern Orientalism by a broadly chronological description, and also by the description of a set of devices common to the work of important poets, artists, and scholars. Chapter Three, &quot;Orientalism Now,&quot; begins where its predecessor left off, at around 1870. This is the period of great colonial expansion into the Orient, and it culminates in World War II. The very last section of Chapter Three characterizes the shift from British and French to American hegemony; I attempt there finally to sketch the present intellectual and social realities of Orientalism in the United States.<br /> <br /> 3. ''The personal dimension''. In the ''Prison Notebooks'' Gramsci says: &quot;The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is 'knowing thyself' as a product of the historical process to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory.&quot; The only available English translation inexplicably leaves Gramsci's comment at that, whereas in fact Gramsci's Italian text concludes by adding, &quot;therefore it is imperative at the outset to compile such an inventory.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Antonio Gramsci, ''The Prison Notebooks: Selections'', trans. and ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), p. 324. The full passage, unavailable in the Hoare and Smith translation, is to be found in Gramsci, ''Quaderni del Carcere'', ed. Valentino Gerratana (Turin: Einaudi Editore, 1975), 2: 1363.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Much of the personal investment in this study derives from my awareness of being an &quot;Oriental&quot; as a child growing up in two British colonies. All of my education, in those colonies (Palestine and Egypt) and in the United States, has been Western, and yet that deep early awareness has persisted. In many ways my study of Orientalism has been an attempt to inventory the traces upon me, the Oriental subject, of the culture whose domination has been so powerful a factor in the life of all Orientals. This is why for me the Islamic Orient has had to be the center of attention. Whether what I have achieved is the inventory prescribed by Gramsci is not for me to judge, although I have felt it important to be conscious of trying to produce one. Along the way, as severely and as rationally as I have been able, I have tried to maintain a critical consciousness, as well as employing those instruments of historical, humanistic, and cultural research of which my education has made me the fortunate beneficiary. In none of that, however, have I ever lost hold of the cultural reality of, the personal involvement in having been constituted as, &quot;an Oriental.&quot;<br /> <br /> The historical circumstances making such a study possible are fairly complex, and I can only list them schematically here. Anyone resident in the West since the 1950s, particularly in the United States, will have lived through an era of extraordinary turbulence in the relations of East and West. No one will have failed to note how &quot;East&quot; has always signified danger and threat during this period, even as it has meant the traditional Orient as well as Russia. In the universities a growing establishment of area-studies programs and institutes has made the scholarly study of the Orient a branch of national policy. Public affairs in this country include a healthy interest in the Orient, as much for its strategic and economic importance as for its traditional exoticism. If the world has become immediately accessible to a Western citizen living in the electronic age, the Orient too has drawn nearer to him, and is now less a myth perhaps than a place crisscrossed by Western, especially American, interests.<br /> <br /> One aspect of the electronic, postmodern world is that there has been a reinforcement of the stereotypes by which the Orient is viewed. Television, the films, and all the media's resources have forced information into more and more standardized molds. So far as the Orient is concerned, standardization and cultural stereotyping have intensified the hold of the nineteenth-century academic and imaginative demonology of &quot;the mysterious Orient.&quot; This is nowhere more true than in the ways by which the Near East is grasped. Three things have contributed to making even the simplest perception of the Arabs and Islam into a highly politicized, almost raucous matter: one, the history of popular anti-Arab and anti-Islamic prejudice in the West, which is immediately reflected in the history of Orientalism; two, the struggle between the Arabs and Israeli Zionism, and its effects upon American Jews as well as upon both the liberal culture and the population at large; three, the almost total absence of any cultural position making it possible either to identify with or dispassionately to discuss the Arabs or Islam. Furthermore, it hardly needs saying that because the Middle East is now so identified with Great Power politics, oil economics, and the simple-minded dichotomy of freedom-loving, democratic Israel and evil, totalitarian, and terroristic Arabs, the chances of anything like a clear view of what one talks about in talking about the Near East are depressingly small.<br /> <br /> My own experiences of these matters are in part what made me write this book. The life of an Arab Palestinian in the West, particularly in America, is disheartening. There exists here an almost unanimous consensus that politically he does not exist, and when it is allowed that he does, it is either as a nuisance or, as an Oriental. The web of racism, cultural stereotypes, political imperialism, dehumanizing ideology holding in the Arab or the Muslim is very strong indeed, and it is this web which every Palestinian has come to feel as his uniquely punishing destiny. It has made matters worse for him to remark that no person academically involved with the Near East--no Orientalist, that is--has ever in the United States culturally and politically identified himself wholeheartedly with the Arabs; certainly there have been identifications on some level, but they have never taken an &quot;acceptable&quot; form as has liberal American identification with Zionism, and all too frequently they have been radically flawed by their association either with discredited political and economic interests (oil-company and State Department Arabists, for example) or with religion.<br /> <br /> The nexus of knowledge and power creating &quot;the Oriental&quot; and in a sense obliterating him as a human being is therefore not for me an exclusively academic matter. Yet it is an ''intellectual'' matter of some very obvious importance. I have been able to put to use my humanistic and political concerns for the analysis and description of a very worldly matter, the rise, development, and consolidation of Orientalism. Too often literature and culture are presumed to be politically, even historically innocent; it has regularly seemed otherwise to me, and certainly my study of Orientalism has convinced me (and I hope will convince my literary colleagues) that society and literary culture can only be understood and studied together. In addition, and by an almost inescapable logic, I have found myself writing the history of a strange, secret sharer of Western anti-Semitism. That anti-Semitism and, as I have discussed it in its Islamic branch, Orientalism resemble each other very closely is a historical, cultural, and political truth that needs only to be mentioned to an Arab Palestinian for its irony to be perfectly understood. But what I should like also to have contributed here is a better understanding of the way cultural domination has operated. If this stimulates a new kind of dealing with the Orient, indeed if it eliminates the &quot;Orient&quot; and &quot;Occident&quot; altogether, then we shall have advanced a little in the process of what Raymond Williams has called the &quot;unlearning&quot; of &quot;the inherent dominative mode.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Raymond Williams, ''Culture and Society, 1780-1950'' (London: Chatto &amp; Windus, 1958), p. 376.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === Footnotes ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;1.&quot;/&gt;<br /> <br /> == '''1.''' '''The Scope of Orientalism''' ==<br /> ... le genie inquiet et ambitieux de Europeens ... impatient d'employer les nouveaux instruments de leur puissance ...<br /> <br /> --Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier, ''Preface historique'' (1809) ''Description de l'Egypte''<br /> <br /> === I. '''Knowing the Oriental''' ===<br /> On June 13, 1910, Arthur James Balfour lectured the House of Commons on &quot;the problems with which we have to deal in Egypt.&quot; These, he said, &quot;belong to a wholly different category&quot; than those &quot;affecting the Isle of Wight or the West Riding of Yorkshire.&quot; He spoke with the authority of a long-time member of Parliament, former private secretary to Lord Salisbury, former chief secretary for Ireland, former secretary for Scotland, former prime minister, veteran of numerous overseas crises, achievements, and changes. During his involvement in imperial affairs Balfour served a monarch who in 1876 had been declared Empress of India; he had been especially well placed in positions of uncommon influence to follow the Afghan and Zulu wars, the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, the death of General Gordon in the Sudan, the Fashoda Incident, the battle of Omdurman, the Boer War, the Russo-Japanese War. In addition his remarkable social eminence, the breadth of his learning and wit--he could write on such varied subjects as Bergson, Handel, theism, and golf--his education at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, and his apparent command over imperial affairs all gave considerable authority to what he told the Commons in June 1910. But there was still more to Balfour's speech, or at least to his need for giving it so didactically and moralistically. Some members were questioning the necessity for &quot;England in Egypt,&quot; the subject of Alfred Milner's enthusiastic book of 1892, but here designating a once-profitable occupation that had become a source of trouble now that Egyptian nationalism was on the rise and the continuing British presence in Egypt no longer so easy to defend. Balfour, then, to inform and explain.<br /> <br /> Recalling the challenge of J. M. Robertson, the member of Tyneside, Balfour himself put Robertson's question again: &quot;What right have you to take up these airs of superiority with regard to people whom you choose to call Oriental?&quot; The choice of &quot;Oriental&quot; was canonical; it had been employed by Chaucer and Mandeville, by Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope, and Byron. It designated Asia or the East, geographically, morally, culturally. One could speak in Europe of an Oriental personality, an Oriental atmosphere, an Oriental tale, Oriental despotism, or an Oriental mode of production, and be understood. Marx had used the word, and now Balfour was using it; his choice was understandable and called for no comment whatever.<br /> <br /> I take up no attitude of superiority. But I ask [Robertson and anyone else] ... who has even the most superficial knowledge of history, if they will look in the face the facts with which a British statesman has to deal when he is put in a position of supremacy over great races like the inhabitants of Egypt and countries in the East. We know the civilization of Egypt better than we know the civilization of any other country. We know it further back; we know it more intimately; we know more about it. It goes far beyond the petty span of the history of our race, which is lost in the prehistoric period at a time when the Egyptian civilisation had already passed its prime. Look at all the Oriental countries. Do not talk about superiority or inferiority.<br /> <br /> Two great themes dominate his remarks here and in what will follow: knowledge and power, the Baconian themes. As Balfour justifies the necessity for British occupation of Egypt, supremacy in his mind is associated with &quot;our&quot; knowledge of Egypt and not principally with military or economic power. Knowledge to Balfour means surveying a civilization from its origins to its prime to its decline--and of course, it means ''being able to do that''. Knowledge means rising above immediacy, beyond self, into the foreign and distant. The object of such knowledge is inherently vulnerable to scrutiny; this object is a &quot;fact&quot; which, if it develops, changes, or otherwise transforms itself in the way that civilizations frequently do, nevertheless is fundamentally, even ontologically stable. To have such knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it, to have authority over it. And authority here means for &quot;us&quot; to deny autonomy to &quot;it&quot;--the Oriental country--since we know it and it exists, in a sense, ''as'' we know it. British knowledge of Egypt ''is'' Egypt for Balfour, and the burdens of knowledge make such questions as inferiority and superiority seem petty ones. Balfour nowhere denies British superiority and Egyptian inferiority; he takes them for granted as he describes the consequences of knowledge.<br /> <br /> First of all, look at the facts of the case. Western nations as soon as they emerge into history show the beginnings of those capacities for self-government ... having merits of their own.... You may look through the whole history of the Orientals in what is called, broadly speaking, the East, and you never find traces of self-government. All their great centuries--and they have been very great--have been passed under despotisms, under absolute government. All their great contributions to civilisation--and they have been great--have been made under that form of government. Conqueror has succeeded conqueror; one domination has followed another; but never in all the revolutions of fate and fortune have you seen one of those nations of its own motion establish what we, from a Western point of view, call self-government. That is the fact. It is not a question of superiority and inferiority. I suppose a true Eastern sage would say that the working government which we have taken upon ourselves in Egypt and elsewhere is not a work worthy of a philosopher--that it is the dirty work, the inferior work, of carrying on the necessary labour.<br /> <br /> Since these facts are facts, Balfour must then go on to the next part of his argument.<br /> <br /> Is it a good thing for these great nations--I admit their greatness--that this absolute government should be exercised by us? I think it is a good thing. I think that experience shows that they have got under it far better government than in the whole history of the world they ever had before, and which not only is a benefit to them, but is undoubtedly a benefit to the whole of the civilised West.... We are in Egypt not merely for the sake of the Egyptians, though we are there for their sake; we are there also for the sake of Europe at large.<br /> <br /> Balfour produces no evidence that Egyptians and &quot;the races with whom we deal&quot; appreciate or even understand the good that is being done them by colonial occupation. It does not occur to Balfour, however, to let the Egyptian speak for himself, since presumably any Egyptian who would speak out is more likely to be &quot;the agitator [who] wishes to raise difficulties&quot; than the good native who overlooks the &quot;difficulties&quot; of foreign domination. And so, having settled the ethical problems, Balfour turns at last to the practical ones. &quot;If it is our business to govern, with or without gratitude, with or without the real and genuine memory of all the loss of which we have relieved the population [Balfour by no means implies, as part of that loss, the loss or at least the indefinite postponement of Egyptian independence] and no vivid imagination of all the benefits which we have given to them; if that is our duty, how is it to be performed?&quot; England exports &quot;our very best to these countries.&quot; These selfless administrators do their work &quot;amidst tens of thousands of persons belonging to a different creed, a different race, a different discipline, different conditions of life.&quot; What makes their work of governing possible is their sense of being supported at home by a government that endorses what they do. Yet<br /> <br /> directly the native populations have that instinctive feeling that those with whom they have got to deal have not behind them the might, the authority, the sympathy, the full and ungrudging support of the country which sent them there, those populations lose all that sense of order which is the very basis of their civilisation, just as our officers lose all that sense of power and authority, which is the very basis of everything they can do for the benefit of those among whom they have been sent.<br /> <br /> Balfour's logic here is interesting, not least for being completely consistent with the premises of his entire speech. England knows Egypt; Egypt is what England knows; England knows that Egypt cannot have self-government; England confirms that by occupying Egypt; for the Egyptians, Egypt is what England has occupied and now governs; foreign occupation therefore becomes &quot;the very basis&quot; of contemporary Egyptian civilization; Egypt requires, indeed insists upon, British occupation. But if the special intimacy between governor and governed in Egypt is disturbed by Parliament's doubts at home, then &quot;the authority of what ... is the dominant race--and as I think ought to remain the dominant race--has been undermined.&quot; Not only does English prestige suffer; &quot;it is vain for a handful of British officials--endow them how you like, give them all the qualities of character and genius you can imagine--it is impossible for them to carry out the great task which in Egypt, not we only, but the civilised world have imposed upon them.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;This and the preceding quotations from Arthur James Balfour's speech to the House of Commons are from Great Britain, ''Parliamentary Debates'' (Commons), 5th ser., 17 (1910): 1140-46. See also A. P. Thornton, ''The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies: A Study in British Power'' (London: MacMillan &amp; Co., 1959), pp. 357-60. Balfour's speech was a defense of Eldon Gorst's policy in Egypt; for a discussion of that see Peter John Dreyfus Mellini, &quot;Sir Eldon Gorst and British Imperial Policy in Egypt,&quot; unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1971.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> As a rhetorical performance Balfour's speech is significant for the way in which he plays the part of, and represents, a variety of characters. There are of course &quot;the English,&quot; for whom the pronoun &quot;we&quot; is used with the full weight of a distinguished, powerful man who feels himself to be representative of all that is best in his nation's history. Balfour can also speak for the civilized world, the West, and the relatively small corps of colonial officials in Egypt. If he does not speak directly for the Orientals, it is because they after all speak another language; yet he knows how they feel since he knows their history, their reliance upon such as he, and their expectations. Still, he does speak for them in the sense that what they might have to say, were they to be asked and might they be able to answer, would somewhat uselessly confirm what is already evident: that they are a subject race, dominated by a race that knows them and what is good for them better than they could possibly know themselves. Their great moments were in the past; they are useful in the modern world only because the powerful and up-to-date empires have effectively brought them out of the wretchedness of their decline and turned them into rehabilitated residents of productive colonies.<br /> <br /> Egypt in particular was an excellent case in point, and Balfour was perfectly aware of how much right he had to speak as a member of his country's parliament on behalf of England, the West, Western civilization, about modern Egypt. For Egypt was not just another colony: it was the vindication of Western imperialism; it was, until its annexation by England, an almost academic example of Oriental backwardness; it was to become the triumph of English knowledge and power. Between 1882, the year in which England occupied Egypt and put an end to the nationalist rebellion of Colonel Arabi, and 1907, England's representative in Egypt, Egypt's master, was Evelyn Baring (also known as &quot;Over-baring&quot;), Lord Cromer. On July 30, 1907, it was Balfour in the Commons who had supported the project to give Cromer a retirement prize of fifty thousand pounds as a reward for what he had done in Egypt. Cromer ''made'' Egypt, said Balfour:<br /> <br /> Everything he has touched he has succeeded in.... Lord Cromer's services during the past quarter of a century have raised Egypt from the lowest pitch of social and economic degradation until it now stands among Oriental nations, I believe, absolutely alone in its prosperity, financial and moral.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Denis Judd, ''Balfour and the British Empire: A Study in Imperial Evolution, 1874-1932'' (London: MacMillan &amp; Co., 1968), p. 286. See also p. 292: as late as 1926 Balfour spoke--without irony--of Egypt as an &quot;independent nation.&quot;&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> How Egypt's moral prosperity was measured, Balfour did not venture to say. British exports to Egypt equaled those to the whole of Africa; that certainly indicated a sort of financial prosperity, for Egypt and England (somewhat unevenly) together. But what really mattered was the unbroken, all-embracing Western tutelage of an Oriental country, from the scholars, missionaries, businessmen, soldiers, and teachers who prepared and then implemented the occupation to the high functionaries like Cromer and Balfour who saw themselves as providing for, directing, and sometimes even forcing Egypt's rise from Oriental neglect to its present lonely eminence.<br /> <br /> If British success in Egypt was as exceptional as Balfour said, it was by no means an inexplicable or irrational success. Egyptian affairs had been controlled according to a general theory expressed both by Balfour in his notions about Oriental civilization and by Cromer in his management of everyday business in Egypt. The most important thing about the theory during the first decade of the twentieth century was that it worked, and worked staggeringly well. The argument, when reduced to its simplest form, was clear, it was precise, it was easy to grasp. There are Westerners, and there are Orientals. The former dominate; the latter must be dominated, which usually means having their land occupied, their internal affairs rigidly controlled, their blood and treasure put at the disposal of one or another Western power. That Balfour and Cromer, as we shall soon see, could strip humanity down to such ruthless cultural and racial essences was not at all an indication of their particular viciousness. Rather it was an indication of how streamlined a general doctrine had become by the time they put it to use--how streamlined and effective.<br /> <br /> Unlike Balfour, whose theses on Orientals pretended to objective universality, Cromer spoke about Orientals specifically as what he had ruled or had to deal with, first in India, then for the twenty-five years in Egypt during which he emerged as the paramount consulgeneral in England's empire. Balfour's &quot;Orientals&quot; are Cromer's &quot;subject races,&quot; which he made the topic of a long essay published in the ''Edinburgh Review'' in January 1908. Once again, knowledge of subject races or Orientals is what makes their management easy and profitable; knowledge gives power, more power requires more knowledge, and so on in an increasingly profitable dialectic of information and control. Cromer's notion is that England's empire will not dissolve if such things as militarism and commercial egotism at home and &quot;free institutions&quot; in the colony (as opposed to British government &quot;according to the Code of Christian morality&quot;) are kept in check. For if, according to Cromer, logic is something &quot;the existence of which the Oriental is disposed altogether to ignore,&quot; the proper method of ruling is not to impose ultrascientific measures upon him or to force him bodily to accept logic. It is rather to understand his limitations and &quot;endeavor to find, in the contentment of the subject race, a more worthy and, it may be hoped, a stronger bond of union between the rulers and the ruled.&quot; Lurking everywhere behind the pacification of the subject race is imperial might, more effective for its refined understanding and infrequent use than for its soldiers, brutal tax gatherers, and incontinent force. In a word, the Empire must be wise; it must temper its cupidity with selflessness, and its impatience with flexible discipline.<br /> <br /> To be more explicit, what is meant when it is said that the commercial spirit should be under some control is this--that in dealing with Indians or Egyptians, or Shilluks, or Zulus, the first question is to consider what these people, who are all, nationally speaking, more or less ''in statu pupillari'', themselves think is best in their own interests, although this is a point which deserves serious consideration. But it is essential that each special issue should be decided mainly with reference to what, by the light of Western knowledge and experience tempered by local considerations, we conscientiously think is best for the subject race, without reference to any real or supposed advantage which may accrue to England as a nation, or--as is more frequently the case--to the special interests represented by some one or more influential classes of Englishmen. If the British nation as a whole persistently bears this principle in mind, and insists sternly on its application, though we can never create a patriotism akin to that based on affinity of race or community of language, we may perhaps foster some sort of cosmopolitan allegiance grounded on the respect always accorded to superior talents and unselfish conduct, and on the gratitude derived both from favours conferred and from those to come. There may then at all events be some hope that the Egyptian will hesitate before he throws in his lot with any future Arabi.... Even the Central African savage may eventually learn to chant a hymn in honour of Astraea Redux, as represented by the British official who denies him gin but gives him justice. More than this, commerce will gain.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer, ''Political and Literary Essays'', ''1908-1913'' (1913; reprint ed., Freeport, N. Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), pp. 40, 53, 12-14.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> How much &quot;serious consideration&quot; the ruler ought to give proposals from the subject race was illustrated in Cromer's total opposition to Egyptian nationalism. Free native institutions, the absence of foreign occupation, a self-sustaining national sovereignty: these unsurprising demands were consistently rejected by Cromer, who asserted unambiguously that &quot;the real future of Egypt ... lies not in the direction of a narrow nationalism, which will only embrace native Egyptians ... but rather in that of an enlarged cosmopolitanism.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 171.&lt;/ref&gt; Subject races did not have it in them to know what was good for them. Most of them were Orientals, of whose characteristics Cromer was very knowledgeable since he had had experience with them both in India and Egypt. One of the convenient things about Orientals for Cromer was that managing them, although circumstances might differ slightly here and there, was almost everywhere nearly the same.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Roger Owen, &quot;The Influence of Lord Cromer's Indian Experience on British Policy in Egypt 1883-1907,&quot; in ''Middle Eastern Affairs, Number Four: St. Antony's Papers Number 17'', ed. Albert Hourani (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 109-39.&lt;/ref&gt; This was, of course, because Orientals were almost everywhere nearly the same.<br /> <br /> Now at last we approach the long-developing core of essential knowledge, knowledge both academic and practical, which Cromer and Balfour inherited from a century of modern Western Orientalism: knowledge about and knowledge of Orientals, their race, character, culture, history, traditions, society, and possibilities. This knowledge was effective: Cromer believed he had put it to use in governing Egypt. Moreover, it was tested and unchanging knowledge, since &quot;Orientals&quot; for all practical purposes were a Platonic essence, which any Orientalist (or ruler of Orientals) might examine, understand, and expose. Thus in the thirty-fourth chapter of his two-volume work ''Modern Egypt'', the magisterial record of his experience and achievement, Cromer puts down a sort of personal canon of Orientalist wisdom:<br /> <br /> Sir Alfred Lyall once said to me: &quot;Accuracy is abhorrent to the Oriental mind. Every Anglo-Indian should always remember that maxim.&quot; Want of accuracy, which easily degenerates into untruthfulness, is in fact the main characteristic of the Oriental mind.<br /> <br /> The European is a close reasoner; his statements of fact are devoid of any ambiguity; he is a natural logician, albeit he may not have studied logic; he is by nature sceptical and requires proof before he can accept the truth of any proposition; his trained intelligence works like a piece of mechanism. The mind of the Oriental, on the other hand, like his picturesque streets, is eminently wanting in symmetry. His reasoning is of the most slipshod description. Although the ancient Arabs acquired in a somewhat higher degree the science of dialectics, their descendants are singularly deficient in the logical faculty. They are often incapable of drawing the most obvious conclusions from any simple premises of which they may admit the truth. Endeavor to elicit a plain statement of facts from any ordinary Egyptian. His explanation will generally be lengthy, and wanting in lucidity. He will probably contradict himself half-a-dozen times before he has finished his story. He will often break down under the mildest process of cross-examination.<br /> <br /> Orientals or Arabs are thereafter shown to be gullible, &quot;devoid of energy and initiative,&quot; much given to &quot;fulsome flattery,&quot; intrigue, cunning, and unkindness to animals; Orientals cannot walk on either a road or a pavement (their disordered minds fail to understand what the clever European grasps immediately, that roads and pavements are made for walking); Orientals are inveterate liars, they are &quot;lethargic and suspicious,&quot; and in everything oppose the clarity, directness, and nobility of the Anglo-Saxon race.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer, ''Modern Egypt'' (New York: Macmillan Co., 1908), 2: 146-67. For a British view of British policy in Egypt that runs totally counter to Cromer's, see Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, ''Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt: Being a Personal Narrative of Events'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1922). There is a valuable discussion of Egyptian opposition to British rule in Mounah A. Khouri, ''Poetry and the Making of Modern Egypt, 1882-1922'' (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Cromer makes no effort to conceal that Orientals for him were always and only the human material he governed in British colonies. &quot;As I am only a diplomatist and an administrator, whose proper study is also man, but from the point of view of governing him,&quot; Cromer says, &quot;... I content myself with noting the fact that somehow or other the Oriental generally acts, speaks, and thinks in a manner exactly opposite to the European.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Cromer, ''Modern Egypt'', 2: 164.&lt;/ref&gt; Cromer's descriptions are of course based partly on direct observation, yet here and there he refers to orthodox Orientalist authorities (in particular Ernest Renan and Constantin de Volney) to support his views. To these authorities he also defers when it comes to explaining why Orientals are the way they are. He has no doubt that ''any'' knowledge of the Oriental will confirm his views, which, to judge from his description of the Egyptian breaking under cross-examination, find the Oriental to be guilty. The crime was that the Oriental was an Oriental, and it is an accurate sign of how commonly acceptable such a tautology was that it could be written without even an appeal to European logic or symmetry of mind. Thus any deviation from what were considered the norms of Oriental behavior was believed to be unnatural; Cromer's last annual report from Egypt consequently proclaimed Egyptian nationalism to be an &quot;entirely novel idea&quot; and &quot;a plant of exotic rather than of indigenous growth.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Cited in John Marlowe, ''Cromer in Egypt'' (London: Elek Books, 1970), p. 271.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> We would be wrong, I think, to underestimate the reservoir of accredited knowledge, the codes of Orientalist orthodoxy, to which Cromer and Balfour refer everywhere in their writing and in their public policy. To say simply that Orientalism was a rationalization of colonial rule is to ignore the extent to which colonial rule was justified in advance by Orientalism, rather than after the fact. Men have always divided the world up into regions having either real or imagined distinction from each other. The absolute demarcation between East and West, which Balfour and Cromer accept with such complacency, had been years, even centuries, in the making. There were of course innumerable voyages of discovery; there were contacts through trade and war. But more than this, since the middle of the eighteenth century there had been two principal elements in the relation between East and West. One was a growing systematic knowledge in Europe about the Orient, knowledge reinforced by the colonial encounter as well as by the widespread interest in the alien and unusual, exploited by the developing sciences of ethnology, comparative anatomy, philology, and history; furthermore, to this systematic knowledge was added a sizable body of literature produced by novelists, poets, translators, and gifted travelers. The other feature of Oriental-European relations was that Europe was always in a position of strength, not to say domination. There is no way of putting this euphemistically. True, the relationship of strong to weak could be disguised or mitigated, as when Balfour acknowledged the &quot;greatness&quot; of Oriental civilizations. But the essential relationship, on political, cultural, and even religious grounds, was seen--in the West, which is what concerns us here--to be one between a strong and a weak partner.<br /> <br /> Many terms were used to express the relation: Balfour and Cromer, typically, used several. The Oriental is irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, &quot;different&quot;; thus the European is rational, virtuous, mature, &quot;normal.&quot; But the way of enlivening the relationship was everywhere to stress the fact that the Oriental lived in a different but thoroughly organized world of his own, a world with its own national, cultural, and epistemological boundaries and principles of internal coherence. Yet what gave the Oriental's world its intelligibility and identity was not the result of his own efforts but rather the whole complex series of knowledgeable manipulations by which the Orient was identified by the West. Thus the two features of cultural relationship I have been discussing come together. Knowledge of the Orient, because generated out of strength, in a sense ''creates'' the Orient, the Oriental, and his world. In Cromer's and Balfour's language the Oriental is depicted as something one judges (as in a court of law), something one studies and depicts (as in a curriculum), something one disciplines (as in a school or prison), something one illustrates (as in a zoological manual). The point is that in each of these cases the Oriental is ''contained'' and ''represented'' by dominating frameworks. Where do these come from?<br /> <br /> Cultural strength is not something we can discuss very easily--and one of the purposes of the present work is to illustrate, analyze, and reflect upon Orientalism as an exercise of cultural strength. In other words, it is better not to risk generalizations about so vague and yet so important a notion as cultural strength until a good deal of material has been analyzed first. But at the outset one can say that so far as the West was concerned during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, an assumption had been made that the Orient and everything in it was, if not patently inferior to, then in need of corrective study by the West. The Orient was viewed as if framed by the classroom, the criminal court, the prison, the illustrated manual. Orientalism, then, is knowledge of the Orient that places things Oriental in class, court, prison, or manual for scrutiny, study, judgment, discipline, or governing.<br /> <br /> During the early years of the twentieth century, men like Balfour and Cromer could say what they said, in the way they did, because a still earlier tradition of Orientalism than the nineteenth-century one provided them with a vocabulary, imagery, rhetoric, and figures with which to say it. Yet Orientalism reinforced, and was reinforced by, the certain knowledge that Europe or the West literally commanded the vastly greater part of the earth's surface. The period of immense advance in the institutions and content of Orientalism coincides exactly with the period of unparalleled European expansion; from 1815 to 1914 European direct colonial dominion expanded from about 35 percent of the earth's surface to about 85 percent of it.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Harry Magdoff, &quot;Colonialism (1763-c. 1970),&quot; ''Encyclopaedia Britannica'', 15th ed. (1974), pp. 893-4. See also D. K. Fieldhouse, ''The Colonial Empires: A Comparative Survey from the Eighteenth Century'' (New York: Delacorte Press, 1967), p. 178.&lt;/ref&gt; Every continent was affected, none more so than Africa and Asia. The two greatest empires were the British and the French; allies and partners in some things, in others they were hostile rivals. In the Orient, from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to Indochina and Malaya, their colonial possessions and imperial spheres of influence were adjacent, frequently overlapped, often were fought over. But it was in the Near Orient, the lands of the Arab Near East, where Islam was supposed to define cultural and racial characteristics, that the British and the French encountered each other and &quot;the Orient&quot; with the greatest intensity, familiarity, and complexity. For much of the nineteenth century, as Lord Salisbury put it in 1881, their common view of the Orient was intricately problematic: &quot;When you have got a ... faithful ally who is bent on meddling in a country in which you are deeply interested--you have three courses open to you. You may renounce--or monopolize--or share. Renouncing would have been to place the French across our road to India. Monopolizing would have been very near the risk of war. So we resolved to share.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Quoted in Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid, ''Egypt and Cromer: A Study in Anglo-Egyptian Relations'' (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), p. 3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> And share they did, in ways that we shall investigate presently. What they shared, however, was not only land or profit or rule; it was the kind of intellectual power I have been calling Orientalism. In a sense Orientalism was a library or archive of information commonly and, in some of its aspects, unanimously held. What bound the archive together was a family of ideas&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;The phrase is to be found in Ian Hacking, ''The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas About Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference'' (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 17.&lt;/ref&gt; and a unifying set of values proven in various ways to be effective. These ideas explained the behavior of Orientals; they supplied Orientals with a mentality, a genealogy, an atmosphere; most important, they allowed Europeans to deal with and even to see Orientals as a phenomenon possessing regular characteristics. But like any set of durable ideas, Orientalist notions influenced the people who were called Orientals as well as those called Occidental, European, or Western; in short, Orientalism is better grasped as a set of constraints upon and limitations of thought than it is simply as a positive doctrine. If the essence of Orientalism is the ineradicable distinction between Western superiority and Oriental inferiority, then we must be prepared to note how in its development and subsequent history Orientalism deepened and even hardened the distinction. When it became common practice during the nineteenth century for Britain to retire its administrators from India and elsewhere once they had reached the age of fifty-five, then a further refinement in Orientalism had been achieved; no Oriental was ever allowed to see a Westerner as he aged and degenerated, just as no Westerner needed ever to see himself, mirrored in the eyes of the subject race, as anything but a vigorous, rational, ever-alert young Raj.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;V. G. Kiernan, ''The Lords of Human Kind: Black Man, Yellow Man, and White Man in an Age of Empire'' (Boston: Little, Brown &amp; Co., 1969), p. 55.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Orientalist ideas took a number of different forms during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. First of all, in Europe there was a vast literature about the Orient inherited from the European past. What is distinctive about the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which is where this study assumes modern Orientalism to have begun, is that an Oriental renaissance took place, as Edgar Quinet phrased it.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Edgar Quinet, ''Le Genie des religions, in Oeuvres completes'' (Paris: Paguerre, 1857), pp. 55-74.&lt;/ref&gt; Suddenly it seemed to a wide variety of thinkers, politicians, and artists that a new awareness of the Orient, which extended from China to the Mediterranean, had arisen. This awareness was partly the result of newly discovered and translated Oriental texts in languages like Sanskrit, Zend, and Arabic; it was also the result of a newly perceived relationship between the Orient and the West. For my purposes here, the keynote of the relationship was set for the Near East and Europe by the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in 1798, an invasion which was in many ways the very model of a truly scientific appropriation of one culture by another, apparently stronger one. For with Napoleon's occupation of Egypt processes were set in motion between East and West that still dominate our contemporary cultural and political perspectives. And the Napoleonic expedition, with its great collective monument of erudition, the ''Description de l'Egypte'', provided a scene or setting for Orientalism, since Egypt and subsequently the other Islamic lands were viewed as the live province, the laboratory, the theater of effective Western knowledge about the Orient. I shall return to the Napoleonic adventure a little later.<br /> <br /> With such experiences as Napoleon's the Orient as a body of knowledge in the West was modernized, and this is a second form in which nineteenth- and twentieth-century Orientalism existed. From the outset of the period I shall be examining there was everywhere amongst Orientalists the ambition to formulate their discoveries, experiences, and insights suitably in modern terms, to put ideas about the Orient in very close touch with modern realities. Renan's linguistic investigations of Semitic in 1848, for example, were couched in a style that drew heavily for its authority upon contemporary comparative grammar, comparative anatomy, and racial theory; these lent his Orientalism prestige and--the other side of the coin--made Orientalism vulnerable, as it has been ever since, to modish as well as seriously influential currents of thought in the West. Orientalism has been subjected to imperialism, positivism, utopianism, historicism, Darwinism, racism, Freudianism, Marxism, Spenglerism. But Orientalism, like many of the natural and social sciences, has had &quot;paradigms&quot; of research, its own learned societies, its own Establishment. During the nineteenth century the field increased enormously in prestige, as did also the reputation and influence of such institutions as the Societe asiatique, the Royal Asiatic Society, the Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft, and the American Oriental Society. With the growth of these societies went also an increase, all across Europe, in the number of professorships in Oriental studies; consequently there was an expansion in the available means for disseminating Orientalism. Orientalist periodicals, beginning with the ''Fundgraben des Orients'' (1809), multiplied the quantity of knowledge as well as the number of specialties.<br /> <br /> Yet little of this activity and very few of these institutions existed and flourished freely, for in a third form in which it existed, Orientalism imposed limits upon thought about the Orient. Even the most imaginative writers of an age, men like Flaubert, Nerval, or Scott, were constrained in what they could either experience of or say about the Orient. For Orientalism was ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, the West, &quot;us&quot;) and the strange (the Orient, the East, &quot;them&quot;). This vision in a sense created and then served the two worlds thus conceived. Orientals lived in their world, &quot;we&quot; lived in ours. The vision and material reality propped each other up, kept each other going. A certain freedom of intercourse was always the Westerner's privilege; because his was the stronger culture, he could penetrate, he could wrestle with, he could give shape and meaning to the great Asiatic mystery, as Disraeli once called it. Yet what has, I think, been previously overlooked is the constricted vocabulary of such a privilege, and the comparative limitations of such a vision. My argument takes it that the Orientalist reality is both antihuman and persistent. Its scope, as much as its institutions and all-pervasive influence, lasts up to the present.<br /> <br /> But how did and does Orientalism work? How can one describe it all together as a historical phenomenon, a way of thought, a contemporary problem, and a material reality? Consider Cromer again, an accomplished technician of empire but also a beneficiary of Orientalism. He can furnish us with a rudimentary answer. In &quot;The Government of Subject Races&quot; he wrestles with the problem of how Britain, a nation of individuals, is to administer a wide-flung empire according to a number of central principles. He contrasts the &quot;local agent,&quot; who has both a specialist's knowledge of the native and an Anglo-Saxon individuality, with the central authority at home in London. The former may &quot;treat subjects of local interest in a manner calculated to damage, or even to jeopardize, Imperial interests. The central authority is in a position to obviate any danger arising from this cause.&quot; Why? Because this authority can &quot;ensure the harmonious working of the different parts of the machine&quot; and &quot;should endeavour, so far as is possible, to realise the circumstances attendant on the government of the dependency.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Cromer, ''Political and Literary Essays'', p. 35.&lt;/ref&gt; The language is vague and unattractive, but the point is not hard to grasp. Cromer envisions a seat of power in the West, and radiating out from it towards the East a great embracing machine, sustaining the central authority yet commanded by it. What the machine's branches feed into it in the East--human material, material wealth, knowledge, what have you--is processed by the machine, then converted into more power. The specialist does the immediate translation of mere Oriental matter into useful substance: the Oriental becomes, for example, a subject race, an example of an &quot;Oriental&quot; mentality, all for the enhancement of the &quot;authority&quot; at home. &quot;Local interests&quot; are Orientalist special interests, the &quot;central authority&quot; is the general interest of the imperial society as a whole. What Cromer quite accurately sees is the management of knowledge by society, the fact that knowledge--no matter how special--is regulated first by the local concerns of a specialist, later by the general concerns of a social system of authority. The interplay between local and central interests is intricate, but by no means indiscriminate.<br /> <br /> In Cromer's own case as an imperial administrator the &quot;proper study is also man,&quot; he says. When Pope proclaimed the proper study of mankind to be man, he meant all men, including &quot;the poor Indian&quot;; whereas Cromer's &quot;also&quot; reminds us that certain men, such as Orientals, can be singled out as the subject for ''proper'' study. The proper study--in this sense--of Orientals is Orientalism, properly separate from other forms of knowledge, but finally useful (because finite) for the material and social reality enclosing all knowledge at any time, supporting knowledge, providing it with uses. An order of sovereignty is set up from East to West, a mock chain of being whose clearest form was given once by Kipling:<br /> <br /> Mule, horse, elephant, or bullock, he obeys his driver, and the driver his sergeant, and the sergeant his lieutenant, and the lieutenant his captain, and the captain his major, and the major his colonel, and the colonel his brigadier commanding three regiments, and the brigadier his general, who obeys the Viceroy, who is the servant of the Empress.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;See Jonah Raskin, ''The Mythology of Imperialism'' (New York: Random House, 1971), p. 40.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> As deeply forged as is this monstrous chain of command, as strongly managed as is Cromer's &quot;harmonious working,&quot; Orientalism can also express the strength of the West and the Orient's weakness--as seen by the West. Such strength and such weakness are as intrinsic to Orientalism as they are to any view that divides the world into large general divisions, entities that coexist in a state of tension produced by what is believed to be radical difference.<br /> <br /> For that is the main intellectual issue raised by Orientalism. Can one divide human reality, as indeed human reality seems to be genuinely divided, into clearly different cultures, histories, traditions, societies, even races, and survive the consequences humanly? By surviving the consequences humanly, I mean to ask whether there is any way of avoiding the hostility expressed by the division, say, of men into &quot;us&quot; (Westerners) and &quot;they&quot; (Orientals). For such divisions are generalities whose use historically and actually has been to press the importance of the distinction between some men and some other men, usually towards not especially admirable ends. When one uses categories like Oriental and Western as both the starting and the end points of analysis, research, public policy (as the categories were used by Balfour and Cromer), the result is usually to polarize the distinction--the Oriental becomes more Oriental, the Westerner more Western--and limit the human encounter between different cultures, traditions, and societies. In short, from its earliest modern history to the present, Orientalism as a form of thought for dealing with the foreign has typically shown the altogether regrettable tendency of any knowledge based on such hard-and-fast distinctions as &quot;East&quot; and &quot;West&quot;: to channel thought into a West or an East compartment. Because this tendency is right at the center of Orientalist theory, practice, and values found in the West, the sense of Western power over the Orient is taken for granted as having the status of scientific truth.<br /> <br /> A contemporary illustration or two should clarify this observation perfectly. It is natural for men in power to survey from time to time the world with which they must deal. Balfour did it frequently. Our contemporary Henry Kissinger does it also, rarely with more express frankness than in his essay &quot;Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy.&quot; The drama he depicts is a real one, in which the United States must manage its behavior in the world under the pressures of domestic forces on the one hand and of foreign realities on the other. Kissinger's discourse must for that reason alone establish a polarity between the United States and the world; in addition, of course, he speaks consciously as an authoritative voice for the major Western power, whose recent history and present reality have placed it before a world that does not easily accept its power and dominance. Kissinger feels that the United States can deal less problematically with the industrial, developed West than it can with the developing world. Again, the contemporary actuality of relations between the United States and the so-called Third World (which includes China, Indochina, the Near East, Africa, and Latin America) is manifestly a thorny set of problems, which even Kissinger cannot hide.<br /> <br /> Kissinger's method in the essay proceeds according to what linguists call binary opposition: that is, he shows that there are two styles in foreign policy (the prophetic and the political), two types of technique, two periods, and so forth. When at the end of the historical part of his argument he is brought face to face with the contemporary world, he divides it accordingly into two halves, the developed and the developing countries. The first half, which is the West, &quot;is deeply committed to the notion that the real world is external to the observer, that knowledge consists of recording and classifying data--the more accurately the better.&quot; Kissinger's proof for this is the Newtonian revolution, which has not taken place in the developing world: &quot;Cultures which escaped the early impact of Newtonian thinking have retained the essentially pre-Newtonian view that the real world is almost completely ''internal'' to the observer.&quot; Consequently, he adds, &quot;empirical reality has a much different significance for many of the new countries than for the West because in a certain sense they never went through the process of discovering it.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Henry A. Kissinger, ''American Foreign Policy'' (New York: W. W. Norton &amp; Co., 1974), pp. 48-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Unlike Cromer, Kissinger does not need to quote Sir Alfred Lyall on the Oriental's inability to be accurate; the point he makes is sufficiently unarguable to require no special validation. We had our Newtonian revolution; they didn't. As thinkers we are better off than they are. Good: the lines are drawn in much the same way, finally, as Balfour and Cromer drew them. Yet sixty or more years have intervened between Kissinger and the British imperialists. Numerous wars and revolutions have proved conclusively that the pre-Newtonian prophetic style, which Kissinger associates both with &quot;inaccurate&quot; developing countries and with Europe before the Congress of Vienna, is not entirely without its successes. Again unlike Balfour and Cromer, Kissinger therefore feels obliged to respect this pre-Newtonian perspective, since &quot;it offers great flexibility with respect to the contemporary revolutionary turmoil.&quot; Thus the duty of men in the post-Newtonian (real) world is to &quot;construct an international order ''before'' a crisis imposes it as a necessity&quot;: in other words, ''we'' must still find a way by which the developing world can be contained. Is this not similar to Cromer's vision of a harmoniously working machine designed ultimately to benefit some central authority, which opposes the developing world?<br /> <br /> Kissinger may not have known on what fund of pedigreed knowledge he was drawing when he cut the world up into pre-Newtonian and post-Newtonian conceptions of reality. But his distinction is identical with the orthodox one made by Orientalists, who separate Orientals from Westerners. And like Orientalism's distinction Kissinger's is not value-free, despite the apparent neutrality of his tone. Thus such words as &quot;prophetic,&quot; &quot;accuracy,&quot; &quot;internal,&quot; &quot;empirical reality,&quot; and &quot;order&quot; are scattered throughout his description, and they characterize either attractive, familiar, desirable virtues or menacing, peculiar, disorderly defects. Both the traditional Orientalist, as we shall see, and Kissinger conceive of the difference between cultures, first, as creating a battlefront that separates them, and second, as inviting the West to control, contain, and otherwise govern (through superior knowledge and accommodating power) the Other. With what effect and at what considerable expense such militant divisions have been maintained, no one at present needs to be reminded.<br /> <br /> Another illustration dovetails neatly--perhaps too neatly--with Kissinger's analysis. In its February 1972 issue, the ''American Journal of Psychiatry'' printed an essay by Harold W. Glidden, who is identified as a retired member of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, United States Department of State; the essay's title (&quot;The Arab World&quot;), its tone, and its content argue a highly characteristic Orientalist bent of mind. Thus for his four-page, double-columned psychological portrait of over 100 million people, considered for a period of 1,300 years, Glidden cites exactly four sources for his views: a recent book on Tripoli, one issue of the Egyptian newspaper ''Al-Ahram'', the periodical ''Oriente Moderno'', and a book by Majid Khadduri, a well-known Orientalist. The article itself purports to uncover &quot;the inner workings of Arab behavior,&quot; which from ''our'' point of view is &quot;aberrant&quot; but for Arabs is &quot;normal.&quot; After this auspicious start, we are told that Arabs stress conformity; that Arabs inhabit a shame culture whose &quot;prestige system&quot; involves the ability to attract followers and clients (as an aside we are told that &quot;Arab society is and always has been based on a system of client-patron relationships&quot;); that Arabs can function only in conflict situations; that prestige is based solely on the ability to dominate others; that a shame culture--and therefore Islam itself--makes a virtue of revenge (here Glidden triumphantly cites the June 29, 1970 ''Ahram'' to show that &quot;in 1969 [in Egypt] in 1070 cases of murder where the perpetrators were apprehended, it was found that 20 percent of the murders were based on a desire to wipe out shame, 30 percent on a desire to satisfy real or imaginary wrongs, and 31 percent on a desire for blood revenge&quot;); that if from a Western point of view &quot;the only rational thing for the Arabs to do is to make peace ... for the Arabs the situation is not governed by this kind of logic, for objectivity is not a value in the Arab system.&quot;<br /> <br /> Glidden continues, now more enthusiastically: &quot;it is a notable fact that while the Arab value system demands absolute solidarity within the group, it at the same time encourages among its members a kind of rivalry that is destructive of that very solidarity&quot;; in Arab society only &quot;success counts&quot; and &quot;the end justifies the means&quot;; Arabs live &quot;naturally&quot; in a world &quot;characterized by anxiety expressed in generalized suspicion and distrust, which has been labelled free-floating hostility&quot;; &quot;the art of subterfuge is highly developed in Arab life, as well as in Islam itself&quot;; the Arab need for vengeance overrides everything, otherwise the Arab would feel &quot;ego-destroying&quot; shame. Therefore, if &quot;Westerners consider peace to be high on the scale of values&quot; and if &quot;we have a highly developed consciousness of the value of time,&quot; this is not true of Arabs. &quot;In fact,&quot; we are told, &quot;in Arab tribal society (where Arab values originated), strife, not peace, was the normal state of affairs because raiding was one of the two main supports of the economy.&quot; The purpose of this learned disquisition is merely to show how on the Western and Oriental scale of values &quot;the relative position of the elements is quite different.&quot; QED.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Harold W. Glidden, &quot;The Arab World,&quot; ''American Journal of Psychiatry'' 128, no. 8 (February 1972): 984-8.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> This is the apogee of Orientalist confidence. No merely asserted generality is denied the dignity of truth; no theoretical list of Oriental attributes is without application to the behavior of Orientals in the real world. On the one hand there are Westerners, and on the other there are Arab-Orientals; the former are (in no particular order) rational, peaceful, liberal, logical, capable of holding real values, without natural suspicion; the latter are none of these things. Out of what collective and yet particularized view of the Orient do these statements emerge? What specialized skills, what imaginative pressures, what institutions and traditions, what cultural forces produce such similarity in the descriptions of the Orient to be found in Cromer, Balfour, and our contemporary statesmen?<br /> <br /> === II. Imaginative Geography and Its Representations: Orientalizing the Oriental ===<br /> Strictly speaking, Orientalism is a field of learned study. In the Christian West, Orientalism is considered to have commenced its formal existence with the decision of the Church Council of Vienne in 1312 to establish a series of chairs in &quot;Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac at Paris, Oxford, Bologna, Avignon, and Salamanca.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;R. W. Southern, ''Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages'' (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 72. See also Francis Dvornik, ''The Ecumenical Councils'' (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1961), pp. 65-6: &quot;Of special interest is the eleventh canon directing that chairs for teaching Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and Chaldean should be created at the main universities. The suggestion was Raymond Lull's, who advocated learning Arabic as the best means for the conversion of the Arabs. Although the canon remained almost without effect as there were few teachers of Oriental languages, its acceptance indicates the growth of the missionary idea in the West. Gregory X had already hoped for the conversion of the Mongols, and Franciscan friars had penetrated into the depths of Asia in their missionary zeal. Although these hopes were not fulfilled, the missionary spirit continued to develop.&quot; See also Johann W. Fuck, ''Die Arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts'' (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1955).&lt;/ref&gt; Yet any account of Orientalism would have to consider not only the professional Orientalist and his work but also the very notion of a field of study based on a geographical, cultural, linguistic, and ethnic unit called the Orient. Fields, of course, are made. They acquire coherence and integrity in time because scholars devote themselves in different ways to what seems to be a commonly agreed-upon subject matter. Yet it goes without saying that a field of study is rarely as simply defined as even its most committed partisans--usually scholars, professors, experts, and the like--claim it is. Besides, a field can change so entirely, in even the most traditional disciplines like philology, history, or theology, as to make an all-purpose definition of subject matter almost impossible. This is certainly true of Orientalism, for some interesting reasons.<br /> <br /> To speak of scholarly specialization as a geographical &quot;field&quot; is, in the case of Orientalism, fairly revealing since no one is likely to imagine a field symmetrical to it called Occidentalism. Already the special, perhaps even eccentric attitude of Orientalism becomes apparent. For although many learned disciplines imply a position taken towards, say, ''human'' material (a historian deals with the human past from a special vantage point in the present), there is no real analogy for taking a fixed, more or less total geographical position towards a wide variety of social, linguistic, political, and historical realities. A classicist, a Romance specialist, even an Americanist focuses on a relatively modest portion of the world, not on a full half of it. But Orientalism is a field with considerable geographical ambition. And since Orientalists have traditionally occupied themselves with things Oriental (a specialist in Islamic law, no less than an expert in Chinese dialects or in Indian religions, is considered an Orientalist by people who call themselves Orientalists), we must learn to accept enormous, indiscriminate size plus an almost infinite capacity for subdivision as one of the chief characteristics of Orientalism--one that is evidenced in its confusing amalgam of imperial vagueness and precise detail.<br /> <br /> All of this describes Orientalism as an academic discipline. The &quot;ism&quot; in Orientalism serves to insist on the distinction of this discipline from every other kind. The rule in its historical development as an academic discipline has been its increasing scope, not its greater selectiveness. Renaissance Orientalists like Erpenius and Guillaume Postel were primarily specialists in the languages of the Biblical provinces, although Postel boasted that he could get across Asia as far as China without needing an interpreter. By and large, until the mid-eighteenth century Orientalists were Biblical scholars, students of the Semitic languages, Islamic specialists, or, because the Jesuits had opened up the new study of China, Sinologists. The whole middle expanse of Asia was not academically conquered for Orientalism until, during the later eighteenth century, Anquetil-Duperron and Sir William Jones were able intelligibly to reveal the extraordinary riches of Avestan and Sanskrit. By the middle of the nineteenth century Orientalism was as vast a treasure-house of learning as one could imagine. There are two excellent indices of this new, triumphant eclecticism. One is the encyclopedic description of Orientalism roughly from 1765 to 1850 given by Raymond Schwab in his ''La Renaissance orientale''.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Raymond Schwab, ''La Renaissance orientale'' (Paris: Payot, 1950). See also V.-V. Barthold, ''La Decouverte de l'Asie: Histoire de l'orientalisme en Europe et en Russie'', trans. B. Nikitine (Paris: Payot, 1947), and the relevant pages in Theodor Benfey, ''Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft und Orientalischen Philologie in Deutschland'' (Munich: Gottafschen, 1869). For an instructive contrast see James T. Monroe, ''Islam and the Arabs in Spanish Scholarship'' (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970).&lt;/ref&gt; Quite aside from the scientific discoveries of things Oriental made by learned professionals during this period in Europe, there was the virtual epidemic of Orientalia affecting every major poet, essayist, and philosopher of the period. Schwab's notion is that &quot;Oriental&quot; identifies an amateur or professional enthusiasm for everything Asiatic, which was wonderfully synonymous with the exotic, the mysterious, the profound, the seminal; this is a later transposition eastwards of a similar enthusiasm in Europe for Greek and Latin antiquity during the High Renaissance. In 1829 Victor Hugo put this change in directions as follows: &quot;Au siecle de Louis XIV on etait helleniste, maintenant on est orientaliste.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Victor Hugo, ''Oeuvres poetiques'', ed. Pierre Albouy (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 1: 580.&lt;/ref&gt; A nineteenth-century Orientalist was therefore either a scholar (a Sinologist, an Islamicist, an Indo-Europeanist) or a gifted enthusiast (Hugo in ''Les Orientales'', Goethe in the ''Westostlicher Diwan''), or both (Richard Burton, Edward Lane, Friedrich Schlegel).<br /> <br /> The second index of how inclusive Orientalism had become since the Council of Vienne is to be found in nineteenth-century chronicles of the field itself. The most thorough of its kind is Jules Mohl's ''Vingt-sept Ans d'histoire des etudes orientales'', a two-volume logbook of everything of note that took place in Orientalism between 1840 and 1867.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Jules Mohl, ''Vingt-sept Ans d'histoire des etudes orientales: Rapports faits a la Societe asiatique de Paris de 1840 a 1867'', 2 vols. (Paris: Reinwald, 1879-80).&lt;/ref&gt; Mohl was the secretary of the Societe asiatique in Paris, and for something more than the first half of the nineteenth century Paris was the capital of the Orientalist world (and, according to Walter Benjamin, of the nineteenth century). Mohl's position in the Societe could not have been more central to the field of Orientalism. There is scarcely anything done by a European scholar touching Asia during those twenty-seven years that Mohl does not enter under &quot;etudes orientales.&quot; His entries of course concern publications, but the range of published material of interest to Orientalist scholars is awesome. Arabic, innumerable Indian dialects, Hebrew, Pehlevi, Assyrian, Babylonian, Mongolian, Chinese, Burmese, Mesopotamian, Javanese: the list of philological works considered Orientalist is almost uncountable. Moreover, Orientalist studies apparently cover everything from the editing and translation of texts to numismatic, anthropological, archaeological, sociological, economic, historical, literary, and cultural studies in every known Asiatic and North African civilization, ancient and modern. Gustave Dugat's ''Histoire des orientalistes de l'Europe du XII&lt;sup&gt;e&lt;/sup&gt; au XIX&lt;sup&gt;e&lt;/sup&gt; siecle'' (1868-1870)&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Gustave Dugat, ''Histoire des orientalistes de l'Europe du XII&lt;sup&gt;e&lt;/sup&gt; au XIX&lt;sup&gt;e&lt;/sup&gt; siecle'', 2 vols. (Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1868-70).&lt;/ref&gt; is a selective history of major figures, but the range represented is no less immense than Mohl's.<br /> <br /> Such eclecticism as this had its blind spots, nevertheless. Academic Orientalists for the most part were interested in the classical period of whatever language or society it was that they studied. Not until quite late in the century, with the single major exception of Napoleon's Institut d'Egypte, was much attention given to the academic study of the modern, or actual, Orient. Moreover, the Orient studied was a textual universe by and large; the impact of the Orient was made through books and manuscripts, not, as in the impress of Greece on the Renaissance, through mimetic artifacts like sculpture and pottery. Even the rapport between an Orientalist and the Orient was textual, so much so that it is reported of some of the early-nineteenth-century German Orientalists that their first view of an eight-armed Indian statue cured them completely of their Orientalist taste.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;See Rene Gerard, ''L'Orient et la pensee romantique allemande'' (Paris: Didier, 1963), p. 112.&lt;/ref&gt; When a learned Orientalist traveled in the country of his specialization, it was always with unshakable abstract maxims about the &quot;civilization&quot; he had studied; rarely were Orientalists interested in anything except proving the validity of these musty &quot;truths&quot; by applying them, without great success, to uncomprehending, hence degenerate, natives. Finally, the very power and scope of Orientalism produced not only a fair amount of exact positive knowledge about the Orient but also a kind of second-order knowledge--lurking in such places as the &quot;Oriental&quot; tale, the mythology of the mysterious East, notions of Asian inscrutability--with a life of its own, what V. G. Kiernan has aptly called &quot;Europe's collective day-dream of the Orient.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Kiernan, ''Lords of Human Kind'', p. 131.&lt;/ref&gt; One happy result of this is that an estimable number of important writers during the nineteenth century were Oriental enthusiasts: It is perfectly correct, I think, to speak of a genre of Orientalist writing as exemplified in the works of Hugo, Goethe, Nerval, Flaubert, Fitzgerald, and the like. What inevitably goes with such work, however, is a kind of free-floating mythology of the Orient, an Orient that derives not only from contemporary attitudes and popular prejudices but also from what Vico called the conceit of nations and of scholars. I have already alluded to the political uses of such material as it has turned up in the twentieth century.<br /> <br /> Today an Orientalist is less likely to call himself an Orientalist than he was almost any time up to World War II. Yet the designation is still useful, as when universities maintain programs or departments in Oriental languages or Oriental civilizations. There is an Oriental &quot;faculty&quot; at Oxford, and a department of Oriental studies at Princeton. As recently as 1959, the British government empowered a commission &quot;to review developments in the Universities in the fields of Oriental, Slavonic, East European and African studies ... and to consider, and advise on, proposals for future development.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;University Grants Committee, ''Report of the Sub-Committee on Oriental, Slavonic'', ''East European and African Studies'' (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1961).&lt;/ref&gt; The Hayter Report, as it was called when it appeared in 1961, seemed untroubled by the broad designation of the word ''Oriental'', which it found serviceably employed in American universities as well. For even the greatest name in modern Anglo-American Islamic studies, H. A. R. Gibb, preferred to call himself an Orientalist rather than an Arabist. Gibb himself, classicist that he was, could use the ugly neologism &quot;area study&quot; for Orientalism as a way of showing that area studies and Orientalism after all were interchangeable geographical titles.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;H. A. R. Gibb, ''Area Studies Reconsidered'' (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1964).&lt;/ref&gt; But this, I think, ingenuously belies a much more interesting relationship between knowledge and geography. I should like to consider that relationship briefly.<br /> <br /> Despite the distraction of a great many vague desires, impulses, and images, the mind seems persistently to formulate what Claude Levi-Strauss has called a science of the concrete.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;See Claude Levi-Strauss, ''The Savage Mind'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), chaps. 1-7.&lt;/ref&gt; A primitive tribe, for example, assigns a definite place, function, and significance to every leafy species in its immediate environment. Many of these grasses and flowers have no practical use; but the point Levi-Strauss makes is that mind requires order, and order is achieved by discriminating and taking note of everything, placing everything of which the mind is aware in a secure, refindable place, therefore giving things some role to play in the economy of objects and identities that make up an environment. This kind of rudimentary classification has a logic to it, but the rules of the logic by which a green fern in one society is a symbol of grace and in another is considered maleficent are neither predictably rational nor universal. There is always a measure of the purely arbitrary in the way the distinctions between things are seen. And with these distinctions go values whose history, if one could unearth it completely, would probably show the same measure of arbitrariness. This is evident enough in the case of fashion. Why do wigs, lace collars, and high buckled shoes appear, then disappear, over a period of decades? Some of the answer has to do with utility and some with the inherent beauty of the fashion. But if we agree that all things in history, like history itself, are made by men, then we will appreciate how possible it is for many objects or places or times to be assigned roles and given meanings that acquire objective validity only ''after'' the assignments are made. This is especially true of relatively uncommon things, like foreigners, mutants, or &quot;abnormal&quot; behavior.<br /> <br /> It is perfectly possible to argue that some distinctive objects are made by the mind, and that these objects, while appearing to exist objectively, have only a fictional reality. A group of people living on a few acres of land will set up boundaries between their land and its immediate surroundings and the territory beyond, which they call &quot;the land of the barbarians.&quot; In other words, this universal practice of designating in one's mind a familiar space which is &quot;ours&quot; and an unfamiliar space beyond &quot;ours&quot; which is &quot;theirs&quot; is a way of making geographical distinctions that ''can be'' entirely arbitrary. I use the word &quot;arbitrary&quot; here because imaginative geography of the &quot;our land-barbarian land&quot; variety does not require that the barbarians acknowledge the distinction. It is enough for &quot;us&quot; to set up these boundaries in our own minds; &quot;they&quot; become &quot;they&quot; accordingly, and both their territory and their mentality are designated as different from &quot;ours.&quot; To a certain extent modern and primitive societies seem thus to derive a sense of their identities negatively. A fifth-century Athenian was very likely to feel himself to be nonbarbarian as much as he positively felt himself to be Athenian. The geographic boundaries accompany the social, ethnic, and cultural ones in expected ways. Yet often the sense in which someone feels himself to be not-foreign is based on a very unrigorous idea of what is &quot;out there,&quot; beyond one's own territory. All kinds of suppositions, associations, and fictions appear to crowd the unfamiliar space outside one's own.<br /> <br /> The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard once wrote an analysis of what he called the poetics of space.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Gaston Bachelard, ''The Poetics of Space'', trans. Maria Jolas (New York: Orion Press, 1964).&lt;/ref&gt; The inside of a house, he said, acquires a sense of intimacy, secrecy, security, real or imagined, because of the experiences that come to seem appropriate for it. The objective space of a house--its corners, corridors, cellar, rooms--is far less important than what poetically it is endowed with, which is usually a quality with an imaginative or figurative value we can name and feel: thus a house may be haunted, or homelike, or prisonlike, or magical. So space acquires emotional and even rational sense by a kind of poetic process, whereby the vacant or anonymous reaches of distance are converted into meaning for us here. The same process occurs when we deal with time. Much of what we associate with or even know about such periods as &quot;long ago&quot; or &quot;the beginning&quot; or &quot;at the end of time&quot; is poetic--made up. For a historian of Middle Kingdom Egypt, &quot;long ago&quot; will have a very clear sort of meaning, but even this meaning does not totally dissipate the imaginative, quasi-fictional quality one senses lurking in a time very different and distant from our own. For there is no doubt that imaginative geography and history help the mind to intensify its own sense of itself by dramatizing the distance and difference between what is close to it and what is far away. This is no less true of the feelings we often have that we would have been more &quot;at home&quot; in the sixteenth century or in Tahiti.<br /> <br /> Yet there is no use in pretending that all we know about time and space, or rather history and geography, is more than anything else imaginative. There are such things as positive history and positive geography which in Europe and the United States have impressive achievements to point to. Scholars now do know more about the world, its past and present, than they did, for example, in Gibbon's time. Yet this is not to say that they know all there is to know, nor, more important, is it to say that what they know has effectively dispelled the imaginative geographical and historical knowledge I have been considering. We need not decide here whether this kind of imaginative knowledge infuses history and geography, or whether in some way it overrides them. Let us just say for the time being that it is there as something ''more'' than what appears to be merely positive knowledge.<br /> <br /> Almost from earliest times in Europe the Orient was something more than what was empirically known about it. At least until the early eighteenth century, as R. W. Southern has so elegantly shown, European understanding of one kind of Oriental culture, the Islamic, was ignorant but complex.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Southern, ''Western Views of Islam'', p. 14.&lt;/ref&gt; For certain associations with the East--not quite ignorant, not quite informed--always seem to have gathered around the notion of an Orient. Consider first the demarcation between Orient and West. It already seems bold by the time of the ''Iliad''. Two of the most profoundly influential qualities associated with the East appear in Aeschylus's ''The Persians'', the earliest Athenian play extant, and in ''The Bacchae'' of Euripides, the very last one extant. Aeschylus portrays the sense of disaster overcoming the Persians when they learn that their armies, led by King Xerxes, have been destroyed by the Greeks. The chorus sings the following ode:<br /> <br /> Now all Asia's land<br /> <br /> Moans in emptiness.<br /> <br /> Xerxes led forth, oh oh!<br /> <br /> Xerxes destroyed, woe woe!<br /> <br /> Xerxes' plans have all miscarried<br /> <br /> In ships of the sea.<br /> <br /> Why did Darius then<br /> <br /> Bring no harm to his men<br /> <br /> When he led them into battle,<br /> <br /> That beloved leader of men from Susa?&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Aeschylus, ''The Persians'', trans. Anthony J. Podleck (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), pp. 73-4.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> What matters here is that Asia speaks through and by virtue of the European imagination, which is depicted as victorious over Asia, that hostile &quot;other&quot; world beyond the seas. To Asia are given the feelings of emptiness, loss, and disaster that seem thereafter to reward Oriental challenges to the West; and also, the lament that in some glorious past Asia fared better, was itself victorious over Europe.<br /> <br /> In ''The Bacchae'', perhaps the most Asiatic of all the Attic dramas, Dionysus is explicitly connected with his Asian origins and with the strangely threatening excesses of Oriental mysteries. Pentheus, king of Thebes, is destroyed by his mother, Agave, and her fellow bacchantes. Having defied Dionysus by not recognizing either his power or his divinity, Pentheus is thus horribly punished, and the play ends with a general recognition of the eccentric god's terrible power. Modern commentators on ''The Bacchae'' have not failed to note the play's extraordinary range of intellectual and aesthetic effects; but there has been no escaping the additional historical detail that Euripides &quot;was surely affected by the new aspect that the Dionysiac cults must have assumed in the light of the foreign ecstatic religions of Bendis, Cybele, Sabazius, Adonis, and Isis, which were introduced from Asia Minor and the Levant and swept through Piraeus and Athens during the frustrating and increasingly irrational years of the Peloponnesian War.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Euripides, ''The Bacchae'', trans. Geoffrey S. Kirk (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), p. 3. For further discussion of the Europe-Orient distinction see Santo Mazzarino, ''Fra oriente e occidente: Ricerche di storia greca arcaica'' (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1947), and Denys Hay, ''Europe: The Emergence of an Idea'' (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The two aspects of the Orient that set it off from the West in this pair of plays will remain essential motifs of European imaginative geography. A line is drawn between two continents. Europe is powerful and articulate; Asia is defeated and distant. Aeschylus ''represents'' Asia, makes her speak in the person of the aged Persian queen, Xerxes' mother. It is Europe that articulates the Orient; this articulation is the prerogative, not of a puppet master, but of a genuine creator, whose life-giving power represents, animates, constitutes the otherwise silent and dangerous space beyond familiar boundaries. There is an analogy between Aeschylus's orchestra, which contains the Asiatic world as the playwright conceives it, and the learned envelope of Orientalist scholarship, which also will hold in the vast, amorphous Asiatic sprawl for sometimes sympathetic but always dominating scrutiny. Secondly, there is the motif of the Orient as insinuating danger. Rationality is undermined by Eastern excesses, those mysteriously attractive opposites to what seem to be normal values. The difference separating East from West is symbolized by the sternness with which, at first, Pentheus rejects the hysterical bacchantes. When later he himself becomes a bacchant, he is destroyed not so much for having given in to Dionysus as for having incorrectly assessed Dionysus's menace in the first place. The lesson that Euripides intends is dramatized by the presence in the play of Cadmus and Tiresias, knowledgeable older men who realize that &quot;sovereignty&quot; alone does not rule men;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Euripides, ''Bacchae'', p. 52.&lt;/ref&gt; there is such a thing as judgment, they say, which means sizing up correctly the force of alien powers and expertly coming to terms with them. Hereafter Oriental mysteries will be taken seriously, not least because they challenge the rational Western mind to new exercises of its enduring ambition and power.<br /> <br /> But one big division, as between West and Orient, leads to other smaller ones, especially as the normal enterprises of civilization provoke such outgoing activities as travel, conquest, new experiences. In classical Greece and Rome geographers, historians, public figures like Caesar, orators, and poets added to the fund of taxonomic lore separating races, regions, nations, and minds from each other; much of that was self-serving, and existed to prove that Romans and Greeks were superior to other kinds of people. But concern with the Orient had its own tradition of classification and hierarchy. From at least the second century B.C. on, it was lost on no traveler or eastward-looking and ambitious Western potentate that Herodotus--historian, traveler, inexhaustibly curious chronicler--and Alexander--king warrior, scientific conqueror--had been in the Orient before. The Orient was therefore subdivided into realms previously known, visited, conquered, by Herodotus and Alexander as well as their epigones, and those realms not previously known, visited, conquered. Christianity completed the setting up of main intra-Oriental spheres: there was a Near Orient and a Far Orient, a familiar Orient, which Rene Grousset calls &quot;l'empire du Levant,&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Rene Grousset, ''L'Empire du Levant: Histoire de la question d'Orient'' (Paris: Payot, 1946).&lt;/ref&gt; and a novel Orient. The Orient therefore alternated in the mind's geography between being an Old World to which one returned, as to Eden or Paradise, there to set up a new version of the old, and being a wholly new place to which one came as Columbus came to America, in order to set up a New World (although, ironically, Columbus himself thought that he discovered a new part of the Old World). Certainly neither of these Orients was purely one thing or the other: it is their vacillations, their tempting suggestiveness, their capacity for entertaining and confusing the mind, that are interesting.<br /> <br /> Consider how the Orient, and in particular the Near Orient, became known in the West as its great complementary opposite since antiquity. There were the Bible and the rise of Christianity; there were travelers like Marco Polo who charted the trade routes and patterned a regulated system of commercial exchange, and after him Lodovico di Varthema and Pietro della Valle; there were fabulists like Mandeville; there were the redoubtable conquering Eastern movements, principally Islam, of course; there were the militant pilgrims, chiefly the Crusaders. Altogether an internally structured archive is built up from the literature that belongs to these experiences. Out of this comes a restricted number of typical encapsulations: the journey, the history, the fable, the stereotype, the polemical confrontation. These are the lenses through which the Orient is experienced, and they shape the language, perception, and form of the encounter between East and West. What gives the immense number of encounters some unity, however, is the vacillation I was speaking about earlier. Something patently foreign and distant acquires, for one reason or another, a status more rather than less familiar. One tends to stop judging things either as completely novel or as completely well known; a new median category emerges, a category that allows one to see new things, things seen for the first time, as versions of a previously known thing. In essence such a category is not so much a way of receiving new information as it is a method of controlling what seems to be a threat to some established view of things. If the mind must suddenly deal with what it takes to be a radically new form of life--as Islam appeared to Europe in the early Middle Ages--the response on the whole is conservative and defensive. Islam is judged to be a fraudulent new version of some previous experience, in this case Christianity. The threat is muted, familiar values impose themselves, and in the end the mind reduces the pressure upon it by accommodating things to itself as either &quot;original&quot; or &quot;repetitious.&quot; Islam thereafter is &quot;handled&quot;: its novelty and its suggestiveness are brought under control so that relatively nuanced discriminations are now made that would have been impossible had the raw novelty of Islam been left unattended. The Orient at large, therefore, vacillates between the West's contempt for what is familiar and its shivers of delight in--or fear of--novelty.<br /> <br /> Yet where Islam was concerned, European fear, if not always respect, was in order. After Mohammed's death in 632, the military and later the cultural and religious hegemony of Islam grew enormously. First Persia, Syria, and Egypt, then Turkey, then North Africa fell to the Muslim armies; in the eighth and ninth centuries Spain, Sicily, and parts of France were conquered. By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Islam ruled as far east as India, Indonesia, and China. And to this extraordinary assault Europe could respond with very little except fear and a kind of awe. Christian authors witnessing the Islamic conquests had scant interest in the learning, high culture, and frequent magnificence of the Muslims, who were, as Gibbon said, &quot;coeval with the darkest and most slothful period of European annals.&quot; (But with some satisfaction he added, &quot;since the sum of science has risen in the West, it should seem that the Oriental studies have languished and declined.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Edward Gibbon, ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'' (Boston: Little, Brown &amp; Co., 1855), 6: 399.&lt;/ref&gt;) What Christians typically felt about the Eastern armies was that they had &quot;all the appearance of a swarm of bees, but with a heavy hand ... they devastated everything&quot;: so wrote Erchembert, a cleric in Monte Cassino in the eleventh century.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Norman Daniel, ''The Arabs and Medieval Europe'' (London: Longmans, Green &amp; Co., 1975), p. 56.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Not for nothing did Islam come to symbolize terror, devastation, the demonic, hordes of hated barbarians. For Europe, Islam was a lasting trauma. Until the end of the seventeenth century the &quot;Ottoman peril&quot; lurked alongside Europe to represent for the whole of Christian civilization a constant danger, and in time European civilization incorporated that peril and its lore, its great events, figures, virtues, and vices, as something woven into the fabric of life. In Renaissance England alone, as Samuel Chew recounts in his classic study ''The Crescent and the Rose'', &quot;a man of average education and intelligence&quot; had at his fingertips, and could watch on the London stage, a relatively large number of detailed events in the history of Ottoman Islam and its encroachments upon Christian Europe.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Samuel C. Chew, ''The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England During the Renaissance'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937), p. 103.&lt;/ref&gt; The point is that what remained current about Islam was some necessarily diminished version of those great dangerous forces that it symbolized for Europe. Like Walter Scott's Saracens, the European representation of the Muslim, Ottoman, or Arab was always a way of controlling the redoubtable Orient, and to a certain extent the same is true of the methods of contemporary learned Orientalists, whose subject is not so much the East itself as the East made known, and therefore less fearsome, to the Western reading public.<br /> <br /> There is nothing especially controversial or reprehensible about such domestications of the exotic; they take place between all cultures, certainly, and between all men. My point, however, is to emphasize the truth that the Orientalist, as much as anyone in the European West who thought about or experienced the Orient, performed this kind of mental operation. But what is more important still is the limited vocabulary and imagery that impose themselves as a consequence. The reception of Islam in the West is a perfect case in point, and has been admirably studied by Norman Daniel. One constraint acting upon Christian thinkers who tried to understand Islam was an analogical one; since Christ is the basis of Christian faith, it was assumed--quite incorrectly--that Mohammed was to Islam as Christ was to Christianity. Hence the polemic name &quot;Mohammedanism&quot; given to Islam, and the automatic epithet &quot;imposter&quot; applied to Mohammed.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Norman Daniel, ''Islam and the West: The Making of an Image'' (Edinburgh: University Press, 1960), p. 33. See also James Kritzeck, ''Peter the Venerable and Islam'' (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1964).&lt;/ref&gt; Out of such and many other misconceptions &quot;there formed a circle which was never broken by imaginative exteriorisation.... The Christian concept of Islam was integral and self-sufficient.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Daniel, ''Islam and the West'', p. 252.&lt;/ref&gt; Islam became an image--the word is Daniel's but it seems to me to have remarkable implications for Orientalism in general--whose function was not so much to represent Islam in itself as to represent it for the medieval Christian.<br /> <br /> The invariable tendency to neglect what the Qur'an meant, or what Muslims thought it meant, or what Muslims thought or did in any given circumstances, necessarily implies that Qur'anic and other Islamic doctrine was presented in a form that would convince Christians; and more and more extravagant forms would stand a chance of acceptance as the distance of the writers and public from the Islamic border increased. It was with very great reluctance that what Muslims said Muslims believed was accepted as what they did believe. There was a Christian picture in which the details (even under the pressure of facts) were abandoned as little as possible, and in which the general outline was never abandoned. There were shades of difference, but only with a common framework. All the corrections that were made in the interests of an increasing accuracy were only a defence of what had newly been realised to be vulnerable, a shoring up of a weakened structure. Christian opinion was an erection which could not be demolished, even to be rebuilt.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 259-60.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> This rigorous Christian picture of Islam was intensified in innumerable ways, including--during the Middle Ages and early Renaissance--a large variety of poetry, learned controversy, and popular superstition.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;See for example William Wistar Comfort, &quot;The Literary Role of the Saracens in the French Epic,&quot; ''PMLA'' 55 (1940): 628-59.&lt;/ref&gt; By this time the Near Orient had been all but incorporated in the common world-picture of Latin Christianity--as in the ''Chanson de Roland'' the worship of Saracens is portrayed as embracing Mahomet ''and'' Apollo. By the middle of the fifteenth century, as R. W. Southern has brilliantly shown, it became apparent to serious European thinkers &quot;that something would have to be done about Islam,&quot; which had turned the situation around somewhat by itself arriving militarily in Eastern Europe. Southern recounts a dramatic episode between 1450 and 1460 when four learned men, John of Segovia, Nicholas of Cusa, Jean Germain, and Aeneas Silvius (Pius II), attempted to deal with Islam through ''contraferentia'', or &quot;conference.&quot; The idea was John of Segovia's: it was to have been a staged conference with Islam in which Christians attempted the wholesale conversion of Muslims. &quot;He saw the conference as an instrument with a political as well as a strictly religious function, and in words which will strike a chord in modern breasts he exclaimed that even if it were to last ten years it would be less expensive and less damaging than war.&quot; There was no agreement between the four men, but the episode is crucial for having been a fairly sophisticated attempt--part of a general European attempt from Bede to Luther--to put a representative Orient in front of Europe, to ''stage'' the Orient and Europe together in some coherent way, the idea being for Christians to make it clear to Muslims that Islam was just a misguided version of Christianity. Southern's conclusion follows:<br /> <br /> Most conspicuous to us is the inability of any of these systems of thought [European Christian] to provide a fully satisfying explanation of the phenomenon they had set out to explain [Islam]--still less to influence the course of practical events in a decisive way. At a practical level, events never turned out either so well or so ill as the most intelligent observers predicted; and it is perhaps worth noticing that they never turned out better than when the best judges confidently expected a happy ending. Was there any progress [in Christian knowledge of Islam]? I must express my conviction that there was. Even if the solution of the problem remained obstinately hidden from sight, the statement of the problem became more complex, more rational, and more related to experience.... The scholars who labored at the problem of Islam in the Middle Ages failed to find the solution they sought and desired; but they developed habits of mind and powers of comprehension which, in other men and in other fields, may yet deserve success.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Southern, ''Western Views of Islam'', pp. 91-2, 108-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The best part of Southern's analysis, here and elsewhere in his brief history of Western views of Islam, is his demonstration that it is finally Western ignorance which becomes more refined and complex, not some body of positive Western knowledge which increases in size and accuracy. For fictions have their own logic and their own dialectic of growth or decline. Onto the character of Mohammed in the Middle Ages was heaped a bundle of attributes that corresponded to the &quot;character of the [twelfth-century] prophets of the 'Free Spirit' who did actually arise in Europe, and claim credence and collect followers.&quot; Similarly, since Mohammed was viewed as the disseminator of a false Revelation, he became as well the epitome of lechery, debauchery, sodomy, and a whole battery of assorted treacheries, all of which derived &quot;logically&quot; from his doctrinal impostures.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Daniel, ''Islam and the West'', pp. 246, 96, and passim.&lt;/ref&gt; Thus the Orient acquired representatives, so to speak, and representations, each one more concrete, more internally congruent with some Western exigency, than the ones that preceded it. It is as if, having once settled on the Orient as a locale suitable for incarnating the infinite in a finite shape, Europe could not stop the practice; the Orient and the Oriental, Arab, Islamic, Indian, Chinese, or whatever, become repetitious pseudoincarnations of some great original (Christ, Europe, the West) they were supposed to have been imitating. Only the source of these rather narcissistic Western ideas about the Orient changed in time, not their character. Thus we will find it commonly believed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that Arabia was &quot;on the fringe of the Christian world, a natural asylum for heretical outlaws,&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 84.&lt;/ref&gt; and that Mohammed was a cunning apostate, whereas in the twentieth century an Orientalist scholar, an erudite specialist, will be the one to point out how Islam is really no more than second-order Arian heresy.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Duncan Black Macdonald, &quot;Whither Islam?&quot; ''Muslim World'' 23 (January 1933): 2.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Our initial description of Orientalism as a learned field now acquires a new concreteness. A field is often an enclosed space. The idea of representation is a theatrical one: the Orient is the stage on which the whole East is confined. On this stage will appear figures whose role it is to represent the larger whole from which they emanate. The Orient then seems to be, not an unlimited extension beyond the familiar European world, but rather a closed field, a theatrical stage affixed to Europe. An Orientalist is but the particular specialist in knowledge for which Europe at large is responsible, in the way that an audience is historically and culturally responsible for (and responsive to) dramas technically put together by the dramatist. In the depths of this Oriental stage stands a prodigious cultural repertoire whose individual items evoke a fabulously rich world: the Sphinx, Cleopatra, Eden, Troy, Sodom and Gomorrah, Astarte, Isis and Osiris, Sheba, Babylon, the Genii, the Magi, Nineveh, Prester John, Mahomet, and dozens more; settings, in some cases names only, half-imagined, half-known; monsters, devils, heroes; terrors, pleasures, desires. The European imagination was nourished extensively from this repertoire: between the Middle Ages and the eighteenth century such major authors as Ariosto, Milton, Marlowe, Tasso, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and the authors of the ''Chanson de Roland'' and the ''Poema del Cid'' drew on the Orient's riches for their productions, in ways that sharpened the outlines of imagery, ideas, and figures populating it. In addition, a great deal of what was considered learned Orientalist scholarship in Europe pressed ideological myths into service, even as knowledge seemed genuinely to be advancing.<br /> <br /> A celebrated instance of how dramatic form and learned imagery come together in the Orientalist theater is Barthelemy d'Herbelot's ''Bibliotheque orientale'', published posthumously in 1697, with a preface by Antoine Galland. The introduction of the recent ''Cambridge History of Islam'' considers the ''Bibliotheque'', along with George Sale's preliminary discourse to his translation of the Koran (1734) and Simon Ockley's ''History of the Saracens'' (1708, 1718), to be &quot;highly important&quot; in widening &quot;the new understanding of Islam&quot; and conveying it &quot;to a less academic readership.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;P. M. Holt, Introduction to ''The Cambridge History of Islam'', ed. P. M. Holt, Anne K. S. Lambton, and Bernard Lewis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. xvi.&lt;/ref&gt; This inadequately describes d'Herbelot's work, which was not restricted to Islam as Sale's and Ockley's were. With the exception of Johann H. Hottinger's ''Historia Orientalis'', which appeared in 1651, the ''Bibliotheque'' remained the standard reference work in Europe until the early nineteenth century. Its scope was truly epochal. Galland, who was the first European translator of ''The Thousand and One Nights'' and an Arabist of note, contrasted d'Herbelot's achievement with every prior one by noting the prodigious range of his enterprise. D'Herbelot read a great number of works, Galland said, in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, with the result that he was able to find out about matters hitherto concealed from Europeans.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Antoine Galland, prefatory &quot;Discours&quot; to Barthelemy d'Herbelot, ''Bibliotheque orientale'', ''ou Dictionnaire universel contenant tout ce qui fait connaitre les peuples de l'Orient'' (The Hague: Neaulme &amp; van Daalen, 1777), 1: vii. Galland's point is that d'Herbelot presented real knowledge, not legend or myth of the sort associated with the &quot;marvels of the East.&quot; See R. Wittkower, &quot;Marvels of the East: A Study in the History of Monsters,&quot; ''Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes'' 5 (1942): 159-97.&lt;/ref&gt; After first composing a dictionary of these three Oriental languages, d'Herbelot went on to study Oriental history, theology, geography, science, and art, in both their fabulous and their truthful varieties. Thereafter he decided to compose two works, one a ''bibliotheque'', or &quot;library,&quot; an alphabetically arranged dictionary, the second a ''florilege'', or anthology. Only the first part was completed.<br /> <br /> Galland's account of the ''Bibliotheque'' stated that &quot;orientale&quot; was planned to include principally the Levant, although--Galland says admiringly--the time period covered did not begin only with the creation of Adam and end with the &quot;temps ou nous sommes&quot;: d'Herbelot went even further back, to a time described as &quot;plus haut&quot; in fabulous histories--to the long period of the pre-Adamite Solimans. As Galland's description proceeds, we learn that the ''Bibliotheque'' was like &quot;any other&quot; history of the world, for what it attempted was a complete compendium of the knowledge available on such matters as the Creation, the Deluge, the destruction of Babel, and so forth--with the difference that d'Herbelot's sources were Oriental. He divided history into two types, sacred and profane (the Jews and Christians in the first, the Muslims in the second), and two periods, pre- and postdiluvian. Thus d'Herbelot was able to discuss such widely divergent histories as the Mogul, the Tartar, the Turkish, and the Slavonic; he took in as well all the provinces of the Muslim Empire, from the Extreme Orient to the Pillars of Hercules, with their customs, rituals, traditions, commentaries, dynasties, palaces, rivers, and flora. Such a work, even though it included some attention to &quot;la doctrine perverse de Mahomet, qui a cause si grands dommages au Christianisme,&quot; was more capaciously thorough than any work before it. Galland concluded his &quot;Discours&quot; by assuring the reader at length that d'Herbelot's ''Bibliotheque'' was uniquely &quot;utile et agreable&quot;; other Orientalists, like Postel, Scaliger, Golius, Pockoke, and Erpenius, produced Orientalist studies that were too narrowly grammatical, lexicographical, geographical, or the like. Only d'Herbelot was able to write a work capable of convincing European readers that the study of Oriental culture was more than just thankless and fruitless: only d'Herbelot, according to Galland, attempted to form in the minds of his readers a sufficiently ample idea of what it meant to know and study the Orient, an idea that would both fill the mind and satisfy one's great, previously conceived expectations.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Galland, prefatory &quot;Discours&quot; to d'Herbelot, ''Bibliotheque orientale'', pp. xvi, xxxiii. For the state of Orientalist knowledge immediately before d'Herbelot, see V. J. Parry, &quot;Renaissance Historical Literature in Relation to the New and Middle East (with Special Reference to Paolo Giovio),&quot; in ''Historians of the Middle East'', ed. Bernard Lewis and P. M. Holt (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 277-89.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In such efforts as d'Herbelot's, Europe discovered its capacities for encompassing and Orientalizing the Orient. A certain sense of superiority appears here and there in what Galland had to say about his and d'Herbelot's ''materia orientalia''; as in the work of seventeenth-century geographers like Raphael du Mans, Europeans could perceive that the Orient was being outstripped and outdated by Western science.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Barthold, ''La Decouverte de l'Asie'', pp. 137-8.&lt;/ref&gt; But what becomes evident is not only the advantage of a Western perspective: there is also the triumphant technique for taking the immense fecundity of the Orient and making it systematically, even alphabetically, knowable by Western laymen. When Galland said of d'Herbelot that he satisfied one's expectations he meant, I think, that the ''Bibliotheque'' did not attempt to revise commonly received ideas about the Orient. For what the Orientalist does is to ''confirm'' the Orient in his readers' eyes; he neither tries nor wants to unsettle already firm convictions. All the ''Bibliotheque orientale'' did was represent the Orient more fully and more clearly; what may have been a loose collection of randomly acquired facts concerning vaguely Levantine history, Biblical imagery, Islamic culture, place names, and so on were transformed into a rational Oriental panorama, from A to Z. Under the entry for Mohammed, d'Herbelot first supplied all of the Prophet's given names, then proceeded to confirm Mohammed's ideological and doctrinal value as follows:<br /> <br /> C'est le fameux imposteur Mahomet, Auteur et Fondateur d'une heresie, qui a pris le nom de religion, que nous appellons Mahometane. ''Voyez'' le titre d'Eslam.<br /> <br /> Les Interpretes de l'Alcoran et autres Docteurs de la Loy Musulmane ou Mahometane ont applique a ce faux prophete tous les eloges, que les Ariens, Paulitiens ou Paulianistes &amp; autres Heretiques ont attribue a Jesus-Christ, en lui otant sa Divinite....&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;D'Herbelot, ''Bibliotheque orientale'', 2: 648.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> (This is the famous imposter Mahomet, Author and Founder of a heresy, which has taken on the name of religion, which we call Mohammedan. See entry under ''Islam''.<br /> <br /> The interpreters of the Alcoran and other Doctors of Muslim or Mohammedan Law have applied to this false prophet all the praises which the Arians, Paulicians or Paulianists, and other Heretics have attributed to Jesus Christ, while stripping him of his Divinity....)<br /> <br /> &quot;Mohammedan&quot; is the relevant (and insulting) European designation; &quot;Islam,&quot; which happens to be the correct Muslim name, is relegated to another entry. The &quot;heresy ... which we call Mohammedan&quot; is &quot;caught&quot; as the imitation of a Christian imitation of true religion. Then, in the long historical account of Mohammed's life, d'Herbelot can turn to more or less straight narrative. But it is the ''placing'' of Mohammed that counts in the ''Bibliotheque''. The dangers of free-wheeling heresy are removed when it is transformed into ideologically explicit matter for an alphabetical item. Mohammed no longer roams the Eastern world as a threatening, immoral debauchee; he sits quietly on his (admittedly prominent) portion of the Orientalist stage.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;See also Montgomery Watt, &quot;Muhammad in the Eyes of the West,&quot; ''Boston University Journal'' 22, no. 3 (Fall 1974): 61-9.&lt;/ref&gt; He is given a genealogy, an explanation, even a development, all of which are subsumed under the simple statements that prevent him from straying elsewhere.<br /> <br /> Such &quot;images&quot; of the Orient as this are images in that they represent or stand for a very large entity, otherwise impossibly diffuse, which they enable one to grasp or see. They are also ''characters'', related to such types as the braggarts, misers, or gluttons produced by Theophrastus, La Bruyere, or Selden. Perhaps it is not exactly correct to say that one ''sees'' such characters as the ''miles gloriosus'' or Mahomet the imposter, since the discursive confinement of a character is supposed at best to let one apprehend a generic type without difficulty or ambiguity. D'Herbelot's character of Mahomet is an ''image'', however, because the false prophet is part of a general theatrical representation called ''orientale'' whose totality is contained in the ''Bibliotheque''.<br /> <br /> The didactic quality of the Orientalist representation cannot be detached from the rest of the performance. In a learned work like the ''Bibliotheque orientale'', which was the result of systematic study and research, the author imposes a disciplinary order upon the material he has worked on; in addition, he wants it made clear to the reader that what the printed page delivers is an ordered, disciplined judgment of the material. What is thus conveyed by the ''Bibliotheque'' is an idea of Orientalism's power and effectiveness, which everywhere remind the reader that henceforth in order to get at the Orient he must pass through the learned grids and codes provided by the Orientalist. Not only is the Orient accommodated to the moral exigencies of Western Christianity; it is also circumscribed by a series of attitudes and judgments that send the Western mind, not first to Oriental sources for correction and verification, but rather to other Orientalist works. The Orientalist stage, as I have been calling it, becomes a system of moral and epistemological rigor. As a discipline representing institutionalized Western knowledge of the Orient, Orientalism thus comes to exert a three-way force, on the Orient, on the Orientalist, and on the Western &quot;consumer&quot; of Orientalism. It would be wrong, I think, to underestimate the strength of the three-way relationship thus established. For the Orient (&quot;out there&quot; towards the East) is corrected, even penalized, for lying outside the boundaries of European society, &quot;our&quot; world; the Orient is thus ''Orientalized'', a process that not only marks the Orient as the province of the Orientalist but also forces the uninitiated Western reader to accept Orientalist codifications (like d'Herbelot's alphabetized ''Bibliotheque'') as the ''true'' Orient. Truth, in short, becomes a function of learned judgment, not of the material itself, which in time seems to owe even its existence to the Orientalist.<br /> <br /> This whole didactic process is neither difficult to understand nor difficult to explain. One ought again to remember that all cultures impose corrections upon raw reality, changing it from free-floating objects into units of knowledge. The problem is not that conversion takes place. It is perfectly natural for the human mind to resist the assault on it of untreated strangeness; therefore cultures have always been inclined to impose complete transformations on other cultures, receiving these other cultures not as they are but as, for the benefit of the receiver, they ought to be. To the Westerner, however, the Oriental was always ''like'' some aspect of the West; to some of the German Romantics, for example, Indian religion was essentially an Oriental version of Germano-Christian pantheism. Yet the Orientalist makes it his work to be always converting the Orient from something into something else: he does this for himself, for the sake of his culture, in some cases for what he believes is the sake of the Oriental. This process of conversion is a disciplined one: it is taught, it has its own societies, periodicals, traditions, vocabulary, rhetoric, all in basic ways connected to and supplied by the prevailing cultural and political norms of the West. And, as I shall demonstrate, it tends to become more rather than less total in what it tries to do, so much so that as one surveys Orientalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the overriding impression is of Orientalism's insensitive schematization of the entire Orient.<br /> <br /> How early this schematization began is clear from the examples I have given of Western representations of the Orient in classical Greece. How strongly articulated were later representations building on the earlier ones, how inordinately careful their schematization, how dramatically effective their placing in Western imaginative geography, can be illustrated if we turn now to Dante's ''Inferno''. Dante's achievement in ''The Divine Comedy'' was to have seamlessly combined the realistic portrayal of mundane reality with a universal and eternal system of Christian values. What Dante the pilgrim sees as he walks through the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso is a unique vision of judgment. Paolo and Francesca, for instance, are seen as eternally confined to hell for their sins, yet they are seen as enacting, indeed living, the very characters and actions that put them where they will be for eternity. Thus each of the figures in Dante's vision not only represents himself but is also a typical representation of his character and the fate meted out to him.<br /> <br /> &quot;Maometto&quot;--Mohammed--turns up in canto 28 of the ''Inferno''. He is located in the eighth of the nine circles of Hell, in the ninth of the ten Bolgias of Malebolge, a circle of gloomy ditches surrounding Satan's stronghold in Hell. Thus before Dante reaches Mohammed, he passes through circles containing people whose sins are of a lesser order: the lustful, the avaricious, the gluttonous, the heretics, the wrathful, the suicidal, the blasphemous. After Mohammed there are only the falsifiers and the treacherous (who include Judas, Brutus, and Cassius) before one arrives at the very bottom of Hell, which is where Satan himself is to be found. Mohammed thus belongs to a rigid hierarchy of evils, in the category of what Dante calls ''seminator di scandalo e di scisma''. Mohammed's punishment, which is also his eternal fate, is a peculiarly disgusting one: he is endlessly being cleft in two from his chin to his anus like, Dante says, a cask whose staves are ripped apart. Dante's verse at this point spares the reader none of the eschatological detail that so vivid a punishment entails: Mohammed's entrails and his excrement are described with unflinching accuracy. Mohammed explains his punishment to Dante, pointing as well to Ali, who precedes him in the line of sinners whom the attendant devil is splitting in two; he also asks Dante to warn one Fra Dolcino, a renegade priest whose sect advocated community of women and goods and who was accused of having a mistress, of what will be in store for him. It will not have been lost on the reader that Dante saw a parallel between Dolcino's and Mohammed's revolting sensuality, and also between their pretensions to theological eminence.<br /> <br /> But this is not all that Dante has to say about Islam. Earlier in the ''Inferno'', a small group of Muslims turns up. Avicenna, Averroes, and Saladin are among those virtuous heathens who, along with Hector, Aeneas, Abraham, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, are confined to the first circle of the Inferno, there to suffer a minimal (and even honorable) punishment for not having had the benefit of Christian revelation. Dante, of course, admires their great virtues and accomplishments, but because they were not Christians he must condemn them, however lightly, to Hell. Eternity is a great leveler of distinctions, it is true, but the special anachronisms and anomalies of putting pre-Christian luminaries in the same category of &quot;heathen&quot; damnation with post-Christian Muslims does not trouble Dante. Even though the Koran specifies Jesus as a prophet, Dante chooses to consider the great Muslim philosophers and king as having been fundamentally ignorant of Christianity. That they can also inhabit the same distinguished level as the heroes and sages of classical antiquity is an ahistorical vision similar to Raphael's in his fresco ''The School of Athens'', in which Averroes rubs elbows on the academy floor with Socrates and Plato (similar to Fenelon's ''Dialogues des morts'' [1700-1718], where a discussion takes place between Socrates and Confucius).<br /> <br /> The discriminations and refinements of Dante's poetic grasp of Islam are an instance of the schematic, almost cosmological inevitability with which Islam and its designated representatives are creatures of Western geographical, historical, and above all, moral apprehension. Empirical data about the Orient or about any of its parts count for very little; what matters and is decisive is what I have been calling the Orientalist vision, a vision by no means confined to the professional scholar, but rather the common possession of all who have thought about the Orient in the West. Dante's powers as a poet intensify, make more rather than less representative, these perspectives on the Orient. Mohammed, Saladin, Averroes, and Avicenna are fixed in a visionary cosmology--fixed, laid out, boxed in, imprisoned, without much regard for anything except their &quot;function&quot; and the patterns they realize on the stage on which they appear. Isaiah Berlin has described the effect of such attitudes in the following way:<br /> <br /> In [such a] ... cosmology the world of men (and, in some versions, the entire universe) is a single, all-inclusive hierarchy; so that to explain why each object in it is as, and where, and when it is, and does what it does, is ''eo ipso'' to say what its goal is, how far it successfully fulfills it, and what are the relations of coordination and subordination between the goals of the various goal-pursuing entities in the harmonious pyramid which they collectively form. If this is a true picture of reality, then historical explanation, like every other form of explanation, must consist, above all, in the attribution of individuals, groups, nations, species, each to its own proper place in the universal pattern. To know the &quot;cosmic&quot; place of a thing or a person is to say what it is and what it does, and at the same time why it should be and do as it is and does. Hence to be and to have value, to exist and to have a function (and to fulfill it more or less successfully) are one and the same. The pattern, and it alone, brings into being and causes to pass away and confers purpose, that is to say, value and meaning, on all there is. To understand is to perceive patterns.... The more inevitable an event or an action or a character can be exhibited as being, the better it has been understood, the profounder the researcher's insight, the nearer we are to the one ultimate truth.<br /> <br /> This attitude is profoundly anti-empirical.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Isaiah Berlin, ''Historical Inevitability'' (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), pp. 13-14.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> And so, indeed, is the Orientalist attitude in general. It shares with magic and with mythology the self-containing, self-reinforcing character of a closed system, in which objects are what they are ''because'' they are what they are, for once, for all time, for ontological reasons that no empirical material can either dislodge or alter. The European encounter with the Orient, and specifically with Islam, strengthened this system of representing the Orient and, as has been suggested by Henri Pirenne, turned Islam into the very epitome of an outsider against which the whole of European civilization from the Middle Ages on was founded. The decline of the Roman Empire as a result of the barbarian invasions had the paradoxical effect of incorporating barbarian ways into Roman and Mediterranean culture, Romania; whereas, Pirenne argues, the consequence of the Islamic invasions beginning in the seventh century was to move the center of European culture away from the Mediterranean, which was then an Arab province, and towards the North. &quot;Germanism began to play its part in history. Hitherto the Roman tradition had been uninterrupted. Now an original Romano-Germanic civilization was about to develop.&quot; Europe was shut in on itself: the Orient, when it was not merely a place in which one traded, was culturally, intellectually, spiritually ''outside'' Europe and European civilization, which, in Pirenne's words, became &quot;one great Christian community, coterminous with the ''ecclesia''.... The Occident was now living its own life.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Henri Pirenne, ''Mohammed and Charlemagne'', trans. Bernard Miall (New York: W. W. Norton &amp; Co., 1939), pp. 234, 283.&lt;/ref&gt; In Dante's poem, in the work of Peter the Venerable and other Cluniac Orientalists, in the writings of the Christian polemicists against Islam from Guibert of Nogent and Bede to Roger Bacon, William of Tripoli, Burchard of Mount Syon, and Luther, in the ''Poema del Cid'', in the ''Chanson de Roland'', and in Shakespeare's ''Othello'' (that &quot;abuser of the world&quot;), the Orient and Islam are always represented as outsiders having a special role to play ''inside'' Europe.<br /> <br /> Imaginative geography, from the vivid portraits to be found in the ''Inferno'' to the prosaic niches of d'Herbelot's ''Bibliotheque orientale'', legitimates a vocabulary, a universe of representative discourse peculiar to the discussion and understanding of Islam and of the Orient. What this discourse considers to be a fact--that Mohammed is an imposter, for example--is a component of the discourse, a statement the discourse compels one to make whenever the name Mohammed occurs. Underlying all the different units of Orientalist discourse--by which I mean simply the vocabulary employed whenever the Orient is spoken or written about--is a set of representative figures, or tropes. These figures are to the actual Orient--or Islam, which is my main concern here--as stylized costumes are to characters in a play; they are like, for example, the cross that Everyman will carry, or the particolored costume worn by Harlequin in a ''commedia dell'arte'' play. In other words, we need not look for correspondence between the language used to depict the Orient and the Orient itself, not so much because the language is inaccurate but because it is not even trying to be accurate. What it is trying to do, as Dante tried to do in the ''Inferno'', is at one and the same time to characterize the Orient as alien and to incorporate it schematically on a theatrical stage whose audience, manager, and actors are ''for'' Europe, and only for Europe. Hence the vacillation between the familiar and the alien; Mohammed is always the imposter (familiar, because he pretends to be like the Jesus we know) and always the Oriental (alien, because although he is in some ways &quot;like&quot; Jesus, he is after all not like him).<br /> <br /> Rather than listing all the figures of speech associated with the Orient--its strangeness, its difference, its exotic sensuousness, and so forth--we can generalize about them as they were handed down through the Renaissance. They are all declarative and self-evident; the tense they employ is the timeless eternal; they convey an impression of repetition and strength; they are always symmetrical to, and yet diametrically inferior to, a European equivalent, which is sometimes specified, sometimes not. For all these functions it is frequently enough to use the simple copula ''is''. Thus, Mohammed ''is'' an imposter, the very phrase canonized in d'Herbelot's ''Bibliotheque'' and dramatized in a sense by Dante. No background need be given; the evidence necessary to convict Mohammed is contained in the &quot;is.&quot; One does not qualify the phrase, neither does it seem necessary to say that Mohammed ''was'' an imposter, nor need one consider for a moment that it may not be necessary to repeat the statement. It ''is'' repeated, he ''is'' an imposter, and each time one says it, he becomes more of an imposter and the author of the statement gains a little more authority in having declared it. Thus Humphrey Prideaux's famous seventeenth-century biography of Mohammed is subtitled ''The True Nature of Imposture''. Finally, of course, such categories as imposter (or Oriental, for that matter) imply, indeed require, an opposite that is neither fraudulently something else nor endlessly in need of explicit identification. And that opposite is &quot;Occidental,&quot; or in Mohammed's case, Jesus.<br /> <br /> Philosophically, then, the kind of language, thought, and vision that I have been calling Orientalism very generally is a form of radical realism; anyone employing Orientalism, which is the habit for dealing with questions, objects, qualities, and regions deemed Oriental, will designate, name, point to, fix what he is talking or thinking about with a word or phrase, which then is considered either to have acquired, or more simply to be, reality. Rhetorically speaking, Orientalism is absolutely anatomical and enumerative: to use its vocabulary is to engage in the particularizing and dividing of things Oriental into manageable parts. Psychologically, Orientalism is a form of paranoia, knowledge of another kind, say, from ordinary historical knowledge. These are a few of the results, I think, of imaginative geography and of the dramatic boundaries it draws. There are some specifically modern transmutations of these Orientalized results, however, to which I must now turn.<br /> <br /> === '''III.''' '''Projects''' ===<br /> It is necessary to examine the more flamboyant operational successes of Orientalism if only to judge how exactly wrong (and how totally opposite to the truth) was the grandly menacing idea expressed by Michelet, that &quot;the Orient advances, invincible, fatal to the gods of light by the charm of its dreams, by the magic of its ''chiaroscuro''.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Quoted by Henri Baudet in ''Paradise on Earth: Some Thoughts on European Images of Non-European Man'', trans. Elizabeth Wentholt (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1965), p. xiii.&lt;/ref&gt; Cultural, material, and intellectual relations between Europe and the Orient have gone through innumerable phases, even though the line between East and West has made a certain constant impression upon Europe. Yet in general it was the West that moved upon the East, not vice versa. ''Orientalism'' is the generic term that I have been employing to describe the Western approach to the Orient; Orientalism is the discipline by which the Orient was (and is) approached systematically, as a topic of learning, discovery, and practice. But in addition I have been using the word to designate that collection of dreams, images, and vocabularies available to anyone who has tried to talk about what lies east of the dividing line. These two aspects of Orientalism are not incongruent, since by use of them both Europe could advance securely and unmetaphorically upon the Orient. Here I should like principally to consider material evidence of this advance.<br /> <br /> Islam excepted, the Orient for Europe was until the nineteenth century a domain with a continuous history of unchallenged Western dominance. This is patently true of the British experience in India, the Portuguese experience in the East Indies, China, and Japan, and the French and Italian experiences in various regions of the Orient. There were occasional instances of native intransigence to disturb the idyll, as when in 1638-1639 a group of Japanese Christians threw the Portuguese out of the area; by and large, however, only the Arab and Islamic Orient presented Europe with an unresolved challenge on the political, intellectual, and for a time, economic levels. For much of its history, then, Orientalism carries within it the stamp of a problematic European attitude towards Islam, and it is this acutely sensitive aspect of Orientalism around which my interest in this study turns.<br /> <br /> Doubtless Islam was a real provocation in many ways. It lay uneasily close to Christianity, geographically and culturally. It drew on the Judeo-Hellenic traditions, it borrowed creatively from Christianity, it could boast of unrivaled military and political successes. Nor was this all. The Islamic lands sit adjacent to and even on top of the Biblical lands; moreover, the heart of the Islamic domain has always been the region closest to Europe, what has been called the Near Orient or Near East. Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic languages, and together they dispose and redispose of material that is urgently important to Christianity. From the end of the seventh century until the battle of Lepanto in 1571, Islam in either its Arab, Ottoman, or North African and Spanish form dominated or effectively threatened European Christianity. That Islam outstripped and outshone Rome cannot have been absent from the mind of any European past or present. Even Gibbon was no exception, as is evident in the following passage from the ''Decline and Fall'':<br /> <br /> In the victorious days of the Roman republic it had been the aim of the senate to confine their councils and legions to a single war, and completely to suppress a first enemy before they provoked the hostilities of a second. These timid maxims of policy were disdained by the magnanimity or enthusiasm of the Arabian caliphs. With the same vigour and success they invaded the successors of Augustus and Artaxerxes; and the rival monarchies at the same instant became the prey of an enemy whom they had so long been accustomed to despise. In the ten years of the administration of Omar, the Saracens reduced to his obedience thirty-six thousand cities or castles, destroyed four thousand churches or temples of the unbelievers, and edified fourteen hundred moschs for the exercise of the religion of Mohammed. One hundred years after his flight from Mecca the arms and reign of his successors extended from India to the Atlantic Ocean, over the various and distant provinces....&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Gibbon, ''Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', 6: 289.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> When the term ''Orient'' was not simply a synonym for the Asiatic East as a whole, or taken as generally denoting the distant and exotic, it was most rigorously understood as applying to the Islamic Orient. This &quot;militant&quot; Orient came to stand for what Henri Baudet has called &quot;the Asiatic tidal wave.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Baudet, ''Paradise on Earth'', p. 4.&lt;/ref&gt; Certainly this was the case in Europe through the middle of the eighteenth century, the point at which repositories of &quot;Oriental&quot; knowledge like d'Herbelot's ''Bibliotheque orientale'' stop meaning primarily Islam, the Arabs, or the Ottomans. Until that time cultural memory gave understandable prominence to such relatively distant events as the fall of Constantinople, the Crusades, and the conquest of Sicily and Spain, but if these signified the menacing Orient they did not at the same time efface what remained of Asia.<br /> <br /> For there was always India, where, after Portugal pioneered the first bases of European presence in the early sixteenth century, Europe, and primarily England after a long period (from 1600 to 1758) of essentially commercial activity, dominated politically as an occupying force. Yet India itself never provided an indigenous threat to Europe. Rather it was because native authority crumbled there and opened the land to inter-European rivalry and to outright European political control that the Indian Orient could be treated by Europe with such proprietary hauteur--never with the sense of danger reserved for Islam.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;See Fieldhouse, ''Colonial Empires'', pp. 138-61.&lt;/ref&gt; Nevertheless, between this hauteur and anything like accurate positive knowledge there existed a vast disparity. D'Herbelot's entries for Indo-Persian subjects in the ''Bibliotheque'' were all based on Islamic sources, and it is true to say that until the early nineteenth century &quot;Oriental languages&quot; was considered a synonym for &quot;Semitic languages.&quot; The Oriental renaissance of which Quinet spoke served the function of expanding some fairly narrow limits, in which Islam was the catchall Oriental example.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Schwab, ''La Renaissance orientale'', p. 30.&lt;/ref&gt; Sanskrit, Indian religion, and Indian history did not acquire the status of scientific knowledge until after Sir William Jones's efforts in the late eighteenth century, and even Jones's interest in India came to him by way of his prior interest in and knowledge of Islam.<br /> <br /> It is not surprising, then, that the first major work of Oriental scholarship after d'Herbelot's ''Bibliotheque'' was Simon Ockley's ''History of the Saracens'', whose first volume appeared in 1708. A recent historian of Orientalism has opined that Ockley's attitude towards the Muslims--that to them is owed what was first known of philosophy by European Christians--&quot;shocked painfully&quot; his European audience. For not only did Ockley make this Islamic pre-eminence clear in his work; he also &quot;gave Europe its first authentic and substantial taste of the Arab viewpoint touching the wars with Byzantium and Persia.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;A. J. Arberry, ''Oriental Essays: Portraits of Seven Scholars'' (New York: Macmillan Co., 1960), pp. 30, 31.&lt;/ref&gt; However, Ockley was careful to dissociate himself from the infectious influence of Islam, and unlike his colleague William Whiston (Newton's successor at Cambridge), he always made it clear that Islam was an outrageous heresy. For his Islamic enthusiasm, on the other hand, Whiston was expelled from Cambridge in 1709.<br /> <br /> Access to Indian (Oriental) riches had always to be made by first crossing the Islamic provinces and by withstanding the dangerous effect of Islam as a system of quasi-Arian belief. And at least for the larger segment of the eighteenth century, Britain and France were successful. The Ottoman Empire had long since settled into a (for Europe) comfortable senescence, to be inscribed in the nineteenth century as the &quot;Eastern Question.&quot; Britain and France fought each other in India between 1744 and 1748 and again between 1756 and 1763, until, in 1769, the British emerged in practical economic and political control of the subcontinent. What was more inevitable than that Napoleon should choose to harass Britain's Oriental empire by first intercepting its Islamic through-way, Egypt?<br /> <br /> Although it was almost immediately preceded by at least two major Orientalist projects, Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 and his foray into Syria have had by far the greater consequence for the modern history of Orientalism. Before Napoleon only two efforts (both by scholars) had been made to invade the Orient by stripping it of its veils and also by going beyond the comparative shelter of the Biblical Orient. The first was by Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (1731-1805), an eccentric theoretician of egalitarianism, a man who managed in his head to reconcile Jansenism with orthodox Catholicism and Brahmanism, and who traveled to Asia in order to prove the actual primitive existence of a Chosen People and of the Biblical genealogies. Instead he overshot his early goal and traveled as far east as Surat, there to find a cache of Avestan texts, there also to complete his translation of the Avesta. Raymond Schwab has said of the mysterious Avestan fragment that set Anquetil off on his voyages that whereas &quot;the scholars looked at the famous fragment of Oxford and then returned to their studies, Anquetil looked, and then went to India.&quot; Schwab also remarks that Anquetil and Voltaire, though temperamentally and ideologically at hopeless odds with each other, had a similar interest in the Orient and the Bible, &quot;the one to make the Bible more indisputable, the other to make it more unbelievable.&quot; Ironically, Anquetil's Avesta translations served Voltaire's purposes, since Anquetil's discoveries &quot;soon led to criticism of the very [Biblical] texts which had hitherto been considered to be revealed texts.&quot; The net effect of Anquetil's expedition is well described by Schwab:<br /> <br /> In 1759, Anquetil finished his translation of the ''Avesta'' at Surat; in 1786 that of the ''Upanishads'' in Paris--he had dug a channel between the hemispheres of human genius, correcting and expanding the old humanism of the Mediterranean basin. Less than fifty years earlier, his compatriots were asked what it was like to be Persian, when he taught them how to compare the monuments of the Persians to those of the Greeks. Before him, one looked for information on the remote past of our planet exclusively among the great Latin, Greek, Jewish, and Arabic writers. The Bible was regarded as a lonely rock, an aerolite. A universe in writing was available, but scarcely anyone seemed to suspect the immensity of those unknown lands. The realization began with his translation of the ''Avesta'', and reached dizzying heights owing to the exploration in Central Asia of the languages that multiplied after Babel. Into our schools, up to that time limited to the narrow Greco-Latin heritage of the Renaissance [of which much had been transmitted to Europe by Islam], he interjected a vision of innumerable civilizations from ages past, of an infinity of literatures; moreover the few European provinces were not the only places to have left their mark in history.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Raymond Schwab, ''Vie d'Anquetil-Duperron suivie des Usages civils et religieux des Perses par Anquetil-Duperron'' (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1934), pp. 10, 96, 4, 6.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> For the first time, the Orient was revealed to Europe in the materiality of its texts, languages, and civilizations. Also for the first time, Asia acquired a precise intellectual and historical dimension with which to buttress the myths of its geographic distance and vastness. By one of those inevitable contracting compensations for a sudden cultural expansion, Anquetil's Oriental labors were succeeded by William Jones's, the second of the pre-Napoleonic projects I mentioned above. Whereas Anquetil opened large vistas, Jones closed them down, codifying, tabulating, comparing. Before he left England for India in 1783, Jones was already a master of Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian. These seemed perhaps the least of his accomplishments: he was also a poet, a jurist, a polyhistor, a classicist, and an indefatigable scholar whose powers would recommend him to such as Benjamin Franklin, Edmund Burke, William Pitt, and Samuel Johnson. In due course he was appointed to &quot;an honorable and profitable place in the Indies,&quot; and immediately upon his arrival there to take up a post with the East India Company began the course of personal study that was to gather in, to rope off, to domesticate the Orient and thereby turn it into a province of European learning. For his personal work, entitled &quot;Objects of Enquiry During My Residence in Asia&quot; he enumerated among the topics of his investigation &quot;the Laws of the Hindus and Mohammedans, Modern Politics and Geography of Hindustan, Best Mode of Governing Bengal, Arithmetic and Geometry, and Mixed Sciences of the Asiaticks, Medicine, Chemistry, Surgery, and Anatomy of the Indians, Natural Productions of India, Poetry, Rhetoric and Morality of Asia, Music of the Eastern Nations, Trade, Manufacture, Agriculture, and Commerce of India,&quot; and so forth. On August 17, 1787, he wrote unassumingly to Lord Althorp that &quot;it is my ambition to know ''India'' better than any other European ever knew it.&quot; Here is where Balfour in 1910 could find the first adumbration of his claim as an Englishman to know the Orient more and better than anyone else.<br /> <br /> Jones's official work was the law, an occupation with symbolic significance for the history of Orientalism. Seven years before Jones arrived in India, Warren Hastings had decided that Indians were to be ruled by their own laws, a more enterprising project than it appears at first glance since the Sanskrit code of laws existed then for practical use only in a Persian translation, and no Englishman at the time knew Sanskrit well enough to consult the original texts. A company official, Charles Wilkins, first mastered Sanskrit, then began to translate the ''Institutes'' of Manu; in this labor he was soon to be assisted by Jones. (Wilkins, incidentally, was the first translator of the Bhagavad-Gita.) In January 1784 Jones convened the inaugural meeting of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which was to be for India what the Royal ''Society'' was for England. As first president of the society and as magistrate, Jones acquired the effective knowledge of the Orient and of Orientals that was later to make him the undisputed founder (the phrase is A. J. Arberry's) of Orientalism. To rule and to learn, then to compare Orient with Occident: these were Jones's goals, which, with an irresistible impulse always to codify, to subdue the infinite variety of the Orient to &quot;a complete digest&quot; of laws, figures, customs, and works, he is believed to have achieved. His most famous pronouncement indicates the extent to which modern Orientalism, even in its philosophical beginnings, was a comparative discipline having for its principal goal the grounding of the European languages in a distant, and harmless, Oriental source:<br /> <br /> The ''Sanscrit'' language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the ''Greek'', more copious than the ''Latin'', and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three without believing them to have sprung from some common source.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Arberry, ''Oriental Essays'', pp. 62-6.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Many of the early English Orientalists in India were, like Jones, legal scholars, or else, interestingly enough, they were medical men with strong missionary leanings. So far as one can tell, most of them were imbued with the dual purpose of investigating &quot;the sciences and the arts of Asia, with the hope of facilitating ameliorations there and of advancing knowledge and improving the arts at home&quot;:&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Frederick Eden Pargiter, ed., ''Centenary Volume of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1823-1923'' (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1923), p. viii.&lt;/ref&gt; so the common Orientalist goal was stated in the ''Centenary Volume'' of the Royal Asiatic Society founded in 1823 by Henry Thomas Colebrooke. In their dealings with the modern Orientals, the early professional Orientalists like Jones had only two roles to fulfill, yet we cannot today fault them for strictures placed on their humanity by the official ''Occidental'' character of their presence in the Orient. They were either judges or they were doctors. Even Edgar Quinet, writing more metaphysically than realistically, was dimly aware of this therapeutic relationship. &quot;L'Asie a les prophetes,&quot; he said in ''Le Genie des religions''; &quot;L'Europe a les docteurs.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Quinet, ''Le Genie des religions'', p. 47.&lt;/ref&gt; Proper knowledge of the Orient proceeded from a thorough study of the classical texts, and only after that to an application of those texts to the modern Orient. Faced with the obvious decrepitude and political impotence of the modern Oriental, the European Orientalist found it his duty to rescue some portion of a lost, past classical Oriental grandeur in order to &quot;facilitate ameliorations&quot; in the present Orient. What the European took from the classical Oriental past was a vision (and thousands of facts and artifacts) which only he could employ to the best advantage; to the modern Oriental he gave facilitation and amelioration--and, too, the benefit of his judgment as to what was best for the modern Orient.<br /> <br /> It was characteristic of all Orientalist projects before Napoleon's that very little could be done in advance of the project to prepare for its success. Anquetil and Jones, for example, learned what they did about the Orient only after they got there. They were confronting, as it were, the whole Orient, and only after a while and after considerable improvising could they whittle it down to a smaller province. Napoleon, on the other hand, wanted nothing less than to take the whole of Egypt, and his advance preparations were of unparalleled magnitude and thoroughness. Even so, these preparations were almost fanatically schematic and--if I may use the word--textual, which are features that will bear some analysis here. Three things above all else seem to have been in Napoleon's mind as he readied himself while in Italy in 1797 for his next military move. First, aside from the still threatening power of England, his military successes that had culminated in the Treaty of Campo Formio left him no other place to turn for additional glory than the East. Moreover, Talleyrand had recently animadverted on &quot;les avantages a retirer de colonies nouvelles dans les circonstances presentes,&quot; and this notion, along with the appealing prospect of hurting Britain, drew him eastwards. Secondly, Napoleon had been attracted to the Orient since his adolescence; his youthful manuscripts, for example, contain a summary he made of Marigny's ''Histoire des Arabes'', and it is evident from all of his writing and conversation that he was steeped, as Jean Thiry has put it, in the memories and glories that were attached to Alexander's Orient generally and to Egypt in particular.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Jean Thiry, ''Bonaparte en Egypte decembre 1797-24 aout 1799'' (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1973), p. 9.&lt;/ref&gt; Thus the idea of reconquering Egypt as a new Alexander proposed itself to him, allied with the additional benefit of acquiring a new Islamic colony at England's expense. Thirdly, Napoleon considered Egypt a likely project precisely because he knew it tactically, strategically, historically, and--not to be underestimated--textually, that is, as something one read about and knew through the writings of recent as well as classical European authorities. The point in all this is that for Napoleon Egypt was a project that acquired reality in his mind, and later in his preparations for its conquest, through experiences that belong to the realm of ideas and myths culled from texts, not empirical reality. His plans for Egypt therefore became the first in a long series of European encounters with the Orient in which the Orientalist's special expertise was put directly to functional colonial use; for at the crucial instant when an Orientalist had to decide whether his loyalties and sympathies lay with the Orient or with the conquering West, he always chose the latter, from Napoleon's time on. As for the emperor himself, he saw the Orient only as it had been encoded first by classical texts and then by Orientalist experts, whose vision, based on classical texts, seemed a useful substitute for any actual encounter with the real Orient.<br /> <br /> Napoleon's enlistment of several dozen &quot;savants&quot; for his Egyptian Expedition is too well known to require detail here. His idea was to build a sort of living archive for the expedition, in the form of studies conducted on all topics by the members of the Institut d'Egypte, which he founded. What is perhaps less well known is Napoleon's prior reliance upon the work of the Comte de Volney, a French traveler whose ''Voyage en Egypte et en Syrie'' appeared in two volumes in 1787. Aside from a short personal preface informing the reader that the sudden acquisition of some money (his inheritance) made it possible for him to take the trip east in 1783, Volney's ''Voyage'' is an almost oppressively impersonal document. Volney evidently saw himself as a scientist, whose job it was always to record the &quot;etat&quot; of something he saw. The climax of the ''Voyage'' occurs in the second volume, an account of Islam as a religion.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Constantin-Francois Volney, ''Voyage en Egypte et en Syrie'' (Paris: Bossange, 1821), 2: 241 and passim.&lt;/ref&gt; Volney's views were canonically hostile to Islam as a religion and as a system of political institutions; nevertheless Napoleon found this work and Volney's ''Considerations sur la guerre actuel de Turcs'' (1788) of particular importance. For Volney after all was a canny Frenchman, and--like Chateaubriand and Lamartine a quarter-century after him--he eyed the Near Orient as a likely place for the realization of French colonial ambition. What Napoleon profited from in Volney was the enumeration, in ascending order of difficulty, of the obstacles to be faced in the Orient by any French expeditionary force.<br /> <br /> Napoleon refers explicitly to Volney in his reflections on the Egyptian expedition, the ''Campagnes d'Egypte et de Syrie'', ''1798-1799'', which he dictated to General Bertrand on Saint Helena. Volney, he said, considered that there were three barriers to French hegemony in the Orient and that any French force would therefore have to fight three wars: one against England, a second against the Ottoman Porte, and a third, the most difficult, against the Muslims.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Napoleon, ''Campagnes d'Egypte et de Syrie, 1798-1799: Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de Napoleon'' (Paris: Comou, 1843), 1: 211.&lt;/ref&gt; Volney's assessment was both shrewd and hard to fault since it was clear to Napoleon, as it would be to anyone who read Volney, that his ''Voyage'' and the ''Considerations'' were effective texts to be used by any European wishing to win in the Orient. In other words, Volney's work constituted a handbook for attenuating the human shock a European might feel as he directly experienced the Orient: Read the books, seems to have been Volney's thesis, and far from being disoriented by the Orient, you will compel it to you.<br /> <br /> Napoleon took Volney almost literally, but in a characteristically subtle way. From the first moment that the Armee d'Egypte appeared on the Egyptian horizon, every effort was made to convince the Muslims that &quot;nous sommes les vrais musulmans,&quot; as Bonaparte's proclamation of July 2, 1798, put it to the people of Alexandria.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Thiry, ''Bonaparte en Egypte'', p. 126. See also Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, ''Arab Rediscovery of Europe: A Study in Cultural Encounters'' (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 12-20.&lt;/ref&gt; Equipped with a team of Orientalists (and sitting on board a flagship called the ''Orient''), Napoleon used Egyptian enmity towards the Mamelukes and appeals to the revolutionary idea of equal opportunity for all to wage a uniquely benign and selective war against Islam. What more than anything impressed the first Arab chronicler of the expedition, Abd-al-Rahman al-Jabarti, was Napoleon's use of scholars to manage his contacts with the natives--that and the impact of watching a modern European intellectual establishment at close quarters.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Abu-Lughod, ''Arab Rediscovery of Europe'', p. 22.&lt;/ref&gt; Napoleon tried everywhere to prove that he was fighting ''for'' Islam; everything he said was translated into Koranic Arabic, just as the French army was urged by its command always to remember the Islamic sensibility. (Compare, in this regard, Napoleon's tactics in Egypt with the tactics of the ''Requerimiento'', a document drawn up in 1513--in Spanish--by the Spaniards to be read aloud to the Indians: &quot;We shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such sell and dispose of them as their Highnesses [the King and Queen of Spain] may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey,&quot; etc. etc.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Quoted from Arthur Helps, ''The Spanish Conquest of America'' (London, 1900), p. 196, by Stephen J. Greenblatt, &quot;Learning to Curse: Aspects of Linguistic Colonialism in the Sixteenth Century,&quot; in ''First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old'', ed. Fredi Chiapelli (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), p. 573.&lt;/ref&gt;) When it seemed obvious to Napoleon that his force was too small to impose itself on the Egyptians, he then tried to make the local imams, cadis, muftis, and ulemas interpret the Koran in favor of the Grande Armee. To this end, the sixty ulemas who taught at the Azhar were invited to his quarters, given full military honors, and then allowed to be flattered by Napoleon's admiration for Islam and Mohammed and by his obvious veneration for the Koran, with which he seemed perfectly familiar. This worked, and soon the population of Cairo seemed to have lost its distrust of the occupiers.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Thiry, ''Bonaparte en Egypte'', p. 200. Napoleon was not just being cynical. It is reported of him that he discussed Voltaire's ''Mahomet'' with Goethe, and defended Islam. See Christian Cherfils, ''Bonaparte et l'Islam d'apres les documents francais arabes'' (Paris: A. Pedone, 1914), p. 249 and passim.&lt;/ref&gt; Napoleon later gave his deputy Kleber strict instructions after he left always to administer Egypt through the Orientalists and the religious Islamic leaders whom they could win over; any other politics was too expensive and foolish.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Thiry, ''Bonaparte en Egypte'', p. 434.&lt;/ref&gt; Hugo thought that he grasped the tactful glory of Napoleon's Oriental expedition in his poem &quot;Lui&quot;:<br /> <br /> Au Nil je le retrouve encore.<br /> <br /> L'Egypte resplendit des feux de son aurore;<br /> <br /> Son astre imperial se leve a l'orient.<br /> <br /> Vainqueur, enthousiaste, eclatant de prestiges,<br /> <br /> Prodige, il etonna la terre des prodiges.<br /> <br /> Les vieux scheiks veneraient l'emir jeune et prudent;<br /> <br /> Le peuple redoutait ses armes inouies;<br /> <br /> Sublime, il apparut aux tribus eblouies<br /> <br /> Comme un Mahomet d'occident.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Hugo, ''Les Orientales, in Oeuvres poetiques'', 1: 684.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> (By the Nile, I find him once again.<br /> <br /> Egypt shines with the fires of his dawn;<br /> <br /> His imperial orb rises in the Orient.<br /> <br /> Victor, enthusiast, bursting with achievements,<br /> <br /> Prodigious, he stunned the land of prodigies.<br /> <br /> The old sheikhs venerated the young and prudent emir.<br /> <br /> The people dreaded his unprecedented arms;<br /> <br /> Sublime, he appeared to the dazzled tribes<br /> <br /> Like a Mahomet of the Occident.)<br /> <br /> Such a triumph could only have been prepared ''before'' a military expedition, perhaps only by someone who had no prior experience of the Orient except what books and scholars told him. The idea of taking along a full-scale academy is very much an aspect of this textual attitude to the Orient. And this attitude in turn was bolstered by specific Revolutionary decrees (particularly the one of 10 Germinal An III--March 30, 1793--establishing an ''ecole publique'' in the Bibliotheque nationale to teach Arabic, Turkish, and Persian)&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Henri Deherain, ''Silvestre de Sacy, ses contemporains et ses disciples'' (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1938), p. v.&lt;/ref&gt; whose object was the rationalist one of dispelling mystery and institutionalizing even the most recondite knowledge. Thus many of Napoleon's Orientalist translators were students of Sylvestre de Sacy, who, beginning in June 1796, was the first and only teacher of Arabic at the Ecole publique des langues orientales. Sacy later became the teacher of nearly every major Orientalist in Europe, where his students dominated the field for about three-quarters of a century. Many of them were politically useful, in the ways that several had been to Napoleon in Egypt.<br /> <br /> But dealings with the Muslims were only a part of Napoleon's project to dominate Egypt. The other part was to render it completely open, to make it totally accessible to European scrutiny. From being a land of obscurity and a part of the Orient hitherto known at second hand through the exploits of earlier travelers, scholars, and conquerors, Egypt was to become a department of French learning. Here too the textual and schematic attitudes are evident. The Institut, with its teams of chemists, historians, biologists, archaeologists, surgeons, and antiquarians, was the learned division of the army. Its job was no less aggressive: to put Egypt into modern French; and unlike the Abbe Le Mascrier's 1735 ''Description de l'Egypte'', Napoleon's was to be a universal undertaking. Almost from the first moments of the occupation Napoleon saw to it that the Institut began its meetings, its experiments--its fact-finding mission, as we would call it today. Most important, everything said, seen, and studied was to be recorded, and indeed was recorded in that great collective appropriation of one country by another, the ''Description de l'Egypte'', published in twenty-three enormous volumes between 1809 and 1828.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;''Description de l'Egypte, ou Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont ete faites in Egypte pendant l'expedition de l'armee francaise, publie par les ordres de sa majeste l'empereur Napoleon le grand'', 23 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie imperiale, 1809-28).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The ''Description's'' uniqueness is not only in its size, or even in the intelligence of its contributors, but in its attitude to its subject matter, and it is this attitude that makes it of great interest for the study of modern Orientalist projects. The first few pages of its ''preface historique'', written by Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier, the Institut's secretary, make it clear that in &quot;doing&quot; Egypt the scholars were also grappling directly with a kind of unadulterated cultural, geographical, and historical significance. Egypt was the focal point of the relationships between Africa and Asia, between Europe and the East, between memory and actuality.<br /> <br /> Placed between Africa and Asia, and communicating easily with Europe, Egypt occupies the center of the ancient continent. This country presents only great memories; it is the homeland of the arts and conserves innumerable monuments; its principal temples and the palaces inhabited by its kings still exist, even though its least ancient edifices had already been built by the time of the Trojan War. Homer, Lycurgus, Solon, Pythagoras, and Plato all went to Egypt to study the sciences, religion, and the laws. Alexander founded an opulent city there, which for a long time enjoyed commercial supremacy and which witnessed Pompey, Caesar, Mark Antony, and Augustus deciding between them the fate of Rome and that of the entire world. It is therefore proper for this country to attract the attention of illustrious princes who rule the destiny of nations.<br /> <br /> No considerable power was ever amassed by any nation, whether in the West or in Asia, that did not also turn that nation toward Egypt, which was regarded in some measure as its natural lot.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Fourier, ''Preface historique'', vol. 1 of ''Description de l'Egypte'', p. 1.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Because Egypt was saturated with meaning for the arts, sciences, and government, its role was to be the stage on which actions of a world-historical importance would take place. By taking Egypt, then, a modern power would naturally demonstrate its strength and justify history; Egypt's own destiny was to be annexed, to Europe preferably. In addition, this power would also enter a history whose common element was defined by figures no less great than Homer, Alexander, Caesar, Plato, Solon, and Pythagoras, who graced the Orient with their prior presence there. The Orient, in short, existed as a set of values attached, not to its modern realities, but to a series of valorized contacts it had had with a distant European past. This is a pure example of the textual, schematic attitude I have been referring to.<br /> <br /> Fourier continues similarly for over a hundred pages (each page, incidentally, is a square meter in size, as if the project and the size of the page had been thought of as possessing comparable scale). Out of the free-floating past, however, he must justify the Napoleonic expedition as something that needed to be undertaken when it happened. The dramatic perspective is never abandoned. Conscious of his European audience and of the Oriental figures he was manipulating, he writes:<br /> <br /> One remembers the impression made on the whole of Europe by the astounding news that the French were in the Orient.... This great project was meditated in silence, and was prepared with such activity and secrecy that the worried vigilance of our enemies was deceived; only at the moment that it happened did they learn that it had been conceived, undertaken, and carried out successfully....<br /> <br /> So dramatic a ''coup de theatre'' had its advantages for the Orient as well:<br /> <br /> This country, which has transmitted its knowledge to so many nations, is today plunged into barbarism.<br /> <br /> Only a hero could bring all these factors together, which is what Fourier now describes:<br /> <br /> Napoleon appreciated the influence that this event would have on the relations between Europe, the Orient, and Africa, on Mediterranean shipping, and on Asia's destiny.... Napoleon wanted to offer a useful European example to the Orient, and finally also to make the inhabitants' lives more pleasant, as well as to procure for them all the advantages of a perfected civilization.<br /> <br /> None of this would be possible without a continuous application to the project of the arts and sciences.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. iii.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> To restore a region from its present barbarism to its former classical greatness; to instruct (for its own benefit) the Orient in the ways of the modern West; to subordinate or underplay military power in order to aggrandize the project of glorious knowledge acquired in the process of political domination of the Orient; to formulate the Orient, to give it shape, identity, definition with full recognition of its place in memory, its importance to imperial strategy, and its &quot;natural&quot; role as an appendage to Europe; to dignify all the knowledge collected during colonial occupation with the title &quot;contribution to modern learning&quot; when the natives had neither been consulted nor treated as anything except as pretexts for a text whose usefulness was not to the natives; to feel oneself as a European in command, almost at will, of Oriental history, time, and geography; to institute new areas of specialization; to establish new disciplines; to divide, deploy, schematize, tabulate, index, and record everything in sight (and out of sight); to make out of every observable detail a generalization and out of every generalization an immutable law about the Oriental nature, temperament, mentality, custom, or type; and, above all, to transmute living reality into the stuff of texts, to possess (or think one possesses) actuality mainly because nothing in the Orient seems to resist one's powers: these are the features of Orientalist projection entirely realized in the ''Description de l'Egypte'', itself enabled and reinforced by Napoleon's wholly Orientalist engulfment of Egypt by the instruments of Western knowledge and power. Thus Fourier concludes his preface by announcing that history will remember how &quot;Egypte fut le theatre de sa [Napoleon's] gloire, et preserve de l'oubli toutes les circonstances de cet evenement extraordinaire.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. xcii.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The ''Description'' thereby displaces Egyptian or Oriental history as a history possessing its own coherence, identity, and sense. Instead, history as recorded in the ''Description'' supplants Egyptian or Oriental history by identifying itself directly and immediately with world history, a euphemism for European history. To save an event from oblivion is in the Orientalist's mind the equivalent of turning the Orient into a theater for his representations of the Orient: this is almost exactly what Fourier says. Moreover, the sheer power of having described the Orient in modern Occidental terms lifts the Orient from the realms of silent obscurity where it has lain neglected (except for the inchoate murmurings of a vast but undefined sense of its own past) into the clarity of modern European science. There this new Orient figures as--for instance, in Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's biological theses in the ''Description''--the confirmation of laws of zoological specialization formulated by Buffon.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, ''Histoire naturelle des poissons du Nil'', vol. 17 of ''Description de l'Egypte'', p. 2.&lt;/ref&gt; Or it serves as a &quot;contraste frappante avec les habitudes des nations Europeennes,&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;M. de Chabrol, ''Essai sur les moeurs des habitants modernes de l'Egypte'', vol. 14 of ''Description de l'Egypte'', p. 376.&lt;/ref&gt; in which the &quot;bizarre jouissances&quot; of Orientals serve to highlight the sobriety and rationality of Occidental habits. Or, to cite one more use for the Orient, equivalents of those Oriental physiological characteristics that made possible the successful embalming of bodies are sought for in European bodies, so that chevaliers fallen on the field of honor can be preserved as lifelike relics of Napoleon's great Oriental campaign.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;This is evident in Baron Larrey, ''Notice sur la conformation physique des egyptiens et des differentes races qui habitent en Egypte, suivie de quelques reflexions sur l'embaumement des momies'', vol. 13 of ''Description de l'Egypte''.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Yet the military failure of Napoleon's occupation of Egypt did not also destroy the fertility of its over-all projection for Egypt or the rest of the Orient. Quite literally, the occupation gave birth to the entire modern experience of the Orient as interpreted from within the universe of discourse founded by Napoleon in Egypt, whose agencies of domination and dissemination included the Institut and the ''Description''. The idea, as it has been characterized by Charles-Roux, was that Egypt &quot;restored to prosperity, regenerated by wise and enlightened administration ... would shed its civilizing rays upon all its Oriental neighbors.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Cited by John Marlowe, ''The Making of the Suez Canal'' (London: Cresset Press, 1964), p. 31.&lt;/ref&gt; True, the other European powers would seek to compete in this mission, none more than England. But what would happen as a continuing legacy of the common Occidental mission to the Orient--despite inter-European squabbling, indecent competition, or outright war--would be the creation of new projects, new visions, new enterprises combining additional parts of the old Orient with the conquering European spirit. After Napoleon, then, the very language of Orientalism changed radically. Its descriptive realism was upgraded and became not merely a style of representation but a language, indeed a means of ''creation''. Along with the ''langues meres'', as those forgotten dormant sources for the modern European demotics were entitled by Antoine Fabre d'Olivet, the Orient was reconstructed, reassembled, crafted, in short, ''born'' out of the Orientalists' efforts. The ''Description'' became the master type of all further efforts to bring the Orient closer to Europe, thereafter to absorb it entirely and--centrally important--to cancel, or at least subdue and reduce, its strangeness and, in the case of Islam, its hostility. For the Islamic Orient would henceforth appear as a category denoting the Orientalists' power and not the Islamic people as humans nor their history as history.<br /> <br /> Thus out of the Napoleonic expedition there issued a whole series of textual children, from Chateaubriand's ''Itineraire'' to Lamartine's ''Voyage en Orient'' to Flaubert's ''Salammbo'', and in the same tradition, Lane's ''Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians'' and Richard Burton's ''Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to al-Madinah and Meccah''. What binds them together is not only their common background in Oriental legend and experience but also their learned reliance on the Orient as a kind of womb out of which they were brought forth. If paradoxically these creations turned out to be highly stylized simulacra, elaborately wrought imitations of what a live Orient might be thought to look like, that by no means detracts either from the strength of their imaginative conception or from the strength of European mastery of the Orient, whose prototypes respectively were Cagliostro, the great European impersonator of the Orient, and Napoleon, its first modern conqueror.<br /> <br /> Artistic or textual work was not the only product of the Napoleonic expedition. There were, in addition and certainly more influential, the scientific project, whose chief instance is Ernest Renan's ''Systeme compare et histoire generale des langues semitiques'', completed in 1848 for--neatly enough--the Prix Volney, and the geopolitical project, of which Ferdinand de Lesseps's Suez Canal and England's occupation of Egypt in 1882 are prime instances. The difference between the two is not only in manifest scale but also in quality of Orientalist conviction. Renan truly believed that he had re-created the Orient, as it really was, in his work. De Lesseps, on the other hand, always was somewhat awed by the newness his project had released out of the old Orient, and this sense communicated itself to everyone for whom the opening of the canal in 1869 was no ordinary event. In his ''Excursionist and Tourist Advertiser'' for July 1, 1869, Thomas Cook's enthusiasm carries on de Lesseps's:<br /> <br /> On November the 17th, the greatest engineering feat of the present century is to have its success celebrated by a magnificent inauguration fete, at which nearly every European royal family will have its special representative. Truly the occasion will be an exceptional one. The formation of a line of water communication between Europe and the East, has been the thought of centuries, occupying in turn the minds of Greeks, Roman, Saxon and Gaul, but it was not until within the last few years that modern civilization began seriously to set about emulating the labours of the ancient Pharaohs, who, many centuries since, constructed a canal between the two seas, traces of which remain to this day.... Everything connected with [the modern] works are on the most gigantic scale, and a perusal of a little pamphlet, descriptive of the undertaking, from the pen of the Chevalier de St. Stoess, impresses us most forcibly with the genius of the great Master-mind--M. Ferdinand de Lesseps--to whose perseverance, calm daring and foresight, the dream of ages has at last become a real and tangible fact ... the project for bringing more closely together the countries of the West and the East, and thus uniting the civilizations of different epochs.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Quoted in John Pudney, ''Suez: De Lesseps' Canal'' (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), pp. 141-2.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The combination of old ideas with new methods, the bringing together of cultures whose relations to the nineteenth century were different, the genuine imposition of the power of modern technology and intellectual will upon formerly stable and divided geographical entities like East and West: this is what Cook perceives and what, in his journals, speeches, prospectuses, and letters, de Lesseps advertises.<br /> <br /> Genealogically, Ferdinand's start was auspicious. Mathieu de Lesseps, his father, had come to Egypt with Napoleon and remained there (as &quot;unofficial French representative,&quot; Marlowe says&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Marlowe, ''Making of the Suez Canal'', p. 62.&lt;/ref&gt;) for four years after the French evacuated it in 1801. Many of Ferdinand's later writings refer back to Napoleon's own interest in digging a canal, which, because he had been misinformed by experts, he never thought was a realizable goal. Infected by the erratic history of canal projects that included French schemes entertained by Richelieu and the Saint-Simonians, de Lesseps returned to Egypt in 1854, there to embark on the undertaking that was eventually completed fifteen years later. He had no real engineering background. Only a tremendous faith in his near-divine skills as builder, mover, and creator kept him going; as his diplomatic and financial talents gained him Egyptian and European support, he seems to have acquired the necessary knowledge to carry matters to completion. More useful, perhaps, he learned how to plant his potential contributors in the world-historical theater and make them see what his &quot;pensee morale,&quot; as he called his project, really meant. &quot;Vous envisagez,&quot; he told them in 1860, &quot;les immenses services que le rapprochement de l'occident et de l'orient doit rendre a la civilization et au developpement de la richesse generale. Le monde attend de vous un grand progres et vous voulez repondre a l'attente du monde.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ferdinand de Lesseps, ''Lettres, journal et documents pour servir a l'histoire du Canal de Suez'' (Paris: Didier, 1881), 5: 310. For an apt characterization of de Lesseps and Cecil Rhodes as mystics, see Baudet, ''Paradise on Earth'', p. 68.&lt;/ref&gt; In accordance with such notions the name of the investment company formed by de Lesseps in 1858 was a charged one and reflected the grandiose plans he cherished: the Compagnie universelle. In 1862 the Academie francaise offered a prize for an epic on the canal. Bornier, the winner, delivered himself of such hyperbole as the following, none of it fundamentally contradicting de Lesseps's picture of what he was up to:<br /> <br /> Au travail! Ouvriers que notre France envoie,<br /> <br /> Tracez, pour l'univers, cette nouvelle voie!<br /> <br /> Vos peres, les heros, sont venus jusqu'ici;<br /> <br /> Soyez ferme comme aux intrepides,<br /> <br /> Comme eux vous combattez aux pieds des pyramides,<br /> <br /> Et leurs quatre mille ans vous contemplent aussi!<br /> <br /> Oui, c'est pour l'univers! Pour l'Asie et l'Europe,<br /> <br /> Pour ces climats lointain que la nuit enveloppe,<br /> <br /> Pour le Chinois perfide et l'Indien demi-nu;<br /> <br /> Pour les peuples heureux, libres, humains et braves,<br /> <br /> Pour les peuples mechants, pour les peuples esclaves,<br /> <br /> Pour ceux a qui le Christ est encore inconnu.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Cited in Charles Beatty, ''De Lesseps of Suez: The Man and His Times'' (New York: Harper &amp; Brothers, 1956), p. 220.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> De Lesseps was nowhere more eloquent and resourceful than when he was called upon to justify the enormous expense in money and men the canal would require. He could pour out statistics to enchant any ear; he would quote Herodotus and maritime statistics with equal fluency. In his journal entries for 1864 he cited with approbation Casimir Leconte's observation that an eccentric life would develop significant originality in men, and from originality would come great and unusual exploits.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;De Lesseps, ''Lettres, journal et documents'', 5: 17.&lt;/ref&gt; Such exploits were their own justification. Despite its immemorial pedigree of failures, its outrageous cost, its astounding ambitions for altering the way Europe would handle the Orient, the canal was worth the effort. It was a project uniquely able to override the objections of those who were consulted and, in improving the Orient as a whole, to do what scheming Egyptians, perfidious Chinese, and half-naked Indians could never have done for themselves.<br /> <br /> The opening ceremonies in November 1869 were an occasion which, no less than the whole history of de Lesseps's machinations, perfectly embodied his ideas. For years his speeches, letters, and pamphlets were laden with a vividly energetic and theatrical vocabulary. In the pursuit of success, he could be found saying of himself (always in the first person plural), we created, fought, disposed, achieved, acted, recognized, persevered, advanced; nothing, he repeated on many occasions, could stop us, nothing was impossible, nothing mattered finally except the realization of &quot;le resultat final, le grand but,&quot; which he had conceived, defined, and finally executed. As the papal envoy to the ceremonies spoke on November 16 to the assembled dignitaries, his speech strove desperately to match the intellectual and imaginative spectacle offered by de Lesseps's canal:<br /> <br /> Il est permis d'affirmer que l'heure qui vient de sonner est non seulement une des plus solennelles de ce siecle, mais encore une des plus grandes et des plus decisives qu'ait vues l'humanite, depuis qu'elle a une histoire ci-bas. Ce lieu, ou confinent--sans desormais y toucher--l'Afrique et l'Asie, cette grande fete du genre humain, cette assistance auguste et cosmopolite, toutes les races du globe, tous les drapeaux, tous les pavillions, flottant joyeusement sous ce ciel radieux et immense, la croix debout et respectee de tous en face du croissant, que de merveilles, que de contrastes saississants, que de reves reputes chimeriques devenus de palpables realites! et, dans cet assemblage de tant de prodiges, que de sujets de reflexions pour le penseur, que de joies dans l'heure presente et, dans les perspectives de l'avenir, que de glorieuses esperances!...<br /> <br /> Les deux extremites du globe se rapprochent; en se rapprochant, elles se reconnaissent; en se reconnaissant, tous les hommes, enfants d'un seul et meme Dieu, eprouvent le tressaillement joyeux de leur mutuelle fraternite! O Occident! O Orient! rapprochez, regardez, reconnaissez, saluez, etreignez-vous!...<br /> <br /> Mais derriere le phenomene materiel, le regard du penseur decouvre des horizons plus vastes que les espaces mesurables, les horizons sans bornes ou mouvent les plus hautes destinees, les plus glorieuses conquetes, les plus immortelles certitudes du genre humain....<br /> <br /> [Dieu] que votre souffle divin plane sur ces eaux! Qu'il y passe et repasse, de l'Occident a l'Orient, de l'Orient a l'Occident! O Dieu! Servez vous de cette voie pour rapprocher les hommes les uns des autres!&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 324-33.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The whole world seemed crowded in to render homage to a scheme that God could only bless and make use of himself. Old distinctions and inhibitions were dissolved: the Cross faced down the Crescent, the West had come to the Orient never to leave it (until, in July 1956, Gamal Abdel Nasser would activate Egypt's taking over of the canal by pronouncing the name of de Lesseps).<br /> <br /> In the Suez Canal idea we see the logical conclusion of Orientalist thought and, more interesting, of Orientalist effort. To the West, Asia had once represented silent distance and alienation; Islam was militant hostility to European Christianity. To overcome such redoubtable constants the Orient needed first to be known, then invaded and possessed, then re-created by scholars, soldiers, and judges who disinterred forgotten languages, histories, races, and cultures in order to posit them--beyond the modern Oriental's ken--as the true classical Orient that could be used to judge and rule the modern Orient. The obscurity faded to be replaced by hothouse entities; the Orient was a scholar's word, signifying what modern Europe had recently made of the still peculiar East. De Lesseps and his canal finally destroyed the Orient's distance, its cloistered intimacy ''away'' from the West, its perdurable exoticism. Just as a land barrier could be transmuted into a liquid artery, so too the Orient was transubstantiated from resistant hostility into obliging, and submissive, partnership. After de Lesseps no one could speak of the Orient as belonging to another world, strictly speaking. There was only &quot;our&quot; world, &quot;one&quot; world bound together because the Suez Canal had frustrated those last provincials who still believed in the difference between worlds. Thereafter the notion of &quot;Oriental&quot; is an administrative or executive one, and it is subordinate to demographic, economic, and sociological factors. For imperialists like Balfour, or for anti-imperialists like J. A. Hobson, the Oriental, like the African, is a member of a subject race and not exclusively an inhabitant of a geographical area. De Lesseps had melted away the Orient's geographical identity by (almost literally) dragging the Orient into the West and finally dispelling the threat of Islam. New categories and experiences, including the imperialist ones, would emerge, and in time Orientalism would adapt itself to them, but not without some difficulty.<br /> <br /> === '''IV.''' '''Crisis''' ===<br /> It may appear strange to speak about something or someone as holding a ''textual'' attitude, but a student of literature will understand the phrase more easily if he will recall the kind of view attacked by Voltaire in ''Candide'', or even the attitude to reality satirized by Cervantes in ''Don Quixote''. What seems unexceptionable good sense to these writers is that it is a fallacy to assume that the swarming, unpredictable, and problematic mess in which human beings live can be understood on the basis of what books--texts--say; to apply what one learns out of a book literally to reality is to risk folly or ruin. One would no more think of using ''Amadis of Gaul'' to understand sixteenth-century (or present-day) Spain than one would use the Bible to understand, say, the House of Commons. But clearly people have tried and do try to use texts in so simple-minded a way, for otherwise ''Candide'' and ''Don Quixote'' would not still have the appeal for readers that they do today. It seems a common human failing to prefer the schematic authority of a text to the disorientations of direct encounters with the human. But is this failing constantly present, or are there circumstances that, more than others, make the textual attitude likely to prevail?<br /> <br /> Two situations favor a textual attitude. One is when a human being confronts at close quarters something relatively unknown and threatening and previously distant. In such a case one has recourse not only to what in one's previous experience the novelty resembles but also to what one has read about it. Travel books or guidebooks are about as &quot;natural&quot; a kind of text, as logical in their composition and in their use, as any book one can think of, precisely because of this human tendency to fall back on a text when the uncertainties of travel in strange parts seem to threaten one's equanimity. Many travelers find themselves saying of an experience in a new country that it wasn't what they expected, meaning that it wasn't what a book said it would be. And of course many writers of travel books or guidebooks compose them in order to say that a country ''is'' like this, or better, that it ''is'' colorful, expensive, interesting, and so forth. The idea in either case is that people, places, and experiences can always be described by a book, so much so that the book (or text) acquires a greater authority, and use, even than the actuality it describes. The comedy of Fabrice del Dongo's search for the battle of Waterloo is not so much that he fails to find the battle, but that he looks for it as something texts have told him about.<br /> <br /> A second situation favoring the textual attitude is the appearance of success. If one reads a book claiming that lions are fierce and then encounters a fierce lion (I simplify, of course), the chances are that one will be encouraged to read more books by that same author, and believe them. But if, in addition, the lion book instructs one how to deal with a fierce lion, and the instructions work perfectly, then not only will the author be greatly believed, he will also be impelled to try his hand at other kinds of written performance. There is a rather complex dialectic of reinforcement by which the experiences of readers in reality are determined by what they have read, and this in turn influences writers to take up subjects defined in advance by readers' experiences. A book on how to handle a fierce lion might then cause a series of books to be produced on such subjects as the fierceness of lions, the origins of fierceness, and so forth. Similarly, as the focus of the text centers more narrowly on the subject--no longer lions but their fierceness--we might expect that the ways by which it is recommended that a lion's fierceness be handled will actually ''increase'' its fierceness, force it to be fierce since that is what it is and that is what in essence we know or can ''only'' know about it.<br /> <br /> A text purporting to contain knowledge about something actual, and arising out of circumstances similar to the ones I have just described, is not easily dismissed. Expertise is attributed to it. The authority of academics, institutions, and governments can accrue to it, surrounding it with still greater prestige than its practical successes warrant. Most important, such texts can ''create'' not only knowledge but also the very reality they appear to describe. In time such knowledge and reality produce a tradition, or what Michel Foucault calls a discourse, whose material presence or weight, not the originality of a given author, is really responsible for the texts produced out of it. This kind of text is composed out of those pre-existing units of information deposited by Flaubert in the catalogue of ''idees recues''.<br /> <br /> In the light of all this, consider Napoleon and de Lesseps. Everything they knew, more or less, about the Orient came from books written in the tradition of Orientalism, placed in its library of ''idees recues''; for them the Orient, like the fierce lion, was something to be encountered and dealt with to a certain extent ''because'' the texts made that Orient possible. Such an Orient was silent, available to Europe for the realization of projects that involved but were never directly responsible to the native inhabitants, and unable to resist the projects, images, or mere descriptions devised for it. Earlier in this chapter I called such a relation between Western writing (and its consequences) and Oriental silence the result of and the sign of the West's great cultural strength, its will to power over the Orient. But there is another side to the strength, a side whose existence depends on the pressures of the Orientalist tradition and its textual attitude to the Orient; this side lives its own life, as books about fierce lions will do until lions can talk back. The perspective rarely drawn on Napoleon and de Lesseps--to take two among the many projectors who hatched plans for the Orient--is the one that sees them carrying on in the dimensionless silence of the Orient mainly because the discourse of Orientalism, over and above the Orient's powerlessness to do anything about them, suffused their activity with meaning, intelligibility, and reality. The discourse of Orientalism and what made it possible--in Napoleon's case, a West far more powerful militarily than the Orient--gave them Orientals who could be described in such works as the ''Description de l'Egypte'' and an Orient that could be cut across as de Lesseps cut across Suez. Moreover, Orientalism gave them their success--at least from their point of view, which had nothing to do with that of the Oriental. Success, in other words, had all the actual human interchange between Oriental and Westerner of the Judge's &quot;said I to myself, said I&quot; in ''Trial by Jury''.<br /> <br /> Once we begin to think of Orientalism as a kind of Western projection onto and will to govern over the Orient, we will encounter few surprises. For if it is true that historians like Michelet, Ranke, Toqueville, and Burckhardt ''emplot'' their narratives &quot;as a story of a particular kind,&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Hayden White, ''Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe'' (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), p. 12.&lt;/ref&gt; the same is also true of Orientalists who plotted Oriental history, character, and destiny for hundreds of years. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Orientalists became a more serious quantity, because by then the reaches of imaginative and actual geography had shrunk, because the Oriental-European relationship was determined by an unstoppable European expansion in search of markets, resources, and colonies, and finally, because Orientalism had accomplished its self-metamorphosis from a scholarly discourse to an imperial institution. Evidence of this metamorphosis is already apparent in what I have said of Napoleon, de Lesseps, Balfour, and Cromer. Their projects in the Orient are understandable on only the most rudimentary level as the efforts of men of vision and genius, heroes in Carlyle's sense. In fact Napoleon, de Lesseps, Cromer, and Balfour are far more ''regular'', far less unusual, if we recall the schemata of d'Herbelot and Dante and add to them both a modernized, efficient engine (like the nineteenth-century European empire) and a positive twist: since one cannot ontologically obliterate the Orient (as d'Herbelot and Dante perhaps realized), one does have the means to capture it, treat it, describe it, improve it, radically alter it.<br /> <br /> The point I am trying to make here is that the transition from a merely textual apprehension, formulation, or definition of the Orient to the putting of all this into practice in the Orient did take place, and that Orientalism had much to do with that--if I may use the word in a literal sense''--preposterous'' transition. So far as its strictly scholarly work was concerned (and I find the idea of strictly scholarly work as disinterested and abstract hard to understand: still, we can allow it intellectually), Orientalism did a great many things. During its great age in the nineteenth century it produced scholars; it increased the number of languages taught in the West and the quantity of manuscripts edited, translated, and commented on; in many cases, it provided the Orient with sympathetic European students, genuinely interested in such matters as Sanskrit grammar, Phoenician numismatics, and Arabic poetry. Yet--and here we must be very clear--Orientalism overrode the Orient. As a system of thought about the Orient, it always rose from the specifically human detail to the general transhuman one; an observation about a tenth-century Arab poet multiplied itself into a policy towards (and about) the Oriental mentality in Egypt, Iraq, or Arabia. Similarly a verse from the Koran would be considered the best evidence of an ineradicable Muslim sensuality. Orientalism assumed an unchanging Orient, absolutely different (the reasons change from epoch to epoch) from the West. And Orientalism, in its post-eighteenth-century form, could never revise itself. All this makes Cromer and Balfour, as observers and administrators of the Orient, inevitable.<br /> <br /> The closeness between politics and Orientalism, or to put it more circumspectly, the great likelihood that ideas about the Orient drawn from Orientalism can be put to political use, is an important yet extremely sensitive truth. It raises questions about the predisposition towards innocence or guilt, scholarly disinterest or pressure-group complicity, in such fields as black or women's studies. It necessarily provokes unrest in one's conscience about cultural, racial, or historical generalizations, their uses, value, degree of objectivity, and fundamental intent. More than anything else, the political and cultural circumstances in which Western Orientalism has flourished draw attention to the debased position of the Orient or Oriental as an object of study. Can any other than a political master-slave relation produce the Orientalized Orient perfectly characterized by Anwar Abdel Malek?<br /> <br /> a) On the level of the ''position of the problem'', and the problematic ... the Orient and Orientals [are considered by Orientalism] as an &quot;object&quot; of study, stamped with an otherness--as all that is different, whether it be &quot;subject&quot; or &quot;object&quot;--but of a constitutive otherness, of an essentialist character.... This &quot;object&quot; of study will be, as is customary, passive, non-participating, endowed with a &quot;historical&quot; subjectivity, above all, non-active, non-autonomous, non-sovereign with regard to itself: the only Orient or Oriental or &quot;subject&quot; which could be admitted, at the extreme limit, is the alienated being, philosophically, that is, other than itself in relationship to itself, posed, understood, defined--and acted--by others.<br /> <br /> b) On the level of the ''thematic'', [the Orientalists] adopt an essentialist conception of the countries, nations and peoples of the Orient under study, a conception which expresses itself through a characterized ethnist typology ... and will soon proceed with it towards racism.<br /> <br /> According to the traditional orientalists, an essence should exist--sometimes even clearly described in metaphysical terms--which constitutes the inalienable and common basis of all the beings considered; this essence is both &quot;historical,&quot; since it goes back to the dawn of history, and fundamentally a-historical, since it transfixes the being, &quot;the object&quot; of study, within its inalienable and nonevolutive specificity, instead of defining it as all other beings, states, nations, peoples, and cultures--as a product, a resultant of the vection of the forces operating in the field of historical evolution.<br /> <br /> Thus one ends with a typology--based on a real specificity, but detached from history, and, consequently, conceived as being intangible, essential--which makes of the studied &quot;object&quot; another being with regard to whom the studying subject is transcendent; we will have a homo Sinicus, a homo Arabicus (and why not a homo Aegypticus, etc.), a homo Africanus, the man--the &quot;normal man,&quot; it is understood--being the European man of the historical period, that is, since Greek antiquity. One sees how much, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, the hegemonism of possessing minorities, unveiled by Marx and Engels, and the anthropocentrism dismantled by Freud are accompanied by europocentrism in the area of human and social sciences, and more particularly in those in direct relationship with non-European peoples.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Anwar Abdel Malek, &quot;Orientalism in Crisis,&quot; ''Diogenes'' 44 (Winter 1963): 107-8.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Abdel Malek sees Orientalism as having a history which, according to the &quot;Oriental&quot; of the late twentieth century, led it to the impasse described above. Let us now briefly outline that history as it proceeded through the nineteenth century to accumulate weight and power, &quot;the hegemonism of possessing minorities,&quot; and anthropocentrism in alliance with Europocentrism. From the last decades of the eighteenth century and for at least a century and a half, Britain and France dominated Orientalism as a discipline. The great philological discoveries in comparative grammar made by Jones, Franz Bopp, Jakob Grimm, and others were originally indebted to manuscripts brought from the East to Paris and London. Almost without exception, every Orientalist began his career as a philologist, and the revolution in philology that produced Bopp, Sacy, Burnouf, and their students was a comparative science based on the premise that languages belong to families, of which the Indo-European and the Semitic are two great instances. From the outset, then, Orientalism carried forward two traits: (1) a newly found scientific self-consciousness based on the linguistic importance of the Orient to Europe, and (2) a proclivity to divide, subdivide, and redivide its subject matter without ever changing its mind about the Orient as being always the same, unchanging, uniform, and radically peculiar object.<br /> <br /> Friedrich Schlegel, who learned his Sanskrit in Paris, illustrates these traits together. Although by the time he published his ''Uber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier'' in 1808 Schlegel had practically renounced his Orientalism, he still held that Sanskrit and Persian on the one hand and Greek and German on the other had more affinities with each other than with the Semitic, Chinese, American, or African languages. Moreover, the Indo-European family was artistically simple and satisfactory in a way the Semitic, for one, was not. Such abstractions as this did not trouble Schlegel, for whom nations, races, minds, and peoples as things one could talk about passionately--in the ever-narrowing perspective of populism first adumbrated by Herder--held a lifelong fascination. Yet nowhere does Schlegel talk about the living, contemporary Orient. When he said in 1800, &quot;It is in the Orient that we must search for the highest Romanticism,&quot; he meant the Orient of the ''Sakuntala'', the Zend-Avesta, and the Upanishads. As for the Semites, whose language was agglutinative, unaesthetic, and mechanical, they were different, inferior, backward. Schlegel's lectures on language and on life, history, and literature are full of these discriminations, which he made without the slightest qualification. Hebrew, he said, was made for prophetic utterance and divination; the Muslims, however, espoused a &quot;dead empty Theism, a merely negative Unitarian faith.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Friedrich Schlegel, ''Uber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier: Ein Beitrag zur Begrundung der Altertumstunde'' (Heidelberg: Mohr &amp; Zimmer, 1808), pp. 44-59; Schlegel, ''Philosophie der Geschichte: In achtzehn Vorlesungen gehalten zu Wien im Jahre 1828'', ed. Jean-Jacques Anstett, vol. 9 of Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, ed. Ernest Behler (Munich: Ferdinand Schoningh, 1971), p. 275.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Much of the racism in Schlegel's strictures upon the Semites and other &quot;low&quot; Orientals was widely diffused in European culture. But nowhere else, unless it be later in the nineteenth century among Darwinian anthropologists and phrenologists, was it made the basis of a scientific subject matter as it was in comparative linguistics or philology. Language and race seemed inextricably tied, and the &quot;good&quot; Orient was invariably a classical period somewhere in a long-gone India, whereas the &quot;bad&quot; Orient lingered in present-day Asia, parts of North Africa, and Islam everywhere. &quot;Aryans&quot; were confined to Europe and the ancient Orient; as Leon Poliakov has shown (without once remarking, however, that &quot;Semites&quot; were not only the Jews but the Muslims as well&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Leon Poliakov, ''The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe'', trans. Edmund Howard (New York: Basic Books, 1974).&lt;/ref&gt;), the Aryan myth dominated historical and cultural anthropology at the expense of the &quot;lesser&quot; peoples.<br /> <br /> The official intellectual genealogy of Orientalism would certainly include Gobineau, Renan, Humboldt, Steinthal, Burnouf, Remusat, Palmer, Weil, Dozy, Muir, to mention a few famous names almost at random from the nineteenth century. It would also include the diffusive capacity of learned societies: the Societe asiatique, founded in 1822; the Royal Asiatic Society, founded in 1823; the American Oriental Society, founded in 1842; and so on. But it might perforce neglect the great contribution of imaginative and travel literature, which strengthened the divisions established by Orientalists between the various geographical, temporal, and racial departments of the Orient. Such neglect would be incorrect, since for the Islamic Orient this literature is especially rich and makes a significant contribution to building the Orientalist discourse. It includes work by Goethe, Hugo, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Kinglake, Nerval, Flaubert, Lane, Burton, Scott, Byron, Vigny, Disraeli, George Eliot, Gautier. Later, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, we could add Doughty, Barres, Loti, T. E. Lawrence, Forster. All these writers give a bolder outline to Disraeli's &quot;great Asiatic mystery.&quot; In this enterprise there is considerable support not only from the unearthing of dead Oriental civilizations (by European excavators) in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey, but also from major geographical surveys done all through the Orient.<br /> <br /> By the end of the nineteenth century these achievements were materially abetted by the European occupation of the entire Near Orient (with the exception of parts of the Ottoman Empire, which was swallowed up after 1918). The principal colonial powers once again were Britain and France, although Russia and Germany played some role as well.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;See Derek Hopwood, ''The Russian Presence in Syria and Palestine, 1843-1943: Church and Politics in the Near East'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).&lt;/ref&gt; To colonize meant at first the identification--indeed, the creation--of interests; these could be commercial, communicational, religious, military, cultural. With regard to Islam and the Islamic territories, for example, Britain felt that it had legitimate interests, as a Christian power, to safeguard. A complex apparatus for tending these interests developed. Such early organizations as the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (1698) and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (1701) were succeeded and later abetted by the Baptist Missionary Society (1792), the Church Missionary Society (1799), the British and Foreign Bible Society (1804), the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews (1808). These missions &quot;openly joined the expansion of Europe.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;A. L. Tibawi, ''British Interests in Palestine, 1800-1901'' (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 5.&lt;/ref&gt; Add to these the trading societies, learned societies, geographical exploration funds, translation funds, the implantation in the Orient of schools, missions, consular offices, factories, and sometimes large European communities, and the notion of an &quot;interest&quot; will acquire a good deal of sense. Thereafter interests were defended with much zeal and expense.<br /> <br /> So far my outline is a gross one. What of the typical experiences and emotions that accompany both the scholarly advances of Orientalism and the political conquests aided by Orientalism? First, there is disappointment that the modern Orient is not at all like the texts. Here is Gerard de Nerval writing to Theophile Gautier at the end of August 1843:<br /> <br /> I have already lost, Kingdom after Kingdom, province after province, the more beautiful half of the universe, and soon I will know of no place in which I can find a refuge for my dreams; but it is Egypt that I most regret having driven out of my imagination, now that I have sadly placed it in my memory.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Gerard de Nerval, ''Oeuvres'', ed. Albert Beguin and Jean Richet (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), 1: 933.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> This is by the author of a great ''Voyage en Orient''. Nerval's lament is a common topic of Romanticism (the betrayed dream, as described by Albert Beguin in ''L'Ame romantique et le reve'') and of travelers in the Biblical Orient, from Chateaubriand to Mark Twain. Any direct experience of the mundane Orient ironically comments on such valorizations of it as were to be found in Goethe's &quot;Mahometsgesang&quot; or Hugo's &quot;Adieux de l'hotesse arabe.&quot; Memory of the modern Orient disputes imagination, sends one back to the imagination as a place preferable, for the European sensibility, to the real Orient. For a person who has never seen the Orient, Nerval once said to Gautier, a lotus is still a lotus; for me it is only a kind of onion. To write about the modern Orient is either to reveal an upsetting demystification of images culled from texts, or to confine oneself to the Orient of which Hugo spoke in his original preface to ''Les Orientales'', the Orient as &quot;image&quot; or &quot;pensee,&quot; symbols of &quot;une sorte de preoccupation generale.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Hugo, ''Oeuvres poetiques'', 1: 580.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> If personal disenchantment and general preoccupation fairly map the Orientalist sensibility at first, they entail certain other more familiar habits of thought, feeling, and perception. The mind learns to separate a general apprehension of the Orient from a specific experience of it; each goes its separate way, so to speak. In Scott's novel ''The Talisman'' (1825), Sir Kenneth (of the Crouching Leopard) battles a single Saracen to a standoff somewhere in the Palestinian desert; as the Crusader and his opponent, who is Saladin in disguise, later engage in conversation, the Christian discovers his Muslim antagonist to be not so bad a fellow after all. Yet he remarks:<br /> <br /> I well thought ... that your blinded race had their descent from the foul fiend, without whose aid you would never have been able to maintain this blessed land of Palestine against so many valiant soldiers of God. I speak not thus of thee in particular, Saracen, but generally of thy people and religion. Strange is it to me, however, not that you should have the descent from the Evil One, but that you should boast of it.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Sir Walter Scott, ''The Talisman'' (1825; reprint ed., London: J. M. Dent, 1914), pp. 38-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> For indeed the Saracen does boast of tracing his race's line back to Eblis, the Muslim Lucifer. But what is truly curious is not the feeble historicism by which Scott makes the scene &quot;medieval,&quot; letting Christian attack Muslim theologically in a way nineteenth-century Europeans would not (they would, though); rather, it is the airy condescension of damning a whole people &quot;generally&quot; while mitigating the offense with a cool &quot;I don't mean you in particular.&quot;<br /> <br /> Scott, however, was no expert on Islam (although H. A. R. Gibb, who was, praised ''The Talisman'' for its insight into Islam and Saladin&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;See Albert Hourani, &quot;Sir Hamilton Gibb, 1895-1971,&quot; ''Proceedings of the British Academy'' 58 (1972): 495.&lt;/ref&gt;), and he was taking enormous liberties with Eblis's role by turning him into a hero for the faithful. Scott's knowledge probably came from Byron and Beckford, but it is enough for us here to note how strongly the general character ascribed to things Oriental could withstand both the rhetorical and the existential force of obvious exceptions. It is as if, on the one hand, a bin called &quot;Oriental&quot; existed into which all the authoritative, anonymous, and traditional Western attitudes to the East were dumped unthinkingly, while on the other, true to the anecdotal tradition of storytelling, one could nevertheless tell of experiences with or in the Orient that had little to do with the generally serviceable bin. But the very structure of Scott's prose shows a closer intertwining of the two than that. For the general category in advance offers the specific instance a limited terrain in which to operate: no matter how deep the specific exception, no matter how much a single Oriental can escape the fences placed around him, he is ''first'' an Oriental, ''second'' a human being, and ''last'' again an Oriental.<br /> <br /> So general a category as &quot;Oriental&quot; is capable of quite interesting variations. Disraeli's enthusiasm for the Orient appeared first during a trip East in 1831. In Cairo he wrote, &quot;My eyes and mind yet ache with a grandeur so little in unison with our own likeness.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Quoted by B. R. Jerman, ''The Young Disraeli'' (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1960), p. 126. See also Robert Blake, ''Disraeli'' (London: Eyre &amp; Spottiswoode, 1966), pp. 59-70.&lt;/ref&gt; General grandeur and passion inspired a transcendent sense of things and little patience for actual reality. His novel ''Tancred'' is steeped in racial and geographical platitudes; everything is a matter of race, Sidonia states, so much so that salvation can only be found in the Orient and amongst its races. There, as a case in point, Druzes, Christians, Muslims, and Jews hobnob easily because--someone quips--Arabs are simply Jews on horseback, and all are Orientals at heart. The unisons are made between general categories, not between categories and what they contain. An Oriental lives in the Orient, he lives a life of Oriental ease, in a state of Oriental despotism and sensuality, imbued with a feeling of Oriental fatalism. Writers as different as Marx, Disraeli, Burton, and Nerval could carry on a lengthy discussion between themselves, as it were, using all those generalities unquestioningly and yet intelligibly.<br /> <br /> With disenchantment and a generalized--not to say schizophrenic--view of the Orient, there is usually another peculiarity. Because it is made into a general object, the whole Orient can be made to serve as an illustration of a particular form of eccentricity. Although the individual Oriental cannot shake or disturb the general categories that make sense of his oddness, his oddness can nevertheless be enjoyed for its own sake. Here, for example, is Flaubert describing the spectacle of the Orient:<br /> <br /> To amuse the crowd, Mohammed Ali's jester took a woman in a Cairo bazaar one day, set her on the counter of a shop, and coupled with her publicly while the shopkeeper calmly smoked his pipe.<br /> <br /> On the road from Cairo to Shubra some time ago a young fellow had himself publicly buggered by a large monkey--as in the story above, to create a good opinion of himself and make people laugh.<br /> <br /> A marabout died a while ago--an idiot--who had long passed as a saint marked by God; all the Moslem women came to see him and masturbated him--in the end he died of exhaustion--from morning to night it was a perpetual jacking-off....<br /> <br /> ''Quid dicis'' of the following fact: some time ago a ''santon'' (ascetic priest) used to walk through the streets of Cairo completely naked except for a cap on his head and another on his prick. To piss he would doff the prick-cap, and sterile women who wanted children would run up, put themselves under the parabola of his urine and rub themselves with it.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;''Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour'', trans, and ed. Francis Steegmuller (Boston: Little, Brown &amp; Co., 1973), pp. 44-5. See Gustave Flaubert, ''Correspondance'', ed. Jean Bruneau (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), 1: 542.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Flaubert frankly acknowledges that this is grotesquerie of a special kind. &quot;All the old comic business&quot;--by which Flaubert meant the well-known conventions of &quot;the cudgeled slave ... the coarse trafficker in women ... the thieving merchant&quot;--acquire a new, &quot;fresh ... genuine and charming&quot; meaning in the Orient. This meaning cannot be reproduced; it can only be enjoyed on the spot and &quot;brought back&quot; very approximately. The Orient is ''watched'', since its almost (but never quite) offensive behavior issues out of a reservoir of infinite peculiarity; the European, whose sensibility tours the Orient, is a watcher, never involved, always detached, always ready for new examples of what the ''Description de l'Egypte'' called &quot;bizarre jouissance.&quot; The Orient becomes a living tableau of queerness.<br /> <br /> And this tableau quite logically becomes a special topic for texts. Thus the circle is completed; from being exposed as what texts do not prepare one for, the Orient can return as something one writes about in a disciplined way. Its foreignness can be translated, its meanings decoded, its hostility tamed; yet the ''generality'' assigned to the Orient, the disenchantment that one feels after encountering it, the unresolved eccentricity it displays, are all redistributed in what is said or written about it. Islam, for example, was typically Oriental for Orientalists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Carl Becker argued that although &quot;Islam&quot; (note the vast generality) inherited the Hellenic tradition, it could neither grasp nor employ the Greek, humanistic tradition; moreover, to understand Islam one needed above all else to see it, not as an &quot;original&quot; religion, but as a sort of failed Oriental attempt to employ Greek philosophy without the creative inspiration that we find in Renaissance Europe.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;This is the argument presented in Carl H. Becker, ''Das Erbe der Antike im Orient und Okzident'' (Leipzig: Quelle &amp; Meyer, 1931).&lt;/ref&gt; For Louis Massignon, perhaps the most renowned and influential of modern French Orientalists, Islam was a systematic rejection of the Christian incarnation, and its greatest hero was not Mohammed or Averroes but al-Hallaj, a Muslim saint who was crucified by the orthodox Muslims for having dared to personalize Islam.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;See Louis Massignon, ''La Passion d'al-Hosayn-ibn-Mansour al-Hallaj'' (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1922).&lt;/ref&gt; What Becker and Massignon explicitly left out of their studies was the eccentricity of the Orient, which they backhandedly acknowledged by trying so hard to regularize it in Western terms. Mohammed was thrown out, but al-Hallaj was made prominent because he took himself to be a Christ-figure.<br /> <br /> As a judge of the Orient, the modern Orientalist does not, as he believes and even says, stand apart from it objectively. His human detachment, whose sign is the absence of sympathy covered by professional knowledge, is weighted heavily with all the orthodox attitudes, perspectives, and moods of Orientalism that I have been describing. His Orient is not the Orient as it is, but the Orient as it has been Orientalized. An unbroken arc of knowledge and power connects the European or Western statesman and the Western Orientalists; it forms the rim of the stage containing the Orient. By the end of World War I both Africa and the Orient formed not so much an intellectual spectacle for the West as a privileged terrain for it. The scope of Orientalism exactly matched the scope of empire, and it was this absolute unanimity between the two that provoked the only crisis in the history of Western thought about and dealings with the Orient. And this crisis continues now.<br /> <br /> Beginning in the twenties, and from one end of the Third World to the other, the response to empire and imperialism has been dialectical. By the time of the Bandung Conference in 1955 the entire Orient had gained its political independence from the Western empires and confronted a new configuration of imperial powers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Unable to recognize &quot;its&quot; Orient in the new Third World, Orientalism now faced a challenging and politically armed Orient. Two alternatives opened before Orientalism. One was to carry on as if nothing had happened. The second was to adapt the old ways to the new. But to the Orientalist, who believes the Orient never changes, the new is simply the old betrayed by new, misunderstanding ''dis-Orientals'' (we can permit ourselves the neologism). A third, revisionist alternative, to dispense with Orientalism altogether, was considered by only a tiny minority.<br /> <br /> One index of the crisis, according to Abdel Malek, was not simply that &quot;national liberation movements in the ex-colonial&quot; Orient worked havoc with Orientalist conceptions of passive, fatalistic &quot;subject races&quot;; there was in addition the fact that &quot;specialists and the public at large became aware of the time-lag, not only between orientalist science and the material under study, but also--and this was to be determining--between the conceptions, the methods and the instruments of work in the human and social sciences and those of orientalism.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Abdel Malek, &quot;Orientalism in Crisis,&quot; p. 112.&lt;/ref&gt; The Orientalists--from Renan to Goldziher to Macdonald to von Grunebaum, Gibb, and Bernard Lewis--saw Islam, for example, as a &quot;cultural synthesis&quot; (the phrase is P. M. Holt's) that could be studied apart from the economics, sociology, and politics of the Islamic peoples. For Orientalism, Islam had a meaning which, if one were to look for its most succinct formulation, could be found in Renan's first treatise: in order best to be understood Islam had to be reduced to &quot;tent and tribe.&quot; The impact of colonialism, of worldly circumstances, of historical development: all these were to Orientalists as flies to wanton boys, killed--or disregarded--for their sport, never taken seriously enough to complicate the essential Islam.<br /> <br /> The career of H. A. R. Gibb illustrates within itself the two alternative approaches by which Orientalism has responded to the modern Orient. In 1945 Gibb delivered the Haskell Lectures at the University of Chicago. The world he surveyed was not the same one Balfour and Cromer knew before World War I. Several revolutions, two world wars, and innumerable economic, political, and social changes made the realities of 1945 an unmistakably, even cataclysmically, new object. Yet we find Gibb opening the lectures he called ''Modern Trends in Islam'' as follows:<br /> <br /> The student of Arabic civilization is constantly brought up against the striking contrast between the imaginative power displayed, for example, in certain branches of Arabic literature and the literalism, the pedantry, displayed in reasoning and exposition, even when it is devoted to these same productions. It is true that there have been great philosophers among the Muslim peoples and that some of them were Arabs, but they were rare exceptions. The Arab mind, whether in relation to the outer world or in relation to the processes of thought, cannot throw off its intense feeling for the separateness and the individuality of the concrete events. This is, I believe, one of the main factors lying behind that &quot;lack of a sense of law&quot; which Professor Macdonald regarded as the characteristic difference in the Oriental.<br /> <br /> It is this, too, which explains--what is so difficult for the Western student to grasp [until it is explained to him by the Orientalist]--the aversion of the Muslims from the thought-processes of rationalism.... The rejection of rationalist modes of thought and of the utilitarian ethic which is inseparable from them has its roots, therefore, not in the so-called &quot;obscurantism&quot; of the Muslim theologians but in the atomism and discreteness of the Arab imagination.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;H. A. R. Gibb, ''Modern Trends in Islam'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947), p. 7.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> This is pure Orientalism, of course, but even if one acknowledges the exceeding knowledge of institutional Islam that characterizes the rest of the book, Gibb's inaugural biases remain a formidable obstacle for anyone hoping to understand modern Islam. What is the meaning of &quot;difference&quot; when the preposition &quot;from&quot; has dropped from sight altogether? Are we not once again being asked to inspect the Oriental Muslim as if his world, unlike ours--&quot;differently&quot; from it--had never ventured beyond the seventh century? As for modern Islam itself, despite the complexities of his otherwise magisterial understanding of it, why must it be regarded with so implacable a hostility as Gibb's? If Islam is flawed from the start by virtue of its permanent disabilities, the Orientalist will find himself opposing any Islamic attempts to reform Islam, because, according to his views, reform is a betrayal of Islam: this is exactly Gibb's argument. How can an Oriental slip out from these manacles into the modern world except by repeating with the Fool in ''King Lear'', &quot;They'll have me whipp'd for speaking true, thou'lt have me whipp'd for lying; and sometimes I am whipp'd for holding my peace.&quot;<br /> <br /> Eighteen years later Gibb faced an audience of English compatriots, only now he was speaking as the director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard. His topic was &quot;Area Studies Reconsidered,&quot; in which, among other ''apercus'', he agreed that &quot;the Orient is much too important to be left to the Orientalists.&quot; The new, or second alternative, approach open to Orientalists was being announced, just as ''Modern Trends'' exemplified the first, or traditional, approach. Gibb's formula is well-intentioned in &quot;Area Studies Reconsidered,&quot; so far, of course, as the Western experts on the Orient are concerned, whose job it is to prepare students for careers &quot;in public life and business.&quot; What we now need, said Gibb, is the traditional Orientalist ''plus'' a good social scientist working together: between them the two will do &quot;interdisciplinary&quot; work. Yet the traditional Orientalist will not bring outdated knowledge to bear on the Orient; no, his expertise will serve to remind his uninitiated colleagues in area studies that &quot;to apply the psychology and mechanics of Western political institutions to Asian or Arab situations is pure Walt Disney.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Gibb, ''Area Studies Reconsidered'', pp. 12, 13.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In practice this notion has meant that when Orientals struggle against colonial occupation, you must say (in order not to risk a Disneyism) that Orientals have never understood the meaning of self-government the way &quot;we&quot; do. When some Orientals oppose racial discrimination while others practice it, you say &quot;they're all Orientals at bottom&quot; and class interest, political circumstances, economic factors are totally irrelevant. Or with Bernard Lewis, you say that if Arab Palestinians oppose Israeli settlement and occupation of their lands, then that is merely &quot;the return of Islam,&quot; or, as a renowned contemporary Orientalist defines it, Islamic opposition to non-Islamic peoples,&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Bernard Lewis, &quot;The Return of Islam,&quot; ''Commentary'', January 1976, pp. 39-49.&lt;/ref&gt; a principle of Islam enshrined in the seventh century. History, politics, and economics do not matter. Islam is Islam, the Orient is the Orient, and please take all your ideas about a left and a right wing, revolutions, and change back to Disneyland.<br /> <br /> If such tautologies, claims, and dismissals have not sounded familiar to historians, sociologists, economists, and humanists in any other field except Orientalism, the reason is patently obvious. For like its putative subject matter, Orientalism has not allowed ideas to violate its profound serenity. But modern Orientalists--or area experts, to give them their new name--have not passively sequestered themselves in language departments. On the contrary, they have profited from Gibb's advice. Most of them today are indistinguishable from other &quot;experts&quot; and &quot;advisers&quot; in what Harold Lasswell has called the policy sciences.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;See Daniel Lerner and Harold Lasswell, eds., ''The Policy Sciences: Recent Developments in Scope and Method'' (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1951).&lt;/ref&gt; Thus the military-national-security possibilities of an alliance, say, between a specialist in &quot;national character analysis&quot; and an expert in Islamic institutions were soon recognized, for expediency's sake if for nothing else. After all, the &quot;West&quot; since World War II had faced a clever totalitarian enemy who collected allies for itself among gullible Oriental (African, Asian, undeveloped) nations. What better way of outflanking that enemy than by playing to the Oriental's illogical mind in ways only an Orientalist could devise? Thus emerged such masterful ploys as the stick-and-carrot technique, the Alliance for Progress, SEATO, and so forth, all of them based on traditional &quot;knowledge&quot; retooled for better manipulation of its supposed object.<br /> <br /> Thus as revolutionary turmoil grips the Islamic Orient, sociologists remind us that Arabs are addicted to &quot;oral functions,&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Morroe Berger, ''The Arab World Today'' (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday &amp; Co., 1962), p. 158.&lt;/ref&gt; while economists--recycled Orientalists--observe that for modern Islam neither capitalism nor socialism is an adequate rubric.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;There is a compendium of such attitudes listed and criticized in Maxime Rodinson, ''Islam and Capitalism'', trans. Brian Pearce (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973).&lt;/ref&gt; As anticolonialism sweeps and indeed unifies the entire Oriental world, the Orientalist damns the whole business not only as a nuisance but as an insult to the Western democracies. As momentous, generally important issues face the world--issues involving nuclear destruction, catastrophically scarce resources, unprecedented human demands for equality, justice, and economic parity--popular caricatures of the Orient are exploited by politicians whose source of ideological supply is not only the half-literate technocrat but the superliterate Orientalist. The legendary Arabists in the State Department warn of Arab plans to take over the world. The perfidious Chinese, half-naked Indians, and passive Muslims are described as vultures for &quot;our&quot; largesse and are damned when &quot;we lose them&quot; to communism, or to their unregenerate Oriental instincts: the difference is scarcely significant.<br /> <br /> These contemporary Orientalist attitudes flood the press and the popular mind. Arabs, for example, are thought of as camel-riding, terroristic, hook-nosed, venal lechers whose undeserved wealth is an affront to real civilization. Always there lurks the assumption that although the Western consumer belongs to a numerical minority, he is entitled either to own or to expend (or both) the majority of the world resources. Why? Because he, unlike the Oriental, is a true human being. No better instance exists today of what Anwar Abdel Malek calls &quot;the hegemonism of possessing minorities&quot; and anthropocentrism allied with Europocentrism: a white middle-class Westerner believes it his human prerogative not only to manage the nonwhite world but also to own it, just because by definition &quot;it&quot; is not quite as human as &quot;we&quot; are. There is no purer example than this of dehumanized thought.<br /> <br /> In a sense the limitations of Orientalism are, as I said earlier, the limitations that follow upon disregarding, essentializing, denuding the humanity of another culture, people, or geographical region. But Orientalism has taken a further step than that: it views the Orient as something whose existence is not only displayed but has remained fixed in time and place for the West. So impressive have the descriptive and textual successes of Orientalism been that entire periods of the Orient's cultural, political, and social history are considered mere responses to the West. The West is the actor, the Orient a passive reactor. The West is the spectator, the judge and jury, of every facet of Oriental behavior. Yet if history during the twentieth century has provoked intrinsic change in and for the Orient, the Orientalist is stunned: he cannot realize that to some extent<br /> <br /> the new [Oriental] leaders, intellectuals or policy-makers, have learned many lessons from the travail of their predecessors. They have also been aided by the structural and institutional transformations accomplished in the intervening period and by the fact that they are to a great extent more at liberty to fashion the future of their countries. They are also much more confident and perhaps slightly aggressive. No longer do they have to function hoping to obtain a favorable verdict from the invisible jury of the West. Their dialogue is not with the West, it is with their fellow-citizens.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, &quot;Retreat from the Secular Path? Islamic Dilemmas of Arab Politics,&quot; ''Review of Politics'' 28, no. 4 (October 1966): 475.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Moreover, the Orientalist assumes that what his texts have not prepared him for is the result either of outside agitation in the Orient or of the Orient's misguided inanity. None of the innumerable Orientalist texts on Islam, including their summa, ''The Cambridge History of Islam'', can prepare their reader for what has taken place since 1948 in Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, or the Yemens. When the dogmas about Islam cannot serve, not even for the most Panglossian Orientalist, there is recourse to an Orientalized social-science jargon, to such marketable abstractions as elites, political stability, modernization, and institutional development, all stamped with the cachet of Orientalist wisdom. In the meantime a growing, more and more dangerous rift separates Orient and Occident.<br /> <br /> The present crisis dramatizes the disparity between texts and reality. Yet in this study of Orientalism I wish not only to expose the sources of Orientalism's views but also to reflect on its importance, for the contemporary intellectual rightly feels that to ignore a part of the world now demonstrably encroaching upon him is to avoid reality. Humanists have too often confined their attention to departmentalized topics of research. They have neither watched nor learned from disciplines like Orientalism whose unremitting ambition was to master ''all'' of a world, not some easily delimited part of it such as an author or a collection of texts. However, along with such academic security-blankets as &quot;history,&quot; &quot;literature,&quot; or &quot;the humanities,&quot; and despite its overreaching aspirations, Orientalism is involved in worldly, historical circumstances which it has tried to conceal behind an often pompous scientism and appeals to rationalism. The contemporary intellectual can learn from Orientalism how, on the one hand, either to limit or to enlarge realistically the scope of his discipline's claims, and on the other, to see the human ground (the foul-rag-and-bone shop of the heart, Yeats called it) in which texts, visions, methods, and disciplines begin, grow, thrive, and degenerate. To investigate Orientalism is also to propose intellectual ways for handling the methodological problems that history has brought forward, so to speak, in its subject matter, the Orient. But before that we must virtually see the humanistic values that Orientalism, by its scope, experiences, and structures, has all but eliminated.<br /> <br /> === Footnotes ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;2.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> == '''2.''' '''Orientalist Structures and Restructures''' ==<br /> When the seyyid 'Omar, the Nakeeb el-Ashraf (or chief of the descendants of the Prophet) ... married a daughter, about forty-five years since, there walked before the procession a young man who had made an incision in his abdomen, and drawn out a large portion of his intestines, which he carried before him on a silver tray. After the procession, he restored them to their proper place, and remained in bed many days before he recovered from the effects of this foolish and disgusting act.<br /> <br /> --Edward William Lane, ''An Account of the Manners and Customs of the modern Egyptians''<br /> <br /> ... dans le cas de la chute de cet empire, soit par une revolution a Constantinople, soit par un demembrement successif, les puissances europeennes prendront chacune, a titre de protectorat, la partie de l'empire qui lui sera assignee par les stipulations du congres; que ces protectorats, definis et limites, quant aux territoires, selon les voisinages, la surete des frontieres, l'analogie de religions, de moeurs et d'interets ... ne consacreront que la suzerainete des puissances. Cette sorte de suzerainete definie ainsi, et consacree comme droit europeen, consistera principalement dans le droit d'occuper telle partie du territoire ou des cotes, pour y fonder, soit des villes libres, soit des colonies europeennes, soit des ports et des echelles de commerce.... Ce n'est qu'une tutelle armee et civilisatrice que chaque puissance exercera sur son protectorat; elle garantira son existence et ses elements de nationalite, sous le drapeau d'une nationalite plus forte....<br /> <br /> --Alphonse de Lamartine, ''Voyage en Orient''<br /> <br /> === '''I.''' '''Redrawn Frontiers, Redefined Issues, Secularized Religion''' ===<br /> Gustave Flaubert died in 1880 without having finished ''Bouvard et Pecuchet'', his comic encyclopedic novel on the degeneration of knowledge and the inanity of human effort. Nevertheless the essential outlines of his vision are clear, and are clearly supported by the ample detail of his novel. The two clerks are members of the bourgeoisie who, because one of them is the unexpected beneficiary of a handsome will, retire from the city to spend their lives on a country estate doing what they please (&quot;nous ferons tout ce que nous plaira!&quot;). As Flaubert portrays their experience, doing as they please involves Bouvard and Pecuchet in a practical and theoretical jaunt through agriculture, history, chemistry, education, archaeology, literature, always with less than successful results; they move through fields of learning like travelers in time and knowledge, experiencing the disappointments, disasters, and letdowns of uninspired amateurs. What they move through, in fact, is the whole disillusioning experience of the nineteenth century, whereby--in Charles Moraze's phrase--&quot;les bourgeois conquerants&quot; turn out to be the bumbling victims of their own leveling incompetence and mediocrity. Every enthusiasm resolves itself into a boring cliche, and every discipline or type of knowledge changes from hope and power into disorder, ruin, and sorrow.<br /> <br /> Among Flaubert's sketches for the conclusion of this panorama of despair are two items of special interest to us here. The two men debate the future of mankind. Pecuchet sees &quot;the future of Humanity through a glass darkly,&quot; whereas Bouvard sees it &quot;brightly!&quot;<br /> <br /> Modern man is progressing, Europe will be regenerated by Asia. The historical law that civilization moves from Orient to Occident ... the two forms of humanity will at last be soldered together.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Gustave Flaubert, ''Bouvard et Pecuchet'', vol. 2 of ''Oeuvres'', ed. A. Thibaudet and R. Dumesnil (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), p. 985.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> This obvious echo of Quinet represents the start of still another of the cycles of enthusiasm and disillusionment through which the two men will pass. Flaubert's notes indicate that like all his others, this anticipated project of Bouvard's is rudely interrupted by reality--this time by the sudden appearance of gendarmes who accuse him of debauchery. A few lines later, however, the second item of interest turns up. The two men simultaneously confess to each other that their secret desire is once again to become copyists. They have a double desk made for them, they buy books, pencils, erasers, and--as Flaubert concludes the sketch--&quot;ils s'y mettent&quot;: they turn to. From trying to live through and apply knowledge more or less directly, Bouvard and Pecuchet are reduced finally to transcribing it uncritically from one text to another.<br /> <br /> Although Bouvard's vision of Europe regenerated by Asia is not fully spelled out, it (and what it comes to on the copyist's desk) can be glossed in several important ways. Like many of the two men's other visions, this one is ''global'' and it is ''reconstructive''; it represents what Flaubert felt to be the nineteenth-century predilection for the rebuilding of the world according to an imaginative vision, sometimes accompanied by a special scientific technique. Among the visions Flaubert has in mind are the utopias of Saint-Simon and Fourier, the scientific regenerations of mankind envisioned by Comte, and all the technical or secular religions promoted by ideologues, positivists, eclectics, occultists, traditionalists, and idealists such as Destutt de Tracy, Cabanis, Michelet, Cousin, Proudhon, Cournot, Cabet, Janet, and Lamennais.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;There is an illuminating account of these visions and utopias in Donald G. Charlton, ''Secular Religions in France, 1815-1870'' (London: Oxford University Press, 1963).&lt;/ref&gt; Throughout the novel Bouvard and Pecuchet espouse the various causes of such figures; then, having ruined them, they move on looking for newer ones, but with no better results.<br /> <br /> The roots of such revisionist ambitions as these are Romantic in a very specific way. We must remember the extent to which a major part of the spiritual and intellectual project of the late eighteenth century was a reconstituted theology--natural supernaturalism, as M. H. Abrams has called it; this type of thought is carried forward by the typical nineteenth-century attitudes Flaubert satirizes in ''Bouvard et Pecuchet''. The notion of regeneration therefore harks back to<br /> <br /> a conspicuous Romantic tendency, after the rationalism and decorum of the Enlightenment ... [to revert] to the stark drama and suprarational mysteries of the Christian story and doctrines and to the violent conflicts and abrupt reversals of the Christian inner life, turning on the extremes of destruction and creation, hell and heaven, exile and reunion, death and rebirth, dejection and joy, paradise lost and paradise regained.... But since they lived, inescapably, after the Enlightenment, Romantic writers revived these ancient matters with a difference: they undertook to save the overview of human history and destiny, the existential paradigms, and the cardinal values of their religious heritage, by reconstituting them in a way that would make them intellectually acceptable, as well as emotionally pertinent, for the time being.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;M. H. Abrams, ''Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature'' (New York: W. W. Norton &amp; Co., 1971), p. 66.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> What Bouvard has in mind--the regeneration of Europe by Asia--was a very influential Romantic idea. Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, for example, urged upon their countrymen, and upon Europeans in general, a detailed study of India because, they said, it was Indian culture and religion that could defeat the materialism and mechanism (and republicanism) of Occidental culture. And from this defeat would arise a new, revitalized Europe: the Biblical imagery of death, rebirth, and redemption is evident in this prescription. Moreover, the Romantic Orientalist project was not merely a specific instance of a general tendency; it was a powerful shaper of the tendency itself, as Raymond Schwab has so convincingly argued in ''La Renaissance orientale''. But what mattered was not Asia so much as Asia's ''use to'' modern Europe. Thus anyone who, like Schlegel or Franz Bopp, mastered an Oriental language was a spiritual hero, a knight-errant bringing back to Europe a sense of the holy mission it had now lost. It is precisely this sense that the later secular religions portrayed by Flaubert carry on in the nineteenth century. No less than Schlegel, Wordsworth, and Chateaubriand, Auguste Comte--like Bouvard--was the adherent and proponent of a secular post-Enlightenment myth whose outlines are unmistakably Christian.<br /> <br /> In regularly allowing Bouvard and Pecuchet to go through revisionist notions from start to comically debased finish, Flaubert drew attention to the human flaw common to all projects. He saw perfectly well that underneath the ''idee recue'' &quot;Europe-regenerated-by-Asia&quot; lurked a very insidious hubris. Neither &quot;Europe&quot; nor &quot;Asia&quot; was anything without the visionaries' technique for turning vast geographical domains into treatable, and manageable, entities. At bottom, therefore, Europe and Asia were ''our'' Europe and ''our'' Asia--our ''will'' and ''representation'', as Schopenhauer had said. Historical laws were in reality ''historians''&lt;nowiki/&gt;' laws, just as &quot;the two forms of humanity&quot; drew attention less to actuality than to a European capacity for lending man-made distinctions an air of inevitability. As for the other half of the phrase--&quot;will at last be soldered together&quot;--there Flaubert mocked the blithe indifference of science to actuality, a science which anatomized and melted human entities as if they were so much inert matter. But it was not just any science he mocked: it was enthusiastic, even messianic European science, whose victories included failed revolutions, wars, oppression, and an unteachable appetite for putting grand, bookish ideas quixotically to work immediately. What such science or knowledge never reckoned with was its own deeply ingrained and unself-conscious bad innocence and the resistance to it of reality. When Bouvard plays the scientist he naively assumes that science merely is, that reality is as the scientist says it is, that it does not matter whether the scientist is a fool or a visionary; he (or anyone who thinks like him) cannot see that the Orient may not wish to regenerate Europe, or that Europe was not about to fuse itself democratically with yellow or brown Asians. In short, such a scientist does not recognize in his science the egoistic will to power that feeds his endeavors and corrupts his ambitions.<br /> <br /> Flaubert, of course, sees to it that his poor fools are made to rub their noses in these difficulties. Bouvard and Pecuchet have learned that it is better not to traffic in ideas and in reality together. The novel's conclusion is a picture of the two of them now perfectly content to copy their favorite ideas faithfully from book onto paper. Knowledge no longer requires application to reality; knowledge is what gets passed on silently, without comment, from one text to another. Ideas are propagated and disseminated anonymously, they are repeated without attribution; they have literally become ''idees recues'': what matters is that they are ''there'', to be repeated, echoed, and re-echoed uncritically.<br /> <br /> In a highly compressed form this brief episode, taken out of Flaubert's notes for ''Bouvard et Pecuchet'', frames the specifically modern structures of Orientalism, which after all is one discipline among the secular (and quasi-religious) faiths of nineteenth-century European thought. We have already characterized the general scope of thought about the Orient that was handed on through the medieval and Renaissance periods, for which Islam was the essential Orient. During the eighteenth century, however, there were a number of new, interlocking elements that hinted at the coming evangelical phase, whose outlines Flaubert was later to re-create.<br /> <br /> For one, the Orient was being opened out considerably beyond the Islamic lands. This quantitative change was to a large degree the result of continuing, and expanding, European exploration of the rest of the world. The increasing influence of travel literature, imaginary utopias, moral voyages, and scientific reporting brought the Orient into sharper and more extended focus. If Orientalism is indebted principally to the fruitful Eastern discoveries of Anquetil and Jones during the latter third of the century, these must be seen in the wider context created by Cook and Bougainville, the voyages of Tournefort and Adanson, by the President de Brosses's ''Histoire des navigations aux terres australes'', by French traders in the Pacific, by Jesuit missionaries in China and the Americas, by William Dampier's explorations and reports, by innumerable speculations on giants, Patagonians, savages, natives, and monsters supposedly residing to the far east, west, south, and north of Europe. But all such widening horizons had Europe firmly in the privileged center, as main observer (or mainly observed, as in Goldsmith's ''Citizen of the World''). For even as Europe moved itself outwards, its sense of cultural strength was fortified. From travelers' tales, and not only from great institutions like the various India companies, colonies were created and ethnocentric perspectives secured.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;For some illuminating material see John P. Nash, &quot;The Connection of Oriental Studies with Commerce, Art, and Literature During the 18th-19th Centuries,&quot; ''Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society Journal'' 15 (1930): 33-9; also John F. Laffey, &quot;Roots of French Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of Lyon,&quot; ''French Historical Studies'' 6, no. 1 (Spring 1969): 78-92, and R. Leportier, ''L'Orient Porte des Indes'' (Paris: Editions France-Empire, 1970). There is a great deal of information in Henri Omont, ''Missions archeologiques francaises en Orient aux XVII&lt;sup&gt;e&lt;/sup&gt; et XVIII&lt;sup&gt;e&lt;/sup&gt; siecles'', 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1902), and in Margaret T. Hodgen, ''Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries'' (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), as well as in Norman Daniel, ''Islam, Europe and Empire'' (Edinburgh: University Press, 1966). Two indispensable short studies are Albert Hourani, &quot;Islam and the Philosophers of History,&quot; ''Middle Eastern Studies'' 3, no. 3 (April 1967): 206-68, and Maxime Rodinson, &quot;The Western Image and Western Studies of Islam,&quot; in ''The Legacy of Islam'', ed. Joseph Schacht and C. E. Bosworth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 9-62.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> For another, a more knowledgeable attitude towards the alien and exotic was abetted not only by travelers and explorers but also by historians for whom European experience could profitably be compared with other, as well as older, civilizations. That powerful current in eighteenth-century historical anthropology, described by scholars as the confrontation of the gods, meant that Gibbon could read the lessons of Rome's decline in the rise of Islam, just as Vico could understand modern civilization in terms of the barbaric, poetic splendor of their earliest beginnings. Whereas Renaissance historians judged the Orient inflexibly as an enemy, those of the eighteenth century confronted the Orient's peculiarities with some detachment and with some attempt at dealing directly with Oriental source material, perhaps because such a technique helped a European to know himself better. George Sale's translation of the Koran and his accompanying preliminary discourse illustrate the change. Unlike his predecessors, Sale tried to deal with Arab history in terms of Arab sources; moreover, he let Muslim commentators on the sacred text speak for themselves.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;P. M. Holt, &quot;The Treatment of Arab History by Prideaux, Ockley, and Sale,&quot; in ''Historians of the Middle East'', ed. Bernard Lewis and P. M. Holt (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 302. See also Holt's ''The Study of Modern Arab History'' (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1965).&lt;/ref&gt; In Sale, as throughout the eighteenth century, simple comparatism was the early phase of the comparative disciplines (philology, anatomy, jurisprudence, religion) which were to become the boast of nineteenth-century method.<br /> <br /> But there was a tendency among some thinkers to exceed comparative study, and its judicious surveys of mankind from &quot;China to Peru,&quot; by sympathetic identification. This is a third eighteenth-century element preparing the way for modern Orientalism. What today we call historicism is an eighteenth-century idea; Vico, Herder, and Hamann, among others, believed that all cultures were organically and internally coherent, bound together by a spirit, genius, ''Klima'', or national idea which an outsider could penetrate only by an act of historical sympathy. Thus Herder's ''Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit'' (1784-1791) was a panoramic display of various cultures, each permeated by an inimical creative spirit, each accessible only to an observer who sacrificed his prejudices to ''Einfuhlung''. Imbued with the, populist and pluralist sense of history advocated by Herder and others,&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;The view of Herder as populist and pluralist is advocated by Isaiah Berlin, ''Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas'' (New York: Viking Press, 1976).&lt;/ref&gt; an eighteenth-century mind could breach the doctrinal walls erected between the West and Islam and see hidden elements of kinship between himself and the Orient. Napoleon is a famous instance of this (usually selective) identification by sympathy. Mozart is another; ''The Magic Flute'' (in which Masonic codes intermingle with visions of a benign Orient) and ''The Abduction from the Seraglio'' locate a particularly magnanimous form of humanity in the Orient. And this, much more than the modish habits of &quot;Turkish&quot; music, drew Mozart sympathetically eastwards.<br /> <br /> It is very difficult nonetheless to separate such intuitions of the Orient as Mozart's from the entire range of pre-Romantic and Romantic representations of the Orient as exotic locale. Popular Orientalism during the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth attained a vogue of considerable intensity. But even this vogue, easily identifiable in William Beckford, Byron, Thomas Moore, and Goethe, cannot be simply detached from the interest taken in Gothic tales, pseudomedieval idylls, visions of barbaric splendor and cruelty. Thus in some cases the Oriental representation can be associated with Piranesi's prisons, in others with Tiepolo's luxurious ambiences, in still others with the exotic sublimity of late-eighteenth-century paintings.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;For a discussion of such motifs and representations, see Jean Starobinski, ''The Invention of Liberty'', ''1700-1789'', trans. Bernard C. Smith (Geneva: Skira, 1964).&lt;/ref&gt; Later in the nineteenth century, in the works of Delacroix and literally dozens of other French and British painters, the Oriental genre tableau carried representation into visual expression and a life of its own (which this book unfortunately must scant). Sensuality, promise, terror, sublimity, idyllic pleasure, intense energy: the Orient as a figure in the pre-Romantic, pretechnical Orientalist imagination of late-eighteenth-century Europe was really a chameleonlike quality called (adjectivally) &quot;Oriental.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;There are a small number of studies on this too-little-investigated subject. Some well-known ones are: Martha P. Conant, ''The Oriental Tale in England in the Eighteenth Century'' (1908; reprint ed., New York: Octagon Books, 1967); Marie E. de Meester, ''Oriental Influences in the English Literature of the Nineteenth Century, Anglistische Forschungen'', no. 46 (Heidelberg, 1915); Byron Porter Smith, ''Islam in English Literature'' (Beirut: American Press, 1939). See also Jean-Luc Doutrelant, &quot;L'Orient tragique au XVIII&lt;sup&gt;e&lt;/sup&gt; siecle,&quot; ''Revue des Sciences Humaines'' 146 (April-June 1972): 255-82.&lt;/ref&gt; But this free-floating Orient would be severely curtailed with the advent of academic Orientalism.<br /> <br /> A fourth element preparing the way for modern Orientalist structures was the whole impulse to classify nature and man into types. The greatest names are, of course, Linnaeus and Buffon, but the intellectual process by which bodily (and soon moral, intellectual, and spiritual) extension--the typical materiality of an object--could be transformed from mere spectacle to the precise measurement of characteristic elements was very widespread. Linnaeus said that every note made about a natural type &quot;should be a product of number, of form, of proportion, of situation,&quot; and indeed, if one looks in Kant or Diderot or Johnson, there is everywhere a similar penchant for dramatizing general features, for reducing vast numbers of objects to a smaller number of orderable and describable ''types''. In natural history, in anthropology, in cultural generalization, a type had a particular ''character'' which provided the observer with a designation and, as Foucault says, &quot;a controlled derivation.&quot; These types and characters belonged to a system, a network of related generalizations. Thus,<br /> <br /> all designation must be accomplished by means of a certain relation to all other possible designations. To know what properly appertains to one individual is to have before one the classification--or the possibility of classifying--all others.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Michel Foucault, ''The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences'' (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), pp. 138, 144. See also Francois Jacob, ''The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity'', trans. Betty E. Spillmann (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973), p. 50 and passim, and Georges Canguilhem, ''La Connaissance de la vie'' (Paris: Gustave-Joseph Vrin, 1969), pp. 44-63.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the writing of philosophers, historians, encyclopedists, and essayists we find character-as-designation appearing as physiological-moral classification: there are, for example, the wild men, the Europeans, the Asiatics, and so forth. These appear of course in Linnaeus, but also in Montesquieu, in Johnson, in Blumenbach, in Soemmerring, in Kant. Physiological and moral characteristics are distributed more or less equally: the American is &quot;red, choleric, erect,&quot; the Asiatic is &quot;yellow, melancholy, rigid,&quot; the African is &quot;black, phlegmatic, lax.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;See John G. Burke, &quot;The Wild Man's Pedigree: Scientific Method and Racial Anthropology,&quot; in ''The Wild Man Within: An Image in Western Thought from the Renaissance to Romanticism'', ed. Edward Dudley and Maximillian E. Novak (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), pp. 262-8. See also Jean Biou, &quot;Lumieres et anthropophagie,&quot; ''Revue des Sciences Humaines'' 146 (April-June 1972): 223-34.&lt;/ref&gt; But such designations gather power when, later in the nineteenth century, they are allied with character as derivation, as genetic type. In Vico and Rousseau, for example, the force of moral generalization is enhanced by the precision with which dramatic, almost archetypal figures--primitive man, giants, heroes--are shown to be the genesis of current moral, philosophic, even linguistic issues. Thus when an Oriental was referred to, it was in terms of such genetic universals as his &quot;primitive&quot; state, his primary characteristics, his particular spiritual background.<br /> <br /> The four elements I have described--expansion, historical confrontation, sympathy, classification--are the currents in eighteenth-century thought on whose presence the specific intellectual and institutional structures of modern Orientalism depend. Without them Orientalism, as we shall see presently, could not have occurred. Moreover, these elements had the effect of releasing the Orient generally, and Islam in particular, from the narrowly religious scrutiny by which it had hitherto been examined (and judged) by the Christian West. In other words, modern Orientalism derives from secularizing elements in eighteenth-century European culture. One, the expansion of the Orient further east geographically and further back temporally loosened, even dissolved, the Biblical framework considerably. Reference points were no longer Christianity and Judaism, with their fairly modest calendars and maps, but India, China, Japan, and Sumer, Buddhism, Sanskrit, Zoroastrianism, and Manu. Two, the capacity for dealing historically (and not reductively, as a topic of ecclesiastical politics) with non-European and non-Judeo-Christian cultures was strengthened as history itself was conceived of more radically than before; to understand Europe properly meant also understanding the objective relations between Europe and its own previously unreachable temporal and cultural frontiers. In a sense, John of Segovia's idea of ''contraferentia'' between Orient and Europe was realized, but in a wholly secular way; Gibbon could treat Mohammed as a historical figure who influenced Europe and not as a diabolical miscreant hovering somewhere between magic and false prophecy. Three, a selective identification with regions and cultures not one's own wore down the obduracy of self and identity, which had been polarized into a community of embattled believers facing barbarian hordes. The borders of Christian Europe no longer served as a kind of custom house; the notions of human association and of human possibility acquired a very wide general--as opposed to parochial--legitimacy. Four, the classifications of mankind were systematically multiplied as the possibilities of designation and derivation were refined beyond the categories of what Vico called gentile and sacred nations; race, color, origin, temperament, character, and types overwhelmed the distinction between Christians and everyone else.<br /> <br /> But if these interconnected elements represent a secularizing tendency, this is not to say that the old religious patterns of human history and destiny and &quot;the existential paradigms&quot; were simply removed. Far from it: they were reconstituted, redeployed, redistributed in the secular frameworks just enumerated. For anyone who studied the Orient a secular vocabulary in keeping with these frameworks was required. Yet if Orientalism provided the vocabulary, the conceptual repertoire, the techniques--for this is what, from the end of the eighteenth century on, Orientalism ''did'' and what Orientalism ''was''--it also retained, as an undislodged current in its discourse, a reconstructed religious impulse, a naturalized supernaturalism. What I shall try to show is that this impulse in Orientalism resided in the Orientalist's conception of himself, of the Orient, and of his discipline.<br /> <br /> The modern Orientalist was, in his view, a hero rescuing the Orient from the obscurity, alienation, and strangeness which he himself had properly distinguished. His research reconstructed the Orient's lost languages, mores, even mentalities, as Champollion reconstructed Egyptian hieroglyphics out of the Rosetta Stone. The specific Orientalist techniques--lexicography, grammar, translation, cultural decoding--restored, fleshed out, reasserted the values both of an ancient, classical Orient and of the traditional disciplines of philology, history, rhetoric, and doctrinal polemic. But in the process, the Orient and Orientalist disciplines changed dialectically, for they could not survive in their original form. The Orient, even in the &quot;classic&quot; form which the Orientalist usually studied, was modernized, restored to the present; the traditional disciplines too were brought into contemporary culture. Yet both bore the traces of ''power''--power to have resurrected, indeed created, the Orient, power that dwelt in the new, scientifically advanced techniques of philology and of anthropological generalization. In short, having transported the Orient into modernity, the Orientalist could celebrate his method, and his position, as that of a secular creator, a man who made new worlds as God had once made the old. As for carrying on such methods and such positions beyond the life-span of any individual Orientalist, there would be a secular tradition of continuity, a lay order of disciplined methodologists, whose brotherhood would be based, not on blood lineage, but upon a common discourse, a praxis, a library, a set of received ideas, in short, a doxology, common to everyone who entered the ranks. Flaubert was prescient enough to see that in time the modern Orientalist would become a copyist, like Bouvard and Pecuchet; but during the early days, in the careers of Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest Renan, no such danger was apparent.<br /> <br /> My thesis is that the essential aspects of modern Orientalist theory and praxis (from which present-day Orientalism derives) can be understood, not as a sudden access of objective knowledge about the Orient, but as a set of structures inherited from the past, secularized, redisposed, and re-formed by such disciplines as philology, which in turn were naturalized, modernized, and laicized substitutes for (or versions of) Christian supernaturalism. In the form of new texts and ideas, the East was accommodated to these structures. Linguists and explorers like Jones and Anquetil were contributors to modern Orientalism, certainly, but what distinguishes modern Orientalism as a field, a group of ideas, a discourse, is the work of a later generation than theirs. If we use the Napoleonic expedition (1798-1801) as a sort of first enabling experience for modern Orientalism, we can consider its inaugural heroes--in Islamic studies, Sacy and Renan and Lane--to be builders of the field, creators of a tradition, progenitors of the Orientalist brotherhood. What Sacy, Renan, and Lane did was to place Orientalism on a scientific and rational basis. This entailed not only their own exemplary work but also the creation of a vocabulary and ideas that could be used impersonally by anyone who wished to become an Orientalist. Their inauguration of Orientalism was a considerable feat. It made possible a scientific terminology; it banished obscurity and instated a special form of illumination for the Orient; it established the figure of the Orientalist as central authority ''for'' the Orient; it legitimized a special kind of specifically coherent Orientalist work; it put into cultural circulation a form of discursive currency by whose presence the Orient henceforth would be ''spoken for''; above all, the work of the inaugurators carved out a field of study and a family of ideas which in turn could form a community of scholars whose lineage, traditions, and ambitions were at once internal to the field and external enough for general prestige. The more Europe encroached upon the Orient during the nineteenth century, the more Orientalism gained in public confidence. Yet if this gain coincided with a loss in originality, we should not be entirely surprised, since its mode, from the beginning, was reconstruction and repetition.<br /> <br /> One final observation: The late-eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century ideas, institutions, and figures I shall deal with in this chapter are an important part, a crucial elaboration, of the first phase of the greatest age of territorial acquisition ever known. By the end of World War I Europe had colonized 85 percent of the earth. To say simply that modern Orientalism has been an aspect of both imperialism and colonialism is not to say anything very disputable. Yet it is not enough to say it; it needs to be worked through analytically and historically. I am interested in showing how modern Orientalism, unlike the precolonial awareness of Dante and d'Herbelot, embodies a systematic discipline of ''accumulation''. And far from this being exclusively an intellectual or theoretical feature, it made Orientalism fatally tend towards the systematic accumulation of human beings and territories. To reconstruct a dead or lost Oriental language meant ultimately to reconstruct a dead or neglected Orient; it also meant that reconstructive precision, science, even imagination could prepare the way for what armies, administrations, and bureaucracies would later do on the ground, in the Orient. In a sense, the vindication of Orientalism was not only its intellectual or artistic successes but its later effectiveness, its usefulness, its authority. Surely it deserves serious attention on all those counts.<br /> <br /> === '''II.''' '''Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest Renan: ''Rational Anthropology and Philological Laboratory''''' ===<br /> The two great themes of Silvestre de Sacy's life are heroic effort and a dedicated sense of pedagogic and rational utility. Born in 1757 into a Jansenist family whose occupation was traditionally that of ''notaire'', Antoine-Isaac-Silvestre was privately tutored at a Benedictine abbey, first in Arabic, Syriac, and Chaldean, then in Hebrew. Arabic in particular was the language that opened the Orient to him since it was in Arabic, according to Joseph Reinaud, that Oriental material, both sacred and profane, was then to be found in its oldest and most instructive form.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Henri Deherain, ''Silvestre de Sacy: Ses Contemporains et ses disciples'' (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1938), p. 111.&lt;/ref&gt; Although a legitimist, in 1769 he was appointed the first teacher of Arabic at the newly created school of ''langues orientales vivantes'', of which he became director in 1824. In 1806 he was named professor at the College de France, although from 1805 on he was the resident Orientalist at the French Foreign Ministry. There his work (unpaid until 1811) at first was to translate the bulletins of the Grande Armee and Napoleon's ''Manifesto'' of 1806, in which it was hoped that &quot;Muslim fanaticism&quot; could be excited against Russian Orthodoxy. But for many years thereafter Sacy created interpreters for the French Oriental dragomanate, as well as future scholars. When the French occupied Algiers in 1830, it was Sacy who translated the proclamation to the Algerians; he was regularly consulted on all diplomatic matters relating to the Orient by the foreign minister, and on occasion by the minister of war. At the age of seventy-five he replaced Dacier as secretary of the Academie des Inscriptions, and also became curator of Oriental manuscripts at the Bibliotheque royale. Throughout his long and distinguished career his name was rightly associated with the restructuring and re-forming of education (particularly in Oriental studies) in post-Revolutionary France.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;For these and other details see ibid., pp. i-xxxiii.&lt;/ref&gt; With Cuvier, Sacy in 1832 was made a new peer of France.<br /> <br /> It was not only because he was the first president of the Societe asiatique (founded in 1822) that Sacy's name is associated with the beginning of modern Orientalism; it is because his work virtually put before the profession an entire systematic body of texts, a pedagogic practice, a scholarly tradition, and an important link between Oriental scholarship and public policy. In Sacy's work, for the first time in Europe since the Council of Vienne, there was a self-conscious methodological principle at work as a coeval with scholarly discipline. No less important, Sacy always felt himself to be a man standing at the beginning of an important revisionist project. He was a self-aware inaugurator, and more to the point of our general thesis, he acted in his writing like a secularized ecclesiastic for whom his Orient and his students were doctrine and parishioners respectively. The Duc de Broglie, an admiring contemporary, said of Sacy's work that it reconciled the manner of a scientist with that of a Biblical teacher, and that Sacy was the one man able to reconcile &quot;the goals of Leibniz with the efforts of Bossuet.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Duc de Broglie, &quot;Eloge de Silvestre de Sacy,&quot; in Sacy, ''Melanges de litterature orientale'' (Paris: E. Ducrocq, 1833), p. xii.&lt;/ref&gt; Consequently everything he wrote was addressed specifically to students (in the case of his first work, his ''Principes de grammaire generale'' of 1799, the student was his own son) and presented, not as a novelty, but as a revised extract of the best that had already been done, said, or written.<br /> <br /> These two characteristics--the didactic presentation to students and the avowed intention of repeating by revision and extract--are crucial. Sacy's writing always conveys the tone of a voice speaking; his prose is dotted with first-person pronouns, with personal qualifications, with rhetorical presence. Even at his most recondite--as in a scholarly note on third-century Sassanid numismatics--one senses not so much a pen writing as a voice pronouncing. The keynote of his work is contained in the opening lines of the dedication to his son of the ''Principes de grammaire generale'': &quot;C'est a toi, mon cher Fils, que ce petit ouvrage a ete entrepris&quot;--which is to say, I am writing (or speaking) to you because you need to know these things, and since they don't exist in any serviceable form, I have done the work myself for you. Direct address: utility: effort: immediate and beneficent rationality. For Sacy believed that everything could be made clear and reasonable, no matter how difficult the task and how obscure the subject. Here are Bossuet's sternness and Leibniz's abstract humanism, as well as the ''tone'' of Rousseau, all together in the same style.<br /> <br /> The effect of Sacy's tone is to form a circle sealing off him and his audience from the world at large, the way a teacher and his pupils together in a closed classroom also form a sealed space. Unlike the matter of physics, philosophy, or classical literature, the matter of Oriental studies is arcane; it is of import to people who already have an interest in the Orient but want to know the Orient better, in a more orderly way, and here the pedagogical discipline is more effective than it is attractive. The didactic speaker, therefore, ''displays'' his material to the disciples, whose role it is to receive what is given to them in the form of carefully selected and arranged topics. Since the Orient is old and distant, the teacher's display is a restoration, a re-vision of what has disappeared from the wider ken. And since also the vastly rich (in space, time, and cultures) Orient cannot be totally exposed, only its most representative parts need be. Thus Sacy's focus is the anthology, the chrestomathy, the tableau, the survey of general principles, in which a relatively small set of powerful examples delivers the Orient to the student. Such examples are powerful for two reasons: one, because they reflect Sacy's powers as a Western authority deliberately taking from the Orient what its distance and eccentricity have hitherto kept hidden, and two, because these examples have the semiotical power in them (or imparted to them by the Orientalist) to signify the Orient.<br /> <br /> All of Sacy's work is essentially compilatory; it is thus ceremoniously didactic and painstakingly revisionist. Aside from the ''Principes de grammaire generale'', he produced a ''Chrestomathie arabe'' in three volumes (1806 and 1827), an anthology of Arab grammatical writing (1825), an Arabic grammar of 1810 (''a l'usage des eleves de l'Ecole speciale''), treatises on Arabic prosody and the Druze religion, and numerous short works on Oriental numismatics, onomastics, epigraphy, geography, history, and weights and measures. He did a fair number of translations and two extended commentaries on ''Calila and Dumna'' and the ''Maqamat'' of al-Hariri. As editor, memorialist, and historian of modern learning Sacy was similarly energetic. There was very little of note in other related disciplines with which he was not ''au courant'', although his own writing was single-minded and, in its non-Orientalist respects, of a narrow positivist range.<br /> <br /> Yet when in 1802 the Institut de France was commissioned by Napoleon to form a ''tableau generale'' on the state and progress of the arts and sciences since 1789, Sacy was chosen to be one of the team of writers: he was the most rigorous of specialists and the most historical-minded of generalists. Dacier's report, as it was known informally, embodied many of Sacy's predilections as well as containing his contributions on the state of Oriental learning. Its title''--Tableau historique de l'erudition francaise''--announces the new historical (as opposed to sacred) consciousness. Such consciousness is dramatic: learning can be arranged on a stage set, as it were, where its totality can be readily surveyed. Addressed to the king, Dacier's preface stated the theme perfectly. Such a survey as this made it possible to do something no other sovereign had attempted, namely to take in, with one ''coup d'oeil'', the whole of human knowledge. Had such a ''tableau historique'' been undertaken in former times, Dacier continued, we might today have possessed many masterpieces now either lost or destroyed; the interest and utility of the tableau were that it preserved knowledge and made it immediately accessible. Dacier intimated that such a task was simplified by Napoleon's Oriental expedition, one of whose results was to heighten the degree of modern geographical knowledge.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Bon Joseph Dacier, ''Tableau historique de l'erudition francaise, ou Rapport sur les progres de l'histoire et de la litterature ancienne depuis 1789'' (Paris: Imprimerie imperiale, 1810), pp. 23, 35, 31.&lt;/ref&gt; (At no point more than in Dacier's entire ''discours'' do we see how the dramatic form of a ''tableau historique'' has its use-equivalent in the arcades and counters of a modern department store.)<br /> <br /> The importance of the ''Tableau historique'' for an understanding of Orientalism's inaugural phase is that it exteriorizes the form of Orientalist knowledge and its features, as it also describes the Orientalist's relationship to his subject matter. In Sacy's pages on Orientalism--as elsewhere in his writing--he speaks of his own work as having ''uncovered'', ''brought to light'', ''rescued'' a vast amount of obscure matter. Why? In order ''to place it before'' the student. For like all his learned contemporaries Sacy considered a learned work a positive addition to an edifice that all scholars erected together. Knowledge was essentially the ''making visible'' of material, and the aim of a tableau was the construction of a sort of Benthamite Panopticon. Scholarly discipline was therefore a specific technology of power: it gained for its user (and his students) tools and knowledge which (if he was a historian) had hitherto been lost.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Michel Foucault, ''Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison'', trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), pp. 193-4.&lt;/ref&gt; And indeed the vocabulary of specialized power and acquisition is particularly associated with Sacy's reputation as a pioneer Orientalist. His heroism as a scholar was to have dealt successfully with insurmountable difficulties; he acquired the means to present a field to his students where there was none. He ''made'' the books, the precepts, the examples, said the Duc de Broglie of Sacy. The result was the production of material about the Orient, methods for studying it, and exempla that even Orientals did not have.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Broglie, &quot;Eloge de Silvestre de Sacy,&quot; p. 107.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Compared with the labors of a Hellenist or a Latinist working on the Institut team, Sacy's labors were awesome. They had the texts, the conventions, the schools; he did not, and consequently had to go about making them. The dynamic of primary loss and subsequent gain in Sacy's writing is obsessional; his investment in it was truly heavy. Like his colleagues in other fields he believed that knowledge is seeing--pan-optically, so to speak--but unlike them he not only had to identify the knowledge, he had to decipher it, interpret it, and most difficult, make it available. Sacy's achievement was to have produced a whole field. As a European he ransacked the Oriental archives, and he could do so without leaving France. What texts he isolated, he then brought back; he doctored them; then he annotated, codified, arranged, and commented on them. In time, the Orient as such became less important than what the Orientalist made of it; thus, drawn by Sacy into the sealed discursive place of a pedagogical tableau, the Orientalist's Orient was thereafter reluctant to emerge into reality.<br /> <br /> Sacy was much too intelligent to let his views and his practice stand without supporting argument. First of all, he always made it plain why the &quot;Orient&quot; on its own could not survive a European's taste, intelligence, or patience. Sacy defended the utility and interest of such things as Arabic poetry, but what he was really saying was that Arabic poetry had to be properly transformed by the Orientalist before it could begin to be appreciated. The reasons were broadly epistemological, but they also contained an Orientalistic self-justification. Arabic poetry was produced by a completely strange (to Europeans) people, under hugely different climatic, social, and historical conditions from those a European knows; in addition, such poetry as this was nourished by &quot;opinions, prejudices, beliefs, superstitions which we can acquire only after long and painful study.&quot; Even if one does go through the rigors of specialized training, much of the description in the poetry will not be accessible to Europeans &quot;who have attained to a higher degree of civilization.&quot; Yet what we can master is of great value to us as Europeans accustomed to disguise our exterior attributes, our bodily activity, and our relationship to nature. Therefore, the Orientalist's use is to make available to his compatriots a considerable range of unusual experience, and still more valuable, a kind of literature capable of helping us understand the &quot;truly divine&quot; poetry of the Hebrews.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Sacy, ''Melanges de litterature orientale'', pp. 107, 110, 111-12.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> So if the Orientalist is necessary because he fishes some useful gems out of the distant Oriental deep, and since the Orient cannot be known without his mediation, it is also true that Oriental writing itself ought not to be taken in whole. This is Sacy's introduction to his theory of fragments, a common Romantic concern. Not only are Oriental literary productions essentially alien to the European; they also do not contain a sustained enough interest, nor are they written with enough &quot;taste and critical spirit,&quot; to merit publication except as extracts (''pour meriter d'etre publies autrement que par extrait'').&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Silvestre de Sacy, ''Chrestomathie arabe, ou Extraits de divers ecrivains arabes, tant en prose qu'en vers, avec une traduction francaise et des notes, a l'usage des eleves de l'Ecole royale et speciale des langues orientales vivantes'' (vol. 1, 1826; reprint ed., Osnabruck: Biblio Verlag, 1973), p. viii.&lt;/ref&gt; Therefore the Orientalist is required to ''present'' the Orient by a series of representative fragments, fragments republished, explicated, annotated, and surrounded with still more fragments. For such a presentation a special genre is required: the chrestomathy, which is where in Sacy's case the usefulness and interest of Orientalism are most directly and profitably displayed. Sacy's most famous production was the three-volume ''Chrestomathie arabe'', which was sealed at the outset, so to speak, with an internally rhyming Arabic couplet: &quot;Kitab al-anis al-mufid lil-Taleb al-mustafid;/wa gam'i al shathur min manthoum wa manthur&quot; (A book pleasant and profitable for the studious pupil;/it collects fragments of both poetry and prose).<br /> <br /> Sacy's anthologies were used very widely in Europe for several generations. Although what they contain was claimed as typical, they submerge and cover the censorship of the Orient exercised by the Orientalist. Moreover, the internal order of their contents, the arrangement of their parts, the choice of fragments, never reveal their secret; one has the impression that if fragments were not chosen for their importance, or for their chronological development, or for their aesthetic beauty (as Sacy's were not), they must nevertheless embody a certain Oriental naturalness, or typical inevitability. But this too is never said. Sacy claims simply to have exerted himself on behalf of his students, to make it unnecessary for them to purchase (or read) a grotesquely large library of Oriental stuff. In time, the reader forgets the Orientalist's effort and takes the restructuring of the Orient signified by a chrestomathy as the Orient ''tout court''. Objective structure (designation of Orient) and subjective restructure (representation of Orient by Orientalist) become interchangeable. The Orient is overlaid with the Orientalist's rationality; its principles become his. From being distant, it becomes available; from being unsustainable on its own, it becomes pedagogically useful; from being lost, it is found, even if its missing parts have been made to drop away from it in the process. Sacy's anthologies not only supplement the Orient; they supply it as Oriental presence to the West.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;For the notions of &quot;supplementarity,&quot; &quot;supply,&quot; and &quot;supplication,&quot; see Jacques Derrida, ''De la grammatologie'' (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1967), p. 203 and passim.&lt;/ref&gt; Sacy's work canonizes the Orient; it begets a canon of textual objects passed on from one generation of students to the next.<br /> <br /> And the living legacy of Sacy's disciples was astounding. Every major Arabist in Europe during the nineteenth century traced his intellectual authority back to him. Universities and academies in France, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and especially Germany were dotted with the students who formed themselves at his feet and through the anthological tableaux provided by his work.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;For a partial list of Sacy's students and influence see Johann W. Fuck, ''Die Arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts'' (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1955), pp. 156-7.&lt;/ref&gt; As with all intellectual patrimonies, however, enrichments and restrictions were passed on simultaneously. Sacy's genealogical originality was to have treated the Orient as something to be restored not only because of but also despite the modern Orient's disorderly and elusive presence. Sacy ''placed'' the Arabs ''in'' the Orient, which was itself placed in the general tableau of modern learning. Orientalism belonged therefore to European scholarship, but its material had to be re-created by the Orientalist before it could enter the arcades alongside Latinism and Hellenism. Each Orientalist re-created his own Orient according to the fundamental epistemological rules of loss and gain first supplied and enacted by Sacy. Just as he was the father of Orientalism, he was also the discipline's first sacrifice, for in translating new texts, fragments, and extracts subsequent Orientalists entirely displaced Sacy's work by supplying their own restored Orient. Nevertheless the process he started would continue, as philology in particular developed systematic and institutional powers Sacy had never exploited. This was Renan's accomplishment: to have associated the Orient with the most recent comparative disciplines, of which philology was one of the most eminent.<br /> <br /> The difference between Sacy and Renan is the difference between inauguration and continuity. Sacy is the originator, whose work represents the field's emergence and its status as a nineteenth-century discipline with roots in revolutionary Romanticism. Renan derives from Orientalism's second generation: it was his task to solidify the official discourse of Orientalism, to systematize its insights, and to establish its intellectual and worldly institutions. For Sacy, it was his personal efforts that launched and vitalized the field and its structures; for Renan, it was his adaptation of Orientalism to philology and both of them to the intellectual culture of his time that perpetuated the Orientalist structures intellectually and gave them greater visibility.<br /> <br /> Renan was a figure in his own right neither of total originality nor of absolute derivativeness. Therefore as a cultural force or as an important Orientalist he cannot be reduced simply to his personality nor to a set of schematic ideas in which he believed. Rather, Renan is best grasped as a dynamic force whose opportunities were already created for him by pioneers like Sacy, yet who brought their achievements into the culture as a kind of currency which he circulated and recirculated with (to force the image a little further) his own unmistakable re-currency. Renan is a figure who must be grasped, in short, as a type of cultural and intellectual praxis, as a style for making Orientalist statements within what Michel Foucault would call the archive of his time.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Foucault's characterization of an archive can be found in ''The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language'', trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith and Rupert Sawyer (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), pp. 79-131. Gabriel Monod, one of Renan's younger and very perspicacious contemporaries, remarks that Renan was by no means a revolutionary in linguistics, archaeology, or exegesis, yet because he had the widest and the most precise learning of anyone in his period, he was its most eminent representative (''Renan, Taine, Michelet'' [Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1894], pp. 40-1). See also Jean-Louis Dumas, &quot;La Philosophie de l'histoire de Renan,&quot; ''Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale'' 77, no. 1 (January-March 1972): 100-28.&lt;/ref&gt; What matters is not only the things that Renan said but also how he said them, what, given his background and training, he chose to use as his subject matter, what to combine with what, and so forth. Renan's relations with his Oriental subject matter, with his time and audience, even with his own work, can be described, then, without resorting to formulae that depend on an unexamined assumption of ontological stability (e.g., the ''Zeitgeist'', the history of ideas, life-and-times). Instead we are able to read Renan as a writer doing something describable, in a place defined temporally, spatially, and culturally (hence archivally), for an audience and, no less important, for the furtherance of his own position in the Orientalism of his era.<br /> <br /> Renan came to Orientalism from philology, and it is the extraordinarily rich and celebrated cultural position of, that discipline that endowed Orientalism with its most important technical characteristics. For anyone to whom the word ''philology'' suggests dry-as-dust and inconsequential word-study, however, Nietzsche's proclamation that along with the greatest minds of the nineteenth century he is a philologist will come as a surprise--though not if Balzac's ''Louis Lambert'' is recalled:<br /> <br /> What a marvelous book one would write by narrating the life and adventures of a word! Undoubtedly a word has received various impressions of the events for which it was used; depending on the places it was used, a word has awakened different kinds of impressions in different people; but is it not more grand still to consider a word in its triple aspect of soul, body, and movement?&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Honore de Balzac, ''Louis Lambert'' (Paris: Calmann-Levy, n.d.), p. 4.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> What is the category, Nietzsche will ask later, that includes himself, Wagner, Schopenhauer, Leopardi, all as philologists? The term seems to include both a gift for exceptional spiritual insight into language and the ability to produce work whose articulation is of aesthetic and historical power. Although the profession of philology was born the day in 1777 &quot;when F. A. Wolf invented for himself the name of ''stud. philol''.,&quot; Nietzsche is nevertheless at pains to show that professional students of the Greek and Roman classics are commonly incapable of understanding their discipline: &quot;they never reach the ''roots of the matter'': they never adduce philology as a problem.&quot; For simply &quot;as knowledge of the ancient world philology cannot, of course, last forever; its material is exhaustible.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Nietzsche's remarks on philology are everywhere throughout his works. See principally his notes for &quot;Wir Philologen&quot; taken from his notebooks for the period January-July 1875, translated by William Arrowsmith as &quot;Notes for 'We Philologists,' &quot; ''Arion'', N. S. 1/2 (1974): 279-380; also the passages on language and perspectivism in ''The Will to Power'', trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968).&lt;/ref&gt; It is this that the herd of philologists cannot understand. But what distinguishes the few exceptional spirits whom Nietzsche deems worthy of praise--not unambiguously, and not in the cursory way that I am now describing--is their profound relation to modernity, a relation that is given them by their practice of philology.<br /> <br /> Philology problematizes--itself, its practitioner, the present. It embodies a peculiar condition of being modern and European, since neither of those two categories has true meaning without being related to an earlier alien culture and time. What Nietzsche also sees is philology as something ''born, made'' in the Viconian sense as a sign of human enterprise, created as a category of human discovery, self-discovery, and originality. Philology is a way; of historically setting oneself off, as great artists do, from one's time and an immediate past even as, paradoxically and antinomically, one actually characterizes one's modernity by so doing.<br /> <br /> Between the Friedrich August Wolf of 1777 and the Friedrich Nietzsche of 1875 there is Ernest Renan, an Oriental philologist, also a man with a complex and interesting sense of the way philology and modern culture are involved in each other. In ''L'Avenir de la science'' (written in 1848 but not published till 1890) he wrote that &quot;the founders of modern mind are philologists.&quot; And what is modern mind, he said in the preceding sentence, if not &quot;rationalism, criticism, liberalism, [all of which] were founded on the same day as philology?&quot; Philology, he goes on to say, is both a comparative discipline possessed only by moderns and a symbol of modern (and European) superiority; every advance made by humanity since the fifteenth century can be attributed to minds we should call philological. The job of philology in modern culture (a culture Renan calls philological) is to continue to see reality and nature clearly, thus driving out supernaturalism, and to continue to keep pace with discoveries in the physical sciences. But more than all this, philology enables a general view of human life and of the system of things: &quot;Me, being there at the center, inhaling the perfume of everything, judging, comparing, combining, inducing--in this way I shall arrive at the very system of things.&quot; There is an unmistakable aura of power about the philologist. And Renan makes his point about philology and the natural sciences:<br /> <br /> To do philosophy is to know things; following Cuvier's nice phrase, philosophy is ''instructing the world in theory''. Like Kant I believe that every purely speculative demonstration has no more validity than a mathematical demonstration, and can teach us nothing about existing reality. Philology is the ''exact science'' of mental objects [''La philologie est la science exacte des choses de'' ''l'esprit'']. It is to the sciences of humanity what physics and chemistry are to the philosophic sciences of bodies.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ernest Renan, ''L'Avenir de la science: Pensees de 1848'', 4th ed. (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1890), pp. 141, 142-5, 146, 148, 149.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> I shall return to Renan's citation from Cuvier, as well as to the constant references to natural science, a little later. For the time being, we should remark that the whole middle section of ''L'Avenir de la science'' is taken up with Renan's admiring accounts of philology, a science he depicts as being at once the most difficult of all human endeavors to characterize and the most precise of all disciplines. In the aspirations of philology to a veritable science of humanity, Renan associates himself explicitly with Vico, Herder, Wolf, and Montesquieu as well as with such philological near-contemporaries as Wilhelm von Humboldt, Bopp, and the great Orientalist Eugene Burnouf (to whom the volume is dedicated). Renan locates philology centrally within what he everywhere refers to as the march of knowledge, and indeed the book itself is a manifesto of humanistic meliorism, which, considering its subtitle (&quot;Pensees de 1848&quot;) and other books of 1848 like ''Bouvard et Pecuchet'' and ''The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte'', is no mean irony. In a sense, then, the manifesto generally and Renan's accounts of philology particularly--he had by then already written the massive philological treatise on Semitic languages that had earned him the Prix Volney--were designed to place Renan as an intellectual in a clearly perceptible relationship to the great social issues raised by 1848. That he should choose to fashion such a relationship on the basis of the ''least'' immediate of all intellectual disciplines (philology), the one with the least degree of apparent ''popular'' relevance, the most conservative and the most traditional, suggests the extreme deliberateness of Renan's position. For he did not really speak as one man to all men but rather as a reflective, specialized voice that took, as he put it in the 1890 preface, the inequality of races and the necessary domination of the many by the few for granted as an antidemocratic law of nature and society.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. xiv and passim.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> But how was it possible for Renan to hold himself and what he was saying in such a paradoxical position? For what was philology on the one hand if not a science of all humanity, a science premised on the unity of the human species and the worth of every human detail, and yet what was the philologist on the other hand if not--as Renan himself proved with his notorious race prejudice against the very Oriental Semites whose study had made his professional name&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;The entire opening chapter--bk. 1, chap. 1--of the ''Histoire generale et systeme compare des langues semitiques'', in ''Oeuvres completes'', ed. Henriette Psichari (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1947-61), 8: 143-63, is a virtual encyclopedia of race prejudice directed against Semites (i.e., Moslems and Jews). The rest of the treatise is sprinkled generously with the same notions, as are many of Renan's other works, including ''L'Avenir de la science'', especially Renan's notes.&lt;/ref&gt;--a harsh divider of men into superior and inferior races, a liberal critic whose work harbored the most esoteric notions of temporality, origins, development, relationship, and human worth? Part of the answer to this question is that, as his early letters of philological intent to Victor Cousin, Michelet, and Alexander von Humboldt show,&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ernest Renan, ''Correspondance; 1846-1871'' (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1926), 1: 7-12.&lt;/ref&gt; Renan had a strong guild sense as a professional scholar, a professional Orientalist, in fact, a sense that put distance between himself and the masses. But more important, I think, is Renan's own conception of his role as an Oriental philologist within philology's larger history, development, and objectives as he saw them. In other words, what may to us seem like paradox was; the expected result of how Renan perceived his dynastic position within philology, its history and inaugural discoveries, and what he, Renan, did within it. Therefore Renan should be characterized, not as speaking ''about'' philology, but rather as ''speaking philologically'' with all the force of an initiate using the encoded language of a new prestigious science none of whose pronouncements about language itself could be construed either directly or naively.<br /> <br /> As Renan understood, received, and was instructed in philology, the discipline imposed a set of doxological rules upon him. To be a philologist meant to be governed in one's activity first of all by a set of recent revaluative discoveries that effectively began the science of philology and gave it a distinctive epistemology of its own: I am speaking here of the period roughly from the 1780s to the mid-1830s, the latter part of which coincides with the period of Renan's beginning his education. His memoirs record how the crisis of religious faith that culminated in the loss of that faith led him in 1845 into a life of scholarship: this was his initiation into philology, its world-view, crises, and style. He believed that on a personal level his life reflected the institutional life of philology. In his life, however, he determined to be as Christian as he once was, only now without Christianity and with what he called &quot;la science laique&quot; (lay science).&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ernest Renan, ''Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse'', in ''Oeuvres completes'', 2: 892. Two works by Jean Pommier treat Renan's mediation between religion and philology in valuable detail: ''Renan, d'apres des documents inedits'' (Paris: Perrin, 1923), pp. 48-68, and ''La Jeunesse clericale d'Ernest Renan'' (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1933). There is a more recent account in J. Chaix-Ruy, ''Ernest Renan'' (Paris: Emmanuel Vitte, 1956), pp. 89-111. The standard description--done more in terms of Renan's religious vocation--is still valuable also: Pierre Lasserre, ''La Jeunesse d'Ernest Renan: Histoire de la crise religieuse au XIX&lt;sup&gt;e&lt;/sup&gt; siecle'', 3 vols. (Paris: Garnier Freres, 1925). In vol. 2, pp. 50-166 and 265-98 are useful on the relations between philology, philosophy, and science.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The best example of what a lay science could and could not do was provided years later by Renan in a lecture given at the Sorbonne in 1878, &quot;On the Services Rendered by Philology to the Historical Sciences.&quot; What is revealing about this text is the way Renan clearly had religion in mind when he spoke about philology--for example, what philology, like religion, teaches us about the origins of humanity, civilization, and language--only to make it evident to his hearers that philology could deliver a far less coherent, less knitted together and positive message than religion.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ernest Renan, &quot;Des services rendus aux sciences historiques par la philologie,&quot; in ''Oeuvres completes'' 8: 1228.&lt;/ref&gt; Since Renan was irremediably historical and, as he once put it, morphological in his outlook, it stood to reason that the only way in which, as a very young man, he could move out of religion into philological scholarship was to retain in the new lay science the historical world-view he had gained from religion. Hence, &quot;one occupation alone seemed to me to be worthy of filling my life; and that was to pursue my critical research into Christianity [an allusion to Renan's major scholarly project on the history and origins of Christianity] using those far ampler means offered me by lay science.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Renan, ''Souvenirs'', p. 892.&lt;/ref&gt; Renan had assimilated himself to philology according to his own post-Christian fashion.<br /> <br /> The difference between the history offered internally by Christianity and the history offered by philology, a relatively new discipline, is precisely what made modern philology possible, and this Renan knew perfectly. For whenever &quot;philology&quot; is spoken of around the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, we are to understand the ''new'' philology, whose major successes include comparative grammar, the reclassification of languages into families, and the final rejection of the divine origins of language. It is no exaggeration to say that these accomplishments were a more or less direct consequence of the view that held language to be an entirely human phenomenon. And this view became current once it was discovered empirically that the so-called sacred languages (Hebrew, primarily) were neither of primordial antiquity nor of divine provenance. What Foucault has called the discovery of language was therefore a secular event that displaced a religious conception of how God delivered language to man in Eden.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Foucault, ''The Order of Things'', pp. 290-300. Along with the discrediting of the Edenic origins of language, a number of other events--the Deluge, the building of the Tower Babel--also were discredited as explanations. The most comprehensive history of theories of linguistic origin is Arno Borst, ''Der Turmbau von Babel: Geschichte der Meinungen uber Ursprung und Vielfalt der Sprachen und Volker'', 6 vols. (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1957-63).&lt;/ref&gt; Indeed, one of the consequences of this change, by which an etymological, dynastic notion of linguistic filiation was pushed aside by the view of language as a domain all of its own held together with jagged internal structures and coherences, is the dramatic subsidence of interest in the problem of the origins of language. Whereas in the 1770s, which is when Herder's essay on the origins of language won the 1772 medal from the Berlin Academy, it was all the rage to discuss that problem, by the first decade of the new century it was all but banned as a topic for learned dispute in Europe.<br /> <br /> On all sides, and in many different ways, what William Jones stated in his ''Anniversary Discourses'' (1785-1792), or what Franz Bopp put forward in his ''Vergleichende Grammatik'' (1832), is that the divine dynasty of language was ruptured definitively and discredited as an idea. A new historical conception, in short, was needed, since Christianity seemed unable to survive the empirical evidence that reduced the divine status of its major text. For some, as Chateaubriand put it, faith was unshakable despite new knowledge of how Sanskrit outdated Hebrew: &quot;Helas! il est arrive qu'une connaissance plus approfondie de la langue savante de l'Inde a fait rentrer ces siecles innombrables dans le cercle etroit de la Bible. Bien m'en a pris d'etre redevenue croyant, avant d'avoir eprouve cette mortification.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Quoted by Raymond Schwab, ''La Renaissance orientale'' (Paris: Payot, 1950), p. 69. On the dangers of too quickly succumbing to generalities about Oriental discoveries, see the reflections of the distinguished contemporary Sinologist Abel Remusat, ''Melanges postumes d'histoire et litterature orientales'' (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1843), p. 226 and passim.&lt;/ref&gt; (Alas! it has happened that a deeper knowledge of the learned language of India has forced innumerable centuries into the narrow circle of the Bible. How lucky for me that I have become a believer again before having had to experience this mortification.) For others, especially philologists like the pioneering Bopp himself, the study of language entailed its own history, philosophy, and learning, all of which did away with any notion of a primal language given by the Godhead to man in Eden. As the study of Sanskrit and the expansive mood of the later eighteenth century seemed to have moved the earliest beginnings of civilization very far east of the Biblical lands, so too language became less of a continuity between an outside power and the human speaker than an internal field created and accomplished by language users among themselves. There was no first language, just as--except by a method I shall discuss presently--there was no simple language.<br /> <br /> The legacy of these first-generation philologists was, to Renan, of the highest importance, higher even than the work done by Sacy. Whenever he discussed language and philology, whether at the beginning, middle, or end of his long career, he repeated the lessons of the new philology, of which the antidynastic, anticontinuous tenets of a technical (as opposed to a divine) linguistic practice are the major pillar. For the linguist, language cannot be pictured as the result of force emanating unilaterally from God. As Coleridge put it, &quot;Language is the armory of the human mind; and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ''Biographia Literaria'', chap. 16, in ''Selected Poetry and Prose of Coleridge'', ed. Donald A. Stauffer (New York: Random House, 1951), pp. 276-7.&lt;/ref&gt; The idea of a first Edenic language gives way to the heuristic notion of a protolanguage (Indo-European, Semitic) whose existence is never a subject of debate, since it is acknowledged that such a language cannot be recaptured but can only be reconstituted in the philological process. To the extent that one language serves, again heuristically, as a touchstone for all the others, it is Sanskrit in its earliest Indo-European form. The terminology has also shifted: there are now ''families'' of languages (the analogy with species and anatomical classifications is marked), there is ''perfect'' linguistic form, which need not correspond to any &quot;real&quot; language, and there are original languages only as a function of the philological discourse, not because of nature.<br /> <br /> But some writers shrewdly commented on how it was that Sanskrit and things Indian in general simply took the place of Hebrew and the Edenic fallacy. As early as 1804 Benjamin Constant noted in his ''Journal intime'' that he was not about to discuss India in his ''De la religion'' because the English who owned the place and the Germans who studied it indefatigably had made India the ''fons et origo'' of everything; and then there were the French who had decided after Napoleon and Champollion that everything originated in Egypt and the new Orient.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Benjamin Constant, ''Oeuvres'', ed. Alfred Roulin (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), p. 78.&lt;/ref&gt; These teleological enthusiasms were fueled after 1808 by Friedrich Schlegel's celebrated ''Uber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier'', which seemed to confirm his own pronouncement made in 1800 about the Orient being the purest form of Romanticism.<br /> <br /> What Renan's generation--educated from the mid-1830s to the late 1840s--retained from all this enthusiasm about the Orient was the intellectual necessity of the Orient for the Occidental scholar of languages, cultures, and religions. Here the key text was Edgar Quinet's ''Le Genie des religions'' (1832), a work that announced the Oriental Renaissance and placed the Orient and the West in a functional relationship with each other. I have already referred to the vast meaning of this relationship as analyzed comprehensively by Raymond Schwab in ''La Renaissance orientale''; my concern with it here is only to note specific aspects of it that bear upon Renan's vocation as a philologist and as an Orientalist. Quinet's association with Michelet, their interest in Herder and Vico, respectively, impressed on them the need for the scholar-historian to confront, almost in the manner of an audience seeing a dramatic event unfold, or a believer witnessing a revelation, the different, the strange, the distant. Quinet's formulation was that the Orient proposes and the West disposes: Asia has its prophets, Europe its doctors (its learned men, its scientists: the pun is intended). Out of this encounter, a new dogma or god is born, but Quinet's point is that both East and West fulfill their destinies and confirm their identities in the encounter. As a scholarly attitude the picture of a learned Westerner surveying as if from a peculiarly suited vantage point the passive, seminal, feminine, even silent and supine East, then going on to ''articulate'' the East, making the Orient deliver up its secrets under the learned authority of a philologist whose power derives from the ability to unlock secret, esoteric languages--this would persist in Renan. What did not persist in Renan during the 1840s, when he served his apprenticeship as a philologist, was the dramatic attitude: that was replaced by the scientific attitude.<br /> <br /> For Quinet and Michelet, history was a drama. Quinet suggestively describes the whole world as a temple and human history as a sort of religious rite. Both Michelet and Quinet ''saw'' the world they discussed. The origin of human history was something they could describe in the same splendid and impassioned and dramatic terms used by Vico and Rousseau to portray life on earth in primitive times. For Michelet and Quinet there is no doubt that they belong to the communal European Romantic undertaking &quot;either in epic or some other major genre--in drama, in prose romance, or in the visionary 'greater Ode'--radically to recast into terms appropriate to the historical and intellectual circumstances of their own age, the Christian pattern of the fall, the redemption, and the emergence of a new earth which will constitute a restored paradise.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Abrams, ''Natural Supernaturalism'', p. 29.&lt;/ref&gt; I think that for Quinet the idea of a new god being born was tantamount to the filling of the place left by the old god; for Renan, however, being a philologist meant the severance of any and all connections with the old Christian god, so that instead a new doctrine--probably science--would stand free and in a new place, as it were. Renan's whole career was devoted to the fleshing out of this progress.<br /> <br /> He put it very plainly at the end of his undistinguished essay on the origins of language: man is no longer an inventor, and the age of creation is definitely over.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Renan, ''De l'origine du langage, in Oeuvres completes'', 8: 122.&lt;/ref&gt; There was a period, at which we can only guess, when man was literally ''transported'' from silence into words. After that there was language, and for the true scientist the task is to examine how language ''is'', not how it came about. Yet if Renan dispels the passionate creation of primitive times (which had excited Herder, Vico, Rousseau, even Quinet and Michelet) he instates a new, and deliberate, type of artificial creation, one that is performed as a result of scientific analysis. In his ''lecon inaugurale'' at the College de France (February 21, 1862) Renan proclaimed his lectures open to the public so that it might see at first hand &quot;le laboratoire meme de la science philologique&quot; (the very laboratory of philological science).&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Renan, &quot;De la part des peuples semitiques dans l'histoire de la civilisation,&quot; in ''Oeuvres completes'', 2: 320.&lt;/ref&gt; Any reader of Renan would have understood that such a statement was meant also to carry a typical if rather limp irony, one less intended to shock than passively to delight. For Renan was succeeding to the chair of Hebrew, and his lecture was on the contribution of the Semitic peoples to the history of civilization. What more subtle affront could there be to &quot;sacred&quot; history than the substitution of a philological laboratory for divine intervention in history; and what more telling way was there of declaring the Orient's contemporary relevance to be simply as material for European investigation?&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 333.&lt;/ref&gt; Sacy's comparatively lifeless fragments arranged in tableaux were now being replaced with something new.<br /> <br /> The stirring peroration with which Renan concluded his ''lecon'' had another function than simply to connect Oriental-Semitic philology with the future and with science. Etienne Quatremere, who immediately preceded Renan in the chair of Hebrew, was a scholar who seemed to exemplify the popular caricature of what a scholar was like. A man of prodigiously industrious and pedantic habits, he went about his work, Renan said in a relatively unfeeling memorial minute for the ''Journal des debats'' in October 1857, like a laborious worker who even in rendering immense services nevertheless could not see the whole edifice being constructed. The edifice was nothing less than &quot;la science historique de l'esprit humain,&quot; now in the process of being built stone by stone.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Renan, &quot;Trois Professeurs au College de France: Etienne Quatremere,&quot; in ''Oeuvres completes'', 1: 129. Renan was not wrong about Quatremere, who had a talent for picking interesting subjects to study and then making them quite uninteresting. See his essays &quot;Le Gout des livres chez les orientaux&quot; and &quot;Des sciences chez les arabes,&quot; in his ''Melanges d'histoire et de philologie orientales'' (Paris: E. Ducrocq, 1861), pp. 1-57.&lt;/ref&gt; Just as Quatremere was not of this age, so Renan in his work was determined to be of it. Moreover, if the Orient had been hitherto identified exclusively and indiscriminately with India and China, Renan's ambition was to carve out a new Oriental province for himself, in this case the Semitic Orient. He had no doubt remarked the casual, and surely current, confusion of Arabic with Sanskrit (as in Balzac's ''La Peau de chagrin'', where the fateful talisman's Arabic script is described as Sanskrit), and he made it his job accordingly to do for the Semitic languages what Bopp had done for the Indo-European: so he said in the 1855 preface to the comparative Semitic treatise.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Honore de Balzac, ''La Peau de chagrin'', vol. 9 (''Etudes philosophiques'' 1) of ''La Comedie humaine'', ed. Marcel Bouteron (Paris: Gallimard, 1950), p. 39; Renan, ''Histoire generale des langues semitiques'', p. 134.&lt;/ref&gt; Therefore Renan's plans were to bring the Semitic languages into sharp and glamorous focus ''a la'' Bopp, and in addition to elevate the study of these neglected inferior languages to the level of a passionate new science of mind ''a la'' Louis Lambert.<br /> <br /> On more than one occasion Renan was quite explicit in his assertions that Semites and Semitic were ''creations'' of Orientalist philological study.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;See, for instance, ''De l'origine du langage'', p. 102, and ''Histoire generale'', p. 180.&lt;/ref&gt; Since he was the man who did the study, there was meant to be little ambiguity about the centrality of his role in this new, artificial creation. But how did Renan mean the word ''creation'' in these instances? And how was this creation connected with either natural creation, or the creation ascribed by Renan and others to the laboratory and to the classificatory and natural sciences, principally what was called philosophical anatomy? Here we must speculate a little. Throughout his career Renan seemed to imagine the role of science in human life as (and I quote in translation as literally as I can) &quot;''telling'' (speaking or articulating) definitively to man the word [logos?] of things.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Renan, ''L'Avenir de la science'', p. 23. The whole passage reads as follows: &quot;Pour moi, je ne connais qu'un seul resultat a la science, c'est de resoudre l'enigme, c'est de dire definitivement a l'homme le mot des choses, c'est de l'expliquer a lui-meme, c'est de lui donner, au nom de la seule autorite legitime qui est la nature humaine toute entiere, le symbole que les religions lui donnaient tout fait et qu'ils ne peut plus accepter.&quot;&lt;/ref&gt; Science gives speech to things; better yet, science brings out, causes to be pronounced, a potential speech within things. The special value of linguistics (as the new philology was then often called) is not that natural science resembles it, but rather that it treats words as natural, otherwise silent objects, which are made to give up their secrets. Remember that the major breakthrough in the study of inscriptions and hieroglyphs was the discovery by Champollion that the symbols on the Rosetta Stone had a ''phonetic'' as well as a semantic component.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;See Madeleine V.-David, ''Le Debat sur les ecritures et l'hieroglyphe aux XVII&lt;sup&gt;e&lt;/sup&gt; et XVIII&lt;sup&gt;e&lt;/sup&gt; siecles et l'application de la notion de dechiffrement aux ecritures mortes'' (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1965), p. 130.&lt;/ref&gt; To make objects speak was like making words speak, giving them circumstantial value, and a precise place in a rule-governed order of regularity. In its first sense, ''creation'', as Renan used the word, signified the articulation by which an object like ''Semitic'' could be seen as a creature of sorts. Second, creation also signified the setting--in the case of Semitic it meant Oriental history, culture, race, mind--illuminated and brought forward from its reticence by the scientist. Finally, creation was the formulation of a system of classification by which it was possible to see the object in question comparatively with other like objects; and by &quot;comparatively&quot; Renan intended a complex network of paradigmatic relations that obtained between Semitic and Indo-European languages.<br /> <br /> If in what I have so far said I have insisted so much on Renan's comparatively forgotten study of Semitic languages, it has been for several important reasons. Semitic was the scientific study to which Renan turned right after the loss of his Christian faith; I described above how he came to see the study of Semitic as replacing his faith and enabling a critical future relation with it. The study of Semitic was Renan's first full-length Orientalist and scientific study (finished in 1847, published first in 1855), and was as much a part of his late major works on the origins of Christianity and the history of the Jews as it was a propaedeutic for them. In intention, if not perhaps in achievement--interestingly, few of the standard or contemporary works in either linguistic history or the history of Orientalism cite Renan with anything more than cursory attention&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Renan is mentioned only in passing in Schwab's ''La Renaissance orientale'', not at all in Foucault's ''The Order of Things'', and only somewhat disparagingly in Holger Pederson's ''The Discovery of Language: Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century'', trans. John Webster Spargo (1931; reprint ed., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972). Max Muller in his ''Lectures on the Science of Language'' (1861-64; reprint ed., New York: Scribner, Armstrong, &amp; Co., 1875) and Gustave Dugat in his ''Histoire des orientalistes de l'Europe du XII&lt;sup&gt;e&lt;/sup&gt; au XIX&lt;sup&gt;e&lt;/sup&gt; siecle'', 2 vols. (Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1868-70) do not mention Renan at all. James Darmesteter's ''Essais Orientaux'' (Paris: A. Levy, 1883)--whose first item is a history, &quot;L'Orientalisme en France&quot;--is dedicated to Renan but does not mention his contribution. There are half-a-dozen short notices of Renan's production in Jules Mohl's encyclopedic (and extremely valuable) quasi-logbook, ''Vingt-sept ans d'histoire des etudes orientales: Rapports faits a la Societe asiatique de Paris de 1840 a 1867'', 2 vols. (Paris: Reinwald, 1879-80).&lt;/ref&gt;--his Semitic opus was proposed as a philological breakthrough, from which in later years he was always to draw retrospective authority for his positions (almost always bad ones) on religion, race, and nationalism.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;In works dealing with race and racism Renan occupies a position of some importance. He is treated in the following: Ernest Seilliere, ''La Philosophie de l'imperialisme'', 4 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1903-8); Theophile Simar, ''Etude critique sur la formation de la doctrine des races au XVIII&lt;sup&gt;e&lt;/sup&gt; siecle et son expansion au XIX&lt;sup&gt;e&lt;/sup&gt; siecle'' (Brussels: Hayez, 1922); Erich Voegelin, ''Rasse und Staat'' (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1933), and here one must also mention his ''Die Rassenidee in der Geistesgeschichte von Ray bis Carus'' (Berlin: Junker und Dunnhaupt, 1933), which, although it does not deal with Renan's period, is an important complement to ''Rasse und Staat''; Jacques Barzun, ''Race: A Study in Modern Superstition'' (New York: Harcourt, Brace &amp; Co., 1937).&lt;/ref&gt; Whenever Renan wished to make a statement about either the Jews or the Muslims, for example, it was always with his remarkably harsh (and unfounded, except according to the science he was practicing) strictures on the Semites in mind. Furthermore, Renan's Semitic was meant as a contribution both to the development of Indo-European linguistics and to the differentiation of Orientalisms. To the former Semitic was a degraded form, degraded in both the moral and the biological sense, whereas to the latter Semitic was a--if not the--stable form of cultural decadence. Lastly, Semitic was Renan's first creation, a fiction invented by him in the philological laboratory to satisfy his sense of public place and mission. It should by no means be lost on us that Semitic was for Renan's ego the symbol of European (and consequently his) dominion over the Orient and over his own era.<br /> <br /> Therefore, as a branch of the Orient, Semitic was not fully a natural object--like a species of monkey, for instance--nor fully an unnatural or a divine object, as it had once been considered. Rather, Semitic occupied a median position, legitimated in its oddities (regularity being defined by Indo-European) by an inverse relation to normal languages, comprehended as an eccentric, quasi-monstrous phenomenon partly because libraries, laboratories, and museums could serve as its place of exhibition and analysis. In his treatise, Renan adopted a tone of voice and a method of exposition that drew the maximum from book-learning and from natural observation as practiced by men like Cuvier and the Geoffroy Saint-Hilaires ''pere et fils''. This is an important stylistic achievement, for it allowed Renan consistently to avail himself of the ''library'', rather than either primitivity or divine fiat, as a conceptual framework in which to understand language, together with the ''museum'', which is where the results of laboratory observation are delivered for exhibition, study, and teaching.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;In ''La Renaissance orientale'' Schwab has some brilliant pages on the museum, on the parallelism between biology and linguistics, and on Cuvier, Balzac, and others; see p. 323 and passim. On the library and its importance for mid-nineteenth-century culture, see Foucault, &quot;La Bibliotheque fantastique,&quot; which is his preface to Flaubert's ''La Tentation de Saint Antoine'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), pp. 7-33. I am indebted to Professor Eugenio Donato for drawing my attention to these matters; see his &quot;A Mere Labyrinth of Letters: Flaubert and the Quest for Fiction,&quot; ''Modern Language Notes'' 89, no. 6 (December 1974): 885-910.&lt;/ref&gt; Everywhere Renan treats of normal human facts--language, history, culture, mind, imagination--as transformed into something else, as something peculiarly deviant, because they are Semitic and Oriental, and because they end up for analysis in the laboratory. Thus the Semites are rabid monotheists who produced no mythology, no art, no commerce, no civilization; their consciousness is a narrow and rigid one; all in all they represent &quot;une combinaison inferieure de la nature humaine.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Renan, ''Histoire generale'', pp. 145-6.&lt;/ref&gt; At the same time Renan wants it understood that he speaks of a prototype, not a real Semitic type with actual existence (although he violated this too by discussing present-day Jews and Muslims with less than scientific detachment in many places in his writings).&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;See ''L'Avenir de la science'', p. 508 and passim.&lt;/ref&gt; So on the one hand we have the transformation of the human into the specimen, and on the other the comparative judgment rendered by which the specimen remains a specimen and a subject for philological, scientific study.<br /> <br /> Scattered throughout the ''Histoire generale et systeme compare des langues semitiques'' are reflections on the links between linguistics and anatomy, and--for Renan this is equally important--remarks on how these links could be employed to do human history (''les sciences historiques''). But first we should consider the implicit links. I do not think it wrong or an exaggeration to say that a typical page of Renan's Orientalist ''Histoire generale'' was constructed typographically and structurally with a page of comparative philosophical anatomy, in the style of Cuvier or Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, kept in mind. Both linguists and anatomists purport to be speaking about matters not directly obtainable or observable in nature; a skeleton and a detailed line drawing of a muscle, as much as paradigms constituted by the linguists out of a purely hypothetical proto-Semitic or proto-Indo-European, are similarly products of the laboratory and of the library. The text of a linguistic or an anatomical work bears the same general relation to nature (or actuality) that a museum case exhibiting a specimen mammal or organ does. What is given on the page and in the museum case is a truncated exaggeration, like many of Sacy's Oriental extracts, whose purpose is to exhibit a relationship between the science (or scientist) and the object, not one between the object and nature. Read almost any page by Renan on Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, or proto-Semitic and you read a fact of power, by which the Orientalist philologist's authority summons out of the library at will examples of man's speech, and ranges them there surrounded by a suave European prose that points out defects, virtues, barbarisms, and shortcomings in the language, the people, and the civilization. The tone and the tense of the exhibition are cast almost uniformly in the contemporary present, so that one is given an impression of a pedagogical demonstration during which the scholar-scientist stands before us on a lecture-laboratory platform, creating, confining, and judging the material he discusses.<br /> <br /> This anxiety on Renan's part to convey the sense of a demonstration actually taking place is heightened when he remarks explicitly that whereas anatomy employs stable and visible signs by which to consign objects to classes, linguistics does not.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Renan, ''Histoire generale'', p. 214.&lt;/ref&gt; Therefore the philologist must make a given linguistic fact correspond in some way to a historical period: hence the possibility of a classification. Yet, as Renan was often to say, linguistic temporality and history are full of lacunae, enormous discontinuities, hypothetical periods. Therefore linguistic events occur in a nonlinear and essentially discontinuous temporal dimension controlled by the linguist in a, very particular way. That way, as Renan's whole treatise on the Semitic branch of the Oriental languages goes very far to show, is comparative: Indo-European is taken as the living, ''organic'' norm, and Semitic Oriental languages are seen comparatively to be ''inorganic''.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 527. This idea goes back to Friedrich Schlegel's distinction between organic and agglutinative languages, of which latter type Semitic is an instance. Humboldt makes the same distinction, as have most Orientalists since Renan.&lt;/ref&gt; Time is transformed into the space of comparative classification, which at bottom is based on a rigid binary opposition between organic and inorganic languages. So on the one hand there is the organic, biologically generative process represented by Indo-European, while on the other there is an inorganic, essentially unregenerative process, ossified into Semitic: most important, Renan makes it absolutely clear that such an imperious judgment is made by the Oriental philologist in his laboratory, for distinctions of the kind he has been concerned with are neither possible nor available for anyone except the trained professional. &quot;Nous refusons donc aux langues semitiques la faculte de se regenerer, toute en reconnaissant qu'elles n'echappent pas plus que les autres oeuvres de la conscience humaine a la necessite du changement et des modifications successives&quot; (Therefore we refuse to allow that the Semitic languages have the capacity to regenerate themselves, even while recognizing that they do not escape--any more than other products of human consciousness--the necessity of change or of successive modifications).&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 531-2.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Yet behind even this radical opposition, there is another one working in Renan's mind, and for several pages in the first chapter of book 5 he exposes his position quite candidly to the reader. This occurs when he introduces Saint-Hilaire's views on the &quot;degradation, of types.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 515 and passim.&lt;/ref&gt; Although Renan does not specify which Saint-Hilaire he refers to, the reference is clear enough. For both Etienne and his son Isidore were biological speculators of extraordinary fame and influence, particularly among literary intellectuals during the first half of the nineteenth century in France. Etienne, we recall, had been a member of the Napoleonic expedition, and Balzac dedicated an important section of the preface for ''La Comedie humaine'' to him; there is also much evidence that Flaubert read both the father and the son and used their views in his work.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;See Jean Seznec, ''Nouvelles Etudes sur &quot;La Tentation de Saint Antoine&quot;'' (London: Warburg Institute, 1949), p. 80.&lt;/ref&gt; Not only were Etienne and Isidore legatees of the tradition of &quot;Romantic&quot; biology, which included Goethe and Cuvier, with a strong interest in analogy, homology, and organic ''ur''-form among species, but they were also specialists in the philosophy and anatomy of monstrosity--teratology, as Isidore called it--in which the most horrendous physiological aberrations were considered a result of internal degradation within the species-life.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;See Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, ''Philosophie anatomique: Des monstruosites humaines'' (Paris: published by the author, 1822). The complete title of Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's work is: ''Histoire generale et particuliere des anomalies de l'organisation chez l'homme et les animaux, ouvrage comprenante des recherches sur les caracteres, la classification, l'influence physiologique et pathologique, les rapports generaux, les lois et les causes des monstruosites, des varietes et vices de conformation, ou traite de teratologie'', 3 vols. (Paris: J.-B. Bailliere, 1832-36). There are some valuable pages on Goethe's biological ideas in Erich Heller, ''The Disinherited Mind'' (New York: Meridian Books, 1959), pp. 3-34. See also Jacob, ''The Logic of Life'', and Canguilhem, ''La Connaissance de la vie'', pp. 174-84, for very interesting accounts of the Saint-Hilaires' place in the development of the life sciences.&lt;/ref&gt; I cannot here go into the intricacies (as well as the macabre fascination) of teratology, though it is enough to mention that both Etienne and Isidore exploited the theoretical power of the linguistic paradigm to explain the deviations possible within a biological system. Thus Etienne's notion was that a monster is an ''anomaly'', in the same sense that in language words exist in analogical as well as anomalous relations with each other: in linguistics the idea is at least as old as Varro's ''De Lingua Latina''. No anomaly can be considered simply as a gratuitous exception; rather anomalies confirm the regular structure binding together all members of the same class. Such a view is quite daring in anatomy. At one moment in the &quot;Preliminaire&quot; to his ''Philosophie anatomique'' Etienne says:<br /> <br /> And, indeed, such is the character of our epoch that it becomes impossible today to enclose oneself strictly within the framework of a simple monograph. Study an object in isolation and you will only be able to bring it back to itself; consequently you can never have perfect knowledge of it. But see it in the midst of beings who are connected with each other in many different ways, and which are isolated from each other in different ways, and you will discover for this object a wider scope of relationships. First of all, you will know it better, even in its specificity: but more important, by considering it in the very center of its own sphere of activity, you will know precisely how it behaves in its own exterior world, and you will also know how its own features are constituted in reaction to its surrounding milieu.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;E. Saint-Hilaire, ''Philosophie anatomique'', pp. xxii-xxiii.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Not only is Saint-Hilaire saying that it is the specific character of contemporary study (he was writing in 1822) to examine phenomena comparatively; he is also saying that for the scientist there is no such thing as a phenomenon, no matter how aberrant and exceptional, that cannot be explained with reference to other phenomena. Note also how Saint-Hilaire employs the metaphor of centrality (''le centre de sa sphere d'activite'') used later by Renan in ''L'Avenir de la science'' to describe the position occupied by any object in nature--including even the philologist--once the object is scientifically ''placed'' there by the examining scientist. Thereafter between the object and the scientist a bond of sympathy is established. Of course, this can only take place during the laboratory experience, and not elsewhere. The point being made is that a scientist has at his disposal a sort of leverage by which even the totally unusual occurrence can be seen naturally and known scientifically, which in this case means without recourse to the supernatural, and with recourse only to an enveloping environment constituted by the scientist. As a result nature itself can be reperceived as continuous, harmoniously coherent, and fundamentally intelligible.<br /> <br /> Thus for Renan Semitic is a phenomenon of arrested development in comparison with the mature languages and cultures of the Indo-European group, and even with the other Semitic Oriental languages.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Renan, ''Histoire generale'', p. 156.&lt;/ref&gt; The paradox that Renan sustains, however, is that even as he encourages us to see languages as in some way corresponding to &quot;etres vivants de la nature,&quot; he is everywhere else proving that his Oriental languages, the Semitic languages, are inorganic, arrested, totally ossified, incapable of self-regeneration; in other words, he proves that Semitic is not a live language, and for that matter, neither are Semites live creatures. Moreover, Indo-European language and culture are alive and organic ''because'' of the laboratory, not despite it. But far from being a marginal issue in Renan's work, this paradox stands, I believe, at the very center of his entire work, his style, and his archival existence in the culture of his time, a culture to which--as people so unlike each other as Matthew Arnold, Oscar Wilde, James Frazer, and Marcel Proust concurred--he was a very important contributor. To be able to sustain a vision that incorporates and holds together life and quasi-living creatures (Indo-European, European culture) as well as quasimonstrous, parallel inorganic phenomena (Semitic, Oriental culture) is precisely the achievement of the European scientist in his laboratory. He ''constructs'', and the very act of construction is a sign of imperial power over recalcitrant phenomena, as well as a confirmation of the dominating culture and its &quot;naturalization.&quot; Indeed, it is not too much to say that Renan's philological laboratory is the actual locale of his European ethnocentrism; but what needs emphasis here is that the philological laboratory has no existence outside the discourse, the writing by which it is constantly produced and experienced. Thus even the culture he calls organic and alive--Europe's--is also a ''creature being created'' in the laboratory and by philology.<br /> <br /> Renan's entire later career was European and cultural. Its accomplishments were varied and celebrated. Whatever authority his style possessed can, I think, be traced back to his technique for constructing the inorganic (or the missing) and for giving it the appearance of life. He was most famous, of course, for his ''Vie de Jesus'', the work that inaugurated his monumental histories of Christianity and the Jewish people. Yet we must realize that the ''Vie'' was exactly the same type of feat that the ''Histoire generale'' was, a construction enabled by the historian's capacity for skillfully crafting a dead (dead for Renan in the double sense of a dead faith and a lost, hence dead, historical period) Oriental biography--and the paradox is immediately apparent--''as if it were'' the truthful narrative of a natural life. Whatever Renan said had first passed through the philological laboratory; when it appeared in print woven through the text, there was in it the life-giving force of a contemporary cultural signature, which drew from modernity all its scientific power and all its uncritical self-approbation. For that sort of culture such genealogies as dynasty, tradition, religion, ethnic communities were all simply functions of a theory whose job was to instruct the world. In borrowing this latter phrase from Cuvier, Renan was circumspectly placing scientific demonstration over experience; temporality was relegated to the scientifically useless realm of ordinary experience, while to the special periodicity of culture and cultural comparativism (which spawned ethnocentrism, racial theory, and economic oppression) were given powers far in advance of moral vision.<br /> <br /> Renan's style, his career as Orientalist and man of letters, the circumstances of the meaning he communicates, his peculiarly intimate relationship with the European scholarly and general culture of his time--liberal, exclusivist, imperious, antihuman except in a very conditional sense--all these are what I would call ''celibate'' and scientific. Generation for him is consigned to the realm of ''l'avenir'', which in his famous manifesto he associated with science. Although as a historian of culture he belongs to the school of men like Turgot, Condorcet, Guizot, Cousin, Jouffroy, and Ballanche, and in scholarship to the school of Sacy, Caussin de Perceval, Ozanam, Fauriel, and Burnouf, Renan's is a peculiarly ravaged, ragingly masculine world of history and learning; it is indeed the world, not of fathers, mothers, and children, but of men like his Jesus, his Marcus Aurelius, his Caliban, his solar god (the last as described in &quot;Reves&quot; of the ''Dialogues philosophiques'').&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Renan, ''Oeuvres completes'', 1: 621-2 and passim. See H. W. Wardman, ''Ernest Renan: A Critical Biography'' (London: Athlone Press, 1964), p. 66 and passim, for a subtle description of Renan's domestic life; although one would not wish to force a parallel between Renan's biography and what I have called his &quot;masculine&quot; world, Wardman's descriptions here are suggestive indeed--at least to me.&lt;/ref&gt; He cherished the power of science and Orientalist philology particularly; he sought its insights and its techniques; he used it to intervene, often with considerable effectiveness, in the life of his epoch. And yet his ideal role was that of spectator.<br /> <br /> According to Renan, a philologist ought to prefer ''bonheur'' to ''jouissance'': the preference expresses a choice of elevated, if sterile, happiness over sexual pleasure. Words belong to the realm of ''bonheur'', as does the study of words, ideally speaking. To my knowledge, there are very few moments in all of Renan's public writing where a beneficent and instrumental role is assigned to women. One occurs when Renan opines that foreign women (nurses, maids) must have instructed the conquering Normans' children, and hence we can account for the changes that take place in language. Note how productivity and dissemination are not the functions aided, but rather internal change, and a subsidiary one at that. &quot;Man,&quot; he says at the end of the same essay, &quot;belongs neither to his language nor to his race; he belongs to himself before all, since before all he is a free being and a moral one.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Renan, &quot;Des services rendus au sciences historiques par la philologie,&quot; in ''Oeuvres completes'', 8: 1228, 1232.&lt;/ref&gt; Man was free and moral, but enchained by race, history, and science as Renan saw them, conditions imposed by the scholar on man.<br /> <br /> The study of Oriental languages took Renan to the heart of these conditions, and philology made it concretely apparent that knowledge of man was--to paraphrase Ernst Cassirer--poetically transfiguring&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ernst Cassirer, ''The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science, and History since Hegel'', trans. William H. Woglom and Charles W. Hendel (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1950), p. 307.&lt;/ref&gt; only if it had been previously severed from raw actuality (as Sacy had necessarily severed his Arabic fragments from their actuality) and then put into a doxological straitjacket. By becoming ''philology'', the study of words as once practiced by Vico, Herder, Rousseau, Michelet, and Quinet lost its plot and its dramatic presentational quality, as Schelling once called it. Instead, philology became epistemologically complex; ''Sprachgefuhl'' was no longer enough since words themselves pertained less to the senses or the body (as they had for Vico) and more to a sightless, imageless, and abstract realm ruled over by such hothouse formulations as race, mind, culture, and nation. In that realm, which was discursively constructed and called the Orient, certain kinds of assertions could be made, all of them possessing the same powerful generality and cultural validity. For all of Renan's effort was to deny Oriental culture the right to be generated, except artificially in the philological laboratory. A man was not a child of the culture; that dynastic conception had been too effectively challenged by philology. Philology taught one how culture is a construct, an ''articulation'' (in the sense that Dickens used the word for Mr. Venus's profession in ''Our Mutual Friend''), even a creation, but not anything more than a quasi-organic structure.<br /> <br /> What is specially interesting in Renan is how much he knew himself to be a creature of his time and of his ethnocentric culture. On the occasion of an academic response to a speech made by Ferdinand de Lesseps in 1885, Renan averred as how &quot;it was so sad to be a wiser man than one's nation.... One cannot feel bitterness towards one's homeland. Better to be mistaken along with the nation than to be too right with those who tell it hard truths.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Renan, &quot;Reponse au discours de reception de M. de Lesseps (23 avril 1885),&quot; in ''Oeuvres completes'', 1: 817. Yet the value of being truly contemporary was best shown with reference to Renan by Sainte-Beuve in his articles of June 1862. See also Donald G. Charlton, ''Positivist Thought in France During the Second Empire'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), and his ''Secular Religions in France''. Also Richard M. Chadbourne, &quot;Renan and Sainte-Beuve,&quot; ''Romanic Review'' 44, no. 2 (April 1953): 126-35.&lt;/ref&gt; The economy of such a statement is almost too perfect to be true. For does not the old Renan say that the best relationship is one of parity with one's own culture, its morality, and its ethos during one's time, that and not a dynastic relation by which one is either the child of his times or their parent? And here we return to the laboratory, for it is there--as Renan thought of it--that filial and ultimately social responsibilities cease and scientific and Orientalist ones take over. His laboratory was the platform from which as an Orientalist he addressed the world; it mediated the statements he made, gave them confidence and general precision, as well as continuity. Thus the philological laboratory as Renan understood it redefined not only his epoch and his culture, dating and shaping them in new ways; it gave his Oriental subject matter a scholarly coherence, and more, it made him (and later Orientalists in his tradition) into the Occidental ''cultural'' figure he then became. We may well wonder whether this new autonomy within the culture was the freedom Renan hoped his philological Orientalist science would bring or whether, so far as a critical historian of Orientalism is concerned, it set up a complex affiliation between Orientalism and its putative human subject matter that is based finally on power and not really on disinterested objectivity.<br /> <br /> === '''III.''' '''Oriental Residence and Scholarship: ''The Requirements of Lexicography and Imagination''''' ===<br /> Renan's views of the Oriental Semites belong, of course, less to the realm of popular prejudice and common anti-Semitism than they do to the realm of scientific Oriental philology. When we read Renan and Sacy, we readily observe the way cultural generalization had begun to acquire the armor of scientific statement and the ambience of corrective study. Like many academic specialties in their early phases, modern Orientalism held its subject matter, which it defined, in a viselike grip which it did almost everything in its power to sustain. Thus a knowing vocabulary developed, and its functions, as much as its style, located the Orient in a ''comparative'' framework, of the sort employed and manipulated by Renan. Such comparatism is rarely descriptive; most often, it is both evaluative and expository. Here is Renan comparing typically:<br /> <br /> One sees that in all things the Semitic race appears to us to be an incomplete race, by virtue of its simplicity. This race--if I dare use the analogy--is to the Indo-European family what a pencil sketch is to painting; it lacks that variety, that amplitude, that abundance of life which is the condition of perfectibility. Like those individuals who possess so little fecundity that, after a gracious childhood, they attain only the most mediocre virility, the Semitic nations experienced their fullest flowering in their first age and have never been able to achieve true maturity.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Renan, ''Oeuvres completes'', 8: 156.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Indo-Europeans are the touchstone here, just as they are when Renan says that the Semitic Oriental sensibility never reached the heights attained by the Indo-Germanic races.<br /> <br /> Whether this comparative attitude is principally a scholarly necessity or whether it is disguised ethnocentric race prejudice, we cannot say with absolute certainty. What we can say is that the two work together, in support of each other. What Renan and Sacy tried to do was to reduce the Orient to a kind of human flatness, which exposed its characteristics easily to scrutiny and removed from it its complicating humanity. In Renan's case, the legitimacy of his efforts was provided by philology, whose ideological tenets encourage the reduction of a language to its roots; thereafter, the philologist finds it possible to connect those linguistics roots, as Renan and others did, to race, mind, character, and temperament at their roots. The affinity between Renan and Gobineau, for example, was acknowledged by Renan to be a common philological and Orientalist perspective;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;In his letter of June 26, 1856, to Gobineau, ''Oeuvres completes'', 10: 203-4. Gobineau's ideas were expressed in his ''Essai sur l'inegalite des races humaines'' (1853-55).&lt;/ref&gt; in subsequent editions of the ''Histoire generale'' he incorporated some of Gobineau's work within his own. Thus did comparatism in the study of the Orient and Orientals come to be synonymous with the apparent ontological inequality of Occident and Orient.<br /> <br /> The main traits of this inequality are worth recapitulating briefly. I have already referred to Schlegel's enthusiasm for India, and then his subsequent revulsion from it and of course from Islam. Many of the earliest Oriental amateurs began by welcoming the Orient as a salutary ''derangement'' of their European habits of mind and spirit. The Orient was overvalued for its pantheism, its spirituality, its stability, its longevity, its primitivity, and so forth. Schelling, for example, saw in Oriental polytheism a preparation of the way for Judeo-Christian monotheism: Abraham was prefigured in Brahma. Yet almost without exception such overesteem was followed by a counterresponse: the Orient suddenly appeared lamentably underhumanized, antidemocratic, backward, barbaric, and so forth. A swing of the pendulum in one direction caused an equal and opposite swing back: the Orient was undervalued. Orientalism as a profession grew out of these opposites, of compensations and corrections based on inequality, ideas nourished by and nourishing similar ideas in the culture at large. Indeed the very project of restriction and restructuring associated with Orientalism can be traced directly to the inequality by which the Orient's comparative poverty (or wealth) besought scholarly, scientific treatment of the kind to be found in disciplines like philology, biology, history, anthropology, philosophy, or economics.<br /> <br /> And thus the actual profession of Orientalist enshrined this inequality and the special paradoxes it engendered. Most often an individual entered the profession as a way of reckoning with the Orient's claim on him; yet most often too his Orientalist training opened his eyes, so to speak, and what he was left with was a sort of debunking project, by which the Orient was reduced to considerably less than the eminence once seen in it. How else is one to explain the enormous labors represented by the work of William Muir (1819-1905), for example, or of Reinhart Dozy (1820-1883), and the impressive antipathy in that work to the Orient, Islam, and the Arabs? Characteristically, Renan was one of Dozy's supporters, just as in Dozy's four-volume ''Histoire des Mussulmans d'Espagne'', ''jusqu'a la conquete de l'Andalousie par les Almoravides'' (1861) there appear many of Renan's anti-Semitic strictures, compounded in 1864 by a volume arguing that the Jews' primitive God was not Jahweh but Baal, proof for which was to be found in Mecca, of all places. Muir's ''Life of Mahomet'' (1858-1861) and his ''The Caliphate, Its Rise, Decline and Fall'' (1891) are still considered reliable monuments of scholarship, yet his attitude towards his subject matter was fairly put by him when he said that &quot;the sword of Muhammed, and the Kor'an, are the most stubborn enemies of Civilisation, Liberty, and the Truth which the world has yet known.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Cited by Albert Hourani in his excellent article &quot;Islam and the Philosophers of History,&quot; p. 222.&lt;/ref&gt; Many of the same notions are to be found in the work of Alfred Lyall, who was one of the authors cited approvingly by Cromer.<br /> <br /> Even if the Orientalist does not explicitly judge his material as Dozy and Muir did, the principle of inequality exerts its influence nevertheless. It remains the professional Orientalist's job to piece together a portrait, a restored picture as it were, of the Orient or the Oriental; fragments, such as those unearthed by Sacy, supply the material, but the narrative shape, continuity, and figures are constructed by the scholar, for whom scholarship consists of circumventing the unruly (un-Occidental) nonhistory of the Orient with orderly chronicle, portraits, and plots. Caussin de Perceval's ''Essai sur l'histoire des Arabes avant l'Islamisme, pendant l'epoque de Mahomet'' (three volumes, 1847-1848) is a wholly professional study, depending for its sources on documents made available ''internally'' to the field by other Orientalists (principally Sacy, of course) or documents--like the texts of ibn-Khaldun, upon whom Caussin relied very heavily--reposing in Orientalist libraries in Europe. Caussin's thesis is that the Arabs were made a people by Mohammed, Islam being essentially a political instrument, not by any means a spiritual one. What Caussin strives for is clarity amidst a huge mass of confusing detail. Thus what emerges out of the study of Islam is quite literally a one-dimensional portrait of Mohammed, who is made to appear at the end of the work (after his death has been described) in precise photographic detail.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Caussin de Perceval, ''Essai sur l'histoire des Arabes avant l'Islamisme, pendant l'epoque de Mahomet et jusqu'a la reduction de toutes les tribus sous la loi musulmane'' (1847-48; reprint ed., Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1967), 3: 332-9.&lt;/ref&gt; Neither a demon, nor a prototype of Cagliostro, Caussin's Mohammed is a man appropriated to a history of Islam (the fittest version of it) as an exclusively political movement, centralized by the innumerable citations that thrust him up and, in a sense, out of the text. Caussin's intention was to leave nothing unsaid about Mohammed; the Prophet is thereby seen in a cold light, stripped both of his immense religious force and of any residual powers to frighten Europeans. The point here is that as a figure for his own time and place Mohammed is effaced, in order for a very slight human miniature of him to be left standing.<br /> <br /> A nonprofessional analogue to Caussin's Mohammed is Carlyle's, a Mohammed forced to serve a thesis totally overlooking the historical and cultural circumstances of the Prophet's own time and place. Although Carlyle quotes Sacy, his essay is clearly the product of someone arguing for some general ideas on sincerity, heroism, and prophethood. His attitude is salutary: Mohammed is no legend, no shameful sensualist, no laughable petty sorcerer who trained pigeons to pick peas out of his ear. Rather he is a man of real vision and self-conviction, albeit an author of a book, the Koran, that is &quot;a wearisome confused jumble, crude, incondite; endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement; most crude, incondite--insupportable stupidity, in short.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Thomas Carlyle, ''On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History'' (1841; reprint ed., New York: Longmans, Green &amp; Co., 1906), p. 63.&lt;/ref&gt; Not a paragon of lucidity and stylistic grace himself, Carlyle asserts these things as a way of rescuing Mohammed from the Benthamite standards that would have condemned both Mohammed and him together. Yet Mohammed is a hero, transplanted into Europe out of the same barbaric Orient found wanting by Lord Macaulay in his famous &quot;Minute&quot; of 1835, in which it was asserted that &quot;our native subjects&quot; have more to learn from us than we do from them.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Macaulay's Indian experiences are described by G. Otto Trevelyan, ''The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay'' (New York: Harper &amp; Brothers, 1875), 1: 344-71. The complete text of Macaulay's &quot;Minute&quot; is conveniently to be found in Philip D. Curtin, ed., ''Imperialism: The Documentary History of Western Civilization'' (New York: Walker &amp; Co., 1971), pp. 178-91. Some consequences of Macaulay's views for British Orientalism are discussed in A. J. Arberry, ''British Orientalists'' (London: William Collins, 1943).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Both Caussin and Carlyle, in other words, show us that the Orient need not cause us undue anxiety, so unequal are Oriental to European achievements. The Orientalist and non-Orientalist perspectives coincide here. For within the comparative field that Orientalism became after the philological revolution of the early nineteenth century, and outside it, either in popular stereotypes or in the figures made of the Orient by philosophers like Carlyle and stereotypes like those of Macaulay, the Orient in itself was subordinated intellectually to the West. As material for study or reflection the Orient acquired all the marks of an inherent weakness. It became subject to the vagaries of miscellaneous theories that used it for illustration. Cardinal Newman, no great Orientalist, used Oriental Islam as the basis of lectures in 1853 justifying British intervention in the Crimean War.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;John Henry Newman, ''The Turks in Their Relation to Europe'', vol. 1 of his ''Historical Sketches'' (1853; reprint ed., London: Longmans, Green &amp; Co., 1920).&lt;/ref&gt; Cuvier found the Orient useful for his work ''Le Regne animal'' (1816). The Orient was usefully employed as conversation in the various salons of Paris.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;See Marguerite-Louise Ancelot, ''Salons de Paris, foyers eteints'' (Paris: Jules Tardieu, 1858).&lt;/ref&gt; The list of references, borrowings, and transformations that overtook the Oriental idea is immense, but at bottom what the early Orientalist achieved, and what the non-Orientalist in the West exploited, was a reduced model of the Orient suitable for the prevailing, dominant culture and its theoretical (and hard after the theoretical, the practical) exigencies.<br /> <br /> Occasionally one comes across exceptions, or if not exceptions then interesting complications, to this unequal partnership between East and West. Karl Marx identified the notion of an Asiatic economic system in his 1853 analyses of British rule in India, and then put beside that immediately the human depredation introduced into this system by English colonial interference, rapacity, and outright cruelty. In article after article he returned with increasing conviction to the idea that even in destroying Asia, Britain was making possible there a real social revolution. Marx's style pushes us right up against the difficulty of reconciling our natural repugnance as fellow creatures to the sufferings of Orientals while their society is being violently transformed with the historical necessity of these transformations.<br /> <br /> Now, sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organizations disorganized and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of woes, and their individual members losing at the same time their ancient form of civilization and their hereditary means of subsistence, we must not forget that these idyllic village communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath the traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies....<br /> <br /> England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindustan was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.<br /> <br /> Then, whatever bitterness the spectacle of the crumbling of an ancient world may have for our personal feelings, we have the right, in point of history, to exclaim with Goethe:<br /> <br /> Sollte diese Qual uns qualen<br /> <br /> Da sie unsere Lust vermehrt<br /> <br /> Hat nicht Myriaden Seelen<br /> <br /> Timurs Herrschaft aufgeziehrt?&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Karl Marx, ''Surveys from Exile'', ed. David Fernbach (London: Pelican Books, 1973), pp. 306-7.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> (Should this torture then torment us<br /> <br /> Since it brings us greater pleasure?<br /> <br /> Were not through the rule of Timur<br /> <br /> Souls devoured without measure?)<br /> <br /> The quotation, which supports Marx's argument about torment producing pleasure, comes from the ''Westostlicher Diwan'' and identifies the sources of Marx's conceptions about the Orient. These are Romantic and even messianic: as human material the Orient is less important than as an element in a Romantic redemptive project. Marx's economic analyses are perfectly fitted thus to a standard Orientalist undertaking, even though Marx's humanity, his sympathy for the misery of people, are clearly engaged. Yet in the end it is the Romantic Orientalist vision that wins out, as Marx's theoretical socio-economic views become submerged in this classically standard image:<br /> <br /> England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating--the annihilation of the Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 320.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The idea of regenerating a fundamentally lifeless Asia is a piece of pure Romantic Orientalism, of course, but coming from the same writer who could not easily forget the human suffering involved, the statement is puzzling. It requires us first to ask how Marx's moral equation of Asiatic loss with the British colonial rule he condemned gets skewed back towards the old inequality between East and West we have so far remarked. Second, it requires us to ask where the human sympathy has gone, into what realm of thought it has disappeared while the Orientalist vision takes its place.<br /> <br /> We are immediately brought back to the realization that Orientalists, like many other early-nineteenth-century thinkers, conceive of humanity either in large collective terms or in abstract generalities. Orientalists are neither interested in nor capable of discussing individuals; instead artificial entities, perhaps with their roots in Herderian populism, predominate. There are Orientals, Asiatics, Semites, Muslims, Arabs, Jews, races, mentalities, nations, and the like, some of them the product of learned operations of the type found in Renan's work. Similarly, the age-old distinction between &quot;Europe&quot; and &quot;Asia&quot; or &quot;Occident&quot; and &quot;Orient&quot; herds beneath very wide labels every possible variety of human plurality, reducing it in the process to one or two terminal, collective abstractions. Marx is no exception. The collective Orient was easier for him to use in illustration of a theory than existential human identities. For between Orient and Occident, as if in a self-fulfilling proclamation, only the vast anonymous collectivity mattered, or existed. No other type of exchange, severely constrained though it may have been, was at hand.<br /> <br /> That Marx was still able to sense some fellow feeling, to identify even a little with poor Asia, suggests that something happened before the labels took over, before he was dispatched to Goethe as a source of wisdom on the Orient. It is as if the individual mind (Marx's, in this case) could find a precollective, preofficial individuality in Asia--find and give in to its pressures upon his emotions, feelings, senses--only to give it up when he confronted a more formidable censor in the very vocabulary he found himself forced to employ. What that censor did was to stop and then chase away the sympathy, and this was accompanied by a lapidary definition: Those people, it said, don't suffer--they are Orientals and hence have to be treated in other ways than the ones you've just been using. A wash of sentiment therefore disappeared as it encountered the unshakable definitions built up by Orientalist science, supported by &quot;Oriental&quot; lore (e.g., the ''Diwan'') supposed to be appropriate for it. The vocabulary of emotion dissipated as it submitted to the lexicographical police action of Orientalist science and even Orientalist art. An experience was dislodged by a dictionary definition: one can almost see that happen in Marx's Indian essays, where what finally occurs is that something forces him to scurry back to Goethe, there to stand in his protective Orientalized Orient.<br /> <br /> In part, of course, Marx was concerned with vindicating his own theses on socio-economic revolution; but in part also he seems to have had easy resource to a massed body of writing, both internally consolidated by Orientalism and put forward by it beyond the field, that controlled any statement made about the Orient. In Chapter One I tried to show how this control had had a general cultural history in Europe since antiquity; in this chapter my concern has been to show how in the nineteenth century a modern professional terminology and practice were created whose existence dominated discourse about the Orient, whether by Orientalists or non-Orientalists. Sacy and Renan were instances of the way Orientalism fashioned, respectively, a body of texts and a philologically rooted process by which the Orient took on a discursive identity that made it unequal with the West. In using Marx as the case by which a non-Orientalist's human engagements were first dissolved, then usurped by Orientalist generalizations, we find ourselves having to consider the process of lexicographical and institutional consolidation peculiar to Orientalism. What was this operation, by which whenever you discussed the Orient a formidable mechanism of omnicompetent definitions would present itself as the only one having suitable validity for your discussion? And since we must also show how this mechanism operated specifically (and effectively) upon personal human experiences that otherwise contradicted it, we must also show where ''they'' went and what forms ''they'' took, while they lasted.<br /> <br /> All this is a very difficult and complex operation to describe, at least as difficult and complex as the way any growing discipline crowds out its competitors and acquires authority for its traditions, methods, and institutions, as well as general cultural legitimacy for its statements, personalities, and agencies. But we can simplify a great deal of the sheer narrative complexity of the operation by specifying the kinds of experiences that Orientalism typically employed for its own ends and represented for its wider-than-professional audience. In essence these experiences continue the ones I described as having taken place in Sacy and Renan. But whereas those two scholars represent a wholly bookish Orientalism, since neither claimed any particular expertise with the Orient ''in situ'', there is another tradition that claimed its legitimacy from the peculiarly compelling fact of residence in, actual existential contact with, the Orient. Anquetil, Jones, the Napoleonic expedition define the tradition's earliest contours, of course, and these will thereafter retain an unshakable influence on all Orientalist residents. These contours are the ones of European power: to reside in the Orient is to live the privileged life, not of an ordinary citizen, but of a representative European whose empire (French or British) ''contains'' the Orient in its military, economic, and above all, cultural arms. Oriental residence, and its scholarly fruits, are thereby fed into the bookish tradition of the textual attitudes we found in Renan and Sacy: together the two experiences will constitute a formidable library against which no one, not even Marx, can rebel and which no one can avoid.<br /> <br /> Residence in the Orient involves personal experience and personal testimony to a certain extent. Contributions to the library of Orientalism and to its consolidation depend on how experience and testimony get converted from a purely personal document into the enabling codes of Orientalist science. In other words, within a text there has to take place a metamorphosis from personal to official statement; the record of Oriental residence and experience by a European must shed, or at least minimize, its purely autobiographical and indulgent descriptions in favor of descriptions on which Orientalism in general and later Orientalists in particular can draw, build, and base further scientific observation and description. So one of the things we can watch for is a more explicit conversion than in Marx of personal sentiments about the Orient into official Orientalist statements.<br /> <br /> Now the situation is enriched and complicated by the fact that during the entire nineteenth century the Orient, and especially the Near Orient, was a favorite place for Europeans to travel in and write about. Moreover, there developed a fairly large body of Oriental-style European literature very frequently based on personal experiences in the Orient. Flaubert comes to mind immediately as one prominent source of such literature; Disraeli, Mark Twain, and Kinglake are three other obvious examples. But what is of interest is the difference between writing that is converted from personal to professional Orientalism, and the second type, also based on residence and personal testimony, which remains &quot;literature&quot; and not science: it is this difference that I now want to explore.<br /> <br /> To be a European in the Orient ''always'' involves being a consciousness set apart from, and unequal with, its surroundings. But the main thing to note is the intention of this consciousness: What is it in the Orient for? Why does it set itself there even if, as is the case with writers like Scott, Hugo, and Goethe, it travels to the Orient for a very concrete sort of experience without actually leaving Europe? A small number of intentional categories proposed themselves schematically. One: the writer who intends to use his residence for the specific task of providing professional Orientalism with scientific material, who considers his residence a form of scientific observation. Two: the writer who intends the same purpose but is less willing to sacrifice the eccentricity and style of his individual consciousness to impersonal Orientalist definitions. These latter do appear in his work, but they are disentangled from the personal vagaries of style only with difficulty. Three: the writer for whom a real or metaphorical trip to the Orient is the fulfillment of some deeply felt and urgent project. His text therefore is built on a personal aesthetic, fed and informed by the project. In categories two and three there is considerably more space than in one for the play of a personal--or at least non-Orientalist--consciousness; if we take Edward William Lane's ''Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians'' as the pre-eminent example of category one, Burton's ''Pilgrimage to al-Madinah and Meccah'' as belonging to category two, and Nerval's ''Voyage en Orient'' as representing category three, the relative spaces left in the text for the exercise and display of authorial presence will be clear.<br /> <br /> Despite their differences, however, these three categories are not so separate from each other as one would imagine. Nor does each category contain &quot;pure&quot; representative types. For example, works in all three categories rely upon the sheer egoistic powers of the European consciousness at their center. In all cases the Orient is ''for'' the European observer, and what is more, in the category that contains Lane's ''Egyptians'', the Orientalist ego is very much in evidence, however much his style tries for impartial impersonality. Moreover, certain motifs recur consistently in all three types. The Orient as a place of pilgrimage is one; so too is the vision of Orient as spectacle, or ''tableau vivant''. Every work on the Orient in these categories tries to characterize the place, of course, but what is of greater interest is the extent to which the work's internal structure is in some measure synonymous with a comprehensive ''interpretation'' (or an attempt at it) of the Orient. Most of the time, not surprisingly, this interpretation is a form of Romantic restructuring of the Orient, a re-vision of it, which restores it redemptively to the present. Every interpretation, every structure created for the Orient, then, is a reinterpretation, a rebuilding of it.<br /> <br /> Having said that, we return directly to differences between the categories. Lane's book on the Egyptians was influential, it was frequently read and cited (by Flaubert among others), and it established its author's reputation as an eminent figure in Orientalist scholarship. In other words, Lane's authority was gained, not by virtue simply of what he said, but by virtue of how what he said could be adapted to Orientalism. He is quoted as a source of knowledge about Egypt or Arabia, whereas Burton or Flaubert were and are read for what they tell us about Burton and Flaubert over and above their knowledge of the Orient. The author-function in Lane's ''Modern Egyptians'' is less strong than in the other categories because his work was disseminated into the profession, consolidated by it, institutionalized with it. The authorial identity in a work of professional discipline such as his is subordinated to the demands of the field, as well as to the demands of the subject matter. But this is not done simply, or without raising problems.<br /> <br /> Lane's classic, ''An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians'' (1836), was the self-conscious result of a series of works and of two periods of residence in Egypt (1825-1828 and 1833-1835). One uses the phrase &quot;self-conscious&quot; with some emphasis here because the impression Lane wished to give was that his study was a work of immediate and direct, unadorned and neutral, description, whereas in fact it was the product of considerable editing (the work he wrote was not the one he finally published) and also of a considerable variety of quite special efforts. Nothing in his birth or background seemed to destine him for the Orient, except his methodical studiousness and his capacity for classical studies and for mathematics, which somewhat explain the apparent internal neatness of his book. His preface offers a series of interesting clues about what it was that he did for the book. He went to Egypt originally to study Arabic. Then, after making some notes about modern Egypt, he was encouraged to produce a systematic work on the country and its inhabitants by a committee of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. From being a random set of observations the work was changed into a document of useful knowledge, knowledge arranged for and readily accessible to anyone wishing to know the essentials of a foreign society. The preface makes it clear that such knowledge must somehow dispose of pre-existing knowledge, as well as claim for itself a particularly effective character: here Lane is the subtle polemicist. He must show initially that he did what others before him either could not or did not do, and then, that he was able to acquire information both authentic and perfectly correct. And thus his peculiar authority begins to emerge.<br /> <br /> While Lane dallies in his preface with a Dr. Russell's &quot;account of the people of Aleppo&quot; (a forgotten work), it is obvious that the ''Description de l'Egypte'' is his main antecedent competition. But that work, confined by Lane to a long footnote, is mentioned in contemptuous quotation marks as &quot;the great French work&quot; on Egypt. ''That'' work was at once too philosophically general and too careless, Lane says; and Jacob Burckhardt's famous study was merely a collection of proverbial Egyptian wisdom, &quot;bad tests of the morality of a people.&quot; Unlike the French and Burckhardt, Lane was able to submerge himself amongst the natives, to live as they did, to conform to their habits, and &quot;to escape exciting, in strangers, any suspicion of ... being a person who had no right to intrude among them.&quot; Lest that imply Lane's having lost his objectivity, he goes on to say that he conformed only to the ''words'' (his italics) of the Koran, and that he was always aware of his difference from an essentially alien culture.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Edward William Lane, Author's Preface to ''An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians'' (1836; reprint ed., London: J. M. Dent, 1936), pp. xx, xxi.&lt;/ref&gt; Thus while one portion of Lane's identity floats easily in the unsuspecting Muslim sea, a submerged part retains its secret European power, to comment on, acquire, possess everything around it.<br /> <br /> The Orientalist can imitate the Orient without the opposite being true. What he says about the Orient is therefore to be understood as description obtained in a one-way exchange: as ''they'' spoke and behaved, ''he'' observed and wrote down. His power was to have existed amongst them as a native speaker, as it were, and also as a secret writer. And what he wrote was intended as useful knowledge, not for them, but for Europe and its various disseminative institutions. For that is one thing that Lane's prose never lets us forget: that ego, the first-person pronoun moving through Egyptian customs, rituals, festivals, infancy, adulthood, and burial rites, is in reality both an Oriental masquerade and an Orientalist device for capturing and conveying valuable, otherwise inaccessible information. As narrator, Lane is both exhibit and exhibitor, winning two confidences at once, displaying two appetites for experience: the Oriental one for engaging companionship (or so it seems) and the Western one for authoritative, useful knowledge.<br /> <br /> Nothing illustrates this better than the last tripartite episode in the preface. Lane there describes his principal informant and friend, Sheikh Ahmed, as companion and as curiosity. Together the two pretend that Lane is a Muslim; yet only after Ahmed conquers his fear, inspired by Lane's audacious mimicry, can he go through the motions of praying by his side in a mosque. This final achievement is preceded by two scenes in which Ahmed is portrayed as a bizarre glass-eater and a polygamist. In all three portions of the Sheikh Ahmed episode the distance between the Muslim and Lane increases, even as in the action itself it decreases. As mediator and translator, so to speak, of Muslim behavior, Lane ironically enters the Muslim pattern only far enough to be able to describe it in a sedate English prose. His identity as counterfeit believer and privileged European is the very essence of bad faith, for the latter undercuts the former in no uncertain way. Thus what seems to be factual reporting of what ''one'' rather peculiar Muslim does is made to appear by Lane as the candidly exposed center of ''all'' Muslim faith. No mind is given by Lane to the betrayal of his friendship with Ahmed or with the others who provide him with information. What matters is that the report seem accurate, general, and dispassionate, that the English reader be convinced that Lane was never infected with heresy or apostasy, and finally, that Lane's text cancel the human content of its subject matter in favor of its scientific validity.<br /> <br /> It is for all these ends that the book is organized, not simply as the narrative of Lane's residence in Egypt but as narrative structure overwhelmed by Orientalist restructuring and detail. This, I think, is the central achievement of Lane's work. In outline and shape ''Modern Egyptians'' follows the routine of an eighteenth-century novel, say one by Fielding. The book opens with an account of country and setting, followed by chapters on &quot;Personal Characteristics&quot; and &quot;Infancy and Early Education.&quot; Twenty-five chapters on such things as festivals, laws, character, industry, magic, and domestic life precede the last section, &quot;Death and Funeral Rites.&quot; On the face of it, Lane's argument is chronological and developmental. He writes about himself as the observer of scenes that follow the major divisions in the human lifetime: his model is the narrative pattern, as it is in ''Tom Jones'' with the hero's birth, adventures, marriage, and implied death. Only in Lane's text the narrative voice is ageless; his subject, however, the modern Egyptian, goes through the individual life-cycle. This reversal, by which a solitary individual endows himself with timeless faculties and imposes on a society and people a personal life-span, is but the first of several operations regulating what might have been the mere narration of travels in foreign parts, turning an artless text into an encyclopedia of exotic display and a playground for Orientalist scrutiny.<br /> <br /> Lane's control of his material is not only established through his dramatized double presence (as fake Muslim and genuine Westerner) and his manipulation of narrative voice and subject, but also through his use of detail. Each major section in each chapter is invariably introduced with some unsurprising general observation. For example, &quot;it is generally observed that many of the most remarkable peculiarities in the manners, customs, and character of a nation are attributable to the physical peculiarities of the country.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 1.&lt;/ref&gt; What follows confirms this easily--the Nile, Egypt's &quot;remarkably salubrious&quot; climate, the peasant's &quot;precise&quot; labor. Yet instead of this leading to the next episode in narrative order, the detail is added to, and consequently the narrative fulfillment expected on purely formal grounds is not given. In other words, although the gross outlines of Lane's text conform to the narrative and causal sequence of birth-life-death, the special detail introduced during the sequence itself foils narrative movement. From a general observation, to a delineation of some aspect of Egyptian character, to an account of Egyptian childhood, adolescence, maturity, and senescence, Lane is always there with great detail to ''prevent'' smooth transitions. Shortly after we hear about Egypt's salubrious climate, for instance, we are informed that few Egyptians live beyond a few years, because of fatal illness, the absence of medical aid, and oppressive summer weather. Thereafter we are told that the heat &quot;excites the Egyptian [an unqualified generalization] to intemperance in sensual enjoyments,&quot; and soon are bogged down in descriptions, complete with charts and line drawings, of Cairene architecture, decoration, fountains, and locks. When a narrative strain re-emerges, it is clearly only as a formality.<br /> <br /> What prevents narrative order, at the very same time that narrative order is the dominating fiction of Lane's text, is sheer, overpowering, monumental description. Lane's objective is to make Egypt and the Egyptians totally visible, to keep nothing hidden from his reader, to deliver the Egyptians without depth, in swollen detail. As rapporteur his propensity is for sadomasochistic colossal tidbits: the self-multilation of dervishes, the cruelty of judges, the blending of religion with licentiousness among Muslims, the excess of libidinous passions, and so on. Yet no matter how odd and perverse the event and how lost we become in its dizzying detail, Lane is ubiquitous, his job being to reassemble the pieces and enable us to move on, albeit jerkily. To a certain extent he does this by just being a European who can discursively control the passions and excitements to which the Muslims are unhappily subject. But to an even greater extent, Lane's capacity to rein in his profuse subject matter with an unyielding bridle of discipline and detachment depends on his cold distance from Egyptian life and Egyptian productivity.<br /> <br /> The main symbolic moment occurs at the beginning of chapter 6, &quot;Domestic Life--Continued.&quot; By now Lane has adopted the narrative convention of taking a walk through Egyptian life, and having reached the end of his tour of the public rooms and habits of an Egyptian household (the social and spatial worlds are mixed together by him), he begins to discuss the intimate side of home life. Immediately, he &quot;must give some account of marriage and the marriage-ceremonies.&quot; As usual, the account begins with a general observation: to abstain from marriage &quot;when a man has attained a sufficient age, and when there is no just impediment, is esteemed by the Egyptians improper, and even disreputable.&quot; Without transition this observation is applied by Lane to himself, and he is found guilty. For one long paragraph he then recounts the pressures placed on him to get married, which he unflinchingly refuses. Finally, after a native friend even offers to arrange a ''mariage de convenance'', also refused by Lane, the whole sequence is abruptly terminated with a period and a dash.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 160-1. The standard biography of Lane, published in 1877, was by his great-nephew, Stanley Lane-Poole. There is a sympathetic account of Lane by A. J. Arberry in his ''Oriental Essays: Portraits of Seven Scholars'' (New York: Macmillan Co., 1960), pp. 87-121.&lt;/ref&gt; He resumes his general discussion with another general observation.<br /> <br /> Not only do we have here a typical Lane-esque interruption of the main narrative with untidy detail, we have also a firm and literal disengagement of the author from the productive processes of Oriental society. The mini-narrative of his refusal to join the society he describes concludes with a dramatic hiatus: ''his'' story cannot continue, he seems to be saying, so long as he does not enter the intimacy of domestic life, and so he drops from sight as a candidate for it. He literally abolishes himself as a human subject by refusing to marry into human society. Thus he preserves his authoritative identity as a mock participant and bolsters the objectivity of his narrative. If we already knew that Lane was a non-Muslim, we now know too that in order for him to become an Orientalist--instead of an Oriental--he had to deny himself the sensual enjoyments of domestic life. Moreover, he had also to avoid dating himself by entering the human life-cycle. Only in this negative way could he retain his timeless authority as observer.<br /> <br /> Lane's choice was between living without &quot;inconvenience and discomfort&quot; and accomplishing his study of the modern Egyptians. The result of his choice is plainly to have made possible his definition of the Egyptians, since had he become one of them, his perspective would no longer have been antiseptically and asexually lexicographical. In two important and urgent ways, therefore, Lane gains scholarly credibility and legitimacy. First, by interfering with the ordinary narrative course of human life: this is the function of his colossal detail, in which the observing intelligence of a foreigner can introduce and then piece together massive information. The Egyptians are disemboweled for exposition, so to speak, then put together admonishingly by Lane. Second, by disengaging from the generation of Egyptian-Oriental life: this is the function of his subduing his animal appetite in the interest of disseminating information, not in and for Egypt, but in and for European learning at large. To have achieved both the imposition of a scholarly will upon an untidy reality and an intentional shift away from the place of his residence to the scene of his scholarly reputation is the source of his great fame in the annals of Orientalism. Useful knowledge such as his could only have been obtained, formulated, and diffused by such denials.<br /> <br /> Lane's two other major works, his never-completed Arabic lexicon and his uninspired translation of the ''Arabian Nights'', consolidated the system of knowledge inaugurated by ''Modern Egyptians''. In both of his later works his individuality has disappeared entirely as a creative presence, as of course has the very idea of a narrative work. Lane the man appears only in the official persona of annotator and retranslator (the ''Nights'') and impersonal lexicographer. From being an author contemporary with his subject matter, Lane became--as Orientalist scholar of classical Arabic and classical Islam--its survivor. But it is the form of that survival which is of interest. For Lane's legacy as a scholar mattered not to the Orient, of course, but to the institutions and agencies of his European society. And these were either academic--the official Orientalist societies, institutions, and agencies--or they were extra-academic in very particular ways, figuring in the work of later Europeans resident in the Orient.<br /> <br /> If we read Lane's ''Modern Egyptians'', not as a source of Oriental lore, but as a work directed towards the growing organization of academic Orientalism, we will find it illuminating. The subordination of genetic ego to scholarly authority in Lane corresponds exactly to the increased specialization and institutionalization of knowledge about the Orient represented by the various Oriental societies. The Royal Asiatic Society was founded a decade before Lane's book appeared, but its committee of correspondence--whose &quot;objects were to receive intelligence and inquiries relating to the arts, sciences, literature, history and antiquities&quot; of the Orient&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Frederick Eden Pargiter, ed., ''Centenary Volume of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1823-1923'' (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1923), p. x.&lt;/ref&gt;--was the structural recipient of Lane's fund of information, processed and formulated as it was. As for the diffusion of such work as Lane's, there were not only the various societies of useful knowledge but also, in an age when the original Orientalist program of aiding commerce and trade with the Orient had become exhausted, the specialized learned societies whose products were works displaying the potential (if not actual) values of disinterested scholarship. Thus, a program of the Societe asiatique states:<br /> <br /> To compose or to print grammars, dictionaries, and other elementary books recognized as useful or indispensable for the study of those languages taught by appointed professors [of Oriental languages]; by subscriptions or by other means to contribute to the publication of the same kind of work undertaken in France or abroad; to acquire manuscripts, or to copy either completely or in part those that are to be found in Europe, to translate or to make extracts from them, to multiply their number by reproducing them either by engraving or by lithography; to make it possible for the authors of useful works on geography, history, the arts, and the sciences to acquire the means for the public to enjoy the fruits of their nocturnal labors; to draw the attention of the public, by means of a periodic collection devoted to Asiatic literature, to the scientific, literary, or poetic productions of the Orient and those of the same sort that regularly are produced in Europe, to those facts about the Orient that could be relevant to Europe, to those discoveries and works of all kinds of which the Oriental peoples could become the subject: these are the objectives proposed for and by the Societe asiatique.<br /> <br /> Orientalism organized itself systematically as the acquisition of Oriental material and its regulated dissemination as a form of specialized knowledge. One copied and printed works of grammar, one acquired original texts, one multiplied their number and diffused them widely, even dispensed knowledge in periodic form. It was into and for this system that Lane wrote his work, and sacrificed his ego. The mode in which his work persisted in the archives of Orientalism was provided for also. There was to be a &quot;museum,&quot; Sacy said,<br /> <br /> a vast depot of objects of all kinds, of drawings, of original books, maps, accounts of voyages, all offered to those who wish to give themselves to the study of [the Orient]; in such a way that each of these students would be able to feel himself transported as if by enchantment into the midst of, say, a Mongolian tribe or of the Chinese race, whichever he might have made the object of his studies.... It is possible to say ... that after the publication of elementary books on ... the Oriental languages, nothing is more important than to lay the cornerstone of this museum, which I consider a living commentary upon and interpretation [''truchement''] of the dictionaries.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;''Societe asiatique: Livre du centenaire, 1822-1922'' (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1922), pp. 5-6.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ''Truchement'' derives nicely from the Arabic ''turjaman'', meaning &quot;interpreter,&quot; &quot;intermediary,&quot; or &quot;spokesman.&quot; On the one hand, Orientalism acquired the Orient as literally and as widely as possible; on the other, it domesticated this knowledge to the West, filtering it through regulatory codes, classifications, specimen cases, periodical reviews, dictionaries, grammars, commentaries, editions, translations, all of which together formed a simulacrum of the Orient and reproduced it materially in the West, for the West. The Orient, in short, would be converted from the personal, sometimes garbled testimony of intrepid voyagers and residents into impersonal definition by a whole array of scientific workers. It would be converted from the consecutive experience of individual research into a sort of imaginary museum without walls, where everything gathered from the huge distances and varieties of Oriental culture became categorically ''Oriental''. It would be reconverted, restructured from the bundle of fragments brought back piecemeal by explorers, expeditions, commissions, armies, and merchants into lexicographical, bibliographical, departmentalized, and ''textualized'' Orientalist sense. By the middle of the nineteenth century the Orient had become, as Disraeli said, a career, one in which one could remake and restore not only the Orient but also oneself.<br /> <br /> === '''IV.''' '''Pilgrims and Pilgrimages, British and French''' ===<br /> Every European traveler or resident in the Orient has had to protect himself from its unsettling influences. Someone like Lane ultimately rescheduled and resituated the Orient when he came to write about it. The eccentricities of Oriental life, with its odd calendars, its exotic spatial configurations, its hopelessly strange languages, its seemingly perverse morality, were reduced considerably when they appeared as a series of detailed items presented in a normative European prose style. It is correct to say that in Orientalizing the Orient, Lane not only defined but edited it; he excised from it what, in addition to his own human sympathies, might have ruffled the European sensibility. In most cases, the Orient seemed to have offended sexual propriety; everything about the Orient--or at least Lane's Orient-in-Egypt--exuded dangerous sex, threatened hygiene and domestic seemliness with an excessive &quot;freedom of intercourse,&quot; as Lane put it more irrepressibly than usual.<br /> <br /> But there were other sorts of threats than sex. All of them wore away the European discreteness and rationality of time, space, and personal identity. In the Orient one suddenly confronted unimaginable antiquity, inhuman beauty, boundless distance. These could be put to use more innocently, as it were, if they were thought and written about, not directly experienced. In Byron's &quot;Giaour,&quot; in the ''Westostlicher Diwan'', in Hugo's ''Orientales'', the Orient is a form of release, a place of original opportunity, whose keynote was struck in Goethe's &quot;Hegire&quot;--<br /> <br /> Nord und West Sud zersplittern,<br /> <br /> Throne bersten, Reiche zittern,<br /> <br /> Fluchte du, in reinen Osten<br /> <br /> Patriarchenluft zu kosten!<br /> <br /> (North, West, and South disintegrate,<br /> <br /> Thrones burst, empires tremble.<br /> <br /> Fly away, and in the pure East<br /> <br /> Taste the Patriarchs' air.)<br /> <br /> One always ''returned'' to the Orient--&quot;Dort, im Reinen und in Rechten/Will ich menschlichen Geschlechten/In des Ursprungs Tiefe dringen&quot; (There in purity and righteousness will I go back to the profound origins of the human race)--seeing it as completion and confirmation of everything one had imagined:<br /> <br /> Gottes ist der Orient!<br /> <br /> Gottes ist der Okzident!<br /> <br /> Nord und sudliches Gelande<br /> <br /> Ruht im Frieden seiner Hande.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ''Westostlicher Diwan'' (1819; reprint ed., Munich: Wilhelm Golmann, 1958), pp. 8-9, 12. Sacy's name is invoked with veneration in Goethe's apparatus for the ''Diwan''.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> (God is the Orient!<br /> <br /> God is the Occident!<br /> <br /> Northern and southern lands<br /> <br /> Repose in the peace of His hands.)<br /> <br /> The Orient, with its poetry, its atmosphere, its possibilities, was represented by poets like Hafiz--''unbegrenzt'', boundless, Goethe said, older and younger than we Europeans. And for Hugo, in &quot;Cri de guerre du mufti&quot; and &quot;La Douleur du pacha&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Victor Hugo, ''Les Orientales'', in ''Oeuvres poetiques'', ed. Pierre Albouy (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 1: 616-18.&lt;/ref&gt; the fierceness and the inordinate melancholy of Orientals was mediated, not by actual fear for life or disoriented lostness, but by Volney and George Sale, whose learned work translated barbarous splendor into usable information for the sublimely talented poet.<br /> <br /> What Orientalists like Lane, Sacy, Renan, Volney, Jones (not to mention the ''Description de l'Egypte''), and other pioneers made available, the literary crowd exploited. We must recall now our earlier discussion of the three types of work dealing with the Orient and based upon actual residence there. The rigorous exigencies of knowledge purged from Orientalist writing an authorial sensibility: hence Lane's self-excision, and hence also the first kind of work we enumerated. As for types two and three, the self is there prominently, subservient to a voice whose job it is to dispense real knowledge (type two), or dominating and mediating everything we are told about the Orient (type three). Yet from one end of the nineteenth century to the other--after Napoleon, that is--the Orient was a place of pilgrimage, and every major work belonging to a genuine if not always to an academic Orientalism took its form, style, and intention from the idea of pilgrimage there. In this idea as in so many of the other forms of Orientalist writing we have been discussing, the Romantic idea of restorative reconstruction (natural supernaturalism) is the principal source.<br /> <br /> Every pilgrim sees things his own way, but there are limits to what a pilgrimage can be for, to what shape and form it can take, to what truths it reveals. All pilgrimages to the Orient passed through, or had to pass through, the Biblical lands; most of them in fact were attempts either to relive or to liberate from the large, incredibly fecund Orient some portion of Judeo-Christian/Greco-Roman actuality. For these pilgrims the Orientalized Orient, the Orient of Orientalist scholars, was a gauntlet to be run, just as the Bible, the Crusades, Islam, Napoleon, and Alexander were redoubtable predecessors to be reckoned with. Not only does a learned Orient inhibit the pilgrim's musings and private fantasies; its very antecedence places barriers between the contemporary traveler and his writing, unless, as was the case with Nerval and Flaubert in their use of Lane, Orientalist work is severed from the library and caught in the aesthetic project. Another inhibition is that Orientalist writing is too circumscribed by the official requirements of Orientalist learning. A pilgrim like Chateaubriand claimed insolently that he undertook his voyages exclusively for his own sake: &quot;j'allais chercher des images: voila tout.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, ''Oeuvres romanesques et voyages'', ed. Maurice Regard (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 2: 702.&lt;/ref&gt; Flaubert, Vigny, Nerval, Kinglake, Disraeli, Burton, all undertook their pilgrimages in order to dispel the mustiness of the pre-existing Orientalist archive. Their writing was to be a fresh new repository of Oriental experience--but, as we shall see, even this project usually (but not always) resolved itself into the reductionism of the Orientalistic. The reasons are complex, and they have very much to do with the nature of the pilgrim, his mode of writing, and the intentional form of his work.<br /> <br /> What was the Orient for the individual traveler in the nineteenth century? Consider first the differences between an English speaker and a French speaker. For the former the Orient was India, of course, an actual British possession; to pass through the Near Orient was therefore to pass en route to a major colony. Already, then, the room available for imaginative play was limited by the realities of administration, territorial legality, and executive power. Scott, Kinglake, Disraeli, Warburton, Burton, and even George Eliot (in whose ''Daniel Deronda'' the Orient has plans made for it) are writers, like Lane himself and Jones before him, for whom the Orient was defined by material possession, by a material imagination, as it were. England had defeated Napoleon, evicted France: what the English mind surveyed was an imperial domain which by the 1880s had become an unbroken patch of British-held territory, from the Mediterranean to India. To write about Egypt, Syria, or Turkey, as much as traveling in them, was a matter of touring the realm of political will, political management, political definition. The territorial imperative was extremely compelling, even for so unrestrained a writer as Disraeli, whose ''Tancred'' is not merely an Oriental lark but an exercise in the astute political management of actual forces on actual territories.<br /> <br /> In contrast, the French pilgrim was imbued with a sense of acute loss in the Orient. He came there to a place in which France, unlike Britain, had no sovereign presence. The Mediterranean echoed with the sounds of French defeats, from the Crusades to Napoleon. What was to become known as &quot;la mission civilisatrice&quot; began in the nineteenth century as a political second-best to Britain's presence. Consequently French pilgrims from Volney on planned and projected for, imagined, ruminated about places that were principally ''in their minds''; they constructed schemes for a typically French, perhaps even a European, concert in the Orient, which of course they supposed would be orchestrated by them. Theirs was the Orient of memories, suggestive ruins, forgotten secrets, hidden correspondences, and an almost virtuosic style of being, an Orient whose highest literary forms would be found in Nerval and Flaubert, both of whose work was solidly fixed in an imaginative, unrealizable (except aesthetically) dimension.<br /> <br /> This was also true to a certain extent of scholarly French travelers in the Orient. Most of them were interested in the Biblical past or in the Crusades, as Henri Bordeaux has argued in his ''Voyageurs d'Orient''.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;See Henri Bordeaux, ''Voyageurs d'Orient: Des pelerins aux meharistes de Palmyre'' (Paris: Plon, 1926). I have found useful the theoretical ideas about pilgrims and pilgrimages contained in Victor Turner, ''Dramas'', ''Fields'', ''and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society'' (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974), pp. 166-230.&lt;/ref&gt; To these names we must add (at Hassan al-Nouty's suggestion) the names of Oriental Semiticists, including Quatremere; Saulcy, the explorer of the Dead Sea; Renan as Phoenician archaeologist; Judas, the student of Phoenician languages; Catafago and Defremery, who studied the Ansarians, Ismailis, and Seljuks; Clermont-Ganneau, who explored Judea; and the Marquis de Vogue, whose work centered on Palmyrian epigraphy. In addition there was the whole school of Egyptologists descended from Champollion and Mariette, a school that would later include Maspero and Legrain. As an index of the difference between British realities and French fantasies, it is worthwhile recalling the words in Cairo of the painter Ludovic Lepic, who commented sadly in 1884 (two years after the British occupation had begun): &quot;L'Orient est mort au Caire.&quot; Only Renan, ever the realistic racist, condoned the British suppression of Arabi's nationalist rebellion, which, out of his greater wisdom, he said was a &quot;disgrace to civilization.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Hassan al-Nouty, ''Le Proche-Orient dans la litterature francaise de Nerval a Barres'' (Paris: Nizet, 1958), pp. 47-8, 277, 272.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Unlike Volney and Napoleon, the nineteenth-century French pilgrims did not seek a scientific so much as an exotic yet especially attractive reality. This is obviously true of the literary pilgrims, beginning with Chateaubriand, who found in the Orient a locale sympathetic to their private myths, obsessions, and requirements. Here we notice how all the pilgrims, but especially the French ones, exploit the Orient in their work so as in some urgent way to justify their existential vocation. Only when there is some additional cognitive purpose in writing about the Orient does the outpouring of self seem more under control. Lamartine, for instance, writes about himself, and also about France as a power in the Orient; that second enterprise mutes and finally controls imperatives heaped upon his style by ''his'' soul, ''his'' memory, and ''his'' imagination. No pilgrim, French or English, could so ruthlessly dominate his self or his subject as Lane did. Even Burton and T. E. Lawrence, of whom the former fashioned a deliberately Muslim pilgrimage and the latter what he called a reverse pilgrimage ''away'' from Mecca, delivered masses of historical, political, and social Orientalism that were never as free of their egos as Lane's were of his. This is why Burton, Lawrence, and Charles Doughty occupy a middle position between Lane and Chateaubriand.<br /> <br /> Chateaubriand's ''Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem'', ''et de Jerusalem a Paris'' (1810-1811) records the details of a journey undertaken in 1805-1806, after he had traveled in North America. Its many hundreds of pages bear witness to its author's admission that &quot;je parle eternellement de moi,&quot; so much so that Stendhal, no self-abnegating writer himself, could find Chateaubriand's failure as a knowledgeable traveler to be the result of his &quot;stinking egotism.&quot; He brought a very heavy load of personal objectives and suppositions to the Orient, unloaded them there, and proceeded thereafter to push people, places, and ideas around in the Orient as if nothing could resist his imperious imagination. Chateaubriand came to the Orient as a constructed ''figure'', not as a true self. For him Bonaparte was the last Crusader; he in turn was &quot;the last Frenchman who left his country to travel in the Holy Land with the ideas, the goals, and the sentiments of a pilgrim of former times.&quot; But there were other reasons. Symmetry: having been to the New World and seen its monuments of nature, he needed to complete his circle of studies by visiting the Orient and its monuments of knowledge: as he had studied Roman and Celtic antiquity, all that was left for him was the ruins of Athens, Memphis, and Carthage. Self-completion: he needed to replenish his stock of images. Confirmation of the importance of the religious spirit: &quot;religion is a kind of universal language understood by all men,&quot; and where better to observe it than there in the Orient, even in lands where a comparatively low religion like Islam held sway. Above all, the need to see things, not as they were, but as Chateaubriand supposed they were: the Koran was &quot;le livre de Mahomet&quot;; it contained &quot;ni principe de civilisation, ni precepte qui puisse elever le caractere.&quot; &quot;This book,&quot; he continued, more or less freely inventing as he went along, &quot;preaches neither hatred of tyranny nor love of liberty.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Chateaubriand, ''Oeuvres'', 2: 702 and note, 1684, 769-70, 769, 701, 808, 908.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> To so preciously constituted a figure as Chateaubriand, the Orient was a decrepit canvas awaiting his restorative efforts. The Oriental Arab was &quot;civilized man fallen again into a savage state&quot;: no wonder, then, that as he watched Arabs trying to speak French, Chateaubriand felt like Robinson Crusoe thrilled by hearing his parrot speak for the first time. True, there were places like Bethlehem (whose etymological meaning Chateaubriand got completely wrong) in which one found again some semblance of real--that is, European--civilization, but those were few and far between. Everywhere, one encountered Orientals, Arabs whose civilization, religion, and manners were so low, barbaric, and antithetical as to merit reconquest. The Crusades, he argued, were not aggression; they were a just Christian counterpart to Omar's arrival in Europe. Besides, he added, even if the Crusades in their modern or original form were aggression, the issue they raised transcended such questions of ordinary mortality:<br /> <br /> The Crusades were not only about the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre, but more about knowing which would win on the earth, a cult that was civilization's enemy, systematically favorable to ignorance [this was Islam, of course], to despotism, to slavery, or a cult that had caused to reawaken in modern people the genius of a sage antiquity, and had abolished base servitude?&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 1011, 979, 990, 1052.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> This is the first significant mention of an idea that will acquire an almost unbearable, next to mindless authority in European writing: the theme of Europe teaching the Orient the meaning of liberty, which is an idea that Chateaubriand and everyone after him believed that Orientals, and especially Muslims, knew nothing about.<br /> <br /> Of liberty, they know nothing; of propriety, they have none: force is their God. When they go for long periods without seeing conquerors who do heavenly justice, they have the air of soldiers without a leader, citizens without legislators, and a family without a father.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 1069.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Already in 1810 we have a European talking like Cromer in 1910, arguing that Orientals require conquest, and finding it no paradox that a Western conquest of the Orient was not conquest after all, but liberty. Chateaubriand puts the whole idea in the Romantic redemptive terms of a Christian mission to revive a dead world, to quicken in it a sense of its own potential, one which only a European can discern underneath a lifeless and degenerate surface. For the traveler this means that he must use the Old Testament and the Gospels as his guide in Palestine;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 1031.&lt;/ref&gt; only in this way can the apparent degeneration of the modern Orient be gotten beyond. Yet Chateaubriand senses no irony in the fact that his tour and his vision will reveal nothing to him about the modern Oriental and ''his'' destiny. What matters about the Orient is what it lets happen to Chateaubriand, what it allows his spirit to do, what it permits him to reveal about himself, his ideas, his expectations. The liberty that so concerns him is no more than his own release from the Orient's hostile wastes.<br /> <br /> Where his release allows him to go is directly back into the realm of imagination and imaginative interpretation. Description of the Orient is obliterated by the designs and patterns foisted upon it by the imperial ego, which makes no secret of its powers. If in Lane's prose we watch the ego disappear so that the Orient may appear in all its realistic detail, in Chateaubriand the ego dissolves itself in the contemplation of wonders it creates, and then is reborn, stronger than ever, more able to savor its powers and enjoy its interpretations.<br /> <br /> When one travels in Judea, at first a great ennui grips the heart; but when, passing from one solitary place to another, space stretches out without limits before you, slowly the ennui dissipates, and one feels a secret terror, which, far from depressing the soul, gives it courage and elevates one's native genius. Extraordinary things are disclosed from all parts of an earth worked over by miracles: the burning sun, the impetuous eagle, the sterile fig tree; all of poetry, all the scenes from Scripture are present there. Every name encloses a mystery; every grotto declares the future; every summit retains within it the accents of a prophet. God Himself has spoken from these shores: the arid torrents, the riven rocks, the open tombs attest to the prodigy; the desert still seems struck dumb with terror, and one would say that it has still not been able to break the silence since it heard the voice of the eternal.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 999.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The process of thought in this passage is revealing. An experience of Pascalian terror does not merely reduce one's self-confidence, it miraculously stimulates it. The barren landscape stands forth like an illuminated text presenting itself to the scrutiny of a very strong, refortified ego. Chateaubriand has transcended the abject, if frightening, reality of the contemporary Orient so that he may stand in an original and creative relationship to it. By the end of the passage he is no longer a modern man but a visionary seer more or less contemporary with God; if the Judean desert has been silent since God spoke there, it is Chateaubriand who can hear the silence, understand its meaning, and--to his reader--make the desert speak again.<br /> <br /> The great gifts of sympathetic intuition which had enabled Chateaubriand to represent and interpret North American mysteries in ''Rene'' and ''Atala'', as well as Christianity in ''Le Genie du Christianisme'', are aroused to even greater feats of interpretation during the ''Itineraire''. No longer is the author dealing with natural primitivity and romantic sentiment: here he is dealing with eternal creativity and divine originality themselves, for it is in the Biblical Orient that they were first deposited, and they have remained there in unmediated and latent form. Of course, they cannot be simply grasped; they must be aspired to and achieved by Chateaubriand. And it is this ambitious purpose that the ''Itineraire'' is made to serve, just as in the text Chateaubriand's ego must be reconstructed radically enough to get the job done. Unlike Lane, Chateaubriand attempts to ''consume'' the Orient. He not only appropriates it, he represents and speaks for it, not in history but beyond history, in the timeless dimension of a completely healed world, where men and lands, God and men, are as one. In Jerusalem, therefore, at the center of his vision and at the ultimate end of his pilgrimage, he grants himself a sort of total reconciliation with the Orient, the Orient as Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Greek, Persian, Roman, and finally French. He is moved by the plight of the Jews, but he judges that they too serve to illuminate his general vision, and as a further benefit, they give the necessary poignance to his Christian vindictiveness. God, he says, has chosen a new people, and it is not the Jews.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 1126-27, 1049.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> He makes some other concessions to terrestrial reality, however. If Jerusalem is booked into his itinerary as its final extraterrestrial goal, Egypt provides him with material for a political excursus. His ideas about Egypt supplement his pilgrimage nicely. The magnificent Nile Delta moves him to assert that<br /> <br /> I found only the memories of my glorious country worthy of those magnificent plains; I saw the remains of monuments of a new civilization, brought to the banks of the Nile by the genius of France.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 1137.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> But these ideas are put in a nostalgic mode because in Egypt Chateaubriand believes he can equate the absence of France with the absence of a free government ruling a happy people. Besides, after Jerusalem, Egypt appears to be only a kind of spiritual anticlimax. After political commentary on its sorry state, Chateaubriand asks himself the routine question about &quot;difference&quot; as a result of historical development: how can this degenerate stupid mob of &quot;Musulmans&quot; have come to inhabit the same land whose vastly different owners so impressed Herodotus and Diodorus?<br /> <br /> This is a fitting valedictory to Egypt, which he leaves for Tunis, Carthaginian ruins, and finally, home. Yet he does one last thing of note in Egypt: unable to do more than look at the Pyramids from a distance, he takes the trouble to send an emissary there, to have him inscribe his (Chateaubriand's) name on the stone, adding for our benefit, &quot;one has to fulfill all the little obligations of a pious traveler.&quot; We would not ordinarily give much more than amused attention to this charming bit of touristic banality. As a preparation, however, for the very last page of the ''Itineraire'', it appears more important than at first glance. Reflecting on his twenty-year project to study &quot;tous les hasards et tous les chagrins&quot; as an exile, Chateaubriand notes elegiacally how every one of his books has been in fact a kind of prolongation of his existence. A man with neither a home nor the possibility of acquiring one, he finds himself now well past his youth. If heaven accords him eternal rest, he says, he promises to dedicate himself in silence to erecting a &quot;monument a ma patrie.&quot; What he is left with on earth, however, is his writing, which, if his name will live, has been enough, and if it will not live, has been too much.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 1148, 1214.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> These closing lines send us back to Chateaubriand's interest in getting his name inscribed on the Pyramids. We will have understood that his egoistic Oriental memoirs supply us with a constantly demonstrated, an indefatigably performed experience of self. Writing was an act of life for Chateaubriand, for whom nothing, not even a distant piece of stone, must remain scriptively untouched by him if he was to stay alive. If the order of Lane's narrative was to be violated by scientific authority and enormous detail, then Chateaubriand's was to be transformed into the asserted will of an egoistic, highly volatile individual. Whereas Lane would sacrifice his ego to the Orientalist canon, Chateaubriand would make everything he said about the Orient wholly dependent on his ego. Yet neither writer could conceive of his posterity as continuing on fruitfully after him. Lane entered the impersonality of a technical discipline: his work would be used, but not as a human document. Chateaubriand, on the other hand, saw that his writing, like the token inscription of his name on a Pyramid, would signify his self; if not, if he had not succeeded in prolonging his life by writing, it would be merely excessive, superfluous.<br /> <br /> Even if all travelers to the Orient after Chateaubriand and Lane have taken their work into account (in some cases, even to the extent of copying from them verbatim), their legacy embodies the fate of Orientalism and the options to which it was limited. Either one wrote science like Lane or personal utterance like Chateaubriand. The problems with the former were its impersona Western confidence that descriptions of general, collective phenomena were possible, and its tendency to make realities not so much out of the Orient as out of its own observations. The problem with personal utterance was that it inevitably retreated into a position equating the Orient with private fantasy, even if that fantasy was of a very high order indeed, aesthetically speaking. In both cases, of course, Orientalism enjoyed a powerful influence on how the Orient was described and characterized. But what that influence always prevented, even until today, was some sense of the Orient that was neither impossibly general nor imperturbably private. To look into Orientalism for a lively sense of an Oriental's human or even social reality--as a contemporary inhabitant of the modern world--is to look in vain.<br /> <br /> The influence of the two options I have described, Lane's and Chateaubriand's, British and French, is a great deal of the reason for this omission. The growth of knowledge, particularly specialized knowledge, is a very slow process. Far from being merely additive or cumulative, the growth of knowledge is a process of selective accumulation, displacement, deletion, rearrangement, and insistence within what has been called a research consensus. The legitimacy of such knowledge as Orientalism was during the nineteenth century stemmed not from religious authority, as had been the case before the Enlightenment, but from what we can call the restorative citation of antecedent authority. Beginning with Sacy, the learned Orientalist's attitude was that of a scientist who surveyed a series of textual fragments, which he thereafter edited and arranged as a restorer of old sketches might put a series of them together for the cumulative picture they implicitly represent. Consequently, amongst themselves Orientalists treat each other's work in the same citationary way. Burton, for example, would deal with the ''Arabian Nights'' or with Egypt indirectly, ''through'' Lane's work, by citing his predecessor, challenging him even though he was granting him very great authority. Nerval's own voyage to the Orient was by way of Lamartine's, and the latter's by way of Chateaubriand. In short, as a form of growing knowledge Orientalism resorted mainly to citations of predecessor scholars in the field for its nutriment. Even when new materials came his way, the Orientalist judged them by borrowing from predecessors (as scholars so often do) their perspectives, ideologies, and guiding theses. In a fairly strict way, then, Orientalists after Sacy and Lane rewrote Sacy and Lane; after Chateaubriand, pilgrims rewrote him. From these complex rewritings the actualities of the modern Orient were systematically excluded, especially when gifted pilgrims like Nerval and Flaubert preferred Lane's descriptions to what their eyes and minds showed them immediately.<br /> <br /> In the system of knowledge about the Orient, the Orient is less a place than a ''topos'', a set of references, a congeries of characteristics, that seems to have its origin in a quotation, or a fragment of a text, or a citation from someone's work on the Orient, or some bit of previous imagining, or an amalgam of all these. Direct observation or circumstantial description of the Orient are the fictions presented by writing on the Orient, yet invariably these are totally secondary to systematic tasks of another sort. In Lamartine, Nerval, and Flaubert, the Orient is a re-presentation of canonical material guided by an aesthetic and executive will capable of producing interest in the reader. Yet in all three writers, Orientalism or some aspect of it is asserted, even though, as I said earlier, the narrative consciousness is given a very large role to play. What we shall see is that for all its eccentric individuality, this narrative consciousness will end up by being aware, like Bouvard and Pecuchet, that pilgrimage is after all a form of copying.<br /> <br /> When he began his trip to the Orient in 1833, Lamartine did so, he said, as something he had always dreamed about: &quot;un voyage en Orient [etait] comme un grand acte de ma vie interieure.&quot; He is a bundle of predispositions, sympathies, biases: he hates the Romans and Carthage, and loves Jews, Egyptians, and Hindus, whose Dante he claims he will become. Armed with a formal verse &quot;Adieu&quot; to France, in which he lists everything that he plans to do in the Orient, he embarks for the East. At first everything he encounters either confirms his poetic predictions or realizes his propensity for analogy. Lady Hester Stanhope is the Circe of the desert; the Orient is the &quot;patrie de mon imagination&quot;; the Arabs are a primitive people; Biblical poetry is engraved on the land of Lebanon; the Orient testifies to the attractive largeness of Asia and to Greece's comparative smallness. Soon after he reaches Palestine, however, he becomes the incorrigible maker of an imaginary Orient. He alleges that the plains of Canaan appear to best advantage in the works of Poussin and Lorrain. From being a &quot;translation,&quot; as he called it earlier, his voyage is now turned into a prayer, which exercises his memory, soul, and heart more than it does his eyes, mind, or spirit.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Alphonse de Lamartine, ''Voyage en Orient'' (1835; reprint ed., Paris: Hachette, 1887), 1: 10, 48-9, 179, 178, 148, 189, 118, 245-6, 251.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> This candid announcement completely unlooses Lamartine's analogic and reconstructive (and undisciplined) zeal. Christianity is a religion of imagination and recollection, and since Lamartine considers that he typifies the pious believer, he indulges himself accordingly. A catalogue of his tendentious &quot;observations&quot; would be interminable: a woman he sees reminds him of Haidee in ''Don Juan''; the relationship between Jesus and Palestine is like that between Rousseau and Geneva; the actual river Jordan is less important than the &quot;mysteries&quot; it gives rise to in one's soul; Orientals, and Muslims in particular, are lazy, their politics are capricious, passionate, and futureless; another woman reminds him of a passage in ''Atala''; neither Tasso nor Chateaubriand (whose antecedent travels seem often to harass Lamartine's otherwise heedless egoism) got the Holy Land right--and on and on. His pages on Arabic poetry, about which he discourses with supreme confidence, betray no discomfort at his total ignorance of the language. All that matters to him is that his travels in the Orient reveal to him how the Orient is &quot;la terre des cultes, des prodiges,&quot; and that he is its appointed poet in the West. With no trace of self-irony he announces:<br /> <br /> This Arab land is the land of prodigies; everything sprouts there, and every credulous or fanatical man can become a prophet there in his turn.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., 1: 363; 2: 74-5; 1: 475.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> He has become a prophet merely by the fact of residence in the Orient.<br /> <br /> By the end of his narrative Lamartine has achieved the purpose of his pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, that beginning and end point of all time and space. He has internalized reality enough to want to retreat from it back into pure contemplation, solitude, philosophy, and poetry.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., 2: 92-3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Rising above the merely geographical Orient, he is transformed into a latter-day Chateaubriand, surveying the East as if it were a personal (or at the very least a French) province ready to be disposed of by European powers. From being a traveler and pilgrim in real time and space, Lamartine has become a transpersonal ego identifying itself in power and consciousness with the whole of Europe. What he sees before him is the Orient in the process of its inevitable future dismemberment, being taken over and consecrated by European suzerainty. Thus in Lamartine's climactic vision the Orient is reborn as European right-to-power over it:<br /> <br /> This sort of suzerainty thus defined, and consecrated as a European right, will consist principally in the right to occupy one or another territory, as well as the coasts, in order to found there either free cities, or European colonies, or commercial ports of call....<br /> <br /> Nor does Lamartine stop at this. He climbs still higher to the point where the Orient, what he has just seen and where he has just been, is reduced to &quot;nations without territory, ''patrie'', rights, laws or security ... waiting anxiously for the shelter&quot; of European occupation.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., 2: 526-7, 533. Two important works on French writers in the Orient are Jean-Marie Carre, ''Voyageurs et ecrivains francais en Egypte'', 2 vols. (Cairo: Institut francais d'archeologie orientale, 1932), and Moenis Taha-Hussein, ''Le Romantisme francais et l'Islam'' (Beirut: Dar-el-Maeref, 1962).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In all the visions of the Orient fabricated by Orientalism there is no recapitulation, literally, as entire as this one. For Lamartine a pilgrimage to the Orient has involved not only the penetration of the Orient by an imperious consciousness but also the virtual elimination of that consciousness as a result of its accession to a kind of impersonal and continental control over the Orient. The Orient's actual identity is withered away into a set of consecutive fragments, Lamartine's recollective observations, which are later to be gathered up and brought forth as a restated Napoleonic dream of world hegemony. Whereas Lane's human identity disappeared into the scientific grid of his Egyptian classifications, Lamartine's consciousness transgresses its normal bounds completely. In so doing, it repeats Chateaubriand's journey and his visions only to move on beyond them, into the sphere of the Shelleyan and Napoleonic abstract, by which worlds and populations are moved about like so many cards on a table. What remains of the Orient in Lamartine's prose is not very substantial at all. Its geopolitical reality has been overlaid with his plans for it; the sites he has visited, the people he has met, the experiences he has had, are reduced to a few echoes in his pompous generalizations. The last traces of particularity have been rubbed out in the &quot;resume politique&quot; with which the ''Voyage en Orient'' concludes.<br /> <br /> Against the transcendent quasi-national egoism of Lamartine we must place Nerval and Flaubert in contrast. Their Oriental works play a substantial role in their total ''oeuvre'', a much greater one than Lamartine's imperialist ''Voyage'' in his ''oeuvre''. Yet both of them, like Lamartine, came to the Orient prepared for it by voluminous reading in the classics, modern literature, and academic Orientalism; about this preparation Flaubert was much more candid than Nerval, who in ''Les Filles du feu'' says disingenuously that all he knew about the Orient was a half-forgotten memory from his school education.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Gerard de Nerval, ''Les Filles du feu'', in ''Oeuvres'', ed. Albert Beguin and Jean Richet (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), 1: 297-8.&lt;/ref&gt; The evidence of his ''Voyage en Orient'' flatly contradicts this, although it shows a much less systematic and disciplined knowledge of Orientalia than Flaubert's. More important, however, is the fact that both writers (Nerval in 1842-1843 and Flaubert in 1849-1850) had greater personal and aesthetic uses for their visits to the Orient than any other nineteenth-century travelers. It is not inconsequential that both were geniuses to begin with, and that both were thoroughly steeped in aspects of European culture that encouraged a sympathetic, if perverse, vision of the Orient. Nerval and Flaubert belonged to that community of thought and feeling described by Mario Praz in ''The Romantic Agony'', a community for which the imagery of exotic places, the cultivation of sadomasochistic tastes (what Praz calls ''algolagnia''), a fascination with the macabre, with the notion of a Fatal Woman, with secrecy and occultism, all combined to enable literary work of the sort produced by Gautier (himself fascinated by the Orient), Swinburne, Baudelaire, and Huysmans.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Mario Praz, ''The Romantic Agony'', trans. Angus Davison (Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishing Co., 1967).&lt;/ref&gt; For Nerval and Flaubert, such female figures as Cleopatra, Salome, and Isis have a special significance; and it was by no means accidental that in their work on the Orient, as well as in their visits to it, they pre-eminently valorized and enhanced female types of this legendary, richly suggestive, and associative sort.<br /> <br /> In addition to their general cultural attitudes, Nerval and Flaubert brought to the Orient a personal mythology whose concerns and even structure required the Orient. Both men were touched by the Oriental renaissance as Quinet and others had defined it: they sought the invigoration provided by the fabulously antique and the exotic. For each, however, the Oriental pilgrimage was a quest for something relatively personal: Flaubert seeking a &quot;homeland,&quot; as Jean Bruneau has called it,&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Jean Bruneau, ''Le &quot;Conte Orientale&quot; de Flaubert'' (Paris: Denoel, 1973), p. 79.&lt;/ref&gt; in the locales of the origin of religions, visions, and classical antiquity; Nerval seeking--or rather following--the traces of his personal sentiments and dreams, like Sterne's Yorick before him. For both writers the Orient was a place therefore of ''deja vu'', and for both, with the artistic economy typical of all major aesthetic imaginations, it was a place often returned to after the actual voyage had been completed. For neither of them was the Orient exhausted by their uses of it, even if there is often a quality of disappointment, disenchantment, or demystification to be found in their Oriental writings.<br /> <br /> The paramount importance of Nerval and Flaubert to a study such as this of the Orientalist mind in the nineteenth century is that they produced work that is connected to and depends upon the kind of Orientalism we have so far discussed, yet remains independent from it. First there is the matter of their work's scope. Nerval produced his ''Voyage en Orient'' as a collection of travel notes, sketches, stories, and fragments; his preoccupation with the Orient is to be found as well in ''Les Chimeres'', in his letters, in some of his fiction and other prose writings. Flaubert's writing both before and after his visit is soaked in the Orient. The Orient appears in the ''Carnets de Voyage'' and in the first version of ''La Tentation de Saint Antoine'' (and in the two later versions), as well as in ''Herodias, Salammbo'', and the numerous reading notes, scenarios, and unfinished stories still available to us, which have been very intelligently studied by Bruneau.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;These are all considered by Bruneau in ''ibid''.&lt;/ref&gt; There are echoes of Orientalism in Flaubert's other major novels, too. In all, both Nerval and Flaubert continually elaborated their Oriental material and absorbed it variously into the special structures of their personal aesthetic projects. This is not to say, however, that the Orient is incidental to their work. Rather--by contrast with such writers as Lane (from whom both men borrowed shamelessly), Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Renan, Sacy--their Orient was not so much grasped, appropriated, reduced, or codified as lived in, exploited aesthetically and imaginatively as a roomy place full of possibility. What mattered to them was the structure of their work as an independent, aesthetic, and personal fact, and not the ways by which, if one wanted to, one could effectively dominate or set down the Orient graphically. Their egos never absorbed the Orient, nor totally identified the Orient with documentary and textual knowledge of it (with official Orientalism, in short).<br /> <br /> On the one hand, therefore, the scope of their Oriental work exceeds the limitations imposed by orthodox Orientalism. On the other hand, the subject of their work is more than Oriental or Orientalistic (even though they do their own Orientalizing of the Orient); it quite consciously plays with the limitations and the challenges presented to them by the Orient and by knowledge about it. Nerval, for example, believes that he has to infuse what he sees with vitality since, he says,<br /> <br /> Le ciel et la mer sont toujours la; le ciel d'Orient, la mer d'Ionie se donnent chaque matin le saint baiser d'amour; mais la terre est morte, morte sous la main de l'homme, et les dieux se sont envoles!<br /> <br /> (The sky and the sea are still there; the Oriental sky and the Ionian sky give each other the sacred kiss of love each morning; but the earth is dead, dead because man has killed it, and the gods have fled.)<br /> <br /> If the Orient is to live at all, now that its gods have fled, it must be through his fertile efforts. In the ''Voyage en Orient'' the narrative consciousness is a constantly energetic voice, moving through the labyrinths of Oriental existence armed--Nerval tells us--with two Arabic words, ''tayeb'', the word for assent, and ''mafisch'', the word for rejection. These two words enable him selectively to confront the antithetical Oriental world, to confront it and draw out from it its secret principles. He is predisposed to recognize that the Orient is &quot;le pays des reves et de l'illusion,&quot; which, like the veils he sees everywhere in Cairo, conceal a deep, rich fund of female sexuality. Nerval repeats Lane's experience of discovering the necessity for marriage in an Islamic society, but unlike Lane he does attach himself to a woman. His liaison with Zaynab is more than socially obligatory:<br /> <br /> I must unite with a guileless young girl who is of this sacred soil, which is our first homeland; I must bathe myself in the vivifying springs of humanity, from which poetry and the faith of our fathers flowed forth!... I would like to lead my life like a novel, and I willingly place myself in the situation of one of those active and resolute heroes who wish at all costs to create a drama around them, a knot of complexity, in a word, action.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Nerval, ''Voyage en Orient'', in ''Oeuvres'', 2: 68, 194, 96, 342.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Nerval invests himself in the Orient, producing not so much a novelistic narrative as an everlasting intention--never fully realized--to fuse mind with physical action. This antinarrative, this para-pilgrimage, is a swerving away from discursive finality of the sort envisioned by previous writers on the Orient.<br /> <br /> Connected physically and sympathetically to the Orient, Nerval wanders informally through its riches and its cultural (and principally feminine) ambience, locating in Egypt especially that maternal &quot;center, at once mysterious and accessible&quot; from which all wisdom derives.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 181.&lt;/ref&gt; His impressions, dreams, and memories alternate with sections of ornate, mannered narrative done in the Oriental style; the hard realities of travel--in Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey--mingle with the design of a deliberate digression, as if Nerval were repeating Chateaubriand's ''Itineraire'' using an underground, though far less imperial and obvious, route. Michel Butor puts it beautifully:<br /> <br /> To Nerval's eyes, Chateaubriand's journey remains a voyage along the surface, while his own is calculated, utilizing annex centers, lobbies of ellipses englobing the principal centers; this allows him to place in evidence, by parallax, all the dimensions of the snare harbored by the normal centers. Wandering the streets or environs of Cairo, Beirut, or Constantinople, Nerval is always lying in wait for anything that will allow him to sense a cavern extending beneath Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem [the principal cities of Chateaubriand's ''Itineraire'']....<br /> <br /> Just as the three cities of Chateaubriand are in communication--Rome, with its emperors and popes, reassembling the heritage, the testament, of Athens and Jerusalem--the caverns of Nerval ... become engaged in intercourse.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Michel Butor, &quot;Travel and Writing,&quot; trans. John Powers and K. Lisker, ''Mosaic'' 8, no. 1 (Fall 1974): 13.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Even the two large plotted episodes, &quot;The Tale of the Caliph Hakim&quot; and &quot;The Tale of the Queen of the Morning,&quot; that will supposedly convey a durable, solid narrative discourse seem to push Nerval away from &quot;overground&quot; finality, edging him further and further into a haunting internal world of paradox and dream. Both tales deal with multiple identity, one of whose motifs--explicitly stated--is incest, and both return us to Nerval's quintessential Oriental world of uncertain, fluid dreams infinitely multiplying themselves past resolution, definiteness, materiality. When the journey is completed and Nerval arrives in Malta on his way back to the European mainland, he realizes that he is now in &quot;le pays du froid et des orages, et deja l'Orient n'est plus pour moi qu'un de ses reves du matin auxquels viennent bientot succeder les ennuis du jour.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Nerval, ''Voyage en Orient'', p. 628.&lt;/ref&gt; His ''Voyage'' incorporates numerous pages copied out of Lane's ''Modern Egyptians'', but even their lucid confidence seems to dissolve in the endlessly decomposing, cavernous element which is Nerval's Orient.<br /> <br /> His ''carnet'' for the ''Voyage'' supplies us, I think, with two perfect texts for understanding how his Orient untied itself from anything resembling an Orientalist conception of the Orient, even though his work depends on Orientalism to a certain extent. First, his appetites strive to gather in experience and memory indiscriminately: &quot;Je sens le besoin de m'assimiler toute la nature (femmes etrangeres). Souvenirs d'y avoir vecu.&quot; The second elaborates a bit on the first: &quot;Les reves et la folie ... Le desir de l'''Orient''. L'Europe s'eleve. Le reve se realise ... Elle. Je l'avais fuie, je l'avais perdue ... Vaisseau d'Orient.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 706, 718.&lt;/ref&gt; The Orient symbolizes Nerval's dream-quest and the fugitive woman central to it, both as desire and as loss. &quot;Vaisseau d'Orient&quot;--vessel of the Orient--refers enigmatically either to the woman as the vessel carrying the Orient, or possibly, to Nerval's own vessel for the Orient, his prose ''voyage''. In either case, the Orient is identified with commemorative ''absence''.<br /> <br /> How else can we explain in the ''Voyage'', a work of so original and individual a mind, the lazy use of large swatches of Lane, incorporated without a murmur by Nerval as ''his'' descriptions of the Orient? It is as if having failed both in his search for a stable Oriental reality and in his intent to give systematic order to his re-presentation of the Orient, Nerval was employing the borrowed authority of a canonized Orientalist text. After his voyage the earth remained dead, and aside from its brilliantly crafted but fragmented embodiments in the ''Voyage'', his self was no less drugged and worn out than before. Therefore the Orient seemed retrospectively to belong to a negative realm, in which failed narratives, disordered chronicles, mere transcription of scholarly texts, were its only possible vessel. At least Nerval did not try to save his project by wholeheartedly giving himself up to French designs on the Orient, although he did resort to Orientalism to make some of his points.<br /> <br /> In contrast to Nerval's negative vision of an emptied Orient, Flaubert's is eminently corporeal. His travel notes and letters reveal a man scrupulously reporting events, persons, and settings, delighting in their ''bizarreries'', never attempting to reduce the incongruities before him. In what he writes (or perhaps because he writes), the premium is on the eye-catching, translated into self-consciously worked-out phrases: for example, &quot;Inscriptions and birddroppings are the only two things in Egypt that give any indication of life.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;''Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour'', trans, and ed. Francis Steegmuller (Boston: Little, Brown &amp; Co., 1973), p. 200. I have also consulted the following texts, in which all Flaubert's &quot;Oriental&quot; material is to be found: ''Oeuvres completes de Gustave Flaubert'' (Paris: Club de l'Honnete homme, 1973), vols. 10, 11; ''Les Lettres d'Egypte, de Gustave Flaubert'', ed. A. Youssef Naaman (Paris: Nizet, 1965); Flaubert, ''Correspondance'', ed. Jean Bruneau (Paris, Gallimard, 1973), 1: 518 ff.&lt;/ref&gt; His tastes run to the perverse, whose form is often a combination of extreme animality, even of grotesque nastiness, with extreme and sometimes intellectual refinement. Yet this particular kind of perversity was not something merely observed, it was also studied, and came to represent an essential element in Flaubert's fiction. The familiar oppositions, or ambivalences, as Harry Levin has called them, that roam through Flaubert's writing--flesh versus mind, Salome versus Saint John, Salammbo versus Saint Anthony&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Harry Levin, ''The Gates of Horn: A Study of Five French Realists'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 285.&lt;/ref&gt;--are powerfully validated by what he saw in the Orient, what, given his eclectic learning, he could see there of the partnership between knowledge and carnal grossness. In Upper Egypt he was taken with ancient Egyptian art, its preciosity and deliberate lubricity: &quot;so dirty pictures existed even so far back in antiquity?&quot; How much more the Orient really answered questions than it raised them is evident in the following:<br /> <br /> You [Flaubert's mother] ask me whether the Orient is up to what I imagined it to be. Yes, it is; and more than that, it extends far beyond the narrow idea I had of it. I have found, clearly delineated, everything that was hazy in my mind. Facts have taken the place of suppositions--so excellently so that it is often as though I were suddenly coming upon old forgotten dreams.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;''Flaubert in Egypt'', pp. 173, 75.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Flaubert's work is so complex and so vast as to make any simple account of his Oriental writing very sketchy and hopelessly incomplete. Nevertheless, in the context created by other writers on the Orient, a certain number of main features in Flaubert's Orientalism can fairly be described. Making allowances for the difference between candidly personal writing (letters, travel notes, diary jottings) and formally aesthetic writing (novels and tales), we can still remark that Flaubert's Oriental perspective is rooted in an eastward and southward search for a &quot;visionary alternative,&quot; which &quot;meant gorgeous color, in contrast to the greyish tonality of the French provincial landscape. It meant exciting spectacle instead of hum-drum routine, the perennially mysterious in place of the all too familiar.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Levin, ''Gates of Horn'', p. 271.&lt;/ref&gt; When he actually visited it, however, this Orient impressed him with its decrepitude and senescence. Like every other Orientalism, then, Flaubert's is revivalist: ''he'' must bring the Orient to life, he must deliver it to himself and to his readers, and it is his experience of it in books and on the spot, and his language for it, that will do the trick. His novels of the Orient accordingly were labored historical and learned reconstructions. Carthage in ''Salammbo'' and the products of Saint Anthony's fevered imagination were authentic fruits of Flaubert's wide reading in the (mainly Western) sources of Oriental religion, warfare, ritual, and societies.<br /> <br /> What the formal aesthetic work retains, over and above the marks of Flaubert's voracious readings and recensions, are memories of Oriental travel. The ''Bibliotheque des idees recues'' has it that an Orientalist is &quot;un homme qui a beaucoup voyage,&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Flaubert, ''Catalogue des opinions chic, in Oeuvres'', 2: 1019.&lt;/ref&gt; only unlike most other such travelers Flaubert put his voyages to ingenious use. Most of his experiences are conveyed in theatrical form. He is interested not only in the content of what he sees but--like Renan--in ''how'' he sees, the way by which the Orient, sometimes horribly but always attractively, seems to present itself to him. Flaubert is its best audience:<br /> <br /> ... Kasr el-'Aini Hospital. Well maintained. The work of Clot Bey--his hand is still to be seen. Pretty cases of syphilis; in the ward of Abbas's Mamelukes, several have it in the arse. At a sign from the doctor, they all stood up on their beds, undid their trouserbelts (it was like army drill), and opened their anuses with their fingers to show their chancres. Enormous infundibula; one had a growth of hair inside his anus. One old man's prick entirely devoid of skin; I recoiled from the stench. A rachitic: hands curved backward, nails as long as claws; one could see the bone structure of his torso as clearly as a skeleton; the rest of his body, too, was fantastically thin, and his head was ringed with whitish leprosy.<br /> <br /> Dissecting room: ... On the table an Arab cadaver, wide open; beautiful black hair....&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;''Flaubert in Egypt'', p. 65.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The lurid detail of this scene is related to many scenes in Flaubert's novels, in which illness is presented to us as if in a clinical theater. His fascination with dissection and beauty recalls, for instance, the final scene of ''Salammbo'', culminating in Matho's ceremonial death. In such scenes, sentiments of repulsion or sympathy are repressed entirely; what matters is the correct rendering of exact detail.<br /> <br /> The most celebrated moments in Flaubert's Oriental travel have to do with Kuchuk Hanem, a famous Egyptian dancer and courtesan he encountered in Wadi Haifa. He had read in Lane about the ''almehs'' and the ''khawals'', dancing girls and boys respectively, but it was his imagination rather than Lane's that could immediately grasp as well as enjoy the almost metaphysical paradox of the ''almeh's'' profession and the meaning of her name. (In ''Victory'', Joseph Conrad was to repeat Flaubert's observation by making his musician heroine--Alma--irresistibly attractive and dangerous to Axel Heyst.) ''Alemah'' in Arabic means a learned woman. It was the name given to women in conservative eighteenth-century Egyptian society who were accomplished reciters of poetry. By the mid-nineteenth century the title was used as a sort of guild name for dancers who were also prostitutes, and such was Kuchuk Hanem, whose dance &quot;L'Abeille&quot; Flaubert watched before he slept with her. She was surely the prototype of several of his novels' female characters in her learned sensuality, delicacy, and (according to Flaubert) mindless coarseness. What he especially liked about her was that she seemed to place no demands on him, while the &quot;nauseating odor&quot; of her bedbugs mingled enchantingly with &quot;the scent of her skin, which was dripping with sandalwood.&quot; After his voyage, he had written Louise Colet reassuringly that &quot;the oriental woman is no more than a machine: she makes no distinction between one man and another man.&quot; Kuchuk's dumb and irreducible sexuality allowed Flaubert's mind to wander in ruminations whose haunting power over him reminds us somewhat of Deslauriers and Frederic Moreau at the end of ''l'Education sentimentale'':<br /> <br /> As for me, I scarcely shut my eyes. Watching that beautiful creature asleep (she snored, her head against my arm: I had slipped my forefinger under her necklace), my night was one long, infinitely intense reverie--that was why I stayed. I thought of my nights in Paris brothels--a whole series of old memories came back--and I thought of her, of her dance, of her voice as she sang songs that for me were without meaning and even without distinguishable words.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 220, 130.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Oriental woman is an occasion and an opportunity for Flaubert's musings; he is entranced by her self-sufficiency, by her emotional carelessness, and also by what, lying next to him, she allows him to think. Less a woman than a display of impressive but verbally inexpressive femininity, Kuchuk is the prototype of Flaubert's Salammbo and Salome, as well as of all the versions of carnal female temptation to which his Saint Anthony is subject. Like the Queen of Sheba (who also danced &quot;The Bee&quot;) she could say--were she able to speak--&quot;Je ne suis pas une femme, je suis un monde.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Flaubert, ''La Tentation de Saint Antoine, in Oeuvres'', 1: 85.&lt;/ref&gt; Looked at from another angle Kuchuk is a disturbing symbol of fecundity, peculiarly Oriental in her luxuriant and seemingly unbounded sexuality. Her home near the upper reaches of the Nile occupied a position structurally similar to the place where the veil of Tanit--the goddess described as ''Omnifeconde''--is concealed in ''Salammbo''.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;See Flaubert, ''Salammbo'', in ''Oeuvres'', 1: 809 ff. See also Maurice Z. Shroder, &quot;On Reading ''Salammbo,&quot; L'Esprit createur'' 10, no. 1 (Spring 1970): 24-35.&lt;/ref&gt; Yet like Tanit, Salome, and Salammbo herself, Kuchuk was doomed to remain barren, corrupting, without issue. How much she and the Oriental world she lived in came to intensify for Flaubert his own sense of barrenness is indicated in the following:<br /> <br /> We have a large orchestra, a rich palette, a variety of resources. We know many more tricks and dodges, probably, than were ever known before. No, what we lack is the intrinsic principle, the soul of the thing, the very idea of the subject. We take notes, we make journeys: emptiness! emptiness! We become scholars, archaeologists, historians, doctors, cobblers, people of taste. What is the good of all that? Where is the heart, the verve, the sap? Where to start from? Where to go? We're good at sucking, we play a lot of tongue-games, we pet for hours: but the real thing! To ejaculate, beget the child!&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;''Flaubert in Egypt'', pp. 198-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Woven through all of Flaubert's Oriental experiences, exciting or disappointing, is an almost uniform association between the Orient and sex. In making this association Flaubert was neither the first nor the most exaggerated instance of a remarkably persistent motif in Western attitudes to the Orient. And indeed, the motif itself is singularly unvaried, although Flaubert's genius may have done more than anyone else's could have to give it artistic dignity. Why the Orient seems still to suggest not only fecundity but sexual promise (and threat), untiring sensuality, unlimited desire, deep generative energies, is something on which one could speculate: it is not the province of my analysis here, alas, despite its frequently noted appearance. Nevertheless one must acknowledge its importance as something eliciting complex responses, sometimes even a frightening self-discovery, in the Orientalists, and Flaubert was an interesting case in point.<br /> <br /> The Orient threw him back on his own human and technical resources. It did not respond, just as Kuchuk did not, to his presence. Standing before its ongoing life Flaubert, like Lane before him, felt his detached powerlessness, perhaps also his self-induced unwillingness, to enter and become part of what he saw. This of course was Flaubert's perennial problem; it had existed before he went East, and it remained after the visit. Flaubert admitted the difficulty, the antidote to which was in his work (especially in an Oriental work like ''La Tentation de Saint Antoine'') to stress the ''form'' of encyclopedic presentation of material at the expense of human engagement in life. Indeed, Saint Anthony is nothing if not a man for whom reality is a series of books, spectacles, and pageants unrolling temptingly and at a distance before his eyes. All of Flaubert's immense learning is structured--as Michel Foucault has tellingly noted--like a theatrical, fantastic library, parading before the anchorite's gaze;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Foucault, &quot;La Bibliotheque fantastique,&quot; in Flaubert, ''La Tentation de Saint Antoine'', pp. 7-33.&lt;/ref&gt; residually, the parade carries in its form Flaubert's memories of Kasr el'Aini (the syphilitics' army drill) and Kuchuk's dance. More to the point, however, is that Saint Anthony is a celibate to whom temptations are primarily sexual. After putting up with every sort of dangerous charm, he is finally given a glimpse into the biological processes of life; he is delirious at being able to see life being born, a scene for which Flaubert felt himself to be incompetent during his Oriental sojourn. Yet because Anthony is delirious, we are meant to read the scene ironically. What is granted to him at the end, the desire to ''become'' matter, to become life, is at best a desire--whether realizable and fulfillable or not, we cannot know.<br /> <br /> Despite the energy of his intelligence and his enormous power of intellectual absorption, Flaubert felt in the Orient, first, that &quot;the more you concentrate on it [in detail] the less you grasp the whole,&quot; and then, second, that &quot;the pieces fall into place of themselves.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;''Flaubert in Egypt'', p. 79.&lt;/ref&gt; At best, this produces a ''spectacular'' form, but it remains barred to the Westerner's full participation in it. On one level this was a personal predicament for Flaubert, and he devised means, some of which we have discussed, for dealing with it. On a more general level, this was an ''epistemological'' difficulty for which, of course, the discipline of Orientalism existed. At one moment during his Oriental tour he considered what the epistemological challenge could give rise to. Without what he called spirit and style, the mind could &quot;get lost in archaeology&quot;: he was referring to a sort of regimented antiquarianism by which the exotic and the strange would get formulated into lexicons, codes, and finally cliches of the kind he was to ridicule in the ''Dictionnaire des idees recues''. Under the influence of such an attitude the world would be &quot;regulated like a college. Teachers will be the law. Everyone will be in uniform.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 211-2.&lt;/ref&gt; As against such an imposed discipline, he no doubt felt that his own treatments of exotic material, notably the Oriental material he had both experienced and read about for years, were infinitely preferable. In those at least there was room for a sense of immediacy, imagination, and flair, whereas in the ranks of archaeological tomes everything but &quot;learning&quot; had been squeezed out. And more than most novelists Flaubert was acquainted with organized learning, its products, and its results: these products are clearly evident in the misfortunes of Bouvard and Pecuchet, but they would have been as comically apparent in fields like Orientalism, whose textual attitudes belonged to the world of ''idees recues''. Therefore one could either construct the world with verve and style, or one could copy it tirelessly according to impersonal academic rules of procedure. In both cases, with regard to the Orient, there was a frank acknowledgment that it was a world elsewhere, apart from the ordinary attachments, sentiments, and values of ''our'' world in the West.<br /> <br /> In all of his novels Flaubert associates the Orient with the escapism of sexual fantasy. Emma Bovary and Frederic Moreau pine for what in their drab (or harried) bourgeois lives they do not have, and what they realize they want comes easily to their daydreams packed inside Oriental cliches: harems, princesses, princes, slaves, veils, dancing girls and boys, sherbets, ointments, and so on. The repertoire is familiar, not so much because it reminds us of Flaubert's own voyages in and obsession with the Orient, but because, once again, the association is clearly made between the Orient and the freedom of licentious sex. We may as well recognize that for nineteenth-century Europe, with its increasing ''embourgeoisement'', sex had been institutionalized to a very considerable degree. On the one hand, there was no such thing as &quot;free&quot; sex, and on the other, sex in society entailed a web of legal, moral, even political and economic obligations of a detailed and certainly encumbering sort. Just as the various colonial possessions--quite apart from their economic benefit to metropolitan Europe--were useful as places to send wayward sons, superfluous populations of delinquents, poor people, and other undesirables, so the Orient was a place where one could look for sexual experience unobtainable in Europe. Virtually no European writer who wrote on or traveled to the Orient in the period after 1800 exempted himself or herself from this quest: Flaubert, Nerval, &quot;Dirty Dick&quot; Burton, and Lane are only the most notable. In the twentieth century one thinks of Gide, Conrad, Maugham, and dozens of others. What they looked for often--correctly, I think--was a different type of sexuality, perhaps more libertine and less guilt-ridden; but even that quest, if repeated by enough people, could (and did) become as regulated and uniform as learning itself. In time &quot;Oriental sex&quot; was as standard a commodity as any other available in the mass culture, with the result that readers and writers could have it if they wished without necessarily going to the Orient.<br /> <br /> It was certainly true that by the middle of the nineteenth century France, no less than England and the rest of Europe, had a flourishing knowledge industry of the sort that Flaubert feared. Great numbers of texts were being produced, and more important, the agencies and institutions for their dissemination and propagation were everywhere to be found. As historians of science and knowledge have observed, the organization of scientific and learned fields that took place during the nineteenth century was both rigorous and all-encompassing. Research became a regular activity; there was a regulated exchange of information, and agreement on what the problems were as well as consensus on the appropriate paradigms for research and its results.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;For a discussion of this process see Foucault, ''Archaeology of Knowledge''; also Joseph Ben-David, ''The Scientist's Role in Society'' (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971). See also Edward W. Said, &quot;An Ethics of Language,&quot; ''Diacritics'' 4, no. 2 (Summer 1974): 28-37.&lt;/ref&gt; The apparatus serving Oriental studies was part of the scene, and this was one thing that Flaubert surely had in mind when he proclaimed that &quot;everyone will be in uniform.&quot; An Orientalist was no longer a gifted amateur enthusiast, or if he was, he would have trouble being taken seriously as a scholar. To be an Orientalist meant university training in Oriental studies (by 1850 every major European university had a fully developed curriculum in one or another of the Orientalist disciplines), it meant subvention for one's travel (perhaps by one of the Asiatic societies or a geographical exploration fund or a government grant), it meant publication in accredited form (perhaps under the imprint of a learned society or an Oriental translation fund). And both within the guild of Orientalist scholars and to the public at large, such uniform accreditation as clothed the work of Orientalist scholarship, not personal testimony nor subjective impressionism, meant Science.<br /> <br /> Added to the oppressive regulation of Oriental matters was the accelerated attention paid by the Powers (as the European empires were called) to the Orient, and to the Levant in particular. Ever since the Treaty of Chanak of 1806 between the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain, the Eastern Question had hovered ever more prominently on Europe's Mediterranean horizons. Britain's interests were more substantial in the East than France's, but we must not forget Russia's movements into the Orient (Samarkand and Bokhara were taken in 1868; the Transcaspian Railroad was being extended systematically), nor Germany's and Austria-Hungary's. France's North African interventions, however, were not the only components of its Islamic policy. In 1860, during the clashes between Maronites and Druzes in Lebanon (already predicted by Lamartine and Nerval), France supported the Christians, England the Druzes. For standing near the center of all European politics in the East was the question of minorities, whose &quot;interests&quot; the Powers, each in its own way, claimed to protect and represent. Jews, Greek and Russian Orthodox, Druzes, Circassians, Armenians, Kurds, the various small Christian sects: all these were studied, planned for, designed upon by European Powers improvising as well as constructing their Oriental policy.<br /> <br /> I mention such matters simply as a way of keeping vivid the sense of layer upon layer of interests, official learning, institutional pressure, that covered the Orient as a subject matter and as a territory during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Even the most innocuous travel book--and there were literally hundreds written after mid-century&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;See the invaluable listings in Richard Bevis, ''Bibliotheca Cisorientalia: An Annotated Checklist of Early English Travel Books on the Near and Middle East'' (Boston: G. K. Hall &amp; Co., 1973).&lt;/ref&gt;--contributed to the density of public awareness of the Orient; a heavily marked dividing line separated the delights, miscellaneous exploits, and testimonial portentousness of individual pilgrims in the East (which included some American voyagers, among them Mark Twain and Herman Melville&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;For discussions of the American travelers see Dorothee Metlitski Finkelstein, ''Melville's Orienda'' (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1961), and Franklin Walker, ''Irreverent Pilgrims: Melville'', ''Browne, and Mark Twain in the Holy Land'' (Seattle; University of Washington Press, 1974).&lt;/ref&gt;) from the authoritative reports of scholarly travelers, missionaries, governmental functionaries, and other expert witnesses. This dividing line existed clearly in Flaubert's mind, as it must have for any individual consciousness that did not have an innocent perspective on the Orient as a terrain for literary exploitation.<br /> <br /> English writers on the whole had a more pronounced and harder sense of what Oriental pilgrimages might entail than the French. India was a valuably real constant in this sense, and therefore all the territory between the Mediterranean and India acquired a correspondingly weighty importance. Romantic writers like Byron and Scott consequently had a political vision of the Near Orient and a very combative awareness of how relations between the Orient and Europe would have to be conducted. Scott's historical sense in ''The Talisman'' and ''Count Robert of Paris'' allowed him to set these novels in Crusader Palestine and eleventh-century Byzantium, respectively, without at the same time detracting from his canny political appreciation of the way powers act abroad. The failure of Disraeli's ''Tancred'' can easily be ascribed to its author's perhaps over-developed knowledge of Oriental politics and the British Establishment's network of interests; Tancred's ingenuous desire to go to Jerusalem very soon mires Disraeli in ludicrously complex descriptions of how a Lebanese tribal chieftain tries to manage Druzes, Muslims, Jews, and Europeans to his political advantage. By the end of the novel Tancred's Eastern quest has more or less disappeared because there is nothing in Disraeli's material vision of Oriental realities to nourish the pilgrim's somewhat capricious impulses. Even George Eliot, who never visited the Orient herself, could not sustain the Jewish equivalent of an Oriental pilgrimage in ''Daniel Deronda'' (1876) without straying into the complexities of British realities as they decisively affected the Eastern project.<br /> <br /> Thus whenever the Oriental motif for the English writer was not principally a stylistic matter (as in FitzGerald's ''Rubaiyat'' or in Morier's ''Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan''), it forced him to confront a set of imposing resistances to his individual fantasy. There are no English equivalents to the Oriental works by Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Nerval, and Flaubert, just as Lane's early Orientalist counterparts--Sacy and Renan--were considerably more aware than he was of how much they were creating what they wrote about. The form of such works as Kinglake's ''Eothen'' (1844) and Burton's ''Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah'' (1855-1856) is rigidly chronological and dutifully linear, as if what the authors were describing was a shopping trip to an Oriental bazaar rather than an adventure. Kinglake's undeservedly famous and popular work is a pathetic catalogue of pompous ethnocentrisms and tiringly nondescript accounts of the Englishman's East. His ostensible purpose in the book is to prove that travel in the Orient is important to &quot;moulding of your character--that is, your very identity,&quot; but in fact this turns out to be little more than solidifying &quot;your&quot; anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and general all-purpose race prejudice. We are told, for instance, that the ''Arabian Nights'' is too lively and inventive a work to have been created by a &quot;mere Oriental, who, for creative purposes, is a thing dead and dry--a mental mummy.&quot; Although Kinglake blithely confesses to no knowledge of any Oriental language, he is not constrained by ignorance from making sweeping generalizations about the Orient, its culture, mentality, and society. Many of the attitudes he repeats are canonical, of course, but it is interesting how little the experience of actually seeing the Orient affected his opinions. Like many other travelers he is more interested in remaking himself and the Orient (dead and dry--a mental mummy) than he is in seeing what there is to be seen. Every being he encounters merely corroborates his belief that Easterners are best dealt with when intimidated, and what better instrument of intimidation than a sovereign Western ego? En route to Suez across the desert, alone, he glories in his self-sufficiency and power: &quot;I was here in this African desert, and I ''myself'', ''and no other'', ''had charge of my life''.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Alexander William Kinglake, ''Eothen, or Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East'', ed. D. G. Hogarth (1844; reprint ed., London: Henry Frowde, 1906), pp. 25, 68, 241, 220.&lt;/ref&gt; It is for the comparatively useless purpose of letting Kinglake take hold of himself that the Orient serves him.<br /> <br /> Like Lamartine before him, Kinglake comfortably identified his superior consciousness with his nation's, the difference being that in the Englishman's case his government was closer to settling in the rest of the Orient than France was--for the time being. Flaubert saw this with perfect accuracy:<br /> <br /> It seems to me almost impossible that within a short time England won't become mistress of Egypt. She already keeps Aden full of her troops, the crossing of Suez will make it very easy for the redcoats to arrive in Cairo one fine morning--the news will reach France two weeks later and everyone will be very surprised! Remember my prediction: at the first sign of trouble in Europe, England will take Egypt, Russia will take Constantinople, and we, in retaliation, will get ourselves massacred in the mountains of Syria.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;''Flaubert in Egypt'', p. 81.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> For all their vaunted individuality Kinglake's views express a public and national will over the Orient; his ego is the instrument of this will's expression, not by any means its master. There is no evidence in his writing that he struggled to create a novel opinion of the Orient; neither his knowledge nor his personality was adequate for that, and this is the great difference between him and Richard Burton. As a traveler, Burton was a real adventurer; as a scholar, he could hold his own with any academic Orientalist in Europe; as a character, he was fully aware of the necessity of combat between himself and the uniformed teachers who ran Europe and European knowledge with such precise anonymity and scientific firmness. Everything Burton wrote testifies to this combativeness, rarely with more candid contempt for his opponents than in the preface to his translation of the ''Arabian Nights''. He seems to have taken a special sort of infantile pleasure in demonstrating that he knew more than any professional scholar, that he had acquired many more details than they had, that he could handle the material with more wit and tact and freshness than they.<br /> <br /> As I said earlier, Burton's work based on his personal experience occupies a median position between Orientalist genres represented on the one hand by Lane and on the other by the French writers I have discussed. His Oriental narratives are structured as pilgrimages and, in the case of ''The Land of Midian Revisited'', pilgrimages for a second time to sites of sometimes religious, sometimes political and economic significance. He is present as the principal character of these works, as much the center of fantastic adventure and even fantasy (like the French writers) as the authoritative commentator and detached Westerner on Oriental society and customs (like Lane). He has been rightly considered the first in a series of fiercely individualistic Victorian travelers in the East (the others being Blunt and Doughty) by Thomas Assad, who bases his work on the distance in tone and intelligence between his writers' work and such works as Austen Layard's ''Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon'' (1851), Eliot Warburton's celebrated ''The Crescent and the Cross'' (1844), Robert Curzon's ''Visit to the Monasteries of the Levant'' (1849), and (a work he does not mention) Thackeray's moderately amusing ''Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo'' (1845).&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Thomas J. Assad, ''Three Victorian Travellers: Burton, Blunt and Doughty'' (London: Routledge &amp; Kegan Paul, 1964), p. 5.&lt;/ref&gt; Yet Burton's legacy is more complex than individualism precisely because in his writing we can find exemplified the struggle between individualism and a strong feeling of national identification with Europe (specifically England) as an imperial power in the East. Assad sensitively points out that Burton was an imperialist, for all his sympathetic self-association with the Arabs; but what is more relevant is that Burton thought of himself both as a rebel against authority (hence his identification with the East as a place of freedom from Victorian moral authority) and as a potential agent of authority in the East. It is the ''manner'' of that coexistence, between two antagonistic roles for himself, that is of interest.<br /> <br /> The problem finally reduces itself to the problem of knowledge of the Orient, which is why a consideration of Burton's Orientalism ought to conclude our account of Orientalist structures and restructures in most of the nineteenth century. As a traveling adventurer Burton conceived of himself as sharing the life of the people in whose lands he lived. Far more successfully than T. E. Lawrence, he was able to become an Oriental; he not only spoke the language flawlessly, he was able to penetrate to the heart of Islam and, disguised as an Indian Muslim doctor, accomplish the pilgrimage to Mecca. Yet Burton's most extraordinary characteristic is, I believe, that he was preternaturally knowledgeable about the degree to which human life in society was governed by rules and codes. All of his vast information about the Orient, which dots every page he wrote, reveals that he knew that the Orient in general and Islam in particular were systems of information, behavior, and belief, that to be an Oriental or a Muslim was to know certain things in a certain way, and that these were of course subject to history, geography, and the development of society in circumstances specific to it. Thus his accounts of travel in the East reveal to us a consciousness aware of these things and able to steer a narrative course through them: no man who did not know Arabic and Islam as well as Burton could have gone as far as he did in actually becoming a pilgrim to Mecca and Medina. So what we read in his prose is the history of a consciousness negotiating its way through an alien culture by virtue of having successfully absorbed its systems of information and behavior. Burton's freedom was in having shaken himself loose of his European origins enough to be able to live as an Oriental. Every scene in the ''Pilgrimage'' reveals him as winning out over the obstacles confronting him, a foreigner, in a strange place. He was able to do this because he had sufficient knowledge of an alien society for this purpose.<br /> <br /> In no writer on the Orient so much as in Burton do we feel that generalizations about the Oriental--for example, the pages on the notion of ''Kayf'' for the Arab or on how education is suited to the Oriental mind (pages that are clearly meant as a rebuttal to Macaulay's simple-minded assertions)&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Richard Burton, ''Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to al-Madinah and Meccah'', ed. Isabel Burton (London: Tylston &amp; Edwards, 1893), 1: 9, 108-10.&lt;/ref&gt;--are the result of knowledge acquired about the Orient by living there, actually seeing it firsthand, truly trying to see Oriental life from the viewpoint of a person immersed in it. Yet what is never far from the surface of Burton's prose is another sense it radiates, a sense of assertion and domination over all the complexities of Oriental life. Every one of Burton's footnotes, whether in the ''Pilgrimage'' or in his translation of the ''Arabian Nights'' (the same is true of his &quot;Terminal Essay&quot; for it&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Richard Burton, &quot;Terminal Essay,&quot; in ''The Book of the Thousand and One Nights'' (London: Burton Club, 1886), 10: 63-302.&lt;/ref&gt;) was meant to be testimony to his victory over the sometimes scandalous system of Oriental knowledge, a system he had mastered by himself. For even in Burton's prose we are never directly ''given'' the Orient; everything about it is presented to us by way of Burton's knowledgeable (and often prurient) interventions, which remind us repeatedly how he had taken over the management of Oriental life for the purposes of his narrative. And it is this fact--for in the ''Pilgrimage'' it is a fact--that elevates Burton's consciousness to a position of supremacy over the Orient. In that position his individuality perforce encounters, and indeed merges with, the voice of Empire, which is itself a system of rules, codes, and concrete epistemological habits. Thus when Burton tells us in the ''Pilgrimage'' that &quot;Egypt is a treasure to be won,&quot; that it &quot;is the most tempting prize which the East holds out to the ambition of Europe, not excepted even the Golden Horn,&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Burton, ''Pilgrimage'', 1: 112, 114.&lt;/ref&gt; we must recognize how the voice of the highly idiosyncratic master of Oriental knowledge informs, feeds into the voice of European ambition for rule over the Orient.<br /> <br /> Burton's two voices blending into one presage the work of Orientalists-''cum''-imperial agents like T. E. Lawrence, Edward Henry Palmer, D. G. Hogarth, Gertrude Bell, Ronald Storrs, St. John Philby, and William Gifford Paigrave, to name only some English writers. The double-pronged intention of Burton's work is at the same time to use his Oriental residence for scientific observation ''and'' not easily to sacrifice his individuality to that end. The second of these two intentions leads him inevitably to submit to the first because, as will appear increasingly obvious, he is a European for whom such knowledge of Oriental society as he has is possible only for a European, with a European's self-awareness of society as a collection of rules and practices. In other words, to be a European in the Orient, and to be one knowledgeably, one must see and know the Orient as a domain ruled over by Europe. Orientalism, which is the system of European or Western knowledge about the Orient, thus becomes synonymous with European domination of the Orient, and this domination effectively overrules even the eccentricities of Burton's personal style.<br /> <br /> Burton took the assertion of personal, authentic, sympathetic, and humanistic knowledge of the Orient as far as it would go in its struggle with the archive of official European knowledge about the Orient. In the history of nineteenth-century attempts to restore, restructure, and redeem all the various provinces of knowledge and life, Orientalism--like all the other Romantically inspired learned disciplines--contributed an important share. For not only did the field evolve from a system of inspired observation into what Flaubert called a regulated college of learning, it also reduced the personalities of even its most redoubtable individualists like Burton to the role of imperial scribe. From being a place, the Orient became a domain of actual scholarly rule and potential imperial sway. The role of the early Orientalists like Renan, Sacy, and Lane was to provide their work and the Orient together with a ''mise en scene''; later Orientalists, scholarly or imaginative, took firm hold of the scene. Still later, as the scene required management, it became clear that institutions and governments were better at the game of management than individuals. This is the legacy of nineteenth-century Orientalism to which the twentieth century has become inheritor. We must now investigate as exactly as possible the way twentieth-century Orientalism--inaugurated by the long process of the West's occupation of the Orient from the 1880s on--successfully controlled freedom and knowledge; in short, the way Orientalism was fully formalized into a repeatedly produced copy of itself.<br /> <br /> === Footnotes ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;3.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> == '''3.''' '''Orientalism Now''' ==<br /> On les apercevait tenant leurs idoles entre leurs bras comme de grands enfants paralytiques.<br /> <br /> --Gustave Flaubert, ''La Tentation de Saint Antoine''<br /> <br /> The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea--something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to....<br /> <br /> --Joseph Conrad, ''Heart of Darkness''<br /> <br /> === '''I.''' '''Latent and Manifest Orientalism''' ===<br /> In Chapter One, I tried to indicate the scope of thought and action covered by the word ''Orientalism'', using as privileged types the British and French experiences of and with the Near Orient, Islam, and the Arabs. In those experiences I discerned an intimate, perhaps even the most intimate, and rich relationship between Occident and Orient. Those experiences were part of a much wider European or Western relationship with the Orient, but what seems to have influenced Orientalism most was a fairly constant sense of confrontation felt by Westerners dealing with the East. The boundary notion of East and West, the varying degrees of projected inferiority and strength, the range of work done, the kinds of characteristic features ascribed to the Orient: all these testify to a willed imaginative and geographic division made between East and West, and lived through during many centuries. In Chapter Two my focus narrowed a good deal. I was interested in the earliest phases of what I call modern Orientalism, which began during the latter part of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth. Since I did not intend my study to become a narrative chronicle of the development of Oriental studies in the modern West, I proposed instead an account of the rise, development, and institutions of Orientalism as they were formed against a background of intellectual, cultural, and political history until about 1870 or 1880. Although my interest in Orientalism there included a decently ample variety of scholars and imaginative writers, I cannot claim by any means to have presented more than a portrait of the typical structures (and their ideological tendencies) constituting the field, its associations with other fields, and the work of some of its most influential scholars. My principal operating assumptions were--and continue to be--that fields of learning, as much as the works of even the most eccentric artist, are constrained and acted upon by society, by cultural traditions, by worldly circumstance, and by stabilizing influences like schools, libraries, and governments; moreover, that both learned and imaginative writing are never free, but are limited in their imagery, assumptions, and intentions; and finally, that the advances made by a &quot;science&quot; like Orientalism in its academic form are less objectively true than we often like to think. In short, my study hitherto has tried to describe the ''economy'' that makes Orientalism a coherent subject matter, even while allowing that as an idea, concept, or image the word ''Orient'' has a considerable and interesting cultural resonance in the West.<br /> <br /> I realize that such assumptions are not without their controversial side. Most of us assume in a general way that learning and scholarship move forward; they get better, we feel, as time passes and as more information is accumulated, methods are refined, and later generations of scholars improve upon earlier ones. In addition, we entertain a mythology of creation, in which it is believed that artistic genius, an original talent, or a powerful intellect can leap beyond the confines of its own time and place in order to put before the world a new work. It would be pointless to deny that such ideas as these carry some truth. Nevertheless the possibilities for work present in the culture to a great and original mind are never unlimited, just as it is also true that a great talent has a very healthy respect for what others have done before it and for what the field already contains. The work of predecessors, the institutional life of a scholarly field, the collective nature of any learned enterprise: these, to say nothing of economic and social circumstances, tend to diminish the effects of the individual scholar's production. A field like Orientalism has a cumulative and corporate identity, one that is particularly strong given its associations with traditional learning (the classics, the Bible, philology), public institutions (governments, trading companies, geographical societies, universities), and generically determined writing (travel books, books of exploration, fantasy, exotic description). The result for Orientalism has been a sort of consensus: certain things, certain types of statement, certain types of work have seemed for the Orientalist correct. He has built his work and research upon them, and they in turn have pressed hard upon new writers and scholars. Orientalism can thus be regarded as a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, dominated by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the Orient. The Orient is taught, researched, administered, and pronounced upon in certain discrete ways.<br /> <br /> The Orient that appears in Orientalism, then, is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later, Western empire. If this definition of Orientalism seems more political than not, that is simply because I think Orientalism was itself a product of certain political forces and activities. Orientalism is a school of interpretation whose material happens to be the Orient, its civilizations, peoples, and localities. Its objective discoveries--the work of innumerable devoted scholars who edited texts and translated them, codified grammars, wrote dictionaries, reconstructed dead epochs, produced positivistically verifiable learning--are and always have been conditioned by the fact that its truths, like any truths delivered by language, are embodied in language, and what is the truth of language, Nietzsche once said, but<br /> <br /> a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms--in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Friedrich Nietzsche, &quot;On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,&quot; in ''The Portable Nietzsche'', ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Press, 1954), pp. 46-7.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Perhaps such a view as Nietzsche's will strike us as too nihilistic, but at least it will draw attention to the fact that so far as it existed in the West's awareness, the Orient was a word which later accrued to it a wide field of meanings, associations, and connotations, and that these did not necessarily refer to the real Orient but to the field surrounding the word.<br /> <br /> Thus Orientalism is not only a positive doctrine about the Orient that exists at any one time in the West; it is also an influential academic tradition (when one refers to an academic specialist who is called an Orientalist), as well as an area of concern defined by travelers, commercial enterprises, governments, military expeditions, readers of novels and accounts of exotic adventure, natural historians, and pilgrims to whom the Orient is a specific kind of knowledge about specific places, peoples, and civilizations. For the Orient idioms became frequent, and these idioms took firm hold in European discourse. Beneath the idioms there was a layer of doctrine about the Orient; this doctrine was fashioned out of the experiences of many Europeans, all of them converging upon such essential aspects of the Orient as the Oriental character, Oriental despotism, Oriental sensuality, and the like. For any European during the nineteenth century--and I think one can say this almost without qualification--Orientalism was such a system of truths, truths in Nietzsche's sense of the word. It is therefore correct that every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric. Some of the immediate sting will be taken out of these labels if we recall additionally that human societies, at least the more advanced cultures, have rarely offered the individual anything but imperialism, racism, and ethnocentrism for dealing with &quot;other&quot; cultures. So Orientalism aided and was aided by general cultural pressures that tended to make more rigid the sense of difference between the European and Asiatic parts of the world. My contention is that Orientalism is fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Orient because the Orient was weaker than the West, which elided the Orient's difference with its weakness.<br /> <br /> This proposition was introduced early in Chapter One, and nearly everything in the pages that followed was intended in part as a corroboration of it. The very presence of a &quot;field&quot; such as Orientalism, with no corresponding equivalent in the Orient itself, suggests the relative strength of Orient and Occident. A vast number of pages on the Orient exist, and they of course signify a degree and quantity of interaction with the Orient that are quite formidable; but the crucial index of Western strength is that there is no possibility of comparing the movement of Westerners eastwards (since the end of the eighteenth century) with the movement of Easterners westwards. Leaving aside the fact that Western armies, consular corps, merchants, and scientific and archaeological expeditions were always going East, the number of travelers from the Islamic East to Europe between 1800 and 1900 is minuscule when compared with the number in the other direction.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;The number of Arab travelers to the West is estimated and considered by Ibrahim Abu-Lughod in ''Arab Rediscovery of Europe: A Study in Cultural Encounters'' (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 75-6 and passim.&lt;/ref&gt; Moreover, the Eastern travelers in the West were there to learn from and to gape at an advanced culture; the purposes of the Western travelers in the Orient were, as we have seen, of quite a different order. In addition, it has been estimated that around 60,000 books dealing with the Near Orient were written between 1800 and 1950; there is no remotely comparable figure for Oriental books about the West. As a cultural apparatus Orientalism is all aggression, activity, judgment, will-to-truth, and knowledge. The Orient existed for the West, or so it seemed to countless Orientalists, whose attitude to what they worked on was either paternalistic or candidly condescending--unless, of course, they were antiquarians, in which case the &quot;classical&quot; Orient was a credit to ''them'' and not to the lamentable modern Orient. And then, beefing up the Western scholars' work, there were numerous agencies and institutions with no parallels in Oriental society.<br /> <br /> Such an imbalance between East and West is obviously a function of changing historical patterns. During its political and military heyday from the eighth century to the sixteenth, Islam dominated both East and West. Then the center of power shifted westwards, and now in the late twentieth century it seems to be directing itself back towards the East again. My account of nineteenth-century Orientalism in Chapter Two stopped at a particularly charged period in the latter part of the century, when the often dilatory, abstract, and projective aspects of Orientalism were about to take on a new sense of worldly mission in the service of formal colonialism. It is this project and this moment that I want now to describe, especially since it will furnish us with some important background for the twentieth-century crises of Orientalism and the resurgence of political and cultural strength in the East.<br /> <br /> On several occasions I have alluded to the connections between Orientalism as a body of ideas, beliefs, cliches, or learning about the East, and other schools of thought at large in the culture. Now one of the important developments in nineteenth-century Orientalism was the distillation of essential ideas about the Orient--its sensuality, its tendency to despotism, its aberrant mentality, its habits of inaccuracy, its backwardness--into a separate and unchallenged coherence; thus for a writer to use the word ''Oriental'' was a reference for the reader sufficient to identify a specific body of information about the Orient. This information seemed to be morally neutral and objectively valid; it seemed to have an epistemological status equal to that of historical chronology or geographical location. In its most basic form, then, Oriental material could not really be violated by anyone's discoveries, nor did it seem ever to be revaluated completely. Instead, the work of various nineteenth-century scholars and of imaginative writers made this essential body of knowledge more clear, more detailed, more substantial--and more distinct from &quot;Occidentalism.&quot; Yet Orientalist ideas could enter into alliance with general philosophical theories (such as those about the history of mankind and civilization) and diffuse world-hypotheses, as philosophers sometimes call them; and in many ways the professional contributors to Oriental knowledge were anxious to couch their formulations and ideas, their scholarly work, their considered contemporary observations, in language and terminology whose cultural validity derived from other sciences and systems of thought.<br /> <br /> The distinction I am making is really between an almost unconscious (and certainly an untouchable) positivity, which I shall call ''latent'' Orientalism, and the various stated views about Oriental society, languages, literatures, history, sociology, and so forth, which I shall call ''manifest'' Orientalism. Whatever change occurs in knowledge of the Orient is found almost exclusively in manifest Orientalism; the unanimity, stability, and durability of latent Orientalism are more or less constant. In the nineteenth-century writers I analyzed in Chapter Two, the differences in their ideas about the Orient can be characterized as exclusively manifest differences, differences in form and personal style, rarely in basic content. Every one of them kept intact the separateness of the Orient, its eccentricity, its backwardness, its silent indifference, its feminine penetrability, its supine malleability; this is why every writer on the Orient, from Renan to Marx (ideologically speaking), or from the most rigorous scholars (Lane and Sacy) to the most powerful imaginations (Flaubert and Nerval), saw the Orient as a locale requiring Western attention, reconstruction, even redemption. The Orient existed as a place isolated from the mainstream of European progress in the sciences, arts, and commerce. Thus whatever good or bad values were imputed to the Orient appeared to be functions of some highly specialized Western interest in the Orient. This was the situation from about the 1870s on through the early part of the twentieth century--but let me give some examples that illustrate what I mean.<br /> <br /> Theses of Oriental backwardness, degeneracy, and inequality with the West most easily associated themselves early in the nineteenth century with ideas about the biological bases of racial inequality. Thus the racial classifications found in Cuvier's ''Le Regne animal'', Gobineau's ''Essai sur l'inegalite des races humaines'', and Robert Knox's ''The Races of Man'' found a willing partner in latent Orientalism. To these ideas was added second-order Darwinism, which seemed to accentuate the &quot;scientific&quot; validity of the division of races into advanced and backward, or European-Aryan and Oriental-African. Thus the whole question of imperialism, as it was debated in the late nineteenth century by pro-imperialists and anti-imperialists alike, carried forward the binary typology of advanced and backward (or subject) races, cultures, and societies. John Westlake's ''Chapters on the Principles of International Law'' (1894) argues, for example, that regions of the earth designated as &quot;uncivilized&quot; (a word carrying the freight of Orientalist assumptions, among others) ought to be annexed or occupied by advanced powers. Similarly, the ideas of such writers as Carl Peters, Leopold de Saussure, and Charles Temple draw on the advanced/backward binarism&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;See Philip D. Curtin, ed., ''Imperialism: The Documentary History of Western Civilization'' (New York: Walker &amp; Co., 1972), pp. 73-105.&lt;/ref&gt; so centrally advocated in late-nineteenth-century Orientalism.<br /> <br /> Along with all other peoples variously designated as backward, degenerate, uncivilized, and retarded, the Orientals were viewed in a framework constructed out of biological determinism and moral-political admonishment. The Oriental was linked thus to elements in Western society (delinquents, the insane, women, the poor) having in common an identity best described as lamentably alien. Orientals were rarely seen or looked at; they were seen through, analyzed not as citizens, or even people, but as problems to be solved or confined or--as the colonial powers openly coveted their territory--taken over. The point is that the very designation of something as Oriental involved an already pronounced evaluative judgment, and in the case of the peoples inhabiting the decayed Ottoman Empire, an implicit program of action. Since the Oriental was a member of a subject race, he had to be subjected: it was that simple. The ''locus classicus'' for such judgment and action is to be found in Gustave Le Bon's ''Les Lois psychologiques de l'evolution des peuples'' (1894).<br /> <br /> But there were other uses for latent Orientalism. If that group of ideas allowed one to separate Orientals from advanced, civilizing powers, and if the &quot;classical&quot; Orient served to justify both the Orientalist and his disregard of modern Orientals, latent Orientalism also encouraged a peculiarly (not to say invidiously) male conception of the world. I have already referred to this in passing during my discussion of Renan. The Oriental male was considered in isolation from the total community in which he lived and which many Orientalists, following Lane, have viewed with something resembling contempt and fear. Orientalism itself, furthermore, was an exclusively male province; like so many professional guilds during the modern period, it viewed itself and its subject matter with sexist blinders. This is especially evident in the writing of travelers and novelists: women are usually the creatures of a male power-fantasy. They express unlimited sensuality, they are more or less stupid, and above all they are willing. Flaubert's Kuchuk Hanem is the prototype of such caricatures, which were common enough in pornographic novels (e.g., Pierre Louys's ''Aphrodite'') whose novelty draws on the Orient for their interest. Moreover the male conception of the world, in its effect upon the practicing Orientalist, tends to be static, frozen, fixed eternally. The very possibility of development, transformation, human movement--in the deepest sense of the word--is denied the Orient and the Oriental. As a known and ultimately an immobilized or unproductive quality, they come to be identified with a bad sort of eternality: hence, when the Orient is being approved, such phrases as &quot;the wisdom of the East.&quot;<br /> <br /> Transferred from an implicit social evaluation to a grandly cultural one, this static male Orientalism took on a variety of forms in the late nineteenth century, especially when Islam was being discussed. General cultural historians as respected as Leopold von Ranke and Jacob Burckhardt assailed Islam as if they were dealing not so much with an anthropomorphic abstraction as with a religio-political culture about which deep generalizations were possible and warranted: in his ''Weltgeschichte'' (1881-1888) Ranke spoke of Islam as defeated by the Germanic-Romanic peoples, and in his &quot;Historische Fragmente&quot; (unpublished notes, 1893) Burckhardt spoke of Islam as wretched; bare, and trivial.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;See Johann W. Fuck, &quot;Islam as an Historical Problem in European Historiography since 1800,&quot; in ''Historians of the Middle East'', ed. Bernard Lewis and P. M. Holt (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 307.&lt;/ref&gt; Such intellectual operations were carried out with considerably more flair and enthusiasm by Oswald Spengler, whose ideas about a Magian personality (typified by the Muslim Oriental) infuse ''Der Untergang des Abendlandes'' (1918-1922) and the &quot;morphology&quot; of cultures it advocates.<br /> <br /> What these widely diffused notions of the Orient depended on was the almost total absence in contemporary Western culture of the Orient as a genuinely felt and experienced force. For a number of evident reasons the Orient was always in the position both of outsider and of incorporated weak partner for the West. To the extent that Western scholars were aware of contemporary Orientals or Oriental movements of thought and culture, these were perceived either as silent shadows to be animated by the Orientalist, brought into reality by him, or as a kind of cultural and intellectual proletariat useful for the Orientalist's grander interpretative activity, necessary for his performance as superior judge, learned man, powerful cultural will. I mean to say that in discussions of the Orient, the Orient is all absence, whereas one feels the Orientalist and what he says as presence; yet we must not forget that the Orientalist's presence is enabled by the Orient's effective absence. This fact of substitution and displacement, as we must call it, clearly places on the Orientalist himself a certain pressure to reduce the Orient in his work, even after he has devoted a good deal of time to elucidating and exposing it. How else can one explain major scholarly production of the type we associate with Julius Wellhausen and Theodor Noldeke and, overriding it, those bare, sweeping statements that almost totally denigrate their chosen subject matter? Thus Noldeke could declare in 1887 that the sum total of his work as an Orientalist was to confirm his &quot;low opinion&quot; of the Eastern peoples.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 309.&lt;/ref&gt; And like Carl Becker, Noldeke was a philhellenist, who showed his love of Greece curiously by displaying a positive dislike of the Orient, which after all was what he studied as a scholar.<br /> <br /> A very valuable and intelligent study of Orientalism--Jacques Waardenburg's ''L'Islam dans le miroir de l'Occident''--examines five important experts as makers of an image of Islam. Waardenburg's mirror-image metaphor for late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Orientalism is apt. In the work of each of his eminent Orientalists there is a highly tendentious--in four cases out of the five, even hostile--vision of Islam, as if each man saw Islam as a reflection of his own chosen weakness. Each scholar was profoundly learned, and the style of his contribution was unique. The five Orientalists among them exemplify what was best and strongest in the tradition during the period roughly from the 1880s to the interwar years. Yet Ignaz Goldziher's appreciation of Islam's tolerance towards other religions was undercut by his dislike of Mohammed's anthropomorphisms and Islam's too-exterior theology and jurisprudence; Duncan Black Macdonald's interest in Islamic piety and orthodoxy was vitiated by his perception of what he considered Islam's heretical Christianity; Carl Becker's understanding of Islamic civilization made him see it as a sadly undeveloped one; C. Snouck Hurgronje's highly refined studies of Islamic mysticism (which he considered the essential part of Islam) led him to a harsh judgment of its crippling limitations; and Louis Massignon's extraordinary identification with Muslim theology, mystical passion, and poetic art kept him curiously unforgiving to Islam for what he regarded as its unregenerate revolt against the idea of incarnation. The manifest differences in their methods emerge as less important than their Orientalist consensus on Islam: latent inferiority.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;See Jacques Waardenburg, ''L'Islam dans le miroir de l'Occident'' (The Hague: Mouton &amp; Co., 1963).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Waardenburg's study has the additional virtue of showing how these five scholars shared a common intellectual and methodological tradition whose unity was truly international. Ever since the first Orientalist congress in 1873, scholars in the field have known each other's work and felt each other's presence very directly. What Waardenburg does not stress enough is that most of the late-nineteenth-century Orientalists were bound to each other politically as well. Snouck Hurgronje went directly from his studies of Islam to being an adviser to the Dutch government on handling its Muslim Indonesian colonies; Macdonald and Massignon were widely sought after as experts on Islamic matters by colonial administrators from North Africa to Pakistan; and, as Waardenburg says (all too briefly) at one point, all five scholars shaped a coherent vision of Islam that had a wide influence on government circles throughout the Western world.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 311.&lt;/ref&gt; What we must add to Waardenburg's observation is that these scholars were completing, bringing to an ultimate concrete refinement, the tendency since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to treat the Orient not only as a vague literary problem but--according to Masson-Oursel--as &quot;un ferme propos d'assimiler adequatement la valeur des langues pour penetrer les moeurs et les pensees, pour forcer meme des secrets de l'histoire.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;P. Masson-Oursel, &quot;La Connaissance scientifique de l'Asie en France depuis 1900 et les varietes de l'Orientalisme,&quot; ''Revue Philosophique'' 143, nos. 7-9 (July-September 1953): 345.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> I spoke earlier of incorporation and assimilation of the Orient, as these activities were practiced by writers as different from each other as Dante and d'Herbelot. Clearly there is a difference between those efforts and what, by the end of the nineteenth century, had become a truly formidable European cultural, political, and material enterprise. The nineteenth-century colonial &quot;scramble for Africa&quot; was by no means limited to Africa, of course. Neither was the penetration of the Orient entirely a sudden, dramatic afterthought following years of scholarly study of Asia. What we must reckon with is a long and slow process of appropriation by which Europe, or the European awareness of the Orient, transformed itself from being textual and contemplative into being administrative, economic, and even military. The fundamental change was a spatial and geographical one, or rather it was a change in the quality of geographical and spatial apprehension so far as the Orient was concerned. The centuries-old designation of geographical space to the east of Europe as &quot;Oriental&quot; was partly political, partly doctrinal, and partly imaginative; it implied no necessary connection between actual experience of the Orient and knowledge of what is Oriental, and certainly Dante and d'Herbelot made no claims about their Oriental ideas except that they were corroborated by a long ''learned'' (and not existential) tradition. But when Lane, Renan, Burton, and the many hundreds of nineteenth-century European travelers and scholars discuss the Orient, we can immediately note a far more intimate and even proprietary attitude towards the Orient and things Oriental. In the classical and often temporally remote form in which it was reconstructed by the Orientalist, in the precisely actual form in which the modern Orient was lived in, studied, or imagined, the ''geographical space'' of the Orient was penetrated, worked over, taken hold of. The cumulative effect of decades of so sovereign a Western handling turned the Orient from alien into colonial space. What was important in the latter nineteenth century was not ''whether'' the West had penetrated and possessed the Orient, but rather ''how'' the British and French felt that they had done it.<br /> <br /> The British writer on the Orient, and even more so the British colonial administrator, was dealing with territory about which there could be no doubt that English power was truly in the ascendant, even if the natives were on the face of it attracted to France and French modes of thought. So far as the actual space of the Orient was concerned, however, England was really there, France was not, except as a flighty temptress of the Oriental yokels. There is no better indication of this qualitative difference in spatial attitudes than to look at what Lord Cromer had to say on the subject, one that was especially dear to his heart:<br /> <br /> The reasons why French civilisation presents a special degree of attraction to Asiatics and Levantines are plain. It is, as a matter of fact, more attractive than the civilisations of England and Germany, and, moreover, it is more easy of imitation. Compare the undemonstrative, shy Englishman, with his social exclusiveness and insular habits, with the vivacious and cosmopolitan Frenchman, who does not know what the word shyness means, and who in ten minutes is apparently on terms of intimate friendship with any casual acquaintance he may chance to make. The semi-educated Oriental does not recognise that the former has, at all events, the merit of sincerity, whilst the latter is often merely acting a part. He looks coldly on the Englishman, and rushes into the arms of the Frenchman.<br /> <br /> The sexual innuendoes develop more or less naturally thereafter. The Frenchman is all smiles, wit, grace, and fashion; the Englishman is plodding, industrious, Baconian, precise. Cromer's case is of course based on British solidity as opposed to a French seductiveness without any real presence in Egyptian reality.<br /> <br /> Can it be any matter for surprise [Cromer continues] that the Egyptian, with his light intellectual ballast, fails to see that some fallacy often lies at the bottom of the Frenchman's reasoning, or that he prefers the rather superficial brilliancy of the Frenchman to the plodding, unattractive industry of the Englishman or the German? Look, again, at the theoretical perfection of French administrative systems, at their elaborate detail, and at the provision which is apparently made to meet every possible contingency which may arise. Compare these features with the Englishman's practical systems, which lay down rules as to a few main points, and leave a mass of detail to individual discretion. The half-educated Egyptian naturally prefers the Frenchman's system, for it is to all outward appearance more perfect and more easy of application. He fails, moreover, to see that the Englishman desires to elaborate a system which will suit the facts with which he has to deal, whereas the main objection to applying French administrative procedures to Egypt is that the facts have but too often to conform to the ready-made system.<br /> <br /> Since there is a real British presence in Egypt, and since that presence--according to Cromer--is there not so much to train the Egyptian's mind as to &quot;form his character,&quot; it follows therefore that the ephemeral attractions of the French are those of a pretty damsel with &quot;somewhat artificial charms,&quot; whereas those of the British belong to &quot;a sober, elderly matron of perhaps somewhat greater moral worth, but of less pleasing outward appearance.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer, ''Modern Egypt'' (New York: Macmillan Co., 1908), 2: 237-8.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Underlying Cromer's contrast between the solid British nanny and the French coquette is the sheer privilege of British emplacement in the Orient. &quot;The facts with which he [the Englishman] has to deal&quot; are altogether more complex and interesting, by virtue of their possession by England, than anything the mercurial French could point to. Two years after the publication of his ''Modern Egypt'' (1908), Cromer expatiated philosophically in ''Ancient and Modern Imperialism''. Compared with Roman imperialism, with its frankly assimilationist, exploitative, and repressive policies, British imperialism seemed to Cromer to be preferable, if somewhat more wishy-washy. On certain points, however, the British were clear enough, even if &quot;after a rather dim, slipshod, but characteristically Anglo-Saxon fashion,&quot; their Empire seemed undecided between &quot;one of two bases--an extensive military occupation or the principle of nationality [for subject races].&quot; But this indecision was academic finally, for in practice Cromer and Britain itself had opted against &quot;the principle of nationality.&quot; And then there were other things to be noted. One point was that the Empire was not going to be given up. Another was that intermarriage between natives and English men and women was undesirable. Third--and most important, I think--Cromer conceived of British imperial presence in the Eastern colonies as having had a lasting, not to say cataclysmic, effect on the minds and societies of the East. His metaphor for expressing this effect is almost theological, so powerful in Cromer's mind was the idea of Western penetration of Oriental expanses. &quot;The country,&quot; he says, &quot;over which the breath of the West, heavily charged with scientific thought, has once passed, and has, in passing, left an enduring mark, can never be the same as it was before.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer, ''Ancient and Modern Imperialism'' (London: John Murray, 1910), pp. 118, 120.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In such respects as these, nonetheless, Cromer's was far from an original intelligence. What he saw and how he expressed it were common currency among his colleagues both in the imperial Establishment and in the intellectual community. This consensus is notably true in the case of Cromer's viceregal colleagues, Curzon, Swettenham, and Lugard. Lord Curzon in particular always spoke the imperial lingua franca, and more obtrusively even than Cromer he delineated the relationship between Britain and the Orient in terms of possession, in terms of a large geographical space wholly owned by an efficient colonial master. For him, he said on one occasion, the Empire was not an &quot;object of ambition&quot; but &quot;first and foremost, a great historical and political and sociological fact.&quot; In 1909 he reminded delegates to the Imperial Press Conference meeting at Oxford that &quot;we train here and we send out to you your governors and administrators and judges, your teachers and preachers and lawyers.&quot; And this almost pedagogical view of empire had, for Curzon, a specific setting in Asia, which as he once put it, made &quot;one pause and think.&quot;<br /> <br /> I sometimes like to picture to myself this great Imperial fabric as a huge structure like some Tennysonian &quot;Palace of Art,&quot; of which the foundations are in this country, where they have been laid and must be maintained by British hands, but of which the Colonies are the pillars, and high above all floats the vastness of an Asiatic dome.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;George Nathaniel Curzon, ''Subjects of the Day: Being a Selection of Speeches and Writings'' (London: George Allen &amp; Unwin, 1915), pp. 4-5, 10, 28.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> With such a Tennysonian Palace of Art in mind, Curzon and Cromer were enthusiastic members together of a departmental committee formed in 1909 to press for the creation of a school of Oriental studies. Aside from remarking wistfully that had he known the vernacular he would have been helped during his &quot;famine tours&quot; in India, Curzon argued for Oriental studies as part of the British responsibility to the Orient. On September 27, 1909, he told the House of Lords that<br /> <br /> our familiarity, not merely with the languages of the people of the East but with their customs, their feelings, their traditions, their history and religion, our capacity to understand what may be called the genius of the East, is the sole basis upon which we are likely to be able to maintain in the future the position we have won, and no step that can be taken to strengthen that position can be considered undeserving of the attention of His Majesty's Government or of a debate in the House of Lords.<br /> <br /> At a Mansion House conference on the subject five years later, Curzon finally dotted the i's. Oriental studies were no intellectual luxury; they were, he said,<br /> <br /> a great Imperial obligation. In my view the creation of a school [of Oriental studies--later to become the London University School of Oriental and African Studies] like this in London is part of the necessary furniture of Empire. Those of us who, in one way or another, have spent a number of years in the East, who regard that as the happiest portion of our lives, and who think that the work that we did there, be it great or small, was the highest responsibility that can be placed upon the shoulders of Englishmen, feel that there is a gap in our national equipment which ought emphatically to be filled, and that those in the City of London who, by financial support or by any other form of active and practical assistance, take their part in filling that gap, will be rendering a patriotic duty to the Empire and promoting the cause and goodwill among mankind.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 184, 191-2. For the history of the school, see C. H. Phillips, ''The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1917-1967: An Introduction'' (London: Design for Print, 1967).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> To a very great extent Curzon's ideas about Oriental studies derive logically from a good century of British utilitarian administration of and philosophy about the Eastern colonies. The influence of Bentham and the Mills on British rule in the Orient (and India particularly) was considerable, and was effective in doing away with too much regulation and innovation; instead, as Eric Stokes has convincingly shown, utilitarianism combined with the legacies of liberalism and evangelicalism as philosophies of British rule in the East stressed the rational importance of a strong executive armed with various legal and penal codes, a system of doctrines on such matters as frontiers and land rents, and everywhere an irreducible supervisory imperial authority.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Eric Stokes, ''The English Utilitarians and India'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959).&lt;/ref&gt; The cornerstone of the whole system was a constantly refined knowledge of the Orient, so that as traditional societies hastened forward and became modern commercial societies, there would be no loss of paternal British control, and no loss of revenue either. However, when Curzon referred somewhat inelegantly to Oriental studies as &quot;the necessary furniture of Empire,&quot; he was putting into a static image the transactions by which Englishmen and natives conducted their business and kept their places. From the days of Sir William Jones the Orient had been both what Britain ruled and what Britain knew about it: the coincidence between geography, knowledge, and power, with Britain always in the master's place, was complete. To have said, as Curzon once did, that &quot;the East is a University in which the scholar never takes his degree&quot; was another way of saying that the East required one's presence there more or less forever.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Cited in Michael Edwardes, ''High Noon of Empire: India Under Curzon'' (London: Eyre &amp; Spottiswoode, 1965), pp. 38-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> But then there were the other European powers, France and Russia among them, that made the British presence always a (perhaps marginally) threatened one. Curzon was certainly aware that all the major Western powers felt towards the world as Britain did. The transformation of geography from &quot;dull and pedantic&quot;--Curzon's phrase for what had now dropped out of geography as an academic subject--into &quot;the most cosmopolitan of all sciences&quot; argued ''exactly'' that new Western and widespread predilection. Not for nothing did Curzon in 1912 tell the Geographical Society, of which he was president, that<br /> <br /> an absolute revolution has occurred, not merely in the manner and methods of teaching geography, but in the estimation in which it is held by public opinion. Nowadays we regard geographical knowledge as an essential part of knowledge in general. By the aid of geography, and in no other way, do we understand the action of great natural forces, the distribution of population, the growth of commerce, the expansion of frontiers, the development of States, the splendid achievements of human energy in its various manifestations.<br /> <br /> We recognize geography as the handmaid of history.... Geography, too, is a sister science to economics and politics; and to any of us who have attempted to study geography it is known that the moment you diverge from the geographical field you find yourself crossing the frontiers of geology, zoology, ethnology, chemistry, physics, and almost all the kindred sciences. Therefore we are justified in saying that geography is one of the first and foremost of the sciences: that it is part of the equipment that is necessary for a proper conception of citizenship, and is an indispensable adjunct to the production of a public man.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Curzon, ''Subjects of the Day'', pp. 155-6.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Geography was essentially the material underpinning for knowledge about the Orient. All the latent and unchanging characteristics of the Orient stood upon, were rooted in, its geography. Thus on the one hand the geographical Orient nourished its inhabitants, guaranteed their characteristics, and defined their specificity; on the other hand, the geographical Orient solicited the West's attention, even as--by one of those paradoxes revealed so frequently by organized knowledge--East was East and West was West. The cosmopolitanism of geography was, in Curzon's mind, its universal importance to the whole of the West, whose relationship to the rest of the world was one of frank covetousness. Yet geographical appetite could also take on the moral neutrality of an epistemological impulse to find out, to settle upon, to uncover--as when in ''Heart of Darkness'' Marlow confesses to having a passion for maps.<br /> <br /> I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, When I grow up I will go there.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Joseph Conrad, ''Heart of Darkness'', in ''Youth and Two Other Stories'' (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1925), p. 52.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Seventy years or so before Marlow said this, it did not trouble Lamartine that what on a map was a blank space was inhabited by natives; nor, theoretically, had there been any reservation in the mind of Emer de Vattel, the Swiss-Prussian authority on international law, when in 1758 he invited European states to take possession of territory inhabited only by mere wandering tribes.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;For an illustrative extract from de Vattel's work see Curtin, ed., ''Imperialism'', pp. 42-5.&lt;/ref&gt; The important thing was to dignify simple conquest with an idea, to turn the appetite for more geographical space into a theory about the special relationship between geography on the one hand and civilized or uncivilized peoples on the other. But to these rationalizations there was also a distinctively French contribution.<br /> <br /> By the end of the nineteenth century, political and intellectual circumstances coincided sufficiently in France to make geography, and geographical speculation (in both senses of that word), an attractive national pastime. The general climate of opinion in Europe was propitious; certainly the successes of British imperialism spoke loudly enough for themselves. However, Britain always seemed to France and to French thinkers on the subject to block even a relatively successful French imperial role in the Orient. Before the Franco-Prussian War there was a good deal of wishful political thinking about the Orient, and it was not confined to poets and novelists. Here, for instance, is Saint-Marc Girardin writing in the ''Revue des Deux Mondes'' on March 15, 1862:<br /> <br /> La France a beaucoup a faire en Orient, parce que l'Orient attend beaucoup d'elle. Il lui demande meme plus qu'elle ne peut faire; il lui remettrait volontiers le soin entier de son avenir, ce qui serait pour la France et pour l'Orient un grand danger: pour la France, parce que, disposee a prendre en mains la cause des populations souffrantes, elle se charge le plus souvent de plus d'obligations qu'elle n'en peut remplir; pour l'Orient, parce que tout peuple qui attend sa destinee de l'etranger n'a jamais qu'une condition precaire et qu'il n'y a de salut pour les nations que celui qu'elles se font elles-memes.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Cited by M. de Caix, ''La Syrie'' in Gabriel Hanotaux, ''Histoire des colonies francaises'', 6 vols. (Paris: Societe de l'histoire nationale, 1929-33), 3: 481.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Of such views as this Disraeli would doubtless have said, as he often did, that France had only &quot;sentimental interests&quot; in Syria (which is the &quot;Orient&quot; of which Girardin was writing). The fiction of &quot;populations souffrantes&quot; had of course been used by Napoleon when he appealed to the Egyptians on their behalf against the Turks and for Islam. During the thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties the suffering populations of the Orient were limited to the Christian minorities in Syria. And there was no record of &quot;l'Orient&quot; appealing to France for its salvation. It would have been altogether more truthful to say that Britain stood in France's way in the Orient, for even if France genuinely felt a sense of obligation to the Orient (and there were some Frenchmen who did), there was very little France could do to get between Britain and the huge land mass it commanded from India to the Mediterranean.<br /> <br /> Among the most remarkable consequences of the War of 1870 in France were a tremendous efflorescence of geographical societies and a powerfully renewed demand for territorial acquisition. At the end of 1871 the Societe de geographie de Paris declared itself no longer confined to &quot;scientific speculation.&quot; It urged the citizenry not to &quot;forget that our former preponderance was contested from the day we ceased to compete ... in the conquests of civilization over barbarism.&quot; Guillaume Depping, a leader of what has come to be called the geographical movement, asserted in 1881 that during the 1870 war &quot;it was the schoolmaster who triumphed,&quot; meaning that the real triumphs were those of Prussian scientific geography over French strategic sloppiness. The government's ''Journal officiel'' sponsored issue after issue centered on the virtues (and profits) of geographical exploration and colonial adventure; a citizen could learn in one issue from de Lesseps of &quot;the opportunities in Africa&quot; and from Gamier of &quot;the exploration of the Blue River.&quot; Scientific geography soon gave way to &quot;commercial geography,&quot; as the connection between national pride in scientific and civilizational achievement and the fairly rudimentary profit motive was urged, to be channeled into support for colonial acquisition. In the words of one enthusiast, &quot;The geographical societies are formed to break the fatal charm that holds us enchained to our shores.&quot; In aid of this liberating quest all sorts of schemes were spun out, including the enlisting of Jules Verne--whose &quot;unbelievable success,&quot; as it was called, ostensibly displayed the scientific mind at a very high peak of ratiocination--to head &quot;a round-the-world campaign of scientific exploration,&quot; and a plan for creating a vast new sea just south of the North African coast, as well as a project for &quot;binding&quot; Algeria to Senegal by railroad--&quot;a ribbon of steel,&quot; as the projectors called it.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;These details are to be found in Vernon McKay, &quot;Colonialism in the French Geographical Movement,&quot; ''Geographical Review'' 33, no. 2 (April 1943): 214-32.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Much of the expansionist fervor in France during the last third of the nineteenth century was generated out of an explicit wish to compensate for the Prussian victory in 1870-1871 and, no less important, the desire to match British imperial achievements. So powerful was the latter desire, and out of so long a tradition of Anglo-French rivalry in the Orient did it derive, that France seemed literally haunted by Britain, anxious in all things connected with the Orient to catch up with and emulate the British. When in the late 1870s, the Societe academique indo-chinoise reformulated its goals, it found it important to &quot;bring Indochina into the domain of Orientalism.&quot; Why? In order to turn Cochin China into a &quot;French India.&quot; The absence of substantial colonial holdings was blamed by military men for that combination of military and commercial weakness in the war with Prussia, to say nothing of long-standing and pronounced colonial inferiority compared with Britain. The &quot;power of expansion of the Western races,&quot; argued a leading geographer, La Ronciere Le Noury, &quot;its superior causes, its elements, its influences on human destinies, will be a beautiful study for future historians.&quot; Yet only if the white races indulged their taste for voyaging--a mark of their intellectual supremacy--could colonial expansion occur.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Agnes Murphy, ''The Ideology of French Imperialism, 1817-1881'' (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1948), pp. 46, 54, 36, 45.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> From such theses as this came the commonly held view of the Orient as a geographical space to be cultivated, harvested, and guarded. The images of agricultural care for and those of frank sexual attention to the Orient proliferated accordingly. Here is a typical effusion by Gabriel Charmes, writing in 1880:<br /> <br /> On that day when we shall be no longer in the Orient, and when other great European powers will be there, all will be at an end for our commerce in the Mediterranean, for our future in Asia, for the traffic of our southern ports. ''One of the most fruitful sources of our national wealth will be dried up''. (Emphasis added)<br /> <br /> Another thinker, Leroy-Beaulieu, elaborated this philosophy still further:<br /> <br /> A society colonizes, when itself having reached a high degree of maturity and of strength, it procreates, it protects, it places in good conditions of development, and it brings to virility a new society to which it has given birth. Colonization is one of the most complex and delicate phenomena of social physiology.<br /> <br /> This equation of self-reproduction with colonization led Leroy-Beaulieu to the somewhat sinister idea that whatever is lively in a modern society is &quot;magnified by this pouring out of its exuberant activity on the outside.&quot; Therefore, he said,<br /> <br /> Colonization is the expansive force of a people; it is its power of reproduction; ''it is its enlargement and its multiplication through space''; it is the subjection of the universe or a vast part of it to that people's language, customs, ideas, and laws.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 189, 110, 136.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The point here is that the space of weaker or underdeveloped regions like the Orient was viewed as something inviting French interest, penetration, insemination--in short, colonization. Geographical conceptions, literally and figuratively, did away with the discrete entities held in by borders and frontiers. No less than entrepreneurial visionaries like de Lesseps, whose plan was to liberate the Orient and the Occident from their geographical bonds, French scholars, administrators, geographers, and commercial agents poured out their exuberant activity onto the fairly supine, feminine Orient. There were the geographical societies, whose number and membership outdid those of all Europe by a factor of two; there were such powerful organizations as the Comite de l'Asie francaise and the Comite d'Orient; there were the learned societies, chief among them the Societe asiatique, with its organization and membership firmly embedded in the universities, the institutes, and the government. Each in its own way made French interests in the Orient more real, more substantial. Almost an entire century of what now seemed passive study of the Orient had had to end, as France faced up to its transnational responsibilities during the last two decades of the nineteenth century.<br /> <br /> In the only part of the Orient where British and French interests literally overlapped, the territory of the now hopelessly ill Ottoman Empire, the two antagonists managed their conflict with an almost perfect and characteristic consistency. Britain was ''in'' Egypt and Mesopotamia; through a series of quasi-fictional treaties with local (and powerless) chiefs it controlled the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Suez Canal, as well as most of the intervening land mass between the Mediterranean and India. France, on the other hand, seemed fated to hover over the Orient, descending once in a while to carry out schemes that repeated de Lesseps's success with the canal; for the most part these schemes were railroad projects, such as the one planned across more or less British territory, the Syrian-Mesopotamian line. In addition France saw itself as the protector of Christian minorities--Maronites, Chaldeans, Nestorians. Yet together, Britain and France were agreed in principle on the necessity, when the time came, for the partition of Asiatic Turkey. Both before and during World War I secret diplomacy was bent on carving up the Near Orient first into spheres of influence, then into mandated (or occupied) territories. In France, much of the expansionist sentiment formed during the heyday of the geographical movement focused itself on plans to partition Asiatic Turkey, so much so that in Paris in 1914 &quot;a spectacular press campaign was launched&quot; to this end.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Jukka Nevakivi, ''Britain, France, and the Arab Middle East, 1914-1920'' (London: Athlone Press, 1969), p. 13.&lt;/ref&gt; In England numerous committees were empowered to study and recommend policy on the best ways of dividing up the Orient. Out of such commissions as the Bunsen Committee would come the joint Anglo-French teams of which the most famous was the one headed by Mark Sykes and Georges Picot. Equitable division of geographical space was the rule of these plans, which were deliberate attempts also at calming Anglo-French rivalry. For, as Sykes put it in a memorandum,<br /> <br /> it was clear ... that an Arab rising was sooner or later to take place, and that the French and ourselves ought to be on better terms if the rising was not to be a curse instead of a blessing....&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 24.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The animosities remained. And to them was added the irritant provided by the Wilsonian program for national self-determination, which, as Sykes himself was to note, seemed to invalidate the whole skeleton of colonial and partitionary schemes arrived at jointly between the Powers. It would be out of place here to discuss the entire labyrinthine and deeply controversial history of the Near Orient in the early twentieth century, as its fate was being decided between the Powers, the native dynasties, the various nationalist parties and movements, the Zionists. What matters more immediately is the peculiar epistemological framework through which the Orient was seen, and out of which the Powers acted. For despite their differences, the British and the French saw the Orient as a geographical--and cultural, political, demographical, sociological, and historical--entity over whose destiny they believed themselves to have traditional entitlement. The Orient to them was no sudden discovery, no mere historical accident, but an area to the east of Europe whose principal worth was uniformly defined in terms of Europe, more particularly in terms specifically claiming for Europe--European science, scholarship, understanding, and administration--the credit for having made the Orient what it was now. And this had been the achievement--inadvertent or not is beside the point--of modern Orientalism.<br /> <br /> There were two principal methods by which Orientalism delivered the Orient to the West in the early twentieth century. One was by means of the disseminative capacities of modern learning, its diffusive apparatus in the learned professions, the universities, the professional societies, the explorational and geographical organizations, the publishing industry. All these, as we have seen, built upon the prestigious authority of the pioneering scholars, travelers, and poets, whose cumulative vision had shaped a quintessential Orient; the doctrinal--or doxological--manifestation of such an Orient is what I have been calling here latent Orientalism. So far as anyone wishing to make a statement of any consequence about the Orient was concerned, latent Orientalism supplied him with an enunciative capacity that could be used, or rather mobilized, and turned into sensible discourse for the concrete occasion at hand. Thus when Balfour spoke about the Oriental to the House of Commons in 1910, he must surely have had in mind those enunciative capacities in the current and acceptably rational language of his time, by which something called an &quot;Oriental&quot; could be named and talked about without danger of too much obscurity. But like all enunciative capacities and the discourses they enable, latent Orientalism was profoundly conservative--dedicated, that is, to its self-preservation. Transmitted from one generation to another, it was a part of the culture, as much a language about a part of reality as geometry or physics. Orientalism staked its existence, not upon its openness, its receptivity to the Orient, but rather on its internal, repetitious consistency about its constitutive will-to-power over the Orient. In such a way Orientalism was able to survive revolutions, world wars, and the literal dismemberment of empires.<br /> <br /> The second method by which Orientalism delivered the Orient to the West was the result of an important convergence. For decades the Orientalists had spoken about the Orient, they had translated texts, they had explained civilizations, religions, dynasties, cultures, mentalities--as academic objects, screened off from Europe by virtue of their inimitable foreignness. The Orientalist was an expert, like Renan or Lane, whose job in society was to interpret the Orient for his compatriots. The relation between Orientalist and Orient was essentially hermeneutical: standing before a distant, barely intelligible civilization or cultural monument, the Orientalist scholar reduced the obscurity by translating, sympathetically portraying, inwardly grasping the hard-to-reach object. Yet the Orientalist remained outside the Orient, which, however much it was made to appear intelligible, remained beyond the Occident. This cultural, temporal, and geographical distance was expressed in metaphors of depth, secrecy, and sexual promise: phrases like &quot;the veils of an Eastern bride&quot; or &quot;the inscrutable Orient&quot; passed into the common language.<br /> <br /> Yet the distance between Orient and Occident was, almost paradoxically, in the process of being reduced throughout the nineteenth century. As the commercial, political, and other existential encounters between East and West increased (in ways we have been discussing all along), a tension developed between the dogmas of latent Orientalism, with its support in studies of the &quot;classical&quot; Orient, and the descriptions of a present, modern, manifest Orient articulated by travelers, pilgrims, statesmen, and the like. At some moment impossible to determine precisely, the tension caused a convergence of the two types of Orientalism. Probably--and this is only a speculation--the convergence occurred when Orientalists, beginning with Sacy, undertook to advise governments on what the modern Orient was all about. Here the role of the specially trained and equipped expert took on an added dimension: the Orientalist could be regarded as the special agent of Western power as it attempted policy vis-a-vis the Orient. Every learned (and not so learned) European traveler in the Orient felt himself to be a representative Westerner who had gotten beneath the films of obscurity. This is obviously true of Burton, Lane, Doughty, Flaubert, and the other major figures I have been discussing.<br /> <br /> The discoveries of Westerners about the manifest and modern Orient acquired a pressing urgency as Western territorial acquisition in the Orient increased. Thus what the scholarly Orientalist defined as the &quot;essential&quot; Orient was sometimes contradicted, but in many cases was confirmed, when the Orient became an actual administrative obligation. Certainly Cromer's theories about the Oriental--theories acquired from the traditional Orientalist archive--were vindicated plentifully as he ruled millions of Orientals in actual fact. This was no less true of the French experience in Syria, North Africa, and elsewhere in the French colonies, such as they were. But at no time did the convergence between latent Orientalist doctrine and manifest Orientalist experience occur more dramatically than when, as a result of World War I, Asiatic Turkey was being surveyed by Britain and France for its dismemberment. There, laid out on an operating table for surgery, was the Sick Man of Europe, revealed in all his weakness, characteristics, and topographical outline.<br /> <br /> The Orientalist, with his special knowledge, played an inestimably important part in this surgery. Already there had been intimations of his crucial role as a kind of secret agent ''inside'' the Orient when the British scholar Edward Henry Palmer was sent to the Sinai in 1882 to gauge anti-British sentiment and its possible enlistment on behalf of the Arabi revolt. Palmer was killed in the process, but he was only the most unsuccessful of the many who performed similar services for the Empire, now a serious and exacting business entrusted in part to the regional &quot;expert.&quot; Not for nothing was another Orientalist, D. G. Hogarth, author of the famous account of the exploration of Arabia aptly titled ''The Penetration of Arabia'' (1904),&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;D. G. Hogarth, ''The Penetration of Arabia: A Record of the Development of Western Knowledge Concerning The Arabian Peninsula'' (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1904). There is a good recent book on the same subject: Robin Bidwell, ''Travellers in Arabia'' (London: Paul Hamlyn, 1976).&lt;/ref&gt; made the head of the Arab Bureau in Cairo during World War I. And neither was it by accident that men and women like Gertrude Bell, T. E. Lawrence, and St. John Philby, Oriental experts all, posted to the Orient as agents of empire, friends of the Orient, formulators of policy alternatives because of their intimate and expert knowledge of the Orient and of Orientals. They formed a &quot;band&quot;--as Lawrence called it once--bound together by contradictory notions and personal similarities: great individuality, sympathy and intuitive identification with the Orient, a jealously preserved sense of personal mission in the Orient, cultivated eccentricity, a final disapproval of the Orient. For them all the Orient was their direct, peculiar experience of it. In them Orientalism and an effective praxis for handling the Orient received their final European form, before the Empire disappeared and passed its legacy to other candidates for the role of dominant power.<br /> <br /> Such individualists as these were not academics. We shall soon see that they were the beneficiaries of the academic study of the Orient, without in any sense belonging to the official and professional company of Orientalist scholars. Their role, however, was not to scant academic Orientalism, nor to subvert it, but rather to make it effective. In their genealogy were people like Lane and Burton, as much for their encyclopedic autodidacticism as for the accurate, the quasi-scholarly knowledge of the Orient they had obviously deployed when dealing with or writing about Orientals. For the curricular study of the Orient they substituted a sort of elaboration of latent Orientalism, which was easily available to them in the imperial culture of their epoch. Their scholarly frame of reference, such as it was, was fashioned by people like William Muir, Anthony Bevan, D. S. Margoliouth, Charles Lyall, E. G. Browne, R. A. Nicholson, Guy Le Strange, E. D. Ross, and Thomas Arnold, who also followed directly in the line of descent from Lane. Their imaginative perspectives were provided principally by their illustrious contemporary Rudyard Kipling, who had sung so memorably of holding &quot;dominion over palm and pine.&quot;<br /> <br /> The difference between Britain and France in such matters was perfectly consistent with the history of each nation in the Orient: the British were there; the French lamented the loss of India and the intervening territories. By the end of the century, Syria had become the main focus of French activity, but even there it was a matter of common consensus that the French could not match the British either in quality of personnel or in degree of political influence. The Anglo-French competition over the Ottoman spoils was felt even on the field of battle in the Hejaz, in Syria, in Mesopotamia--but in all these places, as astute men like Edmond Bremond noted, the French Orientalists and local experts were outclassed in brilliance and tactical maneuvering by their British counterparts.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Edmond Bremond, ''Le Hedjaz dans la guerre mondiale'' (Paris: Payot, 1931), pp. 242 ff.&lt;/ref&gt; Except for an occasional genius like Louis Massignon, there were no French Lawrences or Sykeses or Bells. But there were determined imperialists like Etienne Flandin and Franklin-Bouillon. Lecturing to the Paris Alliance francaise in 1913, the Comte de Cressaty, a vociferous imperialist, proclaimed Syria as France's own Orient, the site of French political, moral, and economic interests--interests, he added, that had to be defended during this &quot;age des envahissants imperialistes&quot;; and yet Cressaty noted that even with French commercial and industrial firms in the Orient, with by far the largest number of native students enrolled in French schools, France was invariably being pushed around in the Orient, threatened not only by Britain but by Austria, Germany, and Russia. If France was to continue to prevent &quot;le retour de l'Islam,&quot; it had better take hold of the Orient: this was an argument proposed by Cressaty and seconded by Senator Paul Doumer.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Le Comte de Cressaty, ''Les Interets de la France en Syrie'' (Paris: Floury, 1913).&lt;/ref&gt; These views were repeated on numerous occasions, and indeed France did well by itself in North Africa and in Syria after World War I, but the special, concrete management of emerging Oriental populations and theoretically independent territories with which the British always credited themselves was something the French felt had eluded them. Ultimately, perhaps, the difference one always feels between modern British and modern French Orientalism is a stylistic one; the import of the generalizations about Orient and Orientals, the sense of distinction preserved between Orient and Occident, the desirability of Occidental dominance over the Orient--all these are the same in both traditions. For of the many elements making up what we customarily call &quot;expertise,&quot; style, which is the result of specific worldly circumstances being molded by tradition, institutions, will, and intelligence into formal articulation, is one of the most manifest. It is to this determinant, to this perceptible and modernized refinement in early-twentieth-century Orientalism in Britain and France, that we must now turn.<br /> <br /> === '''II.''' '''Style, Expertise, Vision: ''Orientalism's Worldliness''''' ===<br /> As he appears in several poems, in novels like ''Kim'', and in too many catchphrases to be an ironic fiction, Kipling's White Man, as an idea, a persona, a style of being, seems to have served many Britishers while they were abroad. The actual color of their skin set them off dramatically and reassuringly from the sea of natives, but for the Britisher who circulated amongst Indians, Africans, or Arabs there was also the certain knowledge that he belonged to, and could draw upon the empirical and spiritual reserves of, a long tradition of executive responsibility towards the colored races. It was of this tradition, its glories and difficulties, that Kipling wrote when he celebrated the &quot;road&quot; taken by White Men in the colonies:<br /> <br /> Now, this is the road that the White Men tread<br /> <br /> When they go to clean a land--<br /> <br /> Iron underfoot and the vine overhead<br /> <br /> And the deep on either hand.<br /> <br /> We have trod that road--and a wet and windy road--<br /> <br /> Our chosen star for guide.<br /> <br /> Oh, well for the world when the White Men tread<br /> <br /> Their highway side by side!&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Rudyard Kipling, ''Verse'' (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday &amp; Co., 1954), p. 280.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Cleaning a land&quot; is best done by White Men in delicate concert with each other, an allusion to the present dangers of European rivalry in the colonies; for failing in the attempt to coordinate policy, Kipling's White Men are quite prepared to go to war: &quot;Freedom for ourselves and freedom for our sons/And, failing freedom, War.&quot; Behind the White Man's mask of amiable leadership there is always the express willingness to use force, to kill and be killed. What dignifies his mission is some sense of intellectual dedication; he is a White Man, but not for mere profit, since his &quot;chosen star&quot; presumably sits far above earthly gain. Certainly many White Men often wondered what it was they fought for on that &quot;wet and windy road,&quot; and certainly a great number of them must have been puzzled as to how the color of their skins gave them superior ontological status plus great power over much of the inhabited world. Yet in the end, being a White Man, for Kipling and for those whose perceptions and rhetoric he influenced, was a self-confirming business. One became a White Man because one ''was'' a White Man; more important, &quot;drinking that cup,&quot; living that unalterable destiny in &quot;the White Man's day,&quot; left one little time for idle speculation on origins, causes, historical logic.<br /> <br /> Being a White Man was therefore an idea and a reality. It involved a reasoned position towards both the white and the nonwhite worlds. It meant--in the colonies--speaking in a certain way, behaving according to a code of regulations, and even feeling certain things and not others. It meant specific judgments, evaluations, gestures. It was a form of authority before which nonwhites, and even whites themselves, were expected to bend. In the institutional forms it took (colonial governments, consular corps, commercial establishments) it was an agency for the expression, diffusion, and implementation of policy towards the world, and within this agency, although a certain personal latitude was allowed, the impersonal communal idea of being a White Man ruled. Being a White Man, in short, was a very concrete manner of being-in-the-world, a way of taking hold of reality, language, and thought. It made a specific style possible.<br /> <br /> Kipling himself could not merely have happened; the same is true of his White Man. Such ideas and their authors emerge out of complex historical and cultural circumstances, at least two of which have much in common with the history of Orientalism in the nineteenth century. One of them is the culturally sanctioned habit of deploying large generalizations by which reality is divided into various collectives: languages, races, types, colors, mentalities, each category being not so much a neutral designation as an evaluative interpretation. Underlying these categories is the rigidly binomial opposition of &quot;ours&quot; and &quot;theirs,&quot; with the former always encroaching upon the latter (even to the point of making &quot;theirs&quot; exclusively a function of &quot;ours&quot;). This opposition was reinforced not only by anthropology, linguistics, and history but also, of course, by the Darwinian theses on survival and natural selection, and--no less decisive--by the rhetoric of high cultural humanism. What gave writers like Renan and Arnold the right to generalities about race was the official character of their formed cultural literacy. &quot;Our&quot; values were (let us say) liberal, humane, correct; they were supported by the tradition of belles-lettres, informed scholarship, rational inquiry; as Europeans (and white men) &quot;we&quot; shared in them every time their virtues were extolled. Nevertheless, the human partnerships formed by reiterated cultural values excluded as much as they included. For every idea about &quot;our&quot; art spoken for by Arnold, Ruskin, Mill, Newman, Carlyle, Renan, Gobineau, or Comte, another link in the chain binding &quot;us&quot; together was formed while another outsider was banished. Even if this is always the result of such rhetoric, wherever and whenever it occurs, we must remember that for nineteenth-century Europe an imposing edifice of learning and culture was built, so to speak, in the face of actual outsiders (the colonies, the poor, the delinquent), whose role in the culture was to give definition to what ''they'' were constitutionally unsuited for.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;The themes of exclusion and confinement in nineteenth-century culture have played an important role in Michel Foucault's work, most recently in his ''Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison'' (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), and ''The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction'' (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The other circumstance common to the creation of the White Man and Orientalism is the &quot;field&quot; commanded by each, as well as the sense that such a field entails peculiar modes, even rituals, of behavior, learning, and possession. Only an Occidental could speak of Orientals, for example, just as it was the White Man who could designate and name the coloreds, or nonwhites. Every statement made by Orientalists or White Men (who were usually interchangeable) conveyed a sense of the irreducible distance separating white from colored, or Occidental from Oriental; moreover, behind each statement there resonated the tradition of experience, learning, and education that kept the Oriental-colored to his position of ''object studied by the Occidental-white'', instead of vice versa. Where one was in a position of power--as Cromer was, for example--the Oriental belonged to the system of rule whose principle was simply to make sure that no Oriental was ever allowed to be independent and rule himself. The premise there was that since the Orientals were ignorant of self-government, they had better be kept that way for their own good.<br /> <br /> Since the White Man, like the Orientalist, lived very close to the line of tension keeping the coloreds at bay, he felt it incumbent on him readily to define and redefine the domain he surveyed. Passages of narrative description regularly alternate with passages of rearticulated definition and judgment that disrupt the narrative; this is a characteristic style of the writing produced by Oriental experts who operated using Kipling's White Man as a mask. Here is T. E. Lawrence, writing to V. W. Richards in 1918:<br /> <br /> ... the Arab appealed to my imagination. It is the old, old civilisation, which has refined itself clear of household gods, and half the trappings which ours hastens to assume. The gospel of bareness in materials is a good one, and it involves apparently a sort of moral bareness too. They think for the moment, and endeavour to slip through life without turning corners or climbing hills. In part it is a mental and moral fatigue, a race trained out, and to avoid difficulties they have to jettison so much that we think honorable and grave: and yet without in any way sharing their point of view, I think I can understand it enough to look at myself and other foreigners from their direction, and without condemning it. I know I am a stranger to them, and always will be; but I cannot believe them worse, any more than I could change to their ways.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;''The Letters of T. E. Lawrence of Arabia'', ed. David Garnett (1938; reprint ed., London: Spring Books, 1964), p. 244.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> A similar perspective, however different the subject under discussion may seem to be, is found in these remarks by Gertrude Bell:<br /> <br /> How many thousand years this state of things has lasted [namely, that Arabs live in &quot;a state of war&quot;], those who shall read the earliest records of the inner desert will tell us, for it goes back to the first of them, but in all the centuries the Arab has bought no wisdom from experience. He is never safe, and yet he behaves as though security were his daily bread.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Gertrude Bell, ''The Desert and the Sown'' (London: William Heinemann, 1907), p. 244.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> To which, as a gloss, we should, add her further observation, this time about life in Damascus:<br /> <br /> I begin to see dimly what the civilisation of a great Eastern city means, how they live, what they think; and I have got on to terms with them. I believe the fact of my being English is a great help.... We have gone up in the world since five years ago. The difference is very marked. I think it is due to the success of our government in Egypt to a great extent.... The defeat of Russia stands for a great deal, and my impression is that the vigorous policy of Lord Curzon in the Persian Gulf and on the India frontier stands for a great deal more. No one who does not know the East can realise how it all hangs together. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that if the English mission had been turned back from the gates of Kabul, the English tourist would be frowned upon in the streets of Damascus.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Gertrude Bell, ''From Her Personal Papers, 1889-1914'', ed. Elizabeth Burgoyne (London: Ernest Benn, 1958), p. 204.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In such statements as these, we note immediately that &quot;the Arab&quot; or &quot;Arabs&quot; have an aura of apartness, definiteness, and collective self-consistency such as to wipe out any traces of individual Arabs with narratable life histories. What appealed to Lawrence's imagination was the clarity of the Arab, both as an image and as a supposed philosophy (or attitude) towards life: in both cases what Lawrence fastens on is the Arab as if seen from the cleansing perspective of one not an Arab, and one for whom such un-self-conscious primitive simplicity as the Arab possesses is something defined by the observer, in this case the White Man. Yet Arab refinement, which in its essentials corresponds to Yeats's visions of Byzantium where<br /> <br /> Flames that no faggot feeds, flint nor steel has lit,<br /> <br /> Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,<br /> <br /> Where blood-begotten spirits come<br /> <br /> And all complexities of fury leave&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;William Butler Yeats, &quot;Byzantium,&quot; ''The Collected Poems'' (New York: Macmillan Co., 1959), p. 244.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> is associated with Arab perdurability, as if the Arab had not been subject to the ordinary processes of history. Paradoxically, the Arab seems to Lawrence to have exhausted himself in his very temporal persistence. The enormous age of Arab civilization has thus served to refine the Arab down to his quintessential attributes, and to tire him out morally in the process. What we are left with is Bell's Arab: centuries of experience and no wisdom. As a collective entity, then, the Arab accumulates no existential or even semantical thickness. He remains the same, except for the exhausting refinements mentioned by Lawrence, from one end to the other of &quot;the records of the inner desert.&quot; We are to assume that if ''an'' Arab feels joy, if he is sad at the death of his child or parent, if he has a sense of the injustices of political tyranny, then those experiences are necessarily subordinate to the sheer, unadorned, and persistent fact of being an Arab.<br /> <br /> The primitiveness of such a state exists simultaneously on at least two levels: one, ''in the definition'', which is reductive; and two (according to Lawrence and Bell), ''in reality''. This absolute coincidence was itself no simple coincidence. For one, it could only have been made from the outside by virtue of a vocabulary and epistemological instruments designed both to get to the heart of things and to avoid the distractions of accident, circumstance, or experience. For another, the coincidence was a fact uniquely the result of method, tradition, and politics all working together. Each in a sense obliterated the distinctions between the type''--the'' Oriental, ''the'' Semite, ''the'' Arab, ''the'' Orient--and ordinary human reality, Yeats's &quot;uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor,&quot; in which all human beings live. The scholarly investigator took a type marked &quot;Oriental&quot; for the same thing as any individual Oriental he might encounter. Years of tradition had encrusted discourse about such matters as the Semitic or Oriental spirit with some legitimacy. And political good sense taught, in Bell's marvelous phrase, that in the East &quot;it all hangs together.&quot; Primitiveness therefore inhered in the Orient, ''was'' the Orient, an idea to which anyone dealing with or writing about the Orient had to return, as if to a touchstone outlasting time or experience.<br /> <br /> There is an excellent way of understanding all this as it applied to the white agents, experts, and advisers for the Orient. What mattered to Lawrence and Bell was that their references to Arabs or Orientals belonged to a recognizable, and authoritative, convention of formulation, one that was able to subordinate detail to it. But from where, more particularly, did &quot;the Arab,&quot; &quot;the Semite,&quot; or &quot;the Oriental&quot; come?<br /> <br /> We have remarked how, during the nineteenth century in such writers as Renan, Lane, Flaubert, Caussin de Perceval, Marx, and Lamartine, a generalization about &quot;the Orient&quot; drew its power from the presumed representativeness of everything Oriental; each particle of the Orient told of its Orientalness, so much so that the attribute of being Oriental overrode any countervailing instance. An Oriental man was first an Oriental and only second a man. Such radical typing was naturally reinforced by sciences (or discourses, as I prefer to call them) that took a backward and downward direction towards the species category, which was supposed also to be an ontogenetic explanation for every member of the species. Thus within broad, semipopular designations such as &quot;Oriental&quot; there were some more scientifically valid distinctions being made; most of these were based principally on language types--e.g., Semitic, Dravidic, Hamitic--but they were quickly able to acquire anthropological, psychological, biological, and cultural evidence in their support. Renan's &quot;Semitic,&quot; as an instance, was a linguistic generalization which in Renan's hands could add to itself all sorts of parallel ideas from anatomy, history, anthropology, and even geology. &quot;Semitic&quot; could then be employed not only as a simple description or designation; it could be applied to any complex of historical and political events in order to pare them down to a nucleus both antecedent to and inherent in them. &quot;Semitic,&quot; therefore, was a transtemporal, transindividual category, purporting to predict every discrete act of &quot;Semitic&quot; behavior on the basis of some pre-existing &quot;Semitic&quot; essence, and aiming as well to interpret all aspects of human life and activity in terms of some common &quot;Semitic&quot; element.<br /> <br /> The peculiar hold on late-nineteenth-century liberal European culture of such relatively punitive ideas will seem mysterious unless it is remembered that the appeal of sciences like linguistics, anthropology, and biology was that they were empirical, and by no means speculative or idealistic. Renan's Semitic, like Bopp's Indo-European, was a constructed object, it is true, but it was considered logical and inevitable as a protoform, given the scientifically apprehendable and empirically analyzable data of specific Semitic languages. Thus, in trying to formulate a prototypical and primitive linguistic type (as well as a cultural, psychological, and historical one), there was also an &quot;attempt to define a primary human potential,&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Stanley Diamond, ''In Search of the Primitive: A Critique of Civilization'' (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1974), p. 119.&lt;/ref&gt; out of which completely specific instances of behavior uniformly derived. Now this attempt would have been impossible had it not also been believed--in classical empiricist terms--that mind and body were interdependent realities, both determined originally by a given set of geographical, biological, and quasihistorical conditions.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;See Harry Bracken, &quot;Essence, Accident and Race,&quot; ''Hermathena'' 116 (Winter 1973): pp. 81-96.&lt;/ref&gt; From this set, which was not available to the native for discovery or introspection, there was no subsequent escape. The antiquarian bias of Orientalists was supported by these empiricist ideas. In all their studies of &quot;classical&quot; Islam, Buddhism, or Zoroastrianism they felt themselves, as George Eliot's Dr. Casaubon confesses, to be acting &quot;like the ghost of an ancient, wandering about the world and trying mentally to construct it as it used to be, in spite of ruin and confusing changes.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;George Eliot, ''Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life'' (1872; reprint ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1956), p. 13.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Were these theses about linguistic, civilizational, and finally racial characteristics merely one side of an academic debate amongst European scientists and scholars, we might dismiss them as furnishing material for an unimportant closet drama. The point is, however, that both the terms of the debate and the debate itself had very wide circulation; in late-nineteenth-century culture, as Lionel Trilling has said, &quot;racial theory, stimulated by a rising nationalism and a spreading imperialism, supported by an incomplete and mal-assimilated science, was almost undisputed.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lionel Trilling, ''Matthew Arnold'' (1939; reprint ed., New York: Meridian Books, 1955), p. 214.&lt;/ref&gt; Race theory, ideas about primitive origins and primitive classifications, modern decadence, the progress of civilization, the destiny of the white (or Aryan) races, the need for colonial territories--all these were elements in the peculiar amalgam of science, politics, and culture whose drift, almost without exception, was always to raise Europe or a European race to dominion over non-European portions of mankind. There was general agreement too that, according to a strangely transformed variety of Darwinism sanctioned by Darwin himself, the modern Orientals were degraded remnants of a former greatness; the ancient, or &quot;classical,&quot; civilizations of the Orient were perceivable through the disorders of present decadence, but only (''a'') because a white specialist with highly refined scientific techniques could do the sifting and reconstructing, and (''b'') because a vocabulary of sweeping generalities (the Semites, the Aryans, the Orientals) referred not to a set of fictions but rather to a whole array of seemingly objective and agreed-upon distinctions. Thus a remark about what Orientals were and were not capable of was supported by biological &quot;truths&quot; such as those spelled out in P. Charles Michel's &quot;A Biological View of Our Foreign Policy&quot; (1896), in Thomas Henry Huxley's ''The Struggle for Existence in Human Society'' (1888), Benjamin Kidd's ''Social Evolution'' (1894), John B. Crozier's ''History of Intellectual Development on the Lines of Modern Evolution'' (1897-1901), and Charles Harvey's ''The Biology of British Politics'' (1904).&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;See Hannah Arendt, ''The Origins of Totalitarianism'' (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), p. 180, note 55.&lt;/ref&gt; It was assumed that if languages were as distinct from each other as the linguists said they were, then too the language users--their minds, cultures, potentials, and even their bodies--were different in similar ways. And these distinctions had the force of ontological, empirical truth behind them, together with the convincing demonstration of such truth in studies of origins, development, character, and destiny.<br /> <br /> The point to be emphasized is that this truth about the distinctive differences between races, civilizations, and languages was (or pretended to be) radical and ineradicable. It went to the bottom of things, it asserted that there was no escape from origins and the types these origins enabled; it set the real boundaries between human beings, on which races, nations, and civilizations were constructed; it forced vision away from common, as well as plural, human realities like joy, suffering, political organization, forcing attention instead in the downward and backward direction of immutable origins. A scientist could no more escape such origins in his research than an Oriental could escape &quot;the Semites&quot; or &quot;the Arabs&quot; or &quot;the Indians&quot; from which his present reality--debased, colonized, backward--excluded him, except for the white researcher's didactic presentation.<br /> <br /> The profession of specialized research conferred unique privileges. We recall that Lane could appear to be an Oriental and yet retain his scholarly detachment. The Orientals he studied became in fact ''his'' Orientals, for he saw them not only as actual people but as monumentalized objects in his account of them. This double perspective encouraged a sort of structured irony. On the one hand, there was a collection of people living in the present; on the other hand, these people--as the subject of study--became &quot;the Egyptians,&quot; &quot;the Muslims,&quot; or &quot;the Orientals.&quot; Only the scholar could see, and manipulate, the discrepancy between the two levels. The tendency of the former was always towards greater variety, yet this variety was always being restrained, compressed downwards and backwards to the ''radical'' terminal of the generality. Every modern, native instance of behavior became an effusion to be sent back to the original terminal, which was strengthened in the process. This kind of &quot;dispatching&quot; was precisely the ''discipline'' of Orientalism.<br /> <br /> Lane's ability to deal with the Egyptians as present beings and as validations of ''sui generis'' labels was a function both of Orientalist discipline and of generally held views about the Near Oriental Muslim or Semite. In no people more than in the Oriental Semites was it possible to see the present and the origin together. The Jews and the Muslims, as subjects of Orientalist study, were readily understandable in view of their primitive origins: this was (and to a certain extent still is) the cornerstone of modern Orientalism. Renan had called the Semites an instance of arrested development, and functionally speaking this came to mean that for the Orientalist no modern Semite, however much he may have believed himself to be modern, could ever outdistance the organizing claims on him of his origins. This functional rule worked on the temporal and spatial levels together. No Semite advanced in time beyond the development of a &quot;classical&quot; period; no Semite could ever shake loose the pastoral, desert environment of his tent and tribe. Every manifestation of actual &quot;Semitic&quot; life could be, and ought to be, referred back to the primitive explanatory category of &quot;the Semitic.&quot;<br /> <br /> The executive power of such a system of reference, by which each discrete instance of real behavior could be reduced down and back to a small number of explanatory &quot;original&quot; categories, was considerable by the end of the nineteenth century. In Orientalism it was the equivalent of bureaucracy in public administration. The department was more useful than the individual file, and certainly the human being was significant principally as the occasion for a file. We must imagine the Orientalist at work in the role of a clerk putting together a very wide assortment of files in a large cabinet marked &quot;the Semites.&quot; Aided by recent discoveries in comparative and primitive anthropology, a scholar like William Robertson Smith could group together the inhabitants of the Near Orient and write on their kinship and marriage customs, on the form and content of their religious practice. The power of Smith's work is its plainly radical demythologizing of the Semites. The nominal barriers presented to the world by Islam or Judaism are swept aside; Smith uses Semitic philology, mythology, and Orientalist scholarship &quot;to construct ... a hypothetical picture of the development of the social systems, consistent with all the Arabian facts.&quot; If this picture succeeds in revealing the antecedent, and still influential, roots of monotheism in totemism or animal worship, then the scholar has been successful. And this, Smith says, despite the fact that &quot;our Mohammedan sources draw a veil, as far as they can, over all details of the old heathenism.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;W. Robertson Smith, ''Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia'', ed. Stanley Cook (1907; reprint ed., Oesterhout, N.B.: Anthropological Publications, 1966), pp. xiii, 241.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Smith's work on the Semites covered such areas as theology, literature, and history; it was done with a full awareness of work done by Orientalists (see, for instance, Smith's savage attack in 1887 on Renan's ''Histoire du peuple d'Israel''), and more important, was intended as an aid to the understanding of the modern Semites. For Smith, I think, was a crucial link in the intellectual chain connecting the White-Man-as-expert to the modern Orient. None of the encapsulated wisdom delivered as Oriental expertise by Lawrence, Hogarth, Bell, and the others would have been possible without Smith. And even Smith the antiquarian scholar would not have had half the authority without his additional and direct experience of &quot;the Arabian facts.&quot; It was the combination in Smith of the &quot;grasp&quot; of primitive categories with the ability to see general truths behind the empirical vagaries of contemporary Oriental behavior that gave weight to his writing. Moreover, it was this special combination that adumbrated the style of expertise upon which Lawrence, Bell, and Philby built their reputation.<br /> <br /> Like Burton and Charles Doughty before him, Smith voyaged in the Hejaz, between 1880 and 1881. Arabia has been an especially privileged place for the Orientalist, not only because Muslims treat Islam as Arabia's ''genius loci'', but also because the Hejaz appears historically as barren and retarded as it is geographically; the Arabian desert is thus considered to be a locale about which one can make statements regarding the past in exactly the same form (and with the same content) that one makes them regarding the present. In the Hejaz you can speak about Muslims, modern Islam, and primitive Islam without bothering to make distinctions. To this vocabulary devoid of historical grounding, Smith was able to bring the cachet of additional authority provided by his Semitic studies. What we hear in his comments is the standpoint of a scholar commanding ''all'' the antecedents for Islam, the Arabs, and Arabia. Hence:<br /> <br /> It is characteristic of Mohammedanism that all national feeling assumes a religious aspect, inasmuch as the whole polity and social forms of a Moslem country are clothed in a religious dress. But it would be a mistake to suppose that genuine religious feeling is at the bottom of everything that justifies itself by taking a religious shape. The prejudices of the Arab have their roots in a conservatism which lies deeper than his belief in Islam. It is, indeed, a great fault of the religion of the Prophet that it lends itself so easily to the prejudices of the race among whom it was first promulgated, and that it has taken under its protection so many barbarous and obsolete ideas, which even Mohammed must have seen to have no religious worth, but which he carried over into his system in order to facilitate the propagation of his reformed doctrines. Yet many of the prejudices which seem to us most distinctively Mohammedan have no basis in the Koran.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;W. Robertson Smith, ''Lectures and Essays'', ed. John Sutherland Black and George Chrystal (London: Adam &amp; Charles Black, 1912), pp. 492-3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The &quot;us&quot; in the last sentence of this amazing piece of logic defines the White Man's vantage point explicitly. This allows &quot;us&quot; to say in the first sentence that all political and social life are &quot;clothed&quot; in religious dress (Islam can thus be characterized as totalitarian), then to say in the second that religion is only a cover used by Muslims (in other words, all Muslims are hypocrites essentially). In the third sentence, the claim is made that Islam--even while laying hold upon the Arab's faith--has not really reformed the Arab's basic pre-Islamic conservatism. Nor is this all. For if Islam was successful as a religion it was because it fecklessly allowed these &quot;authentic&quot; Arab prejudices to creep in; for such a tactic (now we see that it was a tactic on Islam's behalf) we must blame Mohammed, who was after all a ruthless crypto-Jesuit. But all this is more or less wiped out in the last sentence, when Smith assures &quot;us&quot; that everything he has said about Islam is invalid, since the quintessential aspects of Islam known to the West are not &quot;Mohammedan&quot; after all.<br /> <br /> The principles of identity and noncontradiction clearly do not bind the Orientalist. What overrides them is Orientalist expertise, which is based on an irrefutable collective verity entirely within the Orientalist's philosophical and rhetorical grasp. Smith is able without the slightest trepidation to speak about &quot;the jejune, practical and ... constitutionally irreligious habit of the Arabic mind,&quot; Islam as a system of &quot;organized hypocrisy,&quot; the impossibility of &quot;feeling any respect for Moslem devotion, in which formalism and vain repetition are reduced to a system.&quot; His attacks on Islam are not relativist, for it is clear to him that Europe's and Christianity's superiority is actual, not imagined. At bottom, Smith's vision of the world is binary, as is evident in such passages as the following:<br /> <br /> The Arabian traveller is quite different from ourselves. The labour of moving from place to place is a mere nuisance to him, he has no enjoyment in effort [as &quot;we&quot; do], and grumbles at hunger or fatigue with all his might [as &quot;we&quot; do not]. You will never persuade the Oriental that, when you get off your camel, you can have any other wish than immediately to squat on a rug and take your rest (''isterih''), smoking and drinking. Moreover the Arab is little impressed by scenery [but &quot;we&quot; are].&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 492, 493, 511, 500, 498-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;We&quot; are this, &quot;they&quot; are that. Which Arab, which Islam, when, how, according to what tests: these appear to be distinctions irrelevant to Smith's scrutiny of and experience in the Hejaz. The crucial point is that everything one can know or learn about &quot;Semites&quot; and &quot;Orientals&quot; receives immediate corroboration, not merely in the archives, but directly on the ground.<br /> <br /> Out of such a coercive framework, by which a modern &quot;colored&quot; man is chained irrevocably to the general truths formulated about his prototypical linguistic, anthropological, and doctrinal forebears by a white European scholar, the work of the great twentieth-century Oriental experts in England and France derived. To this framework these experts also brought their private mythology and obsessions, which in writers like Doughty and Lawrence have been studied with considerable energy. Each--Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Doughty, Lawrence, Bell, Hogarth, Philby, Sykes, Storrs--believed his vision of things Oriental was individual, self-created out of some intensely personal encounter with the Orient, Islam, or the Arabs; each expressed general contempt for official knowledge held about the East. &quot;The sun made me an Arab,&quot; Doughty wrote in ''Arabia Deserta'', &quot;but never warped me to Orientalism.&quot; Yet in the final analysis they all (except Blunt) expressed the traditional Western hostility to and fear of the Orient. Their views refined and gave a personal twist to the academic style of modern Orientalism, with its repertoire of grand generalizations, tendentious &quot;science&quot; from which there was no appeal, reductive formulae. (Doughty again, on the same page as his sneer at Orientalism: &quot;The Semites are like to a man sitting in a cloaca to the eyes, and whose brows touch heaven.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Charles M. Doughty, ''Travels in Arabia Deserta'', 2nd ed., 2 vols. (New York: Random House, n.d.), 1: 95. See also the excellent article by Richard Bevis, &quot;Spiritual Geology: C. M. Doughty and the Land of the Arabs,&quot; ''Victorian Studies'' 16 (December 1972), 163-81.&lt;/ref&gt;) They acted, they promised, they recommended public policy on the basis of such generalizations; and, by a remarkable irony, they acquired the identity of White Orientals in their natal cultures--even as, in the instances of Doughty, Lawrence, Hogarth, and Bell, their professional involvement with the East (like Smith's) did not prevent them from despising it thoroughly. The main issue for them was preserving the Orient and Islam under the control of the White Man.<br /> <br /> A new dialectic emerges out of this project. What is required of the Oriental expert is no longer simply &quot;understanding&quot;: now the Orient must be made to perform, its power must be enlisted on the side of &quot;our&quot; values, civilization, interests, goals. Knowledge of the Orient is directly translated into activity, and the results give rise to new currents of thought and action in the Orient. But these in turn will require from the White Man a new assertion of control, this time not as the author of a scholarly work on the Orient but as the maker of contemporary history, of the Orient as urgent actuality (which, because he began it, only the expert can understand adequately). The Orientalist has now become a figure of Oriental history, indistinguishable from it, its shaper, its characteristic ''sign'' for the West. Here is the dialectic in brief:<br /> <br /> Some Englishmen, of whom Kitchener was chief, believed that a rebellion of Arabs against Turks would enable England, while fighting Germany, simultaneously to defeat her ally Turkey. Their knowledge of the nature and power and country of the Arabic-speaking peoples made them think that the issue of such a rebellion would be happy: and indicated its character and method. So they allowed it to begin, having obtained formal assurances of help for it from the British Government. Yet none the less the rebellion of the Sherif of Mecca came to most as a surprise, and found the Allies unready. It aroused mixed feelings and made strong friends and enemies, amid whose clashing jealousies its affairs began to miscarry.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;T. E. Lawrence, ''The Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph'' (1926; reprint ed., Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran &amp; Co., 1935), p. 28.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> This is Lawrence's own synopsis of chapter 1 of ''The Seven Pillars of Wisdom''. The &quot;knowledge&quot; of &quot;some Englishmen&quot; authors a movement in the Orient whose &quot;affairs&quot; create a mixed progeny; the ambiguities, the half-imagined, tragicomic results of this new, revived Orient become the subject of expert writing, a new form of Orientalist discourse that presents a vision of the contemporary Orient, not as narrative, but as all complexity, problematics, betrayed hope--with the White Orientalist author as its prophetic, articulate definition.<br /> <br /> The defeat of narrative by vision--which is true even in so patently storylike a work as ''The Seven Pillars''--is something we have already encountered in Lane's ''Modern Egyptians''. A conflict between a holistic view of the Orient (description, monumental record) and a narrative of events in the Orient is a conflict on several levels, involving several different issues. As the conflict is frequently renewed in the discourse of Orientalism, it is worthwhile analyzing it here briefly. The Orientalist surveys the Orient from above, with the aim of getting hold of the whole sprawling panorama before him--culture, religion, mind, history, society. To do this he must see every detail through the device of a set of reductive categories (the Semites, the Muslim mind, the Orient, and so forth). Since these categories are primarily schematic and efficient ones, and since it is more or less assumed that no Oriental can know himself the way an Orientalist can, any vision of the Orient ultimately comes to rely for its coherence and force on the person, institution, or discourse whose property it is. Any comprehensive vision is fundamentally conservative, and we have noted how in the history of ideas about the Near Orient in the West these ideas have maintained themselves regardless of any evidence disputing them. (Indeed, we can argue that these ideas produce evidence that proves their validity.)<br /> <br /> The Orientalist is principally a kind of agent of such comprehensive visions; Lane is a typical instance of the way an individual believes himself to have subordinated his ideas, or even what he sees, to the exigencies of some &quot;scientific&quot; view of the whole phenomenon known collectively as the Orient, or the Oriental nation. A vision therefore is static, just as the scientific categories informing late-nineteenth-century Orientalism are static: there is no recourse beyond &quot;the Semites&quot; or &quot;the Oriental mind&quot;; these are final terminals holding every variety of Oriental behavior within a general view of the whole field. As a discipline, as a profession, as specialized language or discourse, Orientalism is staked upon the permanence of the whole Orient, for without &quot;the Orient&quot; there can be no consistent, intelligible, and articulated knowledge called &quot;Orientalism.&quot; Thus the Orient belongs to Orientalism, just as it is assumed that there is pertinent information belonging to (or about) the Orient.<br /> <br /> Against this static system of &quot;synchronic essentialism&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;For a discussion of this see Talal Asad, &quot;Two European Images of Non-European Rule,&quot; in ''Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter'', ed. Talal Asad (London: Ithaca Press, 1975), pp. 103-18.&lt;/ref&gt; I have called vision because it presumes that the whole Orient can be seen panoptically, there is a constant pressure. The source of pressure is narrative, in that if any Oriental detail can be shown to move, or to develop, diachrony is introduced into the system. What seemed stable--and the Orient is synonymous with stability and unchanging eternality--now appears unstable. Instability suggests that history, with its disruptive detail, its currents of change, its tendency towards growth, decline, or dramatic movement, is possible in the Orient and for the Orient. History and the narrative by which history is represented argue that vision is insufficient, that &quot;the Orient&quot; as an unconditional ontological category does an injustice to the potential of reality for change.<br /> <br /> Moreover, narrative is the specific form taken by written history to counter the permanence of vision. Lane sensed the dangers of narrative when he refused to give linear shape to himself and to his information, preferring instead the monumental form of encyclopedic or lexicographical vision. Narrative asserts the power of men to be born, develop, and die, the tendency of institutions and actualities to change, the likelihood that modernity and contemporaneity will finally overtake &quot;classical&quot; civilizations; above all, it asserts that the domination of reality by vision is no more than a will to power, a will to truth and interpretation, and not an objective condition of history. Narrative, in short, introduces an opposing point of view, perspective, consciousness to the unitary web of vision; it violates the serene Apollonian fictions asserted by vision.<br /> <br /> When as a result of World War I the Orient was made to enter history, it was the Orientalist-as-agent who did the work. Hannah Arendt has made the brilliant observation that the counterpart of the bureaucracy is the imperial agent,&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Arendt, ''Origins of Totalitarianism'', p. 218.&lt;/ref&gt; which is to say that if the collective academic endeavor called Orientalism was a bureaucratic institution based on a certain conservative vision of the Orient, then the servants of such a vision in the Orient were imperial agents like T. E. Lawrence. In his work we can see most clearly the conflict between narrative history and vision, as--in his words--the &quot;new Imperialism&quot; attempted &quot;an active tide of imposing responsibility on the local peoples [of the Orient].&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;T. E. Lawrence, ''Oriental Assembly'', ed. A. W. Lawrence (New York: E. P. Dutton &amp; Co., 1940), p. 95.&lt;/ref&gt; The competition between the European Powers now caused them to prod the Orient into active life, to press the Orient into service, to turn the Orient from unchanging &quot;Oriental&quot; passivity into militant modern life. It would be important, nevertheless, never to let the Orient go its own way or get out of hand, the canonical view being that Orientals had no tradition of freedom.<br /> <br /> The great drama of Lawrence's work is that it symbolizes the struggle, first, to stimulate the Orient (lifeless, timeless, forceless) into movement; second, to impose upon that movement an essentially Western shape; third, to contain the new and aroused Orient in a personal vision, whose retrospective mode includes a powerful sense of failure and betrayal.<br /> <br /> I meant to make a new nation, to restore a lost influence, to give twenty millions of Semites the foundation on which to build an inspired dream-palace of their national thoughts.... All the subject provinces of the Empire to me were not worth one dead English boy. If I have restored to the East some self-respect, a goal, ideals: if I have made the standard rule of white over red more exigent, I have fitted those peoples in a degree for the new commonwealth in which the dominant races will forget their brute achievements, and white and red and yellow and brown and black will stand up together without side-glances in the service of the world.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Cited in Stephen Ely Tabachnick, &quot;The Two Veils of T. E. Lawrence,&quot; ''Studies in the Twentieth Century'' 16 (Fall 1975): 96-7.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> None of this, whether as intention, as an actual undertaking, or as a failed project, would have been remotely possible without the White Orientalist perspective at the outset:<br /> <br /> The Jew in the Metropole at Brighton, the miser, the worshipper of Adonis, the lecher in the stews of Damascus were alike signs of the Semitic capacity for enjoyment, and expressions of the same nerve which gave us at the other pole the self-denial of the Essenes, or the early Christians, or the first Khalifas, finding the ways to heaven fairest for the poor in spirit. The Semite hovered between lust and self-denial.<br /> <br /> Lawrence is backed in such statements by a respectable tradition stretching like a lighthouse beam through the whole nineteenth century; at its light-emanating center, of course, is &quot;the Orient,&quot; and that is powerful enough to light up both the gross and the refined topographies within its range. The Jew, the worshipper of Adonis, the Damascene lecher, are signs not so much of humanity, let us say, as of a semiotic field called Semitic and built into coherence by the Semitic branch of Orientalism. Inside this field, certain things were possible:<br /> <br /> Arabs could be swung on an idea as on a cord; for the unpledged allegiance of their minds made them obedient servants. None of them would escape the bond till success had come, and with it responsibility and duty and engagement. Then the idea was gone and the work ended--in ruins. Without a creed they could be taken to the four corners of the world (but not to heaven) by being shown the riches of the earth and the pleasures of it; but if on the road ... they met the prophet of an idea, who had nowhere to lay his head and who depended for his food on charity or birds, then they would all leave their wealth for his inspiration.... They were as unstable as water, and like water would perhaps finally prevail. Since the dawn of life, in successive waves they had been dashing themselves against the coasts of flesh. Each wave was broken.... One such wave (and not the least) I raised and rolled before the breath of an idea, till it reached its crest, and toppled over and fell at Damascus. The wash of that wave, thrown back by the resistance of vested things, will provide the matter of the following wave, when in fullness of time the sea shall be raised once more.<br /> <br /> &quot;Could,&quot; &quot;would,&quot; and &quot;if&quot; are Lawrence's way inserting himself in the field, as it were. Thus the possibility is prepared for the last sentence, in which as manipulator of the Arabs Lawrence puts himself at their head. Like Conrad's Kurtz, Lawrence has cut himself loose from the earth so as to become identified with a new reality in order--he says later--that he might be responsible for &quot;hustling into form ... the new Asia which time was inexorably bringing upon us.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lawrence, ''Seven Pillars of Wisdom'', pp. 42-3, 661.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Arab Revolt acquires meaning only as Lawrence designs meaning for it; his meaning imparted thus to Asia was a triumph, &quot;a mood of enlargement ... in that we felt that we had assumed another's pain or experience, his personality.&quot; The Orientalist has become now the representative Oriental, unlike earlier participant observers such as Lane, for whom the Orient was something kept carefully at bay. But there is an unresolvable conflict in Lawrence between the White Man and the Oriental, and although he does not explicitly say so, this conflict essentially restages in his mind the historical conflict between East and West. Conscious of his power over the Orient, conscious also of his duplicity, unconscious of anything in the Orient that would suggest to him that history, after all, is history and that even without him the Arabs would finally attend to their quarrel with the Turks, Lawrence reduces the entire narrative of the revolt (its momentary successes and its bitter failure) to ''his'' vision of himself as an unresolved, &quot;standing civil war&quot;:<br /> <br /> Yet in reality we had borne the vicarious for our own sakes, or at least because it was pointed for our benefit: and could escape from this knowledge only by a make-belief in sense as well as in motive....<br /> <br /> There seemed no straight walking for us leaders in this crooked lane of conduct, ring within ring of unknown, shamefaced motives cancelling or double-charging their precedents.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 549, 550-2.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> To this intimate sense of defeat Lawrence was later to add a theory about &quot;the old men&quot; who stole the triumph from him. In any event, what matters to Lawrence is that as a white expert, the legatee of years of academic and popular wisdom about the Orient, he is able to subordinate his style of being to theirs, thereafter to assume the role of Oriental prophet giving shape to a movement in &quot;the new Asia.&quot; And when, for whatever reason, the movement fails (it is taken over by others, its aims are betrayed, its dream of independence invalidated), it is ''Lawrence''&lt;nowiki/&gt;'s disappointment that counts. So far from being a mere man lost in the great rush of confusing events, Lawrence equates himself fully with the struggle of the new Asia to be born.<br /> <br /> Whereas Aeschylus had represented Asia mourning its losses, and Nerval had espressed his disappointment in the Orient for not being more glamorous than he had wanted, Lawrence ''becomes'' both the mourning continent and a subjective consciousness expressing an almost cosmic disenchantment. In the end Lawrence--and thanks not only to Lowell Thomas and Robert Graves--and Lawrence's vision became the very symbol of Oriental trouble: Lawrence, in short, had assumed responsibility for the Orient by interspersing his knowing experience between the reader and history. Indeed what Lawrence presents to the reader is an unmediated expert power--the power to be, for a brief time, the Orient. All the events putatively ascribed to the historical Arab Revolt are reduced finally to Lawrence's experiences on its behalf.<br /> <br /> In such a case, therefore, style is not only the power to symbolize such enormous generalities as Asia, the Orient, or the Arabs; it is also a form of displacement and incorporation by which one voice becomes a whole history, and--for the white Westerner, as reader or writer--the only kind of Orient it is possible to know. Just as Renan had mapped the field of possibility open to the Semites in culture, thought, and language, so too Lawrence charts the space (and indeed, appropriates that space) and time of modern Asia. The effect of this style is that it brings Asia tantalizingly close to the West, but only for a brief moment. We are left at the end with a sense of the pathetic distance still separating &quot;us&quot; from an Orient destined to bear its foreignness as a mark of its permanent estrangement from the West. This is the disappointing conclusion corroborated (contemporaneously) by the ending of E. M. Forster's ''A Passage to India'', where Aziz and Fielding attempt, and fail at, reconciliation:<br /> <br /> &quot;Why can't we be friends now?&quot; said the other, holding him affectionately. &quot;It's what I want. It's what you want.&quot;<br /> <br /> But the horses didn't want it--they swerved apart; the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices, &quot;No, not yet,&quot; and the sky said, &quot;No, not there.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;E. M. Forster, ''A Passage to India'' (1924; reprint ed., New York: Harcourt, Brace &amp; Co., 1952), p. 322.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> This style, this compact definition, is what the Orient will always come up against.<br /> <br /> Despite its pessimism, there is a positive political message behind its phrases. The gulf between East and West can be modulated, as Cromer and Balfour knew well, by superior Western knowledge and power. Lawrence's vision is complemented in France by Maurice Barres's ''Une Enquete aux pays du Levant'', the record of a journey through the Near Orient in 1914. Like so many works before it, the ''Enquete'' is a work of recapitulation whose author not only searches out sources and origins of Western culture in the Orient but also redoes Nerval, Flaubert, and Lamartine in their voyages to the Orient. For Barres, however, there is an additional political dimension to his journey: he seeks proof, and conclusive evidence, for a constructive French role in the East. Yet the difference between French and British expertise remains: the former manages an actual conjunction of peoples and territory, whereas the latter deals with a realm of spiritual possibility. For Barres the French presence is best seen in French schools where, as he says of a school in Alexandria, &quot;It is ravishing to see those little Oriental girls welcoming and so wonderfully reproducing the ''fantaisie'' and the melody [in their spoken French] of the Ile-de-France.&quot; If France does not actually have any colonies there, she is not entirely without possessions:<br /> <br /> There is, there in the Orient, a feeling about France which is so religious and strong that it is capable of absorbing and reconciling all our most diverse aspirations. In the Orient we represent spirituality, justice, and the category of the ideal. England is powerful there; Germany is all-powerful; but we possess Oriental souls.<br /> <br /> Arguing vociferously with Jaures, this celebrated European doctor proposes to vaccinate Asia against its own illnesses, to occidentalize the Orientals, to bring them into salubrious contact with France. Yet even in these projects Barres's vision preserves the very distinction between East and West he claims to be mitigating.<br /> <br /> How will we be able to form for ourselves an intellectual elite with which we can work, made out of Orientals who would not be deracinated, who would continue to evolve according to their own norms, who would remain penetrated by family traditions, and who would thus form a link between us and the mass of natives? How will we create relationships with a view towards preparing the way for agreements and treaties which would be the desirable form taken by our political future [in the Orient]? All these things are finally all about soliciting in these strange peoples the taste for maintaining contact with our intelligence, ''even though this taste may in fact come out of their own sense of their national destiny''.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Maurice Barres, ''Une Enquete aux pays du Levant'' (Paris: Plon, 1923), 1: 20; 2: 181, 192, 193, 197.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The emphasis in the last sentence is Barres's own. Since unlike Lawrence and Hogarth (whose book ''The Wandering Scholar'' is the wholly informative and unromantic record of two trips to the Levant in 1896 and 1910&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;D. G. Hogarth, ''The Wandering Scholar'' (London: Oxford University Press, 1924). Hogarth describes his style as that of &quot;the explorer first and the scholar second&quot; (p. 4).&lt;/ref&gt;) he writes of a world of distant probabilities; he is more prepared to imagine the Orient as going its own way. Yet the bond (or leash) between East and West that he advocates is designed to permit a constant variety of intellectual pressure going from West to East. Barres sees things, not in terms of waves, battles, spiritual adventures, but in terms of the cultivation of intellectual imperialism, as ineradicable as it is subtle. The British vision, exemplified by Lawrence, is of the mainstream Orient, of peoples, political organizations, and movements guided and held in check by the White Man's expert tutelage; the Orient is &quot;our&quot; Orient, &quot;our&quot; people, &quot;our&quot; dominions. Discriminations between elites and the masses are less likely to be made by the British than by the French, whose perceptions and policy were always based on minorities and on the insidious pressures of spiritual community between France and its colonial children. The British agent-Orientalist--Lawrence, Bell, Philby, Storrs, Hogarth--during and after World War I took over both the role of expert-adventurer-eccentric (created in the nineteenth century by Lane, Burton, Hester Stanhope) and the role of colonial authority, whose position is in a central place next to the indigenous ruler: Lawrence with the Hashimites, Philby with the house of Saud, are the two best-known instances. British Oriental expertise fashioned itself around consensus and orthodoxy and sovereign authority; French Oriental expertise between the wars concerned itself with heterodoxy, spiritual ties, eccentrics. It is no accident, then, that the two major scholarly careers of this period, one British, one French, were H. A. R. Gibb's and Louis Massignon's, one whose interest was defined by the notion of Sunna (or orthodoxy) in Islam, the other whose focus was on the quasi-Christlike, theosophical Sufi figure, Mansur al-Hallaj. I shall return to these two major Orientalists a little later.<br /> <br /> If I have concentrated so much on imperial agents and policy-makers instead of scholars in this section, it was to accentuate the major shift in Orientalism, knowledge about the Orient, intercourse with it, from an academic to an ''instrumental'' attitude. What accompanies the shift is a change in the attitude as well of the individual Orientalist, who need no longer see himself--as Lane, Sacy, Renan, Caussin, Muller, and others did--as belonging to a sort of guild community with its own internal traditions and rituals. Now the Orientalist has become the representative man of his Western culture, a man who compresses within his own work a major duality of which that work (regardless of its specific form) is the symbolic expression: Occidental consciousness, knowledge, science taking hold of the furthest Oriental reaches as well as the most minute Oriental particulars. Formally the Orientalist sees himself as accomplishing the union of Orient and Occident, but mainly by reasserting the technological, political, and cultural supremacy of the West. History, in such a union, is radically attentuated if not banished. Viewed as a current of development, as a narrative strand, or as a dynamic force unfolding systematically and materially in time and space, human history--of the East or the West--is subordinated to an essentialist, idealist conception of Occident and Orient. Because he feels himself to be standing at the very rim of the East-West divide, the Orientalist not only speaks in vast generalities; he also seeks to convert each aspect of Oriental or Occidental life into an unmediated sign of one or the other geographical half.<br /> <br /> The interchange in the Orientalist's writing between his expert self and his testimonial, beholding self as Western representative is pre-eminently worked out in visual terms. Here is a typical passage (quoted by Gibb) from Duncan Macdonald's classic work ''The Religious Attitude and Life in Islam'' (1909):<br /> <br /> The Arabs show themselves not as especially easy of belief, but as hard-headed, materialistic, questioning, doubting, scoffing at their own superstitions and usages, fond of tests of the supernatural--and all this in a curiously light-minded, almost childish fashion.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Cited by H. A. R. Gibb, &quot;Structure of Religious Thought in Islam,&quot; in his ''Studies on the Civilization of Islam'', ed. Stanford J. Shaw and William R. Polk (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962), p. 180.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The governing verb is ''show'', which here gives us to understand that the Arabs display themselves (willingly or unwillingly) to and for expert scrutiny. The number of attributes ascribed to them, by its crowded set of sheer appositions, causes &quot;the Arabs&quot; to acquire a sort of existential weightlessness; thereby, &quot;the Arabs&quot; are made to rejoin the very broad designation, common to modern anthropological thought, of &quot;the childish primitive.&quot; What Macdonald also implies is that for such descriptions there is a peculiarly privileged position occupied by the Western Orientalist, whose representative function is precisely ''to show'' what needs to be seen. All specific history is capable of being seen thus at the apex, or the sensitive frontier, of Orient and Occident together. The complex dynamics of human life--what I have been calling history as narrative--becomes either irrelevant or trivial in comparison with the circular vision by which the details of Oriental life serve merely to reassert the Orientalness of the subject and the Westernness of the observer.<br /> <br /> If such a vision in some ways recalls Dante's, we should by no means fail to notice what an enormous difference there is between this Orient and Dante's. Evidence here is meant to be (and probably is considered) scientific; its pedigree, genealogically speaking, is European intellectual and human science during the nineteenth century. Moreover, the Orient is no simple marvel, or an enemy, or a branch of exotica; it is a political actuality of great and significant moment. Like Lawrence, Macdonald cannot really detach his representative characteristics as a Westerner from his role as a scholar. Thus his vision of Islam, as much as Lawrence's of the Arabs, implicates ''definition'' of the object with the ''identity'' of the person defining. All Arab Orientals must be accommodated to a vision of an Oriental type as constructed by the Western scholar, as well as to a specific encounter with the Orient in which the Westerner regrasps the Orient's essence as a consequence of his intimate estrangement from it. For Lawrence as for Forster, this latter sensation produces the despondency as well of personal failure; for such scholars as Macdonald, it strengthens the Orientalist discourse itself.<br /> <br /> And it puts that discourse abroad in the world of culture, politics, and actuality. In the period between the wars, as we can easily judge from, say, Malraux's novels, the relations between East and West assumed a currency that was both widespread and anxious. The signs of Oriental claims for political independence were everywhere; certainly in the dismembered Ottoman Empire they were encouraged by the Allies and, as is perfectly evident in the whole Arab Revolt and its aftermath, quickly became problematic. The Orient now appeared to constitute a challenge, not just to the West in general, but to the West's spirit, knowledge, and imperium. After a good century of constant intervention in (and study of) the Orient, the West's role in an East itself responding to the crises of modernity seemed considerably more delicate. There was the issue of outright occupation; there was the issue of the mandated territories; there was the issue of European competition in the Orient; there was the issue of dealing with native elites, native popular movements, and native demands for self-government and independence; there was the issue of civilizational contacts between Orient and Occident. Such issues forced reconsideration of Western knowledge of the Orient. No less a personage than Sylvain Levi, president of the Societe asiatique between 1928 and 1935, professor of Sanskrit at the College de France, reflected seriously in 1925 on the urgency of the East-West problem:<br /> <br /> Our duty is to understand Oriental civilization. The humanistic problem, which consists, on an intellectual level, in making a sympathetic and intelligent effort to understand foreign civilizations in both their past and their future forms, is specifically posed for us Frenchmen [although similar sentiments could have been expressed by an Englishman: the problem was a ''European'' one] in a practical way with regard to our great Asiatic colonies....<br /> <br /> These peoples are the inheritors of a long tradition of history, of art, and of religion, the sense of which they have not entirely lost and which they are probably anxious to prolong. We have assumed the responsibility of intervening in their development, sometimes without consulting them, sometimes in answer to their request.... We claim, rightly or wrongly, to represent a superior civilization, and because of the right given us by virtue of this superiority, which we regularly affirm with such assurance as makes it seem incontestable to the natives, we have called in question all their native traditions....<br /> <br /> In a general way, then, wherever the European has intervened, the native has perceived himself with a sort of general despair which was really poignant since he felt that the sum of his well-being, in the moral sphere more than in sheer material terms, instead of increasing had in fact diminished. All of which has made the foundation of his social life seem to be flimsy and to crumble under him, and the golden pillars on which he had thought to rebuild his life now seem no more than tinseled cardboard.<br /> <br /> This disappointment has been translated into rancor from one end to the other of the Orient, and this rancor is very close now to turning to hate, and hate only waits for the right moment in order to turn into action.<br /> <br /> If because of laziness or incomprehension Europe does not make the effort that its interests alone require from it, ''then the Asiatic drama will approach the crisis point''.<br /> <br /> It is here that that science which is a form of life and an instrument of policy--that is, wherever our interests are at stake--owes it to itself to penetrate native civilization and life in their intimacy in order to discover their fundamental values and durable characteristics rather than to smother native life with the incoherent threat of European civilizational imports. We must offer ourselves to these civilizations as we do our other products, that is, on the local exchange market. [Emphasis in original]&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Frederic Lefevre, &quot;Une Heure avec Sylvain Levi,&quot; in ''Memorial Sylvain Levi'', ed. Jacques Bacot (Paris: Paul Hartmann, 1937), pp. 123-4.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Levi has no difficulty in connecting Orientalism with politics, for the long--or rather, the prolonged--Western intervention in the East cannot be denied either in its consequences for knowledge or in its effect upon the hapless native; together the two add up to what could be a menacing future. For all his expressed humanism, his admirable concern for fellow creatures, Levi conceives the present juncture in unpleasantly constricted terms. The Oriental is imagined to feel his world threatened by a superior civilization; yet his motives are impelled, not by some positive desire for freedom, political independence, or cultural achievement ''on their own terms'', but instead by rancor or jealous malice. The panacea offered for this potentially ugly turn of affairs is that the Orient be marketed for a Western consumer, be put before him as one among numerous wares beseeching his attention. By a single stroke you will defuse the Orient (by letting it think itself to be an &quot;equal&quot; quantity on the Occidental marketplace of ideas), and you will appease Western fears of an Oriental tidal wave. At bottom, of course, Levi's principal point--and his most telling confession--is that unless something is done about the Orient, &quot;the Asiatic drama will approach the crisis point.&quot;<br /> <br /> Asia suffers, yet in its suffering it threatens Europe: the eternal, bristling frontier endures between East and West, almost unchanged since classical antiquity. What Levi says as the most august of modern Orientalists is echoed with less subtlety by cultural humanists. Item: in 1925 the French periodical ''Les Cahiers du mois'' conducted a survey among notable intellectual figures; the writers canvassed included Orientalists (Levi, Emile Senart) as well as literary men like Andre Gide, Paul Valery, and Edmond Jaloux. The questions dealt with relations between Orient and Occident in a timely, not to say brazenly provocative, way, and this already indicates something about the cultural ambience of the period. We will immediately recognize how ideas of the sort promulgated in Orientalist scholarship have now reached the level of accepted truth. One question asks whether Orient and Occident are mutually impenetrable (the idea was Maeterlinck's) or not; another asks whether or not Oriental influence represented &quot;un peril grave&quot;--Henri Massis's words--to French thought; a third asks about those values in Occidental culture to which its superiority over the Orient can be ascribed. Valery's response seems to me worth quoting from, so forthright are the lines of its argument and so time-honored, at least in the early twentieth century:<br /> <br /> From the cultural point of view, I do not think that we have much to fear ''now'' from the Oriental influence. It is not unknown to us. We owe to the Orient all the beginnings of our arts and of a great deal of our knowledge. We can very well welcome what now comes out of the Orient, if something new is coming out of there--which I very much doubt. This doubt is precisely our guarantee and our European weapon.<br /> <br /> Besides, the real question in such matters is to ''digest''. But that has always been, just as precisely, the great specialty of the European mind through the ages. Our role is therefore to maintain this power of choice, of universal comprehension, of the transformation of everything into our own substance, powers which have made us what we are. The Greeks and the Romans showed us how to deal with the monsters of Asia, how to treat them by analysis, how to extract from them their quintessence.... The Mediterranean basin seems to me to be like a closed vessel where the essences of the vast Orient have always come in order to be condensed. [Emphasis and ellipses in original]&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Paul Valery, ''Oeuvres'', ed. Jean Hytier (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), 2: 1556-7.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> If European culture generally has digested the Orient, certainly Valery was aware that one specific agency for doing the job has been Orientalism. In the world of Wilsonian principles of national self-determination, Valery relies confidently on analyzing the Orient's threat away. &quot;The power of choice&quot; is mainly for Europe first to acknowledge the Orient as the origin of European science, then to treat it as a superseded origin. Thus, in another context, Balfour could regard the native inhabitants of Palestine as having priority on the land, but nowhere near the subsequent authority to keep it; the mere wishes of 700,000 Arabs, he said, were of no moment compared to the destiny of an essentially European colonial movement.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Cited in Christopher Sykes, ''Crossroads to Israel'' (1965; reprint ed., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), p. 5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Asia represented, then, the unpleasant likelihood of a sudden eruption that would destroy &quot;our&quot; world; as John Buchan put it in 1922:<br /> <br /> The earth is seething with incoherent power and unorganized intelligence. Have you ever reflected on the case of China? There you have millions of quick brains stifled in trumpery crafts. They have no direction, no driving power, so the sum of their efforts is futile, and the world laughs at China.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Cited in Alan Sandison, ''The Wheel of Empire: A Study of the Imperial Idea in Some Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Fiction'' (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967), p. 158. An excellent study of the French equivalent is Martine Astier Loutfi, ''Litterature et colonialisme: L'Expansion coloniale vue dans la litterature romanesque francaise, 1871-1914'' (The Hague: Mouton &amp; Co., 1971).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> But if China organized itself (as it would), it would be no laughing matter. Europe's effort therefore was to maintain itself as what Valeiy called &quot;une machine puissante,&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Paul Valery, ''Variete'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1924), p. 43.&lt;/ref&gt; absorbing what it could from outside Europe, converting everything to its use, intellectually and materially, keeping the Orient selectively organized (or disorganized). Yet this could be done only through clarity of vision and analysis. Unless the Orient was seen for what it was, its power--military, material, spiritual--would sooner or later overwhelm Europe. The great colonial empires, great systems of systematic repression, existed to fend off the feared eventuality. Colonial subjects, as George Orwell saw them in Marrakech in 1939, must not be seen except as a kind of continental emanation, African, Asian, Oriental:<br /> <br /> When you walk through a town like this--two hundred thousand inhabitants, of whom at least twenty thousand own literally nothing except the rags they stand up in--when you see how the people live, and still more, how easily they die, it is always difficult to believe that you are walking among human beings. All colonial empires are in reality founded upon that fact. The people have brown faces--besides they have so many of them! Are they really the same flesh as yourself? Do they even have names? Or are they merely a kind of undifferentiated brown stuff, about as individual as bees or coral insects? They arise out of the earth, they sweat and starve for a few years, and then they sink back into the nameless mounds of the graveyard and nobody notices that they are gone. And even the graves themselves soon fade back into the soil.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;George Orwell, &quot;Marrakech,&quot; in ''A Collection of Essays'' (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1954), p. 187.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Aside from the picturesque characters offered European readers in the exotic fiction of minor writers (Pierre Loti, Marmaduke Pickthall, and the like), the non-European known to Europeans is precisely what Orwell says about him. He is either a figure of fun, or an atom in a vast collectivity designated in ordinary or cultivated discourse as an undifferentiated type called Oriental, African, yellow, brown, or Muslim. To such abstractions Orientalism had contributed its power of generalization, converting instances of a civilization into ideal bearers of its values, ideas, and positions, which in turn the Orientalists had found in &quot;the Orient&quot; and transformed into common cultural currency.<br /> <br /> If we reflect that Raymond Schwab brought out his brilliant biography of Anquetil-Duperron in 1934--and began those studies which were to put Orientalism in its proper cultural context--we must also remark that what he did was in stark contrast to his fellow artists and intellectuals, for whom Orient and Occident were still the secondhand abstractions they were for Valery. Not that Pound, Eliot, Yeats, Arthur Waley, Fenollosa, Paul Claudel(in his ''Connaissance de l'est''), Victor Segalen, and others were ignoring &quot;the wisdom of the East,&quot; as Max Muller had called it a few generations earlier. Rather the culture viewed the Orient, and Islam in particular, with the mistrust with which its learned attitude to the Orient had always been freighted. A suitable instance of this contemporary attitude at its most explicit is to be found in a series of lectures given at the University of Chicago in 1924 on &quot;The Occident and the Orient&quot; by Valentine Chirol, a well-known European newspaperman of great experience in the East; his purpose was to make clear to educated Americans that the Orient was not as far off as perhaps they believed. His line is a simple one: that Orient and Occident are irreducibly opposed to each other, and that the Orient--in particular &quot;Mohammedanism&quot;--is one of &quot;the great world-forces&quot; responsible for &quot;the deepest lines of cleavage&quot; in the world.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Valentine Chirol, ''The Occident and the Orient'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924), p. 6.&lt;/ref&gt; Chirol's sweeping generalizations are, I think, adequately represented by the titles of his six lectures: &quot;Their Ancient Battleground&quot;; &quot;The Passing of the Ottoman Empire, the Peculiar Case of Egypt&quot;; &quot;The Great British Experiment in Egypt&quot;; &quot;Protectorates and Mandates&quot;; &quot;The New Factor of Bolshevism&quot;; and &quot;Some General Conclusions.&quot;<br /> <br /> To such relatively popular accounts of the Orient as Chirol's, we can add a testimonial by Elie Faure, who in his ruminations draws, like Chirol, on history, cultural expertise, and the familiar contrast between White Occidentalism and colored Orientalism. While delivering himself of paradoxes like &quot;le carnage permanent de l'indifference orientale&quot; (for, unlike &quot;us,&quot; &quot;they&quot; have no conception of peace), Faure goes on to show that the Orientals' bodies are lazy, that the Orient has no conception of history, of the nation, or of ''patrie'', that the Orient is essentially mystical--and so on. Faure argues that unless the Oriental learns to be rational, to develop techniques of knowledge and positivity, there can be no ''rapprochement'' between East and West.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Elie Faure, &quot;Orient et Occident,&quot; ''Mercure de France'' 229 (July 1-August 1, 1931): 263, 264, 269, 270, 272.&lt;/ref&gt; A far more subtle and learned account of the East-West dilemma can be found in Fernand Baldensperger's essay &quot;Ou s'affrontent l'Orient et l'Occident intellectuels,&quot; but he too speaks of an inherent Oriental disdain for the idea, for mental discipline, for rational interpretation.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Fernand Baldensperger, &quot;Ou s'affrontent l'Orient et l'Occident intellectuels,&quot; in ''Etudes d'histoire litteraire'', 3rd ser. (Paris: Droz, 1939), p. 230.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Spoken as they are out of the depths of European culture, by writers who actually believe themselves to be speaking on behalf of that culture, such commonplaces (for they are perfect ''idees recues'') cannot be explained simply as examples of provincial chauvinism. They are not that, and--as will be evident to anyone who knows anything about Faure's and Baldensperger's other work--are the more paradoxical for not being that. Their background is the transformation of the exacting, professional science of Orientalism, whose function in nineteenth-century culture had been the restoration to Europe of a lost portion of humanity, but which had become in the twentieth century both an instrument of policy and, more important, a code by which Europe could interpret both itself and the Orient to itself. For reasons discussed earlier in this book, modern Orientalism already carried within itself the imprint of the great European fear of Islam, and this was aggravated by the political challenges of the ''entre-deux-guerres''. My point is that the metamorphosis of a relatively innocuous philological subspecialty into a capacity for managing political movements, administering colonies, making nearly apocalyptic statements representing the White Man's difficult civilizing mission--all this is something at work within a purportedly liberal culture, one full of concern for its vaunted norms of catholicity, plurality, and open-mindedness. In fact, what took place was the very opposite of liberal: the hardening of doctrine and meaning, imparted by &quot;science,&quot; into &quot;truth.&quot; For if such truth reserved for itself the right to judge the Orient as immutably Oriental in the ways I have indicated, then liberality was no more than a form of oppression and mentalistic prejudice.<br /> <br /> The extent of such illiberality was not--and is not--often recognized from within the culture, for reasons that this book is trying to explore. It is heartening, nevertheless, that such illiberality has occasionally been challenged. Here is an instance from I. A. Richards's foreword to his ''Mencius on the Mind'' (1932); we can quite easily substitute &quot;Oriental&quot; for &quot;Chinese&quot; in what follows.<br /> <br /> As to the effects of an increased knowledge of Chinese thought upon the West, it is interesting to notice that a writer so unlikely to be thought either ignorant or careless as M. Etienne Gilson can yet, in the English Preface of his ''The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas'', speak of Thomistic Philosophy as &quot;accepting and gathering up the whole of human tradition.&quot; This is how we all think, to us the Western world is still the World [or the part of the World that counts]; but an impartial observer would perhaps say that such provincialism is dangerous. And we are not yet so happy in the West that we can be sure that we are not suffering from its effects.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;I. A. Richards, ''Mencius on the Mind: Experiments in Multiple Definitions'' (London: Routledge &amp; Kegan Paul, 1932), p. xiv.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Richards's argument advances claims for the exercise of what he calls Multiple Definition, a genuine type of pluralism, with the combativeness of systems of definition eliminated. Whether or not we accept his counter to Gilson's provincialism, we can accept the proposition that liberal humanism, of which Orientalism has historically been one department, ''retards'' the process of enlarged and enlarging meaning through which true understanding can be attained. What took the place of enlarged meaning in twentieth-century Orientalism--that is, within the technical field--is the subject most immediately at hand.<br /> <br /> === '''III.''' '''Modern Anglo-French Orientalism in Fullest Flower''' ===<br /> Because we have become accustomed to think of a contemporary expert on some branch of the Orient, or some aspect of its life, as a specialist in &quot;area studies,&quot; we have lost a vivid sense of how, until around World War II, the Orientalist was considered to be a generalist (with a great deal of specific knowledge, of course) who had highly developed skills for making summational statements. By summational statements I mean that in formulating a relatively uncomplicated idea, say, about Arabic grammar or Indian religion, the Orientalist would be understood (and would understand himself) as also making a statement about the Orient as a whole, thereby summing it up. Thus every discrete study of one bit of Oriental material would also confirm in a summary way the profound Orientality of the material, And since it was commonly believed that the whole Orient hung together in some profoundly organic way, it made perfectly good hermeneutical sense for the Orientalist scholar to regard the material evidence he dealt with as ultimately leading to a better understanding of such things as the Oriental character, mind, ethos, or world-spirit.<br /> <br /> Most of the first two chapters of this book have made similar arguments about earlier periods in the history of Orientalist thought. The differentiation in its later history that concerns us here, however, is the one between the periods immediately before and after World War I. In both instances, as with the earlier periods, the Orient is Oriental no matter the specific case, and no matter the style or technique used to describe it; the difference between the two periods in question is the ''reason'' given by the Orientalist for seeing the essential Orientality of the Orient. A good example of the prewar rationale can be found in the following passage by Snouck Hurgronje, taken from his 1899 review of Eduard Sachau's ''Muhammedanisches Recht'':<br /> <br /> ... the law, which in practice had to make ever greater concessions to the use and customs of the people and the arbitrariness of their rulers, nevertheless retained a considerable influence on the intellectual life of the Muslims. Therefore it remains, and still is for us too, an important subject of study, not only for abstract reasons connected with the history of law, civilization and religion, but also for practical purposes. The more intimate the relations of Europe with the Muslim East become, the more Muslim countries fall under European suzerainty, the more important it is for us Europeans to become acquainted with the intellectual life, the religious law, and the conceptual background of Islam.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;''Selected Works of C. Snouck Hurgronje'', ed. G. H. Bousquet and J. Schacht (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1957), p. 267.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Although Hurgronje allows that something so abstract as &quot;Islamic law&quot; did occasionally yield to the pressure of history and society, he is more interested than not in retaining the abstraction for intellectual use because in its broad outline &quot;Islamic law&quot; confirms the disparity between East and West. For Hurgronje the distinction between Orient and Occident was no mere academic or popular cliche: quite the contrary. For him it signified the essential, historical power relationship between the two. Knowledge of the Orient either proves, enhances, or deepens the difference by which European suzerainty (the phrase has a venerable nineteenth-century pedigree) is extended effectively over Asia. To know the Orient as a whole, then, is to know it because it is entrusted to one's keeping, if one is a Westerner.<br /> <br /> An almost symmetrical passage to Hurgronje's is to be found in the concluding paragraph of Gibb's article &quot;Literature&quot; in ''The Legacy of Islam'', published in 1931. After having described the three casual contacts between East and West up till the eighteenth century, Gibb then proceeds to the nineteenth century:<br /> <br /> Following on these three moments of casual contact, the German romantics turned again to the East, and for the first time made it their conscious aim to open a way for the real heritage of oriental poetry to enter into the poetry of Europe. The nineteenth century, with its new sense of power and superiority, seemed to clang the gate decisively in the face of their design. Today, on the other hand, there are signs of a change. Oriental literature has begun to be studied again for its own sake, and a new understanding of the East is being gained. As this knowledge spreads and the East recovers its rightful place in the life of humanity, oriental literature may once again perform its historic function, and assist us to liberate ourselves from the narrow and oppressive conceptions which would limit all that is significant in literature, thought, and history to our own segment of the globe.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;H. A. R. Gibb, &quot;Literature,&quot; in ''The Legacy of Islam'', ed. Thomas Arnold and Alfred Guillaume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931), p. 209.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Gibb's phrase &quot;for its own sake&quot; is in diametrical opposition to the string of reasons subordinated to Hurgronje's declaration about European suzerainty over the East. What remains, nevertheless, is that seemingly inviolable over-all identity of something called &quot;the East&quot; and something else called &quot;the West.&quot; Such entities have a use for each other, and it is plainly Gibb's laudable intention to show that the influence on Western of Oriental literature need not be (in its results) what Brunetiere had called &quot;a national disgrace.&quot; Rather, the East could be confronted as a sort of humanistic challenge to the local confines of Western ethnocentricity.<br /> <br /> His earlier solicitation of Goethe's idea of ''Weltliteratur'' notwithstanding, Gibb's call for humanistic interinanimation between East and West reflects the changed political and cultural realities of the postwar era. European suzerainty over the Orient had not passed; but it had evolved--in British Egypt--from a more or less placid acceptance by the natives into a more and more contested political issue compounded by fractious native demands for independence. These were the years of constant British trouble with Zaghlul, the Wafd party, and the like.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;The best general account of this period in political, social, economic, and cultural terms is to be found in Jacques Berque, ''Egypt: Imperialism and Revolution'', trans. Jean Stewart (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972).&lt;/ref&gt; Moreover, since 1925 there had been a worldwide economic recession, and this too increased the sense of tension that Gibb's prose reflects. But the specifically cultural message in what he says is the most compelling. Heed the Orient, he seems to be telling his reader, for its use to the Western mind in the struggle to overcome narrowness, oppressive specialization, and limited perspectives.<br /> <br /> The ground had shifted considerably from Hurgronje to Gibb, as had the priorities. No longer did it go without much controversy that Europe's domination over the Orient was almost a fact of nature; nor was it assumed that the Orient was in need of Western enlightenment. What mattered during the interwar years was a cultural self-definition that transcended the provincial and the xenophobic. For Gibb, the West has need of the Orient as something to be studied because it releases the spirit from sterile specialization, it eases the affliction of excessive parochial and nationalistic self-centeredness, it increases one's grasp of the really central issues in the study of culture. If the Orient appears more a partner in this new rising dialectic of cultural self-consciousness, it is, first, because the Orient is more of a challenge now than it was before, and second, because the West is entering a relatively new phase of cultural crisis, caused in part by the diminishment of Western suzerainty over the rest of the world.<br /> <br /> Therefore, in the best Orientalist work done during the interwar period--represented in the impressive careers of Massignon and Gibb himself--we will find elements in common with the best humanistic scholarship of the period. Thus the summational attitude of which I spoke earlier can be regarded as the Orientalist equivalent of attempts in the purely Western humanities to understand culture ''as a whole'', antipositivistically, intuitively, sympathetically. Both the Orientalist and the non-Orientalist begin with the sense that Western culture is passing through an important phase, whose main feature is the crisis imposed on it by such threats as barbarism, narrow technical concerns, moral aridity, strident nationalism, and so forth. The idea of using specific texts, for instance, to work from the specific to the general (to understand the whole life of a period and consequently of a culture) is common to those humanists in the West inspired by the work of Wilhelm Dilthey, as well as to towering Orientalist scholars like Massignon and Gibb. The project of revitalizing philology--as it is found in the work of Curtius, Vossler, Auerbach, Spitzer, Gundolf, Hofmannsthal&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;There is a useful account of the intellectual project informing their work in Arthur R. Evans, Jr., ed., ''On Four Modern Humanists: Hofmannsthal'', ''Gundolf, Curtius, Kantorowicz'' (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970).&lt;/ref&gt;--has its counterpart therefore in the invigorations provided to strictly technical Orientalist philology by Massignon's studies of what he called the mystical lexicon, the vocabulary of Islamic devotion, and so on.<br /> <br /> But there is another, more interesting conjunction between Orientalism in this phase of its history and the European sciences of man (''sciences de l'homme''), the ''Geisteswissenschaften'' contemporary with it. We must note, first, that non-Orientalist cultural studies were perforce more immediately responsive to the threats to humanistic culture of a self-aggrandizing, amoral technical specialization represented, in part at least, by the rise of fascism in Europe. This response extended the concerns of the interwar period into the period following World War II as well. An eloquent scholarly and personal testimonial to this response can be found in Erich Auerbach's magisterial ''Mimesis'', and in his last methodological reflections as a ''Philolog''.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Erich Auerbach, ''Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature'', trans. Willard R. Trask (1946; reprint ed., Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), and his ''Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages'', trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Bollingen Books, 1965).&lt;/ref&gt; He tells us that ''Mimesis'' was written during his exile in Turkey and was meant to be in large measure an attempt virtually ''to see'' the development of Western culture at almost the last moment when that culture still had its integrity and civilizational coherence; therefore, he set himself the task of writing a general work based on specific textual analyses in such a way as to lay out the principles of Western literary performance in all their variety, richness, and fertility. The aim was a synthesis of Western culture in which the synthesis itself was matched in importance by the very gesture of doing it, which Auerbach believed was made possible by what he called &quot;late bourgeois humanism.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Erich Auerbach, &quot;Philology and ''Weltliteratur'',&quot; trans. M. and E. W. Said, ''Centennial Review'' 13, no. 1 (Winter 1969): 11.&lt;/ref&gt; The discrete particular was thus converted into a highly mediated symbol of the world-historical process.<br /> <br /> No less important for Auerbach--and this fact is of immediate relevance to Orientalism--was the humanistic tradition of involvement in a national culture or literature not one's own. Auerbach's example was Curtius, whose prodigious output testified to his deliberate choice as a German to dedicate himself professionally to the Romance literatures. Not for nothing, then, did Auerbach end his autumnal reflections with a significant quotation from Hugo of St. Victor's ''Didascalicon'': &quot;The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 17.&lt;/ref&gt; The more one is able to leave one's cultural home, the more easily is one able to judge it, and the whole world as well, with the spiritual detachment ''and'' generosity necessary for true vision. The more easily, too, does one assess oneself and alien cultures with the same combination of intimacy and distance.<br /> <br /> No less important and methodologically formative a cultural force was the use in the social sciences of &quot;types&quot; both as an analytical device and as a way of seeing familiar things in a new way. The precise history of the &quot;type&quot; as it is to be found in early-twentieth-century thinkers like Weber, Durkheim, Lukacs, Mannheim, and the other sociologists of knowledge has been examined often enough:&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;For example, in H. Stuart Hughes, ''Consciousness and Society: The Reconstruction of European Social Thought, 1890-1930'' (1958; reprint ed., New York: Vintage Books, 1961).&lt;/ref&gt; yet it has not been remarked, I think, that Weber's studies of Protestantism, Judaism, and Buddhism blew him (perhaps unwittingly) into the very territory originally charted and claimed by the Orientalists. There he found encouragement amongst all those nineteenth-century thinkers who believed that there was a sort of ontological difference between Eastern and Western economic (as well as religious) &quot;mentalities.&quot; Although he never thoroughly studied Islam, Weber nevertheless influenced the field considerably, mainly because his notions of type were simply an &quot;outside&quot; confirmation of many of the canonical theses held by Orientalists, whose economic ideas never extended beyond asserting the Oriental's fundamental incapacity for trade, commerce, and economic rationality. In the Islamic field those cliches held good for literally hundreds of years--until Maxime Rodinson's important study ''Islam and Capitalism'' appeared in 1966. Still, the notion of a type--Oriental, Islamic, Arab, or whatever--endures and is nourished by similar kinds of abstractions or paradigms or types as they emerge out of the modern social sciences.<br /> <br /> I have often spoken in this book of the sense of estrangement experienced by Orientalists as they dealt with or lived in a culture so profoundly different from their own. Now one of the striking differences between Orientalism in its Islamic version and all the other humanistic disciplines where Auerbach's notions on the necessity of estrangement have some validity is that Islamic Orientalists never saw their estrangement from Islam either as salutary or as an attitude with implications for the better understanding of their own culture. Rather, their estrangement from Islam simply intensified their feelings of superiority about European culture, even as their antipathy spread to include the entire Orient, of which Islam was considered a degraded (and usually, a virulently dangerous) representative. Such tendencies--it has also been my argument--became built into the very traditions of Orientalist study throughout the nineteenth century, and in time became a standard component of most Orientalist training, handed on from generation to generation. In addition, I think, the likelihood was very great that European scholars would continue to see the Near Orient through the perspective of its Biblical &quot;origins,&quot; that is, as a place of unshakably influential religious primacy. Given its special relationship to both Christianity and Judaism, Islam remained forever the Orientalist's idea (or type) of ''original'' cultural effrontery, aggravated naturally by the fear that Islamic civilization originally (as well as contemporaneously) continued to stand somehow opposed to the Christian West.<br /> <br /> For these reasons, Islamic Orientalism between the wars shared in the general sense of cultural crisis adumbrated by Auerbach and the others I have spoken of briefly, without at the same time developing in the same way as the other human sciences. Because Islamic Orientalism also preserved within it the peculiarly polemical ''religious'' attitude it had had from the beginning, it remained fixed in certain methodological tracks, so to speak. Its cultural alienation, for one, needed to be preserved from modern history and sociopolitical circumstance, as well as from the necessary revisions imposed on any theoretical or historical &quot;type&quot; by new data. For another, the abstractions offered by Orientalism (or rather, the opportunity for making abstractions) in the case of Islamic civilization were considered to have acquired a new validity; since it was assumed that Islam worked the way Orientalists said it did (without reference to actuality, but only to a set of &quot;classical&quot; principles), it was also assumed that modern Islam would be nothing more than a reasserted version of the old, especially since it was also supposed that modernity for Islam was less of a challenge than an insult. (The very large number of assumptions and suppositions in this description, incidentally, are intended to portray the rather eccentric twists and turns necessary for Orientalism to have maintained its peculiar way of seeing human reality.) Finally, if the synthesizing ambition in philology (as conceived by Auerbach or Curtius) was to lead to an enlargement of the scholar's awareness, of his sense of the brotherhood of man, of the universality of certain principles of human behavior, in Islamic Orientalism synthesis led to a sharpened sense of difference between Orient and Occident as reflected in Islam.<br /> <br /> What I am describing, then, is something that will characterize Islamic Orientalism until the present day: its retrogressive position when compared with the other human sciences (and even with the other branches of Orientalism), its general methodological and ideological backwardness, and its comparative insularity from developments both in the other humanities and in the real world of historical, economic, social, and political circumstances.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;See Anwar Abdel Malek, &quot;Orientalism in Crisis,&quot; ''Diogenes'' 44 (Winter 1963): 103-40.&lt;/ref&gt; Some awareness of this lag in Islamic (or Semitic) Orientalism was already present towards the end of the nineteenth century, perhaps because it was beginning to be apparent to some observers how very little either Semitic or Islamic Orientalism had shaken itself loose from the religious background from which it originally derived. The first Orientalist congress was organized and held in Paris in 1873, and almost from the outset it was evident to other scholars that the Semiticists and Islamicists were in intellectual arrears, generally speaking. Writing a survey of all the congresses that had been held between 1873 and 1897, the English scholar R. N. Cust had this to say about the Semitic-Islamic subfield:<br /> <br /> Such meetings [as those held in the ancient-Semitic field], indeed, advance Oriental learning.<br /> <br /> The same cannot be said with regard to the modern-Semitic section; it was crowded, but the subjects discussed were of the smallest literary interest, such as would occupy the minds of the dilettanti scholars of the old school, not the great class of &quot;indicatores&quot; of the nineteenth century. I am forced to go back to Pliny to find a word. There was an absence from this section both of the modern philological and archeological spirit, and the report reads more like that of a congress of University tutors of the last century met to discuss the reading of a passage in a Greek play, or the accentuation of a vowel, before the dawn of Comparative Philology had swept away the cobwebs of the Scholiasts. Was it worth while to discuss whether Mahomet could hold a pen or write?&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;R. N. Cust, &quot;The International Congresses of Orientalists,&quot; ''Hellas'' 6, no. 4 (1897): 349.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> To some extent the polemical antiquarianism that Cust described was a scholarly version of European anti-Semitism. Even the designation &quot;modern-Semitic,&quot; which was meant to include both Muslims and Jews (and which had its origin in the so-called ancient-Semitic field pioneered by Renan), carried its racist banner with what was doubtless meant to be a decent ostentation. A little later in his report Cust comments on how in the same meeting &quot; 'the Aryan' supplied much material for reflection.&quot; Clearly &quot;the Aryan&quot; is a counterabstraction to &quot;the Semite,&quot; but for some of the reasons I listed earlier, such atavistic labels were felt to be especially pertinent to Semites--with what expensive moral and human consequences for the human community as a whole, the history of the twentieth century amply demonstrates. Yet what has not been sufficiently stressed in histories of modern anti-Semitism has been the legitimation of such atavistic designations by Orientalism, and more important for my purposes here, the way this academic and intellectual legitimation has persisted right through the modern age in discussions of Islam, the Arabs, or the Near Orient. For whereas it is no longer possible to write learned (or even popular) disquisitions on either &quot;the Negro mind&quot; or &quot;the Jewish personality,&quot; it is perfectly possible to engage in such research as &quot;the Islamic mind,&quot; or &quot;the Arab character&quot;--but of this subject more later.<br /> <br /> Thus, in order properly to understand the intellectual genealogy of interwar Islamic Orientalism--as it is most interestingly and satisfyingly seen (no irony intended) in the careers of Massignon and Gibb--we must be able to understand the differences between the Orientalist's summational attitude towards his material and the kind of attitude to which it bears a strong cultural resemblance, that in the work of philologists such as Auerbach and Curtius. The intellectual crisis in Islamic Orientalism was another aspect of the spiritual crisis of &quot;late bourgeois humanism&quot;; in its form and style, however, Islamic Orientalism viewed the problems of mankind as separable into the categories called &quot;Oriental&quot; or &quot;Occidental.&quot; It was believed, then, that for the Oriental, liberation, self-expression, and self-enlargement were not the issues that they were for the Occidental. Instead, the Islamic Orientalist expressed his ideas about Islam in such a way as to emphasize his, as well as putatively the Muslim's, ''resistance'' to change, to mutual comprehension between East and West, to the development of men and women out of archaic, primitive classical institutions and into modernity. Indeed, so fierce was this sense of resistance to change, and so universal were the powers ascribed to it, that in reading the Orientalists one understands that the apocalypse to be feared was not the destruction of Western civilization but rather the destruction of the barriers that kept East and West from each other. When Gibb opposed nationalism in the modern Islamic states, he did so because he felt that nationalism would corrode the inner structures keeping Islam Oriental; the net result of secular nationalism would be to make the Orient no different from the West. Yet it is a tribute to Gibb's extraordinarily sympathetic powers of identification with an alien religion that he put his disapproval in such a way as to seem to be ''speaking for'' the Islamic orthodox community. How much such pleading was a reversion to the old Orientalist habit of speaking for the natives and how much it was a sincere attempt at speaking in Islam's best interests is a question whose answer lies somewhere between the two alternatives.<br /> <br /> No scholar or thinker, of course, is a perfect representative of some ideal type or school in which, by virtue of national origin or the accidents of history, he participates. Yet in so relatively insulated and specialized a tradition as Orientalism, I think there is in each scholar some awareness, partly conscious and partly non-conscious, of national tradition, if not of national ideology. This is particularly true in Orientalism, additionally so because of the direct political involvement of European nations in the affairs of one or another Oriental country: the case of Snouck Hurgronje, to cite a non-British and non-French instance where the scholar's sense of national identity is simple and clear, comes to mind immediately.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;See W. F. Wertheim, &quot;Counter-insurgency Research at the Turn of the Century--Snouck Hurgronje and the Acheh War,&quot; ''Sociologische Gids'' 19 (September-December 1972).&lt;/ref&gt; Yet even after making all the proper qualifications about the difference between an individual and a type (or between an individual and a tradition), it is nevertheless striking to note the extent to which Gibb and Massignon ''were'' representative types. Perhaps it would be better to say that Gibb and Massignon fulfilled all the expectations created for them by their national traditions, by the politics of their nations, by the internal history of their national &quot;schools&quot; of Orientalism.<br /> <br /> Sylvain Levi put the distinction between the two schools trenchantly:<br /> <br /> The political interest that ties England to India holds British work to a sustained contact with concrete realities, and maintains the cohesion between representations of the past and the spectacle of the present.<br /> <br /> Nourished by classical traditions, France seeks out the human mind as it manifests itself in India in the same way that it is interested in China.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Sylvain Levi, &quot;Les Parts respectives des nations occidentales dans les progres de l'indianisme,&quot; in ''Memorial Sylvain Levi'', p. 116.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> It would be too easy to say that this polarity results, on the one hand, in work that is sober, efficient, concrete, and on the other, in work that is universalistic, speculative, brilliant. Yet the polarity serves to illuminate two long and extremely distinguished careers that between them dominated French and Anglo-American Islamic Orientalism until the 1960s; if the domination makes any sense at all, it is because each scholar derived from and worked in a self-conscious tradition whose constraints (or limits, intellectually and politically speaking) can be described as Levi describes them above.<br /> <br /> Gibb was born in Egypt, Massignon in France. Both were to become deeply religious men, students not so much of society as of the religious life in society. Both were also profoundly worldly; one of their greatest achievements was putting traditional scholarship to use in the modern political world. Yet the range of their work--the texture of it, almost--is vastly different, even allowing for the obvious disparities in their schooling and religious education. In his lifelong devotion to the work of al-Hallaj--&quot;whose traces,&quot; Gibb said in his obituary notice for Massignon in 1962, he &quot;never ceased to seek out in later Islamic literature and devotion&quot;--Massignon's almost unrestricted range of research would lead him virtually everywhere, finding evidence for &quot;l'esprit humaine a travers l'espace et le temps.&quot; In an ''oeuvre'' that took &quot;in every aspect and region of contemporary Muslim life and thought,&quot; Massignon's presence in Orientalism was a constant challenge to his colleagues. Certainly Gibb for one admired--but finally drew back from--the way Massignon pursued<br /> <br /> themes that in some way linked the spiritual life of Muslims and Catholics [and enabled him to find] a congenial element in the veneration of Fatima, and consequently a special field of interest in the study of Shi'ite thought in many of its manifestations, or again in the community of Abrahamanic origins and such themes as the Seven Sleepers. His writings on these subjects have acquired from the qualities that he brought to them a permanent significance in Islamic studies. But just because of these qualities they are composed, as it were, in two registers. One was at the ordinary level of objective scholarship, seeking to elucidate the nature of the given phenomenon by a masterly use of established tools of academic research. The other was at a level on which objective data and understanding were absorbed and transformed by an individual intuition of spiritual dimensions. It was not always easy to draw a dividing line between the former and the transfiguration that resulted from the outpouring of the riches of his own personality.<br /> <br /> There is a hint here that Catholics are more likely to be drawn to a study of &quot;the veneration of Fatima&quot; than Protestants, but there is no mistaking Gibb's suspicion of anyone who blurred the distinction between &quot;objective&quot; scholarship and one based on (even an elaborate) &quot;individual intuition of spiritual dimensions.&quot; Gibb was right, however, in the next paragraph of the obituary to acknowledge Massignon's &quot;fertility&quot; of mind in such diverse fields as &quot;the symbolism of Muslim art, the structure of Muslim logic, the intricacies of medieval finance, and the organization of artisan corporations&quot;; and he was right also, immediately after, to characterize Massignon's early interest in the Semitic languages as giving rise to &quot;elliptic studies that to the uninitiate almost rivalled the mysteries of the ancient Hermetica.&quot; Nevertheless, Gibb ends on a generous note, remarking that<br /> <br /> for us, the lesson which by his example he impressed upon the Orientalists of his generation was that even classical Orientalism is no longer adequate without some degree of committedness to the vital forces that have given meaning and value to the diverse aspects of Eastern cultures.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;H. A. R. Gibb, &quot;Louis Massignon (1882-1962),&quot; ''Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society'' (1962), pp. 120, 121.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> That, of course, was Massignon's greatest contribution, and it is true that in contemporary French Islamology (as it is sometimes called) there has grown up a tradition of identifying with &quot;the vital forces&quot; informing &quot;Eastern culture&quot;; one need only mention the extraordinary achievements of scholars like Jacques Berque, Maxime Rodinson, Yves Lacoste, Roger Amaldez--all of them differing widely among themselves in approach and intention--to be struck with the seminal example of Massignon, whose intellectual impress upon them all is unmistakable.<br /> <br /> Yet in choosing to focus his comments almost anecdotally upon Massignon's various strengths and weaknesses, Gibb misses the obvious things about Massignon, things that make him so different from Gibb and yet, when taken as a whole, make him the mature symbol of so crucial a development within French Orientalism. One is Massignon's personal background, which quite beautifully illustrates the simple truth of Levi's description of French Orientalism. The very idea of &quot;un esprit humain&quot; was something more or less foreign to the intellectual and religious background out of which Gibb, like so many modern British Orientalists, developed: in Massignon's case the notion of &quot;esprit,&quot; as an aesthetic as well as religious, moral, and historical reality, was something he seemed to have been nourished upon from childhood. His family was friendly with such people as Huysmans, and in nearly everything he wrote Massignon's early education in the intellectual ambience as well as the ideas of late Symbolisme is evident, even to the particular brand of Catholicism (and Sufi mysticism) in which he was interested. There is no austerity in Massignon's work, which is formulated in one of the great French styles of the century. His ideas about human experience draw plentifully upon thinkers and artists contemporary with him, and it is the very wide cultural range of his style itself that puts him in a different category altogether from Gibb's. His early ideas come out of the period of so-called aesthetic decadence, but they are also indebted to people like Bergson, Durkheim, and Mauss. His first contact with Orientalism came through Renan, whose lectures he heard as a young man; he was also a student of Sylvain Levi, and came to include among his friends such figures as Paul Claudel, Gabriel Bounoure, Jacques and Raissa Maritain, and Charles de Foucauld. Later he was able to absorb work done in such relatively recent fields as urban sociology, structural linguistics, psychoanalysis, contemporary anthropology, and the New History. His essays, to say nothing of the monumental study of al-Hallaj, draw effortlessly on the entire corpus of Islamic literature; his mystifying erudition and almost familiar personality sometimes make him appear to be a scholar invented by Jorge Luis Borges. He was very sensitive to &quot;Oriental&quot; themes in European literature; this was one of Gibb's interests, too, but unlike Gibb, Massignon was attracted primarily neither to European writers who &quot;understood&quot; the Orient nor to European texts that were independent artistic corroborations of what later Orientalist scholars would reveal (e.g., Gibb's interest in Scott as a source for the study of Saladin). Massignon's &quot;Orient&quot; was completely consonant with the world of the Seven Sleepers or of the Abrahamanic prayers (which are the two themes singled out by Gibb as distinctive marks of Massignon's unorthodox view of Islam): offbeat, slightly peculiar, wholly responsive to the dazzling interpretative gifts which Massignon brought to it (and which in a sense made it up as a subject). If Gibb liked Scott's Saladin, then Massignon's symmetrical predilection was for Nerval, as suicide, ''poete maudit'', psychological oddity. This is not to say that Massignon was essentially a student of the past; on the contrary, he was a major presence in Islamic-French relations, in politics as well as culture. He was obviously a passionate man who believed that the world of Islam could be penetrated, not by scholarship exclusively, but by devotion to all of its activities, not the least of which was the world of Eastern Christianity subsumed within Islam, one of whose subgroups, the Badaliya Sodality, was warmly encouraged by Massignon.<br /> <br /> Massignon's considerable literary gifts sometimes give his scholarly work an appearance of capricious, overly cosmopolitan, and often private speculation. This appearance is misleading, and in fact is rarely adequate as a description of his writing. What he wished deliberately to avoid was what he called &quot;l'analyse analytique et statique de l'orientalisme,&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Louis Massignon, ''Opera Minora'', ed. Y. Moubarac (Beirut: Dar-el-Maaref, 1963), 3: 114. I have used the complete bibliography of Massignon's work by Moubarac: ''L'Oeuvre de Louis Massignon'' (Beirut: Editions du Cenacle libanais, 1972-73).&lt;/ref&gt; a sort of inert piling up, on a supposed Islamic text or problem, of sources, origins, proofs, demonstrations, and the like. Everywhere his attempt is to include as much of the context of a text or problem as possible, to animate it, to surprise his reader, almost, with the glancing insights available to anyone who, like Massignon, is willing to cross disciplinary and traditional boundaries in order to penetrate to the human heart of any text. No modern Orientalist--and certainly not Gibb, his closest peer in achievement and influence--could refer so easily (and accurately) in an essay to a host of Islamic mystics and to Jung, Heisenberg, Mallarme, and Kierkegaard; and certainly very few Orientalists had that range together with the concrete political experience of which he was able to speak in his 1952 essay &quot;L'Occident devant l'Orient: Primaute d'une solution culturelle.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Massignon, &quot;L'Occident devant l'Orient: Primaute d'une solution culturelle,&quot; in ''Opera Minora'', 1: 208-23.&lt;/ref&gt; And yet his intellectual world was a clearly defined one. It had a definite structure, intact from the beginning to the end of his career, and it was laced up, despite its almost unparalleled richness of scope and reference, in a set of basically unchanging ideas. Let us briefly describe the structure and list the ideas in a summary fashion.<br /> <br /> Massignon took as his starting point the existence of the three Abrahamanic religions, of which Islam is the religion of Ishmael, the monotheism of a people excluded from the divine promise made to Isaac. Islam is therefore a religion of resistance (to God the Father, to Christ the Incarnation), which yet keeps within it the sadness that began in Hagar's tears. Arabic as a result is the very language of tears, just as the whole notion of ''jihad'' in Islam (which Massignon explicitly says is the epic form in Islam that Renan could not see or understand) has an important intellectual dimension whose mission is war against Christianity and Judaism as exterior enemies, and against heresy as an interior enemy. Yet within Islam, Massignon believed he was able to discern a type of countercurrent, which it became his chief intellectual mission to study, embodied in mysticism, a road towards divine grace. The principal feature of mysticism was of course its subjective character, whose nonrational and even inexplicable tendencies were towards the singular, the individual, the momentary experience of participation in the Divine. All of Massignon's extraordinary work on mysticism was thus an attempt to describe the itinerary of souls out of the limiting consensus imposed on them by the orthodox Islamic community, or Sunna. An Iranian mystic was more intrepid than an Arab one, partly because he was Aryan (the old nineteenth-century labels &quot;Aryan&quot; and &quot;Semitic&quot; have a compelling urgency for Massignon, as does also the legitimacy of Schlegel's binary opposition between the two language families&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 169.&lt;/ref&gt;) and partly because he was a man seeking the Perfect; the Arab mystic, in Massignon's view, inclined towards what Waardenburg calls a testimonial monism. The exemplary figure for Massignon was al-Hallaj, who sought liberation for himself outside the orthodox community by asking for, and finally getting, the very crucifixion refused by Islam as a whole; Mohammed, according to Massignon, had deliberately rejected the opportunity offered him to bridge the gap separating him from God. Al-Hallaj's achievement was therefore to have achieved a mystical union with God against the grain of Islam.<br /> <br /> The rest of the orthodox community lives in a condition of what Massignon calls &quot;soif ontologique&quot;--ontological thirst. God presents himself to man as a kind of absence, a refusal to be present, yet the devout Muslim's consciousness of his submission to God's will (Islam) gives rise to a jealous sense of God's transcendence and an intolerance of idolatry of any sort. The seat of these ideas, according to Massignon, is the &quot;circumcised heart,&quot; which while it is in the grip of its testimonial Muslim fervor can, as is the case with mystics like al-Hallaj, also be inflamed with a divine passion or love of God. In either case, God's transcendental unity (''tawhid'') is something to be achieved and understood over and over by the devout Muslim, either through testifying to it or through mystic love of God: and this, Massignon wrote in a complex essay, defines the &quot;intention&quot; of Islam.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;See Waardenburg, ''L'Islam dans le miroir de l'Occident'', pp. 147, 183, 186, 192, 211, 213.&lt;/ref&gt; Clearly Massignon's sympathies lay with the mystic vocation in Islam, as much for its closeness to his own temperament as a devout Catholic as for its disrupting influence within the orthodox body of beliefs. Massignon's image of Islam is of a religion ceaselessly implicated in its refusals, its latecoming (with reference to the other Abrahamanic creeds), its comparatively barren sense of worldly reality, its massive structures of defense against &quot;psychic commotions&quot; of the sort practiced by al-Hallaj and other Sufi mystics, its loneliness as the only remaining &quot;Oriental&quot; religion of the three great monotheisms.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Massignon, ''Opera Minora'', 1: 227.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> But so obviously stern a view of Islam, with its &quot;invariants simples&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 355.&lt;/ref&gt; (especially for so luxuriant a thought as Massignon's), entailed no deep hostility towards it on his part. In reading Massignon one is struck by his repeated insistence on the need for complex reading--injunctions whose absolute sincerity it is impossible to doubt. He wrote in 1951 that his kind of Orientalism was &quot;ni une manie d'exotisme, ni un reniement de l'Europe, mais une mise au niveau entre nos methodes de recherches et les traditions vecues d'antiques civilisations.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Quoted from Massignon's essay on Biruni in Waardenburg, ''L'Islam dans le miroir de l'Occident'', p. 225.&lt;/ref&gt; Put into practice in the reading of an Arabic or Islamic text, this kind of Orientalism produced interpretations of an almost overwhelming intelligence; one would be foolish not to respect the sheer genius and novelty of Massignon's mind. Yet what must catch our attention in his definition of his Orientalism are two phrases: &quot;nos methodes de recherches&quot; and &quot;les traditions vecues d'antiques civilisations.&quot; Massignon saw what he did as the synthesis of two roughly opposed quantities, yet it is the peculiar asymmetry between them that troubles one, and not merely the fact of the opposition between Europe and Orient. Massignon's implication is that the essence of the difference between East and West is between modernity and ancient tradition. And indeed in his writings on political and contemporary problems, which is where one can see most immediately the limitations of Massignon's method, the East-West opposition turns up in a most peculiar way.<br /> <br /> At its best, Massignon's vision of the East-West encounter assigned great responsibility to the West for its invasion of the East, its colonialism, its relentless attacks on Islam. Massignon was a tireless fighter on behalf of Muslim civilization and, as his numerous essays and letters after 1948 testify, in support of Palestinian refugees, in the defense of Arab Muslim and Christian rights in Palestine against Zionism, against what, with reference to something said by Abba Eban, he scathingly called Israeli &quot;bourgeois colonialism.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Massignon, ''Opera Minora'', 3: 526.&lt;/ref&gt; Yet the framework in which Massignon's vision was held also assigned the Islamic Orient to an essentially ancient time and the West to modernity. Like Robertson Smith, Massignon considered the Oriental to be not a modern man but a Semite; this reductive category had a powerful grip on his thought. When, for example, in 1960 he and Jacques Berque, his colleague at the College de France, published their dialogue on &quot;the Arabs&quot; in ''Esprit'', a good deal of the time was spent in arguing whether the best way to look at the problems of the contemporary Arabs was simply to say, in the main instance, that the Arab-Israeli conflict was really a ''Semitic'' problem. Berque tried to demur gently, and to nudge Massignon towards the possibility that like the rest of the world the Arabs had undergone what he called an &quot;anthropological variation&quot;: Massignon refused the notion out of hand.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 610-11.&lt;/ref&gt; His repeated efforts to understand and report on the Palestine conflict, for all their profound humanism, never really got past the quarrel between Isaac and Ishmael or, so far as his quarrel with Israel was concerned, the tension between Judaism and Christianity. When Arab cities and villages were captured by the Zionists, it was Massignon's religious sensibilities that were offended.<br /> <br /> Europe, and France in particular, were seen as ''contemporary'' realities. Partly because of his initial political encounter with the British during the First World War, Massignon retained a pronounced dislike of England and English policy; Lawrence and his type represented a too-complex policy which he, Massignon, opposed in his dealings with Faisal. &quot;Je cherchais avec Faysal ... a penetrer dans le sens meme de sa tradition a lui.&quot; The British seemed to represent &quot;expansion&quot; in the Orient, amoral economic policy, and an outdated philosophy of political influence.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 212. Also p. 211 for another attack on the British, and pp. 423-7 for his assessment of Lawrence.&lt;/ref&gt; The Frenchman was a more modern man, who was obliged to get from the Orient what he had lost in spirituality, traditional values, and the like. Massignon's investment in this view came, I think, by way of the entire nineteenth-century tradition of the Orient as therapeutic for the West, a tradition whose earliest adumbration is to be found in Quinet. In Massignon, it was joined to a sense of Christian compassion:<br /> <br /> So far as Orientals are concerned, we ought to have recourse to this science of compassion, to this &quot;participation&quot; even in the construction of their language and of their mental structure, in which indeed we must participate: because ultimately this science bears witness either to verities that are ours too, or else to verities that we have lost and must regain. Finally, because in a profound sense everything that exists is good in some way, and those poor colonized people do not exist only for our purposes but in and for themselves [''en soi''].&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Quoted in Waardenburg, ''L'Islam dans le miroir de l'Occident'', p. 219.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Nevertheless the Oriental, ''en soi'', was incapable of appreciating or understanding himself. Partly because of what Europe had done to him, he had lost his religion and his ''philosophie''; Muslims had &quot;un vide immense&quot; within them; they were close to anarchy and suicide. It became France's obligation, then, to associate itself with the Muslims' desire to defend their traditional culture, the rule of their dynastic life, and the patrimony of believers.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 218-19.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> No scholar, not even a Massignon, can resist the pressures on him of his nation or of the scholarly tradition in which he works. In a great deal of what he said of the Orient and its relationship with the Occident, Massignon seemed to refine and yet to repeat the ideas of other French Orientalists. We must allow, however, that the refinements, the personal style, the individual genius, may finally supersede the political restraints operating impersonally through tradition and through the national ambience. Even so, in Massignon's case we must also recognize that in one direction his ideas about the Orient remained thoroughly traditional and Orientalist, their personality and remarkable eccentricity notwithstanding. According to him, the Islamic Orient was spiritual, Semitic, tribalistic, radically monotheistic, un-Aryan: the adjectives resemble a catalogue of late-nineteenth-century anthropological descriptions. The relatively earthbound experiences of war, colonialism, imperialism, economic oppression, love, death, and cultural exchange seem always in Massignon's eyes to be filtered through metaphysical, ultimately dehumanized lenses: they are Semitic, European, Oriental, Occidental, Aryan, and so on. The categories structured his world and gave what he said a kind of deep sense--to him, at least. In the other direction, among the individual and immensely detailed ideas of the scholarly world, Massignon maneuvered himself into a special position. He reconstructed and defended Islam against Europe on the one hand and against its own orthodoxy on the other. This intervention--for it was that--into the Orient as animator and champion symbolized his own acceptance of the Orient's difference, as well as his efforts to change it into what he wanted. Both together, the will to knowledge over the Orient and on its behalf in Massignon are very strong. His al-Hallaj represents that will perfectly. The disproportionate importance accorded al-Hallaj by Massignon signifies first, the scholar's decision to promote one figure above his sustaining culture, and second, the fact that al-Hallaj had come to represent a constant challenge, even an irritant, to the Western Christian for whom belief was not (and perhaps could not be) the extreme self-sacrifice it was for the Sufi. In either case, Massignon's al-Hallaj was intended literally to embody, to incarnate, values essentially outlawed by the main doctrinal system of Islam, a system that Massignon himself described mainly in order to circumvent it with al-Hallaj.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless we need not say immediately of Massignon's work that it was perverse, or that its greatest weakness was that it misrepresented Islam as an &quot;average&quot; or &quot;common&quot; Muslim might adhere to the faith. A distinguished Muslim scholar has argued precisely for this last position, although his argument did not name Massignon as an offender.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;See A. L. Tibawi, &quot;English-Speaking Orientalists: A Critique of Their Approach to Islam and Arab Nationalism, Part I,&quot; ''Islamic Quarterly'' 8, nos. 1, 2 (January-June 1964): 25-44; &quot;Part II,&quot; ''Islamic Quarterly'' 8, nos. 3, 4 (July-December 1964): 73-88.&lt;/ref&gt; Much as one may be inclined to agree with such theses--since, as this book has tried to demonstrate, Islam ''has'' been fundamentally misrepresented in the West--the real issue is whether indeed there can be a true representation of anything, or whether any and all representations, because they ''are'' representations, are embedded first in the language and then in the culture, institutions, and political ambience of the representer. If the latter alternative is the correct one (as I believe it is), then we must be prepared to accept the fact that a representation is ''eo ipso'' implicated, intertwined, embedded, interwoven with a great many other things besides the &quot;truth,&quot; which is itself a representation. What this must lead us to methodologically is to view representations (or misrepresentations--the distinction is at best a matter of degree) as inhabiting a common field of play defined for them, not by some inherent common subject matter alone, but by some common history, tradition, universe of discourse. Within this field, which no single scholar can create but which each scholar receives and in which he then finds a place for himself, the individual researcher makes his contribution. Such contributions, even for the exceptional genius, are strategies of redisposing material within the field; even the scholar who unearths a once-lost manuscript produces the &quot;found&quot; text in a context already prepared for it, for that is the real meaning of ''finding'' a new text. Thus each individual contribution first causes changes within the field and then promotes a new stability, in the way that on a surface covered with twenty compasses the introduction of a twenty-first will cause all the others to quiver, then to settle into a new accommodating configuration.<br /> <br /> The representations of Orientalism in European culture amount to what we can call a discursive consistency, one that has not only history but material (and institutional) presence to show for itself. As I said in connection with Renan, such a consistency was a form of cultural praxis, a system of opportunities for making statements about the Orient. My whole point about this system is not that it is a misrepresentation of some Oriental essence--in which I do not for a moment believe--but that it operates as representations usually do, for a purpose, according to a tendency, in a specific historical, intellectual, and even economic setting. In other words, representations have purposes, they are effective much of the time, they accomplish one or many tasks. Representations are formations, or as Roland Barthes has said of all the operations of language, they are deformations. The Orient as a representation in Europe is formed--or deformed--out of a more and more specific sensitivity towards a geographical region called &quot;the East.&quot; Specialists in this region do their work on it, so to speak, because in time their profession as Orientalists requires that they present their society with images of the Orient, knowledge about it, insight into it. And to a very large extent the Orientalist provides his own society with representations of the Orient (''a'') that bear his distinctive imprint, (''b'') that illustrate his conception of what the Orient can or ought to be, (''c'') that consciously contest someone else's view of the Orient, (''d'') that provide Orientalist discourse with what, at that moment, it seems most in need of, and (''e'') that respond to certain cultural, professional, national, political, and economic requirements of the epoch. It will be evident that even though it will never be absent, the role of positive knowledge is far from absolute. Rather, &quot;knowledge&quot;--never raw, unmediated, or simply objective--is what the five attributes of Orientalist representation listed above ''distribute'', and redistribute.<br /> <br /> Seen in such a way, Massignon is less a mythologized &quot;genius&quot; than he is a kind of system for producing certain kinds of statements, disseminated into the large mass of discursive formations that together make up the archive, or cultural material, of his time. I do not think that we dehumanize Massignon if we recognize this, nor do we reduce him to being subject to vulgar determinism. On the contrary, we will see in a sense how a very human being had, and was able to acquire more of, a cultural and productive capacity that had an institutional, or extrahuman, dimension to it: and this surely is what the finite human being must aspire to if he is not to be content with his merely mortal presence in time and space. When Massignon said &quot;nous sommes tous des Semites&quot; he was indicating the range of his ideas over his society, showing the extent to which his ideas about the Orient could transcend the local anecdotal circumstances of a Frenchman and of French society. The category of Semite drew its nourishment out of Massignon's Orientalism, but its force derived from its tendency to extend out of the confines of the discipline, out into a broader history and anthropology, where it seemed to have a certain validity and power.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;&quot;Une figure domine tous les genres [of Orientalist work], celle de Louis Massignon&quot;: Claude Cahen and Charles Pellat, &quot;Les Etudes arabes et islamiques,&quot; ''Journal asiatique'' 261, nos. 1, 4 (1973): 104. There is a very detailed survey of the Islamic-Orientalist field to be found in Jean Sauvaget, ''Introduction a l'histoire de l'Orient musulman: Elements de bibliographie'', ed. Claude Cahen (Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1961).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> On one level at least, Massignon's formulations and his representations of the Orient did have a direct influence, if not an unquestioned validity: among the guild of professional Orientalists. As I said above, Gibb's recognition of Massignon's achievement constitutes an awareness that as an alternative to Gibb's own work (by implication, that is), Massignon was to be dealt with. I am of course imputing things to Gibb's obituary that are there only as traces, not as actual statements, but they are obviously important if we look now at Gibb's own career as a foil for Massignon's. Albert Hourani's memorial essay on Gibb for the British Academy (to which I have referred several times) admirably summarizes the man's career, his leading ideas, and the importance of his work: with Hourani's assessment, in its broad lines, I have no disagreement. Yet something is missing from it, although this lack is partly made up for in a lesser piece on Gibb, William Polk's &quot;Sir Hamilton Gibb Between Orientalism and History.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;William Polk, &quot;Sir Hamilton Gibb Between Orientalism and History,&quot; ''International Journal of Middle East Studies'' 6, no. 2 (April 1975): 131-9. I have used the bibliography of Gibb's work in ''Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of Hamilton A. R. Gibb'', ed. George Makdisi (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 1-20.&lt;/ref&gt; Hourani tends to view Gibb as the product of personal encounters, personal influences, and the like; whereas Polk, who is far less subtle in his general understanding of Gibb than Hourani, sees Gibb as the culmination of a specific academic tradition, what--to use an expression that does not occur in Polk's prose--we can call an academic-research consensus or paradigm.<br /> <br /> Borrowed in this rather gross fashion from Thomas Kuhn, the idea has a worthwhile relevance to Gibb, who as Hourani reminds us was in many ways a profoundly institutional figure. Everything that Gibb said or did, from his early career at London to the middle years at Oxford to his influential years as director of Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, bears the unmistakable stamp of a mind operating with great ease inside established institutions. Massignon was irremediably the outsider, Gibb the insider. Both men, in any case, achieved the very pinnacle of prestige and influence in French and Anglo-American Orientalism, respectively. The Orient for Gibb was not a place one encountered directly; it was something one read about, studied, wrote about within the confines of learned societies, the university, the scholarly conference. Like Massignon, Gibb boasted of friendships with Muslims, but they seemed--like Lane's--to have been useful friendships, not determining ones. Consequently Gibb is a dynastic figure within the academic framework of British (and later of American) Orientalism, a scholar whose work quite consciously demonstrated the national tendencies of an academic tradition, set inside universities, governments, and research foundations.<br /> <br /> One index of this is that in his mature years Gibb was often to be met with speaking and writing for policy-determining organizations. In 1951, for instance, he contributed an essay to a book significantly entitled ''The Near East and the Great Powers'', in which he tried to explain the need for an expansion in Anglo-American programs of Oriental studies:<br /> <br /> ... the whole situation of the Western countries in regard to the countries of Asia and Africa has changed. We can no longer rely on that factor of prestige which seemed to play a large part in prewar thinking, neither can we any longer expect the peoples of Asia and Africa or of Eastern Europe to come to us and learn from us, while we sit back. We have to learn about them so that we can learn to work with them in a relationship that is closer to terms of mutuality.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;H. A. R. Gibb, &quot;Oriental Studies in the United Kingdom,&quot; in ''The Near East and the Great Powers'', ed. Richard N. Frye (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951), pp. 86-7.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The terms of this new relationship were spelled out later in &quot;Area Studies Reconsidered.&quot; Oriental studies were to be thought of not so much as scholarly activities but as instruments of national policy towards the newly independent, and possibly intractable, nations of the postcolonial world. Armed with a refocused awareness of his importance to the Atlantic commonwealth, the Orientalist was to be the guide of policymakers, of businessmen, of a fresh generation of scholars.<br /> <br /> What counted most in Gibb's later vision was not the Orientalist's positive work as a scholar (for example, the kind of scholar Gibb had been in his youth when he studied the Muslim invasions of Central Asia) but its adaptability for use in the public world. Hourani puts this well:<br /> <br /> ... it became clear to him [Gibb] that modern governments and elites were acting in ignorance or rejection of their own traditions of social life and morality, and that their failures sprang from this. Henceforth his main efforts were given to the elucidation, by careful study of the past, of the specific nature of Muslim society and the beliefs and culture which lay at the heart of it. Even this problem he tended to see at first mainly in political terms.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Albert Hourani, &quot;Sir Hamilton Gibb, 1895-1971,&quot; ''Proceedings of the British Academy'' 58 (1972): p. 504.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Yet no such later vision could have been possible without a fairly rigorous amount of preparation in Gibb's earlier work, and it is there that we must first seek to understand his ideas. Among Gibb's earliest influences was Duncan Macdonald, from whose work Gibb clearly derived the concept that Islam was a coherent system of life, a system made coherent not so much by the people who led that life as by virtue of some body of doctrine, method of religious practice, idea of order, in which all the Muslim people participated. Between the people and &quot;Islam&quot; there was obviously a dynamic encounter of sorts, yet what mattered to the Western student was the supervening power of Islam to make intelligible the experiences of the Islamic people, not the other way around.<br /> <br /> For Macdonald and subsequently for Gibb, the epistemological and methodological difficulties of &quot;Islam&quot; as an object (about which large, extremely general statements could be made) are never tackled. Macdonald for his part believed that in Islam one could perceive aspects of a still more portentous abstraction, the Oriental mentality. The entire opening chapter of his most influential book (whose importance for Gibb cannot be minimized), ''The Religious Attitude and Life in Islam'', is an anthology of unarguable declaratives about the Eastern or Oriental mind. He begins by saying that &quot;it is plain, I think, and admitted that the conception of the Unseen is much more immediate and real to the Oriental than to the western peoples.&quot; The &quot;large modifying elements which seem, from time to time, almost to upset the general law&quot; do not upset it, nor do they upset the other equally sweeping and general laws governing the Oriental mind. &quot;The essential difference in the Oriental mind is not credulity as to unseen things, but inability to construct a system as to seen things.&quot; Another aspect of this difficulty--which Gibb was later to blame for the absence of form in Arabic literature and for the Muslim's essentially atomistic view of reality--is &quot;that the difference in the Oriental is not essentially religiosity, but the lack of the sense of law. For him, there is no immovable order of nature.&quot; If such a &quot;fact&quot; seems not to account for the extraordinary achievements of Islamic science, upon which a great deal in modern Western science is based, then Macdonald remains silent. He continues his catalogue: &quot;It is evident that anything is possible to the Oriental. The supernatural is so near that it may touch him at any moment.&quot; That an ''occasion''--namely, the historical and geographical birth of monotheism in the Orient--should in Macdonald's argument become an entire theory of difference between East and West signifies the degree of intensity to which &quot;Orientalism&quot; has committed Macdonald. Here is his summary:<br /> <br /> ''Inability'', then, to see life steadily, and see it whole, to understand that a theory of life must cover all the facts, and ''liability'' to be stampeded by a single idea and blinded to everything else--therein, I believe, is the difference between the East and the West.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Duncan Black Macdonald, ''The Religious Attitude and Life in Islam'' (1909; reprint ed., Beirut: Khayats Publishers, 1965), pp. 2-11.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> None of this, of course, is particularly new. From Schlegel to Renan, from Robertson Smith to T. E. Lawrence, these ideas get repeated and re-repeated. They represent a decision about the Orient, not by any means a fact of nature. Anyone who, like Macdonald and Gibb, consciously entered a profession called Orientalism did so on the basis of a decision made: that the Orient was the Orient, that it was different, and so forth. The elaborations, refinements, consequent articulations of the field therefore sustain and prolong the decision to confine the Orient. There is no perceivable irony in Macdonald's (or Gibb's) views about Oriental liability to be stampeded by a single idea; neither man seems able to recognize the extent of ''Orientalism''&lt;nowiki/&gt;'s liability to be stampeded by the single idea of Oriental difference. And neither man is concerned by such wholesale designations as &quot;Islam&quot; or &quot;the Orient&quot; being used as proper nouns, with adjectives attached and verbs streaming forth, as if they referred to persons and not to Platonic ideas.<br /> <br /> It is no accident, therefore, that Gibb's master theme, in almost everything he wrote about Islam and the Arabs, was the tension between &quot;Islam&quot; as a transcendent, compelling Oriental fact and the realities of everyday human experience. His investment as a scholar and as a devout Christian was in &quot;Islam,&quot; not so much in the (to him) relatively trivial complications introduced into Islam by nationalism, class struggle, the individualizing experiences of love, anger, or human work. Nowhere is the impoverishing character of this investment more evident than in ''Whither Islam?'', a volume edited and contributed to, in the title essay, by Gibb in 1932. (It also includes an impressive article on North African Islam by Massignon.) Gibb's task as he saw it was to assess Islam, its present situation, its possible future course. In such a task the individual and manifestly different regions of the Islamic world were to be, not refutations of Islam's unity, but examples of it. Gibb himself proposed an introductory definition of Islam; then, in the concluding essay, he sought to pronounce on its actuality and its real future. Like Macdonald, Gibb seems entirely comfortable with the idea of a monolithic East, whose existential circumstances cannot easily be reduced to race or racial theory; in resolutely denying the value of racial generalization Gibb rises above what had been most reprehensible in preceding generations of Orientalists. Gibb has a correspondingly generous and sympathetic view of Islam's universalism and tolerance in letting diverse ethnic and religious communities coexist peacefully and democratically within its imperium. There is a note of grim prophecy in Gibb's singling out the Zionists and the Maronite Christians, alone amongst ethnic communities in the Islamic world, for their inability to accept coexistence.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;H. A. R. Gibb, &quot;Whither Islam?&quot; in ''Whither Islam? A Survey of Modern Movements in the Moslem World'', ed. H. A. R. Gibb (London: Victor Gollancz, 1932), pp. 328, 387.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> But the heart of Gibb's argument is that Islam, perhaps because it finally represents the Oriental's exclusive concern not with nature but with the Unseen, has an ultimate precedence and domination over all life in the Islamic Orient. For Gibb Islam ''is'' Islamic orthodoxy, ''is'' also the community of believers, ''is'' life, unity, intelligibility, values. It ''is'' law and order too, the unsavory disruptions of jihadists and communist agitators notwithstanding. In page after page of Gibb's prose in ''Whither Islam?'', we learn that the new commercial banks in Egypt and Syria are facts of Islam or an Islamic initiative; schools and an increasing literacy rate are Islamic facts, too, as are journalism, Westernization, and intellectual societies. At no point does Gibb speak of European colonialism when he discusses the rise of nationalism and its &quot;toxins.&quot; That the history of modern Islam might be more intelligible for its resistance, political and nonpolitical, to colonialism, never occurs to Gibb, just as it seems to him finally irrelevant to note whether the &quot;Islamic&quot; governments he discusses are republican, feudal, or monarchical.<br /> <br /> &quot;Islam&quot; for Gibb is a sort of superstructure imperiled both by politics (nationalism, communist agitation, Westernization) and by dangerous Muslim attempts to tamper with its intellectual sovereignty. In the passage that follows, note how the word ''religion'' and its cognates are made to color the tone of Gibb's prose, so much so that we feel a decorous annoyance at the mundane pressures directed at &quot;Islam&quot;:<br /> <br /> Islam, as a religion, has lost little of its force, but Islam as the arbiter of social life [in the modern world] is being dethroned; alongside it, or above it, new forces exert an authority which is sometimes in contradiction to its traditions and its social prescriptions, but nevertheless forces its way in their teeth. To put the position in its simplest terms, what has happened is this. Until recently, the ordinary Muslim citizen and cultivator had no political interests or functions, and no literature of easy access except religious literature, had no festivals and no communal life except in connection with religion, saw little or nothing of the outside world except through religious glasses. ''To him, in consequence, religion meant everything''. Now, however, more in all the advanced countries, his interests have expanded and his activities are no longer bounded by religion. He has political questions thrust on his notice; he reads, or has read to him, a mass of articles on subjects of all kinds which have nothing to do with religion, and in which the religious point of view may not be discussed at all and the verdict held to lie with some quite different principles.... [Emphasis added]&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 335.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Admittedly, the picture is a little difficult to see, since unlike any other religion ''Islam is or means everything''. As a description of a human phenomenon the hyperbole is, I think, unique to Orientalism. Life itself--politics, literature, energy, activity, growth--is an intrusion upon this (to a Westerner) unimaginable Oriental totality. Yet as &quot;a complement and counterbalance to European civilisation&quot; Islam in its modern form is nevertheless a useful object: this is the core of Gibb's proposition about modern Islam. For &quot;in the broadest aspect of history, what is now happening between Europe and Islam is the reintegration of western civilization, artificially sundered at the Renaissance and now reasserting its unity with overwhelming force.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 377.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Unlike Massignon, who made no effort to conceal his metaphysical speculations, Gibb delivered such observations as this as if they were objective knowledge (a category he found wanting in Massignon). Yet by almost any standards most of Gibb's general works on Islam ''are'' metaphysical, not only because he uses abstractions like &quot;Islam&quot; as if they have a clear and distinct meaning but also because it is simply never clear where in concrete time and space Gibb's &quot;Islam&quot; is taking place. If on the one hand, following Macdonald, he puts Islam definitively outside the West, on the other hand, in much of his work, he is to be found &quot;reintegrating&quot; it with the West. In 1955 he made this inside-outside question a bit clearer: the West took from Islam only those nonscientific elements that it had originally derived from the West, whereas in borrowing much from Islamic science, the West was merely following the law making &quot;natural science and technology ... indefinitely transmissible.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;H. A. R. Gibb, &quot;The Influence of Islamic Culture on Medieval Europe,&quot; ''John Rylands Library Bulletin'' 38, no. 1 (September 1955): 98.&lt;/ref&gt; The net result is to make Islam in &quot;art, aesthetics, philosophy and religious thought&quot; a second-order phenomenon (since those came from the West), and so far as science and technology are concerned, a mere conduit for elements that are not ''sui generis'' Islamic.<br /> <br /> Any clarity about what Islam is in Gibb's thought ought to be found ''within'' these metaphysical constraints, and indeed his two important works of the forties, ''Modern Trends in Islam'' and ''Mohammedanism: An Historical Survey'', flesh out matters considerably. In both books Gibb is at great pains to discuss the present crisis in Islam, opposing its inherent, essential being to modern attempts at modifying it. I have already mentioned Gibb's hostility to modernizing currents in Islam and his stubborn commitment to Islamic orthodoxy. Now it is time to mention Gibb's preference for the word ''Mohammedanism'' over ''Islam'' (since he says that Islam is really based upon an idea of apostolic succession culminating in Mohammed) and his assertion that the Islamic master science is law, which early on replaced theology. The curious thing about these statements is that they are assertions made about Islam, not on the basis of evidence internal to Islam, but rather on the basis of a logic deliberately outside Islam. No Muslim would call himself a Mohammedan, nor so far as is known would he necessarily feel the importance of law over theology. But what Gibb does is to situate himself as a scholar within contradictions he himself discerns, at that point in &quot;Islam&quot; where &quot;there is a certain unexpressed dislocation between the formal outward process and the inner realities.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;H. A. R. Gibb, ''Mohammedanism: An Historical Survey'' (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), pp. 2, 9, 84.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Orientalist, then, sees his task as expressing the dislocation and consequently speaking the truth about Islam, which by definition--since its contradictions inhibit its powers of self-discernment--it cannot express. Most of Gibb's general statements about Islam supply concepts to Islam that the religion or culture, again by ''his'' definition, is incapable of grasping: &quot;Oriental philosophy had never appreciated the fundamental idea of justice in Greek philosophy.&quot; As for Oriental societies, &quot;in contrast to most western societies, [they] have generally devoted [themselves] to building stable social organizations [more than] to constructing ideal systems of philosophical thought.&quot; The principal internal weakness of Islam is the &quot;breaking of association between the religious orders and the Muslim upper and middle classes.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 111, 88, 189.&lt;/ref&gt; But Gibb is also aware that Islam has never remained isolated from the rest of the world and therefore must stand in a series of external dislocations, insufficiencies, and disjunctions between itself and the world. Thus he says that modern Islam is the result of a classical religion coming into disynchronous contact with Romantic Western ideas. In reaction to this assault, Islam developed a school of modernists whose ideas everywhere reveal hopelessness, ideas unsuited to the modern world: Mahdism, nationalism, a revived caliphate. Yet the conservative reaction to modernism is no less unsuited to modernity, for it has produced a kind of stubborn Luddism. Well then, we ask, what is Islam finally, if it cannot conquer its internal dislocations nor deal satisfactorily with its external surroundings? The answer can be sought in the following central passage from ''Modern Trends'':<br /> <br /> Islam is a living and vital religion, appealing to the hearts, minds, and consciences of tens and hundreds of millions, setting them a standard by which to live honest, sober, and god-fearing lives. It is not Islam that is petrified, but its orthodox formulations, its systematic theology, its social apologetic. It is here that the dislocation lies, that the dissatisfaction is felt among a large proportion of its most educated and intelligent adherents, and that the danger for the future is most evident. No religion can ultimately resist disintegration if there is a perpetual gulf between its demands upon the will and its appeal to the intellect of its followers. That for the vast majority of Muslims the problem of dislocation has not yet arisen justifies the ulema in refusing to be rushed into the hasty measures which the modernists prescribe; but the spread of modernism is a warning that re-formulation cannot be indefinitely shelved.<br /> <br /> In trying to determine the origins and causes of this petrifaction of the formulas of Islam, we may possibly also find a clue to the answer to the question which the modernists are asking, but have so far failed to resolve--the question, that is, of the way in which the fundamental principles of Islam may be re-formulated without affecting their essential elements.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;H. A. R. Gibb, ''Modern Trends in Islam'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947), pp. 108, 113, 123.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The last part of this passage is familiar enough: it suggests the now traditional Orientalist ability to reconstruct and reformulate the Orient, given the Orient's inability to do so for itself. In part, then, Gibb's Islam exists ''ahead'' of Islam as it is practiced, studied, or preached in the Orient. Yet this prospective Islam is no mere Orientalist fiction, spun out of his ideas: it is based on an &quot;Islam&quot; that--since it cannot truly exist''--appeals'' to a whole community of believers. The reason that &quot;Islam&quot; can exist in some more or less future Orientalist formulation of it is that in the Orient Islam is usurped and traduced by the language of its clergy, whose claim is upon the community's mind. So long as it is silent in its appeal, Islam is safe; the moment the reforming clergy takes on its (legitimate) role of reformulating Islam in order for it to be able to enter modernity, the trouble starts. And that trouble, of course, is dislocation.<br /> <br /> Dislocation in Gibb's work identifies something far more significant than a putative intellectual difficulty within Islam. It identifies, I think, the very privilege, the very ground on which the Orientalist places himself so as to write about, legislate for, and reformulate Islam. Far from being a chance discernment of Gibb's, dislocation is the epistemological passageway into his subject, and subsequently, the observation platform from which in all his writing, and in every one of the influential positions he filled, he could survey Islam. Between the silent appeal of Islam to a monolithic community of orthodox believers and a whole merely verbal articulation of Islam by misled corps of political activists, desperate clerks, and opportunistic reformers: there Gibb stood, wrote, reformulated. His writing said either what Islam could not say or what its clerics would not say. What Gibb wrote was in one sense temporally ahead of Islam, in that he allowed that at some point in the future Islam would be able to say what it could not say now. In another important sense, however, Gibb's writings on Islam predated the religion as a coherent body of &quot;living&quot; beliefs, since his writing was able to get hold of &quot;Islam&quot; as a silent appeal made to Muslims ''before'' their faith became a matter for worldly argument, practice, or debate.<br /> <br /> The contradiction in Gibb's work--for it is a contradiction to speak of &quot;Islam&quot; as neither what its clerical adherents in fact say it is nor what, if they could, its lay followers would say about it--is muted somewhat by the metaphysical attitude governing his work, and indeed governing the whole history of modern Orientalism which he inherited, through mentors like Macdonald. The Orient and Islam have a kind of extrareal, phenomenologically reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert. From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing the Orient could not do was to represent itself. Evidence of the Orient was credible only after it had passed through and been made firm by the refining fire of the Orientalist's work. Gibb's ''oeuvre'' purports to be Islam (or Mohammedanism) both ''as it is'' and ''as it might be''. Metaphysically--and only metaphysically--essence and potential are made one. Only a metaphysical attitude could produce such famous Gibb essays as &quot;The Structure of Religious Thought in Islam&quot; or &quot;An Interpretation of Islamic History&quot; without being troubled by the distinction made between objective and subjective knowledge in Gibb's criticism of Massignon.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Both essays are to be found in Gibb's ''Studies on the Civilization of Islam'', pp. 176-208 and 3-33.&lt;/ref&gt; The statements about &quot;Islam&quot; are made with a confidence and a serenity that are truly Olympian. There is no dislocation, no felt discontinuity between Gibb's page and the phenomenon it describes, for each, according to Gibb himself, is ultimately reducible to the other. As such, &quot;Islam&quot; and Gibb's description of it have a calm, discursive plainness whose common element is the English scholar's orderly page.<br /> <br /> I attach a great deal of significance to the appearance of and to the intended model for the Orientalist's page as a printed object. I have spoken in this book about d'Herbelot's alphabetic encyclopedia, the gigantic leaves of the ''Description de l'Egypte'', Renan's laboratory-museum notebook, the ellipses and short episodes of Lane's ''Modern Egyptians'', Sacy's anthological excerpts, and so forth. These pages are signs of some Orient, and of some Orientalist, ''presented'' to the reader. There is an order to these pages by which the reader apprehends not only the &quot;Orient&quot; but also the Orientalist, as interpreter, exhibitor, personality, mediator, representative (and representing) expert. In a remarkable way Gibb and Massignon produced pages that recapitulate the history of Orientalist writing in the West as that history has been embodied in a varied generic and topographical style, reduced finally to a scholarly, monographic uniformity. The Oriental specimen; the Oriental excess; the Oriental lexicographic unit; the Oriental series; the Oriental exemplum: all these have been subordinated in Gibb and Massignon to the linear prose authority of discursive analysis, presented in essay, short article, scholarly book. In their time, from the end of World War I till the early sixties, three principal forms of Orientalist writing were radically transformed: the encyclopedia, the anthology, the personal record. Their authority was redistributed or dispersed or dissipated: to a committee of experts (''The Encyclopedia of Islam'', ''The Cambridge History of Islam''), to a lower order of service (elementary instruction in language, which would prepare one not for diplomacy, as was the case with Sacy's ''Chrestomathie'', but for the study of sociology, economics, or history), to the realm of sensational revelation (having more to do with personalities or governments--Lawrence is the obvious example--than with knowledge). Gibb, with his quietly heedless but profoundly sequential prose; Massignon, with the flair of an artist for whom no reference is too extravagant so long as it is governed by an eccentric interpretative gift: the two scholars took the essentially ''ecumenical'' authority of European Orientalism as far as it could go. After them, the new reality--the new specialized style--was, broadly speaking, Anglo-American, and more narrowly speaking, it was American Social Scientese. In it, the old Orientalism was broken into many parts; yet all of them still served the traditional Orientalist dogmas.<br /> <br /> === '''IV.''' '''The Latest Phase''' ===<br /> Since World War II, and more noticeably after each of the Arab-Israeli wars, the Arab Muslim has become a figure in American popular culture, even as in the academic world, in the policy planner's world, and in the world of business very serious attention is being paid the Arab. This symbolizes a major change in the international configuration of forces. France and Britain no longer occupy center stage in world politics; the American imperium has displaced them. A vast web of interests now links all parts of the former colonial world to the United States, just as a proliferation of academic subspecialties divides (and yet connects) all the former philological and European-based disciplines like Orientalism. The area specialist, as he is now called, lays claims to regional expertise, which is put at the service of government or business or both. The massive, quasi-material knowledge stored in the annals of modern European Orientalism--as recorded, for example, in Jules Mohl's nineteenth-century logbook of the field--has been dissolved and released into new forms. A wide variety of hybrid representations of the Orient now roam the culture. Japan, Indochina, China, India, Pakistan: their representations have had, and continue to have, wide repercussions, and they have been discussed in many places for obvious reasons. Islam and the Arabs have their own representations, too, and we shall treat them here as they occur in that fragmentary--yet powerfully and ideologically coherent--persistence, a far less frequently discussed one, into which, in the United States, traditional European Orientalism disbursed itself.<br /> <br /> 1. ''Popular images and social science representations''. Here are a few examples of how the Arab is often represented today. Note how readily &quot;the Arab&quot; seems to accommodate the transformations and reductions--all of a simply tendentious kind--into which he is continually being forced. The costume for Princeton's tenth-reunion class in 1967 had been planned before the June War. The motif--for it would be wrong to describe the costume as more than crudely suggestive--was to have been Arab: robes, headgear, sandals. Immediately after the war, when it had become clear that the Arab motif was an embarrassment, a change in the reunion plans was decreed. Wearing the costume as had been originally planned, the class was now to walk in procession, hands above heads in a gesture of abject defeat. This was what the Arab had become. From a faintly outlined stereotype as a camel-riding nomad to an accepted caricature as the embodiment of incompetence and easy defeat: that was all the scope given the Arab.<br /> <br /> Yet after the 1973 war the Arab appeared everywhere as something more menacing. Cartoons depicting an Arab sheik standing behind a gasoline pump turned up consistently. These Arabs, however, were clearly &quot;Semitic&quot;: their sharply hooked noses, the evil mustachioed leer on their faces, were obvious reminders (to a largely non-Semitic population) that &quot;Semites&quot; were at the bottom of all &quot;our&quot; troubles, which in this case was principally a gasoline shortage. The transference of a popular anti-Semitic animus from a Jewish to an Arab target was made smoothly, since the figure was essentially the same.<br /> <br /> Thus if the Arab occupies space enough for attention, it is as a negative value. He is seen as the disrupter of Israel's and the West's existence, or in another view of the same thing, as a surmountable obstacle to Israel's creation in 1948. Insofar as this Arab has any history, it is part of the history given him (or taken from him: the difference is slight) by the Orientalist tradition, and later, the Zionist tradition. Palestine was seen--by Lamartine and the early Zionists--as an empty desert waiting to burst into bloom; such inhabitants as it had were supposed to be inconsequential nomads possessing no real claim on the land and therefore no cultural or national reality. Thus the Arab is conceived of now as a shadow that dogs the Jew. In that shadow--because Arabs and Jews are Oriental Semites--can be placed whatever traditional, latent mistrust a Westerner feels towards the Oriental. For the Jew of pre-Nazi Europe has bifurcated: what we have now is a Jewish hero, constructed out of a reconstructed cult of the adventurer-pioneer-Orientalist (Burton, Lane, Renan), and his creeping, mysteriously fearsome shadow, the Arab Oriental. Isolated from everything except the past created for him by Orientalist polemic, the Arab is chained to a destiny that fixes him and dooms him to a series of reactions periodically chastised by what Barbara Tuchman gives the theological name &quot;Israel's terrible swift sword.&quot;<br /> <br /> Aside from his anti-Zionism, the Arab is an oil supplier. This is another negative characteristic, since most accounts of Arab oil equate the oil boycott of 1973-1974 (which principally benefitted Western oil companies and a small ruling Arab elite) with the absence of any Arab moral qualifications for owning such vast oil reserves. Without the usual euphemisms, the question most often being asked is why such people as the Arabs are entitled to keep the developed (free, democratic, moral) world threatened. From such questions comes the frequent suggestion that the Arab oil fields be invaded by the marines.<br /> <br /> In the films and television the Arab is associated either with lechery or bloodthirsty dishonesty. He appears as an oversexed degenerate, capable, it is true, of cleverly devious intrigues, but essentially sadistic, treacherous, low. Slave trader, camel driver, moneychanger, colorful scoundrel: these are some traditional Arab roles in the cinema. The Arab leader (of marauders, pirates, &quot;native&quot; insurgents) can often be seen snarling at the captured Western hero and the blond girl (both of them steeped in wholesomeness), &quot;My men are going to kill you, but--they like to amuse themselves before.&quot; He leers suggestively as he speaks: this is a current debasement of Valentino's Sheik. In newsreels or news-photos, the Arab is always shown in large numbers. No individuality, no personal characteristics or experiences. Most of the pictures represent mass rage and misery, or irrational (hence hopelessly eccentric) gestures. Lurking behind all of these images is the menace of ''jihad''. Consequence: a fear that the Muslims (or Arabs) will take over the world.<br /> <br /> Books and articles are regularly published on Islam and the Arabs that represent absolutely no change over the virulent anti-Islamic polemics of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. For no other ethnic or religious group is it true that virtually anything can be written or said about it, without challenge or demurral. The 1975 course guide put out by the Columbia College undergraduates said about the Arabic course that every other word in the language had to do with violence, and that the Arab mind as &quot;reflected&quot; in the language was unremittingly bombastic. A recent article by Emmett Tyrrell in ''Harper's'' magazine was even more slanderous and racist, arguing that Arabs are basically murderers and that violence and deceit are carried in the Arab genes.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;R. Emmett Tyrell, Jr., &quot;Chimera in the Middle East,&quot; ''Harper's'', November 1976, pp. 35-8.&lt;/ref&gt; A survey entitled ''The Arabs in American Textbooks'' reveals the most astonishing misinformation, or rather the most callous representations of an ethnic-religious group. One book asserts that &quot;few people of this [Arab] area even know that there is a better way to live,&quot; and then goes on to ask disarmingly, &quot;What links the people of the Middle East together?&quot; The answer, given unhesitatingly, is, &quot;The last link is the Arab's hostility--hatred--toward the Jews and the nation of Israel.&quot; Along with such material goes this about Islam, in another book: &quot;The Moslem religion, called Islam, began in the seventh century. It was started by a wealthy businessman of Arabia, called Mohammed. He claimed that he was a prophet. He found followers among other Arabs. He told them that they were picked to rule the world.&quot; This bit of knowledge is followed by another, equally accurate: &quot;Shortly after Mohammed's death, his teachings were recorded in a book called the Koran. It became the holy book of Islam.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Cited in Ayad al-Qazzaz, Ruth Afiyo, et al., ''The Arabs in American Textbooks'', California State Board of Education, June 1975, pp. 10, 15.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> These crude ideas are supported, not contradicted, by the academic whose business is the study of the Arab Near East. (It is worth noting incidentally that the Princeton event I referred to above took place in a university that prides itself on its department of Near Eastern Studies founded in 1927, the oldest such department in the country.) Take as an instance the report produced in 1967 by Morroe Berger, a professor of sociology and Near Eastern studies at Princeton, at the behest of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; he was then president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the professional association of scholars concerned with all aspects of the Near East, &quot;primarily since the rise of Islam and from the viewpoint of the social science and humanistic disciplines,&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;&quot;Statement of Purpose,&quot; ''MESA Bulletin'' 1, no. 1 (May 1967): 33.&lt;/ref&gt; and founded in 1967. He called his paper &quot;Middle Eastern and North African Studies: Developments and Needs,&quot; and had it published in the second issue of the ''MESA Bulletin''. After surveying the strategic, economic, and political importance of the region to the United States, and after endorsing the various United States government and private foundation projects to support programs in universities--the National Defense Education Act of 1958 (a directly Sputnik-inspired initiative), the establishing of links between the Social Science Research Council and Middle Eastern studies, and so on--Berger came to the following conclusions:<br /> <br /> The modern Middle East and North Africa is not a center of great cultural achievement, nor is it likely to become one in the near future. The study of the region or its languages, therefore, does not constitute its own reward so far as modern culture is concerned.<br /> <br /> ... Our region is not a center of great political power nor does it have the potential to become one.... The Middle East (less so North Africa) has been receding in immediate political importance to the U.S. (and even in &quot;headline&quot; or &quot;nuisance&quot; value) relative to Africa, Latin America and the Far East.<br /> <br /> ... The contemporary Middle East, thus, has only in small degree the kinds of traits that seem to be important in attracting scholarly attention. This does not diminish the validity and intellectual value of studying the area or affect the quality of work scholars do on it. It does, however, put limits, of which we should be aware, on the field's capacity for growth in the numbers who study and teach.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Morroe Berger, &quot;Middle Eastern and North African Studies: Developments and Needs,&quot; ''MESA Bulletin'' 1, no. 2 (November 1967): 16.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> As a prophecy, of course, this is fairly lamentable; what makes it even more unfortunate is that Berger was commissioned not only because he was an expert on the modern Near East but also--as is clear from the report's conclusion--because he was expected to be in a good position to predict its future, and the future of policy. His failure to see that the Middle East was of great political significance, and potentially of great political power, was no chance aberration of judgment, I think. Both of Berger's main mistakes derive from the first and last paragraphs, whose genealogy is the history of Orientalism as we have been studying it. In what Berger has to say about the absence of great cultural achievement, and in what he concludes about future study--that the Middle East does not attract scholarly attention because of its intrinsic weaknesses--we have an almost exact duplication of the canonical Orientalist opinion that the Semites never produced a great culture and that, as Renan frequently said, the Semitic world was too impoverished ever to attract universal attention. Moreover, in making such time-honored judgments and in being totally blind to what is before his eyes--after all, Berger was not writing fifty years ago, but during a period when the United States was already importing about 10 percent of its oil from the Middle East and when its strategic and economic investments in the area were unimaginably huge--Berger was ensuring the centrality of his own position as Orientalist. For what he says, in effect, is that without people such as he the Middle East would be neglected; and that without his mediating, interpretative role the place would not be understood, partly because what little there is to understand is fairly peculiar, and partly because only the Orientalist can interpret the Orient, the Orient being radically incapable of interpreting itself.<br /> <br /> The fact that Berger was not so much a classical Orientalist when he wrote (he wasn't and isn't) as he was a professional sociologist does not minimize the extent of his indebtedness to Orientalism and its ideas. Among those ideas is the specially legitimated antipathy towards and downgrading of the material forming the main basis of his study. So strong is this in Berger that it obscures the actualities before his eyes. And more impressively still, it makes it unnecessary for him to ask himself why, if the Middle East &quot;is not a center of great cultural achievement,&quot; he should recommend that anyone devote his life, as he has, to the study of its culture. Scholars--more than, say, doctors--study what they like and what interests them; only an exaggerated sense of cultural duty drives a scholar to the study of what he does not think well of. Yet it is just such a sense of duty Orientalism has fostered, because for generations the culture at large put the Orientalist at the barricades, where in his professional work he confronted the East--its barbarities, its eccentricities, its unruliness--and held it at bay on behalf of the West.<br /> <br /> I mention Berger as an instance of the academic attitude towards the Islamic Orient, as an instance of how a learned perspective can support the caricatures propagated in the popular culture. Yet Berger stands also for the most current transformation overtaking Orientalism: its conversion from a fundamentally philological discipline and a vaguely general apprehension of the Orient into a social science specialty. No longer does an Orientalist try first to master the esoteric languages of the Orient; he begins instead as a trained social scientist and &quot;applies&quot; his science to the Orient, or anywhere else. This is the specifically American contribution to the history of Orientalism, and it can be dated roughly from the period immediately following World War II, when the United States found itself in the position recently vacated by Britain and France. The American experience of the Orient prior to that exceptional moment was limited. Cultural isolatos like Melville were interested in it; cynics like Mark Twain visited and wrote about it; the American Transcendentalists saw affinities between Indian thought and their own; a few theologians and Biblical students studied the Biblical Oriental languages; there were occasional diplomatic and military encounters with Barbary pirates and the like, the odd naval expedition to the Far Orient, and of course the ubiquitous missionary to the Orient. But there was no deeply invested tradition of Orientalism, and consequently in the United States knowledge of the Orient never passed through the refining and reticulating and reconstructing processes, whose beginning was in philological study, that it went through in Europe. Furthermore, the imaginative investment was never made either, perhaps because the American frontier, the one that counted, was the westward one. Immediately after World War II, then, the Orient became, not a broad catholic issue as it had been for centuries in Europe, but an administrative one, a matter for policy. Enter the social scientist and the new expert, on whose somewhat narrower shoulders was to fall the mantle of Orientalism. In their turn, as we shall see, they made such changes in it that it became scarcely recognizable. In any event, the new Orientalist took over the attitudes of cultural hostility and kept them.<br /> <br /> One of the striking aspects of the new American social-science attention to the Orient is its singular avoidance of literature. You can read through reams of expert writing on the modern Near East and never encounter a single reference to literature. What seem to matter far more to the regional expert are &quot;facts,&quot; of which a literary text is perhaps a disturber. The net effect of this remarkable omission in modern American awareness of the Arab or Islamic Orient is to keep the region and its people conceptually emasculated, reduced to &quot;attitudes,&quot; &quot;trends,&quot; statistics: in short, dehumanized. Since an Arab poet or novelist--and there are many--writes of his experiences, of his values, of his humanity (however strange that may be), he effectively disrupts the various patterns (images, cliches, abstractions) by which the Orient is represented. A literary text speaks more or less directly of a living reality. Its force is not that it is Arab, or French, or English; its force is in the power and vitality of words that, to mix in Flaubert's metaphor from ''La Tentation de Saint Antoine'', tip the idols out of the Orientalists' arms and make them drop those great paralytic children--which are their ideas of the Orient--that attempt to pass for the Orient.<br /> <br /> The absence of literature and the relatively weak position of philology in contemporary American studies of the Near East are illustrations of a new eccentricity in Orientalism, where indeed my use of the word itself is anomalous. For there is very little in what academic experts on the Near East do now that resembles traditional Orientalism of the sort that ended with Gibb and Massignon; the main things that are reproduced are, as I said, a certain cultural hostility and a sense based not so much on philology as on &quot;expertise.&quot; Genealogically speaking, modern American Orientalism derives from such things as the army language schools established during and after the war, sudden government and corporate interest in the non-Western world during the postwar period, Cold War competition with the Soviet Union, and a residual missionary attitude towards Orientals who are considered ripe for reform and reeducation. The nonphilological study of esoteric Oriental languages is useful for obvious rudimentary strategic reasons; but it is also useful for giving a cachet of authority, almost a mystique, to the &quot;expert&quot; who appears able to deal with hopelessly obscure material with firsthand skill.<br /> <br /> In the social-science order of things, language study is a mere tool for higher aims, certainly not for reading literary texts. In 1958, for example, the Middle East Institute--a quasi-governmental body founded to oversee and sponsor research interest in the Middle East--produced a ''Report on Current Research''. The contribution &quot;Present State of Arabic Studies in the United States&quot; (done, interestingly enough, by a professor of Hebrew) is prefaced by an epigraph announcing that &quot;no longer is knowledge of foreign languages, for instance, the sole province of the scholars in the humanities. It is a working tool of the engineer, the economist, the social scientist, and many other specialists.&quot; The whole report stresses the importance of Arabic to oil-company executives, technicians, and military personnel. But the report's main talking point is this trio of sentences: &quot;Russian universities are now producing fluent Arabic speakers. Russia has realized the importance of appealing to men through their minds, by using their own language. The United States need wait no longer in developing its foreign language program.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Menachem Mansoor, &quot;Present State of Arabic Studies in the United States,&quot; in ''Report on Current Research 1958'', ed. Kathleen H. Brown (Washington: Middle East Institute, 1958), pp. 55-6.&lt;/ref&gt; Thus Oriental languages are part of some policy objective--as to a certain extent they have always been--or part of a sustained propaganda effort. In both these aims the study of Oriental languages becomes the instrument carrying out Harold Lasswell's theses about propaganda, in which what counts is not what people are or think but what they can be made to be and think.<br /> <br /> The propagandist outlook in fact combines respect for individuality with indifference to formal democracy. The respect for individuality arises from the dependence of large scale operations upon the support of the mass and upon experience with the variability of human preferences.... This regard for men in the mass rests upon no democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests. The modern propagandist, like the modern psychologist, recognizes that men are often poor judges of their own interests, flitting from one alternative to the next without solid reason or clinging timorously to the fragments of some mossy rock of ages. Calculating the prospect of securing a permanent change in habits and values involves much more than the estimation of the preferences of men in general. It means taking account of the tissue of relations in which men are webbed, searching for signs of preference which may reflect no deliberation and directing a program towards a solution which fits in fact.... With respect to those adjustments which do require mass action the task of the propagandist is that of inventing goal symbols which serve the double function of facilitating adoption and adaptation. The symbols must induce acceptance spontaneously.... It follows that the management ideal is control of a situation not by imposition but by divination.... The propagandist takes it for granted that the world is completely caused but that it is only partly predictable....&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Harold Lasswell, &quot;Propaganda,&quot; ''Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences'' (1934), 12: 527. I owe this reference to Professor Noam Chomsky.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The acquired foreign language is therefore made part of a subtle assault upon populations, just as the study of a foreign region like the Orient is turned into a program for control by divination.<br /> <br /> Yet such programs must always have a liberal veneer, and usually this is left to scholars, men of good will, enthusiasts to attend to. The idea encouraged is that in studying Orientals, Muslims, or Arabs &quot;we&quot; can get to know another people, their way of life and thought, and so on. To this end it is always better to let them speak for themselves, to represent themselves (even though underlying this fiction stands Marx's phrase--with which Lasswell is in agreement--for Louis Napoleon: &quot;They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented&quot;). But only up to a point, and in a special way. In 1973, during the anxious days of the October Arab-Israeli War, the ''New York Times Magazine'' commissioned two articles, one representing the Israeli and one the Arab side of the conflict. The Israeli side was presented by an Israeli lawyer; the Arab side, by an American former ambassador to an Arab country who had no formal training in Oriental studies. Lest we jump immediately to the simple conclusion that the Arabs were believed incapable of representing themselves, we would do well to remember that both Arabs and Jews in this instance were Semites (in the broad cultural designation I have been discussing) and that both ''were being made to be'' represented for a Western audience. It is worthwhile here to remember this passage from Proust, in which the sudden appearance of a Jew into an aristocratic salon is described as follows:<br /> <br /> The Rumanians, the Egyptians, the Turks may hate the Jews. But in a French drawing-room the differences between those people are not so apparent, and an Israelite making his entry as though he were emerging from the heart of the desert, his body crouching like a hyaena's, his neck thrust obliquely forward, spreading himself in proud &quot;salaams,&quot; completely satisfies a certain taste for the oriental [''un gout pour l'orientalisme''].&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Marcel Proust, ''The Guermantes Way'', trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff (1925; reprint ed., New York: Vintage Books, 1970), p. 135.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 2. ''Cultural relations policy''. While it is true to say that the United States did not in fact become a world empire until the twentieth century, it is also true that during the nineteenth century the United States was concerned with the Orient in ways that prepared for its later, overtly imperial concern. Leaving aside the campaigns against the Barbary pirates in 1801 and 1815, let us consider the founding of the American Oriental Society in 1842. At its first annual meeting in 1843 its president, John Pickering, made the very clear point that America proposed for itself the study of the Orient in order to follow the example of the imperial European powers. Pickering's message was that the framework of Oriental studies--then as now--was political, not simply scholarly. Note in the following summary how the lines of argument for Orientalism leave little room for doubt as to their intention:<br /> <br /> At the first annual meeting of the American Society in 1843, President Pickering began a remarkable sketch of the field it was proposed to cultivate by calling attention to the especially favorable circumstances of the time, the peace that reigned everywhere, the freer access to Oriental countries, and the greater facilities for communication. The earth seemed quiet in the days of Metternich and Louis Philippe. The treaty of Nanking had opened Chinese ports. The screw-propellor had been adopted in oceangoing vessels; Morse had completed his telegraph and he had already suggested the laying of a trans-Atlantic cable. The objects of the Society were to cultivate learning in Asiatic, African, and Polynesian language, and in everything concerning the Orient, to create a taste for Oriental Studies in this country, to publish texts, translations and communications, and to collect a library and cabinet. Most of the work has been done in the Asiatic field, and particularly in Sanskrit and the Semitic languages.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Nathaniel Schmidt, &quot;Early Oriental Studies in Europe and the Work of the American Oriental Society, 1842-1922,&quot; ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'' 43 (1923): 11. See also E. A. Speiser, &quot;Near Eastern Studies in America, 1939-45,&quot; ''Archiv Orientalni'' 16 (1948): 76-88.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Metternich, Louis-Philippe, the Treaty of Nanking, the screw propellor: all suggest the imperial constellation facilitating Euro-American penetration of the Orient. This has never stopped. Even the legendary American missionaries to the Near East during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries took their role as set not so much by God as by ''their'' God, ''their'' culture, and ''their'' destiny.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;As an instance there is Henry Jessup, ''Fifty-Three Years in Syria'', 2 vols. (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1910).&lt;/ref&gt; The early missionary institutions--printing presses, schools, universities, hospitals, and the like--contributed of course to the area's well-being, but in their specifically imperial character and their support by the United States government, these institutions were no different from their French and British counterparts in the Orient. During the First World War, what was to become a major United States policy interest in Zionism and the colonization of Palestine played an estimable role in getting the United States into the war; British discussions prior to and after the Balfour Declaration (November 1917) reflect the seriousness with which the declaration was taken by the United States.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;For the connection between the issuing of the Balfour Declaration and United States war policy, see Doreen Ingrams, ''Palestine Papers 19171922: Seeds of Conflict'' (London: Cox &amp; Syman, 1972), pp. 10 ff.&lt;/ref&gt; During and after the Second World War, the escalation in United States interest in the Middle East was remarkable. Cairo, Teheran, and North Africa were important arenas of war, and in that setting, with the exploitation of its oil, strategic, and human resources pioneered by Britain and France, the United States prepared for its new postwar imperial role.<br /> <br /> Not the least aspect of this role was &quot;a cultural relations policy,&quot; as it was defined by Mortimer Graves in 1950. Part of this policy was, he said, the attempt to acquire &quot;every significant publication in every important Near Eastern language published since 1900,&quot; an attempt &quot;which our Congress ought to recognize as a measure of our national security.&quot; For what was clearly at stake, Graves argued (to very receptive ears, by the way), was the need for &quot;much better American understanding of the forces which are contending with the American idea for acceptance by the Near East. The principal of these are, of course, communism and Islam.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Mortimer Graves, &quot;A Cultural Relations Policy in the Near East,&quot; in ''The Near East and the Great Powers'', ed. Frye, pp. 76, 78.&lt;/ref&gt; Out of such a concern, and as a contemporary adjunct to the more backward-looking American Oriental Society, was born the entire vast apparatus for research on the Middle East. The model, both in its frankly strategic attitude and in its sensitivity to public security and policy (not, as is often postured, to pure scholarship), was the Middle East Institute, founded May 1946 in Washington under the aegis of, if not entirely within or by, the federal government.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;George Camp Keiser, &quot;The Middle East Institute: Its Inception and Its Place in American International Studies,&quot; in ''The Near East and the Great Powers'', ed. Frye, pp. 80, 84.&lt;/ref&gt; Out of such organizations grew the Middle East Studies Association, the powerful support of the Ford and other foundations, the various federal programs of support to universities, the various federal research projects, research projects carried out by such entities as the Defense Department, the RAND Corporation, and the Hudson Institute, and the consultative and lobbying efforts of banks, oil companies, multinationals, and the like. It is no reduction to say of all this that it retains, in most of its general as well as its detailed functioning, the traditional Orientalist outlook which had been developed in Europe.<br /> <br /> The parallel between European and American imperial designs on the Orient (Near and Far) is obvious. What is perhaps less obvious is (''a'') the extent to which the European tradition of Orientalist scholarship was, if not taken over, then accommodated, normalized, domesticated, and popularized and fed into the postwar efflorescence of Near Eastern studies in the United States; and (''b'') the extent to which the European tradition has given rise in the United States to a coherent attitude among most scholars, institutions, styles of discourse, and orientations, despite the contemporary appearance of refinement, as well as the use of (again) highly sophisticated-appearing social-science techniques. I have already discussed Gibb's ideas; it needs to be pointed out, however, that in the middle 1950s he became director of the Harvard Center for Middle East Studies, from which position his ideas and style exerted an important influence. Gibb's presence in the United States was different in what it did for the field from Philip Hitti's presence at Princeton since the late 1920s. The Princeton department produced a large group of important scholars, and its brand of Oriental studies stimulated great scholarly interest in the field. Gibb, on the other hand, was more truly in touch with the public-policy aspect of Orientalism, and far more than Hitti's at Princeton his position at Harvard focused Orientalism on a Cold War area-studies approach.<br /> <br /> Gibb's own work, nevertheless, did not overtly employ the language of cultural discourse in the tradition of Renan, Becker, and Massignon. Yet this discourse, its intellectual apparatus, and its dogmas were impressively present, principally (although not exclusively) in the work and institutional authority, at Chicago and then at UCLA, of Gustave von Grunebaum. He came to the United States as part of the intellectual immigration of European scholars fleeing fascism.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;For an account of this migration, see ''The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930-1960'', ed. Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969).&lt;/ref&gt; Thereafter he produced a solid Orientalist ''oeuvre'' that concentrated on Islam as a holistic culture about which, from beginning to end of his career, he continued to make the same set of essentially reductive, negative generalizations. His style, which bore often chaotic evidence of his Austro-Germanic polymathy, of his absorption of the canonical pseudoscientific prejudices of French, British, and Italian Orientalism, as well as of an almost desperate effort to remain the impartial scholar-observer, was next to unreadable. A typical page of his on the Islamic self-image will jam together half-a-dozen references to Islamic texts drawn from as many periods as possible, references as well to Husserl and the pre-Socratics, references to Levi-Strauss and various American social scientists. All this, nevertheless, does not obscure von Grunebaum's almost virulent dislike of Islam. He has no difficulty presuming that Islam is a unitary phenomenon, unlike any other religion or civilization, and thereafter he shows it to be antihuman, incapable of development, self-knowledge, or objectivity, as well as uncreative, unscientific, and authoritarian. Here are two typical excerpts--and we must remember that von Grunebaum wrote with the unique authority of a European scholar in the United States, teaching, administering, giving grants to a large network of scholars in the field.<br /> <br /> It is essential to realize that Muslim civilization is a cultural entity that does not share our primary aspirations. It is not vitally interested in the structured study of other cultures, either as an end in itself or as a means towards clearer understanding of its own character and history. If this observation were to be valid merely for contemporary Islam, one might be inclined to connect it with the profoundly disturbed state of Islam, which does not permit it to look beyond itself unless forced to do so. But as it is valid for the past as well, one may perhaps seek to connect it with the basic anti-humanism of this [Islamic] civilization, that is, the determined refusal to accept man to any extent whatever as the arbiter or the measure of things, and the tendency to be satisfied with the truth as the description of mental structures, or in other words, with psychological truth.<br /> <br /> [Arab or Islamic nationalism] lacks, in spite of its occasional use as a catchword, the concept of the divine right of a nation, it lacks a formative ethic, it also lacks, it would seem, the later nineteenth century belief in mechanistic progress; above all it lacks the intellectual vigor of a primary phenomenon. Both power and the will to power are ends in themselves. [This sentence seems to serve no purpose in the argument; yet it doubtless gives von Grunebaum the security of a philosophical-sounding nonsentence, as if to assure himself that he speaks wisely, not disparagingly, of Islam.] The resentment of political slights [felt by Islam] engenders impatience and impedes long-range analysis and planning in the intellectual sphere.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Gustave von Grunebaum, ''Modern Islam: The Search for Cultural Identity'' (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), pp. 55, 261.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In most other contexts such writing would politely be called polemical. For Orientalism, of course, it is relatively orthodox, and it passed for canonical wisdom in American study of the Middle East after World War II, mainly because of the cultural prestige associated with European scholars. The point is, however, that von Grunebaum's work is accepted uncritically by the field, even though the field itself today cannot reproduce people like him. Yet only one scholar has undertaken a serious critique of von Grunebaum's views: Abdullah Laroui, a Moroccan historian and political theorist.<br /> <br /> Using the motif of reductive repetition in von Grunebaum's work as a practical tool of critical anti-Orientalist study, Laroui manages his case impressively on the whole. He asks himself what it is that caused von Grunebaum's work, despite the enormous mass of its detail and its apparent range, to remain reductive. As Laroui says, &quot;the adjectives that von Grunebaum affixes to the word Islam (medieval, classical, modern) are neutral or even superfluous: there is no difference between classical Islam and medieval Islam or Islam plain and simple.... There is therefore [for von Grunebaum] only ''one'' Islam that changes within itself.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Abdullah Laroui, &quot;Pour une methodologie des etudes islamiques: L'Islam au miroir de Gustave von Grunebaum,&quot; ''Diogene'' 38 (July-September 1973): 30. This essay has been collected in Laroui's ''The Crisis of the Arab Intellectuals: Traditionalism or Historicism?'' trans. Diarmid Cammell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).&lt;/ref&gt; Modern Islam, according to von Grunebaum, has turned away from the West because it remains faithful to its original sense of itself; and yet Islam can modernize itself only by a self-reinterpretation from a Western point of view--which, of course, von Grunebaum shows is impossible. In describing von Grunebaum's conclusions, which add up to a portrait of Islam as a culture incapable of innovation, Laroui does not mention that the need for Islam to use Western methods to improve itself has, as an idea, perhaps because of von Grunebaum's wide influence, become almost a truism in Middle Eastern studies. (For example, David Gordon, in ''Self-Determination and History in the Third World'',&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;David Gordon, ''Self-Determination and History in the Third World'' (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971).&lt;/ref&gt; urges &quot;maturity&quot; on Arabs, Africans, and Asians; he argues that this can be gained only by learning from Western objectivity.)<br /> <br /> Laroui's analysis shows also how von Grunebaum employed A. L. Kroeber's culturalist theory to understand Islam, and how this tool necessarily entailed a series of reductions and eliminations by which Islam could be represented as a closed system of exclusions. Thus, each of the many diverse aspects of Islamic culture could be seen by von Grunebaum as a direct reflection of an unvarying matrix, a particular theory of God, that compels them all into meaning and order: development, history, tradition, reality in Islam are therefore interchangeable. Laroui rightly maintains that history as a complex order of events, temporalities, and meanings cannot be reduced to such a notion of culture, in the same way that culture cannot be reduced to ideology, nor ideology to theology. Von Grunebaum has fallen prey both to the Orientalist dogmas he inherited and to a particular feature of Islam which he has chosen to interpret as a shortcoming: that there is to be found in Islam a highly articulated theory of religion and yet very few accounts of religious experience, highly articulate political theory and few precise political documents, a theory of social structure and very few individualized actions, a theory of history and very few dated events, an articulated theory of economics and very few quantified series, and so on.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Laroui, &quot;Pour une methodologie des etudes islamiques,&quot; p. 41.&lt;/ref&gt; The net result is a historical vision of Islam entirely hobbled by the theory of a culture incapable of doing justice to, or even examining, its existential reality in the experience of its adherents. Von Grunebaum's Islam, after all, is the Islam of the earlier European Orientalists--monolithic, scornful of ordinary human experience, gross, reductive, unchanging.<br /> <br /> At bottom such a view of Islam is political, not even euphemistically impartial. The strength of its hold on the new Orientalist (younger, that is, than von Grunebaum) is due in part to its traditional authority, and in part to its use-value as a handle for grasping a vast region of the world and proclaiming it an entirely coherent phenomenon. Since Islam has never easily been encompassed by the West politically--and certainly since World War II Arab nationalism has been a movement openly declaring its hostility to Western imperialism--the desire to assert intellectually satisfying things about Islam in retaliation increases. One authority has said of Islam (without specifying ''which'' Islam or aspect of Islam he means) that it is &quot;one prototype of closed traditional societies.&quot; Note here the edifying use of the word ''Islam'' to signify all at once a society, a religion, a prototype, and an actuality. But all this will be subordinated by the same scholar to the notion that, unlike normal (&quot;our&quot;) societies, Islam and Middle Eastern societies are totally &quot;political,&quot; an adjective meant as a reproach to Islam for not being &quot;liberal,&quot; for not being able to separate (as &quot;we&quot; do) politics from culture. The result is an invidiously ideological portrait of &quot;us&quot; and &quot;them&quot;:<br /> <br /> To understand Middle Eastern society as a whole must remain our great aim. Only a society [like &quot;ours&quot;] that has already achieved a dynamic stability can afford to think of politics, economics, or culture as genuinely autonomous realms of existence and not merely convenient divisions for study. In a traditional society that does not separate the things of Caesar from those of God, or that is entirely in flux, the connection between, say, politics and all other aspects of life is the heart of the issue. Today, for example, whether a man is to marry four wives or one, fast or eat, gain or lose land, rely on revelation or reason, have all become political issues in the Middle East.... No less than the Moslem himself, the new Orientalist must inquire anew what the significant structures and relationships of Islamic society may be.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Manfred Halpern, &quot;Middle East Studies: A Review of the State of the Field with a Few Examples,&quot; ''World Politics'' 15 (October 1962): 121-2.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The triviality of most of the examples (marrying four wives, fasting or eating, etc.) is meant as evidence of Islam's all-inclusiveness, and its tyranny. As to ''where'' this is supposed to be happening, we are not told. But we are reminded of the doubtless nonpolitical fact that Orientalists &quot;are largely responsible for having given Middle Easterners themselves an accurate appreciation of their past,&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 117.&lt;/ref&gt; just in case we might forget that Orientalists know things by definition that Orientals cannot know on their own.<br /> <br /> If this sums up the &quot;hard&quot; school of the new American Orientalism, the &quot;soft&quot; school emphasizes the fact that traditional Orientalists have given us the basic outlines of Islamic history, religion, and society but have been &quot;all too often content to sum up the meaning of a civilization on the basis of a few manuscripts.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Leonard Binder, &quot;1974 Presidential Address,&quot; ''MESA Bulletin'' 9, no. 1 (February 1975): 2.&lt;/ref&gt; Against the traditional Orientalist, therefore, the new area-studies specialist argues philosophically:<br /> <br /> Research methodology and disciplinary paradigms are not to determine what is selected for study, and they are not to limit observation. Area studies, from this perspective, hold that true knowledge is only possible of things that exist, while methods and theories are abstractions, which order observations and offer explanations according to non-empirical criteria.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Good. But ''how'' does one know the &quot;things that exist,&quot; and to what extent are the &quot;things that exist&quot; ''constituted'' by the knower? This is left moot, as the new value-free apprehension of the Orient as something that exists is institutionalized in area-studies programs. Without tendentious theorizing, Islam is ''rarely'' studied, ''rarely'' researched, ''rarely'' known: the naivete of this conception scarcely conceals what ideologically it means, the absurd theses that man plays no part in setting up both the material and the processes of knowledge, that the Oriental reality is static and &quot;exists,&quot; that only a messianic revolutionary (in Dr. Kissinger's vocabulary) will not admit the difference between reality out there and in his head.<br /> <br /> Between the hard and soft schools, however, more or less diluted versions of the old Orientalism flourish--in the new academic jargons in some cases, in the old ones in others. But the principal dogmas of Orientalism exist in their purest form today in studies of the Arabs and Islam. Let us recapitulate them here: one is the absolute and systematic difference between the West, which is rational, developed, humane, superior, and the Orient, which is aberrant, undeveloped, inferior. Another dogma is that abstractions about the Orient, particularly those based on texts representing a &quot;classical&quot; Oriental civilization, are always preferable to direct evidence drawn from modern Oriental realities. A third dogma is that the Orient is eternal, uniform, and incapable of defining itself; therefore it is assumed that a highly generalized and systematic vocabulary for describing the Orient from a Western standpoint is inevitable and even scientifically &quot;objective.&quot; A fourth dogma is that the Orient is at bottom something either to be feared (the Yellow Peril, the Mongol hordes, the brown dominions) or to be controlled (by pacification, research and development, outright occupation whenever possible).<br /> <br /> The extraordinary thing is that these notions persist without significant challenge in the academic and governmental study of the modern Near Orient. Lamentably, there has been no demonstrable effect--if there has been a challenging gesture at all--made by Islamic or Arab scholars' work disputing the dogmas of Orientalism; an isolated article here or there, while important for its time and place, cannot possibly affect the course of an imposing research consensus maintained by all sorts of agencies, institutions, and traditions. The point of this is that Islamic Orientalism has led a contemporary life quite different from that of the other Orientalist subdisciplines. The Committee of Concerned Asia Scholars (who are primarily Americans) led a revolution during the 1960s in the ranks of East Asia specialists; the African studies specialists were similarly challenged by revisionists; so too were other Third World area specialists. Only the Arabists and Islamologists still function unrevised. For them there are still such things as ''an'' Islamic society, ''an'' Arab mind, ''an'' Oriental psyche. Even the ones whose specialty is the modern Islamic world anachronistically use texts like the Koran to read into every facet of contemporary Egyptian or Algerian society. Islam, or a seventh-century ideal of it constituted by the Orientalist, is assumed to possess the unity that eludes the more recent and important influences of colonialism, imperialism, and even ordinary politics. Cliches about how Muslims (or Mohammedans, as they are still sometimes called) behave are bandied about with a nonchalance no one would risk in talking about blacks or Jews. At best, the Muslim is a &quot;native informant&quot; for the Orientalist. Secretly, however, he remains a despised heretic who for his sins must additionally endure the entirely thankless position of being known--negatively, that is--as an anti-Zionist.<br /> <br /> There is of course a Middle East studies establishment, a pool of interests, &quot;old boy&quot; or &quot;expert&quot; networks linking corporate business, the foundations, the oil companies, the missions, the military, the foreign service, the intelligence community together with the academic world. There are grants and other rewards, there are organizations, there are hierarchies, there are institutes, centers, faculties, departments, all devoted to legitimizing and maintaining the authority of a handful of basic, basically unchanging ideas about Islam, the Orient, and the Arabs. A recent critical analysis of the Middle East studies operation in the United States shows, not that the field is &quot;monolithic,&quot; but that it is complex, that it contains old-style Orientalists, deliberately marginal specialists, counterinsurgency specialists, policymakers, as well as &quot;a small minority ... of academic power brokers.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;&quot;Middle East Studies Network in the United States,&quot; ''MERIP Reports'' 38 (June 1975): 5.&lt;/ref&gt; In any event, the core of Orientalist dogma persists.<br /> <br /> As an instance of what, in its highest and most intellectually prestigious form, the field now produces, let us consider briefly the two-volume ''Cambridge History of Islam'', which was first published in England in 1970 and is a regular summa of Orientalist orthodoxy. To say of this work by numerous luminaries that it is an intellectual failure by any standards other than those of Orientalism is to say that it could have been a different and better history of Islam. In fact, as several more thoughtful scholars have noted,&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;The two best critical reviews of the ''Cambridge History'' are by Albert Hourani, ''The English Historical Review'' 87, no. 343 (April 1972): 348-57, and Roger Owen, ''Journal of Interdisciplinary History'' 4, no. 2 (Autumn 1973): 287-98.&lt;/ref&gt; this kind of history was already doomed when first planned and could not have been different, or better in execution: too many ideas were uncritically accepted by its editors; there was too much reliance on vague concepts; little emphasis was placed on methodological issues (which were left as they have been standing in Orientalist discourse for almost two centuries); and no effort was put forth to make even the idea of Islam seem interesting. Moreover, not only does ''The Cambridge History of Islam'' radically misconceive and misrepresent Islam as a religion; it also has no corporate idea of itself as a history. Of few such enormous enterprises can it be true, as it is of this one, that ideas and methodological intelligence are almost entirely absent from it.<br /> <br /> Erfan Shahid's chapter on pre-Islamic Arabia, which opens the history, intelligently sketches the fruitful consonance between topography and human economy out of which Islam appeared in the seventh century. But what can one fairly say of a history of Islam, defined by P. M. Holt's introduction rather airily as a &quot;cultural synthesis,&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;P. M. Holt, Introduction, ''The Cambridge History of Islam'', ed. P. M. Holt, Anne K. S. Lambton, and Bernard Lewis, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 1: xi.&lt;/ref&gt; that proceeds directly from pre-Islamic Arabia to a chapter on Mohammed, then to a chapter on the Patriarchal and Umayyad caliphates, and entirely bypasses any account of Islam as a system of belief, faith, or doctrine? For hundreds of pages in volume 1, Islam is understood to mean an unrelieved chronology of battles, reigns, and deaths, rises and heydays, comings and passings, written for the most part in a ghastly monotone.<br /> <br /> Take the Abbasid period from the eighth to the eleventh century as an instance. Anyone who has the slightest acquaintance with Arab or Islamic history will know that it was a high point of Islamic civilization, as brilliant a period of cultural history as the High Renaissance in Italy. Yet nowhere in the forty pages of description does one get an inkling of any richness; what is found instead is sentences like this: &quot;Once master of the caliphate, [al-Ma'mun] seemed henceforth to shrink from contact with Baghdad society and remained settled at Merv, entrusting the government of Iraq to one of his trusted men, al-Hasan b. Sahl, the brother of al-Fadl, who was faced almost at once with a serious Shi'i revolt, that of Abu'l-Saraya, who in Jumada II 199/January 815 sent out a call to arms from Kufa in support of the Hasanid Ibn Tabataba.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;D. Sourdel, &quot;The Abbasid Caliphate,&quot; ''Cambridge History of Islam'', ed. Holt et al., 1: 121.&lt;/ref&gt; A non-Islamicist will not know at this point what a Shi'i or a Hasanid is. He will have no idea what Jumada II is, except that it clearly designates a date of some sort. And of course he will believe that the Abbasids, including Harun al-Rashid, were an incorrigibly dull and murderous lot, as they sat sulking in Merv.<br /> <br /> The Central Islamic lands are defined as excluding North Africa and Andalusia, and ''their'' history is an orderly march from the past till modern times. In volume 1, therefore, Islam is a geographical designation applied chronologically and selectively as it suits the experts. But nowhere in the chapters on classical Islam is there an adequate preparation for the disappointments in store for us when we come to &quot;recent times,&quot; as they are called. The chapter on the modern Arab lands is written without the slightest understanding of the revolutionary developments in the area. The author takes a schoolmarmish, openly reactionary attitude towards the Arabs (&quot;it must be said that during this period the educated and uneducated youth of the Arab countries, with their enthusiasm and idealism, became a fertile soil for political exploitation and, at times, perhaps without realizing it, the tools of unscrupulous extremists and agitators&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Z. N. Zeine, &quot;The Arab Lands,&quot; ''Cambridge History of Islam'', ed. Holt et al., 1: 575.&lt;/ref&gt;), tempered by occasional praise of Lebanese nationalism (although we are never told that the appeal of fascism to a small number of Arabs during the thirties also infected the Lebanese Maronites, who in 1936 founded the Falanges libanaises as a copy of Mussolini's Black Shirts). &quot;Unrest and agitation&quot; are ascribed to 1936 without a mention of Zionism, and the very notions of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism are never allowed to violate the serenity of the narrative. As for the chapters on &quot;the political impact of the West&quot; and &quot;economic and social change&quot;--ideas left no more specific than that--they are tacked on as reluctant concessions to Islam as having something to do with &quot;our&quot; world in general. Change is unilaterally equated with modernization, even though it is nowhere made clear why other kinds of change need be so imperiously dismissed. Since it is assumed that Islam's only worthwhile relations have been with the West, the importance of Bandung or of Africa or of the Third World generally is ignored; this blithe indifference to a good three-quarters of reality somewhat explains the amazingly cheerful statement that &quot;the historical ground has been cleared [by whom, for what, in what way?] for a new relationship between the West and Islam ... based on equality and cooperation.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Dankwart A. Rustow, &quot;The Political Impact of the West,&quot; ''Cambridge History of Islam'', ed. Holt et al., 1: 697.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> If by the end of volume 1 we are mired in a number of contradictions and difficulties about what Islam really is, there is no help to be had in volume 2. Half the book is devoted to covering the tenth to the twentieth centuries in India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Spain, North Africa, and Sicily; there is more distinction in the chapters on North Africa, although the same combination of professional Orientalist jargon with unguided historical detail prevails pretty much everywhere. So far, after approximately twelve hundred pages of dense prose, &quot;Islam&quot; appears to be no more a cultural synthesis than any other roll call of kings, battles, and dynasties. But in the last half of volume 2, the great synthesis completes itself with articles on &quot;The Geographical Setting,&quot; &quot;Sources of Islamic Civilization,&quot; &quot;Religion and Culture,&quot; and &quot;Warfare.&quot;<br /> <br /> Now one's legitimate questions and objections seem more justified. Why is a chapter commissioned on Islamic warfare when what is really discussed (interestingly, by the way) is the sociology of some Islamic armies? Is one to assume that there is an Islamic mode of war different, say, from Christian warfare? Communist war versus capitalist war proposes itself as a suitably analogous topic. Of what use for the understanding of Islam--except as a display of Gustave von Grunebaum's indiscriminate erudition--are the opaque quotations from Leopold von Ranke which, along with other equally ponderous and irrelevant material, dot his pages on Islamic civilization? Is it not mendacious thus to disguise the real Grunebaumian thesis, that Islamic civilization rests on an unprincipled borrowing by Muslims from the Judeo-Christian, Hellenistic, and Austro-Germanic civilizations? Compare with this idea--that Islam is by definition a plagiaristic culture--the one put forward in volume 1 that &quot;so-called Arabic literature&quot; was written by Persians (no proof offered, no names cited). When Louis Gardet treats &quot;Religion and Culture,&quot; we are told summarily that only the first five centuries of Islam are to be discussed; does this mean that religion and culture in &quot;modern times&quot; cannot be &quot;synthesized,&quot; or does it mean that Islam achieved its final form in the twelfth century? Is there really such a thing as &quot;Islamic geography,&quot; which seems to include the &quot;planned anarchy&quot; of Muslim cities, or is it mainly an invented subject to demonstrate a rigid theory of geographical-racial determinism? As a hint we are reminded of &quot;the Ramadan fast with its active nights,&quot; from which we are expected to conclude that Islam is a religion &quot;designed for town dwellers.&quot; This is explanation in need of explanation.<br /> <br /> The sections on economic and social institutions, on law and justice, mysticism, art and architecture, science, and the various Islamic literatures are on an altogether higher level than most of the ''History''. Yet nowhere is there evidence that their authors have much in common with modern humanists or social scientists in other disciplines: the techniques of the conventional history of ideas, of Marxist analysis, of the New History, are noticeably absent. Islam, in short, seems to its historians to be best suited to a rather Platonic and antiquarian bias. To some writers of the ''History'' Islam is a politics and a religion; to others it is a style of being; to others it is &quot;distinguishable from Muslim society&quot;; to still others it is a mysteriously known essence; to ''all'' the authors Islam is a remote, tensionless thing, without much to teach us about the complexities of today's Muslims. Hanging over the whole disjointed enterprise which is ''The Cambridge History of Islam'' is the old Orientalist truism that Islam is about texts, not about people.<br /> <br /> The fundamental question raised by such contemporary Orientalist texts as ''The Cambridge History'' is whether ethnic origins and religion are the best, or at least the most useful, basic, and clear, definitions of human experience. Does it matter more in understanding contemporary politics to know that X and Y are disadvantaged in certain very concrete ways, or that they are Muslims or Jews? This is of course a debatable question, and we are very likely in rational terms to insist on both the religious-ethnic and the socio-economic descriptions; Orientalism, however, clearly posits the Islamic category as the dominant one, and this is the main consideration about its retrograde intellectual tactics.<br /> <br /> 3. ''Merely Islam''. So deeply entrenched is the theory of Semitic simplicity as it is to be found in modern Orientalism that it operates with little differentiation in such well-known anti-Semitic European writings as ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' and in remarks such as these by Chaim Weizmann to Arthur Balfour on May 30, 1918:<br /> <br /> The Arabs, who are superficially clever and quick witted, worship one thing, and one thing only--power and success.... The British authorities ... knowing as they do the treacherous nature of the Arabs ... have to watch carefully and constantly.... The fairer the English regime tries to be, the more arrogant the Arab becomes.... The present state of affairs would necessarily tend toward the creation of an Arab Palestine, if there were an Arab people in Palestine. It will not in fact produce that result because the fellah is at least four centuries behind the times, and the effendi ... is dishonest, uneducated, greedy, and as unpatriotic as he is inefficient.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Cited in Ingrams, ''Palestine Papers, 1917-1922'', pp. 31-2.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The common denominator between Weizmann and the European anti-Semite is the Orientalist perspective, seeing Semites (or subdivisions thereof) as by nature lacking the desirable qualities of Occidentals. Yet the difference between Renan and Weizmann is that the latter had already gathered behind his rhetoric the solidity of institutions whereas the former had not. Is there not in twentieth-century Orientalism that same unaging &quot;gracious childhood&quot;--heedlessly allied now with scholarship, now with a state and all its institutions--that Renan saw as the Semites' unchanging mode of being?<br /> <br /> Yet with what greater harm has the twentieth-century version of the myth been maintained. It has produced a picture of the Arab as seen by an &quot;advanced&quot; quasi-Occidental society. In his resistance to foreign colonialists the Palestinian was either a stupid savage, or a negligible quantity, morally and even existentially. According to Israeli law only a Jew has full civic rights and unqualified immigration privileges; even though they are the land's inhabitants, Arabs are given less, more simple rights: they cannot immigrate, and if they seem not to have the same rights, it is because they are &quot;less developed.&quot; Orientalism governs Israeli policy towards the Arabs throughout, as the recently published Koenig Report amply proves. There are good Arabs (the ones who do as they are told) and bad Arabs (who do not, and are therefore terrorists). Most of all there are all those Arabs who, once defeated, can be expected to sit obediently behind an infallibly fortified line, manned by the smallest possible number of men, on the theory that Arabs have had to accept the myth of Israeli superiority and will never dare attack. One need only glance through the pages of General Yehoshafat Harkabi's ''Arab Attitudes to Israel'' to see how--as Robert Alter put it in admiring language in ''Commentary''&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Robert Alter, &quot;Rhetoric and the Arab Mind,&quot; ''Commentary'', October 1968, pp. 61-85. Alter's article was an adulatory review of General Yehoshafat Harkabi's ''Arab Attitudes to Israel'' (Jerusalem: Keter Press, 1972).&lt;/ref&gt;--the Arab mind, depraved, anti-Semitic to the core, violent, unbalanced, could produce only rhetoric and little more. One myth supports and produces another. They answer each other, tending towards symmetries and patterns of the sort that as Orientals the Arabs themselves can be expected to produce, but that as a human being no Arab can truly sustain.<br /> <br /> Of itself, in itself, as a set of beliefs, as a method of analysis, Orientalism cannot develop. Indeed, it is the doctrinal antithesis of development. Its central argument is the myth of the arrested development of the Semites. From this matrix other myths pour forth, each of them showing the Semite to be the opposite of the Westerner and irremediably the victim of his own weaknesses. By a concatenation of events and circumstances the Semitic myth bifurcated in the Zionist movement; one Semite went the way of Orientalism, the other, the Arab, was forced to go the way of the Oriental. Each time tent and tribe are solicited, the myth is being employed; each time the concept of Arab national character is evoked, the myth is being employed. The hold these instruments have on the mind is increased by the institutions built around them. For every Orientalist, quite literally, there is a support system of staggering power, considering the ephemerality of the myths that Orientalism propagates. This system now culminates in the very institutions of the state. To write about the Arab Oriental world, therefore, is to write with the authority of a nation, and not with the affirmation of a strident ideology but with the unquestioning certainty of absolute truth backed by absolute force.<br /> <br /> In its February 1974 issue ''Commentary'' gave its readers an article by Professor Gil Carl Alroy entitled &quot;Do the Arabs Want Peace?&quot; Alroy is a professor of political science and is the author of two works, ''Attitudes Towards Jewish Statehood in the Arab World'' and ''Images of Middle East Conflict''; he is a man who professes to &quot;know&quot; the Arabs, and is obviously an expert on image making. His argument is quite predictable: that the Arabs want to destroy Israel, that the Arabs really say what they mean (and Alroy makes ostentatious use of his ability to cite evidence from Egyptian newspapers, evidence he everywhere identifies with &quot;Arabs&quot; as if the two, Arabs and Egyptian newspapers, were one), and so on and on, with unflagging, one-eyed zeal. Quite the center of his article, as it is the center of previous work by other &quot;Arabists&quot; (synonymous with &quot;Orientalists&quot;), like General Harkabi, whose province is the &quot;Arab mind,&quot; is a working hypothesis on what Arabs, if one peels off all the outer nonsense, are really like. In other words, Alroy must prove that because Arabs are, first of all, as one in their bent for bloody vengeance, second, psychologically incapable of peace, and third, congenitally tied to a concept of justice that means the opposite of that, they are not to be trusted and must be fought interminably as one fights any other fatal disease. For evidence Alroy's principal exhibit is a quotation taken from Harold W. Glidden's essay &quot;The Arab World&quot; (to which I referred in Chapter One). Alroy finds Glidden able to have &quot;captured the cultural differences between the Western and the Arab view&quot; of things &quot;very well.&quot; Alroy's argument is clinched, therefore--the Arabs are unregenerate savages--and thus an authority on the Arab mind has told a wide audience of presumably concerned Jews that they must continue to watch out. And he has done it academically, dispassionately, fairly, using evidence taken from the Arabs themselves--who, he says with Olympian assurance, have &quot;emphatically ruled out ... real peace&quot;--and from psychoanalysis.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Gil Carl Alroy, &quot;Do The Arabs Want Peace?&quot; ''Commentary'', February 1974, pp. 56-61.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> One can explain such statements by recognizing that a still more implicit and powerful difference posited by the Orientalist as against the Oriental is that the former ''writes'' about, whereas the latter ''is written'' about. For the latter, passivity is the presumed role; for the former, the power to observe, study, and so forth; as Roland Barthes has said, a myth (and its perpetuators) can invent itself (themselves) ceaselessly.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Roland Barthes, ''Mythologies'', trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill &amp; Wang, 1972), pp. 109-59.&lt;/ref&gt; The Oriental is given as fixed, stable, in need of investigation, in need even of knowledge about himself. No dialectic is either desired or allowed. There is a source of information (the Oriental) and a source of knowledge (the Orientalist), in short, a writer and a subject matter otherwise inert. The relationship between the two is radically a matter of power, for which there are numerous images. Here is an instance taken from Raphael Patai's ''Golden River to Golden Road'':<br /> <br /> In order properly to evaluate what Middle Eastern culture will ''willingly accept'' from the embarrassingly rich storehouses of Western civilization, a better and sounder understanding of Middle Eastern culture ''must first be acquired''. The same prerequisite is necessary in order ''to gauge'' the probable effects ''of newly introduced traits'' on the cultural context of tradition directed peoples. Also, the ways and means ''in which new cultural offerings can be made palatable'' must be studied much more thoroughly than was hitherto the case. In brief, the only way in which ''the Gordian knot of resistance'' to Westernization in the Middle East ''can be unraveled'' is that of studying the Middle East, ''of obtaining a fuller picture'' of its traditional culture, a better understanding of ''the processes of change taking place'' in it at present, and ''a deeper insight'' into the psychology of human groups brought up in Middle Eastern culture. ''The task is taxing, but the prize, harmony between the West'' and a neighboring world area of crucial importance, is well worth it.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Raphael Patai, ''Golden River to Golden Road: Society, Culture, and Change in the Middle East'' (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962; 3rd rev. ed., 1969), p. 406.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The metaphorical figures propping up this passage (I have indicated them by italics) come from a variety of human activities, some commercial, some horticultural, some religious, some veterinary, some historical. Yet in each case the relation between the Middle East and the West is really defined as sexual: as I said earlier in discussing Flaubert, the association between the Orient and sex is remarkably persistent. The Middle East is resistant, as any virgin would be, but the male scholar wins the prize by bursting open, penetrating through the Gordian knot despite &quot;the taxing task.&quot; &quot;Harmony&quot; is the result of the conquest of maidenly coyness; it is not by any means the coexistence of equals. The underlying power relation between scholar and subject matter is never once altered: it is uniformly favorable to the Orientalist. Study, understanding, knowledge, evaluation, masked as blandishments to &quot;harmony,&quot; are instruments of conquest.<br /> <br /> The verbal operations in such writing as Patai's (who has outstripped even his previous work in his recent ''The Arab Mind''&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Raphael Patai, ''The Arab Mind'' (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973). For an even more racist work see John Laffin, ''The Arab Mind Considered: A Need for Understanding'' (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1976).&lt;/ref&gt;) aim at a very particular sort of compression and reduction. Much of his paraphernalia is anthropological--he describes the Middle East as a &quot;culture area&quot;--but the result is to eradicate the plurality of differences among the Arabs (whoever they may be in fact) in the interest of one difference, that one setting Arabs off from everyone else. As a subject matter for study and analysis, they can be controlled more readily. Moreover, thus reduced they can be made to permit, legitimate, and valorize general nonsense of the sort one finds in works such as Sania Hamady's ''Temperament and Character of the Arabs''. Item:<br /> <br /> The Arabs so far have demonstrated an incapacity for disciplined and abiding unity. They experience collective outbursts of enthusiasm but do not pursue patiently collective endeavors, which are usually embraced half-heartedly. They show lack of coordination and harmony in organization and function, nor have they revealed an ability for cooperation. Any collective action for common benefit or mutual profit is alien to them.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Sania Hamady, ''Temperament and Character of the Arabs'' (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1960), p. 100. Hamady's book is a favorite amongst Israelis and Israeli apologists; Alroy cites her approvingly, and so does Amos Elon in ''The Israelis: Founders and Sons'' (New York: Holt, Rinehart &amp; Winston, 1971). Morroe Berger (see note 137 below) also cites her frequently. Her model is Lane's ''Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians'', but she has none of Lane's literacy or general learning.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The style of this prose tells more perhaps than Hamady intends. Verbs like &quot;demonstrate,&quot; &quot;reveal,&quot; &quot;show,&quot; are used without an indirect object: to whom are the Arabs revealing, demonstrating, showing? To no one in particular, obviously, but to everyone in general. This is another way of saying that these truths are self-evident only to a privileged or initiated observer, since nowhere does Hamady cite generally available evidence for her observations. Besides, given the inanity of the observations, what sort of evidence could there be? As her prose moves along, her tone increases in confidence: &quot;Any collective action ... is alien to them.&quot; The categories harden, the assertions are more unyielding, and the Arabs have been totally transformed from people into no more than the putative subject of Hamady's style. The Arabs exist only as an occasion for the tyrannical observer: &quot;The world is ''my'' idea.&quot;<br /> <br /> And so it is throughout the work of the contemporary Orientalist: assertions of the most bizarre sort dot his or her pages, whether it is a Manfred Halpern arguing that even though all human thought processes can be reduced to eight, the Islamic mind is capable of only four,&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Manfred Halpern's thesis is presented in &quot;Four Contrasting Repertories of Human Relations in Islam: Two Pre-Modern and Two Modern Ways of Dealing with Continuity and Change, Collaboration and Conflict and the Achieving of Justice,&quot; a paper presented to the 22nd Near East Conference at Princeton University on Psychology and Near Eastern Studies, May 8, 1973. This treatise was prepared for by Halpern's &quot;A Redefinition of the Revolutionary Situation,&quot; ''Journal of International Affairs'' 23, no. 1 (1969): 54-75.&lt;/ref&gt; or a Morroe Berger presuming that since the Arabic language is much given to rhetoric Arabs are consequently incapable of true thought.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Morroe Berger, ''The Arab World Today'' (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1964), p. 140. Much the same sort of implication underlies the clumsy work of quasi-Arabists like Joel Carmichael and Daniel Lerner; it is there more subtly in political and historical scholars such as Theodore Draper, Walter Laqueur, and Elie Kedourie. It is strongly in evidence in such highly regarded works as Gabriel Baer's ''Population and Society in the Arab East'', trans. Hanna Szoke (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964), and Alfred Bonne's ''State and Economics in the Middle East: A Society in Transition'' (London: Routledge &amp; Kegan Paul, 1955). The consensus seems to be that if they think at all, Arabs think differently--i.e., not necessarily with reason, and often without it. See also Adel Daher's RAND study, ''Current Trends in Arab Intellectual Thought'' (RM-5979-FF, December 1969) and its typical conclusion that &quot;the concrete problem-solving approach is conspicuously absent from Arab thought&quot; (p. 29). In a review-essay for the ''Journal of Interdisciplinary History'' (see note 124 above), Roger Owen attacks the very notion of &quot;Islam&quot; as a concept for the study of history. His focus is ''The Cambridge History of Islam'', which, he finds, in certain ways perpetuates an idea of Islam (to be found in such writers as Carl Becker and Max Weber) &quot;defined essentially as a religious, feudal, and antirational system, [that] lacked the necessary characteristics which had made European progress possible.&quot; For a sustained proof of Weber's total inaccuracy, see Maxime Rodinson's ''Islam and Capitalism'', trans. Brian Pearce (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), pp. 76-117.&lt;/ref&gt; One can call these assertions myths in their function and structure, and yet one must try to understand what other imperatives govern their use. Here one is speculating, of course. Orientalist generalizations about the Arabs are very detailed when it comes to itemizing Arab characteristics critically, far less so when it comes to analyzing Arab strengths. The Arab family, Arab rhetoric, the Arab character, despite copious descriptions by the Orientalist, appear de-natured, without human potency, even as these same descriptions possess a fullness and depth in their sweeping power over the subject matter. Hamady again:<br /> <br /> Thus, the Arab lives in a hard and frustrating environment. He has little chance to develop his potentialities and define his position in society, holds little belief in progress and change, and finds salvation only in the hereafter.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Hamady, Character and Temperament, p. 197.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> What the Arab cannot achieve himself is to be found in the writing about him. The Orientalist is supremely certain of ''his'' potential, is not a pessimist, is able to define his position, his own and the Arab's. The picture of the Arab Oriental that emerges is determinedly negative; yet, we ask, why this endless series of works on him? What grips the Orientalist, if it is not--as it certainly is not--love of Arab science, mind, society, achievement? In other words, what is the nature of Arab presence in mythic discourse about him?<br /> <br /> Two things: number and generative power. Both qualities are reducible to each other ultimately, but we ought to separate them for the purposes of analysis. Almost without exception, every contemporary work of Orientalist scholarship (especially in the social sciences) has a great deal to say about the family, its male-dominated structure, its all-pervasive influence in the society. Patai's work is a typical example. A silent paradox immediately presents itself, for if the family is an institution for whose general failures the only remedy is the placebo of &quot;modernization,&quot; we must acknowledge that the family continues to produce itself, is fertile, and is the source of Arab existence in the world, such as it is. What Berger refers to as &quot;the great value men place upon their own sexual prowess&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Berger, ''Arab World'', p. 102.&lt;/ref&gt; suggests the lurking power behind Arab presence in the world. If Arab society is represented in almost completely negative and generally passive terms, to be ravished and won by the Orientalist hero, we can assume that such a representation is a way of dealing with the great variety and potency of Arab diversity, whose source is, if not intellectual and social, then sexual and biological. Yet the absolutely inviolable taboo in Orientalist discourse is that that very sexuality must never be taken seriously. It can never be explicitly blamed for the absence of achievement and &quot;real&quot; rational sophistication the Orientalist everywhere discovers among the Arabs. And yet this is, I think, the missing link in arguments whose main object is criticism of &quot;traditional&quot; Arab society, such as Hamady's, Berger's, and Lerner's. They recognize the power of the family, note the weaknesses of the Arab mind, remark the &quot;importance&quot; of the Oriental world to the West, but never say what their discourse implies, that what is really left to the Arab after all is said and done is an undifferentiated sexual drive. On rare occasions--as in the work of Leon Mugniery--we do find the implicit made clear: that there is a &quot;powerful sexual appetite ... characteristic of those hot-blooded southerners.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Quoted by Irene Gendzier in ''Frantz Fanon: A Critical Study'' (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973), p. 94.&lt;/ref&gt; Most of the time, however, the belittlement of Arab society and its reduction of platitudes inconceivable for any except the racially inferior are carried on over an undercurrent of sexual exaggeration: the Arab produces himself, endlessly, sexually, and little else. The Orientalist says nothing about this, although his argument depends on it: &quot;But co-operation in the Near East is still largely a family affair and little of it is found outside the blood group or village.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Berger, ''Arab World'', p. 151.&lt;/ref&gt; Which is to say that the only way in which Arabs count is as mere biological beings; institutionally, politically, culturally they are nil, or next to nil. Numerically and as the producers of families, Arabs are actual.<br /> <br /> The difficulty with this view is that it complicates the passivity amongst Arabs assumed by Orientalists like Patai and even Hamady and the others. But it is in the logic of myths, like dreams, exactly to welcome radical antitheses. For a myth does not analyze or solve problems. It represents them as already analyzed and solved; that is, it presents them as already assembled images, in the way a scarecrow is assembled from bric-a-brac and then made to stand for a man. Since the image ''uses'' all material to its own end, and since by definition the myth displaces life, the antithesis between an over-fertile Arab and a passive doll is not functional. The discourse papers over the antithesis. An Arab Oriental is that impossible creature whose libidinal energy drives him to paroxysms of over-stimulation--and yet, he is as a puppet in the eyes of the world, staring vacantly out at a modern landscape he can neither understand nor cope with.<br /> <br /> It is in recent discussions of Oriental political behavior that such an image of the Arab seems to be relevant, and it is often occasioned by scholarly discussion of those two recent favorites of Orientalist expertise, revolution and modernization. Under the auspices of the School of Oriental and African Studies there appeared in 1972 a volume entitled ''Revolution in the Middle East and Other Case Studies'', edited by P. J. Vatikiotis. The title is overtly medical, for we are expected to think of Orientalists as finally being given the benefit of what &quot;traditional&quot; Orientalism usually avoided: psychoclinical attention. Vatikiotis sets the tone of the collection with a quasi-medical definition of revolution, but since Arab revolution is in his mind and in his readers', the hostility of the definition seems acceptable. There is a very clever irony here about which I shall speak later. Vatikiotis's theoretical support is Camus--whose colonial mentality was no friend of revolution or of the Arabs, as Conor Cruise O'Brien has recently shown--but the phrase &quot;revolution destroys both men and principles&quot; is accepted from Camus as having &quot;fundamental sense.&quot; Vatikiotis continues:<br /> <br /> ... all revolutionary ideology is in direct conflict with (actually, is a head-on attack upon) man's rational, biological and psychological make-up.<br /> <br /> Committed as it is to a methodical metastasis, revolutionary ideology demands fanaticism from its adherents. Politics for the revolutionary is not only a question of belief, or a substitute for religious belief. It must stop being what it has always been, namely, an adaptive activity in time for survival. Metastatic, soteriological politics abhors adaptiveness, for how else can it eschew the difficulties, ignore and bypass the obstacles of the complex biological-psychological dimension of man, or mesmerize his subtle though limited and vulnerable rationality? It fears and shuns the concrete and discrete nature of human problems and the preoccupations of political life: it thrives on the abstract and the Promethean. It subordinates all tangible values to the one supreme value: the harnessing of man and history in a grand design of human liberation. It is not satisfied with human politics, which has so many irritating limitations. It wishes instead to create a new world, not adaptively, precariously, delicately, that is, humanly, but by a terrifying act of Olympian pseudo-divine creation. Politics in the service of man is a formula that is unacceptable to the revolutionary ideologue. Rather man exists to serve a politically contrived and brutally decreed order.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;P. J. Vatikiotis, ed., ''Revolution in the Middle East'', ''and Other Case Studies; proceedings of a seminar'' (London: George Allen &amp; Unwin, 1972), pp. 8-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Whatever else this passage says--purple writing of the most extreme sort, counterrevolutionary zealotry--it is saying nothing less than that revolution is a bad kind of sexuality (pseudo-divine act of creation), and also a cancerous disease. Whatever is done by the &quot;human,&quot; according to Vatikiotis, is rational, right, subtle, discrete, concrete; whatever the revolutionary proclaims is brutal, irrational, mesmeric, cancerous. Procreation, change, and continuity are identified not only with sexuality and with madness but, a little paradoxically, with abstraction.<br /> <br /> Vatikiotis's terms are weighted and colored emotionally by appeals (from the right) to humanity and decency and by appeals (against the left) safeguarding humanity from sexuality, cancer, madness, irrational violence, revolution. Since it is Arab revolution that is in question, we are to read the passage as follows: This is what revolution is, and if the Arabs want it, then that is a fairly telling comment on them, on the kind of inferior race they are. They are ''only'' capable of sexual incitement and not of Olympian (Western, modern) reason. The irony of which I spoke earlier now comes into play, for a few pages later we find that the Arabs are so inept that they cannot even aspire to, let alone consummate, the ambitions of revolution. By implication, Arab sexuality need not be feared for itself but for its failure. In short, Vatikiotis asks his reader to believe that revolution in the Middle East is a threat precisely because revolution cannot be attained.<br /> <br /> The major source of political conflict and potential revolution in many countries of the Middle East, as well as Africa and Asia today, is the inability of so-called radical nationalist regimes and movements to manage, let alone resolve, the social, economic and political problems of independence.... Until the states in the Middle East can control their economic activity and create or produce their own technology, their access to revolutionary experience will remain limited. The very political categories essential to a revolution will be lacking.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 12, 13.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. In this series of dissolving definitions revolutions emerge as figments of sexually crazed minds which on closer analysis turn out not to be capable even of the craziness Vatikiotis truly respects--which is human, not Arab, concrete, not abstract, asexual, not sexual.<br /> <br /> The scholarly centerpiece of Vatikiotis's collection is Bernard Lewis's essay &quot;Islamic Concepts of Revolution.&quot; The strategy here appears refined. Many readers will know that for Arabic speakers today the word ''thawra'' and its immediate cognates mean revolution; they will know this also from Vatikiotis's introduction. Yet Lewis does not describe the meaning of ''thawra'' until the very end of his article, after he has discussed concepts such as ''dawla, fitna'', and ''bughat'' in their historical and mostly religious context. The point there is mainly that &quot;the Western doctrine of the right to resist bad government is alien to Islamic thought,&quot; which leads to &quot;defeatism&quot; and &quot;quietism&quot; as political attitudes. At no point in the essay is one sure where all these terms are supposed to be taking place except somewhere in the history of words. Then near the end of the essay we have this:<br /> <br /> In the Arabic-speaking countries a different word was used for [revolution] ''thawra''. The root ''th-w-r'' in classical Arabic meant to rise up (e.g. of a camel), to be stirred or excited, and hence, especially in Maghribi usage, to rebel. It is often used in the context of establishing a petty, independent sovereignty; thus, for example, the so-called party kings who ruled in eleventh century Spain after the break-up of the Caliphate of Cordova are called ''thuwwar'' (sing. ''tha'ir''). The noun ''thawra'' at first means excitement, as in the phrase, cited in the Sihah, a standard medieval Arabic dictionary, ''intazir hatta taskun hadhihi 'lthawra'', wait till this excitement dies down--a very apt recommendation. The verb is used by al-Iji, in the form of ''thawaran'' or ''itharat fitna'', stirring up sedition, as one of the dangers which should discourage a man from practising the duty of resistance to bad government. ''Thawra'' is the term used by Arabic writers in the nineteenth century for the French Revolution, and by their successors for the approved revolutions, domestic and foreign, of our own time.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Bernard Lewis, &quot;Islamic Concepts of Revolution,&quot; in ibid., pp. 33, 38-9. Lewis's study ''Race and Color in Islam'' (New York: Harper &amp; Row, 1971) expresses similar disaffection with an air of great learning; more explicitly political--but no less acid--is his ''Islam in History: Ideas'', ''Men and Events in the Middle East'' (London: Alcove Press, 1973).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The entire passage is full of condescension and bad faith. Why introduce the idea of a camel rising as an etymological root for modern Arab revolution except as a clever way of discrediting the modern? Lewis's reason is patently to bring down revolution from its contemporary valuation to nothing more noble (or beautiful) than a camel about to raise itself from the ground. Revolution is excitement, sedition, setting up a petty sovereignty--nothing more; the best counsel (which presumably only a Western scholar and gentleman can give) is &quot;wait till the excitement dies down.&quot; One wouldn't know from this slighting account of ''thawra'' that innumerable people have an active commitment to it, in ways too complex for even Lewis's sarcastic scholarship to comprehend. But it is this kind of essentialized description that is natural for students and policymakers concerned with the Middle East: that revolutionary stirrings among &quot;the Arabs&quot; are about as consequential as a camel's getting up, as worthy of attention as the babblings of yokels. All the canonical Orientalist literature will for the same ideological reason be unable to explain or prepare one for the confirming revolutionary upheaval in the Arab world in the twentieth century.<br /> <br /> Lewis's association of ''thawra'' with a camel rising and generally with excitement (and not with a struggle on behalf of values) hints much more broadly than is usual for him that the Arab is scarcely more than a neurotic sexual being. Each of the words or phrases he uses to describe revolution is tinged with sexuality: ''stirred'', ''excited'', ''rising up''. But for the most part it is a &quot;bad&quot; sexuality he ascribes to the Arab. In the end, since Arabs are really not equipped for serious action, their sexual excitement is no more noble than a camel's rising up. Instead of revolution there is sedition, setting up a petty sovereignty, and more excitement, which is as much as saying that instead of copulation the Arab can only achieve foreplay, masturbation, coitus interruptus. These, I think, are Lewis's implications, no matter how innocent his air of learning, or parlorlike his language. For since he is so sensitive to the nuances of words, he must be aware that ''his'' words have nuances as well.<br /> <br /> Lewis is an interesting case to examine further because his standing in the political world of the Anglo-American Middle Eastern Establishment is that of the learned Orientalist, and everything he writes is steeped in the &quot;authority&quot; of the field. Yet for at least a decade and a half his work in the main has been aggressiyely ideological, despite his various attempts at subtlety and irony. I mention his recent writing as a perfect exemplification of the academic whose work purports to be liberal objective scholarship but is in reality very close to being propaganda ''against'' his subject material. But this should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the history of Orientalism; it is only the latest--and in the West, the most uncriticized--of the scandals of &quot;scholarship.&quot;<br /> <br /> So intent has Lewis become upon his project to debunk, to whittle down, and to discredit the Arabs and Islam that even his energies as a scholar and historian seem to have failed him. He will, for example, publish a chapter called &quot;The Revolt of Islam&quot; in a book in 1964, then republish much of the same material twelve years later, slightly altered to suit the new place of publication (in this case ''Commentary'') and retitled &quot;The Return of Islam.&quot; From &quot;Revolt&quot; to &quot;Return&quot; is of course a change for the worse, a change intended by Lewis to explain to his latest public why it is that the Muslims (or Arabs) still will not settle down and accept Israeli hegemony over the Near East.<br /> <br /> Let us look more closely at how he does this. In both of his pieces he mentions an anti-imperialist riot in Cairo in 1945, which in both cases he describes as anti-Jewish. Yet in neither instance does he tell us how it was anti-Jewish; in fact, as his material evidence for anti-Jewishness, he produces the somewhat surprising intelligence that &quot;several churches, Catholic, Armenian and Greek Orthodox, were attacked and damaged.&quot; Consider the first version, done in 1964:<br /> <br /> On November 2, 1945 political leaders in Egypt called for demonstrations on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. These rapidly developed into anti-Jewish riots, in the course of which a Catholic, an Armenian, and a Greek Orthodox church were attacked and damaged. What, it may be asked, had Catholics, Armenians and Greeks to do with the Balfour Declaration?&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Bernard Lewis, &quot;The Revolt of Islam,&quot; in ''The Middle East and The West'' (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964), p. 95.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> And now the ''Commentary'' version, done in 1976:<br /> <br /> As the nationalist movement has become genuinely popular, so it has become less national and more religious--in other words less Arab and more Islamic. In moments of crisis--and these have been many in recent decades--it is the instinctive communal loyalty which outweighs all others. A few examples may suffice. On November 2, 1945, demonstrations were held in Egypt [note here how the phrase &quot;demonstrations were held&quot; is an attempt to show instinctive loyalties; in the previous version &quot;political leaders&quot; were responsible for the deed] on the anniversary of the issue by the British Government of the Balfour Declaration. Though this was certainly not the intention of the political leaders who sponsored it, the demonstration soon developed into an anti-Jewish riot and the anti-Jewish riot into a more general outbreak in the course of which several churches, Catholic, Armenian, and Greek Orthodox [another instructive change: the impression here is that many churches, of three kinds, were attacked; the earlier version is specific about three churches], were attacked and damaged.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Bernard Lewis, &quot;The Return of Islam,&quot; ''Commentary'', January 1976, p. 44.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Lewis's polemical, not scholarly, purpose is to show, here and elsewhere, that Islam is an anti-Semitic ideology, not merely a religion. He has a little logical difficulty in trying to assert that Islam is a fearful mass phenomenon and at the same time &quot;not genuinely popular,&quot; but this problem does not detain him long. As the second version of his tendentious anecdote shows, he goes on to proclaim that Islam is an irrational herd or mass phenomenon, ruling Muslims by passions, instincts, and unreflecting hatreds. The whole point of his exposition is to frighten his audience, to make it never yield an inch to Islam. According to Lewis, Islam does not develop, and neither do Muslims; they merely are, and they are to be watched, on account of that pure essence of theirs (according to Lewis), which happens to include a long-standing hatred of Christians and Jews. Lewis everywhere restrains himself from making such inflammatory statements flat out; he always takes care to say that of course the Muslims are not anti-Semitic the way the Nazis were, but their religion can too easily accommodate itself to anti-Semitism and has done so. Similarly with regard to Islam and racism, slavery, and other more or less &quot;Western&quot; evils. The core of Lewis's ideology about Islam is that it never changes, and his whole mission is now to inform conservative segments of the Jewish reading public, and anyone else who cares to listen, that any political, historical, and scholarly account of Muslims must begin and end with the fact that Muslims are Muslims.<br /> <br /> For to admit that an entire civilization can have religion as its primary loyalty is too much. Even to suggest such a thing is regarded as offensive by liberal opinion, always ready to take protective umbrage on behalf of those whom it regards as its wards. This is reflected in the present inability, political, journalistic, and scholarly alike, to recognize the importance of the factor of religion in the current affairs of the Muslim world and in the consequent recourse to the language of left-wing and right-wing, progressive and conservative, and the rest of the Western terminology, the use of which in explaining Muslim political phenomena is about as accurate and as enlightening as an account of a cricket match by a baseball correspondent. [Lewis is so fond of this last simile that he quotes it verbatim from his 1964 polemic.]&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 40.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In a later work Lewis tells us what terminology is more accurate and useful, although the terminology seems no less &quot;Western&quot; (whatever &quot;Western&quot; means): Muslims, like most other former colonial peoples, are incapable of telling the truth or even of seeing it. According to Lewis, they are addicted to mythology, along with &quot;the so-called revisionist school in the United States, which look back to a golden age of American virtue and ascribe virtually all the sins and crimes of the world to the present establishment in their country.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Bernard Lewis, ''History''--''Remembered, Recovered, Invented'' (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 68.&lt;/ref&gt; Aside from being a mischievous and totally inaccurate account of revisionist history, this kind of remark is designed to put Lewis as a great historian above the petty underdevelopment of mere Muslims and revisionists.<br /> <br /> Yet so far as being accurate is concerned, and so far as living up to his own rule that &quot;the scholar, however, will not give way to his prejudices,&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lewis, ''Islam in History'', p. 65.&lt;/ref&gt; Lewis is cavalier with himself and with his cause. He will, for example, recite the Arab case against Zionism (using the &quot;in&quot; language of the Arab nationalist) without at the same time mentioning--anywhere, in any of his writings--that there was such a thing as a Zionist invasion and colonization of Palestine despite and in conflict with the native Arab inhabitants. No Israeli would deny this, but Lewis the Orientalist historian simply leaves it out. He will speak of the absence of democracy in the Middle East, except for Israel, without ever mentioning the Emergency Defense Regulations used in Israel to rule the Arabs; nor has he anything to say about &quot;preventive detention&quot; of Arabs in Israel, nor about the dozens of illegal settlements on the militarily occupied West Bank of Gaza, nor about the absence of human rights for Arabs, principal among them the right of immigration, in former Palestine. Instead, Lewis allows himself the scholarly liberty to say that &quot;imperialism and Zionism [so far as the Arabs are concerned were] long familiar under their older names as the Christians and Jews.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lewis, ''The Middle East and the West'', pp. 60, 87.&lt;/ref&gt; He quotes T. E. Lawrence on &quot;the Semites&quot; to bolster his case against Islam, he never discusses Zionism in parallel with Islam (as if Zionism were a French, not a religious, movement), and he tries everywhere to demonstrate that any revolution anywhere is at best a form of &quot;secular millenarianism.&quot;<br /> <br /> One would find this kind of procedure less objectionable as political propaganda--which is what it is, of course--were it not accompanied by sermons on the objectivity, the fairness, the impartiality of a real historian, the implication always being that Muslims and Arabs cannot be objective but that Orientalists like Lewis writing about Muslims and Arabs are, by definition, by training, by the mere fact of their Westernness. This is the culmination of Orientalism as a dogma that not only degrades its subject matter but also blinds its practitioners. But let us listen finally to Lewis telling us how the historian ought to conduct himself. We may well ask whether it is only the Orientals who are subject to the prejudices he chastises.<br /> <br /> [The historian's] loyalties may well influence his choice of subject of research; they should not influence his treatment of it. If, in the course of his researches, he finds that the group with which he identifies himself is always right, and those other groups with which it is in conflict are always wrong, then he would be well advised to question his conclusions, and to reexamine the hypothesis on the basis of which he selected and interpreted his evidence; for it is not in the nature of human communities [presumably, also, the community of Orientalists] always to be right.<br /> <br /> Finally the historian must be fair and honest in the way he presents his story. That is not to say that he must confine himself to a bare recital of definitely established facts. At many stages in his work the historian must formulate hypotheses and make judgments. The important thing is that he should do so consciously and explicitly, reviewing the evidence for and against his conclusions, examining the various possible interpretations, and stating explicitly what his decision is, and how and why he reached it.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lewis, ''Islam in History'', pp. 65-6.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> To look for a conscious, fair, and explicit judgment by Lewis of the Islam he has treated as he has treated it is to look in vain. He prefers to work, as we have seen, by suggestion and insinuation. One suspects, however, that he is unaware of doing this (except perhaps with regard to &quot;political&quot; matters like pro-Zionism, anti-Arab nationalism, and strident Cold Warriorism), since he would be certain to say that the whole history of Orientalism, of whom he is the beneficiary, has made these insinuations and hypotheses into indisputable truths.<br /> <br /> Perhaps the most indisputable of these rock-bottom &quot;truths,&quot; and the most peculiar (since it is hard to believe it could be maintained for any other language), is that Arabic as a language is a dangerous ideology. The contemporary ''locus classicus'' for this view of Arabic is E. Shouby's essay &quot;The Influence of the Arabic Language on the Psychology of the Arabs.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Originally published in ''Middle East Journal'' 5 (1951). Collected in ''Readings in Arab Middle Eastern Societies and Cultures'', ed. Abdulla Lutfiyye and Charles W. Churchill (The Hague: Mouton &amp; Co., 1970), pp. 688-703.&lt;/ref&gt; The author is described as &quot;a psychologist with training in both Clinical and Social Psychology,&quot; and one presumes that a main reason his views have such wide currency is that he is an Arab himself (a self-incriminating one, at that). The argument he proposes is lamentably simple-minded, perhaps because he has no notion of what language is and how it operates. Nevertheless the subheadings of his essay tell a good deal of his story; Arabic is characterized by &quot;General vagueness of Thought,&quot; &quot;Overemphasis on Linguistic Signs,&quot; &quot;Over-assertion and Exaggeration.&quot; Shouby is frequently quoted as an authority because he speaks like one and because what he hypostasizes is a sort of mute Arab who at the same time is a great word-master playing games without much seriousness or purpose. Muteness is an important part of what Shouby is talking about, since in his entire paper he never once quotes from the literature of which the Arab is so inordinately proud. Where, then, does Arabic influence the Arab mind? Exclusively within the mythological world created for the Arab by Orientalism. The Arab is a sign for dumbness combined with hopeless overarticulateness, poverty combined with excess. That such a result can be attained by philological means testifies to the sad end of a formerly complex philological tradition, exemplified today only in very rare individuals. The reliance of today's Orientalist on &quot;philology&quot; is the last infirmity of a scholarly discipline completely transformed into social-science ideological expertise.<br /> <br /> In everything I have been discussing, the language of Orientalism plays the dominant role. It brings opposites together as &quot;natural,&quot; it presents human types in scholarly idioms and methodologies, it ascribes reality and reference to objects (other words) of its own making. Mythic language is discourse, that is, it cannot be anything but systematic; one does not really make discourse at will, or statements in it, without first belonging--in some cases unconsciously, but at any rate involuntarily--to the ideology and the institutions that guarantee its existence. These latter are always the institutions of an advanced society dealing with a less advanced society, a strong culture encountering a weak one. The principal feature of mythic discourse is that it conceals its own origins as well as those of what it describes. &quot;Arabs&quot; are presented in the imagery of static, almost ideal types, and neither as creatures with a potential in the process of being realized nor as history being made. The exaggerated value heaped upon Arabic as a language permits the Orientalist to make the language equivalent to mind, society, history, and nature. For the Orientalist the language ''speaks'' the Arab Oriental, not vice versa.<br /> <br /> 4. ''Orientals Orientals Orientals''. The system of ideological fictions I have been calling Orientalism has serious implications not only because it is intellectually discreditable. For the United States today is heavily invested in the Middle East, more heavily than anywhere else on earth: the Middle East experts who advise policymakers are imbued with Orientalism almost to a person. Most of this investment, appropriately enough, is built on foundations of sand, since the experts instruct policy on the basis of such marketable abstractions as political elites, modernization, and stability, most of which are simply the old Orientalist stereotypes dressed up in policy jargon, and most of which have been completely inadequate to describe what took place recently in Lebanon or earlier in Palestinian popular resistance to Israel. The Orientalist now tries to see the Orient as an imitation West which, according to Bernard Lewis, can only improve itself when its nationalism &quot;is prepared to come to terms with the West.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lewis, The Middle East and the West, p. 140.&lt;/ref&gt; If in the meantime the Arabs, the Muslims, or the Third and Fourth Worlds go unexpected ways after all, we will not be surprised to have an Orientalist tell us that this testifies to the incorrigibility of Orientals and therefore proves that they are not to be trusted.<br /> <br /> The methodological failures of Orientalism cannot be accounted for either by saying that the ''real'' Orient is different from Orientalist portraits of it, or by saying that since Orientalists are Westerners for the most part, they cannot be expected to have an inner sense of what the Orient is all about. Both of these propositions are false. It is not the thesis of this book to suggest that there is such a thing as a real or true Orient (Islam, Arab, or whatever); nor is it to make an assertion about the necessary privilege of an &quot;insider&quot; perspective over an &quot;outsider&quot; one, to use Robert K. Merton's useful distinction.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Robert K. Merton, &quot;The Perspectives of Insiders and Outsiders,&quot; in his ''The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations'', ed. Norman W. Storer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 99-136.&lt;/ref&gt; On the contrary, I have been arguing that &quot;the Orient&quot; is itself a constituted entity, and that the notion that there are geographical spaces with indigenous, radically &quot;different&quot; inhabitants who can be defined on the basis of some religion, culture, or racial essence proper to that geographical space is equally a highly debatable idea. I certainly do not believe the limited proposition that only a black can write about blacks, a Muslim about Muslims, and so forth.<br /> <br /> And yet despite its failures, its lamentable jargon, its scarcely concealed racism, its paper-thin intellectual apparatus, Orientalism flourishes today in the forms I have tried to describe. Indeed, there is some reason for alarm in the fact that its influence has spread to &quot;the Orient&quot; itself: the pages of books and journals in Arabic (and doubtless in Japanese, various Indian dialects, and other Oriental languages) are filled with second-order analyses by Arabs of &quot;the Arab mind,&quot; &quot;Islam,&quot; and other myths. Orientalism has also spread in the United States now that Arab money and resources have added considerable glamour to the traditional &quot;concern&quot; felt for the strategically important Orient. The fact is that Orientalism has been successfully accommodated to the new imperialism, where its ruling paradigms do not contest, and even confirm, the continuing imperial design to dominate Asia.<br /> <br /> In the one part of the Orient that I can speak about with some direct knowledge, the accommodation between the intellectual class and the new imperialism might very well be accounted one of the special triumphs of Orientalism. The Arab world today is an intellectual, political, and cultural satellite of the United States. This is not in itself something to be lamented; the specific form of the satellite relationship, however, is. Consider first of all that universities in the Arab world are generally run according to some pattern inherited from, or once directly imposed by, a former colonial power. New circumstances make the curricular actualities almost grotesque: classes populated with hundreds of students, badly trained, overworked, and underpaid faculty, political appointments, the almost total absence of advanced research and of research facilities, and most important, the lack of a single decent library in the entire region. Whereas Britain and France once dominated intellectual horizons in the East by virtue of their prominence and wealth, it is now the United States that occupies that place, with the result that the few promising students who manage to make it through the system are encouraged to come to the United States to continue their advanced work. And while it is certainly true that some students from the Arab world continue to go to Europe to study, the sheer numerical preponderance comes to the United States; this is as true of students from so-called radical states as it is of students from conservative states like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Besides, the patronage system in scholarship, business, and research makes the United States a virtual hegemonic commander of affairs; the source, however much it may not be a real source, is considered to be the United States.<br /> <br /> Two factors make the situation even more obviously a triumph of Orientalism. Insofar as one can make a sweeping generalization, the felt tendencies of contemporary culture in the Near East are guided by European and American models. When Taha Hussein said of modern Arab culture in 1936 that it was European, not Eastern, he was registering the identity of the Egyptian cultural elite, of which he was so distinguished a member. The same is true of the Arab cultural elite today, although the powerful current of anti-imperialist Third World ideas that has gripped the region since the early 1950s has tempered the Western edge of the dominant culture. In addition, the Arab and Islamic world remains a second-order power in terms of the production of culture, knowledge, and scholarship. Here one must be completely realistic about using the terminology of power politics to describe the situation that obtains. No Arab or Islamic scholar can afford to ignore what goes on in scholarly journals, institutes, and universities in the United States and Europe; the converse is not true. For example, there is no major journal of Arab studies published in the Arab world today, just as there is no Arab educational institution capable of challenging places like Oxford, Harvard, or UCLA in the study of the Arab world, much less in any non-Oriental subject matter. The predictable result of all this is that Oriental students (and Oriental professors) still want to come and sit at the feet of American Orientalists, and later to repeat to their local audiences the cliches I have been characterizing as Orientalist dogmas. Such a system of reproduction makes it inevitable that the Oriental scholar will use his American training to feel superior to his own people because he is able to &quot;manage&quot; the Orientalist system; in his relations with his superiors, the European or American Orientalists, he will remain only a &quot;native informant.&quot; And indeed this is his role in the West, should he be fortunate enough to remain there after his advanced training. Most elementary courses in Oriental languages are taught by &quot;native informants&quot; in United States universities today; also, power in the system (in universities, foundations, and the like) is held almost exclusively by non-Orientals, although the numerical ratio of Oriental to non-Oriental resident professionals does not favor the latter so overwhelmingly.<br /> <br /> There are all kinds of other indications of how the cultural domination is maintained, as much by Oriental consent as by direct and crude economic pressure from the United States. It is sobering to find, for instance, that while there are dozens of organizations in the United States for studying the Arab and Islamic Orient, there are none in the Orient itself for studying the United States, by far the greatest economic and political influence in the region. Worse, there are scarcely any institutes of even modest stature in the Orient devoted to study of the Orient. But all this, I think, is small in comparison with the second factor contributing to the triumph of Orientalism: the fact of consumerism in the Orient. The Arab and Islamic world as a whole is hooked into the Western market system. No one needs to be reminded that oil, the region's greatest resource, has been totally absorbed into the United States economy. By that I mean not only that the great oil companies are controlled by the American economic system; I mean also that Arab oil revenues, to say nothing of marketing, research, and industry management, are based in the United States. This has effectively made the oil-rich Arabs into huge customers of American exports: this is as true of states in the Persian Gulf as it is of Libya, Iraq, and Algeria--radical states all. My point is that the relationship is a one-sided one, with the United States a selective customer of a very few products (oil and cheap manpower, mainly), the Arabs highly diversified consumers of a vast range of United States products, material and ideological.<br /> <br /> This has had many consequences. There is a vast standardization of taste in the region, symbolized not only by transistors, blue jeans, and Coca-Cola but also by cultural images of the Orient supplied by American mass media and consumed unthinkingly by the mass television audience. The paradox of an Arab regarding himself as an &quot;Arab&quot; of the sort put out by Hollywood is but the simplest result of what I am referring to. Another result is that the Western market economy and its consumer orientation have produced (and are producing at an accelerating rate) a class of educated people whose intellectual formation is directed to satisfying market needs. There is a heavy emphasis on engineering, business, and economics, obviously enough; but the intelligentsia itself is auxiliary to what it considers to be the main trends stamped out in the West. Its role has been prescribed and set for it as a &quot;modernizing&quot; one, which means that it gives legitimacy and authority to ideas about modernization, progress, and culture that it receives from the United States for the most part. Impressive evidence for this is found in the social sciences and, surprisingly enough, among radical intellectuals whose Marxism is taken wholesale from Marx's own homogenizing view of the Third World, as I discussed it earlier in this book. So if all told there is an intellectual acquiescence in the images and doctrines of Orientalism, there is also a very powerful reinforcement of this in economic, political, and social exchange: the modern Orient, in short, participates in its own Orientalizing.<br /> <br /> But in conclusion, what of some alternative to Orientalism? Is this book an argument only ''against'' something, and not ''for'' something positive? Here and there in the course of this book I have spoken about &quot;decolonializing&quot; new departures in the so-called area studies--the work of Anwar Abdel Malek, the studies published by members of the Hull group on Middle Eastern studies, the innovative analyses and proposals of various scholars in Europe, the United States, and the Near East&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;See, for example, the recent work of Anwar Abdel Malek, Yves Lacoste, and the authors of essays published in ''Review of Middle East Studies 1 and 2'' (London: Ithaca Press, 1975, 1976), the various analyses of Middle Eastern politics by Noam Chomsky, and the work done by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP). A good prospectus is provided in Gabriel Ardant, Kostas Axelos, Jacques Berque, et al., ''De I'imperialisme a la decolonisation'' (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1965).&lt;/ref&gt;--but I have not attempted to do more than mention them or allude to them quickly. My project has been to describe a particular system of ideas, not by any means to displace the system with a new one. In addition, I have attempted to raise a whole set of questions that are relevant in discussing the problems of human experience: How does one ''represent'' other cultures? What is ''another'' culture? Is the notion of a distinct culture (or race, or religion, or civilization) a useful one, or does it always get involved either in self-congratulation (when one discusses one's own) or hostility and aggression (when one discusses the &quot;other&quot;)? Do cultural, religious, and racial differences matter more than socio-economic categories, or politicohistorical ones? How do ideas acquire authority, &quot;normality,&quot; and even the status of &quot;natural&quot; truth? What is the role of the intellectual? Is he there to validate the culture and state of which he is a part? What importance must he give to an independent critical consciousness, an ''oppositional'' critical consciousness?<br /> <br /> I hope that some of my answers to these questions have been implicit in the foregoing, but perhaps I can speak a little more explicitly about some of them here. As I have characterized it in this study, Orientalism calls in question not only the possibility of nonpolitical scholarship but also the advisability of too close a relationship between the scholar and the state. It is equally apparent, I think, that the circumstances making Orientalism a continuingly persuasive type of thought will persist: a rather depressing matter on the whole. Nevertheless there is some rational expectation in my own mind that Orientalism need not always be so unchallenged, intellectually, ideologically, and politically, as it has been.<br /> <br /> I would not have undertaken a book of this sort if I did not also believe that there is scholarship that is not as corrupt, or at least as blind to human reality, as the kind I have been mainly depicting. Today there are many individual scholars working in such fields as Islamic history, religion, civilization, sociology, and anthropology whose production is deeply valuable as scholarship. The trouble sets in when the guild tradition of Orientalism takes over the scholar who is not vigilant, whose individual consciousness as a scholar is not on guard against ''idees recues'' all too easily handed down in the profession. Thus interesting work is most likely to be produced by scholars whose allegiance is to a discipline defined intellectually and not to a &quot;field&quot; like Orientalism defined either canonically, imperially, or geographically. An excellent recent instance is the anthropology of Clifford Geertz, whose interest in Islam is discrete and concrete enough to be animated by the specific societies and problems he studies and not by the rituals, preconceptions, and doctrines of Orientalism.<br /> <br /> On the other hand, scholars and critics who are trained in the traditional Orientalist disciplines are perfectly capable of freeing themselves from the old ideological straitjacket. Jacques Berque's and Maxime Rodinson's training ranks with the most rigorous available, but what invigorates their investigations even of traditional problems is their methodological self-consciousness. For if Orientalism has historically been too smug, too insulated, too positivistically confident in its ways and its premises, then one way of opening oneself to what one studies in or about the Orient is reflexively to submit one's method to critical scrutiny. This is what characterizes Berque and Rodinson, each in his own way. What one finds in their work is always, first of all, a direct sensitivity to the material before them, and then a continual self-examination of their methodology and practice, a constant attempt to keep their work responsive to the material and not to a doctrinal preconception. Certainly Berque and Rodinson, as well as Abdel Malek and Roger Owen, are aware too that the study of man and society--whether Oriental or not--is best conducted in the broad field of all the human sciences; therefore these scholars are critical readers, and students of what goes on in other fields. Berque's attention to recent discoveries in structural anthropology, Rodinson's to sociology and political theory, Owen's to economic history: all these are instructive correctives brought from the contemporary human sciences to the study of so-called Oriental problems.<br /> <br /> But there is no avoiding the fact that even if we disregard the Orientalist distinctions between &quot;them&quot; and &quot;us,&quot; a powerful series of political and ultimately ideological realities inform scholarship today. No one can escape dealing with, if not the East/West division, then the North/South one, the have/have-not one, the imperialist/anti-imperialist one, the white/colored one. We cannot get around them all by pretending they do not exist; on the contrary, contemporary Orientalism teaches us a great deal about the intellectual dishonesty of dissembling on that score, the result of which is to intensify the divisions and make them both vicious and permanent. Yet an openly polemical and right-minded &quot;progressive&quot; scholarship can very easily degenerate into dogmatic slumber, a prospect that is not edifying either.<br /> <br /> My own sense of the problem is fairly shown by the kinds of questions I formulated above. Modern thought and experience have taught us to be sensitive to what is involved in representation, in studying the Other, in racial thinking, in unthinking and uncritical acceptance of authority and authoritative ideas, in the sociopolitical role of intellectuals, in the great value of a skeptical critical consciousness. Perhaps if we remember that the study of human experience usually has an ethical, to say nothing of a political, consequence in either the best or worst sense, we will not be indifferent to what we do as scholars. And what better norm for the scholar than human freedom and knowledge? Perhaps too we should remember that the study of man in society is based on concrete human history and experience, not on donnish abstractions, or on obscure laws or arbitrary systems. The problem then is to make the study fit and in some way be shaped by the experience, which would be illuminated and perhaps changed by the study. At all costs, the goal of Orientalizing the Orient again and again is to be avoided, with consequences that cannot help but refine knowledge and reduce the scholar's conceit. Without &quot;the Orient&quot; there would be scholars, critics, intellectuals, human beings, for whom the racial, ethnic, and national distinctions were less important than the common enterprise of promoting human community.<br /> <br /> Positively, I do believe--and in my other work have tried to show--that enough is being done today in the human sciences to provide the contemporary scholar with insights, methods, and ideas that could dispense with racial, ideological, and imperialist stereotypes of the sort provided during its historical ascendancy by Orientalism. I consider Orientalism's failure to have been a human as much as an intellectual one; for in having to take up a position of irreducible opposition to a region of the world it considered alien to its own, Orientalism failed to identify with human experience, failed also to see it as human experience. The worldwide hegemony of Orientalism and all it stands for can now be challenged, if we can benefit properly from the general twentieth-century rise to political and historical awareness of so many of the earth's peoples. If this book has any future use, it will be as a modest contribution to that challenge, and as a warning: that systems of thought like Orientalism, discourses of power, ideological fictions--mind-forg'd manacles--are all too easily made, applied, and guarded. Above all, I hope to have shown my reader that the answer to Orientalism is not Occidentalism. No former &quot;Oriental&quot; will be comforted by the thought that having been an Oriental himself he is likely--too likely--to study new &quot;Orientals&quot;--or &quot;Occidentals&quot;--of his own making. If the knowledge of Orientalism has any meaning, it is in being a reminder of the seductive degradation of knowledge, of any knowledge, anywhere, at any time. Now perhaps more than before.<br /> <br /> === Footnotes ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;4.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> = '''Afterword''' =<br /> <br /> === '''I''' ===<br /> ''Orientalism'' was completed in the last part of 1977, and was published a year later. It was (and still is) the only book that I wrote as one continuous gesture, from research, to several drafts, to final version, each following the other without interruption or serious distraction. With the exception of a wonderfully civilized and relatively burdenless year spent as a Fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1975-6), I had very little in the way of support or interest from the outside world. I received encouragement from one or two friends and my immediate family, but it was far from clear whether such a study of the ways in which the power, scholarship, and imagination of a two-hundred-year-old tradition in Europe and America viewed the Middle East, the Arabs, and Islam, ''might'' interest a general audience. I recall, for instance, that it was very difficult at first to interest a serious publisher in the project. One academic press in particular very tentatively suggested a modest contract for a small monograph, so unpromising and slender did the whole enterprise seem at the outset. But luckily (as I describe my good fortune with my first publisher in ''Orientalism''&lt;nowiki/&gt;'s original page of Acknowledgments) things changed for the better very quickly after I finished writing the book.<br /> <br /> In both America and England (where a separate U.K. edition appeared in 1979) the book attracted a great deal of attention, some of it (as was to be expected) very hostile, some of it uncomprehending, but most of it positive and enthusiastic. Beginning in 1980 with the French edition, a whole series of translations started to appear, increasing in number to this day, many of which have generated controversies and discussions in languages that I am incompetent to understand. There was a remarkable and still controversial Arabic translation by the gifted Syrian poet and critic Kamal Abu Deeb; I shall say more about that in a moment. Thereafter ''Orientalism'' appeared in Japanese, German, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Catalan, Turkish, Serbo-Croatian, and Swedish (in 1993 it became a bestseller in Sweden, which mystified the local publisher as much as it did me). There are several editions (Greek, Russian, Norwegian, and Chinese) either under way or about to appear. Other European translations are rumored, as is an Israeli version, according to one or two reports. There have been partial translations pirated in Iran and Pakistan. Many of the translations that I have known about directly (in particular, the Japanese) have gone through more than one edition; all are still in print and appear on occasion to give rise to local discussions that go very far beyond anything I was thinking about when I wrote the book.<br /> <br /> The result of all this is that ''Orientalism'', almost in a Borgesian way, has become several different books. And, insofar as I have been able to follow and understand these subsequent versions, that strange, often disquieting, and certainly unthought-of polymorphousness is what I should like to discuss here, reading back into the book that I wrote what others have said, in addition to what I myself wrote after ''Orientalism'' (eight or nine books plus many articles). Obviously I shall try to correct misreadings and, in a few instances, willful misinterpretations.<br /> <br /> Yet I shall also be rehearsing arguments and intellectual developments that acknowledge ''Orientalism'' to be a helpful book in ways that I foresaw only very partially at the time. The point of all this is neither to settle scores nor to heap congratulations on myself, but to chart and record a much-expanded sense of authorship that goes well beyond the egoism of the solitary beings we feel ourselves to be as we undertake a piece of work. For in all sorts of ways ''Orientalism'' now seems to me a collective book that I think supersedes me as its author more than I could have expected when I wrote it.<br /> <br /> Let me begin with the one aspect of the book's reception that I most regret and find myself trying hardest now (in 1994) to overcome. That is the book's alleged anti-Westernism, as it has been misleadingly and rather too sonorously called by commentators both hostile and sympathetic. This notion has two parts to it, sometimes argued together, sometimes separately. The first is the claim imputed to me that the phenomenon of Orientalism is a synecdoche, or a miniature symbol, of the entire West, and indeed ought to be taken to represent the West as a whole. Since this is so, the argument continues, therefore the entire West is an enemy of the Arab and Islamic or for that matter the Iranian, Chinese, Indian, and many other non-European peoples who suffered Western colonialism and prejudice.<br /> <br /> The second part of the argument ascribed to me is no less far-reaching. It is that a predatory West and Orientalism have violated Islam and the Arabs. (Note that the terms &quot;Orientalism&quot; and &quot;West&quot; have been collapsed into each other.) Since that is so, the very existence of Orientalism and Orientalists is seized upon as a pretext for arguing the exact opposite, namely, that Islam is perfect, that it is the only way ''(al-hal al-wahid)'', and so on and so on. To criticize Orientalism, as I did in my book, is in effect to be a supporter of Islamism or Muslim fundamentalism.<br /> <br /> One scarcely knows what to make of these caricatured permutations of a book that to its author and in its arguments is explicitly anti-essentialist, radically skeptical about all categorical designations such as Orient and Occident, and painstakingly careful about ''not'' &quot;defending&quot; or even discussing the Orient and Islam. Yet ''Orientalism'' has in fact been read and written about in the Arab world as a systematic defense of Islam and the Arabs, even though I say explicitly in the book that I have no interest in, much less capacity for, showing what the true Orient and Islam really are. Actually I go a great deal further when, very early in the book, I say that words such as &quot;Orient&quot; and &quot;Occident&quot; correspond to no stable reality that exists as a natural fact. Moreover, all such geographical designations are an odd combination of the empirical and imaginative. In the case of the Orient as a notion in currency in Britain, France, and America, the idea derives to a great extent from the impulse not simply to describe, but also to dominate and somehow to defend against it. As I try to show, this is powerfully true with reference to Islam as a particularly dangerous embodiment of the Orient.<br /> <br /> The central point in all this is, however, as Vico taught us, that human history is made by human beings. Since the struggle for control over territory is part of that history, so too is the struggle over historical and social meaning. The task for the critical scholar is not to separate one struggle from another, but to connect them, despite the contrast between the overpowering materiality of the former and the apparent otherworldly refinements of the latter. My way of doing this has been to show that the development and maintenance of every culture require the existence of another, different and competing ''alter ego''. The construction of identity--for identity, whether of Orient or Occident, France or Britain, while obviously a repository of distinct collective experiences, is finally a construction in my opinion--involves the construction of opposites and &quot;others&quot; whose actuality is always subject to the continuous interpretation and re-interpretation of their differences from &quot;us.&quot; Each age and society re-creates its &quot;Others.&quot; Far from a static thing then, identity of self or of &quot;other&quot; is a much worked-over historical, social, intellectual, and political process that takes place as a contest involving individuals and institutions in all societies. Debates today about Frenchness and Englishness in France and Britain respectively, or about Islam in countries like Egypt and Pakistan, are part of the same interpretive process, which involves the identities of different &quot;others,&quot; whether they be outsiders and refugees, or apostates and infidels. It should be obvious in all cases that these processes are not mental exercises but urgent social contests involving such concrete political issues as immigration laws, the legislation of personal conduct, the constitution of orthodoxy, the legitimization of violence and/or insurrection, the character and content of education, and the direction of foreign policy, which very often has to do with the designation of official enemies. In short, the construction of identity is bound up with the disposition of power and powerlessness in each society, and is therefore anything but mere academic woolgathering.<br /> <br /> What makes all these fluid and extraordinarily rich actualities difficult to accept is that most people resist the underlying notion: that human identity is not only not natural and stable, but constructed, and occasionally even invented outright. Part of the resistance and hostility generated by books like ''Orientalism'', or after it, ''The Invention of Tradition'', and ''Black Athena'',&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Martin Bernal, ''Black Athena'' (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, Volume I, 1987; Volume II, 1991); Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence Rangers, eds., ''The Invention of Tradition'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).&lt;/ref&gt; is that they seem to undermine the naive belief in the certain positivity and unchanging historicity of a culture, a self, a national identity. ''Orientalism'' can only be read as a defense of Islam by suppressing half of my argument, in which I say (as I do in a subsequent book, ''Covering Islam'') that even the primitive community we belong to natally is not immune from the interpretive contest, and that what appears in the West to be the emergence, return to, or resurgence of Islam is in fact a struggle in Islamic societies over the definition of Islam. No one person, authority, or institution has total control over that definition; hence, of course, the contest. Fundamentalism's epistemological mistake is to think that &quot;fundamentals&quot; are ahistorical categories, not subject to and therefore outside the critical scrutiny of true believers, who are supposed to accept them on faith. To the adherents of a restored or revived version of early Islam, Orientalists are considered (like Salman Rushdie) to be dangerous because they tamper with that version, cast doubt on it, show it to be fraudulent and non-divine. To them, therefore, the virtues of my book were that it pointed out the malicious dangers of the Orientalists and somehow pried Islam from their clutches.<br /> <br /> Now this is hardly what I saw myself doing, but the view persists anyway. There are two reasons for this. In the first place no one finds it easy to live uncomplainingly and fearlessly with the thesis that human reality is constantly being made and unmade, and that anything like a stable essence is constantly under threat. Patriotism, extreme xenophobic nationalism, and downright unpleasant chauvinism are common responses to this fear. We all need some foundation on which to stand; the question is how extreme and unchangeable is our formulation of what this foundation is. My position is that in the case of an essential Islam or Orient, these images are no more than images, and are upheld as such both by the community of the Muslim faithful and (the correspondence is significant) by the community of Orientalists. My objection to what I have called Orientalism is not that it, is just the antiquarian study of Oriental languages, societies, and peoples, but that as a system of thought Orientalism approaches a heterogenous, dynamic, and complex human reality from an uncritically essentialist standpoint; this suggests both an enduring Oriental reality and an opposing but no less enduring Western essence, which observes the Orient from afar and from, so to speak, above. This false position hides historical change. Even more important, from my standpoint, it hides the ''interests'' of the Orientalist. Those, despite attempts to draw subtle distinctions between Orientalism as an innocent scholarly endeavor and Orientalism as an accomplice to empire, can never unilaterally be detached from the general imperial context that begins its modern global phase with Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798.<br /> <br /> I have in mind the striking contrast between the weaker and stronger party that is evident from the beginning of Europe's modern encounters with what it called the Orient. The studied solemnity and grandiose accents of Napoleon's ''Description de l'Egypte''--its massive, serried volumes testifying to the systematic labors of an entire corps of ''savants'' backed by a modern army of colonial conquest--dwarfs the individual testimony of people like Abdal-Rahman al-Jabarti, who in three separate volumes describes the French invasion from the point of view of the invaded. One might say that the ''Description'' is just a scientific, and therefore objective, account of Egypt in the early nineteenth century, but the presence of Jabarti (who is both unknown and ignored by Napoleon) suggests otherwise. Napoleon's is an &quot;objective&quot; account from the standpoint of someone powerful trying to hold Egypt within the French imperial orbit; Jabarti's is an account by someone who paid the price, was figuratively captured and vanquished.<br /> <br /> In other words, rather than remaining as inert documents that testify to an eternally opposed Occident and Orient, the ''Description'' and Jabarti's chronicles together constitute a historical experience, out of which others evolved, and before which others existed. Studying the historical dynamics of this set of experiences is more demanding than sliding back into stereotypes like &quot;the conflict of East and West.&quot; That is one reason why ''Orientalism'' is mistakenly read as a surreptitiously anti-Western work and, by an act of unwarranted and even willful retrospective endowment, this reading (like all readings based on a supposedly stable binary opposition) elevates the image of an innocent and aggrieved Islam.<br /> <br /> The second reason why the anti-essentialism of my arguments has proved hard to accept is political and urgently ideological. I had absolutely no way of knowing that, a year after the book was published, Iran would be the site of an extraordinarily far-reaching Islamic revolution, nor that the battle between Israel and the Palestinians would take such savage and protracted forms, from the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the onset of the ''intifada'' in late 1987. The end of the Cold War did not mute, much less terminate, the apparently unending conflict between East and West as represented by the Arabs and Islam on one side and the Christian West on the other. More recent, but no less acute, contests developed as a result of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan; the challenge to the ''status quo'' during the 1980s and '90s made by Islamic groups in countries as diverse as Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and the Occupied Territories, and the various American and European responses: the creation of Islamic brigades to fight the Russians from bases in Pakistan; the Gulf War; the continued support of Israel; and the emergence of &quot;Islam&quot; as a topic of alarmed, if not always precise and informed, journalism and scholarship. All this inflamed the sense of persecution felt by people forced, on an almost daily basis, to declare themselves to be either Westerners or Easterners. No one seemed to be free from the opposition between &quot;us&quot; and &quot;them,&quot; which resulted in a sense of reinforced, deepened, hardened identity that has not been particularly edifying.<br /> <br /> In such a turbulent context ''Orientalism''&lt;nowiki/&gt;'s fate was both fortunate and unfortunate. To those in the Arab and Islamic world who felt Western encroachment with anxiety and stress, it appeared to be the first book that gave a serious answer back to a West that had never actually listened to or forgiven the Oriental for being an Oriental at all. I recall one early Arabic review of the book that described its author as a champion of Arabism, a defender of the downtrodden and abused, whose mission was to engage Western authorities in a kind of epic and romantic ''mano-a-mano''. Despite the exaggeration, it did convey some real sense of the West's enduring hostility, as felt by Arabs, and it also conveyed a response that many educated Arabs felt was appropriate.<br /> <br /> I will not deny that I ''was'' aware, when writing the book, of the subjective truth insinuated by Marx in the little sentence I quoted as one of the book's epigraphs (&quot;They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented.&quot;), which is that if you feel you have been denied the chance to speak your piece, you will try extremely hard to get that chance. For indeed, the subaltern ''can'' speak, as the history of liberation movements in the twentieth century eloquently attests. But I never felt that I was perpetuating the hostility between two rival political and cultural monolithic blocks, whose construction I was describing and whose terrible effects I was trying to reduce. On the contrary, as I said earlier, the Orient versus Occident opposition was both misleading and highly undesirable; the less it was given credit for actually describing anything more than a fascinating history of interpretations and of contesting interests, the better. I am happy to record that many readers in Britain and America, as well as in English-speaking Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Caribbean, saw the book as stressing the actualities of what was later to be called multiculturalism, rather than xenophobia and aggressive, race-oriented nationalism.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless ''Orientalism'' has been thought of rather more as a kind of testimonial to subaltern status--the wretched of the earth talking back--than a multicultural critique of power using knowledge to advance itself. Thus, as its author I have been seen as playing an assigned role: that of a self-representing consciousness of what had formerly been suppressed and distorted in the learned texts of a discourse specifically designed to be read not by Orientals but by other Westerners. This is an important point, and it adds to the sense of fixed identities battling across a permanent divide that my book quite specifically abjures, but which it paradoxically presupposes and depends on. None of the Orientalists I write about seems ever to have intended an Oriental as a reader. The discourse of Orientalism, its internal consistency, and its rigorous procedures were all designed for readers and consumers in the metropolitan West. This goes as much for people I genuinely admire, like Edward Lane and Gustave Flaubert, who were fascinated by Egypt, as it does for haughty colonial administrators, like Lord Cromer, brilliant scholars, like Ernest Renan, and baronial aristocrats, like Arthur Balfour, all of whom condescended to and disliked the Orientals they either ruled or studied. I must confess to a certain pleasure in listening in, uninvited, to their various pronouncements and inter-Orientalist discussions, and an equal pleasure in making known my findings both to Europeans and non-Europeans. I have no doubt that this was made possible because I traversed the imperial East-West divide, entered into the life of the West, and yet retained some organic connection with the place from which I originally came. I would repeat that this is very much a procedure of crossing, rather than maintaining, barriers; I believe ''Orientalism'' as a book shows it, especially at moments when I speak of humanistic study as seeking ideally to go beyond coercive limitations on thought toward a non-dominative, and non-essentialist, type of learning.<br /> <br /> These considerations did in fact add to the pressures on my book to represent a sort of testament of wounds and a record of sufferings, the recital of which was felt as a long overdue striking back at the West. I deplore so simple a characterization of a work that is--here I am not going to be falsely modest--quite nuanced and discriminating in what it says about different people, different periods, and different styles of Orientalism. Each of my analyses varies the picture, increases the difference and discriminations, separates authors and periods from each other, even though all pertain to Orientalism. To read my analyses of Chateaubriand and Flaubert, or of Burton and Lane, with exactly the same emphasis, deriving the same reductive message from the banal formula &quot;an attack on Western civilization&quot; is, I believe, to be both simplistic and wrong. But I also believe that it is entirely correct to read recent Orientalist authorities, such as the almost comically persistent Bernard Lewis, as the politically motivated and hostile witnesses that their suave accents and unconvincing displays of learning attempt to hide.<br /> <br /> Once again, then, we are back to the political and historical context of the book, which I do not pretend is irrelevant to its contents. One of the most generously perspicacious and intelligently discriminating statements of that conjuncture was laid out in a review by Basim Musallam (MERIP, 1979). He begins by comparing my book with an earlier demystification of Orientalism by the Lebanese scholar Michael Rustum in 1895 ''(Kitab al-Gharib fi al-Gharb)'', but then says that the main difference between us is that my book is about loss, whereas Rustum's is not:<br /> <br /> Rustum writes as a free man and a member of a free society: a Syrian, Arab by speech, citizen of a still-independent Ottoman state unlike Michael Rustum, Edward Said has no generally accepted identity, his very ''people'' are in dispute. It is possible that Edward' Said and his generation sometimes feel that they stand on nothing more solid than the remnants of the destroyed society of Michael Rustum's Syria, and on memory. Others in Asia and Africa have had their successes in this age of national liberation; here, in painful contrast, there has been desperate resistance against overwhelming odds and, until now, defeat. It is not just any &quot;Arab&quot; who wrote this book, but one with a particular background and experience. (22)<br /> <br /> Musallam correctly notes that an Algerian would not have written the same kind of generally pessimistic book, especially one like mine that does very little with the history of French relations with North Africa, Algeria most particularly. So while I would accept the overall impression that ''Orientalism'' is written out of an extremely concrete history of personal loss and national disintegration--only a few years before I wrote ''Orientalism'' Golda Meir made her notorious and deeply Orientalist comment about there being no Palestinian people--I would also like to add that neither in this book, nor in the two that immediately followed it, ''The Question of Palestine'' (1980) and ''Covering Islam'' (1981), did I want only to suggest a political program of restored identity and resurgent nationalism. There was, of course, an attempt in both of the later books to supply what was missing in ''Orientalism'', namely a sense of what an alternative picture of parts of the Orient--Palestine and Islam respectively--might be from a personal point of view.<br /> <br /> But in all my works I remained fundamentally critical of a gloating and uncritical nationalism. The picture of Islam that I represented was not one of assertive discourse and dogmatic orthodoxy, but was based instead on the idea that communities of interpretation exist within and outside the Islamic world, communicating with each other in a dialogue of equals. My view of Palestine, formulated originally in ''The Question of Palestine'', remains the same today: I expressed all sorts of reservations about the insouciant nativism and militant militarism of the nationalist consensus; I suggested instead a critical look at the Arab environment, Palestinian history, and the Israeli realities, with the explicit conclusion that only a negotiated settlement between the two communities of suffering, Arab and Jewish, would provide respite from the unending war. (I should mention in passing that although my book on Palestine was given a fine Hebrew translation in the early 1980s by Mifras, a small Israeli publishing house, it remains untranslated into Arabic to this day. Every Arabic publisher who was interested in the book wanted me to change or delete those sections that were openly critical of one or another Arab regime (including the PLO), a request that I have always refused to comply with.)<br /> <br /> I regret to say that the Arabic reception of ''Orientalism'', despite Kamal Abu Deeb's remarkable translation, still managed to ignore that aspect of my book which diminished the nationalist fervor that some implied from my critique of Orientalism, which I associated with those drives to domination and control also to be found in imperialism. Abu Deeb's painstaking translation was an almost total avoidance of Arabized Western expressions; technical words like ''discourse, simulacrum, paradigm'', or ''code'' were rendered from within the classical rhetoric of the Arab tradition. His idea was to place my work inside one fully formed tradition, as if it were addressing another from a perspective of cultural adequacy and equality. In this way, he reasoned, it was possible to show that just as one could advance an epistemological critique from within the Western tradition, so too could one do it from within the Arabic.<br /> <br /> Yet the sense of fraught confrontation between an often emotionally defined Arab world and an even more emotionally experienced Western world drowned out the fact that ''Orientalism'' was meant to be a study in critique, not an affirmation of warring and hopelessly antithetical identities. Moreover, the actuality I described in the book's last pages, of one powerful discursive system maintaining hegemony over another, was intended as the opening salvo in a debate that might stir Arab readers and critics to engage more determinedly with the system of Orientalism. I was either upbraided for not having paid closer attention to Marx--the passages on Marx's own Orientalism in my book were the most singled out by dogmatic critics in the Arab world and India, for instance--whose system of thought was claimed to have risen above his obvious prejudices, or I was criticized for not appreciating the great achievements of Orientalism, the West, etc. As with defenses of Islam, recourse to Marxism or &quot;the West&quot; as a coherent total system seems to me to have been a case of using one orthodoxy to shoot down another.<br /> <br /> The difference between Arab and other responses to ''Orientalism'' is, I think, an accurate indication of how decades of loss, frustration, and the absence of democracy have affected intellectual and cultural life in the Arab region. I intended my book as part of a pre-existing current of thought whose purpose was to liberate intellectuals from the shackles of systems such as Orientalism: I wanted readers to make use of my work so they might then produce new studies of their own that would illuminate the historical experience of Arabs and others in a generous, enabling mode. That certainly happened in Europe, the United States, Australia, the Indian subcontinent, the Caribbean, Ireland, Latin America, and parts of Africa. The invigorated study of Africanist and Indological discourses; the analyses of subaltern history; the reconfiguration of post-colonial anthropology, political science, art history, literary criticism, musicology, in addition to the vast new developments in feminist and minority discourses--to all these, I am pleased and flattered that ''Orientalism'' often made a difference. That does not seem to have been the case (insofar as I can judge it) in the Arab world, where, partly because my work is correctly perceived as Eurocentric in its texts, and partly because, as Musallam says, the battle for cultural survival is too engrossing, books like mine are interpreted less usefully, productively speaking, and more as defensive gestures either for or against the &quot;West.&quot;<br /> <br /> Yet among American and British academics of a decidedly rigorous and unyielding stripe, ''Orientalism'', and indeed all of my other work, has come in for disapproving attacks because of its &quot;residual&quot; humanism, its theoretical inconsistencies, its insufficient, perhaps even sentimental, treatment of agency. I am glad that it has! ''Orientalism'' is a partisan book, not a theoretical machine. No one has convincingly shown that individual effort is not at some profoundly unteachable level both eccentric and, in Gerard Manley Hopkins's sense, ''original''; this despite the existence of systems of thought, discourses, and hegemonies, (although none of them are in fact seamless, perfect, or inevitable). The interest I took in Orientalism as a cultural phenomenon (like the culture of imperialism I talk about in ''Culture and Imperialism'', its 1993 sequel) derives from its variability and unpredictability, both qualities that give writers like Massignon and Burton their surprising force, and even attractiveness. What I tried to preserve in what I analyzed of Orientalism was its combination of consistency ''and'' inconsistency, its play, so to speak, which can only be rendered by preserving for oneself as writer and critic the right to some emotional force, the right to be moved, angered, surprised, and even delighted. This is why, in the debate between Gayan Prakash, on the one hand, and Rosalind O'Hanlon and David Washbrook, on the other, I think Prakash's more mobile post-structuralism has to be given its due.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;O'Hanlon and Washbrook, &quot;After Orientalism: Culture, Criticism, and Politics in the Third World;&quot; Prakash, &quot;Can the Subaltern Ride? A Reply to O'Hanlon and Washbrook,&quot; both in ''Comparative Studies in Society and History'', IV, 9 (January 1992), 141-184.&lt;/ref&gt; By the same token the work of Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, and Ashis Nandy, predicated on the sometimes dizzying subjective relationships engendered by colonialism, cannot be gainsaid for ''its'' contribution to our understanding of the humanistic traps laid by systems such as Orientalism.<br /> <br /> Let me conclude this survey of ''Orientalism''&lt;nowiki/&gt;'s critical transmutations with a mention of the one group of people who were, not unexpectedly, the most exercised and vociferous in responding to my book, the Orientalists themselves. They were not my ''principal'' intended audience at all; I had in mind casting some light on their practices so as to make other humanists aware of one field's particular procedures and genealogy. The word &quot;Orientalism&quot; itself has been for too long confined to a professional specialty; I tried to show was its application and existence in the general culture, in literature, ideology, and social as well as political attitudes. To speak of someone as an Oriental, as the Orientalists did, was not just to designate that person as someone whose language, geography, and history were the stuff of learned treatises: it also was often meant as a derogatory expression signifying a lesser breed of human being. This is not to deny that for artists like Nerval and Segalen the word &quot;Orient&quot; was wonderfully, ingeniously connected to exoticism, glamour, mystery, and promise. But it was also a sweeping historical generalization. In addition to these uses of the words ''Orient, Oriental'', and ''Orientalism'', the term ''Orientalist'' also came to represent the erudite, scholarly, mainly academic specialist in the languages and histories of the East. Yet, as the late Albert Hourani wrote me in March 1992, a few months before his untimely and much regretted death, due to the force of my argument (for which he said he could not reproach me), my book had the unfortunate effect of making it almost impossible to use the term &quot;Orientalism&quot; in a neutral sense, so much had it become a term of abuse. He concluded that he would have still liked to retain the word for use in describing &quot;a limited, rather dull but valid discipline of scholarship.&quot;<br /> <br /> In his generally balanced 1979 review of ''Orientalism'', Hourani formulated one of his objections by suggesting that while I singled out the exaggerations, racism, and hostility of much Orientalist writing, I neglected to mention its numerous scholarly and humanistic achievements. Names that he brought up included Marshall Hodgson, Claude Cohen, and Andre Raymond, all of whose accomplishments (along with the German authors who come up ''de rigueur'') should be acknowledged as real contributors to human knowledge. This does not, however, conflict with what I say in ''Orientalism'', with the difference that I do insist on the prevalence in the discourse itself of a structure of attitudes that cannot simply be waved away of discounted. Nowhere do I argue that Orientalism is evil, or sloppy, or uniformly the same in the work of each Orientalist. But I do say that the ''guild'' of Orientalists has a specific history of complicity with imperial power, which it would be Panglossian to call irrelevant.<br /> <br /> So while I sympathize with Hourani's plea, I have serious doubts whether the notion of Orientalism properly understood can ever, in fact, be completely detached from its rather more complicated and not always flattering circumstances. I suppose that one can imagine at the limit that a specialist in Ottoman or Fatimid archives is an Orientalist in Hourani's sense, but we are still required to ask where, how, and with what supporting institutions and agencies such studies take place ''today''? Many who wrote after my book appeared asked exactly those questions of even the most recondite and otherworldly scholars, with sometimes devastating results.<br /> <br /> Still, there has been one sustained attempt to mount an argument whose purport is that a critique of Orientalism (mine in particular) is both meaningless and somehow a violation of the very idea of disinterested scholarship. That attempt is made by Bernard Lewis, about whom I had devoted a few critical pages in my book. Fifteen years after ''Orientalism'' appeared, Lewis produced a series of essays, some of them collected in a book entitled ''Islam and the West'', one of whose main sections is an attack on me, which he surrounds with chapters and other essays that mobilize a set of lax and characteristically Orientalist formulas--Muslims are enraged at modernity, Islam never made the separation between church and state, and so on and on--all of them pronounced with an extreme level of generalization and with scarcely a mention of the differences between individual Muslims, between Muslim societies, or between Muslim traditions and eras. Since Lewis has in a sense appointed himself a spokesman for the guild of Orientalists on which my critique was originally based, it may be worth spending a little more time on his procedures. His ideas are, alas, fairly current among his acolytes and imitators, whose job seems to be to alert Western consumers to the threat of an enraged, congenitally undemocratic and violent Islamic world.<br /> <br /> Lewis's verbosity scarcely conceals both the ideological underpinnings of his position and his extraordinary capacity for getting nearly everything wrong. Of course, these are familiar attributes of the Orientalists' breed, some of whom have at least had the courage to be honest in their active denigration of Islamic, as well as other non-European, peoples. Not Lewis. He proceeds by distorting the truth, by making false analogies, and by innuendo, methods to which he adds that veneer of omniscient tranquil authority which he supposes is the way scholars talk. Take as a typical example the analogy he draws between my critique of Orientalism and a hypothetical attack on studies of classical antiquity, an attack which, he says, would be a foolish activity. It would be, of course, but then Orientalism and Hellenism are radically incomparable. The former is an attempt to describe a whole region of the world as an accompaniment to that region's colonial conquest, the latter is not at all about the direct colonial conquest of Greece in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; in addition, Orientalism expresses antipathy to Islam, Hellenism sympathy for classical Greece.<br /> <br /> Additionally, the present political moment, with its reams of racist anti-Arab and anti-Muslim stereotypes (and no attacks on classical Greece), allows Lewis to deliver ahistorical and willful political assertions in the form of scholarly argument, a practice thoroughly in keeping with the least creditable aspects of old-fashioned colonialist Orientalism.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;In one particularly telling instance, Lewis's habits of tendentious generalization do seem to have gotten him in legal trouble. According to ''Liberation'' (March 1, 1994) and the ''Guardian'' (March 8, 1994), Lewis now faces both criminal and civil suits brought against him in France by Armenian and human rights organizations. He is being charged under the same statute that makes it a crime in France to deny that the Nazi Holocaust took place; the charge against him is denying (in French newspapers) that a genocide of Armenians took place under the Ottoman empire.&lt;/ref&gt; Lewis's work therefore is part of the present political, rather than purely intellectual, environment.<br /> <br /> To imply, as he does, that the branch of Orientalism dealing with Islam and the Arabs is a learned discipline that can therefore be compared with classical philology is as appropriate as comparing one of the many Israeli Arabists and Orientalists who have worked for the occupation authorities of the West Bank and Gaza with scholars like Wilamowitz or Mommsen. On the one hand Lewis wishes to reduce Islamic Orientalism to the status of an innocent and enthusiastic department of scholarship; on the other he wishes to pretend that Orientalism is too complex, various, and technical to exist in a form for any non-Orientalist (like myself and many others) to criticize. Lewis's tactic here is to suppress a significant amount of history. As I suggest, European interest in Islam derived not from curiosity but from fear of a monotheistic, culturally and militarily formidable competitor to Christianity. The earliest European scholars of Islam, as numerous historians have shown, were medieval polemicists writing to ward off the threat of Muslim hordes and apostasy. In one way or another that combination of fear and hostility has persisted to the present day, both in scholarly and non-scholarly attention to an Islam which is viewed as belonging to a part of the world--the Orient--counterposed imaginatively, geographically, and historically ''against'' Europe and the West.<br /> <br /> The most interesting problems about Islamic or Arabic Orientalism are, first, the forms taken by the medieval vestiges that persist so tenaciously, and, second, the history and sociology of connections between Orientalism and the societies that produced it. There are strong ''affiliations'' between Orientalism and the literary imagination, for example, as well as the imperial consciousness. What is striking about many periods of European history is the traffic between what scholars and specialists wrote and what poets, novelists, politicians, and journalists then said about Islam. In addition--and this is the crucial point that Lewis refuses to deal with--there is a remarkable (but nonetheless intelligible) parallel between the rise of modern Orientalist scholarship and the acquisition of vast Eastern empires by Britain and France.<br /> <br /> Although the connection between a routine British classical education and the extension of the British empire is more complex than Lewis might suppose, no more glaring parallel exists between power and knowledge in the modern history of philology than in the case of Orientalism. Much of the information and knowledge about Islam and the Orient that was used by the colonial powers to justify their colonialism derived from Orientalist scholarship: a recent study by many contributors, ''Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament'',&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993.&lt;/ref&gt; edited by Carl A. Breckenridge and Peter Van der Veer, demonstrates with copious documentation how Orientalist knowledge was used in the colonial administration of South Asia. A fairly consistent interchange still continues between area scholars, such as Orientalists, and government departments of foreign affairs. In addition, many of the stereotypes of Islamic and Arabic sensuality, sloth, fatalism, cruelty, degradation, and splendor to be found in writers from John Buchan to V.S. Naipaul have also been presuppositions underlying the adjoining field of academic Orientalism. In contrast, the trade in cliches between Indology and Sinology, on the one hand, and general culture, on the other, is not quite as flourishing, although there are relationships and borrowings to be noted. Nor is there much similarity between what obtains among Western experts in Sinology and Indology and the fact that many professional scholars of Islam in Europe and the United States spend their lives studying the subject, yet still find it an impossible religion and culture to like, much less admire.<br /> <br /> To say, as Lewis and his imitators do, that all such observations are only a matter of espousing &quot;fashionable causes&quot; is not quite to address the question of why, for example, so many Islamic specialists were and still are routinely consulted by, and actively work for, governments whose designs in the Islamic world are economic exploitation, domination, or outright aggression, or why so many scholars of Islam--like Lewis himself--voluntarily feel that it is part of their duty to mount attacks on modern Arab or Islamic peoples with the pretense that &quot;classical&quot; Islamic culture can nevertheless be the object of disinterested scholarly concern. The spectacle of specialists in the history of medieval Islamic guilds being sent on State Department missions to brief area embassies on United States security interests in the Persian Gulf does not spontaneously suggest anything resembling the love of Hellas ascribed by Lewis to the supposedly cognate field of classical philology.<br /> <br /> It is therefore not surprising that the field of Islamic and Arabic Orientalism, always ready to deny its complicity with state power, had never until very recently produced an internal critique of the affiliations I have just been describing, and that Lewis can utter the amazing statement that a criticism of Orientalism would be &quot;meaningless.&quot; It is also not surprising that, with a few exceptions, most of the negative criticism my work has elicited from &quot;specialists&quot; has been, like Lewis's, no more than banal description of a barony violated by a crude trespasser. The only specialists (again with a few exceptions) who attempted to deal with what I discuss--which is not only the content of Orientalism, but its relationships, affiliations, political tendencies, and worldview--were Sinologists, Indologists, and the younger generation of Middle East scholars, susceptible to newer influences and also to the political arguments that the critique of Orientalism entailed. One example is Benjamin Schwartz of Harvard, who used the occasion of his 1982 presidential address to the Asian Studies Association not only to disagree with some of my criticism, but also to welcome my arguments intellectually.<br /> <br /> Many of the senior Arabists and Islamicists have responded with the aggrieved outrage that is for them a substitute for self-reflection; most use words such as &quot;malign,&quot; &quot;dishonor,&quot; &quot;libel,&quot; as if criticism itself were an impermissible violation of their sacrosanct academic preserve. In Lewis's case the defense offered is an act of conspicuous bad faith, since more than most Orientalists he has been a passionate political partisan against Arab (and other) causes in such places as the U.S. Congress, ''Commentary'', and elsewhere. The proper response to him must therefore include an account of what politically and sociologically he is all about when he pretends to be defending the &quot;honor&quot; of his field, a defense which, it will be evident enough, is an elaborate confection of ideological half-truths designed to mislead non-specialist readers.<br /> <br /> In short, the relationship between Islamic or Arab Orientalism and modern European culture can be studied without at the same time cataloguing every Orientalist who ever lived, every Orientalist tradition, or everything written by Orientalists, then lumping them together as rotten and worthless imperialism. I never did that anyway. It is beknighted to say that Orientalism is a conspiracy or to suggest that &quot;the West&quot; is evil: both are among the egregious fatuities that Lewis and one of his epigones, the Iraqi publicist K. Makiya, have had the temerity to ascribe to me. On the other hand it is hypocritical to suppress the cultural, political, ideological, and institutional contexts in which people write, think, and talk about the Orient, whether they are scholars or not. And as I said earlier, it is extremely important to understand that the reason Orientalism is opposed by so many thoughtful non-Westerners is that its modern discourse is correctly perceived as a discourse of power originating in an era of colonialism, the subject of an excellent recent symposium ''Colonialism and Culture'', edited by Nicholas B. Dirks.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1992.&lt;/ref&gt; In this kind of discourse, based mainly upon the assumption that Islam is monolithic and unchanging and therefore marketable by &quot;experts&quot; for powerful domestic political interests, neither Muslims nor Arabs nor any of the other dehumanized lesser peoples recognize themselves as human beings or their observers as simple scholars. Most of all they see in the discourse of modern Orientalism and its counterparts in similar knowledges constructed for Native Americans and Africans a chronic tendency to deny, suppress, or distort the cultural context of such systems of thought in order to maintain the fiction of its scholarly disinterest.<br /> <br /> === '''II''' ===<br /> Yet I would not want to suggest that, current though such views as Lewis's may be, they are the only ones that have either emerged or been reinforced during the past decade and a half. Yes, it is true that ever since the demise of the Soviet Union there has been a rush by some scholars and journalists in the United States to find in an Orientalized Islam a new empire of evil. Consequently, both the electronic and print media have been awash with demeaning stereotypes that lump together Islam and terrorism, or Arabs and violence, or the Orient and tyranny. And there has also been a return in various parts of the Middle and Far East to nativist religion and primitive nationalism, one particularly disgraceful aspect of which is the continuing Iranian ''fatwa'' against Salman Rushdie. But this isn't the whole picture, and what I want to do in the remaining part of this essay is to talk about new trends in scholarship, criticism, and interpretation that, although they accept the basic premises of my book, go well beyond it in ways, I think, that enrich our sense of the complexity of historical experience.<br /> <br /> None of those trends has emerged out of the blue, of course; nor have they gained the status of fully established knowledges and practices. The worldly context remains both perplexingly stirred-up and ideologically fraught, volatile, tense, changeable, and even murderous. Even though the Soviet Union has been dismembered and the Eastern European countries have attained political independence, patterns of power and dominance remain unsettlingly in evidence. The global south--once referred to romantically and even emotionally as the Third World--is enmeshed in a debt trap, broken into dozens of fractured or incoherent entities, beset with problems of poverty, disease, and underdevelopment that have increased in the past ten or fifteen years. Gone are the non-Aligned movement and the charismatic leaders who undertook decolonization and independence. An alarming pattern of ethnic conflict and local wars, not confined to the global south, as the tragic case of the Bosnians attests, has sprung up all over again. And in places like Central America, the Middle East, and Asia, the United States still remains the dominant power, with an anxious and still un-unified Europe straggling behind.<br /> <br /> Explanations for the current world scene and attempts to comprehend it culturally and politically have emerged in some strikingly dramatic ways. I have already mentioned fundamentalism. The secular equivalents are a return to nationalism and theories that stress the radical distinction--a falsely all-inclusive one, I believe--between different cultures and civilizations. Recently, for example, Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard University advanced the far from convincing proposition that Cold War bipolarism has been superseded by what he called the clash of civilizations, a thesis based on the premise that Western, Confucian, and Islamic civilizations, among several others, were rather like watertight compartments whose adherents were at bottom mainly interested in fending off all the others.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;&quot;The Clash of Civilizations,&quot; ''Foreign Affairs'' 71, 3 (Summer 1993), 22-49.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> This is preposterous, since one of the great advances in modern cultural theory is the realization, almost universally acknowledged, that cultures are hybrid and heterogenous and, as I argued in ''Culture and Imperialism'', that cultures and civilizations are so interrelated and interdependent as to beggar any unitary or simply delineated description of their individuality. How can one today speak of &quot;Western civilization&quot; except as in large measure an ideological fiction, implying a sort of detached superiority for a handful of values and ideas, none of which has much meaning outside the history of conquest, immigration, travel, and the mingling of peoples that gave the Western nations their present mixed identities? This is especially true of the United States, which today cannot seriously be described except as an enormous palimpsest of different races and cultures sharing a problematic history of conquests, exterminations, and of course major cultural and political achievements. And this was one of the implied messages of ''Orientalism'', that any attempt to force cultures and peoples into separate and distinct breeds or essences exposes not only the misrepresentations and falsifications that ensue, but also the way in which understanding is complicit with the power to produce such things as the &quot;Orient&quot; or the &quot;West.&quot;<br /> <br /> Not that Huntington, and behind him all the theorists and apologists of an exultant Western tradition, like Francis Fukuyama, haven't retained a good deal of their hold on the public consciousness. They have, as is evident in the symptomatic case of Paul Johnson, once a Left intellectual, now a retrograde social and political polemicist. In the April 18, 1993, issue of ''The New York Times Magazine'', by no means a marginal publication, Johnson published an essay entitled &quot;Colonialism's Back--And Not a Moment Too Soon,&quot; whose main idea was that &quot;the civilized nations&quot; ought to take it upon themselves to re-colonize Third World countries &quot;where the most basic conditions of civilized life had broken down,&quot; and to do this by means of a system of imposed trusteeships. His model is explicitly a nineteenth century colonial one where, he says, in order for the Europeans to trade profitably they had to impose political order.<br /> <br /> Johnson's argument has numerous subterranean echoes in the works of U.S. policy-makers, the media, and of course U.S. foreign policy itself, which remains interventionist in the Middle East, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, and frankly missionary everywhere else, especially with regard to its policies toward Russia and; the former Soviet republics. The important point, however, is that a largely unexamined but serious rift has opened in the public consciousness between the old ideas of Western hegemony (of which the system of Orientalism was a part) on the one hand, and newer ideas that have taken hold among subaltern and disadvantaged communities and among a wide sector of intellectuals, academics, and artists, on the other. It is now very strikingly no longer the case that the lesser peoples--formerly colonized, enslaved, suppressed--are silent or unaccounted for except by senior European or American males. There has been a revolution in the consciousness of women, minorities, and marginals so powerful as to affect mainstream thinking worldwide. Although I had some sense of it when I was working on ''Orientalism'' in the 1970s, it is now so dramatically apparent as to demand the attention of everyone seriously concerned with the scholarly and theoretical study of culture.<br /> <br /> Two broad currents can be distinguished: post-colonialism and post-modernism, both in their use of the word &quot;post&quot; suggesting not so much the sense of going beyond but rather, as Ella Shohat puts it in a seminal article on the post-colonial, suggesting &quot;continuities and discontinuities, but its emphasis is on the new modes and forms of the old colonialist practices, not on a 'beyond'.&quot;&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;&quot;Notes on the 'Post-Colonial',&quot; ''Social Text'', 31/32 (1992), 106.&lt;/ref&gt; Both post-colonialism and post-modernism emerged as related topics of engagement and investigation during the 1980s and, in many instances, seemed to take account of such works as ''Orientalism'' as antecedents. It would be impossible here to get into the immense terminological debates that surround both words, some of them dwelling at length on whether the phrases should or should not be hyphenated. The point here is therefore not to talk about isolated instances of excess or risible jargon, but to locate those currents and efforts which, from the perspective of a book published in 1978, seem to some extent now to involve it in 1994.<br /> <br /> Much of the most compelling work on the new political and economic order has concerned what, in a recent article, Harry Magdoff has described as &quot;globalization,&quot; a system by which a small financial elite expanded its power over the whole globe, inflating commodity and service prices, redistributing wealth from lower income sectors (usually in the non-Western world) to the higher-income ones.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Magdoff, &quot;Globalisation-To What End?,&quot; ''Socialist Register 1992: New World Order?'', ed. Ralph Milliband and Leo Panitch (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1992), 1-32.&lt;/ref&gt; Along with this, as discussed in astringent terms by Masao Miyoshi and Arif Dirlik, there has emerged a new transnational order in which states no longer have borders, labor and income are subject only to global managers, and colonialism has reappeared in the subservience of the South to the North.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Miyoshi, &quot;A Borderless World? From Colonialism to Trans-nationalism and the Decline of the Nation-State,&quot; ''Critical Inquiry'', 19, 4 (Summer 1993), 726-51; Dirlik, &quot;The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism,&quot; ''Critical Inquiry'', 20, 2 (Winter 1994), 328-56.&lt;/ref&gt; Both Miyoshi and Dirlik go on to show how the interest of Western academics in subjects such as multiculturalism and &quot;post-coloniality&quot; can in fact be a cultural and intellectual retreat from the new realities of global power: &quot;What we need,&quot; Miyoshi says, &quot;is a rigorous political and economic scrutiny rather than a gesture of pedagogic expediency,&quot; exemplified by the &quot;liberal self-deception&quot; contained in such new fields as cultural studies and multiculturalism (751).<br /> <br /> But even if we take such injunctions seriously (as we must), there is a solid basis in historical experience for the appearance today of interest in both post-modernism and its quite different counterpart post-colonialism. There is first of all the much greater Eurocentric bias in the former, and a preponderance of theoretical and aesthetic emphasis stressing the local and the contingent, as well as the almost decorative weightlessness of history, pastiche, and above all consumerism. The earliest studies of the post-colonial were by such distinguished thinkers as Anwar Abdel Malek, Samir Amin, and C. L. R. James, almost all based on studies of domination and control done from the standpoint of either a completed political independence or an incomplete liberationist project. Yet whereas post-modernism in one of its most famous programmatic statements (Jean-Francois Lyotard's) stresses the disappearance of the grand narratives of emancipation and enlightenment, the emphasis behind much of the work done by the first generation of post-colonial artists and scholars is exactly the opposite: the grand narratives remain, even though their implementation and realization are at present in abeyance, deferred, or circumvented. This crucial difference between the urgent historical and political imperatives of post-colonialism and post-modernism's relative detachment makes for altogether different approaches and results, although some overlap between them (in the technique of &quot;magical realism,&quot; for example) does exist.<br /> <br /> I think it would be wrong to suggest that in much of the best post-colonial work that has proliferated so dramatically since the early 1980s there hasn't been a great emphasis on the local, regional, and contingent: there has, but it seems to me to be most interestingly connected in its general approach to a universal set of concerns, all of them having to do with emancipation, revisionist attitudes toward history and culture, and a widespread use of recurring theoretical models and styles. A leading motif has been the consistent critique of Eurocentrism and patriarchy. Across U.S. and European campuses in the 1980s students and faculty alike worked assiduously to expand the academic focus of so-called core curricula to include writing by women, non-European artists and thinkers, and subalterns. This was accompanied by important changes in the approach to area studies, long in the hands of classical Orientalists and their equivalents. Anthropology, political science, literature, sociology, and above all history felt the effects of a wide-ranging critique of sources, the introduction of theory, and the dislodgement of the Eurocentric perspective. Perhaps the most brilliant revisionist work was done not in Middle East Studies, but in the field of Indology with the advent of Subaltern Studies, a group of remarkable scholars and researchers led by Ranajit Guha. Their aim was nothing less than a revolution in historiography, their immediate goal being to rescue the writing of Indian history from the domination of the nationalist elite and restore to it the important role of the urban poor and the rural masses. I think it would be wrong to say of such mostly academic work only that it was easily co-optable and complicit with &quot;transnational&quot; neo-colonialism. We need to record and acknowledge the achievement while warning of the later pitfalls.<br /> <br /> What has been of special interest for me has been the extension of post-colonial concerns to the problems of geography. After all, ''Orientalism'' is a study based on the re-thinking of what had for centuries been believed to be an unbridgeable chasm separating East from West. My aim, as I said earlier, was not so much to dissipate difference itself--for who can deny the constitutive role of national as well as cultural differences in the relations between human beings--but to challenge the notion that difference implies hostility, a frozen reified set of opposed essences, and a whole adversarial knowledge built out of those things. What I called for in ''Orientalism'' was a new way of conceiving the separations and conflicts that had stimulated generations of hostility, war, and imperial control. And indeed, one of the most interesting developments in post-colonial studies was a re-reading of the canonical cultural works, not to demote or somehow dish dirt on them, but to re-investigate some of their assumptions, going beyond the stifling hold on them of some version of the master-slave binary dialectic. This has certainly been the comparable effect of astoundingly resourceful novels such as Rusdie's ''Midnight's Children'', the narratives of C. L. R. James, the poetry of Aime Cesaire and of Derek Walcott, works whose daring new formal achievements are in effect a re-appropriation of the historical experience of colonialism, revitalized and transformed into a new aesthetic of sharing and often transcendent re-formulation.<br /> <br /> One sees it also in the work of the group of distinguished Irish writers who in 1980 established themselves as a collective called Field Day. The preface to a collection of their works says about them:<br /> <br /> [These writers] believed that Field Day could and should contribute to the solution of the present crisis by producing analyses of the established opinion, myths and stereotypes which had become both a symptom and cause of the current situation [between Ireland and the North]. The collapse of constitutional and political arrangements and the recrudescence of the violence which they had been designed to repress or contain made this a more urgent requirement in the North than in the Republic.... The company, therefore, decided to embark upon a succession of publications, starting with a series of pamphlets [in addition to an impressive series of poems by Seamus Heaney, essays by Seamus Deane, plays by Brian Friel and Tom Paulin] in which the nature of the Irish problem could be explored and, as a result, more successfully confronted than it had been hitherto.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;''Ireland's Field Day'' (London: Hutchinson, 1985), pp. vii-viii.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The idea of rethinking and re-formulating historical experiences which had once been based on the geographical separation of peoples and cultures is at the heart of a whole spate of scholarly and critical works. It is to be found, to mention only three, in Ammiel Alcalay's ''After Arabs and Jews: Remaking Levantine Culture'', Paul Gilroy's ''The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness'', and Moira Ferguson's ''Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery'', ''1670-1834''.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Alcalay (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); Gilroy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); Ferguson (London: Routledge, 1992).&lt;/ref&gt; In these works, domains once believed to have been exclusive to one people, gender, race, or class are re-examined and shown to have involved others. For long represented as a battleground between Arabs and Jews, the Levant emerges in Alcalay's book as a Mediterranean culture common to both peoples; according to Gilroy a similar process alters, indeed doubles, our perception of the Atlantic Ocean, hitherto thought of as principally a European passage. And in re-examining the adversarial relationship between English slave-owners and African slaves, Ferguson allows a more complex pattern dividing white female from white male to stand out, with new demotions and dislocations appearing as a result in Africa.<br /> <br /> I could go on giving more and more examples. I shall conclude briefly by saying that although the animosities and inequities still exist from which my interest in Orientalism as a cultural and political phenomenon began, there is now at least a general acceptance that these represent not an eternal order but a historical experience whose end, or at least partial abatement, may be at hand. Looking back at it from the distance afforded by fifteen eventful years and the availability of a massive new interpretive and scholarly enterprise to reduce the effects of imperialist shackles on thought and human relations, ''Orientalism'' at least had the merit of enlisting itself openly in the struggle, which continues of course in &quot;West&quot; and &quot;East&quot; together.<br /> <br /> E. W. S.<br /> <br /> New York<br /> <br /> March 1994<br /> <br /> === Footnotes ===<br /> <br /> &lt;references group=&quot;5.&quot;/&gt;<br /> <br /> [[Category:Library works by Edward Said]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about decolonisation]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:On_the_history_of_the_movement_of_women_workers_in_Russia&diff=76018 2024-09-30T12:47:04Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=On the History of the Movement of Women Workers in Russia|author=Alexandra Kollontai|written in=1920|type=Article|source=https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1919/history.htm|display_title=yes}}<br /> <br /> What year could be said to mark the beginning of the working women's movement in Russia? In its essential nature, the movement of women workers is inseparably linked with the entire proletarian movement as one indivisible whole. The woman worker, as a member of the proletarian class, as someone selling her labour, also rose in revolt with the workers every time they opposed the violation of their human rights, participated together and on an equal footing with the workers in all worker uprisings, in all the factory revolts so hated by tsarism.<br /> <br /> For this reason, the beginning of the movement of women workers in Russia coincides with the first signs of the awakening of class self-consciousness among the Russian proletariat, and with its first attempts, by means of combined pressure, strikes and walk-outs, to achieve more tolerable, less humiliating and miserly conditions of existence.<br /> <br /> Women workers took active part in the worker revolts at the Krenholm factory in 1872 and at the Lazeryev textile factory in Moscow in 1874. They were involved in the strike in 1878 at the New Cotton-Spinning Plant in Petrograd and led the weavers' strike in the famous workers' demonstration in Orekhovo-Zuyevo, during which factory buildings were wrecked. As a result, the tsarist government was compelled to hurry through its legislation prohibiting night work for women and children, which came into force on 3 June, 1885.<br /> <br /> It is indicative that the spontaneous wave of strikes that shook proletarian Russia in the 1870's and the early 1880's affected mainly the textile industry, in which the majority of the work force is made up of cheap female labour. The disturbances of the 1870's and early 1880's occurred for purely economic reasons, provoked by unemployment and the continuing crisis in the cotton industry. However, is it not remarkable that this downtrodden 'factory girl', without rights, oppressed by labour beyond her strength and politically ignorant, despised even by the female half of the urban petty bourgeoisie and held at arm's length by peasant women who clung tenaciously to old traditions, should be in the front ranks of those fighting for the rights of the working class, for the emancipation of women? The harsh conditions of life itself compelled the factory girl to oppose openly the power of the bosses and the enslavement of capital. However, in fighting for the rights and interests of her class, the woman worker was unwittingly also preparing the way for the emancipation of women from those chains that still weighed upon them in particular and created inequality of status and conditions among men and women workers, even within the framework of one single working class.<br /> <br /> During the new and intensified wave of worker disturbances in the mid- and the late 1890's, working women were once again invariably active participants in worker revolts. The April revolt at the Yaroslavl factory in 1895 received vigorous support from the women weavers. Nor were women workers less active than their male comrades during the economic strikes of 1894-1895 in St Petersburg. When, in the summer of 1896, St Petersburg became the scene of the historic strike by textile workers, the women weavers courageously and unanimously walked out of the workshops together with the men weavers. What difference does it make that at home hungry children are waiting for their working mother? What difference does it make that this strike brings with it the threat of dismissal, of exile or prison? The common class cause is more important, more sacred than maternal feelings, concern for the family, for personal and family well-being!<br /> <br /> At a time of disturbances and strikes the woman worker, oppressed, timid, without rights, straightens up to her full height and becomes equal as a fighter and comrade. This transformation takes place unconsciously, spontaneously, but it is important and significant. It is the path along which the workers' movement is leading the woman worker to liberation, not only as one who sells her labour, but also as a woman, a wife, a mother and a housewife.<br /> <br /> At the end of the 1890's and the beginning of the 20th century there were a number of disturbances and strikes at factories employing mainly women: at tobacco-processing factories (Shanshai), at spinning and weaving mills (Maxwell) in Petrograd, etc. The working-class movement in Russia is gaining strength, organising itself, taking shape. So also is class resistance among the female proletariat.<br /> <br /> Nonetheless, until the momentous year of the first Russian revolution the movement was basically economic in nature. Political slogans had to be concealed or advanced in disguised form. A healthy class instinct prompts the woman worker to support strikes, and not infrequently the women themselves organise and carry through 'factory revolts'. However, no sooner had the wave of bitter strike struggle passed, no sooner had the workers returned to work, victorious or defeated, than the women were once again isolated from one another, still unconscious of the need for organisation, for constant comradely contact. In those years it was still exceptional to find a woman worker in the illegal party organisations. The broad objectives of the socialist workers' party had still not seized hold of the working woman, and she remained unresponsive to universal political slogans. The life led by six million proletarian women in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century was still too dark, too unenlightened, and their existence too much in the grip of hunger, deprivation and humiliation. A 12-hour, or at best an 11-hour working day, a starvation wage of 12-15 roubles a month, accommodation in overcrowded barracks, the absence of any form of assistance from the state or society in case of illness, pregnancy or unemployment, the impossibility of organising self-help as the tsarist government savagely persecuted any attempts at organisation by the workers — these were the conditions surrounding the woman worker. Her back was bent by the intolerable burden of oppression, and her soul, terrified by the spectre of poverty and starvation, refused to believe in a brighter future and the possibility of fighting to cast off the yoke of tsarism and capital.<br /> <br /> At the beginning of the 20th century, women workers avoided politics and revolutionary struggle. The socialist movement in Russia can, it is true, take pride in an abundance of charming and heroic women who, by their energetic work and selflessness, helped to consolidate the underground movement and prepared the way for the revolutionary explosion that occurred in the years that followed. However none of these women, from the first women socialists such as Sofia Bardina or the Leshern sisters, full of charm and inner beauty, to the iron-willed Sofia Perovskaya, were representatives of the female proletariat. In the majority of cases these were the young girls to which Turgenev dedicated his prose poem 'The Threshold', girls from a wealthy, aristocratic background who left their parental homes, broke with their prosperous past and 'went to the people' to spread revolutionary propaganda and fight against social injustice, striving to redeem the 'sins of their fathers'. Even much later, in the 1890's and the beginning of the 20th century, when Marxism had already put down deep roots in the Russian workers' movement, the number of women workers involved in the movement was very small. The active women members of the underground organisations in those years were not women workers but women from the intelligentsia — students, teachers, medical assistants and writers. It was rare to find a 'factory girl' at an illegal meeting. Nor did the women workers attend the Sunday evening classes held just outside the city limits of Petrograd, which were then the only legal method of spreading, under the innocent guise of geography or arithmetic, the ideas of Marxism and scientific socialism among the broad working masses. Working women still fought shy of life, avoided combat ... still believed that their lot was the oven, the wash-tub and the cradle.<br /> <br /> == The first revolution of 1905 ==<br /> The picture changes radically from the moment when the red spectre of revolution first overshadowed Russia with its fiery wings. The revolutionary year of 1905 sent deep shock waves through the working masses. The Russian worker sensed his strength for the first time, for the first time realised that he was bearing on his shoulders the whole national wealth. The Russian proletarian woman worker, the unfailing collaborator in all the political demonstrations of the proletariat in the revolutionary years of 1905-1906, was also awoken from her slumbers. She was to be found everywhere. If we wanted to relate the facts of the mass participation of women in the movement of the time, enumerate all the active manifestations of protest and struggle by women workers, recall all the selfless actions undertaken by proletarian women, their loyalty to the ideals of socialism, then we would have to reconstruct scene by scene the entire history of the Russian revolution of 1905.<br /> <br /> Many still remember those years full of romanticism. The image of the woman worker, still 'incomplete', but already stirring into life, with her searching, hope-filled eyes turned on the speaker at crowded meetings charged with infectious enthusiasm, lives once again in the memory. The faces of women, filled with concentrated energy and unshakable resolution, can be seen among the serried ranks of the workers' procession on the memorial on the memorable 9 January, bloody Sunday. A sun, unusually bright for St Petersburg, illuminates this purposeful, solemn and silent procession, highlighting the women's faces, so numerous among the crowd. The penalty for naive illusions and childish trustfulness strikes the women; the woman worker, young girl, working wife, is a common figure among the mass victims of that January day. The slogan 'General Strike' that flies from workshop to workshop is picked up by these women, yesterday still lacking class consciousness, and compels some of them to be the first to walk out.<br /> <br /> The women workers in the provinces did not lag behind their comrades in the capital. In the October days, exhausted by work and their harsh existence on the edge of starvation, women leave the factories and, in the name of the common cause, courageously deprive their children of their last piece of bread... With simple, moving words the woman worker appeals to her male comrades, suggesting that they too leave their work; she keeps up the spirits of those on strike, breathing energy into those who waver... The woman worker struggled tirelessly, protested courageously, sacrificed herself heroically for the common cause, and the more active she became, the more rapidly was the process of her mental awakening achieved. The woman worker began to take note of the world around her, of the injustices stemming from the capitalist system. She became more painfully and acutely aware of the bitterness of all her sufferings and sorrows. Alongside common proletarian demands one can hear ever more distinctly the voices of the women of the working class recalling the needs and requirements of women workers. At the time of the elections to the Shidlovsky commission in March, 1905, the refusal to admit women as worker delegates provoked murmurs of discontent among women: the sufferings and sacrifices that they had only recently passed through had brought the men and women of the working class closer together, put them on an equal footing. It appeared particularly unjust at that moment to turn to the woman fighter and citizen and underline her age-old lack of rights. When the Shidlovsky commission refused to recognise the woman chosen as one of the seven delegates from the Sampsoniyevsky textile works, the indignant women workers representing several textile works decided to present to the commission the following protest declaration: 'Women deputies representing women workers are not allowed onto the commission under your chairmanship. We believe such a decision to be unjust. Women workers predominate in the factories and mills of St Petersburg. The number of women employed in spinning and weaving mills is increasing every year because the men are moving to factories that offer better pay. We, the women workers, bear a heavier burden of work. Because of our helplessness and lack of rights, we are kept down more by our comrades, and paid less. When this commission was announced, our hearts filled with hope; at last the time is coming — we thought — when the woman worker in St Petersburg will be able to speak out to the whole of Russia in the name of all her sister workers about the oppression, wrongs and humiliations of which the male worker can know nothing. And then, when we had already chosen our deputies, we were informed that only men can be deputies. However, we hope that this is not your final decision...<br /> <br /> The refusal to allow women workers the right of representation and their expulsion from political life constituted a blatant injustice for all that section of the female population that had carried on.its shoulders the burden of the liberation struggle. Women workers repeatedly attended pre-election meetings during the election campaigns for the First and Second Dumas, and noisily protested against a law that deprived them of any voice in a matter so important as the election of a representative to the Russian parliament. There were instances, for example in Moscow, when women workers came to meetings of electors, broke up the meeting and protested against the way the elections were being conducted.<br /> <br /> That women workers were no longer indifferent to their lack of rights is also shown by the fact that, of the 40,000 signatures on petitions addressed to the First and Second State Dumas demanding that electoral rights be extended to women also, a large majority were those of women workers. The collection of signatures was organised by the Alliance for Female Equality and other bourgeois women's organisations, and was conducted at plants and factories. The fact that women workers willingly signed petitions drawn up by bourgeois women also reveals that the political consciousness of women workers was only just awakening, that they were taking their first, hesitant steps, still stopping half-way. The women workers were becoming aware of their deprivation and lack of political rights, but were still unable to link this fact with the common struggle of their own class, were unable to find the correct path that would lead proletarian women to their full and comprehensive emancipation. The woman worker still naively accepted the hand held out to her by bourgeois feminists. The suffragettes turned to the working women, hoping to draw them onto their side, get their support and organise them into purely feminine, supposedly non-class, but essentially bourgeois alliances. However, a healthy class instinct and a deep mistrust of the 'fine ladies' saved women workers from being attracted to feminism and prevented any long or stable fraternisation with bourgeois suffragettes.<br /> <br /> The years 1905 and 1906 were marked by a particularly large number of women's meetings eagerly attended by women workers. The women workers listened carefully to the voice of the bourgeois suffragettes, but what was offered to them did not satisfy the urgent needs of those enslaved to capital, and did not evoke any whole-hearted response. The women of the working class were exhausted by the burden of intolerable working conditions, hunger and the material insecurity of their families; their immediate demands were: a shorter working day, higher pay, a more humane attitude on the part of the factory administration, less police surveillance, more freedom of action. All these demands were alien to bourgeois feminism. The suffragettes approached the women workers with narrowly feminine causes and aspirations. They did not and could not understand the class nature of the emerging women workers' movement. They were particularly disappointed by the domestic servants. On the initiative of the bourgeois feminists, the first meetings of domestic servants were held in St Petersburg and Moscow in 1905. The domestic servants eagerly responded to this call to 'organise' and turned up at the early meetings in large numbers. However, when the Alliance for Female Equality tried to organise them to its own taste, i.e. to set up an idyllic, mixed alliance between lady employers and domestic employees, the domestic servants turned away from the suffragettes and, to the disappointment of the bourgeois ladies, 'hastened to join their own class party, organising their own special trade unions'. Such is the state of affairs in Moscow, Vladimir, Penza, Kharkov and a number of other cities. The same fate befell attempts by another political women's organisation even more to the right, the Women's Progressive Party, which attempted to organise domestic employees under the watchful eye of their mistresses. The domestic servants' movement overflowed the boundaries predetermined for it by the feminists. Look at the newspapers from 1905 and you will see that they abound in reports of direct action by domestic servants, even in the most remote regions of Russia. This action took the form either of mass strike action, or of street demonstrations. The strikes involved cooks, laundresses and maids; there were strikes according to profession, and strikes that united all 'domestic servants'. This protest by domestic employees spread like an infection from place to place. The demands made by the domestic servants were usually limited to an 8-hour working day, a minimum wage, more tolerable living conditions (a separate room), polite treatment by the employer, etc.<br /> <br /> This political awakening of women was, moreover, not limited to the urban poor. For the first time in Russia, the Russian peasant woman also raised her voice persistently and resolutely. The end of 1904 and the whole of 1905 is a period of continuous 'petticoat rebellions', sparked off by the war against Japan. All the horrors and deprivations, all the social and economic ills that stemmed from this ill-fated war, weighed down on the peasant woman, wife and mother. The conscription of reserves placed a double burden of work and worry on her already overloaded shoulders, and forced her, hitherto dependent and fearful of everything that lay beyond the circle of her domestic interests, to meet face to face previously unsuspected hostile forces, and to become consciously aware of all her humiliation and deprivation, drain to the last drop the whole bitter cup of unmerited wrongs... Illiterate, downtrodden peasant women left their homes and villages for the first time and hurried into town to wear down the steps of government offices in the attempt to obtain some news of their husbands, sons, and fathers, to petition for financial assistance and defend their interests... The total lack of rights that was the peasant's lot, the lies and injustice of the existing social order, stood in all their naked ugliness before the bewildered peasant woman... She returned from town sober and hardened, bearing in her heart an inexhaustible supply of bitterness, hatred and anger... In the summer of 1905 a whole series of 'petticoat rebellions' broke out in the south. Filled with anger and with a boldness surprising for women, the peasant women attacked military and police headquarters where the army recruits were stationed, seized their menfolk and took them home. Armed with rakes, pitchforks and brooms, peasant women drove the armed guards from the villages. They are protesting in their own way against the intolerable burden of war. They are, of course, arrested, tried and given severe punishments, but the 'petticoat rebellions' continue. In this protest, defence of peasant interests and of purely 'female' interests are so closely interwoven that there are no grounds for dividing them and classing the 'petticoat rebellions' as part of the 'feminist movement'.<br /> <br /> Following the 'political demonstrations' by the peasant women there come a series of 'petticoat rebellions' on economic grounds. This is the period of universal peasant unrest and agricultural strikes. The 'petticoats' sometimes initiated these disturbances, drawing the men after them. There were cases when, having failed to involve the men, the women marched to the manors by themselves to present their demands and ultimata. Arming themselves with whatever came to hand, they went ahead of the men to meet the punitive detachments. The downtrodden peasant woman, oppressed for centuries, suddenly became one of the central figures in the political drama. During the whole revolutionary period the peasant women, standing always united with their menfolk, guarded and defended peasant interests, and with amazing tact and sensitivity referred to their special, women's needs only when that did not endanger the common peasant cause.<br /> <br /> This did not mean that the peasant women were indifferent to their needs as women, that they ignored them. On the contrary, the mass emergence of peasant women onto the political arena, their mass participation in the common struggle, reinforced and developed their feminine self awareness. By November, 1905, the peasant women of the Voronezh province sent two of their own deputies to the peasant congress with instructions from the women's gathering to demand 'political rights' and 'freedom' for women on an equal basis with men. [1]<br /> <br /> The female peasant population of the Caucasus defended their rights with particular vigour. The Guria peasant women at village meetings in the Kutaisi province adopted resolutions demanding political equality with men. At rural and urban meetings held to discuss the introduction of Zemstvos in Transcaucasia, the deputies representing the local population included Georgian women who insisted upon their rights as women.<br /> <br /> While demanding political equality, the peasant women naturally always raised their voices in defence of their economic interests; the question of 'allotments' of land, concerned the peasant woman as much as it did the peasant man. In some regions, peasant women who had enthusiastically supported the idea of expropriating private land, cooled in their support for this measure when the question arose as to whether the women would be included in the count to determine the size of the land allotment. 'If the land is taken from the landowners and given only to the men,' the women argued anxiously, 'then we will face real slavery. At present we can at least earn a few kopecks on our own account, whereas if that were to happen, we will simply be working for the men.' However, the fears of the peasant women proved to be completely unfounded; simple economic calculation obliged the peasantry to insist that land also be given to the women. The agrarian interests of the male and female sections of the peasantry were so closely interwoven that the men, in fighting to abolish the existing agricultural bondage for themselves, inevitably defended at the same time the economic interests of their womenfolk.<br /> <br /> However, in fighting for the economic and political interests of the peasantry as a whole, the peasant woman also learned how to fight for her own specific needs and requirements as a woman. The same held true for the woman worker; with her unfailing participation in the whole liberation movement she, even more than the peasant woman, prepared public opinion to accept the principle of female equality. The idea of civic equality for women, now implemented in Soviet Russia, was spread through society not by the heroic efforts of individual women with forceful personalities, not by the struggle of the bourgeois feminists, but by the spontaneous pressure of broad masses of working and peasant women, who had been roused into life by the thunder of the first Russian revolution in 1905.<br /> <br /> In 1909, in my book ''The Social Basis of the Women's Question,'' I said, arguing against the bourgeois feminists, against whom the whole of my book is directed: 'If the peasant woman does succeed in achieving in the near future an improvement in her domestic, economic and legal position, this will naturally be thanks only to the combined, united efforts of peasant democracy directed at obtaining the fulfilment of those peasant demands which, in one form or another, continue to be heard in the peasant milieu. Attempts by the feminists to &quot;clear the way for women&quot;, are here irrelevant... If the peasant woman does free herself from the present agrarian bondage, she will receive more than all the feminist organisations put together could give her.'<br /> <br /> These words, written ten years ago, have now been fully vindicated. The Great October Revolution has not only fulfilled the basic, urgent demand of the peasantry of both sexes that the land be transferred into the hands of those who work it, but has also raised the peasant woman to the honourable position of a free citizen equal in every respect, and now enslaved only by old methods of agricultural work and by still persisting family traditions and mores.<br /> <br /> That of which the working and peasant women could only dream in the days of the first Russian revolution in 1905 has been translated into reality by the Great October Revolution of 1917.<br /> <br /> Woman in Russia has achieved political equality. However she owes this achievement not to co-operation with bourgeois suffragettes, but to a joint, united struggle with her comrade workers in the ranks of her own working class.<br /> [[Category:Library works by Alexandra Kollontai]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about feminism]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about the Soviet Union]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:The_social_basis_of_the_woman_question&diff=76017 2024-09-30T12:47:03Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=The Social Basis of the Woman Question|author=Alexandra Kollontai|written in=1909|type=Pamphlet|source=https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1909/social-basis.htm|display_title=yes}}<br /> <br /> Leaving it to the bourgeois scholars to absorb themselves in discussion of the question of the superiority of one sex over the other, or in the weighing of brains and the comparing of the psychological structure of men and women, the followers of historical materialism fully accept the natural specificities of each sex and demand only that each person, whether man or woman, has a real opportunity for the fullest and freest self-determination, and the widest scope for the development and application of all natural inclinations. The followers of historical materialism reject the existence of a special woman question separate from the general social question of our day. Specific economic factors were behind the subordination of women; natural qualities have been a secondary factor in this process. Only the complete disappearance of these factors, only the evolution of those forces which at some point in the past gave rise to the subjection of women, is able in a fundamental way to influence and change their social position. In other words, women can become truly free and equal only in a world organised along new social and productive lines.<br /> <br /> This, however, does not mean that the partial improvement of woman’s life within the framework of the modern system is impossible. The radical solution of the workers’ question is possible only with the complete reconstruction of modem productive relations; but must this prevent us from working for reforms which would serve to satisfy the most urgent interests of the proletariat? On the contrary, each new gain of the working class represents a step leading mankind towards the kingdom of freedom and social equality: each right that woman wins brings her nearer the defined goal of full emancipation.<br /> <br /> Social democracy was the first to include in its programme the demand for the equalisation of the rights of women with those of men; in speeches and in print the party demands always and everywhere the withdrawal of limitations affecting women; it is the party’s influence alone that has forced other parties and governments to carry out reforms in favour of women. And in Russia this party is not only the defender of women in terms of its theoretical positions but always and everywhere adheres to the principle of women’s equality.<br /> <br /> What, in this case, hinders our “equal righters” from accepting the support of this strong and experienced party? The fact is that however “radical” the equal righters may be, they are still loyal to their own bourgeois class. Political freedom is at the moment an essential prerequisite for the growth and power of the Russian bourgeoisie, without it, all the economic welfare of the latter will turn out to have been built upon sand. The demand for political equality is for women a necessity that stems from life itself.<br /> <br /> The slogan of “access to the professions” has ceased to suffice; only direct participation in the government of the country promises to assist in raising women’s economic situation. Hence the passionate desire of women of the middle bourgeoisie to gain the franchise, and hence their hostility to the modern bureaucratic system.<br /> <br /> However, in their demands for political equality our feminists are like their foreign sisters; the wide horizons opened by social democratic learning remain alien and incomprehensible to them. The feminists seek equality in the framework of the existing class society, in no way do they attack the basis of this society. They fight for prerogatives for themselves, without challenging the existing prerogatives and privileges. We do not accuse the representatives of the bourgeois women’s movement of failure to understand the matter; their view of things flows inevitably from their class position.<br /> <br /> == The Struggle for Economic Independence ==<br /> First of all we must ask ourselves whether a single united women’s movement is possible in a society based on class contradictions. The fact that the women who take part in the liberation movement do not represent one homogeneous mass is clear, to every unbiased observer.<br /> <br /> The women’s world is divided, just as is the world of men, into two camps; the interests and aspirations of one group of women bring it close to the bourgeois class, while the other group has close connections with the proletariat, and its claims for liberation encompass a full solution to the woman question. Thus although both camps follow the general slogan of the “liberation of women”, their aims and interests are different. Each of the groups unconsciously takes its starting point from the interests of its own class, which gives a specific class colouring to the targets and tasks it sets itself.<br /> <br /> However apparently radical the demands of the feminists, one must not lose sight of the fact that the feminists cannot, on account of their class position, fight for that fundamental transformation of the contemporary economic and social structure of society without which the liberation of women cannot be complete.<br /> <br /> If in certain circumstances the short-term tasks of women of all classes coincide, the final aims of the two camps, which in the long term determine the direction of the movement and the tactics to be used, differ sharply. While for the feminists the achievement of equal rights with men in the framework of the contemporary capitalist world represents a sufficiently concrete end in itself, equal rights at the present time are, for the proletarian women, only a means of advancing the struggle against the economic slavery of the working class. The feminists see men as the main enemy, for men have unjustly seized all rights and privileges for themselves, leaving women only chains and duties. For them a victory is won when a prerogative previously enjoyed exclusively by the male sex is conceded to the “fair sex”. Proletarian women have a different attitude. They do not see men as the enemy and the oppressor; on the contrary, they think of men as their comrades, who share with them the drudgery of the daily round and fight with them for a better future. The woman and her male comrade are enslaved by the same social conditions; the same hated chains of capitalism oppress their will and deprive them of the joys and charms of life. It is true that several specific aspects of the contemporary system lie with double weight upon women, as it is also true that the conditions of hired labour sometimes turn working women into competitors and rivals to men. But in these unfavourable situations, the working class knows who is guilty.<br /> <br /> The woman worker, no less than her brother in misfortune, hates that insatiable monster with its gilded maw which, concerned only to drain all the sap from its victims and to grow at the expense of millions of human lives, throws itself with equal greed at man, woman and child. Thousands of threads bring the working man close. The aspirations of the bourgeois woman, on the other hand, seem strange and incomprehensible. They are not warming to the proletarian heart; they do not promise the proletarian woman that bright future towards which the eyes of all exploited humanity are turned.<br /> <br /> The proletarian women’s final aim does not, of course, prevent them from desiring to improve their status even within the framework of the current bourgeois system, but the realisation of these desires is constantly hindered by obstacles that derive from the very nature of capitalism. A woman can possess equal rights and be truly free only in a world of socialised labour, of harmony and justice. The feminists are unwilling and incapable of understanding this; it seems to them that when equality is formally accepted by the letter of the law they will be able to win a comfortable place for themselves in the old world of oppression, enslavement and bondage, of tears and hardship. And this is true up to a certain point. For the majority of women of the proletariat, equal rights with men would mean only an equal share in inequality, but for the “chosen few”, for the bourgeois women, it would indeed open doors to new and unprecedented rights and privileges that until now have been enjoyed by men of the bourgeois class alone. But each new concession won by the bourgeois woman would give her yet another weapon for the exploitation of her younger sister and would go on increasing the division between the women of the two opposite social camps. Their interests would be more sharply in conflict, their aspirations more obviously in contradiction.<br /> <br /> Where, then, is that general “woman question”? Where is that unity of tasks and aspirations about which the feminists have so much to say? A sober glance at reality shows that such unity does not and cannot exist. In vain the feminists try to assure themselves that the “woman question” has nothing to do with that of the political party and that “its solution is possible only with the participation of all parties and all women”; as one of the radical German feminists has said, the logic of facts forces us to reject this comforting delusion of the feminists.<br /> <br /> The conditions and forms of production have subjugated women throughout human history, and have gradually relegated them to the position of oppression and dependence in which most of them existed until now.<br /> <br /> A colossal upheaval of the entire social and economic structure was required before women could begin to retrieve the significance and independence they had lost. Problems which at one time seemed too difficult for the most talented thinkers have now been solved by the inanimate but all-powerful conditions of production. The same forces which for thousands of years enslaved women now, at a further stage of development, are leading them along the path to freedom and independence.<br /> <br /> The woman question assumed importance for woman of the bourgeois classes approximately in the middle of the nineteenth century — a considerable time after the proletarian women had arrived in the labour arena. Under the impact of the monstrous successes of capitalism, the middle classes of the population were hit by waves of need. The economic changes had rendered the financial situation of the petty and middle bourgeoisie unstable, and the bourgeois women were faced with a dilemma of menacing proportions, either accept poverty, or achieve the right to work. Wives and daughters of these social groups began to knock at the doors of the universities, the art salons, the editorial houses, the offices, flooding to the professions that were open to them. The desire of bourgeois women to gain access to science and the higher benefits of culture was not the result of a sudden, maturing need but stemmed from that same question of “daily bread”.<br /> <br /> The women of the bourgeoisie met, from the very first, with stiff resistance from men. A stubborn battle was waged between the professional men, attached to their “cosy little jobs”, and the women who were novices in the matter of earning their daily bread. This struggle gave rise to “feminism” — the attempt of bourgeois women to stand together and pit their common strength against the enemy, against men. As they entered the labour arena these women proudly referred to themselves as the “vanguard of the women’s movement”. They forgot that in this matter of winning economic independence they were, as in other fields, travelling in the footsteps of their younger sisters and reaping the fruits of the efforts of their blistered hands.<br /> <br /> Is it then really possible to talk of the feminists pioneering the road to women’s work, when in every country hundreds of thousands of proletarian women had flooded the factories and workshops, taking over one branch of industry after another, before the bourgeois women’s movement was ever born? Only thanks to the fact that the labour of women workers had received recognition on the world market were the bourgeois women able to occupy the independent position in society in which the feminists take so much pride.<br /> <br /> We find it difficult to point to even one fact in the history of the struggle of the proletarian women to improve their material conditions to which the general feminist movement has contributed significantly. Whatever the proletarian women have achieved in the sphere of raising their own living standards is the result of the efforts of the working class in general and of themselves in particular. The history of the struggle of the working women for better conditions of labour and for a more decent life is the history of the struggle of the proletariat for its liberation.<br /> <br /> What, if not the fear of a dangerous explosion of proletarian dissatisfaction, forces the factory owners to raise the price of labour, reduce hours and introduce better working conditions? What, if not the fear of “labour unrest”, persuades the government to establish legislation to limit the exploitation of labour by capital?<br /> <br /> There is not one party in the world that has taken up the defence of women as social democracy has done. The working woman is first and foremost a member of the working class, and the more satisfactory the position and the general welfare of each member of the proletarian family, the greater the benefit in the long run to the whole of the working class.<br /> <br /> In face of the growing social difficulties, the sincere fighter for the cause must stop in sad bewilderment. She cannot but see how little the general women’s movement has done for proletarian women, how incapable it is of improving the working and living conditions of the working class. The future of humanity must seem grey, drab and uncertain to those women who are fighting for equality but who have not adopted the proletarian world outlook or developed a firm faith in the coming of a more perfect social system. While the contemporary capitalist world remains unchanged, liberation must seem to them incomplete and impartial. What despair must grip the more thoughtful and sensitive of these women. Only the working class is capable of maintaining morale in the modern world with its distorted social relations. With firm and measured step it advances steadily towards its aim. It draws the working women to its ranks. The proletarian woman bravely starts out on the thorny path of labour. Her legs sag; her body is torn. There are dangerous precipices along the way, and cruel beasts of prey are close at hand.<br /> <br /> But only by taking this path is the woman able to achieve that distant but alluring aim — her true liberation in a new world of labour. During this difficult march to the bright future the proletarian woman, until recently a humiliated, downtrodden slave with no rights, learns to discard the slave mentality that has clung to her, step by step she transforms herself into an independent worker, an independent personality, free in love. It is she, fighting in the ranks of the proletariat, who wins for women the right to work; it is she, the “younger sister”, who prepares the ground for the “free” and “equal” woman of the future.<br /> <br /> For what reason, then, should the woman worker seek a union with the bourgeois feminists? Who, in actual fact, would stand to gain in the event of such an alliance? Certainly not the woman worker. She is her own saviour; her future is in her own hands. The working woman guards her class interests and is not deceived by great speeches about the “world all women share”. The working woman must not and does not forget that while the aim of bourgeois women is to secure their own welfare in the framework of a society antagonistic to us, our aim is to build, in the place of the old, outdated world, a bright temple of universal labour, comradely solidarity and joyful freedom.<br /> <br /> == Marriage and the Problem of the Family ==<br /> Let us turn our attention to another aspect of the woman question, the question of the family. The importance that the solution of this urgent and complex question has for the genuine emancipation of women is well known. The struggle for political rights, for the right to receive doctorates and other academic degrees, and for equal pay for equal work, is not the full sum of the fight for equality. To become really free woman has to throw off the heavy chains of the current forms of the family, which are outmoded and oppressive. For women, the solution of the family question is no less important than the achievement of political equality and economic independence.<br /> <br /> In the family of today, the structure of which is confirmed by custom and law, woman is oppressed not only as a person but as a wife and mother, in most of the countries of the civilised world the civil code places women in a greater or lesser dependence on her husband, and awards the husband not, only the right to dispose of her property but also the right of moral and physical dominance over her.<br /> <br /> Where the official and legal servitude of women ends, the force we call “public opinion” begins. This public opinion is created and supported by the bourgeoisie with the aim of preserving “the sacred institution of property”. The hypocrisy of “double morality” is another weapon. Bourgeois society crushes woman with its savage economic vice, paying for her labour at a very low rate. The woman is deprived of the citizen’s right to raise her voice in defence of her interests: instead, she is given only the gracious alternative of the bondage of marriage or the embraces of prostitution — a trade despised and persecuted in public but encouraged and supported in secret. Is it necessary to emphasise the dark sides of contemporary married life and the sufferings women experience in connection with their position in the present family structure? So much has already been written and said on this subject. Literature is full of depressing pictures of the snares of married and family life. How many psychological dramas are enacted! How many lives are crippled! Here, it is only important for us to note that the modern family structure, to a lesser or greater extent, oppresses women of all classes and all layers of the population. Customs and traditions persecute the young mother whatever the stratum of the population to which she belongs; the laws place bourgeois women, proletarian women and peasant women all under the guardianship of their husbands.<br /> <br /> Have we not discovered at last that aspect of the woman question over which women of all classes can unite? Can they not struggle jointly against the conditions oppressing them? Is it not possible that the grief and suffering which women share in this instance will soften the claws of class antagonism and provide common aspirations and common action for the women of the different camps? Might it not be that on the basis of common desires and aims, co-operation between the bourgeois women and the proletarian women may become a possibility? The feminists are struggling for freer forms of marriage and for the “right to maternity”; they are raising their voices in defence of the prostitute, the human being persecuted by all. See how rich feminist literature is in the search for new forms of relationships and in enthusiastic demands for the “moral equality” of the sexes. Is it not true that while in the sphere of economic liberation the bourgeois women lag behind the many-million strong army of proletarian women who are pioneering the way for the “new woman”, in the fight for the solution, of the family question the laurels go to the feminists?<br /> <br /> Here in Russia, women of the middle bourgeoisie — that army of independent wage-earners thrown on to the labour market during the 1860s — have long since settled in practice many of the confused aspects of the marriage question. They have courageously replaced the “consolidated” family of the traditional church marriage with more elastic types of relationship that meet the needs of that social layer. But the subjective solution of this question by individual women does not change the situation and does not relieve the overall gloomy picture of family life. If any force is destroying the modern form of the family, it is not the titanic efforts of separate and stronger individuals but the inanimate and mighty forces of production, which are uncompromisingly budding life, on new foundation’s.<br /> <br /> The heroic struggle of individual young women of the bourgeois world, who fling down the gauntlet and demand of society the right to “dare to love” without orders and without chains, ought to serve as an example for all women languishing in family chains — this is what is preached by the more emancipated feminists abroad and our progressive equal righters at home. The marriage question, in other words, is solved in their view without reference to the external situation; it is solved independently of changes in the economic structure of society. The isolated, heroic efforts of individuals is enough. Let a woman simply “dare”, and the problem of marriage is solved.<br /> <br /> But less heroic women shake their heads in distrust. “It is all very well for the heroines of novels blessed by the prudent author with great independence, unselfish friends and extraordinary qualities of charm, to throw down the gauntlet. But what about those who have no capital, insufficient wages, no friends and little charm?” And the question of maternity preys on the mind of the woman who strives for freedom. Is “free love” possible? Can it be realised as a common phenomenon, as the generally accepted norm rather than the individual exception, given the economic structure of our society? Is it possible to ignore the element of private property in contemporary marriage? Is it possible, in an individualistic world, to ignore the formal marriage contract without damaging the interests of women? For the marital contract is the only guarantee that all the difficulties of maternity will not fall on the woman alone. Will not that which once happened to the male worker now happen to the woman? The removal of guild regulations, without the establishment of new rules governing the conduct of the masters, gave capital absolute power over the workers. The tempting slogan “freedom of contract for labour and capital” became a means for the naked exploitation of labour by capital. “Free love”, introduced consistently into contemporary class society, instead of freeing woman from the hardships of family life, would surely shoulder her with a new burden — the task of caring, alone and unaided, for her children.<br /> <br /> Only a whole number of fundamental reforms in the sphere of social relations — reforms transposing obligations from the family to society and the state — could create a situation where the principle of “free love” might to some extent be fulfilled. But can we seriously expect the modern class state, however democratic it may be, to take upon itself the duties towards mothers and children which at present are undertaken by that individualistic unit, the modern family? Only the fundamental transformation of all productive relations could create the social prerequisites to protect women from the negative aspects of the “free love” formula. Are we not aware of the depravity and abnormalities that in present conditions are anxious to pass themselves off under this convenient label? Consider all those gentlemen owning and administering industrial enterprises who force women among their workforce and clerical staff to satisfy their sexual whims, using the threat of dismissal to achieve their ends. Are they not, in their own way, practising “free love”? All those “masters of the house” who rape their servants and throw them out pregnant on to the street, are they not adhering to the formula of “free love”?<br /> <br /> But we are not talking of that kind of ‘freedom’ object the advocates of free marriage. On the contrary, we demand the acceptance of a ‘single morality’ equally binding for both sexes. We oppose the sexual licence that is current, and view as moral only the free union that is based on true love.” But, my dear friends, do you not think that your ideal of “free marriage”, when practised in the conditions of present society, might produce results that differ little from the distorted practice of sexual freedom? Only when women are relieved of all those material burdens which at the present time create a dual dependence, on capital and on the husband, can the principle of “free love” be implemented without bringing new grief for women in its wake. As women go out to, work and achieve economic independence, certain possibilities for “free love” appear, particularly for the better-paid women of the intelligentsia. But the dependence of women on capital remains, and this dependence increases as more and more proletarian women sell their labour power. Is the slogan “free love” capable of improving the sad existence of these women, who earn only just enough to keep themselves alive? And anyway, is not “free love” already practised among the working classes and practised so widely that the bourgeoisie has on more than one occasion raised the alarm and campaigned against the “depravity” and “immorality” of the proletariat? It should be noted that when the feminists enthuse about the new forms of cohabitation outside marriage that should be considered by the emancipated bourgeois woman, they speak of “free love”, but when the working class is under discussion these relationships are scornfully referred to as “disorderly sexual intercourse”. This sums up their attitude.<br /> <br /> But for proletarian women at the present time all relationships, whether sanctified by the church or not, are equally harsh in their consequences. The crux of the family and marriage problem lies for the proletarian wife and mother not in the question of the sacred or secular external form, but in the attendant social and economic, conditions which define the complicated obligations of the working-class woman, of course it matters to her too whether her husband has the right to dispose of her earnings, whether he has the right by law to force her to live with him when she does not want to, whether the husband can forcibly take her children away etc. However, it is not such paragraphs of the civic code that determine the position of woman in the family, nor is it these paragraphs which make for the confusion and complexity of the family problem. The question of relationships would cease to be such a painful one for the majority of women only if society, relieved women of all those petty household cares which are at present unavoidable (given the existence of individual, scattered domestic economies), took over responsibility for the younger generation, protected maternity and gave the mother to the child for at least the first months after birth.<br /> <br /> In opposing the legal and sacred church marriage contract, the feminists are fighting a fetish. The proletarian women, on the other hand, are waging war against the factors that are behind the modern form of marriage and family. In striving to change fundamentally the conditions of life, they know that they are also helping to reform relationships between the sexes. Here we have the main difference between the bourgeois and proletarian approach to the difficult problem of the family.<br /> <br /> The feminists and the social reformers from the camp of the bourgeoisie, naively believing in the possibility of creating new forms of family and new types of marital relations against the dismal background of the contemporary class society, tie themselves in knots in their search for these new forms. If life itself has not vet produced these forms, it is necessary, they seem to imagine, to think them up whatever the cost. There must, they believe, be modern forms of sexual relationship which are capable of solving the complex family problem under the present social system. And the ideologists of the bourgeois world — the journalists, writers and prominent women fighters for emancipation one after the other put forward their “family panacea”, their new “family formula”.<br /> <br /> How utopian these marriage formulas sound. How feeble these palliatives, when considered in the light of the gloomy reality of our modern family structure. Before these formulas of “free relationships” and “free love” can become practice, it is above all necessary that a fundamental reform of all social relationships between people take place; furthermore, the moral and sexual norms and the whole psychology of mankind would have to undergo a thorough evolution, is the contemporary person psychologically able to cope with “free love&quot;? What about the jealousy that eats into even the best human souls? And that deeply-rooted sense of property that demands the possession not only of the body but also of the soul of another? And the inability to have the proper respect for the individuality of another? The habit of either subordinating oneself to the loved one, or of subordinating the loved one to oneself? And the bitter and desperate feeling of desertion, of limitless loneliness, which is experienced when the loved ceases to love and leaves? Where can the lonely person, who is an individualist to the very core of his being, find solace? The collective, with its joys and disappointments and aspirations, is the best outlet for the emotional and intellectual energies of the individual. But is modern man capable of working with this collective in such a way as to feel the mutually interacting influences? Is the life of the collective really capable, at present, of replacing the individual’s petty personal joys? Without the “unique,” “one-and-only” twin soul, even the socialist, the collectivist, is quite alone in the present antagonistic world; only in the working class do we catch the pale glimpse of the future, of more harmonious and more social relations between people. The family problem is as complex and many-faceted as life itself. Our social system is incapable of solving it.<br /> <br /> Other marriage formulas have been put forward. Several progressive women and social thinkers regard the marriage union only as a method of producing progeny. Marriage in itself, they hold, does not have any special value for woman — motherhood is her purpose, her sacred aim, her task in life. Thanks to such inspired advocates as Ruth Bray and Ellen Key, the bourgeois ideal that recognises woman as a female rather than a person has acquired a special halo of progressiveness. Foreign literature has seized upon the slogan put forward by these advanced women with enthusiasm. And even here in Russia, in the period before the political storm [of 1905], before social values came in for revision, the question of maternity had attracted the attention of the daily press. The slogan “the right to maternity” cannot help producing lively response in the broadest circles of the female population. Thus, despite the fact that all the suggestions of the feminists in this connection were of the utopian variety, the problem was too important and topical not to attract women.<br /> <br /> The “right to maternity” is the kind of question that touches not only women from the bourgeois class but also, to an even greater extent, proletarian women as well. The right to be a mother — these are golden words that go straight to “any women’s heart” and force that heart to beat faster. The right to feed “one’s own” child with one’s own milk, and to attend the first signs of its awakening consciousness, the right to care for its tiny body and shield its tender soul from the thorns and sufferings of the first steps in life — what mother would not support these demands?<br /> <br /> It would seem that we have again stumbled on an issue that could serve as a moment of unity between women of different social layers: it would seem that we have found, at last, the bridge uniting women of the two hostile worlds. Let us look closer, to discover what the progressive bourgeois women understand by “the right to maternity”. Then we can see whether, in fact, proletarian women can agree with the solutions to the problem of maternity envisaged by the bourgeois fighters for equal rights. In the eyes of its eager apologists, maternity possesses an almost sacred quality. Striving to smash the false prejudices that brand a woman for engaging in a natural activity — the bearing of a child — because the activity has not been sanctified by the law, the fighters for the right to maternity have bent the stick in the other direction: for them, maternity has become the aim of a woman’s life.<br /> <br /> Ellen Key’s devotion to the obligations of maternity and the family forces her to give an assurance that the isolated family unit will continue to exist even in a society transformed along socialist lines. The only change, as she sees it, will be that all the attendant elements of convenience or of material gain will be excluded from the marriage union, which will be concluded according to mutual inclinations, without rituals or formalities — love and marriage will be truly synonymous. But the isolated family unit is the result of the modern individualistic world, with its rat-race, its pressures, its loneliness; the family is a product of the monstrous capitalist system. And yet Key hopes to bequeath the family to socialist society! Blood and kinship ties at present often serve, it is true, as the only support in life, as the only refuge in times of hardship and misfortune. But will they be morally or socially necessary in the future? Key does not answer this question. She has too loving a regard for the “ideal family”, this egoistic unit of the middle bourgeoisie to which the devotees of the bourgeois structure of society look with such reverence.<br /> <br /> But it is not only the talented though erratic Ellen Key who loses her way in the social contradictions. There is probably no other question about which socialists themselves are so little in agreement as the question of marriage and the family. Were we to try and organise a survey among socialists, the results would most probably be very curious. Does the family wither away? or are there grounds for believing that the family disorders of the present are only a transitory crisis? Will the present form of the family be preserved in the future society, or will it be buried with the modern capitalist system? These are questions which might well receive very different answers.<br /> <br /> With the transfer of educative functions from the family to society, the last tie holding together the modern isolated family will be loosened; the process of disintegration will proceed at an even faster pace, and the pale silhouettes of future marital relations will begin to emerge. What can we say about these indistinct silhouettes, hidden as they are by present-day influences?<br /> <br /> Does one have to repeat that the present compulsory form of marriage will be replaced by the free union of loving individuals? The ideal of free love drawn by the hungry imagination of women fighting for their emancipation undoubtedly corresponds to some extent to the norm of relationships between the sexes that society will establish. However, the social influences are so complex and their interactions so diverse that it is impossible to foretell what the relationships of the future, when the whole system has fundamentally been changed, will he like. But the slowly maturing evolution of relations between the sexes is clear evidence that ritual marriage and the compulsive isolated family are doomed to disappear.<br /> <br /> == The Struggle for Political Rights ==<br /> The feminists answer our criticisms by saying: even if the arguments behind our defence of the political rights of women seem to you mistaken, is the importance of the demand itself, which is equally urgent for feminists and for representatives of the working class, thereby reduced? Cannot the women of the two social camps, for the sake of their common political aspirations, surmount the barriers of class antagonism that divide them? Surely they are capable of waging a common struggle against the hostile forces that surround them? Division between bourgeois and proletarian is inevitable as far as other questions are concerned, but in the case of this particular question, the feminists imagine,, the women of the various social classes have no differences.<br /> <br /> Feminists keep returning to these arguments with bitterness and bewilderment, seeing preconceived notions of partisan loyalty in the refusal of representatives of the working class to join forces with them in the struggle for women’s political rights. Is this really the case?<br /> <br /> Is there a complete identity of political aspirations, or does antagonism hinder the creation of an indivisible, above-class army of women in this instance as in all others? We have to answer this question before we can outline the tactics that proletarian women will employ in winning political rights for their sex.<br /> <br /> The feminists declare themselves to be on the side of social reform, and some of them even say they are in favour of socialism — in the far distant future, of course — but they are not intending to struggle in the ranks of the working class for the realisation of these aims. The best of them believe, with a naive sincerity, that once the deputies’ seats are within their reach they will be able to cure the social sores which have in their view developed because men, with their inherent egoism, have been masters of the situation. However good the intentions of individual groups of feminists towards the proletariat, whenever the question of class struggle has been posed they have left the battlefield in a fright. They find that they do not wish to interfere in alien causes, and prefer to retire to their bourgeois liberalism which is so comfortably familiar.<br /> <br /> No, however much the bourgeois feminists try to repress the true aim of their political desires, however much they assure their younger sisters that involvement in political life promises immeasurable benefits for the women of the working class, the bourgeois spirit that pervades the whole feminist movement gives a class colouring even to the demand for equal political rights with men, which would seem to be a general women’s demand. Different aims and understandings of how political rights are to be used create an unbridgeable gulf between bourgeois and proletarian women. This does not contradict the fact that the immediate tasks of the two groups of women coincide to a certain degree, for the representatives of all classes which have received access to political power strive above all to achieve a review of the civil code, which in every country, to a greater or lesser extent, discriminates against women. Women press for legal changes that create more favourable conditions of labour for themselves; they stand together against the regulations legalising prostitution etc. However, the coincidence of these immediate tasks is of a purely formal nature. For class interest determines that the attitude of the two groups to these reforms is sharply contradictory.<br /> Class instinct — whatever the feminists say — always shows itself to be more powerful than the noble enthusiasms of “above-class” politics. So long as the bourgeois women and their “younger sisters” are equal in their inequality, the former can, with complete sincerity, make great efforts to defend the general interests of women. But once the barrier is down and the bourgeois women have received access to political activity, the recent defenders of the “rights of all women” become enthusiastic defenders of the privileges of their class, content to leave the younger sisters with no rights at all. Thus, when the feminists talk to working women about the need for a common struggle to realise some “general women’s” principle, women of the working class are naturally distrustful.<br /> [[Category:Library works by Alexandra Kollontai]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about feminism]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Communism_and_the_family&diff=76016 2024-09-30T12:47:03Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Communism and the Family|author=Alexandra Kollontai|written in=1920|type=Essay|source=https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm}}<br /> <br /> == Women’s role in production: its effect upon the family ==<br /> Will the family continue to exist under communism? Will the family remain in the same form? These questions are troubling many women of the working class and worrying their menfolk as well. Life is changing before our very eyes; old habits and customs are dying out, and the whole life of the proletarian family is developing in a way that is new and unfamiliar and, in the eyes of some, “bizarre”. No wonder that working women are beginning to think these questions over. Another fact that invites attention is that divorce has been made easier in Soviet Russia. The decree of the Council of People’s Commissars issued on 18 December 1917 means that divorce is, no longer a luxury that only the rich can afford; henceforth, a working woman will not have to petition for months or even for years to secure the right to live separately from a husband who beats her and makes her life a misery with his drunkenness and uncouth behaviour. Divorce by mutual agreement now takes no more than a week or two to obtain. Women who are unhappy in their married life welcome this easy divorce. But others, particularly those who are used to looking upon their husband as “breadwinners”, are frightened. They have not yet understood that a woman must accustom herself to seek and find support in the collective and in society, and not from the individual man.<br /> <br /> There is no point in not facing up to the truth: the old family in which the man was everything and the woman nothing, the typical family where the woman had no will of her own, no time of her own and no money of her own, is changing before our very eyes. But there is no need for alarm. It is only our ignorance that leads us to think that the things we are used to can never change. Nothing could be less true than the saying “as it was, so it shall be”. We have only to read how people lived in the past to see that everything is subject to change and that no customs, political organisations or moral principles are fixed and inviolable. In the course of history, the structure of the family has changed many times; it was once quite different from the family of today. There was a time when the kinship family was considered the norm: the mother headed a family consisting of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who lived and worked together. At another period the patriarchal family was the rule. In this case it was the father whose will was law for all the other members of the family: even today such families may be found among the peasantry in the Russian villages. Here the morals and customs of family life are not those of the urban proletariat. In the countryside, they observe norms which the worker has long forgotten. The structure of the family and the customs of family life also vary from nation to nation. Among some peoples such as the Turks. Arabs and Persians, a man is allowed to have several wives. There have been and there still are tribes where the woman may have several husbands. We are used to the fact that a young girl is expected to remain a virgin until marriage; however, there are tribes where it is a matter of pride to have had many lovers and where the women decorate their arms and legs with the corresponding number of bracelets. Many practices which might astonish us and which might even seem immoral are considered by other peoples to be quite normal and they, in their turn, consider our laws and customs “sinful”. There is, therefore, no reason to be frightened of the fact that the family is in the process of change, and that outdated and unnecessary things are being discarded and new relations between men and women developing our job is to decide which aspects of our family system are outdated and to determine what relations, between the men and women of the working and peasant classes and which rights and duties would best harmonise with the conditions of life in the new workers’ Russia. That which is in be With the new life should be maintained, while all that is old and outdated and derives from the cursed epoch of servitude and domination, of landed proprietors and capitalists, should be swept aside together with the exploiting class itself and the other enemies of the proletariat and the poor.<br /> <br /> The type of family to which the urban and rural proletariat has grown accustomed is one of these, legacies of the past. There was a time when the isolated, firmly-knit family, based on a church wedding, was equally necessary to all its members. If there had been no family, who would have fed, clothed and brought up the children? Who would have given them advice? In days gone by, to be an orphan was one of the worst fates imaginable. In the family of old, the husband earns and orts his wife and children. The wife for her part is occupied with housekeeping and with bringing up the children as best she can. But over the last hundred years this customary family structure has been falling apart in all the countries where capitalism is dominant and where the number of factories and other enterprises which employ hired labour is increasing. The customs and moral principles of family life are changing as the general conditions of life change. It is the universal spread of female labour that has contributed most of all to the radical change in family life. Formerly only the man was considered a breadwinner. But Russian women have for the past fifty or sixty years (and in other capitalist countries for a somewhat longer period of time) been forced to seek paid work outside the family and outside the home. The wages of the “breadwinner” being insufficient for the needs of the family, the woman found herself obliged to look for a wage and to knock at the factory door. With every year the number of working-class women starting work outside the home as day labourers, saleswomen, clerks, washerwomen and servants increased. Statistics show that in 1914, before the outbreak of the First World War, there were about sixty million women earning their own living in the countries of Europe and America, and during the war this number increased considerably. Almost half of these women are married. What kind of family life they must have can easily be imagined. What kind of “family life” can there be if the wife and mother is out at work for at least eight hours and, counting the travelling, is away from home for ten hours a day? Her home is neglected; the children grow up without any maternal care, spending most of the time out on the streets, exposed to all the dangers of this environment. The woman who is wife, mother and worker has to expend every ounce of energy to fulfil these roles. She has to work the same hours as her husband in some factory, printing-house or commercial establishment and then on top of that she has to find the time to attend to her household and look after her children. Capitalism has placed a crushing burden on woman’s shoulders: it has made her a wage-worker without having reduced her cares as housekeeper or mother. Woman staggers beneath the weight of this triple load. She suffers, her face is always wet with tears. Life has never been easy for woman, but never has her lot been harder and more desperate than that of the millions of working women under the capitalist yoke in this heyday of factory production.<br /> <br /> The family breaks down as more and more women go out to work. How can one talk about family life when the man and woman work different shifts, and where the wife does not even have the time to prepare a decent meal for her offspring? How can one talk of parents when the mother and father are out working all day and cannot find the time to spend even a few minutes with their children? It was quite different in the old days. The mother remained at home and occupied herself with her household duties; her children were at her side, under her watchful eye. Nowadays the working woman hastens out of the house early in the morning when the factory whistle blows. When evening comes and the whistle sounds again, she hurries home to scramble through the most pressing of her domestic tasks. Then it’s oil to work again the next morning, and she is tired from lack of sleep. For the married working woman, life is as had as the workhouse. It is not surprising therefore that family ties should loosen and the family begin to fall apart. The circumstances that held the family together no longer exist. The family is ceasing ''to be necessary either to its members or to the nation as a whole.'' The old family structure is now merely a hindrance. What used to make the old family so strong? First, because the husband and father was the family’s breadwinner; secondly, because the family economy was necessary to all its members: and thirdly, because children were brought up by their parents. What is left of this former type of family? The husband, as we have just seen, has ceased to he the sole breadwinner. The wife who goes to work earns wages. She has learned to cam her own living, to support her children and not infrequently her husband. The family now only serves as the primary economic unit of society and the supporter and educator of young children. Let us examine the matter in more detail, to see whether or not the family is about to be relieved of these tasks as well.<br /> <br /> == Housework ceases to be necessary ==<br /> There was a time when the women of the poorer classes in city and country spent their entire lives within the four walls of the home. A woman knew nothing beyond the threshold of her own home, and in most cases had no wish to know anything. After all, in her own home, there was so much to do, and this work was most necessary and useful not only for the family itself but also for the state as a whole. The woman did everything that the modern working and peasant woman has to do, but besides this cooking, washing, cleaning and mending, she spun wool and linen, wove cloth and garments, knitted stockings, made lace, prepared — as far as her resources permitted — all sorts of pickles, jams and other preserves for winter, and manufactured, her own candles. It is difficult to make a complete list of all her duties. That is how our mothers and grandmothers lived. Even today you may still come across remote villages deep in the country, far from the railroads and the big rivers, where this mode of life has been preserved and where the mistress of the house is overburdened with all kinds of chores over which the working woman of the big cities and of the populous industrial regions has long ceased to worry.<br /> <br /> In our grandmother’s day, all this domestic work was necessary and beneficial; it ensured the well-being of the family. The more the mistress of the house applied herself, the better the peasant or craftsman’s family lived. Even the national economy benefited from the housewife’s activity, for the woman did not limit herself to making soup and cooking potatoes (i.e. satisfying the Immediate needs of the family), she also produced such things as cloth, thread, butter, etc. which had a value as commodities that could be sold on the market. And every man, whether peasant or worker, tried to find a wife who had “hands of gold”, for he knew that a family could not get along without this “domestic labour”. The interests of the whole nation were involved, for the more work the woman and the other members of the family put into making cloth, leather and wool (the surplus of which was sold in the neighbouring market), the greater the economic prosperity of the country as a whole.<br /> <br /> But capitalism has changed all this. All that was formerly produced in the bosom of the family is now being manufactured on a mass scale in workshops and factories. The machine has superseded the wife. What housekeeper would now bother to make candles, spin wool or weave, cloth? All these products can be bought in the shop next door, formerly every girl would learn to knit stockings. Nowadays, what working woman would think of making her own? In the first place she doesn’t have the time. Time is money, and no one wants to waste time in an unproductive and useless manner. Few working women would start to pickle cucumbers or make other preserves when all these things can be bought in the shop. Even if the products sold in the store are of an inferior quality and not prepared with the care of the home-made equivalent the working woman has neither the time nor the energy needed to 1 perform these domestic operations. First and foremost she is a hired worker. Thus the family economy is gradually being deprived of all the domestic work without which our grandmothers could hardly have imagined a family. What was formerly produced in the family is now produced by the collective labour of working men and women in the factories.<br /> <br /> The family no longer produces; it only consumes. The housework that remains consists of cleaning (cleaning the floors, dusting, heating water, care of the lamps etc.), cooking (preparation of dinners and suppers), washing and the care of the linen and clothing of the “family (darning and mending). These are difficult and exhausting tasks and they absorb all the spare time and energy of the working woman who must, in addition, put in her hours at a factory. But this work is different in one important way from the work our grandmothers did: the four tasks enumerated above, which still serve to keep the family together, are of no value to the state and the national economy, for they do not create any new values or make any contribution to the prosperity of the country. The housewife may spend all day, from morning to evening, cleaning her home, she may wash and iron the linen daily, make every effort to keep her clothing in good order and prepare whatever dishes she pleases and her modest resources allow, and she will still end the day without having created any values. Despite her industry she would not have made anything that could be considered a commodity. Even if a working woman were to live a thousand years, she would still have to begin every day from the beginning. There would always be a new layer of dust to be removed from the mantelpiece, her husband would always come in hungry and her children bring in mud on their shoes.<br /> <br /> Women’s work is becoming less useful to the community as a whole. It is becoming unproductive. The individual household is dying. It is giving way in our society to collective housekeeping. Instead of the working woman cleaning her flat, the communist society can arrange for men and women whose job it is to go round in the morning cleaning rooms. The wives of the rich have long since been freed from these irritating and tiring domestic duties. Why should working woman continue to be burdened with them? In Soviet Russia the working woman should be surrounded by the same ease and light, hygiene and beauty that previously only the very rich could afford. Instead of the working woman having to struggle with the cooking and spend her last free hours in the kitchen preparing dinner and supper, communist society win organise public restaurants and communal kitchens.<br /> <br /> Even under capitalism such establishments have begun to appear. In fact over the last half a century the number of restaurants and cafes in all the great cities of Europe has been growing daily; they are springing up like mushrooms after the autumn rain. But under capitalism only people with well-lined purses can afford to take their meals in restaurants, while under communism everyone will be able to eat in the communal kitchens and dining-rooms. The working woman will not have to slave over the washtub any longer, or ruin her eyes in darning her stockings and mending her linen; she will simply take these things to the central laundries each week and collect the washed and ironed garments later. That will be another job less to do. Special clothes-mending centres will free the working woman from the hours spent on mending and give her the opportunity to devote her evenings to reading, attending meetings and concerts. Thus the four categories of housework are doomed to extinction with the victory of communism. And the working woman will surely have no cause to regret this. Communism liberates worm from her domestic slavery and makes her life richer and happier.<br /> <br /> == The state is responsible for the upbringing of children ==<br /> But even if housework disappears, you may argue, there are still the children to look after. But here too, the workers’ state will come to replace the family, society will gradually take upon itself all the tasks that before the revolution fell to the individual parents. Even before the revolution, the instruction of the child had ceased to be the duty of the parents. Once the children had attained school age the parents could breathe more freely, for they were no longer responsible for the intellectual development of their offspring. But there were still plenty of obligations to fulfil. There was still the matter of feeding the children, buying them shoes and clothes and seeing that they developed into skilled and honest workers able, when the time came, to earn their own living and feed and support their parents in old age. Few workers’ families however, were able to fulfil these obligations. Their low wages did not enable them to give the children enough to eat, while lack of free time prevented them from devoting the necessary attention to the education of the rising generation. The family is supposed to bring up the children, but in reality proletarian children grow up on the streets. Our forefathers knew some family life, but the children of the proletariat know none. Furthermore, the parents’ small income and the precarious position in which the family is placed financially often force the child to become an independent worker at scarcely ten years of age. And when children begin, to earn their own money they consider themselves their own masters, and the words and counsels of the parents are no longer law; the authority of the parents weakens, and obedience is at an end.<br /> <br /> Just as housework withers away, so the obligations of parents to their children wither away gradually until finally society assumes the full responsibility. Under capitalism children were frequently, too frequently, a heavy and unbearable burden on the proletarian family. Communist society will come to the aid of the parents. In Soviet Russia the Commissariats of Public Education and of Social Welfare are already doing much to assist the family. We already have homes for very small babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals and health resorts for sick children. restaurants, free lunches at school and free distribution of text books, warm clothing and shoes to schoolchildren. All this goes to show that the responsibility for the child is passing from the family to the collective.<br /> <br /> The parental care of children in the family could be divided into three parts: (a) the care of the very young baby, (b) the bringing up of the child, and (c) the instruction of the child. Even in capitalist society the education of the child in primary schools and later in secondary and higher educational establishments became the responsibility of the state. Even in capitalist society the needs of the workers were to some extent met by the provision of playgrounds, kindergartens, play groups, etc. The more the workers became conscious of their rights and the better they were organised, the more society had to relieve the family of the care of the children. But bourgeois society was afraid of going too far towards meeting the interests of the working class, lest this contribute to the break-up of the family. For the capitalists are well aware that the old type of family, where the woman is a slave and where the husband is responsible for the well-being of his wife and children, constitutes the best weapon in the struggle to stifle the desire of the working class for freedom and to weaken the revolutionary spirit of the working man and working woman. The worker is weighed down by his family cares and is obliged to compromise with capital. The father and mother are ready to agree to any terms when their children are hungry. Capitalist society has not been able to transform education into a truly social and state matter because the property owners, the bourgeoisie, have been against this.<br /> <br /> Communist society considers the social education of the rising generation to be one of the fundamental aspects of the new life. The old family, narrow and petty, where the parents quarrel and are only interested in their own offspring, is not capable of educating the “new person”. The playgrounds, gardens, homes and other amenities where the child will spend the greater part of the day under the supervision of qualified educators will, on the other hand, offer an environment in which the child can grow up a conscious communist who recognises the need for solidarity, comradeship, mutual help and loyalty to the collective. What responsibilities are left to the parents, when they no longer have to take charge of upbringing and education? The very small baby, you might answer, while it is still learning to walk and clinging to its mother’s skirt, still needs her attention. Here again the communist state hastens to the aid of the working mother. No longer will there be any women who are alone. The workers’ state aims to support every mother, married or unmarried, while she is suckling her child, and to establish maternity homes, day nurseries and other such facilities in every city and village, in order to give women the opportunity to combine work in society with maternity.<br /> <br /> Working mothers have no need to be alarmed; communist not intending to take children away from their parents or to tear the baby from the breast of its mother, and neither is it planning to take, violent measures to destroy the family. No such thing! The aims of communist society are quite different. Communist society sees that the old type of family is breaking up, and that all the old pillars which supported the family as a social unit are being removed: the domestic economy is dying, and working-class parents are unable to take care of their children or provide them with sustenance and education. Parents and children suffer equally from this situation. Communist society has this to say to the working woman and working man: “You are young, you love each other. Everyone has the right to happiness. Therefore live your life. Do not flee happiness. Do not fear marriage, even though under capitalism marriage was truly a chain of sorrow. Do not be afraid of having children. Society needs more workers and rejoices at the birth of every child. You do not have to worry about the future of your child; your child will know neither hunger nor cold.” Communist society takes care of every child and guarantees both him and his mother material and moral support. Society will feed, bring up and educate the child. At the same time, those parents who desire to participate in the education of their children will by no, means be prevented from doing so. Communist society will take upon itself all the duties involved in the education of the child, but the joys of parenthood will not be taken away from those who are capable of appreciating them. Such are the plans of communist society and they can hardly be interpreted as the forcible destruction of the family and the forcible separation of child from mother.<br /> <br /> There is no escaping the fact: the old type of family has had its day. The family is withering away not because it is being forcibly destroyed by the state, but because the family is ceasing to be a necessity. The state does not need the family, because the domestic economy is no longer profitable: the family distracts the worker from more useful and productive labour. The members of the family do not need the family either, because the task of bringing up the children which was formerly theirs is passing more and more into the hands of the collective. In place of the old relationship between men and women, a new one is developing: a union of affection and comradeship, a union of two equal members of communist society, both of them free, both of them independent and both of them workers. No more domestic bondage for women. No more inequality within the family. No need for women to fear being left without support and with children to bring up. The woman in communist society no longer depends upon her husband but on her work. It is not in her husband but in her capacity for work that she will find support. She need have no anxiety about her children. The workers’ state will assume responsibility for them. Marriage will lose all the elements of material calculation which cripple family life. Marriage will be a union of two persons who love and trust each other. Such a union promises to the working men and women who understand themselves and the world around them the most complete happiness and the maximum satisfaction. Instead of the conjugal slavery of the past, communist society offers women and men a free union which is strong in the comradeship which inspired it. Once the conditions of labour have been transformed and the material security of the working women has increased, and once marriage such as the church used to perform it — this so-called indissoluble marriage which was at bottom merely a fraud — has given place to the free and honest union of men and women who are lovers and comrades, prostitution will disappear. This evil, which is a stain on humanity and the scourge of hungry working women, has its roots in commodity production and the institution of private property. Once these economic forms are superseded, the trade in women will automatically disappear. The women of the working class, therefore, need not worry over the fact that the family is doomed to disappear. They should, on the contrary, welcome the dawn of a new society which will liberate women from domestic servitude, lighten the burden of motherhood and finally put an end to the terrible curse of prostitution.<br /> <br /> The woman who takes up the struggle for the liberation of the working class must learn to understand that there is no more room for the old proprietary attitude which says: “These are my children, I owe them all my maternal solicitude and affection; those are your children, they are no concern of mine and I don’t care if they go hungry and cold — I have no time for other children.” The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers.<br /> <br /> The workers’ state needs new relations between the sexes, just as the narrow and exclusive affection of the mother for her own children must expand until it extends to all the children of the great, proletarian family, the indissoluble marriage based on the servitude of women is replaced by a free union of two equal members of the workers’ state who are united by love and mutual respect. In place of the individual and egoistic family, a great universal family of workers will develop, in which all the workers, men and women, will above all be comrades. This is what relations between men and women, in the communist society will be like. These new relations will ensure for humanity all the joys of a love unknown in the commercial society of a love that is free and based on the true social equality of the partners.<br /> <br /> Communist society wants bright healthy children and strong, happy young people, free in their feelings and affections. In the name of equality, liberty and the comradely love of the new marriage we call upon the working and peasant men and women, to apply themselves courageously and with faith to the work of rebuilding human society, in order to render it more perfect, more just and more capable of ensuring the individual the happiness which he or she deserves. The red flag of the social revolution which flies above Russia and is now being hoisted aloft in other countries of the world proclaim the approach of the heaven on earth to which humanity has been aspiring for centuries.<br /> [[Category:Library works by Alexandra Kollontai]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about feminism]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Sexual_relations_and_the_class_struggle&diff=76015 2024-09-30T12:47:02Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle|author=Alexandra Kollontai|written in=1921|type=Essay|source=https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1921/sex-class-struggle.htm#footnote01-top|display_title=yes}}<br /> <br /> Among the many problems that demand the consideration and attention of contemporary mankind, sexual problems are undoubtedly some of the most crucial. There isn’t a country or a nation, apart from the legendary “islands”, where the question of sexual relationships isn’t becoming an urgent and burning issue. Mankind today is living through an acute sexual crisis which is far more unhealthy and harmful for being long and drawn-out. Throughout the long journey of human history, you probably won’t find a time when the problems of sex have occupied such a central place in the life of society; when the question of relationships between the sexes has been like a conjuror, attracting the attention of millions of troubled people; when sexual dramas have served as such a never-ending source of inspiration for every sort of art.<br /> <br /> As the crisis continues and grows more serious, people are getting themselves into an increasingly hopeless situation, and are trying desperately by every available means to settle the “insoluble question”. But with every new attempt to solve the problem, the confused knot of personal relationships gets more tangled. It’s as if we couldn’t see the one and only thread that could finally lead us to success in controlling the stubborn tangle. The sexual problem is like a vicious circle. and however frightened people are and however much they run this way and that, they are unable to break out.<br /> <br /> The conservatively inclined part of mankind argue that we should return to the happy times of the past, we should re-establish the old foundations of the family and strengthen the well-tried norms of sexual morality. The champions of bourgeois individualism say that we ought to destroy all the hypocritical restrictions of the obsolete code of sexual behaviour. These unnecessary and repressive “rags” ought to be relegated to the archives — only the individual conscience, the individual will of each person can decide such intimate questions. Socialists, on the other hand, assure us that sexual problems will only be settled when the basic reorganisation of the social and economic structure of society has been tackled. Doesn’t this “putting off the problem until tomorrow” suggest that we still haven’t found that one and only “magic thread”? Shouldn’t we find or at least locate this “magic thread” that promises to unravel the tangle? Shouldn’t we find it now, at this very moment?<br /> <br /> The history of human society, the history of the continual battle between various social groups and classes of opposing aims and interests, gives us the clue to finding this “thread”. It isn’t the first time that mankind has gone through a sexual crisis. This isn’t the first time that the pressure of a rushing tide of new values and ideals has blurred the clear and definite meaning of moral commandments about social relationships. The “sexual crisis” was particularly acute at the time of the Renaissance and the Reformation, when a great social advance pushed the proud and patriarchal feudal nobility who were used to absolute command into the background, and cleared the way for the development and establishment of a new social force — the bourgeoisie. The sexual morality of the feudal world had developed out of the depths of the “tribal way of life” — the collective economy and the tribal authoritarian leadership that stifles the individual will of the individual member. This clashed with the new and strange moral code of the rising bourgeoisie. The sexual morality of the bourgeoisie is founded on principles that are in sharp contradiction to the basic morality of feudalism. Strict individualism and the exclusiveness and isolation of the “nuclear family” replaced the emphasis on “collective work” that was characteristic of both the local and regional economic structure of patrimonial life. Under capitalism and the ethic of competition, the triumphant principles of individualism and exclusive private property, grew and destroyed whatever remained of the idea of the community, which was to some extent common to all types of tribal life. For a whole century, while the complex laboratory of life was turning the old norms into a new formula and achieving the outward harmony of moral ideas, men wandered confusedly between two very different sexual codes and attempted to accommodate themselves to both.<br /> <br /> But in those bright and colourful days of change, the sexual crisis, although profound, did not have the threatening character that it has assumed in our time. The main reason for this is that in “the great days” of the Renaissance, in the “new age” when the bright light of a new spiritual culture flooded the dying world with its clear colours, flooded the bare monotonous life of the Middle Ages, the sexual crisis affected only a relatively small part of the population. By far the largest section of the population, the peasantry, was affected only in the most indirect way and only as, slowly, over the course of centuries, a change in the economic base, in the economic relations of the countryside, took place. At the top of the social ladder a bitter battle between two opposing social worlds was fought out. This involved also a struggle between their different ideals and values and ways of looking at things. It was these people who experienced and were threatened by the sexual crisis that developed. The peasants, wary of new things, continued to cling firmly to the well-tried tribal tradition handed down from their forefathers, and only under the pressure of extreme necessity modified and adapted this tradition to the changing conditions of their economic environment. Even at the height of the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the feudal world the sexual crisis by-passed the “class of tax-payers”. As the upper strata of society went about breaking up the old ways, the peasants in fact seemed to be more intent on clinging firmly to their traditions. In spite of the continuous whirlwinds that threatened overhead and shook the very soil under their feet, the peasants, especially our Russian peasantry, managed to preserve the basis of their sexual code untouched and unshaken for many centuries.<br /> <br /> The story today is very different. The “sexual crisis” does not spare even the peasantry. Like an infectious disease it “knows neither rank nor status”. It spreads from the palaces and mansions to the crowded quarters of the working class, looks in on the peaceful dwelling places of the petty bourgeoisie, and makes its way into the heart of the countryside. It claims victims in the villas of the European bourgeoisie, in the fusty basement of the worker’s family, and in the smoky hut of the peasant. There is “no defence, no bolt” against sexual conflict. To imagine that only the members of the well-off sections of society are floundering and are in the throes of these problems would be to make a grave mistake. The waves of the sexual crisis are sweeping over the threshold of workers’ homes, and creating situations of conflict that are as acute and heartfelt as the psychological sufferings of the “refined bourgeois world”. The sexual crisis no longer interests only the “propertied”. The problems of sex concern the largest section of society — they concern the working class in its daily life. It is therefore hard to understand why this vital and urgent subject is treated with such indifference. This indifference is unforgivable. One of the tasks that confront the working class in its attack on the “beleaguered fortress of the future” is undoubtedly the task of establishing more healthy and more joyful relationships between the sexes.<br /> <br /> What are the roots of this unforgivable indifference to one of the essential tasks of the working class? How can we explain to ourselves the hypocritical way in which “sexual problems” are relegated to the realm of “private matters” that are not worth the effort and attention of the collective? Why has the fact been ignored that throughout history one of the constant features of social struggle has been the attempt to change relationships between the sexes, and the type of moral codes that determine these relationships; and that the way personal relationships are organised in a certain social group has had a vital influence on the outcome of the struggle between hostile social classes?<br /> <br /> The tragedy of our society is not just that the usual forms of behaviour and the principles regulating this behaviour are breaking down, but that a spontaneous wave of new attempts at living is developing from within the social fabric, giving men hopes and ideals that cannot yet be realised. We are people living in the world of property relationships, a world of sharp class contradictions and an individualistic morality. We still live and think under the heavy hand of an unavoidable loneliness of spirit. Man experiences this “loneliness” even in towns full of shouting, noise and people, even in a crowd of close friends and work-mates. Because of their loneliness men are apt to cling in a predatory and unhealthy way to illusions about finding a “soul mate” from among the members of the opposite sex. They see sly Eros as the only means of charming away, if only for a time, the gloom of inescapable loneliness.<br /> <br /> People have perhaps never in any age felt spiritual loneliness as deeply and persistently as at the present time. People have probably never become so depressed and fallen so fully under the numbing influence of this loneliness. It could hardly be otherwise. The darkness never seems so black as when there’s light shining just ahead.<br /> <br /> The “individualists”, who are only loosely organised into a collective with other individuals, now have the chance to change their sexual relationships so that they are based on the creative principle of friendship and togetherness rather than on something blindly physiological. The individualistic property morality of the present day is beginning to seem very obviously paralysing and oppressive. In criticising the quality of sexual relationships modern man is doing far more than rejecting the outdated forms of behaviour of the current moral code. His lonely soul is seeking the regeneration of the very essence of these relationships. He moans and pines for “great love”, for a situation of warmth and creativity which alone has the power to disperse the cold spirit of loneliness from which present day “individualists” suffer.<br /> <br /> If the sexual crisis is three quarters the result of external socioeconomic relationships, the other quarter hinges on our “refined individualistic psyche”, fostered by the ruling bourgeois ideology. The “potential for loving” of people today is, as the German writer Miesel-Hess puts it, at a low ebb. Men and women seek each other in the hope of finding for themselves, through another person, a means to a larger share of spiritual and physical pleasure. It makes no difference whether they are married to the partner or not, they give little thought to what’s going on in the other person, to what’s happening to their emotions and psychological processes.<br /> <br /> The “crude individualism” that adorns our era is perhaps nowhere as blatant as in the organisation of sexual relationships. A person wants to escape from his loneliness and naïvely imagines that being “in love” gives him the right to the soul of the other person — the right to warm himself in the rays of that rare blessing of emotional closeness and understanding. We individualists have had our emotions spoiled in the persistent cult of the “ego”. We imagine that we can reach the happiness of being in a state of “great love” with those near to us, without having to “give” up anything of ourselves.<br /> <br /> The claims we make on our “contracted partner” are absolute and undivided. We are unable to follow the simplest rule of love — that another person should be treated with great consideration. New concepts will teach us to achieve relationships based on the unfamiliar ideas of complete freedom, equality and genuine friendship. But in the meantime mankind has to sit in the cold with its spiritual loneliness and can only dream about the “better age” when all relationships between people will be warmed by the rays of “the sun god”, will experience a sense of togetherness, and will be educated in the new conditions of living. The sexual crisis cannot be solved unless there is a radical reform of the human psyche, and unless man’s potential for loving is increased. And a basic transformation of the socio-economic relationships along communist lines is essential if the psyche is to be re-formed. This is an “old truth” but there is no other way out. The sexual crisis will in no way be reduced, whatever kind of marriage or personal relationships people care to try.<br /> <br /> History has never seen such a variety of personal relationships — indissoluble marriage with its “stable family”, “free unions”, secret adultery; a girl living quite openly with her lover in so-called “wild marriage”; pair marriage, marriage in threes and even the complicated marriage of four people — not to talk of the various forms of commercial prostitution. You get the same two moral codes existing side by side in the peasantry as well — a mixture of the old tribal way of life and the developing bourgeois family. Thus you get the permissiveness of the girls’ house&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;In the traditional Russian villages, the young girls would often get together to rent an old hut or a room in someone’s house. They would gather there in the evenings to tell stories, do needlework and sing. The young men would come to join in the merrymaking. Sometimes it seems that the merrymaking would become an orgy, though there are conflicting ideas about this.&lt;/ref&gt; side by side with the attitude that fornication, or men sleeping with their daughters-in-law, is a disgrace. It’s surprising that, in the face of the contradictory and tangled forms of present-day personal relationships, people are able to preserve a faith in moral authority, and are able to make sense of these contradictions and thread their way through these mutually destructive and incompatible moral codes. Even the usual justification — “I live by the new morality” — doesn’t help anyone, since the new morality is still only in the process of being formed. Our task is to draw out from the chaos of the present-day contradictory sexual norms the shape, and make clear the principles, of a morality that answers the spirit of the progressive and revolutionary class.<br /> <br /> Besides the already mentioned inadequacies of the contemporary psyche — extreme individuality, egoism that has become a cult — the “sexual crisis” is made worse by two characteristics of the psychology of modern man:<br /> <br /> # The idea of “possessing” the married partner;<br /> # The belief that the two sexes are unequal, that they are of unequal worth in every way, in every sphere, including the sexual sphere.<br /> <br /> Bourgeois morality, with its introverted individualistic family based entirely on private property, has carefully cultivated the idea that one partner should completely “possess” the other. It has been very successful. The idea of “possession” is more pervasive now than under the patrimonial system of marriage relationships. During the long historical period that developed under the aegis of the “tribe”, the idea of a man possessing his wife (there has never been any thought of a wife having undisputed possession of her husband) did not go further than a purely physical possession. The wife was obliged to be faithful physically — her soul was her own. Even the knights recognised the right of their wives to have chichesbi (platonic friends and admirers) and to receive the “devotion” of other knights and minnesingers. It is the bourgeoisie who have carefully tended and fostered the idea of the absolute possession of the “contracted partner’s” emotional as well as physical “I”, thus extending the concept of property rights to include the right to the other person’s whole spiritual and emotional world. Thus the family structure was strengthened and stability guaranteed in the period when the bourgeoisie were struggling for domination. This is the ideal that we have accepted as our heritage and have been prepared to see as an unchangeable moral absolute! The idea of “property” goes far beyond the boundaries of “lawful marriage”. It makes itself felt as an inevitable ingredient of the most “free” union of love. Contemporary lovers with all their respect for freedom are not satisfied by the knowledge of the physical faithfulness alone of the person they love. To be rid of the eternally present threat of loneliness, we “launch an attack” on the emotions of the person we love with a cruelty and lack of delicacy that will not be understood by future generations. We demand the right to know every secret of this person’s being. The modern lover would forgive physical unfaithfulness sooner than “spiritual” unfaithfulness. He sees any emotion experienced outside the boundaries of the “free” relationship as the loss of his own personal treasure.<br /> <br /> People “in love” are unbelievably insensitive in their relations to a third person. We have all no doubt observed this strange situation — two people who love each other are in a hurry, before they have got to know each other properly, to exercise their rights over all the relationships that the other person has formed up till that time, to look into the innermost corners of their partner’s life. Two people who yesterday were unknown to each other, and who come together in a single moment of mutual erotic feeling, rush to get at the heart of the other person’s being. They want to feel that this strange and incomprehensible psyche, with its past experience that can never be suppressed, is an extension of their own self. the idea that the married pair are each other’s property is so accepted that when a young couple who were yesterday each living their own separate lives are today opening each other’s correspondence without a blush, and making common property of the words of a third person who is a friend of only one of them, this hardly strikes us as something unnatural. But this kind of “intimacy” is only really possible when people have been working out their lives together for a long period of time. Usually a dishonest kind of closeness is substituted for this genuine feeling, the deception being fostered by the mistaken idea that a physical relationship between two people is a sufficient basis for extending the rights of possession to each other’s emotional being.<br /> <br /> The “inequality” of the sexes — the inequality of their rights, the unequal value of their physical and emotional experience — is the other significant circumstance that distorts the psyche of contemporary man and is a reason for the deepening of the “sexual crisis”. The “double morality” inherent in both patrimonial and bourgeois society has, over the course of centuries, poisoned the psyche of men and women. These attitudes are so much a part of us that they are more difficult to get rid of than the ideas about possessing people that we have inherited only from bourgeois ideology. The idea that the sexes are unequal, even in the sphere of physical and emotional experience, means that the same action will be regarded differently according to whether it was the action of a man or a woman. Even the most “progressive” member of the bourgeoisie, who has long ago rejected the whole code of current morality, easily catches himself out at this point since he too in judging a man and a woman for the same behaviour will pass different sentences. One simple example is enough. Imagine that a member of the middle-class intelligentsia who is learned, involved in politics and social affairs — who is in short a “personality”, even a “public figure” — starts sleeping with his cook (a not uncommon thing to happen) and even becomes legally married to her. Does bourgeois society change its attitude to this man, does the event throw even the tiniest shadow of doubt as to his moral worth? Of course not.<br /> <br /> Now imagine another situation. A respected woman of bourgeois society — a social figure, a research student, a doctor, or a writer, it’s all the same — becomes friendly with her footman, and to complete the scandal marries him. How does bourgeois society react to the behaviour of the hitherto “respected” woman? They cover her with “scorn”, of course! And remember, it’s so much the worse for her if her husband, the footman, is good-looking or possesses other “physical qualities”. “It’s obvious what she’s fallen for”, will be the sneer of the hypocritical bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> If a woman’s choice has anything of an “individual character” about it she won’t be forgiven by bourgeois society. This attitude is a kind of throwback to the traditions of tribal times. Society still wants a woman to take into account, when she is making her choice, rank and status and the instructions and interests of her family. Bourgeois society cannot see a woman as an independent person separate from her family unit and outside the isolated circle of domestic obligations and virtues. Contemporary society goes even further than the ancient tribal society in acting as woman’s trustee, instructing her not only to marry but to fall in love only with those people who are “worthy” of her.<br /> <br /> We are continually meeting men of considerable spiritual and intellectual qualities who have chosen as their friend-for-life a worthless and empty woman, who in no way matches the spiritual worth of the husband. We accept this as something normal and we don’t think twice about it. At the most friends might pity Ivan Ivanovich for having landed himself with such an unbearable wife. But if it happens the other way round, we flap our hands and exclaim with concern, “How could such an outstanding woman as Maria Petrovna fall for such a nonentity? I begin to doubt the worth of Maria Petrovna.” Where do we get this double criterion from? What is the reason for it? The reason is undoubtedly that the idea of the sexes being of “different value” has become, over the centuries, a part of man’s psychological make-up. We are used to evaluating a woman not as a personality with individual qualities and failings irrespective of her physical and emotional experience, but only as an appendage of a man. This man, the husband or the lover, throws the light of his personality over the woman, and it is this reflection and not the woman herself that we consider to be the true definition of her emotional and moral make-up. In the eyes of society the personality of a man can be more easily separated from his actions in the sexual sphere. The personality of a woman is judged almost exclusively in terms of her sexual life. This type of attitude stems from the role that women have played in society over the centuries, and it is only now that a re-evaluation of these attitudes is slowly being achieved, at least in outline. Only a change in the economic role of woman, and her independent involvement in production, can and will bring about the weakening of these mistaken and hypocritical ideas.<br /> <br /> The three basic circumstances distorting the modern psyche — extreme egoism, the idea that married partners possess each other, and the acceptance of the inequality of the sexes in terms of physical and emotional experience — must be faced if the sexual problem is to be settled. People will find the “magic key” with which they can break out of their situation only when their psyche has a sufficient store of “feelings of consideration”, when their ability to love is greater, when the idea of freedom in personal relationships becomes fact, and when the principle of “comradeship” triumphs over the traditional idea of “inequality” and submission. The sexual problems cannot be solved without this radical re-education of our psyche.<br /> <br /> But isn’t this asking too much? Isn’t the suggestion utopian, without foundation, the naïve notion of a dreaming idealist? How are you honestly going to raise mankind’s “potential for loving”? Haven’t wise men of all nations since time immemorial, beginning with Buddha and Confucius and ending with Christ, been busying themselves over this? And who can say if the “potential for loving” has been raised? Isn’t this kind of well-meaning daydream about the solution of the sexual crisis simply a confession of weakness and a refusal to go on with the search for the “magic key”?<br /> <br /> Is that the case? Is the radical re-education of our psyche and our approach to sexual relationships something so unlikely, so removed from reality? Couldn’t one say that, on the contrary, while great social and economic changes are in progress, the conditions are being created that demand and give rise to a new basis for psychological experience that is in line with what we have been talking about? Another class, a new social group, is coming forward to replace the bourgeoisie, with its bourgeois ideology, and its individualistic code of sexual morality. The progressive class, as it develops in strength, cannot fail to reveal new ideas about relationships between the sexes that form in close connection with problems of its social class.<br /> <br /> The complicated evolution of socio-economic relations taking place before our eyes, which changes all our ideas about the role of women in social life and undermines the sexual morality of the bourgeoisie, has two contradictory results. On the one hand we see mankind’s tireless efforts to adapt to the new, changing socio-economic conditions. This is manifest either in an attempt to preserve the “old forms” while providing them with a new content (the observance of the external form of the indissoluble, strictly monogamous marriage with an acceptance, in practice, of the freedom of the partners) or in the acceptance of new forms which contain however all the elements of the moral code of bourgeois marriage (the “free” union where the compulsive possessiveness of the partners is greater than within legal marriage). On the other hand we see the slow but steady appearance of new forms of relationships between the sexes that differ from the old norms in outward form and in spirit.<br /> <br /> Mankind is not groping its way toward these new ideas with much confidence, but we need to look at its attempt, however vague it is at the moment, since it is an attempt closely linked with the tasks of the proletariat as the class which is to capture the “beleaguered fortress” of the future. If, amongst the complicated labyrinth of contradictory and tangled sexual norms, you want to find the beginnings of more healthy relationships between the sexes — relationships that promise to lead humanity out of the sexual crisis — you have to leave the “cultured quarters” of the bourgeoisie with their refined individualistic psyche, and take a look at the huddled dwelling-places of the working class. There, amidst the horror and squalor of capitalism, amidst tears and curses, the springs of life are welling up.<br /> <br /> You can see the double process which we have just mentioned working itself out in the lives of the proletariat, who have to exist under the pressure of harsh economic conditions, cruelly exploited by capitalism. You can see both the process of “passive adjustment” and that of active opposition to the existing reality. The destructive influence of capitalism destroys the basis of the worker’s family and forces him unconsciously to adapt to the existing conditions. This gives rise to a whole series of situations with regard to relationships between the sexes which are similar to those in other social classes. Under the pressure of low wages the worker inevitably tends to get married at a later age. If twenty years ago a worker usually got married between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, he now shoulders the cares of a family only towards his thirtieth year. The higher the cultural demands of the worker — the more he values the opportunity of being in contact with cultural life, of visiting theatres and lectures, of reading papers and magazines, of giving his spare time to struggle and politics or to some favourite pursuit such as art or reading etc. — the later he tends to get married. But physical needs won’t take a financial situation into consideration: they insist on making themselves felt. The working-class bachelor, in the same way as the middle-class bachelor, looks to prostitution for an outlet. This is an example of the passive adjustment of the working class to the unfavourable conditions of their existence. Take another example. When the worker marries, the low level of pay forces the worker’s family to “regulate” childbirth just as the bourgeois family does. The frequent cases of infanticide, the growth of prostitution — these are all expressions of the same process. These are all examples of adjustment by the working class to the surrounding reality. But this is not a process characteristic of the proletariat alone. All the other classes and sections of the population caught up in the world process of capitalist development react in this way.<br /> <br /> We see a difference only when we begin to talk about the active, creative forces at work that oppose rather than adapt to the repressive reality, and about the new ideals and attempts at new relationships between the sexes. It is only within the working class that this active opposition is taking shape. This doesn’t mean that the other classes and sections of the population (particularly the middle-class intelligentsia who, by the circumstances of their social existence, stand closest to the working class) don’t adopt the “new” forms that are being worked out by the progressive working class. The bourgeoisie, motivated by an instinctive desire to breathe new life into their dead and feeble forms of marriage, seize upon the “new” ideas of the working class. But the ideals and code of sexual morality that the working class develops do not answer the class needs of the bourgeoisie. They reflect the demands of the working class and therefore serve as a new weapon in its social struggle. They help shatter the foundations of the social domination of the bourgeoisie. Let us make this point clear by an example.<br /> <br /> The attempt by the middle-class intelligentsia to replace indissoluble marriage by the freer, more easily broken ties of civil marriage destroys the essential basis of the social stability of the bourgeoisie. It destroys the monogamous, property-oriented family. On the other hand, a greater fluidity in relationships between the sexes coincides with and is even the indirect result of one of the basic tasks of the working class. The rejection of the element of “submission” in marriage is going to destroy the last artificial ties of the bourgeois family. This act of “submission” on the part of one member of the working class to another, in the same way as the sense of possessiveness in relationships, has a harmful effect on the proletarian psyche. It is not in the interests of that revolutionary class to elect only certain members as its independent representatives, whose duty it is to serve the class interests before the interests of the individual, isolated family. Conflicts between the interests of the family and the interests of the class which occur at the time of a strike or during an active struggle, and the moral yardstick with which the proletariat views such events, are sufficiently clear evidence of the basis of the new proletarian ideology.<br /> <br /> Suppose family affairs require a businessman to take his capital out of a firm at a time when the enterprise is in financial difficulties. Bourgeois morality is clear-cut in its estimate of his action: “The interests of the family come first”. We can compare this with the attitude of workers to a strikebreaker who defies his comrades and goes to work during a strike to save his family from being hungry. “The interests of the class come first”. Here’s another example. The love and loyalty of the middle-class husband are sufficient to divert his husbands from all interests outside the home and end up by tying her to the nursery and the kitchen. “The ideal husband can support the ideal family” is the way the bourgeoisie looks at it. But how do workers look upon a “conscious” member of their class who shuts the eyes of his wife or girl-friend to the social struggle? For the sake of individual happiness, for the sake of the family, the morality of the working class will demand that women take part in the life that is unfolding beyond the doorsteps. The “captivity” of women in the home, the way family interests are placed before all else, the widespread exercise of absolute property rights by the husband over the wife — all these things are being broken down by the basic principle of working-class ideology of “comradely solidarity”. The idea that some members are unequal and must submit to other members of one and the same class is in contradiction with the basic proletarian principle of comradeship. This principle of comradeship is basic to the ideology of the working class. It colours and determines the whole developing proletarian morality, a morality which helps to re-educate the personality of man, allowing him to be capable of positive feeling, capable of freedom instead of being bound by a sense of property, capable of comradeship rather than inequality and submission.<br /> <br /> It is an old truth that every new class that develops as a result of an advance in economic growth and material culture offers mankind an appropriately new ideology. The code of sexual behaviour is a part of this ideology. However it is worth saying something about “proletarian ethics” or “proletarian sexual morality”, in order to criticise the well-worn idea that proletarian sexual morality is no more than “superstructure”, and that there is no place for any change in this sphere until the economic base of society has been changed. As if the ideology of a certain class is formed only when the breakdown in the socio-economic relationships, guaranteeing the dominance of that class, has been completed! All the experience of history teaches us that a social group works out its ideology, and consequently its sexual morality, in the process of its struggle with hostile social forces.<br /> <br /> Only with the help of new spiritual forces, created within and answering the needs of the class, will that class manage to strengthen its social position. It can only successfully win power from those groups in society that are hostile to it by holding to these new norms and ideals. To search for the basic criteria for a morality that can reflect the specific interests of the working class, and to see that the developing sexual norms are in accordance with these criteria — this is the task that must be tackled by the ideologists of the working class. We have to understand that it is only by becoming aware of the creative process that is going on within society, and of the new demands, new ideals and new norms that are being formed, only by becoming clear about the basis of the sexual morality of the progressive class, that we can possibly make sense of the chaos and contradictions of sexual relationships and find the thread that will make it possible to undo the tightly rolled up tangle of sexual problems.<br /> <br /> We must remember that only a code of sexual morality that is in harmony with the problems of the working class can serve as an important weapon in strengthening the working class’s fighting position. The experience of history teaches us that much. What can stop us using this weapon in the interests of the working class, who are fighting for a communist system and for new relationships between the sexes that are deeper and more joyful?<br /> <br /> === Footnotes ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;note&quot; /&gt;<br /> [[Category:Library works by Alexandra Kollontai]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about feminism]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:The_Soviet_woman,_a_full_and_equal_citizen_of_her_country&diff=76014 2024-09-30T12:47:02Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=The Soviet Woman — a Full and Equal Citizen of Her Country|author=Alexandra Kollontai|written in=1946|type=Article|source=https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1946/full.htm|display_title=yes}}<br /> <br /> It is a well-known fact that the Soviet Union has achieved exceptional successes in drawing women into the active construction of the state. This generally accepted truth is not disputed even by our enemies. The Soviet woman is a full and equal citizen of her country. In opening up to women access to every sphere of creative activity, our state has simultaneously ensured all the conditions necessary for her to fulfil her natural obligation — that of being a mother bringing up her children and mistress of her home.<br /> <br /> From the very beginning, Soviet law recognised that motherhood is not a private matter, but the social duty of the active and equal woman citizen. This proposition is enshrined in the Constitution. The Soviet Union has solved one of the most important and complex of problems how to make active use of female labour in any area without this being to the detriment of motherhood.<br /> <br /> A great deal of attention has been given to the organisation of public canteens, kindergartens, Young Pioneer camps, playgrounds and creches — those institutions which, as Lenin wrote, facilitate in practice the emancipation of women and are able, in practice, to reduce the female inequality vis-a-vis men. More than seven thousand women's and children's consultation centres have been established in the USSR, of which half are in rural areas. Over 20 thousand creches have been organised. It should be pointed out here that in tsarist Russia in 1913 there existed only 19 creches and 25 kindergartens, and even these were not maintained by the state, but by philanthropic organisations.<br /> <br /> The Soviet state provides increasing material assistance to mothers. Women receive allowances and paid leave before and after the birth of the child and their post is kept open for them until they return from leave.<br /> <br /> Large and one-parent families receive state allowances to help them provide for and bring up their children. In 1945 the state paid out more than two thousand million roubles in such allowances. The title 'Mother-Heroine' has been awarded to more than 10 thousand women in the RSFSR alone, while the order of 'Maternal Glory' and the 'Medal of Motherhood' have been awarded to 1,100 thousand women.<br /> <br /> Soviet women have justified the trust and concern shown to them by their state. They have shown a high degree of heroism both in peaceful, creative labour before the war, during the years of armed battle against the nazi invaders, and now, in the efforts to fulfil the monumental tasks set by the new five-year plan. Many branches of industry in which female labour is predominant are among the first to fulfil their plans. Equally worthy of mention are the enormous achievements of the Soviet peasant women, who bore on their shoulders the greater part of the burden of agricultural labour during the war years.<br /> <br /> Our women have mastered professions that have long been considered the exclusive domain of men. There are women engine-drivers, women mechanics, women lathe operators, women fitters, well-qualified women workers in charge of the most complex mechanisms.<br /> <br /> The women of the Soviet Union work on an equal footing with men to advance science, culture and the arts; they occupy an outstanding place in the national education and health services.<br /> <br /> In a country where, 30 years ago, out of 2,300 thousand working women 1,300 thousand worked as servants in the towns and 750 thousand as farm labourers in the countryside, in a country where there were almost no women engineers, almost no scientists, and appointment to a teaching post was accompanied by conditions insulting to female dignity, in that country there are now 750 thousand women teachers, 100 thousand women doctors, and 250 thousand women engineers. Women make up one half of the student body in institutions of higher education. Over 33 thousand women are working in laboratories and in research institutes, 25 thousand women have academic titles and degrees, and 166 women have been awarded the State Prize for their achievements in science and work.<br /> <br /> The women of the Soviet Union are implementing their political rights in practice. The Supreme Soviet of the USSR has 277 women deputies, while 256 thousand women have been elected to rural, urban, regional and republican organs of state power...<br /> <br /> The women of the Soviet Union do not have to demand from their government the right to work, the right to education, the right to the protection of motherhood. The state itself, the government itself, draws women into work, giving them wide access to every sphere of social life, assisting and rewarding mothers.<br /> <br /> During the years of invasion by nazi aggressors, Soviet women, and the women of other democratic countries, saw with their own eyes the need to wage a tireless battle against nazism until every trace of it had been removed. Only this will spare the world the threat of new wars.<br /> <br /> The struggle for democracy and lasting peace, the struggle against reaction and fascism, is the main task we face today. To cut women off from this basic and important task, to attempt to confine them within 'purely female', feminist organisations, can only weaken the women's democratic movement. Only the victory of democracy can ensure women equality.<br /> <br /> We, the women of the Land of Soviets, are devoting all our energy to creative labour, to the fulfilment of the monumental tasks set by the five-year plan, knowing that in so doing we are strengthening the bulwark of peace throughout the world — the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.<br /> <br /> At the same time we must be on the alert for intrigues by the reactionaries and expose their plans and intentions, their attempts to divide the ranks of democracy.<br /> <br /> The unity of all the forces of democracy is our most reliable weapon in the struggle against reaction, in the struggle for freedom and peace throughout the world.<br /> [[Category:Library works by Alexandra Kollontai]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about feminism]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about the Soviet Union]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:The_woman_worker_and_peasant_in_Soviet_Russia&diff=76013 2024-09-30T12:47:01Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=The woman worker and peasant in Soviet Russia|author=Alexandra Kollontai|written in=1921|type=Article|source=https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1921/peasant.htm|display_title=yes}}<br /> <br /> In Soviet Russia there is no independent movement of women workers. In Soviet Russia the proletariat of both sexes are indissolubly <br /> <br /> united in their struggle to establish and consolidate the dictatorship and to build the new society of working people.<br /> <br /> However, precisely in order to ensure this unity, this joint struggle and joint work, the Communist Party had to include among its tasks the special task of involving women actively in the construction of a new future and in the conscious defence of the first republic of working people against its internal and external enemies.<br /> <br /> This task was formulated by the Bolshevik Party as far back as the eve of the revolution, the spring of 1917, when the editorial board of the magazine ''Rabotnitsa'' was set up under the party Central Committee in order to serve not only as a centre of propaganda work among the female proletariat, but also as a centre organising women workers around the banner of Bolshevism.<br /> <br /> At a time when bourgeois chauvinism and Kerenskyism were in full flood and the dangers of conciliation had not yet been finally eliminated, the editorial board of ''Rabotnitsa'', responding in early June, 1917, to Kerensky's call for the Russian army to advance, organised a large international meeting calling for opposition to the criminal slaughter of the war and for world-wide worker solidarity against the common enemy-the capitalists-and their loyal servants, the conciliators. This was the first open international meeting in Russia.<br /> <br /> In autumn, 1917, with the struggle of the proletariat for Soviet power having intensified, and faced with the threat of an offensive by General Kornilov, the most progressive and conscious section of women workers came out in support of the Bolsheviks and became actively involved in the civil war that had broken out. However, the broad mass of women workers and peasants remained outside the movement, passively bearing the increasing burden of economic collapse, deprivation and suffering that inevitably accompany the clash between two social worlds.<br /> <br /> The Great October Revolution and the transfer of power into the hands of the working people gave women in Russia full political and civil equality. A new age opened up before women workers and peasants. An end had been put to their former, age-old lack of rights. From that moment on, women enjoyed total equality in every sphere of the work and life of the state. From the very first days following the October Revolution, the Communist Party hastened to make use of the energies of women communists and women workers sympathetic to Soviet power. Women were appointed Commissars, were given important posts, and even sat on the Council of People's Commissars. They were given work in every section of the newly formed Soviet state apparatus...<br /> <br /> The doors of the Communist Party stood open to women of the working class, and the law gave them every opportunity to participate in the work of the Soviets to reshape their way of life and thus improve their own living conditions... However, the broad mass of women workers and peasants (taken in the majority) looked with fear upon communists and Soviet power, seeing in them only the destroyers of the fundamental order and ancient traditions, 'godless' people who separated church and state, heartless people who wished to take children away from their mothers and hand them over to be brought up by the state.<br /> <br /> Starvation and deprivation further stimulated the blind resentment of the women, who transmitted to their families ideas and attitudes hostile to communism.<br /> <br /> In the autumn of 1918 after the attempt by counterrevolution, with the assistance of the Czechoslovaks, to smash the Bolsheviks and put an end to Soviet power, the party recognised the urgency of the problem of involving women workers in Soviet construction and raising their level of class-consciousness. The women, who had stood aside from the movement to consolidate the Soviets, were already becoming a factor actively assisting counter-revolution.<br /> <br /> In the interests of communism it was necessary to win over the women workers and turn them into defenders of Soviet power. General propaganda of the ideas of Soviet power and communism proved insufficient to draw women into the movement. A special approach had to be found as regards the women workers and poorest peasants; a special method of work among women had to be developed in order to force them to understand and appreciate what their position should be and which power best guaranteed women's interests – the dictatorship of the proletariat, or a return to the rule of the bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> On the initiative of a group of communist women in Moscow, and with the full support of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party, the First All-Russia Congress of Women Workers and Peasants was convened in Moscow in November, 1918. It was attended by over a thousand women delegates elected at women workers' and peasants' meetings. This congress was not only of enormous propaganda significance, but also laid the foundations for the creation within the Russian Communist Party of a special, all-Russia apparatus for conducting work among women. The creation of a special apparatus within the party whose purpose was to draw the mass of the female population into the construction of a republic of working people and into the struggle for communism thus received official recognition within the party.<br /> <br /> To begin with, responsibility for this work was assumed by the Commissions for Propaganda Among Women Workers, organised under the auspices of party committees. The slogan of the commissions ran: 'propaganda in deeds as well as words', which meant that women workers and peasants were to be turned into conscious and active communists via involvement in the creative practical work of the Soviets. With this in view, the commissions created a special apparatus linking the party with the broad mass of backward working women. This apparatus was the council of women delegates. Each enterprise and each workshop was to send one woman delegate for every fifty women workers to the delegate council of women workers. The delegates were elected for three months, and their attendance at weekly delegate councils, at which they were informed about recent political events, about the work being done in various branches of Soviet construction, and in particular about social education, public catering, protection of motherhood and other areas of state activity directly assisting the domestic emancipation of working woman, was compulsory. The delegates not only attended the councils, but were also charged with a number of practical activities which included membership of the commissions on labour protection, on improving living conditions, on provision for motherhood, etc., operating at their own enterprises, visits of inspection to state institutions in order to become familiar with the methods and systems of work used in various branches of the state apparatus, and also co-operating in various party and state campaigns. As the work done by the party among the women increased, it became necessary to regulate it, make it more efficient and thorough-going. In the autumn of 1919, the party reorganised the Commissions for Propaganda Among Women Workers into departments for work among women. Such departments now form part of every local party committee, from the Central Committee to city, district and uyezd committees.<br /> <br /> The departments for work among women not only involve women workers and peasants in the party and in state construction, turning them into active women Communists, but also bring independent initiative into the building of communism, putting before the party and state organs tasks related to the comprehensive and practical emancipation of women. Thus, on the initiative of the departments, abortion was legalised, and the proposal advanced at the Eighth Congress of Soviets on actively involving women workers in the rehabilitation of the economy and organisation of production by bringing women into all the organs of economic management has been adopted. The inter-departmental commission for the campaign against prostitution, and the commissions to promote the protection of mother and child were also set up on the initiative of these departments. During the elaboration of the law on the obligation to work (April, 1920) they introduced a number of clauses relating to the protection of the physical strength, health and interests of mothers. Finally, in April of this year, on the initiative of the women's departments, a law was passed through the Council of People's Commissars on involving women workers and peasants in the practical work of executive committee departments and institutions for a period of two months with a view to infusing new life into the state apparatus and freeing it from bureaucratic elements, and also in order to train state executives from among the women workers.<br /> <br /> Over the two and a half years since the creation within the party of the special apparatus to conduct work among women with a view to involving women workers and peasants in the construction of a republic of working people... and drawing them into communism, enormous progress has been made. The former mistrustful or passive attitude among the mass of women to the revolution and to Soviet power is now found only in the most remote areas where the women's departments have not yet begun to expand their activities.<br /> <br /> Of the total party membership, 9-10 per cent is comprised of women. According to the latest figures (February-March), there are 3,842 women communists in 12 provinces, including:<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable&quot;<br /> |women workers<br /> |2,406<br /> |-<br /> |intelligentsia<br /> |1,010<br /> |-<br /> |peasants<br /> |426<br /> |-<br /> |'''total'''<br /> |'''3,842'''<br /> |}<br /> The number of delegates in these provinces totals 12,910.<br /> <br /> On the most conservative estimates, the number of delegates linked to the women workers' departments, and therefore under the influence of the Communist Party, is more than 70 thousand. These 70 thousand delegates elected from among women workers, housewives and peasant women (the latter elected on a village basis) represent a female population numbering more than 3 million, all linked to the party. Through their deputies, these 3 million women are involved in one way or another in the practical work of state construction either in the sphere of production organisation, or in national defence, or in the re-organisation of daily life and living conditions on new communist principles. Thus, for example, in the 12 provinces for which we have the most recent figures, 6,930 women workers took part in subbotniks, and 2,975 women workers and peasants worked in Soviet institutions.<br /> <br /> Thus, through active, practical participation in the work to rehabilitate the economy, help the Red Army, develop agriculture, provide for children (Children's Week), overcome the fuel crisis and get the transport system working again, etc., the party is gradually moulding out of hundreds of thousands of 'non-party' women workers and peasants not only new, fresh forces working for the Soviet system, but also conscious defenders of the republic of the working people and of communism. The broad mass of women workers has already ceased to be the bulwark of counter-revolution. These three years of special work among women have succeeded not only in awakening their political consciousness, but also In accustoming them to active participation in the construction of the new society.<br /> <br /> Immediately following the revolution, women were elected as members of the Soviets. However, the election of women was still rare, an exception to the rule. Women were more commonly used to help carry through the designated tasks, and it was a rarity for women to be given administrative posts involving decision-making. Even now there are not many women workers and peasants who are members of the Soviets. For example, in the 12 provinces referred to above, there are only 635 women members of Soviets, that is, an average of 52 members for each province. Moreover, in the uyezd Soviets the number of women members is 574, while in the provincial Soviets there are only seven...<br /> <br /> Women workers have been particularly active over recent years in the inspection of various institutions, primarily canteens, hospitals and all the children's institutions that form part of the network of social upbringing. A number of abuses in these institutions, mismanagement, incompetence, and sometimes a deliberately obstructive approach on the part of representatives of the petty-bourgeois elements that poured into state institutions, were discovered thanks to the vigilant eye and conscientiousness of the women workers. In the afore-mentioned 12 provinces, 3,436 women worker delegates sat on inspection commissions. In Petrograd, around 500 women delegates took part in the inspection of infirmaries. According to the figures of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection, up to 25 thousand women workers and peasants were actively involved in large-scale inspections throughout the whole of Russia. When the republic of working people was faced with the problem of looking after wounded Red Army soldiers, Moscow women workers, under the leadership of the women workers' departments, immediately organised groups of 20-50 delegates who visited the army hospitals once a week, inspected them, reported on inadequacies to the appropriate institution and organised subbotniks to clean the infirmaries and mend the clothes of the wounded. When there were not enough medical orderlies, the delegates helped to transport the ill and the wounded, visited them, read them newspapers, wrote their letters for them, etc. According to the People's Commissariat for Health, the women delegates played a not unimportant role in the improvement of conditions in Moscow hospitals.<br /> <br /> As regards the involvement of women in military affairs, the Soviet republic of the working people has adopted a completely new approach. The bourgeoisie has always based itself on the view that the woman was and should remain the preserver of the home, while nature has determined that the man should defend it, or, by extension, should defend the fatherland, the state.<br /> <br /> 'War,' according to the bourgeoisie, 'is men's business.' The idea of taking women into the armed forces appeared monstrous to bourgeois society. It would undermine the 'foundations of the family' – an institution essential to private property and the class-based state.<br /> <br /> The use of female personnel during the last imperialist war, particularly in England, was significant not so much as a practical state measure, but rather as a particular form of patriotic propaganda.<br /> <br /> A very different attitude is developing in the state of the working people to the involvement of women workers and peasants into the army for the self-defence of the republic of the working people. In the transitional period through which we are now passing, the two duties of each member of the state of the working people to work and to defend that republic are fusing together. The great revolution that took place in October, 1917, in the organisation of production and in the national economy of Russia have had a radical effect upon the lives of women and their role in the state. The communist state, in which all the available reserves of adult citizens are taken into account in order to be put to more rational use and in order to develop the national productive forces more successfully, is already unable to dispense with the part played by women. Just as the basic economic system requires, in the interests of the working class, that the greatest possible number of women be involved in it, so also the self-defence of the working class against bourgeois domination requires that women workers and peasants be used for the army and the navy. The involvement of women, of women workers and peasants, in military affairs is dictated hot by short-term political considerations, such as those that guided the bourgeois governments in the imperialist war, but by the fundamental objectives of the working class. The broader the participation by the working population in its vital objectives, the more successfully will the workers and peasants' army be able to defend the revolution.<br /> <br /> The Red Army needs the active involvement of women workers and peasants. Women should be used to ensure success at the front precisely because this victory is essential to the women themselves for their total emancipation and the consolidation of those rights which the October Revolution has won for them. Therefore the participation of women workers and peasants in the Soviet class army is to be evaluated not only in terms of the practical aid which women have already supplied to the army and the war front, but also in terms of that inevitable radical change introduced by the question of involving women in military matters. While the October Revolution paved the way for the abolition of the former inequality between the sexes, the active involvement of women on our common basic fronts-the labour front and the war front – will destroy the lingering prejudices that fed this inequality.<br /> <br /> Women workers and peasants were involved in the civil, class war from the very first barricade battles in 1917. Just as the Red Guards&quot; emerged spontaneously in the workers' districts, so also there arose, just as spontaneously, auxiliary detachments of women medical orderlies, Red nurses, and simply groups of volunteer women workers and peasants who assumed one function or another in the Red Guards during and immediately after the October days. However, at that time the involvement of women workers and peasants was not a mass phenomenon, nor was it organised. It was only from the end of 1918 onwards that the women workers and peasants of the Soviet Republic began to take part in military affairs on an organised basis. When the Red Army was formed to replace the Red Guards, the government of workers and peasants did, it is true, appeal for co-operation not only by men, but also by women. However, it did not prove possible at first to find a practical, useful way of making widespread use of women at the front.<br /> <br /> The active involvement of working women in the Red Army consists primarily in the formation of an entire detachment of women communists who function as political propagandists in the army, as political workers. Many of these women political workers in the army died alongside their comrades in defence of Soviet power, while others returned decorated with the Order of the Red Banner.<br /> <br /> Even in the army Military Revolutionary Councils the number of women members was very small. The political sections of the Red Army are to a large degree the creation of the talented organiser, comrade Varsenika-Kasparova.<br /> <br /> The second way in which women workers are involved in military matters is as Red nurses and medical orderlies. The first trained Red nurses from among women workers who had attended special courses arrived at the front in November, 1919, and a number of documents testify to their selfless work and that of the medical orderlies.<br /> <br /> Over a period of two years, up to 6,000 trained women workers, Red nurses and medical orderlies have been sent to the front...<br /> <br /> The women workers and peasants serving as Red nurses and medical orderlies have shown cheerfulness and enthusiasm in their work. The Red nurse treats the wounded Red Army soldier first and foremost as a comrade and brother, and does not show that sickly-sweet condescension with which the bourgeois nurse approached the 'poor soldier'.<br /> <br /> The organisation of medical assistance to the army has opened before the women workers and peasants a wide sphere of necessary and important work, particularly at a moment when Soviet Russia is experiencing bitter class conflict.<br /> <br /> However, the role of women in the defence of the Soviet Republic is not limited to the organisation of medical assistance. One only has to remember the critical moments in the struggle, when all the gains of our revolution were in danger, to realise how great and important a role women workers and peasants have played in the self-defence of the republic. Three episodes in the class war over the last three years serve to illustrate this very clearly: the attack by the Whites on the Donbas and Lugansk in 1919, the Denikin threat to Tula and the Yudenich threat to Red Petrograd in the autumn of the same year; Lugansk succeeded in repelling the second attack on the Red city by White Guard bands thanks only to the massive and active participation of working men and women in every sphere of defence. Particularly memorable is the resolute stand adopted by the working women of Tula during Denikin's advance: 'Denikin will reach Moscow only over our dead bodies,' declared the women workers, who were then fulfilling a variety of roles and carrying out every kind of work for the front, from digging trenches to army communications. The fame of the women workers of Petrograd, who repelled the attack by Yudenich, is too well known to need repetition here. The proletarian women of Petrograd not only provided 500 Red nurses and medical orderlies for the front, but also served in their thousands in the machine-gun companies, in communications, in sapper companies, and laboured selflessly in the cold autumn weather to dig trenches and surround Petrograd with barbed wire...<br /> <br /> Not only in Moscow, but throughout the whole of Russia, the system of universal military training is drawing young women workers and peasants into military matters, thus gradually creating the reserves necessary to defend the republic from international predators.<br /> <br /> During the last three years, not one recruitment campaign has been conducted in which women have not taken an active part. Women workers and peasants helped to combat army desertion, and to collect the necessary army equipment; they visited infirmaries and concerned themselves about the fate of sick and wounded Red Army soldiers. The appeal from the Red front found a warm response in the hearts of women workers and peasants. The industrial centres in particular sent a large number of women to the front. Her class sense tells the woman worker that the total emancipation of women is indissolubly linked with each first victory of the Red front.<br /> <br /> In May of this year, the first women workers will complete their course in military communications. Over the last few months courses for women telephonists and telegraph operators have become available in various parts of the country; the latest graduates completed courses in Samara and Simbirsk in the summer of 1920, and provided efficient cadres for the Southern and South-Western fronts.<br /> <br /> The heroism of the women workers and peasants, their direct involvement in battle and their fearlessness under fire is referred to in dispatches from General Headquarters. The number of Red Army women who have been killed, wounded or taken prisoner is 1,854. Many women have been awarded the Order of the Red Banner: medical orderlies, telephonists, Red Army women soldiers in machine-gun detachments, medical orderlies, doctors, etc.<br /> <br /> Women workers have also played an important role in organising the public catering service. They are involved in the organisation of public canteens, in food quality control, in the management of canteens and the organisation of a special children's food service. Women delegates organise a duty roster for mothers at children's canteens. In some places (for example Kiev, the Moscow province, etc.), women workers took the first steps to organise factory canteens. In the provincial capitals of Russia almost the entire population is now using the public catering service. About five million people now use canteens, which shows first and foremost that, in what concerns the emancipation of women from the slavery of housework, working Russia has managed during the four years following the revolution to achieve that which no bourgeois country would have dared attempt. Up to 75 thousand women are now employed in the public catering service.<br /> <br /> Women workers are particularly active in social education. This area of Soviet policy is the one that even backward women workers can most easily understand and sympathize with. Numerous children's institutions: children's homes, creches and nurseries – are run by women workers. Women delegates are helping Soviet organs of government to organise new institutions and improve those that already exist. Under the pressure of women Communists working in social education, the former charitable 'refuges' for orphans-those breeding grounds producing servile and will-less servants of the bourgeoisie – are disappearing, to be replaced by new forms of social education for children in the healthy environment of children's homes, kindergartens, and playgrounds where women workers can leave their children with an easy heart. It is true that material obstacles such as the shortage of equipment, textbooks, clothing and a normal supply of food are severely impeding the exemplary organisation of 'social education'. However, the policy laid down by the Soviet government in this sphere is receiving the energetic support of many communist women, and the very idea of social education is gradually penetrating the consciousness of broad masses of women workers. A number of women communists-comrades Nikolayeva (a former woman worker), Lilina, Yelizarova, Dyushenhave made their valuable contribution to this cause and assisted the progress of this difficult and responsible work while the names of comrades Nadezhda Krupskaya and L. Menzhinskaya are inseparably linked with the creation of one, unified school of labour and the organisation of widespread out-of-school education.<br /> <br /> Not only in the capital cities of Soviet Russia, but also in many provincial towns, courses have been started for children's nurses, kindergarten teachers, women creche organisers, etc., and women workers are being sent to attend them.<br /> <br /> Closely linked to the activities of women workers in the sphere of social education is the work done by women delegates and women communists to ensure protection for mother and child. On the initiative of the women's departments, special Commissions of Support have been organised as part of the subdivision concerned with the protection of mother and child. These special commissions are to assist in the broad practical implementation of those decrees on the protection of motherhood which, for a number of technical reasons, and particularly as a result of the dislocation of the national economy, are in effect only benefiting an extremely small number of working women.<br /> <br /> The Commissions of Support, under the leadership of the women's departments, are conducting a campaign to spread the idea of protecting mother and child, and are familiarising women workers at their place of work with the basic laws on the protection of expectant and nursing mothers at work, and are checking on the implementation of all legislation in this area.<br /> <br /> Women workers in the Ukraine are particularly active in the sphere of the protection of motherhood, and each enterprise has a group concerned with this issue. Women workers are the directors of numerous institutions, creches, mother and child homes, and themselves run the local departments.<br /> <br /> Comrade Moirova, who is in charge of the Ukrainian Department of Women Workers under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine, is a tireless worker who shows great initiative. In just one year she has succeeded in raising the work of the women's departments in the sphere of protection of mother and child to the necessary level, having begun this work in the Ukraine under the guidance of one of the leading figures in work among the female proletariat in Russia, Comrade Konkordia Samoilova.<br /> <br /> There is still one major and difficult task to be carried through in the sphere of protection of mother and child. At present, the measures taken to protect and provide for motherhood benefit only women working in factories and plants, and even countryside, even summer creches are few in number. However, this task has already been set, and will be dealt with as soon as it is materially possible to do so...<br /> <br /> The protection of motherhood is impossible without the proper organisation of labour protection at factories. Despite the fact that the principle of equal pay for equal work was established in Soviet Russia from the very first moment of the revolution, most women workers in fact continue to do lower-paid work. The fact that women often lack qualifications means that women belong to the lower-paid category of workers. Moreover, very little has been done to improve sanitation and hygiene at factories. Harmful, unhealthy conditions of work seriously affect women workers, particularly if one takes into account the fact that decrees are implemented only under pressure from the Commissions of Labour Protection. Women workers are being brought into these commissions and made responsible for checking that the decrees on labour protection are implemented, for encouraging an improvement in conditions of work (provision of washrooms, cloakrooms, canteens, etc.), and in particular for concerning themselves with the help of the Commissions of Support with the protection of motherhood and the fate of nursing and pregnant women workers.<br /> <br /> Over these four years women workers have also played a major role in eliminating illiteracy. The Communist Party departments of women workers have succeeded in drawing large numbers of working women into this work. In some provinces every enterprise has a woman delegate specifically selected to assist in eliminating adult illiteracy. Women worker delegates give technical assistance to schools, teach or help to organise literacy schools.<br /> <br /> In Yekaterinburg, the women workers themselves organised a census of the illiterate. Over recent years, the question of eliminating illiteracy was raised at many conferences of women workers.<br /> <br /> Women workers are participating in the administration of Soviet law, both as judges and as members of the jury. In particular it is now becoming customary for women of the Soviet East to take part in people's courts. Here, women are achieving emancipation from their everyday yoke and religious tradition only thanks to the support of Soviet legislation. In Bashkiria, among the Kirghiz and Tatar women, and in Turkestan, the court is one of the first stages of Soviet work among Muslim women who are only just awakening and becoming conscious of their rights.<br /> <br /> In order to make more effective use of women workers in the cause of Soviet construction, the women's departments are everywhere seconding women workers to courses. At first, women workers attended mainly courses on the protection of motherhood, organised by Comrade Lebedeva, who was in charge of all the work done for the protection of mother and child in Soviet Russia and who managed to raise this work to the necessary level. Subsequently the women started to attend courses for medical orderlies and Red nurses, and courses on pre-school upbringing.<br /> <br /> However, women workers are now being seconded to all courses on Soviet construction and party work. Women delegates from the women's departments have been allotted 10 per cent of all the places available on party courses. In 1920 ten provinces sent 3,484 women workers and peasants to such courses through the women's departments.<br /> <br /> On the initiative of the Central Women's Department, a special section has been set up at the Sverdlov University (the central party school) which introduce the students to the basic methods and forms of work among the female proletariat. In order to ensure that women workers, peasants and housewives are brought up in the spirit of communism, the women's departments have obtained for themselves a certain number of places in schools and on courses and, in addition to oral propaganda of the ideas of communism, are also conducting systematic written propaganda by means of special publications. In Soviet Russia at present local party newspapers publish 74 special every week. The Central Department publishes a weekly Bulletin which contains all the instructions and resolutions of the department, the study programmes for use both with women delegates and in party schools, the theses that are to serve for propaganda work, and other guidelines and instructions. The department also publishes a monthly political magazine, Kommunistka (Communist Woman), and a special pamphlet which provides material for reproduction in the various local editions of the Working Women's Supplement.<br /> <br /> The Central Department also has a literature board which plans the publication of brochures, pamphlets and appeals. Over the last year the Central Department has issued over 20 brochures, books on the protection of female labour, a report on the First Conference of Women Communists, a number of appeals and leaflets related to political and state campaigns.<br /> <br /> The education of the masses in the party spirit completes and resumes the Soviet experience gained by broad masses of women workers-with the active and direct co-operation of housewives and peasant women-in Soviet construction. At present, the practical communist education of the masses both by the party and by the women's departments is being directed towards the spheres of economic construction and the revival of production.<br /> <br /> As one of the urgent tasks now facing the Soviet Republic is the revival of production and the organisation of the national economy on communist principles, the active involvement of women in this work is now a matter of particular importance.<br /> <br /> The transition in Soviet Russia to universal labour conscription represented a historic turning point in the position of women. The new system of organising labour based: 1) on a rigorous assessment and rational distribution of all the existing labour reserves of the republic, including women; 2) on the transition from family consumption and individual economic units to collective production and consumption, and 3) on a unified and regulated economic plan, has radically altered the basis upon which rested the former enslavement and dependence of women. The summons of all to the labour front without distinction of sex is changing the entire traditional picture of life and relations between the sexes. The former dependence of women on the capitalist boss and husband cum bread-winner has disappeared. There is now one master, whom the working man and the working woman must both equally obey in the interests of the whole working class-the Soviet Republic of Working People.<br /> <br /> The role played by women workers and peasants in the organisation of the national economy on communist principles is becoming more and more important. As the working men have been drawn to the Red front, working women in Russia have become firmly established on the labour front, the economic front. According to the figures of the All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions, which are far from complete, of the 5.5 million workers in trade unions, the majority in a number of major branches of industry are women...<br /> <br /> At the same time, there is no trade union that does not number women among its members, and no branch of work in which women are not involved. However, despite the fact that female labour is widely used in Soviet Russia, and that women workers outnumber men workers in many branches of production, the number of women workers in the various organs of production management, from factory committees and commissions to the central organs of economic management, is still very small. The plenum of the Petrograd Soviet, for example, consists of 135 working men, but only 25 working women. Of the 194 members of management organs supervising the textile workers' trade union in 38 provinces, only 10 are women. An exception to this rule is Kostroma, where women constitute a majority in the trade union management. In factory management, particularly with the transition to one-man management, women are a rarity, with the exception of the clothing industry and certain textile combines where women workers are members of the management organs. Women are in the minority at trade union congresses, and there are even fewer women at national economic congresses, and in central organs of management.<br /> <br /> What is the cause of this phenomenon, and what does it tell us? One of the reasons for this lack of activity on the part of women workers in the organisation of production is the fact that the women's departments of the party have only recently set themselves the task of shifting the emphasis of their work from involving women in the construction of Soviet institutions to involving them in the rehabilitation of the national economy. This appeal was launched only this winter, and was clearly formulated for the first time at the Third All-Russia Conference of Provincial Women's Departments in December, 1920. It was then confirmed at the Eighth Congress of Soviets with the adoption of the resolution on involving women workers in all organs of management and in the organisation of the national economy. There can be no doubt that, with the increasing activity of the women's departments within the trade unions, and with the use of production propaganda not only to raise labour productivity, but also to involve women equally with men in the organisation of new forms of production, the number of women workers becoming active builders of the national economy will increase as rapidly and consistently as it is doing in the other spheres of activity connected with the reconstruction of life on new principles.<br /> <br /> With the assistance of organisers specifically chosen to work among women in trade unions, with the help of production conferences and the skilful involvement of women workers in trade union efforts to improve working conditions at the factories for both men and women workers, we may confidently hope that the two-million-strong army of women workers can be moulded into steadfast and conscious builders of communist forms of production.<br /> <br /> Without the participation of women workers and peasants, victory on the labour front is impossible. On the other hand, however, the complete and actual emancipation of the 70 million women of the working republic is equally impossible without the introduction and implementation of the principles of the communist economic system and the transformation of life according to new principles. The great change brought about by the Russian proletarian revolution in the hearts and minds of the workers of both sexes makes it easier to draw the broad mass of women workers and peasants into every sphere of public and economic life. That mustering of forces made necessary by the protracted civil war has steeled the will of the workers of both sexes, and has taught them to follow Marx's behest that their liberation can only be achieved by their own efforts. It is now not individuals, but masses of women workers who are joining in the task of constructing the Soviet Republic. As yet, the peasant woman is only timidly following in their wake. The women among the urban poor have become conscious of their rights and have bound their future to the future of communism. The party's task is to find the way to the mind and heart of the peasant woman.<br /> <br /> After the peasant woman comes the 'last slave', the woman of the East, awakening from age-old slavery. The women's departments are vigorously pursuing their work in every area with the population of the peoples of the East and in all the eastern republics of Soviet Russia, in order to rally the forces of Muslim and mountain women around the banner of communism and Soviet power.<br /> <br /> A start has also been made in the work among women engaged in non-physical labour: teachers, office workers, medical personnel, telephonists and telegraph operators.<br /> <br /> On looking back over what has been done during these revolutionary years to organise women around the banner of communism, one cannot but note with deep satisfaction the enormous successes achieved in this difficult and painstaking work. There is now no sphere of Soviet life into which women of the working class have not been drawn. Yesterday's woman worker or peasant is today in charge of army political sections, is transport commissar, organises public catering, heads the department for the protection of motherhood, is in charge of social education, organises reading rooms, supervises canteens, joins the food detachments, and is actively engaged in all political campaigns and all the initiatives undertaken by the republic to combat the collapse of the economy, starvation and epidemics. The woman worker is the soul of the subbotniks, and wherever her duties and obligations call her, she is a full and equal citizen.<br /> <br /> During the four years of the revolution, the movement of women workers has changed from being spontaneous, unorganised, amateurish and disunited to become a large-scale, systematic and organised phenomenon. It is increasingly clear and indisputable that, without close co-operation on the part of the women, the proletariat will not be able to fulfil its great class task. The party as a whole must now consider how to make wide-ranging and skilful use of this female force. The departments of women workers now face the task of enriching the construction of the new society by bringing to the fore those urgent and immediate issues which primarily affect women, and whose solution will deliver the final blow to their recent enslavement by the family and the outdated morals of the bourgeois world.<br /> <br /> The proletarian revolution has achieved its objective. All arguments about the inequality of women have been swept into the past. The October Revolution has created a solid basis for the comprehensive emancipation of women...<br /> [[Category:Library works by Alexandra Kollontai]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about feminism]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about the Soviet Union]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:How_Marxism_works&diff=76012 2024-09-30T12:47:01Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=How Marxism works|image=|author=Chris Harman|written in=1979|publisher=Bookmarks Publications|published_date=May, 1979|published_location=London, England|edition_date=July 1, 2000|type=Pamphlet|isbn=9781898876274|source=[https://sa.org.au/marxism_page/intros/Harman_hmw.pdf How Marxism Works PDF]|audiobook=[https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0-IkmzWbjob9lPqBGAyQAX6lhxm5fE_d Dessalines]|display_title=yes}} <br /> {{Foreword|date=2023-10-07|foreword=Originally written in 1979, ''How Marxism Works'' is an incredibly important tool for the communist movement. Chris Harman was able to accurately convey the principles of [[Marxism]] to first-time readers. His pamphlet is still relevant today, with the majority of its examples from a recent enough period to resonate with present-day readers.<br /> <br /> The strength of How Marxism Works lies in its beginner-friendliness: this book could be given out to someone who has never heard the word 'communism' before, and they would come out with a working knowledge of Marxism in record time.<br /> <br /> However, Chris Harman was also in the [[Socialist Workers Party (UK)|Socialist Workers' Party]], a [[Trotskyist]] party. As such, some of his examples are dyed in the colors of his bias against the [[Soviet Union]] -- opinions that have nothing to do with how Marxism works, and instead all to do with the author's own leaning towards Trotsykism.<br /> <br /> This edition by ProleWiki is adapted from an earlier edition and contains our own chapter annotations as well as this foreword. We have also removed an annex that advertised books for sale as it was not part of the author's work. Links have also been provided to ProleWiki pages or library works when possible. Everything else has been left as in the source.}}<br /> == Introduction ==<br /> There is a widespread myth that Marxism is difficult. It is a myth propagated by the enemies of socialism – former [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] leader [[Harold Wilson]] boasted that he was never able to get beyond the first page of Marx’s [[Library:Capital, vol. I|Capital]]. It is a myth also encouraged by a peculiar breed of academics who declare themselves to be ‘Marxists’: they deliberately cultivate obscure phrases and mystical expressions in order to give the impression that they possess a special knowledge denied to others.<br /> <br /> So it is hardly surprising that many socialists who work 40 hours a week in factories, mines or offices take it for granted that Marxism is something they will never have the time or the opportunity to understand.<br /> <br /> In fact the basic ideas of Marxism are remarkably simple. They explain, as no other set of ideas can, the society in which we live. They make sense of a world wracked by crises, of its poverty in the midst of plenty, of its coups d’etat and military dictatorships, of the way in which marvellous inventions can consign millions to the dole queues, of ‘democracies’ that subsidise torturers and of ‘socialist’ states that threaten each other’s people with nuclear missiles.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the establishment thinkers who so deride Marxist ideas chase each other round in a mad game of blind man’s buff, understanding nothing and explaining less.<br /> <br /> But though Marxism is not difficult, there is a problem for the reader who comes across Marx’s writings for the first time. Marx wrote well over a century ago. He used the language of the time, complete with references to individuals and events then familiar to virtually everyone, now known only to specialist historians.<br /> <br /> I remember my own bafflement when, while still at school, I tried to read his pamphlet [[Library:The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte|The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte]].<br /> <br /> I didn’t know either what Brumaire was or who [[Louis Bonaparte]] was. How many socialists have abandoned attempts to come to grips with Marxism after such experiences!<br /> <br /> This is the justification for this short book. It seeks to provide an introduction to Marxist ideas, which will make it easier for socialists to follow what Marx was on about and to understand the development of Marxism since then in the hands of [[Friedrich Engels|Frederick Engels]], [[Rosa Luxemburg]], [[Vladimir Lenin]], [[Leon Trotsky]], and a whole host of lesser thinkers.&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 1.&quot;&gt;No less important, we can note as well: [[Stalin]], [[Mao Zedong]], [[Kim Il Sung]] and [[Deng Xiaoping]]. Trotsky himself was important to Marxism only as far as he provided an example of what not to do.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Much of this pamphlet first appeared as a series of articles in Socialist Worker under the title ‘Marxism Made Easy’. But I have added substantial fresh material. A little of this I have lifted wholesale from two previous attempts to provide a simple exposition of Marxist ideas: Duncan Hallas’s ''The Meaning of Marxism'' and Norwich SWP’s ‘''Marxist Education Series''’.<br /> <br /> One final point. Space has prevented me from dealing in this pamphlet with some important parts of the Marxist analysis of the modern world. I have included a substantial further reading section at the back.<br /> <br /> === ProleWiki annotations ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;ProleWiki 1.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> == Why we need Marxist theory ==<br /> What do we need theory for? We know there is a crisis. We know we are being robbed by our employers. We know we’re all angry. We know we need socialism. All the rest is just for the intellectuals.<br /> <br /> You often hear words such as these from militant socialists and trade unionists. Such views are strongly encouraged by anti-socialists, who try to give the impression that Marxism is an obscure, complicated and boring doctrine.<br /> <br /> Socialist ideas, they say, are ‘abstract’. They may seem all right in theory, but in real life common sense tells us something else entirely.<br /> <br /> The trouble with these arguments is that the people who put them forward usually have a ‘theory’ of their own, even if they refuse to recognise it. Ask them any question about society, and they will try to answer it with some generalisation or other. A few examples: ‘People are naturally selfish.’ ‘Anyone can get to the top if they try hard enough.’ ‘If it weren’t for the rich there wouldn’t be any money to provide work for the rest of us.’ ‘If only we could educate the workers, society would change.’ ‘Declining morals have brought the country to its present state.’ Listen to any argument in the street, on the bus, in the canteen – you’ll hear dozens of such sayings.<br /> <br /> Each and every one contains a view of why society is like it is and of how people can improve their condition. Such views are all ‘theories’ of society.<br /> <br /> When people say they do not have a theory, all they really mean is they have not clarified their views.<br /> <br /> This is particularly dangerous for anyone who is trying to change society. For the newspapers, the radio, the television, are all continually filling our minds with attempted explanations for the mess society is in. They hope we will accept what they say without thinking more about the issues.<br /> <br /> But you cannot fight effectively to change society unless you recognise what is false in all these different arguments.<br /> <br /> This was first shown 150 years ago. In the 1830s and 1840s the development of industry in areas such as the north west of England drew hundreds of thousands of men, women and children into miserably paid jobs. They were forced to endure living conditions of unbelievable squalor.<br /> <br /> They began to fight back against this with the first mass workers’ organisations – the first trade unions, and in Britain the first movement for political rights for workers: [[Chartism]]. Alongside these movements were the first small groups of people dedicated to winning socialism.<br /> <br /> Immediately the problem arose as to how the workers’ movement could achieve its aim.<br /> <br /> Some people said it was possible to persuade society’s rulers to change things through peaceful means. The ‘moral force’ of a mass, peaceful movement would ensure that benefits were given to the workers. Hundreds of thousands of people organised, demonstrated, worked to build a movement on the basis of such views – only to end defeated and demoralised.&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 2.&quot;&gt;Known as [[utopian socialism]]; see [[Robert Owen]], [[Saint-Simon]], [[Charles Fourier]]. They believed that by building factories nicer to the employees, all other capitalists would be convinced to do the same when they saw how much nicer and productive these factories were. It did not work out.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Others recognised the need to use ‘physical force’, but thought this could be achieved by fairly small, conspiratorial groups cut off from the rest of society. These too led tens of thousands of workers into struggles that ended in defeat and demoralisation.&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 2.&quot;&gt;See [[Auguste Blanqui]]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Still others believed the workers could achieve their goals by economic action, without confronting the army and the police. Again, their arguments led to mass actions. In England in 1842 the world’s first general strike took place in the industrial areas of the north, with tens of thousands of workers holding out for four weeks until forced back to work by hunger and privation.<br /> <br /> It was towards the end of the first stage of defeated workers’ struggles, in 1848, that the German socialist Karl Marx spelt out his own ideas fully, in his pamphlet [[Library:Manifesto of the Communist Party|The Communist Manifesto]].<br /> <br /> His ideas were not pulled out of thin air. They attempted to provide a basis for dealing with all the questions that had been brought up by the workers’ movement of the time.<br /> <br /> The ideas Marx developed are still relevant today. It is stupid to say, as some people do, that they must be out of date because Marx first wrote them down more than 150 years ago. In fact, all the notions of society that Marx argued with are still very widespread. Just as the Chartists argued about ‘moral force’ or ‘physical force’, socialists today argue about the ‘parliamentary road’ or the ‘revolutionary road’. Among those who are revolutionaries the argument for and against ‘terrorism’ is as alive as it was in 1848.<br /> <br /> === The idealists ===<br /> Marx was not the first person to try to describe what was wrong with society. At the time he was writing, new inventions in factories were turning out wealth on a scale undreamt of by previous generations. For the first time it seemed humanity had the means to defend itself against the natural calamities that had been the scourge of previous ages.<br /> <br /> Yet this did not mean any improvement in the lives of the majority of the people. Quite the opposite. The men, women and children who manned the new factories led lives much worse that those led by their grandparents who had toiled the land. Their wages barely kept them above the bread line; periodic bouts of mass unemployment thrust them well below it. They were crammed into miserable, squalid slums, without proper sanitation, subjected to monstrous epidemics.<br /> <br /> Instead of the development of civilisation bringing general happiness and well being, it was giving rise to greater misery.<br /> <br /> This was noted, not just by Marx, but by some of the other great thinkers of the period – men such as the English poets Blake and Shelley, the Frenchmen Fourier and [[Proudhon]], the German philosophers [[Hegel]] and [[Ludwig Feuerbach|Feuerbach]].<br /> <br /> Hegel and Feuerbach called the unhappy state in which humanity found itself ‘alienation’ – a term you still often hear. By alienation, Hegel and Feuerbach meant that men and women continually found that they were dominated and oppressed by what they themselves had done in the past. So, Feuerbach pointed out, people had developed the idea of God –and then had bowed down before it, feeling miserable because they could not live up to something they themselves had made. The more society advanced, the more miserable, ‘alienated’, people became.<br /> <br /> In his own earliest writings Marx took this notion of ‘alienation’ and applied it to the life of those who created the wealth of society:&lt;blockquote&gt;The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range... With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion the devaluation of the world of men... The object which labour produces confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer...&lt;/blockquote&gt;In Marx’s time the most popular explanations of what was wrong with society were still of a religious kind. The misery of society, it was said, was because of the failure of people to do what God wanted them to. If only we were all to ‘renounce sin’ everything would turn out all right.<br /> <br /> A similar view is often heard today, although it usually purports to be non-religious. This is the claim that ‘to change society, you must first change yourself’. If only individual men and women would cure themselves of ‘selfishness’ or ‘materialism’ (or occasionally ‘hangups’) then society would automatically get better.<br /> <br /> A related view spoke not of changing all individuals, but a few key ones – those who exercise power in society. The idea was to try to make the rich and powerful ‘see reason’.<br /> <br /> One of the first British socialists, Robert Owen, began by trying to convince industrialists that they should be kinder to their workers. The same idea is still dominant today among the leaders of the Labour Party, including its left wing. Note how they always call the crimes of the employers ‘mistakes’, as if a bit of argument will persuade big business to relax its grip on society.<br /> <br /> Marx referred to all such views as ‘[[Idealism|idealist]]’. Not because he was against people having ‘ideas’, but because such views see ideas as existing in isolation from the conditions in which people live.<br /> <br /> People’s ideas are intimately linked to the sort of lives they are able to live. Take, for instance, ‘selfishness’. Present day capitalist society breeds selfishness – even in people who continually try to put other people first. A worker who wants to do their best for their children, or to give their parents something on top of their pension, finds the only way is to struggle continually against other people – to get a better job, more overtime, to be first in the queue for redundancy. In such a society you cannot get rid of ‘selfishness’ or ‘greediness’ merely by changing the minds of individuals.<br /> <br /> It’s even more ridiculous to talk of changing society by changing the ideas of ‘top people’. Suppose you were successful in winning a big employer over to socialist ideas and he then stopped exploiting workers. He would just lose in competition with rival employers and be driven out of business.<br /> <br /> Even for those who rule society what matters is not ideas but the structure of the society in which they hold those ideas.<br /> <br /> The point can be put another way. If ideas are what change society, where do the ideas come from?<br /> <br /> We live in a certain sort of society. The ideas put across by the press, the TV, the educational system and so on defend that sort of society. How has anyone ever been able to develop completely different ideas? Because their daily experiences contradict the official ideas of our society.<br /> <br /> For example, you cannot explain why far fewer people are religious today than 100 years ago simply in terms of the success of atheistic propaganda. You have to explain why people listen to atheistic ideas in a way they did not 100 years ago.<br /> <br /> Similarly, if you want to explain the impact of ‘great men’, you have to explain why other people agree to follow them. It is no good saying that, for example. Napoleon or Lenin changed history, without explaining why millions of people were willing to do what they suggested. After all, they were not mass hypnotists. Something in the life of society at a certain point led people to feel that what they suggested seemed correct.<br /> <br /> You can only understand how ideas change history if you understand where those ideas come from and why people accept them. That means looking beyond the ideas to the material conditions of the society in which they occur. That is why Marx insisted, ‘It is not consciousness that determines being, but social being that determines consciousness.’<br /> <br /> === ProleWiki annotations ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;ProleWiki 2.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> == Understanding history ==<br /> Ideas by themselves cannot change society. This was one of Marx’s first conclusions. Like a number of thinkers before him, he insisted that to understand society you had to see human beings as part of the material world.<br /> <br /> Human behaviour was determined by material forces, just like the behaviour of any other natural object. The study of humanity was part of the scientific study of the natural world. Thinkers with such views were called [[Materialism|materialists]].<br /> <br /> Marx regarded materialism as a great step forward over the various religious and idealist notions of history. It meant that you could argue scientifically about changing social conditions, you no longer depended on praying to God or on ‘spiritual change’ in people.<br /> <br /> The replacement of idealism by materialism was the replacement of mysticism by science. But not all materialist explanations of human behaviour are correct. Just as there have been mistaken scientific theories in biology, chemistry or physics, so there have been mistaken attempts to develop scientific theories of society. Here are a few examples: One very widespread, non-Marxist, materialist view holds that human beings are animals, who behave ‘naturally’ in certain ways. Just as it is in the nature of wolves to kill or in the nature of sheep to be placid, so it is in the nature of men to be aggressive, domineering, competitive and greedy (and, it is implied, of women to be meek, submissive, deferential and passive).<br /> <br /> One formulation of this view is to be found in the best selling book ''The Naked Ape''. The conclusions that are drawn from such arguments are almost invariably reactionary. If men are naturally aggressive, it is said, then there is no point in trying to improve society. Things will always turn out the same. Revolutions will ‘always fail’.<br /> <br /> But ‘human nature’ does in fact vary from society to society. For instance, competitiveness, which is taken for granted in our society, hardly existed in many previous societies. When scientists first tried to give [[Lakota people|Sioux]] Indians IQ tests, they found that the Indians could not understand why they should not help each other do the answers. The society they lived in stressed cooperation, not competition.<br /> <br /> The same with aggressiveness. When Eskimos first met Europeans, they could not make any sense whatsoever of the notion of ‘war’. The idea of one group of people trying to wipe out another group of people seemed crazy to them.<br /> <br /> In our society it is regarded as ‘natural’ that parents should love and protect their children. Yet in the Ancient Greek city of Sparta it was regarded as ‘natural’ to leave infants out in the mountains to see if they could survive the cold.<br /> <br /> ‘Unchanging human nature’ theories provide no explanation for the great events of history. The pyramids of Egypt, the splendours of Ancient Greece, the empires of [[Roman Empire (27 BCE–395 CE)|Rome]] or the [[Realm of the Four Parts (1438–1533)|Incas]], the modern industrial city, are put on the same level as the illiterate [[Peasantry|peasants]] who lived in the mud hovels of the [[Feudalism|Dark Ages]]. All that matters is the ‘naked ape’ – not the magnificent civilisations the ape has built. It is irrelevant that some forms of society succeed in feeding the ‘apes’, while others leave millions to starve to death.<br /> <br /> Many people accept a different materialist theory, which stresses the way it is possible to change human behaviour. Just as animals can be trained to behave differently in a circus to a jungle, so, say the supporters of this view, human behaviour can similarly be changed. If only the right people got control of society, it is said, then ‘human nature’ could be transformed.<br /> <br /> This view is certainly a great step forward from the ‘naked ape’. But as an explanation of how society as a whole can be changed it fails. If everyone is completely conditioned in present-day society, how can anyone ever rise above society and see how to change the conditioning mechanisms? Is there some God-ordained minority that is magically immune to the pressures that dominate everyone else? If we are all animals in the circus, who can be the lion tamer?<br /> <br /> Those who hold this theory either end up saying society cannot change (like the naked apers) or they believe change is produced by something outside society – by God, or a ‘great man’, or the power of individual ideas. Their ‘materialism’ lets a new version of idealism in through the back door.<br /> <br /> As Marx pointed out, this doctrine necessarily ends up by dividing society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. This ‘materialist’ view is often reactionary. One of the best known adherents of the view today is a right wing American psychologist called Skinner. He wants to condition people to behave in certain ways. But since he himself is a product of American capitalist society, his ‘conditioning’ merely means trying to make people conform to that society.<br /> <br /> Another materialist view blames all the misery in the world on ‘population pressure’. (This is usually called Malthusian after Malthus, the English economist of the late 18th century who first developed it.) But it cannot explain why the United States, for instance, burns corn while people in India starve. Nor can it explain why 150 years ago there was not enough food produced in the US to feed 10 million people, while today enough is produced to feed 200 million.<br /> <br /> It forgets that every extra mouth to feed is also an extra person capable of working and creating wealth.<br /> <br /> Marx called all these mistaken explanations forms of ‘mechanical’ or ‘crude’ materialism. They all forget that as well as being part of the material world, human beings are also acting, living creatures whose actions change it.<br /> <br /> === The materialist interpretation of history ===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence – their food, shelter and clothing.&lt;/blockquote&gt;With these words, Karl Marx first stressed what was distinct about his explanation of how society developed. Human beings are animals descended from ape-like creatures. Like other animals, their first concern is feeding themselves and protecting themselves from the climate.<br /> <br /> The way other animals do this depends on their inherited biological make up. A wolf stays alive by chasing and killing its prey, in ways determined by its biologically inherited instincts. It keeps warm on cold nights because of its fur. It brings up its cubs according to inherited patterns of behaviour.<br /> <br /> But human life is not fixed in this way. The humans who roamed the Earth 100,000 years ago or 30,000 years ago lived quite different lives from ourselves. They lived in caves and holes in the ground. They did not have any containers to keep food or water in, they depended for their food on collecting berries or throwing stones at wild animals. They could not write, or count beyond the fingers on their hands. They had no real knowledge of what went on beyond their immediate neighbourhood or what their forefathers had done.<br /> <br /> Yet physically their make up 100,000 years ago was similar to that of modern man and 30,000 years ago it was identical. If you washed and shaved a caveman, put him in a suit and walked him down the high street, no one would think him out of place.<br /> <br /> As the archaeologist C. Gordon Childe has noted:&lt;blockquote&gt;The earliest skeletons of our own species belong to the closing phases of the last Ice Age … Since the time when skeletons of Homo sapiens first appear in the geological record … man’s bodily evolution has come virtually to a standstill, although his cultural progress was just beginning.&lt;/blockquote&gt;The same point is made by another archaeologist, Leakey:&lt;blockquote&gt;The physical differences between men of the Aurignacian and Magdalenian cultures (25,000 years ago) on the one hand, and present day men on the other is negligible, while the cultural difference is immeasurable.&lt;/blockquote&gt;By ‘culture’ the archaeologist means the things which men and women learn and teach one another (how to make clothes from furs or wool, how to make pots out of clay, how to make fire, how to build homes, and so forth) as opposed to those things that animals know instinctively.<br /> <br /> The lives of the earliest humans were already vastly different from those of other animals. For they were able to use the physical features peculiar to humans – large brains, forelimbs capable of manipulating objects – to begin to shape their surroundings to suit their needs. This meant humans could adapt themselves to a wide range of different conditions, without any change in their physical make up. Humans no longer simply reacted to conditions around them. They could act upon those conditions, beginning to change them to their own advantage.<br /> <br /> At first they used sticks and stones to attack wild beasts, they lit torches from naturally occurring fires to provide themselves with heat and light, they covered themselves with vegetation and animal skins. Over many tens of thousands of years they learnt to make fire themselves, to shape stones using other stones, eventually to grow food from seeds they themselves had planted, to store it in pots made out of clay, and to domesticate certain animals.<br /> <br /> Comparatively recently – a mere 5,000 years ago, out of half a million years of human history – they learnt the secret of turning ores into metals that could be shaped into reliable tools and effective weapons.<br /> <br /> Each of these advances had an enormous impact, not merely in making it easier for humans to feed and clothe themselves, but also in transforming the very organisation of human life itself. From the beginning human life was social. Only the joint efforts of several humans could enable them to kill the beasts, to gather the food and keep the fires going. They had to cooperate.<br /> <br /> This continual close cooperation also caused them to communicate, by uttering sounds and developing languages. At first the social groups were simple. There was not enough naturally growing produce anywhere to support groups of humans more than perhaps a couple of dozen strong. All effort had to be put into the basic tasks of getting the food, so everyone did the same job and lived the same sort of life.<br /> <br /> With no means of storing any quantities of food, there could be no private property or class divisions, nor was there any booty to produce a motive for war.<br /> <br /> There were, until a few years ago, still hundreds of societies in many different parts of the globe where this was still the pattern – among some of the Indians of North and South America, some of the peoples of Equatorial Africa and the Pacific Ocean, the Aborigines of Australia.<br /> <br /> Not that these people were less clever than ourselves or had a more ‘primitive mentality’. The Australian Aborigines, for instance, had to learn to recognise literally thousands of plants and the habits of scores of different animals in order to survive. The anthropologist Professor Firth has described how: &lt;blockquote&gt;Australian tribes … know the habits, markings, breeding grounds and seasonal fluctuations of all the edible animals, fish and birds of their hunting grounds. They know the external and some of the less obvious properties of rocks, stones, waxes, gums, plants, fibres and barks; they know how to make fire; they know how to apply heat to relieve pain, stop bleeding and delay the putrefaction of fresh food; and they also use fire and heat to harden some woods and soften others … They know something at least of the phases of the moon, the movement of the tides, the planetary cycles, and the sequence and duration of the seasons; they have correlated together such climactic fluctuations as wind systems, annual patterns of humidity and temperature and fluxes in the growth and presence of natural species … In addition they make intelligent and economical use of the by-products of animals killed for food; the flesh of the kangaroo is eaten; the leg bones are used as fabricators for stone tools and as pins; the sinews become spear bindings; the claws are set into necklaces with wax and fibre; the fat is combined with red ochre as a cosmetic, and blood is mixed with charcoal as paint... They have some knowledge of simple mechanical principles and will trim a boomerang again and again to give it the correct curve...&lt;/blockquote&gt;They were much more ‘clever’ than us in dealing with the problems of surviving in the Australian desert. What they had not learnt was to plant seeds and grow their own food – something our own ancestors learnt only about 5,000 years ago, after being on the Earth for 100 times that period.<br /> <br /> The development of new techniques of producing wealth – the means of human life – has always given birth to new forms of cooperation between humans, to new social relations.<br /> <br /> For example, when people first learnt to grow their own food (by planting seeds and domesticating animals) and to store it (in earthenware pots) there was a complete revolution in social life – called by archaeologists ‘the neolithic revolution’. Humans had to cooperate together now to clear the land and to harvest food, as well as to hunt animals. They could live together in much greater numbers than before, they could store food and they could begin to exchange goods with other settlements.<br /> <br /> The first towns could develop. For the first time there was the possibility of some people leading lives that did not involve them just in providing food: some would specialise in making pots, some in mining flints and later metal for tools and weapons, some in carrying through elementary administrative tasks for the settlement as a whole. More ominously, the stored surplus of food provided a motive for war.<br /> <br /> People had begun by discovering new ways of dealing with the world around them, or harnessing nature to their needs. But in the process, without intending it, they had transformed the society in which they lived and with it their own lives. Marx summed up this process: a development of the ‘forces of production’ changed the ‘relations of production’ and, through them, society.<br /> <br /> There are many more recent examples. Some 300 years ago the vast majority of people in this country still lived on the land, producing food by techniques that had not changed for centuries. Their mental horizon was bounded by the local village and their ideas very much influenced by the local church. The vast majority did not need to read and write, and never learned to.<br /> <br /> Then, 200 years ago, industry began to develop. Tens of thousands of people were drawn into the factories. Their lives underwent a complete transformation. Now they lived in great towns, not small villages. They needed to learn skills undreamt of by their ancestors, including eventually the ability to read and write. Railways and steamships made it possible to travel across half the Earth.<br /> <br /> The old ideas hammered into their heads by the priests no longer fitted at all. The material revolution in production was also a revolution in the way they lived and in the ideas they had.<br /> <br /> Similar changes are still affecting vast numbers of people. Look at the way people from villages in Bangladesh or Turkey have been drawn to the factories of England or Germany seeking work. Look at the way many find that their old customs and religious attitudes no longer fit.<br /> <br /> Or look at the way in the past 50 years the majority of women have got used to working outside the home and how this has led them to challenge the old attitude that they were virtually the property of their husbands.<br /> <br /> Changes in the way humans work together to produce the things that feed, clothe and shelter them cause changes in the way in which society is organised and the attitude of people in it. This is the secret of social change – of history – that the thinkers before Marx (and many since), the idealists and the mechanical materialists, could not understand.<br /> <br /> The idealists saw there was change – but said it must come out of the skies. The mechanical materialists saw that humans were conditioned by the material world but could not understand how things could ever change. What Marx saw was that human beings are conditioned by the world around them, but that they react back upon the world, working on it so as to make it more habitable.<br /> <br /> But in doing so they change the conditions under which they live and therefore themselves as well.<br /> <br /> The key to understanding change in society lies in understanding how human beings cope with the problem of creating their food, shelter and clothing. That was Marx’s starting point. But that does not mean Marxists believe that improvements in technology automatically produce a better society, or even that inventions automatically lead to changes in society. Marx rejected this view (sometimes called technological determinism). Again and again in history, people have rejected ideas for advancing the production of food, shelter or clothing because these clash with the attitudes or the forms of society that already exist.<br /> <br /> For example, under the Roman Empire there were many ideas about how to produce more crops from a given amount of ground, but people didn’t put them into effect because they required more devotion to work than you could get from slaves working under fear of the whip. When the British ruled Ireland in the 18th century they tried to stop the development of industry there because it clashed with the interests of businessmen in London.<br /> <br /> If someone produced a method of solving the food problem of India by slaughtering the sacred cows or providing everyone in Britain with succulent steaks by processing rat meat, they would be ignored because of established prejudices.<br /> <br /> Developments in production challenge old prejudices and old ways of organising society, but they do not automatically overthrow those old prejudices and social forms. Many human beings fight to prevent change – and those wanting to use new methods of production have to fight or change. If those who oppose change win, then the new forms of production cannot come into operation and production stagnates or even goes backwards.<br /> <br /> In Marxist terminology: as the forces of production develop they clash with the pre-existing social relations and ideas that grew up on the basis of old forces of production. Either people identified with the new forces of production win this clash, or those identified with the old system do. In the one case, society moves forward, in the other it remains stuck in a rut, or even goes backwards.<br /> <br /> == Class struggle ==<br /> We live in a society that is divided into classes, in which a few people have vast amounts of private property, and most of us have virtually none. Naturally, we tend to take it for granted that things have always been like this. But in fact, for the greater part of human history, there were no classes, no private property, and no armies or police. This was the situation during the half a million years of human development up to 5,000 or 10,000 years ago.&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 4.&quot;&gt;See [[Primitive communism]]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Until more food could be produced by one person’s work than was needed to keep that person fit for work, there could be no division into classes. What was the point of keeping slaves if all that they produced was needed to keep them alive?<br /> <br /> But beyond a certain point, the advance of production made class divisions not only possible but necessary. Enough food could be produced to leave a surplus after the immediate producers had taken enough to stay alive. And the means existed to store this food and to transport it from one place to another.<br /> <br /> The people whose labour produced all this food could simply have eaten the extra ‘surplus’ food.<br /> <br /> Since they lived fairly meagre, miserable lives, they were strongly tempted. But that left them unprotected against the ravages of nature, which might mean famine or a flood the next year, and against attacks from angry tribes from outside the area.<br /> <br /> It was, at first, of great advantage to everyone if a special group of people took charge of this extra wealth, storing it against future disaster, using it to support craftsmen, building up means of defence, exchanging part of it with distant peoples for useful objects. These activities came to be carried out in the first towns, where administrators, merchants and craftsmen lived. Out of the markings on tablets used to keep a record of the different sorts of wealth, writing began to develop.<br /> <br /> Such were the first, faltering steps of what we call ‘civilisation’. But – and it was a very big but – all this was based on control of the increased wealth by a small minority of the population. And the minority used the wealth for its own good as well as the good of society as a whole.<br /> <br /> The more production developed, the more wealth came into the hands of this minority – and the more it became cut off from the rest of society. Rules, which began as a means of benefiting society, became ‘laws’, insisting that the wealth and the land that produced it was the ‘private property’ of the minority. A [[ruling class]] had come into existence – and laws defended its power.<br /> <br /> You might perhaps ask whether it would have been possible for society to have developed otherwise, for those who laboured on the land to control its produce?<br /> <br /> The answer has to be no. Not because of ‘human nature’, but because society was still very poor.<br /> <br /> The majority of the Earth’s population were too busy scratching the soil for a meagre living to have time to develop systems of writing and reading, to create works of art, to build ships for trade, to plot the course of the stars, to discover the rudiments of mathematics, to work out when rivers would flood or how irrigation channels should be constructed. These things could only happen if some of the necessities of life were seized from the mass of the population and used to maintain a privileged minority which did not have to toil from sunrise to sunset.<br /> <br /> However, that does not mean that the division into classes remains necessary today. The last century has seen a development of production undreamt of in the previous history of humanity.<br /> <br /> Natural scarcity has been overcome – what now exists is artificial scarcity, created as governments destroy food stocks.<br /> <br /> Class society today is holding humanity back, not leading it forward.<br /> <br /> It was not just the first change from purely agricultural societies to societies of towns and cities that gave rise, necessarily, to new class divisions. The same process was repeated every time new ways of producing wealth began to develop.<br /> <br /> So, in Britain 1,000 years ago, the ruling class was made up of feudal barons who controlled the land and lived off the backs of the serfs. But as trade began to develop on a big scale, there grew up alongside them in the cities a new privileged class of wealthy merchants. And when industry began to develop on a substantial scale, their power in turn was disputed by the owners of industrial enterprises.<br /> <br /> At each stage in the development of society there was an oppressed class whose physical labour created the wealth, and a ruling class who controlled that wealth. But as society developed both the oppressed and the oppressors underwent changes.<br /> <br /> In the slave society of Ancient Rome the slaves were the personal property of the ruling class. The slave owner owned the goods produced by the slave because he owned the slave, in exactly the same way as he owned the milk produced by a cow because he owned the cow.<br /> <br /> In the feudal society of the Middle Ages the serfs had their own land, and owned what was produced from it; but in return for having this land they had to do a number of days work every year on the land owned by the feudal lord. Their time would be divided – perhaps half their time they would be working for the lord, half the time for themselves. If they refused to do work for the lord, he was entitled to punish them (through flogging, imprisonment or worse).<br /> <br /> In modern capitalist society the boss does not physically own the worker nor is he entitled to physically punish a worker who refuses to do unpaid work for him. But the boss does own the factories where the worker has to get a job if he or she wants to keep alive. So it is fairly easy for him to force the worker to put up with a wage which is much less than the value of the goods the worker makes in the factory.<br /> <br /> In each case the oppressing class gets control of all the wealth that is left over once the most elementary needs of the workers have been met. The slave owner wants to keep his property in a good condition, so he feeds his slave in exactly the same way as you might oil your car. But everything surplus to the physical needs of the slave, the owner uses for his own enjoyment. The feudal serf has to feed and clothe himself with the work he puts in on his own bit of land. All the extra labour he puts in on the lord’s fields goes to the lord.<br /> <br /> The modern worker gets paid a wage. All the other wealth he creates goes to the employing class as profit, interest or rent.<br /> <br /> === The class struggle and the state ===<br /> The workers have rarely accepted their lot without fighting back. There were slave revolts in Ancient Egypt and Rome, peasant revolts in Imperial China, civil wars between the rich and poor in the cities of Ancient Greece, in Rome and Renaissance Europe.<br /> <br /> That is why Karl Marx began his pamphlet [[Library:Manifesto of the Communist Party|''The Communist Manifesto'']] by insisting, ‘The history of all hitherto existing societies has been the history of class struggles.’ The growth of civilisation had depended on the exploitation of one class by another, and therefore on the struggle between them.<br /> <br /> However powerful an Egyptian pharaoh, a Roman emperor or a medieval prince, however luxurious their lives, however magnificent their palaces, they could do nothing unless they guaranteed that the products grown by the most miserable peasant or slave passed into their possession. They could only do this if alongside the division into classes there also grew something else – control over the means of violence by themselves and their supporters.<br /> <br /> In earlier societies there had been no army, police or governmental apparatus separate from the majority of the people. Even some 50 or 60 years ago, for instance, in parts of Africa, it was still possible to find societies in which this was still so. Many of the tasks done by the state in our society were simply done informally by the whole population, or by meetings of representatives.<br /> <br /> Such meetings would judge the behaviour of any individual who was considered to have broken an important social rule. Punishment would be applied by the whole community – for instance by forcing miscreants to leave. Since everyone was agreed on the necessary punishment, separate police were not needed to put it into effect. If warfare occurred all the young men would take part, under leaders chosen for the occasion, again without any separate army structure.<br /> <br /> But once you had a society in which a minority had control over most of the wealth, these simple ways of keeping ‘law and order’ and organising warfare could no longer work. Any meeting of representatives or any gathering of the armed young men would be likely to split along class lines.<br /> <br /> The privileged group could only survive if it began to monopolise in its own hands the making and implementation of punishments, laws, the organisation of armies, the production of weapons. So the separation into classes was accompanied by the growth of groups of judges, policemen and secret policemen, generals, bureaucrats – all of whom were given part of the wealth in the hands of the privileged class in return for protecting its rule.<br /> <br /> Those who served in the ranks of this ‘state’ were trained to obey without hesitation the orders of their ‘superiors’ and were cut off from all normal social ties with the exploited mass of people. The state developed as a killing machine in the hands of the privileged class. And a highly effective machine it could be.<br /> <br /> Of course, the generals who ran this machine often fell out with a particular emperor or king, and tried to put themselves in his place. The ruling class, having armed a monster, could often not control it. But since the wealth needed to keep the killing machine running came from the exploitation of the working masses, every such revolt would be followed by continuation of society along the old lines.<br /> <br /> Throughout history people who have really wanted to change society for the better have found themselves up against not just the privileged class, but also an armed machine, a state, that serves its interest.<br /> <br /> Ruling classes, together with the priests, generals, policemen and legal systems that backed them up, all grew up in the first place because without them civilisation could not develop. But once they are established in power, they come to have an interest in hindering the further development of civilisation. Their power is dependent upon their ability to force those who produce wealth to hand it over to them. They become wary of new ways of producing wealth, even if more efficient than the old, lest control escape from their hands.<br /> <br /> They fear anything that could lead to the exploited masses developing initiative and independence.<br /> <br /> And they also fear the growth of new privileged groups with enough wealth to be able to pay for arms and armies of their own. Beyond a certain point, instead of aiding the development of production, they began to hinder it.<br /> <br /> For example, in the Chinese Empire, the power of the ruling class rested upon its ownership of the land and its control over the canals and dams that were necessary for irrigation and to avoid floods.<br /> <br /> This control laid the basis for a civilisation that lasted some 2,000 years. But at the end of this period production was not much more advanced than at the beginning – despite the flourishing of Chinese art, the discovery of printing and gunpowder, all at a time when Europe was stuck in the Dark Ages.<br /> <br /> The reason was that when new forms of production did begin to develop, it was in towns, through the initiative of merchants and craftsmen. The ruling class feared this growth in power of a social grouping that was not completely under its control. So periodically the imperial authorities took harsh measures to crush the growing economies of the towns, to drive production down, and to destroy the power of the new social classes.<br /> <br /> The growth of new forces of production – of new ways of producing wealth – clashed with the interests of the old ruling class. A struggle developed, the outcome of which determined the whole future of society.<br /> <br /> Sometimes the outcome, as in China, was that new forms of production were prevented from emerging, and society remained more or less stagnant for very long periods of time.<br /> <br /> Sometimes, as in the Roman Empire, the inability of new forms of production to develop meant that eventually there was no longer enough wealth being produced to maintain society on its old basis.<br /> <br /> Civilisation collapsed, the cities were destroyed and people reverted to a crude, agricultural form of society.<br /> <br /> Sometimes a new class, based upon a new form of production, was able to organise to weaken and finally overthrow the old ruling class, together with its legal system, its armies, its ideology, its religion. Then society could go forward.<br /> <br /> In each case whether society went forwards or backwards&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 4.&quot;&gt;The author doesn't mean the general trend of how society progresses, but individual revolutions.&lt;/ref&gt; depended on who won the war between the classes. And, as in any war, victory was not ordained in advance, but depended on the organisation, cohesion and leadership of the rival classes.<br /> <br /> === ProleWiki annotations ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;ProleWiki 4.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> == Capitalism – how the system began ==<br /> One of the most ludicrous arguments you hear is that things could not be different to the way they are now. Yet things were different. And not on some distant part of the globe, but in this country, not so long ago. A mere 250 years ago people would have regarded you as a lunatic if you had described to them the world we live in now, with its huge cities, its great factories, its aeroplanes, its space expeditions – even its railway systems were beyond the bounds of their imagination.<br /> <br /> For they lived in a society which was overwhelmingly rural, in which most people had never travelled ten miles outside their local village, in which the pattern of life was determined, as it had been for thousands of years, by the alternation of the seasons.<br /> <br /> But already, 700 or 800 years ago, a development had begun which was eventually to challenge this whole system of society. Groups of craftsmen and traders began to establish themselves in towns, not giving their services for nothing to some lord as the rest of the population did, but exchanging products with various lords and serfs for foodstuffs. Increasingly they used precious metals as a measure of that exchange. It was not a big step to seeing in every act of exchange an opportunity to get a little extra of the precious metal, to make a profit.<br /> <br /> At first the towns could only survive by playing one lord off against another. But as the skills of their craftsmen improved, they created more wealth, and they grew in influence. The ‘burghers’, the ‘bourgeois’ or the ‘middle classes’ began as a class within the [[Feudalism|feudal society]] of the Middle Ages.<br /> <br /> But they obtained their riches in a quite different way to the feudal lords who dominated that society.<br /> <br /> A feudal lord lived directly off the agricultural produce he was able to force his serfs to produce on his land. He used his personal power to make them do this, without having to pay them. By contrast the wealthier classes in the towns lived off the proceeds of selling non-agricultural goods. They paid workers wages to produce these for them, by the day or week.<br /> <br /> These workers, often escaped serfs, were ‘free’ to come and go as they liked – once they had finished the work for which they had been paid. The ‘only’ compulsion on them to work was that they would starve if they did not find employment with someone. The rich could only grow richer because rather than starve, the ‘free’ worker would accept less money for his work than the goods he produced were worth.<br /> <br /> We will return to this point later. For the present what matters is that the middle class burghers and the feudal lords got their wealth from quite different sources. This led them to want society organised in different ways.<br /> <br /> The feudal lord’s ideal was a society in which he had absolute power in his own lands, unbound by written laws, with no intrusion from any outside body, with his serfs unable to flee. He wanted things to stay as in the days of his father and grandfather, with everyone accepting the social station into which they were born.<br /> <br /> The newly rich bourgeoisie necessarily saw things differently. They wanted restraints on the power of individual lords or kings to interfere with their trade or steal their wealth.<br /> <br /> They dreamed of achieving this through a fixed body of written laws, to be drawn up and enforced by their own chosen representatives. They wanted to free the poorer classes from serfdom, so that they could work (and increase the burghers’ profits) in the towns.<br /> <br /> As for themselves, their fathers and grandfathers had often been under the thumb of feudal lords, and they certainly did not want that to continue.<br /> <br /> In a word, they wanted to revolutionise society. Their clashes with the old order were not only economic, but also ideological and political. Ideological chiefly meant religious, in an illiterate society where the chief source of general ideas about society was church preaching.<br /> <br /> Since the medieval church was run by bishops and abbots who were feudal lords in their own right, it propagated pro-feudal views, attacking as ‘sinful’ many of the practices of the urban bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> So in [[Holy Roman Empire (800–1806)|Germany]], [[Kingdom of the Netherlands|Holland]], [[Kingdom of England (927–1707)|Britain]] and [[Kingdom of France (987–1792)|France]] in the 16th and 17th centuries the middle classes rallied to a religion of their own: [[Protestantism]] – a religious ideology that preached thrift, sobriety, hard work (especially for the workers!) and the independence of the middle class congregation from the power of bishops and abbots.<br /> <br /> The middle class created a God in their image, in opposition to the God of the Middle Ages.<br /> <br /> Today we are told at school or on television about the great religious wars and civil wars of that period as if they were just about religious differences, as if people were daft enough to fight and die merely because they disagreed over the role of the blood and body of Christ in the Holy Communion. But much more was at stake – the clash between two completely different forms of society, based upon two different ways of organising the production of wealth.<br /> <br /> In Britain the bourgeoisie won. Horrific as it must seem to our present ruling class, their ancestors consecrated their power by cutting off a king’s head, justifying the act with the rantings of Old Testament prophets.<br /> <br /> But elsewhere the first round went to feudalism. In France and Germany the Protestant bourgeois revolutionaries were wiped out after bitter civil wars (although a feudal version of Protestantism survived as the religion of northern Germany). The bourgeoisie had to wait two centuries and more before enjoying success, in second round that began without religious clothing in [[French Revolution|1789 Paris]].<br /> <br /> === Exploitation and surplus value ===<br /> In [[Slavery|slave]] and feudal societies the upper classes had to have legal controls over the mass of the working population. Otherwise those who worked for the feudal lord or the slave owner would have run away, leaving the privileged class with no one to labour for it.<br /> <br /> But the capitalist does not, usually, need such legal controls over the person of the worker. He doesn’t need to own him or her, provided he ensures that the worker who refuses to work for the capitalist will starve. Instead of owning the worker, the capitalist can prosper providing he owns and controls the worker’s source of livelihood – the machines and factories.<br /> <br /> The material necessities of life are produced by the labour of human beings. But that labour is next to useless without tools to cultivate the land and to process naturally occurring materials. The tools can vary enormously – from simple agricultural implements such as ploughs and hoes to the complicated machines you find in modern automated factories. But without the tools even the most highly skilled worker is unable to produce the things needed for physical survival.<br /> <br /> It is the development of these tools – usually referred to as ‘the means of production’ – that separates modern human beings from our distant ancestors of the Stone Age. Capitalism is based on the ownership of these means of production by a few people. In Britain today, for instance, 1 percent of the population owns 84 percent of the stocks and shares in industry. In their hands is concentrated effective control over the vast majority of the means of production – the machines, the factories, the oil fields, the best agricultural land. The mass of the population can only get a liveli- hood if the capitalists allow them to work at and with those means of production. This gives the capitalists immense power to exploit the labour of other people – even though in the eyes of the law ‘all men are equal’.<br /> <br /> It took some centuries for the capitalists to build up their monopoly control over the means of production. In this country, for instance, the parliaments of the 17th and 18th centuries had first to pass a succession of Enclosure Acts, which drove peasants away from their own means of production, the land which they had cultivated for centuries. The land became the property of a section of the capitalist class and the mass of the rural population were forced to sell their labour to capitalists or starve.<br /> <br /> Once capitalism had achieved this monopoly of the means of production, it could afford to let the mass of the population enjoy apparent freedom and equality of political rights with the capitalists.<br /> <br /> For however ‘free’ the workers were, they still had to work for a living.<br /> <br /> Pro-capitalist economists have a simple explanation of what then happens. They say that by paying wages the capitalist buys the labour of the worker. He must pay a fair price for it. Otherwise the worker will go and work for someone else. The capitalist gives a ‘fair day’s wage’. In return the worker should give a ‘fair day’s work’.<br /> <br /> How then do they explain profit? This, they claim, is a ‘reward’ to the capitalist for his ‘sacrifice’ in allowing the means of production (his capital) to be put to use. It is an argument that can hardly convince any worker who gives it a moment’s thought.<br /> <br /> Take a company that announces a ‘net rate of profit’ of 10 percent. It is saying that if the cost of all the machinery, factories and so on that it owns is £100 million, then it is left with £10 million profit after paying the wages, raw material costs and the cost of replacing the machinery that wears out in a year.<br /> <br /> You don’t have to be a genius to see that after ten years the company will have made a total profit of £100 million – the full cost of its original investment.<br /> <br /> If it is ‘sacrifice’ that is being rewarded, then surely after the first ten years all profits should cease.<br /> <br /> For by then the capitalists have been paid back completely for the money they put in in the first place. In fact, however, the capitalist is twice as wealthy as before. He owns his original investment and the accumulated profits.<br /> <br /> The workers, in the meantime, have sacrificed most of their life’s energy to working eight hours a day, 48 weeks a year, in the factory. Are they twice as well off at the end of that time as at the beginning? You bet your boots they’re not. Even if a worker saves assiduously, he or she won’t be able to buy much more than a colour television set, a cheap central heating system or a second hand car. The worker will never raise the money to buy the factory he or she works in.<br /> <br /> The ‘fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay’ has multiplied the capital of the capitalist, while leaving the worker with no capital and no choice but to go on working for roughly the same wage. The ‘equal rights’ of the capitalist and the worker have increased inequality.<br /> <br /> One of Karl Marx’s great discoveries was the explanation for this apparent anomaly. There is no mechanism that forces a capitalist to pay his workers the full value of the work they do. A worker employed, for example, in the engineering industry today might create £400 of new output a week.<br /> <br /> But that does not mean he or she will be paid this sum. In 99 cases out of 100, they will get paid considerably less.<br /> <br /> The alternative they have to working is to go hungry (or live on the miserable sums handed out by the social security). So they demand not the full value of what they produce, but rather just enough to give them a more or less acceptable living standard. The worker is paid only enough to get him to put all his efforts, all his capacity for work (what Marx called his labour power) at the disposal of the capitalist each day.<br /> <br /> From the capitalist’s point of view, providing the workers are paid enough to keep them fit for work and to bring up their children as a new generation of workers, then they are being paid a fair amount for their labour power. But the amount of wealth needed to keep workers fit for work is considerably less than the amount of wealth they can produce once working – the value of their labour power is considerably less than the value created by their labour.<br /> <br /> The difference goes into the pocket of the capitalist. Marx called it ‘surplus value’.<br /> <br /> === The self expansion of capital ===<br /> If you read the writing of apologists for the present system, you will soon notice that they share a strange belief. Money, according to them, has a magical property. It can grow like a plant or animal.<br /> <br /> When a capitalist puts his money in a bank he expects it to increase in amount. When he invests it in the shares of ICI or Unilever he expects to be rewarded by offshoots of fresh money every year, in the form of dividend payments. Karl Marx noted this phenomenon, which he called the ‘self expansion of capital’, and set out to explain it. As we saw previously, his explanation began not with money, but with labour and the means of production. In present society, those with enough wealth can buy control of the means of production. They can then force everyone else to sell to them the labour needed to work the means of production. The secret of the ‘self expansion of capital’, of the miraculous capacity of money to grow for those who have plenty of it, lies in the buying and selling of this labour.<br /> <br /> Let’s take the example of a worker, who we’ll call Jack, who gets a job with an employer, Sir Browning Browne. The work Jack can do in eight hours will create an additional amount of wealth – worth perhaps £48. But Jack will be willing to work for much less than this, since the alternative is social security. The efforts of pro-capitalist MPs, such as the obnoxious Tory Peter Lilley, ensure that he will only get £12 a day on social security to keep himself and his family. They explain that to give more would be to ‘destroy the incentive to work’.<br /> <br /> If Jack wants to get more than £12 a day he has to sell his ability to work, his labour power, even if he is offered much less than the £48 worth of wealth he can create in eight hours. He will be willing to work for, perhaps, the average wage, £28 a day. The difference, £20 a day, goes into the pocket of Sir Browning. It is Sir Browning’s surplus value.<br /> <br /> Because he had enough wealth to buy control of the means of production in the first place, Sir Browning Browne can guarantee growing richer by £20 a day for every worker he employs. His money keeps growing, his capital expanding, not because of some law of nature, but because his control of the means of production allows him to get someone else’s labour on the cheap.<br /> <br /> Of course, Sir Browning does not necessarily have all the £20 to himself – he may rent the factory or the land, he may have borrowed some of his initial wealth from other members of the ruling class. They demand in return a cut of the surplus value. So perhaps he forks out £10 to them as rent, interest and dividend payments, leaving himself with only £10 profit.<br /> <br /> Those who live off dividends have probably never seen Jack in their lives. Nevertheless, it was not the mystical power of pound coins that gave them their income, but the all too physical sweat of Jack. The dividend, the interest payments and the profit all came out of the surplus value.<br /> <br /> What decides how much Jack gets for his work? The employer will try to pay as little as possible.<br /> <br /> But in practice there are limits below which he cannot go. Some of these limits are physical – it is no good giving workers such miserable wages that they suffer from malnutrition and are unable to put any effort into their work. They also have to be able to travel to and from work, to have somewhere they can rest at night, so that they do not fall asleep over the machines.<br /> <br /> From this point of view it is worth even paying for what the workers think of as ‘little luxuries’ – like a few pints in the evening, the television, the occasional holiday. These all make the worker more refreshed and capable of doing more work. They all serve to replenish his labour power. It is an important fact that where wages are ‘held too low’ the productivity of labour falls.<br /> <br /> The capitalist has to worry about something else as well. His firm will be in business for many years, long after the present set of workers have died out. The firm will require the labour of their children. So they have to pay the workers enough to bring up their children. They also have to ensure that the state provides these children with certain skills (such as reading and writing) through the educational system.<br /> <br /> In practice, something else matters as well – what the worker thinks is a ‘decent wage’. A worker who gets paid considerably less than this may well neglect his work, not worrying about losing his job since he thinks it is ‘useless’.<br /> <br /> All these elements that determine his wage have one thing in common. They all go towards making sure he has the life energy, the labour power, that the capitalist buys by the hour. The workers are paid the cost of keeping themselves and their families alive and fit for work.<br /> <br /> In present capitalist society, one further point has to be noted. Huge amounts of wealth are spent on such things as police forces and weapons. These are used in the interests of the capitalist class by the state. In effect, they belong to the capitalist class, although they are run by the state. The value which is spent on them belongs to the capitalists, not the workers. It too is part of the surplus value.<br /> <br /> Surplus value = profit + rent + interest + spending on the police, army and so on.<br /> <br /> == The labour theory of value ==<br /> But machinery, capital, produces goods as well as labour. If so, it’s only fair that capital as well as labour gets a share of the wealth produced. Every ‘factor of production’ has to get its reward.<br /> <br /> That is how someone who has been taught a little pro-capitalist economics replies to the Marxist analysis of exploitation and surplus value. And at first sight the objection seems to make some sense. For, surely, you cannot produce goods without capital?<br /> <br /> Marxists have never argued that you could. But our starting point is rather different. We begin by asking: where does capital come from? How did the means of production come into existence in the first place?<br /> <br /> The answer is not difficult to find. Everything people have used historically to create wealth – whether a Neolithic stone axe or a modern computer – once had to be made by human labour. Even if the axe was shaped with tools, the tools in turn were the product of previous labour.<br /> <br /> That is why Karl Marx used to refer to the means of production as ‘[[Dead labor|dead labour]]’. When businessmen boast of the capital they possess, in reality they are boasting that they have gained control of a vast pool of the labour of previous generations – and that does not mean the labour of their ancestors, who laboured no more than they do now.<br /> <br /> The notion that labour was the source of wealth – usually referred to as the ‘[[labour theory of value]]’ – was not an original discovery of Marx. All the great pro-capitalist economists until his time accepted it.<br /> <br /> Such men, like the Scottish economist [[Adam Smith]] or the English economist [[David Ricardo]], were writing when the system of industrial capitalism was still fairly young – in the years just before and just after the French Revolution. The capitalists did not yet dominate and needed to know the real source of their wealth if they were ever to do so. Smith and Ricardo served their interests by telling them that labour created wealth, and that to build up their wealth they had to ‘free’ labour from the control of the old pre-capitalist rulers.<br /> <br /> But it was not long before thinkers close to the working class began to turn the argument against the friends of Smith and Ricardo: if labour creates wealth, then labour creates capital. And the ‘rights of capital’ are no more than the rights of usurped labour.<br /> <br /> Soon the economists who supported capital were pronouncing the labour theory of value to be a load of nonsense. But if you kick truth out the front door, it has a habit of creeping in the back.<br /> <br /> Turn on the radio. Listen to it long enough and you will hear some pundit or other claim that what is wrong with the British economy is that ‘people do not work hard enough’ or, another way of saying the same thing, ‘productivity is too low’. Forget for a minute whether the argument is correct or not.<br /> <br /> Instead look closely at the way it is put. They never say ‘machines do not work hard enough’. No, it is always people, the workers.<br /> <br /> They claim that if only the workers worked harder, more wealth would be created, and that this would make possible more investment in new machinery. The people who use this argument may not know it, but they are saying that more work will create more capital. Work, labour, is the source of wealth.<br /> <br /> Say I have a £5 note in my pocket. Why is that of use to me? After all, it’s only a piece of printed paper. Its value to me lies in the fact that I can get, in exchange for it, something useful that has been made by someone else’s labour. The £5 note, in fact, is nothing more than an entitlement to the products of so much labour. Two £5 notes are an entitlement to the products of twice as much labour, and so on.<br /> <br /> When we measure wealth we are really measuring the labour that has been expended in creating it.<br /> <br /> Of course, not everyone produces as much with their labour in a given time as everyone else. If I set out, for instance, to make a table, I might take five or six times as long as a skilled carpenter. But no one in their right mind would regard what I had made as five or six times as valuable as a table made by a skilled carpenter. They would estimate its value according to how much of the carpenter’s labour would be needed to make it, not mine.<br /> <br /> Say it would take a carpenter an hour to make a table, then they would say that the value of the table to them was the equivalent of one hour’s labour. That would be the labour time necessary to make it, given the usual level of technique and skill in present society.<br /> <br /> For this reason, Marx insisted that the measure of the value of something was not simply the time it took an individual to make it, but the time it would take an individual working with the average level of technology and the average level of skill – he called this average level of labour needed ‘the socially necessary labour time’. The point is important because under capitalism advances in technology are always taking place, which means that it takes less and less labour to produce goods.<br /> <br /> For example, when radios were made with thermionic valves they were very expensive items, because it took a great deal of labour to make the valves, to wire them together and so on. Then the transistor was invented, which could be made and wired together with much less labour. Suddenly, all the workers in the factories still making valve radios found that the value of what they were producing slumped, for the value of radios was no longer determined by the labour time needed to make them from valves, but instead by the time needed to make them with transistors.<br /> <br /> One final point. Prices of some goods fluctuate wildly – on a day-to-day or a week-to-week basis.<br /> <br /> These changes can be caused by many other things besides changes in the amount of labour needed to make them.<br /> <br /> When the frost in Brazil killed all the coffee plants the price of coffee shot up, because there was a shortage throughout the world and people were prepared to pay more. If tomorrow some natural catastrophe was to destroy all the televisions in Britain, there is no doubt the price of televisions would shoot up in the same way. What economists call ‘supply and demand’ continually causes such fluctuations in price.<br /> <br /> For this reason, many pro-capitalist economists say that the labour theory of value is nonsense.<br /> <br /> They say that only supply and demand matter. But that is nonsense. For this argument forgets that when things fluctuate they usually fluctuate around an average level. The sea goes up and down because of tides, but that doesn’t mean we cannot talk of a fixed point around which it moves, which we call ‘sea level’.<br /> <br /> Similarly, the fact that prices go up and down from day to day does not mean that there are not fixed values around which they fluctuate. For instance, if all the televisions were destroyed, the first new ones to be produced would be very much in demand and fetch a high price. But it would not be long before more and more were on the market, competing with each other until the price was forced down close to their value in terms of the labour time needed to make them.<br /> <br /> === Competition and accumulation ===<br /> There was a time when capitalism did seem like a dynamic and progressive system. For most of human history, the lives of most men and women have been dominated by drudgery and exploitation. Industrial capitalism did not change this when it made its appearance in the 18th and 19th centuries.<br /> <br /> But it did seem to put this drudgery and exploitation to some useful purpose. Instead of wasting vast amounts of wealth on luxury for a few parasitic aristocrats or in building luxury tombs for dead monarchs or in futile wars over which son of an emperor should rule some God-forsaken hole, it used wealth to build up the means of creating more wealth. The rise of capitalism was a period of growth in industry, cities, means of transportation – on a scale undreamt of in previous human history.<br /> <br /> Strange as it may seem today, places such as Oldham, Halifax and Bingley were the home of miracles. Humanity had never before seen so much raw cotton and wool turned so quickly into cloth to clothe millions. This did not happen because of any special virtues possessed by the capitalists. They were always rather noxious people, obsessed only with getting wealth into their own hands by paying as little as possible for the labour they used.<br /> <br /> Many previous ruling classes had been like them in this respect without building up industry. But the capitalists were different in two important respects.<br /> <br /> The first we have dealt with – that they did not own workers, instead paying them by the hour for their ability to work, their labour power. They used wage slaves, not slaves. Secondly, they did not themselves consume the goods their workers produced. The feudal landlord lived directly from the meat, bread, cheese and wine produced by his serfs. But the capitalist lived by selling to other people the goods produced by workers.<br /> <br /> This gave the individual capitalist less freedom to behave as he pleased than the individual slave owner or feudal lord had. To sell goods, the capitalist had to produce them as cheaply as possible.<br /> <br /> The capitalist owned the factory and was all-powerful within it. But he could not use his power as he wished. He had to bow down before the demands of competition with other factories.<br /> <br /> Let’s go back to our favourite capitalist. Sir Browning Browne. Assume that a certain quantity of the cotton cloth produced in his factory took ten hours of workers’ time to turn out, but that some other factory could produce the same amount in five hours of workers’ time. Sir Browning would not be able to charge the price for it equivalent to ten hours of labour. No one in their right mind would pay this price when there was cheaper cloth just down the road.<br /> <br /> Any capitalist who wanted to survive in business had to ensure that his workers worked as fast as possible. But that was not all. He also had to make sure that his workers were working with the most up to date machinery, so that their labour produced as many goods in an hour as did the labour of those working for other capitalists. The capitalist who wanted to stay in business had to make sure he owned ever greater amounts of means of production – or, as Marx put it, to accumulate capital!<br /> <br /> The competition between capitalists produced a power, the market system, that had each and every one of them in its grip. It compelled them to speed up the work process all the time and to invest as much as they could afford in new machinery. And they could only afford the new machinery (and, of course, have their own luxuries on the side) if they kept workers’ wages as low as they could.<br /> <br /> Marx writes in his major work, [[Library:Capital, vol. I|Capital]], that the capitalist is like a miser, obsessed with getting more and more wealth. But:&lt;blockquote&gt;What in the miser is mere idiosyncracy is, in the capitalist, the effect of a social mechanism in which he is but one of the wheels … The development of capitalist production makes it constantly necessary to keep increasing the amount of capital laid out in a given industrial undertaking, and competition makes the immanent laws of capitalist production to be felt by each individual capitalist as external coercive laws. It compels him to keep constantly extending his capital in order to preserve it. But extend it he cannot, except by means of progressive accumulation. Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!&lt;/blockquote&gt;Production does not take place to satisfy human need – even the human needs of the capitalist class – but in order to enable one capitalist to survive in competition with another capitalist. The workers employed by each capitalist find their lives dominated by the drive of their employers to accumulate faster than their rivals.<br /> <br /> As Marx’s The Communist Manifesto put it:&lt;blockquote&gt;In bourgeois society living labour is but a means to accumulate dead labour … Capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.&lt;/blockquote&gt;The compulsive drive for capitalists to accumulate in competition with one another explains the great rush forward of industry in the early years of the system. But something else resulted as well – repeated economic crisis. Crisis is not new. It is as old as the system itself.<br /> <br /> == Economic crisis ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;''The accumulation of wealth on the one hand, of poverty on the other.''&lt;/blockquote&gt;That was how Marx summed up the trend of capitalism. Every capitalist fears competition from every other, so he works his employees as hard as possible, paying wages as low as he can get away with.<br /> <br /> The result is a disproportion between the massive growth of means of production on the one hand, and the limited growth in wages and the number of workers employed on the other. This, Marx insisted, was the basic cause of economic crisis.<br /> <br /> The easiest way to look at this is to ask: who buys the greatly expanding quantity of goods? The low wages of the workers mean they cannot afford the goods produced by their own labour. And the capitalists cannot increase wages, because that would be to destroy profit, the driving force of the system.<br /> <br /> But if firms cannot sell the goods they produce, they have to shutdown factories and sack workers.<br /> <br /> The total amount of wages then falls still more, and yet more firms cannot sell their goods. A ‘crisis of overproduction’ sets in, with goods piling up throughout the economy that people cannot afford to buy.<br /> <br /> This has been a recurrent feature of capitalist society for the past 160 years.<br /> <br /> But any quick-witted apologist for the system will soon point out that there should be an easy way out of the crisis. All that’s needed is that capitalists invest their profit in new factories and machines. That will provide jobs for workers, who in turn will then be able to buy the unsold goods.<br /> <br /> This means that as long as there’s new investment all the goods produced can be sold and the system can provide full employment.<br /> <br /> Marx was no fool and recognised this. Indeed, as we’ve seen, he realised that the competitive pressure on capitalists to invest was central to the system. But, he asked, does this mean the capitalists will invest all their profits, all the time?<br /> <br /> The capitalist will only invest if he thinks he is guaranteed a ‘reasonable’ profit.<br /> <br /> If he doesn’t think there is such a profit to be made, he won’t risk his money in investment. He’ll put it in the bank and leave it there.<br /> <br /> Whether the capitalist invests or not depends on how he assesses the economic situation. When it looks right, the capitalists all rush to invest at the same time, falling over each other searching for construction sites, buying up machines, scouring the earth for raw materials, paying over the odds for skilled labour.<br /> <br /> This is usually called the ‘boom’.<br /> <br /> But the frenzied competition for land, raw materials and skilled labour forces up the prices of these things. And suddenly a point is reached where some firms discover their costs have risen so much that all their profits have disappeared.<br /> <br /> The investment boom all at once gives way to an investment ‘slump’. No one wants new factories – construction workers are sacked. No one wants new machines – the machine tool industry goes into crisis. No one wants all the iron and steel that is being produced – the steel industry is suddenly working ‘below capacity’ and becomes ‘unprofitable’. Closures and shutdowns spread from industry to industry, destroying jobs – and with them the ability of workers to buy the goods of other industries.<br /> <br /> The history of capitalism is a history of such periodic lurches into crisis, into the insanity of unemployed workers going hungry outside empty factories, while stocks of ‘unwanted’ goods rot.<br /> <br /> Capitalism creates these crises of overproduction periodically because there is no planning, so there’s no way to stop the stampede of capital into and out of investment all at once.<br /> <br /> People used to think that the state could stop this. By intervening in the economy, increasing state investment when private investment was low, then reducing it when private investment caught up, the state would keep production on an even keel. But nowadays state investment too is part of the lunacy.<br /> <br /> Look at British Steel. Some years ago, when the firm was still nationalised, steel workers were told their jobs were being scrapped to make way for vast modern automatic furnaces designed to produce more steel more cheaply. Now they are being told that yet more workers must lose their jobs – because Britain was not the only country to embark on these massive investment plans.<br /> <br /> France, Germany, the United States, Brazil, Eastern Europe, even South Korea, all did the same.<br /> <br /> Now there’s a world surplus of steel – a crisis of overproduction. State investment is being cut.<br /> <br /> Steel workers, of course, suffer both ways. This is the price humanity is still paying for an economic system where the production of massive wealth is controlled by a small privileged group interested only in profit. It does not matter whether these small privileged groups own industry directly, or control it indirectly through their control of the state (as with British Steel). While they use this control to compete with each other for the largest share of the profits, whether nationally or internationally, it is the workers who suffer.<br /> <br /> The final lunacy of the system is that the ‘crisis of overproduction’ is not overproduction at all. All that ‘surplus’ steel, for instance, could help solve world hunger. Peasants around the world have to plough the land with wooden ploughshares – steel ploughshares would increase food production.<br /> <br /> But the peasants have no money anyway, so the capitalist system isn’t interested – there’s no profit to be made.<br /> <br /> === Why crises tend to get worse ===<br /> Crises do not just take place with monotonous regularity. Marx also predicted they would get worse as time went on.<br /> <br /> Even if investment took place at an even rate, without fits and starts, it could not stop the overall trend towards crisis. This is because the competition between capitalists (and capitalist nations) forces them to invest in labour saving equipment.<br /> <br /> In Britain today almost all new investments are designed to cut the number of workers employed.<br /> <br /> That is why there we fewer workers in British industry today than ten years ago, even though output has increased over that time.<br /> <br /> Only by ‘rationalising production’, by ‘increasing productivity’ and by cutting the workforce can one capitalist get a bigger share of the cake than another. But the result for the system as a whole is devastating. For it means that the number of workers does not increase at anything like the same speed as investment.<br /> <br /> Yet it is the labour of workers that is the source of the profits, the fuel that keeps the system going. If you make bigger and bigger investments, without a corresponding increase in the source of profits, you are heading for a breakdown – just as surely as if you expected to drive a Jaguar on the amount of petrol needed to keep a Mini going.<br /> <br /> That is why Marx argued 100 years ago that the very success of capitalism in piling up huge investments in new equipment led to a ‘[[Tendency of the rate of profit to fall|tendency of the rate of profit to decline]]’ which means ever-worsening crises.<br /> <br /> His argument can be applied very simply to capitalism today. Instead of the old picture of ‘bad times’ turning into ‘good times’, of slumps turning into booms, we seem to be in a never ending slump. Any spell of upturn, any drop in unemployment, is limited and short lived.<br /> <br /> Apologists for the system say this is because investment is not high enough. Without new investment there are no new jobs, without new jobs there’s no money to buy new goods. So far, we can agree with them – but we don’t agree with their explanation of why this is happening.<br /> <br /> They blame wages. Wages are too high, they say, which cuts profits to the bone. Capitalists are frightened to invest because they won’t get ‘sufficient reward’.<br /> <br /> But the crisis has continued through long years in which government pay policies have cut workers’ living standards and pushed profits up. The years 1975-78 saw the biggest cut in workers’ living standards this century, while the rich grew richer – the top 10 percent pushed up their share of the national cake from 57.8 percent in 1974 to 60 percent in 1976.<br /> <br /> There still isn’t enough investment to end the crisis – and that goes not just for Britain but for other countries where wages have been cut back, for France, for Japan, for Germany.<br /> <br /> We would do better to listen to what Karl Marx said 100 years ago than to listen to those who apologise for capitalism today.<br /> <br /> Marx predicted that as capitalism got older, its crises would get worse because the source of profit, labour, does not increase nearly as rapidly as the investment needed to put labour to work. Marx wrote when the value of the plant and machinery needed to employ each worker was fairly low. It has shot up since then, until today it can be £20,000 or even £30,000. Competition between capitalist firms has forced them to use ever bigger and evermore expensive machinery. The point has been reached where, in most industries, it is taken for granted that new machinery means fewer workers.<br /> <br /> The international economic agency OECD has predicted that employment in the world’s major economies will fall, even if by some miracle investment soars.<br /> <br /> Which it won’t. Because capitalists care about their profit, and if their investment increases fourfold but their profit only doubles, they get really upset. Yet this is what must happen if industry grows more quickly than the source of profit, labour.<br /> <br /> As Marx put it, the rate of profit will tend to fall. He predicted that a point would eventually be reached at which any new investment would seem a perilous venture. The scale of expenditure needed for new plant and machinery would be colossal, but the rate of profit would be lower than ever before. When this point was reached, each capitalist (or capitalist state) would fantasise about huge new investment programmes – but be afraid to make them for fear of going bust.<br /> <br /> The world economy today is very much like that. Rover plans new production lines – but fears it will lose money. British Steel dreams of those big plants it planned – but have to keep them on ice because it cannot sell its present output. The Japanese shipbuilders have given up investing in new yards – and some of the old ones are being shut down.<br /> <br /> The very success of capitalism in building ever vaster and more productive machinery has brought the system to the point of seemingly permanent crisis.<br /> <br /> A point was reached in the slave societies of the ancient world and the feudal societies of the Middle Ages where either a revolution would transform society or it would enter a permanent crisis that would drive it backwards. In the case of Rome, the lack of a revolution led precisely to the destruction of Roman civilisation and to the Dark Ages. In the case of some feudal societies – Britain and, later, France – revolution destroyed the old order and enabled new social advance to take place, under capitalism.<br /> <br /> Now capitalism itself faces the choice between permanent crisis, which eventually will plunge humanity back into barbarism through poverty and war, or a socialist revolution.<br /> <br /> == The working class ==<br /> Marx began The Communist Manifesto with the statement, ‘The history of all hitherto existing societies has been the history of class struggles.’ The question of how the ruling class was to force the oppressed class to keep producing wealth for it was crucial. Because of this, in every previous society, there had been enormous struggles between the classes which often culminated in civil war – the slave uprisings in Ancient Rome, the peasant uprisings in medieval Europe, the great civil wars and revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries.<br /> <br /> In all of these great struggles, the mass of the insurgent forces were from the most oppressed section of society. But, as Marx hastened to add, at the end of the day all their efforts served only to replace one privileged ruling minority with another. So, for example, in [[History of China|Ancient China]] there were several successful peasant revolts – but they merely replaced one emperor with another. Similarly, those who made the greatest effort in the [[French Revolution of 1789|French Revolution]] were the ‘bras nus’ – the poorer classes of Paris, but at the end of the day society was ruled not by them but by bankers and industrialists instead of the king and courtiers.<br /> <br /> There were two main reasons for this failure of the lower classes to keep control of the revolutions in which they fought.<br /> <br /> Firstly, the general level of wealth in society was fairly low. It was only because the vast mass of people were kept in abysmal poverty that a small minority had time and leisure to develop the arts and sciences to maintain civilisation. In other words, class division was necessary if society was to progress.<br /> <br /> Secondly, the life of the oppressed classes did not prepare them to run society. By and large they were illiterate, they had little idea of what things were like outside their own immediate locality, and, above all, their everyday life divided each of them against the other. Each peasant was concerned with cultivating his own plot of land. Each craftsman in the town ran his own small business and was to some extent in competition with other craftsmen, not united with them.<br /> <br /> Peasant revolts would start with vast numbers of people rising up to divide the land of the local feudal lords, but once the lord was defeated they would fall to squabbling among themselves about how they would divide the land. As Marx put it, peasants were like ‘potatoes in a sack’; they could be forced together by some outside power but were not capable of linking permanently to represent their own interests.<br /> <br /> The workers who create the wealth under modern capitalism differ from all the previous lower classes. Firstly, the division of classes is no longer necessary for human progress. So much wealth is created that capitalist society itself periodically destroys huge quantities through wars or economic crises. It could be divided up equally and society could still have a flowering of science, arts and so forth.<br /> <br /> Secondly, life under capitalism prepares workers in many ways to take control of society. For example, capitalism needs workers who are skilled and educated. Also capitalism forces thousands of people into huge workplaces in huge conurbations where they are in close contact with one another, and where they can be a powerful force for changing society.<br /> <br /> Capitalism makes workers cooperate in production within the factory, and those cooperative skills can easily be turned against the system, as when workers organise themselves into unions. Because they are massed together in huge concentrations it is much easier for workers to democratically control such bodies than it was for previously oppressed classes.<br /> <br /> Furthermore, capitalism tends increasingly to turn groups of people who thought of themselves as a ‘cut above’ ordinary workers (such as clerks or technicians) into wage labourers who are forced to organise unions and so on as other workers do.<br /> <br /> Lastly, the development of communications – railways, roads, air transport, postal systems, telephones, radio and television – allows workers to communicate outside their own locality or industry. They can organise as a class on a national and international scale – something beyond the wildest dreams of previous oppressed classes.<br /> <br /> All these facts mean that the working class can not only be a force which rebels against existing society, but can organise itself, (electing and controlling its own representatives, so as to change society in its own interest, and not just to set up yet another emperor or group of bankers. As Karl Marx put it:&lt;blockquote&gt;All previous historical movements were movements of minorities in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious independent movement of the immense majority in the interests of the immense majority.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> == How can society be changed? ==<br /> In Britain the overwhelming majority of socialists and trade unionists have generally argued that society can be transformed without violent revolution. All that is needed, they say, is for socialists to win enough popular support to gain control of the ‘traditional’ political institutions – parliament and the local councils. Then socialists will be in a position to change society by getting the existing state – the civil service, the judiciary, the police, the armed forces – to enforce laws to curtail the power of the employing class.<br /> <br /> In this way, it has been claimed, socialism can be introduced gradually and without violence, by reforming the present set up.<br /> <br /> This view is usually referred to as ‘reformism’, although occasionally you will hear it referred to as ‘revisionism’ (because it involves revising Marx’s ideas completely), ‘social democracy’ (although until 1914 that meant revolutionary socialism) or Fabianism (after the Fabian Society which has long propagated the reformist view in Britain). It is a view accepted by the left as well as the right of the Labour Party.<br /> <br /> Reformism seems, at first sight, very plausible. It fits with what we are told at school, in the papers and on television – that ‘parliament runs the country’ and that ‘parliament is elected according to the democratic wishes of the people’. Yet despite that, every attempt to introduce socialism through parliament has ended in failure. Thus there were three majority Labour governments in Britain between 1945 and 1979 – with massive majorities in 1945 and 1966 – yet we are no nearer socialism than in 1945.<br /> <br /> The experience abroad is the same. In Chile in 1970, the socialist Salvador Allende was elected president. People claimed that this was a ‘new way’ to move to socialism. Three years later the generals who had been asked to join the government overthrew Allende and the Chilean working class movement was destroyed.<br /> <br /> There are three interconnected reasons why reformism must always fail.<br /> <br /> Firstly, while socialist majorities in parliaments are ‘gradually’ introducing socialist measures, real economic power continues to lie in the hands of the old ruling class. They can use this economic power to shut down whole sections of industry, to create unemployment, to force up prices through speculation and hoarding, to send money abroad so creating a ‘balance of payments’ crisis, and to launch press campaigns blaming all this on the socialist government.<br /> <br /> Thus Harold Wilson’s Labour government was forced in 1964 and again in 1966 to drop measures which would have benefited workers – by the wholesale movement of money abroad by wealthy individuals and companies. Wilson himself describes in his memoirs how:&lt;blockquote&gt;We had now reached the situation where a newly elected government was being told by international speculators that the policy on which we had fought the election could not be implemented... The queen’s first minister was being asked to bring down the curtain on parliamentary democracy by accepting the doctrine that an election in Britain was a farce, that the British people could not make a choice between policies.&lt;/blockquote&gt;It only needs to be added that, despite Wilson’s alleged indignation, for the next six years he did indeed follow the sort of policies demanded by the speculators.<br /> <br /> The same deliberate creation of balance of payments crises forced the Labour government elected in 1974 to introduce three consecutive sets of cuts in public spending in hospitals, schools and social services.<br /> <br /> Allende’s government in Chile faced even greater disruption at the hands of big business. Twice, whole sections of industry were shut down by ‘bosses’ strikes’, as speculation increased prices to an enormous level and hoarding of goods by businessmen caused queuing for the necessities of life.<br /> <br /> The second reason capitalism cannot be reformed is that the existing state machine is not ‘neutral’, but designed, from top to bottom, to preserve capitalist society.<br /> <br /> The state controls nearly all the means of exercising physical force, the means of violence. If the organisations of the state were neutral, and did whatever any particular government told them, whether capitalist or socialist, then the state could be used to stop sabotage of the economy by big business. But look at the way the state machine operates and who really gives the orders, and you can see it is not neutral.<br /> <br /> The state machine is not simply the government. It is a vast organisation with many different branches – the police, the army, the judiciary, the civil service, the people who run the nationalised industries and so on. Many of the people who work in these different branches of the state come from the working class – they live and get paid like workers.<br /> <br /> But it is not these people who make the decisions. The rank and file soldiers don’t decide where wars are going to be fought or whether strikes are going to be broken; the counter clerk in the social security office does not decide how much dole will be paid out. The whole state machine is based on the principle that people on one rung of the ladder obey those on the rung above.<br /> <br /> This is essentially the case in the sections of the state machine that exercise physical force – army, navy, air force, police. The first thing soldiers are taught when they enlist – long before they are allowed to touch weapons – is to obey orders, regardless of their personal opinions of those orders.<br /> <br /> That is why they are taught to do absurd drills. If they will follow lunatic commands on the parade ground without thinking about it, it is reckoned they will shoot when ordered to without thinking about that either.<br /> <br /> The most heinous crime in any army is a refusal to obey orders – mutiny. So seriously is the offence regarded, that mutiny during time of war is still punishable by execution in Britain. Who gives the orders?<br /> <br /> If you look at the chain of command in the British army (and other armies are no different) it goes: general – brigadier – colonel – lieutenant – NCO – private. At no stage in that chain of command do elected representatives – MPs or local councillors – get a look in. It is just as much an act of mutiny for a group of privates to obey their local MP rather than the officer. The army is a massive killing machine. The people who run it – and have the power to promote other soldiers into commanding positions – are the generals.<br /> <br /> Of course, in theory the generals are responsible to the elected government. But soldiers are trained to obey generals, not politicians. If generals choose to give orders to their soldiers which are at variance with the wishes of an elected government, the government cannot countermand those orders. It can only try to persuade the generals to change their minds. The government knows the sorts of orders that are being given – because military affairs are invariably secret, it is very easy for generals to hide what they are doing from governments they don’t like.<br /> <br /> That doesn’t always mean that generals always, or even usually, ignore what governments say to them. Usually in Britain they have found it convenient to go along with most of what the government suggests. But, in a life and death situation, the generals are able to put their killing machine into operation without listening at all to the government, and there is little the government can do about it. This is what the generals eventually did in Chile when Allende was overthrown.<br /> <br /> So the question, ‘Who runs the army?’ is really, ‘Who are the generals?’ In Britain about 80 percent of the senior officers went to fee-paying ‘public’ schools – the same proportion as 50 years ago (17 years of Labour government didn’t change that). They are related to the owners of big business, belong to the same posh clubs, mix at the same social functions, share the same ideas (if you doubt this, look at the letters column in virtually any copy of the Daily Telegraph). The same goes for the heads of the civil service, the judges, the chief constables.<br /> <br /> Do you think these people are going to obey government orders to take economic power away from their friends and relatives in big business, just because 330 people walk into a lobby in the House of Commons? Would they not be much more likely to copy the example of the Chilean generals, judges and senior civil servants, who sabotaged the government’s orders for three years and then, when the time was ripe, overthrew it?<br /> <br /> In practice the particular ‘constitution’ we have in Britain means that those who control the state machine would be able to thwart the will of an elected left wing government far short of physically overthrowing it. If such a government were elected, it would be faced with massive economic sabotage by the employing class (factory closures, flights of money abroad, hoarding of necessities, inflationary price rises). If the government attempted to deal with such sabotage using ‘constitutional means’ – by passing laws – it would find its hands tied behind its back.<br /> <br /> The House of Lords would certainly refuse to ratify any such law – delaying it for nine months at a minimum. The judges would ‘interpret’ any law passed in such a way as to curtail its powers. The civil service chiefs, the generals and the police chiefs would use the decisions of the judges and the House of Lords to justify their own unwillingness to do what ministers told them. They would be backed by virtually the whole press, which would scream that the government was behaving ‘illegally’ and ‘unconstitutionally’. The generals would then use such language to justify preparations to overthrow an 'illegal’ government.<br /> <br /> The government would be powerless to deal with the economic chaos – unless it really did act unconstitutionally and called upon rank and file civil servants, police and soldiers to turn against their superiors.<br /> <br /> Lest anyone thinks this is all wild fantasy, it should be added that there have been at least two occasions in recent British history when generals have sabotaged government decisions they did not like.<br /> <br /> In 1912 the House of Commons passed a bill providing for a ‘Home Rule’ parliament to run a united Ireland. The Tory leader, Bonar Law, immediately denounced the (Liberal!) government as an illegal ‘junta’ who had ‘sold the constitution’. The House of Lords naturally delayed the law as long as it could (two years then), while former Tory minister Edward Carson organised a paramilitary force in the north of Ireland to resist the law.<br /> <br /> When the generals who commanded the British army in Ireland were told to move their troops northwards to deal with this force, they refused and threatened to resign their commissions. It was because of this action, usually called the ‘Curragh Mutiny’, that Ireland north and south didn’t get a single parliament in 1914, and remains a divided nation even today.<br /> <br /> In 1974 there was a rerun of the events of 1912 in miniature. The right wing sectarian Loyalists of Northern Ireland organised a general stoppage of industry, using barricades to prevent people going to work, against being forced to accept a joint Protestant-Catholic government in Northern Ireland.<br /> <br /> British ministers called on the British army and the Northern Ireland police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, to dismantle the barricades and end the strike. The senior army officers and the police commanders told the government that this would be inadvisable, and neither soldiers nor police moved against the Loyalists. The joint Protestant-Catholic government was forced to resign, the views of army officers proving more powerful than the views of the British government.<br /> <br /> If that could happen in 1914 and 1974 with middle-of-the-road governments trying to push through mild measures, imagine what would happen if a militant socialist government was elected. Any serious reformist majority in parliament would soon be forced to make a choice: either abandon reforms in order to placate those who own industry and control the key positions in the state, or prepare for an all out conflict, which will inevitably mean the use of some kind of force, against those who control those positions.<br /> <br /> The third reason why reformism is a dead end is that parliamentary ‘democracy’ contains inbuilt mechanisms for preventing any revolutionary movement finding expression through it.<br /> <br /> Some reformists argue that the best way to take on the power of those who control the key positions in the state machine is for the left to obtain a majority in parliament first. This argument falls because parliaments always understate the level of revolutionary consciousness of the mass of the population.<br /> <br /> The mass of the people will only believe that they themselves can run society when they begin in practice to change society through struggle. It is when millions of people are occupying their factories or taking part in a general strike that ideas of revolutionary socialism suddenly seem realistic.<br /> <br /> But such a level of struggle cannot be maintained indefinitely unless the old ruling class is removed from power. If it hangs on, it will wait until the occupations or strikes decline, then use its control over the army and police to break the struggle.<br /> <br /> And once the strikes or occupations begin to falter, the feeling of unity and confidence among the workers begins to wane. Demoralisation and bitterness set in. Even the best begin to feel that changing society was just a wild dream.<br /> <br /> That is why employers always prefer strike votes to be taken when workers are at home by themselves, getting their ideas from the television and the newspapers, not when they are united at mass meetings, able to hear other workers’ arguments.<br /> <br /> That is also why anti-union laws nearly always include a clause forcing workers to call off strikes while secret, postal ballots are taken. Such clauses are accurately called ‘cooling off’ periods – they are designed to pour cold water on the confidence and unity of workers.<br /> <br /> The parliamentary electoral system contains built in secret ballots and cooling off periods. For instance, if a government is brought to its knees by a massive strike, it is likely to say, ‘OK, wait three weeks until a general election can resolve the question democratically.’ It hopes that in the interim the strike will be called off. The workers’ confidence and unity will then fade. Employers may well be able to blacklist militants. The capitalist press and the television can begin functioning normally again, hammering home pro-government ideas. The police can arrest ‘troublemakers’.<br /> <br /> Then when the election finally takes place, the vote will not reflect the high point of the workers’ struggles, but the low point after the strike.<br /> <br /> In France in 1968, the government of General de Gaulle used elections in precisely this way. The reformist workers’ parties and unions told workers to end their strikes, and de Gaulle won the election.<br /> <br /> The British Prime Minister Edward Heath tried the same trick when faced with a massively successful miners’ strike in 1974. But this time the miners were not conned. They kept their strike up – and Heath lost the election.<br /> <br /> If workers wait for elections to decide the key issues in the class struggle, they will never reach that high point.<br /> <br /> === The workers’ state ===<br /> Marx, in his pamphlet The Civil War in France, and Lenin in The State and Revolution outlined a completely different view of how socialism can be won. Neither simply pulled these ideas out of thin air: both developed their views by seeing the working class in action – Marx saw the Paris Commune, Lenin the Russian ‘Soviets’ (workers’ councils) of 1905 and 1917.<br /> <br /> But Marx and Lenin insisted that the working class could not begin to construct socialism until it had first destroyed the old state based on bureaucratic chains of command, and secondly created a new state based on entirely new principles. Lenin underlined how completely different this state had to be from the old by calling it ‘a commune state, a state which is not a state’.&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 9.&quot;&gt;We've been unable to find this quote outside of this work.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> A new state, Marx and Lenin said, was necessary if the working class was to impose its dictates on the remnants of the old ruling and middle classes. That was why they called it the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ – the working class had to dictate how society was to be run. It also had to defend its revolution against attacks from ruling classes elsewhere in the world. To do these two jobs, it had to have armed forces of its own, some form of policing of society, courts, even prisons.<br /> <br /> But if this new army, police and legal system was to be controlled by the workers, and never turn against their interests, it had to be based on completely different principles from the capitalist state.<br /> <br /> It had to be the means by which the working class as a majority dictated to the rest of society, not a dictatorship directed against the majority of the working class.<br /> <br /> The main differences are these.<br /> <br /> The capitalist state serves the interests of a small minority of society. The workers’ state has to serve the interests of the overwhelming majority. Force in the capitalist state is exercised by a minority of hired killers, cut off from the rest of society and trained to obey upper class officers.<br /> <br /> But in a workers’ state, force would be needed only so the majority could protect themselves against anti-social acts by the remnants of the old privileged classes.<br /> <br /> Soldiering and policing in a workers’ state can be done by ordinary workers, who mix freely with their fellow workers, share the same ideas and lead the same lives. Indeed, to make sure that groups of soldiers and police never develop separated from the mass of workers, the ‘soldiers’ and ‘police’ should be ordinary factory and office workers who take it in turns, on a rota system, to carry out these functions.<br /> <br /> Instead of the armed forces and police being run by a small group of officers, they would be run by directly elected representatives of the mass of workers.<br /> <br /> Parliamentary representatives in a capitalist state pass laws but leave it to full time bureaucrats, police chiefs and judges to implement them. This means that MPs and councillors can always hide behind a million excuses when their promises are not implemented. The workers’ representatives in a workers’ state would have to see their laws put into action. They, not an elite of top bureaucrats, would have to explain to the workers of the civil service, the army and so on how things should be done.<br /> <br /> Again elected workers’ representatives would have to interpret the laws in courts.<br /> <br /> Parliamentary representatives in a capitalist state are cut off from those who elect them by high salaries. In a workers’ state the representatives would get no more than the average workers’ wage.<br /> <br /> The same goes for those who work full time in key posts implementing the decisions of the workers’ representatives (the equivalent of present-day civil servants).<br /> <br /> Workers’ representatives, and all those concerned with implementing workers’ decisions, would not be, as MPs, immune to removal from office for five years (or for life in the case of senior civil servants). They would be subject to at least annual elections, and to immediate recall by those who elected them if they did not implement their wishes.<br /> <br /> Parliamentary representatives are elected by all the people living in a certain locality – upper class, middle class and working class, slum landlords as well as tenants, stockbrokers as well as labourers.<br /> <br /> In a workers’ state election would be by those who work only, with voting only after open discussion on the issues concerned. So the core of the workers’ state would be workers’ councils based on the factories, mines, docks, big offices, with groups such as housewives, pensioners, school students and students having their own representatives.<br /> <br /> In this way, each section of the working class would have its own representative and be able directly to judge whether he or she was following their interests. In these ways, the new state cannot become a force separate from and against the majority working class – as it was in Eastern Bloc countries which called themselves ‘Communist’.<br /> <br /> At the same time, the workers’ council system provides a means by which workers can coordinate their efforts in running industry according to a democratically decided national plan, and not end up running their factories in competition with each other. It is easy to see how modem computer technology would enable all workers to be given information on the various economic options open to society, and to direct their representatives to choose what the majority of workers thought the best set of options – for example, whether to spend resources on Concorde or on a cheap and reliable public transport system, whether to build nuclear bombs or kidney machines, and so on.<br /> <br /> === The withering away of the state ===<br /> Because state power would not be something separate from the mass of the workers, it would be much less a matter of coercion than under capitalism. As the remnants of the old society against which it was directed became resigned to the success of the revolution, and as revolutions removed foreign ruling classes, there would be less and less need for coercion, until eventually workers need never take time off from work to staff the ‘police’ and the ‘army’.<br /> <br /> This is what Marx and Lenin meant when they said the state would wither away. Instead of coercion against people, the state would become merely a mechanism of workers’ councils to decide how to produce and allocate goods.<br /> <br /> Workers’ councils have come into being in one form or another whenever the struggle between the classes within capitalism has reached a really high level. ‘Soviet’ is the word the Russians used for workers’ councils in 1905 and 1917.<br /> <br /> In 1918 in Germany workers’ councils were, briefly, the only power in the country.&lt;ref name=&quot;:0&quot; group=&quot;ProleWiki 9.&quot;&gt;This is in reference to the German November Revolution of 1918-1919. When the nascent and not fully developed Communist Party of Germany led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht led a failed attempt to overthrow the newly formed Weimar Republic.&lt;/ref&gt; In Spain in 1936 the various workers’ parties and unions were united by ‘militia committees’ which ran the localities and were very much like workers’ councils. In Hungary in 1956 the workers elected councils to run the factories and the localities as they fought Russian troops.&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 9.&quot;&gt;It must be noted the [[Hungarian counterrevolution of 1956|1956 Hungarian counter-revolution]] was a fascist uprising and attempt at a [[color revolution]]. They also did not fight 'Russian' troops but the ''Soviet'' [[Red Army]], in which there were Hungarian soldiers.&lt;/ref&gt; In Chile in 1972-73 the workers began to build ‘cordones’ – workers’ committees that linked the big factories.<br /> <br /> The workers’ council begins life as a body workers use to coordinate their struggle against capitalism. It may start with modest functions, raising strike funds maybe, but because these bodies are based on direct election from the workers, with workers’ representatives subject to recall, they can at the highest points in the struggle coordinate the efforts of the whole working class. They can lay the basis for workers’ power.<br /> <br /> === ProleWiki annotations ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;ProleWiki 9.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> == How do workers become revolutionary? ==<br /> In Britain most workers this century have looked to the Labour Party and parliament to change society. A large minority have backed the reactionary ideas of the Tory party. The supporters of revolutionary socialism have generally been few in number.<br /> <br /> This indifference or even opposition of workers to revolutionary socialism is hardly surprising. We have all been brought up in a capitalist society where it is taken for granted that everyone is selfish, where people are continually told by the newspapers and television that only a privileged minority have the ability to take the key decisions in industry and the state, where the mass of workers are taught from the first day they enter school to obey orders given by ‘their elders and betters’.<br /> <br /> As Marx put it, ‘The ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class,’ and vast numbers of workers accept them.<br /> <br /> Yet despite this, repeatedly in the history of capitalism, revolutionary movements of the working class have shaken one country after another: France in 1871,&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 10.&quot;&gt;The [[Paris Commune]]&lt;/ref&gt; Russia in 1917,&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 10.&quot;&gt;The [[Russian revolution of 1917|October Revolution]]&lt;/ref&gt; Germany and Hungary in 1919, Italy in 1920, Spain and France in 1936, Hungary in 1956,&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 10.&quot;&gt;See PW annotation 9.1&lt;/ref&gt; France in 1968,&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 10.&quot;&gt;The [[May 68]] crisis. Protesting students received some concessions from the French state, but nothing lasting: wages grew a little bit, a referendum was taken but did not pass, and a new Parliament was elected.&lt;/ref&gt; Chile in 1972- 73, Portugal in 1975,&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 10.&quot;&gt;The [[Carnation revolution]], which was waged internally by the army and was relatively peaceful. A socialist Portugal almost came out of it as the [[Portuguese Communist Party|PCP]] was very powerful at the time, but the [[United States of America|USA]] posted one of their aircraft carriers outside of Lisbon, threatening to invade if that happened. The revolution led to Portugal relinquishing control of their colonies and the end of the fascist dictatorship by Antonio Salazar.&lt;/ref&gt; Iran in 1979,&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 10.&quot;&gt;The [[1979 Iranian revolution]] which led to the creation of the [[Islamic Republic of Iran]].&lt;/ref&gt; Poland in 1980.<br /> <br /> The explanation for these upheavals lies in the very nature of capitalism itself. Capitalism is a crisis-prone system. In the long run it cannot provide full employment, it cannot provide prosperity for all, it cannot secure our living standards today against the crisis it will produce tomorrow. But during the capitalist ‘booms’ workers come to expect these things.<br /> <br /> So, for instance, in the 1950s and early 1960s, workers in Britain came to expect permanent full employment, a ‘welfare state’ and gradual but real improvements in living standards. By contrast, over the last 25 years successive governments have allowed unemployment to increase to a real figure of more than 4 million, have cut the welfare state to shreds, and have attempted again and again to cut living standards.<br /> <br /> Because we are brainwashed into accepting many capitalist ideas, we accept some of these attacks.<br /> <br /> But inevitably a point is reached where workers find they can stand it no more. Suddenly, often when no one expects it, their anger suddenly flares and they take some action against employer or government. Perhaps they stage a strike, or organise a demonstration.<br /> <br /> When this happens, whether they like it or not, workers begin doing things that contradict all the capitalist ideas they have previously accepted. They begin to act in solidarity with one another, as a class, in opposition to the representatives of the capitalist class.<br /> <br /> The ideas of revolutionary socialism that they used to reject out of hand now begin to fit in with what they are doing. Some at least of the workers begin to take those ideas seriously – providing those ideas are accessible.<br /> <br /> The scale on which this takes place depends on the scale of the struggle, not on the ideas in workers’ heads to begin with. Capitalism forces them into struggle even if they begin with pro- capitalist ideas. The struggle then makes them question these ideas.<br /> <br /> Capitalist power rests on two planks – control of the means of production and control of the state. A real revolutionary movement begins among the vast mass of workers when struggles over their immediate economic interests lead them to clash with both planks of capitalist rule.<br /> <br /> Take for example a group of workers who have been employed in the same factory for years. The whole normal humdrum pattern of their lives is dependent on their jobs there. One day the employer announces that he is going to close the factory down. Even the Tory voters in the workforce are horrified and want to do something. In desperation they decide that the only way to continue to lead the sort of lives capitalism has taught them to expect is to occupy the factory – to challenge the employer’s control over the means of production.<br /> <br /> They may soon find themselves up against the state as well, as the employer calls in the police to return control of ‘his’ property back to him. If they are to have any chance of keeping their jobs, the workers now must also confront the police, the state machine, as well as the employer.<br /> <br /> Thus capitalism itself creates the conditions of class conflict which open workers’ minds to ideas quite opposed to those which the system has taught them. This explains why the history of capitalism has been marked by periodic upsurges of revolutionary feeling among millions of workers, even if most of the time most workers accept the ideas the system feeds them.<br /> <br /> One final point. One of the biggest things holding many workers back from support for revolutionary ideas is the feeling that it is not worth them personally doing anything because other workers will never support them. When they find that other workers are doing things, they suddenly lose their own apathy. In the same way people, who feel that they, as workers, are quite incapable of running society, suddenly learn otherwise when they find, in the course of massive struggles against existing society, that they’re taking over much of its running.<br /> <br /> It is because of this that once revolutionary movements start, they can snowball at amazing speed.<br /> <br /> === ProleWiki annotations ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;ProleWiki 10.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> == The revolutionary socialist party ==<br /> The basic premise of Marxism is that the development of capitalism itself drives workers into revolt against the system.<br /> <br /> When such revolts break out – whether a mass demonstration, an armed insurrection or even a big strike – the transformation of working class consciousness is astonishing. All the mental energy that workers previously frittered away on a hundred and one diversions – from doing the horses to watching the telly – is suddenly directed towards trying to deal with the problem of how to change society. Millions of people working on such problems produce solutions of amazing ingenuity, which often leave established revolutionaries as bewildered as the ruling class by this turn of events.<br /> <br /> So, for instance, in the first Russian revolution of 1905 a new form of workers’ organisation, the soviet – the workers’ council – grew out of the strike committee set up during a printing strike. At first the Bolshevik Party – the most militant of the revolutionary socialists – treated the Soviets with distrust: they did not believe it was possible for the mass of previously non-political workers to create a genuinely revolutionary instrument.<br /> <br /> Such experiences are found in many strikes: the established militants are taken completely by surprise when workers who have ignored their advice for so long, suddenly begin to organise militant action themselves.<br /> <br /> This spontaneity is fundamental. But it is wrong to draw the conclusion – as anarchists and near-anarchists do – that because of spontaneity, there is no need for a revolutionary party.<br /> <br /> In a revolutionary situation, millions of workers change their ideas very, very quickly. But they do not all change all their ideas at once. Inside every strike, every demonstration, every armed uprising there are always continual arguments. A few workers will see the action they are taking as a prelude to the working class taking control of society. Others will be half against taking any action at all, because it is disturbing the ‘natural order of things’. In the middle will be the mass of workers, attracted first by one set of arguments, then by the other, Onto one side of the balance the present ruling class will throw all the weight of its newspaper propaganda machine, denouncing the workers’ actions. It will throw too its strikebreaking forces, whether police, army or right wing organisations.<br /> <br /> And on the workers’ side of the argument there must be an organisation of socialists who can draw on the lessons of past class struggle, who can throw the arguments about socialism into the balance.<br /> <br /> There must be an organisation that can draw together the growing understanding of workers in struggle, so they can act together to change society.<br /> <br /> And this revolutionary socialist party needs to be there before the struggle starts, for organisation is not born spontaneously. The party is built through the continual interplay of socialist ideas and experience of the class struggle – for merely to understand society is not enough: only by applying these ideas in the day-to-day class struggle, in strikes, demonstrations, campaigns, will workers become aware of their power to change things, and gain the confidence to do it.<br /> <br /> At certain points, the intervention of a socialist party can be decisive, can tip the balance towards change, towards a revolutionary transfer of power to the workers, towards a socialist society.<br /> <br /> === What sort of party? ===<br /> The revolutionary socialist party needs to be democratic. To fulfil its role, the party must be continually in touch with the class struggle, and that means with its own members and supporters in the workplaces where that struggle takes place. It needs to be democratic because its leadership must always reflect the collective experience of the struggle.<br /> <br /> At the same time, this democracy is not merely a system of election but a continual debate within the party – a continual interaction of the socialist ideas on which the party is based with the experience of class struggle.<br /> <br /> But the revolutionary socialist party must also be centralised – for it is an active party, not a debating society. It needs to be able to intervene collectively in the class struggle, and to respond quickly, so it must have a leadership capable of taking day-to-day decisions in the name of the party.<br /> <br /> If the government orders the jailing of pickets, for instance, the party needs to react at once, without the need to convene conferences to take democratic decisions first. So the decision is made centrally and acted upon. Democracy comes into play afterwards, when the party hammers out whether the decision was correct or not – and maybe changes the party leadership if it was out of touch with the needs of the struggle.<br /> <br /> The revolutionary socialist party needs to maintain a fine and delicate balance between democracy and centralism. The key is that the party does not exist for its own sake, but as a means for bringing a revolutionary change to socialism – and that can only be through class struggle.<br /> <br /> So the party must continually adapt itself to the struggle. When the struggle is low, and few workers believe in the possibility of revolutionary change, then the party will be small – and must be content to be so for to dilute its political ideas in order to increase its membership would be pointless. But when the struggle increases, large numbers of workers can change their ideas very fast, realising through struggle their power to change things – and then the party must be able to open its doors, otherwise it will be left on the sidelines.<br /> <br /> The party cannot substitute for the working class. It must be part of the class struggle, continually trying to unite the most class-conscious workers to provide a leadership for the struggle. Nor can the party dictate to the class. It cannot simply proclaim itself the leadership, but must win that position, proving the correctness of socialist ideas in practice – which means anything from a small strike to the revolution itself.<br /> <br /> Some people see the revolutionary socialist party as the precursor of socialism. This is completely wrong. Socialism can only come about when the working class itself takes control of the means of producing wealth and uses this to transform society.<br /> <br /> You cannot build an island of socialism in a sea of capitalism. Attempts by small groups of socialists to cut themselves off and lead their lives according to socialist ideas always fail miserably in the long term – for a start, the economic and ideological pressures are always there. And in cutting themselves off from capitalism, such small groups also cut themselves off from the only force that can bring socialism: the working class.<br /> <br /> Of course, socialists fight against the degrading effects of capitalism every day – against racism, against sexism, against exploitation, against brutality. But we can only do so by taking the strength of the working class as our base.<br /> <br /> == Imperialism and national liberation ==<br /> Throughout the history of capitalism the employing class has always looked to an additional source of wealth – the seizure of wealth produced in other countries.<br /> <br /> The growth of the first forms of capitalism at the close of the Middle Ages was accompanied by the seizure by western states of vast colonial empires – the empires of Spain and Portugal, of Holland and France, and, of course, of Britain. Wealth was pumped into the hands of the ruling classes of western Europe, while whole societies in what has become known as the Third World (Africa, Asia and South America) were destroyed.<br /> <br /> Thus, the ‘discovery’ of America by Europeans in the 16th century produced a vast flow of gold into Europe. The other side of that coin was the destruction of whole societies and the enslavement of others. For example, in Haiti, where Columbus first established a settlement, the native Harawak Indians (perhaps half a million in all) were exterminated in just two generations. In Mexico the Indian population was reduced from 20 million in 1520 to 2 million in 1607.<br /> <br /> The Indian population of the West Indies and of parts of the mainland was replaced by slaves captured in Africa and transported across the Atlantic under abominable conditions. An estimated 15 million slaves survived the Atlantic crossing while about 9 million died in transit. About half the slaves were transported in British ships – which is one reason why British capitalism was the first to expand industry.<br /> <br /> The wealth from the slave trade provided the means to finance industry. As an old saying put it, ‘The walls of Bristol are cemented with the blood of the negroes’ – and this applied just as much to other ports. As Karl Marx put it, ‘The veiled slavery of the wage worker in Europe required for its pedestal slavery pure and simple in the New World.’ The slave trade was complemented by pure looting – as when the British conquered India. Bengal was so advanced that the first British visitors were stunned by the magnificence of its civilisation.<br /> <br /> But this wealth did not stay long in Bengal. As Lord Macaulay wrote in his biography of the conqueror, Clive:&lt;blockquote&gt;The immense population was given up as prey. Enormous fortunes were thus rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, while 30 million of human beings were reduced to the extremity of wretchedness. They had been used to living under tyranny, but never tyranny like this.&lt;/blockquote&gt;From that point onwards Bengal became renowned not for its wealth, but for a grinding poverty that every few years saw millions starve to death in famines, a poverty that continues to this day.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, in the 1760s, at a time when total capital investment in England was no more than £6 million to £7 million, the annual tribute to England from India was £2 million.<br /> <br /> The same processes were at work in relation to England’s oldest colony – Ireland. During the Great Famine of the late 1840s when Ireland’s population was halved by starvation and emigration, more than enough wheat to feed the starving population was sent from the country as rent to English landlords.<br /> <br /> Today, it is usual to divide the world into ‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’ countries. The impression is given that the ‘underdeveloped’ countries have been moving in the same direction for hundreds of years as the ‘developed’ countries, but at a slower speed.<br /> <br /> But, in fact, one reason for the ‘development’ of the Western countries was that the rest were robbed of wealth and pushed backwards. Many are poorer today than they were 300 years ago.<br /> <br /> As Michael Barratt Brown has pointed out:&lt;blockquote&gt;The wealth per head of the present underdeveloped lands, not only in India, but in China, Latin America and Africa, was higher than in Europe in the 17th century, and fell as wealth grew in Western Europe.&lt;/blockquote&gt;The possession of an empire enabled Britain to develop as the world’s first industrial power. It was in a position to stop other capitalist states getting their hands on the raw materials, markets and profitable areas of investment within its third of the world.<br /> <br /> As new industrial powers such as Germany, Japan and the United States grew up, they wanted these advantages for themselves. They built up rival empires or ‘spheres of influence’. Faced with economic crisis, each of the major capitalist powers tried to solve its problems by encroaching on the spheres of influence of its rivals. Imperialism led to world war.<br /> <br /> This in turn produced huge changes within the internal organisation of capitalism. The tool for waging war, the state, became much more important. It worked ever more closely with the giant firms to reorganise industry for foreign competition and war. Capitalism became state monopoly capitalism.<br /> <br /> The development of imperialism meant that capitalists did not just exploit the working class of their own country; they also took physical control of other countries and exploited their populations. For the most oppressed classes in the colonial countries, this meant that they were exploited by foreign imperialists as well as by their own ruling class. They were doubly exploited.<br /> <br /> But sections of the ruling classes in the colonial countries also suffered. They saw many of their own opportunities to exploit the local population stolen from them by imperialism. In the same way, the middle classes in the colonies, who would have liked to see a rapid expansion of locally run industry so as to provide them with good career opportunities, suffered as well.<br /> <br /> The last 60 years have seen all these various classes in colonial and ex-colonial countries rise up against the effects of imperialism. Movements have developed that have attempted to unite the whole population against foreign imperialist rule. Their demands have included:<br /> <br /> * Expulsion of foreign imperialist troops.<br /> * Unification of the whole national territory under a single national government, as against its division between different imperialisms.<br /> * The re-establishment of the original language in everyday life, as opposed to some language imposed by the foreign rulers.<br /> * The use of the wealth produced by the country to expand local industry to bring about ‘development’ and ‘modernisation’ of the country.<br /> <br /> Such were the demands of successive revolutionary upsurges in China (in 1912, 1923-27 and in 1945-48), in Iran (in 1905-12, 1917-21 and in 1941-53), in Turkey (after the First World War), in the West Indies (from the 1920s onwards), in India (in 1920-48), in Africa (after 1945) and in Vietnam (until the United States was defeated in 1975).<br /> <br /> These movements were often led by sections of the local upper classes or middle classes, but they meant that the ruling classes of the advanced countries faced an additional opponent as well as their own working class. The national movement in the so-called Third World challenged the imperialist capitalist states at the same time as did their own working classes.<br /> <br /> For the working class movement in the advanced countries this had great importance. It meant that in its fight against capitalism, it had an ally in the liberation movements of the Third World. So, for example, a Shell worker in Britain had an ally in the liberation forces in South Africa who were fighting to take over the property which Shell owned there. If Shell can thwart the aims of the liberation movements in the Third World, then it will be more powerful when it comes to resisting the demands of workers in Britain.<br /> <br /> This is true, even if the liberation movement in the Third World country does not have a socialist leadership – indeed, even if its leadership merely wants to replace foreign rule by the rule of a local capitalist or state capitalist class.<br /> <br /> The imperialist state which is trying to smash that liberation movement is the same imperialist state that is the greatest enemy of the Western worker. That is why Marx insisted that ‘a nation that oppresses others cannot itself be free’, and why Lenin argued for an alliance between the workers of the advanced countries and the oppressed people of the Third World, even when these had a non-socialist leadership.<br /> <br /> This does not mean that socialists will agree with the way in which non-socialists in an oppressed country lead a national liberation struggle (any more than we necessarily agree with how a trade union leader leads a strike). But we have to make it clear before anything else that we support that struggle. Otherwise we an all too easily end up supporting our own ruling class against ieople it is oppressing.<br /> <br /> We have to support a liberation struggle unconditionally, before we are entitled to criticise the way it is led.<br /> <br /> However, revolutionary socialists in a country which is oppressed by imperialism cannot leave matters there. They have to argue, day in day out, with other people about how the struggle for national liberation should be waged.<br /> <br /> Here, the most important points are contained in the theory of permanent revolution developed by Trotsky.&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 11.&quot;&gt;The [[Permanent Revolution|permanent revolution]] theory of Trotsky does not talk about national liberation against colonialism, rather it talks about how the revolution that started in a country would extend through the other, making it &quot;permanent&quot;, theory which is incorrect&lt;/ref&gt; Trotsky began by recognising that often movements against oppression are initiated by people from middle class or even upper class backgrounds.<br /> <br /> Socialists support such movements because they aim to ‘move one of the burdens that weighs upon the most oppressed classes and groups in society. But we also have to recognise that those from the upper or middle classes cannot lead such struggles consistently. They will be afraid of unleashing a full-blooded class struggle, in case this challenges not merely oppression from outside, but also their own ability to live by exploiting the most oppressed classes.<br /> <br /> At a certain point they will run away from the struggle they themselves initiated, and, if necessary, unite with the foreign oppressor to smash it. At this point, if socialist, working class does do not take the leadership of the national liberation struggle, it will be defeated.<br /> <br /> Trotsky also made one final point. It is true that in most Third World countries the working class is only a minority, often a small minority, of the population. But it is nevertheless often quite big in absolute terms (for example in India and China it is tens of millions strong), it often creates a huge proportion of the national wealth in relation to its size, and it is concentrated in overwhelming numbers in the cities which are key when it comes ruling the country. So in a period of revolutionary turmoil, the working class can take the leadership of all other oppressed classes and seize control of whole countries. The revolution can be permanent, beginning with demands for national liberation and ending with socialist demands. But only if socialists in the oppressed country have from the beginning organised the workers on an independent, class basis – supporting the general movement for national liberation, but always warning that its middle class or upper class leaders cannot be trusted.<br /> <br /> === ProleWiki annotations ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;ProleWiki 11.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> == Marxism and feminism ==<br /> There are two different approaches to women’s liberation – feminism and revolutionary socialism.<br /> <br /> Feminism was the dominant influence on the women’s movements which sprung up in the advanced capitalist countries during the 1960s and 1970s. It started from the view that men always oppress women, that there was something in men’s biology or psychological make up which made them treat women as inferior. This led to the view that liberation was possible only by the separation of women from men – either the total separation of the feminists who sought ‘liberated lifestyles’ or the partial separation of women’s committees, women’s caucuses or women-only events.<br /> <br /> Many of those who supported this partial separation called themselves socialist feminists. But later radical feminist ideas of total separation made the running inside the women’s movement.<br /> <br /> Separatist ideas ended time and again as a slightly radical wing of the social services, as with women’s refuges.<br /> <br /> This failing led many feminists in another direction – towards the Labour Party. They believed that getting the right women in the right places, as MPs, trade union officials, local councillors, would somehow help all women to find equality.<br /> <br /> The tradition of revolutionary socialism starts from a very different set of ideas. Marx and Engels, writing as far back as 1848, argued, first, that women’s oppression did not arise from the ideas in men’s heads, but from the development of private property and with it the emergence of a society based on classes. For them, the fight for women’s liberation was inseparable from the fight to end all class society – the struggle for socialism.<br /> <br /> Marx and Engels also pointed out that the development of capitalism, based on the factory system, brought profound changes in people’s lives, and especially in the lives of women. Women were brought back into social production, from which they had been progressively excluded with the development of class society.<br /> <br /> This gave women a potential power which they had never had before. Organised collectively, women as workers had greater independence and ability to fight for their rights. This was in great contrast to their lives previously, when their main role in production, through the family, made them completely dependent on the family head – the husband or father.<br /> <br /> From this Marx and Engels concluded that the material basis of the family, and so of women’s oppression, no longer existed. What stopped women from benefiting from this was the fact that property remained in the hands of the few. What keeps women oppressed today is the way capitalism is organised – in particular the way capitalism uses a particular form of the family in order to make sure that its workers bring their children up to be the next generation of workers. It is a great advantage that while it pays men – and increasingly women – to work, women will devote their lives, unpaid, to making sure their men are fit to work in the factories and their children will grow up to do the same.<br /> <br /> Socialism, by contrast, would see society taking on many of the family functions which weigh so heavily on women.<br /> <br /> This didn’t mean that Marx, Engels and their successors went about preaching the ‘abolition of the family’. The family’s supporters have always been able to mobilise many of the most oppressed women in its support – they see the ‘abolition of the family’ as giving their husbands licence to abandon them with the responsibility for the children. Revolutionary socialists have always tried instead to show how in a better, socialist society, women would not be forced into the miserable, cramped life provided by the present day family.<br /> <br /> Feminists have always rejected this sort of analysis. Far from approaching women where they have the power to change the world and end their oppression – where they are collectively strong at work – they approach women as sufferers. Campaigns of the 1980s, for example, focused on such issues as prostitution, rape or the threat to women and families from nuclear weapons. These all start from positions where women are weak.<br /> <br /> Feminism starts with the assumption that oppression overrides class division. This leads to conclusions which leave class society intact while improving the position of some women – a minority. The women’s movement has tended to be dominated by women from the ‘new middle class’ – journalists, writers, lecturers, higher grade white collar workers. The typists, filing clerks, machinists have got left out.<br /> <br /> It is only during periods of radical change and revolutionary upsurge that the question of women’s liberation becomes reality, not just for a minority, but for all working class women as well. The Bolshevik revolution of 1917 produced a much greater equality for women than ever known in the world before. Divorce, abortion and contraception were made freely available. Childcare and housework became the responsibility of society. There were the beginnings of communal restaurants, laundries and nurseries which gave women far more choice and control over their lives.<br /> <br /> Of course, the fate of these advances couldn’t be separated from the fate of the revolution itself.<br /> <br /> Famine, civil war, the decimation of the working class, and the failure of revolution internationally meant the eventual defeat of socialism in Russia itself. The moves towards equality were reversed.<br /> <br /> But the early years of the soviet republic showed what socialist revolution could achieve, even in the most unfavourable conditions. Today, the prospects for women’s liberation are far better. In Britain – and much the same is true of other advanced capitalist countries – two workers in every five are women.<br /> <br /> Women’s liberation can be achieved only through the collective power of the working class. This means rejecting the feminist idea of women’s separate organisations. Only women and men workers acting together as part of a united revolutionary movement can destroy class society, and with it the oppression of women.<br /> <br /> == Socialism and war ==<br /> The present century has been a century of wars. Some 10 million people were killed in the First World War, 55 million in the Second, 2 million in the wars in Indochina. And the two great nuclear powers, the United States and Russia, still possess the means to destroy the human race many times over.&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 12.&quot;&gt;The [[Soviet Union]] developed the nuclear bombs in response to the development of the nuclear bombs of the USA, since without them, the United States would have had the path paved to destroy the country of the Soviets.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Explaining this horror is difficult for those who take existing society for granted. They are driven to conclude that there is some innate, instinctive drive in human beings that leads them to enjoy mass slaughter. But human society has not always known war. Gordon Childe noted of Europe in the Stone Age:&lt;blockquote&gt;The earliest Danubians seem to have been a peaceful folk; weapons of war as against hunters' tools are absent from their graves. Their villages lacked military defences. [But] in the later phases of the Neolithic period armaments became the most conspicuous items...&lt;/blockquote&gt;War is not caused by some innate human aggressiveness. It is a product of the division of society into classes. When, between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago, a class of property owners first emerged, it had to find the means to defend its wealth. It began to construct armed forces, a state, cut off from the rest of society. This then became a valuable means of further increasing its wealth, by plundering other societies.<br /> <br /> The division of society into classes meant that war became a permanent feature of human life.<br /> <br /> The slave owning ruling classes of Ancient Greece and Rome could not survive without continual wars which procured more slaves. The feudal lords of the Middle Ages had to be heavily armed in order to subdue the local serfs and to protect their loot from other feudal lords. When the first capitalist ruling classes began 300 or 400 years ago, they too repeatedly had to have recourse to war. They had to fight bitter wars in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries in order to establish their supremacy over the remnants of the old feudal rulers. The most successful capitalist countries, such as Britain, used warfare to expand their wealth—reaching overseas, looting India and Ireland, transporting millions of people as slaves from Africa to the Americas, turning the whole world into a source of plunder for themselves.<br /> <br /> Capitalist society built itself through war. No wonder that those who lived within it came 'to believe that war was both 'inevitable' and 'just'.<br /> <br /> Yet capitalism could never be based entirely on war. Most of its wealth came through exploiting workers in factories and mines. And that was something which could be disrupted by any fighting within the 'home country' itself.<br /> <br /> Each national capitalist class wanted peace at home while waging war abroad. So while encouraging belief in 'military virtues' it also bitterly attacked 'violence'. The ideology of capitalism combines, in a completely contradictory way, exaltation of militarism and pacifist phrases.<br /> <br /> In the present century war preparations have become more central to the system than ever before. In the 19th century capitalist production was based on many small firms competing with each other.<br /> <br /> The state was a relatively small body that regulated their relations with each other and with their workers. But in the present century big firms have eaten up most of the small firms, so eliminating much of the competition within each country. Competition is more and more international, between the giant firms of different nations.<br /> <br /> There is no international capitalist state to regulate this competition. Instead, each national state exerts all the pressure it can to help its capitalists get an advantage over their foreign rivals. The life and death struggle of different capitalists with each other can become the life and death struggle of different states, each with its huge array of destructive weaponry.<br /> <br /> Twice this struggle has led to world war. The First and Second World Wars were imperialist wars,&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 12.&quot;&gt;The second world war was not an inter-imperialist war, given the class character it had, because the main military goal of Nazi Germany was to eliminate the Soviet Union, through their GeneralOst plan. The soviet union went to the lengths of even doing a non-agression pact in order to avoid conflict the furthest possible, but Nazi Germany broke it.&lt;/ref&gt; conflicts between alliances of capitalist states over the domination of the globe. The Cold War was a continuation of that struggle, with the most powerful capitalist states lined up against each other in NATO and the Warsaw Pact.&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 12.&quot;&gt;The Warsaw pact was a pact of socialist countries, which also fought with the colonized in their decolonization processes, supporting them militarely and economically&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In addition to this global conflict, many hot wars have raged in different parts of the world. Usually they have been struggles between different capitalist states over who should control a particular region, such as the Iran-Iraq war which broke out in 1980 and the Gulf War in 1991. All the major powers stoke the fires of war by selling the most sophisticated military technology to Third World states.<br /> <br /> Many people who accept the rest of the capitalist system do not like this grim reality. They want capitalism but not war. They try to find alternatives within the system. For example, there are those who believe the United Nations can prevent war.<br /> <br /> But the UN is merely the arena where different states that embody the drive to war meet together.<br /> <br /> There they compare their strengths with each other, like boxers measuring up before a bout. If one state or alliance is easily more powerful than another, then both will see the pointlessness of a war whose outcome is known in advance. But if there is any doubt about the outcome, they know of only one way of settling the issue, and that is to go to war.<br /> <br /> This was true of the two great nuclear alliances, NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Even though the West had the military edge over the Eastern Bloc, the gap was not so great for the Russians to believe themselves at a hopeless disadvantage. So, despite the fact that a Third World War would wipe out most of the human race, both Washington and Moscow drew up plans for fighting and winning a nuclear war.&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki 12.&quot;&gt;See PW annotation 12.1&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Cold War came to an end with the political upheaval in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the collapse of the USSR into its constituent republics in 1991. There was then much talk of a 'new world order' and a 'peace dividend'.<br /> <br /> Instead, however, we have seen a succession of barbaric wars—the war of the West against its former ally Iraq, the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the former USSR, the horrific civil wars in Somalia and former Yugoslavia.<br /> <br /> No sooner is one military rivalry between capitalist powers resolved than another takes its place.<br /> <br /> Everywhere, ruling classes know that war is a way of increasing their influence and of blinding workers and peasants with nationalism.<br /> <br /> You can loathe and fear war without opposing capitalist society. But you cannot end it. War is the inevitable product of the division of society into classes. The threat of it will never be ended by begging existing rulers to make peace. The armaments have to be wrested from their hands by a movement fighting to overturn class society once and for all.<br /> <br /> The peace movements which emerged in Europe and North America at the end of the 1970s did not understand this. They fought to stop the introduction of Cruise and Pershing missiles, for unilateral disarmament, for a nuclear freeze. But they believed that the fight for peace could succeed in isolation from the struggle between capital and labour.<br /> <br /> So they failed to mobilise the only power capable of stopping the drive towards war, the working class. Only socialist revolution can end the horror of war.<br /> <br /> === ProleWiki annotations ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;ProleWiki 12.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> [[Category:Library works by Chris Harman]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about philosophy]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Make_way_for_winged_Eros:_a_letter_to_working_youth&diff=76011 2024-09-30T12:47:01Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Make way for Winged Eros: A Letter to Working Youth|author=Alexandra Kollontai|written in=1923|type=Essay|source=https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1923/winged-eros.htm}}<br /> <br /> == Love as a socio-psychological factor ==<br /> You ask me, my young friend, what place proletarian ideology gives to love? You are concerned by the fact that at the present time young workers are occupied more with love and related questions than with the tremendous tasks of construction which face the workers’ republic. It is difficult for me to judge events from a distance, but let us try to find an explanation for this situation, and then it will be easier to answer the first question about the place of love in proletarian ideology.<br /> <br /> There can be no doubt that Soviet Russia has entered a new phase of the civil war. The main theatre of struggle is now the front where the two ideologies, the two cultures — the bourgeois and the proletarian — do battle. The incompatibility of these two ideologies is becoming increasingly obvious, and the contradictions between these two fundamentally different cultures are growing more acute. Alongside the victory of communist principles and ideals in the sphere of politics and economics, a revolution in the outlook, emotions and the inner world of working people is inevitably taking place. A new attitude to life, society, work, art and to the rules of living (i.e. morality) can already be observed. The arrangement of sexual relationships is one aspect of these rules of living. Over the five years of the existence of our labour republic, the revolution on this non-military front has been accomplishing a great shift in the way men and women think. The fiercer the battle between the two ideologies, the greater the significance it assumes and the more inevitably it raises new “riddles of life” and new problems to which only the ideology of the working class can give a satisfactory answer.<br /> <br /> The “riddle of love” that interests us here is one such problem. This question of the relationships between the sexes is a mystery as old as human society itself. At different levels of historical development mankind has approached the solution of this problem in different ways. The problem remains the same: the keys to its solution change. The keys are fashioned by the different epochs, by the classes in power and by the spirit” of a particular age (in other words by its culture).<br /> <br /> In Russia over the recent years of intense civil war and general dislocation there has been little interest in the nature of the riddle. The men and women of the working classes were in the grip of other emotions, passions and experiences. In those years everyone walked in the shadow of death, and it was being decided whether victory would belong to the revolution and progress or to counter-revolution and reaction. In face of the revolutionary threat, tender-winged Eros fled from the surface of life. There was neither time nor a surplus of inner strength for love’s “joys and pains.” Such is the law of the preservation of humanity’s social and psychological energy. As a whole. this energy is always directed to the most urgent aims of the historical moment. And in Russia, for a time, the biological instinct of reproduction, the natural voice of nature dominated the situation. Men and women came together and men and women parted much more easily and much more simply than before. They came together without great commitment and parted without tears or regret.<br /> <br /> Prostitution disappeared, and the number of sexual relationships where the partners were under no obligation to each other and which were based on the instinct of reproduction unadorned by any emotions of love increased. This fact frightened some. But such a development was, in those years, inevitable. Either pre-existing relationships continued to exist and unite men and women through comradeship and long-standing friendship, which was rendered more precious by the seriousness of the moment, or new relationships were begun for the satisfaction of purely biological needs, both partners treating the affair as incidental and avoiding any commitment that might hinder their work for the revolution.<br /> <br /> The unadorned sexual drive is easily aroused but is soon spent; thus “wingless Eros” consumes less inner strength than “winged Eros.” whose love is woven of delicate strands of every kind of emotion. “Wingless Eros” does not make one suffer from sleepless nights, does not sap one’s will, and does not entangle the rational workings of the mind. The fighting class could not have fallen under the power of “winged Eros” at a time when the clarion call of revolution was sounding. It would not have been expedient at such a time to waste the inner strength of the members of the collective on experiences that did not directly serve the revolution. Individual sex love, which lies at the heart of the pair marriage, demands a great expenditure of inner energy. The working class was interested not only in economising in terms of material wealth but also in preserving the intellectual and emotional energy of each person. For this reason, at a time of heightened revolutionary struggle, the undemanding instinct of reproduction spontaneously replaced the all embracing “winged Eros.”<br /> <br /> But now the picture changes. The Soviet republic and the whole of toiling humanity are entering a period of temporary and comparative calm. The complex task of understanding and assimilating the achievements and gains that have been made is beginning. The proletariat, the creator of new forms of life, must be able to learn from all social and psychological phenomena, grasp the significance of these phenomena and fashion weapons from them for the self-defence of the class. Only when the proletariat has appropriated the laws not only of the creation of material wealth but also of inner, psychological life is it able to advance fully armed to fight the decaying bourgeois world. Only then will toiling humanity prove itself to be the victor, not only on the military and labour front but also on the psychological-cultural front.<br /> <br /> Now that the revolution has proved victorious and is in a stronger position, and now that the atmosphere of revolutionary élan has ceased to absorb men and women completely, tender-winged Eros has emerged from the shadows and begun to demand his rightful place. “Wingless Eros” has ceased to satisfy psychological needs. Emotional energy has accumulated and men and women, even of the working class, have not yet learned to use it for the inner life of the collective. This extra energy seeks an outlet in the love-experience. The many-stringed lyre of the god of love drowns the monotonous voice of “wingless Eros.” Men and women are now not only united by the momentary satisfaction of the sex instinct but are beginning to experience “love affairs” again, and to know all the sufferings and all the exaltations of love’s happiness.<br /> <br /> in the life of the Soviet republic an undoubted growth of intellectual and emotional needs, a desire for knowledge, an interest in scientific questions and in art and the theatre can be observed. This movement towards transformation inevitably embraces the sphere of love experiences too. Interest is aroused in the question of the psychology of sex, the mystery of love. Everyone to some extent is having to face up to questions of personal life. One notes with surprise that party workers who in previous years had time only for Pravda editorials and minutes and reports are reading fiction books in which winged Eros is lauded.<br /> <br /> What does this mean? Is this a reactionary step? A symptom of the beginning of the decline of revolutionary creativity? Nothing of the sort! It is time we separated ourselves from the hypocrisy of bourgeois thought. It is time to recognize open that love is not only a powerful natural factor, a biological force, but also a social factor. Essentially love is a profoundly social emotion. At all stages of human development love has in different forms, it is true, been an integral part of culture. Even the bourgeoisie, who saw love as a “private matter,” was able to channel the expression of love in its class interests. The ideology of the working class must pay even greater attention to the significance of love as a factor which can, like any other psychological or social phenomenon, be channeled to the advantage of the collective. Love is not in the least a “private” matter concerning only the two loving persons: love possesses a uniting element which is valuable to the collective. This is clear from the fact that at all stages of historical development society has established norms defining when and under what conditions love is “legal” (i.e. corresponds to the interests of the given social collective), and when and under what conditions love is sinful and criminal (i.e. contradicts the tasks of the given society).<br /> <br /> == Historical notes ==<br /> From the very early stages of its social being, humanity has sought to regulate not only sexual relations but love itself.<br /> <br /> In the kinship community, love for one’s blood relations was considered the highest virtue. The kinship group would not have approved of a woman sacrificing herself for the sake of a beloved husband: fraternal or sisterly attachment were the most highly regarded feelings. Antigone, who according to the Greek legend risked her life to bury the body of her dead brother, was a heroine in the eyes of her contemporaries. Modern bourgeois society would consider such an action on the part of a sister as highly curious. In the times of tribal rule, when the state was still in its embryonic stage, the love held in greatest respect was the love between two members of the same tribe. In an era when the social collective had only just evolved from the stage of kinship community and was still not firmly established in its new form, it was vitally important that its members were linked by mental and emotional ties. Love-friendship was the most suitable type of tie, since at that time the interests of the collective required the growth and accumulation of contacts not between the marriage pair but between fellow-members of the tribe, between the organizers and defenders of the tribe and state that is to say, between the men of the tribe, of course; women at that time had no role to play in social life, and there was no talk of friendship among women). “Friendship” was praised and considered far more important than love between man and wife. Castor and Pollux were famous for their loyalty to each other and their unshakable friendship, rather than for the feats they performed for their country. For the sake of friendship or its semblance a man might offer his wife to an acquaintance or a guest.<br /> <br /> The ancient world considered friendship and “loyalty until the grave” to be civic virtues. Love in the modern sense of the word had no place, and hardly attracted the attention either of poets or of writers. The dominant ideology of that time relegated love to the sphere of narrow, personal experiences with which society was not concerned; marriage was based on convenience, not on love. Love was just one among other amusements; it was a luxury which only the citizen who had fulfilled all his obligations to the state could afford. While bourgeois ideology values the “ability to love” provided it confines itself to the limits set down by bourgeois morality, the ancient world did not consider such emotions in its categories of virtues and positive human qualities. The person who accomplished great deeds and risked his life for his friend was considered a hero and his action “most virtuous” while a man risking himself for the sake of a woman he loved would have been reproached or even despised.<br /> <br /> The morality of the ancient world, then, did not even recognize the love that inspired men to great deeds — the love so highly regarded in the feudal period — as worthy of consideration. The ancient world recognized only those emotions which drew its fellow-members close together and rendered the emerging social organism more stable. In subsequent stages of cultural development, however, friendship ceases to be considered a moral virtue. Bourgeois society was built on the principles of individualism and competition, and has no place for friendship as a moral factor. Friendship does not help in any way, and may hinder the achievement of class aims; it is viewed as an unnecessary manifestation of “sentimentality” and weakness. Friendship becomes an object of derision. Castor and Pollux in the New York of London of today would only evoke a condescending smile. This was not so in feudal society, where love-friendship was seen as a quality to be taught and encouraged.<br /> <br /> The feudal system defended the interests of the noble family. Virtues were defined with reference not so much to relations between the members of that society as to the obligations of the individual to his or her family and its traditions. Marriage was contracted according to the interests of the family, and any young man (the girl had no rights whatever) who chose himself a wife against these interests was severely criticized. In the feudal era the individual was not supposed to place personal feelings and inclinations above the interests of family, and he who did so “sinned.” Morality did not demand that love and marriage go hand in hand.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, love between the sexes was not neglected; in fact, for the first time in the history of humanity it received a certain recognition. It may seem strange that love was first accepted in this age of strict asceticism, of crude and cruel morals, an age of violence and rule by violence; but the reasons for acceptance become clear when we take a closer look. In certain situations and in certain circumstances, love can act as a lever propelling the man to perform actions of which he would otherwise have been incapable. The knighthood demanded of each member fearlessness, bravery, endurance and great feats of individual valour on the battlefield. Victory in war was in those days decided not so much by the organization of troops as by the individual qualities of the participants. The knight in love with the inaccessible “lady of his heart” found it easier to perform miracles of bravery, easier to win tournaments, easier to sacrifice his life. The knight in love was motivated by the desire to “shine” and thus to win the attention of his beloved.<br /> <br /> The ideology of chivalry recognized love as a psychological state that could be used to the advantage of the feudal class, but nevertheless it sought to organize emotions in a definite framework. Love between man and wife was not valued, for the family that lived in the knightly castle and in the Russian boyar’s ''terem'' was not held together by emotional ties. The social factor of chivalrous love operated where the knight loved a woman outside the family and was inspired to military and other heroic feats by this emotion. The more inaccessible the woman, the greater the knight’s determination to win her favour and the greater his need to develop in himself the virtues and qualities which were valued by his social class. Usually the knight chose as his lady the woman least accessible, the wife of his suzerain, or often the queen. Only such a “platonic” love could spur the knight to perform miracles of bravery and was considered virtuous and worthy. The knight rarely chose an unmarried woman as the object of his love, for no matter how far above him in station and apparently inaccesible the girl might be, the possibility of marriage and the consequent removal of the psychological lever could not be ruled out. Hence feudal morality combined recognition of the ideal of asceticism (sexual restraint) with recognition of love as a moral virtue. In his desire to free love from all that was carnal and sinful and to transform it into an abstract emotion completely divorced from its biological base the knight was prepared to go to great lengths, choosing as his lady a woman he had never seen or joining the ranks of the lovers of the Virgin Mary. Further he could not go.<br /> <br /> Feudal ideology saw love as a stimulus, as a quality assisting in social cohesion: spiritual love and the knight’s adoration of his lady served the interests of the noble class. The knight who would have thought nothing of sending his wife to a monastery or of slaying her for unfaithfulness would have been flattered if she had been chosen by another knight as his lady, and would have made no objections to her platonic friendships. But while placing so much emphasis on spiritual love, feudal morality in no way demanded that love should determine legal marriage relationships. Love and marriage were kept separate by feudal ideology, and were only united by the bourgeois class that emerged in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The exalted sophistication of feudal love existed. therefore, alongside indescribably crude norms of relations between the sexes. Sexual intercourse both within and outside marriage lacked the softening and inspiring element of love and remained an undisguisedly physiological act.<br /> <br /> The church pretended to wage war on depravity, but by encouraging “spiritual love” it encouraged crude animal relations between the sexes. The knight who would not be parted from the emblem of the lady of his heart, who composed poetry in her honour and risked his life to win her smile, would rape a girl of the urban classes without a second thought or order his steward to bring him a beautiful peasant for his pleasure. The wives of the knights, for their part, did not let slip the opportunity to enjoy the delights of the flesh with the troubadours and pages of the feudal household.<br /> <br /> With the weakening of feudalism and the growth of new conditions of life dictated by the interests of the rising bourgeoisie, a new moral ideal of relations between the sexes developed. Rejecting platonic love, the bourgeoisie defended the violated rights of the body and injected the combination of the spiritual and physical into the very conception of love. Bourgeois morality did not separate love and marriage; marriage was the expression of the mutual attraction of the couple. In practice of course the bourgeoisie itself, in the name of convenience, continually sinned against this moral teaching, but the recognition of love as the pillar of marriage had a profound class basis.<br /> <br /> Under the feudal system the family was held together firmly by the traditions of nobility and birth. The married couple was held in place by the power of the church, the unlimited authority of the head of the family, the strength of family tradition and the will of the suzerain; marriage was indissoluble. The bourgeois family evolved in different conditions; its basis was not the co-ownership of family wealth but the accumulation of capital. The family was the guardian of this capital; in order that accumulation might take place as rapidly as possible, it was important that a man’s savings should be handled with care and skill: in other words, that the woman should not only be a good housewife but also the helper and friend of her husband. With the establishment of capitalist relations and of the bourgeois social system, the family. in order to remain stable, had to be based not only on economic considerations but also on the co-operation of all its members, who had a joint interest in the accumulation of wealth. And co-operation could serve as a more powerful factor when husband and wife and parents and children were held together by strong emotional and psychological bonds.<br /> <br /> At the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, the new economic way of life gave rise to a new ideology. The conceptions of love and marriage gradually changed. The religious reformer, Luther, and the other thinkers and public figures of the Renaissance and the Reformation, understood the social force of love perfectly. Aware that the stability of the family — the economic unit on which the bourgeois system rests — required that its members be linked by more than economic ties alone, the revolutionary ideologists of the rising bourgeoisie propagated the new moral ideal of a love that embraced both the flesh and the soul. The reformers of the period challenged the celibacy of the clergy and made merciless fun of the “spiritual love” of chivalry that kept the knight in a continual state of aspiration but denied him the hope of satisfying his sensual needs. The ideologists of the bourgeoisie and the reformation recognised the legitimacy of the body’s needs. Thus, while the feudal world had divided love into the sexual act (relations within marriage or with concubines) on the one hand, and spiritual, platonic love (the relations between the knight and the lady of his heart) on the other, the bourgeois class included both the physical attraction between the sexes and emotional attachments in its concept of love. The feudal ideal had separated love from marriage; the bourgeoisie linked the two. The bourgeoisie made love and marriage inseparable. In practice, of course, this class has always retreated from its ideal; but while the question of mutual inclination was never raised under feudalism, bourgeois morality requires that even in marriages of convenience, the partners should practise hypocrisy and pretend affection.<br /> <br /> Traces of feudal tradition and feudal attitudes to marriage and love have come down to us, surviving the centuries and accommodating themselves to the morality of the bourgeois class. Royal families and the higher ranks of the aristocracy still live according to these old norms. In these circles it is considered “amusing” but rather “awkward” when a marriage is concluded on the basis of love. The princes and princesses of this world still have to bow to the demands of birth and politics, joining themselves for life to people they do not care for.<br /> <br /> In peasant families one also finds that family and economic considerations play a big part in marriage arrangements. The peasant family differs from that of the urban industrial bourgeoisie chiefly in that it is an economic labour unit; its members are so firmly held together by economic circumstances that inner bonds are of secondary importance. For the medieval artisan, love likewise had no role in marriage, for in the context of the guild system the family was a productive unit, and this economic rationale provided stability. The ideal of love in marriage only begins to appear when, with the emergence of the bourgeoisie, the family loses its productive functions and remains a consumer unit also serving as a vehicle for the preservation of accumulated capital.<br /> <br /> But though bourgeois morality defended the rights of two “loving hearts” to conclude a union even in defiance of tradition, and though it criticized “spiritual love” and asceticism, proclaiming love as the basis of marriage, it nevertheless defined love in a very narrow way. Love is permissible only when it is within marriage. Love outside legal marriage is considered immoral. Such ideas were often dictated, of course, by economic considerations, by the desire to prevent the distribution of capital among illegitimate children. The entire morality of the bourgeoisie was directed towards the concentration of capital. The ideal was the married couple, working together to improve their welfare and to increase the wealth of their particular family unit. divorced as it was from society. Where the interests of the family and society were in conflict, bourgeois morality decided in the interests of the family (cf. the sympathetic attitude of bourgeois morality — though not the law — to deserters and to those who, for the sake of their families, cause the bankruptcy of their fellow shareholders). This morality, with a utilitarianism typical of the bourgeoisie, tried to use love to its advantage, making it the main ingredient of marriage, and thereby strengthening the family.<br /> <br /> Love, of course, could not be contained within the limits set down by bourgeois ideologists. Emotional conflicts grew and multiplied, and found their expression in the new form of literature — the novel — which the bourgeois class developed. Love constantly escaped from the narrow framework of legal marriage relations set for it, into free relationships and adultery, which were condemned but which were practised. The bourgeois ideal of love does not correspond to the needs of the largest section of the population — the working class. Nor is it relevant to the life-style of the working intelligentsia. This is why in highly developed capitalist countries one finds such an interest in the problems of sex and love and in the search for the key to its mysteries. How, it is asked, can relations between the sexes be developed in order to increase the sum of both individual and social happiness?<br /> <br /> The working youth of Soviet Russia is confronting this question at this very moment. This brief survey of the evolution of the ideal of love marriage relationships will help you, my young friend, to realize and understand that love is not the private matter it might seem to be at a first glance. Love is an important psychological and social factor, which society has always instinctively organized in its interests. Working men and women, armed with the science of Marxism and using the experience of the past, must seek to discover the place love ought to occupy in the new social order and determine the ideal of love that corresponds to their class interests.<br /> <br /> == Love-comradeship ==<br /> The new, communist society is being built on the principle of comradeship and solidarity. Solidarity is not only an awareness of common interests: it depends also on the intellectual and emotional ties linking the members of the collective. For a social system to be built on solidarity and co-operation it is essential that people should be capable of love and warm emotions. The proletarian ideology, therefore, attempts to educate and encourage every member of the working class to be capable of responding to the distress and needs of other members of the class, of a sensitive understanding of others and a penetrating consciousness of the individual’s relationship to the collective. All these “warm emotions” — sensitivity, compassion, sympathy and responsiveness — derive from one source: they are aspects of love, not in the narrow, sexual sense but in the broad meaning of the word. Love is an emotion that unites and is consequently of an organizing character. The bourgeoisie was well aware of this, and in the attempt to create a stable family bourgeois ideology erected “married love” as a moral virtue; to be a “good family man” was, in the eyes of the bourgeoisie, an important and valuable quality. The proletariat should also take into account the psychological and social role that love, both in the broad sense and in the sense of relationships between the sexes, can and must play, not in strengthening family-marriage ties, but in the development of collective solidarity<br /> <br /> What is the proletariat’s ideal of love? We have already seen that each epoch has its ideal; each class strives to fill the conception of love with a moral content that suits its own interests. Each stage of cultural development, with its richer intellectual and emotional experiences, redefines the image of Eros. With the successive stages in the development of the economy and social life, ideas of love have changed; shades of emotion have assumed greater significance or, on the other hand, have ceased to exist.<br /> <br /> In the course of the thousand-year history of human society. love has developed from the simple biological instinct — the urge to reproduce which is inherent in all creatures from the highest to the lowest — into a most complex emotion that is constantly acquiring new intellectual and emotional aspects. Love has become a psychological and social factor. Under the impact of economic and social forces, the biological instinct for reproduction has been transformed in two diametrically opposed directions. On the one hand the healthy sexual instinct has been turned by monstrous social and economic relations, particularly those of capitalism, into unhealthy carnality. The sexual act has become an aim in itself — just another way of obtaining pleasure, through lust sharpened with excesses and through distorted, harmful titillations of the flesh. A man does not have sex in response to healthy instincts which have drawn him to a particular woman: a man approaches any woman, though he feels no sexual need for her in particular, with the aim of gaining his sexual satisfaction and pleasure through her. Prostitution is the organized expression of this distortion of the sex drive. If intercourse with a woman does not prompt the expected excitement, the man will turn to every kind of perversion.<br /> <br /> This deviation towards unhealthy carnality takes relationships far from their source in the biological Instinct. On the other hand, over the centuries and with the changes in human social life and culture, a web of emotional and intellectual experiences has come to surround the physical attraction of the sexes. Love in its present form is a complex state of mind and body; it has long been separated from its primary source, the biological instinct for reproduction, and in fact it is frequently in sharp contradiction with it. Love is intricately woven from friendship, passion, maternal tenderness, infatuation, mutual compatibility, sympathy, admiration, familiarity and many other shades of emotion. With such a range of emotions involved, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish direct connection between the natural drive of “wingless Eros” and “winged Eros,” where physical attraction and emotional warmth are fused. The existence of love friendship where the element of physical attraction is absent, of love for one’s work or for a cause, and of love for the collective, testify to the extent to which love has become “spiritualized” and separated from its biological base.<br /> <br /> In modern society. sharp contradictions frequently arise and battles are waged between the various manifestations of emotion. A deep intellectual and emotional involvement in one’s work may not be compatible with love for a particular man or woman, love for the collective might conflict with love for husband, wife or children. It may be difficult for love-friendship in one person to coexist with passion in another; in the one case love is predominantly based on intellectual compatibility, and in the other case on physical harmony. “Love” has many faces and aspects. The various shades of feeling that have developed over the ages and which are experienced by contemporary men and women cannot be covered by such a general and inexact term.<br /> <br /> Under the rule of bourgeois ideology and the capitalist way of life, the complexity of love creates a series of complex and insoluble problems. By the end of the nineteenth century the many-sidedness of love had become a favourite theme for writers with a psychological bent Love for two or even three has interested and perplexed many of the more thoughtful representatives of bourgeois culture. In the sixties of the last century our Russian thinker and writer Alexander Herzen tried to uncover this complexity of the inner world and the duality of emotion in his novel ''Who Is Guilty?'', and Cheryshevsky tackled the same questions in his novel ''What is to be Done?'', Poetic geniuses such as Goethe and Byron, and bold pioneers in the sphere of relations between the sexes such as George Sand, have tried to come to terms with these issues in their own lives; the author of ''Who Is Guilty?'' also knew of the problems from his own experience, as did many other great thinkers, poets and public figures. And at this present moment many “small” people are weighed down by the difficulties of love and vainly seek for solutions within the framework of bourgeois thought. But the key to the solution is in the hands of the proletariat. Only the ideology and the life-style of the new, labouring humanity can unravel this complex problem of emotion.<br /> <br /> We are talking here of the duality of love, of the complexities of “winged Eros”; this should not be confused with sexual relations “with out Eros,” where one man goes with many women or one woman with a number of men. Relations where no personal feelings are involved can have unfortunate and harmful consequences (the early exhaustion of the organism, venereal diseases etc.), but however entangled they are, they do not give rise to “emotional dramas.” These “dramas” and conflicts begin only where the various shades and manifestations of love are present. A woman feels close to a man whose ideas, hopes and aspirations match her own; she is attracted physically to another. For one woman a man might feel sympathy and a protective tenderness, and in another he might find support and understanding for the strivings of his intellect. To which of the two must he give his love? And why must he tear himself apart and cripple his inner self, if only the possession of both types of inner bond affords the fullness of living?<br /> <br /> Under the bourgeois system such a division of the inner emotional world involves inevitable suffering. For thousands of years human culture, which is based on the institution of property, has been teaching people that love is linked with the principles of property. Bourgeois ideology has insisted that love, mutual love, gives the right to the absolute and indivisible possession of the beloved person. Such exclusiveness was the natural consequence of the established form of pair marriage and of the ideal of “all-embracing love” between husband and wife. But can such an ideal correspond to the interests of the working class? Surely it is important and desirable from the proletariat’s point of view that people’s emotions should develop a wider and richer range? And surely the complexity of the human psyche and the many-sidedness of emotional experience should assist in the growth of the emotional and intellectual bonds between people which make the collective stronger? The more numerous these inner threads drawing people together, the firmer the sense of solidarity and the simpler the realization of the working-class ideal of comradeship and unity.<br /> <br /> Proletarian ideology cannot accept exclusiveness and “all embracing love.” The proletariat is not filled with horror and moral indignation at the many forms and facets of “winged Eros” in the way that the hypocritical bourgeoisie is; on the contrary, it tries to direct these emotions, which it sees as the result of complex social circumstances, into channels which are advantageous to the class during the struggle for and the construction of communist society. The complexity of love is not in conflict with the interests of the proletariat. On the contrary, it facilitates the triumph of the ideal of love-comradeship which is already developing.<br /> <br /> At the tribal stage love was seen as a kinship attachment (love between sisters and brothers, love for parents). The ancient culture of the pre-christian period placed love-friendship above all else. The feudal world idealized platonic courtly love between members of the opposite sex outside marriage. The bourgeoisie took monogamous marital love as its ideal. The working class derives its ideal from the labour co-operation and inner solidarity that binds the men and women of the proletariat together; the form and content of this ideal naturally differs from the conception of love that existed in other cultural epochs. The advocacy of love-comradeship in no way implies that in the militant atmosphere of its struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat the working class has adopted a strait-jacket ideology and is mercilessly trying to remove all traces of tender emotion from relations between the sexes. The ideology of the working class does not seek to destroy “winged Eros” but, on the contrary, to clear the way for the recognition of the value of love as a psychological and social force.<br /> <br /> The hypocritical morality of bourgeois culture resolutely restricted the freedom of Eros, obliging him to visit only the “legally married couple.” Outside marriage there was room only for the “wing less Eros” of momentary and joyless sexual relations which were bought (in the case of prostitution) or stolen (in the case of adultery). The morality of the working class, on the other hand, in so far as it has already been formulated, definitely rejects the external forms of sexual relations. The social aims of the working class are not affected one bit by whether love takes the form of a long and official union or is expressed in a temporary relationship. The ideology of the working class does not place any formal limits on love. But at the same time the ideology of the working class is already beginning to take a thoughtful attitude to the content of love and shades of emotional experience. In this sense the proletarian ideology will persecute “wingless Eros” in a much more strict and severe way than bourgeois morality. “Wingless Eros” contradicts the interests of the working class. In the first place it inevitably involves excesses and therefore physical exhaustion, which lower the resources of labour energy available to society. In the second place it impoverishes the soul, hindering the development and strengthening of inner bonds and positive emotions. And in the third place it usually rests on an inequality of rights in relationships between the sexes, on the dependence of the woman on the man and on male complacency and insensitivity, which undoubtedly hinder the development of comradely feelings. “Winged Eros” is quite different.<br /> <br /> Obviously sexual attraction lies at the base of “winged Eros” too, but the difference is that the person experiencing love acquires the inner qualities necessary to the builders of a new culture — sensitivity, responsiveness and the desire to help others. Bourgeois ideology demanded that a person should only display such qualities in their relationship with one partner. The aim of proletarian ideology is that men and women should develop these qualities not only in relation to the chosen one but in relation to all the members of the collective. The proletarian class is not concerned as to which shades and nuances of feeling predominate in winged Eros. The only stipulation is that these emotions facilitate the development and strengthening of comradeship. The ideal of love-comradeship, which is being forged by proletarian ideology to replace the all-embracing and exclusive marital love of bourgeois culture, involves the recognition of the rights and integrity of the other’s personality, a steadfast mutual support and sensitive sympathy, and responsiveness to the other’s needs.<br /> <br /> The ideal of love-comradeship is necessary to the proletariat in the important and difficult period of the struggle for and the consolidation of the dictatorship. But there is no doubt that with the realization of communist society love will acquire a transformed and unprecedented aspect. By that time the “sympathetic ties” between all the members of the new society will have grown and strengthened. Love potential will have increased, and love-solidarity will become the lever that competition and self-love were in the bourgeois system. Collectivism of spirit can then defeat individualist self-sufficiency, and the “cold of inner loneliness,” from which people in bourgeois culture have attempted to escape through love and marriage, will disappear. The many threads bringing men and women into close emotional and intellectual contact will develop. and feelings will emerge from the private into the public sphere. Inequality between the sexes and the dependence of women on men will disappear without trace, leaving only a fading memory of past ages.<br /> <br /> In the new and collective society, where interpersonal relations develop against a background of joyful unity and comradeship, Eros will occupy an honourable place as an emotional experience multiplying human happiness. What will be the nature of this transformed Eros? Not even the boldest fantasy is capable of providing the answer to this question. But one thing is clear: the stronger the intellectual and emotional bonds of the new humanity, the less the room for love in the present sense of the word. Modern love always sins, because it absorbs the thoughts and feelings of “loving hearts” and isolates the loving pair from the collective. In the future society, such a separation will not only become superfluous but also psychologically inconceivable. In the new world the accepted norm of sexual relations will probably be based on free, healthy and natural attraction (without distortions and excesses) and on “transformed Eros.”<br /> <br /> But at the present moment we stand between two cultures. And at this turning-point, with the attendant struggles of the two worlds on all fronts, including the ideological one, the proletariat’s interest is to do its best to ensure the quickest possible accumulation of “sympathetic feelings.” In this period the moral ideal defining relationships is not the unadorned sexual instinct but the many-faceted love experience of love-comradeship. In order to answer the demands formulated by the new proletarian morality, these experiences must conform to three basic principles: 1. Equality in relationships an end to masculine egoism and the slavish suppression of the female personality; 2. Mutual recognition of the rights of the other, of the fact that one does not own the heart and soul of the other (the sense of property, encouraged by bourgeois culture; 3. Comradely sensitivity, the ability to listen and understand the inner workings of the loved person (bourgeois culture demanded this only from the woman). But in proclaiming the rights of “winged Eros,” the ideal of the working class at the same time subordinates this love to the more powerful emotion of love-duty to the collective. However great the love between two members of the collective, the ties binding the two persons to the collective will always take precedence, will be firmer, more complex and organic. Bourgeois morality demanded all for the loved one. The morality of the proletariat demands all for the collective.<br /> <br /> But I can hear you objecting, my young friend, that though it may be true that love-comradeship will become the ideal of the working class, will this new “moral measurement” of emotions not place new constraints on sexual relationships? Are we not liberating love from the fetters of bourgeois morality only to enslave it again? Yes, my young friend, you are right. The ideology of the proletariat rejects bourgeois “morality” in the sphere of love-marriage relations. Nevertheless, it inevitably develops its own class morality, its own rules of behaviour, which correspond more closely to the tasks of the working class and educate the emotions in a certain direction. In this way it could be said that feelings are again in chains. The proletariat will undoubtedly clip the wings of bourgeois culture. But it would be short-sighted to regret this process, since the new class is capable of developing new facets of emotion which possess unprecedented beauty, strength and radiance. As the cultural and economic base of humanity changes, so will love be transformed.<br /> <br /> The blind, all-embracing, demanding passions will weaken; the sense of property, the egoistical desire to bind the partner to one “forever,” the complacency of the man and the self-renunciation of the woman will disappear. At the same time, the valuable aspects and elements of love will develop. Respect for the right of the other’s personality will increase, and a mutual sensitivity will be learned; men and women will strive to express their love not only in kisses and embraces but in joint creativity and activity. The task of proletarian ideology is not to drive Eros from social life but to rearm him according to the new social formation, and to educate sexual relationships in the spirit of the great new psychological force of comradely solidarity.<br /> <br /> I hope it is now clear to you that the interest among young workers in the question of love is not a symptom of “decline.” I hope that you can now grasp the place love must occupy in the relationships between young workers.<br /> [[Category:Library works by Alexandra Kollontai]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about feminism]]</div>

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<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=International Socialist Conferences of Women Workers|author=Alexandra Kollontai|written in=1907-1916|type=Speeches|source=https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1907/is-conferences.htm#a7|display_title=yes}}<br /> == The first international conference of socialist Women, in Stuttgart, 1907 ==<br /> A new danger is threatening the domination of the bourgeoisie – women workers are resolutely adopting the path of international class organisation. The downtrodden, submissive slaves humbly bowing before the omnipotence of the modern Moloch of capital are, under the reviving influence of socialist doctrine, lifting their heads and raising their voices in defence of their interests as women and their common class interests.<br /> <br /> While the 'poison of socialist doctrine' had infected only one half of the working class, while opposition was concentrated exclusively in the male section of the proletariat, the capitalists could breathe freely; they still had in their power an inexhaustible supply of compliant workers always ready obediently and selflessly to enrich by their labour the happy owners of the instruments of production. With unconscious calculation the bourgeoisie availed itself of the advantage offered by this state of affairs: it set one half of the proletariat against the other, shattered its unity, compelled the women to appear as the menacing rivals of their menfolk, sapping the class solidarity of the workers. With malicious smugness it countered the resistance of united proletarians with the indifference of the unconscious female elements, and the more ignorant and dispersed the women remained, the more unsuccessful was the struggle waged by the organised elements of the working class.<br /> <br /> However, the class consciousness of the women workers, once aroused, was sufficient to compel them to grasp the hand of friendship held out to them by their male worker comrades and adopt the path of open and stubborn resistance. The involvement of proletarian women in the common class struggle, and their growing solidarity have shaken the usual self-confidence of the bourgeoisie and spread alarm in place of its previous tranquillity: the increasing organisation of the female proletariat removes the last defenceless victim of capitalist exploitation. The ground is disappearing from beneath the feet of the bourgeoisie, and the light of the approaching social revolution glows ever more brightly.<br /> <br /> Is it therefore surprising that the bourgeoisie is doubly hostile to any sign of protest among women workers, and to any attempt on their part to defend their needs and interests as women and their common class interests and needs? Even in the most democratic and advanced countries everything possible is done to make it difficult for women to defend their labour interests. To grant the woman worker the same rights as the man would be to put in the hands of the working class a new and dangerous weapon, to double the active army of the militant opponent; the bourgeoisie is too intelligent to agree to such a dangerous experiment<br /> <br /> The whole bourgeois world listened with unconcealed animosity to the solemn and harmonious notes that rang out from Stuttgart in 1907, during the International Socialist Congress.&lt;ref&gt;This is a reference to the Seventh International Congress of the Second International, held in Stuttgart on 18-24 August, 1907. The congress was attended by delegates from 25 countries, including Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, England, Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, Russia and the USA – 886 delegates in all. The Bolshevik delegation was led by Lenin, who did a great deal of work to consolidate the left-wing forces of international Social-Democracy. The congress adopted a resolution committing socialists to oppose the approaching war.&lt;/ref&gt; But most of all it was angered by the bold voices of the female proletariat. However radical were the speeches pronounced by the men, whatever 'mad' resolutions they might adopt, the bourgeoisie always consoled itself with the thought that it still had one tested method at its disposal: break the resistance of the 'hotheads' by replacing them with submissive female workers. And now a new surprise: from all over the world women representatives of the working class are gathering in order to forge by their united efforts a new weapon with which to fight the world hostile to the proletariat.&lt;ref&gt;In 1907, just before the opening of the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart, the First International Conference of Socialist Women was held, attended by 58 women delegates from 14 countries. The main aim of the conference was to formulate one united tactic for all the Socialist parties in the campaign to win voting rights for women workers as part of universal and equal voting rights for both sexes.&lt;/ref&gt; The daring of women has exceeded all expectations: yesterday's silent slave is now a courageous fighter for the liberation of the working class. Could one imagine a more vexatious spectacle! Spiteful ridicule rained down upon the heads of the women representatives of the working class, ridicule that failed to conceal the genuine anxiety of the bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> The gentlemen of capital and property do now indeed have something to ponder over, something to be depressed about: new successes are being achieved in the organisation of the working class. And if, until only recently, the bourgeoisie could draw comfort from the lack of unity in the female section of the proletariat, now, after the Stuttgart Conference, it has lost even this sweet solace.<br /> <br /> On the basis of facts and figures these women representatives described the growing awareness of the female proletariat and its organisational successes, particularly in recent years. England has the largest number of organised women workers: 150 thousand are members of trade unions; 30 thousand are politically organised in 'independent workers' parties and women workers are also members of the Social-Democratic Federation.&lt;ref&gt;''The Social-Democratic Federation'' – founded in England in 1884, declared itself a socialist organisation, but did not recognise Marxism. It had no contact with the workers and was extremely sectarian in nature. In 1907 it was renamed the Social-Democratic Party.&lt;/ref&gt; In Austria trade union organisations include 42 thousand women among their members. In Germany the number of women who are trade union members is also impressive – 120 thousand; despite all the police harassment, 10,500 women workers have joined the Social-Democratic Party, and the distribution figure for the women workers magazine ''Die Gleichheit'' (Equality)&lt;ref&gt;''Die Gleichheit''(Equality) – a Social-Democratic bimonthly magazine issued by the women's proletarian movement in Germany. It was published from 1890 to 1925, and was edited by Clara Zetkin from 1892 to 1917.&lt;/ref&gt; is 70 thousand copies. In Finland the Social-Democratic movement has 18,600 women. In Belgium 14 thousand women workers are trade union members. In Hungary 15 thousand women workers are in trade union organisations, etc.<br /> <br /> The growing organisation of women workers and the specific social objectives which it is mainly their task to carry through led to an awareness of the need for greater solidarity and closer contact among the organised women workers of the world.<br /> <br /> The first women's international conference in Stuttgart set itself two objectives: 1) to elaborate the basis for more uniform activity on the part of the socialist movement (in various countries) in the struggle to win voting rights for women workers; 2) to establish permanent and correct relations between women's organisations throughout the world.<br /> <br /> The main question discussed at the conference was, without any doubt, the question of voting rights for women workers. Put forward for discussion by the conference and introduced into the Social-Democratic congress as a special resolution, this question is designed to meet the growing need within the female proletariat to define the future tactics of international Social-Democracy in the struggle for political rights for women workers, and to transfer this principle from the sphere of theoretical recognition to that of practical activity. With the growth of its class consciousness and organisation, the female proletariat was brought by its basic material needs to an acute awareness of its lack of political rights, and learned to see in those rights not only a 'policy principle' but also an urgent and immediate need.<br /> <br /> Over recent years, the working class, in one country after the other, has faced the question of achieving universal suffrage. It might have seemed that the four-part election formula advanced by the Social-Democrats and supplemented with a fifth section specifying 'without distinction of sex', would have left no room for doubts and hesitations regarding the way the party would act in such circumstances. However, it turned out, otherwise. When it came to the defence of the fifth section, not only male Social-Democrats, but even the women revealed their fundamental instability, their vacillation, and by their compromising attitude to this issue, so important to the working class, demonstrated that this fundamental principle has not yet become an integral part of Social-Democracy.<br /> <br /> One after the other women from Belgium, Austria, Sweden, accepted the removal from the agenda of the demand for political rights for women workers and gave their support to an emasculated, abbreviated compromise formula for electoral reform. However, most characteristic of all was the fact that this opportunist policy was not condemned by consistent and steadfast supporters of socialism but, on the contrary, won their sympathy and approval and was even presented to proletarian women in other countries as a model. The working women themselves cannot be blamed for this compromise tactic – it is typical of less aware and less disciplined party elements but the other, the male section of the proletariat, whose spirit and consciousness has been tempered in battle, should not have allowed itself to be drawn along the path of practical opportunism.<br /> <br /> There are democratic principles which, for the sake of its own interests, the working class must not sacrifice: there are slogans which the proletariat cannot change without damaging itself, even though the change is made in order to achieve the maximum results at any given moment.<br /> <br /> If, in some politically backward country, the working class had had the opportunity to attain universal, equal, secret but indirect rather than direct voting rights, the position of the Social-Democrats in such a situation would have been obvious: despite the risk of stalling a reform that was otherwise certain to be adopted, the workers party would fight to the last moment for the full formula... Perhaps the indirect electoral system would be adopted despite the opposition of the Social-Democrats, and no doubt they would have to reconcile themselves to this fact, but their attitude to it would be perfectly clear: they could view it only as a defeat.<br /> <br /> The situation is different as regards the issue of voting rights for women workers. The demand 'without distinction of sex' has not yet become an integral part of the practice of proletarian struggle: awareness of the importance of full and equal political rights for women workers in the name of the interests of the whole class has not yet had time to take firm root. It must not be forgotten that women began to work outside the home only comparatively recently, and have only recently begun to play a role in the proletarian movement. The ideological survivals of the bourgeois-capitalist world affect the purity and clarity of proletarian class consciousness in regard to women, and blur the distinct outlines of a principle that would appear to be indisputable in the eyes of the proletariat, namely the principle of equality of civil rights for all the members of the world proletarian family.<br /> <br /> The vacillating tactic of the party in the struggle for women's voting rights obliged the Social-Democrats to devote particular attention to this issue at the congress. The adoption of a resolution which would clearly and precisely express the willingness of the working class to fight for voting rights for women workers with the same unswerving determination with which Social-Democracy pursues all its principles – this was the slogan of the women's socialist conference, a slogan dictated by the interests of women workers. Such a resolution appeared all the more desirable in that it was fully in accord with the spirit of Social-Democracy...<br /> <br /> The resolution on voting rights for women put forward at the women's conference and then introduced at the socialist congress was advanced with a view to demanding the clear and precise recognition of the fifth section of the election formula ('without distinction of sex') as being of equal importance with the other four.<br /> <br /> However, the resolution met with opposition. Two trends appeared within the women's socialist movement: one orthodox, the other opportunist in the spirit of unconscious feminism. The first trend was represented by the women Social-Democrats from Germany, the second by those from Austria and some from England.<br /> <br /> The resolution put forward by the German delegates had two objectives: in demanding that the socialist parties recognise the full extent of the importance of a practical struggle to secure the political equality of women, the resolution was also intended to draw a distinct line between bourgeois feminism and the women's proletarian movement. This struck the English socialists at their most vulnerable point. It is a well-known fact that many of them work hand-in-glove with bourgeois champions of women's rights, and in the heat of a sometimes selfless struggle in defence of women's interests, they lose sight of class distinctions.<br /> <br /> The struggle to achieve political equality for ''proletarian women'' is part and parcel of the overall class struggle of the proletariat; when it becomes an independent militant aim in itself it eclipses the class objectives of women workers. The inventive bourgeoisie, who love to hide their real desires behind a screen of splendid-sounding slogans, put the world of women and its objectives in opposition to the class cause of women workers. However, as soon as the women's cause is put above the proletarian cause, as soon as women workers allow themselves to be seduced by fine-sounding phrases about the community of women's interests regardless of class divisions, they lose their living link with their own class cause and thus betray their own particular interests. Bourgeois women, according to their own assertion, are generously demanding rights for 'all women', whereas women workers are only fighting for their class interests. However, in practice the situation is precisely the reverse: in winning political rights for themselves, women workers are also opening up the way to the voting booth for women of other classes. In resolutely and consistently defending the interests of the women of its own class, Social-Democracy is putting into practice the principles of the fullest form of democracy and promoting the success of the women's cause as a whole.<br /> <br /> Bourgeois hypocrisy also affected the English supporters of women's political equality. English women workers are prepared to support ''limited, qualified'' electoral rights for women–an unforgivable and despicable betrayal of the proletarian cause. The representatives of the Independent Labour Party&lt;ref&gt;''The Independent Labour Party'' – founded in England in 1893. Its aims were to secure the election of workers to Parliament in order to pursue its own independent policies, to campaign for the nationalisation of land and the means of production, and also to work within the trade unions. It soon lost its militant spirit under the influence of bourgeois fellow-travellers, and its leadership became opportunist.&lt;/ref&gt; and the Fabian Society&lt;ref&gt;''The Fabian Society'' founded in England in 1884 by representatives of the bourgeois intelligentsia. The Fabians rejected class struggle, and proposed a programme of state or municipal 'socialism', hoping to transform capitalist society into a socialist society by means of gradual reform.&lt;/ref&gt; did not hesitate to defend this clearly treacherous position before the whole socialist world, and only the Social-Democratic Federation, together with the proletariat of other countries, condemned such a solution to the problem and demanded electoral rights for all citizens who had reached majority, regardless of sex.<br /> <br /> This disagreement yet again clearly demonstrated the importance for the socialists of working out a clearly defined tactical position on the question of achieving political equality for women workers. However, such a clearly defined formulation of the question was precisely what the English wanted least... Together with the Austrian delegates they demanded that each party be given the right to settle this question independently in accord with the circumstances then obtaining; they declared a single model of action compulsory for each country to be completely unnecessary. The resolution put forward by the German Social-Democrats obliged the English to do some painful thinking. It faced them with a question: are they defending the interests of their class as a whole in its difficult struggle to survive, passing through great trials today in the expectation of equally great triumphs in the future, or are they merely fighting for new privileges for those women who neither sow nor reap, but who gather into the barns?<br /> <br /> The Austrian delegates represented the opposite extreme. Furious opponents of feminism, they were not, of course, prepared to work together with bourgeois feminists in the defence of rights for 'all women'. However, despite their sworn hostility towards feminism and its tactic of adaptation, Austrian women socialists fell into the same error as the English. In defending at the conference the position they had adopted during the recent struggle in Austria to achieve universal suffrage, they attempted to show that, in certain political conditions, it is permissible to put aside the interests of one section of the proletariat — in this case women workers — in order to achieve practical advantages for another section. Instead of a categorical demand that the principle of political equality for proletarian women be recognised on the same footing with all other democratic demands by the proletariat, the Austrians introduced into the resolution by means of an amendment a poorly-defined wish that the ''moment'' and the ''very method of struggle'' for electoral rights for women be determined by each country at its own discretion...<br /> <br /> Every time the question of party tactics becomes a matter of urgency for Social-Democracy, it has to return to the tested method of solving this question: it must once more carefully and precisely determine to what extent a given demand, a given principle is essential in order to achieve the ultimate objective of the working class. If this principle is indeed of considerable importance for the ultimate objective being pursued by the workers, then there cannot be, must not be, any room for compromise in policy even if such a compromise promises to bring immediate benefit. Indeed, what would become of the class objectives of the proletariat if Social-Democracy put away its basic policy principles every time it hoped it might thereby acquire some 'practical advantage'? And what would then distinguish its policy principles from hypocritical bourgeois diplomacy?<br /> <br /> The principle of political equality for women is beyond dispute. Social-Democracy long ago proclaimed in theory the importance of extending voting rights to women workers. However, the tactic of 'concessions', the tactic of 'step by step' is now seeking another solution to this problem also. In place of the usual principled determination and steadfastness of Social-Democracy, it proposes 'compliance' and 'moderation'. Fortunately the proletariat is only too well aware that its 'modesty' has never reaped any reward. The tractability and compliance of the proletariat are, in the eyes of its enemy, proof positive of its 'impotence', and the more moderate, the more 'reasonable' are its demands, the more miserly are the concessions granted to it. The victory of one of the two warring sides is decided not by the compliance of one of them, but by the 'actual balance of forces'. The proletariat presses its demands waging a resolute and consistent struggle to achieve them, but it can only achieve that which corresponds to its actual influence and importance at any given moment. The more resolute is Social-Democracy's adherence to its basic principles, the further removed its tactic from concessions decided upon beforehand, the more closely will the results of its struggle correspond to the actual balance of power and forces between the warring sides.<br /> <br /> All of the above constitutes a 'well-worn truth', but a truth that has to be repeated every time a proposed compromise tactic postpones a new victory by the proletariat and threatens to damage one of the basic tenets of Social-Democracy. If the amendment introduced by the Austrian delegates were accepted, such damage would be unavoidable. With their precautionary 'compliance' the Austrian delegates would not only postpone the extension of voting rights to proletarian women but also, and more importantly, violate one of the basic principles of socialism: preserving the unity of the working class as the major guarantee of success in the proletarian struggle.<br /> <br /> 'Naturally,' said Clara Zetkin, addressing the commission on women's voting rights at the congress, 'we are not so politically uneducated as to demand that the socialist parties of every country, in every struggle for electoral reform and in all circumstances, make the demand for voting rights for women the cornerstone, the deciding factor in their struggle. That will depend on the level of historical development in individual countries. We are criticising the tactic of 'abandoning in advance, without a struggle, the demand for voting rights for women...'&lt;ref&gt;Cf. the speech delivered by Clara Zetkin at the Seventh International Socialist Congress of the Second International in Stuttgart, August, 1907.&lt;/ref&gt; <br /> <br /> This precise and consistent class policy was also defended by German Social-Democrats: Luise Zietz, Emma Ihrer, Ottilie Baader, Hilja Pärssinen, woman deputy to the Finnish Seim, Csozi from Hungary, representatives from Russia, Shaw from England and others. Those who supported this view demanded that the international congress confirm the proposition that the struggle for voting rights for women workers is not separate from the class struggle, and that any concession in this area, any deviation from principle, is a compromise that damages the whole cause of the working class.<br /> <br /> The defenders of the opportunist tactic came mainly from among the Austrian delegates, and they received a measure of support from Viktor Adler. Lily Braun was also on their side. However, this trend did not meet support at the conference. All the arguments advanced by the Austrians to the effect that the 'obstinacy' of the Social-Democrats only served to make political gains by the proletariat more difficult to achieve, all the arguments of the representatives of Catholic countries – Belgium and France – that the influence of clericalism would allegedly increase with the involvement of women in politics and would lead to a regrouping of parliamentary representation to the disadvantage of the working class, paled before the indisputable fact that the most impoverished, exploited section of the proletariat women workers are still deprived of the possibility of opposing the violation of their rights. It is to these pariahs of contemporary society, these pale, worn slaves of capitalism, that their comrades in misery, their comrades in the struggle for a brighter future, preach resignation, patience and self-denial — the cliched, pharisaical virtues of the bourgeoisie!...<br /> <br /> The mood of the conference was not favourable to such trends. In contrast to the usual 'respectful obedience' of women, the conference was marked by a lively, bracing atmosphere quite distinct from the somewhat dry, businesslike air of the socialist congress itself. The massive organisational structure of the congress, the presence of almost 900 delegates and the need to observe a whole series of formalities cooled the enthusiasm of the representatives of the socialist world, and only now and again was this enthusiasm able to break through to the surface and affect all those taking part. Here at the congress the most experienced 'masters of the spoken word', skilled in all the finer points of parliamentary battle, crossed verbal swords, but perhaps for this very reason many of them sounded excessively 'cautious'...<br /> <br /> At the women's conference, on the other hand, the living pulse of bold faith and confidence beat without ceasing and one could sense that courageous rejection of and revulsion towards compromise decisions which are characteristic of organisations that are still young and have not yet become set in fixed forms. The majority of the representatives of proletarian women could not but realise what tragic consequences would follow upon the adoption of the Austrian amendment...<br /> <br /> By a majority of 47 votes to 11, the women's socialist conference adopted the resolution put forward by the German delegation and placed it before the socialist congress.<br /> <br /> The living spirit of proletarian self-consciousness compelled the representatives of the workers to support this resolution and confirm the principle of the common interests of both sexes, their solidarity in the struggle for political rights for the whole of the working class. This is without doubt a major event in the' history of the workers' movement, demonstrating yet again to the bourgeois world that, despite repeated assertions about the 'death of Marxism', the true spirit of scientific socialism is still alive and is continually inspiring the many millions who make up international Social-Democracy.<br /> <br /> The question of the formation of an international women's socialist secretariat was second on the conference agenda. The German Social-Democrats introduced a proposal to establish closer contacts among representatives of the working class from different countries and to set up for this purpose a secretariat which would gather information on the women's proletarian movement everywhere. Although this question was purely organisational, it provoked a lively exchange of opinions, and once more revealed two heterogeneous trends within the women's section of Social-Democracy.<br /> <br /> The proposal to form an independent women's international secretariat was put forward by the German delegates, and the Austrian delegates once again introduced an amendment. Having declared themselves opposed to separating proletarian women in any way whatsoever, they considered it unnecessary to form a separate secretariat to ensure international communication among women workers. In their opinion, comrades abroad could be kept informed on the state of the women's proletarian movement in each country by empowering a member of the party in each country to send reports on the position of women workers' organisations and on successes achieved by the movement to the central socialist organs of the other countries. This amendment vividly illustrates the constant fear on the part of the Austrians of discrediting themselves by a too clearly-marked defence of 'women's interests' which might earn them the label 'feminists'...<br /> <br /> The German Social-Democrats, on the contrary, defended the idea that an independent grouping of ''proletarian'' women ''within the party'' has clear organisational advantages. Such an organisation would make it possible to concentrate the attention of the party on the specific needs and requirements of women workers, and would also make it easier to rally around the party the generally less aware female members of the proletarian class.<br /> <br /> The involvement of women workers in the party is necessitated by practical and urgent considerations. Up till now women workers remain the most deprived section of the proletarian family, they are still oppressed everywhere by 'special laws', and even in countries which have broad democratic representation women alone remain ''without rights.''<br /> <br /> With every year that passes, involvement in the political life of their country is becoming an increasingly urgent issue for the women of the working class. However, among the broad masses of the male proletariat the urgency of this demand is not as yet sufficiently recognised.<br /> <br /> In order to defend this demand, in order to inculcate in their comrades the proper attitude to the question of equal rights for women workers in every sphere and draw them into the struggle to attain in practice equal civil rights for women, women have only one course – to unite their forces around the party. Women workers must set up a women's secretariat, a commission, a bureau within the party, not in order to wage a separate battle for political rights and defend their own interests by themselves but in order to exert pressure on the party ''from within,'' in order to compel their comrades to wage their struggle in the interests of the female proletariat as well.<br /> <br /> Thus greater party concern about the specific requirements of women workers will increase the popularity of the party among the less class-conscious female population, stimulating the flow of new forces into the army of the fighting proletariat, while the unification of women workers within the party will allow this homogeneous core, motivated by the same requirements, to defend its specific requirements and needs more resolutely within the party too. It was not only police obstacles that led in Germany to special, separate propaganda work among women: this method of work is gradually being adopted in other countries living under freer political regimes.<br /> <br /> The need to unite women's forces within the party is, of course, felt with particular force in countries where it is only the women who remain without political rights. In those cases where the question of the struggle for the further democratisation of voting rights is to the fore, the core of class-conscious women workers can only strive to ensure a more steadfast attitude in the party towards the question of achieving voting rights for women also...<br /> <br /> The position of proletarian women in contemporary society, and the specific needs which they experience in the field of social relations, create a practical basis for conducting special work among the female proletariat. However, such a grouping of proletarian women within the party (the setting up of commissions, bureaus, sections, etc.) has, of course, nothing in common with feminism. Whereas the feminists are struggling to extend to the women of the bourgeois classes those privileges which were hitherto enjoyed only by the men, women workers are pursuing a solely proletarian, common class objective.<br /> <br /> At the women's international conference, the victory went to the left, that is, to that section which suggested the creation of an independent international secretariat.&lt;ref&gt;This is a reference to the creation during the Women's Conference at Stuttgart of an International Women's Secretariat, headed by Clara Zetkin. The work of the Secretariat was to include gathering information on women's movements and on the leadership of the women's socialist movement.&lt;/ref&gt; The editorial board of ''Die Gleichheit'' (Equality) has been elected as the central organ of the international movement of socialist women until the next international congress. There can be no doubt that both this purely organisational decision and also the congress resolution on tactics, a resolution which determines the attitude of Social-Democracy to the question of votes for women, will have a beneficial effect upon the further development of the Social-Democratic movement among women workers, and will promote the more rapid growth of the organised army of the female proletariat.<br /> <br /> Only if they are firmly united amongst themselves and, at the same time, one with their class party in the common class struggle, can women workers cease to appear as a brake on the proletarian movement and march confidently foreward, arm in arm with their male worker comrades to the noble and cherished proletarian aim-towards a new, better and brighter future.<br /> <br /> == The second international women's conference in Copenhagen, in 1910 ==<br /> When the First International Conference of Socialist Women was held in Stuttgart in 1907 on the initiative of the German socialists, the women's socialist movement was still in its infancy everywhere except Germany. Its shape was still hazy and unclear, and the conference itself was convened not so much to review what had been already achieved as to give its 'blessing' to the movement and stimulate its further development. Stuttgart was merely a ''symptom'' of the awakening of broad masses of working-class women, but a symptom nonetheless significant, promising and pregnant with consequences...<br /> <br /> Three years have passed. During this short period of time the women's proletarian movement has succeeded not only in increasing its numbers, but also in becoming social force which cannot be ignored in the process of the class struggle. Particularly rapid has been the success achieved by Germany in the organisation of the female proletariat: according to the data presented at the conference in Stuttgart, that is, in 1907 the Social-Democratic Party had only some 10 thousand women members; by 1910 it already had more than 82 thousand, and the central socialist organ for women workers ''Die Gleichheit'' (Equality) had a circulation of 80 thousand. Similar giant strides have been taken by Austria in the organisation of working-class women: in 1909 the party had only 7 thousand women members; in 1910 it had more than 14 thousand, the trade union movement had around 44 thousand women members and the women's worker newspaper had a circulation of 20 thousand. Finland, though small in population, was also not left behind. Here women (more than 16 thousand) accounted for some 31 per cent of the membership of the workers' party. England can boast of more than 200 thousand women trade union members. Everywhere – in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Holland, Italy, the United States – the women of the working class are awakening, attempting to create a women's socialist movement and direct it along the path boldly marked out by the energetic efforts of German women socialists.<br /> <br /> According to the calculations made by the Swiss delegation, the numerical relationship between the male and female sections of the organised working class in various countries is as follows:&lt;blockquote&gt;Finland: For every 1 organized woman worker there are 6 organized male workers.<br /> <br /> Denmark: For every 1 organized woman worker there are 8 organized male workers.<br /> <br /> Austria: For every 1 organized woman worker there are 10 organized male workers.<br /> <br /> England: For every 1 organized woman worker there are 11 organized male workers.<br /> <br /> Italy: For every 1 organized woman worker there are 12 organized male workers.<br /> <br /> Sweden &amp; Norway: For every 1 organized woman worker there are 13 organized male workers.<br /> <br /> Germany: For every 1 organized woman worker there are 14 organized male workers.<br /> <br /> Switzerland: For every 1 organized woman worker there are 18 organized male workers.&lt;ref&gt;''Statistical Report'' to the Second International Conference of Socialist Women, 1910, p. 26&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Of course, if these figures are compared with the number of women workers on the labour market and the growing number of women earning their own living in every country, the scale of female participation in the workers movement appears very modest even insignificant. However, in order to assess the importance of the women's socialist movement accurately, two things must be remembered: firstly, its short history – l5-20 years ago it had never been heard of; secondly, the ''prospects'' opening up before it. The question of the further democratisation of the electoral system, which is now posing itself in one form or another in England and the United States, in the federal states of Germany and the Scandinavian countries, must have and will have its inevitable effect upon the further development and success of the women's proletarian movement. The women's proletarian movement has ceased to be merely a luxury and become a daily practical necessity...<br /> <br /> The growth of the women's proletarian movement over the last three years was noticeable at the opening of the Copenhagen Conference.&lt;ref&gt;The Second International Conference of Socialist Women was held on 26-27 August, 1910, prior to the opening of the Eighth International Congress of the Second International in Copenhagen (28 August-3 September, 1910).&lt;/ref&gt; In Stuttgart the delegates numbered 52, in Copenhagen they already numbered around 100 and represented 17 countries. This time only the French and the Belgians were absent. Socialist parties and trade unions were represented, together with clubs, societies, and unions of women workers adopting a class position.<br /> <br /> The conference agenda included, in addition to the organisational question of establishing closer links between organised socialist women from different countries, two major issues: 1) ways and means of achieving in practice universal suffrage for women and 2) social security and protection for mother and child. Despite these seemingly specifically female topics, the conference in Copenhagen was free of that sickly-sweet 'feminine flavour' which provokes such irrepressible boredom in the practical politician who is used to the 'cut and thrust' of real political battle... The questions discussed at the conference were examined not only from the point of view of the common tasks of proletarian class policy, but were also, and inevitably, supplemented with more general demands. The fate of Finland, a country with an extremely democratic system of popular representation, the question of war, peace and the fight against militarism, the struggle against domestic manufacture and night work, compelled those taking part in the congress to move beyond the narrow framework of feminine issues and, having become more familiar with wide-ranging, urgent issues, to join in the active struggle being waged by the many millions who compose the army of the organised working class.<br /> <br /> However, while one cannot object to the position adopted by the conference on the issues it debated, and while, indeed, one can note with satisfaction that the 'women's worker army' is marching side by side with the whole proletarian movement, it must be stated that, in terms of the formal conduct of its conferences, the women representatives of international socialism still have something to learn from their male colleagues. The lack of familiarity with 'parliamentary practice' led to a number of omissions, which gave rise to misunderstanding and dissatisfaction: certain resolutions were not only not put to the vote, but were not even debated: debates were bunched together, questions were removed from the agenda on the decision of a questionable majority, etc. All of these errors could have been avoided with greater experience...<br /> <br /> The main topic discussed at the conference was, of course, that of voting rights. The conflict between the left wing of the women's international, led by the German delegation, and the representatives of those English workers' organisations who work together with the suffragettes&lt;ref&gt;Suffragettes –members of a bourgeois women's movement seeking voting rights for women. The suffragettes adopted a tactic of obstruction, organised street demonstrations, and caused disruption of every kind. The suffragettes did not seek the support of working women.&lt;/ref&gt; and thus support the slogan of ''qualified'' electoral rights, was inevitable. The English produced as their 'trump card' the venerable and well-known socialist and champion of the women's cause, Charlotte Despard, whose personal attractiveness, noble bearing, grey hair and skilful, impressive speech was intended to win sympathy and soften the severity of the left-wing judgement. A 'furious battle' was expected. However, although the discussion was lively, the expected 'battle' did not take place: from the very beginning it was clear that the overwhelming majority at the conference supported the 'left', and that the English were fighting for a lost cause... The ease with which victory over the'right' was won is explained in part by the fact that, with the exception of Despard, they did not have one good orator on their side. The English defence lacked spirit and imagination, their arguments in defence of their tactic were naive, almost 'genteel' – the 'harmony' of women's interests, complaints against the 'harshness' of class politics, against social injustice, which also affected the bourgeois woman...<br /> <br /> The conference, sharply criticising co-operation between English socialists and the bourgeois suffragettes, adopted a resolution which, however, failed to stress this aspect sufficiently. 'The women's socialist movement in every country rejects qualified electoral rights,' runs the resolution, as a falsification and as an insult to the very principle of political equality for women. The movement is fighting for the only viable and concrete expression of this principle: universal suffrage for all women who have reached their majority, without qualifications of property, tax, education or any other kind which hinder members of the working class from availing themselves of their civil rights. The women's socialist movement wages its struggle not together with the women's bourgeois movement, but in close co-operation with socialist parties, who are defending electoral rights for women as one of the basic and, in practice, one of the most essential demands in the call for the full democratisation of the electoral system.&lt;ref&gt;Cf. the resolutions adopted at the International Conference of Socialist Women in Copenhagen, 25-26 August, 1910, and the Reports to the international Socialist Congress.&lt;/ref&gt; The conciliatory note sounded by the Austrian delegate, Adelheid Popp, in a speech intended to soften the harshness of this judgement found no support, and the resolution was passed by an overwhelming majority, with ten votes against.<br /> <br /> On the issue of maternity insurance and protection, no serious differences emerged, and it was only a formal oversight on the part of the presidium that caused conflict with part of the English delegation, which them left the conference hall. The resolution introduced by the German delegation on this issue repeated in essence the basic demands of the Social-Democrats, as developed and supplemented at the women's conference in Mannheim&lt;ref&gt;A reference to the Fourth Socialist Conference of German Women, which was held in Mannheim on 22-23 September, 1906, and attended by 50 women delegates and 5 women socialists from other countries, including Alexandra Kollontai. The agenda included: the campaign for voting rights for women, propaganda work among rural women, involving domestic servants in the women's movement, etc. On all these issues resolutions were adopted which called for intensification of the struggle for women's rights and satisfaction of their demands.&lt;/ref&gt;: the demand for an 8-hour working day, the prohibition of the use of female labour in particularly unhealthy branches of production, 16-week leave for expectant and nursing mothers, and the introduction of the principle of compulsory maternity insurance, etc. Unfortunately this fundamental question that affects directly the interests of every working woman was accorded too little time, and the debates were hurried and abbreviated. Resolutions introducing important addenda to the demands presented by the German delegation were not put forward for debate nor put to the vote, and this despite the fact that the Finnish resolution proposed by Pärssinen, Aalle and Silänpäa and other deputies to the Seim, clearly emphasised a point omitted in the German resolution–the extension of all forms of maternity protection to include both ''legitimate'' and ''illegitimate'' mothers, and a review of the laws on infanticide, committed mainly by mothers who have been abandoned to their fate...<br /> <br /> It should not be thought that all the measures demanded in the resolution ''automatically'' covered both legitimate and illegitimate mothers. It is precisely such a fuddled mode of thinking that dominates in the West, sadly even among women socialists, that preference for legalised marital cohabitation, which made it desirable to debate this fundamental point more thoroughly. It was important to emphasise with all the authority of the conference that maternity is to be recognised as a social function independently of the marital and family forms it assumes... The question of principle involved in maternity insurance and protection was, however, submerged in a number of practical details.<br /> <br /> Mention must also be made of yet another important omission in the resolution adopted at the conference: it fails to point clearly and precisely to the principle underlying maternal insurance. Is such insurance an independent section of social insurance, or is it merely a subsection of social insurance in case of illness? The formulation of the resolution indicates that those who drew it up viewed maternity insurance as one of the functions to be carried out by hospital bursaries. If this proposition had been more clearly expressed, however, it would undoubtedly have led to an elucidation of certain other propositions which require closer examination. It would have raised the question of the grounds for extending insurance to cover that large section of the female population not gainfully employed (i.e. the wives of workers) that can still be found in many countries. Is it possible, and is it acceptable to extend insurance to them via their husbands? What is then to be done in the case of 'non-legalised' cohabitation?<br /> <br /> A 'simplification' of this complex question in order to avoid debates of principle and heated feelings would scarcely be in the interests of the cause. Despite the adoption of the resolution, the question of maternity insurance cannot be considered as fully dealt with, and Social-Democracy will undoubtedly have to return to it.<br /> <br /> More impassioned debate was provoked by the Danish proposal on night work. This resolution, introduced on the initiative of women type-setters, pointed out that legislation prohibiting night work for women but permitting it for men hindered the working woman in her struggle to earn her living. It is only with enormous effort that women succeed in gaining access to better-paid jobs and better working conditions (in printing, for example), and the prohibition oil night work for women pushes them back into the ranks of the unskilled workers, exposes them once more to all the temptations of prostitution and the horrors of approaching destitution. Night work must be abolished ''simultaneously'' for both men and women, as it is equally harmful to both...<br /> <br /> The 'over-simplified' way in which the Danish delegates presented the question of night work meant that their resolution was unable to win support. By a majority of 13 votes to 2 (voting was by country) the resolution was rejected. An individual demand meeting the interests of only one specific profession (night work in a skilled profession is found mainly in the printing industry) could not override a demand corresponding to the interests of the class as a whole. However, the conflict this question provoked indicates the need for a serious approach to the question raised by the Danish and Swedish delegations, namely the simultaneous equalising of the conditions of male and female labour...<br /> <br /> The resolution put forward by the chairwoman of the conference, Clara Zetkin, expressing sympathy with Finland, and another resolution put forward by the English, reminding women of their obligation to oppose chauvinism and bring up their children in a spirit of anti-militarism were both adopted without debate and were met with warm applause.&lt;ref&gt;In addition to the resolutions listed above, the international women's conference in Copenhagen also decided to declare 8 March the International Day of Working Women, and to mark it every year as the day of international solidarity among the female proletariat in their struggle for equal economic and political rights. The first International Women's Day was held in 1911 in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Denmark under the slogan 'Voting rights for women workers so as to unite forces in the struggle for socialism'.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The central women's international bureau remained as before in Stuttgart, and''Die Gleichheit'' (Equality) was again recognised as the organ of the international socialist movement.<br /> <br /> Whatever may have been the superficial failings, of the second international socialist conference, its work will undoubtedly have a major and beneficial influence upon the further success of the workers' movement. There is every reason to hope that the women's socialist movement, which is an integral part of the whole workers movement, will assume larger and even more impressive dimensions before the next, the third conference. It will also clearly and irrefutably demonstrate that only special propaganda work among the female proletariat, work organised within the party on the basis of technical independence, can supplement the ranks of the organised workers with a 'second army', the army of women workers fighting for the common workers' cause and for the comprehensive emancipation of women.<br /> <br /> == Summary ==<br /> What is the women's socialist movement, and what are its objectives and aims? What are the forms that it is taking? Is it not simply a branch of bourgeois feminism, its 'left wing'? And if not, how is the existence of separate women's newspapers and magazines, the convocation of meetings, congresses and conferences to be explained? Why is the movement not absorbed into the powerful current of the whole workers' movement?<br /> <br /> These questions, which inevitably arise in connection with the women s international socialist conference in Copenhagen in August 1910, frequently cause bewilderment even among socialists, who are, unfortunately, insufficiently familiar with the history of the women's working-class movement in the West.<br /> <br /> The history of this movement, however, is instructive and to a certain extent provides the answer to such questions.<br /> <br /> Today there is hardly a socialist who would openly dispute the importance of the organisation of women workers and the desirability of creating a broad women's socialist movement. Socialists now take pride in the size of the 'women's army' and, when estimating the chances of success in the process of class struggle, take into account this new and rapidly increasing active force. However, there was a time, and not all that long ago — about 25 years — when such a thing as a ''women's socialist movement'' had never been heard of in any country, even if it had hundreds of thousands, millions, of women workers.<br /> <br /> When, 14 years ago, during the international congress held in London in 1896, 30 women delegates (from England. Germany, America, Holland, Belgium and Poland) arranged for their own separate women's conference, only a couple of countries (Germany, England) were making their first attempts to set up a women's socialist movement. The workers' organisations in every country did, it is true, include individual women in their ranks, but, on entering the ranks of the party and taking part in the trade union struggle, the majority of these women as it was renounced in advance their work on behalf of the most deprived and legally unprotected section of the working class – women workers. Virtually nothing was being done by the party to raise the class consciousness of working women, for the emancipation of women as housewives and mothers.<br /> <br /> This was the situation in Germany until the beginning of the 1890s, in England and other countries until the beginning of the 20th century, and in Russia up to the revolutionary upheavals of 1905. In those countries where organisations of working women assumed primarily a professional form (for example, England and America), work was conducted in the main together with the bourgeois feminists and under their direct leadership; there was no question of a class struggle.<br /> <br /> The first unofficial conference of women socialist delegates held in London in 1896 concerned itself mainly with an examination of the relationship between bourgeois feminism and the women's proletarian movement. It was recognised as desirable to distinguish between the women's bourgeois movement and the women's socialist movement, and emphasis was placed upon the urgent need to intensify socialist propaganda work among working women in order to involve them in the class struggle.<br /> <br /> Eleven years have passed since then. Capitalism has continued its successful progress, developing itself to the full and subordinating to itself not only new branches of production, but also new countries. Female labour has become a major social force within the national economy. However it was precisely women workers, outside any organisation, not linked to their class comrades by any obligations, dispersed and isolated from one another, who were in effect dangerous and damaging rivals of the male section of the working class, often undermining the successes the latter had achieved by active demonstrations.<br /> <br /> The question of organising women workers and of the ways and means of involving them in the general movement became an urgent and immediate issue. Feeling their way, adapting to the conditions in their country, the worker organisations in different countries attempted, each using its own methods, to solve this problem. The result was a variegated and motley scene. The forms taken by the women's proletarian movement varied according to local conditions. However, the most important thing was that the movement of the women of the working class had been called into being – it existed.<br /> <br /> By 1907 the movement had assumed such a scale that it was possible to convene the first international women's conference in Stuttgart. When the representatives from the various countries revealed what they had achieved in their own countries, the results, if not impressive of themselves, held promise in terms of the possibilities opened up for the future. There now emerged the question of the formation of an international women's bureau to co-ordinate the women's socialist organisations in different countries. The bureau was set up in Stuttgart, and the magazine ''Die Gleichheit'' (Equality) was recognised as the central organ of the international movement.<br /> <br /> The conference held in Stuttgart was of decisive importance for the socialist movement. It secured for the movement that independence which it needed for the future success of its work. It became clear that the women's proletarian movement was an integral part of the whole movement of the working class. Nonetheless, the specific social and political position of women in contemporary society requires that a particular approach be adopted towards women, and puts before the party a number of special objectives. These objectives, while they form ''part'' of the whole working-class movement, while they form part of the common aim, nonetheless affect specifically female interests more closely and are therefore more properly pursued by the ''women representatives of the working class themselves.'' This point of view has now prevailed, but its elaboration nonetheless required great effort on the part of the women, and provoked a sharp conflict of opinions...<br /> <br /> The German party was the first to conduct independent propaganda work among the female proletariat; other countries gradually followed its example. The seeds sown by the first supporters of the women's socialist movement led by Clara Zetkin are already taking root...<br /> <br /> Over recent years efforts have been made everywhere to arouse the awareness of working-class women by drawing them into the party. Everywhere the movement is carrying out painstaking work to involve working women in the broad current of the whole movement... The reports made by different countries at the women's conference in Copenhagen is proof of this tireless activity.<br /> <br /> How this meeting of almost 100 representatives of the working class of 17 countries differed from the usual bourgeois congresses of suffragettes!...<br /> <br /> After two days of animated and enthusiastic work, the delegates to the second socialist women's conference left the hall of the hospitable People's House imbued with the firm belief that by the third international conference of socialist women,&lt;ref&gt;It had been planned to convene the third international women's conference in 1914 in Vienna, but this was prevented by the outbreak of the First World War.&lt;/ref&gt; the 'second army' of the working class in every country will be able to swell its ranks with a fresh inflow of new and active forces from among the women of the working class.<br /> <br /> A. Kollontai.<br /> <br /> == Footnotes ==<br /> &lt;references /&gt;<br /> [[Category:Library works about feminism]]<br /> [[Category:Library works by Alexandra Kollontai]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Socialist_States_and_the_Environment&diff=76009 2024-09-30T12:47:00Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Socialist States and the Environment|author=Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro|publisher=Pluto Press|published_date=2021|source=[https://annas-archive.gs/slow_download/1139c34510fc3ff037565318c7c19f2c/0/2 Anna's Archive]|pdf=[https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzacebhyoeahqjcqdwl2igtbsjt7od6qetwza2vinhk4xdq4wumsenmg2?filename=Salvatore%20Engel-Di%20Mauro%20-%20Socialist%20States%20and%20the%20Environment_%20Lessons%20for%20Eco-Socialist%20Futures-Pluto%20Press%20%282021%29.pdf PDF]}}<br /> <br /> == Preface ==<br /> Down from Mars mountain, in the Biellese Alps of the north-western Italian peninsula, there runs an intermittent stream, the Elv (Elvo in Italian). It is swollen by the Olobbia, Oremo, Viona and Ingagna creeks along its way to become a tributary of the river Cervo, among the many feeders of the Po. Long ago, through multiple phases of glacial erosion in the Early Pleistocene (one to two million years ago), these and other now bygone streams carried and dumped auriferous pebbles, gravel and sand along their courses to form a bulging, oblong strip of land, a couple of river terraces layered on top of each other.<br /> <br /> This is the Bessa highland, a natural preserve since 1985. With what turns out to be an exiguous amount of that shimmering metal, the Bessa is part of a much larger gold-bearing area dotted with tiny ancient mines. It rises between 300 and 450 metres above sea level, an infinitesimal altitude next to the nearby towering Alps. More than a couple of millennia ago, this was Salassi domain before a Roman contingent led by Consul Appius Claudius Pulcher had the better of them (143–140 bce) and secured the gold-bearing land for the Roman Empire. Barely a century later the gold-bearing deposits of the region were deemed unworthy of more mining efforts.<br /> <br /> To this day, assortments of mainly hobbyists and fortune seekers converge on the Bessa, sifting through sediment, looking for miracles, though of different sorts. It is said that the Victimuli (presumably, in part, the descendants of the Salassi) melted much of the gold to form the statue of a horse, which they interred in the higher portion of the Bessa to conceal it from the Romans. Centuries later, fairies allegedly visited this stretch of once gold-bearing land and promised to share their talent for finding gold. The locals could not have been happier with such a revelation, but during a feast they made the unpardonable error of ridiculing the fairies for their anserine feet. Deeply offended, the fairies left, never to return.<br /> <br /> The magical Mars mountain, the quick and lively interlocking montane streams, the glacial refashioning of land yielding concentrations of gold, ancient land struggles, the skilled fairies, the modern breakthrough-seekers and the best means to get that elusive gold. This is the long, rocky, slippery, shining, trap-riddled path of recovering and rebuilding socialism, including anarchism and communism, the precious substance that is within our grasp and made elusive by both malicious and well-meaning forces. Recalling and rediscovering bits of history and legend from one’s land of birth can be a salutary method to recover what seems to be lost, but is in reality far from it.<br /> <br /> Shorn of petty parochialism and nostalgia, this is itself a challenge of overcoming. It is a process of mixing the grounding in a place – familiar yet, for someone like me, alienated – with the ethereal flight necessary to reach beyond the concreteness of the present and the restraints of the past, including the place of origin, which allows, if all hinges well, for a return to the same place, even if not physically, with renewed vision and reinvigorated determination.<br /> <br /> The endeavour implies the opposite of seeking fortunes or collectible relics in a debris of prematurely discarded history. In other words, the sifting process is one of looking for clues for what to do in what we know well or thought we did, and in the revisiting process find out we did not know as well as we thought or appreciate as well as we ought. Whether such renewal makes for any improvement in perspective and political struggle is another matter. The reader must decide that, ultimately.<br /> <br /> At least, for what it is worth, it is how I would like to conceive of my political journey thus far and what I want to share with you, though henceforth not in such an allegorical way. One could start such a journey from a much benighted present and work backwards. But working forwards from the past is an essential complement to comprehend the current state of affairs. This is where the importance of various historical socialist experiences becomes evident, especially as they are treated like dirt from both right and left, even as gold cannot exist as such without the dirt that bears it.<br /> <br /> It could be that clue seared in the back of my head from the permanent strained look and buried frustrations on the faces of some gimnázium colleagues I saw in the early 1990s while living on teachers’ wages on Balaton Lake, contrasted by the verdant countryside and plentiful woods I enjoyed, along with their stores of delightful mushrooms and tea herbs.<br /> <br /> It must be that heated word slinging over the merits of life under socialism between two villagers at a dusty and bustling village bus stop or that nostalgic twinkle I could discern in some farmers’ eyes when talking about the Kádár government, while I was living in south-west Hungary in the late 1990s, and the frenetic pace and copious use of whatever agrochemicals one could find to meet the new watermelon production targets set by some unknown bosses far away in Sweden or Greece.<br /> <br /> It must be the expression of political indifference among the Roma I met and the grinding poverty at the margins of rural villages, with their fresh abusive and smelly dumping grounds, and the ride given to a day worker just sacked and stranded tens of kilometres from home and without the money to get there via an ever more expensive and rarefied public transport system, while the financial heist of 2008 raged on, mercilessly hacking to bits the life savings of millions.<br /> <br /> It must be that 2010 toxic red mud disaster at Ajka, in Hungary, killing at least seven villagers, rekindling home-town childhood memories of toxic spills contaminating groundwater and sending folks in droves to the shops for bottled water and of anxiety-sparking events not too far away, like the Seveso accident and dioxins terror. Only much later did I learn of the shocking 1963 Vajont Dam disaster, when a massive landslide resulted in nearly 2,000 people drowned or suffocated to death by a sudden rush of muddy water.<br /> <br /> But it was the profoundness of the words of a couple of Baré and Jivi (Guahibo) activists in Yaracuy (Venezuela) that added the final displacing weight needed to start unravelling like a load of bog rolls all my prior, sedimented (pre)conceptions of ‘Soviet’ dictatorship, of authoritarian socialism, of leftist statism. They, too, were critical of Chavismo, and yet they were convinced Chavistas. They recognised and lived the contradictions, but also the necessity to continue along the path taken, seeing also the tangible betterment of the lives of their communities that would not have been possible without the Chávez government. They saw the huge strides being made as well as the setbacks and unsettlingly uncertain future. The former must always be underlined, and the latter must be faced with the utmost clarity and commensurate vehemence, rather than used to dismiss all the gains made and to foreclose any like path in the future. It is all part of the messy, at times regrettably violent struggle, where taking one’s eyes off the ultimate objectives means self-erosion, capitulation and reabsorption into the even more detestable, into an even worse set of conditions. This is what I took from the conversations I was honoured to have with them.<br /> <br /> And the Baré and Jivi, as with so many Indigenous communities and peoples struggling for decolonisation, know very well what is at stake, which, unlike for a community like mine, is survival. Up to that point, a full four years after the untimely passing of Hugo Chávez, I had followed the wagon of aloofness, scepticism, critique and refusal of anything combining the state and socialism or communist struggle, a catastrophic oxymoron to me in a previous life and to that of so many others still. Chavismo was just another expression of the wrong-headed kind of socialism that inexorably fails, gets distorted or corrupted, and ends up in some authoritarian Hades. And destroys the environment as well, just look at that greenhouse gas-belching oil economy.<br /> <br /> I was not just wrong, I was thoroughly misguided and misdirected, unable to see through the privileges in which I was raised in liberal democracies and the projection of frustration on revolutionaries in the rest of the world of the immense historical defeats and, in some cases, resignation that the left in the imperialist centres had suffered and internalised. I was and to some extent still am among them, the projectors, imbibing that mellifluous labour-aristocracy drink of self-rot while trying to make myself vomit it out for good.<br /> <br /> This book is not an exercise in finding the praiseworthy in ‘socialist’ states, but about reconsidering their environmental impacts according to wider global and ecological contexts, to try to understand what challenges can be expected in the struggle for socialism and what can be done differently for a socialist future. It is a response to the still predominant and facile capitalist and environmentalist rhetoric that would have us equate socialism, and even more so communism, with ‘ecocide’ and ‘totalitarianism’.<br /> <br /> In some respects this work is also an attempt to understand what made state-socialist societies into poor or spent alternatives. In general, it should be household knowledge that the terrible outcomes that came out of state-socialist countries are as justifiable as those that have always typified free-market ‘democracies’. All those who favour capitalism or promote capitalist ‘democracy’ must be tasked with explaining how they can support social systems predicated on historical and current horrors. I suspect this will not happen until the forces sustaining capitalist regimes are defeated and, more desirably, a classless egalitarian order is established.<br /> <br /> What is being recommended here, instead of dismissing socialist states as not socialist or as proof that socialism is fatally flawed, is to grasp the reasons for the trajectories socialist states took and to understand the contexts through which those trajectories happened. Without doing so it is not possible to oppose effectively the massive and overwhelming disinformation on socialism (including within parts of the self-described left) and to draw up workable political alternatives and strategies to overcome capitalism (the most ecologically destructive system in the history of humanity), prevent further planetary destruction and embark on building an ecologically sensible society.<br /> <br /> The task is not to formulate any blueprints for the future. That, even if legitimate, would require first the end of capitalism in at least most of the world so as to establish globally coordinated popular assemblies deciding on and writing up place-sensitive guidelines. Obviously this is rather far from the currently existing political conditions. Alternatively one can, indeed must, learn from the past regarding what kinds of situations and actions can lead to what kinds of outcomes and legacies so as to do the utmost to prevent or at least minimise the carnage and environmental devastation associated with many of the socialist revolutions that temporarily prevailed and then foundered or were made to founder.<br /> <br /> The obverse of this task, not undertaken in this volume, is to demonstrate and underline continuously, insistently and repetitively the horrors of liberal ‘democracies’ and capitalism generally, since liberal democrats and capitalist encomiasts will not take ownership of or will not feel responsible for the disaster that is their preferred kind of society and since exactly such demands continue to be made of socialists of any persuasion. In this adverse situation, any concessions to such ideologues must be resisted without falling into any idealisation or rationalisation of past and current socialisms. To accomplish this, the realities of socialism need to be confronted, not ignored or dismissed as an alien other.<br /> <br /> Arguing with anti-socialists and especially anti-communists about getting communism right is not too different from arguing with anti-anarchists about desisting from defining anarchism as chaos. It is likely a fruitless effort because political antagonists of egalitarianist movements are usually more interested in maintaining power or in maintaining their privileges (whether explicitly articulated or not), than any logical and evidence-based debate. In such a mindset the point is to debate only insofar as it furthers the conquest of political power, not about convincing or educating anyone or sharing a different perspective on the same problem.<br /> <br /> But I would wager that, as in the case of the biophysical and technical sciences (also known as science, technology, engineering, and maths), most simply do not know much, if anything, about socialism, communism or anarchism. Educating, agitating, debating and convincing should be activities of primary importance in that regard. The battle of ideas, if one wishes to make analogies to war, is really waged against self-aware antagonists and not with most people, who might even see arguments of this sort as senseless.<br /> <br /> This book is then not an attempt to convince those who already (think they) know, but to share a viewpoint with those who wonder about socialism or who are open to differing interpretations of socialism and its histories. It is certainly not some innocent sharing process on my part. As anyone, I have a set of principles and a related (or consequent) political proclivity, which is here identified as an anarchist-communist and (eco)feminist variant of ecosocialism, which may not always be evident in the ways I express myself in what follows.<br /> <br /> == Acknowledgments ==<br /> Just conceiving of this book took a couple of years. Its precursor is a 2016 editorial appearing in ''Capitalism Nature Socialism'', ‘The Enduring Relevance of State-Socialism’. The further development of that editorial into a larger project would not have been possible without the solicitation and editing care of Associate Commissioning Editor Jakob Horstmann. Along the way, the work benefited greatly from the critical eyes of Deborah Engel-Di Mauro, which was especially important to what became Chapter 2 of this book, and of Marco Armiero, Leigh Brownhill, Maarten DeKadt, Danny Faber, Mazen Labban, George Martin, Laura Pulido, Jose Tapia and Judith Watson, who all contributed in different ways to the making of that 2016 editorial and what came of it afterwards. Robert Webb’s and David Castle’s supervision and Dan Harding’s copy-editing at Pluto Press have greatly facilitated this work’s completion. I cannot thank all of them enough for their generosity.<br /> <br /> The ideas expressed in this book also poured out of many everyday experiences that wreaked not a few moments of cognitive dissonance in me since the early 1990s, in hindsight a most intellectually stultifying period. Accompanying those moments were occasional conversations and debates that are not easy to have even now, owing to widespread anti-communism. The early 2000s, in contrast, became a nursery for my inchoate, then largely inimical thoughts on socialist states. The fertile turnabout was mainly traceable to the good fortune of becoming part of the now long-defunct New York Editorial Group of ''Capitalism Nature Socialism'', in the delightful and enlightening company of the above-thanked Maarten DeKadt, George Martin and Jose Tapia, alongside Paul Bartlett, Paul Cooney, Eliza Darling, Peter Freund, Joel Kovel, Patty Lee Parmalee, Costas Panayotakis and Eddie Yuen. It was during that time that my ideas on state socialism started to turn.<br /> <br /> Very gradually those ideas shifted in an unexpected direction. It is a direction that is not necessarily aligned with the thoughts of most, if not all, of those who were part of that New York Editorial Group, and certainly not with mine as they were then. But I still owe all those comrades a profuse thanks for providing the spark, which, under institutional pressures and redirections due to my varied interests, was temporarily extinguished but reignited about a decade later, when I could return to studying the histories of socialism. Eventually, what I managed to publish on the subject intertwined with my background in physical geography and research on soils. The work now before you is to some degree a scion of that interscientific graft, nourished by those who have stimulated me in one way or another, including the Jivi and Baré comrades mentioned in the Preface, to persist in reconsidering and rethinking socialist states in what I hope will be deemed a constructive direction.<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> The unpunished disruption of the biosphere by savage and murderous forays on the land and in the air continues. One cannot say too much about the extent to which all these machines that spew fumes spread carnage. Those who have the technological means to find the culprits have no interest in doing so, and those who have an interest in doing so lack the technological means. They have only their intuition and their innermost conviction. We are not against progress, but we do not want progress that is anarchic and criminally neglects the rights of others. We therefore wish to affirm that the battle against the encroachment of the desert is a battle to establish a balance between man, nature, and society. As such it is a political battle above all, and not an act of fate. (Sankara 2007 [1986], 258)<br /> <br /> When, in 1983, a popular insurrection reinstated Marxist Pan-Africanist Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara as head of state of Burkina Faso (then called Upper Volta), environmental protection was among the first items in the new revolutionary government’s agenda. This complemented commitments to gender equality, public health, literacy and national self-reliance. Those policies were explicitly intertwined in the quest to reach socialism. In the span of four years, until Sankara was assassinated in 1987, mass mobilisations enabled the development of planned wood cutting and livestock movement as well as reforestation to contain desertification (Biney 2018). Since then, with the French neocolonial yoke restored, forests have been diminished from 68,470 to 52,902 km2 (as of 2016), a contraction of roughly 23 per cent (World Bank 2021a).<br /> <br /> As Burkinabé revolutionaries knew, ecological sustainability is a political struggle and socialism its linchpin. Inheriting and elaborating on a century of socialist experiences and centuries of decolonisation struggles, they had embarked on a promising adventure. They had it right. There is little prospect for an ecologically sustainable society without socialism, without decolonisation. But there was more to this linkage. The Burkinabé revolutionaries showed how socialism is imbued with ecological thinking and how constructive state institutions can be to achieving social equality and environmental sustainability. State socialism, as an intermediate phase, can have and has had ecologically and socially beneficial effects. This can be claimed without downplaying state-socialist problems and horrors. The issue is recognising what has gone well and facing up to what has gone wrong, with an aim to inform current and future efforts, strategies and struggles for an environmentally sustainable, egalitarian, classless, state-free society.<br /> <br /> The insights and actions of the Burkinabé revolutionaries could not be more relevant today. A profit-crazed, commerce-glorifying world is the daily stale and toxic bread for most of us. Propelled by the insatiable thirst for profits, capitalist communities are structurally incapable of leaving ecosystems in healthy states. A salient illustration is the settler colonial liberal democracy called Brazil, from where the Bolsonaro regime has intensified encroachments and attacks on Amazonian Indigenous peoples. This is consistent with a long history of attempts to annihilate non-capitalist communities, whose ability to thrive without any need of capital is as intolerable to capitalists as any form of socialism. Socialism, especially in its state-powered variant, may have an uneasy relationship with non-capitalist systems, but with most non-capitalist and anti-capitalist bulwarks gone, there is hardly any restraining the intrinsic rapaciousness of capitalism.<br /> <br /> The resulting present is an ever-intensifying concentration and centralisation into fewer hands of the wealth produced by almost all societies worldwide, a systemic tendency of capitalism that Karl Marx underlined long ago (1992 [1867], 776). And there are nauseating repercussions to this. Capitalism is what produces more than a billion people going hungry or malnourished or vulnerable to famines in an age of abundant food production as never witnessed in human history. It is what keeps one in three persons from having access to safe potable water (WHO 2019). It is what gives preferential treatment to housing speculators over those needing shelter. It is the development of profitable and ever deadlier wars, with ever more devastating weaponry, the diffusion of mass imprisonment, mass displacement, mass migration, mass death and vast riches and political privileges for a small fraction of humanity.<br /> <br /> The correlate to these preventable, if not politically willed social disasters is the continuing destructive impact on the rest of nature. The capitalist present is a hundredfold speed-up of species extinctions, unparalleled in the history of earth (Ceballos et al. 2017), and an average 68 per cent fall in the populations of mammals, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians since 1970 (WWF 2020); that is, since many fetters on capitalist activities have been loosened (also known as neoliberalism). The present is over 40 per cent of insect species threatened with extinction (Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys 2019). It is an increasingly more contaminated present that keeps adding to the decades of already mounting quantities of discarded plastics, persistent toxic substances (PCBs, lead, etc.), oil spills, radioactive waste and much poisonous else. The present is a relentless growth in greenhouse gas output into the atmosphere and more frequent extreme weather events (Herring et al. 2020). The present is melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and drowning coastlines and islands. The present is 10 per cent of humanity linked to about 50 per cent of all human-produced CO2 emissions, a figure roughly mirrored in half of humanity correlating with about 10 per cent of the emitted CO2. Since 1990, when almost all socialist states were undone, yearly emissions have expanded by 60 per cent, over a third of it related to the lifestyle of the wealthiest 5 per cent (Gore 2020). The present is the gory glory of capital, the free market unleashed, the pinnacle of the magnification of the liberal freedom to loot and kill. That is what really triumphed in 1989. That is what cannot be fathomed by the astonishingly still-existing old believers in capitalism and its hyper-armed and world-policing political correlate, liberal democracy.<br /> <br /> Even major capitalist institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) acknowledge environmental destruction as a major problem. More importantly, ever more people worldwide understand that the problem is social, not merely technical, and certainly not removed from daily life. Notions like Pachamama, environmental justice, Sumak Kawsay and strike for climate are salient examples of renewed, revived or, in the case of ecologically indebted societies (economically wealthy countries), rediscovered linkages that sometimes cross the large regional wealth gaps dividing the world. These movements recognise and press against the structures of power underlying environmental destruction. In the mainstream, a few in the biophysical and technical sciences appreciate the enormous gaps in political power and the specifically capitalist causes of global environmental destruction (Ceddia 2020; Wiedeman et al. 2020). Regrettably, within those sciences capitalism-friendly prescriptions or technical formulations of regulatory frameworks abound, even when repeatedly phrased in ominous terms (Ripple et al. 2020). The problem is simplistically laid out as one of global population and economic growth. Rarely do technical experts venture into social causes and relations of domination, much less promote an alternative politics, and even less reveal their own political proclivities. When scientists like Wiedeman et al. (2020) feel free enough to speak their mind on capitalism (even naming it) – in a journal like ''Nature'', no less – and even point to Marx and socialist alternatives, something major must be afoot. Perhaps in the biophysical or technical sciences people are starting to sense just what a warped understanding of the world most of us have been fed. But even as they seem so close to questioning the foundations of their own society, our brave scientists seem unaware of the huge wealth of historical experiences and resulting ideas, and novel forms of organising, for a society free of domination. Their recommendations spell this all out:<br /> <br /> What is needed are convincing and viable solutions at the systems level that can be followed. We call for the scientific community across all disciplines to identify and support solutions with multidisciplinary research, for the public to engage in broad discussions about solutions and for policy makers to implement and enable solutions in policy processes. (Wiedeman et al. 2020, 7)<br /> <br /> Aside from their ingenuousness on actually existing political processes, where, to name a few problems, Indigenous environmentalists are assassinated and the ‘public’ is usually met with teargas or worse whenever attempting to be seriously engaged with such issues, these scientists must not know about the existence of Cuba or the notion of the control over the means of production and the not so peaceful struggle that it implies. Nonetheless, under current conditions it would be shocking if these brave scientists are not shunned or accused of ‘communism’.<br /> <br /> The present is also dotted with stubborn, decentralised, small-area projects worth following, supporting and helping to interlink with each other. There are plenty of them and they point to workable alternatives. Renewable energy and forest conservation increasingly undergird the satisfaction of daily needs in the autonomous Tzotzil Maya egalitarianism-oriented caracoles (municipalities) coordinated through the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) in Chiapas (Mexico). In the centre of the US empire, the Menominee community, in their ongoing struggle for survival as a people, are renowned for their sustainable forestry techniques (Davis 2000). There are many instances of shared urban living arrangements, including squats, that are ecologically less impacting in cities like Barcelona, Melbourne and Rome (Cattaneo and Engel-Di Mauro 2015; Nelson 2018) or in the middle of Virginia in the US (Kinkade and the Twin Oaks Community 2011). Crucially, many Indigenous peoples are on the front lines of defending water, forests, soils and much else worldwide.<br /> <br /> Yet these weavings of alternative institutions cannot mobilise people and resources to the level states can, so the myriad anti-capitalist egalitarian projects and efforts, and the movements behind them, have not made the sort of impact needed to diminish substantively the destructive environmental impacts of capitalist systems. Nor should they be expected to carry out such a feat, given the relations of power at play globally. Hundreds of earth defenders, organising resistance against profit-hungry resource looters, are murdered each year (Global Witness 2020). It should not be surprising that solutions cannot be found at the systemic level until systems are radically transformed (i.e. dismantled through replacement), but approaches based on largely uncoordinated small initiatives eschewing state institutions on principle have not proven effective at such transformation. Often, especially where most people are forced into wage dependence, alternative projects cannot offer the means to live well and sometimes just to survive.<br /> <br /> There is here an issue of scale. Compared to the relentless and global destructive impacts of capitalist relations, what has so far been achieved – with countless praiseworthy efforts – is manifestly insufficient. This is of course easy to utter, and, to pre-empt any misunderstanding, pointing out the existence of a massive problem is not meant here as any criticism of past and existing alternative projects. The point here is that such projects, crucial as they are, must reach the capacity of overcoming and replacing prevailing institutions worldwide if the aim is to turn things around towards ecologically sustainable social equality. This is another way of saying that a commensurate counter-power is needed, implying forms of centralisation (with mutually beneficial divisions of tasks) just to enable coordinated global action. It seems that usually alternatives are instead on the defensive, beleaguered and, when getting together, end up reproducing pre-existing schisms, if not fragmenting even more. Planetary disasters, like persisting and widening social inequalities, imperialist wars, ozone layer disruption, global warming and ocean acidification and pollution, reflect a net political defeat, at least so far. This should be acknowledged and confronted as much as alternative projects and practices should be highlighted, commended and materially supported. But the task here is not to develop or recommend any guidelines or develop potentially replicable tactics and organising techniques based on successes in bettering the conditions for people and other forms of life. Many have already done so and continue to do so through multiple paths and diverse experiences, as in the examples just mentioned (for more, see Sen 2018). This book is more about recuperating, informing, clarifying and posing questions by drawing from the constructive outcomes of state socialism.<br /> <br /> === Reasons to Reject Capitalism and Its Liberal Democratic Variant ===<br /> Capitalism’s pairing with indirect or parliamentary democracy is of recent vintage and confined to only a few countries. Capitalism is a set of social relations based on endless, racialised and gendered capital accumulation, private property, national states and liberal to authoritarian ideologies (for instance, ‘free-market democracy’, nationalism, ‘populism’, fascism, colonialism and supremacism). Most capitalist societies exist largely as suppliers of commodities for liberal consumption mainly in liberal democratic regimes. They are typically ruled by one or another form of dictatorship, including one-party and monarchical states. For most of its history, capitalism involved strenuous efforts by the ruling classes to deny any form of political participation by majorities. The US, in this regard, is among the stealthiest examples. Were it not for hundreds of years of often violently repressed pressures from below, including from socialist movements, parliamentary democracies with universal suffrage would probably not exist today (Miliband 1994, 24–6).<br /> <br /> When parliamentarism and capitalism combine as liberal democracy the situation is not necessarily improved for those living under such regimes, and gets worse for peoples elsewhere by way of imperialism and colonialism. Gerald Horne (1986), among others, have shown how liberalism from its inception is imbued with racism and colonial logic as part of its very class-differentiating foundations (cf. Du Bois 1945). Slavers and ‘planters’ like Calhoun or Washington cannot be easily dismissed as outside the liberal framework, as if they did not share the same philosophical bases as later figures like J.S. Mill and others of like mind, including those within liberal institutions that hatched fascism and Nazism. After all, Von Mises, Hayek and Croce were all supportive of fascism, at least as a temporary measure to quash worker militancy and save capitalist regimes from themselves. Without liberal democracy and its support for fascists and Nazis as part of anti-communism, fascist and Nazi regimes could not have existed. Liberals of all stripes – conservative, labourite, left liberal, radical, republican, etc. – have much to answer for (Losurdo 2005; Rockhill 2017).<br /> <br /> Laconically put, liberal democracy is the art of creating, dumping on and sacrificing others (not just people) to establish or reproduce privileges for a propertied few. From the start, the matter has been sorted out by dividing societies into races. This is why environmental racism is the norm, not the exception, in liberal democracies specifically and capitalist countries generally, whether at the scale of a city or the entire planet. Discussions on and appeals to democracy should always be qualified by appealing to readers’ intellectual refinement in distinguishing talk of democracy from support for genocide, slavery and colonialism or from apologetics for, to cite only a couple of examples, the US Confederacy or fascism and Nazism, since those mass-murdering dictatorships were creatures of liberal democratic systems, even elected to parliament (Heller 2011; Perrault 1998).<br /> <br /> During the decades when the state-socialist camp was a serious contender to liberal democracies and their allied authoritarian regimes, state-socialist systems were holding in check what is now becoming a much clearer unbridled destruction of working-class life prospects and ransacking of the environment worldwide. It must also be appreciated that the historical achievements of communist, socialist and anarchist movements have been consistently deformed or smashed by liberal democratic forces through constant military pressures and other repressive means (Blackburn 1991, 236; Democratic Socialist Party 1999, 63–4; O’Connor 1998). This is not an excuse for leftist anti-capitalist violence and authoritarianism, but the oppressive turns and, barring anarchism, the statism developing in such movements cannot be understood as if isolated from the societies and international context out of which those movements sprung.<br /> <br /> === Environmentalist Reasons to Revisit State Socialism ===<br /> And yet there is a carefully cultivated and diffused misrepresentation of ‘communism’ and ‘socialism’ as metonyms for all sorts of horrors, including the worst environmental carnage the world has ever seen. The European east, in this, has taken on the role of representing the entirety of all things socialist or communist everywhere and for all time. This role is quickly being overshadowed by that of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but the propagandistic effect is virtually the same. As Tickle and Welsh have pointed out:<br /> <br /> In the West, eastern Europe [after 1989] quickly became known as a region suffering some of the worst environmental degradation imaginable as a consequence of the excesses of communism. Images from polluted black-spots cast a graphic picture of environmental and human suffering, with little to counter the impression that this was typical of the entire region. The vast tracts of relatively unpolluted lands remained an invisible backdrop to these striking images. (Welsh and Tickle 1998, 17)<br /> <br /> Would it look odd to represent democracy and the free market with images of the thousands of Superfund sites in the US, the Cuyahoga River’s spontaneous combustion, the Greater London Smog, the countless gouged and barren landscapes from mining operations and heavy metal pollution, the Bhopal pesticide factory explosion, the pulverisation of entire islands with nuclear warheads or the Fukushima meltdown?<br /> <br /> True, there were some disastrous environmental impacts through state socialism, but they were neither pervasive nor intrinsic to that form of socialism. In fact, environmental issues were among the priorities even during the Russian Civil War, which followed shortly after the 1917 revolution. Under Bolshevik rule, ecology as a science thrived and became the most advanced in the scientific world. Environmental conservation and movements were part of state-socialist societies, at times shaping national policies if not putting up successful pressures from below (Gare 2002). In several major ways, over a roughly seventy-year period, there certainly were catastrophes, but the net effects were environmentally constructive (see Chapter 4). The following is a brief overview of accomplishments within state-socialist countries that are practicable examples from which ecosocialist futures can be built.<br /> <br /> Many species were saved from the brink of extinction or protected by means of large preserves. Preserves were expanded in number and areal extent over time, with some exceptions, and this enabled the protection of entire ecosystems along with their diverse soils and surface waters. To make this possible, millions of people were mobilised to environmental causes and educated formally and informally on the importance of environmental protection, leaving lasting legacies of environmental literacy and sensibility (Goldman 1972; Ostergren and Shvarts 2000; Roman 2018; Rosset and Benjamin 1994; Weiner 1999). Soil conservation measures were, on the whole, successful, given severe economic constraints and inherited low levels of productivity (Betancourt 2020; Brown and Wolf 1984; Chendev et al. 2015; Golosov and Belyaev 2013; Rosset et al. 2011; Wuepper et al. 2020). Logging was kept to within the limits of forest regeneration, for the most part. There were many instances of major afforestation efforts that reduced soil erosion and protected waterways, as well as many species’ habitats (Biró et al. 2013; Brain 2011; Potapov et al. 2015; Rosset et al. 2011; Shixiong et al. 2011; Tucker 2000, 48–50). Environmental monitoring programmes were developed in state-socialist countries that industrialised, and monitoring stations, thanks to industrial-level productivity gains, were distributed as densely as possible (Laity 2008; Permitin and Tikunov 1992; Pryde 1991; Whittle and Santos 2006).<br /> <br /> In cities, public transportation was privileged over individual motorised vehicle use, which was always highly attenuated. City planning included provisions and actualisations of ample green spaces. Internal travel and internal population migration were restricted, while housing was centrally planned and largely guaranteed, all of which contributed to reducing urban expansion pressures and keeping mobile air pollution sources in check (Goldman 1972; Josephson et al. 2013, 91–3; Koont 2011, 175–6; Pryde 1972). Per capita resource consumption tended to be low and materials recycling was well developed and, at least until the 1980s, highly encouraged (Birman 1989; Gille 2004; Goldman 1972; Krausmann et al. 2016; Peterson 1993, 130). Air and water pollution from industries, though mainly confined to small areas, became problematic especially where state-socialist systems undertook rapid industrialisation, mainly in the 1970s, but measures were adopted that led to substantial improvements in reducing pollutant output and remediating polluted sites. Measures included switching to natural gas where feasible and retrofitting industrial plants with less polluting equipment. In state-socialist countries inheriting a lack of basic sewerage collection and treatment infrastructure, it was thanks to socialist states’ introduction of water purification plants that public hygiene was greatly improved (Dominick 1998; Goldman 1972; Muldavin 2000; Placeres et al. 2011; Pryde 1972). Through international treaties, socialist states also promoted biodiversity protection, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions reduction, and soil conservation worldwide (Josephson et al. 2013, 196–7; Oldfield 2018; Sokolovsky 2004).<br /> <br /> Practices and effects were also highly variable historically and geographically. Internal political struggles and external military and economic assaults made environmentally constructive relations extremely tough to achieve or maintain. At the same time, socialist states inherited situations of much environmental devastation and widespread social deprivation. State-socialist countries were also very diverse. A few were already industrialised, but most were largely agrarian and many of those had long been looted by colonising liberal democratic empires. There were certainly major environmentally destructive aspects to state socialism, mainly through the introduction and expansion of increasingly export-oriented mining, fossil fuel production and use, agrochemicals-based and mechanised farming, as well as manufacturing and processing industries. These, however, are typical negatives encountered in any capitalist country and more so in countries reliant on raw material and/or intermediate manufacturing products like state-socialist countries. Unlike the wealthiest capitalist countries, state-socialist countries’ sometimes inadequate capacity for pollution prevention or remediation is traceable to an inability to accumulate or direct enough resources to those ends. This is especially understandable when this is viewed relative to the high risk associated with reducing the level of military defence to parry liberal democracies’ belligerence. On the whole, socialist states, when not regressing to capitalist ways, as in the PRC, were able to expand or keep natural preserves, contain if not prevent mass species extinction, keep consumption levels low, produce environmentally more sustainable cities than in the most industrialised capitalist countries, expand environmental monitoring capacity and much else, all under immense pressures from within and without throughout their existence. One should draw from and build on such historical experiences and achievements, rather than jettison state socialism entirely.<br /> <br /> === Leftist Reasons to Reconsider State Socialism ===<br /> To those who dismiss or even find offensive any reference to socialism in the ‘centrally planned economies’, the issue is an obverse of liberal democrats’ self-congratulatory and reactionaries’ self-privileging delusions. In the case of socialists who deny the socialism part of socialist states, environmental degradation caused through ‘really existing socialism’ can be easily passed off to one or another form of capitalism or degenerated system that failed to turn socialist. This is a self-absolving purist manoeuvre. In a purist perspective, the notion of triumphant socialism (or communism) is one of an ultimate state of being, where all is resolved and social and ecological harmony prevails. Anything short of that is simply not socialism (or communism).<br /> <br /> Many anarchists, on the other hand, converge, though from very different angles, with pro-capitalists in ascribing all sorts of evils as inevitable consequences of state-based or centralised institutions, usually equated with political power-taking or statism. An anarchist position would require taking individual freedom at least as seriously as collective needs and social equality to get to a truly egalitarian society. This is not an impossible ideal; it is lived experience. Copious examples of egalitarianism do exist among non-capitalist societies and even within capitalist ones, but also within state socialism. A recent example is the ABRA Centro Social y Biblioteca Libertaria opened in 2018 in Havana.1 Anarchists are part of the same societies where revolutions have occurred or where oppression and environmental destruction exist. Anarchists played important, if not prominent roles in socialist revolutions leading to the unintended formation of socialist states. They have not had the level of responsibility as, say, communist parties, for the undesirable or atrocious state-socialist outcomes of revolutions. On the other hand, it is self-serving to claim to have had major roles in revolutions, as in Russia, China and Cuba, while denying connections to any nasty results (cf. Dirlik 1991, 209). Anarchists, too, must face up to the so far consistent failure of achieving the ends for which they have fought and re-examine strategies, as in fact many anarchists have. One instance is the welcome repudiation of propaganda by the deed through bombs and assassinations. Why should the political strategies of communist parties or socialist states not be held to the same standards of understanding and expectations of historical self-transformation, rather than being summarily dismissed?<br /> <br /> What is proposed here is a rebuilding by unlearning and relearning about socialist states, though circumscribed to a study of environmental impacts. Just as there are many kinds of capitalism, there have always been diverse socialist currents, among which are Marxism and anarchism. To reject any socialist variant because it is not in accord with one’s notions of socialism is to pretend that everyone claiming to be socialist must follow the same line of thinking and action as oneself. This is impossible to achieve even if one tries, and there are anyway fundamentals that are shared and that motivate all socialists, who, in the broadest sense, include anarchists and communists. Stalinists are as Marxist as the early twentieth-century social democrats and the latter-day Trotskyists. The Socialist Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan was as socialist as the Bolshevik Lenin when she tried to assassinate him. Likewise, the anarchists engaged in targeted killings (propaganda by the deed) are just as anarchist as those repudiating such a strategy. Those in the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo who entered the Republican government in Spain during the civil war were just as anarchist as those who rejected that entry in government. Social systems contain the germ of their own supersession, but the seed will not sprout without the warmth and nourishment of self-critical hindsight. It is thus that the horrors and errors of the past are the springboard for better futures.<br /> <br /> So, the work here presented is a process of learning from the strides, horrors and mistakes of one general current of socialism, state socialism, from a kaleidoscopic and fractious socialist past and bits of the present, too, rather than consign to a ditch what does not suit one’s principles and ideas of socialism, or anarchism or communism. Another reason for this kind of learning may be worth pondering. In a political context where any kind of egalitarian-minded anti-capitalism is immediately equated with historical dustbins or reduced to capitalism-friendly politics (liberalism), it should be a priority to recover or reclaim the results of millions of people’s historical struggles for social equality and that, for a time, effectively contained capitalists’ power, and curtailed, for decades, their earth-devouring expansionistic tendencies.<br /> <br /> There is more to this. The wager here is that there are redeeming qualities to taking the reins of existing politically centralising institutions, if limited to making the coordination of struggles more effective. Socialist states could serve this purpose, or at least it should not be presumed that they are necessarily destructive. There are multiple ways to counter capitalist institutions and to help build power to develop the foundations for an environmentally sustainable egalitarian state-free, classless world. The usefulness of centralising processes depends on what sort of institutions are inherited, the extent to which they can be altered to facilitate egalitarian objectives and prevailing conditions – that is, the results of social struggles. This statement doubtless will turn off not a few leftists immediately, who may justifiably view as an oxymoron this nod to centralism while upholding socialism. This is understandable, but such a stance also involves finding ways to confront aspects of the state that do deliver on people’s material well-being and that in some measure legitimise the state in the eyes of majorities. Building parallel institutions that can take over constructive state functions (say, healthcare, environmental monitoring programmes, public education, scientific labs) is important, but this does not necessarily mean that one must take apart or discard everything that has been built. For one thing, securing resources for such parallel institutions is, under current conditions, asking for an immediate clash with the state. This has been historically a losing battle in many ways, and self-defence often entails militarised reorganisation and a quick end to social equality or to equating means and ends. Killing, even in self-defence, becomes part of the regrettable side of a revolutionary process when confronting social forces intent on stamping out any alternative. The current struggle in northern Syria, the Rojava Revolution, is among the many examples.<br /> <br /> Still, there are other barriers, as already intimated. It is not just by violent repression that states gain legitimacy. It is people who form the institutions that comprise a state, including millions of people whose lives are economically tied to state institutions (I am one of them). Perhaps too obvious to underline, the state comes out of and is always part of a society, never external to it, so to be against the state is also to struggle with, if not being against a large part of society. Some of this kind of appreciation as opposed to support for the state or for state-like structures is re-entering the leftist arena in writings seeking to demonstrate compatibilities between struggles from within and from outside of state or centralising decision-making institutions (Burbach and Piñeiro 2007; Ciccariello-Maher 2014; Gray 2018). A discussion on political strategies could be more effective when framed in terms of finding complementarities and mutually beneficial coordination. At crucial turns of events, it is helpful to have friends even within oppressive institutions. Besides, relations of domination are more diffuse than the bounds of states. Capitalists, regardless, will ultimately consider all leftists as enemies and try to squash one or the other anti-capitalist leftist variant, depending on which kind of anti-capitalist action is regarded as most menacing for the system as a whole. These thoughts are a subtext of the present work, a not so subtle call to reconsider the socialist state as a viable, maybe even necessary, complement to bottom-up egalitarian action, but these thoughts will not be developed further, save as an open question.<br /> <br /> Motivating this book are prevalent misunderstandings and disinformation campaigns about state socialism and socialism generally, the movements that gave rise to socialist states, as well as their environmental records. Given the sustained social and environmental disaster that is capitalism, especially its liberal democratic variant, one should find recurring tropes about socialism (and even more so communism) as being bad for the environment, or of Chernobyl as a metonym for socialism in any form, to be an impediment to the struggle for environmental sustainability. Across political proclivities, many have deemed anything related to ‘real existing socialism’ peremptorily awful and have celebrated its disappearance. The purpose of this volume is to show that the socialist state has been prematurely discredited.<br /> <br /> This may seem outrageous or a futile exercise. After all, ‘real existing socialism’ was terrible on all accounts. It is a fact, so one is told – something not to bother reckoning or dusting off. But there are facts one is also not told and that can show ways forward from what has been cast aside. A recent study revealed that the only country where people’s well-being has been improved in an environmentally sustainable way is in Cuba, arguably the only remaining socialist state (Moran et al. 2008).<br /> <br /> Something similarly far from terrible about state socialism was demonstrated in the 1980s. Healthcare professionals have long understood the importance of economic wealth redistribution to people’s well-being, such as infant mortality rates, life expectancy and number of people per doctor, hospital and healthcare practitioner, among other such indicators. A study from the 1980s by US-based researchers, using mostly World Bank data, found that state-socialist countries largely surpassed capitalist countries at similar levels of economic development (Cereseto and Waitzkin 1986; Navarro 1992). In Cuba there have been similar public health achievements, bettering even the US when it comes to child mortality rates, in spite of 60 years of sanctions and economic blockade by the US (Fitz 2020). In other words, data gathered through capitalist countries’ governments and international capitalist institutions showed how much better off the physical quality of life was or is under socialist states. These are not the delusions of some frothing unreconstructed ‘Stalinists’ at the fringes of liberal democratic society. They are the conclusions of consummately conventional researchers who take findings seriously.<br /> <br /> === Defining State Socialism ===<br /> Crucial to debates over the environmental impacts of socialist states is defining what is meant by socialist or communist society. Without any clarity on this, one can just plaster environmental ills on whatever social system one dislikes, just to suit one’s politics. More importantly, definitions of socialism and communism are ‘needed if we are to be clear and persuasive about the kind of future society to which we orient our current activities’ (Resnick and Wolff 2002, 75–6). One can start by avoiding literal interpretations and derogatory characterisations. Defining socialism and communism may be highly contested, but there are empirical bounds set through historical experiences and developments that help move this task away from a self-serving game of arbitrary ascriptions (see Chapter 2).<br /> <br /> Looking through historical details easily brings to light the uselessness of terms like ‘totalitarianism’ or ‘communist states’ to describe countries like Yugoslavia or the USSR. Even conventional scholars had arrived at such conclusion by the 1970s at least (e.g. Jancar 1987, 5–9). Terms like totalitarian, monolithic and the like fail to account for any observable changes within a society and then cannot explain the fall of such systems, especially when the dissolution is instituted by a supposedly totalitarian regime. On the other hand, using official titles to distinguish countries makes for some interesting conclusions, such that the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia are monarchies and Laos and China are democratic or people’s republics. Identifying states or countries or governments as socialist, beyond slurs and labels, is nevertheless fraught with much political contention among more serious activists and scholars, and rightfully so. There has never been a single way of defining socialism. The range has been from technocratic to statist to workerist to decentralist, and so on. It seems, at least, that most on the left would agree that communism means a state-free, egalitarian, classless society, either one worth fighting for or worth drawing from or preserving, if existing state-free and classless societies are taken as akin to ‘communist’ or ‘anarchist’ (see, e.g., Baer 2018, 169–71).<br /> <br /> Some find it distasteful even to intimate that a state could be socialist because the denotation they use is of a political system defined by bottom-up, democratic decision-making processes, including the workplace (e.g. Chomsky and Pollin 2020, 59–60). This is such a narrow perspective on socialism as to make it impossible to recognise as socialist any government or state ever in existence so far, except maybe for fleeting insurrectionary events like the 1871 Paris Commune or Soviets in 1917 Russia. When doing little more than criticise from a historical or geographical distance one never has to get one’s hands dirty, nor assume any responsibilities for anything gone terribly wrong. Furthermore, this attitude also prevents a recognition of positive impacts.<br /> <br /> As many of the revolutionary protagonists themselves understood, socialist states were or are in a transitory situation between capitalism and full socialism (D’Mello 2009; Frank 1977; Szalai 2005; Szymanski 1979). It is as structurally a contradictory position as any, but more often a lethal one for many. The processes involved to institute a socialist system can be upended to re-establish capitalism in one or another of its political variants, depending on the outcomes of internal and global dynamics. In the main, a change to a neoliberal variant of capitalism is what has happened. More positively, or as a future prospect, state socialism is a situation that can lead to a fully developed socialist society, with, among other processes, the socialisation of social reproduction and of the means of production, including resource access and production output, systematic redistribution of wealth to cover everyone’s daily needs, and with workplace democracy prevailing, all leading to establishing communism, that is, state-free and egalitarian communities. These are not necessary stages, but feasible or desirable ends, dependent on prevailing conditions. The trajectory of a socialist state hinges on the outcomes of both internal relations of power (class struggles, always involving multiple forms of oppression) and external pressures. The latter imply the processes and results of class struggles within countries whose capitalist and/or state institutions bring pressures to bear on socialist states. The reason for framing the matter as involving capitalist and/or state institutions is to keep in mind potential antagonisms among socialist states, independently of capitalist systems, as occurred, for example, between the USSR and PRC and between the PRC and Vietnam. Statecraft is another insidious enemy of socialism, as anarchist communists, autonomists, revolutionary syndicalists and dissident Bolsheviks have long understood.<br /> <br /> === Developing Criteria ===<br /> Considering state socialism as transitory or intermediate from capitalism to socialism still does not resolve the problem of identifying criteria to distinguish state socialism from capitalism. Often, socialist states are judged according to who holds political power or how property is handled. Persisting social inequalities in state-socialist societies are explained away through power grabs or usurping control over the means of production. This is behind notions that environmental destruction was due to dictatorship and/or lack of private property (for the pro-capitalists) or workers’ control of the economy (for the pro-socialists). But takes like these elide the specific ways in which class formation and conflict occurred in state socialism. It is not possible to explain how state-socialist systems changed without such social dynamism, including how it was possible to have any environmentalist movements emerge, as they did.<br /> <br /> Blaikie (1985, 34), in trying to build a comparative framework to explain differences in socially caused soil erosion rates in different countries, drew attention to the importance of considering the relations of production affecting land use. He surmised that relations of production in ‘centrally planned economies’ have specific characteristics, but unfortunately did not elaborate much further on this point. Resnick and Wolff (2002), paying attention to the concept of mode of production (how production is organised in a society), provide a possible answer. They distinguish between property relations (ownership, control of the means of production), political power and surplus labour processes (production, appropriation and distribution of surplus; production relations). The latter (what happens in the workplace and how what is produced is distributed in society) characterises class structure. On this basis, they define communism as a form of government (a state) addressing ‘class structure’ (workplace dynamics, vying for classlessness and the disposal of the surplus produced). Communism is when producers of surplus are the same as the people disposing of the surplus; hence, workers’ cooperatives could be an illustration of this. Socialism overlaps with communism (though it is unclear how) but does not tackle ‘class structure’; that is, socialism is about ‘state management, regulation, and intervention in the economy (perhaps including nationalization of productive property, planning, and so on) to secure greater equality of incomes, a broad social welfare minimum, mass democratic political participation, and so on’ (Resnick and Wolff 2002, 77).<br /> <br /> But relations in the workplace and how surplus is taken and distributed are just as consequential to class differentiation as who owns what and who has what sort of political power. This is because the relative control over the means of production is part of what constitutes one’s class position. Among the reasons why a manager can tell me what to do at work (production relations) is, among other reasons, because that manager has been granted control over an office or a factory floor by a boss or owner. The reason that surplus can be distributed in ways contrary to most workers’ benefit has a lot to do with different forms of political power (not just in the state), and the extent to which workers can exert such power through formal or informal social institutions. Class structure is defined so narrowly by Resnick and Wolff as to downplay or deny the effects on class differentiation of who owns what and who has what sort of political influence. The processes might be separable analytically, but not in lived experience, and focusing exclusively on the employer–employee relationship obscures substantive differences between capitalist and socialist states. Socialist states, among other things, were systems where necessary and surplus labour were decided politically through centralised state organs, not through highly variable market pricing conditions dictated by capitalists (Cockshott and Cottrell 1993). Wealth redistribution through variously planned investment allocations was hardly a way for capitalists (or bureaucrats or party members) to get rich. If they were just another form of capitalism, one would need to explain the need to dismantle such systems to privatise an already available source of capital accumulation, the insistence on Marxism-Leninism, the virtually guaranteed employment, the free social services and the maintenance of low wealth gaps.<br /> <br /> A promising clarification on the dynamics of a mode of production turns out to be vitiated by a reductionistic take on class structure and a confused if not tautological terminology. In Resnick and Wolf’s understanding, capitalist class structure is defined by capitalist forms of surplus appropriation. The class structure is the employer– employee relationship, which defines the ways surplus is made, taken and dished out, which creates the capitalist class structure. What is more, contrary to Marx’s view, Resnick and Wolf reckon that ‘communism’ has a class structure and even a state and government policy to boot, including the possibility of autocracy. That can be one way of understanding communism, but it is not the meaning adopted in this volume. Their definition just adds to the reigning confusion on communism. Startlingly, Resnick and Wolff omit state-free societies that are or have been classless. There are even examples under their nose, in the US (the settler colonial system where those authors live) in the everyday practices and social institutions of traditionalists in ‘Reservations’, for example. The departure from not just Marx, but communists and even anarchists, about the meaning of communism and socialism is no mere semantic quibble. Confining class relations to matters of surplus is what allows Resnick and Wolff to claim socialist states as state capitalist (whether socialism or communism has ever existed anywhere, the authors never tell us). Essentially, countries like the USSR were never socialist because they retained the employer–employee relationship in the workplace. This takes us back to the purism that exonerates socialism from any environmental destruction and at the same time disallows acknowledgement of positive results.<br /> <br /> Resnick and Wolff’s analytical differentiation of political power, property relations and surplus labour and management are still useful, but need further specification. Coming to the rescue are James O’Connor (1998, 258–62) and David Lane (2014, 7), who provide handy, concise descriptions for state socialism that do not efface substantive differences.2 Lane takes socialist movements’ histories in much greater consideration by defining state socialism as:<br /> <br /> a society distinguished by a state-owned, more or less centrally administered economy controlled by a dominant communist party which seeks, on the basis of Marxism-Leninist ideology and through the agency of the state, to mobilize the population to make a classless society [i.e. communism].<br /> <br /> This definition includes a system-specific set of property relations and political power structure, including a superstructure component (e.g. ideology), whose importance should never be underestimated. O’Connor emphasises many of the features encapsulated in Lane’s pithier description, but importantly adds social policy aspects of commitment to socio-economic equality, full employment, job security guarantees and collective consumption (such as public transit, common eateries, cooperative farms, etc.), as well as commonalities in the social conditions and economic status of the places where state socialism emerged.<br /> <br /> Lane’s claim that ‘State socialist societies were insulated from the world capitalist system’ (2014, 8) is best set aside. Viewed bio-physically, the assertion of state-socialist insulation from the rest of the world implies the ability of existing on another planet. Three examples should put the matter to rest. One is long-range air pollution bringing contaminants across different regions. Another example is stratospheric ozone layer-thinning chemicals emitted mainly from the largest capitalist economies but affecting many other parts of the world, especially at higher latitudes. Finally, and by now more obviously, greenhouse gas emissions, also overwhelmingly emitted from the largest capitalist economies, have led to radiative forcing in the atmosphere (global warming, climate change), affecting differentially the entire planet. There is no insulation possible from such environmental impacts.<br /> <br /> The insulationist view also implies negligible to no trade, scientific exchanges and much else, a most mistaken assumption contravened by a cursory look at the evidence (O’Connor 1998, 258–9). For example, the USSR and their allied states were already in a dependent relationship with western European and North American countries by the mid-1950s, trading mainly raw materials for key manufactures like machinery and other commodities tied to technological innovations. It was an increasingly disadvantageous relationship, where North American and western European powers could restrict the kinds of technologies exported to state-socialist countries to maintain economic and military superiority. As economies reliant on raw materials exports, state-socialist countries were also vulnerable to rapid downturns due to poor terms of trade. For instance, when oil and sugar prices took a dive in the 1980s, the USSR and Cuban economies suffered major revenue shortfalls. The economic dependency on liberal democracies, as the world’s largest consumer markets and centres of highest capital accumulation and technological innovation, only worsened over time through high-interest loans, joint companies and direct investments, among other forms of capitalist encroachment (Berend 1996; Böröcz 1992; Sanchez-Sibony 2014).<br /> <br /> What is missing in Lane’s definition is the issue of class structure, which existed and exists in state socialism, and that Resnick and Wolff have the great merit of raising as a main parameter. However, class structure in state-socialist countries resulted mainly from overt political struggles, rather than concealment through market exchange. The state was the main locus of decision-making processes over the degree of surplus production and allocation. That was predicated on differential control over the means of production, a degree of control that varied over time as a result of class struggles, expressed within the ruling party as well. The centralised appropriation and redistribution of surplus, largely run by older men often from a predominant nationality or cultural group, occurred in uneven gendered (largely patriarchal) and ethnically based if not racist ways, as the Roma and some Siberian peoples experienced.<br /> <br /> Still more refined criteria are needed for state socialism than Lane develops. The above description implies that currently China, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam are all state-socialist. This is true insofar as those states retain institutional structures characterised by, for example, the channelling of political involvement through a single party, social assistance programmes and reliance on ‘Marxist-Leninist’ terminology for political legitimation. If material conditions and historical developments are taken as a primary way of defining state socialism, those socialist states are no longer socialist because much of the economy is in the hands of private businesses and ideological justifications are now permeated by neoliberal terminology, among other reasons. This is one among many issues to be clarified, with attention to historical conjunctures.<br /> <br /> To Lane’s description several other attributes can be added for greater clarity and for more encompassing societal comparisons. One essential attribute of a socialist state is its formation out of self-defined communist movements ousting a capitalism-oriented regime, whether a semi-feudal monarchy, a settler colonial or colonial dictatorship, a neocolonial ‘democracy’, etc. Historically there has not yet been any successful socialist revolution toppling core capitalist regimes, but this does not mean it is an impossibility. The corollary of taking down a capitalist regime is at least a formal intent, including once in power, of fostering, primarily through state institutions, the development of the conditions for a communist society. Whether steps were or are actually taken to achieve such a goal is something that should be explained rather than expected or dismissed as impossible. What counts as a step towards communism also depends on the official and/or assumed meanings of communism taken within the countries affected. This is one reason, for instance, to categorise as state-socialist the present political systems in place in Cuba, Laos, the PRC and Vietnam, even as the Cuban case departs substantively from the others and is, arguably, the closest to the socialist path. The idea of the PRC or Vietnam as state-socialist will likely be rejected by many for differing reasons, but the implications of ascribing the capitalism label to such countries are actually counterproductive to socialist (and especially ecosocialist) causes (see the second section in Chapter 4, ‘The PRC: Fulcrum of World Ecosocialist Struggles’).<br /> <br /> Another essential attribute is relative to social chronology. State-socialist systems have been established where states already existed. This qualification is important, given the existence of other kinds of civilisations featuring similarities to socialism or communism but that never developed a state as a main way of structuring society (or that historically decentralised and became state-free, but later came under the yoke of a state). Just as important, this sequential specificity to the establishment of state socialism brings into relief major influential factors that are typically ignored, which are the persistent structural inequalities engendered through inherited state institutions, among other relations of domination. These alone take multiple generations to overcome and, arguably, cannot even be neutralised when surrounded by belligerent national states intent on the destruction of any form of socialism (understood as anti-capitalist in orientation). Anarchists in the Russian and Spanish civil wars, to allude to some salient examples, learned this the hard way, so the challenge is not confined to socialist states (Graham 2002). It was and will be a challenge to face for as long as capitalist societies exist.<br /> <br /> These criteria (Table 1.1) serve as the main way of categorising with greater precision the state-based social systems described as socialist by their governments or ruling parties. A list of state-socialist countries is provided in Table 1.2 with their respective periods of existence. According to the above-discussed criteria, 26 countries were state-socialist and only one, Cuba, remains today. Notably, relative to environmental impacts, 13 never industrialised under socialist states and most of them had short time spans. This is based on a study by Bentzen et al. (2013), except that allegedly deindustrialised countries are still counted here as industrialised because they retain an industrial infrastructure for most economic activities, including consumption. Accordingly, twelve had a pre-existing industrial base, though for most of them it was under state socialism that industrialisation really expanded to national levels. Of these, the central European countries, North Korea and the western parts of Russia inherited major environmental problems by the time they turned state-socialist.<br /> <br /> ''Table 1.1'' Main criteria to identify countries as state-socialist<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable&quot;<br /> |''Historical and institutional processes''<br /> |''Principal characteristics''<br /> |-<br /> |Wider societal context of revolution<br /> |Capitalist or capitalism-oriented system<br /> |-<br /> |Power-taking revolutionary formation<br /> |Self-defined communist party or movement<br /> |-<br /> |Originally stated political objectives<br /> |Building socialism to create conditions for communism<br /> |-<br /> |Formal political system<br /> |Dominance of or exclusionary rule by a communist party<br /> |-<br /> |Class structure<br /> |Based on politically centralised surplus production, appropriation and distribution<br /> |-<br /> |Official ideology<br /> |‘Marxism-Leninism’; state-centred communist party leadership<br /> |-<br /> |Organisation of main economic activities<br /> |Centrally administered or coordinated<br /> |-<br /> |Property relations in key economic sectors Social policies<br /> |Predominance of state ownership Socio-economic equality; full employment and job security; collective resource consumption<br /> |}<br /> Three countries, while retaining nominally communist party rule, ‘Marxism-Leninism’ and control over some key economic sectors, have embarked on an overt capitalist path, and mainly industrialised after that major shift. Not a few self-described socialist systems with one-party rule are therefore not regarded as socialist states, such as Laos, the PRC and Vietnam. This may raise eyebrows. However, the reforms of 1978 in the PRC and the similar policy shifts in Laos and Vietnam in 1986 spelled a decisive turn towards capitalism in those countries. State ownership lost predominance in most sectors and state firms can fail under capitalist competitive pressures. Mass unemployment problems ensued and have been absorbed mostly through a constant expansion in output by other firms or in other sectors, including through foreign direct investment. Key sectors like manufacturing and farming are under private control and much economic activity is coordinated through private domestic and foreign enterprises. Class structure is mainly based on relations of surplus production and appropriation dominated by private firms with surplus distribution mostly achieved through capitalist labour market pricing mechanisms. In other words, in those countries there is clearly a capitalist predominance in the relations of production and in the management of surplus labour, but there remain key socialist aspects. An example is a dominant coordinating role of the state and an official Marxist-Leninist ideology. Extensive public services are provided, and socialist forms of property are not only legally recognised, but in part still favoured through government policies (on China, see Long et al. 2018).<br /> <br /> [table]<br /> <br /> The above shifts towards a capitalist road resemble the development of other formal instances of ‘socialism’ in other countries, where a one-party socialist government presides over a capitalist economy. Such governments (twelve in total) demarcated or demarcate themselves emphatically away from the sort of systems espoused in the USSR or Maoist China. There is no communist objective in such governments and Marxism-Leninism was mostly or entirely rejected. State involvement in economic activities have varied historically by degrees, as in liberal democracies. A list of these countries is given in Table 1.3.<br /> <br /> Self-titled socialist administrations have ranged from one-party governments, such as the Baathists in Iraq and Syria, to multi-party governments under predominant socialist party influence, as in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas. Other examples are Egypt under the Arab Socialist Union and Tanzania under the Tanganyika African National Union. The Sandinista government in Nicaragua explicitly followed principles of political pluralism and a mixed economy. Many of these alternative socialist governments were corporatist: more focused on national sovereignty and building national identities. This was often as a way of ensuring the sheer existence of new states carved out of former colonies, within neocolonial frameworks, as in the case of post-1968 Iraq in relation to the US (the US government helped Saddam Hussein rise to power and sustained his regime militarily through the 1980s). The substance of their economies and internal and foreign relations were highly contingent on political developments within liberal democracies like the US, France, Italy and the UK.<br /> <br /> [table]<br /> <br /> The kinds of environmental policies (if they had the possibility of establishing any) and impacts such one-party socialist governments had were heavily shaped by direct meddling from capitalist countries, mainly by means of neocolonial relations, including proxy and direct wars. This is why it is important to distinguish socialist states, like the USSR or the pre-1986 Lao People’s Democratic Republic, from socialist governments with capitalist economies or under neocolonial influence, like the Syrian Arab Republic or Burma under the Burma Socialist Programme Party. It is not just a matter of relative sovereignty, but also of what ultimate and shorter-term political objectives guided the state. This distinction, it turns out, has environmental ramifications, largely on account of the PRC in terms of the severity of environmental impacts since the Dèng reforms.<br /> <br /> === State Socialism and the Environment ===<br /> The following chapters proceed first, in Chapter 2, with a historical and geographical overview of the rise and development of socialist movements and states. This background is important in dispelling pervasive mischaracterisations of socialism and socialist states. Exposing and dissecting such ideas about state socialism is taken up in Chapter 3 by means of empirical comparisons that demonstrate the mixed to positive environmental impacts of state socialism and by refuting the logic of comparisons that fail to consider global inter-linkages. Chapter 4 provides the wider and specific contexts that need to be addressed to explain the particular forms of state-socialist environmental impacts. This is accomplished by discussing the USSR, PRC and Cuba. Chapter 5 is dedicated to explaining the relationship between state socialism and the environment, first by examining and critiquing more popular perspectives and then formulating an alternative historical and dialectical materialist explanation. Chapter 5 is a discussion of and set of questions on the contradictory nature of state socialism relative to building an environmentally sustainable egalitarian classless and state-free society.<br /> <br /> Chapter 2 is a highly abridged history and geography of socialisms. Just like other political movements and ideas, socialism has never been in the singular. This has been so from its very beginnings. So, whenever anyone reviles or embraces socialism, the first question one should ask is: which socialism? Throughout I highlight ecological worldviews expressed in socialist currents. This is to dispel prevailing false notions about socialism, including about ecological understandings, and the oxymoron of the idea of communist states, a concept that fundamentally contradicts what all communist movements and thinkers have stood for. The latter part of the chapter is dedicated to describing the recent emergence of ecosocialist movements and thought.<br /> <br /> Chapter 3 takes up the popular claim that the environmental records of state-socialist countries are the worst ever or worse than those of capitalist democracies. Such views are predicated on tendentious sensationalised examples and arbitrary comparisons. Criteria or analytical frameworks are typically not spelled out and verdicts are dispensed mainly on the basis of impressions or selective use of evidence, rather than substantiated by systematic inquiry. The frameworks of the comparisons are usually implicit and often based on faulty assumptions. They can be absolutist (the worst), synchronous and diachronous. When comparisons are done thoroughly and a diversity of types of evidence is considered, it is evident that the reality is mostly the reverse of what we are told. Changes over time in the same countries (diachronous analyses) are found to be more appropriate, though insufficient, in catching more comparable trends through similar ecosystems. Overall, capitalist systems, especially liberal democracies, are much worse for the planet, historically and in the present. This is even more so if one includes the internationally profitable business made out of the Chinese economy since the 1980s. Ultimately, comparing countries that are historically interconnected and that have mutually changed each other is a dubious undertaking. On biophysical grounds, comparisons are for the most part problematic and much more research is needed to gain a clearer understanding of how to compare different biophysical contexts and histories. For these reasons, comparisons should at the very least be contextualised in a country’s social and environmental history and according to global processes and interlinkages across countries, all of which vary over time.<br /> <br /> Going beyond debunking prevailing views, Chapter 4 delves into the general processes shared by state-socialist countries and the various conditions where socialist states arose. The task is to consider the historical, international and biophysical contexts. This includes giving attention to the legacies of capitalist impacts on the environments where socialist states were established and to a fuller record of socialist states beyond the usual fixation on negative impacts. The task is carried out through studies of the USSR, the PRC and Cuba. Each case study features a discussion of what went well as well as badly and why, while bringing in comparisons with similar environmental impacts in liberal democracies, especially the US.<br /> <br /> Having covered empirical evidence, varying contexts and major social and environmental changes, the discussion moves to appraising explanations and developing a dialectical and historical materialist framework in Chapter 5, the concluding chapter. On biophysical degradation problems in state-socialist countries there has been no shortage of theories. The general argument is that socialist states are intrinsically destructive biophysically because they are economically inefficient authoritarian systems suppressing the counterbalancing nature of civil society, censoring crucial information, mismanaging resource use, chronically compromised by institutionalised conflicts of interests and lacking private property and market signals. These claims are unflinchingly made in the face of similarly destructive tendencies in liberal democracies and are contradicted by much of the evidence presented. By and large, such explanations amount to little more than celebrations of one or another idealised form of capitalism. Analyses tend to be vitiated by evaluations based on whether or how well socialist states conform to standards allegedly characterising the wealthiest liberal democratic countries. Most explanatory statements therefore end up being a mere reproduction of preconceived notions. Recent, alternative ‘revisionist’ frameworks, in contrast, consider the wider context and local particularities of socialist states and appreciate the importance of the variety of biophysical processes. These scholars look for deeper processes that thread through state-socialist and capitalist systems alike. Underlining this convergence, they look for causal mechanisms common to both kinds of social systems. However, far from explaining anything, these arguments confuse convergence with sameness and are incapable of sorting out what set socialist states apart as well as identifying and explaining relations of power internationally and subnationally that led to biophysical degradation or improvements.<br /> <br /> Explanations from leftist circles find some similarities with the convergence theorists, but also avoid being mired in allegedly greater depth or nuance. These theories are largely inchoate and so are followed by an alternative explanatory take modelled after the author’s prior research, building on existing leftist theories and approaches more broadly. This attempt at a dialectical materialist framework is sketched out mainly as an outline, as otherwise a separate book could (perhaps should) be written. Putting these thoughts into print may understandably invite heavy criticism if not rebuke from at least part of the left. Rest assured, for what it is worth, that I do not find socialist states necessarily preferable to liberal democracies. This depends on the trajectory that emerges out of struggles within socialist states relative to the objective of reaching an environmentally sustainable socialism. The main problem, for those like me living in capitalist countries, is the uses of state socialism to scare folks away from socialism or communism in general and to divert attention away from the historical and current horrors of capitalist societies, whether in their liberal democratic or authoritarian garbs. A corollary problem is the treatment of state socialism as irredeemable, as if entirely devoid of positive potentials through struggles from within.<br /> <br /> Chapter 5’s conclusion is an opening to the implications of the findings for ecosocialist strategy. A main argument is that rejecting state socialism is premature or not the most constructive route, considering how state-socialist systems helped reduce or mitigate the destructive tendencies of capitalism and given the deterioration of social and environmental conditions worldwide, especially since the 1990s. What should be done instead is to revisit and learn from socialist states so as to build on their strengths and overcome or pre-empt their awful aspects. One way to begin doing so is to discern the causal factors common to socialist states that led them to some environmentally destructive episodes. Several broad interrelated causal factors are traceable to the wider context of a capitalist world economy; the interconnections between socialist states and capitalist powers, if not former colonial powers; and pre-existing and newly formed internal social conflicts, including class struggles. These three processes combine to create overarching contradictions that to a large extent will have to be faced by any current socialist formation: building the foundations for a future classless and state-free society and the defences to fend off capitalist powers and survive within a capitalist world economy, while bringing sufficient material well-being to all and less (not more) environmental harm. Addressing these contradictions involves two forms of interrelated but different struggles: a social one and a biophysical one. Socialist states, for all their flaws, exemplified this combined struggle. They still offer much not only in terms of signposts about what to prevent, but also of potentials to overcome capitalist relations in environmentally sustainable ways.<br /> <br /> This work departs in several ways from the copious writings on environmental degradation and socialist states. First, it is a comparative approach to state-socialist systems’ environmental impacts at different scales of analysis. This allows for greater attentiveness to environmental processes, which are not bound to political boundaries. Second, state-socialist systems and biophysical processes are studied as dynamic and changing over time and as mutually constitutive. The terms environmental and biophysical are used interchangeably. Biophysical as understood here has two subsets: ecological (relations among organisms and between organisms and physical environments) and physical (solar radiation, wind, wave action, etc.). Finally, there is emphasis on a relational, multiple-scale analysis of environmental impacts within state-socialist countries. Relational here means examining world-scale linkages and mutual influences between state-socialist and capitalist countries as well as considering global biophysical changes to help explain biophysical effects in state-socialist countries. This comparative, relational and multiple-scale framework that includes the study of biophysical processes is a longer-winded way of saying historical and dialectical materialism, an often mischaracterised and shunned way of understanding and explaining. More importantly, adopting this framework is a response to the usual ways scholars and pundits treat socialist states and environments. Socialist states are often depicted as monolithic, unchanging and stagnant, and environments as passive substrate or background. Overall this work addresses state socialism in relation to capitalism on several fronts, political and scientific.<br /> <br /> == A Brief History of Socialist States and Ecosocialism ==<br /> Traceable in places to social struggles, philosophies and beliefs in the middle of the 1600s, socialism has always been in the plural, a polyvocal response and set of alternatives to the social and environmental degradation and havoc wreaked by capitalism. Its multifariousness is rooted in diverse and historically shifting peasant, artisanal and proletarian social conditions and value systems (Arrighi et al. 1989). Even if largely emerging out of capitalist European societies, socialism was inflected from the start by the influences of communalistic and egalitarian paragons elsewhere, especially from Indigenous peoples’ lifeways in the Americas and revolutionary self-determination movements, as through the 1791–1804 Haitian Revolution (Anderson 2010; Birchall 1997; Krader 1974, 5–6; Meisenhelder 1995; Merchant 1980; Weaver 2014, 276).<br /> <br /> Practices, strategies and ideals already varied greatly by the time socialism emerged as a concept in the 1820s. Some currents, very few at first, were inclusive and sensitive to multiple forms of oppression, and some were masculinist, chauvinistic and even justified colonialism and racism. There were those, such as Cabet, Fourier and Owen, who imagined and at times set up egalitarian communities or workers’ cooperatives that, more often than not, fell apart within a few years. Some of these communities were religious in character, basing their socialist quest on dissenting interpretations of holy scriptures. There were those advocating for technocratic centralist rule by producers, including industrialists, whose foremost exponent was Saint Simon. His followers pressed the state for the establishment of a technocratic order based on the large-scale scientific management of the economy.<br /> <br /> Syndicalists focused on worker power as the way to reach socialism and formed unions to that effect. The visionary Inka-French feminist Flora Tristán introduced the concept and practices of working-class unity in the struggle to improve workers’ conditions at both work and home (Beik and Beik 1993). Most syndicalists, however, largely accepted the legitimacy of the existing social order, at least in economically prosperous years. Finally, Jacobins, a prominent grouping during the French revolution, strove to turn state institutions into organs for the gradual extension of political rights to all. Shared by all the major socialist movements was the belief that everyone involved in production could eventually cooperate to improve society for mutual benefit, which assumed a harmonious relationship between, for instance, peasants, industrialists and workers (Cole 1953).<br /> <br /> The delineation of the now familiar labels of socialist, communist and anarchist took roughly a century. Anarchism and communism would start assuming clearly separable politics in the 1860s, largely splitting not too long thereafter. A demarcation between socialism and communism would not appear until the 1920s splits within socialist and social democratic parties (Braunthal 1967a; Graham 2005; Guérin 1970).<br /> <br /> In the 1830s, with the spread of workers’ mutual-assistance associations, Pierre Joseph Proudhon developed the concept of anarchism as an alternative kind of social order based on mutualism and federated communities. These ideas would be further elaborated on and diffused by Mihail Bakunin, Élisée Reclus, Pëtr Kropotkin and the Owenite William Benbouw, among others, who stressed the inseparability of state and capitalism and therefore the necessity to overcome both simultaneously. Imbued with these ideas, revolutionary syndicalist and anarcho-communist movements organised revolts in places like Ukraine, Mexico and Spain in the 1900s (Eckhardt 2016; Graham 2005; Guérin 1970). At the same time, Kropotkin and especially the communard Reclus, whose work is an early form of bioregionalism, started to call attention to the importance of the environment in a non-deterministic fashion (Reclus 2013).<br /> <br /> Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’ analyses of capitalism as a system of dispossession and exploitation and their development of dialectical historical materialism started maturing in the 1840s. The ''Communist Manifesto'' (1948), written for the Communist League (1847–52) and revived in the 1870s, was an early distillation of this framework. It was part of a new approach eventually called Scientific Socialism, grounded on studying social relations, both past and present, so as to arrive at political strategies attuned to existing possibilities. Such an overarching worldview offered an alternative to a tendency in prior and contemporary perspectives, deemed Utopian, to formulate pre-packaged blueprints devoid of analyses of social context and hence unable to find effective applicability, attested by negligible political effects. Noteworthy are Engels’ early studies involving attention to environmental degradation and Marx’s scattered, laconic, but clear analyses of the environmentally destructive propensities of capitalism (Dickens 1992; Foster 2000).<br /> <br /> Neither Scientific Socialism nor historical and dialectical materialism were ever unified perspectives under any one theoretical or party line. Much effort would be exerted from the very beginning, especially by Friedrich Engels, to counter various non-dialectical, economically deterministic (vulgar materialist) and idealist perspectives claiming scientific standing. The struggle for scientific rigour and dialectical materialist open-endedness was ultimately unsuccessful, as rigid, closed and sometimes doctrinaire worldviews have often prevailed within Marxism, institutional and otherwise.<br /> <br /> === Revolutions and State Power ===<br /> In much of Europe and, partly, in European settler colonies, the ideas of Marx and Engels came to prominence especially through the International Workingmen’s Association (the First International, 1864–76), where they played key roles, alongside collectivist anarchists like Bakunin. The First International was, among other things, a focal point of decisive political bifurcation among socialist forces. Engels, Marx and their allies (including a few communards) tried to centralise decision-making processes under their direction and favour the formation of parties to be coordinated by means of the International. Anarchists and some syndicalists balked at any state-oriented route, while Bakuninists formed shadow and conspiratorial groups. The schism that resulted from the increasing divide, exacerbated by state repression, fractured the First International irreparably, but its demise was overshadowed by the rise of social democratic parties (Braunthal 1967a, 175; Cole 1961; Eckhardt 2016).<br /> <br /> As a result of recurring brutal repression, preceding and during the First International’s existence, some socialists favoured forming secret societies to achieve their aims, by force if necessary. This route became particularly easier to justify after the 1871 massacre and persecution of thousands of communards by the Prussian and French governments to squash the Paris Commune. Other tendencies saw social change unfolding through tensions within society itself and opted for gradualist approaches, working within existing institutions. Some socialist formations developed both kinds of strategies, or shifted from one to the other. This diversity of strategies has run across all socialist currents at one point or another.<br /> <br /> From the late 1800s, socialism was progressively represented by parliamentary or statist approaches. The founding of the Second International in 1889 was dominated by political parties, especially the German Social Democratic Party. In 1893, anarchist formations and trade unions were made officially ineligible for membership, leading to a permanent severance of anarchist organisations from what became mainstream socialist institutions. Out of these changes also came greater affinity between socialist and labour parties and statism, and then reformism. Anarchists and syndicalists would thenceforth form their own independent international organisations and rarely interact with other socialist groups (Braunthal 1967b).<br /> <br /> Communism was integral to Marxism early on but also to some forms of anarchism, where the term was inflected as anarchist communism. The differences from Marxism lay mainly in seeing the state as a fundamental obstacle to be overcome immediately and in refusing any intermediate stage to achieving communism. Marx and Engels, in contrast, upheld strategies of movement centralisation, predicated on striving for working-class gains, and the conquest and use of the state so as to dissolve it. They defined the process as proceeding in two steps: first establishing worker majority rule (‘dictatorship of the proletariat’), and then, through that transitional stage, the eventual achievement of communism. State socialism, arguably, conforms to this notion of a transitory phase.<br /> <br /> Marx and Engels would later see a potential for skipping directly to communism in non-capitalist societies, but this would be contingent on successful revolutions in the most powerful capitalist countries (Rodney 2011). Those writings would not be widely known until the 1960s. The means to achieve communism – a state-free, classless society – would nevertheless be highly contested within Marxism, ranging from conforming to and/or using liberal democracy to a violent overthrow of any form of capitalist regime and its replacement with a socialist version (Cole 1960; Graham 2005). Be that as it may, for both Marx and Engels, as for Reclus, in different ways, comprehending biophysical processes (a ‘mastery of nature’) was crucial to developing a communist society. They warned against what would now be called environmentally unsustainable practices. These proclivities persisted within Marxist thought (e.g. Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ‘Lenin’). They furnished precedents and continuities that would form socialist states’ environmentalist undercurrents, nourished by histories of struggles against colonial depredations, the material effects of industrialisation and recurring and, mainly by the 1980s, rediscoveries of insights from Marx and Engels (Dickens 1992; Gare 1993; Löwy 2017).<br /> <br /> In contrast, some socialist, social democratic and labour parties adopted narrow and gradualist objectives and, in some respects, even liberal principles, confining political work mainly to parliamentarism. In the early 1900s, anti-Marxist and Marxist revisionist currents arose that converged over a disavowal of class struggle. Communism remained the province of still-influential segments of social democratic parties. In the case of the Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party (founded in 1898), such a segment was embodied by what came to be called the Bolshevik wing, who split from the Mensheviks by 1912 and founded their own party.<br /> <br /> The Bolsheviks were ahead of their time. The contradictions within social democratic parties became a centrifugal force that, in the wake of World War I, tore them apart on questions of nationalism and support for war. Most social democratic parties (including labour and socialist parties) opted on the side of their respective national governments in a crude display of chauvinism, flatly contradicting their 1907 anti-militarism resolution. A minority within the Second International, convened at the Bolshevik Lenin’s insistence, met in 1915 to organise opposition to the war, but it was ultimately in vain. Nationalist binges in mass slaughter prevailed upon the Second International, which was officially defunct by 1916.<br /> <br /> Excepting Russia, revolutionary attempts like the 1919 German Spartacist revolt and Hungarian Soviet Republic were crushed militarily within months. Newly formed or reconstituted authoritarian regimes subsequently incarcerated, executed or exiled thousands of socialists of all stripes. Similar convulsions in other parts of the world preceded or roughly coincided with the 1917 Russian Revolution, even if not as influential at the time. In Mexico, the Mexican Revolution of 1910–20 included anarchism-leaning Magonismo and the pro-peasant agrarian socialist Zapatismo. The institutions that came about would later enable Cuban revolutionaries to set up their main base in Mexico in the 1950s. In China, the republic founded with the overthrow of the monarchy (the 1911 Xinhai Revolution) encouraged the spread of socialist ideas. These infused the 1919 May Fourth Movement, which also had anarchist currents and included activists, including Máo Zédōng, who founded the Communist Party of China in 1921 and became their leader in 1943. Otherwise, out of the mayhem of World War I and schisms within most social democratic and socialist parties, leftist currents often broke away to form communist parties, either as the war was ending or shortly thereafter.<br /> <br /> In Russia, a militarily weakened Czarist dictatorship gave way, in October 1917, to the rising tides of workers’ councils (soviets) occupying factories and mines, peasant communes and land appropriations, national liberation movements (especially in Siberia and Central Asia) and a variety of socialist formations, mainly the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries and, to some degree, anarcho-communists (e.g. Makhno-led revolutionaries in Ukraine). The Bolsheviks succeeded not only in gaining popularity in the industrialised, urban and especially western parts of Russia, but also in centralising decision-making processes and consolidating their own political power. This they achieved by providing workable alternatives enabling many to survive the wars, repressing other socialist formations and crushing revolts, and eviscerating soviets of decision-making authority.1 Developing a new army (the Red Army), the Bolsheviks, with the aid of Left Socialist Revolutionaries and Anarchists (Makhnovists), eventually, by 1922, defeated multiple, well-armed military formations (the White Guard) allied to the Czarists. Notably, the feat included the repulsion of many invading foreign troops supporting the White Guard, including thousands sent by the US Wilson government (the American Expeditionary Force, Siberia). These liberal democratic and subsequent Nazi-fascist invasions in World War II would permanently scar and define the politics of the new socialist state, the USSR. A major outcome was the privileging of military investment to ensure self-defence, the rapid industrialisation that would provide such military capacity and the contradictory environmental practices and ramifications that would follow.<br /> <br /> === The Russian Revolution, the Socialist State and the Environment ===<br /> Communist fortunes changed radically with the Russian Revolution, for the better for some and for the worst for others. One-party Bolshevik rule was resisted or denounced by dissident communists and anarchist communists from the very beginning. There were nevertheless major social gains and a flowering of egalitarian culture. It was during the 1920s that ecologists, naturalists and conservationists exerted increasing influence and major strides were made in environmental protection (Gare 1993; Weiner 1999). These promising developments were curtailed by the late 1930s, under Stalin’s leadership, as the aftermath of internecine struggle among Bolshevik factions over economic policies, political strategies and the level and kind of centralisation. Political purges occurred multiple times and thousands of people were disappeared or interned. Several million perished or suffered greatly, while millions more had their lives improved and a small percentage accrued prestige and power.<br /> <br /> The repression created even more critics from within as well as without. Prominent among them was Trotsky, founder of the Red Army. Organising actions outside the party to counter the rising influence of Stalin’s faction, he was expelled from the party in 1927. Living in exile, he founded the Fourth International in 1938 as response to the Third or Communist International (the Comintern, 1919–43). He was assassinated in Mexico by Stalin’s agents in 1940. Critiques of the USSR under Stalin would vary with time and according to political persuasion, but largely centred on the lack of substantive worker control over the economy and the suppression of legitimate dissent. It is from these perspectives that the first critical studies of socialist states emerged. Developing and applying Marxist theories, Trotsky and his allies concluded that the USSR and similar societies had become degenerated workers’ states, with later Trotskyists going further in regarding such social systems as bureaucratically deformed, ruled by a new and increasingly entrenched bureaucratic class, or, in other renditions, as state capitalist (Chase-Dunn 1982). Criticism was not solely about politics, though. It included environmental issues. But such criticism was largely indirect and confined to scientific communities and naturalist organisations (Weiner 1999).<br /> <br /> Within two decades Russia was being transformed forcefully, feverishly and violently into an industrialised society, formally organised into federated socialist republics under the rule of what came to be called the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Decision-making was centralised in a restricted number of people, often the CPSU’s Politburo, sweeping aside the early Bolshevik internal policy of ‘freedom of discussion, unity of action’ (democratic centralism). Forced requisitions and subordination to farm managers (euphemistically called collectivisation) meant that the peasant majority effectively lost control over much of the land appropriated. Mixtures of economic coercion and enticement induced ever greater employment in factories and cooperative farms. While it became an increasingly repressive country for many Bolsheviks as well, the USSR quickly began to rival economically and militarily the most advanced industrialised capitalist countries. This proved crucial to gaining popular consent, to curry leftists’ support abroad, as well as to rout the Nazi and imperial Japanese invaders from the west and east during World War II.<br /> <br /> Many communists and socialists drew great inspiration from the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks in particular. They began forming communist parties and/or aligning themselves with the Bolsheviks through the Moscow-centred Comintern. There, communist and allied organisations would meet periodically and coordinate activities, at least in the first years, to promote global proletarian revolution. Decisions made through the Comintern came to have far-reaching consequences, some of them entirely unintended.<br /> <br /> For example, strategies for the colonies and relative to oppressed peoples were to involve the cultivation of solidarity among workers across different communities and alliances with liberal elements in national liberation movements. And the various affected parties dutifully aligned their activities accordingly in their respective countries. This is what led to the early collaboration between the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Guómíndăng (the Nationalist Party) until, after the death of the party founder, Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan), the Guómíndăng purged and slaughtered communists in 1927. The reverberations were, among other places, felt by the communist anti-colonial Thanh Nien movement, which folded as a result of losing their primary base of operations in China and their main leader Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chí Minh), who escaped to the USSR.<br /> <br /> From 1928 to 1935 the Comintern called on communist parties to undermine moderate leftist parties. Thereafter, with the rise of Nazism, the policy shifted to a popular front strategy, characterised by forming broad alliances to fight fascism. Such abrupt shifts created confusion, demoralised or marginalised activists, and created conditions conducive to conformism and personal vendettas. Worker-led revolutions, as in Spain (1936), were sacrificed in the name of protecting the USSR, or socialism in one country, in a sense making a universalising socialist virtue out of the particularity of Bolshevik self-preservation necessity.<br /> <br /> The repercussions of Bolshevism deeply affected many leftist movements in other parts of the world. Those allied to or taking inspiration from the Bolsheviks turned ever more towards the statist and vanguardist approaches, forming the ideological backbone of state-socialist systems. The objectives and techniques, to simplify, amounted to founding and expanding a rigidly disciplined, militarised party structure, often in clandestine form (mimicking experiences in Czarist Russia, where such strategies were essential for sheer survival). The next steps entailed building and severing alliances as necessary to conquer state institutions by violent means, involving infiltration into military institutions or at a minimum the formation of a well-trained military wing. Conquest of state apparatuses would be followed by the consolidation of power and elimination of opposition groups, including those of the leftist variety. The party, claiming to represent the workers, would then embark upon proletarianisation (including subduing self-subsisting communities) and industrialisation, repressing or smashing any movement getting in the way. This was justified on the basis of creating the conditions for socialism, understood as a preliminary stage towards communism.<br /> <br /> As the established regime bureaucratised and militarised (and institutional Marxism-Leninism ossified into a set of dogmas and precepts), forced industrialisation became an attractive way in many countries, especially former colonies, to ensure economic dependence by most people on state organs (the consolidation of power) as well as to raise material well-being (the cultivation of popular consent) in ways that, ironically, converged with aspects of contemporary liberal democratic notions of modernisation. Industrialisation also proved of great value in self-defence against the constant threats of invasion or coups by liberal democracies or other capitalist states. The matter of self-defence may have been useful for propaganda purposes, especially in marshalling nationalist sentiment, but it was also a legitimate preoccupation. It must be recalled, for example, that the US invaded Russia in 1918–20 and China in 1900–1 to try and suffocate revolutionary movements and that such policies as military build-up and alliances like the Warsaw Pact, founded in 1955, were responses to global US military expansionism and to the 1948 formation and subsequent expansion of NATO (Berend 1996).<br /> <br /> === Socialist States in a Capitalist World Economy ===<br /> What was done in the name of workers and socialism in the USSR was perceived as successful by many leftists, who replicated or attempted to replicate Bolshevik strategies elsewhere. The very existence of the USSR had also greatly modified the world economy and the political contexts of countries where leftist forces were emergent. At the same time, new socialist states established through Bolshevik-modelled and supported revolutions were expected to be subordinated to the CPSU Politburo.<br /> <br /> To some extent, such an arrangement was established with communist parties in western Europe, but more in terms of coordination, which did not last much beyond the early 1970s. By and large actual subordination occurred in a few central and eastern European countries. This unfolded through the USSR Red Army’s liberation from Nazi and fascist regimes and subsequent military presence, which pre-empted political reversals in favour of the enemy camp and stifled independent socialist state action. Salient examples of the latter are the military suppression of the mainly communist revolts in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968 (Berend 1996).<br /> <br /> The degree of the USSR’s grip over ‘satellite’ states was always tenuous, though. The Red Army withdrew in 1958 from Romania, where the government pursued an independent path, essentially disengaging from the Warsaw Pact by 1963 and becoming among the US government’s ‘Most Favoured Nation’ trading partners in 1975. In 1973, after the capitalism-leaning reforms of 1968, the Hungarian government acceded to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (the precursor of the World Trade Organisation), and then the IMF in 1983. These illustrate a progressive subordination to the core capitalist bloc during the USSR’s existence (Berend 1996).<br /> <br /> Nor was there the sort of neocolonial dependence rife among formerly colonised societies. By the late 1970s the USSR was basically subsidising its supposed ‘satellites’ to the tune of $20 and $80 billion through an unequal exchange of raw materials and energy for manufactures (Turnock 2006, 284). There were also socialist states forged out of autochthonous forces expelling the fascist invaders, like Albania and Yugoslavia. Those countries were always independent of and repeatedly clashed with the USSR. Overall, in environmental matters, as well as domestic social policy and even internal government politics (which could even involve multiple parties, as in the German Democratic Republic), socialist states were independent of the USSR (Berend 1996).<br /> <br /> The 1949 founding of the PRC played a major role in shifting revolutionary leadership away from Europe, as it eventuated into rivalry with the USSR over political hegemony among communist formations worldwide. The schism happened by the late 1950s, leading to an undeclared border war in 1969 and rapprochement with the US government, made obvious with US President Nixon’s 1972 visit. There was also much internal strife within the PRC, for reasons not too dissimilar from those in the USSR during the 1930s. A major manifestation of the conflicts was the tumultuous and deadly Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–76). The result, the ousting of the Máo faction, eventually yielded a reformed CPC under Dèng Xiăopíng’s leadership (Li 2016; Xu 2018).<br /> <br /> Almost all ruling socialist formations (socialist states or one-party socialist governments) were formed between the 1960s and 1970s, during or after the USSR–PRC schism and the independent lines taken by Yugoslavia and Albania. Moreover, all such ruling socialist formations were grounded in anti-colonial national liberationist movements and ideologies and deeply etched by long colonial histories of racialised segregation. That there would be conflicts among ruling socialist formations within and between socialist countries should therefore not be surprising. For example, in 1979 Vietnam and the PRC were at war in relation to the Vietnamese government, with USSR support, invading Cambodia to oust the Khmer Rouge, which had historically developed out of the Vietnamese-dominated Communist Party of Indochina, founded in 1930 by Hồ Chí Minh (also known as Nguyễn Sinh Cung).2<br /> <br /> The situation and trajectories elsewhere could therefore not be more divergent from those in Europe, and the USSR had even less influence in such places. Revolutionary struggles were deeply intertwined with decolonisation and involved alliances with nationalist and liberal democratic elements. Harsh colonial repression induced secretive organising, making Bolshevik strategies more attractive and effective. In colonies and semi-colonies in north Africa and much of Asia, Marxist social democratic parties had already formed since the days of the Second International and then Bolshevik parties by the 1920s. Most of them were repressed or essentially destroyed by governments aligned with core capitalist states.<br /> <br /> On one occasion, North Korea’s socialist rule degenerated into a dynastic autocracy. In the wake of civilian-decimating and infrastructure-flattening US aggression and following prolonged power struggles within the Workers’ Party of Korea, the national-chauvinistic Kim Il Sung Kapsan faction seized power. They steered the country away from socialism by 1972 in favour of an amalgam of voluntarism, nationalism and neo-Confucianism, known as Juche or ‘self-reliance’ ideology (David-West 2011; Gills 1992; Robinson 2007).<br /> <br /> In much of Africa, when independence movements successfully overthrew colonial rule, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, the timing largely coincided with established socialist state systems in conflict. This affected newly independent states in terms of fleeting linkages and support, as the USSR and PRC supported either right- or left-wing governments depending on geopolitical convenience. This was not a one-way process. Excepting the marginalised Pan-Africanist and Afrocentric Communist movements, who promoted African forms of collectivism, self-described socialist or communist parties were rather fluid politically, aligning themselves with liberal democracies, the USSR or the PRC according to changing circumstances.<br /> <br /> To some extent, what transpired internationally largely reflected the societal diversity negated by boundaries and states imposed by colonisers and the widely different histories of African communities. Many African peoples had no backgrounds of highly centralised states or sometimes any state formation at all. They had also undergone little to no industrialisation, so that Bolshevism had arguably greater difficulty spreading compared to places in Africa affected by settler colonialism and industrialisation such as South Africa. Pre-existing communalistic institutions in many Asian and African societies could be used towards developing and diffusing socialist ideas or practices, but the capacity for self-subsistence in most peasant, pastoralist and gatherer-hunter communities also often made socialist notions redundant. Hence, a diffuse radicalised social base, supporting otherwise well-organised political groups, was often absent and this also impeded any firm and lasting political footing in most countries. A consequence was a mix of socialist and liberal policies characterising most socialist governments and states. The Somali single-party Barré administration is a paragon of this, switching sides according to which government offered a better military and economic deal.<br /> <br /> Furthermore, socialist states or one-party socialist governments in African countries, but also in many Asian countries, could not emulate Bolshevik strategies because they lacked the economic and military means to do so. When gaining state power, communist and socialist parties, much like their counterparts in contemporary socialist states (by the 1970s), were easily undercut through raw material pricing (uneven terms of trade), direct financial pressures (e.g. extortionate interests on loans) and other such tactics from core capitalist countries or former colonial powers, which were often the same.<br /> <br /> Otherwise, as in the cases of Angola and Mozambique, the new socialist states were under constant military attack and invasions by the South African racist state, supported by the US and allies, or by proxies of former colonial powers. Other countries suffered a fate akin to that of the above-described, short-lived Burkinabé socialist state (1983–7), which was struck down through a murderous pro-French coup before any lasting positive social and environmental impact could even start to materialise. Such horrific post-liberation conditions made it virtually impossible to carry out any sensible environmental policy or to start reversing the long-term biophysical damage of colonial dictatorship. Excluding the relatively ephemeral Burkinabé case, the average lifespan of socialist states in Africa was 17.3 years, barely enough time to leave much of a mark. Rather, the environmentally ruinous mass extraction of raw materials to benefit core and semi-peripheral capitalist economies continued virtually unabated through neocolonial relations, facilitated through supranational institutions like the IMF and World Bank.<br /> <br /> The Americas and Asia-Pacific, dominated by settler colonists through racist systems, have been rough terrain for working-class unity of action through national liberation and decolonisation. Aside from draconian policies to separate people according to racial categories, the annihilation of many Indigenous and Aboriginal peoples and the appropriation of their lands necessitated an entirely different approach to socialism, one that never really came about as a result of racism or Eurocentrism among settler colonial socialists (Bedford and Irving-Stephens 2000). The various early Utopian socialist communities formed in the US by the likes of Cabet and Owen in the 1800s attest to a widespread indifference among socialists of the day to the racism, genocide and settler colonial land theft that enabled the establishment of such Utopian socialist communities. The revolution in Haiti (1791–1804) – a yoke-shattering, world-transforming freedom struggle – was and still is little appreciated in socialist movements (Blackburn 2006). Environmental impacts in the Americas are thus overwhelmingly tied to shifts in various types of capitalist regimes.<br /> <br /> Yet hundreds of years of Indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples’ liberation struggles have nurtured movements that have led to some socialist successes in taking over the reins of government. The pluri-national state of Bolivia and the Bolivarian state of Venezuela are the main illustrations of socialist rule over a still capitalist economy. Mixed-heritage peasant movements have also played a major role, as in the establishment of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. But these are short-lived, limited or very recent turns of events. A veritable contrast is Cuba. Since sloughing off US colonial dominance in 1959, Cuba exemplifies continuity despite huge odds. There has been repression, not too unlike in other state-socialist contexts, but never to mass-murdering proportions. Arguably state socialism became a default pathway out of neocolonial stagnation. More is said about Cuba in Chapter 4, but the environmental repercussions have eventually been the making of the most environmentally sustainable country on the planet.<br /> <br /> Aside from various forms of often repressive if not mass-murdering statism and misguided vanguardism, there were also traces of Saint-Simonianism in the self-congratulatory importance given to parties as omniscient guides or incarnations of the proletariat. This streak would explode into an increasingly dominant technocratic wing in socialist states as they came to be increasingly integrated into the economic orbits of core capitalist countries, mainly those of western Europe and North America. The intensifying economic dependence of socialist states on capital from liberal democracies translated politically into the reform phase of the 1960s and 1970s (Frank 1989). During this period, party affiliation, especially in central and east European state-socialist countries, started to become less economically important (though still politically prestigious) than technocratic status. A dual system came into temporary existence characterised by military and political dependence on the USSR and economic dependence on the most powerful capitalist states (Böröcz 1992).<br /> <br /> The PRC would also partially succumb to such internal party friction, but in different ways and through deadlier struggles (i.e. the Cultural Revolution, 1966–76) eventuating in the Dèng reforms of 1978 and the more or less fully fledged capitalism in the present under CPC direction, with key economic sectors under direct state control. By the 1980s, other socialist states would follow suit in South East Asia (e.g. Vietnam’s 1986 Đổi Mới reforms), as they would in the USSR and through much of the state-socialist world. Huberman and Sweezy (1968, 117–20) summed up well some of the major contradictory characteristics of the USSR and with it arguably most other state-socialist countries when they deemed the system highly stratified, ‘effectively depoliticized’ and capable, by means of private rather than socially oriented incentives, of rivalling the likes of Japan in coaxing ever more productivity from workers. Still, the histories and development of socialist states and their environmental impacts are incomprehensible without factoring in internal struggles, capitalist legacies, pressures from belligerent capitalist states and changing social and environmental conditions (see also Chase-Dunn 1982).<br /> <br /> === Ecosocialism ===<br /> Socialist states may be the centre of attention in this work, but, as briefly discussed, socialism has always included movements resisting or refusing centralisation or state power. I return to these only to highlight those that have influenced the development of ecosocialist ideas and organising. This is because such socialist movements give primary status to environmental concerns.<br /> <br /> Ecosocialism, briefly put, is a movement, perspective and by now even an institutional politics that gathers socialist and environmentalist principles and objectives together. It is socialist in the sense of identifying capitalist relations as the ultimate and systemic cause of structural inequalities and environmental destruction. Politically, this means struggling for social equality by establishing the social control of the means to life. This includes decolonisation and cross-generational justice as well as overcoming patriarchal relations and developing respect for differing knowledge systems, striving to combine them to the benefit of all. Ecosocialism is environmentalist in calling attention to the biophysically destructive character of currently conventional ways of living and in premising the understanding of biophysical processes on diverse forms of systematic knowledge and inquiry, institutional and otherwise. Ecosocialism, in other words, stands for the development of biophysically sustainable egalitarian communities worldwide (Kovel 2014; Löwy 2011; Turner and Brownhill 2006).<br /> <br /> Like socialism has been historically, ecosocialism is just as divided regarding political strategies, ways of organising and other such matters. Hans Baer (2018, 136–53) provides a useful overview of the different currents. A salient difference is among those who see state power or centralisation as essential, those who find such strategy anathema and those who strive to find complementarity between grassroots and state institutions.<br /> <br /> To some extent, as remarked above, environmental concern was already expressed in the writings of Marx, Engels, Reclus, Kropotkin, Luxemburg and Lenin, among others, but it was not really until the 1960s that socialist movements returned to and elaborated on the germinal ideas within the socialisms of the 1800s and early 1900s (Foster 2000; Gare 1993). The global 1968 revolts were a particularly important juncture in this recovery and elaboration process.<br /> <br /> Anarchist-communist, feminist, Maoist and Trotskyist organisations were influential in those revolts, an outpouring of liberation movements long excluded or marginalised within most socialist or state-socialist institutions. In many countries, including in liberal democracies like Mexico, such movements suffered from police brutality, assassinations and outright massacres during protests. In the US, one may recall the Black Panther Party, among other national liberation movements like the Young Lords and the American Indian Movement, who were methodically and ruthlessly squashed through liberal democratic state repression (Shawki 2006).<br /> <br /> Such organisations, if not the ideas they promoted, have been important in the formation and development of existing anti-systemic movements, through the World Social Forum and other international groupings like Via Campesina. The latter was constituted largely by smallholding farmers and has aided the development of low-input farming in Cuba. There are also revolutionary movements and communities drawing inspiration directly from communist and socialist histories and ideas, but on the basis of their complementarities with locally specific egalitarian communalistic traditions, political and philosophical thought and current social conditions. A few salient examples of such anti-authoritarian forces at the time of writing include the Brazilian Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Workers Movement, formed in 1984), the South African Landless People’s Movement (founded in 2001), the largely Tzotzil Mayan EZLN (founded in 1983) and the militarily besieged and mostly Kurdish Democratic Confederalism of Rojava (Northern Syria, established in 2011). In core capitalist countries there are or have been similar movements like Occupy, the Anarchist Black Cross and Co-operative Jackson in North America and various communities in Italy struggling to re-establish the commons (e.g. NoTav in the Piedmont region), as well as long-standing squatters movements in many metropolitan areas (Akuno and Nangwaya 2017; Cattaneo and Engel-Di Mauro 2015). This is besides the continuity of relatively small political formations and periodically erupting popular demands for more state-socialist kinds of provisions, like guaranteed employment, workplace rights, unemployment benefits, health care and much else.<br /> <br /> There have been socialist ideas infused to some extent in environmentalist movements as well, especially since the late 1980s. Several theorist-activists and dissidents in state-socialist countries began to reassess and, in many cases, prematurely or opportunistically reject Marxist approaches from an environmental standpoint, and in some cases to mine classical works for ideas, until then mostly ignored, on people–environment relations. Arguably, more advanced environmental understanding in socialism or communism emerged in areas of the world where struggles for self-determination or sheer survival (e.g. decolonisation) involve the protection of ecosystems such as forests. Hence, the Brazilian Seringueiros movement led by Chico Mendes (assassinated in 1988) was among the first to combine ecological and socialist approaches in an explicit manner by the early to middle 1980s (Löwy 2011). The relatively late attendance to ecological thought within socialist and communist movements (and later in some parties, too) is only partly explainable by the predominance of socialist state industrialisation prerogatives, in their varied garbs. The preoccupations of the majority of socialists and communists lay firmly within the social. After all, it was the social question that lay at centre stage in the very origins of socialism. Furthermore, socialists and communists were not immune to the society–nature dualism and other ideological constructs typical of capitalist societies.<br /> <br /> Historically it has therefore been challenging to overcome such predominant worldviews. The 1990s, however, saw the bridging of what have been often called red and green perspectives, congealed in emerging and spreading red-green movements. In some case, green parties, for example, have incorporated some traditional socialist issues as part of their platforms, as in the UK. Conversely, anarchist-communist, Trotskyist and other communist parties and organisations have increasingly adopted environmental issues as their own, such as in the Fourth International. Efforts have also continued to be made to draw red-green movements closer to the numerous struggles of Indigenous peoples, especially as a result of the latter’s worldviews and everyday practices being traditionally more constructive or holistic relative to nature. Such major self-critical renewals are also behind the development of what have become known as ecosocialist perspectives. Aside from movements taking up these ideas, including Kovel and Löwy’s ''Ecosocialist Manifesto'' (2001), there have been several political formations and even state institutions where ecosocialism is increasingly being incorporated in platforms and policies, as in the Bolivian and Venezuelan governments (the latter even having a ministry dedicated to ecosocialism), the Left-Green Movement (Iceland), the Nordic Green Left Alliance and the Partido Socialismo e Libertade (Brazil). What is also novel to these developments in socialist and communist movements and institutional political formations is their attentiveness to and promotion of gender, anti-racist and decolonial egalitarian outlooks, viewed as crucial to ecosocialist transformation (Baer 2018).<br /> <br /> With this historical overview and multiple-scale relations of power in mind, Chapter 3 addresses and takes apart prevailing ways in which state-socialist and capitalist systems are compared relative to environmental records. First, conventional methodology is applied to disprove the view, based on that same methodology, that environmental impacts are worse under state socialism. Afterwards, the conventional methodology is subjected to critique on account of the explanatory interlinkages and contexts it erases, and a different comparative analysis is developed.<br /> <br /> == The Poverty of Comparisons ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;To put the point as bluntly as possible, socialist revolution has proven to be less ecologically harmful than capitalist imperialist rivalry and counterrevolution.&lt;/blockquote&gt;– James O’Connor (1998, 257)<br /> <br /> An exceedingly warm day in late May 2020 in northern Siberia is all it took to liquefy the permafrost land supports of a diesel fuel tank at a thermal power plant near Norilsk, among the cities most polluted by heavy metals and sulphur emissions. The structure collapsed due to its own weight and 6,000 tonnes of diesel seeped into the soil. Another 15,000 tonnes reached nearby waterways and the turbid, grey-brown water of the Ambarnaya River turned crimson. It will take decades for this part of the Arctic to recover ecologically. So far, in Russia, only the 1994 Komi crude oil spill surpasses the amount spread by the Norilsk disaster. Yet this major spill pales in comparison to the Exxon Valdez disaster near Tatitlek, Alaska. In March 1989, with the beginning of the end of European state socialism, an Exxon tanker smashed into a reef at Prince William Sound, releasing some 37,000 tonnes of crude oil, immediately ravaging surrounding ocean ecosystems and another 2,100 km of coastline. And yet this is still a small fraction of the all-time record-setting Deepwater Horizon explosion at the hands of BP. The oil released and still being released has polluted about 1,770 km of coastline. The Norilsk disaster is therefore not the worst by any means. It is, however, the latest in a long and ever more sordid record of fossil fuel havoc wreaked on oceans, seas and inland waters and on all beings drawing their sustenance directly therefrom. The taiga and broad-leaf coniferous forests in the Ural region have been contaminated with crude oil since the USSR was made to vanish (Buzmakov et al. 2019). The Norilsk diesel spill, along with all the largest, high-frequency and low-magnitude fossil fuel spills, is a crystal clear free-market product, since the raw material is extracted by a private company for profit, to be sold in domestic and world markets.<br /> <br /> Not that Norilsk – home of the world’s largest smelting complex – had previously been a centre of ecological harmony. Very far from it. Under the USSR, starting in the 1930s with forced labour, Norilsk eventually joined the list of most polluted cities in the world, with its concentration of smelters and mining operations. The Kola Peninsula is peppered with pockets of lasting damage, most intensified since the 1970s, including taiga forests diminished by acid rain downwind of nickel smelters and piles of radioactive waste from nuclear plants (Bruno 2016; Kozlov and Barcan 2000; Revich 1995). Other cities, like Chelyabinsk and Magnitogorsk, bear the environmental scars of similar policies. These cases, often and rightfully decried as monstrosities, were modelled after industrial centres in the US, like Gary, Indiana (Josephson et al. 2013, 84), among the most enduringly polluted places (Dietrich et al. 2019; Hurley 1988). It should be little surprise that shifting to capitalism has not at all improved on prior disasters and certainly not on the USSR’s conservation achievements. The diesel spill is a testament to worsening conditions in other aspects of environmental impacts. Yet continuing and in some ways worsening pollution problems are glossed over when the USSR’s environmental record is evaluated. And the same logic is extended to socialism generally. Typical arguments begin with some assertion that state socialism was (or is) worse on the environment than those of capitalist ‘democratic’ societies.<br /> <br /> Often the comparison (even when parenthetical) ends there. Socialism is just categorically worse to the environment. Full stop. It is common sense. Supporting evidence is optional. And it is for good reason that such totalising statements are rarely backed by data. Because when comparisons are made at all, the results end up embarrassing purveyors of free-market democracy. Some conditions under state socialism are similar to or even better than under industrialised liberal democracies, like the relatively much lower levels of consumption and waste (either total or per capita; see Birman 1989; Goldman 1972; Krausmann et al. 2016). Other aspects may be worse but in delimited zones, like air quality around Norilsk or sulphur emissions from coal-fired plants and heating systems.<br /> <br /> Another instance of using environmental problems to defame socialism is the infamous ‘black triangle’, where air quality still tends to be poor. It is a roughly Belgium-sized heavily industrialised area located at the meeting points of the Czech Republic, the former German Democratic Republic, and Poland. But this comparison is hardly unequivocal when compared to the frequent deadly smog enveloping the Po Valley in northern Italy or the areas in and around Delhi, in northern India, or the recurring toxic air in the same, now formerly state-socialist ‘black triangle’. And Los Angeles had its fair share of smog problems for decades before heavy regulations, not more free-market measures or more ‘democracy’, were put in place.<br /> <br /> It might seem simple enough to parry any such critique with constant reminders of Chernobyl, as if it says everything about what socialism meant for the environment and people. A more critical view of cases like the US’s Three Mile Island disaster should temper those kinds of pronouncements, as Marshall Goldman (1988) would have reminded us. One could create an equally false image of the US, Canada and other liberal democracies by showing only the most devastated areas in those countries. Here are a few examples: the destruction of the Florida Everglades, the pollution of the Niger Delta, the Bhopal disaster, the radioactive releases at Hanford in the US, the more than 3,000 highly contaminated Superfund sites in the US and acid deposition in western and central Europe.<br /> <br /> It seems that comparisons are more often rhetorical window dressing than attempts to get to grips at all with the causes of environmental destruction. Most of the landscapes in state-socialist countries have not been negatively impacted, if impacted at all, compared to what was done prior to the political change that brought about socialist states. This could and should be said of China now as well. In any case, there is a prevailing omission about similarities. To draw from Philip Pryde: ‘history must deem the 1970s and 1980s as decades of net environmental losses. This is equally true in both the United States and the Soviet Union, where striking parallels exist in the context of environmental problems’ (Pryde 1991, 291). In other words, the environmental records of industrialised state-socialist and liberal democratic countries are more a case of convergence, not differential ranking, but – it is important to add – for divergent causes created through interlinkages across state-socialist and capitalist countries.<br /> <br /> Anti-socialist environmentalism is like the shallow, fig-leaf variety (‘econationalism’) expressed by many protest groups in the latter-day USSR, where environmental devastation continued or recrudesced almost as soon as local bosses could grab for themselves a piece of the USSR and call it independence. Comparisons are usually not followed through. Perhaps it is because they do not lead unequivocally to capitalist superiority.<br /> <br /> Comparative statements are largely deployed as pre-emptive intervention to foreclose debate. And in terms of physical health (Cereseto and Waitzkin 1986; Navarro 1992), capitalist detractors of state socialism would certainly lose the argument. This is among the open secrets that gets very little attention and very rare mention. But on the environment, comparisons can get easily muddled because it is not as straightforward as pitting some measure of economic development against physical health indicators. There are different ecosystems with widely different kinds of species and characteristics, multiple biophysical combinations, long-term and shifting weather patterns, and so much else to consider. The variability is quite the head spinner. What is being compared is a much greater challenge than is usually recognised. But when comparisons of environmental impact are indeed made between capitalism and state socialism, they tend to be self-servingly selective, supporting the pre-packaged conclusion that free-market democracy is best.<br /> <br /> === Making Comparative Frameworks Explicit ===<br /> As already discussed about such selectivity, why are most countries ignored, and why are the criteria for comparison seldom specified? What is supposed to be compared to what and on what basis? In the case of socialist states, it seems more appropriate to compare industrialising countries with similar countries or to compare according to comparable levels of economic status or timing of industrialisation. This would be more sensible than pretending that, say, much of western Europe, with a couple of hundred years of industrialisation, is comparable to south-eastern Europe (e.g. Albania, Bulgaria, Romania), with very recent industrialisation packed into a few decades. After all, many environmentalists pin the blame on industrialisation for our current environmental woes (as if technology, not politics, were the malaise to be addressed). It also makes little sense to compare Japan or West Germany with Hungary, Poland or Yugoslavia (instead of, say, Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic), because manufacturing and mechanisation, among other such developments, largely occurred from the 1960s onwards in those state-socialist countries, not, as in Japan, since the late nineteenth century. South Korea or Taiwan may make more sense to compare to Hungary and Poland, in this respect. In any case, if one is keen on the environment, ecosystem comparisons should also be made, without skipping inconvenient cases. We know about the disappearing Aral Sea or the pollution dangers to Lake Baikal; yet we are implicitly asked to forget about the dried-up Baja California wetlands, the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer, the pollution of Lake Okeechobee, the Mississippi delta dead zone and the thinning of Lake Chad. If comparisons are to be made, they should be made all the way. Here, I do this in a largely illustrative manner to show some salient problems that should be acknowledged openly and confronted. This is also because of the dearth of data available that cross administrative boundaries or that go beyond treating national boundaries as if they neatly demarcated environmental impacts.<br /> <br /> Much is unjustifiably assumed in mainstream scholarship and, scratching the surface a bit, it turns out that three kinds of comparison underlie much of the argumentation on socialist states and the environment: (1) absolutist, (2) synchronous and (3) diachronic. In an absolutist comparison a social system’s overall environmental impact is assessed on the basis of the highest or lowest rankings. It is characterised by recourse to superlatives (like worst or best) and to the logical flaw of generalising from one or a handful of cases. Another comparative framework is geographical and synchronous, as in what happened in different countries during the same historical period. A third technique is to analyse environmental impacts across time (diachronous) within a country, as in comparing the before and after of a major historical change, like the abandonment of state socialism for liberal democracy or another capitalist variant of politics. Synchronous and diachronous comparisons can be useful in giving a general picture of the environmental impacts of socialist state systems. However, one must also beware that political units rarely if ever coincide with ecological ones. Diverse environments are enveloped within an administrative level (e.g. a country’s borders) and a similar kind of ecosystem can cross different countries or administrative units. What is more, environmental impacts in the past affect the kind of environment subsequently encountered and impacted. For example, the deforestation of a landscape brings about a changed ecosystem inherited by the following generation, so that environmental impacts over the same place or region may not be comparable across time without historical analysis. Some impacts also exceed the area and period in which they occur, such as with airborne lead pollution or greenhouse gas emissions. Countries where a long-term environmental problem is detected, such as lake acidification, may not be the only or even primary source of the problem, which could be due to atmospheric transfers of pollutants from another country. These are some of the issues that make environmental impact comparisons across and within countries challenging and at times of dubious legitimacy. Changes in ecological dynamics matter as much as social ones. The utmost is tried here to account for both kinds of processes, but I also show that even comparisons that are done conventionally do not demonstrate any greater environmental friendliness for liberal democracies. In fact, the opposite is often the case.<br /> <br /> === Absolutist Comparisons ===<br /> Using superlatives is more a propagandistic or sloganeering tactic than a methodology, but it is common enough that it merits at least a brief dissection, with an equally quick dismissal. In the conventional environmentalist imaginary, the USSR and ‘eastern Europe’ figure as regions of the world where the worst industrial accidents or worst cases of pollution have happened. Characteristic of this kind of ranking is an allusion to the Chernobyl accident, the destruction of the Aral Sea and so on. The argument, simply stated, is that the worst environmental insults are in state-socialist countries; therefore, the whole of socialism or communism is awful for the environment.<br /> <br /> This ‘selective citation of environmental atrocities’ (McIntyre and Thornton 1978, 175) has been around for many decades. It is specious argumentation amounting to a diversionary tactic to dissimulate the main causes. A handful of industrialised or industrialising countries are claimed to represent not only all state-socialist countries, but all of socialism or all of communism, even communist projects brutally suppressed in state-socialist countries. Most state-socialist countries, though, had no such awful environmental impacts. Rather, countries like Laos and Vietnam are reeling still from the widespread and enduring environmental devastation inflicted by the US government’s military invasion and carpet bombings in the 1960s and 1970s.<br /> <br /> Another major flaw is about the lack of criteria discussed to pass judgement in the first place. Given the examples frequently cited, it can be deduced that the criteria consist of the size of the area affected, lasting negative impacts and sometimes the number of human deaths. The problem is that there are many kinds of impacts and they are not necessarily commensurable. For instance, it is true that the worst nuclear power accident occurred at Chernobyl, but it is also true that the worst oil spill in history so far happened just off the coast of Louisiana (US) in 2010, the Deepwater Horizon explosion. On land, the 1994 Mingbulak oil spill in the Ferghana Valley (Uzbekistan) is the largest recorded so far (Sharma et al. 2020), though not in terms of area and numbers of people deleteriously affected. For that, one should consider at least among the worst cases the Texaco oil drilling pollution in the lands of the Kichwa and Shuar Nations (north-east Ecuador). From 1964 to 1990, that US firm intentionally dumped 68 billion litres of toxic wastewater and 64 million litres of crude oil over a 4,400 km2 area. Cancer-related deaths and miscarriages have skyrocketed among the more than 30,000 people inhabiting the area (Coronel Vargas et al. 2020; San Sebastián et al. 2001). The worst case of dioxin contamination was the 1976 industrial accident at Seveso, Italy, in terms of adverse health effects, and, in terms of permanently displaced inhabitants, the 1983 Times Beach chemical plant leak (Missouri, US). The Centralia underground coal mine fire at Centralia, Pennsylvania, has been burning since 1962, making that part of the state uninhabitable. It is unclear which of these different kinds of impacts should be considered worse than another and on what basis.<br /> <br /> Even if the criteria were clear and took care of impact specificity, the claim about state-socialist impacts as the worst quickly evaporates. The reader may want to consider, in terms of total areas affected and loss of ecosystems, the massive losses of forests and wetlands worldwide prior to the 1917 Russian Revolution and still ongoing even after the disappearance of nearly all socialist states. In terms of lasting damage, one might wish to become acquainted or remind oneself of the Hanford radioactivity experiment on inhabitants of Washington State (US) and the nuclear detonations on Maralinga land (Australia), a case among many, within countries like the US and Australia as well as within the former USSR, where large areas remain off limits because of unsafe levels of radioactivity. It is particularly jarring to find anyone from the US, a country sprinkled with more than 1,300 highly contaminated sites (US EPA 2020a), pointing to the USSR or now China as the most polluted country. In terms of human deaths, it is under capitalist conditions where environmental disasters are accompanied by the highest mortalities. Two horrific, heart-wrenching examples are in Bhopal, where the actual worst industrial accident in history was inflicted by a US business (Mittal 2016), and the Niger Delta, where oil extraction by a combination of northern European firms and national government forces has undermined the health and livelihoods of millions.<br /> <br /> A little past midnight on 3 December 1984, following several years of managerial negligence to reduce costs, a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal released, along other reaction products, about 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (used to produce carbaryl pesticide). More than half a million people were exposed to the poison, mainly poor residents, many living in shacks. Within two days 8,000 people suffocated to death, succumbing to pulmonary oedema. Over the subsequent 20 years the toll reached 20,000 deaths. Of those who survived, more than 200,000 have been harmed by life-debilitating pulmonary, gynaecological, ocular and/or neurological ailments, while thousands more were born with deformities (Broughton 2005; Dhara and Dhara 2002; Gupta and Varma 2020; Mishra et al., 2009). The plant was shut down shortly after the disaster. Years of prior wastewater discharge and post-closure leaking stockpiles have contaminated local soils and groundwater with carbaryl, hexachloro-cyclohexane and other persistent organochlorines, alongside chromium, mercury, nickel and lead pollution. Nearby residents, already suffering from exposure to toxic gases, remain at risk for neurological, hepatological, reproductive, endocrine and gastrointestinal damage, among other health effects, through soil contact, dust inhalation, water use and bioaccumulation (Johnson et al., 2009). The struggle for clean-up and reparations continues and those responsible for the catastrophe have yet to be brought to justice. Unlike the cases of Chernobyl and Fukushima, there were no permanent evacuations in Bhopal. People there still live in a highly contaminated environment, with little institutional support or compensation. This is in India, the world’s largest liberal democracy.<br /> <br /> In Nigeria, Africa’s largest liberal democracy, there exists another under-recognised case of extensive and lasting pollution. The Niger Delta is among the world’s largest coastal wetland and mangrove swamp areas (''c''.26,000 km2). It is home to millions of people whose livelihoods depend primarily on subsistence farming, gathering and hunting (Kalu and Stewart 2007). Since the discoveries of oil and gas reserves in the early 1950s, soils have been contaminated through onshore drilling, piping, transport and refining. Continuous gas flaring and thousands of spills are major sources of surface soil contamination, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and heavy metals to levels tens of thousands of times those recommended by the WHO (Abii and Nwosu 2009; Ipingbemi 2009; Iwegbue et al. 2009). Among the immediate health consequences of pollution have been deformities at birth, liver damage and dermal diseases, but carcinogenic compounds and heavy metal poisoning contribute to making many locals’ lives painful and short. Soil pollution is also undermining water quality and agricultural productivity through direct crop losses and soil nutrient decline (Dung et al. 2008; Rim-Rukeh et al. 2007; Sojinu et al. 2010). Health hazards are compounded by mass impoverishment and meagre infrastructure due to the destruction of livelihood resources, heightening economic dependence on foreign institutions and the militarised appropriation by transnational corporations and the central government of the bulk of oil and gas profits. Such gross injustice, recognised in international courts, has been met since the 1970s by a combination of protests, legal action and armed struggles, without substantial redress so far (Watts 1997).<br /> <br /> If one digs a bit more among the droves of environmental pollution cases, one discovers that the culprits of disaster are almost all private enterprises and war-related state industries from liberal democracies. The US Department of Defense is especially destructive, sending into the atmosphere more greenhouse gases than entire industrialised countries like Sweden (Crawford 2019; Schwartzman and Schwartzman 2019). But there is an even more sinister aspect to the oft-repeated proclamation on socialist states as intrinsically destructive. It is an aspect that environmental justice activists and scholars have long known about and documented (see the ''Environmental Justice Atlas'';1 Temper et al. 2015). Viewed globally, the message from Bhopal and the Niger Delta could not be louder. People of colour can be murdered at will by transnational and national capitalists without much, if any, substantive consequence. The familiar trope in the mainstream about socialism’s disastrous environmental consequences conceals the fact that the worst cases have occurred in capitalist countries and that most people fatally affected by environmental destruction have not been white, much less east European whites. To borrow from Vijay Prashad (2018), the question has never really been so much about East and West as about South and North.<br /> <br /> === Categorisation Criteria to Compare Environmental Impacts ===<br /> If the claim that socialist states are the worst does not hold, perhaps one can say, as is more often said, that on the whole state socialism has been worse than capitalism on the environment. This moderated expression is a relative, rather than absolute, kind of comparison. At first glance it would seem a more plausible thesis until a comparison is attempted in more than an impressionistic or partial way, which is how comparisons have so far been done. Most of those who claim state-socialist systems are environmentally worse furnish no criteria about which countries count as state-socialist nor justify the selection of countries included in a comparative analysis. For this and other reasons it was important to clarify these criteria in Chapter 1, so that at least those disagreeing with the outcome of the analysis offered here can spell out their own alternative criteria for comparisons and then make the comparisons accordingly (and just as systematically). What prevails instead in studies on this topic is the almost sole focus on eastern Europe, the USSR and/or China, with Cuba rarely considered, and the exclusion of state-socialist countries in Africa and South East Asia.<br /> <br /> A systematic comparison is far from simple. There is great disparity in the total number of countries for each social system, with capitalist countries greatly outnumbering state-socialist and socialist government countries, depending on the historical period (see Chapter 1). As of 2020, the ratio of capitalist to the other two social systems combined is more than 200 to one, with Cuba argued here as the only state-socialist country left. Countries like China, Eritrea and Vietnam, ruled by (self-titled) socialist or communist single-party governments, are categorised as countries with a ‘socialist government’ in a capitalist economy. Social democratic parties and thereby social democracies became avowedly pro-capitalist in the aftermath of World War I. The total number of countries under different systems shifted markedly over the decades covered, as social systems were transformed from state-socialist to capitalist and some polities literally disappeared (Figure 3.1). Socialist states became capitalist regimes by the early 1990s especially in northern Eurasia and Central Asia, but also in southern and eastern Africa. Nicaragua’s Sandinista government yielded to right-wingers by the early 1990s. Only a few countries, like North Korea and Cuba, did not undergo such political change, at least not in that direction, even though they were deeply affected by systemic changes in what was the USSR. As discussed earlier, in North Korea, notably, the change by the 1970s was towards the shedding of socialism in favour of Juche (self-reliance) ideology and a dynastic autocratic order. The PRC became a special case starting with a major systemic change in 1978, leading to a capitalist economy under a self-described communist party. Something similar occurred in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam between the middle of the 1980s and the early 1990s. There are therefore multiple cut-off dates to keep in mind for different countries, although the 1989–92 period remains pivotal with respect to a capitalist turn.<br /> <br /> [image]<br /> <br /> It is striking how low the number of state-socialist countries was compared to capitalist countries even in the heyday of state socialism: the 1970s and 1980s. The low number is deceptive, though. During that time, 34 per cent of the global population lived in state-socialist countries, which covered about 30 per cent of the earth’s land surface (aggregated data from CIA 1976 and UNSD 2007). About a third of the human world back then existed outside the direct rule of capitalists and certainly outside liberal democracies. Importantly, with respect to environmental impacts, the timing of industrialisation mainly coincides with the inception of state socialism or one-party socialist governments (Table 3.1; summed from Tables 1.2. and 1.3). Some countries are counted twice because they reindustrialised following war, as in Hungary, or had major manufacturing expansion on a pre-existing industrial base, as in the USSR. This is something to keep in mind because most capitalist countries continue to have low or insignificant levels of industrialisation. The potential for impact intensity is much greater in countries undergoing industrialisation, especially when, in the case of socialist states, there is no neocolonial outlet.<br /> <br /> ''Table 3.1'' Number of countries industrialised relative to social system introduction<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable&quot;<br /> |''Social system''<br /> | colspan=&quot;2&quot; |''Total countries''<br /> |-<br /> |<br /> |''Preceding''<br /> |''During''<br /> |-<br /> |State socialism<br /> |6<br /> |13<br /> |-<br /> |One-party socialist government<br /> |2<br /> |5<br /> |}<br /> The level and timing of (re)industrialisation is tied to the availability of investments to build, maintain and expand factories, offices, transportation networks, machinery, schooling systems and much else. Economic indicators like gross domestic product (GDP) give an indication of the potential for such investments as well as for resource consumption (via purchasing power) beyond the demands of a manufacturing sector. Extreme gaps exist among countries in this respect and they cross social systems. At the same time, no country is really isolated from the capitalist world economy, as shown in Chapters 1 and 2. There are mutual influences among countries by means of, for example, commercial ties, and, fatefully for many communities, relations of domination or neocolonial interventions by the most powerful states and capitalist institutions on much of the rest of the world. Socialist states were and are enmeshed and shaped by these dynamics. A relational kind of comparative framework is therefore in order where countries’ relative position in the capitalist world economy is included in the analysis. This way of proceeding with comparisons is much more apt than the typical arbitrary and highly skewed selection of only the most industrialised state-socialist countries with economic means typically reaching only half of those of the wealthiest capitalist countries against which they are compared. That is like comparing people living in luxury and privilege with those priced out of healthy foods and healthcare, and then pointing the finger at the latter for their worse health conditions or poor choices in life.<br /> <br /> Comparisons of the environmental records of countries that interact with each other should involve, at the very least, a consideration and an analysis of data that better represent a country’s relative status, that imply a wider interlinked context and that also point to processes shaping all sorts of environmental policies and practices. Drawing from world systems scholarship, this can be more effectively accomplished by using the analytical category of world-system position, which is historically dynamic (the position can shift) and accounts for enormous power differences. Relations of power, in this case at the international scale, are represented by the categories of periphery, semi-periphery and core. Minqi Li masterfully and succinctly describes them this way:<br /> <br /> The core regions, because of their strong military power and monopoly over the leading sectors of the capitalist world economy, are able to extract economic surplus from the periphery and the semi-periphery through unequal exchange. Much of the economic surplus produced by the periphery is extracted by the core and the semi-periphery. The semi-peripheral regions extract economic surplus from the periphery but are exploited by the core. (Li 2016, 197)<br /> <br /> Minqi Li’s per capita GDP method is employed here, along with the same database (Bolt et al. 2018), to approximate world-system position and account for population size. Countries with more than double the world’s average per capita GDP are assigned core status and those in the semi-periphery have values from average to twice the average figures. Below average per capita GDP places a country in the periphery. This way, the most powerful state-socialist countries like the USSR, German Democratic Republic and PRC are compared with much more like analogues in the semi-periphery of the capitalist world, like Brazil, India, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. The wealthiest capitalist countries in the world are in a sordid league of their own and should be treated as such – not as exceptions, but as countries embodying a substantively different status as the main manipulators of the world economy and enforcers of capitalism (Amin 2018; Wallerstein 1979). At the same time, and this is a major departure from standard fare, the state-socialist periphery is included in the analysis and compared to like capitalist regions characterised by similar economic conditions.<br /> <br /> Within the fifty-year period considered (1960s through the 2010s), shifts in position have had negligible statistical effects. Nevertheless, for the countries where this applies the average ranking is computed and rounded to the nearest integer. The decades and number of countries considered vary because of data availability limitations. Most countries are represented (86–91 per cent, the higher percentage starting in the 1990s), and data for small island or archipelago countries tend to be under-reported. The historical time frame includes the maximum extent of state socialism as well as the major bouts of industrialisation state-socialist countries underwent. Thus, the very worst environmental effects of state socialism are also displayed. It turns out that even using the least flattering data for state-socialist countries points to their environmental impacts being less terrible than those of their capitalist counterparts.<br /> <br /> === Comparing Social Systems over the Same Periods (Synchronic Comparisons) ===<br /> A general comparison between social systems, while effacing differences among countries, is still useful to get a panoramic, global view of environmental impact as long as no more than that is said about such a comparison. This kind of data analysis is done on CO2 emissions and ecological footprints of consumption because of their planetary, long-term consequences through climate change and pressures on the biosphere, respectively. Details on these parameters and terms are provided later in this chapter and standard deviations are visually displayed regarding CO2 emissions to show how wide discrepancies among countries can be acknowledged. CO2 is closely linked to fossil fuel combustion, the mainstay of energy use, while raw material extraction and resource use in general affects the broader impact on ecosystems. Hence, and using per capita figures, biophysical processes, economic processes and human well-being aspects are being considered at once. CH4 (methane) emissions also have global climate repercussions, but they are entered into a comparative analysis based on both world-system position and social system type to explore a more relational angle to greenhouse gas emissions. To represent other atmospheric emissions bearing more regional or localised impacts, SO2 emissions are analysed relative to world-system position and social system. This is because sulphur emissions typically form part of the more egregious insults stemming from the coal-based energy use typifying the state-socialist countries that engaged in rapid industrialisation. The point of all this is not to offer an exhaustive synchronic comparative study, but to show, by illustration, the baselessness of popular notions about the environmental impacts of state socialism, even according to those notions’ own logic.<br /> <br /> === Carbon Emissions ===<br /> CO2 comprises most of the emitted greenhouse gases linked to climate change (roughly three-quarters of all greenhouse gas emissions). When average per capita emissions of CO2 are scrutinised (Figure 3.2a), capitalist countries in short order evince a much greater impact. Because they were rapidly industrialising or reindustrialising to overcome the devastation of war, state-socialist countries had greater impacts in the early 1960s, while most of the capitalist world remained rural and many countries were just gaining formal independence. Many of the most highly industrialised capitalist countries were also reeling from a couple of wars, so mass consumption rates were just picking up speed, and there were still parts of the economy that were not tied to fossil fuel consumption. For example, household appliances were not widespread. This is what depressed average values for capitalist countries until the mass consumption boom spread, mainly in the core capitalist world.<br /> <br /> In the middle of the 1960s, capitalist countries, mainly the highly industrialised ones, accelerated fossil fuel use much more and simply took off with CO2 emissions, dwarfing the state-socialist and socialist governed countries. Non- or anti-Marxist, self-described socialist, one-party ruled countries mainly came into being between the late 1950s and the late 1960s, with countries like Iraq and Libya accounting for the spike in CO2 emissions as a result of increasing fossil fuel production capacity and to some extent industrialising. In state-socialist countries, emissions in the late 1960s and through the 1970s were tempered by the entry of agrarian or largely peasant societies becoming state-socialist, such as Congo, Laos, Kampuchea and Yemen. State-socialist countries were mainly composed of countries with low to middle GDP.<br /> <br /> [image]<br /> <br /> In the case of state-socialist countries, there is another factor seldom considered except when criticising socialism. GDP is, strictly speaking, based on market valuation, hardly the mainstay of state-socialist economic policies. Because market-based valuation and profit rates, which means constantly raising consumption rates, are typically shunned, if not considered illegitimate, in state-socialist countries, GDP or similar economic indicators may be less appropriate than total volumes of resource inputs and use-value outputs. Nevertheless, GDP is highly correlated with energy consumption, which is mostly derived by burning fossil fuels, which emit greenhouse gases (Schwartzman and Schwartzman 2019; Tucker 1995). State-socialist per capita emissions plummeted by the early 1990s, as most were transmogrified into capitalist systems or became single-party socialist government countries with capitalist economies, like the PRC and Vietnam. These latter countries intensified industrialisation and became integrated into the world economy as manufacturing centres, but it was primarily in China where the bulk of per capita yearly emissions occured (see Chapter 4). A steady increase occured through the 2000s throughout the capitalist world, mainly with the expansion of manufacturing in countries with a middle GDP level, including India and Brazil. State-socialist averages only reflect Cuba’s figures after 1992, and this points to Cuba being below average by two or more orders of magnitude relative to capitalist countries. This is the probable reason for the tendency of countries with lower or decreasing GDP over time contributing less greenhouse gas emissions.<br /> <br /> Averages mask enormous differences among countries within each system, such as the much greater emissions in places like the US and the Persian Gulf monarchies. These differences can be recognised by including standard deviation values (Figure 3.2b). Doing so also makes evident Cuba as the sole remaining state-socialist country since 1992 (hence the line interruption). The standard deviation for state-socialist countries is much more contained compared to capitalist and socialist government counterparts. The observable spike at the end of the 1960s is traceable to major oil exporters becoming nominally socialist in government, like Iraq and Libya, but consumption levels rapidly decrease, and it was mainly with the transformation of the PRC economy since 1978 that per capita emissions started rising again. However, the standard deviation is not as high as for capitalist countries, even if such figures include countries with the lowest GDP values in the world. Standard deviations over time indicate large variability among capitalist countries until the formerly state-socialist industrialised countries, especially in central and eastern Europe, joined the capitalist fold. Countries with socialist governments display large differences only when fossil fuel-producing countries started raising output, but afterwards, with the expansion in the number of such countries, the levels of per capita emissions by country first dropped as a result of non-industrialised countries and then jumped by the early 1990s with mainly the PRC contributing. In part this is also the consequence of the PRC becoming a net oil importer by 1992. Standard deviations for other greenhouse gases and air pollutants follow the same patterns as in the Figure 3.2 and for the same reasons, so they are not reported or discussed further. Noteworthy is that conversion into capitalist systems does not lead to an overall decline in per capita emissions. On the contrary, after the transition to capitalism, per capita emissions increase, while generally the opposite happens with conversion to state socialism. Though increasing especially since the late 1950s, world CO2 emissions ballooned from the early 1990s onwards, in the absence of any substantive influence by socialist states.<br /> <br /> Emitted CO2 lingers in the atmosphere for decades to more than a century, bearing lasting effects. So, it is important to consider cumulative (historical) contributions to gauge the impacts of different social systems, not just yearly emissions. The maximum atmospheric residence time of CO2 as well as available data coincide approximately with the time that has elapsed since the Russian Revolution. This makes for a direct historical comparison, except that both prior to 1946 and after 1992 only one state-socialist country existed. A more appropriate comparison would then be for the 1946–92 period, at the height of global state-socialist presence encompassing roughly a third of humanity. During that time about 69 per cent of the world cumulative total belonged to the capitalist countries and one could add the 5 per cent from the countries under one-party socialist governments, since they presided over capitalist economies (Table 3.2). Historically, then, capitalist economies have disproportionate carbon emissions, exceeding the two-thirds of the world they occupied in the 1946–92 bracket. This disproportionality argument is only strengthened when including capitalist markets under one-party socialist governments. Not only that, but there is an enormous emissions differential between the time of the maximum number of socialist states and when one socialist state existed. This suggests, as others have noted (Baer 2018, 32), that with socialist states in retreat much more CO2 is emitted globally, more than twice the amount (1,518,826 compared to 624,081 million tonnes). It is as if socialist states substantially restrained capitalist excesses. Perhaps a renewed worldwide spread of state socialism could more than halve capitalist countries’ emissions, but this is sheer conjecture. On the other hand, if the Cuban model were replicated, precipitous reductions and overall improvement globally would be assured.<br /> <br /> [image]<br /> <br /> === Methane and Sulphur Emissions and Position in the Capitalist World Economy ===<br /> Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas with greater global warming potential than CO2. Once airborne it can stay in the atmosphere for more than a decade and is 50 times more powerful than CO2 in terms of global warming effects. Thankfully all countries show a precipitous decline in CH4 emissions since 1970 in the core and semi-periphery (Figure 3.3). The trend for the industrialising or industrialised state-socialist countries in the semi-periphery, however, is one of very low emissions throughout, even as they increasingly shifted to methane to counter pollution from coal combustion. Most notably, core capitalist countries emit the most per capita on average. This is almost the reverse for the periphery, where socialist states like the PRC were continuing with rapid industrialisation during that period. However, the emissions, even at their peak, reach but a small fraction of capitalist core and semi-periphery countries. There was a very quick reduction by the 1980s, reflecting the systemic change in China and the mitigating effects of low-emission, lower-input agrarian countries like Angola, Madagascar and Mozambique into the state-socialist camp by the middle of the 1970s. The sudden reduction reached a new emissions rate that remained stable throughout the 1980s and then dropped even further, to below levels in both the capitalist and one-party socialist government periphery (Figure 3.4). Overall, relative to CO2 and CH4 emissions, capitalist systems consistently impact the atmosphere much more than either state-socialist or one-party socialist systems.<br /> <br /> [image]<br /> <br /> Comparisons, as stated above, should be thorough, and so presented here is also evidence of a net negative state-socialist impact on the atmosphere. Air pollutants like sulphur emissions (SO2), also a main ingredient of acid rain (Grennfelt et al. 2020), reflects less favourably on socialist states, and nowadays even more so with one-party socialist states, mainly the PRC (Figure 3.5). There is an irony to this. As explained in Chapter 4, the USSR government’s successful efforts to set up an international long-range air pollutants reduction agreement is a major factor in the SO2 emissions decline in core countries from the late 1970s onwards. Aside from that, this rare, noteworthy accomplishment in core countries is due to sustained environmentalist struggles forcing heavy government regulation on polluting capitalist firms. Data comparisons of this sort conceal the existence of such struggles. It should also be kept in mind that the lower levels in core countries are still four times those of the one-party socialist government and capitalist peripheries.<br /> <br /> Another matter needs to be clarified as well. The high level of sulphur emissions is largely because of a historically unprecedented rapid pace of industrialisation relying on often sulphur-rich coal reserves, more abundantly available in countries like the USSR, Poland, the PRC and the German Democratic Republic. Coal-burning power plants were not equipped with the cutting-edge tools to reduce sulphur output, as in core countries. At the same time there were measures taken by the 1980s in industrialised state-socialist countries to attenuate emissions and this is shown by a steady decline in SO2 emitted (Krüger et al. 2004; Welford 1991). The pattern is therefore similar historically to what transpired in the capitalist core (Dominick 1998), but this observation is to some extent deceptive. Because the peak pollution rates occurred over a much more compact period, the negative impact was also shorter in duration. Had socialist states continued their path of amelioration, SO2 emissions would have continued declining.<br /> <br /> [image]<br /> <br /> One-party socialist systems with capitalist economies exhibit a major sulphur emission uptick in the 1990s, mostly explainable by the PRC’s entry into the fold. The massive increase in emissions meets the rates featured in the disappearing state-socialist systems of the semi-periphery. There have been effective attenuating and preventive measures that have succeeded in cutting emissions down by at least a third, but the rates remain the highest. Alongside major industrial output increases, this is also traceable to the privatisation reforms and rapid industrialisation in the PRC combined with the influx of direct investment from capitalist countries, shown often to correlate highly with increases in, for example, CO2 emissions (Sarkodie et al. 2020). This is taken up again in Chapter 4. Regardless, with the capitalist transformation of nearly all socialist state countries, whether inclusive or not of formal political institutions, the net effect now is that half of humanity, mainly in India and China, is exposed to rising air pollution, resulting in millions of premature deaths every year (Shaddick et al. 2020).<br /> <br /> The capitalist periphery had a consistently lower impact relative to SO2 emissions compared to the socialist-oriented camps until recently with sulphur emissions (Figure 3.6). However, the post-1990 figures exhibit a major jump in the state-socialist category. This is due to Cuba being the sole state-socialist country remaining by then, so the trend from the 1990s refers to that of Cuba alone. Relative to most of the periphery, though, Cuba probably ranks highest in levels of industrialisation, urbanisation and overall standard of living, so the comparison gets tenuous. After a sudden fall, emissions reached levels comparable to those in the semi-periphery (with emissions in the range of Taiwan’s and the PRC’s, for example), which makes sense in terms of raising or maintaining high human development levels. This occurred as the economic output recovered from the sharp downturn linked to the disappearance of the USSR. In part, the problem is due to the US embargo, which impedes the local development and/or transfers of technologies from abroad that would help prevent the release of SO2 into the atmosphere. As discussed in Chapter 4, there are major positive changes in Cuba that are leading to reversing this trend.<br /> <br /> [image]<br /> <br /> === Other Biophysical Parameters ===<br /> So far, taking a partially conventional route to comparisons and focusing on the atmosphere, the picture is an equivocal one. It does not support the contention that state socialism is worse on the environment. Arguably, impacts on the chemical composition of the atmosphere are easier to compare, too. The atmosphere has less geographically and historically variable characteristics and processes than ecosystems, soils and surface waters on continental landmasses. Air emissions data are also more complete than most other kinds of environmental data. Effects of pollutants discharged into oceans and seas are tougher to analyse because the pollution sources are much more difficult to pin down to individual countries and the available data are not as geographically encompassing. Studying the spread of coastal dead zones is also at times challenging in terms of accounting for the wide variability of coastal ecosystems (from wetlands to semi-deserts) and, to some extent, in terms of determining provenance, when rivers cross different countries. Comparing impacts like deforestation, groundwater withdrawal, or soil erosion requires accounting for the great variety of forest ecosystems (with different biodiversity potentials), aquifer types (with differing capacities and replenishment rates) and soil types and their topographical position, while also controlling for the effects of past land uses under different social systems.<br /> <br /> Moreover, data are often insufficient or inadequate and monitoring systems may be spotty. Monitoring systems are distributed in extremely uneven ways worldwide (on soils data and monitoring, see Engel-Di Mauro 2014). In most countries, governments have limited infrastructure and budgets at their disposal even to carry out a monitoring programme. The matter cannot be easily resolved by using remote sensing data because global coverage is relatively recent and sometimes not as reliable as direct monitoring techniques. A more ecologically attuned alternative would be longitudinal (diachronic) studies of the same kinds of ecosystems within the same countries or, even better, when studies are available, ecoregions across countries. This is taken up below.<br /> <br /> Regardless, pretending all the above problems away does not yield the sort of results that would support the contention that state socialism is intrinsically damaging. In the case of soil degradation, this is rather evident. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) data compiled in the late 1980s show the USSR as no worse than other countries. In fact, the ranking of the USSR was 28th, much higher than that of the US, which was 52nd (higher ranking meaning less overall degradation). If one extends the comparisons, one finds Hungary ranked similarly higher than the Netherlands and other such results that indicate less soil degradation in industrialised state-socialist countries relative to the industrialised liberal democratic counterparts. Other interesting comparisons can be made, such as the Koreas having virtually the same ranking and Vietnam and Laos having much better rankings than Thailand, which is in turn ranked lower than Cambodia (Bot et al. 2000).<br /> <br /> These results are especially interesting in view of the exaggerated statements made by pro-capitalist institutions and intellectuals. For example, based on a 1988 study, the IMF, World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development posited that many regions in the former USSR were on the verge of ecological breakdown (reported in Hill 1997, 1). If that were true, the US should have already reached soil degradation hell by the 1980s, given the results of the above-discussed FAO study. Things get barmier still. Relying on just one 1995 World Bank report by a Hungarian agricultural economist, Josephson et al. (2013, 212) assert that a quarter of farmland in Armenia was eroded away ‘as a result of intensive and irrational agricultural practices’ during the USSR period. This is quite a statement, considering that in Armenia the only output that did not decline in the 1990s was in the farming sector, according to other agricultural economists (Lerman and Mirzakharian 2001, 9). Similar kinds of exaggerations, through the same World Bank report, are spread about Azerbaijan and Belarus (more than 20 per cent arable land loss) and Ukraine (a third of farmland lost). Strangely enough, people in those countries are not experiencing permanent food production shortfalls or mass starvation.<br /> <br /> As intimated, these kinds of soil degradation studies must be interpreted with much care, as they lump together information that is not easily comparable. For soil erosion severity comparisons one must control for more and less erodible kinds of soils. Countries with much steep topography, earthquake potential and/or active volcanoes should not be compared with countries mostly made up of plains in seismically inactive regions, at least not without qualification and apposite parametric adjustments. There are also problems related to the criteria used. Most authors of soil degradation studies measure potential land degradation relative to the requirements of an industrialised, market-oriented farming system, rather than small-scale peasant farming needs or hunter-gatherer requirements. Nevertheless, the much more credible FAO study, carried out by soil scientists rather than economists, directly contradicts the claims about state-socialist systems having somehow greater destructive propensities, even when using the same terms and the same biases as those implicit in those claims (e.g. assuming land to be arable if it yields marketable produce).<br /> <br /> === Ecological Footprints ===<br /> There is another way to compare overall impacts that in some way bypasses the above-described challenges. The method is called the ‘ecological footprint’. It is an estimate of how much of the biosphere’s regenerative capacity is taken up by human activities, measured in global hectares (Moran et al. 2008). A global hectare (gha) is an area with a biological regeneration rate equal to that of a world-average biologically productive hectare (every gha has the same amount of bioproductivity). This method still glosses over wide differences, if not incommensurables between ecosystems and geospheres, but it is a more accurate parameter than soil degradation, water withdrawals, deforestation rates and such. This is because the distribution of soil types, forests and water resources vary independently of social system. For instance, it is entirely inappropriate to compare deforestation rates between a country endowed with lush rainforest as the default ecosystem with a country that has little to no forests even without any human-caused deforestation. Likewise, it would be just as problematic to compare soil erosion rates in a highly mountainous country with those in a country wholly located on a plain and accruing sediment through periodical floods (fresh material for soil formation) from upstream sources located in neighbouring countries.<br /> <br /> In part to circumvent biophysical incommensurability, the analysis here relies on the Ecological Footprint of Consumption (EFC). The EFC is computed by adding the net value of ecological footprints from imports and exports (in gha) to the sum of all products from different uses on land and sea. This estimate provides a major advantage over the comparisons done above because imports and exports are included. In this manner, EFC comparisons enable some accounting for global interconnections, which are typically left out of the picture. With these qualifications the per capita EFC values aggregated by a social system reveals patterns not too dissimilar from the ones described above, with capitalist social systems disproportionately the culprit of planetary destruction through excessive resource consumption (Figure 3.7).<br /> <br /> [image]<br /> <br /> The 1960s were dominated by the rapid industrialisation drives of some of the state-socialist countries aligned with the USSR or the PRC. Through the 1980s, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the USSR reached the second decile. The result is a greater impact than capitalist countries, which comprise a great number of countries that were starting to gain formal independence and with low to negligible manufacturing output and largely exporting raw materials. But by the middle of the 1970s, average EFCs in state-socialist countries started declining to levels below those of capitalist countries. This should be expected, as countries like Ethiopia, Madagascar and Mozambique started joining the state-socialist camp. It also needs to be underlined again that most capitalist countries were not industrialised and served mainly as suppliers of raw materials (and still do). This explains why average values for greenhouse gases, pollutants and the EFC tended to be higher for state-socialist countries. State-socialist countries did not have former colonies to exploit through neocolonial relationships and this meant a far greater level of within-country pollution from the combination of raw material extraction and industrial output. The fact that, by the 1980s, the average per capita EFCs reached levels similar to or lower than those of capitalist countries should be regarded as a major feat. This trend continued until the sharp drop of the 1990s, as the number of state-socialist countries dwindled to one, Cuba, where EFC levels by the 2000s were markedly lower than all averages.<br /> <br /> Countries under single-party socialist governments (e.g. Libya, Syria) nationalised and developed some industries, but were largely exporters of raw materials as well. Nevertheless, their per capita EFCs have been much lower than the capitalist average from the 1960s to the present. Importantly, such countries include the PRC after 1978 and Laos and Vietnam after 1986. Per capita EFCs still managed to stay substantially lower than those of capitalist countries, irrespective of the massive growth in consumption levels and high integration into global trade and investment flows. In fact, the per capita EFCs of capitalist countries kept growing over time, barring the decrease and stagnation of the recession-fraught 1980s, and somewhat mirrored in state-socialist countries (belying notions of state-socialist economic insulation). The recent slight drop coincides with the 2008 financial collapse, which had little effect on resource consumption rates in the PRC, among other less impacting countries. The gap may be closing between socialist government and capitalist systems, but – at least relative to total resource consumption – it cannot be said that the PRC is the most negatively impacting country ecologically. In fact, according to 2016 data China ranks 68th out of 185 countries in per capita EFC. The situation is even starker when total EFCs are divided according to social system (Figure 3.7). Capitalist countries are simply inordinately destructive. That average per capita EFCs continue to grow in the 2000s just demonstrates how awful to the planet capitalism is, regardless of its political variant.<br /> <br /> The net effects of EFCs can be compared to the biocapacity within a country’s territory to determine whether the country is in ecological deficit or surplus (reserve). When a country’s EFC exceeds its biocapacity, the country is deemed to be in ecological deficit; the converse is to have an ecological reserve. Biocapacity is the biosphere’s productive capacity and socially useful resource provision. Given the highly uneven distribution of different kinds of ecosystems and physical environments, treating all countries as if they could rely on their own biocapacities within the same global system (capitalism) skews results in favour of the most ecologically and environmentally endowed countries, especially those encompassing multiple biomes. This is one reason for conducting more contextualised, country-specific studies, as in Chapter 4.<br /> <br /> The issue of resource usefulness could also pose some difficulty because industrialised capitalist systems are taken as the norm regarding what is useful and, moreover, what counts as resource changes over time. For example, rare earths are now much more sought after than in the past, thanks to products like mobile phones and computers. However, national-level data already preclude consideration of differing social systems and their differing resource bases at subnational scales (e.g. Kanien’kéha communities in Canada and the US). The fact that socialist states and one-party socialist governments concentrated on industrialisation and/or raising output – even when for different ends – makes such countries more comparable to capitalist systems, even if they are politically light years away from each other.<br /> <br /> With these qualifications in mind, capitalist countries overall show a precipitous decline in ecological sustainability from a large ecological reserve to a net deficit by the end of the 1970s (Figure 3.8). State-socialist countries were only slightly in reserve and quickly got into deficit as industrialisation was achieved in some of the countries and large resource extraction projects were introduced in countries with largely peasant economies. By the middle of the 1970s and through the 1980s, both systems were in ecological deficit, alternating with each other in terms of degree. On average, capitalist countries were less ecologically demanding. This reflects the much larger average area that capitalist countries occupied, which is almost the entire tropics, where the greatest biocapacities are located relative to ecosystem biomass productivity and biodiversity. However, by the end of the 1980s the state-socialist systems’ deficit was being markedly reduced just as they were being made to disappear. Their average was converging with that of capitalist countries. Cuba constituted the only state-socialist country by the 1990s and the low deficit testifies to their having become the most biophysically sustainable country relative to the standard of living. Socialist government countries initially hovered close to parity until the PRC joined, which steadily dragged the impact into increasingly larger deficit. However, on aggregate such countries remained in less deficit than capitalist ones.<br /> <br /> [image]<br /> <br /> === Comparing before and after Systemic Change (Diachronic Comparisons) ===<br /> A third way of making comparisons is by looking at environmental impacts longitudinally, that is, before and after major social transformations. By the early 1990s most state-socialist countries became capitalist, so just reinspecting the above-displayed graphs can already give a sense of the environmental effects of expanding the capitalist world. From the above analyses it is evident that the systemic changes in formerly state-socialist countries have hardly brought any improvement on previous environmental impacts. Total air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions have increased sharply since the 1990s, including in the new liberal democratic variants of central and eastern Europe, swallowed up first by NATO and then by the European Union. In part this is due to the progressive disinvestment in public transport and the spread of individual motorised vehicle use. Average emissions and ecological footprints have either remained roughly as high as before or somewhat increased. Per capita CO2 emissions also increased on average since 1990, but at least not to the level of the 1970s. Recall that greenhouse gas emissions linger in the atmosphere at least for decades before they are washed out, so a constant rate of emissions means more cumulative damage.<br /> <br /> A study in ''Nature Climate Change'' from Peters et al. (2012) on the relationship between economic crises and CO2 emissions confirms this disastrous trend but adds even more revealing connections. The demise of most socialist states did not lead to as sharp a decline in CO2 emissions as the US savings and loans scam of the 1980s and the US real estate bubble of 2008–9. Stated differently, a single capitalist economy, the US economy, has been responsible for much more intense climate change impacts than all state-socialist countries combined. It is therefore not only the historically much greater cumulatively destructive impact of industrialised liberal democracies that is at issue, but also the intensity and weight of the annual, shorter-term impact, which becomes more evident by comparing yearly economic growth and CO2 emissions figures.<br /> <br /> SO2 emissions are the exception. They have remained roughly at the same level of destructiveness over time. For this less terrible outcome one can probably thank the restraining influence of transboundary pollution treaties, where the USSR played an essential role as initiator (see the first section in Chapter 4, ‘The USSR: Creating Mass Ecological Consciousness’). Whether this is a great stride within a capitalist world economy is disputable. Globally, much of the sulphur emissions has been shifted to the PRC, largely through coal burning to feed into manufacturing products mainly destined for the wealthiest capitalist markets, like the US. Perhaps this is what made possible the successful implementation of transboundary pollution treaties in Europe and North America by the 1990s, the sort that some Westerners praise and indicate as an example to follow (Maas et al. 2016). If the thesis presented here is correct about the PRC acting as the pollution redirection valve, one should find air pollution treaties of that ilk rather disconcerting.<br /> <br /> The form and amounts of air pollution have shifted substantially within former state-socialist countries. In the days of the USSR air pollution reached a peak of 75 per cent of what was emitted in the contemporary US and was declining, thanks to an increasing switch to natural gas and to successes from environmental policy application. The systemic change brought economic collapse and so pollutants from stationary sources decreased even further. They had picked up again by the 2000s, with increasing output and less pollution oversight. With the expansion of motorised vehicle use (the main mobile source), nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide emissions rapidly increased by about 20 per cent within a decade (Oldfield 2005, 100). Something similar has occurred in countries like Hungary with the production and disposal of waste. It has risen markedly and in conformity with contradictory EU policies that ultimately encourage the multiplication of waste (Gille 2004).<br /> <br /> The net effect of systemic change on forest ecosystems is mixed and tending to the negative. This is part of wider global trends. Since 1990 the increasing deforestation rates and total losses in forested areas have been staggering (Houghton 2016; Williams 2006). About 178 million hectares of forest have been chopped, equivalent to a bit less than the area of Indonesia or Mexico. Encroachment into tropical forests have also led to a rise in zoonotic diseases (WWF 2020, 16). What is more, since 1991 every 1 per cent wealth increase from cash crops investments by a handful of capitalists resulted in a 2.4 to 10 per cent cash crop area enlargement at the expense of forests in Latin America and Southeast Asia (Ceddia 2020). These linkages and wider lenses are ultimately decisive when assessing longitudinal changes, not only in forest cover within state-socialist countries but also in ecosystems more broadly. Viewed globally, the impacts of socialist states are mild in comparison to the global capital onslaught on the biosphere.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, forest ecosystems have a mixed relationship with state-socialist systems, with some periods of much afforestation (in part overturning pre-revolutionary deforestation legacies in countries like the USSR and China) and others of high regional losses due to logging or pollution. This mixed outcome nevertheless had a net positive in forest expansion. Systemic changes in the late 1980s and early 1990s have not improved matters or have led to worse results (for countries like China, the early 1980s is a more appropriate chronology). Here, examples are drawn from existing longitudinal studies mainly from central and eastern Europe. The outcome for forest ecosystems of a turn to liberal democracy tends not to be terribly positive.<br /> <br /> In the western Caucasus region, annually logging rates between 1985 and 2010 were low (0.03 per cent). Instead, the biggest clear-cutting episode happened in preparation for the 2014 Winter Olympics (Bragina et al. 2015a). The dismemberment of Yugoslavia, where private smallholding was not uncommon, did not necessarily lead to environmentally sustainable forestry. In northern Croatia, privately owned woods were sites of more destructive logging and have remained so since the 1990s, with a decline of 1.8 per cent. However, in the state-owned or managed forests the woods have expanded by 10 per cent. This is without considering the issue of forest fragmentation due to parcelling out of land through ‘restitution’ or sale. Regardless, the extent of privately owned forest has shrunk from 24 to 19 per cent since the violent destruction of state-socialist Yugoslavia. It is, in this case, an expansion of state ownership, not privatisation, that has enabled the preservation and even increase of forests (Cvitanović et al. 2016).<br /> <br /> One interesting set of studies comes from the Carpathian ecoregion. It is an area of about 380,000 km2 or roughly 6 per cent of the part of central and eastern Europe that used to be state-socialist. The studies show a less than stellar situation following 1990. Under Polish administrative boundaries, the Carpathian forest witnessed a sharp, rapid fragmentation and contraction between 1988 and 2000, whether the woods were owned by private, public or national park entities. Privately owned forests were chopped five times as much. It must be added that in Poland farming was mainly in private hands under state socialism (Kuemmerle et al. 2009). So whatever negative impact came about through farming in Poland is hardly due to ‘socialism’. Conversely, forest regeneration since 1990 happened as well because of farm abandonment.<br /> <br /> In the Carpathian parts of southern Romania, as much as a fifth of farmland was abandoned after 1990 (Kuemmerle et al. 2009), compared to roughly 24 per cent for the entire Carpathian region. But by 2010, as with most of the Carpathian region, the more profitable lands came to be recultivated, especially with EU membership, with the much smaller remaining land area turning into forest or grassland. Overall the initial sizeable abandonment of cropland in the Carpathians ecoregion did not end up churning out much reforestation or grassland expansion except in areas now at the neocapitalist margins, like the eastern Hungarian and Ukrainian portions of the region (Griffiths 2013). Over a much longer term, the last 250 years, most deforestation happened prior to socialist state formation but what remained of forested areas were also relatively stable. Forest areas also tended to remain stable or expand during or close to calamities, like the world wars, systemic change in the 1990s and EU accession in the early 2000s. This is excepting the Romanian portion of the Carpathians, where net loss has occurred since 2000. However, even more interestingly, most forests stayed or were enlarged during socialist state rule, especially on the northern slopes (Munteanu et al. 2014). Results from a similar study for parts of rural Slovakia show similar patterns (Kanianska et al. 2014).<br /> <br /> Curiously enough, some of the same Carpathian ecoregion forest researchers claim a net reforestation tendency for all of central and eastern Europe. This is allegedly linked to an uneven disappearance and rebounding of farming. But such a view is rather suspect because it is generalised from just a single county or a single national park within Albania, Latvia and Romania (Taff et al. 2009). For Albania and Romania in particular, it seems the researchers lost the forest for the trees, given how well documented the post-1990 logging frenzy has been for those two countries, as reported by the very same authors (Taff et al. 2009, 5). Other studies, using satellite rather than officially reported data, show Latvia as a site of net forest loss during 1985–2012 (Alix-Garcia et al. 2016, 287). At the scale of the Carpathian ecoregion, a fifth of forestland has seen the replacement of entire stands since the late 1980s. The slight forest recovery in the ecoregion since the systemic change only in part countered widespread clear-cutting and other less intense logging. What is more, the worst period for Carpathian forests was from the late 1980s through the early 1990s and since 2000 (Griffiths et al. 2014).<br /> <br /> As the last cited study indicates, there are important issues to be considered when findings point to forest rebound. First is that forest ecosystems should not be treated solely in terms of number of trees irrespective of species. It may make sense if one wants to reduce living organisms to how much carbon they can store, but this way there is no difference made between tree plantations or monocultures and bio-diverse forests. Second, just because trees are returning to what was previously farmland, there is no guarantee that the resulting woods will be contributing to more biodiversity compared to the agroecosystems preceding them, that the overall outcome helps reduce soil erosion or even that they will become net carbon stores. In fact, there is no guarantee that woodland will replace abandoned cultivated land at all. In a study carried out in Slovakia’s wine region, it was found that a third of vineyard area has been lost since the systemic change in the early 1990s. This is due to declining economic feasibility for what had been largely carried out by smallholders subsidised by the state but outside the cooperative farm system. As in much of the region, there were plenty of small private farms in operation prior to the restoration of capitalism. For abandoned vineyards in Slovakia, the outcome of systemic change is so far a conversion to conventional farming or urban area, leading to net biodiversity loss and more soil sealing (Lieskovský et al. 2013). Finally, a third major problem is that basically all studies converge on implying that reforestation (never even remotely close to reaching pre-industrial levels) requires social cataclysms to induce farmland abandonment, rather than democratisation.<br /> <br /> Forests are nowhere near the main kinds of ecosystems in central and eastern Europe, and certainly not in other regions where socialist states once existed. In contrast to most of western Europe, for example, high-biodiversity grasslands make up a large portion of central and eastern European landscapes. Such grasslands have not exactly been prioritised for conservation after the systemic change. Not that they necessarily were under state socialism, except for the extensive system of nature preserves. In the USSR, 23 million hectares of steppe were destroyed to be converted into farmland (not unlike what happened in North America decades earlier), making what is now Kazakhstan into a centre of cereals production. It was the rapid economic downturn with the demise of the USSR that led to a partial reversal of farmland to grassland, only for the trend to be reversed again by the 2000s (Kraemer et al. 2015). In the Hungarian Danube-Tisza interfluve, after decades of grassland stability under the socialist state, about 15 per cent (400 km2) was wiped out within 13 years (1987–99) through the plough, urban expansion and afforestation with mostly non-native trees. Further destruction ensued through 2008, though at a much lower pace of about 0.4 per cent (Biró et al. 2013). Similarly, in northern Croatia, between 1991 and 2012, most areas have witnessed a net loss of permanent grasslands despite the continuous decline of farming and pasture and widespread farm abandonment. A similar decline is reported in parts of Slovakia (Kanianska et al. 2014). More recently established grasslands, which account for most of the 21 per cent increase in grassland area since 1991, have developed at the expense of forests or farmland (Cvitanović et al. 2017). With such market-friendly management, the native grasslands of such regions may meet a fate worse than that of the North American tall-grass prairie. Unsurprisingly, conservationists are realising that there needs to be greater state intervention (sometimes without saying so directly), like providing grassland preservation incentives for owners or to introducing or enlarging protected areas.<br /> <br /> The fate of other organisms is in part tied to what has happened to vegetation cover, but also to what people have resorted to do when in dire straits. Within the boundaries of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Mongolia, Romania and the Russian Federation, regime change brought about a drastic curtailment of funding for wildlife management and, with virtually unfettered poaching, a net temporary decline in large mammalian populations, with few exceptions. This happened even if major changes in land use eventuated in habitat improvement for some species. In the western part of Russia, abandonment of about 40 per cent of farmland has led to large tracts of early-phase forest and this may have helped some large mammalian species, like the wolf, brown bear and wild boar. But since the early 2000s several large mammal populations have rebounded (not so the Eurasian lynx, red deer and wild reindeer), so that the initial downturn at least from some species seems linked to the initial effects of the regime change (Bragina et al. 2015b), although the misery that change brought to most people has not substantively subsided. In a later study covering nine formerly state-socialist countries in central and eastern Europe, some of the same scientists (Bragina et al. 2018) show a net decline for the same large mammal species in Ukraine between the early 1980s and 2010s and mixed to positive trends for the rest. The picture is not entirely rosy for large mammals, nevertheless. There are doubtless some improvements for a few species, but these may also be due more to changing circumstances than constructive changes in environmental policy or more effective protection enforcement. To complicate matters, as with other regions of the world, it is unclear whether and to what degree large mammal migrations affect the reliability of counts that are based on national-level data.<br /> <br /> Natural preserves and conservation efforts in general have gone mainly down the drain along with socialist states. With the fall of the USSR, the positive legacy of large tracts of protected lands (''zapovedniki'') has been undermined through the reduction of state support and increasing pressures on opening up ''zapovedniki'' to exploitation (Ostergren and Shvarts 2000). The break-up of the country into different countries has resulted in less, if not zero coordination of activities impacting shared ecosystems. The Aral Sea fisheries are one major example, where privatisation and division into separate national jurisdictions has accelerated an already declining fish population, including by overfishing and continued agrochemical pollution (Petr et al. 2004). Even environmental monitoring has become more challenging (Oldfield 2005, 94–5). Lioubimtseva (2014), for example, reports that meteorological stations have rarefied or entirely ceased operations since the USSR was dissolved. This has also hindered weather data gathering on the Aral Sea. Water depth data are also harder to retrieve with the fall in the number of gauging stations (Laity 2008).<br /> <br /> === The Dismal Environmental Record of Capitalism ===<br /> Available evidence does not support the view that state-socialist countries have had an environmental record that is worse than that of capitalist countries. This is so whichever kind of comparison one wants to choose. A cursory look into the worst impacts makes it obvious that businesses and capitalist governments can be shown to have caused many of the very worst accidents with the highest numbers of fatalities, especially when compared to Chernobyl.<br /> <br /> With respect to the main destructive impacts at the planetary scale, state-socialist systems have never come close to the level of destructiveness of capitalist systems. Any worse record on atmospheric emissions was at most temporary and only for a couple of substances. The highest greenhouse gas emissions are squarely the business of capitalist countries. When one considers per capita CO2 emissions the disparity is so large as to make even countries like the PRC look environmentally friendly. It needs to be kept in mind that often capitalist social system averages for some emissions are lower because most countries have relatively low GDP, smaller manufacturing and industrial farming sectors, and majorities suffering from inadequate resources to meet basic needs. Consequently such countries tend to emit less greenhouse gases and air pollutants, such as SO2. State-socialist countries, on the other hand, included attempts to raise productivity levels to raise living standards as well as to develop the military in order to deter capitalist attacks and invasions. That such policies did not succeed in reaching the levels enjoyed in the wealthiest capitalist countries is the ruse by which anti-socialists distract attention away from the violent basis of global inequalities and from the exploitative sources of capital accumulation in liberal democracies (Amin 2018; Mies 1986).<br /> <br /> The rapid industrialisation necessary to achieve the above-mentioned policy aims in state-socialist countries led to an initial dramatic spike, levelling and major to moderate declines in emissions. This should not be surprising, since levels of well-being correlate with the quantities of energy consumed, which is still derived overwhelmingly from burning fossil fuels (Schwartzman and Schwartzman 2019). Still, industrialisation led to unprecedented jumps in greenhouse gas emissions only in some of the state-socialist countries in the 1960s and 1970s, especially those that were initially largely based on peasant farming. In the meantime, emissions keep rising as production rises in already highly industrialised countries, whether state-socialist or capitalist. In some ways, at the planetary scale the influences of the USSR and then the Maoist PRC set limits on capitalist ruling classes’ global appropriation of resources and environmental destruction in ways similarly noted regarding the mitigation of capitalist demands over workers in liberal democracies and the facilitation of national liberation movements’ independence from colonial powers (Blackburn 1991, 192).<br /> <br /> When the USSR and allied states transformed into liberal democracies some emissions fell, but within a decade they started climbing back up. In the PRC, on the other hand, a major change had happened by the late 1970s, leading eventually to the highest total emissions in the world by the 2000s. This is much more explanatory than any argument about capitalist superiority in energy efficiency or technological innovation. It would be a major feat if such techniques and technologies were environmentally low impacting (from extraction to consumption), as well as freely available and redistributed worldwide. What is omitted in the pro-capitalist argument of market-driven (or public–private generated) technological advances in lowering environmental impact is that attaining such technological heights, on capitalist terms, requires exploiting much of the planet for resources and thereby suppressing potentials for living standards improvements in most other countries, including capitalist ones.<br /> <br /> If one is truly concerned about climate change, the cumulative and total greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere should be the principal focus of attention. Accordingly, the priority must be reforming capitalist systems away from fossil fuels and high-input industrial farming, starting with the highest-income capitalist countries, that is, beginning mainly with liberal democracies. This would have to include proscribing investments into other countries when they involve raising greenhouse gas emissions, including cattle ranching, mining and other sectors leading to deforestation and net increases in greenhouse gas emissions.<br /> <br /> In other words, for a Global Green New Deal to be workable (Chomsky and Pollin 2020), the first step is political reforms in liberal democracies, which combine as the most responsible for total greenhouse gas emissions, currently and historically. After all, those countries are touted as bastions of representative government, free expression, individual rights, and the like. The fact that greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise unabated in spite of the popularity of green alternatives points to the failure of liberal democracies to address one of the biggest environmental problem facing humanity.<br /> <br /> Pryde recognised long ago that environmental problems in the USSR, the usual target of animus, had by the 1960s ‘become at least as bad as in the United States’ (Pryde 1972, 171). This is in part false. The USSR was not even close to how terrible the US is environmentally, especially for the rest of the world. Nevertheless, even a supporter of liberal democratic capitalism felt compelled to concede parity even if not superiority, rather than inferiority, while insisting on faulty comparisons. So, the news is that state-socialist systems, given the evidence, are, to say the least, generally more environmentally constructive.<br /> <br /> === The Poverty of Comparisons ===<br /> Ultimately, as Peter J. Taylor (1987) pointed out some decades ago, explaining phenomena by means of comparisons is of doubtful legitimacy without examining how the interconnections and mutual transformations between the compared cases lead to those phenomena. The shaky nature of comparisons between countries becomes evident once it is realised that, especially since the intensification of global linkages in the 1970s, what happens in one country is traceable to if not contingent on what happens in another country (Dietz and Rosa 1994). This is without even considering the widely shifting conditions that characterise many countries, which may be spurred on by major catastrophes, economic downturns, internal rebellions, military invasions and other such.<br /> <br /> Comparisons at the social system level of abstraction, as reproduced in part here, are a dubious undertaking. They entail effacing differences between countries within each social system. It is like pretending that all capitalist or socialist countries are or have been ruled through a single state or government. Hence, for example, per capita statistics should be reserved for comparisons between countries rather than social systems. This level of detailed comparison would also make more sense if the range of ecosystem variability within countries is also to be considered, but the task then becomes unnecessarily encyclopaedic.<br /> <br /> There are additional, arguably even more serious shortcomings to the usual ways that comparisons are made. State-socialist countries are typically evaluated as if they had no inimical social structures to overcome or long-term environmental damage to face because of impacts from preceding capitalist systems. This omission of history becomes most disturbing in, among others, the cases of Angola, Cambodia, Laos, Mozambique, North Korea, Vietnam and especially Laos, the most bombed country in history (Boland 2017). The ecocides resulting from the wars inflicted on those countries are the direct responsibility of liberal democracies. Among the major horrific legacies are the destruction of forest ecosystems through extensive bombing raids, the mine fields laid out during the wars and the long-term effects on people of relentless attacks with chemical weapons (Schecter et al. 1995; Westing 1984; Zierler 2011). This is not even to touch upon the long-term ecological impacts of plantations, mines and other resource extraction processes imposed through colonialism in most of the countries that became, for a time, state-socialist. This applies to most of the above-mentioned countries along with others like Congo and Madagascar. These examples speak for themselves and flatly contradict the ‘legacies of communism’ storyline discussed more substantively in Chapter 5.<br /> <br /> Just as problematic is the predominant selective comparisons of only some industrialised state-socialist countries with only the wealthiest and most militarily powerful liberal democracies, given the increasing and highly unfavourable financial and trade ties of the former to the latter. State-socialist countries were neither closed nor autarchical. People moved, commodities were exchanged and ideas were transmitted across boundaries, with restrictions imposed on such movements by both state-socialist and capitalist governments (Josephson et al. 2013, 107; Mignon Kirchhof and McNeill 2019, 8). In 1930s USSR, tens of thousands of tractors were imported from the US to help raise farming productivity. US companies like DuPont saw no difficulty in getting involved with and profiting from building the fertiliser industry and some of the major canal works to develop irrigation systems (Josephson et al. 2013, 96–7). Between 1929 and 1940 a quarter of industrial equipment and hundreds of thousands of machine tools were imported (Josephson et al. 2013, 84). Thus, capitalist industry also had at least a small hand in the environmental impacts of an industrialising USSR, unlike the much larger hand in the PRC since the late 1970s. But it also had a hand in progress over environmental monitoring and remediation. As in the case of the majority of countries, the equipment to accomplish those tasks had to be imported from the most powerful capitalist countries (Josephson et al. 2013, 200).<br /> <br /> The wider context of socialist states has always been a capitalist world-system, whose existence is contingent on endless capital accumulation; that is, the primary motivation to produce anything is supposed to be to gain profits above all (Chase-Dunn 1982; Frey 2012). The capitalist world-system is predicated on forcing other societies into developing capitalist social structures (or risk perishing) and thereby enter into a subordinated relation to a capitalist core. The outcome is the establishment and reproduction of highly uneven development at all scales, meaning that most of humanity’s life chances are contingent on the prerogatives of a handful of capitalists.<br /> <br /> In conventional comparisons, countries that were formed or were transformed as an outcome of struggles against capitalism are being compared to the capitalist countries that invaded, colonised or indirectly ruled over those newly formed or transformed countries. Integration into the world capitalist economy is not optional and, arguably, neither is an industrialisation drive. Sustained ties with the capitalist world and raising productive capacity could be avoided only if one had been entirely uninterested in not just rebuilding, but also improving on the means to feed, clothe and house people after inheriting a low and extremely uneven level of production capacity, an economy structured around raw material and agricultural export (e.g. the USSR, China) or a debilitating plantation colonial economy (e.g. Benin, Cuba, Madagascar), and, for many countries, the direct devastation of two world wars with civil wars in between and/or afterwards (e.g. Bulgaria, China, Hungary, Laos, Mongolia, North Korea, Romania, USSR, Vietnam, Yugoslavia), causing millions of deaths and, economically, major labour shortages.<br /> <br /> The last factor provided an additional incentive to mechanise production as quickly as possible instead of waiting for a demographic rebound. Industrialisation, on the other hand, was crucial to overcoming chronic food shortages in countries where socialist states arose. The food production challenges had little to do with state socialism. In the case of the USSR, for example, most of the productive farmland had been wrecked by the invading Nazis, resulting in a 40 per cent contraction of agricultural production, followed by a protracted and extensive drought in some of the otherwise most agriculturally productive regions (Josephson et al. 2013, 113). It should hardly be surprising that USSR’s postwar economic trajectory resembled that of Japan, with similar percentages of international trade patterns relative to national economic output (Sanchez-Sibony 2014, 4–5).<br /> <br /> All state-socialist countries faced externally imposed challenges, while tackling internal strife and attempting to bring about major social change towards equality in often oppressive patriarchal peasant or pastoralist systems. The horrific tragedies and, in some cases (especially the USSR under Stalin), mass killings and grinding political repression are unjustifiable, but the larger context must also be understood to see what needs to be done to avoid those horrors in future. Some state-socialist systems emerged through the establishment of political independence after protracted war but were then trapped in neocolonial dependence and interventionist pressures from former colonial powers, such that building self-sufficiency was stymied, and even more any chances for industrialisation (e.g. Burkina Faso, Congo, Ethiopia, Madagascar). Some extricated themselves from a neocolonial or colonial dictatorship and started substantive independence under terrible social conditions (e.g. Cuba, Mongolia), if not absolutely devastated environmental circumstances (e.g. Kampuchea, Laos, North Korea, Vietnam). There were thus intense pressures to parry from capitalist countries. Rapid industrialisation or the promotion of self-sufficiency was eminently reasonable, given the experience of military invasions from liberal democracies and other capitalist powers, along with military encirclement and constant threats after repelling those invasions. In some cases, foreign powers and internal enemies waged all-out war from independence onwards, such that any effective implementation of socialist policies was altogether precluded (e.g. Angola, Mozambique). Briefly put, socialist states existed under a state of siege from their inception.<br /> <br /> When siege intensity lessened, the pressures were economic and not terribly different from the sort experienced as neocolonialism in most former colonies at formal independence. There were and still are embargoes and other ways through which state-socialist economies have been undermined by concerted efforts through various international institutions like the IMF and the Trilateral Commission. As soon as the opportunity arose, capitalists (especially those from liberal democracies) took advantage by setting up shop or establishing joint ventures within state-socialist countries to exploit highly skilled labour for a pittance (Frank 1977; Pryde 1972, 159). Environmental destruction in state-socialist countries resulted from these capitalist pressures and interlinkages, too, not just from some allegedly misguided domestic policies or socialism per se.<br /> <br /> In the face of such enormous disadvantages, state socialism was in many instances an overall success. It lay the groundwork for and to a large degree achieved reductions in social inequalities and improvements in living standards and environmental practices, while fighting off colonialism or imperialism from core capitalist countries and trying to overcome internal reactionary resistance. Those accomplishments should not be tossed aside and consigned to oblivion. One does not jettison voting rights, progress against slavery systems or advances made in environmental justice in liberal democracies on account of the multiple genocides and racism that subtends the very core of those political systems.<br /> <br /> In other words, for the story to hold that state socialism is worse on the environment, historical and international contexts must be entirely or partially eviscerated. The conventional narrative is an attempt to invert reality, where official pronouncements or stated policies are taken at face value only when they show ‘the intention of challenging and eventually superceding the West’ (Oldfield 2005, 33; Chu 2018). Institutional expressions regarding social equality, building socialism, raising living standards and improving the relationship to the environment are instead met with scepticism (cf. Pryde 1972, 136). In this manner, as propaganda is conflated for reality when convenient, socialist states are made into caricatures: easy targets of scorn or dismissal. It is the triumph of politically innocuous critique and of socially irrelevant irreverence to ‘really existing socialism’, all to the current ruling classes’ merriment.<br /> <br /> When the countries being compared have developed intense connections over time, the comparison can even be disinforming on environmental change. During the socialist state period in Hungary, for example, widespread soil acidification problems are traceable to heavy use of agrochemicals, like ammoniacal nitrate, but the problem could have been averted or at least reduced by refraining from producing the likes of sausages, fruits and vegetables for Western markets, especially West Germany and Austria, to fulfil loan repayment schedules imposed by Western financial institutions (Engel-Di Mauro 2002). In effect, the more an economy is integrated with international capital flows, the higher the ecological footprint (Figge et al. 2017). Accordingly, China, as a country embodying the main contradictions of the world capitalist economy (Frey 2012; Li 2016), should be expected to have a worsening environmental record. As Peters et al. (2012) have shown, the wealthiest countries (largely liberal democracies) can overconsume fossil fuels and spew out the most greenhouse gases by appropriating natural wealth (e.g. fossil fuels) from the rest of the world, where there is chronic underconsumption relative to fossil fuel production.<br /> <br /> There are additional problems to consider related to diverse and changing biophysical contexts. For example, a short-grass prairie does not respond in the same way to the same kind of farming impacts as a mixed deciduous forest. Once trees are felled they may regrow as secondary forest, not grasses. Likewise, grasses that are ploughed may also be restored and forests would be unlikely to appear even if planted. Soil types are not going to suddenly change because a mixed deciduous forest is gone. Such soils will tend to retain the main characteristics (often on the more acidic side, for example) even when forests do not return as a result of constant ploughing. Some soils are more erodible or have more material to erode than other soils even within the same kind of ecosystem. Moreover, comparisons of forest ecosystems even within the same region can be suspect. In a study conducted recently in the Urals it was found that plant species in taiga biomes are more sensitive to crude oil contamination than those making up mixed conifer-deciduous forests (Buzmakov et al. 2019). The same intensity of crude oil contamination, in other words, will be deadlier for some forests than others. These kinds of differences are often papered over, which can lead to exaggerating or underestimating damage.<br /> <br /> To obviate misleading comparisons of countries’ environmental records, both biophysical and social contexts need to be examined along with interlinkages across places. To some extent this is accomplished in Chapter 4 by looking more closely into the ecosocial contexts and histories of the USSR, China and Cuba.<br /> <br /> == Environmental Impacts in Context ==<br /> As discussed in Chapter 1, state socialism is more akin to a transitory system that can go the way of socialism or of some guise of capitalism, if not of an entirely different type of oppressive system aside from capitalism. State socialism is a contradictory set of conditions where struggles continue for socialism, characterised by internal strife among contending socialist and anti-socialist forces, under constant threats of annihilation by core capitalist states in a wider global context dominated by capitalist relations. This transitory and internally contradictory process situated in mortally antagonistic relations of power extends to and shapes the relationship of socialist states with the environment.<br /> <br /> On the one hand, socialist revolutionaries attempt to develop the material conditions of socialism by raising everyone’s well-being, while parrying deadly attacks from within and from abroad. This in itself already poses a contradiction, since warfare denies the possibility of considering everyone’s well-being. Internal conflict includes conflicts within and among socialist movements relative to the best course of action to achieve similar or the same short- and long-term objectives. On the other hand, as part of improving people’s lives and establishing the material basis for a socialist future, ecological conditions must be protected with the same vigour. At stake are public health (or workers’ life prospects) and the ecological and environmental foundations for the resources needed to build socialism.<br /> <br /> The contradictions and social struggles are therefore multiple, and simultaneously social and ecological. Navigating them was and is a challenge to socialism generally and socialist states are unexceptional in this. The issue here is how under such contradictions and struggles socialist states fared relative to the biophysical environment and what they can offer for future socialist prospects. It will be shown that, as socialist states, they fared much better than we are usually told and that they provide examples on which ecosocialism can be built. However, when looking into the fate of the relationship between state socialism and the environment the starting position should never be downplayed. The historical conjuncture (prevailing global relations of power) and the social contexts of successful socialist revolutions deeply inflect potentials for socialism and relations with the rest of nature.<br /> <br /> All societies where revolutions succeeded were characterised by privation and tenuous living conditions for the majority. Most of those societies were ravaged by centuries of colonial depredation or by recent or sustained devastating wars. Invariably there were destructive capitalist legacies and tendencies, both ecological and social, that had to be redressed and shaped the possibilities of what could be achieved. Under such harsh circumstances, environmental concerns must be weighed against the necessity of rapidly building, often for the first time or almost from scratch, the foundations to enable coverage of basic survival needs while also improving people’s living standards. These include establishing reliable food, water and medicinal supplies, adequate housing and sanitary infrastructure, effective health provision and transport, among other ways of meeting basic human needs and of improving living conditions that by and large societies undergoing socialist revolutions lacked historically. This balancing act between ecological relations and improvements in living conditions occurred under the constant military and economic pressures of liberal democracies, directly or indirectly. At the same time it must be underlined that it was not by conquest and colonialism that socialist states achieved or tried to achieve such balance. The destructive environmental and social outcomes from developing industries to improve material conditions were consequently meted out overwhelmingly within state-socialist countries’ borders (Weiner 2017).<br /> <br /> To elucidate on the contexts that shaped the environmental and ecological outcomes of state socialism I rely on three case studies. They are selected on the basis of their extent of global influence, substantive social and ecological/environmental differences and the author’s relative familiarity and background with those countries. The first is the USSR, in accordance with historical sequence, followed by China and Cuba. The USSR set the pace for state socialism worldwide and, so far, exemplifies the longest period of state-socialist environmental impact. The net environmental effects were more positive than negative, even when considering the calamities for which the USSR has been made infamous in the press and within the academy. In contrast, the PRC is a showcase for the effects of an arrested state-socialist path redirected to a form of one-party socialist rule over a capitalist economy. The environmental repercussions have been dire, but not as hopeless as often depicted. It may resemble what has happened in countries like Laos and Vietnam. Cuba, on the other hand, presents a unique case of state-socialist survival, largely independent of both the USSR and China, and an ecological model for the rest of the world. In some ways, Cuba exemplifies how a socialist state can lay the groundwork for an ecologically sustainable socialism or ecosocialism.<br /> <br /> A further elaboration on the institutional set-up that affected state-socialist environmental practices can help guide the interpretation of the ecological effects of state socialism, picking up from the discussion in Chapter 1 regarding what characterises state socialism (see also O’Connor 1998, 255–65). Because politics and economy were overtly linked, instead of being masked as in capitalist societies, environmental issues were immediately a matter of direct political struggle over how resources are to be allocated, used and even defined (e.g. what are to be considered legitimate sources of energy and using what criteria). Most enterprises answered to one or another form of centralised administrative decision-making body and ultimately to a communist party’s central authority. These characteristics also make the party directly responsible for social and environmental outcomes, so that an entire political system’s legitimacy rides on policy results.<br /> <br /> For example, centralised price determination could be directed at mitigating the consumption of raw materials and wastefulness in general. Potentially, it could also redirect production towards ecologically more constructive ends (Goldman 1972, 273–83; Josephson et al. 2013, 214; Oldfield 2005, 25; Pryde 1972, 153). That it was not always so and, given similar or comparatively poorer records in the most powerful capitalist countries (think of the Persian Gulf monarchies or the US, especially in terms of global impacts), should be grounds for further investigation into negatively influential factors and ways to combat them in future if one is interested in struggling for socialism rather than totalising dismissals of socialist states.<br /> <br /> A fundamental flaw, though, was or is the lack of direct accountability of different institutions, from enterprise to the central state decision-making organs, to the people supposedly being represented, allegedly the working class. Worker control (e.g. through council/soviet communism, workplace democracy) can be of decisive help in identifying environmental harm and prioritising its prevention, especially when human health is in question. Still, worker control is no guarantee of an environmentally friendly outcome, as fighting for better working conditions or shorter working days has no particularly ecological content. There is therefore another aspect that needs consideration, which is the level of ecological sensibility in society as well as the incentives and consequences of ecologically sustainable practices and environmentalism. Perhaps to state the obvious, the sensibility and incentives emerge, in large measure, from the lived material conditions of deteriorating ecological relations or physical environments. In state-socialist systems the level of ecological sensibility and incentives for ecologically constructive actions were mainly shaped by the results of struggles within party structures, constituted in part by environmentalists (see the discussion on green Bolshevism below) and by pressures on the party apparatus from wider sections of society, including from scientific communities and volunteer associations, and inimical forces within and outside a state-socialist country.<br /> <br /> The USSR’s decision-making structures set the template for other state-socialist systems, so it is useful to consider it in elucidating environmental policies and practices for state socialism broadly. In the USSR, republic and overarching All-Union Ministries governed tens of thousands of firms. Short-to long-term planning for each ministry occurred through the Gosplan (State Planning Committee), whose national plans were subjected to the scrutiny of the Supreme Soviet, the legislative branch representing the republics and deciding over all planning projects. Planning included resource use and conservation measures, which each ministry drew up relative to their area of competence. Conformity to environmental regulations was enforced from within each ministry, but also from the millions of inspectors in the People’s Control Commission, which was established in 1920 (as the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate) to serve as supervisory control over administrations and enterprises. The ministries in turn were under the responsibility of the Council of Ministers, whose members were elected by the Supreme Soviet. Eventually the executive organs of the Communist Party of the USSR, elected through party congresses, had the final say (depending on the period, this was the Central Committee or its more restricted Politburo component). The USSR’s decision-making structure was not transplanted whole in all state-socialist countries, but many of its facets were introduced and modified to suit national contexts. Importantly, state office workers (mainly bureaucrats) did not necessarily have to be Communist Party members. State apparatuses and bureaucracies were never solely in the hands of a single party.<br /> <br /> This decision-making structure facilitates coordination of activities across different levels, from national to production unit level (e.g. mine, farm, office, factory). Scientific research and higher education institutions provided expertise-based information and advice for different specialised departments and ministries, which conveyed the findings and recommendations to central planners to draw up national plans. Environmental monitoring and information flow were standardised as part of scientific work and the data were fed directly into the ministries responsible for different branches of the economy. In addition, in wider society, volunteer associations (e.g. naturalists) and scientific establishments concerned with biological and health issues conducted independent studies, monitoring and campaigns to educate or sensitise the public to environmental issues. Destructive environmental impacts could be easily tracked at the highest decision-making levels through a variety of channels (Ziegler 1980).<br /> <br /> The main obstacles to avoiding environmentally negative impacts or to prioritising ecological issues, aside from there being no ultimate accountability to workers at the workplace level, were the investment priorities and rewarding system, deformed as well by external international pressures. Central state authorities, within and beyond the party, privileged military defence and heavy industry, distributed funds to enterprises mainly according to productivity (production targets, fulfilling plans) and rewarded enterprise management with bonuses and privileges. This kind of framework favours managers’ enterprise-oriented or sectoral self-promotion at the expense of wider social interests and ecological concerns. The problem would persist even if economic activities were organised in worker-run cooperatives. Anything impeding the fulfilment of production plans could compromise the status and viability of a production unit.<br /> <br /> It is important to keep in mind that interministerial conflict was rife not only over resource allocation, but also over environmental protection, as well as regulations and their enforcement. Hence there were and are multiple sources and forms of environmental information reaching the central decision-making bodies (Ziegler 1980). As a result environmental records could never be entirely distorted or suppressed, not even to the wider public. At the very least, central decision-making offices would have a clear picture of environmental problems, even if sometimes with delay when lower-ranking administrators slowed down the data-collection process or falsified data for personal gain. Nevertheless, coordinating such wide-ranging interests relative to environmental policies in a state-socialist system rests mightily on central party authorities, at once a strength and weakness technically: a strength in mobilising people and resources to address environmental problems; a weakness in being potentially overwhelmed by too much information and too many sets of relations to handle. Ultimately, the overall directions of coordination efforts result mainly from struggles within those centralised political structures, even as they are heavily affected by forces external to them.<br /> <br /> Exacerbating the problem is that work and institutions dedicated to environmental protection and ecologically constructive economic activity received considerably fewer material incentives. Central party authorities, at any administrative level, also worsen prospects for ecological sustainability when repressing pro-socialist environmentalist forces and by suppressing environmental information when it may, over the short term, undermine socialist state legitimacy. But, just as in the rest of society, these authorities were (and are) also divided relative to priorities, objectives, strategies and other such considerations. As in any social system, state socialism is imbued with relations of power and social struggles, except that their outcomes can, as already remarked, lead to building or strengthening actual socialism or degenerate into some form of capitalism or other kind of authoritarian system (North Korean dynastic rule could be viewed as an example). The outcome is a varied history of environmental impacts, with some horrific failures interspersed among spectacular as well as many muted successes.<br /> <br /> === The USSR: Creating Mass Ecological Consciousness ===<br /> By far the greatest critical scrutiny has been showered on the USSR when it comes to socialism and the environment. The first of what turned out to be a sensationalist account appeared to a Western public in the early 1980s in the form of a translated samizdat (self-published manuscript). It was authored by a Boris Komarov, Ze’ev Wolfson’s pseudonym. The samizdat was smuggled to the West and quickly seized upon in liberal democracies as a chance to whip up more anti-communism, this time on environmentalist grounds. The work was deeply flawed, argumentatively and empirically, as Marshall Goldman remarked in the foreword to that book. Wolfson had skipped the critical assessments levelled from within government institutions as well as policy successes in reversing or preventing ecological damage. In spite of Marshall’s warnings, major scholars have reproduced the flawed arguments and problematic data, which were used to charge the USSR with ‘ecocide’ (e.g. Feshbach and Friendly 1993; Pryde 1986). The high-ranking geographer Wolfson would later migrate to Israel, where he strangely never took issue with the environmental devastation there (Tal 2002), much less with an annihilationist settler colonial system (Finkelstein 2003). He instead turned his attention again to the then former USSR, finding, to his chagrin, that the free market is even worse (Wolfson 1994). But by that time any critique of capitalism had great difficulty gaining any traction. Wolfson’s take may have contrasted official USSR government statements on environmental degradation, but it also amplified the already loud and then increasingly louder fantasies equating freedom, markets and democracy with a healthy environment.<br /> <br /> What materialised after Wolfson’s samizdat was much more influential than any smuggled unauthorised work. What Komarov decried in the 1970s paled in comparison to the Chernobyl accident and the shrinking Aral Sea, the most popularised, prominent examples of environmental damage. Enduring ecological harms they certainly are, but they have been easily subordinated to what could be considered an environmentalist equivalent of a red scare, where even reforming capitalism through a ‘Green New Deal’ is too socialist. It is for this reason that I discuss those three cases of environmental destruction in somewhat greater detail. They demonstrate how much historical and international capitalist context matters and how the very worst imputed to the USSR conceals a more widespread opposite tendency of sensible environmental policies and practices, certainly compared to those suffusing the new ‘post-socialist’ systems. Buried in the very texts where the USSR is indicted as a failure in environmental protection are examples of cutting-edge biological conservation practices through ecological preserves (''zapovedniki''), successes in pollution abatement, lasting improvements through soil conservation, afforestation and reforestation, mass diffusion of environmental education and ecological sensitisation and some of the most advanced environmental research and monitoring programmes worldwide. In terms of positive global contributions, it is regrettably much forgotten how repeated efforts by the USSR to link disarmament to international environmental treaties were rebuffed by the US and allied states (Josephson et al. 2013, 196–7).<br /> <br /> ==== Czarist Legacies ====<br /> First, however, a few words on Czarist legacies are in order. The USSR did not emerge out of a cocoon. Especially in western Russia, forests and soils came under severe pressure with industrialisation, especially in the rising centres of factory production in major cities and of fossil fuel resource extraction, like Baku for oil and the Donbass for coal. Commercially motivated hunting and logging led to rapid falls in the populations of bears, beavers, elk, fox, hare, mink, sable, seals, wild boar and wolves, among other species that were increasingly threatened with at least local extinction if not locally or regionally extinguished (Josephson et al. 2013, 41; Pryde 1972, 9–11).<br /> <br /> As one of the main culprits of species loss, deforestation was rife in part because of its economic linking to the vast and rapid forest losses in North America, among the many destructive outcomes of US and Canadian settler colonial expansion (Wynn 2007). By the late 1800s, US and Canadian business demand for timber was mainly fulfilled by Czarist Russia, which had turned into a main timber exporter (Josephson et al. 2013, 121). A similar process of Russia being converted into a raw material supplier for North American settler colonial empires occurred with the fur trade, which devastated beaver and other fur-bearing animals as well as Indigenous communities in both Russia and North America.<br /> <br /> Forest losses were also due to Czarist economic policies and were particularly intense on private estates (Josephson et al. 2013, 31). For instance, the now much deforested and polluted Kola Peninsula in the Arctic was already an object of railway infrastructure development and resource exploitation before 1917 and using forced labour. Under Stalin, by the 1930s Czarist policy and brutality was much expanded, not newly introduced, and it even involved some of the same people at the helm (Bruno 2016, 12–13).<br /> <br /> In the newly conquered lands of Central Asia, starting in the 1860s, the Czarist regime displaced millions of nomadic herder peoples and, by severely undermining transhumance, increased susceptibility to famine. Ploughing the steppe contributed to increasing the chances of pasture and cropland failures during droughts. In 1855–6, Kazakh herders lost as much as 70 per cent of cattle due to such calamity. The worst came during 1930–3, due to grossly negligent USSR policies, but it is also true that Czarist government policy led to half a million deaths in the 1891 famine, even though enough grain was available. Famines and the economic maldistribution that exacerbated them were a periodic feature of Russian life under the Czar that would only be surmounted in the 1950s, thanks to the advances made possible by succeeding USSR governments.<br /> <br /> Much of the settler colonial effort amounted to raising existing cotton production to make the region a cotton basket, introducing large monocultures, massively expanding irrigation and building railways mainly linking resource extraction and commercial centres. By World War I the Russian Empire had become one of the largest exporters of cotton in the world, much to the detriment of local ecosystems. Waterlogging and soil salinisation became a widespread problem, as did the malaria outbreaks related to the lager swampland area created (Cameron 2018; White 2013).<br /> <br /> With the 1861 serfdom reforms, peasants were granted titles to small land parcels. These were mainly in sloping zones with relatively thin soils poor in nutrients. This policy unleashed the largest historical expansion of cultivated area, covering much of the southern and south-eastern Russian Plain. The result, combined with inadequate means and techniques at peasants’ disposal, was severe gully erosion, the sort that mars a landscape for the long term and is difficult to remediate. Effects were felt downslope in the flow impairment if not clogging up of small rivers and in the build-up of sediment along the valley bottoms (Golosov and Belyaev 2013; Sidorchuk and Golosov 2003).<br /> <br /> There were attempts in some quarters, by the late nineteenth century, to lessen if not stop the ecological destructiveness of the Czarist Empire. These culminated in the introduction of the first ''zapovedniki'' in the 1890s, or nature reserves equipped with scientific research stations, and an initiative to establish experimental stations to help devise soil conservation measures more effectively. Much was contingent on the intensity of commercial pressures. More importantly, nature protection, such as there was to limited degrees under the Czar, was conceptualised in terms of long-term reproducible yield of whatever resources, mainly timber, suited capitalist prerogatives. It was not an ecosystem that was to be preserved, but bits and pieces of it: those that made money or served the state’s needs of the day (not that the two are incompatible, but they might not always coincide over the short term).<br /> <br /> To some extent, especially among biologists and ecologists, a strong environmental sensibility had evolved since at least the 1860s and that had been frustrated by the poor environmental record of the Czarist regime. Aside from forest losses and soil destruction, biodiversity was threatened as many species were hunted to extinction or disappeared through habitat loss. Many more species were threatened by exploitative ravages, such as the above-mentioned fur trade. The destructive environmental impacts were associated with industrialisation, economic subordination to core capitalist countries and the historical imperialistic push eastwards into Siberia, Central Asia and elsewhere.<br /> <br /> ==== Early Bolshevik Environmentalism ====<br /> As soon as the USSR was established, even in the midst of a most bloody civil war, the Bolshevik government introduced much environmental legislation and restrictions on industrial output were introduced. This was decades before they were introduced in countries of much greater economic means (Goldman 1972). Examples of early Bolshevik environmentalism and marked improvements in environmental protection measures abound. Some policies were also innovative and unprecedented. Again, during civil war, in 1921 the Bolshevik government put together the first agro-meteorological service in the world (Elie 2018, 83). This would later also be useful in climatological monitoring. A 1919 decree on water conservation aimed at preventing contamination of reservoirs from sewage established a water protection agency (Goldman 1972, 17). Wastewater regulation came into effect in 1923 (Pryde 1972, 137).1 Green spaces and mass transport were already planned or in the works during the 1920s for urban centres. This began a decades-long effort to improve the quality of life in cities and it is why there is usually much more ecologically sustainable infrastructure now in the former USSR (Josephson et al. 2013, 91–3). Urban-planning efforts culminated in the materialisation of ample city parks, green belts, no suburban sprawl and general cleanliness in public areas (Pryde 1972, 156).<br /> <br /> Conservation and forest and wildlife preservation were already policy priorities by 1917 (Goldman 1972, 16–18). Shortly after the civil war, between 1925 and 1929, the ''zapovedniki'' area was quadrupled from one million to four million hectares. This is one reason that most conservationists and naturalists initially had a favourable view of the October Revolution and many continued to do so even during more arduous times under the Stalin government (Josephson et al. 2013, 66; Weiner 1999). They saw it as the chance for new and existing policies, for which they had long fought, to be finally enforced effectively. They also saw in the revolution the potential for expanding and intensifying conservation programmes. But the main exponents of conservation sought the support of the Provisional Government, rather than the Soviets. They were aghast at the destruction of ''zapovedniki'' resulting from war, as well as, sometimes, from peasant takeovers of large estates and private parks (Suing and Dedaj 2018; Weiner 1988, 18–20).<br /> <br /> A main problem, aside from a lack of involvement or membership in leftist parties, was that mainstream conservationists did not take their concerns to the people at large except in efforts for a general defence of science from emerging challenges by Proletkul’t and other movements aiming to replace existing science with a proletarian science (Gare 1993; Sheehan 1985). The Proletkul’t movement was formed in 1918 by Bolsheviks who believed that society in its entirety had to be transformed, including culture, and that promoting worker control of industry had to take precedence as well as the development of constructive relations with the rest of nature. Lenin was among the biting critics of Proletkul’t, but he nevertheless did not try to stifle them. It was thanks to the scientific and Marxist outlook of influential segments of the Bolshevik Party, particularly leaders like Lenin and Lunacharsky, that conservationists found their views vigorously supported by the new government. Forests, surface waters and underground mineral resources were all nationalised and brought under conservation policies. Even under war conditions and threats to the very survival of the new state, efforts continued with protecting forests and new nature protection decrees were introduced (Pryde 1972, 14–15).<br /> <br /> This was accomplished by actively seeking the collaboration even of eminent scientists who bore little to no sympathies for the revolution or communism, like V.I. Vernadskii. Under early Bolshevik government, environmentalism had a sort of roaring twenties, the likes of which no state-based society had ever witnessed. The form of environmentalism espoused by the likes of Lenin may not have diverged appreciably from the conservationism in the industrialised capitalist countries, but it was not the sort that led to mass displacements or appropriation of land to protect ‘national interests’. And in that kind of conservationism more radical approaches could thrive, such as those of the Proletkul’t movement. It was also under such favourable conditions for environmentalism that ecology thrived. Ecologists in the USSR were at the cutting edge of research and theoretical advances, including the approaches of phytosociology, community ecology and food webs and energy transfers, the last of these developed by Stanchinskii (Gare 1993; Suing and Dedaj 2018; Weiner 1988, 285, fn. 15).<br /> <br /> Ecologists were gaining major influence over economic policies as well. In 1926 the Interagency State Committee for the Protection of Nature was instituted to vet all matters related to resource management and they even had veto power for plans deigned too environmentally destructive. This inchoate form of environmental impact assessment had no precedent and did not exist in any other state in the world. None of this was enough to save ecologists from marginalisation by the early 1930s, when many of them started to clash with the Bolshevik mainstream over the Five-Year Plan, owing to aspects that lifted protections for some ''zapovedniki'' and undermined other ecosystems.<br /> <br /> ==== Mass Environmental Sensitisation in the USSR ====<br /> The heyday of green Bolshevism may have been short-lived, but it was never eradicated. Approaches developed and diffused during that period were elaborated upon and expanded in different ways and under diverse guises until the end of the USSR (Yanitsky 2012; Weiner 1999). Even under the repressive and murderous Stalin government there existed independent, critical movements for environmental protection, mainly led by scientists. To a large extent this resulted from the Bolsheviks’ privileging of science as integral to state planning, policies and education. Though government censorship did impair scientific research intermittently over the 1930s and 1950s, mainly in genetics, scientific research was promoted and well funded and scientists had prominent political and wider social influence (Weiner 2006). The latter was important in spreading ecological sensibility in the public and in struggles for environmental protection, often against economic planners and technocrats.<br /> <br /> A main conduit of scientific outreach and mass public involvement in environmental matters and struggles was the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Nature (VOOP). It was founded in 1924 by prominent field biologists and enjoyed much popularity, boasting tens of thousands of members less than a decade later, declining to a few thousand under the repressive rule of the Stalin faction (Pryde 1972, 20–1; Weiner 1999, 37–8). By the 1970s, however, the society boasted more than 25 million members and then 37 million by 1987, about 13 per cent of the USSR’s total population of the day (Foster 2015; Kelley et al. 1976, 178). The reach of environmental education and ecological sensitisation was truly vast. In their openly critical and politically independent engagement with the government, VOOP was complemented by the Moscow Society of Naturalists, the Moscow section of the Geographical Society of the USSR, the All-Union Botanical Society, and several volunteer naturalist associations. It was through the many projects and public outreach programmes of these organisations that tens of thousands of people gained environmental education through volunteer work. At some universities students formed nature protection groups like the Nature Protection Brigade at Moscow State University, founded in 1960. Environmental concerns were not circumscribed to scientific communities and the many thousands of naturalists in the wider public. There was direct political support from authorities at the republic and oblast (provincial) administrative levels as well as from portions of the official press. This attests to a widespread sensitivity to environmental issues throughout society, including governing institutions.<br /> <br /> These organisations would write complaint letters directly to the Politburo, publish letters of protest through the mainstream press, carry out street protests to pressure authorities and even set up mock show trials of high-ranking officials on a range of environmental questions, all without repressive consequences. This is how, for example, the secret police were successfully taken to task in 1948 for logging in a protected area and how the rescinding of the inviolability status of several ''zapovedniki'' under Stalin was reversed and full protection restored in 1954 (Weiner 2006). Mass mobilisation and campaigning were also behind stymieing technocrats’ plans, on multiple occasions, to locate pulp mills near Lake Baikal (Kelley 1976) and to shift river flow in Siberia to undo damage to the Aral Sea. Several other large-scale projects were similarly blocked, as in the case of a hydroelectricity project that would have sacrificed Lake Sevan in Armenia (Breyfogle 2015; Pryde 1972, 122; Weiner 1999).<br /> <br /> Ecological sensibility reached the highest echelons of power. Enterprise managers and associated economic ministries were repeatedly and scathingly criticised from within the upper chamber of the Supreme Soviet over inadequate pollution control measures. Throughout the history of the USSR, pressure to comply with environmental norms was also applied to economic planners from the Ministry of Public Health and from the People’s Control Commission, with its millions of independent inspectors (Ziegler 1980). By the 1980s hundreds of environmentalist groups formed and successfully defeated major new environmentally destructive large-scale projects, and imposed the closure or retrofitting of polluting industrial plants (DeBardeleben 1992). The tide was finally turning against the technocratic economic planners and engineers and in favour of developing an ecologically based socialism, until the demise of the USSR halted the process in its tracks and partially rechanneled environmentalist movements towards nationalism, as attested in environmentalism’s current parlous state of affairs in the countries formerly within the USSR (Elie and Coumel 2013; Newell and Henry 2017; Yanitsky 2012).<br /> <br /> ==== The USSR’s Ecological Preserves (Zapovedniki) ====<br /> It was especially the preservation of nature that animated much of the environmentalist opposition to government economic planners within different levels of government as well as among scientific and naturalist volunteer associations. The ''zapovednik'' or ecological preserve was a central pillar of environmentalism within and beyond the state. As described above, the first protected areas or ''zapovedniki'' designated for scientific study were instituted by scientific societies by the 1890s, but they lacked substantive legal protection and were designed to support commercial maximum-yield prerogatives. ''Zapovedniki'' ‘were imagined as baselines (etalony) of healthy natural communities against which changes in surrounding, once-similar but human-affected areas could be compared’ (Weiner 2006, 531). But only under the Bolshevik government did the ''zapovednik'' gain policy priority, firm legal backing and permanent inviolability status. ''Zapovedniki'' are a hallmark of the USSR’s positive ecological impacts. It was soon after the revolution, in 1917, that the Bolshevik government established the first national ''zapovednik''. It was also the first of its kind in setting aside large, protected areas for scientific purposes, as ecological exemplars. In a 1921 decree (reaffirmed in 1960), ''zapovedniki'' were to be reserved for ecosystem study and withdrawn permanently from economic use. By the 1940s the number of ''zapovedniki'' was expanded to 40, encompassing seven million hectares. Another expansion was instituted in the 1950s, with 12.5 million hectares spread over 128 ''zapovedniki''. After a contraction in the 1960s, more such protected areas were decreed until they amounted to 150 areas, or 20 million hectares. Including surface waters, ''zapovedniki'' total area reached slightly more than 30 million hectares. Sizes varied considerably, from a couple of hundred to several million hectares. Half of the ''zapovedniki'' were located west of the Urals and in the Caucasus and they tended to be smaller than in less populated regions like Siberia (Colwell et al. 1997; Ostergren and Jacques 2002, 111–12).<br /> <br /> As ecosystem models they were used as controls relative to heavily impacted areas to help pinpoint environmental problems more precisely and to develop ideas for more sustainable economic practices. Equipped with monitoring stations, these areas were subjected yearly to season-specific studies, generating an unmatched wealth of long-term ecological data. This includes the possibility of modelling different kinds of human impacts, the effects of climate change or fire disturbance on biological communities and the relationship between reserve size and geometry on the survival of different species. Eventually the geographical distribution of ''zapovedniki'' represented the major bioregions within the USSR’s boundaries (Colwell et al. 1997).<br /> <br /> An important aspect of early USSR policy was to entrust conservation mainly to the People’s Commissariat for Education (Narkompros) so that natural resources would not be under the direct control of state organs with economic interests in exploitation. However, it was the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture (Narkomzem) that was able to arrogate to itself responsibilities for hunting regulations and enforcement and the creation and maintenance of related ''zapovedniki'', sometimes undermining conservation efforts (Weiner 1988, 24–30). During the hardships after the war and with the advent of the New Economic Policy, ''zapovedniki'' had to be subsidised by means of some resource extraction. This set a precedent that would later be usurped by some factions, especially in times of declining general prosperity (Weiner 1988, 39).<br /> <br /> Conservation continued even at the height of the ‘Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature’ (1948–53), typically indicated as paragon of Stalinist excesses. Often the important background to this is omitted, which was in the main a response to the famine of 1946 and part of efforts to recover industrial capacity from the ravages of the world capitalist powers’ conflagration, including especially Axis-Alliance invasions (Josephson et al. 2013, 84). The plan entailed an attempt to reduce the rough climate conditions (prone to extended droughts) in the southern and Central Asian portions of the USSR. This was tried by expanding irrigation canals, building artificial lakes and planting trees to create shelter belts. Throughout this period the number of ''zapovedniki'' was increased from 37 in 1937 to 128 in 1951, with the total area expanded from 7.14 to 12.5 million hectares (Pryde 1972, 51). What is more, millions of hectares of forest were set aside because of their importance to the viability of hydroelectric dams. Clear-cutting could have resulted in much soil erosion, eventually silting up rivers and impoundments and reducing the water flow necessary to generate electricity. To achieve this the Politburo repeatedly fought off the Ministry of Heavy Industry and Stalin mainly sided with conservationists on this issue (Brain 2011). The result was that, ‘from 1948 to 1953, the number of trees planted exceeded that of those planted during the previous 250 years of forestry history’ (Josephson et al. 2013, 120).<br /> <br /> All this may not have been entirely successful and, in part, damage ensued. Some species like the Turan tiger in the Aral Sea area disappeared (White 2013). At the same time, thanks to measures taken by succeeding USSR governments, most species, such as the saiga and the sturgeon, were saved from extinction and, since capitalism took over, are now threatened with or nearing extinction (Bekenov et al. 1998; Milner-Gulland et al. 2003; Secor et al. 2000). In some cases the motivations for saving a species coincided with the interests of sections of some economic ministries. Sturgeon life, for instance, coincided with the economic importance of caviar. The issue of saving the sturgeon brought together local citizenry, the caviar industry and the State Fisheries Committee to mount a successful offensive against the building of a hydroelectric dam on the Volga river (Josephson et al. 2013, 171). But most of the efforts at biodiversity conservation were not reducible to particular economic interests. They were part of genuine environmental concerns within and outside governing institutions (Weiner 1999).<br /> <br /> Pressures increased from economic planners to reduce the number and total area of the ''zapovedniki'' to make room for industrial uses. It was after the Stalin administration that the peak of 128 ''zapovedniki'' slid to 79 by 1968, with the total area roughly halved (from 12.5 to 6.4 million hectares). However, in 1977 nature protection was inscribed in the constitution (Obertreis 2018), giving a more direct legal basis for citizens to call the government to account. And so they often did, even before the enactment of such laws. This came about especially by way of scientific communities in the biological and earth sciences, relatively independent outfits like the All-Russia Society for the Conservation of Nature and organising and consciousness raising by activists. Their efforts, facilitated by the ease of land use reallocation thanks to state ownership, are one reason for the eventual restoration, expansion and more effective protection of the ''zapovedniki''. These successes in turning the anti-ecological tide of the 1960s were also due to the actions of sympathetic forces within government and the wider scientific establishment (Pryde 1972, 20–1; Weiner 1999).<br /> <br /> Conservation was not limited to ''zapovedniki''. In 1983 the Andropov government set up tens of national parks for alternative, recreational uses (Ostergren and Jacques 2002). In the main, national parks served environmental education and cultural heritage purposes as well as providing additional areas for ecological monitoring. These were complemented by millions of hectares of natural refuges (''zakazniki''), characterised by variable uses and hunting restrictions or prohibition. Lastly, natural monuments (''pahmiatnyki prirody'') were limited to protecting certain landscape features, which could range from an endemic plant to an entire coastline. Such conservation areas preceded and/or were expanded or newly formed during the USSR’s existence. By the time the USSR was dismantled, cutting-edge ecological work and protected representative ecosystems were contributing to improving prospects towards ecological sustainability. Even as this chance was largely sacrificed to capitalist prerogatives by the 1990s, the size and degree of protection of these nature reserves remain historically unparalleled and is among the ways in which a high degree of biodiversity was successfully preserved in the USSR (Colwell et al. 1997, 58).<br /> <br /> ==== Soil and Forest Conservation in the USSR ====<br /> Following in the footsteps of a fledgling movement inspired by the ideas of V.V. Dokuchaev, the eminent late nineteenth-century geographer and founder of soil science, soil scientists finally got the chance to set up field experimental stations to address soil erosion after the October Revolution. The first one dedicated to soil conservation studies was put together in 1921 and eventually seven were established, backed up by two national soil conservation institutes: one for farming issues, the other for the rest.<br /> <br /> The 1948 ‘Plan for the Transformation of Nature’ was a major boost for soil conservation. Farming policy mandated afforestation for the first time, along with the expansion or overhaul of irrigation systems. Forest shelterbelts complemented reservoir construction in more than 120 million hectares to reduce the impact of seasonal soil-erosive hot dry winds. The Dnepr, Don, Ural and Volga catchments were thereby blanketed with protective woods and other vegetation. The largest planting effort, in 1949–53, succeeded in securing windbreaks for more than two million hectares. In this manner much of the Russian Plain’s soil surface, mainly in the steppe and forest-steppe zones, was stabilised and protected for the long term. The increasing rates of erosion affecting such soils had been a topic of concern since the 1600s, but little had been done about the problem until the Bolsheviks came to power. Among the beneficial results of the policy is that the upper humus-rich soil layers (topsoils) of chernozem soils have become thicker over time under windbreaks compared to chernozems untouched by major human impacts like farming. Chernozems (grassland soils) are prevalent in the steppe regions. Their stabilisation and topsoil thickening constitute an especially important feat because they are often more erodible (due to the frequent loess sediment substrate). In addition, promoting chernozem topsoil development increases long-term carbon sequestration in soil organic matter. Unfortunately forested windbreaks have increasingly been destroyed since the early 1990s (Chendev et al. 2015).<br /> <br /> Timber demand from industry and for export also put pressure on forests, in continuity with Czarist times, but the logging was much more sustainable overall under Bolshevik rule. This was because timber extraction was heavily tempered by the afforestation and reforestation programmes introduced in the 1950s, as discussed above. By the late 1960s most timber was exported from the USSR to countries like the UK and Japan. Of total timber exports, a fifth went to the former and a third to the latter (Goldman 1972, 167–8). Deforestation and ensuing soil erosion, including near Lake Baikal, was not traceable to socialist state mismanagement. According to Goldman (1972, 169), much deforestation occurred even earlier, in spite of forest protection policies under Lenin and later Stalin, and because of similar economic pressures (Brain 2016). Yet total forested area consistently rose from 738 to 792 million hectares between 1961 and 1982 (Barr 1988, 249). In the Western and most industrialised part of the USSR (west of the Urals), the extent of forest cover reached more than 216 million hectares by 1985. The afforestation and reforestation policy set a pattern that outlasted the USSR, so that by 2012 the total area was expanded by another ten million hectares (Potapov et al. 2015). Such historical and current forest expansions have mitigated the effects of clear-cutting in Siberia since the early 1990s, which had not happened in the USSR to anywhere near the more recent levels of devastation (Achard et al. 2006; Trunov 2017).<br /> <br /> As the USSR government engaged in rapid industrialisation, agricultural area was expanded. Pressure on forest ecosystems was counterbalanced by shelterbelt construction, but, with increasing mechanisation, farming eventually came to be more impacting on soils and, to some extent, laden with agrochemicals. Especially in the Russian Plain, the expansion of beet production alongside cereal crops was accompanied by deeper ploughing and heavy machinery, causing compaction problems that were not adequately addressed until the 1980s (Chendev et al. 2015). Soil compaction often augments soil erosion rates. However, in the forest-steppe zone of Kursk oblast, for instance, a long-term study on variously managed and uncultivated chernozems (1964–2002) found that even the worst farming machinery effects of the 1970s left the soil’s physical characteristics relatively undamaged for such soil types (Kuznetsova 2012). Compaction-level measurements, like soil bulk density and porosity, were within permissible levels (1.25–1.35 g cm−3 and 45–55 per cent respectively).<br /> <br /> A major turn was the so-called ‘Virgin and Idle Lands Programme’ (VILP). Between 1954 and 1964 grassland cultivation was extended to northern Kazakhstan and western Siberia. There was ample precedent though. The 1941 Nazi and fascist invasion and extensive farmland destruction had already prompted an eastward shift in farming area to include Kazakhstan. By 1951, 2.6 million hectares of land were put to the plough (McCauley 1976, 167–8).<br /> <br /> The areas affected by the VILP are characterised by wide-ranging interannual precipitation levels, dry and high spring/summer winds (90–110 kph) and recurring droughts. A primary incentive for the VILP was, aside from generating more revenue for industry and military power development, a need to raise grain production and augment meat and dairy availability. For example, growing wheat on the steppes would allow fodder crop specialisation in other regions. To a major degree the objective was to sustain an increasingly urban and wage-dependent population.<br /> <br /> Eventually 23 million hectares of grassland came under the plough with the help of 650,000 colonists, despite specialists’ reservations based on the experiences of major crop failures in the 1930s. Worse, the VILP featured an anti-fallow campaign, eradication of pre-existing vegetation (especially with mouldboard ploughs), machinery-induced compaction and constant pressures on state and cooperative farms to maximise yields and forsake field rotation, contour ploughing and other soil protection techniques. Matters were little helped by limited irrigation, or by agrochemical distribution and application difficulties. The combination of monocultural production with insufficient herbicides created a bounty of undesirable plants (weeds) eventually contributing to reduced grain yields.<br /> <br /> These considerations benefit from historical hindsight, however. The Khrushchev government had legitimate reasons to be sanguine about the VILP. In 1956 wheat production hit record levels and the 1958 harvest proved to be very generous. But excellent yields alternated with poor harvests in tune with variable yearly weather patterns (McCauley 1976, 186). Moreover, viewed over the spans of decades, successes could be lethally deceptive. A prolonged drought (1961–3) led to major productivity losses and more frequent dust storms. Approximately seven million hectares of newly established cropland had to be retired. The VILP also led to land concentration under fewer, larger state farms, mostly at the expense of remaining pastoralists and cooperatives. The calamity turned the VILP into a net financial loss for state coffers, spelling more dependency on North American imports, and contributed to the removal of Khrushchev by rival forces by 1964. The succeeding Brezhnev government discontinued the policy and instituted a special soil erosion programme in the Ministry of Agriculture. Not that this could alter the cyclical nature of meteorological conditions, but the new measures did attenuate erosion problems.<br /> <br /> Interestingly it was to Canada that the government looked for models, not the US or Argentina, even if they arguably had similar problems and grassland ecosystems (Josephson et al. 2013, 152). However, in at least some portions of those very Canadian prairies, soil erosion was far from under control at the time and in some respects continued to be severe in the uplands (Gregorich and Anderson 1985; Martz and de Jong 1987). It was not until the 1980s that conservation tillage, crop residue management and other measures succeeded in substantially reducing erosion rates (Huffman et al. 2000). It should be emphasised that the knowledge transfer also went in the opposite direction. Techniques developed in the 1930s in the USSR for industrial production systems to cope with permafrost conditions were borrowed and adapted by North American firms and governments (Chu 2018, 184).<br /> <br /> More importantly, continued expansion of farmland subsequently contributed to reducing grain import dependence, as drought started to affect other regions. Noteworthy is the increasing aridification of the regional climate in Central Asia, with the increasing frequency of ever more intense droughts since the middle of the 1960s (Elie 2018) – Khrushchev’s VILP was a case of awful timing. It must also be acknowledged that, unlike countries such as the US and Canada, the main farming areas of the USSR were located exactly where drought frequency and magnitude had been rising. There was no possibility for the USSR government to switch food production to another region. And unlike some major capitalist countries, the USSR did not have or seek colonies or land abroad under corporate control to overcome domestic agricultural limits.<br /> <br /> The story is not too dissimilar from what occurred in the US with the Dust Bowl, but there are several crucial differences. One is that the USSR, unlike the US (or Canada), is prone to drought except in the north, where farming is largely unfeasible or impossible. Expanding farmland wherever it is practicable is a way to ensure that agricultural production is much less disrupted when one region is hit by drought (McCauley 1976, 196). In the US, unlike in the USSR, the drought-mitigating effects of irrigation systems, which were expanded rather than reduced, have robbed water from many Indigenous communities. They are also behind one of the world’s biggest, yet seldom discussed, environmental disasters. The Ogallala aquifer in the western US, one of the largest in the world, is now threatened with depletion and, in some areas, salinisation (Brooks and Emel 1995; Woodhouse 2003). Something similarly disastrous may be in the offing with the aquifers in the region upstream from the Aral Sea (Gadaev and Yasakov 2012). Additionally, human-accentuated droughts continue to generate periodic dust storms to this day in the south-west US as they do in the steppe regions, including Ukraine (Birmili et al. 2008; Dudiak et al. 2020), and they are major driving and respiratory hazards.<br /> <br /> In any event, following the Khrushchev administration matters did improve overall. Impacts on grassland soils were reduced under the Brezhnev government with the introduction and spread of minimum tillage, spatial alternation of annuals and perennials and re-establishment of grasses, among other soil conservation methods. Previous practices were also reinstated, such as crop rotation, contour ploughing and tree planting for shelterbelts, which reduce vulnerability to wind erosion (Elie 2018; Kraemer et al. 2015; McCauley 1976; Zonn et al. 1994).<br /> <br /> These soil conservation policies were far from easy to introduce and spread. When the USSR became a net grain importer (mainly from the US) in 1972, a third less land started to be left fallow (unsown to regain fertility) as in previous times. In the official press, open criticism was levelled at the government during the 1970s and 1980s for failing to address soil erosion effectively, including by top soil scientists (Brown and Wolf 1984, 17–18).<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, soil conservation measures implemented from the 1970s onwards were eventually largely successful. Consequently much of the soil in the Russian (especially the central portion) main area of cultivation is now stable, under grasses or woods, and mainly free of erosional gullies and ravines. Techniques varied by environment type and include: revegetation, gully infilling, forest belts, periodic fallow and planting perpendicular to slope direction (Brown and Wolf 1984; Golosov and Belyaev 2013). There were also moves to expand organic farming, which by 1980 had spread to cover 4 per cent of farmland (Peterson 1993, 109). Moreover, thanks to the recentralisation of forestry away from the Sovnarkhozy (Regional Economic Council) and under relevant ministries, deforestation was also held in check (Josephson et al. 2013, 162). Farmland and logging area abandonment since 1990 may have helped restrain or halt erosion rates (this depends on the degree to which human impact reduced erosion rates relative to prevailing or changing environmental conditions), but it is the net positive result from USSR policies that have made the difference, as shown in comparison to the higher erosion rates in adjacent countries (Sidorchuk and Golosov 2003; Wuepper et al. 2020). One could speak of a positive USSR legacy in the case of soil protection measures. If the status of soils were as disastrous as portrayed by mainstream scholars, foreign firms and government would not now be flocking to countries in the former USSR to buy up farmland (Visser and Spoor 2011).<br /> <br /> ==== Pollution Abatement in the USSR ====<br /> Major pollution problems accompanied rapid industrialisation and decades of increasing industrial output. A much justified and oft-cited complaint or critique about the USSR was the lax or lack of enforcement of what were otherwise much more stringent water and air pollution standards compared to contemporary ones in the US (Goldman 1972, 27–8; Oldfield 2005, 93–4). However, it is also true that legislation to reduce air pollution introduced under Czarism in 1913 was never enforced until the Bolshevik Party took over and eventually expanded the degree of restriction (Pryde 1972, 12).<br /> <br /> Water pollution remained a problem throughout the latter part of the USSR period, but there were also many cases of successful prevention and remediation (Pryde 1972, 144). Under the Stalin government, public health infrastructure and measures against air pollution were introduced (Josephson et al. 2013, 87). Major investments were made in pollution prevention research and implementation by 1929–30, but the wartime invasion and devastation interrupted and debilitated the planned infrastructure and applications over the long term. Nevertheless, by 1949 all industries and building projects were required to install dust-trapping devices (Izmerov 1973). It was during that administration as well that, in 1951, some of the world’s first maximum permissible concentration standards were established, at first for 122 pollutants. These scientific breakthroughs laid the foundation for toxicological standards worldwide (Izmerov 1973, 28, 45; Josephson et al. 2013, 92). Air pollution legislation was updated every five to ten years, and by 1970 comprehensive national guidelines on water use and pollution prevention were introduced (Pryde 1972, 137).<br /> <br /> By the 1970s regular air quality monitoring was spread over 110 cities, reaching 150,000 total point and transect samples (Izmerov 1973, 35). In the 1980s, 537 cities were equipped with such monitoring infrastructure, totalling 1,155 air quality monitoring stations (Permitin and Tikunov 1992; Pryde 1991, 32). Additionally, tens of background monitoring stations were built to reach complete country coverage by the early 1980s. All major contaminants were included, in addition to several heavy metals like lead and cadmium and pesticides like DDT. These stations, following a decade of disruption and retrenchment, form the backbone of pollution monitoring today in the former USSR countries (Chernogaeva et al. 2009). Thanks to copious scientific research and monitoring over decades, the sources, diffusion routes and health effects of air pollution were identified, helping to make the design and implementation of plans and regulations more effective in tackling the environmental challenges of industrialisation.<br /> <br /> As a consequence, alternative technologies for heating, electricity and coal combustion were developed and applied to reduce incomplete combustion, sulphur content and total emissions. This included switching to natural gas and hydropower sources, as well as using less polluting forms of coal. Fuel use based on natural gas increased roughly tenfold from 1955 to 1987, from 2.4 to 25 per cent of total energy sources (Shahgedanova and Burt 1994). The result was a marked diminution in airborne dust and sulphur in urban centres within a decade. For example, sulphur levels were more than halved and ash amounts reduced by two-thirds between 1953 and 1961 in Moscow. Similar outcomes were achieved in many other towns and the positive trend continued through to the USSR’s disappearance (Izmerov 1973, 63–4, 104–5; Shahgedanova and Burt 1994, 208).<br /> <br /> Pollution mainly from the metallurgical, petrochemical and power industries remained unresolved (Izmerov 1973, 65). Heavy metals contamination, for example, became severe in some areas by the 1970s, but the case of lead shows that there were also countervailing tendencies that rivalled the wealthiest capitalist countries. Leaded paint was already banned by the 1920s. In the US this did not happen until 1971. The use of leaded petrol, which did not reach the USSR until the 1940s, was severely restricted within many cities and tourist destinations by 1956 (Thomas and Orlova 2001). These are major reasons behind the much lower incidence of lead contamination, but stationary sources like the lead smelter in the Rudnaya River Valley (Russian far east) were highly and enduringly contaminating of proximate environments and people’s bodies (Kachur et al. 2003).<br /> <br /> Eventually, after peaking in the early 1980s, sulphur emissions from those stationary sources were successfully cut overall and drastically so, from 118 to 30 μg m−3, with localised exceptions. Nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide emissions, on the other hand, were largely held in check, mostly because of investments in public transport and the mitigation of private motorised vehicle use (Shahgedanova and Burt 1994, 212, 216, 219). There were nevertheless substantive reductions in industrial emissions by the middle of the 1980s. For example, pollution within a 30 km radius of the Middle Ural copper smelter showed rapid diminution of total emissions from 225 to less than 175 tonnes per year within the span of a couple of years in the early 1980s and then steadily declining further at lower rates. This includes sulphur, dust, nitrogen oxides, arsenic, copper and lead emissions. Upper soil horizons, though, retain long-term toxicity from decades of heavy metal and metalloid deposition (Vorobeichik and Kaigorodova 2017).<br /> <br /> Though air pollution never reached the levels of countries with comparable industrialisation levels, like Australia, the US and Canada (Hill 1997, 20; Oldfield 2005, 24–5), major reductions in sulphur and nitrous oxide emission were achieved thanks in part to a switch to natural gas (Figures 4.1 and 4.2). In this manner, particulate matter was also reduced over time (Figure 4.3), doing better than the US in most years. Most of all, better results were thanks to ‘an effort initiated by the government in the 1970s to improve air quality’ by using multiple mitigation techniques in stationary sources, such as retrofitting with more effective scrubbers (Peterson 1993, 45). A negative effect was the rising methane emissions, in part due to the fuel switch policy, but unevenly over time and surpassing US emission rates (Figure 4.4). However, CO2 emissions were always considerably lower than those in the US (Figure 4.5). The USSR may have had the highest sulphur emissions among the industrialised state-socialist countries (also because of reliance on lignite), yet it was always below US emission rates and also the most affected by long-range air pollutants from countries like the UK, Denmark and West Germany, as well as Poland (Hill 1997, 208; Josephson et al. 2013, 220–1; Pryde 1972, 152).<br /> <br /> Water pollution was mainly a locality-specific problem primarily associated with small streams in proximity to industrial plants and mines, as recognised at least by the late 1930s. The introduction and diffusion of sewage systems and treatment plants, along with increasingly stricter mandates for industries to ensure water purification prior to emission, aided in preventing or mitigating pollution in most cases. With postwar reconstruction and massive expansion of drinking water and sewerage infrastructure, more than three-quarters of USSR inhabitants had access to piped, potable water by the end of the 1950s (Litvinov 1962). Along most of the stretches of the larger streams, such as the Volga and Yenisey, dissolved oxygen levels were adequate or good from an ecological standpoint (within and higher than the recommended 6.5–8.0 mg L−1). While nitrate levels tended to be low, ammonia concentrations were above recommended 0.5 mgL−1 by 1980 in the Ob and Amur rivers. By 1985 concentrations were successfully reduced to below recommended maxima (Zecchini 1996, 53). However, by the 1980s the Don and Dniestr were highly polluted from a combination of industrial, municipal and agricultural effluents (Oldfield 2005, 25).<br /> <br /> [images]<br /> <br /> Part of the reason for the reduction in total toxic emissions over time was due to increasingly stringent regulations, actions to shift fuels, improvements in technical efficiency and strides in reuse and recycling of waste in industrial processes (Dudenkov 1985; Pryde 1972). More fines were introduced for enterprises caught polluting, even if enforcement had a mixed record. Some interpret the policies as ineffective because fines were lower compared to the loss of funds for failure to meet production targets (Josephson et al. 2013, 198–9). Most trace this to an intrinsic conflict of interest (e.g. Josephson et al. 2013, 203; Goldman 1972; Pryde 1972), as if a state is an internally coherent or homogeneous unit, a monolith impermeable to the rest of society (see Oldfield 2005). To think about the matter this way leaves unexplained the cases in which state institutions fought each other over conservation issues or resource management and the instances where conservation prevailed over economistic calculation, including by means of environmental campaigns from below (Weiner 1999). Such arguments also cannot explain government actions to replace fuel sources with less polluting ones, as described above. As further examples, in the 1960s pollution-abating retrofitting was installed in thousands of industrial establishments, and a hundred polluting factories in Moscow were relocated away from expanding residential areas. In the 1970s, 35,000 propane-fuelled lorries and public transport vehicles were ordered for Moscow to reduce carbon monoxide emissions by three-quarters. By 1972 central heating district facilities reached most domiciles in the largest cities and reduced pollution from coal use (McIntyre and Thornton 1978). By the 1980s, thanks to both public pressure and concerted industrial policy efforts, pollution levels were coming under control and falling (Oldfield 2005, 24). In large measure the limited successes in fighting industrial pollution had to do with the partial defeat of environmentalists and public health practitioners at the hands of the economic ministries (Kelley 1976; Ziegler 1980).<br /> <br /> All those environmental struggles within the USSR are effaced by an overwhelming emphasis on lasting pollution brought about through nuclear power. The first is associated with an explosion at Kyshtym in 1957, at the Mayak plutonium production plant in Chelyabinsk oblast (Josephson et al. 2013, 132; Pryde 1972), making it the third biggest nuclear accident behind Fukushima Daiichi (2011), Japan, and Chernobyl (1986). Less publicised these days is the Windscale fire at the Sellafield nuclear facility (UK), which happened less than a month after the Kyshtym accident. Ranking among the top ten nuclear disasters, the Windscale accident released radioactive fallout through the UK and parts of the rest of Europe. The largest such accident was, of course, Chernobyl. So much has already been written about it that the few remarks included here are rather to supplement what was discussed in Chapter 3.<br /> <br /> The siting of Chernobyl made for a much greater impact on land, rather than mainly the ocean, as in the case of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown (an ongoing disaster at the time of writing; Kasar et al. 2020). Radioactive releases largely escaped westward from the nuclear accident site, and most fell on communities in what is currently Belarus. The number of evacuated people was more than twice that of Fukushima, in part because of physiography and prevailing wind patterns, but mainly because of the USSR authorities’ decision to locate the reactors in a region with a relatively high population. The problem is not whether the Lenin nuclear plant meltdown near Chernobyl (Ukraine) was or was not as disastrous or deadly as made out to be. A disaster it was and mortality rates are likely high in the long aftermath. The problem is that Chernobyl is seared in public memory of the ‘free world’ as proof that socialism leads inexorably to catastrophe. Chernobyl is almost like a stock image archived permanently under a folder labelled ‘communism’.<br /> <br /> Yet the disaster and its pictorial representations are a double-edged metonym. As much as it is a way of compelling us to understand communism as intrinsically horrific, Chernobyl is also a threat to the nuclear industry and to all those environmentalists (leftist or not) who view the nuclear option as a viable alternative to fossil fuels. Protestation must never exceed the bounds of moderation towards the nuclear industry. The nuclear disaster must be understood as only demonstrating the incompetence on the part of the USSR. We are supposed to think that such a catastrophe will never happen under technologically superior free-market democracies, or under fully automated luxury communism, according to some on another part of the political spectrum. In none of those social systems would there be any use of graphite-moderated BRMKs (high-power channel-type reactors), as in Chernobyl. Never mind that there are nine BRMKs still in operation and without any particularly greater environmental destructiveness than usual for nuclear power.<br /> <br /> What the Chernobyl accident also demonstrated was a convergence of interests among top-ranked USSR and US officials and the nuclear industry. Focusing on the accident as a uniquely destructive event takes attention away from the destructiveness of nuclear power in general. As Brown has pointed out:<br /> <br /> In four decades of operation, the Hanford plutonium plant near Richland [Washington State] and the Maiak plant next to Ozersk each issued at least 200 million curies of radioactivity – twice what Chernobyl emitted – into the surrounding environment. The plants left behind hundreds of square miles of uninhabitable territory, contaminated rivers, soiled fields and forests, and thousands of people claiming to be sick from the plants’ radioactive effluence. (Brown 2013, 3)<br /> <br /> And there were and remain tens of those plutonium production centres. The Hanford site in eastern Washington (US) is more than just a production and disposal operation. In 1949 there was a deliberate release of 7,000 to 12,000 curies of radioactive iodine as an experiment in monitoring radioactivity levels. The authorities compromised and cut short the lives of thousands of downwind inhabitants, predominantly in Colville, Coeur d’Alene, Kalispel, Kooten-ai, Nez Perce, Spokane, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakama Indigenous communities. To this day there is no adequate epidemiological study.2 Chernobyl was accidental; Hanford was intentional.<br /> <br /> This in no way absolves or justifies the USSR government’s nuclear energy programme. It may have been expedient in raising energy provisioning and moving away from more polluting sources and there may be still more reasons that the USSR felt compelled to engage in a nuclear power programme, but the disastrous consequences overwhelm the benefits with or without accidents. Any socialist movement, especially when attaining political predominance, should learn from the state-socialist nuclear power programme so as to stay clear of any such technology as well as devise safe ways to decommission and dispose of spent nuclear fuel.<br /> <br /> Producing energy from nuclear fusion, however, is a much more promising technical alternative. Just as in the case of developing hydrogen-powered vehicles (Fateev et al. 2020; Korovin 1994), the USSR was at the forefront of nuclear fusion research. In 1951 nuclear physicists and engineers there began to develop a device containing hot plasma by using magnetic fields and that became the precursor to the Tokamak (Smirnov 2009). The Tokamak is the current basis for developing a nuclear fusion reactor, now taken to the most promising levels by scientists in South Korea (project KSTAR). It remains to be seen whether, just as in the case of solar panels and electric cars, such a technology is put in place through socially oppressive means and creates other kinds of environmental destruction.<br /> <br /> ==== The USSR’s Impacts on Arctic and Aral Sea Environments ====<br /> There is just as mixed a record relative to parts of the Arctic and the Aral Sea ecosystems. In the Arctic zone, the Kola Peninsula in particular was hard hit from the 1930s onwards with the introduction and spread of factories, mines and eventually nuclear power, leading to a corrosive cocktail of acid rain, deforestation, polluted waters, upturned earth and, initially, prison labour, in continuity with the Czarist dictatorship (Bruno 2016, 26–7). However, when, for example, the Stalin administration turned their attention to the region in the 1930s to mine apatite, they had not set out to wreck the environment. There were careful plans to locate mining areas well away from urban centres and ecologically sensitive areas and to maximise the reuse of mined materials and spoils (such as nepheline for aluminium), but discovery of bauxite in the Urals made the mineral recycling programme redundant and, as the Urals’ deposits dwindled in the 1970s, importing bauxite was cheaper than recycling mine waste from the Khibiny Mountains (Bruno 2018). It was not the Stalin regime that was careless about the environment, in this instance. The greater integration into the capitalist world economy by the 1960s, with the Khrushchev and Brezhnev administrations, created the conditions whereby economic pressures increased the influence of a commercial valuation process, where displacement of environmental destruction is transformed into cheaper raw material import. This intensified an already highly problematic set of resource extraction policies to aid rapid industrialisation and that resulted in much social and environmental harm.<br /> <br /> Along with the largely deleterious impact on many species, such as reindeer (partly herded into large farms), USSR policy, including forced sedentarisation, displaced and marginalised the Sápmi, Komi and Nenets. The Sápmi suffered similarly just across the border, under social democracy. As environmental historian Andy Bruno has observed, ‘Soviet rule had turned the Kola Peninsula into the most populated, industrialized, and militarized section of the global Arctic, as well as one of the most polluted’ (Bruno 2016, 4). None of this was preordained and things could have been turned about in more positive directions. Nickel smelters, among the more polluting industries, turned into a veritable scourge mainly when the USSR came under more intense economic pressures in the 1970s. Agricultural output shortfalls and accompanying dependence on US grain imports, and then the 1980s major oil export revenue losses due to a world oil glut, combined to intensify indebtedness to Western capitalist institutions (Bruno 2016, 19–20). ''Zapovedniki'', nevertheless, were established (e.g. the Lapland preserve) and were valiantly defended by dissenting communist conservationists even at the height of the 1930s purges and executions and despite multiple attempts at opening ''zapovedniki'' up to industry (Weiner 1999).<br /> <br /> Then there is the Aral Sea, shrunk as a direct consequence of the diversion of major rivers to suit hydroelectrical purposes and to provide irrigation privileging cotton production as an export-oriented cash crop. As already remarked, it was under the Czarist regime that major inroads were made towards turning that part of Central Asia into a cotton-producing region. It was not until 1945 that substantive river redirection, mainly the Syr and Amu Darya, started. Canal construction proceeded through the 1970s and extensive soil salinisation problems eventually followed. By the 1960s the sea was expected by experts within the USSR to turn into a salt marsh by 2000 (Goldman 1972, 216–17). More recently the sea was predicted to have disappeared by 2021 (Gadaev and Yasakov 2012, 10). Fortunately this has not turned out to be the case, but it is small consolation that a mere fraction of the sea remains and requires massive investment just to retain its current, much diminished size. The impact is not just on the Aral Sea and its communities and ecosystems, particularly the now mostly disappeared wetlands. There is a regional effect in making an already arid region even drier and with greater seasonal temperature extremes, as the moderating effect of a large body of water are largely gone (Laity 2008, 282–3). The impacts were not entirely negative either. Efforts at mitigating vegetation losses and reforestation succeeded and stabilised surrounding ecosystems (Kariyeva and van Leeuwen 2012; Robinson 2016; Zhou et al. 2015).<br /> <br /> Yet the sea’s shrinkage was not due to the USSR alone. Closer scrutiny reveals that the most extensive shrinkage of the sea happened after, not during, the USSR’s existence. This is evinced in 1977–2010 NASA satellite imagery, which shows that it was after 1990 that the sea was reduced to a quarter of its 1960 extent (NASA 2012). Most of the losses occurred after 1989, even as there were temporary declines in water withdrawals and increases in precipitation and upstream runoff (Micklin 2007; Wang et al. 2020). This is in part due to open and unlined irrigation canals as well as the continuation of cotton production combined with another water-demanding cropping system, wet rice monocultures (Laity 2008, 282). In addition, temperatures had been markedly increasing decades prior to the dissolution of the USSR (Lioubimtseva 2014), magnifying evaporation rates and speeding up the sea’s recession. The process was at first gradual, over the 1960–80 period, which is part of the reason that USSR governments underestimated the problem. It took a few decades for the shrinking trend to become prominent (Glantz 2007) and for regional climate warming to exacerbate the impacts of river diversion. The warming trends, as shown in Chapter 3, are hardly the making of the USSR alone or of socialist states more broadly. The Aral Sea disaster is regrettably not unique. Countries like the US are even more wasteful with water, with only a third to half of irrigation water reaching crops. Many examples exist in the US and elsewhere of shrinking lakes tied to industrial farming schemes in semi-arid and arid regions (Horowitz 2012; Pryde 1972, 123).<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, decisions were made in full awareness of the disastrous consequences. Revenues from cotton exports were deemed more important. Downstream fisheries were already deleteriously impacted by the 1970s. Within a few decades 500,000 hectares of spawning and migratory areas succumbed not only to desiccation but also to the poisonous cocktail of fertilisers and biocides from industrialised farming. Still, with central planning coordination, including the introduction of aquaculture, fishing remained viable and production even increased (Glantz 2007; Karimov 2011; Petr et al. 2004). Local people’s health was neglected and thousands of lives were shortened by the toxic consequences of polluted air and water, as well as threatened by the leftovers of a biological weapons programme (Edelstein 2012). Cotton production soared, doubling between 1960 and 1980, contributing substantially to the state acquiring core capitalist currency to repay loans and disproportionately high interest, and, among other things, purchase high-technology products. This, more than any notion of mismanagement or inferiority of central planning, can explain the ecologically and, for part of the region, socially destructive outcome, given that endless capital accumulation was not the overall objective. It was certainly not some reckless intervention in the environment intrinsic to ‘socialism’, as is often portrayed.<br /> <br /> Contrast this with the main goals of outfits like the US Army Corps of Engineers over the same period or more recently. This is an analogy made by some regarding similarities in the environmental practices of the USSR and the US (Josephson et al. 2013, 119), except that the objectives were rather different. Among other things, the aim in the US was to improve river navigation and build dams as part of infrastructure primarily serving commercial interests or, in cases like New Orleans, mainly the needs of upper-class whites. In the meantime, the projects undertaken by the Corps often led to destroying wetlands and degrading riverbeds, among other deleterious consequences (Hartman and Squires 2006; Robinson 1989; Schneiders 1996). The dams on the Colorado River and other diversions of river water in the western US have had regionally destructive repercussions to benefit mainly white settler farming businesses and at the expense of Indigenous communities’ access to water, not to mention the submergence of sacred places and former settlements (Young 1997). Downstream of the Colorado River dams there are problems of salinisation and toxic chemical build-ups in the river delta, while in Mexico much of the wetlands area of Baja California has been destroyed. In fact, the Colorado River does not reach Baja California anymore, thereby starving local marine life of nutrients and reducing biodiversity (Kowalewski et al. 2000; Tecle 2017). One could claim that the intent was not necessarily destructive and that if there was destruction it is not intrinsic to liberal democracy; carry the same argument over to state socialism and we get the same degree of absolution. The problem, though, is the thirst for endless capital accumulation, the basis of liberal democracy that eventually drives even the most socially or ecologically positive intentions towards awful outcomes.<br /> <br /> ==== The USSR’s Environmentally Constructive Contributions ====<br /> Even if the USSR’s impacts were at times destructive, and on a couple of occasions lastingly catastrophic, policies to contain environmental impact and promote conservation were much more successful than typically acknowledged. Ecological sensibility was diffused to tens of thousands of people through scientific and volunteer association. Conservation research enjoyed high levels of investment and infrastructure (Pryde 1972, 164). This all made it easier to set up ecological preserves, establish biodiversity conservation areas and organise to pressure government to improve air and water quality and to fight off some large-scale plans of environmentally destructive potential. Centralised decision-making processes and the drastic curtailment of private land ownership made conservation more effective, aiding in the set-up and protection of large preserves throughout the country. This made possible the institution of the world’s most comprehensive system of ecological preserves (''zapovedniki''), which was enlarged over time, aiding in the protection of biodiversity and restoration of threatened species. Major strides were made in soil conservation and afforestation whose positive effects are felt even today. Pollution problems existed with industrialisation and increased in severity especially in the 1970s, but technological improvements, fuel source switching to methane, increasing restrictions and fines, as well as grassroots activism, contributed to substantial and steady reductions in emissions by the 1980s.<br /> <br /> There were other important developments that would require a separate book to recount. Zoning and industry siting were more easily controlled with centralisation, with potential for ecological and social benefits contingent on the outcomes of struggles within and between state organs at different levels as well as with organised locals. The suppression of hydroelectric dam construction in Armenia and a paper pulp plant near Lake Baikal exemplify successful struggles.<br /> <br /> Urban centres were designed to limit excessive consumption and waste and promote socialisation. Heating and hot water systems were made more energy efficient and available to most citizens, thanks in part to urban planning that focused more on providing communal living spaces. Amenities reached most everyone, and not just in cities. There was a thick network of public transport, plenty of urban green space and very little private vehicle use. Consequently air pollution was largely confined to stationary sources like factories, which were usually located well away from inhabited areas, and green spaces helped absorb contaminants. Workplaces were mainly located close to people’s residences or reachable by public transport, pre-empting the need for personal motorised vehicles for most. By 1970, with an eye to reducing fossil fuel use further, electric cars were being developed and tested (Korovin 1994). This would have complemented existing reliance on railways for mass freight of consumer and producer supplies, which contributed to keeping mobile sources of pollution low (Krausmann et al. 2016).<br /> <br /> The lack of mass consumerism prevented the existence of premeditated product obsolescence. An advantage of suppressing commercialisation and greater media control was the existence of little to no advertising, for example. There was no ‘unrestrained competition to seduce the consumer into buying what he doesn’t need by the use of gaudy and unnecessary packaging, misleading advertising, constant design changes, psychological pressures, “beautifying” chemical additives of uncertain side-effects, etc.’ (Pryde 1972, 164). A result was 195 kg of solid waste per capita for a total of 56 million tonnes in 1988, compared to 665 kg per capita in the US and 162.9 million tonnes total (Peterson 1993, 130). There were few to no disposable products and thereby much less solid waste accumulation. Recycling rates were widely promoted and much greater in the USSR than in the US (Goldman 1972, 174). Compared to the US and other high-consumption countries, the USSR was also more advanced in the recycling of human waste, including using biosolids for farming (Goldman 1972, 273–83). The latter, it should be noted, can create pollution problems that at the time were not adequately studied or not considered at all. With proper screening and processing, however, recycling effluent can and should be pursued further – much further than has been the case since the 1970s.<br /> <br /> Lastly, there were important and lasting positive environmental legacies of the USSR at the global level by way of international environmental agreements and treaties, along with the copious scientific work and data needed to back them up (Foster 2015). Starting in the 1950s, climatologists and geophysicists in the USSR developed tools to understand the global climate system that would become essential to climate change study. By the 1960s they were analysing the role of human causation in global climate change and developing climate change models grounded in palaeoclimatic analogues to enable forecasting. They were internationally influential participants from the late 1950s in the precursors to the 1990 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, where USSR scientists were ultimately marginalised. Such precursors include the 1957–8 International Geophysical Year and the 1979 World Climate Conference, which was pushed by the World Meteorological Organisation under the leadership of Swiss and USSR scientists. The basis for multiple attempts at climate change protocols and agreements (so far complete failures) bears the heavy imprint of the USSR’s precocious advocacy (Oldfield 2018).<br /> <br /> The USSR, as part of the UN’s Security Council, lent their political weight in support of the 1972 Stockholm Declaration, which outlined the principles of social and ecological sustainability. In 1975, partly owing to being a recipient of air pollution and acid rain from countries to the west, the USSR led the charge in pushing for an international treaty on long-range air pollution through the United Nations (Sokolovsky 2004). Negotiations were arduous and the USSR devoted major efforts, enlisting the backing of Scandinavian countries, to overcome four years of stalling and objections by NATO countries even to meet on the issues. The resulting 1979 Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution was a pivotal moment in the making of legally binding global environmental protection policies. Fostering scientific and technical collaboration among tens of countries to reduce air pollution, the agreement eventually proved successful in markedly reducing regional emissions in Europe and North America. Regrettably, the convention stands as a rare example of effective international action on the environment. The USSR also spearheaded the 1977 UN Conference on Desertification in Nairobi, with USSR scientists featuring as major organisers and ensuring that social causation would be among the main processes considered (Elie 2015).<br /> <br /> As shown above, there were beneficial developments and promising potentials stemming from the institutional structures of the USSR. Ecological footprint data largely verify this both in total and per capita values. This becomes especially evident when compared to the consistently worse record for the US, with a similar population size, an ability to offload environmental harms on many other countries and a highly industrialised and much wealthier economy (Figure 4.6). Much could therefore be learned of ecological value from historical experiences in the USSR instead of just jettisoning them.<br /> <br /> [image]<br /> <br /> Among others, one is that making the economic much more evidently political is insufficient to tackle or prevent destructive environmental impacts without putting ecological issues front and centre of policy and everyday practices, especially by dedicating just as much if not more resources and rewards to ecologically constructive activities.<br /> <br /> Another is that official pronouncements and legal frameworks must be aligned with material conditions and feasible prospects. The Communist Party leadership too often exaggerated what could be achieved under prevailing conditions. Furthermore, they often dissimulated the negative forms of environmental impacts as well as existing power relations, characterised mainly by worker subordination to central committee and multiple-level administrative and managerial dictates. This would have also meant avoiding claims of state-socialist superiority and dropping any visions of catching up to and surpassing the wealthiest capitalist countries in economic output.<br /> <br /> Instead, it could have been easily demonstrated how much better off people were compared to the Czarist period and to almost all other countries in the world, in terms of living standards, for example. The realisation of the wealthiest capitalist countries’ level of wealth relies on a history and a present of colonial and neocolonial horrors unbecoming of any socialist project. Rhetorical manoeuvres may have served a galvanising purpose for party members and maybe also wider society, but they eventually (if not immediately) backfired when environmental and social harms patently contradicted official statements and intentions.<br /> <br /> Nonetheless, it is impressive that much environmental legislation and many positive environmental practices started to be instituted since the very establishment of the USSR, during protracted wars, famines and multiple scorched-earth foreign invasions. Conservationist rationales behind those policies, as discussed above, may have overlapped somewhat with those in countries like the US (e.g. securing a reliable internal supply of raw materials; see also Gare 1993), but the implementation of those policies faced much rougher economic circumstances from within and without. That so many environmental benefits were achieved in a rapidly industrialising country under such general strains testifies to the usefulness of the socialist state in mitigating environmental harm while raising standards of living in what was initially an overwhelmingly deprived agrarian society. The conflicts between environmental concerns and industrial interests, expressed institutionally through, for instance, the tension between pollution fines and production targets, signifies a symptom of the contradiction that was the USSR. It is no picnic to balance the striving to overcome capitalist and semi-feudal Czarist legacies of widespread material deprivation, grossly unequal access to resources and much environmental destruction with building socialism and ensuring a more liveable environment and the integrity of ecosystems.<br /> <br /> === The PRC: Fulcrum of World Ecosocialist Struggles ===<br /> Much maligned now from both left and right political positions, the PRC presents an interesting analytical and immediately political conundrum. On the one hand, if one recognises the PRC as socialist even after 1978, the environmental devastation that took off since then becomes evidence for the presumed ecological evils of state socialism. But this enmeshes all capitalist countries at once in such environmental destruction because of the tight connection between economic changes towards market mechanisms in the PRC and capitalist investments from and exports to the largest economies under liberal democracies like the US and Canada. On the other hand, if the PRC is deemed capitalist (and the official Marxist rhetoric spurious), then the obvious intensification and expansion of environmental damage since 1978 cannot be explained by socialist mismanagement at all. The destructive effects would be flatly capitalist in character, as in fact they are even according to the Cato Institute, a mouthpiece for the coarsest enthusiasts of capitalism. In their view, the redirection imposed by the Dèng government since 1978 led to a radical transformation of the PRC by the end of the 1990s, such that it ‘is no longer communist except in name’ (Coase and Wang 2013, 10). But if one takes environmental impact alone as the measure of ethics or progress, one could find praiseworthy the much lower impacts when the CPC was led by Máo. If anything, the PRC demonstrates most clearly what nonsense it is to hold the view that state socialism inevitably leads to environmental destruction. It is in this case just as arguable that it is the transformation of a socialist into a capitalist system that yields that kind of catastrophic trouble. More to the point, regardless of ideologically motivated labels, a decisive and massively more destructive turn is evident in China following the introduction of capitalist policies. This would appear to be the least controversial conclusion to draw so far and with far-reaching political consequences.<br /> <br /> ==== Legacies of Commercialisation and Colonialism in China ====<br /> The ecosystems harmed or destroyed currently in China are often those that resulted from millennia of impacts from social systems preceding the 1949 establishment of the PRC. The highly heterogeneous ecosystems within the variably bounded territory of China, commercially oriented yet not capitalist since the 1600s or so (Marks 1998, 11–13), underwent major lasting and largely negative environmental impacts prior to the establishment of a socialist state. Among the most salient was biodiversity loss and deforestation associated with the expansion of an intensive form of farming whose aims were to produce surplus for trade and state, not necessarily to provide for subsistence needs. Matters were only exacerbated from the 1850s onwards with the belligerent encroachment of liberal democracies (the Opium Wars being among the more egregious examples), imposing terms of trade and commercial monopolies that essentially funnelled more resources away to foreign businesses. The forced subordination to a capitalist world economy dominated by European empires introduced or intensified plantation systems oriented towards export, concentrated in commodities such as silk, tobacco and sugar cane (Marks 1998, 342–3).<br /> <br /> The 1750–1950 period saw the contraction of forests from 25 per cent to 5–10 per cent of total land area, widespread soil erosion, river sedimentation and mass declines in fish life. Ever-increasing demands on farms to produce more from ecosystems already depleted of energy reserves and with compromised nutrient cycles (due to such changes as deforestation and possibly soil organic matter depletion) led to an agricultural underproduction problem.3 Moreover, a state apparatus debilitated by liberal democracies’ imperialism and internal conflict, eventually degenerating into warlordism by the 1920s, became useless in providing even basic provisions out of collected taxes. This resulted in increasing vulnerability to famines induced by the frequent droughts associated with El Niño Southern Oscillations between 1876 and 1930, leading to tens of millions of preventable deaths. The genocidal Japanese invasion of 1937 and the horrors inflicted by warlords (variously allied to Jiăng Jièshí’s – aka Chang Kaishek’s – Guómíndăng and/or the Japanese) contributed to lasting environmental destruction that could only be worsened by the 1945–9 civil war, precipitated by an uncompromising, power-hungry Guómíndăng supported militarily by the US. A major, rarely recalled catastrophe involved the Guómíndăng’s wartime actions. In 1938 they blew up the Yellow River’s dykes in a vain attempt to stop the Japanese army’s advance. The ensuing flood drowned about a million people, led to four million total deaths, displaced millions of people, set in motion wide fluctuations in the river’s course, destroyed hundreds of thousands of villages and millions of hectares of cropland and, adding disaster to calamity, failed to stop the Japanese army. In other words, by the time they took state power the CPC inherited highly degraded ecosystems, a country devastated by decades of war, a farming sector in tatters, foreign market dependence even for basic goods, a militarily ravaged low-grade industrial base and a financially leaky and weakened state apparatus incapable of meeting people’s basic needs (Marks 2017, 287–8).<br /> <br /> ==== Environmental Impacts and Policies under the Maoist Fraction of the CPC ====<br /> Shortly after the revolution the US imposed a trade embargo and sanctions that impeded any import of technologies or other products, including agrochemical fertilisers, which could have helped alleviate the suffering of millions in China after such trying decades. The CPC are hardly to be exempted from criticism though. Relations with the USSR could be justifiably tense, and they certainly were by the late 1920s (see Chapter 2). The split with the USSR over political priorities (the worst of it happening over 1956–66), including the question of international leadership relative to mainstream communist parties, was entirely preventable, as was the 1969 border conflict. The split with the USSR only made matters worse overall, including by way of undermining prospects for technological assistance, especially in farming. Under such circumstances, imposed and self-inflicted, it would have been a remarkable act of self-immolation for any political formation in power to leave matters as they stood, instead of doing the utmost to establish the basis for producing consistent, reliable surpluses to house, clothe and feed people.<br /> <br /> Agricultural expansionism and accelerated industrialisation were not too different strategically from that employed decades earlier in the USSR. The policies led to similar atrocities and disasters, including a major famine. But they also led to what Kenneth Pomeranz has identified as a transformation of ‘the notorious “land of famine” of the 1850–1950 period into a crucial grain-surplus area’ by means of a massive expansion of irrigation, which ‘contributed mightily to improving per capita food supplies for a national population that has more than doubled since 1949’ (Pomeranz 2009b, 9). The overarching aims were relatively straightforward: raise productivity levels (that is, industrialise) as fast as possible to hasten the establishment of the material conditions necessary for socialism (in line with predominant understandings that egalitarianism is not feasible on an empty stomach) while parrying threats from liberal democracies and then also the USSR (Shapiro 2001, 2).<br /> <br /> However, Máo Zédōng and associates did not have the level of social influence Stalin had enjoyed (and usurped). Máo’s fate, increasingly having to struggle against being marginalised by capitalist roaders (a main motivation behind the 1966–76 Cultural Revolution), was more akin to that of Khrushchev. His failures over attempts to compete with the US over, among other pursuits, agricultural productivity cost him his post, even as it was under Khrushchev’s government that the marks of full industrialisation were lastingly chiselled into many landscapes and in the minds of most people in the USSR.<br /> <br /> Industrialisation in the PRC, in contrast, remained hampered by a dearth of locally available resources. Irrespective of such a disadvantage, machinery, agrochemicals and hybridised crops, among other means of production, were developed and output did increase (Eisenman 2018; Xu 2018). Problems of environmental destruction were noted with much concern, but were not given the same weight as economic output. Still, between 1956 and 1957 sanitation standards were promulgated for all industry and water systems, along with water quality protection and soil conservation policies. These would guide much of the environmental regulation until the 1970s (Muldavin 2000, 252).<br /> <br /> Resorting to expanding farming to even more land, leading to more uncultivated ecosystem destruction, and pro-natalist policies to increase the numbers of workers may seem perverse in hindsight. The reality of a decimated population and economic isolation should temper such judgement. Be that as it may, the imposition of large, centralised farm units on peasants (‘collectivisation’) compensated for low productivity levels and amassed the necessary capital to industrialise rapidly (Eisenman 2018). A result was agricultural encroachment into much grassland in Inner Mongolia, Jiansu and Xinjiang, and deforestation in some mountainous and tropical areas, especially in Manchuria and Yúnnán. Within 30 years (1950–80) arable land increased from 80 to 130 million hectares (Marks 2017, 310–12, 320).<br /> <br /> This may at first seem very destructive until it is realised that by the middle of the 1970s reforestation efforts were successful enough to increase wooded area to 12 per cent of land cover, winning the praise of at least some world-renowned conservationists (Eckholm 1976). Tens of millions of hectares of land were replanted with trees through massive socialist state reforestation campaigns started in the 1950s, which continue today. To a minor extent forest recovery also occurred by setting land aside for spontaneous regeneration. Grasslands and shrubland, however, have contracted overall, mainly due to cropland expansion. Claims of inflationary official figures over the extent of reforestation and afforestation (e.g. Marks 2017, 320–1) have been disproven by a recent NASA-sponsored study that combines multiple sources of evidence (Liu and Tian 2010). At the same time, inadequate attention to local ecological contexts has resulted in afforestation worsening conditions relative to biodiversity and water supplies in some areas (Shixiong et al. 2011). Still, the reinstatement and expansion of forests is a major feat of generally constructive biophysical impact while at the same time expanding food production potential.<br /> <br /> According to an analysis of soil quality trends from the 1930s through the 1980s, no net soil erosion occurred countrywide, but there were major regional topsoil loss problems of lasting consequence (in the loess areas, for example). Though nitrogen and soil organic matter did decline (as they have in virtually all major industrialised countries), potassium and phosphate levels increased (a typical result of decades of chemical fertiliser input) and alkalinity and salinisation problems have been kept largely in check. Urban expansion, in contrast, is wrecking much nutrient-rich arable soil, even if to a geographically very confined extent (Lindert 2000).<br /> <br /> ==== Shifting to the State Management of a Capitalist Economy in the PRC ====<br /> The environmentally worst was to come with the completion of industrialisation after the capitalist-friendly policy changes instituted in 1978, after the ousting of Máo’s CPC faction. This was by no means a foreclosed outcome. Environmental protection efforts, gathering momentum under Máo’s leadership with the reforestation and afforestation campaigns, were enshrined into law in 1978. The PRC’s National Environmental Protection Agency was instituted shortly thereafter (Wu 1987). But the farming improvements, the industrial base and moderate environmental successes built through much sacrifice were redirected towards profit-making ventures and intense capital accumulation for the few. Centralised control over environmental practices was substantially reduced. Land and factories were mostly privatised, state planning and control were drastically reduced just as new environmental regulations were to be enforced, zones of even more intense worker exploitation were set up (special economic zones, such as Shēnzhèn, near Hong Kong) and the national economy was increasingly opened to investment and imports from the capitalist countries. Environmental regulators remained largely uncoordinated and environmental monitoring and assessment remained embryonic.<br /> <br /> Between the 1980s and 1990s the real great leap forward occurred. Levels of industrialisation comparable to those of the US were achieved in the PRC within just two decades. This was not out of the blue, though. Agrochemical plants and production had expanded markedly beginning with Máo’s waning days of leadership, thanks to friendlier terms established with the US Nixon administration. Not long afterwards, agricultural output soared along with agrochemicals exports along with farmland and water quality degradation. Land use intensification behind higher farm output at the village ‘commune’ level (nominally collective farm units remunerated increasingly through wages instead of work points) was achieved by increasing surplus extraction from peasants and at the cost of rising pollution problems (Eisenman 2018; Muldavin 2000).<br /> <br /> There were and have been many and major negative environmental consequences to these shifts, including wetland and grassland contraction and an unprecedented increase in the emission of greenhouse gases surpassing those of the US, the now former number one polluter of the atmosphere (Liu and Diamond 2005; Smil 2015; Zhang et al. 2015). After a steady rise mainly since the 1970s, barring the blip caused by the Great Leap Forward industrialisation drive (1958–62), CO2 emissions started spiking exponentially in 2002 and in short order arrived at the world’s leading position, as examined later in this chapter. Controlling for population size, though, the figures are still less than half those of the US.<br /> <br /> Air pollution has been horrific in major cities, with sometimes a series of days of impenetrable haze with such strong specular reflection as to give the impression of living within a large, shiny, suffocating envelope. Much of the problem was due to coal use in urban centres, which has been greatly worsened by emissions from the rising fleets of motorised vehicles. Air quality resembles what had happened in the wealthiest capitalist countries by the 1960s, with a high average degree of fine dust (89 μg m−3), sulphur dioxide (48 μg m−3) and nitrogen dioxide (34 μg m−3) pervading the air of 113 cities. In rural areas, burning fuelwood and coal is also a major health hazard (Kan 2009).<br /> <br /> Over the past decade, however, some water quality improvements have occurred in rivers and lakes, with biological oxygen demand falling by about 3 per cent. This has been part of a ramping up of investments in environmental protection, which have trebled from 0.5 to 1.5 per cent of GDP (Kan 2009). Smog has been successfully and markedly reduced, mainly by investing more in end-of-pipe technologies, including desulphurisation, increasing reliance on methane and by much more effective enforcement of regulations over industrial emissions and vehicular traffic (Mao et al. 2014; van der A et al. 2017; Ying and Carlowicz 2016).<br /> <br /> [image]<br /> <br /> But this has been mainly confined to cities and was a short-lived amelioration at the national scale. Nitrous oxides rose substantially in the 1990s, surpassing the US, among the highest world emitters (Figure 4.7). Then, after reaching a peak by 2007, nitrous oxide emissions have been stabilised at a level nearly three times higher than 1970. Taken on a per capita basis, however, the figures are rather low, especially compared to the US (Figure 4.8). In part this rise is due to more motorised transport use.<br /> <br /> Sulphur emissions (Figure 4.9) follow a similar pattern, except that in the US they have steadily declined since 1979, reaching levels not experienced in China since the early 1970s. This remarkable feat is the result of the above-discussed successful 1979 UN long-range pollution treaty, which was realised thanks to the USSR. Total fine particulate matter emitted has instead been very high, mainly through coal combustion later primed by vehicular exhaust, aside from the expansion of industries, including via relocation from abroad (Figure 4.10). As part of the result of switching from coal, total methane emissions have tended to be high (higher than in the US) and have further increased since the early 2000s, but they are still much lower on a per capita basis (Figure 4.11). On per capita terms much of the air pollution remains lower than that of the US, save for PM2.5 emissions, an indicator of the extent of at least potential smog conditions. Sulphur emissions are also approaching the levels of the US, as a result of increasingly higher rates in China and declining ones in the US.<br /> <br /> [images]<br /> <br /> Soil pollution has intensified and expanded to such an extent that by 2014 above-standard trace element concentrations affected 16.1 per cent of the total land area (Chen et al. 2016). In many of the main cities, aside from smog problems, the levels of water contamination are high or risky enough that people must procure or purchase bottled water to drink and wash food (as the author also experienced). If it is any consolation, at least all this is well known because of effective environmental monitoring, and measures are being taken to contain the problem, including harsher and clearer legal frameworks, committing to ten-year national soil surveys and setting up monitoring stations making available continuously updated results (Li et al. 2019; Zhou and Liu 2018). This is hardly enough, especially in terms of prevention, but China is on its way to a level of soil monitoring that used to exist in Hungary until 1989 or that exists to a similar extent in the Netherlands. In the US, instead, as the US Environmental Protection Agency states, ‘Currently, no single information source tracks the extent of contaminated land nationwide’ (US EPA 2020b). In China, at least, they know where they can start tackling the problem.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, 40 per cent of mammalian species and possibly 80 per cent of plant species are threatened with extinction, while hundreds had already been lost since before the 1949 revolution (Marks 2017, 330–6). These are but some of the negative impacts that have occurred or have been intensified since 1978, including major river water diversions, large-scale damming (the Three Gorges Dam being a prominent example), air and soil pollution linked to mining, industrial plants and the dizzyingly fast diffusion of motorised vehicles (Chen et al. 2011).<br /> <br /> Not all impacts have been as terrible as usually depicted (but this can be said of the wealthiest capitalist countries too). Deforestation, while it ran amok again in the 1980s, was somewhat reversed by the 1990s. The increasingly privatised ‘collectivised’ forests were felled liberally, overwhelming the timber market in such a way as to reduce logging, ironically, in state-owned forests (amounting to about 42 per cent of total forest cover), where historically much damage had been done to provide fledgling manufacturing and building sectors with raw materials before the late 1970s. Regrettably, in the 1990s, with even more liberalisation of the state forestry sector in supplying businesses, the rate of deforestation, including old-growth survivals, increased in state-owned forests as well. Such was the increasing magnitude and frequency of flooding, landslides and other disastrous effects, causing thousands of deaths, that a logging ban was put into effect in 1998.<br /> <br /> In some parts of China reforestation efforts have since been successful, such as in Yúnnán, but in part the logging problem has been displaced to other countries, as China has become an importer of lumber, resulting especially in tropical forest losses elsewhere. This possibility of halting environmentally harmful practices, at least, can be counted as a merit for a one-party socialist government that is supposed to promote socialism while ruling over a capitalist economy (which is, in a way, as contradictory as social democracy). Biodiversity prospects have also been improving with the establishment of 2,000 nature preserves by 2003, totalling 14.4 per cent of land area (Liu and Diamond 2005, 1183).<br /> <br /> But the net effects of CPC and business decisions have been destructive, which points to major failures on the part of the capitalist-oriented ruling fraction of the CPC to restrain or suppress environmentally destructive businesses. Desert expansion has been increasingly problematic, even if it dates as a problem to periods preceding 1949. The problem in figures is the increase of areas classified as desert from 15 to 25 per cent of total land area, a startling outcome driven especially by the loss of grasslands to industrialised farming, mining and other impacts of an extractive character. The problem has been exacerbated by groundwater withdrawals at faster than regeneration rates.<br /> <br /> ==== An Overview of Environmental Impacts in the PRC ====<br /> The socialist state phase of the PRC was short, lasting between 1949 and 1978, barely three decades. Generally, from the 1950s through the late 1970s, the prevailing Máo fraction of the CPC introduced sanitation standards, included environmental concerns in town planning and expanded forest cover. They oversaw a large-scale reforestation campaign that helped re-establish much of the forest cover lost over prior centuries. Environmental legislation became part of the constitution by 1978 with the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the CPC. This laid the groundwork for the creation of the National Environmental Protection Agency in 1988.<br /> <br /> Nonetheless, the capitalist-oriented reforms under Dèng Xiăopíng led to soaring greenhouse gas emissions, some desert enlargement (also in part due to climate change), an increase in species under threat of extinction or going extinct, major expansion in urban areas at the expense of surrounding ecosystems and the spread and intensification of soil, air and water pollution. After a brief spell of deforestation, however, campaigns to regain forest cover resumed and have been largely successful, alongside air pollution control measures over the past decade. Investments in renewable energy have also transformed China into a vanguard of more environmentally friendly alternative technologies. Arran Gare (2012, 14–15) captures the essence of the systemic change and its repercussions most effectively:<br /> <br /> China is best understood as a capitalist economy going through the stage of primitive accumulation with the state serving the interests of the bourgeoisie. In this regard, its pre-eminent concern, essentially, is to assure high profitability of business enterprises by dispossessing the peasantry of their means of production in order to create a pliable proletariat in the cities. It is more complicated than this, however. Transnational corporations have been the greatest beneficiaries of the cheap labor and lax environmental regulation. The local bourgeoisie use everything at their disposal to increase their share of profits but often work on very low margins and are very susceptible to changes in the global economy. The central government also makes some effort to ameliorate the conditions of employees. However, the involvement of local government and the fact that local government performance is defined mainly in terms of GDP growth and therefore primarily oriented to attracting and maintaining foreign investment, along with a corrupt and ineffective legal system, means that the government effectively sides with capitalists against employees and local populations. To compound the situation, it is becoming evident that many officials and Communist Party members are leading capitalists and are aligned with international capital rather than local capital.<br /> <br /> So, overall, the shift to a capitalist economy has been an environmentally disastrous turn, even if most people in China, thanks to state interventions and limited social welfare policies, have generally benefited with higher living standards. Those benefits must not be underestimated but they are undermined by extreme economic inequality and the erosion of biophysical conditions. The total EFC steadily increased since the 1960s and then took a steep rise in 2002, surpassing by 2004 the country that until then had been the biggest drain on the planet, the US. However, on a per capita basis the US has at least twice the impact of China (Figure 4.12).<br /> <br /> [image]<br /> <br /> Acutely aware of this contradiction between raising well-being while destroying its social and ecological basis (see also O’Connor 1988), the PRC government has aimed, officially since 2007, to build an ‘ecological civilisation’, a phrase coined by a Chinese agricultural economist in a 1984 Russian publication and etymologically tied to 1970s intellectual discussions within the USSR. Promisingly, this goal of moving beyond industrial civilisation was written into the country’s constitution in 2018. It remains to be seen whether the push for environmental sustainability is coupled with socialism and whether policies and new environmental practices overcome the amount of damage already done and still being done. At the same time there is now at least institutional legitimacy for ecologically minded communists in the PRC struggling to overturn the capitalist system (Gare 2020; Huan 2016).<br /> <br /> ==== The PRC in International Context ====<br /> It is relatively easy to lay the blame on the CPC (or the nominal ‘socialism’ they stand for) for globally deleterious effects of industrial output and increasing consumption rates in the PRC. After all, they rule the country. Leaving the matter there overlooks the fact that the CPC hardly have control of the economy as a whole, and this aspect is important if one wants to find out where to bring pressures to change course. Just as noteworthy is the decentralised nature of economic activity and regulatory environmental enforcement since the 1990s, where capitalist pressures and local officials’ economic incentives degenerate into a lack of environmental policy enforcement (Tao et al. 2019). Most businesses are in private hands, including foreign ones. Many enterprises, whether state owned or privately owned, can and do go bankrupt, as in any other capitalist system (Huang 2012). If all firms were controlled by the CPC one would expect especially state-owned enterprises to be immune from liquidation. They are not and workers get sacked, in droves. Substantive change towards ecological sustainability and real socialism would then have to include targeting all the private domestic and foreign firms benefiting from the above-described ills. Nevertheless, the ruling capitalist faction of the CPC is certainly blameworthy relative to policies instituted and carried out.<br /> <br /> More importantly, there is also such a thing as class struggle in China. There have been thousands of strikes and small revolts for several decades over working conditions and also over environmental quality (Li 2017), as well as peasant resistance to village communal land privatisation and rural protests over environmental degradation (Muldavin 2000; Jing 2010). Furthermore, there persist divisions within the party and among party-aligned capitalists. Within the CPC there do remain genuine communists, many of whom are environmentalists, such as Pan Yue. These fractions of the party have been steadily sidelined, however, after some promising movements in the early 2000s (Gare 2012).<br /> <br /> There are in any case international linkages to be considered. Were the CPC capable of controlling all industries, which they of course do not, one would still have to account for the massive foreign direct investment propelling industrial production since the 1980s and the presence of industrial plants operated by private firms from countries like the US or Germany. In a highly intensified global commercial interlinkage of countries, especially since the late 1980s, one cannot pretend that such human-derived calamities as pollution and species extinctions within and from the PRC are the product of the PRC alone (this goes for almost any country, even the US). As pointed out above, comparisons between countries are a dubious undertaking when countries’ contexts are not considered. It is, for example, because of the increasingly dense commercial interlinkage across continents since the 1980s that the PRC has become a net exporter of energy, even if a net oil importer since 1993. This paradox is due to the energy embodied in the manufactured commodities exported (Chen et al. 2011; Hongtao et al. 2010; Huang et al. 2019). At the same time, if one accounts for total ecological footprint (equivalent yearly biological production – measured as global hectares – needed to sustain given resource consumption rates), the PRC has been a net importer of energy and in net ecological deficit since at least the mid-1990s, barring the 1997–9 period (Li et al. 2007). The PRC is as environmentally unsustainable as basically all the liberal democracies, as already shown in the comparative analyses in Chapter 3.<br /> <br /> What this relative unsustainability hides, however, are the global capitalist interconnections that enable it. That is to say, the ecological devastation in China is at least in part predicated on linkages with the most powerful capitalist institutions and states. The arrangement is well known to world systems analysts, who have shown empirically that semi-peripheral (middle-income) countries in the capitalist world economy tend to become sites of higher environmental damage intensity (Roberts et al. 2003) while in part offloading, through raw material imports, other forms of environmental destruction to the global periphery, or lower-income countries:<br /> <br /> China, a middle-income nation, is exploiting forests of other low-and middle-income nations in a manner similar to high-income nations as it tries to protect its own forests while meeting its needs for wood, fuel, paper, and pulp from abroad to stimulate its economic growth and satisfy its changing consumption patterns. (Shandra et al. 2019, 100)<br /> <br /> This can explain why reforestation has succeeded within the PRC just as timber imports have skyrocketed since roughly the early 2000s. Otherwise stated, if the world’s ‘chimney’ (a rather terrible metonym for the PRC; as in Malm 2012) is to provide endless stuff for endless profits there must be endless worker exploitation (wages) and endless amounts of fuelwood costing much less than the stuff the chimney produces for the world market. That lower-priced fuelwood is predicated on chains of exploitation of all sorts of life forms in a highly racialised global pyramidal structure of power.<br /> <br /> This semi-peripheral chimney situation for the PRC has now been in place for decades, arguably emerging out of the July 1971 US National Security Advisor’s secret Beijing visit. The rest of the world, especially the wealthiest countries, get low-price manufactures, as long as Chinese workers’ wages are comparatively low, while many Chinese (as so many elsewhere) suffer the consequences of pollution, involving hundreds of firms in many countries, including liberal democracies and the PRC, raking in huge profits. As Andreas Malm (2012) has explained, capitalists flocking to countries with the lowest production costs, especially wages, will stimulate spikes in fossil fuel use and thereby greenhouse gas emissions. And it is not only people who get harmed in the process. The grotesque and biodiversity-menacing trade in wildlife from the PRC and South East Asia, for which such countries have become infamous, are linked to lacklustre environmental protection and enforcement in the PRC and demand pressures mainly from the European Union and Japan (Nijman 2010) capitalising, among other factors, on the low-wage labour employed to trap wildlife. Even the scientific mainstream, while not grasping the relations of production involved, recognise that ‘globalisation’ (the intensification of global trade and outsourcing of manufacturing) has resulted in the mass relocation of pollution from the ‘developed’ to the ‘developing’ countries, with the US–PRC relationship as the most impactful instance (Wiedman and Lezen 2018). This link is also evinced by way of unfettered global trade, which if markedly reduced would substantively decrease both CO2 and particulate emissions (Lin et al. 2019).<br /> <br /> One way of representing the repercussions of this arrangement is by estimating the premature deaths linked to industrial emissions of PM2.5 (dust smaller than 2.5 microns) and their long-range transport. Perhaps the reader will recall the great attention given in the press in the early 2000s to the eye-watering giant brown cloud periodically hovering over the lands of South and East Asia. Much was made of its menace to health and amplification of global warming trends (Ramanathan et al. 2005), but it was also another chance, mostly missed, to get over any persisting institutional dichotomy between health and environment and barmy assumptions of physical environments respecting national borders (Mitman et al. 2004). Missed almost entirely in a haze of hyperbole, metaphor and chatter was how intertwined cross-regional commodity and pollutant flows are.<br /> <br /> For air pollution from global commerce is deadly under currently predominant social arrangements and their associated environmental practices. Pollutants within the PRC are in part due to the outsourcing of industries from the US. But there is a differential boomerang effect involved as well. While the US north-east enjoys a reduction in air pollution, air quality in the western US is impacted by pollutants coming from outsourced US enterprises manufacturing their products in China (Lin et al. 2014). The broader results of capitalist globalisation, however, are truly grim. For 2007, slightly more than a third of the world’s 3.45 million premature deaths from PM2.5 pollution was traceable to production for international trade. This is greater than mortality rates linked to long-distance air pollution. Some 12 per cent of world premature deaths were associated with pollutants coming from other regions, while 22 per cent resulted from production of commodities for export. For the PRC, the picture is similarly disproportionate. Airborne pollutants travelling from export-oriented industries in China led to 64,800 early deaths elsewhere, with 3,100 in western Europe and the US. In exchange, 108,000 Chinese died prematurely from the air pollution emitted to produce commodities bought in western Europe and the US (Zhang et al. 2017). Not only that, until 2018, when a ban was legislated, China was the destination for 70 per cent of the world’s electronic and plastic waste from the largest economies, like the US (Frey 2012; Kan 2009). The waste-producing consumption of goods abroad is linked to the distressing health effects of domestic polluting industries and international dumping. In some ways it is a situation like Cancer Alley in Louisiana (US), which is in some measure a product of US petrochemical exports that enable firms elsewhere in the world to manufacture other commodities for export.<br /> <br /> Another major illustration of this uneven and combined trade in devastation is related directly to the now decades-long planetary climate catastrophe. Global trade has risen from 27 to 60 per cent of world GDP between 1970 and 2019, with the PRC playing a pivotal role (World Bank 2020a). By 2004, international trade took up about a quarter of global CO2 emissions, mainly through exports from the PRC (Davis and Caldeira 2010). Trade between the US and PRC alone contributed about 7.2 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 to the atmosphere between 1997 and 2003. According to US Department of Energy data this was a small fraction (0.004 per cent) of the 173.9 Gt world total, but still close to twice Vietnam’s 3.9 Gt, for example.4<br /> <br /> Much is being made of the PRC surpassing the US in 2006 as the foremost CO2 emitter, but what is astonishing is how much more impacting greenhouse gases like N2O and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) rarely form part of such a discussion. Yet N2O (nitrous oxide, laughing gas) has nearly 300 times as much atmospheric warming potential as CO2 and HFCs hundreds to thousands of times more (UN Climate Change 2020). Not only that, N2O is a stratospheric ozone-depleting substance not covered under the Montréal Protocol (Ravishankara et al. 2009), a treaty already hobbled by methyl bromide exemptions to ingratiate large corporate farming interests (Gareau 2013). Add the glaring laughing gas omission and the much-inflated poster child of international environmental agreements treaty groans under the weight of raw capitalist deception. It turns out that total N2O emissions in the PRC overtook those in the US by 1990, though not in per capita terms (Figure 4.7), and without the fanfare allotted to the same outcome observed with respect to CO2. The US, however, remains in first place relative to total HFC emissions with about 301 million tonnes of emissions, at least as of 2010. The PRC is a distant second with 184 million tonnes, after overtaking Japan’s place by 2000.5 None of this makes any of these countries’ ruling classes any friendlier to the ozone layer. There seems instead to be widespread indifference among them about millions of people getting ever more quickly seared by carcinogenic ultraviolet radiation. This is an indictment of capitalist states as well as one-party socialist governments presiding over capitalist economies, such as the PRC.<br /> <br /> N2O emissions in lower-income countries like China are tied to levels of foreign direct investments, as shown for a study covering the years between 1990 and 2014 (Mejia 2020). Reducing such economic dependency could improve matters. This could be similarly argued about CO2 emissions, about which there has been much research. Over the above-discussed 1997–2003 period, US CO2 emissions would have been 3–6 per cent higher without importing goods from the PRC, while exports from the PRC to the US accounted for 7–14 per cent of the PRC’s CO2 emissions (Bin and Harriss 2006). In 2003 there were 4.5 and 5.9 Gt of CO2 emitted from the PRC and US, respectively. Adjusting for trade effects using even the lowest percentages (that is, in the US’s favour), the US would have emitted 6.2 Gt and the PRC 4.1 Gt of CO2. But by 2018 the PRC’s contributions far surpassed those of the US. The figures are about 10.1 Gt for the PRC and 5.4 Gt for the US. At the same time, trade between the two countries has increased fivefold in monetary terms since the above-cited studies, according to the US Census Bureau.6 The difference has remained about five to one in favour of exports from the PRC, but the volume of commodities traded has markedly increased. The oft-cited figures therefore exaggerate the divergence in annual emissions between the two countries. Using the higher percentage from Bin and Harriss (2006) to adjust for trade effects (14 per cent for 2003), the resulting 2018 totals make the difference of 5.7 and 8.7 Gt CO2 emissions between the US and PRC much less dramatic than what is often quoted. When accounting for net international trade effects (Ritchie and Roser 2017) a similar outcome emerges. For the US, a net importer (i.e. net consumer of world resources), about 8 per cent should be added to the 5.4 Gt figure, yielding 5.8 Gt. Conversely, about 13 per cent should be deducted from emissions in the PRC, a net exporter, resulting in 8.8 Gt.<br /> <br /> More broadly, in a wider global context commodity production in China responds inordinately to foreign demand relative to the US. Roughly a third of the PRC’s GDP is accounted for by exports (at least prior to the Covid-19 pandemic). In 2005, CO2 emissions due to exports exceeded import-related emissions by 1,000 million tonnes (Lin and Sun 2010). Since joining the World Trade Organisation in 2001, foreign direct investment and commerce have so intensified as to usher in another major upwards shift in CO2 emissions (Ren et al. 2014), the other having been reached thanks to the changes brought about in 1978. These shifts are evident from the two instances of steepening slope inclinations in the PRC’s cumulative CO2 emissions curve, one after 1978 and the other after 2001 (Figure 4.13). Importing goods produced by outsourced industries makes the effectively highest resource-consuming countries in the world, like the US or UK, look environmentally better or even like they are reducing emissions. But if CO2 embedded in imports were included in greenhouse gas accounting, UK figures would be twice those typically reported (Harvey 2020).<br /> <br /> [image]<br /> <br /> Still, export-heavy production and foreign investments are only two factors behind China’s greenhouse gas emissions record having attained such dismal heights. Emissions keep rising at alarming rates for many other reasons, including profit-oriented economic policies, sustained coal dependence and technological challenges. However, halting a critical source of national revenue – to expand the internal market, introduce or renovate basic infrastructure, develop more environmentally friendly technologies and lift up people’s standard of living, among other objectives – is not much of an option unless world powers, like the US and its NATO satellites, collaborate with the PRC in achieving a global green transition (Lin et al. 2019). To understate the issue, this is unlikely in a capitalist framework, so the PRC will continue to seem like the main culprit and increasingly like a necessary priority target of green reform.<br /> <br /> That is, until one acknowledges still other ways of looking at the same data aside from total yearly emissions. When population size is included in the analysis, the PRC emits less than half (7 Gt) of the CO2 emitted in the US (16.6 Gt). This may make little difference to atmospheric dynamics, but even when just focusing on the atmosphere countries like the US are hardly exonerated. Nor does it make the PRC necessarily steal the carbon emissions limelight. Once CO2 is airborne it takes decades to a couple of centuries for it to be scavenged from the atmosphere and stored away in some other part of the planet (or geosphere). The same story goes for other greenhouse gases, save for methane (about a decade of residence time in the atmosphere). Looked this way, the location of the highest greenhouse gas emissions changes again. Historically, more than 405 Gt of CO2 have been emitted in the US, attaining the world record by far, even if the emissions curve displays much less spectacular slope changes in the early 1970s and early 1990s (Figure 4.13). In China (including now the PRC), in 2018 a distant third in the ranking, the cumulative total is 210 Gt, with the then EU-28 not far behind the US in second position with 356 Gt.<br /> <br /> In contrast to the US and other countries that developed into capitalist formations, colonised and plundered the rest of the world, and thereby got industrialised early, the PRC shook off colonising powers late and started off in a situation of mass poverty that was overcome by industrialising rapidly, as in the case of the USSR. The CPC Dèng faction’s 1978 takeover and the subsequent conversion of the PRC into a capitalist machine marked the start of a massive expansion of industrial capacity. Given its basis in fossil fuels, the industrial expansion led to an exponential rise in greenhouse gas emissions. The major shift in the PRC occurred as global warming, tropical forest destruction, biodiversity declines, ozone layer disruption and neocolonial reconfigurations (neoliberalism) were already in full swing, alongside the development of consumption technologies of unprecedented destructive efficiency and policies characterised by, among other trends, a complete abandonment of the precautionary principle (Gareau 2013), industrial outsourcing, general suppression of workers’ wages, mass privatisation of public assets, bloated capitalist coffers and militaries, and ever extreme financial speculation and volatility. In this overall systemic shift towards a capitalist economy the PRC was affected by and eventually effected similar planetary environmental damage by largely following prevailing economic policies, while adding some protective buffers from speculation and from foreign corporate encroachment (as the main imperialist powers have done historically).<br /> <br /> But for a country with, at first, the largest population and without colonies to ransack, it should not be surprising that the drive to complete industrialisation and compete successfully (and defend oneself) against world powers, while raising living standards, would result in environmental catastrophes mainly within the country and in skyrocketing greenhouse gas emissions. Not surprising does not mean legitimate, as there are always alternatives worth exploring. Any promising changes towards diffuse worker and peasant control of the economy and towards ecological sustainability were stifled first under the Máo administration and then under Dèng and succeeding governments (Gare 2012). The shift to a capitalist economy in the PRC has exacerbated matters monumentally and with great speed. It demonstrates to the rest of the world, especially the now tiny state-socialist world, the grave environmental consequences of a move towards capitalism.<br /> <br /> However, trying out alternatives to capitalism or state socialism carry extreme risks in a capitalist world-system, such as succumbing to invasions or a coup orchestrated from abroad. Or turning into an oligarchs’ playground or into an even more centralised form of despotism with a capitalist economy, as in what emerged out of the USSR bloc after attempts to build social democracy in the 1980s. Or, worse, a state-socialist country could descend into the horrors of civil war, get torn up like Yugoslavia, and then become subordinated to the dictates of a foreign capitalist power. These outcomes have been neither socially nor ecologically positive. They did not go unnoticed by the CPC leadership and convinced those who had prevailed by 1976 within the CPC to reinforce their political grip in overseeing the capitalist road already taken by 1978 (Lane 2014).<br /> <br /> When it comes to global impacts like climate change it is also worth considering the issue of the long-term scale of impact per country. Addressing greenhouse gas emissions while raising living standards for millions, as they still need to be, should entail having countries that have stuffed the atmosphere the most with greenhouse gases not only phase out fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas sources soonest, but also overhaul land use so as to have net absorption and storage (sequestration) of greenhouse gases for the next hundred years or so. The same should be argued about economic and technological overhauls to address historical and current world deforestation, biodiversity loss, soil destruction and various forms of pollution, especially in the oceans, among other environmentally destructive impacts. And this massive redirection of funds is without even demanding historical reparations, global wealth redistribution and the free sharing of environmentally constructive technologies and techniques. For the US, in terms of impacts on the atmosphere, it could be argued that twice as much of these kinds of changes need to be made compared to the PRC to undo the long-term harm done. At the same time the PRC inherited greenhouse gas emissions (estimated at 1.8 Gt of CO2) for which other countries are also in part responsible (the UK is especially complicit alongside others partaking of the colonisation of China: Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Czarist Russia, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Spain and the US). Although such pre-revolutionary emissions are infinitesimal compared to the massive atmospheric outlays from the PRC since 1949, the historical trauma of colonisation contributed to and still enables the ruling capitalist fraction of the CPC to justify economic growth and thereby military might for self-defence, with huge environmental consequences. Undermining that excuse takes much more and is much more complicated than sweeping the CPC from power.<br /> <br /> Concentrating on the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on earth systems or on environmental devastation within the PRC without accounting for global interlinkages, imperialist pressures and histories of colonisation amounts to pretending that there exists an international level playing field and to denying the effects of highly uneven power relations. The implication of using only annual emissions totals or other environmental impact indicators to compare countries is especially perverse. It is to downplay, if not ignore, the vast disparities between countries and the significance of people’s quality of life, which largely depend on energy derived from fossil fuels, precisely on account of the capitalist world dynamics that spawned and enforce such dependence. Planetary environmental damage is not addressed, much less resolved, by blaming those who are worse off for decisions and actions taken by the better off and most powerful. Surely the enormous gaps in wealth and political power should be central concerns in the struggle for environmentally constructive, life-affirming impacts. When it comes to planetary environmental catastrophes, those insisting on locating problems within individual countries or even single political parties ought to have a look at the much broader capitalist world picture to grasp the main, systemic causes that need to be addressed and, just as important, identify those political forces that wield the greatest power at the global scale. In the current conjuncture, barking up the China tree is misplaced, if not delusional. To borrow and somewhat diverge from Minqi Li (2016), the planetary-level impacts and the trajectory of the PRC, as the world centre of capital accumulation, hinges on the outcomes of global capitalist contradictions. A crucial determining process is what results from current class struggles within China and their interlinkages with class struggles in the rest of the world. A high degree of international commercial interdependence underlies greenhouse gas emissions and other kinds of environmental harm. This does not exonerate the ruling classes engaging in such activity, much less those capitalist fractions of the CPC governing the PRC. However, knowledge of the extent of environmental damage emerging from international capitalist commercial linkages reveals possibilities for reducing such atmospheric emissions by delinking from capitalist countries or linking with specifically socialist projects instead (including within capitalist countries).<br /> <br /> === Cuba: The Most Environmentally Sustainable Country on Earth ===<br /> By the 1950s, cane sugar plantations had some 400 years of history on what is now known as the island of Cuba. It was a history of socially and ecologically devastating impacts, including genocides and slavery. Less than 30 per cent of forests remained because of cane sugar production (Whittle and Rey Santos 2006). Such impacts from succeeding settler colonial regimes were behind Cuba becoming at one point the largest sugar exporter (Monzote 2008; Tucker 2000, 27).<br /> <br /> The parlous environmental situation was magnified after US conquest in 1898, when a US client regime was imposed. Sugar cane production was industrialised and expanded into other areas of the island, bringing more deforestation, habitat losses (leading to declining biodiversity), water depletion (75,000 litres per tonne of sugar cane) and pollution, and soil erosion and related compaction, but also new problems related to agrochemicals and mechanisation, like soil acidification and heavy metals pollution (Cheesman 2004, 17–18; Scarpaci and Portela 2005, 19–20). Setting up the first national park in 1930, among very few other more positive contributions, was too little to countervail widespread environmental devastation.<br /> <br /> What is more, sugar cane plantations were tightly linked to US firms and international sugar markets, while the island’s infrastructure was geared towards raw material export. There was little to no manufacturing sector, especially not of the sort that would offer consumer items to be sold within the country. The vast majority of Cubans were undernourished, had sparse water sanitation infrastructure, little to no healthcare services, tended to be illiterate and lived in huts (O’Connor 1970; Yaffe 2019). This is the situation Cuban revolutionaries inherited in 1959, a hugely unequal, racist and largely plantation-based economy dependent on the whims of US companies, which controlled three-quarters of arable land, and their allied local upper-class despots.<br /> <br /> ==== Overturning Colonial and Neocolonial Legacies in Cuba ====<br /> Barely a year after Cuban revolutionaries succeeded in gaining substantive independence from the US, the US government imposed a trade embargo that lasts to this day and which cut off access to the means of industrialised agricultural production and the main market for sugar sales. One outcome was the expansion of sugar cane plantations in other US colonies like Puerto Rico, as well as other Caribbean islands and Brazil and Mexico. Hence, ecological degradation was exported by the US to other countries in the American tropics (Tucker 2000, 48–50).<br /> <br /> To make matters worse within Cuba, a drought affected the island in 1962–3. Among the initial responses was an extensive reforestation programme, the expansion in the number and extent of protected areas, and the diversification of farming with more land under cultivation, as pursued in the USSR. The government’s policies of natural preserves expansion resulted in what is today a network of protected land-based, marine and coastal ecosystems. Thanks to state-socialist policies, even if climate change, pollution and overfishing pose constant threats, Cuba boasts among the most well-protected marine ecosystems in the Caribbean, including coral reefs, with natural preserves covering a quarter of surrounding underwater landmasses or insular shelf (Roman 2018; Whittle and Santos 2006). In other words, from the start environmental protection and improving people’s lives were not perceived as mutually antagonistic policies.<br /> <br /> Still, to fend off starvation risks the Cuban government had to import most food, mainly from the USSR and other parts of Europe, and engage in rapid industrialisation, including farming. The resulting indebtedness forced a return to an emphasis on sugar cane export to new markets farther away to offset import-induced government deficits and to repay loans, including to the USSR and allied states. Thus, the area of sugar cane cultivation came to surpass the pre-1959 extent, affecting 30 per cent of arable land and taking up 75 per cent of export-based income. Even so, reforestation efforts were in full swing by the 1960s thanks to assistance from Czechoslovakia. Community nurseries were set up in the 1970s to conserve and share seeds and seedlings to reforest areas in the countryside degraded by plantations and mining. Over 200,000 hectares were thus reforested, contributing to a longer-term net expansion of biodiverse forest since 1959 (Rosset and Benjamin 1994; Rosset et al. 2011; Tucker 2000, 48–50).<br /> <br /> Environmental regulation was distributed across different state offices, as in the USSR. This changed in 1976 when the State Committee on Science and Technology was tasked with coordinating environmental protection activities under the newly minted National Commission for Environmental Protection and the Rational Use of the Natural Resources (COMARNA). Such coordinating functions were folded under the Academy of Science in 1980, when the State Committee was scrapped. During the 1980s a comprehensive regulatory and action plan was developed and, in 1990, culminated in expanding the powers of COMARNA as a permanent commission independent of the ministries and entitled to enacting (contingent on state approval) and enforcing environmental regulation (Whittle and Santos 2006).<br /> <br /> By the early 1990s, however, terrible hardships created conditions so dire as to induce the decision by the government, among other measures, to favour cooperatives and private plots and to develop and spread organic farming methods. The disappearance of the USSR resulted in the loss of crucial sources of raw materials and machinery that threatened, among other things, the ability of food provisioning and the state’s capacity to ensure food access. Drastic measures (such as food rationing and conversions to low-input farming) were put in place that, after much resistance within and outside the party and state, produced much compromise among various factions in how food is to be produced and distributed, accompanied by some decentralisation in decision-making processes (Hearn and Alfonso 2012; Premat 2012). Sugar, nickel – mined through a joint venture with a Canadian firm – and tobacco still comprise the main exports, though export-oriented farming is getting more diversified. Economically, though, social inequalities are rising mainly due to the allowance of a parallel US dollar-based economy, especially in the tourism sector (Blackburn 2000, 15–18).<br /> <br /> A decisive official turn towards ecological sustainable socialism was made evident in Fidel Castro’s speech at the United Nation’s 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where he communicated the refusal to follow the conventional model of development, including the one promoted in the USSR. Amid a precipitous downturn that threatened to tear asunder the country, the Cuban government elected to reconfigure institutions and modify the constitution to facilitate a transformation towards an ecologically sustainable society.<br /> <br /> In 1994 the new Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment (CITMA) was established to succeed the Cuban Academy of Science and COMARNA. Turning a permanent commission into a cabinet-level office greatly empowered environmental regulators, who previously had less leverage relative to other ministries. CITMA was tasked with identifying inadequacies in existing environmental laws and environmental degradation problems and empowered to provide the means to remediate existing and prevent future environmental harm (Whittle and Santos 2006). The policy included promoting renewable energy, biological conservation and agroecology in food production through, among other things, educational programmes, professional training, research funding and public outreach.<br /> <br /> In 1997 sustainable development was incorporated into the constitution (Law 81), giving environmental protection high priority (Benz 2020; Whittle and Santos 2006). In effect, existing environmental legislation from the 1970s was greatly expanded. What was novel is making sustainable development into law. It means that environmental conservation is a citizen’s duty, and it is to be carried out with the well-being of current and future generations in mind. This commitment is mirrored in a proactive effort to infuse higher education with environmental literacy curricula focused on building practical skills and technical expertise (Gómez 2019). Since then even more strides have been made in developing and applying ecologically beneficial practices, especially by adopting agroecological crop production methods and developing urban farming. This has not been at the expense of other kinds of historical achievements. Advances in integrated pest management are among those feats, thanks to much state investment in research institutes. Healthcare also remains universal and research in the medical and biotechnological sciences continue to be cutting edge (Baracca and Franconi 2016; Lucantoni 2020; Navarro 1992).<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, especially because of tremendous external and internal capitalist pressures, the road remains long in reversing centuries of environmental damage and in improving upon decades of mixed results since the 1959 revolution. Attempts to wean the economy away from fossil fuels have been made multiple times, including by means of lowering demand through low-input farming. A nuclear power option was also considered by 1967, in continuity with the Batista dictatorship’s 1956 plans in concert with the US government. However, the latter period plans were with the USSR, whose downfall halted nuclear plant construction and rapidly led to its abandonment. In hindsight this was a fortuitous aspect of the massive downturn, but the project’s abandonment hardly solved the energy resource problem.<br /> <br /> Trends in fossil fuel consumption can be seen as indirectly relative to CO2 emissions (Figures 4.14). With advantageous terms of trade granted by the USSR, CO2 emissions climbed more or less parallel to oil imports and combustion, which also helped build up industrial infrastructure. Manufacturing and energy production at first took their toll on air quality, with rising sulphur, nitrogen oxide and fine particle emissions (Figures 4.15, 4.16 and 4.17). For the most part air quality improved with the economic downturn, but nitrogen oxide, aerosol and methane emissions (Figure 4.18) had already been worked on, mainly by improving farming techniques and developing retrofitting apparatuses for manufacturing industries. Sulphur emissions persist as a problem, which necessitates more attentiveness to replacing or retrofitting aged and polluting motorised vehicles and power plants. A general problem lies in the underdevelopment of railway transport or other means of transportation that would substantially reduce toxic emissions and greenhouse gases. Still, there has been an overall positive impact on air quality that is to some extent the result of introducing more energy-efficient appliances and lighting and conservation measures, as well as extending the electrical grid to much of the island, especially in the early 2000s.<br /> <br /> [images]<br /> <br /> The sharp CO2 emissions decline in the early 1990s, due to the sudden interruption in oil flow with the USSR’s disappearance, was stabilised to a lower plateau by the late 1990s. The energy procurement problem was alleviated mainly through agreements of affordable oil imports from Venezuela under the newly established socialist Bolivarian government. In the 2000s, CO2 emissions rose again to reach the levels of the 1980s by 2014. The figures for air emissions are still very low compared to countries with living standards at or above Cuban levels. The most recent direction is anyway downward, thanks to efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption, including by introducing more renewable energy use. But about 95 per cent of electricity is made possible by fossil fuels, so the inflection may not last long unless an infrastructural overhaul is successfully achieved (Iakovleva et al. 2020; Hornborg et al. 2019; Madrazo et al. 2018).<br /> <br /> This is the intent of the Cuban socialist state and resources have been made available more and more towards this purpose. The 2005 Cuban Energy Revolution initiative led to the diffusion of energy-conserving appliances and fluorescent light bulbs, replacing less energy-efficient counterparts. In 2014, following through on the new energy policy, a national plan was approved to phase out fossil fuels in electricity generation, eventually replacing fossil fuels with combinations of biomass, solar panels, hydropower and wind energy sources. The long-term strategy may meet some obdurate obstacles because of the challenges of constructing the necessary infrastructure for a transition to renewable energy sources. This necessitates continuous resource extraction and labour power to establish and maintain such infrastructure, as well as accumulating enough capital and securing the resource base to do so. For island countries like Cuba, with relatively exiguous sources of energy, finding a solution is likely to entail global coordination that is attentive, relative to socialist principles, to ensuring social justice elsewhere as well as within Cuba (Baer 2018, 164; Hornborg et al. 2019). It is instead through food production, aside from biodiversity conservation efforts, that the greatest advances have been made towards ecological sustainability. Yet, overall, the far-sighted and sustained environmental measures taken up and developed over several decades have improved not only the lives of Cubans but also, as shown in the achievement of a lower ecological footprint, the state of the island’s ecosystems and physical environments (Figure 4.19).<br /> <br /> [image]<br /> <br /> ==== Environmentally Sustainable Farming in Cuba ====<br /> Much land in Cuba is impacted by farming (''c''.28 per cent of total land area), approximately 41 per cent of which is under cooperatives. Much land was redistributed to landless peasants and a state farming sector was instituted. State farms came to have control over 85 per cent of farmland. But in 1963 the state farm system was broken up into agricultural cooperatives, the Unidades Básicas de Producción Cooperativas (UBPC). Since 1961, nearly all smallholding farmers (those with less than 67 hectares) are organised through the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP). Among the benefits are farm credit and interest-free loans from the state. Other smallholders have been brought into cooperatives by using incentives and persuasion, rather than coercion, as had been briefly the case in the 1970s (Rosset et al. 2011; Royce 2018).<br /> <br /> During the 1970s and 1980s Cuba underwent the industrialisation of agriculture with the introduction of machinery, agrochemicals, hybrid crops and large-scale irrigation systems, and the expansion of monocultures. This change was facilitated by supportive measures from the USSR and their allied socialist states. The consequences were typical of this kind of high-input, capital-intensive farming, but arguably more intensely so on a high-rainfall island with a warm climate that is battered each year by hurricanes and with a long history of deforestation and widespread nutrient-depleting sugar cane plantations. Depending on landscape position, soil properties and ecosystem type these processes make for faster soil erosion, salinisation and acidification rates.<br /> <br /> It only took a couple of decades of industrialised farming for soil erosion and compaction problems to worsen in 43 per cent and 24 per cent of farmland, respectively. Salinisation and acidification problems increased (respectively 14 per cent and 25 per cent of farmland). The combined impacts of salinisation, acidification and organic matter loss contributed to nutrient insufficiency challenges in about 45 per cent of cultivated areas. Overall, more than three-quarters of farmed area showed one or another productivity impediment (Machín Sosa et al. 2013; Rosset et al. 2011). These negative impacts, however, were already being addressed and reversed by a combination of conventional soil conservation and alternative agroecological approaches (Rosset and Benjamin 1994).<br /> <br /> The conventional techniques have already been described relative to the USSR experience and were by and large replicated in Cuba. Novel agroecological approaches, on the other hand, have been a hallmark of the Cuban soil and agroecosystem restoration process. Much state investment in scientific education and research infrastructure facilitated this outcome, with dozens of agricultural research centres set up and dotting the country already by the 1970s. Scientific inquiry into agroecology and development of agroecological applications started within research and field centres at least a decade before the 1990s hardships. The development of biological pest management dates back even further, to the 1970s. This state-supported foray into ecologically oriented, low-input agriculture was a major factor in making possible the turn away from agrochemicals-intensive farming. It is consequently incorrect to impute the shift to ecologically sustainable agriculture to sheer economic desperation (Fernandez et al. 2018; Levins 1990).<br /> <br /> Aside from well-known organic amendments, like livestock and green manures and municipal organic waste composting, vermicomposting has become more fully developed in Cuba. Earthworm-driven humus production has reached an industrial scale, a feat unique to Cuba. There has also been much research into and use of biofertilisers, like nitrogen-enhancing ''Rhizobium'' and other such bacterial inoculants, to raise soil organic matter and nutrient levels. One important innovation is the enrolment and concentration of specialised bacteria to make soil phosphorus (one of the major plant nutrients) more soluble. This way it can be more readily absorbed by plant roots. This is of inestimable value for places where soil tends to be alkaline (high pH), which causes phosphorus to be tied up by mineral particles and therefore not available to roots (Rosset and Benjamin 1994).<br /> <br /> In 1993, under enormous economic duress, the Cuban government decided to replace many state-run farm units, managing three-quarters of cultivated land, with cooperatives run by formerly waged farmers (as state employees). Now only a third of farmland is under state farm management. As an advantage and incentive over UBPCs and private farms the newly created cooperative farms can use state-owned land in perpetuity without having to pay rent (usufruct rights) and can avail themselves of low-interest credit to purchase farming equipment and infrastructure. This is the same year when more stringent soil conservation laws were passed. The combined environmental and social policies worked. Farming impact has shifted increasingly in a net positive ecological direction while the precipitous decline in food production and availability was rapidly overcome and reversed to reach among the highest per capita food production rates in South America and the Caribbean. Under-nutrition rates, which in the early 1990s afflicted a fifth of Cubans, were reduced to 5 per cent by the 2000s and to 2.5 per cent by 2014, a level comparable to high-income countries (Betancourt 2020; Rosset et al. 2011).<br /> <br /> Other major changes resulted from socialist state efforts in conjunction with popular support. After a peak of 36 per cent of total land area in the early 2000s, farmland has contracted to the current 28 per cent figure, which is at about 1980s levels. This has allowed for expanding areas of conservation, even if not necessarily planned that way. What has been planned, however, was a continuation of the reforestation programme. This is manifested in a nearly 2 per cent annual increase in forest area since 1991 (Betancourt 2020; Rosset et al. 2011; Royce 2018; World Bank 2020b).<br /> <br /> By the 2000s, smallholder farming in Cuba amounted to about a fifth of cultivated area. In 2015 this fraction had climbed to 40 per cent and has come to predominate tobacco and coffee production, while sugar and other export-oriented crops are mainly under cooperatives. Another major shift occurred by 2002. As part of a crop diversification effort, sugar cane production was reduced by roughly a third (mainly by closing sugar mills). What remains in place is state control over purchasing and inputs as well as disposal of land and main crop selection (Fernandez et al. 2018; Royce 2018).<br /> <br /> At the same time, tillage and agrochemical application has fallen sharply since the 1990s, affecting only a tenth of farmland, including in private holdings. There are also some negative trends that constitute another front of struggle. A parallel market based on US dollars and a rising private sector (not only in farming) are contributing to rising social inequalities that are not sufficiently counterbalanced with more egalitarian wealth redistribution mechanisms, such as cooperative farms (Levins 2005; Rosset and Benjamin 1994).<br /> <br /> As remarked above, the turn to ecologically sustainable farming was accomplished with much state and scientific community support in the diffusion of agroecological principles and the bolstering of traditional methods (Fernandez et al. 2018). The conversion has not necessarily been smooth, as tensions have occurred with farmers in some instances and there remain divisions between those promoting conventional and agroecological techniques (Fernandez et al. 2018; Royce 2018). The ANAP-based farmer-to-farmer movement in part may be facilitating the resolution of such tensions by demonstrating higher productivity rates through agroecological methods, gradually pulling the rug from under die-hard supporters of conventional agriculture.<br /> <br /> Agroecological production methods are devised to maximise farmer autonomy by relying as much as feasible on local ecosystem resources and recycling them within the same locality. Techniques include biological pest removal, refraining from agrochemical inputs, manual weeding, nonhuman animal traction and minimal tillage, raising biodiversity and conserving water through polycultural growing techniques (e.g. intercropping), crop–livestock integration, mulching, seed saving and maintaining and raising soil organic matter levels through such techniques as recycling biomass into soils through composting and vermicomposting. Institutional adoption of intercropping techniques for small-scale farming has acknowledged the importance of and built on combinations of methods developed by Taino-Arawak and West and Central African farmers. This way, existing traditional knowledge has been valorised and recovered, while science has been redirected towards more positive ends (Fernandez et al. 2018; Machín Sosa et al. 2013; Rosset et al. 2011; Rosset and Benjamin 1994).<br /> <br /> The push for agroecological methods was formalised in 1987 with the founding of the Cuban Association of Agronomists and Foresters, whose charter is the promulgation of ecologically sustainable farming and silviculture by means of research, training and extension service. Decades of efforts bore fruit by the 1990s when agroecology found major support in ANAP, within which, in 1997, there emerged a largely volunteer-based agroecology movement. It is based on horizontal communication and mutual aid among farmers (farmer to farmer), in contrast to unidirectional ‘expert’ extension services. ANAP started promoting low-input agricultural techniques and became members of La Via Campesina, an international small farmers association founded in 1993 to promote food sovereignty among other social justice objectives. This way ANAP members could even more easily meet, exchange ideas and learn from farmers in other countries in the region regarding agroecological techniques (Machín Sosa et al. 2013).<br /> <br /> The development and diffusion of the farmer-to-farmer programme sped up the diffusion of ecologically sustainable farming methods. The farmer-to-farmer movement focuses on integrating traditional farmer knowledge and farmer innovation with agroecological science through information exchange programmes, workshops and free training, which are also part of ANAP’s remit since its founding. As a grassroots initiative involving 216 households in 1999, the farmer-to-farmer movement grew exponentially to include 110,000 farming households by 2009. In 2018 the number has risen to 200,000 (Lucantoni 2020).<br /> <br /> Aside from institutional backing and Via Campesina facilitation, the agroecology farmer-to-farmer movement received funds from international donors like Oxfam, helping the movement thrive independently of the state. Ecologically sustainable practices were thereby developed and spread throughout Cuba. Among the palpable results is the increase in maize and bean yields achieved with a net reduction of agrochemical fertiliser application at the national scale (Betancourt 2020). The extent of famers’ adoption and eventual conversion to agroecological techniques and their ecologically constructive effects are not detectable under ‘organic farming’ figures, used by some to analyse progress made in ecologically sustainable farming. In Cuba only 0.2 per cent of farmland can be considered under ‘organic’ management, amounting to about 15,500 ha spread over 7,100 farms (Willer et al. 2008, 233). It must also be borne in mind that ‘organic’ certification exists mainly to fulfil ‘organic food’ export interests. In fact, US businesses have been eyeing Cuban organic farms as potential cheap suppliers to a burgeoning US organic food market (Severson 2016; see also Fernandez et al. 2018, 15–17).<br /> <br /> The beneficial social and ecological effects of farms’ adoption of agroecological techniques are excluded by such labelling, especially if some agrochemicals continue to be used during transition phases. Furthermore, agroecological principles emphasise adapting to local ecological conditions (rather than simply substituting agrochemicals with alternative ‘organic’ substances) and maximising farmer autonomy (rather than reproducing dependence on capitalist markets for inputs) (Rosset et al. 2011, 163–4). A more relevant datum would then be that cooperatives of smallholder farmers produce 65 per cent of Cuba’s food on a quarter of total farmland and produce more food per hectare than large, industrialised farms. Between 46 and 72 per cent of these farmers (numbers vary depending on the province) apply agroecological techniques to differing degrees, even for cocoa, maize, rice and tobacco cultivation and milk and meat production (Altieri et al. 2012). It will take time for a transition to solely ecologically sustainable farming, including eclipsing import dependence for such staples as cereal grains, but in Cuba, as nowhere else, the transition is in full swing.<br /> <br /> ==== The Rise of Urban Farming in Cuba ====<br /> Among the most impressive shifts in Cuban agriculture has been in the cities, where urban farming has taken off to levels unimaginable a few decades ago. This is a crucial turn because by the 1980s the number of people living in cities reached between 69 and 80 per cent of the total population (Marshalek 2017; Rosset and Benjamin 1994). Millions of tonnes of vegetables are now produced agroecologically over more than 50,000 hectares of urban land by 383,000 urban growers. There is no other country where low-input, ecologically sustainable urban food production has reached this degree of success (Altieri et al. 2012).<br /> <br /> The case of Havana well exemplifies the transition process and the biophysical transformations involved. There, the first urban farm (''organopónicos'') was set up for civilian uses in 1991 (Koont 2011, 25). Food production long existed in Havana, but was institutionally suppressed and relegated to backyards after the 1959 revolution, until the late 1980s revival. The city, currently inhabited by about 2.1 million people over roughly 782 km2, is a major port and commercial centre over karst topography and traversed by eleven short, low-flowing streams and the 50 km long Almendares (Febles-González et al. 2012), which has been contaminated with heavy metals (e.g. cobalt, chromium, lead) by an upstream smelter and landfill (Olivares-Rieumont et al. 2005). The climate is tropical savanna with marked seasonality.<br /> <br /> However, the main meteorological influence (and hazard) comes from droughts and hurricanes, ever more frequent and intense, as well as increasing sea levels. The state-led introduction and spread of agroecological techniques, however, has not only been transforming urban ecosystems by raising agrodiversity, reducing exposed soil surfaces and decreasing agrochemical contamination, it also has resulted in the improved resilience of food-producing areas to the onslaught of more frequent and higher-magnitude extreme weather events related to global warming (Altieri and Funes-Monzone 2012). High-intensity rainfall can still cause much flooding, due to insufficient draining and channelling capacity. Groundwater and aquifers are also increasingly affected by salt-water intrusion resulting from sea-level rise (Placeres et al. 2011).<br /> <br /> Most soils are red and chalk brown earths, moderately alkaline and typically with sufficient nutrient levels for fruit trees, pastures and cane sugar. Towards the coastal areas there are cases of exposed karst (Placeres et al. 2011). In some cases soils have been contaminated through open solid waste dumping over the past century (Rizo et al. 2012). There are also sources of organic pollutants, like an oil refinery and smelter. A recent study showed that contamination levels for PCBs and PAHs are largely within safe concentrations in most urban soils sampled, except a few city parks. The matter is of concern relative to direct soil particle contact or inhalation, but not food production (Sosa et al. 2019).<br /> <br /> Heavy metals, though, may be problematic. Lead and zinc are particularly high in industrial zones, but cobalt and nickel are in part geogenic (from the rock or sediment layers below soils). Industrial plants and other installations amount to 197 point sources of pollution and diffuse sources mostly associated with motorised vehicles, though cases of smog tend to be rare and particulate matter levels are usually low (Placeres et al. 2011). Lead and other trace element contamination is a concern downwind and near to industrial point sources, while contamination via vehicular traffic seems as yet understudied (Álvarez et al. 2017). Aside from industrial areas there are school grounds and city parks with an incidence of high levels of cobalt, nickel, zinc and copper from human sources, which may be due to aerial deposition from industrial and vehicular emissions (Rizo et al. 2011). Given the prevailing alkaline conditions of soils and the widespread use of compost in urban cultivation, the main contamination threats are likely from airborne sources and possibly through watering and storm-related runoff. This is because the potential for vegetable contamination by the heavy metals listed is negligible with high pH soil and high levels of soil organic matter.<br /> <br /> Urban cultivators have had to face these and other biophysical processes and will be facing possibly greater difficulties with the effects of climate change. Among the more salient ones is the scarcity of irrigation water amenable to crop production (Koont 2011, 180). Salt-water intrusion into aquifers and the contamination of the Almendares River exacerbate this problem. Urban food producers, on the other hand, have been bringing about major ecological changes. One is the forgoing of agrochemicals and farming machinery in favour of organic farming techniques and agroecological applications. Such changes include overhauls in land use and land access distribution. Another is in contributing to urban reforestation (including fruit trees) and green space expansion more broadly, as urban food production units also participate in a national greening programme (Koont 2011, 175–6). Urban heat island effects and pollutant dispersal can be radically reduced in this way, while moisture can be retained more effectively and flooding magnitude could also be mitigated. Agrodiversity, if not total biodiversity, may also be increasing as a result of the spread of ecologically sustainable farming.<br /> <br /> The blossoming of urban farming by the 1990s is the fruit of heavy state promotion combined with initiatives and pressures from below (French et al. 2010; Marshalek 2017). The virtual disappearance of small, private gardening and animal husbandry by the 1960s gave way to greater dependence on rural farming. By the late 1980s, under duress from a continuous US embargo and a major shift in conjuncture, a sea change occurred. The government was to some extent compelled to concentrate on urban food production because most Cubans live in cities. The now celebrated, larger and more commercially oriented urban farms have been supplemented by smaller usufruct-based ''parcelas'' on public land and home patios (now enjoying official appreciation) that provide for subsistence as well as private earnings (Altieri et al. 1999; Koont 2011, 165; Levins 2005; Machado 2017; Rosset and Benjamin 1994).<br /> <br /> Urban food production in Havana and in Cuba is exceptional. Not only has it been reintroduced and supported by state institutions, but it is also integrated into wider agricultural planning, including peri-urban areas. This level of coordination is possible when the national state retains tenure over most land, private enterprise is restricted and profitability is subordinated to a primary directive of feeding people. Furthermore, the policies of the Cuban government over the previous decades have been crucial to establishing the research and extension structures, educational levels and skilling processes that became important in confronting the sudden economic downturn of the 1990s and promoting the development and implementation of technical innovations and improvements for urban farming. This is mainly through the above-described farmer-to-farmer movement coupled with specialised scientific institutes diffusing agroecological applications through ANAP. State institutions have played key roles in providing the inputs, material incentives and moral inducements (e.g. patriotism rhetoric) to diffuse agroecological and organic farming methods (Koont 2011, 8; Premat 2012).<br /> <br /> Estimates on the number of urban cultivators are contradictory. Some claim 50,000 and others 90,000 people are involved in urban food production. Regardless, this is a large number of people who have become involved and it is especially noteworthy that 7 per cent of Cuba’s workers are formally employed in urban agriculture (Koont 2011, 191). Some of the reasons lie in economic benefits potentially gained by cultivators. Roughly 40 per cent of Havana’s food production includes selling surplus (González Novo and Castellanos Quintero 2014). The end result of combinations of inducements is that vegetable and fruit production has reached levels hovering at or exceeding minimum levels to cover the city’s nutritional needs. Much of what is grown, especially on the ''organopónicos'' and intensive gardens, covers everyday popular culinary needs and abides by agroecological principles, also diffused via state extension programmes and farmers’ own innovations (Leitgeb et al. 2011). Beans, gourds, lettuce, melons, plantains, tomatoes and watermelons, for instance, are grown using composts and more concentrated organic fertilisers and in combination with herbs and other plants helpful in warding off pests (French et al. 2010, 158; Leitgeb et al. 2016).<br /> <br /> ==== Prospects for Cuban Urban Agriculture ====<br /> Under current circumstances (international as well as national), urban cultivation can complement food production of staple crops in the countryside, where organic techniques have also been diffused institutionally. This way, shortfalls in food production and access can be overcome more easily at the same time that there emerge and develop greater and more diffuse self-reliance in society and more ecologically sensible practices. The fate of urban cultivation is said by some to hinge on the prevailing economic trajectory, which is also linked to modifications to US policies and wider capitalist world-system shifts. The recent rapid decline in larger gardens (including ''organopónicos'') was in part to give way to more lucrative tourism and manufacturing use (French et al. 2010, 159). This appears to indicate an inverse relationship between economic hardship and urban food production similar to many cities in the Global North. However, the continuous rise in the numbers of smaller ''parcelas'' and patios (Koont 2009) contravenes any notion of overall urban food production decline and instead points to policies and movements from below that support the spread of more decentralised practices, as well as displacement to peri-urban areas to cope with economic tendencies (from within as well from abroad) privileging activities that generate higher earnings, attract foreign investments and enable survival in the face of relentless US imperialist pressures.<br /> <br /> Productivity may be relatively high, especially when compared with gardening in cities over the Global North, but prospects may be tied to what people decide to do as the harshness of the 1990s is giving way to improved living conditions and possibly greater availability of fossil fuels and agrochemicals (Koont 2011). Urban food growing and farming generally have been insufficient to ensure food availability nationally. Consequently, Cuba continues to depend on imported foods (up to 40 per cent of total food consumed, if not more). Much is being made of this difficulty as part of an effort to show the alleged failures of the socialist state in Cuba (Bruno 2017; Machado 2017; Montgomery 2007). This point of view ignores the larger picture. For an island country hit by a decades-long embargo it is a herculean and long-term effort to exit import dependence and general colonial plantation legacies, reinforced through decades of trade with the USSR bloc. It is unreasonable to expect Cubans to achieve what no other country in the Caribbean (and beyond) has yet to achieve (Levins 2004). For example, another island nation, the UK, imports 50 per cent of its food (DEFRA 2017).<br /> <br /> The difficulty with fulfilling food demands in Cuba may also be that much of the imported food is made out of crops that cannot be adequately grown under tropical island conditions, such as cereals and soybeans, without resorting to fossil fuel-derived agrochemicals. Dietary patterns are also tough to change when the prerogative is ensuring all Cubans’ nutritional needs are met. This is a prerogative that, for instance, does not exist in the US, where hunger persists amid one of the highest food production levels in the world. One could also argue that an overwhelmingly urban society needs to undergo major change over a couple of generations to transform itself into an agrarian society that uses fossil fuels sparingly. What should be taken as much more consequential is that the benefits of urban farming have not been evenly spread in Cuba. There persist social justice issues due to racialised class disparities, unresolved since before the 1959 revolution, that hinder the attainment of equal food access for Afro-Cubans (Lowell and Law 2017, 112–13).<br /> <br /> There are still other international and contextual aspects that should be considered. Part of the fate of urban food production and the ecosystemic impacts it implies is tied to newer linkages being forged since the early 1990s. One of them is with the PRC. Its capitalist reorientation notwithstanding, the PRC have played an important, if underappreciated, role in the transfer of technical know-how and materials helpful towards the development of low-input, organic farming methods (INIFAT 2010, 11, 18). Moreover, there are cultural dynamics within Cuban society that have also in some ways facilitated the urban cultivation renaissance, aside from internationally derived pressures. Some of the early and persisting forms of highly intensive urban cultivation over inhospitable, tiny spaces are traceable to the gardening practices within Cuba’s long-standing Chinese diasporic community (see also Koont 2011, 182). Perhaps, then, it is not so random that General Sio Wong, the revolutionary war veteran of Sino-Cuban background and party leader, has been a main proponent of urban farming and agroecological principles (Koont 2011, 25–6; Premat 2012, 11). One urban cultivation method, promoted by institutional experts and the main basis of ''organopónicos'', is to mix sediment and composted materials to help establish growing areas over virtually uncultivable city surfaces. These are also part of traditional expertise and everyday gardening practices.<br /> <br /> The above major achievements are disparaged by detractors as the effects of economic crisis, the US embargo and a partial opening to the ‘free market’ (e.g. Benz 2020; Montgomery 2007). These are the sorts of specious arguments that ignore how similar embargoes or economic hardship in other countries, such as Iraq, have been met by privileging military or other exclusive, narrow interests over safeguarding most people’s well-being (Cabello et al. 2012). Moreover, the implication that only economic downturns can bring ecologically beneficial effects is politically rather sinister, implying that social struggle and political change are irrelevant. Unlike those social systems, the state socialism of Cuba, where social equality and well-being are priorities, is the sole existing model that meets a minimum requirement of standards of living ‘within a consumption pattern that could be extended globally without entering [planetary] overshoot’ (Moran et al. 2008, 4). That is no small feat for a small country under siege by the mightiest military in world history.<br /> <br /> === The Net Environmental Effects of State-Socialist Systems ===<br /> For the most part, especially in Cuba, the net ecological consequences of state socialism have been an improvement over pre-existing conditions under the authoritarian rule of rapacious capitalist (and associated semi-feudal) institutions, well networked with or under the thumb of the colonial dictatorship of liberal democracies. If some impacts of socialist states were negative, in some instances for the long term, it is not for a lack of ecological sensitivity within ruling parties or the wider socialist sections of state-socialist systems. It is in part a result of the eventual dominance of ruling party fractions and sections of society who privileged industrialisation at any cost and the shifting struggles within socialist states over priorities. Just as important, though, are the external inimical and belligerent forces and historical circumstances beyond the control of socialist states.<br /> <br /> Environmentalism was constitutive of, not foreign to, the socialist state, and even more so with Cuba and the USSR at large. There was no need to import or smuggle environmentalist work into a country with a long history and wealth of ecological thought, especially in the case of the USSR (Elie 2015). Before the publication of Rachel Carson’s germinal ''Silent Spring'', the biologist and environmentalist Aleksandr Nikolaevich Formozov was calling attention, in 1961, to the devastating effects of pesticides on birds, insects and other organisms, including those beneficial to agriculture (Weiner 1999, 305). Under state-socialist systems some of the most advanced environmental research and monitoring programmes were developed. The priority given to mass literacy and scientific education, coupled with campaigns of ecological sensibilisation by scientific societies, contributed to public sensitisation to ecological issues and to successful environmental struggles. This remains the case in Cuba.<br /> <br /> The challenge was and has been throughout state-socialist history reconciling industrialisation with environmental protection, which manifested itself by way of struggles among and within ministries as well as wider activism outside of government, involving scientific communities and volunteer organisations founded by socialist currents during the early revolutionary periods. The unresolved conflict between pollution and industrialisation reflects a contradiction between achieving socialism, which meant promoting the improvement of everyone’s well-being as well as nature protection, and developing the material means to do so. The net ecological effects (and thereby also the effects on people’s health) were therefore mixed. There were major improvements in nature protection and conservation, enhancing biodiversity, greening cities and reducing some forms of air and water pollution over time. And there were major pollution problems from industrial production, including farming, along with several localised and regional instances of lasting destruction. This was certainly so for the USSR and the PRC, but much less so for Cuba.<br /> <br /> That such a challenge between aims and available means remained and remains unresolved is to some extent traceable to the ways in which decision-making processes were structured. For instance, in the USSR people running mining, energy and other industrial production sectors were rewarded with bonuses for meeting production targets in a timely fashion. Anything that impeded resource provision or that caused delays to those ends were strenuously fought against and environmental and health effects were dumped on the central state organs to resolve.<br /> <br /> There also were and are, in Cuba, rewards for nature protection and public health actions, in terms of promotions, research funds and the like. And then there are the thousands of environmental activists within and outside formal institutions whose reward lay mainly in preventing harm, reducing impact or pushing the state to enforce environmental legislation. This is in addition to the capacity of state-socialist governments to mobilise, at times coercively, at times via material incentives, millions of people to do ecologically constructive things. This is exemplified by reforestation efforts in all the countries discussed, monitoring from below in the USSR and Cuba, or vermicomposting training workshops in Cuba.<br /> <br /> The selection, allocation and use of resources are part of an overtly political decision-making process in state socialism, not just a technical matter or an issue decided within private companies without any public input until after the fact. The centralised decision-making system and planning arrangement is both an advantage and disadvantage. On the one hand, there are clear ultimate responsibilities over plans, regulations and actions relative to the environment and ministries could be played against each other to improve overall results. On the other hand, because central authorities’ legitimacy rode on providing well-being to all, including liveable environments and nature protection, any discrepancy between policy and results immediately undermines the state politically. Even environmental information flow is part of overt, if not formalised political struggle.<br /> <br /> The outcomes of these struggles have differed. In the USSR and the PRC the central authorities (such as the Politburo), rather than concede their major faults and change course, opted to conceal and repress as much as possible, fearing a backlash, which happened multiple times and in multiple places regardless. Air and water pollution cannot really be hidden from the rest of the citizenry. Such instances of environmental damage, in a state-centralised decision-making context, become crises of political legitimacy. In Cuba the matter was resolved through greater decentralisation and allowance of public criticism by the 1980s (Levins 1990). The question regarding the USSR or PRC should be why the central authorities made such (in the long-term self-destructive) decisions compared to countries like Cuba.<br /> <br /> Progress on environmental issues in a country like the USSR or the PRC under Máo could have been made to reduce if not prevent the major air and water pollution coming out of the industrial sources that experts had identified if the USSR or PRC had amassed the level of capital and material extraction to accomplish that. But that would have necessitated drawing resources from most of the rest of the world by imperial and economically exploitative means, as in the case of western European countries or the US and Canada. The exploitative route is essentially alien to socialist states and is in any case unfeasible. To do that takes many more decades of conquering and ransacking other countries and then maintaining a neocolonial relationship.<br /> <br /> Hence the USSR, like China until recently, developed the technical capacities to prevent or overcome much ecological damage associated with rapid industrialisation, but without the economic means to reach that kind of technological level. It was then a choice of further exploiting domestic resources and workers, as China has done, or borrowing and importing technology and spare parts from the capital-rich countries, as most states do, and thereby become indebted to governments that endeavoured to destroy any form of socialism. The USSR leadership opted for greater economic dependency on the core capitalist countries, managing to resolve neither the economic and technological independence problem, nor avoid some major environmental problems.<br /> <br /> In Cuba, however, matters were taken in a somewhat different direction, seizing the imposition of an economic disaster as an opportunity to build an ecologically sustainable socialist society. This is in itself unprecedented and squarely associated with the development of a state-socialist system. The many capitalist countries recently experiencing sudden and devastating economic downturns, like East Asian countries in 1997 or European and North American countries in 2008, did not result in any serious institutional rethinking (certainly no self-critical analysis) or substantive efforts of the sort that the Cuban socialist state has undergone. This should not surprise anyone. Since the prime directive is profitability and wealth accumulation, capitalist institutions are structurally incapable of mobilising society in a constructive direction. It takes socialist revolution or massive organising and pressures from below to push against the undemocratic nature of capitalism and reach the chance to build an egalitarian and ecologically sustainable society.<br /> <br /> Cuba thus presents an acute contrast to other countries on account of advances in ecologically sustainable practices since the revolution. Forests expanded along with biodiversity, ecological preserve areas have been multiplied and enlarged, and farming has increasingly shifted to ecologically sustainable techniques that are so advanced as to be the envy of the world. What is more, food production has been integrated into urban centres to a degree unmatched anywhere else and affording large outlays of produce in ways that improve urban ecosystems. The country is exemplary in implementing ecologically sensible measures and substantively reducing environmental impact, while markedly improving the well-being of society as a whole. While enforcement and shifting to renewable energy are a challenge when having meagre means, the efforts have borne fruit if the ecological footprint is any guide (Figure 4.19). Cuba was consistently in the lower portion of ecological impact among countries with similar values for the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI), but by the 1990s it was consistently the least ecologically damaging with half as much impact as Costa Rica, the closest country in the same HDI range (Cabello et al. 2012). The Cuban government’s achievements in conservation are acknowledged even in the ''New York Times'' (Goode 2015), where, daringly, it is intimated that a resumption of US business activity on the island will bring the environmental woes of yore (see Fernandez et al. 2018, 18).<br /> <br /> == Reckoning with Contradictions to Build Ecosocialism ==<br /> Sweeping condemnations of the environmental impacts of socialism can and should be easily swept aside. They are patently baseless for several reasons. The more obvious one is that the wide historical diversity of socialist currents (which here include anarchist and communist ones) is not reducible to state-socialist systems. Only some of them are associated with the establishment of socialist states. Second, a more comprehensive environmental record shows that the net impacts of socialist states have been positive. This is on account of ecosystem and soil conservation, reforestation and afforestation, at least partially successful measures in air and water pollution abatement and prevention, and, most of all, relatively low ecological footprints. Another reason is that many socialist states did not make much of a dent on ecosystems relative to countries with greater historically accumulated capital. This is in part because most socialist states did not industrialise or had no chance to (see Rodney 2011). Studies on the environmental impacts of ‘communism’ overwhelmingly exclude most socialist states without any justification and this raises the suspicion that such largely Eurocentric scholarship is underlain by a white western European superiority complex. A fourth reason is that the environmental record, as also shown in the previous chapters, has been much worse for capitalist countries and keeps getting worse over time, to the point of having already caused planetary, not just localised or regional, calamities. Finally, the more egregious cases of environmental destruction caused through socialist states bear at least in part a direct and indirect imprint of capitalist countries, especially liberal democracies, by means of historically inherited environmental devastation, sustained military and economic pressures and exacerbation of environmental degradation following state socialism.<br /> <br /> Deleterious and disastrous long-term biophysical impacts, such as there were, resulted in some socialist states, mainly those undergoing industrialisation. Those are what require explanation. To some degree an explanatory framework has been hinted at or expressed throughout this work by means of analysing the wider context in Chapter 3 and concrete situations in Chapter 4. Allusions have already been made to the contexts wherein socialist states arose and developed. An explanation is offered later in this chapter that is based on a historical and dialectical materialist framework. Afterwards, the framework is extended to consider some overarching questions and quandaries compelled by the historical challenges faced by socialist states. An argument is made that reclaiming state socialism is important towards exploring realistic ecosocialist possibilities in the present. But first, here is a short overview of prevailing explanations about state socialism and the environment.<br /> <br /> === Principal Narratives on State Socialism and the Environment ===<br /> Three overarching and interlocking stories pervade the literature on state socialism and the environment. One focuses on alleged state-socialist residuals or nasty legacies. Another view traces most or all problems to the authoritarianism or ‘totalitarianism’ of state socialism. A third line of reasoning would have Marxist ideology as the culprit. These explanatory approaches rest on capitalist democracy supremacism and presume a mainly or totally negative state-socialist environmental record. For these reasons alone they are irrelevant because of the mostly constructive effects of state socialism, as shown above, and because of a long record of environmental devastation in capitalist societies. The conventional storylines could apply to cases of state-socialist environmental degradation, though, if they did not fail on their own terms or through contradictory evidence.<br /> <br /> The state-socialist environmental legacies argument is downright embarrassing. Basically, an alleged disastrous present is the fault of what transpired in the past under state socialism (e.g. Agyeman and Ogneva-Himmelberger 2009; Pavlínek and Pickles 2000; Peterson 1993). Is the pollution of Lake Okeechobee or the Mississippi Delta Dead Zone then a legacy of liberal democracy? The narrative unfolds as a selective chronology of inheritance, where the past conveniently stops at the beginning of a state-socialist system. Environmental pollution or degradation preceding socialist states are underestimated or eschewed, as are constructive legacies from socialist states. Worse, the legacies argument can also serve to absolve institutional responsibilities for environmental harm after socialist states were dismantled.<br /> <br /> A second explanatory strategy resorts to the tired ‘totalitarianism’ construct or, in less ossified renditions, finds the ultimate causes in authoritarianism and related institutionalised conflicts of interest, including a lack of checks and balances, secrecy and censorship (e.g. Dominick 1998; Edelstein 2012, 38; Goldman 1972, 34, 138–40; Goldman 1992, 3–4, 214; Josephson et al. 2013, 13; Mignon Kirchoff and McNeill 2019, 13; Pavlínek and Pickles 2000, 6, 26; Peterson 1993, 12–18; Pryde 1972, 2). Authoritarianism, in that perspective, usually means state or central party organ control, lack of a ‘free market’ and market signals, and private property, among other hallmarks of capitalist democracy (e.g. Goldman 1972, 40, 46–8; Josephson et al. 2013, 207–9; Pavlínek and Pickles 2000, 16; Peterson 1993, 13; Pryde 1972, 42, 119–20; Weiner and Brooke 2018, 309).<br /> <br /> At a most banal level this is not an explanation at all for state-socialist malfeasance because similar or worse records exist under free-market democracies. Furthermore, the existence and frequent effectiveness of environmentalist opposition, reported by many of the same scholars, contradicts the claims made on their own terms. Another fly in the ointment is the institutional diversity existing within socialist states and the antagonisms among such institutions, involving wrangling over state funds (Goldman 1972, 169; Jancar 1987, 5). Additionally, natural resources and means of production were often under cooperative management and to some extent under smallholder private ownership, not direct state control. The notion of ultimate Politburo control is largely fictional. Finally, the claim of censorship and secrecy is spurious, as detractors of state socialism themselves describe many instances of substantial data access and of open criticism without repression (Josephson et al. 2013, 150, 157; Goldman 1972, 34, 54, 65–6; M.I. Goldman’s foreword in Komarov 1980; Obertreis 2018; Pryde 1972, 68), while overlooking copious cases of environmental information suppression in liberal democracies. There were even cases of collusion by the US government and the nuclear industry when it came to suppressing information on the Kyshtym and Chernobyl nuclear accidents (Brown 2013; Josephson et al. 2013, 259).<br /> <br /> A third major line of reasoning attributes causal powers to ideas and faults Marxism for environmental degradation (e.g. Jancar 1987, 6; Pryde 1972, 42; Shapiro 2001, 4). Again, given environmental devastation in liberal democracies this is not a credible explanation. In any case, there are many kinds of ideas and belief systems that eventuate in the same environmental effects (cf. Marks 2017). That there have been different and even mutually antagonistic Marxist currents also seems beyond such theorists’ comprehension.<br /> <br /> None of the arguments offered in the mainstream about the relationship of state socialism to the environment address why socialist states scored so many environmental successes. They cannot even explain what they are fixated with, which are instances of environmental degradation and devastation in the industrialised state-socialist countries. The solutions they offer have at best led to mixed environmental outcomes, if not more destruction, in the very liberal democratic countries used implicitly or explicitly as comparative paragons. What is sorely missing in studies of the environmental impacts of socialist states is not only a balanced framework, but also social and ecological contextualisation. For example, deforestation is impossible to explain by looking only at where the deforestation happens. This is a basic methodological principle developed through several approaches over five decades, such as political ecology and the world systems paradigm.<br /> <br /> === Convergence as Explanation ===<br /> Frameworks that steer clear of crude liberal democratic supremacism have recently surfaced under the ‘revisionism’ label. They are attentive to the wider context and to historical open-endedness, overwhelmingly about the USSR, and are more mindful of capitalist horrors. However, the claim is that environmental impacts in capitalism and state socialism tend to converge in level of harm or forms of environmental practices. This line of argument resembles the more moderated versions of the views expressed by the likes of Goldman (1972) and Pryde (1972). Where convergence proponents differ is in concluding that state socialism (or ‘communism’ as they often frame it) is not in itself worse for the environment. They recognise factors beyond the control of socialist states, including biophysical ones, and underlying social structures shared by capitalist systems. Where they differ is about the source of convergence. Some find it in ‘the common experience of modernizing states’, premised on a ‘growth imperative’ (Bruno 2016, 15–16), ‘developmentalism’ (Pomeranz 2009a; Weiner and Brooke 2018, 309) or Enlightenment ideology (Josephson et al. 2013). Some recognise the role of global economic pressures alongside questionable technical decisions (Bruno 2016, 20) and see deep-seated continuities with the tribute-seeking statecraft from centuries ago (Weiner 2009). It is all part of a general worldwide trend in spiralling population growth, energy use and economic growth that took off in the 1970s and 1980s (Chu 2018, 158). In other words, the explanation is really an observation that state socialism converged with liberal democracies and the rest of the world when it comes to environmental impacts and only painstaking comparisons can reveal differences in the causal mechanisms that led to such convergent patterns.<br /> <br /> Convergence perspectives, though, cannot explain the general global trend and the timing of the worst effects in the 1970s and 1980s, nor why environmental destruction has intensified since the demise of the USSR. It also leaves unaddressed whether and how the same problem extends to all state-socialist countries. This is crucial. The Congolese and Mozambican socialist states did not undergo industrialisation, while the Hungarian and North Korean ones did. Cuba’s environmentally constructive record also remains inexplicable on this view. Revisionists cannot specify the overarching social processes whose outcomes are ecologically unsustainable or spell out and develop political alternatives. It is a viewpoint that sidelines questions of relations of power at multiple scales, including settler colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism. Treating socialist states as analogues of ‘modernity’ is a politically evasive and disabling manoeuvre, dissembling relational differentiation and major unevenness in power relations, while collapsing widely differing social and historical conditions into an undifferentiated ‘modernity’ porridge.<br /> <br /> The emptiness of this kind of perspective is well represented by a question posed by some ‘revisionists’ on account of the discomfort associated with realising the equally terrible natures of capitalism and ‘socialism’: ‘Is it possible to create an economy that respects society, democracy, and nature?’ (Mignon Kirchhof and McNeill 2019, 14). Their discomfort is understandable, but it is predicated on asserting equifinality without considering the evidence, as presented here, that state socialism has more constructive environmental effects than capitalist democracy. Since they believe all state socialism, without bothering to study its multiple forms, is little different from liberal democracy (the revisionists’ fixed reference point), the conclusion is that environmentally friendly impacts are independent of political system. It makes no difference whether there is democracy or dictatorship.<br /> <br /> And this is true. Dictatorship is quite compatible with reducing environmental damage, if not even preventing it. Authoritarianism has been standard practice in setting up national parks in settler colonial systems like the US and Canada, for example, forcing Indigenous peoples out or killing them. The reason why the notion of a just transition or environmental or ecological justice is crucially important is precisely because there is no necessary link between egalitarian social relations and constructive environmental impact. Ecosystems and biomes are much wider processes than what happens within a single species. The political ambiguity of environmental issues makes it all the more important to be transparent about political commitments. Revisionists suffer from the same political ailment of third-way environmentalists who claim both socialism and capitalism are destructive and then end up siding with whoever is in power to achieve effective environmental protection measures.<br /> <br /> === Explanations from Leftist Positions ===<br /> There is another interesting twist to the stories recounted about the alleged failure of socialist states on the environmental front. Goldman (1972, 64–6) was among the few in the mainstream who showed a grasp of how pressures to overcome ‘underdevelopment’ led to environmental trouble. Even if claiming that socialist states are environmentally damaging is an unsupported assertion, this argument by Goldman is interesting because of its coherence with the directives (or justifications) from state-socialist governments. It also highlights one of the central concerns of socialists more broadly relative to improving everyone’s quality of life instead of that of a select few, as in capitalist conditions. This already creates major challenges when, as already pointed out, a country is in a state of siege and is under economic pressure, not to mention divergent internal factions struggling over development and survival strategies, which entails struggles for power. There was no outlet to displace the polluting consequences of industrialisation, such as far-flung colonies or advantageous neocolonial relations and terms of trade favouring outsourcing and relocation of environmentally destructive economic activities (O’Connor 1998; Weiner 2017).<br /> <br /> Several explanatory frameworks have already been developed on the left, but they presume that state socialism is environmentally wretched. Because of this they are compelled to construct a narrative that distances state socialism from their brand of socialism. Hence, they trace the causal mechanism in the repression of dissenters, including many ecologists, and the suppression and distortions of Marxian text, combined with external pressures, eventuating in the concentration of power and class neodifferentiation, authoritarian economic planning and the prioritisation of manufacturing, among other consequences leading to environmental harms (Angus 2016, 208–11; Foster 2000; Gare 1993; O’Connor 1991, 9; Sheehan 1985; Weiner 1988). A still underexplored avenue is the major role in environmental destruction played by persisting patriarchal relations and the militarised government that derives from them. These have been hitherto only briefly tackled (Seager 1993, 111–16). Gare (2016, 21) finds that the recent neoliberal ‘fusion of bureaucracies and markets against democracy’ (and the striving for global control) coheres with the technocratic managerialism of socialist states, which have therefore had little difficulty in embracing this latest capitalist form. These tendencies are interrelated. As pointed out already, from the beginning socialist states faced enormous external pressures from liberal democracies in the form of constant military and economic pressures (Democratic Socialist Party 1999, 64–5; Chase-Dunn 1982; O’Connor 1998). The precision of these explanation are not in dispute here; the problem is that they have been missing the mark.<br /> <br /> A system prioritising the overcoming of low levels of material well-being and productivity levels, and usually coming out of peasant patriarchal societies and often also colonial oppression (among other major disadvantages), all the while being militarily invaded and/or besieged, creates conditions not exactly conducive to the development of egalitarian social structures and environmentally constructive impacts. In these historical conditions it is a marvel that there were any successes in improving standards of living, raising environmental standards, engaging in reforestation, reducing or preventing waste, pre-empting consumerism, developing recycling programmes and attaining high volumes of recycling, improving access to education, providing free and universal health care, guaranteeing full employment and job security and even setting up lasting conservation areas, among other major feats. Add to this the development of cutting-edge social practices and policies like gender parity efforts in Burkina Faso (Biney 2018), reconciliation and pacification methods (even if fraught with violence) in Mozambique (Igreja 2010; Meneses 2016), revolutionary applications of agronomy in Guinea Bissau and the Cabo Verde Islands (César 2018; Manji and Fletcher 2013) and world-renowned successes in space, biomedical, health, conservation, engineering, ecology and biotechnology research and applications in the USSR, Cuba and the PRC (Fitz 2020; Foster 2015; Levins 2005; Navarro 1992; Weiner 1999), and the record is even more impressive.<br /> <br /> === Developing a Dialectical Historical Materialist Explanatory Framework for Ecosocialist Ends ===<br /> Another way to explain the relationship between socialist states and the environment is possible and necessary. One way to start is to look at ecosocial dynamics. In short, this means (1) a much wider historical and socio-geographical contextualisation than studies and explanations have so far encompassed; and (2) a dialectical materialist approach to biophysical dynamics that are inclusive of and beyond human impacts. I will stick to the negative impacts, since regrettably they overwhelmingly continue to catch leftists’ imagination, but also because, given consistent historical patterns of capitalist violence and extreme pressures, the worse should be expected following a revolution.<br /> <br /> For the first aspect, an example can be the historical and wider conditions through which socialist states developed. What has not gained enough attention in the copious literature is arguably of greater import than explaining the internal power struggles within the USSR and then in other socialist states that led to environmental disasters. The case of Chernobyl could be reconsidered this way. The existence of an atomic-nuclear programme in the USSR – first, in the early 1940s, for military and then, by the 1950s, for civilian purposes – resulted from a primary motivation called self-defence. Between 1932 and 1939, following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the USSR and Japan warred allegedly over boundaries, with tens of thousands of deaths. The USSR had already been invaded (from the east) by the US and their allies during the Russian Civil War, and the Japanese imperial expansion was possibly an even greater danger. During World War II the USSR was invaded by German armies assisted by various governments (e.g. Hungary, Romania) and nationalist contingents from eastern Europe (particularly Ukrainian). It was the Nazi government’s largest military operation, it must be recalled (in practice, anti-communism trumps illiberalism in the Nazi mindset). The democratically elected US government bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. NATO was founded in Washington, DC, in April 1949, to which the USSR and their allies responded only by 1955 with the establishment of the Warsaw Pact (in Warsaw, not Moscow, interestingly). It is also important to note that the USSR did not have any proven atomic bomb capacity until the first test in August 1949, months after the formation of NATO and several months before any certainty over the outcome of the Chinese Civil War (the PRC was not declared until 1 October 1949). By 1945 the US had encircled the USSR with military bases (Vine 2015) and had openly threatened the USSR with the atom bomb. It should be clear that the impetus behind the USSR’s nuclear arms programme has been self-defence from the beginning. Unlike the US, on no occasion did the USSR threaten other states with nuclear attack. It should be self-evident that in a world heavily inflected by US belligerence one is almost compelled to develop a nuclear weapons complex. Otherwise, if a country becomes attractive to US ruling classes for certain resources or military strategies, the risk is to be invaded or bombed to smithereens, as happened with Vietnam, Laos, Afghanistan and Iraq, for example.<br /> <br /> A related issue is why the USSR bothered at all to develop civilian applications of nuclear power. The potted answer is often high modernism, including a drive for industrialisation, developmentalism or productivism, but this suggests a sort of voluntarism (if not some innate Bolshevik evil, in some renditions of USSR history), as if people decide of their own accord to get into something awful or are somehow inexorably hungry for power and determined to keep it once they have it. What should instead be asked is what propelled such a turn. A similarly brief answer would be a combination of self-defence and getting legitimacy from most people by delivering on living standards improvements. Both aspects necessitate the building of higher productive capacity and with that comes some sort of centralised coordination and chains of command. None of this is inevitable and other roads could have been taken, but the immense military and economic pressure from liberal democracies must not be underestimated. In the USSR the first electricity-generating nuclear plant in the world used for a civilian power grid was set up in the USSR at Obninsk in 1954, about 115 km south-west of Moscow (this was followed in the UK, at Sellafield, and France, at Marcoule, in 1956, and then in the US in 1957, at Shippingport). This nuclear option was based on external military pressures and on finding the fastest route to the highest energy production, relative to technologies available. This kind of reconsideration and reframing of the nuclear issue in the USSR is much deeper on relations of power than most perspectives offer. The example of Chernobyl is confined mainly to the scale of national states and does not address ecological processes, but one could easily go further to subnational struggles. Yet the question is, what would an ecosocialist formation do differently in the face of such conditions and in attempting to fulfil basic needs, while preventing environmental damage?<br /> <br /> One way of addressing (not solving) the above quandary is to extend the contextualised analysis further by applying a dialectical materialist framework inclusive of biophysical dynamics, drawing from state-socialist achievements, and to learn from the environmental transformations under state socialism. Due to my prior work it is easier for me to discuss impacts on soils in Hungary, so I use that theme as an illustration. The example of impacts on soils in Hungary also coincides with the second aspect, delineated above, aimed at building a dialectical materialist framework.<br /> <br /> In Hungary there were various transformations of soil use and science as a combined effect of the interlinkages of soils research, the outcomes of human impact and wider social changes at multiple scales. As farming became increasingly industrialised and central to the Hungarian economy by the late 1960s, under the Kádár government, soils were altered ever more destructively, encouraging major shifts in farming and soil science communities. Soil properties in some regions became more acid and/or overwhelmed with phosphorus and potassium. This appears to have been in mainly women-run household farming spaces more than conventional, large-scale plots (Engel-Di Mauro, 2003). Acidification through industrialised farming in humid temperate regions is often associated with prolonged and high amounts of nitrogen fertiliser applications combined with large-scale harvest removals and tillage (which leads to much soil organic matter rapidly degrading, while returns of organic matter to soils diminish). Other areas’ soils with differing intrinsic properties remained near neutral or changed towards greater alkalinity, sometimes because of the amounts of fertiliser added were greater than ever before (this can raise alkalinity or neutralise acidity) and made available through industrialisation and centralised production systems. Such differential impacts on soils resulted from combinations of soil dynamics at variable timescales (millennia to years) and autonomous from society, as well as the outcomes of historical human impacts. The latter, even prior to state socialism, were traceable to Hungary’s world-system position as net food exporter. Industrialised farming became especially important by the 1970s to develop agricultural exports to offset the Hungarian socialist state’s dependence on finance and technologies from Western liberal democracies.<br /> <br /> That there was environmental destruction, in this light, should scarcely raise any eyebrows. The relative damage to soils under the Kádár government is an instructive case, even as successful soil conservation also occurred and probably the most comprehensive and extensive soil-monitoring programme in the world was developed. Pressures to go in a negative direction were nevertheless great. Increasingly indebted financially to states and firms in Western liberal democracies, the Hungarian government introduced economic reforms promoting more privatised and greater export-oriented farming to garner the necessary currency to repay debts with interest from lenders in the wealthiest liberal democratic regimes (Berend 1996). These policies had the effect of intensifying mechanisation, pesticide and fertiliser production and application, and all the trappings of industrial farming that led to the now familiar path of soil degradation, such as compaction, erosion and acidification. And loan repayment along with internal pacification played an important part in such environmentally destructive outcomes. It was not then just a matter of accumulating capital through agriculture to facilitate the building or expansion of industry.<br /> <br /> Changing soil properties and dependent centralised capital accumulation (e.g. financial indebtedness and agricultural exports to states and firms in western Europe and North America) brought about two contrasting and interrelated processes. On the one hand state soil science and agronomy gained a capacity for an unparalleled achievement in soil-monitoring resolution (to the scale of six hectares). On the other hand, the very capital accumulation that enabled that level of monitoring exposed the flaws of industrial farming and compelled scientists and cooperative farms to institute soil conservation measures and a liming programme by the mid-1980s. The realisation of widespread soil degradation problems, it must be borne in mind, would not have been possible without most farmland use being under centralised coordination. Such ecological and social transformations crucially involved the promotion of largely white, male and more profit-oriented interests while displacing women and racially minoritised farmers. By the 2000s those wealthier farmers who happened to grow crops on such previously limed fields would have some production advantages, especially compared to middle-income farmers who are squeezed by high productivity pressures while having insufficient capital (Engel-Di Mauro 2018). Finally, soil science itself has been deeply affected (even scarred) by all these developments, to which soil scientists themselves contributed actively. The socially shifting, but largely white male soil science community has contributed to changes in soils use while the outcomes of soil use have led to the reshaping of soil science communities towards even more entrenched productivism (in line with demands for raising agricultural exports, for example) or, sometimes as a form of political dissidence, greater environmental sensibility (Engel-Di Mauro, 2006).<br /> <br /> More abstractly explained, these ecosocial processes can be viewed as intersecting and unfolding in a dialectical fashion. There are interpenetrating opposites (differentiations) that are part of a unity and at different scales (levels of organisation), such as limed and unamended soils, acidifying and neutral to alkaline soils, socialist states and liberal democracies, gendered and racialised farming communities, and industrialised and manual agricultural cultivation techniques. The interpenetration aspect can be exemplified by soil properties, preceding or autonomous from social dynamics, being both the subject and object of human impacts. Human impacts lead to alteration of soil properties, which change differentially beyond the influence of human impact, due to intrinsic qualities in soils. Altered soil properties influence how human impact unfolds, which in the above case raised a perceived need for higher fertiliser applications and even prompted a nationwide liming campaign, with repercussions on other ecosystems through quarrying, to name just one possible and wider ecological effect. In all this there are negations, such as the transformation of farming with industrialisation, export-reorientation and productivism to more conservationist forms of soil science and agronomy. Throughout, transformations have been mutual, between soil science and their subjects of study, policymaking and impacted environments, scientists and farmers, socialist and liberal democratic states, and so on. Most of all, there is no end to the story and no necessary predictability. The relationship between soil dynamics and social processes is material, dialectical and thereby open-ended. This could be another way of explaining what happened under state socialism in Hungary relative to impacts on soils, taking into consideration how human-induced transformations in soils contributed to changes in state-socialist policies. These brought about the potentials for a more constructive relationship to soils, but they were foiled by external pressures, like loan repayment subtended by cranking up farm exports, and internal contradictions. In this precarious situation the government attempted, among other things, to raise productivity to satisfy the objectives of improving people’s living standards while at same time the party and wider society were internally divided among would-be pro-capitalist and unreconstructed Horthyist (with a few Nazis sprinkled in) counter-revolutionaries, factions bound to Moscow’s priorities, and a minority of committed egalitarian factions.<br /> <br /> One possible lesson from the above-described state-socialist ecosocial dynamics is the importance of anticipating and preparing for social struggles while developing the fullest grasp possible of biophysical processes, all at multiple scales of analysis (planetary–local). Relative to soils it would be crucial, before revolutionary prospects emerge and to make them happen, to organise a large cadre of scientists committed to agroecological and socialist principles while preparing to divide efforts between (1) developing environmentally sustainable farming that feeds everyone and remunerates food producers highly and (2) an export-oriented sector mainly dedicated to solidarity-based in-kind trade, while building the wherewithal to sustain prolonged economic attacks and internal sabotage affecting local food systems. At the very least, agroecological techniques and economic incentives help develop soil properties that can enhance subsequent farming and wider ecosystem conditions that create other healthful benefits for farming and wider communities. This, of course, is quite a tall order and only takes care of a small fraction of economic activities and environmental impacts, which would have to be coordinated with other activities and practices in similar ways. Such coordination could be facilitated by means of a socialist state or whatever other kinds of institutions make the most sense in given conjunctures and conditions. Regardless, these are some of the major strategy questions that can see the light of day by reclaiming state socialism and studying its people–environment histories with a dialectical and historical materialist eye.<br /> <br /> === Dialectical and Historical Materialism as an Open-Ended Process of the Mutual Transformations ===<br /> The above is but one way of looking at the world of people–environment relations dialectically and through a historical materialist prism, instead of treating ecosystems and environments as static backgrounds or as unproblematically comparable. Environmental legacies are not mere background and do not just provide limits to or burdens on the present. They are affected by present impacts in refashioning the extent of their influence on the present condition. A dialectical understanding means paying attention to processes, inter-linkages and, crucially, relations that are part of a whole as well as processes of mutual transformations (Harvey 1996, 46–68; Levins and Lewontin 1985).<br /> <br /> To clarify further, dialectics as understood here is not based on identifying a synthesis of a thesis and its antithesis. Hegel, Marx and Engels held no such view, though many still think so even recently (e.g. Shimp 2009, repeating Heilbroner’s mistakes). It has instead long been known that it was Fichte, building on Kant’s ideas, who developed the synthesis formula (Mueller 1958). The widespread legend about Marxist dialectics can in part be blamed on some Marxists, certainly those involved in codifying what became the prevailing and state-sponsored version of dialectics in the USSR. That bears a decisive role in propagating such a formulaic, actually non-Marxian idea of dialectics. But many also continue to make a muddle of dialectics, as when they separate it from a relational view (that things can only be defined in relation to each other, like anarchism, communism, socialism and capitalism). Marx’s, and also Hegel’s, version of dialectics is shot through with relationality already, so a term like ‘relational dialectics’ is wholly misinforming if pointing to Marxian dialectics. One can regard this as part of the deformation or degeneration of socialism in state power garb and leave the matter at that. Or we can take stock of the experiences, learn from them and struggle to ensure that dialectical materialism, just like the word communism, will no longer be distorted that way and will be turned to directly practical use in figuring out political strategies, resolving tensions, respecting and reconciling differences towards unity of purpose and action, and so on.<br /> <br /> This may seem pedantic, but consider what kinds of policies can come out of a synthesis formula compared to a dialectical view. In the first, there are supposed to be two processes that contradict or conflict with each other and there is a resolution of that contradiction or conflict called a synthesis. So, one is supposed to look for things that are related but in contrast with each other. Applied to ecological processes or to how societies relate to environments, this becomes farcical if not dangerous. Is reforestation a synthesis of deforestation (thesis) and planting trees (antithesis)? What is the antithesis of a forest, a grassland, a desert, a wetland or some other kind of biome? Forests can also regenerate without planting trees and reforestation is not necessarily an ecological improvement, as one can have higher-biodiversity forests that are cut down, overtaken by cropland, and then, as a synthesis, replaced by low-biodiversity monocultural tree plantations as forests.<br /> <br /> As conceived here, dialectical materialism is about looking out for and grasping how things relate to each other and change and about reckoning with mutual transformations that imply specifically human action and relationships between people and the components that comprise the rest of the universe. Reforestation, then, is a process of people relating differently to each other and at the same time to other beings within an ecosystem. This puts the emphasis on decision-making processes, on struggles over what sort of ecosystem is desirable, etc., rather than on finding out what is antithetical to what and forcing some sort of desired outcome (synthesis), other possibilities be damned.<br /> <br /> Dialectical materialism is also a process of people transforming themselves in the process of transforming an ecosystem as part of a larger whole made up of interrelated societies and social interactions with and within ecosystems. There is no prescription, no foreclosed future, so whatever action is undertaken has no predictable outcomes or synthesis to another level. Dialectical materialism is an openness to outcomes being different from expectations, to maintaining the future as radically open with possibilities and to recognising how oneself is changed by the relationship with other beings or processes and with changes in the whole of which one is part. It is no recipe or formula. It is, rather, a set of methodological guidelines based on thinking about the world as always changing (processes, transformations), as things always defined in relation to other things and as part of sets of relations in a larger whole. This framework is a far more politically constructive alternative to the prevailing approaches of reductionism, monocausality, dualism, supremacism or objectivism, among other frameworks that fail to be socially critical and critically self-reflexive (Plumwood 1993).<br /> <br /> === A Research Agenda to Develop Questions and Quandaries for Ecosocialist Strategies ===<br /> A historical and dialectical materialist framework, as outlined above, could be one way of proceeding, but with a critical reclaiming or interpretation of state socialism as intrinsically contradictory, ambivalent and transitory. This work is underlain by a three-pronged research agenda: (1) relational comparisons of state-socialist systems’ environmental impacts that go beyond national-level analyses and refuse to treat such systems as monolithic or isolated; (2) multiple-scale studies of social causes of environmental degradation as well as environmental improvements within and beyond state-socialist countries (e.g. transboundary pollution, international preserves); (3) investigations into biophysical processes explaining environmental degradation or the attenuation of human impacts related to state-socialist policies and practices. Such a research agenda, informed by a critical reclaiming of state socialism and a historical and dialectical materialist framework, opens a way to formulate questions and highlight quandaries that must be faced when ecosocialist struggles gain momentum or succeed in redirecting society towards ecosocialism.<br /> <br /> One way to enter this combined revisitation and preparatory activity is to learn from historical processes. There is no shortage of ideas about what can be learned, what the objectives should be, and what needs to be done differently for a future revolution or a world-systemic change towards socialism (e.g. Baer 2018; Bennholdt-Thomsen and Mies 1999; Kovel 2007). Yet too often it is underappreciated or even forgotten that the new revolutionary formation that became the USSR was invaded militarily soon after its establishment and that it was constantly besieged economically and threatened militarily by liberal democracies until its dissolution on 26 December 1991. Whatever strides were achieved socially and environmentally, and there were many, were thenceforth achieved under tremendous external pressures. At the same time, the Bolsheviks in power did not have the allegiance of most of the peasant majority. It is in this context of internal political weakness and enormous external pressures that the USSR’s degeneration into an ever more centralised, paranoid, partially self-destructive and, for a time, terrorising set of institutions came about (Getty and Naumov 1999; Weiner 2017). In China the historical lesson was incorporated to develop strategies to ensure the backing of most peasants, but the revolutionaries had to contend with a long tradition of non-capitalistic commercial orientation as well (D’Mello 2009; Marks 1998).<br /> <br /> These aspects alone should remind leftists of the high stakes and the immediate, murderous capitalist reprisals that accompany any successful or even potentially successful revolutionary activity. Out of the experience of the Russian Revolution, one could say that achieving socialism (and eventually communism) hinges at the very least on obtaining mass support and securing international coordination pre-empting deadly capitalist reaction. This requirement of at least neutralising the most militarily and economically powerful capitalist formations is something that Marx and Engels had pointed out by the 1880s (Rodney 2011). Subsequent revolutions nevertheless benefited greatly from the support of what survived of the USSR, even if eventually splits emerged, as with the PRC, Yugoslavia and Albania. From these splits there is much that still needs to be learned about the advantages and dangers of state power and political fragmentation in an international scene characterised by increasing centralisation and concentration of capitalist power embodied in gigantic corporations.<br /> <br /> The development of technology and expansion of productive capacity were primary objectives in socialist states not only in raising the material well-being of the majorities whose lives were mainly awful in pre-revolutionary times, but also in terms of sheer survival under siege from ‘the most advanced countries’ (Weiner 1988, 233) and from inimical forces within state-socialist countries. A contradiction ensued from this general set of conditions that should be much more widely appreciated. The connection between developing the forces of production and living standards improvements and self-defence was made amply clear not too long after the first successful socialist revolution in what came and went as the USSR. Almost everything was subordinated in practice and ideologically to the defence of the only socialist country, conflating the USSR with world socialism, until the conceit was exposed most forcefully with the establishment of the PRC and the tensions erupted into conflict by the 1960s (not on account of Stalin, interestingly, but the anti-Stalinist Khrushchev faction).<br /> <br /> The legitimate claim for self-defence and survival concealed internal strife and increasing centralisation of political decision-making processes, which were also precipitated by capitalist encirclement. All Bolshevik factions aimed for socialism to triumph and saw the USSR as threatened. The matter was especially urgent in the early decades, but the threat and massive pressures lasted even while chances of invasion were markedly reduced by means of the insanity of the nuclear warhead détente. One can point to the 1930s purges or even earlier, with the violent suppression of the Kronstadt Soviet (1921), as the beginning of the end or of the development of a degenerating system, but the state of siege was no mere Bolshevik hallucination or ideological expedient. All countries that underwent similar or similarly inspired revolutions faced similar challenges and attacks directly from liberal democracies or through their proxies. Constantly. The Cuban state, which as argued here is the only socialist state left, is a living example of what would happen to a successful revolution elsewhere if any of that calibre came about again.<br /> <br /> The above comprise major social contradictions that are still rarely confronted by ecosocialists and other anti-capitalist leftists. They are manifested in three main ways. One is the unfavourable contexts wherein socialist movements were able to bring about revolutions and the socialist states (instead of, for example, confederations of workers councils) that emerged from those revolutions. The present neoliberal capitalist predominance throughout most of the world has exacerbated or newly caused global environmental degradation, and this constitutes a major set of conditions for current struggles. Another process is the socialism-undermining interconnectivity between state-socialist and capitalist countries, which are former or present colonial powers. This was a challenge in the past and will be so for any future successful revolution, including between socialist states or formations. A third major context is composed of pre-existing and newly formed internal social conflicts, including decolonisation and class struggles, which are always constituted through multiple forms of oppression. These are not going away and were sets of relations that posed great challenges to socialist movements, whether they succeeded or not in bringing about revolutions.<br /> <br /> These three overarching processes combined in the past to undermine or redirect in unexpected negative directions whatever promising changes socialist revolutions or socialist states were undergoing. But they were also met with the resolve of many pushing against those destructive aspects and succeeding in eventually arriving at better living conditions and net positive environmental impacts. Nevertheless, those processes were and will be sources of contradictions for socialist projects.<br /> <br /> One major contradiction to always keep in mind is building defences to fend off capitalist powers while bringing sufficient material well-being to all and less, not more, militarism. Part of this is also ensuring that basic infrastructure is functioning or even exists at all. The Norilsk smelters, the coal mines of the German Democratic Republic, the development of processing plants in Vietnam and the PRC’s Great Leap Forward are among the numerous examples that followed from these pressures and represent attempts to improve living standards and the state of a country with available technologies.<br /> <br /> The second main contradiction is in building the foundations of a classless society, inimical to endless capital accumulation, while having to exert the utmost effort to survive in a capitalist world economy. To start building such foundations, most socialist revolutions had to face and try to overcome the oppressive and at times ecologically unsustainable social structures in which many revolutionaries were raised. Many revolutions occurred in mainly agrarian or peasant-majority societies with semi-feudal arrangements heavily influenced by capitalist relations. The undermining and transformation of peasant systems had been well under way prior to those revolutions, and in most cases under the brutal and stultifying conditions of colonialism. Just to enable people to raise their material well-being required technological and economic resources unavailable in the countries where the revolutions succeeded. Having to import manufactures or technologically crucial parts often necessitated raw material export under often declining terms of trade. The raw material export aspect is one example of pressures to introduce or expand environmental damage. Something similar occurred by way of loan repayment and joint company schemes in the industrialised state-socialist countries, where environmentally unsound production was to a major degree to satisfy capitalist countries’ market demands. Simply delinking from the capitalist world economy can lead to a drastic reduction in lifespans or worsening living standards, the stuff that creates the mass discontent useful in helping reactionaries restore capitalism.<br /> <br /> These contradictory processes are much more relevant to and explanatory of environmental impact, whether positive or negative, rather than some problems intrinsic to state socialism. In other words, these are causal processes that can be made visible when letting go of liberal democratic presumptions or when resisting the temptation of judging what came out of socialist revolutions what socialism should be, instead of addressing the interrelationships of actually existing conditions, errors and atrocities, so as to be better prepared next time. In this light, the social and environmental improvements accomplished through socialist states ought to be even more appreciated and thoroughly studied.<br /> <br /> What emerge from the application of the above framework are three broad, interrelated factors that shaped the ways in which the relationship between state socialism and the environment has evolved. One is the effects of the shifting context of socialist states in a capitalist world economy. Another is to be found in the changing interconnections between socialist states and capitalist powers, if not former colonial powers. A third is in the pre-existing and newly formed internal social conflicts faced in and between state-socialist countries following successful revolutions or systemic changes, including class struggles. These three processes inform overarching quandaries that need to be faced by any current socialist formation: building the foundations for a future classless and state-free society and the defences to fend off capitalist powers and survive within a capitalist world economy, while bringing sufficient material well-being to all and, in the process, less, not more, environmental harm. All this is necessary while at the same time ensuring close coordination and mutual support among socialist states and socialist movements. Addressing these quandaries involves two forms of interrelated but different struggles: a social and an ecological one. Socialist states exemplified this combined struggle. They still offer much not only in terms of signposts about what to prevent, but also of potentials to overcome capitalist relations in ecologically sustainable ways.<br /> <br /> === Reclaiming State Socialism ===<br /> As Eduardo Galeano once put it, ‘we are all invited to the world burial of socialism’, but the ‘funeral is for the wrong corpse’ (Galeano 1991, 250). The struggle for socialism is just as crucial as ever, but the trick is how to combine anti-authoritarian socialist or socially egalitarian practices and theories with the need to build an ecologically minded and sustainable alternative to capitalism; and accomplish this in such a way as to avoid the pitfalls of state socialism and help build ecosocialist futures. More egalitarianism and environmental sustainability, even if not expressed as ecosocialism, is what millions of people seem to be demanding more and more even if this is diversely articulated, such as red-green alternatives, savordaya, ecological civilisation, democratic confederalism and the like. Socialist states could have a positive role in transitioning towards such biophysically and socially constructive alternatives. Those states, especially in Cuba, have demonstrated the potential to move in that direction.<br /> <br /> Overall, the environmental record of state-socialist systems has been positive. In part this is due to the environmental sensibility pervading sections of what became ruling parties, particularly in the USSR. That sensibility endured even at the height of civil war and internal, mass-murderous repression. Socialist states like the PRC, which were turned into one-party governing institutions presiding over capitalist economies, have demonstrated an environmentally disastrous tendency. In the PRC the struggle within the party and society at large over the meaning and practice of ecological civilisation, which means returning to a path towards egalitarianism, seems decisive in stemming and reversing the environmentally destructive tide. To some extent this tendency towards greater environmental harm with more capitalist reform is evident when pro-capitalist technocrats within a ruling party have a greater say in running an economy within state-socialist countries, as happened in the USSR and the industrialised state-socialist countries in central and eastern Europe towards the end. However, the tendency was held in check by combinations of environmental movements, concerned or sympathetic high-ranking party officials and regional to local bureaucracies who stood to lose from environmental degradation. In countries like Cuba the situation was precipitated by a terrible economic downturn coupled with a throttling US embargo that is now 60 years old. But the environmentally constructive basis of present accomplishments is part of long-standing concerns with undoing the damaging and deadly environmental and social legacies of the capitalist past, including the struggle to overcome centuries of plantation economy practices grounded in sugar exports.<br /> <br /> The lower ecological footprints in even the most industrialised forms of state socialism reflect a more constructive relationship with the biosphere. Biodiversity has been enhanced directly by extensive habitat and ecosystem protection measures as well as by successful afforestation and reforestation programmes, and, especially in the case of the USSR, ecological preserves. Soil protection and conservation have been effective and of lasting positive consequence, while organic farming techniques were starting to be increasingly favoured in the latter days of countries like the USSR. It is as if, with the dismantling of the USSR, the mantle has been taken up by Cuba. There the struggle for biophysically sustainable farming within the socialist state bore major successes with the development and spread of food production systems based on agroecological principles and traditional peasant knowledge systems. Thanks to these strides, Cuba is the epicentre of agroecological development and application. What is more, advances in urban farming are showing to the rest of the world how to integrate the urbanisation process with more environmentally sustainable living and direct grassroots participation. Socialist states also achieved lower ecological footprints by privileging mass transit and railways, and, in most instances, promoting recycling and minimising consumer waste. Air and water pollution in the industrialising state-socialist countries were addressed from the beginning, even if in fits and starts, owing to industrialising at breakneck speeds. Eventually, pollution abatement measures were increasingly more effective with time. At international levels, socialist states, especially the USSR, took the lead in long-range air pollution treaties, climatological research and climate change concerns, and desertification containment campaigns, among other environmental issues of global consequence. Lastly, socialist states can and have played crucial roles in ecological sensibilisation and mass environmental literacy by making education systems available to all, by means of diffusing scientific principles that are helpful towards understanding biophysical processes and by enabling biological conservation and naturalist movements and organisations to thrive and even gain influence over economic policy. Generally, it appears that the more socialist states give room to capitalist relations and to global capital flow, the greater the deleterious environmental impact.<br /> <br /> There is much that can be built or rebuilt from the decades of experiences and successes in state-socialist countries. It is neither necessary nor advisable to start from scratch if the desire is to move as quickly as possible beyond capitalism. Rejecting state socialism is not much of an option, considering how state-socialist systems helped reduced or mitigate the destructive tendencies of capitalism and given the deterioration of social and ecological conditions worldwide, especially since the 1990s. What should be done instead is to revisit and learn from socialist states so as to build on their strengths and overcome their negative aspects. That is, each state-socialist case can be studied in context, as I have done here to some extent, to learn what worked well towards biophysical sustainability and determine the reasons for such successes. The same should be carried out regarding negative outcomes.<br /> <br /> === Potential Ecosocialist Paths Ahead ===<br /> No bloc centred on the USSR exists now, only a besieged Cuba and a few socialist governments, like Bolivia and Venezuela, under attack from liberal democracies and with little control over their national economies. The PRC has been in a counter-revolutionary phase since 1978 that necessitates support for the forces aiming to turn the tables, including within the CPC. Something similar has occurred or is occurring in Laos and Vietnam, and the rest of the socialist states have been wiped out since the early 1990s and replaced by capitalist client states. The role of ecosocialists and other like-minded people in the imperialist liberal democracies (mainly the NATO countries) and within the PRC is therefore especially important in overturning the balance of power globally, in supporting communists and genuine socialists in other countries and in allowing the flowering of ecosocialism where it has taken root most promisingly so far, as in Venezuela and Cuba. But it is just as important in contributing to the self-defence struggles of Indigenous peoples, whose lifeways are among the paragons for ecosocialism. In this respect, the late Edward Benton-Benai, co-founder of the American Indian Movement, in recounting Anishiinabeg Prophecy, put the matter in a way that is particularly apt for ecosocialists of any persuasion: ‘the light skinned race will be given a choice between two roads. One road will be green and lush, and very inviting. The other road will be black and charred, and walking it will cut their feet’ (Benton-Benai 1988, 93).<br /> <br /> The Venezuelan case is one that brings to light these quandaries. There, ecosocialism has representation at the ministerial level (the first such in the world) and, as pointed out in Chapter 2, there are agroecology programmes and smallholder farmers’ struggles for food sovereignty with the backing of state institutions; there are also promising projects featuring the establishment and coordination of communes and workers cooperatives with state institutions (Burbach and Piñeiro 2007; Ciccariello-Maher 2014). Instead of support for these projects and state initiatives, some fixate on the Bolivarian socialist government’s political flaws and continued oil extraction (Bruno 2017; Machado 2017), in other words, for trying to survive on an exports-based oil economy that has been historically established and currently reinforced by capitalist forces within and abroad. While trying to improve living standards and relations with the environment, the Bolivarian socialist government is dealing with a national economy overwhelmingly in capitalist hands and with relentless military and economic attacks from the US and allied states. Criticisms of the Bolivarian socialists so far furnish no strategies or workable plans to deal with these quandaries, in contrast to some ecosocialists (Schwartzman and Saul 2015). The matter is not just about the survival of a socialist government. Promising life-affirming prospects for Afro-Venezuelans and Indigenous people, put in motion through the Bolivarian socialist process, are also at stake. The work of collectives like the Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle has been a shining illustration of critical support for the Bolivarian socialist project in countries plagued by governments intent on destroying it.<br /> <br /> There are plenty of ideas and organising efforts, as indicated in Chapter 1, to learn from past state-socialist histories and improve upon them. For the most part they are based on rejecting state takeovers or institutional processes that subordinate worker control to central decision-making structures and insisting on worker and community self-organisation and self-management. Some resonate with what is advocated for here. That is, an appropriation of means of production (securing an economic base), an environmentally sustainable development of the forces of production that builds on existing subsistence perspectives (Bennholdt-Thomsen and Mies 1999) and the constant striving for economic democracy can be combined with identifying and availing oneself of possibilities emerging from constructive linkages to and intervention in existing state institutions (for examples, see Akuno and Nangwaya 2017; Kovel 2007, 263–75). This includes assemblies or similar processes where politically organised forces can bring learning experiences to communities struggling for self-determination. In some respects this harkens back to the Maoist mass line approach (D’Mello 2009) and could be useful in coordinating political forces within and outside the state, or a socialist state if one arises. It is unnecessary to reinvent the wheel with the great wealth of political organising histories and knowledge inherited from manifold socialist currents.<br /> <br /> Investigation aiming to offer viable constructive actions are feasible if, instead of regarding state socialism as a form of degeneracy of some pious intent, one concentrates on the transitory, protean character of socialist government of the sort in Venezuela or Bolivia, where the objective is to build socialism. Some past state-socialist institutions, for instance, should be considered as a future reference, like the mass-mobilising scientific and naturalist organisations and people’s control committees in the USSR, which were established shortly after the revolution. Such organising from below proved essential in the USSR in parrying technocrats and capitalism-tending reformists. Relative to Cuba currently, the same kind of methodology can be applied constructively if state socialism is understood as a contradictory phase that could go towards ecosocialism. In a state-socialist country, as in any other country, social struggles are not held in suspension. They continue, change and evolve as the balance of forces shifts and, biophysically, as impacts on the environment reshape the ways social relations connect to the rest of nature. In this reading, both material and political support for the socialist state’s environmental and social advances in Cuba from countries like the US are crucial towards enabling ecosocialist prospects. The dire environmental situation in the PRC, as another example, can be overcome if the existing socialist forces within and outside the party prevail. The task of ecosocialist outsiders is to do the utmost to help those forces succeed (see Li 2016; 2017).<br /> <br /> Another problem is engaging with political strategy and the necessary preparatory work for times when capitalist relations are on the wane. Part of this is a repeated failure to engage directly with technical expertise outside strictly social questions and to develop the means, in preparation to any systemic change, to build collectives of politically committed, egalitarian and technically capable specialists. This is essential to confronting and resolving environmental challenges. Environmental destruction poses sets of complex dynamics, and the recent environmental reorientation among many radical leftist currents has been important in this respect. But radical leftist movements’ predominant external criticism (if not at times rejection) of biophysical science frameworks and a near lack of systematically worked-out alternatives only facilitates the capitalist co-option of those sciences (see, for example, Gare 1993; Schwartzman 1996). Failure to rally technical scientists around radical causes or to become directly involved in producing the scientific knowledge and institutions that will be required for a transition to socialism is to court the sort of troubles the Bolsheviks faced right after the revolution. The Zapatista science initiative ConCiencias por la Humanidad is one example that addresses this challenge directly,1 as well as the adoption of agroecological methods by the Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil (Borsatto and Souza-Esquerdo 2019). A similarly important development is the reconstitution of collectives like Science for the People2 and Pandemic Research for the People,3 both in the US.<br /> <br /> Just as tough is overcoming current and historical divisions and antagonisms among leftists. These may be intractable because, as histories of socialism show, there are fundamental and possibly irreconcilable differences among socialist currents regarding objectives, irrespective of overlaps in ultimate ends regarding a classless society (which implies no state). To some extent the antagonism also stems from an age-old strife over centralist and bottom-up approaches. But this legitimate conundrum about political method often conceals a form of maximalist politics that leads to self-isolation. It is an inability to grasp the possibility that differences among radical leftists may be much smaller than between all radical leftists and the above-described politically reactionary camps. The matter is not as simple as presented here, certainly. There are persisting overlaps in practice, if not in ideology, between some leftist groups and reactionary formations. The issues of decolonisation, racialisation and masculinism are among these overlaps, when they are ignored or treated as secondary in importance to class differentiation, instead of seeing all of them as fundamentally intertwined with or the ''sine qua non'' of class struggle, as part of a differentiated unity.<br /> <br /> Finally, since it hardly depends only on socialists, the even tougher challenge is to clarify to all directly involved as well as to external communities how projects that have little to no ostensibly socialist content can nevertheless be shown to promote socialist ends. Such can be among the lessons of state socialism. Branding such projects socialist, like cooperatives where decisions are made by external or internal party leaders, only plays into the hands of detractors. If the context is such that socialists must forgo some socialist principles to make gains towards a socialist future, this must be articulated explicitly. Debates must occur and be as free as possible in terms of demonstrating how contradictory practices cohere with the ultimate objective of bringing about socialism. But this may not be feasible, especially under military dictatorships, so other strategies that enable room for debate must be designed and thought of in advance, even if clandestinely and among few people, always with provisions made for restoring fully open discussions when circumstances allow and with the understanding that such discussions will not be effective if participants are not on equal terms. This is among the many lessons from the Bolshevik or, more recently, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party experiences.<br /> <br /> As stated in the Introduction, the process of state socialism turning into fully fledged socialism can be and has been upended to re-establish capitalism in one or another of its political variants, depending on the outcomes of internal and global dynamics. More positively, state socialism is a situation that can lead to a fully developed socialist society, with, among other processes, the socialisation of social reproduction and of the means of production (including resource access and production output), systematic redistribution of wealth to cover everyone’s daily needs and workplace democracy prevailing, all leading to establishing communism, that is, state-free and egalitarian communities. That, not incidentally, does not entail the end of conflicts or tensions, nor of all forms of inequality. Nor does it naturally lead to the end of environmental destruction. A communist society must also develop the means to resolve social tensions in constructive ways and become ecologically sustainable, which is a complementary but different kind of struggle. It is not necessary to start from scratch, as many Indigenous peoples have developed constructive ways of addressing social tensions and destructive environmental impacts, certainly more constructive than capitalist or socialist state systems. However, such societies cannot be simply replicated, nor can their lifeways be superimposed on state-based systems. It is state-based systems, not just capitalist ones, that must be transformed and overcome, not only to arrive at much more constructive relations with the rest of nature, but also to stop the marginalisation and annihilation of state-free societies.<br /> <br /> To repeat, addressing the above-identified contradictions involves social and environmental struggles. They are both multifaceted. The social struggle is to unify all egalitarianism-seeking forces, including within state institutions, to neutralise and overcome multiple forms of oppression and relations of domination. This is to bring about egalitarian, classless, state-free communities where they do not exist, and to build power with those already in existence. The ecological struggle is to impede environmental destruction, to foster life-promoting practices beyond those directly benefiting us and to find ways to live with compromised ecosystems that are irrevocably altered. These objectives imply unifying all forces, including within state institutions, seeking ecological sustainability and vying to avoid harming other species. The social and ecological struggles are not separate, but they are different. Bringing them together is an additional struggle and one that should not be taken for granted because one does not seamlessly flow into the other.<br /> <br /> The current global environmental disasters cannot be confronted without social institutions capable of mobilising people and resources to that scale. Socialist states have that advantage and therefore remain relevant to the present struggles for an ecologically sustainable class-and state-free society. They are examples from which to learn and unlearn, through which to foresee and prepare and on which to build to overcome their flaws. Socialism, defined as the social ownership of the means of production with social equality, is a destination from which societies can evolve in a saner way than under capitalism. That evolution is not guaranteed to be towards an ecologically sustainable society. What previous forms of socialism demonstrated is how important relations are with the rest of nature and how such relations cannot be resolved by making changes only within society. Histories of socialist states demonstrate that both kinds of broad struggles must be waged at once (social and ecological) while at the same time confronting capitalist legacies of environmental devastation and internal (potentially violent) contradictions under a state of siege from outside forces.<br /> <br /> If mobilisation through socialist states is done with environmentalist priorities, alongside social justice, much more can be done constructively and more rapidly. The crucial matter is keeping state institutions responsive, accountable from the bottom up. This is no easy task. Its feasibility is highly contingent on the constellation of forces within and outside each country, among other factors, like inherited economic structure and relative dependency on core capitalist economies, timing and conditions of state formation, etc. In capitalist countries this kind of mobilisation that can override profit-oriented interests is more difficult and historically remains to be demonstrated. On the other hand, the strides made in state-socialist countries have largely been unmade, to varying degrees, once socialist states were replaced by capitalist regimes. However, these are more contingent, historical trends, and they can only point to ways forward in relative terms. Such historical changes are important to take into consideration when devising ways to create a responsive, accountable set of state institutions, ideally to be converted into confederative bodies, not unlike what Rojava revolutionaries advocate for, as well as the EZLN and other similar movements. In Rojava and Chiapas there are examples of bottom-up decision-making processes about environmental conservation, promoting ecological understandings, devising ways to empower women (teaching jinealogy in Rojava, which is tied to ecological sustainability rather explicitly) and reconcile different cultural groups in ways that enable policy implementations including environmentally positive practices. These are in some ways spelled out in their very constitutions, even if practices may be less than stellar, largely because of highly inimical forces from without and within, particularly in the case of Rojava.<br /> <br /> Writing a book about these issues is relatively easy, certainly compared to the much more arduous work of organising and taking direct action. May what is offered here at least contribute towards addressing the historical challenges of self-correction as a complement to struggles forthcoming, in the spirit of Amílcar Cabral’s guiding principle that, ‘We must constantly be more aware of the errors and mistakes we make so that we can correct our work and constantly do better in the service of our Party. The mistakes we make should not dishearten us, just as the victories we score should not make us forget our mistakes’ (Cabral 1979 [1965], 226).<br /> <br /> This is key to preventing even more catastrophes than have already happened and are happening. Capitalist societies, including liberal democracies, where mass destruction is largely reserved for those elsewhere, are the most destructive monstrosities in human history. To dismiss socialist states is in some ways to dismiss the prospects for a better world.<br /> <br /> == Postface ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;The Western Left, or at least a substantial part of it, hates all Left-wing countries and movements that have ever come to power … It hates China and Vietnam, it hates Cuba and Venezuela. It wants to stay pure: doesn’t want to govern, and it probably doesn’t even want any Left wing country to exist … When one governs, one makes errors, but how else to move forward? A big chunk of the Left in Western countries only wants to cry about how it is being marginalised, it hates taking risks. (Vltchek 2015, 184–5)<br /> <br /> The assumption of responsibility for the language of the post-Soviet and the reclaiming of its vocabulary should start with an operation of negation; a refusal to use ‘post-Communist’, ‘post-socialist’, and ‘post-Soviet’ in the discourse of late capitalism. Instead, we should employ such terms as a ‘time of interruption of socialism’, ‘time of regression’, ‘time of betrayal of progress’, ‘time of crude retro-capitalism’, or simply ‘the 1990s and 2000s’ (Fiks 2007)&lt;/blockquote&gt;A corpse lies about, now displayed as a dismembered memory, now precariously stitched together. With the utmost contempt and taxidermic care, the macabre spectacle is kept on display by its killers and by those feasting on its tattered and tarnished remains. For foe and fair-weather friend alike cherish remembrances and traces the corpse has left. Memories of its existence are terrifyingly useful, whether distorted or plainly invented to suit the justification of the day, if not for fear of its reincarnation and reconstitution from the menacing larvae that the assassins and scavengers constantly conjure up through their liberal dispensations of rights, property and war. But the assassins and scavengers ultimately behold manicured images of themselves, projected on what amounts to a lesser fraction of the many-flowered movements that continuously spring up, clamouring for a better life, if not a just future or just a chance for a life at all. It is my suspicion that the assassins and scavengers know this. Keeping the corpse alive therefore serves them all too well. Their purposefully misnamed and putrefied representation will linger as long as capitalist liberties and prerogatives prevail.<br /> <br /> For the most part, those of a mindful constitution in the ecologically indebted worlds simply gawk at and acquiesce to the macabre spectacle. Sometimes they even abet its dismembering and reweaving. It would appear they are sometimes consciously complicit, but for the most part it is a matter of a debilitating lack of awareness and knowledge. There is anyway little solace and even less reward in becoming familiar with a reviled corpse unless one is prepared to join in the now customary collective revulsion. This is also expressed in the form of pre-emptive disgust for Bolshevism or Stalinism. The recitation is by now so thoroughly normalised and internalised that it is nearly compulsory, or at least felt as a reasonable expectation. This is all the more reason to lunge, without fear or remorse, into the histories and contexts hidden or refracted by the spectacle of the corpse. The rotting carcass must be exposed for what it really is, the tendency inhering capitalism to wreck what sustains us and to deny the satisfaction of needs and self-fulfilment potentialities of the world’s majorities.<br /> [[Category:Library works about Cuba]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about China]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about the Soviet Union]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:The_prince&diff=76008 2024-09-30T12:47:00Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Message box/archive}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> {{Library work|title=The prince|author=Nicolo Machiavelli|written in=1532|type=Political treatise|source=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm|display_title=yes}}<br /> Nicolo Machiavelli was born at Florence on 3rd May 1469. He was the second son of Bernardo di Nicolo Machiavelli, a lawyer of some repute, and of Bartolommea di Stefano Nelli, his wife. Both parents were members of the old Florentine nobility.<br /> <br /> His life falls naturally into three periods, each of which singularly enough constitutes a distinct and important era in the history of Florence. His youth was concurrent with the greatness of Florence as an Italian power under the guidance of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Il Magnifico. The downfall of the Medici in Florence occurred in 1494, in which year Machiavelli entered the public service. During his official career Florence was free under the government of a Republic, which lasted until 1512, when the Medici returned to power, and Machiavelli lost his office. The Medici again ruled Florence from 1512 until 1527, when they were once more driven out. This was the period of Machiavelli’s literary activity and increasing influence; but he died, within a few weeks of the expulsion of the Medici, on 22nd June 1527, in his fifty-eighth year, without having regained office.<br /> <br /> === Youth — Æt. 1-25—1469-94 ===<br /> Although there is little recorded of the youth of Machiavelli, the Florence of those days is so well known that the early environment of this representative citizen may be easily imagined. Florence has been described as a city with two opposite currents of life, one directed by the fervent and austere Savonarola, the other by the splendour-loving Lorenzo. Savonarola’s influence upon the young Machiavelli must have been slight, for although at one time he wielded immense power over the fortunes of Florence, he only furnished Machiavelli with a subject of a gibe in ''The Prince'', where he is cited as an example of an unarmed prophet who came to a bad end. Whereas the magnificence of the Medicean rule during the life of Lorenzo appeared to have impressed Machiavelli strongly, for he frequently recurs to it in his writings, and it is to Lorenzo’s grandson that he dedicates ''The Prince''.<br /> <br /> Machiavelli, in his “History of Florence,” gives us a picture of the young men among whom his youth was passed. He writes: “They were freer than their forefathers in dress and living, and spent more in other kinds of excesses, consuming their time and money in idleness, gaming, and women; their chief aim was to appear well dressed and to speak with wit and acuteness, whilst he who could wound others the most cleverly was thought the wisest.” In a letter to his son Guido, Machiavelli shows why youth should avail itself of its opportunities for study, and leads us to infer that his own youth had been so occupied. He writes: “I have received your letter, which has given me the greatest pleasure, especially because you tell me you are quite restored in health, than which I could have no better news; for if God grant life to you, and to me, I hope to make a good man of you if you are willing to do your share.” Then, writing of a new patron, he continues: “This will turn out well for you, but it is necessary for you to study; since, then, you have no longer the excuse of illness, take pains to study letters and music, for you see what honour is done to me for the little skill I have. Therefore, my son, if you wish to please me, and to bring success and honour to yourself, do right and study, because others will help you if you help yourself.”<br /> <br /> === Office — Æt. 25-43—1494-1512 ===<br /> The second period of Machiavelli’s life was spent in the service of the free Republic of Florence, which flourished, as stated above, from the expulsion of the Medici in 1494 until their return in 1512. After serving four years in one of the public offices he was appointed Chancellor and Secretary to the Second Chancery, the Ten of Liberty and Peace. Here we are on firm ground when dealing with the events of Machiavelli’s life, for during this time he took a leading part in the affairs of the Republic, and we have its decrees, records, and dispatches to guide us, as well as his own writings. A mere recapitulation of a few of his transactions with the statesmen and soldiers of his time gives a fair indication of his activities, and supplies the sources from which he drew the experiences and characters which illustrate ''The Prince''.<br /> <br /> His first mission was in 1499 to Catherina Sforza, “my lady of Forli” of ''The Prince'', from whose conduct and fate he drew the moral that it is far better to earn the confidence of the people than to rely on fortresses. This is a very noticeable principle in Machiavelli, and is urged by him in many ways as a matter of vital importance to princes.<br /> <br /> In 1500 he was sent to France to obtain terms from Louis XII for continuing the war against Pisa: this king it was who, in his conduct of affairs in Italy, committed the five capital errors in statecraft summarized in ''The Prince'', and was consequently driven out. He, also, it was who made the dissolution of his marriage a condition of support to Pope Alexander VI; which leads Machiavelli to refer those who urge that such promises should be kept to what he has written concerning the faith of princes.<br /> <br /> Machiavelli’s public life was largely occupied with events arising out of the ambitions of Pope Alexander VI and his son, Cesare Borgia, the Duke Valentino, and these characters fill a large space of ''The Prince''. Machiavelli never hesitates to cite the actions of the duke for the benefit of usurpers who wish to keep the states they have seized; he can, indeed, find no precepts to offer so good as the pattern of Cesare Borgia’s conduct, insomuch that Cesare is acclaimed by some critics as the “hero” of ''The Prince''. Yet in ''The Prince'' the duke is in point of fact cited as a type of the man who rises on the fortune of others, and falls with them; who takes every course that might be expected from a prudent man but the course which will save him; who is prepared for all eventualities but the one which happens; and who, when all his abilities fail to carry him through, exclaims that it was not his fault, but an extraordinary and unforeseen fatality.<br /> <br /> On the death of Pius III, in 1503, Machiavelli was sent to Rome to watch the election of his successor, and there he saw Cesare Borgia cheated into allowing the choice of the College to fall on Giuliano delle Rovere (Julius II), who was one of the cardinals that had most reason to fear the duke. Machiavelli, when commenting on this election, says that he who thinks new favours will cause great personages to forget old injuries deceives himself. Julius did not rest until he had ruined Cesare.<br /> <br /> It was to Julius II that Machiavelli was sent in 1506, when that pontiff was commencing his enterprise against Bologna; which he brought to a successful issue, as he did many of his other adventures, owing chiefly to his impetuous character. It is in reference to Pope Julius that Machiavelli moralizes on the resemblance between Fortune and women, and concludes that it is the bold rather than the cautious man that will win and hold them both.<br /> <br /> It is impossible to follow here the varying fortunes of the Italian states, which in 1507 were controlled by France, Spain, and Germany, with results that have lasted to our day; we are concerned with those events, and with the three great actors in them, so far only as they impinge on the personality of Machiavelli. He had several meetings with Louis XII of France, and his estimate of that monarch’s character has already been alluded to. Machiavelli has painted Ferdinand of Aragon as the man who accomplished great things under the cloak of religion, but who in reality had no mercy, faith, humanity, or integrity; and who, had he allowed himself to be influenced by such motives, would have been ruined. The Emperor Maximilian was one of the most interesting men of the age, and his character has been drawn by many hands; but Machiavelli, who was an envoy at his court in 1507-8, reveals the secret of his many failures when he describes him as a secretive man, without force of character—ignoring the human agencies necessary to carry his schemes into effect, and never insisting on the fulfilment of his wishes.<br /> <br /> The remaining years of Machiavelli’s official career were filled with events arising out of the League of Cambrai, made in 1508 between the three great European powers already mentioned and the pope, with the object of crushing the Venetian Republic. This result was attained in the battle of Vaila, when Venice lost in one day all that she had won in eight hundred years. Florence had a difficult part to play during these events, complicated as they were by the feud which broke out between the pope and the French, because friendship with France had dictated the entire policy of the Republic. When, in 1511, Julius II finally formed the Holy League against France, and with the assistance of the Swiss drove the French out of Italy, Florence lay at the mercy of the Pope, and had to submit to his terms, one of which was that the Medici should be restored. The return of the Medici to Florence on 1st September 1512, and the consequent fall of the Republic, was the signal for the dismissal of Machiavelli and his friends, and thus put an end to his public career, for, as we have seen, he died without regaining office.<br /> <br /> === Literature and death — Æt. 43-58—1512-27 ===<br /> On the return of the Medici, Machiavelli, who for a few weeks had vainly hoped to retain his office under the new masters of Florence, was dismissed by decree dated 7th November 1512. Shortly after this he was accused of complicity in an abortive conspiracy against the Medici, imprisoned, and put to the question by torture. The new Medicean pope, Leo X, procured his release, and he retired to his small property at San Casciano, near Florence, where he devoted himself to literature. In a letter to Francesco Vettori, dated 13th December 1513, he has left a very interesting description of his life at this period, which elucidates his methods and his motives in writing ''The Prince''. After describing his daily occupations with his family and neighbours, he writes: “The evening being come, I return home and go to my study; at the entrance I pull off my peasant-clothes, covered with dust and dirt, and put on my noble court dress, and thus becomingly re-clothed I pass into the ancient courts of the men of old, where, being lovingly received by them, I am fed with that food which is mine alone; where I do not hesitate to speak with them, and to ask for the reason of their actions, and they in their benignity answer me; and for four hours I feel no weariness, I forget every trouble, poverty does not dismay, death does not terrify me; I am possessed entirely by those great men. And because Dante says:<br /> <br /> Knowledge doth come of learning well retained,<br /> <br /> Unfruitful else,<br /> <br /> I have noted down what I have gained from their conversation, and have composed a small work on ‘Principalities,’ where I pour myself out as fully as I can in meditation on the subject, discussing what a principality is, what kinds there are, how they can be acquired, how they can be kept, why they are lost: and if any of my fancies ever pleased you, this ought not to displease you: and to a prince, especially to a new one, it should be welcome: therefore I dedicate it to his Magnificence Giuliano. Filippo Casavecchio has seen it; he will be able to tell you what is in it, and of the discourses I have had with him; nevertheless, I am still enriching and polishing it.”<br /> <br /> The “little book” suffered many vicissitudes before attaining the form in which it has reached us. Various mental influences were at work during its composition; its title and patron were changed; and for some unknown reason it was finally dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici. Although Machiavelli discussed with Casavecchio whether it should be sent or presented in person to the patron, there is no evidence that Lorenzo ever received or even read it: he certainly never gave Machiavelli any employment. Although it was plagiarized during Machiavelli’s lifetime, ''The Prince'' was never published by him, and its text is still disputable.<br /> <br /> Machiavelli concludes his letter to Vettori thus: “And as to this little thing [his book], when it has been read it will be seen that during the fifteen years I have given to the study of statecraft I have neither slept nor idled; and men ought ever to desire to be served by one who has reaped experience at the expense of others. And of my loyalty none could doubt, because having always kept faith I could not now learn how to break it; for he who has been faithful and honest, as I have, cannot change his nature; and my poverty is a witness to my honesty.”<br /> <br /> Before Machiavelli had got ''The Prince'' off his hands he commenced his “Discourse on the First Decade of Titus Livius,” which should be read concurrently with ''The Prince''. These and several minor works occupied him until the year 1518, when he accepted a small commission to look after the affairs of some Florentine merchants at Genoa. In 1519 the Medicean rulers of Florence granted a few political concessions to her citizens, and Machiavelli with others was consulted upon a new constitution under which the Great Council was to be restored; but on one pretext or another it was not promulgated.<br /> <br /> In 1520 the Florentine merchants again had recourse to Machiavelli to settle their difficulties with Lucca, but this year was chiefly remarkable for his re-entry into Florentine literary society, where he was much sought after, and also for the production of his “Art of War.” It was in the same year that he received a commission at the instance of Cardinal de’ Medici to write the “History of Florence,” a task which occupied him until 1525. His return to popular favour may have determined the Medici to give him this employment, for an old writer observes that “an able statesman out of work, like a huge whale, will endeavour to overturn the ship unless he has an empty cask to play with.”<br /> <br /> When the “History of Florence” was finished, Machiavelli took it to Rome for presentation to his patron, Giuliano de’ Medici, who had in the meanwhile become pope under the title of Clement VII. It is somewhat remarkable that, as, in 1513, Machiavelli had written ''The Prince'' for the instruction of the Medici after they had just regained power in Florence, so, in 1525, he dedicated the “History of Florence” to the head of the family when its ruin was now at hand. In that year the battle of Pavia destroyed the French rule in Italy, and left Francis I a prisoner in the hands of his great rival, Charles V. This was followed by the sack of Rome, upon the news of which the popular party at Florence threw off the yoke of the Medici, who were once more banished.<br /> <br /> Machiavelli was absent from Florence at this time, but hastened his return, hoping to secure his former office of secretary to the “Ten of Liberty and Peace.” Unhappily he was taken ill soon after he reached Florence, where he died on 22nd June 1527.<br /> <br /> === The man and his works ===<br /> No one can say where the bones of Machiavelli rest, but modern Florence has decreed him a stately cenotaph in Santa Croce, by the side of her most famous sons; recognizing that, whatever other nations may have found in his works, Italy found in them the idea of her unity and the germs of her renaissance among the nations of Europe. Whilst it is idle to protest against the world-wide and evil signification of his name, it may be pointed out that the harsh construction of his doctrine which this sinister reputation implies was unknown to his own day, and that the researches of recent times have enabled us to interpret him more reasonably. It is due to these inquiries that the shape of an “unholy necromancer,” which so long haunted men’s vision, has begun to fade.<br /> <br /> Machiavelli was undoubtedly a man of great observation, acuteness, and industry; noting with appreciative eye whatever passed before him, and with his supreme literary gift turning it to account in his enforced retirement from affairs. He does not present himself, nor is he depicted by his contemporaries, as a type of that rare combination, the successful statesman and author, for he appears to have been only moderately prosperous in his several embassies and political employments. He was misled by Catherina Sforza, ignored by Louis XII, overawed by Cesare Borgia; several of his embassies were quite barren of results; his attempts to fortify Florence failed, and the soldiery that he raised astonished everybody by their cowardice. In the conduct of his own affairs he was timid and time-serving; he dared not appear by the side of Soderini, to whom he owed so much, for fear of compromising himself; his connection with the Medici was open to suspicion, and Giuliano appears to have recognized his real forte when he set him to write the “History of Florence,” rather than employ him in the state. And it is on the literary side of his character, and there alone, that we find no weakness and no failure.<br /> <br /> Although the light of almost four centuries has been focused on ''The Prince'', its problems are still debatable and interesting, because they are the eternal problems between the ruled and their rulers. Such as they are, its ethics are those of Machiavelli’s contemporaries; yet they cannot be said to be out of date so long as the governments of Europe rely on material rather than on moral forces. Its historical incidents and personages become interesting by reason of the uses which Machiavelli makes of them to illustrate his theories of government and conduct.<br /> <br /> Leaving out of consideration those maxims of state which still furnish some European and eastern statesmen with principles of action, ''The Prince'' is bestrewn with truths that can be proved at every turn. Men are still the dupes of their simplicity and greed, as they were in the days of Alexander VI. The cloak of religion still conceals the vices which Machiavelli laid bare in the character of Ferdinand of Aragon. Men will not look at things as they really are, but as they wish them to be—and are ruined. In politics there are no perfectly safe courses; prudence consists in choosing the least dangerous ones. Then—to pass to a higher plane—Machiavelli reiterates that, although crimes may win an empire, they do not win glory. Necessary wars are just wars, and the arms of a nation are hallowed when it has no other resource but to fight.<br /> <br /> It is the cry of a far later day than Machiavelli’s that government should be elevated into a living moral force, capable of inspiring the people with a just recognition of the fundamental principles of society; to this “high argument” ''The Prince'' contributes but little. Machiavelli always refused to write either of men or of governments otherwise than as he found them, and he writes with such skill and insight that his work is of abiding value. But what invests ''The Prince'' with more than a merely artistic or historical interest is the incontrovertible truth that it deals with the great principles which still guide nations and rulers in their relationship with each other and their neighbours.<br /> <br /> In translating ''The Prince'' my aim has been to achieve at all costs an exact literal rendering of the original, rather than a fluent paraphrase adapted to the modern notions of style and expression. Machiavelli was no facile phrasemonger; the conditions under which he wrote obliged him to weigh every word; his themes were lofty, his substance grave, his manner nobly plain and serious. ''Quis eo fuit unquam in partiundis rebus, in definiendis, in explanandis pressior?'' In ''The Prince'', it may be truly said, there is reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word. To an Englishman of Shakespeare’s time the translation of such a treatise was in some ways a comparatively easy task, for in those times the genius of the English more nearly resembled that of the Italian language; to the Englishman of to-day it is not so simple. To take a single example: the word ''intrattenere'', employed by Machiavelli to indicate the policy adopted by the Roman Senate towards the weaker states of Greece, would by an Elizabethan be correctly rendered “entertain,” and every contemporary reader would understand what was meant by saying that “Rome ''entertained'' the Ætolians and the Achaeans without augmenting their power.” But to-day such a phrase would seem obsolete and ambiguous, if not unmeaning: we are compelled to say that “''Rome maintained friendly relations with the Ætolians'',” etc., using four words to do the work of one. I have tried to preserve the pithy brevity of the Italian so far as was consistent with an absolute fidelity to the sense. If the result be an occasional asperity I can only hope that the reader, in his eagerness to reach the author’s meaning, may overlook the roughness of the road that leads him to it.<br /> <br /> The following is a list of the works of Machiavelli:<br /> <br /> Principal works. Discorso sopra le cose di Pisa, 1499; Del modo di trattare i popoli della Valdichiana ribellati, 1502; Del modo tenuto dal duca Valentino nell’ ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, etc., 1502; Discorso sopra la provisione del danaro, 1502; Decennale primo (poem in terza rima), 1506; Ritratti delle cose dell’ Alemagna, 1508-12; Decennale secondo, 1509; Ritratti delle cose di Francia, 1510; Discorsi sopra la prima deca di T. Livio, 3 vols., 1512-17; Il Principe, 1513; Andria, comedy translated from Terence, 1513 (?); Mandragola, prose comedy in five acts, with prologue in verse, 1513; Della lingua (dialogue), 1514; Clizia, comedy in prose, 1515 (?); Belfagor arcidiavolo (novel), 1515; Asino d’oro (poem in terza rima), 1517; Dell’ arte della guerra, 1519-20; Discorso sopra il riformare lo stato di Firenze, 1520; Sommario delle cose della citta di Lucca, 1520; Vita di Castruccio Castracani da Lucca, 1520; Istorie fiorentine, 8 books, 1521-5; Frammenti storici, 1525.<br /> <br /> Other poems include Sonetti, Canzoni, Ottave, and Canti carnascialeschi.<br /> <br /> Editions. Aldo, Venice, 1546; della Tertina, 1550; Cambiagi, Florence, 6 vols., 1782-5; dei Classici, Milan, 10 1813; Silvestri, 9 vols., 1820-2; Passerini, Fanfani, Milanesi, 6 vols. only published, 1873-7.<br /> <br /> Minor works. Ed. F. L. Polidori, 1852; Lettere familiari, ed. E. Alvisi, 1883, 2 editions, one with excisions; Credited Writings, ed. G. Canestrini, 1857; Letters to F. Vettori, see A. Ridolfi, Pensieri intorno allo scopo di N. Machiavelli nel libro Il Principe, etc.; D. Ferrara, The Private Correspondence of Nicolo Machiavelli, 1929.<br /> <br /> === Dedication ===<br /> To the Magnificent Lorenzo Di Piero De’ Medici<br /> <br /> Those who strive to obtain the good graces of a prince are accustomed to come before him with such things as they hold most precious, or in which they see him take most delight; whence one often sees horses, arms, cloth of gold, precious stones, and similar ornaments presented to princes, worthy of their greatness.<br /> <br /> Desiring therefore to present myself to your Magnificence with some testimony of my devotion towards you, I have not found among my possessions anything which I hold more dear than, or value so much as, the knowledge of the actions of great men, acquired by long experience in contemporary affairs, and a continual study of antiquity; which, having reflected upon it with great and prolonged diligence, I now send, digested into a little volume, to your Magnificence.<br /> <br /> And although I may consider this work unworthy of your countenance, nevertheless I trust much to your benignity that it may be acceptable, seeing that it is not possible for me to make a better gift than to offer you the opportunity of understanding in the shortest time all that I have learnt in so many years, and with so many troubles and dangers; which work I have not embellished with swelling or magnificent words, nor stuffed with rounded periods, nor with any extrinsic allurements or adornments whatever, with which so many are accustomed to embellish their works; for I have wished either that no honour should be given it, or else that the truth of the matter and the weightiness of the theme shall make it acceptable.<br /> <br /> Nor do I hold with those who regard it as a presumption if a man of low and humble condition dare to discuss and settle the concerns of princes; because, just as those who draw landscapes place themselves below in the plain to contemplate the nature of the mountains and of lofty places, and in order to contemplate the plains place themselves upon high mountains, even so to understand the nature of the people it needs to be a prince, and to understand that of princes it needs to be of the people.<br /> <br /> Take then, your Magnificence, this little gift in the spirit in which I send it; wherein, if it be diligently read and considered by you, you will learn my extreme desire that you should attain that greatness which fortune and your other attributes promise. And if your Magnificence from the summit of your greatness will sometimes turn your eyes to these lower regions, you will see how unmeritedly I suffer a great and continued malignity of fortune.<br /> <br /> == THE PRINCE ==<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER I. HOW MANY KINDS OF PRINCIPALITIES THERE ARE, AND BY WHAT MEANS THEY ARE ACQUIRED ===<br /> All states, all powers, that have held and hold rule over men have been and are either republics or principalities.<br /> <br /> Principalities are either hereditary, in which the family has been long established; or they are new.<br /> <br /> The new are either entirely new, as was Milan to Francesco Sforza, or they are, as it were, members annexed to the hereditary state of the prince who has acquired them, as was the kingdom of Naples to that of the King of Spain.<br /> <br /> Such dominions thus acquired are either accustomed to live under a prince, or to live in freedom; and are acquired either by the arms of the prince himself, or of others, or else by fortune or by ability.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER II. CONCERNING HEREDITARY PRINCIPALITIES ===<br /> I will leave out all discussion on republics, inasmuch as in another place I have written of them at length, and will address myself only to principalities. In doing so I will keep to the order indicated above, and discuss how such principalities are to be ruled and preserved.<br /> <br /> I say at once there are fewer difficulties in holding hereditary states, and those long accustomed to the family of their prince, than new ones; for it is sufficient only not to transgress the customs of his ancestors, and to deal prudently with circumstances as they arise, for a prince of average powers to maintain himself in his state, unless he be deprived of it by some extraordinary and excessive force; and if he should be so deprived of it, whenever anything sinister happens to the usurper, he will regain it.<br /> <br /> We have in Italy, for example, the Duke of Ferrara, who could not have withstood the attacks of the Venetians in ’84, nor those of Pope Julius in ’10, unless he had been long established in his dominions. For the hereditary prince has less cause and less necessity to offend; hence it happens that he will be more loved; and unless extraordinary vices cause him to be hated, it is reasonable to expect that his subjects will be naturally well disposed towards him; and in the antiquity and duration of his rule the memories and motives that make for change are lost, for one change always leaves the toothing for another.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER III. CONCERNING MIXED PRINCIPALITIES ===<br /> But the difficulties occur in a new principality. And firstly, if it be not entirely new, but is, as it were, a member of a state which, taken collectively, may be called composite, the changes arise chiefly from an inherent difficulty which there is in all new principalities; for men change their rulers willingly, hoping to better themselves, and this hope induces them to take up arms against him who rules: wherein they are deceived, because they afterwards find by experience they have gone from bad to worse. This follows also on another natural and common necessity, which always causes a new prince to burden those who have submitted to him with his soldiery and with infinite other hardships which he must put upon his new acquisition.<br /> <br /> In this way you have enemies in all those whom you have injured in seizing that principality, and you are not able to keep those friends who put you there because of your not being able to satisfy them in the way they expected, and you cannot take strong measures against them, feeling bound to them. For, although one may be very strong in armed forces, yet in entering a province one has always need of the goodwill of the natives.<br /> <br /> For these reasons Louis the Twelfth, King of France, quickly occupied Milan, and as quickly lost it; and to turn him out the first time it only needed Lodovico’s own forces; because those who had opened the gates to him, finding themselves deceived in their hopes of future benefit, would not endure the ill-treatment of the new prince. It is very true that, after acquiring rebellious provinces a second time, they are not so lightly lost afterwards, because the prince, with little reluctance, takes the opportunity of the rebellion to punish the delinquents, to clear out the suspects, and to strengthen himself in the weakest places. Thus to cause France to lose Milan the first time it was enough for the Duke Lodovico&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 3&quot;&gt;Duke Lodovico was Lodovico Moro, a son of Francesco Sforza, who married Beatrice d’Este. He ruled over Milan from 1494 to 1500, and died in 1510.&lt;/ref&gt; to raise insurrections on the borders; but to cause him to lose it a second time it was necessary to bring the whole world against him, and that his armies should be defeated and driven out of Italy; which followed from the causes above mentioned.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless Milan was taken from France both the first and the second time. The general reasons for the first have been discussed; it remains to name those for the second, and to see what resources he had, and what any one in his situation would have had for maintaining himself more securely in his acquisition than did the King of France.<br /> <br /> Now I say that those dominions which, when acquired, are added to an ancient state by him who acquires them, are either of the same country and language, or they are not. When they are, it is easier to hold them, especially when they have not been accustomed to self-government; and to hold them securely it is enough to have destroyed the family of the prince who was ruling them; because the two peoples, preserving in other things the old conditions, and not being unlike in customs, will live quietly together, as one has seen in Brittany, Burgundy, Gascony, and Normandy, which have been bound to France for so long a time: and, although there may be some difference in language, nevertheless the customs are alike, and the people will easily be able to get on amongst themselves. He who has annexed them, if he wishes to hold them, has only to bear in mind two considerations: the one, that the family of their former lord is extinguished; the other, that neither their laws nor their taxes are altered, so that in a very short time they will become entirely one body with the old principality.<br /> <br /> But when states are acquired in a country differing in language, customs, or laws, there are difficulties, and good fortune and great energy are needed to hold them, and one of the greatest and most real helps would be that he who has acquired them should go and reside there. This would make his position more secure and durable, as it has made that of the Turk in Greece, who, notwithstanding all the other measures taken by him for holding that state, if he had not settled there, would not have been able to keep it. Because, if one is on the spot, disorders are seen as they spring up, and one can quickly remedy them; but if one is not at hand, they are heard of only when they are great, and then one can no longer remedy them. Besides this, the country is not pillaged by your officials; the subjects are satisfied by prompt recourse to the prince; thus, wishing to be good, they have more cause to love him, and wishing to be otherwise, to fear him. He who would attack that state from the outside must have the utmost caution; as long as the prince resides there it can only be wrested from him with the greatest difficulty.<br /> <br /> The other and better course is to send colonies to one or two places, which may be as keys to that state, for it is necessary either to do this or else to keep there a great number of cavalry and infantry. A prince does not spend much on colonies, for with little or no expense he can send them out and keep them there, and he offends a minority only of the citizens from whom he takes lands and houses to give them to the new inhabitants; and those whom he offends, remaining poor and scattered, are never able to injure him; whilst the rest being uninjured are easily kept quiet, and at the same time are anxious not to err for fear it should happen to them as it has to those who have been despoiled. In conclusion, I say that these colonies are not costly, they are more faithful, they injure less, and the injured, as has been said, being poor and scattered, cannot hurt. Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.<br /> <br /> But in maintaining armed men there in place of colonies one spends much more, having to consume on the garrison all the income from the state, so that the acquisition turns into a loss, and many more are exasperated, because the whole state is injured; through the shifting of the garrison up and down all become acquainted with hardship, and all become hostile, and they are enemies who, whilst beaten on their own ground, are yet able to do hurt. For every reason, therefore, such guards are as useless as a colony is useful.<br /> <br /> Again, the prince who holds a country differing in the above respects ought to make himself the head and defender of his less powerful neighbours, and to weaken the more powerful amongst them, taking care that no foreigner as powerful as himself shall, by any accident, get a footing there; for it will always happen that such a one will be introduced by those who are discontented, either through excess of ambition or through fear, as one has seen already. The Romans were brought into Greece by the Ætolians; and in every other country where they obtained a footing they were brought in by the inhabitants. And the usual course of affairs is that, as soon as a powerful foreigner enters a country, all the subject states are drawn to him, moved by the hatred which they feel against the ruling power. So that in respect to those subject states he has not to take any trouble to gain them over to himself, for the whole of them quickly rally to the state which he has acquired there. He has only to take care that they do not get hold of too much power and too much authority, and then with his own forces, and with their goodwill, he can easily keep down the more powerful of them, so as to remain entirely master in the country. And he who does not properly manage this business will soon lose what he has acquired, and whilst he does hold it he will have endless difficulties and troubles.<br /> <br /> The Romans, in the countries which they annexed, observed closely these measures; they sent colonies and maintained friendly relations with&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 3&quot;&gt;See remark in the introduction on the word “intrattenere.”&lt;/ref&gt; the minor powers, without increasing their strength; they kept down the greater, and did not allow any strong foreign powers to gain authority. Greece appears to me sufficient for an example. The Achaeans and Ætolians were kept friendly by them, the kingdom of Macedonia was humbled, Antiochus was driven out; yet the merits of the Achaeans and Ætolians never secured for them permission to increase their power, nor did the persuasions of Philip ever induce the Romans to be his friends without first humbling him, nor did the influence of Antiochus make them agree that he should retain any lordship over the country. Because the Romans did in these instances what all prudent princes ought to do, who have to regard not only present troubles, but also future ones, for which they must prepare with every energy, because, when foreseen, it is easy to remedy them; but if you wait until they approach, the medicine is no longer in time because the malady has become incurable; for it happens in this, as the physicians say it happens in hectic fever, that in the beginning of the malady it is easy to cure but difficult to detect, but in the course of time, not having been either detected or treated in the beginning, it becomes easy to detect but difficult to cure. Thus it happens in affairs of state, for when the evils that arise have been foreseen (which it is only given to a wise man to see), they can be quickly redressed, but when, through not having been foreseen, they have been permitted to grow in a way that every one can see them, there is no longer a remedy. Therefore, the Romans, foreseeing troubles, dealt with them at once, and, even to avoid a war, would not let them come to a head, for they knew that war is not to be avoided, but is only to be put off to the advantage of others; moreover they wished to fight with Philip and Antiochus in Greece so as not to have to do it in Italy; they could have avoided both, but this they did not wish; nor did that ever please them which is forever in the mouths of the wise ones of our time:—Let us enjoy the benefits of the time—but rather the benefits of their own valour and prudence, for time drives everything before it, and is able to bring with it good as well as evil, and evil as well as good.<br /> <br /> But let us turn to France and inquire whether she has done any of the things mentioned. I will speak of Louis&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 3&quot;&gt;Louis XII, King of France, “The Father of the People,” born 1462, died 1515.&lt;/ref&gt; (and not of Charles)&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 3&quot;&gt;Charles VIII, King of France, born 1470, died 1498.&lt;/ref&gt; as the one whose conduct is the better to be observed, he having held possession of Italy for the longest period; and you will see that he has done the opposite to those things which ought to be done to retain a state composed of divers elements.<br /> <br /> King Louis was brought into Italy by the ambition of the Venetians, who desired to obtain half the state of Lombardy by his intervention. I will not blame the course taken by the king, because, wishing to get a foothold in Italy, and having no friends there—seeing rather that every door was shut to him owing to the conduct of Charles—he was forced to accept those friendships which he could get, and he would have succeeded very quickly in his design if in other matters he had not made some mistakes. The king, however, having acquired Lombardy, regained at once the authority which Charles had lost: Genoa yielded; the Florentines became his friends; the Marquess of Mantua, the Duke of Ferrara, the Bentivogli, my lady of Forli, the Lords of Faenza, of Pesaro, of Rimini, of Camerino, of Piombino, the Lucchese, the Pisans, the Sienese—everybody made advances to him to become his friend. Then could the Venetians realize the rashness of the course taken by them, which, in order that they might secure two towns in Lombardy, had made the king master of two-thirds of Italy.<br /> <br /> Let any one now consider with what little difficulty the king could have maintained his position in Italy had he observed the rules above laid down, and kept all his friends secure and protected; for although they were numerous they were both weak and timid, some afraid of the Church, some of the Venetians, and thus they would always have been forced to stand in with him, and by their means he could easily have made himself secure against those who remained powerful. But he was no sooner in Milan than he did the contrary by assisting Pope Alexander to occupy the Romagna. It never occurred to him that by this action he was weakening himself, depriving himself of friends and of those who had thrown themselves into his lap, whilst he aggrandized the Church by adding much temporal power to the spiritual, thus giving it greater authority. And having committed this prime error, he was obliged to follow it up, so much so that, to put an end to the ambition of Alexander, and to prevent his becoming the master of Tuscany, he was himself forced to come into Italy.<br /> <br /> And as if it were not enough to have aggrandized the Church, and deprived himself of friends, he, wishing to have the kingdom of Naples, divided it with the King of Spain, and where he was the prime arbiter in Italy he takes an associate, so that the ambitious of that country and the malcontents of his own should have somewhere to shelter; and whereas he could have left in the kingdom his own pensioner as king, he drove him out, to put one there who was able to drive him, Louis, out in turn.<br /> <br /> The wish to acquire is in truth very natural and common, and men always do so when they can, and for this they will be praised not blamed; but when they cannot do so, yet wish to do so by any means, then there is folly and blame. Therefore, if France could have attacked Naples with her own forces she ought to have done so; if she could not, then she ought not to have divided it. And if the partition which she made with the Venetians in Lombardy was justified by the excuse that by it she got a foothold in Italy, this other partition merited blame, for it had not the excuse of that necessity.<br /> <br /> Therefore Louis made these five errors: he destroyed the minor powers, he increased the strength of one of the greater powers in Italy, he brought in a foreign power, he did not settle in the country, he did not send colonies. Which errors, had he lived, were not enough to injure him had he not made a sixth by taking away their dominions from the Venetians; because, had he not aggrandized the Church, nor brought Spain into Italy, it would have been very reasonable and necessary to humble them; but having first taken these steps, he ought never to have consented to their ruin, for they, being powerful, would always have kept off others from designs on Lombardy, to which the Venetians would never have consented except to become masters themselves there; also because the others would not wish to take Lombardy from France in order to give it to the Venetians, and to run counter to both they would not have had the courage.<br /> <br /> And if any one should say: “King Louis yielded the Romagna to Alexander and the kingdom to Spain to avoid war,” I answer for the reasons given above that a blunder ought never to be perpetrated to avoid war, because it is not to be avoided, but is only deferred to your disadvantage. And if another should allege the pledge which the king had given to the Pope that he would assist him in the enterprise, in exchange for the dissolution of his marriage&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 3&quot;&gt;Louis XII divorced his wife, Jeanne, daughter of Louis XI, and married in 1499 Anne of Brittany, widow of Charles VIII, in order to retain the Duchy of Brittany for the crown.&lt;/ref&gt; and for the cap to Rouen,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 3&quot;&gt;The Archbishop of Rouen. He was Georges d’Amboise, created a cardinal by Alexander VI. Born 1460, died 1510.&lt;/ref&gt; to that I reply what I shall write later on concerning the faith of princes, and how it ought to be kept.<br /> <br /> Thus King Louis lost Lombardy by not having followed any of the conditions observed by those who have taken possession of countries and wished to retain them. Nor is there any miracle in this, but much that is reasonable and quite natural. And on these matters I spoke at Nantes with Rouen, when Valentino, as Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander, was usually called, occupied the Romagna, and on Cardinal Rouen observing to me that the Italians did not understand war, I replied to him that the French did not understand statecraft, meaning that otherwise they would not have allowed the Church to reach such greatness. And in fact it has been seen that the greatness of the Church and of Spain in Italy has been caused by France, and her ruin may be attributed to them. From this a general rule is drawn which never or rarely fails: that he who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined; because that predominancy has been brought about either by astuteness or else by force, and both are distrusted by him who has been raised to power.<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 3&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER IV. WHY THE KINGDOM OF DARIUS, CONQUERED BY ALEXANDER, DID NOT REBEL AGAINST THE SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER AT HIS DEATH ===<br /> Considering the difficulties which men have had to hold to a newly acquired state, some might wonder how, seeing that Alexander the Great became the master of Asia in a few years, and died whilst it was scarcely settled (whence it might appear reasonable that the whole empire would have rebelled), nevertheless his successors maintained themselves, and had to meet no other difficulty than that which arose among themselves from their own ambitions.<br /> <br /> I answer that the principalities of which one has record are found to be governed in two different ways; either by a prince, with a body of servants, who assist him to govern the kingdom as ministers by his favour and permission; or by a prince and barons, who hold that dignity by antiquity of blood and not by the grace of the prince. Such barons have states and their own subjects, who recognize them as lords and hold them in natural affection. Those states that are governed by a prince and his servants hold their prince in more consideration, because in all the country there is no one who is recognized as superior to him, and if they yield obedience to another they do it as to a minister and official, and they do not bear him any particular affection.<br /> <br /> The examples of these two governments in our time are the Turk and the King of France. The entire monarchy of the Turk is governed by one lord, the others are his servants; and, dividing his kingdom into sanjaks, he sends there different administrators, and shifts and changes them as he chooses. But the King of France is placed in the midst of an ancient body of lords, acknowledged by their own subjects, and beloved by them; they have their own prerogatives, nor can the king take these away except at his peril. Therefore, he who considers both of these states will recognize great difficulties in seizing the state of the Turk, but, once it is conquered, great ease in holding it. The causes of the difficulties in seizing the kingdom of the Turk are that the usurper cannot be called in by the princes of the kingdom, nor can he hope to be assisted in his designs by the revolt of those whom the lord has around him. This arises from the reasons given above; for his ministers, being all slaves and bondmen, can only be corrupted with great difficulty, and one can expect little advantage from them when they have been corrupted, as they cannot carry the people with them, for the reasons assigned. Hence, he who attacks the Turk must bear in mind that he will find him united, and he will have to rely more on his own strength than on the revolt of others; but, if once the Turk has been conquered, and routed in the field in such a way that he cannot replace his armies, there is nothing to fear but the family of this prince, and, this being exterminated, there remains no one to fear, the others having no credit with the people; and as the conqueror did not rely on them before his victory, so he ought not to fear them after it.<br /> <br /> The contrary happens in kingdoms governed like that of France, because one can easily enter there by gaining over some baron of the kingdom, for one always finds malcontents and such as desire a change. Such men, for the reasons given, can open the way into the state and render the victory easy; but if you wish to hold it afterwards, you meet with infinite difficulties, both from those who have assisted you and from those you have crushed. Nor is it enough for you to have exterminated the family of the prince, because the lords that remain make themselves the heads of fresh movements against you, and as you are unable either to satisfy or exterminate them, that state is lost whenever time brings the opportunity.<br /> <br /> Now if you will consider what was the nature of the government of Darius, you will find it similar to the kingdom of the Turk, and therefore it was only necessary for Alexander, first to overthrow him in the field, and then to take the country from him. After which victory, Darius being killed, the state remained secure to Alexander, for the above reasons. And if his successors had been united they would have enjoyed it securely and at their ease, for there were no tumults raised in the kingdom except those they provoked themselves.<br /> <br /> But it is impossible to hold with such tranquillity states constituted like that of France. Hence arose those frequent rebellions against the Romans in Spain, France, and Greece, owing to the many principalities there were in these states, of which, as long as the memory of them endured, the Romans always held an insecure possession; but with the power and long continuance of the empire the memory of them passed away, and the Romans then became secure possessors. And when fighting afterwards amongst themselves, each one was able to attach to himself his own parts of the country, according to the authority he had assumed there; and the family of the former lord being exterminated, none other than the Romans were acknowledged.<br /> <br /> When these things are remembered no one will marvel at the ease with which Alexander held the Empire of Asia, or at the difficulties which others have had to keep an acquisition, such as Pyrrhus and many more; this is not occasioned by the little or abundance of ability in the conqueror, but by the want of uniformity in the subject state.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER V. CONCERNING THE WAY TO GOVERN CITIES OR PRINCIPALITIES WHICH LIVED UNDER THEIR OWN LAWS BEFORE THEY WERE ANNEXED ===<br /> Whenever those states which have been acquired as stated have been accustomed to live under their own laws and in freedom, there are three courses for those who wish to hold them: the first is to ruin them, the next is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live under their own laws, drawing a tribute, and establishing within it an oligarchy which will keep it friendly to you. Because such a government, being created by the prince, knows that it cannot stand without his friendship and interest, and does its utmost to support him; and therefore he who would keep a city accustomed to freedom will hold it more easily by the means of its own citizens than in any other way.<br /> <br /> There are, for example, the Spartans and the Romans. The Spartans held Athens and Thebes, establishing there an oligarchy: nevertheless they lost them. The Romans, in order to hold Capua, Carthage, and Numantia, dismantled them, and did not lose them. They wished to hold Greece as the Spartans held it, making it free and permitting its laws, and did not succeed. So to hold it they were compelled to dismantle many cities in the country, for in truth there is no safe way to retain them otherwise than by ruining them. And he who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always the watchword of liberty and its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither time nor benefits will ever cause it to forget. And whatever you may do or provide against, they never forget that name or their privileges unless they are disunited or dispersed, but at every chance they immediately rally to them, as Pisa after the hundred years she had been held in bondage by the Florentines.<br /> <br /> But when cities or countries are accustomed to live under a prince, and his family is exterminated, they, being on the one hand accustomed to obey and on the other hand not having the old prince, cannot agree in making one from amongst themselves, and they do not know how to govern themselves. For this reason they are very slow to take up arms, and a prince can gain them to himself and secure them much more easily. But in republics there is more vitality, greater hatred, and more desire for vengeance, which will never permit them to allow the memory of their former liberty to rest; so that the safest way is to destroy them or to reside there.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER VI. CONCERNING NEW PRINCIPALITIES WHICH ARE ACQUIRED BY ONE’S OWN ARMS AND ABILITY ===<br /> Let no one be surprised if, in speaking of entirely new principalities as I shall do, I adduce the highest examples both of prince and of state; because men, walking almost always in paths beaten by others, and following by imitation their deeds, are yet unable to keep entirely to the ways of others or attain to the power of those they imitate. A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it. Let him act like the clever archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow attains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their strength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach.<br /> <br /> I say, therefore, that in entirely new principalities, where there is a new prince, more or less difficulty is found in keeping them, accordingly as there is more or less ability in him who has acquired the state. Now, as the fact of becoming a prince from a private station presupposes either ability or fortune, it is clear that one or other of these things will mitigate in some degree many difficulties. Nevertheless, he who has relied least on fortune is established the strongest. Further, it facilitates matters when the prince, having no other state, is compelled to reside there in person.<br /> <br /> But to come to those who, by their own ability and not through fortune, have risen to be princes, I say that Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and such like are the most excellent examples. And although one may not discuss Moses, he having been a mere executor of the will of God, yet he ought to be admired, if only for that favour which made him worthy to speak with God. But in considering Cyrus and others who have acquired or founded kingdoms, all will be found admirable; and if their particular deeds and conduct shall be considered, they will not be found inferior to those of Moses, although he had so great a preceptor. And in examining their actions and lives one cannot see that they owed anything to fortune beyond opportunity, which brought them the material to mould into the form which seemed best to them. Without that opportunity their powers of mind would have been extinguished, and without those powers the opportunity would have come in vain.<br /> <br /> It was necessary, therefore, to Moses that he should find the people of Israel in Egypt enslaved and oppressed by the Egyptians, in order that they should be disposed to follow him so as to be delivered out of bondage. It was necessary that Romulus should not remain in Alba, and that he should be abandoned at his birth, in order that he should become King of Rome and founder of the fatherland. It was necessary that Cyrus should find the Persians discontented with the government of the Medes, and the Medes soft and effeminate through their long peace. Theseus could not have shown his ability had he not found the Athenians dispersed. These opportunities, therefore, made those men fortunate, and their high ability enabled them to recognize the opportunity whereby their country was ennobled and made famous.<br /> <br /> Those who by valorous ways become princes, like these men, acquire a principality with difficulty, but they keep it with ease. The difficulties they have in acquiring it rise in part from the new rules and methods which they are forced to introduce to establish their government and its security. And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them.<br /> <br /> It is necessary, therefore, if we desire to discuss this matter thoroughly, to inquire whether these innovators can rely on themselves or have to depend on others: that is to say, whether, to consummate their enterprise, have they to use prayers or can they use force? In the first instance they always succeed badly, and never compass anything; but when they can rely on themselves and use force, then they are rarely endangered. Hence it is that all armed prophets have conquered, and the unarmed ones have been destroyed. Besides the reasons mentioned, the nature of the people is variable, and whilst it is easy to persuade them, it is difficult to fix them in that persuasion. And thus it is necessary to take such measures that, when they believe no longer, it may be possible to make them believe by force.<br /> <br /> If Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus had been unarmed they could not have enforced their constitutions for long—as happened in our time to Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined with his new order of things immediately the multitude believed in him no longer, and he had no means of keeping steadfast those who believed or of making the unbelievers to believe. Therefore such as these have great difficulties in consummating their enterprise, for all their dangers are in the ascent, yet with ability they will overcome them; but when these are overcome, and those who envied them their success are exterminated, they will begin to be respected, and they will continue afterwards powerful, secure, honoured, and happy.<br /> <br /> To these great examples I wish to add a lesser one; still it bears some resemblance to them, and I wish it to suffice me for all of a like kind: it is Hiero the Syracusan.&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 6&quot;&gt;Hiero II, born about 307 B.C., died 216 B.C.&lt;/ref&gt; This man rose from a private station to be Prince of Syracuse, nor did he, either, owe anything to fortune but opportunity; for the Syracusans, being oppressed, chose him for their captain, afterwards he was rewarded by being made their prince. He was of so great ability, even as a private citizen, that one who writes of him says he wanted nothing but a kingdom to be a king. This man abolished the old soldiery, organized the new, gave up old alliances, made new ones; and as he had his own soldiers and allies, on such foundations he was able to build any edifice: thus, whilst he had endured much trouble in acquiring, he had but little in keeping.<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 6&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER VII. CONCERNING NEW PRINCIPALITIES WHICH ARE ACQUIRED EITHER BY THE ARMS OF OTHERS OR BY GOOD FORTUNE ===<br /> Those who solely by good fortune become princes from being private citizens have little trouble in rising, but much in keeping atop; they have not any difficulties on the way up, because they fly, but they have many when they reach the summit. Such are those to whom some state is given either for money or by the favour of him who bestows it; as happened to many in Greece, in the cities of Ionia and of the Hellespont, where princes were made by Darius, in order that they might hold the cities both for his security and his glory; as also were those emperors who, by the corruption of the soldiers, from being citizens came to empire. Such stand simply elevated upon the goodwill and the fortune of him who has elevated them—two most inconstant and unstable things. Neither have they the knowledge requisite for the position; because, unless they are men of great worth and ability, it is not reasonable to expect that they should know how to command, having always lived in a private condition; besides, they cannot hold it because they have not forces which they can keep friendly and faithful.<br /> <br /> States that rise unexpectedly, then, like all other things in nature which are born and grow rapidly, cannot leave their foundations and correspondencies&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 7&quot;&gt;“Le radici e corrispondenze,” their roots (i.e. foundations) and correspondencies or relations with other states—a common meaning of “correspondence” and “correspondency” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.&lt;/ref&gt; fixed in such a way that the first storm will not overthrow them; unless, as is said, those who unexpectedly become princes are men of so much ability that they know they have to be prepared at once to hold that which fortune has thrown into their laps, and that those foundations, which others have laid ''before'' they became princes, they must lay ''afterwards''.<br /> <br /> Concerning these two methods of rising to be a prince by ability or fortune, I wish to adduce two examples within our own recollection, and these are Francesco Sforza&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 7&quot;&gt;Francesco Sforza, born 1401, died 1466. He married Bianca Maria Visconti, a natural daughter of Filippo Visconti, the Duke of Milan, on whose death he procured his own elevation to the duchy. Machiavelli was the accredited agent of the Florentine Republic to Cesare Borgia (1478-1507) during the transactions which led up to the assassinations of the Orsini and Vitelli at Sinigalia, and along with his letters to his chiefs in Florence he has left an account, written ten years before ''The Prince'', of the proceedings of the duke in his “Descritione del modo tenuto dal duca Valentino nello ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli,” etc., a translation of which is appended to the present work.&lt;/ref&gt; and Cesare Borgia. Francesco, by proper means and with great ability, from being a private person rose to be Duke of Milan, and that which he had acquired with a thousand anxieties he kept with little trouble. On the other hand, Cesare Borgia, called by the people Duke Valentino, acquired his state during the ascendancy of his father, and on its decline he lost it, notwithstanding that he had taken every measure and done all that ought to be done by a wise and able man to fix firmly his roots in the states which the arms and fortunes of others had bestowed on him.<br /> <br /> Because, as is stated above, he who has not first laid his foundations may be able with great ability to lay them afterwards, but they will be laid with trouble to the architect and danger to the building. If, therefore, all the steps taken by the duke be considered, it will be seen that he laid solid foundations for his future power, and I do not consider it superfluous to discuss them, because I do not know what better precepts to give a new prince than the example of his actions; and if his dispositions were of no avail, that was not his fault, but the extraordinary and extreme malignity of fortune.<br /> <br /> Alexander the Sixth, in wishing to aggrandize the duke, his son, had many immediate and prospective difficulties. Firstly, he did not see his way to make him master of any state that was not a state of the Church; and if he was willing to rob the Church he knew that the Duke of Milan and the Venetians would not consent, because Faenza and Rimini were already under the protection of the Venetians. Besides this, he saw the arms of Italy, especially those by which he might have been assisted, in hands that would fear the aggrandizement of the Pope, namely, the Orsini and the Colonnesi and their following. It behoved him, therefore, to upset this state of affairs and embroil the powers, so as to make himself securely master of part of their states. This was easy for him to do, because he found the Venetians, moved by other reasons, inclined to bring back the French into Italy; he would not only not oppose this, but he would render it more easy by dissolving the former marriage of King Louis. Therefore the king came into Italy with the assistance of the Venetians and the consent of Alexander. He was no sooner in Milan than the Pope had soldiers from him for the attempt on the Romagna, which yielded to him on the reputation of the king. The duke, therefore, having acquired the Romagna and beaten the Colonnesi, while wishing to hold that and to advance further, was hindered by two things: the one, his forces did not appear loyal to him, the other, the goodwill of France: that is to say, he feared that the forces of the Orsini, which he was using, would not stand to him, that not only might they hinder him from winning more, but might themselves seize what he had won, and that the king might also do the same. Of the Orsini he had a warning when, after taking Faenza and attacking Bologna, he saw them go very unwillingly to that attack. And as to the king, he learned his mind when he himself, after taking the Duchy of Urbino, attacked Tuscany, and the king made him desist from that undertaking; hence the duke decided to depend no more upon the arms and the luck of others.<br /> <br /> For the first thing he weakened the Orsini and Colonnesi parties in Rome, by gaining to himself all their adherents who were gentlemen, making them his gentlemen, giving them good pay, and, according to their rank, honouring them with office and command in such a way that in a few months all attachment to the factions was destroyed and turned entirely to the duke. After this he awaited an opportunity to crush the Orsini, having scattered the adherents of the Colonna house. This came to him soon and he used it well; for the Orsini, perceiving at length that the aggrandizement of the duke and the Church was ruin to them, called a meeting of the Magione in Perugia. From this sprung the rebellion at Urbino and the tumults in the Romagna, with endless dangers to the duke, all of which he overcame with the help of the French. Having restored his authority, not to leave it at risk by trusting either to the French or other outside forces, he had recourse to his wiles, and he knew so well how to conceal his mind that, by the mediation of Signor Pagolo—whom the duke did not fail to secure with all kinds of attention, giving him money, apparel, and horses—the Orsini were reconciled, so that their simplicity brought them into his power at Sinigalia.&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 7&quot;&gt;Sinigalia, 31st December 1502.&lt;/ref&gt; Having exterminated the leaders, and turned their partisans into his friends, the duke laid sufficiently good foundations to his power, having all the Romagna and the Duchy of Urbino; and the people now beginning to appreciate their prosperity, he gained them all over to himself. And as this point is worthy of notice, and to be imitated by others, I am not willing to leave it out.<br /> <br /> When the duke occupied the Romagna he found it under the rule of weak masters, who rather plundered their subjects than ruled them, and gave them more cause for disunion than for union, so that the country was full of robbery, quarrels, and every kind of violence; and so, wishing to bring back peace and obedience to authority, he considered it necessary to give it a good governor. Thereupon he promoted Messer Ramiro d’Orco,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 7&quot;&gt;Ramiro d’Orco. Ramiro de Lorqua.&lt;/ref&gt; a swift and cruel man, to whom he gave the fullest power. This man in a short time restored peace and unity with the greatest success. Afterwards the duke considered that it was not advisable to confer such excessive authority, for he had no doubt but that he would become odious, so he set up a court of judgment in the country, under a most excellent president, wherein all cities had their advocates. And because he knew that the past severity had caused some hatred against himself, so, to clear himself in the minds of the people, and gain them entirely to himself, he desired to show that, if any cruelty had been practised, it had not originated with him, but in the natural sternness of the minister. Under this pretence he took Ramiro, and one morning caused him to be executed and left on the piazza at Cesena with the block and a bloody knife at his side. The barbarity of this spectacle caused the people to be at once satisfied and dismayed.<br /> <br /> But let us return whence we started. I say that the duke, finding himself now sufficiently powerful and partly secured from immediate dangers by having armed himself in his own way, and having in a great measure crushed those forces in his vicinity that could injure him if he wished to proceed with his conquest, had next to consider France, for he knew that the king, who too late was aware of his mistake, would not support him. And from this time he began to seek new alliances and to temporize with France in the expedition which she was making towards the kingdom of Naples against the Spaniards who were besieging Gaeta. It was his intention to secure himself against them, and this he would have quickly accomplished had Alexander lived.<br /> <br /> Such was his line of action as to present affairs. But as to the future he had to fear, in the first place, that a new successor to the Church might not be friendly to him and might seek to take from him that which Alexander had given him, so he decided to act in four ways. Firstly, by exterminating the families of those lords whom he had despoiled, so as to take away that pretext from the Pope. Secondly, by winning to himself all the gentlemen of Rome, so as to be able to curb the Pope with their aid, as has been observed. Thirdly, by converting the college more to himself. Fourthly, by acquiring so much power before the Pope should die that he could by his own measures resist the first shock. Of these four things, at the death of Alexander, he had accomplished three. For he had killed as many of the dispossessed lords as he could lay hands on, and few had escaped; he had won over the Roman gentlemen, and he had the most numerous party in the college. And as to any fresh acquisition, he intended to become master of Tuscany, for he already possessed Perugia and Piombino, and Pisa was under his protection. And as he had no longer to study France (for the French were already driven out of the kingdom of Naples by the Spaniards, and in this way both were compelled to buy his goodwill), he pounced down upon Pisa. After this, Lucca and Siena yielded at once, partly through hatred and partly through fear of the Florentines; and the Florentines would have had no remedy had he continued to prosper, as he was prospering the year that Alexander died, for he had acquired so much power and reputation that he would have stood by himself, and no longer have depended on the luck and the forces of others, but solely on his own power and ability.<br /> <br /> But Alexander died five years after he had first drawn the sword. He left the duke with the state of Romagna alone consolidated, with the rest in the air, between two most powerful hostile armies, and sick unto death. Yet there were in the duke such boldness and ability, and he knew so well how men are to be won or lost, and so firm were the foundations which in so short a time he had laid, that if he had not had those armies on his back, or if he had been in good health, he would have overcome all difficulties. And it is seen that his foundations were good, for the Romagna awaited him for more than a month. In Rome, although but half alive, he remained secure; and whilst the Baglioni, the Vitelli, and the Orsini might come to Rome, they could not effect anything against him. If he could not have made Pope him whom he wished, at least the one whom he did not wish would not have been elected. But if he had been in sound health at the death of Alexander,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 7&quot;&gt;Alexander VI died of fever, 18th August 1503.&lt;/ref&gt; everything would have been different to him. On the day that Julius the Second&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 7&quot;&gt;Julius II was Giuliano della Rovere, Cardinal of San Pietro ad Vincula, born 1443, died 1513.&lt;/ref&gt; was elected, he told me that he had thought of everything that might occur at the death of his father, and had provided a remedy for all, except that he had never anticipated that, when the death did happen, he himself would be on the point to die.<br /> <br /> When all the actions of the duke are recalled, I do not know how to blame him, but rather it appears to be, as I have said, that I ought to offer him for imitation to all those who, by the fortune or the arms of others, are raised to government. Because he, having a lofty spirit and far-reaching aims, could not have regulated his conduct otherwise, and only the shortness of the life of Alexander and his own sickness frustrated his designs. Therefore, he who considers it necessary to secure himself in his new principality, to win friends, to overcome either by force or fraud, to make himself beloved and feared by the people, to be followed and revered by the soldiers, to exterminate those who have power or reason to hurt him, to change the old order of things for new, to be severe and gracious, magnanimous and liberal, to destroy a disloyal soldiery and to create new, to maintain friendship with kings and princes in such a way that they must help him with zeal and offend with caution, cannot find a more lively example than the actions of this man.<br /> <br /> Only can he be blamed for the election of Julius the Second, in whom he made a bad choice, because, as is said, not being able to elect a Pope to his own mind, he could have hindered any other from being elected Pope; and he ought never to have consented to the election of any cardinal whom he had injured or who had cause to fear him if they became pontiffs. For men injure either from fear or hatred. Those whom he had injured, amongst others, were San Pietro ad Vincula, Colonna, San Giorgio, and Ascanio.&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 7&quot;&gt;San Giorgio is Raffaello Riario. Ascanio is Ascanio Sforza.&lt;/ref&gt; The rest, in becoming Pope, had to fear him, Rouen and the Spaniards excepted; the latter from their relationship and obligations, the former from his influence, the kingdom of France having relations with him. Therefore, above everything, the duke ought to have created a Spaniard Pope, and, failing him, he ought to have consented to Rouen and not San Pietro ad Vincula. He who believes that new benefits will cause great personages to forget old injuries is deceived. Therefore, the duke erred in his choice, and it was the cause of his ultimate ruin.<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 7&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER VIII. CONCERNING THOSE WHO HAVE OBTAINED A PRINCIPALITY BY WICKEDNESS ===<br /> Although a prince may rise from a private station in two ways, neither of which can be entirely attributed to fortune or genius, yet it is manifest to me that I must not be silent on them, although one could be more copiously treated when I discuss republics. These methods are when, either by some wicked or nefarious ways, one ascends to the principality, or when by the favour of his fellow-citizens a private person becomes the prince of his country. And speaking of the first method, it will be illustrated by two examples—one ancient, the other modern—and without entering further into the subject, I consider these two examples will suffice those who may be compelled to follow them.<br /> <br /> Agathocles, the Sicilian,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 8&quot;&gt;Agathocles the Sicilian, born 361 B.C., died 289 B.C.&lt;/ref&gt; became King of Syracuse not only from a private but from a low and abject position. This man, the son of a potter, through all the changes in his fortunes always led an infamous life. Nevertheless, he accompanied his infamies with so much ability of mind and body that, having devoted himself to the military profession, he rose through its ranks to be Praetor of Syracuse. Being established in that position, and having deliberately resolved to make himself prince and to seize by violence, without obligation to others, that which had been conceded to him by assent, he came to an understanding for this purpose with Amilcar, the Carthaginian, who, with his army, was fighting in Sicily. One morning he assembled the people and the senate of Syracuse, as if he had to discuss with them things relating to the Republic, and at a given signal the soldiers killed all the senators and the richest of the people; these dead, he seized and held the princedom of that city without any civil commotion. And although he was twice routed by the Carthaginians, and ultimately besieged, yet not only was he able to defend his city, but leaving part of his men for its defence, with the others he attacked Africa, and in a short time raised the siege of Syracuse. The Carthaginians, reduced to extreme necessity, were compelled to come to terms with Agathocles, and, leaving Sicily to him, had to be content with the possession of Africa.<br /> <br /> Therefore, he who considers the actions and the genius of this man will see nothing, or little, which can be attributed to fortune, inasmuch as he attained pre-eminence, as is shown above, not by the favour of any one, but step by step in the military profession, which steps were gained with a thousand troubles and perils, and were afterwards boldly held by him with many hazardous dangers. Yet it cannot be called talent to slay fellow-citizens, to deceive friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion; such methods may gain empire, but not glory. Still, if the courage of Agathocles in entering into and extricating himself from dangers be considered, together with his greatness of mind in enduring and overcoming hardships, it cannot be seen why he should be esteemed less than the most notable captain. Nevertheless, his barbarous cruelty and inhumanity with infinite wickedness do not permit him to be celebrated among the most excellent men. What he achieved cannot be attributed either to fortune or genius.<br /> <br /> In our times, during the rule of Alexander the Sixth, Oliverotto da Fermo, having been left an orphan many years before, was brought up by his maternal uncle, Giovanni Fogliani, and in the early days of his youth sent to fight under Pagolo Vitelli, that, being trained under his discipline, he might attain some high position in the military profession. After Pagolo died, he fought under his brother Vitellozzo, and in a very short time, being endowed with wit and a vigorous body and mind, he became the first man in his profession. But it appearing a paltry thing to serve under others, he resolved, with the aid of some citizens of Fermo, to whom the slavery of their country was dearer than its liberty, and with the help of the Vitelleschi, to seize Fermo. So he wrote to Giovanni Fogliani that, having been away from home for many years, he wished to visit him and his city, and in some measure to look upon his patrimony; and although he had not laboured to acquire anything except honour, yet, in order that the citizens should see he had not spent his time in vain, he desired to come honourably, so would be accompanied by one hundred horsemen, his friends and retainers; and he entreated Giovanni to arrange that he should be received honourably by the Fermians, all of which would be not only to his honour, but also to that of Giovanni himself, who had brought him up.<br /> <br /> Giovanni, therefore, did not fail in any attentions due to his nephew, and he caused him to be honourably received by the Fermians, and he lodged him in his own house, where, having passed some days, and having arranged what was necessary for his wicked designs, Oliverotto gave a solemn banquet to which he invited Giovanni Fogliani and the chiefs of Fermo. When the viands and all the other entertainments that are usual in such banquets were finished, Oliverotto artfully began certain grave discourses, speaking of the greatness of Pope Alexander and his son Cesare, and of their enterprises, to which discourse Giovanni and others answered; but he rose at once, saying that such matters ought to be discussed in a more private place, and he betook himself to a chamber, whither Giovanni and the rest of the citizens went in after him. No sooner were they seated than soldiers issued from secret places and slaughtered Giovanni and the rest. After these murders Oliverotto, mounted on horseback, rode up and down the town and besieged the chief magistrate in the palace, so that in fear the people were forced to obey him, and to form a government, of which he made himself the prince. He killed all the malcontents who were able to injure him, and strengthened himself with new civil and military ordinances, in such a way that, in the year during which he held the principality, not only was he secure in the city of Fermo, but he had become formidable to all his neighbours. And his destruction would have been as difficult as that of Agathocles if he had not allowed himself to be overreached by Cesare Borgia, who took him with the Orsini and Vitelli at Sinigalia, as was stated above. Thus one year after he had committed this parricide, he was strangled, together with Vitellozzo, whom he had made his leader in valour and wickedness.<br /> <br /> Some may wonder how it can happen that Agathocles, and his like, after infinite treacheries and cruelties, should live for long secure in his country, and defend himself from external enemies, and never be conspired against by his own citizens; seeing that many others, by means of cruelty, have never been able even in peaceful times to hold the state, still less in the doubtful times of war. I believe that this follows from severities&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 8&quot;&gt;Mr Burd suggests that this word probably comes near the modern equivalent of Machiavelli’s thought when he speaks of “crudelta” than the more obvious “cruelties.”&lt;/ref&gt; being badly or properly used. Those may be called properly used, if of evil it is possible to speak well, that are applied at one blow and are necessary to one’s security, and that are not persisted in afterwards unless they can be turned to the advantage of the subjects. The badly employed are those which, notwithstanding they may be few in the commencement, multiply with time rather than decrease. Those who practise the first system are able, by aid of God or man, to mitigate in some degree their rule, as Agathocles did. It is impossible for those who follow the other to maintain themselves.<br /> <br /> Hence it is to be remarked that, in seizing a state, the usurper ought to examine closely into all those injuries which it is necessary for him to inflict, and to do them all at one stroke so as not to have to repeat them daily; and thus by not unsettling men he will be able to reassure them, and win them to himself by benefits. He who does otherwise, either from timidity or evil advice, is always compelled to keep the knife in his hand; neither can he rely on his subjects, nor can they attach themselves to him, owing to their continued and repeated wrongs. For injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavour of them may last longer.<br /> <br /> And above all things, a prince ought to live amongst his people in such a way that no unexpected circumstances, whether of good or evil, shall make him change; because if the necessity for this comes in troubled times, you are too late for harsh measures; and mild ones will not help you, for they will be considered as forced from you, and no one will be under any obligation to you for them.<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 8&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER IX. CONCERNING A CIVIL PRINCIPALITY ===<br /> But coming to the other point—where a leading citizen becomes the prince of his country, not by wickedness or any intolerable violence, but by the favour of his fellow citizens—this may be called a civil principality: nor is genius or fortune altogether necessary to attain to it, but rather a happy shrewdness. I say then that such a principality is obtained either by the favour of the people or by the favour of the nobles. Because in all cities these two distinct parties are found, and from this it arises that the people do not wish to be ruled nor oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles wish to rule and oppress the people; and from these two opposite desires there arises in cities one of three results, either a principality, self-government, or anarchy.<br /> <br /> A principality is created either by the people or by the nobles, accordingly as one or other of them has the opportunity; for the nobles, seeing they cannot withstand the people, begin to cry up the reputation of one of themselves, and they make him a prince, so that under his shadow they can give vent to their ambitions. The people, finding they cannot resist the nobles, also cry up the reputation of one of themselves, and make him a prince so as to be defended by his authority. He who obtains sovereignty by the assistance of the nobles maintains himself with more difficulty than he who comes to it by the aid of the people, because the former finds himself with many around him who consider themselves his equals, and because of this he can neither rule nor manage them to his liking. But he who reaches sovereignty by popular favour finds himself alone, and has none around him, or few, who are not prepared to obey him.<br /> <br /> Besides this, one cannot by fair dealing, and without injury to others, satisfy the nobles, but you can satisfy the people, for their object is more righteous than that of the nobles, the latter wishing to oppress, while the former only desire not to be oppressed. It is to be added also that a prince can never secure himself against a hostile people, because of there being too many, whilst from the nobles he can secure himself, as they are few in number. The worst that a prince may expect from a hostile people is to be abandoned by them; but from hostile nobles he has not only to fear abandonment, but also that they will rise against him; for they, being in these affairs more far-seeing and astute, always come forward in time to save themselves, and to obtain favours from him whom they expect to prevail. Further, the prince is compelled to live always with the same people, but he can do well without the same nobles, being able to make and unmake them daily, and to give or take away authority when it pleases him.<br /> <br /> Therefore, to make this point clearer, I say that the nobles ought to be looked at mainly in two ways: that is to say, they either shape their course in such a way as binds them entirely to your fortune, or they do not. Those who so bind themselves, and are not rapacious, ought to be honoured and loved; those who do not bind themselves may be dealt with in two ways; they may fail to do this through pusillanimity and a natural want of courage, in which case you ought to make use of them, especially of those who are of good counsel; and thus, whilst in prosperity you honour them, in adversity you do not have to fear them. But when for their own ambitious ends they shun binding themselves, it is a token that they are giving more thought to themselves than to you, and a prince ought to guard against such, and to fear them as if they were open enemies, because in adversity they always help to ruin him.<br /> <br /> Therefore, one who becomes a prince through the favour of the people ought to keep them friendly, and this he can easily do seeing they only ask not to be oppressed by him. But one who, in opposition to the people, becomes a prince by the favour of the nobles, ought, above everything, to seek to win the people over to himself, and this he may easily do if he takes them under his protection. Because men, when they receive good from him of whom they were expecting evil, are bound more closely to their benefactor; thus the people quickly become more devoted to him than if he had been raised to the principality by their favours; and the prince can win their affections in many ways, but as these vary according to the circumstances one cannot give fixed rules, so I omit them; but, I repeat, it is necessary for a prince to have the people friendly, otherwise he has no security in adversity.<br /> <br /> Nabis,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 9&quot;&gt;Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, conquered by the Romans under Flamininus in 195 B.C.; killed 192 B.C.&lt;/ref&gt; Prince of the Spartans, sustained the attack of all Greece, and of a victorious Roman army, and against them he defended his country and his government; and for the overcoming of this peril it was only necessary for him to make himself secure against a few, but this would not have been sufficient had the people been hostile. And do not let any one impugn this statement with the trite proverb that “He who builds on the people, builds on the mud,” for this is true when a private citizen makes a foundation there, and persuades himself that the people will free him when he is oppressed by his enemies or by the magistrates; wherein he would find himself very often deceived, as happened to the Gracchi in Rome and to Messer Giorgio Scali&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 9&quot;&gt;Messer Giorgio Scali. This event is to be found in Machiavelli’s “Florentine History,” Book III.&lt;/ref&gt; in Florence. But granted a prince who has established himself as above, who can command, and is a man of courage, undismayed in adversity, who does not fail in other qualifications, and who, by his resolution and energy, keeps the whole people encouraged—such a one will never find himself deceived in them, and it will be shown that he has laid his foundations well.<br /> <br /> These principalities are liable to danger when they are passing from the civil to the absolute order of government, for such princes either rule personally or through magistrates. In the latter case their government is weaker and more insecure, because it rests entirely on the goodwill of those citizens who are raised to the magistracy, and who, especially in troubled times, can destroy the government with great ease, either by intrigue or open defiance; and the prince has not the chance amid tumults to exercise absolute authority, because the citizens and subjects, accustomed to receive orders from magistrates, are not of a mind to obey him amid these confusions, and there will always be in doubtful times a scarcity of men whom he can trust. For such a prince cannot rely upon what he observes in quiet times, when citizens have need of the state, because then every one agrees with him; they all promise, and when death is far distant they all wish to die for him; but in troubled times, when the state has need of its citizens, then he finds but few. And so much the more is this experiment dangerous, inasmuch as it can only be tried once. Therefore a wise prince ought to adopt such a course that his citizens will always in every sort and kind of circumstance have need of the state and of him, and then he will always find them faithful.<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 9&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER X. CONCERNING THE WAY IN WHICH THE STRENGTH OF ALL PRINCIPALITIES OUGHT TO BE MEASURED ===<br /> It is necessary to consider another point in examining the character of these principalities: that is, whether a prince has such power that, in case of need, he can support himself with his own resources, or whether he has always need of the assistance of others. And to make this quite clear I say that I consider those who are able to support themselves by their own resources who can, either by abundance of men or money, raise a sufficient army to join battle against any one who comes to attack them; and I consider those always to have need of others who cannot show themselves against the enemy in the field, but are forced to defend themselves by sheltering behind walls. The first case has been discussed, but we will speak of it again should it recur. In the second case one can say nothing except to encourage such princes to provision and fortify their towns, and not on any account to defend the country. And whoever shall fortify his town well, and shall have managed the other concerns of his subjects in the way stated above, and to be often repeated, will never be attacked without great caution, for men are always adverse to enterprises where difficulties can be seen, and it will be seen not to be an easy thing to attack one who has his town well fortified, and is not hated by his people.<br /> <br /> The cities of Germany are absolutely free, they own but little country around them, and they yield obedience to the emperor when it suits them, nor do they fear this or any other power they may have near them, because they are fortified in such a way that every one thinks the taking of them by assault would be tedious and difficult, seeing they have proper ditches and walls, they have sufficient artillery, and they always keep in public depots enough for one year’s eating, drinking, and firing. And beyond this, to keep the people quiet and without loss to the state, they always have the means of giving work to the community in those labours that are the life and strength of the city, and on the pursuit of which the people are supported; they also hold military exercises in repute, and moreover have many ordinances to uphold them.<br /> <br /> Therefore, a prince who has a strong city, and had not made himself odious, will not be attacked, or if any one should attack he will only be driven off with disgrace; again, because that the affairs of this world are so changeable, it is almost impossible to keep an army a whole year in the field without being interfered with. And whoever should reply: If the people have property outside the city, and see it burnt, they will not remain patient, and the long siege and self-interest will make them forget their prince; to this I answer that a powerful and courageous prince will overcome all such difficulties by giving at one time hope to his subjects that the evil will not be for long, at another time fear of the cruelty of the enemy, then preserving himself adroitly from those subjects who seem to him to be too bold.<br /> <br /> Further, the enemy would naturally on his arrival at once burn and ruin the country at the time when the spirits of the people are still hot and ready for the defence; and, therefore, so much the less ought the prince to hesitate; because after a time, when spirits have cooled, the damage is already done, the ills are incurred, and there is no longer any remedy; and therefore they are so much the more ready to unite with their prince, he appearing to be under obligations to them now that their houses have been burnt and their possessions ruined in his defence. For it is the nature of men to be bound by the benefits they confer as much as by those they receive. Therefore, if everything is well considered, it will not be difficult for a wise prince to keep the minds of his citizens steadfast from first to last, when he does not fail to support and defend them.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XI. CONCERNING ECCLESIASTICAL PRINCIPALITIES ===<br /> It only remains now to speak of ecclesiastical principalities, touching which all difficulties are prior to getting possession, because they are acquired either by capacity or good fortune, and they can be held without either; for they are sustained by the ancient ordinances of religion, which are so all-powerful, and of such a character that the principalities may be held no matter how their princes behave and live. These princes alone have states and do not defend them; and they have subjects and do not rule them; and the states, although unguarded, are not taken from them, and the subjects, although not ruled, do not care, and they have neither the desire nor the ability to alienate themselves. Such principalities only are secure and happy. But being upheld by powers, to which the human mind cannot reach, I shall speak no more of them, because, being exalted and maintained by God, it would be the act of a presumptuous and rash man to discuss them.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, if any one should ask of me how comes it that the Church has attained such greatness in temporal power, seeing that from Alexander backwards the Italian potentates (not only those who have been called potentates, but every baron and lord, though the smallest) have valued the temporal power very slightly—yet now a king of France trembles before it, and it has been able to drive him from Italy, and to ruin the Venetians—although this may be very manifest, it does not appear to me superfluous to recall it in some measure to memory.<br /> <br /> Before Charles, King of France, passed into Italy,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 11&quot;&gt;Charles VIII invaded Italy in 1494.&lt;/ref&gt; this country was under the dominion of the Pope, the Venetians, the King of Naples, the Duke of Milan, and the Florentines. These potentates had two principal anxieties: the one, that no foreigner should enter Italy under arms; the other, that none of themselves should seize more territory. Those about whom there was the most anxiety were the Pope and the Venetians. To restrain the Venetians the union of all the others was necessary, as it was for the defence of Ferrara; and to keep down the Pope they made use of the barons of Rome, who, being divided into two factions, Orsini and Colonnesi, had always a pretext for disorder, and, standing with arms in their hands under the eyes of the Pontiff, kept the pontificate weak and powerless. And although there might arise sometimes a courageous pope, such as Sixtus, yet neither fortune nor wisdom could rid him of these annoyances. And the short life of a pope is also a cause of weakness; for in the ten years, which is the average life of a pope, he can with difficulty lower one of the factions; and if, so to speak, one people should almost destroy the Colonnesi, another would arise hostile to the Orsini, who would support their opponents, and yet would not have time to ruin the Orsini. This was the reason why the temporal powers of the pope were little esteemed in Italy.<br /> <br /> Alexander the Sixth arose afterwards, who of all the pontiffs that have ever been showed how a pope with both money and arms was able to prevail; and through the instrumentality of the Duke Valentino, and by reason of the entry of the French, he brought about all those things which I have discussed above in the actions of the duke. And although his intention was not to aggrandize the Church, but the duke, nevertheless, what he did contributed to the greatness of the Church, which, after his death and the ruin of the duke, became the heir to all his labours.<br /> <br /> Pope Julius came afterwards and found the Church strong, possessing all the Romagna, the barons of Rome reduced to impotence, and, through the chastisements of Alexander, the factions wiped out; he also found the way open to accumulate money in a manner such as had never been practised before Alexander’s time. Such things Julius not only followed, but improved upon, and he intended to gain Bologna, to ruin the Venetians, and to drive the French out of Italy. All of these enterprises prospered with him, and so much the more to his credit, inasmuch as he did everything to strengthen the Church and not any private person. He kept also the Orsini and Colonnesi factions within the bounds in which he found them; and although there was among them some mind to make disturbance, nevertheless he held two things firm: the one, the greatness of the Church, with which he terrified them; and the other, not allowing them to have their own cardinals, who caused the disorders among them. For whenever these factions have their cardinals they do not remain quiet for long, because cardinals foster the factions in Rome and out of it, and the barons are compelled to support them, and thus from the ambitions of prelates arise disorders and tumults among the barons. For these reasons his Holiness Pope Leo&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 11&quot;&gt;Pope Leo X was the Cardinal de’ Medici.&lt;/ref&gt; found the pontificate most powerful, and it is to be hoped that, if others made it great in arms, he will make it still greater and more venerated by his goodness and infinite other virtues.<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 11&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XII. HOW MANY KINDS OF SOLDIERY THERE ARE, AND CONCERNING MERCENARIES ===<br /> Having discoursed particularly on the characteristics of such principalities as in the beginning I proposed to discuss, and having considered in some degree the causes of there being good or bad, and having shown the methods by which many have sought to acquire them and to hold them, it now remains for me to discuss generally the means of offence and defence which belong to each of them.<br /> <br /> We have seen above how necessary it is for a prince to have his foundations well laid, otherwise it follows of necessity he will go to ruin. The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well armed they have good laws. I shall leave the laws out of the discussion and shall speak of the arms.<br /> <br /> I say, therefore, that the arms with which a prince defends his state are either his own, or they are mercenaries, auxiliaries, or mixed. Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious, and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy. The fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you. They are ready enough to be your soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if war comes they take themselves off or run from the foe; which I should have little trouble to prove, for the ruin of Italy has been caused by nothing else than by resting all her hopes for many years on mercenaries, and although they formerly made some display and appeared valiant amongst themselves, yet when the foreigners came they showed what they were. Thus it was that Charles, King of France, was allowed to seize Italy with chalk in hand;&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 12&quot;&gt;“With chalk in hand,” “col gesso.” This is one of the ''bons mots'' of Alexander VI, and refers to the ease with which Charles VIII seized Italy, implying that it was only necessary for him to send his quartermasters to chalk up the billets for his soldiers to conquer the country. ''Cf''. “The History of Henry VII,” by Lord Bacon: “King Charles had conquered the realm of Naples, and lost it again, in a kind of a felicity of a dream. He passed the whole length of Italy without resistance: so that it was true what Pope Alexander was wont to say: That the Frenchmen came into Italy with chalk in their hands, to mark up their lodgings, rather than with swords to fight.”&lt;/ref&gt; and he who told us that our sins were the cause of it told the truth, but they were not the sins he imagined, but those which I have related. And as they were the sins of princes, it is the princes who have also suffered the penalty.<br /> <br /> I wish to demonstrate further the infelicity of these arms. The mercenary captains are either capable men or they are not; if they are, you cannot trust them, because they always aspire to their own greatness, either by oppressing you, who are their master, or others contrary to your intentions; but if the captain is not skilful, you are ruined in the usual way.<br /> <br /> And if it be urged that whoever is armed will act in the same way, whether mercenary or not, I reply that when arms have to be resorted to, either by a prince or a republic, then the prince ought to go in person and perform the duty of a captain; the republic has to send its citizens, and when one is sent who does not turn out satisfactorily, it ought to recall him, and when one is worthy, to hold him by the laws so that he does not leave the command. And experience has shown princes and republics, single-handed, making the greatest progress, and mercenaries doing nothing except damage; and it is more difficult to bring a republic, armed with its own arms, under the sway of one of its citizens than it is to bring one armed with foreign arms. Rome and Sparta stood for many ages armed and free. The Switzers are completely armed and quite free.<br /> <br /> Of ancient mercenaries, for example, there are the Carthaginians, who were oppressed by their mercenary soldiers after the first war with the Romans, although the Carthaginians had their own citizens for captains. After the death of Epaminondas, Philip of Macedon was made captain of their soldiers by the Thebans, and after victory he took away their liberty.<br /> <br /> Duke Filippo being dead, the Milanese enlisted Francesco Sforza against the Venetians, and he, having overcome the enemy at Caravaggio,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 12&quot;&gt;Battle of Caravaggio, 15th September 1448.&lt;/ref&gt; allied himself with them to crush the Milanese, his masters. His father, Sforza, having been engaged by Queen Johanna&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 12&quot;&gt;Johanna II of Naples, the widow of Ladislao, King of Naples.&lt;/ref&gt; of Naples, left her unprotected, so that she was forced to throw herself into the arms of the King of Aragon, in order to save her kingdom. And if the Venetians and Florentines formerly extended their dominions by these arms, and yet their captains did not make themselves princes, but have defended them, I reply that the Florentines in this case have been favoured by chance, for of the able captains, of whom they might have stood in fear, some have not conquered, some have been opposed, and others have turned their ambitions elsewhere. One who did not conquer was Giovanni Acuto,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 12&quot;&gt;Giovanni Acuto. An English knight whose name was Sir John Hawkwood. He fought in the English wars in France, and was knighted by Edward III; afterwards he collected a body of troops and went into Italy. These became the famous “White Company.” He took part in many wars, and died in Florence in 1394. He was born about 1320 at Sible Hedingham, a village in Essex. He married Domnia, a daughter of Bernabo Visconti.&lt;/ref&gt; and since he did not conquer his fidelity cannot be proved; but every one will acknowledge that, had he conquered, the Florentines would have stood at his discretion. Sforza had the Bracceschi always against him, so they watched each other. Francesco turned his ambition to Lombardy; Braccio against the Church and the kingdom of Naples. But let us come to that which happened a short while ago. The Florentines appointed as their captain Pagolo Vitelli, a most prudent man, who from a private position had risen to the greatest renown. If this man had taken Pisa, nobody can deny that it would have been proper for the Florentines to keep in with him, for if he became the soldier of their enemies they had no means of resisting, and if they held to him they must obey him. The Venetians, if their achievements are considered, will be seen to have acted safely and gloriously so long as they sent to war their own men, when with armed gentlemen and plebians they did valiantly. This was before they turned to enterprises on land, but when they began to fight on land they forsook this virtue and followed the custom of Italy. And in the beginning of their expansion on land, through not having much territory, and because of their great reputation, they had not much to fear from their captains; but when they expanded, as under Carmignuola,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 12&quot;&gt;Carmignuola. Francesco Bussone, born at Carmagnola about 1390, executed at Venice, 5th May 1432.&lt;/ref&gt; they had a taste of this mistake; for, having found him a most valiant man (they beat the Duke of Milan under his leadership), and, on the other hand, knowing how lukewarm he was in the war, they feared they would no longer conquer under him, and for this reason they were not willing, nor were they able, to let him go; and so, not to lose again that which they had acquired, they were compelled, in order to secure themselves, to murder him. They had afterwards for their captains Bartolomeo da Bergamo, Roberto da San Severino, the count of Pitigliano,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 12&quot;&gt;Bartolomeo Colleoni of Bergamo; died 1457. Roberto of San Severino; died fighting for Venice against Sigismund, Duke of Austria, in 1487. “Primo capitano in Italia.”—Machiavelli. Count of Pitigliano; Nicolo Orsini, born 1442, died 1510.&lt;/ref&gt; and the like, under whom they had to dread loss and not gain, as happened afterwards at Vaila,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 12&quot;&gt;Battle of Vaila in 1509.&lt;/ref&gt; where in one battle they lost that which in eight hundred years they had acquired with so much trouble. Because from such arms conquests come but slowly, long delayed and inconsiderable, but the losses sudden and portentous.<br /> <br /> And as with these examples I have reached Italy, which has been ruled for many years by mercenaries, I wish to discuss them more seriously, in order that, having seen their rise and progress, one may be better prepared to counteract them. You must understand that the empire has recently come to be repudiated in Italy, that the Pope has acquired more temporal power, and that Italy has been divided up into more states, for the reason that many of the great cities took up arms against their nobles, who, formerly favoured by the emperor, were oppressing them, whilst the Church was favouring them so as to gain authority in temporal power: in many others their citizens became princes. From this it came to pass that Italy fell partly into the hands of the Church and of republics, and, the Church consisting of priests and the republic of citizens unaccustomed to arms, both commenced to enlist foreigners.<br /> <br /> The first who gave renown to this soldiery was Alberigo da Conio,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 12&quot;&gt;Alberigo da Conio. Alberico da Barbiano, Count of Cunio in Romagna. He was the leader of the famous “Company of St George,” composed entirely of Italian soldiers. He died in 1409.&lt;/ref&gt; the Romagnian. From the school of this man sprang, among others, Braccio and Sforza, who in their time were the arbiters of Italy. After these came all the other captains who till now have directed the arms of Italy; and the end of all their valour has been, that she has been overrun by Charles, robbed by Louis, ravaged by Ferdinand, and insulted by the Switzers. The principle that has guided them has been, first, to lower the credit of infantry so that they might increase their own. They did this because, subsisting on their pay and without territory, they were unable to support many soldiers, and a few infantry did not give them any authority; so they were led to employ cavalry, with a moderate force of which they were maintained and honoured; and affairs were brought to such a pass that, in an army of twenty thousand soldiers, there were not to be found two thousand foot soldiers. They had, besides this, used every art to lessen fatigue and danger to themselves and their soldiers, not killing in the fray, but taking prisoners and liberating without ransom. They did not attack towns at night, nor did the garrisons of the towns attack encampments at night; they did not surround the camp either with stockade or ditch, nor did they campaign in the winter. All these things were permitted by their military rules, and devised by them to avoid, as I have said, both fatigue and dangers; thus they have brought Italy to slavery and contempt.<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 12&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XIII. CONCERNING AUXILIARIES, MIXED SOLDIERY, AND ONE’S OWN ===<br /> Auxiliaries, which are the other useless arm, are employed when a prince is called in with his forces to aid and defend, as was done by Pope Julius in the most recent times; for he, having, in the enterprise against Ferrara, had poor proof of his mercenaries, turned to auxiliaries, and stipulated with Ferdinand, King of Spain,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 13&quot;&gt;Ferdinand V (F. II of Aragon and Sicily, F. III of Naples), surnamed “The Catholic,” born 1452, died 1516.&lt;/ref&gt; for his assistance with men and arms. These arms may be useful and good in themselves, but for him who calls them in they are always disadvantageous; for losing, one is undone, and winning, one is their captive.<br /> <br /> And although ancient histories may be full of examples, I do not wish to leave this recent one of Pope Julius the Second, the peril of which cannot fail to be perceived; for he, wishing to get Ferrara, threw himself entirely into the hands of the foreigner. But his good fortune brought about a third event, so that he did not reap the fruit of his rash choice; because, having his auxiliaries routed at Ravenna, and the Switzers having risen and driven out the conquerors (against all expectation, both his and others), it so came to pass that he did not become prisoner to his enemies, they having fled, nor to his auxiliaries, he having conquered by other arms than theirs.<br /> <br /> The Florentines, being entirely without arms, sent ten thousand Frenchmen to take Pisa, whereby they ran more danger than at any other time of their troubles.<br /> <br /> The Emperor of Constantinople,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 13&quot;&gt;Joannes Cantacuzenus, born 1300, died 1383.&lt;/ref&gt; to oppose his neighbours, sent ten thousand Turks into Greece, who, on the war being finished, were not willing to quit; this was the beginning of the servitude of Greece to the infidels.<br /> <br /> Therefore, let him who has no desire to conquer make use of these arms, for they are much more hazardous than mercenaries, because with them the ruin is ready made; they are all united, all yield obedience to others; but with mercenaries, when they have conquered, more time and better opportunities are needed to injure you; they are not all of one community, they are found and paid by you, and a third party, which you have made their head, is not able all at once to assume enough authority to injure you. In conclusion, in mercenaries dastardy is most dangerous; in auxiliaries, valour. The wise prince, therefore, has always avoided these arms and turned to his own; and has been willing rather to lose with them than to conquer with the others, not deeming that a real victory which is gained with the arms of others.<br /> <br /> I shall never hesitate to cite Cesare Borgia and his actions. This duke entered the Romagna with auxiliaries, taking there only French soldiers, and with them he captured Imola and Forli; but afterwards, such forces not appearing to him reliable, he turned to mercenaries, discerning less danger in them, and enlisted the Orsini and Vitelli; whom presently, on handling and finding them doubtful, unfaithful, and dangerous, he destroyed and turned to his own men. And the difference between one and the other of these forces can easily be seen when one considers the difference there was in the reputation of the duke, when he had the French, when he had the Orsini and Vitelli, and when he relied on his own soldiers, on whose fidelity he could always count and found it ever increasing; he was never esteemed more highly than when every one saw that he was complete master of his own forces.<br /> <br /> I was not intending to go beyond Italian and recent examples, but I am unwilling to leave out Hiero, the Syracusan, he being one of those I have named above. This man, as I have said, made head of the army by the Syracusans, soon found out that a mercenary soldiery, constituted like our Italian condottieri, was of no use; and it appearing to him that he could neither keep them nor let them go, he had them all cut to pieces, and afterwards made war with his own forces and not with aliens.<br /> <br /> I wish also to recall to memory an instance from the Old Testament applicable to this subject. David offered himself to Saul to fight with Goliath, the Philistine champion, and, to give him courage, Saul armed him with his own weapons; which David rejected as soon as he had them on his back, saying he could make no use of them, and that he wished to meet the enemy with his sling and his knife. In conclusion, the arms of others either fall from your back, or they weigh you down, or they bind you fast.<br /> <br /> Charles the Seventh,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 13&quot;&gt;Charles VII of France, surnamed “The Victorious,” born 1403, died 1461.&lt;/ref&gt; the father of King Louis the Eleventh,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 13&quot;&gt;Louis XI, son of the above, born 1423, died 1483.&lt;/ref&gt; having by good fortune and valour liberated France from the English, recognized the necessity of being armed with forces of his own, and he established in his kingdom ordinances concerning men-at-arms and infantry. Afterwards his son, King Louis, abolished the infantry and began to enlist the Switzers, which mistake, followed by others, is, as is now seen, a source of peril to that kingdom; because, having raised the reputation of the Switzers, he has entirely diminished the value of his own arms, for he has destroyed the infantry altogether; and his men-at-arms he has subordinated to others, for, being as they are so accustomed to fight along with Switzers, it does not appear that they can now conquer without them. Hence it arises that the French cannot stand against the Switzers, and without the Switzers they do not come off well against others. The armies of the French have thus become mixed, partly mercenary and partly national, both of which arms together are much better than mercenaries alone or auxiliaries alone, but much inferior to one’s own forces. And this example proves it, for the kingdom of France would be unconquerable if the ordinance of Charles had been enlarged or maintained.<br /> <br /> But the scanty wisdom of man, on entering into an affair which looks well at first, cannot discern the poison that is hidden in it, as I have said above of hectic fevers. Therefore, if he who rules a principality cannot recognize evils until they are upon him, he is not truly wise; and this insight is given to few. And if the first disaster to the Roman Empire&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 13&quot;&gt;“Many speakers to the House the other night in the debate on the reduction of armaments seemed to show a most lamentable ignorance of the conditions under which the British Empire maintains its existence. When Mr Balfour replied to the allegations that the Roman Empire sank under the weight of its military obligations, he said that this was ‘wholly unhistorical.’ He might well have added that the Roman power was at its zenith when every citizen acknowledged his liability to fight for the State, but that it began to decline as soon as this obligation was no longer recognised.”—''Pall Mall Gazette'', 15th May 1906.&lt;/ref&gt; should be examined, it will be found to have commenced only with the enlisting of the Goths; because from that time the vigour of the Roman Empire began to decline, and all that valour which had raised it passed away to others.<br /> <br /> I conclude, therefore, that no principality is secure without having its own forces; on the contrary, it is entirely dependent on good fortune, not having the valour which in adversity would defend it. And it has always been the opinion and judgment of wise men that nothing can be so uncertain or unstable as fame or power not founded on its own strength. And one’s own forces are those which are composed either of subjects, citizens, or dependents; all others are mercenaries or auxiliaries. And the way to make ready one’s own forces will be easily found if the rules suggested by me shall be reflected upon, and if one will consider how Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, and many republics and princes have armed and organized themselves, to which rules I entirely commit myself.<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 13&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XIV. THAT WHICH CONCERNS A PRINCE ON THE SUBJECT OF THE ART OF WAR ===<br /> A prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select anything else for his study, than war and its rules and discipline; for this is the sole art that belongs to him who rules, and it is of such force that it not only upholds those who are born princes, but it often enables men to rise from a private station to that rank. And, on the contrary, it is seen that when princes have thought more of ease than of arms they have lost their states. And the first cause of your losing it is to neglect this art; and what enables you to acquire a state is to be master of the art. Francesco Sforza, through being martial, from a private person became Duke of Milan; and the sons, through avoiding the hardships and troubles of arms, from dukes became private persons. For among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised, and this is one of those ignominies against which a prince ought to guard himself, as is shown later on. Because there is nothing proportionate between the armed and the unarmed; and it is not reasonable that he who is armed should yield obedience willingly to him who is unarmed, or that the unarmed man should be secure among armed servants. Because, there being in the one disdain and in the other suspicion, it is not possible for them to work well together. And therefore a prince who does not understand the art of war, over and above the other misfortunes already mentioned, cannot be respected by his soldiers, nor can he rely on them. He ought never, therefore, to have out of his thoughts this subject of war, and in peace he should addict himself more to its exercise than in war; this he can do in two ways, the one by action, the other by study.<br /> <br /> As regards action, he ought above all things to keep his men well organized and drilled, to follow incessantly the chase, by which he accustoms his body to hardships, and learns something of the nature of localities, and gets to find out how the mountains rise, how the valleys open out, how the plains lie, and to understand the nature of rivers and marshes, and in all this to take the greatest care. Which knowledge is useful in two ways. Firstly, he learns to know his country, and is better able to undertake its defence; afterwards, by means of the knowledge and observation of that locality, he understands with ease any other which it may be necessary for him to study hereafter; because the hills, valleys, and plains, and rivers and marshes that are, for instance, in Tuscany, have a certain resemblance to those of other countries, so that with a knowledge of the aspect of one country one can easily arrive at a knowledge of others. And the prince that lacks this skill lacks the essential which it is desirable that a captain should possess, for it teaches him to surprise his enemy, to select quarters, to lead armies, to array the battle, to besiege towns to advantage.<br /> <br /> Philopoemen,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 14&quot;&gt;Philopoemen, “the last of the Greeks,” born 252 B.C., died 183 B.C.&lt;/ref&gt; Prince of the Achaeans, among other praises which writers have bestowed on him, is commended because in time of peace he never had anything in his mind but the rules of war; and when he was in the country with friends, he often stopped and reasoned with them: “If the enemy should be upon that hill, and we should find ourselves here with our army, with whom would be the advantage? How should one best advance to meet him, keeping the ranks? If we should wish to retreat, how ought we to pursue?” And he would set forth to them, as he went, all the chances that could befall an army; he would listen to their opinion and state his, confirming it with reasons, so that by these continual discussions there could never arise, in time of war, any unexpected circumstances that he could not deal with.<br /> <br /> But to exercise the intellect the prince should read histories, and study there the actions of illustrious men, to see how they have borne themselves in war, to examine the causes of their victories and defeat, so as to avoid the latter and imitate the former; and above all do as an illustrious man did, who took as an exemplar one who had been praised and famous before him, and whose achievements and deeds he always kept in his mind, as it is said Alexander the Great imitated Achilles, Caesar Alexander, Scipio Cyrus. And whoever reads the life of Cyrus, written by Xenophon, will recognize afterwards in the life of Scipio how that imitation was his glory, and how in chastity, affability, humanity, and liberality Scipio conformed to those things which have been written of Cyrus by Xenophon. A wise prince ought to observe some such rules, and never in peaceful times stand idle, but increase his resources with industry in such a way that they may be available to him in adversity, so that if fortune chances it may find him prepared to resist her blows.<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 14&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XV. CONCERNING THINGS FOR WHICH MEN, AND ESPECIALLY PRINCES, ARE PRAISED OR BLAMED ===<br /> It remains now to see what ought to be the rules of conduct for a prince towards subject and friends. And as I know that many have written on this point, I expect I shall be considered presumptuous in mentioning it again, especially as in discussing it I shall depart from the methods of other people. But, it being my intention to write a thing which shall be useful to him who apprehends it, it appears to me more appropriate to follow up the real truth of the matter than the imagination of it; for many have pictured republics and principalities which in fact have never been known or seen, because how one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live, that he who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation; for a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil.<br /> <br /> Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity. Therefore, putting on one side imaginary things concerning a prince, and discussing those which are real, I say that all men when they are spoken of, and chiefly princes for being more highly placed, are remarkable for some of those qualities which bring them either blame or praise; and thus it is that one is reputed liberal, another miserly, using a Tuscan term (because an avaricious person in our language is still he who desires to possess by robbery, whilst we call one miserly who deprives himself too much of the use of his own); one is reputed generous, one rapacious; one cruel, one compassionate; one faithless, another faithful; one effeminate and cowardly, another bold and brave; one affable, another haughty; one lascivious, another chaste; one sincere, another cunning; one hard, another easy; one grave, another frivolous; one religious, another unbelieving, and the like. And I know that every one will confess that it would be most praiseworthy in a prince to exhibit all the above qualities that are considered good; but because they can neither be entirely possessed nor observed, for human conditions do not permit it, it is necessary for him to be sufficiently prudent that he may know how to avoid the reproach of those vices which would lose him his state; and also to keep himself, if it be possible, from those which would not lose him it; but this not being possible, he may with less hesitation abandon himself to them. And again, he need not make himself uneasy at incurring a reproach for those vices without which the state can only be saved with difficulty, for if everything is considered carefully, it will be found that something which looks like virtue, if followed, would be his ruin; whilst something else, which looks like vice, yet followed brings him security and prosperity.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XVI. CONCERNING LIBERALITY AND MEANNESS ===<br /> Commencing then with the first of the above-named characteristics, I say that it would be well to be reputed liberal. Nevertheless, liberality exercised in a way that does not bring you the reputation for it, injures you; for if one exercises it honestly and as it should be exercised, it may not become known, and you will not avoid the reproach of its opposite. Therefore, any one wishing to maintain among men the name of liberal is obliged to avoid no attribute of magnificence; so that a prince thus inclined will consume in such acts all his property, and will be compelled in the end, if he wish to maintain the name of liberal, to unduly weigh down his people, and tax them, and do everything he can to get money. This will soon make him odious to his subjects, and becoming poor he will be little valued by any one; thus, with his liberality, having offended many and rewarded few, he is affected by the very first trouble and imperilled by whatever may be the first danger; recognizing this himself, and wishing to draw back from it, he runs at once into the reproach of being miserly.<br /> <br /> Therefore, a prince, not being able to exercise this virtue of liberality in such a way that it is recognized, except to his cost, if he is wise he ought not to fear the reputation of being mean, for in time he will come to be more considered than if liberal, seeing that with his economy his revenues are enough, that he can defend himself against all attacks, and is able to engage in enterprises without burdening his people; thus it comes to pass that he exercises liberality towards all from whom he does not take, who are numberless, and meanness towards those to whom he does not give, who are few.<br /> <br /> We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed. Pope Julius the Second was assisted in reaching the papacy by a reputation for liberality, yet he did not strive afterwards to keep it up, when he made war on the King of France; and he made many wars without imposing any extraordinary tax on his subjects, for he supplied his additional expenses out of his long thriftiness. The present King of Spain would not have undertaken or conquered in so many enterprises if he had been reputed liberal. A prince, therefore, provided that he has not to rob his subjects, that he can defend himself, that he does not become poor and abject, that he is not forced to become rapacious, ought to hold of little account a reputation for being mean, for it is one of those vices which will enable him to govern.<br /> <br /> And if any one should say: Caesar obtained empire by liberality, and many others have reached the highest positions by having been liberal, and by being considered so, I answer: Either you are a prince in fact, or in a way to become one. In the first case this liberality is dangerous, in the second it is very necessary to be considered liberal; and Caesar was one of those who wished to become pre-eminent in Rome; but if he had survived after becoming so, and had not moderated his expenses, he would have destroyed his government. And if any one should reply: Many have been princes, and have done great things with armies, who have been considered very liberal, I reply: Either a prince spends that which is his own or his subjects’ or else that of others. In the first case he ought to be sparing, in the second he ought not to neglect any opportunity for liberality. And to the prince who goes forth with his army, supporting it by pillage, sack, and extortion, handling that which belongs to others, this liberality is necessary, otherwise he would not be followed by soldiers. And of that which is neither yours nor your subjects’ you can be a ready giver, as were Cyrus, Caesar, and Alexander; because it does not take away your reputation if you squander that of others, but adds to it; it is only squandering your own that injures you.<br /> <br /> And there is nothing wastes so rapidly as liberality, for even whilst you exercise it you lose the power to do so, and so become either poor or despised, or else, in avoiding poverty, rapacious and hated. And a prince should guard himself, above all things, against being despised and hated; and liberality leads you to both. Therefore it is wiser to have a reputation for meanness which brings reproach without hatred, than to be compelled through seeking a reputation for liberality to incur a name for rapacity which begets reproach with hatred.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XVII. CONCERNING CRUELTY AND CLEMENCY, AND WHETHER IT IS BETTER TO BE LOVED THAN FEARED ===<br /> Coming now to the other qualities mentioned above, I say that every prince ought to desire to be considered clement and not cruel. Nevertheless he ought to take care not to misuse this clemency. Cesare Borgia was considered cruel; notwithstanding, his cruelty reconciled the Romagna, unified it, and restored it to peace and loyalty. And if this be rightly considered, he will be seen to have been much more merciful than the Florentine people, who, to avoid a reputation for cruelty, permitted Pistoia to be destroyed.&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 17&quot;&gt;During the rioting between the Cancellieri and Panciatichi factions in 1502 and 1503.&lt;/ref&gt; Therefore a prince, so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal, ought not to mind the reproach of cruelty; because with a few examples he will be more merciful than those who, through too much mercy, allow disorders to arise, from which follow murders or robberies; for these are wont to injure the whole people, whilst those executions which originate with a prince offend the individual only.<br /> <br /> And of all princes, it is impossible for the new prince to avoid the imputation of cruelty, owing to new states being full of dangers. Hence Virgil, through the mouth of Dido, excuses the inhumanity of her reign owing to its being new, saying:&lt;blockquote&gt;“Res dura, et regni novitas me talia cogunt<br /> <br /> Moliri, et late fines custode tueri.”&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 17&quot;&gt;''... against my will, my fate''''A throne unsettled, and an infant state,''''Bid me defend my realms with all my pow’rs,''''And guard with these severities my shores.''Christopher Pitt.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Nevertheless he ought to be slow to believe and to act, nor should he himself show fear, but proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence may not make him incautious and too much distrust render him intolerable.<br /> <br /> Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life, and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you. And that prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected other precautions, is ruined; because friendships that are obtained by payments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied upon; and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women. But when it is necessary for him to proceed against the life of someone, he must do it on proper justification and for manifest cause, but above all things he must keep his hands off the property of others, because men more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. Besides, pretexts for taking away the property are never wanting; for he who has once begun to live by robbery will always find pretexts for seizing what belongs to others; but reasons for taking life, on the contrary, are more difficult to find and sooner lapse. But when a prince is with his army, and has under control a multitude of soldiers, then it is quite necessary for him to disregard the reputation of cruelty, for without it he would never hold his army united or disposed to its duties.<br /> <br /> Among the wonderful deeds of Hannibal this one is enumerated: that having led an enormous army, composed of many various races of men, to fight in foreign lands, no dissensions arose either among them or against the prince, whether in his bad or in his good fortune. This arose from nothing else than his inhuman cruelty, which, with his boundless valour, made him revered and terrible in the sight of his soldiers, but without that cruelty, his other virtues were not sufficient to produce this effect. And short-sighted writers admire his deeds from one point of view and from another condemn the principal cause of them. That it is true his other virtues would not have been sufficient for him may be proved by the case of Scipio, that most excellent man, not only of his own times but within the memory of man, against whom, nevertheless, his army rebelled in Spain; this arose from nothing but his too great forbearance, which gave his soldiers more license than is consistent with military discipline. For this he was upbraided in the Senate by Fabius Maximus, and called the corrupter of the Roman soldiery. The Locrians were laid waste by a legate of Scipio, yet they were not avenged by him, nor was the insolence of the legate punished, owing entirely to his easy nature. Insomuch that someone in the Senate, wishing to excuse him, said there were many men who knew much better how not to err than to correct the errors of others. This disposition, if he had been continued in the command, would have destroyed in time the fame and glory of Scipio; but, he being under the control of the Senate, this injurious characteristic not only concealed itself, but contributed to his glory.<br /> <br /> Returning to the question of being feared or loved, I come to the conclusion that, men loving according to their own will and fearing according to that of the prince, a wise prince should establish himself on that which is in his own control and not in that of others; he must endeavour only to avoid hatred, as is noted.<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 17&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XVIII. CONCERNING THE WAY IN WHICH PRINCES SHOULD KEEP FAITH&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 18&quot;&gt;“The present chapter has given greater offence than any other portion of Machiavelli’s writings.” Burd, “Il Principe,” p. 297.&lt;/ref&gt; ===<br /> Every one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity and not with craft. Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on their word. You must know there are two ways of contesting,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 18&quot;&gt;“Contesting,” ''i.e''. “striving for mastery.” Mr Burd points out that this passage is imitated directly from Cicero’s “De Officiis”: “Nam cum sint duo genera decertandi, unum per disceptationem, alterum per vim; cumque illud proprium sit hominis, hoc beluarum; confugiendum est ad posterius, si uti non licet superiore.”&lt;/ref&gt; the one by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to understand how to avail himself of the beast and the man. This has been figuratively taught to princes by ancient writers, who describe how Achilles and many other princes of old were given to the Centaur Chiron to nurse, who brought them up in his discipline; which means solely that, as they had for a teacher one who was half beast and half man, so it is necessary for a prince to know how to make use of both natures, and that one without the other is not durable. A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves. Those who rely simply on the lion do not understand what they are about. Therefore a wise lord cannot, nor ought he to, keep faith when such observance may be turned against him, and when the reasons that caused him to pledge it exist no longer. If men were entirely good this precept would not hold, but because they are bad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe it with them. Nor will there ever be wanting to a prince legitimate reasons to excuse this non-observance. Of this endless modern examples could be given, showing how many treaties and engagements have been made void and of no effect through the faithlessness of princes; and he who has known best how to employ the fox has succeeded best.<br /> <br /> But it is necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic, and to be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived. One recent example I cannot pass over in silence. Alexander the Sixth did nothing else but deceive men, nor ever thought of doing otherwise, and he always found victims; for there never was a man who had greater power in asserting, or who with greater oaths would affirm a thing, yet would observe it less; nevertheless his deceits always succeeded according to his wishes,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 18&quot;&gt;“Nondimanco sempre gli succederono gli inganni (ad votum).” The words “ad votum” are omitted in the Testina addition, 1550.&lt;/ref&gt; because he well understood this side of mankind.&lt;blockquote&gt;<br /> ''&lt;br /&gt;Alexander never did what he said, Cesare never said what he did.''<br /> <br /> Italian Proverb.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.<br /> <br /> And you have to understand this, that a prince, especially a new one, cannot observe all those things for which men are esteemed, being often forced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to fidelity,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 18&quot;&gt;“Contrary to fidelity” or “faith,” “contro alla fede,” and “tutto fede,” “altogether faithful,” in the next paragraph. It is noteworthy that these two phrases, “contro alla fede” and “tutto fede,” were omitted in the Testina edition, which was published with the sanction of the papal authorities. It may be that the meaning attached to the word “fede” was “the faith,” ''i.e''. the Catholic creed, and not as rendered here “fidelity” and “faithful.” Observe that the word “religione” was suffered to stand in the text of the Testina, being used to signify indifferently every shade of belief, as witness “the religion,” a phrase inevitably employed to designate the Huguenot heresy. South in his Sermon IX, p. 69, ed. 1843, comments on this passage as follows: “That great patron and Coryphaeus of this tribe, Nicolo Machiavel, laid down this for a master rule in his political scheme: ‘That the show of religion was helpful to the politician, but the reality of it hurtful and pernicious.’”&lt;/ref&gt; friendship, humanity, and religion. Therefore it is necessary for him to have a mind ready to turn itself accordingly as the winds and variations of fortune force it, yet, as I have said above, not to diverge from the good if he can avoid doing so, but, if compelled, then to know how to set about it.<br /> <br /> For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.<br /> <br /> For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody; because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on.<br /> <br /> One prince&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 18&quot;&gt;Ferdinand of Aragon. “When Machiavelli was writing ''The Prince'' it would have been clearly impossible to mention Ferdinand’s name here without giving offence.” Burd’s “Il Principe,” p. 308.&lt;/ref&gt; of the present time, whom it is not well to name, never preaches anything else but peace and good faith, and to both he is most hostile, and either, if he had kept it, would have deprived him of reputation and kingdom many a time.<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 18&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XIX. THAT ONE SHOULD AVOID BEING DESPISED AND HATED ===<br /> Now, concerning the characteristics of which mention is made above, I have spoken of the more important ones, the others I wish to discuss briefly under this generality, that the prince must consider, as has been in part said before, how to avoid those things which will make him hated or contemptible; and as often as he shall have succeeded he will have fulfilled his part, and he need not fear any danger in other reproaches.<br /> <br /> It makes him hated above all things, as I have said, to be rapacious, and to be a violator of the property and women of his subjects, from both of which he must abstain. And when neither their property nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content, and he has only to contend with the ambition of a few, whom he can curb with ease in many ways.<br /> <br /> It makes him contemptible to be considered fickle, frivolous, effeminate, mean-spirited, irresolute, from all of which a prince should guard himself as from a rock; and he should endeavour to show in his actions greatness, courage, gravity, and fortitude; and in his private dealings with his subjects let him show that his judgments are irrevocable, and maintain himself in such reputation that no one can hope either to deceive him or to get round him.<br /> <br /> That prince is highly esteemed who conveys this impression of himself, and he who is highly esteemed is not easily conspired against; for, provided it is well known that he is an excellent man and revered by his people, he can only be attacked with difficulty. For this reason a prince ought to have two fears, one from within, on account of his subjects, the other from without, on account of external powers. From the latter he is defended by being well armed and having good allies, and if he is well armed he will have good friends, and affairs will always remain quiet within when they are quiet without, unless they should have been already disturbed by conspiracy; and even should affairs outside be disturbed, if he has carried out his preparations and has lived as I have said, as long as he does not despair, he will resist every attack, as I said Nabis the Spartan did.<br /> <br /> But concerning his subjects, when affairs outside are disturbed he has only to fear that they will conspire secretly, from which a prince can easily secure himself by avoiding being hated and despised, and by keeping the people satisfied with him, which it is most necessary for him to accomplish, as I said above at length. And one of the most efficacious remedies that a prince can have against conspiracies is not to be hated and despised by the people, for he who conspires against a prince always expects to please them by his removal; but when the conspirator can only look forward to offending them, he will not have the courage to take such a course, for the difficulties that confront a conspirator are infinite. And as experience shows, many have been the conspiracies, but few have been successful; because he who conspires cannot act alone, nor can he take a companion except from those whom he believes to be malcontents, and as soon as you have opened your mind to a malcontent you have given him the material with which to content himself, for by denouncing you he can look for every advantage; so that, seeing the gain from this course to be assured, and seeing the other to be doubtful and full of dangers, he must be a very rare friend, or a thoroughly obstinate enemy of the prince, to keep faith with you.<br /> <br /> And, to reduce the matter into a small compass, I say that, on the side of the conspirator, there is nothing but fear, jealousy, prospect of punishment to terrify him; but on the side of the prince there is the majesty of the principality, the laws, the protection of friends and the state to defend him; so that, adding to all these things the popular goodwill, it is impossible that any one should be so rash as to conspire. For whereas in general the conspirator has to fear before the execution of his plot, in this case he has also to fear the sequel to the crime; because on account of it he has the people for an enemy, and thus cannot hope for any escape.<br /> <br /> Endless examples could be given on this subject, but I will be content with one, brought to pass within the memory of our fathers. Messer Annibale Bentivogli, who was prince in Bologna (grandfather of the present Annibale), having been murdered by the Canneschi, who had conspired against him, not one of his family survived but Messer Giovanni,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 19&quot;&gt;Giovanni Bentivogli, born in Bologna 1438, died at Milan 1508. He ruled Bologna from 1462 to 1506. Machiavelli’s strong condemnation of conspiracies may get its edge from his own very recent experience (February 1513), when he had been arrested and tortured for his alleged complicity in the Boscoli conspiracy.&lt;/ref&gt; who was in childhood: immediately after his assassination the people rose and murdered all the Canneschi. This sprung from the popular goodwill which the house of Bentivogli enjoyed in those days in Bologna; which was so great that, although none remained there after the death of Annibale who was able to rule the state, the Bolognese, having information that there was one of the Bentivogli family in Florence, who up to that time had been considered the son of a blacksmith, sent to Florence for him and gave him the government of their city, and it was ruled by him until Messer Giovanni came in due course to the government.<br /> <br /> For this reason I consider that a prince ought to reckon conspiracies of little account when his people hold him in esteem; but when it is hostile to him, and bears hatred towards him, he ought to fear everything and everybody. And well-ordered states and wise princes have taken every care not to drive the nobles to desperation, and to keep the people satisfied and contented, for this is one of the most important objects a prince can have.<br /> <br /> Among the best ordered and governed kingdoms of our times is France, and in it are found many good institutions on which depend the liberty and security of the king; of these the first is the parliament and its authority, because he who founded the kingdom, knowing the ambition of the nobility and their boldness, considered that a bit to their mouths would be necessary to hold them in; and, on the other side, knowing the hatred of the people, founded in fear, against the nobles, he wished to protect them, yet he was not anxious for this to be the particular care of the king; therefore, to take away the reproach which he would be liable to from the nobles for favouring the people, and from the people for favouring the nobles, he set up an arbiter, who should be one who could beat down the great and favour the lesser without reproach to the king. Neither could you have a better or a more prudent arrangement, or a greater source of security to the king and kingdom. From this one can draw another important conclusion, that princes ought to leave affairs of reproach to the management of others, and keep those of grace in their own hands. And further, I consider that a prince ought to cherish the nobles, but not so as to make himself hated by the people.<br /> <br /> It may appear, perhaps, to some who have examined the lives and deaths of the Roman emperors that many of them would be an example contrary to my opinion, seeing that some of them lived nobly and showed great qualities of soul, nevertheless they have lost their empire or have been killed by subjects who have conspired against them. Wishing, therefore, to answer these objections, I will recall the characters of some of the emperors, and will show that the causes of their ruin were not different to those alleged by me; at the same time I will only submit for consideration those things that are noteworthy to him who studies the affairs of those times.<br /> <br /> It seems to me sufficient to take all those emperors who succeeded to the empire from Marcus the philosopher down to Maximinus; they were Marcus and his son Commodus, Pertinax, Julian, Severus and his son Antoninus Caracalla, Macrinus, Heliogabalus, Alexander, and Maximinus.<br /> <br /> There is first to note that, whereas in other principalities the ambition of the nobles and the insolence of the people only have to be contended with, the Roman emperors had a third difficulty in having to put up with the cruelty and avarice of their soldiers, a matter so beset with difficulties that it was the ruin of many; for it was a hard thing to give satisfaction both to soldiers and people; because the people loved peace, and for this reason they loved the unaspiring prince, whilst the soldiers loved the warlike prince who was bold, cruel, and rapacious, which qualities they were quite willing he should exercise upon the people, so that they could get double pay and give vent to their own greed and cruelty. Hence it arose that those emperors were always overthrown who, either by birth or training, had no great authority, and most of them, especially those who came new to the principality, recognizing the difficulty of these two opposing humours, were inclined to give satisfaction to the soldiers, caring little about injuring the people. Which course was necessary, because, as princes cannot help being hated by someone, they ought, in the first place, to avoid being hated by every one, and when they cannot compass this, they ought to endeavour with the utmost diligence to avoid the hatred of the most powerful. Therefore, those emperors who through inexperience had need of special favour adhered more readily to the soldiers than to the people; a course which turned out advantageous to them or not, accordingly as the prince knew how to maintain authority over them.<br /> <br /> From these causes it arose that Marcus, Pertinax, and Alexander, being all men of modest life, lovers of justice, enemies to cruelty, humane, and benignant, came to a sad end except Marcus; he alone lived and died honoured, because he had succeeded to the throne by hereditary title, and owed nothing either to the soldiers or the people; and afterwards, being possessed of many virtues which made him respected, he always kept both orders in their places whilst he lived, and was neither hated nor despised.<br /> <br /> But Pertinax was created emperor against the wishes of the soldiers, who, being accustomed to live licentiously under Commodus, could not endure the honest life to which Pertinax wished to reduce them; thus, having given cause for hatred, to which hatred there was added contempt for his old age, he was overthrown at the very beginning of his administration. And here it should be noted that hatred is acquired as much by good works as by bad ones, therefore, as I said before, a prince wishing to keep his state is very often forced to do evil; for when that body is corrupt whom you think you have need of to maintain yourself—it may be either the people or the soldiers or the nobles—you have to submit to its humours and to gratify them, and then good works will do you harm.<br /> <br /> But let us come to Alexander, who was a man of such great goodness, that among the other praises which are accorded him is this, that in the fourteen years he held the empire no one was ever put to death by him unjudged; nevertheless, being considered effeminate and a man who allowed himself to be governed by his mother, he became despised, the army conspired against him, and murdered him.<br /> <br /> Turning now to the opposite characters of Commodus, Severus, Antoninus Caracalla, and Maximinus, you will find them all cruel and rapacious-men who, to satisfy their soldiers, did not hesitate to commit every kind of iniquity against the people; and all, except Severus, came to a bad end; but in Severus there was so much valour that, keeping the soldiers friendly, although the people were oppressed by him, he reigned successfully; for his valour made him so much admired in the sight of the soldiers and people that the latter were kept in a way astonished and awed and the former respectful and satisfied. And because the actions of this man, as a new prince, were great, I wish to show briefly that he knew well how to counterfeit the fox and the lion, which natures, as I said above, it is necessary for a prince to imitate.<br /> <br /> Knowing the sloth of the Emperor Julian, he persuaded the army in Sclavonia, of which he was captain, that it would be right to go to Rome and avenge the death of Pertinax, who had been killed by the praetorian soldiers; and under this pretext, without appearing to aspire to the throne, he moved the army on Rome, and reached Italy before it was known that he had started. On his arrival at Rome, the Senate, through fear, elected him emperor and killed Julian. After this there remained for Severus, who wished to make himself master of the whole empire, two difficulties; one in Asia, where Niger, head of the Asiatic army, had caused himself to be proclaimed emperor; the other in the west where Albinus was, who also aspired to the throne. And as he considered it dangerous to declare himself hostile to both, he decided to attack Niger and to deceive Albinus. To the latter he wrote that, being elected emperor by the Senate, he was willing to share that dignity with him and sent him the title of Caesar; and, moreover, that the Senate had made Albinus his colleague; which things were accepted by Albinus as true. But after Severus had conquered and killed Niger, and settled oriental affairs, he returned to Rome and complained to the Senate that Albinus, little recognizing the benefits that he had received from him, had by treachery sought to murder him, and for this ingratitude he was compelled to punish him. Afterwards he sought him out in France, and took from him his government and life. He who will, therefore, carefully examine the actions of this man will find him a most valiant lion and a most cunning fox; he will find him feared and respected by every one, and not hated by the army; and it need not be wondered at that he, a new man, was able to hold the empire so well, because his supreme renown always protected him from that hatred which the people might have conceived against him for his violence.<br /> <br /> But his son Antoninus was a most eminent man, and had very excellent qualities, which made him admirable in the sight of the people and acceptable to the soldiers, for he was a warlike man, most enduring of fatigue, a despiser of all delicate food and other luxuries, which caused him to be beloved by the armies. Nevertheless, his ferocity and cruelties were so great and so unheard of that, after endless single murders, he killed a large number of the people of Rome and all those of Alexandria. He became hated by the whole world, and also feared by those he had around him, to such an extent that he was murdered in the midst of his army by a centurion. And here it must be noted that such-like deaths, which are deliberately inflicted with a resolved and desperate courage, cannot be avoided by princes, because any one who does not fear to die can inflict them; but a prince may fear them the less because they are very rare; he has only to be careful not to do any grave injury to those whom he employs or has around him in the service of the state. Antoninus had not taken this care, but had contumeliously killed a brother of that centurion, whom also he daily threatened, yet retained in his bodyguard; which, as it turned out, was a rash thing to do, and proved the emperor’s ruin.<br /> <br /> But let us come to Commodus, to whom it should have been very easy to hold the empire, for, being the son of Marcus, he had inherited it, and he had only to follow in the footsteps of his father to please his people and soldiers; but, being by nature cruel and brutal, he gave himself up to amusing the soldiers and corrupting them, so that he might indulge his rapacity upon the people; on the other hand, not maintaining his dignity, often descending to the theatre to compete with gladiators, and doing other vile things, little worthy of the imperial majesty, he fell into contempt with the soldiers, and being hated by one party and despised by the other, he was conspired against and was killed.<br /> <br /> It remains to discuss the character of Maximinus. He was a very warlike man, and the armies, being disgusted with the effeminacy of Alexander, of whom I have already spoken, killed him and elected Maximinus to the throne. This he did not possess for long, for two things made him hated and despised; the one, his having kept sheep in Thrace, which brought him into contempt (it being well known to all, and considered a great indignity by every one), and the other, his having at the accession to his dominions deferred going to Rome and taking possession of the imperial seat; he had also gained a reputation for the utmost ferocity by having, through his prefects in Rome and elsewhere in the empire, practised many cruelties, so that the whole world was moved to anger at the meanness of his birth and to fear at his barbarity. First Africa rebelled, then the Senate with all the people of Rome, and all Italy conspired against him, to which may be added his own army; this latter, besieging Aquileia and meeting with difficulties in taking it, were disgusted with his cruelties, and fearing him less when they found so many against him, murdered him.<br /> <br /> I do not wish to discuss Heliogabalus, Macrinus, or Julian, who, being thoroughly contemptible, were quickly wiped out; but I will bring this discourse to a conclusion by saying that princes in our times have this difficulty of giving inordinate satisfaction to their soldiers in a far less degree, because, notwithstanding one has to give them some indulgence, that is soon done; none of these princes have armies that are veterans in the governance and administration of provinces, as were the armies of the Roman Empire; and whereas it was then more necessary to give satisfaction to the soldiers than to the people, it is now more necessary to all princes, except the Turk and the Soldan, to satisfy the people rather the soldiers, because the people are the more powerful.<br /> <br /> From the above I have excepted the Turk, who always keeps round him twelve thousand infantry and fifteen thousand cavalry on which depend the security and strength of the kingdom, and it is necessary that, putting aside every consideration for the people, he should keep them his friends. The kingdom of the Soldan is similar; being entirely in the hands of soldiers, it follows again that, without regard to the people, he must keep them his friends. But you must note that the state of the Soldan is unlike all other principalities, for the reason that it is like the Christian pontificate, which cannot be called either an hereditary or a newly formed principality; because the sons of the old prince are not the heirs, but he who is elected to that position by those who have authority, and the sons remain only noblemen. And this being an ancient custom, it cannot be called a new principality, because there are none of those difficulties in it that are met with in new ones; for although the prince is new, the constitution of the state is old, and it is framed so as to receive him as if he were its hereditary lord.<br /> <br /> But returning to the subject of our discourse, I say that whoever will consider it will acknowledge that either hatred or contempt has been fatal to the above-named emperors, and it will be recognized also how it happened that, a number of them acting in one way and a number in another, only one in each way came to a happy end and the rest to unhappy ones. Because it would have been useless and dangerous for Pertinax and Alexander, being new princes, to imitate Marcus, who was heir to the principality; and likewise it would have been utterly destructive to Caracalla, Commodus, and Maximinus to have imitated Severus, they not having sufficient valour to enable them to tread in his footsteps. Therefore a prince, new to the principality, cannot imitate the actions of Marcus, nor, again, is it necessary to follow those of Severus, but he ought to take from Severus those parts which are necessary to found his state, and from Marcus those which are proper and glorious to keep a state that may already be stable and firm.<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 19&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XX. ARE FORTRESSES, AND MANY OTHER THINGS TO WHICH PRINCES OFTEN RESORT, ADVANTAGEOUS OR HURTFUL? ===<br /> 1. Some princes, so as to hold securely the state, have disarmed their subjects; others have kept their subject towns distracted by factions; others have fostered enmities against themselves; others have laid themselves out to gain over those whom they distrusted in the beginning of their governments; some have built fortresses; some have overthrown and destroyed them. And although one cannot give a final judgment on all of these things unless one possesses the particulars of those states in which a decision has to be made, nevertheless I will speak as comprehensively as the matter of itself will admit.<br /> <br /> 2. There never was a new prince who has disarmed his subjects; rather when he has found them disarmed he has always armed them, because, by arming them, those arms become yours, those men who were distrusted become faithful, and those who were faithful are kept so, and your subjects become your adherents. And whereas all subjects cannot be armed, yet when those whom you do arm are benefited, the others can be handled more freely, and this difference in their treatment, which they quite understand, makes the former your dependents, and the latter, considering it to be necessary that those who have the most danger and service should have the most reward, excuse you. But when you disarm them, you at once offend them by showing that you distrust them, either for cowardice or for want of loyalty, and either of these opinions breeds hatred against you. And because you cannot remain unarmed, it follows that you turn to mercenaries, which are of the character already shown; even if they should be good they would not be sufficient to defend you against powerful enemies and distrusted subjects. Therefore, as I have said, a new prince in a new principality has always distributed arms. Histories are full of examples. But when a prince acquires a new state, which he adds as a province to his old one, then it is necessary to disarm the men of that state, except those who have been his adherents in acquiring it; and these again, with time and opportunity, should be rendered soft and effeminate; and matters should be managed in such a way that all the armed men in the state shall be your own soldiers who in your old state were living near you.<br /> <br /> 3. Our forefathers, and those who were reckoned wise, were accustomed to say that it was necessary to hold Pistoia by factions and Pisa by fortresses; and with this idea they fostered quarrels in some of their tributary towns so as to keep possession of them the more easily. This may have been well enough in those times when Italy was in a way balanced, but I do not believe that it can be accepted as a precept for to-day, because I do not believe that factions can ever be of use; rather it is certain that when the enemy comes upon you in divided cities you are quickly lost, because the weakest party will always assist the outside forces and the other will not be able to resist. The Venetians, moved, as I believe, by the above reasons, fostered the Guelph and Ghibelline factions in their tributary cities; and although they never allowed them to come to bloodshed, yet they nursed these disputes amongst them, so that the citizens, distracted by their differences, should not unite against them. Which, as we saw, did not afterwards turn out as expected, because, after the rout at Vaila, one party at once took courage and seized the state. Such methods argue, therefore, weakness in the prince, because these factions will never be permitted in a vigorous principality; such methods for enabling one the more easily to manage subjects are only useful in times of peace, but if war comes this policy proves fallacious.<br /> <br /> 4. Without doubt princes become great when they overcome the difficulties and obstacles by which they are confronted, and therefore fortune, especially when she desires to make a new prince great, who has a greater necessity to earn renown than an hereditary one, causes enemies to arise and form designs against him, in order that he may have the opportunity of overcoming them, and by them to mount higher, as by a ladder which his enemies have raised. For this reason many consider that a wise prince, when he has the opportunity, ought with craft to foster some animosity against himself, so that, having crushed it, his renown may rise higher.<br /> <br /> 5. Princes, especially new ones, have found more fidelity and assistance in those men who in the beginning of their rule were distrusted than among those who in the beginning were trusted. Pandolfo Petrucci, Prince of Siena, ruled his state more by those who had been distrusted than by others. But on this question one cannot speak generally, for it varies so much with the individual; I will only say this, that those men who at the commencement of a princedom have been hostile, if they are of a description to need assistance to support themselves, can always be gained over with the greatest ease, and they will be tightly held to serve the prince with fidelity, inasmuch as they know it to be very necessary for them to cancel by deeds the bad impression which he had formed of them; and thus the prince always extracts more profit from them than from those who, serving him in too much security, may neglect his affairs. And since the matter demands it, I must not fail to warn a prince, who by means of secret favours has acquired a new state, that he must well consider the reasons which induced those to favour him who did so; and if it be not a natural affection towards him, but only discontent with their government, then he will only keep them friendly with great trouble and difficulty, for it will be impossible to satisfy them. And weighing well the reasons for this in those examples which can be taken from ancient and modern affairs, we shall find that it is easier for the prince to make friends of those men who were contented under the former government, and are therefore his enemies, than of those who, being discontented with it, were favourable to him and encouraged him to seize it.<br /> <br /> 6. It has been a custom with princes, in order to hold their states more securely, to build fortresses that may serve as a bridle and bit to those who might design to work against them, and as a place of refuge from a first attack. I praise this system because it has been made use of formerly. Notwithstanding that, Messer Nicolo Vitelli in our times has been seen to demolish two fortresses in Citta di Castello so that he might keep that state; Guido Ubaldo, Duke of Urbino, on returning to his dominion, whence he had been driven by Cesare Borgia, razed to the foundations all the fortresses in that province, and considered that without them it would be more difficult to lose it; the Bentivogli returning to Bologna came to a similar decision. Fortresses, therefore, are useful or not according to circumstances; if they do you good in one way they injure you in another. And this question can be reasoned thus: the prince who has more to fear from the people than from foreigners ought to build fortresses, but he who has more to fear from foreigners than from the people ought to leave them alone. The castle of Milan, built by Francesco Sforza, has made, and will make, more trouble for the house of Sforza than any other disorder in the state. For this reason the best possible fortress is—not to be hated by the people, because, although you may hold the fortresses, yet they will not save you if the people hate you, for there will never be wanting foreigners to assist a people who have taken arms against you. It has not been seen in our times that such fortresses have been of use to any prince, unless to the Countess of Forli,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 20&quot;&gt;Catherine Sforza, a daughter of Galeazzo Sforza and Lucrezia Landriani, born 1463, died 1509. It was to the Countess of Forli that Machiavelli was sent as envoy on 1499. A letter from Fortunati to the countess announces the appointment: “I have been with the signori,” wrote Fortunati, “to learn whom they would send and when. They tell me that Nicolo Machiavelli, a learned young Florentine noble, secretary to my Lords of the Ten, is to leave with me at once.” ''Cf''. “Catherine Sforza,” by Count Pasolini, translated by P. Sylvester, 1898.&lt;/ref&gt; when the Count Girolamo, her consort, was killed; for by that means she was able to withstand the popular attack and wait for assistance from Milan, and thus recover her state; and the posture of affairs was such at that time that the foreigners could not assist the people. But fortresses were of little value to her afterwards when Cesare Borgia attacked her, and when the people, her enemy, were allied with foreigners. Therefore, it would have been safer for her, both then and before, not to have been hated by the people than to have had the fortresses. All these things considered then, I shall praise him who builds fortresses as well as him who does not, and I shall blame whoever, trusting in them, cares little about being hated by the people.<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 20&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XXI. HOW A PRINCE SHOULD CONDUCT HIMSELF SO AS TO GAIN RENOWN ===<br /> Nothing makes a prince so much esteemed as great enterprises and setting a fine example. We have in our time Ferdinand of Aragon, the present King of Spain. He can almost be called a new prince, because he has risen, by fame and glory, from being an insignificant king to be the foremost king in Christendom; and if you will consider his deeds you will find them all great and some of them extraordinary. In the beginning of his reign he attacked Granada, and this enterprise was the foundation of his dominions. He did this quietly at first and without any fear of hindrance, for he held the minds of the barons of Castile occupied in thinking of the war and not anticipating any innovations; thus they did not perceive that by these means he was acquiring power and authority over them. He was able with the money of the Church and of the people to sustain his armies, and by that long war to lay the foundation for the military skill which has since distinguished him. Further, always using religion as a plea, so as to undertake greater schemes, he devoted himself with pious cruelty to driving out and clearing his kingdom of the Moors; nor could there be a more admirable example, nor one more rare. Under this same cloak he assailed Africa, he came down on Italy, he has finally attacked France; and thus his achievements and designs have always been great, and have kept the minds of his people in suspense and admiration and occupied with the issue of them. And his actions have arisen in such a way, one out of the other, that men have never been given time to work steadily against him.<br /> <br /> Again, it much assists a prince to set unusual examples in internal affairs, similar to those which are related of Messer Bernabo da Milano, who, when he had the opportunity, by any one in civil life doing some extraordinary thing, either good or bad, would take some method of rewarding or punishing him, which would be much spoken about. And a prince ought, above all things, always endeavour in every action to gain for himself the reputation of being a great and remarkable man.<br /> <br /> A prince is also respected when he is either a true friend or a downright enemy, that is to say, when, without any reservation, he declares himself in favour of one party against the other; which course will always be more advantageous than standing neutral; because if two of your powerful neighbours come to blows, they are of such a character that, if one of them conquers, you have either to fear him or not. In either case it will always be more advantageous for you to declare yourself and to make war strenuously; because, in the first case, if you do not declare yourself, you will invariably fall a prey to the conqueror, to the pleasure and satisfaction of him who has been conquered, and you will have no reasons to offer, nor anything to protect or to shelter you. Because he who conquers does not want doubtful friends who will not aid him in the time of trial; and he who loses will not harbour you because you did not willingly, sword in hand, court his fate.<br /> <br /> Antiochus went into Greece, being sent for by the Ætolians to drive out the Romans. He sent envoys to the Achaeans, who were friends of the Romans, exhorting them to remain neutral; and on the other hand the Romans urged them to take up arms. This question came to be discussed in the council of the Achaeans, where the legate of Antiochus urged them to stand neutral. To this the Roman legate answered: “As for that which has been said, that it is better and more advantageous for your state not to interfere in our war, nothing can be more erroneous; because by not interfering you will be left, without favour or consideration, the guerdon of the conqueror.” Thus it will always happen that he who is not your friend will demand your neutrality, whilst he who is your friend will entreat you to declare yourself with arms. And irresolute princes, to avoid present dangers, generally follow the neutral path, and are generally ruined. But when a prince declares himself gallantly in favour of one side, if the party with whom he allies himself conquers, although the victor may be powerful and may have him at his mercy, yet he is indebted to him, and there is established a bond of amity; and men are never so shameless as to become a monument of ingratitude by oppressing you. Victories after all are never so complete that the victor must not show some regard, especially to justice. But if he with whom you ally yourself loses, you may be sheltered by him, and whilst he is able he may aid you, and you become companions on a fortune that may rise again.<br /> <br /> In the second case, when those who fight are of such a character that you have no anxiety as to who may conquer, so much the more is it greater prudence to be allied, because you assist at the destruction of one by the aid of another who, if he had been wise, would have saved him; and conquering, as it is impossible that he should not do with your assistance, he remains at your discretion. And here it is to be noted that a prince ought to take care never to make an alliance with one more powerful than himself for the purposes of attacking others, unless necessity compels him, as is said above; because if he conquers you are at his discretion, and princes ought to avoid as much as possible being at the discretion of any one. The Venetians joined with France against the Duke of Milan, and this alliance, which caused their ruin, could have been avoided. But when it cannot be avoided, as happened to the Florentines when the Pope and Spain sent armies to attack Lombardy, then in such a case, for the above reasons, the prince ought to favour one of the parties.<br /> <br /> Never let any Government imagine that it can choose perfectly safe courses; rather let it expect to have to take very doubtful ones, because it is found in ordinary affairs that one never seeks to avoid one trouble without running into another; but prudence consists in knowing how to distinguish the character of troubles, and for choice to take the lesser evil.<br /> <br /> A prince ought also to show himself a patron of ability, and to honour the proficient in every art. At the same time he should encourage his citizens to practise their callings peaceably, both in commerce and agriculture, and in every other following, so that the one should not be deterred from improving his possessions for fear lest they be taken away from him or another from opening up trade for fear of taxes; but the prince ought to offer rewards to whoever wishes to do these things and designs in any way to honour his city or state.<br /> <br /> Further, he ought to entertain the people with festivals and spectacles at convenient seasons of the year; and as every city is divided into guilds or into societies,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 21&quot;&gt;“Guilds or societies,” “in arti o in tribu.” “Arti” were craft or trade guilds, ''cf''. Florio: “Arte . . . a whole company of any trade in any city or corporation town.” The guilds of Florence are most admirably described by Mr Edgcumbe Staley in his work on the subject (Methuen, 1906). Institutions of a somewhat similar character, called “artel,” exist in Russia to-day, ''cf''. Sir Mackenzie Wallace’s “Russia,” ed. 1905: “The sons . . . were always during the working season members of an artel. In some of the larger towns there are artels of a much more complex kind— permanent associations, possessing large capital, and pecuniarily responsible for the acts of the individual members.” The word “artel,” despite its apparent similarity, has, Mr Aylmer Maude assures me, no connection with “ars” or “arte.” Its root is that of the verb “rotisya,” to bind oneself by an oath; and it is generally admitted to be only another form of “rota,” which now signifies a “regimental company.” In both words the underlying idea is that of a body of men united by an oath. “Tribu” were possibly gentile groups, united by common descent, and included individuals connected by marriage. Perhaps our words “sects” or “clans” would be most appropriate.&lt;/ref&gt; he ought to hold such bodies in esteem, and associate with them sometimes, and show himself an example of courtesy and liberality; nevertheless, always maintaining the majesty of his rank, for this he must never consent to abate in anything.<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 21&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XXII. CONCERNING THE SECRETARIES OF PRINCES ===<br /> The choice of servants is of no little importance to a prince, and they are good or not according to the discrimination of the prince. And the first opinion which one forms of a prince, and of his understanding, is by observing the men he has around him; and when they are capable and faithful he may always be considered wise, because he has known how to recognize the capable and to keep them faithful. But when they are otherwise one cannot form a good opinion of him, for the prime error which he made was in choosing them.<br /> <br /> There were none who knew Messer Antonio da Venafro as the servant of Pandolfo Petrucci, Prince of Siena, who would not consider Pandolfo to be a very clever man in having Venafro for his servant. Because there are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehended; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless. Therefore, it follows necessarily that, if Pandolfo was not in the first rank, he was in the second, for whenever one has judgment to know good and bad when it is said and done, although he himself may not have the initiative, yet he can recognize the good and the bad in his servant, and the one he can praise and the other correct; thus the servant cannot hope to deceive him, and is kept honest.<br /> <br /> But to enable a prince to form an opinion of his servant there is one test which never fails; when you see the servant thinking more of his own interests than of yours, and seeking inwardly his own profit in everything, such a man will never make a good servant, nor will you ever be able to trust him; because he who has the state of another in his hands ought never to think of himself, but always of his prince, and never pay any attention to matters in which the prince is not concerned.<br /> <br /> On the other hand, to keep his servant honest the prince ought to study him, honouring him, enriching him, doing him kindnesses, sharing with him the honours and cares; and at the same time let him see that he cannot stand alone, so that many honours may not make him desire more, many riches make him wish for more, and that many cares may make him dread chances. When, therefore, servants, and princes towards servants, are thus disposed, they can trust each other, but when it is otherwise, the end will always be disastrous for either one or the other.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XXIII. HOW FLATTERERS SHOULD BE AVOIDED ===<br /> I do not wish to leave out an important branch of this subject, for it is a danger from which princes are with difficulty preserved, unless they are very careful and discriminating. It is that of flatterers, of whom courts are full, because men are so self-complacent in their own affairs, and in a way so deceived in them, that they are preserved with difficulty from this pest, and if they wish to defend themselves they run the danger of falling into contempt. Because there is no other way of guarding oneself from flatterers except letting men understand that to tell you the truth does not offend you; but when every one may tell you the truth, respect for you abates.<br /> <br /> Therefore a wise prince ought to hold a third course by choosing the wise men in his state, and giving to them only the liberty of speaking the truth to him, and then only of those things of which he inquires, and of none others; but he ought to question them upon everything, and listen to their opinions, and afterwards form his own conclusions. With these councillors, separately and collectively, he ought to carry himself in such a way that each of them should know that, the more freely he shall speak, the more he shall be preferred; outside of these, he should listen to no one, pursue the thing resolved on, and be steadfast in his resolutions. He who does otherwise is either overthrown by flatterers, or is so often changed by varying opinions that he falls into contempt.<br /> <br /> I wish on this subject to adduce a modern example. Fra Luca, the man of affairs to Maximilian,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 23&quot;&gt;Maximilian I, born in 1459, died 1519, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. He married, first, Mary, daughter of Charles the Bold; after her death, Bianca Sforza; and thus became involved in Italian politics.&lt;/ref&gt; the present emperor, speaking of his majesty, said: He consulted with no one, yet never got his own way in anything. This arose because of his following a practice the opposite to the above; for the emperor is a secretive man—he does not communicate his designs to any one, nor does he receive opinions on them. But as in carrying them into effect they become revealed and known, they are at once obstructed by those men whom he has around him, and he, being pliant, is diverted from them. Hence it follows that those things he does one day he undoes the next, and no one ever understands what he wishes or intends to do, and no one can rely on his resolutions.<br /> <br /> A prince, therefore, ought always to take counsel, but only when he wishes and not when others wish; he ought rather to discourage every one from offering advice unless he asks it; but, however, he ought to be a constant inquirer, and afterwards a patient listener concerning the things of which he inquired; also, on learning that any one, on any consideration, has not told him the truth, he should let his anger be felt.<br /> <br /> And if there are some who think that a prince who conveys an impression of his wisdom is not so through his own ability, but through the good advisers that he has around him, beyond doubt they are deceived, because this is an axiom which never fails: that a prince who is not wise himself will never take good advice, unless by chance he has yielded his affairs entirely to one person who happens to be a very prudent man. In this case indeed he may be well governed, but it would not be for long, because such a governor would in a short time take away his state from him.<br /> <br /> But if a prince who is not inexperienced should take counsel from more than one he will never get united counsels, nor will he know how to unite them. Each of the counsellors will think of his own interests, and the prince will not know how to control them or to see through them. And they are not to be found otherwise, because men will always prove untrue to you unless they are kept honest by constraint. Therefore it must be inferred that good counsels, whencesoever they come, are born of the wisdom of the prince, and not the wisdom of the prince from good counsels.<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 23&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XXIV. WHY THE PRINCES OF ITALY HAVE LOST THEIR STATES ===<br /> The previous suggestions, carefully observed, will enable a new prince to appear well established, and render him at once more secure and fixed in the state than if he had been long seated there. For the actions of a new prince are more narrowly observed than those of an hereditary one, and when they are seen to be able they gain more men and bind far tighter than ancient blood; because men are attracted more by the present than by the past, and when they find the present good they enjoy it and seek no further; they will also make the utmost defence of a prince if he fails them not in other things. Thus it will be a double glory for him to have established a new principality, and adorned and strengthened it with good laws, good arms, good allies, and with a good example; so will it be a double disgrace to him who, born a prince, shall lose his state by want of wisdom.<br /> <br /> And if those seigniors are considered who have lost their states in Italy in our times, such as the King of Naples, the Duke of Milan, and others, there will be found in them, firstly, one common defect in regard to arms from the causes which have been discussed at length; in the next place, some one of them will be seen, either to have had the people hostile, or if he has had the people friendly, he has not known how to secure the nobles. In the absence of these defects states that have power enough to keep an army in the field cannot be lost.<br /> <br /> Philip of Macedon, not the father of Alexander the Great, but he who was conquered by Titus Quintius, had not much territory compared to the greatness of the Romans and of Greece who attacked him, yet being a warlike man who knew how to attract the people and secure the nobles, he sustained the war against his enemies for many years, and if in the end he lost the dominion of some cities, nevertheless he retained the kingdom.<br /> <br /> Therefore, do not let our princes accuse fortune for the loss of their principalities after so many years’ possession, but rather their own sloth, because in quiet times they never thought there could be a change (it is a common defect in man not to make any provision in the calm against the tempest), and when afterwards the bad times came they thought of flight and not of defending themselves, and they hoped that the people, disgusted with the insolence of the conquerors, would recall them. This course, when others fail, may be good, but it is very bad to have neglected all other expedients for that, since you would never wish to fall because you trusted to be able to find someone later on to restore you. This again either does not happen, or, if it does, it will not be for your security, because that deliverance is of no avail which does not depend upon yourself; those only are reliable, certain, and durable that depend on yourself and your valour.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XXV. WHAT FORTUNE CAN EFFECT IN HUMAN AFFAIRS AND HOW TO WITHSTAND HER ===<br /> It is not unknown to me how many men have had, and still have, the opinion that the affairs of the world are in such wise governed by fortune and by God that men with their wisdom cannot direct them and that no one can even help them; and because of this they would have us believe that it is not necessary to labour much in affairs, but to let chance govern them. This opinion has been more credited in our times because of the great changes in affairs which have been seen, and may still be seen, every day, beyond all human conjecture. Sometimes pondering over this, I am in some degree inclined to their opinion. Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 25&quot;&gt;Frederick the Great was accustomed to say: “The older one gets the more convinced one becomes that his Majesty King Chance does three-quarters of the business of this miserable universe.” Sorel’s “Eastern Question.”&lt;/ref&gt; but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less.<br /> <br /> I compare her to one of those raging rivers, which when in flood overflows the plains, sweeping away trees and buildings, bearing away the soil from place to place; everything flies before it, all yield to its violence, without being able in any way to withstand it; and yet, though its nature be such, it does not follow therefore that men, when the weather becomes fair, shall not make provision, both with defences and barriers, in such a manner that, rising again, the waters may pass away by canal, and their force be neither so unrestrained nor so dangerous. So it happens with fortune, who shows her power where valour has not prepared to resist her, and thither she turns her forces where she knows that barriers and defences have not been raised to constrain her.<br /> <br /> And if you will consider Italy, which is the seat of these changes, and which has given to them their impulse, you will see it to be an open country without barriers and without any defence. For if it had been defended by proper valour, as are Germany, Spain, and France, either this invasion would not have made the great changes it has made or it would not have come at all. And this I consider enough to say concerning resistance to fortune in general.<br /> <br /> But confining myself more to the particular, I say that a prince may be seen happy to-day and ruined to-morrow without having shown any change of disposition or character. This, I believe, arises firstly from causes that have already been discussed at length, namely, that the prince who relies entirely on fortune is lost when it changes. I believe also that he will be successful who directs his actions according to the spirit of the times, and that he whose actions do not accord with the times will not be successful. Because men are seen, in affairs that lead to the end which every man has before him, namely, glory and riches, to get there by various methods; one with caution, another with haste; one by force, another by skill; one by patience, another by its opposite; and each one succeeds in reaching the goal by a different method. One can also see of two cautious men the one attain his end, the other fail; and similarly, two men by different observances are equally successful, the one being cautious, the other impetuous; all this arises from nothing else than whether or not they conform in their methods to the spirit of the times. This follows from what I have said, that two men working differently bring about the same effect, and of two working similarly, one attains his object and the other does not.<br /> <br /> Changes in estate also issue from this, for if, to one who governs himself with caution and patience, times and affairs converge in such a way that his administration is successful, his fortune is made; but if times and affairs change, he is ruined if he does not change his course of action. But a man is not often found sufficiently circumspect to know how to accommodate himself to the change, both because he cannot deviate from what nature inclines him to do, and also because, having always prospered by acting in one way, he cannot be persuaded that it is well to leave it; and, therefore, the cautious man, when it is time to turn adventurous, does not know how to do it, hence he is ruined; but had he changed his conduct with the times fortune would not have changed.<br /> <br /> Pope Julius the Second went to work impetuously in all his affairs, and found the times and circumstances conform so well to that line of action that he always met with success. Consider his first enterprise against Bologna, Messer Giovanni Bentivogli being still alive. The Venetians were not agreeable to it, nor was the King of Spain, and he had the enterprise still under discussion with the King of France; nevertheless he personally entered upon the expedition with his accustomed boldness and energy, a move which made Spain and the Venetians stand irresolute and passive, the latter from fear, the former from desire to recover the kingdom of Naples; on the other hand, he drew after him the King of France, because that king, having observed the movement, and desiring to make the Pope his friend so as to humble the Venetians, found it impossible to refuse him. Therefore Julius with his impetuous action accomplished what no other pontiff with simple human wisdom could have done; for if he had waited in Rome until he could get away, with his plans arranged and everything fixed, as any other pontiff would have done, he would never have succeeded. Because the King of France would have made a thousand excuses, and the others would have raised a thousand fears.<br /> <br /> I will leave his other actions alone, as they were all alike, and they all succeeded, for the shortness of his life did not let him experience the contrary; but if circumstances had arisen which required him to go cautiously, his ruin would have followed, because he would never have deviated from those ways to which nature inclined him.<br /> <br /> I conclude, therefore that, fortune being changeful and mankind steadfast in their ways, so long as the two are in agreement men are successful, but unsuccessful when they fall out. For my part I consider that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is, therefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her.<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 25&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XXVI. AN EXHORTATION TO LIBERATE ITALY FROM THE BARBARIANS ===<br /> Having carefully considered the subject of the above discourses, and wondering within myself whether the present times were propitious to a new prince, and whether there were elements that would give an opportunity to a wise and virtuous one to introduce a new order of things which would do honour to him and good to the people of this country, it appears to me that so many things concur to favour a new prince that I never knew a time more fit than the present.<br /> <br /> And if, as I said, it was necessary that the people of Israel should be captive so as to make manifest the ability of Moses; that the Persians should be oppressed by the Medes so as to discover the greatness of the soul of Cyrus; and that the Athenians should be dispersed to illustrate the capabilities of Theseus: then at the present time, in order to discover the virtue of an Italian spirit, it was necessary that Italy should be reduced to the extremity that she is now in, that she should be more enslaved than the Hebrews, more oppressed than the Persians, more scattered than the Athenians; without head, without order, beaten, despoiled, torn, overrun; and to have endured every kind of desolation.<br /> <br /> Although lately some spark may have been shown by one, which made us think he was ordained by God for our redemption, nevertheless it was afterwards seen, in the height of his career, that fortune rejected him; so that Italy, left as without life, waits for him who shall yet heal her wounds and put an end to the ravaging and plundering of Lombardy, to the swindling and taxing of the kingdom and of Tuscany, and cleanse those sores that for long have festered. It is seen how she entreats God to send someone who shall deliver her from these wrongs and barbarous insolencies. It is seen also that she is ready and willing to follow a banner if only someone will raise it.<br /> <br /> Nor is there to be seen at present one in whom she can place more hope than in your illustrious house,&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 26&quot;&gt;Giuliano de Medici. He had just been created a cardinal by Leo X. In 1523 Giuliano was elected Pope, and took the title of Clement VII.&lt;/ref&gt; with its valour and fortune, favoured by God and by the Church of which it is now the chief, and which could be made the head of this redemption. This will not be difficult if you will recall to yourself the actions and lives of the men I have named. And although they were great and wonderful men, yet they were men, and each one of them had no more opportunity than the present offers, for their enterprises were neither more just nor easier than this, nor was God more their friend than He is yours.<br /> <br /> With us there is great justice, because that war is just which is necessary, and arms are hallowed when there is no other hope but in them. Here there is the greatest willingness, and where the willingness is great the difficulties cannot be great if you will only follow those men to whom I have directed your attention. Further than this, how extraordinarily the ways of God have been manifested beyond example: the sea is divided, a cloud has led the way, the rock has poured forth water, it has rained manna, everything has contributed to your greatness; you ought to do the rest. God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.<br /> <br /> And it is not to be wondered at if none of the above-named Italians have been able to accomplish all that is expected from your illustrious house; and if in so many revolutions in Italy, and in so many campaigns, it has always appeared as if military virtue were exhausted, this has happened because the old order of things was not good, and none of us have known how to find a new one. And nothing honours a man more than to establish new laws and new ordinances when he himself was newly risen. Such things when they are well founded and dignified will make him revered and admired, and in Italy there are not wanting opportunities to bring such into use in every form.<br /> <br /> Here there is great valour in the limbs whilst it fails in the head. Look attentively at the duels and the hand-to-hand combats, how superior the Italians are in strength, dexterity, and subtlety. But when it comes to armies they do not bear comparison, and this springs entirely from the insufficiency of the leaders, since those who are capable are not obedient, and each one seems to himself to know, there having never been any one so distinguished above the rest, either by valour or fortune, that others would yield to him. Hence it is that for so long a time, and during so much fighting in the past twenty years, whenever there has been an army wholly Italian, it has always given a poor account of itself; the first witness to this is Il Taro, afterwards Allesandria, Capua, Genoa, Vaila, Bologna, Mestri.&lt;ref group=&quot;chapter 26&quot;&gt;The battles of Il Taro, 1495; Alessandria, 1499; Capua, 1501; Genoa, 1507; Vaila, 1509; Bologna, 1511; Mestri, 1513.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> If, therefore, your illustrious house wishes to follow these remarkable men who have redeemed their country, it is necessary before all things, as a true foundation for every enterprise, to be provided with your own forces, because there can be no more faithful, truer, or better soldiers. And although singly they are good, altogether they will be much better when they find themselves commanded by their prince, honoured by him, and maintained at his expense. Therefore it is necessary to be prepared with such arms, so that you can be defended against foreigners by Italian valour.<br /> <br /> And although Swiss and Spanish infantry may be considered very formidable, nevertheless there is a defect in both, by reason of which a third order would not only be able to oppose them, but might be relied upon to overthrow them. For the Spaniards cannot resist cavalry, and the Switzers are afraid of infantry whenever they encounter them in close combat. Owing to this, as has been and may again be seen, the Spaniards are unable to resist French cavalry, and the Switzers are overthrown by Spanish infantry. And although a complete proof of this latter cannot be shown, nevertheless there was some evidence of it at the battle of Ravenna, when the Spanish infantry were confronted by German battalions, who follow the same tactics as the Swiss; when the Spaniards, by agility of body and with the aid of their shields, got in under the pikes of the Germans and stood out of danger, able to attack, while the Germans stood helpless, and, if the cavalry had not dashed up, all would have been over with them. It is possible, therefore, knowing the defects of both these infantries, to invent a new one, which will resist cavalry and not be afraid of infantry; this need not create a new order of arms, but a variation upon the old. And these are the kind of improvements which confer reputation and power upon a new prince.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> This opportunity, therefore, ought not to be allowed to pass for letting Italy at last see her liberator appear. Nor can one express the love with which he would be received in all those provinces which have suffered so much from these foreign scourings, with what thirst for revenge, with what stubborn faith, with what devotion, with what tears. What door would be closed to him? Who would refuse obedience to him? What envy would hinder him? What Italian would refuse him homage? To all of us this barbarous dominion stinks. Let, therefore, your illustrious house take up this charge with that courage and hope with which all just enterprises are undertaken, so that under its standard our native country may be ennobled, and under its auspices may be verified that saying of Petrarch:&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;''Virtu contro al Furore''<br /> <br /> ''   Prendera l’arme, e fia il combatter corto:''<br /> <br /> ''Che l’antico valore''<br /> <br /> ''   Negli italici cuor non e ancor morto.''<br /> <br /> ''&lt;br /&gt;Virtue against fury shall advance the fight,''<br /> <br /> ''   And it i’ th’ combat soon shall put to flight:''<br /> <br /> ''For the old Roman valour is not dead,''<br /> <br /> ''   Nor in th’ Italians’ brests extinguished.''<br /> <br /> Edward Dacre, 1640&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== Footnotes ====<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;chapter 26&quot; /&gt;<br /> [[Category:Library works by Nicolo Machiavelli]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about geopolitics]]<br /> [[Category:Library works by non-marxists and other authors]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Debt_the_first_5000_years&diff=76007 2024-09-30T12:47:00Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Debt: The first 5000 years|author=David Graeber|publisher=Melville House Publishing|published_date=2011|type=Book|isbn=978-1-933633-86-2|source=[https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/special/statesofdamage/syllabus201516/graeber-debt_the_first_5000_years.pdf warwick]|summary=This book explores the role debt has played in shaping human history, from ancient civilizations to modern societies, debunking the conventional economic narratives that money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems.}}<br /> <br /> == Chapter one: On the experience of moral confusion ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;debt<br /> <br /> • noun 1 a sum of money owed. 2 the state of owing money. 3 a feeling of gratitude for a favour or service.<br /> <br /> -Oxford English Dictionary<br /> <br /> If you owe the bank a hundred thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a hundred million dollars, you own the bank.<br /> <br /> -American Proverb&lt;/blockquote&gt;TWO YEARS AGO, by a series of strange coincidences, I found myself attending a garden party at Westminster Abbey. I was a bit uncomfortable. It's not that other guests weren't pleasant and amicable, and Father Graeme, who had organized the party, was nothing if not a gracious and charming host. But I felt more than a little out of place. At one point, Father Graeme intervened, saying that there was someone by a nearby fountain whom I would certainly want to meet. She turned out to be a trim, well-appointed young woman who, he explained, was an attorney-&quot;but more of the activist kind. She works for a foundation that provides legal support for anti-poverty groups in London. You'll probably have a lot to talk about. &quot;<br /> <br /> We chatted. She told me about her job. I told her I had been involved for many years with the global justice movement-&quot;anti-globalization movement, &quot; as it was usually called in the media. She was curious: she'd of course read a lot about Seattle, Genoa, the tear gas and street battles, but ...well, had we really accomplished anything by all of that?<br /> <br /> &quot;Actually, &quot; I said, &quot;I think it's kind of amazing how much we did manage to accomplish in those first couple of years. &quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;For example?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Well, for example, we managed to almost completely destroy the IMF.&quot;<br /> <br /> As it happened, she didn't actually know what the IMF was, so I offered that the International Monetary Fund basically acted as the world's debt enforcers-&quot;You might say, the high-finance equivalent of the guys who come to break your legs.&quot; I launched into historical background, explaining how, during the '7os oil crisis, OPEC countries ended up pouring so much of their newfound riches into Western banks that the banks couldn't figure out where to invest the money; how Citibank and Chase therefore began sending agents around the world trying to convince Third World dictators and politicians to take out loans (at the time, this was called &quot;go-go banking&quot;); how they started out at extremely low rates of interest that almost immediately skyrocketed to 20 percent or so due to tight U.S. money policies in the early '8os; how, during the '8os and '9os, this led to the Third World debt crisis; how the IMF then stepped in to insist that, in order to obtain refinancing, poor countries would be obliged to abandon price supports on basic foodstuffs, or even policies of keeping strategic food reserves, and abandon free health care and free education; how all of this had led to the collapse of all the most basic supports for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on earth. I spoke of poverty, of the looting of public resources, the collapse of societies, endemic violence, malnutrition, hopelessness, and broken lives.<br /> <br /> &quot;But what was your position?&quot; the lawyer asked.<br /> <br /> &quot;About the IMF? We wanted to abolish it.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;No, I mean, about the Third World debt.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Oh, we wanted to abolish that too. The immediate demand was to stop the IMF from imposing structural adjustment policies, which were doing all the direct damage, but we managed to accomplish that surprisingly quickly. The more long-term aim was debt amnesty. Something along the lines of the biblical Jubilee. As far as we were concerned,&quot; I told her, &quot;thirty years of money flowing from the poorest countries to the richest was quite enough. &quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;But,&quot; she objected, as if this were self-evident, &quot;they'd borrowed the money! Surely one has to pay one's debts. &quot;<br /> <br /> It was at this point that I realized this was going to be a very different sort of conversation than I had originally anticipated.<br /> <br /> Where to start? I could have begun by explaining how these loans had originally been taken out by unelected dictators who placed most of it directly in their Swiss bank accounts, and ask her to contemplate the justice of insisting that the lenders be repaid, not by the dictator, or even by his cronies, but by literally taking food from the mouths of hungry children. Or to think about how many of these poor countries had actually already paid back what they'd borrowed three or four times now, but that through the miracle of compound interest, it still hadn't made a significant dent in the principal. I could also observe that there was a difference between refinancing loans, and demanding that in order to obtain refinancing, countries have to follow some orthodox free-market economic policy designed in Washington or Zurich that their citizens had never agreed to and never would, and that it was a bit dishonest to insist that countries adopt democratic constitutions and then also insist that, whoever gets elected, they have no control over their country's policies anyway. Or that the economic policies imposed by the IMF didn't even work. But there was a more basic problem: the very assumption that debts have to be repaid.<br /> <br /> Actually, the remarkable thing about the statement &quot;one has to pay one's debts&quot; is that even according to standard economic theory, it isn't true. A lender is supposed to accept a certain degree of risk. If all loans, no matter how idiotic, were still retrievable--if there were no bankruptcy laws, for instance--the results would be disastrous. What reason would lenders have not to make a stupid loan?<br /> <br /> &quot;Well, I know that sounds like common sense,&quot; I said, &quot;but the funny thing is, economically, that's not how loans are actually supposed to work. Financial institutions are supposed to be ways of directing resources toward profitable investments. If a bank were guaranteed to get its money back, plus interest, no matter what it did, the whole system wouldn't work. Say I were to walk into the nearest branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland and say 'You know, I just got a really great tip on the horses. Think you could lend me a couple million quid?' Obviously they'd just laugh at me. But that's just because they know if my horse didn't come in, there'd be no way for them to get the money back. But, imagine there was some law that said they were guaranteed to get their money back no matter what happens, even if that meant, I don't know, selling my daughter into slavery or harvesting my organs or something. Well, in that case, why not? Why bother waiting for someone to walk in who has a viable plan to set up a laundromat or some such? Basically, that's the situation the IMF created on a global level-which is how you could have all those banks willing to fork over billions of dollars to a bunch of obvious crooks in the first place. &quot;<br /> <br /> I didn't get quite that far, because at about that point a drunken financier appeared, having noticed that we were talking about money, and began telling funny stories about moral hazard—which somehow, before too long, had morphed into a long and not particularly engrossing account of one of his sexual conquests. I drifted off.<br /> <br /> Still, for several days afterward, that phrase kept resonating in my head.<br /> <br /> &quot;Surely one has to pay one's debts. &quot;<br /> <br /> The reason it's so powerful is that it's not actually an economic statement: it's a moral statement. After all, isn't paying one's debts what morality is supposed to be all about? Giving people what is due them. Accepting one's responsibilities. Fulfilling one's obligations to others, just as one would expect them to fulfill their obligations to you. What could be a more obvious example of shirking one's responsibilities than reneging on a promise, or refusing to pay a debt?<br /> <br /> It was that very apparent self-evidence, I realized, that made the statement so insidious. This was the kind of line that could make terrible things appear utterly bland and unremarkable. This may sound strong, but it's hard not to feel strongly about such matters once you've witnessed the effects. I had. For almost two years, I had lived in the highlands of Madagascar. Shortly before I arrived, there had been an outbreak of malaria. It was a particularly virulent outbreak because malaria had been wiped out in highland Madagascar many years before, so that, after a couple of generations, most people had lost their immunity. The problem was, it took money to maintain the mosquito eradication program, since there had to be periodic tests to make sure mosquitoes weren't starting to breed again and spraying campaigns if it was discovered that they were. Not a lot of money. But owing to IMF-imposed austerity programs, the government had to cut the monitoring program. Ten thousand people died. I met young mothers grieving for lost children. One might think it would be hard to make a case that the loss of ten thousand human lives is really justified in order to ensure that Citibank wouldn't have to cut its losses on one irresponsible loan that wasn't particularly important to its balance sheet anyway. But here was a perfectly decent woman-one who worked for a charitable organization, no less-who took it as self-evident that it was. After all, they owed the money, and surely one has to pay one's debts.<br /> <br /> For the next few weeks, that phrase kept coming back at me. Why debt? What makes the concept so strangely powerful? Consumer debt is the lifeblood of our economy. All modern nation-states are built on deficit spending. Debt has come to be the central issue of international politics. But nobody seems to know exactly what it is, or how to think about it.<br /> <br /> The very fact that we don't know what debt is, the very flexibility of the concept, is the basis of its power. If history shows anything, it is that there's no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt-above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it's the victim who's doing something wrong. Mafiosi understand this. So do the commanders of conquering armies. For thousands of years, violent men have been able to tell their victims that those victims owe them something. If nothing else, they &quot;owe them their lives&quot; (a telling phrase) because they haven't been killed.<br /> <br /> Nowadays, for example, military aggression is defined as a crime against humanity, and international courts, when they are brought to bear, usually demand that aggressors pay compensation. Germany had to pay massive reparations after World War I, and Iraq is still paying Kuwait for Saddam Hussein's invasion in 1990. Yet the Third World debt, the debt of countries like Madagascar, Bolivia, and the Philippines, seems to work precisely the other way around. Third World debtor nations are almost exclusively countries that have at one time been attacked and conquered by European countries-often, the very countries to whom they now owe money. In 1895, for example, France invaded Madagascar, disbanded the government of then-Queen Ranavalona III, and declared the country a French colony. One of the first things General Gallieni did after &quot;pacification, &quot; as they liked to call it then, was to impose heavy taxes on the Malagasy population, in part so they could reimburse the costs of having been invaded, but also, since French colonies were supposed to be fiscally self-supporting, to defray the costs of building the railroads, highways, bridges, plantations, and so forth that the French regime wished to build. Malagasy taxpayers were never asked whether they wanted these railroads, highways, bridges, and plantations, or allowed much input into where and how they were built.1 To the contrary: over the next half century, the French army and police slaughtered quite a number of Malagasy who objected too strongly to the arrangement (upwards of half a million, by some reports, during one revolt in 1947). It's not as if Madagascar has ever done any comparable damage to France. Despite this, from the beginning, the Malagasy people were told they owed France money, and to this day, the Malagasy people are still held to owe France money, and the rest of the world accepts the justice of this arrangement. When the &quot;international community&quot; does perceive a moral issue, it's usually when they feel the Malagasy government is being slow to pay their debts.<br /> <br /> But debt is not just victor's justice; it can also be a way of punishing winners who weren't supposed to win. The most spectacular example of this is the history of the Republic of Haiti-the first poor country to be placed in permanent debt peonage. Haiti was a nation founded by former plantation slaves who had the temerity not only to rise up in rebellion, amidst grand declarations of universal rights and freedoms, but to defeat Napoleon's armies sent to return them to bondage. France immediately insisted that the new republic owed it 150 million francs in damages for the expropriated plantations, as well as the expenses of outfitting the failed military expeditions, and all other nations, including the United States, agreed to impose an embargo on the country until it was paid. The sum was intentionally impossible (equivalent to about 18 billion dollars), and the resultant embargo ensured that the name &quot;Haiti&quot; has been a synonym for debt, poverty, and human misery ever since. 2<br /> <br /> Sometimes, though, debt seems to mean the very opposite. Starting in the 198os, the United States, which insisted on strict terms for the repayment of Third World debt, itself accrued debts that easily dwarfed those of the entire Third World combined-mainly fueled by military spending. The U.S. foreign debt, though, takes the form of treasury bonds held by institutional investors in countries (Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the Gulf States) that are in most cases, effectively, U.S. military protectorates, most covered in U.S. bases full of arms and equipment paid for with that very deficit spending. This has changed a little now that China has gotten in on the game (China is a special case, for reasons that will be explained later), but not very much-even China finds that the fact it holds so many U.S. treasury bonds makes it to some degree beholden to U.S. interests, rather than the other way around.<br /> <br /> So what is the status of all this money continually being funneled into the U.S. treasury? Are these loans? Or is it tribute? In the past, military powers that maintained hundreds of military bases outside their own home territory were ordinarily referred to as &quot;empires,&quot; and empires regularly demanded tribute from subject peoples. The U.S. government, of course, insists that it is not an empire--but one could easily make a case that the only reason it insists on treating these payments as &quot;loans&quot; and not as &quot;tribute&quot; is precisely to deny the reality of what's going on.<br /> <br /> Now, it's true that, throughout history, certain sorts of debt, and certain sorts of debtor, have always been treated differently than others. In the 172os, one of the things that most scandalized the British public when conditions at debtors' prisons were exposed in the popular press was the fact that these prisons were regularly divided into two sections. Aristocratic inmates, who often thought of a brief stay in Fleet or Marshalsea as something of a fashion statement, were wined and dined by liveried servants and allowed to receive regular visits from prostitutes. On the &quot;common side,&quot; impoverished debtors were shackled together in tiny cells, &quot;covered with filth and vermin,&quot; as one report put it, &quot;and suffered to die, without pity, of hunger and jail fever. &quot;3<br /> <br /> In a way you can see current world economic arrangements as a much larger version of the same thing: the U.S. in this case being the Cadillac debtor, Madagascar the pauper starving in the next cellwhile the Cadillac debtors' servants lecture him on how his problems are due to his own irresponsibility.<br /> <br /> And there's something more fundamental going on here, a philosophical question, even, that we might do well to contemplate. What is the difference between a gangster pulling out a gun and demanding you give him a thousand dollars of &quot;p.otection money,&quot; and that same gangster pulling out a gun and demanding you provide him with a thousand-dollar &quot;loan&quot;? In most ways, obviously, nothing. But in certain ways there is a difference. As in the case of the U.S. debt to Korea or Japan, were the balance of power at any point to shift, were America to lose its military supremacy, were the gangster to lose his henchmen, that &quot;loan&quot; might start being treated very differently. It might become a genuine liability. But the crucial element would still seem to be the gun.<br /> <br /> There's an old vaudeville gag that makes the same point even more elegantly-here, as improved on by Steve Wright:<br /> <br /> I was walking down the street with a friend the other day and a guy with a gun jumps out of an alley and says &quot;stick 'em up.&quot;<br /> <br /> As I pull out my wallet, I figure, &quot;shouldn't be a total loss.&quot; So I pull out some money, turn to my friend and say, &quot;Hey, Fred, here's that fifty bucks I owe you. &quot;<br /> <br /> The robber was so offended he took out a thousand dollars of his own money, forced Fred to lend it to me at gunpoint, and then took it back again.<br /> <br /> In the final analysis, the man with the gun doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to do. But in order to be able to run even a regime based on violence effectively, one needs to establish some kind of set of rules. The rules can be completely arbitrary. In a way it doesn't even matter what they are. Or, at least, it doesn't matter at first. The problem is, the moment one starts framing things in terms of debt, people will inevitably start asking who really owes what to whom.<br /> <br /> Arguments about debt have been going on for at least five thousand years. For most of human history-at least, the history of states and empires-most human beings have been told that they are debt-ors.4 Historians, and particularly historians of ideas, have been oddly reluctant to consider the human consequences; eapecially since this situation-more than any other-has caused continual outrage and resentment. Tell people they are inferior, they are unlikely to be pleased, but this surprisingly rarely leads to armed revolt. Tell people that they are potential equals who have failed, and that therefore, even what they do have they do not deserve, that it isn't rightly theirs, and you are much more likely to inspire rage. Certainly this is what history would seem to teach us. For thousands of years, the struggle between rich and poor has largely taken the form of conflicts between creditors and debtors—of arguments about the rights and wrongs of interest payments, debt peonage, amnesty, repossession, restitution, the sequestering of sheep, the seizing of vineyards, and the selling of debtors' children into slavery. By the same token, for the last five thousand years, with remarkable regularity, popular insurrections have begun the same way: with the ritual destruction of the debt records—tablets, papyri, ledgers, whatever form they might have taken in any particular time and place. (After that, rebels usually go after the records of landholding and tax assessments.) As the great classicist Moses Finley often liked to say, in the ancient world, all revolutionary movements had a single program: &quot;Cancel the debts and redistribute the land.&quot;5<br /> <br /> Our tendency to overlook this is all the more peculiar when you consider how much of our contemporary moral and religious language originally emerged directly from these very conflicts. Terms like &quot;reckoning&quot; or &quot;redemption&quot; are only the most obvious, since they're taken directly from the language of ancient finance. In a larger sense, the same can be said of &quot;guilt,&quot; &quot;freedom, &quot; &quot;forgiveness,&quot; and even &quot;sin.&quot; Arguments about who really owes what to whom have played a central role in shaping our basic vocabulary of right and wrong.<br /> <br /> The fact that so much of this language did take shape in arguments about debt has left the concept strangely incoherent. After all, to argue with the king, one has to use the king's language, whether or not the initial premises make sense.<br /> <br /> If one looks at the history of debt, then, what one discovers first of all is profound moral confusion. Its most obvious manifestation is that most everywhere, one finds that the majority of human beings hold simultaneously that (1) paying back money one has borrowed is a simple matter of morality, and (2) anyone in the habit of lending money is evil.<br /> <br /> It's true that opinions on this latter point do shift back and forth. One extreme possibility might be the situation the French anthropologist Jean-Claude Galey encountered in a region of the eastern Himalayas, where as recently as the 1970s, the low-ranking castes-they were referred to as &quot;the vanquished ones,&quot; since they were thought to be descended from a populat&quot;on once conquered by the current landlord caste, many centuries before-lived in a situation of permanent debt dependency. Landless and penniless, they were obliged to solicit loans from the landlords simply to find a way to eat-not for the money, since the sums were paltry, but because poor debtors were expected to pay back the interest in the form of work, which meant they were at least provided with food and shelter while they cleaned out their creditors' outhouses and reroofed their sheds. For the &quot;vanquished&quot;-as for most people in the world, actually-the most significant life expenses were weddings and funerals. These required a good deal of money, which always had to be borrowed. In such cases it was common practice, Galey explains, for high-caste moneylenders to demand one of the borrower's daughters as security. Often, when a poor man had to borrow money for his daughter's marriage, the security would be the bride herself. She would be expected to report to the lender's household after her wedding night, spend a few months there as his concubine, and then, once he grew bored, be sent off to some nearby timber camp, where she would have to spend the next year or two as a prostitute working off her father's debt. Once it was paid off, she'd return to her husband and begin her married life.6<br /> <br /> This seems shocking, outrageous even, but Galey does not report any widespread feeling of injustice. Everyone seemed to feel that this was just the way things worked. Neither was there much concern voiced among the local Brahmins, who were the ultimate arbiters in matters of morality-though this is hardly surprising, since the most prominent moneylenders were often Brahmins themselves.<br /> <br /> Even here, of course, it's hard to know what people were saying behind closed doors. If a group of Maoist rebels were to suddenly seize control of the area (some do operate in this part of rural India) and round up the local usurers for trial, we might hear all sorts of views expressed.<br /> <br /> Still, what Galey describes represents, as I say, one extreme of possibility: one in which the usurers themselves are the ultimate moral authorities. Compare this with, say, medieval France, where the moral status of moneylenders was seriously in question. The Catholic Church had always forbidden the practice of lending money at interest, but the rules often fell into desuetude, causing the Church hierarchy to authorize preaching campaigns, sending mendicant friars to travel from town to town warning usurers that unless they repented and made full restitution of all interest extracted from their victims, they would surely go to Hell.<br /> <br /> These sermons, many of which have survived, are full of horror stories of God's judgment on unrepentant lenders: stories of rich men struck down by madness or terrible diseases, haunted by deathbed nightmares of the snakes or demons who would soon rend or eat their flesh. In the twelfth century, when such campaigns reached their heights, more direct sanctions began to be employed. The papacy issued instructions to local parishes that all known usurers were to be excommunicated; they were not to be allowed to receive the sacraments, and under no conditions could their bodies be buried on hallowed ground. One French cardinal, Jacques de Vitry, writing around r2ro, recorded the story of a particularly influential moneylender whose friends tried to pressure their parish priest to overlook the rules and allow him to be buried in the local churchyard:<br /> <br /> Since the dead usurer's friends were very insistent, the priest yielded to their pressure and said, &quot;Let us put his body on a donkey and see God's will, and what He will do with the body. Wherever the donkey takes it, be it a church, a cemetery, or elsewhere, there will I bury it.&quot; The body was placed upon the donkey which without deviating either to right or left, took it straight out of town to the place where thieves are hanged from the gibbet, and with a hearty buck, sent the cadaver flying into the dung beneath the gallows.7<br /> <br /> Looking over world literature, it is almost impossible to find a single sympathetic representation of a moneylender-or anyway, a professional moneylender, which means by definition one who charges interest. I'm not sure there is another profession (executioners?) with such a consistently bad image. It's especially remarkable when one considers that unlike executioners, usurers often rank among the richest and most powerful people in their communities. Yet the very name, &quot;usurer,&quot; evokes images of loan sharks, blood money, pounds of flesh, the selling of souls, and behind them all, the Devil, often represented as himself a kind of usurer, an evil accountant with his books and ledgers, or alternately, as the figure looming just behind the usurer, biding his time until he can repossess the soul of a villain who, by his very occupation, has clearly made a compact with Hell.<br /> <br /> Historically, there have been only two effective ways for a lender to try to wriggle out of the opprobrium: either shunt off responsibility onto some third party, or insist that the borrower is even worse. In medieval Europe, for instance, lords often took the first approach, employing Jews as surrogates. Many would even speak of &quot;our&quot; Jews-that is, Jews under their personal protection-though in practice this usually meant that they would first deny Jews in their territories any means of making a living except by usury (guaranteeing that they would be widely detested), then periodically turn on them, claiming they were detestable creatures, and take the money for themselves. The second approach is of course more common. But it usually leads to the conclusion that both parties to a loan are equally guilty; the whole affair is a shabby business; and most likely, both are damned.<br /> <br /> Other religious traditions have different perspectives. In medieval Hindu law codes, not only were interest-bearing loans permissible (the main stipulation was that interest should never exceed principal), but it was often emphasized that a debtor who did not pay would be reborn as a slave in the household of his creditor-or in later codes, reborn as his horse or ox. The same tolerant attitude toward lenders, and warnings of karmic revenge against borrowers, reappear in many strands of Buddhism. Even so, the moment that usurers were thought to go too far, exactly the same sort of stories as found in Europe would start appearing. A Medieval Japanese author recounts one-he insists it's a true story-about the terrifying fate of Hiromushime, the wife of a wealthy district governor around 776 AD. An exceptionally greedy woman,<br /> <br /> she would add water to the rice wine she sold and make a huge profit on such diluted sake. On the day she loaned something to someone she would use a small measuring cup, but on the day of collection she used a large one. When lending rice her scale registered small portions, but when she received payment it was in large amounts. The interest that she forcibly collected was tremendous—often as much as ten or even one hundred times the amount of the original loan. She was rigid about collecting debts, showing no mercy whatsoever. Because of this, many people were thrown into a state of anxiety; they abandoned their households to get away from her and took to wandering in other provinces.8<br /> <br /> After she died, for seven days, monks prayed over her sealed coffin. On the seventh, her body mysteriously sprang to life:<br /> <br /> Those who came to look at her encountered an indescribable stench. From the waist up she had already become an ox with four-inch horns protruding from her forehead. Her two hands had become the hooves of an ox, her nails were now cracked so that they resembled an ox hoof's instep. From the waist down, however, her body was that of a human. She disliked rice and preferred to eat grass. Her manner of eating was rumination. Naked, she would lie in her own excrement.9<br /> <br /> Gawkers descended. Guilty and ashamed, the family made desperate attempts to buy forgiveness, canceling all debts owed to them by anybody, donating much of their wealth to religious establishments. Finally, mercifully, the monster died.<br /> <br /> The author, himself a monk, felt that the story represented a clear case of premature reincarnation-the woman was being punished by the law of karma for her violations of &quot;what is both reasonable and right. &quot; His problem was that Buddhist scriptures, insofar as they explicitly weighed in on the matter, didn't provide a precedent. Normally, it was debtors who were supposed to be reborn as oxen, not creditors. As a result, when it came time to explain the moral of the story, his exposition grew decidedly confusing:<br /> <br /> It is as one sutra says: &quot;When we do not repay the things that we have borrowed, our payment becomes that of being reborn as a horse or ox.&quot; &quot;The debtor is like a slave, the creditor is like a master. &quot; Or again: &quot;a debtor is a pheasant and his creditor a hawk. &quot; If you are in a situation of having granted a loan, do not put unreasonable pressure on your debtor for repayment. If you do, you will be reborn as a horse or an ox and be put to work for him who was in debt to you, and then you will repay many times over.10<br /> <br /> So which will it be? They can't both end up as animals in each other's barns.<br /> <br /> All the great religious traditions seem to bang up against this quandary in one form or another. On the one hand, insofar as all human relations involve debt, they are all morally compromised. Both parties are probably already guilty of something just by entering into the relationship; at the very least they run a significant danger of becoming guilty if repayment is delayed. On the other hand, when we say someone acts like they &quot;don't owe anything to anybody, &quot; we're hardly describing the person as a paragon of virtue. In the secular world, morality consists largely of fulfilling our obligations to others, and we have a stubborn tendency to imagine those obligations as debts. Monks, perhaps, can avoid the dilemma by detaching themselves from the secular world entirely, but the rest of us appear condemned to live in a universe that doesn't make a lot of sense.<br /> <br /> <br /> The story of Hiromushime is a perfect illustration of the impulse to throw the accusation back at the accuser-just as in the story about the dead usurer and the donkey, the emphasis on excrement, animals, and humiliation is clearly meant as poetic justice, the creditor forced to experience the same feelings of disgrace and degradation that debtors are always made to feel. It's all a more vivid, more visceral way of asking that same question: &quot;Who really owes what to whom?&quot;<br /> <br /> It's also a perfect illustration of how the moment one asks the question &quot;Who really owes what to whom?,&quot; one has begun to adopt the creditor's language. Just as if we don't pay our debts, &quot;our payment becomes that of being reborn as a horse or an ox&quot;; so if you are an unreasonable creditor, you too will &quot;repay. &quot; Even karmic justice can thus be reduced to the language of a business deal.<br /> <br /> Here we come to the central question of this book: What, precisely, does it mean to say that our sense of morality and justice is reduced to the language of a business deal? What does it mean when we reduce moral obligations to debts? What changes when the one turns into the other? And how do we speak about them when our language has been so shaped by the market? On one level the difference between an obligation and a debt is simple and obvious. A debt is the obligation to pay a certain sum of money. As a result, a debt, unlike any other form of obligation, can be precisely quantified. This allows debts to become simple, cold, and impersonal-which, in turn, allows them to be transferable. If one owes a favor, or one's life, to another human being-it is owed to that person specifically. But if one owes forty thousand dollars at 12-percent interest, it doesn't really matter who the creditor is; neither does either of the two parties have to think much about what the other party needs, wants, is capable of doing-as they certainly would if what was owed was a favor, or respect, or gratitude. One does not need to calculate the human effects; one need only calculate principal, balances, penalties, and rates of interest. If you end up having to abandon your home and wander in other provinces, if your daughter ends up in a mining camp working as a prostitute, well, that's unfortunate, but incidental to the creditor. Money is money, and a deal's a deal.<br /> <br /> From this perspective, the crucial factor, and a topic that will be explored at length in these pages, is money's capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic-and by doing so, to justify things that would otherwise seem outrageous or obscene. The factor of violence, which I have been emphasizing up until now, may appear secondary. The difference between a &quot;debt&quot; and a mere moral obligation is not the presence or absence of men with weapons who can enforce that obligation by seizing the debtor's possessions or threatening to break his legs. It is simply that a creditor has the means to specify, numerically, exactly how much the debtor owes.<br /> <br /> However, when one looks a little closer, one discovers that these two elements-the violence and the quantification-are intimately linked. In fact it's almost impossible to find one without the other. French usurers had powerful friends and enforcers, capable of bullying even Church authorities. How else would they have collected debts that were technically illegal? Hiromushime was utterly uncompromising with her debtors-&quot;showing no mercy whatsoever&quot;-but then, her husband was the governor. She didn't have to show mercy. Those of us who do not have armed men behind us cannot afford to be so exacting.<br /> <br /> The way violence, or the threat of violence, turns human relations into mathematics will crop up again and again over the course of this book. It is the ultimate source of the moral confusion that seems to float around everything surrounding the topic of debt. The resulting dilemmas appear to be as old as civilization itself. We can observe the process in the very earliest records from ancient Mesopotamia; it finds its first philosophical expression in the Vedas, reappears in endless forms throughout recorded history, and still lies underneath the essential fabric of our institutions today-state and market, our most basic conceptions of the nature of freedom, morality, sociality-all of which have been shaped by a history of war, conquest, and slavery in ways we're no longer capable of even perceiving because we can no longer imagine things any other way.<br /> <br /> <br /> There are obvious reasons why this is a particularly important moment to reexamine the history of debt. September 2oo8 saw the beginning of a financial crisis that almost brought the entire world economy screeching to a halt. In many ways the world economy did: ships stopped moving across the oceans, and thousands were placed in dry dock. Building cranes were dismantled, as no more buildings were being put up. Banks largely ceased making loans. In the wake of this, there was not only public rage and bewilderment, but the beginning of an actual public conversation about the nature of debt, of money, of the financial institutions that have come to hold the fate of nations in their grip.<br /> <br /> But that was just a moment. The conversation never ended up taking place.<br /> <br /> The reason that people were ready for such a conversation was that the story everyone had been told for the last decade or so had just been revealed to be a colossal lie. There's really no nicer way to say it. For years, everyone had been hearing of a whole host of new, ultrasophisticated financial innovations: credit and commodity derivatives, collateralized mortgage obligation derivatives, hybrid securities, debt swaps, and so on. These new derivative markets were so incredibly sophisticated, that-according to one persistent story-a prominent investment house had to employ astrophysicists to run trading programs so complex that even the financiers couldn't begin to understand them. The message was transparent: leave these things to the professionals. You couldn't possibly get your minds around this. Even if you don't like financial capitalists very much (and few seemed inclined to argue that there was much to like about them), they were nothing if not capable, in fact so preternaturally capable, that democratic oversight of financial markets was simply inconceivable. (Even a lot of academics fell for it. I well remember going to conferences in 2oo6 and 2007 where trendy social theorists presented papers arguing that these new forms of securitization, linked to new information technologies, heralded a looming transformation in the very nature of time, possibility-reality itself. I remember thinking: &quot;Suckers!&quot; And so they were.)<br /> <br /> Then, when the rubble had stopped bouncing, it turned out that many if not most of them had been nothing more than very elaborate scams. They consisted of operations like selling poor families mortgages crafted in such a way as to make eventual default inevitable; taking bets on how long it would take the holders to default; packaging mortgage and bet together and selling them to institutional investors (representing, perhaps, the mortgage-holders' retirement accounts) claiming that it would make money no matter what happened, and allow said investors to pass such packages around as if they were money; turning over responsibility for paying off the bet to a giant insurance conglomerate that, were it to sink beneath the weight of its resultant debt (which certainly would happen), would then have to be bailed out by taxpayers (as such conglomerates were indeed bailed out).U In other words, it looks very much like an unusually elaborate version of what banks were doing when they lent money to dictators in Bolivia and Gabon in the late '7os: make utterly irresponsible loans with the full knowledge that, once it became known they had done so, politicians and bureaucrats would scramble to ensure that they'd still be reimbursed anyway, no matter how many human lives had to be devastated and destroyed in order to do it.<br /> <br /> The difference, though, was that this time, the bankers were doing it on an inconceivable scale: the total amount of debt they had run up was larger than the combined Gross Domestic Products of every country in t4e world-and it threw the world into a tailspin and almost destroyed the system itself.<br /> <br /> Armies and police geared up to combat the expected riots and unrest, but none materialized. But neither have any significant changes in how the system is run. At the time, everyone assumed that, with the very defining institutions of capitalism (Lehman Brothers, Citibank, General Motors) crumbling, and all claims to superior wisdom revealed to be false, we would at least restart a broader conversation about the nature of debt and credit institutions. And not just a convwersation.<br /> <br /> It seemed that most Americans were open to radical solutions. Surveys showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans felt that the banks should not be rescued, whatever the economic consequences, but that ordinary citizens stuck with bad mortgages should be bailed out. In the United States this is quite extraordinary. Since colonial days, Americans have been the population least sympathetic to debtors. In a way this is odd, since America was settled largely by absconding debtors, but it's a country where the idea that morality is a matter of paying one's debts runs deeper than almost any other. In colonial days, an insolvent debtor's ear was often nailed to a post. The United States was one of the last countries in the world to adopt a law of bankruptcy: despite the fact that in 1787, the Constitution specifically charged the new government with creating one, all attempts were rejected on &quot;moral grounds&quot; until r898Y The change was epochal. For this very reason, perhaps, those in charge of moderating debate in the media and legislatures decided that this was not the time. The United States government effectively put a three-trillion-dollar Band-Aid over the problem and changed nothing. The bankers were rescued; small-scale debtors-with a paltry few exceptions-were not.U To the contrary, in the middle of the greatest economic recession since the '3os, we are already beginning to see a backlash against them-driven by financial corporations who have now turned to the same government that bailed them out to apply the full force of the law against ordinary citizens in financial trouble. &quot;It's not a crime to owe money,&quot; reports the Minneapolis-St. Paul StarTribune, &quot;But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts.&quot; In Minnesota, &quot;the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 6o percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009 .. . In Illinois and southwest Indiana, some judges jail debtors for missing court-ordered debt payments. In extreme cases, people stay in jail until they raise a minimum payment. In January [2o1o], a judge sentenced a Kenney, Ill., man 'to indefinite incarceration' until he came up with $300 toward a lumber yard debt.&quot;14<br /> <br /> In other words, we are moving toward a restoration of something much like debtors' prisons. Meanwhile, the conversation stopped dead, popular rage against bailouts sputtered into incoherence, and we seem to be tumbling inexorably toward the next great financial catastrophe—the only real question being just how long it will take.<br /> <br /> We have reached the point at which the IMF itself, now trying to reposition itself as the conscience of global capitalism, has begun to issue warnings that if we continue on the present course, no bailout is likely to be forthcoming the next time. The public simply will not stand for it, and as a result, everything really will come apart. &quot;IMF Warns Second Bailout Would 'Threaten Democracy&quot;' reads one recent headline.15 (Of course by &quot;democracy&quot; they mean &quot;capitalism. &quot;) Surely it means something that even those who feel they are responsible for keeping the current global economic system running, who just a few years ago acted as if they could simply assume the current system would be around forever, are now seeing apocalypse everywhere.<br /> <br /> <br /> In this case, the IMF has a point. We have every reason to believe that we do indeed stand on the brink of epochal changes.<br /> <br /> Admittedly, the usual impulse is to imagine everything around us as absolutely new. Nowhere is this so true as with money. How many times have we been told that the advent of virtual money, the dematerialization of cash into plastic and dollars into blips of electronic information, has brought us to an unprecedented new financial world? The assumption that we were in such uncharted territory, of course, was one of the things that made it so easy for the likes of Goldman Sachs and AIG to convince people that no one could possibly understand their dazzling new financial instruments. The moment one casts matters on a broad historical scale, though, the first thing one learns is that there's nothing new about virtual money. Actually, this was the original form of money. Credit system, tabs, even expense accounts, all existed long before cash. These things are as old as civilization itself. True, we also find that history tends to move back and forth between periods dominated by bullion-where it's assumed that gold and silver are money-and periods where money is assumed to be an abstraction, a virtual unit of account. But historically, credit money comes first, and what we are witnessing today is a return of assumptions that would have been considered obvious common sense in, say, the Middle Ages-or even ancient Mesopotamia.<br /> <br /> But history does provide fascinating hints of what we might expect. For instance: in the past, ages of virtual credit money almost invariably involve the creation of institutions designed to prevent everything going haywire--to stop the lenders from teaming up with bureaucrats and politicians to squeeze everybody dry, as they seem to be doing now. They are accompanied by the creation of institutions designed to protect debtors. The new age of credit money we are in seems to have started precisely backwards. It began with the creation of global institutions like the IMF designed to protect not debtors, but creditors. At the same time, on the kind of historical scale we're talking about here, a decade or two is nothing. We have very little idea what to expect. ''&lt;nowiki/&gt;'''<br /> <br /> <br /> This book is a history of debt, then, but it also uses that history as a way to ask fundamental questions about what human beings and human society are or could be like--what we actually do owe each other, what it even means to ask that question. As a result, the book begins by attempting to puncture a series of myths-not only the Myth of Barter, which is taken up in the first chapter, but also rival myths about primordial debts to the gods, or to the state-t hat in one way or another form the basis of our common-sense assumptions about the nature of economy and society. In that common-sense view, the State and the Market tower above all else as diametrically opposed principles. Historical reality reveals, however, that they were born together and have always been intertwined. The one thing that all these misconceptions have in common, we will find, is that they tend to reduce all human relations to exchange, as if our ties to society, even to the cosmos itself, can be imagined in the same terms as a business deal. This leads to another question: If not exchange, then what? In chapter five, I will begin to answer the question by drawing on the fruits of anthropology to describe a view of the moral basis of economic life; then return to the question of the origins of money to demonstrate how the very principle of exchange emerged largely as an effect of violence--that the real origins of money are to be found in crime and recompense, war and slavery, honor, debt, and redemption. That, in turn, opens the way to starting, with chapter eight, an actual history of the last five thousand years of debt and credit, with its great alternations between ages of virtual and physical money. Many of the discoveries here are profoundly unexpected: from the origins of modern conceptions of rights and freedoms in ancient slave law, to the origins of investment capital in medieval Chinese Buddhism, to the fact that many of Adam Smith's most famous arguments appear to have been cribbed from the works of free-market theorists from medieval Persia (a story which, incidentally, has interesting implications for understanding the current appeal of political Islam). All of this sets the stage for a fresh approach to the last five hundred years, dominated by capitalist empires, and allows us to at least begin asking what might really be at stake in the present day.<br /> <br /> For a very long time, the intellectual consensus has been that we can no longer ask Great Questions. Increasingly, it's looking like we have no other choice.<br /> <br /> == Chapter two: The myth of barter ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;For every subtle and complicated question, there is a perfectly simple and straightforward answer, which is wrong. -H.L. Mencken&lt;/blockquote&gt;WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE between a mere obligation, a sense that one ought to behave in a certain way, or even that one owes something to someone, and a debt, properly speaking? The answer is simple: money. The difference between a debt and an obligation is that a debt can be precisely quantified. This requires money.<br /> <br /> Not only is it money that makes debt possible: money and debt appear on the scene at exactly the same time. Some of the very first written documents that have come down to us are Mesopotamian tablets recording credits and debits, rations issued by temples, money owed for rent of temple lands, the value of each precisely specified in grain and silver. Some of the earliest works of 1p0ral philosophy, in turn, are reflections on what it means to imagine morality as debt-that is, in terms of money.<br /> <br /> A history of debt, then, is thus necessarily a history of money-and the easiest way to understand the role that debt has played in human society is simply to follow the forms that money has taken, and the way money has been used, across the centuries-and the arguments that inevitably ensued about what all this means. Still, this is necessarily a very different history of money than we are used to. When economists speak of the origins of money, for example, debt is always something of an afterthought. First comes barter, then money; credit only develops later. Even if one consults books on the history of money in, say, France, India, or China, what one generally gets is a history of coinage, with barely any discussion of credit arrangements at all. For almost a century, anthropologists like me have been pointing out that there is something very wrong with this picture. The standard economic-history version has little to do with anything we observe when we examine how economic life is actually conducted, in real communities and marketplaces, almost anywhere-where one is much more likely to discover everyone in debt to everyone else in a dozen different ways, and that most transactions take place without the use of currency.<br /> <br /> Why the discrepancy?<br /> <br /> Some of it is just the nature of the evidence: coins are preserved in the archeological record; credit arrangements usually are not. Still, the problem runs deeper. The existence of credit and debt has always been something of a scandal for economists, since it's almost impossible to pretend that those lending and borrowing money are acting on purely &quot;economic&quot; motivations (for instance, that a loan to a stranger is the same as a loan to one's cousin); it seems important, therefore, to begin the story of money in an imaginary world from which credit and debt have been entirely erased. Before. we can apply the tools of anthropology to reconstruct the real history of money, we need to understand what's wrong with the conventional account.<br /> <br /> Economists. generally speak of three functions of money: medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value. All economic textbooks treat the first as primary. Here's a fairly typical extract from Economics, by Case, Fair, Gartner, and Heather (1996):<br /> <br /> Money is vital to the working of a market economy. Imagine what life would be like without it. The alternative to a monetary economy is barter, people exchanging goods and services for other goods and services directly instead of exchanging via the medium of money.<br /> <br /> How does a barter system work? Suppose you want croissants, eggs and orange juice for breakfast. Instead of going to the grocer's and buying these things with money, you would have to find someone who has these items and is willing to trade them. You would also have to have something the baker, the orange juice purveyor and the egg vendor want. Having pencils to trade will do you no good if the baker and the orange juice and egg sellers do not want pencils.<br /> <br /> A barter system requires a double coincidence of wants for trade to take place. That is, to effect a trade, I need not only have to find someone who has what I want, but that person must also want what I have. Where the range of traded goods is small, as it is in relatively unsophisticated economies, it is<br /> <br /> not difficult to find someone to trade with, and barter is often used.'<br /> <br /> This latter point is questionable, but it's phrased in so vague a way that it would be hard to disprove.<br /> <br /> In a complex society with many goods, barter exchanges involve an intolerable amount of effort. Imagine trying to find people who offer for sale all the things you buy in a typical trip to the grocer's, and who are willing to accept goods that you have to offer in exchange for their goods.<br /> <br /> Some agreed-upon medium of exchange (or means of payment) neatly eliminates the double coincidence of wants problem. 2<br /> <br /> It's important to emphasize that this is not presented as something that actually happened, but as a purely imaginary exercise. &quot;To see that society benefits from a medium of exchange&quot; write Begg, Fischer and Dornbuch (Economics, 2oos), &quot;imagine a barter economy. &quot; &quot;Imagine the difficulty you would have today,&quot; write Maunder, Myers, Wall, and Miller (Economics Explairzed, 1991), &quot;if you had to exchange your labor directly for the fruits of someone else's labor. &quot; &quot;Imagine,&quot; write Parkin and King (Economics, 1995), &quot;you have roosters, but you want roses. &quot;1 One could multiply examples endlessly. Just about every economics textbook employed today sets out the problem the same way. Historically, they note, we know that there was a time when there was no money. What must it have been like? Well, let us imagine an economy something like today's, except with no money. That would have been decidedly inconvenient! Surely, people must have invented money for the sake of efficiency.<br /> <br /> The story of money for economists always begins with a fantasy world of barter. The problem is where to locate this fantasy in time and space: Are we talking about cave men, Pacific Islanders, the American frontier? One textbook, by economists Joseph Stiglitz and John Driffill, takes us to what appears to be an imaginary New England or Midwestern town:<br /> <br /> One can imagine an old-style farmer bartering with the blacksmith, the tailor, the grocer, and the doctor in his small town. For simple barter to work, however, there must be a double coincidence of wants . . . Henry has potatoes and wants shoes, Joshua has an extra pair of shoes and wants potatoes. Bartering can make them both happier. But if Henry has firewood and Joshua does not need any of that, then bartering for Joshua's shoes requires one or both of them to go searching for more people in the hope of making a multilateral exchange. Money provides a way to make multilateral exchange much simpler. Henry sells his firewood to someone else for money and uses the money to buy Joshua's shoes.4<br /> <br /> Again this is just a make-believe land much like the present, except with money somehow plucked away. As a result it makes no sense: Who in their right mind would set up a grocery in such a place? And how would they get supplies? But let's leave that aside. There is a simple reason why everyone who writes an economics textbook feels they have to tell us the same story. For economists, it is in a very real sense the most important story ever told. It was by telling it, in the significant year of r776, that Adam Smith, professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow, effectively brought the discipline of economics into being.<br /> <br /> He did not make up the story entirely out of whole cloth. Already in 330 Be, Aristotle was speculating along vaguely similar lines in his treatise on politics. At first, he suggested, families must have produced everything they needed for themselves. Gradually, some would presumably have specialized, some growing corn, others making wine, swapping one for the other.5 Money, Aristotle assumed, must have emerged from such a process. But, like the medieval schoolmen who occasionally repeated the story, Aristotle was never clear as to how.6<br /> <br /> In the years after Columbus, as Spanish and Portuguese adventurers were scouring the world for new sources of gold and silver, these vague stories disappear. Certainly no one reported discovering a land of barter. Most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century travelers in the West Indies or Africa assumed that all societies would necessarily have their own forms of money, since all societies had governments and all governments issued money.7<br /> <br /> Adam Smith, on the other hand, was determined to overturn the conventional wisdom of his day. Above all, he objected to the notion that money was a creation of government. In this, Smith was the intellectual heir of the Liberal tradition of philosophers like John Locke, who had argued that government begins in the need to protect private property and operated best when it -tried to limit itself to that function. Smith expanded on the argument, insisting that property, money and markets not only existed before political institutions but were the very foundation of human society. It followed that insofar as government<br /> <br /> should play any role in monetary affairs, it should limit itself to guaranteeing the soundness of the currency. It was only by making such an argument that he could insist that economics is itself a field of human inquiry with its own principles and laws-that is, as distinct from, say ethics or politics.<br /> <br /> Smith's argument is worth laying out in detail because it is, as I say, the great founding myth of the discipline of economics.<br /> <br /> What, he begins, is the basis of economic life, properly speaking? It is &quot;a certain propensity in human nature ...the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another. &quot; Animals don't do this. &quot;Nobody, &quot; Smith observes, &quot;ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. &quot;8 But humans, if left to their own devices, will inevitably begin swapping and comparing things. This is just what humans do. Even logic and conversation are really just forms of trading, and as in all things, humans will always try to seek their own best advantage, to seek the greatest profit they can from the exchange.9<br /> <br /> It is this drive to exchange, in turn, which creates that division of labor responsible for all human achievement and civilization. Here the scene shifts to another one of those economists' faraway fantasylandsit seems to be an amalgam of North American Indians and Central Asian pastoral nomads: &lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In a tribe of hunters or shepherds a particular person makes bows and arrows, for example, with more readiness and dexterity than any other. He frequently exchanges them for cattle or for venison with his companions; and he finds at last that he can in this manner get more cattle and venison, than if he himself went to the field to catch them. From a regard to his own interest, therefore, the making of bows and arrows grows to be his chief business, and he becomes a sort of armourer. Another excels in making the frames and covers of their little huts or moveable houses. He is accustomed to be of use in this way to his neighbours, who reward him in the same manner with cattle and with venison, till at last he finds it his interest to dedicate himself entirely to this employment, and to become a sort of house-carpenter. In the same manner a third becomes a smith or a brazier; a fourth a tanner or dresser of hides or skins, the principal part of the clothing of savages . . .<br /> <br /> It's only once we have expert arrow-makers, wigwam-makers, and so on that people start realizing there's a problem. Notice how, as in so many examples, we have a tendency to slip from imaginary savages to small-town shopkeepers.<br /> <br /> • But when the division of labor first began to take place, this power of exchanging must frequently have been very much clogged and embarrassed in its operations. One man, we shall suppose, has more of a certain commodity than he himself has occasion for, while another has less. The former consequently would be glad to dispose of, and the latter to purchase, a part of this superfluity. But if this latter should chance to have nothing that the former stands in need of, no exchange can be made between them. The butcher has more meat in his shop than he himself can consume, and the brewer and the baker would each of them be willing to purchase a part of it. But they have nothing to offer in exchange . . .<br /> <br /> <br /> In order to avoid the inconveniency of such situations, every prudent man in every period of society, after the first establishment of the division of labor, must naturally have endeavored to manage his affairs in such a manner, as to have at all times by him, besides the peculiar produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of some one commodity or other, such as he imagined that few people would be likely to refuse in exchange for the produce of their industry.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> So everyone will inevitably start stockpiling something they figure that everyone else is likely to want. This has a paradoxical effect, because at a certain point, rather than making that commodity less valuable (since everyone already has some) it becomes more valuable (because it becomes, effectively, currency):<br /> <br /> Salt is said to be the common instrument of commerce and exchanges in Abyssinia; a species of shells in some parts of the coast of India; dried cod at Newfoundland; tobacco in Virginia; sugar in some of our West India colonies; hides or dressed leather in some other countries; and there is at this day a village in Scotland where it is not uncommon, I am told, for a workman to carry nails instead of money to the baker's shop or the ale-house.1 2<br /> <br /> Eventually, of course, at least for long-distance trade, it all boils down to precious metals, since these are ideally suited to serve as currency, being durable, portable, and able to be endlessly subdivided into identical portions.<br /> <br /> Different metals have been made use of by different nations for this purpose. Iron was the common instrument of commerce among the ancient Spartans; copper among the ancient Romans; and gold and silver among all rich and commercial nations.<br /> <br /> <br /> Those metals seem originally to have been made use of for this purpose in rude bars, without any stamp or coinage ...<br /> <br /> <br /> The use of metals in this rude state was attended with two very considerable inconveniencies; first with the trouble of weighing; and, secondly, with that of assaying them. In the precious metals, where a small difference in the quantity makes a great difference in the value, even the business of weighing, with proper exactness, requires at least very accurate weights and scales. The weighing of gold in particular is an operation of some nicety . . .13<br /> <br /> It's easy to see where this is going. Using irregular metal ingots is easier than barter, but wouldn't standardizing the units-say, stamping pieces of metal with uniform designations guaranteeing weight and fineness, in different denominations-make things easier still? Clearly it would, and so was coinage born. True, issuing coinage meant governments had to get involved, since they generally ran the mints; but in the standard version of the story, governments have only this one limited role- to guarantee the money supply-and tend to do it badly, since throughout history, unscrupulous kings have often cheated by debasing the coinage and causing inflation and other sorts of political havoc in what was originally a matter of simple economic common sense.<br /> <br /> Tellingly, this story played a crucial role not only in founding the discipline of economics, but in the very idea that there was something called &quot;the economy,&quot; which operated by its own rules, separate from moral or political life, that economists could take as their field of study.<br /> <br /> &quot;The economy&quot; is where we indulge in our natural propensity to truck and barter. We are still trucking and bartering. We always will be. Money is simply the most efficient means.<br /> <br /> Economists like Karl Menger and Stanley Jevons later improved on the details of the story, most of all by adding various mathematical equations to demonstrate that a random assortment of people with random desires could, in theory, produce not only a single commodity to use as money but a uniform price system. In the process, they also substituted all sorts of impressive technical vocabulary (i.e., &quot;inconveniences&quot; became &quot;transaction costs&quot;). The crucial thing, though, is that by now, this story has become simple common sense for most people. We teach it to children in schoolbooks and museums. Everybody knows it. &quot;Once upon a time, there was barter. It was difficult. So people invented money. Then came the development of banking and credit.&quot; It all forms a perfectly simple, straightforward progression, a process of increasing sophistication and abstraction that has carried humanity, logically and inexorably, from the Stone Age exchange of mastodon tusks to stock markets, hedge funds, and securitized derivatives. &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;4<br /> <br /> It really has become ubiquitous. Wherever we find money, we also find the story. At one point, in the town of Arivonimamo, in Madagascar, I had the privilege of interviewing a Kalanoro, a tiny ghostly creature that a local spirit medium claimed to keep hidden away in a chest in his home. The spirit belonged to the brother of a notorious local loan shark, a horrible woman named Nordine, and to be honest I was a bit reluctant to have anything to do with the family, but some of my friends insisted-since after all, this was a creature from ancient times. The creature spoke from behind a screen in an eerie, otherworldly quaver. But all it was really interested in talking about was money. Finally, slightly exasperated by the whole charade, I asked, &quot;So, what did you use for money back in ancient times, when you were still alive?&quot;<br /> <br /> The mysterious voice immediately replied, &quot;No. We didn't use money. In ancient times we used to barter commodities directly, one for the other . . . &quot;<br /> <br /> <br /> The story, then, is everywhere. It is the founding myth of our system of economic relations. It is so deeply established in common sense, even in places like Madagascar, that most people on earth couldn't imagine any other way that money possibly could have come about.<br /> <br /> The problem is there's no evidence that it ever happened, and an enormous amount of evidence suggesting that it did not.<br /> <br /> For centuries now, explorers have been trying to find this fabled land of barter-none with success. Adam Smith set his story in aboriginal North America (others preferred Africa or the Pacific). In Smith's time, at least it could be said that reliable information on Native American economic systems was unavailable in Scottish libraries. But by mid-century, Lewis Henry Morgan's descriptions of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, among others, were widely published-and they made clear that the main economic institution among the Iroquois nations were longhouses where most goods were stockpiled and then allocated by women's councils, and no one ever traded arrowheads for slabs of meat. Economists simply ignored this information.15 Stanley Jevons, for example, who in 1871 wrote what has come to be considered the classic book on the origins of money, took his examples straight from Smith, with Indians swapping venison for elk and beaver hides, and made no use of actual descriptions of Indian life that made it clear that Smith had simply made this up. Around that same time, missionaries, adventurers, and colonial administrators were fanning out across the world, many bringing copies of Smith's book with them, expecting to find the land of barter. None ever did. They discovered an almost endless variety of economic systems. But to this day, no one has been able to locate a part of the world where the ordinary mode of economic transaction between neighbors takes the form of &quot;I'll give you twenty chickens for that cow. &quot;<br /> <br /> The definitive anthropological work on barter, by Caroline Humphrey, of Cambridge, could not be more definitive in its conclusions: &quot;No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of money; all available ethnography suggests that there never has been such a thing. &quot;1&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Now, all this hardly means that barter does not exist-or even that it's never practiced by the sort of people that Smith would refer to as &quot;savages.&quot; It just means that it's almost never employed, as Smith imagined, between fellow villagers. Ordinarily, it takes place between strangers, even enemies. Let us begin with the Nambikwara of Brazil. They would seem to fit all the criteria: they are a simple society without much in the way of division of labor, organized into small bands that traditionally numbered at best a hundred people each. Occasionally if one band spots the cooking fires of another in their vicinity, they will send emissaries to negotiate a meeting for purposes of trade. If the offer is accepted, they will first hide their women and children in the forest, then invite the men of other band to visit camp. Each band has a chief; once everyone has been assembled, each chief gives a formal speech praising the other party and belittling his own; everyone puts aside their weapons to sing and dance together-though the dance is one that mimics military confrontation. Then, individuals from each side approach each other to trade:<br /> <br /> If an individual wants an object he extols it by saying how fine it is. If a man values an object and wants much in exchange for it, instead of saying that it is very valuable he says that it is no good, thus showing his desire to keep it. &quot;This axe is no good, it is very old, it is very dull,&quot; he will say, referring to his axe which the other wants.<br /> <br /> This argument is carried on in an angry tone of voice until a settlement is reached. When agreement has been reached each snatches the object out of the other's hand. If a man has bartered a necklace, instead of taking it off and handing it over, the other person must take it off with a show of force. Disputes, often leading to fights, occur when one party is a little premature and snatches the object before the other has finished arguing.17<br /> <br /> The whole business concludes with a great feast at which the women reappear, but this too can lead to problems, since amidst the music and good cheer, there is ample opportunity for seductions.18 This sometimes led to jealous quarrels. Occasionally, people would get killed.<br /> <br /> Barter, then, for all the festive elements, was carried out between people who might otherwise be enemies and hovered about an inch away from outright warfare-and, if the ethnographer is to be believed-if one side later decided they had been taken advantage of, it could very easily lead to actual wars.<br /> <br /> To shift our spotlight halfway around the world to Western Am-hem Land in Australia, where the Gunwinggu people are famous for entertaining neighbors in rituals of ceremonial barter called the dza-malag. Here the threat of actual violence seems much more distant. Partly, this is because things are made easier by the existence of a moiety system that embraces the whole region: no one is allowed to marry, or even have sex with, people of their own moiety, no matter where they come from, but anyone from the other is technically a potential match. Therefore, for a man, even in distant communities, half the women are strictly forbidden, half of them fair game. The region is also united by local specialization: each people has its own trade product to be bartered with the others.<br /> <br /> What follows is from a description of a dzamalag held in the 1940s, as observed by an anthropologist named Ronald Berndt.<br /> <br /> Once again, it begins as strangers, after some initial negotiations, are invited into the hosts' main camp. The visitors in this particular example were famous for their &quot;much-prized serrated spears&quot;-their hosts had access to good European cloth. The trading begins when the visiting party, which consisted of both men and women, enters the camp's dancing ground of &quot;ring place,&quot; and three of them began to entertain their hosts with music. Two men start singing, a third accompanies them on the didjeridu. Before long, women from the hosts' side come and attack the musicians:<br /> <br /> Men and women rise and begin to dance. The dzamalag opens when two Gunwinggu women of the opposite moiety to the singing men &quot;give dzamalag&quot; to the latter. They present each man with a piece of cloth, and hit or touch him, pulling him down on the ground, calling him a dzamalag husband, and joking with him in an erotic vein. Then another woman of the opposite moiety to the pipe player gives him cloth, hits and jokes with him.<br /> <br /> This sets in motion the dzamalag exchange. Men from the visiting group sit quietly while women of the opposite moiety come over and give them cloth, hit them, and invite them to copulate; they take any liberty they choose with the men, amid amusement and applause, while the singing and dancing continue. Women try to undo the men's loin coverings or touch their penises, and to drag them from the &quot;ring place&quot; for coitus. The men go with their dzamalag partners, with a show of reluctance, to copulate in the bushes away from the fires which light up the dancers. They may give the women tobacco or beads. When the women return, they give part of this tobacco to their own husbands, who have encouraged them to go dza-malag. The husbands, in turn, use the tobacco to pay their own female dzamalag partners ... 19<br /> <br /> New singers and musicians appear, are again assaulted and dragged off to the bushes; men encourage their wives &quot;not to be shy,&quot; so as to maintain the Gunwinggu reputation for hospitality; eventually those men also take the initiative with the visitors' wives, offering cloth, hitting them, and leading them off into the bushes. Beads and tobacco circulate. Finally, once participants have all paired off at least once, and the guests are satisfied with the cloth they have acquired, the women stop dancing and stand in two rows and the visitors line up to repay them.<br /> <br /> Then visiting men of one moiety dance towards the women of the opposite moiety, in order to &quot;give them dzamalag.&quot; They hold shovel-nosed spears poised, pretending to spear the women, but instead hit them with the flat of the blade. &quot;We will not spear you, for we have already speared you with our penises.&quot; They present the spears to the women. Then visiting men of the other moiety go through the same actions with the women of their opposite moiety, giving them spears with serrated points. This terminates the ceremony, which is followed by a large distribution of food.20<br /> <br /> This is a particularly dramatic case, but dramatic cases are revealing. What the Gunwinggu hosts appear to have been able to do here, owing to the relatively amicable relations between neighboring peoples in Western Arnhem Land, is to take all the elements in Nambikwara barter (the music and dancing, the potential hostility, the sexual intrigue), and turn it all into a kind of festive game--one not, perhaps, without its dangers, but (as the ethnographer emphasizes) considered enormous fun by everyone concerned.<br /> <br /> What all such cases of trade through barter have in common is that they are meetings with strangers who will, likely as not, never meet again, and with whom one certainly will not enter into any ongoing relations. This is why a direct one-on-one exchange is appropriate: each side makes their trade and walks away. It's all made possible by laying down an initial mantle of sociability, in the form of shared pleasures, music and dance--the usual base of conviviality on which trade must always be built. Then comes the actual trading, where both sides make a great display of the latent hostility that necessarily exists in any exchange of material goods between strangers-where neither party has no particular reason not to take advantage of the other-by playful mock aggression, though in the Nambikwara case, where the mantle of sociability is extremely thin, mock aggression is in constant danger of slipping over into the real thing. The Gunwinggu, with their more relaxed attitude toward sexuality, have quite ingeniously managed to make the shared pleasures and aggression into exactly the same thing.<br /> <br /> Recall here the language of the economics textbooks: &quot;Imagine a society without money.&quot; &quot;Imagine a barter economy.&quot; One thing these examples make abundantly clear is just how limited the imaginative powers of most economists turn out to be.2&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Why? The simplest answer would be: for there to even be a discipline called &quot;economics,&quot; a discipline that concerns itself first and foremost with how individuals seek the most advantageous arrangement for the exchange of shoes for potatoes, or cloth for spears, it must assume that the exchange of such goods need have nothing to do with war, passion, adventure, mystery, sex, or death. Economics assumes a division between different spheres of human behavior that, among people like the Gunwinngu and the Nambikwara, simply does not exist. These divisions in turn are made possible by very specific institutional arrangements: the existence of lawyers, prisons, and police, to ensure that even people who don't like each other very much, who have no interest in developing any kind of ongoing relationship, but are simply interested in getting their hands on as much of the others' possessions as possible, will nonetheless refrain from the most obvious expedient (theft). This in turn allows us to assume that life is neatly divided between the marketplace, where we do our shopping, and the &quot;sphere of consumption,&quot; where we concern ourselves with music, feasts, and seduction. In other words, the vision of the world that forms the basis of the economics textbooks, which Adam Smith played so large a part in promulgating, has by now become so much a part of our common sense that we find it hard to imagine any other possible arrangement.<br /> <br /> From these examples, it begins to be clear why there are no societies based on barter. Such a society could only be one in which everybody was an inch away from everybody else's throat; but nonetheless hovering there, poised to strike but never actually striking, forever. True, barter does sometimes occur between people who do not consider each other strangers, but they're usually people who might as well be strangers-that is, who feel no sense of mutual responsibility or trust, or the desire to develop ongoing relations. The Pukhtun of Northern Pakistan, for instance, are famous for their open-handed hospitality. Barter is what you do with those to whom you are not bound by ties of hospitality (or kinship, or much of anything else):<br /> <br /> A favorite mode of exchange among men is barter, or adal-badal (give and take). Men are always on the alert for the possibility of bartering one of their possessions for something better. Often the exchange is like for like: a radio for a radio, sunglasses for sunglasses, a watch for a watch. However, unlike objects can also be exchanged, such as, in one instance, a bicycle for two donkeys. Adal-badal is always practiced with non-relatives and affords men a great deal of pleasure as they attempt to get the advantage over their exchange partner. A good exchange, in which a man feels he has gotten the better of the deal, is cause for bragging and pride. If the exchange is bad, the recipient tries to renege on the deal or, failing that, to palm off the faulty object on someone unsuspecting. The best partner in adal-badal is someone who is distant spatially and will therefore have little opportunity to complain. 22<br /> <br /> Neither are such unscrupulous motives limited to Central Asia. They seem inherent to the very nature of barter-which would explain the fact that in the century or two before Smith's time, the English words &quot;truck and barter,&quot; like their equivalents in French, Spanish, German, Dutch, and Portuguese, literally meant &quot;to trick, bamboozle, or rip off.&quot;2&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Swapping one thing directly for another while trying to get the best deal one can out of the transaction is, ordinarily, how one deals with people one doesn't care about and doesn't expect to see again. What reason is there not to try to take advantage of such a person? If, on the other hand, one cares enough about someone-a neighbor, a friend-to wish to deal with her fairly and honestly, one will inevitably also care about her enough to take her individual needs, desires, and situation into account. Even if you do swap one thing for another, you are likely to frame the matter as a gift.<br /> <br /> <br /> To illustrate what I mean by this, let's return to the economics textbooks and the problem of the &quot;double coincidence of wants.&quot; When we left Henry, he needed a pair of shoes, but all he had lying around were some potatoes. Joshua had an extra pair of shoes, but he didn't really need potatoes. Since money has not yet been invented, they have a problem. What are they to do?<br /> <br /> The first thing that should be clear by now is that we'd really have to know a bit more about Joshua and Henry. Who are they? Are they related? If so, how? They appear to live in a small community. Any two people who have been living their lives in the same small community will have some sort of complicated history with each other. Are they friends, rivals, allies, lovers, enemies, or several of these things at once?<br /> <br /> The authors of the original example seem to assume two neighbors of roughly equal status, not closely related, but on friendly terms-that is, as close to neutral equality as one can get. Even so, this doesn't say much. For example, if Henry was living in a Seneca longhouse, and needed shoes, Joshua would not even enter into it; he'd simply mention it to his wife, who'd bring up the matter with the other matrons, fetch materials from the longhouse's collective storehouse, and sew him some. Alternately, to find a scenario fit for an imaginary economics textbook, we might place Joshua and Henry together in a small, intimate community like a Nambikwara or Gunwinggu band.<br /> <br /> SCENARIO 1<br /> <br /> Henry walks up to Joshua and says &quot;Nice shoes!&quot;<br /> <br /> Joshua says, &quot;Oh, they're not much, but since you seem to like them, by all means take them. &quot;<br /> <br /> Henry takes the shoes.<br /> <br /> Henry's potatoes are not at issue since both parties are perfectly well aware that if Joshua were ever short of potatoes, Henry would give him some.<br /> <br /> And that's about it. Of course it's not clear, in this case, how long Henry will actually get to keep the shoes. It probably depends on how nice they are. If they were just ordinary shoes, this might be the end of the matter. If they are in any way unique or beautiful, they might end up being passed around. There's a famous story that John and Lorna Marshall, who carried out a study of Kalahari Bushmen in the '6os, once gave a knife to one of their favorite informants. They left and came back a year later, only to discover that pretty much everyone in the band had been in possession of the knife at some point in between. On the other hand, several Arab friends confirm to me that in less strictly egalitarian contexts, there is an expedient. If a friend praises a bracelet or bag, you are normally expected to immediately say &quot;take it&quot;-but if you are really determined to hold on to it, you can always say, &quot;yes, isn't it beautiful? It was a gift.&quot;<br /> <br /> But clearly, the authors of the textbook have a slightly more impersonal transaction in mind. The authors seem to imagine the two men as the heads of patriarchal households, on good terms with each other, but who keep their own supplies. Perhaps they live in one of those Scottish villages with the butcher and the baker in Adam Smith's examples, or a colonial settlement in New England. Except for some reason they've never heard of money. It's a peculiar fantasy, but let's see what we can do:<br /> <br /> SCENARIO 2<br /> <br /> Henry walks up to Joshua and says, &quot;Nice shoes!&quot;<br /> <br /> Or, perhaps-let's make this a bit more realistic-Henry's wife is chatting with Joshua's and strategically lets slip that the state of Henry's shoes is getting so bad he's complaining about corns.<br /> <br /> The message is conveyed, and Joshua comes by the next day to offer his extra pair to Henry as a present, insisting that this is just a neighborly gesture. He would certainly never want anything in return.<br /> <br /> It doesn't matter whether Joshua is sincere in saying this. By doing so, Joshua thereby registers a credit. Henry owes him one.<br /> <br /> How might Henry pay Joshua back? There are endless possibilities. Perhaps Joshua really does want potatoes. Henry waits a discrete interval and drops them off, insisting that this too is just a gift. Or Joshua doesn't need potatoes now but Henry waits until he does. Or maybe a year later, Joshua is planning a banquet, so he comes strolling by Henry's barnyard and says &quot;Nice pig ...&quot;<br /> <br /> In any of these scenarios, the problem of &quot;double coincidence of wants,&quot; so endlessly invoked in the economics textbooks, simply disappears. Henry might not have something Joshua wants right now. But if the two are neighbors, it's obviously only a matter of time before he will.24<br /> <br /> This in turn means that the need to stockpile commonly acceptable items in the way that Smith suggested disappears as well. With it goes the need to develop currency. As with so many actual small communities, everyone simply keeps track of who owes what to whom.<br /> <br /> There is just one major conceptual problem here-one the attentive reader might have noticed. Henry &quot;owes Joshua one.&quot; One what? How do you quantify a favor? On what basis do you say that this many potatoes, or this big a pig, seems more or less equivalent to a pair of shoes? Because even if these things remain rough-and-ready approximations, there must be some way to establish that X is roughly equivalent to Y, or slightly worse or slightly better. Doesn't this imply that something like money, at least in the sense of a unit of accounts by which one can compare the value of different objects, already has to exist?<br /> <br /> In most gift economies, there actually is a rough-and-ready way to solve the problem. One establishes a series of ranked categories of types of thing. Pigs and shoes may be considered objects of roughly equivalent status, one can give one in return for the other; coral necklaces are quite another matter, one would have to give back another necklace, or at least another piece of jewelry-anthropologists are used to referring to these as creating different &quot;spheres of exchange.”&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt; This does simplify things somewhat. When cross-cultural barter becomes a regular and unexceptional thing, it tends to operate according to similar principles: there are only certain things traded for certain others (cloth for spears, for example), which makes it easy to work out traditional equivalences. However, this doesn't help us at all with the problem of the origin of money. Actually, it makes it infinitely worse. Why stockpile salt or gold or fish if they can only be exchanged for some things and not others?<br /> <br /> In fact, there is good reason to believe that barter is not a particularly ancient phenomenon at all, but has only really become widespread in modern times. Certainly in most of the cases we know about, it takes place between people who are familiar with the use of money, but for one reason or another, don't have a lot of it around. Elaborate barter systems often crop up in the wake of the collapse of national economies: most recently in Russia in the '9os, and in Argentina around 2002, when rubles in the first case, and dollars in the second, effectively disappeared.26 Occasionally one can even find some kind of currency beginning to develop: for instance, in POW camps and many prisons, inmates have indeed been known to use cigarettes as a kind of currency, much to the delight and excitement of professional economists.27 But here too we are talking about people who grew up using money and now have to make do without it-exactly the situation &quot;imagined&quot; by the economics textbooks with which I began.<br /> <br /> The more frequent solution is to adopt some sort of credit system. When much of Europe &quot;reverted to barter&quot; after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and then again after the Carolingian Empire likewise fell apart, this seems to be what happened. People continued keeping accounts in the old imperial currency, even if they were no longer using coins.28 Similarly, the Pukhtun men who like to swap bicycles for donkeys are hardly unfamiliar with the use of money. Money has existed in that part of the world for thousands of years. They just prefer direct exchange between equals-in this case, because they consider it more manly.29<br /> <br /> The most remarkable thing is that even in Adam Smith's examples of fish and nails and tobacco being used as money, the same sort of thing was happening. In the years following the appearance of The Wealth of Nations, scholars checked into most of those examples and discovered that in just about every case, the people involved were quite familiar with the use of money, and in fact, were using money-as a unit of account.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;0 Take the example of dried cod, supposedly used as money in Newfoundland. As the British diplomat A. Mitchell-Innes pointed out almost a century ago, what Smith describes was really an illusion, created by a simple credit arrangement:<br /> <br /> In the early days of the Newfoundland fishing industry, there was no permanent European population; the fishers went there for the fishing season only, and those who were not fishers were traders who bought the dried fish and sold to the fishers their daily supplies. The latter sold their catch to the traders at the market price in pounds, shillings and pence, and obtained in return a credit on their books, with which they paid for their supplies. Balances due by the traders were paid for by drafts on England or France.31<br /> <br /> It was quite the same in the Scottish village. It's not as if anyone actually walked into the local pub, plunked down a roofing nail, and asked for a pint of beer. Employers in Smith's day often lacked coin to pay their workers; wages could be delayed by a year or more; in the meantime, it was considered acceptable for employees to carry off either some of their own products or leftover work materials, lumber, fabric, cord, and so on. The nails were de facto interest on what their employers owed them. So they went to the pub, ran up a tab, and when occasion permitted, brought in a bag of nails to charge off against the debt. The law making tobacco legal tender in Virginia seems to have been an attempt by planters to oblige local merchants to accept their products as a credit around harvest time. In effect, the law forced all merchants in Virginia to become middlemen in the tobacco business, whether they liked it or not; just as all West Indian merchants were obliged to become sugar dealers, since that's what all their wealthier customers brought in to write off against their debt.<br /> <br /> The primary examples, then, were ones in which people were improvising credit systems, because actual money-gold and silver coinage-was in short supply. But the most shocking blow to the conventional version of economic history came with the translation, first of Egyptian hieroglyphics, and then of Mesopotamian cuneiform, which pushed back scholars' knowledge of written history almost three millennia, from the time of Homer (circa 8oo Be), where it had hovered in Smith's time, to roughly 3500 BC. What these texts revealed was that credit systems of exactly this sort actually preceded the invention of coinage by thousands of years.<br /> <br /> The Mesopotamian system is the best-documented, more so than that of Pharaonic Egypt (which appears similar), Shang China (about which we know little), or the Indus Valley civilization (about which we know nothing at all). As it happens, we know a great deal about Mesopotamia, since the vast majority of cuneiform documents were financial in nature.<br /> <br /> The Sumerian economy was dominated by vast temple and palace complexes. These were often staffed by thousands: priests and officials, craftspeople who worked in their industrial workshops, farmers and shepherds who worked their considerable estates. Even though ancient Sumer was usually divided into a large number of independent citystates, by the time the curtain goes up on Mesopotamian civilization around 3500, temple administrators already appear to have developed a single, uniform system of accountancy-one that is in some ways still with us, actually, because it's to the Sumerians that we owe such things as the dozen or the 24-hour day.32 The basic monetary unit was the silver shekel. One shekel's weight in silver was established as the equivalent of one gur, or bushel of barley. A shekel was subdivided into 6o minas, corresponding to one portion of barley-on the principle that there were 30 days in a month, and Temple workers received two rations of barley every day. It's easy to see that &quot;money&quot; in this sense is in no way the product of commercial transactions. It was actually created by bureaucrats in order to keep track of resources and move things back and forth between departments.<br /> <br /> Temple bureaucrats used the system to calculate debts (rents, fees, loans ...) in silver. Silver was, effectively, money. And it did indeed circulate in the form of unworked chunks, &quot;rude bars&quot; as Smith had put it.33 In this he was right. But it was almost the only part of his account that was right. One reason was that silver did not circulate very much. Most of it just sat around in Temple and Palace treasuries, some of which remained, carefully guarded, in the same place for literally thousands of years. It would have been easy enough to standardize the ingots, stamp them, create some authoritative system to guarantee their purity. The technology existed. Yet no one saw any particular need to do so. One reason was that while debts were calculated in silver, they did not have to be paid in silver-in fact, they could be paid in more or less anything one had around. Peasants who owed money to the Temple or Palace, or to some Temple or Palace official, seem to have settled their debts mostly in barley, which is why fixing the ratio of silver to barley was so important. But it was perfectly acceptable to show up with goats, or furniture, or lapis lazuli. Temples and Palaces were huge industrial operations-they could find a use for almost anything.34<br /> <br /> In the marketplaces that cropped up in Mesopotamian cities, prices were also calculated in silver, and the prices of commodities that weren't entirely controlled by the Temples and Palaces would tend to fluctuate according to supply and demand. But even here, such evidence as we have suggests that most transactions were based on credit. Merchants (who sometimes worked for the Temples, sometimes operated independently) were among the few people who did, often, actually use silver in transactions; but even they mostly did much of their dealings on credit, and ordinary people buying beer from &quot;ale women,&quot; or local innkeepers, once again, did so by running up a tab, to be settled at harvest time in barley or anything they might have had at hand.35<br /> <br /> At this point, just about every aspect of the conventional story of the origins of money lay in rubble. Rarely has an historical theory been so absolutely and systematically refuted. By the early decades of the twentieth century, all the pieces were in place to completely rewrite the history of money. The groundwork was laid by Mitchell-Innes-the same one I've already cited on the matter of the cod-in two essays that appeared in New York's Banking Law Journal in 1913 and 1914. In these, Mitchell-Innes matter-of-factly laid out the false assumptions on which existing economic history was based and suggested that what was really needed was a history of debt:<br /> <br /> One of the popular fallacies in connection with commerce is that in modern days a money-saving device has been introduced called credit and that, before this device was known, all, purchases were paid for in cash, in other words in coins. A careful investigation shows that the precise reverse is true. In olden days coins played a far smaller part in commerce than they do to-day. Indeed so small was the quantity of coins, that they did not even suffice for the needs of the [Medieval English] Royal household and estates which regularly used tokens of various kinds for the purpose of making small payments. So unimportant indeed was the coinage that sometimes Kings did not hesitate to call it all in for re-minting and re-issue and still commerce went on just the same.36<br /> <br /> In fact, our standard account of monetary history is precisely backwards. We did not begin with barter, discover money, and then eventually develop credit systems. It happened precisely the other way around. What we now call virtual money came first. Coins came much later, and their use spread only unevenly, never completely replacing credit systems. Barter, in turn, appears to be largely a kind of accidental byproduct of the use of coinage or paper money: historically, it has mainly been what people who are used to cash transactions do when for one reason or another they have no access to currency.<br /> <br /> The curious thing is that it never happened. This new history was never written. It's not that any economist has ever refuted Mitchell-Innes. They just ignored him. Textbooks did not change their story--even if all the evidence made clear that the story was simply wrong. People still write histories of money that are actually histories of coinage, on the assumption that in the past, these were necessarily the same thing; periods when coinage largely vanished are still described as times when the economy &quot;reverted to barter,&quot; as if the meaning of this phrase is self-evident, even though no one actually knows what it means. As a result we have next-to-no idea how, say, the inhabitant of a Dutch town in 950 AD actually went about acquiring cheese or spoons or hiring musicians to play at his daughter's wedding-let alone how any of this was likely to be arranged in Pemba or Samarkand.17<br /> <br /> == Chapter tree: Primordial debts ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;In being born every being is born as debt owed to the gods, the saints, the Fathers and to men. If one makes a sacrifice, it is because of a debt owing to the gods from birth ...If one recites a sacred text, it is because of a debt owing to the saints ...If one wishes for offspring, it is because of a debt due to the ''fathers from birth . . . And if one gives hospitality, it is because it is a debt owing to men.''<br /> <br /> ''-Satapatha Brahmana 1.7.12,'' 1-6<br /> <br /> ''Let us drive away the evil effects of bad dreams, just as we pay off debts.''<br /> <br /> ''—Rig Veda 8-47.17''&lt;/blockquote&gt;THE REASON THAT economics textbooks now begin with imaginary villages is because it has been impossible to talk about real ones. Even some economists have been forced to admit that Smith's Land of Barter doesn't really exist.1<br /> <br /> The question is why the myth has been perpetuated, anyway. Economists have long since jettisoned other elements of The Wealth of Nations-for instance, Smith's labor theory of value and disapproval of joint-stock corporations. Why not simply write off the myth of barter as a quaint Enlightenment parable, and instead attempt to understand primordial credit arrangements-or anyway, something more in keeping with the historical evidence?<br /> <br /> The answer seems to be that the Myth of Barter cannot go away, because it is central to the entire discourse of economics.<br /> <br /> Recall here what Smith was trying to do when he wrote The Wealth of Nations. Above all, the book was an attempt to establish the newfound discipline of economics as a science. This meant that not only did economics have its own peculiar domain of study-what we now call &quot;the economy,&quot; though the idea that there even was something called an &quot;economy&quot; was very new in Smith's day-but that this economy operated according to laws of much the same sort as Sir Isaac Newton had so recently identified as governing the physical world. Newton had represented God as a cosmic watchmaker who had created the physical machinery of the universe in such a way that it would operate for the ultimate benefit of humans, and then let it run on its own. Smith was trying to make a similar, Newtonian argument.2 God-or Divine Providence, as he put it-had arranged matters in such a way that our pursuit of self-interest would nonetheless, given an unfettered market, be guided &quot;as if by an invisible hand&quot; to promote the general welfare. Smith's famous invisible hand was, as he says in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, the agent of Divine Providence. It was literally the hand of God.3<br /> <br /> Once economics had been established as a discipline, the theological arguments no longer seemed necessary or important. People continue to argue about whether an unfettered free market really will produce the results that Smith said it would; but no one questions whether &quot;the market&quot; naturally exists. The underlying assumptions that derive from this came to be seen as common sense-so much so that, as I've noted, we simply assume that when valuable objects do change hands, it will normally be because two individuals have both decided they would gain a material advantage by swapping them. One interesting corollary is that, as a result, economists have come to see the very question of the presence or absence of money as not especially important, since money is just a commodity, chosen to facilitate exchange, and which we use to measure the value of other commodities. Otherwise, it has no special qualities. Still, in 1958, Paul Samuelson, one of the leading lights of the neoclassical school that still predominates in modern economic thought, could express disdain for what he called &quot;the social contrivance of money.&quot; &quot;Even in the most advanced industrial economies,&quot; he insisted, &quot;if we strip exchange down to its barest essentials and peel off the obscuring layer of money, we find that trade between individuals and nations largely boils down to barter. &quot;4 Others spoke of a &quot;veil of money&quot; obscuring the nature of the &quot;real economy&quot; in which people produced real goods and services and swapped them back and forth.5<br /> <br /> Call this the final apotheosis of economics as common sense. Money is unimportant. Economies-&quot;real economies&quot;-are really vast barter systems. The problem is that history shows that without money, such vast barter systems do not occur. Even when economies &quot;revert to barter,&quot; as Europe was said to do in the Middle Ages, they don't actually abandon the use of money. They just abandon the use of cash. In the Middle Ages, for instance, everyone continued to assess the value of tools and livestock in the old Roman currency, even if the coins themselves had ceased to circulate.6<br /> <br /> It's money that had made it possible for us to imagine ourselves in the way economists encourage us to do: as a collection of individuals and nations whose main business is swapping things. It's also clear that the mere existence of money, in itself, is not enough to allow us see the world this way. If it were, the discipline of economics would have been created in ancient Sumer, or anyway, far earlier than 1776, when Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations appeared.<br /> <br /> The missing element is in fact exactly the thing Smith was attempting to downplay: the role of government policy. In England, in Smith's day, it became possible to see the market, the world of butchers, ironmongers, and haberdashers, as its own entirely independent sphere of human activity because the British government was actively engaged in fostering it. This required laws and police, but also, specific monetary policies, which liberals like Smith were (successfully) advo-cating.7 It required pegging the value of the currency to silver, but at the same time greatly increasing the money supply, and particularly the amount of small change in circulation. This not only required huge amounts of tin and copper, but also the careful regulation of the banks that were, at that time, the only source of paper money. The century before The Wealth of Nations had seen at least two attempts to create state-supported central banks, in France and Sweden, that had proven to be spectacular failures. In each case, the would-be central bank issued notes based largely on speculation that collapsed the moment investors lost faith. Smith supported the use of paper money, but like Locke before him, he also believed that the relative success of the Bank of England and Bank of Scotland had been due to their policy of pegging paper money firmly to precious metals. This became the mainstream economic view, so much so that alternative theories of money as credit-the one that Mitchell-Innes advocated-were quickly relegated to the margins, their proponents written off as cranks, and the very sort of thinking that led to bad banks and speculative bubbles in the first places<br /> <br /> It might be helpful, then, to consider what these alternative theories actually were.<br /> <br /> State and Credit Theories of Money<br /> <br /> Mitchell-Innes was an exponent of what came to be known as the Credit Theory of money, a position that over the course of the nineteenth century had its most avid proponents not in Mitchell-Innes's native Britain but in the two up-and-coming rival powers of the day, the United States and Germany. Credit Theorists insisted that money is not a commodity but an accounting tool. In other words, it is not a &quot;thing&quot; at all. You can no more touch a dollar or a deutschmark than you can touch an hour or a cubic centimeter. Units of currency are merely abstract units of measurement, and as the credit theorists correctly noted, historically, such abstract systems of accounting emerged long before the use of any particular token of exchange.8<br /> <br /> The obvious next question is: If money is a just a yardstick, what then does it measure? The answer was simple: debt. A coin is, effectively, an IOU. Whereas conventional wisdom holds that a banknote is, or should be, a promise to pay a certain amount of &quot;real money&quot; (gold, silver, whatever that might be taken to mean), Credit Theorists argued that a banknote is simply the promise to pay something of the same value as an ounce of gold. But that's all that money ever is. There's no fundamental difference in this respect between a silver dollar, a Susan B. Anthony dollar coin made of a copper-nickel alloy designed to look vaguely like gold, a green piece of paper with a picture of George Washington on it, or a digital blip on some bank's computer. Conceptually, the idea that a piece of gold is really just an IOU is always rather difficult to wrap one's head around, but something like this must be true, because even when gold and silver coins were in use, they almost never circulated at their bullion value.<br /> <br /> How could credit money come about? Let us return to the economics professors' imaginary town. Say, for example, that Joshua were to give his shoes to Henry, and, rather than Henry owing him a favor, Henry promises him something of equivalent value.9 Henry gives Joshua an IOU. Joshua could wait for Henry to have something useful, and then redeem it. In that case Henry would rip up the IOU and the story would be over. But say Joshua were to pass the IOU on to a third party-Sheila-to whom he owes something else. He could tick it off against his debt to a fourth party, Lola-now Henry will owe that amount to her. Hence is money born. Because there's no logical end to it. Say Sheila now wishes to acquire a pair of shoes from Edith; she can just hand Edith the IOU, and assure her that Henry is good for it. In principle, there's no reason that the IOU could not continue circulating around town for years-provided people continue to have faith in Henry. In fact, if it goes on long enough, people might forget about the issuer entirely. Things like this do happen. The anthropologist Keith Hart once told me a story about his brother, who in the 'sos was a British soldier stationed in Hong Kong. Soldiers used to pay their bar tabs by writing checks on accounts back in England. Local merchants would often simply endorse them over to each other and pass them around as currency: once, he saw one of his own checks, written six months before, on the counter of a local vendor covered with about forty different tiny inscriptions in Chinese.<br /> <br /> What credit theorists like Mitchell-Innes were arguing is that even if Henry gave Joshua a gold coin instead of a piece of paper, the situation would be essentially the same. A gold coin is a promise' to pay something else of equivalent value to a gold coin. After all, a gold coin is not actually useful in itself. One only accepts it because one assumes other people will.<br /> <br /> In this sense, the value of a unit of currency is not the measure of the value of an object, but the measure of one's trust in other human beings.<br /> <br /> This element of trust of course makes everything more complicated. Early banknotes circulated via a process almost exactly like what I've just described, except that, like the Chinese merchants, each recipient added his or her signature to guarantee the debt's legitimacy. But generally, the difficulty in the Chartalist position-this is what it came to be called, from the Latin charta, or token-is to establish why people would continue to trust a piece of paper. After all, why couldn't anyone just sign Henry's name on an IOU? True, this sort of debt-token system might work within a small village where everyone knew one another, or even among a more dispersed community like sixteenth-century Italian or twentieth-century Chinese merchants, where everyone at least had ways of keeping track of everybody else. But systems like these cannot create a full-blown currency system, and there's no evidence that they ever have. Providing a sufficient number of IOUs to allow everyone even in a medium-sized city to be able to carry out a significant portion of their daily transactions in such currency would require millions of tokens. &lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; To be able to guarantee all of them, Henry would have to be almost unimaginably rich.<br /> <br /> All this would be much less of a problem, however, if Henry were, say, Henry II, King of England, Duke of Normandy, Lord of Ireland, and Count of Anjou.<br /> <br /> The real impetus for the Chartalist position, in fact, came out of what came to be known as the &quot;German Historical School,&quot; whose most famous exponent was the historian G.F. Knapp, whose State Theory of Money first appeared in 1905.11 If money is simply a unit of measure, it makes sense that emperors and kings should concern themselves with such matters. Emperors and kings are almost always concerned to established uniform systems of weights and measures throughout their kingdoms. It is also true, as Knapp observed, that once established, such systems tend to remain remarkably stable over time. During the reign of the actual Henry II (1154-1189), just about everyone in Western Europe was still keeping their accounts using the monetary system established by Charlemagne some 350 years earlier-that is, using pounds, shillings, and pence-espite the fact that some of these coins had never existed (Charlemagne never actually struck a silver pound), none of Charlemagne's actual shillings and pence remained in circulation, and those coins that did circulate tended to vary enormously in size, weight, purity, and valueY According to the Chartalists, this doesn't really matter. What matters is that there is a uniform system for measuring credits and debts, and that this system remains stable over time. The case of Charlemagne's currency is particularly dramatic because his actual empire dissolved quite quickly, but the monetary system he created continued to be used, for keeping accounts, within his former territories for more than 8oo years. It was referred to, in the sixteenth century, quite explicitly as &quot;imaginary money, &quot; and derniers and livres were only completely abandoned, as units of account, around the time of the French RevolutionY<br /> <br /> According to Knapp, whether or not the actual, physical money stuff in circulation corresponds to this &quot;imaginary money&quot; is not particularly important. It makes no real difference whether it's pure silver, debased silver, leather tokens, or dried cod-provided the state is willing to accept it in payment of taxes. Because whatever the state was willing to accept, for that reason, became currency. One of the most important forms of currency in England in Henry's time were notched &quot;tally sticks&quot; used to record debts. Tally sticks were quite explicitly IOUs: both parties to a transaction would take a hazelwood twig, notch it to indicate the amount owed, and then split it in half. The creditor would keep one half, called &quot;the stock &quot; (hence the origin of the term &quot;stock holder&quot;) and the debtor kept the other, called &quot;the stub&quot; (hence the origin of the term &quot;ticket stub.&quot;) Tax assessors used such twigs to calculate amounts owed by local sheriffs. Often, though, rather than wait for the taxes to come due, Henry's exchequer would often sell the tallies at a discount, and they would circulate, as tokens of debt owed to the government, to anyone willing to trade for them.14<br /> <br /> Modern banknotes actually work on a similar principle, except in reverseY Recall here the little parable about Henry's IOU. The reader might have noticed one puzzling aspect of the equation: the IOU can operate as money only as long as Henry never pays his debt. In fact this is precisely the logic on which the Bank of England-the first successful modern central bank-was originally founded. In 1694, a consortium of English bankers made a loan of £1,2oo,ooo to the king. In return they received a royal monopoly on the issuance of banknotes. What this meant in practice was they had the right to advance IOUs for a portion of the money the king now owed them to any inhabitant of the kingdom willing to borrow from them, or willing to deposit their own money in the bank-in effect, to circulate or &quot;monetize&quot; the newly created royal debt. This was a great deal for the bankers (they got to charge the king 8 percent annual interest for the original loan and simultaneously charge interest on the same money to the clients who borrowed it), but it only worked as long as the original loan remained outstanding. To this day, this loan has never been paid back. It cannot be. If it ever were, the entire monetary system of Great Britain would cease to exist. &lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> If nothing else, this approach helps solve one of the obvious mysteries of the fiscal policy of so many early kingdoms: Why did they make subjects pay taxes at all? This is not a question we're used to asking. The answer seems self-evident. Governments demand taxes because they wish to get their hands on people's money. But if Smith was right, and gold and silver became money through the natural workings of the market completely independently of governments, then wouldn't the obvious thing be to just grab control of the gold and silver mines? Then the king would have all the money he could possibly need. In fact, this is what ancient kings would normally do. If there were gold and silver mines in their territory, they would usually take control of them. So what exactly was the point of extracting the gold, stamping one's picture on it, causing it to circulate among one's subjects-and then demanding that those same subjects give it back again?<br /> <br /> This does seem a bit of a puzzle. But if money and markets do not emerge spontaneously, it actually makes perfect sense. Because this is the simplest and most efficient way to bring markets into being. Let us take a hypothetical example. Say a king wishes to support a standing army of fifty thousand men. Under ancient or medieval conditions, feeding such a force was an enormous problem-unless they were on the march, one would need to employ almost as many men and animals just to locate, acquire, and transport the necessary provisions.17 On the other hand, if one simply hands out coins to the soldiers and then demands that every family in the kingdom was obliged to pay one of those coins back to you, one would, in one blow, turn one's entire national economy into a vast machine for the provisioning of soldiers, since now every family, in order to get their hands on the coins, must find some way to contribute to the general effort to provide soldiers with things they want. Markets are brought into existence as a side effect.<br /> <br /> This is a bit of a cartoon version, but it is very clear that markets did spring up around ancient armies; one need only take a glance at Kautilya's Arthasasatra, the Sassanian &quot;circle of sovereignty,&quot; or the Chinese &quot;Discourses on Salt and Iron&quot; to discover that most ancient rulers spent a great deal of their time thinking about the relation between mines, soldiers, taxes, and food. Most concluded that the creation of markets of this sort was not just convenient for feeding soldiers, but useful in all sorts of ways, since it meant officials no longer had to requisition everything they needed directly from the populace, or figure out a way to produce it on royal estates or royal workshops. In other words, despite the dogged liberal assumption-again, coming from Smith's legacy-that the existence of states and markets are somehow opposed, the historical record implies that exactly the opposite is the case. Stateless societies tend also to be without markets.<br /> <br /> As one might imagine, state theories of money have always been anathema to mainstream economists working in the tradition of Adam Smith. In fact, Chartalism has tended to be seen as a populist underside of economic theory, favored mainly by cranks.18 The curious thing is that the mainstream economists often ended up actually working for governments and advising such governments to pursue policies much like those the Chartalists described-that is, tax policies designed to create markets where they had not existed before-despite the fact that they were in theory committed to Smith's argument that markets develop spontaneously of their own accord.<br /> <br /> This was particularly true in the colonial world. To return to Madagascar for a moment: I have already mentioned that one of the first things that the French general Gallieni, conqueror of Madagascar, did when the conquest of the island was complete in 1901 was to impose a head tax. Not only was this tax quite high, it was also only payable in newly issued Malagasy francs. In other words, Gallieni did indeed print money and then demand that everyone in the country give some of that money back to him.<br /> <br /> Most striking of all, though, was language he used to describe this tax. It was referred to as the &quot;imp6t moralisateur,&quot; the &quot;educational&quot; or &quot;moralizing tax.&quot; In other words, it was designed-to adopt the language of the day-to teach the natives the value of work. Since the &quot;educational tax&quot; came due shortly after harvest time, the easiest way for farmers to pay it was to sell a portion of their rice crop to the Chinese or Indian merchants who soon installed themselves in small towns across the country. However, harvest was when the market price of rice was, for obvious reasons, at its lowest; if one sold too much of one's crop, that meant one would not have enough left to feed one's family for the entire year, and thus be forced to buy one's own rice back, on credit, from those same merchants later in the year when prices were much higher. As a result, farmers quickly fell hopelessly into debt (the merchants doubling as loan sharks). The easiest ways to pay back the debt was either to find some kind of cash crop to sell-to start growing coffee, or pineapples--or else to send one's children off to work for wages in the city, or on one of the plantations that French colonists were establishing across the island. The whole project might seem no more than a cynical scheme to squeeze cheap labor out of the peasantry, and it was that, but it was also something more. The colonial government was were also quite explicit (at least in their own internal policy documents), about the need to make sure that peasants had at least some money of their own left over, and to ensure that they became accustomed to the minor luxuries-parasols, lipstick, cookies-available at the Chinese shops. It was crucial that they develop new tastes, habits, and expectations; that they lay the foundations of a consumer demand that would endure long after the conquerors had left, and keep Madagascar forever tied to France.<br /> <br /> Most people are not stupid, and most Malagasy understood exactly what their conquerors were trying to do to them. Some were determined to resist. More than sixty years after the invasion, a French anthropologist, Gerard Althabe, was able to observe villages on the east coast of the island whose inhabitants would dutifully show up at the coffee plantations to earn the money for their poll tax, and then, having paid it, studiously ignore the wares for sale at the local shops and instead turn over any remaining money to lineage elders, who would then use it to buy cattle for sacrifice to their ancestors.19 Many were quite open in saying that they saw themselves as resisting a trap.<br /> <br /> Still, such defiance rarely lasts forever. Markets did gradually take shape, even in those parts of the island where none had previously existed. With them came the inevitable network of little shops. And by the time I got there, in 1990, a generation after the poll tax had finally been abolished by a revolutionary government, the logic of the market had become so intuitively accepted that even spirit mediums were reciting passages that might as well have come from Adam Smith.<br /> <br /> Such examples could be multiplied endlessly. Something like this occurred in just about every part of the world conquered by European arms where markets were not already in place. Rather than discovering barter, they ended up using the very techniques that mainstream economics rejected to bring something like the market into being.<br /> <br /> In Search of a Myth<br /> <br /> Anthropologists have been complaining about the Myth of Barter for almost a century. Occasionally, economists point out with slight exasperation that there's a fairly simple reason why they're still telling the same story despite all the evidence against it: anthropologists have never come up with a better one.10 This is an understandable objection, but there's a simple answer to it. The reasons why anthropologists haven't been able to come up with a simple, compelling story for the origins of money is because there's no reason to believe there could be one. Money was no more ever &quot;invented&quot; than music or mathematics or jewelry. What we call &quot;money&quot; isn't a &quot;thing&quot; at all, it's a way of comparing things mathematically, as proportions: of saying one of X is equivalent to six of Y. As such it is probably as old as human thought. The moment we try to get any more specific, we discover that there are any number of different habits and practices that have converged in the stuff we now call &quot;money,&quot; and this is precisely the reason why economists, historians, and the rest have found it so difficult to come up with a single definition.<br /> <br /> Credit Theorists have long been hobbled by the lack of an equally compelling narrative. This is not to say that all sides in the currency debates that ranged between 1850 and 1950 were not in the habit of deploying mythological weaponry. This was true particularly, perhaps, in the United States. In 1894, the Greenbackers, who pushed for detaching the dollar from gold entirely to allow the government to spend freely on job-creation campaigns, invented the idea of the March on Washington-an idea that was to have endless resonance in U.S. history. L. Frank Baum's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which appeared in 1900, is widely recognized to be a parable for the Populist campaign of William Jennings Bryan, who twice ran for president on the Free Silver platform-vowing to replace the gold standard with a bimetallic system that would allow the free creation of silver money alongside gold_ll As with the Greenbackers, one of the main constituencies for the movement was debtors: particularly, Midwestern farm families such as Dorothy's, who had been facing a massive wave of foreclosures during the severe recession of the 189os. According to the Populist reading, the Wicked Witches of the East and West represent the East and West Coast bankers (promoters of and benefactors from the tight money supply), the Scarecrow represented the farmers (who didn't have the brains to avoid the debt trap), the Tin Woodsman was the industrial proletariat (who didn't have the heart to act in solidarity with the farmers), the Cowardly Lion represented the political class (who didn't have the courage to intervene). The yellow brick road, silver slippers, emerald city, and hapless Wizard presumably speak for themselves.22 &quot;Oz&quot; is of course the standard abbreviation for &quot;ounce. &quot;23 As an attempt to create a new myth, Baum's story was remarkably effective. As political propaganda, less so. William Jennings Bryan failed in three attempts to win the presidency, the silver standard was never adopted, and few nowadays even remember what The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was originally supposed to be about.24<br /> <br /> For state-money theorists in particular, this has been a problem. Stories about rulers using taxes to create markets in conquered territories, or to pay for soldiers or other state functions, are not particularly inspiring. German ideas of money as the embodiment of national will did not travel very well.<br /> <br /> Every time there was a major economic meltdown, however, conventional laissez-faire economics took another hit. The Bryan campaigns were born as a reaction to the Panic of 1893. By the time of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the very notion that the market could regulate itself, so long as the government ensured that money was safely pegged to precious metals, was completely discredited. From roughly 1933 to 1979, every major capitalist government reversed course and adopted some version of Keynesianism. Keynesian orthodoxy started from the assumption that capitalist markets would not really work unless capitalist governments were willing effectively to play nanny: most famously, by engaging in massive deficit &quot;pump-priming&quot; during downturns. While in the '8os, Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States made a great show of rejecting all of this, it's unclear how much they really did.25 And in any case, they were operating in the wake of an even greater blow to previous monetary orthodoxy: Richard Nixon's decision in 1971 to unpeg the dollar from precious metals entirely, eliminate the international gold standard, and introduce the system of floating currency regimes that has dominated the world economy ever since. This meant in effect that all national currencies were henceforth, as neoclassical economists like to put it, &quot;fiat money&quot; backed only by the public trust.<br /> <br /> Now, John Maynard Keynes himself was much more open to what he liked to call the &quot;alternative tradition&quot; of credit and state theories than any economist of that stature (and Keynes is still arguably the single most important economic thinker of the twentieth century) before or since. At certain points he immersed himself in it: he spent several years in the 1920s studying Mesopotamian cuneiform banking records to try to ascertain the origins of money-his &quot;Babylonian madness, &quot; as he would later call it.26 His conclusion, which he set forth at the very beginning of his Treatise on Money, his most famous work, was more or less the only conclusion one could come to if one started not from first principles, but from a careful examination of the historical record: that the lunatic fringe was, essentially, right. Whatever its earliest origins, for the last four thousand years, money has been effectively a creature of the state. Individuals, he observed, make contracts with one another. They take out debts, and they promise payment.<br /> <br /> The State, therefore, comes in first of all as the authority of law which enforces the payment of the thing which corresponds to the name or description in the contract. But it comes doubly when, in addition, it claims the right to determine and declare what thing corresponds to the name, and to vary its declaration from time to time-when, that is to say it claims the right to re-edit the dictionary. This right is claimed by all modern States and has been so claimed for some four thousand years at least. It is when this stage in the evolution of Money has been reached that Knapp's Chartalism-the doctrine that money is peculiarly a creation of the State-is fully realized ... To-day all civilized money is, beyond the possibility of dispute, chartalist.27<br /> <br /> This does not mean that the state necessarily creates money. Money is credit, it can be brought into being by private contractual agreements (loans, for instance). The state merely enforces the agreement and dictates the legal terms. Hence Keynes' next dramatic assertion: that banks create money, and that there is no intrinsic limit to their ability to do so: since however much they lend, the borrower will have no choice but to put the money back into some bank again, and thus, from the perspective of the banking system as a whole, the total number of debits and credits will always cancel out.28 The implications were radical, but Keynes himself was not. In the end, he was always careful to frame the problem in a way that could be reintegrated into the mainstream economics of his day.<br /> <br /> Neither was Keynes much of a mythmaker. Insofar as the alternative tradition has come up with an answer to the Myth of Barter, it was not from Keynes' own efforts (Keynes ultimately decided that the origins of money were not particularly important) but in the work of some contemporary neo-Keynesians, who were not afraid to follow some of his more radical suggestions as far as they would go.<br /> <br /> The real weak link in state-credit theories of money was always the element of taxes. It is one thing to explain why early states demanded taxes (in order to create markets.) It's another to ask &quot;by what right?&quot; Assuming that early rulers were not simply thugs, and that taxes were not simply extortion-and no Credit Theorist, to my knowledge, took such a cynical view even of early government-one must ask how they justified this sort of thing.<br /> <br /> Nowadays, we all think we know the answer to this question. We pay our taxes so that the government can provide us with services. This starts with security services-military protection being, often, about the only service some early states were really able to provide. By now, of course, the government provides all sorts of things. All of this is said to go back to some sort of original &quot;social contract&quot; that everyone somehow agreed on, though no one really knows exactly when or by whom, or why we should be bound by the decisions of distant ancestors on this one matter when we don't feel particularly bound by the decisions of our distant ancestors on anything else.29 All of this makes sense if you assume that markets come before governments, but the whole argument totters quickly once you realize that they don't.<br /> <br /> There is an alternative explanation, one created to be in keeping with the state-credit theory approach. It's referred to as &quot;primordial debt theory&quot; and it has been developed largely in France, by a team of researchers-not only economists but anthropologists, historians, and classicists-originally assembled around the figures of Michel Aglietta and Andre Orleans,30 and more recently, Bruno Theret, and it has since been taken up by neo-Keynesians in the United States and the United Kingdom as weiiY<br /> <br /> It's a position that has emerged quite recently, and at first, largely amidst debates about the nature of the euro. The creation of a common European currency sparked not only all sorts of intellectual debates (does a common currency necessarily imply the creation of a common European state? Or of a common European economy or society? Are these ultimately the same thing?) but dramatic political ones as well. The creation of the euro zone was spearheaded above all by Germany, whose central banks still see their main goal as combating inflation. What's more, tight money policies and the need to balance budgets having been used as the main weapon to chip away welfare-state policies in Europe, it has necessarily become the stake of political struggles between bankers and pensioners, creditors and debtors, just as heated as those of r89os America.<br /> <br /> The core argument is that any attempt to separate monetary policy from social policy is ultimately wrong. Primordial-debt theorists insist that these have always been the same thing. Governments use taxes to create money, and they are able to do so because they have become the guardians of the debt that all citizens have to one another. This debt is the essence of society itself. It exists long before money and markets, and money and markets themselves are simply ways of chopping pieces of it up.<br /> <br /> At first, the argument goes, this sense of debt was expressed not through the state, but through religion. To make the argument, Aglietta and Orleans fixed on certain works of early Sanskrit religious literature: the hymns, prayers, and poetry collected in the Vedas and the Brahma-nas, priestly commentaries composed over the centuries that followed, texts that are now considered the foundations of Hindu thought. It's not as odd a choice as it might seem. These texts constitute the earliest known historical reflections on the nature of debt.<br /> <br /> Actually, even the very earliest Vedic poems, composed sometime between 1500 and 1200 BC, evince a constant concern with debt-which is treated as synonymous with guilt and sinY There are numerous prayers pleading with the gods to liberate the worshipper from the shackles or bonds of debt. Sometimes these seem to refer to debt in the literal sense-Rig Veda 10.34, for instance, has a lorig description of the sad plight of gamblers who &quot;wander homeless, in constant fear, in debt, and seeking money.&quot; Elsewhere it's clearly metaphorical.<br /> <br /> In these hymns, Yama, the god of death, figures prominently. To be in debt was to have a weight placed on you by Death. To be under any sort of unfulfilled obligation, any unkept promise, to gods or to men, was to live in the shadow of Death. Often, even in the very early texts, debt seems to stand in for a broader sense of inner suffering, from which one begs the gods-particularly Agni, who represents the sacrificial fire-for release. It was only with the Brahmanas that commentators started trying to weave all this together into a more comprehensive philosophy. The conclusion: that human existence is itself a form of debt.<br /> <br /> A man, being born, is a debt; by his own self he is born to Death, and only when he sacrifices does he redeem himself from Death.33<br /> <br /> Sacrifice (and these early commentators were themselves sacrificial priests) is thus called &quot;tribute paid to Death. &quot; Or such was the manner of speaking. In reality, as the priests knew better than anyone, sacrifice was directed to all the gods, not just Death-Death was just the intermediary. Framing things this way, though, did immediately raise the one problem that always comes up, whenever anyone conceives human life through such an idiom. If our lives are on loan, who would actually wish to repay such a debt? To live in debt is to be guilty, incomplete. But completion can only mean annihilation. In this way, the &quot;tribute&quot; of sacrifice could be seen as a kind of interest payment, with the life of the animal substituting temporarily for what's really owed, which is ourselves-a mere postponement of the inevitable.34<br /> <br /> Different commentators proposed different ways out of the dilemma. Some ambitious Brahmins began telling their clients that sacrificial ritual, if done correctly, promised a way to break out of the human condition entirely and achieve eternity (since, in the face of eternity, all debts become meaningless.)35 Another way was to broaden the notion of debt, so that all social responsibilities become debts of one sort or another. Thus two famous passages in the Brahmanas insist that we are born as a debt not just to the gods, to be repaid in sacrifice, but also to the Sages who created the Vedic learning to begin with, which we must repay through study; to our ancestors (&quot;the Fathers &quot;), who we must repay by having children; and finally, &quot;to men&quot;-apparently meaning humanity as a whole, to be repaid by offering hospitality to strangers.36 Anyone, then, who lives a proper life is constantly paying back existential debts of one sort or another; but at the same time, as the notion of debt slides back into a simple sense of social obligation, it becomes something far less terrifying than the sense that one's very existence is a loan taken against Death.37 Not least because social obligations always cut both ways. Especially since, once one has oneself fathered children, one is just as much a debtor as a creditor.<br /> <br /> What primordial-debt theorists have done is to propose that the ideas encoded in these Vedic texts are not peculiar to a certain intellectual tradition of early Iron Age ritual specialists in the Ganges valley, but that they are essential to the very nature and history of human thought. Consider for example this statement, from an essay by French economist Bruno Theret with the uninspiring title &quot;The Socio-Cultural Dimensions of the Currency: Implications for the Transition to the Euro,&quot; published in the Journal of Consumer Policy in 1999:<br /> <br /> At the origin of money we have a &quot;relation of representation &quot; of death as an invisible world, before and beyond life--a representation that is the product of the symbolic function proper to the human species and which envisages birth as an original debt incurred by all men, a debt owing to the cosmic powers from which humanity emerged.<br /> <br /> Payment of this debt, which can however never be settled on earth-because its full reimbursement is out of reach-takes the form of sacrifices which, by replenishing the credit of the living, make it possible to prolong life and even in certain cases to achieve eternity by joining the Gods. But this initial beliefclaim is also associated with the emergence of sovereign powers whose legitimacy resides in their ability to represent the entire original cosmos. And it is these powers that invented money as a means of settling debts-a means whose abstraction makes it possible to resolve the sacrificial paradox by which putting to death becomes the permanent means of protecting life. Through this institution, belief is in turn transferred to a currency stamped with the effigy of the sovereign-a money put in circulation but whose return is organized by this other institution which is the tax/settlement of the life debt. So money also takes on the function of a means of payment.38<br /> <br /> If nothing else, this provides a neat illustration of how different are standards of debate in Europe from those current in the Anglo-American world. One can't imagine an American economist of any stripe writing something like this. Still, the author is actually making a rather clever synthesis here. Human nature does not drive us to &quot;truck and barter.&quot; Rather, it ensures that we are always creating symbols-such as money itself. This is how we come to see ourselves in a cosmos surrounded by invisible forces; as in debt to the universe.<br /> <br /> The ingenious move of course is to fold this back into the state theory of money-since by &quot;sovereign powers&quot; Theret actually means &quot;the state. &quot; The first kings were sacred kings who were either gods in their own right or stood as privileged mediators between human beings and the ultimate forces that governed the cosmos. This sets us on a road to the gradual realization that our debt to the gods was always, really, a debt to the society that made us what we are.<br /> <br /> The &quot;primordial debt,&quot; writes British sociologist Geoffrey Ingham, &quot;is that owed by the living to the continuity and durability of the society that secures their individual existence. &quot;39 In this sense it is not just criminals who owe a &quot;debt to society&quot;-we are all, in a certain sense, guilty, even criminals.<br /> <br /> For instance, Ingham notes that, while there is no actual proof that money emerged in this way, &quot;there is considerable indirect etymological evidence &quot;:<br /> <br /> In all Indo-European languages, words for &quot;debt&quot; are synonymous with those for &quot;sin&quot; or &quot;guilt&quot;, illustrating the links between religion, payment and the mediation of the sacred and profane realms by &quot;money. &quot; For example, there is a connection between money (German Geld), indemnity or sacrifice (Old English Geild), tax (Gothic Gild) and, of course, guilt.40<br /> <br /> Or, to take another curious connection: Why were cattle so often used as money? The German historian Bernard Laum long ago pointed out that in Homer, when people measure the value of a ship or suit of armor, they always measure it in oxen-even though when they actually exchange things, they never pay for anything in oxen. It is hard to escape the conclusion that this was because an ox was what one offered the gods in sacrifice. Hence they represented absolute value. From Sumer to Classical Greece, silver and gold were dedicated as offerings in temples. Everywhere, money seems to have emerged from the thing most appropriate for giving to the gods.41<br /> <br /> If the king has simply taken over guardianship of that primordial debt we all owe to society for having created us, this provides a very neat explanation for why the government feels it has the right to make us pay taxes. Taxes are just a measure of our debt to the society that made us. But this doesn't really explain how this kind of absolute lifedebt can be converted into money, which is by definition a means of measuring and comparing the value of different things. This is just as much a problem for credit theorists as for neoclassical economists, even if the problem for them is somewhat differently framed. If you start from the barter theory of money, you have to resolve the problem of how and why you would come to select one commodity to measure just how much you want each of the other ones. If you start from a credit theory, you are left with the problem I described in the first chapter: how to turn a moral obligation into a specific sum of money, how the mere sense of owing someone else a favor can eventually turn into a system of accounting in which one is able to calculate exactly how many sheep or fish or chunks of silver it would take to repay the debt. Or in this case, how do we go from that absolute debt we owe to God to the very specific debts we owe our cousins, or the bartender?<br /> <br /> The answer provided by primordial-debt theorists is, again, ingenious. If taxes represent our absolute debt to the society that created us, then the first step toward creating real money comes when we start calculating much more specific debts to society, systems of fines, fees, and penalties, or even debts we owe to specific individuals who we have wronged in some way, and thus to whom we stand in a relation of &quot;sin&quot; or &quot;guilt.&quot;<br /> <br /> This is actually much less implausible than it might sound. One of the puzzling things about all the theories about the origins of money that we've been looking at so far is that they almost completely ignore the evidence of anthropology. Anthropologists do have a great deal of knowledge of how economies within stateless societies actually worked-how they still work in places where states and markets have been unable to completely break up existing ways of doing things. There are innumerable studies of, say, the use of cattle as money in eastern or southern Africa, of shell money in the Americas (wampum being the most famous example) or Papua New Guinea, bead money, feather money, the use of iron rings, cowries, spondylus shells, brass rods, or woodpecker scalps.42 The reason that this literature tends to be ignored by economists is simple: &quot;primitive currencies&quot; of this sort is only rarely used to buy and sell things, and even when they are, never primarily to buy and sell everyday items such as chickens or eggs or shoes or potatoes. Rather than being employed to acquire things, they are mainly used to rearrange relations between people. Above all, to arrange marriages and to settle disputes, particularly those arising from murders or personal injury.<br /> <br /> There is every reason to believe that our own money started the same way-even the English word &quot;to pay&quot; is originally derived from a word for &quot;to pacify, appease&quot;-as in, to give someone something precious, for instance, to express just how badly you feel about having just killed his brother in a drunken brawl, and how much you would really like to avoid this becoming the basis for an ongoing blood-feud.43<br /> <br /> Debt theorists are especially concerned with this latter possibility. This is partly because they tend to skip past the anthropological literature and look at early law codes-taking inspiration here, from the groundbreaking work of one of the twentieth century's greatest numismatists, Philip Grierson, who in the '7os, first suggested that money might first have emerged from early legal practice. Grierson was an expert in the European Dark Ages, and he became fascinated by what have come to be known as the &quot;Barbarian Law Codes,&quot; established by many Germanic peoples after the destruction of the Roman Empire in the 6oos and 7oos-Goths, Frisians, Franks, and so on-soon followed by similar codes published everywhere from Russia to Ireland. Certainly they are fascinating documents. On the one hand, they make it abundantly clear just how wrong are conventional accounts of Europe around this time &quot;reverting to barter.&quot; Almost all of the Germanic law codes use Roman money to make assessments; penalties for theft, for instance, are almost always followed by demands that the thief not only return the stolen property but pay any outstanding rent (or in the event of stolen money, interest) owing for the amount of time it has been in his possession. On the other hand, these were soon followed by law codes by people living in territories that had never been under Roman rule-in Ireland, Wales, Nordic countries, Russia-and these are if anything even more revealing. They could be remarkably creative, both in what could be used as a means of payment and on the precise breakdown of injuries and insults that required compensation:<br /> <br /> Compensation in the Welsh laws is reckoned primarily in cattle and in the Irish ones in cattle or bondmaids (cumal), with considerable use of precious metals • in both. In the Germanic codes it is mainly in precious metal ...In the Russian codes it was silver and furs, graduated from marten down to squirrel. Their detail is remarkable, not only in the personal injuries envisioned-specific compensations for the loss of an arm, a hand, a forefinger, a nail, for a blow on the head so that the brain is visible or bone projects-but in the coverage some of them gave to the possessions of the individual household. Title II of the Salic Law deals with the theft of pigs, Title III with cattle, Title IV with sheep, Title V with goats, Title VI with dogs, each time with an elaborate breakdown differentiating between animals of different age and sex.44<br /> <br /> This does make a great deal of psychological sense. I've already remarked how difficult it is to imagine how a system of precise equivalences-one young healthy milk cow is equivalent to exactly thirty-six chickens-could arise from most forms of gift exchange. If Henry gives Joshua a pig and feels he has received an inadequate counter-gift, he might mock Joshua as a cheapskate, but he would have little occasion to come up with a mathematical formula for precisely how cheap he feels Joshua has been. On the other hand, if Joshua's pig just destroyed Henry's garden, and especially, if that led to a fight in which Henry lost a toe, and Henry's family is now hauling Joshua up in front of the village assembly-this is precisely the context where people are most likely to become petty and legalistic and express outrage if they feel they have received one groat less than was their rightful due. That means exact mathematical specificity: for instance, the capacity to measure the exact value of a two-year-old pregnant sow. What's more, the levying of penalties must have constantly required the calculation of equivalences. Say the fine is in marten pelts but the culprit's clan doesn't have any martens. How many squirrel skins will do? Or pieces of silver jewelry? Such problems must have come up all the time and led to at least a rough-and-ready set of rules of thumb over what sorts of valuable were equivalent to others. This would help explain why, for instance, medieval Welsh law codes can contain detailed breakdowns not only of the value of different ages and conditions of milk cow, but of the monetary value of every object likely to be found in an ordinary homestead, down to the cost of each piece of timber-despite the fact that there seems no reason to believe that most such items could even be purchased on the open market at the time.45<br /> <br /> <br /> There is something very compelling in all this. For one thing, the premise makes a great deal of intuitive sense. After all, we do owe everything we are to others. This is simply true. The language we speak and even think in, our habits and opinions, the kind of food we like to eat, the knowledge that makes our lights switch on and toilets flush, even the style in which we carry out our gestures of defiance and rebellion against social conventions-all of this, we learned from other people, most of them long dead. If we were to imagine what we owe them as a debt, it could only be infinite. The question is: Does it really make sense to think of this as a debt? After all, a debt is by definition something that we could at least imagine paying back. It is strange enough to wish to be square with one's parents-it rather implies that one does not wish to think of them as parents any more. Would we really want to be square with all humanity? What would that even mean? And is this desire really a fundamental feature of all human thought?<br /> <br /> Another way to put this would be: Are primordial-debt theorists describing a myth, have they discovered a profound truth of the human condition that has always existed in all societies, and is it simply spelled out particularly clearly in certain ancient texts from India-or are they inventing a myth of their own?<br /> <br /> Clearly it must be the latter. They are inventing a myth.<br /> <br /> The choice of the Vedic material is significant. The fact is, we know almost nothing about the people who composed these texts and little about the society that created them.46 We don't even know if interest-bearing loans existed in Vedic India-which obviously has a bearing on whether priests really saw sacrifice as the payment of interest on a loan we owe to Death.47 As a result, the material can serve as a kind of empty canvas, or a canvas covered with hieroglyphics in an unknown language, on which we can project almost anything we want to. If we look at other ancient civilizations in which we do know something about the larger context, we find that no such notion of sacrifice as payment is in evidence.48 If we look through the work of ancient theologians, we find that most were familiar with the idea that sacrifice was a way by which human beings could enter into commercial relations with the gods, but that they felt it was patently ridiculous: If the gods already have everything they want, what exactly do humans have to bargain with?49 We've seen in the last chapter how difficult it is to give gifts to kings. With gods {let alone God) the problem is magnified infinitely. Exchange implies equality. In dealing with cosmic forces, this was simply assumed to be impossible from the start.<br /> <br /> The notion that debts to gods were appropriated by the state, and thus became the bases for taxation systems, can't really stand up either. The problem here is that in the ancient world, free citizens didn't usually pay taxes. Generally speaking, tribute was levied only on conquered populations. This was already true in ancient Mesopotamia, where the inhabitants of independent cities did not usually have to pay direct taxes at all. Similarly, as Moses Finley put it, &quot;Classical Greeks looked upon direct taxes as tyrannical and avoided them whenever pos-sible.50 Athenian citizens did not pay direct taxes of any sort; though the city did sometimes distribute money to its citizens, a kind of reverse taxation-sometimes directly, as with the proceeds of the Laurium silver mines, and sometimes indirectly, as through generous fees for jury duty or attending the assembly. Subject cities, however, did have to pay tribute. Even within the Persian Empire, Persians did not have to pay tribute to the Great King, but the inhabitants of conquered provinces did.51 The same was true in Rome, where for a very long time, Roman citizens not only paid no taxes but had a right to a share of the tribute levied on others, in the form of the dole-the &quot;bread&quot; part of the famous &quot;bread and circuses. &quot;52<br /> <br /> In other words, Benjamin Franklin was wrong when he said that in this world nothing is certain except death and taxes. This obviously makes the idea that the debt to one is just a variation on the other much harder to maintain.<br /> <br /> None of this, however, deals a mortal blow to the state theory of money. Even those states that did not demand taxes did levy fees, penalties, tariffs, and fines of one sort or another. But it is very hard to reconcile with any theory that claims states were first conceived as guardians of some sort of cosmic, primordial debt.<br /> <br /> It's curious that primordial-debt theorists never have much to say about Sumer or Babylonia, despite the fact that Mesopotamia is where the practice of loaning money at interest was first invented, probably two thousand years before the Vedas were composed-and that it was also the home of the world's first states. But if we look into Mesopotamian history, it becomes a little less surprising. Again, what we find there is in many ways the exact opposite of what such theorists would have predicted.<br /> <br /> The reader will recall here that Mesopotamian city-states were dominated by vast Temples: gigantic, complex industrial institutions often staffed by thousands-including everyone from shepherds and barge-pullers to spinners and weavers to dancing girls and clerical administrators. By at least 2700 BC, ambitious rulers had begun to imitate them by creating palace complexes organized on similar terms-with the exception that where the Temples centered on the sacred chambers of a god or goddess, represented by a sacred image who was fed and clothed and entertained by priestly servants as if he or she were a living person. Palaces centered on the chambers of an actual live king. Sumerian rulers rarely went so far as to declare themselves gods, but they often came very close. However, when they did interfere in the lives of their subjects in their capacity as cosmic rulers, they did not do it by imposing public debts, but rather by canceling private ones.53<br /> <br /> We don't know precisely when and how interest-bearing loans originated, since they appear to predate writing. Most likely, Temple administrators invented the idea as a way of financing the caravan trade. This trade was crucial because while the river valley of ancient Mesopotamia was extraordinarily fertile and produced huge surpluses of grain and other foodstuffs, and supported enormous numbers of livestock, which in turn supported a vast wool and leather industry, it was almost completely lacking in anything else. Stone, wood, metal, even the silver used as money, all had to be imported. From quite early times, then, Temple administrators developed the habit of advancing goods to local merchants-some of them private, others themselves Temple functionaries-who would then go off and sell it overseas. Interest was just a way for the Temples to take their share of the resulting profits.54 However, once established, the principle seems to have quickly spread. Before long, we find not only commercial loans, but also consumer loans-usury in the classical sense of the term. By c24oo BC it already appears to have been common practice on the part of local officials, or wealthy merchants, to advance loans to peasants who were in financial trouble on collateral and begin to appropriate their possessions if they were unable to pay. It usually started with grain, sheep, goats, and furniture, then moved on to fields and houses, or, alternately or ultimately, family members. Servants, if any, went quickly, followed by children, wives, and in some extreme occasions, even the borrower himself. These would be reduced to debt-peons: not quite slaves, but very close to that, forced into perpetual service in the lender's household-or, sometimes, in the Temples or Palaces themselves. In theory, of course, any of them could be redeemed whenever the borrower repaid the money, but for obvious reasons, the more a peasant's resources were stripped away from him, the harder that became.<br /> <br /> The effects were such that they often threatened to rip society apart. If for any reason there was a bad harvest, large proportions of the peasantry would fall into debt peonage; families would be broken up. Before long, lands lay abandoned as indebted farmers fled their homes for fear of repossession and joined semi-nomadic bands on the desert fringes of urban civilization. Faced with the potential for complete social breakdown, Sumerian and later Babylonian kings periodically announced general amnesties: &quot;clean slates,&quot; as economic historian Michael Hudson refers to them. Such decrees would typically declare all outstanding consumer debt null and void (commercial debts were not affected), return all land to its original owners, and allow all debt-peons to return to their families. Before long, it became more or less a regular habit for kings to make such a declaration on first assuming power, and many were forced to repeat it periodically over the course of their reigns.<br /> <br /> In Sumeria, these were called &quot;declarations of freedom&quot;-and it is significant that the Sumerian word amargi, the first recorded word for &quot;freedom&quot; in any known human language, literally means &quot;return to mother&quot;-since this is what freed debt-peons were finally allowed to do.55<br /> <br /> Michael Hudson argues that Mesopotamian kings were only in a position to do this because of their cosmic pretensions: in taking power, they saw themselves as literally recreating human society, and so were in a position to wipe the slate clean of all previous moral obligations. Still, this is about as far from what primordial-debt theorists had in mind as one could possibly imagine.56<br /> <br /> <br /> Probably the biggest problem in this whole body of literature is the initial assumption: that we begin with an infinite debt to something called &quot;society.&quot; It's this debt to society that we project onto the gods. It's this same debt that then gets taken up by kings and national governments.<br /> <br /> What makes the concept of society so deceptive is that we assume the world is organized into a series of compact, modular units called &quot;societies,&quot; and that all people know which one they're in. Historically, this is very rarely the case. Imagine I am a Christian Armenia!) merchant living under the reign of Genghis Khan. What is &quot;society&quot; for me? Is it the city where I grew up, the society of international merchants (with its own elaborate codes of conduct) within which I conduct my daily affairs, other speakers of Armenian, Christendom (or maybe just Orthodox Christendom), or the inhabitants of the Mongol empire itself, which stretched from the Mediterranean to Korea? Historically, kingdoms and empires have rarely been the most important reference points in peoples' lives. Kingdoms rise and fall; they also strengthen and weaken; governments may make their presence known in people's lives quite sporadically, and many people in history were never entirely clear whose government they were actually in. Even until quite recently, many of the world's inhabitants were never even quite sure what country they were supposed to be in, or why it should matter. My mother, who was born a Jew in Poland, once told me a joke from her childhood:<br /> <br /> There was a small town located along the frontier between Russia and Poland; no one was ever quite sure to which it belonged. One day an official treaty was signed and not long after, surveyors arrived to draw a border. Some villagers approached them where they had set up their equipment on a nearby hill.<br /> <br /> &quot;So where are we, Russia or Poland?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;According to our calculations, your village now begins exactly thirty-seven meters into Poland.&quot;<br /> <br /> The villagers immediately began dancing for joy.<br /> <br /> &quot;Why?&quot; the surveyors asked. &quot;What difference does it make?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Don't you know what this means?&quot; they replied. &quot;It means we'll never have to endure another one of those terrible Russian winters! &quot;<br /> <br /> However, if we are born with an infinite debt to all those people who made our existence possible, but there is no natural unit called &quot;society&quot;-then who or what exactly do we really owe it to? Everyone? Everything? Some people or things more than others? And how do we pay a debt to something so diffuse? Or, perhaps more to the point, who exactly can claim the authority to tell us how we can repay it, and on what grounds?<br /> <br /> If we frame the problem that way, the authors of the Brahmanas are offering a quite sophisticated reflection on a moral question that no one has really ever been able to answer any better before or since. As I say, we can't know much about the conditions under which those texts were composed, but such evidence as we do have suggests that the crucial documents date from sometime between soo and 400 Be-that is, roughly the time of Socrates-which in India appears to have been just around the time that a commercial economy, and institutions like coined money and interest-bearing loans were beginning to become features of everyday life. The intellectual classes of the time were, much as they were in Greece and China, grappling with the implications. In their case, this meant asking: What does it mean to imagine our responsibilities as debts? To whom do we owe our existence?<br /> <br /> It's significant that their answer did not make any mention either of &quot;society&quot; or states (though certainly kings and governments certainly existed in early India). Instead, they fixed on debts to gods, to sages, to fathers, and to &quot;men.&quot; It wouldn't be at all difficult to translate their formulation into more contemporary language. We could put it this way. We owe our existence above all:<br /> <br /> * &lt;sup&gt;•&lt;/sup&gt; To the universe, cosmic forces, as we would put it now, to Nature. The ground of our existence. To be repaid through ritual: ritual being an act of respect and recognition to all that beside which we are small.57<br /> * &lt;sup&gt;•&lt;/sup&gt; To those who have created the knowledge and cultural accomplishments that we value most; that give our existence its form, its meaning, but also its shape. Here we would include not only the philosophers and scientists who created our intellectual tradition but everyone from William Shakespeare to that long-since-forgotten woman, somewhere in the Middle East, who created leavened bread. We repay them by becoming learned ourselves and contributing to human knowledge and human culture.<br /> * &lt;sup&gt;•&lt;/sup&gt; To our parents, and their parents-our ancestors. We repay them by becoming ancest.ors.<br /> * &lt;sup&gt;•&lt;/sup&gt; To humanity as a whole. We repay them by generosity to strangers, by maintaining that basic communistic ground of sociality that makes human relations, and hence life, possible.<br /> <br /> Set out this way, though, the argument begins to undermine its very premise. These are nothing like commercial debts. After all, one might repay one's parents by having children, but one is not generally thought to have repaid one's creditors if one lends the cash to someone else.58<br /> <br /> Myself, I wonder: Couldn't that really be the point? Perhaps what the authors of the Brahmanas were really demonstrating was that, in the final analysis, our relation with the cosmos is ultimately nothing like a commercial transaction, nor could it be. That is because commercial transactions imply both equality and separation. These examples are all about overcoming separation: you are free from your debt to your ancestors when you become an ancestor; you are free from your debt to the sages when you become a sage, you are free from your debt to humanity when you act with humanity. All the more so if one is speaking of the universe. If you cannot bargain with the gods because they already have everything, then you certainly cannot bargain with the universe, because the universe is everything-and that everything necessarily includes yourself. One could in fact interpret this list as a subtle way of saying that the only way of &quot;freeing oneself&quot; from the debt was not literally repaying debts, but rather showing that these debts do not exist because one is not in fact separate to begin with, and hence that the very notion of canceling the debt, and achieving a separate, autonomous existence, was ridiculous from the start. Or even that the very presumption of positing oneself as separate from humanity or the cosmos, so much so that one can enter into one-to-one dealings with it, is itself the crime that can be answered only by death. Our guilt is not due to the fact that we cannot repay our debt to the universe. Our guilt is our presumption in thinking of ourselves as being in any sense an equivalent to Everything Else that Exists or Has Ever Existed, so as to be able to conceive of such a debt in the first place.59<br /> <br /> Or let us look at the other side of the equation. Even if it is possible to imagine ourselves as standing in a position of absolute debt to the cosmos, or to humanity, the next question becomes: Who exactly has a right to speak for the cosmos, or humanity, to tell us how that debt must be repaid? If there's anything more preposterous than claiming to stand apart from the entire universe so as to enter into negotiations with it, it is claiming to speak for the other side.<br /> <br /> If one were looking for the ethos for an individualistic society such as our own, one way to do it might well be to say: we all owe an infinite debt to humanity, society, nature, or the cosmos (however one prefers to frame it), but no one else could possibly tell us how we are to pay it. This at least would be intellectually consistent. If so, it would actually be possible to see almost all systems of established authority-religion, morality, politics, economics, and the criminal-justice system-as so many different fraudulent ways to presume to calculate what cannot be calculated, to claim the authority to tell us how some aspect of that unlimited debt ought to be repaid. Human freedom would then be our ability to decide for ourselves how we want to do so.<br /> <br /> No one, to my knowledge, has ever taken this approach. Instead, theories of existential debt always end up becoming wa-ys of justifying-or laying claim to-structures of authority. The case of the Hindu intellectual tradition is telling here. The debt to humanity appears only in a few early texts, and is quickly forgotten. Almost all later Hindu commentators ignore it and instead put their emphasis on a man's debt to his father.60<br /> <br /> <br /> Primordial-debt theorists have other fish to fry. They are not really interested in the cosmos, but actually, in &quot;society. &quot;<br /> <br /> Let me return again to that word, &quot;society.&quot; The reason that it seems like such a simple, self-evident concept is because we mostly use it as a synonym for &quot;nation.&quot; After all, when Americans speak of paying their debt to society, they are not thinking of their responsibilities to people who live in Sweden. It's only the modern state, with its elaborate border controls and social policies, that enables us to imagine &quot;society&quot; in this way, as a single bounded entity. This is why projecting that notion backwards into Vedic or Medieval times will always be deceptive, even though we don't really have another word.<br /> <br /> It seems to me that this is exactly what the primordial-debt theorists are doing: projecting such a notion backwards.<br /> <br /> Really, the whole complex of ideas they are talking about-the notion that there is this thing called society, that we have a debt to it, that governments can speak for it, that it can be imagined as a sort of secular god-all of these ideas emerged together around the time of the French Revolution, or in its immediate wake. In other words, it was born alongside the idea of the modern nation-state.<br /> <br /> We can already see them coming together clearly in the work of Auguste Comte, in early nineteenth-century France. Comte, a philosopher and political pamphleteer now most famous for having first coined the term &quot;sociology,&quot; went so far, by the end of his life, as actually proposing a Religion of Society, which he called Positivism, broadly modeled on Medieval Catholicism, replete with vestments where all the buttons were on the back (so they couldn't be put on without the help of others). In his last work, which he called a &quot;Positivist Catechism,&quot; he also laid down the first explicit theory of social debt. At one point someone asks an imaginary Priest of Positivism what he thinks of the notion of human rights. The priest scoffs at the very idea. This is nonsense, he says, an error born of individualism. Positivism understands only duties. After all:<br /> <br /> We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. After our birth these obligations increase or accumulate before the point where we are capable of rendering anyone any service. On what human foundation, then, could one seat the idea of &quot;rights&quot; ?61<br /> <br /> While Comte doesn't use the word &quot;debt,&quot; the sense is clear enough. We have already accumulated endless debts before we get to the age at which we can even think of paying them. By that time, there's no way to calculate to whom we even owe them. The only way to redeem ourselves is to dedicate ourselves to the service of Humanity as a whole.<br /> <br /> In his lifetime, Comte was considered something of a crackpot, but his ideas proved influential. His notion of unlimited obligations to society ultimately crystallized in the notion of the &quot;social debt,&quot; a notion taken up among social reformers and, eventually, socialist politicians in many parts of Europe and abroad.62 &quot;We are all born as debtors to society&quot;: in France the notion of a social debt soon became something of a catchphrase, a slogan, and eventually a cliche.63 The state, according to this view, was merely the administrator of an existential debt that all of us have to the society that created us, embodied not least in the fact that we all continue to be completely dependent on one another for our existence, even if we are not completely aware of how.<br /> <br /> These are also the intellectual and political circles that shaped the thought of Emile Durkheim, the founder of the discipline of sociology that we know today, who in a way did Comte one better by arguing that all gods in all religions are always already projections of society-so an explicit religion of society would not even be necessary. All religions, for Durkheim, are simply ways of recognizing our mutual dependence on one another, a dependence that affects us in a million ways that we are never entirely aware of. &quot;God&quot; and &quot;society&quot; are ultimately the same.<br /> <br /> The problem is that for several hundred years now, it has simply been assumed that the guardian of that debt we owe for all of this, the legitimate representatives of that amorphous social totality that has allowed us to become individuals, must necessarily be the state. Almost all socialist or socialistic regimes end up appealing to some version of this argument. To take one notorious example, this was how the Soviet Union used to justify forbidding their citizens from emigrating to other countries. The argument was always: The USSR created these people, the USSR raised and educated them, made them who they are. What right do they have to take the product of our investment and transfer it to another country, as if they didn't owe us anything? Neither is this rhetoric restricted to socialist regimes. Nationalists appeal to exactly the same kind of arguments--especially in times of war. And all modern governments are nationalist to some degree.<br /> <br /> One might even say that what we really have, in the idea of primordial debt, is the ultimate nationalist myth. Once we owed our lives to the gods that created us, paid interest in the form of animal sacrifice, and ultimately paid back the principal with our lives. Now we owe it to the Nation that formed us, pay interest in the form of taxes, and when it comes time to defend the nation against its enemies, to offer to pay it with our lives.<br /> <br /> This is a great trap of the twentieth century: on one side is the logic of the market, where we like to imagine we all start out as individuals who don't owe each other anything. On the other is the logic of the state, where we all begin with a debt we can never truly pay. We are constantly told that they are opposites, and that between them they contain the only real human possibilities. But it's a false dichotomy. States created markets. Markets require states. Neither could continue without the other, at least, in anything like the forms we would recognize today.<br /> <br /> == Chapter four: Cruelty and redemption ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;We will buy the poor for silver, the needy for a pair of sandals.-Amos 2:6&lt;/blockquote&gt;THE READER MAY have noticed that there is an unresolved debate between those who see money as a commodity and those who see it as an IOU. Which one is it? By now, the answer should be obvious: it's both. Keith Hart, probably the best-known current anthropological authority on the subject, pointed this out many years ago. There are, he famously observed, two sides to any coin:<br /> <br /> Look at a coin from your pocket. On one side is &quot;heads &quot;-the symbol of the political authority which minted the coin; on the other side is &quot;tails&quot;-the precise specification of the amount the coin is worth as payment in exchange. One side reminds us that states underwrite currencies and the money is originally a relation between persons in society, a token perhaps. The other reveals the coin as a thing, capable of entering into definite relations with other things.1<br /> <br /> Clearly, money was not invented to overcome the inconveniences of barter between neighbors-since neighbors would have no reason to engage in barter in the first place. Still, a system of pure credit money would have serious inconveniences as well. Credit money is based on trust, and in competitive markets, trust itself becomes a scarce commodity. This is particularly true of dealings between strangers. Within the Roman empire, a silver coin stamped with the image of Tiberius might have circulated at a value considerably higher than the value of the silver it contained. Ancient coins invariably circulated at a value higher than their metal content.2 This was largely because Tiberius's government was willing to accept them at face value. However, the Persian government probably wasn't, and the Mauryan and Chinese governments certainly weren't. Very large numbers of Roman gold and silver coins did end up in India and even China; this is presumably the main reason that they were made of gold and silver to begin with.<br /> <br /> What's true for a vast empire like Rome or China is obviously all the more true for a Sumerian or Greek city-state, let alone anyone operating within the kind of broken checkerboard of kingdoms, towns, and tiny principalities that prevailed in most of Medieval Europe or India. As I've pointed out, often what was inside and what was outside were not especially clear. Within a community-a town, a city, a guild or religious society-pretty much anything could function as money, provided everyone knew there was someone willing to accept it to cancel out a debt. To offer one particularly striking example, in certain cities in nineteenth-century Siam, small change consisted entirely of porcelain Chinese gaming counters-basically, the equivalent of poker chips-issued by local casinos. If one of these casinos went out of business or lost its license, its owners would have to send a crier through the streets banging a gong and announcing that anyone holding such chits had three days to redeem them.3 For major transactions, of course, currency that was also acceptable outside the community (usually silver or gold again) was ordinarily employed.<br /> [[File:Graeber-debt the first 5000 years-1.png|thumb]]<br /> In a similar way, English shops, for many centuries, would issue their own wood or lead or leather token money. The practice was often technically illegal, but it continued until relatively recent times. Here is an example from the seventeenth century, by a certain Henry, who had a store at Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire:<br /> <br /> This is clearly a case of the same principle: Henry would provide small change in the form of IOUs redeemable at his own store. As such, they might circulate broadly, at least among anyone who did regular business at that shop. But they were unlikely to travel very far from Stony Stratford-most tokens, in fact, never circulated more than a few blocks in any direction. For larger transactions, everyone, including Henry, expected money in a form that would be acceptable anywhere, including in Italy or France.4<br /> <br /> Throughout most of history, even where we do find elaborate markets, we also find a complex jumble of different sorts of currency. Some of these may have originally emerged from barter between foreigners: the cacao money of Mesoamerica or salt money of Ethiopia are frequently cited examples.5 Others arose from credit systems, or from arguments over what sort of goods should be acceptable to pay taxes or other debts. Such questions were often matters of endless contestation. One could often learn a lot about the balance of political forces in a given time and place by what sorts of things were acceptable as currency. For instance: in much the same way that colonial Virginia planters managed to pass a law obliging shopkeepers to accept their tobacco as currency, medieval Pomeranian peasants appear to have at certain points convinced their rulers to make taxes, fees, and customs duties, which were registered in Roman currency, actually payable in wine, cheese, peppers, chickens, eggs, and even herring-much to the annoyance of traveling merchants, who therefore had to either carry such things around in order to pay the tolls or buy them locally at prices that would have been more advantageous to their suppliers for that very reason.6 This was in an area with a free peasantry, rather than serfs. They were in a relatively strong political position. In other times and places, the interests of lords and merchants prevailed instead.<br /> <br /> Thus money is almost always something hovering between a commodity and a debt-token. This is probably why coins—pieces of silver or gold that are already valuable commodities in themselves, but that, being stamped with the emblem of a local political authority, became even more valuable—still sit in our heads as the quintessential form of money. They most perfectly straddle the divide that defines what money is in the first place. What's more, the relation between the two was a matter of constant political contestation.<br /> <br /> In other words, the battle between state and market, between governments and merchants is not inherent to the human condition.<br /> <br /> <br /> Our two origin stories—the myth of barter and the myth of primordial debt—may appear to be about as far apart as they could be, but in their own way, they are also two sides of the same coin. One assumes the other. It's only once we can imagine human life as a series of commercial transactions that we're capable of seeing our relation to the universe in terms of debt.<br /> <br /> To illustrate, let me call a perhaps surpnsmg witness, Friedrich Nietzsche, a man able to see with uncommon clarity what happens when you try to imagine the world in commercial terms.<br /> <br /> Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals appeared in 1887. In it, he begins with an argument that might well have been taken directly from Adam Smith-but he takes it a step further than Smith ever dared to, insisting that not just barter, but buying and selling itself, precede any other form of human relationship. The feeling of personal obligation, he observes,<br /> <br /> has its origin in the oldest and most primitive personal relationship there is, in the relationship between seller and buyer, creditor and debtor. Here for the first time one person moved up against another person, here an individual measured himself against another individual. We have found no civilization still at such a low level that something of this relationship is not already perceptible. To set prices, to measure values, to think up equivalencies, to exchange things-that preoccupied man's very first thinking to such a degree that in a certain sense it's what thinking itself is. Here the oldest form of astuteness was bred; here, too, we can assume are the first beginnings of man's pride, his feeling of pre-eminence in relation to other animals. Perhaps our word &quot;man&quot; (manas) continues to express directly something of this feeling of the self: the human being describes himself as a being which assesses values, which values and measures, as the &quot;inherently calculating animal. &quot; Selling and buying, together with their psychological attributes, are even older than the beginnings of any form of social organizations and groupings; out of the most rudimentary form of personal legal rights the budding feeling of exchange, contract, guilt, law, duty, and compensation was instead first transferred to the crudest and earliest social structures (in their relationships with similar social structures), along with the habit of comparing power with power, of measuring, of calculating.7<br /> <br /> Smith, too, we will remember, saw the origins of language-and hence of human thought-as lying in our propensity to &quot;exchange one thing for another,&quot; in which he also saw the origins of the market.R The urge to trade, to compare values, is the very thing that makes us intelligent beings, and different from other animals. Society comes later-which means our ideas about responsibilities to other people first take shape in strictly commercial terms.<br /> <br /> Unlike with Smith, however, it never occurred to Nietzsche that you could have a world where all such transactions immediately cancel out. Any system of commercial accounting, he assumed, will produce creditors and debtors. In fact, he believed that it was from this very fact that human morality emerged. Note, he says, how the German word schuld means both &quot;debt&quot; and &quot;guilt.&quot; At first, to be in debt was simply to be guilty, and creditors delighted in punishing debtors unable to repay their loans by inflicting &quot;all sorts of humiliation and torture on the body of the debtor, for instance, cutting as much flesh off as seemed appropriate for the debt.&quot;9 In fact, Nietzsche went so far as to insist that those original barbarian law codes that tabulated so much for a ruined eye, so much for a severed finger, were not originally meant to fix rates of monetary compensation for the loss of eyes and fingers, but to establish how much of the debtor's body creditors were allowed to take! Needless to say, he doesn't provide a scintilla of evidence for this (none exists).10 But to ask for evidence would be to miss the point. We are dealing here not with a real historical argument but with a purely imaginative exercise.<br /> <br /> When humans did begin to form communities, Nietzsche continues, they necessarily began to imagine their relationship to the community in these terms. The tribe provides them with peace and security. They are therefore in its debt. Obeying its laws is a way of paying it back (&quot;paying your debt to society&quot; again). But this debt, he says, is also paid-here too-in sacrifice:<br /> <br /> Within the original tribal cooperatives-we're talking about primeval times-the living generation always acknowledged a legal obligation to the previous generations, and especially to the earliest one which had founded the tribe [ . ..] Here the reigning conviction is that the tribe only exists at all only because of the sacrifices and achievements of its ancestors-and that people have to pay them back with sacrifices and achievements. In this people recognize a debt which keeps steadily growing because these ancestors in their continuing existence as powerful spirits do not stop giving the tribe new advantages and lending them their power. Do they do this for free? But there is no &quot;for free &quot; for those raw and &quot;spiritually destitute&quot; ages. What can people give back to them? Sacrifices (at first as nourishment understood very crudely), festivals, chapels, signs of honor, above all, obedience--for all customs, as work of one's ancestors, are also their statutes and commands. Do people ever give them enough? This suspicion remains and grows.11<br /> <br /> In other words, for Nietzsche, starting from Adam Smith's assumptions about human nature means we must necessarily end up with something very much along the lines of primordial-debt theory. On the one hand, it is because of our feeling of debt to the ancestors that we obey the ancestral laws: this is why we feel that the community has the right to react &quot;like an angry creditor&quot; and punish us for our transgressions if we break them. In a larger sense, we develop a creeping feeling that we could never really pay back the ancestors, that no sacrifice (not even the sacrifice of our first-born) will ever truly redeem us. We are terrified of the ancestors, and the stronger and more powerful a community becomes, the more powerful they seem to be, until finally, &quot;the ancestor is necessarily transfigured into a god.&quot; As communities grow into kingdoms and kingdoms into universal empires, the gods themselves come to seem more universal, they take on grander, more cosmic pretentions, ruling the heavens, casting thunderbolts-culminating in the Christian god, who, as the maximal deity, necessarily &quot;brought about the maximum feeling of indebtedness on earth.&quot; Even our ancestor Adam is no longer figured as a creditor, but as a transgressor, and therefore a debtor, who passes on to us his burden of Original Sin:<br /> <br /> Finally, with the impossibility of discharging the debt, people also come up with the notion that it is impossible to remove the penance, the idea that it cannot be paid off (&quot;eternal punishment&quot;) ...until all of a sudden we confront the paradoxical and horrifying expedient with which a martyred humanity found temporary relief, that stroke of genius of Christianity: God sacrificing himself for the guilt of human beings, God paying himself back with himself, God as the only one who can redeem man from what for human beings has become impossible to redeem-the creditor sacrificing himself for the debtor, out of love (can people believe that?), out of love for his debtor!&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;2<br /> <br /> It all makes perfect sense if you start from Nietzsche's initial premise. The problem is that the premise is insane.<br /> <br /> There is also every reason to believe that Nietzsche knew the premise was insane; in fact, that this was the entire point. What Nietzsche is doing here is starting out from the standard, common-sense assumptions about the nature of human beings prevalent in his day (and to a large extent, still prevalent)-that we are rational calculating machines, that commercial self-interest comes before society, that &quot;society &quot; itself is just a way of putting a kind of temporary lid on the resulting conflict. That is, he is starting out from ordinary bourgeois assumptions and driving them to a place where they can only shock a bourgeois audience.<br /> <br /> It's a worthy game and no one has ever played it better; but it's a game played entirely within the boundaries of bourgeois thought. It has nothing to say to anything that lies beyond that. The best response to anyone who wants to take seriously Nietzsche's fantasies about savage hunters chopping pieces off each other's bodies for failure to remit are the words of an actual hunter-gatherer-an Inuit from Greenland made famous in the Danish writer Peter Freuchen's Book of the Eskimo. Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting expedition, he found one of the successful hunters dropping off several hundred pounds of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man objected indignantly:<br /> <br /> &quot;Up in our country we are human!&quot; said the hunter. &quot;And since we are human we help each other. We don't like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.&quot;13<br /> <br /> The last line is something of an anthropological classic, and similar statements about the refusal to calculate credits and debits can be found through the anthropological literature on egalitarian hunting societies. Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began &quot;comparing power with power, measuring, calculating&quot; and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt.<br /> <br /> It's not that he, like untold millions of similar egalitarian spirits throughout history, was unaware that humans have a propensity to calculate. If he wasn't aware of it, he could not have said what he did. Of course we have a propensity to calculate. We have all sorts of propensities. In any real-life situation, we have propensities that drive us in several different contradictory directions simultaneously. No one is more real than any other. The real question is which we take as the foundation of our humanity, and therefore, make the basis of our civilization. If Nietzsche's analysis of debt is helpful to us, then, it is because it reveals that when we start from the assumption that human thought is essentially a matter of commercial calculation, that buying and selling are the basis of human society-then, yes, once we begin to think about our relationship with the cosmos, we will necessarily conceive of it in terms of debt.<br /> <br /> <br /> I do think Nietzsche helps us in another way as well: to understand the concept of redemption. Niezsche's account of &quot;primeval times&quot; might be absurd, but his description of Christianity-of how a sense of debt is transformed into an abiding sense of guilt, and guilt to self-loathing, and self-loathing to self-torture-all of this does ring very true.<br /> <br /> Why, for instance, do we refer to Christ as the &quot;redeemer&quot;? The primary meaning of &quot;redemption&quot; is to buy something back, or to recover something that had been given up in security for a loan; to acquire something by paying off a debt. It is rather striking to think that the very core of the Christian message, salvation itself, the sacrifice of God's own son to rescue humanity from eternal damnation, should be framed in the language of a financial transaction.<br /> <br /> Nietzsche might have been starting from the same assumptions as Adam Smith, but clearly the early Christians weren't. The roots of this thinking lie deeper than Smith's with his nation of shopkeepers. The authors of the Brahmanas were not alone in borrowing the language of the marketplace as a way of thinking about the human condition. Indeed, to one degree or another, all the major world religions do this.<br /> <br /> The reason is that all of them-from Zoroastrianism to Islam-arose amidst intense arguments about the role of money and the market in human life, and particularly about what these institutions meant for fundamental questions of what human beings owed to one another. The question of debt, and arguments about debt, ran through every aspect of the political life of the time. These arguments were set amidst revolts, petitions, reformist movements. Some such movements gained allies in the temples and palaces. Others were brutally suppressed. Most of the terms, slogans, and specific issues being debated, though, have been lost to history. We just don't know what a political debate in a Syrian tavern in 750 BC was likely to be about. As a result, we have spent thousands of years contemplating sacred texts full of political allusions that would have been instantly recognizable to any reader at the time when they were written, but whose meaning we now can only guess at. 14<br /> <br /> One of the unusual things about the Bible is that it preserves some bits of this larger context. To return to the notion of redemption: the Hebrew words padah and goal, both translated as &quot;redemption,&quot; could be used for buying back anything one had sold to someone else, particularly the recovery of ancestral land, or to recovering some object held by creditors in way of a pledge.15 The example foremost in the minds of prophets and theologians seems to have been the last: the redemption of pledges, and especially, of family members held as debtpawns. It would seem that the economy of the Hebrew kingdoms, by the time of the prophets, was already beginning to develop the same kind of debt crises that had long been common in Mesopotamia: especially in years of bad harvests, the poor became indebted to rich neighbors or to wealthy moneylenders in the towns, they would begin to lose title to their fields and to become tenants on what had been their own land, and their sons and daughters would be removed to serve as servants in their creditors' households, or even sold abroad as slaves.16 The earlier prophets contain allusions to such crises, but the book of Nehemiah, written in Persian times, is the most explicitY<br /> <br /> Some also there were that said, &quot;We have mortgaged our lands, vineyards, and houses, that we might buy corn, because of the dearth. &quot;<br /> <br /> There were also those that said, &quot;We have borrowed money for the king's tribute, and that upon our lands and vineyards.<br /> <br /> &quot;Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children: and, lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already: neither is it in our power to redeem them; for other men have our lands and vineyards. &quot;<br /> <br /> And I was very angry when I heard their cry and these words.<br /> <br /> Then I consulted with myself, and I rebuked the nobles, and the rulers, and said unto them, &quot;Ye exact usury, every one of his brother. &quot; And I set a great assembly against themY<br /> <br /> Nehemiah was a Jew born in Babylon, a former cup-bearer to the Persian emperor. In 444 Be, he managed to talk the Great King into appointing him governor of his native Judaea. He also received permission to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem that had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar more than two centuries earlier. In the course of rebuilding, sacred texts were recovered and restored; in a sense, this was the moment of the creation of what we now consider Judaism.<br /> <br /> The problem was that Nehemiah quickly found himself confronted with a social crisis. All around him, impoverished peasants were unable to pay their taxes; creditors were carrying off the children of the poor. His first response was to issue a classic Babylonian-style &quot;clean slate&quot; edict-having himself been born in Babylon, he was clearly familiar with the general principle. All non-commercial debts were to be forgiven. Maximum interest rates were set. At the same time, though, Nehemiah managed to locate, revise, and reissue much older Jewish laws, now preserved in Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus, which in certain ways went even further, by institutionalizing the principle.19 The most famous of these is the Law of Jubilee: a law that stipulated that all debts would be automatically cancelled &quot;in the Sabbath year&quot; (that is, after seven years had passed), and that all who languished in bondage owing to such debts would be released.20<br /> <br /> &quot;Freedom,&quot; in the Bible, as in Mesopotamia, came to refer above all to release from the effects of debt. Over time, the history of the Jewish people itself came to be interpreted in this light: the liberation from bondage in Egypt was God's first, paradigmatic act of redemption; the historical tribulations of the Jews (defeat, conquest, exile) were seen as misfortunes that would eventually lead to a final redemption with the coming of the Messiah-though this could only be accomplished, prophets such as Jeremiah warned them, after the Jewish people truly repented of their sins (carrying each other off into bondage, whoring after false gods, the violation of commandments) Y In this light, the adoption of the term by Christians is hardly surprising. Redemption was a release from one's burden of sin and guilt, and the end of history would be that moment when all slates are wiped clean and all debts finally lifted when a great blast from angelic trumpets will announce the final Jubilee.<br /> <br /> If so, &quot;redemption&quot; is no longer about buying something back. It's really more a matter of destroying the entire system of accounting. In many Middle Eastern cities, this was literally true: one of the common acts during debt cancelation was the ceremonial destruction of the tablets on which financial records had been kept, an act to be repeated, much less officially, in just about every major peasant revolt in history.22<br /> <br /> This leads to another problem: What is possible in the meantime, before that final redemption comes? In one of his more disturbing parables, the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, Jesus seemed to be explicitly playing with the problem:<br /> <br /> Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.<br /> <br /> The servant fell on his knees before him. &quot;Be patient with me,&quot; he begged, &quot;and I will pay back everything.&quot; The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt, and let him go.<br /> <br /> But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. &quot;Pay back what you owe me!&quot; he demanded.<br /> <br /> His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, &quot;Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.&quot;<br /> <br /> But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.<br /> <br /> Then the master called the servant in. &quot;You wicked servant, &quot; he said, &quot;I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?&quot; In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.23<br /> <br /> This is quite an extraordinary text. On one level it's a joke; in others, it could hardly be more serious.<br /> <br /> We begin with the king wishing to &quot;settle accounts&quot; with his servants. The premise is absurd. Kings, like gods, can't really enter into relations of exchange with their subjects, since no parity is possible. And this is a king who clearly is God. Certainly there can be no final settling of accounts.<br /> <br /> So at best we are dealing with an act of whimsy on the king's part. The absurdity of the premise is hammered home by the sum the first man brought before him is said to owe. In ancient Judaea, to say someone owes a creditor &quot;ten thousand talents&quot; would be like now saying someone owes &quot;a hundred billion dollars.&quot; The number is a joke, too; it simply stands in for &quot;a sum no human being could ever, conceivably, repay. &quot;24<br /> <br /> Faced with infinite, existential debt, the servant can only tell obvious lies: &quot;a hundred billion? Sure, I'm good for it! Just give me a little more time.&quot; Then, suddenly, apparently just as arbitrarily, the Lord forgives him.<br /> <br /> Yet, it turns out, the amnesty has a condition he is not aware of. It is incumbent on his being willing to act in an analogous way to other humans-in this particular case, another servant who owes him (to translate again into contemporary terms), maybe a thousand bucks. Failing the test, the human is cast into hell for all eternity, or &quot;until he should pay back all he owed,&quot; which in this case comes down to the same thing.<br /> <br /> The parable has long been a challenge to theologians. It's normally interpreted as a comment on the endless bounty of God's grace and how little He demands of us in comparison-and thus, by implication, as a way of suggesting that torturing us in hell for all eternity is not as unreasonable as it might seem. Certainly, the unforgiving servant is a genuinely odious character. Still, what is even more striking to me is the tacit suggestion that forgiveness, in this world, is ultimately impossible. Christians practically say as much every time they recite the Lord's Prayer, and ask God to &quot;forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. &quot;25 It repeats the story of the parable almost exactly, and the implications are similarly dire. After all, most Christians reciting the prayer are aware that they do not generally forgive their debtors. Why then should God forgive them their sins?26<br /> <br /> What's more, there is the lingering suggestion that we really couldn't live up to those standards, even if we tried. One of the things that makes the Jesus of the New Testament such a tantalizing character is that it's never clear what he's telling us. Everything can be read two ways. When he calls on his followers to forgive all debts, refuse to cast the first stone, turn the other cheek, love their enemies, to hand over their possessions to the poor-is he really expecting them to do this? Or are such demands just a way of throwing in their faces that, since we are clearly not prepared to act this way, we are all sinners whose salvation can only come in another world-a position that can be (and has been) used to justify almost anything? This is a vision of human life as inherently corrupt, but it also frames even spiritual affairs in commercial terms: with calculations of sin, penance, and absolution, the Devil and St. Peter with their rival ledger books, usually accompanied by the creeping feeling that it's all a charade because the very fact that we are reduced to playing such a game of tabulating sins reveals us to be fundamentally unworthy of forgiveness.<br /> <br /> World religions, as we shall see, are full of this kind of ambivalence. On the one hand they are outcries against the market; on the other, they tend to frame their objections in commercial terms-as if to argue that turning human life into a series of transactions is not a very good deal. What I think even these few examples reveal, though, is how much is being papered over in the conventional accounts of the origins and history of money. There is something almost touchingly naive in the stories about neighbors swapping potatoes for an extra pair of shoes. When the ancients thought about money, friendly swaps were hardly the first thing that came to mind.<br /> <br /> True, some might have thought about their tab at the local alehouse, or, if they were a merchant or administrator, of storehouses, account books, exotic imported delights. For most, though, what was likely to come to mind was the selling of slaves and ransoming of prisoners, corrupt tax-farmers and the depredations of conquering armies, mortgages and interest, theft and extortion, revenge and punishment, and, above all, the tension between the need for money to create families, to acquire a bride so as to have children, and use of that same money to destroy families-to create debts that lead to the same wife and children being taken away. &quot;Some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already: neither is it in our power to redeem them.&quot; One can only imagine what those words meant, emotionally, to a father in a patriarchal society in which a man's ability to protect the honor of his family was everything. Yet this is what money meant to the majority of people for most of human history: the terrifying prospect of one's sons and daughters being carried off to the homes of repulsive strangers to clean their pots and provide the occasional sexual services, to be subject to every conceivable form of violence and abuse, possibly for years, conceivably forever, as their parents waited, helpless, avoiding eye contact with their neighbors, who knew exactly what was happening to those they were supposed to have been able to protect.27 Clearly this was the worst thing that could happen to anyone-which is why, in the parable, it could be treated as interchangeable with being &quot;turned over to the jailors to be tortured &quot; for life. And that's just from the perspective of the father. One can only imagine how it might have felt to be the daughter. Yet, over the course of human history, untold millions of daughters have known (and in fact many still know) exactly what it's like.<br /> <br /> One might object that this was just assumed to be in the nature of things: like the imposition of tribute on conquered populations, it might have been resented, but it wasn't considered a moral issue, a matter of right and wrong. Some things just happen. This has been the most common attitude of peasants to such phenomena throughout human history. What's striking about the historical record is that in the case of debt crises, this was not how many reacted. Many actually did become indignant. So many, in fact, that most of our contemporary language of social justice, our way of speaking of human bondage and emancipation, continues to echo ancient arguments about debt.<br /> <br /> It's particularly striking because so many other things do seem to have been accepted as simply in the nature of things. One does not see a similar outcry against caste systems, for example, or for that matter, the institution of slavery.28 Surely slaves and untouchables often experienced at least equal horrors. No doubt many protested their condition. Why was it that the debtors' protests seemed to carry such greater moral weight? Why were debtors so much more effective in winning the ear of priests, prophets, officials, and social reformers? Why was it that officials like Nehemiah were willing to give such sympathetic consideration to their complaints, to inveigh, to summon great assemblies?<br /> <br /> Some have suggested practical reasons: debt crises destroyed the free peasantry, and it was free peasants who were drafted into ancient armies to fight in wars.29 No doubt this was a factor; clearly it wasn't the only one. There is no reason to believe that Nehemiah, for instance, in his anger at the usurers, was primarily concerned with his ability to levy troops for the Persian king. It is something more fundamental.<br /> <br /> What makes debt different is that it is premised on an assumption of equality.<br /> <br /> To be a slave, or lower-caste, is to be intrinsically inferior. We are dealing with relations of unadulterated hierarchy. In the case of debt, we are dealing with two individuals who begin as equal parties to a contract. Legally, at least as far as the contract is concerned, they are the same.<br /> <br /> We can add that, in the ancient world, when people who actually were more or less social equals loaned money to one another, the terms appear to have normally been quite generous. Often no interest was charged, or if it was, it was very low. &quot;And don't charge me interest,&quot; wrote one wealthy Canaanite to another, in a tablet dated around 1200 BC, &quot;after all, we are both gentlemen. &quot;30 Between close kin, many &quot;loans&quot; were probably, then as now, just gifts that no one seriously expected to recover. Loans between rich and poor were something else again.<br /> <br /> The problem was that, unlike status distinctions like caste or slavery, the line between rich and poor was never precisely drawn. One can imagine the reaction of a farmer who went up to the house of a wealthy cousin, on the assumption that &quot;humans help each other,&quot; and ended up, a year or two later, watching his vineyard seized and his sons and daughters led away. Such behavior could be justified, in legal terms, by insisting that the loan was not a form of mutual aid but a commercial relationship-a contract is a contract. (It also required a certain reliable access to superior force.) But it could only have felt like a terrible betrayal. What's more, framing it as a breach of contract meant stating that this was, in fact, a moral issue: these two parties ought to be equals, but one had failed to honor the bargain. Psychologically, this can only have made the indignity of the debtor's condition all the more painful, since it made it possible to say that it was his own turpitude that sealed his daughter's fate. But that just made the motive all the more compelling to throw back the moral aspersions: &quot;Our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children. &quot; We are all the same people. We have a responsibility to take account of one another's needs and interests. How then could my brother do this to me?<br /> <br /> In the Old Testament case, debtors were able to marshal a particularly powerful moral argument-as the authors of Deuteronomy constantly reminded their readers, were not the Jews all slaves in Egypt, and had they not all been redeemed by God? Was it right, when they had all been given this promised land to share, for some to take that land away from others? Was it right for a population of liberated slaves to go about enslaving one aother's children?31 But analogous arguments were being made in similar situations almost everywhere in the ancient world: in Athens, in Rome, and for that matter, in China-where legend had it that coinage itself was first invented by an ancient emperor to redeem the children of families who had been forced to sell them after a series of devastating floods.<br /> <br /> Through most of history, when overt political conflict between classes did appear, it took the form of pleas for debt cancellation-the freeing of those in bondage, and usually, a more just reallocation of the land. What we see, in the Bible and other religious traditions, are traces of the moral arguments by which such claims were justified, usually subject to all sorts of imaginative twists and turns, but inevitably, to some degree, incorporating the language of the marketplace itself.<br /> <br /> == Chapter five: A brief treatiste on the moral grounds of economic relations ==<br /> '''TO TELL THE HISTORY''' of debt, then, is also necessarily to reconstruct how the language of the marketplace has come to pervade every aspect of human life-even to provide the terminology for the moral and religious voices ostensibly raised against it. We have already seen how both Vedic and Christian teachings thus end up making the same curious move: first describing all morality as debt, but then, in their very manner of doing so, demonstrating that morality cannot really be reduced to debt, that it must be grounded in something else.1<br /> <br /> But what? Religious traditions prefer vast, cosmological answers: the alternative to the morality of debt lies in recognition of continuity with the universe, or life in the expectation of the imminent annihilation of the universe, or absolute subordination to the deity, or withdrawal into another world. My own aims are more modest, so I will take the opposite approach. If we really want to understand the moral grounds of economic life, and by extension, human life, it seems to me that we must start instead with the very small things: the everyday details of social existence, the way we treat our friends, enemies, and children-often with gestures so tiny (passing the salt, bumming a cigarette) that we ordinarily never stop to think about them at all. Anthropology has shown us just how different and numerous are the ways in which humans have been known to organize themselves. But it also reveals some remarkable commonalities-fundamental moral principles that appear to exist everywhere, and that will always tend to be invoked, wherever people transfer objects back and forth or argue about what other people owe them.<br /> <br /> One of the reasons that human life is so complicated, in turn, is because many of these principles contradict one another. As we will see, they are constantly pulling us in radically different directions. The moral logic of exchange, and hence of debt, is only one; in any given situation, there are likely to be completely different principles that could be brought to bear. In this sense, the moral confusion discussed in the first chapter is hardly new; in a sense, moral thought is founded on this very tension.<br /> <br /> <br /> To really understand what debt is, then, it will be necessary to understand how it's different from other sorts of obligation that human beings might have to one another—which, in turn, means mapping out what those other sorts of obligation actually are. Doing so, however, poses peculiar challenges. Contemporary social theory—economic anthropology included-offers surprisingly little help in this regard. There's an enormous anthropological literature on gifts, for instance, starting with the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss's essay of 1925, even on &quot;gift economies&quot; that operate on completely different principles than market economies-but in the end, almost all this literature concentrates on the exchange of gifts, assuming that whenever one gives a gift, this act incurs a debt, and the recipient must eventually reciprocate in kind. Much as in the case of the great religions, the logic of the marketplace has insinuated itself even into the thinking of those who are most explicitly opposed to it. As a result, I am going to have to start over here, to create a new theory, pretty much from scratch.<br /> <br /> Part of the problem is the extraordinary place that economics currently holds in the social sciences. In many ways it is treated as a kind of master discipline. Just about anyone who runs anything important in America is expected to have some training in economic theory, or at least to be familiar with its basic tenets. As a result, those tenets have come to be treated as received wisdom, as basically beyond question (one knows one is in the presence of received wisdom when, if one challenges it, the first reaction is to treat one as simply ignorant-&quot;You obviously have never heard of the Laffer Curve&quot;; &quot;Clearly you need a course in Economics 101&quot;-the theory is seen as so obviously true that no one who understands it could possibly disagree.) What's more, those branches of social theory that make the greatest claims to &quot;scientific status&quot;—&quot;rational choice theory,&quot; for instance—start from the same assumptions about human psychology that economists do: that human beings are best viewed as self-interested actors calculating how to get the best terms possible out of any situation, the most profit or pleasure or happiness for the least sacrifice or investment—curious, considering experimental psychologists have demonstrated over and over again that these assumptions simply aren't true.2<br /> <br /> From early on, there were those who wished to create a theory of social interaction grounded in a more generous view of human nature--insisting that moral life comes down to something more than mutual advantage, that it is motivated above all by a sense of justice. The key term here became &quot;reciprocity,&quot; the sense of equity, balance, fairness, and symmetry, embodied in our image of justice as a set of scales. Economic transactions were just one variant of the principle of balanced exchange--and one that had a notorious tendency to go awry. But if one examines matters closely, one finds that all human relations are based on some variation on reciprocity.<br /> <br /> In the r9sos, '6os and '7os, there was something of a craze for this sort of thing, in the guise of what was then called &quot;exchange theory,&quot; developed in infinite variations, from George Homans' &quot;Social Exchange Theory&quot; in the United States to Claude Levi-Strauss's Structuralism in France. Levi-Strauss, who became a kind of intellectual god in anthropology, made the extraordinary argument that human life could be imagined as consisting of three spheres: language (which consisted of the exchange of words), kinship (which consisted of the exchange of women), and economics (which consisted of the exchange of things). All three, he insisted, were governed by the same fundamental law of reciprocity.3<br /> <br /> Levi-Strauss's star is fallen now, and such extreme statements seem, in retrospect, a little bit ridiculous. Still, it's not as if anyone has proposed a bold new theory to replace all this. Instead, the assumptions have simply retreated into the background. Almost everyone continues to assume that in its fundamental nature, social life is based on the principle of reciprocity, and therefore that all human interaction can best be understood as a kind of exchange. If so, then debt really is at the root of all morality, because debt is what happens when some balance has not yet been restored.<br /> <br /> But can all justice really be reduced to reciprocity? It's easy enough to come up with forms of reciprocity that don't seem particularly just. &quot;Do unto others as you would wish others to do unto you&quot; might seem like an excellent foundation for a system of ethics, but for most of us, &quot;an eye for an eye&quot; does not evoke justice so much as vindictive brutal-ity.4 &quot;One good turn deserves another&quot; is a pleasant sentiment, but &quot;I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine&quot; is shorthand for political corruption. Conversely, there are relationships that seem clearly moral but appear to have nothing to do with reciprocity. The relation between mother and child is an oft-cited example. Most of us learn our sense of justice and morality first from our parents. Yet it is extremely difficult to see the relation between parent and child as particularly reciprocal.<br /> <br /> Would we really be willing to conclude that therefore it is not a moral relationship? That it has nothing to do with justice?<br /> <br /> The Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood begins a recent book on debt with a similar paradox:<br /> <br /> Nature Writer Ernest Thompson Seton had an odd bill presented to him on his twenty-first birthday. It was a record kept by his father of all the expenses connected with young Ernest's childhood and youth, including the fee charged by the doctor for delivering him. Even more oddly, Ernest is said to have paid it. I used to think that Mr. Seton Senior was a jerk, but now I'm wondering.5<br /> <br /> Most of us wouldn't wonder much. Such behavior seems monstrous, inhuman. Certainly Seton did: he paid the bill, but never spoke to his father again afterward.6 And in a way, this is precisely why the presentation of such a bill seems so outrageous. Squaring accounts means that the two parties have the ability to walk away from each other. By presenting it, his father suggested he'd just as soon have nothing further to do with him.<br /> <br /> In other words, while most of us can imagine what we owe to our parents as a kind of debt, few of us can imagine being able to actually pay it-or even that such a debt ever should be paid. Yet if it can't be paid, in what sense is it a &quot;debt&quot; at all? And if it is not a debt, what is it?<br /> <br /> <br /> One obvious place to look for alternatives is in cases of human interaction in which expectations of reciprocity seem to slam into a wall. Nineteenth-century travelers' accounts, for instance, are full of this sort of thing. Missionaries working in certain parts of Africa would often be astounded by the reactions they would receive when they administered medicines. Here's a typical example, from a British missionary in Congo:<br /> <br /> A day or two after we reached Vana we found one of the natives very ill with pneumonia. Comber treated him and kept him alive on strong fowl-soup; a great deal of careful nursing and attention was visited on him, for his house was beside the camp. When we were ready to go on our way again, the man was well. To our astonishment he came and asked us for a present, and was as astonished and disgusted as he had made us to be, when we declined giving it. We suggested that it was his place to bring us a present and to show some gratitude.<br /> <br /> He said to us, &quot;Well indeed! You white men have no shame!&quot;7<br /> <br /> In the early decades of the twentieth century, the French philosopher Lucien Levy-Bruhl, in an attempt to prove that &quot;natives&quot; operated with an entirely different form of logic, compiled a list of similar stories: for instance, of a man saved from drowning who proceeded to ask his rescuer to give him some nice clothes to wear, or another who, on being nursed back to health after having been savaged by a tiger, demanded a knife. One French missionary working in Central Africa insisted that such things happened to him on a regular basis:<br /> <br /> You save a person's life, and you must expect to receive a visit from him before long; you are now under an obligation to him, and you will not get rid of him except by giving him presents.8<br /> <br /> Now, certainly, there is almost always felt to be something extraordinary about saving a life. Anything surrounding birth and death almost cannot help but partake of the infinite, and, therefore, throw all everyday means of moral calculation askew. This is probably why stories like this had become something of a cliche in America when I was growing up. I remember as a child several times being told that among the Inuit (or sometimes it was among Buddhists, or Chinese, but curiously, never Africans)-that if one saves someone else's life, one is considered responsible for taking care of that person forever. It defies our sense of reciprocity. But somehow, it also makes a weird kind of sense.<br /> <br /> We have no way of knowing what was really going on in the minds of the patients in these stories, since we don't know who they were or what sort of expectations they had (how they normally interacted with their doctors, for example). But we can guess. Let's try a thought experiment. Imagine that we are dealing with a place where, if one man saved another's life, the two became like brothers. Each was now expected to share everything, and to provide for the other when he was in need. If so, the patient would surely notice that his new brother appeared to be extraordinarily wealthy, not in much need of anything, but that he, the patient, was lacking in many things the missionary could provide.<br /> <br /> Alternately (and more likely), imagine that we are dealing not with a relationship of radical equality but the very opposite. In many parts of Africa, accomplished curers were also important political figures with extensive clienteles of former patients. A would-be follower thus arrives to declare his political allegiance. What complicates the matter in this case is that followers of great men, in this part of Africa, were in a relatively strong bargaining position. Good henchmen were hard to come by; important people were expected to be generous with followers to keep them from joining some rival's entourage instead. If so, asking for a shirt or knife would be a way of asking for confirmation that the missionary does wish to have the man as a follower. Paying him back, in contrast, would be, like Seton's gesture to his father, an insult: a way of saying that despite the missionary having saved his life, he would just as soon have nothing further to do with him.<br /> <br /> <br /> This is a thought experiment-because we don't really know what the African patients were thinking. The point is that such forms of radical equality and radical inequality do exist in the world, that each carries within it its own kind of morality, its own way of thinking and arguing about the rights and wrongs of any given situation, and these moralities are entirely different than that of tit-for-tat exchange. In the rest of the chapter, I will provide a rough-and-ready way to map out the main possibilities, by proposing that there are three main moral principles on which economic relations can be founded, all of which occur in any human society, and which I will call communism, hierarchy, and exchange.<br /> <br /> Communism<br /> <br /> I will define communism here as any human relationship that operates on the principles of &quot;from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.&quot;<br /> <br /> I admit that the usage here is a bit provocative. &quot;Communism&quot; is a word that can evoke strong emotional reactions-mainly, of course, because we tend to identify it with &quot;communist&quot; regimes. This is ironic, since the Communist parties that ruled over the USSR and its satellites, and that still rule China and Cuba, never described their own systems as &quot;communist. &quot; They described them as &quot;socialist.&quot; &quot;Communism&quot; was always a distant, somewhat fuzzy utopian ideal, usually to be accompanied by the withering away of the state-to be achieved at some point in the distant future.<br /> <br /> Our thinking about communism has been dominated by a myth. Once upon a time, humans held all things in common-in the Garden of Eden, during the Golden Age of Saturn, in Paleolithic huntergatherer bands. Then came the Fall, as a result of which we are now cursed with divisions of power and private property. The dream was that someday, with the advance of technology and general prosperity, with social revolution or 'the guidance of the Party, we would finally be in a position to put things back, to restore common ownership and common management of collective resources. Throughout the last two centuries, Communists and anti-Communists argued over how plausible this picture was and whether it would be a blessing or a nightmare. But they all agreed on the basic framework: communism was about collective property, &quot;primitive communism&quot; did once exist in the distant past, and someday it might return.<br /> <br /> We might call this &quot;mythic communism&quot;-or even, &quot;epic communism&quot;-a story we like to tell ourselves. Since the days of the French Revolution, it has inspired millions; but it has also done enormous damage to humanity. It's high time, I think, to brush the entire argument aside. In fact, &quot;communism&quot; is not some magical utopia, and neither does it have anything to do with ownership of the means of production. It is something that exists right now-that exists, to some degree, in any human society, although there has never been one in which everything has been organized in that way, and it would be difficult to imagine how there could be. All of us act like communists a good deal of the time. None of us acts like a communist consistently. &quot;Communist society&quot;-in the sense of a society organized exclusively on that single principle-could never exist. But all social systems, even economic systems like capitalism, have always been built on top of a bedrock of actually-existing communism.<br /> <br /> Starting, as I say, from the principle of &quot;from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs&quot; allows us to look past the question of individual or private ownership (which is often little more than formal legality anyway) and at much more immediate and practical questions of who has access to what sorts of things and under what conditions.9 Whenever it is the operative principle, even if it's just two people who are interacting, we can say we are in the presence of a sort of communism.<br /> <br /> Almost everyone follows this principle if they are collaborating on some common project.10 If someone fixing a broken water pipe says, &quot;Hand me the wrench,&quot; his co-worker will not, generally speaking, say, &quot;And what do I get for it?&quot;---even if they are working for ExxonMobil, Burger King, or Goldman Sachs. The reason is simple efficiency (ironically enough, considering the conventional wisdom that &quot;communism just doesn't work&quot;): if you really care about getting something done, the most efficient way to go about it is obviously to allocate tasks by ability and give people whatever they need to do them.11 One might even say that it's one of the scandals of capitalism that most capitalist firms, internally, operate communistically. True, they don't tend to operate very democratically. Most often they are organized around military-style top-down chains of command. But there is often an interesting tension here, because top-down chains of command are not particularly efficient: they tend to promote stupidity among those on top, resentful foot-dragging among those on the bottom. The greater the need to improvise, the more democratic the cooperation tends to become. Inventors have always understood this, start-up capitalists frequently figure it out, and computer engineers have recently rediscovered the principle: not only with things like freeware, which everyone talks about, but even in the organization of their businesses. Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 198os, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other's garages.<br /> <br /> This is presumably also why in the immediate wake of great di-sasters-a flood, a blackout, or an economic collapse-people tend to behave the same way, reverting to a rough-and-ready communism. However briefly, hierarchies and markets and the like become luxuries that no one can afford. Anyone who has lived through such a moment can speak to their peculiar qualities, the way that strangers become sisters and brothers and human society itself seems to be reborn. This is important, because it shows that we are not simply talking about cooperation. In fact, communism is the foundation of all human sociability. It is what makes society possible. There is always an assumption that anyone who is not actually an enemy can be expected on the principle of &quot;from each according to their abilities,&quot; at least to an extent: for example, if one needs to figure out how to get somewhere, and the other knows the way.<br /> <br /> We so take this for granted, in fact, that the exceptions are themselves revealing. E.E. Evans-Pritchard, an anthropologist who in the 1920s carried out research among the Nuer, Nilotic pastoralists in southern Sudan, reports his discomfiture when he realized that someone had intentionally given him wrong directions:<br /> <br /> On one occasion I asked the way to a certain place and was deliberately deceived. I returned in chagrin to camp and asked the people why they had told me the wrong way. One of them replied, &quot;You are a foreigner, why should we tell you the right way? Even if a Nuer who was a stranger asked us the way we would say to him, 'You continue straight along that path,' but we would not tell him that the path forked. Why should we tell him? But you are now a member of our camp and you are kind to our children, so we will tell you the right way in future.&quot;12<br /> <br /> The Nuer are constantly engaged in feuds; any stranger might well turn out to be an enemy there to scout out a good place for an ambush, and it would be unwise to give such a person useful information. What's more, Evans-Pritchard's own situation was obviously relevant, since he was an agent of the British government-the same government that had recently sent in the RAF to strafe and bomb the inhabitants of this very settlement before forcibly resettling them there. Under the circumstances, the inhabitants' treatment of Evans-Pritchard seems quite generous. The main point, though, is that it requires something on this scale-an immediate threat to life and limb, terror-bombing of civilian populations-before people will ordinarily consider not giving a stranger accurate directions.13<br /> <br /> It's not just directions. Conversation is a domain particularly disposed to communism. Lies, insults, put-downs, and other sorts of verbal aggression are important-but they derive most of their power from the shared assumption that people do not ordinarily act this way: an insult does not sting unless one assumes that others will normally be considerate of one's feelings, and it's impossible to lie to someone who does not assume you would ordinarily tell the truth. When we genuinely wish to break off amicable relations with someone, we stop speaking to them entirely.<br /> <br /> The same goes for small courtesies like asking for a light, or even for a cigarette. It seems more legitimate to ask a stranger for a cigarette than for an equivalent amount of cash, or even food; in fact, if one has been identified as a fellow smoker, it's rather difficult to refuse such a request. In such cases-a match, a piece of information, holding the elevator-one might say the &quot;from each&quot; element is so minimal that most of us comply without even thinking about it. Conversely, the same is true if another person's need-even a stranger's-is particularly spectacular or extreme: if he is drowning, for example. If a child has fallen onto the subway tracks, we assume that anyone who is capable of helping her up will do so.<br /> <br /> I will call this &quot;baseline communism&quot;: the understanding that, unless people consider themselves enemies, if the need is considered great enough, or the cost considered reasonable enough, the principle of &quot;from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs&quot; will be assumed to apply. Of course, different communities apply very different standards. In large, impersonal urban communities, such a standard may go no further than asking for a light or directions. This might not seem like much, but it founds the possibility of larger social relations. In smaller, less impersonal communities-especially those not divided into social classes-the same logic will likely extend much further: for example, it is often effectively impossible to refuse a request not just for tobacco, but for food-sometimes even from a stranger; certainly from anyone considered to belong to the community. Exactly one page after describing his difficulties in asking for directions, Evans-Pritchard notes that these same Nuer find it almost impossible, when dealing with someone they have accepted as a member of their camp, to refuse a request for almost any item of common consumption, so that a man or woman known to have anything extra in the way of grain, tobacco, tools, or agricultural implements can be expected to see their stockpiles disappear almost immediately.14 However, this baseline of openhanded sharing and generosity never extends to everything. Often, in fact, things freely shared are treated as trivial and unimportant for that very reason. Among the Nuer, true wealth takes the form of cattle. No one would freely share their cattle; in fact, young Nuer men learn that they are expected to defend their cattle with their lives; for this reason, cattle are neither bought nor sold.<br /> <br /> The obligation to share food, and whatever else is considered a basic necessity, tends to become the basis of everyday morality in a society whose members see themselves as equals. Another anthropologist, Audrey Richards, once described how Bemba mothers, &quot;such lax disciplinarians in everything else,&quot; will scold their children harshly if they give one an orange or some other treat and the child does not immediately offer to share it with her friends.15 But sharing is also, in such societies-in any, if we really think about it-a major focus of life's pleasures. As a result, the need to share is particularly acute in both the best of times and the worst of times: during famines, for example, but also during moments of extreme plenty. Early missionary accounts of native North Americans almost invariably include awestruck remarks on generosity in times of famine, often to total strangers.16 At the same time,<br /> <br /> On returning from their fishing, their hunting, and their trading, they exchange many gifts; if they have thus obtained something unusually good, even if they have bought it, or if it has been given to them, they make a feast to the whole village with it. Their hospitality towards all sorts of strangers is remarkable.17<br /> <br /> The more elaborate the feast, the more likely one is to see some combination of free sharing of some things (for instance, food and drink) and careful distribution of others: say, prize meat, whether from game or sacrifice, which is often parceled out according to very elaborate protocols or equally elaborate gift exchange. The giving and taking of gifts often takes on a distinctly gamelike quality, continuous often with the actual games, contests, pageants, and performances that also often mark popular festivals. As with society at large, the shared conviviality could be seen as a kind of communistic base on top of which everything else is constructed. It also helps to emphasize that sharing is not simply about morality, but also about pleasure. Solitary pleasures will always exist, but for most human beings, the most pleasurable activities almost always involve sharing something: music, food, liquor, drugs, gossip, drama, beds. There is a certain communism of the senses at the root of most things we consider fun.<br /> <br /> The surest way to know that one is in the presence of communistic relations is that not only are no accounts taken, but it would be considered offensive, or simply bizarre, to even consider doing so. Each village, clan, or nation within the League of the Hodenosaunee, or Iroquois, for example, was divided into two halves.18 This is a common pattern: in other parts of the world (Amazonia, Melanesia) too, there are arrangements in which members of one side can only marry someone from the other side, or only eat food grown on the other side; such rules are explicitly designed to make each side dependent on the other for some basic necessity of life. Among the Six Iroquois, each side was expected to bury the other's dead. Nothing would be more absurd than for one side to complain that, &quot;last year, we buried five of your dead, but you only buried two of ours.&quot;<br /> <br /> Baseline communism might be considered the raw material of sociality, a recognition of our ultimate interdependence that is the ultimate substance of social peace. Still, in most circumstances, that minimal baseline is not enough. One always behaves in a spirit of solidarity more with some people than others, and certain institutions are specifically based on principles of solidarity and mutual aid. First among these are those we love, with mothers being the paradigm of selfless love. Others include close relatives, wives and husbands, lovers, one's closest friends. These are the people with whom we share everything, or at least to whom we know we can turn in need, which is the definition of a true friend everywhere. Such friendships may be formalized by a ritual as &quot;bond-friends&quot; or &quot;blood brothers&quot; who cannot refuse each other anything. As a result, any community could be seen as criss-crossed with relations of &quot;individualistic communism,&quot; one-to-one relations that operate, to varying intensities and degrees, on the basis of &quot;from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.&quot;19<br /> <br /> This same logic can be, and is, extended within groups: not only cooperative work groups, but almost any in-group will define itself by creating its own sort of baseline communism. There will be certain things shared or made freely available within the group, others that anyone will be expected to provide for other members on request, that one would never share with or provide to outsiders: help in repairing one's nets in an association of fisherman, stationery supplies in an office, certain sorts of information among commodity traders, and so forth. Also, certain categories of people we can always call on in certain situations, such as harvesting or moving house.20 One could go on from here to various forms of sharing, pooling, who gets to call on whom for help with certain tasks: moving, or harvesting, or even, if one is in trouble, providing an interest-free loan. Finally, there are the different sorts of &quot;commons,&quot; the collective administration of common resources.<br /> <br /> The sociology of everyday communism is a potentially enormous field, but one which, owing to our peculiar ideological blinkers, we have been unable to write about because we have been largely unable to see it. Rather than try to further outline it, I will limit myself to three final points.<br /> <br /> First, we are not really dealing with reciprocity here--or at best, only with reciprocity in the broadest sense.21 What is equal on both sides is the knowledge that the other person would do the same for you, not that they necessarily will. The Iroquois example brings home clearly what makes this possible: that such relations are based on a presumption of eternity. Society will always exist. Therefore, there will always be a north and a south side of the village. This is why no accounts need be taken. In a similar way, people tend to treat their mothers and best friends as if they will always exist, however well they know it isn't true.<br /> <br /> The second point has to do with the famous &quot;law of hospitality. &quot; There is a peculiar tension between a common stereotype of what are called &quot;primitive societies&quot; (people lacking both states and markets) as societies in which anyone not a member of the community is assumed to be an enemy, and the frequent accounts of early European travelers awestruck by the extraordinary generosity shown them by actual &quot;savages.&quot; Granted, there is a certain truth to both sides. Wherever a stranger is a dangerous potential enemy, the normal way to overcome the danger is by some dramatic gesture of generosity whose very magnificence catapults them into that mutual sociality that is the ground for all peaceful social relations. True, when one is dealing with completely unknown quantities, there is often a process of testing. Both Christopher Columbus, in Hispaniola, and Captain Cook, in Polynesia, reported similar stories of islanders who either flee, attack, or offer everything-but who often later enter the boats and help themselves to anything they take a fancy to, provoking threats of violence from the crew, who then did their utmost to establish the principle that relations between strange peoples should be mediated instead by &quot;normal&quot; commercial exchange.<br /> <br /> It's understandable that dealings with potentially hostile strangers should encourage an all-or-nothing logic, a tension preserved even in English in the etymology of the words &quot;host,&quot; &quot;hostile,&quot; &quot;hostage,&quot; and indeed &quot;hospitality,&quot; all of which are derived from the same Latin root.22 What I want to emphasize here is that all such gestures are simply exaggerated displays of that very &quot;baseline communism&quot; that I have already argued is the ground of all human social life. This is why, for instance, the difference between friends and enemies is so often articulated through food-and often the most commonplace, humble, domestic sorts of food: as in the familiar principle, common in both Europe and the Middle East, that those who have shared bread and salt must never harm one another. In fact, those things that exist above all to be shared often become those things one cannot share with enemies. Among the Nuer, so free with food and everyday possessions, if one man murders another, a blood feud follows. Everyone in the vicinity will often have to line up on one side or another, and those on opposite sides are strictly forbidden to eat with anyone on the other, or even to drink from a cup or bowl one of their newfound enemies has previously used, lest terrible results ensue.23 The extraordinary inconvenience this creates is a major incentive to try to negotiate some sort of settlement. By the same token, it is often said that people who have shared food, or the right, archetypal kind of food, are forbidden to harm one another, however much they might be otherwise inclined to do so. At times, this can take on an almost comical formality, as in the Arab story of the burglar who, while ransacking someone's house, stuck his finger in a jar to see if it was full of sugar, only to discover it was full of salt instead. Realizing that he had now eaten salt at the owner's table, he dutifully put back everything he'd stolen.<br /> <br /> Finally, once we start thinking of communism as a principle of morality rather than just a question of property ownership, it becomes clear that this sort of morality is almost always at play to some degree in any transaction-even commerce. If one is on sociable terms with someone, it's hard to completely ignore their situation. Merchants often reduce prices for the needy. This is one of the main reasons why shopkeepers in poor neighborhoods are almost never of the same ethnic group as their customers; it would be almost impossible for a merchant who grew up in the neighborhood to make money, as they would be under constant pressure to give financial breaks, or at least easy credit terms, to their impoverished relatives and school chums. The opposite is true as well. An anthropologist who lived for some time in rural Java once told me that she measured her linguistic abilities by how well she could bargain at the local bazaar. It frustrated her that she could never get it down to a price as low as local people seemed pay. &quot;Well,&quot; a Javanese friend finally had to explain, &quot;they charge rich Javanese people more, too.&quot;<br /> <br /> Once again, we are back to the principle that if the needs (for instance, dire poverty), or the abilities (for instance, wealth beyond imagination), are sufficiently dramatic, then unless there is a complete absence of sociality, some degree of communistic morality will almost inevitably enter into the way people take accounts. A Turkish folktale about the Medieval Sufi mystic Nasruddin Hodja illustrates the complexities thus introduced into the very concept of supply and demand:<br /> <br /> One day when Nasruddin was left in charge of the local teahouse, the king and some retainers, who had been hunting nearby, stopped in for breakfast.<br /> <br /> &quot;Do you have quail eggs?&quot; asked the king.<br /> <br /> &quot;I'm sure I can find some,&quot; answered Nasruddin.<br /> <br /> The king ordered an omelet of a dozen quail eggs, and Nasruddin hurried out to look for them. After the king and his party had eaten, he charged them a hundred gold pieces.<br /> <br /> The king was puzzled. &quot;Are quail eggs really that rare in this part of the country?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;It's not so much quail eggs that are rare around here,&quot; Nasruddin replied. &quot;It's more visits from kings.&quot;<br /> <br /> Exchange<br /> <br /> Communism, then, is based neither in exchange nor in reciprocity-except, as I have observed, in the sense that it does involve mutual expectations and responsibilities. Even here, it seems better to use another word (&quot;mutuality&quot;?) so as to emphasize that exchange operates on entirely different principles; that it's a fundamentally different kind of moral logic.<br /> <br /> Exchange is all about equivalence. It's a back-and-forth process involving two sides in which each side gives as good as it gets. This is why one can speak of people exchanging words (if there's an argument), blows, or even gunfire.25 In these examples, it's not that there is ever an exact equivalence-even if there were some way to measure an exact equivalence-but more a constant process of interaction tending toward equivalence. Actually, there's something of a paradox here: each side in each case is trying to outdo the other, but, unless one side is utterly put to rout, it's easiest to break the whole thing off when both consider the outcome to be more or less even. When we move to the exchange of material goods, we find a similar tension. Often there is an element of competition; if nothing else, there's always that possibility. But at the same time, there's a sense that both sides are keeping accounts, and that, unlike what happens in communism, which always partakes of a certain notion of eternity, the entire relationship can be canceled out, and either party can call an end to it at any time.<br /> <br /> This element of competition can work in completely different ways. In cases of barter or commercial exchange, when both parties to the transaction are only interested in the value of goods being transacted, they may well-as economists insist they should-try to seek the maximum material advantage. On the other hand, as anthropologists have long pointed out, when the exchange is of gifts, that is, the objects passing back and forth are mainly considered interesting in how they reflect on and rearrange relations between the people carrying out the transaction, then insofar as competition enters in, it is likely to work precisely the other way around-to become a matter of contests of generosity, of people showing off who can give more away.<br /> <br /> Let me take these one at a time.<br /> <br /> What marks commercial exchange is that it's &quot;impersonal&quot;: who it is that is selling something to us, or buying something from us, should in principle be entirely irrelevant. We are simply comparing the value or two objects. True, as with any principle, in practice, this is rarely completely true. There has to be some minimal element of trust for a transaction to be carried out at all, and, unless one is dealing with a vending machine, that usually requires some outward display of sociality. Even in the most impersonal shopping mall or supermarket, clerks are expected to at least simulate personal warmth, patience, and other reassuring qualities; in a Middle-Eastern bazaar, one might have to go through an elaborate process of establishing a simulated friendship, sharing tea, food, or tobacco, before engaging in similarly elaborate haggling-an interesting ritual that begins by establishing sociality through baseline communism-and continues with an often prolonged mock battle over prices. It's all done on the basis of the assumption that buyer and seller are, at least at that moment, friends (and thus each entitled to feel outraged and indignant at the other's unreasonable demands), but it's all a little piece of theater. Once the object changes hands, there is no expectation that the two will ever have anything to do with each other again.26<br /> <br /> Most often this sort of haggling-in Madagascar the term for it literally means &quot;to battle out a sale&quot; (miady varotra)-can be a source of pleasure in itself.<br /> <br /> The first time I visited Analakely, the great cloth market in Madagascar's capital, I came with a Malagasy friend intent on buying a sweater. The whole process took about four hours. It went something like this: my friend would spot a likely sweater hanging in some booth, ask the price, and then she would begin a prolonged battle of wits with the vendor, invariably involving dramatic displays of insult and indignation, and simulated walkings off in disgust. Often it seemed ninety percent of the argument was spent on a final, tiny difference of a few ariary-literally, pennies-that seemed to become a profound matter of principle on either side, since a merchant's failure to concede it could sink the entire deal.<br /> <br /> The second time I visited Analakely I went with another friend, also a young woman, who had a list of measures of cloth to buy supplied by her sister. At each booth she adopted the same procedure: she simply walked up and asked for the price.<br /> <br /> The man would quote her one.<br /> <br /> &quot;All right,&quot; she then asked, &quot;and what's your real final price?&quot; He'd tell her, and she'd hand over the money.<br /> <br /> &quot;Wait a minute!&quot; I asked. &quot;You can do that?<br /> <br /> &quot;Sure,&quot; she said. &quot;Why not?&quot;<br /> <br /> I explained what had happened with my last friend.<br /> <br /> &quot;Oh, yeah,&quot; she said. &quot;Some people enjoy that sort of thing.&quot;<br /> <br /> Exchange allows us to cancel out our debts. It gives us a way to call it even: hence, to end the relationship. With vendors, one is usually only pretending to have a relationship at all. With neighbors, one might for this very reason prefer not to pay one's debts. Laura Bohannan writes about arriving in a Tiv community in rural Nigeria; neighbors immediately began arriving bearing little gifts: &quot;two ears corn, one vegetable marrow, one chicken, five tomatoes, one handful peanuts. &quot;27 Having no idea what was expected of her, she thanked them and wrote down in a notebook their names and what they had brought. Eventually, two women adopted her and explained that all such gifts did have to be returned. It would be entirely inappropriate to simply accept three eggs from a neighbor and never bring anything back. One did not have to bring back eggs, but one should bring something back of approximately the same value. One could even bring money-there was nothing inappropriate in that-provided one did so at a discreet interval, and above all, that one did not bring the exact cost of the eggs. It had to be either a bit more or a bit less. To bring back nothing at all would be to cast oneself as an exploiter or a parasite. To bring back an exact equivalent would be to suggest that one no longer wishes to have anything to do with the neighbor. Tiv women, she learned, might spend a good part of the day walking for miles to distant homesteads to return a handful of okra or a tiny bit of change, &quot;in an endless circle of gifts to which no one ever handed over the precise value of the object last received &quot;-and in doing so, they were continually creating their society. There was certainly a trace of communism here-neighbors on good terms could also be trusted to help each other out in emergencies-but unlike communistic relations, which are assumed to be permanent, this sort of neighborliness had to be constantly created and maintained, because any link can be broken off at any time.<br /> <br /> There are endless variations on this sort of tit-for-tat, or almost tit-for-tat, gift exchange. The most familiar is the exchange of presents: I buy someone a beer; they buy me the next one. Perfect equivalence implies equality. But consider a slightly more complicated example: I take a friend out to a fancy restaurant for dinner; after a discreet interval, they do the same. As anthropologists have long been in the habit of pointing out, the very existence of such customs-especially, the feeling that one really ought to return the favor-can't be explained by standard economic theory, which assumes that any human interaction is ultimately a business deal and that we are all self-interested individuals trying to get the most for ourselves for the least cost or least amount of effort.28 But this feeling is quite real, and it can cause genuine strain for those of limited means trying to keep up appearances. So: Why, if I took a free-market economic theorist out to an expensive dinner, would that economist feel somewhat diminished-uncomfortably in my debt-until he had been able to return the favor? Why, if he were feeling competitive with me, would he be inclined to take me to someplace even more expensive?<br /> <br /> Recall the feasts and festivals alluded to above: here, too, there is a base of conviviality and playful (sometimes not so playful) competition. On the one hand, everyone's pleasure is enhanced-after all, how many people would really want to eat a superb meal at a French restaurant all alone? On the other, things can easily slip into games of one-upmanship-and hence obsession, humiliation, rage ...or, as we'll soon see, even worse. In some societies, these games are formalized, but it's important to stress that such games only really develop between people or groups who perceive themselves to be more or less equivalent in status.29 To return to our imaginary economist: it's not clear that he would feel diminished if he received a present, or was taken out to dinner, by just anyone. He would be most likely to feel this way if the benefactor were someone he felt was of roughly equivalent status or dignity: a colleague, for example. If Bill Gates or George Soros took him out to dinner, he would likely conclude that he had indeed received something for nothing and leave it at that. If some ingratiating junior colleague or eager graduate student did the same, he'd be likely to conclude that he was doing the man a favor just by accepting the invitation-if indeed he did accept, which he probably wouldn't.<br /> <br /> This, too, appears to be the case wherever we find society divided into fine gradations of status and dignity. Pierre Bourdieu has described the &quot;dialectic of challenge and riposte&quot; that governs all games of honor among Kabyle Berber men in Algeria, in which the exchange of insults, attacks (in feud or battles), thefts, or threats was seen to follow exactly the same logic as the exchange of gifts.30 To give a gift is both an honor and a provocation. To respond to one requires infinite artistry. Timing is all-important. So is making the counter-gift just different enough, but also just slightly grander. Above all is the tacit moral principle that one must always pick on someone one's own size. To challenge someone obviously older, richer, and more honorable is to risk being snubbed, and hence humiliated; to overwhelm a poor but respectable man with a gift he couldn't possibly pay back is simply cruel, and will do equal damage to your reputation. There's an Indonesian story about that too: about a rich man who sacrificed a magnificent ox to shame a penurious rival; the poor man utterly humiliated him, and won the contest, by calmly proceeding to sacrifice a chicken.31<br /> <br /> Games like this become especially elaborate when status is to some degree up for grabs. When matters are too clear-cut, that introduces its own sorts of problems. Giving gifts to kings is often a particularly tricky and complicated business. The problem here is that one cannot really give a gift fit for a king (unless, perhaps, one is another king), since kings by definition already have everything. On the one hand, one is expected to make a reasonable effort:<br /> <br /> Nasruddin was once called up to visit the king. A neighbor saw him hurrying along the road carrying a bag of turnips.<br /> <br /> &quot;What are those for?&quot; he asked.<br /> <br /> &quot;I've been called to see the king. I thought it would be best<br /> <br /> to bring some kind of present. &quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;You're bringing him turnips? But turnips are peasant food!<br /> <br /> He's a king! You should bring him something more appropriate, like grapes. &quot;<br /> <br /> Nasruddin agreed, and came to the king carrying a bunch of grapes. The king was not amused. &quot;You're giving me grapes? But I'm a king! This is ridiculous. Take this idiot out and teach him some manners! Throw each and every one of the grapes at him and then kick him out of the palace.&quot;<br /> <br /> The emperor's guards dragged Nasruddin into a side room and began pelting him with grapes. As they did so, he fell on his knees and began crying, &quot;Thank you, thank you God, for your infinite mercy!&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Why are you thanking God?&quot; they asked. &quot;You're being totally humiliated! &quot;<br /> <br /> Nasruddin replied, &quot;Oh, I was just thinking, 'Thank God I didn't bring the turnips!&quot;'<br /> <br /> On the other hand, to give something that a king does not already have can get you in even greater trouble. One story circulating in the early Roman Empire concerned an inventor who, with great fanfare, presented a glass bowl as a gift to the emperor Tiberius. The emperor was puzzled: What was so impressive about a piece of glass? The man dropped it on the ground. Rather than shattering, it merely dented. He picked it up and simply pushed it back into its former shape.<br /> <br /> &quot;Did you tell anyone else how you made this thing?&quot; asked a startled Tiberius.<br /> <br /> The inventor assured him that he had not. The emperor therefore ordered him killed, since, if word of how to make unbreakable glass got out, his treasury of gold and silver would soon be worthless.32<br /> <br /> The best bet when dealing with kings was to make a reasonable effort to play the game, but one that is still bound to fail. The fourteenth-century Arab traveler Ibn Battuta tells of the customs of the King of Sind, a terrifying monarch who took a particular delight in displays of arbitrary power.33 It was customary for foreign worthies visiting the king to present him with magnificent presents; whatever the gift was, he would invariably respond by presenting the bearer with something many times its value. As a result, a substantial business developed where local bankers would lend money to such visitors to finance particularly spectacular gifts, knowing they could be well repaid from the proceeds of royal one-upmanship. The king must have known about this. He didn't object-since the whole point was to show that his wealth exceeded all possible equivalence-and if he really needed to, he could always expropriate the bankers. They knew that the really important game was not economic, but one of status, and his was absolute.<br /> <br /> In exchange, the objects being traded are seen as equivalent. Therefore, by implication, so are the people: at least, at the moment when gift is met with counter-gift, or money changes hands; when there is no further debt or obligation and each of the two parties is equally free to walk away. This in turn implies autonomy. Both principles sit uncomfortably with monarchs, which is the reason that kings generally dislike any sort of exchange.34 But within that overhanging prospect of potential cancellation, of ultimate equivalence, we find endless variations, endless games one can play. One can demand something from another person, knowing that by doing so, one is giving the other the right to demand something of equivalent value in return. In some contexts, even praising another's possession might be interpreted as a demand of this sort. In eighteenth-century New Zealand, English settlers soon learned that it was not a good idea to admire, say, a particularly beautiful jade pendant worn around the neck of a Maori warrior; the latter would inevitably insist on giving it, not take no for an answer, and then, after a discreet interval, return to praise the settler's coat or gun. The only way to head this off was to quickly give him a gift before he could ask for one. Sometimes gifts are offered in order for the giver to be able to make such a demand: if one accepts the present, one is tacitly agreeing to allow the giver to claim whatever he deems equivalent.35<br /> <br /> All this, in turn, can shade into something very much like barter, directly swapping one thing for another-which as we've seen does occur even in what Marcel Mauss liked to refer to as &quot;gift economies,&quot; even if largely between strangers.16 Within communities, there is almost always a reluctance, as the Tiv example so nicely illustrates, to allow things to cancel out-one reason that if there is money in common usage, people will often either refuse to use it with friends or relatives (which in a village society includes pretty much everyone), or alternately, like the Malagasy villagers in chapter 3, use it in radically different ways.<br /> <br /> === Hierarchy ===<br /> Exchange, then, implies formal equality-or at least, the potential for it. This is precisely why kings have such trouble with it.<br /> <br /> In contrast, relations of explicit hierarchy-that is, relations between at least two parties in which one is considered superior to the other-do not tend to operate by reciprocity at all. It's hard to see because the relation is often justified in reciprocal terms (&quot;the peasants provide food, the lords provide protection&quot;), but the principle by which they operate is exactly the opposite. In practice, hierarchy tends to work by a logic of precedent.<br /> <br /> To illustrate what I mean by this, let us imagine a kind of continuum of one-sided social relations, ranging from the most exploitative to the most benevolent. At one extreme is theft, or plunder; on the other selfless charity.37 Only at these two extremes is it is possible to have material interactions between people who otherwise have no social relation of any kind. Only a lunatic would mug his next-door neighbor. A band of marauding soldiers or nomadic horsemen falling on a peasant hamlet to rape and pillage also obviously have no intention of forming any ongoing relations with the survivors. But in a similar way, religious traditions often insist that the only true charity is anonymous-in other words, not meant to place the recipient in one's debt. One extreme form of this, documented in various parts of the world, is the gift by stealth, in a kind of reverse burglary: to literally sneak into the recipient's house at night and plant one's present so no one can know for sure who has left it. The figure of Santa Claus, or Saint Nicholas (who, it must be remembered, was not just the patron saint of children, but also the patron saint of thieves) would appear to •be the mythological version of the same principle: a benevolent burglar with whom no social relations are possible and therefore to whom no one could possibly owe anything, in his case, above all, because he does not actually exist.<br /> <br /> Observe, however, what happens when one moves just a little bit less far out on the continuum in either direction. I have been told (I suspect it isn't true) that in parts of Belarus, gangs prey so systematically on travelers on trains and busses that they have developed the habit of giving each victim a little token, to confirm that the bearer has already been robbed. Obviously one step toward the creation of a state. Actually, one popular theory of the origins of the state, that goes back at least to the fourteenth-century North African historian Ibn Khaldun, runs precisely along these lines: nomadic raiders eventually systematize their relations with sedentary villagers; pillage turns into tribute, rape turns into the &quot;right of the first night&quot; or the carrying off of likely candidates as recruits for the royal harem. Conquest, untrammeled force, becomes systematized, and thus framed not as a predatory relation but as a moral one, with the lords providing protection, and the villagers, their sustenance. But even if all parties assume they are operating by a shared moral code, that even kings cannot do whatever they want but must operate within limits, allowing peasants to argue about the rights and wrongs of just how much of their harvest a king's retainers are entitled to carry off, they are very unlikely to frame their calculation in terms of the quality or quantity of protection provided, but rather in terms of custom and precedent: How much did we pay last year? How much did our ancestors have to pay? The same is true on the other side. If charitable donations become the basis for any sort of social relation, it will not be one based on reciprocity. If you give some coins to a panhandler, and that panhandler recognizes you later, it is unlikely that he will give you any money-but he might well consider you more likely to give him money again. Certainly this is true if one donates money to a charitable organization. (I gave money to the United Farm Workers once and I still haven't heard the end of it.) Such an act of one-sided generosity is treated as a precedent for what will be expected afterward.38 It's quite the same if one gives candy to a child.<br /> <br /> This is what I mean when I say that hierarchy operates by a principle that is the very opposite of reciprocity. Whenever the lines of superiority and inferiority are clearly drawn and accepted by all parties as the framework of a relationship, and relations are sufficiently ongoing that we are no longer simply dealing with arbitrary force, then relations will be seen as being regulated by a web of habit or custom. Sometimes the situation is assumed to have originated in some founding act of conquest. Or it might been seen as ancestral custom for which there is no need of explanation. But this introduces another complication to the problem of giving gifts to kings-or to any superior: there is always the danger that it will be treated as a precedent, added to the web of custom, and therefore considered obligatory thereafter. Xenophon claims that in the early days of the Persian Empire, each province vied to send the Great King gifts of its most unique and valuable products. This became the basis of the tribute system: each province was eventually expected to provide the same &quot;gifts&quot; every year.39 Similarly, according to the great Medieval historian Marc Bloch:<br /> <br /> [I]n the ninth century, when one day there was a shortage of wine in the royal cellars at Ver, the monks of Saint-Denis were asked to supply the two hundred hogs-heads required. This contribution was thenceforth claimed from them as of right every year, and it required an imperial charter to abolish it. At Ardres, we are told, there was once a bear, the property of the local lord. The inhabitants, who loved to watch it fight with dogs, undertook to feed it. The beast eventually died, but the lord continued to exact the loaves of bread. &quot;40<br /> <br /> In other words, any gift to a feudal superior, &quot;especially if repeated three of four times,&quot; was likely to be treated as a precedent and added to the web of custom. As a result, those giving gifts to superiors often insisted on receiving a &quot;letter of non-prejudice&quot; legally stipulating that such a gift would not be required in the future. While it is unusual for matters to become quite so formalized, any social relation that is assumed from the start to be unequal will inevitably begin to operate on an analogous logic-if only because, once relations are seen as based on &quot;custom,&quot; the only way to demonstrate that one has a duty or obligation to do something is to show that one has done it before.<br /> <br /> Often, such arrangements can turn into a logic of caste: certain clans are responsible for weaving the ceremonial garments, or bringing the fish for royal feasts, or cutting the king's hair. They thus come to be known as weavers or fishermen or barbers.41 This last point can't be overemphasized because it brings home another truth regularly overlooked: that the logic of identity is, always and everywhere, entangled in the logic of hierarchy. It is only when certain people are placed above others, or where everyone is being ranked in relation to the king, or the high priest, or Founding Fathers, that one begins to speak of people bound by their essential nature: about fundamentally different kinds of human being. Ideologies of caste or race are just extreme examples. It happens whenever one group is seen as raising themselves above others, or placing themselves below others, in such a way that ordinary standards of fair dealing no longer apply.<br /> <br /> In fact, something like this happens in a small way even in our most intimate social relations. The moment we recognize someone as a different sort of person, either above or below us, then ordinary rules of reciprocity become modified or are set aside. If a friend is unusually generous once, we will likely wish to reciprocate. If she acts this way repeatedly, we conclude she is a generous person, and are hence less likely to reciprocate.42<br /> <br /> We can describe a simple formula here: a certain action, repeated, becomes customary; as a result, it comes to define the actor's essential nature. Alternately, a person's nature may be defined by how others have acted toward him in the past. To be an aristocrat is largely to insist that in the past, others have treated you as an aristocrat (since aristocrats don't really do anything in particular, most spend their time simply existing in some sort of putatively superior state), and therefore should continue to do so. Much of the art of being such a person is that of treating oneself in such a manner that it conveys how you expect others to treat you: in the case of actual kings, covering oneself with gold so as to suggest that others do likewise. On the other end of the scale, this is also how abuse becomes self-legitimating. As a former student of mine, Sarah Stillman, pointed out: in the United States, if a middle-class thirteen-year-old girl is kidnapped, raped, and killed, it is considered an agonizing national crisis that everyone with a television is expected to follow for several weeks. If a thirteen-year-old girl is turned out as a child prostitute, raped systematically for years, and ultimately killed, all this is considered unremarkable-really just the sort of thing one can expect to end up happening to someone like that.43<br /> <br /> When objects of material wealth pass back and forth between superiors and inferiors as gifts or payments, the key principle seems to be that the sorts of things given on each side should be considered fundamentally different in quality, their relative value impossible to quantify-the result being that there is no way to even conceive of a squaring of accounts. Even if Medieval writers insisted on imagining society as a hierarchy in which priests pray for everyone, nobles fight for everyone, and peasants feed everyone, it never even occurred to anyone to establish how many prayers or how much military protection was equivalent to a ton of wheat. Nor did anyone ever consider making such a calculation. Neither is it that &quot;lowly&quot; sorts of people are necessarily given lowly sorts of things and vice versa. Sometimes it is quite the opposite. Until recently, just about any notable philosopher, artist, poet, or musician was required to find a wealthy patron for support. Famous works of poetry or philosophy are often prefaced-oddly, to the modern eye-with gushing, sycophantic praise for the wisdom and virtue of some long-forgotten earl or count who provided a meager stipend. The fact that the noble patron merely provided room and board, or money, and that the client showed his gratitude by painting the Mona Lisa, or composing the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, was in no way seen to compromise the assumption of the noble's intrinsic superiority.<br /> <br /> There is one great exception to this principle, and that is the phenomenon of hierarchical redistribution. Here, though, rather than giving back and forth the same sorts of things, they give back and forth exactly the same thing: as, for instance, when fans of certain Nigerian pop stars throw money onto the stage during concerts, and the pop stars in question make occasional tours of their fans' neighborhoods tossing (the same) money from the windows of their limos. When this is all that's going on, we may speak of an absolutely minimal sort of hierarchy. In much of Papua New Guinea, social life centers on &quot;big men,&quot; charismatic individuals who spend much of their time coaxing, cajoling, and manipulating in order to acquire masses of wealth to give away again at some great feast. One could, in practice, pass from here to, say, an Amazonian or indigenous North American chief. Unlike big men, their role is more formalized; but actually such chiefs have no power to compel anyone to do anything they don't want to (hence North American Indian chiefs' famous skill at oratory and powers of persuasion). As a result, they tended to give away far more than they received. Observers often remarked that in terms of personal possessions, a village chief was often the poorest man in the village, such was the pressure on him for constant supply of largesse.<br /> <br /> Indeed, one could judge how egalitarian a society really was by exactly this: whether those ostensibly in positions of authority are merely conduits for redistribution, or able to use their positions to accumulate riches. The latter seems most likely in aristocratic societies that add another element: war and plunder. After all, just about anyone who comes into a very large amount of wealth will ultimately give at least part of it away-often in grandiose and spectacular ways to large numbers of people. The more of one's wealth is obtained by plunder or extortion, the more spectacular and self-aggrandizing will be the forms in which it's given away.44 And what is true of warrior aristocracies is all the more true of ancient states, where rulers almost invariably represented themselves as the protectors of the helpless, supporters of widows and orphans, and champions of the poor. The genealogy of the modern redistributive state-with its notorious tendency to foster identity politics-can be traced back not to any sort of &quot;primitive communism&quot; but ultimately to violence and war.<br /> <br /> === Shifting between modalities ===<br /> I should underline again that we are not talking about different types of society here (as we've seen, the very idea that we've ever been organized into discrete &quot;societies&quot; is dubious) but moral principles that always coexist everywhere. We are all communists with •our closest friends, and feudal lords when dealing with small children. It is very hard to imagine a society where people wouldn't be both.<br /> <br /> The obvious question is: If we are all ordinarily moving back and forth between completely different systems of moral accounting, why hasn't anybody noticed this? Why, instead, do we continually feel the need to reframe everything in terms of reciprocity?<br /> <br /> Here we must return to the fact that reciprocity is our main way of imagining justice. In particular, it is what we fall back on when we're thinking in the abstract, and especially when we're trying to create an idealized picture of society. I've already given examples of this sort of thing. Iroquois communities were based on an ethos that required everyone to be attentive to the needs of several different sorts of people: their friends, their families, members of their matrilineal clans, even friendly strangers in situations of hardship. It was when they had to think about society in the abstract that they started to emphasize the two sides of the village, each of which had to bury the other's dead. It was a way of imagining communism through reciprocity. Similarly, feudalism was a notoriously messy and complicated business, but whenever Medieval thinkers generalized about it, they reduced all its ranks and orders into one simple formula in which each order contributed its share: &quot;Some pray, some fight, still others work. &quot;45 Even hierarchy was seen as ultimately reciprocal, despite this formula having nothing to do with the real relations between priests, knights, and peasants really operated on the ground. Anthropologists are familiar with the phenomenon: it's only when people who have never had occasion to really think about their society or culture as a whole, who probably weren't even aware they were living inside something other people considered a &quot;society&quot; or a &quot;culture, &quot; are asked to explain how everything works that they say things like &quot;this is how we repay our mothers for the pain of having raised us,&quot; or puzzle over conceptual diagrams in which clan A gives their women in marriage to clan B who gives theirs to clan C, who gives theirs back to A again, but which never seem to quite correspond to what real people actually do.46 When trying to imagine a just society, it's hard not to evoke images of balance and symmetry, of elegant geometries where everything balances out.<br /> <br /> The idea that there is something called &quot;the market&quot; is not so very different. Economists will often admit this, if you ask them in the right way. Markets aren't real. They are mathematical models, created by imagining a self-contained world where everyone has exactly the same motivation and the same knowledge and is engaging in the same selfinterested calculating exchange. Economists are aware that reality is always more complicated; but they are also aware that to come up with a mathematical model, one always has to make the world into a bit of a cartoon. There's nothing wrong with this. The problem comes when it enables some (often these same economists) to declare that anyone who ignores the dictates of the market shall surely be punished-or that since we live in a market system, everything (except government interference) is based on principles of justice: that our economic system is one vast network of reciprocal relations in which, in the end, the accounts balance and all debts are paid.<br /> <br /> These principles get tangled up in each other and it's thus often difficult to tell which predominates in a given situation-one reason that it's ridiculous to pretend we could ever reduce human behavior, economic or otherwise, to a mathematical formula of any sort. Still, this means that some degree of reciprocity can be detected as potentially present in any situation; so a determined observer can always find some excuse to say it's there. What's more, certain principles appear to have an inherent tendency to slip into others. For instance, a lot of extremely hierarchical relationships can operate (at least some of the time) on communistic principles. If you have a rich patron, you come to him in times of need, and he is expected to help you. But only to a certain degree. No one expects the patron to provide so much help that it threatens to undermine the underlying inequality.47<br /> <br /> Likewise, communistic relations can easily start slipping into relations of hierarchical inequality-often without anyone noticing it. It's not hard to see why this happens. Sometimes different people's &quot;abilities&quot; and &quot;needs&quot; are grossly disproportionate. Genuinely egalitarian societies are keenly aware of this and tend to develop elaborate safeguards around the dangers of anyone-say, especially good hunters, in a hunting society-rising too far above themselves; just as they tend to be suspicious of anything that might make one member of the society feel in genuine debt to another. A member who draws attention to his own accomplishments will find himself the object of mockery. Often, the only polite thing to do if one has accomplished something significant is to instead make fun of oneself. The Danish writer Peter Freuchen, in his Book of the Eskimo, described how in Greenland, one could tell what a fine delicacy someone had to offer his guests by how much he belittled it beforehand:<br /> <br /> The old man laughed. &quot;Some people don't know much. I am such a poor hunter and my wife a terrible cook who ruins everything. I don't have much, but I think there is a piece of meat outside. It might still be there as the dogs have refused it several times.&quot;<br /> <br /> This was such a recommendation in the Eskimo way of backwards bragging that everyone's mouths began to water ...<br /> <br /> The reader will recall the walrus hunter of the last chapter, who took offense when the author tried to thank him for giving him a share of meat-after all, humans help one another, and once we treat something as a gift, we turn into something less than human: &quot;Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs. &quot;48<br /> <br /> &quot;Gift&quot; here does not mean something given freely, not mutual aid that we can ordinarily expect human beings to provide to one another. To thank someone suggests that he or she might not have acted that way, and that therefore the choice to act this way creates an obligation, a sense of debt-and hence, inferiority. Communes or egalitarian collectives in the United States often face similar dilemmas, and they have to come up with their own safeguards against creeping hierarchy. It's not that the tendency for communism to slip into hierarchy is inevitable-societies like the Inuit have managed to fend it off for thousands of years-but rather, that one must always guard against it.<br /> <br /> In contrast, it's notoriously difficult-often downright impossible-to shift relations based on an assumption of communistic sharing to relations of equal exchange. We observe this all the time with friends: if someone is seen as taking advantage of your generosity, it's often much easier to break off relations entirely than to demand that they somehow pay you back. One extreme example is the Maori story about a notorious glutton who used to irritate fishermen up and down the coast near where he lived by constantly asking for the best portions of their catch. Since to refuse ''';1''' direct request for food was effectively impossible, they .would dutifully turn it over; until one day, people decided enough was enough and killed him.49<br /> <br /> We've already seen how creating a ground of sociability among strangers can often require an elaborate process of testing the others' limits by helping oneself to their possessions. The same sort of thing can happen in peacemaking, or even in the creation of business partnerships.50 In Madagascar, people told me that two men who are thinking of going into business together will often become blood brothers. Blood brotherhood, fatidra, consists of an unlimited promise of mutual aid. Both parties solemnly swear that they will never refuse any request from the other. In reality, partners to such an agreement are usually fairly circumspect in what they actually request. But, my friends insisted, when people first make such an agreement, they sometimes like to test it out. One may demand the other's house, the shirt off his back, or (everyone's favorite example) the right to spend the night with his wife. The only limit is the knowledge that anything one can demand, the other one can too.51 Here, again, we are talking about an initial establishment of trust. Once the genuineness of the mutual commitment has been confirmed, the ground is prepared, as it were, and the two men can begin to buy and sell on consignment, advance funds, share profits, and otherwise trust that each will look after the other's commercial interests from then on. The most famous and dramatic moments, however, are those when relations of exchange threaten to break down into hierarchy: that is, when two parties are acting like equals, trading gifts, or blows, or commodities, or anything else, but one of them does something that completely flips the scale.<br /> <br /> I've already mentioned the tendency of gift exchange to turn into games of one-upmanship, and how in some societies this potential is formalized in great public contests. This is typical, above all, of what are often called &quot;heroic societies&quot;: those in which governments are weak or nonexistent and society is organized instead around warrior noblemen, each with his entourage of loyal retainers and tied to the others by ever-shifting alliances and rivalries. Most epic poetry-from the Iliad to the Mahabharata to Beowulf-harkens back to this sort of world, and anthropologists have discovered similar arrangements among the Maori of New Zealand and the Kwakiutl, Tlingit, and Haida of the American Northwest coast. In heroic societies, the throwing of feasts and resulting contests of generosity are often spoken of as mere extensions of war: &quot;fighting with property &quot; or &quot;fighting with food.&quot; Those who throw such feasts often indulge in colorful speeches about how their enemies are thus crushed and destroyed by glorious feats of generosity aimed in their direction (Kwakiutl chiefs liked to speak of themselves as great mountains from which gifts rolled like giant boulders), and of how conquered rivals are thus reduced-much as in the Inuit metaphor-to slaves.<br /> <br /> Such statements are not to be taken literally-another feature of such societies is a highly developed art of boastingY Heroic chiefs and warriors tended to talk themselves up just as consistently as those in egalitarian societies talked themselves down. It's not as if someone who loses out in a contest of gift exchange is ever actually reduced to slavery, but he might end up feeling as if he were. And the consequences could be catastrophic. One ancient Greek source describes Celtic festivals where rival nobles would alternate between jousts and contests of generosity, presenting their enemies with magnificent gold and silver treasures. Occasionally this could lead to a kind of checkmate; someone would be faced with a present so magnificent that he could not possibly match it. In this case, the only honorable response was for him to cut his own throat, thus allowing his wealth to be distributed to his followersY Six hundred years later, we find a case from an Icelandic saga of an aging Viking named Egil, who befriended a younger man named Einar, who was still actively raiding. They liked to sit together composing poetry. One day Einar came by a magnificent shield &quot;inscribed with old tales; and between the writing were overlaid spangles of gold with precious stones. &quot; No one had ever seen anything like it. He took it with him on a visit to Egil. Egil was not at home, so Einar waited three days, as was the custom, then hung the shield as a present in the mead-hall and rode off.<br /> <br /> Egil returned home, saw the shield, and asked who owned such a treasure. He was told that Einar had visited and given it to him. Then Egil said, &quot;To hell with him! Does he think I'm going to stay up all night and compose a poem about his shield? Get my horse, I'm going to ride after him and kill him. &quot; As Einar's luck would have it he had left early enough to put sufficient distance between himself and Egil. So Egil resigned himself to composing a poem about Einar's gift.54<br /> <br /> <br /> Competitive gift exchange, then, does not literally render anyone slaves; it is simply an affair of honor. These are people, however, for whom honor is everything.<br /> <br /> The main reason that being unable to pay a debt, especially a debt of honor, was such a crisis was because this '''was''' how noblemen assembled their entourages. The law of hospitality in the ancient world, for instance, insisted that any traveler must be fed, given shelter, and treated as an honored guest-but only for a certain length of time. If a guest did not go away, he would eventually become a mere subordinate. The role of such hangers-on has been largely neglected by students of human history. In many periods-from imperial Rome to medieval China-probably the most important relationships, at least in towns and cities, were those of patronage. Anyone rich and important would find himself surrounded by flunkies, sycophants, perpetual dinner guests, and other sorts of willing dependents. Drama and poetry of the time are full of such characters.55 Similarly, for much of human history, being respectable and middle-class meant spending one's mornings going from door to door, paying one's respects to important local patrons. To this day, informal patronage systems still crop up, whenever relatively rich and powerful people feel the need to assemble networks of supporters-a practice well documented in many parts of the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Latin America. Such relationships seem to consist of a slapdash mix of all three principles that I've been mapping out over the course of this chapter; nevertheless, those observing them insist on trying to cast them in the language of exchange and debt.<br /> <br /> A final example: in a collection called Gifts and Spoils, published in r97r, we find a brief essay by the anthropologist Lorraine Blaxter about a rural department in the French Pyrenees, most of whose inhabitants are farmers. Everyone places a great emphasis on the importance of mutual aid-the local phrase means &quot;giving service&quot; (rendre service). People living in the same community should look out for one another and pitch in when their neighbors are having trouble. This is the essence of communal morality, in fact, it's how one knows that any sort of community exists. So far so good. However, she notes, when someone does a particularly great favor, mutual aid can turn into something else:<br /> <br /> If a man in a factory went to the boss and asked for a job, and the boss found him one, this would be an example of someone giving service. The man who got the job could never repay the boss, but he could show him respect, or perhaps give him symbolic gifts of garden produce. If a gift demands a return, and no tangible return is possible, the repayment will be through support or esteem.56<br /> <br /> Thus does mutual aid slip into inequality. Thus do patron-client relations come into being. We have already observed this. I chose this particular passage because the author's phrasing is so weird. It completely contradicts itself. The boss does the man a favor. The man cannot repay the favor. Therefore, the man repays the favor by showing up at the boss's house with the occasional basket of tomatoes and showing him respect. So which one is it? Can he repay the favor, or not?<br /> <br /> Peter Freuchen's walrus hunter would, no doubt, think he knew exactly what was going on here. Bringing the basket of tomatoes was simply the equivalent of saying &quot;Thank you.&quot; It was a way of acknowledging that one owes a debt of gratitude, that gifts had in fact made slaves just as whips make dogs. The boss and the employee are now fundamentally different sorts of people. The problem is that in all other respects, they are not fundamentally different sorts of people. Most likely they are both middle-aged Frenchmen, fathers of families, citizens of the Republic with similar tastes in music, sports, and food. They ought to be equals. As a result, even the tomatoes, which are really a token of recognition of the existence of a debt that can never be repaid, has to be represented as if it was itself a kind of repayment-an interest payment on a loan that could, everyone agrees to pretend, someday be paid back, thus returning the two members to their proper equal status once again.57<br /> <br /> (It's telling that the favor is finding the client a job in a factory, because what happens is not very different from what happens when you get a job in a factory to begin with. A wage-labor contract is, ostensibly, a free contract between equals-but an agreement between equals in which both agree that once one of them punches the time clock, they won't be equals any more.58 The law does recognize a bit of a problem here; that's why it insists that you cannot sell off your equality permanently [you are not free to sell yourself into slavery]. Such arrangements are only acceptable if the boss's power is not absolute, if it is limited to work time, and if you have the legal right to break off the contract and thereby to restore yourself to full equality, at any time.)<br /> <br /> It seems to me that this agreement between equals to no longer be equal (at least for a time) is critically important. It is the very essence of what we call &quot;debt.&quot;<br /> <br /> <br /> What, then, is debt?<br /> <br /> Debt is a very specific thing, and it arises from very specific situations. It first requires a relationship between two people who do not consider each other fundamentally different sorts of being, who are at least potential equals, who '''are''' equals in those ways that are really important, and who are not currently in a state -of equality—but for whom there is some way to set matters straight.<br /> <br /> In the case of gift-giving, as we've seen, this requires a certain equality of status. That's why our economics professor didn't feel any sense of obligation—any debt of honor—if taken out to dinner by someone who ranked either much higher or much lower than himself. With money loans, all that is required is that the two parties be of equal legal standing. (You can't lend money to a child, or to a lunatic. Well, you can, but the courts won't help you get it back.) Legal-rather than moral-debts have other unique qualities. For instance, they can be forgiven, which isn't always possible with a moral debt.<br /> <br /> This means that there is no such thing as a genuinely unpayable debt. If there was no conceivable way to salvage the situation, we<br /> <br /> wouldn't be calling it a &quot;debt.&quot; Even the French villager could, conceivably, save his patron's life, or win the lottery and buy the factory. Even when we speak of a criminal &quot;paying his debt to society,&quot; we are saying that he has done something so terrible that he has now been banished from that equal status under the law that belongs by natural right to any citizen of his country; however, we call it a &quot;debt&quot; because it can be paid, equality can be restored, even if the cost may be death by lethal injection.<br /> <br /> During the time that the debt remains unpaid, the logic of hierarchy takes hold. There is no reciprocity. As anyone who has ever been in jail knows, the first thing the jailors communicate is that nothing that happens in jail has anything to do with justice. Similarly, debtor and creditor confront each other like a peasant before a feudal lord. The law of precedent takes hold. If you bring your creditor tomatoes from the garden, it never occurs to you that he would give something back. He might expect you to do it again, though. But always there is the assumption that the situation is somewhat unnatural, because the debt really ought to be paid.<br /> <br /> This is what makes situations of effectively unpayable debt so difficult and so painful. Since creditor and debtor are ultimately equals, if the debtor cannot do what it takes to restore herself to equality, there is obviously something wrong with her; it must be her fault.<br /> <br /> This connection becomes clear if we look at the etymology of common words for &quot;debt&quot; in European languages. Many are synonyms for &quot;fault,&quot; &quot;sin,&quot; or &quot;guilt;&quot; just as a criminal owes a debt to society, a debtor is always a sort of criminal.59 In ancient Crete, according to Plutarch, it was the custom for those taking loans to pretend to snatch the money from the lender's purse. Why, he wondered? Probably &quot;so that, if they default, they could be charged with violence and punished all the more. &quot;60 This is why in so many periods of history insolvent debtors could be jailed, or even-as in early Republican Rome-executed.<br /> <br /> A debt, then, is just an exchange that has not been brought to completion.<br /> <br /> It follows that debt is strictly a creature of reciprocity and has little to do with other sorts of morality (communism, with its needs and abilities; hierarchy, with its customs and qualities). True, if we were really determined, we could argue (as some do) that communism is a condition of permanent mutual indebtedness, or that hierarchy is constructed out of unpayable debts. But isn't this just the same old story, starting from the assumption that all human interactions must be, by definition, forms of exchange, and then performing whatever mental somersaults are required to prove it?<br /> <br /> No. All human interactions are not forms of exchange. Only some are. Exchange encourages a particular way of conceiving human relations. This is because exchange implies equality, but it also implies separation. It's precisely when the money changes hands, when the debt is cancelled, that equality is restored and both parties can walk away and have nothing further to do with each other.<br /> <br /> Debt is what happens in between: when the two parties cannot yet walk away from each other, because they are not yet equal. But it is carried out in the shadow of eventual equality. Because achieving that equality, however, destroys the very reason for having a relationship, just about everything interesting happens in between.61 In fact, just about everything human happens in between-even if this means that all such human relations bear with them at least a tiny element of criminality, guilt, or shame.<br /> <br /> For the Tiv women whom I mentioned earlier in the chapter, this wasn't much of a problem. By ensuring that everyone was always slightly in debt to one another, they actually created human society, if a very fragile sort of society-a delicate web made up of obligations to return three eggs or a bag of okra, ties renewed and recreated, as any one of them could be cancelled out at any time.<br /> <br /> Our own habits of civility are not so very different. Consider the custom, in American society, of constantly saying &quot;please&quot; and &quot;thank you.&quot; To do so is often treated as basic morality: we are constantly chiding children for forgetting to do it, just as the moral guardians of our society-teachers and ministers, for instance-do to everybody else. We often assume that the habit is universal, but as the Inuit hunter made clear, it is not.62 Like so many of our everyday courtesies, it is a kind of democratization of what was once a habit of feudal deference: the insistence on treating absolutely everyone the way that one used only to have to treat a lord or similar hierarchical superior.<br /> <br /> Perhaps this is not so in every case. Imagine we are on a crowded bus, looking for a seat. A fellow passenger moves her bag aside to clear one; we smile, or nod, or make some other little gesture of acknowledgment. Or perhaps we actually say &quot;Thank you.&quot; Such a gesture is simply a recognition of common humanity: we are acknowledging that the woman who had been blocking the seat is not a mere physical obstacle but a human being, and that we feel genuine gratitude toward someone we will likely never see again. None of this is generally true when one asks someone across the table to &quot;please pass the salt,&quot; or when the postman thanks you for signing for a delivery. We think of these simultaneously as meaningless formalities and as the very moral basis of society. Their apparent unimportance can be measured by the fact that almost no one would refuse, on principle, to say &quot;please&quot; or &quot;thank you&quot; in just about any situation-even those who might find it almost impossible to say &quot;I'm sorry&quot; or &quot;I apologize.&quot;<br /> <br /> In fact, the English &quot;please&quot; is short for &quot;if you please,&quot; &quot;if it pleases you to do this&quot;-it is the same in most European languages (French si il vous plait, Spanish por favor). Its literal meaning is &quot;you are under no obligation to do this.&quot; &quot;Hand me the salt. Not that I am saying that you have to!&quot; This is not true; there is a social obligation, and it would be almost impossible not to comply. But etiquette largely consists of the exchange of polite fictions (to use less polite language, lies). When you ask someone to pass the salt, you are also giving them an order; by attaching the word &quot;please,&quot; you are saying that it is not an order. But, in fact, it is.<br /> <br /> In English, &quot;thank you&quot; derives from &quot;think,&quot; it originally meant, &quot;I will remember what you did for me&lt;nowiki&gt;''&lt;/nowiki&gt;-which is usually not true either-but in other languages (the Portuguese obrigado is a good example) the standard term follows the form of the English &quot;much obliged&quot;-it actually does means &quot;I am in your debt.&quot; The French merci is even more graphic: it derives from &quot;mercy,&quot; as in begging for mercy; by saying it you are symbolically placing yourself in your benefactor's power-since a debtor is, after all, a criminalY Saying &quot;you're welcome,&quot; or &quot;it's nothing&quot; (French de rien, Spanish de nada)-the latter has at least the advantage of often being literally true--is a way of reassuring the one to whom one has passed the salt that you are not actually inscribing a debit in your imaginary moral account book. So is saying &quot;my pleasure&quot;-you are saying, &quot;No, actually, it's a credit, not a debit-you did me a favor because in asking me to pass the salt, you gave me the opportunity to do something I found rewarding in itself!&quot;64<br /> <br /> Decoding the tacit calculus of debt (&quot;I owe you one,&quot; &quot;No, you don't owe me anything,&quot; &quot;Actually, if anything, it's me who owes you,&quot; as if inscribing and then scratching off so many infinitesimal entries in an endless ledger) makes it easy to understand why this sort of thing is often viewed not as the quintessence of morality, but as the quintessence of middle-class morality. True, by now middle-class sensibilities dominate society. But there are still those who find the practice odd. Those at the very top of society often still feel that deference is owed primarily to hierarchical superiors and find it slightly idiotic to watch postmen and pastry cooks taking turns pretending to treat each other like little feudal lords. At the other extreme, those who grew up in what in Europe are called &quot;popular&quot; environments-small towns, poor neighborhoods, anyplace where there is still an assumption that people who are not enemies will, ordinarily, take care of one another-will often find it insulting to be constantly told, in effect, that there is some chance they might not do their job as a waiter or taxi driver correctly, or provide houseguests with tea. In other words, middle-class etiquette insists that we are all equals, but it does so in a very particular way. On the one hand, it pretends that nobody is giving anybody orders (think here of the burly security guard at the mall who appears before someone walking into a restricted area and says, &quot;Can I help you?&quot;); on the other, it treats every gesture of what I've been calling &quot;baseline communism&quot; as if it were really a form of exchange. As a result, like Tiv neighborhoods, middle-class society has to be endless!y recreated, as a kind of constant flickering game of shadows, the criss-crossing of an infinity of momentary debt relations, each one almost instantly cancelled out.<br /> <br /> All of this is a relatively recent innovation. The habit of always saying &quot;please&quot; and &quot;thank you&quot; first began to take hold during the commercial revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries-among those very middle classes who were largely responsible for it. It is the language of bureaus, shops, and offices, and over the course of the last five hundred years it has spread across the world along with them. It is also merely one token of a much larger philosophy, a set of assumptions of what humans are and what they owe one another, that have by now become so deeply ingrained that we cannot see them.<br /> <br /> <br /> Sometimes, at the brink of a new historical era, some prescient soul can see the full implications of what is beginning to happen-sometimes in a way that later generations can't. Let me end with a text by such a person. In Paris, sometime in 1540s, Franc;:ois Rabelais-lapsed monk, doctor, legal scholar-composed what was to become a famous mock eulogy, which he inserted in the third book of his great Gargantua and Pantagruel, and which came to be known as &quot;In Praise of Debt.&quot;<br /> <br /> Rabelais places the encomium in the mouth of one Panurge, a wandering scholar and man of extreme classical erudition who, he observes, &quot;knew sixty-three ways of making money-the most honorable and most routine of which was stealing. &quot;65 The good-natured giant Pantagruel adopts Panurge and even provides him with a respectable income, but it bothers him that Panurge continues to spend money like water and remains up to his ears in debt. Wouldn't it be better, Pantagruel suggests, to be able to pay his creditors?<br /> <br /> Panurge responds with horror: &quot;God forbid that I should ever be out of debt!&quot; Debt is, in fact, the very basis of his philosophy:<br /> <br /> Always owe somebody something, then he will be forever praying God to grant you a good, long and blessed life. Fearing to lose what you owe him, he will always be saying good things about you in every sort of company; he will be constantly acquiring new lenders for you, so that you can borrow to pay him back, filling his ditch with other men's spoil.66<br /> <br /> Above all else, they will always be praying that you come into money. It's like those ancient slaves destined to be sacrificed at their masters' funerals. When they wished their master long life and good health, they genuinely meant it! What's more, debt can make you into a kind of god, who can make something (money, well-wishing creditors) out of absolutely nothing.<br /> <br /> Worse still: I give myself to bonnie Saint Bobelin if all my life I have not reckoned debts to be, as it were, a connection and colligation between Heaven and Earth (uniquely preserving the lineage of Man without which, I say, all human beings would soon perish) and perhaps to be that great World Soul which, according to the Academics, gives life to all things.<br /> <br /> That it really is so, evoke tranquilly in your mind the Idea and Form of a world-take if you like the thirtieth of the worlds imagined by Metrodorus-in which there were no debtors or lenders at all. A universe sans debts! Amongst the heavenly bodies there would be no regular course whatsoever: all would be in disarray. Jupiter, reckoning that he owed no debt to Saturn, would dispossess him of his sphere, and with his Homeric chain hold in suspension all the Intelligences, gods, heavens, daemons, geniuses, heroes, devils, earth, sea and all the elements ...The Moon would remain dark and bloody; why should the Sun share his light with her? He is under no obligation. The Sun would never shine on their Earth; the heavenly bodies would pour no good influences down upon it.<br /> <br /> Between the elements there will be no mutual sharing of qualities, no alternation, no transmutation whatsoever, one will not think itself obliged to the other; it has lent it nothing. From earth no longer will water be made, nor water transmuted into air; from air fire will not be made, and fire will not warm the earth. Earth will bring forth nothing but monsters, Titans, giants. The rain will not rain, the light will shed no light, the wind will not blow, and there will be no summer, no autumn, Lucifer will tear off his bonds and, sallying forth from deepest Hell with the Furies, the Vengeances and the horned devils, will seek to turf the gods of both the greater and lesser nations out from their nests in the heavens.<br /> <br /> And what's more, if human beings owed nothing to one another, life would &quot;be no better than a dog-fight&quot;-a mere unruly brawl.<br /> <br /> Amongst human beings none will save another; it will be no good a man shouting Help! Fire! I'm drowning! Murder! Nobody will come and help him. Why? Because he has lent nothing: and no one owes him anything. No one has anything to lose by his fire, his shipwreck, his fall, or his death. He has lent nothing. And: he would lend nothing either hereafter.<br /> <br /> In short, Faith, Hope and Charity would be banished from this world.<br /> <br /> Panurge-a man without a family, alone, whose entire calling in life was getting large amounts of money and then spending it-serves as a fitting prophet for the world that was just beginning to emerge. His perspective of course is that of a wealthy debtor-not one liable to be trundled off to some pestiferous dungeon for failure to pay. Still, what he is describing is the logical conclusion, the reductio ad absur-dum, which Rabelais as always lays out with cheerful perversity, of the assumptions about the world as exchange slumbering behind all our pleasant bourgeois formalities (which Rabelais himself, incidentally, detested-the book is basically a mixture of classical erudition and dirty jokes).<br /> <br /> And what he says is true. If we insist on defining all human interactions as matters of people giving one thing for another, then any ongoing human relations can only take the form of debts. Without them, no one would owe anything to anybody. A world without debt would revert to primordial chaos, a war of all against all; no one would feel the slightest responsibility for one another; the simple fact of being human would have no significance; we would all become isolated planets who couldn't even be counted on to maintain our proper orbits.<br /> <br /> Pantagruel will have none of it. His own feelings on the matter, he says, can be summed up with one line from the Apostle Paul: &quot;Owe no man anything, save mutual love and affection.&quot;67 Then, in an appropriately biblical gesture, he declares, &quot;From your past debts I shall free you.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;What can I do but thank you?&quot; Panurge replies.<br /> <br /> == Chapter six: Games with sex and death ==<br /> '''WHEN WE RETURN''' to an examination of conventional economic history, one thing that jumps out is how much has been made to disappear. Reducing all human life to exchange means not only shunting aside all other forms of economic experience (hierarchy, communism), but also ensuring that the vast majority of the human race who are not adult males, and therefore whose day-to-day existence is relatively difficult to reduce to a matter of swapping things in such a way as to seek mutual advantage, melt away into the background.<br /> <br /> As a result, we end up with a sanitized view of the way actual business is conducted. The tidy world of shops and malls is the quintessential middle-class environment, but at either the top or the bottom of the system, the world of financiers or of gangsters, deals are often made in ways not so completely different from ways that the Gunwinggu or Nambikwara make them-at least in that sex, drugs, music, extravagant displays of food, and the potential for violence do often play parts.<br /> <br /> Consider the case of Neil Bush (George W.'s brother) who, during divorce proceedings with his wife, admitted to multiple infidelities with women who, he claimed, would mysteriously appear at his hotel-room door after important business meetings in Thailand and Hong Kong.<br /> <br /> &quot;You have to admit it's pretty remarkable,&quot; remarked one of his wife's attorneys, &quot;for a man to go to a hotel-room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;It was very unusual,&quot; Bush replied, admitting however that this had happened to him on numerous occasions.<br /> <br /> &quot;Were they prostitutes?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;I don't know. &quot;'<br /> <br /> In fact, such things seem almost par for the course when really big money comes into play.<br /> <br /> In this light, the economists' insistence that economic life begins with barter, the innocent exchange of arrows for teepee frames, with no one in a position to rape, humiliate, or torture anyone else, and that it continues in this way, is touchingly utopian.<br /> <br /> As a result, though, the histories we tell are full of blank spaces, and the women in them seem to appear out of nowhere, without explanation, much like the Thai women who appeared at Bush's door. Recall the passage cited in Chapter Three, from numismatist Philip Grierson, about money in the barbarian law codes:<br /> <br /> Compensation in the Welsh laws is reckoned primarily in cattle and in the Irish ones in cattle or bondmaids (cumal), with considerable use of precious metals in both. In the Germanic codes it is mainly in precious metal . ..2<br /> <br /> How is it possible to read this passage without immediately stopping at the end of the first line? &quot;Bondmaids&quot;? Doesn't that mean &quot;slaves?&quot; (It does.) In ancient Ireland, female slaves were so plentiful and important that they came to function as currency. How did that happen? And if we are trying to understand the origins of money, here, isn't the fact that people are using one another as currency at all interesting or significant?3 Yet none of the sources on money remark much on it. It would seem that by the time of the law codes, slave girls were not actually traded, but just used as units of account. Still, they must have been traded at some point. Who were they? How were they enslaved? Were they captured in war, sold by their parents, or reduced to slavery through debt? Were they a major trade item? The answer to all these questions would seem to be yes, but it's hard to say more because the history remains largely unwritten.4<br /> <br /> Or let's return to the parable of the ungrateful servant. &quot;Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.&quot; How did that happen? Note that we're not even speaking of debt service here (he is already his creditor's servant), but outright slavery. How did a man's wife and children come to be considered no different than his sheep and crockery-as property to be liquidated on the occasion of default? Was it normal for a man in first-century Palestine to be able to sell his wife? (It wasn'tY If he didn't own her, why was someone else allowed to sell her if he couldn't pay his debts?<br /> <br /> The same could be asked of the story in Nehemiah. It's hard not to empathize with the distress of a father watching his daughter taken off by strangers. On the other hand, one might also ask: Why weren't they taking him? The daughter hadn't borrowed any money.<br /> <br /> It's not as if it is ordinary for fathers in traditional societies to be able to sell their children. This is a practice with a very specific history: it appears in the great agrarian civilizations, from Sumer to Rome to China, right around the time when we also start to see evidence of money, markets, and interest-bearing loans; later, more gradually, it also appears in those surrounding hinterlands that supplied those civilizations with slaves.6 What's more, if we examine the historical evidence, there seems good reason to believe that the very obsession with patriarchal honor that so defines &quot;tradition&quot; in the Middle East and Mediterranean world itself arose alongside the father's power to alienate his children-as a reaction to what were seen as the moral perils of the market. All of this is treated as somehow outside the bounds of economic history..<br /> <br /> Excluding all this is deceptive not only because it excludes the main purposes to which money was actually put in the past, but because it doesn't give us a clear vision of the present. After all, who were those Thai women who so mysteriously appeared at Neil Bush's hotel door? Almost certainly, they were children of indebted parents. Likely as not, they were contractual debt peons themselves.'<br /> <br /> Focusing on the sex industry would be deceptive, though. Then as now, most women in debt bondage spend the vast majority of their time sewing, preparing soups, and scouring latrines. Even in the Bible, the admonition in the Ten Commandments not to &quot;covet thy neighbor's wife&quot; clearly referred not to lust in one's heart (adultery had already been covered in commandment number seven), but to the prospect of taking her as a debt-peon-in other words, as a servant to sweep one's yard and hang out the laundry.x In most such matters, sexual exploitation was at best incidental (usually illegal, sometimes practiced anyway, symbolically important.) Again, once we remove some of our usual blinders, we can see that matters have changed far less, over the course of the last five thousand years or so, than we really like to think.<br /> <br /> <br /> These blinders are all the more ironic when one looks at the anthropological literature on what used to be called &quot;primitive money&quot;-that is, the sort one encounters in places where there are no states or markets-whether Iroquois wampum, African cloth money, or Solomon Island feather money, and discovers that such money is used almost exclusively for the kinds of transactions that economists don't like to have to talk about.<br /> <br /> In fact, the term &quot;primitive money&quot; is deceptive for this very reason, since it suggests that we are dealing with a crude version of the kind of currencies we use today. But this is precisely what we don't find. Often, such currencies are never used to buy and sell anything at all.9 Instead, they are used to create, maintain, and otherwise reorganize relations between people: to arrange marriages, establish the paternity of children, head off feuds, console mourners at funerals, seek forgiveness in the case of crimes, negotiate treaties, acquire followers-almost anything but trade in yams, shovels, pigs, or jewelry.<br /> <br /> Often, these currencies were extremely important, so much so that social life itself might be said to revolve around getting and disposing of the stuff. Clearly, though, they mark a totally different conception of what money, or indeed an economy, is actually about. I've decided therefore to refer to them as &quot;social currencies,&quot; and the economies that employ them as &quot;human economies.&quot; By this I mean not that these societies are necessarily in any way more humane (some are quite humane; others extraordinarily brutal), but only that they are economic systems primarily concerned not with the accumulation of wealth, but with the creation, destruction, and rearranging of human beings.<br /> <br /> Historically, commercial economies-market economies, as we now like to call them-are a relative newcomer. For most of human history, human economies predominated. To even begin to write a genuine history of debt, then, we have to start by asking: What sort of debts, what sort of credits and debits, do people accumulate in human economies? And what happens when human economies begin to give away to or are taken over by commercial ones? This is another way of asking the question, &quot;How do mere obligations turn into debts?&quot;-but it means not just asking the question in the abstract, but examining the historical record to try to reconstruct what actually did happen.<br /> <br /> This is what I will do over the course of the next two chapters. First I will look at the role of money in human economies, then describe what can happen when human economies are suddenly incorporated into the economic orbits of larger, commercial ones. The African slave trade will serve as a particularly catastrophic case in point. Then, in the next chapter, I will return to the first emergence of commercial economies in early civilizations of Europe and the Middle East.<br /> <br /> === Money as Inadequate Substitute ===<br /> The most interesting theory of the origin of money is the one recently put forward by a French economist-turned-anthropologist named Philippe Rospabe. While his work is largely unknown in the Englishspeaking world, it's quite ingenious, and it bears directly on our problem. Rospabe's argument is that &quot;primitive money&quot; was not originally a way to pay debts of any sort. It's a way of recognizing the existence of debts that cannot possibly be paid. His argument is worth considering in detail.<br /> <br /> In most human economies, money is used first and foremost to arrange marriages. The simplest and probably most common way of doing this was by being presented as what used to be called &quot;brideprice&quot;: a suitor's family would deliver a certain number of dog teeth, or cowries, or brass rings, or whatever is the local social currency, to a woman's family, and they would present their daughter as his bride. It's easy to see why this might be interpreted as buying a women, and many colonial officials in Africa and Oceania in the early part of the twentieth century did indeed come to that conclusion. The practice caused something of a scandal, and by 1926, the League of Nations was debating banning the practice as a form of slavery. Anthropologists objected. Really, they explained, this was nothing like the purchase of, say, an ox-let alone a pair of sandals. After all, if you buy an ox, you don't have any responsibilities to the ox. What you are really buying is the right to dispose of the ox in any way that pleases you. Marriage is entirely different, since a husband will normally have just as many responsibilities toward his wife as his wife will have toward him. It's a way of rearranging relations between people. Second of all, if you were really buying a wife, you'd be able to sell her. Finally, the real significance of the payment concerns the status of the woman's children: if he's buying anything, it's the right to call her offspring his own.10<br /> <br /> The anthropologists ended up winning the argument, and &quot;brideprice&quot; was dutifully redubbed &quot;bridewealth. &quot; But they never really answered the question: What is actually happening here? When a Fijian suitor's family presents a whale tooth to ask for a woman's hand in marriage, is this an advance payment for the services the woman will provide in cultivating her future husband's gardens? Or is he purchasing the future fertility of her womb? Or is this a pure formality, the equivalent of the dollar that has to change hands in order to seal a contract? According to Rospabe, it's none of these. The whale tooth, however valuable, is not a form of payment. It is really an acknowledgment that one is asking for something so uniquely valuable that'payment of any sort would be impossible. The only appropriate payment for the gift of a woman is the gift of another woman; in the meantime, all one can do is to acknowledge the outstanding debt.<br /> <br /> <br /> There are places where suitors say this quite explicitly. Consider the Tiv of Central Nigeria, who we have already met briefly in the last chapter. Most of our information on the Tiv comes from mid-century, when they were still under British colonial rule.11 Everyone at that time insisted that a proper marriage should take the form of an exchange of sisters. One man gives his sister in marriage to another, that man marries the sister of his newfound brother-in-law. This is the perfect marriage because the only thing one can really give in exchange for a woman is another woman,.<br /> <br /> Obviously, even if every family had exactly equal numbers of brothers and sisters, things couldn't always work this neatly. Say I marry your sister but you don't want to marry mine (because, say, you don't like her, or because she's only five years old). In that case, you become her &quot;guardian,&quot; which means you can claim the right to dispose of her in marriage to someone else--for instance, someone whose sister you actually do wish to marry. This system quickly grew into a complex system in which most important men became guardians of numerous &quot;wards,&quot; often scattered over wide areas; they would swap and trade them and in the process accumulate numerous wives for themselves, while less-fortunate men were only able to marry late in life, or not at all.12<br /> <br /> There was one other expedient. The Tiv at that time used bundles of brass rods as their most prestigious form of currency. Brass rods were only held by men, and never used to buy things in markets (markets were dominated by women); instead, they were exchanged only for things that men considered of higher importance: cattle, horses, ivory, ritual titles, medical treatment, magical charms. It was possible, as one Tiv ethnographer, Akiga Sai, explains, to acquire a wife with brass rods, but it required quite a lot of them. You would need to give two or three bundles of them to her parents to establish yourself as a suitor; then, when you did finally make off with her (such marriages were always first framed as elopements), another few bundles to assuage her mother when she showed up angrily demanding to know what was going on. This would normally be followed by five more to get her guardian to at least temporarily accept the situation, and more still to her parents when she gave birth, if you were to have any chance of their accepting your claims to be the father of her children. That might get her parents off your back, but you'd have to pay off the guardian forever, because you could never really use money to acquire the rights to a woman. Everyone knew that the only thing you can legitimately give in exchange for a woman is another woman. In this case, everyone has to abide by the pretext that a woman will someday be forthcoming. In the meantime, as one ethnographer succinctly puts it, &quot;the debt can never be fully paid. &quot;13<br /> <br /> According to Rospabe, the Tiv are just making explicit the underlying logic of bridewealth everywhere. The suitor presenting bridewealth is never paying for a woman, or even for the rights to claim her children. That would imply that brass rods, or whale's teeth, cowrie shells, or even cattle are somehow the equivalent of a human being, which by the logic of a human economy is obviously absurd. Only a human could ever be considered equivalent to another human. All the more so since, in the case of marriage, we are speaking of something even more valuable than one human life: we are speaking of a human life that also has the capacity to generate new lives.<br /> <br /> Certainly, many of those who pay bridewealth are, like the Tiv, quite explicit about all this. Bridewealth money is presented not to settle a debt, but as a kind of acknowledgment that there exists a debt that cannot be settled by means of money. Often the two sides will maintain at least the polite fiction that there will, someday, be a recompense in kind: that the suitor's clan will eventually provide one of its own women, perhaps even that very woman's daughter or granddaughter, to marry a man of the wife's natal clan. Or maybe there will be some arrangement about the disposition of her children; perhaps her clan will get to keep one for itself. The possibilities are endless.<br /> <br /> <br /> Money, then, begins, as Rospabe himself puts it, &quot;as a substitute for life.'* One might call it the recognition of a life-debt. This, in turn, explains why it's invariably the exact same kind of money that's used to arrange marriages that is also used to pay wergeld (or &quot;bloodwealth&quot; as it's sometimes also called): money presented to the family of a murder victim so as to prevent or resolve a blood-feud. Here the sources are even more explicit. On the one hand, one presents whale teeth or brass rods because the murderer's kin recognize they owe a life to the victim's family. On the other, whale teeth or brass rods are in no sense, and can never be, compensation for the loss of a murdered relative.<br /> <br /> Certainly no one presenting such compensation would ever be foolish enough to suggest that any amount of money could possibly be the &quot;equivalent&quot; to the value of someone's father, sister, or child.<br /> <br /> So here again, money is first and foremost an acknowledgment that one owes something much more valuable than money.<br /> <br /> In the case of a blood-feud, both parties will also be aware that even a revenge killing, while at least it conforms to the principle of a life for a life, won't really compensate for the victim's grief and pain either. This knowledge allows for some possibility of settling the matter without violence. But even here, there is often a feeling that, as in the case of marriage, the real solution to the problem is simply being temporarily postponed.<br /> <br /> An illustration might be helpful. Among the Nuer, there is a special class of priestly figures who specialize in mediating feuds, referred to in the literature as &quot;leopard-skin chiefs.&quot; If one man murders another, he will immediately seek out one of their homesteads, since such a homestead is treated as an inviolate sanctuary: even the dead man's family, who will be honor-bound to avenge the murder, will know that they cannot enter it, lest terrible consequences ensue. According to EvansPritchard's classic account, the chief will immediately start trying to negotiate a settlement between the murderer and victim's families, a delicate business, because the victim's family will always first refuse:<br /> <br /> The chief first finds out what cattle the slayer's people possess and what they are prepared to pay in compensation.... He<br /> <br /> then visits the dead man's people and asks them to accept cattle for the life. They usually refuse, for it is a point of honor to be obstinate, but their refusal does not mean that they are unwilling to accept compensation. The chief knows this and insists on their acceptance, even threatening to curse them if they do not give way ...15<br /> <br /> More-distant kin weigh in, reminding everyone of their responsibility to the larger community, of all the trouble that an outstanding feud will cause to innocent relatives, and after a great show of holding out, insisting that it is insulting to suggest that any number of cattle could possibly substitute for the life of a son or brother, they will usually grudgingly accept.16 In fact, even once the matter has technically been settled, it really hasn't-it usually takes years to assemble the cattle, and even once they have been paid, the two sides will avoid each other, &quot;especially at dances, for in the excitement they engender, merely bumping into a man whose kinsman has been slain may cause a fight to break out, because the&lt;sup&gt;'&lt;/sup&gt;offense is never forgiven and the score must finally be paid with a life.&quot;17<br /> <br /> So it's much the same as with bridewealth. Money does not wipe out the debt. One life can only be paid for with another. At best those paying bloodwealth, by admitting the existence of the debt and insisting that they wish they could pay it, even though they know this is impossible, can allow the matter to be placed permanently on hold.<br /> <br /> Halfway around the world, one finds Lewis Henry Morgan describing the elaborate mechanisms set up by the Six Nations of the Iroquois to avoid precisely this state of affairs. In the event one man killed another,<br /> <br /> Immediately on the commission of a murder, the affair was taken up by the tribes to which the parties belonged, and strenuous efforts were made to effect a reconciliation, lest private retaliation should lead to disastrous consequences.<br /> <br /> The first council ascertained whether the offender was willing to confess his crime, and to make atonement. If he was, the council immediately sent a belt of white wampum, in his name, to the other council, which contained a message to that effect. The latter then endeavored to pacify the family of the deceased, to quiet their excitement, and to induce them to accept the wampum as condonation.18<br /> <br /> Much as in the case of the Nuer, there were complicated schedules of exactly how many fathoms of wampum were paid over, depending on the status of the victim and the nature of the crime. As with the Nuer, too, everyone insisted that this was not payment. The value of the wampum in no sense represented the value of the dead man's life:<br /> <br /> The present of white wampum was not in the nature of a compensation for the life of the deceased, but of a regretful confession of the crime, with a petition for forgiveness. It was a peace-offering, the acceptance of which was pressed by mutual friends ...19<br /> <br /> Actually, in many cases there was also some way to manipulate the system to turn payments meant to assuage one's rage and grief into ways of creating a new life that would in some sense substitute for the one that was lost. Among the Nuer, forty cattle were set as the standard fee for bloodwealth. But it was also the standard rate of bridewealth. The logic was this: if a man had been murdered before he was able to marry and produce offspring, it's only natural that his spirit would be angry. He had been, effectively, robbed of his eternity. The best solution would be to use the cattle paid in settlement to acquire what was called a &quot;ghost-wife&quot;: a woman who would then be formally married to the dead man. In practice, she was usually paired off with one of the victim's brothers, but this was not particularly important; it didn't really matter too much who impregnated her, since he would be in no sense the father of her' children. Her children would be considered the children of the victim's ghost-and as a result, any boys among them were seen as having been born with a particular commitment to someday avenge his death.20<br /> <br /> This latter is unusual. But Nuer appear to have been unusually stubborn about feuds. Rospabe provides examples from other parts of the world that are even more telling. Among North African Bedouins, for instance, it sometimes happened that the only way to settle a feud was for the killer's family to turn over a daughter, who would then marry the victim's next of kin-his brother, say. If she bore him a male child, the boy was given the same name as his dead uncle and considered to be, at least in the broadest sense, a substitute for him.21 The Iroquois, who traced descent in the female line, did not trade women in this fashion. However, they had another, more direct approach. If a man died-even of natural causes-his wife's relatives might &quot;put his name upon the mat, &quot; sending off belts of wampum to commission a war party, which would then raid an enemy village to secure a captive. The captive could either be killed, or, if the clan matrons were in a benevolent mood (one could never tell; the grief of mourning is tricky), adopted: this was signified by throwing a belt of wampum around his shoulders, whereon he would be given the name of the deceased and be considered, from that moment on, married to the victim's wife, the owner of his personal possessions, and in every way, effectively, the exact same person as the dead man used to be.22<br /> <br /> All of this merely serves to underline Rospabe's basic point, which is that money can be seen, in human economies, as first and foremost the acknowledgment of the existence of a debt that cannot be paid.<br /> <br /> In a way, it's all very reminiscent of primordial-debt theory: money emerges from the recognition of an absolute debt to that which has given you life. The difference is that instead of imagining such debts as between an individual and society, or perhaps the cosmos, here they are imagined as a kind of network of dyadic relations: almost everyone in such societies was in a relation of absolute debt to someone else. It's not that we owe &quot;society. &quot; If there is any notion of &quot;society&quot; here--and it's not clear that there is-society is our debts.<br /> <br /> === Blood Debts (lele) ===<br /> Obviously, this leads us to the same familiar problem: How does a token of recognition that one cannot pay a debt turn into a form of payment by which a debt can be extinguished? If anything, the problem seems even worse than it was before.<br /> <br /> In fact, it isn't. The African evidence clearly shows how such things can happen-though the answer is a bit unsettling. To demonstrate this, it will be necessary to look at one or two African societies with a closer focus.<br /> <br /> I'll start with the Lele, an African people who had, at the time that Mary Douglas studied them in the r9sos, managed to turn the principle of blood debts into the organizing principle of their entire society.<br /> <br /> The Lele were, at that time, a group of perhaps ten thousand souls, living on a stretch of rolling country near the Kasai River in the Belgian Congo, and considered a rude backcountry folk by their richer and more cosmopolitan neighbors, the Kuba and Bushong. Lele women grew maize and manioc; the men thought of themselves as intrepid hunters but spent most of their time weaving and sewing raffia-palm cloth. This cloth was what the area was really known for. It was not only used for every sort of clothing, but also exported: the Lele considered themselves the clothiers of the region, and it was traded with surrounding people to acquire luxuries. Internally, it functioned as a sort of currency. Still, it was not used in markets (there were no markets), and, as Mary Douglas discovered to her great inconvenience, within a village, one couldn't use it to acquire food, tools, tableware, or really much of anythingY It was the quintessential social currency.<br /> <br /> Informal gifts of raffia cloth smooth all social relations: husband to wife, son to mother, son to father. They resolve occasions of tension, as peace-offerings; they make parting gifts, or convey congratulations. There are also formal gifts of raffia which are neglected only at risk of rupture of the social ties involved. A man, on reaching adulthood, should give 20 cloths to his father. Otherwise he would be ashamed to ask his father's help for raising his marriage dues. A man should give 20 cloths to his wife on each delivery of a child ...24<br /> <br /> Cloth was also used for various fines and fees, and to pay curers. So for instance, if a man's wife reported a would-be seducer, it was customary to reward her with 20 cloths for her fidelity (it was not required, but not doing so was considered decidedly unwise); if an adulterer was caught, he was expected to pay 50 or roo cloths to the woman's husband; if the husband and lover disturbed the peace of the village by fighting before the matter was settled, each would have to pay two in compensation, and so forth.<br /> <br /> Gifts tended to flow upward. Young people were always giving little presents of cloth as marks of respect to fathers, mothers, uncles, and the like. These gifts were hierarchical in nature: that is, it never occurred to those receiving them that they should have to reciprocate in any way. As a result, elders, and especially elder men, usually had a few extra pieces lying around, and young men, who could never weave quite enough to meet their needs, would have to turn to them whenever time for some major payment rolled around: for instance, if they had to pay a major fine, or wished to hire a doctor to assist their wife in childbirth, or wanted to join a cult society. They were thus always slightly in debt, or at least slightly beholden, to their elders. But everyone also had a whole range of friends and relatives who they had helped out, and so could turn to for assistance.25<br /> <br /> Marriage was particularly expensive, since the arrangements usually required getting one's hands on several bars of camwood. If raffia cloth was the small change of social life, camwood-a rare imported wood used for the manufacture of cosmetics-was the high-denomination currency. A hundred raffia cloths were equivalent to three to five bars. Few individuals owned much in the way of camwood, usually just little bits to grind up for their own use. Most was kept in each village's collective treasury.<br /> <br /> This is not to say that camwood was used for anything like bridewealth-rather, it was used in marriage negotiations, in which all sorts of gifts were passed back and forth. In fact, there was no bridewealth. Men could not use money to acquire women; nor could they use it to claim any rights over children. The Lele were matrilineal. Children belonged not to their father's clan, but to their mother's.<br /> <br /> There was another way that men gained control over women, however.26 This was the system of blood debts.<br /> <br /> It is a common understanding among many traditional African peoples that human beings do not simply die without a reason. If someone dies, someone must have killed them. If a Lele woman died in childbirth, for example, this was assumed to be because she had committed adultery. The adulterer was thus responsible for the death. Sometimes she would confess on her deathbed, otherwise the facts of the matter would have to be established through divination. It was the same if a baby died. If someone became sick, or slipped and fell while climbing a tree, one would check to see if they had been involved in any quarrel that could be said to have caused the misfortune. If all else failed, one could employ magical means to identify the sorcerer. Once the village was satisfied that a culprit had been identified, that person owed a blood-debt: that is, he owed the victim's next of kin a human life. The culprit would thus have to transfer over a young woman from his family, his sister or her daughter, to be the victim's ward, or &quot;pawn. &quot;<br /> <br /> As with the Tiv, the system quickly became immensely complicated. Pawnship was inherited. If a woman was someone's pawn, so would her children be, and so would her daughters' children. This meant that most males were also considered someone else's man. Still, no one would accept a male pawn in payment of blood-debts: the whole point was to get hold of a young woman, who would then go on to produce additional pawn children. Douglas's Lele informants emphasized that any man would naturally want to have many of these as possible:<br /> <br /> Ask &quot;Why do you want to have more pawns?&quot; and they invariably say, &quot;The advantage of owning pawns is that if you .incur a blood-debt, you can settle it by paying one of your pawns, and your own sisters remain free. &quot; Ask, &quot;Why do you wish your own sisters to remain free?&quot; and they reply, &quot;Ah! then if I incur a blood-debt, I can settle it by giving one of them as a pawn ...&quot;<br /> <br /> Every man is always aware that at any time he is liable for a blood-debt. If any woman he has seduced confesses his name in the throes of child-birth, and subsequently dies, or if her child dies, or if anyone he has quarreled with dies of illness or accident, he may be held responsible ...Even if a woman runs away from her husband, and fighting breaks out on her account, the deaths will be laid at her door, and her brother or mother's brother will have to pay up. Since only women are accepted as blood-compensation, and since compensation is demanded for all deaths, of men as well as of women, it is obvious that there can never be enough to go around. Men fall into arrears in their pawnship obligations, and girls used to be pledged before their birth, even before their mothers were of marriageable ageY<br /> <br /> In other words, the whole thing turned into an endlessly complicated chess game-one reason, Douglas remarks, why the term &quot;pawn&quot; seems singularly apropos. Just about every adult Lele male was both someone else's pawn, and engaged in a constant game of securing, swapping, or redeeming pawns. Every major drama or tragedy of village life would ordinarily lead to a transfer of rights in women. Almost all of those women would eventually get swapped again.<br /> <br /> Several points need to be emphasized here. First of all, what were being traded were, quite specifically, human lives. Douglas calls them &quot;blood-debts,&quot; but &quot;life-debts&quot; would be more appropriate. Say, for instance, a man is drowning, and another man rescues him. Or say he's deathly ill but a doctor cures him. In either case, we would likely say one man &quot;owes his life&quot; to the other. So would the Lele, but they meant it literally. Save someone's life, they owe you a life, and a life owed had to be paid back. The usual recourse was for a man whose life was saved to turn over his sister as a pawn-or if not that, a different woman; a pawn he had acquired from someone else.<br /> <br /> The second point is that nothing could substitute for a human life. &quot;Compensation was based on the principle of equivalence, a life for a life, a person for a person. &quot; Since the value of a human life was absolute, no amount of raffia cloth, or camwood bars, or goats, or transistor radios, or anything else could possibly take its place.<br /> <br /> The third and most important point is that in practice, &quot;human life&quot; actually meant &quot;woman's life&quot;-or even more specifically, &quot;young woman's life.&quot; Ostensibly this was to maximize one's holdings: above all, one wished for a human being who could become pregnant and produce children, since those children would also be pawns. Still, even Mary Douglas, who was in no sense a feminist, was forced to admit that the whole arrangement did seem to operate as if it were one gigantic apparatus for asserting male control over women. This was true above all because women themselves could not own pawns.28 They could only be pawns. In other words: when it came to life-debts, only men could be either creditors '''or''' debtors. Young women were thus the credits and the debits-the pieces being moved around the chessboard-while the hands that moved them were invariably male.29<br /> <br /> Of course, since almost everyone was a pawn, or had been at some point in their lives, being one could not in itself be much of a tragedy. For male pawns it was in some ways quite advantageous, since one's &quot;owner&quot; had to pay most of one's fines and fees and even blood-debts. This is why, as Douglas's informants uniformly insisted, pawnship had nothing in common with slavery. The Lele did keep slaves, but never very many. Slaves were war captives, usually foreigners. As such they had no family, no one to protect them. To be a pawn, on the other hand, meant to have not one, but two different families to look after you: you still had your own mother and her brothers, but now you also had your &quot;lord.&quot;<br /> <br /> For a woman, the very fact that she was the stakes in a game that all men were playing afforded all sorts of opportunities to game the system. In principle, a girl might be born a pawn, assigned to some man for eventual marriage. In practice, however,<br /> <br /> a little Lele girl would grow up a coquette. From infancy she was the centre of affectionate, teasing, flirting attention. Her affianced husband never gained more than a very limited control over her . . . Since men competed with one another for women there was scope for women to manoeuvre and intrigue. Hopeful seducers were never lacking and no woman doubted that she could get another husband if it suited her.30<br /> <br /> In addition, a young Lele woman had one unique and powerful card to play. Everyone was well aware that, if she completely refused to countenance her situation, she always had the option of becoming a &quot;village-wife. &quot;31<br /> <br /> The institution of village-wife was a peculiarly Lele one. Probably the best way to describe it is to imagine a hypothetical case. Let us say that an old, important man acquires a young woman as pawn through a blood-debt, and he decides to marry her himself. Technically, he has the right to do so, but it's no fun for a young woman to be an old man's third or fourth wife. Or, say he decides to offer her in marriage to one of his male pawns in a village far away from her mother and natal home. She protests. He ignores her protestations. She waits for an opportune moment and slips off at night to an enemy village, where she asks for sanctuary. This is always possible: all villages have their traditional enemies. Neither would an enemy village refuse a woman who came to them in such a situation. They would immediately declare her &quot;wife of the village,&quot; who all men living there would then be obliged to protect.<br /> <br /> It helps to understand that here, as in many parts of Africa, most older men had several wives. This meant that the pool of women available for younger men was considerably reduced. As our ethnographer explains, the imbalance was a source of considerable sexual tension:<br /> <br /> Everyone recognized that the young unmarried men coveted the wives of their seniors. Indeed, one of their pastimes was to plan seductions and the man who boasted of none was derided. Since the old men wished to remain polygynists, with two or three wives, and since adulteries were thought to disrupt the peace of the village, Lele had to make some arrangement to appease their unmarried men.<br /> <br /> Therefore, when a sufficient number of them reached the age of eighteen or so, they were allowed to buy the right to a common wife.32<br /> <br /> After paying an appropriate fee in raffia cloth to the village treasury, they were permitted to build a collective house, and then they were either allotted a wife to put in it, or allowed to form a party that would try to steal one from a rival village. (Or, alternately, if one showed up as a refugee, they would ask the rest of the village for the right to accept her: this was invariably granted.) This common wife is what's referred to as a &quot;village wife.&quot; The position of village wife was more than respectable. In fact, a newly married village wife was treated very much like a princess. She was not expected to plant or weed in the gardens, fetch wood or water, or even to cook; all household chores were done by her eager young husbands, who provided the best of everything, spending much of their time hunting in the forest vying to bring her the choicest delicacies, or plying her with palm wine. She could help herself to others' possessions and was expected to make all sorts of mischief to the bemused indulgence of all concerned. She was also expected to make herself sexually available to all members of the age-set-perhaps ten or twelve different men-at first, pretty much whenever they wanted her.33<br /> <br /> Over time, a village wife would usually settle down with just three or four of her husbands, and finally, just one. The domestic arrangements were flexible. Nonetheless, in principle, she was married to the village as a whole. If she had children, the village was considered to be their father, and as such expected to bring them up, provide them with resources, and eventually, get them properly married off-which is why villages had to maintain collective treasuries full of raffia and camwood bars in the first place. Since at any time a village was likely to have several village wives, it would also have its own children and grandchildren, and therefore be in a position to both demand and pay blood-debts, and thus, to accumulate pawns.<br /> <br /> As a result, villages became corporate bodies, collective groups that, like modern corporations, had to be treated as if they were individuals for purposes of law. However there was one key difference. Unlike ordinary individuals, villages could back up their claims with force.<br /> <br /> As Douglas emphasizes, this was crucial, because ordinary Lele men were simply not able to do this to one another.34 In everyday affairs, there was an almost complete lack of any systematic means of coercion. This was the main reason, she notes, that pawnship was so innocuous. There were all sorts of rules, but with no government, no courts, no judges to make authoritative decisions, no group of armed men willing or able to employ the threat of force to back those decisions up, rules were there to be adjusted and interpreted. In the end, everyone's feelings had to be taken into account. In everyday affairs, Lele put great stock on gentle and agreeable behavior. Men might have been regularly seized with the urge to throw themselves at each other in fits of jealous rage (often they had good reason to), but they very rarely did. And if a fight did break out, everyone would immediately jump in to break it up and submit the affair to public mediation.35<br /> <br /> Villages, in contrast, were fortified, and age-sets could be mobilized to act as military units. Here, and only here, did organized violence enter the picture. True, when villages fought, it was also always over women (everyone Douglas talked to expressed incredulity at the very idea that grown men, anywhere, could ever come to blows over anything else). But in the case of villages, it could come to an actual war. If another village's elders ignored one's claims to a pawn, one's young men might organize a raiding party and kidnap her, or carry off some other likely young women to be their collective wife. This might lead to deaths, and to further claims for compensation. &quot;Since it had the backing of force,&quot; Douglas observes drily, &quot;the village could afford to be less conciliatory towards the wishes of its pawns. &quot;36<br /> <br /> It's at exactly this point, too, where the potential for violence enters, that the great wall constructed between the value of lives and money can suddenly come tumbling down.<br /> <br /> Sometimes when two clans were disputing a claim to blood compensation, the claimant might see no hope of getting satisfaction from his opponents. The political system offered no direct means for one man (or clan) to use physical coercion or to resort to superior authority to enforce claims against another. In such a case, rather than abandon his claim to a pawnwoman, he would be ready to take the equivalent in wealth, if he could get it. The usual procedure was to sell his case against the defendants to the only group capable of extorting a pawn by force, that is, to a village.<br /> <br /> The man who meant to sell his case to a village asked them for '''Ioo''' raffia cloths or five bars of camwood. The village raised the amount, either from its treasury, or by a loan from one of its members, and thereby adopted as its own his claim to a pawn.37<br /> <br /> Once he held the money, his claim was over, and the village, which had now bought it, would proceed to organize a raid to seize the woman in dispute.<br /> <br /> In other words, it was only when violence was brought into the equation that there was any question of buying and selling people. The ability to deploy force, to cut through the endless maze of preferences, obligations, expectations, and responsibilities that mark real human relationships, also made it possible to overcome what is otherwise the first rule of all Lele economic relationships: that human lives can only be exchanged for other human lives, and never for physical objects. Significantly, the amount paid-a hundred cloths, or an equivalent amount of camwood-was also the price of a slave.38 Slaves were, as I mentioned, war captives. There seem never to have been very many of them; Douglas only managed to locate two descendants of slaves in the 1950s, some twenty-five years after the practice had been abol-ished.39 Still, the numbers were not important. The mere fact of their existence set a precedent. The value of a human life could, sometimes, be quantified; but if one was able to move from A=A (one life equals another) to A = B (one life = one hundred cloths), it was only because the equation was established at the point of a spear.<br /> <br /> === Flesh-debt (Tiv) ===<br /> I have dwelt on the Lele in such detail in part because I wanted to convey some sense of why I was using the term &quot;human economy,&quot; what life is like inside one, what sort of dramas fill people's days, and how money typically operates in the midst of all this. Lele currencies are, as I say, quintessential social currencies. They are used to mark every visit, every promise, every important moment in a man's or woman's life. It is surely significant, too, what the objects used as currency here actually were. Raffia cloth was used for clothing. In Douglas's day, it was the main thing used to clothe the human body; camwood bars were the source of a red paste that was used as a cosmetic-it was the main substance used as makeup, by both men and women, to beautify themselves each day. These, then, were the materials used to shape people's physical appearance, to make them appear mature, decent, attractive, and dignified to their fellows. They were what turned a mere naked body into a proper social being.<br /> <br /> This is no coincidence. In fact, it's extraordinarily common in what I've been calling human economies. Money almost always arises first from objects that are used primarily as adornment of the person. Beads, shells, feathers, dog or whale teeth, gold, and silver are all well-known cases in point. All are useless for any purpose other than making people look more interesting, and hence, more beautiful. The brass rods used by the Tiv might seem an exception, but actually they're not: they were used mainly as raw material for the manufacture of jewelry, or simply twisted into hoops and worn at dances. There are exceptions (cattle, for instance), but as a general rule, it's only when governments, and then markets, enter the picture that we begin to see currencies like barley, cheese, tobacco, or salt.40<br /> <br /> It also illustrates the peculiar progression of ideas that so often mark human economies. On the one hand, human life is the absolute value. There is no possible equivalent. Whether a life is given or taken, the debt is absolute. In places, this principle is indeed sacrosanct. More often, it is compromised by the elaborate games played by the Tiv, who treat the giving of lives, and the Lele, who treat the taking of lives, as creating debts that can only be paid by delivering another human being. In each case, too, the practice ends up engendering an extraordinarily complex game in which important men end up exchanging women, or at least, rights over their fertility.<br /> <br /> But this is already a kind of opening. Once the game exists, once the principle of substitution comes in, there was always the possibility of extending it. When that begins to happen, systems of debt that were premised on creating people can-even here- suddenly become the means of destroying them.<br /> <br /> As an example, let us once again return to the Tiv. The reader will recall that if a man did not have a sister or a ward to give in exchange for one's wife, it was possible to assuage her parents and guardians by gifts of money. However, such a wife would never be considered truly his. Here too, there was one dramatic exception. A man could buy a slave, a woman kidnapped in a raid from a distant country.41 Slaves, after all, had no parents, or could be treated as if they didn't; they had been forcibly removed from all those networks of mutual obligation and debt in which ordinary people acquired their outward identities. This was why they could be bought and sold.<br /> <br /> Once married, though, a purchased wife would quickly develop new ties. She was no longer a slave, and her children were perfectly legitimate- more so, in fact, than those of a wife who was merely acquired through the continual payment of brass rods.<br /> <br /> We have perhaps a general principle: to make something saleable, in a human economy, one needs to first rip it from its context. That's what slaves are: people stolen from the community that made them what they are. As strangers to their new communities, slaves no longer had mothers, fathers, kin of any sort. This is why they could be bought and sold or even killed: because the only relation they had was to their owners. A Lele village's ability to organize raids and kidnap a woman from an alien community seems to have been the key to its ability to start trading women for money-even if in their case, they could do so only to a very limited extent. After all, her relatives were not very far away, and they would surely come around demanding an explanation. In the end, someone would have to come up with an arrangement that everyone could live with.42<br /> <br /> Still, I would also insist that there is something more than this. One gets the distinct sense, in much of the literature, that many African societies were haunted by the awareness that these elaborate networks of debt could, if things went just slightly wrong, be transformed into something absolutely terrible. The Tiv are a dramatic case in point.<br /> <br /> <br /> Among students of anthropology, the Tiv are mainly famous for the fact that their economic life was divided into what their best-known ethnographers, Paul and Laura Bohannan, referred to as three separate &quot;spheres of exchange. &quot; Ordinary, everyday economic activity was mostly the affair of women. They were the ones who filled the markets, and who trod the paths giving and returning minor gifts of okra, nuts, or fish. Men concerned themselves with what they considered higher things: the kind of transactions that could be conducted using the Tiv currency, which, as with the Lele, consisted of two denominations, a kind of locally made cloth called tugudu, widely exported, and, for major transactions, bundles of imported brass rods.43 These could be used to acquire certain flashy and luxurious things (cows, purchased foreign wives), but they were mainly for the give and take of political affairs, hiring curers, acquiring magic, gaining initiation into cult societies. In political matters, Tiv were even more resolutely egalitarian than the Lele: successful old men with their numerous wives might have lorded it over their sons and other dependants within their own house compounds, but beyond that, there was no formal political organization of any sort. Finally, there was the system of wards, which consisted entirely of men's rights in women. Hence, the notion of &quot;spheres.&quot; In principle, these three levels—ordinary consumption goods, masculine prestige goods, and rights in women-were completely separate. No amount of okra could get you a brass rod, just as, in principle, no number of brass rods could give you full rights to a woman.<br /> <br /> In practice, there were ways to game the system. Say a neighbor was sponsoring a feast but was short on supplies; one might come to his aid, then later, discreetly, ask for a bundle or two in repayment. To be able to wheel and deal, to &quot;turn chickens into cows,&quot; as the saying went, and ultimately, broker one's wealth and prestige into a way of acquiring wives, required a &quot;strong heart&quot;-that is, an enterprising and charismatic personality.44 But &quot;strong heart&quot; had another meaning too. There was believed to be a certain actual biological substance called tsav that grew on the human heart. This was what gave certain people their charm, their energy, and their powers of persuasion. Tsav therefore was both a physical substance and that invisible power that allows certain people to bend others to their will.45<br /> <br /> The problem was-and most Tiv of that time appear to have believed that this was the problem with their society-that it was also possible to augment one's tsav through artificial means, and this could only be accomplished by consuming human flesh.<br /> <br /> Now, I should emphasize right away that there is no reason to believe that any Tiv actually did practice cannibalism. The idea of eating human flesh appears to have disgusted and horrified them as much as it would most Americans. Yet for centuries, most appear to have been veritably obsessed by the suspicion that some of their neighbors—and particularly prominent men who became de facto political leaders-were, in fact, secret cannibals. Men who built up their tsav by such means, the stories went, attained extraordinary powers: the ability to fly, to become impervious to weapons, to be able to send out their souls at night to kill their victims in such a way that their victims did not even know that they were dead, but would wander about, confused and feckless, to be harvested for their cannibal feasts. They became, in short, terrifying witches.46<br /> <br /> The mbatsav, or society of witches, was always looking for new members, and the way to accomplish this was to trick people into eating human flesh. A witch would take a piece of the body of one of his own close relatives, who he had murdered, and place it in the victim's food. If the man was foolish enough to eat it, he would contract a &quot;flesh-debt,&quot; and the society of witches ensured that flesh-debts are always paid.<br /> <br /> Perhaps your friend, or some older man, has noticed that you have a large number of children, or brothers and sisters, and so tricks you into contracting the debt with him. He invites you to eat food in his house alone with him, and when you begin the meal he sets before you two dishes of sauce, one of which contains cooked human flesh ...<br /> <br /> If you eat from the wrong dish, but you do not have a &quot;strong heart&quot;-the potential to become a witch-you will become sick and flee from the house in terror. But if you have that hidden potential, the flesh will begin to work in you. That evening, you will find your house surrounded by screeching cats and owls. Strange noises will fill the air. Your new creditor will appear before you, backed by his confederates in evil. He will tell of how he killed his own brother so you two could dine together, and pretend to be tortured by the thought of having lost his own kin as you sit there, surrounded by your plump and healthy relatives. The other witches will concur, acting as if all this is your own fault. &quot;You have sought for trouble, and trouble has come upon you. Come and lie down on the ground, that we may cut your throat. &quot;47<br /> <br /> There's only one way out, and that's to pledge a member of your own family as substitute. This is possible, because you will find you have terrible new powers, but they must be used as the other witches demand. One by one, you must kill off your brothers, sisters, children; their bodies will be stolen from their graves by the college of witches, brought back to life just long enough to be properly fattened, tortured, killed again, then carved and roasted for yet another feast.<br /> <br /> The flesh debt goes on and on. The creditor keeps on coming. Unless the debtor has men behind him who are very strong in tsav, he cannot free himself from the flesh debt until he has given up all his people, and his family is finished. Then he goes himself and lies down on the ground to be slaughtered, and so the debt is finally discharged.48<br /> <br /> === The slave trade ===<br /> In one sense, it's obvious what's going on here. Men with &quot;strong hearts&quot; have power and charisma; using it, they can manipulate debt to turn extra food into treasures, and treasures into wives, wards, and daughters, and thus become the heads of ever-growing families. But that very power and charisma that allows them to do this also makes them run the constant danger of sending the whole process jolting back into a kind of horrific implosion, of creating flesh-debts whereby one's family is converted back into food.<br /> <br /> Now, if one is simply trying to imagine the worst thing that could possibly happen to someone, surely, being forced to dine on the mutilated corpses of one's own children would, anywhere, be pretty high on the list. Still, anthropologists have come to understand, over the years, that every society is haunted by slightly different nightmares, and these differences are significant. Horror stories, whether about vampires, ghouls, or flesh-eating zombies, always seem to reflect some aspect of the tellers' own social lives, some terrifying potential, in the way they are accustomed to interact with each other, that they do not wish to acknowledge or confront, but also cannot help but talk about.49<br /> <br /> In the Tiv case, what would that be? Clearly, Tiv did have a major problem with authority. They lived in a landscape dotted with compounds, each organized around a single older man with his numerous wives, children, and assorted hangers-on. Within each compound, that man had near-absolute authority. Outside there was no formal political structure, and Tiv were fiercely egalitarian. In other words: all men aspired to become the masters of large families, but they were extremely suspicious of any form of mastery. Hardly surprising, then, that Tiv men were so ambivalent about the nature of power that they became convinced that the very qualities that allow a man to rise to legitimate prominence could, if taken just a little bit further, turn him into a mon-ster.50 In fact, most Tiv seemed to assume that most male elders '''were''' witches, and that if a young person died, they were probably being paid off for a flesh-debt.<br /> <br /> But this still doesn't answer the one obvious question: Why is all this framed in terms of debt?<br /> <br /> <br /> .<br /> <br /> Here a little history is in order. It would appear that the ancestors of the Tiv arrived in the Benue river valley and adjacent lands sometime around 175o-a time when all of what's now Nigeria was being torn apart by the Atlantic slave trade. Early stories relate how the Tiv, during their migrations, used to paint their wives and children with what looked like smallpox scars, so that potential raiders would be afraid to carry them off.51 They established themselves in a notoriously inaccessible stretch of country and offered up ferocious defense against periodic raids from neighboring kingdoms to their north and west-with which they eventually came to a political rapprochement.SZ<br /> <br /> The Tiv, then, were well aware of what was happening all around them. Consider, for example, the case of the copper bars whose use they were so careful to restrict, so as to avoid their becoming an allpurpose form of currency.<br /> <br /> Now, copper bars had been used for money in this part of Africa for centuries, and at least in some places, for ordinary commercial transactions, as well. It was easy enough to do: one simply snapped them apart into smaller pieces, or pulled some of them into thin wires, twisted those around to little loops, and one had perfectly serviceable small change for everyday market transactions.53 Most of the ones current in Tivland since the late eighteenth century, on the other hand, were mass-produced in factories in Birmingham and imported through the port of Old Calabar at the mouth of the Cross River, by slavetraders based in Liverpool and Bristol.54 In all the country adjoining the Cross River-that is, in the region directly to the south of the Tiv territory-copper bars were used as everyday currency. This was presumably how they entered Tivland; they were either carried in by pedlars from the Cross River or acquired by Tiv traders on expeditions abroad. All this, however, makes the fact that the Tiv refused to use copper bars as such a currency doubly significant.<br /> <br /> During the q6os alone, perhaps a hundred thousand Africans were shipped down the Cross River to Calabar and nearby ports, where they were put in chains, placed on British, French, or other European ships, and shipped across the Atlantic-part of perhaps a million and a half exported from the Bight of Biafra during the whole period of the Atlantic slave trade.55 Some of them had been captured in wars or raids, or simply kidnapped. The majority, though, were carried off because of debts.<br /> <br /> Here, though, I must explain something about the organization of the slave trade.<br /> <br /> The Atlantic Slave Trade as a whole was a gigantic network of credit arrangements. Ship-owners based in Liverpool or Bristol would acquire goods on easy credit terms from local wholesalers, expecting to make good by selling slaves (also on credit) to planters in the Antilles and America, with commission agents in the city of London ultimately financing the affair through the profits of the sugar and tobacco trade.56 Ship-owners would then transport their wares to African ports like Old Calabar. Calabar itself was the quintessential mercantile city-state, dominated by rich African merchants who dressed in European clothes, lived in European-style houses, and in some cases even sent their children to England to be educated.<br /> <br /> On arrival, European traders would negotiate the value of their cargoes in the copper bars that served as the currency of the port. In 1698, a merchant aboard a ship called the Dragon noted the following prices he managed to establish for his wares:<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable&quot;<br /> |one bar iron one bunch of beads<br /> |'''4''' copper bars<br /> <br /> '''4''' copper bars<br /> |-<br /> |five rangoes57<br /> |'''4''' copper bars<br /> |-<br /> |one basin No. 1<br /> |'''4''' copper bars<br /> |-<br /> |one tankard<br /> |'''3''' copper bars<br /> |-<br /> |one yard linen<br /> |'''I''' copper bar<br /> |-<br /> |six knives<br /> |'''I''' copper bar<br /> |-<br /> |one brass bell No. '''I'''<br /> |'''3''' copper bars58<br /> |}<br /> By the height of the trade fifty years later, British ships were bringing in large quantities of cloth (both products of the newly created Manchester mills and calicoes from India), and iron and copper ware, along with incidental goods like beads, and also, for obvious reasons, substantial numbers of firearms.19 The goods were then advanced to African merchants, again on credit, who assigned them to their own agents to move upstream.<br /> <br /> The obvious problem was how to secure the debt. The trade was an extraordinarily duplicitous and brutal business, and slave raiders were unlikely to be dependable credit risks-especially when dealing with foreign merchants who they might never see again.60 As a result, a system quickly developed in which European captains would demand security in the form of pawns.<br /> <br /> The sort of &quot;pawns&quot; we are talking about here are clearly quite different from the kind we encountered among the Lele. In many of the kingdoms and trading towns of West Africa, the nature of pawnship appears to have already undergone profound changes by the time Europeans showed up on the scene around 1500-it had become, effectively, a kind of debt peonage. Debtors would pledge family members as surety for loans; the pawns would then become dependents in the creditors' households, working their fields and tending to their household chores-their persons acting as security while their labor, effectively, substituted for interest.61 Pawns were not slaves; they were not, like slaves, cut off from their families; but neither were they precisely free.62 In Calabar and other ports, masters of slaving ships, on advancing goods to their African counterparts, soon developed the custom of demanding pawns as security-for instance, two of the merchants' own dependents for every three slaves to be delivered, preferably including at least one member of the merchants' familiesY This was in practice not much different than demanding the surrender of hostages, and at times it created major political crises when captains, tired of waiting for delayed shipments, decided to take off with a cargo of pawns instead.<br /> <br /> Upriver, debt pawns also played a major part in the trade. In one way, the area was a bit unusual. In most of West Africa, the trade ran through major kingdoms such as Dahomey or Asante to make wars and impose draconian punishments-one very common expedient for rulers was to manipulate the justice system, so that almost any crime came to be punishable by enslavement, or by death with the enslavement of one's wife and children, or by outrageously high fines which, if one could not pay them, would cause the defaulter and his family to be sold as slaves. In another way, it is unusually revealing, since the lack of any larger government structures made it easier to see what was really happening. The pervasive climate of violence led to the systematic perversion of all the institutions of existing human economies, which were transformed into a gigantic apparatus of dehumanization and destruction.<br /> <br /> In the Cross River region, the trade seems to have seen two phases. The first was a period of absolute terror and utter chaos, in which raids were frequent, and anyone traveling alone risked being kidnapped by roving gangs of thugs and sold to Calabar. Before long, villages lay abandoned; many people fled into the forest; men would have to form armed parties to work the fields.64 This period was relatively brief. The second began when representatives of local merchant societies began to establish themselves in communities up and down the region, offering to restore order. The most famous of these was the Aro Confederacy, who called themselves, &quot;Children of God. &quot;65 Backed by heavily armed mercenaries and the prestige of their famous Oracle at Arochukwu, they established a new and notoriously harsh justice system.66 Kidnappers were hunted down and themselves sold as slaves. Safety was restored to roads and farmsteads. At the same time, Aro collaborated with local elders to create a code of ritual laws and penalties so comprehensive and severe that everyone was at constant risk of falling afoul of themY Anyone who violated one would be turned over to the Aro for transport to the coast, with their accuser receiving their price in copper bars.68 According to some contemporary accounts, a man who simply disliked his wife and was in need of brass rods could<br /> <br /> always come up with some reason to sell her, and the village elders— who received a share of the profits-would almost invariably concur.69 The most ingenious trick of the merchant societies, though, was to assist in the dissemination of a secret society, called Ekpe. Ekpe was most famous for sponsoring magnificent masquerades and for initiating its members into arcane mysteries, but it also acted as a secret mechanism for the enforcement of debts.70 In Calabar itself, for example, the Ekpe society had access to a whole range of sanctions, starting with boycotts (all members were forbidden to conduct trade with a defaulting debtor), fines, seizure of property, arrest, and finally, execution-with the most hapless victims left tied to trees, their lower jaws removed, as a warning to others.71 It was ingenious, particularly, because such societies always allowed anyone to buy in, rising though the nine initiatory grades if they could pay the fee-these also exacted, of course, in the brass rods the merchants themselves supplied. In Calabar, the fee schedule for each grade looked like this:72<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable&quot;<br /> |+<br /> |1. Nyampi<br /> 2. Oku Akana<br /> <br /> 3. Brass<br /> <br /> 4. Makanda<br /> |300 boxes brass rods, each £2 9s.<br /> =£735, for the first four grades.<br /> |-<br /> |5. Makara<br /> 6. Mboko Mboko<br /> <br /> 7. Bunko Abonko<br /> <br /> 8. Mboko Nya Ekpo<br /> <br /> 9. Ekpe<br /> |50 boxes brass rods for each of the lower grades.<br /> |}<br /> In other words, it was quite expensive. But membership quickly became the chief mark of honor and distinction everywhere. Entry fees were no doubt less exorbitant in small, distant communities, but the effect was still the same: thousands ended up in debt to the merchants, whether for the fees required for joining, or for the trade goods they supplied (mostly cloth and metal put to use creating the gear and costumes for the Ekpe performances-debts that they thus themselves became responsible for enforcing on themselves. These debts, too, were regularly paid in people, ostensibly yielded up as pawns.)<br /> <br /> How did it work in practice? It appears to have varied a great deal from place to place. In the Afikpo district, on a remote part of the upper Cross River, for instance, we read that everyday affairs-the acquisition of food, for example-was conducted, as among the Tiv, &quot;without trade or the use of money.&quot; Brass rods, supplied by the merchant societies, were used to buy and sell slaves, but otherwise mostly as a social currency, &quot;used for gifts and for payments in funerals, titles, and other ceremonies.&quot;73 Most of those payments, titles, and ceremonies were tied to the secret societies that the merchants had also brought to the area. All this does sound a bit like the Tiv arrangement, but the presence of the merchants ensured that the effects were very different:<br /> <br /> In the old days, if anybody got into trouble or debt in the upper parts of the Cross River, and wanted ready money, he used generally to &quot;pledge&quot; one or more of his children, or some other members of his family or household, to one of the Aku-nakuna traders who paid periodical visits to his village. Or he would make a raid on some neighboring village, seize a child, and sell him or her to the same willing purchaser.74<br /> <br /> The passage only makes sense if one recognizes that debtors were also, owing to their membership in the secret societies, collectors. The seizing of a child is a reference to the local practice of &quot;panyarring,&quot; current throughout West Africa, by which creditors despairing of repayment would simply sweep into the debtor's community with a group of armed men and seize anything-people, goods, domestic animals-that could be easily carried off, then hold it hostage as security.75 It didn't matter if the people or goods had belonged to the debtor, or even the debtor's relatives. A neighbor's goats or children would do just as well, since the whole point was to bring social pressure on whoever owed the money. As William Bosman put it, &quot;If the Debtor be an honest man and the Debt just, he immediately endeavours by the satisfaction of his Creditors to free his Countrymen. &quot;76 It was actually a quite sensible expedient in an environment with no central authority, where people tended to feel an enormous sense of responsibility toward other members of their community and very little responsibility toward anyone else. In the case of the secret society cited above, the debtor would, presumably, be calling in his own debts-real or imagined-to those outside the organization, in order not to have to send off members of his own family.n<br /> <br /> Such expedients were not always effective. Often debtors would be forced to pawn more and more of their own children or dependents, until finally there was no recourse but to pawn themselves.78 And of course, at the height of the slave trade, &quot;pawning&quot; had become little more than a euphemism. The distinction between pawns and slaves had largely disappeared. Debtors, like their families before them, ended up turned over to the Aro, then to the British, and finally, shackled and chained, crowded into tiny slaving vessels and sent off to be sold on plantations across the sea?9<br /> <br /> <br /> If the Tiv, then, were haunted by the vision of an insidious secret organization that lured unsuspecting victims into debt traps, whereby they themselves became the enforcers of debts to be paid with the bodies of their children, and ultimately, themselves-one reason was because this was, literally happening to people who lived a few hundred miles away. Nor is the use of the phrase &quot;flesh-debt&quot; in any way inappropriate. Slave-traders might not have been reducing their victims to meat, but they were certainly reducing them to nothing more than bodies. To be a slave was to be plucked from one's family, kin, friends, and community, stripped of one's name, identity, and dignity; of everything that made one a person rather than a mere human machine capable of understanding orders. Neither were most slaves offered much opportunity to develop enduring human relations. Most that ended up in Caribbean or American plantations, though, were simply worked to death.<br /> <br /> What is remarkable is that all this was done, the bodies extracted, through the very mechanisms of the human economy, premised on the principle that human lives are the ultimate value, to which nothing could possibly compare. Instead, all the same institutions-fees for initiations, means of calculating guilt and compensation, social currencies, debt pawnship-were turned into their opposite; the machinery was, as it were, thrown into reverse; and, as the Tiv also perceived, the gears and mechanisms designed for the creation of human beings collapsed on themselves and became the means for their destruction.<br /> <br /> <br /> I do not want to leave the reader with the impression that what I am describing here is in any way peculiar to Africa. One could find the exact same things happening wherever human economies came into contact with commercial ones (and particularly, commercial economies with advanced military technology and an insatiable demand for human labor).<br /> <br /> Remarkably similar things can be observed throughout Southeast Asia, particularly amongst hill and island people living on the fringes of major kingdoms. As the premier historian of the region, Anthony Reid, has pointed out, labor throughout Southeast Asia has long been organized above all through relations of debt bondage.<br /> <br /> Even in relatively simple societies little penetrated by money, there were ritual needs for substantial expenditures-the payment of bride-price for marriage and the slaughter of a buffalo at the death of a family member. It is widely reported that such ritual needs are the most common reason why the poor become indebted to the rich . ..8&lt;sup&gt;0&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> For instance, one practice, noted from Thailand to Sulawesi, is for a group of poor brothers to turn to a rich sponsor to pay for the expenses of one brother's marriage. He's then referred to as their &quot;master. &quot; This is more like a patron-client relation than anything else: the brothers might be obliged to do the occasional odd job, or appear as his entourage on occasions when he has to make a good impression-not much more. Still, technically, he owns their children, and &quot;can also repossess the wife he provided if his bondsmen fail to carry out his obligations.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;81&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Elsewhere, we hear similar stories to those in Africa-of peasants pawning themselves or members of their families, or even gambling themselves into bondage; of principalities where penalties invariably took the form of heavy fines. &quot;Frequently, of course, these fines could not be paid, and the condemned man, often accompanied by his dependants, became the bondsman of the ruler, of the injured party, or of whoever was able to pay his fine for him. &quot;82 Reid insists that most of this was relatively innocuous-in fact, poor men might take out loans for the express purpose of becoming debtors to some wealthy patron, who could provide them with food during hard times, a roof, a wife. Clearly this was not &quot;slavery&quot; in the ordinary sense. That is, unless the patron decided to ship some of his dependents off to creditors of his own in some distant city like Majapahit or Ternate, whereupon they might find themselves toiling in some grandee's kitchen or pepper plantation like any other slave.<br /> <br /> It's important to point this out because one of the effects of the slave trade is that people who don't actually live in Africa are often left with an image of that continent as an irredeemably violent, savage place- an image that has had disastrous effects on those who do live there. It might be fitting, then, to consider the history of one place that is usually represented as the polar opposite: Bali, the famous &quot;land of ten thousand temples&quot;-an island often pictured in anthropological texts and tourist brochures as if it were inhabited exclusively by placid, dreamy artists who spend their days arranging flowers and practicing synchronized dance routines.<br /> <br /> In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Bali had not yet obtained this reputation. At the time, it was still divided among a dozen tiny, squabbling kingdoms in an almost perpetual state of war. In fact, its reputation among the Dutch merchants and officials ensconced in nearby Java was almost exactly the opposite of what it is today. Balinese were considered a rude and violent people ruled by decadent, opium-addicted nobles whose wealth was based almost exclusively on their willingness to sell their subjects to foreigners as slaves. By the time the Dutch were fully in control in Java, Bali had been turned largely into a reservoir for the export of human beings-young Balinese women in particular being in great demand in cities through the region as both prostitutes and concubines.83 As the island was drawn into the slave trade, almost the entire social and political system of the island was transformed into an apparatus for the forcible extraction of women. Even within villages, ordinary marriages took the form of &quot;marriage by capture&quot;-sometimes staged elopements, sometimes real forcible kidnappings, after which the kidnappers would pay a woman's family to let the matter drop.84 If a woman was captured by someone genuinely important, though, no compensation would be offered. Even in the 196os, elders recalled how attractive young women used to be hidden away by their parents,<br /> <br /> forbidden to bear towering offerings to temple festivals, lest they be espied by a royal scout and hustled into the closely protected female quarters of the palace, where the eyes of male visitors were restricted to foot level. For there was slim chance a girl would become a legitimate low-caste wife (penawing) of the raja ...More likely after affording a few years' licentious satisfaction, she would degenerate into a slave-like servant.85<br /> <br /> Or, if she did rise to such a position that the high-caste wives began to see her as a rival, she might be either poisoned or shipped off overseas to end up servicing soldiers at some Chinese-run bordello in Jogjakarta, or changing bedpans in the house of a French plantationowner in the Indian Ocean island of Reunion.86 Meanwhile, royal law codes were rewritten in all the usual ways, with the exception that here, the force of law was directed above all and explicitly against women. Not only were criminals and debtors to be enslaved and deported, but any married man was granted the power to renounce his wife, and by doing so render her, automatically, property of the local ruler, to be disposed of as he wished. Even a woman whose husband died before she had produced male offspring would to be handed over to the palace to be sold abroadY<br /> <br /> As Adrian Vickers explains, even Bali's famous cockfights—so familiar to any first-year anthropology student-were originally promoted by royal courts as a way of recruiting human merchandise:<br /> <br /> Kings even helped put people into debt by staging large cockfights in their capitals. The passion and extravagance encouraged by this exciting sport led many peasants to bet more than they could afford. As with any gambling, the hope of great wealth and the drama of a contest fuelled ambitions which few could afford and at the end of the day, when the last spur had sunk into the chest of the last rooster, many peasants had no home and family to return to. They, and their wives and children, would be sold to Java.88<br /> <br /> === Reflections on violence ===<br /> I began this book by asking a question: How is it that moral obligations between people come to be thought of as debts, and as a result, end up justifying behavior that would otherwise seem utterly immoral?<br /> <br /> I began this chapter by beginning to propose an answer: by making a distinction between commercial economies and what I call &quot;human economies&quot;-that is, those where money acts primarily as a social currency, to create, maintain, or sever relations between people rather than to purchase things. As Rospabe so cogently demonstrated, it is the peculiar quality of such social currencies that they are never quite equivalent to people. If anything, they are a constant reminder that human beings can never be equivalent to anything—even, ultimately, to one another. This is the profound truth of the blood-feud. No one can ever really forgive the man who killed his brother because every brother is unique. Nothing could substitute—not even some other man given the same name and status as your brother, or a concubine who will bear a son who will be named after your brother, or a ghost-wife who will bear a child pledged to someday avenge his death.<br /> <br /> In a human economy, each person is unique, and of incomparable value, because each is a unique nexus of relations with others. A woman may be a daughter, sister, lover, rival, companion, mother, age-mate, and mentor to many different people in different ways. Each relation is unique, even in a society in which they are sustained through the constant givimg back and forth of generic objects such as raffia cloth or bundles of copper wire. In one sense, those objects make one who one is-a fact illustrated by the way the objects used as social currencies are so often things otherwise used to clothe or decorate the human body, that help make one who one is in the eyes of others. Still, just as our clothes don't really make us who we are, a relationship kept alive by the giving and taking of raffia is always something more than that.89 This means that the raffia, in turn, is always something less. This is why I think Rospabe was right to emphasize the fact that in such economies, money can never substitute for a person: money is a way of acknowledging that very fact, that the debt cannot be paid. But even the notion that a person can substitute for a person, that one sister can somehow be equated with another, is by no means self-evident. In this sense, the term &quot;human economy&quot; is double-edged. These are, after all, economies: that is, systems of exchange in which qualities are reduced to quantities, allowing calculations of gain and loss-even if those calculations are simply a matter (as in sister exchange) of '''I''' equals '''I,''' or (as in the feud) of '''I''' minus '''I''' equals o.<br /> <br /> How is this calculability effectuated? How does it become possible to treat people as if they are identical? The Lele example gave us a hint: to make a human being an object of exchange, one woman equivalent to another for example, requires first of all ripping her from her context; that is, tearing her away from that web of relations that makes her the unique conflux of relations that she is, and thus, into a generic value capable of being added and subtracted and used as a means to measure debt. This requires a certain violence. To make her equivalent to a bar of camwood takes even more violence, and it takes an enormous amount of sustained and systematic violence to rip her so completely from her context that she becomes a slave.<br /> <br /> I should be clear here. I am not using the word &quot;violence&quot; metaphorically. I am not speaking merely of conceptual violence, but of the literal threat of broken bones and bruised flesh; of punches and kicks; in much the same way that when the ancient Hebrews spoke of their daughters in &quot;bondage,&quot; they were not being poetic, but talking about literal ropes and chains.<br /> <br /> Most of us don't like to think much about violence. Those lucky enough to live relatively comfortable, secure lives in modern cities tend either to act as if it does not exist or, when reminded that it does, to write off the larger world &quot;out there&quot; as a terrible, brutal place, with not much that can be done to help it. Either instinct allows us not to have to think about the degree to which even our own daily existence is defined by violence or at least the threat of violence (as I've often noted, think about what would happen if you were to insist on your right to enter a university library without a properly validated ID), and to overstate the importance-or at least the frequency-of things like war, terrorism, and violent crime. The role of force in providing the framework for human relations is simply more explicit in what we call &quot;traditional societies&quot;-even if in many, actual physical assault by one human on another occurs less often than in our own. Here's a story from the Bunyoro kingdom, in East Africa:<br /> <br /> Once a man moved into a new village. He wanted to find out what his neighbors were like, so in the middle of the night he pretended to beat his wife very severely, to see if the neighbors would come and remonstrate with him. But he did not really beat her; instead he beat a goatskin, while his wife screamed and cried out that he was killing her. Nobody came, and the very next day the man and his wife packed up and left that village and went to find some other place to live.90<br /> <br /> The point is obvious. In a proper village, the neighbors should have rushed in, held him back, demanded to know what the woman could possibly have done to deserve such treatment. The dispute would become a collective concern that ended in some sort of collective settlement. This is how people ought to live. No reasonable man or woman would want to live in a place where neighbors don't look after one another.<br /> <br /> In its own way it's a revealing story, charming even, but one must still ask: How would a community-even one the man in the story would have considered a proper community-have reacted if they thought she was beating him?91 I think we all know the answer. The first case would have led to concern; the second would have led to ridicule. In Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, young villagers used to put on satirical skits making fun of husbands beaten by their wives, even to parade them about the town mounted backwards on an ass for everyone to jeer at.92 No African society, as far as I know, went quite this far. (Neither did any African society burn as many witches-Western Europe at that time was a particularly savage place.) Yet as in most of the world, the assumption that the one sort of brutality was at least potentially legitimate, and that the other was not, was the framework within which relations between the sexes took place.93<br /> <br /> What I want to emphasize is that there is a direct relation between that fact and the possibility of trading lives for one another.<br /> <br /> Anthropologists are fond of making diagrams to represent preferential marriage patterns. Sometimes, these diagrams can be quite beautiful.<br /> [[File:Graeber-debt the first 5000 years-2.png|center|thumb|Ideal pattern of bilateral cross-cousin marriage]]<br /> Sometimes they merely have a certain elegant simplicity, as in this diagram on an instance of Tiv sister exhange:95<br /> [[File:Debt the first 5000 years image 3.png|center|thumb]]<br /> Human beings, left to follow their own desires, rarely arrange themselves in symmetrical patterns. Such symmetry tends to be bought at a terrible human price. In the Tiv case, Akiga is actually willing to describe it:<br /> <br /> Under the old system an elder who had a ward could always marry a young girl, however senile he might be, even if he were a leper with no hands or feet; no girl would dare to refuse him. If another man were attracted by his ward he would take his own and give her to the old man by force, in order to make an exchange. The girl had to go with the old man, sorrowfully carrying his goat-skin bag. If she ran back to her home her owner caught her and beat her, then bound her and brought her back to the elder. The old man was pleased, and grinned till he showed his blackened molars. &quot;Wherever you go,&quot; he told her, &quot;you will be brought back here to me; so stop worrying, and settle down as my wife.&quot; The girl fretted, till she wished the earth might swallow her. Some women even stabbed themselves to death when they were given to an old man against their will; but in spite of all, the Tiv did not care.96<br /> <br /> The last line says everything. Citing it might seem unfair (the Tiv did, evidently, care enough to elect Akiga to be their first parliamentary representative, knowing he supported legislation to outlaw such practices), but it serves nicely to bring home the real point: that certain sorts of violence '''were''' considered morally acceptable.97 No neighbors would rush in to intervene if a guardian was beating a runaway ward. Or if they did, it would be to insist that he use more gentle means to return her to her rightful husband. And it was because women knew that this is how their neighbors, or even parents, would react that &quot;exchange marriage&quot; was possible.<br /> <br /> This is what I mean by people &quot;ripped from their contexts. &quot;<br /> <br /> <br /> The Lele were fortunate enough to have largely escaped the devastations of the slave trade; the Tiv were sitting practically on the teeth of the shark, and they had to make heroic efforts to keep the threat at bay. Nonetheless, in both cases there were mechanisms for forcibly removing young women from their homes, and it was precisely this that made them exchangeable-though in each case too, a principle stipulated that a woman could only be exchanged for another woman. The few exceptions, when women could be exchanged for other things, emerged directly from war and slavery-that is, when the level of violence was significantly ratcheted up.<br /> <br /> The slave trade, of course, represented violence on an entirely different scale. We are speaking here of destruction of genocidal proportions, in world-historic terms, comparable only to events like the destruction of New World civilizations or the Holocaust. Neither do I mean in any way to blame the victims: we need only imagine what would be likely to happen in our own society if a group of space aliens suddenly appeared, armed with undefeatable military technology, infinite wealth, and no recognizable morality-and announced that they were willing to pay a million dollars each for human workers, no questions asked. There will always be at least a handful of people unscrupulous enough to take advantage of such a situation-and a handful is all it takes.<br /> <br /> Groups like the Aro Confederacy represent an all-too-familiar strategy, deployed by fascists, mafias, and right-wing gangsters everywhere: first unleash the criminal violence of an unlimited market, in which everything is for sale and the price of life becomes extremely cheap; then step in, offering to restore a certain measure of order-though one which in its very harshness leaves all the most profitable aspects of t4e earlier chaos intact. The violence is preserved within the structure of the law. Such mafias, too, almost invariably end up enforcing a strict code of honor in which morality becomes above all a matter of paying one's debts.<br /> <br /> Were this a different book, I might reflect here on the curious parallels between the Cross River societies and Bali, both of which saw a magnificent outburst of artistic creativity (Cross River Ekpe masks were a major influence on Picasso) that took the form, above all, of an efflorescence of theatrical performance, replete with intricate music, splendid costumes, and stylized dance-a kind of alternative political order as imaginary spectacle-at the exact moment that ordinary life became a game of constant peril in which any misstep might lead to being sent away. What was the link between the two? It's an interesting question, but not one we can really answer here. For present purposes, the crucial question has to be: How common was this? The African slave trade was, as I mentioned, an unprecedented catastrophe, but commercial economies had already been extracting slaves from human economies for thousands of years. It is a practice as old as civilization. The question I want to ask is: To what degree is it actually constitutive of civilization itself?<br /> <br /> I am not speaking strictly of slavery here, but of that process that dislodges people from the webs of mutual commitment, shared history, and collective responsibility that make them what they are, so as to make them exchangeable-that is, to make it possible to make them subject to the logic of debt. Slavery is just the logical end-point, the most extreme form of such disentanglement. But for that reason it provides us with a window on the process as a whole. What's more, owing to its historical role, slavery has shaped our basic assumptions and institutions in ways that we are no longer aware of and whose influence we would probably never wish to acknowledge if we were. If we have become a debt society, it is because the legacy of war, conquest, and slavery has never completely gone away. It's still there, lodged in our most intimate conceptions of honor, property, even freedom. It's just that we can no longer see that it's there.<br /> <br /> In the next chapter, I will begin to describe how this happened.<br /> <br /> == Chapter seven: Honor and degradation ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;ur&lt;sub&gt;5&lt;/sub&gt; [HAR]: n., liver; spleen; heart, soul; bulk, main body; foundation; loan; obligation; interest; surplus, profit; interest-bearing debt; repayment; slavewoman.<br /> <br /> -early Sumerian dictionary1<br /> <br /> It is just to give each what is owed.<br /> <br /> -Simonides&lt;/blockquote&gt;'''IN''' THE LAST CHAPTER, I offered a glimpse of how human economies, with their social currencies-which are used to measure, assess, and maintain relationships between people, and only perhaps incidentally to acquire material goods-might be transformed into something else. What we discovered was that we cannot begin to think about such questions without taking into account the role of sheer physical violence. In the case of the African slave trade, this was primarily violence imposed from outside. Nonetheless, its very suddenness, its very brutality, provides us with a sort of freeze-frame of a process that must have occurred in a much slower, more haphazard fashion in other times and places. This is because there is every reason to believe that slavery, with its unique ability to rip human beings from their contexts, to turn them into abstractions, played a key role in the rise of markets everywhere.<br /> <br /> What happens, then, when the same process happens more slowly? It would seem that much of this history is permanently lost-since in both the ancient Middle East and the ancient Mediterranean, most of the really critical moments seem to have occurred just before the advent of written records. Still, the broad outlines can be reconstructed.<br /> <br /> The best way to do so, I believe, is to start from a single, odd, vexed concept: the concept of honor, which can be treated as a kind of artifact, or even as a hieroglyphic, a fragment preserved from history that seems to compress into itself the answer to almost everything we've been trying to understand. On the one hand, violence: men who live by violence, whether soldiers or gangsters, are almost invariably obsessed with honor, and assaults on honor are considered the most obvious justification for acts of violence. On the other, debt. We speak both of debts of honor, and honoring one's debts; in fact, the transition from one to the other provides the best clue to how debts emerge from obligations; even as the notion of honor seemed to echo a defiant insistence that financial debts are not really the most important ones; an echo, here, of arguments that, like those in the Vedas and the Bible, go back to the very dawn of the market itself. Even more disturbingly, since the notion of honor makes no sense without the possibility of degradation, reconstructing this history reveals how much our basic concepts of freedom and morality took shape within institutions-notably, but not only, slavery-that we'd sooner not have to think about at all.<br /> <br /> <br /> To underscore some of the paradoxes surrounding the concept and bring home what's really at stake here, let us consider the story of one man who survived the Middle Passage: Olaudah Equiano, born sometime around 1745 in a rural community somewhere within the confines of the Kingdom of Benin. Kidnapped from his home at the age of eleven, Equiano was eventually sold to British slavers operating in the Bight of Biafra, from whence he was conveyed first to Barbados, then to a plantation in colonial Virginia.<br /> <br /> Equiano's further adventures-and there were many-are narrated in his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olau-dah Equiano: or, Gustavus V assa, the African, published in 1789. After spending much of the Seven Years' War hauling gunpowder on a British frigate, he was promised his freedom, denied his freedom, sold to several owners-who regularly lied to him, promising his freedom, and then broke their word-until he passed into the hands of a Quaker merchant in Pennsylvania, who eventually allowed him to purchase his freedom. Over the course of his later years he was to become a successful merchant in his own right, a best-selling author, an Arctic explorer, and eventually, one of the leading voices of English Abolitionism. His eloquence and the power of his life story played significant parts in the movement that led to the British abolition of the slave trade in 1807.<br /> <br /> Readers of Equiano's book are often troubled by one aspect of the story: that for most of his early life, he was not opposed to the institution of slavery. At one point, while saving money to buy his freedom, he even briefly took a job that involved purchasing slaves in Africa. Equiano only came around to an abolitionist position after converting to Methodism and falling in with religious activists against the trade. Many have asked: Why did it take him so long? Surely if anyone had reason to understand the evils of slavery, he did.<br /> <br /> The answer seems, oddly, to lie in the man's very integrity. One thing that comes through strikingly in the book is that this was not only a man of endless resourcefulness and determination, but above all, a man of honor. Yet this created a terrible dilemma. To be made a slave is to be stripped of any possible honor. Equiano wished above all else to regain what had been taken from him. The problem is that honor is, by definition, something that exists in the eyes of others. To be able to recover it, then, a slave must necessarily adopt the rules and standards of the society that surrounds him, and this means that, in practice at least, he cannot absolutely reject the institutions that deprived him of his honor in the first place.<br /> <br /> It strikes me that this experience--of only being able to restore one's lost honor, to regain the ability to act with integrity by acting in accord with the terms of a system that one knows, through deeply traumatic personal experience, to be utterly unjust-is itself one of the most profoundly violent aspects of slavery. It is another example, perhaps, of the need to argue in the master's language, but here taken to insidious extremes.<br /> <br /> All societies based on slavery tend to be marked by this agonizing double consciousness: the awareness that the highest things one has to strive for are also, ultimately, wrong; but at the same time, the feeling that this is simply the nature of reality. This might help explain why throughout most of history, when slaves did rebel against their masters, they rarely rebelled against slavery itself. But the flip side of this is that even slave-owners seemed to feel that the whole arrangement was somehow fundamentally perverse or unnatural. First-year Roman law students, for instance, were made to memorize the following definition:&lt;blockquote&gt;slavery is an institution according to the law of nations whereby one person falls under the property rights of another, contrary to nature.2&lt;/blockquote&gt;At the very least, there was always seen to be something disreputable and ugly about slavery. Anyone too close to it was tainted. Slave-traders particularly were scorned as inhuman brutes. Throughout history, moral justifications for slavery are rarely taken particularly seriously even by those who espouse them. For most of human history, most people saw slavery much as we see war: a tawdry business, to be sure, but one would have to be naive indeed to imagine it could simply be eliminated.<br /> <br /> === Honor Is Surplus Dignity ===<br /> So what is slavery? I've already begun to suggest an answer in the last chapter. Slavery is the ultimate form of being ripped from one's context, and thus from all the social relationships that make one a human being. Another way to put this is that the slave is, in a very real sense, dead.<br /> <br /> This was the conclusion of the first scholar to carry out a broad historical survey of the institution, an Egyptian sociologist named Ali 'Abd al-Wahid Wafi, in Paris in 1931.3 Everywhere, he observes, from the ancient world to then-present-day South America, one finds the same list of possible ways whereby a free person might be reduced to slavery:<br /> <br /> * r) By the law of force<br /> <br /> * a. By surrender or capture in war<br /> * b. By being the victim of raiding or kidnapping<br /> <br /> * 2) As legal punishment for crimes (including debt)<br /> * 3) Through paternal authority (a father's sale of his children)<br /> * 4) Through the voluntary sale of one's self4<br /> <br /> Everywhere, too, capture in war is considered the only way that is considered absolutely legitimate. All the others were surrounded by moral problems. Kidnapping was obviously criminal, and parents would not sell children except under desperate circumstances.5 We read of famines in China so severe that thousands of poor men would castrate themselves, in the hope that they might sell themselves as eunuchs at court-but this was also seen as the sign of total social breakdown.6 Even the judicial process could easily be corrupted, as the ancients were well aware--especially when it came to enslavement for debt.<br /> <br /> On one level, al-Wahid's argument is just an extended apologia for the role of slavery in Islam-widely criticized, since Islamic law never eliminated slavery, even when the institution largely vanished in the rest of the Medieval world. True, he argues, Mohammed did not forbid the practice, but still, the early Caliphate was the first government we know of that actually succeeded in eliminating all these practices (judicial abuse, kidnappings, the sale of offspring) that had been recognized as social problems for thousands of years, and to limit slavery strictly to prisoners of war.<br /> <br /> The book's most enduring contribution, though, lay simply in asking: What do all these circumstances have in common? AI-Wahid's answer is striking in its simplicity: one becomes a slave in situations where one would otherwise have died. This is obvious in the case of war: in the ancient world, the victor was assumed to have total power over the vanquished, including their women and children; all of them could be simply massacred. Similarly, he argued, criminals were condemned to slavery only for capital crimes, and those who sold themselves, or their children, normally faced starvation.7<br /> <br /> This is not just to say, though, that a slave was seen as owing his master his life since he would otherwise be dead.8 Perhaps this was true at the moment of his or her enslavement. But after that, a slave could not owe debts, because in almost every important sense, a slave was dead. In Roman law, this was quite explicit. If a Roman soldier was captured and lost his liberty, his family was expected to read his will and dispose of his possessions. Should he later regain his freedom, he would have to start over, even to the point of remarrying the woman who was now considered his widow.9<br /> <br /> In West Africa, according to one French anthropologist, the same principles applied:<br /> <br /> Once he had been finally removed from his own milieu through capture the slave was considered as socially dead, just as if he had been vanquished and killed in combat. Among the Mande, at one time, prisoners of war brought home by the conquerors were offered dege (millet and milk porridge)-because it was held that a man should not die on an empty stomach-and then presented with their arms so that they could kill themselves. Anyone who refused was slapped on the face by his abductor and kept as a captive: he had accepted the contempt which deprived him of personality &lt;sup&gt;.10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Tiv horror stories about men who are dead but do not know it or who are brought back from the grave to serve their murderers, and Haitian zombie stories, all seem to play on this essential horror of slavery: the fact that it's a kind of living death.<br /> <br /> In a book called Slavery and Social Death-surely the most profound comparative study of the institution yet written-Orlando Patterson works out exactly what it has meant to be so completely and absolutely ripped from one's contextY First of all, he emphasizes, slavery is unlike any other form of human relation because it is not a moral relation. Slave-owners might dress it up in all sorts of legalistic or paternalistic language, but really this is just window-dressing and no one really believes it; really, it is a relation based purely on violence; a slave must obey because if he doesn't, he can be beaten, tortured, or killed, and everyone is perfectly well aware of this. Second of all, being socially dead means that a slave has no binding moral relations with anyone else: he is alienated from his ancestors, community, family, clan, city; he cannot make contracts or meaningful promises, except at the whim of his master; even if he acquires a family, it can be broken up at any time. The relation of pure force that attached him to his master was hence the only human relationship that ultimately mattered. As a result-and this is the third essential element-the slave's situation was one of utter degradation. Hence the Mande warrior's slap: the captive, having refused his one final chance to save his honor by killing himself, must recognize that he will now be considered an entirely contemptible being.12<br /> <br /> Yet at the same time, this ability to strip others of their dignity becomes, for the master, the foundation of his honor. As Patterson notes, there have been places-the Islamic world affords numerous examples-where slaves are not even put to work for profit; instead, rich men make a point of surrounding themselves with battalions of slave retainers simply for reasons of status, as tokens of their magnificence and nothing else.<br /> <br /> It seems to me that this is precisely what gives honor its notoriously fragile quality. Men of honor tend to combine a sense of total ease and self-assurance, which comes with the habit of command, with a notorious jumpiness, a heightened sensitivity to slights and insults, the feeling that a man (and it is almost always a man) is somehow reduced, humiliated, if any &quot;debt of honor&quot; is allowed to go unpaid. This is because honor is not the same as dignity. One might even say: honor is surplus dignity. It is that heightened consciousness of power, and its dangers, that comes from having stripped away the power and dignity of others; or at the very least, from the knowledge that one is capable of doing so. At its simplest, honor is that excess dignity that must be defended with the knife or sword (violent men, as we all know, are almost invariably obsessed with honor). Hence the warrior's ethos, where almost anything that could possibly be seen as a sign of disrespect-in inappropriate word, an inappropriate glance--is considered a challenge, or can be treated as such. Yet even where overt violence has largely been put out of the picture, wherever honor Is at issue, it comes with a sense that dignity can be lost, and therefore must be constantly defended.<br /> <br /> The result is that to this day, &quot;honor&quot; has two contradictory meanings. On the one hand, we can speak of honor as simple integrity. Decent people honor their commitments. This is clearly what &quot;honor&quot; meant for Equiano: to be an honorable man meant to be one who speaks the truth, obeys the law, keeps his promises, is fair and conscientious in his commercial dealings.&lt;sup&gt;0&lt;/sup&gt; His problem was that honor simultaneously meant something else, which had everything to do with the kind of violence required to reduce human beings to commodities to begin with.<br /> <br /> The reader might be asking: But what does all this have to do with the origins of money? The answer is, surprisingly: everything. Some of the most genuinely archaic forms of money we know about appear to have been used precisely as measures of honor and degradation: that is, the value of money was, ultimately, the value of the power to turn others into money. The curious puzzle of the cumal-the slave-girl money of medieval Ireland-would appear to be a dramatic illustration.<br /> <br /> === Honor Price (Early Medieval Ireland) ===<br /> For much of its early history, Ireland's situation was not very different than that in many of the African societies we looked at in the end of the last chapter. It was a human economy perched uncomfortably on the fringe of an expanding commercial one. What's more, at certain periods there was a very lively slave trade. As one historian put it, &quot;Ireland has no mineral wealth, and foreign luxury goods could be bought by Irish kings mainly for two export goods, cattle and people. &quot;14 Hardly surprising, perhaps, that cattle and people were the two major denominations of the currency. Still,-by the time our earliest records kick in, around 6ooAD, the slave trade appears to have died off, and slavery itself was a waning institution, coming under severe disapproval from the ChurchY Why, then, were cumal still being used as units of account, to tally up debts that were actually paid out in cows, and in cups and brooches and other objects made of silver, or, in the case of minor transactions, sacks of wheat or oats? And there's an even more obvious question: Why women? There were plenty of male slaves in early Ireland, yet no one seems ever to have used them as money.<br /> <br /> Most of what we know about the economy of early Medieval Ireland comes from legal sources-a series of law codes, drawn up by a powerful class of jurists, dating roughly from the seventh to ninth centuries '''AD.''' These, however, are exceptionally rich. Ireland at that time was still very much a human economy. It was also a very rural one: people lived in scattered homesteads, not unlike the Tiv, growing wheat and tending cattle. The closest there were to towns were a few concentrations around monasteries. There appears to have been a near total absence of markets, except for a few on the coast-presumably, mainly slave or cattle markets-frequented by foreign ships.16<br /> <br /> As a result, money was employed almost exclusively for social purposes: gifts; fees to craftsmen, doctors, poets, judges, and entertainers; various feudal payments (lords gave gifts of cattle to clients who then had to regularly supply them with food). The authors of the law codes didn't even know how to put a price on most goods of ordinary use--pitchers, pillows, chisels, slabs of bacon, and the like; no one seems ever to have paid money for them.17 Food was shared in families or delivered to feudal superiors, who laid it out in sumptuous feasts for friends, rivals, and retainers. Anyone needing a tool or furniture or clothing either went to a kinsman with the relevant craft skills or paid someone to make it. The objects themselves were not for sale. Kings, in turn, assigned tasks to different clans: this one was to provide them with leather, this one poets, this one shields ... precisely the sort of unwieldy arrangement that markets were later developed to get around.18<br /> <br /> Money could be loaned. There was a highly complex system of pledges and sureties to guarantee that debtors delivered what they owed. Mainly, though, it was used for paying fines. These fines are endlessly and meticulously elaborated in the codes, but what really strikes the contemporary observer is that they were carefully graded by rank. This is true of almost all the &quot;Barbarian Law Codes &quot;-the size of the penalties usually has at least as much do with the status of the victim as it does with the nature of the injury-but only in Ireland were things mapped out quite so systematically.<br /> <br /> The key to the system was a notion of honor: literally &quot;face.&quot;19 One's honor was the esteem one had in the eyes of others, one's honesty, integrity, and character, but also one's power, in the sense of the ability to protect oneself, and one's family and followers, from any sort of degradation or insult. Those who had the highest degree of honor were literally sacred beings: their persons and possessions were sacrosanct. What was so unusual about Celtic systems-and the Irish one went further with this than any other-was that honor could be precisely quantified. Every free person had his or her &quot;honor price&quot;: the price that one had to pay for an insult to the person's dignity. These varied. The honor price of a king, for instance, was seven cumal, or seven slave girls-this was the standard honor price for any sacred being, the same as a bishop or master poet. Since (as all sources hasten to point out) slave girls were not normally paid as such, this would mean, in the case of an insult to such a person's dignity, one would have to pay twenty-one milk cows or twenty-one ounces of silver.20 The honor price of a wealthy peasant was two and a half cows, of a minor lord, that, plus half a cow additionally for each of his free dependents-and since a lord, to remain a lord, had to have at least five of these, that brought him up to at least five cows total.21<br /> <br /> Honor price is not to be confused with wergeld-the actual price of a man or woman's life. If one killed a man, one paid goods to the value of seven cumals, in recompense for killing him, to which one then added his honor price, for having offended against his dignity (by killing him). Interestingly, only in the case of a king are the blood price and his honor price the same.<br /> <br /> There were also payments for injury: if one wounds a man's cheek, one pays his honor price plus the price of the injury. (A blow to the face was, for obvious reasons, particularly egregious.) The problem was how to calculate the injury, since this varied according to both the physical damage and status of the injured party. Here, Irish jurists developed the ingenious expedient of measuring different wounds with different varieties of grain: a cut on the king's cheek was measured in grains of wheat, on that of a substantial farmer in oats, on that of a smallholder merely in peas. One cow was paid for each.U Similarly, if one stole, say, a man's brooch or pig, one had to pay back three brooches or three pigs-plus his honor price, for having violated the sanctity of his homestead. Attacking a peasant under the protection of a lord was the same as raping a man's wife or daughter, a violation of the honor not of the victim, but of the man who should have been able to protect them.<br /> <br /> Finally, one had to pay the honor price if one simply insulted someone of any importance: say, by turning the person away at a feast, inventing a particularly embarrassing nickname (at least, if it caught on), or humiliating the person through the use of satire. Mockery was a refined art in Medieval Ireland, and poets were considered close to magicians: it was said that a talented satirist could rhyme rats to death, or at the very least, raise blisters on the faces of victims. Any man publicly mocked would have no choice but to defend his honor; and, in Medieval Ireland, the value of that honor was precisely defined.<br /> <br /> I should note that while twenty-one cows might not seem like much when we are dealing with kings, Ireland at the time had about 150 kings.24 Most had only a couple of thousand subjects, though there were also higher-ranking, provincial kings for whom the honor price was double.25 What's more, since the legal system was completely separate from the political one, jurists, in theory, had the right the demote anyone-including a king-who had committed a dishonorable act. If a nobleman turned a worthy man away from his door or feast, sheltered a fugitive, or ate steak from an obviously stolen cow, or even if he allowed himself to be satirized and did not take the offending poet to court, his price could be lowered to that of a commoner. But the same was true of a king who ran away in battle, or abused his powers, or even was caught working in the fields or otherwise engaging in tasks beneath his dignity. A king who did something utterly outrageous-murdered one of his own relatives, for example-might end up with no honor price at all, which meant not that people could say anything they liked about the king, without fear of recompense, but that he couldn't stand as surety or witness in court, as one's oath and standing in law was also determined by one's honor price. This didn't happen often, but it did happen, and legal wisdom made sure to remind people of it: the list, contained in one famous legal text, of the &quot;seven kings who lost their honor price,&quot; was meant to ensure that everyone remembered that no matter how sacred and powerful, anyone could fall.<br /> <br /> What's unusual about the Irish material is that it's all spelled out so clearly. This is partly because Irish law codes were the work of a class of legal specialists who seem to have turned the whole thing almost into a form of entertainment, devoting endless hours to coming up with every possible abstract possibility. Some of the provisos are so whimsical (&quot;if stung by another man's bee, one must calculate the extent of the injury, but also, if one swatted it in the process, subtract the replacement value of the bee&quot;) that one has to assume they were simply jokes. Still, as a result, the moral logic that lies behind any elaborate code of honor is laid out here in startling honesty. What about women? A free woman was honored at precisely so percent of the price of her nearest male relative (her father, if alive; if not, her husband). If she was dishonored, her price was payable to that relative. Unless, that is, she was an independent landholder. In that case, her honor price was the same as that of a man. And unless she was a woman of easy virtue, in which case it was zero, since she had no honor to outrage. What about marriage? A suitor paid the value of the wife's honor to her father and thus became its guardian. What about serfs? The same principle applied: when a lord acquired a serf, he bought out that man's honor price, presenting him with its equivalent in cows. From that moment on, if anyone insulted or injured the serf, it was seen an attack on the lord's honor, and it was up to the lord to collect the attendant fees. Meanwhile the lord's honor price was notched upward as a result of gathering another dependent: in other words, he literally absorbs his new vassal's honor into his own.26<br /> <br /> All this, in turn, makes it possible to understand both something of the nature of honor, and why slave girls were kept as units for reckoning debts of honor even at a time when-owing no doubt to church influence-they no longer actually changed hands. At first sight it might seem strange that the honor of a nobleman or king should be measured in slaves, since slaves were human beings whose honor was zero. But if one's honor is ultimately founded on one's ability to extract the honor of others, it makes perfect sense. The value of a slave is that of the honor that has been extracted from them.<br /> <br /> Sometimes, one comes on a single haphazard detail that gives the game away. In this case it comes not from Ireland but from the Dimetian Code in Wales, written somewhat later but operating on much the same principles. At one point, after listing the honors due to the seven holy sees of the Kingdom of Dyfed, whose bishops and abbots were the most exalted and sacred creatures in the kingdom, the text specifies that<br /> <br /> Whoever draws blood from an abbot of any one of those principal seats before mentioned, let him pay seven pounds; and a female of his kindred to be a washerwoman, as a disgrace to the kindred, and to serve as a memorial to the payment of the honor priceY<br /> <br /> A washerwoman was the lowest of servants, and the one turned over in this case was to serve for life. She was, in effect, reduced to slavery. Her permanent disgrace was the restoration of the abbot's honor. While we cannot know if some similar institution once lay behind the habit of reckoning the honor of Irish &quot;sacred&quot; beings in slavewomen, the principle is clearly the same. Honor is a zero-sum game. A man's ability to protect the women of his family is an essential part of that honor. Therefore, forcing him to surrender a woman of his family to perform menial and degrading chores in another's household is the ultimate blow to his honor. This, in turn, makes it the ultimate reaffirmation of the honor of he who takes it away.<br /> <br /> <br /> What makes Medieval Irish laws seem so peculiar from our perspective is that their exponents had not the slightest discomfort with putting an exact monetary price on human dignity. For us, the notion that the sanctity of a priest or the majesty of a king could be held equivalent to a million fried eggs or a hundred thousand haircuts is simply bizarre. These are precisely the things that ought to be considered beyond all possibility of quantification. If Medieval Irish jurists felt otherwise, it was because people at that time did not use money to buy eggs or haircuts.28 It was the fact that it was still a human economy, in which money was used for social purposes, that it was possible to create such an intricate system whereby it was possible not just to measure but to add and subtract specific quantities of human dignity-and in doing so, provide us with a unique window into the true nature of honor itself.<br /> <br /> The obvious question is: What happens to such an economy when people do begin to use the same money used to measure dignity to buy eggs and haircuts? As the history of ancient Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean world reveals, the result was a profound-and enduring-moral crisis.<br /> <br /> === Mesopotamia (The Origins of Patriarchy) ===<br /> In ancient Greek, the word for &quot;honor&quot; was tfme. In Homer's time, the term appears to have been used much like the Irish term &quot;honor price&quot;: it referred both to the glory of the warrior and the compensation paid as damages in case of injury or insult. Yet with the rise of markets over the next several centuries, the meaning of the word tfme began to change. On the one hand, it became the word for &quot;price&quot;-as in, the price of something one buys in the market. On the other, it referred to an attitude of complete contempt for markets.<br /> <br /> Actually, this is still the case today:<br /> <br /> In Greece the word &quot;timi&quot; means honor, which has been typically seen as the most important value in Greek village society. Honor is often characterized in Greece as an open-handed generosity and blatant disregard for monetary costs and counting. And yet the same word also means &quot;price&quot; as in the price of a pound of tomatoes.29<br /> <br /> The word &quot;crisis&quot; literally refers to a crossroads: it is the point where things could go either of two different ways. The odd thing about the crisis in the concept of honor is that it never seems to have been resolved. Is honor the willingness to pay one's monetary debts? Or is it the fact that one does not feel that monetary debts are really that important? It appears to be both at the same time.<br /> <br /> There's also the question of what men of honor actually do think is important. When most of us think of a Mediterranean villager's sense of honor, we don't think so much of a casual attitude toward money as of a veritable obsession with premarital virginity. Masculine honor is caught up not even so much in a man's ability to protect his womenfolk as in his ability to protect their sexual reputations, to respond to any suggestion of impropriety on the part of his mother, wife, sister, or daughter as if it were a direct physical attack on his own person. This is a stereotype, but it's not entirely unjustified. One historian who went through fifty years of police reports about knife-fights in nineteenth-century Ionia discovered that virtually every one of them began when one party publicly suggested that the other's wife or sister was a whore.30<br /> <br /> So, why the sudden obsession with sexual propriety? It doesn't seem to be there in the Welsh or Irish material. There, the greatest humiliation was to see your sister or daughter reduced to scrubbing someone else's laundry. What is it, then, about the rise of money and markets that cause so many men to become so uneasy about sex?31<br /> <br /> This is a difficult question, but at the very least, one can imagine how the transition from a human economy to a commercial one might cause certain moral dilemmas. What happens, for instance, when the same money once used to arrange marriages and settle affairs of honor can also be used to pay for the services of prostitutes?<br /> <br /> As we'll see, there is reason to believe that it is in such moral crises that we can find the origin not only of our current conceptions of honor, but of patriarchy itself. This is true, at least, if we define &quot;patriarchy&quot; in its more specific Biblical sense: the rule of fathers, with all the familiar images of stern bearded men in robes, keeping a close eye over their sequestered wives and daughters, even as their children kept a close eye over their flocks and herds, familiar from the book of Genesis.32 Readers of the Bible had always assumed that there was something primordial in all this; that this was simply the way desert people, and thus the earliest inhabitants of the Near East, had always behaved. This was why the translation of Sumerian, in the first half of the twentieth century, came as something of a shock.<br /> <br /> In the very earliest Sumerian texts, particularly those from roughly 3000 to 2500 Be, women are everywhere. Early histories not only record the names of numerous female rulers, but make clear that women were well represented among the ranks of doctors, merchants, scribes, and public officials, and generally free to take part in all aspects of public life. One cannot speak of full gender equality: men still outnumbered women in all these areas. Still, one gets the sense of a society not so different than that which prevails in much of the developed world today. Over the course of the next thousand years or so, all this changes. The place of women in civic life erodes; gradually, the more familiar patriarchal pattern takes shape, with its emphasis on chastity and premarital virginity, a weakening and eventually wholesale disappearance of women's role in government and the liberal professions, and the loss of women's independent legal status, which renders them wards of their husbands. By the end of the Bronze Age, around noo BC, we begin to see large numbers of women sequestered away in harems and (in some places, at least), subjected to obligatory veiling.<br /> <br /> In fact, this appears to reflect a much broader worldwide pattern. It has always been something of a scandal for those who like to see the advance of science and technology, the accumulation of learning, economic growth-&quot;human progress,&quot; as we like to call it-as necessarily leading to greater human freedom, that for women, the exact opposite often seems to be the case. Or at least, has been the case until very recent times. A similar gradual restriction on women's freedoms can be observed in India and China. The question is, obviously, Why? The standard explanation in the Sumerian case has been the gradual infiltration of pastoralists from the surrounding deserts who, presumably, always had more patriarchal mores. There was, after all, only a narrow strip of land along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that could support intensive irrigation works, and hence, urban life. Civilization was thus from early times surrounded by a fringe of desert people, who lived much like those described in Genesis and spoke the same Semitic languages. It is undeniably true that, over the course of time, the Sumerian language was gradually replaced-first by Akkadian, then by Amorite, then by Aramaic languages, and finally, most recently of all, by Arabic, which was also brought to Mesopotamia and the Levant by desert pastoralists. While all this did, clearly, bring with it profound cultural changes as well, it's not a particularly satisfying explanation.33 Former nomads appear to have been willing to adapt to urban life in any number of other ways. Why not that one? And it's very much a local explanation and does nothing, really, to explain the broader pattern. Feminist scholarship has instead tended to emphasize the growing scale and social importance of war, and the increasing centralization of the state that accompanied it.34 This is more convincing. Certainly, the more militaristic the state, the harsher its laws tended to be toward women. But I would add another, complementary argument. As I have emphasized, historically, war, states, and markets all tend to feed off one another. Conquest leads to taxes. Taxes tend to be ways to create markets, which are convenient for soldiers and administrators. In the specific case of Mesopotamia, all of this took on a complicated relation to an explosion of debt that threatened to turn all human relationsand by extension, women's bodies-into potential commodities. At the same time, it created a horrified reaction on the part of the (male) winners of the economic game, who over time felt forced to go to greater and greater lengths to make clear that their women could in no sense be bought or sold.<br /> <br /> A glance at the existing material on Mesopotamian marriage gives us a clue as to how this might have happened.<br /> <br /> It is common anthropological wisdom that bridewealth tends to be typical of situations where population is relatively thin, land not a particularly scarce resource, and therefore, politics are all about controlling labor. Where population is dense and land at a premium, one tends to instead find dowry: adding a woman to the household is adding another mouth to feed, and rather than being paid off, a bride's father is expected to contribute something (land, wealth, money ...) to help support his daughter in her new home.35 In Sumerian times, for instance, the main payment at marriage was a huge gift of food paid by the groom's father to the bride's, destined to provide a sumptuous feast for the wedding.36 Before long, however, this seems to have split into two payments, one for the wedding, another to the woman's father, calculated-and often paid-in silver.37 Wealthy women sometimes appear to have ended up with the money: at least, many appear to have to worn silver arm and leg rings of identical denominations.<br /> <br /> However as time went on, this payment, called the terhatum, often began to take on the qualities of a simple purchase. It was referred to as &quot;the price of a virgin &quot;-not a mere metaphor, since the illegal deflowering of a virgin was considered a property crime against her father.38 Marriage was referred to as &quot;taking possession&quot; of a woman, the same word one would use for the seizure of goods.39 In principle, a wife, once possessed, owed her husbands strict obedience, and often could not seek a divorce even in cases of physical abuse.<br /> <br /> For women with wealthy or powerful parents, all this remained largely a matter of principle, modified considerably in practice. Merchants' daughters, for example, typically received substantial cash dowries, with which they could go into business in their own right, or act as partners to their husbands. However, for the poor-that is, most people-marriage came more and more to resemble a simple cash transaction.<br /> <br /> Some of this must have been an effect of slavery: while actual slaves were rarely numerous, the very existence of a class of people with no kin, who were simply commodities, did make a difference. In Nuzi, for instance, &quot;the brideprice was paid in domestic animals and silver amounting to a total value of 40 shekels of silver&quot;'-to which the author drily adds, &quot;there is some evidence that it was equal to the price of a slave girl. &quot;40 This must have been making things uncomfortably obvious. It's in Nuzi, too, where we happen to have unusually detailed records, that we find examples of rich men paying cut-rate &quot;brideprice&quot; to impoverished families to acquire a daughter who they would then adopt, but who would in fact be either kept as a concubine or nursemaid, or married to one of their slaves.41<br /> <br /> Still, the really critical factor here was debt. As I pointed out in the last chapter, anthropologists have long emphasized that paying bridewealth is not the same as buying a wife. After all-and this was one of the clinching arguments, remember, in the original 1930s League of Nations debate-if a man were really buying a woman, wouldn't he also be able to sell her? Clearly African and Melanesian husbands were not able to sell their wives to some third party. At most, they could send them home and demand back their bridewealth.42<br /> <br /> A Mesopotamian husband couldn't sell his wife either. Or, normally he couldn't. Still, everything changed the moment he took out a loan. Since if he did, it was perfectly legal-as we've seen-to use his wife and children as surety, and if he was unable to pay, they could then be taken away as debt pawns in exactly the same way that he could lose his slaves, sheep, and goats. What this also meant was that honor and credit became, effectively, the same thing: at least for a poor man, one's creditworthiness was precisely one's command over one's household, and (the flip side, as it were) relations of domestic authority, relations that in principle meant ones of care and protection, became property rights that could indeed be bought and sold.<br /> <br /> Again, for the poor, this meant that family members became commodities that could be rented or sold. Not only could one dispose of daughters as &quot;brides&quot; to work in rich men's households, tablets in Nuzi show that one could now hire out family members simply by taking out a loan: there are recorded cases of men sending their sons or even wives as &quot;pawns&quot; for loans that were clearly just advance payment for employment in the lender's farm or cloth workshop.43<br /> <br /> The most dramatic and enduring crisis centered on prostitution. It's actually not entirely clear, from the earliest sources, whether one can speak here of &quot;prostitution&quot; at all. Sumerian temples do often appear to have hosted a variety of sexual activities. Some priestesses, for instance, were considered to be married to or otherwise dedicated to gods. What this meant in practice seems to have varied considerably. Much as in the case of the later devadasis, or &quot;temple dancers&quot; of Hindu India, some remained celibate; others were permitted to marry but were not to bear children; others were apparently expected to find wealthy patrons, becoming in effect courtesans to the elite. Still others lived in the temples and had the responsibility to make themselves sexually available to worshippers on certain ritual occasions.44 One thing the early texts do make clear is that all such women were considered extraordinarily important. In a very real sense, they were the ultimate embodiments of civilization. After all, the entire machinery of the Sumerian economy ostensibly existed to support the temples, which were considered the households of the gods. As such, they represented the ultimate possible refinement in everything from music and dance to art, cuisine, and graciousness of living. Temple priestesses and spouses of the gods were the highest human incarnations of this perfect life.<br /> <br /> It's also important to emphasize that Sumerian men do not appear, at least in this earliest period, to have seen anything troubling about the idea of their sisters having sex for money. To the contrary, insofar as prostitution did occur (and remember, it could not have been nearly so impersonal, cold-cash a relation in a credit economy), Sumerian religious texts identify it as among the fundamental features of human civilization, a gift given by the gods at the dawn of time. Procreative sex was considered natural (after all, animals did it). Non-procreative sex, sex for pleasure, was divine.45<br /> <br /> The most famous expression of this identification of prostitute and civilization can be found in the story of Enkidu in the epic of Gilgamesh. In the beginning of the story, Enkidu is a monster-a naked and ferocious &quot;wild man&quot; who grazes with the gazelles, drinks at the watering place with wild cattle, and terrorizes the people of the city. Unable to defeat him, the citizens finally send out a courtesan who is also a priestess of the goddess Ishtar. She strips before him, and they make love for six days and seven nights. Afterward, Enkidu's former animal companions run away from him. After she explains that he has now learned wisdom and become like a God (she is, after all, a divine consort), he agrees to put on clothing and come to live in the city like a proper, civilized hu.man being.46<br /> <br /> Already, in the earliest version of the Enkidu story, though, one can detect a certain ambivalence. Much later, Enkidu is sentenced to death by the gods, and his immediate reaction is to condemn the courtesan for having brought him from the wilds in the first place: he curses her to become a common streetwalker or tavern keeper, living among vomiting drunks, abused and beaten by her clients. Then, later, he regrets his behavior and blesses her instead. But that trace of ambivalence was there from the beginning, and over time, it grew more powerful. From early times, Sumerian and Babylonian temple complexes were surrounded by far less glamorous providers of sexual services-indeed, by the time we know much about them, they were the center of veritable red-light districts full of taverns with dancing girls, men in drag (some of them slaves, some runaways), and an almost infinite variety of prostitutes. There is an endlessly elaborate terminology whose subtleties are long since lost to us. Most seem to have doubled as entertainers: tavern-keepers doubled as musicians; male transvestites were not only singers and dancers, but often performed knife-throwing acts. Many were slaves put to work by their masters, or women working off religious vows or debts, or debt bondswomen, or, for that matter, women escaping debt bondage with no place else to go. Over time, many of the lower-ranking temple women were either bought as slaves or debt peons as well, and there might have often been a blurring of roles between priestesses who performed erotic rituals and prostitutes owned by the temple (and hence, in principle, by the god), sometimes lodged within the temple compound itself, whose earnings added to the temple treasuries.47 Since most everyday transactions in Mesopotamia were not cash transactions, once has to assume that it was the same with prostitutes-like the tavern-keepers, many of whom seem to have been former prostitutes, they developed ongoing credit relations with their clients-and this must have meant that most were less like what we think of as streetwalkers and more like courtesans.4&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; Still, the origins of commercial prostitution appear to have been caught up in a peculiar mixture of sacred (or once-sacred) practice, commerce, slavery, and debt.<br /> <br /> <br /> &quot;Patriarchy&quot; originated, first and foremost, in a rejection of the great urban civilizations in the name of a kind of purity, a reassertion of paternal control against great cities like Uruk, Lagash, and Babylon, seen as places of bureaucrats, traders, and whores. The pastoral fringes, the deserts and steppes away from the river valleys, were the places to which displaced, indebted farmers fled. Resistance, in the ancient Middle East, was always less a politics of rebellion than a politics of exodus, of melting away with one's flocks and families-often before both were taken away.49 There were always tribal peoples living on the fringes. During good times, they began to take to the cities; in hard times, their numbers swelled with refugees-farmers who effectively became Enkidu once again. Then, periodically, they would create their own alliances and sweep back into the cities once again as conquerors. It's difficult to say precisely how they imagined their situation, because it's only in the Old Testament, written on the other side of the Fertile Crescent, that one has any record of the pastoral rebels' points of view. But nothing there mitigates against the suggestion that the extraordinary emphasis we find there on the absolute authority of fathers, and the jealous protection of their fickle womenfolk, were made possible by, but at the same time a protest against, this very commoditization of people in the cities that they fled.<br /> <br /> The world's Holy Books-the Old and New Testaments, the Koran, religious literature from the Middle Ages to this day-echo this voice of rebellion, combining contempt for the corrupt urban life, suspicion of the merchant, and often, intense misogyny. One need only think of the image of Babylon itself, which has become permanently lodged in the collective imagination as not only the cradle of civilization, but also the Place of Whores. Herodotus echoed popular Greek fantasies when he claimed that every Babylonian maiden was obliged to prostitute herself at the temple, so as to raise the money for her dowry.50 In the New Testament, Saint Peter often referred to Rome as &quot;Babylon, &quot; and the Book of Revelation provides perhaps the most vivid image of what he meant by this when it speaks of Babylon, &quot;the great whore,&quot; sitting &quot;upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy&quot;:<br /> <br /> And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:<br /> <br /> ITS And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.&lt;sup&gt;51&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Such is the voice of patriarchal hatred of the city, and of the angry millennial voices of the fathers of the ancient poor.<br /> <br /> Patriarchy as we know it seems to have taken shape in a see-sawing battle between the newfound elites and newly dispossessed. Much of my own analysis here is inspired by the brilliant work of feminist historian Gerda Lerner, who, in an essay on the origins of prostitution, observed:<br /> <br /> Another source for commercial prostitution was the pauperization of farmers and their increasing dependence on loans in order to survive periods of famine, which led to debt slavery. Children of both sexes were given up for debt pledges or sold for &quot;adoption.&quot; Out of such practices, the prostitution of female family members for the benefit of the head of the family could readily develop. Women might end up as prostitutes because their parents had to sell them into slavery or because their impoverished husbands might so use them. Or they might become self-employed as a last alternative to enslavement. With luck, they might in this profession be upwardly mobile through becoming concubines.<br /> <br /> By the middle of the second millennium B.C., prostitution was well established as a likely occupation for the daughters of the poor. As the sexual regulation of women of the propertied class became more firmly entrenched, the virginity of respectable daughters became a financial asset for the family. Thus, commercial prostitution came to be seen as a social necessity for meeting the sexual needs of men. What remained problematic was how to distinguish clearly and permanently between respectable and non-respectable women.<br /> <br /> This last point is crucial. The most dramatic known attempt to solve the problem, Lerner observes, can be found in a Middle Assyrian law code dating from somewhere between 1400 and rroo BC, which is also the first known reference to veiling in the history of the Middle East-and also, Lerner emphasizes, first to make the policing of social boundaries the responsibility of the state.52 It is not surprising that this takes place under the authority of perhaps the most notoriously militaristic state in the entire ancient Middle East.<br /> <br /> The code carefully distinguishes among five classes of women. Respectable women (either married ladies or concubines), widows, and daughters of free Assyrian men-&quot;must veil themselves&quot; when they go out on the street. Prostitutes and slaves (and prostitutes are now considered to include unmarried temple servants as well as simple harlots) are not allowed to wear veils. The remarkable thing about the laws is<br /> <br /> that the punishments specified in the code are not directed at respectable women who do not wear veils, but against prostitutes and slaves who do. The prostitute was to be publicly beaten fifty times with staves and have pitch poured on her head; the slave girl was to have her ears cut off. Free men proven to have knowingly abetted an impostor would also be thrashed and put to a month's forced labor.<br /> <br /> Presumably in the case of respectable women, the law was assumed to be self-enforcing: as what respectable woman would wish to go out on the street in the guise of a prostitute?<br /> <br /> When we refer to &quot;respectable&quot; women, then, we are referring to those whose bodies could not, under any conditions, be bought or sold. Their physical persons were hidden away and permanently relegated to some man's domestic sphere; when they appeared in public veiled, they were effectively still ostentatiously walking around, even in public, inside such a sphere.53 Women who could be exchanged for money, on the other hand, must be instantly recognizable as such.<br /> <br /> The Assyrian law code is one isolated instance; veils certainly did not become obligatory everywhere after 1300 '''BC.''' But it provides a window on developments that were happening, however unevenly, even spasmodically, across the region, propelled by the intersection of commerce, class, defiant assertions of male honor, and the constant threat of the defection of the poor. States seem to have played a complex dual role, simultaneously fostering commoditization and intervening to ameliorate its effects: enforcing the laws of debt and rights of fathers, and offering periodic amnesties. But the dynamic also led, over the course of millennia, to a systematic demotion of sexuality itself from a divine gift and embodiment of civilized refinement to one of its more familiar associations: with degradation, corruption, and guilt.<br /> <br /> <br /> Here I think we have the explanation for that general decline of women's freedoms that may be observed in all the great urban civilizations for so much of their history. In all of them, similar things were happening, even if in each case, the pieces came together in different ways.<br /> <br /> The history of China, for instance, saw continual and largely unsuccessful government campaigns to eradicate both brideprice and debt slavery, and periodic scandals over the existence of &quot;markets in daughters,&quot; including the outright sale of girls as daughters, wives, concubines, or prostitutes (at the buyer's discretion) continue to this day.54 In India, the caste system allowed what were otherwise differences between rich and poor to be made formal and explicit. Brahmins and other members of the upper castes jealously sequestered their daughters, and married them off with lavish dowries, while the lower castes practiced brideprice, allowing members of the higher (&quot;twice-born &quot;) castes to scoff at them for selling their daughters. The twice-born were likewise largely protected from falling into debt bondage, while for much of the rural poor, debt dependency was institutionalized, with the daughters of poor debtors, predictably, often dispatched to brothels or to the kitchens or laundries of the rich.55 In either case, between the push of commoditization, which fell disproportionally on daughters, and the pull of those trying to reassert patriarchal rights to &quot;protect&quot; women from any suggestion that they might be commoditized, women's formal and practical freedoms appear to have been gradually but increasingly restricted and effaced. As a result, notions of honor changed too, becoming a kind of protest against the implications of the market, even as at the same time (like the world religions) they came to echo that market logic in endless subtle ways.<br /> <br /> Nowhere, however, are our sources as rich and detailed as they are for ancient Greece. This is partly because a commercial economy arrived there so late, almost three thousand years later than in Sumer. As a result, Classical Greek literature gives us a unique opportunity to observe the transformation as it was actually taking place.<br /> <br /> === Ancient Greece (Honor and Debt) ===<br /> The world of the Homeric epics is one dominated by heroic warriors who are disdainful of trade. In many ways, it is strikingly reminiscent of medieval Ireland. Money existed, but it was not used to buy anything; important men lived their lives in pursuit of honor, which took material form in followers and treasure. Treasures were given as gifts, awarded as prizes, carried off as loot.56 This is no doubt how tfme first came to mean both &quot;honor&quot; and &quot;price&quot;-in such a world, no one sensed any sort of contradiction between the two.57<br /> <br /> All this was to change dramatically when commercial markets began to develop two hundred years later. Greek coinage seem to have been first used mainly to pay soldiers, as well as to pay fines and fees and payments made to and by the government, but by about 6oo BC, just about every Greek city-state was producing its own coins as a mark of civic independence. It did not take long, though, before coins were in common use in everyday transactions. By the fifth century, in Greek cities, the agora, the place of public debate and communal assembly, also doubled as a marketplace.<br /> <br /> One of the first effects of the arrival of a commercial economy was a series of debt crises, of the sort long familiar from Mesopotamia and Israel. &quot;The poor,&quot; as Aristotle succinctly put it in his Constitution of the Athenians, &quot;together with their wives and children, were enslaved to the rich. &quot;58 Revolutionary factions emerged, demanding amnesties, and most Greek cities were at least for a while taken over by populist strongmen swept into power partly by the demand for radical debt relief. The solution most cities ultimately found, however, was quite different than it had been in the Near East. Rather than institutionalize periodic amnesties, Greek cities tended to adopt legislation limiting or abolishing debt peonage altogether, and then, to forestall future crises, they would turn to a policy of expansion, shipping off the children of the poor to found military colonies overseas. Before long, the entire coast from Crimea to Marseille was dotted with Greek cities, which served, in turn, as conduits for a lively trade in slaves.59 The sudden abundance of chattel slaves, in turn, completely transformed the nature of Greek society. First and most famously, it allowed even citizens of modest means to take part in the political and cultural life of the city and have a genuine sense of citizenship. But this, in turn, drove the old aristocratic classes to develop more and more elaborate means of setting themselves off from what they considered the tawdriness and moral corruption of the new democratic state.<br /> <br /> When the curtain truly goes up on Greece, in the fifth century, we find everybody arguing about money. For the aristocrats, who wrote most of the surviving texts, money was the embodiment of corruption. Aristocrats disdained the market. Ideally, a man of honor should be able to raise everything he needed on his own estates, and never have to handle cash at all.60 In practice, they knew this was impossible. Yet at every point they tried to set themselves apart from the values of the ordinary denizens of the marketplace: to contrast the beautiful gold and silver beakers and tripods they gave one another at funerals and weddings with the vulgar hawking of sausages or charcoal; the dignity of the athletic contests for which they endlessly trained with commoners' vulgar gambling; the sophisticated and literate courtesans who attended to them at their drinking clubs, and common prostitutes (porne)-slave-girls housed in brothels near the agora, brothels often sponsored by the democratic polis itself as a service to the sexual needs of its male citizenry. In each case, they placed a world of gifts, generosity, and honor above sordid commercial exchange.6&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> This resulted in a slightly different play of push and pull than we saw in Mesopotamia. On the one hand, we see a culture of aristocratic protest against what they saw as the lowly commercial sensibilities of ordinary citizens. On the other hand, we see an almost schizophrenic reaction on the part of the ordinary citizens themselves, who simultaneously tried to limit or even ban aspects of aristocratic culture and to imitate aristocratic sensibilities. Pederasty is an excellent case in point here. On the one hand, man-boy love was seen as the quintessential aristocratic practice-it was the way, in fact, that young aristocrats would ordinarily become initiated into the privileges of high society. As a result, the democratic polis saw it as politically subversive and made sexual relations between male citizens illegal. At the same time, almost everyone began to practice it.<br /> <br /> The famous Greek obsession with male honor that still informs so much of the texture of daily life in rural communities in Greece hearkens back not so much to Homeric honor but to this aristocratic rebellion against the values of the marketplace, which everyone, eventually, began to make their own.62 The effects on women, though, were even more severe than they had been in the Middle East. Already by the age of Socrates, while a man's honor was increasingly tied to disdain for commerce and assertiveness in public life, a woman's honor had come to be defined in almost exclusively sexual terms: as a matter of virginity, modesty, and chastity, to the extent that respectable women were expected to be shut up inside the household and any woman who played a part in public life was considered for that reason a prostitute, or tantamount to oneY The Assyrian habit of veiling was not widely adopted in the Middle East, but it '''was''' adopted in Greece. As much as it flies in the face of our stereotypes about the origins of &quot;Western&quot; freedoms, women in democratic Athens, unlike those of Persia or Syria, were expected to wear veils when they ventured out in public.64<br /> <br /> <br /> Money, then, had passed from a measure of honor to a measure of everything that honor was not. To suggest that a man's honor could be bought with money became a terrible insult-this despite the fact that, since men were often taken in war or even by bandits or pirates and held for ransom, they often did go through dramas of bondage and redemption not unlike those experienced by so many Middle Eastern women. One particularly striking way of hammering it home-actually, in this case, almost literally-was by branding ransomed prisoners with the mark of their own currency, much as if today some imaginary foreign kidnapper, after having received the ransom money for an American victim, made a point of burning a dollar sign onto the victim's forehead before returning him.65<br /> <br /> One question that isn't clear from all this is, Why? Why had money, in particular, become such a symbol of degradation? Was it all because of slavery? One might be tempted to conclude that it was: perhaps the newfound presence of thousands of utterly degraded human beings in ancient Greek cities made any suggestion that a free man (let alone a free woman) might in any sense be bought or sold particularly insulting. But this is clearly not the case. Our discussion of the slave money of Ireland showed that the possibility of the utter degradation of a human being was in no sense a threat to heroic honor-in a way, it was its very essence. Homeric Greeks do not appear to have been any different. It seems hardly coincidental that the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles that sets off the action of the Iliad, generally considered to be the first great work of Western literature, is a dispute over honor between two heroic warriors over the disposition of a slave girl.66 Agamemnon and Achilles were also well aware that it would only take an unfortunate turn in battle, or perhaps a shipwreck, for either of them to wind up as a slave. Odysseus barely escapes being enslaved on several occasions in the Odyssey. Even in the third century AD, the Roman emperor Valerian (253-260 AD), defeated at the Battle of Edessa, was captured and spent the last years of his life as the footstool that the Sassanian emperor Shapur I used to mount his horse. Such were the perils of war. All this was essential to the nature of martial honor. A warrior's honor is his willingness to play a game on which he stakes everything. His grandeur is directly proportional to how far he can fall.<br /> <br /> Was it, then, that the advent of commercial money threw traditional social hierarchies into disarray? Greek aristocrats often spoke this way, but the complaints seem rather disingenuous. Surely it was money that allowed such a polished aristocracy to exist in the first place.67 Rather, the thing that really seemed to bother them about money was simply that they wanted it so much. Since money could be used to buy just about anything, everybody wanted it. That is: it was desirable because it was non-discriminating. One could see how the metaphor of the porne might seem particularly appropriate. A woman &quot;common to the people&quot;-as the poet Archilochos put it-is available to everyone. In principle, we shouldn't be attracted to such an undiscriminating creature. In fact, of course, we are.68 And nothing was both so undiscriminating, and so desirable, as money. True, Greek aristocrats would ordinarily insist that they were not attracted to common porne, and that the courtesans, flute-girls, acrobats, and beautiful boys that frequented their symposia were not really prostitutes at all (though at times they also admitted that they really were), they also struggled with the fact that their own high-minded pursuits, such as chariot-racing, outfitting ships for the navy, and sponsoring tragic dramas, required the exact same coins as the ones used to buy cheap perfume and pies for a fisherman's wife--the only real difference being that their pursuits tended to require a lot more of them.69<br /> <br /> We might say, then, that money introduced a democratization of desire. Insofar as everyone wanted money, everyone, high and low, was pursuing the same promiscuous substance. But even more: increasingly, they did not just want money. They needed it. This was a profound change. In the Homeric world, as in most human economies, we hear almost no discussion of those things considered necessary to human life (food, shelter, clothing) because it is simply assumed that everybody has them. A man with no possessions could, at the very least, become a retainer in some rich man's household. Even slaves had enough to eat?0 Here too, the prostitute was a potent symbol for what had changed, since while some of the denizens of brothels were slaves, others were simply poor; the fact that their basic needs could no longer be taken for granted were precisely what made them submit to others' desires. This extreme fear of dependency on others' whims lies at the basis of the Greek obsession with the self-sufficient household.<br /> <br /> All this lies behind the unusually assiduous efforts of the male citizens of Greek city-states-like the later Romans-to insulate their wives and daughters from both the dangers and the freedoms of the marketplace. Unlike their equivalents in the Middle East, they do not seem to have offered them as debt pawns. Neither, at least in Athens, was it legal for the daughters of free citizens to be employed as prostitutes.71 As a result, respectable women became invisible, largely removed from the high dramas of economic and political life.72 If anyone was enslaved for debt, it was normally the debtor. Even more dramatically, it was ordinarily male citizens who accused one another of prostitution-with Athenian politicians regularly asserting that their rivals, when they were young boys being plied with gifts from their male suitors, were really trading sex for money, and hence deserved to lose their civic freedoms.71<br /> <br /> <br /> It might be helpful here, to return to the principles laid out in chapter five. What we see above all is the erosion both of older forms of hierarchy-the Homeric world of great men with their retainers-and, at the same time, of older forms of mutual aid, with communistic relations increasingly being confined to the interior of the household.<br /> <br /> It's the former-the erosion of hierarchy-that really seems to have been at stake in the &quot;debt crises&quot; that struck so many Greek cities around 6oo '''BC,''' right around the time that commercial markets were first taking shape.74 When Aristotle spoke of the Athenian poor as falling slave to the rich, what he appears to have meant was that in harsh years, many poor farmers fell into debt; as a result they ended up as sharecroppers on their own property, dependents. Some were even sold abroad as slaves. This led to unrest and agitation, and also to demands for clean slates, for the freeing of those held in bondage, and for the redistribution of agricultural land. In a few cases it led to outright revolution. In Megara, we are told, a radical faction that seized power not only made interest-bearing loans illegal, but did so retroactively, forcing creditors to make restitution of all interest they had collected in the past?5 In other cities, populist tyrants seized power on promises to abrogate agricultural debts.<br /> <br /> On the face of it, all this doesn't seem all that surprising: the moment when commercial markets developed, Greek cities quickly developed all the social problems that had been plaguing Middle Eastern cities for millennia: debt crises, debt resistance, political unrest. In reality, things are not so clear. For one thing, for the poor to be &quot;enslaved to the rich,&quot; in the loose sense that Aristotle seems to be using, was hardly a new development. Even in Homeric society, it was assumed as a matter of course that rich men would live surrounded by dependents and retainers, drawn from the ranks of the dependent poor. The critical thing, though, about such relations of patronage is that they involved responsibilities on both sides. A noble warrior and his humble client were assumed to be fundamentally different sorts of people, but both were also expected to take account of each other's (fundamentally different) needs. Transforming patronage into debt relations-treating, say, an advance of seed corn as a ''loan,'' let alone an interest-bearing loan-changed all this?6 What's more, it did so in two completely contradictory respects. On the one hand, a loan implies no ongoing responsibilities on the part of the creditor. On the other, as I have continually emphasized, a loan does assume a certain formal, legal equality between contractor and contractee. It assumes that they are, at least in some ways on some level, fundamentally the same kind of person. This is certainly about the most ruthless and violent form of equality imaginable. But the fact it was conceived as equality before the market made such arrangements even more difficult to endure.77<br /> <br /> The same tensions can be observed between neighbors, who in farming communities tend to give, lend, and borrow things amongst themselves-anything from sieves and sickles, to charcoal and cooking oil, to seed corn or oxen for plowing. On the one hand, such giving and lending were considered essential parts of the basic fabric of human sociability in farm communities, on the other, overly demanding neighbors were a notorious irritant-one that could only have grown worse when all parties are aware of precisely how much it would have cost to buy or rent the same items that were being given away. Again, one of the best ways to get a sense of what were considered everyday dilemmas for Mediterranean peasants is to look at jokes. Late stories from across the Aegean in Turkey echo exactly the same concerns:<br /> <br /> Nasruddin's neighbor once came by ask if he could borrow his donkey for an unexpected errand. Nasruddin obliged, but the next day the neighbor was back again-he needed to take some grain to be milled. Before long he was showing up almost every morning, barely feeling he needed a pretext. Finally, Nasruddin got fed up, and one morning told him his brother had already come by and taken the donkey.<br /> <br /> Just as the neighbor was leaving he heard a loud braying sound from the yard.<br /> <br /> &quot;Hey, I thought you said the donkey wasn't here!&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Look, who are you going to believe?&quot; asked Nasruddin.<br /> <br /> &quot;Me, or some animal?&quot;<br /> <br /> With the appearance of money, it could also become unclear what was a gift, and what a loan. On the one hand, even with gifts, it was always considered best to return something slightly better than one had received.78 On the other hand, friends do not charge one another interest, and any suggestion that they might was sure to rankle. So what's the difference between a generous return gift and an interest payment? This is the basis of one of the most famous Nasruddin stories, one that appears to have provided centuries of amusement for peasants across the Mediterranean basin and adjoining regions. (It is also, I might note, a play on the fact that in many Mediterranean languages, Greek included, the word for &quot;interest&quot; literally means &quot;offspring.&quot;)<br /> <br /> One day Nasruddin's neighbor, a notorious miser, came by to announce he was throwing a party for some friends. Could he borrow some of Nasruddin's pots? Nasruddin didn't have many but said he was happy to lend whatever he had. The next day the miser returned, carrying Nasruddin's three pots, and one tiny additional one.<br /> <br /> &quot;What's that?&quot; asked Nasrudddin.<br /> <br /> &quot;Oh, that's the offspring of the pots. They reproduced during the time they were with me. &quot;<br /> <br /> Nasruddin shrugged and accepted them, and the miser left happy that he had established a principle of interest. A month later Nasruddin was throwing a party, and he went over to borrow a dozen pieces of his neighbor's much more luxurious crockery. The miser complied. Then he waited a day. And then another ...<br /> <br /> On the third day, the miser came by and asked what had happened to his pots.<br /> <br /> &quot;Oh, them?&quot; Nasruddin said sadly. &quot;It was a terrible tragedy. They died. &quot;79<br /> <br /> In a heroic system, it is only debts of honor—the need to repay gifts, to exact revenge, to rescue or redeem friends or kinsmen fallen prisoner-that operate completely under a logic of tit-for-tat exchange. Honor is the same as credit; it's one's ability to keep one's promises, but also, in the case of a wrong, to &quot;get even. &quot; As the last phrase implies, it was a monetary logic, but money, or anyway money-like relations, are confined to this. Gradually, subtly, without anyone completely understanding the full implications of what was happening, what had been the essence of moral relations turned into the means for every sort of dishonest stratagem.<br /> <br /> We know a little about it from trial speeches, many of which have survived. Here is one from the fourth century, probably around 365 BC. Apollodorus was a prosperous but low-born Athenian citizen (his father, a banker, had begun life as a slave) who, like many such gentlemen, had acquired a country estate. There he made a point of making friends with his closest neighbor, Nicostratus, a man of aristocratic origins, though currently of somewhat straitened means. They acted as neighbors normally did, giving and borrowing small sums, lending each other animals or slaves, minding each other's property when one was away. Then one day Nicostratus ran into a piece of terrible luck. While trying to track down some runaway slaves, he was himself captured by pirates and held for ransom at the slave market on the island of Aegi-nJ.. His relatives could only assemble part of the price, so he was forced :o borrow the rest from strangers in the market. These appear to have been professionals who specialized in such loans, and their terms were :10roriously harsh: if not repaid in thirty days, the sum doubled; if not repaid at all, the debtor became the slave of the man who had put up the money for his redemption.<br /> <br /> Tearfully, Nicostratus appealed to his neighbor. All his possessions were already pledged now to one creditor or another; he knew Apollodorus wouldn't have that much cash lying around, but could his dear friend possibly put up something of his own by way of security? Apollodorus was moved. He would be happy to forgive all debts Nicostratus already owed him, but the rest would be difficult. Still, he would do his best. In the end, he arranged to himself take a loan from an acquaintance of his, Arcesas, on the security of his town-house, at r6 percent annual interest, so as to be able to satisfy Nicostratus's creditors while Nicostratus himself arranged a friendly, no-interest eranos loan from his own relatives. But before long, Apollodorus began to realize that he had been set up. The impoverished aristocrat had decided to take advantage of his nouveau-riche neighbor; he was actually working with Arcesas and some of Apollodorus's enemies to have him falsely declared a &quot;public debtor,&quot; that is, someone who had defaulted on an obligation to the public treasury. This would have first of all meant that he would lose his right to take anyone to court (i.e., his deceivers, to recover the money), and second, would give them a pretext to raid his house to remove his furniture and other possessions. Presumably, Nicostratus had never felt especially comfortable being in debt to a man he considered his social inferior. Rather like Egil the Viking, who would rather kill his friend Einar than have to compose an elegy thanking him for an overly magnificent gift, Nicostratus appears to have concluded that it was more honorable, or anyway more bearable, to try to extract the money from his lowly friend through force and fraud than to spend the rest of his life feeling beholden. Before long, things had indeed descended to outright physical violence, and the whole matter ended up in court.80<br /> <br /> The story has everything. We see mutual aid: the communism of the prosperous, the expectation that if the need is great enough, or the cost manageable enough, friends and neighbors will help one another.81 And most did, in fact, have circles of people who would pool money if a crisis did arise: whether a wedding, a famine, or a ransom. We also see the omnipresent danger of predatory violence that reduces human beings to commodities, and by doing so introduces the most cutthroat kinds of calculation into economic life-not just on the part of the pirates, but even more so, perhaps, on those moneylenders lurking by the market offering stiff credit terms to anyone who came to ransom their relatives but found themselves caught short, and who then could appeal to the state to allow them to hire men with weapons to enforce the contract. We see heroic pride, which sees too great an act of generosity as itself a kind of belittling assault. We see the ambiguity among gifts, loans, and commercial credit arrangements. Neither does the way things played out in this case seem particularly unusual, except perhaps for Nicostratus's extraordinarily ingratitude. Prominent Athenians were always borrowing money to pursue their political projects; less-prominent ones were constantly worrying about their debts, or how to collect from their own debtors.SZ Finally, there is another, subtler element here. While everyday market transactions, at shops or stalls in the agora, were here as elsewhere typically conducted on credit, the mass production of coinage permitted a degree of anonymity for transactions that, in a pure credit regime, simply could not exist.83 Pirates and kidnappers do business in cash-yet the loan sharks at Ae-gina's marketplace could not have operated without them. It is on this same combination of illegal cash business, usually involving violence, and extremely harsh credit terms, also enforced through violence, that innumerable criminal underworlds have been constructed ever since.<br /> <br /> <br /> In Athens, the result was extreme moral confusion. The language of money, debt, and finance provided powerful-and ultimately irresistible--ways to think about moral problems. Much as in Vedic India, people started talking about life as a debt to the gods, of obligations as debts, about literal debts of honor, of debt as sin and of vengeance as debt collection.84 Yet if debt was morality-and certainly at the very least it was in the interest of creditors, who often had little legal recourse to compel debtors to pay up, to insist that it was-what was one to make of the fact that money, that very thing that seemed capable of turning morality into an exact and quantifiable science, also seemed to encourage the very worst sorts of behavior?<br /> <br /> It is from such dilemmas that modern ethics and moral philosophy begin. I think this is true quite literally. Consider Plato's Republic, another product of fourth-century Athens. The book begins when Socrates visits an old friend, a wealthy arms manufacturer, at the port of Piraeus. They get into a discussion of justice, which begins when the old man proposes that money cannot be a bad thing, since it allows those who have it to be just, and that justice consists in two things: telling the truth, and always paying one's debts.85 The proposal is easily demolished. What, Socrates asks, if someone lent you his sword, went violently insane, and then asked for it back (presumably, so he could kill someone)? Clearly it can never be right to arm a lunatic whatever the circumstances.x6 The old man cheerfully shrugs the problem off and heads off to attend to some ritual, leaving his son to carry on the argument.<br /> <br /> The son, Polemarchus, switches gears: clearly his father hadn't meant &quot;debt&quot; in the literal sense of returning what one has borrowed. He meant it more in the sense of giving people what is owed to them; repaying good with good and evil with evil; helping one's friends and hurting one's enemies. Demolishing this one takes a little more work (are we saying justice plays no part in determining who one's friends and enemies are? If so, wouldn't someone who decided he had no friends, and therefore tried to hurt everyone, be a just man? And even if you did have some way to say for certain that one's enemy really is an intrinsically bad person and deserves harm, by harming him, do you not thus make him worse? Can turning bad people into even worse people really be an example of justice?) but it is eventually accomplished. At this point a Sophist, Thrasymachos, enters and denounces all of the debaters as milky-eyed idealists. In reality, he says, all talk of &quot;justice&quot; is mere political pretext, designed to justify the interests of the powerful. And so it should be, because insofar as justice exists, it is simply that: the interest of the powerful. Rulers are like shepherds. We like to think of them as benevolently tending their flocks, but what do shepherds ultimately do with sheep? They kill and eat them, or sell the meat for money. Socrates responds by pointing out that Thrasy-machos is confusing the art of tending sheep with the art of profiting from them. The art of medicine aims to improve health, whether or not doctors get paid for practicing it. The art of shepherding aims to ensure the well-being of sheep, whether or not the shepherd (or his employer) is also a businessman who knows how to extract a profit from them. Just so with the art of governance. If such an art exists, it must have its own intrinsic aim apart from any profit one might also get from it, and what can this be other than the establishment of social justice? It's only the existence of money, Socrates suggests, that allows us to imagine that words like &quot;power&quot; and &quot;interest&quot; refer to universal realities that can be pursued in their own right, let alone that all pursuits are really ultimately the pursuit of power, advantage, or self-interestY The question, he said, is how to ensure that those who hold political office will do so not for gain, but rather for honor.<br /> <br /> I will leave off here. As we all know, Socrates eventually gets around to offering some political proposals of his own, involving philosopher kings; the abolition of marriage, the family, and private property; selective human breeding boards. (Clearly, the book was meant to annoy its readers, and for more than two thousand years, it has succeeded brilliantly.) What I want to emphasize, though, is the degree to which what we consider our core tradition of moral and political theory today springs from this question: What does it mean to pay our debts? Plato presents us first with the simple, literal businessman's view. When this proves inadequate, he allows it to be reframed in heroic terms. Perhaps all debts are really debts of honor after all.88 But heroic honor no longer works in a world where (as Apollodorus sadly discovered) commerce, class, and profit have so confused everything that peoples' true motives are never clear. How do we even know who our enemies are? Finally, Plato presents us with cynical realpolitik. Maybe nobody really owes anything to anybody. Maybe those who pursue profit for its own sake have it right after all. But even that does not hold up. We are left with a certainty that existing standards are incoherent and self-contradictory, and that some sort of radical break would be required in order to create a world that makes any logical sense. But most of those who seriously consider a radical break along the lines that Plato suggested have come to the conclusion that there might be far worse things than moral incoherence. And there we have stood, ever since, in the midst of an insoluble dilemma.<br /> <br /> <br /> It's not surprising that these issues weighed on Plato's mind. Not seven years before, he had taken an ill-fated sea cruise and wound up being captured and, supposedly like Nicostratus, offered for sale on the auction block at Aegina. However, Plato had better luck. A Libyan philosopher of the Epicurean school, one Annikeris, happened to be in the market at the time. He recognized Plato and ransomed him. Plato felt honor-bound to try to repay him, and his Athenian friends assembled twenty minas in silver with which to do so, but Annikeris refused to accept the money, insisting that it was his honor to be able to benefit a fellow lover of wisdom.89 As indeed it was: Annikeris has been remembered, and celebrated, for his generosity ever since. Plato went on to use the twenty minas to buy land for a school, the famous Academy. And while he hardly showed the same ingratitude as Nicostratus, one does rather get the impression that even Plato wasn't especially happy about the fact that his subsequent career was, in a sense, made possible by his debt to a man who he probably considered an extremely minor philosopher-and Annikeris wasn't even Greek! At least this would help explain why Plato, otherwise the inveterate name-dropper, never mentioned Annikeris. We know of his existence only from later biographers.90<br /> <br /> === Ancient Rome (Property and Freedom) ===<br /> If Plato's work testifies to how profoundly the moral confusion introduced by debt has shaped our traditions of thought, Roman law reveals how much it has shaped even our most familiar institutions.<br /> <br /> German legal theorist Rudolf von Jhering famously remarked that ancient Rome had conquered the world three times: the first time through its armies, the second through its religion, the third through its laws.91 He might have added: each time more thoroughly. The Empire, after all, only spanned a tiny portion of the globe; the Roman Catholic Church has spread farther; Roman law has come to provide the language and conceptual underpinnings of legal and constitutional orders everywhere. Law students from South Africa to Peru are expected to spend a good deal of their time memorizing technical terms in Latin, and it is Roman law that provides almost all our basic conceptions about contract, obligation, torts, property, and jurisdiction-and, in a broader sense, of citizenship, rights, and liberties on which political life, too, is based.<br /> <br /> This was possible, Jhering held, because, the Romans were the first to turn jurisprudence into a genuine science. Perhaps-but for all that, it remains true that Roman law has a few notoriously quirky features, some so odd that they have confused and confounded jurists ever since Roman law was revived in Italian universities in the High Middle Ages. The most notorious of these is the unique way it defines property. In Roman law, property, or dominium, is a relation between a person and a thing, characterized by absolute power of that person over that thing. This definition has caused endless conceptual problems. First of all, it's not clear what it would mean for a human to have a &quot;relation&quot; with an inanimate object. Human beings can have relations with one another. But what would it mean to have a &quot;relation&quot; with a thing? And if one did, what would it mean to give that relation legal standing? A simple illustration will suffice: imagine a man trapped on a desert island. He might develop extremely personal relationships with, say, the palm trees growing on that island. If he's there too long, he might well end up giving them all names and spending half his time having imaginary conversations with them. Still, does he own them? The question is meaningless. There's no need to worry about property rights if noone else is there.<br /> <br /> Clearly, then, property is not really a relation between a person and a thing. It's an understanding or arrangement between people concerning things. The only reason that we sometimes fail to notice this is that in many cases-particularly when we are talking about our rights over our shoes, or cars, or power tools-we are talking of rights held, as English law puts it, &quot;against all the world &quot;-that is, understandings between ourselves and everyone else on the planet, that they will all refrain from interfering with our possessions, and therefore allow us to treat them more or less any way we like. A relation between one person and everyone else on the planet is, understandably, difficult to conceive as such. It's easier to think of it as a relationship with a thing. But even here, in practice this freedom to do as one likes turns out to be fairly limited. To say that the fact that I own a chainsaw gives me an &quot;absolute power&quot; to do anything I want with it is obviously absurd. Almost anything I might think of doing with a chainsaw outside my own home or land is likely to be illegal, and there are only a limited number of things I can really do with it inside. The only thing &quot;absolute&quot; about my rights to a chainsaw is my right to prevent anyone else from using it.92<br /> <br /> Nonetheless, Roman law does insist that the basic form of property is private property, and that private property is the owner's absolute power to do anything he wants with his possessions. Twelfth-century Medieval jurists came to refine this into three principles, usus (use of the thing), fructus (fruits, i.e., enjoyment of the products of the thing), and abusus (abuse or destruction of the thing), but Roman jurists weren't even interested in specifying that much, since in a certain way, they saw the details as lying entirely outside the domain of law. In fact, scholars have spent a great deal of time debating whether Roman authors actually considered private property to be a right (ius),93 for the very reason that rights were ultimately based on agreements between people, and one's power to dispose of one's property was not: it was just one's natural ability to do whatever one pleased when social impediments were absent.94<br /> <br /> If you think about it, this really is an odd place to start in developing a theory of property law. It is probably fair to say that, in any part of the world, in any period of history, whether in ancient Japan or Machu Picchu, someone who had a piece of string was free to twist it, knot it, pull it apart, or toss it in the fire more or less as they had a mind to. Nowhere else did legal theorists appear to have found this fact in any way interesting or important. Certainly no other tradition makes it the very basis of property law-since, after all, doing so made almost all actual law little more than a series of exceptions.<br /> <br /> How did this come about? And why? The most convincing explanation I've seen is Orlando Patterson's: the notion of absolute private property is really derived from slavery. One can imagine property not as a relation between people, but as a relation between a person and a thing, if one's starting point is a relation between two people, one of whom is also a thing. (This is how slaves were defined in Roman law: they were people who were also a res, a thing.)95 The emphasis on absolute power begins to make sense as well.96<br /> <br /> The word dominium, meaning absolute private property, was not particularly ancient.97 It only appears in Latin in the late Republic, right around the time when hundreds of thousands of captive laborers were pouring into Italy, and when Rome, as a consequence, was becoming a genuine slave society.98 By so BC, Roman writers had come to simply assume that workers-whether the farmworkers harvesting peas in countryside plantations, the muleteers delivering those peas to shops in the city, or the clerks keeping count of them-were someone else's property. The existence of millions of creatures who were simultaneously persons and things created endless legal problems, and much of the creative genius of Roman law was spent in working out the endless ramifications. One need only flip open a casebook of Roman law to get a sense of these. This is from the second-century jurist Ulpian:<br /> <br /> Again, Mela writes that if some persons were playing ball and one of them, hitting the ball quite hard, knocked it against a barber's hands, and in this way the throat of a slave, whom the barber was shaving, was cut by a razor pressed against it, then who is the person with whom the culpability lay is liable under the Lex Aquilia [the law of civil damages]? Proclus says that the culpability lies with the barber; and indeed, if he was shaving at a place where games are normally played or where traffic was heavy, there is reason to fault him. But it would not be badly held that if someone entrusts himself to a barber who has a chair in a dangerous place, he should have himself to blame.99<br /> <br /> In other words, the master cannot claim civil damages against the ballplayers or barber for destroying his property if the real problem was that he bought a stupid slave. Many of these debates might strike us as profoundly exotic (could you be accused of theft for merely convincing a slave to run away? If someone killed a slave who was also your son, could you take your sentimental feelings toward him into account in assessing damages, or would you have to stick to his market value?)-but our contemporary tradition of jurisprudence is founded directly on such debates.100<br /> <br /> As for dominium, the word is derived from dominus, meaning &quot;master&quot; or &quot;slave-owner,&quot; but ultimately from domus, meaning &quot;house&quot; or &quot;household. &quot; It's of course related to the English term &quot;domestic,&quot; which even now can be used either to mean &quot;pertaining to private life,&quot; or to refer to a servant who cleans the house. Domus overlaps somewhat in meaning with familia, &quot;family&quot;-but, as proponents of &quot;family values&quot; might be interested to know, familia itself ultimately derives from the word famulus, meaning &quot;slave.&quot; A family was originally all those people under the domestic authority of a paterfamilias, and that authority was, in early Roman law at least, conceived as absolute.101 A man did not have total power over his wife, since she was still to some degree under the protection of her own father, but his children, slaves, and other dependents were his to do with as he wanted-at least in early Roman law, he was perfectly free to whip, torture, or sell them. A father could even execute his children, provided he found them to have committed capital crimes.102 With his slaves, he didn't even need that excuse.<br /> <br /> In creating a notion of dominium, then, and thus creating the modern principle of absolute private property, what Roman jurists were doing first of all was taking a principle of domestic authority, of absolute power over people, defining some of those people (slaves) as things, and then extending the logic that originally applied to slaves to geese, chariots, barns, jewelry boxes, and so forth-that is, to every other sort of thing that the law had anything to do with.<br /> <br /> It was quite extraordinary, even in the ancient world, for a father to have the right to execute his slaves-let alone his children. No one is quite sure why the early Romans were so extreme in this regard. It's telling, though, that the earliest Roman debt law was equally unusual in its harshness, since it allowed creditors to execute insolvent debtors.103 The early history of Rome, like the histories of early Greek city-states, was one of continual political struggle between creditors and debtors, until the Roman elite eventually figured out the principle that most successful Mediterranean elites learned: that a free peasantry means a more effective army, and that conquering armies can provide war captives who can do anything debt bondsmen used to do, and therefore, a social compromise-allowing limited popular representation, banning debt slavery, channeling some of the fruits of empire into social-welfare payments-was actually in their interest. Presumably, the absolute power of fathers developed as part of this whole constellation in the same way as we've seen elsewhere. Debt bondage reduced family relations to relations of property; social reforms retained the new power of fathers but protected them from debt. At the same time, the increasing influx of slaves soon meant that any even moderately prosperous household was likely to contain slaves. This meant that the logic of conquest extended into the most intimate aspects of everyday life. Conquered people poured one's bath and combed one's hair. Conquered tutors taught one's children about poetry. Since slaves were sexually available to owners and their families, as well as to their friends and dinner guests, it is likely that most Romans' first sexual experience was with a boy or girl whose legal status was conceived as that of a defeated enemy.104<br /> <br /> Over time, this became more and more of a legal fiction-actual slaves were much more likely to have been paupers sold by parents, unfortunates kidnapped by pirates or bandits, victims of wars or judicial process among barbarians at the fringes of the empire, or children of other slaves.105 Still, the fiction was maintained.<br /> <br /> What made Roman slavery so unusual, in historical terms, was a conjuncture of two factors. One was its very arbitrariness. In dramatic contrast with, say plantation slavery in the Americas, there was no sense that certain people were naturally inferior and therefore destined to be slaves. Instead, slavery was seen as a misfortune that could happen to anyone.106 As a result, there was no reason that a slave might not be in every way superior to his or her master: smarter, with a finer sense of morality, better taste, and a greater understanding of philosophy. The master might even be willing to acknowledge this. There was no reason not to, since it had no effect on the nature of the relationship, which was simply one of power.<br /> <br /> The second was the absolute nature of this power. There are many places where slaves are conceived as war captives, and masters as conquerors with absolute powers of life and death-but usually, this is something of an abstract principle. Almost everywhere, governments quickly move to limit such rights. At the very least, emperors and kings will insist that they are the only ones with the power to order others put to death.107 But under the Roman Republic there was no emperor; insofar as there was a sovereign body, it was the collective body of the slave-owners themselves. Only under the early Empire do we see any legislation limiting what owners could do to their (human) property: the first being a law of the time of the emperor Tiberius (dated r6 AD) stipulating that a master had to obtain a magistrate's permission before ordering a slave publicly torn apart by wild beasts.108 However, the absolute nature of the master's power-the fact that in this context, he effectively was the state—also meant that there were also, at first, no restrictions on manumission: a master could liberate his slave, or even adopt him or her, whereby-since liberty meant nothing outside of membership in a community-that slave automatically became a Roman citizen. This led to some very peculiar arrangements. In the first century AD, for example, it was not uncommon for educated Greeks to have themselves sold into slavery to some wealthy Roman in need of a secretary, entrust the money to a close friend or family member, and then, after a certain interval, buy themselves back, thus obtaining Roman citizenship. This despite the fact that, during such time as they were slaves, if their owner decided to, say, cut one of his secretary's feet off, legally, he would have been perfectly free to do so.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;09<br /> <br /> The relation of dominus and slave thus brought a relation of conquest, of absolute political power into the household (in fact, made it the essence of the household). It's important to emphasize that this was not a moral relation on either side. A well-known legal formula, attributed to a Republican lawyer named Quintus Haterius, brings this home with particular clarity. With the Romans as with the Athenians, for a male to be the object of sexual penetration was considered unbefitting to a citizen. In defending a freedman accused of continuing to provide sexual favors to his former master, Haterius coined an aphorism that was later to become something of a popular dirty joke: impudicitia in ingenuo crimen est, in servo necessitas, in Liberto officium (&quot;to be the object of anal penetration is a crime in the freeborn, a necessity for a slave, a duty for a freedman&quot;).110 What is significant here is that sexual subservience is considered the &quot;duty&quot; only of the freedman. It is not considered the &quot;duty&quot; of a slave. This is because, again, slavery was not a moral relation. The master could do what he liked, and there was nothing the slave could do about it.<br /> <br /> <br /> The most insidious effect of Roman slavery, however, is that through Roman law, it has come to play havoc with our idea of human freedom. The meaning of the Roman word libertas itself changed dramatically over time. As everywhere in the ancient world, to be &quot;free&quot; meant, first and foremost, not to be a slave. Since slavery means above all the annihilation of social ties and the ability to form them, freedom meant the capacity to make and maintain moral commitments to others. The English word &quot;free,&quot; for instance, is derived from a German root meaning &quot;friend,&quot; since to be free meant to be able to make friends, to keep promises, to live within a community of equals. This is why freed slaves in Rome became citizens: to be free, by definition, meant to be anchored in a civic community, with all the rights and responsibilities that this entailed.111<br /> <br /> By the second century AD, however, this had begun to change. The jurists gradually redefined libertas until it became almost indistinguishable from the power of the master. It was the right to do absolutely anything, with the exception, again, of all those things one could not do. Actually, in the Digest, the definitions of freedom and slavery appear back to back:<br /> <br /> Freedom is .the natural faculty to do whatever one wishes that is not prevented by force or law. Slavery is an institution according to the law of nations whereby one person becomes private property (dominium) of another, contrary to nature.112<br /> <br /> Medieval commentators immediately noticed the problem here.113 But wouldn't this mean that everyone is free? After all, even slaves are free to do absolutely anything they're actually permitted to do. To say a slave is free (except insofar as he isn't) is a bit like saying the earth is square (except insofar as it is round), or that the sun is blue (except insofar as it is yellow), or, again, that we have an absolute right to do anything we wish with our chainsaw (except those things that we can't.)<br /> <br /> In fact, the definition introduces all sorts of complications. If freedom is natural, then surely slavery is unnatural, but if freedom and slavery are just matters of degree, then, logically, would not all restrictions on freedom be to some degree unnatural? Would not that imply that society, social rules, in fact even property rights, are unnatural as well? This is precisely what many Roman jurists did conclude-that is, when they did venture to comment on such abstract matters, which was only rarely. Originally, human beings lived in a state of nature where all things were held in common; it was war that first divided up the world, and the resultant &quot;law of nations,&quot; the common usages of mankind that regulate such matters as conquest, slavery, treaties, and borders, that was first responsible for inequalities of property as well.114<br /> <br /> This in turn meant that there was no intrinsic difference between private property and political power-at least, insofar as that power was based in violence. As time went on, Roman emperors also began claiming something like dominium, insisting that within their dominions, they had absolute freedom-in fact, that they were not bound by laws.115 At the same time, as Roman society shifted from a republic of slave-holders to arrangements that increasingly resembled later feudal Europe, with magnates on their great estates surrounded by dependent peasants, debt servants, and an endless variety of slaves-with whom they could largely do as they pleased. The barbarian invasions that overthrew the empire merely formalized the situation, largely eliminating chattel slavery, but at the same time introducing the notion that the noble classes were really descendants of the Germanic conquerors, and that the common people were inherently subservient.<br /> <br /> Still, even in this new Medieval world, the old Roman concept of freedom remained. Freedom was simply power. When Medieval political theorists spoke of &quot;liberty,&quot; they were normally referring to a lord's right to do whatever he wanted within his own domains. This was, again, usually assumed to be not something originally established by agreement, but a mere fact of conquest: one famous English legend holds that when, around 1290, King Edward I asked his lords to produce documents to demonstrate by what right they held their franchises (or &quot;liberties&quot;), the Earl Warenne presented the king only with his rusty sword.116 Like Roman dominium, it was less a right than a power, and a power exercised first and foremost over people-which is why in the Middle Ages it was common to speak of the &quot;liberty of the gallows,&quot; meaning a lord's right to maintain his own private place of execution.<br /> <br /> By the time Roman law began to be recovered and modernized in the twelfth century, the term dominium posed a particular problem, since it had come, in ordinary church Latin of the time, to be used equally for &quot;lordship&quot; and &quot;private property. &quot; Medieval jurists spent a great deal of time and argument establishing whether there was indeed a difference between the two. It was a particularly thorny problem because, if property rights really were, as the Digest insisted, a form of absolute power, it was very difficult to see how anyone could have it but a king-or even, for certain jurists, God.117<br /> <br /> This is not the place to describe the resulting arguments, but I feel it's important to end here because in a way, it brings us full circle and allows us to understand precisely how Liberals like Adam Smith were able to imagine the world the way they did. This is a tradition that assumes that liberty is essentially the right to do what one likes with one's own property. In fact, not only does it make property a right; it treats rights themselves as a form of property. In a way, this is the greatest paradox of all. We are so used to the idea of &quot;having&quot; rights-that rights are something one can possess-that we rarely think about what this might actually mean. In fact (as Medieval jurists were well aware), one man's right is simply another's obligation. My right to free speech is others' obligation not to punish me for speaking; my right to a trial by a jury of my peers is the responsibility of the government to maintain a system of jury duty. The problem is just the same as it was with property rights: when we are talking about obligations owed by everyone in the entire world, it's difficult to think about it that way. It's much easier to speak of &quot;having&quot; rights and freedoms. Still, if freedom is basically our right to own things, or to treat things as if we own them, then what would it mean to &quot;own&quot; a freedom-wouldn't it have to mean that our right to own property is itself a form of property? That does seem unnecessarily convoluted. What possible reason would one have to want to define it this way?118<br /> <br /> Historically, there is a simple-if somewhat disturbing-answer to this. Those who have argued that we are the natural owners of our rights and liberties have been mainly interested in asserting that we should be free to give them away, or even to sell them.<br /> <br /> Modern ideas of rights and liberties are derived from what, from the time when Jean Gerson, Rector of the University of Paris, began to lay them out around 1400, building on Roman law concepts, came to be known as &quot;natural rights theory. &quot; As Richard Tuck, the premier historian of such ideas, has long noted, it is one of the great ironies of history that this was always a body of theory embraced not by the progressives of that time, but by conservatives. &quot;For a Gersonian, liberty was property and could be exchanged in the same way and in the same terms as any other property&quot;-sold, swapped, loaned, or otherwise voluntarily surrendered.119 It followed that there could be nothing intrinsically wrong with, say, debt peonage, or even slavery. And this is exactly what natural-rights theorists came to assert. In fact, over the next centuries, these ideas came to be developed above all in Antwerp and Lisbon, cities at the very center of the emerging slave trade. After all, they argued, we don't really know what's going on in the lands behind places like Calabar, but there is no intrinsic reason to assume that the vast majority of the human cargo conveyed to European ships had not sold themselves, or been disposed of by their legal guardians, or lost their liberty in some other perfectly legitimate fashion. No doubt some had not, but abuses will exist in any system. The important thing was that there was nothing inherently unnatural or illegitimate about the idea that freedom could be sold.120<br /> <br /> Before long, similar arguments came to be employed to justify the absolute power of the state. Thomas Hobbes was the first to really develop this argument in the seventeenth century, but it soon became commonplace. Government was essentially a contract, a kind of business arrangement, whereby citizens had voluntarily given up some of their natural liberties to the sovereign. Finally, similar ideas have become the basis of that most basic, dominant institution of our present economic life: wage labor, which is, effectively, the renting of our freedom in the same way that slavery can be conceived as its sale.121<br /> <br /> It's not only our freedoms that we own; the same logic has come to be applied even to our own bodies, which are treated, in such formulations, as really no different than houses, cars, or furniture. We own ourselves, therefore outsiders have no right to trespass on us.122 Again, this might seem an innocuous, even a positive notion, but it looks rather different when we take into consideration the Roman tradition of property on which it is based. To say that we own ourselves is, oddly enough, to cast ourselves as both master and slave simultaneously. &quot;We&quot; are both owners (exerting absolute power over our property), and yet somehow, at the same time, the things being owned (being the object of absolute power). The ancient Roman household, far from having been forgotten in the mists of history, is preserved in our most basic conception of ourselves-and, once again, just as in property law, the result is so strangely incoherent that it spins off into endless paradoxes the moment one tries to figure out what it would actually mean in practice. Just as lawyers have spent a thousand years trying to make sense of Roman property concepts, so have philosophers spent centuries trying to understand how it could be possible for us to have a relation of domination over ourselves. The most popular solution-to say that each of us has something called a &quot;mind&quot; and that this is completely separate from something else, which we can call &quot;the body,&quot; and that the first thing holds natural dominion over the second-flies in the face of just about everything we now know about cognitive science. It's obviously untrue, but we continue to hold onto it anyway, for the simple reason that none of our everyday assumptions about property, law, and freedom would make any sense without it.123<br /> <br /> === Conclusions ===<br /> The first four chapters of this book describe a dilemma. We don't really know how to think about debt. Or, to be more accurate, we seem to be trapped between imagining society in the Adam Smith mode, as a collection of individuals whose only significant relations are with their own possessions, happily bartering one thing for another for the sake of mutual convenience, with debt almost entirely abolished from the picture, and a vision in which debt is everything, the very substance of all human relations-which of course leaves everyone with the uncomfortable sense that human relations are somehow an intrinsically tawdry business, that our very responsibilities to one another are already somehow necessarily based in sin and crime. It's not an appealing set of alternatives.<br /> <br /> In the last three chapters I have tried to show that there is another way of looking at things, and then to describe how it is that we got here. This is why I developed the concept of human economies: ones in which what is considered really important about human beings is the fact that they are each a unique nexus of relations with others-therefore, that no one could ever be considered exactly equivalent to anything or anyone else. In a human economy, money is not a way of buying or trading human beings, but a way of expressing just how much one cannot do so.<br /> <br /> I then went on to describe how all this can begin to break down: how humans can become objects of exchange: first, perhaps, women given in marriage; ultimately, slaves captured in war. What all these relations have in common, I observed, was violence. Whether it is Tiv girls being tied up and beaten for running away from their husbands, or husbands being herded into slave ships to die on faraway plantations, that same principle always applies: it is only by the threat of sticks, ropes, spears, and guns that one can tear people out of those endlessly complicated webs of relationship with others (sisters, friends, rivals ...) that render them unique, and thus reduce them to something that can be traded.<br /> <br /> All of this, it is important to emphasize, can happen in places where markets in ordinary, everyday goods-clothing, tools, foodstuffs-do not even exist. In fact, in most human economies, one's most important possessions could never be bought and sold for the same reasons that people can't: they are unique objects, caught up in a web of relationships with human beings.124<br /> <br /> My old professor John Cornaro££ used to tell a story about carrying out a survey in Natal, in South Africa. He had spent most of a week driving from homestead to homestead in a jeep with a box full of questionnaires and a Zulu-speaking interpreter, driving past apparently endless herds of cattle. After about six days, his interpreter suddenly started and pointed into the middle of one herd. &quot;Look!&quot; he said. &quot;That's the same cow! That one there-with the red spot on its back. We saw it three days ago in a place ten miles from here. I wonder what happened? Did someone get married? Or maybe there was a settlement to some dispute.&quot;<br /> <br /> In human economies, when this ability to rip people from their contexts does appear, it is most often seen as an end in itself. One can already see a hint of this among the Lele. Important men would occasionally acquire war captives from far away as slaves, but it was almost always to be sacrificed at their funeral.125 The squelching of one man's individuality was seen as somehow swelling the reputation, the social existence, of the other.126 In what I've been calling heroic societies, of course this kind of addition and subtraction of honor and disgrace is lifted from a somewhat marginal practice to become the very essence of politics. As endless epics, sagas, and eddas attest, heroes become heroes by making others small. In Ireland and Wales, we can observe how this very ability to degrade others, to remove unique human beings from their hearths and families and thus render them anonymous units of accounting-the Irish slave-girl currency, the Welsh washerwomen-is itself the highest expression of honor.<br /> <br /> In heroic societies, the role of violence is not hidden-it's glorified. Often, it can form the basis of one's most intimate relations. In the Iliad, Achilles sees nothing shameful in his relation with his slave-girl, Briseis, whose husband and brothers he killed; he refers to her as his &quot;prize of honor,&quot; but almost in the very same breath, he also insists that, just any decent man must love and care for his household dependents, &quot;so I from my heart loved this one, even though I won her with my spear.&quot; &lt;sup&gt;127&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> That such relations of intimacy can often develop between men of honor and those they have stripped of their dignity, history can well attest. After all, the annihilation of any possibility of equality also eliminates any question of debt, of any relation other than power. It allows a certain clarity. This is presumably why emperors and kings have such a notorious tendency to surround themselves with slaves or eunuchs.<br /> <br /> There is something more here, though. If one looks across the expanse of history, one cannot help but notice a curious sense of identification between the most exalted and the most degraded; particularly, between emperors and kings, and slaves. Many kings surround themselves with slaves, appoint slave ministers-there have even been, as with the Mamluks in Egypt, actual dynasties of slaves. Kings surround themselves with slaves for the same reason that they surround themselves with eunuchs: because the slaves and criminals have no families or friends, no possibility of other loyalties-or at least that, in principle, they shouldn't. But in a way, kings should really be like that too. As many an African proverb emphasizes: a proper king has no relatives either, or at least, he acts as if he does not.m In other words, the king and slave are mirror images, in that unlike normal human beings who are defined by their commitments to others, they are defined only by relations of power. They are as close to perfectly isolated, alienated beings as one can possibly become.<br /> <br /> At this point we can finally see what's really at stake in our peculiar habit of defining ourselves simultaneously as master and slave, reduplicating the most brutal aspects of the ancient household in our very concept of ourselves, as masters of our freedoms, or as owners of our very selves. It is the only way that we can imagine ourselves as completely isolated beings. There is a direct line from the new Roman conception of liberty-not as the ability to form mutual relationships with others, but as the kind of absolute power of &quot;use and abuse&quot; over the conquered chattel who make up the bulk of a wealthy Roman man's household-to the strange fantasies of liberal philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, and Smith, about the origins of human society in some collection of thirty- or forty-year-old males who seem to have sprung from the earth fully formed, then have to decide whether to kill each other or begin to swap beaver pelts.129<br /> <br /> European and American intellectuals, it is true, have spent much of the last two hundred years trying to flee from the more disturbing implications of this tradition of thought. Thomas Jefferson, that owner of many slaves, chose to begin the Declaration of Independence by directly contradicting the moral basis of slavery, writing &quot;we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men •are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights . ..&quot;thus undercutting simultaneously any argument that Africans were racially inferior, and also that they or their ancestors could ever have been justly and legally deprived of their freedom. In doing so, however, he did not propose some radically new conception of rights and liberties. Neither have subsequent political philosophers. For the most part, we've just kept the old ones, but with the word &quot;not&quot; inserted here and there. Most of our most precious rights and freedoms are a series of exceptions to an overall moral and legal framework that suggests we shouldn't really have them in the first place.<br /> <br /> Formal slavery has been eliminated, but (as anyone who works from nine to five can testify) the idea that you can alienate your liberty, at least temporarily, endures. In fact, it determines what most of us have to do for most of our waking hours, except, usually, on weekends. The violence has been largely pushed out of sight.130 But this is largely because we're no longer able to imagine what a world based on social arrangements that did not require the continual threat of tasers and surveillance cameras would even look like.<br /> <br /> == Chapter eight: Credit versus bullion ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Bullion is the accessory of war, and not of peaceful trade. -Geoffrey W. Gardiner&lt;/blockquote&gt;ONE MIGHT WELL ASK: If our political and legal ideas really are founded on the logic of slavery, then how did we ever eliminate slavery? Of course, a cynic might argue that we haven't; we've just relabeled it. The cynic would have a point: an ancient Greek would certainly have seen the distinction between a slave and an indebted wage laborer as, at best, a legalistic nicety/ Still, even the elimination of formal chattel slavery has to be considered a remarkable achievement, and it is worthwhile to wonder how it was accomplished. Especially since it was not just accomplished once. The truly remarkable thing, if one consults the historical record, is that slavery has been eliminated-or effectively eliminated-many times in human history.<br /> <br /> In Europe, for instance, the institution largely vanished in the centuries following the collapse of the Roman empire-an historical achievement rarely recognized by those of us used to referring to these events as the beginning of &quot;the Dark Ages. &quot;2 No one is quite sure how it happened. Most agree that the spread of Christianity must have had something to do with it, but that can't have been the direct cause, since the Church itself was never explicitly opposed to the institution and in many cases defended it. Instead, the abolition appears to have happened despite the attitudes of both the intellectuals and the political authorities of the time. Yet it did happen, and it had lasting effects. On the popular level, slavery remained so universally detested that even a thousand years later, when European merchants started trying to revive the trade, they discovered that their compatriots would not countenance slaveholding in their own countries-one reason why planters were eventually obliged to acquire their slaves in Africa and set up plantations in the New World.3 It is one of the great ironies of history that modern racism-probably the single greatest evil of our last two centuries-had to be invented largely because Europeans continued to refuse to listen to the arguments of the intellectuals and jurists and did not accept that anyone they believed to be a full and equal human being could ever be justifiably enslaved.<br /> <br /> What's more, the demise of ancient slavery was not limited to Europe. Remarkably, right around the same time-in the years around 6oo AD-we find almost exactly the same thing happening in India and China, where, over the course of centuries, amidst much unrest and confusion, chattel slavery largely ceased to exist. What all this suggests is that moments of historical opportunity-moments when meaningful change is possible-follow a distinct, even a cyclical pattern, one that has long been far more coordinated across geographical space than we would ever have imagined. There is a shape to the past, and it is only by understanding it that we can begin to have a sense of the historical opportunities that exist in the present.<br /> <br /> The easiest way to make these cycles visible is to reexamine exactly the phenomenon we've been concerned with over the course of this book: the history of money, debt, and credit. The moment we begin to map the history of money across the last five thousand years of Eurasian history, startling patterns begin to emerge. In the case of money, one event stands out above all others: the invention of coinage. Coinage appears to have arisen independently in three different places, almost simultaneously: on the Great Plain of northern China, in the Ganges river valley of northeast India, and in the lands surrounding the Aegean Sea, in each case, between roughly 6oo and soo BC. This wasn't due to some sudden technological innovation: the technologies used in making the first coins were, in each case, entirely different.4 It was a social transformation. Why this happened in exactly this way is an historical mystery. But this much we know: for some reason, in Lydia, India, and China, local rulers decided that whatever longstanding credit systems had existed in their kingdoms were no longer adequate, and they began to issue tiny pieces of precious metals-metals that had previously been used largely in international commerce, in ingot form-and to encourage their subjects to use them in day-to-day transactions.<br /> <br /> From there, the innovation spread. For more than a thousand years, states everywhere started issuing their own coinage. But then, right around 6oo AD, about the time that slavery was disappearing, the whole trend was suddenly thrown into reverse. Cash dried up. Everywhere, there was a movement back to credit once again.<br /> <br /> If we look at Eurasian history over the course of the last five thousand years, what we see is a broad alternation between periods dominated by credit money and periods in which gold and silver come to dominate-that is, those during which at least a large share of transactions were conducted with pieces of valuable metal being passed from hand to hand.<br /> <br /> Why? The single most important factor would appear to be war. Bullion predominates, above all, in periods of generalized violence. There's a very simple reason for that. Gold and silver coins are distinguished from credit arrangements by one spectacular feature: they can be stolen. A debt is, by definition, a record, as well as a relation of trust. Someone accepting gold or silver in exchange for merchandise, on the other hand, need trust nothing more than the accuracy of the scales, the quality of the metal, and the likelihood that someone else will be willing to accept it. In a world where war and the threat of violence are everywhere-and this appears to have been an equally accurate description of Warring States China, Iron Age Greece, and pre-Mauryan India-there are obvious advantages to making one's transactions simple. This is all the more true when dealing with soldiers. On the one hand, soldiers tend to have access to a great deal of loot, much of which consists of gold and silver, and will always seek a way to trade it for the better things in life. On the other, a heavily armed itinerant soldier is the very definition of a poor credit risk. The economists' barter scenario might be absurd when applied to transactions between neighbors in the same small rural community, but when dealing with a transaction between the resident of such a community and a passing mercenary, it suddenly begins to make a great deal of sense.<br /> <br /> For much of human history, then, an ingot of gold of silver, stamped or not, has served the same role as the contemporary drug dealer's suitcase full of unmarked bills: an object without a history, valuable because one knows it will be accepted in exchange for other goods just about anywhere, no questions asked. As a result, while credit systems tend to dominate in periods of relative social peace, or across networks of trust (whether created by states or, in most periods, transnational institutions like merchant guilds or communities of faith), in periods characterized by widespread war and plunder, they tend to be replaced by precious metal. What's more, while predatory lending goes on in every period of human history, the resulting debt crises appear to have the most damaging effects at times when money is most easily convertible into cash.<br /> <br /> As a starting point to any attempt to discern the great rhythms that define the current historical moment, let me propose the following breakdown of Eurasian history according to the alternation between periods of virtual and metal money. The cycle begins with the Age of the First Agrarian Empires (35oo-8oo Be), dominated by virtual credit money. This is followed by the Axial Age (8oo BC-6oo AD), which will be covered in the next chapter, and which saw the rise of coinage and a general shift to metal bullion. The Middle Ages (6oo-1450 AD), which saw a return to virtual credit money, will be covered in chapter 10; chapter n will cover the next turn of the cycle, the Age of Capitalist Empires, which began around 1450 with a massive planetary switch back to gold and silver bullion, and which could only really be said to have ended in 1971, when Richard Nixon announced that the U.S. dollar would no longer be redeemable in gold. This marked the beginning of yet another phase of virtual money, one which has only just begun, and whose ultimate contours are, necessarily, invisible. Chapter 12, the final chapter, will be devoted to applying the insights of history to understanding what it might mean and the opportunities it might throw open.<br /> <br /> === Mesopotamia (3500-800 BC) ===<br /> We have already had occasion to note the predominance of credit money in Mesopotamia, the earliest urban civilization that we know about. In the great temple and palace complexes, not only did money serve largely as an accounting measure rather than physically changing hands, merchants and tradespeople developed credit arrangements of their own. Most of these took the physical form of clay tablets, inscribed with some obligation of future payment, that were then sealed inside clay envelopes and marked with the borrower's seal. The creditor would keep the envelope as a surety, and it would be broken open on repayment. In some times or places at least, these bullae appear to have become what we would now call negotiable instruments, since the tablet inside did not simply record a promise to pay the original lender, but was designated &quot;to the bearer&quot;-in other words, a tablet recording a debt of five shekels of silver (at prevailing rates of interest) could circulate as the equivalent of a five-shekel promissory note-that is, as money.5<br /> <br /> We don't know how often this happened; how many hands such tablets would typically pass through, how many transactions were based on credit, how often merchants actually did weigh out silver in rough chunks to buy and sell their merchandise, or when they were most likely to do so. No doubt all this varied over time. Promissory notes usually circulated within merchant guilds, or between inhabitants of the relatively well-off urban neighborhoods where people knew one another well enough to trust them to be accountable, but not so well that they could rely on one another for more traditional forms of mutual aid.6 We know even less about the marketplaces frequented by ordinary Mesopotamians, except that tavern-keepers operated on credit, and hawkers and operators of market stalls probably did as welJ.7<br /> <br /> The origins of interest will forever remain obscure, since they preceded the invention of writing. The terminology for interest in most ancient languages is derived from some word for &quot;offspring,&quot; causing some to speculate that it originates in loans of livestock, but this seems a bit literal-minded. More likely, the first widespread interest-bearing loans were commercial: temples and palaces would forward wares to merchants and commercial agents, who would then trade them in nearby mountain kingdoms or on trading expeditions overseas.H<br /> <br /> The practice is significant because it implies a fundamental lack of trust. After all, why not simply demand a share in the profits? This seems more fair (a merchant who came back bankrupt would probably have little means of paying anyway), and profit-sharing partnerships of this sort became common practice in the later Middle East.9 The answer seems to be that profit-sharing partnerships were typically contracted between merchants, or anyway people of similar background and experience who had ways of keeping track of one another. Palace or temple bureaucrats and world-roaming merchant adventurers had little in common, and the bureaucrats seem to have concluded that one could not normally expect a merchant returned from a far-off land to be entirely honest about his adventures. A fixed interest rate would render irrelevant whatever elaborate tales of robbery, shipwreck, or attacks by winged snakes or elephants a creative merchant might have concocted. The return was fixed in advance.<br /> <br /> This connection between borrowing and lying, incidentally, is an important one to history. Herodotus remarked about the Persians: &quot;To tell a lie is considered by them the greatest disgrace, and next to that to be in debt ... especially because they think that one in debt must of necessity tell lies.&quot;10 (Later, Herodotus reported a story told to him by a Persian about the origins of the gold that the Persians had acquired in India: they stole it from the nests of giant ants.)11 Jesus's parable of the unforgiving servant makes a joke out of the matter (&quot;Ten thousand talents? No problem. Just give me a little more time&quot;), but even here, one can see how such endless falsehoods contributed to a broader sense that a world in which moral relations are conceived as debts is also, while in certain ways entertaining, necessarily a world of corruption, guilt, and sin.<br /> <br /> By the time of the earliest Sumerian documents, this world may not yet have arrived. Still, the principle of lending at interest, even compound interest, was already familiar to everyone. In 2402 Be, for instance, a royal inscription by King Enmetena of Lagash-one of the earliest we have-complains that his enemy, the King of Umma, had been occupying a huge stretch of farmland that had rightfully belonged to Lagash for decades. He announces: if one were to calculate the rental fees for all that land, then the interest that would have been due on that rent, compounded annually, it would reveal that Umma now owes Lagash four and a half trillion liters of barley. The sum was, as in the parable, intentionally preposterousY It was just an excuse to start a war. Still, he wanted everyone to know that he knew exactly how to do the math.<br /> <br /> Usury-in the sense of interest-bearing consumer loans-was also well established by Enmetena's time. The king ultimately had his war and won it, and two years later, fresh off his victory, he was forced to publish another edict: this one, a general debt cancellation within his kingdom. As he later boasted, &quot;he instituted freedom ''(amargi)'' in Lagash. He restored the child to its mother, and the mother to her child; he cancelled all interest due.&quot;13 This was, in fact, the very first such declaration we have on record-and the first time in history that the word &quot;freedom&quot; appears in a political document.<br /> <br /> Enmetena's text is a bit vague on the details, but a half-century later, when his successor Uruinimgina declared a general amnesty during the New Year's ceremonies of 2350 BC, the terms are all spelled out, and they conform to what was to become typical of such amnesties: cancelling not only all outstanding loans, but all forms of debt servitude, even those based on failure to pay fees or criminal penalties-the only thing excepted being commercial loans.<br /> <br /> Similar declarations are to be found again and again, in Sumerian and later Babylonian and Assyrian records, and always with the same theme: the restoration of &quot;justice and equity,&quot; the protection of widows and orphans, to ensure-as Hammurabi was to put it when he<br /> <br /> abolished debts in Babylon in 1761 Bc-&quot;that the strong might not oppress the weak.&quot;14 In the words of Michael Hudson,<br /> <br /> The designated occasion for clearing Babylonia's financial slate was the New Year festival, celebrated in the spring. Babylonian rulers oversaw the ritual of &quot;breaking the tablets,&quot; that is, the debt records, restoring economic balance as part of the calendrical renewal of society along with the rest of nature. Hammurabi and his fellow rulers signaled these proclamations by raising a torch, probably symbolizing the sun-god of justice Shamash, whose principles were supposed to guide wise and fair rulers. Persons held as debt pledges were released to rejoin their families. Other debtors were restored cultivation rights to their customary lands, free of whatever mortgage liens had accumulated. 15<br /> <br /> Over the next several thousand years, this same list-cancelling the debts, destroying the records, reallocating the land-was to become the standard list of demands of peasant revolutionaries everywhere. In Mesopotamia, rulers appear to have headed off the possibility of unrest by instituting such reforms themselves, as a grand gesture of cosmic renewal, a recreation of the social universe-in Babylonia, during the same ceremony in which the king reenacts his god Marduk's creation of the physical universe. The history of debt and sin was wiped out, and it was time to begin again. But it's also clear what they saw as the alternative: the world plunged into chaos, with farmers defecting to swell the ranks of nomadic pastoralists, and ultimately, if the breakdown continued, returning to overrun the cities and destroy the existing economic order entirely.<br /> <br /> === Egypt (2650-716 BC) ===<br /> Egypt represents an interesting contrast, since for most of its history, it managed to avoid the development of interest-bearing debt entirely.<br /> <br /> Egypt was, like Mesopotamia, extraordinarily rich by ancient standards, but it was also a self-contained society, a river running through a desert, and far more centralized than Mesopotamia. The pharaoh was a god, and the state and temple bureaucracies had their hands in everything: there were a dazzling array of taxes and a continual distribution of allotments, wages, and payments from the state. Here, too, money clearly arose as a means of account. The basic unit was the deben, or &quot;measure&quot;-originally referring to measures of grain, and later of copper or silver. A few records make clear the catch-as-catch-can nature of most transactions:<br /> <br /> In the 15th year of Ramses II [c. 1275 BC] a merchant offered the Egyptian lady Erenofre a Syrian slave girl whose price, no doubt after bargaining, was fixed at 4 deben I kite [about 373 grams] of silver. Erenofre made up a collection of clothes and blankets to the value of 2 deben 2 r/3 kite-the details are set out in the record-and then borrowed a miscellany of objects from her neighbors-bronze vessels, a pot of honey, ten shirts, ten deben of copper ingots-till the price was made up.16<br /> <br /> Most merchants were itinerant, either foreigners or commercial agents for the owners of large estates. There's not much evidence for commercial credit, however; loans in Egypt were still more likely to take the form of mutual aid between neighbors.17<br /> <br /> Substantial, legally enforceable loans, the kind that can lead to the loss of lands or family members, are documented, but they appear to have been rare-and much less pernicious, as the loans did not bear interest. Similarly, we do occasionally hear of debt-bondservants, and even debt slaves, but these seem to have been unusual phenomena and there's no suggestion that matters ever reached crisis proportions, as they so regularly did in Mesopotamia and the Levant.18<br /> <br /> In fact, for the first several thousand years, we seem to be in a somewhat different world, where debt really was a matter of &quot;guilt&quot; and treated largely as a criminal matter:<br /> <br /> When a debtor failed to repay his debt on time, his creditor could take him to court, where the debtor would be required to promise to pay in full by a specific date. As part of his promise-which was under oath-the debtor also pledged to undergo 100 blows and/or repay twice the amount of the original loan if he failed to pay by the date specified.19<br /> <br /> The &quot;and/or&quot; is significant. There was no formal distinction between a fine and a beating. In fact, the entire purpose of the oath (rather like the Cretan custom of having a borrower pretend to snatch the money) seems to have been to create the justification for punitive action: so the debtor could be punished as either a perjurer or a thief.20<br /> <br /> By the time of the New Kingdom (rsso-1070) there is more evidence for markets, but it's only by the time we reach the Iron Age, just before Egypt was absorbed into the Persian empire, that we begin to see evidence for Mesopotamian-style debt crises. Greek sources, for instance, record that the Pharaoh Bakenranef (reigned 720-715 BC) issued a decree abolishing debt bondage and annulling all outstanding liabilities, since &quot;he felt it would be absurd for a soldier, perhaps at the moment when he was setting forth to fight for his fatherland, to be hauled off to prison by his creditor for an unpaid loan&quot;-which, if true, is also one of the earliest mentions of a debt prison.21 Under the Ptolemies, the Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt after Alexander, periodic clean slates had become institutionized. It's well known that the Rosetta Stone, written both in Greek and Egyptian, proved to be the key that made it possible to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics. Few are aware of what it actually says. The stela was originally raised to announce an amnesty, both for debtors and for prisoners, declared by Ptolemy V in r96 sc.ZZ -<br /> <br /> === China (2200-771 BC) ===<br /> We can say almost nothing about Bronze Age India, since its writing remains indecipherable, and not much more about Early China. What little we do know-mainly culled from dribs and drabs in later literary sources-suggests that the earliest Chinese states were far less bureaucratic than their western cousins.23 There being no centralized temple or palace system with priests and administrators managing the storerooms and recording inputs and outputs, there was also little incentive to create a single, uniform unit of account. Instead, the evidence suggests a different path, with social currencies of various sorts still holding sway in the countryside and being converted to commercial purposes in dealings between strangers.<br /> <br /> Later sources recall that early rulers &quot;used pearls and jade as their superior method of payment, gold as their middle method of payment, and knives and spades as their lower method of payment. &quot;24 The author can only be talking about gifts here, and hierarchical ones at that: kings and great magnates rewarding their followers for services in theory rendered voluntarily. In most places, long strings of cowrie shells figure prominently, but even here, though we often hear of &quot;the cowrie money of early China,&quot; and it's easy enough to find texts in which the value of sumptuous gifts are measured in cowries, it's never clear whether people were really carrying them around to buy and sell things in the marketplace.25<br /> <br /> The most likely interpretation is that they were carrying the shells, but for a long time marketplaces themselves were of minor significance, so this use was not nearly as important as the usual uses for social currencies: marriage presents, fines, fees, and tokens of honor.26 At any rate, all sources insist that there was a wide variety of currencies in circulation. As David Scheidel, one of the premier contemporary scholars of early money, notes:<br /> <br /> In pre-imperial China, money took the form of cowrie shells, both originals and-increasingly-bronze imitations, tortoise shells, weighed gold and (rarely) silver bars, and most notably—from at least rooo BC onward—utensil money in the shape of spade blades and knives made of bronzeY<br /> <br /> These were most often used between people who didn't know each other very well. For tabulating debts between neighbors, with local vendors, or with anything having to do with the government, people appear to have employed a variety of credit instruments: later Chinese historians claimed that the earliest of these were knotted strings, rather like the Inca khipu system, and then later, notched strips of wood or bamboo.28 As in Mesopotamia, these appear to have long predated writing.<br /> <br /> We don't really know when the practice of lending at interest first reached China either, or whether Bronze Age China came to see the same sorts of debt crises as occurred in Mesopotamia, but there are tantalizing hints in later documents.29 For instance, later Chinese legends about the origin of coinage ascribed the invention to emperors trying to relieve the effects of natural disasters. One early Han text reports:<br /> <br /> In ancient times, during the floods of Yu and the droughts of Tang, the common people became so exhausted that they were forced to borrow from one another in order to obtain food and clothing. [Emperor] Yu coined money for his people from the gold of Mount Li and [Emperor] Tang did likewise from the copper of Mount Yan. Therefore the world called them benevolent.10<br /> <br /> Other versions are a little more explicit. The Guanzi, a collection that in early imperial China became the standard primer on political economy, notes &quot;There were people who lacked even gruel to eat, and who were forced to sell their children. To rescue these people, Tang coined money.&quot;31<br /> <br /> The story is clearly fanciful (the real origins of coined money were at least a thousand years later), and it is very hard to know what to make of it. Could this reflect a memory of children being taken away as debt sureties? On the face of it, it seems more like starving people selling their children outright-a practice that was later to become commonplace in certain periods of Chinese history.32 But the juxtaposition of loans and the sale of children is suggestive, especially considering what was happening on the other side of Asia at exactly the same time. The Guanzi later goes on to explain that these same rulers instituted the custom of retaining 30 percent of the harvest in public granaries for redistribution in emergencies, so as to ensure that this would never happen again. In other words, they began to set up just the kind of bureaucratic storage facilities that, in places like Egypt and Mesopotamia, had been responsible for creating money as a unit of account to begin with.<br /> <br /> == Chapter nine: The axial age (800 BC - 600 AD) ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Let us designate this period as the &quot;axial age.&quot; Extraordinary events are crowded into this period. In China lived Confucius and Lao Tse, all the trends in Chinese philosophy arose . . . In India it was the age of the Upanishads and of Buddha; as in China, all philosophical trends, including skepticism and materialism, sophistry and nihilism, were developed. -Karl Jaspers, ''Way to Wisdom''&lt;/blockquote&gt;THE PHRASE &quot;THE AXIAL AGE&quot; was coined by the German existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers.1 In the course of writing a history of philosophy, Jaspers became fascinated by the fact that figures like Pythagoras (570-495 Be), the Buddha (563-483 Be), and Confucius (551-479 BC), were all alive at exactly the same time, and that Greece, India, and China, in that period, all saw a sudden efflorescence of debate between contending intellectual schools, each group apparently, unaware of the others' existence. Like the simultaneous invention of coinage, why this happened had always been a puzzle. Jaspers wasn't entirely sure himself. To some extent, he suggested, it must have been an effect of similar historical conditions. For most of the great urban civilizations of the time, the early Iron Age was a kind of pause between empires, a time when political landscapes were broken into a checkerboard of often diminutive kingdoms and city-states, most often at constant war externally and locked in constant political debate within. Each case witnessed the development of something akin to a drop-out culture, with ascetics and sages fleeing to the wilderness or wandering from town to town seeking wisdom; in each, too, they were eventually reabsorbed into the political order as a new kind of intellectual or spiritual elite, whether as Greek sophists, Jewish prophets, Chinese sages, or Indian holy men.<br /> <br /> Whatever the reasons, the result, Jaspers argued, was the first period in history in which human beings applied principles of reasoned inquiry to the great questions of human existence. He observed that all these great regions of the world, China, India, and the Mediterranean, saw the emergence of remarkably parallel philosophical trends, from skepticism to idealism-in fact, almost the entire range of positions about the nature of the cosmos, mind, action, and the ends of human existence that have remained the stuff of philosophy to this day. As one of Jaspers' disciples later put it-overstating only slightly-&quot;no really new ideas have been added since that time. &quot;1<br /> <br /> For Jaspers, the period begins with the Persian prophet Zoroaster, around 8oo Be, and ends around 200 Be, to be followed by a Spiritual Age that centers on figures like Jesus and Mohammed. For my own purposes, I find it more useful to combine the two. Let us define the Axial Age, then, as running from 8oo BC to 6oo AD.3 This makes the Axial Age the period that saw the birth not only of all the world's major philosophical tendencies, but also, all of today's major world religions: Zoroastrianism, Prophetic Judaism, Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Christianity, and Islam.4<br /> <br /> The attentive reader may have noticed that the core period of Jasper's Axial age--the lifetimes of Pythagoras, Confucius, and the Buddha-corresponds almost exactly to the period in which coinage was invented. What's more, the three parts of the world where coins were first invented were also the very parts of the world where those sages lived; in fact, they became the epicenters of Axial Age religious and philosophical creativity: the kingdoms and city-states around the Yellow River in China, the Ganges valley in northern India, and the shores of the Aegean Sea.<br /> <br /> What was the connection? We might start by asking: What is a coin? The normal definition is that a coin is a piece of valuable metal, shaped into a standardized unit, with some emblem or mark inscribed to authenticate it. The world's first coins appear to have been created within the kingdom of Lydia, in western Anatolia (now Turkey), sometime around 6oo sc.5 These first Lydian coins were basically just round lumps of electrum-a gold-silver alloy that occurred naturally in the nearby Pactolus River-that had been heated, then hammered with some kind of insignia. The very first, stamped only with a few letters, appear to have been manufactured by ordinary jewelers, but these disappeared almost instantly, replaced by coins manufactured in a newly established royal mint. Greek cities on the Anatolian coast soon began to strike their own coins, and they came to be adopted in Greece itself; the same thing occurred in the Persian Empire after it absorbed Lydia in 547 BC.<br /> <br /> In both India and China, we can observe the same pattern: invented by private citizens, coinage was quickly monopolized by the state. The first Indian money, which seems to have appeared at some point in the sixth century, consisted of bars of silver trimmed down to uniform weights, then punch-marked with some kind of official symbol.6 Most of the examples discovered by archaeologists contain numerous additional counter-punches, presumably added much in the way that a check or other credit instrument is endorsed before being transferred. This strongly suggests that they were being handled by people used to dealing with more abstract credit instruments.7 Much early Chinese coinage also shows signs of having evolved directly from social currencies: some were in fact cast bronze in the shape of cowries, though others took the shape of diminutive knives, disks, or spades. In every case, local governments quickly stepped in-presumably within the space of about a generation.R However, since in each of the three areas there was a plethora of tiny states, this meant that each ended up with a wide variety of different currency systems. For example, around 700 Be, northern India was still divided into Janapadas or &quot;tribal territories,&quot; some of them monarchies and some republics, and in the sixth century there were still at least sixteen major kingdoms. In China, this was the period where the old Zhou Empire first devolved into vying principalities (the &quot;Spring and Autumn&quot; period, 722-481 Be), then splintered into the chaos of the &quot;Warring States&quot; (475-221 sc.) Like the Greek citystates, all of the resulting kingdoms, no matter how diminutive, aspired to issue their own official currency.<br /> <br /> Recent scholarship has shed a great deal of light on how this must have happened. Gold, silver, and bronze--the materials from which coins were made--had long been the media of international trade; but until that time, only the rich had actually had much in their possession. A typical Sumerian farmer may well have never had occasion to hold a substantial piece of silver in his hand, except perhaps at his wedding. Most precious metals took the form of wealthy women's anklets and heirloom chalices presented by kings to their retainers, or it was simply stockpiled in temples, in ingot form, as sureties for loans. Somehow, during the Axial Age, all this began to change. Large amounts of silver, gold, and copper were dethesaurized, as the economic historians like to say; it was removed from the temples and houses of the rich and placed in the hands of ordinary people, was broken into tinier pieces, and began to be used in everyday transactions.<br /> <br /> How? Israeli Classicist David Schaps provides the most plausible suggestion: most of it was stolen. This was a period of generalized warfare, and it is in the nature of war that precious things are plundered.<br /> <br /> Soldiers who plunder may indeed go first for the women, the alcoholic drinks, or the food, but they will also be looking around for things of value that are easily portable. A long-term standing army will tend to accumulate many things that are valuable and portable-and the most valuable and portable items are precious metals and precious stones. It may well have been the protracted wars among the states of these areas that first produced a large population of people with precious metal in their possession and a need for everyday necessities ...<br /> <br /> Where there are people who want to buy there will be people willing to sell, as innumerable tracts on black markets, drug dealing, and prostitution point out . . . The constant warfare of the archaic age of Greece, of the Janapadas of India, of the Warring States of China, was a powerful impetus for the development of market trade, and in particular for market trade based on the exchange of precious metal, usually in small amounts. If plunder brought precious metal into the hands of the soldiers, the market will have spread it through the population.9<br /> <br /> Now, one might object: but surely, war and plunder were nothing new. The Homeric epics, for instance, show a well-nigh obsessive interest in the division of the spoils. True, but what the Axial Age also saw-again, equally in China, India, and the Aegean-was the rise of a new kind of army, made up not of aristocratic warriors and their retainers, but trained professionals. The period when the Greeks began to use coinage, for instance, was also the period when they developed their famous phalanx tactics, which required constant drill and training of the hoplite soldiers. The results were so extraordinarily effective that Greek mercenaries were soon being sought after from Egypt to Crimea. But unlike the Homeric retainers, who could simply be ignored, an army of trained mercenaries needs to be rewarded in some meaningful way. One could perhaps provide them all with livestock, but livestock are hard to transport; or with promissory notes, but these would be worthless in the mercenaries' own country. Allowing each a tiny share of the plunder does seem an obvious solution.<br /> <br /> These new armies were, directly or indirectly, under the control of governments, and it took governments to turn these chunks of metal into genuine currency. The main reason for this is simply scale: to create enough coins that the people could begin to use them in everyday transactions required mass production on a scale far beyond the abilities of local merchants or smiths.10 Of course we have already seen why governments might have incentive to do so: the existence of markets was highly convenient for governments, and not just because it made it so much easier for them to provision large standing armies. By insisting that only their own coins were acceptable as fees, fines, or taxes, governments were able to overwhelm the innumerable social currencies that already existed in their hinterlands, and to establish something like uniform national markets.<br /> <br /> Actually, one theory is that the very first Lydian coins were invented explicitly to pay mercenariesY This might help explain why the Greeks, who supplied most of the mercenaries, so quickly became accustomed to the use of coins, and why the use of coinage spread so quickly across the Hellenic world, so that by 480 BC there were at least one hundred mints operating in different Greek cities, even though at that time, none of the great trading nations of the Mediterranean had as yet showed the slightest interest in them. The Phoenicians, for example, were considered the greatest merchants and bankers of antiquity.1&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; They were also great inventors, having been the first to develop both the alphabet and the abacus. Yet for centuries after the invention of coinage, they preferred to continue conducting business as they always had, with unwrought ingots and promissory notes.13 Phoenician cities struck no coins until 365 Be, and while Carthage, the great Phoenician colony in North Africa that came to dominate commerce in the Western Mediterranean, did so a bit earlier, it was only when &quot;forced to do so to pay Sicilian mercenaries; and its issues were marked in Punic, 'for the people of the camp.&quot;'14<br /> <br /> On the other hand, in the extraordinary violence of the Axial Age, being a &quot;great trading nation&quot; (rather than, say, an aggressive military power like Persia, Athens, or Rome) was not, ultimately, a winning proposition. The fate of the Phoenician cities is instructive. Sidon, the wealthiest, was destroyed by the Persian emperor Artaxerxes III after a revolt in 351 BC. Forty thousand of its inhabitants are said to have committed mass suicide rather than surrender. Nineteen years later, Tyre was destroyed after a prolonged siege by Alexander: ten thousand died in battle, and the thirty thousand survivors were sold into slavery.<br /> <br /> Carthage lasted longer, but when Roman armies finally destroyed the city in 146 BC, hundreds of thousands of Carthaginians were said to have been raped and slaughtered, and fifty thousand captives put on the auction block, after which the city itself was razed and its fields sowed with salt.<br /> <br /> All this may bring home something of the level of violence amidst which Axial Age thought developed.15 But it also leaves us asking: What exactly was the ongoing relation among coinage, military power, and this unprecedented outpouring of ideas?<br /> <br /> === The Mediterranean ===<br /> Here again our best information is from the Mediterranean world, and I have already provided some of its outlines. Comparing Athens-with its far-flung naval empire-and Rome, we can immediately detect striking similarities. In each city, history begins with a series of debt crises. In Athens, the first crisis, the one that culminated in Solon's reforms of 594 Be, was so early that coinage could hardly have been a factor. In Rome, too, the earliest crises seem to have proceeded the advent of currency. Rather, in each case, coinage became a solution. In brief, one might say that these conflicts over debt had two possible outcomes. The first was that the aristocrats could win, and the poor remain &quot;slaves of the rich&quot;-which in practice meant that most people would end up clients of some wealthy patron. Such states were generally militarily ineffective.16 The second was that popular factions could prevail, institute the usual popular program of redistribution of lands and safeguards against debt peonage, thus creating the basis for a class of free farmers whose children would, in turn, be free to spend much of their time training for war.17<br /> <br /> Coinage played a critical role in maintaining this kind of free peasantry-secure in their landholding, not tied to any great lord by bonds of debt. In fact, the fiscal policies of many Greek cities amounted to little more than elaborate systems for the distribution of loot. It's important to emphasize that few ancient cities, if any, went so far as to outlaw predatory lending, or even debt peonage, entirely. Instead, they threw money at the problem. Gold, and especially silver, were acquired in war, or mined by slaves captured in war. Mints were located in temples (the traditional place for depositing spoils), and city-states developed endless ways to distribute coins, not only to soldiers, sailors, and those producing arms or outfitting ships, but to the populace generally, as jury fees, fees for attending public assemblies, or sometimes just as outright distributions, as Athens did most famously when they discovered a new vein of silver in the mines at Laurium in 483 BC. At the same time, insisting that the same coins served as legal tender for all payments due to the state guaranteed that they would be in sufficient demand that markets would soon develop.<br /> <br /> Many of the political crises in ancient Greek cities similarly turned on the distribution of the spoils. Here is another incident recorded in Aristotle, who provides a conservative take on the origins of a coup in the city of Rhodes around 39I BC (&quot;demagogues&quot; here refers to the leaders of the democracy):<br /> <br /> The demagogues needed money to pay the people for attending the assembly and serving on juries; for if the people did not attend, the demagogues would lose their influence. They raised at least some of the money they needed by preventing the disbursement of the money due the trireme [warship] commanders under their contracts with the city to build and fit triremes for the Rhodian navy. Since the trireme commanders were not paid, they were unable in turn to pay their suppliers and workers, who sued the trireme commanders. To escape these lawsuits the trireme commanders banded together and overthrew the democracy.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;8<br /> <br /> It was slavery, though, that made all this possible. As the figures concerning Sidon, Tyre, and Carthage suggest, enormous numbers of people were being enslaved in many of these conflicts, and, of course, many slaves ended up working in the mines, producing even more gold, silver, and copper. (The mines in Laurium reportedly employed ten to twenty thousand of them.)19<br /> <br /> Geoffrey Ingham calls the resulting system a &quot;military-coinage complex&quot;-though I think it would be more accurate to call it a &quot;military-coinage-slavery complex. &quot;20 Anyway, that describes rather nicely how it worked in practice. When Alexander set out to conquer the Persian Empire, he borrowed much of the money with which to pay and provision his troops, and he minted his first coins, used to pay his creditors and continue to support the money, by melting down gold and silver plundered after his initial victoriesY However, an expeditionary force needed to be paid, and paid well: Alexander's army, which numbered some no,ooo men, required half a ton of silver a day just for wages. For this reason, conquest meant that the existing Persian system of mines and mints had to be reorganized around providing for the invading army; and ancient mines, of course, were worked by slaves. In turn, most slaves in mines were war captives. Presumably most of the unfortunate survivors of the siege of Tyre ended up working in such mines. One can see how this process might feed upon itself.22<br /> <br /> Alexander was also the man responsible for destroying what remained of the ancient credit systems, since not only the Phoenicians but also the old Mesopotamian heartland had resisted the new coin economy. His armies not only destroyed Tyre; they also dethesaurized the gold and silver reserves of Babylonian and Persian temples, the security on which their credit systems were based, and insisted that all taxes to his new government be paid in his own money. The result was to &quot;release the accumulated specie of century onto the market in a matter of months,&quot; something like 18o,ooo talents, or in contemporary terms, an estimated $285 billion.23<br /> <br /> The Hellenistic successor kingdoms established by Alexander's generals, from Greece to India, employed mercenaries rather than national armies, but the story of Rome is, again, similar to that of Athens. Its early history, as recorded by official chroniclers like Livy, is one of continual struggles between patricians and plebians, and of continual crises over debt. Periodically, these would lead to what were called moments of &quot;the secession of the plebs,&quot; when the commoners of the city abandoned their fields and workshops, camped outside the city, and threatened mass defection—an interesting halfway point between the popular revolts of Greece and the strategy of exodus typically -pursued in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Here, too, the patricians were ultimately faced with a decision: they could use agricultural loans to gradually turn the plebian population into a class of bonded laborers on their estates, or they could accede to popular demands for debt protection, preserve a free peasantry, and employ the younger sons of free farm families as soldiers.24 As the prolonged history of crises, secessions, and reforms makes clear, the choice was made grudgingly.25 The plebs practically had to force the senatorial class to take the imperial option. Still, they did, and over time they gradually presided over the establishment of a welfare system that recycled at least a share of the spoils to soldiers, veterans, and their families.<br /> <br /> It seems significant, in this light, that the traditional date of the first Roman coinage-338 Be—is almost exactly the date when debt bondage was finally outlawed (326 BC).26 Again, coinage, minted from war spoils, didn't cause the crisis. It was used as a solution.<br /> <br /> In fact, the entire Roman empire, at its height, could be understood as a vast machine for the extraction of precious metals and their coining and distribution to the military—combined with taxation policies designed to encourage conquered populations to adopt coins in their everyday transactions. Even so, for most of its history, use of coins was heavily concentrated in two regions: in Italy and a few major cities, and on the frontiers, where the legions were actually stationed. In areas where there were neither mines nor military operations, older credit systems presumably continued to operate.<br /> <br /> I will add one final note here. In Greece as in Rome, attempts to solve the debt crisis through military expansion were always, ultimately, just ways of fending off the problem-and they only worked for a limited period of time. When expansion stopped, everything returned to as it had been before. Actually, it's not clear that all forms of debt bondage were ever entirely eliminated even in cities like Athens and Rome. In cities that were not successful military powers, without any source of income to set up welfare policies, debt crises continued to flare up every century or so-and they often became far more acute than they ever had in the Middle East, because there was no mechanism, short of outright revolution, to declare a Mesopotamian-style clean slate. Large populations, even in the Greek world, did, in fact, sink to the rank of serfs and clients.27<br /> <br /> Athenians, as we've seen, seemed to assume that a gentleman normally lived a step or two ahead of his creditors. Roman politicians were little different. Of course much of the debt was money that members of the senatorial class owed to each other: in a way, it's just the usual communism of the rich, extending credit to one another on easy terms that they would never think to offer others. Still, under the late Republic, history records many intrigues and conspiracies hatched by desperate debtors, often aristocrats driven by relentless creditors to make common cause with the poor.28 If we hear less about this sort of thing happening under the emperors, it's probably because there were fewer opportunities for protest; what evidence we have suggests that if anything, the problem got much worse.29 Around 100 AD, Plutarch wrote about his own country as if it were under foreign invasion:<br /> <br /> And as King Darius sent to the city of Athens his lieutenants Datis and Artaphernes with chains and cords, to bind the prisoners they should take; so these usurers, bringing into Greece boxes full of schedules, bills, and obligatory contracts, as so many irons and fetters for the shackling of poor criminals ...<br /> <br /> For at the very delivery of their money, they immediately ask it back, taking it up at the same moment they lay it down; and they let out that again to interest which they take for the use of what they have before lent.<br /> <br /> So that they laugh at those natural philosophers who hold that nothing can be made of nothing and of that which has no existence; but with them usury is made and engendered of that which neither is nor ever was.30<br /> <br /> The works of the early Christian fathers likewise resound with endless descriptions of the misery and desperation of those caught in rich lenders' webs. In the end, through this means, that small window of freedom that had been created by the plebs was completely undone, and the free peasantry largely eliminated. By the end of the empire, most people in the countryside who weren't outright slaves had become, effectively, debt peons to some rich landlord; a situation in the end legally formalized by imperial decrees binding peasants to the land.31 Without a free peasantry to form the basis for the army, the state was forced to rely more and more on arming and employing Germanic barbarians from across the imperial frontiers-with results I need hardly relate.<br /> <br /> === India ===<br /> In most ways, India, could not be more different as a civilization than the ancient Mediterranean-but to a remarkable degree, the same basic pattern repeats itself there as well.<br /> <br /> The Bronze Age civilization of the Indus Valley collapsed sometime around 16oo BC; it would be about a thousand years before India saw the emergence of another urban civilization. When it did, that civilization was centered on the fertile plains that surrounded the Ganges farther east. Here too we observe, at first, a checkerboard of different sorts of government, from the famous &quot;Ksatriya republics&quot; with a populace in arms and urban democratic assemblies, to elective monarchies, to centralized empires like Kosala and Magadha.32 Both Gautama (the future Buddha), and Mahavira (the founder of Jainism) were born in one of the republics, though both ultimately found themselves teaching within the great empires, whose rulers often became patrons of wandering ascetics and philosophers.<br /> <br /> Both kingdoms and republics produced their own silver and copper coinage, but in some ways the republics were more traditional, since the self-governing &quot;populace in arms&quot; consisted of the traditional Ksatriya or warrior caste, who typically held their lands in common and had them worked by serfs or slaves.33 The kingdoms, on the other hand, were founded on a fundamentally new institution: a trained, professional army, open to young men of a wide variety of backgrounds, their equipment supplied by central authorities (soldiers were obliged to check their arms and armor when they entered cities), and provided with generous salaries.<br /> <br /> Whatever their origins, here too, coins and markets sprung up above all to feed the machinery of war. Magadha, which ultimately came out on top, did so largely because it controlled most of the mines. Kautilya's Arthasastra, a political treatise written by one of the chief ministers for the Mauryan dynasty that succeeded it (321-185 Be), stated the matter precisely: &quot;The treasury is based upon mining, the army upon the treasury; he who has army and treasury may conquer the whole wide earth. &quot;34 The government drew its personnel first of all from a landed class, which provided trained administrators, but even more, full-time soldiers: the salaries of each rank of soldier and administrator were carefully stipulated. These armies could be huge. Greek sources report that Magadha could put to the field a force of 2oo,ooo infantry, 2o,ooo horses, and about 4,000 elephants-and that Alexander's men mutinied rather than have to face them. Whether on campaign or in garrison, they were inevitably accompanied by a range of different sorts of camp followers-petty traders, prostitutes, and hired servants-which, with the soldiers, seems to have been the very medium through which a cash economy had originally taken form.35 By Kautilya's time, a few hundred years later, the state was inserting itself into every aspect of the process: Kautilya suggests paying soldiers apparently generous wages, then secretly replacing hawkers with government agents who could charge them twice the normal rates for supplies, as well as organizing prostitutes under a ministry in which they could be trained as spies, so as to make detailed reports on their clients' loyalties.<br /> <br /> Thus was the market economy, born of war, gradually taken over by the government. Rather than stifle the spread of currency, the process seems to have doubled and even tripled it: the military logic was extended to the entire economy, the government systematically setting up its granaries, workshops, trading houses, warehouses, and jails, staffed by salaried officials, and all selling products on the market so as to collect the pieces of silver paid off to soldiers and officials and put them back into the royal treasuries again.’&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; The result was a moneta-rization of daily life unlike anything India was to see for another two thousand years.37<br /> <br /> Something similar seems to have happened with slavery, which was quite commonplace at the time of the rise of the great armies-again, unlike almost any other point in Indian history-but was gradually brought under government control.38 By Kautilya's time, most war captives were not sold in marketplaces but relocated to government villages on newly reclaimed land. They were not allowed to leave, and these government villages were, at least according to the regulations, remarkably dreary places: veritable work camps, with all forms of festive entertainment officially prohibited. Slave hirelings were mostly convicts, rented by the state during their terms.<br /> <br /> With their armies, spies, and administration controlling everything, the new Indian kings evinced little interest in the old priestly caste and its Vedic ritual, though many kept up a lively interest in the new philosophical and religious ideas that seem to have been cropping up everywhere at the time. As time went on, however, the war machine began to sputter. It's not clear exactly why this happened. By the time of emperor Asoka (273-232 be), the Mauryan dynasty controlled almost all of present-day India and Pakistan, but the Indian version of the military-coinage-slavery complex was showing definite signs of strain. Perhaps the clearest sign was the debasement of the coinage, which over the course of two centuries or so had gone from almost pure silver to about fifty percent copper.39<br /> <br /> Asoka, famously, began his reign in conquest: in 265 be, destroying the Kalingas, one of the last remaining Indian republics, in a war in which hundreds of thousands of human beings were, according to his own account, killed or carried off into slavery. Asoka later claimed to have been so disturbed and haunted by the carnage that he renounced war altogether, embraced Buddhism, and declared that from that time on, his kingdom would be governed by principles of ahimsa, or nonviolence. &quot;Here in my kingdom,&quot; he declared in an edict inscribed on one of the great granite pillars in his capital of Patna, which so dazzled the Greek ambassador Megasthenes, &quot;no living being must be killed or sacrificed.&quot;40 Such a statement obviously can't be taken literally: Asoka might have replaced sacrificial ritual with vegetarian feasts, but he didn't abolish the army, abandon capital punishment, or even outlaw slavery. But his rule marked a revolutionary shift in ethos. Aggressive war was abandoned, and much of the army does seems to have been demobilized, along with the network of spies and state bureaucrats, with the new, proliferating mendicant orders (Buddhists, Jains, and also world-renouncing Hi-ndus) given official state support to preach to the villages on questions of social morality. Asoka and his successors diverted substantial resources to these religious orders, with the result that, over the next centuries, thousands of stupas and monasteries were built across the subcontinent.41<br /> <br /> Asoka's reforms are useful to contemplate here because they help reveal just how mistaken some of our basic assumptions are: particularly, that money equals coins, and that more coins in circulation means more commerce and a greater role for private merchants. In reality, the Magadha state promoted markets but had been suspicious of private merchants, seeing them largely as competitors.42 Merchants had been among the earliest and most ardent supporters of the new religions (Jains, owing to their rigorous enforcement of rules against harm to any living creature, were obliged to become, effectively, a mercantile caste). Mercantile interests fully supported Asoka's reforms. Yet the result was not an increase in the use of cash in everyday affairs but exactly the opposite.<br /> <br /> Early Buddhist economic attitudes have long been considered a bit mysterious. On the one hand, monks could not own property as individuals; they were expected to live an austere communistic life with little more than a robe and begging bowl as personal possessions, and they were strictly forbidden to so much as touch anything made of gold or silver. On the other hand, however suspicious of precious metals, Buddhism had always had a liberal attitude toward credit arrangements. It is one of the few of the great world religions that has never formally condemned usury.43 Taken in the context of the times, however, there's nothing particularly mysterious about any of this. It makes perfect sense for a religious movement that rejected violence and militarism, but that was in no way opposed to commerce.44 As we shall see, while Asoka's own empire was not long to endure, soon to be replaced by a succession of ever weaker and mostly smaller states, Buddhism took root. The decline of the great armies eventually led to the near-disappearance of coinage, but also to a veritable efflorescence of increasingly sophisticated forms of credit.<br /> <br /> === China ===<br /> Until about 475 BC, northern China was still nominally an empire, but the emperors had devolved into figureheads and a, series of de facto kingdoms had emerged. The period from 475 to 221 BC is referred as the &quot;Warring States period&quot;; at that point, even the pretense of unity was cast aside. Ultimately, the country was reunited by the state of Qin, who established a dynasty that was then immediately overthrown by a series of massive popular insurrections, ushering in the Han dynasty (2o6 sc-220 AD), founded by a previously obscure rural constable and peasant leader named Liu Bao, who was the first Chinese leader to adopt the Confucian ideology, exam system, and pattern of civil administration that were to continue for almost two thousand years.<br /> <br /> Still, the golden age of Chinese philosophy was the period of chaos that preceded unification, and this followed the typical Axial Age pattern: the same fractured political landscape, the same rise of trained, professional armies and the creation of coined money largely in order to pay them.45 We also see the same government policies designed to encourage the development of markets, chattel slavery on a scale not seen before or since in Chinese history, the appearance of itinerant philosophers and religious visionaries, battling intellectual schools, and eventually, attempts by political leaders to transform the new philosophies into religions of state.46<br /> <br /> There were also significant differences, starting with the currency system. China never minted gold or silver coins. Merchants used precious metals in the form of bullion, but the coins in actual circulation were basically small change: cast bronze disks, usually with a hole in the middle so that they could be strung together. Such strings of &quot;cash&quot; were produced in extraordinary numbers, and very large amounts had to be assembled for large-scale transactions: when wealthy men wished to make donations to temples, for instance, they had to use oxcarts to carry the money. The most plausible explanation is that, especially after unification, Chinese armies were enormous-some Warring States armies numbered up to a million-but not nearly as professional or well paid as those of kingdoms farther west, and from Qin and Han times on, rulers were careful to ensure that this remained the case, to make sure the army never became an independent power base.47<br /> <br /> There was also a notable difference in that the new religious and philosophical movements in China were from their very beginnings also social movements. Elsewhere, they only gradually became so. In ancient Greece, philosophy began with cosmological speculation; philosophers were more likely to be individual sages, perhaps surrounded by a few ardent disciples, as founders of movements.48 Under the Roman empire, schools of philosophy like the Stoics, Epicureans, Neo-Platonists did become movements of a sort: at least in the sense that they had thousands of educated adherents, who &quot;practiced&quot; philosophy not only by reading, writing, and debating, but even more by meditation, diet, and exercise. Still, philosophical movements were basically confined to the civic elite; it was only with the rise of Christianity and other religious movements that philosophy moved beyond it.49 One can observe a similar evolution in India, from individual Brahman world-renouncers, forest sages, and wandering mendicants with theories about the nature of the soul or the composition of the material universe; to philosophical movements of the Buddhists, Jains, Ajrvika, and others mostly long forgotten; to, finally, mass religious movements with thousands of monks, shrines, schools, and networks of lay supporters.<br /> <br /> In China, while many of the founders of the &quot;hundred schools&quot; of philosophy that blossomed under the Warring States were wandering sages who spent their days moving from city to city trying to catch the ears of princes, others were leaders of social movements from the very start. Some of these movements didn't even have leaders, like the School of the Tillers, an anarchist movement of peasant intellectuals who set out to create egalitarian communities in the cracks and fissures between states.50 The Mohists, egalitarian rationalists whose social base seems to have been urban artisans, not only were philosophically opposed to war and militarism, but organized battalions of military engineers who would actively discourage conflicts by volunteering to fight in any war against the side of the aggressor. Even the Confucians, for all the importance they attached to courtly ritual, were in their early days mainly known for their efforts in popular education.51<br /> <br /> === Materialism: The pursuit of profit ===<br /> What is one to make of all this? The popular education campaigns of the period perhaps provide a clue. The Axial Age was the first time in human history when familiarity with the written word was no longer limited to priests, administrators, and merchants, but had become necessary to full participation in civic life. In Athens, it was taken for granted that only a country bumpkin would be entirely illiterate.<br /> <br /> Without mass literacy, neither the emergence of mass intellectual movements, nor the spread of Axial Age ideas would have been possible. By the end of the period, these ideas had produced a world where even the leaders of barbarian armies descending on the Roman empire felt obliged to take a position on the question of the Mystery of the Trinity, and where Chinese monks could spend time debating the relative merits of the eighteen schools of Classical Indian Buddhism.<br /> <br /> No doubt the growth of markets played a role too, not only helping to free people from the proverbial shackles of status or community, but encouraging a certain habit of rational calculation, of measuring inputs and outputs, means and ends, all of which must inevitably have found some echoes in the new spirit of rational inquiry that begins to appear in all the same times and places. Even the word &quot;rational&quot; is telling: it derives, of course, from &quot;ratio&quot;-how many of X go into Y-a sort of mathematical calculation previously used mainly by architects and engineers, but which, with the rise of markets, everyone who didn't want to get cheated at the marketplace had to learn how to do. Still, we must be careful here. After all, money in itself was nothing new. Sumerian farmers and tradesmen were already perfectly capable of making such calculations in 3500 Be; but none, as far as we know, were so impressed that they concluded, like Pythagoras, that mathematical ratios were the key to understanding the nature of the universe and the movement of celestial bodies, and that all things were ultimately composed of numbers-and they certainly hadn't formed secret societies based on sharing this understanding, debating and purging and excommunicating one another.52<br /> <br /> To understand what had changed, we have to look, again, at the particular kind of markets that were emerging at the beginning of the Axial Age: impersonal markets, born of war, in which it was possible to treat even neighbors as if they were strangers.<br /> <br /> Within human economies, motives are assumed to be complex. When a lord gives a gift to a retainer, there is no reason to doubt that it is inspired by a genuine desire to benefit that retainer, even if it is also a strategic move designed to ensure loyalty, and an act of magnificence meant to remind everyone else that he is great and the retainer small. There is no sense of contradiction here. Similarly, gifts between equals are usually fraught with many layers of love, envy, pride, spite, communal solidarity, or any of a dozen other things. Speculating on such matters is a major form of daily entertainment. What's missing, though, is any sense that the most selfish (&quot;self-interested&quot;) motive is necessarily the real one: those speculating on hidden motives are just as likely to assume that someone is secretly trying to help a friend or harm an enemy as to acquire some advantage for him- or herself.53 Neither is any of this likely to have changed much in the rise of early credit markets, where the value of an IOU was as much dependent on assessments of its issuer's character as on his disposable income, and motives of love, envy, pride, etc. could never be completely set aside.<br /> <br /> Cash transactions between strangers were different, and all the more so when trading is set against a background of war and emerges from disposing of loot and provisioning soldiers; when one often had best not ask where the objects traded came from, and where no one is much interested in forming ongoing personal relationships anyway. Here, transactions really do become simply a figuring-out of how many of X will go for how many of Y, of calculating proportions, estimating quality, and trying to get the best deal for oneself. The result, during the Axial Age, was a new way of thinking about human motivation, a radical simplification of motives that made it possible to begin speaking of concepts like &quot;profit&quot; and &quot;advantage&quot;-and imagining that this is what people are really pursuing, in every aspect of existence, as if the violence of war or the impersonality of the marketplace has simply allowed them to drop the pretense that they ever cared about anything else. It was this, in turn, that allowed human life to seem like it could be reduced to a matter of means-to-end calculation, and hence something that could be examined using the same means that one used to study the attraction and repulsion of celestial bodies/4 If the underlying assumption very much resembles those of contemporary economists, it's no coincidence--but with the difference that, in an age when money, markets, states, and military affairs were all intrinsically connected, money was needed to pay armies to capture slaves to mine gold to produce money; when &quot;cutthroat competition &quot; often did involve the literal cutting of throats, it never occurred to anyone to imagine that selfish ends could be pursued by peaceful means. Certainly, this picture of humanity does begin to appear, with startling consistency, across Eurasia, wherever we also see coinage and philosophy appear.<br /> <br /> China provides an unusually transparent case in point. Already in Confucius's time, Chinese thinkers were speaking of the pursuit of profit as the driving force in human life. The actual term used was li, a word first used to refer to the increase of grain one harvests from a field over and above what one originally planted (the pictogram represents a sheaf of wheat next to a knife).55 From there it came to mean commercial profit, and thence, a general term for &quot;benefit&quot; or &quot;payback. &quot; The following story, which purports to tell the reaction of a merchant's son named Li.i Buwei on learning that an exiled prince was living nearby, illustrates the progression nicely:<br /> <br /> On returning home, he said to his father, &quot;What is the profit on investment that one can expect from plowing fields?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Ten times the investment, &quot; replied his father.<br /> <br /> &quot;And the return on investment in pearls and jades is how much?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;A hundredfold. &quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;And the return on investment from establishing a ruler and securing the state would be how much?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;It would be incalculable. &quot;56<br /> <br /> Lti adopted the prince's cause and eventually contrived to make him King of Qin. He went on to became first minister for the king's son, Qin Shi Huang, helping him defeat the other Warring States to became the first Emperor of China. We still have a compendium of political wisdom that Lti commissioned for the new emperor, which contains such military advice as the following:<br /> <br /> As a general principle, when an enemy's army comes, it seeks some profit. Now if they come and find the prospect of death instead, they will consider running away the most profitable thing to do. When all one's enemies consider running to be the most profitable thing to do, no blades will cross.<br /> <br /> This is the most essential point in military matters.57<br /> <br /> In such a world, heroic considerations of honor and glory, vows to •gods or desire for vengeance, were at best weaknesses to be manipulated. In the numerous manuals on statecraft produced at the time, everything was cast as a matter of recognizing interest and advantage, calculating how to balance that which will profit the ruler against that which will profit the people, determining when the ruler's interests are the same as the people's and when they contradict.58 Technical terms drawn from politics, economics, and military strategy (&quot;return on investment,&quot; &quot;strategic advantage&quot;) blended and overlapped.<br /> <br /> The predominant school of political thought under the Warring States was that of the Legalists, who insisted that in matters of statecraft, a ruler's interests were the only consideration, even if rulers would be unwise to admit this. Still, the people could be easily manipulated, since they had the same motivations: the people's pursuit of profit, wrote Lord Shang, is utterly predictable, &quot;just like the tendency of water to flow downhill. &quot;59 Shang was harsher than most of his fellow Legalists in that he believed that widespread prosperity would ultimately harm the ruler's ability to mobilize his people for war, and therefore that terror was the most efficient instrument of governance, but even he insisted that this regime be clothed as a regime of law and justice.<br /> <br /> Wherever the military-coinage-slavery complex began to take hold, we find political theorists propounding similar ideas. Kautilya was no different: the title of his book, the Arthasastra, is usually translated as &quot;manual of statecraft,&quot; since it consists of advice to rulers, but its more literal translation is &quot;the science of material gain. &quot;60 Like the Legalists, Kautilya emphasized the need to create a pretext that governance was a matter of morality and justice, but in addressing the rulers themselves, he insisted that &quot;war and peace are considered solely from the point of view of profit &quot;-of amassing wealth to create a more effective army, of using the army to dominate markets and control resources to amass more wealth, and so on.61 In Greece we've already met Thrasyma-chos. True, Greece was slightly different. Greek city-states did not have kings, and the collapse of private interests and affairs of state was in principle universally denounced as tyranny. Still, in practice, what this meant was that city-states, and even political factions, ended up acting in precisely the same coldly calculating way as Indian or Chinese sovereigns. Anyone who has ever read Thucydides' Melian dialogue--in which Athenian generals present the population of a previously friendly city with elegantly reasoned arguments for why the Athenians have determined that it is to the advantage of their empire to threaten them with collective massacre if they are not willing to become tributepaying subjects, and why it is equally in the interests of the Melians to submit-is aware of the results.62<br /> <br /> Another striking feature of this literature is its resolute materialism. Goddesses and gods, magic and oracles, sacrificial ritual, ancestral cults, even caste and ritual status systems all either disappear or are sidelined, no longer treated as ends in themselves but as yet mere tools to be used for the pursuit of material gain.<br /> <br /> That intellectuals willing to produce such theories should win the ears of princes is hardly surprising. Neither is it particularly surprising that other intellectuals should have been so offended by this sort of cynicism that they began to make common cause with the popular movements that inevitably began to form against those princes. But as is so often the case, oppositional intellectuals were faced with two choices: either adopt the reigning terms of debate, or .try to come up with a diametrical inversion. Mo Di, the founder of Mohism, took the first approach. He turned the concept of li, profit, into something more like &quot;social utility,&quot; and then he attempted to demonstrate that war itself is, by definition, an unprofitable activity. For example, he wrote, campaigns can only be fought in spring and autumn, and each had equally deleterious effects:<br /> <br /> If in the spring then the people miss their sowing and planting, if in the autumn, they miss their reaping and harvesting. Even if they miss only one season, then the number of people who will die of cold and hunger is incalculable. Now let us calculate the army's equipment, the arrows, standards, tents, armor, shields, and sword hilts; the number of these which will break and perish and not come back ...So also with oxen and horses ...63<br /> <br /> His conclusion: if one could add up the total costs of aggression in human lives, animal lives, and material damage, one would be forced to the conclusion that they never outweighed the benefits-even for the victor. In fact, Mo Di took this sort of logic so far that he ended up arguing that the only way to optimize the overall profit of humanity was to abandon the pursuit of private profit entirely and adopt a principle of what he called &quot;universal love&quot;-essentially arguing that if one takes the principle of market exchange to its logical conclusion, it can only lead to a kind of communism.<br /> <br /> The Confucians took the opposite approach, rejecting the initial premise. A good example is most of the opening of Mencius' much-remembered conversation with King Hui:<br /> <br /> &quot;Venerable Sir,&quot; the King greeted him, &quot;since you have not counted a thousand miles too far to come here, may I suppose that you also have something with which you may profit my kingdom?&quot;<br /> <br /> Mencius replied:<br /> <br /> &quot;Why must Your Majesty necessarily use this word 'profit'?<br /> <br /> What I have are only these two topics: benevolence and righteousness, and nothing else.&quot;64<br /> <br /> Still, the end-point was roughly the same. The Confucian ideal of ren, of humane benevolence, was basically just a more complete inversion of profit-seeking calculation than Mo Di's universal love; the main difference was that the Confucians added a certain aversion to calculation itself, preferring what might almost be called an art of decency. Taoists were later to take this even further with their embrace of intuition and spontaneity. All were so many attempts to provide a mirror image of market logic. Still, a mirror image is, ultimately, just that: the same thing, only backwards. Before long we end up with an endless maze of paired opposites-egoism versus altruism, profit versus charity, materialism versus idealism, calculation versus spontaneity-none of which could ever have been imagined except by someone starting out from pure, calculating, self-interested market transactions.65<br /> <br /> === Materialism II: Substance ===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;As in the near presence of death, despise poor flesh, this refuse of blood and bones, this web and tissue of nerves and veins and arteries.<br /> <br /> -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.2<br /> <br /> Taking pity on the hungry wolf, Wen-shuang announced, &quot;I do not covet this filthy bag of meat. I give it over to you that I may quickly acquire a body of more enduring strength. This donation will help benefit us both.&quot;<br /> <br /> -Discourse on the Pure Land 2I.I2&lt;/blockquote&gt;As I've already observed, China was unusual because philosophy there began with debates about ethics and only later turned to speculations about the nature of the cosmos. In both Greece and India, cosmological speculation came first. In each, too, questions about the nature of the physical universe quickly give way to speculation about mind, truth, consciousness, meaning, language, illusion, world-spirits, cosmic intelligence, and the fate of the human soul.<br /> <br /> This particular maze of mirrors is so complex and dazzling that it's extraordinarily difficult to discern the starting point-that is, what, precisely, is being reflected back and forth. Here anthropology can be helpful, as anthropologists have the unique advantage of being able to observe how human beings who have not previously been part of these conversations react when first exposed to Axial Age concepts. Every now and then too, we are presented with moments of exceptional clarity: ones that reveal the essence of our own thought to be almost exactly the opposite of what we thought it to be.<br /> <br /> Maurice Leenhardt, a Catholic missionary who had spent many long years teaching the Gospel in New Caledonia, experienced such a moment in the 1920s, when he asked one of his students, an aged sculptor named Boesoou, how he felt about having been introduced to spiritual ideas:<br /> <br /> Once, waiting to assess the mental progress of the Canaques I had taught for many years, I risked the following suggestion: &quot;In short, we introduced the notion of the spirit to your way of thinking?&quot;<br /> <br /> He objected, &quot;Spirit? Bah! You didn't bring us the spirit.<br /> <br /> We already knew the spirit existed. We have always acted in accord with the spirit. What you've brought us is the body.&quot;66<br /> <br /> The notion that humans had souls appeared to Boesoou to be selfevident. The notion that there was such a thing as the body, apart from the soul, a mere material collection of nerves and tissues-let alone that the body is the prison of the soul; that the mortification of the body could be a means to the glorification or liberation of the soul-all this, it turns out, struck him as utterly new and exotic.<br /> <br /> Axial Age spirituality, then, is built on a bedrock of materialism. This is its secret; one might almost say, the thing that has become invisible to usY But if one looks at the very beginnings of philosophical inquiry in Greece and India-the point when there was as yet no difference between what we'd now call &quot;philosophy&quot; and what we'd now call &quot;science&quot;-this is exactly what one finds. &quot;Theory,&quot; if we can call it that, begins with the questions: &quot;What substance is the world made of?&quot; &quot;What is the underlying material behind the physical forms of objects in the world?&quot; &quot;Is everything made up of varying combinations of certain basic elements (earth, air, water, fire, stone, motion, mind, number ...), or are these basic elements just the forms taken by some even more elementary substance (for instance, as Nyaya and later Democritus proposed, atomic particles ...)&quot;68 In just about every case, some notion of God, Mind, Spirit, some active organizing principle that gave form to and was not itself substance, emerged as well. But this was the kind of spirit that, like Leenhardt's God, only emerges in relation to inert matter.69<br /> <br /> To connect this impulse, too, with the invention of coinage might seem like pushing things a bit far but, at least for the Classical world, there is an emerging scholarly literature-first set off by Harvard literary theorist Marc Shell, and more recently set forth by British classicist Richard Seaford in a book called Money and the Early Greek Mind-that aims to do exactly that.70<br /> <br /> In fact, some of the historical connections are so uncannily close that they are very hard to explain any other way. Let me give an example. After the first coins were minted around 6oo BC in the kingdom of Lydia, the practice quickly spread to Ionia, the Greek cities of the adjacent coast. The greatest of these was the great walled metropolis of Miletus, which also appears to have been the first Greek city to strike its own coins. It was Ionia, too, that provided the bulk of the Greek mercenaries active in the Mediterranean at the time, with Miletus their effective headquarters. Miletus was also the commercial center of the region, and, perhaps, the first city in the world where everyday market transactions came to be carried out primarily in coins instead of credit.71 Greek philosophy, in turn, begins with three men: Thales, of Miletus (c. 624 BC-c. 546 BC), Anaximander, of Miletus (c. 610 BC-c. 546 BC), and Anaximenes, of Miletus (c. 585 BC-C. 525 BC)-in other words, men who were living in that city at exactly the time that coinage was first introduced.72 All three are remembered chiefly for their speculations on the nature of the physical substance from which the world ultimately sprang. Thales proposed water, Anaximenes, air. Anaximander made up a new term, apeiron, &quot;the unlimited,&quot; a kind of pure abstract substance that could not itself be perceived but was the material basis of everything that could be. In each case, the assumption was that this primal substance, by being heated, cooled, combined, divided, compressed, extended, or set in motion, gave rise to the endless particular stuffs and substances that humans actually encounter in the world, from which physical objects are composed-and was also that into which all those forms would eventually dissolve.<br /> <br /> It was something that could turn into everything. As Seaford emphasizes, so was money. Gold, shaped into coins, is a material substance that is also an abstraction. It is both a lump of metal and something more than a lump of metal-it's a drachma or an obol, a unit of currency which (at least if collected in sufficient quantity, taken to the right place at the right time, turned over to the right person) could be exchanged for absolutely any other object whatsoever.73<br /> <br /> For Seaford, what was genuinely new about coins was their doublesidedness: the fact that they were both valuable pieces of metal and, at the same time, something more. At least within the communities that created them, ancient coins were always worth more than the gold, silver, or copper of which they were composed. Seaford refers to this extra value by the inelegant term &quot;fiduciarity,&quot; which comes from the term for public trust, the confidence a community places in its curren-cy.74 True, at the height of Classical Greece, when there were hundreds of city-states producing different currencies according to a number of different systems of weights and denominations, merchants often did carry scales and treat coins-particularly foreign coins-like so many chunks of silver, just as Indian merchants seem to have treated Roman coins; but within a city, that city's currency had a special status, since it was always acceptable at face value when used to pay taxes, public fees, or legal penalties. This is, incidentally, why ancient governments were so often able to introduce base metal into their coins without leading to immediate inflation; a debased coin might have lost value when traded overseas, but at home, it was still worth just as much when purchasing a license, or entering the public theater.75 This is also why, during pubic emergencies, Greek city-states would occasionally strike coins made entirely of bronze or tin, which everyone would agree, while the emergency lasted, to treat as if they were really made of silver.76<br /> <br /> This is the key to Seaford's argument about materialism and Greek philosophy. A coin was a piece of metal, but by giving it a particular shape, stamped with words and images, the civic community agreed to make it something more. But this power was not unlimited. Bronze coins could not be used forever; if one debased the coinage, inflation would eventually set in. It was as if there was a tension there, between the will of the community and the physical nature of the object itself. Greek thinkers were suddenly confronted with a profoundly new type of object, one of extraordinary importance-as evidenced by the fact that so many men were willing to risk their lives to get their hands on it-but whose nature was a profound enigma.<br /> <br /> Consider this word, &quot;materialism.&quot; What does it mean to adopt a &quot;materialist&quot; philosophy? What is &quot;material,&quot; anyway? Normally, we speak of &quot;materials&quot; when we refer to objects that we wish to make into something else. A tree is a living thing. It only becomes &quot;wood&quot; when we begin to think about all the other things you could carve out of it. And of course you can carve a piece of wood into almost anything. The same is true of clay, or glass, or metal. They're solid and real and tangible, but also abstractions, because they have the potential to turn into almost anything else-or, not precisely that; one can't turn a piece of wood into a lion or an owl, but one can turn it into an image of a lion or an owl-it can take on almost any conceivable form. So already in any materialist philosophy, we are dealing with an opposition between form and content, substance and shape; a clash between the idea, sign, emblem, or model in the creator's mind, and the physical qualities of the materials on which it is to be stamped, built, or imposed, from which it will be brought into reality.77 With coins this rises to an even more abstract level because that emblem can no longer be conceived as the model in one person's head, but is rather the mark of a collective agreement. The images stamped on Greek coins (Miletus' lion, Athens' owl) were typically the emblems of the city's god, but they were also a kind of collective promise, by which citizens assured one another that not only would the coin be acceptable in payment of public debts, but in a larger sense, that everyone would accept them, for any debts, and thus, that they could be use to acquire anything anyone wanted.<br /> <br /> The problem is that this collective power is not unlimited. It only really applies within the city. The farther you go outside, into places dominated by violence, slavery, and war-the sort of place where even philosophers taking a cruise might end up on the auction block-the more it turns into a mere lump of precious metaJ.78<br /> <br /> The war between Spirit and Flesh, then, between the noble Idea and ugly Reality, the rational intellect versus stubborn corporeal drives and desires that resist it, even the idea that peace and community are not things that emerge spontaneously but that need to be stamped onto our baser material natures like a divine insignia stamped into base metal-all those ideas that came to haunt the religious and philosophical traditions of the Axial Age, and that have continued to surprise people like Boesoou ever since-can already be seen as inscribed in the nature of this new form of money.<br /> <br /> It would be foolish to argue that all Axial Age philosophy was simply a meditation on the nature of coinage, but I think Seaford is right to argue that this is a critical starting place: one of the reasons that the pre-Socratic philosophers began to frame their questions in the peculiar way they did, asking (for instance): What are Ideas? Are they merely collective conventions? Do they exist, as Plato insisted, in some divine domain beyond material existence? Or do they exist in our minds? Or do our minds themselves ultimately partake of that divine immaterial domain? And if they do, what does this say about our relation to our bodies?<br /> <br /> <br /> In India and China, the debate took different forms, but materialism was always the starting point. We only know the ideas of most truly materialist thinkers from the works of their intellectual enemies: as is the case with the Indian king Payasi, who enjoyed debating Buddhist and Jain philosophers, taking the position that the soul does not exist, that human bodies are nothing but particular configurations of air, water, earth, and fire, their consciousness the result of the elements' mutual interaction, and that when we die, the elements simply dissolve.79 Clearly, though, such ideas were commonplace. Even the Axial Age religions are often startlingly lacking in the plethora of supernatural forces seen before and after: as witnessed by continued debates over whether Buddhism even is a religion, since it rejects any notion of a supreme being, or whether Confucius' admonitions that one should continue to venerate one's ancestors was merely a way of encouraging filial piety, or based on a belief that dead ancestors did, in some sense, continue to exist. The fact that we have to ask says everything. Yet at the same time, what endures, above all, from that age--in institutional terms-are what we call the &quot;world religions. &quot;<br /> <br /> What we see then is a strange kind of back-and-forth, attack and riposte, whereby the market, the state, war, and religion all continually separate and merge with one another. Let me summarize it as briefly as I can:<br /> <br /> * 1) Markets appear to have first emerged, in the Near East at least, as a side effect of government administrative systems. Over time, however, the logic of the market became entangled in military affairs, where it became almost indistinguishable from the mercenary logic of Axial Age warfare, and then, finally, that logic came to conquer government itself; to define its very purpose.<br /> * 2) As a result: everywhere we see the military-coinage-slavery complex emerge, we also see the birth of materialist philosophies. They are materialist, in fact, in both senses of the term: in that they envision a world made up of material forces, rather than divine powers, and in that they imagine the ultimate end of human existence to be the accumulation of material wealth, with ideals like morality and justice being reframed as tools designed to satisfy the masses.<br /> * 3) Everywhere, too, we find philosophers who react to this by exploring ideas of humanity and the soul, attempting to find a new foundation for ethics and morality.<br /> * 4) Everywhere some of these philosophers made common cause with social movements that inevitably formed in the face of these new and extraordinarily violent and cynical elites. The result was something new to human history: popular movements that were also intellectual movements, due to the assumption that those opposing existing power arrangements did so in the name of some kind of theory about the nature of reality.<br /> * 5) Everywhere, these movements were first and foremost peace movements, in that they rejected the new conception of violence, and especially aggressive war, as the foundation of politics.<br /> * 6) Everywhere too, there seems to have been an initial impulse to use the new intellectual tools provided by impersonal markets to come up with a new basis for morality, and everywhere, it foundered. Mohism, with its notion of social profit, flourished briefly and then collapsed. It was replaced by Confucianism, which rejected such ideas outright. We have already seen that reimagining moral<br /> <br /> responsibility in terms of debt-an impulse that cropped up in both Greece and India-while almost inevitable given the new economic circumstances, seems to prove uniformly unsatisfying.80 The stronger impulse is to imagine another world where debt-and with it, all other worldly connections-can be entirely annihilated, where social attachments are seen as forms of bondage; just as the body is a prison.<br /> <br /> * 7) Rulers' attitudes changed over time. At first, most appear to have affected an attitude of bemused tolerance toward the new philosophical and religious movements while privately embracing some version of cynical realpolitik, But as warring cities and principalities were replaced by great empires, and especially, as those empires began to reach the limits of their expansion, sending the militarycoinage-slavery complex into crisis, all this suddenly changed. In India, Asoka tried to re-found his kingdom on Buddhism; in Rome, Constantine turned to the Christians; in China, the Han emperor Wu-Ti (157-87 BC), faced with a similar military and financial crisis, adopted Confucianism as the philosophy of state. Of the three, only Wu Ti was ultimately successful: the Chinese empire endured, in one form or another, for two thousand years, almost always with Confucianism as its official ideology. In Constantine's case the Western empire fell apart, but the Roman church endured. Asoka's project could be said to be the least successful. Not only did his empire fall apart, replaced by an endless series of weaker, usually fragmentary kingdoms, but Buddhism itself was largely driven out of his one-time territories, though it did establish itself much more firmly in China, Nepal, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Korea, Japan, and much of Southeast Asia.<br /> * 8) The ultimate effect was a kind of ideal division of spheres of human activity that endures to this day: on the one hand the market, on the other, religion. To put the matter crudely: if one relegates a certain social space simply to the selfish acquisition of material things, it is almost inevitable that soon someone else will come to set aside another domain in which to preach that, from the perspective of ultimate values, material things are unimportant; that selfishness-or even the self-are illusory, and that to give is better than to receive. If nothing else, it is surely significant that all the Axial Age religions emphasized the importance of charity, a concept that had barely existed before. Pure greed and pure generosity are complementary concepts; neither could really be imagined without the other; both could only arise in institutional contexts that insisted on such pure and single-minded behavior; and both seem to have appeared together wherever impersonal, physical, cash money also appeared on the scene.<br /> <br /> As for the religious movements: it would be easy enough to write them off as escapist, as promising the victims of the Axial Age empires liberation in the next world as a way of letting them accept their lot in this one, and convincing the rich that all they really owed the poor were occasional charitable donations. Radical thinkers almost invariably do write them off in this way. Surely, the willingness of the governments themselves to eventually embrace them would seem to support this conclusion. But the issue is more complicated. First of all, there is something to be said for escapism. Popular uprisings in the ancient world usually ended in the massacre of the rebels. As I've already observed, physical escape, such as via exodus or defection, has always been the most effective response to oppressive conditions since the earliest times we know about. Where physical escape is not possible, what, exactly, is an oppressed peasant supposed to do? Sit and contemplate her misery? At the very least, otherworldly religions provided glimpses of radical alternatives. Often they allowed people to create other worlds within this one, liberated spaces of one sort or another. It is surely significant that the only people who succeeded in abolishing slavery in the ancient world were religious sects, such as the Essenes-who did so, effectively, by defecting from the larger social order and forming their own utopian communities.81 Or, in a smaller but more enduring example: the democratic city-states of northern India were all eventually stamped out by the great empires (Kautilya provides extensive advice on how to subvert and destroy democratic constitutions), but the Buddha admired the democratic organization of their public assemblies and adopted it as the model for his followers.82 Buddhist monasteries are still called sangha, the ancient name for such republics, and continue to operate by the same consensus-finding process to this day, preserving a certain egalitarian democratic ideal that would otherwise have been entirely forgotten.<br /> <br /> Finally, the larger historical achievements of these movements are not, in fact, insignificant. As they took hold, things began to change. Wars became less brutal and less frequent. Slavery faded as an institution, to the point at which, by the Middle Ages, it had become insignificant or even nonexistent across most of Eurasia. Everywhere too, the new religious authorities began to seriously address the social dislocations introduced by debt.<br /> <br /> == Chapter Ten: The Middle Ages (600-1450 AD) ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Artificial wealth comprises the things which of themselves satisfy no natural need, for example money, which is a human contrivance. -St. Thomas Aquinas&lt;/blockquote&gt;IF THE AXIAL AGE saw the emergence of complementary ideals of commodity markets and universal world religions, the Middle Ages were the period in which those two institutions began to merge.<br /> <br /> Everywhere, the age began with the collapse of empires. Eventually, new states formed, but in these new states, the nexus between war, bullion, and slavery was broken; conquest and acquisition for their own sake were no longer celebrated as the end of all political life. At the same time, economic life, from the conduct of international trade to the organization of local markets, came to fall increasingly under the regulation of religious authorities. One result was a widespread movement to control, or even forbid, predatory lending. Another was a return, across Eurasia, to various forms of virtual credit money.<br /> <br /> Granted, this is not the way we're used to thinking of the Middle Ages. For most of us, &quot;Medieval&quot; remains a synonym for superstition, intolerance, and oppression. Yet for most of the earth's inhabitants, it could only be seen as an extraordinary improvement over the terrors of the Axial Age.<br /> <br /> One reason for our skewed perception is that we're used to thinking of the Middle Ages as something that happened primarily in Western Europe, in territories that had been little more than border outposts of the Roman Empire to begin with. According to the conventional wisdom, with the collapse of the empire, the cities were largely abandoned and the economy &quot;reverted to barter,&quot; taking at least five centuries to recover. Even for Europe, though, this is based on a series of unquestioned assumptions that, as I've said, crumble the moment one starts seriously poking at them. Chief among them is the idea that the absence of coins means the absence of money. True, the destruction of the Roman war machine also meant that Roman coins went out of circulation; and the few coins produced within the Gothic or Frankish kingdoms that established themselves over the ruins of the old empire were largely fiduciary in nature.1 Still, a glance at the &quot;barbarian law codes&quot; reveals that even at the height of the Dark Ages, people were still carefully keeping accounts in Roman money as they calculated interest rates, contracts, and mortgages. Again, cities shriveled, and many were abandoned, but even this was something of a mixed blessing. Certainly, it had a terrible effect on literacy; but one must also bear in mind that ancient cities could only be maintained by extracting resources from the countryside. Roman Gaul, for instance, had been a network of cities, connected by the famous Roman roads to an endless succession of slave plantations, which were owned by the urban grandees.2 After around 400 AD, the population of the towns declined radically, but the plantations also disappeared. In the following centuries, many came to be replaced by manors, churches, and even later, castles—where new local lords extracted their own dues from the surrounding farmers. But one need only do the math: since Medieval agriculture was no less efficient than ancient agriculture (in fact, it rapidly became a great deal more so), the amount of work required to feed a handful of mounted warriors and clergymen could not possibly have been anything like that required to feed entire cities. However oppressed Medieval serfs might have been, their plight was nothing compared with that of their Axial Age equivalents.<br /> <br /> Still, the Middle Ages proper are best seen as having begun not in Europe but in India and China, between 400 and 6oo AD, and then sweeping across much of the western half of Eurasia with the advent of Islam. They only really reached Europe four hundred years later. Let us begin our story, then, in India.<br /> <br /> === Medieval India (Flight into hierarchy) ===<br /> I left off in India with Asoka's embrace of Buddhism, but I noted that ultimately, his project foundered. Neither his empire nor his church was to endure. It took a good deal of time, however, for this failure to occur.<br /> <br /> The Mauryans represented a high watermark of empire. The next five hundred years saw a succession of kingdoms, most of them strongly supportive of Buddhism. Stupas and monasteries sprang up everywhere, but the states that sponsored them grew weaker and weaker; centralized armies dissolved; soldiers, like officials, increasingly came to be paid by land grants rather than salaries. As a result, the number of coins in circulation steadily declined.3 Here too, the early Middle Ages witnessed a dramatic decline of cities: where the Greek ambassador Megasthenes described Asoka's capital of Patna as the largest city in the world of his day, Medieval Arab and Chinese travelers described India as a land of endless tiny villages.<br /> <br /> As a result, most historians have come to write, much as they do in Europe, of a collapse of the money economy; of commerce becoming a &quot;reversion to barter.&quot; Here too, this appears to be simply untrue. What vanished were the military means to extract resources from the peasants. In fact, Hindu law-books written at the time show increasing attention to credit arrangements, with a sophisticated language of sureties, collateral, mortgages, promissory notes, and compound interest.4 One need only consider how the Buddhist establishments popping up all over India during these centuries were funded. While the earliest monks were wandering mendicants, owning little more than their begging bowls, early Medieval monasteries were often magnificent establishments with vast treasuries. Still, in principle, their operations were financed almost entirely through credit.<br /> <br /> The key innovation was the creation of what were called the &quot;perpetual endowments&quot; or &quot;inexhaustible treasuries. &quot; Say a lay supporter wished to make a contribution to her local monastery. Rather than offering to provide candles for a specific ritual, or servants to attend to the upkeep of the monastic grounds, she would provide a certain sum of money-or something worth a great deal of money-that would then be loaned out in the name of the monastery, at the accepted 15 -percent annual rate. The interest on the loan would then be earmarked for that specific purpose.5 An inscription discovered at the Great Monastery of Sanci sometime around 450 AD provides a handy illustration. A woman named Harisvamini donates the relatively modest sum of twelve dinaras to the &quot;Noble Community of Monks.% The text carefully inscribes how the income is to be divided up: the interest on five of the dinaras was to provide daily meals for five different monks, the interest from another three would pay to light three lamps for the Buddha, in memory of her parents, and so forth. The inscription ends by saying that this was a permanent endowment, &quot;created with a document in stone to last as long as the moon and the sun&quot;: since the principal would never be touched, the contribution would last forever.7 Some of these loans presumably went to individuals, others were commercial loans to &quot;guilds of bamboo-workers, braziers, and potters,&quot; or to village assemblies.8 We have to assume that in most cases the money is an accounting unit: what were really being transacted were animals, wheat, silk, butter, fruit, and all the other goods whose appropriate rates of interest were so carefully stipulated in the lawcodes of the time. Still, large amounts of gold did end up flowing into monastic coffers. When coins go out of circulation, after all, the metal doesn't simply disappear. In the Middle Ages-and this seems to have been true across Eurasia-the vast majority of it ended up in religious establishments, churches, monasteries, and temples, either stockpiled in hoards and treasuries or gilded onto or cast into altars, sanctums, and sacred instruments. Above all, it was shaped into images of gods. As a result, those rulers who did try to put an Axial Age-style coinage system back into circulation-invariably, to fund some project of military expansion-often had to pursue self-consciously anti-religious policies in order to do so. Probably the most notorious was one Harsa, who ruled Kashmir from 1089 to nor AD, who is said to have appointed an officer called the &quot;Superintendent for the Destruction of the Gods.&quot; According to later histories, Harsa employed leprous monks to systematically desecrate divine images with urine and excrement, thus neutralizing their power, before dragging them off to be melted down.9 He is said to have destroyed more than four thousand Buddhist establishments before being betrayed and killed, the last of his dynasty-and his miserable fate was long held out as an example of where the revival of the old ways was likely to lead one in the end.<br /> <br /> For the most part, then, the gold remained sacrosanct, laid up in the sacred places-though in India, over time these were increasingly Hindu ones, not Buddhist. What we now see as traditional Hindu-village India appears to have been largely a creation of the early Middle Ages. We do not know precisely how it happened. As kingdoms continued to rise and fall, the world inhabited by kings and princes became increasingly distant from that of most people's everyday affairs. During much of the period immediately following the collapse of the Mau-ryan empire, for instance, much of India was governed by foreigners.10 Apparently, this increasing distance allowed local Brahmins to begin reshaping the new-increasingly rural-society along strictly hierarchical principles.<br /> <br /> They did it above all by seizing control of the administration of law. The Dharmasastra, law-codes produced by Brahmin scholars between roughly 200 BC and 400 AD, give us a good idea of the new vision of society. In it, old ideas like the Vedic conception of a debt to gods, sages, and ancestors were resuscitated-but now, they applied only and specifically to Brahmins, whose duty and privilege it was to stand in for all humanity before the forces that controlled the universe.11 Far from being required to attain learning, members of the inferior classes were forbidden to do so: the Laws of Manu, for instance, set down that any Sudra (the lowest caste, assigned to farming and material production) who so much as listened in on the teaching of the law or sacred texts should have molten lead poured into their ears; on the occasion of a repeat offense, have their tongues cut out.12 At the same time Brahmins, however ferociously they guarded their privileges, also adopted aspects of once-radical Buddhist and Jain ideas like karma, reincarnation, and ahimsa. Brahmins were expected to refrain from any sort of physical violence, and even to become vegetarians. In alliance with representatives of the old warrior caste, they also managed to win control of most of the land in the ancient villages. Artisans and craftsmen fleeing the decline or destruction of cities often ended up as suppliant refugees, and, gradually, low-caste clients. The result were increasingly complex local patronage systems in the countryside-j- ajmani systems, as they came to be known-where the refugees provided services for the landowning castes, who took on many of the roles once held by the state, providing protection and justice, extracting labor dues, and so on-but also protected local communities from actual royal representatives.13<br /> <br /> This latter function is crucial. Foreign visitors were later to be awed by the self-sufficiency of the traditional Indian village, with its elaborate system of landowning castes, farmers, and such &quot;service castes&quot; as barbers, smiths, tanners, drummers, and washermen, all arranged in hierarchical order, each seen as making its own unique and necessary contribution to their little society, all of it typically operating entirely without the use of metal currency. It was only possible for those reduced to the status of Sudras and Untouchables to have a chance of accepting their lowly position because the exaction of local landlords was, again, on nothing like the same scale as that under earlier governments-under which villagers had to support cities of upwards of a million people-and because the village community became an effective means of holding the state and its representatives at least partially at bay.<br /> <br /> We don't know the mechanisms that brought this world about, but the role of debt was surely significant. The creation of thousands of Hindu temples alone must have involved hundreds of thousands, even millions, of interest-bearing loans-since, while Brahmins were themselves forbidden to lend money at interest, temples were not. We can already see, in the earliest of the new law-codes, the Laws of Manu, the way that local authorities were struggling to reconcile old customs like debt peonage and chattel slavery with the desire to establish an overarching hierarchical system in which everyone knew their place. The Laws of Manu carefully classify slaves into seven types depending on how they were reduced to slavery (war, debt, self-sale ...) and explain the conditions under which each might be emancipated-but then go on to say that Sudras can never really be emancipated, since, after all, they were created to serve the other castes.14 Similarly, where earlier codes had established a rs-percent annual rate of interest, with exceptions for commercial loans,15 the new codes organized interest by caste: stating that one could charge a maximum of 2 percent a month for a Brahmin, 3 percent for a Ksatriya (warrior), 4 percent for a Vaisya (merchant), and 5 percent for a Sudra-which is the difference between 24 percent annually on the one extreme and a hefty 6o percent on the other.16 The laws also identify five different ways interest can be paid, of which the most significant for our concerns is &quot;bodily interest&quot;: physical labor in the creditor's house or fields, to be rendered until such time as the principal is cleared. Even here, though, caste considerations were paramount. No one could be forced into the service of anyone of lower caste; moreover, since debts were enforceable on a debtor's children and even grandchildren, &quot;until the principal is cleared&quot; could mean quite some time-as the Indian historian R.S. Sharma notes, such stipulations &quot;remind us of the present practice according to which several generations of the same family have been reduced to the position of hereditary ploughmen in consideration of some paltry sum advanced to them.&quot;17<br /> <br /> Indeed, India has become notorious as a country, in which a very large part of the working population is laboring in effective debt peonage to a landlord or other creditor. Such arrangements became even easier over time. By about rooo AD, restrictions on usury by members of the upper castes in Hindu law-codes largely disappeared. On the other hand, rooo AD was about the same time that Islam appeared in India-a religion dedicated to eradicating usury altogether. So at the very least we can say that these things never stopped being contested. And even Hindu law of that time was far more humane than almost anything found in the ancient world. Debtors were not, generally speaking, reduced to slavery, and there is no widespread evidence of the selling of women or children. In fact, overt slavery had largely vanished from the countryside by this time. And debt peons were not even pawns, exactly; by law, they were simply paying interest on a freely contracted agreement. Even when that took generations, the law stipulated that even if the principal was never paid, in the third generation, they would be freed.<br /> <br /> There is a peculiar tension here: a kind of paradox. Debt and credit arrangements may well have played a crucial role in creating the Indian village system, but they could never really become their basis. It might have made a certain sense to declare that, just as Brahmins had to dispatch their debts to the gods, everyone should be, in a certain sense, in debt to those above them. But in another sense, that would have completely subverted the very idea of caste, which was that the universe was a vast hierarchy in which different sorts of people were assumed to be of fundamentally different natures, that these ranks and grades were fixed forever, and that when goods and services moved up and down the hierarchy, they followed not principles of exchange at all but (as in all hierarchical systems) custom and precedent. The French anthropologist Louis Dumont made the famous argument that one cannot even really talk about &quot;inequality&quot; here, because to use that phrase implies that one believes people should or could be equal, and this idea was completely alien to Hindu conceptions.18 For them to have imagined their responsibilities as debts would have been profoundly subversive, since debts are by definition arrangements between equals-at least in the sense that they are equal parties to a contract-that could and should be repaid.19<br /> <br /> Politically, it is never a particularly good idea to first tell people they are your equals, and then humiliate and degrade them. This is presumably why peasant insurrections, from Chiapas to Japan, have so regularly aimed to wipe out debts, rather than focus on more structural issues like caste systems, or even slavery.20 The British Raj discovered this to their occasional chagrin when they used debt peonage-superimposed on the caste system-as the basis of their labor system in colonial India. Perhaps the paradigmatic popular insurrection was the Deccan riots of 1875, when indebted farmers rose up to seize and systematically destroy the account books of local money-lenders. Debt peonage, it would appear, is far more likely to inspire outrage and collective action than is a system premised on pure inequality.<br /> <br /> === China: Buddhism and the economy of infinite debt ===<br /> By Medieval standards, India was unusual for resisting the appeal of the great Axial Age religions, but we observe the basic pattern: the decline of empire, armies, and cash economy, the rise of religious authorities, independent of the state, who win much of their popular legitimacy through their ability to regulate emerging credit systems.<br /> <br /> China might be said to represent the opposite extreme. This was the one place where a late Axial Age attempt to yoke empire and religion together was a complete success. True, here as elsewhere, there was an initial period of breakdown: after the collapse of the Han dynasty around 220 AD, the central state broke apart, cities shrank, coins disappeared, and so on. But in China this was only temporary. As Max Weber long ago pointed out, once one sets up a genuinely effective bureaucracy, it's almost impossible to get rid of it. And the Chinese bureaucracy was uniquely effective. Before long, the old Han system reemerged: a centralized state, run by Confucian scholar-gentry trained in the literary classics, selected through a national exam system, working in meticulously organized national and regional bureaus where the money supply, like other economic matters, was continually monitored and regulated. Chinese monetary theory was always chartalist. This was partly just an effect of size: the empire and its internal market were so huge that foreign trade was never especially important; therefore, those running the government were well aware that they could turn pretty much anything into money, simply by insisting that taxes be paid in that form.<br /> <br /> The two great threats to the authorities were always the same: the nomadic peoples to the north (who they systematically bribed, but who nonetheless periodically swept over and conquered sections of China) and popular unrest and rebellion. The latter was almost constant, and on a scale unknown anywhere else in human history. There were decades in Chinese history when the rate of recorded peasant uprisings was roughly 1.8 per hour.21 What's more, such uprisings were frequently successful. Most of the most famous Chinese dynasties that were not the product of barbarian invasion (the Yuan or Qing) were originally peasant insurrections (the Han, Tang, Sung, and Ming). In no other part of the world do we see anything like this. As a result, Chinese statecraft ultimately came down to funneling enough resources to the cities to feed the urban population and keep the nomads at bay, without causing a notoriously contumacious rural population to rise up in arms. The official Confucian ideology of patriarchal authority, equal opportunity, promotion of agriculture, light taxes, and careful government control of merchants seemed expressly designed to appeal to the interests and sensibilities of a (potentially rebellious) rural patriarch.22<br /> <br /> One need hardly add that in these circumstances, limiting the depredations of the local village loan shark-the traditional bane of rural families-was a constant government concern. Over and over we hear the same familiar story: peasants down on their luck, whether due to natural disaster or the need to pay for a parent's funeral-would fall into the hands of predatory lenders, who would seize their fields and houses, forcing them to work or pay rent in what had once been their own lands; the threat of rebellion would then drive the government to institute a dramatic program of reforms. One of the first we know about came in the form of a coup d'etat in 9 AD, when a Confucian official named Wang Mang seized the throne to deal (so he claimed) with a nationwide debt crisis. According to proclamations made at the time, the practice of usury had caused the effective tax rate (that is, the amount of the average peasant's harvest that ended up being carried off by someone else) to rise from just over 3 percent, to so percent.23 In reaction, Wang Mang instituted a program reforming the currency, nationalizing large estates, promoting state-run industries-including public granaries-and banning private holding of slaves. Wang Mang also established a state loan agency that would offer interest-free funeral loans for up to ninety days for those caught unprepared by the death of relatives, as well as long-term loans of 3 percent monthly or ro percent annual income rates for commercial or agricultural invest-ments.24 &quot;With this scheme,&quot; one historian remarks, &quot;Wang was confident that all business transactions would be under his scrutiny and the abuse of usury would be forever eradicated. &quot;25<br /> <br /> Needless to say, it was not, and later Chinese history is full of similar stories: widespread inequality and unrest followed by the appointment of official commissions of inquiry, regional debt relief (either blanket amnesties or annulments of all loans in which interest had exceeded the principal), cheap grain loans, famine relief, laws against the selling of children.26 All this became the standard fare of government policy. It was very unevenly successful; it certainly did not create an egalitarian peasant utopia, but it prevented any widespread return to Axial Age conditions.<br /> <br /> We are used to thinking of such bureaucratic interventions-particularly the monopolies and regulations-as state restriction on &quot;the market&quot;-owing to the prevailing prejudice that sees markets as quasi-natural phenomena that emerge by themselves, and governments as having no role other than to squelch or siphon from them. I have repeatedly pointed out how mistaken this is, but China provides a particularly striking example. The Confucian state may have been the world's greatest and most enduring bureaucracy, but it actively promoted markets, and as a result, commercial life in China soon became far more sophisticated, and markets more developed, than anywhere else in the world.<br /> <br /> This despite the fact that Confucian orthodoxy was overtly hostile to merchants and even the profit motive itself. Commercial profit was seen as legitimate only as compensation for the labor that merchants expended in transporting goods from one place to another, but never as fruits of speculation. What this meant in practice was that they were pro-market but anti-capitalist.<br /> <br /> Again, this seems bizarre, since we're used to assuming that capitalism and markets are the same thing, but, as the great French historian Fernand Braude! pointed out, in many ways they could equally well be conceived as opposites. While markets are ways of exchanging goods through the medium of money-historically, ways for those with a surplus of grain to acquire candles and vice versa (in economic shorthand, C-M-C', for commodity-money-other commodity)-capitalism is first and foremost the art of using money to get more money (M-C-M'). Normally, the easiest way to do this is by establishing some kind of formal or de facto monopoly. For this reason, capitalists, whether merchant princes, financiers, or industrialists, invariably try to ally themselves with political authorities to limit the freedom of the market, so as to make it easier for them to do soY From this perspective, China was for most of its history the ultimate anti-capitalist market state.28 Unlike later European princes, Chinese rulers systematically refused to team up with would-be Chinese capitalists (who always existed). Instead, like their officials, they saw them as destructive parasites-though, unlike the usurers, ones whose fundamentally selfish and antisocial motivations could still be put to use in certain ways. In Confucian terms, merchants were like soldiers. Those drawn to a career in the military were assumed to be driven largely by a love of violence. As individuals, they were not good people; but they were also necessary to defend the frontiers. Similarly, merchants were driven by greed and basically immoral; yet if kept under careful administrative supervision, they could be made to serve the public good.29 Whatever one might think of the principles, the results are hard to deny. For most of its history, China maintained the highest standard of living in the world-even England only really overtook it in perhaps the r82os, well past the time of the Industrial Revolution.30<br /> <br /> Confucianism is not precisely a religion, perhaps; it is usually considered more an ethical and philosophical system. So China too could be considered something of a departure from the common Medieval pattern, whereby commerce was, almost everywhere, brought under the control of religion. But it wasn't a complete departure. One need only consider the remarkable economic role of Buddhism in this same period. Buddhism had arrived in China through the Central Asia caravan routes and in its early days was largely a religion promoted by merchants, but in the chaos following the collapse of the Han dynasty in 220 AD, it began to take popular roots. The Liang (502-557) and Tang (6r8-907) dynasties saw outbreaks of passionate religious fervor, in which thousands of rural young people across China would renounce their farms, shops, and families to seek ordination as Buddhist monks and nuns; where merchants or landed magnates pledged their entire fortunes to the propagation of the Dharma; building projects hollowed out whole mountains to create bodhisattvas and giant statues of the Buddha; and pageants where monks and devotees ritually burned their heads and hands or, in some instances, set themselves on fire. By the mid-fifth century, there were dozens of such spectacular suicides; they became, as one historian put it &quot;a macabre kind of fashion. &quot;31<br /> <br /> Historians differ over their meaning. Certainly the passions unleashed provided a dramatic alternative to the staid orthodoxy of the Confucian literati, but it's also surprising, to say the least, to see this in a religion promoted above all by the commercial classes. The French Sinologist Jacques Gernet observes:<br /> <br /> It is clear that these suicides, so contrary to traditional morality, aimed to redeem the sins of all beings, to compel the gods and men at one and the same time. And they were staged: usually, in the fifth century, a pyre was erected on a mountain. The suicide took place in the presence of a large crowd uttering lamentations and bringing forward rich offerings. People of all social ranks attended the spectacle together. After the fire had burned out, the ashes of the monk were collected and a stupa, a new place of worship, was created to house them.32<br /> <br /> Gerner's picture of dozens of Christ-like redeemers seems overstated, but the precise meaning of these suicides was unclear-and widely debated-even in the Middle Ages. Some contemporaries saw them as the ultimate expression of contempt for the body; others as recognition of the illusory nature of the self and all material attachments; yet others, as the ultimate form of charity, the giving of that which can only be most precious, one's very physical existence, as a sacrifice to the benefit of all living things; a sentiment that one tenth-century biographer expressed in the following verses:<br /> <br /> To give away the thing that is difficult to part with,<br /> <br /> Is the best offering amongst the alms.<br /> <br /> Let this impure and sinful body,<br /> <br /> Turn into something like a diamondY<br /> <br /> That is, an object of eternal value, an investment that can bear fruit for all eternity.<br /> <br /> I draw attention to this because this sentiment provides an elegant illustration of a problem that seems to have first appeared in the world with notions of pure charity that always seemed to accompany Axial Age religions, and which provided endless philosophical conundrums. In human economies, it does not appear to have occurred to anyone that any act could be either purely selfish or purely altruistic. As I noted in chapter five, an act of absolute selfless giving can only also be absolutely antisocial-hence in a way, inhuman. It is merely the mirror image of an act of theft or even murder; hence, it makes a certain sort of sense that suicide be conceived as the ultimate selfless gift. Yet this is the door that necessarily opens as soon as one develops a notion of &quot;profit&quot; and then tries to conceive its opposite.<br /> <br /> This tension seems to hang over the economic life of Medieval •Chinese Buddhism, which, true to its commercial origins, retained a striking tendency to employ the language of the marketplace. &quot;One purchases felicity, and sells one's sins,&quot; wrote one monk, &quot;just as in commercial operations. &quot;34 Nowhere was this so true as in those schools, such as the School of the Three Stages, that adopted the notion of &quot;karmic debt&quot;-that each of the sins of one's accumulated past lives continues as a debt needing to be discharged. An obscure and unusual view in classical Indian Buddhism, the notion of karmic debt took on a powerful new life in China.31 As one Three Stages text puts it, we all know that insolvent debtors will be reborn as animals or slaves; but in reality, we are all insolvent debtors, because acquiring the money to repay our temporal debts necessarily means acquire new, spiritual ones, since every means of acquiring wealth will necessarily involve exploiting, damaging, and causing suffering to other living beings.<br /> <br /> Some use their power and authority as officials in order to bend the law and seize wealth. Some prosper in the marketplace ...<br /> <br /> They engage in an excess of lies and cheat and extort profits from others. Still others, farmers, burn the mountains and marshes, flood the fields, plough and mill, destroying the nests and burrows of animals ...<br /> <br /> There is no avoiding the fact of our past debts, and it is difficult to comprehend the number of separate lives it would require if you wanted to pay them one by one.36<br /> <br /> As Gernet remarks, the idea of life as an endless burden of debt would surely have struck a chord with Chinese villagers, for whom this was all too often literally true; but, as he also points out, like their counterparts in ancient Israel, they were also familiar with that sense of sudden liberation that came with official amnesties. There was a way to achieve that too. All that was required was to make regular donations to some monastery's Inexhaustible Treasury. The moment one does so, the debts from every one of one's past lives are instantly blotted out. The author even provides a little parable, not unlike Jesus's parable of the ungrateful servant, but far more optimistic. How, it might be asked, would a poor man's tiny contribution possibly have such cosmic effects?<br /> <br /> Answer: In a parable it is like a poor man burdened by a debt of one thousand strings of coins to another person. He always suffers from his debt, and the poor man is afraid whenever the debt-master comes to collect.<br /> <br /> He visits the rich man's house and confesses he is beyond the time-limit and begs forgiveness for his offense--he is poor and without a station in life. He tells him that each day he makes a single coin he will return it to the rich man. On hearing this, the rich man is very pleased and forgives him for being overdue; moreover, the poor man is not dragged away to jail.<br /> <br /> Giving to the Inexhaustible Storehouse is also like this.37<br /> <br /> One might almost call this salvation on the installment plan-but the implication is that the payments shall be made, like the interest payments on the wealth when it is subsequently loaned out, for all eternity.<br /> <br /> Other schools concentrated not on karmic debt, but on one's debt to one's parents. Where Confucians built their system of morality above all on filial piety to fathers, Chinese Buddhists were primarily concerned with mothers; with the care and suffering required in raising, feeding, and educating children. A mother's kindness is unlimited, her selflessness absolute; this was seen to be embodied above all in the act of breastfeeding, the fact that mothers transform their very flesh and blood into milk; they feed their children with their own bodies. In doing so, however, they allow unlimited love to be precisely quantified. One author calculated that the average infant absorbs precisely 180 pecks of mother's milk in its first three years of life, and this constitutes its debt as an adult. The figure soon became canonical. To repay this milk debt, or indeed one's debt to one's parents more generally, was simply impossible. &quot;If you stacked up jewels from the ground up to the twenty-eighth heaven, &quot; wrote one Buddhist author, &quot;it would not compare&quot; with the value of your parent's nurturance.38 Even if you were to &quot;cut your own flesh to offer her three times a day for four billion years,&quot; wrote another, &quot;it would not pay back even a single day&quot; of what your mother did for you.39<br /> <br /> The solution, however, is the same: donating money to the Inexhaustible Treasuries. The result was an elaborate cycle of debts and forms of redemption. A man begins with an unpayable milk-debt. The only thing of comparable value is the Dharma, the Buddhist truth itself. One can thus repay one's parents by bringing them to Buddhism; indeed, this can be done even after death, when one's mother will otherwise wind up as a hungry ghost in hell. If one makes a donation to the Inexhaustible Treasuries in her name, sutras will be recited for her; she will be delivered; the money, in the meantime, will be put partly to work as charity, as pure gift, but partly, too, as in India, as interestbearing loans, earmarked for specific purposes for the furtherance of Buddhist education, ritual, or monastic life.<br /> <br /> The Chinese Buddhist approach to charity was nothing if not multifaceted. Festivals often led to vast outpourings of contributions, with wealthy adherents vying with one another in generosity, often driving their entire fortunes to the monasteries, in the forms of oxcarts laden with millions of strings of cash-a kind of economic self-immolation that paralleled the spectacular monastic suicides. Their contributions swelled the Inexhaustible Treasuries. Some would be given to the needy, particularly in times of hardship. Some would be loaned. One practice that hovered between charity and business was providing peasants with alternatives to the local moneylender. Most monasteries had attendant pawnshops where the local poor could place some valuable posses-sion-a robe, a couch, a mirror-in hock in exchange for low-interest loans.4° Finally, there was the business of the monastery itself: that portion of the Inexhaustible Treasury turned over to the management of lay brothers, and either put out at loan or invested. Since monks were not allowed to eat the products of their own fields, the fruit or grain had to be put on the market, further swelling monastic revenues. Most monasteries came to be surrounded not only by commercial farms but veritable industrial complexes of oil presses, flour mills, shops, and hostels, often with thousands of bonded workers.41 At the same time, the Treasuries themselves became-as Gerner was perhaps the first to point out-the world's first genuine forms of concentrated finance capital. They were, after all, enormous concentrations of wealth managed by what were in effect monastic corporations, which were constantly seeking new opportunities for profitable investment. They even shared the quintessential capitalist imperative of continual growth; the Treasuries had to expand, since according to Mahayana doctrine, genuine liberation would not be possible until the whole world embraced the Dharma.42<br /> <br /> This was precisely the situation-huge concentrations of capital interested in nothing more than profit-that Confucian economic policy was supposed to prevent. Still, it took some time for Chinese governments to recognize the threat. Government attitudes veered back and forth. At first, especially in the chaotic years of the early Middle Ages, monks were welcomed-even given generous land grants and provided with convict laborers to reclaim forests and marshes, and tax-exempt status for their business enterprises.41 A few emperors converted, and while most of the bureaucracy kept the monks at arm's length, Buddhism became especially popular with court women, as well as with eunuchs and many scions of wealthy families. As time went on, though, administrators turned from seeing monks as a boon to rural society to its potential ruination. Already, by 5II AD, there were decrees condemning monks for diverting grain that was supposed to be used for charitable purposes to high-interest loans, and altering debt contracts-a government commission had to be appointed to review the accounts and nullify any loans in which interest was found to have exceeded principal. In 713 AD we have another decree, confiscating two Inexhaustible Treasuries of the Three Stages sect, whose members they accused of fraudulent solicitation.44 Before long there were major campaigns of government repression, at first often limited to certain regions, but over time, more often empire-wide. During the most severe, carried out in 845 AD, a total of 4,6oo monasteries were razed along with their shops and mills, 26o,ooo monks and nuns forcibly defrocked and returned to their families-but at the same time, according to government reports, 15o,ooo temple serfs released from bondage.<br /> <br /> Whatever the real reasons behind the waves of repression (and these were no doubt many), the official reason was always the same: a need to restore the money supply. The monasteries were becoming so large, and so rich, administrators insisted, that China was simply running out of metal:<br /> <br /> The great repressions of Buddhism under the Chou emperor Wu between 574 and 577, under Wu-tsung in 842-845, and finally in 955, presented themselves primarily as measures of economic recovery: each of them provided an opportunity for the imperial government to procure the necessary copper for the minting of new coins.45<br /> <br /> One reason is that monks appear to have been systematically melting down strings of coins, often hundreds of thousands at a time, to build colossal copper or even gilded copper statues of the Buddha-along with other objects such as bells and copper chimes, or even such extravagances as mirrored halls or gilded copper roof tiles. The result, according to official commissions of inquiry, was economically disastrous: the price of metals would soar, coinage disappear, and rural marketplaces cease to function, even as those rural people whose children had not become monks often fell deeper into debt to the monasteries.<br /> <br /> <br /> It perhaps stands to reason that Chinese Buddhism, a religion of merchants that then took popular roots, should have developed in this direction: a genuine theology of debt, even perhaps a practice of absolute self-sacrifice, of abandoning everything, one's fortune or even one's life, that ultimately led to collectively managed finance capital. The reason that the result seems so weird, so full of paradoxes, is that it is again an attempt to apply the logic of exchange to questions of Eternity.<br /> <br /> Recall an idea from earlier in the book: exchange, unless it's an instantaneous cash transaction, creates debts. Debts linger over time. If you imagine all human relations as exchange, then insofar as people do have ongoing relations with one another, those relations are laced with debt and sin. The only way out is to annihilate the debt, but then social relations vanish too. This is quite in accord with Buddhism, whose ultimate aim is indeed the attainment of &quot;emptiness,&quot; absolute liberation, the annihilation of all human and material attachments, since these are all ultimately causes of suffering. For Mahayana Buddhists, however, absolute liberation cannot be achieved by any one being independently; the liberation of each depends on all the others; therefore, until the end of time, such matters are in a certain sense always in suspension.<br /> <br /> In the meantime, exchange dominates: &quot;One purchases felicity, and sells one's sins, just as in commercial operations.&quot; Even acts of charity and self-sacrifice are not purely generous; one is purchasing &quot;merit&quot; from the bodhisattvas.46 The notion of infinite debt comes in when this logic slams up against the Absolute, or, one might perhaps better say, against something that utterly defies the logic of exchange. Because there are things that do. This would explain, for instance, the odd urge to first quantify the exact amount of milk one has absorbed at one's mother's breast, and then to say that there is no conceivable way to repay it. Exchange implies interaction between equivalent beings. Your mother, on the other hand, is not an equivalent being. She created you out of her own flesh. This is exactly the point that I suggested the Vedic authors were subtly trying to make when they talked about &quot;debts&quot; to the gods: of course you carinot really &quot;pay your debt to the universe&quot;-that would imply that (r) you and (2) everything that exists (including you) are in some sense equivalent entities. This is clearly absurd. The closest you can come to repayment is to simply recognize that fact. Such recognition is the true meaning of sacrifice. Like Ros-pabe's original money, a sacrificial offering is not a way to pay a debt, but a way to acknowledge the impossibility of the idea that there could ever be repayment:<br /> <br /> The parallel was not missed in certain mythological tr'aditions. According to one famous Hindu myth, two gods, the brothers Kartikeya and Ganesha, had a quarrel over who should be the first to marry. Their mother Parvati suggested a contest: the winner would be the one to most quickly circle the entire universe. Kartikeya set off on the back of a giant peacock. It took him three years to transverse the limits of the cosmos. Ganesha bided his time, then, finally, walked in a circle around his mother, remarking, &quot;You are the universe to me.&quot;<br /> <br /> I've also argued that any system of exchange is always necessarily founded on something else, something that, in its social manifestation at least, is ultimately communism. With all those things that we treat as eternal, that we assume will always be there-our mother's love, true friendship, sociality, humanity, belonging, the existence of the cosmos-no calculation is necessary, or even ultimately possible; insofar as there is give and take, they follow completely different principles. What, then, happens to such absolute and unlimited phenomena when one tries to imagine the world as a set of transactions-as exchange? Generally, one of two things. We either ignore or deify them.<br /> <br /> (Mothers, and caregiving women in general, are a classic case in point.) Or we do both. What we treat as eternal in our actual relations with one another vanishes and reappears as an abstraction, an absolute.47 In the case of Buddhism, this was framed as the inexhaustible merit of bodhisatt-vas, who exist, in a certain sense, outside of time. They are at once the model for the Inexhaustible Treasuries, and also their practical foundation: one can only repay one's endless karmic debt, or one's infinite milk-debt, by drawing on this equally infinite pool of redemption, which, in turn, becomes the basis for the actual material funds of the monasteries, which are equally eternal—a pragmatic form of communism, in fact, since they were vast pools of wealth collectively owned and collectively managed: the center of vast projects of human cooperation, which were assumed to be similarly eternal. Yet at the same time- here I think Gernet is right—this communism became the basis, in turn, of something very much like capitalism. The reason was, above all, the need for constant expansion. Everything—even charity—was an opportunity to proselytize; the Dharma had to grow, ultimately, to encompass everyone and everything, in order to effect the salvation of all living beings.<br /> <br /> <br /> The Middle Ages were marked by a general move toward abstraction: real gold and silver ended up largely in churches, monasteries, and temples, money became virtual again, and at the same time, the tendency everywhere was to set up overarching moral institutions meant to regulate the process and, in particular, to establish certain protections for debtors.<br /> <br /> China was unusual in that it was one place where an Axial Age empire managed to survive-though at first, only barely. Chinese governments did manage to keep coins in circulation in most places most of the time. This was made easier by their reliance exclusively on small-denomination coins made of bronze. Even so, it clearly took enormous efforts.<br /> <br /> As usual, we don't know a lot about how everyday economic transactions took place, but what we do know suggests that in smallscale transactions, coins were probably most often used in dealing with strangers. As elsewhere, local shopkeepers and merchants extended credit. Most accounts seem to have been kept through the use of tally sticks, strikingly similar to those used in England, except that rather than hazelwood they were usually made of a split piece of notched bamboo. Here, too, the creditor took one half, and the debtor held the other; they were joined at the moment of repayment, and often broken afterward to mark the cancellation of the debt.48 To what degree were they transferable? We don't really know. Most of what we do know is from casual references in texts that are mainly about something else: anecdotes, jokes, and poetic allusions. The great collection of Taoist wisdom, the Leizi, probably written during the Han dynasty, contains one such:<br /> <br /> There was a man of Sung who was strolling in the street and picked up a half tally someone had lost. He took it home and stored it away, and secretly counted the indentations of the broken edge. He told a neighbor: &quot;I shall be rich any day now. &quot;49<br /> <br /> Rather like someone who finds a key and figures &quot;just as soon as I can figure out which lock ...&quot;50 Another story tells of how Liu Bang, a bibulous local constable and future founder of the Han dynasty, used to go on all-night drinking binges, running up enormous tabs. Once, while he lay collapsed in a drunken stupor in a wine-shop, the owner saw a dragon hovering over his head-a sure sign of future greatness-and immediately &quot;broke the tally,&quot; forgiving him his accumulated drinking debts.51<br /> <br /> Tallies weren't just used for loans, but for any sort of contract-which is why early paper contracts also had to be cut in half and one half kept by each partyY With paper contracts, there was a definite tendency for the creditor's half to function as an IOU and thus become transferable. By 8o6 AD, for instance, right around the apogee of Chinese Buddhism, merchants moving tea over long distances from the far south of the country and officials transporting tax payments to the capital, all of them concerned with the dangers of carrying bullion over long distances, began to deposit their money with bankers in the capital and devised a system of promissory notes. They were called &quot;Flying Cash,&quot; also divided in half, like tallies, and redeemable for cash in their branches in the provinces. They quickly started passing from hand to hand and operated something like currency. The government first tried to forbid their use, then a year or two later-and this became a familiar pattern in China-when it realized that it could not suppress them, switched gears and established a bureau empowered to issue such notes themselves.53<br /> <br /> By the early Song dynasty (96o-1279 AD), local banking operations all over China were running similar operations, accepting cash and bullion for safekeeping and allowing depositors to use their receipts as promissory notes, as well as trading in government coupons for salt and tea. Many of these notes came to circulate as de facto money.54 The government, as usual, first tried to ban the practice, then control it (granting a monopoly to sixteen leading merchants), then, finally, set up a government monopoly-the Bureau of Exchange Medium, established in 1023-and before long, aided by the newly invented printing press, was operating factories in several cities employing thousands of workers and producing literally millions of notes.55<br /> <br /> At first, this paper money was meant to circulate for a limited time (notes would expire after two, then three, then seven years), and was redeemable in bullion. Over time, especially as the Song came under increasing military pressure, the temptation to simply print money with little or no backup became overwhelming-and, moreover, Chinese governments were rarely completely willing to accept their own paper money for tax purposes. Combine this with the fact that the bills were worthless outside China, and it's rather surprising that the system worked at all. Certainly, inflation was a constant problem and the money would have to be recalled and reissued. Occasionally the whole system would break down, but then people would resort to their own expedients: &quot;privately issued tea checks, noodle checks, bamboo tallies, wine tallies, etc. &quot;56 Still, the Mongols, who ruled China from 1271 to 1368 AD, chose to maintain the system, and it was only abandoned in the seventeenth century.<br /> <br /> This is important to note because the conventional account tends to represent China's experiment with paper money as a failure, even, for Metallists, proof that &quot;fiat money,&quot; backed only by state power, will always eventually collapse.57 This is especially odd, since the centuries when paper money was in use are usually considered the most economically dynamic in Chinese history. Surely, if the United States government was eventually forced to abandon the use of federal reserve notes in 2400 AD, no one would be arguing that this showed that the very idea was always intrinsically unworkable. Nonetheless, the main point I'd like to emphasize here is that terms like &quot;fiat money,&quot; however common, are deceptive. Almost all of the new forms of paper money that emerged were not originally created by governments at all; they were simply ways of recognizing and expanding the use of credit instruments that emerged from everyday economic transactions. If it was only China that developed paper money in the Middle Ages, this was largely because only in China was there a government large and powerful enough, but also, sufficiently suspicious of its mercantile classes, to feel it had to take charge of such operations.<br /> <br /> === The Near West: Islam (Capital as Credit) ===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Prices depend on the will of Allah; it is he who raises and lowers them.<br /> <br /> -Attributed to the Prophet Mohammed<br /> <br /> The profit of each partner must be in proportion to the share of each in the adventure.<br /> <br /> - Islamic legal precept&lt;/blockquote&gt;For most of the Middle Ages, the economic nerve center of the world economy and the source of its most dramatic financial innovations was neither China nor India, but the West, which, from the perspective of the rest of the world, meant the world of Islam. During most of this period, Christendom, lodged in the declining empire of Byzantium and the obscure semi-barbarous principalities of Europe, was largely insignificant.<br /> <br /> Since people who live in Western Europe have so long been in the habit of thinking of Islam as the very definition of &quot;the East,&quot; it's easy to forget that, from the perspective of any other great tradition, the difference between Christianity and Islam is almost negligible. One need only pick up a book on, say, Medieval Islamic philosophy to discover disputes between the Baghdad Aristoteleans and the neoPythagoreans in Basra, or Persian Neo-Platonists-essentially, scholars doing the same work of trying to square the revealed religion tradition beginning with Abraham and Moses with the categories of Greek philosophy, and doing so in a larger context of mercantile capitalism, universalistic missionary religion, scientific rationalism, poetic celebrations of romantic love, and periodic waves of fascination with mystical wisdom from the East.<br /> <br /> From a world-historical perspective, it seems much more sensible to see Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as three different manifestations of the same great Western intellectual tradition, which for most of human history has centered on Mesopotamia and the Levant, extending into Europe as far as Greece and into Africa as far as Egypt, and sometimes farther west across the Mediterranean or down the Nile. Economically, most of Europe was until perhaps the High Middle Ages in exactly the same situation as most of Africa: plugged into the larger world economy, if at all, largely as an exporter of slaves, raw materials, and the occasional exotica (amber, elephant tusks ...), and importer of manufactured goods (Chinese silks and porcelain, Indian calicoes, Arab steel). To get a sense of comparative economic development (even if the examples are somewhat scattered over time), consider the following table:58<br /> <br /> Populations and Tax Revenue, 350 BC-1200 AD<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable sortable&quot;<br /> | rowspan=&quot;2&quot; |<br /> | colspan=&quot;2&quot; |Population<br /> |Revenue<br /> |Revenue per head<br /> |-<br /> | colspan=&quot;2&quot; |''Millions''<br /> |''Tons of Silver''<br /> |''Grams of Silver''<br /> |-<br /> |Persia, c. BC 350<br /> | colspan=&quot;2&quot; |17<br /> |697<br /> |41<br /> |-<br /> |Egypt, c. BC 200<br /> | colspan=&quot;2&quot; |7<br /> |384<br /> |55<br /> |-<br /> |Rome, c. I AD<br /> | colspan=&quot;2&quot; |50<br /> |825<br /> |I7<br /> |-<br /> |Rome, c. 150 AD<br /> | colspan=&quot;2&quot; |50<br /> |1,050<br /> |21<br /> |-<br /> |Byzantium, c. 850 AD<br /> | colspan=&quot;2&quot; |10<br /> |150<br /> |15<br /> |-<br /> |Abbasids, c. 850 AD<br /> | colspan=&quot;2&quot; |26<br /> |1,260<br /> |48<br /> |-<br /> |T'ang, c. 850 AD<br /> | colspan=&quot;2&quot; |50<br /> |2,145<br /> |43<br /> |-<br /> |France, 1221 AD<br /> | colspan=&quot;2&quot; |8.5<br /> |20.3<br /> |2.4<br /> |-<br /> |England, 1203 AD<br /> | colspan=&quot;2&quot; |&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;-5<br /> |11.5<br /> |4.6<br /> |}<br /> What's more, for most of the Middle Ages, Islam was not only the core of Western civilization; it was its expansive edge, working its way into India, expanding in Africa and Europe, sending missionaries and winning converts across the Indian Ocean.<br /> <br /> The prevailing Islamic attitude toward law, government, and economic matters was the exact opposite of that prevalent in China. Confucians were suspicious of governance through strict codes of law, preferring to rely on the inherent sense of justice of the cultivated scholar-a scholar who was simply assumed to also be a government official. Medieval Islam, on the other hand, enthusiastically embraced law, which was seen as a religious institution derived from the Prophet, but tended to view government, more often than not, as an unfortunate necessity, an institution that the truly pious would do better to avoid.59<br /> <br /> In part this was because of the peculiar nature of Islamic government. The Arab military leaders who, after Mohammed's death in 632 AD, conquered the Sassanian empire and established the Abbasid Caliphate, always continued to see themselves as people of the desert, and never felt entirely part of the urban civilizations they had come to rule. This discomfort was never quite overcome-on either side. It took the bulk of the population several centuries to convert to the conqueror's religion, and even when they did, they never seem to have really identified with their rulers. Government was seen as military power-necessary, perhaps, defend the faith, but fundamentally exterior to society.<br /> <br /> In part, too, it was because of the peculiar alliance between merchants and common folk that came to be aligned against them. After Caliph al-Ma'mum's abortive attempt to set up a theocracy in 832 AD, the government took a hands-off position o_n questions of religion. The various schools of Islamic law were free to create their own educational institutions and maintain their own separate system of religious justice. Crucially, it was the ulema, the legal scholars, who were the principal agents in the conversion of the bulk of the empire's population to Islam in Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa in those same years.60 But-like the elders in charge of guilds, civic associations, commercial sodalities, and religious brotherhoods-they did their best to keep the government, with its armies and ostentation, at arm's length.61 &quot;The best princes are those who visit religious teachers,&quot; one proverb put it, &quot;the worst religious teachers are the those who allow themselves to be visited by princes.&quot;62 A Medieval Turkish story brings it home even more pointedly:<br /> <br /> The king once summoned Nasruddin to court.<br /> <br /> &quot;Tell me,&quot; said the king, &quot;you are a mystic, a philosopher, a man of unconventional understandings. I have become interested in the issue of value. It's an interesting philosophical question. How does one establish the true worth of a person, or an object? Take me for example. If I were to ask you to estimate my value, what would you say?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Oh,&quot; Nasruddin said, &quot;I'd say about two hundred dinars. &quot; The emperor was flabbergasted. &quot;What?! But this belt I'm wearing is worth two hundred dinars!&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;I know,&quot; said Nasruddin. &quot;Actually, I was taking the value of the belt into consideration. &quot;<br /> <br /> This disjuncture had profound economic effects. It meant that the Caliphate, and later Muslim empires, could operate in many ways much like the old Axial Age empires-creating professional armies, waging wars of conquest, capturing slaves, melting down loot and distributing it in the form of coins to soldiers and officials, demanding that those coins be rendered back as taxes-but at the same time, without having nearly the same effects on ordinary people's lives.<br /> <br /> Over the course of the wars of expansion, for example, enormous quantities of gold and silver were indeed looted from palaces, temples, and monasteries and stamped into coinage, allowing the Caliphate to produce gold dinars and silver dirhams of remarkable purity-that is, with next to no fiduciary element, the value of each coin corresponding almost precisely to its weight in precious metal.63 As a result, they were able to pay their troops extraordinarily well. A soldier in the Caliph's army, for example, received almost four times the wages once received by a Roman legionary.64 We can, perhaps, speak of a kind of &quot;militarycoinage-slavery&quot; complex here-but it existed in a kind of bubble. Wars of expansion, and trade with Europe and Africa, did produce a fairly constant flow of slaves, but in dramatic contrast to the ancient world, very few of them ended up laboring in farms or workshops. Most ended up as decoration in the houses of the rich, or, increasingly over time, as soldiers. Over the course of the Abbasid dynasty (75o-1258 AD) in fact, the empire came to rely, for its military forces, almost exclusively on Mamluks, highly trained military slaves captured or purchased from the Turkish steppes. The policy of employing slaves as soldiers was maintained by all of the Islamic successor states, including the Mughals, and culminated in the famous Mamluk sultanate in Egypt in the thirteenth century, but historically, it was unprecedented.65 In most times and places slaves are, for obvious reasons, the very last people to be allowed anywhere near weapons. Here it was systematic. But in a strange way, it also made perfect sense: if slaves are, by definition, people who have been severed from society, this was the logical consequence of the wall created between society and the Medieval Islamic state.66<br /> <br /> Religious teachers appear to have done everything they could to prop up the wall. One reason for the recourse to slave soldiers was their tendency to discourage the faithful from serving in the military (since it might mean fighting fellow believers). The legal system that they created also ensured that it was effectively impossible for Muslims-or for that matter Christian or Jewish subjects of the Caliphate-to be reduced to slavery. Here al-Wahid seems to have been largely correct. Islamic law took aim at just about all the most notorious abuses of earlier, Axial Age societies. Slavery through kidnapping, judicial punishment, debt, and the exposure or sale of children, even through the voluntary sale of one's own person-all were forbidden, or rendered unenforceable.67 Likewise with all the other forms of debt peonage that had loomed over the heads of poor Middle Eastern farmers and their families since the dawn of recorded history. Finally, Islam strictly forbade usury, which it interpreted to mean any arrangement in which money or a commodity was lent at interest, for any purpose whatsoever.68<br /> <br /> In a way, one can see the establishment of Islamic courts as the ultimate triumph of the patriarchal rebellion that had begun so many thousands of years before: of the ethos of the desert or the steppe, real or imagined, even as the faithful did their best to keep the heavily armed descendants of actual nomads confined to their camps and palaces. It was made possible by a profound shift in class alliances. The great urban civilizations of the Middle East had always been dominated by a de facto alliance between administrators and merchants, both of whom kept the rest of the population either in debt peonage or in constant peril of falling into it. In converting to Islam, the commercial classes, so long the arch-villains in the eyes of ordinary farmers and townsfolk, effectively agreed to change sides, abandon all their most hated practices, and become instead the leaders of a society that now defined itself against the state.<br /> <br /> It was possible because from the beginning, Islam had a positive view toward commerce. Mohammed himself had begun his adult life as a merchant; and no Islamic thinker ever treated the honest pursuit of profit as itself intrinsically immoral or inimical to faith. Neither did the prohibitions against usury-which for the most part were scrupulously enforced, even in the case of commercial loans-in any sense mitigate against the growth of commerce, or even the development of complex credit instruments.69 To the contrary, the early centuries of the Caliphate saw an immediate efflorescence in both.<br /> <br /> Profits were still possible because Islamic jurists were careful to allow for certain service fees, and other considerations-notably, allowing goods bought on credit to be priced slightly higher than those bought for cash-that ensured that bankers and traders still had an incentive to provide credit services.70 Still, these incentives were never enough to allow banking to become a full-time occupation: instead, almost any merchant operating on a sufficiently large scale could be expected to combine banking with a host of other moneymaking activities. As a result, credit instruments soon became so essential to trade that almost anyone of prominence was expected to keep most of his or her wealth on deposit, and to make everyday transactions, not by counting out coins, but by inkpot and paper. Promissory notes were called sakk, &quot;checks&quot;, or ruq'a, &quot;notes.&quot; Checks could bounce. One German historian, picking through a multitude of old Arabic literary sources, recounts that:<br /> <br /> About 900 a great man paid a poet in this way, only the banker refused the check, so that the disappointed poet composed a verse to the effect that he would gladly pay a million on the same plan. A patron of the same poet and singer (936) during a concert wrote a check in his favor on a banker for five hundred dinars. When paying, the banker gave the poet to understand that it was customary to charge one dirham discount on each dinar, i.e., about ten per cent. Only if the poet would spend the afternoon and evening with him, he would make no deduction ...<br /> <br /> By about moo the banker had made himself indispensable in Basra: every trader had his banking account, and paid only in checks on his bank in the bazaar....71<br /> <br /> Checks could be countersigned and transferred, and letters of credit (suftaja) could travel across the Indian Ocean or the Sahara.72 If they did not turn into de facto paper money, it was because, since they operated completely independent of the state (they could not be used to pay taxes, for instance), their value was based almost entirely on trust and reputation.73 Appeal to the Islamic courts was generally voluntary or mediated by merchant guilds and civic associations. In such a context, having a famous poet compose verses making fun of you for bouncing a check was probably the ultimate disaster.<br /> <br /> When it came to finance, instead of interest-bearing investments, the preferred approach was partnerships, where (often) one party would supply the capital, the other carry out the enterprise. Instead of fixed return, the investor would receive a share of the profits. Even labor arrangements were often organized on a profit-sharing basis.74 In all such matters, reputation was crucial-in fact, one lively debate in early commercial law was over the question of whether reputation could (like land, labor, money, or other resources) itself be considered a form of capital. It sometimes happened that merchants would form partnerships with no capital at all, but only their good names. This was called &quot;partnership of good reputation. &quot; As one legal scholar explained:<br /> <br /> As for the credit partnership, it is also called the &quot;partnership ' of the penniless&quot; (sharika al-mafalis). It comes about when two people form a partnership without any capital in order to buy on credit and then sell. It is designated by this name partnership of good reputations because their capital consists of their status and good reputations; for credit is extended only to him who has a good reputation among people.75<br /> <br /> Some legal scholars objected to the idea that such a contract could be considered legally binding, since it was not based on an initial outlay of material capital; others considered it legitimate, provided the partners make an equitable partition of the profits-since reputation cannot be quantified. The remarkable thing here is the tacit recognition that, in a credit economy that operates largely without state mechanisms of enforcement (without police to arrest those who commit fraud, or bailiffs to seize a debtor's property), a significant part of the value of a promissory note is indeed the good name of the signatory. As Pierre Bourdieu was later to point out in describing a similar economy of trust in contemporary Algeria: it's quite possible to turn honor into money, almost impossible to convert money into honor.76<br /> <br /> These networks of trust, in turn, were largely responsible for the spread of Islam over the caravan routes of Central Asia and the Sahara, and especially across the Indian Ocean, the main conduit of Medieval world trade. Over the course of the Middle Ages, the Indian Ocean effectively became a Muslim lake. Muslim traders appear to have played a key role in establishing the principle that kings and their armies should keep their quarrels on dry land; the seas were to be a zone of peaceful commerce. At the same time, Islam gained a toehold in trade emporia from Aden to the Moluccas because Islamic courts were so perfectly suited to provide those functions that made such ports attractive: means of establishing contracts, recovering debts, creating a banking sector capable of redeeming or transferring letters of credit.77 The level of trust thereby created between merchants in the great Malay entrepot Malacca, gateway to the spice islands of Indonesia, was legendary. The city had Swahili, Arab, Egyptian, Ethiopian, and Armenian quarters, as well as quarters for merchants from different regions of India, China, and Southeast Asia. Yet it was said that its merchants shunned enforceable contracts, preferring to seal transactions &quot;with a handshake and a glance at heaven. &quot;78<br /> <br /> In Islamic society, the merchant became not just a respected figure, but a kind of paragon: like the warrior, a man of honor able to pursue far-flung adventures; unlike him, able to do so in a fashion damaging to no one. The French historian Maurice Lombard draws a striking, if perhaps rather idealized, picture of him &quot;in his stately town-house, surrounded by slaves and hangers-on, in the midst of his collections of books, travel souvenirs, and rare ornaments, &quot; along with his ledgers, correspondence, and letters of credit, skilled in the arts of double-entry book-keeping along with secret codes and ciphers, giving alms to the poor, supporting places of worship, perhaps, dedicating himself to the writing of poetry, while still able to translate his general creditworthiness into great capital reserves by appealing to family and partners.79 Lombard's picture is to some degree inspired by the famous Thousand and One Nights description of Sindbad, who, having spent his youth in perilous mercantile ventures to faraway lands, finally retired, rich beyond dreams, to spend the rest of his life amidst gardens and dancing girls, telling tall tales of his adventures. Here's a glimpse, from the eyes of a humble porter (also named Sindbad) when first summoned to see him by the master's page:<br /> <br /> He found it to be a goodly mansion, radiant and full of majesty, till he brought him to a grand sitting room wherein he saw a company of nobles and great lords seated at tables garnished with all manner of flowers and sweet-scented herbs, besides great plenty of dainty viands and fruits dried and fresh and confections and wines of the choicest vintages. There also were instruments of music and mirth and lovely slave girls playing and singing. All the company was ranged according to rank, and in the highest place sat a man of worshipful and noble aspect whose bearded sides hoariness had stricken, and he was stately of stature and fair of favor, agreeable of aspect and full of gravity and dignity and majesty. So Sindbad the Porter was confounded at that which he beheld and said in himself, &quot;By Allah, this must be either some king's palace, or a piece of Paradise! &quot;80<br /> <br /> It's worth quoting not only because it represents a certain ideal, a picture of the perfect life, but because there's no real Christian parallel. It would be impossible conceive of such an image appearing in, say, a Medieval French romance.<br /> <br /> The veneration of the merchant was matched by what can only be called the world's first popular free-market ideology. True, one should be careful not to confuse ideals with reality. Markets were ever entirely independent from the government. Islamic regimes did employ all the usual strategies of manipulating tax policy to encourage the growth of markets, and they periodically tried to intervene in commercial law.81 Still, there was a very strong popular feeling that they shouldn't. Once freed from its ancient scourges of debt and slavery, the local bazaar had become, for most, not a place of moral danger, but the very opposite: the highest expression of the human freedom and communal solidarity, and thus to be protected assiduously from state intrusion.<br /> <br /> There was a particular hostility to anything that smacked of pricefixing. One much-repeated story held that the Prophet himself had refused to force merchants to lower prices during a shortage in the city of Medina, on the grounds that doing so would be sacrilegious, since, in a free-market situation, &quot;prices depend on the will of God.&quot;82 Most legal scholars interpreted Mohammed's decision to mean that any government interference in market mechanisms should be considered similarly sacrilegious, since markets were designed by God to regulate themselves.83<br /> <br /> If all this bears a striking resemblance to Adam Smith's &quot;invisible hand&quot; (which was also the hand of Divine Providence), it might not be a complete coincidence. In fact, many of the specific arguments and examples that Smith uses appear to trace back directly to economic tracts written in Medieval Persia. For instance, not only does his argument that exchange is a natural outgrowth of human rationality and speech already appear both in both Ghazali (ws8-1n1 AD), and Tusi (1201-1274 AD); both use exactly the same illustration: that no one has ever observed two dogs exchanging bones.84 Even more dramatically, Smith's most famous example of division of labor, the pin factory, where it takes eighteen separate operations to produce one pin, already appears in Ghazali's Ihya, in which he describes a needle factory, where it takes twenty-five different operations to produce a needle.85<br /> <br /> The differences, however, are just as significant as the similarities. One telling example: like Smith, Tusi begins his treatise on economics with a discussion of the division of labor; but where for Smith, the division of labor is actually an outgrowth of our &quot;natural propensity to truck and barter&quot; in pursuit of individual advantage, for Tusi, it was an extension of mutual aid:<br /> <br /> Let us suppose that each individual were required to busy himself with providing his own sustenance, clothing, dwellingplace and weapons, .first acquiring the tools of carpentry and the smith's trade, then readying thereby tools and implements for sowing and reaping, grinding and kneading, spinning and weaving ... Clearly, he would not be capable of doing justice to any one of them. But when men render aid to each other, each one performing one of these important tasks that are beyond the measure of his own capacity, and observing the law of justice in transactions by giving greatly and receiving in exchange of the labor of others, then the means of livelihood are realized, and the succession of the individual and the survival of the species are assured.86<br /> <br /> As a result, he argues, divine providence has arranged us to have different abilities, desires, and inclinations. The market is simply one manifestation of this more general principle of mutual aid, of the matching of, abilities (supply) and needs (demand)-or to translate it into my own earlier terms, it is not only founded on, but is itself an extension of the kind of baseline communism on which any society must ultimately rest.<br /> <br /> All this is not to say that Tusi was in any sense a radical egalitarian. Quite the contrary. &quot;If men were equal,&quot; he insists, &quot;they would all perish. &quot; We need differences between rich and poor, he insisted, just as much as we need differences between farmers and carpenters. Still, once you start from the initial premise that markets are primarily about cooperation rather than competition-and while Muslim economic thinkers did recognize and accept the need for market competition, they never saw competition as its essence87-the moral implications are very different. Nasruddin's story about the quail eggs might have been a joke, but Muslim ethicists did often enjoin merchants to drive a hard bargain with the rich so they could charge less, or pay more, when dealing with the less fortunate.88<br /> <br /> Ghazali's take on the division of labor is similar, and his account of the origins of money is if anything even more revealing. It begins with what looks much like the myth of barter, except that, like all Middle Eastern writers, he starts not with imaginary primitive tribesmen, but with strangers meeting in an imaginary marketplace.<br /> <br /> Sometimes a person needs what he does not own and he owns what he does not need. For example, a person has saffron but needs a camel for transportation and one who owns a camel does not presently need that camel but he wants saffron. Thus, there is the need for an exchange. However, for there to be an exchange, there must be a way to measure the two objects, for the camel-owner cannot give the whole camel for a quantity of saffron. There is no similarity between saffron and camel so that equal amount of that weight and form can be given. Likewise is the case of one who desires a house but owns some cloth or desires a slave but owns socks, or desires flour but possesses a donkey. These goods have no direct proportionality so one cannot know how much saffron will equal a camel's worth. Such barter transactions would be very difficult.89<br /> <br /> Ghazali also notes that there might also be a problem of one person not even needing what the other has to offer, but this is almost an afterthought; for him, the real problem is conceptual. How do you compare two things with no common qualities? His conclusion: it can only be done by comparing both to a third thing with no qualities at all. For this reason, he explains, God created dinars and dirhams, coins made out of gold and silver, two metals that are otherwise no good for anything:<br /> <br /> Dirhams and dinars are not created for any particular purpose; they are useless by themselves; they are just like stones. They are created to circulate from hand to hand, to govern and to facilitate transactions. They are symbols to know the value and grades of goods.90<br /> <br /> They can be symbols, units of measure, because of this very lack of usefulness, indeed lack of any particular feature other than value:<br /> <br /> A thing can only be exactly linked to other things if it has no particular special form or feature of its own-for example, a mirror that has no color can reflect all colors. The same is the case with money-it has no purpose of its own, but it serves as medium for the purpose of exchanging goods.91<br /> <br /> From this it also follows that lending money at interest must be illegitimate, since it means using money as an end in itself: &quot;Money is not created to earn money. &quot; In fact, he says, &quot;in relation to other goods, dirhams and dinars are like prepositions in a sentence, &quot; words that, as the grammarians inform us, are used to give meaning to other words, but can only do because they have no meaning in themselves. Money is a thus a unit of measure that provides a means of assessing the value of goods, but also one that operates as such only if it stays in constant motion. To enter in monetary transactions in order to obtain even more money, even if it's a matter of M-C-M', let alone M-M', would be, according to Ghazali, the equivalent of kidnapping a post-man.92<br /> <br /> Whereas Ghazali speaks only of gold and silver, what he describes-money as symbol, as abstract measure, having no qualities of its own, whose value is only maintained by constant motion-is something that would never have occurred to anyone were it not in an age when it was perfectly normal for money to be employed in purely virtual form.<br /> <br /> Much of our free-market doctrine, then, appears to have been originally borrowed piecemeal from a very different social and moral universe.93 The mercantile classes of the Medieval Near West had pulled off an extraordinary feat. By abandoning the usurious practices that had made them so obnoxious to their neighbors for untold centuries before, they were able to become-alongside religious teachers-the effective leaders of their communities: communities that are still seen as organized, to a large extent, around the twin poles of mosque and bazaar.94 The spread of Islam allowed the market to become a global phenomenon, operating largely independent of governments, according to its own internal laws. But the very fact that this was, in a certain way, a genuine free market, not one created by the government and backed by its police and prisons-a world of handshake deals and paper promises backed only by the integrity of the signer-meant that it could never really become the world imagined by those who later adopted many of the same ideas and arguments: one of purely self-interested individuals vying for material advantage by any means at hand.<br /> <br /> === The Far West: Christendom (Commerce, Lending, and War) ===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Where there is justice in war, there is also justice in usury. -Saint Ambrose&lt;/blockquote&gt;Europe, as I mentioned, came rather late to the Middle Ages and for most of it was something of a hinterland. Still, the period began much as it did elsewhere, with the disappearance of coinage. Money retreated into virtuality. Everyone continued to calculate costs in Roman currency, then, later, in Carolingian &quot;imaginary money &quot;-the purely conceptual system of pounds, shillings, and pence used across Western Europe to keep accounts well into the seventeenth century.<br /> <br /> Local mints did gradually come back into operation, producing coins in an endless variety of weight, purity, and denominations. How these related to the pan-European system, though, was a matter of manipulation. Kings regularly issued decrees revaluing their own coins in relation to the money of account, &quot;crying up&quot; the currency by, say, declaring that henceforth, one of their ecus or ''escudos'' would no longer be worth 1/&lt;sub&gt;12&lt;/sub&gt; but now 1/s of a shilling (thus effectively raising taxes) or &quot;crying down&quot; the value of their coins by doing the reverse (thus effectively reducing their debts).95 The real gold or silver content of coins was endlessly readjusted, and currencies were frequently called in for re-minting. Meanwhile, most everyday transactions dispensed with cash entirely, operating through tallies, tokens, ledgers, or transactions in kind. As a result, when the Scholastics came to address such matters in the thirteenth century, they quickly adopted Aristotle's position that money was a mere social convention: that it was, basically, whatever human beings decided that it was.96<br /> <br /> All this fit the broader Medieval pattern: actual gold and silver, such of it as was still around, was increasingly laid up in sacred places; as centralized states disappeared, the regulation of markets was increasingly in the hands of the Church.<br /> <br /> At first, the Catholic attitudes toward usury were just as harsh as Muslim ones, and attitudes toward merchants, considerably harsher. In the first case, they had little choice, as many Biblical texts were quite explicit. Consider Exodus 22:25:<br /> <br /> If you lend money to My people, to the poor among you, you are not to act as a creditor to him; you shall not charge him interest.<br /> <br /> Both the Psalms (15:5, 54:12) and Prophets (Jeremiah 9.6, Nehemiah 5:n) were explicit in assigning usurers to death and hellfire. What's more, the early Christian Fathers, who laid the foundation of Church teachings on social issues in the waning years of the Roman empire, were writing amidst the ancient world's last great debt crisis, one that was effectively in the process of destroying the empire's remaining free peasant-ry.97 While few were willing to condemn slavery, all condemned usury.<br /> <br /> Usury was seen above all as an assault on Christian charity, on Jesus's injunction to treat the poor as they would treat the Christ himself, giving without expectation of return and allowing the borrower to decide on recompense (Luke 6:34-35). In 365 AD, for instance, St. Basil delivered a sermon on usury in Cappadocia that set the standard for such issues:<br /> <br /> The Lord gave His own injunction quite plainly in the words, &quot;from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. &quot;98<br /> <br /> But what of the money lover? He sees before him a man under stress of necessity bent to the ground in supplication. He sees him hesitating at no act, no words, of humiliation. He sees him suffering undeserved misfortune, but he is merciless. He does not reckon that he is a fellow-creature. He does not<br /> <br /> give in to his entreaties. He stands stiff and sour. He is moved by no prayers; his resolution is broken by no tears. He persists in refusal . ..99<br /> <br /> That is, until the suppliant mentions &quot;interest.&quot;<br /> <br /> Basil was particularly offended by the crass dishonesty by which moneylenders operated; their abuse of Christian fellowship. The man in need comes seeking a friend, the rich man pretends to be one. In fact he's a secret enemy, and everything he says is a lie. Witness, St. Basil said, how the rich man will always at first swear mighty oaths that he has no money to his name:<br /> <br /> Then the suppliant mentions interest, and utters the word security. All is changed. The frown is relaxed; with a genial smile he recalls old family connection. Now it is &quot;my friend. &quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;I will see, &quot; says he, &quot;if I have any money by me. Yes, there is that sum which a man I know has left in my hands on deposit for profit. He stipulated a very heavy rate of interest. However, I shall certainly take something off, and give it to you on better terms. &quot; With pretences of this kind and talk like this he fawns on the wretched victim, and induces him to swallow the bait. Then he binds him with a written security, adds loss of liberty to the trouble of his pressing poverty, and is off. The man who has made himself responsible for interest that he cannot pay has accepted voluntary slavery for life.100<br /> <br /> The borrower, coming home with his newfound money, at first rejoices. But quickly, &quot;the money slips away,&quot; interest accumulates, and his possessions are sold off. Basil grows poetic in describing the debtor's plight. It's as if time itself has become his enemy. Every day and night conspires against him, as they are the parents of interest. His life becomes a &quot;sleepless daze of anxious uncertainty,&quot; as he is humiliated in public; while at home, he is constantly hiding under the couch at every unexpected knock on the door, and can barely sleep, startled awake by nightmare visions of his creditor standing over his pillow.101<br /> <br /> Probably the most famous ancient homily on usury, though, was Saint Ambrose's De Tobia, pronounced over several days in Milan in 380 BC. He reproduces the same vivid details as Basil: fathers forced to sell their children, debtors who hanged themselves out of shame. Usury, he observes, must be considered a form of violent robbery, even murder.102 Ambrose, though, added one small proviso that was later to have enormous influence. His sermon was the first to carefully examine every Biblical reference to moneylending, which meant that he had to address the one problem later authors always had to struggle with-the fact that, in the Old Testament, usury is not quite forbidden to everyone. The key sticking point is always Deuteronomy 2J:I9-20:<br /> <br /> Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of any thing that is lent upon usury.<br /> <br /> Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury.<br /> <br /> So who then is this &quot;stranger&quot; or (a better translation of the Hebrew nokri, &quot;foreigner&quot;)? Presumably, one against whom robbery and murder would have been justified as well. After all, the ancient Jews lived amidst tribes like the Amalekites, on whom God had specifically instructed them to make war. If by extracting interest one is, as he puts it, fighting without a sword, then it is only legitimate to do so from those &quot;whom it would not be a crime to kill.&quot;103 For Ambrose, living in Milan, all this was something of a technicality. He included all Christians and all those subject to Roman law as &quot;brothers&quot;; there weren't, then, lot of Amalekites around.104 Later, the &quot;Exception of St. Ambrose,&quot; as it came to be known, was to become extremely important.<br /> <br /> All of these sermons-and there were many of them-left certain critical questions unanswered. What should the rich man do when receiving a visit from his troubled neighbor? True, Jesus had said to give without expectation of return, but it seemed unrealistic to expect most Christians to do that. And even if they did, what sort of ongoing relationships would that create? St. Basil took the radical position. God had given us all things in common, and he had specifically instructed the rich to give their possessions to the poor. The communism of the Apostles-who pooled all their wealth, and took freely what they needed-was thus the only proper model for a truly Christian soci-ety.105 Few of the other Christian Fathers were willing to take things this far. Communism was the ideal, but in this fallen and temporary world, they argued, it was simply unrealistic. The Church must accept existing property arrangements, but also come up with spiritual arguments to encourage the rich to nonetheless act with Christian charity. Many of these employed distinctly commercial metaphors. Even Basil was willing to indulge in this sort of thing:<br /> <br /> Whenever you provide for the destitute on account of the Lord, it is both a gift and a loan. It is a gift because you entertain no hope in recovering it, a loan because of our Lord's munificence in paying you back on his behalf, when, having taken a small sum for the poor, he will give you back a vast sum in return.<br /> <br /> &quot;For he who takes pity on the poor, lends to God.&quot;106<br /> <br /> Since Christ is in the poor, a gift of charity is a loan to Jesus, to be repaid with interest inconceivable on earth.<br /> <br /> Charity, however, is a way of maintaining hierarchy, not undermining it. What Basil is talking about here really has nothing to do with debt, and playing with such metaphors seems ultimately to serve only to underline the fact that the rich man doesn't owe the poor suppliant anything, any more than God is in any way legally bound to save the soul of anyone who feeds a beggar. &quot;Debt&quot; here dissolves into a pure hierarchy (hence, &quot;the Lord&quot;) where utterly different beings provide each other utterly different kinds of benefit. Later theologians were to explicitly confirm this: human beings live in time, noted St. Thomas Aquinas, so it makes sense to say that sin is a debt of punishment we owe to God. But God lives outside of time. By definition, he cannot owe anything to anyone. His grace can therefore only be a gift given with no obligation.107<br /> <br /> This, in turn, provides an answer to the question: What are they really asking the rich man to do? The Church opposed usury, but it had little to say about relations of feudal dependency, where the rich man provides charity and the poor suppliant shows his gratitude in other ways. Neither, when these kinds of arrangements began to emerge across the Christian West, did the Church offer significant objections.108 Former debt peons were gradually transformed into serfs or vassals. In some ways, the relationship was not much different, since vassalage was, in theory, a voluntary, contractual relationship. Just as a Christian has to be able to freely choose to submit himself to &quot;the Lord,&quot; so did a vassal have to agree to make himself someone else's man. All this proved perfectly consonant with Christianity.<br /> <br /> Commerce, on the other hand, remained a problem. There was not much of a leap between condemning usury as the taking of &quot;whatever exceeds the amount loaned&quot; and condemning any form of profittaking. Many-Saint Ambrose among them-were willing to take that leap. Where Mohammed declared that an honest merchant deserved a place by the seat of God in heaven, men like Ambrose wondered if an &quot;honest merchant&quot; could actually exist. Many held that one simply could not be both a merchant and a Christian.109 In the early Middle Ages, this was not a pressing issue-specially since so much commerce was conducted by foreigners. The conceptual problems, however, were never resolved. What did it mean that one could only lend to &quot;strangers&quot;? Was it just usury, or was even commerce tantamount to war?<br /> <br /> <br /> Probably the most notorious, and often catastrophic, way that this problem worked itself out in the High Middle Ages was in relations between Christians and Jews. In the years since Nehemiah, Jewish attitudes toward lending had themselves changed. In the time of Augustus, Rabbi Hillel had effectively rendered the sabbatical year a dead letter, by allowing two parties to place a rider on any particular loan contract agreeing that it would not apply. While both the Torah and the Talmud stand opposed to loans on interest, exceptions were made in dealing with Gentiles-particularly as, over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, European Jews were excluded from almost any other line of work.110 This in turn made it harder to contain the practice, as witnessed in the common joke, current in twelfth-century ghettos to justify usury between Jews. It consisted, it is said, of reciting Deuteronomy 23:20 in interrogative tones to make it mean the opposite of its obvious sense: 'Unto a foreigner thou mayest lend upon usury, but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury?'111<br /> <br /> On the Christian side, in n4o AD the &quot;Exception of Saint Ambrose&quot; found its way into Gratian's Decretum, which came to be considered the definitive collection of canon law. At the time, economic life fell very much under the jurisdiction of the Church. While that might appear to leave Jews safely outside the system, in reality, matters were more complicated. For one thing, while both Jews and Gentiles would occasionally attempt to make recourse to the Exception, the prevailing opinion was that it only really applied to Saracens or others with whom Christendom was literally at war. After all, Jews and Christians lived in the same towns and villages. If one were to concede that the Exception allowed Jews and Christians the right to lend to each other at interest, it would also mean that they had the right to murder one another.112 No one really wanted to say that. On the other hand, real relations between Christians and Jews often did seem to skate perilously close to this unfortunate ideal-though obviously the actual murder (apart from mere economic aggression) was all on one side.<br /> <br /> In part this was due to the habit of Christian princes of exploiting, for their own purposes, the fact that Jews did sit slightly outside the system. Many encouraged Jews to operate as moneylenders, under their protection, simply because they also knew that protection could be withdrawn at any time. The kings of England were notorious in this regard. They insisted that Jews be excluded from merchant and craft guilds, but granted them the right to charge extravagant rates of interest, backing up the loans by the full force of Iaw.113 Debtors in Medieval England were regularly thrown in prisons until their families settled with the creditor.114 Yet the same regularly happened to the Jews themselves. In 1210 AD, for example, King John ordered a tallage, or emergency levy, to pay for his wars in France and Ireland. According to one contemporary chronicler &quot;all the Jews throughout England, of both sexes, were seized, imprisoned, and tortured severely, in order to do the king's will with their money. &quot; Most who where put to torture offered all they had and more-but on that occasion, one particularly wealthy merchant, a certain Abraham of Bristol, who the king decided owed him ten thousand marks of silver (a sum equivalent to about a sixth of John's total annual revenue), became famous for holding out. The king therefore ordered that one of his molars be pulled out daily, until he paid. After seven had been extracted, Abraham finally gave in.115<br /> <br /> John's successor, Henry III (1216-1272 AD), was in the habit of turning over Jewish victims to his brother the Earl of Cornwall, so that, as another chronicler put it, &quot;those whom one brother had flayed, the other might embowel.&quot;116 Such stories about the extraction of Jewish teeth, skin, and intestines are, I think, important to bear in mind when thinking about Shakespeare's imaginary Merchant of Venice demanding his &quot;pound of flesh.&quot;117 It all seems to have been a bit of a guilty projection of terrors that Jews had never really visited on Christians, but that had been directed the other way around.<br /> <br /> The terror inflicted by kings carried in it a peculiar element of identification: the persecutions and appropriations were an extension of the logic whereby kings effectively treated debts owed to Jews as ultimately owed to themselves, even setting up a branch of the Treasury (&quot;the Exchequer of the Jews&quot;) to manage them.118 This was of course much in keeping with the popular English impression of their kings as themselves ''a'' group of rapacious Norman foreigners. But it also gave the kings the opportunity to periodically play the populist card, dramatically snubbing or humiliating their Jewish financiers, turning a blind eye or even encouraging pogroms by townsfolk who chose to take the Exception of Saint Ambrose literally, and treat moneylenders as enemies of Christ who could be murdered in cold blood. Particularly gruesome massacres occurred in Norwich in 1144 AD, and in France, in Blois in 1171. Before long, as Norman Cohn put it, &quot;what had once been a flourishing Jewish culture had turned into a terrorized society locked in perpetual warfare with the greater society around it.&quot;119<br /> <br /> One mustn't exaggerate the Jewish role in lending. Most Jews had nothing to do with the business, and those who did were typically bit players, making minor loans of grain or cloth for a return in kind. Others weren't even really Jews. Already in the 1190s, preachers were complaining about lords who would work hand in glove with Christian moneylenders claiming they were &quot;our Jews&quot;-and thus under their special protection.120 By the 11oos, most Jewish moneylenders had long since been displaced by Lombards (from Northern Italy) and Cahorsins (from the French town of Cahors)-who established themselves across Western Europe, and became notorious rural usurers.121<br /> <br /> The rise of rural usury was itself a sign of a growing free peasantry (there had been no point in making loans to serfs, since they had nothing to repossess). It accompanied the rise of commercial farming, urban craft guilds, and the &quot;commercial revolution&quot; of the High Middle Ages, all of which finally brought Western Europe to a level of economic activity comparable to that long since considered normal in other parts of the world. The Church quickly came under considerable popular pressure to do something about the problem, and at first, it did try to tighten the clamps. Existing loopholes in the usury laws were systematically closed, particularly the use of mortgages. These latter began as an expedient: as in Medieval Islam, those determined to dodge the law could simply present the money, claim to be buying the debtor's house or field, and then &quot;rent&quot; it back to the debtor until the principal was repaid. In the case of a mortgage, the house was in theory not even purchased but pledged as security, but any income from it accrued to the lender. In the eleventh century this became a favorite trick of monasteries. In 1148 it was made illegal: henceforth, all income was to be subtracted from the principal. Similarly, in 1187 merchants were forbidden to charge higher prices when selling on credit-the Church thereby going much further than any school of Islamic law ever had. In 1179 usury was made a mortal sin and usurers were excommunicated and denied Christian burial.122 Before long, new orders of itinerant friars like the Franciscans and Dominicans organized preaching campaigns, traveling town to town, village to village, threatening moneylenders with the loss of their eternal souls if they did not make restitution to their victims.<br /> <br /> All this was echoed by a heady intellectual debate in the newly founded universities, not so much as to whether usury was sinful and illegal, but precisely why. Some argued that it was theft of another's material possessions; others that it constituted a theft of time, charging others for something that belonged only to God. Some held that it embodied the sin of Sloth, since like the Confucians, Catholic thinkers usually held that a merchant's profit could only be justified as payment for his labor (i.e., in transporting goods to wherever they were needed), whereas interest accrued even if the lender did nothing at all. Soon the rediscovery of Aristotle, who returned in Arabic translation (and the influence of Muslim sources like Ghazali and Ibn Sina), added new arguments: that treating money as an end in itself defied its true purpose; that charging interest was unnatural, in that it treated mere metal as if it were a living thing that could breed or bear fruit.123<br /> <br /> But as the Church authorities soon discovered, when one starts something like this, it's very hard to keep a lid on it. Soon, new popular religious movements were appearing everywhere, and many took up the same direction so many had in late Antiquity, not only challenging commerce but questioning the very legitimacy of private property. Most were labeled heresies and violently suppressed, but many of the same arguments were taken up amongst the mendicant orders themselves. By the thirteenth century, the great intellectual debate was between the Franciscans and the Dominicans over &quot;apostolic poverty&quot;-basically, over whether Christianity could be reconciled with property of any sort.<br /> <br /> At the same time, the revival of Roman law-which, as we've seen, began from the assumption of absolute private property-put new intellectual weapons in the hands of those who wished to argue that, at least in the case of commercial loans, usury laws should be relaxed. The great discovery in this case was the notion of interesse, which is where our word &quot;interest&quot; originally comes from: a compensation for loss suffered because of late payment.124 The argument soon became that if a merchant made a commercial loan even for some minimal period (say, a month), it was not usurious for him to charge a percentage for each month afterward, since this was a penalty, not rental for the money, and it was justified as compensation for the profit he would have made, had he placed it in some profitable investment, as any merchant would ordinarily be expected to do.125<br /> <br /> <br /> The reader may be wondering how it could have been possible for usury laws to move in two opposite directions simultaneously. The answer would seem to be that politically, the situation in Western Europe was remarkably chaotic. Most kings were, weak, their holdings fractured and uncertain; the Continent was a checkerboard of baronies, principalities, urban communes, manors, and church estates. Jurisdictions were constantly being renegotiated-usually by war. Merchant capitalism of the sort long familiar in the Muslim Near West only really managed to establish itself-quite late, compared with the situation in the rest of the Medieval world-when merchant capitalists managed to secure a political foothold in the independent city-states of northern Italy-most famously, Venice, Florence, Genoa, and Milan-followed by the German cities of the Hanseatic League.126 Italian bankers ultimately managed to free themselves from the threat of expropriation by themselves taking over governments, and by doing so, acquiring their own court systems (capable of enforcing contracts) and even more critically, their own armies.127<br /> <br /> What jumps out, in comparison with the Muslim world, are these links of finance, trade, and violence. Whereas Persian and Arab thinkers assumed that the market emerged as an extension of mutual aid, Christians never completely overcame the suspicion that commerce was really an extension of usury, a form of fraud only truly legitimate when directed against one's mortal enemies. Debt was, indeed, sin-an the part of both parties to the transaction. Competition was essential to the nature of the market, but competition was (usually) nonviolent warfare. There was a reason why, as I've already observed, the words for &quot;truck and barter&quot; in almost all European languages were derived from terms meaning &quot;swindle, &quot; &quot;bamboozle,&quot; or &quot;deceive. &quot; Some disdained commerce for that reason. Others embraced it. Few would have denied that the connection was there.<br /> <br /> One need only examine the way that Islamic credit instruments-or for that matter, the Islamic ideal of the merchant adventurer-were eventually adopted to see just how intimate this connection really was.<br /> <br /> It is often held that the first pioneers of modern banking were the Military Order of the Knights of the Temple of Solomon, commonly known as the Knights Templar. A fighting order of monks, they played a key role in financing the Crusades. Through the Templars, a lord in southern France might take out a mortgage on one of his tenements and receive a &quot;draft&quot; (a bill of exchange, modeled on the Muslim suf-taja, but written in a secret code) redeemable for cash from the Temple in Jerusalem. In other words, Christians appear to have first adopted Islamic financial techniques to finance attacks against Islam.<br /> <br /> The Templars lasted from 1n8 to 1307, but they finally went the way of so many Medieval trading minorities: King Phillip IV, deep in debt to the order, turned on them, accusing them of unspeakable crimes; their leaders were tortured and ultimately killed, and their wealth was expropriated.128 Much of the problem was that they lacked a powerful home base. Italian banking houses such as the Bardi, Pe-ruzzi, and Medici did much better. In banking history, the Italians are most famous for their complex joint-stock organization and for spearheading the use of Islamic-style bills of exchange.129 At first these were simple enough: basically just a form of long-distance money-changing. A merchant could present a certain amount in florins to a banker in Italy and receive a notarized bill registering the equivalent in the international money of account (Carolingian derniers), due in, say, three months' time, and then after it came due, either he or his agent could cash it for an equivalent amount of local currency in the Champagne fairs, which were both the great yearly commercial emporia, and great financial clearing houses, of the European High Middle Ages. But they quickly morphed into a plethora of new, creative forms, mainly a way of navigating-or even profiting from-the endlessly complicated European currency situation.130<br /> <br /> Most of the capital for these banking enterprises derived from the Mediterranean trade in Indian Ocean spices and Eastern luxuries. Yet unlike the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean was a constant war zone. Venetian galleys doubled as both merchant vessels and warships, replete with cannon and marines, and the differences between trade, crusade, and piracy often depended on the balance of forces at any given moment.131 The same was true on land: where Asian empires tended to separate the sphere of warriors and merchants, in Europe they often overlapped:<br /> <br /> All up and down Central Europe, from Tuscany to Flanders, from Brabant to Livonia, merchants not only supplied warriors-as they did all over Europe- they sat in governments that made war and, sometimes, buckled on armor and went into battle themselves. Such places make a long list: not only Florence, Milan, Venice, and Genoa, but also Augsburg, Nuremberg, Strasbourg, and Zurich; not only Lubeck, Hamburg, Bremen, and Danzig, but also Bruges, Ghent, Leiden, and Cologne. Some of them-Florence, Nuremberg, Siena, Bern, and Ulm come to mind-built considerable territorial states.1&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Venetians were only the most famous in this regard. They created a veritable mercantile empire over the course of the eleventh century, seizing islands like Crete and Cyprus and establishing sugar plantations that eventually-anticipating a pattern eventually to become all too familiar in the New World-came to be staffed largely by African slaves.133 Genoa soon followed suit; one of their most lucrative businesses was raiding and trading along the Black Sea to acquire slaves to sell to the Mamluks in Egypt or to work mines leased from the Turks.134 The Genoese republic was also the inventor of a unique mode of military financing, which might be known as war by subscription, whereby those planning expeditions sold shares to investors in exchange for the rights to an equivalent percentage of the spoils. It was precisely the same galleys, with the same &quot;merchant adventurers&quot; aboard, who would eventually pass through the pillars of Hercules to follow the Atlantic coast to Flanders or the Champagne fairs, carrying cargoes of nutmeg or cayenne, silks and woolen goods-along with the inevitable bills of exchange.135<br /> <br /> <br /> It would be instructive, I think, to pause a moment to think about this term, &quot;merchant adventurer. &quot; Originally it just meant a merchant who operated outside his own country. It was around this same time, however, at the height of the fairs of Champagne and the Italian merchant empires, between n6o and 1172, that the term &quot;adventure&quot; began to take on its contemporary meaning. The man most responsible for it was the French poet Chretien de Troyes, author of the famous Arthurian romances-most famous, perhaps, for being the first to tell the story of Sir Percival and the Holy Grail. The romances were a new sort of literature featuring a new sort of hero, the &quot;knight-errant, &quot; a warrior who roamed the world in search of, precisely, &quot;adventure&quot;-in the contemporary sense of the word: perilous challenges, love, treasure, and renown. Stories of knightly adventure quickly became enormously popular, Chretein was followed by innumerable imitators, and the central characters in the stories-Arthur and Guinevere, Lancelot, Gawain, Percival, and the rest-became known to everyone, as they are still. This courtly ideal of the gallant knight, the quest, the joust, romance and adventure, remains central to our image of the Middle Ages.136<br /> <br /> The curious thing is that it bears almost no relation to reality. Nothing remotely like a real &quot;knight-errant&quot; ever existed. &quot;Knights&quot; had originally been a term for freelance warriors, drawn from the younger or, often, bastard sons of the minor nobility. Unable to inherit, many were forced to band together to seek their fortunes. Many became little more than roving bands of thugs, in an endless pursuit of plunder-precisely the sort of people who made merchants' lives so dangerous. Culminating in the twelfth century, there was a concerted effort to bring this dangerous population under the control of the civil authorities: not only the code of chivalry, but the tournament, the joust-all these were more than anything else ways of keeping them out of trouble, as it were, in part by setting knights against each other, in part by turning their entire existence into a kind of stylized ritual.137 The ideal of the lone wandering knight, in search of some gallant adventure, on the other hand, seems to have come out of nowhere.<br /> <br /> This is important, since it lies at the very heart of our image of the Middle Ages-and the explanation, I think, is revealing. We have to recall that merchants had begun to achieve unprecedented social and even political power around this time, but that, in dramatic contrast to Islam, where a figure like Sindbad-the successful merchant adventurer-could serve as a fictional exemplar of the perfect life, merchants, unlike warriors, were never seen as paragons of much of anything.<br /> <br /> It's likely no coincidence that Chretien was living in Troyes, at the very heartland of the Champagne fairs that had become, in turn, the commercial hub of Western Europe.138 While he appears to have modeled his vision of Camelot on the elaborate court life under his patron Henri the Liberal (n52-n8I), Count of Champagne, and his wife Marie, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine, the real court was staffed by lowborn ''commerçants,'' who served as serjeants of the fairs—leaving most real knights in the role of onlookers, guards, or-at tournaments-entertainers.<br /> <br /> This is not to say that tournaments did not become a kind of economic focus in their own right, according to one early twentiethcentury Medievalist, Amy Kelly:<br /> <br /> The biographer of Guillaume le Marechal gives an idea of how this rabble of courtly routiers amused itself on the jousting fields of western Europe. To the tournaments, occurring in a brisk season about twice a month from Pentecost to the feast of St John, flocked the young bloods, sometimes three thousand strong, taking possession of the nearest town. Thither also flocked horse dealers from Lombardy and Spain, from Brittany and the Low Countries, as well as armorers, haberdashers for man and beast, usurers, mimes and story-tellers, acrobats, necromancers, and other gentlemen of the lists, the field, the road. Entertainers of every stripe found liberal patronage ...There were feasts in upper chambers, and forges rang in the smithies all night long. Brawls with grisly incidents-a cracked skull, a gouged eye--occurred as the betting progressed and the dice flew. To cry up their champions in the field came ladies of fair name and others of no name at all.<br /> <br /> The hazards, the concourse, the prizes, keyed men to the pitch of war. The stakes were magnificent, for the victor held his prize, horse and man, for ransom. And for these ransoms fiefs went in gage or the hapless victim fell into the hands of usurers, giving his men, and in extremity, himself, as hostages. Fortunes were made and lost on the point of a lance and many a mother's son failed to ride home. 139<br /> <br /> So, it was not only that the merchants supplied the materials that made the fairs possible; Since vanquished knights technically owed their lives to the victors, merchants ended up, in their capacity as moneylenders, making good business out of liquidating their assets. Alternately, a knight might borrow vast sums to outfit himself in magnificence, hoping to impress some fair lady (with handsome dowry) with his victories; others, to take part in the continual whoring and gambling that always surrounded such events. Losers would end up having to sell their armor and horses, and this created the danger that they would go back to being highwaymen, foment pogroms (if their creditors were Jews) or, if they had lands, make new fiscal demands on those unfortunate enough to live on them.<br /> <br /> Others turned to war, which itself tended to drive the creation of new markets.140 In one of the most dramatic of such incidents, in November II99, a large number of knights at a tournament at the castle of Eery in Champagne, sponsored by Henry's son, Theobald, were seized by a great religious passion, abandoned their games, and swore a vow to instead retake the Holy Land. The crusader army then proceeded to commission the Venetian fleet for transport in exchange for a promise of a so-percent share in all resulting profits. In the end, rather than proceeding to the Holy Land, they ended up sacking the (much wealthier, Orthodox) Christian city of Constantinople after a prolonged and bloody siege. A Flemish count named Baldwin was installed as &quot;Latin Emperor of Constantinople,&quot; but attempting to govern a city that had been largely destroyed and stripped of everything of value ensured that he and his barons soon ended up in great financial difficulties. In a gigantic version of what was happening on the small scale in so many tournaments, they were ultimately reduced to stripping the metal off the church roofs and auctioning holy relics to pay back their Venetian creditors. By 1259, Baldwin had sunk to the point of taking out a mortgage on his own son, who was taken back to Venice as security for a loan.141<br /> <br /> All this does not really answer the question: Whence, then, this image of the solitary knight-errant, wandering the forests of a mythic Albion, challenging rivals, confronting ogres, fairies, wizards, and mysterious beasts? The answer should be clear by now. Really, this is just a sublimated, romanticized image of the traveling merchants themselves: men who did, after all, set off on lonely ventures through wilds and forests, whose outcome was anything but certain.142<br /> <br /> And what of the Grail, that mysterious object that all the knights-errant were ultimately seeking? Oddly enough, Richard Wagner, composer of the opera Parzifal, first suggested that the Grail was a symbol inspired by the new forms of finance.143 Where earlier epic heroes sought after, and fought over, piles of real, concrete gold and silver-the Nibelung's hoard-these new ones, born of the new commercial economy, pursued purely abstract forms of value. No one, after all, knew precisely what the Grail was. Even the epics disagree: sometimes it's a plate, sometimes a cup, sometimes a stone. (Wolfram von Eschen-bach imagined it to be a jewel knocked from Lucifer's helmet in a battle at the dawn of time.) In a way it doesn't matter. The point is that it's invisible, intangible, but at the same time of infinite, inexhaustible value, containing everything, capable of making the wasteland flower, feeding the world, providing spiritual sustenance, and healing wounded bodies. Marc Shell even suggested that it would best be conceived as a blank check, the ultimate financial abstraction.144<br /> <br /> === What, Then, Were the Middle Ages? ===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Each of us is a mere symbolon of a man, the result of bisection, like the flat fish, two out of one, and each of us is constantly searching for his corresponding symbolon. -Plato, The Symposium&lt;/blockquote&gt;There is one way that Wagner got it wrong: the introduction of financial abstraction was not a sign that Europe was leaving the Middle Ages, but that it was finally, belatedly, entering it.<br /> <br /> Wagner's not really to blame here. Almost everyone gets this wrong, because the most characteristic Medieval institutions and ideas arrived so late in Europe that we tend to mistake them for the first stirrings of modernity. We've already seen this with bills of exchange, already in use in the East by 700 or 8oo AD, but only reaching Europe several centuries later. The independent university—perhaps the quintessential Medieval institution-is another case in point. Nalanda was founded in 427 AD, and there were independent institutions of higher learning all over China and the Near West (from Cairo to Constantinople) centuries before the creation of similar institutions in Oxford, Paris, and Bologna.<br /> <br /> If the Axial Age was the age of materialism, the Middle Ages were above all else the age of transcendence. The collapse of the ancient empires did not, for the most part, lead to the rise of new ones.141 Instead, once-subversive popular religious movements were catapulted into the status of dominant institutions. Slavery declined or disappeared, as did the overall level of violence. As trade picked up, so did the pace of technological innovation; greater peace brought greater possibilities not only for the movement of silks and spices, but also of people and ideas. The fact that monks in Medieval China could devote themselves to translating ancient treatises in Sanskrit, and that students in madrasas in Medieval Indonesia could debate legal terms in Arabic, is testimony to the profound cosmopolitanism of the age.<br /> <br /> Our image of the Middle Ages as an &quot;age of faith&quot;-and hence, of blind obedience to authority-is a legacy of the French Enlightenment. Again, it makes sense only if you think of the &quot;Middle Ages&quot; as something that happened primarily in Europe. Not only was the Far West an unusually violent place by world standards, the Catholic Church was extraordinarily intolerant. It's hard to find many Medieval Chinese, Indian, or Islamic parallels, for example, to the burning of &quot;witches&quot; or the massacre of heretics. More typical was the pattern that prevailed in certain periods of Chinese history, when it was perfectly acceptable for a scholar to dabble in Taoism in his youth, become a Confucian in middle age, then become a Buddhist on retirement. If there is an essence to Medieval thought, it lies not in blind obedience to authority, but rather in a dogged insistence that the values that'govern our ordinary daily affairs-particularly those of the court and marketplace-are confused, mistaken, illusory, or perverse. True value lay elsewhere, in a domain that cannot be directly perceived, but only approached through study or contemplation. But this in turn made the faculties of contemplation, and the entire question of knowledge, an endless problem. Consider for example the great conundrum, pondered by Muslim, Christian, and Jewish philosophers alike: What does it mean to simultaneously say that we can only know God through our faculties of Reason, but that Reason itself partakes of God? Chinese philosophers were struggling with similar conundrums when they asked, &quot;Do we read the classics or do the classics read us?&quot; Almost all the great intellectual debates of the age turned on this question in one way or another. Is the world created by our minds, or our minds by the world?<br /> <br /> We can see the same tensions within predominant theories of money. Aristotle had argued that gold and silver had no intrinsic value in themselves, and that money therefore was just a social convention, invented by human communities to facilitate exchange. Since it had &quot;come about by agreement, therefore it is within our power to change it or render it useless&quot; if we all decide that that's what we want to do.146 This position gained little traction in the materialist intellectual environment of the Axial Age, but by the later Middle Ages, it had become standard wisdom. Ghazali was among the first to embrace it. In his own way he took it even further, insisting that the fact that a gold coin has no intrinsic value is the basis of its value as money, since this very lack of intrinsic value is what allows it to &quot;govern,&quot; measure, and regulate the value of other things. But at the same time, Ghazali denied that money was a social convention. It was given us by God.147<br /> <br /> Ghazali was a mystic, and a political conservative, so one might argue that he ultimately shied away from the most radical implications of his own ideas. But one could also ask whether, in the Middle Ages, arguing that money was an arbitrary social convention was really all that radical a position. After all, when Christian and Chinese thinkers insisted that it was, it was almost always as a way of saying that money is whatever the king or the emperor wished it to be. In that sense, Ghazali's position was perfectly consonant with the Islamic desire to protect the market from political interference by saying that it fell properly under the aegis of religious authorities.<br /> <br /> The fact that Medieval money took such abstract, virtual formschecks, tallies, paper money-meant that questions like these (&quot;What does it mean to say that money is a symbol?&quot;) cut to the core of the philosophical issues of the day. Nowhere is this so true as in the history of the word &quot;symbol&quot; itself. Here we encounter some parallels so extraordinary that they can only be described as startling.<br /> <br /> When Aristotle argued that coins are merely social conventions, the term he used was symbolon-from which our own word &quot;symbol&quot; is derived. Symbolon was originally the Greek word for &quot;tally&quot;-an object broken in half to mark a contract or agreement, or marked and broken to record a debt. So our word &quot;symbol&quot; traces back originally to objects broken to record debt contracts of one sort or another. This is striking enough. What's really, remarkable, though, is that the contemporary Chinese word for &quot;symbol,&quot; fu, or fu hao, has almost exactly the same origin.148<br /> <br /> Let's start with the Greek term &quot;symbolon. &quot; Two friends at dinner might create a symbolon if they took some object-a ring, a knucklebone, a piece of crockery-and broke it in half. Any time in the future when either of them had need of the other's help, they could bring their halves as reminders of the friendship. Archeologists have found hundreds of little broken friendship tablets of this sort in Athens, often made of clay. Later they became ways of sealing a contract, the object standing in the place of witnesses.149 The word was also used for tokens of every sort: those given to Athenian jurors entitling them to vote, or tickets for admission to the theater. It could be used refer to money too, but only if that money had no intrinsic value: bronze coins whose value was fixed only by local convention.150 Used for written documents, a symbolon could also be passport, contract, commission, or receipt. By extension, it came to mean: omen, portent, symptom, or finally, in the now-familiar sense, symbol.<br /> <br /> The path to the latter appears to have been twofold. Aristotle fixed on the fact that a tally could be anything: what the object was didn't matter; all that mattered was that there was a way to break it in half. It is exactly so with language: words are sounds we use to refer to objects, or to ideas, but the relation is arbitrary: there's no particular reason, for example, that English-speakers should choose &quot;dog&quot; to refer to an animal and &quot;god&quot; to refer to a deity, rather than the other way around. The only reason is social convention: an agreement between all speakers of a language that this sound shall refer to that thing. In this sense, all words were arbitrary tokens of agreement.151 So, of course, is money-for Aristotle, not only worthless bronze coins that we agree to treat as if they were worth a certain amount, but all money, even gold, is just a symbolon, a social convention.152<br /> <br /> All this came to seem almost commonsensical in the thirteenth century of Thomas Aquinas, when rulers could change the value of currency simply by issuing a decree. Still, Medieval theories of symbols derived less from Aristotle than from the Mystery Religions of Antiquity, where &quot;symbolon&quot; came to refer to certain cryptic formulae or talismans that only initiates could understand.153 It thus came to mean a concrete token, perceptible to the senses, that could only be understood in reference to some hidden reality entirely beyond the domain of sensory experience.154<br /> <br /> The theorist of the symbol whose work was most widely read and respected in the Middle Ages was a sixth-century Greek Christian mystic whose real name has been lost to history, but who is known by his pseudonym Dionysius the Areopagite.155 Dionysius took up the notion in this latter sense to confront what was to become the great intellectual problem of the age: How is it possible for humans to have knowledge of God? How can we, whose knowledge is confined to what our senses can perceive of the material universe, have knowledge of a being whose nature is absolutely alien to that material universe--&quot;that infinity beyond being,&quot; as he puts it, &quot;that oneness that is beyond intel-ligence&quot;?156 It would be impossible were it not for the fact that God, being all-powerful, can do anything, and therefore, just as he places his own body in the Eucharist, so can he reveal himself to our minds through an endless variety of material shapes. Intriguingly, Dionysius warns us that we cannot begin to understand how symbols work until we rid ourselves of the notion that divine things are likely to be beautiful. Images of luminous angels and celestial chariots are only likely to confuse us, since we will be tempted to imagine that that's what heaven is actually like, and in fact we cannot possibly conceive of what heaven is like. Instead, effective symbols are, like the original symbolon, homely objects selected apparently at random; often, ugly, ridiculous things, whose very incongruity reminds us that they are not God; of the fact that God &quot;transcends all materiality,&quot; even as, in another sense, they are God.157 But the notion that they are in any sense tokens of agreement between equals is gone entirely. Symbols are gifts, absolute, free, hierarchical gifts, presented by a being so far above us that any thought of reciprocity, debt, or mutual obligation is simply inconceivable.U8<br /> <br /> Compare the Greek dictionary above to the following, from a Chinese dictionary:<br /> <br /> FU. To agree with, to tally. The two halves of a tally. o evidence; proof of identity, credentials o to fulfill a promise, to keep one's word o to reconcile<br /> <br /> o the mutual agreement between Heaven's appointment and human affairs<br /> <br /> o a tally, a check<br /> <br /> o an imperial seal or stamp<br /> <br /> o a warrant, a commission, credentials<br /> <br /> o like fitting the two halves of a tally, in exact agreement o a symbol, a sign ...159<br /> <br /> The evolution is almost exactly the same. Like symbola, fu can be tallies, contracts, official seals, warrants, passports, or credentials. As promises, they can embody an agreement, a debt contract, or even a relation of feudal vassalage--since a minor lord agreeing to become another man's vassal would split a tally just as he would if borrowing grain or money. The common feature seems to be a contract between two parties that begin as equal, in which one agrees to become subordinate. Later, as the state became more centralized, we mainly hear about fu presented to officials as a means of conveying order: the official would take the left half with him when posted to the provinces, and when the emperor wished to send an important command, he would send the right half with the messenger to make sure that the official knew it was actually the imperial will.160<br /> <br /> We've already seen how paper money seems to have developed from paper versions of such debt contracts, ripped in half and reunited. For Chinese theorists, of course, Aristotle's argument that money was simply a social convention was hardly radical; it was simply assumed. Money was whatever the emperor established it to be. Though even here there was a slight proviso, as evidenced in the entry above, that &quot;fu&quot; could also refer to &quot;the mutual agreement between heaven's appointment and human affairs.&quot; Just as officials were appointed by the emperor, the emperor was ultimately appointed by a higher power, and he could only rule effectively as long as he kept its mandate, which is why propitious omens were called &quot;fu,&quot; signs that heaven approved of the ruler, just as natural disasters were a sign that he had strayed.161<br /> <br /> Here Chinese ideas did grow a bit closer to the Christian ones. But Chinese conceptions of the cosmos had one crucial difference: since there was no emphasis on the absolute gulf between our world and the one beyond it, contractual relations with the gods were by no means out of the question. This was particularly true in Medieval Taoism, where monks were ordained through a ceremony called &quot;rending the tally,&quot; ripping apart a piece of paper that represented a contract with heaven.162 It was the same with the magical talismans, also called &quot;fu,&quot; which an adept might receive from his master. These were literally tallies: the adept kept one; the other half was said to be retained by the gods. Such talismanic fu took the form of diagrams, said to represent a form of celestial writing, comprehensible only to the gods, which committed them to assist the bearer, often giving the adept the right to call on armies of divine protectors with whose help he could slay demons, cure the sick, or otherwise attain miraculous powers. But they could also become, like Dionysius' symbola, objects of contemplation, by which one's mind can ultimately attain some knowledge of the invisible world beyond our own.163<br /> <br /> Many of the most compelling visual symbols to emerge from Medieval China trace back to such talismans: the River Symbol, or, for that matter, the yin-yang symbol that seems to have developed out of it.164 Just looking at a yin-yang symbol, it is easy enough to imagine the left and right (sometimes, too, called &quot;male&quot; and &quot;female&quot;) halves of a tally.<br /> <br /> <br /> A tally does away with the need for witnesses; if the two surfaces agree, then everyone knows that the agreement between the contracting parties exists as well. This is why Aristotle saw it as a fit metaphor for words: word A corresponds to concept B because there is a tacit agreement that we shall act as if it does. The striking thing about tallies is that even though they might begin as simple tokens of friendship and solidarity, in almost all the later examples, what the two parties actually agree to create is a relation of inequality: of debt, obligation, subordination to another's orders. This is in turn what makes it possible to use the metaphor for the relation between the material world and that more powerful world that ultimately gives it meaning. The two sides are the same. Yet what they create is absolute difference. Hence for a Medieval Christian mystic, as for Medieval Chinese magicians, symbols could be literal fragments of heaven-even if for the first, they provided a language whereby one could have some understanding of beings one could not possibly interact with; while for the second, they provided a way of interacting, even making practical arrangements, with beings whose language one could not possibly understand.<br /> <br /> On one level, this is just another version of the dilemmas that always arise when we try to reimagine the world through debt-that peculiar agreement between two equals that they shall no longer be equals, until such time as they become equals once again. Still, the problem took on a peculiar piquancy in the Middle Ages, when the economy became, as it were, spiritualized. As gold and silver migrated to holy places, ordinary transactions everywhere came to be carried out primarily through credit. Inevitably, arguments about wealth and markets became arguments about debt and morality, and arguments about debt and morality became arguments about the nature of our place in the universe. As we've seen, the solutions varied considerably. Europe and India saw a return to hierarchy: society became a ranked order of Priests, Warriors, Merchants, and Farmers (or in Christendom, just Priests, Warriors, and Farmers). Debts between the orders were considered threatening because they implied the potential of equality, and they often led to outright violence. In China, in contrast, the principle of debt often became the governing principle of the cosmos: karmic debts, milk-debts, debt contracts between human beings and celestial powers. From the point of view of the authorities, all these led to excess, and potentially to vast concentrations of capital that might throw the entire social order out of balance. It was the responsibility of government to intervene constantly to keep markets running smoothly and equitably, thus avoiding new outbreaks of popular unrest. In the world of Islam, where theologians held that God recreated the entire universe at every instant, market fluctuations were instead seen as merely another manifestation of divine will.<br /> <br /> The striking thing is that the Confucian condemnation of the merchant, and the Islamic celebration of the merchant, ultimately led to the same thing: prosperous societies with flourishing markets, but where the elements never came together to create the great merchant banks and industrial firms that were to become the hallmark of modern capitalism. It's especially striking in the case of Islam. Certainly, the Islamic world produced figures who would be hard to describe as anything but capitalists. Large-scale merchants were referred to as sahib al-mal, &quot;owners of capital,&quot; and legal theorists spoke freely about the creation and expansion of capital funds. At the height of the Caliphate, some of these merchants were in possession of millions of dinars and seeking profitable investment. Why did nothing like modern capitalism emerge? I would highlight two factors. First, Islamic merchants appear to have taken their free-market ideology seriously. The marketplace did not fall under the direct supervision of the government; contracts were made between individuals-ideally, &quot;with a handshake and a glance at heaven&quot;-and thus honor and credit became largely indistinguishable. This is inevitable: you can't have cutthroat competition where there is no one stopping people from literally cutting one another's throats. Second, Islam also took seriously the principle, later enshrined in classical economic theory but only unevenly observed in practice, that profits are the reward for risk. Trading enterprises were assumed to be, quite literally, adventures, in which traders exposed themselves to the dangers of storm and shipwreck, savage nomads, forests, steppes, and deserts, exotic and unpredictable foreign customs, and arbitrary governments. Financial mechanisms designed to avoid these risks were considered impious. This was one of the objections to usury: if one demands a fixed rate of interest, the profits are guaranteed. Similarly, commercial investors were expected to share the risk. This made most of the forms of finance and insurance that were to later develop in Europe impossible.165<br /> <br /> In this sense the Buddhist monasteries of early Medieval China represent the opposite extreme. The Inexhaustible Treasuries were inexhaustible because, by continually lending their money out at interest and never otherwise touching their capital, they could guarantee effectively risk-free investments. That was the entire point. By doing so, Buddhism, unlike Islam, produced something very much like what we now call &quot;corporations&quot;-entities that, through a charming legal fiction, we imagine to be persons, just like human beings, but immortal, never having to go through all the human untidiness of marriage, reproduction, infirmity, and death. To put it in properly Medieval terms, they are very much like angels.<br /> <br /> Legally, our notion of the corporation is very much a product of the European High Middle Ages. The legal idea of a corporation as a &quot;fictive person&quot; (persona ficta)-a person who, as Maitland, the great British legal historian, put it, &quot;is immortal, who sues and is sued, who holds lands, has a seal of his own, who makes regulations for those natural persons of whom he is composed&quot;166-was first established in canon law by Pope Innocent IV in 1250 AD, and one of the first kinds of entities it applied to were monasteries-as also to universities, churches, municipalities, and guilds.167<br /> <br /> The idea of the corporation as an angelic being is not mine, incidentally. I borrowed it from the great Medievalist Ernst Kantorowicz, who pointed out that all this was happening right around the same time that Thomas Aquinas was developing the notion that angels were really just the personification of Platonic Ideas.168 &quot;According to the teachings of Aquinas,&quot; he notes, &quot;every angel represented a species. &quot;<br /> <br /> Little wonder then that finally the personified collectives of the jurists, which were juristically immortal species, displayed all the features otherwise attributed to angels ...The jurists themselves recognized that there was some similarity between their abstractions and the angelic beings. In this respect, it may be said that the political and legal world of thought of the later Middle Ages began to be populated by immaterial angelic bodies, large and small: they were invisible, ageless, sempiternal, immortal, and sometimes even ubiquitous; and they were endowed with a corpus intellectuale or mysticum [an intellectual or mystical body] which could stand any comparison with the &quot;spiritual bodies &quot; of the celestial beings.169<br /> <br /> All this is worth emphasizing because while we are used to assuming that there's something natural or inevitable about the existence of corporations, in historical terms, they are actually strange, exotic creatures. No other great tradition came up with anything like it.170 They are the most peculiarly European addition to that endless proliferation of metaphysical entities so characteristic of the Middle Ages-as well as the most enduring.<br /> <br /> They have, of course, changed a great deal over time. Medieval corporations owned property, and they often engaged in complex financial arrangements, but in no case were they profit-seeking enterprises in the modern sense. The ones that came closest were, perhaps unsurprisingly, monastic orders-above all, the Cistercians-whose monasteries became something like the Chinese Buddhist ones, surrounded by mills and smithies, practicing rationalized commercial agriculture with a workforce of &quot;lay brothers&quot; who were effectively wage laborers, spinning and exporting wool. Some even talk about &quot;monastic capi-talism.&quot;171 Still, the ground was only really prepared for capitalism in the familiar sense of the term when the merchants began to organize themselves into eternal bodies as a way to win monopolies, legal or de facto, and avoid the ordinary risks of trade. An excellent case in point was the Society of Merchant Adventurers, charted by King Henry IV in London in 1407, who, despite the romantic-sounding name, were mainly in the business of buying up British woolens and selling them in the Flanders fairs. They were not a modern joint-stock company, but a rather old-fashioned Medieval merchant guild, but they provided a structure whereby older, more substantial merchants could simply provide loans to younger ones, and they managed to secure enough of an exclusive control over the woolen trade that substantial profits were pretty much guaranteed.172 When such companies began to engage in armed ventures overseas, though, a new era of human history might be said to have begun.<br /> <br /> == Chapter eleven: Age of the great capitalist empires (1450-1971 AD) ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;''&quot;Eleven pesos, then; and as you can’t pay me the eleven pesos, that makes another eleven pesos-twenty-two in all: eleven for the serape and the petate and eleven because you can’t pay. Is that right, Crisiero?&quot;''<br /> <br /> ''Crisiero had no knowledge of figures, so it was very natural that he said, &quot;That is right, patron.&quot;''<br /> <br /> ''Don Arnulfo was a decent, honorable man. Other landowners were a good deal less softhearted with their peons.''<br /> <br /> ''&quot;The shirt is five pesos. Ri.ght? Very well. And as you can't pay for it, that’s five pesos. And as you remain in my debt for the five pesos, that’s five pesos. And as'' I ''shall never have the money from you, that’s five pesos. So that makes five and five and five and five. That’s twenty pesos. Agreed?&quot;''<br /> <br /> ''&quot;Yes, patron, agreed. &quot;''<br /> <br /> ''The peon can get the shirt nowhere else when he needs one. He can get credit nowhere but from his master, for whom he works and from whom he can never get away as long as he owes him a centavo.''<br /> <br /> -B. Traven, ''The Carreta''&lt;/blockquote&gt;THE EPOCH THAT BEGAN with what we're used to calling the &quot;Age of Exploration &quot; was marked by so many things that were genuinely new-the rise of modern science, capitalism, humanism, the nation-state—that it may seem odd to frame it as just another turn of an historical cycle. Still, from the perspective I've been developing in this book, that is what it was.<br /> <br /> The era begins around 1450 with a turn away from virtual currencies and credit economies and back to gold and silver. The subsequent flow of bullion from the Americas sped the process immensely, sparking a &quot;price revolution&quot; in Western Europe that turned traditional society upside-down. What's more, the return to bullion was accompanied by the return of a whole host of other conditions that, during the Middle Ages, had been largely suppressed or kept at bay: vast empires and professional armies, massive predatory warfare, untrammeled usury and debt peonage, but also materialist philosophies, a new burst of scientific and philosophical creativity—even the return of chattel slavery. It was in no way a simple repeat performance. All the Axial Age pieces reappeared, but they came together in an entirely different way.<br /> <br /> <br /> The 14oos are a peculiar period in European history. It was a century of endless catastrophe: large cities were regularly decimated by the Black Death; the commercial economy sagged and in some regions collapsed entirely; whole cities went bankrupt, defaulting on their bonds; the knightly classes squabbled over the remnants, leaving much of the countryside devastated by endemic warfare. Even in geopolitical terms Christendom was staggering, with the Ottoman Empire not only scooping up what remained of Byzantium but pushing steadily into central Europe, its forces expanding on land and sea.<br /> <br /> At the same time, from the perspective of many ordinary farmers and urban laborers, times couldn't have been much better. One of the perverse effects of the bubonic plague, which killed off about one-third of the European workforce, was that wages increased dramatically. It didn't happen immediately, but this was largely because the first reaction of the authorities was to enact legislation freezing wages, or even attempting to tie free peasants back to the land again. Such efforts were met with powerful resistance, culminating in a series of popular uprisings across Europe. These were squelched, but the authorities were also forced to compromise. Before long, so much wealth was flowing into the hands of ordinary people that governments had to start introducing new laws forbidding the lowborn to wear silks and ermine, and to limit the number of feast days, which, in many towns and parishes, began eating up one-third or even half of the year. The fifteenth century is, in fact, considered the heyday of Medieval festive life, with its floats and dragons, maypoles and church ales, its Abbots of Unreason and Lords of Misrule.1<br /> <br /> Over the next centuries, all this was to be destroyed. In England, the festive life was systematically attacked by Puritan reformers; then eventually by reformers everywhere, Catholic and Protestant alike. At the same time its economic basis in popular prosperity dissolved.<br /> <br /> Why this happened has been a matter of intense historical debate for centuries. This much we know: it began with a massive inflation. Between rsoo and r6so, for instance, prices in England increased soo percent, but wages rose much more slowly, so that in five generations, real wages fell to perhaps 40 percent of what they had been. The same thing happened everywhere in Europe.<br /> <br /> Why? The favorite explanation, ever since a French lawyer named Jean Bodin first proposed it in 1568, was the vast influx of gold and silver that came pouring into Europe after the conquest of the New World. As the value of precious metals collapsed, the argument went, the price of everything else skyrocketed, and wages simply couldn't keep up.2 There is some evidence to support this. The height of popular prosperity around 1450 did correspond to a period when bullion-and therefore, coin-was in particularly short supply.3 The lack of cash played havoc with international trade in particular; in the 146os, we hear of ships full of wares forced to turn back from major ports, as no one had any cash on hand to buy from them. The problem only started to turn around later in the decade, with a sudden burst of silver mining in Saxony and the Tirol, followed by the opening of new sea routes to the Gold Coast of West Africa. Then came the conquests of Cortes and Pizarro. Between 1520 and r64o, untold tons of gold and silver from Mexico and Peru were transported across the Atlantic and Pacific in Spanish treasure ships.<br /> <br /> The problem with the conventional story is that very little of that gold and silver lingered very long in Europe. Most of the gold ended up in temples in India, and the overwhelming majority of the silver bullion was ultimately shipped off to China. The latter is crucial. If we really want to understand the origins of the modern world economy, the place to start is not in Europe at all. The real story is of how China abandoned the use of paper money. It's a story worth telling briefly, because very few people know it.<br /> <br /> <br /> After the Mongols conquered China in 1271, they kept the system of paper money in place, and even made occasional (if usually disastrous) attempts to introduce it in the other parts of their empire. In 1368, however, they were overthrown by another of China's great popular insurrections, and a former peasant leader was once again installed in power.<br /> <br /> During their century of rule, the Mongols had worked closely with foreign merchants, who became widely detested. Partly as a result, the former rebels, now the Ming dynasty, were suspicious of commerce in any form, and they promoted a romantic vision of self-sufficient agrarian communities. This had some unfortunate consequences. For one thing, it meant the maintenance of the old Mongol tax system, paid in labor and in kind; especially since that, in turn, was based on a quasicaste system in which subjects were registered as farmers, craftsmen, or soldiers and forbidden to change their jobs. This proved extraordinarily unpopular. While government investment in agriculture, roads, and canals did set off a commercial boom, much of this commerce was technically illegal, and taxes on crops were so high that many indebted farmers began to flee their ancestral lands.4<br /> <br /> Typically, such floating populations can be expected to seek just about anything but regular industrial employment; here as in Europe, most preferred a combination of odd jobs, peddling, entertainment, piracy, or banditry. In China, many also turned prospector. There was a minor silver rush, with illegal mines cropping up everywhere. Uncoined silver ingots, .instead of official paper money and strings of bronze coins, soon became the real money of the off-the-books informal economy. When the government attempted to shut down illegal mines in the 1430s and 1440s, their efforts sparked local insurrections, in which miners would make common cause with displaced peasants, seize nearby cities, and sometimes threaten entire provinces.5<br /> <br /> In the end, the government gave up even trying to suppress the informal economy. Instead, they swung the other way entirely: stopped issuing paper money, legalized the mines, allowed silver bullion to become the recognized currency for large transactions, and even gave private mints the authority to produce strings of cash.6 This, in turn, allowed the government to gradually abandon the system of labor exactions and substitute a uniform tax system payable in silver.<br /> <br /> Effectively, the Chinese government had gone back to its old policy of encouraging markets and merely intervening to prevent any undue concentrations of capital. It quickly proved spectacularly successful, and Chinese markets boomed. Indeed, many speak of the Ming as having accomplished something almost unique in world history: this was a time whe.n the Chinese population was exploding, but living standards markedly improved.7 The problem was that the new policy meant that the regime had to ensure an abundant supply of silver in the country, so as to keep its price low and minimize popular unrest-but as it turned out, the Chinese mines were very quickly exhausted. In the 1530s, new silver mines were discovered in Japan, but these were exhausted in a decade or two as well. Before long, China had to turn to Europe and the New World.<br /> <br /> Now, since Roman times, Europe had been exporting gold and silver to the East: the problem was that Europe had never produced much of anything that Asians wanted to buy, so it was forced to pay in specie for silks, spices, steel, and other imports. The early years of European expansion were largely attempts to gain access either to Eastern luxuries or to new sources of gold and silver with which to pay for them. In those early days, Atlantic Europe really had only one substantial advantage over its Muslim rivals: an active and advanced tradition of naval warfare, honed by centuries of conflict in the Mediterranean. The moment when Vasco da Gama entered the Indian Ocean in 1498, the principle that the seas should be a zone of peaceful trade came to an immediate end. Portuguese flotillas began bombarding and sacking every port city they came across, then seizing control of strategic points and extorting protection money from unarmed Indian Ocean merchants for the right to carry on their business unmolested.<br /> <br /> At almost exactly the same time, Christopher Columbus-a Genoese mapmaker seeking a short-cut to China-touched land in the New World, and the Spanish and Portuguese empires stumbled into the greatest economic windfall in human history: entire continents full of unfathomable wealth, whose inhabitants, armed only with Stone Age weapons, began conveniently dying almost as soon as they arrived. The conquest of Mexico and Peru led to the discovery of enormous new sources of precious metal, and these were exploited ruthlessly and systematically, even to the point of largely exterminating the surrounding populations to extract as much precious metal as quickly as possible. As Kenneth Pomeranz has recently pointed out, none of this would have been possible were it not for the practically unlimited Asian demand for precious metals.<br /> <br /> Had China in particular not had such a dynamic economy that changing its metallic base could absorb the staggering quantities of silver mined in the New World over three centuries,<br /> <br /> those mines might have become unprofitable within a few decades. The massive inflation of silver-denominated prices in Europe from 1500 to 1640 indicates a shrinking value for the metal there even with Asia draining off much of the supply.8<br /> <br /> By 1540, a silver glut caused a collapse in prices across Europe; the American mines would, at this point, simply have stopped functioning, and the entire project of American colonization foundered, had it not been for the demand from China.9 Treasure galleons moving toward Europe soon refrained from unloading their cargoes, instead rounding the horn of Africa and proceeding across the Indian Ocean toward Canton. After 1571, with the foundation of the Spanish city of Manila, they began to move directly across the Pacific. By the late sixteenth century, China was importing almost fifty tons of silver a year, about 90 percent of its silver, and by the early seventeenth century, n6 tons, or over 97 percent.10 Huge amounts of silk, porcelain, and other Chinese products had to be exported to pay for it. Many of these Chinese products, in turn, ended up in the new cities of Central and South America. This Asian trade became the single most significant factor in the emerging global economy, and those who ultimately controlled the financial levers-particularly Italian, Dutch, and German merchant bankers-became fantastically rich.<br /> <br /> But how exactly did the new global economy cause the collapse of living standards in Europe? One thing we do know: it clearly was not by making large amounts of precious metal available for everyday transactions. If anything, the effect was the opposite. While European mints were stamping out enormous numbers of rials, thalers, ducats, and doubloons, which became the new medium of trade from Nicaragua to Bengal, almost none found their way into the pockets of ordinary Europeans. Instead, we hear constant complaints about the shortage of currency. In England:<br /> <br /> For much of the Tudor period the circulating medium was so small that the taxable population simply did not have sufficient coin in which to pay the benevolences, subsidies, and tenths levied upon them, and time and time again household plate, the handiest near money that most people possessed, had to be surrendered. &lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> This was the case in most of Europe. Despite the massive influx of metal from the Americas, most families were so low on cash that<br /> <br /> they were regularly reduced to melting down the family silver to pay their taxes.<br /> <br /> This was because taxes had to be paid in metal. Everyday business in contrast continued to be transacted much as it had in the Middle Ages, by means of various forms of virtual credit money: tallies, promissory notes, or, within smaller communities, simply by keeping track of who owed what to whom. What really caused the inflation is that those who ended up in control of the bullion-governments, bankers, large-scale merchants-were able to use that control to begin changing the rules, first by insisting that gold and silver were money, and second by introducing new forms of credit-money for their own use while slowly undermining and destroying the local systems of trust that had allowed small-scale communities across Europe to operate largely without the use of metal currency.<br /> <br /> This was a political battle, even if it was also a conceptual argument about the nature of money. The new regime of bullion money could only be imposed through almost unparalleled violence-not only overseas, but at home as well. In much of Europe, the first reaction to the &quot;price revolution&quot; and accompanying enclosures of common lands was not very different from what had so recently happened in China: thousands of one-time peasants fleeing or being forced out of their villages to become vagabonds or &quot;masterless men,&quot; a process that culminated in popular insurrections. The reaction of European governments, however, was entirely different. The rebellions were crushed, and this time, no subsequent concessions were forthcoming. Vagabonds were rounded up, exported to the colonies as indentured laborers, and drafted into colonial armies and navies-or, eventually, set to work in factories at home.<br /> <br /> Almost all of this was carried out through a manipulation of debt. As a result, the very nature of debt, too, became once again one of the principal bones of contention.<br /> <br /> === Part I: Greed, terror, indignation, debt ===<br /> No doubt scholars will never stop arguing about the reasons for the great &quot;price revolution &quot;-largely because it's not clear what kind of tools can be applied. Can we really use the methods of modern economics, which were designed to understand how contemporary economic institutions operate, to describe the political battles that led to the creation of those very institutions?<br /> <br /> This is not just a conceptual problem. There are moral dangers here. To take what might seem an &quot;objective,&quot; macro-economic approach to the origins of the world economy would be to treat the behavior of early European explorers, merchants, and conquerors as if they were simply rational responses to opportunities-as if this were just what anyone would have done in the same situation. This is what the use of equations so often does: make it seem perfectly natural to assume that, if the price of silver in China is twice what it is in Seville, and inhabitants of Seville are capable of getting their hands on large quantities of silver and transporting it to China, then clearly they will, even if doing so requires the destruction of entire civilizations. Or if there is a demand for sugar in England, and enslaving millions is the easiest way to acquire labor to produce it, then it is inevitable that some will enslave them. In fact, history makes it quite clear that this is not the case. Any number of civilizations have probably been in a position to wreak havoc on the scale that the European powers did in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Ming China itself was an obvious candidate}, but almost none actually did so.12<br /> <br /> Consider, for instance, how the gold and silver from the American mines were extracted. Mining operations began almost immediately upon the fall of the Aztec capital of Tenochtithin in 1521. While we are used to assuming that the Mexican population was devastated simply as an effect of newly introduced European diseases, contemporary observers felt that the dragooning of the newly conquered natives to work in the mines was at least equally responsible.U In The Conquest of America, Tzvetan Todorov offers a compendium of some of the most chilling reports, mostly from Spanish priests and friars who, even when committed in principle to the belief that the extermination of the Indians was the judgment of God, could not disguise their horror at scenes of Spanish soldiers testing the blades of their weapons by eviscerating random passers-by, and tearing babies off their mother's backs to be eaten by dogs. Such acts might perhaps be written off as what one would expect when a collection of heavily armed men-many of violent criminal background-are given absolute impunity; but the reports from the mines imply something far more systematic. When Fray Toribio de Motolinia wrote of the ten plagues that he believed God had visited on the inhabitants of Mexico, he listed smallpox, war, famine, labor exactions, taxes (which caused many to sell their children to moneylenders, others to be tortured to death in cruel prisons), and the thousands who died in the building of the capital city. Above all, he insisted, were the uncountable numbers who died in the mines:<br /> <br /> The eighth plague was the slaves whom the Spaniards made in order to put them to work in the mines. At first those who were already slaves of the Aztecs were taken; then those who had given evidence of insubordination; finally all those who could be caught. During the first years after the conquest, the slave traffic flourished, and slaves often changed master. They produced so many marks on their faces, in addition to the royal brand, that they had their faces covered with letters, for they bore the marks of all who had bought and sold them.<br /> <br /> The ninth plague was the service in the mines, to which the heavily laden Indians traveled sixty leagues or more to carry provisions ...When their food gave out they died, either at the mines or on the road, for they had no money to buy food and there was no one to give it to them. Some reached horne in such a state that they died soon after. The bodies of those Indians and of the slaves who died in the mines produced such a stench that it caused a pestilence, especially at the mines of Oaxaca. For half a league around these mines and along a great part of the road one could scarcely avoid walking over dead bodies or bones, and the flocks of birds and crows that carne to fatten themselves upon the corpses were so numerous that they darkened the sun.&quot;14<br /> <br /> Similar scenes were reported in Peru, where whole regions were depopulated by forced service in the mines, and Hispaniola, where the indigenous population was eradicated entirelyY<br /> <br /> When dealing with conquistadors, we are speaking not just of simple greed, but greed raised to mythic proportions. This is, after all, what they are best remembered for. They never seemed to get enough. Even after the conquest of Tenochtitlan or Cuzco, and the acquisition of hitherto-unimaginable riches, the conquerors almost invariably regrouped and started off in search of more treasure.<br /> <br /> Moralists throughout the ages have inveighed against the endlessness of human greed, just as they have against our supposedly endless lust for power. What history actually reveals, though, is that while humans may be justly accused of having a proclivity to accuse others of acting like conquistadors, few really act this way themselves. Even for the most ambitious of us, our dreams are more like Sindbad's: to have adventures, to acquire the means to settle down and live an enjoyable life, and then, to enjoy it. Max Weber of course argued that the essence of capitalism is the urge--which he thought first appeared in Calvinism-never to settle down, but to engage in endless expansion. But the conquistadors were good Medieval Catholics, even if ones usually drawn from the most ruthless and unprincipled elements of Spanish society. Why the unrelenting drive for more and more and more?<br /> <br /> It might help, I think, to go back to the very onset of Hernan Cortes's conquest of Mexico: What were his immediate motives? Cortes had migrated to the colony of Hispaniola in 1504, dreaming of glory and adventure, but for the first decade and a half, his adventures had largely consisted of seducing other people's wives. In 1518, however, he managed to finagle his way into being named commander of an expedition to establish a Spanish presence on the mainland. As Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who accompanied him, later wrote, around this time<br /> <br /> He began to adorn himself and be more careful of his appearance than before. He wore a plume of feathers, with a medallion and a gold chain, and a velvet cloak trimmed with loops of gold. In fact he looked like a bold and gallant Captain. However, he had no money to defray the expenses I have spoken about, for at the time he was very poor and much in debt, despite the fact that he had a good estate of Indians and was getting gold from the mines. But all this he spent on his person, on finery for his wife, whom he had recently married, and on entertaining guests . . .<br /> <br /> When some merchant friends of his heard that he had obtained his command as Captain General, they lent him four thousand gold pesos in coin and another four thousand in goods secured on his Indians and estates. He then ordered two standards and banners to be made, worked in gold with the royal arms and a cross on each side with a legend which said, &quot;Comrades, let us follow the sign of the Holy Cross with true faith, and through it we shall conquer. &quot;16<br /> <br /> In other words, he'd been living beyond his means, got himself in trouble, and decided, like a reckless gambler, to double down and go for broke. Unsurprising, then, that when the governor at the last minute decided to cancel the expedition, Cortes ignored him and sailed for the mainland with six hundred men, offering each an equal share in the expedition's profits. On landing he burned his boats, effectively staking everything on victory.<br /> <br /> Let us skip, then, from the beginning of Diaz's book to its final chapter. Three years later, through some of the most ingenious, ruthless, • brilliant, and utterly dishonorable behavior by a military leader ever recorded, Cortes had his victory. After eight months of grueling house-to-house warfare and the death of perhaps a hundred thousand Aztecs, Tenochtitlan, one of the greatest cities of the world, lay entirely destroyed. The imperial treasury was secured, and the time had come, then, for it to be divided in shares amongst the surviving soldiers.<br /> <br /> Yet according to Diaz, the result among the men was outrage. The officers connived to sequester most of the gold, and when the final tally was announced, the troops learned that they would be receiving only fifty to eighty pesos each. What's more, the better part of their shares was immediately seized again by the officers in their capacity of creditors-since Cortes had insisted that the men be billed for any replacement equipment and medical care they had received during the siege. Most found they had actually lost money on the deal. Diaz writes:<br /> <br /> We were all very deeply in debt. A crossbow was not to be purchased for less than forty or fifty pesos, a musket cost one hundred, a sword fifty, and a horse from 8oo to 1000 pesos, and above. Thus extravagantly did we have to pay for everything! A surgeon, who called himself Mastre Juan, who had tended some very bad wounds, charged wildly inflated fees, and so did a quack named Murcia, who was an apothecary and a barber and also treated wounds, and there were thirty other tricks and swindles for which payment was demanded of our shares as soon as we received them.<br /> <br /> Serious complaints were made about this, and the only remedy that Cortes provided was to appoint two trustworthy persons who knew the prices of goods and could value anything that we had bought on credit. An order went out that whatever price was placed on our purchases or the surgeon's cures must be accepted, but that if we had no money, our creditors must wait two years for paymentY<br /> <br /> Spanish merchants soon arrived charging wildly inflated prices for basic necessities, causing further outrage, until:<br /> <br /> Our general becoming weary of the continual reproaches which were thrown out against him, saying he had stolen everything for himself, and the endless petitions for loans and advance in pay, determined at once to get rid of the most troublesome fellows, by forming settlements in those provinces which appeared most eligible for this purpose. &lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> These were the men who ended up in control of the provinces, and who established local administration, taxes, and labor regimes. Which makes it a little easier to understand the descriptions of Indians with their faces covered by names like so many counter-endorsed checks, or the mines surrounded by miles of rotting corpses. We are not dealing with a psychology of cold, calculating greed, but of a much more complicated mix of shame and righteous indignation, and of the frantic urgency of debts that would only compound and accumulate (these were, almost certainly, interest-bearing loans), and outrage at the idea that, after all they had gone through, they should be held to owe anything to begin with.<br /> <br /> And what of Cortes? He had just pulled off perhaps the greatest act of theft in world history. Certainly, his original debts had now been rendered inconsequential. Yet he somehow always seemed to find himself in new ones. Creditors were already starting to repossess his holdings while he was off on an expedition to Honduras in 1526; on his return, he wrote the Emperor Charles V that his expenses were such that &quot;all I have received has been insufficient to relive me from misery and poverty, being at the moment I write in debt for upwards of five hundred ounces of gold, without possessing a single peso towards it.&quot;19 Disingenuous, no doubt (Cortes at the time owned his own personal palace), but only a few years later, he was reduced to pawning his wife's jewelry to help finance a series of expeditions to California, hoping to restore his fortunes. When those failed to turn a profit, he ended up so besieged by creditors that he had to return to Spain to petition the emperor in person.20<br /> <br /> <br /> If all this seems suspiciously reminiscent of the fourth Crusade, with its indebted knights stripping whole foreign cities of their wealth and still somehow winding up only one step ahead of their creditors, there is a reason. The financial capital that backed these expeditions came from more or less the same place (if in this case Genoa, not Venice). What's more, that relationship, between the daring adventurer on the one hand, the gambler willing to take any sort of risk, and on the other, the careful financier, whose entire operations are organized around producing steady, mathematical, inexorable growth of income, lies at the very heart of what we now call &quot;capitalism. &quot;<br /> <br /> As a result, our current economic system has always been marked by a peculiar dual character. Scholars have long been fascinated by Spanish debates that ensued, in Spanish universities like Santander, about the humanity of the Indians (Did they have souls? Could they have legal rights? Was it legitimate to forcibly enslave them?), just as they have argued about the real attitudes of the conquistadors (was it contempt, revulsion, or even grudging admiration for their adversar-ies?)21 The real point is that at the key moments of decision, none of this mattered. Those making the decisions did not feel they were in control anyway; those who were did not particularly care to know the details. To take a telling example: after the earliest years of the gold and silver mines described by Motolinia, where millions of Indians were simply rounded up and marched off to their deaths, colonists settled on a policy of debt peonage: the usual trick of demanding heavy taxes, lending money at interest to those who could not pay, and then demanding that the loans be repaid with work. Royal agents regularly attempted to forbid such practices, arguing that the Indians were now Christian and that this violated their rights as loyal subjects of the Spanish crown. But as with almost all such royal efforts to act as protector of the Indians, the result was the same. Financial exigencies ended up taking precedence. Charles V himself was deeply in debt to banking firms in Florence, Genoa, and Naples, and gold and silver from the Americas made up perhaps one-fifth of his total revenue. In the end, despite a lot of initial noise and the (usually quite sincere) moral outrage on the part of the king's emissaries, such decrees were either ignored or, at best, enforced for a year or two before being allowed to slip into abeyance.22<br /> <br /> <br /> All of this helps explain why the Church had been so uncompromising in its attitude toward usury. It was not just a philosophical question; it was a matter of moral rivalry. Money always has the potential to become a moral imperative unto itself. Allow it to expand, and it can quickly become a morality so imperative that all others seem frivolous in comparison. For the debtor, the world is reduced to a collection of potential dangers, potential tools, and potential merchandiseY Even human relations become a matter of cost-benefit calculation. Clearly this is the way the conquistadors viewed the worlds that they set out to conquer.<br /> <br /> It is the peculiar feature of modern capitalism to create social arrangements that essentially force us to think this way. The structure of the corporation is a telling case in point—and it is no coincidence that the first major joint-stock corporations in the world were the English and Dutch East India companies, ones that pursued that very same combination of exploration, conquest, and extraction as did the conquistadors. It is a structure designed to eliminate all moral imperatives but profit. The executives who make decisions can argue--and regularly do--that, if it were their own money, of course they would not fire lifelong employees a week before retirement, or dump carcinogenic waste next to schools. Yet they are morally bound to ignore such considerations, because they are mere employees whose only responsibility is to provide the maximum return on investment for the company's stockholders. (The stockholders, of course, are not given any say.)<br /> <br /> The figure of Cortes is instructive for another reason. We are speaking of a man who, in 1521, had conquered a kingdom and was sitting atop a vast pile of gold. Neither did he have any intention of giving it away—even to his followers. Five years later, he was claiming to be a penniless debtor. How was this possible?<br /> <br /> The obvious answer would be: Cortes was not a king, he was a subject of the King of Spain, living within the legal structure of a kingdom that insisted that, if he were not good at managing his money, he would lose it. Yet as we've seen, the king's laws could be ignored in other cases. What's more, even kings were not entirely free agents. Charles V was continually in debt, and when his son Philip 11-his armies fighting on three different fronts ar once--attempted the old Medieval trick of defaulting, all his creditors, from the Genoese Bank of St. George to the German Fuggers and Welsers, closed ranks to insist that he would receive no further loans until he started honoring his commitments.24<br /> <br /> Capital, then, is not simply money. It is not even just wealth that can be turned into money. But neither is it just the use of political power to help one use one's money to make more money. Cortes was trying to do exactly that: in classical Axial Age fashion, he was attempting to use his conquests to acquire plunder, and slaves to work the mines, with which he could pay his soldiers and suppliers cash to embark on even further conquests. It was a tried-and-true formula. But for all the other conquistadors, it provided a spectacular failure.<br /> <br /> This would seem to mark the difference. In the Axial Age, money was a tool of empire. It might have been convenient for rulers to promulgate markets in which everyone would treat money as an end in itself; at times, rulers might have even come to see the whole apparatus of government as a profit-making enterprise; but money always remained a political instrument. This is why when the empires collapsed and armies were demobilized, the whole apparatus could simply melt away. Under the newly emerging capitalist order, the logic of money was granted autonomy; political and military power were then gradually reorganized around it. True, this was a financial logic that could never have existed without states and armies behind it in the first place. As we have seen in the case of Medieval Islam, under genuine free-market conditions-in which the state is not involved in regulating the market in any significant way, even in enforcing commercial contracts-purely competitive markets will not develop, and loans at interest will become effectively impossible to collect. It was only the Islamic prohibition against usury, really, that made it possible for them to create an economic system that stood so far apart from the state.<br /> <br /> Martin Luther was making this very point in 1524, right around the time that Cortes was first beginning to have trouble with his creditors. It is all very well, Luther said, for us to imagine that all might live as true Christians, in accordance with the dictates of the Gospel. But in fact there are few who are really capable of acting this way:<br /> <br /> Christians are rare in this world; therefore the world needs a strict, hard, temporal government that will compel and constrain the wicked not to rob and to return what they borrow, even though a Christian ought not to demand it, or even hope to get it back. This is necessary in order that the world not become a desert, peace may not perish, and trade and society not be utterly destroyed; all of which would happen if we were to rule the world according to the Gospel and not drive and compel the wicked, by laws and the use of force, to do what is right ...Let no one think that the world can be ruled without blood; the sword of the ruler must be red and bloody; for the world will and must be evil, and the sword is God's rod and vengeance upon it.ZS<br /> <br /> &quot;Not to rob and to return what they borrow&quot;-a telling juxtaposition, considering that in Scholastic theory, lending money at interest had itself been considered theft.<br /> <br /> And Luther was referring to interest-bearing loans here. The story of how he got to this point is telling. Luther began his career as a reformer in 1520 with fiery campaigns against usury; in fact, one of his objections to the sale of Church indulgences was that it was itself a form of spiritual usury. These positions won him enormous popular support in towns and villages. However, he soon realized that he'd unleashed a genie that threatened to turn the whole world upside-down. More radical reformers appeared, arguing that the poor were not morally obliged to repay the interest on usurious loans, and proposing the revival of Old Testament institutions like the sabbatical year. They were followed by outright revolutionary preachers who began once again questioning the very legitimacy of aristocratic privilege and private property. In 1525, the year after Luther's sermon, there was a massive uprising of peasants, miners, and poor townsfolk across Germany: the rebels, in most cases, representing themselves as simple Christians aiming to restore the true communism of the Gospels. Over a hundred thousand were slaughtered. Already in 1524, Luther had a sense that matters were spilling out of control and that he would have to choose sides: in that text, he did so. Old Testament laws like the Sabbatical year, he argued, are no longer binding; the Gospel merely describes ideal behavior; humans are sinful creatures, so law is necessary; while usury is a sin, a four to five-percent rate of interest is currently legal under certain circumstances; and while collecting that interest is sinful, under no circumstances is it legitimate to argue that for that reason, borrowers have the right to break the law.26<br /> <br /> The Swiss Protestant reformer Zwingli was even more explicit. God, he argued, gave us the divine law: to love thy neighbor as thyself. If we truly kept this law, humans would give freely to one another, and private property would not exist. However, Jesus excepted, no human being has ever been able to live up to this pure communistic standard. Therefore, God has also given us a second, inferior, human law, to be enforced by the civil authorities. While this inferior law cannot compel us to act as we really ought to act (&quot;the magistrate can force no one to lend out what belongs to him without hope of recompense or profit&quot;)-at least it can make us follow the lead of the apostle Paul, who said: &quot;Pay all men what you owe. &quot;27<br /> <br /> Soon afterward, Calvin was to reject the blanket ban on usury entirely, and by 1650, almost all Protestant denominations had come to agree with his position that a reasonable rate of interest (usually five percent) was not sinful, provided the lenders act in good conscience, do not make lending their exclusive business, and do not exploit the poor.28 (Catholic doctrine was slower to come around, but it did ultimately accede by passive acquiescence.)<br /> <br /> If one looks at how all this was justified, two things jump out. First, Protestant thinkers all continued to make the old Medieval argument about interesse: that &quot;interest&quot; is really compensation for the money that the lender would have made had he been able to place his money in some more profitable investment. Originally, this logic was just applied to commercial loans. Increasingly, it was now applied to all loans. Far from being unnatural, then, the growth of money was now treated as completely expected. All money was assumed to be capitaJ.29 Second, the assumption that usury is something that one properly practices on one's enemies, and therefore, by extension, that all commerce partakes something of the nature of war, never entirely disappears. Calvin, for instance, denied that Deuteronomy only referred to the Amalekites; clearly, he said, it meant that usury was acceptable when dealing with Syrians or Egyptians; indeed with all nations with whom the Jews traded.30 The result of opening the gates was, at least tacitly, to suggest that one could now treat anyone, even a neighbor, as a foreignerY One need only observe how European merchant adventurers of the day actually were treating foreigners, in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, to understand what this might mean in practice.<br /> <br /> Or, one might look closer to home. Take the story of another well-known debtor of the time, the Margrave Casimir of Brandenburg-Ansbach (I48I-I527), of the famous Hohenzollern dynasty:<br /> <br /> Casimir was the son of Margrave Friedrich the Elder of Brandenburg, who has come to be known as one of the &quot;mad princes&quot; of the German Renaissance. Sources differ on just how mad he actually was. One contemporary chronicle describes him as &quot;somewhat deranged in his head from too much racing and jousting;&quot; most agree that he was given to fits of inexplicable rage, as well as to the sponsorship of wild, extravagant festivals, said often to have degenerated into wild bacchanalian orgies.32<br /> <br /> All agree, however, that he was poor at managing his money. At the beginning of ISIS, Friedrich was in such financial trouble-he is said to have owed 2oo,ooo guilders-that he alerted his creditors, mostly fellow nobles, that he might soon be forced to temporarily suspend interest payments on his debts. This seems to have caused a crisis of faith, and within a matter of weeks, his son Casimir staged a palace coup-moving, in the early hours of February 26, ISIS, to seize control of the castle of Plassenburg while his father was distracted with the celebration of Carnival, then forcing him to sign papers abdicating for reason of mental infirmity. Friedrich spent the rest of his life confined in Plassenburg, denied all visitors and correspondence. When at one point his guards requested that the new Margrave provide a couple guilders so he could pass the time gambling with them, Casimir made a great public show of refusal, stating (ridiculously, of course) that his father had left his affairs in such disastrous shape that he could not possibly afford toY<br /> <br /> Casimir dutifully doled out governorships and other prize offices to his father's creditors. He tried to get his house in order, but this proved Surprisingly difficult. His enthusiastic embrace of Luther's reforms in 1521 clearly had as much to do with the prospect of getting his hands on Church lands and monastic assets than with any particular religious fervor. Yet at first, the disposition of Church property remained moot, and Casimir himself compounded his problems by running up gambling debts of his own said to have amounted to nearly 5o,ooo guilders.34<br /> <br /> Placing his creditors in charge of the civil administration had predictable effects: increasing exactions on his subjects, many of whom became hopelessly indebted themselves. Unsurprisingly, Casimir's lands in the Tauber Valley in Franconia became one of the epicenters of the revolt of 1525. Bands of armed villagers assembled, declaring they would obey no law that did not accord with &quot;the holy word of God.&quot; At first, the nobles, isolated in their scattered castles, offered little resistance. The rebel leaders-many of them local shopkeepers, butchers, and other prominent men from nearby towns-began with a largely orderly campaign of tearing down castle fortifications, their knightly occupants being offered guarantees of safety if they cooperated, agreed to abandon their feudal privileges, and swore oaths to abide by the rebels' Twelve Articles. Many complied. The real venom of the rebels was reserved for cathedrals and monasteries, dozens of which were sacked, pillaged, and destroyed.<br /> <br /> Casimir's reaction was to hedge his bets. At first he bided his time, assembling an armed force of about two thousand experienced soldiers, but refusing to intervene as rebels pillaged several nearby monasteries; in fact, negotiating with the various rebel bands in such apparent good faith that many believed he was preparing to join them &quot;as a Christian brother.&quot;35 In May, however, after the knights of the Swabian League defeated the rebels of the Christian Union to the south, Casimir swung into action, his forces brushing aside poorly disciplined rebel bands to sweep through his own territories like a conquering army, burning and pillaging villages and towns, slaughtering women and children. In every town he set up punitive tribunals, and seized all looted property, which he kept, even as his men also expropriated any wealth still to be found in the region's cathedrals, ostensibly as emergency loans to pay his troops.<br /> <br /> It seems significant that Casimir was, of all the German princes, both the longest to waver before intervening, and the most savagely vengeful once he did. His forces became notorious not only for executing accused rebels, but systematically chopping off the fingers of accused collaborators, his executioner keeping a grim ledger of amputated body parts for later reimbursement-a kind of carnal inversion of the account ledgers that had caused him so much trouble in his life. At one point, in the town of Kitzingen, Casimir ordered the gouging out of the eyes of fifty-eight burghers who had, he declared, &quot;refused to look at him as their lord.&quot; Afterward he received the following bill:36<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable&quot;<br /> |+<br /> |80 beheaded<br /> |<br /> |-<br /> |69 eyes put out or fingers cut off<br /> from this to deduct<br /> |114½ fl.<br /> |-<br /> |received from the Rothenburgers<br /> |10 fl.<br /> |-<br /> |received from Ludwig von Hutten<br /> Remainder <br /> |2 fl.<br /> |-<br /> |Plus 2 months' pay at 8 fl. per month<br /> |16 fl.<br /> |-<br /> |Total<br /> |118½ fl.<br /> |}<br /> [Signed] Augustin, the executioner, who the Kitzingers call &quot;Master Ouch.&quot;<br /> <br /> The repression eventually inspired Casimir's brother Georg (later known as &quot;the Pious&quot;) to write a letter asking him if Casimir was intending to take up a trade-since, as Georg gently reminded him, he could not very well continue to be a feudal overlord if his peasants were all dead.37<br /> <br /> With such things happening, it is hardly surprising that men like Thomas Hobbes came to imagine the basic nature of society as a war of all against all, from which only the absolute power of monarchs could save us. At the same time, Casimir's behavior-combining as it does a general attitude of unprincipled, cold-blooded calculation with outbursts of almost inexplicably vindictive cruelty-seems, like that of Cortes's angry foot soldiers when unleashed on the Aztec provinces, to embody something essential about the psychology of debt. Or, more precisely, perhaps, about the debtor who feels he has done nothing to deserve being placed in his position: the frantic urgency of having to convert everything around oneself into money, and rage and indignation at having been reduced to the sort of person who would do so.<br /> <br /> === Part II: The world of credit and the world of interest ===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Of all the beings that have existence only in the minds of men, nothing is more fantastical and nice than Credit; it is never to be forced; it hangs upon opinion; it depends upon our passions of hope and fear; it comes many times unsought-for, and often goes away without reason; and once lost, it is hardly to be quite recovered.<br /> <br /> -Charles Davenant, 1696<br /> <br /> He that has lost his credit is dead to the world.<br /> <br /> -English and German Proverb&lt;/blockquote&gt;The peasants' visions of communistic brotherhood did not come out of nowhere. They were rooted in real daily experience: of the maintenance of common fields and forests, of everyday cooperation and neighborly solidarity. It is out of such homely experience of everyday communism that grand mythic visions are always built.38 Obviously, rural communities were also divided, squabbling places, since communities always are-but insofar as they are communities at all, they are necessarily founded on a ground of mutual aid. The same, incidentally, can be said of members of the aristocracy, who might have fought endlessly over love, land, honor, and religion, but nonetheless still cooperated remarkably well with one another when it really mattered (most of all, when their position as aristocrats was threatened); just as the merchants and bankers, much as they competed with one another, managed to close ranks when it really mattered. This is what I refer to as the &quot;communism of the rich,&quot; and it is a powerful force in human history.39<br /> <br /> The same, as we've seen repeatedly, applies to credit. There are always different standards for those one considers friends or neighbors. The inexorable nature of interest-bearing debt, and the alternately savage and calculating behavior of those enslaved to it, are typical above all of dealings between strangers: it's unlikely that Casimir felt much more kinship with his peasants than Cortes did with the Aztecs (in fact, most likely less, since Aztec warriors were at least aristocrats). Inside the small towns and rural hamlets, where the state was mostly far away, Medieval standards survived intact, and &quot;credit&quot; was just as much a matter of honor and reputation as it had ever been. The great untold story of our current age is of how these ancient credit systems were ultimately destroyed.<br /> <br /> Recent historical research, notably that of Craig Muldrew, who has sifted through thousands of inventories and court cases from sixteenth-and seventeenth-century England, has caused us to revise almost all our old assumptions about what everyday economic life at that time was like. Of course, very little of the American gold and silver that reached Europe actually ended up in the pockets of ordinary farmers, mercers, or haberdashers.40 The lion's share stayed in the coffers of either the aristocracy or the great London merchants, or else in the royal treasury.41 Small change was almost nonexistent. As I've already pointed out, in the poorer neighborhoods of cities or large towns, shopkeepers would issue their own lead, leather, or wooden token money; in the sixteenth century this became something of a fad, with artisans and even poor widows producing their own currency as a way to make ends meet. Elsewhere, those frequenting the local butcher, baker, or shoemaker would simply put things on the tab. The same was true of those attending weekly markets, or selling neighbors milk or cheese or candle-wax. In a typical village, the only people likely to pay cash were passing travelers, and those considered riff-raff: paupers and ne'er-do-wells so notoriously down on their luck that no one would extend credit to them. Since everyone was involved in selling something, however just about everyone was both creditor and debtor; most family income took the form of promises from other families; everyone knew and kept count of what their neighbors owed one another; and every six months or year or so, communities would held a general public &quot;reckoning,&quot; cancelling debts out against each other in a great circle, with only those differences then remaining when all was done being settled by use of coin or goods.43<br /> <br /> The reason that this upends our assumptions is that we're used to blaming the rise of capitalism on something vaguely called &quot;the market&quot;-the breakup of older systems of mutual aid and solidarity, and the creation of a world of cold calculation, where everything had its price. Really, English villagers appear to have seen no contradiction between the two. On the one hand, they believed strongly in the collective stewardship of fields, streams, and forests, and the need to help neighbors in difficulty. On the other hand, markets were seen as a kind of attenuated version of the same principle, since they were entirely founded on trust. Much like the Tiv women with their gifts of yams and okra, neighbors assumed they ought to be constantly slightly in debt to one another. At the same time, most seem to have been quite comfortable with the idea of buying and selling, or even with market fluctuations, provided it didn't get to the point of threatening honest families' livelihoods.44 Even when loans at interest began to be legalized in 1545, that did not ruffle too many feathers, as long as it took place within that same larger moral framework: lending was considered an appropriate vocation, for example, for widows with no other source of income, or as a way for neighbors to share in the profits from some minor commercial venture. William Stout, a Quaker merchant from Lancashire, spoke glowingly of Henry Coward, the tradesman in whose shop he first apprenticed:<br /> <br /> My master then had a full trade of groceries, ironmongerware, and several other goods, and very much respected and trusted, not only by the people of his own religious profession, but by all others of all professions and circumstances ...His credit was so much, that any who had money to dispose of lodged it with him to put out to interest or to make use of it.45<br /> <br /> In this world, trust was everything. Most money literally was trust, since most credit arrangements were handshake deals. When people used the word &quot;credit,&quot; they referred above all to a reputation for honesty and integrity; and a man or woman's honor, virtue, and respectability, but also, reputation for generosity, decency, and good-natured sociability, were at least as important considerations when deciding whether to make a loan as were assessments of net income.46 As a result, financial terms became indistinguishable from moral ones. One could speak of others as &quot;worthies,&quot; as &quot;a woman of high estimation&quot; or &quot;a man of no account,&quot; and equally of &quot;giving credit&quot; to someone's words when one believes what they say (&quot;credit&quot; is from the same root as &quot;creed&quot; or &quot;credibility&quot;), or of &quot;extending credit&quot; to them, when one takes them at their word that they will pay one back.<br /> <br /> One should not idealize the situation. This was a highly patriarchal world: a man's wife or daughter's reputation for chastity was as much a part of his &quot;credit&quot; as his own reputation for kindness or piety. What's more, almost all people below the age of 30, male or female, were employed as servants in someone else's household-as farmhands, milkmaids, apprentices-and as such, were of &quot;no account&quot; at allY Finally, those who lost credibility in the eyes of the community became, effectively, pariahs, and descended into the criminal or semi-criminal classes of rootless laborers, beggars, harlots, cutpurses, hawkers, pedlars, fortune-tellers, minstrels, and other such &quot;masterless men&quot; or &quot;women of ill repute. &quot;48<br /> <br /> Cold cash was employed largely between strangers, or when paying rents, tithes, and taxes to landlords, bailiffs, priests, and other superiors. The landed gentry and wealthy merchants, who eschewed handshake deals, would often use cash with one another, especially to pay off bills of exchange drawn on London markets.49 Above all, gold and silver were used by the government to purchase arms and pay soldiers, and amongst the criminal classes themselves. This meant that coins were most likely to be used both by the sort of people who ran the legal system-the magistrates, constables, and justices of the peace-and by those violent elements of society they saw it as their business to control.<br /> <br /> <br /> Over time, this led to an increasing disjuncture of moral universes. For most, who tried to avoid entanglement in the legal system just as much as they tried to avoid the affairs of soldiers and criminals, debt remained the very fabric of sociability. But those who spent their working lives within the halls of government and great commercial houses gradually began to develop a very different perspective, whereby cash exchange was normal and it was debt that came to be seen as tinged with criminality.<br /> <br /> Each perspective turned on a certain tacit theory of the nature of society. For most English villagers, the real font and focus of social and moral life was not so much the church as the local ale-house--and community was embodied above all in the conviviality of popular festivals like Christmas or May Day, with everything that such celebrations entailed: the sharing of pleasures, the communion of the senses, all the physical embodiment of what was called &quot;good neighborhood. &quot; Society was rooted above in the &quot;love and amity&quot; of friends and kin, and it found expression in all those forms of everyday communism (helping neighbors with chores, providing milk or cheese for old widows) that were seen to flow from it. Markets were not seen as contradicting this ethos of mutual aid. It was, much as it was for Tusi, an extension of mutual aid-and for much the same reason: because it operated entirely through trust and credit.50<br /> <br /> England might not have produced a great theorist like Tusi, but one can find the same assumptions echoed in most of the Scholastic writers, as for instance in Jean Bodin's De Republica, widely circulated in English translation after 1605. &quot;Amity and friendship,&quot; Bodin wrote, &quot;are the foundation of all human and civil society&quot;-they constitute that &quot;true, natural justice&quot; on which the whole legal structure of contracts, courts, and even government must necessarily be built.51 Similarly, when economic thinkers reflected on the origins of the money, they spoke of &quot;trusting, exchanging, and trading. &quot;52 It was simply assumed that human relations came first.<br /> <br /> As a result, all moral relations came to be conceived as debts. &quot;Forgive us our debts &quot;-this was the period, the very end of the Middle Ages, that this translation of the Lord's Prayer gained such universal popularity. Sins are debts to God: unavoidable, but perhaps manageable, since at the end of time our moral debts and credits will be all canceled out against each other in God's final Reckoning. The notion of debt inserted itself into even the most intimate of human relations. Like the Tiv, Medieval villagers would sometimes refer to &quot;flesh debts,&quot; but the notion was completely different: it referred to the right of either partner in a marriage to demand sex from the other, which in principle either could do whenever he or she desired. The phrase &quot;paying one's debts&quot; thus developed connotations, much as the Roman phrase &quot;doing one's duty&quot; had, centuries before. Geoffrey Chaucer even makes a pun out of &quot;tally&quot; (French: taille) and &quot;tail&quot; in the Shipman's Tale, a story about a woman who pays her husband's debts with sexual favors: &quot;and if so I be faille, I am youre wyf, score it upon my taille. &quot;53<br /> <br /> Even London merchants would occasionally appeal to the language of sociability, insisting that in the final analysis, all trade is built on credit, and credit is really just an extension of mutual aid. In 1696, for instance, Charles Davenant wrote that even if there were a general collapse of confidence in the credit system, it could not last long, because eventually, when people reflected on the matter and realized that credit is simply an extension of human society,<br /> <br /> They will find, that no trading nation ever did subsist, and carry on its business by real stock [that is, just coin and merchandise]; that trust and confidence in each other, are as necessary to link and hold a people together, as obedience, love, friendship, or the intercourse of speech. And when experience has taught man how weak he is, depending only on himself, he will be willing to help others, and call upon the assistance of his neighbors, which of course, by degrees, must set credit again afloat.54<br /> <br /> Davenant was an unusual merchant (his father was a poet). More typical of his class were men like Thomas Hobbes, whose Leviathan, published in r6sr, was in many ways an extended attack on the very idea that society is built on any sort of prior ties of communal solidarity.<br /> <br /> Hobbes might be considered the opening salvo of the new moral perspective, and it was a devastating one. When Leviathan came out, it's not clear what scandalized its readers more: its relentless materialism (Hobbes insisted that humans were basically machines whose actions could be understood by one single principle: that they tended to move toward the prospect of pleasure and away from the prospect of pain), or its resultant cynicism (if love,, amity, and trust are such powerful forces, Hobbes asked, why is it that even within our families, we lock our most valuable possessions in strongboxes?) Still, Hobbes' ultimate argument-that humans, being driven by self-interest, cannot be trusted to treat each other justly of their own accord, and therefore that society only emerges when they come to realize that it is to their long-term advantage to give up a portion of their liberties and accept the absolute power of the King-differed little from arguments that theologians like Martin Luther had been making a century earlier. Hobbes simply substituted scientific language for biblical references.55<br /> <br /> I want to draw particular attention to the underlying notion of &quot;self-interest. &quot;56 It is in a real sense the key to the new philosophy. The term first appears in English right around Hobbes' time, and it is, indeed, directly borrowed from interesse, the Roman law term for interest payments. When it was first introduced, most English authors seemed to view the idea that all human life can be explained as the pursuit of self-interest as a cynical, foreign, Machiavellian idea, one that sat uncomfortably with traditional English mores. By the eighteenth century, most in educated society accepted it as simple common sense.<br /> <br /> But why &quot;interest&quot;? Why make a general theory of human motivation out of a word that originally meant &quot;penalty for late payment on a loan&quot;?<br /> <br /> Part of the term's appeal was that it derived from bookkeeping. It was mathematical. This made it seem objective, even scientific. Saying we are all really pursuing our own self-interest provides a way to cut past the welter of passions and emotions that seem to govern our daily existence, and to motivate most of what we actually observe people to do (not only out of love and amity, but also envy, spite, devotion, pity, lust, embarrassment, torpor, indignation, and pride) and discover that, despite all this, most really important decisions are based on the rational calculation of material advantage-which means that they are fairly predictable as well. &quot;Just as the physical world is ruled by the laws of movement,&quot; wrote Helvetius, in a passage reminiscent of Lord Shang, &quot;no less is the moral universe ruled by laws of interest. &quot;57 And of course it was on this assumption that all the quadratic equations of economic theory could ultimately be built.ss<br /> <br /> The problem is that the origin of the concept is not rational at all. Its roots are theological, and the theological assumptions underpinning it never really went away. &quot;Self-interest&quot; is first attested to in the writings of the Italian historian Francesco Guicciadini (who was, in fact, a friend of Machiavelli), around 1510, as a euphemism for St. Augustine's concept of &quot;self-love.&quot; For Augustine, the &quot;love of God&quot; leads us to benevolence toward our fellows; self-love, in contrast, refers to the fact that, since the Fall of Man, we are cursed by endless, insatiable desires for self-gratification-so much so that, if left to our own devices, we will necessarily fall into universal competition, even war. Substituting &quot;interest&quot; for &quot;love&quot; must have seemed an obvious move, since the assumption that love is the primary emotion was precisely what authors like Guicciadini were trying to get away from. But it kept that same assumption of insatiable desires under the guise of impersonal math, since what is &quot;interest&quot; but the demand that money never cease to grow? The same was true when it became the term for investments-&quot;I have a twelve-percent interest in that venture&quot;-it is money placed in the continual pursuit of profit.59 The very idea that human beings are motivated primarily by &quot;self-interest,&quot; then, was rooted in the profoundly Christian assumption that we are all incorrigible sinners; left to our own devices, we will not simply pursue a certain level of comfort and happiness and then stop to enjoy it; we will never cash in the chips, like Sindbad, let alone question why we need to buy chips to begin with. And as Augustine already anticipated, infinite desires in a finite world means endless competition, which in turn is why, as Hobbes insisted, our only hope of social peace lies in contractual arrangements and strict enforcement by the apparatus of the state.<br /> <br /> <br /> The story of the ongms of capitalism, then, is not the story of the gradual destruction of traditional communities by the impersonal power of the market. It is, rather, the story of how an economy of credit was converted into an economy of interest; of the gradual transformation of moral networks by the intrusion of the impersonal-and often vindictive--power of the state. English villagers in Elizabethan or Stuart times did not like to appeal to the justice system, even when the law was in their favor-partly on the principle that neighbors should work things out with one another, but mainly, because the law was so extraordinarily harsh. Under Elizabeth, for example, the punishment for vagrancy (unemployment) was, for first offense, to have one's ears nailed to a pillory; for repeat offenders, death.60<br /> <br /> The same was true of debt law, especially since debts could often, if the creditor was sufficiently vindictive, be treated as a crime. In Chelsea around r66o,<br /> <br /> Margaret Sharples was prosecuted for stealing cloth, &quot;which she had converted into a petticoat for her own wearing,&quot; from Richard Bennett's shop. Her defense was that she had bargained with Bennett's servant for the cloth, &quot;but having not money sufficient in her purse to pay for it, took it away .with purpose to pay for it so soon as she could: and that she afterwards agreed with Mr Bennett of a price for it.&quot; Bennett confirmed that this was so: after agreeing to pay him 22 shillings, Margaret &quot;delivered a hamper with goods in it as a pawn for security of the money, and four shillings ninepence in money.&quot; But &quot;soon after he disliked upon better consideration to hold agreement with her: and delivered the hamper and goods back,&quot; and commenced formal legal proceedings against her.61<br /> <br /> As a result, Margaret Sharples was hanged.<br /> <br /> Obviously, it was the rare shopkeeper who wished to see even his most irritating client on the gallows. Therefore decent people tended to avoid the courts entirely. One of the most interesting discoveries of Craig Muldrew's research is that the more time passed, the less true this became.<br /> <br /> Even in the late Middle Ages, in the case of really large loans, it was not unusual for creditors to lodge claims in local courts-but this was really just a way of ensuring that there was a public record (remember that most people at the time were illiterate). Debtors were willing to go along with the proceedings in part, it would seem, because if there was any interest being charged, it meant that if they did default, the lender was just as guilty in the eyes of the law as they were. Less than one-percent of these cases were ever brought to judgment.62 The legalization of interest began to change the nature of the playing field. In the rs8os, when interest-bearing loans began to become common between villagers, creditors also began to insist on the use of signed, legal bonds; this led to such an explosion of appeals to the courts that in many small towns, almost every household seemed to be caught up in debt litigation of some sort or other. Only a tiny proportion of these suits were ever brought to judgment, either: the usual expedient was still to rely on the simple threat of punishment to encourage debtors to settle out of court.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;’ Still, as a result, the fear of debtor's prison—or worse- came to hang over everyone, and sociability itself came to take on the color of crime. Even Mr. Coward, the kindly shopkeeper, was eventually laid low. His good credit itself became a problem, especially as he felt honor-bound to use it to help the less fortunate:<br /> <br /> He also dealt in merchandise with loose partners, and became concerned much with persons of declining circumstances, where neither profit nor credit could be got; and he gave uneasiness to his wife, by his frequenting some houses of no good character. And she was a very indolent woman, and drew money privately from him, and his circumstances became so burdensome that he daily expected to be made a prisoner. Which, with the shame of forfeiting his former reputation, it drew him into despair and broke his heart, so that he kept to his house for some time and died of grief and shame.64<br /> <br /> It is perhaps not surprising, when one consults contemporary sources about what those prisons were like, particularly for those who were not of aristocratic origins. Mr. Coward would surely have known, as the conditions at the most notorious, like Fleet and Marshalsea, caused periodic scandals when exposed in parliament or the popular press, filling the papers with stories of shackled debtors &quot;covered with filth and vermin, and suffered to die, without pity, of hunger and jail fever,&quot; as the aristocratic roues placed in the elite side of the same jails lived lives of comfort, visited by manicurists and prostitutes.65<br /> <br /> The criminalization of debt, then, was the criminalization of the very basis of human society. It cannot be overemphasized that in a small community, everyone normally was both lender and borrower. One can only imagine the tensions and temptations that must have existed in a communities—and communities, much though they are based on love, in fact, because they are based on love, will always also be full of hatred, rivalry and passion—when it became clear that with sufficiently clever scheming, manipulation, and perhaps a bit of strategic bribery, they could arrange to have almost anyone they hated imprisoned or even hanged. What was it that Richard Bennett really had against Margaret Sharples? We'll never know the back-story, but it's a pretty safe bet that there was one. The effects on communal solidarity must have been devastating. The sudden accessibility of violence really did threaten to transform what had been the essence of sociality into a war of all against all.66 It's not surprising then, that by the eighteenth century, the very notion of personal credit had acquired a bad name, with both lenders and borrowers considered equally suspect.67 The use of coins-at least among those who had access to them-had come to seem moral in itself.<br /> <br /> <br /> Understanding all this allows us to see some of the European authors considered in earlier chapters in an entirely new light. Take Panurge's encomium on debt: it turns out that the real joke is not the suggestion that debt ties communities together (any English or French peasant of the day would have simply assumed this), or even that only debt ties communities together; it is putting the sentiment in the mouth of a wealthy scholar who's really an inveterate criminal-that is, holding up popular morality as a mirror to make fun of the very upper classes who claimed to disapprove of it.<br /> <br /> Or consider Adam Smith:<br /> <br /> It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.68<br /> <br /> The bizarre thing here is that, at the time Smith was writing, this simply wasn't true.69 Most English shopkeepers were still carrying out the main part of their business on credit, which meant that customers appealed to their benevolence all the time. Smith could hardly have been unaware of this. Rather, he is drawing a utopian picture. He wants to imagine a world in,which everyone used cash, in part because he agreed with the emerging middle-class opinion that the world would be a better place if everyone really did conduct themselves this way, and avoid confusing and potentially corrupting ongoing entanglements. We should all just pay the money, say &quot;please&quot; and &quot;thank you,&quot; and leave the store. What's more, he uses this utopian image to make a larger point: that even if all businesses operated like the great commercial companies, with an eye only to self-interest, it wouldn't matter. Even the &quot;natural selfishness and rapacity&quot; of the rich, with all their &quot;vain and insatiable desires&quot; will still, through the logic of the invisible hand, lead to the benefit of alJ.7°<br /> <br /> In other words, Smith simply imagined the role of consumer credit in his own day, just as he had his account of the origins of money.71 This allowed him to ignore the role of both benevolence and malevolence in economic affairs; both the ethos of mutual aid that forms the necessary foundation of anything that would look like a free market (that is, one which is not simply created and maintained by the state), and the violence and sheer vindictiveness that had actually gone into creating the competitive, self-interested markets that he was using as his model.<br /> <br /> Nietzsche, in turn, was taking up Smith's premises, that life is exchange, but laying bare everything (the torture, murder, mutilation) that Smith preferred not to have to talk about. Now that we have seen just a little of the social context, it's difficult to read Nietzsche's otherwise puzzling descriptions of ancient hunters and herdsmen keeping accounts of debts and demanding each others' eyes and fingers without immediately thinking of Casimir's executioner, who actually did present his master with a bill for gouged eyes and severed fingers. What he is really describing is what it took to produce a world in which the son of a prosperous middle-class reverend, such as himself, could simply assume that all human life is premised on calculated, self-interested exchange.<br /> <br /> === Part III: Impersonal credit-money ===<br /> One reason that historians took so long to notice the elaborate popular-credit systems of Tudor and Stuart England is that intellectuals of the time spoke about money in the abstract; they rarely mentioned it. For the educated classes, &quot;money&quot; soon came to mean gold and silver. Most wrote as if it could be taken for granted that gold and silver had always been used as money for all nations in history and, presumably, always would be.<br /> <br /> This not only flew in the face of Aristotle; it directly contradicted the discoveries of European explorers of the time, who were finding shell money, bead money, feather money, salt money, and an endless variety of other currencies everywhere they went.72 Yet all this just caused economic thinkers to dig in their heels. Some appealed to alchemy to argue that the monetary status of gold and silver had a natural basis: gold (which partook of the sun) and silver (which partook of the moon) were the perfected, eternal forms of metal toward which all baser metals tend to evolve.73 Most, however, didn't feel that much explanation was required; the intrinsic value of precious metals was simply self-evident. As a result, when royal advisors or London pamphleteers discussed economic problems, the issues they debated were always the same: How do we keep bullion from leaving the country? What do we do about the crippling shortage of coin? For most, questions like &quot;How do we maintain trust in local credit systems?&quot; simply did not arise.<br /> <br /> This was even more extreme in Britain than on the Continent, where &quot;crying up&quot; or &quot;crying down&quot; the currency was still an option. In Britain, after a disastrous attempt at devaluation under the Tudors, such expedients were abandoned. Henceforth, debasement became a moral issue. For the government to mix base metal into the pure eternal substance of a coin was clearly wrong. So, to a lesser extent, was coin-clipping, a near-universal practice in England, which might be thought of as a kind of popular version of devaluation, since it involved secretly shaving silver off the edges of coins and then pressing them down so they seemed like they were still the original size.<br /> <br /> What's more, those new forms of virtual money that began to emerge in the new age were firmly rooted in these same assumptions. This is critical, because it helps explain what might otherwise seem a bizarre contradiction: How is it that this age of ruthless materialism, in which the notion that money was a social convention was definitively rejected, also saw the rise of paper money, along with a whole host of new credit instruments and forms of financial abstraction that have become so typical of modern capitalism? True, most of these-checks, bonds, stocks, annuities-had their origins in the metaphysical world of the Middle Ages. Yet in this new age, they underwent an enormous efflorescence.<br /> <br /> If one looks at the actual history, though, it quickly becomes clear that all of these new forms of money in no way undermined the assumption that money was founded on the &quot;intrinsic&quot; value of gold and silver: in fact, they reinforced it. What seems to have happened is that, once credit became unlatched from real relations of trust between individuals (whether merchants or villagers), it became apparent that money could, in effect, be produced simply by saying it was there; but that, when this is done in the amoral world of a competitive marketplace, it would almost inevitably lead to scams and confidence games of every sort-causing the guardians of the system to periodically panic, and seek new ways to latch the value of the various forms of paper back onto gold and silver.<br /> <br /> This is the story normally told as &quot;the ongms of modern banking.&quot; From our perspective, though, what it reveals is just how closely bound together war, bullion, and these new credit instruments were. One need only consider the paths not traveled. For instance: there was no intrinsic reason why a bill of exchange couldn't be endorsed over to a third party, then become generally transferable--thus, in effect turning it into a form of paper money. This is how paper money first emerged in China. In Medieval Europe there were periodic movements in that direction, but for a variety of reasons, they did not go far.74 Alternately, bankers can produce money by issuing book credits for more than they have on cash reserve. This is considered the very essence of modern banking, and it can lead to the circulation of private bank notes.75 Some moves were made in this direction as well, especially in Italy, but it was a risky proposition, since there was always the danger of depositors panicking and making a run, and most Medieval governments threatened extremely harsh penalties on bankers unable to make restitution in such cases: as witnessed by the example of Francesch Castello, beheaded in front of his own bank in Barcelona in 1360.76<br /> <br /> Where bankers effectively controlled Medieval governments, it proved safer and more profitable to manipulate the government's own finances. The history of modern financial instruments, and the ultimate origins of paper money, really begin with the issuing of municipal bonds-a practice begun by the Venetian government in the twelfth century when, needing a quick infusion of income for military purposes, it levied a compulsory loan on its taxpaying citizens, for which it promised each of them five percent annual interest, and allowed the &quot;bonds&quot; or contracts to become negotiable, thus, creating a market in government debt. They [the Venetian government?] tended to be quite meticulous about interest payments, but since the bonds had no specific date of maturity, their market prices often fluctuated wildly with the city's political and military fortunes, and so did resulting assessments of the likelihood that they would be able to be repaid. Similar practices quickly spread to the other Italian states and to northern European merchant enclaves as well: the United Provinces of Holland financed their long war of independence against the Hapsburgs (1568-1648) largely through a series of forced loans, though they floated numerous voluntary bond issues as well?7<br /> <br /> Forcing taxpayers to make a loan is, in one sense, simply demanding that they pay their taxes early; but when the Venetian state first agreed to pay interest-and in legal terms, this was again interesse, a penalty for late payment-it was in principle penalizing itself for not immediately giving the money back. It's easy to see how this might raise all sorts of questions about the legal and moral relation between people and government. Ultimately, the commercial classes in those mercantile republics that pioneered these new forms of financing did end up seeing themselves as owning the government more than they saw themselves as being in its debt. Not only the commercial classes: by r6so, a majority of Dutch households held at least a little government debt.78 However, the true paradox only appears when one begins to &quot;monetize&quot; this debt-that is, to take government promises to pay and allow them to circulate as currency.<br /> <br /> While already by the sixteenth century, merchants were using bills of exchange to settle debts, government debt bonds-rentes, juros, annuities-were the real credit money of the new age. It's here that we have to look for the real origins of the &quot;price revolution&quot; that hammered once-independent townsfolk and villagers into the ground and opened the way for most of them to ultimately be reduced to wage laborers, working for those who had access to these higher forms of credit. Even in Seville, where the treasure fleets from the New World first touched port in the Old, bullion was not much used in day-to-day transactions. Most of it was taken directly to the warehouses of Genoese bankers operating from the port and stored for shipment east. But in the process, it became the basis for complex credit schemes whereby the value of the bullion was loaned to the emperor to fund military operations, in exchange for papers entitling the bearer to interest-bearing annuities from the government-papers that could in turn be traded as if they were money. By such means, bankers could almost endlessly multiply the actual value of gold and silver they held. Already in the rs7os, we hear of fairs in places like Medina del Campo, not far from Seville, that had become &quot;veritable factories of certificates,&quot; with transactions carried out exclusively through paper.79 Since whether the Spanish government would actually pay their debts, or how regularly, were always slightly uncertain, the bills would tend to circulate at a discount-especially as juros began circulating throughout the rest of Europe--causing continual inflation.8&lt;sup&gt;0&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It was only with the creation of the Bank of England in r694 that one can speak of genuine paper money, since its banknotes were in no sense bonds. They were rooted, like all the others, in the king's war debts. This can't be emphasized enough. The fact that money was no longer a debt owed to the king, but a debt owed by the king, made it very different than what it had been before. In many ways it had become a mirror image of older forms of money.<br /> <br /> The reader will recall that the Bank of England was created when a consortium of forty London and Edinburgh merchants-mostly already creditors to the crown-offered King William III a £1.2 million loan to help finance his war against France. In doing so, they also convinced him to allow them in return to form a corporation with a monopoly on the issuance of banknotes-which were, in effect, promissory notes for the money the king now owed them. This was the first independent national central bank, and it became the clearinghouse for debts owed between smaller banks; the notes soon developed into the first European national paper currency. Yet the great public debate of the time, a debate about the very nature of money, was about not paper but metal. The 169os were a time of crisis for British coinage. The value of silver had risen so high that new British coins (the mint had recently developed the &quot;milled edge &quot; familiar from coins nowadays, which made them clip-proof) were actually worth less than their silver content, with predictable results. Proper silver coins vanished; all that remained in circulation were the old clipped ones, and these were becoming increasingly scarce. Something had to be done. A war of pamphlets ensued, which came to a head in 1695, one year after the founding of the bank. Charles Davenant's essay on credit, which I've already cited, was actually part of this particular pamphlet-war: he proposed that Britain move to a pure credit money based on public trust, and he was ignored. The Treasury proposed to call in the coinage and reissue it at a 20- to 25-percent lower weight, so as to bring it back below the market price for silver. Many who supported this position took explicitly Chartalist positions, insisting that silver has no intrinsic value anyway, and that money is simply a measure established by the state.81 The man who won the argument, however, was John Locke, the Liberal philosopher, at that time acting as advisor to Sir Isaac Newton, then Warden of the Mint. Locke insisted that one can no more make a small piece of silver worth more by relabeling it a &quot;shilling&quot; than one can make a short man taller by declaring there are now fifteen inches in a foot. Gold and silver had a value recognized by everyone on earth; the government stamp simply attested to the weight and purity of a coin, and-as he added in words veritably shivering with indignation—for governments to tamper with this for their own advantage was just as criminal as the coin-clippers themselves:<br /> <br /> The use and end of the public stamp is only to be a guard and voucher of the quality of silver which men contract for; and the injury done to the public faith, in this point, is that which in clipping and false coining heightens the robbery into treason.82<br /> <br /> Therefore, he argued, the only recourse was to recall the currency and restrike it at exactly the same value that it had before.<br /> <br /> This was done, and the results were disastrous. In the years immediately following, there was almost no coinage in circulation; prices and wages collapsed; there was hunger and unrest. Only the wealthy were insulated, since they were able to take advantage of the new credit money, trading back and forth portions of the king's debt in the form of banknotes. The value of these notes, too, fluctuated a bit at first, but eventually stabilized once they were made redeemable in precious metals. For the rest, the situation only really improved once paper money, and, eventually, smaller-denomination currency, became more widely available. The reforms proceeded top-down, and very slowly, but they did proceed, and they gradually came to create the world where even ordinary, everyday transactions with butchers and bakers were carried out in polite, impersonal terms, with small change, and therefore it became possible to imagine everyday life itself as a matter of self-interested calculation.<br /> <br /> It's easy enough to see why Locke would adopt the position that he did. He was a scientific materialist. For him, &quot;faith&quot; in government-as in the quote above-was not the citizens' belief that the government will keep its promises, but simply that it won't lie to them; that it would, like a good scientist, give them accurate information, and who wanted to see human behavior as founded in natural laws that-like the laws of physics that Newtoq had so recently described-were higher than those of any mc:;re government. The real question is why the British government agreed with him and resolutely stuck to this position despite all the immediate disasters. Soon afterward, in fact, Britain adopted the gold standard (in 1717) and the British Empire maintained it, and with it the notion that gold and silver were money, down to its final days.<br /> <br /> True, Locke's materialism also came to be broadly accepted-even to be the watchword of the age.83 Mainly, though, the reliance on gold and silver seemed to provide the only check on the dangers involved with the new forms of credit-money, which multiplied very quickly-especially once ordinary banks were allowed to create money too. It soon became apparent that financial speculation, unmoored from any legal or community constraints, was capable of producing results that seemed to verge on insanity. The Dutch Republic, which pioneered the development of stock markets, had already experienced this in the tulip mania of 1637-the first of a series of speculative &quot;bubbles,&quot; as they came to be known, in which future prices would first be bid through the ceiling by investors and then collapse. A whole series of such bubbles hit the London markets in the 169os, in almost every case built around a new joint-stock corporation formed, in imitation of the East India Company, around some prospective colonial venture. The famous South Sea Bubble in q2o-in which a newly formed trading company, granted a monopoly of trade with the Spanish colonies, bought up a considerable portion of the British national debt and saw its shares briefly skyrocket before collapsing in ignominy-was only the culmination. Its collapse was followed the next year by the collapse of John Law's famous Banque Royale in France, another central-bank experiment-similar to the Bank of England-that grew so quickly that within a few years it had absorbed all the French colonial trading companies, and most of the French crown's own debt, issuing its own paper money, before crashing into nothingness in 1721, sending its chief executive fleeing for his life. In each case, this was followed by legislation: in Britain, to forbid the creation of new joint-stock companies (other than for the building of turnpikes and canals), and in France, to eliminate paper money based in government debt entirely.<br /> <br /> It's unsurprising, then, that Newtonian economics (if we may call it that)-the assumption that one cannot simply create money, or even, really, tinker with it-came to be accepted by almost everyone. There had to be some solid, material foundation to all this, or the entire system would go insane. True, economists were to spend centuries arguing about what that foundation might be (was it really gold, or was it land, human labor, the utility or desirability of commodities in general?) but almost no one returned to anything like the Aristotelian view.<br /> <br /> <br /> Another way to look at this might be to say that the new age came to be increasingly uncomfortable with the political nature of money. Politics, after all, is the art of persuasion; the political is that dimension of social life in which things really do become true if enough people believe them. The problem is that in order to play the game effectively, one can never acknowledge this: it may be true that, if I could convince everyone in the world that I was the King of France, I would in fact become the King of France; but it would never work if I were to admit that this was the only basis of my claim. In this sense, politics is very similar to magic-one reason both politics and magic tend, just about everywhere, to be surrounded by a certain halo of fraud. These suspicions were widely vaunted at the time. In 17II, the satirical essayist Joseph Addison penned a little fantasy about the Bank of England's-and as a result, the British monetary system's-dependence on public faith in the political stability of the throne. (The Act of Settlement of 1701 was the bill that guaranteed the royal succession, and a sponge was a popular symbol for default). In a dream, he said,<br /> <br /> I saw Public Credit, set on her throne in the Grocer's Hall, the Great Charter over her head, the Act of Settlement full in her view. Her touch turned everything to gold. Behind her seat, bags filled with coin were piled up to the ceiling. On her right the door flies open. The Pretender rushes in, a sponge in one hand, and in the other a sword, which he shakes at the Act of Settlement. The beautiful Queen sinks down fainting. The spell by which she has turned all things around her into treasure is broken. The money bags shrink like pricked bladders. The piles of gold pieces are turned into bundles of rags or faggots of wooden tallies. 84<br /> <br /> If one does not believe m the king, then the money vanishes with him.<br /> <br /> Thus kings, magicians, markets, and alchemists all fused in the public imagination during this era, and we still talk about the &quot;alchemy&quot; of the market, or &quot;financial magicians.&quot; In Goethe's Faust (18o8), he actually has his hero- in his capacity as alchemist-magician-pay a visit to the Holy Roman Emperor. The Emperor is sinking under the weight of endless debts that he has piled up paying for the extravagant pleasures of his court. Faust, and his assistant, Mephistopheles, convince him that he can pay off his creditors by creating paper money. It's represented as an act of pure prestidigitation. &quot;You have plenty of gold lying somewhere underneath your lands,&quot; notes Faust. &quot;Just issue notes promising your creditors you'll give it to them later. Since no one knows how much gold there really is, there's no limit to how much you can promise. &quot;85<br /> <br /> This kind of magical language almost never appears in the Middle Ages.86 It would appear that it's only in a resolutely materialist age that this ability to simply produce things by saying that they are there comes to be seen as a scandalous, even diabolical. And the surest sign that one has entered such a materialist age is precisely the fact that it is seen so. We have already observed Rabelais, at the very beginning of the age, reverting to language almost identical to that used by Plutarch when he railed against moneylenders in Roman times-&quot;laughing at those natural philosophers who hold that nothing can be made of nothing,&quot; as they manipulate their books and ledgers to demand back money they never actually had. Panurge just turned it around: no, it's by borrowing that I make something out of nothing, and become a kind of god.<br /> <br /> But consider the following lines, often attributed to Lord Josiah Charles Stamp, director of the Bank of England:<br /> <br /> The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin. Bankers own the earth; take it away from them, but leave them with the power to create credit, and with the stroke of a pen they will create enough money to buy it back again ...If you wish to remain slaves of Bankers, and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits.87<br /> <br /> It seems extremely unlikely that Lord Stamp ever really said this, but the passage has been cited endlessly-in fact, it's probably the single most often-quoted passage by critics of the modern banking system. However apocryphal, it clearly strikes a chord, and apparently for the same reason: bankers are creating something out of nothing. They are not only frauds and magicians. They are evil, because they're playing God.<br /> <br /> But there's a deeper scandal than mere prestidigitation. If Medieval moralists did not raise such objections, it was not just because they were comfortable with metaphysical entities. They had a much more fundamental problem with the market: greed. Market motives were held to be inherently corrupt. The moment that greed was validated, and unlimited profit was considered a perfectly viable end in itself, this political, magical element became a genuine problem, because it meant that even those actors-the brokers, stock-jobbers, traders-who effectively made the system run had no convincing loyalty to anything, even to the system itself.<br /> <br /> Hobbes, who first developed this vision of human nature into an explicit theory of society, was well aware of this greed dilemma. It formed the basis of his political philosophy. Even, he argued, if we are all rational enough to understand that it's in our long-term interest to live in peace and security, our short-term interests are often such that killing and plundering are the most obviously profitable courses to take, and all it takes is a few to cast aside their scruples to create utter insecurity and chaos. This was why he felt that markets could only exist under the aegis of an absolutist state, which would force us to keep our promises and respect one another's property. But what happens<br /> <br /> when we're talking about a market in which it is state debts and state obligations themselves that are being traded; when one cannot really speak of a state monopoly on force because one is operating in an international market where the primary currency is bonds that the state depends on for its very ability to marshal military force?<br /> <br /> Having made incessant war on all remaining forms of the communism of the poor, even to the point of criminalizing credit, the masters of the new market system discovered that they had no obvious justification left to maintain even the communism of the rich-that level of cooperation and solidarity required to keep the economic system running. True, for all its endless strains and periodic breakdowns, the system has held out so far. But as recent events have dramatically testified, it has never been resolved.<br /> <br /> === Part IV: So what is capitalism, anyway? ===<br /> We are used to seeing modern capitalism (along with modern traditions of democratic government) as emerging only later: with the Age of Revolutions-the industrial revolution, the American and French revolutions-a series of profound breaks at the end of the eighteenth century that only became fully institutionalized after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Here we come face to face with a peculiar paradox. It would seem that almost all elements of financial apparatus that we've come to associate with capitalism-central banks, bond markets, shortselling, brokerage houses, speculative bubbles, securization, annuities-came into being not only before the science of economics (which is perhaps not too surprising), but also before the rise of factories, and wage labor itself.88 This is a genuine challenge to familiar ways of thinking. We like to think of the factories and workshops as the &quot;real economy,&quot; and the rest as superstructure, constructed on top of it. But if this were really so, then how can it be that the superstructure came first? Can the dreams of the system create its body?<br /> <br /> All this raises the question of what &quot;capitalism&quot; is to begin with, a question on which there is no consensus at all. The word was originally invented by socialists, who saw capitalism as that system whereby those who own capital command the labor of those who do not. Proponents, in contrast, tend to see capitalism as the freedom of the marketplace, which allows those with potentially marketable visions to pull resources together to bring those visions into being. Just about everyone agrees, however, that capitalism is a system that demands constant, endless growth. Enterprises have to grow in order to remain viable. The same is true of nations. Just as five percent per annum was widely accepted, at the dawn of capitalism, as the legitimate commercial rate of interest-that is, the amount that any investor could normally expect her money to be growing by the principle of interesse-so is five percent now the annual rate at which any nation's GOP really ought to grow. What was once an impersonal mechanism that compelled people to look at everything around them as a potential source of profit has come to be considered the only objective measure of the health of the human community itself.<br /> <br /> Starting from our baseline date of 1700, then, what we see at the dawn of modern capitalism is a gigantic financial apparatus of credit and debt that operates-in practical effect-to pump more and more labor out of just about everyone with whom it comes into contact, and as a result produces an endlessly expanding volume of material goods. It does so not just by moral compulsion, but above all by using moral compulsion to mobilize sheer physical force. At every point, the familiar but peculiarly European entanglement of war and commerce reappears-often in startling new forms. The first stock markets in Holland and Britain were based mainly in trading shares of the East and West India companies, which were both military and trading ventures. For a century, one such private, profit-seeking corporation governed India. The national debts of England, France, and the others were based in money borrowed not to dig canals and erect bridges, but to acquire the gunpowder needed to bombard cities and to construct the camps required for the holding of prisoners and the training of recruits. Almost all the bubbles of the eighteenth century involved some fantastic scheme to use the proceeds of colonial ventures to pay for European wars. Paper money was debt money, and debt money was war money, and this has always remained the case. Those who financed Europe's endless military conflicts also employed the government's police and prisons to extract ever-increasing productivity from the rest of the population.<br /> <br /> As everybody knows, the world market system initiated by the Spaniards and Portuguese empires first arose in the search for spices. It soon settled into three broad trades, which might be labeled the arms trade, the slave trade, and the drug trade. The last refers mostly to soft drugs, of course, like coffee, tea, and the sugar to put in them, and tobacco, but distilled liquor first appears at this stage of human history as well, and as we all know, Europeans had no compunctions about aggressively marketing opium in China as a way of finally putting an end to the need to export bullion. The cloth trade only came later, after the East India Company used military force to shut down the (more efficient) Indian cotton export trade. One need only take a glance at the book that preserves Charles Davenant's 1696 essay on credit and human fellowship: The political and commercial works of that celebrated writer Charles D'Avenant: relating to the trade and revenue ofEngland, the Plantation trade, the East-India trade and African trade. &quot;Obedience, love, and friendship&quot; might suffice to govern relations between fellow Englishmen, then, but in the colonies, it was mainly just obedience.<br /> <br /> As I've described, the Atlantic slave trade can be imagined as a giant chain of debt-obligations, stretching from Bristol to Calabar to the headwaters of the Cross River, where the Aro traders sponsored their secret societies; just as in the Indian Ocean trade, similar chains connected Utrecht to Capetown to Jakarta to the Kingdom of Gelgel, where Balinese kings arranged their cockfights to lure their own subjects to gamble their freedom away. In either case, the end product was the same: human beings so entirely ripped from their contexts, and hence so thoroughly dehumanized, that they were placed outside the realm of debt entirely.<br /> <br /> The middlemen in these chains, the various commercial links of the debt chain that connected the stock-jobbers in London with the Aro priests in Nigeria, pearl divers in the Aru islands of Eastern Indonesia, Bengali tea plantations, or Amazonian rubber-tappers, give one the impression of having been sober, calculating, unimaginative men. At either end of the debt chain, the whole enterprise seemed to turn on the ability to manipulate fantasies, and to run a constant peril of slipping into what even contemporary observers considered varieties of phantasmagoric madness. On the one end were the periodic bubbles, propelled in part by rumor and fantasy and in part by the fact that just about everyone in cities like Paris and London with any disposable cash would suddenly become convinced that they would somehow be able to profit from the fact that everyone else was succumbing to rumor and fantasy.<br /> <br /> Charles MacKay has left us some immortal descriptions of the first of these, the famous &quot;South Sea Bubble&quot; of J7IO. Actually, the South Sea Company itself (which grew so large that at one point it bought up most of the national debt) was just the anchor for what happened, a giant corporation, its stock constantly ballooning in value, that seemed, to put it in contemporary terms, &quot;too big to fail.&quot; It soon became the model for hundreds of new start-up offerings:<br /> <br /> Innumerable joint-stock companies started up everywhere.<br /> <br /> They soon received the name Bubbles, the most appropriate<br /> <br /> imagination could devise ...Some of them lasted a week or a fortnight, and were no more heard of, while others could not even live out that span of existence. Every evening produced new schemes, and every morning new projects. The highest of the aristocracy were as eager in this hot pursuit of gain as the most plodding jobber in Cornhill.89<br /> <br /> The author lists, as arbitrary examples, eighty-six schemes, ranging from the manufacture of soap or sailcloth, the provision of insurance for horses, to a method to &quot;make deal-boards out of sawdust. &quot; Each issued stock; each issue would appear, then be scooped up and avidly traded back and forth in taverns, coffee-houses, alleys, and haberdasheries across the city. In every case their price was quickly bid through the ceiling-each new buyer betting, effectively, that he or she could unload them to some even more gullible sucker before the inevitable collapse. Sometimes people bid on cards and coupons that would allow them no more than the right to bid on other shares later. Thousands grew rich. Thousands more were ruined.<br /> <br /> The most absurd and preposterous of all, and which shewed, more completely than any other, the utter madness of the people, was one started by an unknown adventurer, entitled &quot;A company for the carrying on of an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.&quot;<br /> <br /> The man of genius who essayed this bold and successful inroad upon public credulity merely stated in his prospectus that the required capital was half a million, in five thousand shares of wol. each, deposit 2!. per share. Each subscriber, paying his deposit, would be entitled to wol. per annum per share. How this immense profit was to be obtained, he would not condescend to inform them at that time, but promised that in a month the full particulars would be duly announced, and call made for the remaining 98!. of the subscription. Next morning, at nine o'clock, this great man opened an office in Cornhill. Crowds beset his door, and when he shut up at three o'clock, he found that no less than one thousand shares had been subscribed for, and the deposits paid.<br /> <br /> He was philosopher enough to be contented with his venture, and set off that same evening for the Continent. He was never heard of again.90<br /> <br /> If one is to believe MacKay, the entire population of London conceived the simultaneous delusion, not that money could really be manufactured out of nothing, but that other people were foolish enough to believe that it could-and that, by that very fact, they actually could make money out of nothing after all.<br /> <br /> Moving to the other side of the debt chain, we find fantasies ranging from the charming to the apocalyptic. In the anthropological literature, there is everything from the beautiful &quot;sea wives&quot; of Aru pearl divers, who will not yield up the treasures of the ocean unless courted with gifts bought on credit from local Chinese shops/1 to the secret markets where Bengali landlords purchase ghosts to terrorize insubordinate debt peons; to Tiv flesh-debts, a fantasy of human society cannibalizing itself; to finally, occasions at which, the Tiv nightmare appears to have very nearly become true.92 One the most famous and disturbing was the great Putumayo scandal of 1909-1911, in which the London reading public was shocked to discover that the agents of the subsidiary of a British rubber company operating in the Peruvian rainforest had created their very own Heart of Darkness, exterminating tens of thousands of Huitoto Indians-who the agents insisted on referring to only as &quot;cannibals&quot;-in scenes of rape, torture, and mutilation that recalled the very worst of the conquest four hundred years earlier.93<br /> <br /> In the debates that followed, the first impulse was to blame everything on a system whereby the Indians were said to have been caught in a debt trap, made completely dependent on the company store:<br /> <br /> The root of the whole evil was the so called patron or &quot;peonage&quot; system-a variety of what used to be called in England the &quot;truck system &quot;-by which the employee, forced to buy all his supplies at the employer's store, is kept hopelessly in debt, while by law he is unable to leave his employment until his debt is paid ...The peon is thus, as often as not, a de facto slave; and since in the remoter regions of the vast continent there is no effective government, he is wholly at the mercy of his master.94<br /> <br /> The &quot;cannibals&quot; who ended up flogged to death, crucified, tied up and used for target practice, or hacked to pieces with machetes for failure to bring in sufficient quantities of rubber, had, the story went, fallen into the ultimate debt trap; seduced by the wares of the company's agents, they'd ended up bartering away their very lives.<br /> <br /> A later Parliamentary inquiry discovered that the real story was nothing of the sort. The Huitoto had not been tricked into becoming debt peons at all. It was the agents and overseers sent into the region who were, much like the conquistadors, deeply indebted-in their case, to the Peruvian company that had commissioned them, which was ultimately receiving its own credit from London financiers. These agents had certainly arrived with every intention of extending that web of credit to include the Indians, but discovering the Huitoto to have no interest in the cloth, machetes, and coins they had brought to trade with them, they'd finally given up and just started rounding Indians up and forcing them to accept loans at gunpoint, then tabulating the amount of rubber they owed.95 Many of the Indians massacred, in turn, had simply been trying to run away.<br /> <br /> In reality, then, the Indians had been reduced to slavery; it's just that, by 1907, no one could openly admit this. A legitimate enterprise had to have some moral basis, and the only morality the company knew was debt. When it became clear that the Huitoto rejected the premise, everything went haywire, and the company ended up, like Casimir, caught in a spiral of indignant terror that ultimately threatened to wipe out its very economic basis.<br /> <br /> <br /> It is the secret scandal of capitalism that at no point has it been organized primarily around free labor.96 The conquest of the Americas began with mass enslavement, then gradually settled into various forms of debt peonage, African slavery, and &quot;indentured service&quot;-that is, the use of contract labor, workers who had received cash in advance and were thus bound for five-, seven-, or ten-year terms to pay it back. Needless to say, indentured servants were recruited largely from among people who were already debtors. In the 16oos there were at times almost as many white debtors as African slaves working in southern plantations, and legally they were at first in almost the same situation, since in the beginning, plantation societies were working within a European legal tradition that assumed slavery did not exist, so even Africans in the Carolinas were classified, as contract laborers.97 Of course this later changed when the idea of &quot;race&quot; was introduced. When African slaves were freed, they were replaced, on plantations from Barbados to Mauritius, with contract laborers again: though now ones recruited mainly in India or China. Chinese contract laborers built the North American railroad system, and Indian &quot;coolies&quot; built the South African mines. The peasants of Russia and Poland, who had been free landholders in the Middle Ages, were only made serfs at the dawn of capitalism, when their lords began to sell grain on the new world market to feed the new industrial cities to the west.98 Colonial regimes in Africa and Southeast Asia regularly demanded forced labor from their conquered subjects, or, alternately, created tax systems designed to force the population into the labor market through debt. British overlords in India, starting with the East India Company but continuing under Her Majesty's government, institutionalized debt peonage as their primary means of creating products for sale abroad.<br /> <br /> This is a scandal not just because the system occasionally goes haywire, as it did in the Putumayo, but because it plays havoc with our most cherished assumptions about what capitalism really is-particularly that, in its basic nature, capitalism has something to do with freedom. For the capitalists, this means the freedom of the marketplace. For most workers, it means free labor. Marxists have questioned whether wage labor is ultimately free in any sense (since someone with nothing to sell but his or her body cannot in any sense be considered a genuinely free agent), but they still tend to assume that free wage labor is the basis of capitalism. And the dominant image in the history of capitalism is the English workingman toiling in the factories of the industrial revolution, and this image can be traced forward to Silicon Valley, with a straight line in between. All those millions of slaves and serfs and coolies and debt peons disappear, or if we must speak of them, we write them off as temporary bumps along the road. Like sweatshops, this is assumed to be a stage that industrializing nations had to pass through, just as it is still assumed that all those millions of debt peons and contract laborers and sweatshop workers who still exist, often in the same places, will surely live to see their children become regular wage laborers with health insurance and pensions, and their children, doctors and lawyers and entrepreneurs.<br /> <br /> When one looks at the actual history of wage labor, even in countries like England, that picture begins to melt away. In most of Medieval northern Europe, wage labor had been mainly a lifestyle phenomenon. From roughly the age of twelve or fourteen to roughly twenty-eight or thirty, everyone was expected to be employed as a servant in someone else's household-usually on a yearly contract basis, for which they received room, board, professional training, and usually a wage of some sort-until they accumulated enough resources to marry and set up a household of their own.99 The first thing that &quot;proletarianization&quot; came to mean was that millions of young men and women across Europe found themselves effectively stuck in a kind of permanent adolescence. Apprentices and journeymen could never become &quot;masters,&quot; and thus, never actually grow up. Eventually, many began to give up and marry early-to the great scandal of the moralists, who insisted that the new proletariat were starting families they could not possibly support.100<br /> <br /> There is, and has always been, a curious affinity between wage labor and slavery. This is not just because it was slaves on Caribbean sugar plantations who supplied the quick-energy products that powered much of early wage laborers' work; not just because most of the scientific management techniques applied in factories in the industrial revolution can be traced back to those sugar plantations; but also because both the relation between master and slave, and between employer and employee, are in principle impersonal: whether you've been sold or you're simply rented yourself out, the moment money changes hands, who you are is supposed to be unimportant; all that's important is that you are capable of understanding orders and doing what you're told.101<br /> <br /> This is one reason, perhaps, that in principle, there was always a feeling that both the buying of slaves and the hiring of laborers should really not be on credit, but should employ cash. The problem, as I've noted, was that for most of the history of British capitalism, the cash simply didn't exist. Even when the Royal Mint began to produce smaller-denomination silver and copper coins, the supply was sporadic and inadequate. This is how the &quot;truck system&quot; developed to begin with: during the industrial revolution, factory owners would often pay their workers with tickets or vouchers good only in local shops, with whose owners they had some sort of informal arrangement, or, in more isolated parts of the country, which they owned themselves.102 Traditional credit relations with one's local shopkeeper clearly took on an entirely new complexion once the shopkeeper was effectively an agent of the boss. Another expedient was to pay workers at least partly in kind-and notice the very richness of the vocabulary for the sorts of things one was assumed to be allowed to appropriate from one's workplace, particularly from the waste, excess, and side products: cabbage, chips, thrums, sweepings, buggings, gleanings, sweepings, potchings, vails, poake, coltage, knockdowns, tinge.103 &quot;Cabbage,&quot; for instance, was the cloth left over from tailoring, &quot;chips&quot; the pieces of board that dockworkers had the right to carry from their workplace (any piece of timber less than two feet long), &quot;thrums&quot; were taken from the warpingbars of looms, and so on. And of course we have already heard about payment in the form of cod, or nails.<br /> <br /> Employers had a final expedient: wait for the money to show up, and in the meantime, don't pay anything-leaving their employees to get by with only what they could scrounge from their shop floors, or what their families could finagle in outside employment, receive in charity, preserve in savings pools with friends and families, or, when all else failed, acquire on credit from the loan sharks and pawnbrokers who rapidly came to be seen as the perennial scourge of the working poor. The situation became such that, by the nineteenth century, any time a fire destroyed a London pawnshop, working-class neighborhoods would brace for the wave of domestic violence that would inevitably ensue when many a wife was forced to confess that she'd long since secretly hocked her husband's Sunday suit.104<br /> <br /> We are, nowadays, used to associating factories eighteen months in arrears for wages with a nation in economic free-fall, such as occurred during the collapse of the Soviet Union; but owing to the hard-money policies of the British government, who were always concerned above all to ensure that their paper money didn't float away in another speculative bubble, in the early days of industrial capitalism, such a situation was in no way unusual. Even the government was often unable to find the cash to pay its own employees. In eighteenth-century London, the Royal Admiralty was regularly over a year behind in paying the wages of those who labored at the Deptford docks-one reason that they were willing to tolerate the appropriation of chips, not to mention hemp, canvas, steel bolts, and cordage. In fact, as Linebaugh has shown, the situation only really began to take recognizable form around 18oo, when the government stabilized its finances, began paying cash wages on schedule, and therefore tried to abolish the practice of what was now relabeled &quot;workplace pilfering&quot;-which, meeting outraged resistance on the part of the dockworkers, was made punishable by whipping and imprisonment. Samuel Bentham, the engineer put in charge of reforming the dockyards, had to turn them into a regular police state in order to be able to institute a regime of pure wage labor-to which purpose he ultimately conceived the notion of building a giant tower in the middle to guarantee constant surveillance, an idea that was later borrowed by his brother Jeremy for the famous Panopticon. &lt;sup&gt;105&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> <br /> Men like Smith and Bentham were idealists; even utopians. To understand the history of capitalism, however, we have to begin by realizing that the picture we have in our heads, of workers who dutifully punch the clock at 8:oo a.m. and receive regular remuneration every Friday, on the basis of a temporary contract that either party is free to break off at any time, began as a utopian vision, was only gradually put into effect even in England and North America, and has never, at any point, been the main way of organizing production for the market, ever, anywhere.<br /> <br /> This is actually why Smith's work is so important. He created the vision of an imaginary world almost entirely free of debt and credit, and therefore, free of guilt and sin; a world where men and women were free to simply calculate their interests in full knowledge that everything had been prearranged by God to ensure that it will serve the greater good. Such imaginary constructs are of course what scientists refer to as &quot;models,&quot; and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with them. Actually I think a fair case can be made that we cannot think without them. The problem with such models-at least, it always seems to happen when we model something called &quot;the market&quot;-is that, once created, we have a tendency to treat them as objective realities, or even fall down before them and start worshipping them as gods. &quot;We must obey the dictates of the market!&quot;<br /> <br /> Karl Marx, who knew quite a bit about the human tendency to fall down and worship our own creations, wrote Das Capital in an attempt to demonstrate that, even if we do start from the economists' utopian vision, so long as we also allow some people to control productive capital, and, again, leave others with nothing to sell but their brains and bodies, the results will be in many ways barely distinguishable from slavery, and the whole system will eventually destroy itself. What everyone seems to forget is the &quot;as if&quot; nature of his analysis.106 Marx was well aware that there were far more bootblacks, prostitutes, butlers, soldiers, pedlars, chimneysweeps, flower girls, street musicians, convicts, nannies, and cab drivers in the London of his day than there were factory workers. He was never suggesting that that's what the world was actually like.<br /> <br /> Still, if there is anything that the last several hundred years of world history have shown, it's that utopian visions can have a certain appeal. This is as true of Adam Smith's as of those ranged against it. The period from roughly r825 to 1975 is a brief but determined effort on the part of a large number of very powerful people-with the avid support of many of the least powerful-to try to turn that vision into something like reality. Coins and paper money were, finally, produced in sufficient quantities that even ordinary people could conduct their daily lives without appeal to tickets, tokens, or credit. Wages started to be paid on time. New sorts of shops, arcades, and galleries appeared, where everyone paid in cash, or alternately, as time went on, by means of impersonal forms of credit like installment plans. As a result, the old puritanical notion that debt was sin and degradation began to take a profound hold on many of those who came to consider themselves the &quot;respectable&quot; working classes, who often took freedom from the clutches of the pawnbroker and loan shark as a point of pride, which separated them from drunkards, hustlers, and ditch-diggers as surely as the fact that they weren't missing teeth.<br /> <br /> Speaking as someone brought up in that sort of working-class family (my brother died at the age of 53, having refused to his dying day to acquire a credit card), I can attest to the degree that, for those who spend most of their waking hours working at someone else's orders, the ability to pull out a wallet full of banknotes that are unconditionally one's own can be a compelling form of freedom. It's not surprising that so many of the economists' assumptions-most of those for which I have been taking them to task over the course of this book-have been embraced by the leaders of the historic workers' movements, so much so that they have come to shape our visions of what alternatives to capitalism might be like. The problem is not just-as I demonstrated in chapter 7-that it is rooted in a deeply flawed, even perverse, conception of human freedom. The real problem is that, like all utopian dreams, it is impossible. We could no more have a universal world market than we could have a systtlm in which everyone who wasn't a capitalist was somehow able to become a respectable, regularly paid wage laborer with access to adequate dental care. A world like that has never existed and never could exist. What's more, the moment that even the prospect that this might happen begins to materialize, the whole system starts to come apart.<br /> <br /> === Part V: Apocalypse ===<br /> Let us return, finally, to where we began: with Cortes and the Aztec treasure. The reader might have asked herself, What did happen to it? Did Cortes really steal it from his own men?<br /> <br /> The answer seems to be that by the time the siege was over, there was very little of it left. Cortes seems to have gotten his hands on much of it long before the siege even began. A certain portion he had won by gambling.<br /> <br /> This story, too, is in Bernal Diaz, and it is strange and puzzling, but also, I suspect, profound. Let me fill in some of the gaps in our story. After burning his boats, Cortes began to assemble an army of local allies, which was easy to do because the Aztecs were widely hated, and then he began to march on the Aztec capital. Moctezuma, the Aztec emperor, who had been monitoring the situation closely, concluded that he needed to at least figure out what sort of people he was dealing with, so he invited the entire Spanish force (only a few hundred men) to be his official guests in Tenochtitlan. This eventually led to a series of palace intrigues during which Cortes's men briefly held the emperor hostage before being forcibly expelled.<br /> <br /> During the time when Moctezuma was being held captive in his own palace, he and Cortes passed a good deal of their time playing an Aztec game called totoloque. They played for gold, and Cortes, of course, cheated. At one point, Moctezuma's men brought the matter to the king's attention, but the king just laughed and made a joke of it-neither was he concerned later when Pedro de Alvarado, Cortes's chief lieutenant, began cheating even more flagrantly, demanding gold for each point lost and when he lost, paying only in worthless pebbles. Why Moctezuma behaved so has remained something of an historical mystery. Diaz took it as a gesture of lordly magnanimity, perhaps even a way of putting the petty-minded Spaniards in their place.107<br /> <br /> One historian, Inga Clenninden, suggests an alternate interpretation. Aztec games, she notes, tended to have a peculiar feature: there was always a way that, by a freak stroke of luck, one could achieve total victory. This seems to have been true, for instance, of their famous ball games. Observers always wonder, viewing the tiny stone hoops set high above the court, how anyone could ever possibly have managed to score. The answer seems to be: they didn't, at least not that way. Normally the game had nothing to do with the hoop. The game was played between two opposing squads, attired as for battle, knocking the ball back and forth:<br /> <br /> The normal method of scoring was through the slow accumulation of points. But that process could be dramatically preempted. To send the ball through one of the rings-a feat, given the size of the ball and the ring, presumably rarer than a hole in one in golf-gave instant victory, ownership of all the goods wagered, and the right to pillage the cloaks of the onlookers. 108<br /> <br /> Whoever scored the point won everything, down to the audience's clothing.<br /> <br /> There were similar rules in board games, such as Cortes and Moctezuma were playing: if, by some freak stroke of luck, one of the dice landed on its edge, the game was over, and the winner took everything. This, Clenninden suggests, must have been what Moctezuma was really waiting for. After all, he was clearly in the middle of extraordinary events. Strange creatures had appeared, apparently from nowhere, with unheard-of powers. Rumors of epidemics, of the destruction of nearby nations, had presumably already reached him. If ever there was a time that some grandiose revelation was due from the gods, then surely this was it.<br /> <br /> Such an attitude does seem to fit perfectly with the spirit of Aztec culture gleaned from its literature, which exuded a sense of impending catastrophe, perhaps astrologically determined, just possibly avoidable-but probably not. Some have suggested that Aztecs must have somehow been aware that they were a civilization skating on the brink of ecological catastrophe; others, that the apocalyptic tone is retrospective-since, after all, what we know of Aztec literature is almost entirely gleaned from men and women who actually did experience its complete destruction. Still, there does seem to be a certain frantic quality in certain Aztec practices—the sacrifice of as many as tens of tho'usands of war prisoners, most notably in the apparent belief that, were the Sun not continually fed with human hearts, it would die and world with it—that it's hard to explain in any other way.<br /> <br /> If Clenninden is right, for Moctezuma, he and Cortes were not simply gambling for gold. Gold was trivial. The stakes were the entire universe.<br /> <br /> Moctezuma was above all a warrior, and all warriors are gamblers; but unlike Cortes, he was clearly in every way a man of honor. As we've also seen, the quintessence of a warrior's honor, which is a greatness that can only come from the destruction and degradation of others, is his willingness to throw himself into a game where he risks that same destruction and degradation himself—and, unlike Cortes, to play graciously, and by the rules.109 When the time came, it meant being willing to stake everything.<br /> <br /> He did. And as it turns out, nothing happened. No die landed on its edge. Cortes continued to cheat, the gods sent no revelation, and the universe was eventually destroyed.<br /> <br /> If there's something to be learned here—and as I say, I think there is—it is that there may be a deeper, more profound relation between gambling and apocalypse. Capitalism is a system that enshrines the gambler as an essential part of its operation, in a way that no other ever has; yet at the same time, capitalism seems to be uniquely incapable of conceiving of its own eternity. Could these two facts be linked?<br /> <br /> I should be more precise here. It's not entirely true that capitalism is incapable of conceiving of its own eternity. On the one hand, its exponents do often feel obliged to present it as eternal, because they insist that is it is the only possible viable economic system: one that, as they still sometimes like to say, &quot;has existed for five thousand years and will exist for five thousand more.&quot; On the other hand, it does seem that the moment a significant portion of the population begins to actually believe this, and particularly, starts treating credit institutions as if they really will be around forever, everything goes haywire. Note here how it was the most sober, cautious, responsible capitalist regimes-the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, the eighteenth-century British Commonwealth-the ones most careful about managing their public debt-that saw the most bizarre explosions of speculative frenzy, the tulip manias and South Sea bubbles.<br /> <br /> Much of this seems to turn on the nature of national deficits and credit money. The national debt is, as politicians have complained practically since these things first appeared, money borrowed from future generations. Still, the effects have always been strangely doubleedged. On the one hand, deficit financing is a way of putting even more military power in the hands of princes, generals, and politicians; on the other, it suggests that government owes something to those it governs. Insofar as our money is ultimately an extension of the public debt, then whenever we buy a newspaper or a cup of coffee, or even place a bet on a horse, we are trading in promises, representations of something that the government will give us at some time in the future, even if we don't know exactly what it is.110<br /> <br /> Immanuel Wallerstein likes to point out that the French Revolution introduced several profoundly new ideas in politics-ideas which, fifty years before the revolution, the vast majority of educated Europeans would have written off as crazy, but which, fifty years afterward, just about anyone felt they had to at least pretend they thought were true. The first is that social change is inevitable and desirable: that the natural direction of history is for civilization to gradually improve. The second is that the appropriate agent to manage such change is the government. The third is that the government gains its legitimacy from an entity called &quot;the people.&quot;111 It's easy to see how the very idea of a national debt-a promise of continual future improvement (at the very least, five percent annual improvement} made by government to people--might itself have played a role in inspiring such a revolutionary new perspective. Yet at the same time, when one looks at what men like Mirabeau, Voltaire, Diderot, Sieyes-the philosophes who first proposed that notion of what we now call &quot;civilization&quot;-were actually arguing about in the years immediately leading up to the revolution, it was even more about the danger of apocalyptic catastrophe, of the prospect of civilization as they knew it being destroyed by default and economic collapse.<br /> <br /> Part of the problem was the obvious one: the national debt is, first, born of war; second, it is not owed to all the people equally, but above all to capitalists-and in France at that time, &quot;capitalist&quot; meant, specifically, &quot;those who held pieces of the national debt.&quot; The more democratically inclined felt that the entire situation was opprobrious. &quot;The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt,&quot; Thomas Jefferson wrote, around this same time, &quot;has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating.&quot;112 Most Enlightenment thinkers feared that it promised even worse. Intrinsic to the new, &quot;modern&quot; notion of impersonal debt, after all, was the possibility of bankruptcy.111 Bankruptcy, at that time, was indeed something of a personal apocalypse: it meant prison, the dissolution of one's estate; for the least fortunate, it meant torture, starvation, and death. What national bankruptcy would mean, at that point in history, nobody knew. There were simply no precedents. Yet as nations fought greater and bloodier wars, and their debts escalated geometrically, default began to appear unavoidable.114 Abbe Sieyes first put forward his great scheme for representative government, for instance, primarily as a way of reforming the national finances, to fend off the inevitable catastrophe. And when it happened, what would it look like? Would the money become worthless? Would military regimes seize power, regimes across Europe be likewise forced to default and fall like dominos, plunging the continent into endless barbarism, darkness, and war? Many were already anticipating the prospect of the Terror long before the revolution itself.115<br /> <br /> It's a strange story because we are used to thinking of the Enlightenment as the dawn of a unique phase of human optimism, borne on assumptions that the advance of science and human knowledge would inevitably make life wiser, safer, and better for everyone--a na&quot;ive faith said to have peaked in the Fabian socialism of the 189os, only to be annihilated in the trenches of World War I. In fact, even the Victorians were haunted by the dangers of degeneration and decline. Most of all, Victorians shared the near-universal assumption that capitalism itself would not be around forever. Insurrection seemed imminent. Many Victorian capitalists operated under the sincere belief that they might, at any moment, find themselves hanging from trees. In Chicago, for instance, a friend once took me on a drive down a beautiful old street, full of mansions from the 187os: the reason, he explained, that it looked like that, was that most of Chicago's rich industrialists of the time were so convinced that the revolution was immanent that they collectively relocated along the road that led to the nearest military base. Almost none of the great theorists of capitalism, from anywhere on the political spectrum, from Marx to Weber, to Schumpeter, to von Mises, felt that capitalism was likely to be around for more than another generation or two at the most.<br /> <br /> One could go further: the moment that the fear of imminent social revolution no longer seemed plausible, by the end of World War II, we were immediately presented with the specter of nuclear holocaust.116 Then, when that no longer seemed plausible, we discovered global warming. This is not to say that these threats were not, and are not, real. Yet it does seem strange that capitalism feels the constant need to imagine, or to actually manufacture, the means of its own imminent extinction. It's in dramatic contrast to the behavior of the leaders of socialist regimes, from Cuba to Albania, who, when they came to power, immediately began acting as if their system would be around forever-ironically enough, considering they in fact turned out to be something of an historical blip.<br /> <br /> Perhaps the reason is because what was true in 1710 is still true. Presented with the prospect of its own eternity, capitalism-or anyway, financial capitalism-simply explodes. Because if there's no end to it, there's absolutely no reason not to generate credit-that is, future money-infinitely. Recent events would certainly seem to confirm this. The period leading up to 2oo8 was one in which many began to believe that capitalism really was going to be around forever; at the very least, no one seemed any longer to be able to imagine an alternative. The immediate effect was a series of increasingly reckless bubbles that brought the whole apparatus crashing down.<br /> <br /> == Chapter Twelve: (1971-The Beginning of Something Yet to Be Determined) ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Look at all these bums: If only there were a way of finding out how much they owe.<br /> <br /> ''—Repo Man'' (1984)<br /> <br /> Free your mind of the idea of deserving, of the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.&lt;blockquote&gt;-Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed&lt;/blockquote&gt;ON AUGUST 15, 1971, United States President Richard Nixon announced that foreign-held U.S. dollars would no longer be convertible into gold-thus stripping away the last vestige of the international gold standard.1 This was the end of a policy that had been effective since I9JI, and confirmed by the Bretton Woods accords at the end of World War II: that while United States citizens might no longer be allowed to cash in their dollars for gold, all U.S. currency held outside the country was to be redeemable at the rate of $35 an ounce. By doing so, Nixon initiated the regime of free-floating currencies that continues to this day.<br /> <br /> The consensus among historians is that Nixon had little choice. His hand was forced by the rising costs of the Vietnam War-one that, like all capitalist wars, had been financed by deficit spending. The United States was in possession of a large proportion of the world's gold reserves in its vaults in Fort Knox (though increasingly less in the late 196os, as other governments, most famously Charles de Gaulle's France, began demanding gold for their dollars); most poorer countries, in contrast, kept their reserves in dollars. The immediate effect of Nixon's unpegging the dollar was to cause the price of gold to skyrocket; it hit a peak of $6oo an ounce in 1980. This of course had the effect of causing<br /> <br /> U.S. gold reserves to increase dramatically in value. The value of the dollar, as denominated in gold, plummeted. The result was a massive net transfer of wealth from poor countries, which lacked gold reserves, to rich ones, like the United States and Great Britain, that maintained them. In the United States, it also set off persistent inflation.<br /> <br /> Whatever Nixon's reasons, though, once the global system of credit money was entirely unpegged from gold, the world entered a new phase of financial history-one that nobody completely understands. While I was growing up in New York, I would hear occasional rumors of secret gold vaults underneath the Twin Towers in Manhattan. Supposedly, these vaults contained not just the U.S. gold reserves, but those of all the major economic powers. The gold was said to be kept in the form of bars, piled up in separate vaults, one for each country, and every year, when the balance of accounts was calculated, workmen with dollies would adjust the stocks accordingly, carting, say, a few million in gold out of the vault marked &quot;Brazil&quot; and transfering them to the one marked &quot;Germany,&quot; and so on.<br /> <br /> Apparently a lot of people had heard these stories. At least, right after the Towers were destroyed on September n, 2001, one of the first questions many New Yorkers asked was: What happened to the money? Was it safe? Were the vaults destroyed? Presumably, the gold had melted. Was this the real aim of the attackers? Conspiracy theories abounded. Some spoke of legions of emergency workers secretly summoned to make their way through miles of overheated tunnels, desperately carting off tons of bullion even as rescue workers labored overhead. One particularly colorful conspiracy theory suggested that the entire attack was really staged by speculators who, like Nixon, expected to see the value of the dollar crash and that of gold to skyrocket-either because the reserves had been destroyed, or because they themselves had laid prior plans to steal them.2<br /> <br /> The truly remarkable thing about this story is that, after having believed it for years, and then, in the wake of 9/n, having been convinced by some more knowing friends that it was all a great myth (&quot;No,&quot; one of them said resignedly, as if to a child, &quot;the United States keeps its gold reserves in Fort Knox&quot;), I did a little research and discovered that, no, actually, it's true. The United States treasury's gold reserves are indeed kept at Fort Knox, but the Federal Reserve's gold reserves, and those of more than one hundred other central banks, governments, and organizations, are stored in vaults under the Federal Reserve building at 33 Liberty Street in Manhattan, two blocks away from the Towers. At roughly five thousand metric tons (266 million troy ounces), these combined reserves represent, according to the Fed's own website, somewhere between one-fifth and one-quarter of all the gold that has ever been taken from the earth:<br /> <br /> &quot;The gold stored at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is secured in a most unusual vault. It rests on the bedrock of Manhattan Island-one of the few foundations considered adequate to support the weight of the vault, its door, and the gold inside-eighty feet below street level and fifty feet below sea level ...To reach the vault, bullionladen pallets must be loaded into one of the Bank's elevators and sent down five floors below street level to the vault floor ...If everything is in order, the gold is either moved to one or more of the vault's 122 compartments assigned to depositing countries and official international organizations or placed on shelves. 'Gold stackers,' using hydraulic lifts, do indeed shift them back and forth between compartments to balance credits and debts, though the vaults have only numbers, so even the workers don't know who is paying whom.&quot;3<br /> <br /> There is no reason to believe, however, that these vaults were in any way affected by the events of September u, 2001.<br /> <br /> Reality, then, has become so odd that it's hard to guess which elements of grand mythic fantasies are really fantasy, and which are true. The image of collapsed vaults, the melted bullion, of secret workers scurrying deep below Manhattan with underground forklifts evacuating the world economy-all this turns out not to be. But is it entirely surprising that people were willing to consider it?4<br /> <br /> In America, the banking system since the days of Thomas Jefferson has shown a remarkable capacity to inspire paranoid fantasies: whether centering on Freemasons, or Elders of Zion, or the Secret Order of the Illuminati, or the Queen of England's drug-money-laundering operations, or any of a thousand other secret conspiracies and cabals. It's the main reason why it took so long for an American central bank to be established to begin with. In a way there's nothing surprising here. The United States has always been dominated by a certain market populism, and the ability of banks to &quot;create money out of nothing&quot;-and even more, to prevent anyone else from doing so--has always been the bugaboo of market populists, since it directly contradicts the idea that markets are a simple expression of democratic equality. Still, since Nixon's floating of the dollar, it has become evident that it's only the wizard behind the screen who seems to be maintaining the viability of the whole arrangement. Under the free-market orthodoxy that followed, we have all being asked, effectively, to accept that &quot;the market&quot; is a self-regulating system, with the rising and falling of prices akin to a force of nature, and simultaneously to ignore the fact that, in the business pages, it is simply assumed that markets rise and fall mainly in anticipation of, or reaction to, decisions regarding interest rates by Alan Greenspan, or Ben Bernanke, or whoever is currently the chairman of the Federal Reserve.5<br /> <br /> <br /> One element, however, tends to go flagrantly missing in even the most vivid conspiracy theories about the banking system, let alone in official accounts: that is, the role of war and military power. There's a reason why the wizard has such a strange capacity to create money out of nothing. Behind him, there's a man with a gun.<br /> <br /> True, in one sense, he's been there from the start. I have already pointed out that modern money is based on government debt, and that governments borrow money in order to finance wars. This is just as true today as it was in the age of King Phillip II. The creation of central banks represented a permanent institutionalization of that marriage between the interests of warriors and financiers that had already begun to emerge in Renaissance Italy, and that eventually became the foundation of financial capitalism.6<br /> <br /> Nixon floated the dollar in order to pay for the cost of a war in which, during the period of 1970-1972 alone, he ordered more than four million tons of explosives and incendiaries dropped on cities and villages across Indochina-causing one senator to dub him &quot;the greatest bomber of all time. &quot;7 The debt crisis was a direct result of the need to pay for the bombs, or to be more precise, the vast military infrastructure required to deliver them. This was what was causing such an enormous strain on the U.S. gold reserves. Many hold that by floating the dollar, Nixon converted the U.S. currency into pure &quot;fiat money &quot;-mere pieces of paper, intrinsically worthless, that were treated as money only because the United States government insisted that it should be. In that case, one could well argue that U.S. military power was now the only thing backing up the currency. In a certain sense this is true, but the notion of &quot;fiat money&quot; assumes that money really &quot;was&quot; gold in the first place. Really we are dealing with another variation of credit money.<br /> <br /> Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. government can't &quot;just print money,&quot; because American money is not issued by the government at all, but by private banks, under the aegis of the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve-despite the name-is technically not part of the government at all, but a peculiar sort of public-private hybrid, a consortium of privately owned banks whose chairman is appointed by the United States president, with Congressional approval, but which otherwise operates without public oversight. All dollar bills in circulation in America are &quot;Federal Reserve Notes &quot;-the Fed issues them as promissory notes, and commissions the U.S. mint to do the actual printing, paying it four cents for each bill.8 The arrangement is just a variation of the scheme originally pioneered by the Bank of England, whereby the Fed &quot;loans&quot; money to the United States government by purchasing treasury bonds, and then monetizes the U.S. debt by lending the money thus owed by the government to other banks.9 The difference is that while the Bank of England originally loaned the king gold, the Fed simply whisks the money into existence by saying that it's there. Thus, it's the Fed that has the power to print money.10 The banks that receive loans from the Fed are no longer permitted to print money themselves, but they are allowed to create virtual money by making loans at a fractional reserve rate established by the Fed-though in the wake of the current credit crisis, at time of this writing, there has been a move to remove even these restrictions.<br /> <br /> All this is a bit of a simplification: monetary policy is endlessly arcane, and it does sometimes seem, intentionally so. (Henry Ford once remarked that if ordinary Americans ever found out how the banking system really worked, there would be a revolution tomorrow.) What is remarkable for present purposes is not so much that American dollars are created by banks, but that one apparently paradoxical result of Nixon's floating the currency was that these bank-created dollars themselves replaced gold as the world's reserve currency: that is, as the ultimate store of value in the world, yielding the United States enormous economic advantages.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the U.S. debt remains, as it has been since 1790, a war debt: the United States continues to spend more on its military than do all other nations on earth put together, and military expenditures are not only the basis of the government's industrial policy; they also take up such a huge proportion of the budget that by many estimations, were it not for them, the United States would not run a deficit at all.[[File:Graeber-debt the first 5000 years-3.jpg|thumb|393x393px]]The U.S. military, unlike any other, maintains a doctrine of global power projection: that it should have the ability, through roughly 8oo overseas military bases, to intervene with deadly force absolutely anywhere on the planet. In a way, though, land forces are secondary; at least since World War II, the key to U.S. military doctrine has always been a reliance on air power. The United States has fought no war in which it did not control the skies, and it has relied on aerial bombardment far more systematically than any other military-in its recent occupation of Iraq, for instance, even going so far as to bomb residential neighborhoods of cities ostensibly under its own control. The essence of U.S. military predominance in the world is, ultimately, the fact that it can, at will, drop bombs, with only a few hours' notice, at absolutely any point on the surface of the planet.&lt;sup&gt;n&lt;/sup&gt; No other government has ever had anything remotely like this sort of capability. In fact, a case could well be made that it is this very power that holds the entire world monetary system, organized around the dollar, together.<br /> <br /> Because of United States trade deficits, huge numbers of dollars circulate outside the country; and one effect of Nixon's floating of the dollar was that foreign central banks have little they can do with these dollars except to use them to buy U.S. treasury bonds.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; This is what is meant by the dollar becoming the world's &quot;reserve currency.&quot; These bonds are, like all bonds, supposed to be loans that will eventually mature and be repaid, but as economist Michael Hudson, who first began observing the phenomenon in the early '70s, noted, they never really do:<br /> <br /> To the extent that these Treasury lOUs are being built into the world's monetary base they will not have to be repaid, but are to be rolled over indefinitely. This feature is the essence of America's free financial ride, a tax imposed at the entire globe’s expense. &lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> What's more, over time, the combined effect of low interest payments and the inflation is that these bonds actually depreciate in value-adding to the tax effect, or as I preferred to put it in the first chapter, &quot;tribute.&quot; Economists prefer to call it &quot;seigniorage.&quot; The effect, though, is that American imperial power is based on a debt that will never-can never-be repaid. Its national debt has become a promise, not just to its own people, but to the nations of the entire world, that everyone knows will not be kept.<br /> <br /> At the same time, U.S. policy was to insist that those countries relying on U.S. treasury bonds as their reserve currency behaved in exactly the opposite way as they did: observing tight money policies and scrupulously repaying their debts.<br /> <br /> As I've already observed, since Nixon's time, the most significant overseas buyers of U.S. treasury bonds have tended to be banks in countries that were effectively under U.S. military occupation. In Europe, Nixon's most enthusiastic ally in this respect was West Germany, which then hosted more than three hundred thousand U.S. troops. In more recent decades the focus has shifted to Asia, particularly the central banks of countries like Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea-again, all U.S. military protectorates. What's more, the global status of the dollar is maintained in large part by the fact that it is, again since 1971, the only currency used to buy and sell petroleum, with any attempt by OPEC countries to begin trading in any currency stubbornly resisted by OPEC members Saudi Arabia and Kuwait-also U.S. military protectorates. When Saddam Hussein made the bold move of singlehandedly switching from the dollar to the euro in 2ooo, followed by Iran in 2001, this was quickly followed by American bombing and military occupation.14 How much Hussein's decision to buck the dollar really weighed into the U.S. decision to depose him is impossible to know, but no country in a position to make a similar switch can ignore the possibility. The result, among policymakers particularly in the global South, is widespread terror.15<br /> <br /> <br /> In all this, the advent of the free-floating dollar marks not a break with the alliance of warriors and financiers on which capitalism itself was originally founded, but its ultimate apotheosis. Neither has the return to virtual money led to a great return to relations of honor and trust: quite the contrary. By 1971, the change had only just begun. The American Express card, the first general-purpose credit card, had been invented a mere thirteen years before, and the modern national credit-card system had only really come into being with the advent of Visa and MasterCard in 1968. Debit cards were later, creatures of the 1970s, and the current, largely cashless economy only came into being in the 1990s. All of these new credit arrangements were mediated not by interpersonal relations of trust but by profit-seeking corporations, and one of the earliest and greatest political victories of the U.S. creditcard industry was the elimination of all legal restrictions on what they could charge as interest.<br /> <br /> If history holds true, an age of virtual money should mean a movement away from war, empire-building, slavery, and debt peonage (waged or otherwise), and toward the creation of some sort of overarching institutions, global in scale, to protect debtors. What we have seen so far is the opposite. The new global currency is rooted in military power even more firmly than the old was. Debt peonage continues to be the main principle of recruiting labor globally: either in the literal sense, in much of East Asia or Latin America, or in the subjective sense, whereby most of those working for wages or even salaries feel that they are doing so primarily to pay off interest-bearing loans. The new transportation and communications technologies have just made it easier, making it possible to charge domestics or factory workers thousands of dollars in transportation fees, and then have them work off the debt in distant countries where they lack legal protections.16 Insofar as overarching grand cosmic institutions have been created that might be considered in any way parallel to the divine kings of the ancient Middle East or the religious authorities of the Middle Ages, they have not been created to protect debtors, but to enforce the rights of creditors. The International Monetary Fund is only the most dramatic case in point here. It stands at the pinnacle of a great, emerging global bureaucracy-the first genuinely global administrative system in human history, enshrined not only in the United Nations, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, but also the endless host of economic unions and trade organizations and non-governmental organizations that work in tandem with them-created largely under U.S. patronage. All of them operate on the principle that (unless one is the United States Treasury), &quot;one has to pay one's debts&quot;-since the specter of default by any country is assumed to imperil the entire world monetary system, threatening, in Addison's colorful image, to turn all the world's sacks of (virtual) gold into worthless sticks and paper.<br /> <br /> All true. Still, we are speaking of a mere forty years here. But Nixon's gambit, what Hudson calls &quot;debt imperialism,&quot; has already come under considerable strain. The first casualty was precisely the imperial bureaucracy dedicated to the protection of creditors (other than those that were owed money by the United States). IMF policies of insisting that debts be repaid almost exclusively from the pockets of the poor were met by an equally global movement of social rebellion (the so-called &quot;anti-globalization movement&quot;—though the name is profoundly deceptive), followed by outright fiscal rebellion in both East Asia and Latin America. By 2000, East Asian countries had begun a systematic boycott of the IMF. In 2002, Argentina committed the ultimate sin: they defaulted—and got away with it. Subsequent U.S. military adventures were clearly meant to terrify and overawe, but they do not appear to have been very successful: partly because, to finance them, the United States had to turn not just to its military clients, but increasingly, to China, its chief remaining military rival. After the neartotal collapse of the U.S. financial industry, which despite having been very nearly granted rights to make up money at will, ''still'' managed to end up with trillions in liabilities it could not pay, bringing the world economy to a standstill, eliminating even the pretense that debt imperialism guaranteed stability.<br /> <br /> Just to give a sense of how extreme a financial crisis we are talking about, here are some statistical charts culled from the pages of the St. Louis Federal Reserve web page.&lt;sup&gt;n&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Here is the amount of U.S. debt held overseas:[[File:Graeber-debt the first 5000 years-4.jpg|center|thumb|457x457px|Federal Debt Held by Foreign &amp; International Investors (FDHBFIN) Source: U.S. Department of the Treasury, Financial Management Service]]Meanwhile, private U.S. banks reacted to the crash by abandoning any pretense that we are dealing with a market economy, shifting all available assets into the coffers of the Federal Reserve itself, which purchased U.S. Treasuries:[[File:Graeber-debt the first 5000 years-5.jpg|center|thumb|457x457px|Board of Governors Total Reserves. Adjusted for Changes in Reserve Requirements (TRARR); Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System]]Allowing them, through yet another piece of arcane magic that none of us could possibly understand, to end up, after an initial near-$4oo-billion dip, with far larger reserves than they had ever had before.[[File:Graeber-debt the first 5000 years-6.jpg|center|thumb|457x457px|Non-Borrowed Reserves of Depository Institutions (BOGNONBR) Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System]]At this point, some U.S. creditors clearly feel they are finally in a position to demand that their own political agendas be taken into account.<br /> <br /> CHINA WARNS U.S. ABOUT DEBT MONETIZATION<br /> <br /> Seemingly everywhere he went on a recent tour of China, Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher was asked to deliver a message to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke: &quot;stop creating credit out of thin air to purchase U.S. Treasuries. &quot;18<br /> <br /> Again, it's never clear whether the money siphoned from Asia to support the U.S. war machine is better seen as &quot;loans&quot; or as &quot;tribute. &quot; Still, the sudden advent of China as a major holder of U.S. treasury bonds has clearly altered the dynamic. Some might question why, if these really are tribute payments, the United States' major rival would be buying treasury bonds to begin with-let alone agreeing to various tacit monetary arrangements to maintain the value of the dollar, and hence, the buying power of American consumers.19 But I think this is a perfect case in point of why taking a very long-term historical perspective can be so helpful.<br /> <br /> From a longer-term perspective, China's behavior isn't puzzling at all. In fact it's quite true to form. The unique thing about the Chinese empire is that it has, since the Han dynasty at least, adopted a peculiar sort of tribute system whereby, in exchange for recognition of the Chinese emperor as world-sovereign, they have been willing to shower their client states with gifts far greater than they receive in return. The technique seems to have been developed almost as a kind of trick when dealing with the &quot;northern barbarians&quot; of the steppes, who always threatened Chinese frontiers: a way to overwhelm them with such luxuries that they would become complacent, effeminate, and unwarlike. It was systematized in the &quot;tribute trade&quot; practiced with client states like Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and various states of Southeast Asia, and for a brief period from 1405 to 1433, it even extended to a world scale, under the famous eunuch admiral Zheng He. He led a series of seven expeditions across the Indian Ocean, his great &quot;treasure fleet&quot;-in dramatic contrast to the Spanish treasure fleets of a century later-carrying not only thousands of armed marines, but endless quantities of silks, porcelain, and other Chinese luxuries to present to those local rulers willing to recognize the authority of the emperor.2&lt;sup&gt;0&lt;/sup&gt; All this was ostensibly rooted in an ideology of extraordinary chauvinism (&quot;What could these barbarians possibly have that we really need, anyway?&quot;), but, applied to China's neighbors, it proved extremely wise policy for a wealthy empire surrounded by much smaller but potentially troublesome kingdoms. In fact, it was such wise policy that the U.S. government, during the Cold War, more or less had to adopt it, creating remarkably favorable terms of trade for those very states-Korea, Japan, Taiwan, certain favored allies in Southeast Asia-that had been the traditional Chinese tributaries; in this case, in order to contain China.21<br /> <br /> Bearing all this in mind, the current picture begins to fall easily back into place. When the United S tates was far and away the predominant world economic power, it could afford to maintain Chinese-style tributaries. Thus these very states, alone amongst U.S. military protectorates, were allowed to catapult themselves out of poverty and into first-world status.22 After 1971, as U.S. economic strength relative to the rest of the world began to decline, they were gradually transtormed back into a more old-fashioned sort of tributary. Yet China's getting in on the game introduced an entirely new element. There is every reason to believe that, from China's point of view, this is the first stage of a very long process of reducing the United States to something like a traditional Chinese client state. And of course, Chinese rulers are not, any more than the rulers of any other empire, motivated primarily by benevolence. There is always a political cost, and what that headline marked was the first glimmerings of what that cost might ultimately be.<br /> <br /> <br /> All that I have said so far merely serves to underline a reality that has come up constantly over the course of this book: that money has no essence. It's not &quot;really&quot; anything; therefore, its nature has always been and presumably always will be a matter of political contention. This was certainly true throughout earlier stages of U.S. history, incidentally-as the endless nineteenth-century battles between gold-bugs, greenbackers, free bankers, bi-metallists and silverites so vividly attest-or, for that matter, the fact that American voters were so suspicious of the very idea of central banks that the Federal Reserve system was only created on the eve of World War I, three centuries after the Bank of England. Even the monetization of the national debt is, as I've already noted, double-edged. It can be seen-as Jefferson saw it-as the ultimate pernicious alliance of warriors and financiers; but it also opened the way to seeing government itself as a moral debtor, of freedom as something literally owed to the nation. Perhaps no one put it so eloquently as Martin Luther King Jr., in his &quot;I Have a Dream&quot; speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963:<br /> <br /> In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.<br /> <br /> When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words<br /> <br /> of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the &quot;unalienable Rights&quot; of &quot;Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. &quot; It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked &quot;insufficient funds.&quot;<br /> <br /> One can see the great crash of 2oo8 in the same light-as the outcome of years of political tussles between creditors and debtors, rich and poor. True, on a certain level, it was exactly what it seemed to be: a scam, an incredibly sophisticated Ponzi scheme designed to collapse in the full knowledge that the perpetrators would be able to force the victims to bail them out. On another level it could be seen as the culmination of a battle over the very definition of money and credit.<br /> <br /> By the end of World War II, the specter of an imminent workingclass uprising that had so haunted the ruling classes of Europe and North America for the previous century had largely disappeared. This was because class war was suspended by a tacit settlement. To put it crudely: the white working class of the North Atlantic countries, from the United States to West Germany, were offered a deal. If they agreed to set aside any fantasies of fundamentally changing the nature of the system, then they would be allowed to keep their unions, enjoy a wide variety a social benefits (pensions, vacations, health care ...), and, perhaps most important, through generously funded and ever-expanding public educational institutions, know that their children had a reasonable chance of leaving the working class entirely. One key element in all this was a tacit guarantee that increases in workers' productivity would be met by increases in wages: a guarantee that held good until the late 1970s. Largely as a result, the period saw both rapidly rising productivity and rapidly rising incomes, laying the basis for the consumer economy of today.<br /> <br /> Economists call this the &quot;Keynesian era&quot; since it was a time in which John Maynard Keynes' economic theories, which already formed the basis of Roosevelt's New Deal in the United States, were adopted by industrial democracies pretty much everywhere. With them came Keynes' rather casual attitude toward money. The reader will recall that Keynes fully accepted that banks do, indeed, create money &quot;out of thin air, &quot; and that for this reason, there was no intrinsic reason that government policy should not encourage this during economic downturns as a way of stimulating demand-a position that had long been dear to the heart of debtors and anathema to creditors.<br /> <br /> Keynes himself had in his day been known to make some fairly radical noises, for instance calling for the complete elimination of that class of people who lived off other people's debts-the &quot;the euthanasia of the rentier, &quot; as he put it-though all he really meant by this was their elimination through a gradual reduction of interest rates. As in so much of Keynesianism, this was much less radical than it first appeared. Actually it was thoroughly in the great tradition of political economy, hearkening back to Adam Smith's ideal of a debtless utopia but especially David Ricardo's condemnation of landlords as parasites, their very existence inimical to economic growth. Keynes was simply proceeding along the same lines, seeing rentiers as a feudal holdover inconsistent with the true spirit of capital accumulation. Far from a revolution, he saw it as the best way of avoiding one:<br /> <br /> I see, therefore, the rentier aspect of capitalism as a transitional phase which will disappear when it has done its work. And with the disappearance of its rentier aspect much else in it besides will suffer a sea-change. It will be, moreover, a great advantage of the order of events which I am advocating, that the euthanasia of the rentier, of the functionless investor, will be nothing sudden ...and will need no revolution.23<br /> <br /> When the Keynesian settlement was finally put into effect, after World War II, it was offered only to a relatively small slice of the world's population. As time went on, more and more people wanted in on the deal. Almost all of the popular movements of the period from 1945 to 1975, even perhaps revolutionary movements, could be seen as demands for inclusion: demands for political equality that assumed equality was meaningless without some level of economic security. This was true not only of movements by minority groups in North Atlantic countries who had first been left out of the deal-such as those for whom Dr. King spoke- but what were then called &quot;national liberation&quot; movements from Algeria to Chile, or, finally, and perhaps most dramatically, in the late 196os and 1970s, feminism. At some point in the '7os, things reached a breaking point. It would appear that capitalism, as a system, simply cannot extend such a deal to everyone. Quite possibly it wouldn't even remain viable if all its workers were free wage laborers; certainly it will never be able to provide everyone in the world the sort of life lived by, say, a 196os auto worker in Michigan or Turin with his own house, garage, and children in college—and this was true even before so many of those children began demanding less stultifying lives. The result might be termed a crisis of inclusion. By the late 1970s, the existing order was clearly in a state of collapse, plagued simultaneously by financial chaos, food riots, oil shock, widespread doomsday prophecies of the end of growth and ecological crisis—all of which, it turned out, proved to be ways of putting the populace on notice that all deals were off.[[File:Graeber-debt the first 5000 years-7.jpg|thumb]]The moment that we start framing the story this way, it's easy to see that the next thirty years, the period from roughly 1978 to 2009, follows nearly the same pattern. Except that the deal, the settlement, had changed. Certainly, when both Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the UK launched a systematic attack on the power of labor unions, as well as on the legacy of Keynes, it was a way of explicitly declaring that all previous deals were off. Everyone could now have political rights—even, by the 1990s, most everyone in Latin America and Africa—but political rights were to become economically meaningless. The link between productivity and wages was chopped to bits: productivity rates have continued to rise, but wages have stagnated or even atrophied.<br /> <br /> This was accompanied, at first, by a return to &quot;monetarism&quot;: the doctrine that even though money was no longer in any way based in gold, or in any other commodity, government and central-bank policy should be primarily concerned with carefully controlling the money supply to ensure that it acted as if it were a scarce commodity. Even as, at the same time, the financialization of capital meant that most money being invested in the marketplace was completely detached from any relation to production of commerce at all, but had become pure speculation.<br /> <br /> All this is not to say that the people of the world were not being offered something: just that, as I say, the terms had changed. In the new dispensation, wages would no longer rise, but workers were encouraged to buy a piece of capitalism. Rather than euthanize the rentiers, everyone could now become rentiers-effectively, could grab a chunk of the profits created by their own increasingly dramatic rates of exploitation. The means were many and familiar. In the United States, there were 401(k) retirement accounts and an endless variety of other ways of encouraging ordinary citizens to play the market; but at the same time, encouraging them to borrow. One of the guiding principles of Thatcherism and Reaganism alike was that economic reforms would never gain widespread support unless ordinary working people could at least aspire to owning their own homes; to this was added, by the 1990s and 2ooos, endless mortgage-refinancing schemes that treated houses, whose value it was assumed would only rise, &quot;like ATMs&quot;-as the popular catchphrase had it, though it turns out, in retrospect, it was really more like credit cards. Then there was the proliferation of actual credit cards, juggled against one another. Here, for many, &quot;buying a piece of capitalism&quot; slithered undetectably into something indistinguishable from those familiar scourges of the working poor: the loan shark and the pawnbroker. It did not help here that in 1980, U.S. federal usury laws, which had previously limited interest to between 7 and 10 percent, were eliminated by act of Congress. Just as the United States had managed to largely get rid of the problem of political corruption by making the bribery of legislators effectively legal (it was redefined as &quot;lobbying&quot;), so the problem of loan-sharking was brushed aside by making real interest rates of 25 percent, so percent, or even in some cases (for instance for payday loans) 120 percent annually, once typical only of organized crime, perfectly legal-and therefore, enforceable no longer by just hired goons and the sort of people who place mutilated animals on their victims' doorsteps, but by judges, lawyers, bailiffs, and police.25<br /> <br /> Any number of names have been coined to describe the new dispensation, from the &quot;democratization of finance&quot; to the &quot;financializa-tion of everyday life.&quot;26 Outside the United States, it came to be known as &quot;neoliberalism.&quot; As an ideology, it meant that not just the market, but capitalism (I must continually remind the reader that these are not the same thing) became the organizing principle of almost everything. We were all to think of ourselves as tiny corporations, organized<br /> <br /> around that same relationship of investor and executive: between the cold, calculating math of the banker, and the warrior who, indebted, has abandoned any sense of personal honor and turned himself into a kind of disgraced machine.<br /> <br /> In this world, &quot;paying one's debts&quot; can well come to seem the very definition of morality, if only because so many people fail to do it. For instance, it has become a regular feature of many sorts of business in America that large corporations or even some small businesses, faced with a debt, will almost automatically simply see what happens if they do not pay-complying only if reminded, goaded, or presented with some sort of legal writ. In other words, the principle of honor has thus been almost completely removed from the marketplaceY As a result, perhaps, the whole subject of debt becomes surrounded by a halo of religion.<br /> <br /> Actually, one might even speak of a double theology, one for the creditors, another for the debtors. It is no coincidence that the new phase of American debt imperialism has also been accompanied by the rise of the evangelical right, who-in defiance of almost all previously existing Christian theology-have enthusiastically embraced the doctrine of &quot;supply-side economics,&quot; that creating money and effectively giving it to the rich is the most Biblically appropriate way to bring about national prosperity. Perhaps the most ambitious theologian of the new creed was George Gilder, whose book Wealth and Poverty became a best-seller in 1981, at the very dawn of what came to be known as the Reagan Revolution. Gilder's argument was that those who felt that money could not simply be created were mired in an old-fashioned, godless materialism that did not realize that just as God could create something out of nothing, His greatest gift to humanity was creativity itself, which proceeded in exactly the same way. Investors can indeed create value out of nothing by their willingness to accept the risk entailed in placing their faith in others' creativity. Rather than seeing the imitation of God's powers of creation ex nihilo as hubris, Gilder argued that it was precisely what God intended: the creation of money was a gift, a blessing, a channeling of grace; a promise, yes, but not one that can be fulfilled, even if the bonds are continually rolled over, because through faith (&quot;in God we trust&quot; again) their value becomes reality:<br /> <br /> Economists who themselves do not believe in the future of capitalism will tend to ignore the dynamics of chance and faith that largely will determine that future. Economists who distrust religion will always fail to comprehend the modes of worship by which progress is achieved. Chance is the foundation of change and the vessel of the divineY<br /> <br /> Such effusions inspired evangelists like Pat Robertson to declare supply-side economics &quot;the first truly divine theory of moneycreation. &quot;29<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, for those who could not simply create money, there was a quite different theological dispensation. &quot;Debt is the new fat,&quot; Margaret Atwood recently remarked, struck by how much the advertisements that surround her daily on the bus in her native Toronto had abandoned their earlier attempts to make riders panic about the creeping terrors of sexual unattractiveness, but instead turned to providing advice on how to free oneself from the much more immediate terrors of the repo man:<br /> <br /> There are even debt TV shows, which have a familiar religiousrevival ring to them. There are accounts of shopaholic binges during which you don't know what came over you and everything was a blur, with tearful confessions by those who've spent themselves into quivering insomniac jellies of hopeless indebtedness, and have resorted to lying, cheating, stealing, and kiting cheques between bank accounts as a result. There are testimonials by families and loved ones whose lives have been destroyed by the debtor's harmful behaviour. There are compassionate but severe admonitions by the television host, who here plays the part of priest or revivalist. There's a moment of seeing the light, followed by repentance and a promise never to do it again. There's a penance imposed-snip, snip go the scissors on the credit cards-followed by a strict curb-on-spending regimen; and finally, if all goes well, the debts are paid down, the sins are forgiven, absolution is granted, and a new day dawns, in which a sadder but more solvent man you rise the morrow morn.30<br /> <br /> Here, risk-taking is in no sense the vessel of the divine. Quite the opposite. But for the poor it's always different. In a way, what Atwood describes might be seen as the perfect inversion of the prophetic voice of Reverend King's &quot;I Have a Dream&quot; speech: whereas the first postwar age was about collective claims on the nation's debt to its humblest citizens, the need for those who have made false promises to redeem themselves, now those same humble citizens are taught to think of themselves as sinners, seeking some kind of purely individual redemption to have the right to any sort of moral relations with other human beings at all.<br /> <br /> At the same time, there is something profoundly deceptive going on here. All these moral dramas start from the assumption that personal debt is ultimately a matter of self-indulgence, a sin against one's loved ones-and therefore, that redemption must necessarily be a matter of purging and restoration of ascetic self-denial. What's being shunted out of sight here is first of all the fact that everyone is now in debt (U.S. household debt is now estimated at on average 130 percent of income), and that very little of this debt was accrued by those determined to find money to bet on the horses or toss away on fripperies. Insofar as it was borrowed for what economists like to call discretionary spending, it was mainly to be given to children, to share with friends, or otherwise to be able to build and maintain relations with other human beings that are based on something other than sheer material calculation.31 One must go into debt to achieve a life that goes in any way beyond sheer survival.<br /> <br /> Insofar as there is a politics, here, it seems a variation on a theme seen since the dawn of capitalism. Ultimately, it's sociality itself that's treated as abusive, criminal, demonic. To this, most ordinary Americans-including Black and Latino Americans, recent immigrants, and others who were formerly excluded from credit-have responded with a stubborn insistence on continuing to love one another. They continue to acquire houses for their families, liquor and sound systems for parties, gifts for friends; they even insist on continuing to hold weddings and funerals, regardless of whether this i.s likely to send them skirting default or bankruptcy-apparently figuring that, as long as everyone now has to remake themselves as miniature capitalists, why shouldn't they be allowed to create money out of nothing too?<br /> <br /> Granted, the role of discretionary spending itself should not be exaggerated. The chief cause of bankruptcy in America is catastrophic illness; most borrowing is simply a matter of survival (if one does not have a car, one cannot work); and increasingly, simply being able to go to college now almost necessarily means debt peonage for at least half one's subsequent working life.32 Still, it is useful to point out that for real human beings survival is rarely enough. Nor should it be.<br /> <br /> By the 1990s, the same tensions had begun to reappear on a global scale, as the older penchant for loaning money for grandiose, state-directed projects like the Aswan Dam gave way to an emphasis on microcredit. Inspired by the success of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, the new model was to identify budding entrepreneurs in poor communities and provide them with small low-interest loans. &quot;Credit,&quot; the Grameen Bank insisted, &quot;is a human right. &quot; At the same time the idea was to draw on the &quot;social capital&quot;-the knowledge, networks, connections, and ingenuity that the poor people of the world are already using to get by in difficult circumstances-and convert it into a way of generating even more (expansive) capital, able to grow at 5 to 20 percent annually.<br /> <br /> As anthropologists like Julia Elyachar discovered, the result is double-edged. As one unusually candid NGO consultant explained to her in Cairo in 1995:<br /> <br /> Money is empowerment. This is empowerment money. You need to be big, need to think big. Borrowers here can be imprisoned if they don't pay, so why be worried?<br /> <br /> In America we get ten offers for credit cards in the mail every day. You pay incredible real interest rates for that credit, something like 40 percent. But the offer is there, so you get the card, and stuff your wallet full of credit cards. You feel good. It should be the same thing here, why not help them get into debt? Do I really care what they use the money for, as long as they pay the loan back?-B<br /> <br /> The very incoherence of the quote is telling. The only unifying theme seems to be: people ought to be in debt. It's good in itself. It's empowering. Anyway, if they end up too empowered, we can also have them arrested. Debt and power, sin and redemption, become almost indistinguishable. Freedom is slavery. Slavery is freedom. During her time in Cairo, Elyachar witnessed young graduates of an NGO training program go on strike for their right to receive start-up loans. At the same time, just about everyone involved took it for granted that most of their fellow students, not to mention everyone else involved in the program, was corrupt and exploiting the system as their personal cash cow. Here too, aspects of economic life that had been based on longstanding relations of trust were, through the intrusion of credit bureaucracies, becoming effectively criminalized.<br /> <br /> Within another decade, the entire project-even in South Asia, where it began-began to appear suspiciously similar to the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis: all sorts of unscrupulous lenders piled in, all sorts of deceptive financial appraisals were passed off to investors, interest accumulated, borrowers tried to collectively refuse payment, lenders began sending in goons to seize what little wealth they had (corrugated tin roofs, for example), and the end result has been an epidemic of suicides by poor farmers caught in traps from which their families could never, possibly, escape.34<br /> <br /> Just as in the 1945-1975 cycle, this new one culminated in another crisis of inclusion. It proved no more possible to really turn everyone in the world into micro-corporations, or to &quot;democratize credit&quot; in such a way that every family that wanted to could have a house (and if you think about it, if we have the means to build them, why shouldn't they? are there families who don't &quot;deserve&quot; houses?) than it had been to allow all wage laborers to have unions, pensions, and health benefits. Capitalism doesn't work that way. It is ultimately a system of power and exclusion, and when it reaches the breaking point, the symptoms recur, just as they had in the 1970s: food riots, oil shock, financial crisis, the sudden startled realization that the current course was ecological unsustainable, attendant apocalyptic scenarios of every sort.<br /> <br /> In the wake of the subprime collapse, the U.S. government was forced to decide who really gets to make money out of nothing: the financiers, or ordinary citizens. The results were predictable. Financiers were &quot;bailed out with taxpayer money&quot;-which basically means that their imaginary money was treated as if it were real. Mortgage holders were, overwhelmingly, left to the tender mercies of the courts, under a bankruptcy law that Congress had a year before (rather suspiciously presciently, one might add) made far more exacting against debtors. Nothing was altered. All major decisions were postponed. The Great Conversation that many were expecting never happened.<br /> <br /> <br /> We live, now, at a genuinely peculiar historical juncture. The credit crisis has provided us with a vivid illustration of the principle set out in the last chapter: that capitalism cannot really operate in a world where people believe it will be around forever.<br /> <br /> For most of the last several centuries, most people assumed that credit could not be generated infinitely because they assumed that the economic system itself was unlikely to endure forever. The future was likely to be fundamentally different. Yet somehow, the anticipated revolutions never happened. The basic structures of financial capitalism largely remained in place. It's only now, at the very moment when it's becoming increasingly clear that current arrangements are not viable, that we suddenly have hit the wall in terms of our collective imagination.<br /> <br /> There is very good reason to believe that, in a generation or so, capitalism itself will no longer exist—most obviously, as ecologists keep reminding us, because it's impossible to maintain an engine of perpetual growth forever on a finite planet, and the current form of capitalism doesn't seem to be capable of generating the kind of vast technological breakthroughs and mobilizations that would be required for us to start finding and colonizing any other planets. Yet faced with the prospect of capitalism actually ending, the most common reaction-even from those who call themselves &quot;progressives&quot;-is simply fear. We cling to what exists because we can no longer imagine an alternative that wouldn't be even worse.<br /> <br /> How did we get here? My own suspicion is that we are looking at the final effects of the militarization of American capitalism itself. In fact, it could well be said that the last thirty years have seen the construction of a vast bureaucratic apparatus for the creation and maintenance of hopelessness, a giant machine designed, first and foremost, to destroy any sense of possible alternative futures. At its root is a veritable obsession on the part of the rulers of the world-in response to the upheavals of the 196os and 197os-with ensuring that social movements cannot be seen to grow, flourish, or propose alternatives; that those who challenge existing power arrangements can never, under any circumstances, be perceived to win.15 To do so requires creating a vast apparatus of armies, prisons, police, various forms of private security firms and police and military intelligence apparatus, and propaganda engines of every conceivable variety, most of which do not attack alternatives directly so much as create a pervasive climate of fear, jingoistic conformity, and simple despair that renders any thought of changing the world seem an idle fantasy. Maintaining this apparatus seems even more important, to exponents of the &quot;free market,&quot; even than maintaining any sort of viable market ecanomy. How else can one explain what happened in the former Soviet Union? One would ordinarily have imagined that the end of the Cold War would have led to the dismantling of the army and the KGB and rebuilding the factories, but in fact what happened was precisely the other way around. This is just an extreme example of what has been happening everywhere. Economically, the apparatus is pure dead weight; all the guns, surveillance cameras, and propaganda engines are extraordinarily expensive and really produce nothing, and no doubt it's yet another element dragging the entire capitalist system down-along with producing the illusion of an endless capitalist future that laid the groundwork for the endless bubbles to begin with. Finance capital became the buying and selling of chunks of that future, and economic freedom, for most of us, was reduced to the right to buy a small piece of one's own permanent subordination.<br /> <br /> In other words, there seems to have been a profound contradiction between the political imperative of establishing capitalism as the only possible way to manage anything, and capitalism's own unacknowledged need to limit its future horizons lest speculation, predictably, go haywire. Once it did, and the whole machine imploded, we were left in the strange situation of not being able to even imagine any other way that things might be arranged. About the only thing we can imagine is catastrophe.<br /> <br /> <br /> To begin to free ourselves, the first thing we need to do is to see ourselves again as historical actors, as people who can make a difference in the course of world events. This is exactly what the militarization of history is trying to take away.<br /> <br /> Even if we are at the beginning of the turn of a very long historical cycle, it's still largely up to us to determine how it's going to turn out. For instance: the last time we shifted from a bullion economy to one of virtual credit money, at the end of the Axial Age and the beginning of the Middle Ages, the immediate shift was experienced largely as a series of great catastrophes. Will it be the same this time around? Presumably a lot depends on how consciously we set out to ensure that it won't be. Will a return to virtual money lead to a move away from empires and vast standing armies, and to the creation of larger structures limiting the depredations of creditors? There is good reason to believe that all these things will happen-and if humanity is to survive, they will probably have to—but we have no idea how long it will take, or what, if it does, it would really look like. Capitalism has transformed the world in many ways that are clearly irreversible. What I have been trying to do in this book is not so much to propose a vision of what, precisely, the next age will be like, but to throw open perspectives, enlarge our sense of possibilities; to begin to ask what it would mean to start thinking on a breadth and with a grandeur appropriate to the times.<br /> <br /> Let me give an example. I've spoken of two cycles of popular movements since World War II: the first (1945-1978), about demanding the rights of national citizenship, the second (1978-2oo8), over access to capitalism itself. It seems significant here that in the Middle East, in the first round, those popular movements that most directly challenged the global status quo tended to be inspired by Marxism; in the second, largely, some variation on radical Islam. Considering that Islam has always placed debt at the center of its social doctrines, it's easy to understand the appeal. But why not throw things open even more widely? Over the last five thousand years, there have been at least two occasions when major, dramatic moral and financial innovations have emerged from the country we now refer to as Iraq. The first was the invention of interest-bearing debt, perhaps sometime around 3000 sc; the second, around 8oo AD, the development of the first sophisticated commercial system that explicitly rejected it. Is it possible that we are due for another? For most Americans, it will seem an odd question, since most Americans are used to thinking of Iraqis either as victims or fanatics (this is how occupying powers always think about the people they occupy), but it is worthy of note that the most prominent working-class Islamist movement opposed to the U.S. occupation, the Sadrists, take their name from one of the founders of contemporary Islamic economics, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr. True, much of what has since come to pass for Islamic economics nowadays has proved decidedly unimpressive.36 Certainly in no sense does it pose a direct challenge to capitalism. Still, one has to assume that among popular movements of this sort, all kinds of interesting conversations about, say, the status of wage labor must be taking place. Or perhaps it's naive to look for any new breakthrough from the puritanical legacy of the old patriarchal rebellion. Perhaps it will come out of feminism. Or Islamic feminism. Or from some as yet completely unexpected quarter. Who's to say? The one thing we can be confident of is that history is not over, and that surprising new ideas will certainly emerge.<br /> <br /> <br /> The one thing that's clear is that new ideas won't emerge without the jettisoning of much of our accustomed categories of thought-which have become mostly sheer dead weight, if not intrinsic parts of the very apparatus of hopelessness-and formulating new ones. This is why I spent so much of this book talking about the market, but also about the false choice between state and market that so monopolized political ideology for the last centuries that it made it difficult to argue about anything else.<br /> <br /> The real history of markets is nothing like what we're taught to think it is. The earlier markets that we are able to observe appear to be spillovers, more or less; side effects of the elaborate administrative systems of ancient Mesopotamia. They operated primarily on credit. Cash markets arose through war: again, largely through tax and tribute policies that were originally designed to provision soldiers, but that later became useful in all sorts of other ways besides. It was only the Middle Ages, with their return to credit systems, that saw the first manifestations of what might be called market populism: the idea that markets could exist beyond, against, and outside of states, as in those of the Muslim Indian Ocean-an idea that was later to reappear in China with the great silver revolts of the fifteenth century. It usually seems to arise in situations where merchants, for one reason or another, find themselves making common cause with common people against the administrative machinery of some great state. But market populism is always riddled with paradoxes, because it still does depend to some degree on the existence of that state, and above all, because it requires founding market relations, ultimately, in something other than sheer calculation: in the codes of honor, trust, and ultimately community and mutual aid, more typical of human economies.37 This in turn means relegating competition to a relatively minor element. In this light, we can see that what Adam Smith ultimately did, in creating his debt-free market utopia, was to fuse elements of this unlikely legacy with that unusually militaristic conception of market behavior characteristic of the Christian West. In doing so he was surely prescient. But like all extraordinarily influential writers, he was also just capturing something of the emerging spirit of his age. What we have seen ever since is an endless political jockeying back and forth between two sorts of populismstate and market populism-without anyone noticing that they were talking about the left and right flanks of exactly the same animal.<br /> <br /> The main reason that we're unable to notice, I think, is that the legacy of violence has twisted everything around us. War, conquest, and slavery not only played the central role in converting human economies into market ones; there is literally no institution in our society that has not been to some degree affected. The story told at the end of chapter 7, of how even our conceptions of &quot;freedom&quot; itself came to be transformed, through the Roman institution of slavery, from the ability to make friends, to enter into moral relations with others, into incoherent dreams of absolute power, is only perhaps the most dramatic instance-and most insidious, because it leaves it very hard to imagine what meaningful human freedom would even be like.38<br /> <br /> If this book has shown anything, it's exactly how much violence it has taken, over the course of human history, to bring us to a situation where it's even possible to imagine that that's what life is really about. Especially when one considers how much of our own daily experience flies directly in the face of it. As I've emphasized, communism may be the foundation of all human relations-that communism that, in our own daily life, manifests itself above all in what we call &quot;love&quot;-but there's always some sort of system of exchange, and usually, a system of hierarchy built on top of it. These systems of exchange can take an endless variety of forms, many perfectly innocuous. Still, what we are speaking of here is a very particular type of calculating exchange. As I pointed out in the very beginning: the difference between owing someone a favor, and owing someone a debt, is that the amount of a debt can be precisely calculated. Calculation demands equivalence. And such equivalence-especially when it involves equivalence between human beings (and it always seems to start that way, because at first, human beings are always the ultimate values)-only seems to occur when people have been forcibly severed from their contexts, so much so that they can be treated as identical to something else, as in: &quot;seven martin skins and twelve large silver rings for the return of your captured brother, &quot; &quot;one of your three daughters as surety for this loan of one hundred and fifty bushels of grain&quot; ...<br /> <br /> This in turn leads to that great embarrassing fact that haunts all attempts to represent the market as the highest form of human freedom: that historically, impersonal, commercial markets originate in theft. More than anything else, the endless recitation of the myth of barter, employed much like an incantation, is the economists' way of fending off any possibility of having to confront it. But even a moment's reflection makes it obvious. Who was the first man to look at a house full of objects and to immediately assess them only in terms of what he could trade them in for in the market likely to have been? Surely, he can only have been a thief. Burglars, marauding soldiers, then perhaps debt collectors, were the first to see the world this way. It was only in the hands of soldiers, fresh from looting towns and cities, that chunks of gold or silver-melted down, in most cases, from some heirloom treasure, that like the Kashmiri gods, or Aztec breastplates, or Babylonian women's ankle bracelets, was both a work of art and a little compendium of history-could become simple, uniform bits of currency, with no history, valuable precisely for their lack of history, because they could be accepted anywhere, no questions asked. And it continues to be true. Any system that reduces the world to numbers can only be held in place by weapons, whether these are swords and clubs, or nowadays, &quot;smart bombs&quot; from unmanned drones.<br /> <br /> It can also only operate by continually converting love into debt. I know my use of the word &quot;love&quot; here is even more provocative, in its own way, than &quot;communism. &quot; Still, it's important to hammer the point home. Just as markets, when allowed to drift entirely free from their violent origins, invariably begin to grow into something different, into networks of honor, trust, and mutual connectedness, so does the maintenance of systems of coercion constantly do the opposite: turn the products of human cooperation, creativity, devotion, love, and trust back into numbers once again. In doing so, they make it possible to imagine a world that is nothing more than a series of cold-blooded calculations. Even more, by turning human sociality itself into debts, they transform the very foundations of our being-since what else are we, ultimately, except the sum of the relations we have with others-into matters of fault, sin, and crime, and making the world into a place of iniquity that can only be overcome by completing some great cosmic transaction that will annihilate everything.<br /> <br /> Trying to flip things around by asking, &quot;What do we owe society?&quot; or even trying to talk about our &quot;debt to nature&quot; or some other manifestation of the cosmos is a false solution-really just a desperate scramble to salvage something from the very moral logic that has severed us from the cosmos to begin with. In fact, it's if anything the culmination of the process, the process brought to a point of veritable dementia, since it's premised on the assumption that we're so absolutely, thoroughly disentangled from the world that we can just toss all other human beings-or all other living creatures, even, or the cosmos-in a sack, and then start negotiating with them. It's hardly surprising that the end result, historically, is to see our life itself as something we hold on false premises, a loan long since overdue, and therefore, to see existence itself as criminal. Insofar as there's a real crime here, though, it's fraud. The very premise is fraudulent. What could possibly be more presumptuous, or more ridiculous, than to think it would be possible to negotiate with the grounds of one's existence? Of course it isn't. Insofar as it is indeed possible to come into any sort of relation with the Absolute, we are confronting a principle that exists outside of time, or human-scale time, entirely; therefore, as Medieval theologians correctly recognized, when dealing with the Absolute, there can be no such thing as debt.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> === Conclusion: Perhaps the world really does owe you a living ===<br /> Perhaps the World Really Does Owe You a Living<br /> <br /> Much of the existing economic literature on credit and banking, when it turns to the kind of larger historical questions treated in this book, strikes me as little more than special pleading. True, earlier figures like Adam Smith and David Ricardo were suspicious of credit systems, but already by the mid-nineteenth century, economists who concerned themselves with such matters were largely in the business of trying to demonstrate that, despite appearances, the banking system really was profoundly democratic. One of the more common arguments was that it was really a way of funneling resources from the &quot;idle rich,&quot; who, too unimaginative to do the work of investing their own money, entrusted it to others, to the &quot;industrious poor&quot;-who had the energy and initiative to produce new wealth. This justified the existence of banks, but it also strengthened the hand of populists who demanded easy money policies, protections for debtors, and so on-since, if times were rough, why should the industrious poor, the farmers and artisans and small businessmen, be the ones to suffer?<br /> <br /> This gave rise to a second line of argument: that no doubt the rich were the major creditors in the ancient world, but now the situation has been reversed. So Ludwig von Mises, writing in the 1930s, around the time when Keynes was calling for the euthanasia of the rentiers:<br /> <br /> Public opinion has always been biased against creditors. It identifies creditors with the idle rich and debtors with the industrious poor. It abhors the former as ruthless exploiters and pities the latter as innocent victims of oppression. It considers government action designed to curtail the claims of the creditors as measures extremely beneficial to the immense majority at the expense of a small minority of hardboiled usurers. It did not notice at all that nineteenth-century capitalist innovations have wholly changed the composition of the classes of creditors and debtors. In the days of Solon the Athenian, of ancient Rome's agrarian laws, and of the Middle Ages, the creditors were by and large the rich and the debtors the poor. But in this age of bonds and debentures, mortgage banks, saving banks, life insurance policies, and social security benefits, the masses of people with more moderate income are rather themselves creditors. 39<br /> <br /> Whereas the rich, with their leveraged companies, are now the principal debtors. This is the &quot;democratization of finance&quot; argument and it is nothing new: whenever there are some people calling for the elimination of the class that lives by collecting interest, there will be others to object that this will destroy the livelihood of widows and pensioners.<br /> <br /> The remarkable thing is that nowadays, defenders of the financial system are often prepared to use both arguments, appealing to one or the other according to the rhetorical convenience of the moment. On the one hand, we have &quot;pundits&quot; like Thomas Friedman, celebrating the fact that &quot;everyone&quot; now owns a piece of Exxon or Mexico, and that rich debtors are therefore answerable to the poor. On the other, Niall Ferguson, author of The Ascent of Money, published in 2009, can still announce as one of his major discoveries that:<br /> <br /> Poverty is not the result of rapacious financiers exploiting the poor. It has much more to do with the lack of financial institutions, with the absence of banks, not their presence. Only when borrowers have access to efficient credit networks can they escape from the clutches of loan sharks, and only when savers can deposit their money in reliable banks can it be channeled from the idle rich to the industrious poor.40<br /> <br /> Such is the state of the conversation in the mainstream literature. My purpose here has been less to engage with it directly than to show how it has consistently encouraged us to ask the wrong questions. Let's take this last paragraph as an illustration. What is Ferguson really saying here? Poverty is caused by a lack of credit. It's only if the industrious poor have access to loans from stable, respectable banks-rather than to loan sharks, or, presumably, credit card companies, or payday loan operations, which now charge loan-shark rates-that they can rise out of poverty. So actually Ferguson is not really concerned with &quot;poverty&quot; at all, just with the poverty of some people, those who are industrious and thus do not deserve to be poor. What about the non-industrious poor? They can go to hell, presumably (quite literally, according to many branches of Christianity). Or maybe their boats will be lifted somewhat by the rising tide. Still, that's clearly incidental. They're undeserving, since they're not industrious, and therefore what happens to them is really beside the point.<br /> <br /> For me, this is exactly what's so pernicious about the morality of debt: the way that financial imperatives constantly try to reduce us all, despite ourselves, to the equivalent of pillagers, eyeing the world simply for what can be turned into money-and then tell us that it's only those who are willing to see the world as pillagers who deserve access to the resources required to pursue anything in life other than money. It introduces moral perversions on almost every level. (&quot;Cancel all student loan debt? But that would be unfair to all those people who struggled for years to pay back their student loans!&quot; Let me assure the reader that, as someone who struggled for years to pay back his student loans and finally did so, this argument makes about as much sense as saying it would be &quot;unfair&quot; to a mugging victim not to mug their neighbors too.)<br /> <br /> The argument might perhaps make sense if one agreed with the underlying assumption-that work is by definition virtuous, since the ultimate measure of humanity's success as a species is its ability to increase the overall global output of goods and services by at least 5 percent per year. The problem is that it is becoming increasingly obvious that if we continue along these lines much longer, we're likely to destroy everything. That giant debt machine that has, for the last five centuries, reduced increasing proportions of the world's population to the moral equivalent of conquistadors would appear to be coming up against its social and ecological limits. Capitalism's inveterate propensity to imagine its own destruction has morphed, in the last half-century, into scenarios that threaten to bring the rest of the world down with it. And there's no reason to believe that this propensity is ever going to go away. The real question now is how to ratchet things down a bit, to move toward a society where people can live more by working less.<br /> <br /> I would like, then, to end by putting in a good word for the non-industrious poor.41 At least they aren't hurting anyone. Insofar as the time they are taking time off from work is being spent with friends and family, enjoying and caring for those they love, they're probably improving the world more than we acknowledge. Maybe we should think of them as pioneers of a new economic order that would not share our current one's penchant for self-destruction.<br /> <br /> <br /> In this book I have largely avoided making concrete proposals, but let me end with one. It seems to me that we are long overdue for some kind of Biblical-style Jubilee: one that would affect both international debt and consumer debt. It would be salutary not just because it would relieve so much genuine human suffering, but also because it would be our way of reminding ourselves that money is not ineffable, that paying one's debts is not the essence of morality, that all these things are human arrangements and that if democracy is to mean anything, it is the ability to all agree to arrange things in a different way. It is significant, I think, that since Hammurabi, great imperial states have invariably resisted this kind of politics. Athens and Rome established the paradigm: even when confronted with continual debt crises, they insisted on legislating around the edges, softening the impact, eliminating obvious abuses like debt slavery, using the spoils of empire to throw all sorts of extra benefits at their poorer citizens (who, after all, provided the rank and file of their armies), so as to keep them more or less afloat-but all in such a way as never to allow a challenge to the principle of debt itself. The governing class of the United States seems to have taken a remarkably similar approach: eliminating the worst abuses (e.g., debtors' prisons), using the fruits of empire to provide subsidies, visible and otherwise, to the bulk of the poulation; in more recent years, manipulating currency rates to flood the country with cheap goods from China, but never allowing anyone to question the sacred principle that we must all pay our debts.<br /> <br /> At this point, however, the principle has been exposed as a flagrant lie. As it turns out, we don't &quot;all&quot; have to pay our debts. Only some of us do. Nothing would be more important than to wipe the slate clean for everyone, mark a break with our accustomed morality, and start again.<br /> <br /> What is a debt, anyway? A debt is just the perversion of a promise. It is a promise corrupted by both math and violence. If freedom (real freedom) is the ability to make friends, then it is also, necessarily, the ability to make real promises. What sorts of promises might genuinely free men and women make to one another? At this point we can't even say. It's more a question of how we can get to a place that will allow us to find out. And the first step in that journey, in turn, is to accept that in the largest scheme of things, just as no one has the right to tell us our true value, no one has the right to tell us what we truly owe.<br /> <br /> == Notes ==<br /> ''ProleWiki note: to be fixed up, but we decided to upload them as is for the time being so that readers could still refer to them.''<br /> <br /> === Chapter One ===<br /> 1. With the predictable results that they weren't actually built to make it easier for Malagasy people to get around in their own country, but mainly to get products from the plantations to ports to earn foreign exchange to pay for building the roads and railways to begin with.<br /> <br /> 2. The United States, for example, only recognized the Republic of Haiti in 186o. France doggedly held on to the demand and the Republic of Haiti was finally forced to pay the equivalent of $21 billion between 1925 and 1946, during most of which time they were under U.S. military occupation.<br /> <br /> 3. Hallam 1866 V: 269-70. Since the government did not feel it appropriate to pay for the upkeep of improvidents, prisoners were expected to furnish the full cost of their own imprisonment. If they couldn't, they simply starved to death.<br /> <br /> 4- If we consider tax responsibilities to be debts, it's the overwhelming majority-and if nothing else the two are closely related, since over the course history, the need to assemble money for tax payments has always been the most frequent reason for falling into debt.<br /> <br /> 5. Finley 1960:63; 1963:24; 1974:80; 1981:106; 1983:108. And these are only the ones I managed to track down. What he says for Greece and Rome would appear to be equally true of Japan, India, or China.<br /> <br /> 6. Galey 1983.<br /> <br /> 7. Jacques de Vitry, in Le Goff 1990:64.<br /> <br /> 8. Kyokai, Record of Miraculous Events in Japan (c. 822 AD), Tale 26, cited in LaFleur 1986:36. Also Nakamura I996:257'59.<br /> <br /> 9. ibid:j6<br /> <br /> 10. ibid:j7.<br /> <br /> 11. Simon Johnson, the IMF's chief economist at the time, put it concisely in a recent article in The Atlantic: &quot;Regulators, legislators, and academics almost all assumed that the managers of these banks knew what they were doing. In retrospect, they didn't. AIG's Financial Products division, for instance, made $2.5 billion in pretax profits in 2005, largely by selling underpriced insurance on complex, poorly understood securities. Often described as 'picking up nickels in front of a steamroller,' this strategy is profitable in ordinary years, and catastrophic in bad ones. As of last fall, AIG had outstanding insurance on more than $400 billion in securities. To date, the U.S. government, in an effort to rescue the company, has committed about $18o billion in investments and loans to cover losses that AIG's sophisticated risk modeling had said were virtually impossible.&quot; (Johnson 2010) Johnson of course passes over the possibility that AIG knew perfectly well what was eventually going to happen, but simply didn't care, since they knew the steamroller was going to flatten someone else.<br /> <br /> 12. In contrast, England already had a national bankruptcy law in 1571. An attempt to create a U.S. federal bankruptcy law in 18oo foundered; there was one briefly in place between 1867 and 1878, aimed to relieve indebted Civil War veterans, bur it was eventually abolished on moral grounds (see Mann 2002 for a good recent history). Bankruptcy reform in America is more likely to make the terms harsher than the other way around, as with the 2005 reforms, which Congress passed, on industry urgings, just before the great credit crash.<br /> <br /> 13. The mortgage relief fund set up after the bailout, for example, has only provided aid to a tiny percentage of claimants, and there has been no movement toward liberalization of bankruptcy laws that had, in fact, been made far harsher, under financial industry pressure, in 2005, just two years before the meltdown.<br /> <br /> 14. &quot;In Jail for Being in Debt,&quot; Chris Serres &amp; Glenin Howatt, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, June 9, 201o, www .startribune.com/local/95692619.html.<br /> <br /> 15. &quot;IMF warns second bailout would 'threaten democracy.&quot;' Angela Jameson and Elizabeth Judge, business . timesonline.co.uk/tol!business/economics/article6928147.ece#cid=OTC -RSS&amp;attr=n85799, accessed November 25, 2009<br /> <br /> === Chapter Two ===<br /> I. Case, Fair, Gartner, &amp; Heather 1996:564. Emphasis in the original.<br /> <br /> 2. op cit.<br /> <br /> 3. Begg, Fischer, and Dornbuch (2oo5:384); Maunder, Myers, Wall, and Miller (I991:3Io); Parkin &amp; King (1995:6s).<br /> <br /> 4. Stiglitz and Driffill 2ooo:su. Emphasis again in the original.<br /> <br /> 5. Aristotle Politics L9.1257<br /> <br /> 6. Neither is it clear we are really speaking of barter here. Aristotle used the term metadosis, which in his day normally meant &quot;sharing&quot; or &quot;sharing out.&quot; Since Smith, this has usually been translated &quot;barter,&quot; but as Karl Polanyi (1957a:93)<br /> <br /> has long since emphasized, this is probably inaccurate, unless Aristotle was introducing an entirely new meaning for the term. Theorists of the origin of Greek money from Laum (1924) to Seaford (2004) have emphasized that customs of apportioning goods (e.g., war booty, sacrificial meat), probably did play a key role in the development of Greek currency. (For a critique of the Aristotelian tradition, which does assume Aristotle is talking about barter, see Fahazmanesh 2oo6.)<br /> <br /> 7. See Jean-Michel Server (1994, 2001) for this literature. He also notes that in the eighteenth century, these accounts suddenly vanished, to be replaced by endless sightings of &quot;primitive barter&quot; in accounts of Oceania, Africa, and the Americas.<br /> <br /> 8. Wealth of Nations !.2.1-2. As we'll see, the line seems to be taken from much older sources.<br /> <br /> 9. &quot;If we should enquire into the principle of human mind on which this disposition of trucking is founded, it is clearly the natural inclination every one has to persuade. The offering of a shilling, which to us appears to have so plain and simple meaning, is in reality offering an argument to persuade one to do so and so as it is for his interest&quot; (Lectures on Jurisprudence, 56) It's fascinating to note that the assumption that the notion that exchange is the basis of our mental functions, and manifests itself both in language (as the exchange of words) and economics (as the exchange of material goods) goes back to Smith. Most anthropologists attribute it to Claude Levi-Strauss (1963:296).<br /> <br /> 10. The reference to shepherds implies he may be referring to another part of the world, but elsewhere his examples, for instance of trading deer for beaver, make it clear he's thinking of the Northeast woodlands of North America.<br /> <br /> n. Wealth of Nations !.4.2.<br /> <br /> 12. Wealth of Nations I.4.3.<br /> <br /> 13. Wealth of Nations !.4.<br /> <br /> 14. The idea of an historical sequence from barter to money to credit actually seems to appear first in the lectures of an Italian banker named Bernardo Davanzati (1SZ9-16o6; so Waswo 1996); it was developed as an explicit theory by German economic historians: Bruno Hildebrand (1864), who posited a prehistoric stage of barter, an ancient stage of coinage, and then, after some reversion to barter in the Middle Ages, a modern stage of credit economy. It took canonical form in the work of his student, Karl Biicher (1907). The sequence has now become universally accepted common sense, and it reappears in at least tacit form in Marx, and explicitly in Simmel-again, despite the fact that almost all subsequent historical research has proved it wrong.<br /> <br /> IS. Though they did make an impression on many others. Morgan's work in particular (18sl, 1877, 1881), which emphasized both collective property rights and the extraordinary importance of women, with women's councils largely in control of economic life, so impressed many radical thinkers-included Marx and Engels-that they became the basis of a kind of counter-myth, of primitive communism and primitive matriarchy.<br /> <br /> 16. Anne Chapman' (1980) goes if anything further, noting that if pure barter is to be defined as concerned only with swapping objects, and not with rearranging relations between people, it's not clear that it has ever existed. See also Heady zoos.<br /> <br /> 17. Levi-Strauss 1943; the translation is from Servet 198z:33.<br /> <br /> 18. One must imagine the temptation for a sexual variety must be fairly strong, for young men and women accustomed to spending almost all of their time with maybe a dozen other people the same age.<br /> <br /> 19. Berndt 19S1:161, cf. Gudeman zoo1: 1z4-zs, who provides an analysis quite similar to my own.<br /> <br /> zo. Berndt 19SI:I6z.<br /> <br /> ZI. Though as we will note later, it's not exactly as if international business deals now never involve music, dancing, food, drugs, high-priced hookers, or the possibility of violence. For a random<br /> <br /> example underlining the last two, see Perkins zoos.<br /> <br /> zz. Lindholm 198z:n6.<br /> <br /> z3. Server zoo1:zo-z1 compiles an enormous number of such terms.<br /> <br /> z4. The point is so obvious that it's amazing it hasn't been made more often. The only classical economist I'm aware of who appears to have considered the possibility that deferred payments might have made barter unnecessary is Ralph Hawtrey (i9z8:z, cited in Einzig 1949=37S1. All others simply assume, for no reason, that all exchanges even between neighbors must have necessarily been what economists like to call &quot;spot trades. &quot;<br /> <br /> zs. Bohannan 19SS, Barth 1969. cf. Munn 1986, Akin &amp; Robbins 1998. A good summary of the concept can be found in Gregory i98z:48-49. Gregory gives one example of a highland Papua New Guinea system with six ranks of valuables, with live pigs and cassowary birds on the top rank, &quot;pearl-shell pendants, pork sides, stone axes, cassowary-plume headdresses, and cowrie-shell headbands&quot; on the second, and so on. Ordinarily items of items of consumption are confined to the last two, which consist of luxury foods and staple vegetable foods, respectively.<br /> <br /> z6. See Server 1998, Humphries 198s.<br /> <br /> z7. The classic essay here is Radford 194S.<br /> <br /> z8. In the 16oos, at least, actually called the old Carolingian denominations &quot;imaginary money&quot;-everyone persisting in using pounds, shillings, and pence (or livres, deniers, and sous) for the intervening Boo years, despite the fact that for most of that period, actual coins-were entirely different, or simply didn't exist (Einaudi 1936).<br /> <br /> z9. Other examples of barter coexisting with money: Orlove 1986; Barnes &amp; Barnes 1989.<br /> <br /> 30. One of the disadvantages of having your book becomes a classic is that often, people will actually check out such examples. (One of the advantages is that even if they discover you were mistaken, people will continue to cite you as an authority anyway.)<br /> <br /> 31. Innes 1913:378. He goes on to observe: &quot;A moment's reflection shows that a staple commodity could not be used as money, because ex hypothesi, the medium of exchange is equally receivable by all members of the community. Thus if the fishers paid for their supplies in cod, the traders would equally have to pay for their cod in cod, an obvious absurdity.&quot;<br /> <br /> 32. The temples appear to have come first; the palaces, which became increasingly important over time, took over their system of administration.<br /> <br /> 33. Smith was not dreaming about these: the current technical term for such ingots is &quot;hacksilber&quot; (e.g., Balmuth 2001).<br /> <br /> 34. Compare Grierson 1977:17 for Egyptian parallels.<br /> <br /> 35. e.g., Hudson 2002:25, 2004:114<br /> <br /> 36. Innes 1913:381<br /> <br /> 37. Peter Spufford's monumental Money and Its Use in Medieval Europe (1988), which devotes hundreds of pages to gold and silver mining, mints, and debasement of coinage, makes only two or three mentions of various sorts of lead or leather token money or minor credit arrangements by which ordinary people appear to have conducted the overwhelming majority of their daily transactions. About these, he says, &quot;we can know next to nothing&quot; (1988:336). An even more dramatic example is the tally-stick, of which we will hear a good deal: the use of tallies instead of cash was widespread in the Middle Ages, but there has been almost no systematic research on the subject, especially outside England.<br /> <br /> === Chapter Three ===<br /> 1. Heinsohn &amp; Steiger (1989) even suggest the main reason their fellow economists haven't abandoned the story is that anthropologists have not yet provided an equally compelling alternative. Still,<br /> <br /> almost all histories of money continue to begin with fanciful accounts of barter. Another expedient is to fall back on pure circular definitions: if &quot;barter&quot; is an economic transaction that does not employ currency, then any economic transaction that doesn't involve currency, whatever its form or content, must be barter. Glyn Davies (1996:u-13) thus describes even Kwakiutl potlatches as &quot;barter.&quot;<br /> <br /> 2. We often forget that there was a strong religious element in all this. Newton himself was in no sense an atheistin fact, he tried to use his mathematical abilities to confirm that the world really had been created, as Bishop Ussher had earlier argued, sometime around October 23, 4004 BC.<br /> <br /> 3. Smith first uses the phrase &quot;invisible hand&quot; in his Astronomy (111.2), but in Theory of Moral Sentiments IV.r.1o, he is explicit that the invisible hand of the market is that of &quot;Providence. &quot; On Smith's theology in general see Nicholls 2003:3543; on its possible connection to Medieval Islam, see chapter 10 below.<br /> <br /> 4. Samuelson 1948:49. See Heinsohn and Steiger 1989 for a critique of this position; also Ingham 2004.<br /> <br /> 5. Pigou 1949. Boianovsky 1993 provides a history of the term.<br /> <br /> 6. &quot;We do not know of any economy in which systematic barter takes place without the presence of money&quot; (Fay-azmanesh 2006:87)-by which he means, in the sense of money of account.<br /> <br /> 7. On the government role of fostering the &quot;self-regulating market&quot; in general, see Polanyi 1949. The standard economic orthodoxy, that if the government just gets out of the way, a market will naturally emerge, without any need to create appropriate legal, police, and political institutions first, was dramatically disproved when free-market ideologues tried to impose this model in the former Soviet Union in the 1990s.<br /> <br /> 8. Innes as usual puts it nicely: &quot;The eye has never seen, nor the hand touched a dollar. All that we can touch or see is a promise to pay or satisfy a debt due for an amount called a dollar.&quot; In the same way, he notes, &quot;All our measures are the same. No one has ever seen on ounce or a foot or an hour. A foot is the distance between two fixed points, but neither the distance nor the points have a corporeal existence&quot; (1914:155).<br /> <br /> 9. Note that this does assume some means of calculating such values-that is, that money of account of some sort already exists. This might seem obvious, but remarkable numbers of anthropologists seem to have missed it.<br /> <br /> 10. To give some sense of scale, even the relatively circumscribed commercial city-state of Hong Kong currently has roughly $23.3 billion in circulation. At roughly 7 million people, that's more than three thousand Hong Kong dollars per inhabitant.<br /> <br /> n. &quot;State theory may be traced to the early nineteenth century and to [Adam] Muller's New Theory of Money, which attempted to explain money value as an expression of communal trust and national will, and culminated in [G.F.] Knapp's State Theory of Money, first published in German in 1905. Knapp considered it absurd to attempt to understand money 'without the idea of the state.' Money is not a medium that emerges from exchange. It is rather a means for accounting for and settling debts, the most important of which are tax debts&quot; (Ingham 2004:47.) Ingham's book is an admirable statement of the Chartalist position, and much of my argument here can be found in much greater detail in it. However, as will later become apparent, I also part company with him in certain respects.<br /> <br /> 12. In French: livres, sous, and deniers.<br /> <br /> 13. Einaudi 1936. Cipolla (1967) calls it &quot;ghost money.&lt;nowiki&gt;''&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> <br /> 14. On tallies: Jenkinson 1911, 1924; Innes 1913; Grandell 1977; Baxter 1989; Stone 2005.<br /> <br /> 15. Snell (1919:240) notes that kings while touring their domains would sometimes seize cattle or other goods by right<br /> <br /> of &quot;preemption&quot; and then pay in tal\ies, but it was very difficult to get their representatives to later pay up: &quot;Subjects were compelled to sell; and the worst of it was that the King's purveyors were in the habit of paying not in cash down, but by means of an exchequer tally, or a beating . . . In practice it was found no easy matter to recover under this system, which lent itself to the worst exactions, and is the subject of numerous complaints in our early popular poetry.&quot;<br /> <br /> 16. It is also interesting to note, in this regard, that the Bank of England still kept their own internal accounts using tally sticks in Adam Smith's time, and only abandoned the practice in 1826.<br /> <br /> q. See Engels (1978) for a classic study of this sort of problem.<br /> <br /> 18. Appealing particularly to debtors, who were understandably drawn to the idea that debt is simply a social arrangement that was in no sense immutable but created by government policies that could just as easily be reshuffled-not to mention, who would benefit from inflationary policies.<br /> <br /> 19. On the tax, Jacob 1987; for the Betsimisaraka village study, Althabe 1968; for analogous Malagasy case studies, Fremigacci 1976, Rainibe 1982, Schlemmer 1983, Feeley-Harnik 1991. For colonial tax policy in Africa more generally, Forstater 2005, 2006.<br /> <br /> 20. So, for instance, Heinsohn &amp; Steiger 1989:188-189.<br /> <br /> 21. Silver was mined in the Midwest itself, and adopting bi-metallism, with both gold and silver as potential backing for currency, was seen as a move in the direction of free credit money, and to allow for the creation of money by local banks. The late nineteenth century saw the first creation of modern corporate capitalism in the United States and it was fervently resisted, with the centralization of the banking system being a major field of struggle, and mutualism-popular democratic (not profit oriented) banking and insurance arrangements-one of the main forms of resistance. The bi-metallists were the more moderate successors of the Greenbackers, who called for a currency detached from money altogether, such as Lincoln briefly imposed in wartime (Dighe (2002) provides a good summary of the historical background.)<br /> <br /> 22. They only became ruby slippers in the movie.<br /> <br /> 23. Some have even suggested that Dorothy herself represents Teddy Roosevelt, since syllabically, &quot;dor-o-thee&quot; is the same as &quot;thee-o-dor&quot;, only backwards.<br /> <br /> 24 See Littlefield 1963 and Rockoff 1990 for a detailed argument about The Wizard of Oz as &quot;monetary allegory. &quot; Baum never admitted that the book had a political subtext, but even those who doubt he put one in intentionally (e.g., Parker 1994; cf. Taylor 2005) admit that such a meaning was quickly attributed to it-there were already explicit political references in the stage version of 1902, only two years after the book's original publication.<br /> <br /> 25. Reagan could as easily be argued to be a practitioner of extreme military Keynesianism, using the Pentagon's budget to create jobs and drive economic growth; anyway, monetary orthodoxy was abandoned very quickly even rhetorically among those actually managing the system.<br /> <br /> 26. See Ingham 2000.<br /> <br /> 27. Keynes 1930: 4-5<br /> <br /> 28. The argument is referred to as the paradox of banking. To provide an extremely simplified version: say there was only one bank. Even if that bank were to make you a loan of a trillion dollars based on no assets of its own of any kind whatever, you would ultimately end up putting the money back into the bank again, which would mean that the bank would now have one trillion in debt, and one trillion in working assets, perfectly balancing each other out. If the bank was charging you more for the loan than it was giving you in interest (which banks always do), it would also make a profit.<br /> <br /> The same would be true if you spent the trillion-whoever ended up with the money would still have to put it into the bank again. Keynes pointed out the existence of multiple banks didn't really change anything, provided bankers coordinated their efforts, which, in fact, they always do.<br /> <br /> 29. I might note that this assumption echoes the logic of neoclassical economic theory, which assumes that all basic institutional arrangements that define the context of economic activity were agreed to by all parties at some imaginary point in the past, and that since then, everything has and will always continue to exist in equilibrium. Interestingly, Keynes explicitly rejected this assumption in his theory of money (Davidson 2006). Contemporary social contract theorists incidentally make a similar argument, that there's no need to assume that this actually happened; it's enough to say it could have and act as if it did.<br /> <br /> 30. Aglietta is a Marxist, and one of the founders of the &quot;Regulation School,&quot; Orleans, an adherent of the &quot;economics of convention&quot; favored by Thevenot and Boltanski. Primordial debt theory has been mainly developed by a group of researchers surrounding economists Michel Agliet-ta and Andre Orleans, first in La Violence de Ia Monnaie (1992), which employed a psychoanalytic, Giradian framework, and then in a volume called Sovereignty, Legitimacy and Money (1995) and a collection called Sovereign Money (Aglietta, Andreau, etc. 1998), co-edited by eleven different scholars. The latter two volumes abandon the Girardian framework for a Dumontian one. In recent years the main exponent of this position has been another Regulationist, Bruno Theret (1992, 1995, 2007, 2008). Unfortunately almost none of this material has ever been translated into English, though a summary of many of Aglietta's contributions can be found in Grahl (20oo).<br /> <br /> 31. For instance, Randall Wray (1990, 1998, 2ooo) and Stephanie Bell (1999, 2ooo) in the United States, or Geoffrey Ingham (1996, 1999, 2004) in the United Kingdom. Michael Hudson and others in the ISCANEE group have taken up elements of the idea, but have never to my knowledge fully embraced it.<br /> <br /> 32. *Rna. Malamoud (1983:22) notes that already in the earliest text it had both the meaning of &quot;goods received in return for the promise to hand back either the goods themselves or something of at least equivalent value&quot;, as well as &quot;crime&quot; or &quot;fault. &quot; So also Olivelle 1993:48, who notes *rna &quot;can mean fault, crime, or guilt-often at the same time.&quot; It is not however the same as the word for &quot;duty.&quot; For a typical example of early prayers for release from debt, see Atharva Veda Book 6 Hymns 117, uS, and 119.<br /> <br /> 33. Satapatha Brahmana 3.6.2.16<br /> <br /> 34. As Sylvain Levi, Marcel Mauss's mentor, remarked, if one takes the Brahmanic doctrine seriously, &quot;the only authentic sacrifice would be suicide&quot; (1898:133; so also A.B. Keith 1925:459). But of course no one actually took things that far.<br /> <br /> 35. More precisely, it offered the sac-rificer a way to break out of a world in which everything, including himself, was a creation of the gods, to fashion an immortal, divine body, ascend into heaven, and thus be &quot;born into a world he made himself&quot; (Satapatha Brahmana VI:2.2.27) where all debts could be repaid, buy back his abandoned mortal body from the gods (see, i.e., Levi 1898:130-32, Malamoud 1983:31-32). This is certainly one of the most ambitious claims ever made for the efficacy of sacrifice, but some priests in China around that time were making similar claims (Puett 2002).<br /> <br /> 36. Translated &quot;saints&quot; in the text with which I began the chapter, but since it refers to the authors of the sacred texts, the usage seems appropriate.<br /> <br /> 37. I am fusing here two slightly different versions: one in Tattiriya Sarphita (6.3.10.5), which says that all Brahmans are born with a debt, but only lists gods, Fathers, and sages, leaving out the duty<br /> <br /> of hospitality, and the other in Satapatha Brahmana (1.7.2.1-6) that says all men are born as a debt, listing all four-but which seems really to be referring to males of twice-born castes. For a full discussion: see Malamoud 1983 and Olivelle 1993:4655, also Malamoud 1998.<br /> <br /> 38. Theret 1999:6o-61<br /> <br /> 39. &quot;The ultimate discharge of this fundamental debt is sacrifice of the living to appease and express gratitude to the ancestors and deities of the cosmos&quot; (Ingham 2004:90).<br /> <br /> 40. op cit. He cites Hudson 2oo2:1o2-3, on the terms for &quot;guilt&quot; or &quot;sin,&quot; but as we'll see the point goes back to Grierson (1977:22-23).<br /> <br /> 41. Laum 1924. His argument about the origin of money in Greece in temple distributions is intriguing and has found contemporary exponents in Seaford (2004) and partly in Hudson (e.g., 2003) but is really a theory of the origin of coinage.<br /> <br /> 42. More than I would ever dream of trying to cite. There are two standard survey works on &quot;primitive money,&quot; by Quiggin and by Einzig, both of which, curiously, came out in 1949. Both are outdated in their analysis but contain a great deal of useful material.<br /> <br /> 43 • English &quot;pay&quot; is from French payer, which in turn is derived from Latin pa-care, &quot;to pacify,&quot; &quot;to make peace with. &quot; Pacare in turn is related to pacere, &quot;to come to terms with an injured party&quot; (Grierson 1977=21).<br /> <br /> 44. Grierson 1977:20.<br /> <br /> 45. In fact, as Grierson notes, the authors often seemed to be intentionally making fun of themselves, as in the Irish text that specifies that one can demand compensation for a bee-sting, but only if one first deducts the cost of the dead bee (Grierson 1977=26).<br /> <br /> 46. We have plenty of myths and hymns from ancient Mesopotamia, too, for ipstance- but most were discovered in the ruins of ancient libraries that were also full of records of court trials, business contracts, and personal correspondence. In the case of the oldest Sanskrit texts, religious literature is all we have. What's more, since these were texts passed on verbatim from teacher to student for thousands of years, we can't even say with any precision when and where they were written.<br /> <br /> 47. Interest-bearing loans certainly existed in Mesopotamia, but they only appear in Egypt in Hellenistic times, and in the Germanic world even later. The text speaks of &quot;the tribute that I owe to Yama,&quot; which could refer to &quot;interest,&quot; but the comprehensive review of early Indian legal sources in Kane's History of Dharmasastra (1973 Il1:4n-461) comes to no clear conclusion on when interest first appeared; Kosambi (1994:148) estimates that it might have appeared in soo BC but admits this is a guess.<br /> <br /> 48. Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China come most immediately to mind. The notion that life is a loan from the gods does occur elsewhere: it seems to crop up spontaneously in ancient Greece, around the same time as money and interest-bearing loans do. &quot;We are all owed as a debt to death,&quot; wrote the poet Simonides, around soo BC. &quot;The sentiment that life was a loan to be repaid by death [became] an almost proverbial saying&quot; (Millet 1991a:6). No Greek author to my knowledge connects this explicitly to sacrifice, though one could conceivably argue that Plato's character Cephalus does so implicitly in one passage of the Republic (331d).<br /> <br /> 49. Hubert and Mauss (1964) provide a good survey of the ancient literature in this regard.<br /> <br /> so. Finley 1981:90<br /> <br /> 51. This was something of a legalistic distinction; what it really meant in practice was that funds levied in Persia were technically considered &quot;gifts,&quot; but it shows the power of the principle (Briant 2006:398-99)<br /> <br /> 52. Pharaonic Egypt and imperial China certainly did levy direct taxes, in money, kind, or labor, in different proportions at different times. In early India,<br /> <br /> the gana-sangha republics do not seem to have demanded taxes of their citizens, but the monarchies that ultimately replaced them did (Rhys Davies 1922:198-200). My point is that taxes were not inevitable and were often seen as marks of conquest.<br /> <br /> 53 • I am following what I believe is still the predominant view; though at least in some places Palaces were in charge of pretty much everything from quite early on, and Temples quite subordinate (see Maekawa 1973-1974). There is lively debate about this, as with the balance of temple, palace, clan, and individual holdings in different times and places, but I have avoided going into such debates, however interesting, unless they have a direct bearing on my argument.<br /> <br /> 54. I am following Hudson's interpretation (2002), though others-e.g, Stein-keller 1981, Mieroop 2002:64-suggest that interest may have instead originated in rental fees.<br /> <br /> 55. For a good summary, Hudson 1993, 2002. The meaning of amargi is first noted in Falkenstein (1954), see also Kramer (1963:79, Lemche (1979:16n34).<br /> <br /> 56. In ancient Egypt there were no loans at interest, and we know relatively little about other early empires, so we don't know how unusual this was. But the Chinese evidence is at the very least suggestive. Chinese theories of money were always resolutely Chartalist; and in the standard story about the origins of coinage, since at least Han times, the mythic founder of the Shang dynasty, upset to see so many families having to sell their children during famines, created coins so that the government could redeem the children and return them to their families (see chapter 8, below).<br /> <br /> 57. What is sacrifice, after all, but a recognition that an act such as taking an animal's life, even if necessary for our sustenance, is not an act to be taken lightly, but with an attitude of humility before the cosmos?<br /> <br /> 58. Unless the recipient is owed money by the creditor, allowing everyone to cancel their debts in a circle. This might seem an extraneous point, but the circular cancellation of debts in this way seems to have been quite a common practice in much of history: see, for instance, the description of &quot;reckonings&quot; in chapter n below.<br /> <br /> 59 I am not ascribing this position to the authors of the Brahmanas necessarily; only pursuing what I take to be the internal logic of the argument, in dialogue with its authors.<br /> <br /> 6o. Malamoud 1983:32.<br /> <br /> 61. Comte 1891:295<br /> <br /> 62. In France, particularly by political thinkers like Alfred Fouille and Leon Bourgeois. The latter, leader of the Radical Party in the 189os, made the notion of social debt one of the conceptual foundations for what his philosophy of &quot;solidarism&quot;-a form of radical republicanism that, he argued, could provide a kind of middle-ground alternative to both revolutionary Marxism and free-market liberalism. The idea was to overcome the violence of class struggle by appealing to a new moral system based on the notion of a shared debt to society-of which the state, of course, was merely the administrator and representative (Hayward 1959, Donzelot 1994, Jobert 2003). Emile Durkheim too was a Solidarist politically.<br /> <br /> 63. As a slogan, the expression is generally attributed to Charles Gide, the late-nineteenth-century French cooperativist, but became common in Solidarist circles. It became an important principle in Turkish socialist circles at the time (Aydan 2003), and, I have heard, though I have not been able to verify, in Latin America.<br /> <br /> === Chapter Four ===<br /> 1. Hart 1986:638.<br /> <br /> 2. The technical term for this is &quot;fi-duciarity,&quot; the degree to which its value is based not on metal content but public trust. For a good discussion of the<br /> <br /> fiduciarity of ancient currencies, see Seaford 2004:139-146. Almost all metal coins were overvalued. If the government set the value below that of the metal, of course, people would simply melt them down; if it's set at exactly the metal value, the results are usually deflationary. As Bruno Theret (2008:826-27) points out, although Locke's reforms, which set the value of the British sovereign at exactly its weight in silver, were ideologically motivated, they had disastrous economic effects. Obviously, if coinage is debased or the value otherwise set too high in relation to the metal content, this can produce inflation. But the traditional view, where, say, the Roman currency was ultimately destroyed by debasement, is clearly false, since it took centuries for inflation to occur (Ingham 2004:102-3).<br /> <br /> 3. Einzig 1949:104; similar gambling chits, in this case made of bamboo, were used in Chinese towns in the Gobi desert (ibid: 108).<br /> <br /> 4 On English token money, see Williamson 1889; Whiting 1971; Mathias 1979b.<br /> <br /> 5. On cacao, Millon 1955; on Ethopian salt money, Einzig 1949:123-26. Both Karl Marx (1857:223, 1867:182) and Max Weber (1978:673-74) were of the opinion that money had emerged from barter between societies, not within them. Karl Bucher (1904), and arguably Karl Polanyi (1968), held something close to this position, at least insofar as they insisted that modern money emerged from external exchange. Inevitably there must have been some sort of mutually reinforcing process between currencies of trade and the local accounting system. Insofar as we can talk about the &quot;invention&quot; of money in its modern sense, presumably this would be the place to look, though in places like Mesopotamia this must have happened long before the use of writing, and hence the history is effectively lost to us.<br /> <br /> 6. Einzig (1949:266), citing Kulischer (1926:92) and Ilwof (1882:36).<br /> <br /> 7. Genealogy of Morals, 2.8.<br /> <br /> 8. As I remarked earlier, both Adam Smith and Nietzsche thus anticipate Levi-Strauss's famous argument that language is the &quot;exchange of words. &quot; The remarkable thing here is that so many have managed to convince themselves that in all this, Nietzsche is providing a radical alternative to bourgeois ideology, even to the logic of exchange. Deleuze and Guattari, most embarrassingly, insist that &quot;the great book of modern ethnology is not so much Mauss' The Gift as Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals. At least it should be,&quot; since, they say, Nietzsche succeeds in interpreting &quot;primitive society&quot; in terms of debt, where Mauss still hesitates to break with the logic of exchange (1972:224-25). On their inspiration, Sarthou-Lajus (1997) has written philosophy of debt as an alternative to bourgeois ideologies of exchange, that, she claims, assume the prior autonomy of the person. Of course what Nietzsche proposes is not an alternative at all. It's another aspect of the same thing. All this is a vivid reminder of how easy it is to mistake radicalized forms of our own bourgeois tradition as alternatives to it (Bataille [1993], who Deleuze and Guat-tari praise as another alternative to Mauss in the same passage, is another notorious example of this sort of thing).<br /> <br /> 9. Genealogy of Morals 2.5.<br /> <br /> 10. Nietzsche had clearly been reading too much Shakespeare. There is no record of the mutilation of debtors in the ancient world; there was a good deal of mutilation of slaves, but they were by definition people who could not be in debt. Mutilation for debt is occasionally attested to in the Medieval period, but as we'll see, Jews tended to be the victims, since they were largely without rights, and certainly not the perpetrators. Shakespeare turned the story around.<br /> <br /> n. Genealogy of Morals 2.19.<br /> <br /> 12. Genealogy of Morals 2.21.<br /> <br /> 13. Freuchen 1961:154. It's not clear what language this was said in, considering that Inuit did not actually have an institution of slavery. It's also interesting<br /> <br /> because the passage would not make sense unless there were some contexts in which gift exchange did operate, and therefore, debts accrued. What the hunter is emphasizing is that it was felt important that this logic did not extend to the basic means of human existence, such as food.<br /> <br /> 14. To take an example, the Ganges Valley in the Buddha's time was full of arguments about the relative merits of monarchical and democratic constitutions. Gautama, though the son of a king, sided with the democrats, and many of the decision-making techniques used in democratic assemblies of the time remain preserved in the organization of Buddhist monasteries (Muhlenberger &amp; Paine 1997.) Were it not for this we would not know anything about them, or even be entirely sure that such democratic polities existed.<br /> <br /> 15. For instance, buying back one's ancestral land (Leviticus 25:25, 26) or anything one had given to the Temple (Leviticus 27).<br /> <br /> 16. Here too, in the case of complete insolvency, the debtor might lose his own freedom as well. See Houston (2oo6) for a good survey of the contemporary literature on economic conditions in the time of the prophets. I here follow a synthesis of his and Michael Hudson's (1993) reconstruction.<br /> <br /> 17. See for instance, Amos 2.6, 8.2, and Isaiah 58.<br /> <br /> 18. Nehemiah 5:3-7.<br /> <br /> 19. There continues to be intense scholarly debate about whether these laws were in fact invented by Nehemiah and his priestly allies (especially Ezra), and whether they were ever actually enforced in any period: see Alexander 1938; North 1954; Finkelstein 1961, 1965; Westbrook 1971; Lemke 1976, 1979; Hudson 1993; Houston 1996 for a few examples. At first there were similar debates about whether Mesopotamian &quot;clean states&quot; were actually enforced, until overwhelming evidence was produced that they were. The bulk of the evidence now indicates that the laws in Deuteronomy were enforced as well, though we can never know for certain how effectively.<br /> <br /> 20. &quot;Every seventh year you shall make a cancellation. The cancellation shall be as follows: every creditor is to release the debts that he has owing to him by his neighbor&quot; (Deuteronomy 15:1-3). Those held in debt bondage were also freed. Every 49 (or in some readings 50) years came the Jubilee, when all family land was to be returned to its original owners, and even family members who had been sold as slaves set free (Leviticus 25:9).<br /> <br /> 21. Unsurprisingly, since the need to borrow was most often sparked by the need to pay taxes imposed by foreign conquerors.<br /> <br /> 22. Hudson notes in Babylonian, clean slates were &quot;called hubullum (debt) masa'um (to wash}, literally 'a washing away of the debt [records],' that is, a dissolving of the clay tablets on which financial obligations were inscribed&quot; (1993:19).<br /> <br /> 23. Matthew 18: 23-34.<br /> <br /> 24. To give a sense of the figures involved, ten thousand talents in gold is roughly equivalent to the entire Roman tax receipts from their provinces in what's now the Middle East. A hundred denarii is 1/6o of one talent, and therefore worth 6oo,ooo times less.<br /> <br /> 25. Opheilema in the Greek original, which meant &quot;that which is owed,&quot; &quot;financial debts,&quot; and by extension, &quot;sin.&quot; This was apparently used to translate the Aramaic hoyween, which also meant both &quot;debt&quot; and, by extension, &quot;sin.&quot; The English here (as in all later Bible citations) follows the King James version, which in this case is itself based on a 1381 translation of the Lord's prayer by John Wycliffe. Most readers will probably be more familiar with 1559 Book of Common Prayer version that substitutes &quot;And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.&quot; However, the original is quite explicitly &quot;debts.&quot;<br /> <br /> 26. Changing these to &quot;spiritual debts&quot; doesn't really change the problem.<br /> <br /> 27. The prospect of sexual abuse in these situations clearly weighed heavily on the popular imagination. &quot;Some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already&quot; protested the Israelites to Nehemiah. Technically, daughters taken in debt bondage were not, if virgins, expected to be sexually available to creditors who did not wish to marry them or marry them to their sons (Exodus 21:7-9; Wright 2009:13o-33) though chattel slaves were sexually available (see Hezser 2003}, and often the roles blurred in practice; even where laws theoretically protected them, fathers must often have had little means to protect them or cause those laws to be enforced. The -Roman historian Livy's account of the abolition of debt bondage in Rome in 326 BC, for instance, featured a handsome young man named Caius Pub-lilius placed in bondage for a debt he'd inherited from his father, and who was savagely beaten for refusing the sexual advances of his creditor (Livy 8.28). When he appeared on the streets and announced what had happened to him, crowds gathered and marched on the Senate to demand that they abolish the institution.<br /> <br /> 28. Particularly if the slaves were foreigners captured in war. As we'll see, the common belief that there were no moral objections to slavery in the ancient world is false. There were plenty. But aside from certain radicals such as the Essenes, the institution was accepted as an unfortunate necessity.<br /> <br /> 29. Hudson (2002:37) cites the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (i.79) who attributes this motive to the Egyptian pharaoh Bakenranef, though he too emphasizes that military considerations were not the only ones, but that cancellations reflected broader feelings about justice.<br /> <br /> 30. Oppenheim 1964:88. Oppenheim suggests that interest-free loans were more common in the Levant, and that in Mesopotamia social equals were more likely to charge each other interest but on easier terms, citing an Old Assyrian merchant who speaks of &quot;the rate one brother charges another&quot; (op cit). In ancient Greece, friendly loans between social equals were known as eranos loans, usually of sums raised by an impromptu mutual-aid society and not involving the payment of interest (Jones 1956:171-73; Vondeling 1961; Finley 1981:67-68; Millet 1991:153-155). Aristocrats often made such loans to one another, but so did groups of slaves trying to pool money to buy back their freedom (Harrill 1998:167). This tendency, for mutual aid to be most marked at the very top and very bottom of the social scale is a consistent pattern to this day.<br /> <br /> 31. Hence the constant invocation of the phrase &quot;your brother,&quot; particularly in Deuteronomy, e.g., &quot;you shall not lend at interest to your brother&quot; (23:20).<br /> <br /> === Chapter Five ===<br /> As we'll see in chapter seven, Plato begins The Republic in exactly the same way.<br /> <br /> 2. For a polite but devastating assessment, see Kahneman 2003.<br /> <br /> 3. Homans 1958, also Blau 1964; Levi-Strauss 1963:296. In anthropology, the first to propose reciprocity as a universal principle was Richard Thurnwald (1916), but it was made famous by Malinowski (1922).<br /> <br /> 4. One reason no known law code has ever been known to enforce the principle; the penalty was always there to be commuted to something else.<br /> <br /> 5. Atwood (2008:1). The author then proceeds to explore the nature of our sense of economic morality by comparing the behavior of caged apes with middleclass Canadian children to argue that all human relations are indeed either exchange or forcible appropriation (ibid:49). Despite the brilliance of many of its arguments, the result is a rather sad testimony to how difficult it is for the scions of the North Atlantic professional classes not to see their own characteristic ways of imagining the world as simple human nature.<br /> <br /> 6. Seton's father, a failed shipping magnate turned accountant, was, Seton later wrote, so cold and abusive that his son spent much of his youth in the woods trying to avoid him; after paying the debt-which incidentally came to $537.50, a tidy but not insurmountable sum in 1881-he changed his name and spent much of the rest of his life trying to develop more healthy child-rearing techniques.<br /> <br /> 7. Rev. W.H. Beatley in Levy-Bruhl 1923:411<br /> <br /> 8. Rev. Fr. Bulléon, in Levy-Bruhl 1923:425<br /> <br /> 9. This phrase was not coined by Marx, incidentally, but was apparently a slogan current in the early French workers' movement, first appearing in print in the work of socialist Louis Blanc in 1839. Marx only took up the phrase in his Critique of the Gotha Programme in 1875, and even then used it in a rather idiosyncratic way: for the principle he imagined could apply on the level of society as a whole once technology had reached the point of guaranteeing absolute material abundance. For Marx, &quot;communism&quot; was both the political movement aiming to bring about such a future society, and that society itself. I am drawing here more on the alternate strain of revolutionary theory, evident most famously perhaps in Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid (1902).<br /> <br /> 10. At least, unless there is some specific reason not to- for instance, a hierarchical division of labor that says some people get coffee and others do not.<br /> <br /> 11. What this means of course is that command economies-putting government bureaucracies in charge of coordinating every aspect of the production and distribution of goods and services within a given national territory-tends to be much less efficient than other available alternatives. This is obviously true, though if it &quot;just doesn't work&quot; at all, it's hard to imagine how states like the Soviet Union could have existed, let alone maintain hemselves as world powers, in the first place.<br /> <br /> 12. Evans-Pritchard 1940:182<br /> <br /> 13. Similarly, a middle-class pedestrian would be unlikely to ask a gang member for directions, and might even run in fear if one approached him to ask for the time, but this is again because of an assumption of a tacit state of war existing between them.<br /> <br /> 14. Ibid, p. 183.<br /> <br /> 15. Richards 1939:197. Max Gluckman, remarking on such customs, concludes that insofar as it is possible to speak of &quot;primitive communism,&quot; it exists in consumption, rather than production, which tends to be much more individually organized (1971:52).<br /> <br /> 16. A typical example: &quot;if a cabin of hungry people meets another whose provisions are not entirely exhausted, the latter share with the newcomers the little which remains to them without waiting to be asked, although they expose themselves thereby to the same danger of perishing as those whom they help ...&quot; Lafitau 1974 Volume II:61.<br /> <br /> 17. Jesuit Relations (1635) 8:127, cited in Delage 1993:54.<br /> <br /> 18. This is a common arrangement in certain parts of the world (particularly the Andes, Amazonia, insular Southeast Asia, and Melanesia), and invariably there is some rule whereby each half is dependent on the other for something considered essential to human life. One can only marry someone from the other side of the village, or maybe one can only eat pigs raised on the other side, or perhaps one side needs people from the other side to sponsor the rituals that initiate its male children into manhood.<br /> <br /> 19. As I have suggested elsewhere, Graeber 2oo1:159&quot; o; cf. Mauss 194T 104-55<br /> <br /> 20. I'm side-stepping the whole question of one-sided examples discussed in Graeber 2001:218.<br /> <br /> 21. Marshall Sahlins (1972) coined the phrase &quot;generalized reciprocity&quot; to<br /> <br /> describe this sort of relation, on the principle that if everything circulates freely, eventually, all accounts will balance out. Marcel Mauss was already making such an argument in lectures back in the 1930s (1947), but he also recognized the problems: while this might be true of Iroquois moieties, some relationships never balance out-for instance, between mother and child. His solution, &quot;alternating reciprocity &quot;-that we repay our parents by having children ourselves-is clearly drawn from his study of the Vedas, but it ultimately demonstrates that if one has already decided that all relations are based on reciprocity, one can always define the term so broadly as to make it true.<br /> <br /> 22. Hostis: see Benveniste 1972:72. The Latin terminology concerning hospitality emphasizes the absolute mastery of the house by its (male) owner as the precondition of any act of hospitality; Derrida (2ooo, 2001) argues that this points to a central contradiction in the very concept of hospitality, since it implies an already-existing absolute dominium or power over others, the kind that might be seen as taking its most exploitative form in Lot's offering his own daughters up to a crowd of Sodomites to dissuade them from raping his houseguests. However, this same principle of hospitality can be equally well documented in societies-such as the Iroquois-that were anything but patriarchal.<br /> <br /> 23. Evans-Pritchard 1940:154, 158.<br /> <br /> 24. This is of course one reason why the very rich like to associate mainly with one another. '<br /> <br /> 25. In a less hostile vein one can speak of an exchange of prisoners, notes, or compliments.<br /> <br /> 26. A good source on haggling: Uchen-do 1967.<br /> <br /> 27. Bohannan 1964:47.<br /> <br /> 28. Not even a real business deal, since these may. often involve a great deal of collective wining and dining and giving of presents. More the sort of imaginary business deal that appears in economics textbooks.<br /> <br /> 29. One need only glance at the vast anthropological literature on &quot;competitive feasting&quot;: e.g., Valeri 2001.<br /> <br /> 30. Bourdieu 1965 is the key text, but he repeats the main points in Bourdieu 1990:98-ror.<br /> <br /> 31. Onvlee 1980:204.<br /> <br /> 32. Petronius 51; Pliny Natural History 36.195; Dio 57.21.5-7.<br /> <br /> 33. &quot;This king is of all men the most addicted to the making of gifts and the shedding of blood. His gate is never without some poor man enriched or some living man executed.&quot;<br /> <br /> 34. Or even the very rich. Nelson Rockefeller, for example, used to pride himself on never carrying a wallet. He didn't need one. Every now and then when he was working late and wanted cigarettes, he would borrow some from the security people at the desk at Rockefeller Center, who would then be able to boast that they had lent a Rockefeller money and would rarely ask for it back. In contrast, &quot;the sixteenth-century Portuguese monarch Dam Manuel, newly rich from the Indies trade, adopted the title 'Lord of the Conquest, Navigation, and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India.' Others called him the &quot;grocer king. &quot; (Ho 2004:227).<br /> <br /> 35. See Graeber 2001:175-76.<br /> <br /> 36. Even between strangers it's a bit unusual: as Servet (1981, 1982) has emphasized, most &quot;primitive trade&quot; takes place through trade partnership and specialized regional middlemen.<br /> <br /> 37. I frame things this way because I am mainly interested here in economics. If we were thinking simply of human relations, I suppose one might say that at one extreme is killing, and at the other, giving birth.<br /> <br /> 38. In fact, it seems essential to the nature of charity that, like a gifts to a king, it can never lead to reciprocity. Even if it turns out that the pathetic-looking beggar is really a god wandering the earth in<br /> <br /> mortal form, or Harun al-Rashid, your reward will be entirely disproportionate. Or consider all those stories about drunken millionaires on a binge who, when they got their life back together, hand out fancy cars or houses to their earlier benefactors. It's easier to imagine a panhandler giving you a fortune than returning an exact equivalent to the dollar that you gave him.<br /> <br /> 39. Xenophon Cyropedia Vlll.6, Herodotus 3.8.9; see Briant 2006:193-194, 394-404, who acknowledges that something broadly along these lines probably did take place, with a more impromptu gift system under Cyrus and Cambyses being systematized under Darius.<br /> <br /> 40. Marc Bloch (1961:n4-15), who adds &quot;every act, especially if it was repeated three or four times, was likely to be transformed into a precedent-even if in the first instance it had been exceptional or even frankly unlawful.&quot;<br /> <br /> 41. The approach is often identified with British anthropologist A.M. Hocart (1936). The important thing is that this does not necessarily mean that these became their main or exclusive occupations: most of the time, such people remained simple farmers like everybody else. Yet what they did for the king, or later, on ritual occasions, for the community, was seen as defining their essential nature, their identity within the whole.<br /> <br /> 42. In fact, we may become indignant at her for an act of stinginess we would never even consider stingy in anyone else-especially, ourselves.<br /> <br /> 43. A version has been published as: Sarah Stillman, &quot;The missing white girl syndrome: disappeared women and media activism&quot; (Stillman, 2007): publications.oxfa m .org.uk/oxfam/ dispiay.asp?K=oo2j 1246&amp;sf_ o1=cat _class&amp;st_o1=62o&amp;sort=SORT_DATE/ d&amp;m=84&amp;dc=719<br /> <br /> 44. Karatani (2003:203-205) makes this point compellingly. The Kwakiutl and other First Nations of the Northwest Coast are something of an intermediary case--aristocratic, but at least in the period we know about, using non-coercive means to gather resources (though Codere 1950.)<br /> <br /> 45. Georges Duby (1980) provides the definitive history of this concept, which goes back to much older Indo-European ideas.<br /> <br /> 46. For a typical example of imaginary reciprocity between father and son, see Oliver 1955:2)0. Anthropological theory buffs will notice that I am here endorsing Edmund Leach's (1961) position on the &quot;circulating connubium&quot; problem. He later applied the same argument to the famous &quot;kula chain&quot; (1983).<br /> <br /> 47. Actually, there are hierarchical relations that are explicitly self-subverting: the one between teacher and student, for example, since if the teacher is successful in passing her knowledge to the student, there is no further basis for inequality.<br /> <br /> 48. Freuchen 1961: '154. It's not clear what the original language was here, considering that the Inuit did not have an institution of slavery. Also, the passage would not make sense unless there were some contexts in which gift exchange did operate, and therefore, in which debts accrued. What the hunter is emphasizing is that it was felt important that this logic did not extend to basic needs like food.<br /> <br /> 49. Firth 1959=411-12 (also in Graeber 2001:175). His name was Tei Reinga.<br /> <br /> so. For one famous example: Chagnon 1996:qo-76.<br /> <br /> sr. Similarly, two groups might form an alliance by contracting a &quot;joking relation,&quot; in which any member of one could at least in theory make similar outrageous demands of the other (Hebert 1958).<br /> <br /> 52. Marcel Mauss, in his famous &quot;Essay on the Gift&quot; (1924), often did, and the results have sometimes confused debate for generations to come.<br /> <br /> 53. Mauss 1925, the Greek source being Posidonius. As usual one does not know how literally to take this account. Mauss thought it likely accurate; I suspect it might have happened once or twice.<br /> <br /> 54. As retold by William Ian Miller (I99J:rs-r6). The first quote is directly from the original, Egil's Saga, chapter 78. Egil remained ambivalent about the shield: he later took it to a wedding party and contrived to drop it into a vat of sour whey. Afterward, concluding it was ruined, he stripped it for its raw materials.<br /> <br /> 55. See, for instance, Wallace-Hadrill 1989.<br /> <br /> 56. Blaxter 1971:127-28.<br /> <br /> 57. Another anthropologist, for instance, defines patron-client relations as &quot;long-term contracted relations in which the client's support is exchanged for the patron's protection; there is an ideology which is morally charged and appears to rule out strict, open accounting, but both parties keep some tacit rough account; the goods and services exchanged are not similar, and there is no implication of fair exchange or balance of satisfactions, since the client is markedly weaker in power and needs the patron more than he is needed by him&quot; (Loizos 1977:ns). Again, it both is and isn't an exchange, it's both a matter of accounting and not a matter of accounting.<br /> <br /> 58. It's exactly the same if one takes a job at a doughnut shop; legally, it must be a free contract between equals, even if in order to be able to say this we have to maintain the charming legal fiction that one of them is an imaginary person named &quot;Krispy Kreme. &quot;<br /> <br /> 59. For instance the word &quot;should,&quot; in English, originally derives from German schuld, meaning &quot;guilt, fault, debt.&quot; Ben-veniste provides similar examples from other Indo-European languages (1963:58). East Asian languages such as Chinese and Japanese rarely conflate the actual words, but a similar identification of debt with sin, shame, guilt, and fault can be easily documented (Malamoud 1988).<br /> <br /> 6o. Plutarch Moralia 303 B, also discussed in Finley 198r:r52, Millett 199ra:42. Similarly, St. Thomas Aquinas made it a matter of Catholic doctrine that sins were &quot;debts of punishment&quot; owed to God.<br /> <br /> 61. This is one reason why it's so easy to dress up other sorts of relationships as debts. Say one wishes to help out a friend in desperate need of money but doesn't want to embarrass her. Usually, the easiest way to do it is to provide the money and then insist that it's a loan (and then let both parties conveniently forget it ever happened). Or think of all the times and places where the rich acquire servants by advancing what is ostensibly a loan.<br /> <br /> 62. One could argue that some equivalent of &quot;please&quot; and &quot;thank you&quot; could be identified in any human language, if one were determined to find them, but then the terms you find are often used so differently-for instance, only in ritual contexts, or to hierarchical superiors-. that it's hard to attach much significance to the fact. It is significant that over the last century or so just about every human language that is used in offices or to make transactions in shops has had to create terms that do function as an exact equivalent of the English &quot;please,&quot; &quot;thank you,&quot; and &quot;you're welcome.&quot;<br /> <br /> 63. In Spanish one first asks a favor (par favor), and then says gracias, in order affirm you recognize one has been done for you, since it derives from the Latin word gratia, meaning &quot;influence, or favor.&quot; &quot;Appreciate&quot; is more monetary: if you say &quot;I really appreciate your doing that for me,&quot; you are using a word that derives from Latin appretiare, &quot;to set a price.&quot;<br /> <br /> 64. &quot;You're welcome,&quot; first documented in Shakespeare's time, derives from Old English wilcuma, wil being &quot;pleasure&quot; and cuma being &quot;guest. &quot; This is why people are still welcomed into a house. It is thus like &quot;be my guest,&quot; implying that, no, if there is an obligation it's on my part, as any host is obliged to be generous to guests, and that dispatching such obligations is a pleasure in itself. Still, it's significant that moralists rarely chide anyone for failure to say &quot;you're welcome&quot;-that one is much more optional.<br /> <br /> 65. Book !.12. This and other quotes are from the 2oo6 Penguin Screech translation, in this case, p. 86.<br /> <br /> 66. Compare the Medieval Arab philosopher Ibn Miskaway: &quot;The creditor desires the well-being of the debtor in order to get his money back rather than because of his love for him. The debtor, on the other hand, does not take great interest in the creditor. &quot; (in Hosseini 2003:36).<br /> <br /> 67. Appropriate, since Panurge's entire discourse is nothing but a comical elaboration of Marcelo Ficino's argument that the entire universe is driven by the power of love.<br /> <br /> Chapter Six<br /> <br /> r. From: Peter Carlson, &quot;The Relatively Charmed Life of Neil Bush,&quot; The Washington Post, Sunday December 28, 2003, Page Do1.<br /> <br /> 2. Grierson 1977:20.<br /> <br /> 3. To be fair to Grierson, he does later suggest that slavery played an important part in the origins of money-though he never speculates about the gender, which seems significant: slave girls also served as the highest denomination of currency in Medieval Iceland (Williams 1937), and in the Rig Veda, great gifts and payments are regularly designated in &quot;gold, cattle, and slave girls&quot; (Chakravarti 198s:s6-57). By the way, I say &quot;young&quot; because elsewhere, when slaves are used as monetary units, the unit is assumed to be a slave about 1820 years old. A cumal was considered the equivalent in value of three milch cows or six heifers.<br /> <br /> 4. On cumal see Nolan 1926, Einzig 1949:247-48, Gerriets 1978, 1981, 1985, Patterson 1982:168-69, Kelly 1998:112-13. Most merely emphasize that cumal were just used as units of account and we don't know anything about earlier practices. It's notable, though, that in the law codes, when several different commodities are used as units of account, they will include that country's most significant exports, and trade currency (that's why in Russian codes, the units were fur and silver). This would imply a significant trade in female slaves in the period just before wrirren records.<br /> <br /> 5. So Bender 1996.<br /> <br /> 6. Here I am drawing on the detailed ethnographic survey work of Alain Te-starr (2ooo, 2oor, 2002). Testarr does a magnificent job synthesizing the evidence, though he roo--as we'll see in the next chapter-has some equally strange blind spots in his conclusions.<br /> <br /> 7. &quot;Although the rhetorical phrase 'selling one's daughter into prostitution' has wide currency . . . the actual arrangement is more often presented as either a loan ro the family or an advance payment for the girl's (usually unspecified or misrepresented) services. The interest on these 'loans' is often roo percent, and the principal may be increased by other debts-for living expenses, medical care, bribes to officials-accrued once the girl has begun work&quot; (Bishop &amp; Robinson 1998:ro5).<br /> <br /> 8. So Michael Hudson (cited in Wray 1999), but it's clear enough if one looks at the language of the original: &quot;Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's&quot; (Exodus 20:17, Deuteronomy 5:21).<br /> <br /> 9. Wampum is a good example: Indians never seem to have used it ro buy things from other members of the same community, although it was regularly used in conducting trade with settlers (see Graeber 20o1:rq-r5o). Others, like Yurok shell money or some Papuan currencies, are widely used as currencies in addition to their social functions, bur the first seems to have emerged from the second.<br /> <br /> 10. The most important texts on the &quot;brideprice debate&quot;: Evans-Pritchard 1931, Raglan 1931, Gray 1968, Corna-ro££ 1980, Valeri 1994. One reason why<br /> <br /> Evans-Pritchard originally proposed ro change the name from &quot;brideprice&quot; ro &quot;bridewealth&quot; because the League of Nations had in 1926 outlawed the practice as a form of slavery (Guyer 1994).<br /> <br /> rr. On Tiv kinship and economy: Duggan 1932; Abraham 1933; Downes 1933; Akiga 1939; L. Bohannan 1952; P. Bohan-nan 1955, 1957, 1959; P. &amp; L. Bohannan 1953, 1968, Tseayo 1975; Keil 1979.<br /> <br /> 12. Akiga Sai 1939:106 for a good analysis of how this could happen. For a later comparative reanalysis in regional perspective, see Fardon 1984, 1985.<br /> <br /> 13. Paul Bohannan puts it: &quot;The kern relationship of debt between a man and his wife's guardian is never broken, because kern is perpetual, the debt can never be fully paid.&quot; (1957:73.) Otherwise the account is from Akiga (1939:126-I27).<br /> <br /> 14. Rospabe 1993:35.<br /> <br /> 15. Evans-Pritchard 1940:153.<br /> <br /> 16. As the ethnographer puts it, &quot;that they are accepting the cattle only in order to honour him and not because they are ready to take cattle for the life of their dead kinsman.&quot; (1940:153)<br /> <br /> q. Op cit 154-155.<br /> <br /> 18. Morgan 1851:332. Morgan, a lawyer by training, is using a technical term here, &quot;condonation,&quot; which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as &quot;the voluntary overlooking of an offence.&quot;<br /> <br /> 19. Morgan 1851:333. The baseline was five fathoms for a man, ten for a woman, bur other factors might intervene (T. Smith 1983:236; Morgan 1851:33134; Parker 1926). On &quot;mourning wars&quot; see Richter 1983; the expression &quot;purring his name upon the mat&quot; is from Fenton 1978:315. Incidentally I am assuming it's a man who dies, since these are the examples in the sources. It's not clear if the same was done for women who died naturally.<br /> <br /> 20. Evans-Pritchard 1940:155, 1951:rocr-n; Howell 1954:71-80, Gough 1971, Hutchinson 1996:62, 175-76.<br /> <br /> 21. Rospabe 1995:47-48, citing Peters 1947.<br /> <br /> 22. On mourning war: Richter 1983. Interestingly, something similar occurred among the Nambikwara. I mentioned in chapter 3 that the feasts held after barter could lead to seductions and jealous murders; Levi-Strauss adds that the ordinary way of resolving such murders is for the killer to marry the victim's wife, adopt his children, and thus, efft!ctively, become the person the victim used to be (1943:12.3).<br /> <br /> 23. Though people did use them to commission certain fancy craft goods (say, musical instruments) from specialists in other villages (1963:54-55).<br /> <br /> 24. Douglas 1958: 112; also 1982:43.<br /> <br /> 25. Douglas (1963:58) estimates that a successful man will have spent at minimum 300 raffia cloths in payments, and given away at least 300 more as gifts, by the time he reached full social maturity.<br /> <br /> 26. As anthropologists often note, the fact that one traces descent through the female line does not necessarily mean that women themselves have a lot of power. It can; it did among the Iroquois, and it does among Minangkabau right now. But it doesn't necessarily.<br /> <br /> 27. Douglas 1963:144-45, which is an adoption of 1960:3-4.<br /> <br /> 28. She was in fact a conservative Catholic, married a Tory economist, and tended to look with disdain on all liberal concerns.<br /> <br /> 29. As if to hammer this home, a man was actually considered to be owed a lifedebt for fathering female children (Douglas 1963:115)-that could only be paid by allowing him to take one of his own daughters' daughters as a pawn. This only makes sense if we assume a principle that only men can be owed a life, and therefore, in the case of women, the creation ' of life was assumed to be given free. Men, as noted, could be pawns and many were, but they were never traded.<br /> <br /> 30. Douglas 1966:150.<br /> <br /> 31. On &quot;village-wives,&quot; see particularly Douglas 1951, also 1963:12.8-40.<br /> <br /> 32. Douglas 1963:76; compare 1951:11. The author is clearly simply repeating her<br /> <br /> informants' explanation for the custom: the Lele didn't &quot;have to&quot; make such an arrangement; in fact, most African societies did not.<br /> <br /> 33 • Some village wives were literally princesses, since chiefs' daughters invariably chose to marry age-sets in this way. The daughters of chiefs were allowed to have sex with anyone they wanted, regardless of age-set, and also had the right to refuse sex, which ordinary village wives did not. Princesses of this sort were rare: there were only three chiefs in all Lele territory. Douglas estimates that the number of Lele women who became village wives, on the other hand, was about 10 percent (1951).<br /> <br /> 34. For instance: 1960:4, 1963:145-46, 168-73, 1964:303. Obviously, men could sometimes put a great deal of physical pressure on women, at least, if everyone else agreed they had a moral right to do so, but even here Douglas emphasizes most women had a good deal of room for maneuver.<br /> <br /> 35 • On peacefulness, particularly, 1963:70-71.<br /> <br /> 36. 1963:170.<br /> <br /> 37- 1963:171.<br /> <br /> 38. Cost of slaves: 1963:36, 1982:46-4- 7.<br /> <br /> 39. Partly, though, this was because the main purpose of male slaves was to be sacrificed at important men's funerals (1963:36).<br /> <br /> 40. See Graeber 2001, chapter 4. The great exception might seem to be the cattle money of the Nuer, and similar pastoral peoples. Yet even these were arguably adornment of the person of a sort.<br /> <br /> 41. Akiga Sai 1939: 12.1, 158--6o.<br /> <br /> 42. So too when Tiv practiced marriage by capture: Akiga Sai (1939:137-41).<br /> <br /> 43 • Here I'm drawing on the classic &quot;spheres of exchange&quot; analysis by Paul Bohannan (1955, 1959), supplemented by Dorward (1976) and Guyer (2004:27-31).<br /> <br /> 44. So Akiga Sai 1939:241; P. Bohannan 1955:66, P. &amp; L. Bohannnan 1968:233, 235 • As charisma in general: East in Akiga Sai 1939:236, Downes 1971:29.<br /> <br /> 45. See Abraham 1933:26; Akiga Sai 1939:246; P. Bohannan 1958:3; Downes 1971:27.<br /> <br /> 46. On witches in general: P. Bohan-nan 1957:187-88, 1958; Downes 1971: 3225. On flesh debts (or ikipindi): Abraham 1933:81-84; Downes 1971:36-40.<br /> <br /> 47. Akiga Sai 1939:257.<br /> <br /> 48. Akiga Sai 1939:260.<br /> <br /> 49. Following here Wilson 1951.<br /> <br /> so. Paul Bohannan (1958:4) makes a similar but not identical argument.<br /> <br /> sr. Tiv migration stories (e.g. Abraham 1933:q-26; Akiga &amp; Bohannan 1954; P. Bohannan 1954) do not explicitly say this, but they could easily be read this way. Akiga's story (1939:137) about Tiv migrants painting what looked like sores on their women's bodies so raiders would not take them is particularly suggestive. Despite their lack of government, Tiv did have a notoriously effective war organization, and as Abrahams notes (1933:19), managed to successfully play the Fulani and Jukun against each other by intervening in their own wars with each other.<br /> <br /> 52. Some of these raids were not entirely unsuccessful. For a while, it would appear, the nearby Jukun kingdom, which made several ultimately unsuccessful efforts to incorporate the Tiv in the eighteenth century, appear to have been selling Tiv captives to slave dealers operating on the coast (Abraham 1933:19; Curtin 1965:255, 298; Latham 1973:29; Tambo 1976: 201-3.) It's doubtless significant here that many Tiv insisted in the 1930s that the Jukun were themselves cannibals, and that the origins of the mbatsav &quot;organization&quot; lay in certain chiefly titles that Tiv acquired from them when they finally came to a political rapprochement (Abraham 1933:33-35).<br /> <br /> 53. Jones 1958; Latham 1971; Northrup 1978:157-64; Herbert 2003:196. The famous Medieval Arab traveler Ibn Batruta, who we've already met at the court of the King of Singh in chapter 2, saw people using them as money in the Niger region, not far away, in the 1340s.<br /> <br /> 54. Herbert (2003:181) estimates that Europeans imported about 2o,ooo tons of English brass and copper into Africa between 1699 and 1865. It was manufactured in Bristol, Cheadle, and Birmingham. The vast majority was exchanged for slaves<br /> <br /> 55. I base this number on the fact that 152,076 slaves are known to have been exported from the Bight of Biafra as a whole in those years (Eitis, Behrent, Richardson &amp; Klein 2ooo). The slave trade at Old Calabar lasted roughly from 1650 to 1841, during which time the port was by far the largest in the Bight, and the exports from the Bight itself during its height represent about 20 percent of all Africa (Lovejoy &amp; Richardson 1999:337).<br /> <br /> 56. Sheridan 1958, Price 198o, 1989, 1991.<br /> <br /> 57. A larger variety of beads.<br /> <br /> 58. Barbot in Talbot 1926 1: 185-186.<br /> <br /> 59. Inkori (1982) demonstrates that in the late eighteenth century, British ships docking in Old Calabar brought on average 400 muskets each, and that between 1757 and 18o6, the total number imported into the Calabar-Cameroons region was 22,986. Rum and other liquor was, however, a very minor import.<br /> <br /> 6o. One common expedient, especially in the early years, was for merchants to arrive at village markets with canoes full of wares, exchange them for slaves, and then, if they didn't come up to quota, wait until nightfall and simply attack homesteads along the river, carrying off anyone they could find (Clarkson in Northrup 1978:66, also cited in Noah 1990:94.)<br /> <br /> 61. The existing scholarly literature is of little help in reconstructing the history of how one form was transformed into the other, since there are only works treating pawnship either as a matter of kinship (e.g., Douglas 1964, Fardon 1985, 1986), or of commerce (e.g., Faiola &amp; Lovejoy 1994), but never comparing the two. As a result, many basic questions remain unasked. Faiola and Lovejoy, for instance, suggest that pawns' labor functions as interest, but the book contains information on whether interest-bearing loans even existed in the parts of Africa where pawnship was practiced.<br /> <br /> 62. It's also clear that this sort of pawnship must have developed from something like the Lele institution. Many of the rules are the same: for instance, much as among the Lele, if a girl was pledged, the creditor often had the option of marrying her when she reached maturity, thus cancelling the debt.<br /> <br /> 63. Lovejoy &amp; Richardson 1999:34951; 2001.<br /> <br /> 64. Equiano 1789:6-13.<br /> <br /> 65. Others included the Akunakuna, and the Efik, who were based in Calabar itself. The Aro were Igbo-speakers, and the reg_ion a patchwork of speakers of lgbo and Ibibio languages.<br /> <br /> 66. On the Aro in general, see Jones 1939; Ottenberg 1958; Afigbo 1971; Ekejiu-ba 1972; Isichei 1976; Northrup 1978; Dike &amp; Ekejiuba 1990; Nwauwa 1991.<br /> <br /> 67. Dike and Ekejiuba (1990:150) estimate that 70 percent of the slaves sold to Europeans in the Bight of Biafra came from the Aro. Most of the rest came from the other merchant societies.<br /> <br /> 68. One twentieth-century elder recalled, &quot;a woman who commited adultery would be sold by her husband and the husband kept the money. Thieves were sold, and the money went to the elders whose responsibility it was to make the decision.&quot; (Northrup 1978: 69)<br /> <br /> 69. Northrup 1978:73<br /> <br /> 70. On Ekpe as debt enforcement in Calabar itself: Jones 1968, Latham 1973:3541, Lovejoy &amp; Richardson 1999:347-49. On the spread of Ekpe to Arochukwe and throughout the region: Rue! 1969:25o-258, Northrup 1978:109-IIO, Nwaka 1978, Ottenberg &amp; Knudson 1985. Nwaka (1978:188) writes: &quot;The Ekpe society, the most widespread in the Cross River area, formed the basis of local government. It performed executive and judicial functions in areas where it operated. Through the agency of its members, punishments were administered to public offenders, customs<br /> <br /> enforced and the authority of the elders upheld. Ekpe laws to some extent regulated the lives of most members of the community in such matters as the cleaning of towns and streets, collection of debts and other measures of public benefit.&quot;<br /> <br /> 71. Latham 1963:38.<br /> <br /> 72. Taken from Walker 1875:120<br /> <br /> 73. Ottenberg &amp; Ottenberg 1962:124.<br /> <br /> 74. Partridge 190572.<br /> <br /> 75. If one were seeking a pawn, one couldn't simply take a random child from a neighboring village, as his or her parents would quickly track the child down.<br /> <br /> 76. In Lovejoy &amp; Richardson 2001:74. For a parallel case in Ghana, see Getz 2003:85.<br /> <br /> 77. Remarkably, Akiga Sai (1939:379-So) insists that, among the Tiv, this was the origin of slavery: the seizing of hostages from the same lineage as someone who refused to pay a debt. Say, he says, the debtor still refuses to pay. They will keep their hostage fettered for a while, then, finally, sell them in another country. &quot;This is the origin of slavery.&quot;<br /> <br /> 78. So Harris 1972:128 writing of another Cross River district, Ikom: one of the major suppliers of slaves for Calabar. There, she notes, debtors were often obliged to pawn themselves when maternal and paternal kin intervened to prevent them from selling off any more of their relatives, with the result that they were finally enslaved and sent to Calabar.<br /> <br /> 79. We do not know what proportion. King Eyo II told a British missionary that slaves &quot;were sold for different reasons-some as prisoners of war, some for debt, some for breaking their country's laws and some by great men who hated them&quot; (in Noah 1990:95). This suggests that debt was not insignificant, especially since as Pier Larson (2ooo:18) notes, all sources at the time would list &quot;war,&quot; since it was considered the most legitimate. Compare Northrup (1978:76-So).<br /> <br /> So. Reid 1983:8<br /> <br /> 81. op cit.<br /> <br /> 82. Reid 1983:10<br /> <br /> 83. Vickers (1996) provides an excellent history of Bali's image in the North Atlantic imagination, from &quot;savage Bali&quot; to terrestrial paradise.<br /> <br /> 84. Geertz &amp; Geertz 1975; Boon 197]:121-24. Belo (1936:26) cites informants in the 1920s that insisted that marriage by capture was a fairly recent innovation, which emerged from gangs of young men stealing women from enemy villages and, often, demanding that their fathers pay money to get them back.<br /> <br /> 85. Boon 197T74<br /> <br /> 86. Covarrubias (1937:12) notes that as early as 1619, Balinese women were in great demand in slave markets in Reunion.<br /> <br /> 87. Boon 1977:28, van der Kraan 1983, Wiener 1995 :27<br /> <br /> 88. Vickers 1996:61. I need only remark that the anthropological literature on Bali, most notably Clifford Geertz's famous essay on the Balinese cockfight as &quot;deep play&quot; (1973), a space where Balinese people can express their inner demons and tell stories about themselves, or his conception of pre-colonial governments as &quot;theater states&quot; (1980) whose politics centered around gathering the resources to create magnificent rituals, might well be rethought in the light of all of this. There is a peculiar blindness in this literature. Even Boon, after the above quote about men hiding their daughters, proceeds on the very next page (1977:75) to refer to that government's &quot;subjects&quot; as really just a &quot;slightly taxed audience for its rituals,&quot; as if the likely prospect of the rape, murder and enslavement of one's children didn't really matter, or, anyway, was not of explicitly political import.<br /> <br /> 89. All this is meant in part as a critique of Louis Dumont's arguments (1992) that the only truly egalitarian societies are modern ones, and even those only by default: since their ultimate value is individualism, and since each individual is valuable above all for the degree to which he or she is unique, there can be no basis for saying that anyone is intrinsically superior to anybody else. One can have the same<br /> <br /> effect without any doctrine of &quot;Western individualism&quot; at all. The entire concept of &quot;individualism&quot; needs to be seriously rethought.<br /> <br /> 90. Beattie 1960: 61.<br /> <br /> 91. True, in many traditional societies, penalties are given to men who beat their wives excessively. But again, the assumption is that some such behavior is at least par for the course.<br /> <br /> 92. On charivari, see for instance Davis 1975, Damron 1984. Keith Thomas (1972:630), who cites this very Nyoro story in an account of English villages of that time, recounts a whole series of social sanctions, such as dunking the &quot;village scold,&quot; that seem almost entirely aimed at the violent control of women, but oddly, he claims that charivari were directed at men who beat their wives, despite the fact that all other sources say the opposite.<br /> <br /> 93. Not quite all. Again, one might cite Iroquois society of the same period as an example: it was in many senses a matriarchy, particularly on the everyday household level, and women were not exchanged.<br /> <br /> 94. Taken from Trawick 2000:185, figure n.<br /> <br /> 95 • The diagram is reproduced from P. Bohannan 195]:87.<br /> <br /> 96. Akiga Sai 1939:161.<br /> <br /> 97. So too among the Lele, where Mary Douglas (1963:131) remarks that it was considered acceptable to whip a village wife for refusing work or sex, but this was no reflection on her status, since the same was true of Lele wives married to just one man, too.<br /> <br /> === Chapter Seven ===<br /> 1. http.sumerianorg/prot-sum.htm, from a &quot;Proto-Sumerian dictionary&quot;<br /> <br /> 2. Florentius in Justinian's Institutes (1.5.4.1). It is interesting to note that when attempts are made to justify slavery, starting with Aristotle, they generally focus not on the institution, which is not in itself justifiable, but on the inferior qualities of some ethnic group being enslaved.<br /> <br /> 3. Elwahid 1931. Clarence-Smith (2oo8:I7n56) notes that ai-Wahid's book itself emerged from within lively debates in the Middle East about the role of slavery in Islam that had been going on at least since the mid-nineteenth century.<br /> <br /> 4. Elwahid 1931: ioi-io, and passim. An analogous list appears in Patterson i982:io5. '<br /> <br /> 5. The sale of children was always felt to be a sign of economic and moral breakdown; even later Roman emperors like Diocletian, notes ai-Wahid, supported charities aimed to provide relief for poor families explicitly so they would not have to resort to things like this (Eiwahed I93I: 8.1).<br /> <br /> 6. Mitamura I970.<br /> <br /> 7. Debt slavery, he notes, was practiced in early Roman history, but this is because according to the laws of the twelve tablets, insolvent debtors could actually be killed. In most places, where this was not possible, debtors were not fully enslaved by reduced to pawns or peons (see Testart 20oo, 2002, for a full explanation of the different possibilities).<br /> <br /> 8. AI-Wahid cites examples from Ath-enaeus of Greek patients who offered themselves as slaves to doctors who had saved their lives (op cit:234)<br /> <br /> 9. Ulpian is precise: &quot;In every branch of the law, a person who fails to return from enemy hands is regarded as having died at the moment when he was captured.&quot; (Digest 49.I5.I8) The Lex Cornelia of 84-8I sc specifies the need for remarriage.<br /> <br /> IO. Meillassoux I996:w6<br /> <br /> II. Patterson I982. &quot;Slavery,&quot; as he defines it, &quot;is the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons. &quot; (I982:I3)<br /> <br /> I2. He quotes Frederick Douglass here to great effect: &quot;A man without force is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it<br /> <br /> can pity him; and even that it cannot do long, if the signs of power do not arise.&quot; (in Patterson I982:I3)<br /> <br /> I3. Presumably an honorable woman as well, though in the case of women, as we shall see, the question became inextricably caught up in questions of fidelity and chastity.<br /> <br /> I4. Paul Houlm (in Duffy, MacSham-hrain and Maynes 2005=431.) True, the balance of trade seems to have shifted back and forth; at some periods Irish ships were raiding English shores, and after 8oo AD the Vikings carried off thousands, briefly making Dublin the largest slave market in Europe. Still, by this time, cumals do not appear to any longer have been used as actual currency. There are some parallels here with Africa, where in certain times and places affected by the trade, debts were tallied up in slaves as well (Einzig I949:I53).<br /> <br /> IS. St. Patrick, one of the founders of the Irish church, was one of the few of the early Church Fathers who was overtly and unconditionally opposed to slavery.<br /> <br /> I6. Doherty I98o:y8-83.<br /> <br /> I7. Gerriets I978:n8, I98I:I7I-72, I985:338. This was in dramatic contrast, incidentally, to Welsh laws from only two or three centuries later, where the prices of all such objects are fastidiously specified (Ellis I9.26:379-8I). The list of items incidentally is a random selection from the Welsh codes.<br /> <br /> I8. Doherty I98o:y3-74<br /> <br /> I9. This was true in Irish and in Welsh, and apparently, other Celtic languages as well. Charles-Edwards (I978:I30, I993=555) actually translates &quot;honor price&quot; as &quot;face value.&quot;<br /> <br /> 20. The one exception being an early ecclesiastical text: Einzig I949:247-48, Gerriets I978=71.<br /> <br /> 21. The main source on the monetary system is Gerriets (I978), a dissertation that unfortunately was never published as a book. A table of standard rates of exchange between cumal, cows, silver, etc. are also to be found in Charles-Edwards 1993:478-85.<br /> <br /> 22. Gerriets 1978:53.<br /> <br /> 23. If you had lent a man your horse or sword and he didn't return it in time for a battle, causing loss of face, or even if a monk lent his cowl to another monk who didn't return it in time, causing him not to have proper attire for an important synod, he could demand his honor price (Fergus 1988:118).<br /> <br /> 24. The honor price of Welsh kings was far higher (Ellis 1926:144).<br /> <br /> 25. Provincial kings, who ranked higher, had an honor price of 14 cumals, and in theory there was a high king at Tara who ruled all Ireland, but the position was often vacant or contested (Byrne 1973).<br /> <br /> 26. All of this is a simplification of what's in fact an endlessly complicated system, and some points, especially concerning marriage, of which there are several varieties, with different integrations of brideprice and dowry, remain obscure. In the case of clients, for example, there were two initial payments by the lord, the honor price being one of them; with &quot;free clients,&quot; however, the honor price was not paid and the client was not reduced to servile status, (See Kelly 1988 for the best general summary.)<br /> <br /> 27. Dimetian Code 11.24.12 (Howe! 2oo6:559). A similar penalty is specified for the killing of public officials from certain districts (Ellis 1926:362).<br /> <br /> 28. &quot;There is no evidence that goods themselves could be assigned prices. That is, while Irish moneys could quantify the status of an individual, they were not used to quantify the value of goods. &quot; (Gerriets 1985=338).<br /> <br /> 29. Sutton 2004:374.<br /> <br /> 30. Gallant 2000. One might also consider here the phrase &quot;affair of honor,&quot; or for that matter, &quot;honor killing&quot;-which also make clear that such sentiments are hardly confined to rural Greece.<br /> <br /> 31. In fact, one could just as easily turn the question around, and ask: Why is it so<br /> <br /> insulting to suggest that a man's sister is trading sex for money in the first place? This one reason I say that concepts of honor still shape our perceptions in ways we're not aware of-there are plenty of places in the world where the suggestion that a man's wife is trading sex for profit, or that his sister is engaged with multiple partners, is more likely to be greeted with bemused good humor than with murderous rage. We've already seen examples in the Gunwinggu and the Lele.<br /> <br /> 32. Obviously I am distinguishing the term here from the broader sense of patriarchy used in much feminist literature, of any social system based on male subordination of women. Clearly the origins of patriarchy in this broader sense must be sought in a much earlier period of history in both the Mediterranean and Near East.<br /> <br /> 33. The &quot;Semitic infiltration&quot; model is already to be found in such classic sources as Saggs (1962). Generally speaking, the pattern seems to be one of periodic urban crisis, the near-breakdown of riverine society being followed by revival, apparently after the advent of a new wave of Semitic pastoralists (Adams et al. 1974).<br /> <br /> 34. Rohrlich 1980 is a compelling example.<br /> <br /> 35. This is of course a vast simplification of a thesis mainly identified with the anthropologist Jack Goody (1976, 1983, 1990). The basic principle is that dowry is not so much a payment by the bride's father (it might come equally from both sides) but a kind of premature inheritance. Goody has had very little to say about Mesopotamia, though, and that little (1990:315-17) focuses almost exclusively on upper-class practice.<br /> <br /> 36. Wilcke 1985, Westbrook 1988, Greengus 1990, Stol 1995:125-27. For Mari: Lafont 1987; for Old Babylonian practice: Greengus 1966, 1969; for Nuzi, Grosz 1983, 1989.<br /> <br /> 37. Our best sources are from the city of Nuzi c1500 sc, though Nuzi was atypical in certain ways, mainly due to Hurrian influence. There, marriage payments appear to have been made in stages, for instance, at the birth of a first child (Grosz 1981:176)-a pattern familiar to anthropologists from Melanesia, Africa, and numerous other parts of the world.<br /> <br /> 38. Finkelstein 1966, VerSteeg 2000:121, 153n9r. A father could claim monetary damages against someone who falsely claimed that his daughter was not a virgin, presumably because it would lower the bride-price (Cooper 2002:101).<br /> <br /> 39. Bottero 1992:113.<br /> <br /> 40. Stol 1995:126.<br /> <br /> 41. Cardascia 1959 on &quot;matrimonial adoption&quot; (also Mendelsohn 1949:8-12, Greengus 1975). During times of famine, sometimes even the brideprice was dispensed with, and a starving family might turn over their daughter to a rich household in exchange for a promise to keep her alive.<br /> <br /> 42. Evans-Prichard 1931, Raglan 1931. It's a little ironic that the debate was occurring in England, since this was one of the few places where it was, technically, legal to sell or even auction off one's wife (Menefee 1981; Stone 1990:14348; see Pateman 1988). Stone notes that while public &quot;wife-sales&quot; in English villages were apparently really prearranged divorces, &quot;the details of the ritual were designed to emphasize the final nature of the transfer of property, by imitating as closely as possible the sale of a cow or a sheep. A halter was used to lead the wife from her home to the market, and from the market to the house of her purchaser.&quot; (1990:145) The practice, confined to the popular classes, caused a scandal when documented in Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge, but it was only completely abandoned in 1919.<br /> <br /> 43. Finley 1981:153-55; Stienkeller 2003; Mieroop 2005:27-28. Mieroop notes that the earliest such contract is documented from twenty-first-century Babylonia. This is an interesting example for the early history of wage labor. As I've written elsewhere (Graeber 2oo6:66-69; 2007:91--94), wage-labor contracts in the ancient world<br /> <br /> were primarily a matter of the rental of slaves-a practice that in Mesopotamia is first documented only in neo-Babylonian times (Oppenheim 1964:78, VerSteeg 2ooo:7o-71; for an Egyptian parallel Ver-Steeg 2002:197).<br /> <br /> 44. The entire issue has been complicated by Herodotus' claim (r.199) that all Babylonian women other than daughters of the elite were expected to prostitute themselves at temples, once, to earn the money for their dowries. This was certainly false, but it has caused the terms of debate to become rather confused between people insisting on the importance of &quot;hi-erodules&quot; or even claiming that all prostitution was effectively sacred (e.g., Kramer 1969, Lambert 1992) and those rejecting the entire notion as Orientalist fantasy (Arnaud 1973, Westenholz 1989, Beard &amp; Henderson 1997, Assante 2003). However, recently published texts from Kish and Sippar make clear that sexual rituals involving temple women, at least some of whom were paid for their services, definitely did take place (Gallery 198o; Yoffee 1998; Stol 1995:138-39) The devadasi analogy incidentally was first to my knowledge proposed in Yoffee 1998:336. On devadasis in general: Orr zooo, Jordan 2003, Vijaisri 2004.<br /> <br /> 45. Kramer 1963:116, Bahrani 2001: 59-&quot;60.<br /> <br /> 46. A similar reading can be found in Bottero 1992:96, but without the ambivalence, which Lerner (1980:247) emphasizes.<br /> <br /> 47. See Lerner 1980, Van Der Toorn 1989, Lambert 1992.<br /> <br /> 48. Also, in many places, small-scale female traders are likened to or confused with prostitutes, simply because they have multiple ongoing relationships with unrelated men (for a contemporary Kazakh example: Nazpary 2001)-and the roles can sometimes overlap.<br /> <br /> 49. Diakonoff (1982). Loose bands of pastoral nomads or refugees, who also sometimes doubled as soldiers, were often referred to generically as hapiru or habiru, both in Mesopotamia and to the West. This might be the origin of the term &quot;Hebrew,&quot; another group that according to their own histories had fled from bondage, wandered with their flocks in the desert, and eventually descended as conquerors on urban society.<br /> <br /> so. Herodotus 1.199, also Strabo 16.1.20.<br /> <br /> 51. Revelations 17.4-5. Revelations seems to follow the perspective of the followers of Peter more than those of Paul. I observe in passing that Rastafarianism, the main prophetic voice today that makes use of the image of Babylon as corruption and oppression-though it does tend to play down the imagery of sexual corruption-has in practice been very much about the reassertion of patriarchal authority among the poor.<br /> <br /> 52. 1980:249-54; r989:12J-40. The main textual source is Driver &amp; Miles 1935; also Cardascia 1969.<br /> <br /> 53. In Sumerian weddings, a bride's father would cover her with a veil, and the groom would remove it-it was by this act that he made her his wife (Stol 1995:128). Not only does this demonstrate the degree to which the veil was a symbol of encompassment in some man's domestic authority; it might also have been the source from which the later Assyrian practice was eventually adopted.<br /> <br /> 54. My take on Confucianism follows Deng's (1999) somewhat unconventional approach. See Watson 1980 on the commoditization of women; Gates 1989 on its relation to general decline of women's freedoms during the Song; there seems to have been another major setback during the Ming dynasty-for a recent overview, Ko, Haboush, and Piggott (2003). Testart (2ooo, 2001:148-49, 190) emphasizes that the case of China confirms his &quot;general sociological law,&quot; that societies that practice brideprice will also allow debt slavery (Testart, Lecrivain, Karadimas &amp; Govo-roff 2oor), since this was a place where the government vainly tried to stop both. Another aspect of Confucianism was that male slavery was seen as much more<br /> <br /> dubious than female slavery; though it never went as far as in Korea, where after the invasion of Hideyoshi, a law was passed decreeing that only women could be enslaved.<br /> <br /> 55. Tambiah (1973, 1989) was the first to make what is now the standard critique of Goody's argument. Goody prefers to see these as indirect dowry payments since they were normally passed to the family (1990:178-97).<br /> <br /> 56. On Homeric honor: Finley 1954:u8-r9, Adkins 1972:14-16 Seaford 1994:6-7. Cattle are again the main unit of account, and silver. Is also apparently used As Classicists have noted, the only actual acts of buying and selling in the Homeric epics are with foreigners (Von Reden 1995:58-76, Seaford 2004:26-3o, Finley 1954=67-70). Needless to say, Homeric society lacked the legalistic precision of the Irish notion of &quot;honor price&quot; but the principles were broadly the same, since tfme could mean not only &quot;honor&quot; but &quot;penalty&quot; and &quot;compensation.&quot;<br /> <br /> 57. Tfme is not used for the &quot;price&quot; of commodities in the Iliad or the Odyssey, but then prices of commodities are barely mentioned. It is, however, used for &quot;compensation,&quot; in the sense of wergeld or honor-price (Seaford 2004:198n46). The first attested use of time as purchase price is in the slightly later Homeric Hymn to Demeter (132) where, as Seaford notes, it seems significant that in fact it refers to a slave.<br /> <br /> 58. Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians 2.2. He is referring to the great crisis leading to Solon's reforms, the famous &quot;shaking off of burdens&quot; of c. 594 BC.<br /> <br /> 59. Greek chattel slavery was in fact much more extreme than anything that appears to have existed in the ancient Near East at the time (see e.g., Westermann 1955; Finley 1974, 1981; Wiedemann 198r; Dandamaev 1984; Westbrook 1995), not only because most Near Eastern &quot;slaves&quot; were not technically slaves at all but redeemable debt pawns, who therefore at least in theory could not be arbitrarily abused, but because even those who were absolute private property had greater rights.<br /> <br /> 6o. &quot;Self-sufficiency is an end and what is best&quot; (Aristotle Politics 1256-58; see Finley 1974:10cr-n, Veyne 1979, for classic discussions of what this meant in practice.)<br /> <br /> 6r. The argument here follows Kurke 2002. On the public brothels, see Halperin 1990, Kurke 1996. There actually were Temple prostitutes in Greece too, mostly famously in Corinth, where Strabo (8.6.20) claimed that the Temple of Aphrodite owned a thousand of them, apparently, slaves who had been dedicated to the temple by pious worshippers.<br /> <br /> 62. As noted in the quote from David Sutton (2004) above. For a sampling of the anthropological literature on honor in contemporary Greek society, see: Campbell 1964, Peristiany 1965, Schneider 1971, Herzfeld 1980, 1985, Just 2001.<br /> <br /> 63. On the impropriety of women's work outside the household, see Brock 1994. On segregation of women in general: Keuls 1985, Cohen 1987, Just 1989, Loraux 199.3<br /> <br /> 64. The evidence is overwhelming, but until recently has been largely ignored. Llewellyn-Jones (2003) notes that the practice began as an aristocratic affectation, but that by the fifth century, all respectable women &quot;were veiled daily and routinely, at least in public or in front of non-related men&quot; (ibid:14).<br /> <br /> 65. van Reden 1997:174, referencing Herodotus 7.233, Plutarch's Pericles, 26-4-<br /> <br /> 66. A woman who one of them, Achilles, had personally reduced to slavery. Bri-seis was from the Trojan town of Lyrnes-sus, and after Achilles killed her husband and three brothers in the Greek attack on the town, she was awarded to him as a prize. (On learning of this, her father later hanged himself.) In the Iliad, Achilles insists he loves her. Briseis' opinions were not considered worth recording, though later poets, uncomfortable with the idea that the greatest epic of antiquity was a celebration of simple rape, concocted a<br /> <br /> story whereby Briseis had actually long been in love with Achilles from afar, and somehow manipulated the course of events so as to cause the battle to begin with.<br /> <br /> 67. Homeric warriors weren't really aristocrats at all, or if they were, as Calhoun puts it (1934:308) they were aristocrats &quot;only in the loosest sense of the word.&quot; Mostly they were just a collection of local chieftains and ambitious warriors.<br /> <br /> 68. See Kurke 1997:112-13, 1999:197--98 for Greek elaborations on the theme. So too Seaford: &quot;Whereas the Homeric gift is invested with the personality of its heroic donor, the only kind of person that money resembles is the prostitute. For Shakespeare it is 'the common whore of all mankind&quot;' (2002:156, emphasis in the original. For what it's worth, Seaford is slightly off here: Shakespeare described the earth as the &quot;common whore of all mankind,&quot; whose womb produces gold, which is money [Timon of Athens 4342-45].)<br /> <br /> 69. Seaford 2002 in his review of Kurke notes that Greek sources regularly go back and forth on this.<br /> <br /> 70. In the Odyssey (11.488--91), famously, Achilles, when trying to invoke the lowest and most miserable person he can possibly imagine, invokes not a slave but a thete, a mere laborer unattached to any household.<br /> <br /> 71. Free porne were always the daughters of foreigners or resident aliens. So, incidentally, were the aristocrats' courtesans.<br /> <br /> 72. The reader will observe that even in the anecdotes that follow, women simply don't appear. We have no idea who Polemarchus' wife was.<br /> <br /> 73. Recall here that pederasty was technically against the law. Or, to be more exact, for a man to submit to the passive role in sodomy was illegal; one could be stripped of one's citizenship for having done so. While most adult men were involved in love affairs with boys, and most boys with men, all did so under the pretense that no intercourse was actually taking place; as a result, almost anyone could be accused of former impropriety. The most famous case here is Aeschines' Against Timarchus (see van Reden 200J:I2o-2J, also Dillon 200J:II7-28.) Exactly the same dilemmas resurface in Rome, where Cicero, for instance, accused his rival Marc Antony of having once made his living as a male prostitute (Philippics 2.44-45), and Octavian, the later Augustus, was widely reputed to have &quot;prostituted&quot; himself, as a youth, to Julius Caesar, among other powerful patrons (Suetonius Augustus 68).<br /> <br /> 74. The most famous cases were Athens, Corinth, and Megara (Asheri 1969; St. Croix 1981; Finley 1981:156-57.)<br /> <br /> 75 • The law was called the palinto-kia and is known mainly from Plutarch (Moralia 295D, apparently drawing on a lost Aristotelian Constitution of the Megarians.) Almost everything about it is at issue in current scholarship (Asheri 1969:14-16; Figueria 1985:14&lt;f-56, Mil-lettt 1989: 21-22; Hudson 1992:31; Bryant 1994:10o-o44). Hudson for instance argues that since the event is said to have happened around 540 sc, at a time when interest-bearing loans might not even have existed, the whole story is likely to be later propaganda. Others suggest that it really happened much later. It's interesting that all Greek sources treat this as a most radical and outrageous populist measure--despite the fact that similar measures became standard Catholic policy during most of the European Middle Ages.<br /> <br /> 76. It is entirely unclear whether loans at interest even existed in this early period, since the first apparent reference to interest is from roughly 475 sc, and the first utterly clear ones from the later part of that same century (Bogaert 1966, 1968; Finley 1981; Millett 1991a: 44-45; Hudson 1992).<br /> <br /> 77. Compare for example Leviticus 25:35-37, which stipulates that it is permissible to make an impoverished &quot;fellow<br /> <br /> countryman&quot; a client or tenant, but not to give him an interest-bearing loan.<br /> <br /> 78. As Hesiod emphasizes in Works and Days (II 344-63); he's our main source on such matters. Paul Millett (1991a:]o-35) provides a close reading of this passage, to illustrate the ambiguities between gifts and loans. Millett's book Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens (op cit) is the basic work on that topic. Scholarship on the Greek economy has long been preoccupied by what's still (rather anachro-nistically) called the Primitivist-Modernist debate; Millett takes a strong Primitivist position and has taken predictable heat from the other side (e.g., Cohen 1995, Shipley 1997, 2001). Most of the debate, though, turns on the prevalence of commercial lending, which is tangential to my present concerns.<br /> <br /> 79. The story is so striking because Nasruddin almost never elsewhere behaves in a way that a contemporary audience would consider unfair or exploitative. Those stories that do always focus on his relations with his neighbor the miser-the listener is presumed to know that being a miser, he must, necessarily, be up to no good.<br /> <br /> So. &quot;Against Nicostratus&quot; (Demosthenes 53). My version largely follows Millet (1991a:53-59) but also draws on Trevett 1992, Dillon 2oo2:94-100, Harris 20o6:261-63). The interpretation of Nicostratus' motives is my own; Dillon, for example, suspects that the entire story of his kidnapping and ransom at Aegina was made up-t hough if that were the case, one would imagine Apol-lodorus would have eventually found out and told the jurors. The text doesn't explicitly say that Nicostratus was an aristocrat, but this seems the most plausible explanation of why someone might have a comfortable country estate but no money. Apollodorus, though, was known, from other contexts, to have feared that his fellow citizens would have contempt for his lowly background, and tried to compensate by lavish-and some felt, over-lavish-generosity (see Ballin 1978; Trevett 1992).<br /> <br /> 81. Athenians when trying to be high-minded at least spoke as if fellow citizens should behave this way to one another; to loan money at interest to a citizen in dire need was treated as obviously reprehensible behavior (Millett 1991a:26). All philosophers who touched on the subject, starting with Plato (Laws 742c, 921c) and Aristotle (Politics 1258c) denounced interest as immoral. Obviously not everyone felt that way. Here as in the Middle East, from whence the custom had spread (Hudson 1992), the dilemma was that charging interest made obvious sense in the case of commercial loans, but easily became abusive in the case of consumer loans.<br /> <br /> 82. It's not clear whether debt slavery, or at least debt peonage, was anywhere entirely eliminated, and debt crises continued to occur at regular intervals in cities other than Athens (Asheri 1969; St. Croix 1981). Some (Rhodes 1981:118-27; Cairns 1991; Harris 2oo6:249-8o) believe that debt bondage was not even entirely eliminated in Athens. Millett (1991a76) is probably right to say that imperial capitals like Athens, and later Rome, fended off the dangers of debt crises and resulting unrest less by forbidding the practice than by funneling tribute money into social programs that provided a constant source of funds for the poor, making usury largely unnecessary.<br /> <br /> 83. Millett 1991b:189-92. The same was true in Roman Galilee (Goodman 1983:55), and presumably in Rome as well (Howgego 1992:13).<br /> <br /> 84. the Furies, who pursue Orestes to avenge his killing of his mother, insist that they are collecting a debt due in blood (Aeschylus, Eumenides 26o, 319.) Millett (1991a:6-7) compiles a number of examples. Korver (1934, cf. Millet 1991:29-32) demonstrates that there was never any formal distinction between &quot;gift&quot; and &quot;loan&quot;; the two continually shaded into each other.<br /> <br /> 85. The two were seen to be connected: Herodotus, famously, argued that for the Persians, the greatest crime was to lie, and that they therefore forbade the loaning of money at interest since it would necessarily give rise to untruthful behavior (1.138).<br /> <br /> 86. Plato Republic 331c.<br /> <br /> 87. Plato Republic 345d. My reading is strongly influenced here by that of Marc Shell (1978). Shell's essay is important, but sadly neglected, as Classicists only seem to cite each other (at least, on the subject of the Classics).<br /> <br /> 88. What Polemarchus is invoking of course is the logic of the heroic gift, and of the feud. If someone helps or harms you, you pay them back the same or better. Polemarchus actually says that there are two circumstances when it's easiest to do this: in war, and in banking.<br /> <br /> 89. The Republic was written in 38o BC, and these events took place in 388/7. See Thesleff 1989:5, DuBois 2003:153-54, for the dates and references to ancient and contemporary scholarship on the issue, which concur that these events did take place. It's not entirely clear if Plato was taken in an act of piracy, sold on the orders of an angry ex-patron, or seized as a prisoner of war (Aegina-Plato's birthplace, incidentally-was then at war with Athens.) But the lines blurred. Curiously, Diogenes the Cynic, a younger contemporary of Plato, was also captured by pirates on a trip to Aegina around the same time. In his case no one came to his aid (unsurprising considering that he rejected all worldly attachments and tended to insult everyone he met). He ended up spending the rest of his life as a slave in Corinth (Diogenes Laertius, 4-9). Plato, Aristotle, and Diogenes were the three most famous philosophers of the fourth century; the fact that two of the three had the experience of standing on an auction block demonstrates that such things really could happen to anyone.<br /> <br /> 90. Plato recounts the events in his Seventh Letter to Dian, but Annikeris only appears in Diogenes Laertius 3.i'r2o.<br /> <br /> 91. Ihering 1877.<br /> <br /> 92. Rights &quot;in rem,&quot; or &quot;in the thing,&quot; are considered to be held &quot;against all the world,&quot; since &quot;a duty is incumbent on all persons whatsoever to abstain from acts injurious to the right&quot;-this is opposed to rights &quot;in personem,&quot; which are held against a specific individual or group of individuals (Digby &amp; Harrison 1897=301). Garnsey (2oo7:177-I78) notes that Proud-hen (1840) was correct in insisting that the &quot;absolute&quot; nature of property rights in the French Civil Code and other paradigmatic modern legal documents goes back directly to Roman law, both to the notion of absolute private property, and to that of the emperor's absolute sovereignty.<br /> <br /> 93 • The idea that Roman property was not a right goes back to Villey (1946), and became mainstream in English scholarship with Tuck (1979=7-13) and Tierney (1997), though Garnsey (2007=177-95) has recently made a convincing case that Roman jurists did see property as a right (ius) in the sense that one had a right of alienation, and to defend one's claims in court. It's an interesting debate, largely turning on one's definition of &quot;right,&quot; but somewhat tangential to my own argument.<br /> <br /> 94. &quot;The paradigmatic relation between a person and a thing is that of ownership, yet the omans themselves seemed never to have defined it. To them, it was a power relation-a form of potestas-directly exercised over the physical thing itself&quot; (Samuel 2003:302).<br /> <br /> 95 • In earliest Roman law (the Twelve Tablets of qso sc) slaves were still people, but of diminished worth, since injuries against them counted as so percent those of a free person (Twelve Tablets VIII.1o). By the late Republic, around the time of the emergence of the concept of dominium, slaves had been redefined as res, things, and injuries to them had the same legal status as injuries to farm animals (Watson 1987:46)<br /> <br /> 96. Patterson: &quot;it is difficult to understand why the Romans would want to invent the idea of a relation between a person and a thing (an almost metaphysical notion, quite at variance with the Roman way of thinking in other areas) ...unless we understand that, for most purposes, the 'thing' on their minds was a slave&quot; (1982:31).<br /> <br /> 97. It does not appear in the Twelve Tablets or early legal documents.<br /> <br /> 98. Dominus first appears in 111 BC, dominium, sometime later (Birks 1985:26). Keith Hopkins (1978) estimates that by the end of the Republic, slaves made up between 30 and 40 percent of the Italian population, perhaps the highest proportion of any known society.<br /> <br /> 99. Digest 9.2.11 pr., Ulpian in the 18'h book on the Edict.<br /> <br /> 100. The examples are from Digest 47.2.36 pr., Ulpian in the 41&quot; book on Sa-binus, and Digest 9.2.33 pr, Paulus' second book to Plautius, respectively.<br /> <br /> 101. See Saller (1984) on domus versus familia. The word familia, and its various later European cognates, famille in French, family in English, and so on, continued to refer primarily to a unit of authority and not necessarily of kinship until at least the 18th century (Stone 1968, Flandrin 1979, Duby 1982:22o-23, Ozment 1983; Herlihy 1985)<br /> <br /> 102. Westbrook 1999:207 goes through the three known cases of this really happening. It would seem that the father's authority here was considered identical to that of the state. If a father was found to have executed his child illegitimately, he could be punished.<br /> <br /> 103. Or to enslave them. In fact the Law of the Twelve Tablets (IILI) itself seems to be an attempt to reform or moderate even harsher practices, as a!-Wahid (Elwahed 1931:8I-82) was perhaps the first to point out.<br /> <br /> 104. Finley notes that the sexual availability of slaves &quot;is treated as a commonplace in the Graeco-Roman literature&quot; (198o:143; see Saller 1987:98--9 9, Glancey wo6:5o-57).<br /> <br /> 105. There is a lively debate about whether breeding slaves was ever extensively practiced in Rome: one common theory of slavery (e.g., Meillassoux 1996, Anderson 1974) arguing that it is never profitable to do so, and when a supply of new slaves is cut off, slaves will ordinarily be converted into serfs. There seems no reason to weigh in on this here, but for a summary, see Bradley 1987.<br /> <br /> 106. True, Roman citizens could not legally enslave one another; but they could be enslaved by foreigners, and pirates and kidnappers rarely put too fine a point on such things.<br /> <br /> 107. The Chinese emperor Wang Mang was so fastidious on this point, for instance, that he once ordered one of his own sons put to death for the arbitrary murder of a slave (Testart 1998:23.)<br /> <br /> 108. The lex Petronia. Technically it bans owners from ordering slaves to &quot;fight the wild beasts,&quot; a popular public entertainment: &quot;fight,&quot; though, is usually a euphemism, since those fighting hungry lions were not provided with weapons, or obviously inadequate ones. It was only a century later, under Hadrian (117-I38 AD), that owners were forbidden to kill their slaves, maintain private dungeons for them or practice other cruel and excessive punishments. Interestingly, the gradual limitation of the power of slave-owners was accompanied by increasing state power, expansion of citizenship, but also the return of various forms of debt-bondage and the creation of dependent peasantry (Finley 1972:92--9 3; I981:164-65).<br /> <br /> 109. Thus Livy (41.9.11) notes in 177 BC the senate actually passed a law to prevent Italians who were not Roman citizens from selling relatives into slavery in this way in order to become citizens.<br /> <br /> no. The phrase is preserved in the work of the elder Seneca ( Controversias 4.7) and noted by Finley (1980:96), among others. There is a detailed discussion in Butrica 2oo6:21o-23.<br /> <br /> 111. Wirszubski 1950. On the etymology, see Benveniste 1963:262-72. Similarly Kopytoff and Miers (1977) emphasize that in Africa, &quot;freedom&quot; always meant incorporation into some kin group--only slaves were &quot;free&quot; (in our sense) of all social relations.<br /> <br /> 112. Florentius in Justinian's Institutes (i.5~4-i). Some suggest that the word &quot;natural&quot; in the first sentence was only inserted in later editions, perhaps in the fourth century. The position that slavery is a product of force enshrined in law, contrary to nature, however, goes back at least to the fourth century BC, when Aristotle (Politics 1253b2o-23) explicitly takes issue with it (see Cambiano 1987).<br /> <br /> 113. Already in the that century, lawyers like Azo and Bracton began asking: If this is true, wouldn't that mean a serf is a free man too? (Harding 1980:424 note 6; see also Buckland 19o8:1, Watson 1987).<br /> <br /> 114. Ulpian wrote that &quot;everyone was born free under the law of nature&quot; and that slavery was a result of the ius gentium (&quot;law of nations&quot;), the common legal usages of mankind. Some later jurists added that property was originally common and the ius gentium was responsible for kingdoms, property, and so on (Digest 1.1.5). As Tuck notes (1979=19), these were really scattered ideas, only systematized by Church thinkers like Gratian much later, during the twelfth-century revival of Roman law.<br /> <br /> 115. Princeps legibus solutus est (&quot;the sovereign is not bound by the laws&quot;), a phrase initially coined by Ulpian and repeated by Justinian (1.3 pr.) This was a very new notion in the ancient world; the Greeks, for instance, had insisted that while men could do as they liked with their women, children, and slaves, any ruler who exploited their own subjects in the same way was the definition of a tyrant. Even the basic principle of modern sovereignty, that rulers hold the ultimate power of life and death over their subjects (which modern heads of state still hold in their power to grant pardons), was looked on with suspicion. Similarly, under the Republic, Cicero argued that rulers who insisted on holding the power of life and death were by definition tyrants, &quot;even if they prefer to be called kings&quot; (De Re Pu-blica 3.23, Westbrook 1999:204.)<br /> <br /> n6. In the Chronicle of Walter of Guis-borough (1957=216); see Clanchy 1993:2-5.<br /> <br /> n7. Aylmer 1980.<br /> <br /> n8. To be fair, a classical liberal would insist that this is the logical conclusion with starting out from the notion of freedom as active instead of passive (or as philosophers put it, that there are &quot;subjective rights&quot;)-that is, seeing freedom not just as others' obligations to allow us to do whatever the law or custom says we can do, but to do anything that is not specifically forbidden, and that this has had tremendous liberating effects. There is certainly truth in this. But historically, it has been something of a side effect, and there are many other ways to come to the same conclusion that do not require us to accept the underlying assumptions about property.<br /> <br /> n9. Tuck 1979:49, cf. Tully 1993:252, Blackburn 1997=63-64.<br /> <br /> 120. Note here that in this period, the justification was not based on any assumption of racial inferiority-racial ideologies came later-but rather on the assumption that African laws were legitimate and should be considered binding, at least on Africans.<br /> <br /> 121. I've made the argument that wage labor is rooted in slavery extensively in the past-see e.g., Graeber 2oo6.<br /> <br /> 122. This is the reason, as C.B. MacPherson (1962) explained, that when &quot;human rights abuses&quot; are evoked in the newspapers, it is only when governments can be seen as trespassing on some victim's person or possessions-say, by raping, torturing, or killing them. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, like just about all similar documents, also speaks of universal rights to food and shelter, but one never reads about governments committing &quot;human rights abuses&quot;<br /> <br /> when they eliminate price supports on basic foodstuffs, even if it leads to widespread malnutrition, or for razing shantytowns or kicking the homeless out of shelters.<br /> <br /> 123. One can trace the notion back as least as far back as Seneca, who in the first century AD, argued that slaves could be free in their minds, since force only applied to the &quot;prison of the body&quot; (De ben-eficiis 3.20)-this appears to have been a key point of transition between the notion of freedom as the ability to form moral relations with others, and freedom as an internalization of the master's power.<br /> <br /> 124. See Roitman 2003:224 for one author who explicitly relates this to debt. For objects as unique points in a human history, there is a vast literature, but see Hoskins 1999, Graeber 2oor.<br /> <br /> 125. One can tell how unusual slavery was by informants' assumptions that slaves would have no idea that this was to be their fate.<br /> <br /> 126. Significantly, at the very moment when his social existence was the only existence he had left. The mass killing of slaves at the funerals of kings, or grandees, has been documented from ancient Gaul, to Sumer, China, and the Americas.<br /> <br /> 127. Iliad 9:342-44.<br /> <br /> 128. •Evans-Pritchard 1948:36; cf., Sah-lins 1981. For a good example of identification of kings and slaves, Feeley-Harnik 1982. Obviously, everyone is well aware that kings do have families, friends, lovers, etc-the point is that this is always seen as something of a problem, since he should be king to all his subjects equally.<br /> <br /> 129. Regarding the influence of Roman law on the liberal tradition, it is fascinating to note that the very earliest author we have on record who laid out something like Smith's model, where money, and ultimately coinage, is invented as an aid to commerce, was another Roman jurist, Paulus: Digest 18.r.r.<br /> <br /> 130. But it has by no means been eliminated. (If anyone is inclined to doubt this, I recommend they take a stroll through their neighborhood ignol'ing all property rights, and see just how long it takes for the weapons to come out.)<br /> <br /> === Chapter Eight ===<br /> 1. &quot;Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver,&quot; wrote the notorious cynic Ambrose Bierce (The Devil's Dictionary, 1911=49). Certainly for those Thai women who appeared at Neil Bush's door, the difference between having been sold by one's parents, and working off one's parents' debt contract, was as much a technicality as it would have been two thousand years ago.<br /> <br /> 2. One of the few authors I know who's confronted the question head-on is Pierre Docki:s (1979), who makes a convincing statement that it has to do with the power of the state: at least, slavery as an institution was briefly revived under the Carolingian empire and then vanished again afterward. It is certainly interesting that since the nineteenth century at least, the &quot;transition from feudalism to capitalism&quot; has become our historical paradigm for epochal social change, and no one much addresses the transition from ancient slavery to feudalism, even though there is reason to believe that whatever is happening now may much more closely resemble it.<br /> <br /> 3- Robin Blackburn makes this argument quite convincingly in The Making of New World Slavery (1997). There were some exceptions, notably the Italian citystates. The story is of course more complicated than I'm representing it: one reason for the hostility was that during much of the Middle Ages, Europeans were largely victims of slave-raiders rather than their beneficiaries, with many captives marketed in North Africa and the Middle East.<br /> <br /> 4 The Aegean coins were stamped; the Indian, punched; and the Chinese, cast. This suggests that we are not talking about diffusion here. Speaking of Indian coins, for instance, one historian remarks: &quot;If there is one thing that seems clear from<br /> <br /> a punch-marked coin, it is that the person who thought it up had never seen a Greek coin-or if he had seen one, it had not impressed him. The punch-marked coin is made by an entirely different metallurgical process&quot; (Schaps 2006:9).<br /> <br /> 5. Pruessner (1928) was perhaps the first to point this out.<br /> <br /> 6. They appear to have been widely used by Old Assyrian merchants operating in Anatolia (Veenhof 1997).<br /> <br /> 7. Powell (1978, 1979, 1999:14-18) provides an excellent assessment of the evidence, emphasizing that Babylonians did not produce scales accurate enough to measure the tiny amounts of silver they would have had to use to make ordinary household purchases like fried fish or cords of firewood in cash. He concludes that silver was largely used in transactions between merchants. Market vendors therefore presumably acted as they do in smallscale markets in Africa and Central Asia, today, building up lists of trustworthy clients to whom they could extend credit over time (e.g., Hart 1999:201, Nazpary 2001).<br /> <br /> 8. Hudson 2002:21-23, who hypothesizes that the time element was important as merchants would presumably otherwise delay to employ the funds as long as possible. See Renger 1984, 1994; Meiroop 2005.<br /> <br /> 9 I'm referring here to Qirad and Mudaraba arrangements, similar to the ancient and Medieval Mediterranean Commenda (Udovitch 1970, Ray 1997).<br /> <br /> 10. Herodotus 1.138.<br /> <br /> n. Herodotus 3.102-5.<br /> <br /> 12. Mieroop 2002:63, 2005:29. He notes that Enmetena's total grain income in any one year was roughly 37 million liters, making the sum he claims to be owed more than one thousand times his own palace's annual revenue.<br /> <br /> 13. Lambert 1971; Lemche 1979:16.<br /> <br /> 14- Hudson 1993 provides the most detailed overview of this literature.<br /> <br /> 15. Hudson 1993:2o.<br /> <br /> 16. Grierson 1977:17, citing Cerny 1954=907.<br /> <br /> 17. Bleiberg 2002<br /> <br /> 18. One authority states categorically: &quot;I do not know of debt-annulment decrees issued by any Pharaoh&quot; (Jasnow 2001:42), and adds that there is no evidence for debt-bondage until the very late Demotic period. This is the same period when Greek sources begin to speak of both.<br /> <br /> 19. VerSteeg 2002:199; see Lorton 1977:42-44.<br /> <br /> 20. This in certain ways resembles the legal loopholes created in both the Medieval Christian and Islamic worlds, where interest was formally banned: see chapter 10 below.<br /> <br /> 21. Diodorus Siculus 1.79. See Westermann 1955:5o-51 for a comparison of Greek and Egyptian sources on . the subject.<br /> <br /> 22. The history of the dissemination of interest-bearing debt is only beginning to be reconstructed. It does not yet appear in Ebla (c. 2500 Be), in Old or Middle Kingdom Egypt, or in Mycenaean Greece, but it eventually becomes common in the Levant in the late Bronze Age, and also in Hittite Anatolia. As we'll see, it came quite late to Classical Greece, and even later to places like Germany.<br /> <br /> 23. In Chinese historiography, in fact, this whole epoch is known as &quot;the feudal period.&quot;)<br /> <br /> 24. The Guanzi, cited in Schaps 2006:20.<br /> <br /> 25. Yung-Ti (20o6) has recently argued that they weren't, though we wouldn't really know. Thierry (1992:39-41) simply assumes they were, providing much evidence of their use both as units of account and means of payment, but none of their use for buying and selling.<br /> <br /> 26. At any rate, cowries were definitely being used as the equivalent of coins in later periods, and the government periodically either suppressed their use or reintroduced them (Quiggin 1949, Swann 1950, Thierry 1992:39-41, Peng 1994.) Cowrie money survived, alongside tally sticks, as a common form of currency in Yunnan province in the far south until relatively recent times (B. Yang 2002), and detailed studies exist, but -as far as I can tell- only in Chinese.<br /> <br /> 27. Scheidel 2004:5.<br /> <br /> 28. Kan 1978:92, Martzloff 2002:178. I note in passing that a study of the Inca khipu system itself would itself be quite fascinating in this regard; the strings were used to record both obligations we would consider financial, and others we would consider ritual, since as in so many Eurasian languages, the words &quot;debt&quot; and &quot;sin&quot; were the same in Quechua as well (Quitter &amp; Urton 2002:270).<br /> <br /> 29. L. Yang (1971:5) finds the first reliable literary reference to loans at interest in the fourth century BC. Peng (1994:98101) notes that the earliest surviving records {the oracle bones and inscriptions) do not mention loans, but there's no reason they would; he also assembles most of the available literary references, finds many references to loans in early periods, and concludes that there's no way to know whether to take them seriously. By the Warring States period, however, there is abundant evidence for local usurers, and all the usual abuses.<br /> <br /> 30. Yan tie lun I 2/4b2-6, in Gale (1967):12.<br /> <br /> 31. Guanzi (73 12), Rickett (1998:397)<br /> <br /> 32. So around 100 BC, &quot;when flood and drought come upon them ...those who have grain sell at half value, while those who have not borrow at exorbitant usury. Then paternal acres change hands; sons and grandsons are sold to pay debts; merchants make vast profits, and even petty tradesmen set up business and realize unheard of gains&quot; (in Duyvendak 1928:32). Loans at interest are first documented in the fourth century BC in China but may have existed before that (Yang 1971:5). For a parallel case of child-selling for debt in early India, Rhys Davids 1922:218.<br /> <br /> === Chapter Nine ===<br /> 1. ]aspers 1949.<br /> <br /> 2. Parkes 1959:71.<br /> <br /> 3. Or, if one must be even more precise, we should probably end it in 632 AD, with the death of the Prophet.<br /> <br /> 4. Obviously Vedic Hinduism is earlier; I am referring to Hinduism as a selfconscious religion, which is generally seen as having taken shape in reaction to Buddhism and Jainism around this time.<br /> <br /> 5. The date used to be set much earlier, at 650 or even 700 sc, but recent archaeology has called this into question. Lydian coins still seem to be the earliest, though, as most of the others have been seem to be the earliest though.<br /> <br /> 6. Prakash &amp; Singh 1968, Dhavalikar 1974, Kosambi 1981, Gupta &amp; Hardaker 1995. The latest accepted dates for the appearance of coinage in India, based on radiocarbon analysis, is circa 400 sc (Erdosy 1988:115, 1995:113).<br /> <br /> 7. Kosambi (1981) notes that there seems to be a direct connection between the first of these and Bronze Age Harap-pan cities: &quot;even after the destruction of Mohenjo Daro, which is entirely a trade city as shown by its fine weights and poor weapons, the traders persisted, and continued to use the very accurate weights of that period. &quot; (ibid:91). Given what we know of Mesopotamia, with which the Harappan civilization was in close contact, it also seems reasonable to assume that they continued to employ older commercial techniques, and, indeed, &quot;promissory notes&quot; do appear as familiar practices in our earliest literary sources, such as the Jakatas (Rhys Davids 1901:16, Thapar 1995 :125, Fiser 2004:194), even if these are many centuries later. Of course, in this case, the marks were presumably meant to confirm the accuracy of the weight, to show that it hadn't been further trimmed, but the inspiration of earlier credit practices seems likely. Kosambi later confirms this: &quot;The marks would correspond to modern countersignatures on bills or cheques cleared through business houses.&quot; (1996:178-79)<br /> <br /> 8. Our first literary record of coinage in China is of a kingdom that reformed its<br /> <br /> currency system in 524 Be-which means that it already had a currency system, and presumably had for some time (Li 1985=372).<br /> <br /> 9. Schaps 2006:34. For a similar recent argument, Schoenberger 2008.<br /> <br /> 10. Of course the very first coins were of fairly high denominations and quite possibly used for paying taxes and fees, and for buying houses and cattle more than for everyday purchases (Kraay 1964, Price 1983, Schaps 2004, Vickers 1985). A real market society in Greece, for instance, could only be said to exist when, as in the fifth century, ordinary citizens went to the market carrying minuscule coins of stamped silver or copper in their cheeks.<br /> <br /> 11. First proposed by Cook (1958), the explanation has since lost favor (Price 1983, Kraay 1964, Wallace 1987, Schaps 2004:96-1o1; though cf. Ingham 2004:1oo)-largely, on the argument that one cannot pay soldiers with coins unless there are already markets with people willing to accept the coins. This strikes me as a weak objection, since the absence of coinage does not imply the absence of either money or markets; almost all parties to the debate (e.g., Balmuth [1967, 1971, 1975, 2001) who argues that irregular pieces of silver were already in wide use as currency, and Le Rider (2001), Seaford (2004:318-37) or for that matter Schaps (2004:222-35), who argue that they were not numerous enough to be a viable everyday currency, seem to give much consideration to the possibility that most market trade took place on credit. Anyway, as I've noted earlier, it would be easy enough for the state to ensure that the coins became acceptable currency simply by insisting that they were the only acceptable means of payment for obligations to the state itself.<br /> <br /> 12. Most of the earliest known Greek bankers were of Phoenician descent, and it's quite possible that they first introduced the concept of interest there (Hudson 1992).<br /> <br /> 13. Elayi &amp; Elayi 1992.<br /> <br /> 14. Starr 1977:H]; see Lee 2000.<br /> <br /> 15. It's interesting to note that, to our knowledge, the great trading nations did not produce much in the way of great art or philosophy.<br /> <br /> 16. The great exception was of course Sparta, which refused to issue its own coinage but developed a system whereby aristocrats adopted a strict military lifestyle and trained permanently for war.<br /> <br /> 17. Aristotle himself noted the connection when he emphasized that the constitution of a Greek state could be predicted by the main army of its military: aristocracies if they relied on cavalry (since horses were very expensive), oligarchies in the case of heavy infantry (since armor was not cheap), democracy in the case of light infantry or navies (since anyone could wield a sling or row a boat) (Politics 4j.i289bjj-44, ij.i297bi6-24, 6.7.IJ2Ia6-I4).<br /> <br /> 18. Keyt (1997:IoJ) summarizing Politics I)04b27-3I.<br /> <br /> 19. Thucydides (6.977) claimed that 2o,ooo escaped from the mines in 421 sc, which is probably exaggerated, but most sources estimate at least ro,ooo for most of that century, generally working shackled and under atrocious conditions (Robinson 1973).<br /> <br /> 20. Ingham 2004:99-Ioo.<br /> <br /> 21. MacDonald 2oo6:43.<br /> <br /> 22. On Alexander's armies monetary needs, Davies 1996:8o in turn, 83; on his logistics more generally, Engels 1978. The figure no,ooo includes not only actual troops but servants, camp-followers, and so forth.<br /> <br /> 23. Green 1993:366.<br /> <br /> 24. The Roman institution was called nexum, and we don't know entirely how it worked: i.e., whether it was a form of labor contract, whereby one worked off the debt for a fixed term, or something more like African pawn systems, where the debtor-and his or her children-served in conditions roughly like those of a slave until redemption (see Testart 2002 for the possibilities). See Buckler 1895, Brunt 1974, Cornell 1994:266-67, JJo--J2.<br /> <br /> 25. Hence, most of the scandalous stories that sparked uprisings against debt bondage centered on dramatic cases of physical or sexual abuse; of course, once debt bondage was abolished and household labor was instead supplied by slaves, such abuse was considered normal and acceptable.<br /> <br /> 26. The first bronze coins paid to soldiers seem to have been coined around 400 BC (Scheidel 2oo6), bur this was the traditional date according to Roman historians.<br /> <br /> 27. What I am arguing flies in the face of much of the conventional scholarly wisdom, summed up best perhaps by Moses Finley when he wrote &quot;in Greece and Rome the debtor class rebelled; whereas in the Near East they did not&quot;-and therefore reforms like those of Nehemiah were at least minor, temporary palliatives. Near Eastern rebellion took a different form; moreover, Greek and Roman solutions were both more limited and more temporary than he supposed.<br /> <br /> 28. Ioannatou 2006 for a good example. Cataline's conspiracy of 63 BC was an alliance of indebted aristocrats and desperate peasants. On continued Republican debt and land redistribution campaigns: Mitchell 1993.<br /> <br /> 29. Howgego makes this point: &quot;If less is heard of debt under the Principate it may well be because political stability removed the opportunity for the expression of discontent. This argument is supported by the way in which debt re-emerges as an issue at times of open revolt&quot; (1992:1J).<br /> <br /> 30. Plutarch, Moralia, 828f-83ra.<br /> <br /> 31. There is, needless to say, a vast and conflicting literature, but probably the best source is Banaji (2001). He emphasizes in the late empire, &quot;debt was the essential means by which employers enforced control over the supply of labour, fragmenting the solidarity of workers and 'personalizing' relations between owners and employees&quot; (ibid:205), a situation he compares interestingly to India.<br /> <br /> 32. Kosambi I966, Sharma I968, Misra I976, Altekar I977:mcr38. Contemporary Indian historians, who refer to them as gana-sanghas (&quot;tribal assemblies&quot;), tend to dismiss them as warrior aristocracies supported by populations of helots or slaves, though of course, Greek city-states could be described the same way.<br /> <br /> 33. In other words, they looked more like Sparta than like Athens. The slaves were also collectively owned (Chakravarti I985:48-49.) Again, one has to wonder how much this was really the general rule, but I yield to the predominant scholarly opinion on such matters.<br /> <br /> 34. Arthasastra 2.12.27. See Sc-haps 2oo6:I8 for a nice comparative commentary.<br /> <br /> 35. Thapar 2002:34, Dikshitar 1948.<br /> <br /> 36. There were also taxes, of course, usually ranging from I/6 to II4 of total yield (Kosambi I996:3I6; Sihag 2005), but taxes also served as a way to bring goods to the market.<br /> <br /> 37. So Kosambi 1966:152-57.<br /> <br /> 38. And wage labor, two phenomena that, as so often in the ancient world, largely overlapped: the common phrase for workers used in texts from the period was dasa-karmakara, &quot;slave-hireling&quot; with the assumption that slaves and laborers worked together and were barely distinguishable (Chakravarti I985). On the predominance of slavery, see Sharma I958, Rai I98L The extent is contested, but early Buddhist texts do seem to assume that any wealthy family would normally have domestic slaves-which certainly wasn't true in other periods.<br /> <br /> 39. Punch-marked coins were also eventually replaced, after Alexander's brief conquest of the Indus Valley and his establishment of Greek colonists in Afghanistan, by Aegean-style coins, ultimately causing the entire Indian tradition to disappear (Kosambi I98I, Gupta &amp; Hardaker I985.)<br /> <br /> 40. It's referred to as the &quot;Pillar Edict&quot; (Norman I975:I6).<br /> <br /> 41. There's a good deal of debate as to when: Schopen (I994) emphasizes there is little evidence for substantial Buddhist monasteries until the first century AD, perhaps three centuries later. This has a great deal of bearing on monetarization too, as we'll see.<br /> <br /> 42. &quot;The private trader was regarded as a thorn (kantaka), a public enemy just short of a national calamity, by Arth. 4.2, taxed and fined for malpractices of which many are taken for granted&quot; (Kosambi I996=243).<br /> <br /> 43 • Those wishing to become monks had to first affirm that they were not themselves debtors (just as they also had to promise they weren't runaway slaves); but there was no rule saying the monastery itself could not lend money. In China, as we'll see, providing easy credit terms for peasants came to be seen as a form of charity:<br /> <br /> 44 Similarly, Buddhist monks are not allowed to see an army, if they can possibly avoid it (Pacittiya, 48-5I).<br /> <br /> 45. Lewis 1990.<br /> <br /> 46. Wilbur I943, Yates 2002. The state of Qin, during the Warring States period, not only allowed for army officers to be allocated slaves by rank, but for merchants, craftsmen, and the &quot;poor and idle&quot; to themselves be &quot;confiscated as slaves&quot; (Lewis I99o:6I-62).<br /> <br /> 47. Scheidel (2006, 2007, 2009) has considered the matter at length and concluded that Chinese currency took the unusual form that it did for two maibn reasons: (I) the historical coincidence that Qin (which used bronze coins) defeated Chu (which used gold) in the civil wars, and subsequent conservatism, and (2) the lack of a highly paid professional army, which allowed the Chinese state to act like the early Roman republic, which also limited itself to bronze coins for peasant conscripts-but unlike the Roman republic, was not surrounded by states accustomed to other forms of currency.<br /> <br /> 48. Pythagoras was, as far as we know, the first to take the latter course, founding a secret political society that for a while had control over the levers of political power in the Greek cities of southern Italy.<br /> <br /> 49. Hadot 1995, 2002. In the ancient world, Christianity was recognized as a philosophy largely because it had its own forms of ascetic practice.<br /> <br /> so. On the Tillers: Graham 1979, 1994:67-110. They seem to have flourished around the same time as Mo Di, the founder of Mohism (roughly 47o-391 sc). The Tillers ultimately vanished, leaving behind mainly a series of treatises on agricultural technology, but they had a tremendous influence on early Taoism-which, in turn, became the favorite philosophy for peasant rebels for many centuries to come, starting with the Yellow Turbans of 184 AD. Eventually, Taoism was displaced by messianic forms of Buddhism as the favorite ideology of rebellious peasants.<br /> <br /> 51. Wei-Ming 1986, Graham 1989, Schwartz 1986.<br /> <br /> 52. Legend has it that after one Pythagorean mathematician discovered the existence of irrational numbers, other members of the sect took him on a cruise and dropped him overboard. For an extended discussion of the relation of early Pythagoreanism (53o-4oo sc) to the rise of a cash economy, see Seaford 2004:266-75).<br /> <br /> 53. At least if my own experience in Madagascar is anything to go on.<br /> <br /> 54. War is quite similar: it's also an area in which it's possible to imagine everyone as playing a game where the rules and stakes are unusually transparent. The main difference is that in war one does care about one's fellow soldiers. On the origins of our own notion of &quot;selfinterest,&quot; see chapter n below.<br /> <br /> 55. Not to be confused with the unrelated Confucian term /i, meaning &quot;ritual&quot; or &quot;etiquette.&quot; Later, /i became the word for &quot;interest&quot;-that is, not only &quot;selfinterest,&quot; but also &quot;interest payment&quot;<br /> <br /> (e.g., Cartier 1988:26-27). I should note that my argument here is slightly unconventional. Schwartz (1985:145-51) notes that in Confucius, &quot;profit&quot; has a purely pejorative meaning, and he argues that it was subversively reinterpreted by Mo Di. I find it unlikely that Confucius represents conventional wisdom at this time; while his writings are the earliest we have on the subject, his position was clearly marginal for centuries after his death. I am assuming instead that the Legalist tradition reflected the common wisdom even before Confucius-or certainly, Mencius.<br /> <br /> 56. Zhan Guo Ce (&quot;Strategies of the Warring States&quot;) no. 109, 7.175<br /> <br /> 5y. Annuals of Lii Buwei, 8154.<br /> <br /> 58. See Ames (1994) for a discussion of key terms: si li (self-interest), shi (strategic advantage), and /i min (public profit).<br /> <br /> 59. Book of Lord Shang 947-48, Duyvendak 1928:65.<br /> <br /> 6o. Kosambi's translation (1965:142); the Encyclopedia Britannica prefers &quot;handbook on profit&quot; (entry for &quot;Carvaka&quot;); Al-tekar (1977:3), &quot;the science of wealth. &quot;<br /> <br /> 61. Nag &amp; Dikshitar 1927:15. Kosambi argues that the Mauryan polity was thus based on a fundamental contradiction: &quot;a moral law-abiding population ruled by a completely amoral king&quot; (1996:237). Yet such a situation is hardly unusual, before or since.<br /> <br /> 62. Thucydides 5.85-113 (cf. 3.36-49). The event took place in 416 sc, around the same time that Lord Shang and Kautilya were writing. Significantly, Thucydides' own objections to such behavior are not explicitly moral but center on showing that it was not to the &quot;long-term profit&quot; of the empire (Kallet 2001:19). On Thucydides' own utilitarian materialism more generally, see Sahlins 2004.<br /> <br /> 63. Mozi 6:7B, in Hansen 2000:137<br /> <br /> 64. Mencius 4.1, in Duyvendak 1928:76-77. He appears to be referring to a distinction originally made by Confucius himself: &quot;the superior person understands what is right while the inferior person only understands what is personally profitable&quot; (Analects 7.4.16).<br /> <br /> 65. The Mohist path--overtly embrace financial logic-was the less well trodden. We've already seen how in India and Greece, attempts to frame morality as debt went nowhere: even the Vedic principles are ostensibly about liberation from debt, which was also, as we've seen, a central theme in Israel.<br /> <br /> 66. Leenhardt 1979:164.<br /> <br /> 67. This interpretation does fly fairly directly in the face of the main thrust of scholarship on the issue, which tends instead to emphasize the &quot;transcendental&quot; nature of Axial Age ideas (e.g., Schwartz 1975, Eisenstadt 198z, 1984, 1986, Roetz 1993, Bellah zoos).<br /> <br /> 68. The Greek system actually began with Fire, Air, and Water, and the Indian with Fire, Water, and Earth, though in each case there were numerous elaborations. The Chinese elemental system was fivefold: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water.<br /> <br /> 69. In Christianity, at least in the Augustinian tradition, this is quite explicit: the material world does not in any sense partake of God; God is not in it; it was simply made by Him (De civitate dei 4.12)-this radical separation of spirit and nature being-according to Henri Frankfort (1948:34Z-44)-a peculiarity of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. That same Augustinian tradition, though, also drew on Plato to insist that reason, on the other hand-the abstract principle which allows us to understand such things, and which is entirely separate from matter-does partake of the divine (see Hoitenga 1991:nz-14, for the conflict in Augustine's own ideas here).<br /> <br /> 70. Shell's essay &quot;The Ring of Gyges&quot; (1978) has already been cited in the last chapter, in my discussion of Plato; Seaford 1998, 2004.<br /> <br /> 71. This is based on the fact that Miletus was one of the cities, if not the first city, to produce coins of small enough<br /> <br /> denominations that they could be used for everyday transactions (Kraay 1964:67).<br /> <br /> 7z. Heraclitus was from the nearby Ionian city of Ephesus and Pythagoras originally from the Ionian island of Samos. After Ionia was incorporated into the Persian empire, large numbers of Ionians fled to southern Italy, which then became the center of Greek philosophy, again, at just the period when the Greek cities there became thoroughly monetarized. Athens became the center of Greek philosophy only in the fifth century, which is also when Athens was militarily dominant and the Athenian &quot;owl&quot; coinage became the main international currency of the Eastern Mediterranean.<br /> <br /> 73 • Or as Seaford (zoo4:zo8) puts it, echoing Anaximander's description of his primal substance, &quot;a distinct, eternal, impersonal, all-embracing, unlimited, homogeneous, eternally moving, abstract, regulating substance, destination for all things as well as their origin&quot; (or, at least, &quot;all things&quot; that were available for purchase.)<br /> <br /> 74. Seaford zoo4:r36-46; see Picard 1975; Wallace 1987; Harris zoo8a:10. Purely &quot;fiduciary&quot; money is of course what a metallist would call &quot;fiat&quot; or &quot;token&quot; money, or a Keynesian, &quot;charta! money. &quot; Despite Finley's arguments to the contrary (1980:141, 196), just about all ancient money was fiduciary to some extent. It's easy to see why coins would ordinarily circulate at a higher face value than their weight in gold or silver, since the price of the latter would tend to fluctuate, but the moment the coin's face value was lower than that of its metal content, there would be no reason not to melt it down.<br /> <br /> 75. In the case of truly large states like the Roman or Mauryan empires, inflation did eventually result, but the full effects were not felt for at least a century (see Ingham zooz:1o1-4, Kessler &amp; Temin zooS, Harris zoo8b for some good discussions of the Roman situation.)<br /> <br /> 76. Seaford 2004:I38-39.<br /> <br /> 77. I am partly inspired here by Marcel Mauss's arguments about of the concept of substance (Allen 1998).<br /> <br /> 78. Hence, as we'll see Aristotle's position that a coin was only a social convention (Nicomachean Ethics 1133a2&lt;r-31) remained very much a minority view in the ancient world. It did become the predominant view later, in the Middle Ages.<br /> <br /> 79. He is known as Payasi in the Buddhist scriptures, Paesi in the Jaina (see Bronkhorst 2007:143-159 for a good discussion of these earliest Indian materialists; for the later materialist school, to which Kautilya is said to belong, see Chattopadhyaya 1994. Jaspers (1951:135), writing of India, notes the appearance of &quot;all philosophical trends, including skepticism and materialism, sophistry and nihilism&quot;-a significant list, since it's obviously not a list of &quot;all&quot; philosophical trends at all, but only the most materialist.<br /> <br /> So. In The Republic it is rejected out of hand. In India, as I've argued, the Hindu tradition only appears to embrace it. Buddhists, Jains, and other oppositional philosophies didn't use the term at all.<br /> <br /> 81. Philo of Alexandria, writing around the time of Christ, says of the Essenes: &quot;not a single slave is to be found among them, but all are free, exchanging services with each other, and they denounce the owners of slaves, not merely for their injustice in outraging the law of equality, but also for their impiety in annulling the statute of nature&quot; (Quod omnis probus liber sit 79). The Therapeutae, another Jewish group, group rejected all forms of property, but looked on slavery &quot;to be a thing absolutely and wholly contrary to nature, for nature has created all men free&quot; (De Vita Contemplativa 70). The similarity to Roman law ideas is notable. Jewish groups are unusually well documented; if similar sects existed in, say, Thrace, or Numidia, we probably wouldn't know.<br /> <br /> 82. Later legend had it that his father was a king and he grew up in a palace, but the Sakya &quot;king&quot; of the time was in fact<br /> <br /> a elected and rotating position (Kosambi 1965:96).<br /> <br /> === Chapter Ten ===<br /> 1. Coins produced by the barbarian successor states generally did not have a great deal of gold or silver in them; as a result they tended to circulate only within the principality of the king or baron who issued them and were largely useless for trade.<br /> <br /> 2. Dockes (1979:62-70) provides a good overview of the situation-literally, since current understandings of the extent of Roman slave estates in France are based largely on aerial photography. Over time even the free communities largely ended up in debt peonage of one sort or another, or bound to the land as serfs (in Latin, coloni).<br /> <br /> 3. As we've seen, Kosambi saw Magadha as a peak of monetarization. R.S. Sharma (2oo1:n&lt;r-62) argues that coinage remained commonplace under the Guptas (28o to 550 AD) but then abruptly disappeared almost everywhere thereafter. However, even if he is right that the total number of coins in circulation did not diminish until then, he himself points out (ibid:143) that the total population of the Ganges Plain almost tripled over this period, so even this would mark a steady decline.<br /> <br /> 4. For an overview: R.S. Sharma 1965, Kane 1968 III:4n-6r, Chatterjee 1971. Schopen (1994) especially emphasizes that the techniques grow more sophisticated over the course of the Middle Ages, for instance, developing bookkeeping techniques for combining compound interest with partial repayments.<br /> <br /> 5. Documents on the regulation of monastic affairs pay a great deal of attention to the details: how when the money was lent out, contracts would be signed, sealed, and deposited in the temple before witnesses; how a surety or pledge worth twice the amount of the loan should be turned over, how &quot;devout lay brothers&quot; should be assigned to manage the investment, and so forth (Schopen 1994).<br /> <br /> 6. From the Arab dinar, which in turn derives from the Roman denarius. It is unclear whether such sums were actually paid in coins at this point: one early monastic manual, for example, speaking of objects that might be relegated to the Inexhaustible Treasuries and thus put out at interest, mentions &quot;gold and silver, whether in the form of coins, finished or raw, in large or small quantities, pure or alloyed, or whether in the form of utensils, finished or unfinished&quot; (Mahasamghika Vinaya, in Gerner 1956 [1995:I65]).<br /> <br /> 7. Fleet 1888: 26.o-62., as translated in Schopen 1994:532-33. One need hardly remark on the irony of this emphasis on eternity emerging within Buddhism, a religion founded on the recognition of the impermanence of all worldly attachments.<br /> <br /> 8. The commercial loans are documented from an inscription at the West Indian monastery at Karle (Levi 1938: 145; Gerner 1956 [1995:164]; Barreau 1961:44447), the assemblies from later Tamil temples (Ayyar 198.:4o-68, R.S. Sharma 1965.) It is not clear whether some of these were commercial loans, or more like the later Buddhist custom of jisa still current in Tibet, Bhutan, and Mongolia, where an individual, or collective, or group of families wishing to support a specific ceremony or, say, an educational project might receive a soo-rupee loan &quot;in perpetuity&quot; and then be expected to provide 8oo rupees a year to organize the ceremony. The responsibilities are then inherited, though the &quot;loan&quot; can be transferred (Miller 1961, Murphy 1961).<br /> <br /> 9. Kalhana, Rajatarangini 7.1091-98; see Basham 1948, Riepe i96i:44n49J The monks were apparently Ajivkas, who still existed at this time.<br /> <br /> 10. Naskar 1996, R.S. Sharma .oo1:4s-66, on the Puranic description of the &quot;Kali age,&quot; which seems to be the way<br /> <br /> later Brahmins referred to the period from roughly Alexander's reign to the early Middle Ages, a period of insecurity and unrest when foreign dynasties ruled much of India, and caste hierarchies were widely challenged or rejected.<br /> <br /> n. Manusmrti 8.5.257. Significantly, the debt to other humans vanishes entirely in these texts.<br /> <br /> 12. Manusmrti 8.5.27o-7 2. A Sudra's tongue would also be cut off for insulting a member of the twice-born castes (8.270).<br /> <br /> 13. R.S. Sharma 1958, 1987, Chauhan 2003.<br /> <br /> 14. &quot;A Sudra, though emancipated by his master, is not released from a state of servitude, for a state which is natural to him, by whom can he be divested?&quot; (Manusmrti, Yajfiavalkya Smrti 8.5.419), or even &quot;Sudras must be reduced to slavery, either by purchase or without purchase, because they were created by God for the sake or serving others (8.5.413).<br /> <br /> 15. Kautilya allowed 6o percent for commercial loans, 120 percent &quot;for enterprises that involve journeys through forests,&quot; and twice that for those that involve shipping goods by sea (Arthasastra 3.n; one later code, Yajfiavalkya Smrti 2.38 follows this.)<br /> <br /> 16. Yajfiavalkya Smrti 2.37, Manusmrti 8.143, Visnusmrti 5.6.2, see Kane 1968 III:421.<br /> <br /> I?. R.S. Sharma 1965:68. Similarly, early law-codes specified that anyone who defaulted on a debt should be reborn as a slave or even a domestic animal in their creditor's household: one later Chinese •Buddhist text was even more exact, specifying that for each eight wen defaulted, one must spend one day as an ox, or for each seven, one day as a horse (Zhuang Chun in Peng 1994:244n17)<br /> <br /> 18. Dumont (1966).<br /> <br /> 19. Gyan Prakash (2003:184) makes this point for the colonial period: when one-time caste hierarchies began to be treated instead as matters of debt bondage, subordinates turned into persons who had equal rights, but whose rights were temporarily &quot;suspended.&quot;<br /> <br /> 20. To be fair, one could also argue that indebted peasants are also likely to be in command of more resources, and thus be more capable of organizing a rebellion. We know very little about popular insurrections in Medieval India (though see Guha (1999). Palat (1986, 1988:205-15; Kosambi 1996:392-93), but the total number of such revolts seems to have been relatively low in comparison to Europe and certainly in comparison to China, where rebellion was almost ceaseless.<br /> <br /> 21. &quot;No one knows just how many rebellions have taken place in Chinese history. From the official record there were several thousand incidents within just three years from 613 to 615 AD, probably one thousand events a year (Wei Z. AD 656: t:h. &quot;Report of the Imperial Historians&quot;). According to Parsons, during the period 1629-44, there were as many as 234,185 insurrections in China, averaging 43 events per day, or 1.8 outbreaks per hour&quot; (Deng 1999:220).<br /> <br /> 22. Following Deng (1999).<br /> <br /> 23. Huang 1999:231.<br /> <br /> 24. These loans appear to have been an extension of the logic of the state granaries, which stockpiled food; some to sell at strategic moments to keep prices low, some to distribute free in times of famine; some to loan at low interest to provide an alternative to usurers.<br /> <br /> 25. Huang op cit; cf. Zhuoyun &amp; Dull 1980:22-24. For his complex currency reforms: Peng 1994:1n-14.<br /> <br /> 26. Generally, interest rates were set at a maximum of 20 percent and compound interest was banned. Chinese authorities eventually also adopted the Indian principle that interest should not be allowed to exceed the principal (Cartier 1988:28; Yang 1971:92-103).<br /> <br /> 27. Braude! 1979; Wallerstein 1991, 2001.<br /> <br /> 28. I am here especially following the work of Boy Bin Wong (1997, 2002; also Mielants 2001, 2007.) Granted, most<br /> <br /> Braudelans only see later dynasties like the Ming as fully embodying this principle, but I think it can be projected backwards.<br /> <br /> 29. So, for instance, while markets themselves were considered beneficial, the government also systematically intervened to prevent price fluctuations, stockpiling commodities when they were cheap and releasing them if prices rose. There were periods of Chinese history when rulers made common cause with merchants, but the result was usually a major popular backlash (Deng 1999:146).<br /> <br /> 30. Pommeranz 1998, Goldstone 2002 for an introduction to the vast literature on comparative standards of living. India was actually doing rather well also for most of its history.<br /> <br /> 31. Zurcher 1958:282.<br /> <br /> 32. Gernet 1956 (1999: 241-42); for the following discussion see Gernet 1960, Jan 1965, Kieschnick 1997, Benn 1998, 2007.<br /> <br /> 33. Tsan-ning (919-1001 ad) quoted in Jan 1965:263. Others appealed to the history of bodhisattvas and pious kings who had made gifts of their own bodies, such as the king who, in time of famine, leapt to his death to be transformed into a mountain of flesh, replete with thousands of heads, eyes, lips, teeth, and tongues, which for ten thousand years only grew larger no matter how much of it humans and animals ingested (Benn 200T95, m8; cf. Ohnuma 2007).<br /> <br /> 34. Tu Mu, cited in Gerner 1956 (1995:245)-<br /> <br /> 35. This might come as something of a surprise, since the phrase is used so often in contemporary Western popular usage, &quot;karmic debt&quot; becoming something of a New Age cliche. But it seems to strike a much more intuitive chord with EuroAmericans than it ever did in India. Despite the close association of debt and sin in the Indian tradition, most early Buddhist schools avoided the concept-largely because it implied a continuity of the self, which they saw as ephemeral and ultimately illusory. The exception were the Sammitiya, called &quot;personalists&quot; as they did believe in an enduring self, who developed the notion of aviprSnasa, whereby the results of good or bad actions-karma-&quot;endure like a sheet of paper on which a debt is inscribed&quot; as an unconscious element of the self that passes from one life to another (Lamotte 1997:22-24, 86---9o; Lusthaus 20o2:209-10). The idea might have died with that sect had it not been taken up by the famous Mahayana philosopher Nagarjuna, who compared it to an &quot;imperishable promissory note&quot; (Kalupahana 1991:54-55, 249; Pasadika 1997). His Madhyamaka school in turn became the Sanlun or &quot;Three Treatise&quot; school in China; the notion of karmic debt was taken up in particular by the &quot;Three Stages&quot; or &quot;Three Levels&quot; school created the monk Hsin-Hsing (540'-94 AD) (Hubbard 2001).<br /> <br /> 36. Commentary on the Dharma of the Inexhaustible Storehouse of the Mahayana Universe, as translated by Hubbard (2oo1:265), with a few changes based on Gerner (1956 [1995:246]).<br /> <br /> 37. In Hubbord 2001:266.<br /> <br /> 38. Dao Shi, in Cole 1998:117. Cole's book provides an excellent summary of this literature (see also Ahern 1973, Teiser 1988, Knapp 2004, Oxfeld 2005). Some Medieval texts focus exclusively on the mother, others on parents generally. Interestingly, the same notion of an infinite and unpayable &quot;milk-debt&quot; to one's mother also appears in Turkey (White 2004=75!6).<br /> <br /> 39. Sutra for the Recompense of Gratitude cited in Baskind 2007=166. My &quot;four billion years&quot; translates &quot;kalpa,&quot; which is technically 4.32 billion years. I also changed &quot;them&quot; for parents to &quot;her&quot; for mother since the context refers to a man who cut his own flesh specifically for his mother's sake. '<br /> <br /> 40. Chinese Buddhists did not invent the pawnshop, but they appear to have been the first to sponsor them on a large scale. On the origins of pawnbroking in general, see Hardaker 1892, Kuznets 1933. On China specifically: Gerner 1956<br /> <br /> [1995=17o-7- 3], Yang 1971:71-73, Whelan 1979. In a remarkable parallel, the first &quot;formal&quot; pawnshops in Europe also emerged from monasteries for similar purposes: the monti di pieta or &quot;banks that take pity&quot; created by the Franciscans in Italy in the fifteenth century. (Peng 1994:245, also makes note of the parallel.)<br /> <br /> 41. Gerner 1956 [1995:142-86], Ch'en 1964:262--65; Collins 1986:66-;1; Peng 1994:243-45. It would seem that Taoist monasteries, which also multiplied in this period, banned making loans (Kohn 2002:76), perhaps in part to mark a distinction.<br /> <br /> 42. Gerner 1956 [1995:228], where he famously wrote, &quot;the donors to the Inexhaustible Treasuries were shareholders, not in the economic domain but that of religion.&quot; As far as I know, the only contemporary scholar who has fully embraced the premise that this was indeed an early form of capitalism is Randall Collins (1986) who sees similar monastic capitalism in later Medieval Europe as well. The accepted Chinese historiography has tended to see the first &quot;shoots of capitalism&quot; developing later, in the Song, which was much less hostile to merchants than other dynasties, followed by a full embrace of the market-but firm rejection of capitalism-in the Ming and Qing. The key question is the organization of labor, and in Tang times this remains somewhat opaque, since even if statistics were available, which they're not, it's difficult to know what terms like &quot;serf,&quot; &quot;slave,&quot; and &quot;wage-laborer&quot; actually meant in practice.<br /> <br /> 43. Gerner 1956 [1995:116-39], Ch'en 1964:269-71, on land reclamation and monastic slaves.<br /> <br /> 44. &quot;It is claimed that the purpose of this generosity is to relieve the poor and orphans. But in fact there is nothing to it but excess and fraud. This is not a legitimate business&quot; Gerner 1956 (1995:104-5, 211).<br /> <br /> 45. Gerner 1956 [1995:22].<br /> <br /> 46. See Adamek 2005, Walsh 2007.<br /> <br /> 47. This is probably why abstractions like Truth, Justice, and Freedom are so often represented as women.<br /> <br /> 48. Marco Polo observed the practice in the southern province of Yunnan in the thirteenth century: &quot;But when they have any business with one another, they take a round or square piece of stick, and split it in two; and one takes one half and the other takes the other half. But before they split it, they make two or three notches in it, or as many as they wish. So, when one of them comes to pay another, he gives him the money or whatever it is, and gets back the piece of stick the other had&quot; (Benedetto 1931:193). See also Yang 1971:92, Kan 1978, Peng 1994:320, 3JO, so8, Trombert 1995:12-15. Tallies of this sort seem, according to Kan, to have preceded writing; and one legend claims that the same man, a minister to the Yellow Emperor, invented both writing and tally contracts simultaneously (Trombert 199PJ).<br /> <br /> 49. Graham I96o:q9.<br /> <br /> so. Actually the similarity was noticed in antiquity as well: Laozi (Daodejing 27) speaks of those who can &quot;count without a tally, secure a door without a lock.&quot; Most famously, he also insisted &quot;when wise men hold the left tally pledge, they do not press their debtors for their debts. Men of virtue hold on to the tally; men lacking virtue pursue their claims&quot; (stanza 79).<br /> <br /> 51. Or one might better say, turning them at one snap from monetary debts to moral ones, since the very fact that we know the story implies he was eventually rewarded (Peng 1994:100). It is probably significant that the word fu, meaning &quot;tally,&quot; also could mean &quot;an auspicious omen granted to a prince as a token of his appointment by Heaven&quot; (Mathews 1931:283). Similarly, Peng notes a passage from Strategems of the Warring States, about a lord attempting to win popular support: &quot;Feng hurried to Bi, where he had the clerks assemble all those people who owed debts, so that his tallies might be matched against theirs. When the tallies had been matched, Feng brought forth a false order to forgive these debts, and he burned the tallies. The people all cheered&quot;<br /> <br /> (ibid:1oon9). For Tibetan parallels, see Uebach 2oo8.<br /> <br /> 52. Similar things happened in England, where early contracts were also broken in half in imitation of tally sticks: the phrase &quot;indentured servant&quot; derives from this practice, since these were contract laborers; the word actually derives from the &quot;indentations&quot; or notches on the tally stick used as a contract (Blackstone 1827 1:218).<br /> <br /> 5.3 L. Yang 1971:52; Peng 1994:329-31. Peng perceptively notes &quot;this method of matching tallies to withdraw cash was actually an outgrowth of the process used in borrowing money, except that the movement over time of loans was transformed into a movement over space&quot; (1994:330).<br /> <br /> 54. They were called &quot;deposit shops&quot;— and L. Yang (1971:78-8o) calls them &quot;proto-banks.&quot; Peng (1994:323-27) notes something along these lines was already operating, at least for merchants and travelers, under the Tang, but the government had strict controls preventing bankers from reinvesting the money.<br /> <br /> 55 • The practice began in Sichuan, which had its own peculiar form of cash, in iron, not bronze, and therefore much more unwieldy.<br /> <br /> 56. Peng 1994:508, also 515, 833. All this is very much like the token money that circulated in much of Europe in the Middle Ages.<br /> <br /> 57. The most important scholarly exponent of this view is von Glahn (1994, though Peng [1994] holds to something close), and it seems the prevailing one among economists, popular and otherwise.<br /> <br /> 58. Diagram from MacDonald 2oo3:6s.<br /> <br /> 59. One of the favorite images employed when remembering the rule of the Legalists, under the much-hated First Dynasty, was that they constructed great brass cauldrons, in which each law was openly and explicitly spelled out-then used them to boil criminals alive.<br /> <br /> 6o. See Bulliet 1979 (also Lapidus 200J:141-46) on the process of conversion. Bulliet also emphasizes (ibid:129) that the main effect of mass conversion was to make the ostensible justification of government, as protector and expander of the faith, seem increasingly hollow. Mass popular support for caliphs and political leaders only reemerged in periods, like the Crusades or during the reconquista in Spain, when Islam itself seemed under attack; as of course, for similar reasons, it has in much of the Islamic world today.<br /> <br /> 6r. &quot;Most of the time the lower circles paia their taxes through their heads, and looked after themselves. Similarly the government received the taxes and provided some sort of security, and apart from this, occupied itself with matters of concern to itself: external war, patronage of learning and the arts, a life of luxmious ostentation&quot; (Pearson 1982:54).<br /> <br /> 62. The proverb appears, attributed to the Prophet himself, in al-Ghazali's Ihya', kitab al-'Ilm, 284, followed by a long list of similar statements: &quot;Sa'id Bin Musaiyab said, 'When you see a religious scholar visiting a prince, avoid him, for he is a thief.' Al-Auza'i said, 'There is nothing more detestable to Allah than a religious scholar who visits an official' ...&quot; etc. This attitude has by no means disappeared. A strong majority of Iranian ayatollahs, for example, oppose the idea of an Islamic state, on the grounds that it would necessarily corrupt religion.<br /> <br /> 63. Lombard 1947, Grierson 1960. This is often represented as a wise policy of refusal to &quot;debase&quot; the coinage, but it might equally be read as meaning that the caliph's signature added no additional value. An experiment with Chinese-style paper money in Basra in 1294 failed, as no one was willing to accept money backed only by state trust (Ash tor 1976:257).<br /> <br /> 64. MacDonald 2003:64. Gradually this became unsupportable and Muslim empires adopted the more typically Medieval iqta' system, whereby soldiers were granted the tax revenues from specific territories.<br /> <br /> 65. Neither have slaves been employed as soldiers since, except in temporary<br /> <br /> and anomalous circumstance (e.g., by the Manchus, or in Barbados).<br /> <br /> 66. It seems significant that (1) the &quot;inquisition&quot; of 832, the failed Abbasid attempt to take control of the ulema; (2) the most important mass conversion of the Caliphate's subjects to Islam, peaking around 825-85o; and (3) the definitive ascent of Turkish slave soldiers in Abbasid armies, often dated to 838, all roughly corresponded in time.<br /> <br /> 67. Elwahed i9ji:iii-35. As he puts it (ibid:127), &quot;the inalienability of liberty is one of the fundamental and uncontested principles of Islam.&quot; Fathers do not have the right to sell their children, and individuals do not have the right to sell themselves-or at least, if they do, no courts will recognize any resultant ownership claims. I note that this is the diametrical opposite of the &quot;natural law&quot; approach that later developed in Europe.<br /> <br /> 68. There is a certain controversy here: some scholars, including some contemporary Muslim scholars opposed to the Islamic economics movement, insist that riba, which is unequivocally condemned in the Koran, did not originally refer to &quot;interest&quot; in general, but to a pre-Islamic Arabian practice of fining late payment by doubling the money owed, and that the blanket condemnation of interest is a misinterpretation (e.g., Rahman 1964, Kuran 1995). I am in no position to weigh in but, if true, this would suggest that the ban on usury really emerged in Iraq itself as part of the process of the creation of grassroots Islam, which would actually reinforce my general argument.<br /> <br /> 69. The best records we have are actually from a community of Jewish merchants in Geniza, in twelfth-century Egypt, who observed the ban on interest even in dealings with one another. The one area where we regularly hear of interest being charged is the one area where coercion was also regularly employed: that is, in dealings with kings, viziers, and officials, who often borrowed large sums of money at interest-especially, but not exclusively, from Jewish or Christian bankers-to pay their troops. Obliging a request for such an illegal loan was a dangerous business, but refusing even more so (for Abbasid examples, see Ray 1997=6S-7o, mainly drawing from Fischel 1937).<br /> <br /> 70. There were also a whole host of legal subterfuges (called hiyal) that one might undertake if one were absolutely determined to charge interest: for instance, buying one's debtor's house for the amount of the loan, charging them rent for it, and then allowing them to buy it back for the same sum; having one's debtor agree to buy a certain product monthly and sell it to one at a discount, and so forth. Some schools of Islamic law banned these outright; others merely disapproved. It used to be assumed that these methods were widely employed, since most economic historians assumed interest to be a necessary element of credit, but recent research provides no evidence that they were especially common (for the older view: Khan 1929, for the new: Ray 1997:5S-59).<br /> <br /> 71. Mez 1922:44S, quoted in Labib 1969:S9. Note that Basra, the city where everyone in the market paid by check, was also the city where, a century later, Mongol attempts to introduce governmentissue paper money were so doggedly resisted. The word sakk is incidentally the origin of the English &quot;check.&quot; The ultimate origins of sakk are contested: Ashtor (1972:555) suggests they were Byzantine; Chosky (19SS), Persian.<br /> <br /> 72. Goitein (1966, 1967, 1973) provides a detailed summary of financial practices among Jewish merchants in twelfthcentury Egypt. Almost every transaction involved credit to some degree. Checks, remarkably similar even in appearance to the kind used today, were in common usage--though sealed bags of metal coins were even more common in everyday transactions.<br /> <br /> 73- Though apparently governments sometimes paid wages by check (Tag El-Din 2007=69.) I am no doubt underplaying<br /> <br /> the government role in all this: there were, for instance, attempts to set up central government banks, and certainly usually a commitment in principle that the government should enforce commercial standards and regulations. It seems, however, that this rarely came to much in practice.<br /> <br /> 74. Udovitch 1970:71-74.<br /> <br /> 75 • Sarakhsi in Udovitch 1975:11, who has a good discussion of the issues involved. Likewise Ray 1997=59&quot;- 0.<br /> <br /> 76. This should surely also be of interest to students of Pierre Bourdieu, who made a famous argument, based on his study of Kabyle society in Algeria, that a man's honor in such a society is a form of &quot;symbolic capital,&quot; analogous to but more important than economic capital, since it is possible to turn honor into money but not the other way around (Bourdieu 1977, 1990). True, the text above does not quite say this, but one does wonder how much this is Bourdieu's own insight, and how much simply reflects the common sense of his informants.<br /> <br /> 77. Following K.N. Chaudhuri (19S5:197). The expansion of Islam was spearheaded by both Sufi brotherhoods and legal scholars; many merchants doubled as either or both. The scholarly literature here is unusually rich. See, for instance: Chaudhuri 19S5, 1990; Risso 1995; Subrahmanyam 1996; Barendtse 2002; Beaujard 2005.<br /> <br /> 7S. In Goody 1996:91.<br /> <br /> 79. M. Lombard 2003:177-79.<br /> <br /> So. Burton's translation; 1934 IV:2013.<br /> <br /> Sr. And what's more, officials employed their own person bankers, and themselves made extensive use of credit instruments such as suftaja both for transfer of tax payments, and the secreting away of ill-gotten gains (Hodgson 1974 I:3o1, Udovitch 1975:S, Ray 1994=69-71.)<br /> <br /> S2. &quot;For Mohammed this natural regulation of the market corresponds to a cosmic regulation. Prices rise and fall as night follows day, as low tides follow high, and price imposition is not only an injustice to the merchant, but a disordering of the natural order of things&quot; (Essid 1995:153).<br /> <br /> 83. Only very limited exceptions were made, for instance in times of disaster, and then most scholars insisted it was always better to provide direct relief to the needy than to interfere with market forces. See Ghazanfar &amp; Islahi 2003, Islahi 2004:31-32; for a fuller discussion of Mohammed's views on price formation, see Tuma 1965, Essid 1988, 1995.<br /> <br /> 84. Hosseini 1998:672, 2003:37: &quot;Both indicate that animals, such as dogs, do not exchange one bone for another. &quot;<br /> <br /> 85. Hosseini 1998, 2003. Smith says he visited such a factory himself, which may well be true, but the example of the eighteen steps originally appears in the entry &quot;Epingle&quot; in Volume 5 of the French En-cyclopedie, published in 1755, twenty years earlier. Hosseini also notes that &quot;Smith's personal library contained the Latin translations of some of the works of Persian (and Arab) scholars of the medieval period&quot; (Hosseini 1998:679), suggesting that he might have lifted them from the originals directly. Other important sources for Islamic precedents for later economic theory include: Rodison 1978, Islahi 1985, Essid 1988, Hosseini 1995, Ghazanfar 1991, 2000, 2003, Ghazanfar &amp; Islahi 1997, 2003. It is becoming more and more clear that a great deal of Enlightenment thought traces back to Islamic philosophy: Decartes' cogito, for example, seems to derive from Ibn Sina (a.k.a. Avicenna), Hume's famous point that the observance of constant conjunctions does not itself prove causality appears in Ghazali, and I have myself noticed Immanuel Kant's definition of enlightenment in the mouth of a magic bird in the fourteenth-century Persian poet Rumi.<br /> <br /> 86. Tusi's Nasirean Ethics, in Sun 2008:409.<br /> <br /> 87. Ghazanfar &amp; Islahi 2003:58; Gha-zanfar 2003:32-33.<br /> <br /> 88. So for example among Ghazali's ethical principles, we find &quot;the buyer should be lenient when bargaining with<br /> <br /> a poor seller and strict when transacting with a rich seller,&quot; and &quot;a person should be willing to sell to the poor who do not have the means and should extend credit to them without the expectation of repayment&quot; (Ghazali Ihya Ulum a/ Din Il:7&lt;r-82, cited in Ghazanfar &amp; Islahi 1997:22)-the latter of course recalling Luke 6:35.<br /> <br /> 89. Ghazali in Ghazanfar &amp; Islahi 1997=27.<br /> <br /> 90. Ibid:32.<br /> <br /> 91. Ibid:32.<br /> <br /> 92. Ibid:35. On postmen in Medieval Islam: Goitein 1964. Ghazali's position here recalls and is no doubt influenced by Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (n21b): that since money is a social convention meant to facilitate exchange, diverting it into usury defies its purpose; but its ultimate thrust is quite different, closer to Thomas Aquinas' argument that money is basically a measure and that usury distorts it, and Henry of Ghent's argument that &quot;money is a medium in exchange and not a terminus&quot;-unsurprisingly, since Aquinas was likely directly influenced by him (Ghazanfar 20oo).<br /> <br /> 93. It's hard to overstate this. Even the famous &quot;Laffer Curve,&quot; by which the Reagan Administration in the 198os tried to argue that cutting taxes would increase government revenue by stimulating economic activity, is often called the Khaldun-Laffer curve because it was first proposed, as a general principle, in Ibn Khaldun's 1377 Muqaddimah.<br /> <br /> 94. Goitein 1957 for the rise of the &quot;Middle Eastern bourgeoisie.&quot;<br /> <br /> 95 • &quot;Crying down&quot; acted as a de facto tax increase, since one would now need to pay more ecus to make up a tax rate fixed in shillings. Since wages were fixed in pounds, shillings, and pence, this also had the effect of raising their value, and hence it was usually popular. &quot;Crying up&quot; by contrast had the effect of lowering the effective value of the units of account. This could be useful to reduce a king's-or his allies'-personal debt measured in such units, but it also undercut the income of wage-earners and those on any sort of fixed income and so was often protested.<br /> <br /> 96. Langholm 1979, Wood 2002:73-76.<br /> <br /> 97. On the patristic literature on usury: Maloney 1983; Gordon 1989; Moser 20oo; Holman 2002:112-26; Jones 2004:25-30.<br /> <br /> 98. Matthew 5:42<br /> <br /> 99. St Basil of Caesarea, Homilia 11 in Psalmum XIV (PG 29, 268-69).<br /> <br /> 100. op cit.<br /> <br /> 101. op cit.<br /> <br /> 102. Ambrose De Officiis 2.25.89.<br /> <br /> 103. Ambrose De Tobia 15:51. See Nelson 1949:3-5, Gordon 1989:114-118.<br /> <br /> 104. Though not entirely. It's worthy to note that the main supply of slaves to the empire at this time came from Germanic barbarians outside the empire, who were acquired either through war or debt.<br /> <br /> 105. &quot;If each one,&quot; he wrote, &quot;after having taken from his personal wealth whatever would satisfy his personal needs, would leave what was superfluous to those who lack every necessity, there would be no rich or poor&quot; (In llliud Lu-cae 49D)-Basil himself had been born an aristocrat, but he had sold off his landed estates and distributed the proceeds to the poor.<br /> <br /> 106. Homilia 11 in Psalmum XIV (PG 29, 277C). The reference is to Proverbs 19.17.<br /> <br /> 107. Summa 8.3.1.3: &quot;since grace is freely given, it excludes the idea of debt ...In [no] sense does debt imply that God owes anything to another creature.&quot;<br /> <br /> 108. Clavero (1986) sees this as a basic conflict over the nature of the contract, and hence the legal basis of human relations in European history: usury, and by extension profit, was denounced, but rent, the basis of feudal relations, was never challenged.<br /> <br /> 109. Gordon 1989:115. &quot;What is commerce,&quot; wrote Cassiodorus (485-585), &quot;except to want to sell dear that which can be bought cheap? Therefore those merchants are detestable who, with no consideration of God's justice, burden their wares more with perjury than value. Them the Lord<br /> <br /> evicted them from the Temple saying, 'Do not make my Father's house into a den of thieves &quot; (in Langholm 1996:454).<br /> <br /> no. On the Jewish legal tradition concerning usury, see Stein 1953, 1955; Kirschenbaum 1985.<br /> <br /> 111. Poliakov 1977:21.<br /> <br /> 112. Nelson (1949) assumed that the &quot;Exception&quot; was often held to apply to relations between Christians and Jews, but Noonan (195TIOI-2) insists that it was mainly held to apply only to &quot;heretics and infidels, particularly the Saracens,&quot; and by some, not even to them.<br /> <br /> 113. Up to 52 percent with security, up to 120 percent without (Homer 1987:91).<br /> <br /> 114. Debtor's prisons, in the sense of prisons exclusively for debtors, existed in England only after 1263, but the imprisonment of debtors has a much longer history. Above all, Jewish lenders seem to have been employed as the means of transforming virtual, credit money into coinage, collecting the family silver from insolvent debtors, and turning it over to royal mints. They also won title to a great deal of land from defaulting debtors, most of which ended up in the hands of barons or monasteries (Singer 1964; Bowers 1983; Schofield &amp; Mayhew 2002).<br /> <br /> 115. Roger of Wendower, Flowers of History 252-53. Roger doesn't name the victim; in some later versions his name is Abraham, in others, Isaac.<br /> <br /> 116. Matthew Prior, in Bolles 1837:13.<br /> <br /> 117. Or even, for that matter, Nietzsche's fantasies of the origins of justice in mutilation. Where one was a projection onto Jews of atrocities actually committed against Jews, Nietzsche was writing in an age where actual &quot;savages&quot; were often punished by similar tortures and mutilations for failure to pay their debts to the colonial tax authorities, as later became a most notorious scandal in Leopold's Belgian Congo.<br /> <br /> 118. Mundill (2002), Brand (2003).<br /> <br /> 119. Cohn 1972:80.<br /> <br /> 120. Peter Cantor, in Nelson 1949:1o-n.<br /> <br /> 121. It was a firm from Cahors, for instance, who received the property of the English Jews when the latter were finally expelled in 1290. Though for a long time, Lombards and Cahorsins were themselves dependent on royal favor and hardly in much better position than the Jews. In France, the kings seemed to expropriate and expel Jews and Lombards alternately (Poliakov 1977:42).<br /> <br /> 122. Noonan 1957:18-19; Le Goff 1990:23-27.<br /> <br /> 123. There are two sorts of wealthgetting, as I have said; one is a part of household management, the other is retail trade: the former necessary and honorable, while that which consists in exchange is justly censured; for it is unnatural, and a mode by which men profit from one another. The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a profit out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term &quot;interest&quot; (takas), which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. &quot;Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural&quot; (Aristotle, Politics 1258b). The Nicomachean Ethics (u21b) is equally damning. For the best general analysis of the Aristotelean tradition on usury: Langholm 1984.<br /> <br /> 124. Noonan 1957=!05-12; Langholm 1984=5o.<br /> <br /> 125. The technical term for the lost income is lucrum cessans: see O'Brien 1920: ro7-10, Noonan 1957=u4-28, Langholm 1992:6o-61; 1998:75; Spufford 1989:260.<br /> <br /> 126. As German merchants also did in the Baltic cities of the Hanseatic alliance. On the Medici bank as a case in point, see de Roover 1946, 1963, Parks 2005.<br /> <br /> 127. The situation in Venice, a pioneer in these matters, is telling: there was no merchant guild, but only craft guilds, since guilds were essentially created as protection against the government, and<br /> <br /> in Venice, the merchants were the government (MacKenney 1987; Mauro 1993=259&quot;-60).<br /> <br /> 128. They were accused of both heresy and sodomy: see Barber 1978.<br /> <br /> 129. One cannot &quot;prove&quot; the Islamic inspiration of European bills of exchange, but considering the amount of trade between the two sides of the Mediterranean, denying it seems bizarre. Braude! (1995:816-17) proposes that the idea must have reached Europe through Jewish merchants, who we know to have long been using them in Egypt.<br /> <br /> 130. On bills of exchange: Usher 1914; de Roover 1967; Boyer-Xambeu, Deleplace, and Gillard 1994; Munro 2oo3b:542-46; Denzel 2006. There were innumerable currencies, any of which might at any time be &quot;cried up,&quot; &quot;cried down,&quot; or otherwise fluctuate in value. Bills of exchange also allowed merchants to effectively engage in currency speculation, and even get around usury laws, once it became possible to pay for one bill of exchange by writing a different bill of exchange, due in several months' time, for a slightly higher sum. This was called &quot;dry exchange&quot; (de Roover 1944), and over time the Church became increasingly skeptical, causing yet another round of financial creativity to get around the laws. It's worthy of note that the rates of interest on such commercial loans were generally quite low: twelve percent at the highest, in dramatic contrast to consumer loans. This is a sign of the increasingly lower risk of such transactions (see Homer 1987 for a history of interest rates).<br /> <br /> 131. Lane 1934.<br /> <br /> 132. &quot;In very many respects, such as the organization of slave labor, management of colonies, imperial administration, commercial institutions, maritime technology and navigation, and naval gunnery, the Italian city-states were the direct forerunners of the Portuguese and Spanish empires, to the shaping of which the Italians contributed so heavily, and in the profits of which they so largely shared&quot; (Brady I99TISO).<br /> <br /> IJ3. They appear to have used Greek serfs at first, and sometimes Arabs captured in the Crusades, and only later, Africans. Still, this was the economic model that was eventually transported by Portuguese merchants to Atlantic islands like the Canaries, then eventually to the Caribbean (Verlinden r9yo, Phillips r985:93-97, Solow r987, Wartburg r995).<br /> <br /> IJ4. Scammell i98r:ry3-75.<br /> <br /> IJS. Spufford r988:r42<br /> <br /> r36 On the notion of adventure: Auerbach r946, Nerlich 1977.<br /> <br /> 137. Duby (r973) makes this point. The &quot;round table&quot; was originally a type of tournament, and especially in the IJoos, it became common to make such tournaments explicit imitations of King Arthur's court, with knights entering the contests taking on roles from them: Galahad, Gawain, Bors, etc.<br /> <br /> rJ8. Also at a time when technological changes, especially the invention of the crossbow and the rise of professional armies, were beginning to render knights' role in combat increasingly irrelevant (Vance r973).<br /> <br /> J Kelly 19JT10.<br /> <br /> r4o. See Schoenberger 2oo8 for a recent and compelling take: comparing the role of war mobilization in creating markets in Greece and Rome to Western Europe in the High Middle Ages.<br /> <br /> r4r. Wolf 1954.<br /> <br /> r42. A point originally made by Vance (r986:48). The similarity is more obvious in the German poet Wolfram von Eschen-bach's Parzifal, written perhaps twenty years later, in which knights &quot;roam freely over Spain, North Africa, Egypt, Syria, to Baghdad, Armenia, India, Ceylon&quot; (Adolf I957:UJ)-and Islamic references are legion (Adolf r947, I95?)-that is, areas known to Europeans of the time only through trade. The fact that actual merchants, on those rare occasions when they appear, are never sympathetic characters has little bearing.<br /> <br /> 143. Wagner, Die Wibelungen: Welt-geschichte aus der Sage (r848)-which in English is &quot;World History as Told in Saga.&quot; I am taking my account of Wagner's argument from another wonderful, if sometimes extravagant, essay by Marc Shell called &quot;Accounting for the Grail&quot; (r992:J?-38). Wagner's argument is really more complicated: it centers on the failed attempt by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to subdue the Italian city-states and the abandonment of his principle that property can only flow from the king; instead, we have the rise of mercantile private property, which is echoed by financial abstraction.<br /> <br /> r44. Shell sees the Grail as a transformation of the older notion of the cornucopia or inexhaustible purse in an age &quot;just beginning to be acquainted with checks and credit&quot;-noting the connection of the legend with the Templars, and fact that Chretien-whose name means &quot;Christian&quot;-was likely, for that reason, to have been a converted Jew. Wolfram also claimed that he got the legend from a Jewish source (Shell r992:44-45).<br /> <br /> 145. Even China was often split and fractured. Just about all the great empirebuilding projects of the Middle Ages were the work not of professional armies, but of nomadic peoples: the Arabs, Mongols, Tatars, and Turks.<br /> <br /> 146. Nicomachean Ethics IIJJa2&lt;f-JI.<br /> <br /> 147. He compares money not only to a postman, but also, to a &quot;ruler,&quot; who also stands outside society to govern and regulate our interactions. It's interesting to note that Thomas Aquinas, who might have been directly influenced by Ghazali (Ghazanfar 2ooo), did accept Aristotle's argument that money was a social convention that humans could just as easily change. For a while, in the late Middle Ages, this became the predominant Catholic view.<br /> <br /> 148. As far as I know, the only scholar to have pointed out the connection is Bernard Faure, a French student of Japanese Buddhism: Faure I998798, 2000:225.<br /> <br /> 149. Later still, as cash transactions became more common, the term was applied to small sums of cash offered as downpayment, rather in the sense of English &quot;earnest money.&quot; On symbola in general: Beauchet 1897; Jones 1956:217; Shell 1978:32-35.<br /> <br /> 150. Descat 1995:986.<br /> <br /> 151. Aristotle On lnterepretation 1.1617. Whitaker (2002:10) thus observes that for Aristotle, &quot;the meaning of a word is fixed by convention, just as the importance attached to a tally, token, or ticket depends on agreement between the parties concerned.&quot;<br /> <br /> 152. Nicomachean Ethics 1133a29-31.<br /> <br /> 153. But they believed that these formulae summed up or &quot;drew together&quot; the essence of those secret truths that the Mysteries revealed-&quot;symbolon,&quot; being derived the verb symballein, meaning &quot;to gather, bring together, or compare.&quot;<br /> <br /> 154. Mûri 1931, Meyer 1999. The only knowledge we have of such symbola comes from Christian sources; Christians later adopted their own symbolon, the Creed, and this remained the primary referent of the term &quot;symbol&quot; throughout the Middle Ages (Ladner 1979).<br /> <br /> 155. Or pseudo-Dionysius, since the real Dionysius the Areopagite was a first-century Athenian converted to Christianity by St. Paul. Pseudo-Dionysius' works are an attempt to reconcile neo-Platonism, with its notion of philosophy as the process of the liberation of the soul from material creation and its reunification with the divine, with Christian orthodoxy. Unfortunately, his most relevant work, Symbolic Theology, has been lost, but his surviving works all bear on the issue to some degree.<br /> <br /> 156. In Barasch 1993:161.<br /> <br /> 157. Pseudo-Dionysius, On the Celestial Hierarchy 141A-C. On Dionysius' theory of symbolism in general, and its influence, see Barasch 1993:158-8o, also Goux 1990:67, Gadamer 2004:63--64.<br /> <br /> 158. He calls them, like communion, &quot;gifts that are granted to us in symbolic mode.&quot; On the Celestial Hierarchy 124A.<br /> <br /> 159. Mathews 1934:283. Compare the definition of symbolon:<br /> <br /> A. tally, i.e. each of two halves or corresponding pieces of a knucklebone or other object, which two guest friends, or any two contracting parties, broke between them, each party keeping one piece, in order to have proof of the identity of the presenter of the other.<br /> <br /> B. of other devices having the same purpose, e.g. a seal-impression on wax,<br /> <br /> 1. any token serving as proof of identity<br /> <br /> 2. guarantee<br /> <br /> 3. token, esp. of goodwill<br /> <br /> After Liddell and Scott 1940:1676-7 7, without the examples, and with the Greek words for &quot;knucklebone&quot; and &quot;guestfriend&quot; rendered into English.<br /> <br /> 160. Rotours 1952:6. On fu (or qi, another name for debt tallies that could be used more generally for &quot;tokens&quot;) more generally: Rotours 1952, Kaltenmark 1960, Kan 1978, Faure 2000:221-29: Falkenhau-sen 2005.<br /> <br /> 161. There is a curious tension here: the will of heaven is also in a certain sense the will of the people, and Chinese thinkers varied on where they placed the emphasis. Xunzi, for instance, assumed that the authority of the king is based on the confidence of the people. He also argued that while confidence among the people is maintained by contracts ensured by the matching of tally sticks, under a truly just king, social trust will be such that such objects will become unnecessary (Roetz 1993=73-74).<br /> <br /> 162. Kohn 2000:330. Similarly in Japan: Faure 2ooo:227.<br /> <br /> 163. In the Encyclopedia of Taoism they are described as &quot;diagrams, conceived as a form of celestial writing, that derive their power from the matching celestial counterpart kept by the deities who bestowed them&quot; (Bokenkamp 2oo8:35). On Taoist fu: Kaltenmark 1960; Seidel 1983; Strickmann zooz:190-91; Verellen 2006; on Buddhist parallels, see Faure 1998; Robson zooS.<br /> <br /> 164. Sasso 1978; the origins of the yin-yang symbol remain obscure and contested but those Sinologists I've consulted find this plausible. The generic word for &quot;symbol&lt;nowiki&gt;''&lt;/nowiki&gt; in contemporary Chinese is fuhiw, which is directly derived from fu.<br /> <br /> 165. Insofar as I'm weighing in on the &quot;Why didn't the Islamic world develop modern capitalism?&quot; debate, then, it seems to me that both Udovitch's argument (1975:19-21) that the Islamic world never developed impersonal credit mechanisms, and Ray's objection (1997:39-40) that the ban on interest and insurance was more important, carry weight. Ray's suggestion that differences in inheritance laws might play a role also deserves investigation.<br /> <br /> 166. Maitland 1908:54.<br /> <br /> 167. Davis 1904.<br /> <br /> 168. In the Platonic sense: just as any particular, physical bird we might happen to see on a nearby fruit tree is merely a token of the general idea of &quot;bird&quot; (which is immaterial, abstract, angelic), so do the various physical, mortal individuals who join together to make up a corporation become an abstract, angelic Idea. Kanto-rowicz argues that it took a number of intellectual innovations to make the notion of the corporation possible: notably, the idea of the aeon or aevum, eternal time, that is, time that lasts forever, as opposed to the Augustinian eternity which is outside of time entirely and was considered the habitation of the angels, to the revival of the works of Dionysius the Areopagite (1957:z8o-81).<br /> <br /> 169. Kantorowicz 195Tz8z-83.<br /> <br /> 170. Islamic law, for instance, not only did not develop the notion of fictive persons, but steadfastly resisted recognizing corporations until quite recently (Kuran zoos).<br /> <br /> 171. Mainly Randall Collins (1986:sz-58), who also makes the comparison with China; cf. Coleman 1988.<br /> <br /> 172. See Nerlich 1987:1z1-z4.<br /> <br /> === Chapter Eleven ===<br /> 1. On English wages, see Dyer 1989; on English festive life, there is a vast literature, but a good recent source is Humphrey 2001. Silvia Federici (zoo4) provides a compelling recent synthesis.<br /> <br /> 2. For a very small sampling of more recent debates over the &quot;price revolution,&quot; see Hamilton 1934, Cipolla 1967, Flynn 198z, Goldstone 1984, 1991, Fisher 1989, Munro zoo3a, zoo7. The main argument is between monetarists who continue to argue that increase in the amount of specie is ultimately responsible for the inflation, and those who emphasize the role of rapid population increase, though most specific arguments are considerably more nuanced.<br /> <br /> 3. Historians speak of &quot;bullion famines &quot;-as most active mines dried up, such gold and silver that wasn't sucked out of Europe to pay for eastern luxuries was increasingly hidden away, causing all sorts of difficulties for commerce. In the 146os, the shortage of specie in cities like Lisbon had been so acute that merchant ships visiting with cargoes full of wares often had to return home without selling anything (Spufford 1988:339-6z).<br /> <br /> 4. Brook 1998. Needless to say, I'm simplifying enormously: another problem was the growth of landlordism, with many smallholders falling in debt to landlords for inability to pay. As members of the ever-increasing royal family and other favored families gained tax exemptions from the state, the tax burden on smallholders became so heavy that many felt forced to sell their lands to the powerful families in exchange for tenancy agreements to free those lands from taxes.<br /> <br /> 5. Chinese historians count 77 different &quot;miners' revolts&quot; during the 1430s and '4os (Harrison 1965:103-4; cf. Tong 1992:6o-64; Gerner 1982:414). Between 1445 and 1449 these became a serious threat as silver miners under a rebel leader named Ye Zongliu made common cause with tenant farmers and the urban poor in overpopulated Fujian and Shaxian, sparking an uprising that spread to a number of different provinces, seizing a number of cities and expelling much of the landed gentry.<br /> <br /> 6. Von Glahn (19967o--82) documents the process. Gerner (1982:415-16) documents how between 1450 and 1500, most taxes became payable in silver. The process culminated in the &quot;single lash of the whip&quot; method: tax reforms put into place between 1530 and 1581 (Huang 1974, see Arrighi, Hui, Hung and Seldon 2003:272-73).<br /> <br /> 7. Wong 1997, Pomeranz 2000, Arrighi 2007, among many others who make this point.<br /> <br /> 8. Pomeranz 2000:273.<br /> <br /> 9. The value of silver in China (as measured in gold) remained, through the sixteenth century, roughly twice what it was in Lisbon or Antwerp (Flynn &amp; Giral-dez 1995, 2002).<br /> <br /> 10. von Glahn 1996b:44o; Atwell 1998. n. Chalis 1978:157.<br /> <br /> 12. China had its own &quot;age of exploration&quot; in the early fifteenth century, but it was not followed by mass conquest and enslavement.<br /> <br /> 13. It's possible that they were wrong. Generally populations did decline by 90 percent even in areas where no direct genocide was taking place. But in most places, after a generation or so, populations started recovering; in Hispaniola and many parts of Mexico and Peru, around the mines, the ultimate death rate was more like 100 percent.<br /> <br /> 14. Todorov 1984:137-38; for the original, Icazbalceta 2oo8:23-26.<br /> <br /> 15. One historian remarks: &quot;By the close of the sixteenth century bullion,<br /> <br /> primarily silver, made up over 95 percent of all exports leaving Spanish America for Europe. Nearly that same percentage of the indigenous population had been destroyed in the process of seizing those riches&quot; (Stannard 1993:221).<br /> <br /> 16. Bernal Diaz 1963:43.<br /> <br /> 17. Bernal Diaz: the quote is a synthesis of the Lockhart translation (1844 Il:no) and Cohen translation (1963:412), though these appear to be based on slightly different originals.<br /> <br /> 18. Bernal Diaz op cit.<br /> <br /> 19. Cortes 1868:141.<br /> <br /> 20. Most of the conquistadors had similar stories. Balboa came to the Americas to flee his creditors; Pizarro borrowed so heavily to outfit his expedition to Peru that after early reverses, it was only the fear of debtor's prison that prevented his return to Panama; Francisco de Montejo had to pawn his entire Mexican possessions for an eight-thousand-peso loan to launch his expedition to Honduras; Pedro de Alvarado too ended up deeply in debt, finally throwing everything into a scheme to conquer the Spice Islands and China-on his death, creditors immediately tried to put his remaining estates to auction.<br /> <br /> 21. e.g., Pagden 1986.<br /> <br /> 22. Gibson 1964:253. All this is disturbingly reminiscent of global politics nowadays, in which the United Nations, for example, will urge poor countries to make education free and available to everyone, and then the International Monetary Fund (which is, legally, actually a part of the United Nations) will insist that those same countries do exactly the opposite, imposing school fees as part of broader &quot;economic reforms&quot; as a condition of refinancing the country's loans.<br /> <br /> 23. Following William Pietz (1985:8), who studied early merchant adventurer's accounts of West Africa; though Todorov (1984:129-31) on the very similar perspective of the conquistadors.<br /> <br /> 24. Some did go bankrupt-for instance, one branch of the Fuggers. But this was surprisingly rare.<br /> <br /> 25. Martin Luther, Von Kaufshand-lung und Wucher, 1524, cited in Nelson 1949:50.<br /> <br /> 26. In Luther's time the main issue was a practice called Zinskauf, technically rent on leased property, which was basically a disguised form of interest-bearing loan.<br /> <br /> 27. In Baker 1974:53-54. The reference to Paul is in Romans 13:7.<br /> <br /> 28. He argued that the fact that Deuteronomy allows usury under any circumstances demonstrates that this could not have been a universal &quot;spiritual law,&quot; but was a political law created for the specific ancient Israeli situation, and therefore, that it could be considered irrelevant in different ones.<br /> <br /> 29. And in fact, this is what &quot;capital&quot; originally meant. The term itself goes back to Latin capitale, which meant &quot;funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money, or money carrying interest&quot; (Braude! 1992:232). It appears in English in the mid-sixteenth century largely as a term borrowed from Italian bookkeeping techniques (Cannan 1921, Richard 1926) for what remained when one squared property, credits, and debts; though until the nineteenth century, English sources generally preferred the word &quot;stock&quot;-in part, one suspects, because &quot;capital&quot; was so closely associated with usury.<br /> <br /> 30. Nations that, after all, also practiced usury on one another: Nelson 1949:76.<br /> <br /> 31. Ben Nelson emphasized this in an important book, The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood.<br /> <br /> 32. Midelfort 1996:39.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 33. Zmora 2006:.8. Public financing at this period largely meant disguised interest-bearing loans from the minor nobility, who were also the stratum from which local administrators were drawn.<br /> <br /> 34. On church lands: Dixon 2002:91. On Casimir's gambling debts: Janssen 1910 IV:147. His overall debt rose to half a million guilders in 1528, and over three<br /> <br /> quarters of a million by 1541 (Zmora 20o6:r3n55.)<br /> <br /> 35 • He was later accused of conspiring with Count Wilhelm von Henneburg, who had gone over to the rebels, to become secular Duke of the territories then held by the Bishop of Wurzburg.<br /> <br /> 36 . From &quot;Report of the Margrave's Commander, Michel Gross from Trock-au,&quot; in Scott &amp; Scribner 1991:301. The sums are based on a promise of r florin per execution, \lz per mutilation. We do not know if Casimir ever paid this particular debt.<br /> <br /> 37. For some relevant accounts of the revolt and repression: Seebohm 1877:14145; Janssen 1910 IV:323-26; Blickle 1977; Endres 1979; Vice 1988; Robisheaux 1989:48-67, Sea 2007. Casimir is said to have ultimately settled into exacting fines, eventually demanding some I04,ooo guldens in compensation from his subjects.<br /> <br /> 38. Linebaugh (2oo8) makes a beautiful analysis of this sort of phenomenon in his essay on the social origins of the Magna Carta.<br /> <br /> 39. It is telling that despite the endless reprisals against commoners, none of the German princes or nobility, even those who openly collaborated with the rebels, was held accountable in any way.<br /> <br /> 40. Muldrew 1993a, 1993b, 1996, 1998, 2oor; cf. Macintosh 1988; Zell 1996, Was-wo 2004, Ingram 2oo6, Valenze 2oo6, Kitch 2007. I find myself strongly agreeing with most of Muldrew's conclusions, only qualifying some: for instance, his rejection of MacPherson's possessive individualism argument (1962) strikes me as unnecessary, since I suspect that the latter does identify changes that are happening on a deeper structural level less accessible to explicit discourse (see Graeber 1997).<br /> <br /> 41. Muldrew (2001:92) estimates that in c. r6oo, eight thousand London merchants might have possessed as much as one-third of all the cash in England.<br /> <br /> 42. Williamson r889; Whiting 1971; Mathias 1979b; Valenze 2oo6:34-40.<br /> <br /> 43 • Gold and silver were a very small part of household wealth: inventories reveal on average fifteen shillings of credit for every one in coin (Muldrew 1998).<br /> <br /> 44 This principle of a right to livelihood is key to what E.P. Thompson famously called &quot;moral economy of the crowd&quot; (1971) in eighteenth-century England, a notion that Muldrew (1993a) thinks can be applied to these credit systems as a whole.<br /> <br /> 45. Stout 1742:74-75, parts of the same passage are cited in Muldrew 1993a:178, and 1998:152..<br /> <br /> 46. To be more precise, either piety (in the Calvinist case) or good natured sociality (in the case of those that opposed them in the name of older festive values)-in the years before the civil war, many parish governments were divided between the &quot;godly&quot; and &quot;good honest men&quot; (Hunt 1983:146)<br /> <br /> 47. Shepherd 2000, Walker 1996; for my own take on &quot;life-cycle service&quot; and wage labor, see, again, Graeber 1997 •<br /> <br /> 48. Hill 1972.:39-56, Wrightson &amp; Levine 1979, Beier 1985.<br /> <br /> 49. Muldrew 2001:84.<br /> <br /> so. For a classic statement on the connection of Tudor markets, festivals, and morality, see Agnew (1986).<br /> <br /> sr. Johnson 2.oo4:56-58. On the two conceptions of justice: Wrightson 1980. Bodin's essay was widely read. It drew on Aquinas' view of love and friendship as prior to the legal order, which, in turn, harkens back to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which reached Europe through Arab sources. Whether there was also a direct influence from the Islamic sources themselves we do not know, but considering the degree of general mutual engagement (Ghazanfar 2.003) it seems likely.<br /> <br /> 52.. Gerard de Malynes's Maintenance of Free Trade (162.2.), cited in Muldrew 1998:98, also Muldrew 2.001:83.<br /> <br /> 53. Chaucer is full of this sort of thing: the Wife of Bath has much to say about conjugal debts (e.g., Cotter 1969). It was really in the period of about 140o- 16oo<br /> <br /> that everything came to be so framed as debt, presumably reflecting the first stirrings of possessive individualism, and attempts to reconcile it to older moral paradigms. Guth (2.oo8), a legal historian, thus calls these centuries &quot;the age of debt,&quot; one which was then replaced after 16oo by an &quot;age of contract.&quot;<br /> <br /> 54. Davenant 1771:152.<br /> <br /> 55. Marshall Sahlins (1996, 2.oo8) has been emphasizing the theological roots of Hobbes for some time. Much of the following analysis draws on his influence.<br /> <br /> 56. Hobbes himself doesn't use the term &quot;self-interest&quot; but does speak of &quot;particular,&quot; &quot;private,&quot; and &quot;common&quot; interests.<br /> <br /> 57. De L’Esprit 53, cited in Hirschman 1986:45. Exploring the contrast between Shang's &quot;profit&quot; and Helvetius' &quot;interest&quot; would be a telling history in itself. They are not the same concept.<br /> <br /> 58. &quot;Interest&quot; (from interesse) comes into common usage as a euphemism for usury in the fourteenth century, but it only comes to be used in its more familiar, general sense in the sixteenth. Hobbes doesn't use &quot;self-interest,&quot; though he speaks of &quot;private&quot; and &quot;common&quot; interests; but that term was already current, having appeared in the work of Machiavelli's friend Francesco Guicciadini in 1512.. It becomes commonplace in the eighteenth century (see Hirschman 1977, 1992., especially chapter 2., &quot;on the concept of interest&quot;; Dumont 1981; Myers 1983, Heilbron 1998).<br /> <br /> 59. See (192.8:187) notes that until around 18oo, &quot;interesse&quot; was the common word for &quot;capital&quot; in French; in English the preferred word was &quot;stock.&quot; It is curious to note that Adam Smith, for one, actually returns to the Augustinian usage, &quot;self-love,&quot; in his famous passage about the butcher and the baker (Wealth of Nations 1.2..2.).<br /> <br /> 6o. Beier 1985:159-&quot;63; cf. Dobb 1946:2.34. Consorting with gypsies was also a capital crime. In the case of vagrancy, justices found it so difficult to find anyone willing to press charges against vagrants that they were eventually forced to reduce the penalty to public whipping.<br /> <br /> 61. In Walker 1996:244.<br /> <br /> 62. Helmholtz 1986, Brand 2002, Guth 2008.<br /> <br /> 63. Helmholz 1986, Muldrew 1998:255, Schofield &amp; Mayhew 2002, Guth 2oo8).<br /> <br /> 64. Stout 1742:121.<br /> <br /> 65. &quot;The horrors of the Fleet and Marshalsea were laid bare in 1729. The poor debtors were found crowded together on the 'common side,'--covered with filth and vermin, and suffered to die, without pity, of hunger and jail fever ...No attempt was made to distinguish the fraudulent from the unfortunate debtor. The rich rogue--able, but unwilling to pay his debts-might riot in luxury and debauchery, while his poor unlucky fellowprisoner was left to starve and rot on the 'common side&quot;' (Hallam 1866 V:269-70.)<br /> <br /> 66. I do not want to argue that the more familiar narrative of &quot;primitive accumulation,&quot; of the enclosure of common lands and rise of private property, the dislocation of thousands of one-time cottagers who became landless laborers, is false. I simply highlight a less familiar side of the story. It's especially helpful to highlight it because the degree to which the Tudor and Stuart periods were actually marked by a rise of enclosures is a heated matter of debate (e.g., Wordie 1983). The use of debt to split communities against themselves is meant in the same vein as Silvia Federici's (2004) brilliant argument about the role of witchcraft accusations in reversing popular gains of the late Middle Ages and opening the way to capitalism.<br /> <br /> 67. &quot;Personal credit received a bad press in the eighteenth century. It was frequently said that it was wrong to go into debt simply to pay for everyday consumption goods. A cash economy was celebrated and the virtues of prudent housekeeping and parsimony extolled. Consequently retail credit, pawnbroking, and moneylending were all attacked, with both borrowers and lenders the targets&quot; (Hoppit 1990:JI2-IJ.)<br /> <br /> 68. Wealth of Nations 1.2.2.<br /> <br /> 69. Muldrew makes this point: 199J:I6J.<br /> <br /> 70. Theory of Moral Sentiments 4.1.10.<br /> <br /> 71. &quot;The man who borrows in order to spend will soon be ruined, and he who lends to him will generally have occasion to repent of his folly. To borrow or to lend for such a purpose, therefore, is in all cases, where gross usury is out of the question, contrary to the interest of both parties; and though it no doubt happens sometimes that people do both the one and the other; yet, from the regard that all men have for their own interest, we may be assured that it cannot happen so very frequently as we are sometimes apt to imagine&quot; (Wealth of Nations 2.4.2). He does occasionally acknowledge the existence of retail credit, but he grants it no significance.<br /> <br /> 72. Reeves 1999. Reeves, like Servet (1994, 2001) shows that many were aware of the variability of money-stuffs: Puffen-dorf, for example, made a long list of them.<br /> <br /> 73. When we attribute value to gold, then, we simply recognize this. The same argument was usually invoked to solve the old Medieval puzzle about diamonds and water: Why is it that diamonds are so expensive, though useless, and water, which is useful in all sorts of ways, hardly worth anything at all? The usual solution was: diamonds are the eternal form of water. (Galileo, who objected to the entire premise, at one point suggested that those who make such claims should really be turned into statues. That way, he suggested, in inimitable Renaissance style, everyone would be happy, since (1) they would be eternal, and (2) the rest of us would no longer have to listen to their stupid arguments.) See Wennerlind 2003, who notes, interestingly, that most European governments employed alchemists in the seventeenth century in order to manufacture gold and silver for coins; it's only when these schemes definitively failed that the governments moved to paper currency.<br /> <br /> 74. Kindleberger 1984; Boyer-Xambeu, Deleplace, &amp; Gillard 1994; Ingham 2004:17I. Rather, this path eventually led to the creation of stock markets: the first public bourses, in fifteenth-century Bruges and Antwerp, began not by trading shares in joint-stock ventures, which barely existed at the time, but by &quot;discounting&quot; bills of exchange.<br /> <br /> 75 • Usher (1934, 1944) originally introduced the distinction between &quot;primitive banking,&quot; where one simply lends out what one has, and &quot;modern banking,&quot; based on some sort of fractional reserve system-that is, one lends more than one has, thus effectively creating money. This would be another reason why we have now moved to something other than &quot;modern banking&quot;-see below.<br /> <br /> 76. Spufford 1988:258, drawing on Usher 1943:239-42. While deposit notes were used, private bank notes, based on credit, only appear quite late-f rom London goldsmiths, who also acted as bankers, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.<br /> <br /> 77. See Munro 2003b for a useful summary.<br /> <br /> 78. MacDonald 2oo6:156.<br /> <br /> 79. Tomas de Mercado in Flynn 1978:400.<br /> <br /> So. See Flynn 1979; Braude! 1992:52223; Stein &amp; Stein 2ooo: 501-o5, 96o-62; Tortella &amp; Comin 2002. The number of juros in circulation went from 3.6 million ducats in 1516 to 80.4 million in 1598.<br /> <br /> 81. The most famous exponent of this position was Nicholas Barbon (169o), who argued that &quot;money is a value made by law&quot; and a measure in just the same manner as inches or hours or fluid ounces. He also emphasized that most money was credit anyway.<br /> <br /> 82. Locke (169I:I44) also cited in Caffentzis 1989:46-47, which remains the most insightful summary of the debate and its implications. Compare Perlman &amp; McCann 1998:n7-2o; Letwin 2003:7118; Valenze 2006:4.43.<br /> <br /> 83. We tend to forget that the materialism of the Marxist tradition is not some radical departure--Marx was, like Nietzsche, taking bourgeois assumptions (though in his case, different ones) and pushing them in directions that would outrage their original proponents. Anyway, there is good reason to believe that what we now call &quot;historical materialism&quot; is really Engels' addition to the project-Engels being himself nothing if not bour. geois in background and sensibilities (he was a stalwart of the Cologne stock exchange).<br /> <br /> 84. Macaulay 1886:485-the original essay was published in the SpectiHor, March I, qn.<br /> <br /> 85. Faust II, Act 1-see Shell 1992, Binswanger 1994 for a detailed analysis. The connection with alchemy is revealing. When in 1300 Marco Polo had remarked that the Chinese emperor &quot;seemed to have mastered the art of alchemy&quot; in his ability to turn mere paper into something as good as gold, this was clearly meant as a joke; by the seventeenth century most European monarchs actually did employ alchemists to try to produce gold from base metals; it was only their failure that led to the adoption of paper money (Wennerlend 2003) -<br /> <br /> 86. It's not as if suspicions about money didn't exist-but they tended to focus, instead, on moral and metaphysical issues (e.g., &quot;the theft of time&quot;).<br /> <br /> 87. Said to have been given at a talk at the University of Texas in 1927, but in fact, while the passage is endlessly cited in recent books and especially on the internet, it cannot be attested to before roughly 1975. The first two lines appear to actually derive from a British investment advisor named LL.B. Angas in 1937: &quot;The modern Banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banks can in fact inflate, mint and unmint the modern ledger-entry currency&quot; (Angas 1937:2o-21). The other parts of the quote are probably later inventions-and Lord Stamp never suggested anything like this in his published writings. A similar line, &quot;the bank hath benefit of all interest which it creates out of nothing&quot; attributed to William Patterson, the first director of the Bank of England, is likewise first attested to only in the 1930s, and is also almost certainly apocryphal.<br /> <br /> 88. Joint-stock corporations were created in the beginning of the colonial period, with the famous East India Company and related colonial enterprises, but they largely vanished during the period of the industrial revolution and were mainly revived only at the end of the nineteenth century, and then principally, at first, in America and Germany. As Giovanni Ar-righi (1994) has pointed out, the heyday of British capitalism was marked by small family firms and high finance; it was America and Germany, who spent the first half of the twentieth century battling over who would replace Great Britain as hegemon, that introduced modern bureaucratic corporate capitalism.<br /> <br /> 89. MacKay 1854:52.<br /> <br /> 90. MacKay 1854:53-54.<br /> <br /> 91. Spyer 1997.<br /> <br /> 92. Prakash 2003:209-16.<br /> <br /> 93. Hardenburg &amp; Casement 1913; the story has been analyzed most famously, and insightfully, by Mick Taussig (1984, 1987).<br /> <br /> 94. Encyclopedia Britannica, n'h edition (1911): entry for &quot;Putumayo.&quot;<br /> <br /> 95 • As Taussig notes (1984:482), when the head of the company was later asked what he actually meant by &quot;cannibal&quot; he said, simply, that it meant the Indians refused to trade with anybody else.<br /> <br /> 96. This is a point demonstrated in great detail in an important book by Yann Moulier-Boutang (1997), which unfortunately has never been translated into English.<br /> <br /> 97. Davies 1975=59. &quot;Indentured&quot; comes from the &quot;indentations&quot; or notches on a tally again, since these were widely used as contracts for those who, like most<br /> <br /> indentured servants, couldn't read (Blackstone 1827 I:218).<br /> <br /> 98. Immanuel Wallerstein (1974) provides the classic analysis of this &quot;second serfdom.<br /> <br /> 99.This was true, incidentally, across the class spectrum: everyone was expected to do this, from lowly milkmaids and apprentices to &quot;ladies in waiting&quot; and knight's pages. This was one reason, incidentally, why indentured-service contracts did not seem like much of a jump in the seventeenth century: they were simply lengthening the term of contracted employment from one to five or seven years. Even in Medieval times there were also adult day-laborers, but these were often considered indistinguishable from simple criminals.<br /> <br /> 100. The very word &quot;proletariat&quot; in a way alludes to this, as it's taken from a Roman term for &quot;those who have children.&quot;<br /> <br /> 101. C.L.R. James 1938; Eric Williams 1944 •<br /> <br /> 102. &quot;Many devices were available by which businessmen economized in the use of cash in wage payments-payment could be made only at long intervals; payment might consist in giving claims on others (truck payment, tickets or vouchers to authorize purchasing from shops, etc., the provision of private notes and tokens) &quot;-Mathias 1979a:95.<br /> <br /> 103. Actually the full list is: &quot;cabbage, chips, waxers, sweepings, sockings, wastages, blessing, lays, dead men, onces, primage, furthing, dunnage, portage, wines, vails, tinge, huggings, colting, rumps, birrs, fents, thrums, potching, scrapings, poake, coltage, extra, tret, tare, largess, the con, nobbings, knockdown, boot, tommy, trimmings, poll, gleanings, lops, tops, bontages, keepy back, pin money&quot; (Linebaugh 1993:449; see also Linebaugh 1982, Rule 1986:n5-17).<br /> <br /> 104. Tebbutt 1983:49. On pawnbroking in general: Hardaker 1892, Hudson 1982, Caskey 1994, Fitzpatrick 2001.<br /> <br /> 105. Linebaugh 1993: 371-404.<br /> <br /> 106. Usually in order to conclude that today, of course, we are living in an entirely different world, because clearly that's not true any more. It might help here to remind the reader that Marx saw himself as writing a &quot;critique of political economy&quot;-that is, of theory and practice of economics of his day.<br /> <br /> 107. See the Lockhart translation of Bernal Diaz (Diaz 1844 II:396), which gives several versions of the story, drawn from different sources.<br /> <br /> 108. Clenninden 1991:144.<br /> <br /> 109. It is on these grounds that Testart distinguishes slavery owing to gambling, where the gambler stakes his own person, and debt slavery, even if these are ultimately gambling debts. &quot;The mentality of the gambler who directly stakes his person in the game is closer to that of the warrior, who risks losing his life in war or being taken into slavery, than to that of the poor person willing to sell himself to survive&quot; (Testart 2002:180).<br /> <br /> no. This is incidentally why complaints about the immorality of deficits are so profoundly disingenuous: since modern money effectively is government debt, if there was no deficit, the results would be disastrous. True, money can also be generated privately, by banks, but there would appear to be limits to this. This is why U.S. financial elites, led by Alan Greenspan, panicked in the late 1990s when the Clinton administration began to run budget surpluses; the Bush tax cuts appear to have been designed specifically to ensure that the deficit was maintained.<br /> <br /> III. Wallerstein 1989.<br /> <br /> n2. 1988:6oo.<br /> <br /> II3. Britain passed its first bankruptcy law in 1542.<br /> <br /> n4. This is no doubt what Goethe was getting at when he had Faust, specifically, tell the emperor to pay his debts with IOUs. After all, we all know what happened to him when his time came due.<br /> <br /> n5. Sonenscher (2oo7) gives a long and detailed history of these debates.<br /> <br /> n6. One might trace a religious element here: in the time of Augustus, a<br /> <br /> group of religious cultists in the Middle East conceived the idea that fire was about to come from the sky and consume the planet. Nothing seemed less likely at the time. Leave them in charge of a corner of the world for two thousand years, they figure out a way to do it. But still, this is clearly part of a larger pattern.<br /> <br /> === Chapter Twelve ===<br /> 1. I was first put on to the significance of the date by fellow anthropologist Chris Gregory (1998: 265-96; also Hudson 2003a). U.S. citizens had not been able to cash in dollars for gold since 1934. The analysis that follows is inspired by both Gregory and Hudson.<br /> <br /> 2. One plausible-sounding version, which cites rather small amounts of bullion, can be found at: www.rediff.com/ money/zoo1/nov1I7wtc.htm. For a more entertaining, fictional version: www.rense .com/general73/confess.htm.<br /> <br /> 3. &quot;The Federal Reserve Bank of New York: the Key to the Gold Vault&quot; (new yorkfed.org/education/addpub/goldvaul .pdf).<br /> <br /> 4. As a minor aside, I remember from the time also reading news reports noting that there were, in fact, a number of expensive jewelry shops in the arcades directly beneath the Towers, and that all the gold in them did in fact disappear. Presumably they were pocketed by rescue workers, but considering the circumstances, it would seem there were no serious objections-at least, I've never heard anything about the matter being further investigated, let alone prosecuted.<br /> <br /> 5. It's no coincidence, certainly, that William Greider decided to name his great history of the Federal Reserve (1989) The Secrets of the Temple. This is actually how many of its own officials privately describe it. He quotes one: &quot;The System is just like the Church ...It's got a pope, the chairman; and a college of cardinals, the governors and bank presidents; and a curia, the senior staff. The equivalent of the laity is the commercial banks . . . We even have different orders of religious thought like Jesuits and Franciscans and Dominicans only we call them pragmatists and monetarists and neo-Keynesians&quot; (ibid:S4l-<br /> <br /> 6. This is hardly a new claim, and it rests in part on the Braudelian (worldsystems) school, for instance, the recent work of Mielants (2007). For a more classically Marxist version developing the connection since Nixon's time, see Custers 2007. For a more mainstream neoclassical treatments of the connection, see MacDonald &amp; Gastman 2oor, MacDonald 2006.<br /> <br /> 7. Senator Fullbright, in McDermott 2oo8:r9o.<br /> <br /> 8. I note that this flies directly in the face of the intent of the United States Constitution (r.S.S), which specifies that only Congress was relegated the power &quot;to coin money, [and] regulate the value thereof&quot;-no doubt at the behest of the Jeffersonians, who were opposed to creating a central bank. The United States still observes the letter of the law: United States coins are issued directly by the Treasury. United States paper money, while signed by the head of the Treasury, is not issued by the Treasury but by the Federal Reserve. They are technically banknotes, though as with the Bank of England, one bank is granted a monopoly in issuing them.<br /> <br /> 9. For those who don't know how the Fed works: technically, there are a series of stages. Generally the Treasury puts out bonds to the public, and the Fed buys them back. The Fed then loans the money thus created to other banks at a special low rate of interest (&quot;the prime rate&quot;), so that those banks can then lend at higher ones. In its capacity as regulator of the banking system, the Fed also establishes the fractional reserve rate: just how many dollars these banks can &quot;lend&quot;--effectively, create-for every dollar they borrow from the Fed, or have on deposit, or can otherwise count as assets. Technically this is rotor, but a variety of legal loopholes allow banks to go considerably higher.<br /> <br /> 10. Which does raise the rather interesting question of what its gold reserves are actually for.<br /> <br /> 11. Indeed, perhaps the greatest compromise to United States global power in recent years is the fact that there is now one place—the region of ' China facing Taiwan-where air defenses are now so dense and sophisticated that the United States Air Force is no longer certain that it can penetrate at will. The inability to blow up Osama bin Laden is, of course, the most dramatic limit to this power.<br /> <br /> 12. Or, to put the money in the United States stock market, which ultimately has a similar effect. As Hudson notes, &quot;American diplomats have made it clear that to buy control of U.S. companies or even to return to gold would be viewed as an unfriendly act&quot; (2oo2a:7), so, unless they want to move out of dollars entirely, which would be considered an even more unfriendly act, there is little alternative. As to how &quot;unfriendly&quot; acts might be received: see below.<br /> <br /> 13. Hudson 2oo2a:12.<br /> <br /> 14. As many have remarked, the three countries that switched to the euro around this time-Iraq, Iran, and North Korea-were precisely those singled out by Bush as his &quot;Axis of Evil.&quot; Of course we can argue about cause and effect here. It's also significant that the core euro-using states such as France and Germany uniformly opposed the war, while U.S. allies were drawn from euro-skeptics like the UK.<br /> <br /> 15. For a few representative takes on the relation of the dollar and empire: from a neoclassical economic perspective, Ferguson (2oor, 2004), from a radical Keynesian perspective, Hudson (2003a), from a Marxist one, Brenner (2002).<br /> <br /> 16. Even the CIA now ordinarily refers to such arrangements as &quot;slavery,&quot; though technically debt peonage is different.<br /> <br /> 17. Compare this to the deficit/military chart above, on page 366—the curve is effectively identical.<br /> <br /> 18. See dailybail.com/home/china-warns-us-about-debt-monetization.html, accessed December 22, 2009. The story is based on a piece from the Wall Street Journal, &quot;Don't Monetize the Debt: The president of the Dallas Fed on inflation risk and central bank independence&quot; (Mary Anastasia O'Grady, WS], May 23, 2009.) I should add that in popular usage nowadays, &quot;to monetize the debt&quot; is generally used as a synonym for &quot;printing money&quot; to pay debt. This usage has become almost universal, but it's not the original sense of the term, which is to turn the debt itself into money. The Bank of England did not print money to pay the national debt; it turned the national debt itself into money. Here too there is a profound argument going on about the nature of money itself.<br /> <br /> 19. The arrangement is sometimes referred to as Bretton Woods II (Dooley, Folkerts-Landau &amp; Garber 2004, 2009): effectively, an agreement since the 1990s at least to use various unofficial means to keep the dollar's value artificially high, and East Asian currencies-particularly the Chinese--artificially low, in order to expedite cheap Asian exports to the United States. Since real wages in the United States have either stagnated or retreated continually since the 1970s, this, and the accumulation of consumer debt, is the only reason living standards in the United States have not precipitously declined.<br /> <br /> zo. On Zheng He, see Dreyer zoo6, Wade 2004, Wake 1997. On the tribute trade in general: Moses 1967, Yii 1967, Hamashita 1994, 2003; Di Cosmo &amp; Wyatt zoos.<br /> <br /> 21. The argument here follows Arrighi, Hui, Hung and Selden 2003, some elements of which were echoed in Arrighi's last work, Adam Smith in Beijing (2007).<br /> <br /> 22. Japan of course was something of an exception, since it had arguably achieved something like First World status even before this.<br /> <br /> 23. Keynes 1936:345.<br /> <br /> 24. See www.irle.berkeley.edu/events/ springo8/fellerI<br /> <br /> 25. The key legislation was the &quot;Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act&quot; of 1980, which struck down all federal usury laws: ostensibly, in reaction to the rampant inflation of the late. 1970s, though of course they were never restored when inflation was brought back under control, as it has in the last quarter-century. It left state interest ceilings in place, but institutions like credit-card companies were allowed to observe the laws of the state in which they are registered, no matter where they operated. This is why most are registered in South Dakota, which has no maximum interest rate.<br /> <br /> 26. The first is from Thomas Friedman (1999) in a cocky and vacuous book called The Lexus and the Olive Tree, the second from Randy Martin (zooz) in a book of the same name.<br /> <br /> 27. In America this &quot;universal otherness&quot; is accomplished above all through racism. This is why most small retailing in the United States is conducted on ethnic lines: say, Korean grocers or dry-cleaners, who pool credit with one another, whose clients, however, are sufficiently socially distant that there is no question of extending credit outside, or even expecting basic relations of trust-since they themselves ordinarily expect electricians, locksmiths, contractors of various sorts who provide services to at least attempt to shaft them: Essentially the market across racial or ethnic lines becomes one where everyone is assumed to be Amalek.<br /> <br /> 28. Gilder 1981:266, cited in Cooper zoo8=7. Cooper's essay is a brilliant exploration of the relation between debt imperialism-a phrase she seems to have coined, inspired by Hudson-and evangelical Christianity, and it is heartily recommended. See also Naylor 1985.<br /> <br /> 29. Robertson 1992:153. In Cooper again: op cit.<br /> <br /> 30. Atwood zoo8:42.<br /> <br /> 31. This is, incidentally, also the best response to conventional critiques of the poor as falling into debt because they are unable to delay gratification-another way in which economic logic, with all its human blind spots, skews any possible understanding of &quot;consumers'&quot; actual motivations. Rationally, since COs yield around 4 percent annually, and credit cards charge 20 percent, consumers should save as a cushion and only go into debt when they absolutely have to, postponing unnecessary purchases until there's a surplus. Very few act this way, but this is rarely because of improvidence (can't wait to get that flashy new dress) but because human relations can't actually be put off in the same way as imaginary &quot;consumer purchases&quot;: one's daughter will only be five once, and one's grandfather has only so many years left.<br /> <br /> 32. There are so many books on the subject that one hesitates to cite, but a couple of outstanding examples are Anya Kamentz's Generation Debt (2oo6), and Brett William's Social History of the Credit Trap (2004). The larger point about demands for debt as a form of class struggle is in large part inspired by the Midnight Notes collective, who argue that, however paradoxically, &quot;neoliberalism has thrown open a new dimension of struggle between capital and the working class within the domain of credit&quot; (2009:7). I have followed this analysis to a degree, but tried to move away from the economistic framing of human life as &quot;reproduction of labor&quot; that hobbles so much Marxist literature-the emphasis on life beyond survival might be distantly Vaneigem-influenced (1967), but largely falls back on my own work on value theory (Graeber 2001).<br /> <br /> 33. Elyachar 2002:510.<br /> <br /> 34. See for instance, &quot;India's microfinance suicide epidemic,&quot; Soutik Biswas, BBC News South Asia, 16 December 2010, http. bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia -II997571<br /> <br /> 35. I have observed this first hand on any number of occasions in my work as<br /> <br /> an activist: police are happy to effectively shut down trade summits, for example, just to ensure that there's no possible chance that protestors can feel they have succeeded in doing so themselves.<br /> <br /> 36. In practice, it mainly consists of &quot;interest-free&quot; banking arrangements that pay lip service to the notion of profitsharing but in reality operate in much the same way as any other bank. The problem is that if profit-sharing banks are competing with more conventional ones in the same marketplace, those who anticipate that their enterprises will yield high profits will gravitate toward the ones offering fixed-interest loans, and only those who anticipate lower profits will turn to the profit-sharing option (Kuran 1995:162). For a transition to no-interest banking to work, it would have to be total.<br /> <br /> 37. Under the Caliphate, to guarantee the money supply; in China, through systematic intervention to stabilize markets and prevent capitalistic monopolies; later, in the United States and other North Atlantic republics, through allowing the monetization of its own debt.<br /> <br /> 38. True, as I showed in chapter 5, economic life will always be a matter of clashing principles, and thus might be said to be incoherent to a certain extent. Actually I don't think this is in any way a bad thing-at the very least, it's endlessly productive. The distortions born of violence strike me as uniquely insidious.<br /> <br /> 39. von Mises 1949:54.41. The original German text was published in 1940 and presumably composed a year or two previous.<br /> <br /> 40. Ferguson 2007:iv.<br /> <br /> 41. I can speak with some authority here since I was myself born of humble origins and have advanced myself in life almost exclusively through my own incessant labors. I am well known by my friends to be a workaholic-to their often justifiable annoyance. I am therefore keenly aware that such behavior is at best slightly pathological, and certainly in no sense makes one a better person.<br /> <br /> == Bibliography ==<br /> <br /> == Index ==<br /> [[Category:Library works about economics]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about history]]<br /> [[Category:Library works by David Graeber]]</div>

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<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work<br /> | title = Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art<br /> | written by = [[Mao Zedong]]<br /> |author=Mao Zedong| written in = 1942<br /> | published =<br /> | type = Speech<br /> | source= [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_08.htm Marxists Internet Archive]<br /> | image =<br /> | image_size =<br /> | image_upright =<br /> | image_alt =<br /> | caption =<br /> }}<br /> == Introduction speech (May 2, 1942) ==<br /> Comrades! You have been invited to this forum today to exchange ideas and examine the relationship between work in the literary and artistic fields and revolutionary work in general. Our aim is to ensure that revolutionary literature and art follow the correct path of development and provide better help to other revolutionary work in facilitating the overthrow of our national enemy and the accomplishment of the task of national liberation.<br /> <br /> In our struggle for the liberation of the Chinese people there are various fronts, among which there are the fronts of the pen and of the gun, the cultural and the military fronts. To defeat the enemy we must rely primarily on the army with guns. But this army alone is not enough; we must also have a cultural army, which is absolutely indispensable for uniting our own ranks and defeating the enemy. Since the May 4th Movement such a cultural army has taken shape in China, and it has helped the Chinese revolution, gradually reduced the domain of China's feudal culture and of the comprador culture which serves imperialist aggression, and weakened their influence. To oppose the new culture the Chinese reactionaries can now only &quot;pit quantity against quality&quot;. In other words, reactionaries have money, and though they can produce nothing good, they can go all out and produce in quantity. Literature and art have been an important and successful part of the cultural front since the May 4th Movement. During the ten years' civil war, the revolutionary literature and art movement grew greatly. That movement and the revolutionary war both headed in the same general direction, but these two fraternal armies were not linked together in their practical work because the reactionaries had cut them off from each other. It is very good that since the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, more and more revolutionary writers and artists have been coming to Yenan and our other anti-Japanese base areas. But it does not necessarily follow that, having come to the base areas, they have already integrated themselves completely with the masses of the people here. The two must be completely integrated if we are to push ahead with our revolutionary work. The purpose of our meeting today is precisely to ensure that literature and art fit well into the whole revolutionary machine as a component part, that they operate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and destroying the enemy, and that they help the people fight the enemy with one heart and one mind. What are the problems that must be solved to achieve this objective? I think they are the problems of the class stand of the writers and artists, their attitude, their audience, their work and their study.<br /> <br /> The problem of class stand. Our stand is that of the proletariat and of the masses. For members of the Communist Party, this means keeping to the stand of the Party, keeping to Party spirit and Party policy. Are there any of our literary and art workers who are still mistaken or not clear in their understanding of this problem? I think there are. Many of our comrades have frequently departed from the correct stand.<br /> <br /> The problem of attitude. From one's stand there follow specific attitudes towards specific matters. For instance, is one to extol or to expose? This is a question of attitude. Which attitude is wanted? I would say both. The question is, whom are you dealing with? There are three kinds of persons, the enemy, our allies in the united front and our own people; the last are the masses and their vanguard. We need to adopt a different attitude towards each of the three. With regard to the enemy, that is, Japanese imperialism and all the other enemies of the people, the task of revolutionary writers and artists is to expose their duplicity and cruelty and at the same time to point out the inevitability of their defeat, so as to encourage the anti-Japanese army and people to fight staunchly with one heart and one mind for their overthrow. With regard to our different allies in the united front, our attitude should be one of both alliance and criticism, and there should be different kinds of alliance and different kinds of criticism. We support them in their resistance to Japan and praise them for any achievement. But if they are not active in the War of Resistance, we should criticize them. If anyone opposes the Communist Party and the people and keeps moving down the path of reaction, we will firmly oppose him. As for the masses of the people, their toil and their struggle, their army and their Party, we should certainly praise them. The people, too, have their shortcomings. Among the proletariat many retain petty-bourgeois ideas, while both the peasants and the urban petty bourgeoisie have backward ideas; these are burdens hampering them in their struggle. We should be patient and spend a long time in educating them and helping them to get these loads off their backs and combat their own shortcomings and errors, so that they can advance with great strides. They have remoulded themselves in struggle or are doing so, and our literature and art should depict this process. As long as they do not persist in their errors, we should not dwell on their negative side and consequently make the mistake of ridiculing them or, worse still, of being hostile to them. Our writings should help them to unite, to make progress, to press ahead with one heart and one mind, to discard what is backward and develop what is revolutionary, and should certainly not do the opposite.<br /> <br /> The problem of audience, i.e., the people for whom our works of literature and art are produced. In the Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia Border Region and the anti-Japanese base areas of northern and central China, this problem differs from that in the Kuomintang areas, and differs still more from that in Shanghai before the War of Resistance. In the Shanghai period, the audience for works of revolutionary literature and art consisted mainly of a section of the students, office workers and shop assistants. After the outbreak of the War of Resistance the audience in the Kuomintang areas became somewhat wider, but it still consisted mainly of the same kind of people because the government there prevented the workers, peasants and soldiers from having access to revolutionary literature and art. In our base areas the situation is entirely different. Here the audience for works of literature and art consists of workers, peasants, soldiers and revolutionary cadres. There are students in the base areas, too, but they are different from students of the old type; they are either former or future cadres. The cadres of all types, fighters in the army, workers in the factories and peasants in the villages all want to read books and newspapers once they become literate, and those who are illiterate want to see plays and operas, look at drawings and paintings, sing songs and hear music; they are the audience for our works of literature and art. Take the cadres alone. Do not think they are few; they far outnumber the readers of any book published in the Kuomintang areas. There, an edition usually runs to only 2,000 copies, and even three editions add up to only 6,000; but as for the cadres in the base areas, in Yenan alone there are more than 10,000 who read books. Many of them, moreover, are tempered revolutionaries of long standing, who have come from all parts of the country and will go out to work in different places, so it is very important to do educational work among them. Our literary and art workers must do a good job in this respect.<br /> <br /> Since the audience for our literature and art consists of workers, peasants and soldiers and of their cadres, the problem arises of understanding them and knowing them well. A great deal of work has to be done in order to understand them and know them well, to understand and know well all the different kinds of people and phenomena in the Party and government organizations, in the villages and factories and in the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies. Our writers and artists have their literary and art work to do, but their primary task is to understand people and know them well. In this regard, how have matters stood with our writers and artists? I would say they have been lacking in knowledge and understanding; they have been like &quot;a hero with no place to display his prowess&quot;. What does lacking in knowledge mean? Not knowing people well. The writers and artists do not have a good knowledge either of those whom they describe or of their audience; indeed they may hardly know them at all. They do not know the workers or peasants or soldiers well, and do not know the cadres well either. What does lacking in understanding mean? Not understanding the language, that is, not being familiar with the rich, lively language of the masses. Since many writers and artists stand aloof from the masses and lead empty lives, naturally they are unfamiliar with the language of the people. Accordingly, their works are not only insipid in language but often contain nondescript expressions of their own coining which run counter to popular usage. Many comrades like to talk about &quot;a mass style&quot;. But what does it really mean? It means that the thoughts and feelings of our writers and artists should be fused with those of the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers. To achieve this fusion, they should conscientiously learn the language of the masses. How can you talk of literary and artistic creation if you find the very language of the masses largely incomprehensible? By &quot;a hero with no place to display his prowess&quot;, we mean that your collection of great truths is not appreciated by the masses. The more you put on the airs of a veteran before the masses and play the &quot;hero&quot;, the more you try to peddle such stuff to the masses, the less likely they are to accept it. If you want the masses to understand you, if you want to be one with the masses, you must make up your mind to undergo a long and even painful process of tempering. Here I might mention the experience of how my own feelings changed. I began life as a student and at school acquired the ways of a student; I then used to feel it undignified to do even a little manual labour, such as carrying my own luggage in the presence of my fellow students, who were incapable of carrying anything, either on their shoulders or in their hands. At that time I felt that intellectuals were the only clean people in the world, while in comparison workers and peasants were dirty. I did not mind wearing the clothes of other intellectuals, believing them clean, but I would not put on clothes belonging to a worker or peasant, believing them dirty. But after I became a revolutionary and lived with workers and peasants and with soldiers of the revolutionary army, I gradually came to know them well, and they gradually came to know me well too. It was then, and only then, that I fundamentally changed the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois feelings implanted in me in the bourgeois schools. I came to feel that compared with the workers and peasants the unremoulded intellectuals were not clean and that, in the last analysis, the workers and peasants were the cleanest people and, even though their hands were soiled and their feet smeared with cow-dung, they were really cleaner than the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intellectuals. That is what is meant by a change in feelings, a change from one class to another. If our writers and artists who come from the intelligentsia want their works to be well received by the masses, they must change and remould their thinking and their feelings. Without such a change, without such remoulding, they can do nothing well and will be misfits.<br /> <br /> The last problem is study, by which I mean the study of Marxism-Leninism and of society. Anyone who considers himself a revolutionary Marxist writer, and especially any writer who is a member of the Communist Party, must have a knowledge of Marxism-Leninism. At present, however, some comrades are lacking in the basic concepts of Marxism. For instance, it is a basic Marxist concept that being determines consciousness, that the objective realities of class struggle and national struggle determine our thoughts and feelings. But some of our comrades turn this upside down and maintain that everything ought to start from &quot;love&quot;. Now as for love, in a class society there can be only class love; but these comrades are seeking a love transcending classes, love in the abstract and also freedom in the abstract, truth in the abstract, human nature in the abstract, etc. This shows that they have been very deeply influenced by the bourgeoisie. They should thoroughly rid themselves of this influence and modestly study Marxism-Leninism. It is right for writers and artists to study literary and artistic creation, but the science of Marxism-Leninism must be studied by all revolutionaries, writers and artists not excepted. Writers and artists should study society, that is to say, should study the various classes in society, their mutual relations and respective conditions, their physiognomy and their psychology. Only when we grasp all this clearly can we have a literature and art that is rich in content and correct in orientation.<br /> <br /> I am merely raising these problems today by way of introduction; I hope all of you will express your views on these and other relevant problems.<br /> <br /> == Concluding speech (May 23, 1942) ==<br /> Comrades! Our forum has had three meetings this month. In the pursuit of truth we have carried on spirited debates in which scores of Party and non-Party comrades have spoken, laying bare the issues and making them more concrete. This, I believe, will very much benefit the whole literary and artistic movement.<br /> <br /> In discussing a problem, we should start from reality and not from definitions. We would be following a wrong method if we first looked up definitions of literature and art in textbooks and then used them to determine the guiding principles for the present-day literary and artistic movement and to judge the different opinions and controversies that arise today. We are Marxists, and Marxism teaches that in our approach to a problem we should start from objective facts, not from abstract definitions, and that we should derive our guiding principles, policies and measures from an analysis of these facts. We should do the same in our present discussion of literary and artistic work.<br /> <br /> What are the facts at present? The facts are: the War of Resistance Against Japan which China has been fighting for five years; the world-wide anti-fascist war; the vacillations of China's big landlord class and big bourgeoisie in the War of Resistance and their policy of high-handed oppression of the people; the revolutionary movement in literature and art since the May 4th Movement--its great contributions to the revolution during the last twenty-three years and its many shortcomings; the anti-Japanese democratic base areas of the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies and the integration of large numbers of writers and artists with these armies and with the workers and peasants in these areas; the difference in both environment and tasks between the writers and artists in the base areas and those in the Kuomintang areas; and the controversial issues concerning literature and art which have arisen in Yenan and the other anti-Japanese base areas. These are the actual, undeniable facts in the light of which we have to consider our problems.<br /> <br /> What then is the crux of the matter? In my opinion, it consists fundamentally of the problems of working for the masses and how to work for the masses. Unless these two problems are solved, or solved properly, our writers and artists will be ill-adapted to their environment and their tasks and will come up against a series of difficulties from without and within. My concluding remarks will centre on these two problems and also touch upon some related ones.<br /> <br /> === I ===<br /> The first problem is: literature and art for whom?<br /> <br /> This problem was solved long ago by Marxists, especially by Lenin. As far back as 1905 Lenin pointed out emphatically that our literature and art should &quot;serve . . . the millions and tens of millions of working people&quot;.[1] For comrades engaged in literary and artistic work in the anti-Japanese base areas it might seem that this problem is already solved and needs no further discussion. Actually, that is not the case. Many comrades have not found a clear solution. Consequently their sentiments, their works, their actions and their views on the guiding principles for literature and art have inevitably been more or less at variance with the needs of the masses and of the practical struggle. Of course, among the numerous men of culture, writers, artists and other literary and artistic workers engaged in the great struggle for liberation together with the Communist Party and the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies, a few may be careerists who are with us only temporarily, but the overwhelming majority are working energetically for the common cause. By relying on these comrades, we have achieved a great deal in our literature, drama, music and fine arts. Many of these writers and artists have begun their work since the outbreak of the War of Resistance; many others did much revolutionary work before the war, endured many hardships and influenced broad masses of the people by their activities and works. Why do we say, then, that even among these comrades there are some who have not reached a clear solution of the problem of whom literature and art are for? Is it conceivable that there are still some who maintain that revolutionary literature and art are not for the masses of the people but for the exploiters and oppressors?<br /> <br /> Indeed literature and art exist which are for the exploiters and oppressors. Literature and art for the landlord class are feudal literature and art. Such were the literature and art of the ruling class in China's feudal era. To this day such literature and art still have considerable influence in China. Literature and art for the bourgeoisie are bourgeois literature and art. People like Liang Shih-chiu, [2] whom Lu Hsun criticized, talk about literature and art as transcending classes, but in fact they uphold bourgeois literature and art and oppose proletarian literature and art. Then literature and art exist which serve the imperialists--for example, the works of Chou Tsojen, Chang Tzu-ping [3] and their like--which we call traitor literature and art. With us, literature and art are for the people, not for any of the above groups. We have said that China's new culture at the present stage is an anti-imperialist, anti-feudal culture of the masses of the people under the leadership of the proletariat. Today, anything that is truly of the masses must necessarily be led by the proletariat. Whatever is under the leadership of the bourgeoisie cannot possibly be of the masses. Naturally, the same applies to the new literature and art which are part of the new culture. We should take over the rich legacy and the good traditions in literature and art that have been handed down from past ages in China and foreign countries, but the aim must still be to serve the masses of the people. Nor do we refuse to utilize the literary and artistic forms of the past, but in our hands these old forms, remoulded and infused with new content, also become something revolutionary in the service of the people.<br /> <br /> Who, then, are the masses of the people? The broadest sections of the people, constituting more than 90 per cent of our total population, are the workers, peasants, soldiers and urban petty bourgeoisie. Therefore, our literature and art are first for the workers, the class that leads the revolution. Secondly, they are for the peasants, the most numerous and most steadfast of our allies in the revolution. Thirdly, they are for the armed workers and peasants, namely, the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies and the other armed units of the people, which are the main forces of the revolutionary war. Fourthly, they are for the labouring masses of the urban petty bourgeoisie and for the petty-bourgeois intellectuals, both of whom are also our allies in the revolution and capable of long-term co-operation with us. These four kinds of people constitute the overwhelming majority of the Chinese nation, the broadest masses of the people.<br /> <br /> Our literature and art should be for the four kinds of people we have enumerated. To serve them, we must take the class stand of the proletariat and not that of the petty bourgeoisie. Today, writers who cling to an individualist, petty-bourgeois stand cannot truly serve the masses of revolutionary workers, peasants and soldiers. Their interest is mainly focused on the small number of petty-bourgeois intellectuals. This is the crucial reason why some of our comrades cannot correctly solve the problem of &quot;for whom?&quot; In saying this I am not referring to theory. In theory, or in words, no one in our ranks regards the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers as less important than the petty-bourgeois intellectuals. I am referring to practice, to action. In practice, in action, do they regard petty-bourgeois intellectuals as more important than workers, peasants and soldiers? I think they do. Many comrades concern themselves with studying the petty-bourgeois intellectuals and analysing their psychology, and they concentrate on portraying these intellectuals and excusing or defending their shortcomings, instead of guiding the intellectuals to join with them in getting closer to the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers, taking part in the practical struggles of the masses, portraying and educating the masses. Coming from the petty bourgeoisie and being themselves intellectuals, many comrades seek friends only among intellectuals and concentrate on studying and describing them. Such study and description are proper if done from a proletarian position. But that is not what they do, or not what they do fully. They take the petty-bourgeois stand and produce works that are the self-expression of the petty bourgeoisie, as can be seen in quite a number of literary and artistic products. Often they show heartfelt sympathy for intellectuals of petty-bourgeois origin, to the extent of sympathizing with or even praising their shortcomings. On the other hand, these comrades seldom come into contact with the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers, do not understand or study them, do not have intimate friends among them and are not good at portraying them; when they do depict them, the clothes are the clothes of working people but the faces are those of petty-bourgeois intellectuals. In certain respects they are fond of the workers, peasants and soldiers and the cadres stemming from them; but there are times when they do not like them and there are some respects in which they do not like them: they do not like their feelings or their manner or their nascent literature and art (the wall newspapers, murals, folk songs, folk tales, etc.). At times they are fond of these things too, but that is when they are hunting for novelty, for something with which to embellish their own works, or even for certain backward features. At other times they openly despise these things and are partial to what belongs to the petty-bourgeois intellectuals or even to the bourgeoisie. These comrades have their feet planted on the side of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals; or, to put it more elegantly, their innermost soul is still a kingdom of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. Thus they have not yet solved, or not yet clearly solved, the problem of &quot;for whom?&quot; This applies not only to newcomers to Yenan; even among comrades who have been to the front and worked for a number of years in our base areas and in the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies, many have not completely solved this problem. It requires a long period of time, at least eight or ten years, to solve it thoroughly. But however long it takes, solve it we must and solve it unequivocally and thoroughly. Our literary and art workers must accomplish this task and shift their stand; they must gradually move their feet over to the side of the workers, peasants and soldiers, to the side of the proletariat, through the process of going into their very midst and into the thick of practical struggles and through the process of studying Marxism and society. Only in this way can we have a literature and art that are truly for the workers, peasants and soldiers, a truly proletarian literature and art.<br /> <br /> This question of &quot;for whom?&quot; is fundamental; it is a question of principle. The controversies and divergences, the opposition and disunity arising among some comrades in the past were not on this fundamental question of principle but on secondary questions, or even on issues involving no principle. On this question of principle, however, there has been hardly any divergence between the two contending sides and they have shown almost complete agreement; to some extent, both tend to look down upon the workers, peasants and soldiers and divorce themselves from the masses. I say &quot;to some extent&quot; because, generally speaking, these comrades do not look down upon the workers, peasants and soldiers or divorce themselves from the masses in the same way as the Kuomintang does. Nevertheless, the tendency is there. Unless this fundamental problem is solved, many other problems will not be easy to solve. Take, for instance, the sectarianism in literary and art circles. This too is a question of principle, but sectarianism can only be eradicated by putting forward and faithfully applying the slogans, &quot;For the workers and peasants!&quot;, &quot;For the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies!&quot; and &quot;Go among the masses!&quot; Otherwise the problem of sectarianism can never be solved. Lu Hsun once said:<br /> <br /> A common aim is the prerequisite for a united front.... The fact that our front is not united shows that we have not been able to unify our aims, and that some people are working only for small groups or indeed only for themselves. If we all aim at serving the masses of workers and peasants, our front will of course be united.[4] <br /> <br /> The problem existed then in Shanghai; now it exists in Chungking too. In such places the problem can hardly be solved thoroughly, because the rulers oppress the revolutionary writers and artists and deny them the freedom to go out among the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers. Here with us the situation is entirely different. We encourage revolutionary writers and artists to be active in forming intimate contacts with the workers, peasants and soldiers, giving them complete freedom to go among the masses and to create a genuinely revolutionary literature and art. Therefore, here among us the problem is nearing solution. But nearing solution is not the same as a complete and thorough solution. We must study Marxism and study society, as we have been saying, precisely in order to achieve a complete and thorough solution. By Marxism we mean living Marxism which plays an effective role in the life and struggle of the masses, not Marxism in words. With Marxism in words transformed into Marxism in real life, there will be no more sectarianism. Not only will the problem of sectarianism be solved, but many other problems as well.<br /> <br /> === II ===<br /> Having settled the problem of whom to serve, we come to the next problem, how to serve. To put it in the words of some of our comrades: should we devote ourselves to raising standards, or should we devote ourselves to popularization?<br /> <br /> In the past, some comrades, to a certain or even a serious extent, belittled and neglected popularization and laid undue stress on raising standards. Stress should be laid on raising standards, but to do so one-sidedly and exclusively, to do so excessively, is a mistake. The lack of a clear solution to the problem of &quot;for whom?&quot;, which I referred to earlier, also manifests itself in this connection. As these comrades are not clear on the problem of &quot;for whom?&quot;, they have no correct criteria for the &quot;raising of standards&quot; and the &quot;popularization&quot; they speak of, and are naturally still less able to find the correct relationship between the two. Since our literature and art are basically for the workers, peasants and soldiers, &quot;popularization&quot; means to popularize among the workers, peasants and soldiers, and &quot;raising standards&quot; means to advance from their present level. What should we popularize among them? Popularize what is needed and can be readily accepted by the feudal landlord class? Popularize what is needed and can be readily accepted by the bourgeoisie? Popularize what is needed and can be readily accepted by the petty-bourgeois intellectuals? No, none of these will do. We must popularize only what is needed and can be readily accepted by the workers, peasants and soldiers themselves. Consequently, prior to the task of educating the workers, peasants and soldiers, there is the task of learning from them. This is even more true of raising standards. There must be a basis from which to raise. Take a bucket of water, for instance; where is it to be raised from if not from the ground? From mid-air? From what basis, then, are literature and art to be raised? From the basis of the feudal classes? From the basis of the bourgeoisie? From the basis of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals? No, not from any of these; only from the basis of the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers. Nor does this mean raising the workers, peasants and soldiers to the &quot;heights&quot; of the feudal classes, the bourgeoisie or the petty-bourgeois intellectuals; it means raising the level of literature and art in the direction in which the workers, peasants and soldiers are themselves advancing, in the direction in which the proletariat is advancing. Here again the task of learning from the workers, peasants and soldiers comes in. Only by starting from the workers, peasants and soldiers can we have a correct understanding of popularization and of the raising of standards and find the proper relationship between the two.<br /> <br /> In the last analysis, what is the source of all literature and art? Works of literature and art, as ideological forms, are products of the reflection in the human brain of the life of a given society. Revolutionary literature and art are the products of the reflection of the life of the people in the brains of revolutionary writers and artists. The life of the people is always a mine of the raw materials for literature and art, materials in their natural form, materials that are crude, but most vital, rich and fundamental; they make all literature and art seem pallid by comparison; they provide literature and art with an inexhaustible source, their only source. They are the only source, for there can be no other. Some may ask, is there not another source in books, in the literature and art of ancient times and of foreign countries? In fact, the literary and artistic works of the past are not a source but a stream; they were created by our predecessors and the foreigners out of the literary and artistic raw materials they found in the life of the people of their time and place. We must take over all the fine things in our literary and artistic heritage, critically assimilate whatever is beneficial, and use them as examples when we create works out of the literary and artistic raw materials in the life of the people of our own time and place. It makes a difference whether or not we have such examples, the difference between crudeness and refinement, between roughness and polish, between a low and a high level, and between slower and faster work. Therefore, we must on no account reject the legacies of the ancients and the foreigners or refuse to learn from them, even though they are the works of the feudal or bourgeois classes. But taking over legacies and using them as examples must never replace our own creative work; nothing can do that. Uncritical transplantation or copying from the ancients and the foreigners is the most sterile and harmful dogmatism in literature and art. China's revolutionary writers and artists, writers and artists of promise, must go among the masses; they must for a long period of time unreservedly and whole-heartedly go among the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers, go into the heat of the struggle, go to the only source, the broadest and richest source, in order to observe, experience, study and analyse all the different kinds of people, all the classes, all the masses, all the vivid patterns of life and struggle, all the raw materials of literature and art. Only then can they proceed to creative work. Otherwise, you will have nothing to work with and you will be nothing but a phoney writer or artist, the kind that Lu Hsun in his will so earnestly cautioned his son never to become.[5]<br /> <br /> Although man's social life is the only source of literature and art and is incomparably livelier and richer in content, the people are not satisfied with life alone and demand literature and art as well. Why? Because, while both are beautiful, life as reflected in works of literature and art can and ought to be on a higher plane, more intense, more concentrated, more typical, nearer the ideal, and therefore more universal than actual everyday life. Revolutionary literature and art should create a variety of characters out of real life and help the masses to propel history forward. For example, there is suffering from hunger, cold and oppression on the one hand, and exploitation and oppression of man by man on the other. These facts exist everywhere and people look upon them as commonplace. Writers and artists concentrate such everyday phenomena, typify the contradictions and struggles within them and produce works which awaken the masses, fire them with enthusiasm and impel them to unite and struggle to transform their environment. Without such literature and art, this task could not be fulfilled, or at least not so effectively and speedily.<br /> <br /> What is meant by popularizing and by raising standards in works of literature and art? What is the relationship between these two tasks? Popular works are simpler and plainer, and therefore more readily accepted by the broad masses of the people today. Works of a higher quality, being more polished, are more difficult to produce and in general do not circulate so easily and quickly among the masses at present. The problem facing the workers, peasants and soldiers is this: they are now engaged in a bitter and bloody struggle with the enemy but are illiterate and uneducated as a result of long years of rule by the feudal and bourgeois classes, and therefore they are eagerly demanding enlightenment, education and works of literature and art which meet their urgent needs and which are easy to absorb, in order to heighten their enthusiasm in struggle and confidence in victory, strengthen their unity and fight the enemy with one heart and one mind. For them the prime need is not &quot;more flowers on the brocade&quot; but &quot;fuel in snowy weather&quot;. In present conditions, therefore, popularization is the more pressing task. It is wrong to belittle or neglect popularization.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, no hard and fast line can be drawn between popularization and the raising of standards. Not only is it possible to popularize some works of higher quality even now, but the cultural level of the broad masses is steadily rising. If popularization remains at the same level for ever, with the same stuff being supplied month after month and year after year, always the same &quot;Little Cowherd&quot; [6] and the same &quot;man, hand, mouth, knife, cow, goat&quot;, [7] will not the educators and those being educated be six of one and half a dozen of the other? What would be the sense of such popularization? The people demand popularization and, following that, higher standards; they demand higher standards month by month and year by year. Here popularization means popularizing for the people and raising of standards means raising the level for the people. And such raising is not from mid-air, or behind closed doors, but is actually based on popularization. It is determined by and at the same time guides popularization. In China as a whole the development of the revolution and of revolutionary culture is uneven and their spread is gradual. While in one place there is popularization and then raising of standards on the basis of popularization, in other places popularization has not even begun. Hence good experience in popularization leading to higher standards in one locality can be applied in other localities and serve to guide popularization and the raising of standards there, saving many twists and turns along the road. Internationally, the good experience of foreign countries, and especially Soviet experience, can also serve to guide us. With us, therefore, the raising of standards is based on popularization, while popularization is guided by the raising of standards. Precisely for this reason, so far from being an obstacle to the raising of standards, the work of popularization we are speaking of supplies the basis for the work of raising standards which we are now doing on a limited scale, and prepares the necessary conditions for us to raise standards in the future on a much broader scale.<br /> <br /> Besides such raising of standards as meets the needs of the masses directly, there is the kind which meets their needs indirectly, that is, the kind which is needed by the cadres. The cadres are the advanced elements of the masses and generally have received more education; literature and art of a higher level are entirely necessary for them. To ignore this would be a mistake. Whatever is done for the cadres is also entirely for the masses, because it is only through the cadres that we can educate and guide the masses. If we go against this aim, if what we give the cadres cannot help them educate and guide the masses, our work of raising standards will be like shooting at random and will depart from the fundamental principle of serving the masses of the people.<br /> <br /> To sum up: through the creative labour of revolutionary writers and artists, the raw materials found in the life of the people are shaped into the ideological form of literature and art serving the masses of the people. Included here are the more advanced literature and art as developed on the basis of elementary literature and art and as required by those sections of the masses whose level has been raised, or, more immediately, by the cadres among the masses. Also included here are elementary literature and art which, conversely, are guided by more advanced literature and art and are needed primarily by the overwhelming majority of the masses at present. Whether more advanced or elementary, all our literature and art are for the masses of the people, and in the first place for the workers, peasants and soldiers; they are created for the workers, peasants and soldiers and are for their use.<br /> <br /> Now that we have settled the problem of the relationship between the raising of standards and popularization, that of the relationship between the specialists and the popularizers can also be settled. Our specialists are not only for the cadres, but also, and indeed chiefly, for the masses. Our specialists in literature should pay attention to the wall newspapers of the masses and to the reportage written in the army and the villages. Our specialists in drama should pay attention to the small troupes in the army and the villages. Our specialists in music should pay attention to the songs of the masses. Our specialists in the fine arts should pay attention to the fine arts of the masses. All these comrades should make close contact with comrades engaged in the work of popularizing literature and art among the masses. On the one hand, they should help and guide the popularizers, and on the other, they should learn from these comrades and, through them, draw nourishment from the masses to replenish and enrich themselves so that their specialities do not become &quot;ivory towers&quot;, detached from the masses and from reality and devoid of content or life. We should esteem the specialists, for they are very valuable to our cause. But we should tell them that no revolutionary writer or artist can do any meaningful work unless he is closely linked with the masses, gives expression to their thoughts and feelings and serves them as a loyal spokesman. Only by speaking for the masses can he educate them and only by being their pupil can he be their teacher. If he regards himself as their master, as an aristocrat who lords it over the &quot;lower orders&quot;, then, no matter how talented he may be, he will not be needed by the masses and his work will have no future.<br /> <br /> Is this attitude of ours utilitarian? Materialists do not oppose utilitarianism in general but the utilitarianism of the feudal, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois classes; they oppose those hypocrites who attack utilitarianism in words but in deeds embrace the most selfish and short-sighted utilitarianism. There is no &quot;ism&quot; in the world that transcends utilitarian considerations; in class society there can be only the utilitarianism of this or that class. We are proletarian revolutionary utilitarians and take as our point of departure the unity of the present and future interests of the broadest masses, who constitute over 90 per cent of the population; hence we are revolutionary utilitarians aiming for the broadest and the most long-range objectives, not narrow utilitarians concerned only with the partial and the immediate. If, for instance, you reproach the masses for their utilitarianism and yet for your own utility, or that of a narrow clique, force on the market and propagandize among the masses a work which pleases only the few but is useless or even harmful to the majority, then you are not only insulting the masses but also revealing your own lack of self-knowledge. A thing is good only when it brings real benefit to the masses of the people. Your work may be as good as &quot;The Spring Snow&quot;, but if for the time being it caters only to the few and the masses are still singing the &quot;Song of the Rustic Poor&quot;, [8] you will get nowhere by simply scolding them instead of trying to raise their level. The question now is to bring about a unity between &quot;The Spring Snow&quot; and the &quot;Song of the Rustic Poor&quot;, between higher standards and popularization. Without such a unity, the highest art of any expert cannot help being utilitarian in the narrowest sense; you may call this art &quot;pure and lofty&quot; but that is merely your own name for it which the masses will not endorse.<br /> <br /> Once we have solved the problems of fundamental policy, of serving the workers, peasants and soldiers and of how to serve them, such other problems as whether to write about the bright or the dark side of life and the problem of unity will also be solved. If everyone agrees on the fundamental policy, it should be adhered to by all our workers, all our schools, publications and organizations in the field of literature and art and in all our literary and artistic activities. It is wrong to depart from this policy and anything at variance with it must be duly corrected.<br /> <br /> === III ===<br /> Since our literature and art are for the masses of the people, we can proceed to discuss a problem of inner-Party relations, i.e., the relation between the Party's work in literature and art and the Party's work as a whole, and in addition a problem of the Party's external relations, i.e., the relation between the Party's work in literature and art and the work of non-Party people in this field, a problem of the united front in literary and art circles.<br /> <br /> Let us consider the first problem. In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes or art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and wheels [9] in the whole revolutionary machine. Therefore, Party work in literature and art occupies a definite and assigned position in Party revolutionary work as a whole and is subordinated to the revolutionary tasks set by the Party in a given revolutionary period. Opposition to this arrangement is certain to lead to dualism or pluralism, and in essence amounts to &quot;politics--Marxist, art--bourgeois&quot;, as with Trotsky. We do not favour overstressing the importance of literature and art, but neither do we favour underestimating their importance. Literature and art are subordinate to politics, but in their turn exert a great influence on politics. Revolutionary literature and art are part of the whole revolutionary cause, they are cogs and wheels in it, and though in comparison with certain other and more important parts they may be less significant and less urgent and may occupy a secondary position, nevertheless, they are indispensable cogs and wheels in the whole machine, an indispensable part of the entire revolutionary cause. If we had no literature and art even in the broadest and most ordinary sense, we could not carry on the revolutionary movement and win victory. Failure to recognize this is wrong. Furthermore, when we say that literature and art are subordinate to politics, we mean class politics, the politics of the masses, not the politics of a few so-called statesmen. Politics, whether revolutionary or counter-revolutionary, is the struggle of class against class, not the activity of a few individuals. The revolutionary struggle on the ideological and artistic fronts must be subordinate to the political struggle because only through politics can the needs of the class and the masses find expression in concentrated form. Revolutionary statesmen, the political specialists who know the science or art of revolutionary politics, are simply the leaders of millions upon millions of statesmen--the masses. Their task is to collect the opinions of these mass statesmen, sift and refine them, and return them to the masses, who then take them and put them into practice. They are therefore not the kind of aristocratic &quot;statesmen&quot; who work behind closed doors and fancy they have a monopoly of wisdom. Herein lies the difference in principle between proletarian statesmen and decadent bourgeois statesmen. This is precisely why there can be complete unity between the political character of our literary and artistic works and their truthfulness. It would be wrong to fail to realize this and to debase the politics and the statesmen of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> Let us consider next the question of the united front in the world of literature and art. Since literature and art are subordinate to politics and since the fundamental problem in China's politics today is resistance to Japan, our Party writers and artists must in the first place unite on this issue of resistance to Japan with all non-Party writers and artists (ranging from Party sympathizers and petty-bourgeois writers and artists to all those writers and artists of the bourgeois and landlord classes who are in favour of resistance to Japan). Secondly, we should unite with them on the issue of democracy. On this issue there is a section of anti-Japanese writers and artists who do not agree with us, so the range of unity will unavoidably be somewhat more limited. Thirdly, we should unite with them on issues peculiar to the literary and artistic world, questions of method and style in literature and art; here again, as we are for socialist realism and some people do not agree, the range of unity will be narrower still. While on one issue there is unity, on another there is struggle, there is criticism. The issues are at once separate and interrelated, so that even on the very ones which give rise to unity, such as resistance to Japan, there are at the same time struggle and criticism. In a united front, &quot;all unity and no struggle&quot; and &quot;all struggle and no unity&quot; are both wrong policies--as with the Right capitulationism and tailism, or the &quot;Left&quot; exclusivism and sectarianism, practiced by some comrades in the past. This is as true in literature and art as in politics.<br /> <br /> The petty-bourgeois writers and artists constitute an important force among the forces of the united front in literary and art circles in China. There are many shortcomings in both their thinking and their works, but, comparatively speaking, they are inclined towards the revolution and are close to the working people. Therefore, it is an especially important task to help them overcome their shortcomings and to win them over to the front which serves the working people.<br /> <br /> === IV ===<br /> Literary and art criticism is one of the principal methods of struggle in the world of literature and art. It should be developed and, as comrades have rightly pointed out, our past work in this respect has been quite inadequate. Literary and art criticism is a complex question which requires a great deal of special study. Here I shall concentrate only on the basic problem of criteria in criticism. I shall also comment briefly on a few specific problems raised by some comrades and on certain incorrect views.<br /> <br /> In literary and art criticism there are two criteria, the political and the artistic. According to the political criterion, everything is good that is helpful to unity and resistance to Japan, that encourages the masses to be of one heart and one mind, that opposes retrogression and promotes progress; on the other hand, everything is bad that is detrimental to unity and resistance to Japan, foments dissension and discord among the masses and opposes progress and drags people back. How can we tell the good from the bad--by the motive (the subjective intention) or by the effect (social practice)? Idealists stress motive and ignore effect, while mechanical materialists stress effect and ignore motive. In contradistinction to both, we dialectical materialists insist on the unity of motive and effect. The motive of serving the masses is inseparably linked with the effect of winning their approval; the two must be united. The motive of serving the individual or a small clique is not good, nor is it good to have the motive of serving the masses without the effect of winning their approval and benefiting them. In examining the subjective intention of a writer or artist, that is, whether his motive is correct and good, we do not judge by his declarations but by the effect of his actions (mainly his works) on the masses in society. The criterion for judging subjective intention or motive is social practice and its effect. We want no sectarianism in our literary and art criticism and, subject to the general principle of unity for resistance to Japan, we should tolerate literary and art works with a variety of political attitudes. But at the same time, in our criticism we must adhere firmly to principle and severely criticize and repudiate all works of literature and art expressing views in opposition to the nation, to science, to the masses and to the Communist Party, because these so-called works of literature and art proceed from the motive and produce the effect of undermining unity for resistance to Japan. According to the artistic criterion, all works of a higher artistic quality are good or comparatively good, while those of a lower artistic quality are bad or comparatively bad. Here, too, of course, social effect must be taken into account. There is hardly a writer or artist who does not consider his own work beautiful, and our criticism ought to permit the free competition of all varieties of works of art; but it is also entirely necessary to subject these works to correct criticism according to the criteria of the science of aesthetics, so that art of a lower level can be gradually raised to a higher and art which does not meet the demands of the struggle of the broad masses can be transformed into art that does.<br /> <br /> There is the political criterion and there is the artistic criterion; what is the relationship between the two? Politics cannot be equated with art, nor can a general world outlook be equated with a method of artistic creation and criticism. We deny not only that there is an abstract and absolutely unchangeable political criterion, but also that there is an abstract and absolutely unchangeable artistic criterion; each class in every class society has its own political and artistic criteria. But all classes in all class societies invariably put the political criterion first and the artistic criterion second. The bourgeoisie always shuts out proletarian literature and art, however great their artistic merit. The proletariat must similarly distinguish among the literary and art works of past ages and determine its attitude towards them only after examining their attitude to the people and whether or not they had any progressive significance historically. Some works which politically are downright reactionary may have a certain artistic quality. The more reactionary their content and the higher their artistic quality, the more poisonous they are to the people, and the more necessary it is to reject them. A common characteristic of the literature and art of all exploiting classes in their period of decline is the contradiction between their reactionary political content and their artistic form. What we demand is the unity of politics and art, the unity of content and form, the unity of revolutionary political content and the highest possible perfection of artistic form. Works of art which lack artistic quality have no force, however progressive they are politically. Therefore, we oppose both the tendency to produce works of art with a wrong political viewpoint and the tendency towards the &quot;poster and slogan style&quot; which is correct in political viewpoint but lacking in artistic power. On questions of literature and art we must carry on a struggle on two fronts.<br /> <br /> Both these tendencies can be found in the thinking of many comrades. A good number of comrades tend to neglect artistic technique; it is therefore necessary to give attention to the raising of artistic standards. But as I see it, the political side is more of a problem at present. Some comrades lack elementary political knowledge and consequently have all sorts of muddled ideas. Let me cite a few examples from Yenan.<br /> <br /> &quot;The theory of human nature.&quot; Is there such a thing as human nature? Of course there is. But there is only human nature in the concrete, no human nature in the abstract. In class society there is only human nature of a class character; there is no human nature above classes. We uphold the human nature of the proletariat and of the masses of the people, while the landlord and bourgeois classes uphold the human nature of their own classes, only they do not say so but make it out to be the only human nature in existence. The human nature boosted by certain petty-bourgeois intellectuals is also divorced from or opposed to the masses; what they call human nature is in essence nothing but bourgeois individualism, and so, in their eyes, proletarian human nature is contrary to human nature. &quot;The theory of human nature&quot; which some people in Yenan advocate as the basis of their so-called theory of literature and art puts the matter in just this way and is wholly wrong.<br /> <br /> &quot;The fundamental point of departure for literature and art is love, love of humanity.&quot; Now love may serve as a point of departure, but there is a more basic one. Love as an idea is a product of objective practice. Fundamentally, we do not start from ideas but from objective practice. Our writers and artists who come from the ranks of the intellectuals love the proletariat because society has made them feel that they and the proletariat share a common fate. We hate Japanese imperialism because Japanese imperialism oppresses us. There is absolutely no such thing in the world as love or hatred with out reason or cause. As for the so-called love of humanity, there has been no such all-inclusive love since humanity was divided into classes. All the ruling classes of the past were fond of advocating it, and so were many so-called sages and wise men, but nobody has ever really practiced it, because it is impossible in class society. There will be genuine love of humanity--after classes are eliminated all over the world. Classes have split society into many antagonistic groupings; there will be love of all humanity when classes are eliminated, but not now. We cannot love enemies, we cannot love social evils, our aim is to destroy them. This is common sense; can it be that some of our writers and artists still do not understand this?<br /> <br /> &quot;Literary and artistic works have always laid equal stress on the bright and the dark, half and half.&quot; This statement contains many muddled ideas. It is not true that literature and art have always done this. Many petty-bourgeois writers have never discovered the bright side. Their works only expose the dark and are known as the &quot;literature of exposure&quot;. Some of their works simply specialize in preaching pessimism and world-weariness. On the other hand, Soviet literature in the period of socialist construction portrays mainly the bright. It, too, describes shortcomings in work and portrays negative characters, but this only serves as a contrast to bring out the brightness of the whole picture and is not on a so-called half-and-half basis. The writers and artists of the bourgeoisie in its period of reaction depict the revolutionary masses as mobs and themselves as saints, thus reversing the bright and the dark. Only truly revolutionary writers and artists can correctly solve the problem of whether to extol or to expose. All the dark forces harming the masses of the people must be exposed and all the revolutionary struggles of the masses of the people must be extolled; this is the fundamental task of revolutionary writers and artists.<br /> <br /> &quot;The task of literature and art has always been to expose.&quot; This assertion, like the previous one, arises from ignorance of the science of history. Literature and art, as we have shown, have never been devoted solely to exposure. For revolutionary writers and artists the targets for exposure can never be the masses, but only the aggressors, exploiters and oppressors and the evil influence they have on the people. The masses too have shortcomings, which should be overcome by criticism and self-criticism within the people's own ranks, and such criticism and self-criticism is also one of the most important tasks of literature and art. But this should not be regarded as any sort of &quot;exposure of the people&quot;. As for the people, the question is basically one of education and of raising their level. Only counter-revolutionary writers and artists describe the people as &quot;born fools&quot; and the revolutionary masses as &quot;tyrannical mobs&quot;.<br /> <br /> &quot;This is still the period of the satirical essay, and Lu Hsun's style of writing is still needed.&quot; Living under the rule of the dark forces and deprived of freedom of speech, Lu Hsun used burning satire and freezing irony, cast in the form of essays, to do battle; and he was entirely right. We, too, must hold up to sharp ridicule the fascists, the Chinese reactionaries and everything that harms the people; but in the Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia Border Region and the anti-Japanese base areas behind the enemy lines, where democracy and freedom are granted in full to the revolutionary writers and artists and withheld only from the counter-revolutionaries, the style of the essay should not simply be like Lu Hsun's. Here we can shout at the top of our voices and have no need for veiled and roundabout expressions, which are hard for the people to understand. When dealing with the people and not with their enemies, Lu Hsun never ridiculed or attacked the revolutionary people and the revolutionary Party in his &quot;satirical essay period&quot;, and these essays were entirely different in manner from those directed against the enemy. To criticize the people's shortcomings is necessary, as we have already said, but in doing so we must truly take the stand of the people and speak out of whole-hearted eagerness to protect and educate them. To treat comrades like enemies is to go over to the stand of the enemy. Are we then to abolish satire? No. Satire is always necessary. But there are several kinds of satire, each with a different attitude, satire to deal with our enemies, satire to deal with our allies and satire to deal with our own ranks. We are not opposed to satire in general; what we must abolish is the abuse of satire.<br /> <br /> &quot;I am not given to praise and eulogy. The works of people who eulogize what is bright are not necessarily great and the works of those who depict the dark are not necessarily paltry.&quot; If you are a bourgeois writer or artist, you will eulogize not the proletariat but the bourgeoisie, and if you are a proletarian writer or artist, you will eulogize not the bourgeoisie but the proletariat and working people: it must be one or the other. The works of the eulogists of the bourgeoisie are not necessarily great, nor are the works of those who show that the bourgeoisie is dark necessarily paltry; the works of the eulogists of the proletariat are not necessarily not great, but the works of those who depict the so-called &quot;darkness&quot; of the proletariat are bound to be paltry--are these not facts of history as regards literature and art? Why should we not eulogize the people, the creators of the history of mankind? Why should we not eulogize the proletariat, the Communist Party, New Democracy and socialism? There is a type of person who has no enthusiasm for the people's cause and looks coldly from the side-lines at the struggles and victories of the proletariat and its vanguard; what he is interested in, and will never weary of eulogizing, is himself, plus perhaps a few figures in his small coterie. Of course, such petty-bourgeois individualists are unwilling to eulogize the deeds and virtues of the revolutionary people or heighten their courage in struggle and their confidence in victory. Persons of this type are merely termites in the revolutionary ranks; of course, the revolutionary people have no need for these &quot;singers&quot;.<br /> <br /> &quot;It is not a question of stand; my class stand is correct, my intentions are good and I understand all right, but I am not good at expressing myself and so the effect turns out bad.&quot; I have already spoken about the dialectical materialist view of motive and effect. Now I want to ask, is not the question of effect one of stand? A person who acts solely by motive and does not inquire what effect his action will have is like a doctor who merely writes prescriptions but does not care how many patients die of them. Or take a political party which merely makes declarations but does not care whether they are carried out. It may well be asked, is this a correct stand? And is the intention here good? Of course, mistakes may occur even though the effect has been taken into account beforehand, but is the intention good when one continues in the same old rut after facts have proved that the effect is bad? In judging a party or a doctor, we must look at practice, at the effect. The same applies in judging a writer. A person with truly good intentions must take the effect into account, sum up experience and study the methods or, in creative work, study the technique of expression. A person with truly good intentions must criticize the shortcomings and mistakes in his own work with the utmost candour and resolve to correct them. This is precisely why Communists employ the method of self-criticism. This alone is the correct stand. Only in this process of serious and responsible practice is it possible gradually to understand what the correct stand is and gradually obtain a good grasp of it. If one does not move in this direction in practice, if there is simply the complacent assertion that one &quot;understands all right&quot;, then in fact one has not understood at all.<br /> <br /> &quot;To call on us to study Marxism is to repeat the mistake of the dialectical materialist creative method, which will harm the creative mood.&quot; To study Marxism means to apply the dialectical materialist and historical materialist viewpoint in our observation of the world, of society and of literature and art; it does not mean writing philosophical lectures into our works of literature and art. Marxism embraces but cannot replace realism in literary and artistic creation, just as it embraces but cannot replace the atomic and electronic theories in physics. Empty, dry dogmatic formulas do indeed destroy the creative mood; not only that, they first destroy Marxism. Dogmatic &quot;Marxism&quot; is not Marxism, it is anti-Marxism. Then does not Marxism destroy the creative mood? Yes, it does. It definitely destroys creative moods that are feudal, bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, liberalistic, individualist, nihilist, art-for-art's sake, aristocratic, decadent or pessimistic, and every other creative mood that is alien to the masses of the people and to the proletariat. So far as proletarian writers and artists are concerned, should not these kinds of creative moods be destroyed? I think they should; they should be utterly destroyed. And while they are being destroyed, something new can be constructed.<br /> <br /> === V ===<br /> The problems discussed here exist in our literary and art circles in Yenan. What does that show? It shows that wrong styles of work still exist to a serious extent in our literary and art circles and that there are still many defects among our comrades, such as idealism, dogmatism, empty illusions, empty talk, contempt for practice and aloofness from the masses, all of which call for an effective and serious campaign of rectification.<br /> <br /> We have many comrades who are still not very clear on the difference between the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie. There are many Party members who have joined the Communist Party organizationally but have not yet joined the Party wholly or at all ideologically. Those who have not joined the Party ideologically still carry a great deal of the muck of the exploiting classes in their heads, and have no idea at all of what proletarian ideology, or communism, or the Party is. &quot;Proletarian ideology?&quot; they think. &quot;The same old stuff!&quot; Little do they know that it is no easy matter to acquire this stuff. Some will never have the slightest Communist flavour about them as long as they live and can only end up by leaving the Party.<br /> <br /> Therefore, though the majority in our Party and in our ranks are clean and honest, we must in all seriousness put things in order both ideologically and organizationally if we are to develop the revolutionary movement more effectively and bring it to speedier success. To put things in order organizationally requires our first doing so ideologically, our launching a struggle of proletarian ideology against non-proletarian ideology. An ideological struggle is already under way in literary and art circles in Yenan, and it is most necessary. Intellectuals of petty-bourgeois origin always stubbornly try in all sorts of ways, including literary and artistic ways, to project themselves and spread their views, and they want the Party and the world to be remoulded in their own image. In the circumstances it is our duty to jolt these &quot;comrades&quot; and tell them sharply, &quot;That won't work! The proletariat cannot accommodate itself to you; to yield to you would actually be to yield to the big landlord class and the big bourgeoisie and to run the risk of undermining our Party and our country.&quot; Whom then must we yield to? We can mould the Party and the world only in the image of the proletarian vanguard. We hope our comrades in literary and art circles will realize the seriousness of this great debate and join actively in this struggle, so that every comrade may become sound and our entire ranks may become truly united and consolidated ideologically and organizationally.<br /> <br /> Because of confusion in their thinking, many of our comrades are not quite able to draw a real distinction between our revolutionary base areas and the Kuomintang areas and they make many mistakes as a consequence. A good number of comrades have come here from the garrets of Shanghai, and in coming from those garrets to the revolutionary base areas, they have passed not only from one kind of place to another but from one historical epoch to another. One society is semi-feudal, semi-colonial, under the rule of the big landlords and big bourgeoisie, the other is a revolutionary new-democratic society under the leadership of the proletariat. To come to the revolutionary bases means to enter an epoch unprecedented in the thousands of years of Chinese history, an epoch in which the masses of the people wield state power. Here the people around us and the audience for our propaganda are totally different. The past epoch is gone, never to return. Therefore, we must integrate ourselves with the new masses without any hesitation. If, living among the new masses, some comrades, as I said before, are still &quot;lacking in knowledge and understanding&quot; and remain &quot;heroes with no place to display their prowess&quot;, then difficulties will arise for them, and not only when they go out to the villages; right here in Yenan difficulties will arise for them. Some comrades may think, &quot;Well, I had better continue writing for the readers in the Great Rear Area; [10] it is a job I know well and has 'national significance'.&quot; This idea is entirely wrong. The Great Rear Area is also changing. Readers there expect authors in the revolutionary base areas to tell about the new people and the new world and not to bore them with the same old tales. Therefore, the more a work is written for the masses in the revolutionary base areas, the more national significance will it have. Fadeyev in The Debacle [11] only told the story of a small guerrilla unit and had no intention of pandering to the palate of readers in the old world; yet the book has exerted world-wide influence. At any rate in China its influence is very great, as you know. China is moving forward, not back, and it is the revolutionary base areas, not any of the backward, retrogressive areas, that are leading China forward. This is a fundamental issue that, above all, comrades must come to understand in the rectification movement.<br /> <br /> Since integration into the new epoch of the masses is essential, it is necessary thoroughly to solve the problem of the relationship between the individual and the masses. This couplet from a poem by Lu Hsun should be our motto:<br /> {{Quote|Fierce-browed, I coolly defy a thousand pointing fingers,<br /> Head-bowed, like a willing ox I serve the children. [12]}}<br /> The &quot;thousand pointing fingers&quot; are our enemies, and we will never yield to them, no matter how ferocious. The &quot;children&quot; here symbolize the proletariat and the masses. All Communists, all revolutionaries, all revolutionary literary and art workers should learn from the example of Lu Hsun and be &quot;oxen&quot; for the proletariat and the masses, bending their backs to the task until their dying day. Intellectuals who want to integrate themselves with the masses, who want to serve the masses, must go through a process in which they and the masses come to know each other well. This process may, and certainly will, involve much pain and friction, but if you have the determination, you will be able to fulfil these requirements.<br /> <br /> Today I have discussed only some of the problems of fundamental orientation for our literature and art movement; many specific problems remain which will require further study. I am confident that comrades here are determined to move in the direction indicated.<br /> <br /> I believe that in the course of the rectification movement and in the long period of study and work to come, you will surely be able to bring about a transformation in yourselves and in your works, to create many fine works which will be warmly welcomed by the masses of the people, and to advance the literature and art movement in the revolutionary base areas and throughout China to a glorious new stage. <br /> == Footnotes ==<br /> 1. See V. I. Lenin, &quot;Party Organisation and Party Literature&quot;, in which he described the characteristics of proletarian literature as follows: ''&quot;It will be a free literature, because the idea of socialism and sympathy with the working people, and not greed or careerism, will bring ever new forces to its ranks. It will be a free literature, because it will serve, not some satiated heroine, not the bored &quot;upper ten thousand&quot; suffering from fatty degeneration, but the millions and tens of millions of working people--the flower of the country, its strength and its future. It will be a free literature, enriching the last word in the revolutionary thought of mankind with the experience and living work of the socialist proletariat, bringing about permanent interaction between the experience of the past (scientific socialism, the completion of the development of socialism from its primitive, utopian forms) and the experience of the present (the present struggle of the worker comrades).''&quot; (Collected Works, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1962, Vol. X, pp. 48-49.)<br /> <br /> 2. Liang Shih-chiu, a member of the counter-revolutionary National Socialist Party, for a long time propagated reactionary American bourgeois ideas on literature and art. He stubbornly opposed the revolution and reviled revolutionary literature and art.<br /> <br /> 3. Chou Tso-jen and Chang Tzu-ping capitulated to the Japanese aggressors after the Japanese occupied Peking and Shanghai in 1937.<br /> <br /> 4. Lu Hsun, &quot;My View on the League of Left-Wing Writers&quot; in the collection Two Hearts, Complete Works, Chin. ed., Vol. IV.<br /> <br /> 5. See Lu Hsun's essay, &quot;Death&quot;, in the &quot;Addenda&quot;, The Last Collection of Essays Written in a Garret in the Quasi-Concession, Complete Works. Chin. ed., Vol. VI.<br /> <br /> 6. The &quot;Little Cowherd&quot; is a popular Chinese folk operetta with only two people acting in it, a cowherd and a village girl, who sing a question and answer duet. In the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japan, this form was used, with new words, for anti-Japanese propaganda and for a time found great favour with the public.<br /> <br /> 7. The Chinese characters for these six words are written simply, with only a few strokes, and were usually included in the first lessons in old primers.<br /> <br /> 8. &quot;The Spring Snow&quot; and the &quot;Song of the Rustic Poor&quot; were songs of the Kingdom of Chu in the 3rd century B.C. The music of the first was on a higher level than that of the second. As the story is told in &quot;Sung Yu's Reply to the King of Chu&quot; in Prince Chao Ming's Anthology of Prose and Poetry, when someone sang &quot;The Spring Snow&quot; in the Chu capital, only a few dozen people joined in, but when the &quot;Song of the Rustic Poor&quot; was sung, thousands did so.<br /> <br /> 9. See V. I. Lenin, &quot;Party Organisation and Party Literature&quot;: &quot;Literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat, 'a cog and a screw' of one single great Social-Democratic mechanism set in motion by the entire politically conscious vanguard of the entire working class.&quot; (Collected Works, Eng. ea., FLPH, Moscow, I962, Vol. X, p. 45.)<br /> <br /> 10. The Great Rear Area was the name given during the War of Resistance to the vast areas under Kuomintang control in southwestern and northwestern China which were not occupied by the Japanese invaders, as distinguished from the &quot;small rear area&quot;, the anti-Japanese base areas behind the enemy lines under the leadership of the Communist Party.<br /> <br /> 11. The Debacle by the famous Soviet writer Alexander Fadeyev was published in 1927 and translated into Chinese by Lu Hsun. The novel describes the struggle of a partisan detachment of workers, peasants and revolutionary intellectuals in Siberia against the counter-revolutionary brigands during the Soviet civil war.<br /> <br /> 12. This couplet is from Lu Hsun's &quot;In Mockery of Myself&quot; in The Collection Outside the Collection, Complete Works,Chin. ed., Vol. VII. <br /> [[Category:Library works by Mao Zedong]]</div>

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<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Message box/Externalarticlecleanup}}&lt;!-- To do: Add paragraph breaks, add third-level headings, fix typos, add notes and references for each chapter --&gt;{{Library work|title=A Concise History of the Communist Party of China|author=Hu Sheng|written in=1994|publisher=Foreign Languages Press|type=Book|source=[https://archive.org/details/ConciseHistoryCPC/mode/1up Internet Archive]}}<br /> <br /> Seventy years have passed since the Communist Party of China came into being. Over these seventy years, the Party has rallied the Chinese people around it and waged an unremitting and heroic struggle for national liberation, social progress and the people's well-being. The struggle has never been easy. To make a victorious revolution and build a new society in a poor and backward country comprising a quarter of the earth's population, the Communist Party of China performed feats that astonished the world, encountering seemingly overwhelming difficulties and at times suffering major setbacks. But difficulties or setbacks of any kind could never hold back its advance; they only made the Party more steadfast and more mature. The Chinese people have gained historic victories in revolution and socialist construction under the leadership of the Communist Party, and today they are forging confidently ahead towards the great goal of socialist modernization. The record of the past shows that the Party serves the people heart and soul and that it can provide the leadership that will enable them to master their own destiny and to make the country strong and prosperous. Looking back over the past seventy years, the Chinese people are more convinced than ever that their choice of socialism as their goal and of the Communist Party to lead them there has been correct. Indeed, it is the inevitable product of China's modern historical development. The rich store of experience embodied in these last seventy years of history was accumulated by pioneers who sought the truth under the most difficult circumstances with no precedent to guide them, and it was paid for in the blood of innumerable martyrs. They deserve our ever enduring remembrance.<br /> <br /> == The Founding of the Communist Party of China ==<br /> <br /> === The Success and Failure of the Revolution of 1911 ===<br /> In the middle of the 19th century, China was plunged in untold suffering and humiliation under the oppression of foreign capitalist and imperialist powers and of domestic feudal forces. The country was deprived of its sovereignty, and its economic lifelines were in the hands of foreigners. Faced with aggression by the Western powers, the feudal and autocratic Qing Dynasty, which had reigned over China for two hundred years, took no effective measures to defend the country. On the contrary, it suppressed all trends towards political and social' progress and let the imperialist powers carve the country up at will. The Qing regime at its final stage, traitorous and corrupt, was detested by the people, because it strangled the country's vitality and kept them in misery. The Chinese entered the 20th century with the national humiliation of seeing their capital city, Beijing, occupied by the Eight-Power Allied Forces sent by Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, Italy and Austria. The Chinese nation seemed to be on the verge of extinction. The Chinese people, who had created a glorious and ancient civilization, could not endure such humiliation for long. In 1902, when the great writer Lu Xun was studying in Japan, he wrote these lines expressing the grief and indignation that filled the hearts of a great many Chinese patriots: &quot;My heart cannot evade the arrow of the god of love. &quot;A great storm is sweeping over my homeland in the darkness standmeCe ^ ^ ^ ^ stars' but d° not nnder I offer my heart's blood to my dear homeland &quot; It was the double oppression of imperialism and feudalism that misery ofThern SUffT&quot;8 of lhe Chinese nation and The mtsery of the Chinese people. That is what hindered all social development and political progress. How could the country commnld fhg&quot; aggressi011 and wi&quot; &quot;&quot;(&quot;&quot;a! independence' How ed bv ; efe' Td f0m *he darkness and France perpetuated by the feudal, autocratic regime? How could it be lifted out of poverty and backwardness and made prosperous and strong' These were the principal questions that confronted semi-colonial semi-feudal China, the principal questions that the Chinese progressives kept turning over in their minds. Many brave men and women devoted themselves to the cause of b °rC thC foUnding of the Communist Party 1118 fhlnese bad ^ver ceased trying to change the destiny of then motherland. However, their repeated struggles the wars of resistance against foreign aggression the peasants' Klngdom in middle of the TV . century the Reform Movement of 18981 and the Boxer Upnsmg (the Yi He Juan Movement) at the turn of the century which started from the lower strata of society and grew into a large-scale anti-imperialist patriotic movement—had all ended Sufd not bfattaiPnedn0tS that ,he&quot; ideats Nevertheless, the wheel of history rolled on, constantly bringing new developments. As the national crisis deepened and new social forces, especially modern capitalist industry, began to grow in Chinese society, a new revolutionary movement was started Chfn^ eadership of Sun Yat-sen, the forerunner of the Chinese democratic revolution. wn™uYat:S&quot;,WaS .f great Patriot as well as a great democrat When he established the small revolutionary group Society for he Revival of China (Xing Zhong Hui) in Honolulu in 1894 he issued a clarion call for &quot;the revival of China.&quot; In 1905' he sponsored the founding of the Chinese Revolutionary League (Zhongguo Tong Men Hui). The League put forward a comprehensive political programme for the establishment of a bourgeois democratic republic and worked hard to carry it out by revolutionary means. It pledged to &quot;drive out the Tartars, revive the Chinese nation, establish a republic and equalize ownership of land.&quot; The immediate objective of the revolution was to overthrow the government of the Qing Dynasty, which had already become a tool of the imperialist powers for the domination of China. Thus, the revolution was essentially anti-imperialist It called for the overthrow of the feudal monarchy that had reigned in China for two thousand years. Before this time, some people had been so influenced by European and American ideas that they questioned the monarchy, but they had never dared envisage its overthrow and the dismantling of the social system it represented. Sun Yat-sen, however, held up the ideal of a democratic republic and set a new objective for the Chinese people. From then on, they began to struggle consciously for the establishment of an independent, democratic state. In Mao Zedong's words Strictly speaking, China's bourgeois-democratic revolution against imperialism and feudalism was begun by Dr. Sun YatRecalling it in 1924, the Manifesto of the 1st National Congress of the Kuomintang of China stated: &quot;The objective of the revoluuon was not merely to overthrow the Manchus, but to carry out the transformation of China after their overthrow,&quot; that is, &quot;to achieve in the political domain the transition from an autocractic system to a democratic system and in the economic domain the transition from handicraft production to capitalist production.&quot;3 t is important to note that while many Chinese were eager to learn from the West, Sun Yat-sen had become aware of certain drawbacks in the capitalist system of the Western countries. His conclusion was that &quot;Europe and America are strong, but their people are impoverished&quot; and that &quot;a social revolution will take place before long.&quot; Influenced by the socialist movement rising in the West, Sun Yat-sen tried to add some colour of socialism to his programme, but whatever his intent, his proposal to &quot;equalize &quot;He&quot;&quot; ^ &quot; the dCTCl°pme&quot;1 «PiFor several years following its establishment, the Chinese Revoluuonary League, together with other organizations under its influence, earned out revolutionary propaganda and agitation. Wi ifa8u? alhe]d Itself Wlth secret societies (especially the Triad Society and similar organizations in southern China ) and with the New Army (a modernized force organized by the government of 894095?and'!aSty IT ^ ddeat *&quot; the Sin°-JaPancse War of 4 95) and launched a series of armed uprisings. The failure of each uprising expanded the influence of revolutionary ideas hatred ,hr0ughout the »nd deepened their hatred of the Qmg government. A revolutionary situation was taking shape across the country. The outbreak of the Revolution of 1911 and the success it attamed proved that the imperialist powers could not arb Si* control the destiny of China after all. The revolution was signifT cant not only because it overthrew the Qing Dynasty, but because t put an end to the autocracy that had reigned in China for &quot;dtS of years and awakened the people to the concept of a democratic repubhe. One should never underestimate the role Chimf byithe ^V0lutI0n of 191 1 in Promoting social progress in China and in liberating the thinking of the Chinese people The Qing Dynasty had been not only the chief representative of the domestic feudal forces but also a tool employed by the foreign imperiahsts to dominate China. The people's triumph over this teudal monarchy that had betrayed them destroyed the old reactionary order and paved the way for revolutionary struggles in the days to come. In this sense, the victory achieved in the Revolution of 1911 was tremendous. However, the Revolution of 191 1 also had obvious weaknesses, it 1 ailed to set forth an explicit and comprehensive political programme to combat foreign imperialist aggression and the weUreaihe0Cr! ? arouse lhe lab°uring masses who h t r ^ maJ°nty °f the Chinese Population; and it failed to form a strong revolutionary party that could success fully lead it to its logical conclusion. This was because the bourgeoisie in China was too feeble. It had ties with the imperialist and feudal forces that could not be completely severed, and it was almost totally divorced from the labouring masses. The bourgeois revolutionaries therefore had neither the courage nor the strength to carry the struggle against imperialism and feudalism to the end. The Revolution of 1911 ended in a compromise with the old forces. The imperialist forces in China were as strong as ever, and there was no great social upheaval in the countryside. The Republic of China was founded, but the fruit of revolution fell into the hands of the Northern warlords headed by Yuan Shikai, who was favoured by the imperialists. China was still a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society, still a country of dire poverty and backwardness. Sun Yat-sen said bitterly, &quot;The political and social darkness and the corruption of every description are even worse than in the Qing Dynasty, and the people are becoming increasingly impoverished.&quot;4 The revolution had not attained its desired goal, so in that sense it was a failure. Nevertheless, the Revolution of 1911 holds an honoured place in modern Chinese history. As historical materialists who uphold Marxism, members of the Communist Party of China will never torget the contributions made by all the revolutionary pioneers before the founding of the Party and as a matter of fact, the Revolution of 1911 was the most important revolution preceding the people's revolution led by the CPC. Looking back over the entire course of China's modern revolutionary history, we can see that the Revolution of 1911 did bear fruit after all. The success of that revolution encouraged the Chinese people to keep up their struggle. On the other hand, its failure taught the progressives among them that it was impossible to build a bourgeois republic under the historical conditions of the time. They came to realize that to win the independence and prosperity of the country and the freedom and happiness of the people, they had to explore a new path. Mao Zedong made clear the importance of the Revolution of 191 1 when he said, &quot;While studying the history of the Communist Party of China, wc should study materials concerning the Revolution of 1911 and the May 4lh Movement before the founding of history1&quot;^ °thcrwise' we cannot understand the development It was only ten years between the outbreak of the Revolution of 1911 and the founding of the Communist Party of China A most all of the first generation of CPC revolutionaries had taken part in the Revolution of 1911 or been deeply influenced y it. These veteran Communists and many democrats who later cooperated with the Communist Party took that revolution as their point of departure. Recalling his own ideological evolution the Communist Lin Boqu wrote: Before the Revolution of 1911, 1 believed that there would be peace and tranquillity across the land if only we overthrew the monarchy. But after I took part in the revolution and experienced setbacks over and over again, the goal of democracy I had been trying to attain was still far away. It was through bitter experience that I gradually came to realize I was in a blind alley and that I finally chose communism. This is not the experience of only one PerSL°n4?uany Pte0pie like me can be fouild in the revolutionary ranks. Thus, the victories of the new-democratic revolution and , socialism in China can be regarded as the continuation and development of the Revolution of 1911<br /> <br /> === The Early Stage of the New Cultural Movement and the Initial Dissemination of Marxism ===<br /> After the failure of the Revolution of 1911, Chinese progressives were in despair, at a loss what to do. Their dreams were shattered, because the founding of the Republic of China did not ring about the desired national independence, democracy and social progress. In 1915, when World War I was at its height Japan seized the opportunity to put forward &quot;Twenty-One Demands&quot; in a bid to obtain exclusive control of China. Yuan Shikai, the chief of the Northern warlords, restored the monarchy and proclaimed himself emperor. Zhang Xun, a former senior official of the Qing Dynasty, supported an attempt by the dethroned Emperor Xuantong to stage a comeback. While the imperialist powers were in bitter rivalry in China, the domestic warlords were intensifying their internecine warfare to set up separatist regimes. Going against the trend of the times, certain intellectuals advocated the worship of Confucius and the study of the Confucian canon. One after another, dramatic events succeeded each other on the Chinese stage. Describing the circumstances of the time in broad outline, Mao Zedong wrote: &quot;Their repeated struggles, including such a country-wide movement as the Revolution of 191 1, all ended in failure. Day by day, conditions in the country got worse, and life was made impossible. Doubts arose, increased and deepened.&quot;7 The reality was grim. The people carried out hard struggles and made great sacrifices, but they did not obtain what they had anticipated. A bourgeois democratic republic was not a panacea for all the ills of China. Multiple political parties, the parliamentary system and other institutions copied from the West were tried out in the early years of the Republic of China, but they failed to solve any practical problems and only became instruments employed by different factions of warlords, bureaucrats and politicians in their scramble for power and profit. Utter despair replaced the previous hopes. Yet this bitter experience had its positive side for the progressives. Since they found the old road impassable, they began to look for a new way out. A greater revolutionary storm was brewing and would soon descend upon the land. The early stage of the new cultural movement—the period before the May 4th Movement of 1919—presaged the coming storm. In September 1915 Chen Duxiu, who had participated in the Revolution of 1911, founded the magazine Youth (later renamed New Youth ) in Shanghai, touching off a new cultural movement. In January 1917 Cai Yuanpei became the President of Beijing University. He advocated the assimilation of all schools of thought, engaged Chen Duxiu as the Dean of Liberal Arts and invited many scholars with new ideas to join the faculty. The editorial board of New Youth moved to Beijing, and Li Dazhao, Lu Xun, Hu Shi, Qian Xuantong and Liu Bannong became members of the board and principal contributors. Thus Beijing University and New Youth became the main bastions of the new cultural movement. The ideologists active at the beginning of the movement summed up the experience of the Revolution of 191 1 and reflected on its failure. They came to the conclusion that the struggles tor national salvation waged by earlier revolutionaries had all ended in failure simply because the Chinese people, as the saying goes, had looked on indifferently as the house across the river went up in flames. Accordingly, they believed that to establish a republic worthy of the name, it was necessary to thoroughly remould the national character, and that if problems of ethics were not solved, politics and academic learning would be of no avail hey put forward the slogan, &quot;Do away with superstitions!&quot;, calling on the people to &quot;break through the net of history,&quot; &quot;cast off the yoke of outworn doctrines&quot; and &quot;emancipate their thinking.&quot; The ideologists of those days directed their main attack against the doctrines of Confucius, which had been the orthodox beliefs of feudalism. Rallying around New Youth and using the theories of evolution and individual emancipation as their major weapons, they mounted an assault on the &quot;sages of the past,&quot; represented by Confucius, and vigorously advocated a new ethics and a new literature. Since the leaders of the Reform Movement of 1898 had departed from the classics and 'rebelled against orthodoxy under the cloak of Confucianism, and the revolutionaries of 1911 had never struck a direct blow against it, the ideologists of the new cultural movement were the first to consciously challenge feudal ethics. They had their own weaknesses. For instance, they believed that it was possible to thoroughly remould the national character through struggle in the ideological and cultural fields alone, without transforming the social environment that engendered feudal ideas. They failed to reveal the social roots of Confucianism and the necessity of transforming China's basic social system. They did not express genuine sympathy for the misery of the workers and peasants who were the overwhelming majority of the population or wait patiently until they had been aroused to revolutionary action. And they followed a formalistic methodology that led them to affirm or negate everything absolutely. Nevertheless, their criticism of Confucianism shook the dominant position of the orthodox feudal ideas. It lifted the sluice gate that had checked the current of new ideas, releasing a tide of mental emancipation in Chinese society. This tide was vigorous, progressive and revolutionary. The cardinal slogan of the new cultural movement was, &quot;Democracy and science.&quot; At a time when feudalism was dominant in society, it was historically progressive to advocate democracy as opposed to dictatorship and science as opposed to blind faith. However, according to Chen Duxiu, the proponent of the slogan, democracy referred to the bourgeois democratic system and bourgeois democratic ideas, and science referred to &quot;natural sciences in a narrow sense and social sciences in a broad sense.&quot;8 He emphasized the need to study society with the same scientific spirit and methodology applied to the study of the natural sciences. However, he also regarded as science the ideological system of idealism (with certain borrowings from the natural sciences), including William James's pragmatism, Henri Bergson's theory of creative evolution and Bertrand Russell's new realism.9 He advocated democracy and science because he believed that &quot;in order to survive in the present world,&quot; China had to &quot;build a new state of the Western type and organize a new society of the Western type&quot;—that is, to build a bourgeois republic and develop capitalism.10 This showed that during its first stage the new cultural movement was essentially a struggle of the new culture of the bourgeoisie against the old culture of the feudal class. The proponents of the movement emphasized the &quot;independent personality&quot; and &quot;equal human rights,&quot; striving only for the liberation of the individual instead of for the liberation of the working people as a whole. They were therefore unable 12 to show the Chinese people the real way out of their misery. In fact, the defects of capitalist civilization were becoming increasingly apparent. Shortly after the outbreak of World War I, Chen Duxiu wrote that when capitalism had replaced feudalism, &quot;political inequality turned into social inequality, and monarchical and aristocratic repression turned into capitalist repression.&quot; There was no denying these defects of modern Western civilization.11 World War I disclosed the inherent contradictions of capitalism in an incisive way. The unprecedented brutality of the war and the social chaos that followed shocked the world and cast doubts on the value of Western civilization. It was the first time that the general public felt that the capitalist system no longer had bright prospects and had lost its original attraction. Towards the end of the war, Li Dazhao said, &quot;The war threw much doubt on the authority of European civilization, and the Europeans themselves have to reflect on its true value.&quot;12 In May 1916 he said: &quot;Representative government is still the subject of experiments. It is difficult to ascertain whether it is good or not and to predict whether it will survive or change.&quot;13 In August 1917 Mao Zedong also said it was true that Oriental ideas did not conform to reality, but that Western ideas did not necessarily do so either. He concluded that most Western ideas should be remoulded along with Oriental ideas.14 These doubts on the part of Left-wingers in the new cultural movement led them to seek a new means of national salvation and prepared the ground for their acceptance of Marxism. Why did the October Revolution that broke out in Russia in 1917 call forth such vigorous response in China? Basically, it was because of the changes taking place in Chinese society. At a time when the Chinese people were groping desperately in the dark, the Russian revolution illuminated a path for them, furnishing new and reasonable replies to the questions they were so anxiously studying. Earlier, even before the Revolution of 1911, certain Chinese intellectuals had begun to talk about socialism. However, some of them only indulged in empty talk about anarchism, talk that even 13 they themselves did not believe had any connection with reality. Others held that the theory of socialism was of no practical significance outside the developed capitalist countries. They were of the view that certain &quot;socialist&quot; measures could be adopted in the course of developing capitalism in China so as to &quot;prevent&quot; a socialist revolution. At the same time, there were also people who introduced Marxism into China as a school of socialist thought. After a British missionary made the first mention of Marx and his theories in the Globe Magazine in Shanghai in 1899, both bourgeois reformists like Liang Qichao and revolutionaries like Zhu Zhixin wrote about them. However, until the October Revolution, Marxism was not correctly interpreted in China, and it was not considered important. Conditions were not yet ripe for Chinese society to embrace Marxism, and its influence was negligible. It was the October Revolution that for the first time turned the theories of socialism in books into a living reality. The Russian revolution held particular interest for the Chinese people because it had taken place in a country where conditions were very similar to those in China: severe feudal oppression combined with economic and cultural backwardness. This demonstrated that &quot;a low level of material civilization could in no way hold back the progress of socialism,&quot;15 and that when capitalism offered no solution, one could turn to socialism. The October Revolution was also a call to resist imperialism, a call that sounded &quot;especially penetrating and especially significant&quot;16 to the Chinese people, who had been so bullied and humiliated by the imperialist powers. This gave a powerful impetus to those Chinese progressives who were inclined towards socialism, encouraging them to make a serious study of the theories of Marxism that had guided the revolution. Furthermore, the mobilization of the Russian worker and peasant masses under the banner of socialism and the historic victory they had gained inspired the Chinese progressives to try new methods of revolution. In short, the October Revolution aroused a new hope of national liberation in China. Under these circumstances, a group of intellectuals who supported the Russian revolution and embraced the rudiments of communist ideas came14 into prominence in China. ,hf.Lo^ahha°DWaS,the firSt *° hold aloft in China 'he banner of he October Revolutjon. In 1918 he became professor and chief librarian at Beijing University and emerged as a prominent be! lTlTaftlr .t* T h&quot;'&quot;1™1 m0vement' In July and Novem1 18, after shrewd observation of the October Revolution and careful reflection upon it, he published a series of articles whh such titles as A Comparative Study of the French and Rushan Revolutions, The Victory of the Common People&quot; and &quot;The ODments°h ^ W&quot;h keen insight int0 historical develpments he declared that the victory of the October Revolution a revolution based on socialism, a social revolution known to the world tor its revolutionary colours, was a triumph for the labour movement a harbinger of world revolution in the 20th century and a new dawn for all mankind. He predicted that the tide set in motion by the October Revolution was irresistible and that the future would surely see &quot;a world of red flags &quot; In an article entitled &quot;The New Era,&quot; published on New Year's Day 1919 he wrote that the October Revolution had opened a new era in uman history, that it would bring forth a new life a new take TheT ^ the Chinese should take the same road as the Russians. While radica1 changes were taking place in the thinking of the hinese ideologists, profound changes were also quietly taking place in China s social structure. During World War I the country s national capitalist economy developed rapidly, because the estern imperialist countries, busy fighting at close quarters on e European battlefield, had temporarily slackened their economic aggression against China. (Japan and the United States were exceptions, continuing to expand their economic influence 1919 antao*°l In the six years froi&quot; 1914 through 1919 a total of 379 factories and mines were built, or an average of 63 a year. In connection with this development, the Chinese working dass and national bourgeoisie grew in strength On the nib 7 £y 4th M°Vement °f ,919' the Industrial workers numbered about two million and were becoming an increasingly important social force. All sorts of social problems incTudh'g 15 contradictions between labour and capital, caused ever greater popular concern, providing an objective basis for the acceptance of Marxism. The rapid increase in the number of students enrolled in various new types of schools and the emergence of many teachers in such schools and of journalists helped to form a larger contingent of intellectuals than there had been in the period of the Revolution of 1911. The anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolution of the bourgeoisie had a new and much stronger body of supporters. The rise of a great new people's revolution was inevitable.<br /> <br /> === The May 4th Movement and the Rise of Socialist Ideas ===<br /> It was China's diplomatic failure at the &quot;peace conference&quot; in Paris that touched off the May 4th Movement. In the first half of 1919, the Allied countries held a &quot;peace conference in Paris. Actually, the conference was manipulated by a few powers that had emerged victorious from World War I. Since China had joined the Allies during the war, it too sent delegates. However, the conference rejected its seven demands (including the liquidation of the foreign spheres of influence in China and the withdrawal of foreign troops) and its call for the annulment of Japan's &quot;Twenty-One Demands&quot; and of the related notes exchanged between the two countries. Moreover, the conference ruled that Germany should transfer to Japan all the privileges it had obtained in Shandong Province. The &quot;peace conference gave China nothing but some astronomical instruments that had been seized by Germany when the Eight-Power Allied Forces had stormed into Beijing in 1900. Nevertheless, the delegates from China's Northern warlord government were prepared to sign the &quot;peace treaty.&quot; When the news reached home, it aroused the indignation of people of all social strata. The patriotic May 4th Movement, pioneered by the students, erupted like a volcano. On May 3 students from Beijing University, together with16 representatives of students from other universities and secondary schools in Beijing, held a rally and decided to send a telegram to the special envoys in Paris, demanding that they refuse to sign the &quot;peace treaty.&quot; One of the students cut his finger and wrote in blood the four Chinese characters Huan Wo Qing Dao (Return Qingdao to China).17 On May 4 more than 3,000 students from a dozen universities and schools assembled in front of the Tian'anmen gate-tower and held a demonstration. They shouted such slogans as &quot;Annul the Twenty-One Demands!&quot;, &quot;Return Qingdao to China!&quot; and &quot;Punish the traitors Cao Rulin, Zhang Zongxiang and Lu Zongyu!&quot; (three pro- Japanese bureaucrats in the Northern warlord government). They wrote in a declaration: &quot;The land of China may be conquered, but it must not be forfeited! The people of China may be killed, but they must not bow their heads! The country has been subjugated! Compatriots, arise!&quot; When the demonstrators reached the west entrance of the foreign embassy quarter their way was blocked, so they changed course, marching towards the residence of Cao Rulin. There they found Zhang Zongxiang and beat him black and blue. Unable to find Cao Rulin, they set his house on fire. The government called out troops and police to suppress the students, thirty-two of whom were arrested. Closing ranks in the struggle, the university and middle-school students established a federation. Twenty-five thousand of them staged a general strike. They also made patriotic speeches in the streets, calling on the public to boycott Japanese merchandise and buy Chinese-made goods. Under the brutal repression of the reactionary authorities, the students' struggle ebbed for a time. Then on June 3, as the government openly commended Cao Rulin and once again strictly banned any patriotic movement, they resumed their campaign in the streets. The students spoke tearfully, while the audiences sobbed, their hands covering their faces. Some 170 students were arrested on the first day, and some 700 on the second. On the third day, when more than 2,000 students turned out into the streets, they were attacked by mounted troops and police. It was at this juncture that an important event took place: the 17 Chinese working class entered the political arena as an independent force. On June 5 in Shanghai, while students were kneeling down along the streets to appeal to the shopkeepers to go on strike, about 70,000 workers spontaneously began a sympathy strike. They were followed by workers in Beijing, l'angshan, Hankou, Nanjing, Changsha and other places. Shopkeepers in many large and medium-sized cities joined the strikers. Like a prairie fire, the struggle spread to more than twenty provinces and over a hundred cities across the country. Ihe May 4th Movement was no longer restricted within the narrow limits of the intelligentsia: it had turned into a nationwide revolutionary movement with the participation of the working class, the petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie. The focus of the struggle shifted from Beijing to Shanghai, and the workers gradually replaced the students as the main force. On June 10, under the pressure from the people, the Northern warlords were compelled to release the arrested students and to announce the dismissal of Cao, Zhang and Lu. On June 27 in Paris hundreds of Chinese—workers, students and other residents—went to the hospital where Lu Zhengxiang, the chief Chinese delegate, was staying for medical treatment and demanded that he refuse to sign the &quot;peace treaty.&quot; The following day, the Chinese delegation did not attend the ceremony for the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. The May 4th Movement was an epoch-making event in the history of the Chinese revolution, marking the great beginning of the new-democratic revolution. Looking back on it, Mao Zedong wrote, &quot;Its outstanding historical significance is to be seen in a feature which was absent from the Revolution of 1911, namely, its thorough and uncompromising opposition to imperialism as well as to feudalism.&quot;18 And according to Zhang Wentian, another prominent leader of the CPC, &quot;The greatest merit of the May 4th Movement lay in arousing the political consciousness of the masses and achieving the unity of the revolutionary forces.&quot;19 In the beginning of the movement, the students emerged in the vanguard of the struggle, while at a later stage the working class18 became the main force, displaying its special sense of organization and discipline and its staunch revolutionary spirit. In the words of Deng Zhongxia, an outstanding leader of the workers' movement, &quot;Thus the Chinese working class began a political strike. Later, it managed to develop independent strength and an independent struggle of its own, on which this strike obviously exercised a great influence.&quot;20 As they witnessed the great strength displayed by the working class in the struggle, &quot;some of the student leaders in the May 4th Movement set out to ‘join the public ,' running schools for workers and organizing trade unions. Later they became the backbone of the newly founded Communist Party of China. Around the time of the May 4th Movement, the Chinese progressives came to realize from the experience of the Paris &quot;peace conference&quot; that the imperialist forces had joined together to oppress the Chinese people. This was the main cause of the further dissemination of socialist ideas in China. Qu Qiubai a prominent Communist and writer, wrote, &quot;The cutting pain of imperialist oppression awakened the public from the nightmare of vague democracy.... Therefore, the students' movement swiftly turned to socialism.&quot;22 The study and propagation of socialism gradually became the main concern of the progressives. This was a salient feature of the new cultural movement after the May 4th Movement. It took time for people to understand socialism. At first they felt an obscure yearning for it, as if, Qu Qiubai continued, &quot;they viewed the morning mist through a screened window. The different schools of socialism were confusing and its meaning was not clear.&quot;23 For the time being, people could hardly distinguish between scientific socialism and other schools of socialism. Magazine articles reflected every variety of socialist thinking—anarchism, utopian socialism, cooperativism, pan-labourism, guild socialism, social democracy and so on. It was only after repeated comparison and judgement that the Chinese progressives chose Marxist scientific socialism. Li Dazhao played a major role in the early stage of the Marxist movement in China. He was the chief editor of a special issue of 19 New Youth devoted to Marxism in May 1919. In his own article, &quot;My Marxist Outlook,&quot; he gave a comprehensive and systematic introduction to Marxism. Marxism, he wrote, was the integration of the study of history, economics and politics; that is, historical materialism, economic theory and socialist doctrine, and &quot;class struggle [ran] through all three, like a gold thread.&quot; Unlike the vague and fragmentary explanations of Marxist theories that had appeared earlier, Li Dazhao's introduction to Marxism was relatively precise and complete. Certain young people who had come into contact with Marxist theories while they had been studying in Japan also played an important role in the early propagation of Marxism in China. For example, in November and December 1919, Yang Pao'an published in New China Daily in Guangdong Province a series of articles entitled &quot;Marxism (Also Known as Scientific Socialism)&quot; in which he gave a systematic account of Marxist historical materialism, economic theory and scientific socialism. Li Da, another student back from Japan, published his translations of such books as Explanations of Historical Materialism, A General Survey of Social Problems, and Marxist Economic Theory. He also wrote articles for the press, including &quot;What is Socialism?&quot; and &quot;The Objectives of Socialism.&quot; Before the May 4th Movement, many intellectuals of different ideological persuasions had participated in the new cultural movement, but since they concentrated their criticism on Confucianism and promoted science and democracy, their differences of opinion were not very evident. Now that Marxism was being widely disseminated, however, distinct splits began to appear in the movement. Hu Shi, for example, had a passion for the bourgeois civilization of the West, believed in pragmatism and advocated reformism. He had declared his determination &quot;not to talk about politics for twenty years.&quot; At this juncture, however, he felt he &quot;could no longer keep his eyes closed and hold his tongue.&quot; In an article entitled &quot;More Discussions on Questions, Less Talk about ‘Doctrines'!&quot; published in July 1919, he stated that &quot;every doctrine is a remedy applied by men of high ideals at a given time and place for a society at that time and place,&quot;20 ^!Zin! tkf !*ai?iSm WaS applicable t0 China. Instead, he advod gradual reform and maintained that the search for &quot;a ^ anient3! solution&quot; was &quot;absolute proof of the bankruptcy of logical circles in China.&quot; He asserted that he had &quot;tried to -how people the correct path so that they would not be misled&quot; nd to prevent them from being &quot;led by the nose&quot; by Marx and Lenin.24 In other words, he did his utmost to discourage the Chinese from embracing Marxism-Leninism and from trying to make a revolution. y s Jo meet the challenge from Hu Shi, the following month Li Doctrine, He ied an article entitled &quot;More on Questions and Doctrines. He pointed out that socialism was a banner of the hmes and that the propagation of doctrines and the study of prac ical questions were not conflicting endeavours but rather upplemented each other. On the one hand, he said, the study of practical questions must be guided by a doctrine. On the other hand a socialist, if his doctrine is to have some influence in the world must study how to apply his ideal, insofar as possible to hi real surroundings.*' &quot;As long as we apply a doctrine as a toS or an actual movement, ' he continued, &quot;it will bring about changes that will be suited to the surroundings in accordance with the time, the place and the nature of the matter.&quot; In this wav Li 3 prellminary &quot;Position of the idea that the general tenets of Marxism must be integrated with the actual conditions of the country and developed in the course of this integration He also rebutted Hu Shi's arguments for reformism. In view of the would65 °! Ch T 3t the tlme' hC declared' Piecemeal reform ° d work and fundamental social problems had to be solved before specific issues could be addressed. The debate on &quot;questions and doctrines&quot; had tremendous retrCUv.SSi°uS' Many y°Ung people in different parts of the country who had begun to embrace Marxist ideas wrote magazine articles expressing their support for Li Dazhao's views. m„ThM f°vlctR.f 1 sian Government issued a declaration renouncng al! the privileges formerly enjoyed by Czarist Russia within the borders of China. During March and April of 1920, The East and other journals made this declaration known to the Chinese 21 public, breaking the news blockade imposed by the reactionaries. When the Chinese people, who had been bullied by the capitalist powers for so long, learned the content of the declaration, they were overjoyed. New Youth carried comments from its readers and stated that the declaration embodied the spirit of the Constitution of Russia, that it demonstrated the will to eradicate capitalist aggressiveness and that the Chinese should study and uphold the doctrines of the worker-peasant government in Russia. The Soviet declaration gave a fresh and powerful impetus to the further dissemination of Marxism in China. Under these circumstances, many progressive intellectuals of different backgrounds came to Marxism by different routes, after careful consideration of the alternatives. As an ideological leader during the initial stage of the new cultural movement, Chen Duxiu declared after the May 4th Movement that since militarism and money-worship had caused endless crimes, it was high time to discard them. He said he had come to realize that republican politics was manipulated by the bourgeoisie, which was in the minority, and that it was an illusion to think it could be used to achieve happiness for the majority. He warned that China should not take the path followed by Europe, the United Sates and Japan. In his article &quot;On Politics&quot; published in September 1920, Chen stated explicitly that it was the prime necessity for a modern society to establish a stale of the labouring classes (the productive classes), by means of revolution, and to institute politics and laws that would prohibit plundering at home and abroad. At this juncture, a group of prominent young Left-wingers who had emerged from the May 4th Movement also began to turn towards Marxism. In the Xiangjiang Review, of which he was the editor-in-chief, Mao Zedong, then a well-known leader of the student movement in Hunan Province, enthusiastically praised the victory of the October Revolution, declaring that it would spread worldwide and that the Chinese should follow its example. After he came to Beijing for the second time, he eagerly sought out books about communism and about conditions in Russia and these helped to establish his faith in Marxism. Many years 'later22 he recalled, &quot;By the summer of 1920 I had become, in theory and to some extent in action, a Marxist.&quot;25 Other noted student leaders, such as Deng Zhongxia, Cai Hesen and Zhou Enlai, one after another, set out on the same road. As has been said above, some veteran members of the Chinese Revolutionary League also began to turn to proletarian socialism. Many years later, Dong Biwu recalled how he and others had joined Sun Yat-sen in the revolution. &quot;The revolution forged ahead, but Sun Yat-sen failed to get hold of it and, as a result, it was snatched by others. We therefore began to study the Russian pattern&quot; and to read Marxism.26 Wu Yuzhang, another veteran revolutionary, said that at that time, from what he had experienced since the Revolution of 1911, he had come to realize that &quot;the old methods of revolution used in the past must be changed.&quot; &quot;In the light shed by the October Revolution and the May 4th Movement,&quot; he added, &quot;the idea that we must rely on the people of the lower social strata and take the path of the Russians became increasingly clear in my mind.&quot;27 That these men with different experiences came to Marxism by different routes indicates that it was the historic choice of a considerable number of Chinese progressives to abandon the capitalist programme for national construction and to take the road illuminated by Marxist scientific socialism. This was the most essential feature of the new cultural movement after the May 4th Movement. It is important to note that the first group of Marxists in China had been fervent fighters for bourgeois democracy. They forsook their faith in bourgeois democracy and turned to Marxism. They made this choice of their own accord, in light of their own experiences and after careful consideration. This was because Marxism, as a well-knit scientific theory, was more convincing to them than any other doctrine and because, as Shi Cuntong put it, &quot;it can solve our problems and bring us benefits.&quot;28 After they accepted Marxism, the Chinese progressives did not discard the respect for science and democracy fostered by the May 4th Movement. On the contrary, under the guidance of Marxism they infused those concepts with fresh and more pro 23 found content. Democracy no longer meant narrow bourgeois democracy but democracy for the majority; that is, for the labouring classes. For this reason they stressed the need to root out the class privileges of the minority and, in the words of Chen Duxiu, to change the state of &quot;the majority of proletarian labourers, who live in hardship, without freedom,&quot; which did not conform to democracy.29 Science includes both natural and social sciences, but the Chinese Marxists believed that the study of society could become a true science only when it was based on historical materialism. As far as science was concerned, therefore, prime importance should be given to the Marxist scientific world outlook, methodology and theory of social revolution. The dissemination of Marxism did not negate the ideological struggle against feudalism. On the contrary, it provided an even sharper weapon for that struggle. Applying historical materialism, the first group of Marxists in China revealed the social causes of feudal ideology and culture. They set a higher goal for their struggle against feudalism, elevating the struggle for liberation of the individual to a struggle for liberation of the masses. As for the form of the struggle, propagation of the new ideas by a small number of people changed into revolutionary practice by the masses, thus deepening their ideological liberation. From the very beginning, the Chinese progressives looked upon Marxism not simply as a doctrine but as an instrument for studying the destiny of the country. Although they were not adequately prepared theoretically, they took the basic principles of Marxism as their guide and participated enthusiastically in the mass struggle. At the beginning of 1920, a number of revolutionary intellectuals in Beijing, at the urging of Li Dazhao, went to the living quarters of rickshaw men to investigate their miserable conditions. Deng Zhongxia and others went to Changxindian, a locomotive repair centre in the suburbs of Beijing, to conduct revolutionary propaganda among the workers and begin to forge links with them. From the very beginning, the participants in the Marxist ideological movement saw to it that they integrated their revolutionary ideas with practice and joined the masses in their struggle. This was one of the characteristics and strong points of24 the Marxist ideological movement. At first, however, the dissemination of Marxism was confined mainly to a small number of intellectuals. Communist groups in various parts of the country, embryonic organizations of the Communist Party of China, made it their principal task to disseminate Marxism and to integrate it with the workers' movement.<br /> <br /> === The Founding of the Communist Party of China ===<br /> [missing page]<br /> <br /> helped the socialists in Tianjin, Tangshan, Taiyuan, Jinan and other cities in northern China to establish Party and Youth League organizations. Between the autumn of 1920 and the spring of 1921, Dong Biwu, Chen Tanqiu, Bao Huiseng and others in Wuhan; Mao Zedong, He Shuheng and others in Changsha; Wang Jinmei, Deng Enming and others in Jinan; and Tan Pingshan, Tan Zhitang and others in Guangzhou also established Communist groups, propagating communist ideas and carrying out organizational activities. Most such groups were established in key cities, where the new cultural movement and the patriotic May 4th Movement had had a profound influence, where large communities of industrial workers were located and where there were the first groups of intellectuals who believed in Marxism. Communist organizations were also formed by progressives among the Chinese students in Japan and France. These early organizations had different names. The Shanghai group, for example, was known as the Communist Party of China from the very beginning. The Beijing group called itself the Beijing Branch of the Communist Party of China. In later years all these local organizations, which were soon to form the Communist Party of China, were commonly known as Communist groups. Work of the Communist Groups Once established, the Communist groups in various parts of China disseminated Marxism in a planned way, doing propaganda and organizational work among the workers and promoting the integration of Marxism with the workers' movement. This was ideological and organizational preparation for the founding of the Communist Party of China. Their main activities were as follows. 1. Studying and propagating Marxism. In September 1920 New Youth became the organ of the Shanghai Communist group and began to propagate Marxism openly. The new column &quot;Study of Russia&quot; in the magazine dealt with the experience of the October Revolution and of Soviet Russia. In November of the same year, the group launched The Communist Party , a semi-clandestine monthly, to spread elementary knowledge about a potential Communist Party and to give news of the Communist International and of Communist parties in other countries, thus preparing the ground for the founding of such a party in China. The Communist groups in various parts of the country propagated Marxism through newspapers and periodicals, including those published by themselves, such as Awakening , a supplement to the Republican Daily in Shanghai, the Wuhan Weekly Review in Hubei, the fortnightly Encourage the New in Jinan and the Mass Journal in Guangdong. Thanks to these journals, scientific socialism became a strong trend of thought in China. The Communist groups in Shanghai and Beijing also published many translations of Marxist works. The Chinese translation, by Chen Wangdao, of The Communist Manifesto was published in August 1920. About one thousand copies were printed for the first edition, and the work was reprinted in many other cities. The same month saw the publication of the Chinese translation of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels. Also translated and published were writings on Marxism such as The ABC of &quot; Capi taC by Marx , An Explanation of Historical Materialism, Class Struggle and The History of Socialism. The publication of these books made it possible for the progressives in China to have a systematic understanding of Marxism. In their initial propagation of Marxism, the Communist groups gave paramount importance to the theories of scientific socialism and class struggle, and these theories had widespread influence in ideological circles. In the original or newly established Marxist societies and other organizations, some of the Communist groups organized progressive young people to learn the basic theories of Marxism and study the practical problems of China. In this way they created the earliest backbone force of the future Party. In particular, the Society for the Study of Marxist Theories in Beijing University, under the guidance of Li Dazhao, served this function: many of its members and corresponding members were revolutionary young people who later became Communists. 2. Conducting polemics against anti-Marxist trends of thought.<br /> <br /> While the influence of Marxist ideology was spreading, some factions that supported bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology were also propagating their political views under the name of socialism. At this time, not all progressives who were seeking the truth were able to see the essential distinction between Marxism and these other forms of socialism. The Communist groups had to struggle to make a clear distinction between scientific socialism and other forms of socialism and to win over persons who were patriotic and inclined towards progress but who had been influenced by other schools of thought. At the end of 1920, Zhang Dongsun and Liang Qichao launched a debate about socialism. Although they stated that capitalism was bound to fall and socialism was sure to rise, they emphasized that since China was industrially backward, there was no ground for the founding of a political party representing the labouring classes and that a real worker-peasant revolution would never take place. They believed that poverty was the major problem in China and that the solution was for the gentry and mercantile class to vitalize industry and commerce and develop capitalism. They called for &quot;a rectified attitude toward capitalists&quot; in order to &quot;bring about sound, gradual development under the present economic system.&quot; They expressed their faith in the guild socialism advocated by Bertrand Russell, a British scholar,—bourgeois reformism under the guise of socialism. These views were firmly rejected by the first group of Marxists in China. The Marxists declared that one could not think about ways to solve China's problems without taking into account the conditions of the times, and that judging from international conditions and the state of society at home, it was impossible for the country to develop capitalism independently. &quot;The Chinese people's position in the world economy,&quot; they pointed out, &quot;has been secured in the mounting tide of the labour movement, and it is theoretically impermissible and practically impossible to institute a system that protects capitalists.&quot; It was necessary, they felt, for China to develop education and industry, but it should do so by means of socialism so as to &quot;uproot the plundering classes at home and resist international capitalism,&quot; instead of &quot;following the wrong path taken by Europe, the United States and Japan.&quot; They added that the existence of the proletariat in China was an undeniable fact and that &quot;the Chinese proletariat is suffering even greater misery than the proletariat in Europe, the United States and Japan.&quot; &quot;This state of affairs,&quot; they concluded, &quot;cannot be remedied unless the Chinese labourers unite and form revolutionary organizations to transform the system of production.&quot; The first group of Marxists were not aware that, for the revolution in semi-colonial, semi-feudal China, the first step had to be democracy, with socialism only as the second step. But from the very beginning they stressed that capitalism was an impasse in China, that socialism was the only solution and that it was necessary to found a party of the working class to lead the Chinese people in revolution. This understanding was absolutely correct and of far-reaching significance. They expounded their views on a theoretical plane and tested them against the actual circumstances of Chinese society. This showed that scientific socialism could take root in China. Among the various trends of socialist thought, anarchism was dominant for a period of time. Proceeding from ultraindividualism, the anarchists preached absolute freedom of the individual in his opposition to power, to any form of organization and discipline, to any authority and to any type of government, including the dictatorship of the proletariat. They also attacked private ownership and advocated absolute egalitarianism. China was a country with a large petty bourgeoisie. In essence, the proposals of the anarchists, which centred around the interests of the individual and seemed to be immensely radical and thoroughgoing, echoed the sentiments of the small producers, who were dissatisfied with the status quo because they had been reduced to bankruptcy, and of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals, who had been reduced to despair politically. A number of young people who were discontent with the old society and looking for a way out, were also influenced by this ideology because they knew little about socialism. Before the May 4th Movement, Shi Fu and others had preached anarchism in China. During the period of the movement, anarchism had found many adherents, especially in Guangdong Province, and more than 70 periodicals and books were published to propagate their ideas. As anarchism was essentially antagonistic to Marxism, they increasingly directed their attacks at Marxism, which was being disseminated on an everwider scale. Huang Lingshuang and others wrote articles with such titles as &quot;Criticism of Marxist Theories&quot; and &quot;We Are Against ‘Bolshevism,' &quot; posing an open challenge to Marxism. It became an important task for the Marxists to expose the true nature of this school of petty-bourgeois socialist ideology. During the polemics against the anarchists, the Marxists argued that while the power of the bourgeoisie should undoubtedly be opposed, the power of the proletariat should not. Revolutionary means must be adopted to seize political power and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. That was the only way to protect the interests of the labourers and ultimately to eliminate classes and make the state wither away. Advocating absolute freedom of the individual, the Marxists said, would only make it impossible for the working class to close ranks and become a powerful combat force, and it would therefore make it easier for the bourgeoisie to destroy the workers' movement. Social and economic chaos would result if the principle of distribution &quot;from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs&quot; were put into effect before the productive forces were highly developed. In reality, the social contradictions in modern China were so acute that only great unity and unremitting struggle could overthrow the old forces. Yet while the anarchists expressed opposition to power, they called for absolute freedom of the individual and urged the elimination of all discipline and of any restraint by the collective. In the end, however, this was all empty talk. The anarchists could form only small, loosely organized groups with a tiny total membership, and they were unable to play an important role in political life. Accordingly, when they encountered scathing criticism from the Marxists, their influence quickly waned. The Marxists also rejected the revisionism of the Second International. Denouncing the assertion that &quot;parliamentary tactics 31 should be employed for the elevation of the workers' status and the shift of political power&quot; in China, they pointed out that &quot;social democrats try to make use of the parliament as a means of transformation, but in reality, parliamentary legislation invariably protects the propertied classes.&quot; They also declared that as a result of the misrepresentations of the Second International, the &quot;cream&quot; of Marxist socialism had disappeared completely. The social democrats' socialism, they said, had degenerated into liberalism, and their revolutionism had degenerated into reformism. This revisionist thinking, they continued, found little support in China, because the class contradictions were extremely acute and the Chinese parliament had long since become a toy in the hands of the warlords. The Marxists' criticism of the position taken by the Second International indicated that from the very beginning the communist movement in China adhered to a revolutionary orientation. Actually, the polemics against the anti-Marxist trends of thought were a struggle to win over the masses. They helped progressives who were inclined to socialism to distinguish between scientific socialism and the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois schools of socialism and to embrace Marxism. Many progressive young people who had been influenced by anarchistic ideas became staunch Marxists later on. 3. Conducting propaganda and organizing the workers. Once formed, the Communist groups in various parts of the country took a direct and energetic part in the labour movement, organizing and educating the workers. This was something no other political party had ever done in China. The Chinese working class displayed great strength in the later stage of the May 4th Movement, but it was still young, and a great many of its members came from among the impoverished peasants and urban vagrants, devoid of class consciousness. Originally they had had guilds and secret societies; later they had had so-called trade unions, which were only organizations manipulated by hooligans or by employers. To propagate Marxism among the workers and awaken their class consciousness, the Communist groups launched publications addressed to them. These included Labour in Shanghai, The Voice of Labour and the Workers' Weekly in Beijing and the Jinan Labour Monthly in Jinan. At the same time, they established various types of workers' schools, the most well-known of which were the school for continuing education in Changxindian in suburban Beijing, established by Deng Zhongxia and others of the Beijing group, and a similar one in western Shanghai established by Li Qihan and others of the Shanghai group. Running such schools was the Party's way of &quot;starting its work among the workers and of coming into contact with the masses to organize trade unions.&quot;30 As a result of these efforts at propaganda and education, the politically awakened workers demanded organization. In November 1920 the Shanghai Machine-building Trade Union, the first trade union led by a Communist group, was founded with an initial membership of about 370. Soon after that, the Shanghai Printing Trade Union came into existence, with a membership of more than 1,300. On May 1, 1921, more than a thousand workers in Changxindian took part in a parade to mark International Labour Day, and to announce the establishment of a &quot;workers' club&quot; (trade union). One after another, trade unions were organized by industrial workers and handicraftsmen in Wuhan, Changsha, Guangzhou and Jinan. These trade unions began to call upon the workers to strike. Most of the members of the Communist groups were intellectuals. In order to carry out effective propaganda and organizational work among the workers, they put on workers' clothes, learned to speak their language and joined in their labour, doing everything possible to become one with them. Yu Xiusong, for example, wrote to a friend that he had &quot;changed his name and changed his clothes&quot; to take a job at the Housheng Iron Works, where he gave lectures to the workers.31 Li Zhong, a student from Hunan No. One Normal School and a member of the Socialist Youth League, worked as a blacksmith at the Jiangnan Shipyard and helped Chen Duxiu and others organize the Machinebuilding Trade Union.32 So it was that from the very outset the Marxist ideological movement in China was one in which the intellectuals were integrated with the workers. 4. Founding the Socialist Youth League. As a vigorous social force receptive to new ideas, young people were, of course, highly valued by the Marxists. On the other hand, they were generally inexperienced and needed good leadership. To meet this need, in August 1920 the Shanghai Communist group founded the Socialist Youth League. Yu Xiusong became the secretary. After that, Youth League organizations were established in Beijing, Tianjin, Wuchang, Hankou, Changsha and other cities, where they organized their members to study Marxism and take part in labour struggles, creating a reserve force for the future Party. These four activities of the Communist groups gave a powerful impetus to the dissemination of Marxism and to its integration with the workers' movement. In the process, those intellectuals who had only recently come to believe in communism gradually underwent profound changes in their thinking and in their attitude toward workers. At the same time, a number of workers learned something about Marxism and raised their class consciousness, becoming advanced elements of the proletariat. All this helped prepare the ground for the founding of a communist party. The 1st National Congress of the Communist Party of China In March 1921, Li Dazhao wrote an article calling for the founding of a political party of the working class. &quot;In China today,&quot; he said, &quot;there is no organization that can really represent the people. If friends of Faction C | the Communists] can establish a solid and well-knit organization and see to the collective training of its members, there will be support for a great, thoroughgoing reform in China.&quot;33 In March of the same year, representatives of Communist organizations throughout the country held a meeting at which they issued a common statement of objectives and principles and worked out a provisional programme.34 On July 23, 1921, the 1st National Congress of the Communist Party of China was convened at No. 106 Wangzhi Road (now. No.76 Xingye Road), in the French concession in Shanghai. As the meeting place caught the eye of plainclothes detectives and was searched by foreign policemen, the delegates had to go to Jiaxing County in Zhejiang Province, where they held their final session on a pleasure boat on Lake Nanhu. Attending the 1st Party Congress were twelve delegates representing fifty-three Party members in seven localities. They were: Li Da and Li Hanjun (Shanghai), Zhang Guotao and Liu Renjing (Beijing), Mao Zedong and He Shuheng (Changsha), Dong Biwu and Chen Tanqiu (Wuhan), Wang Jinmei and Deng Enming (Jinan), Chen Gongbo (Guangzhou) and Zhou Fohai (residing in Japan). Bao Huiseng, designated by Chen Duxiu, who was then in Guangzhou, also attended the congress. Two representatives of the Communist International, G. Maring and Nicolsky, attended as observers. The congress decided that the name of the new party would be &quot;the Communist Party of China&quot; and that its programme would be &quot;to overthrow the bourgeoisie by means of the revolutionary army of the proletariat ... to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to attain the objective of class struggle, that is, the elimination of classes ... to abolish private ownership of capital&quot; and to ally itself with the Third International. From the day of its founding, the Communist Party of China set itself the goal of socialism and, ultimately, communism, and advocated the attainment of that goal by revolutionary means. Thus it made a clear distinction of principle between itself and the social democrats of the Second International, who worshipped bourgeois democracy and parliamentarianism. The congress called for &quot;cooperation with other political parties in the struggle against the common enemy&quot;—that is, the warlords but it failed to work out an explicit programme for the stage of democratic revolution. The newborn Communist Party of China had set socialism and communism as its goal and was firmly determined to make a revolution, but it had little understanding of the specific conditions of the country and did not see the difference and connections between democratic revolution and socialist revolution. Under the social circumstances of semi-colonial and semi-feudal China, with poorly developed cap 35 italism and ruthless oppression by foreign imperialists, the Communist Party of China could not clearly understand such questions as whether it was possible to make socialist revolution immediately and directly and what steps should be taken to realize socialism and then communism. When the congress discussed the plan for practical work, it became clear that because the Party's membership was so small, it would be difficult to organize the peasants and armed forces. Accordingly, it decided to concentrate the Party's energy on organizing factory workers. The Party's first resolution adopted by the congress provided that the basic task of the Party at the time would be &quot;the establishment of trade unions of industrial workers,&quot; that &quot;the Party should imbue the trade unions with the spirit of class struggle&quot; and that it should send members to work in them. As the vanguard of the working class, the Communist Party of China did not simply concern itself with propagating Marxism but paid great attention to establishing close ties with the working class. This was one of its chief merits. To ensure that the CPC would be an advanced party, the congress sought to guarantee the quality of Party members. It decided to &quot;admit new members only with particular caution and after strict examination,&quot; and since the Party was then composed almost entirely of intellectuals, to &quot;make special effort in organizing the workers and educating them in the spirit of communism.&quot; The programme adopted by the congress also stipulated that persons who applied for Party membership must not have any inclination toward non-communist ideas. Before they were admitted, &quot;they must sever relations with any other party or group which [was] opposed to the Communist Party programme.&quot; Furthermore, it was stipulated that &quot;the views of the Party and the identity of Party members should be kept secret until such time as conditions are ripe for them to be brought into the open.&quot; At a time when the Party had just been born, however, its ranks could hardly be totally pure. The twelve delegates to the 1st Party Congress split up later on. Most of them adhered unswervingly to their faith in socialism and communism and upheld the cause of the Chinese revolution, for which some of them gave their lives.People like Chen Gongbo and Zhou Fohai, however, were not genuine Communists, and they were expelled from the Party soon after its founding. Others quit the Party, and some even betrayed the revolution. This was not surprising in a party that had only just come into being. Even when the CPC grew into a mass party composed for the most part of fine, staunch Communists, it was inevitable that waverers, dissidents and turncoats should appear in its ranks. The congress elected Chen Duxiu and two others to form the Central Bureau, the leading organ of the Party. Chen Duxiu was to serve as secretary, while Li Da and Zhang Guotao were to be in charge of propaganda and organizational work respectively. The 1st National Congress of the Party proclaimed the founding of the Communist Party of China. The birth of the CPC was an inevitable outcome of the development of the revolutionary movement in China. Almost at the same time a number of progressives who had no links with the Shanghai group, which initiated the founding of the CPC, were also preparing to found a party. In July 1920 a number of Chinese students who were on a work-study programme in France gathered at a meeting in College de Montargis. According to Li Weihan, one of those present, Cai Hesen &quot;called for making a radical revolution, organizing a Communist party and enforcing the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, following the path of the October Revolution in Russia.&quot; He also consulted Li Weihan and others about how to prepare for the establishment of a Communist party. This was never accomplished, however, Li recalled, &quot;because Cai was busy leading the Chinese students' struggle to secure opportunities to study.&quot;35 In the summer of 1921, members of the Liqun Study Society met in Huanggang, Hubei Province, expressing support for the formation of a party of the Bolshevik type and proposing that the organization be named &quot;Bo She&quot; (for Bolshevik). Upon hearing of the founding of the Communist Party of China, Yun Daiying, founder of the society, immediately called on its members to disband it and join the CPC.36 In the winter of 1923, more than twenty people in Sichuan Province, including Wu Yuzhang and Yang Angong, secretly organized the Chinese Youth Communist Party and began to publish Chixin Pinglun (Sincere Review) as its organ. Later this party abolished itself and urged its members to join the CPC as individuals.37 These facts show that the establishment of a political party of the working class to lead the Chinese people in their struggle had become the common demand of the most conscious revolutionaries in China and was an outcome of the development of the objective situation. That the Communist Party of China was founded in the early 1920s was by no means accidental. The CPC is a revolutionary Marxist party and the vanguard of the Chinese working class. It came into being under specific social and historical circumstances. On the one hand, it was founded after the October Revolution in Russia had been crowned with victory and after the social-democratic trend of thought espoused by the Second International had been discredited during World War I. It embraced Marxism, which was composed of a complete scientific world outlook and the theory of social revolution; Leninism, which was Marxism developed in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution; and scientific socialism, which was clearly distinguished from bourgeois and petty-bourgeois schools of socialism in the course of struggle. On the other hand, it was founded on the basis of the workers' movement in semicolonial and semi-feudal China. The social contradictions in modern China were extremely acute. The working class was relatively new, and many workers had been small producers in the past, but it cherished a fierce desire for revolution, because it was subject to ruthless oppression and exploitation by the foreign imperialists and by the domestic bourgeoisie and feudal forces. Within this class there was no stratum of labour aristocracy such as could be found in Europe, and no solid economic foundation for reformism. China had not passed through a stage of &quot;peaceful&quot; development of capitalism as Europe had done, so the Chinese working class could not carry out peaceful parliamentary struggles and could have no illusions about bourgeois democracy. Therefore, the Party was not influenced by the Second International. It was, from the outset, a party with Marxism-Leninism asits theoretical basis, a new type of revolutionary party of the working class. Being different from the political parties of the past, the Communist Party of China took a clear stand, analyzing problems in China from the Marxist point of view of class struggle and carrying out mass work among the workers. By so doing, the Party, despite its small size, threw all the decadent forces of the old society into a panic. When the communist movement in China was only just stirring, it was criticized as &quot;extremist&quot; and repressed jointly by the reactionaries at home and abroad. In April 1920 the Northern warlord government, basing itself on a reporter's despatch in the American newspaper The Chicago Sun that spoke of the need to guard against extremist preaching, sent telegrams to the military inspectors, governors and superintendents of all provinces and regions, instructing them to keep a sharp lookout for &quot;extremists.&quot;38 In December, at the request of Wang Huaiqing, commander-in-chief of the infantry, the State Council of the Northern warlord government sent a letter to the Ministry of Internal Affairs instructing it to draft special provisions for punishing &quot;extremists.&quot; In his letter of request, Wang cried out in alarm that the &quot;scourge&quot; of the propagation of communism was &quot;worse than fierce floods or savage beasts&quot; and &quot;should be strictly guarded against so as to nip the trouble in the bud.&quot;39 Under these circumstances, which lasted many years, the CPC had to operate as an outlawed and clandestine party, whose members were always in danger of being tracked down, arrested and executed by the reactionary troops and police. Rarely had a political party in China had to function under such difficult conditions. As the political party of the working class, the most advanced class in the country, the CPC represented the interests not only of that class but of the vast masses of the people and the nation as a whole. Using Marxism to clarify its own understanding, the Party was able to illumine for the Chinese people the goal of their struggle and the path to victory. That is why it was able gradually to take root in Chinese soil and to grow into an invincible force. The founding of the Communist Party brought light and hope to the disaster-ridden Chinese people. A revolutionary party of 39 the working class was the first requirement for the victory of the Chinese revolution. With the birth of the CPC, the Chinese revolution took on an entirely new complexion. The Party had to operate in a semi-colonial, semi-feudal country with a vast territory, a huge population, complicated conditions and a backward economy and culture. It had to integrate the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution, a daunting undertaking for which its forerunners provided no experience to draw on. Inevitably, a period of time would be required for the Party to grope its way in the darkness and accumulate experience in the struggle. It would be a slow hard task for the Party to gain strength and to work out a Marxist line, guiding principles and policies that were suited to the conditions of China.<br /> <br /> === Formulating the Programme of Democratic Revolution ===<br /> Before the founding of the Communist Party of China, the Chinese people had waged protracted struggles against foreign aggressors and domestic feudal rulers. Yet these struggles had two fundamental weaknesses. First, those who took part in them did not see clearly the targets of revolution, and they failed to unite with their real friends to attack their real enemies. The slogan &quot;Support the Qing and exterminate the foreigners!&quot; adopted by the Yi He Tuan movement (the Boxers) and the actions they took showed that the peasants did not understand the true nature of the foreign aggressors and the ties between them and the feudal rulers at home. When the Chinese Revolutionary League, the predecessor of the Kuomintang, had overthrown the monarchy of the Qing Dynasty, it believed that it had accomplished its task and as a result, &quot;the revolutionary army prospered while the revolutionary party waned.&quot; For more than ten years after the Revolution of 1911, the Kuomintang only sought to preserve the Provisional Constitution promulgated in the first year of the Republic of China (the so-called pro-Constitution campaign). It failed to take a firm stand against imperialism and allied itself with the local warlords to counter the Northern warlords, thus proving that the bourgeois democrats, too, were incapable of identifying the goal for which the Chinese people should struggle. This was the main reason why little had been achieved in the revolutionary struggles of the past. Second, the earlier revolutionaries did not arouse the people on a broad scale and, in particular, did not go deep among the workers and peasants to launch organized, sustained mass movements. The activities of the Chinese Revolutionary League were conducted mainly by a small number of revolutionaries in alliance with some secret societies or the New Army. They did not integrate themselves with the peasants in the rural areas, and their activities were divorced from the peasants' spontaneous struggles. Neither did they integrate themselves with the workers in the cities. After the Revolution of 1911, although the Kuomintang waged a struggle against Yuan Shikai and opposed the Northern warlord government, it did little mass work. As Zhou Enlai remarked years later, the ordinary workers and intellectuals &quot;were not deeply impressed&quot; by the Kuomintang.40 This was another main reason why little had been achieved in the revolutionary struggles of the past. Shortly after the founding of the Communist Party of China, radical changes took place in these two respects. The CPC took an active part in revolutionary activities and learned, in the course of the struggle, to apply the Marxist method in observing and analyzing the problems China was faced with. In January 1922, the introduction to The Pioneers, a magazine, declared that the first task should be &quot;to study assiduously the objective conditions of China so as to find the most appropriate solution to the country's problems.&quot; The Washington Conference convened by the imperialist powers towards the end of 1921 served as a practical lesson for the young Communist Party of China. At the conference a treaty was adopted by the nine nations—the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium and China (i.e., the warlord government in Beijing). This treaty 41 approved the principle of &quot;equal opportunity in China for the commerce and industry of all nations&quot; and the principle of the &quot;Open Door,&quot; which had been proposed by the United States in a bid to curb Japan's exclusive domination of China and to confirm the imperialist powers' joint control of the country. Manipulated by the imperialists, the warlords of various factions in China intensified their rivalry and fought each other again and again in large-scale wars such as the Zhili-Anhui War and the Zbili-Fengtian War, throwing the political situation in China into utter chaos. These events made it clear to the CPC that what the Chinese people suffered from most was not ordinary capitalist exploitation but oppression by imperialists and rule by feudal warlords. In January 1922 the Party sent representatives to Moscow to attend the first congress of representatives from Communist parties and national revolutionary organizations of the Far Eastern countries, convened by the Communist International. The congress expounded Lenin's theories on the national and colonial questions and stated that, so far as China was concerned, the first thing to do at the time was to &quot;free the country from the shackles of foreign countries, overthrow the military governors&quot; and establish a democratic republic. These ideas were of direct assistance to the CPC in working out a revolutionary programme for that period. The 2nd National Congress of the Communist Party of China The programme of anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolution in China was formulated at the 2nd National Congress of the CPC, held in Shanghai in July 1922. Twelve delegates attended the congress, representing 195 Party members (21 of whom were workers) from various parts of the country. The congress analyzed China's economic and political conditions and brought to light the semi-colonial and semi-feudal nature of the society. On the one hand, the congress stated, China had been placed under the control of the imperialist powers both politically and economically and, indeed, had become &quot;a semi independent country under the domination of international capitalist-imperialist forces.&quot; On the other hand, it said, China remained under the political domination of the warlord and bureaucratic feudal system, which constituted an immense obstacle to the development of the rising Chinese bourgeoisie. It concluded that the democratic revolutionary movement against the imperialist and feudal forces was of paramount importance. While the Party's maximum programme was to realize socialism and communism, the programme for the present stage should be to overthrow the warlords, to cast off oppression by world imperialism and to unify the country as a genuine democratic republic. Given present conditions, the congress believed, this was a stage that could not be skipped over. The congress went on to say that in order to attain the goal of the revolutionary struggle against the imperialists and warlords, it was imperative to form a democratic, united front. After making an elementary analysis of the conditions of all classes in Chinese society, it noted that the masses of Chinese peasants, with their tremendous revolutionary enthusiasm, were &quot;the greatest essential factor in the revolutionary movement.&quot; A large section of the petty bourgeoisie would also join the revolutionary ranks, because they were suffering untold misery. To free themselves from economic oppression, the emerging bourgeoisie would have to rise and struggle against world capitalist imperialism. As for the working class, it was a great force that would steadily grow into a revolutionary army that would overthrow imperialism in China. Thus, for the first time, the 2nd National Party Congress proposed for the Chinese people a clearly defined programme of anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolution. For a long time, the participants in that revolution, launched in the previous century, had had no clear idea of its targets and motive force and had never come out openly against the imperialist and feudal forces. But just a year after the Communist Party of China was founded, these questions had been clarified. Only the CPC, armed with Marxism, could point the way for the Chinese revolution. After the declaration of the 2nd Party Congress was made public, 43 Hu Shi published in the weekly Endeavour an article entitled &quot;International China,&quot; ridiculing the Party's scientific thesis that the imperialists were sponsoring the feudal warlords as &quot;a tall story told by country bumpkins.&quot; He held that the major problem of the time was to form &quot;a good government&quot; composed of &quot;good people,&quot; and that it was not necessary to &quot;involve any problem of world imperialism at this time.&quot; However, it was impossible to establish any really good government or to achieve any economic and political progress unless imperialist oppression and the warlords' regime were overthrown. What the Communist Party stated in scientific language was precisely what the Chinese people had dimly perceived from the realities of their own lives. For this reason, the Party's programme quickly spread far and wide and was accepted by the public. &quot;Down with the imperialist powers! Down with the warlords!&quot; became the demand of the people. Nevertheless, the Communist Party also had some mistaken views regarding the Chinese revolution. It believed that the success of the democratic revolution would only bring the proletariat some freedoms and rights. In other words, the victory of the democratic revolution would be a victory for the bourgeoisie. The Chinese Communists reached this conclusion by judging from what had happened in Western countries, but the Western model was not applicable to the Chinese revolution. The Party had understood the difference between democratic revolution and socialist revolution, but not the difference between old democratic revolution and new democratic revolution. And it did not realize that under the new historical conditions, the democratic revolution should be a new democratic revolution led by the proletariat. Besides formulating an explicitly anti-imperialist and antifeudal revolutionary programme, the Communist Party adopted a brand-new method that had never been, and could never be, adopted by the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois political parties and groups—the method of arousing the masses and relying on them to carry out the revolution. As the vanguard of the working class, the Communist Party of China was different from other parties. All its activities were undertaken to serve the interests of the working class and the masses and to achieve their liberation. It dared therefore to trust the people and rely on them. In its declaration, the Second Party Congress stated: &quot;Our Communist Party is neither a Marxist academic society organized by intellectuals nor a utopian revolutionary organization of a few Communists who are divorced from the masses .... Since ours is a party fighting for the proletariat, we should go among the masses and form a large mass party.&quot; It went on to say that the Party should have the organization and training that would fit it for the revolution and that &quot;all the Party's activities should be conducted in the depths of the masses&quot; and &quot;must never be divorced from the masses.&quot; The upsurge of the Chinese workers' movement in the early stage of the Party's existence was an initial manifestation of the might of the Party's mass line. The Upsurge of the Labour Movement To promote the labour movement, the Communist Party established the Secretariat of the Chinese Labour Organization as a headquarters openly directing the movement. The head office was set up in Shanghai and later moved to Beijing. The director was Zhang Guotao, who was later replaced by Deng Zhongxia. Branches of the organization were established in Beijing, Wuhan, Hunan, Guangdong, Shanghai and other places. The Secretariat published the journal Labour Weekly, ran workers' schools, formed industrial workers' trade unions and organized strikes. These included strikes of workers at British and American cigarette factories in Shanghai, of workers on the Wuchang-Changsha section of the Guangzhou-Hankou Railway and of rickshaw men in the foreign concessions in Hankou. The political influence of the Party was growing among the workers and in society as a whole. In May 1 922 the Secretariat of the Chinese Labour Organization convened the First National Labour Conference in Guangzhou to discuss a number of questions, including ways of strengthening the unity of workers all over the country. Present at the conference were 45 162 representatives from trade unions in different parts of the country who belonged to different political parties and groups. &quot;Because the Communist Party enjoyed extremely high prestige at the conference,&quot; wrote Deng Zhongxia, &quot;the different parties and groups expressed no objections&quot; to the three slogans put up at the conference hall—&quot;Down with imperialism!&quot;, &quot;Down with the warlords!&quot; and &quot;Long live the Communist Party of China!&quot; &quot;The conference adopted the proposal that until an all-China federation of trade unions was established, the Secretariat of the Chinese Labour Organization should serve as the general liaison office for the workers' organizations throughout the country, and, actually, it was acknowledged as the only leader in this field.&quot; This was a confirmation of the leading position of the Party in the labour movement. The success of the conference &quot;led the working class onto the road to national unity.&quot;41 Around the time of the 1st National Labour Conference, there came a first upsurge of the Chinese workers' movement. It began with a strike by seamen in Hong Kong in January 1922 and culminated in a strike by the Beijing-Hankou Railway workers in February 1923. Within those thirteen months, more than a hundred strikes of different dimensions were staged in various parts of the country, with the participation of more than 300,000 workers. The seamen's strike in Hong Kong was the first organized battle of the Chinese working class against the imperialist forces. It started in Hong Kong and spread to the Yangtze River Valley, lasting about four months. In January 1922 seamen in Hong Kong went on strike, demanding higher wages. Under the leadership of Su Zhaozheng, Lin Weimin and others, the strikers persisted in their struggle for 56 days, overcoming every sort of obstruction and sabotage by the Hong Kong British authorities. The strike paralyzed all shipping, urban traffic and production in Hong Kong, and the authorities were compelled to cancel the order declaring the seamen's union illegal and to increase their wages by 15-30 percent. In the words of Deng Zhongxia, &quot;The British imperialists, who had been self-assured and awe-inspiring for seventy years, yielded to the power of Chinese seamen at last.&quot;42 The anti-imperialist strike won the support of Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang. The Secretariat of the Chinese Labour Organization also helped the striking sailors along the Yangtze. The victory of the strike strengthened the courage and confidence of the working class in their struggle and fostered the growth of the labour movement all over the country. Another of the major strikes staged in southern China in this upsurge of the labour movement was the strike of the workers of the Anyuan Coal Mines in Jiangxi Province and of the railway leading from the mines to Zhuzhou in neighbouring Hunan Province. There were more than 17,000 workers at the Anyuan mines and on the railway. Mao Zedong went to Anyuan on a fact-finding mission and then Li Lisan went there to organize the workers. On May 1, International Labour Day, 1922, the Anyuan Mine and Railway Workers' Club (trade union) was established. Early in September, Mao Zedong returned to Anyuan to organize a strike; he was followed by Liu Shaoqi. On September 14, to press the authorities for recognition of the club and a wage increase, the workers went on strike. They put forward seventeen demands, including protection of their political rights and improvement of their material benefits. The mine and railway authorities tried to buy over the workers' leaders and to assassinate Li Lisan, but their schemes ended in failure. Then they sent a telegram to the local warlords, asking them to set up a martial law enforcement headquarters in Anyuan. When Liu Shaoqi walked to the headquarters to negotiate with the authorities, thousands of workers encircled the building to ensure the safety of their representative. The Communist Party employed good tactics in this strike. Liu Shaoqi said, &quot;We should tell the cadres and Party members beforehand that the aim of the revolution is to seize political power. The workers cannot be thoroughly liberated before we gain political power. Therefore we can only put forward limited demands in the strike. The results of negotiations will surely be limited, too. So long as wages are raised and the workers' club is recognized, we should declare the strike victorious and end it.&quot;43 Thanks to the valiant struggle of the workers and the sympathy and support they gained from people of all walks of life, the mine and railway authorities were compelled to 47 meet most of the workers' demands, so the three-day strike at Anyuan came to a victorious conclusion. The membership of the workers' club, which had been 700 before the strike, grew rapidly to more than 10,000. Shortly thereafter, a major strike took place in northern China. On October 23, the workers at the Kailuan Coal Mines near Tangshan in Hebei Province struck for higher wages and recognition of their workers' club. Fifty thousand miners at Kailuan joined in the strike, placing pickets to keep order. The Secretariat of the Chinese Labour Organization appointed Peng Lihe and others to assume command of this struggle. Several miners were killed and fifty others were wounded in front of the office of the mine administration by troops and police who had been called out to suppress the strikers. This bloodshed did not dampen the morale of the strikers, and none of them returned to work. After more than twenty days, considering that the strike had been going on for quite a long time and that it was difficult to keep it up any longer, the strikers accepted mediation and, when the mine authorities increased their wages somewhat, reluctantly returned to work. The strike of the Beijing-Hankou Railway workers was designed to win recognition of the General Beijing-Hankou Railway Trade Union. Zhang Guotao, Luo Zhanglong and other Communists were the principal leaders. The Beijing-Hankou Railway, a major north-south artery, was controlled by Wu Peifu, chief of the warlords of the Zhili faction, for whom it was an important source of revenue with which to finance his troops. The inaugural meeting of the General Beijing-Hankou Railway Trade Union was scheduled for February 1, 1923, in Zhengzhou, Henan Province. Wu Peifu, who in an open telegram had promised to &quot;protect the workers,&quot; suddenly turned hostile and ordered his troops to prevent the meeting from being held. On February 1 the troops and police took control of the entire city of Zhengzhou and cordoned off the union headquarters. Representatives of the workers broke through the lines and crowded into the hall, shouting &quot;Long live the General Beijing-Hankou Railway Trade Union!&quot; and other slogans. However, the meeting could not be held because the hall had been wrecked and the temporary residence of some of the representatives was under siege. The union called on workers all along the railway to go on strike &quot;to fight for freedom and human rights.&quot; On February 4, thirty thousand workers held an orderly general strike. Within three hours, the entire 1,000 kilometre-long Beijing-Hankou railway was shut down. On February 7, Wu Peifu, with the support of the imperialist forces, assembled troops and police to shoot down the striking workers in cold blood. In Hankou the reactionaries tied Lin Xiangqian, president of the Hankou Branch of the union (a Communist Party member), to an electricity pole and tried to force him to call the strikers back to work. Lin refused to surrender and died a hero's death. Shi Yang, legal consultant to the General Beijing-Hankou Railway Trade Union (also a Communist Party member), who had gone to Zhengzhou to attend the inaugural meeting of the union and had now returned, was murdered in nearby Wuchang. Struck by three bullets, he shouted &quot;Long live the workers!&quot; three times before he died. During this massacre, 52 people were killed and more than 300 were wounded. Afterward, some 40 were thrown into prison, and more than 1,000 others were dismissed or went into exile. After the February 7th massacre, trade union organizations in all parts of the country, except those in Guangdong and Hunan provinces, were banned. The workers were demoralized, and for some time the labour movement across the country remained at a low ebb. During this period, the workers' struggles were organized mainly under the leadership of the Communist Party. These struggles demonstrated the revolutionary steadfastness and combat capability of the Chinese working class and expanded the political influence of the Party as the vanguard of that class. This provided favourable conditions for cooperation between the Party and other revolutionary forces and for the launching of a great nationwide revolution. Through the struggles of this period, the Communist Party forged closer ties with the working class and increased its own strength. In June 1922 the Party's Central Committee planned to 49 recruit more members from among the workers. With the growth of the labour movement, a number of outstanding figures emerging from the ranks—such as Su Zhaozheng, Shi Wenbin, Xiang Ying, Deng Pei and Wang Hebo—joined the Party one after another. Grassroots organizations of the Party were also established in industrial and mining enterprises. For example, a Party branch was set up in the area of the Anyuan mine and railway in February 1922, and by May 1924 it already had more than 60 members. The struggles of this period provided important lessons. First, the enemies of the Chinese revolution were extremely strong. To defeat such formidable enemies, it was not sufficient for the proletariat to fight alone, and every opportunity had to be used to win over all potential allies. Second, in semi-colonial and semi-feudal China, the workers were not permitted any democratic rights whatsoever, and almost all their large-scale struggles were suppressed by the reactionary troops and police. It was therefore impracticable to rely on strikes and legal battles to bring about victory, without waging revolutionary armed struggles. In a statement issued after the February 7th massacre, the Secretariat of the Chinese Labour Organization made this point when it asked, &quot;Would the workers have let themselves be slaughtered like this if they had had weapons?&quot;44 Bearing these lessons in mind, the young Communist Party of China entered a period of great revolution based on cooperation with the Kuomintang. NOTES 1. The leaders of the movement tried to use the Emperor's authority to adopt reforms to save the nation from extinction and develop capitalism without basically changing the feudal system. 2. &quot;The Orientation of the Youth Movement,&quot; Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Eng. ed., Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1975, Vol. II, p. 243. 3. Complete Works of Sun Yat-sen, Chin, ed., Zhonghua Book Company, Beijing, 1981, Vol. I, pp. 288-89. 4. Complete Works of Sun Yat-sen, Chin, ed., Zhonghua Book Company, Beijing, 1986, Vol. IX, p. 99. 5. Mao Zedong, &quot;How to Study the History of the Communist Party of China,&quot;<br /> <br /> == In the Torrent of the Great Revolution ==<br /> <br /> === The Establishment of the First Period of Cooperation Between the KMT and the CPC ===<br /> From 1924 to 1927, a great revolutionary movement swept across the country. This movement was unprecedented in modern Chinese history, because vast numbers of people were mobilized to participate in it. In China it is known as the &quot;Great Revolution.&quot; As expressed in the lyrics of a popular song of the lime, the aim of this revolution was to &quot;overthrow the great powers and eliminate the warlords.&quot; &quot;The great powers&quot; was a reference to the imperialist powers, and of course, even if the revolution were successful, that would not rid the world of them. But this slogan expressed the people's determination to combat the invasion and oppression by the imperialist powers, to liberate the country from their rule and to gain independence. The imperialists governed China indirectly through the feudal warlords, of which the Northern warlords were the most powerful at this time. Accordingly, the objective of the Great Revolution was to overthrow the regime of the imperialists and the Northern warlords; thus, it was to be a national democratic revolution. The Great Revolution gave vent to the people's pent-up hatred and rage against the imperialists and feudal warlords. That it took place in the mid-1920s can be attributed to the existence of the Communist Party of China. Although the CPC was still small and 53 weak, it clearly articulated the goal of a national democratic revolution and, moreover, waged a courageous struggle for that goal. The initial victories in this revolution resulted from political cooperation between the Kuomintang and the CPC. The outbreak of the Revolution of 1911 and the founding of the Republic of China had kindled hope in the hearts of many Chinese. However, their hope had been quickly extinguished, and now they were anxiously groping in the dark, seeking a way out of their intolerable situation. By the early 1920s, the people were confronted with two major problems. First, after the European powers and the United States had gone through the economic crisis following World War I, they had staged a comeback and were now redoubling their efforts to plunder China. They played out their conflicts and alliances on Chinese soil and controlled the country politically and economically. The conditions under which the national industries had expanded successfully during the war no longer existed, and most people were directly experiencing, great pressure from the imperialist powers, so that there was widespread resentment against them. Second, fighting between the warlords, each backed by a different imperialist power and each trying to control the whole country, had become a salient feature of the socio-political landscape. At this lime the Northern warlords, who controlled the central government in Beijing, were divided into three principal factions in three different provinces: the Zhili (present-day Hebei) clique, the Anhui clique and the Fengtian (present-day Liaoning) clique. These factions engaged in constant warfare. In 1920 war broke out between the Zhili and Anhui warlords. In 1922 and 1924 there were two wars between the Zhili and Fengtian warlords. Some of the warlords in southern China cooperated with or maintained ties with the Kuomintang, which was led by Sun Yat-sen. A constant state of war persisted between them and the Northern warlords. In 1917 the number of soldiers involved in this internecine fighting was about 55,000. By 1924 it had reached 450,000. Military expenditures rose sharply, placing an unbearable tax burden on the people. The nation was disintegrating. In provinces that had experienced several years of continuous civil war, the lives and property of the people could hardly be guaranteed. People of all social strata were hoping for a great revolution that would change these conditions. However, it would be extremely difficult to fulfil such hopes. The imperialist powers and the feudal warlords were deeply entrenched, and it would be impossible for an isolated minority or scattered individuals to overthrow them. From the failure of the Beijing-Hankou Railway workers' strike, the Communists had learned that in semi-colonial, semi-feudal China, although the working class was resolutely revolutionary, it was too small to prevail alone. The only way for the Communist Party to ensure the victory of the revolution would be to form the broadest possible united front. The peasant masses were naturally the most reliable allies for the working class. The national bourgeoisie and the urban petty bourgeoisie were also potential participants in the united front, because they too had felt the bitterness of imperialist and feudal oppression. The alliance of all these classes would be an important characteristic of the Chinese national democratic revolution. Basing itself on this judgement, the Communist Party decided to form an alliance with the Kuomintang. On the whole, the Kuomintang led by Sun Yat-sen represented the interests of the bourgeoisie and the urban petty bourgeoisie. Having experienced setbacks over the years, it was quite weak. Moreover, its members came from different backgrounds and were divorced from the masses. Nevertheless, the Kuomintang had strengths that could not be overlooked. First, it still enjoyed widespread prestige, thanks to Sun Yat-sen, who had led the Revolution of 1911 that had overthrown the government of the Qing Dynasty and established the Republic. Afterwards, under extremely difficult circumstances, Sun had continued to fight relentlessly against foreign aggressors and domestic warlords. He had become a symbol of national democratic revolution. Second, the KMT had already established a valuable revolutionary base area in southern China. In February 1923 armed forces loyal to Sun Yat-sen drove general Chen Jiongming, who had betrayed Sun, out of Guangzhou [Canton]. Sun Yat-sen returned to Guangdong Province and established his headquarters there as 55 generalissimo of the army and navy. He also gained control of the rich Pearl River Delta and central Guangdong and secured the loyaty of tens of thousands of soldiers. Although most of these soldiers were commanded by local warlords, they supported the national revolution in the areas controlled by Sun s government and permitted the revolutionary forces to be active openly. In no other place in China was this allowed. Third, having experienced setbacks over and over again. Sun Yat-sen had become keenly aware that many members of the Kuomintang were increasingly corrupt and that new tactics had to be adopted tor the Chinese revolution. So he began to establish contacts with the CPC with a view to cooperation between the two parties. He also welcomed the Soviet Union's offer to support the national revolution in China. In June 1922, the CPC issued a statement on the current situation, in which it pointed out that &quot;among the many political parties in China today, only the Kuomintang is comparatively revolutionary and democratic and is relatively sincere in its commitment to democracy, but there is a real need to change its vacillating policy.&quot; Thus, when the CPC prepared to establish a united front, naturally it first considered reaching out to the KMT. The 3rd National Congress of the Communist Party of China In July 1922 the 2nd National Party Congress had tentatively raised the possibility of &quot;extra-party&quot; cooperation as one form of a united front. Another proposal they had discussed was for &quot;intra-party&quot; cooperation, under which Communist Party and Youth League members would join the KMT, turning it into an alliance of the revolutionary classes. This proposal had been made by G. Maring, the representative in China of the Communist International, and had its support. In August of the same year, several leaders of the Central Committee of the CPC had met in Hangzhou. When Maring made his proposal at this meeting, most of the participants had at first opposed it, but it was evenually accepted. In January 1923, the Executive Committee of the Communist International had adopted a &quot;Resolution on the Relationship between the Communist Party of China and the Kuomintang&quot; that was based on Maring's proposal. During June 12-20, 1923, the CPC held its 3rd National Congress in Guangzhou and made a formal decision on policies and methods for cooperation between the CPC and the KMT. The participants at the congress correctly assessed Sun Yatsen's revolutionary stance and the possibility of reorganization of the KMT. They decided that the best way to establish cooperation between the two parties was for CPC members to join the KMT in their individual capacity. This was the only form of cooperation acceptable to Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang at the time. When Sun Yat-sen's wife Soong Ching Ling asked, &quot;Why do we need to have Communist Party members join the Kuomintang?&quot; her husband replied, &quot;The Kuomintang is degenerating; to save it, we need an infusion of new blood.&quot;' When Communists joined the Kuomintang, it helped both parties develop and advanced the Chinese revolution. In this way, the CPC was able to have more influence over the policies of the Kuomintang, promote its regeneration and encourage the bourgeois and petty bourgeois who were under its influence to join the revolutionary ranks. In addition, by taking advantage of the Kuomintang organizations, the CPC was able to mobilize the workers and peasants and secure mass support for the KMT, giving it a new lease on life. This also gave the Communist Party an opportunity to expand its previously limited operations, to be tempered in revolutionary struggles on a broader scale and to bring about an upsurge in the Great Revolution. The decision adopted at the 3rd National Congress of the CPC was therefore of major historical significance. The congress made it clear that while Party members were to join the Kuomintang as individuals, the Party itself should maintain its political, ideological and organizational independence. It emphasized that the interests of the workers and peasants could never be forgotten, that it was the special responsibility of the Party to organize them and carry out propaganda among them, and that encouraging the workers and peasants to participate in the national revolution was the Party's central task. All this was 57 quite right. However, the congress was wrong in some respects. For example, it failed to point out that the democratic revolution should be led by the working class. It stated that the Kuomintang should provide the main impetus for the national revolution, and should occupy the position of leadership in it. Furthermore, the congress underestimated the complexity of the Kuomintang's internal situation, and it did not foresee that relations between the KMT and CPC would change in the years to come. To some degree, these oversights were later responsible for Chen Duxiu's Right opportunist deviation. They also reflected the inexperience and immaturity of the Party at this early stage. The Establishment of Cooperation Between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party After the 3rd National Congress of the CPC, cooperation between the KMT and the CPC progressed rapidly. Communist Party organizations at all levels did much propaganda work, mobilized Party members and revolutionary youth to join the Kuomintang and actively promoted the national ^ revolution throughout China. In early October 1923, at the invitation of Sun Yat-sen, Soviet representative Mikhail Markovich Borodin arrived in Guangzhou. The Soviet government also provided military and material assistance to the Guangzhou government. As Borodin was a politically experienced and capable organizer, Sun asked him to serve as the Kuomintang's organizational instructor (later as its political adviser). Not long after this, Sun Yat-sen wrote a letter to Chiang Kai-shek in which he categorically stated, &quot;Our party's revolution will never succeed without the guidance of Russia.&quot; The Kuomintang soon began a reorganization. During January 20-30, 1924, in Guangzhou, Sun Yat-sen presided over the 1st National Congress of the Kuomintang. Of the 165 delegates who attended to opening ceremony, more than 20 were from the Communist Party. They included: Li Dazhao, Tan Pingshan, Lin Zuhan (Lin Boqu), Zhang Guotao, Qu Qiubai and Mao Zedong. Sun Yat-sen designated Li Dazhao as a member of the presidium of the congress, and Tan Pingshan delivered a work report on behalf of the Kuomintang Provisional Central Executive Committee. The congress approved a manifesto giving a new, updated interpretation of the Three People's Principles that had been enunciated years before by Sun Yat-sen. &quot;Nationalism&quot; now meant anti-imperialism; &quot;democracy&quot; stressed the democratic rights shared by all the common people, and the &quot;people's livelihood&quot; included the &quot;equalization of land ownership&quot; and the &quot;regulation of capital.&quot; Addressing the congress, Sun Yat-sen declared, &quot;Now it is time for us to put forward an explicit revolutionary programme against imperialism and to arouse the masses of the people to fight for the freedom and independence of China! To do otherwise would mean staging an aimless, meaningless revolution, which would never succeed.&quot;2 Not long after the congress, Sun Yat-sen also put forth the slogan: &quot;Land to the tiller.&quot; The political programme adopted at the 1st National Congress of the KMT was essentially compatible with some of the basic principles in the political programme of the Communist Party at the stage of democratic revolution, and it became the common programme for the first period of KuomintangCommunist cooperation. In fact, the 1st National Congress of the KMT adopted three great revolutionary policies—alliance with Russia, cooperation with the Communist Party and assistance to the peasants and workers. It also elected a Central Executive Committee. Ten Communists, including Li Dazhao, Tan Pingshan, Mao Zedong, Lin Zuhan and Qu Qiubai, were elected members or alternate members of the Committee, representing one-fourth of its total membership. After the congress, Communist Party members holding important posts in the headquarters of the Kuomintang included Tang Pingshan, director of the Department of Organization; Lin Zuhan, director of the Department of Peasants; and Mao Zedong, acting director of the Department of Propaganda. The success of the 1st National Congress of the KMT marked 59 the beginning of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. <br /> <br /> === New Developments in the Revolution After the Establishment of Cooperation Between the KMT and the CPC ===<br /> After cooperation between the two parties was established, the country's revolutionary forces gathered at Guangzhou, quickly creating new prospects for the revolution against the imperialists and the feudal warlords. As soon as Communists began to join the Kuomintang, they worked to help form KMT organizations throughout the country. Until this time, Kuomintang branches had existed in only a few areas, such as Guangdong, Sichuan and Shandong provinces, Shanghai and overseas, and their work had been limited to the upper social strata. Although some progressives within the Kuomintang wanted to change this situation, they had no experience of mass work among the lower classes. The Communists, in contrast, placed great importance on such work and had acquired considerable experience in it. CPC members who joined the Kuomintang made a point of doing propaganda and organizational work among the masses in areas where warlords ruled, encouraging them to support the national revolution. Nineteen years later, looking back on the relations between the two parties, Zhou Enlai said: At that time, the Kuomintang relied on us not only ideologically, to revive and develop its Three People's Principles, but also organizationally, to set up its headquarters and expand its membership in the provinces.... Most of the leading members of the Kuomintang in the provinces at the time were our comrades. ...It was our Party that drew the revolutionary youth into the Kuomintang and it was our Party that enabled it to establish ties with the workers and peasants. Members of the Kuomintang left wing predominated in all its local organizations. The places where the Kuomintang expanded most rapidly were precisely those where the left-wingers were in the dominant position and where there were the largest numbers of Communists.3 In January 1926, after two years of hard work the Kuomintang convened its 2nd National Congress. By this time, it had established twelve provincial headquarters, four special municipal headquarters and nine provisional provincial headquarters. The de facto leading members of many of these provincial or municipal headquarters were Communist Party members. These included Li Dazhao in Beijing, Lin Zuhan in Hankou, Dong Yongwei (Dong Biwu) and Chen Tanqiu in Hubei, He Shuheng and Xia Xi in Hunan, Xuan Zhonghua in Zhejiang, Yu Fangzhou and Li Yongsheng in Hebei and Hou Shaoqiu in Jiangsu. The labour movements led by the Communist Party, like the workers' schools they organized, were all launched in the name of the Kuomintang. Therefore, although conditions in the Kuomintang were quite complicated, it had allied itself with the workers, peasants, urban petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie to fight for democratic revolution. With the establishment of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the CPC, the workers' movement, led by the Communists, revived and progressed. For example, the workers' and peasants' movements were legalized in Guangdong, which was under the jurisdiction of the revolutionary government, and thereafter developed even more rapidly. In July 1924, in the Shamian Concessions in Guangzhou which were inhabited by many foreigners, several thousand workers staged a political strike in protest against a new police regulation, issued by the British and French authorities, denying the Chinese free access to the concessions. Chinese police also participated in the strike, which lasted for more than a month and ended in victory. Deng Zhongxia, a respected early leader of the workers' movement led by the Party, praised this strike, saying, &quot;Ever since the failure of the great strike of February 7, 1923, the workers' movement had been at a low ebb. In 1924 the great July strike in Shamian finally put an end to this. ...This strike caused a stir in Guangzhou and Hong Kong, and its influence spread to central and northern China.&quot;4 The peasant movement also continued to grow. As early as 1922, Peng Pai had begun to organize peasant associations in Haifeng County, Guangdong Province, mobilizing the peasants to demand reductions in land rents. Now peasants all over Guangdong began organizing associations and self-defence corps to struggle against local tyrants, evil gentry and corrupt officials. To train personnel to form the core of the peasant movement, the KMT Central Executive Committee inaugurated the Peasant Movement Institute in July 1924, at the suggestion of the Communists. At various times Communist Party members, including Peng Pai, Ruan Xiaoxian and Mao Zedong, served as director of the institute. The cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party made it possible to establish a revolutionary military force. Sun Yat-sen had depended on the armies of the old regime to undertake revolutionary action and had suffered repeated defeats as a result. This had taught him a bitter lesson. At the suggestion of the Communists, at its 1st National Congress the Kuomintang decided to found an army academy. The Whampoa Military Academy—it was located on Whampoa Island near Guangzhou—opened in May 1924 with Sun Yat-sen as chairman. To serve as president of the academy, Sun appointed Chiang Kai-shek, chief of staff of the Guangdong Army, who had just returned from a tour of investigation in the Soviet Union. Liao Zhongkai, a well-known Kuomintang left-winger, was named the representative of the KMT. General Vasily Blucher (who assumed the name of Galen during his stay in China) and other generals of the Soviet Red Army were invited to serve as military advisers. In November the chairman of the Guangdong Regional Committee of the CPC, Zhou Enlai, who had just returned from Europe, was appointed director of the academy's political department. The CPC also selected a large number of Communist Party and Youth League members and other revolutionary young people to study there. In the first group of students who registered at the academy were 56 Communist Party and Youth League members, representing one-tenth of the total enrollment. They included Xu Xiangqian, Chen Geng, Jiang Xianyun, Zuo Quan and Xu Jishen. What distinguished the Whampoa Military Academy from all military schools of the old type was that it attached equal importance to military training and political education. It emphasized the cultivation of patriotism and revolutionary spirit among the students. Zhou Enlai and other Communists were particularly instrumental in this. The system of military training combined with political work was later introduced to other military units under the Guangzhou Revolutionary Government. Not long after the War of Resistance Against Japan broke out in 1937, Mao Zedong said: &quot;In 1924-27 the spirit of the Kuomintang troops was broadly similar to that of the Eighth Route Army today.... A fresh spirit prevailed among these forces; on the whole there was unity between officers and men and between the army and the people, and the army was filled with a revolutionary militancy. The system of Party representatives and of political departments, adopted for the first time in China, entirely changed the complexion of these armed forces.&quot;5 Thanks to the joint efforts of the Communist Party and the Kuomintang, the idea of national revolution spread from south to north and throughout the country. In October 1924, during the second Zhili-Fengtian war, Feng Yuxiang of the Zhili clique staged a coup d'6tat and overthrew the Beijing government controlled by the chief Zhili warlords, Cao Kun and Wu Peifu. Feng Yuxiang thus gained control over the Beijing-Tianjin area. He then reorganized his troops into the National Army and sent a telegram to Sun Yat-sen inviting him to come north to discuss important matters of state. As Feng encountered many difficulties after the coup, he had to invite the veteran chief of the Northern warlords, Duan Qirui, to preside over the discussions. Duan Qirui and Zhang Zuolin, chief of the Fengtian clique, who was preparing to go to Beijing from the Northeast, also sent separate telegrams to Sun Yat-sen inviting him to go north. In November, Sun left Guangzhou for Beijing. Along the way, he 63 called for the convocation of a national assembly and the abrogation of all unequal treaties with the imperialists. In Shanghai, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Hunan, Hubei and other provinces, associations for the convocation of the national assembly were established. Mass organizations everywhere sent him telegrams expressing their support for the assembly. This became a political propaganda movement. At the time, the political climate in China was good. The country seethed with activity and there was a great wave of anti-imperialist and anti-warlord sentiment, but contradictions were becoming apparent within the revolutionary camp. The Kuomintang was a complex organization, and its members included representatives of the big landlord and comprador classes. In June 1924 right-wingers in the KMT ranks, such as Deng Zeru, Zhang Ji and Xie Chi, began hostilities against the CPC by presenting to the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee a &quot;Proposal to Impeach the Communist Party.&quot; On the pretext that the Communist Party had its own organizations within the Kuomintang, they declared that the KMT absolutely could not permit &quot;a party within the party&quot; and called for a split with the Communists. To counter this attack, the Central Committee of the CPC issued an inner-Party circular on July 21, asking Party organizations at all levels to expose the reactionary activities of the right-wingers in the Kuomintang. Chen Duxiu, Yun Daiying, Qu Qiubai and Cai Hesen, among others, wrote a stream of articles defending the political programme adopted at the 1st National Congress of the KMT and blasting the Right-wingers for undermining unity in the revolutionary ranks. On August 20, before leaving for Beijing, Sun Yat-sen presided over a meeting of the Political Committee of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee, which forcefully rejected the right-wingers' position. It issued a directive stating: &quot;Those who say that our party has been changed ideologically because the Communists have joined are mistaken and entirely unreasonable. There is no need to debate this point.... Those who say that our party will split because the Communists have joined it are similarly entertaining groundless fears.&quot;6 Because of Sun Yat-sen's high prestige in the Kuomintang, his firm support for cooperation between the two parties thwarted the Right-wingers' anticommunist activities and their attempt to split the KMT. As the revolution progressed, the left and right wings of the Kuomintang grew further apart and relations between the KMT and the CPC became increasingly strained. There were many new problems in the revolutionary movement. From January 1 1 to 22, 1925, the Communist Party of China held its 4th National Congress in Shanghai. By this time the Party had 994 members. The historical significance of this congress can be summed up as follows. First, it raised the question of the leadership of the Chinese proletariat in the democratic revolution, declaring that unless the proletariat, which was the most revolutionary class, participated vigorously in the national revolutionary movement and exercised leadership over it, the movement would not succeed. Second, it raised the question of the alliance between workers and peasants, pointing out that the revolution needed the extensive participation of the workers, the peasants and the urban petty bourgeoisie. The peasants, it said, were important, since they were the natural allies of the working class. If the proletariat and its party did not mobilize the peasants to participate in the struggle, it would be unable to lead the revolution, and the revolution would fail. Third, the congress added to the content of the democratic revolution, stating that while opposing international imperialism, the Party should simultaneously oppose feudal warlord politics and feudal economic relations. This last statement demonstrated that the Party, having reviewed the events since its founding and particularly since the beginning of its cooperation with the KMT one year earlier, had made major progress in its understanding of the issues involved in the Chinese revolution. They also demonstrated that the Party had already elucidated the basic concept of the new-democratic revolution. Nevertheless, the 4th National Party Congress offered no concrete solution to the complex problem of how the proletariat was to win the struggle with the bourgeoisie for leadership of the revolution. Also, it did not fully understand the vital importance of political power and armed struggle. These weaknesses were to 65 become more apparent as the revolutionary movement progressed. Less than two months after the congress, Sun Yat-sen died of liver cancer in Beijing. In his testament, he wrote: &quot;For forty years I have devoted myself to the cause of the national revolution with the aim of winning freedom and equality for China. My experience during these forty years has convinced me that to achieve this aim we must arouse the masses and unite in a common struggle with those nations of the world which treat us as equals.&quot; Naturally Sun believed that the Soviet Union would be the first nation to treat China as an equal and that to arouse the masses, the Kuomintang should cooperate with the CPC and assist the peasants and workers. These were the two basic conclusions reached by Sun Yat-sen, a great patriot and revolutionary, as he summed up the political experience of his lifetime. Sun's death caused great sorrow throughout China. The KMT and CPC organized mourning ceremonies involving people from all walks of life, so as to disseminate throughout the country the message of Sun's testament and his revolutionary spirit. The national revolutionary movement rose to a new height.<br /> <br /> === The May 30th Movement and the Unification of the Guangdong Revolutionary Base Area ===<br /> The upsurge of the nationwide Great Revolution began in May 1925 with the anti-British and anti-Japanese strike of workers in Shanghai. At this time Shanghai, China's largest industrial city, had 800,000 workers, almost one-third of the national total. The city was an important base for the imperialist powers' aggression in China. There were the &quot;International Settlement,&quot; controlled by the British, and the &quot;French Concession,&quot; and many Japanese, British and other foreign-owned factories were located in Shanghai. The imperialists cruelly wrung every ounce of sweat and blood out of the Chinese labourers, arousing their hatred. Shanghai was also the seat of the Central Committee of the CPC, and the Party was active among the workers there. Using Shanghai University as their main base, Party members went out to do propaganda and organizing among the workers. They had established night schools for workers in seven districts. In the summer of 1924, under the leadership of Deng Zhongxia, Xiang Ying and others, they had founded the West Shanghai Workers' Club, a mass organization with nearly 2,000 members that did much to advance the workers' movement in Shanghai. In February 1925 the workers at the Japanese-owned Naigai No.8 Cotton Mill had gone on strike because a Japanese overseer had beaten a Chinese woman worker. The ranks of the strikers swelled to more than 35,000, as workers from 20 other Japanese-owned textile mills joined the strike. Victory in this struggle had greatly inspired workers throughout the country. On May 1, the 2nd National Labour Congress opened in Guangzhou, and the AllChina Federation of Trade Unions was formally established. Communist Party members Lin Weimin and Liu Shaoqi were elected president and vice-president of the federation. The Nationwide May 30th Movement On May 15, a Japanese capitalist of the Naigai No.7 Cotton Mill in Shanghai killed Gu Zhenghong, a worker who was a Communist. The Central Committee of the CPC met several times to discuss an appropriate response. Cai Hesen urged that the economic struggle of the workers be turned into a national struggle. On May 28 the Central Committee called an emergency meeting at which it decided to mobilize students and workers to launch a large-scale anti-imperialist demonstration in the International Settlement on May 30. On that day the Shanghai workers and students marched and spoke on street corners in support of the textile workers. Suddenly, the British police in the International Settlement opened fire on the crowd marching along Nanjing Road, killing 13 and wounding many others. The martyrs who sacrificed their lives at this demonstration included Shang 67 hai University student and Communist Party member He Bingyi. For several days after this, there were instances of British and Japanese police killing Chinese civilians in Shanghai and other cities. These incidents enraged the people of Shanghai and throughout the country. All their pent-up fury against the imperialists suddenly poured out. Students, workers and shopkeepers all went on strike. On June 11 more than 200,000 people gathered at a mass rally in Shanghai. Approximately 17 million people participated in this movement nationwide. From the great commercial cities to the most remote areas of the countryside, people cried angrily &quot;Down with imperialism!&quot; and &quot;Abolish the unequal treaties!&quot; The wave of anti-imperialism swept the nation with astounding speed. While leading the May 30th Movement, the Communist Party greatly increased its membership. At the time of the Party's 4th National Congress in January 1925, it had only 994 members. By October of the same year, it had 3,000. By December, the number was 10,000. In one year the Party had grown tenfold. As the movement spread across the country, new Party organizations were established in many provinces where there had been none before, such as Yunnan, Guangxi, Anhui and Fujian. The Parly was tempered well in the struggle. On June 3, after news of the May 30th massacre had reached Guangzhou, people from every section of the city's population took to the streets in a mammoth demonstration. On June 19 members of the seamen's, trolley workers' and printers' unions went on strike. Other unionized workers soon joined them, and the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions was established. One slogan of the strike was, &quot;Fight the imperialists to the death!&quot; Within a fortnight the number of strikers swelled to 250,000. Of these, more than 100,000 left Hong Kong and returned to Guangzhou. On June 23, the Hong Kong strikers joined 100,000 people from all walks of life in Guangzhou to hold a rally and a demonstration. Led by Zhou Enlai, 2,000 instructors, cadets and soldiers of the Whampoa Military Academy also participated in the demonstration. As the marchers passed through Shaji, a street on the opposite bank of the Pearl River, the British troops and police from the Shamian Concession suddenly opened fire, killing 52 people and seriously wounding some 170. After the Shaji massacre, the Guangzhou Revolutionary Government immediately severed all economic relations with Britain and blockaded the Guangzhou harbour. Workers from Hong Kong and Shamian convened in Guangzhou a conference of representatives of the Guangzhou and Hong Kong strikers and established a Strike Committee, with Communist Party member Su Zhaozheng as chairman. The committee had subcommittees in charge of armed self-defence, picketing, legal affairs and so on. The strikers managed to blockade the port of Hong Kong. The Guangzhou Revolutionary Government supported them and subsidized the Strike Committee with 10,000 yuan a month. Communist Party members Xu Chengzhang, Chen Geng and others served as chairman of the picketing committee, general instructor and instructors of the armed pickets. The simultaneous strikes in Guangzhou and Hong Kong lasted for 16 months. They were an important component of the May 30th Movement and an unprecedented feat in the history of China's labour movement. They gave a powerful impetus to the Great Revolution, and the several hundred thousand strikers in Guangzhou became a pillar of the Guangzhou Revolutionary Government. The Unification of the Guangdong Revolutionary Base Area The vigorous development of the May 30th Movement created favourable conditions in which the KMT and CPC cooperated to create a revolutionary base area in Guangdong. Although the Guangzhou Revolutionary Government had been established two years earlier, it was internally unstable and had never been able to control all of Guangdong Province. The major threat to the government was Chen Jiongming's hostile troops, who were entrenched along the Dongjiang River in eastern Guangdong. Furthermore, there were government troops who nominally supported national revolution, but who were in fact loyal to the local warlords Yang Ximin (the Yunnan Army) and Liu Zhenhuan (the Guangxi Army). These troops dominated Guangzhou, levying exorbitant taxes and committing outrages. Sun Yat-sen had once sorrowfully told them, &quot;You operate in my name, but you ravage my hometown.&quot; Early in 1925, when Sun Yat-sen was away in the north and seriously ill, Chen Jiongming took advantage of the opportunity to attack Guangzhou. The Guangzhou government organized the Eastern Expeditionary Army, which was divided into three columns taking three different routes, and sent it on a punitive expedition against Chen Jiongming. However, the forces that were to take the north and central routes were led by Yang Ximin and Liu Zhenhuan and refused to go into battle. Two recently established officers' training regiments from the Whampoa Military Academy and the Guangdong army commanded by Xu Chongzhi took the south route and swiftly routed Chen Jiongming's main force, gaining control of the Dongjiang area. By April, the first eastern expedition had proved victorious. In May, Yang Xiwen and Liu Zhenhuan's troops staged a rebellion in Guangzhou in an attempt to overthrow the Guangzhou Revolutionary Government. Although Yang and Liu commanded a substantial number of troops, their plundering and corruption had turned the people against them and weakened their combat effectiveness. The Eastern Expeditionary Army quickly returned to Guangzhou and quelled their rebellion. The KMT and the CPC then began to reorganize the Guangzhou government and the armed forces. On July 1 the National Government was founded in Guangzhou to replace the former Revolutionary Government. Wang Jingwei, who was regarded as a member of the Kuomintang left, was elected president. M. M. Borodin was invited to serve as senior adviser to the government. However, because the CPC did not fully understand the importance of political power, it decided not to participate directly in the government and instead opted for a supervisory role. After the National Government was established, the army of the Whampoa Military Academy, along with the Guangdong, Hunan and Yunnan armies stationed in Guangdong, were reorganized into six armies of the National Revolutionary Army, with a total of 85,000 troops. The army of the Whampoa Military Academy was expanded to become the First Army. Many Communists were given responsibility for political work in the National Revolutionary Army. Zhou Enlai, Li Fuchun, Zhu Kejing and Luo Han served respectively as deputy Party representative and director of the political department of the First, Second, Third and Fourth Armies, and Lin Zuhan served as Party representative and director of the political department of the Sixth Army. Command over these armies, however, still rested with Chiang Kai-shek and the other members of the old military. A major mistake made by the Communists was to underestimate the importance of military command. It was only in the beginning of 1926 that Communist Party member Ye Ting became commander of the Independent Regiment of the Fourth Army of the National Revolutionary Army. The Independent Regiment was directly under the command of the Communist Party, but it represented only a small fraction of the National Revolutionary Army. On August 20, 1925, Liao Zhongkai, leader of the KMT's Left wing, was assassinated in Guangzhou. This was a heavy blow to cooperation between the KMT and the CPC. Xu Chongzhi, Minister of Military Affairs of the National Government and commander-in-chief of the Guangdong Army, was forced out by Chiang Kai-shek. The forces under Xu's command were then taken over and reorganized by Chiang, which further strengthened his power and influence in the military. In September 1925 the remaining troops of Chen Jiongming took advantage of the Eastern Expeditionary Army's return to Guangzhou to reoccupy the Dongjiang area. The National Government decided to launch a second eastern expedition, with Chiang Kai-shek as commander of the expeditionary forces and Zhou Enlai as director of the General Political Department. By the end of November the expeditionary army, with the support of the peasant associations in the Dongjiang area, had wiped out Chen Jiongming's forces, thus bringing to a successful conclusion the second eastern expedition. At the same time, another detachment of the National Revolutionary Army launched a southern expedition and wiped out all the forces commanded by the local 71 warlord, Deng Benyin, that had been entrenched in southern Guangdong and on Hainan Island. In the end, the entire province of Guangdong was unified, which created a solid base for the coming Northern Expedition against the Northern warlords. The Emergence of the New KMT Right Wing and the CPC's Countermove The revolution was progressing rapidly, but at the same time a reactionary faction was emerging within the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang had long been divided, and after the death of Sun Yat-sen, that resolute supporter of KMT-CPC cooperation, the divisions became increasingly apparent. Because the dilferent factions in the KMT represented the interests of different classes, their goals in the forthcoming Northern Expedition were also different. The Left-wingers, who represented the interests of the workers, the peasants and the petty bourgeoisie, wanted to eliminate the imperialist forces and the feudal warlords and establish a state governed by an alliance of all the revolutionary classes. The middle-of-the-roaders, who represented the interests of the national bourgeoisie, sought to overthrow the Northern warlords and then build a state governed by the national bourgeoisie. The Right-wingers, who represented the interests of the landlord and comprador classes, plotted to use the strength of the workers and peasants to overthrow the Northern warlords and then build a regime of the landlord and comprador classes. These three factions were at odds over the political programme laid out at the KMT's 1st National Congress and Sun Yat-sen's &quot;Three Great Policies&quot;—alliance with Russia, cooperation with the Communist Party and assistance to the peasants and workers. The conflicts within the KMT intensified day by day. In June and July 1925, Dai Jitao, a new Right-winger and a close friend of Chiang Kai-shek, wrote several pamphlets, including &quot;Philosophical Foundations of Sun Yat-senism,&quot; and &quot;The National Revolution and the Chinese Kuomintang.&quot; In these works he advocated compromise between opposing classes and criticized the Marxist theory of class struggle, while demanding that all Communists who had joined the Kuomintang &quot;separate themselves from all other Party organizations in order to become true members of the Kuomintang.&quot; In November of the same year, the old Rightwingers of the Kuomintang, including Zou Lu and Xie Chi, illegally convened the so-called 4th Plenary Session of the 1st Central Executive Committee of the KMT at the Biyun Temple in the Western Hills outside Beijing. They pronounced the expulsion of Communist Party members from the Kuomintang and announced that Borodin would no longer be an adviser. This group of old Right-wingers became known as the &quot;Western Hills clique. Even more ominously, after the two eastern expeditions and the suppression of the rebellion by Yang Ximin and Liu Zhenhuan, Chiang Kai-shek expanded his forces and increased his power in the revolutionary ranks. He began to reveal his true anti-Communist character, using the Society for the Study of Sun Yat-sen's Doctrines, controlled by the new KMT Right-wingers, to carry out anti-Communist activities. Chiang Kai-shek was a two-faced careerist. For a time, to strengthen his own position, outwardly he supported alliance with Russia and cooperation with the Communist Party. Inwardly however, he was rabidly anti-Communist, and his ultimate aim was to take the place of the Northern warlords himself. To attain this goal, he needed to use the Communist Party and the workers and peasants under its leadership to bolster his strength and expand his influence. At the same time, however, he was afraid that the workers and peasants might become strong enough to obstruct his climb to power. Therefore, while ostensibly cooperating with the Communist Party, he worked to restrain it, so that the people's forces could not grow substantially and independently. In fact, he protected and organized the Rightist forces. That is, he simultaneously adhered to two policies, cooperating with the Communist Party and at the same time restraining it. After the May 30th Movement, the revolutionary mass movement reached a peak throughout the country. When Chiang Kai-shek saw that the people's forces had grown stronger, he gradually intensified his anti-Communist activities. This situation posed a formidable new problem for the Communist Party. Naturally it was of vital importance to maintain cooperation with the Kuomintang. However, in the face of growing tensions with the old and new Right-wingers in the Kuomintang, the Party needed to find an appropriate response. It was just as Mao Zedong wrote in an article on the united front in 1940: &quot;If unity is sought through struggle, it will live; if unity is sought through yielding, it will perish.&quot;7 At this time many Communist Party members believed that since the Kuomintang Right wing (especially the new Right) was openly trying to split the two parties, the Communist Party should fight back vigorously and appropriately so as to maintain KMT-CPC cooperation. In December 1925 Mao Zedong wrote an essay in which he emphasized the importance of distinguishing between friends and enemies of the revolutionary struggle, lo make this distinction, he proceeded to analyse the economic status of various classes in Chinese society and their respective political attitudes. He pointed out that the staunchest and numerically the largest ally of the proletariat was the peasantry, thus solving the major problem of finding allies in the revolution. Moreover, he reminded people that the national bourgeoisie held contradictory and vacillating attitudes: on the one hand, they felt the need for revolution; on the other hand, they were suspicious of it. He predicted that the Right wing of the national bourgeoisie might become the enemy of the revolutionary forces, while its Left wing might become their friend, but concluded that &quot;we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks.&quot;8 However, in the face of the combined attack of the imperialists and the warlords, Chen Duxiu, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, felt that the Party's strength was inadequate. He was afraid that struggle against the new Right wing of the Kuomintang would impair the relations between the two parties and lead to the isolation and ultimate failure of the revolution in Guangdong. He hoped that unilateral concessions would help alleviate the contradictions within the camp of the national revolutionary forces. This course of action was supported by the Comintern representatives, and therefore carried the day within From January 1 to 19, 1926, the Kuomintang held its 2nd National Congress in Guangzhou. Among the representatives elected from different parts of the country, the majority were Communists and KMT Left-wingers. As a result, the Kuomintang officially continued to oppose the imperialists and warlord forces, adhering to the Three Great Policies of alliance with Russia, cooperation with the Communist Party and assistance to the peasants and workers. Furthermore, the congress decided to take disciplinary measures against the old Right-wingers who had attended the Western Hills meeting. In this sense, the congress was a success. When the congress opened, the leaders of the Communist Party organization in Guangdong were in favour of attacking the Right wing of the Kuomintang, isolating the middle-of-the-roaders and expanding the Left wing, while preparing to repel Chiang's attack. However, under the influence of Chen Duxiu and Zhang Guotao, no action was taken against the new Right wing. The Communists and the KMT Left-wingers were definitely in the minority on the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee and its Central Supervisory Committee. As for Chiang Kai-shek, his standing in the Kuomintang was not particularly high to begin with. At the 1st National Congress, he had not been elected to the Central Executive Committee. But at the 2nd congress he became a member of it and soon after a member of its Standing Committee as well. Similarly, at the time of the 1st National Congress, he had been only the commander of one of the six armies in the National Revolutionary Army. At the second congress, he became chief inspector of the NRA. Thus, his status both in the KMT and in the army rose considerably. The concessions made by the Communist Party did absolutely nothing to moderate the conflicts within the revolutionary camp. On the contrary, they only helped encourage the new KMT Right-wingers. For every inch offered, the new Right-wingers seized an ell. On March 20, only two months after the 2nd National Congress of the KMT ended, Chiang Kai-shek suddenly took grave actions against the Communists. He concocted the 75 story that the Communists were secretly moving the Zhongshan Warship to Whampoa near Guangzhou in an attempt to kidnap him and take him out of Guangdong. Using this as a pretext, he enforced martial law in Guangzhou. He put Communist Party members under surveillance or hou~°. arrest and disarmed the picket corps of the Guangzhou-Hong Kong Strike Committee. He had troops surround the Soviet consulate and put the Soviet advisers under surveillance. At a meeting on March 22, the Central Executive Committee of the KMT adopted a resolution proposed by Chiang to exclude CPC members from the Whampoa Military Academy and from the First Army of the National Revolutionary Army. Wang Jingwei, president of the National Government and chairman of its Military Commission, was forced to resign on account of &quot;illness,&quot; clearing the path for Chiang to advance to the highest and most powerful position in the Kuomintang. This series of events became known as the Zhongshan Warship Incident. The CPC Central Committee was not prepared for such a drastic turn of events, and had no experience as a guide in coping with it. In fact, Chiang Kai-shek still had only limited power and had taken these actions partly to see how the CPC would respond. No sooner had he completed the manoeuvre than he released all those he had arrested and returned the guns he had captured. He apologized for the incident, calling it a &quot;misunderstanding&quot; for which he asked to be &quot;severely punished.&quot; Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Chen Yannian, among others, called for a counterattack. Because only one of the six armies of the National Revolutionary Army was directly under Chiang's command, and because even in that army there were many who were Communists or who sympathized with the revolution, Chiang's position had not been completely consolidated and such a counter-attack was feasible. However, Chen Duxiu and the Soviet adviser N. V. Kuibishev were overwhelmed by Chiang's display of strength, and they were afraid of a split between the KMT and the CPC. They believed that only further concessions would persuade Chiang to participate in the Northern Expedition. In the end, their yielding stance encouraged Chiang to proceed confidently with his activities to restrain the Communist Party. On May 15 the Kuomintang held the 2nd Plenary Session of its 2nd Central Executive Committee. On pretext of avoiding &quot;disputes&quot; within the KMT and of finding &quot;a concrete method of removing misunderstandings,&quot; Chiang Kai-shek proposed a &quot;Resolution on Rectification of Party Affairs.&quot; This resolution stipulated that members of the Communist Party must not exceed more than one-third of the members of executive committees of KMT organizations at or above the municipal or provincial level. It also provided that CPC members could not serve as directors of departments of the KMT Central Executive Committee and that the list of all CPC members who had joined the Kuomintang should be made public. The KMT Left-wingers, including Liu Yazi and He Xiangning, all voted against this draft resolution. Chen Duxiu and Zhang Guotao, however, still believed that the reason for the strained relations between the KMT and the CPC was that the &quot;Communist Party had taken on too many responsibilities&quot; and accordingly advocated further concessions. Thus Chiang's resolution was adopted. At this point, all directors of departments of the KMT Central Executive Committee coming from the CPC had no choice but to resign, and the Communist Party had no further say in the affairs of the Kuomintang. Chiang, on the other hand, was appointed director of the Organization Department of the Central Executive Committee and minister of Military Affairs. He then became chairman of the Standing Committee of the KMT Central Executive Committee and commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army. Thus, he became the most powerful figure in southern China. The 2nd National Congress of the Kuomintang, the Zhongshan Warship Incident and the adoption of the &quot;Resolution on Rectification of Party Affairs&quot; all took place less than six months before the Northern Expedition was to begin. At this critical moment, Chiang Kai-shek did not hesitate to launch one attack after another against the Communists, gaining positions of leadership as they made concessions. He gathered all available power into his own grip and prepared for an anti-Communist coup. After the Zhongshan Warship Incident, Chiang was already 77 aligned with the big landlords and the big bourgeoisie. In analysing class relations, several leaders of the Communist Party turned a blind eye to this new development. They did not understand that the representatives of each class could change their political stance. While Chiang was openly taking steps to launch an anti-Communist attack, they still did not dare to mount a resolute counter-attack, for fear of a split between the two parties. Nevertheless, Chiang's power was still limited. To achieve victory in the Northern Expedition he still needed the support of the Communist Party of China and the Soviet Union. As a result, he did not immediately split with the CPC publicly. As late as May 1926, he still stated, &quot;Not only am I not opposed to Communism, but I very much approve of it.&quot;9 For the time being, the KMT continued to cooperate with the CPC. But the fact that command over the Northern Expeditionary Army was largely in Chiang's hands made it clear that while the revolution was progressing rapidly, it was already in a serious crisis.<br /> <br /> === The Triumphant Progress of the Northern Expedition and the Rise of the Workers' and Peasants' Movements ===<br /> The immediate objective of the Northern Expedition was to topple the Northern warlords who were supported by the imperialists. The Northern warlords seemed a colossus far mightier than the Northern Expeditionary Army. For more than ten years they had controlled the internationally recognized central government and possessed vast financial and material resources. They directly commanded an army of 700,000 men, while the National Revolutionary Army had only about 100,000. At the beginning of the Northern Expedition, this total included both the original six armies in Guangdong and two new ones: the Seventh of Guangxi, commanded by Li Zongren, and the Eighth of Hunan, commanded by Tang Shengzhi. However, the Northern warlords had two fatal weaknesses. First, the Chinese people had long felt a deep hatred for their rule and hoped for an early end to their internecine fighting that had lasted for more than ten years. They longed for the day when China would be independent and unified, and thus increasingly placed their hopes in the National Government in the South. The will of the people would surely play a decisive role in the coming struggle. Second, the Northern warlords were internally divided, principally into three factions. The chief of the already declining Zhili faction, Wu Peifu, still controlled Hunan, Hubei and Henan provinces and the area around the city of Baoding in Zhili (now Hebei Province). His forces totalled approximately 200,000 and were still concentrated in the Nankou area of north China, where they were attacking a part of the National Army commanded by Feng Yuxiang whose main forces had already retreated to the Northwest. Sun Chuanfang, whose forces occupied Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi and Fujian provinces, was known as the &quot;commander-in-chief of five provinces.&quot; He led 200,000 troops who operated as an independent force and whose combat effectiveness had surpassed that of Wu Peifu's army. The most powerful of the warlords was Zhang Zuolin of the Fengtian clique, who with 300,000 troops at his command controlled the three provinces of the Northeast (present-day Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang), Rehe, Chahar, Beijing, Tianjin and Shandong. Deep contradictions persisted as these three forces intrigued against each other. They were unable to coordinate their military operations, and this made it easier for the Northern Expeditionary Army to destroy them one by one. The Northern Expedition Launched Jointly by the KMT and the CPC It was at the suggestion of the Soviet military advisers led by Galen that the National Revolutionary Army adopted a strategy of massing its forces and annihilating the enemy armies one at a time. First, it would send troops into Hunan and Hubei, quickly wiping out Wu Peifu's main force, the weakest link in the 79 Northern warlords. It would try to keep Zhang Zuolin and Sun Chuanfang neutral for a time; then, after the troops sent to Hunan and Hubei had achieved victory, they would turn east to wipe out Sun Chuanfang's army. Finally, they would move north to attack the most powerful forces, those of Zhang Zuolin. In accordance with this plan, in May 1926, a part of the National Revolutionary Army's Seventh Army and Ye Ting's Independent Regiment of the Fourth Army moved as advance forces to Hunan Province to assist Tang Shengzhi's Eighth Army, which had been defeated by Wu Peifu and was retreating to Hengyang in southern Hunan. On July 9, the National Revolutionary Army took a mass pledge in Guangzhou and formally launched the Northern Expedition. Two days later, after the main body of the Fourth and Seventh Armies joined forces with the Eighth Army, they succeeded in taking Changsha. On August 22, they occupied Yuezhou, and thereafter they entered Hubei Province. The Northern Expedition was enthusiastically supported by the people in both the battle areas and the rear. CPC organizations at all levels did effective work in mobilizing the workers and peasants. At this time, Hunan and Hubei were suffering from severe food shortages, and as construction of the WuhanGuangdong Railway was not yet completed, it was a major problem to keep the troops supplied. Under the leadership of the Guangdong Regional Party Committee, the Hong KongGuangzhou Strike Committee of Guangdong organized 3,000 men into transport, propaganda and medical teams to follow the troops north. The Hunan Regional Party Committee had always been a strong organization. According to statistics compiled in August 1926, the province had 2,699 Party members, a figure second only to Guangdong's. The Party counted 400,000 peasants and 110,000 workers in Hunan under its leadership. When the Northern Expeditionary Army advanced toward Changsha, the Hunan Regional Party Committee mobilized these people to act as guides, deliver letters, serve as scouts, help with transport, sweep mines, carry stretchers, give first aid, bring gifts to servicemen and create disorder in the enemy's rear. They also organized peasant self-defence militias to participate directly in the fighting. Such enthusiasm had rarely been seen in previous wars in China. Knowing that the Northern Expeditionary Army was advancing on Wuhan, Wu Peifu hurriedly recalled his troops from the North. He built defences at two strategic points along the railway, the Tingsi and Hesheng bridges near Wuhan. Wu personally commanded his guards and organized a special corps to force the soldiers at gunpoint to fight at the front. In late August, after an intense and bitter battle, the main force of the National Revolutionary Army's Fourth and Seventh Armies and a part of the Eighth Army finally captured the two railway bridges, routed Wu Peifu's main force and marched on Wuhan. Ye Ting's Independent Regiment fought heroically in the fierce battle. Subsequently the main force of the Eighth Army crossed the Yangtze River and on September 6 and 7 occupied Hanyang and Hankou. On October 10 the main force of the Fourth Army and a part of the Eighth Army captured Wuchang, after laying siege to the city for more than a month. The men of Ye Ting's Independent Regiment were the first to scale the walls. The rest of the armies then entered the city, where they annihilated Wu Peifu's main force. After this, the Fourth Army, of which the Independent Regiment was a part, became known as the &quot;Iron Army.&quot; After the great victories of the Northern Expeditionary Army in Hunan and Hubei provinces, Sun Chuanfang abandoned his neutral stand. In late August, he dispatched massive forces from Jiangxi Province, launching a flank attack on Hunan and Hubei in an attempt to cut off the retreat of the Northern Expeditionary Army. During September the National Revolutionary Army's Second, Third and Sixth Armies and the First Division of its First Army, which had been ordered to keep watch on the movements of Sun Chuanfang's army, entered Jiangxi and captured Nanchang for a time. Sun Chuanfang threw his main force into a ferocious counter attack and recaptured Nanchang, inflicting heavy casualties on the First Division of the First Army, which was commanded by Chiang Kai-shek. At this juncture, the Fourth Army and then the Seventh Army entered Jiangxi, joining forces with the other troops there, and in early November 81 launched a fierce offensive along the Nanchang-Jiujiang Railway. Finally, they wiped out Sun Chuanfang's main force and captured Jiujiang and Nanchang. This brought about a complete change in the military situation in Jiangxi. Two divisions of the First Army that had been stationed in the Guangdong-Fujian border area took this opportunity to launch an attack on F ujian Province, and in mid-December they took the city of Fuzhou without a fight. , While the Northern Expeditionary Army was winning these great victories, Feng Yuxiang's National Army troops had withdrawn from Nankou, a strategic point near Beijing, to defend Suiyuan Province (now part of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region). On September 17, in Wuyuan County, Suiyuan, these troops took a mass pledge to fight the Northern warlords and started to move south with the help of the Soviet Union and the CPC. Feng Yuxiang, who had just returned from the Soviet Union and joined the Kuom intang, became commander-in-chief of the combined forces of the National Army. Liu Bojian, a Communist Party member, served as deputy director of the army's political department. By November, the combined forces already controlled Shaanxi and Gansu provinces. Thus, in six months after launching the Northern Expedition, the National Revolutionary Army had made surprising progress. By late 1926 it had already wiped out the main forces of Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang and gained control of all the southern provinces except Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui. Feng Yuxiang's forces controlled the Northwest and were preparing to move east through Tongguan, a county of strategic importance in eastern Shaanxi Province, in coordination with the Northern Expeditionary Army's operation. As most people could clearly see, the victorious conclusion of the Northern Expedition was at hand and it was only a matter of time before the regime of the Northern warlords would finally collapse. Even in the provinces they still controlled, the people cherished new hope. Everywhere the people enthusiastically prepared to welcome the arrival of the Northern Expeditionary Army. In the early stage of the Northern Expedition there were contradictions between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Nevertheless, in the face of a powerful common enemy, the anti-Communist forces within the KMT temporarily ceased their active opposition and by and large, the two parties maintained their alliance. The Northern Expedition was launched under the anti-imperialist and anti-warlord slogans of the Communist Party. In the course of the expedition, Party members made enormous contributions, both by spreading political propaganda in the army and by mobilizing the peasants and workers. Soviet military advisers and material assistance also played an important role. Thanks to cooperation between the KMT and the CPC, the Northern Expeditionary Army was able to achieve major victories in a short space of time. The Mass Movements of Workers and Peasants in Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi Provinces As the warlord regime collapsed before the advancing Northern Expeditionary Army, the mass movements of workers and peasants expanded at an unprecedented rate. This was particularly the case in Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi provinces. In these provinces, the peasant movement was the first to gain momentum. On September 1, 1926, Mao Zedong published an article entitled &quot;The National Revolution and the Peasant Movement,&quot; in which he pointed out the overriding importance of that movement: &quot;The peasant problem is the central issue of the national revolution.... A large part of the so-called national revolutionary movement is the peasant movement.... Unless the peasants in the rural areas rise to overthrow the privileges of the patriarchal feudal landlord class, the warlord and imperialist forces will never be brought down.&quot; In November of the same year, Mao Zedong became the secretary of the CPC Central Committee's Peasant Movement Committee, which decided to make Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Henan provinces the centres of the movement. In Hunan, for example, from July 1926 when the Northern Expeditionary 83 Army arrived there to January of the following year, the membership of peasant associations rose from 400,000 to two million. A total of ten million people were active under the leadership of the peasant associations; in other words, about half the peasants in Hunan were already organized. In many counties almost all the peasants were members of peasant associations. Once organized, they went into action and brought about an unprecedented revolution in the countryside. Their main targets were local tyrants, evil gentry and lawless landlords. They also attacked patriarchal ideas and institutions, corrupt officials in the cities and bad practices and customs in the countryside. As Mao Zedong put it at the time, &quot;In force and momentum the attack is tempestuous.... [T]he popular slogan ‘All power to the peasant associations' has become a reality.&quot;'0 In Hubei, the total membership of the peasant associations swelled to 200,000 by November. In Jiangxi, it reached 50,000 by October. A great rural revolution, unparalleled in Chinese history, was beginning to develop in these two provinces as well. Mao Zedong underlined its significance: &quot;[T]he national revolution requires a great change in the countryside. The Revolution of 1911 did not bring about this change, hence its failure. This change is now taking place, and it is an important factor for the completion of the revolution.&quot;11 As the great rural revolution unfolded, the urban workers' movement also surged forward. In the autumn of 1926 federations of trade unions were formed in Hunan and Hubei. By the following January they had a total of 700,000 members. In Wuhan, union membership had risen tenfold, from about 10,000 before the Northern Expedition to 100,000. Trade unions were also formed in many counties. Shortly after this, a federation of trade unions was established in Jiangxi Province. Following the example of the Guangzhou-Hong Kong Strike Committee, the trade unions in Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi all formed armed workers' picket corps. In Changsha, Wuhan, Jiujiang and other cities, the workers organized large-scale strikes, demanding higher wages, shorter working hours and better working conditions, and opposing feudal overseers and the indentured labour system under which the workers were exploited by both capitalists and contractors. Most of these struggles were successful. However, in certain cities, particularly Wuhan, there was some &quot;Left&quot; deviation in the labour movement. Some workers and shop assistants demanded wages that were too high and hours that were too short, leaving certain middle- and small-scale industrialists and merchants no profits. Furthermore, some workers took excessive actions against such employers. As the revolution swept over Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi in the South, it also made headway in the North. Under the leadership of the Party, the people struggled to overthrow the Fcngtian warlords and topple Duan Qirui, chief of the Anhui warlords. Major victories were also achieved in the mass struggle against imperialism, in January 1927 British sailors killed or wounded several Chinese civilians in Hankou and Jiujiang. Under the leadership of Communist Party members, including Liu Shaoqi and Li Lisan, workers and other residents of Wuhan responded by entering and occupying the British concession in Hankou, while the National Revolutionary Army's Second Independent Division took over the British concession in Jiujiang. On February 9 the Foreign Ministry of the National Government signed an agreement with the British government by which China recovered the two concessions. The CPC Central Committee Falls Behind the Events While the mass movements of the workers and peasants were gaining momentum in Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi provinces, the leading bodies of the Central Committee of the CPC stayed in Shanghai, far from the centre of the revolutionary storm. They lagged far behind revolutionary developments in their understanding and action. At the time, it was important to launch mass movements to support the Northern Expedition, but basically it was the army that fought the war. The Party leadership made a major mistake. As Mao Zedong wrote a decade later, &quot;During the Northern Expedition it neglected to win over the army but laid one-sided stress on the mass movement....&quot;12 Before the Northern Expedition began, Soviet adviser Galen 85 asked the CPC Central Committee, through Zhou Enlai, to resolve the political question of whether the Communists should support or weaken Chiang Kai-shek in the course of the expedition. Chen Duxiu had Zhang Guotao hold a meeting on the question, but there was no real discussion. At the meeting Zhang Guotao uttered only one sentence: &quot;Our Party's policy during the Northern Expedition is to both support and oppose Chiang Kaishek.&quot; Accordingly, for a long time the Party's policy remained unclear, and objectively this helped strengthen Chiang's position. As the Northern Expedition progressed, Chiang tightened his grip on the military and on political power. The Communists should have, and could have, taken advantage of the favourable situation to control some military units and local organs of political power. This would have made it possible to cope with any eventualities. But with Chen Duxiu as general secretary, the Central Committee did not allow such a course of action. It sent a letter to the members of the Hubei Regional Party Committee instructing them that &quot;From now on, we must use our manpower exclusively in mass work; we must never participate in government work.&quot;13 Later, the Central Committee criticized the Hubei Regional Party Committee for allowing Dong Biwu to participate in the Hubei provincial government and asked those Party members who had participated in the Jiangxi provisional provincial government, including Li Fuchun and Lin Zuhan, to leave their posts. It ordered Party members who were magistrates in Jiujiang, Yongxiu and other counties in Jiangxi to resign or be expelled from the Party. It also sent a letter to Liu Bojian, deputy director of the political department of the Combined Forces of the National Army, asking him to see that all Party members and Youth League members serving as Party representatives in the Combined Forces devoted their attention to political propaganda and did not interfere in military and administrative matters.14 Chen Duxiu believed that adopting a concessionary policy would make it clear that the Communists were not scheming to seize power and would case Chiang Kai-shek's concerns. This, in turn, would prevent a rupture between the KMT and the CPC. But Chiang did not slacken his attempt to split the two parties, and when he suddenly launched a full-scale assault on the CPC, the Central Committee was unprepared and unable to organize a forceful resistance. This was a bitter and tragic lesson.<br /> <br /> === Before and After the Coup of April 12, 1927 ===<br /> The split in the southern revolutionary camp became increasingly apparent after its decisive victory in Jiangxi in November 1926. In the autumn of 1926 the Northern Expeditionary Army had won victories in Hunan and Hubei, but Sun Chuanfang continued to menace its flanks. Sun's forces were more powerful than Wu Peifu's. If they entered Hunan from Jiangxi, the Northern Expeditionary Army might find itself in the dangerous position of being cut off from its rear areas. At the same time, however, actual control over the military forces in Hunan and Hubei was already in the hands of General Tang Shengzhi, and the worker and peasant movements were rapidly expanding there. If Chiang Kai-shek were defeated in Jiangxi, it would be hard for him to survive. Under these circumstances, Chiang had no choice but to proceed cautiously in dealing with the relations between the KMT and the CPC. After Sun Chuanfang's main force was defeated in Jiangxi, however, the situation changed drastically. Chiang, who was stationed at Nanchang, was aware that this was not only a victory in Jiangxi but also the prelude to victory throughout the Southeast. The political and military situation in southern China had totally changed. Reactionary Forces at Home and Abroad Gather Around Chiang Kai-shek At this time, the attitude of the imperialist powers toward Chiang Kai-shek underwent a subtle change. They had not expected that the Northern warlords would collapse so quickly. Having weathered the crisis of post World War I and entered a 87 period of relative stability, they were prepared to intervene in the Chinese revolution. The British, centred in the rich Yangtze valley, had the most special privileges. Not long after the Northern Expeditionary Army entered Hubei, British warships provoked a series of incidents, using them as a pretext to shell the county seat of Wanxian in Sichuan Province on the upper Yangtze. More than a thousand soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded in the Wanxian massacre. Sixty-three foreign warships were stationed on the Yangtze River, and more than twenty thousand foreign troops were mustered in Shanghai. Combined with the international business community and police force, the total number of foreigners in Shanghai was over 30,000. The foreign powers plotted to use violence and threats to prevent the continued advance of the Chinese revolution. At the same time, they saw that the fall of the Northern warlords was already inevitable and intensified their efforts to split the revolutionary camp by supporting new agents. The first to do this were the Japanese. At the end of 1926, the director of the Treaties Bureau of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs went to Wuhan and then Nanchang, where he met with Chiang Kai-shek. He reported back to the Japanese government that there were sharp contradictions between Wuhan and Nanchang and that in the future the rifts would inevitably become more apparent. In January 1927 Chiang met with the Japanese consul in Jiujiang, where he stated clearly that far from planning to abolish the unequal treaties that China had been forced to sign with the imperialist powers after the Opium War of 1840, he would respect them to the greatest possible extent. He also promised to recognize foreign loans to China and to repay them within the specified time. In short, he assured the consul that the special privileges enjoyed by foreigners in China would be completely protected. Thus, the imperialist powers began to view Chiang Kai-shek as the leader of the &quot;moderate&quot; faction within the Kuomintang. They began to court him, maintaining that he and his group were the only forces that could prevent the Communists from controlling the vast area south of the Yangtze River. As the political and military situation was increasingly favourable to the South, many of the military forces formerly loyal to the Northern warlords or to local warlords were incorporated into Chiang's. Thus his strength increased rapidly. Politicians and bureaucrats also came from the North to work for Chiang. One of them was Huang Fu, who had close personal ties to him. When Huang Fu came through Shanghai on his way south, he went to see the vice president of the Bank of China, Zhang Gongquan, who promised him that Chiang would be permitted to overdraw his account by one million yuan. When this incident became known, it gave rise to the popular saying, &quot;In the military there is the Northern Expedition, while in politics there is the Southern Expedition.&quot; Against this background, Chiang Kai-shek's anti-Communist stand became more and more evident. Suddenly, he proposed moving the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee and the National Government from Guangzhou to Nanchang, where the headquarters of the Northern Expeditionary Army was located. This would place them under his direct control. On February 21, 1927, he publicly announced his anti-Communist position in a speech at the Nanchang headquarters. He proclaimed himself the &quot;leader of the Chinese revolution&quot; and stated that &quot;when Communist Party members do something wrong or behave improperly, I have the responsibility and the power to intervene and punish them.&quot; He began to openly suppress the revolutionary forces of the workers and peasants. On March 6 he ordered the New First Division of the National Revolutionary Army, stationed in Jiangxi, to trap and kill Chen Zanxian, a Communist Party member who was the chairman of the Ganzhou Federation of Trade Unions and vice-chairman of the Jiangxi Provincial Federation of Trade Unions. During March 10-17, the 2nd Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang held its 3rd Plenary Session in Wuhan. Because several KMT leaders in Wuhan did not want Chiang Kai-shek to exercise dictatorial rule, participants at this session rejected his proposal to move the capital to Nanchang. They adopted resolutions reaffirming Sun Yat-sen's Three Great Policies, strengthening the party's authority and opposing military dictatorship. 89 Furthermore, by changing the system of leadership, they in effect dismissed Chiang Kai-shek from the chairmanship of the Standing Committee of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee. However, because Chiang controlled most of the military power, the resolution strengthening the party's authority had no effect. Chiang accelerated his anti-Communist activities. Having gone to Jiujiang from Nanchang on March 16, he instigated thugs from the Green Band and the Red Band—secret, Mafia-style organizations—to destroy the Jiujiang KMT headquarters and the offices of the city's Federation of Trade Unions, in which Leftwingers constituted a majority. Three people were killed at the KMT headquarters, and at the federation one was killed and six were injured. Chiang then took a warship east to Anqing. On March 23, at his instigation, a gang of ruffians there destroyed the Anhui KMT headquarters, which was dominated by Leftwingers, and the offices of the Federation of Trade Unions and of the peasant association. Again, many people were wounded. The thugs proudly said: &quot;We have made all the arrangements with our leader. We will attack Red elements everywhere we go.&quot; On April 9 the deputy director of the National Revolutionary Army's general political department, Guo Moruo, who had investigated the violence in Anqing and Jiujiang, published a long article entitled &quot;Look at Today's Chiang Kai-shek.&quot; After reviewing the facts, he wrote, &quot;Chiang Kai-shek is no longer the commander-in-chief of our National Revolutionary Army. He is the central force behind a broad spectrum of counterrevolutionaries, including thugs and ruffians, local tyrants and evil gentry, corrupt officials and traitorous warlords.... Inside the KMT he is more dangerous than enemies outside it.&quot;15 It was only a matter of time before the Chiang clique would openly betray the revolution. Different Opinions Within the Communist Party of China There were two different opinions within the CPC as to how the Party should respond to the grave split that might occur in the revolutionary camp at any time. The members of the Guangdong Regional Party Committee had recognized the impending danger earlier. In November 1926 they had submitted a political report to the Central Committee of the CPC in which they pointed out that there could be no hope of long-term cooperation with the new warlords. Therefore, they advised: &quot;We should prepare our forces, organize the masses and consolidate power of the people.... We should try to avoid pointless struggle and prevent the eruption of large-scale struggle (of course, that is not to say we should avoid struggle completely). At the same time, we should do everything possible to prepare all our forces for a great rebellion, and wc should have such great forces. In the event of a large-scale struggle, they said, they hoped to be victorious.&quot;16 On December 11 Zhou Enlai published an article entitled &quot;The Communist Party of China in the Present Political Struggle,&quot; in which he stated explicitly: &quot;For if there were conflicts, they would be conflicts between the masses of revolutionary workers and peasants and a bourgeoisie that was compromising with the imperialist enemies; if there were a split, it would be a split between an alliance of the revolutionary Left wing of the Kuomintang and the Communists on the one hand and the Right wing that was abandoning the revolution on the other.&quot;17 He also warned that the CPC should prepare, mentally and in practical work, for the divisive activities of the new Right-wingers within the KMT. But the Central Committee of the CPC saw this view as &quot;a major, dangerous, and essential error,&quot; one that could &quot;lead to terrible repercussions.&quot;18 It demanded that this error be corrected. It was at this crucial juncture that, on December 13, 1926, the Central Committee convened a special meeting. In his political report, Chen Duxiu stated at the outset: &quot;The important issue in the political report to be addressed at this meeting is still the Kuomintang. Since the military victory in Jiangxi, there have been many new changes in the relationship between the CPC and the KMT, and we need to discuss that question again.&quot; The resolution adopted by the meeting, in line with Chen Duxiu's report, said: 91 &quot;Of all the dangerous tendencies, the most serious is that as the mass movements gain momentum, the people tend toward the ‘Left' while the military regime, terrified of the mass movements, ends towards the Right. If these ‘Left' and Right tendencies continue to develop, the united front will ultimately rupture, and that will endanger the entire national revolutionary movement.&quot; In other words, the Central Committee declared that both the Right tendencies of the military regime and the &quot;Left&quot; tendencies of the mass movements should be prevented. But the first half of the statement was merely empty talk. There was certainly no practical, effective method of countering the rightward swing of Chiang's forces. In fact, the only course of action available was to prevent the &quot;Left&quot; tendencies in the mass movements, that is, to suppress the vigorously expanding workers' and peasants' movements. At a time when the Kuomintang new Right-wingers had already resolved to oppose the Communists and cause a rupture between the KMT and the CPC, and when almost all military and political power was concentrated in their hands, the major force that the Communist Party could rely on was the workers and peasants. If the CPC abandoned the policy of mobilizing and organizing the masses into an effective force, not only would it be unable to counter a coup staged by the new Right wing of the KMT, but it would be unable even to control the vacillations of the upper petty bourgeoisie. Thus, at this special meeting the CPC Central Committee failed to resolve the question of how the Party was to survive and persist in the struggle when faced with imminent danger. Worse, it adopted a mistaken policy toward the mass movements, which led to even more serious consequences. After the meeting, the capitulationist policy of stifling the workers' and peasants' movements in order to appease the Right wing of the KMT began to be carried out in the Party's practical work. Chen Duxiu himself had a talk with the secretary of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee, ordering him to put a stop to the &quot;extreme&quot; actions of the peasants. Some Party members opposed this Right capitulationist error. From January 4 to February 5, 1927, Mao Zedong spent thirtytwo days investigating the peasant movement in Hunan. In the report he submitted to the Central Committee of the CPC, he wrote: &quot;The masses are now shifting to the Left. Our Party has in many respects indicated that it is out of step with the revolutionary mood of the masses. The Kuomintang is even further out of step. This is something we should pay close attention to.&quot; In March, an article entitled &quot;Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan&quot; began to be published in the weekly magazine Soldier. In this report, Mao sharply rejected the skepticism and criticisms heaped on the peasant movement from both inside and outside the Party. He explained the great significance of the revolution in rural areas and pointed out that all revolutionary comrades ought to march at the head of the peasants and lead them, not trail behind them, gesticulating and criticizing or worse, stand in their way and oppose them. He emphasized that the Party should rely on the poor peasants, who were the &quot;vanguard of the revolution&quot; and should unite also with the middle peasants and other forces that could be won over. The Party should work to establish peasant associations and peasant armed forces so that the associations could take all power in the countryside. Then they should reduce rent for land and interest on loans and redistribute the land, and so on. This report was the most important Marxist document of the Communist Party of China on leading the peasant movement. In February, Qu Qiubai wrote an article entitled &quot;A Controversy over the Chinese Revolution,&quot; in which he criticized the Right capitulationist mistakes that had emerged in the Party, and emphasized the need for the Chinese revolution to be led by the proletariat. At this time. Sun Chuanfang's forces had already collapsed, and Chiang Kai-shek had already essentially taken possession of the rich regions of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai. On March 21, when the Northern Expeditionary Army was advancing from Zhejiang to the suburbs of Shanghai, the workers in Shanghai, led by a special committee that included Chen Duxiu, Luo Yinong, Zhou Enlai and Zhao Shiyan, organized a general strike and then staged an armed uprising. (The Shanghai workers had already launched two armed uprisings, both of which had ended in failure because of incomplete preparations and bad timing.) After more 93 than thirty hours of fighting, they defeated the troops of the Northern warlords stationed in Shanghai and occupied all districts of the city except the foreign concessions. This was a heroic feat of the working class during the period of the Great Revolution. It was only after the victorious workers had occupied Shanghai that the Northern Expeditionary Army, which had been stationed in the southern suburbs of Shanghai, finally entered the city under the command of Bai Chongxi. Three days later, on March 24, the Sixth and Second Armies of the National Revolutionary Army moved east from Anhui Province and occupied the city of Nanjing. In the afternoon of the same day, British and American warships cruising on the Yangtze River, on pretext of protecting their nationals, suddenly bombarded Nanjing, killing and wounding many Chinese soldiers and civilians. The Nanjing Incident hastened Chiang Kai-shek's decision to ally himself with the imperialist forces. The Anti-Communist Coup of April 12, 1927 Chiang Kai-shek had resolved to oppose the Communists. But if he was to make a major move against them, he would have to have the support of the imperialist powers and financial assistance from the Zhejiang and Jiangsu plutocrats. He would also need to rely on the gangs of Shanghai thugs. Having hurried from Anhui to Shanghai by warship on March 26, Chiang held a series of secret meetings with the imperialists, plutocrats and gang leaders. He sent representatives to the Shanghai consulates of the five countries involved in the Nanjing Incident (Britain, the United States, France, Japan and Italy), making an apology and telling them that the incident would be resolved immediately, that the workers' armed forces in Shanghai would be disarmed and that action would be taken to foil any attempt to recover the foreign concessions in Shanghai by armed force and rebellion. The imperialists urged him to act quickly and decisively. The Jiangsu and Zhejiang tycoons gave him generous financial support totalling several million yuan. Huang Jinrong, Du Yuesheng and other Shanghai gang leaders promised to use the thugs of the Green Band and Red Band to disarm the worker's armed picket corps on his behalf. Chiang also transferred all military units not completely under his control away from Shanghai and brought his own troops into the Shanghai-Nanjing area. In early April he held a secret meeting in Shanghai with Li Zongren, Bai Chongxi, Huang Shaohong, Li Jishen, Zhang Jingjiang, Wu Zhihui, Li Shizeng and other KMT right-wingers and pro-Chiang warlords, at which they decided to &quot;purge the party&quot; by force, thus completing Chiang's preparations for a surprise attack on the Communists. The Central Committee of the CPC and the Shanghai Regional Party Committee were aware of some of Chiang Kai-shek's plot, and tried to strengthen the workers' picket corps to secure the gains of the revolution. But at that time the Comintern's hopes still rested with Chiang Kai-shek, and it refused to support a split with him. In late March Chen Duxiu sent a letter to the Shanghai Regional Party Committee in which he declared that they should &quot;stop opposing Chiang.&quot;19 On April 1 Wang Jingwei returned to Shanghai from overseas and soon afterward had secret talks with Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang advocated the immediate separation of the Communist Party from the KMT. Concerned that such a separation would enable Chiang to arrogate too much power to himself, Wang proposed that a plenary session of the Central Executive Committee of the KMT be called to discuss his proposal. He also suggested that Chen Duxiu be notified of the session and asked to order Communist Party members nationwide to &quot;temporarily suspend their activities and await the decision of the session.&quot; On April 5 Chen Duxiu and Wang Jingwei released a joint declaration dismissing as rumours the assertions that the &quot;KMT leaders would expel the CPC and crack down on the trade unions and the workers' picket corps&quot; and asking everyone to &quot;forget their suspicions, ignore the rumours, respect each other and sincerely discuss all their concerns.&quot; This declaration led some Communist Party members to relax their vigilance, thinking that the tension had been dissipated. After this, Chen Duxiu and Wang Jingwei left for Wuhan together. The Central Commit 95 tee of the CPC also moved its headquarters from Shanghai to Wuhan. A few days later, Chiang Kai-shek suddenly staged a counterrevolutionary coup in Shanghai. At dawn on April 12, a large number of well-prepared, well-armed thugs of the Green Band and the Red Band rushed out of the foreign concessions and launched a surprise attack on the workers' picket corps stationed at the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions and elsewhere. The pickets immediately rose to resist them. At this time, the Twentysixth Army of the National Revolutionary Army (the former forces of the warlord Sun Chuanfang, which had been reorganized by Chiang) arrived, claiming that they were going to mediate and would first disarm the thugs. The workers' pickets believed this lie and opened the gates. Caught completely unprepared, they were forced to hand over their arms. Some of the workers resisted, but because of the great disparity in numbers, they were defeated. Wang Shouhua, a Communist Party member who was chairman of the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions, had been tricked and murdered by Du Yuesheng the day before. On the morning of April 13, over 100,000 Shanghai workers and other citizens held a mass rally and a protest march, demanding the release of those who had been arrested and the return of the weapons of the workers' picket corps. When the marchers reached Baoshan Road, a unit of the Twenty-sixth Army, lying in ambush, suddenly opened fire on the crowd, killing more than one hundred people and wounding countless others. After the coup of April 12 in Shanghai, in the name of &quot;purging the party&quot; large numbers of Communists and other revolutionary people were killed in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi. In Guangdong alone, more than 2,000 people were arrested and executed, including outstanding Communist Party members such as Xiao Chunti and Xiong Xiong. On April 18, Chiang Kai-shek established in Nanjing a &quot;National Government&quot; representing the interests of the big landlord class and the big bourgeoisie, in opposition to the National Government in Wuhan. Yan Xishan, the warlord of Shanxi, and Liu Xiang, the warlord of Sichuan, also began to &quot;purge the party&quot; in their domains and expressed their support for the Nanjing government. At the same time, the Fengtian warlord, Zhang Zuolin, executed a large number of Communists and other revolutionary people in northern China. On April 28 Li Dazhao, one of the founders of the Communist Party of China, was hanged in Beijing. The Great Revolution suffered a major setback. The counter-revolutionary coup of April 12 was proof that Chiang Kai-shek had already become the rallying point for the anti-Communist forces dependent on the imperialists and consisting of big landlords and the big bourgeoisie. Outwardly, however, he continued to espouse bourgeois reformism in order to deceive the public. Chiang Kai-shek's counter-revolutionary coup won the support of the big bourgeoisie and of certain individuals from the upper strata of the national bourgeoisie. The Shanghai Federation of Commerce sent a telegram expressing its &quot;backing for the government authorities' effort to purge the party.&quot; Individual representatives of the bourgeoisie were drawn to Nanjing to participate in the government and became ornaments of the counterrevolutionary military dictatorship of the big landlord class and the big bourgeoisie. The angry people denounced the coup staged by the Chiang Kai-shek clique. On April 14 seven prominent persons in Shanghai, including Hu Yuzhi, Zheng Zhcnduo and Wu Juenong, signed a letter sharply criticizing the military brutality. In Wuhan, Changsha and other cities, rallies of several hundred thousand people were held to express opposition to the imperialists and denounce Chiang. On April 20 the Central Committee of the CPC issued a delcaration on Chiang's massacre of the people, exposing him as the &quot;public enemy of the national revolution&quot; and calling on the revolutionary people to overthrow the new warlords and the military dictatorship. On April 22, thirty-nine members and alternate members of the KMT Central Executive Committee, and its Central Supervisory Committee, including Soong Ching Ling, Deng Yanda, He Xiangning, Tan Pingshan, Wu Yuzhang, Lin Zuhan and Mao Zedong, signed an open 97 telegram denouncing Chiang. &quot;If,&quot; they wrote, &quot;our people and comrades, especially those in the military, do not want the revolution to be destroyed by Chiang, they must act in accordance with the orders of the Central Executive Committee and overthrow this traitor to Sun Yat-sen, the party and the people. All forces of the National Revolutionary Army should erase this deep disgrace.&quot;20 At this time, the KMT was still cooperating with the CPC m Wuhan. The KMT leadership there, including Wang Jingwei, did not wish to see all power in Chiang's hands. On April 17, the Central Executive Committee of the KMT in Wuhan issued an order expelling Chiang from the party and stripping him of all posts.<br /> <br /> === The Failure of the Great Revolution ===<br /> After the coup of April 12, the political situation in China underwent a fundamental change. There were now three centres of power: two counter-revolutionary governments—one in Beijing led by Zhang Zuolin and one in Nanjing led by Chiang Kai-shek—and one revolutionary government—the National Government in Wuhan, which still maintained cooperation between the KMT and the CPC. The Wuhan National Government had direct control over the provinces of Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi. It faced threats from two directions: the new warlord Chiang Kai-shek to the east and the old warlord Zhang Zuolin to the north. After the armies of Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang were defeated, Zhang Zuolin had transferred his troops south. His main force was stationed along the Beijing-Hankou Railway and controlled Henan, thus posing a major threat to the Wuhan government. Also, the situation within the Wuhan government was extremely complex. Wang Jingwei, who had recently arrived in Wuhan and was acting under the pretence of opposing Chiang, quickly assumed leading positions in the Central Executive Committee of the KMT and in the National Government. At this time, he was posing as a leader of the Left wing. He called on those who wanted to participate in revolution to come to the Left and those who did not to go away at once. At heart, however, he was eager to expel the Communists; the time, he wrote, was not yet right, but &quot;people must make the necessary preparations.&quot;21 Wang Jingwei joined forces with Tang Shengzhi, who controlled the KMT troops in the area of Wuhan. Together they began to restrict the activities of the workers' and peasants' movements, manoeuvred to take control of the situation in Wuhan and waited for the right moment to betray the revolution. After moving to Wuhan, the CPC Central Committee continued to cooperate with Wang Jingwei's faction of the Kuomintang. The tasks the Communists faced were even more complex than before. How should they deal with their enemies outside the Wuhan government? How should they deal with their unreliable allies within the government? Should they and could they prepare for the possibility of another sudden change? These were the problems the Party had to consider. The 5th National Congress of the Party Convened at a Critical Moment Two heated disputes arose within the Party at this time: one was about &quot;deepening vs. broadening,&quot; the other about &quot;the eastern expedition vs. the northern expedition.&quot; &quot;Deepening&quot; meant initiating an agrarian revolution in Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi provinces in order to consolidate the existing revolutionary base areas and then expand them. &quot;Broadening&quot; meant expanding into other areas and taking Beijing before launching an agrarian revolution. Advocates of an eastern expedition supported a punitive expedition against Chiang, while advocates of a northern expedition supported a military campaign against the troops of the Fengtian warlords in Henan. These disputes were resolved in favour of a plan put forward by Borodin and Chen Duxiu, which called for a northern expediCH AFTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 99 tion against the Fengtian warlords. This was in accord with the intentions of Wang Jingwei's National Government in Wuhan. There were four reasons that Borodin and Chen Duxiu proposed this plan. First, the Comintern and the CPC Central Committee naively trusted the combined forces of the National Army commanded by Feng Yuxiang, who at the time was preparing to move his troops from Shaanxi east into Henan. They believed that he was a reliable ally and that by cooperating with him in a punitive expedition against the Fengtian warlords and joining forces at Zhengzhou, capital of Henan Province, they could build a solid base in the Northwest, open up an international route between China and the Soviet Union and then advance to the east. Second, they believed that the imperialist powers were too strong in the Southeast. They feared that if they launched an eastern expedition immediately, they would come into direct conflict with the imperialists and would surely be defeated. Third, since the area of Wuhan was surrounded on four sides by enemy forces, commerce and banking could not function normally and goods were in short supply. Borodin and Chen believed that if they did not fight their way out, they would be unable to surmount the economic difficulties. Outward expansion, they thought, was the key to survival. Fourth, they believed that since the leaders of the National Government in Wuhan represented the upper petty bourgeoisie, their support for the revolution tended to waver. If the Communists initiated an agrarian revolution, it would drive them to abandon the revolution and make a compromise with Chiang Kai-shek. This line of reasoning was known at the time as the &quot;Northwest doctrine.&quot; The advocates of the &quot;Northwest doctrine&quot; were afraid to launch a thoroughgoing agrarian revolution and arm the masses of workers and peasants. Instead, they tried to keep the revolution within the limits imposed by Wang Jingwei so as to stabilize the Kuomintang government in Wuhan. It was just as Zhou Enlai later analysed it: &quot;The central idea of the ‘go north' group was to steer clear of the peasant movement in Hunan and Hubei....&quot;22 Those who supported this plan thus expressed their lack of faith in the people's forces and their fear of the enemy. They placed their hopes primarily on an alliance with Feng Yuxiang and not on the mobilization of the workers and peasants. On April 19 the National Government in Wuhan held a meeting and pledged to continue the Northern Expedition. Its main army marched north into Henan. Thus, there would be no eastern expedition against Chiang and no thoroughgoing agrarian revolution. At this critical moment in the Chinese revolution, the Communist Party held its 5th National Congress in Wuhan. There were now many more Party members than before the Northern Expedition: nearly 58,000. The 5th National Party Congress was convened on April 27, 1927, just two weeks after the coup of April 12. The entire Party expected this congress to make a sober assessment of the situation and to answer the most pressing question: how to save the revolution. It did not do so. The congress declared that although the bourgeoisie had already betrayed the revolution, the revolution had entered the stage of a democratic dictatorship of the workers, peasants and petty bourgeoisie. The Party, it said, should use a programme of agrarian revolution and democratic government to mobilize the peasants and the petty bourgeois; it should make the revolution skip over the capitalist stage of development. But statements like that were only empty talk, far removed from the actual situation of the time. The congress viewed Chiang's betrayal of the revolution as a betrayal by the national bourgeoisie as a whole. This view was unrealistic and later led to ultra-Left actions against the bourgeoisie. It saw Wang Jingwei as a representative of the petty bourgeoisie and his Wuhan government as a reliable ally an alliance of the workers, peasants and petty bourgeois. This misconception led to the adoption of Right concessionary policies towards Wang and the Wuhan government. Furthermore, because of it, the Party did not anticipate their possible betrayal and consequently failed to prepare for it. The proposal for agrarian revolution was sound, but the emphasis on winning the support of the petty bourgeoisie—or, in effect, the support of Wang Jingwei and his clique—rendered it meaningless. At the congress there was no talk of expanding revolutionary 101 troops directly under the leadership of the CPC. Under these dangerous circumstances, when the entire Party expected emergency measures to save the revolution, talk of &quot;skipping over the capitalist stage of development&quot; was simply irrelevant and unrealistic. The congress criticized the Right opportunist errors, but proposed no measures to correct them. Moreover, it reelected Chen Duxiu general secretary. As a result, while the CPC hovered on the brink of disaster, the congress failed to determine an appropriate course of action and provide powerful leadership for the Party. Furthermore, having let this opportunity slip, it watched passively as the overall situation continued to deteriorate. The Right Capitulationism of the CPC Central Committee After the 5th National Party Congress, the situation in the area under the jurisdiction of the National Government in Wuhan became increasingly critical. Because this area was surrounded and blockaded by reactionary forces, business stagnated, factories closed, everyday necessities became extremely scarce, prices skyrocketed and currency depreciated. The government ran up a huge deficit. Many workers and shop assistants lost their jobs. Local tyrants, evil gentry and reactionary officers fished in the troubled waters. Wang Jingwei and his government increasingly spoke and acted in ways destructive to the workers' and peasants' movements. On May 13, 1927, Xia Douyin, commander of the Fourteenth Independent Division of the National Revolutionary Army, stationed in Yichang, sent an open telegram denouncing the Wuhan government. On the 17th, he attacked Zhifang, near Wuchang. The attack was repulsed by Ye Ting, commander of the Wuchang garrison. On May 21 Xu Kexiang, commander of the 33rd Regiment of the National Revolutionary Army's 35th Army, which had been reorganized from warlord troops, staged a counter-revolutionary coup in Changsha. His troops disarmed the workers' pickets and arrested and killed more than one hundred Communists and other revolutionaries. The city of Changsha was overwhelmed by White terror. On June 6 Zhu Peide, the governor of Jiangxi Province and commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army's Fifth Front Army, expelled a large number of Communists and Kuomintang Leftwingers from the province. He began to close down revolutionary organizations and to arrest leaders of the workers' and peasants' movements. Under these circumstances, Borodin and Chen Duxiu, among others, still pinned their hopes on the junction of the National Revolutionary Army carrying on the Northern Expedition and Feng Yuxiang's troops. The National Revolutionary Army's troops marching north fought bloody battles, suffering 14,000 casualties. (The Fourth and Eleventh Armies, which had the most Communists, lost the most men, including the talented commander and Party member Jiang Xianyun.) The National Revolutionary Army routed the Fengtian warlords' main force in Henan, enabling Feng Yuxiang's troops, who had marched east through Tongguan, to capture Zhengzhou on May 31. From June 10 to 12, the leaders of the Wuhan National Government, including Wang Jingwei, Tan Yankai and Sun Ke, held talks with Feng Yuxiang in Zhengzhou. They decided to give Feng complete military and political control in Henan and the Northwest and to send the Northern Expeditionary Army back to Wuhan. Feng's political attitude had changed substantially: he now proposed putting an end to the conflict between the Wuhan and Nanjing governments. On June 20 he went to Xuzhou to hold talks with Chiang Kai-shek and openly sided with him. After this he sent a telegram to the National Government in Wuhan demanding that Borodin be removed from his post and sent back to the Soviet Union. He further demanded that all Communist Party members and large numbers of political officers in the combined forces of the National Revolutionary Army be dismissed. Consequently, the &quot;Northwest doctrine&quot; advocated by Borodin and Chen Duxiu came to nothing, and the Wang Jingwei clique intensified its anti-Communist activities. The situation was growing more ominous. Chen Duxiu and the Soviet advisers, lacking confidence and afraid of provoking Wang Jingwei and Tang Shengzhi, were unable to offer any practical 103 solutions. They continued to pursue a concessionary policy, believing that in this way they could avoid providing Wang and Tang with further pretexts for a split. They cancelled the plan to stage an armed uprising in Hunan and disbanded the workers' picket corps in Wuhan. These actions did nothing to stabilize the National Government in Wuhan and only encouraged further displays of arrogance by the reactionary forces. A.B. Bakulin, a Soviet adviser, wrote in his diary: &quot;Wuhan is becoming more and more like Nanjing.&quot;23 A counter-revolutionary coup in Wuhan was becoming increasingly likely. At this critical juncture, the Executive Committee of the Communist International adopted a resolution on China, and issued a directive (known as the &quot;May Directive&quot;) to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. This directive urged the CPC to transform the Kuomintang by encouraging large numbers of workers and peasants to join it; to turn the peasant associations into organs of village government and confiscate the land held by the landlords; and to organize an army of 70,000 men, of which 20,000 should be Communist Party members. Although the Comintern had made a series of errors in its advice to the Chinese revolutionaries, this particular directive correctly addressed the crucial question of the time: how to save the revolution. Of course, this is not to say that the revolutionaries could have easily achieved victory, but if the CPC had resolutely followed these recommendations, it would have been well prepared to struggle effectively against the Wang Jingwei clique and in a stronger position to confront the reactionaries in all eventualities. Thus it could have prevented a crushing defeat. However, the Central Committee of the CPC believed that it would be too difficult to accomplish the tasks proposed in the Comintern's &quot;May Directive,&quot; and it still hoped that at the last minute its capitulationist tactics would succeed in winning over the Wang Jingwei clique. Dissatisfaction with Chen Duxiu's Right capitulationist errors was growing within the Party. Ren Bishi, the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, wrote a letter criticizing Chen Duxiu. Chen Duxiu ripped the letter to shreds in front of him. On July 4 the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held an enlarged meeting at which Mao Zedong proposed that the peasant armed forces go to the mountains or join military units connected to the Party. &quot;Unless we preserve our own armed forces,&quot; he said, &quot;we shall be helpless to cope with emergencies.&quot; In mid-July, the Central Committee of the CPC was reorganized in accordance with an instruction of the Comintern Executive Committee. Its Provisional Standing Committee was now composed of Zhang Guotao, Li Weihan, Zhou Enlai, Li Lisan and Zhang Tailci. On July 13 the Central Committee issued a statement declaring that China had reached a critical moment when the revolution was at stake. It condemned the KMT Central Executive Committee and the National Government in Wuhan for &quot;recently and publicly preparing for a coup,&quot; for &quot;acting against the interests of the vast majority of the Chinese people and against the basic principles and policies of Dr. Sun Yat-sen&quot; and for &quot;destroying the national revolution.&quot; It therefore decided to recall all Communist Party members serving in the National Government. At the same time, it proclaimed that it would continue to support the revolutionary struggle against imperialism and feudalism and that it wished to continue to cooperate with revolutionary elements in the Kuomintang. Even though this announcement was released rather late, it helped heighten the revolutionary spirit within the Party. On July 14 Soong Ching Ling (Mme. Sun Yat-sen), a prominent representative of the left wing of the KMT, wrote a &quot;Statement Issued in Protest Against the Violation of Sun Yat-sen's Revolutionary Principles and Policies,&quot; which was later published in Hankou. In this statement she said: &quot;Sun Yat-sen's policies are clear. If leaders of the party [the KMT] do not carry them out consistently, then they are no longer Sun's true followers, and the Party is no longer a revolutionary party, but merely a tool in the hands of this or that militarist.&quot; &quot;Feeling thus,&quot; she declared, &quot;I must disassociate myself from active participation in the carrying out of these new policies of the party.&quot;24 On July 15 in Wuhan, Wang Jingwei called an enlarged meeting of the Standing Committee of the KMT Central Execu 105 tive Committee at which a formal decision was made to break off relations with the CPC. This action definitively ended the first period of cooperation between the KMT and the CPC and marked the failure of the Great Revolution of 1924-1927. Launched during the first period of cooperation between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang, the Great Revolution was an unprecedented revolutionary movement in which workers and peasants played the major role. Essentially, it overthrew the rule of the hated Northern warlords and struck heavy blows against the imperialist and feudal forces. Through this movement people came to have their first understanding of the meaning of revolution. Even though it failed, it exerted an enduring influence. It marked a new starting point for subsequent advances in the Chinese revolution. There were two reasons for the failure of the Great Revolution. First, at that time the strength and political experience of the combined imperialist and feudal forces far surpassed those of the revolutionary camp. Furthermore, the Kuomintang suddenly betrayed the revolution and launched a surprise attack on the Communist Party and on the workers' and peasants' movements under its leadership. Second, the CPC Central Committee, represented by Chen Duxiu, committed Right capitulationist errors. During the early stages of the Great Revolution, the Party's line was by and large correct. Party members, both cadres and rank and file, all played active roles and as a result achieved great successes. However, the Party was still immature and inexperienced and did not fully understand either Chinese history and society or the special characteristics and laws of the Chinese revolution. Moreover, it still lacked a deep understanding of Marxist-Leninist theory and of the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution. Therefore, its leading bodies vacillated on certain key questions, and at the later stage of the Great Revolution they failed to lead the Party in taking appropriate action. Instead, they were tricked by the counter-revolutionary forces, and this led to the failure of the Great Revolution. As a branch of the Communist International, the Communist Party of China received direct guidance from it. While actively contributing to the Great Revolution, the Comintern and its representatives in China ultimately failed to understand the actual conditions in China. Some of their ideas were correct, but others were wrong, and these were partly responsible for the Right capitulationist errors made by the leadership of the CPC. It was difficult for the immature Chinese Party to reject the mistaken guidance of the Comintern. Although the Great Revolution failed, it still had enormous significance. Through this revolution, the anti-imperialist, antifeudal programme put forward by the CPC came to be resoundingly supported by the masses. The Party rapidly spread its political influence among the people and greatly expanded its organizations. Millions upon millions of workers and peasants were organized under the leadership of the Party, and the Party began to control part of the troops. In addition, the ordeals the Party went through during this period served to temper it, and its victories and defeats provided it with valuable experience. All of this helped to prepare the ground for the next stage, when, with the leadership of the Party, the Chinese people would push their struggle to a higher plane.<br /> <br /> == The Agrarian Revolution ==<br /> <br /> === The Revolution at a Low Ebb and Armed Resistance by the Communists ===<br /> Following the betrayal of the revolution by Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei, the political situation in China took a sharp turn for the worse. The Great Revolution came to a premature end. The southern part of the country, where the revolutionary movement had been vigorous, descended into bloodshed. The Communist Party of China was subjected to the severest test since its founding. According to incomplete statistics provided by the 6th National Congress of the Party, during the period from March 1927 to June 1928, some 310,000 people had been killed, of whom more than 26,000 were Parly members. Chen Yannian, Zhao Shiyan, Luo Yinong, Xiang Jingyu, Chen Qiaonian, Xia Minghan, Guo Liang and other respected Party activists who had been much loved by the people were killed by the Kuomintang reactionaries. Communist organizations had no choice but to go underground, and the Party suffered great losses. Many local Party organizations were broken up, and many members lost contact with the Party. Those without firm commitment quit the Party or the Youth League, some openly announcing their departure in the press and expressing their repentance for having joined, some even leading the way for enemy agents in their search for Communists. Party membership, which had reached nearly 60,000 at the height of the Great Revolution, dropped to 10,000. Those who remained in the Party were at a 109 loss what to do. Trade unions and peasant associations, which had thrived throughout the country, were outlawed or disbanded. Under the White terror, the worker-peasant movement sank to a low ebb. A great number of people took a middle course, constantly shifting their political allegiance. When the revolution was developing successfully, they would turn to the Left; when it suffered setbacks or was in decline, they would turn to the Right. In these dark days, although some political activists outside the Party and other persons of integrity persisted in their revolutionary stand and refused to side with the Kuomintang led by Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei, many of those taking the middle course distanced themselves from the Communist Party. Some of them were frightened by the KMT's bloody slaughter and had been driven to despair; others still had unrealistic hopes for the KMT, seeing it as a party that had a revolutionary history, that was still flying the banner of Sun Yal-sen and that was continuing the Northern Expedition. The stark reality was that the Chinese revolution was at a very low ebb. The counter-revolutionary forces far surpassed the revolutionary forces led by the Party, and the Party itself was in danger of disintegrating or of being wiped out. In this time of savage repression, when the future of the revolution seemed so bleak, when to be a revolutionary meant risking death, it was not easy to remain steadfast in one's belief and to carry on the struggle. Yet the Communist Party of China was indomitable. As Mao Zedong said more than ten years later, &quot;The Communist Party of China and the Chinese people were neither cowed nor conquered nor exterminated. They picked themselves up, wiped off the blood, buried their fallen comrades and went into battle again.&quot;1 Unlike those who left the Party in the time of danger, some staunch revolutionaries, including Peng Dehuai, He Long and Xu Teli, chose this moment to join it. Many workers and peasants rallied around the Party again and continued the fight. When the reactionaries hung Guo Liang's head at the gate of the city wall of Changsha, Lu Xun, a true friend of the Party, said, &quot;Revolutions have seldom been defeated by hanging a head.... It was precisely because there was darkness and no future that the revolution was begun.&quot;2 Faced with the reactionaries' policy of butchering all revolutionaries, the Communists had only one choice. If they were not simply to wait for death and allow the whole country to be plunged into darkness, they must hold high the revolutionary banner and carry out armed resistance. But the question remained: under such difficult circumstances, how was that to be done? The Nanchang Uprising, the August 7th Meeting, the Autumn Harvest Uprising and the Guangzhou Uprising The Nanchang Uprising represented the Party's first unequivocal reply. Because when the Great Revolution was forging ahead, the CPC Central Committee had failed to recognize the vital importance of controlling armed forces, the overwhelming majority of the troops in the South were in the hands of the Kuomintang. Those that the Party could control or influence were mainly among the Second Front Army of the Fourth Group Army led by Zhang Fakui of the Kuomintang, including the units under the command of He Long and Ye Ting, which at this time were stationed in northern Jiangxi Province. These forces attracted the attention of both the revolutionary and the counter-revolutionary sides. On July 15, 1927, the Wuhan government officially adopted the policy of &quot;separating from the Communists&quot; and immediately sent troops to encircle this area. Also Zhang Fakui declared that &quot;senior officers, like Ye Ting, who are Communists must withdraw from the army or leave the Communist Party.&quot; The situation had become so critical that the slightest hesitation would bring about the doom of the small revolutionary armed forces. Under these circumstances, the Central Committee of the CPC decided in mid-July to stage an armed uprising in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. A Front Committee was formed, headed by Zhou Enlai. On August 1 Zhou Etilai, He Long, Ye Ting, Zhu De and Liu Bocheng, leading twenty thousand troops of the Northern charter three the agrarian revolution in Expeditionary Army under the control or influence of the Party, declared an armed uprising in Nanchang. After four hours of fierce fighting, the insurgent forces took the city. Then, they promptly pulled out and headed for the Chaozhou-Santou area of Guangdong Province via southern Jiangxi and western Fujian, as planned. The purpose of this move was to join forces with the militant peasants of the Dongjiang area of Guangdong, which had a revolutionary tradition, so as to start the agrarian revolution. Then the plan was to march to Guangzhou, re-establish the Guangdong revolutionary base area, occupy an outlet to the sea to obtain assistance from the Communist International and continue with the Northern Expedition. By the end of September the revolutionary forces had occupied Chao'an County and Shantou City in Guangdong Province, and the main units had marched to Jieyang County and then westward to Tangken Town in the same province. Their numbers were now greatly reduced because of battlefield casualties, desertions and the fatigue of constant marching under a blazing summer sun. In early October the troops stationed in the Chaozhou-Santou area and those heading west were encircled, attacked and eventually defeated by a superior enemy force. Some of the remaining troops made their way to the Haifeng-Lufeng area, where they joined forces with the local armed peasants; others, led by Zhu De and Chen Yi, moved to southern Hunan, by way of southern Jiangxi and northern Guangdong, and started guerrilla warfare there. The Nanchang Uprising of August 1, 1927, marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the Communist Party of China. Zhou Enlai said later that the August 1st uprising led by the Communist Party had fired the first shot at the Kuomintang reactionaries and that overall, it had been a correct move. For millions of revolutionary people, after repeated defeats, this uprising was a torch held aloft in the darkness. I he people's armed forces under the leadership of the CPC were born during this uprising. However, there were important lessons to be learned trom the Nanchang Uprising. As Zhou Enlai put it, at that time the purpose of the armed uprising was not to go straight into the surrounding countryside, mobilize and arm the peasants, start the agrarian revolution and establish rural base areas. Rather, the plan was to go south to Guangdong, rely on foreign aid and attack the big cities in the name of a national revolutionary government of the Left. This, said Zhou, was the basic policy mistake. Such a mistake was natural enough. Up until this time the CPC had only had experience of regular battles to occupy key cities during the Northern Expedition, when revolutionary armed forces in the rural areas were considered merely supplementary. In the history of the international Communist movement, there had been no precedent for taking the rural areas first. It was inevitable that the Party should handle new problems according to the experience it had already had. At this time it was imperative for the Party to criticize and rectify the serious mistakes of the past and to decide on new lines and policies. Six days after the Nanchang Uprising, the CPC Central Committee held a secret emergency meeting in Hankou, Hubei Province, to deal ith the problem. B. Lominadze, a Russian who was the newly arrived representative of the Communist International, made a report entitled &quot;The Past Mistakes and New Line of the Party.&quot; Qu Qiubai delivered a work report on behalf of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee. A number of resolutions were adopted, including a &quot;Message from the CPC Central Executive Committee to Members of the Whole Party,&quot; and a new Provisional Political Bureau was elected, headed by Qu Qiubai. At the August 7th Meeting, the mistakes of the Right opportunist line represented by Chen Duxiu in the later stage of the Great Revolution were unequivocally criticized. One of the resolutions adopted at the meeting stated that in handling relations with the Kuomintang, the opportunist leaders abandoned the independent political stand of the CPC and made one concession after another. The resolution criticized these leaders who had never thought of arming the workers and peasants and forming them into a truly revolutionary army. It also pointed out that intimidated by the leaders of the KMT, the Right opportunists had proposed no programme of revolutionary action to solve the 113 oroblem of land. Of course, Chen Duxiu alone could not be blamed for the failure of the Great Revolution, and not all the criticism of past policies that was made at the August 7th Meeting was justified. However, without that shrewd criticism, it would not have been possible to rapidly reinvigorate the whole Party and to bring about a fundamental change of guiding ideology. It was at this meeting that the Central Committee formulated the general principle of agrarian revolution and armed resistance to the Kuomintang reactionaries. The Party had arrived at the correct conclusion at the cost of much blood. Speaking at the meeting, Mao Zedong emphasized the importance of military affairs. &quot;From now on,&quot; he said, &quot;we must be aware that political power is to be obtained by the gun.&quot;3 Thus, the August 7th Meeting pointed out a new road tor the CPC, which had been mired in ideological contusion and organizational disintegration, making a great contribution to saving the Party and the revolution. It was the historic turning point from the failure of the Great Revolution to the rise of the agrarian revolutionary war. Nevertheless, owing to the &quot;Left&quot; ideas of the Communist International and its representatives and to the &quot;Left&quot; tendency within the CPC, while the Central Committee corrected Right mistakes at this meeting, it did nothing to prevent ‘ Left mistakes. On the contrary, adventurism and commandism were allowed and even encouraged. Although the &quot;Left&quot; tendency within the Party was only of secondary importance at the meeting, its later development was to cause enormous damage to the Chinese revolution. . , „ „ After the August 7th Meeting, the Provisional Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee dispatched many cadres to different places to disseminate the decisions taken at the meeting and to reestablish and rebuild the Party organizations. Earlier on August 3, the Central Committee had already drawn up a Plan for the Autumn Harvest Uprising of the Peasants in the Provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong and Jiangxi,&quot; where the peasant movements had been well organized during the Great Revolution. As soon as the meeting ended, Mao Zedong was sent to Hunan as a special envoy of the Central Committee to reorganize the CPC Hunan Provincial Committee and to lead the uprising there. At a meeting of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee held in Changsha, two main subjects were discussed: the question of the uprising and the question of land. Mao Zedong made important remarks on both questions. So far as staging an uprising was concerned, he argued that it was not enough to rely on the peasants alone; they must have help from the military. &quot;One of the Party's mistakes in the past,&quot; he said, &quot;was that it neglected the military. Now we must pay sixty per cent of our attention to the military movement. We must seize and build political power by means of the gun.&quot; As for the question of land, he held that the needs of the peasants could not be met by confiscating the land of big landlords alone. &quot;We must confiscate the land of all the landlords,&quot; he said, &quot;and give it to the peasants.&quot;4 The Provincial Party Committee decided that instead of staging an uprising in the whole province as originally planned, it would do it in the seven counties around Changsha in central Hunan. A Front Committee was established with Mao Zedong as its secretary. The main forces to take part in the Autumn Harvest Uprising included two sections. One was the former Guards Regiment of the General Headquarters of the Second Front Army of the Fourth Group Army of the National Revolutionary Army. This unit had not been able to participate in the Nanchang Uprising, but it included many Communists. The other was the First Division of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, composed of armed peasants from Pingjiang and Liuyang counties in Hunan and from Chongyang and Tongcheng counties in southern Hubei, and workers' armed forces from the Anyuan Coal Mines in Jiangxi Province, totalling about five thousand. Thus, the Autumn Harvest Uprising was to differ from the Nanchang Uprising in that it was to be an action involving not only the military but also a huge number of armed workers and peasants. For the first time, the flag of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army was to be publicly raised. However, the objective of the uprising was still to take Changsha, the central 115 city of Hunan Province. The key elements of the plan were as follows: the regiments were to set off separately and join with the local peasant forces to encircle Changsha; then, when all the detachments were in place, they were to capture Changsha in a single attack, combined with a simultaneous rising of the workers within the city. The uprising was launched on September 9. At one point the revolutionary forces took over some towns, including the county seats of Liling and Liuyang. But as the reactionary forces were far superior, the different columns of insurgents approaching the city by different routes suffered major setbacks one after another. It was then that Mao Zedong showed his outstanding ability to learn from practice. Realizing that Changsha could not be captured, he promptly decided to change the plan. On September 19 the Front Committee held a meeting in Wenjiashi, Liuyang County, at which, after heated debate, the idea of attacking Changsha via Liuyang was rejected. At Mao Zedong's urging, it was decided to withdraw immediately from Pingjiang and Liuyang, enter Jiangxi Province and move south through the Luoxiao Mountains. The revolutionary forces would seek a foothold in the mountain areas, where the enemy's control was relatively weak, in order to preserve their strength for future development. This was another decisive turning point in the history of the people's revolution: the change from attacking big cities to advancing into the rural areas. After the revolutionary forces arrived at the village of Sanwan in Yongxing County, Jiangxi, the tamous &quot;Sanwan reorganization&quot; was accomplished under the leadership of Mao Zedong. The Front Committee reorganized the former division, which now had fewer than one thousand men, into a regiment, established a Party branch for every company and founded soldiers' committees at various levels, so that the officers and men were politically equal and democratic management was practised. This was the beginning of a new type of people's army under the leadership of the proletariat. Mao Zedong also sent men to contact the peasant armed forces under Yuan Wencai and Wang Zuo in the Jinggang Mountains. On October 7 he led the Workers' and Peasants' evolutionary Army to Maoping in Ninggang County at the north foot of the Jinggang range and began the struggle to set up a revolutionary base area in the mountains. Following the Nanchang Uprising and the Autumn Harvest Uprising, the CPC launched an uprising in Guangzhou. At this time the lorces led by Zhang Fakui had already come south and were stationed in Guangzhou. They included the Training Regiment led by Ye Jianying, an undercover Communist. The worker-peasant movement in Guangzhou and the surrounding area had built a good foundation during the upsurge of the Great Revolution. In November, a war broke out between Zhang Fakui on one side, and Li Jishen and Huang Shaohong on the other lor control of Guangdong. Zhang sent most of his troops to fight in Zhaoqing and Wuzhou, leaving only a few in Guangzhou. The Training Regiment and other revolutionary units in Guangzhou had already aroused the suspicion of the enemy. Unless they took immediate action, they were likely to be disbanded or wiped out. On December 1 1, on the instructions of the CPC Central Committee, the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee launched an uprising. 1 his uprising was led by Zhang Tailei, secretary of the Provincial Party Committee, Ye Ting and Ye Jianying. The forces participating were the Training Regiment and part of the Guards Regiment of the Fourth Army of the National Revolutionary Army, seven detachments of the Guangdong Workers' Red Guards and some groups of armed peasants from the suburbs of Guangzhou. After more than ten hours of heavy fighting, the insurgent forces occupied most of the urban area of Guangzhou, where they set up the Guangzhou Soviet Government—the Russian word soviet means a council of representatives—with Su Zhaozheng as chairman. (As Su was ill and did not assume office, Zhang Tailei served as acting chairman). They put forward such political slogans as &quot;Down with imperialism!&quot;, &quot;Down with warlords!&quot; and &quot;Suppress landlords and despotic gentry!&quot;, and announced that an eight-hour day would be instituted for workers and that all land distributed among the peasants. At this time, however, the main forces under Zhang Fakui hurried back to Guangzhou. Because of the great disparity in strength between the enemy and the insurgents, it was impossible for the latter to hold on in Guangzhou. Ye Ting argued that the revolutionary forces should withdraw from the city before Zhang Fakui's troops arrived. But this wise proposal was severely criticized by Heinz Neumann, the German representative of the Communist International, who held that the uprising could only centre around cities, that the insurgent forces had to &quot;attack, attack and attack again&quot; and that any retreat represented &quot;wavering.&quot; As a result, the insurgents lost the chance of evading an attack by superior enemy forces. Greatly outnumbered, they were defeated on the third day of the uprising. Zhang Tailei and many other revolutionaries died a heroic death. The Guangzhou Uprising was another valiant counterattack against the Kuomintang reactionaries' policy of butchery. The insurgent forces took full advantage of the internecine warfare among the new warlords of the Kuomintang. But, once again, events showed that the enemy armies were too strong for the revolutionaries to achieve victory by staging armed urban uprisings or trying to take big cities. When the insurgent forces were outnumbered by the enemy, even if they gained control of the big cities, they would be unable to hold on to them and would suffer crushing defeat. Besides these large-scale uprisings, by early 1928 the CPC had initiated quite a few smaller armed uprisings in other parts of the country. The major ones were as follows: —In Guangdong, the Dongjiang Uprising, centred around Haifeng and Lufeng, and the Qiongya Uprising; —in Jiangxi, the Southwestern Jiangxi Uprising, centred around Donggu in Ji'an County, the Northeastern Jiangxi Uprising, centred around Yiyang and Hengfeng, and the Wan'an Uprising; —in Hunan, the Southern Hunan Uprisings led by Zhu De and Chen Yi, who had brought the surviving forces of the Nanchang Uprising from Guangdong into the area and who, with the cooperation of the CPC Southern Hunan Special Committee and local peasant armed forces, succeeded in occupying seven counties including Yizhang and Chenxian;—in the Honghu Lake area of Hubei and the Sangzhi area of Hunan, the Western Hunan-Hubei Uprising led by Zhou Yiqun and He Long;—in the Hubei-Henan border region, the Huang'an and Macheng Uprising led by the CPC Huang'an-Macheng Special Committee;—in Fujian, the Western Fujian Uprising led by Guo Diren, Deng Zihui and Zhang Dingcheng; —in Henan, the Queshan Uprising led by Ma Shangde (Yang Jingyu); and—in Shaanxi, the Weinan and Huaxian Uprising led by Liu Zhidan. All these uprisings demonstrated that the fire of revolution could never be put out by military suppression by the counterrevolutionaries, because the uprisings were just and corresponded to the demands of the people. Many of them were organized by Communists and other revolutionaries who had gone through the storms of the Great Revolution, adhered to their political belief and returned to their hometowns where the reactionary regime was relatively weak. Making use of their former social connections, they mobilized the oppressed masses of workers and peasants, gradually building forces for the uprisings. Some of these uprisings soon failed, either because wrong policies were followed or because the enemy forces were far superior. Others were continued, mainly in areas bordering several provinces, or in mountain areas remote from the key cities under Kuomintang rule. In such places, the insurgent forces conducted guerrilla warfare on a growing scale, laying the foundation for the later large-scale development of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army and the establishment of rural revolutionary bases. Left Putschism The revolution had virtually come to a standstill. The key cities were under the powerful economic, political and military control of the imperialists and of the reactionary Kuomintang regime. In those places, which had never experienced the Great 119 Revolution, it was not easy for uprisings to take place or to survive for any length of time. In the rural areas, however, where the reactionary forces were relatively weak, and especially in places where the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers had been actively involved in the Great Revolution, there was still room for the Communists to manoeuvre. At this time there could be no question of their launching another movement like the Northern Expedition, that is, of attempting to take key cities and areas, which would immediately bring about a revolutionary situation all over the country. Instead, they had to withdraw to the rural areas that did not attract much attention, so as to preserve and nourish the sparks of revolution. The peasants wanted a revolution, but it was not easy to organize them into fighting units because they were reluctant to leave their homes, and because the villages were widely scattered. Still, the revolutionary forces could survive and gradually develop, as long as they relied closely on the suffering people and pursued correct policies. Because of the realities of semi-colonial, semi-feudal China, if they had not kept firmly to this road, the revolution would have failed. At the time, the members of the CPC Central Committee did not have a correct assessment of the situation and failed to identify tasks appropriate for the struggle. They held that as the fundamental contradictions in Chinese society had not been resolved, the tide of revolution could only continue to rise. They did not take into consideration the political and economic realities of Chinese society and the uneven development of the revolution. They made no effort to distinguish between places where there were conditions for staging an armed uprising and places where it was only possible to organize an orderly retreat. Instead, they ordered Party members, who were few in number, and the masses to organize armed rebellion everywhere, regardless of the strength of the enemy or the discouragement of the people after the failure of the Great Revolution. They even staged hopeless uprisings in some areas that were strictly controlled by the enemy, hoping to astonish and hearten the whole nation. They claimed that the idea of refraining from any rash move so as to preserve the Party's forces was &quot;a manifestation of opportunism that would eventually obstruct the development of rebellion among the masses.&quot;5 Disciplinary action was taken against cadres who were accused of such opportunism. The representative of the Communist International, B. Lominadze, who did not know much about the realities in China, gave much misguided advice of this nature and put forward the proposition of &quot;uninterrupted revolution,&quot; which confused democratic revolution with socialist revolution. Through an enlarged meeting of the Provisional Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held in November 1927, &quot;Left&quot; putschism came to dominate the Party for a period of time. In the resolution adopted at that meeting the Bureau declared that &quot;the present situation of China is a situation ready for direct revolution.&quot; On the basis of this assessment, it formulated the general strategy of a nationwide armed uprising, with urban uprisings as the &quot;central and guiding element.&quot; Further, the Bureau predicted that &quot;the present revolutionary struggle will certainly go beyond a democratic revolution and develop rapidly.&quot; At the meeting, leaders of the Nanchang Uprising and the Autumn Harvest Uprising, including Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong, were accused of having made opportunist mistakes and were disciplined. Both before and after this meeting, reckless actions were undertaken in places where the Party organization was weak and where the enemy was militarily strong. Ill-considered armed uprisings were staged, for example, in Wuxi and Yixing. Most of them were quickly suppressed. Thus, the limited revolutionary forces that had survived after the failure of the Great Revolution again suffered heavy losses. Nevertheless, it was clear that although none of the fundamental contradictions in Chinese society had been resolved, the reactionary forces could not establish a lasting and stable rule, and that the people would not give up fighting. But there was another side of the story. After the failure of the Great Revolution, the reactionary forces were strengthened, while the revolutionary forces were seriously weakened. In view of the overall situation 121 of the country, the revolutionary tide, far from rising, had come to a low ebb. How was it, then, that at such a time the Party could make the mistake of &quot;Left&quot; putschism? It was wonderful that so many Communists were able to carry on the struggle under extremely difficult conditions, but they did not have enough experience to deal with complex problems. Their outrage at the massacres perpetrated by the enemy, their desire for revenge and their abhorrence of Right opportunism, like a fire burning in their hearts, drove them to desperate acts. They could see only one side of the picture and went to extremes, mistaking the awareness of advanced elements for the awareness of the masses. These &quot;Left&quot; attitudes were very common among revolutionaries at the time. Indeed, they were a historical phenomenon that could not have been completely avoided. Nevertheless, the dismal failure of the premature uprisings had a sobering effect and led the Party to give second thought to the problems. In February 1928 the 9th Enlarged Session of the Executive Committee of the Communist International adopted a resolution on China that criticized putschism and Lominadze's mistakes. In April the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee issued a circular endorsing that resolution and admitting that &quot;Left&quot; mistakes of putschism had been made. By this time, most of those mistakes had been eliminated in the Party's practical work throughout the country. The 6th National Congress of the Communist Party of China With the help of the Comintern, the CPC held its 6th National Congress in Moscow from June 18 to July 11, 1928. This congress was of major historical significance. It reviewed the Party's experience since the failure of the Great Revolution and gave basically correct answers to a series of essential questions concerning the Chinese revolution over which there had been heated controversies. Thus, by and large, the congress unified, the thinking of the whole Party, which had been in ideological chaos. The line of the 6th National Congress was basically correct. It stated that since China was still a semi-colonial, semi-feudal country and since none of the basic contradictions that had given rise to the revolution had been resolved, it was still a bourgeoisdemocratic revolution. At the time, quite a number of Party members believed that since the bourgeoisie had already withdrawn from the revolution, it was no longer a bourgeoisdemocratic revolution. Addressing this question, the congress decided that the nature of the revolution was determined by its mission rather than by its motive force. The congress also made a correct assessment of the situation of the Chinese revolution and the tasks ahead. The first wave of revolution, it said, had passed with the failures, and the new wave had not yet come. The forces of counter-revolution were stronger than those of the workers and peasants, and the Party's general line at this stage must be to win over the masses. Putschism and commandism were identified as the most dangerous tendencies, as either of them would divorce the Parly from the people. In short, at the 6th National Congress the Party decided to shift its efforts from organizing uprisings by every possible means to undertaking patient, long-term work among the masses, while guarding against &quot;Left&quot; tendencies. These were major changes in the work of the Party, and when the congress's resolution was made known to all members for implementation, it produced far-reaching effects. The 6th National Congress elected a new Central Committee. Xiang Zhongfa, a dock worker from Wuhan, was selected to be chairman of the Political Bureau and of its Standing Committee, while Zhou Enlai was elected member and secretary-general of the Standing Committee and head of the Central Committee's Organization Department. The election of Xiang Zhongfa as the principal leader of the Party was due to the influence of the Communist International, which in selecting cadres put undue emphasis on the workers' class status. In reality, Xiang Zhongfa did not have the ability to play the principal role in the Central Committee. For a period of time after this, the actual leader of the Party was Zhou Enlai. There were other shortcomings in the work of the congress, especially the following. First, the congress still placed primary 123 emphasis on work in the cities, without taking into account how long and complex the revolution would be or recognizing the special importance of the rural areas. Second, because it did not correctly assess the important role played by the middle-of-theroaders and the internal contradictions among the reactionary forces, it continued to regard the national bourgeoisie as an enemy of the revolution. Thus, the Party lost the opportunity to win over another force and gain its cooperation. At this time the CPC was in a period of major historical change, a period in which it was faced with many complicated problems new to Marxism. In the early stage of the revolution, it was not possible for the Party to reach a correct understanding of all these problems at once. The problem of the relations between urban and rural areas was an example. In the classic works of Marxism, the focus of revolutionary activity had always been the urban proletariat. But China was a country in which the overwhelming majority of the population were peasants. Class contradictions were very acute in the rural areas, and it was impossible for the reactionary rulers to maintain tight control over every part of the vast countryside. Under these circumstances, the Party had to shift the focus of its revolutionary activity first to the rural areas. Only through repeated trial and error in concrete practice could the Party come to a clear understanding of the special rules of the Chinese revolution, and only then could it begin to resolve the problems one by one.<br /> <br /> === From the Struggle in the Jinggang Mountains to the Gutian Meeting ===<br /> After the failure of the Great Revolution, the struggle in the Jinggang Mountains revolutionary base area, under the leadership of Mao Zedong and Zhu De, represented the correct orientation of the Chinese revolution. How was it that in the Jinggang Mountains an independent revolutionary regime, although surrounded by areas under White terror, was able not only to survive but to expand greatly? In a report to the Central Committee dated November 25, 1928, Mao Zedong gave the answer: &quot;We find on analysis that one reason for this phenomenon lies in the incessant splits and wars within China's comprador and landlord classes. So long as these splits and wars continue, it is possible for an armed independent regime of workers and peasants to survive and grow. In addition, its survival and growth require the following conditions: (1) a sound mass base, (2) a sound Party organization, (3) a fairly strong Red Army, (4) terrain favourable to military operations, and (5) economic resources sufficient for sustenance.&quot;6 The Establishment of the Revolutionary Base Area in the Jinggang Mountains The Jinggang Mountains are situated at the middle section of the Luoxiao Mountains in the border region between Hunan and Jiangxi provinces. Mao Zedong had chosen this place to set up the first revolutionary base area for a number of reasons, including the following:—There was a good mass base. During the Great Revolution, Party organizations and peasant associations had been established in various counties in the border region. —Local peasant forces of the old type led by Yuan Wencai and Wang Zuo were ready to unite with the worker-peasant revolutionary army. —It was strategically located, easy to defend but hard to attack. —The self-supporting agricultural economy in the surrounding counties made it easy for the army to raise funds and grain.—It was relatively far from the centre of the Kuomintang regime. Also there were contradictions between the warlords of the two provinces of Hunan and Jiangxi, and their control over the area was fairly weak. When Mao Zedong arrived in the border region with his forces, 125 new splits were occurring within the ruling class. In southern China, Li Zongren's forces were at war with those of Tang Shengzhi. Warlord forces in the locality were busy moving north, leaving the border region between Hunan and Jiangxi empty. Mao took advantage of the situation, doing everything possible to build up the Party, the army and political power there. In early November 1927, chairing a meeting of leading Party members from the various border counties, he urged them to establish or reestablish Party organizations as soon as possible. The previously existing ones had all been destroyed after the May 21st Incident; only some Party members had survived, gone into hiding and were living dispersed. Without an organized Party leadership, it would not be possible to open up a revolutionary base area. After three months of work, Party organizations in the region were gradually restored. Mao Zedong called on the worker-peasant revolutionary army to change the old tradition of undertaking only military operations. The army, he said, must not only fight the enemy, but also expropriate funds from the local tyrants and do propaganda work among the people. In this way, the army would be able not only to win battles, but also to mobilize the masses and to solve the problem of economic resources. After reviewing the army's experience in doing mass work, Mao Zedong set down Three Rules of Discipline and Six Points for Attention. The three rules were: 1. Obey orders in your actions. 2. Don't take anything from the workers and peasants. 3. Turn in all things taken from local tyrants. The six points for attention were: 1. Put back the doors you have taken down for bed-boards. 2. Put back the straw you have used for bedding. 3. Speak politely. 4. Pay fairly for what you buy. 5. Return everything you borrow. 6. Pay for anything you damage. Later two more points were added: Don't bathe within sight of women, and don't search the pockets of captives. These regulations demonstrated the nature of the people's army, and because they were strictly enforced, the army was able to establish close ties with the local people and to win their trust and support. The revolutionary army also reorganized the peasant armed forces led by Yuan Wencai and Wang Zuo and helped organize the Red Guards and other local units for the border counties and townships. It defeated the &quot;suppression campaign&quot; of the Kuomintang army units sent against it and took the county seats of Chaling, Suichuan and Ninggang counties, setting up worker-peasant-soldier governments there. Thus, the revolutionary base area in the border region of Hunan and Jiangxi began to lake shape with Ninggang as its centre. Just at this time, the less than ten thousand troops that had survived the Nanchang Uprising, led by Zhu De and Chen Yi, were moving towards the Jinggang Mountains after the Southern Hunan Uprising. In late April of 1928 the troops under Zhu De and Mao Zedong joined forces in the Jinggang Mountains and were reorganized into the Fourth Army of the Chinese WorkerPeasant Revolutionary Army (shortly thereafter renamed the Fourth Army of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army), with Zhu De as commander and Mao Zedong as Party representative and secretary of the Army Committee. This joining of forces was a momentous event. It raised the number of troops in the Jinggang Mountains revolutionary base area from two thousand to over ten thousand. The backbone of the forces that had survived from the Nanchang Uprising, now under the leadership of Zhu De and Chen Yi, was the Independent Regiment led by Ye Ting, a well-armed, well-trained unit that had distinguished itself during the Great Revolution. Tan Zhenlin, a senior officer who had taken part in the joining of forces, recalled it in these words: &quot;With the joining of the forces led by Zhu De and Mao Zedong, the army was expanded, and we were then able to take Yongxing County. Of course, we had already attacked Chaling and Suichuan counties and occupied the seat of Ninggang County. But we had not dared to go too far afield, as we would not have been able to win if the Kuomintang had sent two regiments against us. We became much stronger after Zhu and Mao joined 127 forces.&quot;7 After this, the CPC established a Special Committee for the Hunan-Jiangxi Border Region and a Worker-Peasant-Soldier Soviet Government of the Border Region. At this time there was a temporary lull in the war between the new Kuomintang warlords. The reactionary rule in the South was relatively stable. Chiang Kai-shek ordered the Kuomintang troops in Hunan and Jiangxi to mount one &quot;suppression campaign&quot; after another against the base area in the Jinggang Mountains. In response, the Special Committee of the Border Region and the Army Committee of the Fourth Red Army laid down the following policies: —The army should stand firm against the enemy and not flee; —The Party should deepen the agrarian revolution in the border region;—The Party organizations in the army should help develop Party organizations in the localities, and the regular army should help develop local armed forces; —The army should take a defensive position toward the comparatively strong ruling forces in Hunan and an offensive position toward the comparatively weak ruling forces in Jiangxi; —The army should concentrate its forces to fight the enemy, confronting him when the time is opportune, and not divide its forces, lest they be destroyed one by one; and —The base area should be expanded by advancing in a series of waves and not by making adventuristic thrusts. Thanks to these proper tactics, to the terrain of the border region, which favoured the operations of the revolutionaries, and to the inadequate coordination between the different Kuomintang forces invading from Hunan and Jiangxi, the Red Army, in four months of fighting, was able to break up three successive &quot;suppression campaigns,&quot; despite the fact that the superior enemy forces numbered from eight to 18 regiments. The biggest victory was won in the Battle of Longyuangou on June 23, when one enemy regiment was wiped out and two more were routed. After this victory, the revolutionary base area in the Jinggang Mountains was extended to cover all of Ninggang, Yongxing and Lianhua counties and parts of Ji'an, Anfu, Suichuan and Lingxian counties. This was the period of greatest expansion of the base area. The Front Committee attached great importance to the building of the revolutionary army. Members of the Fourth Red Army were drawn mainly from two sources: the peasants and the old army. The first concern was to strengthen Party-building and political work among the new troops in order to turn them into a people's army of a new type under the leadership of the Communist Party. The Party organization was divided into four levels: the company branch, with a group in each squad; the battalion committee; the regimental committee; and the army committee. The number of Party members rose until they represented about a quarter of the army. In his November report to the Central Committee, Mao Zedong summed up the results of this policy: &quot;After receiving political education, the Red Army soldiers have become class-conscious, learned the essentials of distributing land, setting up political power, arming the workers and peasants, etc., and they know they are fighting for themselves, for the working class and the peasantry. Hence they can endure the hardships of the bitter struggle without complaint.&quot;8 Such men took every opportunity to serve the masses and were ready to sacrifice their lives for the revolution. Another means of building the Red Army was to ensure democracy in the ranks. In the same report, Mao explained the importance of this policy: &quot;Apart from the role played by the Party, the reason why the Red Army has been able to carry on in spite of such poor material conditions and such frequent engagements is its practice of democracy. The officers do not beat the men; officers and men receive equal treatment; soldiers are free to hold meetings and to speak out; trivial formalities have been done away with; and the accounts are open for all to inspect. The soldiers handle the mess arrangements and, out of the daily five cents for cooking oil, salt, firewood and vegetables, they can even save a little for pocket money, amounting to roughly six or seven coppers per person per day, which is called ‘mess savings.' All this gives great satisfaction to the soldiers. The newly captured soldiers in particular feel that 129 our army and the Kuomintang army are worlds apart. They feel spiritually liberated, even though material conditions in the Red Army are not equal to those in the White army. The very soldiers who had no courage in the White army yesterday are very brave in the Red Army today; such is the effect of democracy.&quot;&lt;nowiki&gt;''&lt;/nowiki&gt; So far as military operations were concerned, Mao Zedong and Zhu De summed up the Red Army's practice as follows: &quot;The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.&quot; These were the simple and basic principles for guerrilla warfare. They corresponded to the circumstances of the time and proved an excellent guide for the Red Army's operations. The military struggle could not be separated from the agrarian revolution. The Jinggang Mountains base area was situated in an agricultural region cut off from other parts of the country, where the overwhelming majority of the residents were peasants. Their fundamental interest lay in the land, and the land question was their primary concern. In the Hunan-Jiangxi border region, over 60 percent of the land was in the hands of the landlords, while the peasants owned less than 40 percent. The peasants who had no land, or very little, had to rent land from the landlords to survive. They had to turn over more than half of the harvest to the landlords as rent, in addition to providing them with various corvfee services and suffering from exploitation by tradesmen and usurers. This land system was the very foundation of the feudal system in China. For generations it had been the dream of poor peasants to acquire land. In the new-democratic revolution there would be no agrarian revolution without victory in the armed struggle, and there could be no victory in the armed struggle without an agrarian revolution to secure the full support of the peasants. In the early stage of the founding of the Jinggang Mountains base area, the masses were mobilized to strike down local tyrants and evil gentry, while the distribution of land was carried out in only a few places on a trial basis. From May to July 1928, when the situation in the base area had become more stable, a movement for general distribution of land swept across the counties in the border region. At this time, the method of distributing land was as follows. Land committees composed of poor peasants at the county, district and township levels were established to take charge of the process. Officers of the Red Army were also sent to help in the villages. In general, the township was taken as the basic unit, but in a few hilly places where there was little farmland, three or four townships were taken as one unit. All the inhabitants, men or women, old or young, were given equal shares of land, and fertile and less fertile land was equally apportioned. Then the distribution was examined to ensure that it had been done fairly. The title deeds for land owned by the landlords were burned in public. Bamboo slips with names were set up along the demarcation lines of the various households' plots, and a land tax was then levied. In December 1928 a Land Law was promulgated in the Jinggang Mountains. This was of greal significance, because it was the CPCs first experiment in land rclorm in so large an area as several counties. This first Land Law, however, had some weaknesses. First, it provided that all the land was to be confiscated and redistributed, not just that of the landlords. This encroached upon the interests of the middle peasants. Second, it provided that the land was to be owned by the government, not by the peasants, who had only the right to use it and were forbidden to sell it' Nevertheless, since they were given the land, the poor peasants became aware that the Red Army was struggling on their behalf, and they began to support it enthusiastically. This was the social foundation for the survival and development of the revolutionary base area in the Jinggang Mountains. If the revolutionary forces were to wage a long-term struggle it was essential for them to have a reliable base area and to build the people's political power. The slogan for the rural areas put forward by the Central Committee at its meeting of August 7, ^^'„was Political power belongs to the peasant associations.&quot; Later, Party documents called for the establishment of revolutionary committees or of worker-peasant Soviets. Soviet governments were set up in Lufeng and Haifeng counties in Guangdong. On November 28, 1927, after the Jinggang Mountains base area was founded, a worker-peasant-soldier Soviet 131 government was established in Chaling County, with Tan Zhenlin as chairman. In May 1928 a worker-peasant-soldier Soviet government of the Hunan-Jiangxi border region was set up at Maoping in Ninggang County. At the time of greatest expansion there were six such county governments in the border region. These governments enjoyed high prestige among the people. In a report to the Hunan Provincial Party Committee, Du Xiujing, the Committee's representative, wrote: &quot;Since the toppling of the local tyrants, the people believe in Commander Mao, and since the distribution of land, they believe in the Party and the Soviet.&quot; There was one setback in the development of the Jinggang Mountains revolutionary base area. In June 1928, the Provincial Party Committee of Hunan, under the influence of putschism, sent a representative to the Jinggang Mountains instructing the Fourth Red Army to go immediately to southern Hunan. Now, it happened that the 29lh Regiment of the Fourth Red Army was composed mainly of peasants from Yizhang County in southern Hunan. While they had proved resolute in the Southern Hunan Uprising, they still had the weaknesses of small peasant producers who felt a great nostalgia for their home villages and were not used to the hard life in the Jinggang Mountains. When these peasants learned of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee's instructions, they insistently demanded to return to southern Hunan and, despite persistent opposition by Mao Zedong and repeated attempts by Zhu De and Chen Yi to dissuade them, prepared to move off on their own. Fearing that if they moved independently they would be wiped out by the enemy, Zhu De and Chen Yi had no choice but to lead the 28th Regiment on the march to southern Hunan along with them. By this time the reactionary rule in that area had become relatively strong. When the Red Army took Chenxian County, the enemy started a counterattack. At this juncture, the soldiers of the 29th Regiment deserted and returned to their home villages. The surviving forces were led by Zhu De and Chen Yi to eastern Guangxi, where they were met by Mao Zedong, who had arrived at the head of part of the 31st Regiment; then they all returned to the Jinggang Mountains base area. During this operation, the Fourth Red Army and the Jinggang Mountains base area suffered heavy losses. The whole episode, known as the &quot;August defeat,&quot; showed that it was not easy to transform peasant armed forces into a new type of people's army under the leadership of the CPC. It was inevitable that such losses should occur in the early days of the people's army. After the main forces of the Fourth Red Army returned to the Jinggang Mountains, they won several battles in succession, recovering most of the territory they had lost. They defeated the enemy's &quot;suppression campaigns&quot; and largely restored the base area. The CPC Central Committee decided to reestablish a Front Committee, with Mao Zedong as secretary, to take charge of the work of the Border Region Special Committee and the Army Committee of the Fourth Red Army. In October 1928 the Second Party Congress of the Hunan- Jiangxi Border Region was convened. The congress adopted a resolution drafted by Mao Zedong, the first part of which dealt with the question of why it was possible for Red political power to exist in China. Mao analysed the conditions under which a small, independent worker-peasant regime had been able to emerge and survive, discussed its significance and answered the question, which had been raised by some people in the Red Army, of how long such a regime could last. In November, in his report to the CPC Central Committee, Mao pointed out the importance of proletarian leadership: &quot;The Party organizations in the border area counties,&quot; he wrote, &quot;which are composed almost exclusively of peasants, will go astray without the ideological leadership of the proletariat.&quot;10 This showed that the leaders of the Fourth Red Army clearly understood the distinction between the people's revolution led by the CPC and peasant warfare of the old type. At a time when the revolution throughout the country was at a low ebb, the establishment of the Jinggang Mountains revolutionary base area represented a remarkable achievement. By founding a revolutionary army, by advancing the agrarian revolution and by building a political power, the area not only set an example and provided comprehensive experience for insurgent forces elsewhere, but also kindled new hope among the masses of revolutionaries. 133 Nevertheless, the Jinggang Mountains area had disadvantages as a revolutionary base. First, although easy to defend and difficult to attack, the area had fewer than two thousand people and produced less than 500 tons of grain a year. As the Red Army grew rapidly in numbers, and as the Kuomintang army carried out repeated &quot;suppression campaigns&quot; and tightly blockaded the region, economic difficulties became so serious that even daily requirements of the army and the people for food, clothing and other necessities could not be met. Second, the Jinggang Mountains were situated in a long, narrow strip of land between the Xiangjiang River to the west and the Ganjiang River to the east, both of which were too deep to be forded. And it was not easy to expand toward the north or south, so the army did not have enough room for manoeuvre. These disadvantages were not so prominent in the beginning, but as the Red Army grew, they became increasingly evident. During July 1928, part of the Kuomintang troops staged a rebellion in Pingjiang County, Hunan, under the leadership of Peng Dehuai, Teng Daiyuan and Huang Gongliie, and formed the Fifth Army of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. For several months the troops of this new branch of the Red Army fought the enemy in the border region of Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi, east of Pingjiang. Then, on December 11, Peng Dehuai and Teng Daiyuan led more than seven hundred of them to the Jinggang Mountains and joined forces with the Fourth Army of the Red Army. Before long, six brigades of the KMT army in the two provinces of Hunan and Jiangxi, totalling about 30,000 men, started to attack the Jinggang Mountains by five different routes. A joint meeting of the Front Committee, the Special Committee of the Hunan-Jiangxi Border Region, the Army Committee of the Fourth Army and the Army Committee of the Fifth Army was held at Bailu Village in Ninggang County. At this meeting it was decided that a part of the Red Army, led by Peng Dehuai and Teng Daiyuan, should stay to defend the Jinggang Mountains, while the main forces of the Fourth Army, led by Mao Zedong, Zhu De and Chen Yi, should march to southern Jiangxi to launch an attack there. The March to Southern Jiangxi and Western Fujian and the Gutian Meeting Conditions in southern Jiangxi were much better for the Fourth Red Army. The undulating hills and thick forests of the area were favourable for guerrilla warfare, it was rich in natural resources and it was linked to the mountainous regions of western Fujian and northern Guangdong, providing a large space for manoeuvre. Party organizations had a good foundation there, and the masses were politically aware. After the failure of the Great Revolution, the 2nd and 4lh Independent Regiments of the Red Army of Jiangxi were formed under the leadership of Li Wenlin and others, and a small, secret Soviet area was established in Donggu, Ji'an County. The reactionary troops stationed there were weak and did not have much fighting capability. In particular, most of them came from other provinces and therefore had no close links with the local landlords and despotic gentry. The area was remote and far from big cities, transportation was poor and it would be hard for enemy troops to concentrate there. These were favourable conditions for developing guerrilla warfare. On January 14, 1929, the main forces of the Fourth Red Army, numbering 3,600, came down from the Jinggang Mountains. They encountered great difficulties in the beginning. On more than one occasion they were in danger, because they had left the original base area and were being pursued and attacked by strong enemy forces. On February 11, however, they laid an ambush at Dabaidi in Ruijin County in southern Jiangxi and at one stroke wiped out most of the enemy brigade led by Liu Shiyi, which was following closely. This great victory enabled them to regain the initiative. They went north to Donggu, where they joined forces with the 2nd and 4th Independent Regiments of the Red Army of Jiangxi, led by Li Wenlin and others, and began to gain a foothold in southern Jiangxi. The leaders of the Fourth Red Army analysed the situation and used their forces in a flexible way. First, they took advantage of the enemy's weakness in western Fujian to make a swift move 135 there. On March 14, at Changlingzhai, they wiped out Guo Fengming's brigade of the KMT's Fujian Provincial Defence Army and occupied the important town of Changting, capturing large quantities of arms and supplies. After that, they returned to southern Jiangxi and on April 1 in Ruijin joined up with the main forces of the Fifth Red Army, which had broken out of an encirclement in the Jinggang Mountains. From May to October, when the main forces of the local warlord army of Fujian had gone to participate in the war between the warlords of Guangdong and Guangxi, the Fourth Red Army made two more sorties into western Fujian. There, with the support of the local workers' and peasants' armed forces, it eliminated the two brigades led by Chen Guohui and Lu Xinming. Soviet governments were established successively in southwestern Jiangxi and in western Fujian, and the local armed forces of the two regions were greatly expanded. Thus, a foundation was laid for the establishment of a central revolutionary base area. At this time, a difference of opinion appeared in the Fourth Red Army's Party organizations and among the leaders. On June 22 at the 7th Party Congress of the Fourth Red Army, held in Longyan, Fujian, an argument broke out regarding the establishment of an Army Committee. Jiang Hua, who was then secretarygeneral of the Political Department of the Fourth Red Army later recalled the outcome: &quot;Although the argument as to whether an Army Committee should be set up was resolved, the difference of opinion on the relationship between the Party and the army, which was behind the argument, was not finally settled.... During the argument, certain elements of non-proletarian thinking, such as the purely military viewpoint, the ideology of roving rebel bands, ultrademocracy and vestiges of warlordism gained some ground in the army.&quot;11 These ideas persisted because most members of the Red Army had come from the peasantry and from old armies. It would take time and effort to change their old concepts and habits. Since no agreement was reached on these questions at the 7th Party Congress of the Fourth Red Army, Mao Zedong, who had originally been appointed secretary of the Front Committee by the CPC Central Committee, was not reelected to that post; nevertheless, he remained a member. Then he left for Jiaoyang in Shanghang County, where the Special Committee of Western Fujian was located, to help guide the Party's work there. On August 21 the CPC Central Committee sent to the Front Committee of the Fourth Red Army a letter, drafted by Zhou Enlai, in which it criticized the 7th Party Congress of the Fourth Red Army. The Central Committee emphasized that the Red Army was not only a fighting organization but also had a great role to play in propaganda and politics. It pointed out that the Red Army must have a relatively centralized leadership, that it was by no means patriarchal for the Party secretary to have more responsibilities, and that demanding that everything be discussed within the Party branch was an expression of ultra-democracy.12 Soon, Chen Yi went to Shanghai to report in detail to the Central Committee on the work of the Fourth Army. On September 28 the Central Committee again sent a directive to the Front Committee. &quot;Now we have the Red Army in the countryside,&quot; the Central Committee wrote, &quot;and later we will have political power in the cities. This is the characteristic of the Chinese revolution. It is a product of the Chinese economic base.&quot; The directive went on to list the basic tasks of the Red Army: ( 1 ) lo mobilize the masses in struggle, accomplish the agrarian revolution and establish Soviet regimes. (2) To carry on guerrilla warfare, arm the peasants and expand the Red Army. (3) To extend guerrilla areas and our political influence throughout the country.13 The directive analysed conditions within the Party organizations of the Fourth Red Army and pointed out that &quot;the only way to combat peasant ideology [among the soldiers was] to build up proletarian ideology and make it predominate.&quot;14 The reason for the combat effectiveness of the Party and the peoples army was that ideological and political unity was guaranteed by a strong sense of organization and discipline. The directive stressed that all the Party's power must be centralized in the Front Committee as the leading organ, and 137 that the charge of &quot;patriarchalism&quot; must not be made indiscriminately to weaken it and to serve as a cover for ultra-democracy. At the same time, it said, the Front Committee should not concern itself with everyday administrative affairs, which should be handled by the administrative organs. Thus, the Central Committee put an end to the argument within the Party organizations of the Fourth Red Army. It also urged the Front Committee and all officers and men to support the leadership of Zhu De and Mao Zedong and asked that Mao Zedong be reinstated as secretary of the Front Committee. In late December the 9th Party Congress of the Fourth Red Army was held in Gutian, Shanghang County, Fujian Province. At the meeting, Mao Zedong delivered a report, and a number of resolutions were adopted. The most important of these was one drafted by Mao on correcting mistaken ideas in the Party. This resolution stated that the Chinese Red Army was &quot;an armed body for carrying out the political tasks of the revolution&quot; and that it must subject itself to the absolute leadership of the Party. It criticized Party members who were exclusively concerned with military affairs and who argued that military affairs and politics were opposed to each other. It reiterated that the Red Army must be integrated with the people and take up the combined tasks of fighting, raising funds and doing propaganda and organizational work among the masses. It criticized those who wanted only to move from city to city to seek an easy life and engage in roving guerrilla actions, refusing to do the hard work of building revolutionary political power. It also criticized manifestations of ultra-democracy and the disregard of organizational discipline, pointing out that its root causes were petty-bourgeois individualism and aversion to discipline. The danger of ultra-democracy, the resolution said, was that it could weaken or even completely undermine the Party's fighting capacity, rendering the Party incapable of fulfilling its fighting tasks and thereby causing the defeat of the revolution. The resolution emphasized the importance of strengthening ideological education in the Party, analysed the various expressions of non-proletarian ideas in the Fourth Red Army's Party organizations and insisted that the Party and the army must be built on proletarian ideas. The resolution of the Gutian meeting was a programme for the building of the Communist Party of China and the Red Army. It answered the fundamental question of how to turn a revolutionary army that was mainly composed of peasants and operating in an environment of rural warfare into a people's army of a new type. Never in the history of China had there been such an army. The resolution of the Gutian meeting was implemented not only by the Fourth Red Army but also by other units of the Red Army to some extent in other parts of the country. It was a milestone in the history of the people's army of China. At the Gutian meeting a new Front Committee was elected with Mao Zedong as secretary. In June 1930 the Red Army units in southwestern Jiangxi and western Fujian were merged into the First Army Group of the Red Army, with Zhu De as commanderin-chicl and Mao Zedong as political commissar and secretary of the Front Committee. The new First Army Group comprised more than 20,000 troops and was thus the strongest Red Army force in the country. In the revolutionary base areas in southern Jiangxi and western Fujian, the agrarian revolution loo developed to a new stage. In April 1929 Mao Zedong, who was in charge of drafting the Land Law lor Xingguo County, Jiangxi, initiated a major change of principle. While the Land Law for the Jinggang Mountains had stipulated that &quot;all the land&quot; was to be confiscated and redistributed, in the new law this provision was changed to read &quot;all the public land and the land of the landlord class.&quot; In July the 1st Party Congress of Western Fujian adopted a resolution providing that land held by peasants was not to be confiscated and that the principle of &quot;taking from those who have a surplus and giving to those who have a shortage&quot; was to be introduced. After this congress, land distribution was carried out in an area of nearly 40,000 square kilometers in western Fujian. As a result, more than 600,000 poor peasants received land. Following the Gutian meeting in December, the main forces of the Fourth Red Army returned to southern Jiangxi. On February 7, 1930, the Front Committee of the Fourth Red Army called a meeting in Ji'an, 139 Jiangxi with the local authorities at which it was decided that the agrarian revolution must be deepened in Jiangxi as well. Accordingly, land distribution was carried out in the whole area of Xingguo and five other counties and in parts of Yongfeng and other counties. A year later, following a decision by the CPC Central Committee, Mao Zedong directed governments at different levels to issue a proclamation making it clear that, once the land had been distributed (according to the principles of &quot;taking from those who have a surplus and giving to those who have a shortage, and taking from those who have better and giving to those who have worse&quot;), the distribution was final. Anyone who had been given land was to manage it himself. The land belonged to him, other people must not encroach upon it and he could rent it out or sell it as he pleased. Produce from the land belonged to the peasant, except that he was expected to pay a land tax to the government. This policy represented a reversal of the Land Law of the Jinggang Mountains, which had provided that land belonged to the government and not to the peasant, who had the right to use it but not to sell it. Through repeated trial and error, the Party gradually developed a complete programme for land reform that corresponded to the realities of the Chinese countryside. Following the land reform in the revolutionary base areas of southern Jiangxi and western Fujian, a fundamental change took place in the social structure and the relations between classes. In October 1930 Mao Zedong conducted a one-week survey of the rural areas in Xingguo, after which he concluded that the situation with regard to the struggle for land throughout southern Jiangxi was more or less the same as in Xingguo. In his report on this survey he wrote that the poor peasants had benefited from the land reform in twelve respects: 1. They had been given farmland, which was the fundamental benefit. 2. They had been given the hills. 3. The grain of the landlords and counter-revolutionary rich peasants had been distributed to them. 4. All the debts owed before the revolution had been cancelled. Rice was cheaper. 6. It was no longer necessary to have money in order to take a wife. 7. It was no longer necessary to pay funeral expenses to bury the dead. 8. The price of an ox was lower than before. 9. They no longer needed money for ritual gift-giving and superstitious practices, as both had been done away with. 10. Drugs, gambling, thieves and bandits had disappeared. 11. They could now afford meat. 12. Most important, political power was now in their hands. The middle peasants too, Mao wrote, had benefited from the agrarian revolution both economically and politically. Most of them had received land, and they were no longer under the rule of the landlords and rich peasants, ordered about in everything. Now they too had the right to speak out, along with the poor peasants and farm labourers. Thus, the overwhelming majority of the peasants supported the agrarian revolution and the Communist Party. Everywhere their enthusiasm for the revolution ran high, and major successes were being achieved in the struggle against feudalism. At about this time, the agrarian revolution was also begun in other revolutionary base areas, one after another. The agrarian revolution was one of the basic components of the Chinese democratic revolution. Without changing the feudal land system it would be impossible to dismantle feudalism. In China there was no political party that represented solely the peasants. The political parties of the national bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie and their representatives either were not concerned with the peasants' land problem or only talked about it and did nothing. Only the Communist Party took practical, resolute action. Only the Communist Party led the masses of poor peasants in a fierce struggle to overthrow the feudal system that had ruled Chinese society for thousands of years. The peasants were realistic about their own interests. The fact that the CPC was leading the agrarian revolution helped them understand the difference between it and the Kuomintang. By the 141 same token, it greatly mobilized their support for the revolutionary war and their eagerness to defend and build the revolutionary base areas. As small producers, the peasants naturally had weaknesses, such as short-sightedness and aversion to discipline; therefore, they had to be educated and remoulded. However, they had a vast reservoir of hatred for imperialism and feudalism, far exceeding the resentment of other classes in society. It would be a mistake to stress the negative aspects of the peasantry at that time without recognizing its positive aspects. After the failure of the Great Revolution, the national bourgeoisie withdrew from the revolution, and the urban petty bourgeoisie wavered a great deal. If the Chinese revolution was to continue to develop into an irresistible force, it was essential for the Communist Party to rely firmly on the peasants, who accounted for the overwhelming majority of the population, winning their support through a thoroughgoing agrarian revolution. The people's revolution led by the Communist Party followed a unique strategy: to encircle the cities from the countryside and seize state power by armed force. This unique strategy, developed by the collective efforts of the Party and the people, took shape only after serious setbacks, through repeated trial and error and constant reviewing of experience. Mao Zedong made the most outstanding contribution to this process. He was the first to advocate shifting the focus of armed struggle to the countryside and to insist on developing rural revolutionary base areas; moreover, it was he who explained the theoretical basis for the strategy of the Chinese revolution. He criticized the idea that there was a contradiction between adhering to the leadership of the proletariat and relying on the peasants as the main force of revolution. &quot;For in the revolution in semi-colonial China,&quot; he wrote, &quot;the peasant struggle must always fail if it does not have the leadership of the workers, but the revolution is never harmed if the peasant struggle outstrips the forces of the workers.&quot;15 He emphasized the importance of persisting in the struggle in rural revolutionary base areas: &quot;Only thus is it possible to build the confidence of the revolutionary masses throughout the country, as the Soviet Union has built it throughout the world. Only thus is it possible to create tremendous difficulties for the reactionary ruling classes, shake their foundations and hasten their internal disintegration. Only thus is it really possible to create a Red Army which will become the chief weapon for the great revolution of the future. In short, only thus is it possible to hasten the revolutionary high tide.&quot;16 A few years later, Mao pointed out in more explicit terms that in semi -colonial, semi-feudal China, the Communist Party had to proceed differently than communist parties in capitalist countries. &quot;Basically,&quot; he said, &quot;the task of the Communist Party here is not to go through a long period of legal struggle before launching insurrection and war, and not to seize the big cities first and then occupy the countryside, but the reverse.&quot;17 After the decision was made at the meeting of August 7, 1927, to resist the murderous policies of the Kuomintang reactionaries with armed struggle, the Party was faced with the fundamental question of how to win that struggle. For a time the Party continued to focus its work on the cities. The first three famous insurrections in key cities after the defeat of the Great Revolution had failed to achieve their goals. But the idea of trying first to gain control of the cities did not quickly disappear. Instead, as will be seen, it continued to emerge, bringing repeated losses to the revolution. If the Chinese Communists, instead of turning to the rural areas, where the reactionary forces were weak, had merely adhered to the dogma in books, blindly copied the model of other countries and continued to concentrate on the cities, the revolution would have soon failed. But the Chinese Marxists represented by Mao Zedong persisted in proceeding from the realities in the country and in learning through practice and from the masses. Thus, displaying admirable initiative at a critical moment when the revolution was at stake, they were able to determine the correct strategy of surrounding the cities from the countryside and seizing state power with armed force, something that had never been done before.<br /> <br /> === The &quot;Left&quot; Mistakes During the Resurgence of Revolution and the Red Army's Victory in the Counter-Campaigns Against &quot;Encirclement and Suppression&quot; ===<br /> During the two years immediately following the 6th National Congress of the CPC in 1928, the revolution revived across the country. Through arduous struggle, the CPC, which seemed to have fallen into hopeless straits after the failure of the Great Revolution, reemcrged as an important political force. There were both objective and subjective reasons for this. The objective reasons were as follows. A period of relative stability prevailed after the founding of the KMT government in Nanjing, but after war broke out between Chiang Kai-shek and the Guangxi clique in March 1929, the country relapsed into incessant tangled warfare between the new warlords. Many of the troops that had previously been engaged in attempts to encircle and suppress the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army were moved to other battlefields to take part in that warfare, leaving a vacuum in certain areas and an opportunity for the Red Army to grow. Moreover, under the rule of the KMT government, the national crisis was aggravated. Every one of the fundamental contradictions in Chinese society became intensified, and the Nanjing government grew increasingly fascist. The ordinary workers and peasants and even the national bourgeoisie had won not an iota of emancipation, political, economic or ideological. Discontent was growing even among those who had cherished illusions about the KMT. The subjective reason for the revival of the revolution at this time was that the CPC Central Committee adhered to a basically correct line and did a great deal of fruitful work by proceeding from the actual conditions in the country. The Resurgence of Revolution in 1929 and Early 1930 In its political resolution, the 6th National Congress of the CPC wrote: &quot;Since the revolution has suffered serious defeats, it is essential to shift from direct armed uprisings on a broad scale to the day-to-day work of organizing and mobilizing the masses.... The general line of the Party is to win over the masses.&quot; A sharp change in the Party's work was effected in the wake of the congress. The Party faced a grim situation in the areas under KMT rule. The &quot;Left&quot; putschism that had emerged in November 1927 brought further heavy losses to the forces that had managed to survive the failure of the Great Revolution. For a time, the Central Committee regarded Hunan, Hubei and Guangdong provinces as centres from which to relaunch struggles, but it was precisely those areas that suffered the heaviest losses. Local Party organizations were ill adapted to the new and perilous environment, since they had mushroomed when the revolutionary activity was at its height and had had only two kinds of experience. Either they had engaged in open or semi-open activities during the period of the Great Revolution, or following the instructions of putschist leaders, they had relied only on a small number of people who acted recklessly, without regard for consequences or even for their own lives. Things had begun to change around the time of the 6th Party Congress, but there was no fundamental turn for the better. Most of the key Party members were concentrated in provincial Party committees, special committees and certain major cities and townships, forming a huge secret organization. The Party was estranged from the masses. Many Party branches had become inactive and existed in name only. Under these difficult conditions, many outstanding Party members immersed themselves in hard, solid work. After the 6th Party Congress, the Central Committee laid down the following principles for the Party's work. First, it was essential to go into the midst of the masses and start work from the grassroots. Only when the organizations at lower levels had been consolidated and become active could organizations at higher levels be set up. Second, secret work should be integrated with open work. Party 145 organizations in every locality should use all means (including legal and semi-legal means) to get in touch with workers and peasants, so as to truly understand their hardships and demands and to patiently mobilize them and lead them in daily struggles. Thus gradually, over a long period of time, the Party would accumulate strength and fulfil its objective of &quot;winning over the masses.&quot; Third, Party cadres should have regular jobs and social relations with people in different milieus, so as to be able to make full use of the cover provided by their professional and social connections. While endeavouring to rectify the &quot;Left&quot; mistakes, the Party also struggled resolutely against the Right views and actions. At this time Chen Duxiu and others, despairing of the future of the revolution, gradually turned liquidationist. Embracing Trotskyite views, they held that after the defeat of the Great Revolution in 1927, the Chinese bourgeoisie had triumphed over the imperialist and feudal forces and stabilized its rule over the people; capitalism had gained the upper hand in Chinese society and would enjoy peaceful development. They concluded that since the bourgeois-democratic revolution in China had ended, the Chinese proletariat could not bring about a &quot;socialist revolution&quot; until some time in the future. Meanwhile, it could only engage in a legal movement, which would centre around the call for a national conference, attended by representatives from all walks of life, to seek a political solution to the country's problems. They advocated abolishing revolutionary movements and slandered the Red Army's military operations as the actions of &quot;roving rebel bands.&quot; Instead of accepting criticism, they tried to split the Party by secretly setting up small opposition factions. This led to their expulsion from the Party. In the face of the cruel White terror, the arrests and massacres in the vast areas under the reactionary KMT regime, it was extremely hard to keep the Party organizations there intact, let alone to consolidate and expand them. It took not only courage and tenacity but also resourcefulness and correct guidance. After a year's preparation, the 2nd Plenary Session of the 6th Central Committee of the CPC was held in June 1929. It made the following judgement on the condition of the Party: &quot;The Party has been rescued from weakness and inactivity and has regained its unity. At the same time, the Party has made progress in its work, gaining ground in its relations with the people, increasing its political influence among the masses and expanding its capacity to lead struggles.&quot;18 According to statistics, Party membership grew from a little over 40,000 in July 1928, at the time of the 6th Party Congress, to 69,000 in June 1929, at the time of the 2nd Plenary Session of the 6th Central Committee, and to 100,000 in March 1930. In spite of some grave setbacks during this time,, the Party gained much valuable experience in underground work in areas strictly controlled by the reactionary forces. This experience was of great importance for the Party's future work in such areas. More important, the strengthening of the CPC Central Committee's leadership of the Red Army and the rural base areas brought about a tremendous expansion of the revolutionary forces. By March 1930, the Red Army had grown to 13 armies with over 62,000 men. And in addition to the base areas in southwestern Jiangxi and western Fujian led by Mao Zedong and others, there were major bases in the border regions of western Hunan-Hubci, Hubei-Henan-Anhui, Fujian-Zhejiang-Jiangxi, Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi and Hunan-Jiangxi, as well as in certain areas of Guangxi and Guangdong. Early in 1928, He Long, Zhou Yiqun and others arrived in the Honghu Lake area of Hubei and the Sangzhi area of Hunan. Using his social connections in his hometown of Sangzhi, He Long built a new revolutionary force by merging several peasant guerrilla units and reorganized them into the Fourth Army of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army. On March 19, 1929, the CPC Central Committee wrote to He Long and the other leaders of the Front Committee of the Fourth Army, instructing them to concentrate on mobilizing the rural population to deepen the agrarian revolution, rather than on taking big cities. In July 1930 the newly formed Fourth Army joined forces in Gong'an County, Hubei Province, with the Sixth Red Army, which had been established by expanding the Western Hubei Guerrilla Corps. Together, the two armies formed the Second Red Army Group, totalling more than 10,000 men, with He Long as commander-in-chief and Zhou Yiqun as political commissar. Soon after that, a Soviet government was set up in the western Hunan-Hubei base area. The Red Army guerrilla forces also grew rapidly in the HubeiHenan-Anhui base area. At first they were divided into three parts, one in the Hubei-Henan border base area, formed after the Huang'an-Machcng Uprising; one in the southeastern Henan base area, formed after the Southern Shangcheng Uprising; and one in the western Anhui base area, formed after the Lu'an-Huoshan Uprising. The Military Commission of the Central Committee assigned Xu Xiangqian to command the Hubei-Henan border base area. In January 1930, seeing the necessity of unifying the leadership of the Party organizations and the command of the Red Army units, the Central Committee decided to set up a Special Committee for the entire Hubei-Henan-Anhui border base area and appointed Guo Shushen as secretary. It also merged the three separate units into the First Army of the Red Army with Xu Jishen as commander, Xu Xiangqian as deputy commander and Cao Dajun as political commissar. The Special Committee and the First Army were the predecessors of the HubeiHenan-Anhui Bureau of the Central Committee and the Fourth Front Army of the Red Army. Having returned to the Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi border region from southern Jiangxi, the Fifth Army of the Red Army, led by Peng Dehuai and Teng Daiyuan, joined with local guerrilla forces to form the Third Army Group of the Red Army. Peng Dehuai became commander-in-chief of the group and secretary of its Front Committee, and Teng Daiyuan was named political commissar. This army group opened up the Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi Revolutionary Base Area. In the western part of Guangxi Province, Deng Xiaoping, representative of the CPC Central Committee, and Zhang Yunyi, Wei Baqun and others led part of the Guangxi army and local peasant forces influenced by the Party in the Bose Uprising of December 1929 and the Longzhou Uprising of February 1930. They founded the Seventh and Eighth armies of the Red Army, with Li Mingrui as commander-in-chief and Deng Xiaoping as political commissar of both armies, and established the Zuojiang and Youjiang Rivers Revolutionary Base Area. Thanks to these events, the Chinese revolutionary movement soon took on a very different aspect. In an article written in April 1930, Zhou Enlai declared: &quot;Peasant guerrilla warfare and the agrarian revolution are the main features of the Chinese revolution today.&quot;19 This was a highly important new assessment, based on the Party's practice during the nearly two years since its 6th Congress. The Emergence of &quot;Left&quot; Adventurism As the situation improved, &quot;Left&quot; impetuosity gradually grew within the Communist Party. The renewal of the warfare between new warlords representing various KMT factions, triggered by the war between Chiang Kai-shek and the Guangxi clique, and the Chinese Eastern Railway Incident20 led the CPC Central Committee to a wrong assessment of the situation and encouraged a resurgence of &quot;Left&quot; thinking. More important, in 1929 the Communist International sent the CPC Central Committee a series of four letters stressing the &quot;struggle against Right tendencies.&quot; The most influential of these, dated October 26, asserted that the time was ripe for decisive action: &quot;China has entered a period of profound national crisis. ...It is now possible and necessary to prepare the masses for the revolution that will overthrow the political power based on the alliance between the landlord class and the bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the workers and peasants in the Soviet form, to engage energetically in the revolutionary forms of class struggle (political strikes by the masses, revolutionary demonstrations, guerrilla warfare, etc.) and to keep expanding them.&quot; The letter added that by and large, the putschist mistakes had been corrected. On January 1 1, 1930, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee adopted a resolution concurring with the view of the Communist International that the country was in profound crisis. 149 &quot;The pace at which the revolution develops,&quot; the resolution went on, &quot;depends on the pace at which the reactionary regime is overthrown directly through armed rebellion.... We should act on the instructions of the Communist International, start at once to prepare the masses to fulfil this task and energetically initiate and expand revolutionary forms of class struggle.&quot; In 1928, when the revolution had suffered grave setbacks, it had been easy to see that the &quot;Left&quot; tendencies in the Party were wrong and to quickly put an end to putschist mistakes. But at this time, when the KMT warlords of different factions were fighting among themselves, and when the revolutionary movement appeared to be reviving, many Party members overestimated revolutionary developments, and this fostered a more intense and sustained growth of &quot;Left&quot; impetuosity. The war in the Central Plains that broke out in May 1930 between Chiang Kai-shek on one side and Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang on the other marked a struggle between new warlords on an unprecedented scale. At the time, Zhou Enlai was in the Soviet Union reporting to the Communist International. Li Lisan and others, who were actually in charge of the work of the Central Committee, considered that the revolutionary crisis had come to a head nationwide. On June 11 the Political Bureau adopted a resolution, drafted by Li Lisan, entitled &quot;The New Revolutionary High Tide and Winning Victory First in One or More Provinces.&quot; &quot;Left&quot; adventurism (later known as the Li Lisan line) thus became dominant in the Central Committee. In this resolution &quot;Left&quot; adventurism manifested itself in several ways. First, the Political Bureau made a totally incorrect assessment of the situation, maintaining that the decisive battle not only for the Chinese revolution but for the world revolution was just around the corner. &quot;The fundamental economic and political crisis in China,&quot; the Bureau wrote, &quot;continues to sharpen in an identical manner in every part of the country without the slightest essential difference.... The general situation shows that a new revolutionary upsurge in China is upon us.... The situation for direct revolution is already in existence on a national basis and is very likely to be turned into nationwide victory of the revolution.&quot; Moreover, the outbreak of the Chinese revolution, it said, would immediately &quot;set off a great revolution worldwide and give rise to the possibility of the final decisive class battle the world over.&quot; Second, the Political Bureau argued that it was no longer necessary to gradually accumulate and prepare the subjective forces of revolution, since the masses, who aspired to large-scale action, would be content with nothing less than a nationwide armed uprising. Third, the Political Bureau continued to espouse the mistaken &quot;city centre theory.&quot; &quot;The great struggle of the proletariat is the decisive force,&quot; the resolution declared. &quot;Without an upsurge in working class strikes and without armed uprisings in key cities, it is absolutely impossible to achieve victory in one or more provinces.&quot; It rejected &quot;encircling the cities from the countryside&quot; as a grossly incorrect concept and called for &quot;a drastic change in the guerrilla tactics of the past.&quot; Fourth, the Political Bureau again confused the bounds of the democratic revolution and the socialist revolution. It maintained that the bourgeoisie had become part of the reactionary alliance and that if the revolution succeeded fixst in one or more provinces, &quot;the factories, enterprises and banks owned by the Chinese bourgeoisie should be confiscated&quot; and &quot;the workers' and peasants' dictatorship must be turned into the dictatorship of the proletariat.&quot; Guided by this sort of thinking, Li Lisan and his followers formed an adventuristic plan to launch armed uprisings in all the key cities of China with Wuhan as the centre and to concentrate all the Red Army forces to attack major cities. The plan emphasized the importance of uprisings in Wuhan and Nanjing and of a general strike in Shanghai, and instructed all Red Army units to &quot;join forces in Wuhan&quot; and &quot;water their horses in the Yangtze River.&quot; In late July the lhird Red Army Group, taking advantage of the enemy's weak defence, captured Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan, and occupied it for a time (pulling out on August 5). Li Lisan was so delighted with this victory that he considered it a vindication of his views and plan. In early August 151 a National General Action Committee was set up as the supreme commanding body for the armed uprisings and the general strike. The leading bodies of the CPC, the Youth League and the trade unions were merged into action committees at various levels, and the normal activities of those organizations were suspended. A detailed plan was put forward to prepare for nationwide uprisings, and appeals for cooperation were sent to Mongolia, which was asked to send troops, and to the Soviet Union, which was asked to prepare for war. Although the mistaken &quot;Left&quot; line held sway for only a little more than three months (from June to September 1930), the Party paid dearly for it. In the areas under KMT rule, many local Party organizations, impatient to organize uprisings, exposed their few members in open actions. This led to the destruction of eleven provincial Party committees and to nearly total disintegration of the Party organizations in Wuhan, Nanjing and other cities. In addition, the Red Army suffered huge losses during its attacks on large cities. An important feature of &quot;Left&quot; adventurism was that its adherents were divorced from reality—that is, they proceeded purely from subjective thinking or imagination and were impatient for success. Naturally, this attitude was resisted by those Party cadres who knew the actual situation and looked the facts in the face. For example, He Mengxiong, a member of the standing committee of the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee, at a meeting sharply criticized Li Lisan's mistake of neglecting both subjective and objective conditions; he was silenced and attacked. In June the Central Committee ordered the First Army Group of the Red Army, led by Mao Zedong and Zhu De, to attack Nanchang and Jiujiang. As they approached Nanchang, however, recognizing that their forces were greatly outnumbered by the enemy, they decided against an attack. By this time, the Third Army Group had already pulled out of Changsha. The First and Third Army Groups joined forces and formed the First Front Army of the Red Army, totalling over 30,000 men. Zhu De became the commander-in-chief and Mao Zedong the general political commissar and secretary of the General Front Committee. They were ordered to retake Changsha but failed after fierce fighting. Flexibly changing tactics according to circumstances, Mao Zedong decided to withdraw from Changsha and enter Jiangxi. In other revolutionary base areas, some leaders of the Party and the Red Army were also doubtful about the Li Lisan line and resisted it in varying degrees. Thus, it was not implemented in an all-round way in practical work, especially in the army and the base areas. Li Lisan's &quot;Left&quot; adventurism had also gone beyond the tolerance of the Communist International. In late July, the Executive Committee of the Comintern adopted a resolution on the question of China stating, &quot;For the time being, we have not yet achieved an objective situation of revolution throughout China.&quot; Zhou Enlai and Qu Qiubai were sent home to rectify Li Lisan's mistake, which they started to do as soon as they returned. During September 24-28, 1930, in Shanghai, the CPC held the Enlarged 3rd Plenary Session of the 6th Central Committee. In his report transmitting the resolution of the Communist International, Zhou Enlai pointed out the uneven development of the Chinese revolution and concluded that &quot;the present situation is not yet a situation for direct armed uprising throughout the country.&quot; He criticized Li Lisan for having made the mistake of &quot;Left&quot; adventurism in planning the Party's work. Li Lisan made a self-criticism, and Qu Qiubai delivered a summary of the political discussion at the session. The 3rd Plenary Session corrected the ultra-Left assessment of the revolutionary situation in China made by Li Lisan and others, and after the meeting Li left his leading position. The programme for urban uprisings was canceled, and after the failure of the second attack on Changsha, the Red Army discontinued its attacks on big cities. Action committees for the central and local levels were dismantled, and the Party, Youth League and trade union organizations were rehabilitated. Work in the rural revolutionary base areas and the Red Army was given an increasingly important position. Nevertheless, the 3rd Plenary Session failed to make a thorough ideological and theoretical criticism of the &quot;Left&quot; mistake, represented by Li Lisan. It tolerated his thinking 153 to an extent and wrongly criticized He Mengxiong who had opposed Li Lisan. Still, those mistakes, which were the main reflection of the Li Lisan line in practical work, were rectified, the problem was basically solved and the work as a whole gradually returned to normal. But soon there was a sudden change. In October the Communist International wrote a letter to the CPC Central Committee declaring that the Li Lisan line was opposed to that of the International. At this time, Wang Ming (Chen Shaoyu) and Bo Gu (Qin Bangxian) had just returned from Moscow, where they had been studying and where they had won the confidence of Pavel Mif, deputy head of the Comintern's Far Eastern Bureau. Through abnormal channels, Wang and Bo learned the contents of the letter before the Central Committee did. They immediately called for &quot;opposing conciliation&quot; and violently attacked the Central Committee as constituted at the 3rd Plenary Session. Wang Ming also distributed his programmatic pamphlet TwoLine Struggle (later revised and renamed Strive to Make the CPC More Bolshevik). He and Bo Gu exaggerated the proportion of capitalism in the Chinese economy and the importance of struggling against the bourgeoisie and the rich peasants at the present stage of the revolution, and they denied the existence of a camp of intermediate forces. They insisted that there was a nationwide revolutionary upsurge and, eager for quick victory in one or more major provinces with key cities, urged that the Party launch nationwide attacks. A &quot;true&quot; Red Army and a government formed by a conference of workers, peasants and soldiers, they said, should already have been established in China, and the main dangers within the Party were Right opportunism in its line, and in its practical work and the defence of the interests of rich peasants. They called on Party members to form a provisional central leading organ and demanded that leading organs at different levels be transformed, consolidated and staffed with &quot;militant cadres&quot; who vigorously supported and implemented their line. The statements and activities of Wang Ming and Bo Gu threw the Party into ideological disarray. Some local Party cadres and organizations that had been criticized by Li Lisan and the 3rd Plenary Session demanded that the Central Committee be reorganized. With the National Federation of Trade Unions in their hands, Luo Zhanglong and others manoeuvred to split the Party. Amid this chaos, the Central Committee found it impossible to carry out its normal work. The 4th Plenary Session of the 6th Central Committee of the CPC was convened in Shanghai on January 7, 1931. It was dominated by Pavel Mif, who had come to China. The main theme of the session was criticism of the 3rd Plenary Session's so-called conciliatory attitude towards the Li Lisan line. &quot;Right deviation&quot; was identified as the chief danger within the Party, and it was decided that &quot;leading organs at different levels should be transformed and consolidated.&quot; Qu Qiubai, Zhou Enlai and others were severely criticized at the meeting. With the support of Mif, Wang Ming, although he was only 26 and had little experience in struggle, was elected not only to the Central Committee but also to the Political Bureau. Nothing positive came out of the 4th Session of the 6th Central Committee. For four long years afterwards, the Central Committee was dominated by the &quot;Left&quot; dogmatism represented by Wang Ming. How was it that Wang Ming was able to gain such ascendancy? There were several reasons. Ever since the August 7th Meeting, there had been heavy &quot;Left&quot; tendencies in the Party, which had never been eliminated from its guiding ideology. Many Party cadres were enthusiastic about revolution but ill prepared with theory and practice. When Wang Ming and his followers tried to intimidate them with a lot of Marxist terms and received full support from the representative of the Communist International, many of them were unable to judge his position correctly and resist it. Wang Ming and his faction argued that the Li Lisan line was not a &quot;Left&quot; deviation but a Right deviation that denied the possibility of winning victory first in one or more provinces. Wang Ming had written in his pamphlet, &quot;At present we have not yet achieved a situation of direct revolution in the whole country, but such a situation could be achieved in one or more major provinces soon, as new waves of revolutionary movement 155 throughout the country are growing and developing at different .needs &quot; Accordingly, he called for efforts to achieve victory in the provinces of Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi, which would pave the way for nationwide victory. He and his supporters demanded continued attacks on the intermediate forces and the launching of a nationwide offensive. Generally speaking, Wang Ming and his faction were more determined and more arrogant than Li Lisan and those who had followed his line of &quot;Left&quot; adventurism, and clothed their arguments in more theoretical verbiage. Therefore they caused greater damage. After the 4th Plenary Session in 1931, the Party's work in the areas under Kuomintang rule was completely disrupted. A number of outstanding Party cadres, including He Mengxiong, Lm Yunan and Li Qiushi, were arrested and executed because renegades informed against them. Luo Zhanglong and others formed an &quot;Extraordinary Central Committee&quot; in opposition to the policies of the 4th Plenary Session and attempted to organize a separate party; they were therefore expelled from the CPC. In late April Gu Sh unzhang, an alternate member of the Political Bureau who had assisted in running the Party's security work and had access to many of the Central Committee's top secrets, was arrested in Wuhan and betrayed the Party. He proposed that the Kuomintang authorities wipe out the headquarters and principal leaders of the CPC Central Committee at one blow in a surprise attack. This highly confidential piece of information was made known to Qian Zhuangfei, an underground Communist who had made his way into the Investigation Section of the KM Fs Central Organization Department and worked there as a confidential secretary. He immediately sent a courier from Nanjing to Shanghai to report to Li Kenong, who was in charge of the Section of Special Tasks of the CPC Central Committee and who would then convey the information to the Central Committee. At this critical moment, Zhou Enlai, assisted by Chen Yun and others, calmly acted to protect the Central Committee and thus averted disaster. In late June Xiang Zhongfa, who was then chairman of the Political Bureau, was arrested because of his imprudence, and soon he too betrayed the Party. Under these circumstances, Wang Ming left Shanghai for Moscow, and Zhou Enlai was forced to leave for Ruijin, Jiangxi, in the Central Revolutionary Base Area. Because both the Central Committee and the Political Bureau in Shanghai had lost more than half their members, a Provisional Central Political Bureau was set up in accordance with instructions from the Communist International. Bo Gu, Zhang Wentian (Luo Fu) and Lu Futan became members of the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee, Bo Gu being given overall responsibility, and they continued to follow the &quot;Left&quot; adventurist line represented by Wang Ming. The Red Army's Victories in the CounterCampaigns Against &quot;Encirclement and Suppression&quot; The Central Committee formed at the 4th Plenary Session sent representatives, representative organs or new leading cadres to the various revolutionary base areas to carry out the struggle against what it called Right deviation. However, in many of them, especially the Central Base Area under the leadership of Mao Zedong, there was no time to carry out the &quot;Left&quot; policies promoted by these emissaries before the KMT began launching its &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; campaigns. For this reason, it was still possible for the Red Army to defeat the enemy on several occasions. The Kuomintang ruling clique was shocked by the growth of the Red Army and the base areas, and particularly by the Red Army's adventurist attacks on key cities during the period when the Party was following the Li Lisan line. By October 1930 the six-month war on the Central Plains between Chiang Kai-shek on one side and Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang on the other, involving more than a million men, was over. Immediately after he had won, Chiang turned back and concentrated large forces to &quot;encircle and suppress&quot; the Red Army in the revolutionary base areas in southern China. By this time the Red Army had expanded to more than 100,000 men. It was now possible to make the major change from waging chiefly guerrilla warfare to waging chiefly mobile warfare. Wherever the Red Army went, it established 157 Party organizations and revolutionary political power. It conducted a struggle for the distribution of land, winning the support of the masses. Stable revolutionary base areas were established, providing broad combat theatres for the Red Army and plenty of room for them to manoeuvre. These conditions had not been available to the Red Army in the past. Thus, in its countercampaigns against the KMT troops' &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; during this period, the Red Army fought on a larger scale and gained greater victories than ever before. The main target of the Kuomintang army's &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; campaigns was the First Front Army of the Red Army, led by Mao Zedong and Zhu De. Beginning in October 1930, Chiang Kai-shek gathered over 100,000 troops and mounted the first &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; campaign, directed by Lu Diping, Governor of Jiangxi. As they underestimated the Red Army, the KMT forces adopted the tactic of driving straight into the revolutionary base area and making a concerted attack by converging columns, hoping to wipe out the main forces of the First Front Army at one blow. On October 30 the General Front Committee and the Jiangxi Action Committee held a joint meeting in Luofang. Noting that the 40,000 men of the First Front Army were greatly outnumbered and that the enemy forces in Hunan were strong while those in Jiangxi were weak, they decided to retreat to the centre of the base area and look for a favourable opportunity for combat. The plan was to lure the enemy troops in deep, wait for them to wear out their strength and then eliminate them in mobile warfare. And indeed, when the KMT army had penetrated deep into the revolutionary base area, it found that its battle line was overextended and its forces were spread too thin. On December 30 the division headquarters and two brigades led by Zhang Huizan, commander of the 18th Division of the &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; army, entered the narrow mountain paths in the Longgang area and were ambushed by the Red Army. In just one day of heavy fighting, the Red Army wiped out some 10,000 enemy troops and captured Zhang Huizan. It followed up this victory with an attack to the east that eliminated half of Tan Daoyuan's division in Dongshao. The first large-scale &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; campaign was smashed. Before long, the Kuomintang regime sent He Yingqin, Minister of War and concurrently director of the Nanchang provisional headquarters of the commander-in-chief of the army, navy and air force, to command 200,000 forces in a second &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; campaign. Drawing the lesson from the failure in the previous campaign, he changed tactics, advancing by stages, attacking only when sure of success and consolidating his position at every step. He also imposed a light economic blockade on the Soviet base area. The Soviet Area Bureau of the Central Committee held several meetings to consider counter-measures. A proposal to withdraw from the area and another to divide the Red Army forces in an attempt to push back the enemy were both rejected in favour of the former tactic of luring the enemy in deep. Utilizing the favourable conditions of the base area, the First Front Army concentrated its main forces, identified the enemy's weak links and made sure that it had superior forces for every battle. First it attacked where the enemy was weak, then moved rapidly from west to east, wiping out the enemy units one by one. During the period of May 16-31, starting from Futian, the Red Army won five battles in succession, sweeping across 350 kilometres from the Ganjiang River in Jiangxi to Jianning in Fujian and eliminating over 30,000 enemy troops. Thus, the KMT's second &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; campaign was also smashed. As soon as the campaign was over in June, Chiang Kai-shek personally took up the post of commander-in-chief of the &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; army, making He Yingqin front line commander, and gathered 300,000 troops for a third attempt. Counting on their tenfold numerical superiority, Chiang and He reverted to the tactic of driving straight into the base area in an attempt to force the Red Army back to the east bank of the Ganjiang River, disperse it and then &quot;mop up&quot; the smaller units. Mao Zedong and Zhu Dc decided to avoid the main forces of Chiang's army and attack its weak spots. Accordingly, they led the main body of the Red Army on a 500-kilometre detour to 159 Xingguo in southern Jiangxi. By this time, the enemy forces were dosing in on them by different routes. Suddenly, however, the Red Army broke through a gap in their lines and won three successive battles, eliminating more than ten thousand enemy troops. Chiang immediately ordered all his units to turn east in pursuit. The Red Army disguised a small number of troops as its main force to lead the Kuomintang army far to the northeast, while its real main force again moved west, making its way through a mountain pass between concentrations of enemy troops. Then they returned to Xingguo to hide, rest and regroup. By the time the enemy discovered the deception and turned west, the Red Army had already had a fortnight's respite. The enemy troops were so hungry, tired and demoralized that they had to withdraw. The Red Army took advantage of this and wiped out another thirty thousand of them. In this way, the KMT's third attempt at &quot;encirclement and suppression,&quot; personally directed by Chiang Kai-shek, was defeated like the first two. After this campaign, the two revolutionary base areas of southern Jiangxi and western Fujian were linked up to form the Central Revolutionary Base Area, an area of fifty thousand square kilometres with twenty-one county towns and a population of two and a half million. Not long after, on December 14, over 17,000 men of the KMT's 26th Route Army (formerly part of the Northwestern Army under Feng Yuxiang) staged a mass defection in Ningdu, Jiangxi Province, under the leadership of Zhao Bosheng, the army's chief of staff who was an underground Communist, and generals Ji Zhentong, Dong Zhentang and Huang Zhongyue. These troops were reorganized as the Fifth Army Group of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. This was the first time that a big regular army unit of the Kuomintang, with strong fighting capacity, had defected on the battlefield and gone over to the Red Army. This showed that the KMT's policy of civil war was unpopular and that the Red Army had grown much stronger. At about this time major victories were also achieved in the struggle against &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; in the revolutionary base areas of Hubei-Henan-Anhui and western Hunan-Hubei. The Red Army and the base areas in those regions had likewise grown enormously. The basic reason that the Red Army was able to defeat one KMT &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; campaign after another in extremely difficult circumstances, even though greatly outnumbered, was that it had the enthusiastic support of the masses of poor peasants in the base areas. These peasants had been given land in the agrarian revolution, and they vied with each other to join the army and to help in the revolutionary war in every way possible. Without that support, the Red Army's victories would not have been possible. The able leadership of Mao Zedong and others was also indispensable. In essence, their strategy was to concentrate the revolutionary forces and destroy the enemy units one by one. Tactically, this meant finding the enemy's weak links while he was on the move and engaging him in quickly decided battles, fighting only when the Red Army could win and retreating when it could not. These strategic and tactical principles solved the complex and difficult problem of defeating a strong enemy by means of inferior forces with backward weapons. They took shape gradually in practice, in response to the specific conditions of the revolutionary war in China. A few years later Mao Zedong was to explain them systematically in his &quot;Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War.&quot;<br /> <br /> === Changes in the Domestic Political Situation and Grave Damage Brought About by &quot;Left&quot; Errors in the Party after the September 18th Incident ===<br /> Late in the night of September 18, 1931, an event took place that shocked the whole country and changed the destiny of China. The Japanese Kwantung Army, which, in accordance with the terms of an unequal treaty, was stationed in northeast China, attacked Beidaying, where the Northeastern Army was garrisoned, and the city of Shenyang. The next day the Japanese army, encountering only light resistance, occupied Shenyang, Changchun and some twenty other cities. In four months' time, the three provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang fell into enemy hands, and the people of northeast China sank into the miserable life of slaves in a conquered land. On January 28, 1932, the Japanese army launched a fresh attack in Shanghai. On March 9 it declared the founding of a puppet Manchukuo regime with Pu Yi, the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, as the &quot;Executive&quot; (a title that two years later was changed to Emperor). The Awakening of the Nation After the September 18th Incident The September 18th Incident was a natural result of the expansionist policy of aggression against China that had long been followed by the Japanese militarists. It was a major step toward turning China into a colony exclusively occupied by Japan. China had been subjected more than once to the threat of being divided among imperialist powers, but this time it was in imminent danger of being conquered. &quot;The Chinese nation laces its greatest danger; from each one the urgent call for action comes forth.&quot; The words of the &quot;March of the Volunteers&quot; expressed the indignation in the hearts of hundreds of millions of Chinese. As a result of the Japanese imperialists' invasion of China, the national contradiction between the two countries became the principal one and brought about major changes in the relations between different classes in China. The Chinese workers and peasants wanted to resist the aggression. After having remained inactive for more than four years, the student youth and the urban petty bourgeoisie also began to call for resistance. Cities that had been quiet for some time were again the scene of indignant protests. In Beiping,22 Shanghai, Nanjing, Guangzhou and Wuhan, students, workers and other residents organized demonstrations and strikes and published open telegrams to the government demanding that it resist Japanese aggression. On September 28, 1931, several thousand students from Shanghai and Nanjing went to the Kuomintang government and the central headquarters of the Kuomintang in Nanjing to demand a declaration of war against Japan; some of them even beat Wang Zhengting, the Foreign Minister. The national bourgeoisie also began to change its attitude and take an active part in the protests. The Sheri Bao and Xin Wen Bao, two newspapers in Shanghai, carried a students' manifesto of resistance. Businesses in Shanghai, Hankou, Tianjin and other cities boycotted Japanese goods and asked that economic relations with Japan be severed. In northeast China under Japanese occupation, large numbers of volunteers rose in resistance. Under conditions of extreme hardship and difficulty, they carried out guerrilla warfare in the area between the Changbai Mountains and the Heilongjiang River, winning the admiration of the whole country. In the face of the Japanese invasion, the government in Nanjing made repeated concessions. At the time of the September 18th Incident, the Japanese Kwantung Army had only 10,000 men, while the Chinese Northeastern Army had 165,000 troops stationed in northeast China, in addition to 70,000 who had moved into the area south of Shanhaiguan, the east end of the Great Wall, before the conclusion of the Central Plains campaign. But two months earlier, Chiang Kai-shek had already announced the policy of &quot;internal pacification before resistance to foreign invasion,&quot; and he insisted on using his main forces to &quot;encircle and suppress&quot; the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, which stood for resistance to the Japanese. When the September 18th Incident took place, the Nanjing government telegraphed the Northeastern Army: &quot;This act of the Japanese Army is merely an ordinary act of provocation. To prevent the incident from developing further, you must keep to absolute non-resistance.&quot;23 This attitude of the Nanjing government allowed the Japanese imperialists to launch large-scale attacks recklessly. But as the national crisis came to a head, divisions appeared within the Kuomintang. Ma Zhanshan, Li Du and other generals of the Northeastern Army resisted the Japanese in northeast China. In January 1932, when the Japanese 163 attacked Shanghai, the 19th Route Army under the command of Jiang Guangnai and Cai Tingkai fought them heroically. As Shanghai and Nanjing were the heart of the Kuomintang regime, and as the Japanese were receiving large-scale reinforcements, the government also sent into battle troops of the Fifth Army under the command of Zhang Zhizhong. However, its basic principle was still to sue for peace. On May 5, through the mediation of Britain and the U.S.A., the government signed the WusongShanghai Armistice Agreement with the Japanese aggressors, surrendering the country's sovereign rights under humiliating terms. The following year, when Rehe Province had fallen into enemy hands and the battle of resistance along the Great Wall had failed, it signed the Tanggu Agreement, which similarly gave away sovereignty over north China. In Zhangjiakou, Feng Yuxiang organized the Chahar People's Anti-Japanese Allied Army, but he met with only obstruction and sabotage from the Nanjing government. From the time of the September 18th Incident, the Communist Parly of China stood firmly for resistance against Japan. On September 20 the CPC Central Committee issued a &quot;Declaration on the Brutal Occupation of the Three Northeastern Provinces by the Japanese Imperialists,&quot; in which it unequivocally demanded opposition to the seizure, immediate withdrawal of all the Japanese ground, naval and air forces occupying the three Northeastern provinces and nullification of all unequal treaties. On November 27 the Provisional Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic, which had just declared its founding in Ruijin, Jiangxi, issued a statement calling on the people of the whole country to mobilize and arm themselves to combat Japanese aggression and the reactionary regime of the Kuomintang. The CPC Provincial Committee of Manchuria instructed local Party organizations to strengthen their contacts with the people's volunteers and to organize armed resistance forces under the Party's leadership. The Central Committee sent Yang Jingyu, Zhao Shangzhi, Zhou Baozhong and Zhao Yiman to the Northeast to strengthen the leadership of Party organizations there. By early 1933, guerrilla units had been founded successively in Bayan, Hailong, Ning'an, Tangyuan and Hailun and in southern and eastern Manchuria; these were eventually to become the main armed forces resisting Japan in northeast China. In this unprecedented national crisis, the Party faced the questions of how to understand the profound changes in class relations in the country and how to advance the national democratic revolution. At this time, &quot;Left&quot; adventurism represented by Wang Ming was already dominant in the Provisional Central Committee. The Committee failed to understand and deal with these questions correctly. It adopted a series of resolutions that only reinforced the tendency towards &quot;Left&quot; adventurism in practical work. The Communist International held that the Japanese occupation of northeast China was to be regarded chiefly as &quot;a further step towards war against the Soviet Union.&quot;24 Following its instructions, the CPC Provisional Central Committee raised the slogan, &quot;Defend the Soviet Union with arms.&quot; This demand was far removed from reality and naturally unacceptable to the Chinese people. The Provisional Central Committee did not understand the changes in class relations in China that had been touched off by the Japanese aggression. It failed to see the positive change in the attitude of the middle-of-the-roaders, who were demanding resistance, or to recognize the splits that were taking place in the Kuomintang. On the contrary, they held that the middle-of-theroaders would help the Kuomintang maintain its rule and prevent the masses from overthrowing it. Therefore, it said, &quot;these sections are the most dangerous enemy, and we should use our main forces to fight these counter-revolutionaries who seek compromise.&quot;25 In this way, some middle-of-the-roaders who might have been friends were pushed into the arms of Chiang Kai-shek. In the new situation, instead of calling for a national united front against Japan, the Provisional Central Committee emphasized the antagonism between the Kuomintang regime and the Soviet political power. It declared that the collapse of the Kuomintang regime was imminent and that the central political 165 conflict in China was &quot;a life-and-death struggle between counterrevolution and revolution.&quot;26 ]n leading workers' movements in cities, the Provisional Central Committee followed adventuristic policies. For example, it demanded that in Shanghai and other cities the workers do everything possible to prepare for general strikes, declared that the most pressing task was to arm the workers and peasants to resist Japanese imperialism and refused to organize legal workers' struggles. Ignoring objective conditions, it insisted that Party organizations in Shanxi, Henan and Hebei should immediately create &quot;a Soviet area in the north&quot; by organizing mutinies by KMT soldiers and insurrections by workers and peasants. Having made these arbitrary decisions, the Provisional Central Committee wrote with full confidence, &quot;the Central Committee is absolutely convinced that the various Party organs will accomplish these urgent tasks one hundred percent in the shortest possible lime!&quot;27 In the areas under KMT rule, these much advertised policies, which were based on &quot;Left&quot; adventurism and closed-doorism and showed no regard for objective reality, were criticized and resisted by leading cadres who had practical experience. These included Liu Shaoqi, head of the Workers Department of the CPC Central Committee and secretary of the Leading Party Group of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, and Li Tiefu, secretary of the Leading Party Group of the Beiping Anti-Imperialist Alliance and Head of the Propaganda Department of the Hebei Provincial Party Committee. Liu Shaoqi maintained that in work among the masses, open and legal means should be used as much as possible, so that underground Party organizations could gradually accumulate strength and consolidate themselves. These leading cadres published articles in Red Flag, the weekly organ of the CPC Central Committee, criticizing the policy of having Party members quit the &quot;yellow trade unions&quot; controlled by the Kuomintang, but their position was not accepted. On the contrary, they were accused of making opportunist mistakes and dismissed from their leading posts. Work in the Areas under Kuomintang Rule in the Early 1930s It was extremely difficult for the CPC to operate in the areas under Kuomintang rule. And &quot;Left&quot; adventurism and closeddoorism led to foolhardy acts that inflicted heavy losses on the Party, making things even more difficult. During 1931 and 1932 the Hebei Provincial Party Committee was decimated on three separate occasions by arrests of its members. By January 1932 membership in the Red trade unions had been reduced to 3,000. By early 1933 it had become too dangerous for the Provisional Central Committee to stay on in Shanghai, and it was obliged to move to the Central Soviet Area. The Shanghai Bureau of the Central Committee was established to lead the Party's work in the KMT-controlled areas and to maintain contact with the Communist International. Between March 1934 and February 1935, this Bureau was nearly wiped out no less than six times, and the following July it was forced to suspend operations. By that time, all but a handful of the Party organizations in the KMTcontrolled areas had been destroyed. It is worth noting that even under such harsh conditions, a number of Communists and progressives outside the Party still continued their struggle in the KMT areas. They made a great contribution by promoting the movement for resistance to Japan and for national salvation, opposing Chiang Kai-shek's dictatorship, disseminating Marxism and using literature and the arts to expand the influence of the Party. How could this happen? Two factors were at work. First, even though after the September 18th Incident the national crisis reached unprecedented proportions, Chiang's ruling clique stubbornly followed the traitorous policy of &quot;internal pacification before resistance to foreign invasion&quot; and intensified its fascist dictatorship. This was extremely unpopular and could not but arouse growing indignation among the people and cause splits among the middle-of-theroaders and even within the KMT ruling clique. Despite the serious &quot;Left&quot; mistakes made by the Provisional Central Committee, many progressives could see that the Communist Party was 167 standing firmly for resistance to Japanese aggression, demanding a democratic politics and working for the benefit of the toiling masses. For this reason, they drew closer and closer to the Party. Second, the &quot;Left&quot; theories of the Provisional Central Committee did not work in practice. Although it had imposed those theories in many places, some Party organizations and many individual members, taught by objective realities, consciously or unconsciously broke away from them for the sake of advancing the revolution. They gradually adjusted their practical work, adopting flexible and effective measures. When the Provisional Central Committee had moved to the Central Soviet Area and the Shanghai Bureau had been repeatedly sabotaged, some Party organizations in Shanghai—for example, the Commission for Cultural Work of the CPC Central Committee and the Provisional Party Committee of Jiangsu Province—lost contact with the higher levels. In the extremely complicated circumstances, they did some exploring on their own and blazed a few new trails, refusing to be guided by the subjectivism of a few leaders. Their abandonment of &quot;Left&quot; thinking manifested itself chiefly in a new concern for uniting with other social forces and for making full use of legal means of propaganda. Although at the time people working in this way did not necessarily have a clear understanding of the right political line, facts proved that they were doing the right thing. Some leaders in the Provisional Central Committee also showed signs of a change in their thinking. In October 1932 Zhang Wentian published in Struggle, another organ of the CPC Central Committee, two articles entitled &quot;Closed-doorism in the Field of Literature and Art&quot; and &quot;On Our Propaganda and Agitation Work.&quot; In these articles he declared that it was chiefly &quot;Left&quot; closed-doorism that had prevented the Left-wing movement in literature and art from expanding beyond the narrow confines of underground work. &quot;It is absolutely essential,&quot; he wrote, &quot;to combat &quot;Left&quot; phrase-mongering and closed-doorism, if the present Left-wing movement in literature and art in China is to become a movement of the masses. Only a broad revolutionary united front can transform our underground activities within narrow confines, enabling us to work openly or semi-openly and to reach a wide range of people.&quot;28 In August 1931 Soong Ching Ling returned home from Europe because her mother had died. She immediately threw herself into the international campaign to secure the release of Paul Noulens, the leader of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Communist International, who had been arrested in Shanghai. When Deng Yanda, the former political director of the Northern Expeditionary Army and her old friend, was murdered on orders from Chiang Kaishek, in grief and indignation she issued a statement entitled, &quot;The Kuomintang Is No Longer a Political Power.&quot; &quot;I firmly believe, she wrote, &quot;that only a revolution built on mass support and for the masses can break the power of militarists and politicians, throw off the yoke of foreign imperialism and truly realize socialism.&quot;29 Soong Ching Ling played a leading role in the founding of the Society for Wiping Out National Humiliation and for Self-Salvation, the China League for the Protection of Civil Rights (together with Cai Yuanpei and Yang Xingfo, who was later murdered by Kuomintang agents for his part in it) and the Chinese People's Committee for Armed Self-defence. She served as the most prominent spokesperson for all these organizations, evoking much favourable response both at home and abroad. Certain Communists kept in close contact with her. In many of his essays the great writer Lu Xun, who had already become a Marxist and kept in close contact with the Party, ruthlessly exposed the dictatorial nature of the ruling clique of big landlords and compradors, their subservience to foreign powers, their shameful failure to resist Japanese aggression and their brutal &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; campaign against writers and artists. He also sharply criticized manifestations of ultra-Leftism in cultural circles. In March 1930, in a speech at the inaugural meeting of the League of Chinese' LeftWing Writers, he said: &quot;Our failure to form a united front shows that we do not have a common objective, or that our objective is only to serve small groups or individuals. If our objective were to serve the masses of workers and peasants, then the front would naturally be united.&quot; Years later, Mao Zedong w'as to pay him this tribute: &quot;Representing the great majority of the nation, Lu 169 Xun breached and stormed the enemy citadel; on the cultural front he was the bravest and most correct, the firmest, the most loyal and the most ardent national hero, a hero without parallel in our history. The road he took was the very road of China's new national culture.&quot;30 The help that Communists gave to Zou Taofen, editor-in-chief of Life Weekly, was a successful example of uniting with patriots and developing progressive forces. Originally, the magazine was devoted chiefly to self-improvement, a subject on which it offered its readers &quot;professional guidance.&quot; Its political position was generally that of the patriotic national bourgeoisie. The September 18th Incident, however, had an enormous effect on Zou Taofen. With the help of Hu Yuzhi and other Communists, he soon espoused the cause of resistance and national salvation and drew closer to the Party. From then on. Life Weekly became a lively and popular publication with a circulation of over 100,000. Zou Taofen's words gained great influence among young people. In July 1932 he founded the Life Bookstore, which also published a large number of progressive books on the social sciences, literature and the arts. The bookstore became an important bastion of progressive culture in areas under Kuomintang rule. Many Communists worked for the bookstore. Notwithstanding the KMT's policy of brutal repression, some Communists and progressives were able to make full use of legal means to conduct their propaganda. In the spring of 1929 Cai Yuanpei, one of the founding members of the Kuomintang, president of the Central Research Academy and director of the Social Sciences Institute, appointed the distinguished scholar Chen Hansheng, a Party member, deputy director of the Institute. To gain a better understanding of the nature of Chinese society, Chen organized a Marxist survey group, which over a period of six years carried out extensive, thoroughgoing investigations of Chinese rural society. In 1933, together with Xue Muqiao and others, he founded the Society for Research on the Chinese Rural Economy and the monthly Chinese Countryside. This magazine, which was published openly, printed many survey reports and treatises on the necessity of reforming the feudal land system, supporting the agrarian revolution led by the Communist Party. Left-wing writers and artists also worked hard to cooperate with the middle-of-the-roaders. Articles by Lu Xun, Qu Qiubai, Mao Dun and Zhou Yang appeared in &quot;Free Talk,&quot; a supplement of the daily newspaper Sheri Bao, edited by Li Liewen, and in the monthly magazine Literature, edited by Fu Donghua. The famous novel Midnight by Mao Dun was published by the Kaiming Bookstore in February 1933 and reprinted four times in three months, which was rare at the time. Communists Xia Yan, Yang Hansheng and Tian Han, through the Mingxing Film Studio and the Lianhua Film Studio, made many progressive films that attracted large audiences. The &quot;March of the Volunteers&quot;—the theme song from the film Heroes and Heroines, written by Xia Yan and produced by the Diantong Film Studio—swept the country. This stirring song, with music by Nie Er and words by Tian Han, did much to mobilize the people for national salvation. Left-wing social scientists translated many Marxist works. The first complete Chinese translations of volume I of Marx's Capital , Engels' Anti-Duhring , Marx's A Critique of Political Economy, Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism were all published in the early 1930s. Progressive social scientists took part in debates on the history and nature of Chinese society, using the tools of Marxist analysis and criticizing views that did not correspond to the realities. Guo Moruo's Studies of Ancient Chinese Society, written while the author was in exile in Japan and published in 1930, was the first book on Chinese history written from a Marxist viewpoint. More and more, Left-wing social scientists were introducing dialectical-materialist and historical-materialist viewpoints into their studies of China and the world. They propagated Marxism in a number of ways, making it easily accessible to young people. Although many of the members of the League of Chinese Left-Wing Writers, the League of Chinese Social Scientists and similar organizations were affected at this time by &quot;Left&quot; ideas, the cultural movement they championed made a great contribution to China's modern ideological development. In particular, the movement played a historic role in disseminating progressive 171 thinking and promoting the anti-Japanese movement for national salvation. It tempered a strong group of revolutionary intellectuals, many of whom later became the backbone of the Party in the fields of ideology and theory, literature and the arts. The Failure of the Central Red Army in the Fifth Campaign Against &quot;Encirclement and Suppression&quot; Since the CPC Provisional Central Committee was still in Shanghai in the early 1930s, it was some time before its &quot;Left&quot; policies penetrated the Red Army and the revolutionary base areas. During November 1-5, 1931, the Party organizations in the Central Soviet Area held their first congress (known as the southern Jiangxi meeting) in Ruijin, Jiangxi. At this meeting, which was presided over by the delegation sent to the Central Soviet Area by the Central Committee after its 4th Plenary Session, Mao Zedong's correct views were denounced as reflecting &quot;narrow empiricism,&quot; &quot;the rich peasants' line ' and extremely serious and consistent Right opportunism,&quot; and stressed that concentrated efforts should be made to fight against Right opportunism. Immediately after this meeting, the 1st National Congress of the Chinese Soviet was held in the same city from November 7 to 20. At this congress the Provisional Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic was founded, Mao Zedong was elected chairman of the government and Xiang Ying and Zhang Guotao vice-chairmen. The congress also established the Central Revolutionary Military Commission, with Zhu De as chairman and Wang Jiaxiang and Peng Dehuai as vice-chairmen. At this time the different Soviet areas were separated from each other. The establishment of the Provisional Central Government and the Central Revolutionary Military Commission helped to centralize command over them and over units of the Red Army. However, the Provisional Central Committee based its policies on the directives of the Communist International, which put undue emphasis on the antagonism between the Soviet political power and the Kuomintang regime and demanded that the separate Soviet areas be linked up to form a whole, as if national victory of the revolution were at hand. This assessment was not realistic. Accordingly, some &quot;Left&quot; policies were laid down in the documents drafted by the Provisional Central Committee and adopted by the 1st National Congress of the Chinese Soviet—for example, the policy of giving no land to landlords and only poor land to rich peasants, which hampered the development of the base areas. In the second half of 1930, in the complicated struggle in the Central Soviet Area, the need to eliminate counterrevolutionaries was greatly exaggerated. Confessions were elicited by force and then given credence, with the result that many cadres and soldiers loyal to the revolution were executed as members of the A-B Group31 or the Social Democrats. This was a bitter lesson for the Party. In the summer of 1932, as soon as it had signed the WusongShanghai Armistice Agreement with Japan which humiliated the Chinese nation and betrayed its sovereignty, the Kuomintang regime dispatched a large number of troops for a fourth &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; campaign against the revolutionary base areas. Their strategy was to proceed in two stages: an attack on the Hubei-Henan-Anhui and Western Hunan-Hubei revolutionary base areas, followed by a concerted attack by all forces on the Central Revolutionary Base Area. First, in July 1932 Chiang Kai-shek massed more than 300,000 troops under his personal command to attack the Hubei-HenanAnhui Revolutionary Base Area. The main forces of the Red Army in that area were the Fourth Front Army commanded by Xu Xiangqian. Through long, hard struggle, the Fourth Front Army had grown to 45,000 seasoned men. It had worked out a set of effective principles for combat, including the following: —when the enemy is strong and the revolutionary forces are weak, keep the initiative and lure him deep into Red territory;—avoid engagement with strong enemy units and attack the weak; —encircle and outflank the enemy; —besiege a point to annihilate an enemy relief force; —concentrate a superior force to eliminate enemy units one 173 by one; .... „ ,—under special conditions, take the initiative and attack the enemy, and thwart the enemy's scheme of &quot;encirclement and suppression.&quot; However, Zhang Guotao, whom the Provisional Central Committee had sent to the area after the 4th Plenary Session as secretary of the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Sub-Bureau of the Central Committee and chairman of the Military Commission, to fulfil his own ambitions, got rid of dissidents and dismissed Zeng Zhongsheng, the former leader of the border region. Before long, during the campaign to eliminate counter-revolutionaries, he had Xu Jishen, an outstanding general of the Red Army, executed, along with many other loyal cadres and soldiers. Some time afterwards, Zeng Zhongsheng was also executed. This produced chaos in the ranks of the revolution. When the Kuomintang was preparing to launch a large-scale attack on the base area, Zhang Guotao underestimated the enemy and made no preparations tor defence. On the contrary, he ordered the Red Army to press south over a long distance. Although the Fourth Front Army fought heroically and inflicted heavy casualties on the Kuomintang troops, it suffered heavy losses and was exhausted from continuous fighting. A large KMT force bore down upon the border, reducing the Red Army to a passive position and repeatedly defeating it. Zhang Guotao was alarmed by these events and decided that more than 20,000 of the main forces of the Fourth Front Army should cross the Beiping-Hankou Railway and move west. After more than two months of marching they entered northern Sichuan and established the Sichuan-Shaanxi Revolutionary Base Area. In July 1932 when an attack was launched on the HubeiHenan-Anhui Revolutionary Base Area, more than 100,000 KMT troops attacked the Western Hunan-Hubei Revolutionary Base Area. Beginning in the winter of 1930, the Second Army Group of the Red Army (with He Long as commander-in-chief and Zhou Yiqun and Deng Zhongxia, successively, as political commissar), had won several battles in the counter-campaign against &quot;encirclement and suppression.&quot; In the region of Honghu Lake, they had utilized the advantageous terrain for guerrilla warfare, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy. However, after the 4th Plenary Session of the Central Committee, Xia Xi was sent to be secretary of the Western Hunan-Hubei Sub-Bureau of the Central Committee and political commissar of the Second Army Group (now reorganized into the Third Army of the Red Army), and he too followed the policies of &quot;Left&quot; adventurism and sectarianism. Duan Dechang and many other outstanding generals were wrongly executed in the movement to eliminate counterrevolutionaries. At first the Third Red Army underestimated the enemy and advanced too rapidly; then, it was forced onto the defensive, suffered heavy losses and eventually had to withdraw from the western Hunan-Hubei region (Xia Xi died during the march). After protracted fighting, it was finally able to open the Eastern Guizhou Revolutionary Base Area. Then, the Sixth Army Group led by Ren Bishi (with Xiao Ke as commander-inchief and Wang Zhen as political commissar) came there to join forces. The Third Army resumed its designation as the Second Army Group and was reorganized with He Long as commanderin-chief, Ren Bishi as political commissar and Guan Xiangying as deputy political commissar. The merger of the Second and Sixth Army Groups greatly strengthened them. Together they opened the Hunan-Hubei-Sichuan-Guizhou Revolutionary Base Area. The CPC Provisional Central Committee, which was still in Shanghai at this time, sent instructions to the Central Revolutionary Base Area: &quot;At present, you should go on the offensive to eliminate the enemy's armed forces, expand the Soviet area and take one or two key cities, so as to bring the revolution to victory in one or more provinces.&quot; In August 1932 the First Front Army of the Red Army, under the command of Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, Zhu Dc and Wang Jiaxiang, took first Le'an County and then Yihuang County, both in Jiangxi, wiping out three enemy brigades. At this time, however, a difference of opinion arose in the Central Committee's Soviet Area Bureau between leaders at the front and in the rear. Leaders of the rear wanted the First Front Army to take the initiative in the face of the enemy's 175 i urge-scale offensive, to attack cities, strike enemy reinforcements and win quick victories. Zhou, Mao, Zhu and Wang, who were responsible for command at the front, telegraphed the Soviet Area Bureau in late September, arguing that under present conditions if they followed such a plan there would be no assurance of victory. &quot;If,&quot; they said, &quot;we are itching to fight and act rashly, we shall waste our efforts, tiring out the troops and achieving nothing. It will be a case of more haste and less speed, and will only put us at a greater disadvantage.&quot; In early October the Soviet Area Bureau held a plenary session in Ningdu, Jiangxi. At the meeting, the plan of the leaders at the front was heavily criticized as &quot;a purely defensive line&quot; and a Righl-deviatiomst policy that &quot;focuses on making preparations and waiting for the enemy to attack.&quot; A heated argument took place about whether Mao Zedong should remain at the front. Zhou, Zhu and Wang insisted that he should be kept there, but most of the participants did not agree. After the meeting, Mao was translerred to the rear, on the excuse that he should preside over the work of the Central Government. He was relieved of his post as general political commissar of the First Front Army, and it was given to Zhou Enlai as an added responsibility. At the end of 1932, the Kuomintang concentrated more than thirty divisions and in February 1933 launched the fourth &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; campaign against the Central Revolutionary Base Area, approaching in three converging columns. I he twelve divisions under the command of Chen Cheng served as the central army of 160,000 men, who were to carry out the mam attack. At this time, the First Front Army had about 70,000 troops The Soviet Area Bureau repeatedly sent telegrams to the front, urging the First Front Army to launch its own attack and quickly occupy Nanfeng and Nancheng. Zhou Enlai replied that the present conditions were not good for attacking cities and that the Red Army should rather seek to wipe out the enemy through mobile warfare. This view was based on a correct assessment of the situation, but it was rejected by the Soviet Area Bureau. Having failed to take Nanfeng, Zhou Enlai and Zhu Dc immediately decided that their main forces should move elsewhere secretly and wait for an opportunity to attack. In two ambushes in Huangbei and Caotaigang, they were able to wipe out three divisions of the well-equipped main force of Chen Cheng and capture more than 10,000 guns. By so doing they smashed the Kuomintang army's fourth &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; campaign against the Central Soviet Area and set an example of ambush by a large force that was unprecedented in the history of the Red Army. It was during this campaign that the CPC Provisional Central Committee moved to the Central Soviet Area. More than a year before, it had already declared: &quot;We must achieve victory first in several key provinces (Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Anhui). This revolutionary task is not for the future but for the present. All our work must be focused on accomplishing it.&quot;32 After moving to the Central Soviet Area, the Provisional Central Committee implemented its &quot;Left&quot; adventuristic policies throughout the Party, the Red Army and the base area. To overcome resistance, organizationally it took a sectarian approach, regarding all cadres who disagreed with its policies as &quot;opportunists,&quot; attacking them mercilessly. Luo Ming, acting secretary of the CPC Fujian Provincial Committee, and Deng Xiaoping, head of the Propaganda Department of the Jiangxi Provincial Committee, opposed this &quot;Left&quot; line of going on the offensive. However, they were denounced as followers of a Right opportunist line who were pessimistic about the revolution and were trying to flee before the enemy. The Provisional Central Committee struggled first against the &quot;Luo Ming line&quot; in Fujian, and then against the &quot;Jiangxi Luo Ming line&quot; of Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zetan, Xie Weijun and Gu Bai in Jiangxi. Its main target was the views of Mao Zedong. This suppression of dissenting opinion threw everyone into a state of anxiety and created an abnormal political atmosphere in the Central Soviet Area. In the second half of 1933, after six months of preparation, Chiang Kai-shek launched a fifth campaign of &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; against the Central Soviet Area, with himself as commander-in-chief. He had learned from previous failures and now relied &quot;thirty percent on military means and seventy percent 177 on politics.&quot; He imposed a tight economic blockade on the Central Soviet Area and utilized the new tactic of building blockhouses and advancing one step at a time. He had already sent a total of one million troops to attack the Red Army in different places. Now, beginning in late September, he sent half a million to attack the Central Soviet Area. By this time, the number of Red Army troops in the Central Soviet Area had grown to more than 80,000. Bo Gu, the leader of the Provisional Central Committee, relied for military command on Li De (the Chinese name of the German Otto Braun), a military adviser associated with the Communist International. Braun had experience only of the formal positional warfare of World War I and knew nothing of the characteristics of the revolutionary war in China. Under his guidance, the Provisional Central Committee abandoned the policy of active defence, which had been effective against the earlier &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; campaigns. It called the impending conflict &quot;a war to decide between two opposing visions of China's future&quot; and raised the slogans, &quot;Don't give up one inch of the base area!&quot; and &quot;Engage the enemy outside the gates!&quot; It ordered the main forces of the Red Army to march north to fight, with the result that they were obliged to move between the main forces of the enemy and his blockhouses and were reduced to passivity. When the Red Army failed to launch an attack, the Provisional Central Committee shifted to a policy of passive defence. It maintained that the Red Army should be divided for defence purposes and fight a war of short, swift thrusts, attempting to substitute positional warfare for guerrilla and mobile warfare and to fight the well-equipped KMT forces in a war of attrition. Thus, as the war progressed, the Red Army found itself increasingly at a disadvantage. One good opportunity did arise for the Red Army to smash the fifth &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; campaign. In November 1933 the generals of the KMT's 19th Route Army, which the year before had tried to defend Shanghai against the Japanese, founded the People's Revolutionary Government of the Chinese Republic and appointed Li Jishen as its chairman. They openly declared that they would resist Japanese aggression and oppose Chiang Kai-shek and sent representatives to negotiate cooperation with the Red Army. The two sides signed an initial agreement. On January 17, 1933, the Provisional Central Government of the Chinese Soviet and the Revolutionary Military Commission of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army had issued a statement that they were ready to sign an agreement on joint operations to resist Japanese aggression with any armed forces on the following three conditions: 1. they must immediately stop attacking the Soviet areas; 2. they must immediately guarantee the democratic rights of the people (freedom of assembly, association and speech, the right to strike and the right to publish); 3. they must immediately arm the people and establish armed volunteers to defend China and strive for its independence, unity and territorial inlcgrity. This statement was enormously important. However, Bo Gu and others continued to regard the middle-of-the-roaders as the most dangerous enemy. They refused to accept the advice of Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhang Wentian and Peng Dehuai. They held that the action taken by the leaders of the 19th Route Army to resist Japan and oppose Chiang was merely designed to deceive the people, and they refused to cooperate with them in military affairs. As a result, in January 1934, isolated and cut off from help, the Fujian People's Government was defeated by Chiang's military attack and political trickery. Since the Red Army let slip this golden opportunity, Chiang, having defeated the Fujian People's Government, was able to complete his encirclement of the Central Soviet Area. In that same month, the CPC Provisional Central Committee, acting for the 6th Central Committee, held the 5th Plenary Session in Ruijin, Jiangxi. At this meeting the &quot;Left&quot; adventuristic line was pushed to an extreme. The Provisional Central Committee reaffirmed that the fifth counter-campaign against &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; was to be a &quot;struggle for the complete victory of Soviet China,&quot; a struggle that would decide whether the country would take &quot;the road of the Soviet or the road of colonialism.&quot; Once again identifying the main danger as 179 Rjeht opportunism and warning against any compromise with it, thr Provisional Central Committee continued to be torn by facial strife. Even under the attack of a strong enemy, it intensified the &quot;Left&quot; policy of giving no land to the landlords and only noor land to the rich peasants, broadening the struggle unnecessarily and creating social disorder. But the w'orst consequence of the Provisional Central Committee's continued &quot;Left&quot; adventurism was the failure of the Red Army in the fifth countercampaign against &quot;encirclement and suppression,&quot; which led to the abandonment of the Central Soviet Area. In mid-April 1934 the KMT army gathered a superior force to attack Guangchang, the northern gateway to the Central Soviet Area. Bo Gu and Otto Braun decided to concentrate the main forces of the Red Army and build fortifications to hold the town, regardless of the enemy's numerical superiority, and they personally went to the front to direct operations. At the end of eighteen days of bloody battle, the Red Army had suffered heavy casualties and Guangchang had fallen. In early October the KMT army pushed into the heartland of the Central Soviet Area. The main forces of the Red Army were compelled to start a strategic shift of position. The Provisional Central Committee and the Central Red Army (the First Front Army of the Red Army), totalling more than 86,000 men, withdrew from the Central Soviet Area and marched west to break out of their encirclement. This was the beginning of the Long March. In July 1934 the Seventh Army Group of the Red Army was ordered to reorganize as the Vanguard Detachment to Resist the Japanese Invaders in the North and entered the border area of Fujian-Zhejiang-Anhui-Jiangxi. There it joined forces with the Tenth Army of the Red Army, led by Fang Zhirnm, to form the Tenth Army Group, which continued the march north in two columns. However, in January 1935, intercepted and pursued by greatly superior forces of the KMT army, the newly formed army group was routed. Fang Zhimin was captured and executed. As we have seen, in the grim aftermath of the failure of the Great Revolution, the Party, learning lessons paid for in blood and going through trial and error, had begun to revitalize the revolution. In the early period of the Kuomintang's large-scale encirclement and suppression&quot; campaigns against the Soviet areas and the Red Army, thanks to correct policies, the Party and army were still able to win great victories, even though the enemy was much stronger. After the September 18th Incident, national contradictions were intensified and great changes took place in the relations between different classes, creating excellent conditions for the Party and the Red Army to unite with the overwhelming majority of the people and to advance the national democratic revolution. However, at this time the leadership of the CPC Central Committee fell into the hands of &quot;Left&quot; dogmatists who understood nothing about conditions in China but who were trusted by the Communist International. This almost led to the failure of the revolution. <br /> <br /> === The Zunyi Meeting and the Triumph of the Red Army's Long March ===<br /> The Long March of the Red Army was a heroic feat unprecedented in history. In October 1934 the Central Red Army (the First Front Army) began the Long March as the forced response to its defeat in the fifth counter-campaign against the enemy's &quot;encirclement and suppression. In trying to break out of the encirclement and effect a strategic shift of position, the leaders of the CPC Central Committee, who had already made &quot;Left&quot; errors, made the further mistake of allowing the troops to flee in disorder, trying to take everything with them. The army carried with it printing equipment, machinery for manufacturing munitions and other cumbersome gear. The entire force of over 80,000 had to travel through mountains along winding trails so narrow that often they could file through only a single pass in one night. The KMT army of &quot;pursuit and suppression,&quot; consisting of 77 regiments from 16 divisions deployed on four blockade lines, was 181 made up of the Guangdong Army, the Hunan Army and the Guangxi Army, each of which tried to obstruct and intercept the Red Army. Although the Red Army broke through the four blockade lines one after another, it suffered heavy losses. When it was going to break through the last line along the Xiangjiang River, conflicts between the Hunan and Guangxi warlords brought about a breach in the line. On November 27, 1934, vanguard troops of the Red Army occupied the major ferry point at Jieshou on the east side of the Xiangjiang River. If the troops had been marching with light packs, they might have been able to cross the river quickly, but because they were so heavily laden, they advanced too slowly. Leading organs of the Central Committee were not able to reach the ferry for two days. By this time, the KMT's Hunan and Guangxi armies were already mounting a rapid pincer attack on the ferry, with air support. The Xiangjiang River battle was the fiercest yet fought by the Central Red Army since it had begun the Long March and involved the heaviest losses. The Red Army troops entrenched at the ferry made a tremendous sacrifice to cover the other troops crossing the river. By December 1 the main body of the Red Army had crossed the river, but it had lost on the east bank the entire 34th Division of the Fifth Army Group and the 18th Regiment of the Third Army Group. The Red Army and the detachment from the Central Committee had been reduced from more than 80,000 men to just over 30,000. After this bitter experience, the troops began to feel that the current leadership was no longer satisfactory and that it needed to be changed. Some leaders who had supported the mistaken &quot;Left&quot; line also began gradually to change their attitude in the light of harsh realities. The Zunyi Meeting At this time Chiang Kai-shek, realizing that the Red Army was advancing towards western Hunan Province to join forces with the Second and Sixth Army Groups, shifted the concentration of his troops, arranging them in a pocket-formation to await the entrance of the Central Red Army and then draw the net tight. At this critical juncture, Mao Zedong suggested that, under the circumstances, it would be best to give up the plan to join forces with the Second and Sixth Army Groups and, to march instead to Guizhou Province, where the enemy was relatively weak. This proposal was approved. After occupying the county of Tongdao, on the southwest border of Hunan Province, the troops entered Guizhou. On November 18 the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held a meeting at Liping, where it formally abandoned the plan to advance towards western Hunan and decided to march to northern Guizhou instead. On January 7, 1935, the Red Army captured Zunyi, a town of strategic importance in northern Guizhou. Because the Red Army suddenly changed direction, it was able to elude the enemy who had been in hot pursuit, and to have 12 days to rest and regroup in Zunyi. From January 15 to 17 the CPC Central Committee held an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau in Zunyi. The meeting focused on rectifying the &quot;Left&quot; errors in military and organizational matters of decisive importance. Major speeches were made by Mao Zedong, Zhang Wentian and Wang Jiaxiang, all of whom sharply criticized two mistakes—the purely defensive action undertaken during the fifth counter-campaign against the enemy's &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; and the flight carried out during the Long March. After heated debate, most of those present came to agree with the opinions expressed by Mao and the other two and rejected the views presented in the report by Bo Gu concerning the fifth counter-campaign. The Political Bureau elected Mao Zedong to its Standing Committee and assigned Zhang Wentian to draft for the Central Committee a resolution evaluating the fifth countercampaign. Not long after this meeting, the Standing Committee decided that Zhang Wentian should take over all responsibility from Bo Gu, and it set up a group of three persons—Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Wang Jiaxiang—to take command of all the Red Army's military operations. The Zunyi Meeting actually established the correct leadership of the Central Committee with Mao Zedong at the core. In this critical situation, the meeting saved the Communist Party, the Red Army and the Chinese revolution. It was a life-or-death turning point in the history of the Party. 183 After the Zunyi Meeting, it was as though the Central Red Army had suddenly obtained a new lease on life. Under the command of Mao Zedong and the others, it became more flexible, changing the direction of battle as the situation changed, turning first east, then west and moving circuitously to go around areas of heavy enemy troop concentration. It took the initiative everywhere. West of Zunyi, on the border of Sichuan and Guizhou provinces, the Red Army crossed the Chishui River four times, confusing the enemy and tiring him out by keeping him on the move. Late in March, it crossed the Wujiang River in the south to feign an attack on Guiyang. Chiang Kai-shek, who was supervising operations at Guiyang at the time, hurriedly moved his Yunnan troops up as reinforcements. Mao Zedong had said long before, &quot;If we can just get the Y unnan troops moved out of the province, it will be a victory.&quot;33 As soon as this had happened, the Red Army launched a long-range raid on Yunnan, its vanguard troops pressing on the provincial capital, Kunming. At this time Kunming was only lightly defended, so reinforcements were hastily called up from the forces defending the Jinsha River, which were thus seriously weakened. The Red Army again suddenly changed direction to head north, moving rapidly so that by May 9 the entire force had crossed the Jinsha River. In this way it got neatly away from the encirclement, pursuit, obstruction and interception of the KMT army, a force hundreds of thousands strong, and attained a decisive victory in its strategic shift of position. The First and Fourth Front Armies Join Forces After the Central Red Army crossed the Jinsha River, it rested in Huili County in Sichuan for five full days and then continued north. When the army entered the Yi minority area in the Daliang Mountains, Chief of Staff Liu Bocheng, in accordance with the Party's policy on nationalities, participated in a sacrificial ceremony to form an alliance with Xiao Yedan, leader of the Guji tribe of the Yi nationality. He persuaded the other tribes to remain neutral, so that the army was allowed to pass without hindrance through the Yi nationality area and to reach the ferry at Anshunchang on the south bank of the Dadu River. In the area around Anshunchang the river was swift and the mountains steep; it was here that in 1863 during the Taiping Revolution, Shi Dakai's troops were unable to cross to the north and finally met their downfall. Led by seventeen brave men, a part of the Red Army successfully crossed the river. But the main body of troops would have been unable to cross at this point in a reasonable amount of time. It was therefore decided to make a race for the Luding Bridge 170 km. upstream, which the enemy had not yet had time to destroy. The troops covered the distance in two days. A shock force composed of 22 soldiers braved intense enemy fire to climb across the cables of bridge and wipe out the defenders, allowing the Central Red Army to cross. Having overcome this obstacle, the army had to cross the first great snow-capped mountain it was to encounter on the Long March—Jiajin Mountain, south of Maogong. To climb this mountain and descend on the other side required a trek of 35 kilometres. And at an altitude of more than 4,000 metres, the concentration of oxygen was low on the high peaks, causing the men to gasp for breath and feel light-headed; some who sat down to rest could not get up again. By June 12 an advance party of the Central Red Army had crossed the Jiajin Mountain and reached Dawei, southeast of Maogong, where they were met by Li Xiannian, the political commissar of the 30th Army of the Fourth Front Army. (The Fourth Front Army, after emerging victorious from the Jialing River campaign in April, had left the Sichuan-Shaanxi Soviet Area and shifted to the west.) Then the First Front Army (the Central Red Army) and the Fourth Front Army joined forces at Lianghekou, north of Maogong. Present at this meeting were Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai and Zhang Guotao, leader of the Fourth Front Army. With the joining of these two major forces, the concentration of Red Army troops in the area reached more than a hundred thousand. On the second day after they had come together, the Central Committee called a meeting of the Political Bureau at Lianghekou. Zhou Enlai gave a report on the current strategic principle. At this time, the two front armies had left their former base areas, and the 185 chief problem they confronted now was where to establish a new one. In his report Zhou suggested that the new base area should meet three conditions: 1 ) it should cover a wide area and allow for highly mobile operations; 2) it should have a large population and a fairly sound mass base; and 3) it should have good economic conditions. The conclusion was that they should go to the Sichuan-ShaanxiGansu border region. No one at the meeting made a counterproposal, and this strategic principle was adopted unanimously. Accordingly, the Political Bureau made a decision stating, &quot;Our strategic principle is to concentrate the main forces to attack to the north, wipe out large numbers of the enemy in mobile warfare and seize southern Gansu first in order to build a Sichuan-ShaanxiGansu Soviet Base Area.&quot;34 With the joining up of the two main forces, the Red Army's strength was greatly increased, and with the correct strategic principle the situation seemed very favourable. But the Fourth Front Army had over 80,000 men, while the First Front Army had only around 30,000, and the numerical superiority of the men under his command fed Zhang Guolao's ambition. At the Lianghekou meeting he had nodded his head and indicated that he agreed with the principle of moving north. Afterwards, however, he raised all kinds of objections, putting pressure on the Central Committee to appoint him the general political commissar of the Red Army, while all the while secretly considering a move south to the border between Sichuan and Xikang provinces. On August 3 the General Headquarters of the Red Army reorganized the army into left and right columns to march north for the Xiahe River-Taohe River campaign. The right column consisted of the First and Third armies of the First Front Army (at this time, the First, Third, Fifth and Ninth Army Groups of the First Front Army had become the First, Third, Fifth and Thirty-second Armies) and the Fourth and Thirtieth Armies of the Fourth Front Army, accompanied by the detachment from the Central Committee and the Front Command. The left column was composed of the Ninth, Thirty-first and Thirty-third Armies of the Fourth Front Army and the Fifth and Thirty-second Armies of the First Front Army, led by Zhu De, commander-inchief, Zhang Guotao, general political commissar and Liu Bocheng, chief of staff. On August 21 the right column began to cross the grasslands in northern Sichuan. The great stretches of grassland were wild and uninhabited, full of weedy swamps and black, stinking sludge pits. The weather changed unpredictably; sometimes fierce winds would blow from all sides with torrential rain, at other times there would be whirling snow and sudden hail. If a man made the slightest miscalculation when approaching a quagmire, he would be swallowed up. The cadres and soldiers had to trek over long distances with little food and salt, and the cold and hunger sapped their strength; in the end many died on the grasslands. Nevertheless, after marching six days and nights, the right column emerged at last to wait for the pre-arranged meeting with the left column. At this point, however, unexpected news arrived: Zhang Guotao, giving all kinds of pretexts, refused to march north and, instead, wanted the right column to march south. Attempting to split the Central Committee and endanger its safety, on September 9 Zhang sent a telegram without the knowledge of the Committee to Chen Changhao, the right column's political commissar, ordering him to lead the column south. When Ye Jianying, who was serving as chief of staff of the right column, saw the telegram, he immediately reported it to Mao Zedong. Mao, Zhou Enlai, Zhang Wentian and Bo Gu held an urgent discussion and decided that to avoid possible internal conflicts in the Red Army, they should set out that very night to lead the First and Third Armies and a detachment of the Military Commission north, in accordance with the strategic principle. Some cadres of the Fourth Front Army did not understand the true situation and advocated the use of force to bar their way. However, Xu Xiangqian, commander-in-chief of the Fourth Front Army, forbade any such action, preserving the unity of the Red Army. The next day the Central Committee sent a telegram to Zhang Guotao demanding that he immediately lead his troops north, which he still refused to do. On September 12 at Ejie, the Political Bureau held an enlarged meeting at which it adopted a &quot;Decision On Comrade Zhang Guotao's Errors&quot; and renamed the part of the Red Army that was marching north, the Shaanxi-Gansu Detachment. The Red Army Marches North and Its Three Main Forces Join Together After the Ejie meeting, the Central Committee led the ShaanxiGansu Detachment rapidly north. On September 17, 1935, they reached Lazikou, a natural barrier of steep cliffs and overhanging rocks on the Sichuan-Gansu border. Scaling the cliffs, the vanguard troops made a surprise attack on the rear of the defending KMT troops and in one stroke broke through to the wide-open terrain of southern Gansu. Immediately after that they occupied the town of Hadapu. Here they learned from a newspaper that in northern Shaanxi there was a very large Soviet area and a big contingent of the Red Army. On the 27th the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau held a meeting at Bangluo Town and decided to press on to northern Shaanxi. On October 19 the Red Army that was marching north reached Wuqi Town in the Shaanxi-Gansu Soviet Area. At the beginning of November, in Ganquan, it joined up with the Fifteenth Army Group, led by Xu Haidong, Cheng Zihua and Liu Zhidan, which had been active in the Shaanxi-Gansu Soviet Area. The Long March of the Central Red Army, which had covered 12,500 kilometres and crossed eleven provinces, finally came to an end, bringing victory for the Communist Party of China and the Red Army and defeat for the enemy. Late in September Zhang Guotao, still persistently moving south in his split with the Central Committee, ordered the former left column and part of the former right column to recross the grasslands, planning to head for the area of Baoxing, Lushan and Tianquan counties in western Sichuan, where grain was fairly plentiful. On October 5 he openly established a separate &quot;Central Committee,&quot; of which he appointed himself chairman. Zhu Dc and Liu Bocheng resolutely struggled with Zhang, patiently trying, along with Xu Xiangqian and others who opposed the split, to convince the officers and men that he had misled them. On January 22, 1936, the Central Committee adopted the &quot;Decision on Comrade Zhang Guotao's Establishment of a Second ‘Central Committee,&quot;' instructing Zhang to immediately dissolve his &quot;Central Committee&quot; and to stop all anti-Party activity. Zhang Guotao's attempt to split the Party was not popular in the Fourth Front Army. The troops who moved south again suffered heavy casualties in battle, and by April only about 40,000 men were left, less than half the original number. At this time, the Central Committee again sent one telegram after another urging the Fourth Front Army to head north. Meanwhile, the Second and Sixth Army Groups were about to arrive in western Sichuan Province. Zhang Hao, in the name of the CPC's delegation to the Communist International, also sent a telegram to Zhang Guotao, asking him to dissolve his &quot;Central Committee&quot; and establish a Southwest Bureau of the Central Committee instead. Under these circumstances, Zhang Guotao had little choice but to announce the dissolution of his &quot;Central Committee&quot; on June 6, 1936. Meanwhile, in November 1935, the Second and Sixth Army Groups led by Ren Bishi, He Long and others, which had been active in the Hunan-Hubei-Sichuan-Guizhou Revolutionary Base Area, had also set out for the north from Sangzhi County, Hunan. They too experienced many hardships and perils, crossing the Jinsha River and snow-capped mountains to join up at last, on July 2, 1936, with the Fourth Front Army at Ganzi in western Sichuan. The Central Committee ordered the Second and Sixth Army Groups to combine with the Thirty-second Army to become the Second Front Army, with He Long as commander-inchief and Ren Bishi as political commissar. Through the efforts of Zhu De, Ren Bishi, He Long and others, and with the support of many of the officers and men of the Fourth Front Army, the Second and Fourth Front Armies finally marched north together. On October 9, the staff of the Fourth Front Army headquarters reached Huining County in Gansu to join forces with the First Front Army. On the 22nd the staff of the Second Front Army headquarters arrived at Jiangtaibu, north of Jingning County, Gansu, where it too joined up with the First Front Army. This marked the victorious completion of the Long March for the Second and Fourth Front Armies as well. 189 Late in October a part of the Fourth Front Army received instructions from the Central Military Commission to cross the Yellow River to the west and begin a campaign in Ningxia. In the first half of November, in accordance with a decision of the Central Committee and the Central Military Commission, the troops crossing the river changed their name to the West Route Army. Under conditions of extreme hardship, they fought alone for four months, annihilating more than twenty thousand enemy troops, until in March of 1937, being greatly outnumbered, they were defeated. After the main forces of the Red Army set out on the Long March, the part that had remained behind, both north and south of the Yangtze River, under the leadership of Xiang Ying, Chen Yi and others, together with guerrilla forces, independently carried out three years of guerrilla warfare in fifteen areas spread over eight provinces. Although they met with great hardship—they lost contact with the CPC Central Committee, and the enemy broke them up and blockaded them—with the support of the masses they were able to overcome one difficulty after another, maintaining their own strength, holding their ground and making a great contribution to the Chinese revolution. Meanwhile, the anti-Japanese armed forces in northeast China, under the leadership of the Communist Party, continued the struggle in extremely difficult circumstances. They included the First, Second, Third and Sixth Armies of the Northeast People's Revolutionary Army, the Fourth Army of the Northeast AntiJapanese Allied Army, the Fifth Army of the Northeast AntiJapanese United Army, the Tangyuan Guerrilla Corps, etc. Later these units became the main armed strength of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army. The triumph of the Long March of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army was the turning point for the Chinese revolution. 1 he officers and men of the Red Army maintained unswerving faith in the victory of the revolution. Eluding pursuit and breaking through blockades by large numbers of KMT troops, overcoming the natural barriers of snow-capped mountains and the grasslands, suffering cold, hunger, wounds and sickness, surmounting the crisis of the internal split in the Party and victoriously completing the Long March, all under conditions of extreme hardship, they demonstrated amazing stamina, courage and resourcefulness. The legendary stories of the Long March, which have circulated both in China and abroad, show that the Communist Party of China and the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army were invincible. Before the KMT's filth &quot;encirclement and suppression&quot; campaign, the Red Army had grown to 300,000 men. Because of the errors made by the Party leadership, the revolution suffered a grave setback, and when the three main forces of the Red Army joined together at the end of the Long March they numbered less than 30,000. However, these troops, which were what remained after rigorous testing, were the cream of the Communist Party and of the Red Army, and they were to become the core force in the War of Resistance Against Japan and the People's War of Liberation. During the Long March they had spread the seeds of revolution everywhere along the way. Just as the flames of war with Japan were about to ignite across the country, the three Red Army contingents joined forces in northern Shaanxi, not far from the anti-Japanese battlefront. The historic importance of the victory of the Long March cannot be overestimated.<br /> <br /> === The Party's Struggle to Establish an Anti-Japanese United Front ===<br /> After the September 18th Incident of 1931, the Japanese invaders incessantly attacked in an effort to occupy the whole of China exclusively. The KMT authorities, while devoting all their strength to &quot;encircling and suppressing&quot; the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army on the Long March, steadily retreated before the Japanese. In February 1935 Chiang Kai-shek, speaking to a Japanese reporter, said, &quot;China and Japan need to cooperate with each other.... The Chinese people have taken no action to fight 191 the Japanese, have no desire to fight them and, furthermore, have h need to do so.&quot;35 However, the deep penetration of the country hv a heavily armed enemy raised a nationwide wave of resistance to the invaders, going against the will of Chiang Kai-shek s Kuomintang. The North China Incident and the December 9th Movement Shortly before the Red Army, marching north under the leadership of the Central Committee of the CPC, reached the Shaanxi-Gansu Border Region, the Japanese militarists took advantage of the KMT's policy of non-resistance to intensify their efforts to take north China. Their first step was to use the June 1935 He-Umezu Agreement (an agreement between the KM1 commanding officer in Beiping, He Yingqin and the commander of the Japanese troops stationed in north China, Yoshijiro Ume zu) to force the KMT Central Army to evacuate Beiping, Tianjin and Hebei Province. The second step was to instigate the autonomy&quot; movement in the five provinces of north China (Hebei, Chahar, Shanxi, Shandong and Suiyuan). In October the director of the Japanese secret service in Shenyang, Kenji Dohihara, in the name of the Japanese Kwantung Army that had occupied the city, made several demands of Song Zheyuan, commander of the 29th Army, which was garrisoned in Beiping, Tianjin, Hebei and Chahar. These included that he announce the establishment of a North China Autonomous Government in an open telegram and dismiss all the north China officials appointed by Nanjmg^On November 6 Kenji Dohihara even insolently ordered Song Zheyuan to announce autonomy before November 20 or the Japanese would send five divisions to take Hebei and six to take Shandong. The Japanese army then began shifting large masses of troops to north China. At the instigation of the Japanese secret service, Yin Rugeng, the supervisory commissioner of the KM 1 government s Jimi Prefecture in Hebei Province, set up a separatist regime consisting of 22 counties in eastern Hebei and established the Eastern Hebei Anti-Communist Autonomous Administration in Tongxian County on the outskirts of Beiping. In December the KMT established the Hebei-Chahar Political Council in Beiping with Song Zheyuan as chairman, imposing a special administration in north China. Dark clouds gathered over the skies of Beiping and Tianjin, and all of north China was in imminent danger. The reaction of the people in north China was naturally intense, particularly among the students, who were closely following the development of the political situation. Beiping students shouted with grief and indignation, &quot;North China is vast, but there is no room in it now for quiet study!&quot; At a time when almost all the Party organizations in the KMT area had been destroyed, one provincial Party committee in Hebei survived and over thirty Party members no longer connected with an organization remained in Beiping. In late spring and early summer of 1935, Li Changqing, a special representative from the Hebei Provincial Party Committee went to Beiping to establish a CCP Interim Work Committee there. The committee, composed of Peng Tao and others, appointed Zhou Xiaozhou to take charge of the work of the Beiping branch of the Chinese National Armed Selfdefence Council. With the people's anti-Japanese sentiment growing stronger every day, students in Beiping, led by the CPC Interim Work Committee and organized and directed by Huang Jing, Yao Yilin, Guo Mingqiu and other Party members, raised a cry of protest in a demonstration held on December 9. Students of Qinghua, Yanjing and other universities in the suburbs started marching downtown but were blocked by military police, and a conflict broke out at Xizhimen Gate at the northwest corner of the city wall. At Xinhuamen, in the centre of town, one or two thousand students broke through the military police lines, shouting, &quot;Down with imperialism!&quot; &quot;Stop the civil war!&quot; &quot;Unite against the enemy!&quot; and other slogans as they tried to present a petition to the government. Because they got no response, they began a protest march. By the time the procession reached Wangfujing Street, the crowd had increased to 3,000. The military police suddenly turned a water cannon on the demonstrators and charged them from both sides, brandishing whips, gunstocks and billyclubs. The demonstrators were dispersed, and more than 193 forty students were injured. The next day, the student body of every school in Beiping boycotted classes en masse. The storm quickly swept the whole country. Beginning on December 11, student gatherings and demonstrations took place in Tianjin, Baoding, Taiyuan, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Wuhan, Chengdu, Chongqing, Quangzhou and other large and mediumsized cities. Factory workers in many areas went on strike. 1 atriotic societies and individuals in Shanghai and other places established national salvation committees, sent open telegrams and launched publications calling for an end to the civil war and for the despatch of soldiers to fight the Japanese. Late in December the Students' Union of Beiping, under the leadership of the Party, organized a propaganda team for the area south of and Tianjin. This team went out into the countryside of Hebei Province to spread anti-Japanese propaganda, thus joining in solidarity with the workers and peasants. The propaganda team was expanded into the Chinese National Liberation Vanguard Corps. The students of Shanghai, Wuhan, Jinan and other cities also went to the countryside to spread the word. Some prolessors and scholars who had formerly been unwilling to participate in political activities wrote articles supporting resistance to the Japanese and nationwide cooperation. The struggle against the Japanese and for national salvation grew into a turbulent nationwide mass movement. _ The December 9th Movement, as it came to be called, not only raised the people's awareness of the crisis lacing the nation but demonstrated to them their own strength. It showed that only by uniting all forces within the country could the Japanese invasion be defeated, and it increased the people's determination to light to save China. . o1 These events demonstrated that in the winter of 1935 the political situation in China was on the eve of a great change. The KMT was neither willing nor able to lead the anti-Japanese forces among the people; instead, it stood in their way. The KM 1 with its many internal factions all jockeying for supremacy, which often led to large-scale internecine strife, was also incapable of effecting nation wide unity. Under the KMT, the feudal land relations had not changed one iota. Since it could not alter China's semi-colonial semi-feudal status, it could not turn China into a capitalist country! At this time China's heavy industry was negligible. In 1933 total output of steel was only 35,000 tons, and the most developed light industry was cotton textiles. However, between 1927 and 1936, the number of spindles owned by foreign capital increased from 42.9 percent of the total to 46.2 percent, while the share held by capital of the national bourgeoisie dropped from 57.1 percent to 53.8. During the same period, the share of looms owned by foreign capital increased from 54.8 percent to 5 8.1, with a corresponding drop from 45.2 percent to 41.9 in the share owned by capital of the national bourgeoisie. When the KMT authorities began to take over political power throughout the country, the middle class expected they would develop China's capitalist economy, but instead they brought the country to the brink of national subjugation. The mission of ringing together the various forces calling for resistance to Japan and organizing an anti-Japanese national united front fell to the Communist Party. Whether the Party could carry out this mission would determine whether it could introduce the next stage of the Chinese revolution. The Wayaobu Meeting On July 25, 1935, the Communist International held its Seventh Congress. At this meeting General Secretary Georgi Dirni-fru' t renownecl Bulgarian activist, delivered a report entitled 1 he Tascist Attack and the Communist International's Task for the Unity of the Working Class in Its Anti-fascist Struggle,&quot; in which he raised for the worldwide communist movement' the question of creating a united front to combat fascism. On August 1 the CPC delegation to the Communist International drafted An Appeal to All Fellow-Countrymen for Resistance Against Japan and lor National Salvation&quot; in the name of the Chinese Soviet Central Government and the CPC Central Committee Soon afterwards this document was publicly promulgated and became commonly known as the &quot;August 1st Declaration &quot; 195 Shortly after the Red Army finished its 12,500-km Long March to northern Shaanxi and gained a firm foothold there, an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau was held at Wayaobu from December 17 to 25 to discuss military strategy, the political situation in China and the Party's tactical line. At this meeting, Mao Zedong asserted that the strategic principle should be to wage a resolute national revolutionary war, first of all subordinating the civil war to the national war and the entire war effort to the fight against the Japanese invaders. He believed that China's national bourgeoisie had a dual nature and could be won over. The Political Bureau adopted the Central Committee's &quot;Resolution on the Present Political Situation and the Tasks of the Party,&quot; drafted by Zhang Wentian. This resolution staled in part: &quot;Changes have taken place or are taking place in the relations between all classes, strata, political parties and armed forces in China's political life.... Therefore, the Party's tactical line is to arouse, unite and organize the revolutionary forces throughout the country and among all the nationalities to oppose the chief enemy confronting them, namely, Japanese imperialism and the arch-traitor Chiang Kai-shek.&quot;36 It added that the main danger within the Party was &quot;closed -doorism.&quot; Two days later, at a meeting of Party activists, Mao Zedong made a report in the spirit of the Wayaobu meeting. In a report entitled &quot;On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism,&quot; he began by asking, &quot;What is the present situation?&quot; and answering, &quot;Its main characteristic is that Japanese imperialism wants to turn China into a colony.&quot;37 &quot;This,&quot; he said, &quot;faces all classes and political groups in China with the question of what to do.&quot;38 Mao pointed out that the workers and peasants were all demanding resistance, as was the petty bourgeoisie, and that even the attitude of the national bourgeoisie was likely to change in the new circumstances. &quot;When the national crisis reaches a crucial point,&quot; he added, &quot;splits will occur in the Kuomintang camp.&quot;39 Summing up the question of class relations, he said, &quot;The basic change in the situation, namely, the Japanese invasion of China south of the Great Wall, has changed the relationship among the various classes in China, strengthening the camp of national revolution and weakening that of counter-revolution.&quot;40 Therefore, the Party's basic tactical task was to form a broad revolutionary national united front. Rejecting the closed-door tactics advocated by some, he declared, &quot;In order to attack the forces of the counterrevolution, what the revolutionary forces need today is to organize millions upon millions of the masses and move a mighty revolutionary army into action.&quot;41 The Wayaobu meeting was one of the most important held in the turbulent period between the Second Revolutionary Civil War and the War of Resistance Against Japan. It showed that the Party, having overcome the &quot;Left&quot; adventurism and &quot;closeddoorism&quot; that had dominated the thinking of the leadership in the period before the Long March, had lost no time in formulating the policy of a national united front against Japan, thus gaining the political initiative in the period to come. It also showed that the Party had matured through the lessons it had learned from its victories and defeats, and that it was capable of adapting to a new situation and creatively carrying out its work. After the Wayaobu meeting, the troops of the First Front Army, called the &quot;Anti-Japanese Vanguard Corps of the Chinese People's Red Army,&quot; prepared to march east to directly engage the Japanese army in battle. Their purpose was to expand the base areas and the anti-Japanese armed forces. Led by Mao Zedong and Peng Dehuai, they crossed the Yellow River in northern Shaanxi and entered Shanxi, beginning the Eastern Expedition campaign. Meanwhile, practical measures were taken to strengthen the united front. The work was done between two groups, the general civilian population and the high-ranking KMT military officers. First, the Party did all it could to foster the anti-Japanese national salvation movement, which had begun to grow after the December 9th students' movement. In the spring of 1936, the Central Committee of the CPC sent Liu Shaoqi to Tianjin to serve as secretary of the Party's Northern Bureau and strengthen Party leadership of the national salvation movement there. This movement of the students of Beiping and Tianjin, severely suppressed 197 hv the KMT authorities, was flagging. After arriving m Tianjin, Liu Shaoqi began publishing articles in the spirit of the Wayaobu meeting with such titles as &quot;Eliminating ‘Closed-doorism and Adventurism,&quot; systematically explaining the Party s line and policies. He emphasized the need to expand the revolutionary Ces in preparation for a decisive battle, as well as the need to build long-term relations with the masses. This last would enable the Party to carry out intensive propaganda work, consolidate and enlarge the anti-Japanese national united front, increase its own strength and improve its position. Referring to the problems relating to the Beiping and Tianjin students movement, he called for a correct implementation of the united front policy in handling relations with the teachers and school officials as well as with the 29th Army and General Song Zheyuan, encouraging them to move in the right direction. Liu worked hard to rebuild and strengthen Party organizations in north China which had been seriously damaged, opening a new chapter in their work The Central Committee of the CPC and its delegation to the Communist International sent Feng Xuefeng and Pan Hanman to Shanghai to reestablish connections with Party organizations there that had lost contact with the Central Committee and to expand united front work. In May 1936 a number of patriots, including Soong Ching Ling, Shen Junru, Zou Taolen, Tao Xingzhi and Zhang Naiqi, announced in Shanghai the establishment of the All-China Federation of All Circles for Resisting Japan and Saving the Nation, which called for cessation of the civil war and united opposition to the Japanese. One after another, antiJapanese national salvation associations in Shanghai, Nanjing, Beiping and many other cities joined the new federation. Later, the All-China Students' Federation was founded, giving further impetus to the nationwide patriotic movement of youth working to save the nation. , • Second, the Party did everything possible to persuade senior KMT officials and army generals to support the anti- Japanese national salvation movement. Mao Zedong and Zhou many letters to them. In the case of the KM f s Northeastern Army headed by Zhang Xueliang, this work was notably successful. The majority of the officers and men of the Northeastern Army, already appalled to see their hometowns fall into enemy hands and eager to return there to fight, had no wish to combat the Red Army, which supported resistance to the Japanese. Their attitude had an effect on Zhang Xueliang and the senior officers. Progressives who were born in northeast China, such as Du Zhongyuan and others, also did a great deal of work to convince Zhang Xueliang. The CPC Central Committee twice sent Li Kenong, chief of the Liaison Bureau, to talk with Zhang about cooperating to resist the invaders. On the evening of April 9, 1936, Zhou Enlai and Zhang Xueliang had a secret meeting in a church in Yan'an. They agreed on the need to stop the civil war and work together in the resistance, exchanged ideas on a number of issues and finally reached an agreement. The Party's efforts to achieve a united front were also effective with Yang Hucheng, who, as commander-in-chief of the KMT's Seventeenth Route Army and head of the Pacification Headquarters in Xi'an, was the leader of those who were in actual control of Shaanxi Province. Yang was in favour of resistance to Japan, had certain other progressive ideas and was friendly with some members of the CPC. The Central Committee sent a succession of people to see him, including Wang Feng and Wang Shiying, and concluded a preliminary agreement of cooperation with him. In this way, by the summer of 1936 hostilities between the Red Army and the Northeastern and Seventeenth Route Armies had virtually ceased. This was the first major victory of the Party's united front policy in northwest China. A similar victory was achieved in Shanxi. In October 1936 the Northern Bureau of the CPC Central Committee sent Bo Yibo and four other Party members (later increased to a total of 16) to Taiyuan, in response to an invitation from Yan Xishan. Yan, who was the leader of those who were in actual control of Shanxi Province, had asked for the Party's help in preparing for armed resistance. The Northern Bureau decided to establish the CPC Shanxi Working Committee, with Bo Yibo as secretary. This committee was set up especially to direct overt, legal activities, carrying out high-level united front work and developing the 199 nti- Japanese national salvation movement. It reported directly an h Northern Bureau and was kept strictly separate from t Party's^nderground Shanxi Interim Provincial Committee, with , . v, it had no horizontal connections. WhAt this time there was an important anti-Japanese gr°uP in Qhfnxi called the &quot;League of Self-Sacrifice for National Salvation &quot; or the &quot;Self-Sacrifice League&quot; for short. Because of opposi ■ from the KMT authorities, within a month after the foundXof the orgfnTzaUon. it essentially ceased to function In the first half of November, however, after he arnved in Shanxi, Bo Yibo took over as secretary of the League and assumed resP°n^ bility for its activities. After that, the League evo ve in anti-Japanese national united front organization under he lead ershin of the CPC. The organization spread from Taiyuan to every county in the province, and with its encouragement the national salvation movement flourished throughout Shanxi. In &quot;he early months of 1937, the CPC Shanx, Working Committee began to train military and government cadres with a view to building a revolutionary armed force in the province. The Approach of KMT-CPC Cooperation The attitude of Chiang Kai-shek and the Central Executive Committee of the KMT towards resistance to Japan began to Change after the North China Incident. Under , he . usion that the problems between the two countries could t* ^before the dinlomacv Chiang had backed down time after time before the Japanese But the illusion was destroyed as the invaders steadily pressed on When the North China Incident took place, direcUy threatening the very existence of the Nanjing government, the K uomln t ang1 had no choice but to consider changing its policy t°'c)n November 19, 1935, the 5th National Congre^of the KMT adopted a resolution proposed by Ch,ang Kai-shek. Chiang s statement recommending this resolution contained a key sent ence- &quot;While there is still some hope of peace, we must under no circumstances' give up on peace, and while the time for self sacrifice is not yet at hand, we must not speak lightly of selfsacrifice.&quot; This sentence implied that when the time was at hand, there would be no choice but to &quot;give up on peace&quot; and resolutely face &quot;self-sacrifice.&quot; In January of the following year Japan's foreign minister, Hirotake Hirota, announced three principles, which, among other demands, called for &quot;coordination of the economies of China, Japan and Manchuria.&quot; This meant recognition of Manchukuo, which Chiang found it hard to accept. Later he wrote, &quot;The situation of the time was very clear: if we rejected his principles it would mean war, and if wc acceded to his demands it would mean extinction.&quot;42 The voracious appetite of the Japanese militarists left Chiang Kai-shek less and less room to manoeuvre. Faced with this situation, at the end of 1935 the Nanjing government began to look for a way out, asking for assistance from the Soviet Union and even seeking ways to make contact with the Communist Party of China. Chiang later explained his policy this way: &quot;War between China and Japan was now inevitable and, while the National Government was negotiating with the Soviet Union, it was also looking for ways to solve the problem of the Communist Party of China.&quot;43 After this, the KMT and the CPC made secret contacts through a variety of channels. With the help of Soong Ching Ling, the leadership of the KMT sought out Dong Jianwu, a Protestant minister and a Communist Party member. On February 27, 1936, Dong secretly made a trip to Wayaobu to see Bo Gu, carrying the message that the KMT authorities wanted to negotiate with the CPC Central Committee. On March 4 Zhang Wentian, Mao Zedong and Peng Dehuai, who were at the front lines in Shanxi at the time, sent a telegram to Dong Jianwu through Bo Gu expressing the Party's eagerness to negotiate. &quot;We enthusiastically welcome this wise and sensible gesture from the Nanjing authorities,&quot; they said, &quot;and wc should like to begin concrete, practical negotiations with them in order to bring together all forces in the country to resist Japan and save the nation.&quot; In addition, they made five concrete demands: 1. All civil war should stop and there should be no distinction between Red and White troops in the armed forces: all must resist 201 JaP2anA government of national defence and a united anti'TV'S S forces 5 ffSU «,™*™ « hould be allowed to concentrate without delay in Hebei, so that thev can first of all resist the advance of the Japanese invader . 4 All political prisoners should be released, and the people *—* »«■nalaffairsand the «;onomy.&quot; back t0 Nanjing. iS- the KMT and the CPC which had been broken off more than eight years earlier, had been reestab '^'rtfshow their sincerity, the entire Anti-Japanese Vanguard Corns of the Chinese People's Red Army, which had crossed the Yellow River from Shaanxi into Shanxi, crossed back and sent an open telegram to the Nanjing government. ln_,this ,tele.®&quot; P abandoned its anti-Chiang Kai-shek stand and called upon the KMT to enter into peace negotiations to stop the t civd war : a d to ioin the CPC in fighting Japan. On August 25 the CPC Centra Committee sent an open letter to the Kuomintang t the current peril facing the whole nation had been brought about by the wron&quot; P°licy pursued by the KMT a policy that must be radically changed. In the letter the CPC declared. &quot;We are ready to form with you a solid, revolutionary, united front like the one against imperialist a&quot;d feudal oppression ha existed during the great revolutionary period of 1925 2/, tor tnat ^the onN way today to save the nation from subjugation and ensure ^survival.... Only if the Kuommtang and the Communist Party of China once again work together and cooperate with every11 political party, group and sector across the country will it be possible to save the country and ensure its survival. b On September 1 the CPC Central Committee issued an internal dir^%Tetp:n^mperialists continuing their attack and the national revolutionary movement growing across the country. is possible that Chiang Kai-shek's entire army, or at least the greater part, may join in resisting Japan. Our general policy should be to force Chiang Kai-shek to resist Japan.... We are now informing [the KMT] that to facilitate negotiations, the CPC Central Committee is prepared to send representatives immediately or to receive representatives from the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek in the Soviet Area.&quot; The Central Committee was now considering the possibility of holding high-level negotiations with the KMT, perhaps sending Zhou Enlai as its representative. The shift from opposing Chiang Kai-shek to forcing him to resist Japan, made in accordance with the changing class relations in the country, was an important change of policy for the Party. But it did not prove easy to carry out the new policy. Chiang was still committed to opposing the Communists. When he spoke of &quot;solving the problem of the Communist Party of China,&quot; what he actually wanted was that the CPC should surrender to the KMT and accept reorganization, meaning, in particular, that the Party's armed forces would have to be dissolved to &quot;effect a solution by political means.&quot; Naturally, this was impossible. He therefore continued to seek such a solution by force. Thus, in the autumn of 1936, when Chiang Kai-shek had settled 'the Guangdong-Guangxi Incident, he moved swiftly, concentrating his troops in preparation tor a new attempt to suppress the revolutionary base area in northern Shaanxi.44 The steadily mounting tide of the anti-Japanese national salvation movement in the country was also causing Chiang great anxiety. In Shanghai, on the night of November 22, the KMT government arrested seven leaders of the All-China Federation of All Circles for Resisting Japan and Saving the Nation, Shen Junru, Zhang Naiqi, Zou Taofen, Li Gongpu, Sha Qianli, Wang Zaoshi and Shi Liang, and took them to a jail in Suzhou. This created a stir for a while, and the case became known as &quot;the jailing of the seven patriotic leaders.&quot; Shortly thereafter the KMT government arrested the leaders of the Nanjing National Salvation Society, Sun Xiaocun and Cao Mengjun. These arrests aroused the indignation of people from every sector across the country and provoked a vast movement calling for the prisoners' release. In the midst of 203 this movement came the Xi'an Incident. The Peaceful Resolution of the Xi'an Incident The KMT general Zhang Xueliang had on many occasions strongly urged Chiang Kai-shek to stop the civil war and join in the fight against Japanese aggression, but each time Chiang had refused. On December 4, 1936, he mustered the army of approximately 30 divisions directly under his control and prepared to set out from Henan for Shaanxi and Gansu to &quot;suppress the Communists.&quot; Chiang flew to the city of Xi'an in Shaanxi Province. There he ordered General Zhang Xueliang and General Yang Hucheng to lead all their troops to the front line in northern Shaanxi to fight the Red Army. Zhang and Yang pleaded with him for several days on end, but he harshly rebuked them. On the afternoon of December 7 Zhang went to Huaqingchi in Lintong County on the outskirts of Xi'an, where Chiang was staying, and tried once more to explain to him the gravity of the Japanese threat. The two men argued for two or three hours, until Zhang was in tears. Finally Chiang pounded the table and shouted, &quot;Even if you were to take a gun and shoot me dead, it wouldn't change my policy of suppressing the Communists.&quot;45 This forced Zhang and Yang to the conclusion that the only way to convince him was to start a mutiny. Before dawn on December 12, a contingent of the Northeastern Army under Zhang's command, acting on the plan worked out by Zhang and Yang, swiftly surrounded Huaqingchi and seized Chiang Kai-shek. Meanwhile, the KMT's Seventeenth Route Army was moving to take control of the entire city of Xi'an, and had taken Chen Cheng, Wei Lihuang, Jiang Dingwen, Zhu Shaoliang and other important KMT officers and officials into custody. Zhang and Yang also sent an open telegram explaining the reasons for the mutiny and making eight proposals, as follows: 1. The Nanjing government should be reorganized to accommodate all parties and groups and make saving the nation their common responsibility. 2. The civil war must stop altogether. The patriotic leaders imprisoned in Shanghai should be immediately released. 4. All political prisoners in the country should be released. 5. The ban on mass patriotic movements should be lifted. 6. All political rights including freedom of assembly and association should be guaranteed. 7. Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Testament should be executed to the letter. 8. A national salvation meeting should be convened without delay. This was the Xi'an Incident, which shook China and the rest of the world. Naturally, it came as a great shock to the Nanjing government. Among the authorities two views emerged as to how to handle the incident. Some supported sending a punitive expedition against Zhang and Yang, while others advocated negotiations to free Chiang. He Yingqin, the pro-Japanese Minister of War, having obtained authorization to conduct a troop transfer, mustered the East and West Column Armies in preparation for an assault on Xi'an. In the meantime, Soong Mei-ling (Madame Chiang Kaishek], H. H. Rung, T.V. Soong and other relatives of Chiang who belonged to a faction aligned with Britain and the United States, in spite of opposition from He Yingqin, worked to find a peaceful resolution of the Xi'an Incident and to secure Chiang's release. The Communist Party had no prior knowledge of the Xi'an Incident. Immediately after Chiang's arrest, Zhang Xueliang sent a telegram to the CPC Central Committee asking for suggestions. In response, the Central Committee despatched Zhou Enlai to Xi'an, where he arrived on December 17. The Central Committee completely approved of Zhang and Yang's stand and of their purpose in detaining Chiang. After careful analysis of the situation, it came to the following conclusion. If Xi'an were put in a position antagonistic to Nanjing, it might prove extremely dangerous for the Chinese nation, igniting a new, large-scale civil war, which would be welcomed only by Japan and the proJapanese faction. At present it was still possible to work for a peaceful solution, thus ending the civil war and creating conditions for a unified effort to resist Japan. This would be welcomed 205 hv all the people in the country, and especially by all parties, amuDS sectors and armies who were in favour of resistance. For these reasons, the CPC Central Committee supported a peaceful settlement of the Xi'an Incident. When the KMT authorities in Nanjing understood that neither Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng nor the Communist Party had any intention of harming Chiang Kai-shek and that they wished to resolve the incident peacefully, they sent T.V. Soong and Soong Mei-ling to Xi'an on December 22 to negotiate. Zhou Enlai participated in the negotiations with Zhang and Yang After two days of discussion, Soong Mei-ling issued a series of statements promising, among other things, that the KMT would cease its suppression of the Communists, and that in three months it would launch a war of resistance against Japan. On the evening of December 24, Zhou Enlai, accompanied by the two Soongs, went to see Chiang Kai-shek. Once again Chiang told Zhou to his face, &quot;The suppression of Communists will stop, there will be an alliance with the Red Army to resist Japan.... The next day Zhang Xueliang, without notitying Zhou Enlai, accompanied Chiang on a flight back to Nanjing. As soon as they arrived, Chiang placed Zhang under arrest. When the news reached Xi'an, there was pandemonium, and once again the danger of civil war seemed imminent. In this most dillicuit situation, Zhou Enlai carefully set to work, preserving the peaceful resolution of the incident at last. After this the civil war basically ceased, and relations between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang developed rapidly. The Xi'an Incident showed how intense the demand tor a united resistance had become throughout the country, even within the ranks of the KMT. The CPC, instead of taking advantage of Chiang Kai-shek's predicament, had done everything possible to see that the incident was settled peacefully, thus showing the sincerity of its intentions to unite with the rest of the country to resist Japan. The Xi'an Incident took place just as the objective conditions for renewed KMT-CPC cooperation were ripening, and its effect was to push those conditions to fruition. At a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on December 27, 1936, Mao Zedong said, &quot;The Xi'an Incident was the key to the transformation of the KMT. If not for that incident, the transformation might have taken longer, since a certain degree of compulsion was definitely needed to force the transformation upon it.... What put an end to the civil war after ten years? It was the Xi'an incident.&quot; In an effort to ensure that cooperation between the KMT and CPC was actually carried out, on February 10, 1937, the CPC Central Committee sent a telegram to the Third Plenary Session of the Central Executive Committee of the KMT. In this telegram the CPC asked that the KMT make it the national policy to do the following: ( 1 ) end all civil wars and concentrate the country's strength in a united effort to meet the foreign aggression; (2) guarantee freedom of speech, assembly and association, and release all political prisoners; (3) call a conference of representatives of all political parties, people of all walks of life and all armies, and concentrate the nation's talents in a common endeavour to save the country; (4) speedily complete all preparations for resisting Japan; and (5) improve the livelihood of the people. If the KMT adopted this policy, the telegram said, the CPC would pledge the following: (1) the policy of armed insurrection to overthrow the National Government will be discontinued throughout the country; (2) the Workers' and Peasants' Democratic Government will be renamed the Government of the Special Region of the Republic of China and the Red Army will be redesignated as part of the National Revolutionary Army, and they will come under the direction of the Central Government in Nanjing and its Military Council respectively; (3) a thoroughly democratic system based on universal suffrage will be put into effect in the areas under the Government of the Special Region; and (4) the policy of confiscating the land of the landlords will be discontinued and the common programme of the anti-Japanese national united front resolutely carried out.47 207 Making these four pledges meant yielding a great deal to the KMT but it was a principled and necessary step. It was the on y to stop the confrontation between the two political powers in country and bring about their cooperation in the resistance ag WEen^he five demands and four pledges of the CPC became known they received widespread support, including support rom STfaction of the KMT that favoured resistance. At the 3rd Plenary Session of the 5th Central Executive Committee of the KMT it was proposed that the KMT should return to the Three Great Policies&quot; of Sun Yat-sen: alliance with Russia, cooperation with the Communist Party and assistance to the peasants and workers The group calling for this move included not only Soong Ching Ling, He Xiangning and others who had always taken a revolutionary stand, together with Feng Ynxiang and others who had vigorously supported resistance ever since the September 18th Incident, but also founding members of the Kuomintang like Zhang Jingjiang, Li Shizeng, Sun Ke and Li Liejun This broad spectrum of supporters reflected the great popularity the proposal had already achieved. In January 1937 the leading organs of the CPC Central Com mittee moved from Bao'an in northern Shaanxi to Yan an. In May the Party held a National Conference there (known then as the Representative Conference of the Soviet Areas) which was attended by representatives from the Soviet areas, the White areas and the Red Army. Mao Zedong gave a report entitled The Tasks of the Communist Party of China in the Period of Resistance to Japan&quot; and a concluding speech entitled Win the Masses in Their Millions for the Anti-Japanese National United Front. Afterwards, the representatives from the White areas held a separate meeting. In July and August Mao Zedong eemred on philosophy at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political College in Yan'an and wrote his celebrated essays &quot;On Practice and Contradiction.&quot; These two essays were written to counter the dogmatism rampant in the Party at the time, but they are also Marxist philosophical works of permanent importance. On various occasions the CPC sent Zhou Enlai, Ye Jianying, in Boqu, Bo Gu and others to Xi'an, Hangzhou, Lushan and Nanjing to meet KMT leaders. Although there were ups and downs in the development of the situation, the civil war had already been stopped, high-level talks between the two parties had begun and the tide of history would irreversibly turn in favour of a united resistance to the Japanese invasion. During the ten years between the defeat of the Great Revolution and the eve of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the Communist Party of China persisted in its struggle under conditions of extreme hardship, maturing politically along the way. During this period the CPC passed through two great trials—the defeat of the Great Revolution and the defeat of the fifth countercampaign against &quot;encirclement and suppression.&quot; These two defeats greatly weakened the Party, bringing it to the very brink of extinction. Some members, who were less determined, panicked and became utterly dejected, even defecting to reactionary forces. Enemies both in China and abroad believed that the CPC would be thoroughly defeated. The steadfast Party members, however, consistently maintained their revolutionary optimism, indomitable will and complete faith in the future, under conditions of unimaginable peril and hardship. They kept their heads and focused on the task at hand, surviving through the darkest hours. This ten-year experience also demonstrated that the strength of the Chinese Communists came from combining the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the specific practice of the Chinese revolution, from working closely with the great majority of the people, seeking truth from facts, adhering to the mass line and maintaining the principle of independence. It demonstrated that any method that ignored realities, dogmatically copied the experience of other countries, relied simply on subjective hopes or prematurely sought quick result was doomed to fail. During these ten years, although several times the Party leadership made &quot;Left&quot; mistakes in thinking that resulted in serious setbacks for the revolutionary cause, the Party finally corrected these mistakes. Thus, as the new period of war with Japan approached, despite the complexity of the contradictions between the Chinese 209 nation and the foreign invaders and between the various classes , home the Party was able to adopt correct policies that would preserve' the major gains from the period of the agrarian revolution.<br /> <br /> == The Mainstay in the War of Resistance Against Japan ==<br /> <br /> === The Line of Total Resistance and the Principle of Protracted War ===<br /> On the night of July 7, 1937, near the Lugouqiao (Marco Polo Bridge) southwest of Beiping, the Japanese aggressor troops, nominally conducting a military exercise, suddenly attacked the local contingent of the KMT's 29th Army stationed there. The Chinese troops fought back, and thus began the War of Resistance Against Japan. The Japanese attack on the Marco Polo Bridge marked the long-premeditated launching of all-out war on China. This war was the largest imperialist invasion ever experienced by China. By the end of July the Japanese army had occupied Beiping and Tianjin. Three hundred thousand troops traveled along the Beiping-Suiyuan, Beiping-Hankou and Tianjin-Pukou rail lines, expanding their attack on north China. On August 13 they turned their guns on Shanghai, hoping to fight a war of quick decision. Relying on their highly developed industry and superior military might, the Japanese believed they were fully capable of forcing China to surrender within a short time and with little cost to themselves. In the &quot;Outline Guide to the Use of Armed Force in North China in the War on China,&quot; drawn up by the headquarters of the general staff of the Japanese army, two months were allotted for &quot;mopping up&quot; the KMT's 29th Army and three months for defeating its Central Army.1 212 213 The Formal Establishment of an Anti- Japanese National United Front Tanan's full-scale invasion brought the Chinese people face to faCe with the grave peril of national extinction. The situation Store them was clear: the only way for the country to survive the crisis threatening its very existence was for the whole nation to join together in a war of resistance. Every class and every political group must put aside its own interests m favour of the interest of the nation as a whole, which was to resist the Japanese aggressors. Otherwise, there would be no future for any of therm This was recognized both by the Communist Paity an &gt; vast number of patriots throughout the country. The day after the incident at the Marco Polo Bridge, the CPC Central Committee issued a manifesto that was a call to arms: &quot;Beiping and Tianjin are in peril! North China is in peril. The Chinese nation is in peril! A war of resistance by the whok nation is the only way out.&quot; The Central Committee called upon the people of the whole country, the government and the armed forces to unite and build the national united front as a Great Wall of resistance to Japanese aggression.&quot; It called upon the Kuomintang and the Communist Party to &quot;cooperate closely and resist the§new attacks of the Japanese aggressors.&quot; &quot;The whole nation from top to bottom,&quot; it said, &quot;must at once abandon any idea of being able to live in submissive peace with the Japanese aggressors.&quot;2 _ _ , . . That same day Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Peng Dehuai and other leaders of the Red Army sent a telegram to Chiang Kai-sheK saying that the officers and men of the Red Army wished to &quot;engage the enemy to defend the country and save the nation. Next, Ye Jianying was sent to Xi'an, where he issued a statemen on July 14 on behalf of the Central Committee of the CPU Ihe statement, addressed to the Nanjing government, carried the following message: &quot;Desiring to resist the enemy vigorously under the command of Chiang Kai-shek, the main force of the Red Army is preparing to set out as soon as possible to resist the Japanese. All armies have been ordered to complete preparations within ten days and await orders to move to the Beiping-Suiyuan defence line.&quot; On July 15 Zhou Enlai, Bo Gu and Lin Boqu presented to Chiang Kai-shek an &quot;Announcement of Kuomintang-Communist Cooperation by the Central Committee of the CPC.&quot; In this announcement the Central Committee emphasized the need for national unity: &quot;As we all know, with our nation facing extreme peril today, it is only through internal unity that we can defeat Japanese imperialist aggression.&quot;4 The announcement set forth three basic objectives—to launch a national war of resistance, to put democracy into effect, and to improve the lives of the people. It reaffirmed the Communist Party's four pledges for KMT-CPC cooperation.5 On July 17 the representatives of the Central Committee held negotiations with Chiang Kai-shek, Shao Lizi and Zhang Chong at a summer resort in the Lushan Mountains in Jiangxi. The CPC representatives proposed using the announcement as the political basis for cooperation between the two parties, and it was agreed that the document would be released through the Central News Agency of the KMT. That same day, under pressure of the swelling nationwide movement to resist Japan and of the CPC's insistence on cooperation, Chiang Kai-shek gave a speech calling for a united resistance. &quot;Once war breaks out,&quot; he said, &quot;every person, young or old, in the north or in the south, must take up the responsibility of resisting Japan and defending our homeland and should be resolved to sacrifice everything for the cause.&quot; But Chiang still cherished illusions of making peace with the Japanese and continued to view the attack at the Marco Polo Bridge as a &quot;local incident.&quot; Song Zheyuan, chairman of the Hebei-Chahar Government Administration Council, continued negotiations with the Japanese army in north China. On July 19 the Foreign Affairs Ministry of the National Government proposed to the Japanese embassy that the two governments cease military operations and return all troops to their former locations, then find a peaceful settlement through diplomacy. This proposal was rejected. The occupation of Beiping and Tianjin shocked the entire country and made it difficult to continue any negotiation. The attack on 215 Shanghai was an even more direct threat to the heartland of the KMT's ruling clique and to the interests of Britain and the United States in China. On August 14, under pressure of a flood of demands from all over the country to take up the war of resistance, the Foreign Affairs Ministry of the National Government released a statement declaring, &quot;Forced by the unrelenting invasion of Japan, China must now act in self-defence and resist this violence.&quot; The leaders of the KMT had been hoping that the Japanese aggressors would stop before they went too far. The Japanese had been urging them to join in &quot;mutual defence against the Communists,&quot; and the KMT leaders had been ready to succumb to their wiles. However, the facts showed that the purpose of the Japanese invasion was to take over the whole of China. If that happened, it would be a death blow not only for the Chinese nation but for themselves. They had no choice but to change their tune and accept the proposal of the CPC and other Chinese patriots that they work together to resist Japan. Chiang Kai-shek very much wanted the Red Army to move to the front, and during the KMT-CPC negotiations he began to express his desire for unity and cooperation with the CPC, agreeing not to send KMT personnel into the Red Army. In August of 1937 the two sides agreed to redesignate the main force of the Red Army, currently in northern Shaanxi, as the Eighth Route Arm&gt; of the National Revolutionary Army, to set up liaison offices of the Eighth Route Army in various cities in KMT-ruled areas and to publish the newspaper New China Daily. On August 22 the Military Council of the National Government issued an order redesignating the Red Army as the Eighth Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army. Three days later the Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee issued an order to reorganize the Red Army as the Eighth Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army, which consisted of the 115th, 120th and 129th Divisions.6 Zhu De was designated commanderin-chief with Peng Dehuai as his deputy, Ye Jianying was named chief of staff with Zuo Quan as his deputy and Ren Bishi became director of the political department with Deng Xiaoping as his deputy. Lin Biao was appointed commander and Nie Rongzhen deputy commander of the 115th Division, which was made up chiefly of the former First and Fifteenth Army Groups of the First Front Army of the Red Army. He Long was appointed commander and Xiao Ke deputy commander of the 120th Division, which was composed mainly of the former Second Front Army; and Liu Bocheng was appointed commander and Xu Xiangqian deputy commander of the 129th Division, mainly composed of the former Fourth Front Army. All these divisions, with a total of more than 45,000 men, were sent to join the KM T army in combating the enemy. In September of 1937 the ShaanxiGansu-Ningxia Revolutionary Base Area was redesignated the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Area Government. It included 23 counties with a total population of 1.5 million, and the CPCCentral Committee was located there. It can be seen that the second cooperation between the KMT and the CPC started with the military. At the urging of the Communist Party, on September 22 the KMT Central News Agency published the &quot;Announcement of Kuomintang-Communist Cooperation by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China,&quot; and the next day Chiang Kai-shek made a statement recognizing the legality of the Communist Party. The CPC's announcement and Chiang's statement proclaimed the intention of the two parties to cooperate for the second time and the formation of an anti- Japanese national united front. The acceptance by the top leader of the KMT of a second period of cooperation with the CPC and his agreement to undertake a war of resistance against Japan represented a great service to the people of the country. At this time the KMT was the ruling party and had at its disposal an army of two million men. The shift in its policy made it possible to launch a total war of resistance. The renewal of cooperation between the KMT and the CPC was welcomed throughout the country. In November of 1937 the great patriot Soong Ching Ling issued a statement calling for unity: &quot;The Communist Party is a party which stands for the interests of the working classes, both industrial and agricultural. Sun 217 r Vat-sen 1 realized that without the keen support and cooperation Lf these classes, the mission of completing the national revolution ronld not easily be carried out.... During the present crisis, all former differences should be forgotten. The whole nation must ioin together in opposing Japanese aggression and fighting for the final victory.&quot;7 The National Revolutionary League of China, led hv Li Jishen and other high-ranking KMT officers and officials who stood for resistance, had originally opposed Chiang. Now it changed its position and supported him. The National Socialist Party the Chinese Youth Party, the Chinese Vocational Education Society, the Rural Construction Party and others all indicated their support for the resistance effort. Workers, peasants intellectuals and other patriotic persons added to the flood of anti-Japanese sentiment. Capitalists engaged in industry and commerce also joined in the struggle, buying national salvation bonds, donating money and supplies to the front and organizing factories and firms to move to the interior. In Singapore the General Association of Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia for Aid to Refugees of the Motherland was established with Jan Kah Kee as chairman, and branches were set up in various countries in Southeast Asia. Ethnic Chinese living in Europe, the United States and other countries set up national salvation groups to spread anti- Japanese propaganda, collect money and materiel and organize young men to return to China and join the army. Mass participation in the resistance grew to a scale unprecedented in modern Chinese history. The Japanese invaders suddenly discovered they were facing a united front composed of the entire Chinese nation. The Conflict Between the Line of Total Resistance and the Line of Partial Resistance Because of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the situation at home and abroad was complex. Internationally, there were several forces with differing attitudes towards the war. The Japanese imperialists intended to annex China and pretended to be preparing an attack on the Soviet Union in an attempt to induce the anti-Soviet British and U.S. imperialists to make concessions to Japan. The German and Italian fascists supported Japan's invasion of China. The Soviet Union, although it explicitly supported China, considered the Kuomintang to be the most important force in the country and the main force in the resistance. On August 21, 1937, the government of the Soviet Union and the National Government of China signed a treaty of mutual non-aggression. After that, Soviet national defence minister K.Y. Voroshilov declared that the Soviet Union would never sit idly by as an indifferent observer of the war between China and Japan. The Soviet Union sent to China first military advisers and then a team of air force volunteers. In addition, it provided the Chinese government with financial and materiel aid. As for Britain and the United Slates, they had a two-sided policy with regard to the China question. As Japan's war of aggression encroached on their interests in China and in the East as a whole, their conflicts with Japan increased. At the same time, they were busy dealing with the tense situation in the West caused by Germany and Italy, and they feared the rise of the Chinese revolutionary force. Thus, on the one hand they hoped that China would resist Japanese aggression and gave China some support; on the other hand, they appeased Japan and tried to alleviate their contradictions with that country by sacrificing China's sovereignty over some of its territory. They also encouraged Japan to attack the Soviet Union, in the hope that this would be to their benefit. In China, too, there were several forces with differing attitudes towards the Japanese aggression. The people were firmly in favour of resistance and determined to defend their motherland. Faced with the threat of national subjugation, not only the workers, peasants and the urban petty and national bourgeoisie but also some landlords, the enlightened gentry of the landlord class in particular, favoured resistance to Japan and refused to be slaves of a foreign power. Many of them, however, were at a loss how to resist and had no understanding of the Communist Party. The middle-of-the-roaders, who constituted the bulk of the population, favoured the resistance, though they still did not fully 219 understand the situation. The Kuomintang was the ruling party and had an internationally recognized legitimate government as well as an army of two million men. Accordingly, most of the middle-of-the-roaders recognized the legitimacy of the Kuomintang and, though they resented its corruption and undemocratic practices, pinned their hopes of resistance on it. Inside the Kuomintang, some members were democratic advocates of resistance to Japan, others were hidden traitors and still others—the majority, who had real power in their hands and worked in the interest of the big landlords and the big bourgeoisie—belonged to the pro-British, pro-American Chiang Kai-shek clique. The members of this clique had a dual character. On the one hand, the country was under full-scale invasion and in danger of being subjugated. If they refused to resist, the people would not tolerate them, and it would be impossible for them to remain in power. Furthermore, there were contradictions between them and Britain and the U.S., as well as contradictions between them and Japan. For these reasons, they resisted Japanese aggression quite actively in the initial period of the war. On the other hand, they continued to oppress the people, were reluctant to see them mobilized on a broad scale and hoped to win the war by relying on international aid. They even tried to take advantage of the war to eliminate, or at least weaken, the people's revolutionary forces led by the Communist Party. Throughout the war, the National Government was controlled solely by the Kuomintang and was not based on a national, democratic united front. It was because of this dual character of those in power in the Kuomintang that even though the KMT and the Communist Party had agreed to cooperate in the War of Resistance, it was very difficult to consolidate and expand that cooperation. From the very beginning, the two parties had serious differences over how to conduct the war, and they followed two completely different lines. The Kuomintang, representing the interests of the big landlords and the big bourgeoisie, prosecuted the war only to the extent it judged necessary to hold on to its position in power after the Japanese aggressors were defeated. Therefore, it pursued a line of partial resistance. That is to say, adhering to its one-party dictatorship, it engaged only the government and its troops in the resistance, refused to carry out any fundamental reform that would facilitate the war effort, denied the people democratic freedoms and rights and refused to improve their living standards so as to prevent them from taking part in the war and expanding their strength. In its Programme for Resisting Japan and Rebuilding the Nation, adopted at a provisional national congress that met from March 29 to April 1, 1938, the Kuomintang took a positive attitude towards resistance, but it also imposed a number of restrictions on the development of the people's movement. On the other hand, the Communist Party, representing the fundamental interests of the Chinese nation, put forward a line of total resistance. The Party maintained that China had the strength to resist the aggression and would eventually triumph. The ultimate source of that strength was the vast number of people. Only by mobilizing and organizing the people could China resist the powerful enemy. It was therefore necessary to introduce political and economic reforms nationwide, putting an end to the one-party dictatorship of the Kuomintang, granting the people full democratic rights to resist Japan and improving the living standards of the workers and peasants. Everything possible had to be done to mobilize, organize and arm the people, so as to make the War of Resistance a true people's war. The Ten-Point Programme for Resisting Japan and Saving the Nation, adopted at an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held in Luochuan, in northern Shaanxi, August 22-25, 1937, set forth this line of total resistance.8 These two lines led to two different outcomes. If the Chinese people followed the line of total resistance, they would expel the invading Japanese imperialists and gain their freedom and liberation. But if they followed the line of partial resistance, they would never win the war, and China would remain occupied by Japan. These two completely different lines inevitably gave rise to conflicts throughout the War of Resistance. At the beginning of the war, Mao Zedong made the basic contradiction clear: 221 &quot;Will the proletariat lead the bourgeoisie in the united front, or the bourgeoisie the proletariat? Will the Kuomintang draw over the Communist Party, or the Communist Party the Kuomintang9 In relation to the current specific political task this question means: Is the Kuomintang to be raised to the level of the Ten-Point Programme for Resisting Japan and Saving the Nation to the level of the total resistance advocated by the Communist Party? Or is the Communist Party to sink to the level of the Kuomintang dictatorship of the landlords and bourgeoisie, to the level of partial resistance?&quot; He gave a straight answer to this question: &quot;The key to leading the anti- Japanese national revolutionary war to victory is to explain, apply and uphold the principle of ‘independence and initiative within the united front'.&quot;9 Events were to prove him correct. The Strategic Principle of Protracted War To mobilize and organize the people for an all-out war of resistance, the CPC had to formulate a strategic principle for the war. Even before the Japanese attack on July 7, 1937, the CPC Central Committee had predicted that the War of Resistance would be long drawn out. At the meeting of Party activists held at Wayaobu in northern Shaanxi Province in December 1935, Mao Zedong had declared, &quot;To defeat our enemies we must be prepared to fight a protracted war.&quot; After the attack, at a meeting on military affairs convened by the Nanjing National Government in August 1937, the CPC representatives Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Ye Jianying stated that strategically, the nationwide War of Resistance should be a long-term defensive war, but that tactical offensives, or active defence, should be carried out within the strategic defensive. They also recommended that the war zones in north China increase their capacity to operate independently for a long time to come by shifting from positional warfare to mobile warfare. At the same time, they said, these zones should mobilize the people on the flanks of the enemy and in occupied areas to engage in guerrilla warfare and to sabotage transport lines, in an effort to wipe out Japanese troops or pin them down. However, these suggestions were not accepted by the leading body of the Kuomintang. , . . . It was not long before the Communist Party noted again, in its Resolution on the Present Situation and the Tasks of the Paity, adopted at the Luochuan meeting, &quot;It should be realized that the war will be an arduous and protracted war.&quot;10 How should such a war be conducted? What tasks should the Red Army fulfil? At the same meeting, Mao Zedong declared that the basic tasks of the Red Army were as follows: to pursue independent guerrilla warfare, to undertake mobile warfare when conditions were favourable, to establish anti- Japanese base areas in the enemy s rear, to pin down and wipe out enemy troops, to give strategic support to friendly armies and to preserve and expand its own ranks. The meeting decided that the strategic tasks of the Red Army were to freely carry out independent guerrilla warfare, mainly in mountainous areas in the enemy's rear in support of front-line battlefields, to open up new battlefields and to establish anti-Japanese base areas behind the enemy lines. After the Luochuan meeting, Zhang Wentian, Peng Dehuai, Zhou Enlai and others published articles explaining both inside and outside the Party the principle of protracted war, in light of the events since the Japanese attack of July 7. Nevertheless, a great many people still believed either that China would be subjugated or that it would win a quick victory. In the Kuomintang camp, some said, &quot;China is inferior in arms and is bound to lose. Continuing the war means subjugation.' Others said, &quot;If we fight for just three months, the international situation is bound to change. The Soviet Union will most probably send troops to China, and Britain and the United States may intervene in Shanghai.&quot; Before the fall of Nanjing, Chiang Kaishek sent Stalin a telegram asking him to send troops as soon as possible In the Communist Party, meanwhile, some members took the enemy lightly and held that China would achieve a quick victory by relying on the Kuomintang's regular army of two million men. Both Party members and non-Party members belittled the importance of guerrilla warfare and pinned their hopes for victory on regular warfare. But the course of the war during 223 :HAPTER four the war of resistance against japan r,B ssrisfss ewiirtriistssis , • the war to refute the prevailing ideas about its tuture Si'ESKSIKtSW Jclmmn ibU the W« of Resistance *«&quot; S&quot; &quot;K&quot; wl, lone and that the final victory would be Chinas, lhe war between China and Japan,&quot; he wrote, &quot;is not just any war U is soecifically a war of life and death between semi-colonial and semi-feudal China and imperialist Japan, fought m the Nineteen Thirties In this war, China and Japan had four basic sets of contrasting features. First, Japan was a powerful impertalts country while China was a weak semi-colonial and semi feudal country' Second, Japan's war of aggression was retrogressive barbarous whereas China's resistance was progressive and jus . Third although it had great war capabilities, Japan was a comparafi'vely small country deficient tn manpower and in military, Cnda and material resources, and it could not stand a long W^r China on the contrary, was a big country with vast territory, rich resources, a large population and plenty of &quot;^etS; and was capable of sustaining a long war. Four*' Jdp h chjna meagre international support for its unjust war, whereas Ch would find abundant support for its just resistance. Because of the;11 first set of contrasting features, the Japanese invaders wou d run rampant for a time, and as Mao put it, China would not be able to oust the Japanese quickly&quot; and would inevitably have a hard stremh of road to travel.-' Because of the other features however, China could not be subjugated and would win the find V1Cln&quot;On Protracted War&quot; Mao predicted that for the Chinese, the war would go through the three stages of strategic defensive, strategic stalemate and strategic offensive. As far as the relative strength of the belligerents was concerned, in the three stages China would inevitably move from inferiority to parity and then to superiority, while Japan would inevitably move from superiority to parity and then to inferiority. The stage of strategic stalemate would last quite a long time, and it would be the most trying period but also the pivotal one in the war as a whole. In this stage, China's form of fighting would be primarily guerrilla warfare supplemented by mobile warfare. The fighting in this stage would be ruthless, but the guerrilla warfare would be successful. The exponents of quick victory, Mao wrote, did not realize that war was a contest of strength and that before a certain change had taken place in the relative strength of the belligerents, there was no basis for trying to fight strategically decisive battles. ‘Whether China becomes an independent country or is reduced to a colony will be determined not by the retention or loss of the big cities in the first stage but by the extent to which the whole nation exerts itself in the second. If we can persevere in the War of Resistance, in the united front and in the protracted war, China will in that stage gain the power to change from weakness to strength.'13 Mao emphasized that the army and the people were the foundation of victory and that the richest source of power to wage war lay in the masses. He made it clear that the only way to win the war with Japan was to mobilize and rely on them and make it a people's war. In &quot;On Protracted War&quot; Mao set forth a programme for the Communist Party to follow as it led the people in the long War of Resistance. He not only predicted that China would achieve the final victory in that war but outlined the methods by which it could do so, constantly weakening the enemy and expanding its own forces. Written soon after the war began and at a time when many people could not foresee how it would proceed, &quot;On Protracted War&quot; presented a clear blueprint for the entire war and offered answers to all kinds of questions about it. Few articles had been as convincing and inspiring as these lectures. And as the war 225 unfolded, events were to prove that Mao's analysis of the situation had been sound and his predictions correct.<br /> <br /> === Carrying Out Guerrilla Warfare behind the Enemy Lines ===<br /> The stage of strategic defensive in China's War of Resistance Against Japan began with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on Jalv 7 1957. and ended with the fall of Guangzhou and Wuhan in October 1938. This stage had two major characteristics One was that the invading Japanese troops penetrated further into China's vast territory along separate routes and their °f ™sives on front-line battlefields reached a peak. The other was that the army of the Chinese people opened up new battlefields behind the enemy lines and expanded rapidly. . , At this time the Japanese invaders directed their attack chiefly against the Kuomintang. Both strategic! illy and &quot; naigns front-line battlefields were the mam battlefields lor re sistLg the invasion. The Kuomintang was relatively eager to resist and had its troops wage the Beiping-Tianjin, Wusong Shanghai. Northern Shanxi and Xuzhou campaigns and the ba tie to defend Wuhan. These troops won a victory in the Taier zhuang campaign in Shandong Province, frustrating the plan of the Japanese imperialists to subjugate China in three months. Nevertheless, the situation on the front-line b^^ld^S Tas unfavourable, because the enemy was strong whereas China was weak and because the Chiang Kai-shek clique followed the line of partial resistance and implemented the principle of passive defence Even the great victory in the Tai'erzhuang campaign failed to extricate the Chinese side from its passive potion in the war as a whole. Between July 1937 and October 1938, the Ja panese troops seized Beiping, Tianjin, Shanghai, zhou and Wuhan and occupied a vast territory with a den population, inflicting untold suffering upon the Chinese peopkn For six weeks after they seized Nanjing he ^Ptta of the Kuomintang government, on December 13, 1937, the Japanese militarists carried out a shocking, bloody slaughter, shooting and burying alive more than 300,000 Chinese troops and civilians there. The Eighth Route Army Marches to the Front After the Red Army was reorganized as the Eighth Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army in August 1937, it marched to the front without delay. In order to exercise more effective leadership over it, the Central Committee of the Communist Party decided to establish a front-line military subcommission under the leadership of the Central Military Commission, with Zhu De as secretary and Peng Dehuai as his deputy. The Central Committee also set two strategic tasks for the Eighth Route Army. One was to support the Kuomintang troops in the front-line battlefields by outflanking the Japanese troops invading Shanxi Province, so as to check their advance and cover the retreat of friendly armies. The other was to seize all opportunities to penetrate the encmy-occupied areas and develop guerrilla warfare there. Before the fall of Taiyuan early in November 1937, the Eighth Route Army mainly supported the Kuomintang troops in their military operations, while dispatching a small number of its men to mobilize and arm the masses. As a leader of the League of Self-Sacrifice for National Salvation in Shanxi Province, Bo Yibo twice proposed to Yan Xishan, the warlord of Shanxi, that a new army be organized there to expand the anti-Japanese armed forces. Yan Xishan first approved the establishment of one regiment on a trial basis and later authorized Bo Yibo to organize five brigades. The Shanxi New Army, also known as the Shanxi Youth Resistance &quot;Daredevil&quot; Corps, was a de facto revolutionary army organized and led by the open Shanxi Working Committee of the CPC. Later, the New Army expanded to 50 regiments under the leadership of the Party. This unit played an important role in the war by fighting in close cooperation with the Eighth Route Army. In mid-September 1937, the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army marched to northeastern Shanxi and made Mount CHATTER FOUR THE WAR OF RESISTANCE AGAINST JAPAN 227 Henushan its base. On September 22 some units of Japan's Fifth Division began to close in on Pingxingguan, a strategic P°‘n‘ cl°f . the Great Wall in northeastern Shanxi. The next day, Zhu De nnd Peng Dehuai sent a telegram to Lin Biao, commander of the 115th Division, ordering him to set out for the area between Pingxingguan and Lingqiu County and launch flexible flank attacks against the invaders. On September 25 a unit of the 115th Division successfully carried out its first ambush wiping out more than 1,000 troops of the 21st Brigade of the Itagaki Division destroying more than 100 Japanese vehicles and capturing a quantity of supplies and weapons. This was the first great victory of the Chinese army in the War of Resistance and it put an end to the myth that Japan's Imperial Army was invincible. It enormously enhanced the confidence of the army and the people increased the prestige of the Communist Party and of the Eighth Route Army and convinced many people that the Communist Party was not only resolutely resisting the Japanese but also capable of defeating them. After the Pingxingguan campaign, the three divisions of the Eighth Route Army and the Kuomintang troops fought together in the Xinkou campaign, which lasted over 20 days. The Kuomintang and the Communist Party cooperated fairly well in this campaign, the fiercest and the largest ever fought in north China. . , • • After the fall of Taiyuan, in accordance with the decision adopted at the Luochuan meeting of the CPC Central Committee in August 1937, the army under the leadership of the Party concentrated on penetrating the enemy's rear areas to open up a second battlefront and establish base areas there, so as to give the Kuomintang armies strategic support. Thus two batllefronts emerged that supported each other in the War of Resistance: the front-line battlefront, for which the KM1 army was chiefly responsible, and the battlefront behind enemy lines, for which the CPC army was chiefly responsible. Opening Up the Battlefront Behind Enemy Lines At this time something curious happened on the Shanxi front: when the Japanese troops, taking advantage of their superior forces, forged ahead, the Kuomintang armies staged one retreat after another, whereas the poorly equipped Eighth Route Army, in small groups, rapidly penetrated the enemy's rear areas. The policy of opening the batllefront behind enemy lines, adopted at the Luochuan meeting, was correct and essential. First, because the enemy was strong while the Chinese side was weak, the invading forces were able to seize vast areas in a very short period of time. If the Japanese troops were allowed to remain in these areas undisturbed, they would make them their military bases and launch fiercer offensives elsewhere. Fighting the enemy in his rear areas would make him lose some of his occupied territory, harass him and pin him down. It would pose a serious threat to Japan, which had a shortage of troops. Second, it would help mobilize and expand the people's own anti- Japanese forces. Having undergone the inhuman atrocities committed by the Japanese aggressors who were burning, killing and plundering everywhere, the people in the occupied areas longed to avenge the sufferings inflicted upon their families and on the motherland as a whole. However, as they were scattered, disorganized and inexperienced in armed struggle, their spontaneous resistance was often short-lived. There was therefore an urgent need for a people's army like the Eighth Route Army to penetrate behind enemy lines and serve as a centre around which all anti-Japanese forces could rally. Only by resisting the Japanese for a long time could the people in the occupied areas enhance their understanding of the war, organize themselves effectively and gradually expand their forces. And only by waging a large-scale people's war in those areas could China win final victory. The conditions in occupied territory made it possible for the Eighth Route Army to wage such a war. Having limited troops, the Japanese could only lake control of cities and transport lines, while in the vast countryside and small towns their rule was weak. In those places the original government organs of the Kuomintang had collapsed because of the invasion, and anarchy prevailed. The masses in the occupied areas were determined to fight Japan. Except for a small number of traitors, all classes, including 229 the landlords, were demanding that the invaders be repelled, so there was a solid mass base for the resistance there. Moreover, the hnsically self-sufficient economy in the occupied rural areas nrovided favourable conditions for surviving the tight blockade imposed by the enemy. For these reasons, when the men of the Eighth Route Army, tempered in the long revolutionary war under the leadership of the Communist Party, moved into the rear areas of the enemy, they were able to serve as the backbone of the resistance, to mobilize and organize powerful people's armed forces and to establish democratic anti-Japanese base areas. „ , .. How should the Eighth Route Army fight the enemy once it had penetrated the occupied areas? The Communist Party formulated the combat principle, &quot;Guerrilla warfare is basic, but lose no chance for mobile warfare under favourable conditions.&quot;14 This represented a major change in military strategy, a change from the mobile warfare used in the later stage of the Agrarian Revolutionary War to guerrilla warfare, a form of fighting well suited to a weak nation resisting a powerful enemy. To conduct guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines, the people's armed forces had to establish anti-Japanese base areas. Such warfare had to be carried out without the support of the country's general rear areas, so base areas must serve that function. It there were no base areas behind enemy lines, it would be impossible to continue guerrilla warfare tor any length of time. 1 here were two basic conditions for establishing and expanding base areas. 1 ) to have armed forces and use them to organize the people to defeat enemy offensives, and 2) to mobilize the people for all the work in the base areas, especially for the establishment and consolidation of democratic organs of political power. In mid-November 1937 the three divisions of the Eighth Route Army and the Shanxi New Army began their strategic deployment in the occupied areas of Shanxi. In cooperation with the local Party organizations, they organized working groups and established battlefield mobilization committees and anti-Japanese associations for national salvation in effect which exercised political power. After the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japan in July 1937, many county magistrates in Shanxi Province fled or were afraid to perform their duties. Taking advantage of the legal status of the League of Self-Sacrifice for National Salvation, Bo Yibo and others sent a large number of cadres from the League and from the Shanxi New Army to replace them. Of the 105 counties in Shanxi, 70 had Communists as their magistrates. Most of them were special representatives sent by the League. As a result, the League became an quasi-political organization. At a meeting of representatives of the army, the government and the people of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hcbei Border Area, convened at Fuping in western Hebei on January 10, 1938, a Provisional Administrative Council of the Border Area was formed by democratic election.15 This was the first united front anti- Japanese democratic government led by the Communist Party behind enemy lines. In October 1937, when the Eighth Route Army was marching to the front, the KMT and the CPC reached an agreement in Nanjing on redesignating the Red Army units and guerrilla forces that remained in the border areas of Hunan, Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Hubei, Henan and Anhui provinces (not including the Qiongya Red Army Guerrillas in Guangdong) as the New Fourth Army of the National Revolutionary Army. In December the headquarters of the New Fourth Army was established in Hankou, Hubei, and soon thereafter it was moved first to Nanchang, Jiangxi, and then to Yansi in southern Anhui. Ye Ting was appointed commander and Xiang Ying deputy commander of this army, which consisted of four detachments. The first three detachments comprised the Red Army units and guerrilla forces in provinces south of the Yangtze River, while the fourth detachment was made up of the Hubei-HenanAnhui, southern Henan and northeastern Hubei Red Army units and guerrilla forces north of the Yangtze. The New Fourth Army had a total of 10,300 men. At the same time, the Southeast Sub-Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and the New Fourth Army Subcommission of the Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee were established. Xiang Ying was appointed 231 cretary 0f both units and Chen Yi was named deputy secretary nf the subcommission. After the New Fourth Army was formed, the army units under the command of Chen Yi and Su Yu marched into enemy-occupied territory to conduct guerrilla warfare and establish base areas. For more than a year the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army successfully carried out guerrilla warfare mainly in the mountains; then they gradually moved into the plains. By October 1938 they had fought over 1,600 engagements with the Japanese troops, killing, wounding or capturing more than 54,000 of them As the people living under the occupation were eagei to join the army to fight Japan, the Eighth Route Army expanded to over 156,000 men and the New Fourth Army to 25,000. In north China they established anti-Japanese base areas in ShanxiChahar-Hebei, northwestern Shanxi, Daqing Mountain in Suiyuan, Shanxi-Hebei-Henan, southwestern Shanxi, the HebeiShandong border and Shandong, and in central China they set up bases in southern Jiangsu, central Anhui, eastern Henan and other places. Many people, including Chiang Kai-shek, had not expected that the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army could create such a situation behind enemy lines within so short a period of time. ^ . , In the winter of 1938 the CPC Central Committee made another strategic decision: it sent the three main forces of the Eighth Route Army from the mountainous areas of Shanxi Province to the plains of Hebei and Shandong. Late in November the main force of the 129th Division entered southern Hebei, the main force of the 120th Division penetrated into central Hebei and the headquarters staff of the 115th Division led its 343th Brigade to the Hebei-Shandong-Henan border area and Shandong Province to establish new base areas in those places. This important strategic action did a great deal to strengthen anti-Japanese guerrilla warfare in the plains. The units of the New Fourth Army also took advantage of the varied terrain of mountains, rivers lakes and branching streams to carry out guerrilla warfare. All this created a new situation in the war behind enemy lines. When the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army marched to the areas behind enemy lines, the Northeast AntiJapanese United Army led by the Communist Yang Jingyu, which had long been engaged in armed struggle against Japan in northeast China, became more active than ever before. Its soldiers of the Han, Manchu and Korean nationalities dealt heavy blows to Japanese and puppet troops. The strategic general rear area of the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army was the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region. To consolidate the region, the government there, which was under the chairmanship of Lin Boqu, suppressed bandits and fought traitors, secret agents, reactionary landlords and despotic gentry. The Central Committee of the CPC and the government of the region, both based in Yan'an in northern Shaanxi, opened a variety of schools that trained a large number of cadres in different disciplines. They included the Chinese People's AntiJapanese Military and Political College, the Northern Shaanxi College, an institution for training young cadres, the Lu Xun Art Academy, the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, the Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC, the School for Workers and Staff Members, the Women's University of China and the PublicHealth School. Tens of thousands of patriotic young people journeyed to Yan'an from every corner of the country. After studying and being tempered in practical work, many of them became staunch revolutionaries determined to fight the Japanese. The consolidation and development of the general rear area enabled the CPC Central Committee to concentrate on commanding military operations behind enemy lines and made it possible for the Party to unite with the people of the whole country in resisting Japanese aggression. The guerrilla warfare carried out behind enemy lines by the armies under the leadership of the CPC was one of the most difficult undertakings in military history. Confronted by the powerful Japanese invaders, the poorly equipped Chinese troops received no replenishment of guns or ammunition from their rear areas. Encircled by the enemy, they created anti-Japanese base areas in remote areas with strikingly poor material conditions. For example, when Nie Rongzhen led some units of the 115th 233 nivision to the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei border area in November it began to snow on Mount Wutai. However, the troops were *9j, wearing unlined clothes and straw shoes and camping at ni^ht in ruined temples. In spite of all this, they finally game ?irm control of the ground. The key element that enabled them m do so was the support of the local people. As Nie Rongzhen nut it &quot;The people, once mobilized, became ‘mountains and seas ?o check the Japanese aggressors.&quot;16 It would have ^been ummag inable for them to persevere in guerrilla warfare let alone expand it in such a difficult environment if they had not been an army of the people and had not formed the closest ties with the Bureau of the CPC Central Committee was set up in Wuhan, the centre of resistance in the Kuomintang area. The representatives of the Communist Party stayed in contact with members of the Kuomintang and consulted with them on important issues in the relatively cooperative atmosphere that existed for a time. Later, with the approval of the Central Committee of the CPC, Zhou Enlai was appointed deputy director of the Political Department of the Military Council of the National Government, and Guo Moruo was named director of the same department's Third Division, which was in charge of culture and propaganda. Communists also participated in the People's Political Council convened by the Kuomintang. The restrictions of the earlier period having been lifted, they again had the opportunity to contact people openly. They made friends and cooperated with persons who opposed the invasion but held political attitudes different from theirs. The Communists also made friends with a number of people from other countries, and to enhance their understanding of and sympathy with the Party, explained to them the Party's principle of uniting to resist Japan. It was at this time that renowned foreign friends of the Party, such as Dr. Norman Bethune of Canada and Dr. D. S. Kotnis of India, stopped over in Wuhan on their way to the anti-Japanese democratic base areas. The Third Division of the Political Department of the Military Council of the National Government, which included Communists and progressives, mounted big propaganda campaigns against Japan. It launched the &quot;Week of Anti-Japanese Propaganda&quot; and similar activities in Wuhan and formed ten opera groups, four publicity teams and a children's troupe to arouse popular feeling against the enemy. Under the leadership of the CPC's Yangtze Bureau, the Party organizations in southern China that had been seriously damaged in the later period of the ten-year civil war gradually recovered and expanded. Between September 1937 and September 1938, CPC provincial committees or working committees were established in Henan, Hubei, Jiangsu, Sichuan, Hunan, Guangxi, Guizhou, Anhui, Guangdong, Yunnan, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Fujian. By September 1938 the number of Party members (ex „ those in the army) exceeded 67,000. C‘ Generally speaking, the work done by the Party in the Wuhan times was effective. It opened up a new situation, and this hac far-reaching effects<br /> <br /> === Overcoming the Right-Deviationist Mistakes and Maintaining the Independence and Initiative of the Party in the United Front ===<br /> During the War of Resistance Against Japan, because of the complex international and domestic situation and because of the two different lines followed by the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the key to the success of the resistance lay in the Party's correct handling, in the united front, of the relation, between unity and independence, between solidarity and struggle. At the very beginning of the war, the CPC Central Committee declared that the Party must follow the principle of 'ndependence and initiative within the united front. This meant tha would be both unity and independence, that the Party would both unite with the Kuomintang and struggle against it, seeking unity through struggle. The CPC would remain independent ideologically, politically and organizationally and follow its own political line of freely mobilizing the masses and leading the people of the whole nation in resistance to Japan. It would maintain its absolute leadership over the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army and other people's armed forces, break the restrictions imposed on it by the Kuomintang and work hard to expand the people's armed forces. To uphold the principle of independence and initiative in the anti-Japanese national united front was, in essence, to strive for leadership in the War of Resistance. When this principle was first formulated by the CPC Central Committee, it was not fully understood by the whole Party. After the united front was established, certain Party members made Right mistakes. For example, some of them yielded to the Kuomintang when it interfered in, and even suppressed, the mass campaign for national salvation. When one unit of the Red Army was being reorganized into the National Revolutionary Army, its commander lowered his vigilance against the anti-Communist schemes of the Kuomintang, with disastrous results.17 Some Party members in KMT areas, having too much faith in the Kuomintang, tended to carry out all their activities openly. Others, who were in the army, tried to secure appointments by the Kuomintang government. When they succeeded, they refused to continue to lead a hard life and to accept the leadership of the Party. Still others were not bold enough to struggle against the Kuomintang secret agents who were sabotaging their base areas. This Right deviationism violated the Party's principle of independence and initiative and was detrimental to the preservation of the united front based on cooperation between the KMT and the CPC. Party organizations at all levels struggled successfully to overcome it. At the end of November 1937, Wang Ming, the CPC's representative to the Communist International, member of the International's Executive Committee and presidium and alternate secretary of its Secretariat, was sent back to China. Before he left, the Secretariat of the International held a special meeting on the situation in the Sino-Japanese war and on the tasks for the CPC. The General Secretary of the Executive Committee, Georgi Dimitrov, maintained that as the CPC and the Chinese working class were relatively weak, in the War of Resistance China should rely on the Kuomintang with Chiang Kai-shek as its head. The CPC, according to Dimitrov, should draw on the practice of the French Communist Party, summed up in the slogan, &quot;Everything for the popular front and everything through the popular front,&quot; and share responsibility and leadership with the Kuomintang. As a matter of fact, the practice of the French Communist Party had not been successful. If the CPC were to give up its proletarian stand of independence and initiative, make no distinction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, refrain from arousing the masses and try to appease the bourgeoisie in all matters so as to maintain the united front, it would only weaken the position of the proletariat, put the united front at the mercy of the 237 w^nreeoisie and eventually bring about China's defeat. Nevertheless, after he arrived in Yan'an, Wang Ming did ,vervthine possible to carry out this &quot;new policy&quot; of the Communist International. At a meeting of the Politburo of the CPC rentral Committee held from December 9 to 14, 1937, he made , report entitled &quot;How to Carry On the Nationwide War of Resistance and Win It.&quot; In this report he put forward some correct ideas on persevering in the war and continuing to cooperate with the Kuomintang. But he also set forth a series of Right capitulationist ideas on the question of how to consolidate and expand the anti-Japanese national united front. Denying the differences of principle between the CPC's line of total resistance and the Kuomintang's line of partial resistance, Wang Ming maintained that the Kuomintang should be the leader in the war, negating the leading role played by the Communist Party. He also rejected the principle of independence and initiative within the united front, saying that &quot;everything must be submitted to the united front&quot; and that &quot;everything must go through the united front.&quot; In this way, he confined the activity of the Party to the limits imposed by the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek and opposed the free mobilization and arming of the masses. He belittled the role of guerrilla warfare, the people's armed lorces and the anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines under the leadership of the Communist Party, and asserted that a quick victory could be achieved by relying on the Kuomintang armies. Wang Ming confused many participants in the meeting when he said that in his report he was relaying the instructions of the Communist International. Towards the end of December 1937, Wang Ming went to Wuhan as a member of the CPC delegation. There, without the approval of the CPC Central Committee, he published &quot;Manifesto of the Communist Party of China on the Present Situation,&quot; &quot;The Key to Saving the Present Situation&quot; and other articles, and he delivered a speech at Wuhan University entitled &quot;On the Anti-Japanese National United Front,&quot; propagating his wrong ideas At a meeting held by the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee in Yan'an from February 27 to March 1, 1938, Wang Ming presented the report &quot;The Present Situation of the AntiJapanese War and How to Carry On the War and Win It.&quot; Although he admitted that in his &quot;Manifesto of the Communist Party of China on the Present Situation&quot; he had made too many concessions to the Kuomintang, he compounded his mistakes by setting forth the strategic principle that mobile warfare, supported by positional warfare, was primary and guerrilla warfare supplementary. He also agreed with the Kuomintang proposal that there should be only one army under unified command. He demanded that the people's armed forces led by the Communist Party come under the command of the Kuomintang and insisted that they and the KMT armies have uniform organization, arms, discipline and material treatment as well as unified operational plans and combat operations. That the Kuomintang would ever agree to the people's armed forces having the same arms and material treatment as its own was only wishful thinking on Wang Ming's part. And if the Communist Party agreed that the two armies would carry out unified combat operations under unified command in accordance with unified operational plans, it would restrict itself in expanding the people's guerrilla warfare. After the meeting, in violation of the Party's principle of democratic centralism, and in defiance of criticisms by Mao Zedong, Zhang Wentian and others, Wang Ming wrote &quot;A Summary of the March Meeting of the Politburo&quot; and published it in the weekly magazine The Masses. Why did Wang Ming oppose the principle of independence and initiative within the united front? Why did he shift from his &quot;Left&quot; deviation during the Agrarian Revolutionary War to Right deviation at the beginning of the War of Resistance? Because he never understood the Party's policy regarding the united front. When the Kuomintang suppressed the Communist Party militarily, the &quot;Left&quot; forces, with Wang Ming at their head, emphasized struggle to the neglect of unity, negating the need for the Party to unite with all kinds of middle-of-the-roaders. When the Kuomintang took a turn in favour of joint resistance to Japan, Wang Ming put good relations with the Kuomintang above everything else and thought that, for the sake of the war effort, the Party 239 C A n„ alternative but to listen to the KMT in all matters. tad in* the unhed front would collapse if the KMT were offendFf stressed the importance of unity to the neglect of struggle These ideas made him shift from &quot;Left&quot; to Right mistakes, which were duplications of those the Party had made in the later stage °f A nodie r' reason' for Wang Ming's Right-deviationist mistakes „ h . he worshipped the instructions of the Comintern and Mindly followed the foreign policy of the Soviet Union There was nothing wrong in the Soviet Union's decision at the time to maintain foreign relations only with the Kuomintang governmen in China. But some leaders of the Comintern and of the Soviet Union overestimated Chiang Kai-shek's enthusiasm for resisting Janan while underestimating his determination to eliminate the CommlX. and their thinking had a great influence on Wang MWang did some useful work in promoting cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and conducting pro£ aganda against the Japanese. However, he rejected the CPC Central Committee's principle of independence ^d mUiaUve within the united front, always acting withinthe LT^For by the Kuomintang. As a result, he impeded the Party swork_For example in the winter of 1937 and the spring of 1938, he made it Impossible for the Party to conduct more extensive guerrilla warfare and to establish more anti-Japanese base areas behinc enemy lines in central China, as it should have done. The Central Committee struggled determinedly to reject ^ang Ming's Right-deviationist mistakes. It insisted that m north China the Party conduct guerrilla warfare independently behind enemy lines and that strategy was brilliantly successful. In central China, despite Wang's interference, the Yangtze Bureau Central Committee for the most part implemented the Cm111&quot;11 tec's principle of independence and initiative. It did much united frontwork, helped local Party organizations with their work and provided leadership in the campaign for national salvation, whde also expanding the armed forces. Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Z De and others reviewed the practical experience gained in guerrilla warfare and made a theoretical generalization of the strategic principles for such warfare, refuting Wang Ming's erroneous ideas. As the Party was determined to be independent within the united front, it confined the influence of those ideas to certain areas and was able to eradicate it in a comparatively short time. After the Politburo meeting of March 1938, the Central Committee sent Ren Bishi as its representative to the Soviet Union to explain to the Communist International the actual situation in China's anti-Japanese national united front. The leaders of the International, who now had a better understanding of China, said they agreed with the political line of the CPC Central Committee headed by Mao Zedong. This helped the Party to correct Wang Ming's mistakes before too long. At the Enlarged 6th Plenary Session of the 6th CPC Central Committee, held in Yan'an from September 29 to November 6, 1938, Mao Zedong made a political report and summarized the work of the session. Many other comrades delivered speeches about their experience in the anti-Japanese war over the previous 15 months. The session basically put an end to Wang Ming's mistakes and reiterated that the CPC must independently lead the people in the fight against the Japanese invaders. Thus, it further unified the thinking and action of the whole Party. This was a vital meeting in the history of the Party, as it upheld the principle of integrating Marxism-Leninism with the realities of the Chinese revolution and reaffirmed the leadership of Mao Zedong. If these problems had not been solved at the beginning of the war, it would have been impossible for the CPC to lead the people to victory.<br /> <br /> === Upholding the Principle of Resistance, Unity and Progress ===<br /> After the Japanese troops seized Guangzhou and Wuhan in October 1938, the War of Resistance passed from the stage of strategic defensive to the stage of strategic stalemate. This was possible because changes had taken place in the relative strength of China and Japan. 241 After 16 months of fighting, the Japanese troops had occupied major industrial cities and other economically developed ChJ&quot; In terms of campaigns, Japan was the winner but it was not af strategically. The full-scale invasion had tailed to destroy China s Stance forces, let alone the people's determination to resist. During the Wuhan campaign, the deputy chief of the Japanese General staff said that even if Wuhan and Guangzhou were t seized China would not give up and the Japanese forces would be dragged deener into the interior, which would be greatly to Japans disadvantage.18 As the invaders occupied more and more territory, a their front line extended and as they were increasingly worn down by protracted warfare, Japan's fundamental weaknesses, such as its shortage of financial and material resources and of troops had come to light As its difficulties increased daily, Japan was unable &quot;wage any more large-scale strategic offensives. The guerrilla warfare led by the CPC had expanded m the occupied areas, leaving the Japanese troops in control of only major transport lines and key cities. Their so-called security zones were actually restricted to on y a few kilometres on either side of major transport lines. TheEighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army were in control of the vast rural areas and carried out constant attacks on the enemy, giving rise to a &quot;jigsaw&quot; pattern, in which the Chinese and Japanese troops encirclcd^each other. The Japanese aggressors had not anticipated such a pattern. As for the Chinese, in the stage of strategic defensive, the Kuomintang troops had retreated time after time from frontline battlefields. And although the people s anti-Japanese forces had expanded, they were far from being able to carry out a strategic counter-offensive ; before they were ready to do that they would still have a long, hard struggle to go through. For these reasons, the war had entered upon a stage of strategic stalemate. Major Changes in Class Relations During the Stage of Stalemate When the stalemate began, major changes took place in Japan's policy for the conduct of the war. From the time they seized Wuhan in October 1938 to the beginning of 1944, the Japanese ceased their strategic offensives on the front lines and began to use more and more of their main forces to fight the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army in their rear areas. So far as the Kuomintang government was concerned, the Japanese invaders reversed their policy of making military offensives primary and political inducement to capitulate secondary. In the occupied areas the Japanese stepped up their efforts to prop up puppet governments and to establish traitors' organizations. At the time, the economic crises of the capitalist countries were further aggravating world contradictions. War clouds hung over the European continent. The fascists in Germany, Italy and Japan exploited and collaborated with each other. To deal with the war started by Germany and Italy in Europe, Britain and the United States tried to appease Japan by sacrificing China to some extent, in the hope that the Japanese would not side with Hitler against them. Accordingly, Britain and the United States also tried to persuade the Kuomintang government to capitulate. Under these circumstances, the capitulationist, divisive and retrogressive activities within the Kuomintang ruling clique became more serious every day. In December 1938 the pro-Japanese Kuomintang group, headed by Wang Jingwei, vice-president of the KMT, chairman of the Central Political Council, vice-chairman of the Supreme National Defence Conference and chairman of the People's Political Council of the Kuomintang, openly capitulated to the Japanese. In 1 940, as directed by the Japanese military, Wang Jingwei and other leading puppets from both southern and northern China were to hold negotiations with each other and establish a united puppet central government—the &quot;National Government of the Republic of China.&quot; The pro-British and pro-American Kuomintang group headed by Chiang Kai-shek continued to resist, but without conviction, pursuing the policy of passively resisting Japan and actively opposing the Communist Party. At the 5th Plenary Session of the 5th Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang, held in January 1939, the political situation in China took a turn for the worse. The Kuomintang gradually shifted its focus from external affairs to internal affairs and adopted the reactionary principle of &quot;corroding,&quot; &quot;guarding against,&quot; &quot;restricting&quot; and 243 - the Communist Party. After the meeting, a committee &quot;combating t specific methods of carrying out this eSllfctrtam&quot;rrasfricSnbetween the KMT and the CPC principle. In certain serjes of serious incidents took became increasingly^ shenJ[ian&gt; Pjngjian and Queshan. In place, sue Japanese troops and civilians and cadres work thCSe of the Communist Party wem suddenly killed or attacked by Kuomintang troops and secret to maintain the coop d the anti-Japanese national every effort to conso Centra) Committee issued a &quot;Manifesto oifthe^ Present Situation, Marking the Second Annivmsary of the War of Resistance,&quot; in whrch it put forward the oppose retrogression. lhese g the partv to recogmoved to Chongqing. In vi ^ Central Committee the 6th Plenary Session of the Wuhan and decided to abolish its Yangtz , iq-iq the South establish a South Bureau instead On January 13 1939 the Sou h Bureau was officially set up m Chongqmg. Ud by Zhou&amp;da the bureau did hard but very effective areas. It scored outstanding underground and open), united front work (among pc P ^ ™&quot; ‘n''».'' Buicau publicized the proposals of the Communist Party, mobilized workers and peasants, united people of all classes and supported the resistance against Japan behind enemy lines. Using flexible tactics, it also waged a resolute struggle against the capitulationists and die-hards who were against resistance, unity and progress so as to ensure that the whole nation fought the Japanese. The bouth Bureau paid particular attention to work among the middle-of-the-roaders. While in the Kuomintang areas, Zhou Lnlai and others contacted representatives of democratic parties prominent persons without party affiliation, democrats in the Kuomintang, members of regional power groups and outstanding intellectuals. They discussed state affairs with these people and gradually gained their understanding and trust, thus expanding the anti-Japanese national united front. Expanding Guerrilla Warfare Behind Enemy Lines and Building the Anti-Japanese Base Areas When the Japanese invaders began using their main armies to attack the resistance forces in the occupied areas, the CPC began to shoulder the chief responsibility for fighting the aggressors. The Japanese concentrated their &quot;mopping-up operations&quot; on the base areas in north China. In spring 1939, they formulated a plan for public security and the elimination of Communists&quot; and launched a &quot;total war&quot; including the military, economic and cultural domains and involving the help of secret agents. The commander-in-chief of the invading Japanese forces proposed what he called a &quot;butcher's knife tactic,&quot; meaning that although e army led by the CPC was small, it must be attacked with great force In the two years of 1939 and 1940, the Japanese launched 109 large-scale &quot;mopping-up operations&quot; in north China alone using a total of more than 500,000 troops, each operation involving more than 1,000. Following the instructions of the CPC Central Committee, the Eighth Route Army persevered in guerrilla warfare in north China, relying on the population and making use of the advantageous terrain in the mountainous areas. The army and people also 245 . intiy sabotaged railways and highways and developed guerrilla warfare in the vast plains, taking advantage of irrigation ditches for concealment. Again in coordination with the local people, army units travelled to different areas to spy on the regular movements of the Japanese troops and accumulate a superior force to ambush them. Immediately after a successful ambush, the army would leave the scene and begin to search for other opportunities to wipe out enemy troops and enlist more men. Early in November 1939, with the support of the 120th Division of the Eighth Route Army, the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei army unit ambushed and wiped out more than 900 Japanese and puppet troops, including Lieutenant General Norihide Abe, commandei of the Japanese Second Independent Mixed Brigade. In the process of fighting, the Shanxi New Army expanded to 50,000 men. Meanwhile, in order to develop guerrilla warfare in central China, in February 1939 the CPC Central Committee sent Zhou Enlai to southern Anhui Province to consult with the leaders of the New Fourth Army. They agreed that the strategic tasks for the army were to consolidate the south, light battles in the east and expand to the north. After this the New Fourth Army and the guerrilla warfare in central China expanded considerably. In May 1940 the Central Committee sent 12,000 men of the Eighth Route Army south to join the New Fourth Army in developing the anti-Japanese base areas in central China. In November 1940, in order to unify the leadership of the two armies in central China, the Central China General Headquarters was established with Ye Ting as commander-in-chief, Liu Shaoqi as political commissar and Chen Yi as deputy commander-in-chief. (Chen Yi was acting commander-in-chief until Ye ling came north of the Yangtze to take up his post.) As for south China, after the fall of Guangzhou in 1938, the Guangdong Party organizations led the people in carrying out guerrilla warfare and establishing the Dongjiang Anti-Japanese Base Area. The Red Army Guerrilla Corps that had been operating on Hainan Island for a long time conducted guerrilla warfare and later expanded to become the Qiongya Column. For more than twro years, from the winter of 1938 to 1940, the war effort led by the CPC behind enemy lines pinned down a great number of invading Japanese troops. In the vast rear areas of the enemy, guerrilla forces carried out countless small-scale surprise attacks, gradually wiping out Japanese effectives and at the same time increasing their own numbers and combat effectiveness. By the end of 1940, the armed forces under the leadership of the CPC had expanded from 50,000 men to 500,000, not counting a large number of local armed units and militiamen. In north, central and south China, 16 new anti-Japanese base areas had been established, in Shanxi-Chahar-Hcbei, Shanxi-HebeiHenan, Shanxi-Suiyuan, Hcbei-Shandong-Henan, Henan-Hubei Shandong, Northeastern Anhui, Eastern Anhui, Central Anhui,' Southern Anhui, Southern Jiangsu, Central Jiangsu, Northern Jiangsu, Henan-Anhui-Jiangsu, Dongjiang and Qiongya. Together with the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, the base areas under the leadership of the CPC had a population of 100 million and played an increasingly important role in the national war of resistance. To sustain the war for a long time, the base areas in occupied territory had to be not only expanded but consolidated. To this end, the CPC attached great importance to promoting all undertakings there. The first of these was to establish organs of political power. The Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region set the example in this respect. At the First Assembly of Representatives of the Border Region, held in Yan'an from the middle of January to the beginning of February 1939, the &quot;Administrative Programme of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region During the War of Resistance Against Japan&quot; was adopted, and a government council for the region was elected, with Lin Boqu as chairman. The programme was of great importance, because it contained the basic policies that would be implemented by the CPC in all anti- Japanese base areas. Later, the CPC Central Committee issued a series of directives on the establishment of organs of political power in base areas. These were as follows: 1. The organ of democratic political power of an anti-Japanese chapter HOUR the WAR OF RESISTANCE AGAINST JAPAN 247 base area would be a united front led by the CPC. In other words, it would be the joint democratic dictatorship of several revolutionary classes over the traitors and reactionaries. 2. In employing government staff, a &quot;three thirds system&quot; was to be implemented, with Communists, non-Party Left progressives and middle-of-the-roaders each taking a third of the posts. This system included people from all backgrounds and helped to unite anti-Japanese elements of all classes. 3. The leading position of the Communist Party in the government was to be maintained through the Party's correct policies, the exemplary conduct of its members and the support of the people. 4. The government should constantly improve democratic systems in all spheres of work. Communists must cooperate with non-Party members in a democratic manner, listening to their opinions and discussing matters with them whenever possible. They should not act arbitrarily or monopolize all power. 5. The policy measures of the government would be to oppose the Japanese imperialists, protect the people who were resisting Japan, properly adjust the interests of all the anti-Japanese classes and improve the life of the workers and peasants. In August 1940, in accordance with the directives of the CPC Central Committee, the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region promulgated its own Administrative Programme. In the autumn of the same year, a general election was held throughout the region. One after another, the other anti- Japanese base areas established organs of political power based on the &quot;three thirds system.&quot; The governments at the grassroots level were formed through direct, democratic elections and enjoyed the support of the local people. The main task of the Party in the War of Resistance behind enemy lines was to mobilize and organize the peasants to resist the Japanese. In essence, it was the peasants, led by the CPC, who were the main force in the resistance. By the time the war broke out, the CPC had abandoned its agrarian policy of confiscating the land of landlords. To mobilize the peasants and improve their material life, the Central Committee decided to introduce the policy of reducing land rents and interest and protecting tenants' rights. The implementation of this policy could not solve the land problem once for all, but politically, it shook the feudal regime, and economically, it weakened feudal exploitation. Thus, during the national war, this policy gave consideration to the interests of both peasants and landlords, integrating the need to maintain the united front with the need to deal with the peasant question. From the winter of 1939 on, all base areas began to reduce rents and interest. The original rents were cut by 25 percent, and the general annual interest rate was fixed at ten percent (with a maximum rate of 15 percent). Other miscellaneous rents, corvee and all forms of usury were brought to an end. Thanks to this policy, the peasants not only benefited economically but also enhanced their political status and became more enthusiastic about farming than ever before. On Lhc basis of the progress in agricultural production, industrial production and all other economic undertakings developed in the base areas. The base areas also actively promoted culture and education. The Central Committee proposed that as many intellectuals as possible be encouraged to take part in the War of Resistance. The governments of base areas organized intellectuals to develop education. In spite of the difficulties presented by the lack of necessary materials, the poverty of the people and constant harassment by the enemy, the governments made full use of their poor facilities to establish primary and secondary schools and to promote education in the society at large, so as to raise the educational level of the masses. At the same time, a number of cadres' schools were set up in Yan'an and in all base areas, the graduates of which became the backbone of the people's armed forces and major contributors to the development of these areas. The Central Committee also attached great importance to developing science and technology in the base areas. In February 1940 the Research Association of Natural Sciences was formed in Yan'an. In August of the same year, the Academy of Natural Sciences was launched, the first of its kind in the history of the CPC, to train scientific and technological personnel. The progress in all undertakings in the base areas greatly 249 ct lengthened the ties between the CPC and the local people and S reased their confidence in the Party and the people s armed forces. This was vital, if the resistance forces were to continue operating behind enemy lines, where the environment was extremely challenging, and to win final victory. Through its work in the base areas, the Party accumulated much experience m establishing organs of political power and promoting economic development, culture and education. Later, this experience would prove highly valuable in the building of New China. In northeast China, the Japanese aggressors repeatedly launched merciless attacks on the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, the army conducted guerrilla warfare and, in May 1939, was reorganized into the First, Second and Third Route Armies. In 1940 Japan sent more troops to northeast China, making it even more difficult for the United Army to operate than before. On February 23, 1940, Yang Jingyu, commander-in-chief of the First Route Army laid down his life heroically in a battle 1 ought m Mengjiang County, Jilin Province. Towards the end of the same year, the United Army moved to the Sino-Soviet border to reorganize and train and continue to fight the Japanese and puppet troops. During 1939 and 1940 the Japanese troops launched some small-scale offensives against the Kuomintang troops. These included the Nanchang, Suixian-Zaoyang, First Changsha, Southern Guangxi, and Zaoyang-Yichang campaigns. However, the KMT forces put up strong resistance and the Japanese tailed to make great advances. During this period, when the Japanese invaders launched frontal attacks, fierce battles were fought. Many Kuomintang officers and men fought valiantly, but these campaigns pinned down only a small part of the Japanese troops and came to an end when the Japanese stopped their offensives. The 100-Regiment Campaign In north China, behind enemy lines, as the people's armed forces and the anti-Japanese base areas were rapidly expanding, from August 20 to the beginning of December 1940 the General Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army launched large-scale offensives against the Japanese troops. As more than 100 regiments of the Eighth Route Army with a total of more than 200,000 men took part in these operations, they were called the 100-Regiment Campaign. Why did the General Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army launch these offensives? Mainly because there had appeared &quot;the gravest danger of capitulation and unprecedented difficulties in the War of Resistance.&quot;20 In September 1939 Hitler had sent his troops to attack Poland, and Britain and France had declared war on Germany. The arrogance of the German fascists greatly encouraged the Japanese aggressors. They stepped up their efforts to force or induce the Chiang Kai-shek clique of the Kuomintang to capitulate. In May and June 1940 they occupied Yichang in the Xiangyang- Yichang Campaign in Hubei Province, thus seizing the entrance to Sichuan Province from Hubei. Then they imposed blockades on the transportation line from Yunnan Province to neighbouring Vietnam. And on two occasions—in March 1940 in Hong Kong and again in June in Macao—representatives of the Japanese army and representatives of the Chongqing government held secret negotiations on the conditions for a truce. At the same time, in the occupied areas the invading troops stepped up the implementation of their &quot;prisoners' cages&quot; policy, using railways, highways and blockhouses, supplemented by blockade walls and trenches, to divide the anti-Japanese base areas into small pieces and encircle them. Then they carried out &quot;mopping-up operations&quot; against these areas and &quot;nibbled at&quot; them. Under these circumstances, the general headquarters of the Eighth Route Army concluded that to combat capitulationism, inspire the army and people fighting the Japanese and temper its own forces, it was essential to organize large-scale sabotage operations against the enemy.21 In the first stage of the 100-Regiment Campaign (from August 20 to September 10, 1940) transportation lines were sabotaged. At the same time, army units, guerrillas and the militia launched offensives against the Japanese and puppet troops. They damaged the Zhengding-Taiyuan, Datong-Puzhou, Beiping-Hankou, chiiiazhuang-Dezhou, Beiping-Suiyuan, Beiping-Shenyang Thmiin-Pukou and Baigui-Jincheng railways, annihilated a large lumber of enemy troops and even seized for a while the strategic Niangzi Pass, a fortified pass held by the Japanese on the border between Shanxi and Hebei. Caught off guard and assar ed from many sides at once, the Japanese and puppet troops had to acccp MUle without preparation and suffered heavy losses. On Septem ber 20 in Yan'an the people held a rally to celebrate the victory of the 100-Regiment Campaign. They also sent a telegram to e Eighth Route Army, encouraging it to &quot;advance unremittingly from victory to victory.&quot; In the second stage (from September 22 to early October), the Eighth Route Army continued to launch surprise attacks on both sides of railways, destroyed Japanese fortified points in the base areas and attacked the county seats of Yushe, Liaoxian, Laiyuan and Lingqiu. However, because the Japanese troops now remained on the alert and the Eighth Route Army was worn out from continuous fighting, the army suffered heav&gt; casu® ^S' 0 seized only one county seat, Yushe, and was unable to clear all the enemy fortified points in the base areas, as it ^.^JiToOO do. From early October, the Japanese dispatched all the 20,000 troops that it could concentrate in north China, in addition to a large number of puppet troops, to carry out des. perate retaliato: ry &quot;mopping-up operations.&quot; The army and people in the base areas fought valiantly against them. During the 100-Regiment Campaign the officers and men of the Eighth Route Army fought the enemy courageously. By the beginning of December, they had fought 1,824 battles, large an small, killed or wounded more than 25,000 Japanese and puppet troops and captured more than 280 Japanese troops and 8,000 puppet troops, as well as guns, artillery and other matdriel The Eighth Route Army itself suffered 17,00p casualties^ The : cam paign dealt a heavy blow to the &quot;prisoners cages policy that was designed to carve up the armed units and people in the antiJapanese base areas into isolated groups. The campaign also pinned down many Japanese troops and deflated their aggressi arrogance. It not only tempered the people's armed forces and enhanced the prestige of the Communist Party and the Eighth Route Army, but also inspired the nation at a time when the War of Resistance was at low ebb. The fact that the Communist Party had persevered for so long in resisting Japan behind enemy lines and had launched the 100- Regiment Campaign was a convincing refutation of the view, held by some, that in the War of Resistance the Party's guerrilla warfare consisted of just moving around without fighting. In spite of the extremely difficult conditions, the army of the Communist Party not only survived but kept a large number of Japanese and puppet troops pinned down in occupied territory. The army and the people fought countless small engagements and also, when conditions were ripe, large-scale battles such as in the 100-Regiment Campaign. During that campaign, on September 11, 1940, Chiang Kai-shek sent Zhu De and Peng Dehuai a telegram reading, &quot;Your army has unhesitatingly seized this good opportunity to launch offensives and has dealt a heavy blow to the enemy. I therefore send this telegram as a citation.&quot; This shows that the Kuomintang authorities officially recognized the achievements of the CPC's Eighth Route Army in the War of Resistance.<br /> <br /> === Repulsing the Anti-Communist Onslaughts Launched by the KMT ===<br /> Throughout the period of the War of Resistance Against Japan there were contradictions that had an important bearing on China's destiny: first, the national contradiction between China and Japan, which determined whether the Chinese nation would survive; second, the class contradiction between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang, which determined whether the people would be able to carry the War of Resistance through to the end and afterwards build a new China. These two contradictions were closely interrelated. 253 Unlike Wang Jingwei, Chiang Kai-shek, the chief leader of the Kuomintang, never forgot to make a pretense of resisting Japan, but when the war was at a stalemate, he adopted a passive attitude toward the War of Resistance and even went so far as to try secretly to reach a compromise with the invaders. He carried out an anti-democratic policy that damaged the efforts for unity and resistance. Furthermore, in the KMT-controlled areas he began to actively oppose the Communist Party, strengthening fascist rule and the activities of secret agents, destroying Communist Party groups and other progressive organizations and jailing Party members and other patriots. He instigated frequent provocations of the Communist Party, attacking the people's army, arresting and killing cadres who supported the resistance, engineering incidents of &quot;friction&quot; between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and even launching armed attacks on the Communist-led anti-Japanese base areas.22 All these acts made the class contradiction between the CPC and the KMT more acute. How, then, was the contradiction to be handled? This was an important and complicated question. The CPC Central Committee held that during the war with Japan, the national contradiction between China and Japan was primary and the domestic class struggle should be subordinated to it. The class struggle should not be denied, but it should serve the national struggle. Accordingly, while rallying the people around itself in the war effort, the CPC sought to maintain its cooperation with the Kuomintang and to carry on the war to the end by following a policy of both alliance with and struggle against the Chiang Kai-shek clique. Alliance with Chiang Kai-shek meant that the Party would do everything possible to persist in the War of Resistance and to secure unity and progress, and that it would support the patriotic forces both inside and outside the Kuomintang so as to keep it in the anti-Japanese united front. The troops commanded by the Communist Party behind enemy lines tied up a great number of Japanese soldiers, which reduced the pressure on the KMT forces in the front-line battlefields. This was an important factor in persuading the KMT to continue its efforts in the War of Resistance. Struggle against Chiang Kai-shek meant that the Party would resist any attempts by the KMT diehards to capitulate, cause splits or retrogress and that it would make no unprincipled concessions. When the Kuomintang launched its campaign against the Communist Party, the latter, upholding the principle of the anti-Japanese national united front, united firmly with the democratic parties and with patriotic and progressive people of all strata and waged the necessary and appropriate struggle against it. The purpose of this class struggle was not to overthrow the KMT government, but to prevent it from capitulating to the Japanese invaders and fighting the Communists and to keep it in the united front. The policy of uniting with the Chiang Kai-shek clique and at the same time struggling against it was based on the lessons the Party had learned from following a policy of alliance without struggle during the period of the Great Revolution and a policy of struggle without alliance during the period of the ten-year civil war. The formulation of the new policy represented a major development of the Party's thinking on the question of the united front. Bearing this policy in mind, the Party was able to approach problems coolly and in an all-round way and to control the development of the overall situation. Repulsing the First Anti-Communist Onslaught In the winter of 1939 and the spring of 1940 the Kuomintang diehards launched their first onslaught on the Communists. At the 6th Plenary Session of its 5th Central Executive Committee, held in November 1939, the KMT established the policy of making the military restriction of the Communist Party its principal objective and the political restriction of the Party subsidiary. In December Kuomintang troops attacked the ShaanxiGansu-Ningxia Border Region, took five county seats there and planned to attack Yan'an. The army led by the CPC resolutely counter-attacked. In Shanxi, Yan Xishan used all his troops to attack the New Army (the Anti-Japanese Daredevil Corps) and the Eighth Route Army. In the Zhongtiao Mountains in Shanxi, several corps under the command of Chiang Kai-shek likewise 255 , forked the Communist-led armies. The New Army, supported hv the Eighth Route Army, repelled these attacks. By January 1Q40 northwestern Shanxi had become an anti-Japanese base area •der the leadership of the Communist Party. In February and March the Kuomintang troops attacked the anti-Japanese base areas in southern Hebei and the Taihang Mountains in southeastern Shanxi where the General Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army was located. The Eighth Route Army, subjected to a pincer movement by the Japanese invaders and the Kuomintang troops, nevertheless repulsed the latter's attacks. Soon after this demonstration of its strength, the CPC Central Committee sent Zhu De to negotiate with Wei Lihuang in Luoyang, Henan Province and Xiao lingguang and Wang Ruofei to negotiate with Yan Xishan at Qiulin Town in Yichuan County, Shaanxi Province. They reached agreement on stopping the armed conflict between their forces, dividing up the areas where their respective troops were to be stationed and where they were to resist the Japanese. While repelling the Kuomintang's first military onslaught, the Communist Party also frustrated its political and ideological attacks. The Kuomintang set all its propaganda machines in motion, promoting the view that Communism did not suit C hina s reality and that there was no need for a Communist party in China Ye Qing, a reactionary scholar, said: &quot;The Three People's Principles can satisfy all China's present and future needs. If these principles are implemented, there is no need for China to practise socialism or to organize a political party to strive for socialism.&quot; The people were worried by the KM Vs attacks on the Communist Party, and many of them raised the question of what direction China should take. The representatives of the national bourgeoisie were dissatisfied with the autocratic rule of the Kuomintang and its passivity in the War of Resistance, but they were skeptical about the Communist Party's proposals. Some of them were under the illusion that after Japan was defeated, a capitalist society of the European and American type would be established in China. At this crucial moment, the Communist Party had to make clear to the Chinese people its views on the revolution and to answer the question, what direction should China take? In October and December of 1939 Mao Zedong published two articles entitled respectively &quot;Introducing The Communist &quot; and &quot;The Chinese Revolution and the Communist Party of China.&quot; In January 1940 he published another called &quot;On New Democracy,&quot; in which he explicitly expounded the views of the Communist Party. He answered three fundamental questions: 1. What kind of state should be built in China? 2. What kind of political, economic and cultural systems should this state have? 3. What were the prospects for this state? In essence, he replied as follows: 1. The basic contradictions in the semi-colonial and semifeudal society of China were the contradiction between imperialism and the Chinese nation and the contradiction between feudalism and the great masses of the people. The first of these was the principal one. Because of the society's semi-colonial and semi-feudal nature, the Chinese revolution must go through two stages: first, a democratic revolution, and second, a socialist revolution. 2. After the May 4th Movement of 1919, the Chinese democratic revolution was no longer a general one but a newdemocratic revolution. It .was an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolution of the masses, and it was led by the proletariat, this being the essential difference between it and the old democratic revolution. During the period of this revolution, which was based on the worker-peasant alliance, the proletariat united the national bourgeoisie and, under special circumstances, a part of the big bourgeoisie to form a broad united front, so as to isolate and strike the main enemy. 3. The political programme of the new-democratic revolution was to end the oppression by imperialism and feudalism and to establish a democratic republic under the joint dictatorship of all revolutionary classes, led by the proletariat and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. Its economic programme was first, to confiscate the big banks and the big industrial and commercial enterprises that dominated the livelihood of the people and convert them into state-owned enterprises, and second, to confiscate the land of the landlords and distribute it to the 257 . „„rnnra2ini! them to establish a cooperative economy, peasants, imefethe new-democratic republic would allow the A‘ Tnment of a' national-capitalist economy and the existence de h neas an t economy. Its cultural programme was to sweep away 'the feudal, comprador culture and develop a national, The &quot;demS'ratk ' revolution would ultimately lead to socialism The new-democratic revolution and the socialist « m, on were two different revolutionary stages, and the latte M he carried out only after the former was completed. I C°&quot; fd be impossible to accomplish the tasks of the two stages at ne s«ok ^ ‘he second must follow immediately upon the first, whhout allowing any intervening stage of bourgeois dictatOT5hThe new-democratic revolution was guided by the commui-swna s m and w i hout the guidance of the communist ideology the s-rrssss— tion was a major event in the nistory ■ _ Tt pnahled the whole membership to get a clear anu revolution, the taste it^ntai chinese people as they KSiS—&quot;on and played a grea' ' y nation of MarxismLemnism with the practice of the ChmeserevolutiomBefore^ bourgeoisie.23 The Comintern declared that the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution would not necessarily lead China onto the capitalist road, but that idea was not clearly explained. With the theory of the new-democratic revolution, many of the problems that had arisen during that stage were solved satisfactorily. It should be remembered, however, that the Party was able to set forth this theory only after it had been through nearly twenty years of arduous struggle and, especially, only after it had reviewed what it had learned, both from its successes and from its failures in the Great Revolution, in the ten-year civil war and in the anti-Japanese war. Having repulsed the first anti-Communist onslaught, the CPC Central Committee made a serious analysis of the domestic situation. It stated that at a time when the Japanese were invading China, the principal contradiction was the one between China and Japan, and the domestic class contradiction was subordinate. There was still a possibility, it said, of preventing the situation from deteriorating and of changing it for the better, and the Party's present task was to consolidate and expand the antiJapanese national united front. After reviewing its experience in united front work, the Central Committee formulated several important tactical principles for such work. These principles were as follows: 1. In the period of the united front, the Party should develop the progressive forces, win over the middle-of-the-roaders and, as far as possible, try to isolate the diehards. These three things were related, but the main emphasis should be on developing the progressive forces. The middle-of-the-roaders tended to vacillate and were bound to break up as a group. They might often be a decisive factor in the struggle between the progressive forces and the diehards, so it was very important for the Party to win them over. 2. In the struggle against the Kuomintang diehards the Party should adhere to the principle of self-defence. That is, it should not attack unless it was attacked. In that case, it should counterattack, but only on just grounds, when the situation was to its advantage and with restraint. By fighting only on just grounds, 259 lhe party would win the sympathy and support of the people of he whole country. By fighting only when the sttuauon was to its advantage and only with restraint, it would ensure victory and be careful to stop at the appropriate time. By observing this pnncipte . party would be able to develop the progressive forces, win over the middle-of-the-roaders, isolate the diehards and carry the War of Resistance to the end. 1 In the period of the anti-Japanese united Iront, struggle was the means to unity and unity was the aim of struggle. As Mao Zedong put it, &quot;If unity |was] sought through struggle it [would] live' if unity [was] sought through yielding, it [would] perish. 4 While trying to improve the situation, the whole Party and the whole army should be on the alert for any eventualities on a local or national scale and prepared to deal with them, lhe mistake of 1927 must not be repeated. These important tactical principles guided not only the united front work at that time but also the long revolutionary struggle that came afterwards, enabling the Party to tackle all kinds of thorny problems more skillfully and to achieve ever more successes. Repulsing the Second Anti-Communist Onslaught Despite the failure of its first onslaught on the Communists, the Kuomintang did not give up. In September 1940 Germany, Italy and Japan signed a pact of alliance. Britain and the United States tried hard to win over the Kuomintang government. Thin ing this was a favourable moment, Chiang Kai-shek intensified his anti-Communist activities, shifting the focus of his armed attacks from north China to central China. In mid-September 1940, Han Deqin, the Kuomintang governor of Jiangsu Province and deputy commander-in-chief of the Shandong- Jiangsu war zone, ordered his main force to attack Huangqiao in northern Jiangsu, an important base of the New Fourth Army, m an attempt to wipe out the units stationed there. From October 4 to 6 the northern Jiangsu command of the New Fourth Army fough back in self-defence and annihilated 11,000 of Han Deqin s troops. After the Huangqiao campaign, Chiang Kai-shek launched the second anti-Communist onslaught. In a telegram to Zhou Enlai who was then in Chongqing, Mao Zedong warned that the CPC should prepare for the most difficult and dangerous situation, making all arrangements accordingly. On January 4, 1941, in accordance with orders from the Military Council of the National Government and with the consent of the Central Committee of the CPC, the headquarters staff of the New Fourth Army and more than 9,000 New Fourth Army troops in southern Anhui began to move north of the Yangtze River. As they were approaching the area of Maolin in Jingxian County on the 6th, they were ambushed by seven divisions totalling more than 80,000 Kuomintang troops. Surrounded and greatly outnumbered, the New Fourth Army troops nevertheless put up heroic resistance. After a bloody battle that lasted seven days, their supplies of food and ammunition were exhausted. Only some 2,000 of them broke through the enemy lines, while the rest laid down their lives or were captured. Ye Ting, commander of the New Fourth Army, was detained when he went to the headquarters of the Kuomintang troops to negotiate. Xiang Ying, deputy commander of the Army, was murdered after breaking through the siege. Strictly speaking, this engagement was not a war but a trap laid by Chiang Kai-shek, who was taking advantage of his post of supreme commander to get rid of dissidents. On January 17 he even spread the rumour that the New Fourth Army had staged a mutiny. He cancelled its official designation and declared that Ye Ting would be handed over to a military court for trial. This was the Southern Anhui Incident, which shocked China and the rest of the world and was the culmination of the second antiCommunist onslaught launched by the Kuomintang. Before these events, Xiang Ying, the secretary of the Southeast Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and one of the leaders of the New Fourth Army, had made contributions to the revolution by carrying on guerrilla warfare for three years in southern China and organizing the New Fourth Army. But he did not correctly understand the principle of maintaining independence and initia261 tive in the united front and the Central Committee's policy of expanding the armed forces to the north and in occupied terntorv He was reluctant to carry out the Central Committee's directive to move north, and when he finally did so he was not sufficiently aware of the danger of attacks by the Kuomintang diehards. He was therefore not adequately prepared for an emergency. Also, before the enemy's attack he made some tactical mistakes. As a result, he was unable to avoid or reduce the grave losses suffered by the New Fourth Army in the Southern Anhui Incident. . ...... After this incident, some people both inside and outside the Party thought that the situation would be a repetition of the one in April 1927, that cooperation between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang would soon break down and that the civil war would expand. Indeed, the Southern Anhui Incident staged by Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang was quite similar to the coup of April 12, 1927. But the situation in 1941 was dillerent from the one in 1927. In 1941, facing the Japanese invasion, the people throughout the country opposed the civil war and demanded unity and resistance to Japan. Also, the balance of strength between the CPC and the Kuomintang was different from what it had been in 1927. More important, the Communist Party already had a mature leadership that frequently reviewed the experience it had gained in revolutionary practice. This leadership did not panic in the face of any eventuality; it did not make unlimited concessions to the reactionary forces, nor did it take any adventurist actions that might serve them as a pretext for sabotaging unity and the resistance. Confronting the grave situation after the Southern Anhui Incident, the CPC Central Committee still put the interests of the resistance above everything else and upheld the policy of both unity and struggle and of seeking unity through struggle. So far as the KMT's military offensives were concerned, the CPC persisted in the policy of self-defence, and as for the political offensives, it resolutely crushed them. . . n On January 20, 1941, the Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee issued an order to reestablish the New Fourth Army Headquarters. A week later this was done in Yancheng County of northern Jiangsu, Chen Yi being appointed acting commander, Liu Shaoqi political commissar and Zhang Yunyi deputy commander. The army was reorganized into seven divisions and one independent brigade with a total strength of 90,000 men. These forces carried on the War of Resistance on both sides of the Yangtze. In the meantime, the Central Committee made public a host of facts exposing the Kuomintang's scheme to undermine the resistance, and it demanded that twelve steps be taken to solve the problems caused by the Southern Anhui Incident.25 In Chongqing, Zhou Enlai lodged a strong protest with the Kuomintang authorities. In a phone call to He Yingqin, chief of the KMT general staff, he denounced the KMT saying, &quot;What you have done has grieved our friends and gladdened our enemies. You have done what the Japanese invaders tried but failed to do. You will be condemned for all time as a traitor to the Chinese nation.&quot; New China Daily , defying the KMT's press censorship, carried two commemorative &quot;inscriptions&quot; by Zhou Enlai. One was: &quot;Mourn for the martyrs of the Southern Anhui Incident. The other was: &quot;It is as great a wrong as history has ever known that Ye Ting has been thrown into jail. How brutal some people are to have killed their own family members!&quot; These two inscriptions, written with grief and indignation, had wide repercussions in Chongqing and throughout the Kuomintangcontrolled areas. Liao Chengzhi, a prominent Communist, exposed the truth of the Southern Anhui Incident in a statement in Hong Kong. He made the following clear to the world: ‘The Communist Party of China has no intention of changing its policy of resistance and unity after the Southern Anhui Incident, but it will have to remain on the alert for a possible anti-Communist military attack. It does not want to see a largescale civil war, and if those who have provoked a civil war form greater plots from which the Japanese will benefit, the future of the War of Resistance in China will be jeopardized. We hope the international community will join in averting this danger.&quot;26 The Communist Party's determination to give priority to the 263 w_r of Resistance won widespread sympathy among the Chinese Zlolc including the middle-of-the-roaders and patriotic mem£!rs of the Kuomintang, and also among people abroad. Many Iconic knew that it was the army led by the Communist Party of rhina that was carrying on the resistance behind enemy lines. On the other hand, the Kuomintang diehards, confronted with a formidable enemy, the Japanese imperialists, nevertheless continued to attack the Communists, thereby losing all popular support. Soong Ching Ling, He Xiangning, Liu Yazi, Peng Zemin and others launched a protest campaign in Hong Kong writing letters to Chiang Kai-shek and to the Central Executive Committee and Supervisory Committee of the KMT. They denounced the Kuomintang authorities for their encirclement and suppression of the New Fourth Army and demanded that they renounce their suppression of the Communist Party and plan to cooperate with it, instead, expand all the anti-Japanese forces and protect all the anti- Japanese parties. , Huang Yanpei, a noted democrat, declared that the Kuomintang authorities were utterly wrong to have attacked the New Fourth Army in Southern Anhui. Feng Yuxiang said that everyone knew the New Fourth Army had made great contributions to the resistance and that the Kuomintang government would be condemned by the people for having annihilated that army Several hundred people in cultural circles issued a statement denouncing the Kuomintang for having turned its guns against the people. Tan Kah Kee, a patriotic leader of the Chinese community in Singapore, sent a telegram to the People s Political Council, appealing for unity and condemning Chiang Kai-sheks betrayal. The majority of the middle-of-the-roaders sympathized with the CPC. Internationally, the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain were dissatisfied with the Kuomintang and urged China to continue its resistance to Japan. In February 1941 President Roosevelt sent his representative Laughlin Currie to China While in Hong Kong, Currie told Soong Ching Ling that he would warn Chiang Kai-shek not to continue to deceive : and attack the troops of the CPC. In Chongqing he told Zhou Enlai that the United States wanted to see China united against Japan. The Kuomintang diehards had not expected that the Communist Party would be so uncompromising towards them and that the reactions to the Southern Anhui Incident would be so strong both at home and abroad. As they were in an extremely isolated and awkward position, they had no choice but to restrain their anti-Communist activities. On March 6, 1941, in a speech delivered at the second session of the People's Political Council, Chiang Kai-shek pledged that absolutely no further military actions would be undertaken against the Communists. Then Dong Biwu, a leading member of the CPC, was elected a non-voting member of the Council. Chiang Kai-shek invited Zhou Enlai for talks to solve the problems concerning relations between the two parties. Thus, the second anti-Communist onslaught mounted by the Kuomintang was repulsed. Far from achieving the object of destroying the Communist Party, Chiang's policy served only to bring about his own isolation by revealing the truth to many people who had formerly harboured illusions about him. On May 8, 1941, the CPC Central Committee issued a directive laying down the policy for Party organizations in the great rear areas: to have well-selected cadres working underground for a long period, accumulating strength and biding their time. In January 1942 in Chongqing, at a meeting of the Southern Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, Zhou Enlai stated that to build a strong and militant Party organization, Party members in the Kuomintang-controlled areas must work and study assiduously. They should make more friends and hold regular jobs so as to have a place in society as cover. Guided by these correct principles, the Party organizations working underground in the KMTcontrolled areas managed to preserve, consolidate and expand themselves and strike deep roots among the masses, despite the fact that the KMT authorities tried every means to undermine them. The ability of the Communist Party to repulse the two onslaughts of the Kuomintang and its determination to persevere in the policy of resistance, unity and progress proved that the leadership of the CPC Central Committee had become politically mature and that despite the complex circumstances, it could up correctly the relations between the national struggle and struggle. As if it had lifted a rock only to drop it on its lhe feet Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang had failed in its cam°Tenfto wipe out the troops under the leadership of the ComS, party More and more people had come to see clearly tha !^ CPC worked not for the interest of a single party or group but for that of the whole nation. Thanks to its correct policies the Party had been able to turn a bad situation around, to unite with I nf-the-roaders and to make the ruling clique of the Kuomintang^think army would exterminate everyone in north China who refused to yield and that it would establish a &quot;Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere&quot; in a sea of blood. Accordingly, the Japanese troops began massacring Chinese soldiers and civilians. In late January, for example, 1,500 Japanese troops &quot;mopped up&quot; the village of Panjiayu, Fengrun County, in eastern Hebei Province. They burned more than 1,000 houses and, in a massacre of unparalleled savagery, drove all the villagers—some 1,300, including women, children and old people—into a courtyard and mowed them down with machine-gun fire. On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched a full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union. The Soviet people immediately began a heroic defence of their country. Earlier, on April 13, 1941, the Soviet Union and Japan had signed a treaty of neutrality. The Soviet Union, which had to cope with a tense situation in Europe, wanted to avoid fighting on two fronts. Japan hoped that if it marched into the area south of China, the treaty would remove any apprehensions for the safety of its rear. In October Hideki Tojo formed a new cabinet and expanded the aggressive war. In the small hours of the morning of December 8, 1941 (Tokyo time), Japan made a surprise aerial attack on Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, the U.S. naval base in the Pacific. Thus began the Pacific War between Japan and the United States and Great Britain. The outbreak of the Soviet-German war and the Pacific War greatly enlarged the scale of World War II, which eventually involved 61 countries and regions. China's War of Resistance Against Japan became an important component of the worldwide anti-fascist war, coordinated with the efforts of other allied countries. On the second day of the war in the Pacific, the CPC Central Committee declared that the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, which were enduring great hardships, would persist in their War of Resistance in the enemy's rear in north and central China, thwart his &quot;mopping-up&quot; operations and tic up large numbers of his troops. On January 1, 1942, in Washington, D.C., twenty-six countries involved in the fight against the Axis powers, headed by the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and China, signed the Declaration of the United Nations, ^pter four the war of resistance against japan 267 . nalling the formal establishment of an international antiracist united front. This created a favourable condition for the rhinese people in their efforts to win the War of Resistance. During this period, China still had to resist the main strength nf Japan's ground forces. By the end of 1941 Japan's total forces had increased to more than 2,400,000 men (300,000 in the navy and over 2,100,000 in the army). About 400,000 troops were stationed in Japan, another 400,000 were fighting elsewhere m Asia and in the Pacific and the remaining 1,300,000, including the Kwantung Army stationed in northeast China, were all deployed in China. If Japan's main ground troops, which made up more than half of the country's total military strength, had been available for use elsewhere in Asia and the Pacific region, the whole war would inevitably have presented quite a different picture The Chinese people's effort to tie up the main forces of the Japanese army was therefore a great contribution to the worldwide anti-fascist war. The Struggle Against Mopping-Up Operations To turn China into a rear base for the war in the Pacific, the Japanese aggressors instituted a brutal colonial rule in the occupied areas and proceeded to plunder them economically, in addition, the Japanese and puppet armies were mustered to conduct repeated &quot;mopping-up&quot; operations against the antiJapanese bases in their rear areas led by the Communist Party. During 1941 and 1942, in the north China base areas, there were 132 such operations involving between 1,000 and 10,000 men each time and 27 operations involving between 10,000 and /U,000 men. Sometimes the &quot;mopping-up&quot; lasted for three or four months in a single area, with the Japanese following a policy of &quot;burn all, kill all and loot all.&quot; In some places they even used poison gas and germ warfare to create depopulated zones. In central China, too, the Japanese army launched large-sccde attacks against the army and the people in its rear. Alter the Pacific war broke out, the Japanese still had 290,000 troops m central China. They and the puppet troops set up blockade lines around anti-Japanese base areas in an attempt to consolidate the occupied areas, ensure control over the main transportation lines and plunder strategic materials. They also targeted the central and southern parts of Jiangsu Province, &quot;mopping up&quot; the countryside again and again. Under the ruthless attacks of the Japanese, the army and the people behind enemy lines suffered heavy casualties. By 1942 the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army had been reduced from 500,000 to about 400,000. Some organs of anti- Japanese democratic political power in the North China Plain had been destroyed. The base areas had shrunk, and their total population had fallen from 100 million to less than 50 million. Much of the arable land in the enemy's rear areas was damaged, so it was impossible to maintain normal production. Marauding Japanese troops also looted grain and domestic animals, causing a famine. This was done deliberately, to ruin the economy of the base areas and thus deprive the anti-Japanese forces of their means of survival. During this period, in the Zhongtiao Mountains of southern Shanxi Province, in the city of Changsha in Hunan and in Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces and other areas, the Kuomintang troops also resisted the attacks of the Japanese army. In addition, they organized a Chinese Expeditionary Army to march into Burma in support of operations conducted by the anti-fascist allies. After the Pacific war broke out, however, since the Chiang Kai-shek clique believed that it could rely on the United States and Great Britain to fight the war against Japan, it continued to increase the friction between itself and the Communist Party. The Kuomintang government suspended the pay of the Eighth Route Army and withheld ammunition, bedding, clothing and other supplies. Moreover, it gathered several hundred thousand troops to encircle the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region and enforce an economic blockade, cutting off support from the outside. Although the people in the Communist-led anti-Japanese bases and the resistance fighters behind enemy lines faced serious hardships, the Communists were not dismayed. The CPC Central Committee made it clear that these difficulties in the War of 269 Resistance were difficulties encountered as the people were advancing and that they were only temporary, because victory was drawing near. They could be overcome by the revolutionary spirit, the spirit that made one seek truth from facts and serve the people wholeheartedly, the spirit of self-reliance and hard struggle, of unity and solidarity, the spirit that later came to be called the &quot;Yan'an spirit.&quot; The Japanese army, reviewing its experience of fighting in its rear areas, concluded that it could not depend on force of arms alone to suppress the Communist Party. Vigorous and tenacious efforts had to be made to combine military measures with civilian ones. Using &quot;mopping-up&quot; as the main form of action, the Japanese troops also combed areas to find resistance fighters and &quot;nibbled&quot; at the territory controlled by the Communists, mounted campaigns to &quot;tighten public security&quot; and employed other tactics. From March 1941 to December 1942, the Japanese army, having undertaken to &quot;wipe out Communism&quot; and &quot;establish a new order in East Asia,&quot; carried out no less than five such campaigns. They divided all of north China into three classifications: &quot;secure zones&quot; (the occupied areas), &quot;quasi-secure zones&quot; (guerrilla areas where their control was contested) and &quot;nonsecure zones&quot; (the anti-Japanese base areas). Different policies were adopted for each classification. Throughout the occupied areas, Chinese traitors were formed into &quot;associations for the preservation of order,&quot; the bao-jia system was tightened and villages were merged and stockaded.- The Japanese also organized villagers into &quot;self-defence corps,&quot; &quot;garrison forces&quot; and &quot;security forces.&quot; They checked household registers, issued identification cards to &quot;disciplined citizens&quot; and practised collective punishment (if one household was found to be anti-Japanese, the members of ten neighbouring households would be killed as well). They arrested Communist Party members and anti-Japanese activists and suppressed all anti-Japanese movements. At the same time, the Japanese controlled steel, iron, zinc and other strategic materials, monopolized or swallowed up Chinese iactoiics and commercial firms, compelled the peasants to plant opium, pillaged great quantities of grain and introduced a rationing system. In addition, they organized &quot;teams of labour for public service&quot; to oppress and exploit the labourers. The Japanese aggressors also spread lies and propaganda to justify the enslavement of the Chinese people and their own brutal colonial rule. In the guerrilla areas, the Japanese army built a network of roads and clusters of blockhouses and constructed ditches, walls and watchtowers to prevent the people's armed forces from gaining a foothold in the guerrilla areas and the occupied areas. As for the anti-Japanese base areas, the Japanese army unceasingly &quot;nibbled&quot; away at them and conducted ruthless and devastating &quot;mopping-up&quot; operations. In view of these ferocious attacks, the Communist Party held that the power of the people's war had to be fully utilized in an all-out struggle against the enemy. The struggle should not consist merely of reckless fighting but should be waged on the political, economic, ideological, cultural and other fronts as well. Only in this way could the enemy be constantly weakened and the strength of the resistance forces be preserved and accumulated. The key to achieving this goal was to practise unified leadership and to coordinate the work in all areas. According to a decision on centralized leadership in the base areas made by the CPC Central Committee on September 1, 1942, the agency of the Central Committee (its bureau or sub-bureau) and the Party committees at all levels were to be the supreme leading organs in the base areas. Secretaries of the Party committees at all levels were to serve concurrently as political commissars in army units at the same levels. In the meantime, the military system, which consisted of the main formations of the regular army, the local formations and the self-defence corps of the people's militia, should be organized in such a way that the main formations of the regular army were the backbone of the armed forces and the other two types of units were strong reserves. When the enemy posed a serious threat, the main formations could be separated and dispersed. When the situation took a favourable turn, the local formations and the people's militia could be concentrated to coordinate with, or act as, main formations carrying out largescale operations. In sum, various forms of struggle should be 271 nAPTER FOUR THE WAR OF RESISTANCE AGAINST JAPAN waged to repel the enemy when he attacked the anti- Japanese base areas and to foil his campaigns to &quot;tighten public security.&quot; jn central China, the struggle in the enemy's rear areas was as intense as in north China. From the spring of 1942 to the end of 1943. the New Fourth Army streamlined its troops, simplified its administration and combined armed struggle with unarmed struggle. The main formations of the regular army watched for opportunities to move from one place to another or make a surprise assault on the enemy, while the regional armed forces and the people's militia kept up guerrilla warfare in the same areas. The local Party and government organizations were totally militarized, so that they were able to adapt to the circumstances of guerrilla warfare. They were dispersed and hidden in the local areas, persisting in the struggle no matter what the situation was. The New Fourth Army harassed the concentrated enemy troops, while they surrounded and annihilated those that were scattered. The New Fourth Army also made it difficult for the puppet troops to return safely from the villages they had attacked to the places where they were stationed. If the Japanese and puppet armies concentrated their forces to &quot;mop up' an area, the people s armed forces in neighbouring areas would strike simultaneously, so that the enemy could occupy one area only at the cost of losing others. Thanks to these flexible tactics, the &quot;mopping up&quot; plan of the Japanese and puppet troops was toiled, and the army and the people in the anti- Japanese base areas became stronger. In the course of this hard struggle behind enemy lines, the army and the people devised a number of very effective tactics. They included &quot;sparrow&quot; warfare, tunnel warfare, land-mine warfare, sabotage operations, guerrilla warfare on the lakes and rivers and the use of armed work teams. I hese tactics represented a further development of the people's war. &quot;Sparrow&quot; warfare was conducted mainly in the mountain areas, where the terrain was rough and the paths rugged. Naturally, the people's self-defence armed forces (the people's militia) were familiar with the local conditions. When the Japanese and puppet troops entered the anti-Japanese base areas, the people s disperse the next, attacking them everywhere. The enemy, unfamiliar with the terrain, had to rush here and there and take a beating on the roads. Tunnel warfare and sabotage operations were conducted in the plains. The army and the people in the base areas in the North China Plain dug trenches in the roads to slow the advance of the Japanese mechanized forces, thus protecting their own retreat. As the circumstances worsened, each household in a village would dig a cellar or burrow, and connecting tunnels would be built between them. These tunnels were later developed into extensive networks linking many villages and suitable for attacking, hiding and moving from place to place. The Japanese soldiers tried to fill the tunnels with smoke, water and poison gas, but all these methods were without avail. By depending on the tunnels, single villages and even individuals could effectively attack the enemy and protect themselves. In both mountain areas and plains, land mines were used. The people made mines o t difterent kinds out of local resources such as scrap iron, glass bottles, clay pottery and even stones. They would lay these mines at the entrance to a village or a road, at a door or in the corner of a courtyard, endangering the lives of the Japanese and puppet soldiers as soon as they entered a village or a house. The army and the people even laid mines under the exits of the Japanese blockhouses, otten killing or wounding enemies who came out and shaking the morale of the others. Guerrilla warfare on the water was waged largely on the river networks of central China. Thousands of soldiers and civilians, taking advantage of the varied terrain of rivers, lakes and branching streams, built dams and underwater barriers to make it difficult for the motorboats of the Japanese army to navigate. With small, silent wooden boats that could go everywhere in the vast water areas, they themselves found opportunities to strike the enemy heavy blows. The armed work teams were organized by the army and people behind enemy lines in an attempt to gain the initiative in the struggle against the mopping-up operations. In the spring of 1942, the policy of advancing as the enemy advanced was initiated in 273 orth China. When the Japanese and puppet troops attacked the anti-Japanese base areas there, the soldiers and civilians would use a part of their forces to penetrate the enemy's rear areas. There they would launch extensive military and political offensives, eliminating diehard Chinese traitors, persuading members of the puppet army and organizations like the &quot;associations for the preservation of order&quot; to cross over to the anti-Japanese side or educating them so they would work for the people insofar as circumstances allowed. These people's armed forces gradually developed into armed work teams operating deep inside occupied territory. Each of them, not only a fighter but also a propagandist and an organizer, was capable of functioning independently—fighting, educating the masses and mobilizing them. By combining military struggle with political struggle and overt struggle with covert struggle, they were able to conduct extensive education among the masses, expose the enemy's true colours, gather information, eliminate traitors and combat spies. They disrupted the order of the Japanese and puppet regimes, won over members of the puppet army and organizations, built secret armed forces and established dual regimes, or covert base areas. Thus, areas in the very heart of the territory controlled by the Japanese and puppet armies were turned into torward positions tor attacking them. In the vicinity of the blockhouses, the enemy could hear members of the armed work teams shouting political propaganda. The members also called on the families of soldiers in the puppet army, asking them to urge their men to give up evil and return to good as soon as possible. When the Japanese and puppet troops came to loot the grain in a village, the armed work teams would appear in time to help the villagers resist and protect their stores. Under these circumstances, the Japanese army could have no sense of security even in the &quot;secure zones.&quot; Although the Japanese and puppet troops made desperate attacks, it was inevitable that they would be drowned in the vast ocean of the people's war. During 1941 and 1942 the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army, the guerrilla forces and the people's militia fought more than 42,000 engagements with the enemy troops, killing, wounding or capturing 331,000 of them. In particular, in their struggle against mopping-up operations behind enemy lines, the army and the people tied up or eliminated a large number of Japanese troops, making a major contribution to the protracted war of resistance against Japanese aggression and giving great support to the anti-fascist war fought by the Allies. In the struggle in occupied territory, soldiers and civilians alike fought indomitably and performed countless acts of heroism. On August 1, 1941, for example, puppet troops encircled Dongxin Village in Xianxian County in central Hebei Province. They tried to force the villagers to identify the mother of Ma Benzhai, the brave and capable commander of the Hui Nationality Detachment. A few villagers who refused to inform against her were killed on the spot; others were cruelly tortured. Ma's mother, who could not tolerate seeing people beaten or killed for her sake, stepped forward bravely. The enemy alternated threats and inducements to compel her to write a letter persuading her son to surrender. She denounced them scathingly: &quot;I am Chinese, and I do not know the word ‘surrender.'&quot; She remained unyielding and starved herself to death. In another incident, on September 25, 1941, on Langya Mountain near the Yishui River in western Hebei Province, under attack by Japanese arid puppet troops, five soldiers of the Eighth Route Army—Ma Baoyu, Hu Delin, Hu Fucai, Song Xueyi and Ge Zhenlin—deliberately drew the enemy fire on themselves to allow the members of Party and government organizations and the people in the area to move to a place of safety. They retreated to a steep cliff and from this vantage point repelled four successive assaults by the Japanese troops. When their last bullet had been fired, they resolutely smashed their guns and leaped from the cliff. Three fell to their death. The other two were caught on the branches of trees and eventually made their escape. The five soldiers became known as the Five Heroes of Langya Mountain. Again, on May 25, 1942, in a critical situation in which the General Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army stationed in Liaoxian County was encircled by the enemy, Zuo Quan, the deputy chief of staff, broke through the encirclement at the head of his men. As he was leading the 275 last group of soldiers through the enemy lines, Zuo Quan was struck by a bullet and gave his life for his country. Thousands upon thousands of such national heroes emerged in the War of Resistance. The revolutionary spirit of the Communist-led army and people in the enemy's rear areas—the spirit that bade them unite as one, resist aggression and defy brute force—was the source of strength that brought them victory in the struggle against the enemy's mopping-up operations. The Chinese people will always remember the great deeds performed by the heroes and martyrs in the War of Resistance Against Japan. Overcoming Economic Difficulties and Initiating the Great Production Campaign During that hard time, the CPC Central Committee adopted a number of effective policies to overcome difficulties and consolidate the anti-Japanese base areas. To lighten the burden on the people, the troops were streamlined and administration was simplified1. The &quot;three thirds system&quot; of political power and the policy of reducing land rents and interest rates were further implemented to arouse the enthusiasm of the peasants and unite people of all social strata in the War of Resistance. In addition, to keep closer relations between the army and the government and between the army and the people, a movement was launched in the army to support the government and cherish the people and a movement was organized among the masses to support the army and give preferential treatment to the families of revolutionary soldiers and martyrs. In the effort to overcome the grave difficulties in material lile and to persevere in the War of Resistance without unduly increasing the people's burden, the great production campaign in the anti-Japanese base areas played a decisive role. The general principle of this campaign was to develop the economy and ensure supplies. Bearing in mind that the rural economy was based on individual producers, that the countryside was divided by the enemy politically and that it was in a state of guerrilla warfare, the CPC Central Committee formulated the following policies: On production : first priority should be given to agriculture but animal husbandry, industry, handicrafts, transportation and commerce should also be developed;—On the relationship between the public and private sectors : both public and private interests, both the army and the people, should be taken into account;—On the relationship between the higher and lower economic departments : leadership should be centralized and management decentralized;—On the relationship between production and consumption: the guiding principle should be to work hard in production and practise strict economy in consumption;—On organizing economic development: cooperation and mutual help should be promoted, emulation should be encouraged in production and rewards should be established for &quot;heroes of labour.&quot; Economic self-sufficiency of the army, government organizations and schools was a creation of the production campaign in the anti-Japanese base areas. The idea that the army should be self-supporting appeared to go against the principle of the division of labour and to be a step backward. In essence, however, it was progressive. It enabled the army to relieve the scarcity of basic necessities, to improve its living conditions, to lessen the burden of taxation on the people and still to have sufficient resources to sustain a protracted war. The CPC Central Committee took the lead in carrying out this policy in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region. At the beginning of 1941, it ordered the 359th Brigade of the 120th Division of the Eighth Route Army to march into Nanniwan, a region not far from Yan'an, the seat of the CPC Central Committee, that was desolate and uninhabited but endowed with fertile soil. In March, after Zhu De had made a field investigation, Wang Zhen led the 359th Brigade into Nanniwan to reclaim the wasteland and plant grain. Under extremely difficult circumstances, lacking funds and tools for production and relying only on themselves, the officers and men of the brigade dug cave dwellings to live in, surveyed the areas to be reclaimed, learned farming techniques, made tools and opened hapter FOUR THE war of resistance against japan lhe wasteland. At the same time, tens of thousands of people &quot;P hthe Party government, army, schools and other circles in Wa!iid in the production campaign. Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai, Ren Bishi and other leaders took part in productive 13 This campaign in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region and in the anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines was highly successful. The output value of agriculture and industry and the volume of commerce increased rapidly, the tax burden ™ the people was greatly alleviated and the material conditions &quot;^soldiers and civflians were markedly improved. During the three years from 1942 through 1944, more than two mil ion ,nu (over 130,000 hectares) of wasteland were brought unde cultivation in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Regiom By 1945 the majority of peasants in the region had saved out of three years' harvests enough grain to last them for an additio year. Some had even saved that much out of a Singh e years harvest In 1944 the 359lh Brigade of the Eighth Route Army, which had done this and had been self-suffictcnt m other basic necessities as well, was declared a model for lhe whole army. In 1941 the &quot;public grain&quot; collected Horn the peasants m the region as a form of taxation made up 13.58 percent of the total yield, but in 1942 the proportion dropped to 11.14 a&quot;d in 1943 to less than 9 percent. From 1943 on, most of the Party and government organizations in all anti-Iapanese base areas behind enemy lines could grow enough grain and veget ablcs to supply their own needs for three or even six momhs_ The tax burden on the people constituted onU about ^ percen of their total revenue. In terms of the standard of living a the time, the cadres had sufficient food and clothing and had been provided mainly by the work of their own hands. The great production campaign was a paean to self-reliance. It supported the hard struggle in the enemy's rear areas, and at the samT time it served to train numbers of cadres m economic development and give the CPC some experience in this area. <br /> <br /> === The Arduous Struggle Against &quot;Mopping-Up&quot; Operations Waged by the Army and the People behind the Enemy Lines ===<br /> <br /> === The Democratic Movement in Areas Ruled by the KMT ===<br /> From 1943 on, the Allies in the anti-fascist war advanced rapidly toward victory. On the European front, following its victory in the battle of Stalingrad, the Soviet army moved on to an all-out counteroffensive, driving deep into the Germanoccupied areas and into Germany itself. The British and American troops landed at Normandy, opening up the second front in Europe. On May 8, 1945, the German fascists surrendered unconditionally. On the Asian and Pacific fronts, the United States launched a frog-hopping attack in the Pacific Ocean, while the Chinese and British troops organized the battle of north Burma and captured the city of Myitkyina. The CPC-led War of Resistance behind enemy lines entered a new stage of development. In 1943 the army and the people in north China, having survived the difficult years 1941 and 1942, were able to launch an offensive against the Japanese army. In 1944 all base areas in north, central and south China opened regional counteroffensives against the Japanese and puppet armies, extending the existing base areas and marching into the enemy's rear areas to open up new ones in Henan, on the Hunan-Guangdong border and on the Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Anhui border. By the spring of 1945, there were nineteen Communist-led anti-Japanese base areas, covering 950,000 square kilometres and having a population of 95.5 million. The Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army and local people's armed forces had increased to 910,000 and the people's militia to 2.2 million. Halting the Third Anti-Communist Onslaught While the CPC-led War of Resistance in the enemy's rear was entering a new phase, the Kuomintang authorities in the main took a wait-and-see attitude, avoiding engagements with the Japanese. On the one hand, they hoped to rely on Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union to win the war; on the other hand, they were still trying to eliminate, or at least weaken, the -hapter four the war of resistance against japan 279 Communist-led revolutionary forces so that they could maintain their autocratic rule after the victory. In the spring of 1943, the KMT launched the third anti-Communist onslaught. In his book China's Destiny, Chiang Kai-shek preached Chinese fascism and openly opposed Communists and liberals, implying that the Communist Party and all other revolutionary forces would be eradicated within two years. Soon after this, the KMT diehards took advantage of the dissolution of the Communist International in May 1943 to demand that the Communist Party of China be disbanded and the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region abolished. They secretly ordered a massive concentration of troops stationed in northwest China under the command of Hu Zongnan to prepare for an attack on the region. To halt this third anti-Communist onslaught by the Kuomintang diehards, the CPC launched a vigorous political counterattack. Liberation Daily, the official newspaper of the CPC Central Committee published in Yan'an, carried articles criticizing China's Destiny and exposing the KMT diehards' plan to launch a civil war. On July 4 and 6, 1943, Zhu De telegraphed Hu Zongnan and Chiang Kai-shek respectively to protest Hu's armed provocation and to appeal for unity. On July 9, 30,000 people in Yan'an held a rally and adopted a statement opposing civil war and calling for unity in the fight against Japan. On July 10, to conceal his plan to attack the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, Hu Zongnan arranged a reception for Zhou Enlai, who was returning from Chongqing to Yan'an via Xi'an. Zhou announced at the reception that he had asked Hu Zongnan personally if he had sent his troops defending the Yellow River west to prepare an attack on the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region. &quot;Deputy Commander Hu told me,&quot; he said, &quot;that he had no intention of attacking the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region and that the troops under his command would take no such action. I was very happy to hear this, and I believe everyone else will be happy, too.&quot;28 Thus Hu's scheme to attack the region was made known to the public. On July 12 Mao Zedong wrote tor Liberation Daily an editorial entitled &quot;Some Pointed Questions for the Kuomintang,&quot; bringing to light the KMT's moves to wreck unity and calling on the people of the whole country to prevent a civil war. Eventually, the KMT's third anti-Communist onslaught was brought to a halt before it could develop into a large-scale armed attack. The Rise of the Patriotic and Democratic Movement in Areas Ruled by the Kuomintang Nevertheless, the KMT did not abandon its one-party dictatorship and, indeed, became even more autocratic. After the outbreak of the Pacific war, Chiang Kai-shek was appointed supreme commander of the ground and air forces of the allied armies in the China theatre (which included Vietnam, Thailand and other countries). General Joseph W. Stilwell was sent by the United States to serve as Chiang's chief of staff. After his arrival in China, Stilwell realized the role the CPC was playing in the war with Japan and believed that the Kuomintang and the Communist Party should cooperate in the war effort. However, as the anti-fascist forces worldwide were making good progress, the U.S. government began considering what was to be done after the war. In accordance with its overall strategy for the postwar period of contending for world hegemony and in line with its aim of replacing Japan as the dominant imperialist power in China, it adopted new policies towards China. In January 1943 the United States signed a bilateral treaty with the KMT government abrogating U.S. extraterritorial rights in China, so as to indicate U.S. support for the KMT government and enhance the latter's international standing. From then on, the United States' China policy gradually changed from favouring cooperation between the KMT and the CPC to supporting Chiang and opposing the Communists. In the autumn of 1944, the U.S. government recalled Stilwell and sent General Albert C. Wedemeyer to take over. Patrick J. Hurley was sent to China as a personal envoy of the President and then was made Ambassador to China. Hurley's mission was to prevent the KMT government from collapsing and to help Chiang unify the country. After the shift in United States policy, the KMT government, feeling secure with U.S. support, became increasing 281 nrruot and degenerate and eventually reached a grave crisis ly The corrupt and reactionary nature of the KMT was manifest in politically, Cth°f I&amp;iomintang persisted in one-party dictatorship , -lengthened the secret service and the bao-jia system. The KMT secret agents, ignoring legal procedures, clandestinely ar«fed many Communists, revolutionary young people and patriotic democrats, cruelly torturing them or killing them at wiU. The people were deprived of their rights of free speech, assembly Thi Sication and not even their lives and property were safe. A commentary in the American newspaper Evening and Sunday v&quot;d that the Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek who arrogated all power to himself and whose position was as high a. that of emperors in the past, was controlled by Chen Lif u and rins brother Chen Guofu, who believed that the thinking of rndtv d uals should be dominated by the state, a view that might well be ^Economically, the four families of Chiang Kai-shek, foreign Minister T V. Soong, Finance Minister H.H Kung and the Chen brothers, which represented bureaucrat-capitalism in China con trolled the country's main lifelines by takmg advantage of tie privileges granted them. By monopolizing banking and com merce, grabbing land, swallowing up factories and mines con trolling transportation and increasing ahead y-exorbitant tax es they rapidly extended comprador and feudal bureaucrat capitalfsm andmade huge fortunes in the nudst : of nationa calamity. In 1944 the property of T.V. Soong in the United State alone exceeded U.S.S47 million. The expansion of bureaucrat capitalism greatly worsened the situation in the areas ^ under Kuomintang rule, where the economy crumbled, pnces skyrock eted and the people, living in destitution, boiled with resentment But it was in military affairs that the weaknesses of the Kuomintang were even more evident. In the face of attacks launched by the Japanese, the KMT army, whose morale was low almost lost its capacity to fight. Beginning from April 944 in order to open up north-south transportation lines, Japan renewed its strategic attacks on Henan, Hunan, Guangxi and other provinces along the Beiping-Hankou, Guangzhou-Hankou and Hunan-Guangxi railway lines. The Japanese army named these attacks its No. 1 Operation. In these engagements, all but a few of the KMT troops were defeated at the first encounter or fled without a battle. The KMT armies were utterly routed. During April and May 1944 Japanese troops attacking Henan occupied Zhengzhou and Xuchang, opening up the Beiping-Hankou Railway. In June and August those attacking Hunan took Changsha and Hengyang and then went on to attack Guangxi, seizing Guilin and Nanning in November. The Japanese pursued the fleeing KMT troops as far as Dushan County, not far from Guiyang, capital of Guizhou Province. This posed a grave threat to Chongqing in neighbouring Sichuan Province. The KMT authorities then sent the troops it had stationed in Burma and those blockading the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region to reinforce its army in Guizhou. In early December, Dushan was recovered, but the Japanese plan to open up land transportation had been realized. In eight months, the Kuomintang authorities had lost more than 200,000 square kilometres of land and 146 cities in Henan, Hunan, Guangxi, Guangdong and Fujian provinces. Consequently, more than 60 million of their countrymen were subjected to great suffering under the cruel oppression of Japanese imperialism. On October 31, 1944, when the KMT had been utterly defeated on all fronts, some 4,000 men from the 359th Brigade of the Eighth Route Army, with Wang Zhen as commander and Wang Shoudao as political commissar, were organized into a detachment to march south from Yan'an. Their mission was to enter enemy-occupied territory in Henan, Hubei, Hunan and Guangdong and establish new anti-Japanese base areas there. The defeat of the Kuomintang troops in Henan, Hunan and Guangxi, especially when compared to the victories of the Allies elsewhere, exposed the corruption and incompetence of the KMT government and completely discredited it. The defeats at the front also formed a sharp contrast with the situation in the enemy's rear. People saw what was happening and drew their own conclusions: the Kuomintang ruling clique was unable to win the 283 of Resistance Against Japan; it could neither defend China's WHenendence nor promote its economic development^ It was only in Jfsmcle to progress. This disillusionment with the Kuommf was a major reason for the rise of a patriotic and democratic movement in the areas under its control. Tnother reason was that the Communist Party had united with the democratic parties and with unaff.liated patriotic de™°&quot;a« in the Struggle against the Kuomintang. During the period of the lend anticommunist onslaught, the KMT diehards persecuted not only Communists but also non-Commumst patriots Ma Yin chu a well-known economist, was arrested and sent to jail fo rebuking the wealthy families for their control of capital. The KMT authorities also cancelled the membership in the Peoples Political Council of Shen Junru, Zhang Bojun, Shi Liang and other prominent democrats. The contradictions between the middle-of-the-roaders and the Kuomintang ruling clique became increasingly acute. More and more middle-of-the-roaders began to understand the CPC's policies and to voice their support for the Party. After the Southern Anhui Incident, the high-handed policies of the Kuomintang diehards, instead of estranging t e great number of middle-of-the-roaders from the Communist Party, drew them closer. In the struggle to save the nation, the Cl C fought alongside these people through thick and thin. On March 19, 1941, the China Federation of Democratic Political Groups, whose social base was the middle bourgeoisie and the upper petty bourgeoisie, was founded in Chongqing. Because the KM 1 authorities created various difficulties for the Federation, it was unable to function openly in Chongqing and had to send some o its members to work in Hong Kong, where they received support from the local CPC office affiliated with the Southern Bureau of the Central Committee. On September 18 the Federation started publishing its official newspaper, the Guangming News ?. On October 10 it published a summary of its views on the current situation and a declaration of the establishment of the Federation. In these articles it maintained that the KMT government should resolutely resist Japan, strengthen unity, put an end to one-party rule, introduce a constitutional system, practise democracy and guarantee the people's democratic freedoms. The cooperative relationship between the Communist Party and the democratic parties was further strengthened as they struggled side by side. In the first half of 1 944, the struggle for democracy in the areas under Kuomintang control became unprecedentedly dynamic. During January and February of that year Huang Yanpei, a well-known figure in industrial and commercial circles, convened in Chongqing a forum on democratic constitutional government. He advanced ten proposals, including that a provisional constitution be adopted, that the freedom of the people be respected, that politics be renewed, that corrupt practices be abolished and that the people be mobilized and supplied with arms. These proposals evoked a positive response from people of all walks of life. The CPC Central Committee decided to participate in the movement for constitutional government and asked Party members to unite with all democrats so as to defeat the Japanese aggression and establish a democratic state. In May of the same year, the China Federation of Democratic Political Groups published another statement on the current situation, denouncing the Kuomintang for eliminating dissidents and for refusing to carry out democratic reform. In September the Federation was renamed the China Democratic League and admitted many people who had no party affiliations. In the meantime, a group of writers and artists set forth three objectives for their colleagues, namely, to resist Japan, to unite and to advocate democracy. More than fifty writers and other intellectuals, including Zhang Shenfu and Cao Yu, held a meeting demanding freedom of speech and publication. In Guangxi, Liu Yazi, Li Jishen and other enlightened members of the Kuomintang established the Anti- Japanese Association of Cultural Circles in Guilin, calling upon the KMT to mobilize the masses, resist the Japanese and uproot defeatism. A Proposal for the Establishment of a Democratic Coalition Government To persevere in the anti-Japanese war being waged by the entire nation, the CPC Central Committee decided to renew 285 paotiations with the Kuomintang. Starting on May 4, 1944, Lin rouu the Central Committee's representative, held several taiks with Zhang Zhizhong and other representatives of the KMT in arld Chongqing. The Communist Party demanded that L Kuomintang acknowledge the democratic rights of the antiJapanese base areas, enlarge the armies led by the CPC, give th neople democracy and freedom and grant the democratic parties fegal status. Owing to the KMT's unjustifiable obstructions, he talks came to nothing. As the failed talks coincided with the KMT's crushing military defeat, popular indignation increased. The withdrawal and defeat of the KMT troops, which started in Henan and Hunan provinces, fully revealed the corruption and incompetence of the Kuomintang government. People of all persuasions, including many middle-of-the-roaders * * to increase unity in the fight against Japan, the KMT s one-party dictatorship be abolished and democratic politics introduced^ This was something new. On September 15, 1944, at a meeting of the People's Political Council, Lin Boqu, following instiuctions from the CPC Central Committee, submitted a formal proposal for the establishment of a democratic coalition government: &quot;We hope that the Kuomintang will immediately end the domination of a single party and that the National Government will call a conference on state affairs, in which representatives of all parties, anti- Japanese armies, local governments and peoples organizations will participate, to discuss the establishment of a coalition government to be formed by all anti-Japanese parties. The new government, by claiming the world's attention, |nsP^S the people of the whole country and raising the morale of the army at the front, will help strengthen national unity, bring together all talented people and concentrate all the anti-Japanese forces. Thus, in coordination with the counteroffensive to be launched by the Allied armies, we shall be able to defeat the Japanese aggressors.&quot;29 Lin's speech to the Council was published in full in New China Daily. Afterwards, the CPC submitted in written form the proposal for the establishment of a democratic coalition government. On October 10 in Yanan, Z ou n ai delivered a speech explaining the specific steps and methods tor carrying it out. This proposal produced strong repercussions at home and abroad. The Japanese army was continuing to attack Guangxi from Hunan. The question of uniting the country to check the enemy attack assumed the greatest urgency and was of concern to everyone. During September and October 1944 the democratic movement in the Kuomin tang-controlled areas expanded day by day. More than 500 patriotic democrats from various circles in Chongqing, including Zhang Lan, Shen Junru and Feng Yuxiang, held a meeting calling for democracy and the termination of the KMT's one-party dictatorship. Dong Biwu also attended the meeting. Seventy-two prominent people, including Soong Ching Ling, Guo Moruo and Zhang Lan, sponsored a memorial meeting for the patriotic journalist Zou Taofen, who, being persecuted by the Kuomintang, had died in exile the previous summer. (According to Zou's wish, unrealized during his lifetime, the CPC Central Committee admitted him posthumously as a Party member.) Several thousand people from all walks of life attending the meeting unanimously denounced the Kuomintang for trampling on democracy and persecuting patriots and declared their determination to struggle against its fascist regime. More than 2,000 people from five universities including West China Union University and Jinling University and twelve learned societies in the city of Chengdu, Sichuan, held a symposium on state affairs and demanded that the Kuomintang government and its supreme command be reorganized and a democratic coalition government established. On October 10 the China Democratic League published a declaration on the final stage of the anti-Japanese war, demanding the immediate abolition of the one-party system, the establishment of a multiparty coalition regime and the institution of political democracy. Under the influence of the Communist Party, the progressive forces were uniting more closely, and the middle-of-the-roaders were becoming politically active and inclined towards progressive views. The patriotic and democratic movement in the areas under Kuomintang rule was increasingly focused on a definite political objective—the establishment of a coalition government. 287 _ , . a flexible approach to negotiations, the CPC also I^TdetermSed struggle agatnst the U.S. policy of sup^rtChiang and opposing the Communists. When Hurley first mE to China the U.S. government tried to prevent the KM T &quot; ™ent from collapsing. Realizing that the CPC had become fhJ mo&quot; dynamic force in China, while the Kuomintang and the N tS Government were falling apart day by day, it asked Hurley to mediate between the two parties. It also understock that the Communist Party led an army of high combat effective ness and that, since the KMT government was corrupt, if a civil war with the Communists broke out before the Japanese were defeated the Kuomintang would face the danger of dtssolut The United States therefore hoped that Chiang Kai-shek would ahow alittle democracy so as to induce hand over its army to the Kuomintang. It believed that if the CPC did so, when the anti-Japanese war was over cl!iaI18 s dommant position could be stabilized. In the meantime the United States £u,d avoid conflict with the Soviet Union on tlx i China quesUom On November 7, 1944, Hurley flew to Yan an, where he indicated his consent to the CPC's proposal to abolish the one-party dicta torship of the Kuomintang and to form a democratic coahtion government. After three days of negotiations. Hurley and the CPC leaders drew up a draft agreement between the National Government and the Kuomintang on the one hand and i the Communist Party of China on the other However, the^ agreement was rejected by Chiang Kai-shek, and Hurley himself later aban doned his endorsement of a democratic coahuongovernmentm the various contacts and negotiations between the KMT and he CPC Hurley's position was that a measure of democracy could be permitted only after the CPC had turned its troops over to the KMT On April 2, 1945, when this political manoeuvring had foiled, Hurley announced that the U.S. government would cooperate only with the KMT, not with the CPC. rmnneine Now that the U.S. policy of supporting Chiang aI,d 0PP°sing the Communists was openly avowed, the reactionary K g ernment became even more arrogant, and the likelihood of civil war &quot;n China increased. From May 5 to 21, 1945, the Kuomintang held its 6th National Congress. At this congress, the KMT refused to form a democratic coalition government and decided to persist in its dictatorship and prepare for civil war. Neither the machinations of the U.S. imperialists nor the threats and deceit of Chiang Kai-shek could halt the advance of the Chinese people in their drive for independence, democracy and liberation. However, they foreboded another long and bitter struggle to be waged after the victory over Japan.<br /> <br /> === The Rectification Movement ===<br /> In the spring of 1942, the Communist Party of China launched a rectification movement throughout the Party. Its purpose was to combat subjectivism in order to rectify the style of study, to combat sectarianism in order to rectify the style in Party relations and to combat Party stereotypes in order to rectify the style of writing. 1 he movement not only added an important page to the annals of the CPC but was also an innovation in the international communist movement. Why did the Party need a rectification movement? Because it had to adapt to the actual situation in which it was leading the Chinese revolution forward. The movement was initiated against a specific historical background. The Communist Party had existed for more than twenty years. During those years, the Chinese revolution had not only won tremendous victories but also suffered grave setbacks; thus, the Party had ample experience of both success and failure. The dogmatist errors made by Wang Ming and his faction had been the most damaging. From the Zunyi Meeting in 1935 to the 6th Plenary Session of the 6th Central Committee of the CPC in 1938, the Party criticized and corrected the &quot;Left&quot; mistakes Wang had made during the later stage of the Agrarian Revolutionary War and the Right-deviationist mistakes he had made in the initial period of the anti-Japanese war. However, the Party had not had time for the entire membership to make a systematic review of its historical experience and, in particular, it had not thoroughly 289 nnlvsed the kinds of thinking that were at the root of the &quot;Left&quot; Right mistakes of the past. Accordingly, there were still aHTerences of opinion with regard to the Party's guiding ideology, and these continued to be damaging to the revolutionary cause at rertain times and places and in certain respects. if a mistake were not truly recognized as such, it would inevitably be repeated in various forms under other conditions. The CPC Central Committee therefore deemed it necessary to conduct a rectification movement within the Party, using the correct stand, viewpoint and method to overcome erroneous ones At the same time, the Party was in the midst of the most difficult period of the War of Resistance. A rectification movement was also indispensable to achieve ideological and political unity and ensure that the Party acted in unison to win final victory over the Japanese. , _ . ~ In 1938 the 6th Plenary Session of the 6th Central Committee of the CPC helped correct the Party's ideological line by setting the task of &quot;applying Marxism concretely in China. In May 1941 at a cadres' meeting in Yan'an, Mao Zedong made a report entitled &quot;Reform Our Study,&quot; in which he said, The twenty years of the Communist Party of China have been twenty years in which the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism has become more and more integrated with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution.&quot;-0 He criticized incisively the &quot;subjectivist style&quot; of some Party members who were unwilling to carry on systematic and thorough investigation and study of the specific conditions ... and issue orders on no other basis than their scanty knowledge and ‘It must be so because it seems so to me.'&quot;31 He proposed that the Party should reform the method and the system of study. From September 10 to October 22 1941, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held an' enlarged meeting to study the Party's history and summarize its experience, so that the members could distinguish between right and wrong political lines and achieve unity of understanding. Thus, conditions for a rectification movement were gradually growing ripe. .—. The Party-wide rectification movement was launched in February 1942, when Mao Zedong gave two speeches, &quot;Rectify the Party's Style of Work&quot; and &quot;Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing.&quot; The Central Committee set up a general study committee under Mao's direction to provide guidance for the movement. The movement had five stages: understanding the importance of the movement, examining the style of study, examining the Party's style of work, examining the style of writing and reviewing the Party's historical experience. This was a Marxist-Leninist educational movement throughout the Party—in other words, a movement in which the Party's style of work was brought into line with the guiding principles of Marxism-Leninism. The most important task of the rectification was to combat subjectivism. Historically, subjectivism had dominated the Party for quite a long time. The Right and &quot;Left&quot; opportunist mistakes that had been repeatedly made all stemmed from subjectivism, which separated theory from practice and failed to conform subjective thinking to objective reality. The leading cadres who had made such mistakes did not truly understand the reality but tried to find solutions to problems in books, in their subjective wishes or in the experience of other countries. As a result, the Party had been seriously damaged and the Chinese revolution had almost collapsed. Since for a long time the ideological roots of these mistakes had not been recognized, the mistakes had been frequent. After the Zunyi Meeting, however, the CPC Central Committee represented by Mao Zedong, acting firmly but flexibly in accordance with objective reality, formulated and put into practice lines, principles and policies suitable to the actual conditions. It soon enabled the Chinese revolution to enter a new phase. These facts showed that it was a matter of life and death for the Party to correct the subjectivism that dominated its guiding ideology. In his report &quot;Reform Our Study,&quot; Mao Zedong emphasized in particular the importance of &quot;seeking truth from facts.&quot; He explained what this meant: &quot;Facts&quot; are all the things that exist objectively, &quot;truth&quot; means their internal relations, that is, the laws governing them, and &quot;to means to study.... And in order to do that we must rely not ^subTective imagination, not on momentary enthusiasm, not on Hfe ess books, but on facts that exist objectively; we must approbate the material in detail and, guided by the general principles of Marxism-Leninism, draw correct conclusions from it. - In his snebh &quot;Rectify the Party's Style of Work,&quot; Mao called upon all Party members &quot;to learn how to apply the Marxist-Leninist stand viewpoint and method in the serious study of China s history, and of China's economics, politics, military affairs and culture and to analyse every problem concretely on the basis of detailed material and then draw theoretical conclusions. According to Mao, stereotyped Party writing was an expression of subjectivism. If it was not corrected, no vigorous ^vo'Htionary thinking could be inspired, the spirit of seeking truth from facts could not prevail and subjectivism could still find a place to hide. Therefore, if the Party wanted to root out subjectivism, it must also put an end to stereotyped Party writing. Another major task in the rectification movement was to combat sectarianism. , . , . . To achieve unity in the Party, unity of thinking alone was not enough- it had to be guaranteed by unity of organization. When subjectivist thinking had been dominant in ‘he Party, sectarianism had inevitably been practised organizationally, and dissidents who persisted in proceeding from reality had been attacked. After the Zunyi Meeting, sectarianism was no longer dominant u remnants of it still existed and found expression in both the Party's internal and external relations. The remnants of inner-Party sectarianism appeared in various forms, such as the &quot;mountain-stronghold&quot; mentality and disunity.34 In his speech &quot;Rectify the Party's Style of Work, Mao Zedong first criticized the assertion of &quot;independence, because it was most harmful to the revolution: Some comrades, see only the interests of the part and not the whole; they always put undue stress on that part of the work lor which' they themselves are responsible and always wish to subordinate the interests of the whole to the interests of their own part.... We should encourage comrades to take the interests of the whole into account. Every Party member, every branch of work, every statement and every action must proceed from the interests of the whole Party; it is absolutely impermissible to violate this principle. Those who assert this kind of &quot;independence&quot; are usually wedded to the doctrine of &quot;me first&quot;.... Although in words they profess respect for the Party, in practice they put themselves first and the Party second.... Whenever they are put in charge of a branch of work, they assert their &quot;independence.&quot; With this aim, they draw some people in, push others out and resort to boasting, flattery and touting among the comrades, thus importing the vulgar style of the bourgeois political parties into the Communist Party. It is their dishonesty that causes them to come to grief. Mao was unequivocal in his condemnation of sectarianism: &quot;We must build a centralized, unified Party,&quot; he said, &quot;and make a clean sweep of all unprincipled factional struggles. We must combat individualism and sectarianism so as to enable our whole Party to march in step and fight for one common goal.&quot;35 Sectarianism still manifested itself in the Party's external relations also. Some leading Party members had no respect for non-Party people and refused to cooperate with them, showing a &quot;closed-door&quot; mentality that had emerged during the time when &quot;Left&quot; opportunism was dominant. In his &quot;Speech at the Assembly of Representatives of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region&quot; in 1941, Mao Zedong stressed that the Communist Party should work in the interests not of just one section of society but of all the people. &quot;Chinese society,&quot; he said, &quot;is small at both ends and big in the middle; that is, the proletariat at one end and the landlord class and big bourgeoisie at the other each constitute only a small minority, while the great majority of the people consists of the peasants, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the other intermediate classes.&quot; It was therefore essential, he said, to give consideration to the interests of these classes. Mao held that Party members should pay careful attention to the opinions of nonParty people: &quot;Communists must listen attentively to the views of people outside the Party and let them have their say. If what they say is 293 pour THE war of resistance against japan CHAP* ek H, we ought to welcome it. and we should learn from their rlg ' ™ints if it is wrong, we should let them finish what they ^ny^and then patiently explain thtngs to them. A Commur must never be opinionated or domineering, or think that he &quot; of in everything while others are good in nothing, he must ' ever shut himself up in his little room, or brag and boast and &quot; rd it over others... Affairs of state, are the public affairs of the whole nation and not the private affairs of a single party or group. Hence Communists have the duty to cooperate democratically with non-Party people and have no right to exclude them and monopolize everything. The Communist Party is a POU^'^rty which works in the interests of the nation and people and which has absolutely no private ends to pursue. It should be supervised S the people and must never go against their will. Its member should be among the people and with them and must not set '^iTthTrectification movement, the Central Committee paid great attention to strengthening the Party ideologically, es^aal lv through ideological and political education of the membersAmong others, Chen Yun's How to Be a Communist Party Mem her and Liu Shaoqi's How to Be a Good Communist were regarded as important documents for study. They did much to heighten the members' Party spirit. . The policy of the rectification movement was, as Mao put it, to &quot;learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones&quot; and to cure the sickness to save the patient.- This was in sharp contra . to the policy of &quot;ruthless struggle&quot; and &quot;merciless blows pursued by leaders who had made &quot;Left&quot; mistakes.- The rectification began with a serious study of relevant documents, followed by criticism and self-criticism. By examining their own thinking, work past records and the work in their areas or departments, Party members were expected to ascertain under what - circum stances and for what reasons they had made mistakes and what the nature of those mistakes was. Thus they gradua y achiev ed unity of understanding and learned how to correct heir it i stakes. In this process, particular emphasis was laid on self-criticism. ^ In May 1942, the CPC Central Committee held the Yanan Forum on Literature and Art. Speaking at this forum, Mao Zedong declared that the basic function of revolutionary literature and art was to serve the masses and, first of all, the workers, peasants and soldiers. He clarified many hotly debated questions, emphasizing that revolutionary literary and art workers had to understand clearly the problem of class stand and to adopt the correct attitude toward three different groups: the enemy, the Party's allies in the united front and the masses. After the forum, writers and artists too began to study as part of the rectification movement. In March of 1943, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee adopted a &quot;Decision on the Readjustment and Simplification of the Central Organs.&quot; Mao Zedong was elected chairman of the Political Bureau and of the Secretariat of the Central Committee. In the rectification movement, the Party's senior cadres reviewed and summed up the Party's experience. The Central Committee held many forums to discuss the Party's history, including forums on the experience of Party organizations in the Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi, Hunan-Jiangxi, Hubei-Henan-Anhui and Fujian-Guangdong border regions, and in the northeastern Jiangxi, western Fujian and Chaozhou-Meixian areas. There were also forums on the experience of the Seventh Army of the Red Army and the Fifth Army Group of the Red Army and of Party organizations in north China. All these forums helped the cadres to understand through their own experience which Party lines had been right and which wrong and to deepen their understanding of Marxism. In July 1942 Zhu De wrote: &quot;Our Party has accumulated rich experience in struggle, correctly understood Marxist-Leninist theory and established in practice a Chinese theory of Marxism-Leninism to guide the Chinese revolution.&quot;39 On July 8, 1943, in his article &quot;The Communist Party of China and the Chinese Nation's Road to Liberation,&quot; published by Liberation Daily, Wang Jiaxiang presented for the first time the concept of &quot;Mao Zedong Thought,&quot; which found wide acceptance in the Party. On April 20, 1945, after a thorough review of the Party's experience, the 7th Plenary Session of the 6th Central 295 remittee of the CPC adopted the &quot;Resolution on Certain QuesUnns in the History of Our Party.&quot; The conclusions set forth m resolution helped the entire Party membership, especially Lor cadres, reach a common understanding, on the basis of Marxism-Leninism, of the fundamental questions regarding the Chinese democratic revolution. The resolution stated that if the Party hoped to win greater victories, it must take as its guide Mao Zedong Thought, which integrated Marxism-Leninism with the practice of the Chinese revolution. This meant that the Communist Party of China had truly chosen the correct course o remaining independent and of making the fundamental tenets of Marxism-Leninism applicable to the situation in China, the resolution laid an ideological foundation lor the convocation o the 7th Party Congress and advanced the cause of the Chinese revolution. It marked the successful conclusion of the rectification movement. , ,QH Between early September and the beginning of December 1943, when the rectification movement was in its later stage, the crc Central Committee, wishing to analyse the Parly's experience, called three successive meetings of the Political Bureau to discuss the &quot;Left&quot; mistakes Wang Ming had made during the Agrarian Revolutionary War and the Right mistakes he had made at the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japan. At these meetings, many comrades criticized Wang's mistakes and some criticized themselves. Mao Zedong stressed that in examining Wang's mistakes. Party members should take a historical view, proceed from reality, make self-criticisms and ensure the umty He said they should refrain from employing wrong methods of struggle that had been used in the past, &quot;learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones&quot; and &quot;cure the sickness to save the patient. Wang Ming pleaded illness and did not attend the meetings. T e Party leaders made painstaking efforts to help him understand his mistakes. Mao Zedong called on him several times and sent people to listen to his views. Zhou Enlai also visited him and had a heart-to-heart talk with him. As a result, Wang Ming admitted his mistakes and wrote to the Central Committee stating that he fully agreed with the judgments expressed in the &quot;Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party.&quot; At Mao's urging, Wang Ming was again elected to the Central Committee at the 7th Party Congress. For a short time during the rectification movement in Yan'an, a mistaken campaign was conducted. On April 3, 1943, the CPC Central Committee issued a &quot;Decision on Continuing the Rectification Movement,&quot; stating that in the process of rectifying the Party's style of work, an in-depth investigation should be made into the backgrounds of all Party cadres. In the decision the Central Committee overestimated the number of counterrevolutionaries hiding in the Party. On July 15 Kang Sheng, the deputy director of the General Study Committee and director of the Social Department of the Central Committee, made a report at a cadres' meeting in Yan'an, entitled &quot;Redeem Those Who Have Made Mistakes.&quot; This report set off a so-called redemption campaign in which confessions were obtained by coercion and then given credence. For ten or fifteen days, a great number of people were falsely accused and unjustly dealt with. This mistake should never have been made in the rectification movement. But since the anti- Japanese base areas were cut off from the outside world, it was difficult to investigate the cadres' backgrounds and, in fact, no real effort was made to do so. The result was that in eliminating counter-revolutionaries, some leading cadres failed to recognize the real number of counter-revolutionaries hiding in the Party, to proceed from the specific conditions in each unit, to seek truth from facts and to deal differently with different cases. Still, because the Central Committee soon put a stop to the &quot;redemption&quot; campaign, it was only a minor aspect of the rectification movement as a whole. It cannot be cited to negate the tremendous achievements of that movement. Above all, the rectification movement had generated a great debate both inside and outside the Party on some major questions. These included how to apply the principles of Marxism-Leninism by proceeding from reality instead of taking a dogmatic approach; how to relate the fundamental tenets of MarxismLeninism to the realities of the Chinese revolution and how to understand the two-line struggle that had taken place in the Party 297 after four the war of resistance against japan thp early 1930s. This debate had strengthened the positions of Cxism-Lemnism inside and outside the Party. Moreover, he rectification movement had greatly raised the ideological level of [he cadres and enabled the Party to become more mature and to thieve unprecedented unity. It was therefore of profound significance.<br /> <br /> === The 7th National Party Congress and the Chinese Victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan ===<br /> As victory in the war with Japan drew near, the Chinese people were presented with a choice between two different offe postwar future, one bright, the other dark. The Communist Party was proposing the establishment of a new China that would be, in the words of Mao Zedong, &quot;independent, free, democratic, united, prosperous and powerf ul.&quot;™ The Chiang Kai-shek clique, on the other hand, was insisting on the perpetuation of the old China - semi-feudal, semi-colonial, ruled by the big landlords and the big bourgeoisie, a China in which the people ! would remain sunk in poverty. Communists would be I«rsei ;utec i and the nation would be split. In view of these ahematives the CPC believed it was its duty to lead the people toward the future that offered hope. The 7th National Congress of the Communist Party of China The 7th National Congress of the Party was held in Yan'an from April 23 to June 11, 1945. Five hundred and forty-seven regular delegates and 208 non-voting delegates attended the congress representing 1.21 million Party members. Seventeen years had passed since the 6th Party Congress in 1928. Accordingly, the 7th Party Congress had both to review the experience of the revolution and to prepare for victory in the war with Japan. Mao Zedong made a political report entitled &quot;On Coalition Government,&quot; Liu Shaoqi made a &quot;Report on the Revision of the Party Constitution,&quot; Zhu De made a military report entitled &quot;The Battlefront in the Liberated Areas,&quot; and Zhou Enlai delivered an important speech entitled &quot;On the United Front.&quot; Ren Bishi, Chen Yun and others also spoke. By the time the 7th Party Congress was convened, the Communist International had been dissolved for two years. For the Chinese Party the congress was an opportunity to put an end to the ideological trend, represented by Wang Ming, of making Marxism-Leninism a dogma and worshiping the Soviet experience and the resolutions of the Comintern. It was also an opportunity for the Party to solve independently the problems of the Chinese revolution in the light of Chinese conditions. The congress's keynote was unity for victory. Its three major achievements were as follows. 1. The congress reviewed the experience gained over the 24 years during which the democratic revolution, led by the CPC, had been following a tortuous course, and especially the experience of the eight years of the War of Resistance. Then, on the basis of that review, it worked out a strategy for defeating the Japanese aggressors and a programme for building a new China. The congress declared that at a time when victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan was at hand, the task for the Party was to boldly mobilize the masses, expand the people's forces and lead them to victory over the Japanese aggressors, liberate all the people of China and establish a new China that would be independent, free, democratic, united, prosperous and powerful. The new China could not, and should not, be a country of the old type, ruled by the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, it could not be made into a socialist country all at once. It should be a country governed by a democratic alliance of all revolutionary classes, based on the united front of the overwhelming majority of the people and under the leadership of the working class—that is, a newdemocratic country. lo build such a country, the congress again called for the abolition of the Kuomintang's one-party dictatorship and the formation of a democratic coalition government. It also expound299 ed in detail the political, economic and cultural programmes to be carried out. However, since the policy of the Kuomintang ruling clique was to maintain its dictatorship, betray the country and launch civil war, the congress declared that the Party, while striving for the establishment of a coalition government, should prepare for another eventuality: the outbreak of civil war. If the KMT waged a civil war, the people would respond by waging a revolutionary war to overthrow the reactionary regime and build a new China. 2. The congress criticized certain wrong ideological trends in the Party and enunciated the major elements of the Party's fine traditions and style of work, enabling all Party members to unify their thinking on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. The proceedings of the congress were highly democratic. In discussing the various reports and speeches, many delegates, speaking their minds freely, analysed the mistakes made by certain Party members in the past, especially the &quot;Left&quot; adventurist mistakes made by Wang Ming and his followers during the Agrarian Revolutionary War. Many delegates, starting from the desire for unity, criticized those who had made mistakes, and most of the persons criticized made self-criticisms as well. By summing up the experience and lessons of the past, the Party strengthened its unity based on the programme adopted at the 7th Congress. The congress noted that most Pary members were working in the countryside and came from families of peasants or petty bourgeois. However, the nature of the Party was not defined by the family background of its members. Rather, it was defined by its political struggle, its inner-Party activities, its ideological education it provided and its ideological and political leadership. The congress defined the Party's excellent style of work, which had developed over the course of its long struggles, a style of work which, as Mao Zedong put it, &quot;essentially entails integrating theory with practice, forging close links with the masses and practising self-criticism.&quot;41 This was the hallmark distinguishing the Communist Party from other political parties, and it ensured the smooth implementation of the Party's lines and policies. The Party Constitution adopted at the congress stipulated that the CPC should take as the guide for all its work Mao Zedong Thought, which was the integration of Marxist and Leninist theories with the revolutionary practice of China, and that it should correct any dogmatic or empirical mistakes. The congress stated that Mao Zedong Thought provided a solid theoretical basis on which all Party members could achieve unity in their thinking and in their action. The congress especially emphasized that the mass line was the basic political and organizational line of the Party. Party members must serve the Chinese people heart and soul and oppose any tendencies to enforce unquestioning obedience to authority, be bureaucratic or act like warlords, which would alienate them from the masses. In internal affairs, the Party should adhere to democratic centralism, integrating strict centralism with extensive democracy; by the same token, Party members should integrate a high sense of organization and discipline with individual enthusiasm and initiative. This would guarantee that the Party could carry out its political tasks and take concerted action in its struggle. 3. The congress selected a new Central Committee with Mao Zedong as chairman, enabling the Party to achieve unprecedented unity. Forty-four members and 33 alternates were elected to the Central Committee at the congress. In the election process three principles were followed:—Persons who had gone astray would not be considered ineligible, so long as they recognized their mistakes and were determined to correct them.—Since the revolutionary forces had long been scattered in the countryside, factions had inevitably formed. They should be acknowledged and given proper consideration, while at the same time they should be weakened until they were eradicated. However, outstanding figures from various localities and different fields of work should be elected to the Central Committee. 301 CH_ Not every member of the Central Committee need be tile but the Committee as a whole should be composed of «nns having a wide spectrum of knowledge and abilities. Swing these principles, the congress formed a Central „ mmittee of unprecedented prestige and unity, with outstanding members bringing to it a great variety of experience gained in different positions and in different localities. On June 19 at the Kt Plenary Session of the 7th Central Committee of the CPC 13 Central Committee members were elected to the decision-making political Bureau; Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou En and Ren Bishi were elected to the Secretariat, which was in charge of the day-to-day work of the Central Committee; and Mao Zedong was elected chairman of the Central Committee. The 7th Party Congress was the last one held during the period of the democratic revolution and the most important. It went down in the annals of the CPC as a congress of victory, a congress of unity. From that time on, the Party, rallying closely around the Central Committee headed by Mao Zedong, threw all its energy into gaining a final victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan and a nationwide victory m the new-democratic revolution. The Final Victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan After mounting offensive operations against the Japanese troops in the summer of 1945, the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army tightened their encirciement of the places Many scattered Liberated Areas were linked up which enabled the people's armed forces to take the initiative militarily. Gradually, they turned guerrilla warfare into mobile warfare, creating the conditions necessary for a full-scale counteroffensive On July 26 1945, the United States, Britain and China issued the Potsdam Declaration, an ultimatum to Japan to surrender unconditionally. On August 8 the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. The participation of the Soviet army dealt a heavy blow to the Japanese troops entrenched in northeast China, thus hastening the end of the war. At this point the anti-Japanese forces in China entered a period of full-scale counteroffensive. At the time, the main formations of the Kuomintang army were in the western part of the country, while most of the cities, towns, communication lines and the coastal areas occupied by the Japanese troops were in the East, surrounded by base areas under the leadership of the Communist Party. The task of launching a full-scale counteroffensive was therefore carried out mainly by the people's armed forces in the base areas. On August 9, 1945, Mao Zedong made a statement entitled &quot;The Last Round with the Japanese Invaders.&quot; On orders from the Yan'an headquarters, the people's armed forces in the anti-Japanese base areas launched a major counteroffensive against both the Japanese and puppet troops. On August 14 the Japanese government sent a note to the governments of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and China, expressing acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration. The next day Emperor Hirohito publicly announced Japan's unconditional surrender. On August 16 the Japanese supreme headquarters ordered its troops to &quot;cease military operations,&quot; but at the same time it ordered them to &quot;carry out military operations in self-defence when they had no alternative.&quot; Thus, although the Japanese troops had officially surrendered, they had not laid down their arms. Consequently, the armed forces under the leadership of the CPC continued their counteroffensive, which had begun on August 11. In the course of these operations, the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army and the other people's armed forces liberated 150 cities and counties. On September 2 the Japanese representatives signed the act of capitulation. The 1.28 million Japanese troops in China surrendered. This brought to an end the War of Resistance Against Japan and also the Second World War. The War of Resistance had been won through bitter fighting and at an extremely high price paid by the people of all nationalities in China. The number of Chinese soldiers and civilians killed and wounded during the war came to more than 21 million, properly losses were estimated at U.S.$60 billion and the expense of the war at U.S.$40 billion. ^TER four THE war of resistance against japan all the wars the Chinese people had fought over more °f hundred years for national liberation from capitalist and tha&quot; IhsUnvaders, this was the first that had ended in complete imperialist mvaaers^ modern history&gt; chlna, which had victory. Tor th® . . distance to armed foreign invasion, i &quot; SSlTulmm, *. A. is®was able to a\engc . hen the Chinese nation This victory j decline It laid the foundation for independence and Uberation, and it greatly inspired :hri&quot;ofPa?f&quot;tionalities in China, enhancing their selfcause China's resistance to the Japanese invaders gained support both from people all over the world and from the gdincu . anti-fascist war support that was an contributed greaUy to the victory of the anti-fascists in other parts °f DurinTte ' ^Resistance, the Communist Party mobilized y l lhf&gt; rear from all walks of life, mainly peasants, and anefe and puppet troops (including 527,000 Japanese troops) and &quot;he Smettee1: the3 ^&quot;nder the leadership of the Communist Party made great sacrifices in .. „ Ann non casualties. The people in the base areas oeiu were in the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan base area. Th ters and civdians behind enemy lines, persevering in the struggle with the greatest devotion, wiped out large numbers of Japanese troops and brought about a gradual weakening of the enemy's forces and a strengthening of their own. Eventually, this made it possible to shift to a full-scale counteroffensive against the Japanese aggressors, contributing greatly to the victory. The history of the War of Resistance clearly demonstrated that the Communist Party and the people's armed forces under its leadership were the staunchest defenders of the nation's interests, the mainstay of the alliance against Japan and the decisive factor in winning the war. Thanks to the War of Resistance, a great change also took place in the balance of forces between the domestic political factions. This war was the third stage of the new-democratic revolution under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, following the Great Revolution and the Agrarian Revolutionary War. Dur ing this stage the Party, combining resistance to imperialism with the struggle against feudalism, correctly handled the relations between the national struggle and the class struggle, safeguarded the unity of the country and fought on tenaciously to win the War of Resistance and obtain the liberation and independence of the Chinese nation. In the course of the war, the majority of the Chinese people came to have a correct understanding of the Communist Party and to support it vigorously. A large section of the national bourgeoisie and the upper petty bourgeoisie openly changed their views of the CPC and even became friends of the Party. During the eight years of the war, the Communist Party's line of resisting Japan on all fronts, although it was implemented only in the democratic anti-Japanese base areas under its leadership and was rejected by the Kuomintang, became a call to the people of China to fight on until victory. Responding to this call, the working class, peasants, urban petty bourgeoisie, national bourgeoisie, the overseas Chinese and part of the landlordcomprador class all joined the anti-Japanese national united front in different ways, turning the War of Resistance into a war of the entire nation against the Japanese invaders. During this war, the Communist Party assumed political leadership. For this reason, when the war came to an end everyone recognized the CommuPTER FOUR THE WAR OF RESISTANCE AGAINST JAPAN Party and the Kuomintang as the two major political forces^ nist '.vnmkt Partv's influence on the social and political iitc The CommumstParty^milue^ ^ ^ ^ before the war. 0f In'the war of Resistance. Mao Zedong Thought the megra• ‘ nf Marxism-Leninism with the revolutionary practice of uon of Marxism the Communist Party gained a Chjna came to ma y,f of china,s democratic better grasp of . rorrectlv the many complex W civil ».r. »» ».1| understanding of t J cpc managed politically and historical experience in a scient y Adhering to mmm-wm the war and to lay a solid foundation for later development of the Chinese revolution.<br /> <br /> == The Struggle for Nationwide Victory in the Democratic Revolution ==<br /> <br /> === The Postwar Political Situation and the Party's Struggle for Peace and Democracy ===<br /> a the democratic partite had mcreased enormously, as had the number of unaffiliated democrats, and they had established close ties with the CPC. In 1945, therefore, the role of the CPC in Chinese society was quite different from what it had been during the early years of the war. During the War of Resistance, the Kuomintang ruling clique persisted in exercising autocratic control, and during the middle and late phases of the war it followed a policy of passive resistance to the Japanese while doggedly fighting the Communist Party. This policy alienated it profoundly from the masses. With the approach of V-J Day, the KMT focused increasingly on the elimination of the CPC and other democratic elements. In May 1945, at the KMT's 6th National Congress, Chiang Kai-shek announced: &quot;Now our major goal is the elimination of the Communist Party! Japan is our external enemy while the CPC is our internal enemy! It is only with the elimination of the CPC that we shall complete our mission!&quot;1 Immediately after the victory over Japan, the KMT ruling clique made plans to deprive the people of the rights they had just gained and to turn China into the same kind of semi-colonial, semi-feudal society it had been before the war. The Chinese people, of course, would not tolerate this. The U.S. government supported the anti-Communisl policy of the KMT. After World War II the United States relied on its great economic and military might for overseas expansion, attempting to strengthen its dominant position in the world. Control over China was an important component of America's global strategy. As was stated in a report prepared by the National Security Council, &quot;The basic long-range objective of the United States in China is the furtherance of a stable, representative government over an independent and unified China which is friendly to the United States,... however, the most important objective which it is practicable to pursue in the short run is the prevention of complete communist control of China.&quot;2 In sum, the situation at the end of the War of Resistance Against Japan was as follows: With U.S. support, the KMT government was plotting to monopolize the fruits of victory, but it was doomed to fail for two reasons: politically, the people did 311 nt trust it, and militarily, its vast army had never fully and °ff ectively participated in the war el fort. In contrast, having Endured the hardships of war, the people's armed forces under the leadership of the Communist Party were able to gather some of ‘ fruits of victory, although they were still unable to turn that victory into a total triumph for the people. The fate of China lay with both the CPC and the KMT, and as a direct result of their actions during the war, one party was gaining strength, while the other was beset with crises. How, then, did events unfold after the war? The CPC strove to avoid civil war and to build a new China by peaceful means; it wanted to introduce social and political reforms while strengthening the national economy. Alter eight cruel years of war, the Chinese people were eager for such reforms. If the KMT had been willing to accept a peacelul solution and cooperate with other parties and groups in the process of reconstruction and reform, then despite the complicated struggles which that effort would inevitably have entailed, the CPC would have been willing to compromise, because, after all, that would have benefitted the people. Chiang Kai-shek, however, chose to maintain his policy of autocracy and civil war. Failing to see his own political weakness, he believed that since his military strength far exceeded that of the CPC, he could do whatever he liked. On August 11, 1945, immediately after Japan announced its intention to surrender, the Supreme Command of Chiang's government issued orders to all KMT officers and men in the various war zones &quot;to step up the war effort and, in accordance with existing military plans and orders, to actively push forward without the slightest relaxation. At the same time, a different order was issued to the Eighteenth Group Army (also known as the Eighth Route Army) led by the CPC: &quot;All units of the Eighteenth Group Army should stay where they are, pending further orders&quot;—in other words, they should wait passively for the enemy to attack them. Puppet troops in enemy-occupied areas were ordered to &quot;maintain order and were allowed to be incorporated only into the KMT iorces. Chiang Kai-shek's next step was going to be to launch civil war in an effort to eliminate the Communist Party and to destroy the Liberated Areas and the people's armed forces under its leadership. The CPC, however, was no longer what it had been in 1927, when it was unable to withstand adversity. It would not obtain peace and national reconstruction at the expense of the people's fundamental interests, by allowing China to return to its prewar status. On August 13 the Xinhua News Agency issued a commentary written by Mao Zedong, entitled &quot;Chiang Kai-shek Is Provoking Civil War,&quot; in which he stated point-blank that Chiang's &quot;orders&quot; were from beginning to end &quot;provocations to civil war.&quot; &quot;Can there be any doubt,&quot; the commentary continued, &quot;that the grave danger of civil war will confront the people of the whole country the moment the War of Resistance is over? We now appeal to all our fellow-countrymen and to the Allied countries to take action, together with the people of the Liberated Areas, resolutely to prevent a civil war in China, which would endanger world peace.&quot;3 On the same day, at a meeting of cadres in Yan'an, Mao Zedong made a speech again warning of civil war: &quot;With regard to Chiang Kai-shek's plot to launch a civil war, our Party's policy has been clear and consistent, that is, resolutely to oppose civil war, be against civil war and prevent civil war. In the days to come, we shall continue, with the utmost effort and greatest patience, to lead the people in preventing civil war. Nevertheless, it is necessary to be soberly aware that the danger of civil war is extremely serious because Chiang Kai-shek's policy is already set.&quot;4 &quot;In short,&quot; he concluded, &quot;we must be prepared. Being prepared, we shall able to deal properly with all kinds of complicated situations.&quot;5 Chiang Kai-shek had misgivings about immediately launching full-scale civil war. After eight years of tenacious resistance and such a costly victory, people across the land were longing to rebuild their country in peace. A civil war would be diametrically opposed to their wishes. Furthermore, at that time, the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union were all opposed to civil war in China. In addition, during the War of Resistance, most of Chiang's crack troops had retreated to southwest and northwest 0 „ ,nd d would be difficult for them to advance swiftly into ciuI? ' ml east China let alone northeast China. Lastly, since the rPC unequivocally Earned him of the consequences, he dared CPtCmke reckless action. He still needed more time to prepare n°It was under these circumstances that Chiang sent three teleTto Yan'an inviting Mao Zedong to Chongqing to discuss fm^ t ni que tions of the time. Chiang calculated that if Mao Xd to &quot;me, he could accuse the CPC of rejecting peace Xiations and he could then blame the civil war on the Communists. If, on the other hand, Mao did come, he could use the peace negotiations to put the CPC off guard inducing it to handover the people's armed forces and political power in the Liberated Areas and at the same time gaming the time he needed to deulov his troops for civil war. The Communist Party truly wished to pursue peace, but it was also soberly aware of the situation. The CPC Central Committee believed that no matter what happened, it was necessary to ent into peace negotiations with the KMT for three reasons. First the people desperately wished for peace, democracy and unity alter {he war. If :hcre was the slightest possibility of brmging about progress and development by peaceful means the Party should try to do so. Second, since Chiang Kai-shek could hardly complete his military deployment for civil war within a short period l o time, it was possible for the Party and the People to achieve peace even if only a temporary peace, and that would be usefu I t revolutionary forces, which also needed time to .prepare for any exigencies. Third, the peace negotiations would clearly dem strate to the nation whether the KMT reactionaries truly wanted peace and democracy or were only trying to bring about civil war and totalitarianism under cover of negotiations. This circular, drafted by Mao Zedong, entitled &quot;On Peace Negotiations with the Kuomintang.&quot; It analysed the situation at the time and outlined the Party's position with regard to the negotiations: &quot;At present the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain all disapprove of civil war in China; at the same time our Party has put forward the three great slogans of peace, democracy and unity and is sending Comrades Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Wang Ruofei to Chongqing to discuss with Chiang Kai-shek the great issues of unity and national reconstruction; thus it is possible that the civil war plot of the Chinese reactionaries may be frustrated. The Kuomintang has now strengthened its position by recovering Shanghai, Nanjing and other places, reopening sea communications, taking over the arms of the enemy and incorporating the puppet troops into its own forces. Nevertheless, it is riddled with a thousand gaping wounds, torn by innumerable internal contradictions and beset with great difficulties. It is possible that after the negotiations the Kuomintang, under domestic and foreign pressure, may conditionally recognize our Party's status. Our Party too may conditionally recognize the status of the Kuomintang. This would bring about a new stage of cooperation between the two parties (plus the Democratic League, etc.) and of peaceful development. In that event, our Party should strive to master all methods of legal struggle and intensify its work in the Kuomintang areas in the three main spheres, the cities, the villages and the army (all weak points in our work there). During the negotiations, the Kuomintang is sure to demand that we drastically reduce the size of the Liberated Areas, cut down the strength of the Liberation Army and stop issuing currency. We on our side are prepared to make such concessions as are necessary and as do not damage the fundamental interests of the people. Without such concessions, we cannot explode the Kuomintang's civil war plot, cannot gain the political initiative, cannot win the sympathy of world public opinion and the middle-of-the-roaders within the country and cannot obtain in exchange legal status for our Party and a state of peace. But there are limits to such concessions; the principle is that they must not damage the fundamental interests of the people. «Tf the Kuomintang still wants to launch civil war after our _ r?v haS taken the above steps, it will put itself in the wrong m Par &gt; eS of the whole nation and the whole world, and our Party m be justified in waging a war of self-defence to crush its ntacks Moreover, our Party is powerful, and if anyone attacks us and if the conditions arc favourable for battle, we will certainIv act in self-defence to wipe him out resolutely, thoroughly, wholly and completely (we do not strike rashly but when we do strike, we must win). We must never be cowed by the Muster ^of reictionaries. But we must at all times firmly adhere to, and never forget, these principles: unity, struggle, unity through struggle; to wage struggles with good reason, with advantage an with restraint; and to make use of contradictions win over the many, oppose the few and crush our enemies one by one. <br /> <br /> === The Peace Negotiations in Chongqing and the Political Consultative Conference ===<br /> On August 28, 1945, in accordance with the Central Committee's decision, Mao Zedong flew from Yan'an to Chongqing with Zhou Enlai and Wang Ruofei for peace negotiations with the Kuomintang authorities. They were accompanied by the KM 1 representative Zhang Zhizhong and by U.S. ambassador Patrick J. Hurley. , , , , This event attracted much attention both at home and abroad, enabling many people to see more clearly that the CPC was sincere in seeking a peaceful solution. Mao's action was widely praised and supported. The poet Liu Yazi wrote a poem extolling it as an act of &quot;overwhelming courage.&quot; Zhang Zhizhong also said that this was a major event in Chinese history. The Achievements of the Peace Negotiations in Chongqing While in Chongqing, Mao Zedong discussed matters of peace nd national reconstruction several times directly with Chiang Kai-shek. Most of the negotiations on specific issues were carried out by CPC representatives Zhou Enlai and Wang Ruofei, and KMT representatives Wang Shijie, Zhang Qun, Zhang Zhizhong and Shao Lizi. Chiang Kai-shek's plans for this round of negotiations can be seen in a passage from his diary written on August 28 and 29, 1945: &quot;Political and military questions should all be resolved. With regard to political issues, however, we should adopt an extremely generous attitude, while making no concessions in military matters.&quot; Moreover, he wrote, &quot;Government administration and military command should be unified.&quot; These political and military questions were, according to Chiang, &quot;at the heart of the issue.&quot; In fact, however, Chiang was never extremely generous in political matters; he merely made a few empty promises of democracy. What he was actually interested in was &quot;unifying&quot; government administration and military command—in other words, eliminating the Liberated Areas and the people's armed forces. On this point, Chiang would brook no concessions. The CPC Central Committee realized beforehand what his attitude would be. To force him to fulfil his promises of democracy, to secure the peace and democracy the nation needed and to disprove the rumour that the Communist Party did not want peace and unity, the CPC Central Committee was prepared, as stated in its internal circular, to reduce the size of the Liberated Areas and the people's armed forces, insofar as such concessions did not harm the fundamental interests of the people. On October 10, 1945, after 43 days of negotiations, the two sides signed a &quot;Summary of Conversations Between the Representatives of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China&quot; (also known as the &quot;October 10th Agreement&quot;). In this summary, the KMT authorities agreed with the &quot;basic policy of peace and national reconstruction&quot;, accepted &quot;long-term cooperation... resolute avoidance of civil war and the building of a new China, independent, free, prosperous and powerful.&quot; They also agreed to bring the KMT's political tutelage to an end, acknowledged some of the people's democratic rights and consentJJAPTER FIVE VICTORY IN THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION 3 1 a to &quot;actively carry out local self-government and conduct Lneral elections from the lower level upward.&quot; 8 during the course of negotiations, both sides agreed to convene _ nolitical consultative conference attended by representatives of all parties and noted public figures, to discuss plans for peace and national reconstruction. . . , The Liberated Areas and the army were the major points of contention. The CPC representatives took the initiative, offering to move troops stationed in base areas in Guangdong, Zhejiang, southern Jiangsu, central and southern Anhui, Hunan, Hu ci and Henan (excluding northern Henan) to the north. At the same time, they also stated that on condition of &quot;an equitable and rational reorganization of the armed forces of the who e country,&quot; they would be willing to reduce their troops from 1.2 million to 24 divisions or to a minimum of 20 divisions, if this represented one-seventh of the total number of reorganized troops. Despite the willingness of the Communist Party to make such major concessions, these two issues remained outstanding, because the Kuomintang was determined to eliminate the people's armed forces and the people's regnpe in the Liberated Areas. . . . ~ The result of the Chongqing negotiations was a victory lor the people's forces. The day after the signing of the October 10th Agreement, Mao Zedong returned to Yan'an and made the following statement at a meeting of the Political Bureau: &quot;The first positive aspect of the negotiations is that they were conducted in an equal manner. For the first time in history both sides formally signed an agreement. Second, the six agreements already signed are all beneficial to the people.&quot; Through the negotiations, the KMT had accepted the policy of peace and unity. Even though the agreements were mere words on paper, if the KMT once again tried to provoke civil war, it would put itself in the wrong in the eyes of the nation and the world and would lose all political initiative. The agreements, therefore, could still give powerful impetus to the democratic movement in the KMT areas. The KMT Launches a Military Offensive During the Peace Negotiations Even though the KMT authorities were holding peace negotiations with the CPC, their main plan was still to use armed might to eliminate the people's revolutionary forces. Furthermore, during the negotiations in Chongqing, the KMT authorities secretly reprinted Chiang Kai-shek's Handbook on the Suppression of Bandits written during his 1933 campaign to &quot;encircle and suppress&quot; the Red Army. The October 10th Agreement was no sooner signed than Chiang secretly ordered his troops to attack the Liberated Areas, calling upon his generals to act according to his instructions in the handbook—that is, urge their officers and men to do their utmost to suppress the &quot;bandits&quot; with all speed. The KMT's strategy was to take complete control of the region south of the Yangtze River and to capture strategic areas and key communication lines in north China, thereby dividing the Liberated Areas and reducing their size, while opening up a route to northeast China. After this, they would proceed to occupy the whole of northeast China, taking advantage of the provisions of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance.7 During the two months from the time of the Japanese surrender on August 14, 1945, to October 17, 1945, KMT troops occupied thirty cities in the Liberated Areas. While working hard for peace and democracy, the Communist Party entertained no illusions about the Kuomintang authorities. In the inner-Party circular of August 26, the Central Committee had firmly stated: &quot;You must definitely not hope that the Kuomintang will be kind-hearted, because it will never be kindhearted. You must rely on your own strength, on correct guidance of activities, on brotherly unity within the Party and good relations with the people.&quot;8 Only then could the Party's position be invulnerable, only then could it lay a solid foundation for peace and democracy and for the building of a new China. On September 19, to protect the fruits of the people's victory in the anti-Japanese war and to expand the people's revolutionary forces, the CPC Central Committee issued a directive to all its pR jtjvE VICTORY IN THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION cHApTbR Hvj^ /.nils succinctly stating its nationwide military strategy : Exbur . ,0 the North, while taking a defensive position in e C*'°The most important components of this strategy were to S concessions in the South by shortening the line of defence ni'pre- to consolidate north China and the Liberated Areas in east and central China; and to gain control over Rehe and Chahar provinces, while concentrating forces to capture the strategically imnortant areas in northeast China.9 To implement this plan and lead the Party's work mno^east rhina the CPC Central Committee transferred 1 1 0,000 military personnel and 20,000 political cadres there and established its Northeast Bureau, with Peng Zhen as secretary and Chen Yun and others as members. At the same time the KMT, wishing to penetrate deep into north China and open a route to the NorthMst dispatched three units to attack the Liberated Areas in north China One unit attacked eastward along the Bciping-Suiyuan Radway the second attacked northward along the TianjrnPukou Railway, while the third pushed toward Beip‘ng &quot;l0&quot;g Datong-Puzhou, Zhengding-Taiyuan and fieipmg-Hankou rail ways The people's armed forces resolutely fought back. In the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Liberated Area the pcop^ armed forces, under the command of Liu Bocheng and D &quot;g Xiaoping wiped out 35,000 men of the attacking troops under the command of Yan Xishan in Shangdang, Shanxi Province. This contained the KMT assault on the Liberated Areas and strength Tned the position of the CPC at the Chongqing negotiations, facilitating the signing of the October 10th Agreement. Ip m d to late October, the people's armed forces m the Liber a tec Areas fought three battles along the Beiping-Suiyuan Railway the Tianjin-Pukou Railway and the Beiping-Hankou Rai^ay^ Handan), annihilating 110,000 attacking tt~ps.By so doing they delayed the KMT's penetration of north China and slowed its advance toward northeast China. °nMg the Hand^ campaign, the CPC succeeded in winning over th : depu ty ^com mander of the KMT's 1 1th War Zone and commander o its Ne Eighth Corps, Gao Shuxun, who, on the battlefield, ordered the 10,000 troops under his command to join the people s armcforces. The KMT was so unpopular for having started a civil war after the victory over Japan that even this high-ranking officer broke with it. The event had tremendous repercussions throughout the country. The people's armed forces, acting on the CPC Central Committee's directive, recovered territory from the Japanese and puppet troops. At the same time, they fought a war of self-defence against the KM1 troops. By January 1946, the Liberated Areas covered an area of 2,391,000 square kilometres with a population of 149 million, and they included 506 cities. The KMT, hgwever, did not learn from its failures and stop its attacks on the Liberated Areas but continued to move large numbers of troops to the civil war battlefront. By early December 1945, the KMT had thrown against the Liberated Areas a total of 1.9 million men, including 1.2 million regular troops, 350,000 puppet Troops and even 350,000 Japanese troops. Naturally, this aroused the fury of the people, who wanted peace and democracy. On November 19 in Chongqing, Guo Moruo, Shen Junru and others staged a protest against the civil war and established the Anti-Civil War Association of All Circles. On November 25 in Kunming, more than 6,000 university and secondary-school students assembled at Southwest Associated University (formed by Beijing University, Qinghua University and Nankai University, which had all moved there at the beginning of the anti- Japanese war) to discuss current affairs and protest the civil war. Faced with pressure from reactionary soldiers, police and secret agents, 30,000 students in Kunming went on strike. The CPC Working Committee of Yunnan Province led the students in this struggle. On December 1 a large band of armed thugs sent by the KMT attacked the campus of Southwest Associated University and other schools with hand grenades, killing four students and wounding several dozen. This incident, which shook the entire nation, came to be known as the December 1st Massacre. The students of Kunming, supported by teachers and individuals from all walks of life, nevertheless continued their struggle. In Chongqing, Shanghai and other cities, there was an outpouring of support for them in the form of strikes and demonstrations by 321 n.dents and other people. The December 1st Movement, based s slogan &quot;Oppose civil war and struggle for democracy! oushed the KMT authorities, who clung to their policy of civil JL, still further into a passive position politically. In September 1945 in Chongqing, as the democratic movement surged forward, intellectuals in the fields of science, technology, culture and education turned what was originally the Democracy ind Science Forum into a formal political organization called the September 3rd Forum. This was the forerunner of the Jiu San (September 3rd) Society. In December of the same year, China Democratic National Construction Association and China Association for Promoting Democracy were founded in Chongqing and Shanghai, respectively. China Democratic League, democratic factions within the KMT and other organizations intensified their activities. They all called for democracy and an end to civil war. The patriotic and democratic movement in the KMT areas was gaining momentum every day. The KMT government dispatched a great number of ofiicials to all the formerly enemy-occupied areas they could reach, particularly the cities, to resume control there. The people in such areas, having just cast off the yoke of the Japanese invaders, at first welcomed the return of the KMT. But many corrupt officials took advantage of their position to expropriate wealth as &quot;booty. There was severe inflation and social chaos, and the masses lived in dire poverty. The bureaucrat-capitalists waxed fat in the name of the takeover, while the future of national industry became increasingly hopeless. The people lost faith in the KMT. At this time, the U.S. government announced the recall of its ambassador, Patrick Hurley, who had lost his credibility as a mediator by stating publicly that the U.S. would cooperate only with Chiang Kai-shek, and appointed General George Marshall as President Truman's special envoy to China to &quot;mediate in the civil war. On December 15 General Marshall left for China. On the same day, President Truman made a statement on U.S. policy toward China, expressing support for the convening of a meeting of representatives of major political parties in China to work out an early solution to the internal strife—a solution that would bring about the unification of the country. But he also stated that the existence of autonomous armies such as the Communist army was inconsistent with political unity and actually made it impossible. Accordingly, once a representative government was established, the autonomous armies and all other armed forces in China should be incorporated into the National Army. On December 27 the Soviet, U.S. and British foreign ministers published an agreement on China they had reached at a meeting in Moscow, stating, &quot;In China unity and democratization must be realized under the leadership of the National Government, democrats must be recruited into all organs of the National Government, and the internal struggle must stop.&quot;10 Marshall's mission was to persuade the Chinese government to convene a national conference attended by representatives of all major parties in order to &quot;bring about China's unification,&quot; a plan that deliberately denied the existence of the Communist-led people's armed forces. At the same time, he was to help the KMT move troops into northeast China and prepare to move others into north China. His main objective was to implement the established policy of helping the KMT expand its authority in China as much as possible. The Political Consultative Conference Under these circumstances, Chiang Kai-shek agreed to hold a political consultative conference as stipulated in the October 10th Agreement. On December 16 Zhou Enlai arrived in Chongqing as the head of the CPC delegation to attend the Political Consultative Conference. To create better conditions for the conference, the CPC delegation first proposed an unconditional cease-fire. After repeated negotiations, on January 5, 1946, it signed an agreement with the KMT authorities on the cessation of hostilities. On January 10 both sides issued orders that from midnight of January 13, their armies should hold their positions and halt all military activity. Thus, for a period of time the fighting truly stopped (except in northeast China), kindling a new hope in the hearts of a people who had suffered through so many years of war 323 and chaos—the hope that civil war might be averted. On the same day that the cease-fire order was issued, the political Consultative Conference opened in Chongqing. A total 0f 38 delegates attended, including representatives of the KMT, the CPC, the Democratic League and the Youth Party and individuals without party affiliation. The CPC and the middleof-the-roaders, represented by the Democratic League, had much in common with regard to basic political questions: they all supported peace as opposed to civil war, and democracy as opposed to one-party dictatorship by the KMT. During the conference, the CPC and Democratic League delegations and some other representatives often discussed major issues among themselves so as to reach a consensus and act in concert. The conference, which lasted twenty-two days and ended on January 31, adopted five agreements: on government organization, on a national assembly, on a programme for peace and national reconstruction, on military affairs and on a draft constitution. According to the first of these agreements, the one-party government of the KMT was to be reorganized with a Government Council as the supreme organ. Half of the councilors were to be from other parties. During the transition period between the termination of the KMT's political tutelage and the formation of a constitutional government, the Council would be responsible for convening a national assembly to draft a constitution. According to the agreement on the draft constitution, a Legislative Yuan would be the highest legislative organ and would be elected by popular vote. An Executive Yuan would be the highest administrative organ and would be responsible to the Legislative Yuan. If the Legislative Yuan collectively lacked confidence in the Executive Yuan, the latter would have either to resign or to request that the President dissolve the Legislative Yuan. This central government structure was equivalent to the parliamentary or cabinet system in Britain and France; It could restrict Chiang Kai-shek's dictatorial powers. The agreement also stipulated that central and local government should be separate. The province would be the highest unit of local self-government, the provincial governor would be elected by the people, and the province would have a constitution, etc. This provided a potential safeguard for the continued existence of democratic governments in the Liberated Areas. The agreement on military affairs mandated that military power should be separate from political parties, that military authority should be separate from civil authority and that the military system should be reformed in line with a democratic system of government. It provided that a three-man military sub-committee (consisting of CPC representative Zhou Enlai, KMT representative Zhang Zhizhong and U.S. special envoy George Marshall) should reach an agreement on measures for reorganizing the troops of the CPC and that the troops of the KMT should be reorganized according to the plan already worked out by the KMT's Ministry of War. The various agreements reached at the Political Consultative Conference did not represent new-democracy, but they did help break up Chiang Kai-shek's dictatorship and promote democracy, and they advanced the cause of peace and national reconstruction. In varying degrees, therefore, they were beneficial to the people and were welcomed by them. These agreements aroused in the hearts of hundreds of millions of the Chinese people the fervent hope for nationwide peace, democracy, unity and unification. Because the agreements embodied many of the opinions of the middle-of-the-roaders, their response was particularly enthusiastic. As a result, for quite a long time in the KMT areas the agreements served as the criterion by which people judged right and wrong: those who upheld the line of the Political Consultative Conference had the support of the people, while those who abrogated it were in clear opposition to them. The CPC was prepared to implement these agreements. When issuing the cease-fire orders, Chairman Mao Zedong had said that a new stage of peace and democracy in China was about to begin and that the entire Party should strive to consolidate domestic peace, carry out democratic reform and build an independent, free, prosperous and powerful new China. The day after the Political Consultative Conference ended, the CPC Central Com325 ^ter five victory in the democratic revolution ■ttee issued an inner-Party directive repeating that the country entering upon a new stage of peace and democracy. _ The principal form of revolution in China, it said, had shifted fro =rmedP struggle to unarmed mass struggle and parliamentary struggle Domestic problems would be solved by political means ,1 of the Party's work must be adapted to this new situation and the entire Party must work for the realization of agreements reached by the Political Consultative Conference. The CPC, the Central Committee said, was sincerely prepared to realize domestic peace, advance economic development and social and political reform and work for progress and prosperity, in accordance with the wishes of the great majority - provided it could protect ^and preserve the basic rights gamed by the people during the ar Resistance Against Japan. At the same time, it continued, Chiang Kai-shek had accepted the agreement only under P^ure, and Britain the U.S. and the big bourgeoisie in China still had many hidden'sehemes. The road to democracy in China would be long and tortuous, it warned, and people should be prepared for the possibility of war. Because of this possibility, the Central Committee advised that it was important for the people s forces to remain on guard and to defend and expand their positions. The [hree most important tasks for the Liberated Areas it declared, were to train soldiers, reduce rents and increase Pr°du«™\ The KMT represented the interests of the big landlords and big bourgeoisie and was therefore based on a very narrow segment of society. Consequently, it could not tolerate any democratic informs The Chiang Kai-shek clique believed that neither people s democracy nor Western-style bourgeois democracy could be realized in China. The U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson later mentioned this in his memoirs, noting that &quot;more and more the Kuomintang evinced the conviction that pursuit of a united and democratic China meant that they would lose all.&quot;1' Precisely for this reason, the KMT was never prepared to fulfil the agreements adopted at the Political Consultative Conference. While the conference was still in session, the Anti-Civi Association of All Circles in Chongqing had held a senes of &quot; meetings at Cangbai Hall. The KMT had sent secret agents to disrupt the meetings, beat people and prevent the lectures from continuing. As soon as the conference was over, at a meeting of the Standing Committee of the KMT Central Executive Committee, many of the diehards angrily denounced the agreements, complaining that they were not favourable to the KMT and, indeed, represented a failure for the party. Chiang Kai-shek himself said, &quot;I am not satisfied with the draft constitution either, but since the matter has already reached this point, there is no way to turn back. For the time being, we have to adopt it and see what we can do in the future.&quot;12 On February 10, 1946, in Chongqing, KMT secret agents disrupted a public meeting held to celebrate the success of the Political Consultative Conference. In March, at the Second Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Executive Committee of the KMT, Chiang Kai-shek told his followers to take remedial measures with regard to the main points of the agreements. He then intensified the civil war, thereby turning them into mere scraps of paper.<br /> <br /> === Smashing the Kuomintang's Offensive by a War of Self-Defence ===<br /> Despite the agreements, the KMT ruling clique still sought to weaken and then destroy the people's revolutionary forces by military means. In the first half of 1946, a political storm was brewing in China. On the surface, the truce agreement signed in January was being carried out. To maintain the cease-fire, the Executive Headquarters for Military Mediation, consisting of representatives of the KMT, the CPC and the United States, sent mediators wherever military clashes occurred. Although the KMT troops never stopped nibbling away at the Liberated Areas, no large-scale military confrontations occurred except in northeast China. But this was merely the calm before the storm. Chiang Kai-shek was using the lull to prepare for full-scale civil war. 327 The Kuomintang Intensifies Preparations for Full-Scale Civil War r, was largely because Chiang could count on the support and distance of the U.S. government that he dared tear up the agreements of the Political Consultative Conference and prepare f° To launch full-scale civil war, Chiang first needed to move his rrick troops swiftly to north and east China to gam control over ch c ksPl4 Shanghai, Nanjing, Beiping and Tianjin. From September 1945 to June 1946, the United States used military ^ &quot;and warships to transport 14 KMT corps 41 divisions and eight regiments of the communications P0'1^ 640 000 men in all, to north, east, northeast and south China. The United States also landed 90,000 marines in China and statlon^ them in Shanghai, Qingdao, Tianjin, Beiping, Qinhuangd. ao i in other places, with'orders to hold those areas unt.l they could^ turned over to the KMT troops. In a short time, the KMT forces took over military equipment from more than one million Jap anese troops and several hundred thousand puppet troops. They a&quot;so!ncor%rated a large number of puppet troops into their own armies greatly increasing their military strength. Having gained control of all the major cities south of the Great Wall, the KMT troops focused theu attack on no^ast Chta^ Union declarldwar onJ^panm August 1 945, JinzhouPPChengde, etc. Other units also advanced into n°rtheast China, recapturing broad areas, except ™ ssstswss ss ss&amp;iss'attack on northeast China. During November they reoccupied Shanhaiguan Jinzhou and other places held by Communist-led forces At the time of the signing of the truce agreement in January 1946, the KMT government had excluded northeast China on the pretext that &quot;sovereignty had not yet been regained there.&quot; In February the U.S. Seventh Fleet used transport vessels to move crack KMT troops (five corps including the New First and Sixth Corps) to Qinhuangdao, from which point the troops advanced to northeast China. In this way, the KMT military presence in the Northeast increased dramatically to 285,000 men. In early March the Soviet army, acting in accordance with the Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty, began to withdraw from the cities and rail lines in northeast China. The KMT army immediately seized Shenyang and advanced against the Liberated Areas from several directions. Beginning on April 18, the main forces of the Communist-led Northeast Democratic Allied Army fought an intense, month-long battle to defend Sipingjie. After annihilating 10,000 enemy troops, they withdrew from the city. In late May, the KMT army captured Changchun and gained control over most of the area south of the Songhua River in Heilongjiang Province. Because the KMT government announced that it would move the capital from Chongqing back to Nanjing in early May, the site of the negotiations between the KMT and the CPC also moved to Nanjing. Zhou Enlai led the CPC delegation to Nanjing and Shanghai, continuing the arduous negotiations and trying hard to avert a full-scale civil war at the last moment. But since Chiang Kai-shek had already committed himself to his course of action, the negotiations were doomed to failure. In the meantime, the U.S. government increased its aid to the KMT. In March 1946 the United States successively organized army and navy advisory teams. On June 17 the two governments signed the Sino-American Lend-Lease Agreement, which transferred U.S.$51.7 million worth of military equipment to the KMT. Secretary of State Acheson later admitted the importance of the U.S. role. In a letter to President Truman on July 30, 1949, he noted: &quot;Indeed during that period, thanks very largely to our aid in transporting, arming and supplying their forces, they extended their control over a large part of North China and Manchuria.&quot;13 These facts shattered the myth of U.S. &quot;media 329 a°The actions by Chiang and the United States caused the * anxiety among the people, including many democratic Arties and unaffiliated democrats. In mid-June the Federation People's Organizations of Shanghai formed a delegation to go t Nanking with a petition to the KMT authorities appealing for neace The group included well-known persons from the Associa for Promoting Democracy, the Democratic National Com struction Association and religious circles. On June 23 the CPC Central Committee's Shanghai Bureau organized more than0°' nOO people from all walks of life to see the petitioners off at the railway station That night, when they arrived at Xiaguan Station n NaniS a group of Thugs dispatched by the KMT authorities surrounded them and beat them in a melee that lasted five hours. Ma Xulun leader of the delegation, and several other representatives were seriously injured. Zhou Enlai hurried to the hospital to express his sympathy and concern. Ma took Zhou s hand an said to him that the hopes of all Chma were pinned on the &quot;&quot;devetopments indicated that the full-scale avU war sought by Chiang Kai-shek was already imminent. Despite the Communist Party's many efforts to achieve peace, it could not prevent the outbreak of war. While doing its best to uphold the agreements of the Political Consultative Coherence, the Party wL forced to prepare to defend itself. On April 16 Zhou Enlai sent a telegram to the CPC Central Committee warning of the grave danger. &quot;To fool the people,&quot; he wrote, &quot;Chiang superficially seeks to reach a compromise, but he is covertly deploying his trips He is hatching formidable plots.&quot; On May 21 l the Centra Committee issued a document telling all Party members that the Kuomintang was preparing for nationwide civil war. We, for our part^the Central Committee directed, &quot;should increase our own preparations (and especially the training of soldiers) in order to stop him &quot; Earlier, on May 4, the Central Committee had issued a d ireedve (known as the May 4th Directive) to solve the rural land question 14 This was designed to increase the peasants enthusism for revolution and production and to lay an even stronger foundation for mass support in the impending war of self-defence On June 19, the eve of the outbreak of civil war, the CPc Central Committee issued an inner-Party directive assessing the situation: &quot;Chiang Kai-shek is bent on launching a major attack, which will be hard to prevent. Once he starts, we judge that if, after about six months of fighting, we win a great victory, peace negotiations can certainly be held. If it is a stalemate, peace talks are also possible. If Chiang's forces win a great victory, there will be no peace talks. Therefore, to win peace our troops must defeat Chiang's attacking forces.&quot; Subsequently, in a directive issued to the commanders of all military units, the Central Committee stated, &quot;Even though our Party is doing everything in its power to arrive at a compromise, making major concessions at the negotiations in Nanjing, you should harbour no illusions.&quot; Facts show that the CPC took action only when its very existence was at stake and when it could no longer avoid defending itself. Moreover, even after being forced into a war of self-defence, it was prepared to make concessions to stop the war. It was entirely due to the machinations of the KMT ruling clique that civil war broke out in China after the victory over Japan, and the KMT should therefore bear full responsibility for it. Full-scale Civil War Breaks Out As soon as they had completed their preparations for war, the KMT authorities revealed their true nature—their contempt for the truce agreement and for the agreements of the Political Consultative Conference—by launching a full-scale attack on the Liberated Areas. On June 26, 1946, two hundred and twenty thousand KMT troops began the assault by besieging the Central Plains Liberated Area in the border region between Hubei and Henan provinces. On the night of the same day, the main forces of the Central Plains Command, led by Commander Li Xiannian and Political Commissar Zheng Weisan and divided into two columns, broke through the enemy siege. Then the KMT forces mounted major offensives against the Liberated Areas of east 331 rhina Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan, Shanxi-Suiyuan, the Northeast and Hainan Island. These attacks marked the outbreak of full-scale civil war. . • On July 11 KMT secret agents in Kunming assassinated Li Gongpu, a member of the Central Committee of the Democratic League and an activist famous for his participation in the Patriotic National Salvation Movement on the eve of the outbreak of the war with Japan. On July 15 Wen Yiduo, a poet and scholar who was a professor at Southwest Associated University, was assassinated in the same city. At the end of the anti- Japanese war, outraged by the lawless acts of the KMT, Wen had taken an active part in the democratic movement. It was obvious that the KMT reactionaries were aiming their guns not only at the Communists but also at all people of good will who called for peace and democracy. As the KMT government overestimated its own strength, it was confident of the outcome of the war and hoped to win a quick victory. For the assault on the Liberated Areas it had assembled 193 brigades (divisions), or 1.6 million of its regular troops, representing 80 percent of its total strength of 248 brigades (divisions), numbering two million. The KMT's principal strategy was to follow the trunk rail lines, attack from south to north and seize and control the cities and lines of communication of the Liberated Areas, wiping out the main elements of the people's armed forces or forcing them north of the Yellow River, where they could then be rounded up and annihilated. Chiang Kai-shek claimed that in view of the KMT's superior military strength, with proper cooperation and flexible tactics the war could be brought to a speedy conclusion. His chief of staff, Chen Cheng, estimated that the Communist-led people's armed forces could be wiped out in three to five months at most. The situation of the people's revolutionary lorces at the beginning of the war was truly grim. In terms of military and economic strength, the KMT was clearly superior. At the time, the people's armed forces consisted of 1.27 million men equipped basically with weapons captured from Japanese and puppet foot soldiers. They had only a few pieces of artillery. The Liberated Areas covered a region measuring approximately 2.3 million square kilometres, populated by 136 million people. Feudal forces within these areas had not yet been eliminated, and the rear areas were not yet consolidated. Moreover, the Liberated Areas were geographically separated from each other by KMT forces and were therefore unable to obtain material assistance from outside. With such a wide disparity between its own strength and that of the enemy, the first question the Communist Party was forced to answer was whether it dared to fight a revolutionary war against the counter-revolutionaries. As we have seen, one major reason that the KMT dared to launch a full-scale civil war was the support that it received from the U.S. government. At that time, the United States seemed invincible, combining great economic strength with its monopoly of the secret of the atomic bomb. The Chinese reactionaries invoked the power of their backer to intimidate others. At the beginning of the war, some middle-of-the-roaders were misled by the outward strength of the reactionaries and overcome by pessimism and fear. Some people even went so far as to advocate that soldiers and civilians in the Liberated Areas, faced with attack, should compromise and make concessions. Internationally, the U.S. was escalating the &quot;cold war.&quot; At the time a clamour was raised that the United States and the USSR were bound to fight, and many people believed that World War III was imminent. The Soviet leaders took a pessimistic view of the situation: they believed that if civil war broke out in China, the United States and the Soviet Union might be drawn into the conflict. China would then be the battlefield in a world war, and the Chinese nation would risk extermination. For this reason, they proposed that the CPC ought to join with Chiang Kai-shek's government and disband its own army. Despite all this, the CPC remained calm and was determined to fight back. After the outbreak of the civil war, all of the Communist-led people's armed forces were compelled to fight in self-defence. The Party believed that Chiang's offensive not only must but could be defeated. Could the Chinese civil war lead to a world war? To answer 333 thjs question, in April 1946 Mao Zedong wrote an i essay &quot;Some Points in Appraisal of the Present International Situation^ He declared that while there was a danger of world war, the demoStic forces of the people of the world were torging ahead and S they must and fould avert that danger. The United States Britain and France and the Soviet Union would arrive at a compromise sooner or later. But, he added, &quot;such compromise doesPnot require the people in the countries of the capitalist world to follow suit and make compromises at home, lhe people in those countries will continue to wage different struggles in accordance with their different conditions.&quot;15 In August of the same vear, not long after the civil war broke out, when talking with the American correspondent Anna Louise Strong, Mao Zedong put forward his famous thesis, &quot;All reactionaries are paper tigers &quot;In appearance &quot; he said, &quot;the reactionaries are terrifying but in reality they are not so powerful. From a long-term point of view it is not the reactionaries but the people who arc really powerful.&quot;16 Mao's views greatly strengthened the confidence and resolve of the entire Party membership, the army and the peop c, convincing them that the Chinese reactionaries could be defeated. But, what would it take to repulse the KMT s military attack. This was another question the CPC had to answer. The Centra] Committee enunciated this fundamental principle- &quot;In order to smash Chiang Kai-shek's offensive we must cooperate closely with the masses of the people and win over all who can be won over.&quot;1' The people's armed forces were m an inferior position both in numbers and in equipment. If they were to defeat Chiang, they had to rely on the people and fight a people's war; there was no other alternative. This was the key to victory. For this purpose, the Party had to solve the rural lan problem, rely on the poor peasants and farm labourers and unite with the middle peasants, while distinguishing the ordinary rich peasants and middle and small landlords from the -traitors bdd gentry and local tyrants. It had to consolidate the Liberated Areas and obtain unending human and material resources to support the war. In the cities, the Party should rely on the working class, the petty bourgeoisie and all progressives and take care to unite with the middle-of-the-roaders and isolate the reactionaries. Among the KMT troops, it should win over all the possible opponents of civil war and isolate the bellicose elements. In short, the Party's political principle was to mobilize the masses, unite with all the forces that could be united with and build the broadest possible people's democratic united front. The Party's military strategy was based on the principle of concentrating a superior force to destroy the enemy forces one by one. Hence, the tactic of dispersing forces for guerrilla warfare, which had been the one chiefly used in the anti-Japanese war, was for the most part supplanted by the tactic of concentrating forces for mobile warfare. And to implement a strategy of active defence, rather than trying to hold or seize a specific city or place, the CPC made elimination of enemy effectives its main objective. During the period from June 1946 to June 1947, the people's armed forces were in a stage of strategic defensive, fighting mainly in the Liberated Areas. During the first eight months of this period, they repelled a general KMT attack on all fronts; during the last four months, when the KMT troops launched concentrated attacks on key sectors, they repelled those as well. At the beginning of the war the KMT, relying on its superiority in numbers and equipment, mounted fierce assaults on the Liberated Areas in an attempt to wipe out the people's armed forces with one blow. The CPC Central Committee, however, had always been prepared for two eventualities. While it had been striving for peace, it had also been preparing to deal with any surprise attack by the KMT. When the KMT troops advanced en masse, the people's troops in the Liberated Areas fought back steadily, concentrating superior forces and trying to annihilate the enemy in mobile warfare. Not long after breaking the siege on the Central Plains, the Central China Field Army, under the command of Su Yu, won seven successive victories in central Jiangsu Province, wiping out six enemy brigades and five battalions of the enemy's communications police corps, totalling more than 50,000 men. Victories were also reported from the area north of the Huaihe River, from the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Liberated Area, from the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Liberated Area 335 ER HVE VICTORY IN THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION _ the Northeast These victories dulled the edge of the and from the Northeas . first experjence m armed forces recaptured 48 wiping out cQuld use m mc'tonnmes fttaduaUy decreased, their morale sank andrteir the peoples tioops recaP TJlc ^^T was weakening, beblocking further '&quot;&quot;effectives had been destroyed and because prison duty ur the occupied areas abandoned by the people's^anned forces .In h d t - « &quot;wwie the KMT was attacking the Liberated Are^ militarily, U T alTyihe ZhouEnlai and tions with the KMT. 1 he , d the civji war but continr ^ t ' t me&quot;1 Marshall ^and^the newly appointed US ambassador to China, Leighton Stuart M ^ declaring that the d^th&quot;a T &quot;mfdiatmn&quot; had already difficult to resolve and that ^ headed by Zh0u failed. On September 30 regard to the breakttSBSPO&amp;gBzZSi CPC's Liberated Areas, to push relations between the KMT and the CPC to the final breaking point.&quot;18 The letter contained a stern warning: &quot;We have received special orders which state that if the government does not immediately cease its military operations against Zhangjiakou and the surrounding areas, the CPC will have no alternative but to view such actions as the government's public declaration of complete failure of the negotiations and its final rejection of a political solution. Full responsibility for all the grave consequences arising therefrom will, of course, be borne by the government.&quot; On October 1 1 the KMT army, without heeding the repeated CPC warnings, launched an assault on Zhangjiakou and occupied it. The KMT authorities let this victory cloud their judgment and immediately abrogated the Political Consultative Conference agreement on the National Assembly. That agreement provided that the National Assembly should be convened not by the one-party government of the KMT but by a reorganized coalition government of all parties. Yet on the very afternoon of the capture of Zhangjiakou, the KMT formally announced that it was going to convene the Assembly. In this way, even more people came to see that it was the KMT that rejected peace and democracy, while the CPC, left with no other choice, had been forced into a war of self-defence. Thus, the sympathy of the people was with the Communist Party. The KMT asked all organizations that had attended the Political Consultative Conference to hand in lists of the representatives they would send to the National Assembly. The CPC flatly refused to do so, and the Democratic League did likewise. The KMT-dominated National Assembly opened in Nanjing in midNovember 1946 (apart from the KMT members, it was attended only by a few politicians from the Youth Party and the Democratic Socialist Party). It adopted the so-called Constitution of the Republic of China, designed to support the dictatorial regime of Chiang Kai-shek. On November 19 Zhou Enlai concluded his attempts to negotiate peace, which had lasted more than twelve months, and returned to Yan'an. In January 1947 General Marshall issued a statement of his intention to leave China and then C turned to the United States. On January 29 the U.S govern1 nt announced the withdrawal of its representatives front the Executive Headquarters for Military Mediation On February2 the KMT authorities forced the CPC representatives to the Exe hnve Headquarters for Military Mediation, including Ye JianCXrto return to Yan'an. Next they ordered the CPC representI fves stationed in Nanjing, Shanghai and Chongqing mdudmg Dong Biwu, Wu Yuzhang and their colleagues, to leave those cities bv March 5. New China Daily, published in Chongoing wls orderfd to shut down. At this point, the KMT blocked all possible avenues to peace and broke off all relations wi c CPh,' March 1947 the KMT troops began to suffer repeated setbacks in their full-scale offensive and had to shift the focus their attacks to key sectors in the Liberated Areas. In the ShanxiHebei-Shandong-Henan and Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei aret* andrn northeast China, they were forced to go on lhe defensive T KMT concentrated its main strength on wiping out the peop e s armed forces in the Northern Shaanxi and Shandong Liberated Areas before turning to others. The people's armed forces continued to follow their strategy of active defence^ In Shandong Province in late February, the East China Held Army under tghe command of Chen Yi and Su Yu, aunched a surprise attack in the Laiwu area. It wiped out over 56,000 men of the KMT's 2nd Pacification Zone, who had been advancing south under deputy commander Li Xianzhou. This dealt a crushing blow to the enemy troops, and made it possible i^h iVearly East China Field Army to focus on fighting in the South. In ear y March the commander-in-chief of the KMT grounc 1 forces Gu Zhutong, ordered 60 brigades, approximately 450,000 men, to advance8 steadily in close formation, ‘inching a new a^ ck^on the Shandong front. Acting on orders of the CPC Central rary Commission, the East China Field Army lured the enemy m deep carefully biding its time and keeping its mam contingen in reserve Then in mid-May it finally seized the initiative and nut out of action 32,000 of the KMT's American-equipped crack troops, ihe Reorganized 74th Division, at the battle of Menglianggu. This smashed the KMT's attack on key sectors in the Shandong Liberated Area. Jn northern Shaanxi, the KMT launched a sudden assault on Yan'an, seat of the CPC Central Committee and General Headquarters of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Two hundred and fifty thousand troops, under the command of Hu Zongnan and others, engaged the 20,000 CPC troops. Although outnumbered ten to one, for six days of round-the-clock combat the Communist troops held back the KMT forces south of Yan'an covering the withdrawal of the CPC central officials and other residents. On March 19 they abandoned Yan'an, beginning a period of bitter fighting in northern Shaanxi. The KMT generals were overjoyed at the capture of Yan'an, but they soon realized that their happiness was premature. After withdrawing from Yan'an, the CPC Central Committee decided to send to north China a working committee consisting o( several of its members, including Liu Shaoqi and Zhu De from the Secretariat, to carry out certain tasks on its behalf. The majority of the Secretariat, including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Ren Bishi, remained in northern Shaanxi. From there they led the simple but efficient organs of the Central Committee and the PLA General Headquarters, directing military operations on all fronts nationwide. Ye Jianying and Yang Shangkun took charge of the Central Committee's Rear Area Commission and moved to northwestern Shanxi to manage the work in the rear. Taking advantage of the favourable conditions in northern Shaanxi, including a good mass base, mountainous terrain and plenty of room for manoeuvre, the PLA's Northwest Field Army Group, later called the Northwest Field Army, used the tactic that Mao Zedong described as &quot;wearing the enemy down to complete exhaustion and then wiping him out.&quot;19 Acting according to this principle, the Northwest Field Army, led by Peng Dehuai, dealt the attacking enemy forces heavy blows. Within 45 days after abandoning Yan'an, the army won three battles fought at Qinghuabian, Yangmahe and Panlongzhen, wiping out more than 20,000 enemy troops. They then turned to fight in northwestern Shaanxi and at Shajiadian completely wiped out the ^PTER FIVE victory in the democratic revolution 339 headquarters staff of the Reorganized 36th Division H^dquarh ‘ and its two brigades under Hu Zongnan. By August the KMT «ault on key sectors of northern Shaanxi had been smashed. During the period from March to June 1947, while in the nrocess of defending themselves against KM 1 attacks on key sectors PLA units began a partial counterattack in the Northeast, Rehe eastern Hebei, northern Henan and southern Shanxi. Although 95 cities in the Liberated Areas remained under enemy occupation, the people's armed forces managed to recapture or liberate 153 cities and to annihilate over 400,000 enemy troops. Within the one year period from July 1946 through June 1947, the People's armed forces wiped out 97 and a half regular brigades, or 780,000 men, as well as 340,000 puppet troops, peace preservation corps and others—altogether, 1.12 million of tie enemy. At the same time, its own ranks swelled to 1.9 million men. In view of these circumstances, the people's armed forces were able to complete the phase of strategic defence as they entered the second year of the War of Liberation.<br /> <br /> === The Opening of the Second Front ===<br /> At this time the Kuomintang ruling clique was growing increasingly corrupt, increasingly divorced trom the people, io carry on the civil war, it relied heavily on the U.S. imperialists and sold out the rights and interests of the nation. U.S. soldiers stationed in China behaved like a domineering army of occupation. The KMT bureaucrat-capitalists waxed fat on the wealth they stole from the people. A great many industrial and commercial enterprises of the national bourgeoisie shut down, the rural economy stagnated and prices skyrocketed. The areas under KMT control sank into economic crisis. Huge numbers of people struggled on the brink of starvation. People of all political persuasions (including the middle-of-the-roaders) gradually came to realize that in this war the central issue was not which party, me KMT or the CPC, would win, but whether China would finally become independent, unified, free and prosperous, as generations of Chinese had longed for it to be. While the army and people of the Liberated Areas were achieving great victories in their war of self-defence, the people of the KMT areas launched a momentous patriotic and democratic movement. With the students in the van, this movement against the reactionary KMT government gradually crystallized into a second front in the people's War of Liberation. The Movement to Protest U.S. Atrocities This movement stemmed from the U.S. policy of supporting Chiang in the civil war and opposing the Communist Party. In exchange for U.S. aid, the KMT authorities signed the Sino-U.S. Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation, one of a number of agreements and treaties, both open and secret, which surrendered the nation's sovereignty under humiliating conditions. Taking advantage of special trading privileges, American manufacturers flooded China's markets with their products, quickly gaining a monopoly. For example, 80 percent of the goods on the shelves of the department stores in Shanghai were made in the United States. U.S. investment accounted for 80 percent of the total foreign capital in China. These percentages were the result not of normal international investment and fair economic exchange but of the unequal treaties signed by the KMT government at the expense of national sovereignty. These circumstances were a mortal blow to the already precarious Chinese national bourgeoisie. Areas controlled by the KMT after the War of Resistance Against Japan had essentially become American colonies. With the connivance of the KMT government, U.S. military personnel in China had been made subject to U.S. rather than Chinese law, and the soldiers stationed in China ran rampant. According to incomplete statistics, between August 1945 and November 1946, they committed at least 3,800 violent acts in the five cities of Shanghai, Nanjing, Beiping, Tianjin and Qingdao, killing or wounding more than 3,300 Chinese. Such crimes could not but fire the indignation of the Chinese people, who had long FIVE VICTORY IN THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION uert their fill of imperialist oppression. TT . . SinThese events showed many Chinese that while the United Thef ? been an ally during World War II, its postwar policy S?l62orting Chiang and opposing the Communist Party was a of supp . • sufferings When American soldiers gang n,aJdaChLcse univershy swdent in the Dongdan Playing Field S Beiping on December 24, 1946, the incident triggered a mass December 30 more than five thousand students from . University Qinghua University and other universities mlle^es in Bering held a demonstration to protest the crimes thce ^3tut0nPt—S;«pience .of this Ancient city under KMT rule but also caused a nattonwrde suree of anti-American sentiment. . __ On December 31 the CPC Central Co^mi^^SSa^sautgTng live to its underground organizations in the KMT arf^' &quot;®lng them to mobilize the masses in big ciues in response to the sWdent movement in Be, ping. It asked the orgamzamns brnkUhe broadest base of support&quot; for this movement, take brave action and &quot;lead the movement forward so as to isolate the U K and Chime&quot; Evtr^rTtteZT; &quot;m°onestrikeeSAsmany alloOdJOO participated nationwide. Many professors, scholars and well-known cultural figures in Beiping Shanghai and other cities denounced the outrages perpe trated by U S soldiers as an insult to the Chinese people, esc ng he student movement as a struggle for mdividua and natiom al dignity. The Shanghai chapter of the Democratic National Construction Association, the Shanghai Association of IndustraJists and Merchants for Progress and the Chongqing Chamber of Commerce, among others, issued statements in support of the students' patriotic actions and demanded the withdrawal of U S troops.^ The student movement developed into a broad-based people's movement, a united front against the U.S. and Chiane Kai-shek. ' 6 The anti-atrocity movement demonstrated that the Chinese nation would tolerate no humiliation. It helped the people understand the underlying connections between American interference in China's affairs and Chiang Kai-shek's autocratic regime and policy of civil war. It also advanced the patriotic democratic movement. In December 1946, to strengthen its leadership of the people's movement in the KMT areas, the CPC Central Committee made Zhou EnJai director of its Urban Work Department. Under the Party's unified leadership, the movement made great advances. The Movement Against Hunger and Civil War in the KMT areas China's bureaucrat capital, combined with U.S. monopoly capital, controlled the economic lifeline of the nation. In 1947 it made up two-thirds of China's total investment m industry and 80 percent of its fixed assets in industry and transportation. The bureaucrat-capitalists took advantage of all sorts of political privileges to bleed the labouring people white and mercilessly annex capital of the national bourgeoisie, thus creating a severe recession in the national economy. As the civil war continued, the KMT government's military expenses soared to 80 percent of its total expenditures. To make up for the huge deficit this caused, the government printed money at an appalling rate. At the end of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the annual rate of currency issue was 1.5 trillion yuan. By the end of 1947, it had reached 40 trillion. Drastic inflation drove consumer prices skyward. An Associated Press report from Shanghai on July 24, 1947, depicted this fact vividly: &quot;In 1940&gt; 100 yuan bought a pig; in 1943, a chicken; in 1945, a fish; in 1946, an egg; and in 1947, one-third of a box of matches.&quot; 343 This vicious inflation was actually a widespread form of plunder of the masses. Under these circumstances, national industry and commerce gradually went bankrupt and were on the verge of total collapse. From October 1946 to February 1947, as many as 27,000 factories and shops closed in 20 cities including Shanghai, Wuhan and Guangzhou. Total industrial output fell by more than 30 percent of its prewar ( 1936) level. The number of unemployed increased sharply. The vast majority of workers, city dwellers and even members of the middle and lower petty bourgeoisie were brought to the brink of disaster. The rural economy also went into a sharp recession. In 1946 agricultural production sank 8 to 12 percent below its 1936 level, and in 1947 it sank a further 33 to 40 percent. Starving people became a common sight in many villages, and bodies of the starved lined the roads. Government employees, teachers and students were also in desperate straits. By July 1947 prices had soared to 60,000 times their prewar levels, and the cost of living had increased by a factor of 6,000 to 7,000. Those who lived on fixed salaries or school subsidies could not afford adequate food and struggled on the edge of starvation. On February 28, 1947, the CPC Central Committee issued a directive on work in the KMT areas. On the foundation of the struggle for survival, the Central Committee said, the Party should try to build a broad front against the betrayal of the nation, civil war, dictatorial rule and the terror practised by secret agents. Thus, it gave the right orientation to the people's movement. In May the patriotic students initiated a movement on an even larger scale than the one launched the previous December against U.S. soldiers' atrocities. This time the targets were hunger and civil war. On the 15th in Nanjing, the capital of the KMT government, students from Central University and other schools marched to the KMT Executive Yuan and Ministry of Education to present petitions. On the 18th students from Beijing University and Qinghua University took to the streets and called on the people to oppose hunger and civil war. The KMT government issued an order forbidding groups of more than ten to gather to lodge petitions and banning all protest marches and all strikes, including strikes by students. Chiang Kai-shek issued a warning, stating that &quot;drastic action&quot; would be taken against the students. But they did not give in. On May 20 in Nanjing more than 5,000 students broke through a blockade of military police and marched through the streets carrying a banner that read &quot;Demonstration of Students from sixteen Universities and Colleges in Nanjing, Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou Against the Crisis in Education.&quot; As they marched, they shouted the slogans &quot;Oppose hunger!&quot; and &quot;Oppose civil war!&quot; On the same day, in Beiping, more .than 7,000 students took to the streets carrying a banner that read, &quot;Demonstration of Students from Beiping and North China Against Hunger and Civil War.&quot; Patriotic students in Tianjin, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Fuzhou, Guilin, Jinan, Changsha, Kunming and other cities joined the struggle with strikes and marches. Many professors and secondary school teachers sympathized with their movement. The Shanghai Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, its Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Bureau and underground Party organizations in Nanjing, Beiping and other cities organized and led these struggles, which became known as the May 20th Movement. The May 20th Movement served to unmask and isolate the KMT reactionaries politically. Not long before this, in April 1947, the KMT government had already used the ruse of government reorganization to draw members of the Democratic Socialist Party and the Youth Party into its cabinet, calling itself a &quot;liberal, multiparty&quot; government. The KMT-controlled People's Political Council was scheduled to open on May 20 in Nanjing. The students' large protest march on that day was therefore a major political blow to the KMT government. The KMT authorities in Nanjing sent troops and policemen to suppress the students, and more than 150 students were wounded or arrested. But the repressive action of the reactionary government failed to achieve its intended result; it only served to spread throughout the country the student movement against hunger and civil war. In the KMT areas, other aspects of the people's movement also intensified rapidly. FIVE VICTORY IN THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION M5 CHApTER . . A tr uniarv 78 1947 the people in Taiwan rose in armea °&quot;Fe&quot;t £ despotic ruTe of the Kuomimang. People of ^^nationality and of the native Gaoshan nationality fought thC u &quot;, shoulder paralyzing the reactionary government m Sh™t of the province. The KMT sent a large detachment of troops the mainland, who landed at the port city of Jilong. In the Woody suppression of this rebellion more than 30,000 people were kl During 1947 about 3.2 million workers went on strike in more twenty cities in the KMT areas. In September Shanghai workers went on strike to protest the authorities use of force to take over three democratic trade umons. The workers fought th roons and police who had been sent to suppress them. In the rural areas, the peasants rebelled against press-ganging an ,he requTsition of grain and taxes. By January 1947 rebellions had occurred in more than 300 counties. Between May and June 1947, the grain riots had spread to more than 40 cities, including Naniins Shanghai, Beiping, Wuxi and Wuhu. There were new developments in the revolutionary movemen in minoriTy-nationality areas as well. In April 1946 the people o Inner Mongolia held a conference to unify the movement autonomy in the region and decided on a policy t of F sti ruggle i for equality, autonomy and national liberation. In Apri 1947 they convened the Conference of Peoples Representatives of Inn Mongolia, at which a provisional people's political council wa elected. The council in turn elected the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Government with Ulanhu, a Mongol and member of the ?_nLt Party, as chairman. On May 1 the Inner Mongoh Autonomous Region was formally founded. The revolutmnary movement in northern Xinjiang, whic egan 1 • tu:s in Hi, Tacheng and Altay, also continued to expand during thi 56 A^Mao Zedong pointed out in a commentary written for the Xinhua News Agency on May 30, 1947'*e^e had turn against the Chiang Kai-shek government. On both the military and political fronts,&quot; he wrote, &quot;it has met defeats, is now begged by the forces it has declared to be its enemies and can find no way of escape.&quot; &quot;The march of events in China,&quot; he added, &quot;is faster than people expected.... The Chinese people should quickly prepare all the necessary conditions for the establishment of a peaceful, democratic and independent new China.&quot; By the end of the first year of fighting, the situation in the civil war had changed dramatically. By July 1947 the Kuomintang's total military strength had already fallen from 4.3 million men to 3.73 million, its regular troops having dropped from two million to 1.5 million. Because its battle lines were overextended and most of its troops were needed for garrison duty, the number of men available for combat was greatly reduced. As a result of successive defeats, it had lost large numbers of men, and morale continued to sink: the mood among the officers and men was defeatist and war-weary. Moreover, the people in the KMT areas rose up in struggle, making the KMT army's rear insecure. In contrast, the People's Liberation Army had grown from 1.27 million men to 1.95 million, with the number of regular troops approaching one million. Furthermore, having captured a large quantity of materiel from the enemy, they were now better equipped. Because the PLA did not need to divide its troops to defend supply lines or cities, the number of men available for combat duty had also increased greatly. Lastly, as most of the Liberated Areas were undergoing agrarian reform, the peasant masses had greater enthusiasm for revolution and production, and the PLA's rear area was therefore secure. On July 4, 1947, in an attempt to get out of his predicament, Chiang Kai-shek issued the &quot;General Mobilization Bill.&quot; This was a desperate attempt to extend the war to the Liberated Areas, so as to wear them down and make it difficult for the PLA to sustain the war. riTin. five victory in the democratic revolution CHAPTtK Advancing Towards the Central Plains A, this time the KMT forces still enjoyed superiority in mhers and, in particular, in equipment. The PLA still faced a a Tficult situation. Nevertheless, the CPC Central Committee d fhe an unexpected policy decision: it would immediately shift m a country-wide offensive, without waiting for the enemy is strategic offensive to be completely defeated and for &quot;&quot;PLA Ifn numerical superiority. It formulated the basic task for the fecond year of the War of Liberation in these terms: &quot;To launch a countrywide counter-offensive, that is, to use our main forces to fight our way to exterior lines, carry the war into re Kuomintang areas, wipe out large numbers of the enemy on the exterior lines and completely wreck the Kuommtangs counter-revolutionary strategy, which is, on the contrary, to c So carry the war into the Liberated Areas, further damage and drain our manpower and material resources and make it imnossible for us to hold out very long. The CPC Central Committee chose the Dabie Mountains of the Central Plains as the main target of their assault, because this region, bordering on three provinces (Hubei, Henan and l Antal was strategically located between Nanjing, the KMT capital an the important city of Wuhan on the middle reaches of the Yan^e River. Relying on the Yellow River as a natura bamer the KMT had concentrated its troops on the eastern flank in Shandong province and the western flank in northern Shaanxi, deploying only a small number of troops to defend the central region. Furthermore, the Dabie Mountains had been i an . old revolutionary base area, and mass support was . 'da&quot;vnd^&quot;° ^ which would make it easy for the Peop es Liberation Army to gam a firm foothold there. Once the PLA took the Dabie Moun tains, it would constitute a threat to Nanjing to the east, Wuha to the west and the Yangtze River to the south. It would therefore be in a position to force Chiang Kai-shek to recall the troops he had sent to attack Shandong and northern Shaanxi so they could intend with the PLA for control of this strategic region. Although it would be most difficult for the PLA to capture Ahe region, success would immediately brmg about a dramatic change in the course of the war, carrying the fighting away from the Liberated Areas into the KMT areas. The CPC Central Committee further decided that in advancing towards the Dabie Mountains, the PLA should refrain from consolidating each city it captured, as it had done during the Northern Expedition in 1926 and 1927. Instead, it should advance by leaps, penetrating swiftly and deeply into enemy territory and abandoning any attempt to build solid rear areas. It should first occupy vast rural territory, then build up revolutionary base areas and finally take the cities. To carry out this strategic plan, the CPC Central Committee coordinated the movements of three armies and deployed troops to tie down the enemy on the flanks. That is, the main force of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Field Army, led by Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping, was to launch an assault along the central route, heading directly for the Dabie Mountains. The main force of the East China Field Army, led by Chen Yi and Su Yu, was to take the eastern route, pushing into the area between Jiangsu, Shandong, Henan and Anhui. Part of the Shanxi-HebeiShandong-Henan Field Army, led by Chen Geng and Xie Fuzhi, was to take the western route, advancing into western Henan. The three armies were to annihilate the enemy forces through coordinated mobile operations. For the containing action on the flanks, the Northwest Field Army was to attack Yulin to draw the enemy troops that were attacking northern Shaanxi up north, and the Shandong Army of the East China Field Army was to start an offensive in eastern Shandong, driving the enemy troops toward the sea. The 500-kilometre drive on the Dabie Mountains was a unique attack. Mao Zedong predicted the serious difficulties involved in this strategy. He pointed out that in fighting towards the exterior lines, there were three possible outcomes. Having paid the price to conquer a given territory, the PLA might 1) be unable to hold its ground and be forced back; 2) be unable to completely hold its ground and be forced to engage in guerrilla warfare on the periphery; or 3) hold its ground. He urged the commanders to prepare for the worst and strive for the best. On the night of June 30, 1947, Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiao349 ■ o led 120 000 troops in a surprise manoeuvre, crossing the P^ural barrier of the Yellow River and thus raising the curtain n lhe pLA's strategic offensive. In 28 days of continuous fight•' jn southwestern Shandong, the PLA troops annihilated 56,000 nf the enemy, opening a route to the south. Then they began their heroic 500-kilometre march south, fighting all the way against hundreds of thousands of KMT troops who intercepted and nursued them. They crossed 15 kilometres of marshes inundated by the Yellow River, waded the Shahe River and fought their way across the Ruhe and Huaihe rivers. In late August, after more than twenty days of exhausting marches and heavy combat, they reached the Dabie Mountains. The advance of Liu and Deng's army forced the KMT to move its main forces back as reinforcements, quickly increasing the troops surrounding the Dabie Mountains to more than 30 bn gades, totalling 200,000 men. Liu and Deng's men were worn out from continuous marching and fighting. Also, they had never fought in the south before. After arriving in a new area, they needed time to establish political power and to mobilize the masses, and they were short of food, clothing and ammunition. In view of these circumstances, Liu and Deng deployed one part of their forces in the northern foothills of the mountains and moved the remainder to western Anhui and eastern Hubei. With firm support from the masses, the troops fought tenaciously, repulsing repeated attacks by the KMT troops on key sectors. By November they had annihilated over 30,000 enemy troops and set up democratic governments in 33 counties. These were the preliminary successes in the Dabie Mountains. In late August, while Liu and Deng's troops were on their 500kilometre trek to the Dabie Mountains, a detachment of 80,000 men from the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Field Army, led by Chen Geng and Xie Fuzhi, crossed the Yellow River into western Henan. By late November they had wiped out 50,000 enemy troops and established democratic governments in 39 counties, fulfilling their strategic mission in the Henan-Shaanxi border area. In September the East China Field Army, led by Chen Yi and Su Yu, crossed the Longhai Railway and marched south into the Henan-Anhui- Jiangsu plains to fight on exterior lines. By late November they too had carried out their strategic mission. At this point, the three armies had fought their way to the exterior lines. They had advanced together in a triangle formation sweeping through the vast area bounded by the Yellow River to the north, the Yangtze to the south, the Hanshui River to the west and the sea to the east. Supporting each other like the three legs of an ancient bronze vessel, the three armies pressed forward and approached the KMT's line of defence along the Yangtze, posing a direct threat to Nanjing and Wuhan. This action pushed the battlefront south from the Yellow River to the north bank of the Yangtze, transforming the Central Plains once an important rear area from which the KMT troops had launched attacks on the Liberated Areas—into a base from which the PL A troops would advance to nationwide victory. Not long after, a spokesman for the General Headquarters of the PLA said that as the three armies moved south they had &quot;manipulated and drawn towards themselves some 90 out of the 160-odd brigades which Chiang Kai-shek had on the southern front, forced his armies into a passive position, played a decisive strategic role and won the acclaim of the people all over the country.&quot;22 Other PLA units were still fighting on the interior lines. These included the Northwest Field Army led by Peng Dehuai, the Shandong Army of the East China Field Army led by Tan Zhenlin and Xu Shiyou, the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Field Army led by Nie Rongzhen and the Taiyue Army of the Shanxi-HebeiShandong-Henan Field Army led by Xu Xiangqian. They intensified their military operations and gradually went over to a counteroffensive. During the summer of 1947, the Northeast Democratic United Army launched a strategic counteroffensive, completely changing the military situation in northeast China. Conducting offensive operations on every front, the PLA had, in fact, switched to a strategic offensive nationwide. This was an event of historic significance. Mao Zedong said at the time: &quot;This is a turning point in history. It is the turning point from growth to extinction for Chiang Kai-shek's twenty-year counterrevolutionary rule. It is the turning point from growth to extinc351 HAPTER f,ve victory in thh DEMOCRAT1C revolution „ for imperialist rule in China, now over a hundred years old This is a momentous event ... and, having occurred, tt will certainly culminate in victory throughout the country. Reform of the Land System As the PLA went over to the strategic offensive, the new situation demanded an intensive land reform movement throughout the Liberated Areas. Such a movement was necessary to arouse the peasants' enthusiasm for revolution and production and to win their support, which was vital to successful operation. in the War of Liberation. In 1946 the CPC Central Committee issued the May 4th Directive ,&quot; which marked the CPC's change from a policy of reducing rent and interest to a policy of confiscating the land of the landlords and distributing it among the peasants. During the period from May 1946 to June 1947, the land question was essentially resolved in two-thirds of the Liberated Areas A total of 600,000 peasants had enlisted in the PLA and ano er million were doing support work at the front lines. Ho'*'ever&gt; reform had not yet reached one-third of the Liberated Areas, and in some places it had not been carried out thoroughly. Fr °m July to September 1947, to facilitate further advances m land reform the Working Committee of the CPC Central Committee held the National Land Conference under the chairmanship of Liu Shaoqi at Xibaipo Village in Pingshan County Hebei Province^ On October 10 the Outline Land Law of China formulated by the conference was approved and promulgated by the Central Com mittcc The Outline Land Law of China presented a thoroughly revolutionary programme. First, it stipulated, &quot;The land system of feudal and semi-feudal exploitation is to be abolished and the system of land to the tillers put into effect. This was a pubhc demonstration of the Party's commitment to overthrowing the feudal system of land ownership. Second, the Law stipulated, &quot;All the land of the landlords and the public land in the villages is to be taken over by the local peasant associations and, together with all other land there, is to be equally distributed among the entire rural population, regardless of sex or age.&quot; The method to be used was to take from those who had a surplus of land and give to those who had a shortage and to take from those who had better land and give to those who had worse. In general, these provisions served to meet the need of the peasants—especially the poor peasants and farm labourers—for land. They also helped avoid the mistake made in the past of allotting no land to landlords and only poor land to rich peasants. However, equal redistribution of all land tended to encroach upon the interests of the middle peasants. This method was therefore changed when land reform was conducted in the newly-liberated areas and in all other parts of the country. Third, the Law stipulated that peasants' congresses and their elected committees were to be the lawful bodies responsible for carrying out the land reform. It also provided for the establishment of people's courts to ensure implementation of the policies and decrees relating to land reform and to maintain revolutionary public order. Thus, while the peasants were mobilized to overthrow the landlords and acquire land themselves, the government promulgated laws and decrees to support them in their struggle, guaranteeing the complete success of the movement. As the War of Liberation progressed, under the guidance of the Outline Land Law hundreds of millions of peasants oppressed under the feudal system participated in a great democratic revolution. However, while the National Land Conference made an enormous contribution, it overestimated the deficiencies in the land reform in the Liberated Areas and overstated the problems within the Party. It did not adopt specific policies to prevent the reform from encroaching upon the interests of the middle peasants and to protect national industry and commerce, and it stressed only the need to guard against Right tendencies, without mentioning the danger of &quot;Left&quot; tendencies. This was one of the reasons why during the land reform and the related Party consolidation, serious &quot;Left&quot; errors were made in many areas. After the National Land Conference, leading Party and govter FIVE victory in the democratic revolution SuTTh. p»». -T; poor P&quot;sany^fthae° land and punish those who were local was soon berng carried out enthus.asttwere encroached upon, or . , odiers were barred from sified as rich peasants participating in decision ma ^ deviation also harmed tax was imposed on ^ them. exaim3le the industrial and national industry and comme landlords were confiscated, and commercial enterprises run y distinction was the taxes levied on enterprises ^^^^between big, made between the landl^rd b t en dcspotic and non-despotic middle and small landlords, 01 ^ - in the landlords. All these people were denounced ^ ^ ^ same way. Some landlor s , nhces they were beaten left with no means sle ^PCCemral Committee found out about ST steps situation and gradually put the reform uc on vast area represented The land reform conducted across history. It uproota social transformation unpara e China, liberated the ed the feudal system from the ^rtd to cruel oppression and peasants who had so long political and economic shackles, their political consciousness and organizational level reached unprecedented heights. In response to the Party's call, &quot;Join the army to protect your land!&quot; ablebodied peasants swarmed into the people's armed forces. Peasants everywhere sent grain, bedding and clothes to the front. Moreover, they organized themselves into transport teams, stretcher teams, railway and road sabotage teams and other military support units. Many established or strengthened people's militia units, which cooperated with the PL A in the defence of the Liberated Areas. The people's armed forces thus found an inexhaustible source of manpower and material assistance, enough to win the War of Liberation. It was precisely as Mao Zedong had said: &quot;The whole Party must understand that thoroughgoing reform of the land system is a basic task of the Chinese revolution in its present stage. If we can solve the land problem universally and completely, we shall have obtained the most fundamental condition for the defeat of all our enemies.&quot;<br /> <br /> === People's Liberation Army Shifts to the Strategic Offensive ===<br /> <br /> === The Party's Programme to Overthrow Chiang Kai-shek and Liberate All China ===<br /> After the War of Liberation entered the stage of strategic offensive, the General Headquarters of the Chinese People's Liberation Army issued a manifesto containing the resounding slogan, &quot;Overthrow Chiang Kai-shek and liberate all China!&quot; The pace of historical progress sometimes exceeds human expectations. As Zhou Enlai put it in the autumn of 1947, &quot;For a time after the Japanese surrender, the Party hoped to establish a new China through peaceful means, though without any relaxation of armed self-defence.&quot;25 However, Chiang Kai-shek tried every means possible to frustrate the efforts for peace of the Communist Party and the Chinese people and imposed on the people the unprecedented calamity of nationwide civil war. After the outbreak of that war, the Party, while responding with armed ^PTER F1VE VICTORY IN THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION if defence still did everything in its power to salvage peace Chiang Kai-shek, for his part, ceaselessly expanded the war, at fhe same time convening the bogus National Assembly that Wonted a so-called Constitution and forcing the CPC represent Lves to leave the KMT areas, thus closing the door to peace negotiations. In July 1947 the KMT government issued an Order for General Mobilization to Suppress the Insurrection of the Communist Bandits.&quot; This order indicated in legal form its final and complete break with the Chinese people. By issuing it, Chiang Kai-shek lifted a rock only to drop it on his own feeti He left t Chinese people with only one alternative: to unite and overthrow him In the second half of 1947, the military situation changed greatly to his disadvantage. As Zhou Enlai explained: We have shown the people with facts that we are strong enough to overthrow him, and the people don't want him anyway. Even e in the upper social strata (except for a few reactionary cliques) and the middle class are getting tired of the loadandwantto overthrow him. Thus, it is opportune to raise the slogan. Over throw Chiang Kai-shek!'&quot;26 Formulating a Programme of Action for the New Period In December 1947 the CPC Central Committee held a meeting at Yangjiagou, Mizhi County, northern Shaanxi, to draw up a specific plan for overthrowing Chiang Kai-shek and liberating all China. At this meeting Mao Zedong presented a report outlining a political, military and economic programme fol Heh began by declaring, &quot;The Chinese people's revolutionary war has now reached a turning point.&quot;27 This was a victory bought at enormous cost, a victory won after iongyears of struggleby the Chinese people under the leadership of the Communist Party &quot;&quot;'reiterated the main points of the PLAN Manifesto of October 1947, which listed eight basic policies of the army, lhe ^&quot;Unite workers, peasants, soldiers, intellectuals and businessmen, all oppressed classes, all people's organizations, democratic parties, minority nationalities, overseas Chinese and other patriots; form a national united front; overthrow the dictatorial Chiang Kai-shek government; and establish a democratic coalition government.&quot;28 This, he said, was the fundamental political programme of the CPC. Practice had demonstrated that without the broadest possible united front, consisting of the overwhelming majority of the population, it would be impossible to bring the Chinese revolution to victory. And without firm leadership by the Party, it would be impossible for any revolutionary united front to consolidate and expand. From the military point of view, Mao analysed the methods that the PLA had been using and that would enable it to carry the War of Liberation to a victorious conclusion. He highlighted ten principles of operation, all of which centred around the basic principle of concentrating a superior force in every engagement so as to destroy the enemy forces one by one. He emphasized the need for the PLA to suit its methods of operation to the new situation, now that it had shifted to the strategic offensive. For example, one of the principles was: &quot;Strive to wipe out the enemy through mobile warfare. At the same time, pay attention to the tactics of positional attack and capture enemy fortified points and cities.&quot; Another, designed to leave the enemy no time to breathe, was: &quot;Give full play to our style of fighting—courage in battle, no fear of sacrifice, no fear of fatigue, and continuous fighting.&quot;29 The army, Mao said, should replenish its strength with all the arms and most of the personnel captured from the enemy, making the front its main source of manpower and materiel. (This was particularly important for main forces fighting far from their bases or without a rear area to fall back on.) Military leaders in world history have seldom made such an open statement of their strategy and tactics while fighting was still going on. But Mao pointed out that because the PLA's strategy and tactics were based on a people's war, no army opposed to the people could either adopt them or counter them. With nationwide victory in sight, the CPC also felt it necessary to proclaim a basic economic programme for the new China. pjvE VICTORY IN THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION CHAPTLK r,v Accordingly, in his report Mao set forth the CPC's plans in this ^Confiscate the land of the feudal class and turn it over to the ™-asants. Confiscate monopoly capital, headed by Chiang Kai diek T v Soong, H.H. Kung and Chen Lifu, and turn it over to he new-democratic state. Protect the industry and commerce of 1 national bourgeoisie. These are the three major economic oolicies of the new-democratic revolution. The principles SL1iding the new-democratic national economy,&quot; he added, must closely conform to the general objective of developing production promoting economic prosperity, giving consideration to both nubiic and private interests and benefiting both labour and capital. Any principle, policy or measure that deviates from this general objective is wrong.&quot;31 , „ . , Mao emphasized that to ensure achievement of the Party s political, military and economic objectives, the Party must firs consolidate its ranks by solving the problem of ‘ impurities in the class composition and style of work of its local organizations, especially those at the primary level in the countryside. Only when these &quot;impurities&quot; were removed, he said, could the Party and the broadest masses of working people all march in the same direction and could the Party lead the masses forward. Mao concluded his report with these forceful words: Ihe dawn is ahead, we must exert ourselves. A decision adopted at the CPC Central Committees meeting in December 1947 stated that Mao Zedong's report was a programmatic document in the political, military and economic fields for the entire period of the overthrow of the reactionaiy Chiang Kai-shek ruling clique and of the founding of a newdemocratic China.&quot;33 Formulating New Policies and Tactics for the New Situation During the period following its December meeting, the CPC Central Committee concentrated on developing concrete policies and tactics appropriate to the new situation. There were three reasons for this. First, as the PLA progressed triumphantly, new areas were liberated, including many cities, and these presented the Party with unfamiliar circumstances and tasks of which it had no experience. Second, the Party and army consisted mainly of peasants and petty bourgeois. Some of them were inclined to approach urban work from the perspective of small producers or to apply their methods of rural work empirically to the urban work. Without guidance from the Party, such tendencies could become destructive. Third, historical experience had shown that in periods when the Party had broken with the KMT, &quot;Left&quot; deviations were likely to occur, and that when successes were scored in revolution, some people were prone to become arrogant and imprudent, which likewise led to &quot;Left&quot; deviations. According to Mao Zedong, in spite of the fact that the line, basic principles and policies of the GPC Central Committee were correct, in practical application &quot;Left&quot; deviations had occurred &quot;to a greater or lesser extent in all the Liberated Areas and in some cases had developed into serious adventurist tendencies.&quot;34 In rural work, such deviations consisted in encroaching on the interests of the middle peasants, neglecting the tactical importance of narrowing the scope of attack in land reform in the new Liberated Areas (that is, neglecting to neutralize the rich peasants and small landlords) and lacking the patience to work step by step. In urban work, &quot;Left&quot; deviations manifested themselves in encroachment on the interests of the industry and commerce of the national bourgeoisie, one-sided stress in the labour movement on the immediate interests of the workers to the neglect of production and construction in the cities, and destruction of production facilities there. As for relations between the Party and the masses, &quot;Left&quot; deviation was seen in the sweeping slogan, &quot;Do everything as the masses want it done,&quot; which rejected the Party's leadership role and encouraged the tendency to let the Party &quot;tail after&quot; the people. In view of these problems, Mao Zedong strictly admonished the Party: &quot;All comrades in the Party should understand that the enemy is now completely isolated. But his isolation is not tantamount to our victory. If we make mistakes in policy, we shall still be unable 359 ‘0 - *£• S withreganL to any outlie SS fees^ on'the war, Party consolidation, land reform indusUy and and, t3CtiCSt iaier inner Party encu comrades at all levels must ■=»&quot; &quot; land reform, Mao Zedong drafted &quot;^^fproblems of kSsksSSS framework of the Prlf C P id^le and smalllandlords, as well as were not. ^&quot;uninate ^en ral Committee also reissued two Agrarian Revolutionary War (1927 37 ). emit Qn Some jSraS! for Land &quot; These provided guidelines for local organizations in dealing with such Problems. was very much in the sp analysed the causes of the been made during Und ^ forward principles and methods to conec classes should be ated the criteria according to ^^t^rtanS of rmly uniting j J need to adopt a policy to protect intellectuals and to win over as many of them as possible so they might serve a people's republic. He also stressed the need to avoid adopting any adventurist policies towards industry and commerce. He declared that the CPC was strongly against indiscriminate beating and killing and the torturing of criminals. The CPC Central Committee distributed copies of this speech to Party organizations at all levels and published it in the Party's newspapers. It proved very helpful in putting the land reform and other mass movements back on the right track. With Mao Zedong's approval, the &quot;Report on Some of the Problems in Land Reform&quot; by the secretary of the Northwest Bureau, Xi Zhongxun, and the &quot;Report on Problems in Work in the New Areas&quot; by the secretary of the Central Plains Bureau, Deng Xiaoping, were also distributed to Party organizations everywhere. Thanks to the Party membership's hard work, by the spring of 1948 the &quot;Left&quot; mistakes in land reform had for the most part been rectified, and the land reform movement had returned to its proper course. Because the peasants in most villages in the new Liberated Areas were not yet organized and public order was still unstable, the conditions there were not yet ripe for reform of the land system. Accordingly, the CPC Central Committee decided that in those villages the methods developed during the War of Resistance Against Japan could be used. This meant that in the beginning the policy would be to reduce rent and interest, to readjust the distribution of seed and grain and to institute a rational distribution of the grain-tax burden. This would provide the peasants with material benefits and shift a larger percentage of the tax burden to the landlords and rich peasants. Only when the necessary conditions were present for enforcing the Land Law would land reform be introduced. The reform would be conducted in two stages. During the first stage, efforts would be made to bring the rich peasants to a neutral stand and struggle would be directed exclusively against the landlords. During the second stage, land would be equally distributed, including the surplus land previously rented out by the rich peasants. These methods were applied in the new Liberation Areas, where they served not VICTORY IN THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION 361 ChaPTEK FIVE otiefv the needs of the peasants but also to reduce the '&quot;mberof persons subjected to political attack, rapidly stabilizn miblic order and stimulating production. ingw h he successive liberation of a series of large and medium• ^cities the CPC was confronted with many new problems. a th.t its nolicv had been construction, not destruction. No ZS22B3SSL .now- „ «*■•»« entering their style of extravagant y_ y A1) individuals and organizations, other tharfthe^governrnent authorities (including the public se ^hy bureau)8 had been prohibited from making arrests or confiscating property. recaptured from the Sisli'HSSH &quot;fevery of the organs of Kuo mintang rule', arrest only the chief reactionaries and do not invoive too mny personSf defining bureaucrat™ &quot; «»-» »» 7 bI ... d„ » ^t'o^'ntnnftra^do 'noUighUy^ advance slogans of ra^1nnftteCTCrc&quot; Co0mmiUee°approved and issued &quot;The Northeast Bureau's Directive on Protecting Newly Recaptured Cities,&quot; which emphasized that when dealing with urban matters it was necessary to abandon practices- suited to guerrilla warfare or to villages. Instead, newly recaptured cities should be governed in the short term by a system of military control. In December the Central Committee approved and distributed Chen Yun's report on the takeover of Shenyang in Liaoning Province. The experience in Shenyang helped solve the two most difficult problems: how to ensure complete control over a city and how to quickly restore public order. Chen Yun enumerated the specific methods to be used as follows: &quot;a) different aspects of the work should be assigned to different divisions; b) in each enterprise or government department the military control commission should start from the top; c) the original staff of each unit should be left unchanged; and d) the commission should take over all units before placing each under the administration of the appropriate division.&quot;38 These methods, Chen Yun said, had been used successfully in Shenyang and had served to ensure a quick takeover, so as to allow no lime for sabotage and to avoid confusion and social unrest. At the same time, he considered it imperative to solve the key political and economic problems in order to set people's minds at rest—restoring electricity, stabilizing currency and prices, disarming enemy police, using the media to publicize government policies and calm the public, issuing wages, and so on. He added, &quot;To ensure success in taking over a city, it is most important that the troops be well disciplined.&quot;39 It was necessary to enforce social reform measures systematically, only when conditions were ripe. Because the Party adopted a series of correct policies, public order in the newly-liberated cities was stabilized quickly, production resumed and increased and the Party established good relations wiih the city dwellers of various social strata. These newly-liberated cities contributed greatly to the war effort and to the economic prosperity of the Liberated Areas. To ensure rigorous application of the Party's line, principles CJ^PTFJ* FIVE VICTORY IN THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION 363 , noiicies for all fields of work, Mao Zedong repeatedly urged fhe entire Party membership to acquire a solid understanding of £* Party's general line. In April 1948, speaking at a conference Of cadres, he summed up that line as follows: &quot;The revolution against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism waged bv the broad masses of the people under the leadership of the nroletariat - this is China's new-democratic revolution, and this fs the general line and general policy of the Communist Party of China at the present stage of history.&quot; &quot;If we actually forget the Party's general line and general policy,&quot; he warned &quot;then we shall he blind half-baked, muddle-headed revolutionaries, and when we carry out a specific line for work and a specific policy, we shall lose our bearings and vacillate now to the left and now to the right, and the work will suffer.&quot;40 . ... He also insisted that the Party must determine its tactics according to the circumstances. In applying the policies adopted by the Central Committee, the Party organizations must make concrete plans, taking into account different local conditions and avoiding over-simplification. Mao emphasized the need to translate the Party s policies into the people's actions. He pointed out that exponents of the slogan &quot;Do everything as the masses want it done were absolutely mistaken: they were denying the leadership role Jarty,f encouraging cadres to &quot;tail after&quot; the masses. The Party he said &quot;must lead the masses to carry out all their correct ideas in the light of the circumstances and educate them to correct any wrong ideas they may entertain. . • To ensure thorough implementation of the Partys policies it was essential to uphold the Party's centralized, unified leadership and to increase Party members' sense of organization and discipline The problem was particularly important at this point, because the revolution had already made tremendous progress. Many of the Liberated Areas had been linked together and many cities had been or were about to be liberated The War of Liberation had become much more of a regular war. These changes required that the Party move quickly to do away with the indiscipline, anarchy, localism, and practice of operating independently that had grown up during the long years of guerrilla warfare when the various army units had been separated from each other by the enemy. The Central Committee required that all local Party organizations strictly enforce its policies and that they establish a regular system of asking the Central Committee for instructions and submitting reports to it at stated intervals. At the same time, they were to strengthen inncr-Party democracy and the Party committee system. Having come to an historic turning point, the Communist Party, as the political party of the proletariat, had to anticipate and study new situations and problems as they arose, and formulate appropriate and effective measures to deal with them. The CPC instituted practical policies and worked hard to help all its members understand their importance and maintain a high degree of unity based on a correct line. Thus, work in all fields was conducted in an orderly manner. All this provided the most important preconditions for nationwide victory in the revolution. As the People's Liberation Army went over to the strategicoffensive, the KMT authorities, in an effort to maintain their tottering rule, stepped up their oppression and exploitation of the people and their suppression of the patriotic democratic forces. After issuing the &quot;Order for General Mobilization to Suppress the Insurrection of the Communist Bandits&quot; in July 1947, the KMT government drafted all eligible men and requisitioned all available material resources to continue the civil war. It arbitrarily arrested, imprisoned and executed workers, students and other patriotic democrats and promulgated a series of reactionary laws and decrees, including &quot;Methods for Dealing with the Communists in Rear Areas,&quot; &quot;Regulations Governing the Establishment cHAFrER FIVE VICTORY IN THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION f Snecial Criminal Courts&quot; and &quot;Martial Law.&quot; The areas under S-MT control were devastated by White terror. R To give its dictatorial rule an air of democracy, from March to vri 1948 the KMT held in Nanjing a Constitutional Congress ^ wh ch Chiang Kai-shek was &quot;elected&quot; President. Because of factional conflicts within the KMT administration, and because [he United States government was considering finding another leader of the KMT to replace Chiang, the leader of the Guangxi faction, Li Zongren, was &quot;elected&quot; vice-president. At the same time the KMT authorities were deploying their remaining regu lar army forces and local troops to reinforce the South and outlying regions in preparation for a last-ditch struggle agams the revolutionary people. f In 1948 the economy of the KMT areas was on the brin collapse Prices rose sharply. In June of that year, the price of rice in Shanghai reached eight million yuan per hectolitre, eight times the January level. In August the KMT government issued a document entitled &quot;Emergency Measures ; for Handling nancial and Economic Situation&quot; and in October another called &quot;Supplementary Measures for Improving Economic Control. It also issued &quot;gold yuan&quot; notes to replace the original currency .The exchange rate was three million yuan for one gold yuan notec However, the new currency also depreciated quickly, and prices soared Thus, all the KMT government s efforts to alleviate he economic crisis were in vain. They served only to worsen the situation for both urban and rural working people and brought national industry and commerce to the verge of fasten As the KMT regime crumbled, the Peoples Liberation Army advanced triumphantly. Under the influence and leadership of the Communist Party of China, the peoples movements xn the KMT areas began to gain momentum. The student masses increasingly pinned their hopes on vie y in the War of Liberation. Accordingly, they dropped the slogan &quot;Oppose civil war!&quot; and instead called on people to Oppose persecution!&quot; In October 1947 the chairman of the Zhejiang University Autonomous Student Association, Yu Zisan was arrested and tortured to death in jail. When they learned of this atrocity, more than 100,000 students demonstrated in twelve cities, including Hangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai and Beiping. They waged a struggle against persecution, illegal arrests, secret police and the killing of young people. In early 1948, when the KMT authorities had students at Tongji University massacred, students in Shanghai, Beiping and other cities intensified their protests. In April students in north China protested against the KMT authorities' suppression of the North China Students' Association with the slogan &quot;Oppose persecution, protect the Students' Association!&quot; Moreover, they joined the teachers and other school staff in Beiping and Tianjin in demanding better material benefits. The teachers, workers, researchers and doctors all held strikes. The movement grew and became known as the &quot;April storm.&quot; During May and June, a nationwide student-led movement against U.S. support for the Japanese militarists swelled to include people from all sectors of society. The reactionary KMT rulers were thus completely isolated. All the democratic parlies and the majority of democrats without party affiliation became daily more inclined to support the people's revolution. As successes were scored in the War of Liberation, the KMT authorities stepped up persecution of the patriotic democratic forces, and as the CPC's propaganda struck deep roots among the people, some democrats and hitherto uncommitted persons began to turn away from the once widespread search for a &quot;third road.&quot;42 Although the Youth Party and the Democratic Socialist Party, once participants in the Democratic League, had gone over to the KMT, the Democratic League and other democratic parties and most of the independent democrats stood with the CPC. They refused to participate in the &quot;National Assembly&quot; or the KMT government and opposed the bogus constitution. On June 28, 1946, the eve of the full-scale civil war launched by the KMT, the CPC Central Committee stated in a circular on the current situation: &quot;On the question of negotiations, the Democratic League advocated that the CPC take a strong position and oppose any concession. If the KMT wants war, they think the CPC should fight back. They believed that war was inevitable.&quot; ^ VICTORY „ ™ DEMOCRATIC ~ *7 The Demoaatk ^ague. the CPC Central Committee sai^ alS° &quot;fdMy &quot; The democratic parties and times of difficulty. Jn lhe struggie against the KMTs crats played an ac civil war. They cooperated with dictatorial rule &quot;d its pol Y jn the course of struggle. ThhisCwas the major characteristic of all the democratic parties at &quot;kMT authorities not only bitterly hated the CPC but were also hostile towards all consistently though the Democratic ec ^. ms t0 achieve democracy and advocated the use of dem( . authorities continual means to achieve of ually used violence to perse h ■ inenl democrat, Du Li Gongpu and Wen Yiduo ano t members of local Bincheng, was assassinated in X iam Qr kidnapped. branches of the Democratic eag or raided In May 1947 Several of its newspapers were demolish c ■ CPC's &quot;MT published a document purpo. rung t Programme for the prepared by the KMT, d h pederation of CornAssociation for Promoting 6 mo , progressive rades of the Throe People s Principles and other ^ organizations as &quot;receiving ; orders [™m thcCPCa^ ^ be the willing tools of ih rvmneratic League an illegal KMT authorities declared the ^mentary puborganization and banned all ^ November 6, 1947, prolished by the Xinhua &gt; unarmed organization. Its tested: &quot;The Democratic League _is an 00^^ ^ Thdr Qnly members have no guns, ^ J3 . , tj.ev were long ago weapons are speech and ^ i ' l Chiang could ss sass sr s=,Se.. ... was forced to announce the dissolution of the party: &quot;Let it be known that from this day onward, the members of this organization will cease all political activities, all members of this headquarters will resign from their posts and this headquarters is hereby dissolved as of today.&quot; The CPC made every possible effort to unite with the democratic parties and individuals. Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and other CPC leaders and the Party organizations maintained close contact with the leaders of the democratic parties, encouraging and supporting them in their struggle against the dictatorship of the KMT. This also helped strengthen the left-wing factions in those parties. In January 1948 Shen Junru and other leaders of the Democratic League convened the 3rd Plenary Session of its 1st Central Committee, at which they declared they would not accept the dissolution of the League and would restore the headquarters. The participants in this session clearly stated that the League would &quot;absolutely not adopt a neutral stand in matters of right and wrong.&quot; They also pointed out that the argument for an independent &quot;middle road&quot; was untenable under the prevailing circumstances in China. The League, then, had no alternative but to take the people's democratic, revolutionary stand and join in the struggle to overthrow the KMT ruling clique, eradicate the feudal system of land ownership, drive the U.S. imperialists out of China and achieve a people's democracy. The participants in the session affirmed that the Communist Party of China was &quot;worthy of every patriot's admiration&quot; and that from then on the League would cooperate with it. This session marked the Democratic League's conversion to the standpoint of new-democratic revolution. As the leader of the League, Shi Liang, said many years later, &quot;This political change will go down in the history of the Democratic League. From this point on, the Democratic League took the right path of total cooperation with the Communist Party of China and, practically speaking, accepted the CPC's leadership.&quot;43 At about this time, the democratic factions in the KMT began to form a revolutionary alliance. On November 12, 1947, in Hong pjvE VICTORY IN THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION in the KM , rhine^e Kuomintang. On January 1, 1948, ocratic Factions of the Chinese g f th Kuomintang. they founded the RevoiuUonary Comnuttee^a^ ^ u Jishen as with Soong A^he^amgres^the^announced, &quot;Our immediate chairman. At the cong Qverthrow the traitorous, dictatorial rerevolutionary wsk is t realize independence, democracy gune Of Chh*&quot;? sh h Revolutionary Committee of the and peace in China. . lf tQ cooperation with the Kuomintang tirm y c , . basic principles of the Communist Party and revolution progressed and as new-democracy PI0g&quot;tee le raedlh rough practical struggle, ifea^ne to^ublicly^c^iowledge the^eadersh^p of the Communist &quot;&quot;other democratic parties. al Construction A^aUon Cht Dfimocratic Par°e&quot;u San Society6 China Zhi Gong Dang and the Taiwan Demrcradc^dfSovernment League, all expressed thetr commitmeo A nrfl nri&quot;eacVrCentTal Committee issued a May Day^logan that called for thew&quot;&quot;Je&quot;x&quot;® df aV TeactSnaiies consultative conference w ic ^ coalition government. the Liberated Areas to and IhetuXg^fa new ChLa under the people's democratic ..pub,. ... * a country suffering under imperialist oppression.&quot;44 With the exception of a few exponents of bourgeois democracy who had turned reactionary, the great majority of them had gradually discarded it and now believed that the Communist Party's political position on building socialism through the establishment of a people's republic was correct. It was this belief that provided the foundation for the Communist-led system of multiparty cooperation and political consultation. <br /> <br /> === Consolidation and Expansion of the People's Democratic United Front ===<br /> <br /> === The Great Decisive Battles ===<br /> In the autumn of 1948 the War of Liberation entered the decisive phase for nationwide victory of the people's forces. A t I his time, the People's Liberation Army had expanded to a total of 2.8 million men, of which 1.49 million were in the field armies, as compared to 1.27 million at the beginning of the war. It was also much better equipped, great quantities of new equip^ ment having been captured from the enemy—one could say that the United States was supplying the PLA through the KMT troops. The PLA had now established powerful artillery and engineering corps, which made it possible for it to attack strongly fortified positions and thus to gain experience in positional warfare. Moreover, the ideological education movement carried out in the army by the methods of &quot;pouring out grievances&quot; and the three check-ups&quot; had greatly enhanced the political consciousness of the troops and their combat effectiveness.45 The Liberated ^ccSAAAd gradually been linked t0 form a continuous area of 2,355,000 square kilometres, or 24.5 percent of the total territory of the country. Their population was now 168 million, or 35.3 percent of the total. Land reform had been completed in most of the Liberated Areas, and the enthusiasm of the peasant masses for revolution and production had reached unprecedented heights. The rear areas of the PLA were therefore increasingly secure. In contrast, the KMT troops had decreased from 4.3 million men at the start of the war to 3.65 million. Because a significant cHAptf.r five victory in the DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION 371 number of them were deployed for garrison duties, only 1.74 million were available for use at the front lines. Moreover, morale was low and the troops lacked combat effectiveness. Even though the KMT reactionaries still controlled three quarters of the territory and two-thirds of the population, they were faced with a hostile people and were extremely isolated. Under these circumstances, they were forced to abandon their strategy of &quot;total defence&quot; and adopt one of &quot;defence of key sectors.&quot; Their five strategic armies (under Hu Zongnan, Bai Chongxi, Liu Zhi, Fu Zuoyi and Wei Lihuang) had been cut off from each other by the PLA and had been operating separately in northwest China, the Central Plains, east China, north China and northeast China, without adequate coordination. As a result, the only thing they could do was to guard strategic areas and communication lines, leaving only a small number of troops available tor strategic manoeuvring. They had already lost the advantage of a continuous battlefront. The KMT regime was on the verge of collapse. All these circumstances showed that the moment for decisive battles between the PLA and the KMT troops was at hand. But the total military strength of the KMT still exceeded that of the PLA. The Communist Party was therefore faced with two major strategic questions. First, did it dare launch decisive battles, fighting on an unprecedentedly large scale? Second, did it dare attempt to capture the enemy's key cities and to annihilate his strongest corps? At the time, the KMT authorities were in the process of making a major strategic change in troop deployment. In August 1948 they convened a &quot;military self-criticism meeting&quot; in Nanjing, during which they decided: 1) to concentrate their forces in the area between the Yellow River and the Yangtze, 2) to strengthen the defence of Liaodong and Rehe in northeast China in order to stabilize north China and to defend their positions south of the Yellow River, and 3) to do all they could to defend the Central Shaanxi Plain and Hanzhong in northwest China in order to protect their line of defence in southwest China. If the PLA allowed time for the KMT to conduct this strategic concentration of forces, it would find it very hard to carry on military operations later. The CPC Central Committee, headed by Mao Zedong, analysed the military situation and decided to seize the opportunity for decisive battles. It organized three consecutive major campaigns—the Liaoxi-Shenyang campaign, the Huai-Hai campaign and the Beiping-Tianjin campaign. These campaigns were correlated with each other, so that they proceeded from one victory to another. The overall strategy called for annihilation of the enemy by groups. The Central Committee chose the correct target for the first strike and began the decisive phase of the war in northeast China. This would prevent the KMT from carrying out its strategic plan of concentrating its forces. At the same time, some of the PLA troops in northeast China could move to fight south of the Great Wall. Moreover, the CPC could take advantage of the industry there to support the war effort nationwide. At this time the military situation in northeast China was most favourable to the PLA, which was quite sure of victory. Although there were still 550,000 KMT troops in the region, they had been cut off trom each other in three areas—Changchun, Shenyang and Jinzhou. The PLA, for its part, had 700,000 regular troops stationed in northeast China, which, together with 300,000 local troops, totalled one million men, far outnumbering the enemy. The Liberated Areas covered 97 percent of the region's total land area and contained 86 percent of its population. Of the 2,100 kilometres of railways, 2,000 km. were in the people's hands. After land reform and the elimination of bandits, the PLA's rear areas were secure. Such favourable conditions were absent in other sectors. The Central Committee accordingly decided to begin the final push in northeast China, so as to be certain of victory in the first campaign. The opening shot in this series of decisive battles was fired on September 16, 1948, in Shandong, in the battle of Jinan, which ended on September 24. The East China Field Army had massed a powerful force to attack this strategically important city. After eight days and nights of fierce fighting, 20,000 men from the KMT's reorganized 96th Corps, under the command of Wu Huawen, revolted and crossed over to the people's side. A further 1 10,000 enemy troops were wiped out, and the commander of the 373 KMT's 2nd Pacification Zone, Wang Yaowu, was captured. This was the beginning of a series of victories in which the PLA liberated the enemy's heavily fortified cities, and it was therefore .he beginning of the total collapse of Chiang Kai-shek s defence svstem which was dependent upon them. The liberation of Jinan linked up the North China and East China Liberated Areas and greatly improved conditions for support of the front lines. It also freed the East China Liberation Army to move south and join the Central Plains Liberation Army in its large-scale campaign to annihilate the enemy south of the Longhai Railway. For these reasons, the victory at Jinan was of great consequence. The Liaoxi-Shenyang Campaign On September 12 the Northeast Liberation Army concentrated its main forde of 700,000 men and launched the momentous Liaoxi [Western Liaoning Province ]-Shenyang campaign. On the basis of strategic considerations, the CPC Central Committee believed that it would be wise to hem in Chiang Kai-shek's troops in northeast China and annihilate them one by one. Chiang did not know what to do with his 550,000 troops stranded north of the Great Wall. If these troops, led by Wei Lihuang, were to retreat south of the Great Wall, the KM 1 would be able to retain them as a relatively complete unit of strategicimportance. Moreover, they could then be combined with Fu Zuoyi's army in north China, to cause trouble for the PLA later on. Mao Zedong pointed out the need to consider the possibility of such a retreat and to wipe out all the enemy troops while they were still in northeast China. To do this, the Northeast Field Army had first to gain control over the Beiping-Liaomng Railway and then to capture Jinzhou, in Liaoning Province, sealing off the exit from the Northeast. But the commander of the Northeast Field Army, Lin Biao, put undue emphasis on the difficulties involved in moving south for the operation and advocated attacking the city of Changchun, in Jilin, instead. After a period o hesitation and repeated criticism by the Central Committee, Lin Biao resolved to move his troops south. On September 12 the Northeast Field Army under the command of Lin Biao and Luo Ronghuan began the attack on Jinzhou. To reinforce the city's defence, Chiang Kai-shek hurriedly summoned a portion of his troops from north China and Shandong and organized them into an army to move east. In the meantime, he organized the main body of his troops at Shenyang into an army to move west. The first of these two armies was blocked by the PLA in the Tashan-Hongluoxian sector, and the second was intercepted northeast of Heishan and Dahushan. On October 14 the Northeast Field Army launched its final assault on Jinzhou. In 31 hours of intense fighting, it succeeded in annihilating nearly 90,000 enemy troops and capturing Fan Hanjie, deputy commander-in-chief of the KMT's Northeast &quot;Bandit Suppression&quot; Flcadquarters. The liberation of Jinzhou impelled part of the KMT troops defending Changchun to revolt and the remainder to surrender. Seeing that the retreat route out of northeast China was now cut off, Chiang Kai-shek gave Liao Yaoxiang, who was in command of the army moving west, strict orders to recapture Jinzhou. The Northeast Field Army immediately encircled Liao's army which consisted of crack troops of the New First Corps and the New Sixth Corps—from the north and south. After stiff fighting lasting two days and one night, it completely wiped out the 100,000 troops of that army and captured Liao Yaoxiang. The Northeast Field Army followed up this victory and on November 2 took Shenyang and Yingkou. Thus, the whole of northeast China was liberated. During the 52 days of the Liaoxi-Shenyang campaign, 472,000 enemy troops were wiped out. From this time onward, the PLA was numerically superior to the KMT, a change that marked another turning point in the Chinese revolution. The liberation of northeast China not only turned the one-million-strong Northeast Field Army into a powerful strategic reserve but also provided favourable conditions for the subsequent liberation of Beiping, Tianjin and the rest of north China. Moreover, it provided the PLA with a secure strategic rear area where there was a certain amount of industry. 375 The Huai-Hai Campaign Immediately following the conclusion of the Liaoxi-Shenyang campaign, 600,000 men from the East China Field Army, the Central Plains Field Army and regional armed forces from east China, the Central Plains and north China, launched the HuaiHai [Huaihe-Haizhou] campaign. Unprecedented in scope, this campaign was centred at Xuzhou in Jiangsu and extended east as far as Haizhou, west as far as Shangqiu, north to Lincheng (now Xuccheng) and south to the Huaihe River. In November 1948 the KMT convened a military conference at Xuzhou, where it decided to transfer the armies under Liu Zhi and Du Yuming to Xuzhou, with orders to fight if they could. If they could not, then they were to retreat south across the Huaihe River to defend the Yangtze. This showed that the KMT General Headquarters was still wavering between defence and withdrawal. At the time, there were 800,000 KMT troops deployed around the intersection of the Tianjin-Pukou and Longhai railways at Xuzhou. . Early in September, Su Yu, deputy commander of the Last China Field Army, had suggested organizing the Huai-Hai campaign. He recommended that the main forces of the East China Field Army leave southwest Shandong for northern Jiangsu, with the aim of wiping out the right flank of the KMT army stationed at Xuzhou. The Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee had agreed. In November the Military Commission decided to expand the scope of the Huai-Hai campaign, with the overall plan of separating Xuzhou and Bengbu and wiping out Liu Zhi's main forces. In a telegram sent to Liu Bocheng, Chen Yi, Deng Xiaoping and others on November 16, the Military Commission pointed out that victory in this campaign would not only secure the situation north of the Yangtze but also lay the foundation lor the resolution of the situation nationwide. On that day the CPC Central Committee decided to organize a General Front Committee consisting of Liu Bocheng, Chen Yi, Deng Xiaoping, Su Yu and Tan Zhenlin, with Deng Xiaoping as secretary. The committee was to assume unified leadership of the East China Field Army and the Central Plains Field Army. Throughout the Huai-Hai campaign, the KMT's troop strength in this sector exceeded the PLA's. Its equipment was also far superior. Under these circumstances, the PLA s tactic was to repeatedly divide the enemy's troops, massing a superior force to annihilate his forces one by one. The campaign was divided into three phases. The first phase lasted from November 6 to 22, 1948. During this period, the KMT army under Huang Baitao was stationed along the Longhai Railway between Lianyungang in the east and Xuzhou in the west. As Mao Zedong stated in a telegram addressed to the forces which were to take part, in this first stage of the campaign, the central task was to concentrate forces to wipe out that army. The PLA decided to use more than half of its total effectives to cut off and attack the enemy troops that were coming to reinforce Huang's army; this would prevent the two units from joining forces and ensure that Huang's troops did not escape. On November 6 the battle began. Huang's army tried to escape to the west. At Jiawang and Taierzhuang, the 23,000 men led by He Jifeng and Zhang Kexia, who were deputy commanders of the KMT's Third Pacification Zone and underground members of the CPC, suddenly revolted. The main forces of the East China Field Army immediately crossed the area those troops had been defending and quickly cut off Huang Baitao's line of retreat as he approached Xuzhou. The enemy reinforcements from all directions were checked. Huang's army had no choice but to turn back to Nianzhuang. Thus forced into a pocket no more than 10 kilometres in length and breadth, Huang's entire unit was wiped out on November 22. _ _ . The second phase of the campaign lasted from November 15 to December 15. The main objective now was to annihilate Huang Wei's army, which had been dispatched as reinforcements and was to march alone all the way from southern Henan to the Huai-Hai area. The 120,000 men of Huang's army were Chiang Kai-shek's own personal troops, and their combat effectiveness was relatively strong. The 18th Corps of Huang's army was part of the KMT's crack force. The main forces of the Central Plams Field Army and part of the East China Field Army adopted the 377 rtic of surrounding the enemy while allowing him one channel f escape which was designed as a trap. On November 25 the PL^ trooPs encircled Huang Wei's army south of the Kua.he pjver at Shuangduiji. The enemy) reinforcements were either wioed out or intercepted. From December 6 to 15, the PLA inducted a general offensive and destroyed the enemy s enure force in the area. During this period, the KMT armies under Qiu rinpnuan Li Mi and Sun Yuanliang, all commanded by Du Yuming^deputy commander-in-chief of the KMT's &quot;Bandit Supnression&quot; Headquarters at Xuzhou, withdrew from the city. They were besieged by the main forces of the East^ China Field Army near Chenguanzhuang, and Sun Yuanliang's entire army was anmhihitedd ^ of the campaign lasted from December 15, 1948 to January 10, 1949. The chief objective now was to wipe out Du Yuming's forces. However, in order to coordmate tto action with the Beiping-Tianjm campaign, in the beginning of this phase the PLA troops on the front line of the Huai-Hai campaign were ordered to stop their attack on Du's army for two weeks to give Fu Zuoyi's army on the north China front a false sense of security. In the meantime, the PLA concentrated on a pohucal offensive, urging Du and others to surrender with their troops. On January 6, 1949, after the PLA had succeeded in dividing and surrounding Fu Zuoyi's army, it launched a general attack on the troops under Du Yuming, who refused to surrender. After four days and nights of intense fighting, the armies led by Li Mi and Qiu Qingquan were completely annihilated. The units wiped out included the 5th Corps, one of the KMT's crack umts_ Du Yuming was captured. This marked the successful end of the Huai-Hai campaign. . . . , ^r».rHr The campaign had lasted 66 days. During this time the K had lost 555,000 men, and its crack troo^ along the southern front had been destroyed. The area north of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze had been liberated and linked up with h North China Liberated Area. The PLA had pressed south to the north bank of the Yangtze. Thus, the KMT capital of Nanjing layex posed directly in front of the PLA forces. The reactionary Kuomintang regime was disintegrating. The Beiping-Tianjin Campaign With the successful conclusion of the Liaoxi-Shenyang campaign, and with victory on the horizon in the Huai-Hai campaign, one million men from the Northeast Field Army and the Second and Third Armies of the North China Military Command joined forces to launch the Beiping-Tianjin campaign. At the time, the KMT's north China forces, not counting the 50,000 of Fu Zuoyi's men stationed at Guisui and Datong, numbered more than 500,000. These men were stationed in a narrow stretch of land extending 500 kilometres east from Shanhaiguan along the Beiping-Liaoning Railway and west to Zhangjiakou along the Beiping-Suiyuan Railway, with Tanggu as their opening to the sea. Of these troops, 17 divisions were commanded by Fu Zuoyi, and 25 were directly under Chiang Kai-shek. Earlier, Chiang had told Fu to withdraw his troops southward to reinforce the defence line along the Yangtze. Fu was deeply suspicious of Chiang's discrimination against those who were not his own men and had not wanted to withdraw. At this time, his troops were already shaken by the PLA's victories in northeast China. However, he calculated that the Northeast Field Army would need three to six months of rest to recuperate from the LiaoxiShenyang campaign and would not be ready to fight south of the Great Wall until the following spring. For this reason, he decided to defend Beiping and Tianjin, control an escape route by sea, seek to expand his forces and wait to see what would happen. Accordingly, he began to withdraw forces from other areas under his control, including Chengde, Baoding, Shanhaiguan and Qinhuangdao, and prepared to flee south by sea or west toward Suiyuan if necessary. If Fu Zuoyi withdrew, the PLA could seize Beiping and Tianjin without fighting. But then Fu's troops would help reinforce the KMT units along the Yangtze River defence line or, in any event, make it possible for the KMT to maintain greater military strength. That would be disadvantageous to the PLA in later battles. Therefore, the CPC Central Committee vv»lieved that the key to success was to postpone the enemy s decision to flee south or west and hold him in north China so the PI A could wipe him out there. , , Acting in accordance with the Central Committee s plan, the main forces of the Northeast Field Army ended their period of rest and consolidation early, not long after the conclusion of the I iaoxi-Shenyang campaign. Starting on November 23, they took a short cut and covertly moved south of the Great Wall. There they joined forces with the Second and Third Armies of the North China Military Command. Applying the principle of encircling the enemy troops without attacking them or separating the enemy troops without encircling them, with lightning speed the combined forces made a strategic encirclement and cut the links between the enemy forces in Beiping, Tianjin and Zhangjiakou, but did not make a tactical encirclement. This action cut off their escape routes to the south and west and at the same time drew the KMT's 92nd, 94th and 105th corps, originally stationed at Tianjin and Tanggu, to the area around Beiping. After that, the PLA started a general assault by taking enemy positions on both wings and then capturing the ones in the middle. In late December, the PLA troops conquered Xinbao an and Zhangjiakou on the west wing. At Xinbao'an they annihilated 16,000 men from the 35th Corps, the main force directly under Fu Zuoyi's command. At Zhangjiakou they destroyed the headquarters of the enemy's 1 1th Army and the 105th Corps, wiping out more than 54,000 men. On January 10, 1949, the CPC Central Committee decided to form a General Front Committee for the Beiping-Tianjin campaign under Lin Biao, Luo Ronghuan and Nie Rongzhen. On January 14, when the enemy defending Tianjin on the east wing refused to surrender, the PLA used a powerful force to launch a general offensive against the city. After 29 hours of intense fighting, the solidly fortified and heavily defended city fell. The 130,000 enemy troops had all been wiped out, and Chen Changjie, commander of the KMT's Tianjin garrison, had been captured. After Tianjin was liberated, the enemy troops defending Tanggu took to their boats and fled south. In order to avoid destroying the world-famous ancient capital of Beiping, the PLA first surrounded the city and then dispatched representatives to meet with Fu Zuoyi. Thanks to the PLA's great strength and the speed with which it had carried out its deployment, and thanks also to the CPC's patient persuasion and to the urging of people from all social strata, in the end Fu Zuoyi was obliged to give in. Acting in accordance with the will of the people, he ordered the troops under his command to leave the city to await reorganization. On January 31, 1949, Fu's army completed its move, and the PLA entered the city. The peaceful liberation of Beiping was proclaimed. The Beiping-Tianjin campaign had lasted for 64 days. More than 520,000 KMT troops had been put out of action or reorganized as part of the PLA, and most of north China had been liberated. A few enemy troops were allowed to remain in Suiyuan. In September 1949 these troops, led by Dong Qiwu, indicated their willingness to revolt and accept incorporation into the PLA. Thus, three patterns were set for disposing of the KMT troops—the Tianjin pattern (fighting them), the Beiping pattern (reorganizing them into PLA units), and the Suiyuan pattern (keeping them intact for a time, winning them over or neutralizing them politically, and reorganizing them at a later date). In terms of their scope and achievements, the three great campaigns of Liaoxi-Shenyang, Huai-Hai and Beiping-Tianjin were unprecedented in Chinese military history and unusual even in world military history. Over the course of four months and nineteen days, from September 12, 1948, to January 31, 1949, these campaigns led to the annihilation of more than 1.54 million KMT troops. Essentially, they caused the collapse of the military strength that had propped up the reactionary KMT regime and thus provided a firm foundation for nationwide victory of the Chinese revolution. The success of the three campaigns was a great victory in the people's war. During the course of the campaigns, the commanders and fighters of the People's Liberation Army displayed a high degree of revolutionary commitment and initiative, fighting heroically and resourcefully against the KMT troops. The people cHAptf.r five victory in the democratic revolution 381 of the Liberated Areas showed incomparable enthusiasm and ceaselessly provided enormous amounts of human and material support for the front. The underground CPC organizations and revolutionary people in the KMT areas also contributed to the PLA's victory in the campaigns. At the time, although the PLA's equipment had improved, transport conditions remained extremely poor. To ensure the needs of the vast army at the front, people helped transport supplies on their shoulders or in pushcarts. According to statistics, no less than 5.43 million labourers were mobilized to support the Huai-Hai campaign, and they carried 7,300 tons of ammunition and 480,000 tons of grain and other goods. Chen Yi once gratefully remarked that victory in the Huai-Hai campaign had been brought in pushcarts by the people. This mass participation was powerful proof of the enthusiastic popular support enjoyed by the Communist Party in the War of Liberation. The victory in the three campaigns was also a victory for Mao Zedong Thought. The CPC Central Committee and its Military Commission, headed by Mao Zedong, with their great revolutionary prowess and superior military command skills, seized the right moment for decisive strategic action and selected the proper course. They mapped out different concepts of operation in the light of the different situations in northeast, east and north China. All of these factors contributed to victory in these great campaigns.<br /> <br /> === Carrying the Revolution Through to the End ===<br /> By the end of the three campaigns, the KMT government's military strength north of the Yangtze River had crumbled. It was even having trouble organizing its defence south of the river. On November 9, 1948, Chiang Kai-shek sent a letter to President Truman asking him to quickly provide more military support and even to send U.S. military advisors to help conduct the war. The United States government, however, sensed Chiang's imminent doom and did not wish to accede to his request. On January 8, 1949, Chiang's government sent messages to the governments of the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union asking them to &quot;mediate&quot; in the Chinese civil war. All tour governments tactfully cited their own particular considerations and declined. At this point, Mao Zedong summed up the situation as follows: &quot;The U.S. government has changed its policy of simply backing the Kuomintang's counter-revolutionary war to a policy of embracing two forms of struggle: &quot;1. Organizing the remnants of the Kuomintang's armed forces and the so-called local forces to continue to resist the People's Liberation Army south of the Yangtze River and in the remote border provinces, and &quot;2 Organizing an opposition faction within the revolutionary camp to strive with might and main to halt the revolution where it is or, if it must advance, to moderate it and prevent it from encroaching too far on the interests of the imperialists and their running dogs.&quot;46 Li Zongren, leader of the Guangxi faction, was prepared to take a chance. He stood ready to replace Chiang Kai-shek, and in order to gain time to implement his scheme of instituting two governments divided by the Yangtze River, he was willing to negotiate with the Communist Party. With this in the background, on December 24, 1948, Bai Chongxi, another leader of the Guangxi faction, sent a telegram to Chiang urging him to hold peace talks. In response to Bai's hint—or perhaps under his influence—the KMT's Hubei Provincial Political Council and the governors of Henan and Hunan provinces recommended resumption of peace talks. In that interest, they also demanded Chiang's resignation. As a result of these internal and external pressures, Chiang Kai-shek was forced to issue a statement on New Years Day, 1949 suing for peace. However, in his statement, he demanded, among other things, the preservation of the KMT-manufactured Constitution, (which had never been approved by the people), of his so-called legally constituted authority and of his reactionary TFK FIVE VICTORY IN THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION CHAPTER Eiv* Unless these conditions were fulfilled, he said, he would 3rnlht to the finish&quot; with the Communist Party. Clearly, these * f 're conditions not for peace but for the continuation of war. At t ti^ there were also some bourgeois Right-wingers who •hdsted\hat the Communist Party immediately put a stop to the War of Liberation, accept Chiang's &quot;conditions for peace and c fmm eliminating its enemies completely. rC Should the Chinese people carry the revolution through to t e . or should they abandon it halfway, allowing the reactionary forces the breathing-time to stage a comeback? At this historic moment with victory already in sight, this question took on vital importance' In the last hundred years, had not the people had enough bitter experience to know the answer- Q . M With these thoughts in mind, on Decembei 30, ' 7„Hnn(1 iccned through the Xinhua News Agency a New Years message Tha t tva^a great call to carry the revolution through to ^&quot;We1 must use the revolutionary method to wipe out all the forces of reaction resolutely, thoroughly, wholly and comp letely , we must unswervingly persist in overthrowing dalism and bureaucrat-capitalism; and we must overthrow the reactionary rule of the Kuomintang on a country-wide scale and set up a republic that is a people's democratic dictatorship under the leadership of the proletariat and with the worker-peasant alliance as temain body.&quot;47 This, he went on to say, would then make it possible for China to develop into a socialist society. But if the revolution were abandoned halfway, it would mean giving the^reactionaries a chance to heal their wounds, so that one day they might stage a comeback and again plunge the whole country into darkness g What was required of all those who wished to participate in the revolutionary cause, he said, was unanimity and cooperation, not the setting up of any ‘opposition faction or theOPnTnuary ^ 7, in his capacity as chairman of the CPC Central Committee, issued a statement indicating the a™, h,and abundant reason to wipe out completely the remnant armed forces of the reactionary Kuomintang government in not too long a period and has full confidence that it can do so, nevertheless, in order to hasten the end of the war, bring about genuine peace and alleviate the people's sufferings, the Communist Party of China is willing to hold peace negotiations with the reactionary Nanjing Kuomintang government or with any local governments or military groups of the Kuomintang....&quot;48 These negotiations would be held, he said, on the basis of eight terms, including that war criminals were to be punished, that the bogus constitution and the bogus &quot;constituted authority&quot; were to be abolished and that all reactionary troops were to be reorganized on democratic principles. Mao's statement was warmly received by the democratic parties, democrats without party affiliation and other people from all social strata. On January 22, 55 individuals, including Li Jishen, Shen Junru, Guo Moruo and Tan Pingshan, who had just arrived in a Liberated Area, issued a joint statement expressing their firm support of Mao's statement and their readiness to help advance the cause of revolution and build a new China under the leadership of the Communist Party of China. On January 21 Chiang Kai-shek announced that he would resign from the position of President and that Vice President Li Zongren would serve as Acting President. The next day, Li Zongren expressed his willingness to accept the Communist Party's eight terms as the foundation on which to begin peace talks. After Chiang Kai-shek resigned, he returned to his hometown of Xikou in Fenghua County, Zhejiang Province. However, he continued to run the government from behind the scenes. He decided that the peace talks should be limited to dividing the country at the Yangtze River. In other words, he insisted that &quot;the integrity of certain provinces south of the Yangtze should be ensured.&quot;49 At the same time, Chiang ordered his followers to prepare for war by strengthening the armed forces. His plan was to reorganize and train two million troops south of the Yangtze over a period of three to six months in order to stage a comeback. At the same time, he began to make arrangements for his final cHA1&gt;TER FIVE victory in the democratic revolution tr.at to Taiwan. Li Zongren's government also intended to the territory south of the Yangtze. It was obvious that the KMT's acceptance of the CPC's eight terms was only a smokeSCrFrom March 5 to 13, 1949, the 7th Central Committee of the rommunist Party of China held its 2nd Plenary Session at Xibaipo Village in Pingshan County, Hebei Province. In his So the session, Mao Zedong set forth policies to promote the speedy achievement of the country-wide victory of the revo lutioTand to organize this victory. He proposed that afterwards the Party should shift the focus of its work from the rural areas o the cities and defined the basic political, economic and foreign nolicies the Party should adopt. He also set the general tasks and main course for transforming China from an agricultural country into an industrial one and from a new-democratic society into socialist one. He appraised the new situation in the class struggle both at home and abroad and gave timely warning that the &quot;sugar-coated bullets&quot; of the bourgeoisie would become the main danger to the proletariat. He stated the Party s policy with regard to negotiations: &quot;Our policy is not to refuse negotiations . but to demand that the other side accept the eight terms in their entirety and to allow no bargaining.- He added that if negotiations on an overall basis succeeded, that would have great advantages. If they failed, then separate negotiations on a local basis would be held after the PLA had made further advances. To bring the war to an early conclusion and realize genuine peace on April I a CPC delegation headed by Zhou Enlai entered into negotiations in Beiping with the KMT ^government atives headed by Zhang Zhizhong. On April 15, after the two sides had had repeated exchanges of views and consultations t CPC representatives presented a final amended version of he Agreement on Internal Peace, demanding a response from i the KMT government by April 20. The KMT government representatives agreed unanimously to accept this agreement and sent Huang Shaohong back to Nanjmg with tlic doeument. It P pened that at this moment the KMT Central Executive Committee was holding a session of its Standing Committee and a Political Conference in Guangzhou. The Central Executive Committee issued a statement rejecting the agreement and instructed Li Zongren and He Yingqin to act accordingly. On April 20 Li and He sent a telegram to the KMT government representatives in Beiping telling them not to sign the Agreement on Interna] Peace. The failure of the negotiations was announced. Nevertheless, at the request of the Communist Party, the KMT government representatives remained in Beiping, and most of them later participated in the preparations for the People's Political Consultative Conference of new China. Because the KMT government refused to sign the Agreement on Internal Peace, on April 21 Chairman Mao Zedong and Commander-in-Chief Zhu De issued an order to the army for a countrywide advance. The Second and Third Field Armies (lormerly the Central Plains Field Army and the East China Field Army), which had been placed under the command of Deng Xiaoping, secretary of the General Front Committee, started to cross the Yangtze River from north to south. In this operation they had the support of troops from the Central Plains Military Command and of the people along the north bank as well as the cooperation of the guerrilla forces south of the river. The battle line stretched for more than 500 kilometres, from Hukou in Jiangxi Province in the west to Jiangyin in Jiangsu in the east. One million troops divided into ?ueV^1UmnS f0Ught their way across the Yangtze on boats, ihe KM 1 defence line along the river, which had been painstakingly built up over a period of three and a half months collapsed instantly. On April 20 and 21, while the PLA was crossing the Yangtze, four British warships, including the Amethyst, intruded into the Yangtze, an inland waterway of China, and proceeded to areas defended by the PLA, trying to prevent the crossing. The British and Chinese exchanged fire. The British killed or wounded 252 PLA men. The Amethyst was disabled by the PLA and forced to anchor on the river near Zhenjiang. The other three ships escaped. After this, the British government declared that British warships had the legal right to 387 navigate the Yangtze. The Conservative Party leader Winston Churchill even proposed that aircraft carriers be dispatched to Chinese waters to provide &quot;effective power of retaliation.&quot; The General Headquarters of the PLA immediately issued a statement declaring, &quot;The Chinese people will defend their territory and sovereignty and absolutely will not permit encroachment by foreign governments.&quot; This statement demonstrated that China was not afraid of threats and would resolutely oppose any imperialist aggression. It made the Chinese people, long bullied and oppressed by the imperialists, proud and elated. This event showed that the time when foreign invaders, relying on their military might, could commit atrocities on China's sovereign soil was gone forever. When the PLA troops broke through the KMT defence lines along the Yangtze, the government in Nanjing fled to Guangzhou. On April 23 the PLA captured Nanjing, the KMT capital, announcing the downfall of the reactionary regime that had lasted for 22 years. The PLA troops then continued their victorious advance to the provinces in south-central, northwest and southwest China. By either military or peaceful means, most of the remaining enemy forces were put out of action. The vast territory of the country was liberated and Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang clique was driven from the mainland.<br /> <br /> === The Great Victory of the Chinese Democratic Revolution ===<br /> Now that the reactionary Kuomintang regime had been overthrown, conditions were ripe for the founding of the People's Republic of China. In June 1949 in Beiping, the Preparatory Meeting for the New Political Consultative Conference was convened, and a standing committee headed by Mao Zedong was established. This committee was in charge of drafting the Common Programme and working out a government structure. This was the beginning of the comprehensive preparatory work to build a new regime in China. As early as March 1949, in a report to the 2nd Plenary Session of the 7th Central Committee of the CPC, Mao Zedong put forward a plan for the basic line of China's development: China should be transformed from a new-democratic, agricultural country into a socialist, industrial one. On June 30 of the same year, in an important article entitled &quot;On the People's Democratic Dictatorship,&quot; he restated this idea. Historical experience, he wrote, showed that the plan to build a bourgeois republic in China could come to nothing. The only solution was to found a people's republic, transform China from an agricultural country into an industrial one and realize the transition from new-democracy through socialism to communism. &quot;To sum up our experience,&quot; he concluded, &quot;and concentrate it into one point, it is: the people's democratic dictatorship under the leadership of the working class (through the Communist Party) and based upon the alliance of workers and peasants.&quot;51 Mao emphasized that the people's dictatorship must be under the leadership of the working class, because &quot;it is only the working class that is most far-sighted, most selfless and most thoroughly revolutionary.&quot;52 The dictatorship was to be based on the alliance of the working class, the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie, and mainly on the alliance of workers and peasants, because those two classes were the main force in overthrowing imperialism and feudalism and in making the transition from new-democracy to socialism. It was necessary to unite with the national bourgeoisie, Mao said, so as to resist the oppression of imperialism and develop China's economy, but the national bourgeoisie could not be the leader of the revolution or have the chief role in state power. This article, together with Mao's report to the Central Committee, laid the political basis for a common programme to be adopted by the New Political Consultative Conference. On September 21, 1949, the New Political Consultative Conference—renamed the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference—was solemnly inaugurated in Beiping. In his opening address Mao Zedong proudly proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China: &quot;,..[T]he Chinese people, comprising one quarter of humanity, 389 CHAPTEK FIVE VICTORY in THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION have now stood up.... We have closed our ranks and defeated both domestic and foreign oppressors through the Peoples War of Liberation and the great people's revolution, and now we are proclaiming the founding of the People's Republic of China From now on our nation will belong to the community of the oeace-loving and freedom-loving nations of the world and work courageously and industriously to foster its own civilization and well-being and at the same time to promote world peace and freedom. Ours will no longer be a nation subject to insult and humiliation. We have stood up.&quot;53 . ^ The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference was an organ of the people's democratic united front, based on the alliance of workers and peasants and led by the Communist Party. It consisted of representatives of the CPC, the democratic parties, public figures without party affiliation, various people s organizations, the People's Liberation Army, all the localities and nationalities and Chinese living overseas. The conference adopted its &quot;Organic Law&quot; and elected the 1st National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (Mao Zedong was elected its chairman on October 9). Until the National People's Congress was convened after a general election, the plenary session of the CPPCC was to act in that capacity. ^ The conference also approved a &quot;Common Programme. The Programme made the following stipulations regarding the state system and the form of government. &quot;The People's Republic of China is a new-democratic or a people's democratic state. It carries out the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class, based on the alliance of workers and peasants, and uniting all democratic classes and all nationalities in China.&quot; &quot;The people's congresses and the people s governments at all levels are the organs for the exercise of state power by the people.&quot; &quot;The organs of state power at all levels shall practise democratic centralism.&quot; , The basic principle for economic construction, the document stated, was &quot;to develop production and bring about a prosperous economy through the policies of taking into account both public and private interests, of benefiting both labour and capital, of mutual aid between the city and countryside, and circulation of goods between China and other countries.&quot; The document noted that the state would coordinate and regulate the state-owned economy, individual economy, private capitalist economy, etc. &quot;In this way,&quot; it continued, &quot;all components of the social economy can, under the leadership of the state-owned economy, carry out division and coordination of labour and play their respective parts in promoting the development of the social economy as a whole.&quot; With regard to the policy towards nationalities, the Common Programme stated: &quot;All nationalities within the boundaries of the People's Republic of China are equal. They shall establish unity and mutual aid among themselves, and shall oppose imperialism and their own public enemies, so that the People's Republic of China will become a big fraternal and cooperative family composed of all its nationalities.&quot; &quot;Regional autonomy shall be exercised in areas where national minorities are concentrated.&quot; As for foreign policy, the document declared that it was to be based on the principle of &quot;lasting international peace, and friendly cooperation between the peoples of all countries, and opposition to the imperialist policy of aggression and war.&quot; This Common Programme became the great charter for the Chinese people, and served for a time as a provisional constitution. The conference also adopted the Organic Law of the Central People's Government. It unanimously elected Mao Zedong chairman of the Central People's Government and elected Zhu De, Liu Shaoqi, Soong Ching Ling, Li Jishen, Zhang Lan and Gao Gang vice-chairmen. Fifty-six other persons, including Chen Yi, were elected members. (Afterwards, the Central People's Government Council appointed Zhou Enlai Premier of the Government Administration Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs.) The conference approved Beiping as the capital of the People's Republic of China and changed the city's name back to Beijing. It also adopted the Western calendar as the chronological system, the &quot;March of the Volunteers&quot; composed by Nie Er as the new national anthem and a national flag with five stars on a field of red, symbolizing the great unity of the people of the whole country under the leadership of the Communist Party. ^^r FIVE VICTORY IN THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION 391 _ . i_ __ -m First Plenary Session of the Chinese 0l| ^Political Consultative Conference came to a successful Peopl le * fhe evening a ceremony was held in Tian'anmen Square Cl:v the foundation stone for the Monument to the Peop£s Heroes. ^The epitaph on the Monument, composed by Mao Ze ^&quot;Eternal gloryato*the heroes of the people who laid down their who laydown their lives in the people, war and the C^of^ many struggles against domesttc ^foragn enerme^ ^ ^ people^' lhdusPwhUeCcelehrating their victories, the Communist Crti of CWna and the people of the whole country commemorated with reverence the revolutionary martyrs who had heroical &quot;n their lives to the long-term struggle for nattonal independence and the pe ople ps b]ic of china marked the ,h. Chines, ib— »■«»»' &quot;J &quot;,Mon f„„ in a new era in Chinese nisxory, a neHowTad!he Chinesfpeople's revolution come about, and how ‘nin^aid^-A revolution cannot be ‘made' ... revolutions and bureaucrat-comprador bourgeoisie, placed itself in opposition to the Chinese people. When the War of Resistance Against Japan came to an end, the Chiang Kai-shek clique ignored the fervent aspirations of the Chinese people to build an independent, democratic, strong and prosperous new China. Instead, it pursued a policy of autocracy and civil war, bringing the entire people to the brink of starvation and death. As a result, the people had to rise to save themselves. Thus it was profound social problems that touched off the revolution, and a solid mass basis provided the condition for its expansion. The Chinese people had always been heroic in their resistance to aggression and oppression. However, during the period of nearly eighty years from the Opium War in 1840 to the May 4th Movement in 1919, they had failed in all their struggles because they lacked the leadership of an advanced revolutionary party. It was the Communist Party that clarified for the people the aim of their revolution. And it was the Communist Party that, over a long course of struggle, found the way for them to bring that revolution to victory. It was the Party that cemented the Chinese people —who had always been considered &quot;a plate of loose sand&quot;—into an unconquerable force with one heart and one mind. It was under the leadership of the Party that the Chinese people, through twenty-eight years of arduous and courageous struggle, won their historic victory at last. Thus, from the revolutionary practice of modern times, the people have drawn a scientific conclusion: without the Communist Party there would have been no New China. This is the great truth confirmed by their own experience. The leadership position of the Communist Party was not the result of some individual's desire or will. For a long time, the Chinese people were presented with a choice of three plans for building the country, three visions of its future. The first, represented by the Northern warlords and later by the Kuomintang ruling clique, was that China should be under the dictatorship of the landlord-comprador class and retain its semi-colonial and semi-feudal status. The second, advocated by some middle-of-theroaders, was that China should be a bourgeois republic and ^TER FIVE VICTORY IN THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION 1,6 -?hese th ee plans were put to the test of practice time and Asa result the first was abandoned by the Chinese people *r.~v v »' «■' and to advance from new-democracy to socialism. That was an W T°hTreasoCn the Communist Party was able to lead the revolusissass Hism m thfmlsses' &quot; ^inte &quot;g Marxism-Leninism with the realto the masses- . * h le series of lines, principles correct theoretical principles guiding the Chinese revolution and a summation of the Party's experience gained in practice. It is the crystallization of the collective wisdom of the Communist Party. The formation and development of Mao Zedong Thought meant that Marxism had already taken deep root in China. Once this Sinicized Marxist ideology was accepted by the Chinese people, it became a great material force in the revolutionary transformation of Chinese society. Seeing this point, even Dean Acheson, the U.S. Secretary of State, who adamantly opposed Communism, had to admit at the end of 1949: &quot;We must face the fact that there is no Chinese basis of resistance to Communism.&quot;56 He said this even though he would not resign himself to defeat and was still under the illusion that someday democratic individualists would prevail again and establish a capitalist system in China. Following the principle of combining Marxism-Leninism with the Chinese reality, the CPC accumulated valuable experience while leading the new-democratic revolution. As Mao Zedong summed it up: &quot;A well-disciplined Party armed with the theory of MarxismLeninism, using the method of self-criticism and linked with the masses of the people; an army under the leadership of such a Party; a united front of all revolutionary classes and all revolutionary groups under the leadership of such a Party—these are the three main weapons with which we have defeated the enemy.... Relying on them, we have won basic victory.&quot;57 The victory of the Chinese people's revolution eloquently proved that Marxism-Leninism can guide not only the liberation struggles of people in capitalist countries but also those of people in colonial and semi-colonial countries. In 1949, in an article commemorating the 28th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong said: &quot;Twenty-eight years of our Party is a long period, in which we have accomplished only one thing—we have won basic victory in the revolutionary war. This calls for celebration, because it is the people's victory, because it is a victory in a country as large as China. But we still have much work to do; to use the analogy of a journey, our past work is only the first step in a long march . , n thousand li (five thousand kilometres].&quot;5&quot; Having won ° rtory in the new-democratic revolution, the Communist Party Tf China integrating the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism ith the concrete practice in the country, would continue leading The peop&quot; ^ the long and difficult struggle to build the new China. NOTES , Cheng Siyuan, Reminiscences of Political Events, Chin. ed„ Guangxi People's States MS Umted Stales Governn.cn, ‘SfSfffiS'Alffk Victory in die War of Resistance Against Japan,&quot; Ibid., p. 13. 7I,nedAFens!S&quot;4a&quot;f4retherKM?governmcnl and the Soviet government signed ,hi&quot; treaty. along E3S5 StctTa lnced that tt &amp;&amp; Central Government of China ha t B. the Nation i ^ fjghting ^ ceased jn Si^a^eSteNahoial Government of the Republic of China will assume full governing authority over them. _ Circular 0f the Central sfSssr, U Dean^Aches^mA/v^yenr^^n1 the State Department, W.W. Norton &amp; Co., New After Japan's surrender, in view of the peasants' eager demand for land, the CPC Central Committee decided to change the land policy for the period of the War of Resistance. That is, instead of merely reducing rents and interest, it would confiscate the land of the landlords and distribute it among the peasants. The &quot;May 4th Directive&quot; marked this change.<br /> <br /> == The Founding of the People's Republic of China and Transition to Socialism ==<br /> <br /> === The Early Period of New China and the Party's Tasks ===<br /> The victory of the Chinese people's revolution and the founding of the People's Republic of China opened a new chapter in Chinese history. The Communist Party of China, which organized and led the revolution to victory, assumed nationwide state power, shouldering the heavy task of leading the people of all ethnic groups in the construction of a new life. A fresh chapter was opened in the Party's history. On October 1, 1949, 300,000 citizens of the capital assembled in Tiananmen Square to hold a grand founding ceremony. Amidst their cheers, Chairman Mao Zedong, on the Tiananmen Rostrum, solemnly proclaimed: &quot;The Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China is founded today.&quot; He pressed a knob and hoisted the first bright red five-star flag. His action was followed by a military review, in which Commander-in-Chief Zhu De reviewed the land, naval and air forces of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Enthusiastic celebrations were held in various major liberated cities across the country. The founding of the People's Republic of China marked the end of a century in which colonialists and imperialists collaborated with feudal rulers to enslave the Chinese people as well 398 CHA,™ SIX F— OF PKC ANP TRANSITION TO SOCAUSM » j f reouent civil wars and loreign as a time of ^aos caused by ^ chinese le aggression and the breakup new society. stood up and China long anticAn independent, united and &quot; d born. Inspired by this ipated by the popu ace wa s * ^ J exhlbited great victory, Chinese at party of China and revolutionary fervour. T disDlayed wholehearted service PLA officers i&quot;hardP work and plain living and to the people, and the spirit areas. people were strict discipline in their wo b innings all around them, struck by the freshness a&quot;derne^~opie rejoiced over Workers, peasants and &quot;he lh exu,tauon, numerous young their emancipation, rmea revolutionary students and other intellectual ^ ^&quot;^todying abroad work. Youthful overseas middle-of-therelurned to China in lag broken away from the reactionroaders, including those forces y initiative. ary enemy, moved e ‘°e ‘\Xhange old ideas in order to Many desired to study an . ces Party forces and the adapt to the chaaBed &quot; liberated areas and in the original revolutionary forces from he more effective core &quot;* emerged over the vast ^p^Tj'^ople's revolution was not The great victory of tteQ«*P«P ^ ^ ^ of world only historically unprecedented *f ^ Qctobcr Socialist significance, ranking af ter tl h fascism. A great Revolution and the W°rld ,d&gt;s population broke through nation with onrfou J ° * greatly^hanged global political the Eastern imperialist fro , g V democracy and patterns; expanded lor&quot;s ed nations and peoples socialism, and inspired the jhus^he victory was welcomed in their struggles for liberation. Thus the &quot;rES 5 £ s ^ one ^r Ma«ismconcrete practice of the Chinese revolution, making it the victory of Mao Zedong Thought. It raised the prestige of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought among the Chinese populace and it was accepted as the guiding ideology for various undertakings of the People's Republic, while its influence spread worldwide. Tests Facing the Newly-Born Republic The great revolutionary triumph of the Chinese people represented the main prevailing stream of the time. In the initial period after the founding of New China, the Communist Party of China and the Chinese people were confronted by many difficulties and numerous severe tests. In military terms, despite a basic victory, the People's Liberation War was yet to be fully concluded. The one million KMT troops in southwest and south China and on coastal islands still put up desperate struggles. In the new liberated areas, the remnant forces left behind by the fleeing KMT struck by disorder were in collusion with local despotic forces. They waged local bandit guerrilla warfare against the people's political power, placing their hopes on imperialist intervention in China's civil war and on the outbreak of a third world war in a vain attempt to stage a comeback. In economic terms. New China had carry-overs from the shambles of the old society characterized by decreased production, impeded communications, hard lives for the people and a high rate of unemployment. The long-term, indiscriminate issuing of paper money by the KMT government, in particular, resulted in cemented skyrocketing prices, rampant speculation and a chaotic market. The Communist Party of China and the people's government faced a new, severe test, in regard to their abilities to check runaway inflation and price rises, stabilize the economic situation, and restore production to provide a firm economic and political foothold, that was more difficult than launching offensives to suppress bandits. In international terms, as soon as it was founded New China was recognized by the Soviet Union and various people's democ^PTER SB FOUND, NG OF PRC AND TRANS, T,ON TO SOOAL.SM 40, •„ in Europe and Asia. India. Burma, Sweden and Svritzerf \ negotiated to sever diplomatic relations with the KMT government and establish diplomatic ties with NewChimr Alad P ntinns with the KMT government and restoring the legal economic 'assistance to Ch,na. The United States which atW ed to dominate the globe, after its ^^&quot;/&quot;&quot;Xed to re in opposition to communism pcdjcy^failed^ It Xfd to recognlze^New ChL and tried * *£?»£* S=o^S^=r^s legal seat in *? chaHenges^This^cmailwi ^the^eed^to^culuvate^new^ Preferred to whether the Party, under completely new historical condhions as it moved into urban areas, held state power and £=NS£ SSS.S the 7th Party Central committee as well as the deep concern shown by many friends of the Party. In brief. New China had been founded, but many still questioned whether the new people's regime could keep a firm foothold and the Communist Party of China could be a successful administrator. This had to be answered by practice. International friends and foes also looked on attentively and waited for an answer. In the face of the complex situation and various difficulties in the early period after the inception of New China, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China kept a clear head, fully confident of meeting the challenge. In line with various basic principles formulated at the 2nd Plenary Session of the 7th Party Central Committee, the Party methodically adopted a series of measures and waged effective struggles to consolidate the new People's Republic. Rear combat to eliminate remnant KMT troops went on smoothly. The Chinese People's Liberation Army, following a unified Central Military Commission, continued to advance through south and southwest China. Seeing the collapse of enemy forces was a foregone conclusion, our army adopted outflanking and encircling tactics and, like a thunderbolt, heroically pursued and attacked the stragglers, winning successive victories in the Hengyang-Baoqing Battle and the Guangxi Battle that eliminated the Bai Chongxi group, and the Guiyang Battle and the Chongqing and Chengdu Battle that wiped out the Hu Zongnan and Song Xilian groups. After drawing a lesson from reverses in its attacks on Jinmen Island, the PLA successfully crossed the sea to liberate Hainan Island in April 1950. Against the backdrop of sweeping military victories on the Chinese mainland, the PLA peacefully liberated vast areas in Yunnan, Sichuan and Sikang, one after another. By June 1950, after eight months of fighting, the PLA wiped out a total of 1.3 million regular KMT troops, making a total of 8.07 million KMT casualties in the entire Liberation War. Thus was completed the task of liberating all Chinese territory with the exception of Tibet, Taiwan and a few islands. In May 1951, the Agreement on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet was reached between the Central People's Government and SIX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 40} the Local Government of Tibet. In October, thePLAmovedmto has^to be stationed there and Tibet was peacefully llbfra‘^ . &quot; me newly-liberated areas, the PLA launched large-scale banditmppression operations. With the support of the broad ™ass* ‘ the people, by June 1950, nearly one million armed KMT bandits had been wiped out, leading to initial social stability. In conjunction with the victorious advance of lbe PLA. tary control committees were first set up in the newly-liberated areas to suppress counter-revolutionary disruptive actl',lt&quot;s&gt; mafntata social order, take over all public institutions of the KMT and organize the restoration of production. When cond lions permitted, conferences of people's representatives from all circles^were convened. These gradually exercised the functions and powers of the people's congress, discussed and determined local government administrative policies and major matters needing development or reform, and elected local people's governments The system of people's representative conferences became Tn appropriate form for the transition from a military control svstem toPa formally elected people's congress. Echelons of political power from the central to local levels of the People s Republic of Xa were set up on a completely -w basis after the borough smashing of the reactionary ruling machine °f cadres ernment functionaries were mostly cadres of the PLA, cadres from old liberated areas and intellectuals whohadnewly pin^i the revolution. The top level consisted mainly of Party members and included considerable numbers of patnouc democrats from various fields. This was astatepowerotfe united front with multi-party cooperation led by the Communist Party of China. It was a government under the people s democratic dictatorship, one unprecedented in Chi&quot;eSfe h‘St&quot;y &quot; J , truly and effectively exercised power nationwide from the centra down to the grassroots level. . . f Confiscation of bureaucratic capital was an important task for the military control committee in newly-liberated cities. On con liberation of overall experience gained in taking over administra tion of cities during the Liberation War in northeast and north China the Party decided to adopt different methods in handling bureaucrat-capital enterprises from those used to deal with the KMT organs of power. It would not smash these bodies, but instead first adhere to their original organizational institutions and production systems, &quot;maintaining original posts, salaries, and systems.&quot; The military control committee took them over intact, exercised supervision over production and then gradually conducted democratic reform and production reform. This made it possible to rapidly enact takeover tasks and prevent chaos, basically avoiding the phenomenon of stoppage of production and damage to equipment. By early 1950, a total of 2,800 bureaucratcapital industrial and mining enterprises and over 2,400 financial enterprises had been taken over. They formed the main sector of the state-owned economy in the early period after the founding of the People's Republic. The people's government abrogated the economic prerogatives gained by imperialists in China through taking advantage of unequal treaties, and recovered control over China's customs offices where imperialists had long been entrenched, exercising control over foreign trade and foreign currency. They safeguarded the state's independence, sovereignty and economic interests. Price Stabilization and Financial- Economic Integration Confronted by an extremely difficult financial and economic situation, the Party carefully led a major struggle to stabilize prices and unify finances and the economy. Financial and economic problems of the time were due to several causes. One was the on-going military conflict, which entailed massive supporting expenditure. Another was the government's shouldering of responsibility, for the sake of social stability, for all the millions of military and government employees and teachers left behind by the old government, so long as they did not oppose the new order. These steps were necessary, but the resultant numbers of national personnel divorced from production whom the government provided for or paid salaries to exceeded 9 million. This constituted a very heavy burden. Large amounts of funds were also needed to restore production and . PTER SIX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 405 „ transnort services. Most parts of the country had no basic tal Tlar tax s^tem. The income of the people's government fell w of expenditure, so it could only rely on the issuance of large Sm™ms ofcurrency to make up financial deficits. Under such ^ instances lopsided-developed speculative capital persisted in Cir tine trouble in newly-liberated cities and prices continued to TvS ln o derto check the market disorder worsened by the manipulation of speculative capital, the Party and government mlving on the forces of the state-owned economy and the support of peasants in old liberated areas, adopted effective measures and necessary administrative means. They successively organized two large-scale campaigns agamst speculation. The first was the ' ilver dollar battle.&quot; Military administrative departments and the people's government in various large cities to counter the rampant silver dollar speculation of the tune issued exnhcit orders strictly forbidding the free circulation of gold bars sUver doUars and foreign currencies on the market They couM only be sold to the People's Bank and it was stipulated that th Renminbi (people's currency) was the sole legal currency. Th speculators, ‘howe v er , turned a deaf ear to the govern&quot; and continued to disrupt financial markets. In Shanghai, th country's largest industrial and commercial metropohs some peop/even hectored that the PLA could ^ ly sealed the securities building, the headquarters of financial speculation, and arrested more than 200 brought to justice, dealing a heavy blow to illegal activities designed to disrupt finances. Speculators changed °ver to hoard • f noderuns cotton yarn, cotton cloth and coal, jacked up pricesan? disrupted ^market. KMT special agents clamoured fhLt controls on rice, cotton and coal alone were enough to kill Shanghai Then the &quot;war of rice and cotton&quot; was waged. Chen determines feelings of mental well-being of citizens.&quot; Large-scale allocation, transportation and concentration of grain, cotton yarn and cloth, and coal were organized nationwide by the people's government. On November 25 when prices were soaring the most rapidly, various major cities across the country took united action in line with the unified arrangements of the central government to sell large quantities of goods without restriction. This resulted in the rapid fall of prices. Simultaneously, they tightened the money supply, with the result that speculators went bankrupt, one after another, since their funds could no longer turn over. The heavy blow administered at capital speculation represented the first round of victory won in the struggle between restriction and counter-restriction on the bourgeoisie. This won extensive support from the masses, including capitalists who were willing to engage in normal and legal business. Subsequently, a representative of the national bourgeoisie in Shanghai acknowledged that the silver dollar unrest in June was suppressed by the Communist Party of China with political force, and this time the price was stabilized with economic clout alone, giving Shanghai industrial and commercial circles a lesson. After this, the socialist state-owned economy gained the first initiative to stabilize the market. To further fundamentally stabilize prices, it was necessary to ensure a balance between state financial revenue and expenditure and between market material supply and demand. To achieve this, it was essential to move from methods of decentralized management adopted in various liberated areas to cope with enemy-imposed isolation and encirclement. The new situation after the founding of New China led to the introduction of integrated management and unified leadership over the nation's financial and economic work. In March 1950, the Party Central Committee issued a circular on the basis of the Decision on Unifying the State's Financial and Economic Work promulgated by the Government Administration Council, calling on Party committees at all levels to use every means to guarantee full implementation of this resolution. Its main contents entailed: unification of national monetary income so the main part would be held by the central government and used in principal state 407 hapTER SIX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM vnenditure; unified allocation of national materials so the bulk 6f dispersed important varieties would be gathered by the state which would make rational use of them and regulate supply and demand; and unified management of national money. The cash nf all military and government institutions and publicly-owned enterprises, except for shortly-needed funds, should be deposited in state banks and allocated under a unified plan. This resolu,ion was immediately carried out conscientiously throughout^ country The government also adopted such measures as reductions in staff, takeovers of stock, strengthening of taxation, issuing of government bonds and curtailment of expenditure. All these measures yielded remarkable results. After March, financial revenue and expenditure approached equilibrium inflation was halted and prices assumed daily stability. The following figures convincingly show this situation. While Shanghai s wholesale price index was 100 in the first month after the city s liberation (June 1949), the figure jumped to 2,097.9 m February 1950. a more than 20-fold rise. Following attacks on speculation and monetarv-economic integration, with the nation's wholesale price index standing at 100 in March 1950, the figure was 85.4 in December 1950, 92.4 in December 1951, and 92 6 in December 1952, demonstrating maintenance of stability and a slight tail. The work of stabilizing prices and unifying finances and the economy was a victory of great importance on the monetary and economic front after the founding of New China. A subsequen end was put to the inflation and price rises which had brought untold suffering to the people for the twelve years flowing the War of Resistance Against Japan during the period of KM 1 rule A stop was also made to the decades of unbalanced financial income and expenditure of old China, creating favourable conditions for winning a secure livelihood for the people, while restor ing and developing industrial and agricultural production, lhis wonderful achievement won the admiration and praise of those people at home and abroad who doubted whether the Communist Party could make the economy a success. It proved that the Communist Party of China was not only invincible militarily and strong politically but had economic clout. The 3rd Plenary Session of the 7th Central Committee The 3rd Plenary Session of the 7th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held in Beijing in June 1950 analysed the international and domestic situation. It summed up the work since the 2nd Plenary Session of the 7th Party Central Committee over the year around the time of the founding of New China. Mao Zedong gave a written report at the session entitled &quot;Fight for a Fundamental Turn for the Better in the Nation's Financial and Economic Situation.&quot; In it the Central Committee outlined the central task for the whole Party and people nationwide. The session pointed out that the group of victories won on China's economic front indicated the beginnings of an improvement in the financial and economic situation but there was still no fundamental turn for the better. A fundamental upturn needed about three years and the creation of three conditions. These were the accomplishment of agrarian reform, a reasonable readjustment of industry and commerce, and a massive reduction in funds needed by state organizations. Mao Zedong delivered a speech entitled, &quot;Don't Hit Out in All Directions.&quot; It pointed out: &quot;To accomplish agrarian reform, we must combat the remnant forces of imperialism, feudalism and the KMT reactionaries; the enemies confronting us are as numerous as they are powerful. We must properly handle the relations between classes, political parties and national races at home so as to isolate and attack current main foes. We should not hit out in all directions. Making too many enemies will create unfavourable nationwide tension. We must create concessions and easing in one aspect, so workers, peasants and small craftspeople support us and the overwhelming majority of the bourgeoisie and intellectuals do not oppose us.&quot; The cable regarding taxation and unemployment which Mao Zedong sent to the secretary of the Shanghai Party committee before the session mentioned such tactics. &quot;We are now in an intense period of change, whose successful progress we should ensure with no unnecessary or minimal destruction. A firm grip on this can help reduce resistance and gain initiative.&quot;1 At that time, due to historical reasons and social and economic reorganization resulting from the victory of the revolution, the CHAFTER SIX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 409 umber of unemployed workers, craftsmen and intellectuals mown tar ily increased. The burden on the peasants was very heavy, auite a few of the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie were &quot; tenterhooks. Dtsrnptive activit.es and the brilhant triumph in me attack on speculative capital caused some comrades in the Party to mistake the main targets of the struggle as the bourgeois^ fe In light of this situation, the session criticized the idea, holding that it was possible to eliminate capitalism and practise socialism ahead of tune, pointing out that it was an erroneous concept inappropriate for national conditions. The national bourgeoisie would be eliminated in the future, but they should now be rallied with us to jointly develop the national economy and not Tshed away Our policy towards the national bourgeoisie remained one'of unity and struggle, with the emphasis on unity, and one of controlling funds and not of squeezing out an &quot;8p£‘y Session of the 7th Party Central Committee wal one of the most important meetings of the Party Central Committee in the early period after the founding of New China. The resolution of the session laid down an explicit tactical ^hne and programme of action for the Party's work during the three years of economic rehabilitation.<br /> <br /> === The War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea, Reform of Land System and Other Democratic Reforms ===<br /> After the 3rd Plenary Session of the 7th Party Central Committee, just as the Chinese people were fighting tor ; a improvement in the financial and economic situation, New China was again faced with the threat of external aggression. On June 25, 1950, civil war broke out in Korea. The split o North and South Korea was the result of the separate acceptance by the armed forces of the United States and the Soviet Union of the surrender of Japanese troops at the 38th parallel of north latitude which marked the dividing line of Korea after World War II. On the third day after the outbreak of Korea's civil war, U.S. imperialism announced arms assistance to South Korea, interfering in the country's internal affairs. At the same time, it ordered its Seventh Naval Fleet to move into the Taiwan Straits &quot;to prevent any attack on Taiwan,&quot; brazenly interfering in China's own affairs and setting foot in China's territory of Taiwan. Subsequently, the UN Security Council, manipulated by the United Slates, adopted a resolution, dressing up the aggressor troops of the United States and the other countries it patched together against Korea as UN forces, appointing General McArthur, commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Far East, as the commander- in-chief of UN forces, further expanding the war against Korea. The Chinese Government voiced strong protest against the United States for its crimes of aggression against Korea and Chinese territory. On June 28, Mao Zedong delivered a speech, pointing out, &quot;The affairs of various countries around the world should be governed by their own citizens. Asia's at lairs should be handled by Asians and not be run by the United States. The U.S. aggression against Asia can only arouse the extensive and resolute resistance of the Asian people.&quot; On July 13, the Central Military Commission promptly made the &quot;Decision on Defence of the Northeast Frontier,&quot; and the Northeast Frontier Force was organized. On September 15, U.S. troops landed in Inchon, cutting off the retreat of the south advancing forces of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The aggressors pressed up to the mouth of the country and there was the possibility that the war flames would spread to China's northeast border. On September 30, Zhou Enlai, premier of the Government Administration Council and foreign minister, gave a stern warning: &quot;The Chinese people ardently love peace, but in the defence of peace, they have not been and will never be, afraid of fighting against wars of aggression. The Chinese people will never tolerate foreign aggression, nor will they allow the imperialists to commit wanton aggression against their own neighbours and turn a blind eyes to it.&quot; On October 3, Zhou asked the Indian ambasBR gx FOUNDING OF FRC and transition to SOCIALISM 411 sadOT n incident* thc Korea.n KOrmust te Stopped immediately. If the U.S. forces attempt to aX&quot;unmdde&quot;ted the determination and strength 1 rittn^e neoole who had stood up, believing that it was °f 1 \ible that China would dispatch troops to take part in the imP so ttre wafno cause to worry, and that they were sure to Conflict between the armed forces of the Chinese people and U.S. imperialists eventually became inevitable. Beating Back U.S. Aggressor Troops Would New China, founded for only a year, dare to meet the United States, the most powerful imperialist country henH-nn? This was no small matter in light of the situation lino in China it that time. Economic rehabilitation had just ES&amp;ssRfcgSSS people's political power had not been completely consolidated. ThtT weapons1 andPequipment of the were still quite backward, and navy and air forces were sti the initial stages. If China dispatched troops tobecomemvolved in the conflict, could they win, would they Jgl t themselves and court disaster to their own door, thus making it impossible for the country to carry out economic constructio^ In the face of such an emergency situation, the Political Bureau If the Central Committee of the Chinese C°mmu^t Party under the guidance of Mao Zedong, met several times in the first half of October 1950. They made an all-round assessment of the internal and external situation, clearly took a sobre note of the immediate difficulties and made a penetrating analysis of the necessity and possibility of dispatching combat troops. Troops had to be dispatched because if U.S. invading troops were allowed to occupy the whole of Korea and their powerful forces pressed up to the banks of the Yalu River, it would be difficult for China to engage in peaceful construction, while international and domestic reactionaries would be bound to swell with arrogance. The consequences would be extremely unfavourable to China and to various countries in the East. The War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea meant protecting homes and the native land. The Joint Declaration of the Various Democratic Parties of China which was published later succinctly stated, &quot;The life and death of Korea and the safety and danger of China are closely related. If the lips disappear, the teeth will be cold; if the door is broken, the hall will be dangerous. The Chinese people's support of the Korean people's war of resistance against U.S. aggression was not only their moral responsibility, but also closely linked to the vital interests of the entire Chinese people. It was determined by the necessity of self-defence.&quot; Possibilities of winning lay in the fact that a war waged against aggression was a just one and a just cause enjoys abundant support. Morale was high and China had abundant reserves of troops. Our army, which had always been able to defeat well-equipped enemies with inferior weapons, possessed rich combat experience, flexible strategies and tactics and a valiant, militant spirit unafraid of sacrifice and hardships. The battlefield was near northeast China, facilitating logistics support. On the other hand, although the U.S. troops had advanced weapons, their forces were dispersed, their supply line long, and their fighting will weak. China strove for the possible defeat of the aggressors within the territory of Korea while simultaneously remaining prepared for potential U.S. air force bombardment of some Chinese cities and industrial bases, and naval attacks on Chinese coastal areas. Even in this eventuality, if these cities and areas were war-torn, it would at most mean delaying victory in the Liberation War for several years. EK SIX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 413 On the basis of these assessments, the conference made the determined strategic decision to resist U.S. aggression and aid K rea protect Chinese homes and the motherland. K on October 8, Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Peop lc d evolutionary Military Commission, issued an order that the Northeast Frontier Forces be formed into the Chinese People s Volunteers (CPV) and Peng Dehuai be appointed their comman der and political commissar. They were to await orders to set out to Korea and participate in operations. The Soviet Union ongi naily agreed to dispatch its air force in support but ^s offer was rescinded at the last moment. On the evening of October 19, 1950, wSlo ak force cover, the CPV vehemently and spirited* Tressed the Yalu River. The arrogant U.S. imperialists simply did not expect China would dispatch its troops to enter the w&quot;. On October 25 the CPV rapidly encountered the enemy which then Straight in. Taking advantage of the foes' weaknesses o misjudgment and rash advances by divided forces, the Chinese troops seized their opportunity while moving forward and made a surprise attack on the enemy. They won the very first battle, and drove the enemy from the banks of the Yalu River to areas south of the Qingchon River. , . U S aggressor troops, wrapped in fond delusions, continued t advance towards the north on a larger scale, launching a general attack named &quot;Christmas Day decisive conclusion campaign. The CPV and Korean People's Army adopted the tactic of luring the enemy in deep, under extremely trying conditions when enemy planes conducted wanton and indiscriminate ^cold The Chinese army had insufficient supplies in the bitterly cold weather but fought valiantly, surrounded, wiped out and inflicted heavy casualties on large numbers of enemy troops. Subsequent victories in further battles forced the enemy troops to change from a general offensive to a general retreat, moving back to south of the 38th parallel line, thus reversing the war situation. This was followed by three successive major campaigns with hot advances and retreats, and offences and defences. By June 10 1951, our army had won all five battles, wiped out a total of 230 000 enemy troops and stabilized the battleiront near the 38th parallel line. Under such circumstances, beginning in July 1951, both sides held truce negotiations. However, the U.S. imperialists did not willingly give up their aggressive ambitions, attempting to use military pressure, such as air strikes and coastal otfensives, to force the Korean-Chinese side to submit in talks. The United States mobilized one-third of all its army, one-fifth of its air force and nearly half of its navy and threw them into the Korean battlefields, making them the main force in the war of aggression against Korea. Truce negotiations, which were intermingled with the fighting, were carried out intermittently, dragging on for two years. In the whole process, the CPV and the Korean People's Army, made use of the terrain to dig tunnels, adopted the operational tactic of combining positional defence and counterattack during movement, wiped out much of the enemy s effective strength through several minor victories. They further eliminated 720,000 enemy troops in two years. China's domestic army units, as the reserve forces of the CPV, took turns to go to fight in Korea, the CPV air force supported by the Soviet Union also began' fighting, and logistics transport guarantees were strengthened. Thus, the United States was compelled to sign the truce agreement on July 27, 1953. Mark W. Clark, then commander-inchief of the UN Forces, later wrote dejectedly about the moment in his reminiscence, &quot;I have earned an unenviable reputation. 1 am the first commander in U.S. history who signed a truce agreement in an unwon war.&quot;3 The U.S. aggressors employed every kind of modern weapon except the atom bombs. The war, however, ended eventually with triumph for the Chinese and Korean armed forces and people. The victory exploded the myth about the invincibility of U.S. imperialism. Just as Peng Dehuai stated in the Work Report on the CPV War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea, the victory eloquently proved &quot;the time has gone forever when Western aggressors could occupy a country as long as they mounted several big guns on the coast of the East as they did for several centuries.&quot; The national self-confidence and pride of the Chinese people was greatly strengthened as a result of the victory. Some CHArrER SIX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 415 once had fears and delusions about imperialism were I profound lesson and woke up. The whole world looked Tchina with new eyes, and China's international prestige was s oktened to an unprecedented level. Since then, imperialists anve dare no° rash attempts to invade New China. A relatively stable peaceful environment was won for China's economic construction and sociaUe Volunteers who entered Korea to fight naJ^he enthusiastic support of the Chinese people at home as their ^.weZl backing Domestically, the Party led the largescale movement to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea vied nationwide to join the CPV and to donate money for buying aircraft and guns. They worked hard on all fronts to promote production and practise strict economy, ZesZn and their actual deeds. The movement to resist U.S. aggression ana aid Korea inculcated in the people the spirit of a high degree of patriotism and internationalism and greatly inspired the people s revolutionary enthusiasm and labour fervour, becoming a tremendous motivating force in restoring and developing the nation al economy and promoting various social reforms. Beginning in September 1954, group after group of the CPV returned home from Korea, even though at that time • ^eUnittd States was still unwilling to reach agreement with the Korean Chinese side on solving the Korean question peacefully or with drawal of all foreign armed forces from both North and South Korea In October 1958 the CPVs were totally recalled home, demmistrating^he sincerity of the Chinese people -th . to the peaceful solution of the Korean issue and China s stand of having no intention to station troops in a foreign country. Abolishing the Feudal Land System While engaging in the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and^id Korea the Party, following the plan adopted at the 3rd Plenary sZoVof the 7th Party Centra. Committee ^ the ^ between the winter of 1950 and the spring of 1953 to accomplish land reform in the countryside of the newly-liberated areas. Their population accounted for over half the country's total. As soon as the new areas were liberated, a campaign was launched to clean up banditry, combat despots and reduce rent and return deposits. Meanwhile, grass-roots political power and militia organizations were established in rural areas. A number of peasant activists were trained, in preparation for the launching of agrarian reform. In June 1950, the Central People's Government Council adopted and promulgated the Law of the People's Republic of China on Agrarian Reform formulated under the guidance of Liu Shaoqi and submitted to the government after it was discussed at the 3rd Plenary Session of the 7th Party Central Committee. The law summed up the experiences and lessons the Party gained in leading past agrarian reform, and set down new policies in keeping with the new situation prevailing after the founding of New China. It became the basic legal basis for guiding the agrarian reform. The agrarian reform movement was conducted when nationwide victory had been won in the people's revolutionary war and unified people's political power had been established. The most important question confronting the Party was no longer how to seize victory in the revolutionary war but rather how to rehabilitate and develop the national economy. Every item of the Party's work was to be centred around and serve this central task, which was also the basic aim of the agrarian reform. The first general principle of the Law of Agrarian Reform affirmed, &quot;Abolition of the land ownership of the feudal exploitative landlord class and introduction of peasant land ownership so as to liberate rural productive forces, develop agricultural production and pave the way for New China's industrialization.&quot; In accord with the need and potential of the new situation, China changed the past policy of collecting surplus land and property from rich peasants to that of preserving the rich peasant economy; that is, a rich peasant's land tilled by himself or by a hired hand and his other property should be protected, and a small amount of land leased by a rich peasant was generally preserved and kept intact. Levies were to be placed on large areas of land leased by a semi-landlord, rich peasant that exceeded the amount of land tilled by himself or by six FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 417 .. , hand With regard to landlords, the scope for confiscating 3 nnerty was limited and for small plot leasers, standards were to pr0pe L for the amount of land to be preserved. Implementation 1 these^policies was aimed at better protecting middle peasants, of h f ,P°' tn , hf. colitting up of the landlord class and reducing C— movement. It would contribute KXuzing the national bourgeoisie, and, in the last analysis, facilitating the restoration and development of production. Whh regard to working methods, it was stressed that agrarian reform1 should be carried^, in a guided, planned and orderly „v Since agrarian reform formed an acute class struggle, entailed implementation of the Party's mass line, and fiance °n poor peasants, farm labourers, uniting of middle fth&quot; mobilization of the broad masses of peasants, so that Struggle to defeat the landlord class they could taisetheirlevel consciousness and organization. Thus they wBte*1 confident of their own strength and mas&quot;r^/^s&quot;wi4&quot;'land p-.rtv oDDOsed the peaceful agrarian reform of bestowing ===== iSm m——d after the founding of New China was the largest in Chinese history, anc lake i the best organized and most smooth compared to earlier ones. This plished throughout the country. Nationwide more than 300 million landless and land-poor peasants (including those in old liberated areas) were given gratis about 700 million mu (15 mu=1 hectare) of land and large quantities of production means, free from the past heavy rent of about 35 billion kg of grain given to landlords annually. Ownership by the landlord class, the foundation of the feudal system that had continued for several thousand years in China, was by that time thoroughly eliminated. This meant a great, historic victory.<br /> Opposition to feudalism was originally a democratic revolutionary task of the bourgeoisie. However, China's bourgeoisie was not strong enough to lead the peasants to fulfil this historical task. Only China's proletariat and its political party, the Communist Party of China, could clearly put forward this historical task and lead the peasants towards its accomplishment. The most fundamental task in opposition to feudalism was to eliminate its economic base; i.e., the feudal exploitative system of ownership by the landlord class. Without the struggle to abolish this, mere opposition to feudal ideology and culture could not be thorough, nor could shake the foundations of the feudal system. Of course, after abolition of this form of land ownership and elimination of the economic base of the feudal system, the Party had to transform the scattered individual economy (once also the foundation of the feudal society) into a socialized, large-scale production economy and continue to carry out arduous struggle in order to thoroughly eliminate the political and ideological influence of feudal and small-scale production. This was a long-term historical task.<br /> With regard to agrarian reform in ethnic minority areas, in view of the economic and political situation and the many social and historical conditions different from those in the Han areas, the Party favoured adopting more prudent and gentle policies and steps, particularly in regard to the Tibetan region. The Agreement on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet signed between the Central People's Government and the Local Government of Tibet stipulated, &quot;In matters related to various reforms in Tibet, there will be no compulsion on the part of the central authorities. The local government of Tibet should carry out reforms of its own accord, and demands for reform raised by the people shall be settled by means of consultation with the leading personnel of Tibet.&quot; The reactionaries in the local government of Tibet consistently obstructed the reform. Waiting for the awakening of Tibetan leaders and maturing of other conditions, up till 1956, the central government continued to tell the Tibetan local government that reform might not be carried out during the Second Five-Year Plan (1958-62). However, reactionaries among serf-owners and nobles not only opposed agrarian reform in Tibet, but also collaborated with reactionary foreign forces to plot for &quot;Tibetan independence.&quot; On March 10, 1959, they staged armed rebellion in Lhasa, which also spread to some other places in Tibet. The Chinese People's Liberation Army was ordered to swiftly put down the rebellion. On March 28, the State Council ordered that the original Tibetan local government be dissolved and that the Preparatory Committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region exercise the function of the Tibetan local government. In June, the Preparatory Committee of the autonomous region held the 2nd plenary session, which adopted the Resolution on Conducting Democratic Reform. From that time on, democratic reform was carried out successively in a systematic and discriminating way throughout the region. The central task of the democratic reform was to change land ownership from that of feudal serf-owners to the peasants. The Party's class line in Tibet's rural areas was: reliance on poverty-stricken serfs and slaves, unity with middle-class serfs (including rich serfs) and with all forces that could be united, attacks on the rebellious and most reactionary serf-owners, thorough elimination of feudal serfdom and elimination of the serf-owning class. In the reform, it meant distinguishing those who participated in the rebellion and those who did not. Land and means of agricultural production of the Tibetan local government and of nobles and monasteries who participated in the rebellion were confiscated. A policy of redemption was adopted with regard to the land and means of agricultural production of the serf-owners, and monasteries who had not joined in the revolt. Within nearly two years, democratic reform was basically accomplished throughout the region. As a result, the last remnant feudal system on this territory of the People's Republic of China was eventually eliminated. Suppression of Counter-Revolutionaries The suppression of counter-revolutionaries was one of the three great movements (the other two being War to Resist U.S Aggression and Aid Korea, and agrarian reform) carried out in the early period after the founding of New China. A large number of counter-revolutionaries were left behind in the mainland when the defeated Kuomintang reactionaries fled to Taiwan. Unreconciled to their routing, they continued to carry out disruptive activities and make trouble. After the Korean War broke out, they believed that a third world war would soon occur and that the time had come for Chiang Kai-shek, swollen with counter-revolutionary arrogance, to launch a counterattack. They destroyed factories and railways, burnt warehouses and citizen residences, looted grain and property, spread rumours and organized riots, raided and besieged grass-roots people's governments, and slaughtered revolutionary cadres and activists among the masses. In 1950, in the vast new liberated areas, nearly 40,000 cadres and masses, including more than 7,000 in Guangxi, were murdered by counter-revolutionaries. To cope with this situation, on October 10, 1950, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued the Instruction on Suppression of CounterRevolutionary Activities, calling on Party committees at all levels to firmly correct the deviation of excessive leniency towards counter-revolutionaries at certain times and in some places and comprehensively implement the policy of combining suppression with leniency. The chief criminals shall be punished without fail those who are accomplices under duress shall go unpunished and those who perform deeds of merit shall be rewarded.&quot; Chief counter-revolutionaries who are guilty of heinous crimes and who are steeped in evil and refuse to repent shall be firmly suppressed. Beginning in December, a large-scale movement to suppress counter-revolutionaries was launched nationwide. 421 The movement was targeted mainly at bandits (chieftains, hardened bandits), special agents, despots, heads of reactionary secret societies and core members of reactionary parties and iP.sues. A mass line was adopted for the movement. Under the leadership of the Party committee, the whole Party and masses were mobilized, public security and judicial organs were combined with the broad masses of the people, various democratic parties and democrats were drawn into participation, and the masses consciously rose to denounce and expose counterrevolutionaries. In February 1951, the Central People's Government promulgated the Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Punishment of Counter-Revolutionaries, providing legal weapons for the struggle to suppress counter-revolutionaries and a standard for measuring penalties. After a nationwide upsurge in the movement to suppress counter-revolutionaries had taken shape, in May 1951, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made a timely decision to immediately implement a prudent drawing back policy and concentrated its efforts on handling long-standing cases. In the handling of cases, the Party stressed the need to conduct investigations and studies, to lay the emphasis on the weight of evidence and to not easily trust confessions, oppose taking hasty actions and extorting admissions through compulsion and providing them with credence. Attack should be directed mainly at those counter-revolutionaries guilty of heinous crimes and bitterly hated by the people. A lenient policy should be adopted towards those who commit light crimes and were willing to repent. The nationwide movement to suppress counter-revolutionaries was basically concluded in October 1951. With its accomplishment, the counter-revolutionary remnant forces left behind in the mainland by Kuomintang reactionaries had been basically wiped out. The bane of wild outlawry, including bandits in west Hunan and Guangxi whom previous dynasties of old China had been unable to eliminate, as well as black social forces in many cities, were by and large eliminated. This brought unprecedented stability to China's social order and effectively supported and co-ordinated agrarian reform and the struggle to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea. Other Democratic Reforms The Party also led the people in conducting multi-faceted democratic reforms in co-ordination with agrarian reform and suppression of counter-revolutionaries. First, democratic reforms were gradually unfolded in state-run industrial, mining and communications and transport enterprises. In November 1951, the CPC Central Committee issued the Instructions on Cleaning Up Counter-Revolutionaries in Factories, Mines and Communications Enterprises and Carrying Out Democratic Reform in Them. During the democratic reform, workers were boldly mobilized and relied upon in a guided way to expose and denounce feudal gangmaster and various other systems which opposed the workers, systems extant in old enterprises and not reformed in time after take-over. The Party wiped out the counter-revolutionaries and remnant feudal forces concealed in enterprises, promoted a number of workers and staff prestigious among the masses to leading posts in administration, production and management. It established factory management committees and worker representative conferences, drew workers into participation in factory management and realized democracy in enterprise management, so that workers would truly become masters of enterprises. At the same time, the movement led to self-education among the worker masses to eliminate estrangement resulting from feudal trade association and regional concepts and to strengthen unity among workers and between workers and managerial and technical personnel. This gave further expression to the new socialist relationship of production based on the taking over of ownership of enterprises and placing it under the people's state. This was an indispensable step taken to transform bureaucrat-capitalist firms into socialist businesses. On May 1, 1950, the Central People's Government promulgated the Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China, the first law of New China. The Marriage Law stipulated, &quot;The feudal marriage system characterized by arrangement, compulsory marriage, superior male and inferior female and neglect of children's interests shall be abolished and the new democratic marriage system characterized by free marriage of male and female, moSIX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 423 pnual rights for men and women and protection of the n0gamy',e interests of women and children shall be instituted, legitimate in ‘ n ^ familiai structure that had ThlS T H for several thousand years as well as a deepening of the ^rSTfdarstruggTe of the Chinese people. The Party and governantl-feudal struggle o ideological and organizational ^extensive pTbUc.ty on and implementation of the Marriage Law, effectively promoting the emancipation of Chinese &quot;'struggle to ban prostitution, patronage of whores, trading November 21, 1949 g a decisjon to seal off sfaiiil sh measures.^he ugly scanfof the old ansiilsi tarily renounce their habits. After two to three years of efforts these social maladies which lingered despite repeated prohibitions and were considered incurable in Western society, were almost totally banned under the leadership of the Communist Party and the people's government. This could only surprise the world and earn applause. The War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea was the continuation of the Chinese people's democratic revolution against imperialism, while the agrarian reform and various other democratic reforms marked the accomplishment of the Chinese people's democratic revolution against feudalism. The mighty torrent of revolution cleaned up the filth and mire left over from the old society. China's social outlook and social mores experienced great changes. This victory further consolidated political power under the people's democratic dictatorship and provided necessary social and political conditions for the work of restoring and developing the economy.<br /> <br /> === The Fight for the Restoration of the National Economy ===<br /> The 3rd Plenary Session of the 7th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed to the entire Party and nation the general slogan and task &quot;Fight for a fundamental turn for the better in the nation's financial and economic situation,&quot; since armed conflict had been basically concluded. Only Tibet and Taiwan remained to be liberated. The focus of the Party's work had begun to shift from military to the economic sphere with its entry to major cities. As early as the 2nd Plenary Session of the 7th Party Central Committee held on the eve of the founding of New China, Mao Zedong pointed out, &quot;From the very first day we take over a city, we should direct our attention to restoring and developing production there.&quot; All other work would &quot;revolve around and serve the central task.&quot; In the early stage after the founding of New China, he solemnly declared, &quot;Economic construction on a national scale has been placed ^pter Six founding OF PRC and transition to SOCIALISM 425 fore us &quot;4 On the eve of the 3rd Plenary Session of the 7th Party Committee, the Party Central Committee telegraphed various localities, demanding that &quot;the principal responsible comof Party bureaus of the Central Committee personally ^1,e fmaanaal, banking and economic tasks and that centra Party bureau conferences regularly discuss fiscal work They must not slacken their effort in the slightest, thinking this is the Ssk only for financial business organizations. This holds true, also for the Party committees of big cities, provinces and autonomous Ions under the Party bureaus. The Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee discusses financial and economic wor at afmos&quot; every conference.- Moving from all-out leadership over the revolutionary war to all-out leadership over peaceful construction marked a profound change in the Party history Old China's economy was extremely backward. The eight y Jananese imperialist war of aggression against China and the three-year conflict launched by Kuomintang reactionaries against he people caused serious damage to the country. In companion with earlier record levels, in 1949 total industrial output had halved in worth. The output value of heavy rnd, ustry . d™PPe^ 70 percent and light industry by 30 percent. That year, stee output was only 158,000 tons, a fall of 80 percent; &quot;al output 32.43 million tons, a drop of 48 percent; gram production 11 3T8 million tons, down about 25 percent, and cotton yield 444 000 tons a dip of about 48 percent. Modern industry came to 17 percent of total industrial and agricultural output value in 1949. According to statistics from the UN Asia-Pacific Society Committee in 1949 China's per-capita income was U.S.S27 ess han two-thirds the average U.S.$44 of Asia as a half the U.S. $57 of India. This made concentrated efforts to restore the national economy a pressing task. The outbreak of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea adversely affected the shift of the focus to e— construction Much manpower and material resources were ne ed to support the war and national defence. However, since the conflict* remained confined to the Korean battlefield, the Party Central Committee decided to &quot;engage in combat, stabilization and construction simultaneously.&quot; Stabilization meant stabilizing prices. This task was accomplished under arduous conditions while the war was still going on. A two-fold economic construction policy focussed on key projects and planned postponements. Another adverse effect of the Korean War on economic work was the U.S. government's brazen declaration of dominion over China's public and private property in the United States, its prohibition of entry to China by all U.S. goods and ships and its manipulation of the Paris Planning Committee to impose complete international blockades and embargoes on New China. In foreign trade, China decided, &quot;proceeding from an overall point of view, to put the Soviet Union in the first place, and at the same time prepare to do business with Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Britain, Japan and the United States.&quot;6 The blockades and embargoes of the imperialists obstructed China's access to the outside world. The Chinese government was compelled to adopt appropriate measures to control all property of U.S. authorities and enterprises in China and freeze U.S. public and private savings deposits in the country. Subsequently, the Chinese government dealt with American public and private businesses in China through requisition, administration, purchases and tightening of control. It took over various cultural, educational and relief organizations receiving U.S. subsidies. The economic and cultural undertakings of other nations in China were dealt with case to case on its own merits by the government in accordance with the principle of reasonableness, advantage and restraint in the light of the different conditions in the nations and trades concerned. The difficulties caused by the blockades and embargoes did not frighten the Chinese people. On the contrary, inspired with the spirit of self-reliance, they redoubled efforts to fight for restoration and development of the economy. Restoration of Agriculture, Transport, Industry and Commerce &quot;The recovery of agriculture will serve as the foundation for the recovery of all other branches, since if no food is available, everything else is out of the question.&quot;7 The aim of agrarian SIX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 427 c m liberate the forces of production. It was implementreform was k seasons of winter and spring in order not ed mainly a ararian reform did not change the individual to hold up wort Ag : economy Freedom from the feudal &quot;TareatW tested the enthusiasm of individual peasants for l fask Thirty deemed it necessary to gradually develop S thour aid alng ££% °f VntUfuTplaPyrtoC^asant fervour for individual economic secs' The state put in great efforts to promote the restoration and totalled 20 million nationwide They billion cubic metres of earth works, equivalent to 23 Suez Cana KSSssSSSSS; were all begun and stepped up at that time_ railway The restoration of communications link. , P . ? . railway rights became the fuse of the \9U Kcvoim ^ less throughout the entire period during the KM 1 rul , t£tS3S£S3£X SSKSJi jg ™e Chengdu and Chongqing stations to warmly hail the achievement. Many could not help becoming teary-eyed. Arduous construction was also started of the Xikang-Tibet and Qinghai-Tibet highways, leading to Lhasa, on the &quot;Roof of the World.&quot; In the restoration and construction of industry, the Party laid emphasis on two points. The first placed wholehearted reliance in the working class and the second did so in the state-run economy. Workers who had been emancipated and become masters of the state and enterprises exhibited greatly heightened labour enthusiasm. Numerous model workers emerged and an extensive labour emulation drive was launched. Key project construction, apart from first restoring and revamping existing businesses in northeast China and other places, led to the building of a group of major enterprises, such as the Fuxin Haizhou open-cast coal mines, the seamless steel tube factory and heavy rolling mill of the Anshan Iron and Steel Co., the Shanxi Heavy Machinery Plant, cotton mills in Wuhan, Zhengzhou, Xi'an and Xinjiang, and the Harbin Flax Mill. The rails for the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway and all steel and iron sluice gates used in the project to harness the Huaihe River were made in China. Restoration and development of trade were important links in promoting material exchange between urban and rural areas and restoration of the entire national economy. The Party held that state-run and cooperative commerce should be gradually developed and expanded to become the main distribution channel. After several years of efforts, by the end of 1952, an integrated state-run commercial system encompassing various departments at all levels had taken basic shape throughout the country. State-run commerce increased its share in the nation's total retail sales Irom 14.9 percent in 1950 to 34.4 percent. Cooperative commerce was an important adjunct for state-run stores to link up with the masses, and particularly the peasants. In 1952, its annual retail sales constituted 19.6 percent of the nation's total retail sales worth. A question of vital importance in the restoration and development of the national economy was how to treat private industry and commerce. In 1950, private industry accounted for 51 percent of total national industrial output value and private comSIX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 429 „n as nercent of the nation's total retail sales. The mcrce made UP p)ayed a relatively crucial role in private c p pf industria] products to meet the needs of inCr^)nuface helping commodity circulation to promote urbanaa-MsssttW Inri exerted positive influence on other capitalists. However, the an aie ranitalist economy also possessed negative aspects. In orfer to develop production and promote economic Pr&quot;P&quot;^' the people's government had to support the positive aspect of t private capitalist economy benefiting the national economy and the neonle's livelihood while restricting its adverse role. In I ? loaq the neonle's government attacked speculative cap)tTand won tLhe Ground of victory in the struggle between restriction and opposition to restriction. When Pr‘c&quot; ^&quot; stable in early 1950, due to the disappearance of false purchasing power resisting from inflation and other—Cc such as sluggish sales of commodities, closed factories, detune. shops and increased unemployment. In ^ bles the government adopted measures such as expansion of sta orders with private factories for processing of materials and purchasing oflarge quantities of farm and sideline products to only helped private industry and commerce to tide over diff.cu ties but enabled them to achieve mighty progress. In 1951, the number of the nation's private industrial enterprises i ■»»!&gt;««&gt; to those in 1950 had increased by 11 percent, the tota production by 39 percent, the number firms by 1 1 9 percent and total retail sales by 36.6 percent, in yea™ profits earned by the national bourgeoisie surpassed those in any of the 22 years under the Kuomintang rule. Movement Against &quot;Three Evils&quot; and Struggle Against &quot;Five Evils&quot; The Party and government protected the legal management and appropriate development of private industry and commerce in accordance with the Common Programme. However, lawless elements among the capitalists, not satisfied with ordinary profits gained by normal methods, tried hard to grab high spoils by illegal means such as bribing state functionaries. The serious acceleration of this situation forced the decision of the Party Central Committee to launch a movement against the &quot;three evils&quot; of mainly corruption, plus waste and bureaucracy, among personnel of Party and state organizations. It also led to a campaign against the &quot;five evils&quot; of capitalist bribery of government workers, tax evasion, theft of state property, cheating on government contracts, and stealing of economic information for private industrial and commercial firms. Cases of cadre corruption were discovered and dealt with sporadically after the founding of New China. Serious corruption and waste by some cadres exposed in the report submitted by the Northeast Bureau to the Party Central Committee in November 1951 aroused the great attention of the Party Central Committee. The committee immediately made the Decision on Streamlining Administration, Increasing Production and Practising Economy, in Opposition to Corruption, Waste and Bureaucracy. This struggle was necessary in order to carry through the policy adopted at the 2nd Plenary Session of the 7th Party Central Committee of guarding against corruption within the entire Party. A vigorous and steady major attack was launched through a mass movement in order to create active public opinion and exhibit mass power. Major representative cases were grasped and tackled in the struggle to arouse the vigilance of the whole Party and the attention of the whole society. Liu Qingshan, former secretary, and Zhang Zishan, then secretary, of the Tianjin Prefect ural Committee of the six FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 431 1HA munist Party, degenerated into arch criminals of corrupC°m Although they had given some meritorious service durti0n,ht democratic revolution, the Party never tolerated their jng the democra^ ^ fey the court and executCHmThe essence of the slruggle against &quot;three evils&quot; that lasted more than half a year was maintenance of the integrity SnSSES i == it healthy social contort Cen(ral Committee issued an 7h&quot;d&quot; whole nation After the movement reached an upsurge, the Party 7sued aTimeiy^ instruction, saying that the various big cities must &quot;nay attention to maintaining the normal progress o life &quot;8 &quot;Production, transportation, finance and tra e co taxes and return of illegal gains. The Party Central Committee pointed out: Concluding the struggle in this way &quot;enables us to gain complete political and economic initiative and bring about rapid economic restoration and development, so capitalists may again move closer to us and rekindle their management enthusiasm and workers not face unemployment.&quot;10 To handle negating positive aspects of the bourgeoisie, which emerged within the Party during the upsurge of the movement, the Party Central Committee stressed: &quot;The political and economic position applicable to the national bourgeoisie on the basis of the Common Programme remains unchanged.&quot;11 The nationwide movement against the five evils concluded after half a year. It attacked the five serious evil malpractices of capitalists. Widespread education on legal management was conducted among industrialists and businessmen, promoting the establishment of worker supervision in private enterprises and the introduction of democratic reform. This enabled the Party to gain another round of victory in the struggle between restriction and opposition to restriction. After the movement ended, the Party and government, in the light of the newly emerged strained relations between the public and private sectors and between labour and capital and a depressed market, took further measures to readjust relations on a new basis. It worked to expand the placing of state orders with private enterprises for the processing of materials, purchases and monopoly sales, to guarantee reasonable profits to ensure the relative development of capitalist industry and commerce. In 1952, total output value of capitalist industry increased 54 percent compared to that of 1949. Achievements in the Three Years of Economic Restoration After three years of efforts, the national economy met with comprehensive restoration and initial development. In 1952, total industrial and agricultural output value reached 81 billion yuan, up by 77.5 percent over 1949, and by 20 percent over the record 1936 level. The average annual increase rate in the three years was 21.1 percent; total industrial output worth increased by 145.1 SK FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM «» t over 1949. with an average annual increase rate of 34.8 peTen Total agricultural output worth rose by 53.5 percent over So with an average annual increase rate of 15.3 percent. The 9t&gt;ut of major industrial and agricultural products surpassed °a Pneak level gained before the founding of New China. Along '&quot;utfthe restoration and development of production, a balance was achieved between state financial revenue and expenditure^ The economic structure improved. Culture, education and public Lnith services developed appropriately. The incomes of employ ^ and peasanrs mcreascd and their living standards improved M/hat In 1952 the total number of the nation s set employee radtcrea d o ib mmlon from the 1949 figure of 8 million, white their average wages had risen by 70 percent. A labour insurance system was instituted among enterprises and a free medical service among government employees and teacher . A survey indicated that in 1936, the year which saw the highest ore-liberation living standards for employees, average annual speldlng per family member was 140 yuan (calculated on the basis of 1957 prices). The figure reached 189.5 yuan in 1952 p 35 percent. The 1952 income of peasants generally increased by over 30 percent compared to that in 1949. Simultaneous with economic restoration, profound ^change ^occurred in the national economic structure. The state, private capitalist, individual, state-capital and co-operat.ve econom.es al developed. With state support and the superiority of the socialist economy the state-run economy developed even faster. In 1949 the share' of socialist industry in total national industrial worth (excluding handicrafts) was 34.7 percent. The figure rose to 5 percent in 1952. Furthermore, industry share (including han i crafts) in the nation's total industrial and agricultural output value rose from 30 percent in 1949 to 41.5 percent. Modern industry went up from 17 percent to 26.6 percent. The proportion of heavy industry in the total industrial output value clunbe from 26.4 percent in 1949 to 35.5 percent in 1952. This progress indicated that the restoration of China's economy not only mcludS quantitative development, but also change in nature and improvement in quality.<br /> <br /> === The Party Proposes the General Line for the Transitional Period ===<br /> Near the end of 1952, our country's development faced a new situation and many new problems. To lead the people in their continued advance, the Party needed to put forward fresh tasks and goals. ^ The struggle to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea had long been stable and an agreement on major issues had been reached uring peace talks. This war New China was compelled to wage was expected to end before long. The main task left over from the democratic revolution, that of large-scale agrarian reform, had basically been accomplished nationwide. The work of restoring the national economy, though adversely affected by war and accompanied by intense social reform, proceeded quite smoothly due to the hard work of the people nationwide. Originally restoration of the national economy was planned to take three to five years but the anticipated goal had been surpassed in three years. All this showed that China had acquired the conditions for carrying out planned economic construction. The Party made a timely decision to begin the First Five-Year Plan for national economic development in 1953. The main part of the plan entailed national industrialization, of course. This was the goal the Chinese people had cherished over the past 100 years, and the key to changing China s backward state and achieving strength and prosperity. The Chinese people were finally able to take big strides forward on the road to industrialization. At the same time, new dilemmas which appeared and accumulated in society required the Party to work out explicit guidelines and systematic policies for their gradual solution. In the rural areas after the agrarian reform, the main problem was that the scattered and backward individual economy of the peasants could hardly meet the growing needs of the cities and industry for grain and agricultural raw materials. The initial appearance of polarization between the rich and the poor compelled the Communists to consider the question of how the private economy should develop. In the cities, restriction and anti-restriction struggles cflApTER SIX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 435 tween the working class and state-run economy on the one hand nd the bourgeoisie on the other had undergone several rounds aJith no conclusion. Instead there had been vacillations that had creat impact on state economic life. The aggravation of these Contradictions resulting from rapid growth of industrialization compelled the Party to consider measures to step up and expand mutual-aid and cooperative movement in the rural areas and control capital in the cities. This inevitably made it essential to place the task of socialist transformation of the national economy on the agenda. It was against this background that the Party Central Committee, after nearly one year of deliberation, drew up and put forward the Party's general line for the transitional period: For a considerably long period of time, there would be gradual realization of state socialist industrialization, plus state socialist transformation of agriculture, the handicraft and capitalist industries and commerce. The clear general line proposed the great task of building socialism to the people of the whole country. This was a major strategic step taken by the Party at a crucial historical moment. Realizing socialism in China was the struggle objective laid down by the Communist Party of China at the time of its founding. Contemporary Chinese history has proved that all efforts aimed at realizing capitalism in China, whether by relormist method or by revolutionary method, had ended in failure. This gave rise to the historical necessity of seeking a new objective of struggle. The objective set by the Communist Party of China to realize socialism precisely embodied this historical necessity. However, China was originally an economically very backward semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. This basic national condition determined the need to take two steps to bring about socialism in China and the need to change over to socialist revolution after passing through the new democratic revolution. This was the road that Chinese revolution must follow in its history of development. It was the reason why for a considerably long time, the Party had invariably taken new democracy as its primary programme and used it to determine the nature of the revolution it led and the nature of the republic founded through this revolution. With regard to the issue of when the revolution should change over to the socialist stage, the Party merely noted that this was the inexorable trend for which certain conditions were essential. It had not made concrete judgments and could not do so on the time and conditions for the changeover. This needed to be decided in the light of the concrete conditions in the process of the development of the revolution. The 2nd Plenary Session of the 7th Party Central Committee held on the eve of the victory of the democratic revolution laid down various basic policies for the republic soon to come into being. It also set the basic orientation for changing China from an agricultural into an industrial state and for progress from the new democratic society to the future socialist society. However, at the time of the founding of New China, the country's socialist future was not written into the Common Programme formulated by the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which acted as a provisional constitution. Liu Shaoqi gave an explanation about this on behalf of the Communist Party of China: &quot;This is because adopting quite serious socialist steps in China is a matter for the distant future.&quot; He pointed out at the same time: There is no doubt that in the future China will advance to socialism and then communism.&quot; During the session, some nonParty people asked Mao Zedong how long it would be before China would advance into socialism. Mao Zedong replied it would probably take twenty to thirty years. On several Party occasions, including a conference of the Political Bureau in September 1948, the 2nd Plenary Session of the 7th Party Central Committee and at a number of inner-Party cadre meetings in the first few years after the founding of New China, Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai all said it would take at least a decade or at most fifteen to twenty years for China to practise socialism. Then they had a rough idea that, after a considerable length of time when industry had developed and the state-run economy had been expanded, it would be possible to adopt &quot;serious socialist steps&quot; to realize nationalization of capitalist industry and commerce and the collectivization of individual agriculture. By 1952, after three years of practice and developments, the accumulation SJX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 437 CHAPTtK _ . fr.sh experience and the attainment of new understanding o ° tens nken for socialist transformation had brought about thrt rchlnge m the original tentative idea. The Party Central rnmmhtee deemed it opportune and necessary to formulate the n tv's aeneral line for the transitional period. This clearly set the tables for the whole Party and the whole people to gradua illy _pass over to socialism, tasks which were estimated to be fulfilled in fifteen years or longer. „ Why and how had this change taken place. First because China already had a relatively strong and rapidly developing socialist state-run economy. This formed a good beginning and an important force to rely on for the social^ transformation of the entire national economy. Confiscation o bureaucrat-capital and turning it into state P~P«rty nalty one of the three major economic programmes for the new democratic revolution. However, as a result of confiscation of bureaucrat-capital, 80 percent of the fixed assets of ^ &quot;a! pre-liberation industrial and mining enterprises and communica tions and transportation became state assets ** „tradon banks came basically under state management The of such a huge economic force in the hands of the state gave confiscation a socialist revolutionary nature Later summing up this stage Mao Zedong said: The statement that the democratic revolution and the socialist revolution can be accomphshed at one stroke &quot;confused the two revolutionary stages, making it er roneous- but is alright to voice when it comes to the opposition erfbtirea uc r a t-capit a 1 . &quot; ' 2 New China's socialist state-run economy should not be put on a par with the official economies during Kuomintang rule and even earlier periods in Chinese history. It represented and guaranteed the interests of the pcopk : and society and was thus well received and trusted by the people^ It became the main force for supporting state finances and ^rhzing rile economic situation and the main body of the existing bas^ industry0 The main tasks for the First Five-Year Plan were to be undertaken by it. The realization of Chinas industrialization could only rely on developing the socialist state-run economy, and not on the capitalist private economy. Chinas national capitalist economic strength was weak and it consisted mainly of commerce and financial capital, with little industrial capital. National industrial capital was invested mainly in light and textile industries and little in heavy industry. Private factories generally were small in scale (69.7 percent had less than 10 workers), their technology was backward (workshop handicraft industry accounted for 79.1 percent). China's national bourgeoisie was unable to lead China's democratic revolution to victory, still less was it able to undertake the heavy task of realizing industrialization in China. While most state-run industries were comparatively advanced in technology, their labour productivity was relatively high, and workers had a strong sense of being masters of state-run enterprises. Their livelihood was secure and they enjoyed various kinds of power and welfare. Their labour enthusiasm was high. In short, the socialist state-run economy at that time clearly demonstrated its superiority over other economic sectors and was a new thriving and prospering force. By 1952, the proportion of state-run industrial output in total modern industry had increased to 56 percent and the business volume of state-run wholesale commerce made up 60 percent of the nation's total. Socialism had become a relatively strong factor in China's social and economic life. In addition, the highly integrated financial and economic work supported by the state economy and state administrative force was naturally guided step by step onto the path of the planned economy. The subsequent development of the planned economic system built on this highly centralized and unified basis showed that it had defects in certain aspects which needed to be readjusted and reformed to suit the changed situation. But this choice made by the Party and government under the severe circumstances prevailing at that time was the only correct one when there was a shortage of and pressing demand for materials. Moreover, a certain degree of unity and planning was always necessary for the stability and development of the national economy. When the First Five-Year Plan began, the demand for the development of the state-run economy and the expansion of the planned economy became a basic factor by which the Party deemed it necessary and possible to put forward the general line ter SIX FOUNDING of PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 439 ,rtr the gradual transition to socialism. Second, because we had accumulated much experience in the ..e Cind restriction of private industry and commerce, this actuallv became the initial step towards the socialist transformation of .L capitalist economy. Protecting national industry and commerce was another one of the three major economic programmes tor the new democratic revolution. Protection included positive aspects advantageous to the national economy and people s livelihood and restrictions on negative aspects acting against these. Because China's economy was backward, the use of the positive role of private industry and commerce was of crucial signil icancc. However, contradictions existed between the capitalist economy on the one hand and the interests of the people and society, state management and the socialist economy on the other hand. There were some contradictions between the workers and the capitalists within the private economy. Readjusting and solving these m accordance with the needs of economic development and with the greatest interests of the vast majority of the people would inevitably entail the struggle between restrictions on capitalism and resistance to these constraints by capitalists. The 2nd Plenary Session of the 7th Party Central Committee pointed out, &quot;‘Restriction versus opposition to restriction will be the mam form of class struggle in the new democratic state.&quot; Under national economic restoration, during the struggle waged against illegal and negative capitalist resistance to state restrictions, in the process of rationally readjusting industry and commerce, the state created a scries of forms from low- to high-level state capitalism. They entailed mainly rational distribution of raw materials and markets, and sustained support of the positive role of private industry and commerce while ensuring growth of the state-run economy. These included the placing of state orders with private enterprises for processing of materials, private company sales of goods tor the state on a commission basis, state monopoly of the purchase and marketing of products of private enterprises, and stale-private operation. These measures were adopted mainly to help private industry and commerce to overcome production dilliculties. At that time, it was difficult for many private enterprises to survive and develop without the support of the state, so the capitalists welcomed these state measures. The results that ensued showed that the series of state capitalist configurations not only aimed to draw on and restrict capitalist industry and commerce, they also inevitably deepened the links between the capitalist and socialist state-run economy, causing different degrees of changes in their relations of production. This, thereby, to varied extents, started initial socialist transformation of them, even though the Party did not fully realize this at the very beginning. From its summation of experience, the Party affirmed that the continued expansion and improvement of various forms of state capitalism provided the concrete way to the gradual socialist transformation of capi talist industry and commerce. It changed former concepts which regarded future declaration of nationalization and elimination of the private capitalist system at one stroke as the only measure for socialist transformation. This was another basic aspect of the Party's view. that it was timely to put forward the general line for gradual transition to socialism. Third, because the Parly had accumulated much experience after the accomplishment of the agrarian reform in launching agricultural mutual aid and cooperation in rural areas. This became the initial step towards the socialist transformation of individual agriculture. Confiscation of feudal land and placing it under peasant ownership was one of the three major economic programmes for the new democratic revolution. After the peasants were given distributed land, the question was, how could individual scattered and weak agriculture meet the rapidly growing needs of industrialization for food and raw material crops? How could polarization between rich and poor be avoided? At that time, each individual peasant household held only an average of some ten mu (15 mu— 1 hectare) of farmland, each poor peasant household or hired hands had an average of less than half a draught animal and half a plough. There were also shortages of funds. Even maintenance of production was not easy, to say nothing of expansion on any scale, improvement of conditions and diversified economic development. On the foundation of such an individual agricultural economy, it w'as impossible to suit the 441 needs of industrial development and avoid polarization between the affluent and badly-off. In the light of current experience and understanding, the Party believed that only by organized mutual aid and cooperation, was it possible to develop output and achieve common prosperity. During the period of national economic restoration, simple cooperative mutual-aid teams were universally set up, while primary cooperatives characterized by pooling of land began to develop. There were also typical trials by advanced cooperatives (collective farms) characterized by collective ownership of the basic means of production. After summing up these practical experiences, the Party confirmed that these mutual aid and cooperative forms not only were effective means for helping poor peasants overcome their difficulties and increase production, but also appropriate methods for preventing the spontaneous tendency towards capitalism in the countryside and guiding agriculture towards a socialist orientation. The Party also established a new concept: China's industrialization and agricultural mechanization would be a very drawn-out process, so agricultural cooperatives could not sit back wailing for industrialization and mechanization. Generally, small-scale agricultural mutual aid and cooperative organizations which lacked large machinery could augment production by relying mainly on unified management and cooperation. They reassembled handicraft workshops which initially also lacked major equipment but could still raise production by relying mainly on cooperation. Many people were convinced by this viewpoint. This was the third basic factor by which the Party deemed it possible to put forward the general line for the gradual transition to socialism. These three points indicated that since the new democratic future was bound to develop towards socialism, the new democratic economy already contained socialist factors of decisive significance that were continually expanding their force and scope. Thus, the new democratic construction stage also meant the transitional period from new democracy to socialism. In a summing-up speech made in September 1953 at an enlarged meeting of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Zhou Enlai said, &quot;To pul it in a nutshell, the transitional period means the new democratic construction period, the period of gradual transition to socialism, as well as a period of gradual increase in the share of the socialist economic sector in the national economy.&quot; Fourth, judging from the then international environment, the imperialists carried out military aggression and posed a threat to China. They imposed a strict economic blockade on the nation. While the capitalist countries themselves were in the doldrums, socialist countries were vigorously developing, demonstrating their superiority over capitalism. During economic rehabilitation and construction in the First Five-Year Plan, only the Soviet Union aided China. Although the Parly proceeded from China's specific conditions while formulating concrete economic policies and methods of work, the Soviet Union's expertise in socialist construction and its economic system still formed a role as a model for China. It also constituted a factor that prompted the Party to deem it necessary to begin the gradual transition to socialism. In September 1952, at a meeting of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, Mao Zedong said, &quot;We will basically accomplish socialism in ten to fifteen years, not begin the transition to socialism after a decade.&quot; This marked the beginning of preparations to promote the general line for the transitional period. Thereafter, Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai also expounded in detail the guiding thought and rough ideas about &quot;beginning from now the gradual transition to socialism.&quot; The conference of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, held in June 1953, formally discussed the matter, forming a fairly comprehensive exposition. The slogans issued on September 24, 1953 to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the founding of New China announced this general line to the whole Party and the people throughout the country. In December, the &quot;Outline for Study and Publicity on the Party's General Line for the Transitional Period—Fight to Build China Into a Great Socialist State by Mobilizing All Forces,&quot; which was drafted by the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee and transmitted by the Central Committee of 443 the Communist Party of China, made a detailed exposition of the rrmtent of the general line. While examining and revising this nutline Mao Zedong wrote this succinct summary: From the founding of the People's Republic of China to the basic accomnlishment of socialist transformation is a transitional period = general line and general tasks during this transitional neriod are, within a considerably long period of time, to gradually realize the state's socialist industrialization and gradua ly realize the stale's socialist transformation of agriculture, handicraft industry and capitalist industry and commerce. This general line, like a beacon light, illuminates various fields of our work. If we depart from it, we will commit Right or Left deviations errors Mao gave the following explanations as to why the lounding of the People's Republic of China should be taken as the beginning uf the transition period from new democracy to socialism: we say things that mark change in the nature of revolution, and mark the basic conclusion of the stage of new democratic revolution and the beuinning of socialist revolution, are the change m political power, the extinction of the counter-revolutionary regime of the Kuomintang and the founding of the People s Repub lie of China. We do not mean that we can set about carrying out the great task of socialist transformation in all national fields immediately after the founding of the People's Republic. Now we still need to solve contradictions between feudalism and democracy; i.e., between the landlords and peasants in the vast rural areas. Over time, the principal contradictions in the rural areas will be between feudalism and democracy, not between capitalism and socialism. Therefore, two to three years are needed to carry out agrarian reform in rural areas. By then, we will, on the one hand, carry out democratic agrarian reform in the rural areas- on the other hand, in the city, we will immediately start to take over bureaucrat-capitalist enterprises and turn them into socialist enterprises, set up socialist state banks and simultaneously set about to establish socialist state commerce and cooperative commerce nationwide. Over the past few years we have begun implementing measures for stale capitalism in private capitalist enterprises. All these facts demonstrated the complicated situa tion prevailing in the first few years of China's transitional period.&quot; In February 1954, the 4th Plenary Session of the 7th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China formally approved this general line confirmed by the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee. The Party's general line for the transitional period was one characterized by &quot;one industrialization and three transformations,&quot; and &quot;one main body and two wings.&quot; &quot;One industrialization&quot; implied the gradual realization of state socialist industrialization; this is the main body. &quot;The three transformations&quot; meant the gradual realization of socialist transformation of agriculture, handicraft and capitalist industry and commerce. These were the &quot;two wings.&quot; &quot;Industrialization&quot; and the &quot;three transformations&quot; related to, promoted and contained each other, demonstrating the organic unity between the development of productive forces and the reform of the relations of production. This was a general line wherein socialist construction and socialist transformation were conducted simultaneously. &quot;Industrialization &quot; and &quot;transformation&quot; both required a very long period of time for their realization, step by step. This stipulation was based on the consideration that China's original production forces were at a very low developmental level, and the reform of hundreds of millions of individual peasants and handicraftsmen required arduous and meticulous work. This task could be realized only through long-term efforts, estimated at the time to take three five-year plan periods, or fifteen years, plus three years of restoration, a total of eighteen years. This was a comparatively careful estimate. Compared with the original plan whereby China would first spend fifteen or twenty years on new democratic construction and then carry out and accomplish socialist transformation in one step, there was change in concrete steps and methods, but the estimated time needed was roughly the same. After the general line for the transitional period was put forward, extensive and intensive publicity and educational work was conducted among the whole Party and people throughout the country. Unity of understanding was quickly achieved within the Party and support was received from the populace nationwide for six FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 445 line which became the new programme for uniting and mobilizing the entire population in the effort to build a great socialist new China.<br /> <br /> === Planned Economic Construction and the Start of Socialist Industrialization ===<br /> On January 1 1953, in an editorial of Renmin Ribao (People s Daily) the Party and government announced: China has begun implement the First Five-Year Plan for national construction. At the 4th Session of the 1st National Committee of theChmese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Zhou tmai minted out &quot;The vear of 1953 is the starting year for the First Five-Year Plan.... Mobilizing the working class and the people _of the whole country in the concentrated effort to overcome 'Jiff culties and work lo fulfil and overfulfil the annual 1953 construe don plan is the overriding task facing us that will run through the whole year.&quot; The following year, at the 1st Session of the Is National People's Congress, he further noted since implementation had begun of the First Five- ear &gt; f construction work has held the primary position in the life of the whole country.&quot; The whole Party and entire populace turned their attention to the task of socialist industrialization joyous y greeting and plunging into the upsurge of large-scale and planned economic construction for New China. The First Five-Year Plan The drafting work of the First Five-Year PlanM (1953-57) was conducted under the guidance of Zhou Enlai and Chen , Y nn. The work started in 1951. In December 1952, the Party Uentrai Committee issued the Instruction on the Drafting of the 195 Plan and the Outline of the Long-Term Programme In Apr 1953 the Parly Central Committee approved the broadcasting of highlights of 1953 national economic plan. The general line put forward during this period by the Party Central Committee for the transitional period was clearly defined: The gradual realization of state socialist industrialization forms the main body of the general line. According to the spirit of the related instructions of the Party Central Committee, we, on the one hand, initially drafted and began to implement the First Five-Year Plan; on the other hand, we continued to constantly discuss and revise the proposals. The work lasted four years and the text of the plan was changed five times, being basically finalized in September 1954. Following its consideration and approval by the National Representative Conference of the Party in March 1955, the plan was formally discussed and adopted at the 2nd Session of the 1st National People's Congress held in July that same year. The NPC was unanimous in agreeing that the plan drawn up under the auspices of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China &quot;is a programme of decisive significance whereby the people of the entire country arc working for the fulfilment of general tasks for the transitional period. It is a plan for peaceful economic and cultural construction.' The guiding principle and basic tasks for the First Five-Year Plan entailed: Concentrating major efforts on developing heavy industry and establishing an initial foundation for state industrialization and modernization of national delcnce; appropriately developing communications and transportation services, light industry, agriculture and commerce; suitably training construction personnel; systematically promoting cooperatives for agriculture and handicrafts; continuing to carry out transformation of capitalist industry and commerce; ensuring steady growth of the share of socialist sectors in the national economy, and simultaneously correctly giving play to the role of individual agriculture, handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce; and ensuring a gradual rise in the level of the people's material and cultural life on the basis of developing production. ( 1 ) The Party determined at that time to take industrialization as the main task of overall economic construction and concentrated major efforts on developing heavy industry. This was partly due to the influence of Soviet construction expertise and also 447 Npr-ause China's industrial foundation, particularly for heavy b nnstrv was very weak. In order to acquire a material base f reezing industrialization by relying on the nation's own f ,1, pverv nossible means had to be tried to achieve major Xtld development of heavy industry. When China started the First Five-Year Plan, although industry had been restored Ld had surpassed record levels, planned industrialization took off at a very low point. In 1952, the share of modern industry in tie total output worth of China's agriculture and industry was a mere 26 6 percent, and that of heavy industry m total &quot;dustnal output value was only 35.5 percent. In the Soviet Union these figures had reached 45.2 percent and 39.5 percent, respectively, in8 1928 before that nation started its First Five-Year Plan. 1952 the per-capita output of many major mdustnal products of Chma notPonly lagged far behind countries but was also lower than India s 1950 level. For exam pie the per-capita steel output of China was 2.37 °t India and the United States, the respective figures were: 4 kg ; and 538 3 kg. In terms of power output, China had 2.76 kwh, India 10 9 kwh and the United States, 2,949 kwh. A paragraph written by Mao Zedong to describe this situadon had a Prf°un^PreS£ sion on the people: &quot;What can we make at present? We can make tables and chairs, tea bowls and teapots, grow tod grair . and grind it into flour, we can also make paper bu we cannot manufacture even a motor vehicle, an aircraft, a ank 01 ^ tractor&quot;'5 The Chinese people, of course, were eager to quickly change this situation. Light industry had some foundation, then limited by market and raw material supplies The 'ltdizauon rate for equipment was very low and the potential for increased production very great. It was thought that to mere ase njgnflilm* production, main reliance could only be placed °n the work enthusiasm of the peasants and their investment of funds. Such being the case, during the First Five-Year Plan, there was the objective possibility for the state to concentrate its mam effort on developing heavy industry. The prevailing tense international situation and imperialists' threat of armed aggression compeUed greater thought being given to the construction of heavy industry essential for the modernization of national defence. The plan stipulated that during the five years, on the one hand China would build a number of new industrial departments on a grand scale and with advanced technology, while on the other hand, the nation should use modern, advanced technology to expand and transform existing industrial departments. The nation should make rational use of and rebuild existing industrial foundations in northeast China, Shanghai and other coastal cities, and also begin to erect new hinterland industrial bases to greatly increase China's industrial production capacity and initially rectify the irrational distribution of industries which were nearly all concentrated in the coastal areas and northeast China. The plan stipulated that during the five years the total value of state investment in economic and cultural construction would hit 76.64 billion yuan. This equalled over 700 million taels (1 tael= 1.1023 ounces) of gold, an unprecedented amount in Chinese history. Of the capital construction investment, 58.2 percent was for industry, of which 88.8 percent was for heavy industry. Giving priority to the promotion of heavy industry did not mean it would be developed in isolation. There had to be overall consideration and comprehensive arrangements to achieve a total balance among the various closely-interlinked national economic departments. The First Five-Year Plan stipulated that while giving priority to the growth of heavy industry, the nation should appropriately develop agriculture, light industry, transportation, post and telecommunications, and commerce as well as cultural and educational undertakings. Out of total capital construction investment, 7.6 percent was for agriculture, forestry and water conservancy departments, 19.2 percent for transportation, post and telecommunications departments, 3 percent for banking and trade departments, and 7.2 percent for cultural and educational departments. Great attention was also paid to market stability, and emphasis was laid on the four major balances of finance, credit, foreign exchange and materials so the national economy could develop proportionally and in a planned and co-ordinated way. (2) The Party emphasized that the scale and speed of economic 449 construction must be based on actual conditions with accurate estimates of potential increase in subjective strength. Serious shortages in funds, machinery, equipment and technical personnel were an important factor restricting economic construction. The blockade and discrimination imposed on us by the United States and other developed capitalist countries in the fields of economic, technological and scientific exchange were also major restrictive factors. Action had to be based on capability and reality. On the question concerning speed of development, a lack of experience and constant hopes to quickly change China's poor and backward state, meant that consideration was usually first given to needs and less attention paid to objective limitations and actual potential. For example, when the plan was first drafted, it proposed that industrial production should increase at an average annual rate of over 20 percent and agricultural production at 7 percent. This plan was drawn up roughly in reference to the 1950-1952 growth rate. But that was a high speed of recovery which was unrealistic to want to maintain for planned economic construction after restoration. At that time, expectations for increased industrial production were placed mainly on putting newly built projects into operation. There was overanticipation of the speed with which new factories would start up production. In particular, extravagant hopes were entertained tor rapid increase in agricultural production, and the disadvantageous factors that restricted such increase were underestimated. After careful investigations and repeated calculations and in view of natural disasters causing the failure to fulfil the planned main annual targets for agricultural production in 1953 and 1954, it was finally decided that industrial production should increase at an average annual rate of 14.7 percent. Of this, 70 percent should come from tapping the potential of existing enterprises, while agricultural production should increase at an average annual rate of 4.3 percent. Such a growth rate was relatively high compared with equivalent rates for many countries. It was, however, in keeping with China's reality and so could be fulfilled. (3) In economic construction, the Party adhered to the policy of relying mainly on China's own efforts while seeking assistance from abroad. The drafting and implementation of the First FiveYear Plan received great help from the Soviet government. Negotiation between China and the Soviet Union determined that the Soviet Union helped China build 156 projects. These constituted the core of industrial construction during the First FiveYear Plan (part of which needed to be carried over to the Second Five-Year Plan). For the building of these projects, the Soviet side not only provided loans, but gave concrete guidance and help in prospecting for natural resources, the selection of factory sites, technical design, the supply of machinery and equipment, and aid in construction and installation, personnel training and placing factories into trial run and operation. During the First Five-Year Plan period, the Soviet Union dispatched 3,000 technical experts to China, while China sent more than 7,000 students and 5,000 trainees to the Soviet Union. This was a glorious page in the history of friendship between the Chinese and Soviet peoples. However, the Party still insisted on and emphasized the need to rely mainly on the nation's efforts and disapproved of dependence on Soviet aid. During the First Five-Year Plan period, foreign loans accounted for only 2.7 percent of the state's total financial revenue. China began in 1955 to repay these loans annually with favourable balance of trade with the Soviet Union. In projects designed and equipped with Soviet help, 20 to 30 percent of the volume of design work and 30 to 50 percent of machinery and equipment came from China itself. There was no dependence on foreign aid for whatever the nation could supply. In 1956, the Party Central Committee further clearly put forward the principle of establishing an independent, comprehensive industrial system. These policies and measures were of far-reaching significance in enabling China to adhere to its independent stand in the subsequent radical change in international relations. (4) The Party called for correct handling of the relations between accumulation and consumption in planned economic construction and an appropriate combination of production growth with improved living standard. The two were fundamentally identical, since the basic aim of socialist construction is to gradually meet people's growing material and cultural needs and 451 to bring about a better life for the populace. However, in the midst of them there also exist contradictions between immediate ^nd long-term interests, and between local and overall interests. Mishandling of these would either hinder the development of Jltional construction or affect improvement of the people s live lihood In order to accumulate construction tunds, the people of he whole country had to work hard, practise economy, be industrious and thrifty and subordinate personal interests to the fun damental, long-term interests of national construction. Necessary limitations had to be put to the range of improvement of immediate living standards. In the process of continuous expansion, there should also be appropriate improvements in living standards through developing production and raising iabom productivity. There should be no undue rise in accumulation at the expense of consumption, which would dampen the people s enthusiasm for building socialism. At .he beginning of the . Fim FiveYear Plan, the construction scale was very big, but the share o accumulation in the entire national income went up only slightly in 1953 compared with 1952, an appropriate scale for the time. The above-mentioned guidelines were based on reality m China and embodied the consistent ideological tenet of integrating the universal principles of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of national construction. Upsurge in Industrial Construction Inspired by the initial implementation of the First Five-Year Plan and in the process of publicizing and studying the Party s general line for the transitional period, a lively atmosphere quick fy prevailed throughout the nation's rural and urban areas for participation and support for state industrial construction. The working class took the lead. Workers were the &quot;ding class of the state, as well as the main force on. the industrial front T hey were known by people of alt social strata as •'elder brothers.&quot; They not only strove to raise their own ideological consciousness but tried hard to lift their educational levels and levels of scientific and technical knowledge. In 1953, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, in accordance with the spirit of the Party Central Committee's instruction on increasing production and practising strict economy, issued an Emergency Circular on Further Launching the Labour Emulation Drive for Increasing Production and Practising Economy to Ensure an All-Round Fulfilment of State Production Plans. In April 1954, Wang Chonglun of Anshan Iron and Steel Company and six other national industrial model workers presented a proposal to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions for launching a technical innovation movement which took off from the vigorous labour emulation drive going on among the working class. The Party Central Committee called upon Party committees at all levels to follow the pattern of selecting large numbers of cadres for the army during the war years. It was to be most determined to pick outstanding cadres from various fields and assign them to work on the industrial front and train them to become key leading members for industrial construction. At that time, as many as 10,000 cadres were assembled at one time nationwide. The Party called on experienced and new cadres to assiduously study industrial construction. At the National Representative Conference of the Party held in 1955, Mao Zedong stressed: &quot;We have entered a new historical period in which we should diligently study socialist industrialization, socialist transformation, modern national defence and begin to study atomic energy. To keep track of this new situation, we should immerse ourselves in these fields and become experts. These are our tasks.&quot; Engineering and technical personnel and scientific workers were to give full play to their abilities in industrialization. Large numbers of graduates from institutions of higher learning and various professional and technical schools accepted state assignments. Braving all hardships, they joyously hurried to the industrial construction front in various parts of the country. University students of the science and engineering disciplines urgently needed in construction were even graduated and assigned jobs one year ahead of schedule in 1952 and 1953. The vanguards of construction, the geological prospecting teams, were an example of how this worked. In old China, there were a mere 200-odd CHAPTER SIX FOUNDING OF Pile AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 453 nrc In just a few years, the number quickly increased to fns of thousands of prospectors through the transfer of profesionals front other fields, assignment of college graduates special led in geology and who had been transferred from other dtsetnltne to study geology, as well as adoption of large-scale training. P Peasants also showed great concern for industrial construction, thinking that once developed it might provide chemical fertilizers mechanization for farming, electric lighting in homes and telephones They supported industrial construction by striving to increase production and actively paying agricultural tax and selling grain and cotton to the state. The existence of a disparity between the prices of industrial and agricultural products became an TZrtant channel for the peasants to contribute energy to state and industrial construction. In the initial development industrial construction, particularly in mining areas, large nurn bers of young peasants were accepted into the fast expanding &quot;dn^sC 'pouring in from the industrial construction front. On December 26, 1953, the three major projects the heavv rolling mill, the seamless steel tube factory, and the No. ircni-smelting &quot;urnaee-of the Anshan Iron and Steel Company held the inauguration ceremony. They formed the fust batch o important projects in China's heavy industrial construction to be completed and go into production. They greatly northeast iron and steel base with Anshan Iron and Steel Compa ny in the centre. This was a victory of important significance for the take-off of New China's socialist industrialization. All t workers of the company wrote to Chairman Mao Zedong reporting on this good news, and Mao Zedong sent a congratulatory telegram in reply. Soviet experts contributed much to the recon struction of the Anshan Company. The Soviet government sent a delegation to attend the celebration meeting. The construction of the Baotou Iron and Steel Company in north China and the Wuhan Iron and Steel Company in central-south China also formally started, making a good beginning for the of large iron and steel bases in the hinterland. By 1956 building had been completed and production begun at the Changchun Automobile Manufacturing Factory, China's first plant producing heavy-duty trucks. China's first jet plane had been successfully manufactured by China's first aircraft manufactory. The Shenyang No. 1 Machine Tool Plant, China's first factory manufacturing machine tools, and the Beijing Electronic Tube Factory, which engaged in mass production of electronic tubes, all went into operation in 1956. The Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge spanning north and south was completed in 1957, making it possible for railways to run the entire length of the country. The completion and opening to traffic of the Qinghai-Tibet, Xikang-Tibet and Xinjiang-Tibet highways linked Tibet with the hinterland. There were countless small and large projects, with one major project started or completed each day, on average. In short, although New China's industrialization took off with a weak foundation, faced multi-sided restrictive factors and arduous tasks, many favourable conditions existed. The most crucial had been the enthusiastic support of the people throughout the country for the task put forward by the Party for socialist industrialization, the main body of the general line and general tasks for the transitional period. As the entire Party and people of the whole country arduously struggled with one heart and one mind, China's industrialization programme made steady progress. VI. CULTURAL AND POLITICAL CONSTRUCTION AND DIPLOMATIC WORK The upsurge of economic construction was followed by a high tide of cultural construction. Construction in other fields also developed appropriately. Cultural and Ideological Construction Cultural construction required first fitting and promoting political change. This meant a change from old China to New China and the transition from new democracy to socialism. Second, it q^PTER six FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 455 ..mailed suiting and boosting economic construction. These meant preparation for and implementation of the First Five-Year Plam P ffter the founding of New China, the Party proposed tha &quot;reform of the old school education and of the old cultural institutions in our society should be conducted carefully s ep by step, and all patriotic ^intellectuals should be won over to the ^IiTaddition'to state leadership over schools, abolition of the oBginal reactionary political education, and the estabhshmen and strengthening of revolutionary political education, reform t of educational work included two main aspects. One was to solve the problem of opening the door of education to the broad masses of workers and peasants. Thus, the Party called for great efforts to launch an anti-illiteracy campaign, develop primary and midd schools and expand the enrolment of chddren of workers^ peasants. It set up worker and peasant accelerated middle schools men worker and peasant cadre remedial classes and classes for furthering their technical know-how, creating special a™nue!_‘° raise the educational levels of worker and peasant cadres. The other aspect was the development and reform of higher education. In 1952 readjustments of colleges and departments were conducted on a national scale. The policy was directed mainly a training industrial personnel and teachers, developing special colleges and training schools, consolidating and strengthening umversiUes and forming a system encompassing engineering colleges with comprehensive faculties. Colleges and universities substantially &quot;sed their enrolments as a result. All these measures were aimed at meeting the urgent needs of planned economic construe tion and construction personnel for industrialization. For scientific work, the Chinese Academy of Sciences was set up shortly after the founding of New China. In the spring o 1954, in transmitting the report submitted by tHe-leading Pa y group of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Party Centra Committee issued this instruction: &quot;As the stales planned nomie construction has begun, we must make great e Thir s to develop natural sciences, to bring about constant development of production technology and help with all-round understanding and more effective use of natural resources. china scientific foundation has been weak. since bringing up researchers the accumulation research experience require a considerably long period time we must work hard inspire ourselves to catch otherwise our backward science will hold development national construction. written instruction also systematically expounded party policy uniting with scientists principle energetically training new forces that establishing system chinese academy sciences at centre including institutions higher learning sections production departments. in art literature continued advocate served workers peasants soldiers people general. it set forth hundred flowers bloom weeding through old bring new. medical health put forward three major principles of gearing needs prevention first western medicines. guided by these policies remarkable achievements were gained reform culture public services. intellectuals ideological remoulding was important condition for completion democratic reforms all fields gradual industrialization country. initial after founding greater section exhibited soaring patriotic fervour most accomplished refused flee kuomintang instead remained mainland greet liberation. return home large numbers famous intelligentsia li siguang lao she participate construction clear proof this. enthusiastic about study desired understand society communist marxism-leninism mao zedong thought. extensively organized them basic marxism policies. arranged take part or visit mass movements struggle resist u.s. chalymi six prc transition socialism egression aid korea agrarian suppression hunter-revolutionaries. they gain education nractice. activities marking anniversary of publication selected=&quot;selected&quot; works gave an impetus upsurge history theory parly china. response call twelve professors beijing university september initiated political movement among of university. this followed centred on launched teachers tianjin. entrusted central committee zhou enlai report concerning two cities. light his personal revolution mainly necessity aim reforming thinking intellectuals. he emphasized need draw distinction between enemy repudiate ideas imperialism feudalism bureaucratcapitalism. encouraged nationalist-minded stand closer strive further proletariat. participating sessions felt greatly enlightened inspired. hearing reports studying documents reviewed their conducted criticism self-criticism. summed disseminated nation universities colleges secondary technical schools gradually spreading various circles forming nationwide. came conclusion autumn total percent teaching staff students middle school participated activities. results whole positive. nevertheless had some shortcomings making distinctions right wrong grounds/&gt; criticism. For example, in learning from the Soviet Union, some units demanded that certain biological theories of the Soviet Union be recognized as &quot;proletarian,&quot; and others of Western scientists be criticized as &quot;bourgeois.&quot; These matters were handled very crudely, with some units adopting mass struggle means and some people were offended. In the process of the movement, the Party took opportune measures to correct the shortcomings, and issued a circular to various work units calling their attention to prevention of such shortcomings. Most intellectuals felt that they had gained something. Through study they had overcome old ideas and accepted new ones, had established the viewpoint of serving the people, knowing their way ahead and gaining strength. In 1951, criticism of the film The Life of Wu Xun was launched in newspapers and magazines. Wu Xun, eulogized by the new movie, became famous for developing school education during the late Qing Dynasty by begging, and was praised as a &quot;perpetually strange beggar&quot; by imperial rulers. Discussion and criticism of this film not only raised the question of how should a historical figure like Wu Xun be evaluated, but extended to the question of how to look upon contemporary Chinese history and the road of Chinese revolution. The criticism became part of the movement of intellectual ideological remoulding. In 1954, starting from giving his support to critical articles by two youths on research on A Dream of Red Mansions, Mao Zedong launched and led an extensive attack on the bourgeois idealism of the Hu Shi school. Hu Shi was the most influential representative of the bourgeoisie in ideological and cultural fields after the May 4th Movement. The issues raised not only concerned how to appraise and study A Dream of Red Mansions, a famous classic Chinese novel. They also concerned the liquidation and criticism of the most influential bourgeois academic school after the May 4th Movement in the fields of philosophy, literature, history, sociology, politics and ideology. In these two attacks launched by the Party, the questions raised were important and the work carried out was essential. Launching criticism and discussions in combination with practical examples for study and application of SIX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 459 Marxism was a method for intellectuals to educate and remould themselves. The two criticisms played a very good role in studyin8 Ind publicizing historical and dialectical materialism and so had their positive aspect. However, the ideological and academic questions they posed were complicated, belonging to the intellectual world Use of the criticism movement to solve them was anoversimplification and one-sided, which made debate in academic fields difficult. The two criticisms turned academic and cultural ques tions into political struggles which they tended to intensify, so they also had their negative aspect. In 1955, another movement was launched to criticize H u Feng's literary and art theory . H u Feng was a progressive literary and art critic who had long participated in the Left-wing literature and art movement. Different opinions and criticisms in progressive literary and artistic circles had circu a cd about his theories. A severe criticism was directed against h 300 000-word letter containing his ideas on the question of literature and art presented by Hu Feng to the Party Central Committee. Very soon the criticism was transformed into exposure and suppre sion of the &quot;Hu Feng counter-revolutionary clique. Thus an ldeo logical debate in the literary and art field was turned into a political struggle; H u Feng and a group of literary and art workers associated with him, including both Party members and non-Party progressive writers, were groundlessly labelled as a ‘‘counter-revolutionary clique,&quot; the target of the struggle. It had made no distinction between friends and enemies and confused the two different types of contradictions-contradictions between the enemy and ourselves and contradictions among the people, creating a major case of injustice in ideological and cultural fields after the founding of New ^In^March 1955, the Party Central Committee released the Instruction on Publicizing Materialism and Criticizing Bourgeois Idealism. It emphasized that in order to realize China s socia list construction and transformation, the fundamental task of the Party in ideological work was to publicize matenatem and oppose idealism, so that cadres and the masses would be liberated from the influence of bourgeois ideology and raise their socialist con sciousness. Fulfilment of this task required long-term efforts. With regard to the correct unfolding of academic criticism and discussion, the instruction stipulated a series of principles. Among them were &quot;reasoned and realistic academic criticism and discussion.&quot; &quot;Criticism and discussion should lake research work as the basis. Simplistic and rough altitudes should be opposed. Academic controversy should be solved through free discussion, with imposition of administrative orders opposed. Those criticized should be allowed to make counter-criticism, with the latter not suppressed. The few people holding different opinions should be allowed to reserve them, the principle that the minority should be subordinated to the majority not to apply in this regard.&quot; During criticism, &quot;We should adhere to the Party's united front policy and the policy of uniting and remoulding intellectuals.... We should draw distinction between political counterrevolutionaries and those who err in academic ideas.&quot; In dealing with the latter, &quot;we should ensure they can continue to carry out research useful to society, enjoy respect and give play to their special skills that benefit society and that they can pass on their skills to youth. At the same time, we should encourage them to take an active part in academic criticism and discussion and remould themselves.&quot; These stipulations were devised on the basis of summing up experience and lessons while studying a situation and problems before carrying out academic criticism and discussions. They were aimed at correcting and preventing the appearance of deviations in academic criticism and discussions so these would develop along the correct path. They laid the initial groundwork for the presentation for the Party's subsequent policy of &quot;letting a hundred schools of thought contend.&quot; However, with the launching of the movement to expose and struggle against the &quot;Hu Feng counter-revolutionary clique,&quot; implementation of these stipulations was seriously obstructed and neglected. The Formulation of the First Constitution of the PRC Along with the beginning of large-scale national economic construction, the strengthening of various forms of political construction and further stimulation of public enthusiasm were 46! placed high on the Party's agenda. P m January 1953, in compliance with the proposal of the fentral Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Centra People's Government Council adopted a resolution on convening local people's congresses elected at various levels, and, on this basis holding the National People's Congress. After more than a year's intense work, the 1st Sesston of the 1st NPC was held tn Reiiing in September 1954. , r. . The primary task of the session was to formulate the first Constitution of the People's Republic of China, which is the state's basic law, Mao Zedong delivered an ebuhient opening speech entitled &quot;Strive to Build a Great Socialist Country. L1&quot; Shaoqi made the Report on the Draft Constitution of the People s Republic of China on behalf of the Constitution Drafting Committee, The session adopted the Constitution of the Peoples Republic of China, an encapsulation of the historical experience gained in the Chinese people's heroic struggle for the founding of New China over a century and more, as well as a summary of new historical experience gained since the estab hshment of the People's Republic of China. The session affirmed the road traversed by the Chinese Communist Parly in leading the Chinese people in the new democratic revolution and established in legal form the Party's general line for the transitional Penod as general tasks for the entire Chinese people. The Constitut on clearly stipulated: &quot;The People's Republic of China is a peop e s democratic state led by the working class and based on he alliance of workers and peasants.... All power in the Peoples Republic of China belongs to the people The organs through which the people exercise power are the National People Con gress and the local people's congresses.... The National People s Congress, the local people's congresses and other organs of s ate practise democratic centralism.&quot; Thus the basic political system of our state was established. The Constitution explicitly stated, &quot;The People's Republic of China, by relying on the organs of state and social forces, and by means of socialist industrialization and transformation, ensures the gradual abolition of systems of exploitation and the building of a socialist society. This set the orientation and way for the nation's transition to socialism. The Constitution also prescribed the fundamental rights and duties of citizens. In short, it embodied two cardinal principles of people's democracy and socialism, recorded the victories of the protracted struggle of the Chinese people and pointed out the correct road for their continued struggle. In line with the Constitution, the session voted for state leaders. Mao Zedong was elected chairman of the People's Republic of China; Zhu De, vice-chairman; Liu Shaoqi, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, while Soong Ching Ling and 12 others became vice-chairmen. Zhou Enlai was decided on as premier after being nominated by Mao Zedong. Following this, the National People's Congress has been the highest organ of state power of the People's Republic of China and the State Council, originating from the National People's Congress and being the highest administrative organ of the state, that is, the Central People's Government. In accordance with the principles prescribed by the Constitution, multi-faceted construction was carried out in the political field, w'ith the main ones as follows: (I) The People's Political Consultative Conference continued to exert its role. With the convening of the National People's Congress, the CPPCC no longer had to act on its behalf. In December 1954 the CPPCC held the 1st Session of the 2nd National Committee, which discussed and adopted the statutes of the CPPCC. It clearly pointed out that a People's Political Consultative Conference was still necessary as a people's democratic united front organization to unite various ethnic groups of the country, democratic classes, democratic parties, people's organizations, overseas Chinese and other patriotic democratic personages. Its tasks were, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, to continue to consolidate and develop the people's democratic united front, and through the unity of various democratic parties and people's organizations to more extensively unite the entire populace and report the masses' opinions and suggestions to relevant state organs, to conduct consultations on major domestic and internapTER SIX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 463 a , i events and important arrangement of personnel, and to tiona, - the development of the cause of socialism. The ■i0int n elected Mao Zedong as honorary chairman, Zhou E at session elected tviao ^ * Ling and ]4 others as vice« Ch^ The contfhued existence of the People's Political Conchairmen-T conformed with the stipulation of the Conthat The people's democratic united front will continue S v its part &quot; and embodied the system of mult, -party cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the Taws relating upstate organs were reformulated at the 1st Session nf the 1st NPC These included the Organic Laws of the NPC ^Council, People's governing Criminal^guaranteeing £ sTg—nt i rnmBs— ££•*£, totalled over 35 or about ^rcen, of the nation's total WulattonTh^y ^ ^ During ,he long area, &quot;Veng p h Yarious ethnic groups had gradual— a. «* »&quot; dominated. People of various ethnic groups in China had commonly suffered from imperialist aggression. Around the time of the founding of New China, imperialist powers still carried out various scheming activities among some minority nationalities instigating so-called &quot;national independence&quot; in a vain attempt to split China up. Proceeding from this reality and in accord with its consistent stand of ethnic equality and unity, the Party decided that regional national autonomy would form the basic policy for solving China's nationality question. In other words, regional national autonomy was introduced in regions where minority nationalities lived in compact communities, within the unified big family of the motherland. Under the unified leadership of the Central People's Government, national autonomous regions and autonomous organizations at different levels were established in accordance with the sizes of population and regions inhabited by ethnic groups. This policy made it possible to ensure the unification of the motherland and the unity of all nationalities in order to jointly resist imperialist aggression plus develop economic and cultural construction. It also ensured the equal status of all nationalities and satisfied the desire of minority peoples to become masters of their own affairs. This was an important creation made by the Party in solving China's national problem in the light of Chinese history and reality and by applying MarxistLeninist theory to national problems. This Party proposition had been accepted by the Common Programme in the early period after the founding of New China. In accordance with the principled stipulations of the Common Programme on national policy, and after summing up the experience gained since the establishment of the inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the first national autonomous government at the provincial level founded in May 1947, the Central People's Government, in August 1952, promulgated the Outline for the Implementation of Regional National Autonomy in the People's Republic of China. The Constitution stipulated further measures on regional national autonomy and the political, economic and cultural construction for various minority nationalities in addition to the Common Programme. By September 1956, China had set up the Inner LrrEK SIX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 465 , -nlia Autonomous Region and the Xinjiang Uygur Autono^ Region, 27 autonomous prefectures and 43 autonomous &quot;nunties Bv 1958, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Cn N^naxia Hui Autonomous Region had been established. The S? Autonomous Region, for which the Preparatory Committee cet un in 1956, was formally established in 1 165. (IV) Revolutionization, Regularization and Modernization of '^The Constitution stipulated: &quot;The armed forces of the People's Republic of China belong lo the people. Their tasks arel° defend I |L achievements of the people's revolution and national co struction and defend the state's sovereignty, territorial integrity and security&quot; If countries openly hostile to the PRC engage 1 arms expansion and war preparations and pose a threat to China s security, the nation cannot go without powerful, modern iiationa defence forces. Therefore China had to build up land, air naval forces strong enough to defend China's territorial inlegn y and defend air and sea territory against ‘^on. During the period of peaceful construction, China s powerful P^A^tchhad Cr tempered m the People's War of Liberation and the War to Resist U S Aggression and Aid Korea, gained new achievements hi its advance along the road to revolutionization, standardiza tion and modernization. Party Building Strengthening the building of the Party and Party unity was the basic condition for fulfilling the tasks of industrialization i and [ socialist transformation set down in the Party's general line tor * Ate &quot; n^of New China, the Party paid great aliention to the construction of Party organization when it was n Dower In 1950, as some within the Party had become afroga&quot; and conceited having been heralded as heroes and given the st\ of bureaucracy and commandism under the nationw.de victory for the revolution, the Party Central Committee issued a senes of instructions concerning building up of the Party. A campaign was launched in the Party to correct the styles of Party cadres. In the spring of 1951, the Party Central Committee held the First National Organizational Work Conference. It was decided to conduct a general rectification of the grass-root organizations of the Party and education on the eight requirements for Communist Party members, particularly with regard to the future of socialism and communism. On the basis of such education, conscientious examination and registration were carried out for Party members. Those who committed various errors and disqualified members were dealt with organizationally. Party consolidation, begun in the latter half of 1951, was carried out in stages and by groups. In work units, where the movement against the &quot;three evils&quot; was under way, Party consolidation took place in combination with the movement. By the spring of 1954, it had been basically concluded. Of the 6.5 million Party members, 410,000 were expelled from or asked to withdraw from the Party. Just when the general line for the transitional period had been put forward, the serious event of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi carrying out anti-Party, splittist activities took place within the Party. Gao Gang and Rao Shushi were transferred, successively, in late 1952 and early 1953 from their posts as top Party and government leaders of northeast and east China to work in central departments. Gao Gang was appointed chairman of the State Planning Commission and Rao Shushi head of the Organizational Department of the CPC Central Committee. At that time, the Party Central Committee was prepared to hold the 1st National People's congress and the 8th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Spying out the situation, Gao Gang and Rao Shushi, inflated with personal ambition, miscalculated that the time had come for them to usurp supreme Party and state leadership. At the National Financial and Economic Conference held in the summer of 1953, Gao Gang and a handful of his followers delivered various unprincipled statements and created internal Party disputes. Outside the meeting, they spread rumours, alleging that there were so-called &quot;circles&quot; among the central authorities, tarnishing the prestige of these entities and in particular attacking Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai of the leading core of the central government while lavishing praise on Gao Gang himself. At the National Organizational Work Conference in the autumn of the same year, Rao Shushi, taking co-ordinated action, also engaged in activities against Liu Shaoqi. After the National Financial and Economic Conference, Gao Gang went to south China, sowing discord in east and central-south China, attempting to incite resentment among high-ranking officials against the central government. He spread the so-called &quot;army-Party theory,&quot; which divided the Communist Party of China into the &quot;Party of the base area and the army&quot; and the &quot;Party of the white area.&quot; This ignored the fact that the army was established and led by the Party but rather asserted that the Party was created by the army. Gao Gang described himself as a representative of the &quot;base area and army Party.&quot; He claimed that the leading organs of the Party Central Committee and the state weere now in the hands of the &quot;white area Party&quot; and because of this, the Party Central Committee should be &quot;regrouped.&quot; In December, Mao Zedong made the usual proposal that Liu Shaoqi be entrusted to take charge of the Party Central Committee's work on his behalf during his leave. Gao Gang appeared personally to oppose this and engaged in clandestine activities, demanding that he be appointed the Party General Secretary or vice-chairman and that the candidate for the premier of the Government Administration Council be changed. In December 1953, the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee exposed the anti-Party splittist activities of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi. The 4th Plenary Session of the 7th Party Central Committee held in February 1954 further exposed and criticized Gao Gang and Rao Shushi. It unanimously adopted the Resolution on Strengthening Party Unity. The resolution stressed that Party unity is the life of the Party and demanded that the whole Party, especially high-ranking Party cadres, raise their consciousness to safeguard Party unity and to wage resolute struggle against all words and deeds that undermined Party unity, tarnished the prestige of the Party Central Committee and interfered with the unified leadership of the Party Central Committee. After the conference, the Secretariat of the Party Central Committee held separate forums on the question of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi, continuing to expose and verify the facts about their scheming. At the same time it awaited their awakening, education was being conducted. Gao Gang, however, rejected Party education, and finally alienated himself trom the Party and the people by his shameful suicide. In March 1955, a resolution on expelling Gao Gang and Rao Shushi from the Party and removing them from all their posts was adopted at the National Party Representative Conference. In order to strengthen supervision over Party members, particularly high-ranking Party cadres, the National Party Representative Conference decided to set up central and local supervisory committees at various levels, and elected the central supervisory committee with Dong Biwu as its secretary. The anti-Gao Gang and anti-Rao Shushi struggle was carried out under the principle of &quot;learning from past mistakes to avoid future ones and curing sickness to save the patient,&quot; with the emphasis on drawing on ideological and political lessons, thereby educating the whole Party, and in particular high-ranking Party cadres. This was a comparatively successful and healthy innerParty struggle carried out after the Chinese Communist Part&gt; wielded power over the whole country. Generally speaking, in the years after the founding of New China, the mental outlook of all Party members was relatively good. They maintained the styles of hard work and close ties with the masses which were developed during the revolutionary war years. The Party paid close attention to educating Party members and the struggle to expel degenerates from Party ranks. The PartyCentral Committee continued to keep up, under the condition of wielding political power over the whole country, the strong unity formed during the Yanan rectification campaign and following the Seventh Party Congress. Careerists Gao Gang and Rao Shushi were expelled from the Party and few in leading Party levels were implicated. As a result, Party unity, far from being harmed, was strengthened. Differences in policies and work at the Party leadership could be ironed out and co-ordination of opinions and unity of understanding achieved through normal inner-Party 469 Irussion. A strongly united Party, a Party taking united action dnd working hard for the correct goal it had set formed the most &quot;nortant guarantee for the smooth progress of various work m the early period after the founding of New China. Diplomatic Work Tn order to create favourable international conditions for planned economic construction, the Party called for various activities and struggles in the diplomatic Held. ... The end of the Korean War saw some easing of tension in Asia The United States, however, not only did not wish to withdraw its troops from Korea for the peaceful solution of the Korean question, but kept its fleet in the laiwan Straits intervening in China's internal affairs. Moreover, it attempted to proceed from Indochina to pose a military threat against China and maintain the tense international situation. This ran counter to the wishes of most countries and people around the world, particularly those in Asia and Africa so was unpopular The Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, which had the grea support of China, waged resolute struggle against the French colonial aggressor troops and won decisive victory in 1954. In April 1954, prompted by the Soviet Union, a conference on the Korean question and the Indochina issue was held m Geneva, attended by foreign ministers of China, the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain, France and related countries. This important conference was one which the People s Republic of China attended for the first time in the status and capacity as one of the five major powers to discuss international issues. During the conference, the Chinese delegation led by Zhou Enlai was active diplomatically. Due to U.S. obstruction, the conference failed to reach an agreement on the political solution of the Korean issue, but reached one on restoration of peace in Indochina. France withdrew its troops from the three countries of Indochina, recognized their national rights, thus putting an end to the colonial war France had waged for many years in this region. In order to develop relations with newly emerging independent countries, especially neighbouring nations, in December 1953, the Chinese government in discussions with India on relations of the two countries in the Tibet region, first proposed the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. These included mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, noninterference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. They won favour with the Indian side. In June 1954, Zhou Enlai visited India and Burma on invitation. He issued joint statements, respectively, with the Prime Ministers of the two countries. There was unanimous agreement that the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence should be the basis guiding relations and they were proposed as the norm for handling international relations, a move with extensive and far-reaching significance. With national liberation movements surging in Asia and Africa, in April 1955, heads of government from 29 Asian and African countries with similar historical backgrounds held a conference in Bandung, Indonesia, to discuss questions of common concern, including the defence of peace, struggle tor national independence and national economic development. The Chinese delegation headed by Zhou Enlai attended the conference. In the face of imperialist sabotage of the conference plus complex differences among the participating countries, Zhou Enlai unequivocally put forward the policy of &quot;seeking common ground while reserving differences.&quot; He called upon various nations to put aside differences while strengthening unity and cooperation in the struggle against colonialism for the common interest and thus brought the conference to a successful conclusion. The conference adopted a final communique, putting forward ten principles for promoting world peace and cooperation. These' actually embodied and extended the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. During the conference, the Chinese delegation established contacts with participating countries. It also declared that the Chinese people did not want to go to war with the United States and that China was willing to discuss with the United States matters concerning the relaxation of the tense 471 situation in the Taiwan area. The declaration led to the ambaf f dorial talks between China and the United States, which began in AUfhese1fruitful diplomatic activities promoted relaxation of the tense international situation and expansion of China's ties with the world. They demonstrated China's important role in international affairs and created the favourable external environment for China's peaceful construction. <br /> <br /> === Cultural and Political Construction and Diplomatic Work ===<br /> <br /> === Socialist Transformation of Agriculture, Handicraft and Capitalist Industry and Commerce ===<br /> Along with the implementation of the First Five-Year Plan and start of socialist industrialization, and publicity about the general line for the transitional period, the systematic socialist transformation of agriculture, handicraft and capitalist industry and commerce also took off. Steady Progress of Agricultural Cooperative Movement In 1953, the Party adopted, in succession, two resolutions on the agricultural cooperative movement. The first was the Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Mutual-Aid and Cooperation in Agricultural Production published in the spring of 1953. The second was the Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Developing Agricultural Producers' Cooperatives, published at the end of 1953. The mutual-aid and cooperative movement in China's rural areas made steady progress under the guidance of these two resolutions. . . . .. Do The first resolution originated as a draft within the y in December 1951. It was brought up against a backdrop of different views on the nature and future of the labour mutualaid organizations which had undergone great development » old liberated areas of the countryside. Individual peasants ww to &quot;get organized&quot; before they could eliminate poverty and attain prosperity. The long-term goal of such organization was collectivization and socialization. The Party consistently advocated these, with no opinion to the contrary. Differences lay in what steps should be taken. In old liberated rural areas, along with restoration and growth of the economy, there was laxity in private-based mutual-aid organizations and spontaneous development towards rich peasants. Faced by this situation, some comrades proposed guiding these mutual-aid organizations to a more advanced level. They were then mainly perennial mutual-aid teams with a small number of cooperatives pooling land. Measures which would raise public accumulation of mutual-aid teams and expand the percentage of cooperatives' distribution according to work should be adopted to gradually overcome self initiative by peasants, slowly shaking, weakening and even negating the private foundation of mutual-aid team organization. Some comrades opposed these views, thinking the main issue in consolidation of mutual-aid teams was to substantiate their production contents, and not shake their private foundation. This latter task and collectivization of agriculture were future tasks, requiring great development of state industry and massive use of agricultural machinery. Differences of opinions also found expression among leaders of the central authorities. The Secretariat of the Central Committee carried out conscientious discussion of differences, took the opinions of various parties into consideration and reached a common understanding. On this basis, the CPC Central Committee held the first conference on agricultural mutual-aid and cooperation in September 1951. The abovementioned resolution draft resulted. The guiding thought which served as the basic starting point of the draft was that of paying attention to the two types of initiatives. The production enthusiasm of the Chinese peasants roused on the basis of agrarian reform was expressed in two areas. One was enthusiasm for the individual economy and the other was enthusiasm for labour mutual-aid. Under Chinese economic conditions, a substantial individual peasant economy would exist cHApTBR SIX FOUNDING OF PRC. AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 473 for a long period of time, so its popularity with peasants was unavoidable. The Party understood the traits of the peasants as orivate property owners and stated that their fervour for the individual sector of the economy must not be neglected and rudely dampened. It adhered to the policy of firmly uniting with middle income peasants and permitting development of rich peasants. The Party had invariably maintained it necessary to encourage organization and develop peasant enthusiasm for mutual-aid labour in order to overcome difficulties that lay in decentralized management, help poverty-stricken peasants increase production and embark on the road to ample food and clothing; and, to enable the country to get more food and rawmaterials, it is necessary to encourage the peasants to &quot;get organized,&quot; to develop the peasants' enthusiasm for labour mutual aid. This mutual-aid labour was based on the individual sector of the economy (peasant private property). Its future development entailed agricultural collectivization and socialist transformation. The draft demanded that labour mutual-aid teams be developed in a guided way and on a large scale across the country, and that in areas where the masses had rich experience in mutual aid and where the leadership backbone force was strong, agricultural producers' cooperatives formed by pooling of land as shares should be selectively developed. In addition, the draft also stated that in places with the full agreement of the peasants and the availability of machinery, it was all right to trial-establish a few socialist collective farms. The resolution draft analysed the two tendencies towards the question of agricultural mutual aid and cooperation. One was a negative attitude which failed to see this was the way by which the Party guided the peasants to advance gradually from the individual peasant economy to a large-scale collective mechanized economy, denying that various existing agricultural producers' cooperatives were a form of transition to socialist agriculture. The second was the impetuous attitude, adopted by those who ignored essential conditions, such as voluntary participation by peasant and economic preparation. Such people prematurely and unduly tried to rescind or restrict the private property of peasants who joined cooperatives, thinking that socialism could be fully accomplished in the countryside in one go. The Party criticized these two extreme tendencies and demanded that agricultural mutual aid and cooperation be carried out as a major matter in accordance with the necessity and possibility of production development. It was to be on the guiding principle of vigorous development and steady progress and the tenet of voluntary participation and mutual benefit, adopting the method of demonstrations of models and gradual popularization. After more than a year of trials, the Party believed that practice proved the correctness of the guiding principle set by the resolution draft, which was made public as a formal resolution in the spring of 1953. When it was published, the term &quot;mechanization conditions&quot; required for the trial operation of socialist collective farms was changed into &quot;suitable economic conditions.&quot; This showed that the Party's view on the use of machinery as a prerequisite for operation of advanced cooperatives had changed somewhat. In 1953, after the Party's general line for the transitional period was published, the Resolution of the CPC Central Committee on Developing Agricultural Producers' Cooperatives was adopted and published in December alongside the CPC Central Committee's major decision on the implementation of state monopoly on the purchase and marketing of grain during the emergence of a tense situation in the food market. The resolution stressed that serious contradictions had been exposed with increasing clarity between the individual agricultural economy and the growing needs for socialist industrialization. In order to further raise agricultural productive forces and gradually overcome the disparity between agriculture and industrial development, the most fundamental task of the Party in its rural work was to use the easily comprehensible principles and methods acceptable to peasants to educate and urge them to become organized and slowly carry out the socialist transformation of agriculture. The resolution placed the hope for increased agricultural production and common prosperity on the cooperative movement. After summing up China's experience gained in mutual aid and cooperative movement, the resolution pointed out: 475 ttThe r0ad to the gradual realization of the socialist transforma™ of agriculture as pointed out by the Party leads from tem* arv mutual-aid teams of simple and common labour to perenmutual-aid teams with a small amount of public property aiined through division of work on the basis of common labour, ft then moves on to agricultural producers' cooperatives with nnoled land as shares, unified management and some public nrooerty, and then to advanced agricultural producers cooperatives (ie collective farms) under collective public ownership, which is socialism in its full sense. This road of development from socialist embryo to greater socialist factors to full-blown socialist cooperatives, is a path charted by our Party for the gradual realization of the socialist transformation of agriculture. I he resolution served to turn more attention to the establishment of primary agricultural producers' cooperatives, confirming that these had demonstrated their superiority during their trial operation and in the process of their early development. This proved they were suitable forms for guiding the peasants to effect transition to advanced cooperatives that were socialist m a fully real sense. They thus increasingly became an important link in the Party's lead to the further advance of the mutual aid and cooperative movement. . . . Under the guidance of the two resolutions, the agricultural cooperative movement had made great progress and was basically sound during this period. Some spontaneous deviations appeared momentarily in 1953 but were quickly corrected. The Party Central Committee set up a rural work department with Deng Zihui as its head, which followed the development of and gave concrete guidance to the movement. While actively promoting mutual aid and cooperation, the Party particularly stressed that agricultural production was the overriding work in rural areas, while other kinds of work were conducted around and served agricultural production. The fundamental criterion for judging whether or not mutual aid and cooperation was successful was increase in production. According to statistics releasedl at the end of 1954 the number of mutual-aid teams had increased from over 4 million at the end of 1951 to nearly 10 million, that of primary cooperatives from over 300 in 1951 to over 14,000 in 1953 and then 100,000 in the autumn of 1954, to 480,000 at the end of 1954. Peasant households participating in mutual-aid teams and cooperatives jumped from 21 million in late 1951 to 70 million at the end of 1954. Their percentage of the nation's total farm households increased from 19.2 percent to 60.3 percent. Many statistical materials available at that time showed that over 80 percent of cooperatives increased production and income. Generally speaking, mutual-aid teams did better than individual farming, and cooperatives excelled mutual-aid teams. That was why the mutual-aid and cooperative movement was welcomed by the broad masses of the poor peasants who were eager to join them. In many villages in the old liberated areas, 60-70 percent and even 80 percent of peasant households joined cooperatives in what had become a mass movement. In the spring of 1955, the number of primary cooperatives had grown to 670,000 nationwide. The CPC Central Committee decided to consolidate the agricultural producers' cooperatives. This was because, during the process of major development of cooperatives, rough work was unavoidable in new cooperatives. In addition, in 1954 the state purchased 3.5 billion kg of grain above quota, causing complaints from peasants. Phenomena that deserved serious attention, such as abnormal slaughter of pigs and cattle, and neglect of collection of manure and preparations for ploughing and sowing, had appeared in some places. The principles for consolidation were: In view of conditions in difiereni areas, either temporarily cease development, go all out to consolidate or appropriately reduce numbers and scale or continue promotion in the course of consolidation. This was known as &quot;cessation, contraction and development.&quot; After initial consolidation on this basis, the number of the nation's cooperatives had been cut by 20,000, and initially consolidated at 650,000. limely steps were taken to readjust the cooperative movement, thus maintaining the pattern of steady advance, characterized by development, consolidation, renewed development and renewed consolidation. „BR SIX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOC.AL.SM 477 chapter Planned Purchases and Supply of Grain t rvtober 1953, the Central Committee made a decision on Planned purchase and supply of grain (state monopoly on the frehase and marketing of grain). Its implementation gave a u c to both agricultural mutual-aid and cooperation, and boostT he ost acism and transformation of private grain traders, $ferrSK££s-=:s erain The small peasant economy had only nmiteu . n. r.i&quot; —ifp-;;: « were rnmoant giving rise to the gram problem. In the first year of the start of'large-scale planned economic &quot;nstruc&quot;°nJ 3 &quot;&quot; situation emerged in the purchase and SUPP ^ of hf31&quot; the sales volume of grain needed to be supplied by the state snot up by 1 l ucent over the previous year. It was apparently ha d to fulfil the state's grain purchase plan Hthat,yefbe ^o appea of stock in some areas. Grain market disorders tegan to appear in small cities, towns and disaster-stricken areas tH wen m Be jrng and Tianiin there were worries about flour supplies. On ueptem bef 4 some traders in Beijing bought all the grain available on the marke' within two hours. People worried that the evil wind of price hikes several times a day would blow again. Confronting these* severe^ circumstances, the Party needed to prudently evaluate the situation and properly handle the relations 1 ^ Estate state and peasants (gram-surplus households), betwem .the state and commodity grain consumers (workers, city dwt lUers and erain-short households in the rural areas), between the state an in traders and between the central and local govern ments. Of these relations, the first two were difficult to tackle, with the first in particular the most challenging. Chen Yun, then in charge of financial and economic work at the central level, said, &quot;I am now carrying a load of explosives, with black dynamite in the front end and yellow in the rear. If we fail to obtain grain, the entire market will fluctuate; if we adopt the method of compulsory grain purchase by the state, the peasants will probably oppose us. We choose between the two, but both pose dangers. The present problem is how to ensure obtaining grain. If our methods prove impracticable and fall through, I can say with certainty, the grain market is sure to become chaotic. This is no joke.&quot;17 After carefully considering and weighing the eight possible measures, the central authorities decided the only basic alternative was to implement compulsory purchases in rural areas, institute a ration system in cities and exercise strict control over private businesses. This was a long-term plan of major importance. As long as there was no marked increase in agricultural production, this was the road to be invariably followed. On the evening of National Day, the Party Central Committee agreed to this important decision at the conference room behind the Tiananmen rostrum. Since implementation of the state monopoly on the purchase and marketing of grain affected the lives of almost the entire urban and rural population, after the resolution was taken, the Party Central Committee called on all Party members and cadres at various levels to go down to grassroots units and adopt this work as an extremely urgent economic and political task. The Party believed it could win the support of the peasants for this policy and this was borne out by facts. It would do so by relying on close ties established between the Party and the peasants since the agrarian reform, strengthening general ideological work and education on the general line through outlining the future of socialism, and by giving full consideration to the rational interests of peasants in planned grain purchases. Implementation of the state monopoly on the purchase and marketing of grain initially eased the strain on the supply of grain, maintained the stability of market prices and moderately met indusCHA1TER SK FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 479 CH i needs for grain. At that time, this was the correct, inevitable tr‘® L Later, in order to alleviate the tension caused by excessive cl*° nnrehases in 1954, the Party reduced amounts of grain ^chased and adopted the fixed quota system for production Purc, 1 murketine This dispelled certain complaints of the S K or »« monopoly •'SST^r. Iho'sntom of state monopoly on purchase and m arkedng of grain required evaluation of the surplus gram of toid &quot; The fundamental solution to the grajn^ortage waS w increase grain production, but the potential for doing so by relying on the small peasant economy was very ‘ow- L^g^sca mechanization of agriculture was the distan l* the development At this time, reliance had to bt placed on t cooperative movement with this as the bas^ for coiiducting appropriate technical transformation. All these factors urged the Party to call for energetic development of agricultural producers cooperatives. M utuaf aid and cooperation as well as compu^ory grain purchase were the two strategic measures for the remould ing of peasants; they related to and promoted each other. In instituting the system of state monopoly over grain purchase anSSi. was necessary to decree that no Pnvate trader were allowed to engage in free dealing in grain. The&gt; could serve asgrain sales agents for the state. Private factories oou d only nrocess products entrusted by state grain departments. 1 h y col not autonomously buy raw materials or sell their f.mshed products This was the meaning behind transformation o priv&lt; fn&quot; and commerce for the enure gi *in trade^ mptoenUtion of state monopoly on gram purchase and marketing was followed by state monopoly purchase of oil-bearing crops and stale monopoly sales of edible oil. In 1954, purchase of cotton was monopolized by the state and cotton cloth was bought and sold exclusively by the state. These all constituted important steps taken to promote the socialist transformation of private industry and commerce. Steady Advance of Socialist Transformation of Private Industry and Commerce In the course of presentation and formation of the general line, Li Weihan, head of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, led an investigative group to Wuhan, Nanjing and Shanghai in the spring of 1953 to survey and sum up the Party's experience in implementation of the policy to use and restrict capitalist industry and commerce. Thereafter, the department submitted a findings report on Questions Concerning Public-Private Relations in Capitalist Industry. After three years of rehabilitation of the national economy, the private capitalist economy had undergone profound reorganization and transformation. Most private enterprises had established contact and cooperation with the socialist economy through various forms and had, to different degrees, changed from the relationship of production characteristic of capitalist enterprises. They were no longer purely private capitalist in nature, but instead, state capitalist enterprises under the management of the people's government, having links with the socialist economy and accepting worker supervision. The development of private industry from a primary state capitalist form to an advanced state capitalist form (the former entailed state purchase and marketing monopoly of private firm products and placing of state orders with private enterprises while the latter involved joint stateprivate operation) was, in fact, a gradual transformation .of production relations and gradual advance to socialism. Therefore, in his report to the Party Central Committee, Li Weihan pointed out: State capitalism &quot;is the main form of using and restricting capitalist industry, the main form for us to gradually bring capitalist industry onto the path of state planning and the main form for transformation of capitalist industry and its gradual transition to socialism.&quot; It was also a principal link in united front work with the bourgeoisie and in the &quot;transformation of capitalist cHAPTER six FOUNDING OK PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 481 eleThentCPC Central Committee attached great importance to findings report. In June, the Party Central Committee ' ve held enlarged meetings of the Political Bureau to discuss Tand set down the policy for transforming capitalist industry Ihrough state capitalism. Later, it decided no. to adopt the niirp ostracization of private commerce but enforce stale 'capitalist policy instead. Thus, the Party's policy towards ^ani t ii list industry and commerce was summed up as utiUza SSS and transformation.&quot; The process of using and restricting capitalism would also transform it. The change feferred to here did not mean final transformation through abolishing capitaUst private ownership of the means of produ lion and turning such bodies thus run into socialist enterp^ It meant the gradual turning of capitalist companies into state capitalist enterprises under the condition o &amp; limited and incomplete private ownership, in the process o implementing due consideration to pubUe and P^me mteres^ and benefiting both labour and capital. The Party estimateu that it would take three to five more years to basically complete the task of guiding private industry and commerce onto th Mth of state capitalism. The final transformation would need a time span of three five-year plans. In September, while talking with some representatives of democratic parties an industrial and commercial circles, Mao Zedong said, More than three years of experience have shown it already certai arsris ss to 5:5 accomplishing the task of socialist transition. , ^ Adoption of the policy of using, restricting and transtormmg capitalist industry and commerce and the introduction of the capitalist forms based mainly on placement of state orders with private enterprises. In January 1954, the State Finance and Economic Commission put forward the Opinion on Systematically Transforming Capitalist Enterprises Employing Ten Workers or More Basically Into Joint Public-Private Enterprises. In 1954, China began to switch to priority development of state capitalism, the advanced form of public-private operation. Placing state orders with private enterprises mainly referred to state-capitalist cooperation outside enterprises. Public-private operation entailed cooperation between the socialist sector and the capitalist sector inside enterprises. The public side had considerable equity rights, conducting public and private joint management of businesses with the public representative in the leading position. In these two forms of state capitalism, profits were distributed according to state income tax, enterprise public accumulation funds, workers' welfare funds, and capitalist dividends which accounted for roughly 25 percent. Most enterprise profits went to the state and workers, basically serving the national economy and the people's livelihood. This produced varying degrees of socialism in these enterprises. At that time, most private enterprises were using obsolete equipment and were backward in operation. The labour productivity of the textile industry, one of the comparatively high development level industries for private enterprise, comprised three quarters of the state-run textile industry, and the gap was expanding. For this reason, plus restrictions on raw materials and the market, many private enterprises found it difficult to operate. They requested the state to supply support and practice of publicprivate operation. In 1954 and 1955, great progress was achieved in the work of expanding joint public-private operation. The number of joint public-private enterprises increased from 1,036 in 1953 to 1,746 in 1954, and the figure rose to 3,193 in 1955. Their output value accounted for 49.6 percent of the nation's total output for private industry (including joint ventures). After the introduction of joint venture enterprises, labour enthusiasm was very high since the state sent cadres to strengthen leadership, invested in building ER SIX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 483 nA expansion and readjusted enterprises. As a result production if joS venture enterprises developed rapidly, w.th increased rnfits Take per-capita labour productivity, for example. StandC at ioo in 1950, it increased to 314 in 1955 in joint publ.cnrivate industry, a three-fold increase, while it was 158 in private industry in the same period, an increase of over 50 Percent. The superiority of joint public-private operation was marked. The dividend distributed to private shareholders in joint publicnrivate factories mostly far exceeded the profits gained during the Sriod of private operation. These circumstances prompted more capitalists to demand joint public-private operation, thus creating a favourable situation for the socialist transformation of industry &quot;jo^t&quot; public-private operation generally began with large enterprises. However, not many existed m the natior is capdahst industry The majority of firms were scattered and backward &quot;and medium businesses. After fairly large enterprises introduced joint operation, the more than 1 20,000 medium and smalf 'bodies, which made up half the total output vatae of private industry, faced a difficult production position ■ due to having simple and crude machinery, complete *ork Pr°&quot; dures and disruption of former economic &gt;nks. Jims &quot; demanded joint public-private operation. In order to guarantee kev Droiects it was impossible for the state to disperse funds and assign cadres for such large numbers of ^b cnterprises^ Under such circumstances, in December 195 Committee put forward the policy of overall planning and consideration for the interests of all concerned, making arrange ments through relevant departments and conductmg trans or mation along the lines of different trades. In various trades* big entities nurtured the small and advanced the backward. Small and medium enterprises were first reorganized and i am ^ aamated Then joint public-private operation was introduced, individual joint operation was combined .i &gt; -organization and transformation to meet the needs o trades. In i 1955 joint public-private operation was fully introduced in trades Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. Acceleration and Hasty Conclusion of Socialist Transformation In the summer of 1955, a heated debate took place within the Party concerning the speed of agricultural cooperation. Prior to the discussion, the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicraft industry and private industry and commerce, on the whole, was proceeding steadily in a planned and systematic way. After the debate, due to sharp criticism of Right opportunism, likened to women with bound feet, the pace of the agricultural cooperative movement was drastically accelerated. So was the speed of socialist transformation in other fields. In the spring of 1955, the Rural Work Department of the Central Committee proposed a plan which required that by the spring of 1956, the number of agricultural cooperatives, which stood at 650,000 after consolidation, should reach one million. This plan was approved by the Conference of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee. Before long, Mao Zedong returned to Beijing from an investigation tour of the south. He made new observations and judgments of the grain situation and the development of agricultural cooperation. He proposed revising the plan and quickening development, increasing the number of agricultural cooperatives from 650,000 to 1.3 million, doubling the figure. Deng Zihui did not agree with this alteration. He contended that the cooperative movement should keep pace with industrialization and growth should not be too fast, and that the cadre leadership level and the level of the masses' political consciousness should be raised step by step. There should be no demands for undue haste. He contended that the development from 100,000 agricultural cooperatives in the autumn of 1954 to 650,000 in the spring of 1955 had already been quite fast. Many problems existed and the task of consolidation was very heavy. Main efforts should be devoted to consolidating existing cooperatives and laying the foundation for their further development. Subsequent practice showed that Deng Zihui 's opinion was correct and conformed with the reality. Mao Zedong, however, asserted that the ^PTEK SIX FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 485 f npno 7il-mi and the Rural Work Department of Stf Srr ^ a'conference 2*^ 9U TmumcLl and autonomous regional Party committees. At Z mectmg Mao Zedong delivered a report titled &quot;On the fh°:Cn oTnrath&quot;oryn ^S'^ing &amp; J £ nf the links between China's agricultural cooperation and mechamzaton, and between social reform and technical renovation also contained profound views. However, the report wa. designed to severely criticize the Right deviatiomsm of Deng ...» and countless tabSs&quot;-all this amounted to an erroneous Rightist guiding policy. Mao even alleged they were proceeding &quot;from the8 stand of the bourgeoisie, the rich peasants, or well-to-do middle peasants with their spontaneous tendencies towards capitalism.&quot; Thus, he exaggerated a normal inner Par y dismite over the speed of growth for cooperation, turning it into a two-line difference and introducing abnormality to sound inner-Party democracy formed over many years Mao Zedong's report was relayed straight to rura y branches Party organizations in various places re-examined con servatism&quot; and opposed &quot;Right deviation&quot; and rearranged the cooperative—SW £&quot;ommittee^held^hc enlarged 6th Plenary Session. In line with Mao Zedong's report On the Cooperative Transformation of Agriculture, the session adopted a resolution and determined Deng Zihui and the Rural Work Department of the Central Committee had committed &quot;Right opportunism,&quot; stressing that &quot;only through criticism of this can fundamental change be brought about in rural work.&quot; In December, the book Socialist Upsurge in China's Countryside, compiled under Mao Zedong's guidance, was published. He wrote the prefaces and 104 notes for the book, including the summary of concrete experience in successful running of cooperatives. They contained many correct opinions on work in rural economic, technical, cultural, educational, women's and youth spheres, saying, &quot;political work is the life-blood of all -economic work ... to foster the socialist spirit which postulates the principle of integrating collective interest with individual interest as the criterion for judging all words and deeds ... diligence and thrift ought to be the principle for all our economic enterprises,&quot; and other important expositions of universal guiding significance. However, the prefaces and some notes not only sharply criticized Right opportunism in the cooperative movement, but also posited that the Right conservative ideas were conducting mischief in many other fields of work, thus further expanding the scope of &quot;anti-Right conservatism.&quot; Under such a political atmosphere, a tidal wave of fury was formed in the agricultural cooperative movement. Although Mao Zedong, in his On the Cooperative Transformation of Agriculture, focused criticism on Right conservatism, he thought that the problem was not one of rash advance by that time. However, he insisted that socialist transformation of agriculture be accomplished in 18 years, that he would adopt the method of gradual advance from low to high and that he would control numbers of cooperatives according to actual situations. He put forward his estimate: By the spring of 1958, half of peasant households would have joined the primary cooperatives; semi-socialist transformation would have been basically accomplished in 1960; then semisocialist peasant households should gradually be developed into complete socialist ones by stages and by groups. However, due to the political pressure formed by the severe criticism of Right opportunism, his estimate no longer formed the principle for COPTER Six FOUNDING OF PRC AND TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 487 euiding the movement, while with regard to actual blind development that appeared in total disregard of these principles and plans, the leadership not only failed to correct this, but instead gleefully praised it. As a result, the tidal wave that speeded up the mass cooperative movement, like a seismic wave, engulted the whole of China's countryside. Cooperatives were suddenly accomplished in the space of only a few months. By the end of 1956, peasant households joining the cooperatives accounted for 96.3 percent of the nation's total peasant families. Of these, 87.8 percent joined advanced cooperatives in only seven years, 11 years ahead of schedule. Pushed by the rapid development of the agricultural cooperative movement, a surging tide of joint public-private operation of capitalist industrial and commercial enterprises also rose throughout the country. The greatly accelerated plan drawn up by the Party Central Committee in November 1955 still called for finishing joint public-private operation of all trade, group by group and stage by stage, in two years. However, private industrialists and merchants in various places, including some enterprise workers and staff members, sounded the gong and beat the drum everyday, asking for approval for joint public-private operation. The government had to adopt the method of one-time approval, all-round joint operation. This entailed first giving recognition to joint public-private operation, then carrying out the appraisal of stocks and assets of enterprises, production arrangements, enterprise reorganization and personnel readjustment. On January 10, 1956, Beijing was the first to declare it had completely realized joint public-private operation for every trade. By the end of January, over fifty large and medium-sized cities across the country, where capitalist industrial and commercial enterprises were relatively concentrated, declared one after another that they had accomplished joint public- private operation in all trades. By the end of the year, 99 percent of the nation's private industrial households and 82.2 percent of private commercial households had been drawn onto the path of public-private joint ventures or cooperatives. After the general line was put forward, the former policy of active leadership and steady advance was also adopted for handicraft cooperation. Organization proceeded from handicraft production cooperative groups, handicraft supply and marketing cooperatives to handicraft production cooperatives. The steps started with supply and sales, advancing from small to big and from low to high, gradually introducing socialist transformation and production change. The rapid development of agricultural cooperatives also affected the speed of handicraft cooperatives. A demand was raised at the end of 1955 that handicraft cooperation should be basically achieved in two years. As a result of the move from the past method for transformation through stages, groups and areas for various sectors of the trades to overall cooperation in the entire handicraft trade, by the end of 1956, over 91.7 percent of handicraft workers had joined cooperatives. The progress of socialist transformation between the latter half of 1955 and 1956 obviously went too fast, forming a deviation from real work. From the viewpoint of orientation and line, however, the socialist transformation of private agriculture, handicraft and capitalist industry and commerce, ultimately conformed to objective needs. Accomplishment of the transformation was a matter of historic significance. <br /> <br /> === Establishment of the Socialist System in China and Completion of the First Five-Year Plan ===<br /> In 1956, socialist transformation of private ownership of the means of production was carried out to a decisive victory in China. Private ownership representing individual ownership by the peasants, handicraftsmen and other labouring people was basically converted into public ownership characterized by collective ownership by the labouring people, while capitalist private ownership by the capitalists was basically converted into state ownership or public ownership by the whole people. After the introduction of joint state-private ownership in all trades, the capitalists were no longer in charge of their formerly owned and managed private enterprises, but were employed as staff numbers mf en*erpriscs, with duties commensurate with their abilities. Thev continued to receive a fixed interest which now, however las no longer related to the profits of the enterprises formerly owned by them. They drew interest according to the checked and approved assets represented by their privately owned shares (n wat estimated at that time that the assets owned by the nation s i- K totalled 2 42 billion yuan) and to a fixed interest rate Z Annual ^Tnmrest rate of 5 percent, which was slightly higher than the bank interest rate at that time). A term of seven years was set for receiving the fixed interest and later extended to ten vears Taking into account the tremendous development of former state-owned economy, the publicly owned socialist economy ScS ownership by the whole people and the collecttve ownership of the labouring masses, thus occupied a dominant nosition in China's national economy. . , This situation was reflected in the composition of the nauonal income. The proportion of the national income from the aUte owned sector rose from 19.1 percent in 195V°2 , e ^rcent to 1956' from the cooperative economy, it rose from 1.5 percent t 53 4 percent; from the economy under joint state-private ownership The proportion increased from 0.7 percent to 7.3 percent meanwhile in the individual economy, it dropped from 71.8 percent to 7 1 percent and in the capitalist sector, from 6.9 ™t to nearly zero. Thus the first three economic sectors accounted for 92.9 percent. As regards total industrial output value, socialist industry rose from 56 Per&quot;&quot;VTrcent W ^ percent, and state capitalist industry from 26 9 ^ ^ percent while private capitalist industry dropped from 17.1 per cent to nearly zero. Of the total retail sales of commodities, state-owned commerce together with supply a&quot;d &quot;tarketing co_ operative commerce, rose from 42.6 percent to 68.3 percent, state capitalist commerce and cooperative commerce organized by former small private merchants increased from 0.2 percent to V'5 nercenr while privately owned commerce dropped from 57.2 percent'to 4.2 percent. Thus, by 1956, a socialist economic system had already been established in China. Economy is the basis of a social system. The leadership of the Communist Party of China, the state machine of the people's democratic dictatorship and the guiding position of Marxism in the ideological field, were powerful socialist factors existing in the superstructure which guaranteed China's transition to a socialist society. Now, with the establishment of the socialist economic foundation, the Party, the people's democratic dictatorship and Marxist ideology have taken up the task of consolidating and developing the socialist economic foundation. Great Victory of the Socialist Reform and the Problems Remaining The tasks set by the Party's general line during the transitional period in terms of the socialist reform of agriculture, handicraft industry and capitalist industry and commerce were in the main completed by 1956. In this sense, the transitional period came to an end and the transition to socialism was realized. According to our present analysis, this -situation indicated that China had begun to enter the primary stage of socialism. Of course, the building of socialism will undergo a prolonged historical process and requires that the Party and people make tremendous efforts. During the period, they may even face unexpected hardships and setbacks. Nevertheless, the Communist Party of China did indeed lead the Chinese people to enter the socialist society. Whatever happens, this was a great victory and a significant milestone in the history of the country and the Party after the founding of the People's Republic of China. Proceeding with socialist transformation at an accelerated pace led to impetuosity and carelessness in the latter stages. Profound lessons should be drawn with regard to the leadership of the Party. The chief problem was that the Party became conceited in face of such a tremendous victory. It was no longer as cautious as before, or as careful in listening to the voice of the masses. It also failed to pay as much respect to inner-Party democracy as it had done in the past. However, there are two basic facts which 491 ne must recognize in regard to the completion of such a profound revolutionary change as that of eliminating private ownership in China— a large country with a population of hundicds of millions: first, steady growth of the national economy was al along basically guaranteed; second, it was carried out, by and large with the widespread support of the masses of people. This was extremely difficult to attain, yet it was, in fact, accomplished. Drastic change in the relations of production often results in damage to the productive forces for a time. In general, this did not occur during socialist transformation in China, although lack of enthusiasm for production on the part of some people did arise as a temporary problem. On the contrary, the transformation guaranteed and promoted development of the productive forces. Take grain output for example. It grew annually during the process of the founding of cooperatives. Farmland irrigation projects and the technical transformation of agriculture also developed correspondingly. Production and economic returns of former private enterprises increased considerably during the course of socialist transformation. Naturally, agricultural transformation could have aroused strong objections, rocking as it did the peasants' profound conception of land and draught animals as being privately owned, as well as contravening their traditional autonomous methods of management based on each family or household as an independent unit. But the Party presented t e peasants with facts, showing how cooperatives would benefit the poor and lower-middle peasants who, making up the majority of the rural population, were facing difficulties in production, and assuring them that cooperatives, at least, would not damage their interests. Therefore, the peasants supported cooperatives or went along with the main trend. At first, when the Party s policy ° mutual benefit and participation on a voluntary basis failed to be strictly implemented, relatively better-off peasants did suffer some losses. The Party, however, paid attention to correcting these deviations and showed them how the development of cooperative production would also benefit them. Realizing it was the trend of the times, they either supported the campaign or went along with the majority. The working class, of course, lul y supported the all-round introduction of the joint state-private ownership in private industrial and commercial businesses. Some capitalists beat drums and gongs to celebrate the event in the daytime but cried on each other's shoulders at night. They found the situation stressful, but had to accept it, however unwillingly. In dealing with national capitalists the Party did not adopt the methods of struggle used against landlords. Instead, fixed interest payments to capitalists continued without interruption. They were given jobs and the status of their representatives in state organs remained unchanged. Hence, they also could accept the conversion and follow the general trend. When ji capitalist, known as a &quot;textile tycoon,&quot; was asked why he accepted the socialist road, he said, &quot;It's true, I'm a capitalist, but first of all I am a Chinese.&quot; He explained how, as a Chinese national capitalist, he had all along dreamt of developing industry to bring salvation and prosperity to his country, but how in the old society, he had suffered continual oppression and extortion from imperialists and bureaucrat-capitalists. In the early days of national liberation, the government extricated his enterprise from its impasse by providing it with loans, entrusting it to process products and purchasing its products, enabling it to increase its profit year by year. He went on to say, &quot;Following implementation of the First Five-Year Plan, many large factories were built throughout the country. Various places went in for large-scale construction, and achievements were made faster than I had dreamt was possible. What an encouraging situation! Where would we be today if it wasn't for the Communist Party and if we hadn't taken the socialist road?&quot; &quot;To me, it [abolition of the capitalist system] means losing what I personally gained from exploitation. Compared with the government's total investment during the First Five-Year Plan period, it was just too trivial. What we have gained is a powerful and prosperous socialist country in which everybody lives a comfortable life.... Materially, in fact, I didn't lose anything. I live quite well.&quot;19 These words vividly reflect the basis and results of the Party's policy of uniting with and remoulding national capitalists. In the course of this very complicated, difficult and profound social reform, the na 493 . nal economy grew steadily and the transformation was widely economy g Jhis enabled thc object,ves of the SUP'ahst transformation to be achieved fairly smoothly. This fact indicates that! in general, the socialist transformation led by the PaMyarToneeUenvisSaged that the socialist revolution might adopt a oolicy of peaceful redemption towards the capitalist class. After th!r October Revolution, Lenin drew an outline for this kind of Leful buving-out policy and plan. Owing to various reasons. Lentn's plany was not implemented successfully. The Communist Party ofP China entered into an alliance with the natl0&quot;l capital ist class during the democratic revolution and continued to ma tain this alliance during the socialist transformation. This his torical background, as well as practical necessity and a real possibility, enabled the Communist Party to buy out the capitalist ciasS peacefully and effectively for the first time in thc history o socialism The Party led the masses of people to create a buymgout method which ruled out payment of large sums of state money in redemption in favour of allowing the capitalists to ™ominue to receive part of the dividend from enterprises for a relatively long period of time. Moreover, a series of forms ranging from primary to advanced state capitalism were created to steer capitalist industry and commerce towards a gradual transition to socialism During the cooperative transformation of agriculture, aserteof forms was also created for the socialist transport from the primary stage to the advanced stage. Thanks to these creative methods China's socialist transformation, while still taking t Soviet Union as the model to follow in its objectives, nevertheless acquired special characteristics of its own in the particular road it chose to follow. Thus, use of this new experience and thinki g served to enrich and develop Marxist theory on scientific socialiSmimpe,uosity and carelessness in the late stageofthesooalist transformation gave rise to many problems. The Party had make careful investigations and studies to bring about systemati readjustments and to gradually resolve problems in keepnng wi the need to develop the productive forces, and concern for the country's social life, as well as the will of the masses of people. There were several important questions which needed to be answered. One, socialist public ownership already occupied a dominant economic position, but was it necessary to make it the only economic sector, or should the individual economy and private economy which benefitted the national economy and enhanced the people's livelihood be maintained to a limited extent? Two, with the complete transformation of capitalism and individual economy and the extension of a highly centralized planned economic system to cover the whole sphere of economic life, should the role of market regulation continue to be developed, and if so, how? Three, how should the state-owned economy give play to the initiative and enthusiasm of the central authorities, the local governments at various levels and the enterprises? And should the proprietary rights and the managing power over the collective economy be divided into different administrative layers and give play to its initiative according to the different layers and different conditions? Other questions: As to public ownership, was the larger the scope the better? As to management, was the more concentrated the better? Most of these problems surfaced in different degrees during the course of transformation. However, they became submerged in the upsurge of the transformation before there was time to discuss them thoroughly and deal with them carefully. These questions and other problems brought on by impetuosity and carelessness in the later stages of the socialist transformation could have been gradually resolved in practice by relying on the accumulation of experience, if serious investigation and readjustment had been made in a calm manner of seeking truth from facts. The objective situation called for the Party to conduct readjustment and reform in this regard. Achievements of the First Five-Year Plan In 1956, when the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicraft industry and capitalist industry and commerce was in the main completed, the main targets set for the First Five-Year 495 « were mostly fulfilled ahead of schedule. The following year, r7WwaCs one of the years which witnessed the most successful 195 ' of the country's economic construction. By the end of set for the First Ftve-Year Plan had been &quot;3KX St Untnent, investment in capUa, instruction of the economy and in culture, education and p health totalled 49.3 billion yuan, overfulfilling the original p Jan . 15 3 nercent With the addition of the funds raised by enter Jisls and vadous localities, the country's actual investment m capital construction totalled 58.8 billion yuan. Th» were 921 industrial and mining projects under construction over and above Ihe set mvestment limit. Of these, 428 had been put tnto oration an the founding of New China. A large number of basic industries which were non-existent in old China were established one by one. Since more than half of the investment for capital construction was pooled in the hinterland, a large number of industrial and mining enterprises mushroomed in these areas, initially improving the allocation of industries which had been irrationally concentrated in coastal areas in old China. The achievements attained in industrial production during the First Five-Year Plan period greatly outstripped what old China had accomplished in 100 years. The growth rate also ranked among the advanced in rates of performance by other countries when their industries first began to take off. In 1957, the country's total agricultural output value reached 60.4 billion yuan (according to 1952 prices as constant), fulfilling 101 percent of the original plan and showing an increase of 25 percent over 1952 and an average annual growth of 4.5 percent. Grain output hit 195.05 million tons, up 19 percent over 1952 and showing an average annual growth of 3.7 percent; and the output of cotton reached 1.64 million tons, up 26 percent over 1952 and registering an average annual growth of 4.7 percent. The growth rate of agriculture was not lower than the world's average level. However, compared with the speedy growth of the country's industry during the same period, relatively speaking, it lagged behind. The growth of grain and cotton production did not reach the level which people had optimistically expected. Tension remained uneased and pressure to increase agricultural production remained high. During the five years, the nation's prices basically remained stable. Except for the year 1956 which witnessed deficit, the state treasury registered a balance in revenue and expenditure, with even a slight surplus. The structure of the state revenue changed considerably. In 1950, it had mainly relied on income from taxes on industry, commerce and agriculture, which accounted for 75 percent. Income from state-owned enterprises and institutions had made up only 13.4 percent, of which the income from industry accounted for 6.8 percent. By 1957 the proportion of various tax incomes to the nation's revenue had dropped to 49.9 CHA1.TER sk founding of PRC and transition to SOCIALISM 497 t While the income from state-owned enterprises and mstiperCel1 had increased to 46.5 percent, of which the income Irom tutions had mcreaseu iu , q i nercent The people s to 205 yuan, a rise of 38.5 percent, wum, CreThe^acrhiCTements^nThina^cconomic construction during the The acnieven. foundation for the gssifssf#; |§§§S§§§^£Si - -—theoretical understanding and practical action.<br /> <br /> == Socialist Construction Advances Tortuously Through Exploration ==<br /> <br /> === The 8th National Party Congress and China's Probing of Its Own Road for Socialist Construction ===<br /> could achieve the nationwide victory of the democratic revolution and then begin the building of New China, and had led this historical process systematically. But building socialism in China is far more difficult and complicated than carrying out the democratic revolution country-wide. China's revolutionary road should not be patterned on that of other countries, nor should its path of construction copy that of other countries. In the early days of socialist construction, the Party called on the nation to &quot;learn from the Soviet Union.&quot; This practice was historically necessary and led to some positive results. However, the experiences of the Soviet Union were not all successful, nor were all its successful experiences applicable to China's conditions. After all, learning from the Soviet Union could not replace seeking one's own road. As for how China should strike out on its own road of socialist construction, it was impossible for the Party to make full theoretical preparation in advance. Only in accordance with the principle of combining the basic tenets of Marxism with China's real situation could it sum up its own experiences, draw on the experiences of other countries and conduct practical explorations. In exploring China's own road for socialist construction, would it be possible to experience fewer big setbacks than was the case in searching for China's revolutionary road? The Party hoped so. Later, history proved that we failed to avoid big detours owing to the fact that we underestimated the difficult and complicated nature of building socialism in China. At any rate, this was a problem which could only be solved through the practice of exploration. In this respect, a good beginning had already been made. 1 he 8th National Party Congress was convened in September 1956 following tremendous changes in the domestic and international situation. At home, the situation was marked by the basic completion of socialist transformation and by China's entering into a new historical period of all-round socialist construction. Shifting the focus of the whole Party's work to economic construction began at the end of the revolutionary war. At that time, however, the heavy tasks of democratic reform and socialist transformation needed to be fulfilled simultaneously. Particular501 ,h-n socialist transformation was gaining momentum, the Iy: partv particularly the high-ranking Party leaders, really whole Pa h P deal Qf theif attention on social reform. Afte^sS transformation was basically completed, the focus ‘be conducted in the light of China's *»Wy ***** situation and needs of the development of Chinas productive f°The international situation underwent a change marked by sSsfcss £ ThHauIed widespread shock within the Soviet Union and all over the world. The imperialists seized this opportunity to s r worldwide upsurge of anti-communism and anti-socialism, crea Sees of ideological confusion among the masses o ‘Top, and brfngmg Lt pity 0^&quot;! &quot;ht^mpte repudiation of the history of the struggle for socialism carried out by the Soviet Fatly a&quot;d J^°Ple the leadership of Stalin. The Party s principled stand was ex nressed in two articles published in the name of the editorial department of Remnin Ribao ( People's Daily) on the basis of dtsPcu&quot; m enlarged meetings of the Pohtmal Buremr o the Party Central Committee. One, entitled On the Hlstorlc Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, appeared Experience o. i Qn ^ Hjstorical Experience of the doing away with blind faith in Stalin and Soviet experiences, emancipating the mind shackled by dogmatism, and striving to seek a road for revolution and construction suited to each country's own conditions. The 8th Party Congress highlighted the initial results gained by the Communist Party of China in exploring China's own road for socialist construction. Publication of &quot;On the Ten Major Relationships&quot; in April 1956 marked the beginning of this exploration and paved the way for the convening of the 8th Party Congress. &quot;On the Ten Major Relationships&quot; and a Series of New Policies In early 1956, the Party Central Committee made known to the Chinese people the draft of the National Programme for Agricultural Development (1956-67) and the policy of building socialism with greater, faster, better and more economical results, based on the ideas of Mao Zedong and leaders of some localities. The programme and policy, put forward under the situation in which the socialist transformation of agriculture was being speeded up, reflected the Party's intention of shifting its attention to agriculture and the construction of the national economy as a whole, and the desire of the Party and the people to quicken the development of the productive forces on the basis of the new socialist relations of production. Particularly, after the armistice of the Indo-China war was realized at the Geneva Conference, the international situation became more relaxed. The Party predicted that there might be a period of peace internationally, and planned to seize the opportunity to speed up the country's economic construction. However, in the surge of opposition to &quot;Right deviationist conservatism,&quot; the Party failed to fully understand and respect the law governing economic construction and set excessively high and enormous demands on speed and scale for the development of agricultural production and construction in other fields, thus leading to impetuosity and rash advance. The Party took note of this problem and began to correct it. in the beginning, Zhou Enlai agreed with the strategy for Jedmg up development. Facing the ever-rising targets which &quot;SUIed strain on finance and material supply, howler he Sglu.A nut earlv on at a State Council meeting in February ?956 &quot;At present there are symptoms of impetuosity. We should raard against it. Socialist enthusiasm should not be dampened, but we should not carelessly make suggestions which are without good grounds, or beyond the limits of possibility, nor should we accelerate the speed arbitrarily. Otherwise, it will be very danger ous We should on no account raise the slogan, ‘Realize mdustri ■7ation at an early date.' If we think over it soberly, we hall recognize that we really cannot do it.&quot; When drawing up plans, whether a 12-year plan or a long-term plan, all departments should bear actual conditions in mind.&quot;' In accordance with this t hulking, the meeting of the Party Central Committee Presided over by Liu Shaoqi in May set the policy of fighting against both conservatism and rash advance. The 3rd Session of the 1st National People's Congress held in June accepted and adopted l this policy, which was put forward in the report by Li Xiannia _ LatcJ'in April 1957, Mao Zedong said, &quot;In my mind, I began somewhat to crave greatness and success. I only began to change n Mmch and April last year. I had talks with comrades from more than 30 departments and later talked about the ten major relationships at the Supreme State Coherence. The Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee called conferences with comrades from 34 econonuc departments to make reports and discuss problems, preparation for the riSth Parly Congress On the basis of these discussions, Mao Zedong dratted fhe report which was entitled &quot;On the Ten Major Re atmnshi^ It was discussed at an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau in April. After it was approved by the Political Buream the report was delivered at the Supreme State Conference on May 2. The report set one basic policy; this was to mobilize all positive factors at home and abroad to serve socialism. It dealt wlth te&quot; (ten major relationships) which were put forward, on the one hand, through summing up China's own experiences and the problems in China's construction and development, and on the other, by drawing lessons from Soviet experience. Mao Zedong stressed that with regard to Marxist-Leninist theories, &quot;What we must study is all that is universally true and we must make sure that this study is linked with Chinese reality. It would lead to a mess if every single sentence, even of Marx's, were followed.&quot;3 Foreign experience should neither be rejected out of hand nor copied indiscriminately. &quot;Particularly worthy of attention is the fact that in the Soviet Union certain defects and errors that occurred in the course of their building of socialism have lately come to light. Do you want to follow the detours they have made?&quot;4 This confirmed the basic thinking that in building socialism China should take its own road in the light of its own conditions. &quot;On the Ten Major Relationships&quot; chiefly discusses economic issues, stressing the need to mobilize all positive factors in all aspects of economic work. The first three questions focus on the relationship between heavy industry on the one hand and light industry and agriculture on the other, the relationship between industry in the coastal regions and industry in the interior, and the relationship between economic construction and construction for national defence. The report confirmed that we had not committed major mistakes while handling these relationships in the past, and stressed that we should make appropriate readjustment according to the situation and our experiences and devote greater efforts to developing agriculture and light industry, make use of and develop industry in the coastal regions, and cut the proportions of military and administrative expenditures as much as possible so as to spend more on economic construction. In the long run, this would help the development of heavy industry and industry in the interior and strengthen national defence. This, in fact, involved the question of blazing a Chinese road of industrialization which was different from that of the Soviet Union. The fourth and fifth questions, discussing the relationship between the state, the units of production and the producers, and the relationship between the central authorities and local governments, began to touch on the question of economic structural reform. Thus a number of new policies for China's socialist economic construction were advanced . Relationships&quot; ?enfthTmlat&quot;p between tie Han nationality and mideal Vkl • iitip leaps and bounds, and the human world is on the eve of a new scientific, technological and industrial revolution. We must rouse ourselves to catch up and &quot;attain the heights of modern science Mao Zedong's speech at the meeting stressed the necessity of currymg out a technological and cultural revolution to innovate the backward technology and fight against ignorance. He called on the whole Party to study science and unite with non-Party intellectuals to work hard in order to quickly catch up with advanced world technological levels. After the conference, the State Council established the Scientific Planning Commission wh,ch, organized and led by Zhou Enlai, Chen Yi, Li Fuchun and Nie Rongzhen, was composed of several hundred renowned scientists. In a few months, the commission formulated the Outline of the Long-Range Plan for the Development of Science and Technology (1956-67) and adopted a series of emergency measures to put the plan into practice. Thus, several new policies for China's socialist cultural construction were initially put forward While discussing the Party and non-Party relationship, &quot;On the Ten Major Relationships&quot; advances the policy of &quot;long-term coexistence and mutual supervision&quot; between the Communist Party and all democratic parties. This clearly declared that under the new historical conditions after entering socialism, China would not practise the one-party system like that in the Soviet Union and confirmed that the united front under the leadership of the Communist Party of China and multi-party cooperation would continue to exist and give play to their roles. Regarding the question of how to deal with counter-revolutionaries, the report, on the premise of confirming the necessity of the former movements to ^suppress and eliminate counter-revolutionaries, estimated that &quot;counter-revolutionaries still exist, although their number has greatly diminished&quot;; put forward the principle that there should be fewer arrests and executions in the suppression of counter-revolutionaries in society at large, and that the policy started m Yanan of &quot;killing none and arresting few&quot; should be adhered to in clearing out counter-revolutionaries in Party and government organs. In his speech at the Shanghai municipal Party congress held in July, Zhou Enlai stressed, &quot;With regard to ^pter seven socialist construction 507 the people's democratic dictatorship, we should continue to exercise dictatorship and at the same time to broaden democracy K With regard to the handling of inner Party contradictions, &quot;On the Ten Major Relationships&quot; reiterates the policy started in Yanan of &quot;learning from past mistakes to avoid future ones, and curing the sickness to save the patient&quot; and opposes ruthless struggle and merciless blows.&quot; Thus, a number of new policies on China's socialist political construction were initially advanced. ~ In June that year, the Party proposed to strive for peaceful means to liberate Taiwan in order to realize the complete reunification of the motherland. It declared that &quot;all patriots belong to one family&quot; and &quot;whether one embraces patriotism earlier or later brooks no distinctions.&quot; It also suggested the Communist Party of China and the Kuomintang, in the interest of the nation and the motherland, join hands for a third round of cooperation. All this vividly shows how the Party sought in every way to find a road for building socialism suited to China's own conditions. Later, when recalling the history of this period, Mao Zedong said repeatedly: Economic construction in past years was learned mainly from foreign experience. The discussion of the ten major relationships in April 1956 signified that we had now begun to put forward our own line for construction with a content all our own. The 8th National Congress of the Communist Party of China The 8th National Congress of the Communist Party of China was held on September 15-27, 1956 in Beijing, lhis was the Party's first national congress after taking over power countrywide, one which manifests the solidarity of the Party and its thriving cause. It was attended by 1,026 delegates representing the nation's 10.73 million Party members. More than 50 foreign Communist Party and Workers' Party delegations, representatives of all the democratic parties in China, and democratic personages without party affiliation attended the congress on invitation. Mao Zedong made the opening speech. Liu Shaoqi, on behalf of the Party Central Committee, gave a political report. Zhou Enlai reported on suggestions concerning the Second Five-Year Plan for Development of the National Economy. Deng Xiaoping presented a report on the revision of the Party Constitution. Zhu De, Chen Yun, Dong Biwu and more than 100 other delegates addressed the congress or delivered written speeches. The basic task of this congress was to sum up the experiences since the 7th National Party Congress, and unite the whole Party and all the forces that could be united, both at home and abroad, to struggle for the building of a great socialist China. The congress correctly analysed the domestic situation and the changes in the major contradictions at home and put forward the Party's fundamental tasks for the future. The political report made by Liu Shaoqi not only systematically expounded the series of principles and policies highlighted in &quot;On the Ten Major Relationships,&quot; but also advanced and resolved a series of strategic questions. The decision adopted by the congress concerning the political report clearly pointed out: Our Party has led the people to achieve the overall and decisive victory in the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicraft industry, and capitalist industry and commerce. &quot;This indicates that the contradictions between the proletariat and the capitalist class in our country have in the main been resolved, that the several thousand years' history of the class exploitation system has basically ended, and that the social system of socialism has been basically established in our country.&quot; The Chinese people must also liberate Taiwan and fight for the thorough completion of the socialist transformation, the final abolition of the exploiting system and the continual elimination of counter-revolutionary remnant forces. &quot;However, the main contradiction in our country has become that between the people's demand for the establishment of an advanced industrial country and China's actual situation as a backward agricultural country, between the people's demand for the rapid development of economy and culture and the situation in which the current economy and culture cannot satisfy the people's demand. The essence of this contradiction is the contradiction between the advanced socialist system and the backward social productive forces in the situation where the socialist system has already been 509 wished in China. The main task of the Party and the people ef‘?he whole country at present is to concentrate forces to solve contradiction a'nd quickly turn China from a backward /he socialist system in China. The formulation on the essence the principal contradiction in China, however, was not e strength on developing the productive forces. History has pro th^ he ^ngres^ adhered°to The principle for economic construeona ba&quot;ch is both positive and reliable, so as to ensure a fairly balanced growth of the national economy^ The congress resolution also pointed out: If we underestimate the possibi ihty of relying on favourable conditions to develop our c0™^y S pt^ tive forces fairly quickly we will °eCt°ve of vatism- and if we set an excessively high speed irrespective of various kinds of objective limitations, we will commit the mistake of adventurism. The Party must pay attention at all times to preventing and correcting these two erroneous tendencies. The congress also put forward the strategic plan of building a basically complete industrial system in China within a period of three five-year plans or an ever longer period of time. The congress adopted Suggestions on the Second Five-Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy (1958-62) providing that by 1962, the nation's gross industrial and agricultural output value should increase over that in 1957 by around 75 percent, of which the total industrial output value should rise around 100 percent and the total agricultural output value around 35 percent. The nation's steel output should reach 10.5 million to 12 million tons, grain output around 250 billion kg, and the national income should increase around 50 percent. In his speech, Chen Yun pointed out: Our socialist economic situation will be like this: In industrial and commercial management, state and collective management should be the main form, supplemented by a certain amount of individual management! With regard to planning, planned production should be the main form of industrial and agricultural production supplemented by free production within the scope allowed by the state plan in the light of changes in the market. In the unified socialist market, the state-controlled market is the main form, supplemented by the free market led by the state within a definite sphere.10 The congress attached importance to this opinion and adopted it in the resolution. It was an important attempt to breach the socialist pattern of the past, both theoretically and practically, and to explore a path for economic structural reform. With regard to the work of the state, the congress proposed continuing to strengthen the people's democratic dictatorship, further expand the country's democratic life, and carry out the struggle against bureaucratism; strengthen the unity of all Chinese nationalities; continue to consolidate the people's democratic united front, and gradually to enact complete sets of laws and establish a complete legal system to ensure that there are laws which the activities of the Party and government can and must 511 be based on. Deng Xiaoping's report on revision of the Party Constitution put forward the main policy on strengthening Party building now that the Party has come to power in China. It pointed out the need to place importance on inner-Party ideological education, enhance the whole Party's ideological level of Marxism-Leninism, adhere to the Party's sole purpose of serving the people wholeheartedly, carry forward the Party's fine traditions of seeking truth from facts and adhering to the mass line, develop innerParty democracy, strengthen the Party's democratic centralism, and tighten up supervision over Party organizations and Party members. He pointed out that since the personality cult was a long-standing social phenomenon, it would inevitably have some reflections in our Party's life and social life. The Party's task, he said, was to resolutely oppose, as a principle of the Party's central authorities, the practice of elevating individuals spectacularly and of sounding panegyrics over an individual's virtues and achievements, and to adhere unswervingly to the system of combining collective leadership with individual responsibility, in order to carry out the Party's democratic principle and mass line in all spheres. After much deliberation and consultation, the congress elected the 97-member 8th Party Central Committee on the basis of giving full play to democracy. The 1st Session of the 8th Party Central Committee elected 17 Political Bureau members and six alternate members to the Political Bureau. It elected Mao Zedong chairman of the Party Central Committee, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Chen Yun vice-chairmen of the Party Central Committee, and Deng Xiaoping general secretary of the Party Central Committee, and these six people formed the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau. The Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee included four secretaries elected at the 7th National Party Congress and two new, younger members. The 8th National Party Congress inherited the leading body of the Party Central Committee elected at the 7th National Party Congress and added some new members, making preparations for the future replacement of the old with the new. At the preparatory meeting to discuss the list of candidates for members of the Party Central Committee, Mao Zedong noted that the make-up of the list reflected the historical development of the Party and, as the focus of the Party's work had been shifted to construction and the economy, in the future, the Party Central Committee should have many engineers, scientists and mature cadres from among the workers, although there were none at present. This set a new standard for the future construction of the collective leadership of the Party central authorities. The Constitution adopted at the 8th National Parly Congress added the article: &quot;The Party Central Committee holds that when necessary, an honorary chairman can be elected in the Party Central Committee.&quot; This was because Mao Zedong himself mentioned to the Party Central CommiLtee that he was preparing that at an appropriate time, he would no longer hold the post of Party chairman. He also proposed that he would not hold the post of state chairman at the next term of office, and suggested revision of the country's Constitution by entering the provision that the chairman and vice-chairmen of the state could hold their posts consecutively only for two terms. He believed that by giving up the position at the first front he could concentrate his energy on studying certain problems, and that he could still, in the capacity of a member of the Party's Political Bureau, make the major-topic report at appropriate meetings after he gave up the posts of chairman of the state and chairman of the Party. This suggestion can be considered as a deliberation of abolishing the existing life-long tenure of the posts of leaders and the preparation for the important reform of the Party and state system of leadership. The new Party Constitution stipulated that the National Party Congress should institute a permanent system with a term of five years, and a national conference should be held every year. This conference was thus made the 1st Session of the 8th National Party Congress. As a matter of fact, however, no other sessions were held during the term of the 8th Party Central Committee except for the 2nd Session of the 8th National Party Congress 513 WhThe Party'sliM swat thf 1st Session of the 8th National Party Congress was correct, and the many new principles and conceptions put forward at the congress were full of creative spirit Of course, many of these new concepts and principles could not be firmly' established or acquire common understanding as the time for working them out in practice was very short, so that they were unlikely to become very mature either theoretically or ideologically. Many ideas (including those put forward soon after the s Session of the 8th National Party Congress) suffered setbacks before they had been put into practice or fully applied. There were numerous unexpected, complicated tests ahead. Nevertheless when all is said and done, this congress did achieve initial results in exploring China's own road for socialist construction, and history has proved these results to be of important, farreaching significance for the development of the Party s cause. Further Exploration After the 8th National Party Congress After the 8th National Party Congress, efforts to further explore China's own road of socialist construction were devoted to the following two questions: One was how to formulate he construction plan for 1957 and readjust some aspects of the economic relations in accordance with the principles set at the 8t National Party Congress; and the other was how to make preparations for the rectification of working style throughout the Party and correctly handle the various kinds of contradictions among the people which were becoming increasingly obvious. In early 1956, although the trend of rash advance in economic construction was basically reined in, it was not completely curbed and rash advance persisted in some areas. The final .accounting of revenue and expenditure at the years end found it to be the first deficit year since 1953. As the problem of oyeranxiety to achieve quick results had not been resolved ideologically, the targets collected from various departments and localities tor the formulation of the 1957 plan still greatly exceeded the limits deemed possible for enabling the national economy to grow steadily through an overall-all balance. Major controversy arose over questions relating to the assessment of the economic work of 1956 and the formulation of the economic plan for 1957. Mao Zedong stressed that the incorrect part in the 1956 financial expenditure and investment in capital construction was not worth &quot;a finger,&quot; and proposed that the budget targets should be set higher, Zhou Enlai and many others, however, suggested that it would be better to slow down the growth, make it more reliable, and cut down the budget targets for 1957. Throughout the discussions, Chen Yun kept emphasizing that the scale of construction should not exceed national strength and that a balance between material supply, finance and credit should be maintained in drawing up a plan. In a large country like ours, he said, economic stability is of primary importance. While discussing the 1957 plan and budget at the 2nd Plenary Session of the 8th Party Central Committee held on November 10, 1956, Zhou Enlai had proposed that the principle of &quot;ensuring key projects and adequately scaling down&quot; should be adopted in 1957. Everybody attending the meeting agreed with this principle. At a meeting during the session on November 15, Mao Zedong said: There are both progress and retrogression, but mainly progress; we should cherish the enthusiasm of our cadres and people and should not pour cold water on them. Actually, Mao Zedong had a different opinion from that of the session concerning the opposition to rash advance. However, he did not make any criticism. Instead, in keeping with the opinion of the majority, he agreed to carry out this principle in 1957. All this indicates that the leading body of the Party Central Committee at that time had kept a sober mind and worked in a style of seeking truth from facts and giving play to democratic discussion. The plan for 1957 thus formulated ensured the year's economic work to be the most effective since the founding of New China. But later Mao Zedong said that he had made a compromise at the 2nd Plenary Session of the 8th Party Central Committee. This became one of the origins of the criticism Mao Zedong brought up at the Nanning Meeting held in January 1958 in regard to the opposition to rash advance. ^PTER seven socialist construction 515 Initial progress and explorations of new ideas were also made ■ the readjustment of the economic relations according to the 1 nnciple of &quot;three main bodies and three supplements&quot; set by the s h National Party Congress. Soon after the basic completion of thc socialist transformation of capitalist industry and c0™™rce Li the handicraft industry, the Party repeatedly stressed that individual handicraft works, small shops, small stalls and neddling which were closely related to peoples lives should ^main under private operation for a long time, and stated that drawbacks in the state monopoly for purchase and marketing should be overcome, market management relaxed, a certain de erce of free purchase and free marketing should be introduced to enterprises and a portion of farm produce should be permitted rn &quot;e free market after the tasks for ~^d and contracted purchase by the state were full died. After the bth National Party Congress, the free market prospered conspicuous lv and the number of individual industrial and commercial operations markedly increased. Take Shanghai for exampk, there were 1,661 individual handicraft households m i September and the number rose to 2,8S5 in October, then jumped further to A, 236 by the end of 1956. To counter opinions which held that the growth of individual businesses went against the orientation of cooperatives, Renmin Ribao (People's Daily) published an edito ial which pointed out that the development of individual house holds engaged in the handicraft industry had, on the one hand, met the people's needs for increasing commodity supplies on the market and, on the other, expanded employment opportumties m the cities Thus, it was beneficial, and not harmful, to the state. Following the increase of such individual households larger self-managed handicraft households aud handicraft wor^h°Ps; which became known as &quot;underground factories aPI»^ed, and so did &quot;underground shops.&quot; What the attitude should be towards happenings like this following the socialist transformation aroused the interest of former industrialists and businessmen and the whole of society. ' . . . In December 1956, Mao Zedong gave many talks and held discussions on this question with responsible members of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce and the Department of the United Front of the Party Central Committee. He expressed this opinion: Underground factories develop because society needs them. They should come above ground and be legalized. The number of such factories may increase as long as there are markets and raw materials. It should be permissible to open small &quot;husband-and-wife&quot; shops, hire labourers, and open up large privately run factories. It will also become an outlet for fixed interest paid to former capitalist industrialists and businessmen if individuals are allowed to invest and open up factories. Investment made by overseas Chinese will not be confiscated in a hundred years. We may practise capitalism after capitalism is eliminated. He called this &quot;the new economic policy.&quot;12 These opinions of Mao Zedong were agreed to by other comrades of the Party Central Committee. Soon afterwards, at a meeting of the NPC Standing Committee, Liu Shaoqi said: Our country is more than 90 percent socialist, so, in my opinion, there is no harm in a capitalist development of several percent. On the one hand, this bit of capitalism may serve as a supplement to the socialist economy and, on the other, it can serve as a comparison with the socialist economy in certain respects.13 Zhou Enlai also said at a State Council meeting: In socialist construction, a bit of private enterprise with flexible operation is good and makes things more lively.14 These new ideas for enlivening the economy represented a new development of the policies of keeping the state and collective operation as the main body and allowing for a certain amount of individual operation as a supplement set by the 8th National Party Congress. A further consideration related to this was that capitalist private operation within definite limits under state leadership could also be made supplementary to the main body of the socialist economy. In his talks with personages of industrial and commercial circles, Mao Zedong was also in favour of extricating from the ranks of &quot;capitalists&quot; the large number of small proprietors and self-employed people engaged in industrial and commercial businesses who entered joint state-private enterprises together with capitalists, of no longer paying them a fixed interest (the amount was minimal), and of allowing them to join A HHm.ah these considerations and suggestions were ats—a siggsiis creased. In September 15, . agricultural production was proposed. In general, a 88 a producti0n team (now s ss farm output quotas to each group ior ou ^ each p]0t of &amp;*££% contract the odd JObs in the fields to households. The major work should be done collectively and the minor, piecemeal work, by households or individuals, thus replacing such labour-wasting practice as that of having &quot;all coop members work together like a swarm of bees,&quot; and so on. These instructions were formulated under the direction of Deng Zihui. They were creative ventures oriented towards the production responsibility system. The 3rd Plenary Session of the 8th Party Central Committee held in autumn 1957 adopted the drafts of three stipulations drawn up under the leadership of Chen Yun for improving the management systems of industry, commerce and finance. The stipulations were meant to appropriately transfer management power downwards to localities and enterprises as called for at the 8th National Party Congress. In essence, the readjustment of economic plans and economic relations were designed to solve contradictions among the people. Systematically posing the question of how to correctly handle contradictions among the people and making it the main theme of the campaign to rectify the Party's style of work as well as of the state's political life was on the agenda only after Mao Zedong had issued an important speech on this question at the Supreme State Conference in February 1957.<br /> <br /> === The Rectification Campaign and the Anti-Rightist Struggle ===<br /> Actually, rectification of the Party's style of work was also proposed at the 8th National Party Congress. In connection with the Yanan rectification movement, Mao Zedong pointed out in his opening speech to the 8th National Party Congress: At present, subjectivism, bureaucratism and factionalism still exist in the thinking and working style of many of our comrades; they are harmful to inner-Party unity and unity between the Party and the people; we must strive to overcome these serious defects, for only in this way can we successfully accomplish the great construction cHAKTER SEVEN socialist construction 519 *,ork ahead of us. At the 2nd Plenary Session of the 8th Party Central Committee held in November 1956, what happened in Poland and Hungary15 was duly heeded as an admonition. Thus, while giving consideration to both national construction and the neople's livelihood, the session stressed, it was necessary to guard Lainst and prevent cadres taking on privileges and divorcing themselves from the people. A decision was taken to carry out a rectification campaign throughout the Party ranks in the nex year towards which discussions and preparations were to be instituted right away. The Rectification Campaign Focusing on the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People This rectification campaign centred on how to correctly handle contradictions among the people. Since contradictions between ourselves and the enemy were basically resolved (but not completely however) in the country, endlessly emerging contradictions among the people became increasingly conspicuous and prominent. These contradictions were reflected in a concentrated way as contradictions between the masses of the people and their leaders; i.c., the people's government and the ruling Communist Party. To resolve these contradictions, from the angle of ideological cduc^Jh it was necessary on the one hand to educate the Communist Par y members who held leading posts, government personnel, and stair members of economic and cultural organizations to listen seriously to the criticisms of the masses and strive, in their style of work to overcome subjectivism, factionalism and bureaucratism which divorce them from reality and the masses; on the other hand efforts should be made to enhance the consciousness of the masses through education and encourage them to foster a socialist spirit based on the principle of combining collective with individual interests. The first aspect should be given priority; therefore, the Party rectification campaign should stress this aspect in seeking to resolve contradictions between the masses and the leaders, and study the new problem of how to correctly handle contradictions among the people under the new situation in which the main task of revolution has shifted to construction. In the autumn and winter of 1956, instability arose. Internationally, the events in Poland and Hungary were bound to exert an influence on China. Domestically, the rapid progress of social transformation and the profound changes, plus the rash advance in economic construction which could not be totally overcome, resulted in some strain in the nation's economic and political life. In the second half of 1956, shortages of grain, meat and everyday necessities occurred in many cities. Many difficulties were encountered by a small number of students in continuing their education, by workers in finding employment, and by demobilized soldiers in getting proper arrangements for placement. A few people created disturbances. According to incomplete statistics, during the six months between September 1956 and March 1957, more than 10,000 workers staged a number of strikes and strikes, while more than 10,000 students became involved in strikes and drawing up petitions. In many places in the rural areas, after the summer harvest, peasants agitated to withdraw from the coops and complained about shortages of food grain. Most sensitive of all to changes in the political climate were the intellectuals, who became increasingly uninhibited in their thinking after the policy was put forward of &quot;Jetting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend.&quot; They criticized dogmatism and aired differing views on questions related to culture, education, science and other fields. Some people also openly criticized shortcomings and mistakes in the work of the Party and the government as well as problems in the working style of some cadres. Their comments, some of which were erroneous, included many sharp criticisms. In face of these newly emerging contradictions, many Party members and cadres, lacking ideological preparation, found themselves in a passive position, or, still judging new things by old standards, they regarded all the disturbances and sharp criticisms by the masses as reflections of the class struggle and attempted to suppress them in a rude, simplistic manner. In February 1957, at an enlarged Supreme State conference attended by more than 1,800 people, Mao Zedong delivered an 521 q^pter seven socialist construction rfant soeech entitled &quot;On the Correct Handling of Contraprions Among the People &quot; He pointed out: Contradictions exist ntersaUy and socialist society is also full of contradictions. It nrecisely these contradictions that propel socialist society to onstan ly advance. In socialist society the basic contradicnons S, 'hose between the relations of production and the productive forces and between the superstructure and the economic base^ However they are fundamentally different in character and have former should be resolved through methods of coercion an dictatorship while the latter can only be resolved through demo how to correctly handle contradictions among the people m by small numbers of people, and the schools of thought contend&quot; and &quot;long-term coexistence and mutual supervis » The quest n of practising economy and China's path to industrialization. Mao Zedong said, &quot;Today, matters stand as follows. The large-scale, turbulent class struggles of the masses characteristic of times of revolution have in the main come to an end, but class struggle is by no means entirely over. While welcoming the new system, the masses are not yet quite accustomed to it. Government personnel are not sufficiently experienced and have to undertake further study and investigation of specific policies.&quot; He held that it was imperative for us at this juncture to raise the question of distinguishing contradictions among the people from those between ourselves and the enemy, as well as the question of the correct handling of contradictions among the people, in order to unite the people of all nationalities in our country to develop our economy and culture, consolidate our new system and build up our new state. Mao Zedong's speech at the Party's National Conference on Propaganda Work held in March 1957 by the Propaganda Department of the Party Central Committee and attended by more than 800 Party and non-Party ideological workers further expounded the Party's evaluation of intellectuals (the overwhelming majority support the socialist system; a small number do not quite welcome the socialist system but are still patriotic; the number of intellectuals who are hostile to our state is very small). He affirmed as necessary the reform of intellectuals and their integration with the masses of workers and peasants. &quot;Let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend,&quot; he declared, was a basic as well as a long-term policy. In leading our country, the &quot;open wide&quot; policy should be followed, and to &quot;open wide&quot; means to give people a chance to express their opinions, so that they dare to speak, dare to criticize and dare to debate. These two speeches, passed on to the broad masses of cadres and intellectuals to discuss, aroused enthusiastic repercussions. In the course of passing on and discussing these two speeches, contradictions among the people in various areas were also exposed and examined. As for the Communist Party, its rectification campaign had already begun. The Party Central Committee circulated a number of inner-Party directives and the Parly newspaper publicly issued a series of editorials to strengthen \nervision over the proceedings. Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi pni south on separate routes. Along the way they made reports, *kiL Party cadres to fully understand the profound transmon Lm revolution to construction, and to fully understand and Idoot the Party's policy of correctly handling contradiction among the people. In this way, &quot;literature and art science and technology will prosper, the Party can always maintain its vital ity, the people's cause will flourish, and China will become a nowerful yet lovable country.&quot;16 P°Qn Aoril 27 the Party Central Committee formally issued its Direction the Rectification Campaign which pointed out. Since the Party has now attained the status of the party in powt throughout the nation and received the support of the broad masses of people, many comrades are likely to adopt the simple method of sending down administrative orders to deal with problems Some elements, lacking a firm stand, are prone to become tainted with remnants of the old society working style to tike on certain ideas of special privilege, and to even treat the masses with methods of retaliation. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out an overall, profound rectification campargn throughout the Party against bureaucratism, factionalism and subjecMKm. This rectification campaign should be a serious ideological educational movement to be carried out in a gentle, mdd y' f well as a movement for making appropriate criticism and self criticism. The methods to be adopted should include heart to heart talks between individuals, small discussion meetings or group ‘meetings; in general, large-scale criticism meetings or public accusation meetings are not recommended. h . T Situation in the Summer of 1957,&quot; Mao Zedong sard. Th P V » aim in carrying out the rectification campaign is to create a nohtical shuation in which we have both centralism and democand freedom, both unity of will and personal 63 The advance^f the theory and policies on the correct handling of contradictions among the people, and also the proposal tor the rectification campaign, together with the politica designed to create, continued and developed the line of the National Party Congress; they represented new achievements in exploring China's own road for building socialism, with equally far-reaching importance and significance to the Party's cause. Rectification Shifts to Anti-Rightist Struggle After publication of the rectification instructions, the Party and government organizations at all levels, Party organizations of institutions of higher learning, scientific research institutes and cultural and art units each held discussion meetings and group meetings in various forms, listened to the opinions of the masses both inside and outside the Party and welcomed the &quot;free airing of views&quot; (a simplified phrase which developed in the course of discussing and implementing the policy of letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend). From May 8 to June 3, on 13 occasions, the United Front Department of the CPC Central Committee held the forums attended by responsible members of the democratic parties and nonparty democratic personages. From May 16 to June 8, on 25 occasions, the United Front Department of the CPC Central Committee and the No. 8 Office of the State Council held forums attended by personages from industrial and commercial circles. Large numbers of cadres and ordinary people both inside and outside the Party enthusiastically responded to the Party's call and put forward many criticisms and suggestions in regard to the work of the Party and government as well as the working style and ideology of Party and government cadres. The Party sincerely welcomed the well-meant criticisms and suggestions from all the personages in general outside the Party and from Party members. In May, the Party Central Committee issued innerParty instructions on several occasions pointing out that &quot;in the past two months, open discussions of contradictions among the people have been conducted at various meetings participated by non-party personages and reported in newspapers and magazines, thus, with exceptional speed, all kinds of contradictions have been exposed. It seems that in the past we did not fully comprehend the situation of these contradictions in detail. It is a good thing «/ that they have been accurately exposed. The criticisms made HvThe majority of nonparty personages are, fundamentally speakyo sincere and correct, no matter how sharp they are. The e &quot;Ifticisms account for well over 90 percent and are extremely Xrs and have be^ domineering. Although this was by no means true of all Party members, this situation was extreme y common. This wrong orientation must be nnd what is more, the sooner the better. These inner rany instructions showed that the Party sincerely hoped, through its rectification to handle contradictions among the people correc v inelud'ng those between the masses of the people and leading members and also hoped to overcome the unhealthy tendency in Tc Party and to strengthen unity between the Party and the Pe bureaucratism, sectarianism and subjectivism. This situation aroused the vigilance of the Party. That only a few people among the intellectuals harboured hostility towards socialism had already been soberly appraised and pointed out by the Party on several occasions. But, their current furious attack had not been foreseen. On May 16, the Party Central Committee issued relevant inner-Party instructions. While stressing that over 90 percent of the criticisms of our Party made by non-Party personages were sincere and correct, the Party Central Committee also pointed out that recently, out in society there were a few people with antiParty leanings who were eager to have a trial of strength. They had made some provocative remarks and tried to deflect the Party's direction (correctly handling contradictions among the people and consolidating the people's democratic dictatorship in the interests of socialist construction) to an erroneous orientation. The Party Central Committee decided that their incorrect and injurious remarks could be issued and published in the newspapers without interference, and for the time being no rebuttal would be made so that their true reactionary features would be exposed. That is to say, the Party changed its stance of opposing free airing of views&quot; to one of favouring &quot;free airing of views&quot; so as to take over the weapon from the Rightists. On May 19, big-character posters appeared in some colleges and universities in Beijing. The Central Committee held the view that bigcharacter posters which could temper the masses while exposing problems and Rightists, had more advantages than disadvantages. Thus institutions of higher learning and units of the Party and government saw a rapid upsurge in speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates and writing big-character posters. This brought on an artificially aggravated, nationwide political tension and instability. &quot;Things Are Beginning to Change,&quot; an article written by Mao Zedong in mid-May, marked the change in the guiding ideology of the Party Central Committee. The theme of the on-going movement switched from the correct handling of contradictions among the people to a struggle against the enemy, and from inner-Party consolidation to beating back the Rightists. On June r&gt;ntral Committee issued inner-Party instructions for 8' 1 nizinu forces to beat back the attack of the Rightists. On the 0161 , dav Renmin Ribao ( People's Daily ) published an editorial Spiled &quot;Why This'&quot; A turbulent anti-Rightist mass movement 6 eid nadonwide The practices of speaking out freely, airing SP WS fully holding great debates and writing big-character post TwerfaL&quot; Se in the struggle against the Rightists. The stage of studying documents, criticism and ^tros^cnans y 6 irH Plenarv Session of the 8th 1 artv uciuk RlThf rS&quot;&quot;on and anti-Rightist movement ended in the summer of 1958. Consequences and Influence of Expanding the Anti-Rightist Struggle After the socialist transformation of private -ownership of the rasr-sti* socialist road. If we had given up the struggle and had not clearly beaten back the attack of a few Rightists in the spheres where problems had arisen, it would have led to ideological and political confusion. Experience gained by the Party in this respect is precious and is of far-reaching significance. However, the Rightists made up a very small number. At that time, the Party made an overly grave estimate of the class struggle and the Rightist attack and failed to adopt a prudent view towards the ferocity of the developing struggle. This resulted in a serious expansion of the struggle against Rightists. Originally, the article &quot;Things Are Beginning to Change&quot; encompassed the following considerations: criticize the Rightists; with some exceptions no names need to be mentioned, and room for manoeuvre should be left to facilitate compromise under appropriate conditions. The Party Central Committee issued instructions on June 29, 1957 to the effect that the number of Rightists who should be criticized by name in different fields should be 400 in Beijing and 4,000 nationwide. Already this did not, in the main, criticize the political and ideological trend as such, but placed more emphasis on specific mention of names, the number of which, nevertheless, was still quite limited. After only ten days, the number of people who were to be criticized by name in accordance with the Party Central Committee instructions was doubled. In August, as instructed, the movement was to be further spread to prefectures and counties, urban districts and large factories and mines (later to the teaching staff of primary and middle schools), and, as proposed, Rightists were to be &quot;dug out&quot; from in deep. According to statistics of the 3rd Plenary Session of the 8th Party Central Committee held in September, over 60,000 people were designated as Rightists; by the time the movement was over, the figure had jumped to 550,000. With regard to the determination of the nature of the Rightists, the suggestions of the United Front Department of the Party Central Committee approved by the Party Central Committee on July 11 still said that &quot;among the people there is the division into left, middle and right.&quot; At the same time, it pointed out that there were indeed some ultraRightists among the Rightists and some of the ultra-Rightists 529 verged on the line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves politically. Only a few days later, the Party Central Committee concluded that the contradiction between the bourgeois Rightists and the people was contradiction between the enemy and ourselves. This led to a drastic expansion of the struggle against the Rightists both in regard to the numbers involved and the nature of the contradiction. The methods adopted of speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates and writing big-character posters during the movement were also important factors in seriously magnifying the struggle against the Rightists. Among those who were designated as &quot;Rightists' only a very small number opposed the Party and socialism. Many persons simply made criticisms and suggestions about the Party's work and its cadres. Their criticisms were either correct or lopsided, but were not in opposition to the Party or socialism. However, many leading cadres regarded themselves as infallible, could not listen to unpleasant criticisms and tended to interpret these criticisms as being anti-Party and anti-socialism. Some people put forward questions and ideas about the reality and theory of socialism. Even if their remarks deviate from the proper direction, their errors should have been resolved through discussions and education, and should not have come under attack as opposing socialism. Many faithful comrades, many friends who had a long history of cooperation with the Party, many talented intellectuals and many young people who, politically, were lull of zeal but lacked maturity, were mistakenly designated as &quot;Rightists.&quot; Because of this they felt grieved and wronged for a long time and could not play their due role in socialist construction. It was a great loss not only to them personally, but also a loss to the cause of the whole Party and state. Magnifying the struggle against the Rightists was a blow to the enthusiasm of many intellectuals and their faith in the Party to definite degree. This was also a loss to the Party and state. When rectification of improper working styles started, the Party Central Committee reiterated that we should not handle contradictions among the people with methods used in struggling against the enemy. However, the situation was complicated, a handful of Rightists had launched attacks; leading members of the Party at all levels tended to rely on the political experience they had accumulated and the habits that had become strengthened during fierce class struggles over a long period of time; they again struck out on the familiar route of directing a mass movement of struggle against enemies and interpreted a host of contradictions among the people which had newly emerged during the period of historical transformations as contradictions between the enemy and ourselves. This is a big lesson in the Party history since the founding of New China, showing how hard it is to deal with an unfamiliar, complicated political situation and to bring about historical changes in political life. Drastic enlargement of the struggle against the Rightists had an extremely untoward effect on high policy: the assessment which had been made at the 1st Session of the 8th National Party Congress on the principal contradiction in Chinese society was changed at the 3rd Plenary Session of the 8th Party Central Committee. Mao Zedong pointed out in his speech in the early days of the plenary session that the main contradiction in Chinese society was still the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the contradiction between the socialist road and the capitalist road. Many comrades expressed doubts concerning this view at the plenary session panel discussions. They held that the answer to the question reached at the 8th National Party Congress was still correct; that this conclusion should not be changed because of the anti-Rightist struggle; and that the temporarily exacerbated class struggle should not be regarded as the longterm, main contradiction. Some other comrades were of the view that although class struggle in the economic sphere had been basically allayed, class struggle in the political and ideological spheres would persist for a long time and was still the main contradiction in society. In his speech at the later period of the plenary session, Mao Zedong disagreed with the former views. In accordance with Mao Zedong's opinions, the 2nd Session of the 8th National Party Congress further affirmed, &quot;The experience of the rectification movement and the struggle against Rightists once again demonstrates that in the entire transition oeriod that is, before the completion of the socialist construction fhe struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and between the socialist road and the capitalist road to all along been the main internal contradiction in China The second Eon announced that there were &quot;two exploiting classes and two abouring classes&quot; in China. Rightists, the overthrown comprador and landlord classes and other reactionaries made up what was called one of the exploiting classes. &quot;The national bourgeoisie, which is now gradually accepting the socialist transf°rmi,t'&quot;&quot;' and its intellectuals&quot; were called the other exploiting class. Work ers and farmers were the two labouring classes. In this way, intellectuals were, for practical purposes, classified within the scope of the second exploiting class. National Partv The judgement of the 1st Session of the 8th National 1 arty Congress on the change of the main contradictions (i.e., he principal contradiction within the country was no longer th contradiction between the proletariat and the bourge01&quot;ie'b&quot; between the need of the people for rapid economic and l cul dural development and the present state of the economy and cuUure that fell short of their need) in Chinese society was, fundamen tally speaking, correct. The session did not negate the existence of the class struggle and, what is more, it clearly pointed out &quot;After the completion of the socialist transformation, struggle between socialism and capitalism in regard to stand, vtewpom and method will continue for a fairly long period of time. 1 he fact that Rightists launched attacks in 1957 proved that the struggle in the ideological field over which who would win out capitalism or socialism, had not naturally come to an end along with the completion of the transformation of private ownership of the means of production. However, how to handle the stru8g'® was a complicated matter. The Party lacked experiences in this respect The practice of drastically magnifying the struggle against the Rightists, once it found expression m theory unsettled and revised the scientific judgement made at the 8th Na* Partv Congress concerning the main contradiction in Chinese Tocilty The revised judgement became the theoretica basis on which the Party was to commit, again and again, mistakes, not only of class-struggle magnification, but even those of a purely fictitious nature. Exploring the way to build socialism in China involves a very difficult process, and must advance through complicated trials. At that time, in the main, two major problems confronted China: one was the class struggle under socialist condition, and the other, the scale and speed of socialist construction. Throughout the long period of about 20 years (1957-76), our Party, in dealing with these two problems, repeatedly made serious mistakes which were mutually exacerbating and which steered the explorations astray along a course fraught with ups and downs.<br /> <br /> === Emergence of the &quot;Great Leap Forward&quot; and People's Communes ===<br /> The proposal to launch a &quot;great leap forward&quot; signalled the Party's intention to strive for the opening up of a new prospect in its exploration of the path for China's socialist construction. History has proved that this effort failed. But the proposal in 1958 for a &quot;great leap forward&quot; was made against the background of contemporaneous historical developments. First of all, there was the influence of the anti-Rightist struggle. The Party held that the victory of the struggle had greatly fired the enthusiasm of the people for socialist construction. During the rectification, a new atmosphere of rapid production growth emerged in some factories and rural areas. Many people were of the view that it was entirely possible that construction could be conducted at a faster speed nationwide than envisaged in the First Five-Year Plan. Mao Zedong believed all the more that the 1956 opposition to premature advance was wrong. At the 3rd Plenary Session of the 8th Party Central Committee held in late September and early October of 1957, apart from discussing rectification and the struggle against the Rightists, the topic of rural work also came under discussion. On listening to some leaders of local governments proposing to achieve greater, faster, better and more economic results, Mao Zedong became very S33 ^TEB SEVEN SOCIALIST CONSTRUCTION ,1 Tn his sDeech at the meeting he not only changed the eXrieement of the 8th National Party Congress on the mam 1 nntradiction in the Chinese society, but also changed the policy of struggle against conservative ideas, on the one hapd' and ™ advance on the other, in economic construction, as had been confirmed at the 1st Session of the 8th National Party g He criticized the 1956 opposition to premature advance as sweepf„g as^e the slogan of achieving greater, faster better and more economic results, as well as the Forty-Article Outline for Ag^ cultural Development; with the emergence of the Rightist cievia ion th &quot;dPed the Rightist attackers with matter to gossip about. The session adopted and published the revised draft of he outline and decided that with the discussion of the outline as the ^emral task, a big debate over the rural produc«^»u dta conducted in the rural areas so as to promote the rapid develop ment of agriculture. On November 13, th c People s Da ly published an editorial to this end. The editorial pointed out, Some people have suffered from the disease of Right-deviatiomst conservatism trailed at a snail's pace and failed to understand that after the formation of agricultural cooperatives we have the conditions and the need for a big leap forward on the productio front. This heralded the &quot;great leap forward. TonferMao Zedong led the Chinese delegation to attend the Confer ence of Communist and Workers' Parties held in November 1957 in Moscow, and the Communist Party of China enjoyed grea nrestige in the international Communist movement. The first man-made earth satellite launched into space by *e Soviet U, inspired socialists throughout the world. The Soviet Umon pu forward the suggestion that it would catch up with or surpass United States in fifteen years. Mao Zedong Propos^d at * meeting that China should catch up with or surpass Britain * fifteen years in steel output. At the 8th National Congress onhe Chinese Trade Unions held in December, on behalf of the Centra Committee Liu Shaoqi extended his congratulations and open y &quot;ced^call tothe people of thecountrythatChmashou.d catch up with or surpass Britain in the output of iron and steel and other important industrial products in fifteen years. In winter that year, the Party committees of various provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions held representative conferences at which they used the style of &quot;speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates and writing big-character posters&quot; to criticize Right-deviationist conservatism; at the same time, they mobilized and organized farmers to work day and night to set off a winter high tide of agricultural production centred on building water conservancy projects, raising pigs so as to provide more manure, and improving the soil. This raised the curtain on the great leap forward. The 2nd Session of the 8th National Party Congress In January and March 1958, Mao Zedong held work conferences in Nanning and Chengdu attended by some of the leading members from the central and local governments. With regard to estimating the economic work in 1956 and the debate over formulating the 1957 economic plan, Mao Zedong more sternly repudiated the struggle against premature advance; he criticized Zhou Enlai and Chen Yun, saying that the struggle against premature advance, or &quot;rash&quot; advance as it was called, discouraged the 600 million people and committed a mistake of political orientation. At the Nanning conference, Mao Zedong put forward the idea of &quot;uninterrupted revolution&quot; and held that in 1956 a fundamental victory of socialist revolution was won in the ownership of the means of production, and in 1957 a fundamental victory of socialist revolution was won in the rectification movement and the struggle against Rightists on the political and ideological front. Now a technical revolution should be conducted to shift the focus of the Party's work to technical revolution. It is true, the transfer of the focus of the Party's work can be considered a continuation of the correct strategic idea of shifting revolution to construction repeatedly stressed before and after the 1st Session of the 8th National Party Congress. However, this particular kind of transfer could not but depart from the correct orientation, integrated as it was with criticism of the struggle against rash advance and the launching of the great leap forward 535 as well as with the slogan of &quot;carrying on a bitter struggle in three years&quot; to basically transform backward conditions, and departing as it did from the track of seeking truth from facts to direct a steady advance. At the Chengdu conference, Mao Zedong stressed that it was necessary to do away with blind laith and to emancipate the mind. He also stressed combining study with independent creation and criticized the dogmatism characterizing the past eight years' economic work (mainly heavy industry and the work of planning) and held that this was owing to the pressure of foreign experience, the inability to think independently and the failing to take warnings from the dogmatism of Wang Ming. The Nanning and Chengdu conferences, inasmuch as they represented a new starting point in exploring China's own road lor building socialism, had a positive aspect, lhal enabled the Central Com mittee and the whole Party to open up a new train of thought; strive to carry forward the good traditions of maintaining independence and keeping the initiative in one's own hands and the mass line- traditions which had been formed in the long revolutionary struggles of the Chinese people; enhance vigour and develop China's socialist construction with better methods and at a quicker pace. However, practice proved later that the conferences exerted a negative etlect on the work of the Cential Committee and the whole Party. The leaders of the Central Committee who had opposed rashness or advocated opposition to rashness in 1956 (they represented the majority of the Party Central Committee, and what is more, their stand was affirmed at the 1st Session of the 8th Party Congress and at the 2nd Plenary Session of the 8th Party Central Committee) were inappropriately criticized at the two conferences; this made way for the following two influences: First, the new explorations actually negated the valuable, successful experience accumulated by the Party and the people from the time of the economic recovery to the First Five-Year Plan period and summed up by the 8th National Party Congress. The new explorations should have been conducted on the basis of these experiences. Totally ignoring them made it very hard to avoid action based on conjecture and rashness divorced from reality. Second, the new exploration actually negated the experience and wisdom of the collective leading body of the Party Central Committee and destroyed the principle of collective leadership and democratic centralism of the Party. Thus, furthering the tendency to make individual arbitrary decisions and easing the development of the personality cult was hardly avoidable. In May 1958, the 2nd Session of the 8th Party Congress was held in Beijing. On behalf of the Central Committee, Liu Shaoqi made a political report. In accordance with the suggestion of Mao Zedong, the session adopted the general line of &quot;going all out, aiming high and achieving greater, faster, better and more economical results in building socialism.&quot; The explanation of the general line in the political report was that the main task of the Parly is to conduct socialist construction and implement technical and cultural revolution (here, the implementation of the cultural revolution was to develop culture, education and public health that serve economic construction). The political report also put forward the policy of walking on two legs (referring to a series of policies for balancing the relations between industry and agriculture, industries run by the central government and those run by local authorities, large enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises). The explanation was correct. The advancement of the general line reflected the wishes of the broad masses of people who urgently wanted China's backward economy and culture to be changed as quickly as possible. However, it ignored the objective law of economic development, negated the comprehensive balance of the plan for the development of the national economy and exaggerated the role of the subjective will and conscious efforts. Moreover, in propaganda, the fundamental spirit of the general line was one-sidedly stressed as &quot;Developing our socialist productive forces at the highest speed,&quot; &quot;Speed is the soul of the general line&quot; and &quot;Faster is the central link in achieving greater, faster, better and more economical results.&quot; Consequently, blind pursuit of faster economic results became an overriding concern. The session held arbitrarily that the opposition to rash advance 537 launched in the second half of 1956 had led to &quot;saddle-shaped&quot; economic development; that is, a high ude in 1956' a .lo™ &quot; years. The call to &quot;take steel as the key link&quot; pressed for a reduced period of only seven years, five years, or even three years, in which to fulfil in advance the steel output target of catching up with or surpassing Britain within fifteen years, as originally stipulated. High targets brought about high estimates of yet unharvested yields. During the 1958 summer harvest period, a wave of sending in false reports of high yields and launching high-yield &quot;satellites&quot; swept various parts of the country. The news media played it up with approval as denoting &quot;how bold the people are determines how great the output of the land is,&quot; and openly criticized the &quot;theory of limitations to grain output&quot; increase and the way of proceeding on the basis of objective, practical conditions as the theory that &quot;conditions determine all.&quot; The high targets and proneness to boasting and exaggeration in production promoted eagerness for the transition to a so-called higher form in the sphere of relations of production, and fostered the subjective view that the larger the scale of agricultural cooperatives and the higher the degree of public ownership, the greater the possibility to expand production. In April, the Central Committee issued suggestions on properly merging small agricultural cooperatives into large communes; thus large communes with one or several thousand households each were established on trial in various localities. Between July and August, Red Flag and People's Daily publicly propagated Mao Zedong's concept that workers, farmers, merchants, students and soldiers would make up each large commune to form the basic units of Chinese society. Henan, Shandong and other places immediately responded to the call and the establishment of rural people's communes began. Output of Iron and Steel Doubled by the Year and Upsurge of the People's Communes In August 1958, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held an enlarged meeting in Beidaihe. The meeting not only made no effort to correct the boasting, exaggeration and confusion that was already seriously harming everyday life, but 539 „„ the contrary, officially expressed support. Grossly overestimated vields falsely reflected enormous increases in agricultural nroduction. Leading members of the related departments of the central government and many localities were jubilant at the great ton forward and had not the slightest doubt regarding the misrepresentations indicating unusually large margins of : increase in production. The meeting went so far as P™8,1? v„ , expected 1958 grain output as reaching 300-350 billion kg (1 S in 1957) and 400-500 billion kg in 1959. The meeting made a formal decision that in 1958 steel output was to be double that of the previous year, reaching 10.7 million tons, and in It was to reach 27-30 million tons. The planned targets for the Second Five-Year Plan adopted at the meeting were in general double those adopted at the 2nd Session of the 8th Party Congress only three months earlier. The Resolution on Setting Up People s Communes in the Rural Areas adopted at the meeting was regarded as the &quot;basic policy that should be followed for guiding farmers to accelerate socialist construction, finish building socialism earlier and gradually make the transition to communisnn The meeting stipulated that the people's communes should implement the principle of merging government administration with commune management and should include workers, farmers, merchants, students and soldiers; stressed that peoples communes should adopt the system of collective ownership at present and should not be in a hurry to change over to the system of ownership by the whole people. Nevertheless, the transition to ownership bv the whole people could be realized at the earliest in three or four years, or later on in five or slx somewhat longer period. The resolution also stated, The real.za lion of communism in China is no longer something in the distant future.&quot; The meeting rapidly pushed the great leap forward and the movement to form people's communes to a high tide. Lett deviations errors, mainly characterized by excessively high targets, messing things up by issuing wrong orders proneness to boasting and exaggeration and the &quot;tendency to effect the transition to communism prematurely&quot; spread unchecked, causing great harm. After the meeting, in order to fulfil the current steel production task which, with the additions made and the sum doubled that year, had reached 10.7 million tons (only 4 million tons were produced in the first eight months of the year), a nationwide mass movement for making steel was started. With the first secretaries of the Party committees at all levels taking charge, people in the tens of millions (about 90 million) were mobilized to go to the mountains, cut trees, excavate coal and find minerals for ironsmelting. Some one million small locally devised smelting furnaces and coking furnaces were put together for making steel by indigenous methods. All modern large- and medium-sized iron and steel enterprises also broke through various rules and regulations, went in for the mass movement in a big way and threw the normal production procedures into disorder. At the same time, with iron and steel as the centre, the &quot;entire nation&quot; also went in for other undertakings such as power, transport, water conservancy projects and cultural and educational activities. This was called &quot;Taking steel as the key link, an all-round leap forward,&quot; and &quot;One takes the lead and all go full steam ahead.&quot; Scientific research, writing articles and poems, or drawing pictures, these also needed to have a leap forward and to launch &quot;satellites.&quot; This widespread blind activity on a mass scale which completely went against objective economic laws not only brought about an enormous waste of human and material resources, but also led to serious imbalance between the various branches of the national economy. By the end of 1958, China had produced 1 1.08 million tons of steel, but only 8 million tons were up to standard. Total industrial output value of the year was 54.8 percent higher than the previous year, while total agricultural output value, verified later, registered only a rise of 2.4 percent over the year before because several dozen million members of rural labour forces were used elsewhere. Investment in capital construction rose by 87.7 percent as against that of the previous year. The total number of workers and staff members throughout the country rose by more than 66 percent, burdening the state financial department beyond its means. Market supplies were tight and difficulties arose in production and the daily lives of the people. After the Beidaihe meeting, people in the rural areas throughthe country rushed headlong into mass action and organized ^ople's communes in a big way. Without any experimentation took just one month or so to basically accomplish this. By the end of the year, 740,000 agricultural cooperatives had merged into 26 000 people's communes and over 99 percent of the farm ers' households were now in communes. As to their characteristics the people's communes were &quot;large in size and collective in nature&quot;; for all practical purposes, this meant equaUtariamsm and indiscriminate transfer of resources. Large meant that a former cooperative with 100-200 households was merged with others into a people's commune of 4,500-5,000 or 10 000-20,000 households. There was, generally speaking, one commune in a township. &quot;Collective&quot; meant that after the _ merging of several dozen or even 100 cooperatives differing in economic conditions, some poorer, some better-oif, all their properties were handed over to the people's commune. Property of relatively greater amount would not be returned and that of less amount would not be made up. An account was made of all he property and it was distributed in a unified way within the commune. Partial implementation of the supply system (mclud ing the establishment of public canteens in a big way and ood provided free of charge, which were called communist factors) led to serious equalitarianism between the former cooperatives (they were called production brigades or teams after merging) and between commune members. At the same time, commune members' plots of land for their private use, domestic animals, fruit trees and so on, also came under commune ownership In the course of establishing various enterprises in a big way the local governments and communes often allocated and used land, materials and members of the labour force belonging to the production teams without compensation and even took over hous es and furniture of commune members. All this was nothing u expropriation of the farmers, who, very upset and discontented slaughtered pigs and sheep, and cut down trees; this enormous damage to the productive forces and had a disastrous impact on agricultural production. In the people's communes, the organization was strictly military. Activities were carried out as if in combat action and everyday life was led in a collective manner. Labour power was organized into squads, platoons, companies and battalions like a military establishment. The method of warfare by large contingents was adopted for industry and agriculture. Continuous operations went on day and night. It was also stressed that communes should strive for all-round self-sufficiency in production and efforts were made to expand the distribution of commodities in the commune. The former small peddlars and vendors, open markets and even household sideline occupations were banned as &quot;capitalist tails.&quot; Many cadres were of the opinion that the less commodity exchange there was, the nearer communism would be. For instance, Xushui County in Hebei Province and Fanxian County in Shandong Province planned the &quot;transition to communism&quot; after two or three years' experiment. To this end, they proposed &quot;eight guarantees&quot; and &quot;ten guarantees&quot; and announced that the people's communes would sustain all the expenses for food, clothing, shelter, travel, childbirth, old age, sickness, death, and weddings. These situations show how deeply the people's communes at the initial stage were imbued with pronounced characteristics of equal itarianism and military communism. The &quot;great leap forward&quot; and the movement to form people's communes constituted one instance of a serious mistake made by the Party in the course of exploring China's own road for building socialism. The mistake had its source. &quot;China's economic backwardness and poor material foundation have up to now landed us in a passive state. We are fettered spiritually and we have not emancipated ourselves in this respect&quot; (Sixty Articles for Work Method ‘draft'). The above remarks made by Mao Zedong in launching the great leap forward spoke out the common feeling of the entire Party. To exert the maximum efforts to construct the country quickly so as to gain more initiative was the common demand of the entire Party and nation. All the people were willing to believe that, confronting the Chinese people who had speedily achieved a series of great victories, there was nothing they could not accomplish. Because we had established an excel543 ^pTFR SEVEN SOCIALIST CONSTRUCTION ema?hJn r certainly could mobilize and rely on ihe masses of Inle for economic construction and could achieve the high thC n we desired and which the world had never seen, it was not Sp^edlh, wish or sentiments of an individual; in a certain sense, Ss tlK Cv indeed existed Within the limits permitted by the economy indeed exisicu correctly led and organobjective conditions, so long as * conformed t0 PHiSi Sfiifgil tion and had failed to make an e»™^t analysi^and study^.^ experience accumulated during e mobilizing and war and political struggles. When they switched to leading economic construction, it was very easy for them to believe that if they adopted the methods of the mass movement, as in the revolutionary war and political struggles, economic construction could be conducted in a quicker and better way. During the revolutionary war period, life in the revolutionary ranks, bordering on military communism, not only left happy memories for many comrades, but also influenced their concept of the future ideal society. Because of the anti-Rightist deviation, the three transformations of socialism were greatly accelerated and rapidly completed. Many comrades saw only its victories, but failed to see the many rough and tumble problems that were left and that would require a long time to adjust and solve. As a result, it strengthened their self-confidence in relying on the anti-Rightist deviation and going all out to step up construction and accelerate progress. Many comrades did not completely fail to see numerous mix-ups and divergencies arising in the mass movement. However, they often regarded them as minor aspects in the development of the situation for which, unavoidably, the price had to be paid as progress went on. They held that what was most important was the enthusiasm of the masses of the people. They were worried that correcting deviation would undermine this enthusiasm. But what they did not understand was that only if the masses were correctly led to achieve practical results in construction, could their enthusiasm be really maintained; and that practices which ran counter to objective economic laws and natural laws as well as exaggerated and false reports of &quot;leap forward results&quot; which damaged production, would truly undermine the enthusiasm of the masses. In short, faced with a series of victories, many Cadres, including many leading cadres in the Party, gradually dispensed with modesty and prudence and gave way to their gradually expanding arrogance and self-satisfaction. They did not have sufficient appreciation of the arduousness of building socialism in a large country with a backward economy and culture, and did not have a sufficient understanding of the necessity to master economic laws and scientific knowledge. In 1956, proceeding from reality, many comrades such as Zhou Enlai and Chen Yun 545 , th. cuseestion to oppose impatient, rash advance. At the ffla A Mao &quot;zedong&quot; could still afford the ideas of respect (or tU&quot; ' omise) However, after the struggle against Rightists, Mao -r &quot; that developments entirely proved the error of ss irisrzs srx-&gt;r determination. Impelled by hotheads eager for quick results, the &quot;great leap forward&quot; could hardly have been avoided.<br /> <br /> === Initial Efforts to Correct &quot;Left&quot; Mistakes ===<br /> j&amp;sr&amp;szx—as wstMm IMlssiSss He S the lead in pointing out and seeking to corre ct the &quot;Left&quot; mistakes he had already discovered, reahzmg that o ,nly rTnr^tr&quot; VtS development. The Central Or—. &quot; Meeting hddin July 1959, led the whole Party in initial efforts to accomplish this aim. Rectification of the People's Communes The First Zhengzhou Meeting was a work conference attended by some, not all, of the central and local leaders. Mao Zedong proposed to hold the meeting, for he had found that in the movement to form people's communes many people had become caught up in a &quot;rash advance&quot; and entertained all sorts of confused ideas. There was a tendency to immediately proclaim ownership by the whole people, abolish commerce and eliminate commodity production. He felt that it was necessary to talk with these comrades to bring them round, to let them calm down and read some works on Marxist theory &quot;in the light of China's socialist economic revolution and economic construction ... so that they could clarify their ideas.&quot;17 An enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee was also held in Wuchang during November and December 1958. The two meetings made preparations for the coming 6th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee held in Wuchang. Following many discussions, the 6th Plenary Session adopted the &quot;Resolution on Some Problems Concerning the People's Communes&quot; which accords the rise of the people's communes a high evaluation. At the same time, it elaborates several major policy issues and theories, in an attempt to clarify the confusion which had already appeared in ideology and work. The resolution stands out against the erroneous tendency of over-zealousness to make the transition to ownership by the whole people and to communism. It points out: It is necessary to distinguish clearly between collective ownership and ownership by the whole people, and in particular, between socialism and communism. The people's commune is an economic organization which is at present basically still under collective ownership. The turning of the agricultural cooperative into the people's commune does not mean changing from collective ownership to ownership by the whole people, and in no way does it mean passing over from socialism to communism. To deny prematurely the general principle of &quot;to each according to his work&quot; and to attempt to replace it with the principle of &quot;to each according to his needs&quot;; that is to say, to enter communism under unripe conditions, is a 547 Utopian idea that cannot materialize. The relations of production ^ust suit the nature of the forces of production. Transition from Baalist collective ownership to socialist ownership by the whole Louie or from socialism to communism, must be based on a St level of development of the forces of product.on Since we are enthusiastic about communism, we must iirst of all be Tager to develop the forces of production and do our utmost to realize industrialization. No groundless announcemennthould be made that the rural people's communes are about to carry out the system of ownership by the whole people at once, much less ‘lhat we a&quot; about to ''enter communism at once.&quot; Tins would only distort and vulgarize the lofty ideal of communism and encour age the tendency of petty-bourgeois egalitarianism, while faibrjg to promote the development of socialist construction in any &quot;&quot;The resolution countered the erroneous tendency to try to do away with commodity production and commodity exchange too eli-ly It pointed out: In the future, for a requrstte period of time it will be essential to promote an extensive development of commodity production in the people's communes as well as of commodity exchange between the state and the communes and among communes. This kind of commodity production and ex cZgeTT be conducted in a planned way on the basts of socialist public ownership; therefore, it is not capitalist. To con linue to develop commodity production and to practise dlstrl^ ion according to work are two major issues of principle for promoting the socialtst economy. This must be the common understanding of all members throughout the Party. ... U The resoluhon sttpulates: The means of hvelihood (mcludmg housing) and the savings deposits owned by commune members themselves are still to be owned by them after organization of the neoole's communes, and will always belong to them. ^The 6th Plenary Session also adopted &quot;Resolutions On the 1959 National Economic Plan.&quot; As the mistakes of ambitious output quotas had as yet failed to be corrected, the meeting formally announced 2-fold and over 2-fold °xhe 1957 as the 1958 quotas for grain, cotton, steel and coal. quota for grain reached 375 billion kg and for steel, 1 1 million tons. Thus, although &quot;reducing the pressure&quot; was emphasized, the 1959 quota for grain output was raised to 525 billion kg and other quotas were also kept high in the 1959 plan set at the Beidaihe Meeting. On the other hand, capital construction investment was reduced from the original 50 billion yuan to 36 billion yuan and the quota for steel output from 27-30 million tons down to 18-20 million tons. For 1959, the plan stipulated an even &quot;greater leap forward&quot; than that of 1958. After the resolution was adopted, Chen Yun suggested that it was not necessary to announce the various quotas set for 1959 in a communique, but his view was not put forward formally. After the 6th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee, the work to rectify people's communes was conducted nationwide. The tendency to rush the transition to ownership by the whole people and to communism prematurely was stopped. However, the egalitarianism and over-centralization within the communes still prevailed. Moreover, due to the obligation to fulfill the high purchase quota resulting from the high estimated output, and the launching of inappropriate struggle against selfish departmentalism on the part of the production team and against the practice of hiding the exact production figures, tension in Party and government relationships with the peasants was not really alleviated. Mao Zedong learned of this situation during an inspection tour and deemed it necessary to further straighten out the problem of &quot;the communist wind,&quot; which was to begin with the problem of ownership at the different levels within the commune. Therefore, an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee (also known as the Second Zhengzhou Meeting) was convened in Zhengzhou in February and March 1959. At the meeting, Mao Zedong made an important speech which pointed out: The main problem in the people's commune movement was that we have gone a little too far in our efforts to improve the relations of production; that is, the system of ownership in the commune. We did not understand that ownership by the commune must also undergo a process of development. 549 ownership by production team was canceled as soon as communes were established and complete ownership by communes was instituted. The &quot;egalitarianism and indiscriminate remuncs (draft).&quot; The &quot;Eighteen Questions Concerning the People's Communes&quot; were also laid down in March and April at the Shanghai Meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. The two documents stipulated: The production team (about the size of the former advanced agricultural producers' cooperative; it was called production team in some areas, production brigade in others) is the basic accounting unit of the people's commune. Ownership by the production team, at present, is the basic form of ownership in the commune. The second document further stipulated that the production teams (called production brigades in some areas, generally they were equivalent to the elementary agricultural producers' cooperatives) under the production brigade as a contracted unit, should own part of the means of production and exercise limited powers of management; all old accounts arising from the organization of the people's communes should be settled and compensations paid, either the requisition of manpower, funds and material by counties or communes from production teams or that done by production teams onto commune members. The latter provision went against the related regulation provided by the second Zhengzhou Meeting. Mao Zedong stressed: Only by settling accounts is it possible to put into effect the law of value that exists objectively. This law of value is like a great school, and only by making use of it can our cadres in their tens of millions and our people in their hundreds of millions acquire some knowledge as to how to build up our socialism and communism. Otherwise, nothing can be accomplished. After the Second Zhengzhou Meeting, the Central Committee urged provinces and counties to hold multi-level meetings of cadres. The five-level cadre meetings at county level included cadres from production brigades and production teams, as well as some commune members, so as to make the principles and policies of the central authorities known to cadres and masses at the grassroots levels. Ihese meetings aimed to fully unveil contradictions and seek unity of thinking and actions. Mao Zedong wrote letters several times to cadres at various levels on holding these meetings and discussed issues and methods with them. He 551 repeatedly stressed, &quot;In short, we must act according to the masses' suggestions. No matter what methods they are, they will do if they meet the demand of the masses. Otherwise, the method won't work in the long run.&quot; &quot;We must show concern for the interests of the masses every day and every hour without fail and must always see that our policy and measures suit the present level of consciousness of the masses and the urgent current demands of the people. They won't work and are bound to fail if these two factors are missing.&quot;18 Quotas for the &quot;Great Leap Forward&quot; and Production Arrangements Readjusted At the 7th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee convened in Shanghai in April 1959, the draft regulating the people's communes was reaffirmed and the draft national economic plan for 1959 was discussed. The convening of the 2nd National People's Congress was suggested by some central committee members as an opportunity to openly revise certain high quotas set in the past. But they failed to elicit the support of the majority of central committee members. Except for investment in capital construction, which was reduced from 36 billion yuan to 26-28 billion yuan, the high quotas set in the 1959 nationa economic plan adopted at the session remained unchanged. Steel was still 18 million tons, 16.5 million tons of which were said in inner Party circles to be good steel. In 1958, good steel accounted for 8 million tons of the 1 1 million tons of steel produced. The 1st Session of the 2nd National People's Congress was convened in Beijing from April 18 to 25. At the session, the 1959 national economic plan set at the 7th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee was approved and these high quotas were announced. . , . At the session, in accordance with the suggestion made by the CPC Central Committee, Liu Shaoqi was elected chairman of the People's Republic of China, Soong Ching Ling and Dong Biwu vice-chairmen, and Zhu De chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. It was decided that Zhou Enlai should continue to serve as premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China. Meanwhile, the 1st Session of the 3rd National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) was held in Beijing. Mao Zedong was elected honorary chairman and Zhou Enlai chairman of the National Committee. In 1956, 1957, early 1958 and at the end of 1958 Mao Zedong requested within and outside the Party that h'e should not serve as chairman of the People's Republic of China, for he wished to withdraw from this leading post to the &quot;second line.&quot; However, because of the new situation after the great leap forward, he stressed at the 7th Plenary Session that power should be concentrated in the Standing Committee of the CPC Political Bureau and Secretariat of the Central Committee under his supreme command. Therefore, in fact, he still remained at the front line. After the 7th Plenary Session, Mao Zedong became aware of problems among cadres who dared not reflect the real situation to levels above them and dared not express differing opinions from them. At the 7th Plenary Session, he urged people to learn from Hai Rui, a Ming Dynasty official who was honest, upright, outspoken and bold enough to state his views in criticism of the Emperor Jiajing. At the end of April, he wrote a letter for inner-Party circulation to cadres at all levels from the provincial to the production team, on speaking the truth. He said, &quot;When fixing output quotas, say the amount you can fulfil, and say the exact amount you have harvested. No lies should be told falsifying the ceal situation.&quot; &quot;Honest people who dare to speak the truth, in the last analysis, benefit the people and do not harm themselves. Those who are fond of telling lies bring harm to both the people and themselves.&quot; &quot;We must admit,&quot; he added, &quot;a great number of lies were told owing to pressure from above. Subordinates are placed in a difficult position if the superior is boastful, puts pressure on them and promises rewards. Therefore, enthusiasm should be there to work with, and definitely no falsehood.&quot;19 Entering the second quarter of 1959, serious consequences resulting from imbalance in the national economy became more 553 apparent. First of all, the situation in agriculture was very unfavourable. The area sown to summer crops of that year was 20 oercent less than that of the previous year. (This was because the 1958 grain output was over-estimated and therelore the slogan &quot;strive for a high yield on a smaller area and bring in a big crop was raised.) The output of summer grain and oil-bearing crops dropped by a large margin. Vegetables, meat and other foodstuffs were in even shorter supply. There were also many problems m industry, while the quotas for iron and steel failed to be fulfilled. According to the plan, 6 million tons of steel would have been produced in the first four months of 1959, but actually the output was only 3.36 million tons. The problem could not be solved through the &quot;iron and steel campaign.&quot; The principle of taking steel as the key link worked to the disadvantage of other industrial sectors, particularly of light industry, which caused the production of people's daily necessities to drop drastically, lhe amount of commodities in storage shrank, and supply shortages appeared everywhere. . In this situation, Chen Yun pointed out that it was nccessai&gt; to economize in the use of grain and to control the volume to be sold; the raising of pigs, chickens, ducks and fish should be conducted by the state, the collectives and by individuals; raw and semifinished materials should be specially allocated for the production of daily necessities; the number of surplus workers who were over-enrolled the year before should be cut down to reduce the pressure on consumer goods. Following this, he was entrusted by Mao Zedong and the Secretariat of the Centra Committee to work out a quota for steel production. After careful investigation and study, Chen Yun in mid-May suggested to the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee that steel outpu for 1959 should be cut back to 13 million tons. He also pointed out in a letter to Mao Zedong, &quot;I don't think that it would be discouraging to fix the production figure a little lower (it is a reliable figure actually). Just as Comrade Liu Shaoqi stated at the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, it would be disappointing if the quota was too high to fulfil.&quot;20 The Party Central Committee and Mao Zedong attached great importance to Chen Yun's views. During May and June, the Central Committee issued a series of urgent instructions: to reduce the steel output from 18 million tons (16.5 million tons) to 13 million tons; to restore private plots of land in the rural areas and allow commune members to raise livestock and encourage them to make full use of scattered pieces of land on which to grow crops without being required to hand in any part of it as public grain to the state, and to plant trees by houses and roadsides which would be owned by themselves. The Central Committee also clearly pointed out that for over a long period of time it would be necessary to allow small private ownership of this kind to exist along with large collective ownership. To permit such small private ownership actually is to protect the fruits of labour gained by commune members after their collective labour hours, and cannot be considered &quot;developing capitalism.&quot; The Central Committee held a meeting at Lushan in early July. With the meeting all prepared for and about to begin, Mao Zedong, in talking with some leading cadres, clearly affirmed that Chen Yun's view on &quot;placing market in good order before capital construction&quot; was correct, and that good arrangement for people's clothing, food, housing, daily necessities and transport were matters of vital bearing on stability among 650 million people. He also proposed to arrange the national economic plan in the order of agriculture, light industry and heavy industry instead of heavy industry, light industry and agriculture, as had been arranged in the past. This meant stressing agriculture as the basis of the national economy. It is necessary, first of all, to do a better job in agriculture. He also pointed out that overall balance was a fundamental problem in economic work. One of the major lessons in the great leap forward was the failure to achieve an overall balance. After nine months of efforts following the First Zhengzhou Meeting, the &quot;communist wind,&quot; boasting and exaggeration, high quotas and issuing orders blindly, were brought under initial control. The situation began to take a turn for the better. Some correct theoretical viewpoints and thinkings based on which the policies were formulated, which were put forward during that 555 period, were of great and far-reaching significance. However, as Mao Zedong at that time lacked a clear understanding of the seriousness of the mistakes, he still completely confirmed the general line, the great leap forward and the people's communes. Therefore efforts to rectify &quot;Left&quot; mistakes were conducted within the framework of the &quot;Left&quot; guiding ideology expressed m the great leap forward of 1958 and the people's communes, though the general understanding of the mistakes gradually deepened. Moreover, with the idea regarding class struggle as the main contradiction in society, some people held that anyone who doubted or denied the great leap forward and the people's communes was &quot;taking a wait-and-see attitude,&quot; or &quot;biding their time to take revenge&quot; or was an out-and-out hostile element. Since the Central Committee's measures to correct the &quot;Left&quot; were not at all adequately implemented, the &quot;Left&quot; mistakes failed to be corrected completely and the situation did not take a 1 undamental turn for the better. In the later period of the Lushan Meeting, particularly, when a major reversal occurred, the situation took a turn for the worse.''<br /> <br /> === Errors in &quot;Anti-Right Deviationist&quot; Struggle and Continuation of the &quot;Great Leap Forward&quot; ===<br /> An enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee was convened in Lushan from July 2 to August 1, 1959. At the beginning of the meeting, Mao Zedong put forward 18 questions mainly concerning the current situation, future tasks and some concrete policies. He considered that the general situation could be described as: the achievements are great, the problems are many and the future is bright. He proposed that all of the members, under the prerequisite of fully affirming achievements, should conscientiously sum up experiences and lessons, further unify thinking and mobilize the whole Party to fulfil the 1959 task of the great leap forward. The meeting was divided into six large groups for talks and discussions. During the discussion, all the participants supported, in principle, the general line, the great leap forward and the people's communes. However, many participants, from varying angles, stressed the seriousness of the problems which had arisen after the great leap forward. They felt that the correction of &quot;Left&quot; mistakes, though achievements had been made in the previous stage, was not thorough enough, and they proposed that it should be deepened. Some of them felt genuinely sorry about the mistakes they had committed in their work, and made earnest selfcriticisms; while many others, not willing to spell out the setbacks and errors in their work, were even less willing to listen to criticism from others. They even believed that the correction of &quot;Left&quot; mistakes had gone too far which had made the cadres and masses feel disappointed, and appeared as a Right deviation. A Letter of Peng Dehuai to Mao Zedong Peng Dehuai, member of the Political Bureau and National Defence Minister, felt anxious about the fact that the meeting had not completely solved the problem and had failed to achieve unity of ideas. Therefore, on July 14, he sent a letter to Mao Zedong, expressing his sincere views and hoping to get Mao Zedong's support and understanding, so that the meeting could correctly sum up experiences and lessons. After affirming the 1958 achievements in his letter, he laid emphasis on some serious problems in work following the great leap forward of 1958, and analysed the underlying reasons for them. He noted, &quot;The outstanding contradiction facing us in construction is the tension in all fields caused by disproportions.&quot; Judging from its character, the contradiction &quot;assumes a political nature.&quot; Objectively the reason why we made mistakes is because we lack experience in construction, while subjectively there existed many problems in the way of thinking and style of work. First of all, there is the tendency towards boasting, exaggeration and one-sided thinking, and the mistake of &quot;failure to adequately 557 seek truth from facts.&quot; Secondly, there is &quot;petty bourgeois fanaticism,&quot; and &quot;uppermost in our minds the thought of entering communism in one stride.&quot; He also mentioned that correcting &quot;Left&quot; tendencies was more difficult than eliminating Right conservative ideas. So arduous efforts were needed to thoroughly correct &quot;Left&quot; thinking. Peng's letter reflected objective reality and the demands of the masses. The basic content is correct. For a member of the Political Bureau to air his own views in a letter to the chairman of the Party also conformed to the Party's organizational principle. On July 16, according to Mao Zedong's instruction, Peng Dehuai's letter was printed and issued to all the participants. Mao Zedong also proposed among several standing committee members of the Political Bureau to &quot;comment on the nature of the letter.&quot; During the small group discussions, some people noted that the letter had exaggerated mistakes, underestimated achievements, and carried a note of complaint and discouragement. They went so far as to consider the letter actually denied the achievements of the great leap forward and the people's communes, and that it was directed against Mao Zedong. Also there were other people who expressed basic agreement with the contents of the letter, thought that it was good to air one's views, but disagreed with some statements in the letter (such as that concerning petty-bourgeois fanaticism). Zhang Wentian, vice minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Huang Kecheng, general chief of staff of the People s Liberation Army, Zhou Xiaozhou, secretary of CPC Hunan Provincial Committee, spoke at the group meeting, and clearly expressed their support for the basic views in Peng's letter. Zhang Wentian also made a systematic theoretical analysis of the serious problems which emerged after the great leap forward, and he stressed the necessity to study the reasons for the errors and shortcomings from the angle of ideological views, methods and style of work. He also mentioned that victory was apt to give people a &quot;swell head,&quot; make them conceited and unable to accept different opinions. So, it was very important to develop a democratic style in the Party. Leaders should create a kind of environ ment for encouraging subordinates to dare to put forward their suggestions. &quot;We shouldn't fear that no one will eulogize our virtues and achievements,&quot; he stressed. &quot;What we fear is that nobody dares to make suggestions to us.&quot; Peng Dehuai's letter and Zhang Wentian's speech aroused Mao Zedong's strong dissatisfaction. Mao held that after the Zhengzhou Meeting, the Central Committee had been leading the whole Party to correct &quot;Left&quot; mistakes, while Peng and Zhang had not been involved in it. Mao Zedong considered the orientation of the great leap forward and the people's communes to be correct. So from beginning to end, he had not given up certain illusory aims in regard to the great leap forward and the people's communes. He believed that in 1958, the achievements predominated, while shortcomings and mistakes only belonged to problems in work; that is to say, counted for only one finger out of ten. Moreover, he considered that the problem of the &quot;communist wind&quot; of the people's communes had, in general, already been resolved by the Shanghai meeting, at which the decisions on 18 questions concerning the people's communes were made. He believed that when the steel quota was reduced to 13 million tons in May 1959, &quot;It completely reflected possibility based on objective reality.&quot;21 The Lushan Meeting only needed to reach a common understanding on this basis. Then the situation would take a turn for the better through a decision to readjust the quotas, which all would follow in their work. But Peng Dehuai and others asked to further deepen correction of the &quot;Left&quot; errors, demanding that the roots of the &quot;Left&quot; errors be cleared away from the guiding ideology. Therefore, Mao believed that Peng Dehuai and others had not followed him to correct shortcomings and mistakes in work, but had actually expressed doubts and opposition to the &quot;great leap forward&quot; and the people's communes, and had drawn up the letter as a challenge to himself and the leadership of the Central Committee. Therefore it was an expression of Right deviation. Because of dissatisfaction with Peng and Zhang which had accumulated in the past, Mao Zedong felt even greater distrust and aversion towards them after reading Peng's letter and the written record of Zhang's speech. Peng Dehuai, he believed, was a &quot;Right559 ■ , Hai Rui &quot; with evil intentions, and had formed a so-called &quot;miUtary club&quot; with Httang Kecheng, Zhang Wentian and Zhou Y^aozhou At that time, people inside and outside the Party and home and abroad were talking about the &quot;great leap forward * a the neonle's communes. Worries about the present situation S criticism 01 shortcomings and mistakes in the leaders' work from many cadres and masses of people (including staff member of0governmen! institutions. Party school students, PLA comma Hers and soldiers and personages outside the Party, as/ well as some representative figures who had been labeled as Right is s) were ah reported to the Central Committee through various channels. Among the criticisms made there were some which denied the &quot;great leap forward&quot; and the people's communes. Mao Zedong tookSthese opinions and criticisms as attacks on the Part.v &quot;them with the disputes between leaders at the central level at the Lushan Meeting. He also linked criticism a trove rsies on ^h c home front with the imperialists' attack on China and Khrushchov's criticism of China. Therefore he co eluded, &quot;The Party is under attack by inner and outer forces and Right deviation has become the main danger at present Acting on such an erroneous judgement he determined to launch a counterattack. On July 23, Mao Zedong convened a meeting f which he made a speech saying, &quot;Now there are some people inside and outside the Party- Rightists outside the Party and a group of people inside the Party— who talk as if we had no saving Laces AUhe same time they fling themselves onto the boundary of the Rightists '' He refuted point by point the opmions raised by Peng gehutand others, considering that they could not adopt a correct attitude towards the revolutionary mass movement and that they were repeating the mistakes made during the opposi &quot;&gt;n to rash advance. He also criticized them for bourgeois vacillati under the pressure of imperialism. On July 26, in a letter writte bv someone in charge of Party work in reflecting opinions to the Central Committee, which criticized the &quot;Left&quot; adventurist misfakes made m the previous year (1958), Mao Zedong wrote some remarks pointing oul that new circumstances bad appeared mside the Party; that was, Right deviations feelings, Right deviation ideology and Right deviationist activities were increasing their power of a furious attack. The &quot;Left&quot; was sure to appear while fighting against the Right, the Right was sure to appear while fighting against the &quot;Left.&quot; &quot;This is natural. Now it is time to fight against the Right,&quot; he noted. Owing to lack of understanding of the &quot;Left&quot; errors in the guiding ideology for the 1958 economic work, the fact that Mao Zedong had long enjoyed high prestige in the whole Party and the personality cult inside the Party was growing, as well as that a lew people added fuel to the flames, the atmosphere at the Lushan Meeting suddenly became tense after Mao's speech. The subject of the meeting was changed from correcting the &quot;Left&quot; to opposing the Right in a struggle directly targeted on Peng, Huang, Zhang and Zhou, which formed a situation tilted to one side. On Mao's suggestion, the 8th Plenary Session of the 8 Hi Central Committee was convened from August 2 to 16. Criticism was leveled at Peng, Huang, Zhang and Zhou at big and small meetings. Moreover, the tone of the criticism grew sharper and sharper. Connecting Peng and Zhang's history, these criticisms &quot;settled old and new accounts together.&quot; Lin Biao, calling Peng Dehuai a &quot;hypocrite,&quot; &quot;schemer&quot; and &quot;careerist,&quot; set the shrillest tone of all in the criticism. A batch of political labels were pasted on Peng including &quot;bourgeois democrat,&quot; &quot;fellow traveller in the democratic revolution, opponent in the socialist revolution,&quot; and &quot;opportunist who has sneaked into the Party.&quot; Peng Dehuai was groundlessly accused of &quot;maintaining illicit relations with foreign countries,&quot; and of organizing a &quot;military club&quot; to &quot;split the Party&quot; and to force Chairman Mao to step down.&quot; Finally, the session adopted a &quot;Resolution on the Errors of the Anti-Party Clique Headed by Peng Dehuai&quot; and the document &quot;Safeguard the Party's General Line and Oppose Right Opportunism.&quot; The resolution affirmed that the anti-Party clique organized by Peng, Huang, Zhang and Zhou, in essence, denied the victory of the general line and achievements of the &quot;great leap forward&quot;; that they opposed high-speed development of the national economy, opposed the movement for high yields on the agricultural front,' the mass iron and steel movement, the movement of the people's communes and the mass movement for economic construction, and the slogan &quot;politics in command&quot; reflecting the leadership of the Party over socialist construction. These were &quot;mistakes of a Right opportunist line which, in nature, opposed the Party, the people and socialism.&quot; It was decided to remove them from the posts of Ministry of National Defence, the Foreign Ministry and the secretarial post of a Party provincial committee. At the same time, they were allowed to keep their original posts in the Central Committee and the Political Bureau, with careful watch over their behaviour. The resolution formally affirmed that the &quot;Right opportunism had become the main danger in the Party at the present&quot; and &quot;safeguarding the general line and fighting back the attack of the Right opportunists has become the present major combat task of our Party.&quot; . Out of consideration for maintaining Party unity and the reputation of Mao Zedong and the Party Central Committee, Peng Dehuai and others admitted and examined their &quot;mistakes. Mao Zedong welcomed their doing so. Serious Results of the Struggle Against Right Deviation After Mao Zedong's speech of July 23, Liu Shaoqi once proposed transmitting an anti- Right deviationist resolution to only the provincial level, and bringing out another resolution on continuing to correct &quot;Left&quot; errors, to be issued to grassroots units below county level. However, it was not possible to air this idea in the Party Central Committee under the prevailing circumstances. The anti-Right-deviationist resolution was gradually made known Party-wide and a large-scale anti-Rightdeviationist struggle was unfolded throughout the country. A large number of cadres and Party members were wrongly criticized and many people, labelled &quot;Right opportunists, were dealt organizational punishments which should not have been administered. In November, the Central Committee stipulated that the anti-Right-deviationist struggle should be carried out only among Party cadres; therefore it did not affect members of democratic parties or intellectuals outside the Party. In rural areas, large numbers of peasant Party members and ordinary people outside the Party were criticized, but were not labelled. According to statistics on the re-examination and rehabilitation of cases in 1962, more than 3 million cadres and Party members were made the focus of major criticism and categorized as Right opportunists. Politically, the &quot;anti-Right-deviationist&quot; struggle had serious consequences. Mao Zedong concluded, &quot;The struggle which arose at Lushan was a class struggle, a continuation of the life-anddeath struggle between the two antagonistic classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, occurring in the course of the past ten years' socialist revolution.&quot;22 This conclusion regarded and dealt with the normal inner-Party discussion of different opinions on principles and policies as a life-and-death struggle between the two antagonistic classes. This, both in theory and practice, served to further escalate the mistake of expanding the class struggle in the wake of the anti-Rightisl movement, and to extend it to the inner-Party ranks and top leading levels of the Party. That is to say, in this connection, the struggle caused serious damage to democratic life in the Party from the CPC Political Bureau and the Central Committee right down to the basic units. Large numbers of comrades who, in seeking truth from facts, dared to reflect the real situation and put forward criticisms and suggestions to the Party, were attacked. This only encouraged the unhealthy tendencies of by-passing principles, fearing to speak the truth, acting worldly-wise and playing safe to keep out of trouble, to the extent of actually creating opportunities for hangers-on to flatter, toady, and seize every chance to gain advantages through trickery. The harmful trends of the personality cult and arbitrary decision-making by one person spread widely throughout the Party. All these factors made it difficult for the Party to prevent, oppose or correct in time the greater mistakes which arose later. Economically the &quot;anti-Right-deviationist&quot; struggle curbed the positive progress of correcting the &quot;Left.&quot; This caused many of the mistakes, which had arisen during the movements of the great leap forward and the people's communes and which had 563 been singled out for correction, to develop once more. Problems which had come to be recognized not long before, now did not seem like problems at all. For instance, one of the main lessons of the great leap forward was the failure to maintain comprehensive balance and proportion in the national economy. However during the anti-Right deviation, this correct thinking was criticized as a &quot;fallacy,&quot; and it was stubbornly maintained that &quot;the major proportions in China's national economy are balanced and normal.&quot; Disregarding the tense situation m economic and political life, some insisted that the political and economic situation in the country is excellent.&quot; Some correct measures taken to reduce overly high quotas in the first half of 1959 were subjected to censure as &quot;shaped like a smal saddle&quot; under the &quot;influence of the trouble stirred up by Right opportunists.&quot; The system of contracting work and output quotas to households, which appeared in the process of recti fying the people's communes, was regarded as taking the &quot;capitalist road&quot; and suppressed. The main slogan then was. Fight against the Right deviation, and go all out to set otf a new upsurge of the great leap forward. The Lushan Meeting reduced the steel output target for 1959 to 12 million tons. As a political task, by means of indiscriminate use of equipment and resources, 13.87 million tons of steel was produced by the end of the year. In 1960, the Party Central Committee demanded achieving an even better great leap forward than the previous year. The target for the output of steel was set excessive y high at 18.4 million tons, which in spite of everything was duly fulfilled Plans were aired for the transition of ownership in the people's communes from ownership basically by the Production team to that by the commune within the next three five or eight years. In order to create conditions for the transition, various methods were adopted to set up commune based economic projects &quot;in a big way&quot; by indiscnmina c requisition of manpower and resources from production teams. The community canteens of the rural areas, their appearance seen as a big event facilitating the &quot;transition from socialism to communism,&quot; were to be set up nationwide, without cxception. People's communes were also organized in many small and medium-sized cities. In short, &quot;Left&quot; errors, primarily represented by overly-high production quotas, exaggeration and the &quot;communist wind,&quot; as well as by issuing blind orders, again spread rampant, persisting for a more prolonged period and resulting in even greater harm. The great leap forward with steel as its key link continuously aggravated the serious imbalance in the national economy. First of all, the movement led to disproportion between accumulation and consumption. In the three years from 1958 to 1960, the rate of accumulation reached 33.9 percent, 43.9 percent and 39.6 percent, respectively, greatly exceeding the 24.2 percent average rate during the First Five-Year Plan period, which was already relatively high. It is true, this laid a foundation for the construction of a large number of factories and mines. Nevertheless, reliable production capacity could only take shape through readjustment. Secondly, the movement brought about an imbalance between industry and agriculture, with heavy industry undergoing over-expanded development. From 1957 to 1960, heavy industry increased 3.3-fold, while agricultural production declined by 22.8 percent. The third setback was the imbalance between various branches of industry itself. Iron and steel production asked for such large amounts of energy, raw and semifinished materials and transport as to interfere with the normal production of other branches. Because of large-scale capital construction and the great increase in the number of employees and the scale of investments, financial revenues and expenditures became imbalanced, while social purchasing power far out-stripped the supply of commodities. The result was huge financial deficits and market shortages. Worst of all, agricultural production was drastically undermined. Owing mainly to the renewed development of &quot;Left&quot; errors during the great leap forward and the people's communes movement, especially the overly-high estimates of output and of state purchases, the peasants' enthusiasm was seriously undermined. In addition, vast areas of China's farmland were hit by natural calamities for several years running, beginning from 565 ,959 while the output of agricultural and sideline production Li sharply. Grain output in 1959 was only 170 billion kg, 30 , lion kg less than the 1958 real output of 200 billion kg. But &quot;, to. toe *e grain output was estimated at 270 billion kg supposedly Representing an increase of 8 percent as compared Jh the 1958 output of 250 billion kg set at the Lushan Meeting &quot;after verification&quot; (in fact, there was still some exaggeration). Due to overestimation of the output, gram p chases from peasants that year increased by 8.65 billion kg over the previous year, reaching 67.4 billion kg and exceeding one-third of the real output. In 1960, gram output dropped further to 143.5 billion kg, a figure 26.5 billion kg less than the 1959 output and down to the 1951 level. The output o cotton also kept falling and reached the 1951 level while the output of oil-bearing crops declined to the level J?1 p . Production of light industry also went down steeply. The Party *°d the people were confronted with the most serious &gt;—difficulties since the founding of New China. The I960 average erain consumption of urban and rural people was down by 19 fement &quot;Compared with that of 1957. Of thts, per-capi consumption in the rural areas fell by 23.7 percent. Per-capita consumption of vegetable oil was down by 23 percent, of meat, by 70 percent. Malnutrition leading to edema was conunoo in many amas, and in not a few provinces the^ numbe rtf deaths among the rural population mcreased. As the birth rate tell y a wide margin ove&quot; large areas, the mortality rate increased conspicuously. According to official statistics the conn y total population in 1960 dropped by 10 million over the previous year. For example, in Xinyang Prefecture of Henan Province the 1960 death rate in nine counties exceeded per thousand, representing a number several times that of mrmal year This was a sad outcome, contrary to the original tope of enabling people to live a better life sooner and earlier That was the most disastrous result and most serious lesson of the* faded &quot;great leap forward&quot; and people's commune movements.''<br /> <br /> === Further Investigations While Readjusting Policies and Overcoming Difficulties ===<br /> Severe difficulties and setbacks gradually awakened the whole Party and the Central Committee. They were determined to take up conscientious investigations and study, correct mistakes and readjust policies. In November 1960, the CPC Central Committee issued an &quot;Urgent Directive Letter on Current Policies for Rural People's Communes.&quot; The 9th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee of the CPC held in January 1961 formally adopted the principle of &quot;readjustment, consolidation, filling out and raising standards&quot; for implementation in the national economy. The two events marked a turning point in the Party's guiding principles in this historical period. The movement of the &quot;great leap forward&quot; and the transition to ownership by the communes were halted. The whole Party shared comforts and hardships with the masses of people and united to wage an unremitting struggle to overcome difficulties. At the same time, during the readjustment of policies and overcoming of difficulties, the Party Central Committee continued the efforts made between the Zhengzhou Meeting and the earlier period of the Lushan Meeting, as well as efforts made before and after the 1st Session of the 8th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Thus new experience was accumulated for further exploration of China's own road to socialism. Investigation and Readjustment of Rural Policies From October 1960, the Party Central Committee began to rectify the style of work and consolidate the communes, so as to eliminate the five winds: namely the &quot;communist wind,&quot; the wind of exaggeration, of enforcing arbitrary orders, of blind guidance in production and the wind of cadres acceding to privileges. But this task was first proposed in a formal, systematic way only after the issuance of the Urgent Directive Letter, which had been worked out under the guidance of Zhou Enlai. The core of the Ser was to call on the whole Party to make the utmost efforts n correct the &quot;communist wind&quot; as the Central Committee and Chairman Mao had instructed agam and again since the winter nf 1958 Since then, it was felt, some localities, communes and nroduction brigades basically had not committed the error again, hut most of the localities and communes had failed to rectify the mistakes thoroughly. The wind blew again after last winter. Some other localities, communes and production brigades made no correction at all, and the wind blew continuously, to the serious detriment of the agricultural forces of production. The Urgent Directive Letter stipulated the Twelve-Article Policy which mainly reiterated: &quot;The three-level system of ownership with the production team as the basic accounting unit is the fundamental system of the people's communes m the present stage. (Mat Zedong added that &quot;beginning from 1961, it would remain un changed for at least seven years,' which was stipulated in lig various experimental places and plans for the transition of ownership by the communes.) The error of egalitarianism and indis criminate requisition of manpower and resources should be thor oughly rectified, and property unlawfully taken must be leturned in full, dr compensation paid for it. Basic ownership by the production team must be strengthened and ownership of minor means of production by the production team should be carried out. Commune members should be allowed to cultivate a sn &lt; private plot of land and engage in household sidelines on a small scale. The principle of distribution according to work should be persisted in. (Mao Zedong added, &quot;This will for at least twenty years&quot;) Rural trade fairs sho^ld^reSrlti0nr^' and so on. At that time, the letter also stressed: We cannot commit mistakes of principle&quot; so long as we persist in the threelevel system of ownership, uphold a partial supply system and persist in running the rural community canteens well. After the Urgent Directive Letter was issued, the entire Par y was mobilized. Leaders and cadres at all levels were organized to go deep into the villages to publicize and explain the letter to grassroots cadres, and then join together with them in working hard to correct mistakes, implement policies and to turn the situation around in the rural areas. The Central Committee also went on to approve and transmit reports on implementation of the Directive by various localities, so as to supervise and expedite the work. In a document drafted for the Central Committee, Mao Zedong wrote, &quot;Comrade Mao Zedong ... as he himself has said, is willing to share a common fate with those comrades who wish to correct their mistakes. He said he himself had made mistakes and must correct them.&quot;23 He mentioned as one of his mistakes that he had written in the Beidaihe resolution that at the eai liest, in three to four years, or at the latest, five to six years, collective ownership could be transformed into ownership by the whole people. (He also explained in &quot;The Summing-up of the Past Ten Years&quot; that he had agreed to the excessive steel quotas at the meetings held in Beidaihe, Wuchang and Shanghai, and that he had committed mistakes the same as other people involved at the time.) Mao Zedong made a self-criticism in the Party and hoped to arouse the awareness of the cadres that &quot;now is the time to make up our minds to correct our mistakes.&quot;24 The 9th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee of the CPC was convened in Beijing in January 1961. Mao Zedong delivered many speeches at the plenary session itself as well as at the CPC Central Committee's preparatory work conference, calling on all Party members to resume the work style of seeking truth from facts and of conducting investigations and study. He said, &quot;Our Party is by tradition one of seeking truth from facts. In recent years, we conducted fewer investigations, and did not know the real situation, probably because we acted like high officials. 1 myself am just a high official and now seldom make the kind of investigations I had formerly carried out in Jiangxi Province.&quot; He asked comrades to persist in the work style of investigations and study and to proceed in all cases from actual conditions. Mao also noted that socialist construction should not be carried out in haste, but would probably take half a century. It must go slowly for a few years, and targets should not be so high, to avoid disasters brought on by seeking an undeserved reputation. 569 Following this, the CPC Central Committee issued a &quot;Letter to the Central Bureaus and Provincial, Municipal and Autonomous Regional Party Committees on Making Assiduous Investigation. AUhe same time, it reprinted and distributed &quot;On Investigation Work &quot; a piece written by Mao Zedong m the spring of 9a0 which had been lost for many years but discovered not long before (the title, as revised, was Oppose Book Worship when published later on). The Central Committee required the leading members above the county level to study these documents in depth in the light of actual conditions. The letter pointed out. I he mistakes and shortcomings in our work during the jast several years occurred because many leaders slackened the work of investigation and study which had been so successful during t e War of Resistance Against Japan and the War of Liberation l -or a time, some judgements and decisions were made on the basis of lopsided and unrealistic materials. This is a major lesson. The Party leaders at all levels must under no circumstances neglect or forget this costly lesson. The letter stated: Investigation and study deep down at the grassroots levels make up the primary task of leadership work. &quot;In everything, proceed from actual conditions no investigation, no right to speak. This must be made the first and foremost principle in the thought and action of all cadres of the Party.&quot; While conducting investigation, We must not be afraid of listening to opinions that are different from ours but contain substance, still less of seeing judgements and decisions negated through the test of practice.&quot; This actually pointed out to the leading members of the Party that the problem was one of rectification of the ideological line. It stressed taking practice as the standard for testing truth instead of previously-made judge ments and decisions, and thus paved the way for using the test of practice to correct past decisions and mistakes. Investigation study and seeking truth from facts as an ideological line was restored to a definite degree; this was an ideological prerequisite for the definite degree of important change which was made m the actual work of this period. . , , Following the session, Mao Zedong directly organized guided three groups to make separate investigations in the countryside of Zhejiang, Hunan and Guangdong provinces. Also Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Deng Xiaoping each went down to grassroots units in Hunan, Hebei and Sichuan provinces, and in Beijing. The secretaries of Party committees of all provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions did the same. In the process of investigations, Mao Zedong discovered that the Urgent Directive Letter had failed to completely solve two major important problems— egalitarianism among production teams within a production brigade and egalitarianism among commune membeis within a production team. In order to systematically solve various problems in the rural people's communes including the abovementioned two, in March in Guangzhou Mao Zedong presided over and drafted Regulations on the Work of Rural People's Communes (for short, the Sixty Articles for Agriculture). Major amendments were made in the text of the regulations several times after repeated discussions and on-the-spot experiments by large numbers of cadres and peasants. In the revised draft issued in June, the provisions in the original draft concerning community canteens and the partial supply system, which were universally opposed by peasants, were deleted. Yet the Urgent Directive Letter and the draft of the Sixty Articles for Agriculture still stated the two provisions as requirements which had to be carried out. Abolishing or suggesting the abolition of community canteens were once condemned as big &quot;Right opportunist&quot; crimes. In September, based on opinions from several provinces, Mao Zedong proposed placing the basic accounting unit of the people's commune lower down to the level of the production team, which was equivalent to the former elementary agricultural producers' cooperative. (The original production team, which was equivalent to the former advanced agricultural producers' cooperative, was later called a production brigade.) In his letter to the Central Committee, Mao Zedong said that under the original system, the right of production was at the production team level while the right of distribution was at the production brigade level. This serious contradiction still fettered the masses' enthusiasm for production. &quot;On this issue, we spent six years muddling along in the past (from the founding of the advanced agricultural producCHARTER SEVEN SOCIALIST CONSTRUCTION ers' cooperative in 1956). In the seventh year we ought to wake &quot;25 This indicated that the work to rectify the policies of the neo pie's communes was a continuation not only of the efforts made following the Zhengzhou Meeting, but dated back to the formation of the advanced agricultural producers cooperative and the efforts to readjust the relations within the agricultural cooperatives before and after the 1st Session of the 8th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. The final revised Sixty Articles for Agriculture stipulated: I he three-level system of ownership in the rural people's communes with the production team as the basic accounting unit is a fundamental system which will remain unchanged for a long period, at least for thirty years. Although some fundamental problems existing in the peoples communes were not completely solved, the article played an important role in mobilizing the enthusiasm of the masses and in restoring and developing agricultural production, since it solved a number of urgent problems which had stirred up the biggest complaints of the masses. The article also played a positive role in curtailing any further blasts of the &quot;communist wind&quot; for quite a long time to come. With the initial correction of the ideological line and gradual readjustment of the rural policies, the work to re-examine cadres and Party members who were criticized in the past was put on the agenda. The CPC Central Committee's instruction on discussion and trial implementation of the revised draft of the Sixty Articles for Agriculture worked out in June 1961 clearly stipulated that decisions in the cases of those who had been correctly criticized in previous years would not be changed; and the verdicts on those who had been wrongly criticized would be corrected, their reputations rehabilitated and their posts restored. If only part of a problem had been wrongly criticized and dealt with, the conclusion on this part of the problem would be corrected. An apology should be made to the masses (including well-todo middle peasants) who had been criticized. If punishment had been incorrectly meted out, it must be corrected. Actually reexamination work was for the purpose of eliminating the negative influence of the &quot;anti-Right-deviationist&quot; struggle, and readjusting political relations within the Party, and also between the Party and the masses who had been wrongly criticized. During the discussions and trial implementation of the Sixty Articles for Agriculture, the Party Central Committee also issued and called for trial implementation of the Thirty-five Articles on Handicraft Industry and the Forty Articles on Commerce which had been worked out in the same spirit. Readjustment of Industry The eight-character principle of &quot;readjustment, consolidation, filling out and raising standards&quot; was suggested by Zhou Enlai and Li Fuchun in August 1960 when they presided over study of the controlled targets for the 1961 national economic plan. The principle was formally approved by the 9th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee of CPC in January 1961. There was no great progress in the readjustment of industry at first, for they originally planned to keep the 1960 targets for the output of iron and steel and other heavy industrial products. On this basis, the 1961 planned targets were neither raised nor reduced. Therefore, the 1961 planned figure adopted by the 9th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee was 19 million tons for steel, a little higher than the 1960 figure; grain was 205 billion kg, a rise of 10.8 percent over the output of 185 billion kg estimated at that time for 1960. Owing to overestimation of the actual agricultural output and too high expectation for possible increase of output, the decision to lower the industrial target was difficult to be made. The results of a half-year's implementation indicated that the output of steel and many other industrial products had dropped by a large margin. Urged by Zhou Enlai, the economic and planning departments did their best to clarify the figures for the actual grain output of the previous several years. Grain for 1958 was not 250 billion kg &quot;checked&quot; at the Lushan Meeting, but 200 billion kg; in 1959 it was 170 billion kg instead of the 255 billion kg reported; in 1960, it was 143.5 billion kg instead of the estimated 185 billion kg. The summer harvest in 1961 was down by 8 billion kg as compared with the previous year. As the 575 agricultural situation was made quite clear, the crux of problems in industry was also fully revealed. So it was impossible to keep on with the 1961 plan proposed at the 9th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee of the CPC. In September 1961, the CPC Central Committee convened a work conference in Lushan. After discussion, it adopted a &quot;Directive on the Question of Industry at Present.&quot; It pointed out that we had already lost more than twelve months. We can no longer hesitate. We must make a prompt decision to resolutely cut back where cutting back is indicated, and reduce the production quotas of industry and capital construction to a reliable level which may allow for unforeseen circumstances. It also pointed out that in the next three years, implementation of the eight-character principle must focus on readjustment. If we do not make up our minds to make necessary cutbacks, but still persist in those unrealistic quotas, our industry and even our entire national economy can fall into a passive position, or into an even more difficult situation. Following the conference, with the approval of the Central Committee, the State Planning Commission made a bigger adjustment to the 1961 plan adopted by the 9th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee. The investment in capital construction was reduced from 16.7 billion yuan to 8.7 billion yuan; the quota for steel was put down from 19 million tons to 8.5 million tons, and the quota for grain down from 205 billion kg to 135 billion kg. After implementation, the results at the end of that year showed that those quotas were generally met. Grain reached 147.5 billion kg, a slight rise over 1960. Another aspect in industrial readjustment was to rectify enterprise order. The &quot;great leap forward&quot; gave rise to many problems in the enterprises. There was confusion in management work. The responsibility system and the system of business accounting became lax. Equipment was damaged, product quality lowered and labour productivity declined. Egalitarianism dominated wages and bonuses. Deng Xiaoping stressed many times that industrial enterprises must be rectified. Under his auspices, Li Fuchun and Bo Yibo were responsible for sending eleven working groups to a large number of factories and mines to make investigations. On this basis, the &quot;Regulations on the Work of State Industrial Enterprises (draft)&quot; (also known as the Seventy Articles Concerning Industrial Enterprises) was worked out. Adopted at the Lushan work conference of the CPC Central Committee, it was distributed by the Central Committee in September for trial implementation. In the draft, there were some guiding principles for readjusting state industrial enterprises such as the &quot;five fixed quotas&quot; (for product programme and production scale; the number of workers and administrative setups; the consumption of the main raw and semi-finished materials and sources of supply; fixed assets and circulating funds; and for cooperative relations). Enterprises also carried out &quot;five guaranties' to the state (product variety, quality and quantity; operation not to exceed gross payroll; fulfilment of cost plan; handing over profit to the state; and utilization period of the main equipment). This served to stabilize the sequence of production of the state enterprises under the then mandatory plan system. It also made a detailed stipulation providing for a system of overall responsibility by the factory director under the leadership of the Party committee, a system of workers, representatives congresses, and for the operations and duties to be carried out under an administrative system of management over the whole factory's united production headed by the factory director. As the regulations were implemented, a series of necessary rules and regulations in state enterprises was rehabilitated or established, thus playing a positive role in the implementation of the principle of readjustment, consolidation, filling out and raising standards. Scientific, Educational and Cultural Policies Readjusted To co-ordinate with the economic readjustment, all cultural fields underwent amendment. Repeated studies were made and opinions in science circles were widely polled. The leading Party groups of the State Science and Technology Commission and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by Nie Rongzhen, put forth the Fourteen Suggestions on Current Work at Research Institutes of Natural Sciences (draft) (abbreviated to be Fourteen Articles for Science). Nie Rongzhen also wrote a special report to the central authorities, asking for instructions on some major policies touched on in the document. In July, the draft was approved by the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee after discus sion It was put into effect on a trial basis. Directed by Deng Xiaoping, the leading Party groups of the Central Propagand Department and the Ministry of Education sketched the Provisional Regulations on Work in the Institutions of .Higher Lean* ing Under the Ministry of Education (draft) (abbreviated to be Sixty Articles on College Education). After thorough discussion, the Party Central Committee approved the dralt at the work conference held in Lushan. It went into effect on a trial basis in September. (Fifty Articles for Middle Schools and Forty Articles for Primary Schools were drafted and discussed at the Lushan meeting They were approved and promulgated by the centr authorities in^March 1963.) In August, urged by Zhou Enlai, he leading Party groups of the Central Propaganda Department, the Ministry of Culture and China Federatton of Literary and Ar Circles followed up with Suggestions on CcIta&quot; P&quot;bta at Present Work in Literature and Literature andArt (draft)(a breviated to Ten Articles on the Arts and later to Eight Articles on Literature and Art). It was approved by the central committee and issued in April 1962. One special concern of these articles was to readjust the rela tionship between intellectuals and the Communist Party. Since the &quot;great leap forward&quot; in 1958, excessive and erroneous criticism had been heaped on intellectuals to keep them from becoming &quot;bourgeois academic authorities&quot; (in other words profession alfy proficient but not socialist-minded' ) Party leaders in some cultural institutions went so far as to take intellectuals as the target of socialist revolution, believing that most intellectuals were part of the bourgeois class. In December 1958, Mao Zedong had written a comment on a report about this situation. Please print this and pass it on to Party committees and branches of all institutions of higher learning, research institutes art and btterary groups, mass media and publishing houses. Ask them to read mid discuss it. It's imperative to grasp the correct orientation and try to unite all professors, assistant professors, assistant lecturers and research personnel who can be united with and who can serve the proletarian educational, cultural and scientific causes.&quot;2&quot; But the endeavour made in line with this spirit had been suspended by the &quot;anti-Right Deviationist&quot; campaign. The drafting and promulgation of the Eight Articles was, in fact, a continuation of the earlier effort. The Central Committee, when ratifying the Fourteen Articles for Science, pointed out: In recent years, quite a number of comrades have developed a lopsided view in regard to knowledge and intellectuals. There have also been more instances of intellectuals being treated rudely. This must receive serious attention. The Central Committee demanded that all work institutions and departments employing intellectuals clear up the criticisms made among them since the &quot;anti-Rightist&quot; campaign. While correct criticisms should be confirmed, wrong ones—whether totally or partially—should be corrected after investigation and a distinction should be made between right and wrong. Things should be explained to them by leading Party persons and those who were wronged must be rehabilitated in order to relieve the strain on them, develop democracy and strengthen unity. Another crucial problem dwelt on in the articles was that of implementing the policy called &quot;let a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend&quot; in the fields of science and art. This is closely related to adjustment of the relationship between the Party and intellectuals. In view of the problems that had cropped up in the natural sciences, social sciences, arts and literature, these articles spelled out in detail a whole set of principles for implementing, in a specific way, the &quot;doublehundred&quot; policy. One principle was that when a concept considered to be wrong was to be criticized, political ideas should be differentiated from academic and artistic ones; a clear distinction must be made between contradictions among the people and those between the enemy and the people. While dealing with different views among the people on academic and artistic questions, the use of methods of political struggle would be impermissible, to say nothing of adopting methods used against the enemy. Moreover, these articles were directed against chaotic happen 577 ;ngs such as assigning too much manual labour in production and too much social activities for people in scientific, educational and cultural units, and also the proneness to boasting, exaggeration and messing things up in these work units by giving impractica orders in professional work. The regulations clearly stipulated that the key task for research institutions was to strive tor scientific achievements and cultivate talents to serve socialism Research work at institutes should remain stable. Five-sixths of the researchers' time should be devoted to professional work. Schools should focus on teaching and students should concentrate on learning. The slogan that &quot;art should serve politics should not be understood in a too narrow sense. Literature and art works should not only inspire people's revolutionary enthusiasm and broaden their political horizon, but also offer aesthetic enjoyment and healthy entertainment. Any piece of art that fulfills one of the above-mentioned criteria qualifies as serving the people an socialism. . _ , , The promulgation and implementation of the regulations igated the tense relationship between the Party and intellectuals. Normal work schedules resumed. All this played an important role in making China to gradually form, by summing up expenence, a series of principles, policies and specific measures for socialist science, education and culture. Though problems arising from expansion of the &quot;anti-Rightist&quot; campaign in 1957 were not totally resolved, the majority of intellectuals were relieved of worries and felt more at ease. The conditions for concentrating on professional work, by and large, were adequately established. Some intellectuals said, &quot;We would like to have the regula tons inscribed on stone tablets.&quot; This remark fully reflected heir support for the regulation, but also betrayed their fear that the policies would change. . The readjustment work done for intellectuals should have led to a scientific reassessment of their class nature. But the regulations did not touch on this basic question. Though the Seventy Articles on Industry did broach it by reiterating that in enterprises the technicians and staff are &quot;part of the working class it made no mention of intellectuals working in scientific, educational and cultural institutions. The question was not solved thoroughly until the work conference on science and technology and the work conference on arts were held in Guangzhou in March 1962. In a speech, Zhou Enlai reinstated the Party's assessment made at the 1956 conference on the question of the class nature concerning intellectuals. According to this assessment, the overwhelming majority of them belonged to the category of labouring people and not to that of the bourgeois class. Chen Yi, in his speech, particularly emphasized that the test of time in the past 12 years, especially in China's most difficult years, had proven that the majority of Chinese intellectuals were patriotic, and believed in the Party, sharing weal and woe with the Party and the people. If the Party cannot test a person in eight, 10 or 12 years, it only shows that the Party is too devoid of insight, he said. He announced the removal of all the stigma attached to intellectuals as being &quot;bourgeois&quot; and insisted on placing them in the category of the labouring people. Shortly after, Zhou Enlai, in his report on the work of the government at the 3rd Session of the 2nd National People's Congress, again announced this scientific judgment. The work report had been approved by the Party Central Committee earlier. Zhou Enlai's Report on the Question of Intellectuals made at the Guangzhou conference in 1962, his Report on Intellectuals delivered in 1956 and his report On the Transformation of Intellectuals made in 1951—convey a continuous inner consistency. They are historical documents representing the Party's correct policies toward Chinese intellectuals following the founding of New China in 1949. But the Party Central Committee had not entirely eliminated &quot;Leftist&quot; ideological and political views. A small number of Party Central Committee members were in disagreement with or in outright opposition to Zhou Enlai and Chen Yi's speeches at the Guangzhou conference. When asked by Zhou Enlai to state his position on the issue, Mao remained silent. This circumstance foreshadowed the subsequent emergence of another major reversal in the Party's policy in regard to intellectuals, knowledge, culture and education. The 7, 000-Person Conference From January 11 to February 7, 1962, an Enlarged Work Conference of the Central Committee was held in Beijing. It was presided over by Mao Zedong and attended by top leaders and those from the Central Committee, the affiliated bureaus and departments of the CPC and Party committees of various provinces, municipalities, prefectures and counties, as well ^ fr01?^ major factories, mines and army units - altogether some 7 0) persons It is usually called the &quot;7,000-Person Conference. This unprecedentedly large conference was held when the domestic situation began to change after a years readjustment of th economic difficulties resulting from the three-year great leap forward &quot; The problems were still great; people in and outside th Partv were very much confused. The purpose of the conference was 'to sum up previous experience, torcachaconsensuson some issues, to strengthen unity and to mobilize the Paity Tor further victory through implementation of the readjustment principles. At fhe initial stage of the conference, the participants discussed the written draft report, delivered by Liu Shaoqi on behalf of the Party. The draft was not yet formally approved by the Centra Political Bureau, and was directly handed to the conference lor discussion, so as to pool collective wisdom and bring out suggestions for amendment. After repeated discussions and modifrcatiom a formal document was born entitled Report on the Enlarged Work Conference of the Central Committee. Deng Xiaoping, then the Party's secretary general, was responsible for the preparation of the conference. The d^af}ing the conference report was first supervised by Deng and then by Liu The report systematically summed up the experience an lessons in economic construction since the great leap forward After enumerating the achievements made in the years socialis construction, the report went on to the major shortcomings a mistakes: (I) The indexes set in the production plan were too high and the battle line for capital construction was overex^™^These would cause severe imbalance between the various branch es of the national economy. (II) In the peoples communes the demarcation between collective ownership and ownership b&gt; the whole people was once blurred. The eagerness to rush transition from one to the other violated the distribution principle of &quot;to each according to his work&quot; and the principle of &quot;exchange at equal values.&quot; This stirred up the &quot;communist wind&quot;—haste to transfer to communism prematurely—and the practice of equalitarianism. (Ill) The improper practice of setting up a large number of integral industrial systems countrywide led to excessive transfer of power to the lower levels and overdecentralization. (IV) There was an over-estimation of the increase in agricultural production and overly urgent demands made in regard to the development of construction. This led to overpopulation in cities, burdening them with supply shortages and adding to difficulties of rural production. The report analysed the reasons for the shortcomings and mistakes, holding that on the one hand we lacked experience in construction; on the other hand, many Party leaders had not been modest enough over the years, and had abandoned the Party tradition of seeking truth from facts and following the mass line. These weaknesses undermined the Party's democratic centralism and deterred the timely recovery and correction of mistakes. The report emphasized that the basic directions and main principles of socialism, the &quot;great leap forward&quot; and the people's communes the &quot;Three Red Banners&quot;—were correct. The achievements over the years were great; the shortcomings and mistakes were secondary, the report said; the Central Committee, including the departments under it and those under the State Council shouldered the major responsibility for the shortcomings and mistakes. Besides, the provincial leading organs should bear secondary responsibility for them. On January 27, Liu Shaoqi delivered a speech to explain the written report. He offered some important insights on questions causing ideological confusion within the Party. He emphasized that the &quot;Three Red Banners&quot; (the general line for socialist construction, the great leap forward and the people's communes) would not be abolished. Instead, consistent efforts would be made to keep them. At present, some issues may be unclear by now, he said, but if we look back after five or ten years, we will be able 581 to understand better, summarize experience again and draw conclusions. As to our mistakes and achievements, we used to comoare them to the relationship between one finger and nine fingers, hut now probably the same thing might not apply. In view of the whole country, perhaps the relationship was that between three fingers and seven fingers. In some regions, the mistakes added up to more than three fingers - they could be as many as seven fingers. As to the causes for the economic dilficulties, natural disasters were only one aspect, mistakes in our work were&gt; l° 11 large extent, another aspect. In some places, ‘30 percent of e difficulties came from natural disasters, the other 70 percent were man-made.&quot; These opinions moved a step further in the direction of facing reality and bravely acknowledging, in a down-to-earth way, the mistakes made in the actual work and guiding thoug since the &quot;great leap forward.&quot; Liu's speech and reports were warmly applauded at the confer ence. Since the participants still had much they wished to say at this meeting sponsored by the Central Committee, Mao Zedong suggested prolonging the conference. The delegates spent the Spring Festival in Beijing. &quot;During the day, they aired views; at night, they watched operas, drama or films. With two meals of staple food and one of porridge, everyone was satisfied. At the latter half of the conference, grassroots leaders ottered their suggestions to the central authorities and to the Party committees of various provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. Several main leaders of the central committee delivered speeches. Mao Zedong made a long speech on January 30, focusing on democratic centralism. He underlined the importance of sufficient democracy both in and outside the Party so that the masses could speak their mind. If we have made mistakes, we should do self-criticism and let others criticize, he said. Mao made a sel criticism, saying, &quot;I'm directly and indirectly responsible for all the mistakes made by the Central Committee because Im the chairman.&quot; &quot;1 should be the first person to be held responsible He also emphasized that the Party was still afflicted with a lot of blindness in carrying out socialist construction. &quot;As far as we are _ j o^nrimv manv unrecognized realms of necessity. From now on, we should put forth our utmost efforts to study it, do research and, through practice, deepen our understanding of it, so as to gain a clear grasp of its laws,&quot; he said. Mao also pointed out that China has a large population; it has a weak foundation to start with and its economy is backward. &quot;1 think it will take at least over a hundred years to develop its productive forces and to catch up with and surpass the most advanced capitalist countries,&quot; he said. Both Deng Xiaoping, representing the Central Secretariat, and Zhou Enlai, the State Council, in speeches delivered at the conference, made self-criticisms. Deng focused on the restoration of the Party's fine traditions and Zhou talked about the major ways to overcome the difficulties. Zhu De spoke at the panel discussion of the Shandong delegates. Chen Yun spoke to the Shaanxi representatives after the conference. Both Zhu De and Chen Yun focused on inner-Party democracy. Several provincial delegates criticized the shortcomings and mistakes in the work and work style of their local leaders. Under the prevailing historical conditions, the conference did achieve important results. The truth-seeking attitude adopted towards shortcomings and mistakes, the democratic atmosphere, and the spirit of self-criticism inspired the whole Party. In general, the Party members felt relieved and relatively free from worry. The conference played a positive role in mobilizing the Party to work closely together to overcome difficulties. Of course, at the time, the term of &quot;Three Red Banners,&quot; a premise confirmed in principle, was not changed. As to the &quot;anti-Rightdeviationist&quot; campaign, the conference only urged rehabilitation of the lower-level Party members who had been wrongly criticized. Nothing was done to rehabilitate Peng Dehuai though his so-called mistake in writing the &quot;Lushan letter&quot; was no longer mentioned. He was said to be leading an &quot;anti-Party group&quot; and had &quot;international support.&quot; All these accusations, of course, were purely fictitious and completely groundless. Thus, it was impossible to thoroughly rectify the mistakes and clear up the guiding thought in the &quot;great leap forward&quot; and &quot;anti-Right-deviationist&quot; campaigns. Lin Biao, in his speech, said that Mao Zedong 583 Thought was always correct. The occurrence of mistakes and difficulties in the recent years resulted from not actmg according to Mao's instructions, or from interference either by Leftist or Rightist ideas. Had we listened to Mao, we would certainly have had fewer difficulties by far and we would have encountered fewer detours. Lin deviated from the principles of seeking truth from facts and of applying the test of practice. He appealed to the soirit of the personality cult in summing up the bitter lessons of experience. This had a negative effect on correcting shortcomings and mistakes as well as on implementing inner-Party democracy. Further Readjustment and Exploration After the 7 000-Person Conference, readjustment in the country's economy' and political relationships underwent further development. The household contract responsibility system in agricultural production was tried boldly on a large scale. The 7 000-Person Conference assumed that the most djtticult period for the economy had been tided over. After the meeting, however, it was discovered that insufficient preparation for difficulties still existed in terms of budgetary deficit and inflation In February 1962, Liu Shaoqi held an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau Standing Committee (Meeting in the West Building at Zhongnanhai) and pointed out that the country was undergoing an &quot;usual period.&quot; Unless resolute measures were taken the national economy would further deteriorate. Chen Yun offered a systematic review at the meeting. On February 26 according lo Liu's proposal, Chen Yun delivered a long speech at a meeting of the members of the Party groups of the ministries under the State Council. It was entitled Present Financial Status and Several Measures to Overcome Difficulties. I pointed out that in the pace of agricultural recovery, we should strive tor speed but be prepared for slowness.&quot; The scale for capital con struction then was based on the erroneous assumption that grain output would reach 350 billion kilogrammes and cotton output 3 5 billion kilogrammes, in 1958. The decision was also affected by the predicted steel output of about 50 million tons. It turned out that the designed scale of capital construction was more than industry and agriculture could support. Chen Yun proposed arranging a stage of recovery of about five years in the national economic programme starting from 1960. In the recovery stage, the lirst thing to do was to increase agricultural production so as to meet the demand for iood and clothing. The indexes for capital construction and certain heavy industries should at first be resolutely lowered, then later raised again. The urban population should be reduced on a wide scale and measures taken to check inflation. Chen Yun's speech was warmly applauded and fully supported by leaders of the various departments under the central authorities. It was approved by the Central Committee and became the guiding document for economic work at the time. The Central Committee decided to restore the government's Financial and Economic Group, to be headed by Chen Yun. In May, the standing committee of CPC's Political Bureau held an enlarged meeting, at which the report on the 1962 readjustment plan, which had been drafted by the Financial and Economic Group, was discussed and adopted. The report signaled a determination to readjust the national economy drastically. Its major provisions included: First, streamlining the number of employees and reducing the urban population. In 1961, according to the deployment plan of the central government, the staff was reduced by more than 8 million and the urban population was cut down by 10 million. In 1962, a reduction of 10 million more employees would be made and the urban population would be further reduced by 12 million. Between the start of 1961 and June 1963, the staff of employees was cut down by about 20 million and 26 million city residents were re-settled. Zhou Enlai exclaimed that deploying such a large number of people was the same as moving a medium-sized country; it was quite unprecedented. Second, cutting down the scale of capital construction and eliminating or slowing down the construction speed of a large number of projects. Compared with the situation in 1960, the 1962 investment in capital construction was reduced from 38.4 billion yuan to 6.7 billion yuan. The accumulation rate dropped 585 from 39.6 per cent to 10.4 per cent. Construction projects were reduced by over two- thirds. Third, reducing industrial projects. Wherever necessary, factories or projects were to be shut down, closed temporarily, merged or transferred. After the readjustment, the number of industrial enterprises was reduced by 38 percent in 1962 as compared with that in 1959. The indexes for most heavy industries were also lowered. Compared with 1960, industrial output value plummeted by 47 percent in 1962. Of this, the output value of heavy industry was reduced by 57 percent. Steel target was cut Irom 18.66 million tons to 6.67 million tons. Weak links like mine excavation, oil and chemical industries and the production of supplies needed in agriculture were reinforced. Fourth, further support for agriculture by assigning more hands and materials. Leadership in the rural areas was also strengthened. These resolute measures, coupled with efforts from residents and leaders at all levels, proved very effective. By the end of 1962, the national economy had started to revive. Agricultural production was the first to pick up. That year, grain output hit 160 billion kilogrammes, 12.5 billion kilogrammes more than the year before. The total agricultural output value increased by 6.2 percent over the previous year, thus ending three consecutive years of recession. Moreover, national finances showed a balance of revenue and expenditure in 1962, with a cash surplus of 830 million yuan. This ended four continuous years of deficit. Market supply was better and trade prices dropped by approximately 35 percent as compared with 1961. Urbanites' living standards started to look up. Compared with the previous year, annual percapita consumption of grain, pork and cloth increased by 5.5 kilogrammes, 0.8 kilogrammes and 0.8 metres, respectively. Economic difficulty, however, had just barely been tided over. People's living standards and the production level of industry and agriculture remained low. The Party and its people had yet to make more efforts in the readjustment and recovery of the national economy. As to the readjustment of political relationships, Liu Shaoqi held a top-level state conference after the 7, 000- Person Conference and the Meeting in the West Building at Zhongnanhai. ]t was followed by the 3rd Session of the 2nd National People's Congress and the 3rd Session of the 3rd National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, both of which had been postponed for a year. At the meetings, Liu Shaoqi briefed the participants, both Party and non-Party, on the 7,000-Person Conference. He explained that the Party, particularly the Central Committee, was responsible for the shortcomings and mistakes which had occurred over the years in domestic work. On behalf of the State Council, Zhou Enlai made a sincere self-criticism in regard to problems existing in governmental work. Those from democratic parties who attended, as well as democratic personages without party affiliation, were moved by the Communist Party's open-heartedness and boldness in admitting and correcting errors in these fields. They expressed their determination &quot;to cross the river in the same boat&quot; with the Party, united in a common purpose and overcome all difficulties. After the meeting, the Central Committee held the National United Front Work Conference and the Nationality Work Conference in order to investigate and correct &quot;Leftist&quot; errors. The two meetings underlined the importance of correctly handling the relationship among different classes, nationalities and religions, as well as the work concerned with overseas Chinese, so as to strengthen the unity of the various social strata and different nationalities. As to the rehabilitation of leaders and Party members who were wronged during the anti-Right Deviationist campaign, Party committees at all levels had started the work after the Central Committee passed out instructions in June 1961. But progress in different regions was uneven. Some regions and work units failed to give the instructions adequate attention. Because of this, the Secretariat of the Central Committee, led by Deng Xiaoping, drafted and issued the Circular on Speeding up Re-examination of Party Members and Cadres in April 1962. Experience accumulated in army work served as a basis for the suggestion that all wronged cadres below county-level be rehabilitated. Except for 587 specific cases involving serious offenses, no case should be left unsolved. It was in this way that the rehabilitation work opened up smoothly and comprehensively. By August 1962, more than six million cadres, Party members and ordinary people countrywide had been cleared. The rehabilitation of &quot;Rightists&quot; started around October 1959 according to Mao Zedong's suggestion. By 1962, the label of &quot;Rightists&quot; was removed from most of them. As for people who were wronged, the removal of the label did not mean the thorough solution of their problem. But removal of the label brought improvement, to some extent, in their political status, work and living conditions. In July 1962, The Party Central United f lont Office proposed that &quot;‘Rightists' and their families who request re-assessment should be re-examined,&quot; &quot;those who were wrongly labelled should be rehabilitated.&quot; The Central Committee did not consent to the proposal at the time. When the central government assigned the basic accounting unit to the production team, which corresponded roughly to the elementary cooperatives, the initiative of the farmers received quite a boost. At the same time, various forms of the household contract responsibility system emerged spontaneously in many places. Ever since the establishment of cooperatives, moves for the &quot;household responsibility&quot; would spontaneously surface whenever the Party called for readjustment of the relations of production inside rural collective economic organization. 1 hey would be stopped again and again only to emerge whenever the opportunity arose. This fact showed that household management within the economic structure of the rural collective economy of peasants in many ways suited the Chinese rural forces of production which consisted mainly of manual labour, and also answered to the needs of the vast majority of peasants. In 1961, provincial leaders in Anhui proposed to support these moves under the premise that the principal means of production were still collectively owned and the farmers should &quot;unify&quot; their management to the state production plan. They proposed to set the &quot;production quota on the field, responsibility on the individual.&quot; By July 1962, more than 20 percent of the rural areas all over the country had been carrying out many different forms of fixing farm output quotas for each household. They proved highly effective and were welcomed by the peasants and grassroots leaders. After extensive investigation and research, Deng Zihui aired his support for the measures adopted in Anhui. He said that to inspire the labourers' enthusiasm, there needed to be a strict responsibility system, that a system of responsibility for the farm work in production would be hard to carry out unless it was related to output. Both Liu Shaoqi and Chen Yun approved of the idea. Deng Xiaoping, at a Secretariat meeting and a meeting with the Communist Youth League leaders in July 1962, gave briefings on the responsibility system emerging in the vast countryside. According to him, &quot;The best production relations should be those that most easily and most quickly recover and develop agricultural production in the localities. What the masses like, we should adopt. If the form is illegal, we can legalize it.&quot; He quoted the popular saying Liu Bocheng often used: &quot;It does not matter if it is a yellow cat or a black cat, as long as it catches mice.&quot;27 He announced that his was a tentative opinion, which might not count. The Central Committee would look into the responsibility system at a meeting in August, he said. In the ten years between the mid-50s and mid-60s, major changes took place in the international situation and China's foreign relations. In the early years of this period, due to cessation of the Korean War and the war in Indo-China, the international atmosphere surrounding China tended to relax. The Party hoped to further such a situation and grasp the opportunity to speed up development of the domestic economy. The resolution adopted by the 1st Plenary Session of the 8th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1956 defined the fundamental prin 589 Holes advocated by the Party for China's dealing with international matters. In early 1957, Mao Zedong made an analysis to the effect that on a world scale at the time, except tor the forces 0f socialism, there existed three kinds of forces: the forces of U. . imperialism persisting in policies of war and aggression; the forces of other developed capitalist countries; and the force of countries having national independence, together with national liberation movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America, n regard to the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, the Pat y stood for continuously strengthening unity and cooperation with them As for the oppressed nations' liberation movements and countries fighting to gain national independence, the Party advocated giving them active support and developing extensive friendly relations with them. Regarding capitalist countries other than the United States, the Party held that they also belonged to an intermediate zone between the socialist countries and the United States. (Later, Mao Zedong called these particular countries the Second Intermediate Zone, and the countries in Asia Africa and Latin America the First Intermediate Zone.) Therefore, China should also win them over and develop friendly relations with them. As to the United States, the Party advocated determined opposition to U.S. armed aggression and threats to China, on the one hand, while still striving for peaceful co-existence with the United States and settling disputes between the two countries through peaceful consultation on the other. From the end of the 50s to the mid-60s, the world situation was turbulent. Between the four forces mentioned above as well as within each of them, relations splintered and were formed anew. The international situation on China's borders was growing strained. China was facing open and potential threats of aggression war provocations and military pressure from many directions. In such a turbulent and intense situation, the heart of the Party's concerns in international relations was how China could preserve her independence and sovereignty and light against hegemonism which loomed on all sides, for the purpose of maintaining her national dignity and interests, safeguardmg Chinas socialist cause and defending world peace and the interests of national liberation and of the entire socialist cause. At that time, the Party made a grim appraisal of the danger of war; and preparing for the worst possibility, made ready to fight an early war, a big war, and a war launched from several directions. Preparation for war became the major factor affecting the Party's political and economic strategies. Relations Between China and the Countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America Relations between China and the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America vigorously surged forward in the years after the mid-50s. The Chinese warmly expressed their support for the Egyptian people's struggle to maintain their sovereignty over the Suez Canal in the face of British and French intervention, the Algerian people's struggle against French colonial rule to win national independence, the struggle of African people in the area south of the Sahara against colonialism and racism, and the Cuban people's struggle against U.S. armed intervention. In the ten years, a large number of Asian and African countries established diplomatic relations with China, as did Cuba, a country in Latin America. Besides, the people of China and Japan developed friendly exchanges, albeit through non-governmental channels because there were no diplomatic relations between the two countries at the time. In 1964, China established diplomatic relations with France. This was an important achievement in the expansion of its diplomatic activities in countries outside of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Between January 1960 and March 1963, according to principles of peaceful co-existence and good-neighbourly relations and through consultation based on equality and in a spirit of mutual understanding and mutual accommodation, China signed agreements or treaties with Burma, Nepal, Mongolia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, properly settling boundary questions unsolved in the past. China and India are two big Asian countries with ancient civilizations. Peoples of the two countries always expressed mu , ,1 sympathy and support in the struggle for independence. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 the two countries actively cooperated in international str&quot;gg*&quot;' ,»ther nutting forward the famous five principles of peaceful co-existence. China sincerely hoped to maintain and develop her friendly relations with India. In 1959 when the armed rebellion launched by Tibetan reactionary elements was quickly sup pressed, some Indian authorities either overtly or covertly adopted a supportive attitude towards the few national splittists in Tibet, thus casting a shadow over Sino-Indian relations The boundary disputes between China and India grew more acrimom°ln the past, there were no formally delimited boundaries, only a iraditional and customary line formed in accordance with administrative jurisdiction by both sides. The bounds ^advocated by the Indian government went far beyond 'hose actu ly within its jurisdiction. It put a vast expanse of Chinese administered territory north of the traditional and customary line under Indian jurisdiction. China advocated an overall solution to the boundary discord through friendly consultation. Before de limiting boundaries, both sides should maintain the status q . But the Indian government refused to negotiate^ After Angus 1959, Indian troops invaded Chinese territory many tunes This led to armed conflicts over the boundary. On November 7 1959 the Chinese government suggested that the armed forces of ea country immediately withdraw 20 km from their actually controlled positions. This was rejected by the Indian government On October 17, 1962, Indian troops launched large-scale attacks °n Chinese frontier troops. The Chinese frontier troops, forced o fight back in self-defence, recovered the Chinese territories occu pfed by Indian troops. To show the sincerity of the Chinese government for the peaceful settlement of rfL^fire bv on November 21 the Chinese government declared a cease fire by the Chinese frontier troops along the entire length of Indian boundary. Furthermore, from December 1, the Chinese frontier troops unilaterally drew back 20 km from the November 7 1959 line of actual control by both sides. Subsequently, the Chinese frontier troops repatriated all Indian prisoners of war and returned all captured weapons and military supplies to the Indian side. All these actions proved that China tried to limit and calm down the boundary conflicts, and place friendship between the two countries above everything else. However, following this, threats of reoccurring boundary provocations still existed for a long period. Sino-U.S. Relations Throughout the ten years, the United States maintained an attitude of open hostility towards China. The two most acute questions were: One, the presence of American armed troops in Taiwan— a matter of intervention in China's internal affairs; the other, U.S .armed aggression in Viet Nam, which posed a threat to China's security. U.S. intrusions into China's territorial air were frequent. With the Bandung Conference finished, the SinoU.S. ambassadorial talks were begun in Geneva in 1955 as a result of a statement made by Zhou Enlai. An agreement was reached regarding the repatriation for ordinary people of both sides. Consequently, a large group of Chinese students, whose return to China was being thwarted by the U.S. government, were able to go back home to serve the motherland and the people. On the question of eliminating the tense situation in the Taiwan area, the United States asked China to commit itself not to liberate Taiwan by force and to acknowledge the right of the United States to conduct so-called &quot;unilateral and collective self-defence&quot; on the Chinese territory of Taiwan, in a ploy to substantiate &quot;two Chinas,&quot; or &quot;one China, one Taiwan.&quot; China upheld her principled stand: the Chinese government would like to negotiate with the Taiwan authorities, to liberate Taiwan together with Penghu, Quemoy and Matsu by peaceful means to finally realize the reunification of the motherland. But this is an internal affair, in which the United States has no right to interfere, and which can not become a topic for Sino-U.S. talks. The diplomatic negotiations between China and the United States on mutual relinquishing resort to force must lead to the removal of U.S. military 593 threats in the Taiwan area. China can in no way recognize the , talus quo of U.S. infringement upon Taiwan. The talks had to he suspended at the end of 1957 when all reasonable suggestions made by the Chinese side were stubbornly rejected by the United States. In order to suppress Kuomintang troops' harassment and wrecking activities on frontline defense of the mainland coast, the People's Liberation Army began bombarding Quemoy in August 1958. The United States hurriedly reinforced its troops m the Taiwan Strait and, furthermore, sent its fleet to escort the Kuomintang fleet. This constituted an invasion of Chinese territorial seas. The Chinese government sent many serious warnings to the U.S. government against this. At the same time, the Chinese government reiterated its wish to solve Sino-U.S. disputes through peaceful negotiations. . In September, Sino-U.S. ambassadorial talks were resumed in Warsaw. The United Slates attempted to &quot;give up Quemoy and Matsu in exchange for China's promise not to appeal to force over Taiwan and Penghu. In fact, the United States was still trying to create &quot;two Chinas.&quot; The Chinese government by no means agreed with the idea, nor were the Taiwan authorities satisfied with it. In consideration of the common ground shared by the Chinese people and the Kuomintang group which opposed the &quot;two Chinas&quot; advocated by the U.S., the Chinese government decided to leave Quemoy and Matsu in the hands of the Taiwan authorities for the time being. On October 6, Mao Zedong wrote a &quot;Message to Taiwan Compatriots,&quot; which was published m the name of Peng Dehuai, minister of national defence, declaring the temporary cessation of shelling Quemoy on the condition that there would be no further U.S. escort. On October 25, Another Message to Taiwan Compatriots&quot; was published, announcing that there would be no shelling of Quemoy's airport and docks on even dates, in order to let Quemoy and other islands bring in supplies, it was not certain whether or not there would be shelling on odd dates. But to avoid possible losses, boats, ships and airplanes of the Taiwan side should not come over. At the same time, the message advised the Kuomintang authorities not to rely on others too much, pointing out that &quot;matters concerning Chinese can be settled only by the Chinese people. Matters that are hard to solve in a short time can be taken care of later through long-term consultations.&quot; The stalemate between China and the United States on the question of Taiwan lasted for many years. An armistice was realized on the Indo-China Peninsula after the 1954 Geneva agreement was reached. With 17 degrees north latitude as the boundary line, north Viet Nam was put under the administration of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam. After the French troops withdrew from Indo-China in 1955, the United States seized the opportunity to replace France, using military assistance to cultivate pro-American forces, especially through active support to the Ngo Dinh Diem ruling clique of south Viet Nam in its cruel persecution of the people who had fought in the former war of resistance against foreign aggression and other patriotic personages. At the end of 1960, the south Vietnamese people were forced to take up arms to resist the reactionary rule of the U.S.-Ngo clique. In 1961, the United States dispatched &quot;special troops&quot; to south Viet Nam, and in the following year, founded the &quot;U.S. Military-Aid Headquarters in Viet Nam,&quot; thus intensifying suppression of the south Vietnamese people and getting ready to raid north Viet Nam. In order to support the Vietnamese people's resistance against U.S. aggression, China gave the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam large quantities of free military assistance. In August 1964, the U.S. started bombing north Viet Nam. The Chinese Government published a statement, saying that &quot;U.S. aggression against the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam means aggression against China. The Chinese people must on no account sit back and watch without going to the rescue.&quot; In March 1965, U.S. marine corps landed at Da Nang in the northern part of south Viet Nam, ready at any time to attack northward. U.S. planes frequently intruded into Chinese territorial air over Yunnan, Guangxi and Hainan Island. Under the circumstances, the Party Central Committee called on the army and the people of the whole country to get ready to deal with the most serious situation possible. By request of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, China began sending relief troops to Viet Nam to operate in spheres such as ground-air missiles, 595 antiaircraft artillery, engineering, railways, mine sweeping and loeistics- By the end of March 1968, Chinese relict troops involved a total of 320,000 people. Together with soldiers and civilians of Viet Nam, Chinese reinforcements, with blood and lives defended north Viet Nam's territorial air and its transportation lines. The toll of the Chinese troops reached more than 5,000, and the materials in aid of Viet Nam amounted to more than U.S.S20 billion. With the support of China and other countries, the Vietnamese people waged arduous struggles, finally driving the U.S. aggressive troops into the hopeless predicament of no victory in sight. In November 1968, the United States had no choice but to declare the cessation of bombing and gunfire in north Viet Nam, and to prepare for negotiations to end the war. Their firm resistance to U.S. imperialist hegemonism and aggression policies demonstrated a high degree of national dignity and a -pirit of national independence on the part of the Chinese people led by the Communist Party of China. Matching its threat of force, the United States also adopted a &quot;peaceful strategy to win victory&quot; over socialist countries. In 1959, Mao Zedong exhorted us to heighten our vigilance against U.S. peaceful methods, namely, by means of infiltration and corruption, inducing socialist countries to evolve peacefully into capitalist countries. Later, Mao Zedong repeatedly raised the question m all earnestness, and linked it with the danger of revisionism arising within the socialist countries. Prevention of peaceful evolution is an important strategic ideology of far-reaching significance. How to correctly and effectively prevent peaceful evolution is an everpresent problem that needs to be settled properly and seriously in exploring the road to build a socialist country. Sino-Soviet Relations The Communist Party of China has always stood lor maintaining relations of friendship between the two Parties and the two countries, unity of the international communist movement and unity among the various socialist countries. In 1957, Mao Zedong led a delegation to take part in a meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties of various countries held in Moscow. By way of conducting internal consultations, the Communist Party of China put forward different opinions on some questions of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. As a result of the eflorts of the two Parties in co-ordinating their stand and making mutual concessions, the Moscow Declaration drafted by both sides was passed. Even so, later on contradictions between China and the Soviet Union nevertheless gradually sharpened. The contradictions and clashes between China and the Soviet Union fell into two categories: 1. Differences in the ideological field. The two Parties had sharply contrasting opinions on the international situation, the international communist movement's line and tactics, and each other's international and domestic policies. 2. On the other hand, the then leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union considered their party as a sort of patriarchal Party,&quot; demanding that the Communist Pa ty of China should follow its baton, in an attempt to control China and make China militarily and diplomatically submit to the strategic needs of &quot;Soviet- U.S. cooperation for domination of the world.&quot; In 1958, the Soviet Union demanded the establishment of a jointly-controlled long-wave station on Chinese territory and a jointly-commanded fleet in China's territorial waters. Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders promptly delivered a stern rebuff to a demand such as this which would impair Chinese sovereignty. In the same year, Khrushchov was deeply worried that the mainland's shelling of Quemoy would hamper &quot;Soviet-U.S. cooperation.&quot; So he demanded that China make a commitment not to resort to force on the question of Taiwan. Of course, China could not agree. When the Sino-Indian boundary conflicts broke out, the Soviet Union did not bother to look into the rights and wrongs of the case, but issued a statement partial to the Indian side, thus exposing Sino-Soviet divergences to public view. In April 1960, on the occasion of marking the 90th anniversary of Lenin's birth, the Communist Party of China published Long Live Leninism! and two other articles, criticizing some views of the Soviet leaders without mentioning names. In June, during the 3rd Congress of the Romanian Workers' Party, Khrushchov I, Vied a meeting of Parties of several countries in Bucharest, where he made unwarranted charges against the Chinese Commu■ . party The Communist Party of China refused to submit to foreign pressure. In July, the Soviet government suddenly notified China of its unilateral decision to immediately withdraw all Soviet experts working m China and to terminate all agreements on economic and technological cooperation between the two countries This breach of faith, which greatly impaired the rela tions between the two Parties and the two countries, ^s co&quot;inutted just when China was suffering serious economic difficulties. In October 1960, Liu Shaoqi led a Chinese delegation to attend a meeting of various Communist and Workers Parties in Mos cow After heated debates and necessary concessions, the Moscow' Statement&quot; was adopted. The Communist Party of China hoped that the unity of the international communist movement could be maintained on the basis of this statement. However, as it hap^nS, controversies in the international communist movemenTecame more and more acute after the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1961. Leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Soviet oc^papers as well as leaders of Communist Parties of many other countries influenced by the Soviet Communist Party, published many resolutions, statements and articles, attacking ‘h^Am^e Communist Party and Parties of other countries. From D=« 196p to March 1963, the Communist Party of China published seve'n articles answering and criticizing several Soviet-influenced Parties that had denounced China. In July 1963, Deng Xiaoping led a Chinese delegation t0 atlcn talks in Moscow between the Parties of the two countries. Aroun this period, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China published &quot;A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement At the same tune jt Central Committee of the Soviet Union published an Open Letter to the Party Organizations at All Levels and to All Par y Members. ' The controversy between .he Chinese an^Sovie parties was further opened up to public view. The talks were without result. From September 1963 to July 1964, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, under the name of the Renmin Ribao editorial department and the Red Flag Magazine Editorial Department, published nine commentaries on the open letter of the Soviet Central Committee. In these articles, &quot;Khrushchov revisionism&quot; was openly criticized by name, and lessons drawn from world history concerning &quot;peaceful evolution&quot; and &quot;capitalist restoration&quot; in socialist countries were expounded. This controversy, which was unprecedented in scale, led to the disintegration of the international communist movement and Communist Parties of many countries. In October 1 964, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union dismissed Khrushchov from his leading position, and appointed Brezhnev First Secretary of the CPSU. Out of a desire to improve relations between the two Parties, the Communist Party of China sent a delegation headed by Zhou Enlai to the Soviet Union to take part in activities celebrating the October Revolution. But the new leadership of the CPSU claimed that their policies on China did not have &quot;even minor differences&quot; from those of Khrushchov. In March 1965, Brezhnev compelled the convocation of a preparatory meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties of various countries for the purpose of collectively denouncing the Communist Party of China. The Communist Party of China and six other fraternal Parties refused to attend. From then on, the Soviet Union kept increasing its armed forces on the boundaries between China and the Soviet Union, and stationed troops in the People's Republic of Mongolia. In March 1966, when the Soviet Communist Party convened the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party of China decided not to send its representatives to attend. Following this, relations between the two Parties broke off. In reviewing the history of the controversies, it is just as Deng Xiaoping later said: When a Communist Party comments on the actions of a foreign fraternal Party, it may often judge them according to some rigid formula or established pattern. Facts show that this approach gets one nowhere. The correctness or incorrectness of the domestic principles and line of a Party in a given country should be judged by that Party itself and by the people of that country. In 599 the last analysis, the answer is made through the practice of the Party and the people concerned. It is not for others to write articles affirming or contradicting them. Whether big, medium-sized, or small, Parties should respect each other's choices and experiences. We can't criticize others for conducting experiments in line with their own conditions. Even if they are wrong, it is up to them to sum up their own experience and try a different path. They should treat us in the same way, allowing us to make mistakes. Even if we make mistakes, it is up to us to correct them. We object to being ordered about and we, for our part, will never issue orders to others. When Deng Xiaoping met with some visiting comrades of a foreign fraternal Party, he talked about the relations between the Communist Party of China and other foreign Parties and the past controversies. He said: Looking back, however, we can see that we haven't always acted correctly. We have previously expressed some incorrect opinions concerning another Party. The visiting foreign comrades also said that they hadn't always acted correctly either. This was one aspect of the past controversies, that is, the ideological divergencies. The key to the problem lies in integrating the universal principles of Marxism with the concrete practices of revolution and construction of each country, using new thinking and new viewpoints to understand, inherit and advance Marxism-Leninism in the face of ever-changing world situation. As to the other aspect of the controversies, Deng Xiaoping said: &quot;If a Party and the country which it leads pursue a foreign policy of interference in the internal affairs of other countries, or invasion or subversion of them, then any other Party is entitled to make its stand known and express its criticism. We have always opposed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union acting like a patriarchal Party and displaying great-power chauvinism. It pursues a hegemonist line and policy in foreign relations.&quot;28 In dealing with the international communist movement and relations between socialist countries, the Communist Party of China upheld the independence and sovereignty of various Parties and countries, and opposed hegemonism of any big Party or any big country and their treating of other fraternal Parties or other socialist countries unequally or ruling by force. With dauntless spirit, the Communist Party of China withstood the pressure from that quarter. This demonstrated the genuine Marxism and true principles of proletarian internationalism of the Communist Party of China. The Communist Party of China and the Chinese people are proud of this, and have won the respect of the Communists of various countries and the people of the world. <br /> <br /> === Maintaining Independence and Sovereignty, Combating Hegemonism ===<br /> <br /> === Further Development of &quot;Left&quot; Deviationist Political Mistakes and Successful Completion of Economic Readjustment ===<br /> During almost two years of readjustment before and after the Enlarged Work Conference of the Parly Central Committee, which was attended by 7,000 people, the domestic situation gradually took a turn for the belter. However, the erroneous &quot;Left&quot; deviationist guiding thought on the issue of economic development, especially in the issue of class struggle, had not been basically corrected. Actually, there still existed different views within the Party and among the leaders of the Party on the situation and policies. In face of serious difficulties, these contradictions and divergencies remained latent. After the situation took a favourable turn, the deepening of domestic policy readjustment (following the West Building Meeting and on to the proposal for assigning farm output quotas to the household) and the further intensification of the Sino-Soviet polemics made inner-Party divergencies gradually surface again over appraisal of the situation and guidance of work. The Party met new twists and turns in its exploration of China's own road for building socialism. The 10th Plenary Session of the 8th CPC Central Committee In August 1962, the Central Committee held a meeting on work at Beidaihe. Originally, the topic had been discussion of the work in agriculture, commerce and other fields, including the 601 question of fixing farm output quotas to the household. However, right at the start, Mao Zedong raised the problems of classes, the general situation, and contradictions for discussion. These topics also became the major content of the 10th Plenary Session of the CPC 8th Central Committee held in Beijing in September. At both the Beidaihe Meeting and the 10th Plenary Session, Mao Zedong made speeches in which he criticized Khrushchov's ideas in the Soviet Union and discussed the questions of classes and class struggle in China. He regarded differences in understanding within the Party as the reflection of class struggle, and opinions differing from his own, but which in fact, conformed fairly well with objective conditions, as indications of Right opportunism; that is, revisionism. All this he denounced as a &quot;foul wind blowing towards individual farming&quot; and &quot;reversal of previous verdicts.&quot; Now some people see the situation as entirely dark, he said. They are ideologically confused, have lost confidence, and fail to see the brightness, therefore concluding that socialism is no good and that individual farming is the only choice. The higher up the wind swept, the stronger it blew. Mao criticized Deng Zihui and others who supported the policy of fixing farm output quotas to the household as representing the well-to-do middle peasants who wished to go in for private farming, and even standing by the side of landlords, rich peasants and the capitalist class in opposing socialism. The recent tendency to reverse previous verdicts was not correct, he added. The cases arising in the campaign against Right deviation in 1959 could not be reversed in one gust of wind. At that time, Peng Dehuai had handed over a lengthy letter appealing to the Central Committee. Mao Zedong considered it an action to reverse previous verdicts, adding that Peng could not be rehabilitated. During the plenary session, Kang Sheng asserted that the novel Liu Zhidan was written to &quot;overturn Gao Gang's case,&quot; which received the support of Mao Zedong. Xi Zhongxun and others who had stood by the work were called an &quot;anti-Party group&quot; out to redress Gao Gang's case. (Of course, criticism of the novel is permissible, but that kind of political analysis and repudiation was groundless.) The session thus decided to set up two commissions for making separate inquiries into the cases of Peng Dehuai and Xi Zhongxun. After the session, Deng Zihui was dismissed from his position as minister of the central committee department of agricultural work. The reform to fix farm output quotas to the household on an experimental basis was thus once again cracked down on. With this, the work of rehabilitating &quot;Right opportunists&quot; came to an end. Those who preferred suggestions to reexamine and rehabilitate &quot;Rightists&quot; who carried out the work on a trial basis were beat back amidst censures of their &quot;extreme recklessness.&quot; &quot;The 10th Plenary Session of the CPC 8th Central Committee pointed out that throughout the historical stage of proletarian revolution and proletarian dictatorship and as well as the whole historical stage of transition from capitalism to communism (which needs several decades, or even a much longer period), there exists class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and struggle between the socialist road and the capitalist road.&quot; This sentence in the communique was written by Mao Zedong himself. On the questions of the class struggle and the danger of restoration of capitalism, he said, from now on, we must remind ourselves of this every year, every month and every day so that &quot;we can retain a relatively sober understanding of this problem and have a Marxist-Leninist line.&quot; Thus this important, yet complicated problem concerning how to understand and deal with class struggle in socialist society was once again put before the whole Party in a serious, yet very simplistic way. After basic completion of the socialist transformation of private ownership of the means of production, besides the external enemy's invasions and subversions, internally in socialist society, class struggle will continue within certain limits for a long time, and can even become sharp under certain conditions. This is an important fact. It was proved by the attack launched by an extremely small number of Rightists in 1957. It was further proved by the emergence of speculation and profiteering, graft and theft, sabotage by hostile elements and the appearance of &quot;restoration records&quot; written by a small number of landlords during the period of economic recession and readjustment. It is quite necessary to face 603 the reality of class struggle, handle it correctly, and acquire a sober understanding of the problem. At the same time, we must understand clearly that even though class struggle exists in certain areas we should not widen and absolutize it. In 1957, as the scope of the anti-Rightist struggle widened, it was asserted that the struggle between the two classes and between the two roads would remain the principal contradiction throughout the entire stage of transition prior to the completion of socialism (estimated at that time to be more than ten years). This was certainly both in practice and in theory, failure to keep a clear head. In 1959, at the Lushan Meeting, struggle against the Right deviation was also regarded as class struggle within the Party, and as a kind of struggle which would continue for at least twenty years, even possible for half a century. At the 10th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee, the criticism of Peng Dehuai, Xi Zhongxun and Deng Zihui was regarded as a struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. A completely wrong judgement was passed on the nature of this matter. Then came a new assertion that the period of transition with class struggle as the principal contradiction would continue right up until the higher stage of communism is reached. The period would be longer than several decades, possibly one hundred years, or several hundred years. This conclusion was even more arbitrary and less clear-minded. Not long after, the assertion was defined as the Party's &quot;basic theory and basic practice&quot; and during the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; it came to be called &quot;the Party's basic line in the whole historical stage of socialism.&quot; Just as &quot;Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China&quot; pointed out, at the 10th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee, Mao Zedong &quot;widened and absolutized the class struggle, which exists only within certain limits in socialist society, and carried forward the viewpoint he had advanced after the anti-Rightist struggle in 1957 that the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie remained the principal contradiction in our society.&quot; This indicates that the viewpoint of the widening of the class struggle had become further systematized, and served as the theoretical preparation for further escalation of the Party's &quot;Left&quot; deviationist mistakes. When the 10th Plenary Session came to end, Liu Shaoqi expressed full support for Mao's theoretical viewpoints and analysis of the situation. At the same time, in view of the fact that the criticism of Peng Dehuai's &quot;Right opportunism&quot; within the whole Party after the Lushan Meeting in 1959 had hampered the work to correct &quot;Left&quot; mistakes that would have continued in their actual work, Liu Shaoqi proposed that the situation concerning criticism of Peng, Xi and Deng at the 10th plenary session be passed on only to high-ranking Party cadres, not to cadres at the lower levels. The Central Committee adopted his proposal. Mao Zedong also said, do not relax economic work on account of the stress on class struggle. We should &quot;give work the priority.&quot; The plenary session discussed and passed several resolutions concerning consolidation of the collective economy to develop agricultural production and commercial work. The session also passed a revised draft of sixty articles on the people's communes, and decided to continue implementation of the eight-character principle for readjusting the national economy. After the 10th Plenary Session of the Party's 8th Central Committee, a complicated situation arose in the Party's and nation's work. On the one hand, politically, the &quot;Left&quot; mistake of widening class struggle grew steadily more serious. On the other hand, the task for economic readjustment and restoration basically continued as scheduled, and was successfully fulfilled by 1965. The two factors were mutually contradictory, but the contradiction was temporarily controlled within definite limits. &quot;Four Clean-Ups&quot; and &quot;Five- Anti&quot; Movements, and Criticism in Political and Ideological Spheres After the 10th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee, the Party Central Committee decided to launch a widespread socialist education movement and wage a large-scale class struggle in the cities and countryside. At a meeting of the Party Central Committee held in February 1963, Mao Zedong introduced the experiences summed up by Hunan and Hebei provinces and other places, and advanced the 605 notion that &quot;once class struggle is grasped, all problems will be solved.&quot; A decision was made to launch a socialist education movement in rural areas to clear up accounts, warehouses, property and work-points (known as the &quot;four clean-ups&quot;) and a &quot;five-anti&quot; movement in cities against corruption and theft, speculation and profiteering, extravagance and waste, decentralism, and bureaucracy. In May, Mao Zedong himself in Hangzhou directed and worked out The Draft Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Certain Problems in Our Present Rural Work (known as the First Ten-Point Decision). The decision's estimate of the domestic political situation was overly serious, considering that serious, sharp class struggles had surfaced in current Chinese society. The &quot;four clean-ups&quot; and the &quot;five-anti&quot; movements are &quot;revolutionary socialist struggles to attack and smash the furious attack launched by capitalist forces.&quot; The decision urged various localities to train cadres and make on-the-spot experiments in preparation for the widespread socialist education movement. In September, in the light of some questions arising in the experiments, the Party Central Committee formulated &quot;The Draft Regulations on Some Specific Policies in the Socialist Education Movement in the Rural Area&quot; (known as the Second Ten-Point Decision). Based on fully affirming the First Ten-Point Decision, the Second TenPoint Decision clearly defined the principle of &quot;taking class struggle as the key link.&quot; This is a principle of &quot;Left&quot; deviation. However, the regulations also stipulated relatively correct specific policies on uniting more than 95 percent of cadres and masses and relying on organizations and cadres at the grassroots level. From the winter of 1963 to the spring of 1964, the &quot;four clear-ups&quot; movement was carried out in a large number of rural communes and brigades throughout the country, and the &quot;five-anti&quot; movement was in its trial stage in a small number of cities. After the autumn of 1963, the polemics between the Chinese and Soviet Parties grew fiercer by the day. Under the circumstances, Mao Zedong held that revisionism had already appeared within our Party. The correct proposition on rural work, which Deng Zihui and others had advocated, was epitomized as san zi yi bao (the extension of plots for private use, the extension of free markets, the increase of small enterprises with sole responsibility for their own profits or losses, and the fixing of output quotas based on the individual household) and was regarded as a &quot;revisionist domestic programme.&quot; In the spring of 1962, Wang Jiaxiang, head of the International Liaison Department of the Central Committee, suggested to the central committee that to gain time for overcoming difficulties and speeding up construction, it is necessary to strive for a relative relief of tension in foreign relations; in the struggle with the United States, the Soviet Union and India, careful consideration should be given to tactics; in the field of foreign assistance, we should be realistic and act within our capability. The general spirit of these suggestions was correct, and as to making suggestions to the central committee, this was in complete conformity with organizational principles. But these suggestions were distortedly generalized as san he yi shao (liquidation of the struggle against imperialism, the reactionaries and modern revisionism, and reduction of assistance and support to the revolutionary struggle of other peoples) and regarded as a &quot;revisionist international programme.&quot; Many suggestions on a united front made by Li Weihan, head of the United Front Department of the Central Committee were also criticized as &quot;capitulation to the bourgeoisie.&quot; Both Wang and Li were severely criticized as &quot;revisionists in the Party&quot; and dismissed from their positions. The &quot;four clean-ups&quot; and &quot;five-anti&quot; movements were looked upon as important strategic measures in fighting against revisionism, preventing revisionism and digging out the domestic roots of revisionism. In the movements, some units conducting on-thespot experiments came up with material describing examples of the &quot;class enemy usurping leadership&quot; or cadres involved in &quot;peaceful transition&quot; (i.e. to capitalism). In May and June of 1964, Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi made a further estimate that leadership in roughly one-third of the grassroots units in the country was not in our hands, but in the hands of the enemy and their allies. With this in mind, the central committee, under the direction of Liu Shaoqi, revised the Second Ten-Point Decision. 607 In it the domestic situation was grossly exaggerated and even further out of keeping with the actual circumstances, and it was asserted that the enemy was trying to entice and corrupt the cadres that &quot;establishing a dual counter-revolutionary political power&quot; was the &quot;principal form adopted by the enemy against us, and that &quot;the current movement is a large-scale mass movement that is more extensive, more complicated and more deep-going than the land reform movement.&quot; It was decided that &quot;the whole movement is to be led by work teams,&quot; that is, organizations and cadres at grassroots level were to be put aside. Liu Shaoqi also urged sending large numbers of work teams to concentrate forces for a battle of annihilation, and using the work methods of the land reform movement, such as visiting poor peasants, showing concern for them and striking roots among the commune members. The central committee continuously transmitted ^documents which later were proved to be wrong, such as the &quot;Report on Taking Back Leadership of the Baiyin Nonferrous Metal Company &quot; submitted jointly by the Gansu Provincial Party Committee and the Party Leadership Group of the Ministry of Metallurgical Industry, the &quot;Report on the Struggle to Seize Back Power in the Xiaozhan Area,&quot; submitted by the Tianjin Municipal Party Committee and a document on summarizing experience m the socialist education movement of the Taoyuan Production Bridge of Funing County in Hebei Province, all of which stressed the struggle to seize power. Because many local cadres had doubts and resentments, the central committee stressed that the major danger then was &quot;Right deviation,&quot; urging cadres at prefectura and county levels to criticize fear of &quot;Left,&quot; but not of Right ideas. Therefore, in the second half of 1964, &quot;Left deviation developed a step further. From the latter part of 1964 to early 1965, the Central Committee held its working conference. Mao Zedong presided over it and worked out &quot;Some Current Questions Raised in the Socialist Education Movement in the Rural Areas (i.e., the 23-Point cument). The document, affirming that most of our cadres were good or fairly good, stipulated that we should free them as quickly as possible from being examined and gradually realize the &quot;three-way combination&quot; representing the masses, cadres and work team. The work method we advocated was to take the mass line, and not create an aura of mystery or adopt the &quot;human sea&quot; tactics that smacked of the military. The results of the &quot;four clean-ups&quot; movement were to be seen in doing the work of construction well, and raising production should be one of the criteria of how well the movement is being conducted. These regulations partially corrected the overly &quot;Left&quot; practices which influenced various localities while Liu Shaoqi was directing the &quot;four clean-ups&quot; work during the second half of 1964. However, the 23-Point Document unduly emphasized that the nature of the movement was to solve the contradiction between socialism and capitalism, pointing out that &quot;this movement targets the Party persons in power taking the capitalist road.&quot; (Later, this became the major slogan of the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot;) Some, such as the Party persons in power were out in the open, others were behind the scenes; some of the people supporting the Party persons in power were at the lower levels, others were in higher levels. There were even some people working in provincial departments and the central organs who opposed socialism. Mao Zedong wrote instructions in inner-Party documents, pointing out that the leaders taking the capitalist road were &quot;bad cadres of the bureaucratcapitalist class.&quot; They &quot;have become or are becoming bourgeois elements who suck the blood of the workers.&quot; &quot;The bureaucrat class on the one hand and the working class and the poor and lower-middle peasants on the other are two bitterly antagonistic classes.&quot; The spearhead of the struggle was thus pointed at Party leaders at various levels. This served to develop &quot;Left&quot; deviationist error of broadening class struggle to a new stage, that is, a stage of so-called &quot;class struggle&quot; created artificially, arbitrarily and systematically. According to the provisions of the &quot;23-Point Document,&quot; the socialist education movement in both the cities and rural areas should be called in short the &quot;four clean-ups&quot; movement (i.e., four clean-ups in the political, economic, organizational and ideological fields). By the spring of 1966, the &quot;four clean-ups&quot; movement had been conducted in about one-third of the counties 609 and people's communes in China's countryside, and in about 3.9 oercent of the nation's total state-owned industrial enterprises and communications departments. As for the rest, such as the financial, trade, cultural and educational departments, the &quot;four cleanups&quot; movement had been conducted as on-the-spot experiments in only a few units. The socialist education movement in both the cities and rural areas, which had been carried out for three years and more, played a positive role in correcting unacceptable behavior among cadres such as grabbing more than their share, issuing mandatory orders, bullying people and oppressing the masses, as well as many shortcomings in management of the collective economy. It was also useful in cracking down on graft, embezzlement, speculation and profiteering, and in checking unhealthy activities tending to foster feudal superstitions^ But due to &quot;taking class struggle as the key link,&quot; many problems differing in nature were regarded as class struggle or as reflections of the class struggle within the Party. This led to confusing the two different types of contradictions and caused many cadres and ordinary people to suffer under attacks which should not have been made against them. Some correct policies and measures for helping to enliven the rural economy, develop farm production and improve peasants' living standards could not be carried out well because more often than not they would be censured as a &quot;capitalist tendency&quot; or a &quot;capitalist tail.&quot; Nevertheless, this movement was conducted only in some areas under unified leadership, in stages and in groups. Moreover, certain deviations arising in the movement were corrected, thus limiting and alleviating to some extent the negative aspects of the movement By and large, industrial and agricultural production had not been adversely affected nationwide, and no widespread social chaos eVeintthleideological sphere, the criticism and struggle were also aggravated. As early as in the autumn of 1962 Jiang Qmg censured a new kunqu opera Li Huimang as a ghost play a ghost appears on the stage as a character) incompatible with socialism. In May 1963, Jiang Qing organized some people to write articles criticizing Li Huimang and former articles praising the opera. This created a tense atmosphere in literary and art circles. In December 1963, Mao Zedong wrote these comments: &quot;Problems abound in all forms of art such as the drama, ballads, music, the fine arts, the dance, the cinema, poetry and literature, and the people involved are numerous; in many departments very little has been achieved so far in socialist transformation.&quot; &quot;Isn't it absurd that many Communists are enthusiastic about promoting feudal and capitalist art, but not socialist art?&quot; He also said on many occasions that the Ministry of Culture was a &quot;ministry of emperors, kings, generals and ministers,&quot; a &quot;ministry of scholars and beauties,&quot; and a &quot;ministry of foreign dead people.&quot; The Ministry of Culture and the literary and art circles immediately organized a rectification campaign to study these instructions. In June 1964, after reading the &quot;Report on the Situation in the Rectification Campaign Carried Out in the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the Associations Under It (Draft),&quot; Mao Zedong wrote an instruction: &quot;In the last fifteen years these associations, most of their publications (it is said that a few are good), and by and large the people in them (that is, not everybody) have not carried out the policies of the Party. They have acted as high and mighty bureaucrats, have not gone to the workers, peasants and soldiers and have not reflected the socialist revolution and socialist construction. In recent years, they have slid right down to the brink of revisionism. Unless they remold themselves in real earnest, at some future date they are bound to become groups like the Hungarian Petofi Club.&quot; At that time, in the sphere of literature and art, there really existed some unhealthy phenomena. It is necessary to point out the problems in this field and solve them by the means of normal criticism, strengthening leadership and improving work. However, Mao Zedong's two written instructions did not objectively appraise the whole situation in literary and art circles. Hence this led to launching mass movements and political struggles to settle problems in culture and art. In cultural departments, culture and art units and in nationwide periodicals and newspapers, Li Huiniang, Xie Yaohuan and other operas, Jiangnan in the North, Early Spring and other films, and many theoretical views on literature 611 and art were subjected to open political criticism. From the summer of 1964 onward, this kind of criticism was expanded to academic circles. A number of representative figures and theoret ical viewpoints in the spheres of philosophy, economics and history and all other academic spheres were vigorously criticized in' research institutes, schools of higher learning, and publications throughout the country. Among the criticized works, many were excellent or rather good. Some had shortcomings, but were groundlessly criticized as having anti-Party and anti-socialist political problems. Among the theoretical viewpoints which were criticized, some were correct, while the others could be discussed. In either case, it was also groundless to criticize them as ant Party and anti-socialist political problems. Among the represent ative figures criticized, most were important leading cad«S' &quot; complied writers and scholars who were Party members in cultural and academic spheres. After being criticized, many of them were dismissed from their leading posts, or unable to &quot;ng^e SSl of 1964, Mao Zedong held a forum Soon'later, on many occasions, he issued written directive^nd made speeches, advancing many extreme proposals for reform ^ With°criticism intensified in the spheres of literature, art science and education, the large majority m the whole continge involved were once again called &quot;bourgeois intellectuals The erroneous and aggravated criticism carried out in the ideological sphere trampled on the policy of letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought ^nteni Tins brought about a tense atmosphere among the broad tanks of intellectuals who were thrown into a state of extreme anxiety an nervousness, [t impaired their enthusiasm and hindered the development of cultural, scientific and educational undeitakmgs^ At the lime when &quot;Left&quot; deviations criticisms were growing increasingly exacerbated, Deng Xiaoping made efforts trying to control the' situation. In March 1965, the Secretariat erf : the CPC Central Committee held a meeting on correcting toe Lett deviation which arose in the socialist education movement carried out in experimentation at Beijing University. In speaking of the current situation in ideological and cultural spheres, Deng Xiaoping said: Now people dare not write articles, and the theatres put on plays only about soldiers and fighting. As to the cinemas, this film can't be shown, that film can't be shown. What film can you find that's ever so perfect? Those &quot;revolutionaries&quot; want to achieve fame by criticizing others and try to climb up by stepping on other people's shoulders. He proposed that such practices should be stopped at once. In September 1965, Peng Zhen in a speech at a national meeting of directors of cultural departments and bureaus under the Ministry of Culture, also attempted to ease the tense atmosphere in literary, art and academic circles by leading the criticism into the orbit of argument and reasoning. However, the developing situation could not be held up for long. In November 1965, Yao Wenyuan's article &quot;Comment on the New Historical Opera ‘Hai Rui Dismissed From Office'&quot; was published. It stirred up an even more erroneous, violent tide of criticism, and which acted as a fuse touching off the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; Three Years of Economic Readjustment from 1963 to 1965 After the 10th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee of the CPC, although &quot;Left&quot; deviationist mistakes had developed further, they had not yet come to dominate the situation countrywide before the launching of &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; The major attention of the Party and the people throughout the country was focused on readjustment of the national economy, while restoring and developing production. In the first half of 1963, the overall situation of the national economy took a favourable turn. With this, a mood of impatience began to gain ground, the feeling was that the task for national economic readjustment had been basically completed, therefore we could now turn to speeding up national economic development. In September the same year, the Party Central Committee made an objective analysis of the current economic situation; the conclusion was that agricultural production had not yet been restored to the level of 1957; some 613 nroblems had not been solved properly such as imbalance m the structure of industry, poor quality of products and low productive efficiency; many problems remained in enterprise manag ment as well. Therefore, the central committee stipulated that from 1963, three more years should be spent in continuo implementation of the principle of &quot;readjustment consolidation, filling out and raising standards&quot; as a transitional stage between the second and third Five-Year Plans. That is to say 1962 was the last year of the Second Five-Year Plan, and the .I^tathe Year Plan would be put off and would begin from 1966. In the three years of transitional stage, the readjustment would be conducted under conditions of the basic completion of he largescale reduction and retreat of the national economy. major tasks and targets were: Agricultural production should reach or exceed the level of 1957; industrial production should be around 50 percent higher than the level of 1957; ^ajor relations in the national economy would be basically balanced on the new base of 1962; the managerial and administrative work f various departments would be led onto a normal path of development' enterprise labour productivity and the economizing of raw Tnd processing materials and fuel should reach or -rpass former top records. To realize the above-mentioned tasks and targets, was imperative to implement the general principle of developing the national economy with agriculture as the base and industry as the leading factor. The economic plan should be drawn up according to the order of first solving the problems of food clothing and daily necessities, then strengthening basic industry, while giving consideration to the development of national defence and breakthroughs in top-level science „ln.ri_ ln the three years of continuous readjustment, some experi menu were made on reform of the economic system Jwo reform measures merit attention. One was the trial establishment of industrial and transport trusts. Many enterprises that produced and managed similar products were integrated into special corporations They were managed according to economic laws rather ton by administrative means. In March 1963, on the motion of Liu Shaoqi, China's first trust— the China Tobacco and Cigar Company— was set up on a trial basis. Subsequently, a dozen or so national, provincial and municipal trusts were founded, thus accumulating experiences for future reforms. The other measure was reform of the labour system. In 1957, Liu Shaoqi advocated the idea of employing fewer regular workers, but more temporary workers who were both workers and peasants. In 1958, he further advocated two labour systems and two educational systems: one was a full-time working system and full-time schooling systemthe other was a work-study, or farm-study labour system and educational system. In 1964, Liu Shaoqi again made the above proposals, which were confirmed by the central committee. Since then, the labour system of employing both permanent workers and temporary workers was gradually introduced on a nationwide scale. I he work-study, or farm-study programme was carried out in some experimental units. After May 1964, as the United States and the Soviet Union were intensifying their military threats against China, the problem of war preparations in economic work became an important item on the Party's agenda. Large-scale construction of the ThirdLine Region (strategic rear) in southwest China was laid out. To help promote it, the central committee decided to carry out the principle of &quot;stopping&quot; (all new projects), &quot;reducing&quot; (projects under construction), &quot;moving&quot; (some enterprises and institutions to the Third-Line Region), &quot;separating&quot; (some enterprises and institutions into two, with some of them moving to the Third-Line Region) and &quot;helping&quot; (enterprises in the Third-Line Region with technical force and equipment from enterprises of the same category in the First-Line and Second-Line regions). Actually, this was another large-scale readjustment of the national economy. To consider economic construction from the angle of war preparation involved not only the re-distribution of industry Mao Zedong advanced the slogan: &quot;Be prepared against war, be prepared against natural disasters, and do everything for the people ; this was especially aimed to develop agriculture and mobilize local enthusiasm for construction. He said: &quot;First, be prepared against war. The people and army must first solve the 615 problem of food and clothing, then they can fight a war. Otherwise, firearms would be useless. Secondly, be prepared against natural disasters. Once a famine year comes, and localities have no stores of grain, cotton or edible oil, they have to rely on assistance from other provinces for support. It's not a permanent solution. Once we have a war, we would have many more difficulties. No matter which province is involved, local national disasters are unavoidable, to say nothing of several provinces combined. Third, the slate should not accumulate too much. We should give consideration to sections of the population who still haven't enough food and clothing; furthermore, we should consider storing grain locally among the people in preparation, for war and natural, disasters; and thirdly, consider accumulation of funds by localities for use in expanded reproduction.&quot; He also said that we have had several years' experience of draining the pond to get all the fish (referring to high purchase quotas), with many localities unable to maintain simple reproduction in famine years. We should take warning from this. Preparing against war and natural disasters and doing everything for the people is at the same time the best method for serving the state according to the old saying that if the common people have ample food and clothing, how could the monarch be hard up?29 After five years of readjustment between 1961 and 1965, the relation between industry and agriculture, the relations within industry and the relation between accumulation and expenditure were brought into relative balance. Industry had increased its ability to support agriculture. Enterprise managerial levels and economic results were somewhat improved. On this basis, industrial and agricultural production was revived and developed; market supply was improved; revenue and expenditure were balanced; prices nationwide were stable, and the market was brisk. At a time when the task of readjusting the national economy was in the main accomplished, the 1st Session of the 3rd National People's Congress met during the end of 1964 and the beginning of 1965. At the session, Zhou Enlai announced that the national economy as a whole would soon enter a new stage of development and that China would begin to carry out the ihird Five-Year Plan beginning from 1966. The Chinese people should redouble their efforts to make China a socialist power with modern agriculture, industry, national defence, and science and technology. This was the first time the Party had taken such a solemn occasion to call on the people of the whole nation to realize the task of the four modernizations. But owing to the outbreak of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; this great task could not be implemented according to plan. The ten years from the 1st Session of the 8th Central Committee of CPC to the eve of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; (1956-66) witnessed a tortuous development in the Party's exploration of how to build socialism in China. In the ten years of large-scale socialist construction, although China suffered serious setbacks, it nevertheless won great achievements as well. In one year and more following 1956, efforts were made to continue carrying out the original tasks set in the First Five-Year Plan (1953-57), and to surpass them. It was then followed by the Second Five-Year Plan period (1958-62). However, the five years were marked by three years of the anomalous (i.e., casting aside scheduled tasks) &quot;big leap forward&quot; and a serious economic recession brought on by it. To overcome the difficulties, the Party and the Chinese people waged an arduous struggle. In the latter two years of the Second Five-Year Plan (1961-62), China went in for readjustment of the national economy. Then followed three years (1963-65) of continuous readjustment. This was regarded as a transitional stage between the Second Five-Year Plan and the Third Five-Year Plan (beginning from 1966). The readjustment, resulting in smooth economic development, required a total of five years. The achievements scored in various fields were notable. 617 Taking 1962 as the base period (which marked the lowest point in the readjustment process), in the three years from 1963 to 1965 the average annual total output value of industry and agriculture increased 15.7 percent; the average annual total outnut value of agriculture rose 11 percent; and the average annual total output value of industry went up 17.9 percent. While m the First Five-Year Plan period, the rates of growth in the three fields were, respectively, 10.9 percent, 4.5 percent and 18 percent. Considering that the base numbers in 1962 were very low, economic growth in the following three years of the readjustment period was restorative in nature; therefore, it cannot be t ully compared with that in the First Five-Year Plan. With 1957 as the base period, in the eight years between 1958 and 1965, investment in capital construction reached 93.8 billion yuan, with which 531 large and medium-sized projects were completed. Total industrial and agricultural output value increased by 59.9 percent. Of this, total agricultural output value rose by 9.9 percent, and total industrial output value by 98.1 percent. In major industrial products, steel increased 2.3 fold, to 12.23 million tons; raw coal 77 percent, to 232 million tons; electricity 3.5 fold, to 67.6 billion kwh; crude oil7.75 fold, to 11.31 million tons; and synthetic ammonia 8.7 fold, to 1.484 million tons. In the major agricultural products, the output of cotton reached 2.098 million tons, up 27 9 percent; grain 194.55 billion kg, close to 195.05 billion kg in 1957 (original estimates of grain output stood at 185 billion kg, not including the output of soybean.); ups and downs in the year of big leap forward&quot; lowered the average growth rate during the period from 1958 to 1965. However, due to the painstaking efforts made by the Chinese people nationwide, agricultural production was restored at a fairly quick paced and even increased in some fields. Industrial production rose in every branch, and even showed a considerable growth in some fields. The &quot;big leap forward&quot; inflicted tremendous damage and waste on China's industrial and agricultural production and construction. However, these years still saw development. There was the beginning of an overall arrangement for industrial construction for the most advanced branches of scientific research, and national defence, construction of water conservancy works, mechanization of agriculture, and for many other projects in modernization. Statistics showed that from 1949, the year of the founding of New China, to 1 964, over two-thirds of the total large and medium-sized projects in various departments of heavy industry were put into operation in the three years of the &quot;big leap forward.&quot; The growth of steelmaking capability in the three years accounted for 36.2 percent of the total increase in steel-making capability from 1949 to 1979; coal mining capability made up 29.6 percent and cotton spinning spindles amounted to 25.9 percent. After carrying out the principle of readjustment, consolidation, filling out and raising standards, newly-begun work projects, and capacity added to old, made steady gains. In the development of industry, the nation's total industrial fixed assets in 1966 were four times that of 1956. In the iron and steel industry, besides further development of the Anshan iron and steel base, the largest in China, two big iron and steel bases, Wuhan and Baotou in the interland, as well as a number of large and medium-sized iron and steel plants in other parts of China, were also built in the ten years. In addition, the construction of a strategic rear iron and steel base in Panzhihua of Sichuan also started in this period. In the machine-building industry, China was able to manufacture equipment for metallurgical, mining, power and petrochemical industries, as well as to set up factories in the fields of aircraft making, automobile manufacturing and mechanical engineering. China was also able to design and manufacture some kinds of large modern equipment. In 1964, China could independently supply over 90 percent of its major machines and equipment. Industry in support of agriculture had developed considerably. In the ten years, tractors and chemical fertilizers used in the countryside increased by seven fold, and the supply of electricity for the rural areas went up by 71 fold. There was an improvement in the regional distribution in the composition of industrial departments. The most outstanding was the development of the petroleum industry which was vital to China's national economy at that time. In 1959, industrial oil currents were discovered in the area 619 nf Daqing, and in 1960, the most difficult year, the Party Central Committee decided to muster workers, cadres and technicians from various fields to conduct oil prospecting and exploitation on the boundless grasslands. In only one year, they ascertained the area of the oilfield and conducted experimental exploitation. In three years, they built up the largest oil-producing base in China, with an oil output covering two-thirds of the national total. They also made breakthroughs in the geological theory of oil reserves, oil exploitation and oil refining technology. Subsequently, Shengli and Dagang oilfields were also opened up. By 1965 China was self-sufficient in oil. The Chinese people proudly proclaimed: Gone are the days when the Chinese people had to depend on &quot;foreign&quot; oil. The petrochemical industry, closely related to the oil industry, was also gradually built up. In the ten years, a total length of 8,000 km of new railways were built. Of these, the Yingtan-Xiamen, Baotou-Lanzhou, Lanzhou-Haiyan, Lanzhou-Urumqi, Chongqing-Guiyang, and Guiyang-Liuzhou railways were completed and opened to trattic. The Chengdu-Kunming, Guiyang-Kunming, Liuzhou-Guiyang and Xiangfan-Chongqing railways were speeding up construction. Apart from Tibet, various provinces and autonomous regions were linked by local railways. For the first time, Fujian and Oinghai provinces, as well as Ningxia and Xinjiang autonomous regions, saw railways running through their land. 1 he proposal and plan for building the Third-Line Region gave an important impetus to railway construction. In the ten years, scientific and technical achievements were outstanding. Many specific requirements in the Twelve-Year Long-Range National Plan for Development of Science and Technology worked out in 1956 were fulfilled. In 1963, China went ahead in advance to work out another ten-year national plan tor the development of science and technology (1963-7,.). Mao Zedong gave instructions in regard to drawing up the new plan: The battle for science and technology must definitely be I ought and moreover, must be fought well. Without science and technology, the productive forces can not be increased. The achievements made in the fields of science and technology for national defense were particularly striking. The work in these fields, presided over by Nie Rongzhen, started in 1958. In 1961, the Central Committee made an important decision to speed up the development of scientific research and industry for national defense, with the research and production of atom bombs and guided missiles as the central tasks. In November 1962, the Central Committee established a fifteen-member special commission headed by Zhou Enlai, including Nie Rongzhen and Luo Ruiqing, to be in charge of the research and production involved. Mao Zedong instructed: &quot;Make major efforts for coordination to do the work well.&quot;31 Zhou Enlai devoted a great deal of energy to this task. After strenuous efforts made by the broad masses of scientists, technicians, commanders and fighters of the People's Liberation Army, as well as by workers, staff members and cadres of concerned departments, China successfully exploded its first atom bomb on October 16, 1964. This was a concentrated expression of the new level in science and technology reached by China at that time. This brilliant achievement attained through the policy of self-reliance effectively broke the nuclear monopoly and defused the nuclear blackmail of the superpowers and raised China's international status. The Chinese government stated: China has consistently advocated the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons. China is forced to conduct nuclear tests and develop nuclear weapons for defense and for protection of the Chinese people from nuclear threat. The Chinese government hereby solemnly declares that China will never at any time or under any circumstances be the first to use nuclear weapons. In the field of basic sciences, in 1965 China first produced synthetic crystalline bovine insulin, taking the leading position in the world. In the ten years, educational undertakings forged rapidly ahead. From 1957 to 1966, graduates from institutions of higher education totalled 1.4 million and graduates of technical secondary schools numbered 2. 1 1 million, or respectively, 4.9 times and 2.4 times that of the period from 1950 to 1956. After readjustment, educational quality was improved greatly. 621 particularly worth notice was that these economic and cultura achievements were attained under conditions in which China was suffering serious economic difficulties at home and facing wai threats and tremendous pressure from abroad (capitalist countries had been enforcing a blockade and embargo on China for a long time and the Soviet Union had torn up contracts and withdrawn its assistance). During the period, China also paid oil all its debts to the Soviet Union (mainly debts incurred lor munitions during the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea). Upholding the policies of maintaining independence and self-reliance, the Chinese people and the Chinese Communists braved the foreign pressure and overcame the difficulties. Jhe heroic spirit of the Chinese people should go down unrivaled m history It is in this period that shining examples emerged, such as that of Jiao Yulu, Lankao County Party Secretary of Henan Province, who displayed the spirit of serving the people wholeheartedly and giving his all till his heart stopped beating; Wang Jinxi, a Communist oil worker at the Daqing Oilfield, who came to be known was as &quot;Iron Man&quot; for his hard work and spirit of fearing no difficulties; the Communist commune members of Dazhai Production Brigade of Xiyang County, Shanxi Province, who together with the local people, demonstrated the spirit of persisting in self-reliance in their arduous efforts to prevail over natural disaster and to conduct construction and production in farming; Lei Feng, a Party member and PLA soldier, who displayed a selfless Communist spirit. The Party called on all cadres, Party members and broad masses of people to learn from them. This became a tremendous spiritual force for building socialism^ Just as the &quot;Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China pointed out in expounding the achievements made in the ten years- &quot;The material and technical basis for modernizing our country was largely established during that period. It was also largely in the same period that the core personnel for our work in the economic, cultural and other spheres were trained and that they gained their experience. This was the principal aspect of the Party's work in that period.&quot; In ten years of exploration, there were two trends of development in the Party's guiding ideology. One trend was correct or relatively correct. That is to say, the Party had developed some correct or relatively correct theoretical viewpoints, principles and policies, and accumulated some correct or relatively correct practical experiences in its exploration of a road of its own for building socialism. This correct trend was in force mainly during the period of exploration lasting over a year before and after the 1st Session of the 8th Party Central Committee held in 1956, the eight- or nine-month exploration before the 1959 Lushan Meeting, and the five-year exploration for readjustment after the winter of 1 960. The other trend was erroneous. That is to say, the Party had formed some erroneous theoretical viewpoints, policies, ideas and practical experiences in the exploration of its own road for building socialism. In thinking back on the Party's history, Deng Xiaoping said on many occasions, &quot;From 1957 on, China was plagued by ‘Left' ideas, which gradually became dominant.&quot;32 He was referring mainly to the &quot;big leap forward,&quot; which had led to overanxiety for quick economic results and the &quot;Left&quot; deviationist mistakes from the broadening of the anti-Rightist struggle, to the &quot;anti-Right deviation&quot; fight at the Lushan Meeting, and to the magnifying of the class struggle after the 10th Plenary Session of the 8th Party Central Committee. Just what is correct needs to be analysed; so does what is incorrect. Errors are often caused by going beyond the limits of truth. As to the speed of socialist economic construction, we should strive for a possible, effective, sustained, stable and balanced high speed. This is necessary and correct. If we go beyond limits and subjectively seek rash advance, we will go astray and do great damage to economic construction. On the question of class struggle under socialist conditions, it is necessary and correct to attach importance to the existence of class struggle in certain spheres and to maintain vigilance against the danger of peaceful evolution and revisionism. It would be extremely erroneous if we failed to see the class struggle and its dangers. To exceed the limits of truth by broadening and absolutizing 623 class struggle which does exist in certain spheres or by virtually fabricating class struggle, is wrong and harmful. Equally detn mental is overestimating the practical possibility of peacefu &quot; olution in a particular setting, as well as opposing many correct ideas and policies by dubbing them revisionist. At the same time we must see that in the ten years of exploration, the correct trend and the erroneous trend did not each separately go their own way but were often interspersed and intertwined. They co-existed not only in the process of the whole Party's exploration, but also in the developmental process of the individual's cognition. Sometimes this trend got the upper hand in the wh°l® Part^' &quot;&quot;et,meS that trend, or different trends co-existed in different spheres. Ten years' development and accumulation of &quot;Left deviationist errors eventually prevailed for a time over the correct trend of development to bring on the launching of the ^cultural revo lution.&quot; Of course, the mistakes made before the cultural revolution&quot; cannot be equated with those of the cultural revolution, whether in scope, gravity, or in nature. In 19 7, when speakmg about why it was necessary to launch the cultural revolution, Mao Zedong stressed that it was because all the past struggles launched in the rural areas, factories and literary and art circles, as well as the socialist education movement, &quot;could not solve the problem.&quot; This clearly indicates that the errors which occurred in the struggles before the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; and the errors of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; itself were different in nature. One cannot fail to see the difference between them, just as one cannot fail to see their inner links. The former was the precursor of and preparation for the latter. , , In the ten years, correct and relatively correct trends of development also spread. However, because the correct trend itself was not yet mature or thoroughgoing enough, it was powerless in the end to prevent the erroneous trend from developing further, so that later, on the contrary, it was overwhelmed for a period of time by the development of erroneous trend. But m the long run, the correct trend could not be completely abandoned and destroyed. A considerable part of the correct trend (for example, the Sixty Articles for Agriculture) still played a positive role among the broad sections of cadres and masses during the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; This is one of the reasons why, when the guiding ideology of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; was fundamentally wrong, the broad masses of cadres and people still during the period scored definite achievements in their actual work. More important is the fact that these correct things which had accumulated served as preparation for the subsequent process of correcting the mistakes and the erroneous guiding ideology of the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; Of course, while pointing out this kind of historical sequence, it is necessary also to sec that after things which were in disorder had been set to rights and the policies of reform and opening were in effect, the Party's guiding ideology advanced to a completely new historical eight on the basis of the thorough correction of the error of the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; This new advance, as compared with the correct trend which had grown in the ten years before the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; is much broader and much more profound. It embraces many new creations and new development which never existed before. The two advances cannot be put on a par. The successes and correct things which accumulated during the ten years of construction and exploration were achieved by the Party and the Chinese people through collective struggle. Among the leaders of the Party Central Committee, Mao Zedong undoubtedly played the most important role. Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Chen Y un and Deng Xiaoping all played important roles. Many correct ideas and decisive policies were advanced by Mao Zedong and won the support of the Party Central Committee's collective leadership. With the support of Mao Zedong, other leaders' correct suggestions could also be passed and carried out in practice. Undoubtedly, Mao Zedong should bear major responsibility for the mistakes made in the ten years. It is not only because he was chairman of the Central Committee at that time, but also because he advanced and supported some major erroneous ideas and decisive policies. Sometimes, these even resulted from his personal arbitrariness which impaired the Party s democratic centralism and suppressed relatively more correct ideas. But just as Deng Xiaoping said: &quot;When we talk 625 about mistakes, we should not speak only of Comrade Mao 7edong, for many other leading comrades in the Central Com mittee made mistakes, too. Comrade Mao got carried away when we launched the ‘great leap forward,' but didn't the rest of us go along with him? Neither Comrade Liu Shaoqi nor Comrade Zhou Enlai nor I for that matter objected to it, and Comrade Chen Y un didn't say anything either. We must be fair in regard to these questions and not give the impression that only one individual made mistakes while everybody else was correct, because this doesn't tally with the facts. When the Central Committee makes a mistake, it is the collective rather than a particular individual that should bear the responsibility.&quot;33 In short, in the ten years of construction, whether achievements or failures, were results occurring in the process of Paity s exploration of a road of its own for building socialism. So long as they are correctly summed up, all experiences, whether positive or negative, are the Party's precious treasures.<br /> <br /> === Ten Years of Achievements and Two Development Tendencies in the Exploration ===<br /> <br /> == The &quot;Cultural Revolution&quot;: Ten Years of Nationwide Chaos ==<br /> <br /> === The &quot;Cultural Revolution&quot; Initiated ===<br /> Bv 1966 China had successfully readjusted the national economy had overcome serious economic difficulties, and had begun implementing its Third Five-Year Plan for the development of the national economy. Just at such a time, the cultural revo u tion&quot; look place. It was called &quot;cultural revolution at the time but it was not a revolution at all. Actually, it was an internal disorder which damaged the development of China's socialism. This so-called &quot;great revolution&quot; was initiated and led by Mao Zedong to prevent the restoration of capitalism, maintain the Party's purity and search for China's own socialist road. However, he did not recognize as incorrect the broadening of class struggle during the socialist stage, and he misjudged the political situation of the Party and state. These mistaken ideas had developed to a very serious extent. He confused right and wrong in regard to a series of important theoretical issues and policies. I his led to blurring the distinction between ourselves and the enemy, to the conclusion that revisionism had in fact appeared in the Party central authorities, and that the Party and the state were facing the danger of a capitalist restoration. He held that the four clcan-ups&quot; movement in the rural areas and the &quot;five-anti movement in the cities launched in the past several years, as well as criticism in the idelogical field, had proved ineffective in solving these problems. Only through the form of a &quot;cultural revolution&quot;—mobilizing the broad masses from bottom to top in an open, all-round way—could the dark side in the Party and the state be thoroughly exposed and the power usurped by so-called &quot;persons taking the capitalist road&quot; be taken back. This &quot;great revolution&quot; was entitled &quot;cultural&quot; because it had been started with &quot;criticism&quot; in the cultural field. Mao added that the &quot;great cultural revolution&quot; was in essence a &quot;political revolution.&quot; Because he had misjudged the situation and wrongly applied his theories, policies and methods, things went contrary to his wishes, and moreover created opportunities for conspiratorial activities by Lin Biao, Jiang Qing and others who evinced out-and-out support for Mao's proposals but, in reality, entertained wild ambitions of their own. These careerists used what power they held in the Party Central Committee to flaunt the reddest banner of &quot;revolution,&quot; fan up a fanatic personality cult with Mao Zedong as the idol, and swung the &quot;Left&quot; deviation as far as it could go. They instigated and connived with a batch of opportunists, adventurers and degenerates, stirred up the masses to &quot;made revolution by way of kicking out Party committees.&quot; This raised a relentless, anarchical tide of &quot;down-with-everything&quot; and brought on nationwide chaos, with untold damage to the work of the Party and the state and to normal and social order in general. The most serious setbacks and losses were inflicted on the socialist cause in China since the founding of the People's Republic. Fuse of the &quot;Cultural Revolution&quot; On November 10, 1965, the Wenhui Bao in Shanghai carried Yao Wenyuan's article &quot;Comment on the New Historical Opera Hai Rui Dismissed from Office&quot; This served as the fuse which touched off the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; In February 1965, Jiang Qing who held no post in the Party except that of Mao Zedong's secretary, had gone to Shanghai to meet Zhang Chunqiao, who was then secretary of the Secretariat CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 629 of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee. They organ Yao Wenyuan, a member of the writing group under the Shanghai Municipal Parly Committee to write an article criticizing the olay Hai Rui Dismissed from Office. The whole writing process was conducted in a highly abnormal, secretive atmosphere. In the article Wu Han, a famous historian and a vice-mayor of Beijing at the time, was criticized by name. In 1960, Wu Han had written an opera Hai Rui Dismissed From Office after Mao Zedong had advocated the mentality of Hai Rui, a figure in Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) history. Yao groundlessly insinuated that returning farmland&quot; and &quot;redeeming unjust cases&quot; as mentioned m Hai Km Dismissed From Office alluded to the &quot;tendency to go it alone in agriculture&quot; and the &quot;pressure to reverse correct verdicts that had been criticized back in 1962. On the strength of this imputation lie launched a fierce political attack on the opera, calling it a reflection of the bourgeoisie's struggle against the dictatorship of the proletariat. In fact, the article touched upon a large number of important political differences existing &quot;Jim th leading stratum of the Party Central Committee since 1961, with its range of attack not limited to Wu Han alone. For more than ten days following publication of the article, no newspaper in Beijing, including the People's Daily reprinted it. As to an article published in Shanghai, newspapers elsewhere in China have al ways had the right to decide whether or not to reprint it. However, this instance deepened Mao's suspicions as well as his dissatisfaction with some major leaders in the Beijing Municipal Party Committee and the Party Central Committee. He felt convinced that Peng Zhen, first secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee and mayor of Beijing, was Wu Hans backer behindthe-scenes and that Beijing was an independent kingdom, impenetrable and watertight.&quot; Later, when Beijing newspapers reprinted the article, they treated it as a toptc for academic discussion. Meanwhile, in a talk with a small number of officials Mao said: &quot;The crucial point (of Hai Rui Dismissed From Office) is ‘dismissed from office'; the Emperor Jiajing dismissed Hai Rui from office, and in 1959 we dismissed Peng Dehuai, and Peng Deliuai is ‘Hai Rui.'&quot; These words of Maos added political stringency to the criticism of Hai Rui Dismissed From Office. By early 1966, the criticism had developed into a movement. Ideological and cultural criticism spread widely throughout the circles of historical studies, literature, art, and philosophy. What position and attitude one adopted towards Hai Rui Dismissed From Office (and later towards any propaganda or comments on Hai Rui as well) seemed to have become the only criterion for judging whether he or she was against the Party and socialism or not. On February 3, 1966, Peng Zhen, head of the Cultural Revolution Group established in 1964, held a group meeting at which an &quot;Outline Report on Current Academic Discussion&quot; (later known as &quot;The February Outline&quot;) was worked out. In the Outline they tried to set appropriate restraints on the ultra-left tendency which had already arisen in the academic discussion regarding its nature, principles and objectives, and to keep the movement under the leadership of the Party and within the limits of an academic discussion. They did not agree to turn it into a movement of serious political criticism. The Outline was passed by the Standing Committee members of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee then in Beijing, reported to Mao Zedong in Wuhan, and then on February 12 transmitted to the whole Party. According to the spirit of the Outline, the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee did not agree to publish the so-called &quot;crucial-point&quot; article by Guan Feng and Qi Benyu in criticism of Hai Rui Dismissed From Office. When Jiang Qing saw that the criticism of Hai Rui Dismissed From Office was meeting with resistance, she secured the support of Lin Biao, vice-chairman of the Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee and minister of National Defense, and from February 2 to 20 in Shanghai held a forum on work in literature and art in the armed forces. In its summary, the forum wrote off the tremendous achievements of the revolutionary literature and art since the founding of New China under the leadership of the Party, slandering the literary and art circles as having been &quot;under the dictatorship of a sinister anti-Party and anti-socialist line.&quot; It declared, &quot;We must resolutely carry on a great socialist revolution on the cultural front.&quot; Mao Zedong 631 revised the summary three times, and suggested it be reported, in the name of the Military Commission, to the Party Central Committee for approval. On April 10, it was transmitted to all levels of the Party. The grave political censure in the summary was directed not only against leaders of the literary and art circles, but also against some leaders in the central authorities. The drawing up of the summary also marked the beginning of collusion between Lin Biao and Jiang Qing, each using the other for personal ends. At the end of March, Mao Zedong had talks with Kang Sheng, Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao, one after another; he severely denounced the &quot;February Outline&quot; as wrong, as blurring class lines and as mixing right with wrong; he called the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee the Palace of Hell, where it was necessary to overthrow the king and set the little devils free, adding that the Central Committee Propaganda Department and the Beijing Municipal Party Committee were shielding scoundrels, suppressing the Left and disallowing revolution; if they continued to shield undesirable persons, the Central Committee Propaganda Department, the Beijing Municipal Party Committee and the Cultural Revolution Group should be dissolved. He also said, I have always proposed that if the central organs did harmful things, I would call on local organizations to rebel and launch an offensive against them. After Mao finished speaking, the Secretariat of the Central Committee suspended Peng Zhen from work in April. Around the same time that Hai Rui Dismissed From Office was being criticized, a political frame-up was perpetrated in the army at the instigation of Lin Biao against Luo Ruiqing, member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, vice-premier of the State Council and general chief-of-staff of the People's Liberation Army. Believing the false accusations lodged by Lin Biao and Ye Qun, Mao in November 1965 suggested, &quot;We should be on guard against those who have no faith in giving prominence to politics but feign agreeement with it while spreading eclecticism (that is, opportunism).&quot; Mao's remarks showed that he did not trust Luo Ruiqing. Because of this, Luo was wrongly criticized, and isolated II to undergo investigation on fabricated charges of &quot;usurping military power and opposing the Party.&quot; At this time, Yang Shangkun, alternate member of the Secretariat and director of the General Office of the Central Committee, was transferred on the basis of fabricated charges. Lu Dingyi, member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, vice-premier of the State Council and minister of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee, was also calumniated and forced to stop work. These serious political incidents arising in succession and implicating high-ranking leaders of the state and Party, added to the strident political criticism echoing through the press, shook the people with rousing forces both in and outside the Party, and created a hectic atmosphere of ubiquitous, omnipresent, &quot;class struggle.&quot; This gave people an overwhelming, false impression that revisionism had really appeared in the Central Committee. Two Meetings of the CPC Central Committee Mark All-Round &quot;Launching of the ‘Cultural Revolution&quot;' An enlarged meeting of the CPC Central Committee's Political Bureau held in May 1966 and the 11th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee in August marked the all-round launching of the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; On the 16th of May, the meeting adopted the &quot;Circular of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China&quot; (the &quot;May 16 Circular,&quot; for short), and the session of August passed the &quot;Decisions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution&quot; (for short, the &quot;Sixteen-Article Decision,&quot; a document having sixteen articles). The two documents and the reshuffling of leading organs of the Central Committee put the &quot;Left&quot; deviationist principles of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; in a dominant position in the Central Committee. The &quot;May 1 6 Circular&quot; began with criticism of the &quot;February Outline,&quot; then put forward the problem of representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army and all spheres of culture. The Circular grossly distorted CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 633 the Outline and censured it, stating that it covered up the political nature of the academic criticism, and that it was a revisionist program to prepare public opinion for the restoration of the bourgeoisie. Therefore, the &quot;May 16 Circular&quot; called upon the whole Party to &quot;hold high the great banner of the proletarian cultural revolution, thoroughly expose the reactionary bourgeois stand of those so-called ‘academic authorities' who oppose the Party and socialism, thoroughly criticize and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois ideas in the sphere of academic work, education, journalism, literature, art and publishing, and seize leadership in these cultural spheres. To achieve this, the Circular pointed out, it was necessary at the same time to criticize and repudiate those representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army and all spheres of culture, and to clear them out or transfer some of them to other positions. Above all, we must not entrust these people with the work of leading the cultural revolution.&quot; In light of the assessment that representatives of the bourgeoisie had sneaked into the Party, the government and the army, the circular warned of the danger of a bourgeois restoration, pointing out that &quot;those representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army and all spheres of culture are a bunch of counter-revolutionary revisionists. Once conditions are ripe, they will seize political power and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Some of them we have already seen through, others we have not. Some are still trusted by us and are being trained as our successors, persons like Khrushchov, for example, who are still nestling beside us. Party committees at all levels must pay full attention to this matter.&quot; The circular was a concentrated reflection of Mao Zedong's serious miscalculation of the political situation in the Party and state at that time. The incisive remarks quoted above were all added by Mao himself. He considered that the struggle in the country between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie had reached a very serious pitch. Under the fierce attacks of the bourgeoisie, quite a large majority of units in the cities and countryside were not in the hands of Marxists, or of the masses. More serious was the fact that revisionists had appeared in the leadership of the Party. As he saw it, a bunch of veteran cadres, who had been able to cooperate with him in the stage of the democratic revolution, did not agree when, in the socialist stage, it became necessary to combat the bourgeois class and carry out collectivization in the countryside. They had already become the persons in authority within the Party taking the capitalist road. These persons already constituted a bourgeois headquarters inside the Central Committee, and they had a revisionist political and organizational line. They had agents in various provinces, municipalities, autonomous regions and departments of the Central Committee and the central government. He felt that they were obstructing the implementation of a series of ideas and methods he had advocated for the construction of socialism and that there was no way to carry them out. Therefore, Mao harbored increasing dissatisfaction and distrust towards Liu Shaoqi and other leaders of the central authorities. When Mao linked these firm convictions about the situation with the lessons he drew from the occurrence of Khrushchov revisionism within the Soviet Party, he was filled with anxiety about the future of the Party and the country. In a talk with Ho Chi Minh soon after the &quot;May 16 Circular&quot; was passed, he said: &quot;We are all over seventy years old. We are bound to be invited by Marx some day. Who on earth will be our successors? Bernstein, or Kautsky or Khrushchov? Nobody knows. Prepare at once while there's still time.&quot; That was Mao's reason for mentioning in the &quot;May 16 Circular&quot; that there were &quot;persons like Khrushchov&quot; within the Party. In May, at an enlarged meeting of the CPC Central Committee's Political Bureau, Peng Zhen, Luo Ruiqing, Lu Dingy i and Yang Shangkun were wrongly criticized for their &quot;anti-Party clique.&quot; At the meeting, Lin Biao listed instances of coup d'etats in ancient and modern times, in China and elsewhere. While attacking Peng, Luo, Lu and Yang, Lin spilt preposterous lies that there were people within the Party Central Committee who wanted to stage a coup d'etat. At the same time, he did his utmost to create a personality cult, proclaiming that &quot;Everything Chairman Mao says is the truth. A single sentence of his carries more weight than ten thousand ordinary sentences.&quot; &quot;Whoever is against Chairman Mao will be punished by the entire Party and condemned by the whole nation.&quot; In an abnormally tense atmosnhere the &quot;May 16 Circular&quot; was passed without proper discussion and in compliance with Mao's suggestion, the meeting decided to suspend Peng Zhen, Luo Ruiqing and Lu Dingyi from their posts as members of the Secretariat of the Central Committee and Yang Shangkun from his post of alternate secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee. The meeting also removed Peng Zhen from his posts as first secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee and mayor of Beijing, and Lu Dingyi from his post as head of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee. Furthermore, the meeting decided to cancel the Cultural Revolution Group headed by Peng Zhen, and founded the Central Cultural Revolution Group directly under the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau. The Central Cultural Revolution Group was set up with Chen Boda as head, Kang Sheng as adviser, and Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao deputy heads. Its members included Wang Li, Guan Feng, Qi Benyu an Yao Wenyuan. (Some of its other appointed members were before long persecuted and expelled.) Actually the group, operating as a special setup, was not subject to any restraint whatever by he Political Bureau and became the de facto headquarters of the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; Before the meeting came to a close, Jiang Qing and Kang Sheng had already spread these decisions to the general public. Fierce attacks were launched against the Beijing Municipal Party Committee in the newspapers. A work team headed by Chen Boda went to the office of the People's Daily to seize power. On June 1, the People's Daily published an editorial entitled &quot;Sweep Away All Monsters and Demons,&quot; calling on the masses to make cultural revolution.&quot; Next day, the newspaper published a bigcharacter poster written by Nie Yuanzi and a few others o Beijing University, which slanderously attacked the Party Committees of Beijing University and of Beijing Municipality. The poster, supported by Mao, was also broadcast nationwide. The newspaper also carried a congratulatory commentary. Students of universities and middle schools in many cities were the first to rise in response to its call. They started with the struggle against so-called &quot;sinister gangs&quot; making their presidents and teachers the targets, wreaking havoc in the schools. Many school Party committees were helpless in the face of it, their work brought to a standstill. In early June, the CPC Political Bureau's Standing Committee, then presided over by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, decided to send work teams to universities and middle schools in Beijing to lead the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; and also drew up the &quot;Eight-Point Directive&quot; which was designed to put the movement under the Party's leadership and restore order. Then in many universities and schools strife arose between two or more student factions, and incidents occurred of some students opposing the work teams. Jiang Qing, Chen Boda and Kang Sheng first fomented discord among students, then unilaterally reported to Mao. Mao scathingly censured the work teams, saying that they &quot;have done a disservice and obstructed the movement.&quot; Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping bore the responsibility and examined their mistakes. In compliance with Mao's suggestion, the Central Committee ordered the withdrawal of all work teams on July 28. Mao considered that the just rising &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; which had just risen after the enlarged meeting of the CPC Political Bureau in May, had been suppressed. In order to clear away the &quot;obstruction,&quot; it was necessary to mount another allround launching of the revolution. On August 1, Mao himself presided over the 11th Plenary Session of the 8th Party Central Committee. At the enlarged meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau on August 4, Mao Zedong again scathingly censured the dispatch of work teams as &quot;an act of suppression to the students' movement&quot; and &quot;a mistake in matters of political line.&quot; And he added, &quot;There are ‘monsters and demons' among people present here.&quot; At the session on the 7th, Mao made public his big-character poster &quot;Bombard the Headquarters,&quot; asserting that &quot;in the last 50 days or so, some leading comrades from the central down to the local levels ... have adopted the reactionary stand of the bourgeoisie, enforced a bourgeois dictatorship and struck down the surging movement of the great cultural revoluCHAPTKR EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 637 tion of the proletariat. They have called black white and stood the facts on their heads, encircled and attacked the revolutionaries, suppressed opinions differing from their own, and imposed a white terror, and they have done all this with great smugness. They inflated the arrogance of the bourgeoisie and clamped down the morale of the proletariat. This is utterly vicious!&quot; In light of the disputes on the question of socialist construction within the leadership in the Party, the big-character poster pointed out: &quot;Associating this with the erroneous tendencies of the Right deviation in 1962 and the apparently ‘Left' but actually Right deviation in 1964, shouldn't this awaken people and make them ponder?&quot; In his big character poster, he mentioned there was a bourgeois headquarters in the Central Committee. Obviously, he was accusing Liu Shaoqi and other leaders who presided over the routine work of the Central Committee, although he did not mention their names. From criticism of Hai Rui Dismissed From His Office to the &quot;May 16 Circular,&quot; and to the big character poster of Mao's, the spearhead of struggle kept escalating. Now, finally, the meeting clearly pointed out the principal target of attack in the &quot;great cultural revolution.&quot; In light of Mao's suggestion, the 11th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee adopted the &quot;Decisions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution&quot; (the &quot;Sixteen- Article Decision,&quot; for short). The decision stipulated that &quot;our objective is to struggle against and crush those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road, to criticize and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois academic ‘authorities' and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes, reform education, literature and art and all superstructures unsuitable to socialist economic basis, in order to consolidate and develop the socialist system. The main target of the present movement is those within the Party who are in authority and are taking the capitalist road.&quot; The decision stressed that young people's main revolutionary orientation has been correct from the beginning; let the masses educate themselves and liberate themselves in the movement; they should put daring above everything else and not fear creating disturb ances; they cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. They should make the fullest use of big-character posters and great debates to argue matters out. The &quot;Sixteen-Article Decision,&quot; like the &quot;May 16 Circular,&quot; failed to set clear criterions for distinguishing between persons taking the capitalist road, Leftists, Rightists and middle elements, or to provide specific regulations concerning how to realize the Party's leadership. Although the &quot;Sixteen-Article Decision&quot; also proposed that we should distinguish the two different types of social contradictions, it actually fostered a blind, spontaneous mass movement which largely confused friends with enemies. As a result, those correct regulations were never followed later on in the movement. In compliance with Mao's suggestion, the plenary session reorganized the leading body of the CPC Central Committee. It elected eleven instead of seven as members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau. The additional members were Tao Zhu, Chen Boda, Kang Sheng and Li Fuchun. Tao Zhu, former first secretary of the Bureau of Central South China, was transferred to the post of standing secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee and head of the CPC Propaganda Department, according to the decision of the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau held in May. But he was soon removed after being elected a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau. (He was later persecuted to death.) Not long after, Li Fuchun was also removed from his position. Liu Shaoqi was demoted from the second to the eighth place on the name list of Standing Committee of the Political Bureau. Although no vicechairman of the Central Committee was elected, Lin Biao was named vice-chairman of the Central Committee soon after the session. Former vice-chairmen Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Chen Yun were no longer mentioned. During the session and in the days following the session, Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and other central leading comrades were criticized one after another. The two meetings made it possible for the erroneous &quot;Left&quot; leadership by Mao Zedong himself to replace the collective leadership by the Party Central Committee. CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 639 This meeting, just as the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau in May, was held in a very tense political atmosphere. Many of the participants were utterly astonished at such a sudden ^r.d important change of personnel in the central leadership; their minds were filled with all sorts of perplexities and suspicions. The of the &quot;Sixteen-Article Decision&quot; at the Pfary session marked the fulfillment of the legal procedure within the Par y for the launching of the &quot;cultural revolution. Nationwide Chaos On the same day the Uth Plenary Session of the 8th &gt; Party Central Committee was convened, Mao Zedong wrote to R Guards of Z middle school attached to Qinghua University expressing his warm support for their rebellious spirit The ^ Guard movement soon spread throughout the August 18 to November 26, Mao Zedong received over 11 million college and middle school teachers, students and Red Guards Shi occasions in Beijing. The CPC Central Commit ee and the State Council jointly issued a circular on inviting students or representatives of students of colleges and middle schools, representatives of revolutionary students of middle schools, and representatives of teachers and other staff members of various ,parts °{ he country to Beijing, free of charge, to look around and see the &quot;great cultural revolution.&quot; This brought the spreading exchanges of experience between these groups to a nationwide high tide. This was a grave step which led to social chaos throughout the country. The Central Cultural Revolution Group launched a so-called defense of Mao Zedong and Mao Zedong Thought In feverish response, Red Guards of various parts of the country charged into the' premises of cultural and educational circles, Pany and government organs, as well as social &quot;feting widespread damage on whatever they ■ deemed to be feudal bourgeois and revisionist.&quot; Many people in cultural units ; and educational institutions. Party organs and government offices were criticized and denounced as members of sinister gangs &quot;representatives of the bourgeoisie,&quot; &quot;reactionary academic authorities&quot; and &quot;counter-revolutionary revisionists.&quot; They were subjected to criticism, humiliation, beating and persecution, and their homes were searched. Many patriotic, democratic personages who had cooperated with the Communist Party over a long period, former industrialists and businessmen and returned overseas Chinese were also assaulted and persecuted. This kind of behavior which cut deep rifts in the social order and trampled democracy and legality underfoot evoked universal resentment among the masses. The Red Guard organizations, which contended head-on because of differing views or interests, kept disintegrating and reorganizing. Under this or that signboard, they waged fierce factional struggles. Some persons among them came to realize that any behavior opposing and assaulting Party and government organs was wrong, and they determined to resolutely oppose any such destructive behavior. Party and government leading cadres at various levels filled with skepticism towards the movement, were thrown into a state of extreme anxiety over the situation. The &quot;May 16 Circular&quot; said that the overwhelming majority of Party committees &quot;have a very poor understanding of the movement and their leadership is far from conscientious and effective.&quot; This created a problem which obstructed the movement. In a continued effort to overcome this so-called &quot;obstruction,&quot; the Central Committee held a work conference in Beijing in October 1966. The meeting focused on criticism of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, accusing them of pursuing &quot;an erroneous line of repressing the masses and attacking active revolutionaries,&quot; which was a &quot;reactionary bourgeois line&quot; opposing the masses' self-liberation. In his speech at the meeting, Chen Boda lauded the Red Guards' acts of sabotage to the skies, but accused people who harbored reservations and vigilance as fearing the masses and revolution, or even as repressing the masses and opposing the revolution. After the meeting, a storm of criticizing the &quot;reactionary bourgeois line&quot; was whipped up nationwide. Afterwards, any behavior beyond normal or legal limits suffered no restraint; but any intervention in such impermissible behavior had slapped on it the label of &quot;reactionary bourgeois line.&quot; Society was thus caught in continuous chaos. In early October, the Central ComCHAPTF.R EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 641 mittee distributed an emergency directive issued by the Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee. It rescinded the decision that the cultural revolution in military academies an schools should be led by the Party committees. After that, To ClTout Party committees in making revolution&quot; became a popular slogan which opened wider the floodgates of anarchisnr Instigated by the Central Cultural Revolution Group, rebels urned their attacks on Party and government leading organizations at various levels. As a result, many Party and government cadres from central to local levels were struggled against and criticized leaving the work of Party and government bodies in a state of paralysis or semi-paralysis. All Party activities at the grassroots levels as well as the regular activities of Party members Ca?n November 1966, a national meeting of industrial and transport enterprises was held. In their speeches, the participants suggested that the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; in industrial and tram port enterprises be led by the Party committees and that the relation between revolution and production be handled correctly. They were against stopping production to make revolution, which in essence negated the &quot;Left&quot; draft regulations put forward by the Central Cultural Revolution Group. However these «.rrect suggestions at the meeting were scathingly censured by L Biao and Jiang Qing. Upon their intervention, two documents were issued Tn the name of the Central Committee concerning the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; in industrial and transport enterprises and in rural areas (the &quot;ten-point regulations on tndustry and^he &quot;ten-point directive on agriculture,&quot; for short). The two docu menbTwere intended to push the cultural revolution beyond the origtaThmits, which confined it to cultural units, educational circles Party organs and government bodies, into industrial en terprises and the rural areas. This was another grave step .toward nationwide upheaval. The countryside was not affected by the cultural revolution for very long, since the thev could not &quot;stop production to make revolution. Neverthe less many rural cadres, activists of the Party and model workers were struggled against and criticized. More destructive was th large numbers of industrial enterprises became involved in the cultural revolution. As a result, backbone members of the leading core of these enterprises were criticized, and a large number of workers left their posts in production, and the enterprises were thrown into confusion. From beginning of the movement, Mao Zedong took an affirmative attitude towards the serious confusion in society. In his July 8 letter to Jiang Qing, Mao held the opinion that great disorder under heaven could bring in great order across the land. In his view, this demonstrated that the masses were fully mobilized; it threw the enemy into disorder, and tempered the masses. In a very perilous position, Zhou Enlai did his best to get the agreement of Mao Zedong to protect a group of veteran cadres, outstanding personages of democratic parties, experts and scholars! He tried his utmost to lead Party and government departments which were still functioning to keep social production going and the 1 unctions of state power in operation. However, now that the great disorder under heaven had already begun to take on startling dimensions, it inevitably burst out of control and could only get worse. Fraught with enormous destructive force, it advanced fiercely along its vicious course, wreaking catastrophe difficult for people to have imagined in the early stages of the &quot;cultural revolution &quot; The &quot;cultural revolution&quot; initiated by Mao Zedong had undergone deliberation and preparation for a period of time. Later, he regarded it as one of the two great things he had done in his life (the other was the revolution led by him to establish the new China). This shows clearly how important the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; was in his eyes. As a leader of the proletarian party in power, Mao Zedong showed great concern for consolidation of the Party and people's power which had been established with such great difficulty, maintained strict vigilance against the danger of capitalist restoration, and tried hard to find out a way to solve this problem. This was priceless and far-sighted. And his unremitting efforts to eliminate corruption in the Party and government bodies, as well as to prevent cadres becoming divorced from the people, also won the support of the Party and the masses. But he magnified the class struggle in socialist society and V 643 considered it absolute, to the point of confusing friends with enemies. He still held to the concept of attaining great order under heaven through great disorder, even in a situation where power was still in the hands of the people. The series of &quot;Left&quot; deviationist fantasies which Mao developed were completely wrong, and were not only opposed to Marxism, but also to the real situation in China. Mao stressed that there were revisionists within the Party and in the Party leadership; his assessment was also not true. The implications of what he referred to as revisionism were very vague. Consequently, many things that were not revisionist, and many that were actually principles of Marxism and socialism, were criticized as revisionist. For example, the so-called &quot;dark wind,&quot; &quot;rush towards private farming&quot; and &quot;pressure to reverse verdicts,&quot; which Mao had repeatedly criticized as revisionist since 1962, were nothing but the reasonable and correct suggestions put forward by some officials and people inside and outside the Party for redressing mistakes made in the movements of the Big Leap Forward and the People Communes as well as the anti-Rightist deviation at the Lushan Meeting in 1959. Now, as clearly seen, the proposals and support for many kinds of farm production responsibility systems, such as the &quot;fixing of farm output quotas for each household,&quot; by Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, Deng Zihui and others heralded the rural reforms made since 1978. However, these proposals were called a revisionist programme by Mao Zedong. For a long time, Mao Zedong was loyal to Marxism and the people's interest, continuously observed and thought deeply about problems in the real life of the newly rising socialist society and strived to perfect the ideal of socialism. His basic train of thought about socialism was consistent with the basic principles of Marxist scientific socialism. Mao's unique concept of socialism includes both some valuable foresights and some unrealistic ideas. Several days before the &quot;May 16 Circular&quot; was adopted, after reading a report submitted by the General Logistics Department of the PLA on developing agricultural production and sideoccupations in the armed forces, Mao wrote a letter of approval (which came to be known as the &quot;May 7 Directive&quot;) to Lin Biao in which he described the ideal society he had been looking forward to. In his letter, he said that all trades and professions in the country should be made a social organization in which people engage in industrial and agricultural productions, study cultural knowledge and military affairs. They also should criticize the bourgeoisie. The organization would be run as one in which social division of labour and commodity production should be gradually limited, and so should the principle of distribution according to work and the principle of material interest. The social organization also should be economically self-sufficient or semi-selfsufficient. (Mao considered that ignoring these limitations would give rise to capitalism.) Mao's concept was then highly valued by the People 's Daily as the guideline for establishing &quot;great schools of communism&quot; throughout the country. As a matter of fact, this was a further development of his 1958 concept of the people's communes. But his concept of socialism characterized by equalitarianism with Utopian coloration got us absolutely nowhere. Therefore, the concept could not but be resisted in various degrees by many comrades within the Party. Some leading comrades in the Central Committee, who did not agree with Mao's erroneous suggestions, but put forward some correct proposals, were accused of fostering revisionism or taking the capitalist road. He considered that serious resistance from the leadership of the Central Committee was blocking his efforts to seek a just, perfect socialism. In conclusion, he saw them as an independent kingdom or a bourgeois headquarters within the Party. Such an assessment was obviously groundless and completely wrong. There are reasons rooted in social history which led to the formation of Mao Zedong's erroneous viewpoints, determined the inability within the Party to resist them and enabled many people to accept them. As the Party rapidly entered the new historical stage of socialism, it did not make ample ideological preparation or proper scientific investigation of how to carry out the all-round construction of socialism in a country with a poor economic and cultural background. In the past periods of revolutionary wars, the Party had accumulated a great deal of experience in class struggle. In observing and dealing with new problems and diffiCHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 645 culties arising in socialist construction, people were susceptible to mechanically copying former practices and experience. As a result they saw problems which were not related to class struggle as class struggle, took the class struggle which existed l to ' a limited degree under the new conditions as occupying a dominant posi tion and continued to adopt methods of mass struggle on a large scale as a solution. It was easy to resume the practices which resembled their life experience under military communism and had proved so effective in the revolutionary ranks in past periods of war and to take them as a sort of basis to plan an ideal society. Although the founders of Marxism expounded and proved the historical trend that capitalist society would inevitably be transformed into socialist society, they could only proceed from the status quo of the relatively developed capitalist society to draw a general inference about a future socialist society which they had not experienced. Using only one or two particular theses of theirs and then misunderstanding them certainly can never solve concrete problems in China and makes it very easy to fantasize socialism. For a long time, Mao's senes of Left devia fionist theoretical viewpoints on class struggle in the socialist period and his concepts of socialism which were tinted with Utopianism had been regarded as an important development of Marxist theory and spread far and wide; thus people thrown into a situation of broadened class struggle were confused and misled. Upholding the erroneous deviation was even regarded as defending the sacred cause of Marxism. Those who took a skeptical attitude towards the erroneous deviation still found it hard to oppose it with perfect assurance. . In the 60s, our Party was compelled to conduct intense polemics with the Soviet Party on the line and principles of the international communist movement. This mfernational background also exerted a great influence on domestic polmcallife; Normal debates arising among comrades m the Party holdi g different opinions were often looked upon as serious struggles between Marxism and revisionism. As a result, inner Party relations became more strained with each passing day. Maos great merits in the Chinese revolutionary cause and the cause of socialism made him an indisputable political leader and ideological authority. For this reason, though broad masses of Party members and cadres, including many high-ranking officials, had growing reservations about many abnormal phenomena in the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; they still found it hard to resist the series of &quot;Left&quot; deviationist viewpoints advanced by Mao and to hold back the outbreak and development of the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; In leading the unfamiliar cause of socialist construction, our Party specially needed prudence. However, some leading cadres had gradually become arrogant in midst of a series of successes. At that time, Mao Zedong's prestige was at its peak among the Chinese people. He also gradually became conceited, divorced from the masses and isolated from the reality. His subjectivism and arbitrary style became more serious as times went on. The cult of Mao Zedong was so widespread that it had gradually became a craze by the time the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; was launched. Just as Deng Xiaoping said: &quot;After criticism of the opposition to rash advance in 1958 and the campaign against ‘Right deviation' in 1959, democratic life in the Party and state gradually ceased to function normally. There was a steady growth of such patriarchal ways as only one person having the say, one person making important decisions, practising the cult of personality and one individual placing himself above the organization. Lin Biao propagated the ‘peak theory,' saying that Chairman Mao's words were supreme instructions. This theory was widespread throughout the Party, army and country.&quot;1 Consequently, this led to the sabotage of the collective leadership principle and democratic centralism in Party and state political life. In this aspect, Lin Biao, Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng and other careerists played the most abominable role. Among them, some had been Party members for many years, had done useful work for the Party and assumed important Party and state important positions, while some had only a few achievements during their official careers and had formerly occupied low positions. But they had one point in common; that is, they joined the Party with a strong blend of exploi ting-class ideology and a thirst for personal power and influence which developed as conditions changed. In ordinary circumstances, their erroneous words and acts were, after all, somewhat restrained by Party organization and discipline and, therefore, their true colors could not be sufficiently exposed. Once they had the extremely abnormal opportunity like the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; their wild political ambitions and conspiratorial methods for usurping Party and state power could be carried to extremes. Due to various historical reasons, after the founding of New China, the process of democratization of the Party and State political life had not been able to develop smoothly. And there were many defects in the system of Party and state leadership and the organizational system. These defects in our systems made it possible for Mao Zedong, the people s respected leader, to make mistakes unchecked, for careerists like Lin Biao and Jiang Qing to run amok for a time, and for the disasterridden &quot;cultural revolution&quot; to take place and develop without any restriction.<br /> <br /> === &quot;Overthrow Everything&quot; Brings On All-Round Civil Strife ===<br /> &quot;All-Round Seizure of Power&quot; Evokes Escalation of Nationwide Turbulence In January 1967, a violent storm of rebels seizing the power of leadership at various levels of Party and government organizations first started in Shanghai, then spread throughout the country. The &quot;cultural revolution&quot; had entered a new stage of so-called &quot;all-round seizure of power.&quot; This stage brought about more serious social turbulence and greater disasters than the previous stage. In early January 1967, under the command of Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, rebel organizations in Shanghai headed by Wang Hongwen of the Shanghai No. 17 State-Owned Cotton Mill, seized leadership power from the Party and government of the city. Mao Zedong vigorously supported the action of seizing power and saw it as an effective method to thoroughly reorganize the leadership at various levels in implementation of the principles of the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; On January 16, the Red Flag published a commentary which transmitted Mao's remarks, saying: &quot;The seizure of power from a handful of Party persons in authority taking the capitalist road was a revolution in which one class overthrew another under the conditions of proletarian dictatorship.&quot; On January 22, the People's Daily also published an editorial calling on all the proletarian revolutionaries to &quot;launch an all-round struggle of seizing power throughout the country and successfully fulfill the great historical mission entrusted by Chairman Mao.&quot; Then rebels in Shanxi (January 14), Qingdao (January 22), Guizhou (January 25), Heilongjiang (January 31) and other provinces proclaimed the all-round seizure of power from provincial and municipal Party and government leading organs, and their seizure of power was approved by the Central Committee. In a short period, the storm of all-round seizure of power swept from departments under the Central Committee and the State Council to local Party and government organs, as well as to all walks of life. This gave rise to a sharp struggle between persons intent on taking over power and the masses inclined to support the existing Party and government leadership, and between one power-seizing faction and other ones. As a result, a raging tide of anarchism stemming from all-round civil strife marked by stampedes of &quot;down with everyone&quot; forged ahead, got out of hand, and threw China into unprecedented chaos. Although Mao Zedong expressed his support for &quot;great disorder under heaven,&quot; nevertheless, in face of the daily worsening crisis, he could not but try to restrain it. At that time, newspapers and magazines published editorials and articles, one after another, repeatedly transmitting Mao's instructives on seizing power, mainly urging people to &quot;realize great alliances of proletarian revolutionaries&quot; and &quot;set up a ‘three-in-onc combination&quot; composed of &quot;leaders of the rebel organizations, representatives of the PLA troops stationed in the locality and revolutionary leading cadres.&quot; The temporary power organs established after seizure of power were called &quot;revolutionary committees.&quot; To form the &quot;great alliances&quot; and &quot;three-in-one combinations,&quot; Mao urged the cor rect handling of cadres and various rebel organizations, that various rebel organizations should be rectified and the anarchist idea of &quot;suspecting everyone and overthrowing everyone be °P In order to stabilize the situation, the CPC Central Committee, the Military Commission of the Central Committee, the State Council and the Central Cultural Revolution Group published a series of circulars and directives, urging teachers and students of colleges and middle schools to stop exchange of experiences with other localities and to resume school classes and carry on the revolution; asking factories, mines, enterprises and rural production teams to persist in making revolution in their spare time, that is to grasp revolution and promote production; demanding the return to normal order of railways, ports, communications and transportation, and the protection of radio stations, banks, warehouses, prisons and other units. Most important was Maos decision to dispatch PLA troops to carry out the task of three supports and two militaries&quot; (supporting industry, supporting agriculture, supporting the broad masses of the Left, military control, political and military training). In appraisal of the situation, Mao considered that the allround seizure of power&quot; would signalize a positive outcome in February, March or April 1967. But things were far from what Mao imagined. Many requirements and regulations published in above-mentioned editorials and directives had produced very little effect. The &quot;great alliances&quot; and &quot;three-in-one combination as the basic principles in the process of seizure of power had not been carried out; but, on the contrary, they became the focus o further struggles. Two or more sharply contrasting large rebe organizations in various places had somewhat different political inclinations, but, in general, they all operated the mfluence of &quot;Left&quot; deviationist principles and ultra- Lett trends of thought. Some rebel organizations chose their own favorite leading cadres as prospective members for the &quot;three-in-one combination &quot; and strived to realize a &quot;great alliance&quot; and the seizure o power with their own faction as its nucleus. Alter being overthrown, many leading cadres were unwilling to, or could not. come out to join leading groups. Some were &quot;combined&quot; with this rebel organization, but soon overthrown by the other. Following their own interests, each faction took only those directives of Chairman Mao or those of the Central Committee which were favourable to itself and each thought what it did was right. On the fundamental issue of &quot;power,&quot; the contention among rebel organizations was so acute that countless disputes and conflicts occurred which led to ruthless armed struggles. After getting involved in supporting the &quot;Left,&quot; the PLA troops found it hard to avoid supporting this faction or that faction. As a result, this brought about many disputes and conflicts between rebel organizations and troops supporting the &quot;Left.&quot; Some rebel organizations in various places assaulted military units, giving rise to bloody incidents. People showed universal discontent with the chaos that had seriously endangered the security of the state, society and the troops. Confronted by such a situation, revolutionaries of the older generation came out boldly and rose up to resist the turbulence. At an enlarged meeting of the Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee, Ye Jianying, Xu Xiangqian, Nie Rongzhen and others demanded that the stability of the army must be maintained, and did not agree to the free airing of views as practiced in civilian life (in the forms of speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates and writing big-character posters). Over this problem, they had a sharp dispute with Jiang Qing, Chen Boda and Kang Sheng. At two meetings, on February 11 and 16, with many members of the Political Bureau participating, Tan Zhenlin, Chen Yi, Ye Jianying, Li Fuchun, Li Xiannian, Xu Xiangqian and Nie Rongzhen, leaders of the Political Bureau or Military Commission, sharply criticized many of the wrong actions taken by the Central Cultural Revolution Group and spoke out, justly denouncing Chen Boda, Kang Sheng and Zhang Chunqiao. Ye Jianying said: &quot;You have caused chaos in the Party, government, factories and the countryside! As if that is not enough for you, you still want to cause chaos in the army! If you go on like that, what is it you're trying to do?&quot; &quot;Can we make revolution without the leadership of the Party, without the CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION 651 army?&quot; Tan Zhenlin said: &quot;You don't want the leadership of the Party, always letting the masses liberate themselves, educate themselves and make revolution themselves. What's this anyway. It's metaphysics.&quot; He added, &quot;Your purpose is to overthrow veteran cadres.&quot; These criticisms spoken out with the force of justice represented the will of the Party and the people and demonstrated the qualities of selflessness and uprightness of the proletarian revolutionaries of the older generation. On hearing the report from the Central Cultural Revolution Group, Mao was highly dissatisfied with these veteran cadres, because their arguments and resistance were actually aimed at completely correcting &quot;Left&quot; deviationist errors of the &quot;cultural revolution,' and also directed against the absurd practices of the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; Mao severely criticized these veteran comrades. At a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC, the Central Cultural Revolution Group attacked them on charges of stirring up an &quot;adverse current of bourgeois restoration.&quot; Following this, the functions of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee were basically taken over by the Central Cultural Revolution Group. , . . . The crux of these questions put forward by revolutionaries of the older generation came down to whether Party leadership was necessary. This was the root cause of the chaotic situation featured by &quot;overthrowing everyone&quot; in the &quot;cultural revolution. The &quot;Left&quot; deviationist theories and principles of the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; under the signboard of criticizing revisionism and capitalism, denied the Party's basic policies and basic achievements made in the seventeen years since the founding of New China, wrongly accused the majority of leading cadres who upheld the Party's correct line and policies from the Central . Committee down to the localities as capitalist roaders and attempted to strike them down, and further to overthrow all the Party and state leading bodies. The &quot;all-round seizure of power which confused right and wrong, the enemy and ourselves, was absolutely wrong. How could it be said to correctly handle cadres and let &quot;representatives of revolutionary cadres come out to make revolution? Nominally, the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; relied directly on the masses, but, in reality, in the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; large numbers of leading Party and state cadres were ferreted out and persecuted, the Party's leading bodies and organizations at various levels lapsed into a state of paralysis or semi-paralysis, the broad masses of Party members and activists were unable to play their roles, Party disciplines and state laws were discarded, and the state's judicial and public security organs were unable to perform their functions. These circumstances provided just the right conditions for a handful of careerists, adventurers, opportunists, degenerate elements and all sorts of social dregs habituated to destructiveness to get together, grow and run riot without restraint. This horde of anti-socialist forces flaunting the most &quot;revolutionary&quot; banners provided the social base on which careerists Lin Biao, Jiang Qing and their likes relied to create chaos. Out of their Irusl in the Party and Mao Zedong, in the early stage of the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; many people became involved in the movement, but they definitely did not support cruel struggles and ruthless attacks of the ultra&quot;Left.&quot; Later, as their consciousness was raised through different experiences they had, they kept leaving the rebel organizations. Many of them in turn used different forms to resist and oppose the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; They were therefore persecuted in varying degrees, and some even lost their lives. In reality, the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; divorced them both from the Party and the masses. So how could there be realization of &quot;great alliances&quot; among the masses? Facts proved that it was hard to stabilize the turbulence through the self-contradictory way which one had to uphold the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; as a whole, but as to details, one was also asked to correct some activities which went too far. After resistance from revolutionaries of the older generation in February was suppressed, anarchism ran increasingly rampant. Jiang Qing and her group denounced the resistance as the &quot;February adverse current,&quot; and even spread news of it out into society by way of agitating the masses to launch a widespread counter-attack against the &quot;February adverse current sweeping down from above.&quot; This started a new wave of ferreting out, attacking and persecuting Party and state leading cadres at variCHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 653 ous levels, as well as assaulting leading organs of the Party and state. In addition, factional struggles among rebel organizations escalated continuously. In April 1967, the People's Daily published Qi Benyu's article clearly criticizing Liu Shaoqi, though his name was not mentioned. This touched off a high tide of so-called &quot;great revolutionary criticism&quot; consisting of a series of all-round attacks on &quot;China's Khrushchov.&quot; This kind of &quot;great criticism&quot; did everything possible to slander and frame Liu Shaoqi, by obscuring right and wrong, confusing friend with foe. This helped spread and abet &quot;Left&quot; deviationist ideological trends and exerted a very bad influence. Mao Zedong considered that the &quot;great criticism&quot; would promote the great alliances, but things went contrary to his wishes. The great criticism promoted great chaos. In many places for a long time, it was not possible to found revolutionary committees. In May, armed clashes took place in some places. From June to early August, instigated by the Central Cultural Revolution Group, tens of thousands of people were mustered by around 1,000 rebel organizations of Beijing and other places to besiege Zhongnanhai (the gathering was dubbed the &quot;Frontline of Ferreting Out Liu Shaoqi&quot;) and to assault the highest organ of state power. On July 22, Jiang Qing provoked violence by raising the slogan of &quot;attack by reasoning, and defend by force&quot; among rebel organizations. In his August 7th speech, the minister of Public Security Xie Fuzhi, in league with the gang of Lin Biao and Jiang Qing, incited the smashing of judicial and public security organs. On the same day, Wang Li made speeches provoking the seizure of power from the Foreign Ministry leadership. In the first half of August, large-scale armed conflicts flared up in Shanghai, Nanjing, Changzhou, Zhengzhou, Changchun, Shenyang, Chongqing, Changsha and other places. Many more public security, judicial and procuratorial organs throughout the country were assaulted. In the name of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, rebel organizations of the ministry recklessly issued directives to Chinese embassies abroad to rebel, and even set fire to the office of the British Charge d'Affaires in Beijing. After Lin Biao advanced the slogan of &quot;Down with the Palace of Hell in the General Political Department&quot; in the second half of July, newspapers and other publications raised the slogan, &quot;Down with a handful of capitalist roaders in the army!&quot; Thus, many local rebel organizations started a wave of storming military institutions. Conflicts between rebel organizations and troops helping the Left increased. Illegal incidents such as ransacking banks, warehouses, vehicles, vessels, files and confidential documents, and sabotaging railway traffic— were perpetrated one after the other in many localities. A large number of people were wounded or killed in armed conflicts. In particular, the city of Wuhan on July 20 witnessed crowds surrounding Wang Li, representative of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, and hemming him in, while a demonstration took place numbering hundreds of thousands of local armymen and people. (Mao Zedong was in Wuhan just at that time.) These events reflected the growing dissatisfaction of broad masses of people, army officers and PLA soldiers towards the &quot;Left&quot; deviationist errors committed by the Central Cultural Revolution Group. The developing tension created a situation almost beyond control. In face of the spreading disturbances, Mao Zedong was compelled to adopt a series of urgent measures. At the end of August, he approved a report submitted by Zhou Enlai requesting that Wang Li and Guan Feng, both members of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, be kept in isolation for investigation. The Central Committee kept issuing orders to maintain public order, ensure the safety of state-owned materials and equipment, and protect the life and property of the people. It also took measures to protect foreign embassies and foreigners residing in China. Military control was also instituted over the most turbulent provinces, municipalities and Party and government departments. In October, the CPC Central Committee transmitted throughout the country a summary of the talks given by Mao Zedong during his inspection tours of north, south central and east China between July and September. In view of the endless conflicts among many rebel factions, Mao once again called for the realization of &quot;great revolutionary alliances,&quot; and criticized the Red Guards, saying, &quot;Now is just the time they are apt to make mistakes,&quot; so we must help them through education. In regard to the overthrow of large numbers of cadres, Mao reiterated the necessity of &quot;correct handling of cadres, and helping more people through education and narrowing the target of attack &quot; We must &quot;liberate a number of cadres,&quot; he added, an &quot;let cadres step forward.&quot; In compliance with Mao s suggestion, the central authorities, provinces and municipalities ^ study courses in rotation, thus extricating a number of leading cadres from the ordeal of investigation. Newspapers, by n«ensi fving criticism of factionalism and anarchism, helped somewhat o suppress Xa &quot;Left&quot; activities. In January 1968, Qi Benyu was also isolated for the convenience of investigation. Although these measures' taken by Mao Zedong could not change the situation basically, they did prevent in certam degrees the situation from detln1the'1winter of 1967 and the spring of 1968, the chaotic situation in society changed for the better, comparatively speakins As long as ultra-&quot;Left&quot; thought and ultra- Leftists were held under a certain degree of restraint, there was growing suspicion of1he &quot;grem cultural revolution&quot; and of the Central Cultura Revolution Group among the masse. People ofmn ^pressed views against the &quot;January seizure of power and Febr^ adverse current&quot; and complained of the injustice to a large number of veteran cadres who had been overthrown In Shanghai and Beijing, there appeared big-character posters cnticiz^g ^ Boda and Kang Sheng, and calling for the overthrow of Zha g Chunqiao and Xie Fuzhi. Ninety-one leading cadres of the Min istry of Foreign Affairs (most of whom were ambassadors in foreign countries, or occupied other important positions) put up ^character poster thoroughly criticizing the reactionary slogan of &quot;Down with Chen Yi&quot; and demanding his t0 the ministry to preside over the work. These trends threw Lin Bia , Jiang Qing and others into a panic. Following the last ten days March 1968, newspapers came out with one article afteran criticizing the &quot;Right-deviatiomst trend to reverse verdicts^ Lin Biao and8 Jiang Qing collaborated to frame up false charges against Yang Chengwu (acting chief of the General Staff of t e PLA, Standing Committee member of the Military Commissio and deputy secretary-general of the Military Commission), Yu Li j i n (political commissar of the PLA Air Force) and Fu Chongbi (commander of the Beijing Garrison). They were all removed from their positions in the army for &quot;having made extremely serious mistakes.&quot; Meanwhile, Huang Yongsheng was appointed as chief of the General Staff of the PLA and head of the General Office of the Military Commission. It was not long before the functions of the Military Commission of the Central Committee were actually being performed by its General Office. This gave Lin Biao and his gang more powerful control in the army. The raging tide of anarchism that had somewhat abated now began running high again as fanned up by opposing the &quot;Rightdeviationist trend to reverse verdicts.&quot; Factional struggles among rebel organizations and bloody incidents caused by violence became accelerated. This led to deterioration in public order again in some localities. The incidents of violence increased again such as assaulting PLA units, looting state-owned property, damaging public facilities, and inflicting casualties on PLA officers, soldiers and ordinary people. Armed conflicts among rebel organizations in some universities and colleges escalated, causing casualties. Once again, Mao Zedong had to take emergency measures to control the situation. Apart from military control over some serious chaotic provinces and municipalities, Mao also instructed departments concerned to dispatch &quot;Mao Zedong Thought propaganda teams&quot; (made up of workers, PLA officers and men) to schools to exercise leadership over them. In his talks with a few heads of rebel organizations, Mao criticized them for resorting to violence. He said: &quot;Now, workers, peasants, soldiers and residents are displeased with what you have done; so are the great majority of your students, as well as some who had supported your faction. You are isolated from workers, peasants, troops, residents and the vast majority of the students.&quot; After two years of practice, Mao Zedong gradually realized that these Red Guards who had been praised as rebels at one time were not a reliable force for carrying out his ideas and proposals. Two years earlier, sending work teams to schools had been completely discredited. However, this time, sending &quot;workers' propaganda teams&quot; and &quot;PLA propagan 657 aa teams&quot; to schools and some Party and government departments was called a revolutionary measure for realizing the aim that &quot;the working class must exercise leadership m everything. For two years, all universities and many middle schoo s throughout the country still failed to respond to the repeated cal from the central authorities to resume classes while making revolution. After entering schools, the workers' and PLA propaganda teams set about the work of resuming classes. The struggle to seize power lasted twenty months and proceed ed amidst wave after wave of grave social turbulence. All twentynine provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions throughout the country managed, in the end, to establish their revo utionary committees. Though the &quot;three-in-one combination was comprised of &quot;army representatives, revolutionary leading cadres and leaders of the rebel organizations,&quot; actually, in many places and units, the army representatives were in of the 5 revo utionary committees. In the complicated situation, the PLA troops did a lot of work in carrying out the task of &quot;three supports and two militaries.&quot; They played an active role in easing tension, maintaining social order and reducing losses caused by turbulence. But, influenced by the &quot;Left&quot; deviations general prmcip e in effect at that time, they could not avoid mistakes which had some negative consequences. Many of the PLA olficers taking up administrative duties in civil organs found they were not familiar with the work. Among the small number of former leading cadres admitted into revolutionary committees, some were competen , but found it hard to play more than a limited role due to the prevailing conditions. Some bad cadres and bad leaders of rebel organizations in revolutionary committees ganged up on each other, or worked in opposition. They continuously stirred up trouble in and outside revolutionary committees, becoming major factors of instability. Interrupted by frequent disputes and disorders, many revolutionary committees could not 1 unction normally Revolutionary committees exercised a centralized leadership system incorporating the Party and government functions, or integrating government administration with economic manage ment, therefore, they formed a highly concentrated locus of power which had to carry out &quot;Left&quot; principles in every field of work. As a matter of fact, they represented a serious retrogression in the state's political system and administration. The 9th National Congress of the CPC After the setting up of the revolutionary committees in 29 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across the country, Mao Zedong decided to convene the 9th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. To make preparations for the congress, the enlarged 12th Plenary Session of the CPC 8th Central Committee was held in Beijing October 13-31, 1968. The circumstances were extremely unusual. At that time, members and alternate members who had succumbed under the label of &quot;renegade,&quot; &quot;enemy agent,&quot; &quot;having illicit relations with foreign countries,&quot; or &quot;anti-Party element,&quot; had reached 52.7 percent of the 8th Central Committee. They were deprived of the right to attend the session. Many of the members of the Central Committee who were allowed to attend the plenary session had just been liberated from the &quot;cowshed&quot; (referring to the place where people were isolated for further investigation during the &quot;cultural revolution&quot;). Of the 97 full members, with 10 having died since the 1 1th Plenary Session, only 40 were qualified to attend the session. When it began, 10 alternate members were elected to fill the vacancies of full members in order to have a quorum. Among the alternate members, only 9 were qualified to attend the session, with 10 having been elected to full membership and 12 having died since the 1 1th Plenary Session. On the other hand, members of the Central Cultural Revolution Group and the General Office of the Military Commission, principal leading members of the provincial, municipal and autonomous region revolutionary committees and the major military commands, totalling 74, were invited to the session, accounting for over 55 percent of the total participants. Mao Zedong presided over the session. In order to maintain that the fundamental direction of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; was correct, in his speech, Mao persisted in praising the &quot;cultural CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 659 evolution &quot; in spite of the facts and asked the session to discuss [he issue. Lin Biao, Jiang Qing and others took this as an oppoiunity to launch attacks on Chen Yi, Ye Jianymg, L. Fuchun, U Yiannian Xu Xiangqian and Nie Rongzhen, who had been involved in the &quot;February adverse current&quot; (Tan Zhenlin was deprived of the right to attend the session), and to organize criticism of Zhu De, Chen Yun and Deng Zihui as die-hard rig i dC Due0toSthe extremely abnormal state of inner-Party life, and without thorough investigation or serious discussion, the plenary session wrongly approved the &quot;report on the examination l of th crimes of Liu Shaoqi— renegade, hidden traitor and scab &lt; made the erroneous decision &quot;to expel Liu Shaoqi from the Party forever a n? remove him from all the posts he has held in and outside the Party.&quot; Chen Shaomin, who was present at the session, refused to agree to the decision in the face of great pressure. During his period of examination, Liu Shaoqi had been completelv deprived of the right to defend himself. Liu suffered all kind of torture and died of illness under the weight of Yalse ^charget * in K a if eng of Henan Province on November 12, 1969. Later, alter serious°re-examination, facts proved that the charges against Liu Shaoqi of &quot;renegade,&quot; &quot;hidden traitor,&quot; and &quot;scab&quot; were false and had been all put up by Lin Biao, Jiang Qing and company. It was completely wrong for the session to reach such a political conclusion^ Pand mete out such an organizational punishment m Liu Shaoqi's case. This is the most serious case of injustice in the p tv\ historv According to statistics drawn up by the Supreme People's'court before September 1980. more than 28 00 peo^e who were implicated in the case were penalized. As early as March 1967 Kang Sheng and Jiang Qing stirred up a sinister campaign of &quot;feneting out renegades.&quot; Rebel organizations throughout the country set up this or that kind of special case Soup They dished out materials on historical problems involving many cadres on whom the Party had already longbefore^ correct conclusions. They even fabricated a large number of cases such as the so-called &quot;61 -person case,&quot; the &quot;Xinjiang renegades clique,&quot; the &quot;northeast renegade clique&quot; and the &quot;south China renegades clique.&quot; Many faithful veteran Party members who had st e 0f socialism which were further developed in the cultural fought heroically under enemy rule and many non-Party person- revolution.&quot; It was also the general guiding ideology during t e ages who had made special contributions to the Party were &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; and was indivisibly connected with the labelled &quot;renegades,&quot; &quot;special agents&quot; and so on. Some of them practice of the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; The report expounded t e were even persecuted to death. Besides, many innocent cadres and formation and meaning of the theory, recalled the prepardhon ordinary people, accused of being &quot;counter-revolutionary ele- and execution of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; under the guidance of ments,&quot; became involved in many wrong cases framed by Lin the theory, extravagantly lauded this &quot;revolutionary theory&quot; as a Biao, Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng and company. They were also &quot;great contribution&quot; and praised the &quot;great achievements score persecuted, and some died without being cleared of the unjust in the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; However, the report did not expound accusations. It is another bitter lesson to be learned in the Party's on how the party was to lead and organize the socialist economic history, following the magnified compaign of the 1930s to ferret construction and cultural advance. The ™ out undercover counter-revolutionaries in the early Soviet areas. I -■ p t Constitution which wrongly reversed the correct content of The 9th National Congress of the CPC was held in Beijing on the old Party Constitution adopted at the 8th National C^ngress April 1, 1969. One thousand five hundred and twelve deputies } CPC The &quot;theory of continued revolution under the representing nearly 22 million Party members attended the con- dictatorship of the proletariat&quot; was put down » the ^ general gress. At that time, various provincial, municipal and autono- programme, while development of the productive forces and mous regional Party committees and primary Party organizations construction of socialist modernization were not mentioned at at the basic level had not yet recovered or been re-established. Articles on the rights of Party members were deleted, and The large majority of Party members had not yet resumed their furthermore, Lin Biao was put down in the general programm organizational lile. In view of this situation, conditions lor con- «c0mrade Mao Zedong's close comrade-in-arms and succes vocation of the congress were not ripe. Deputies to the congress sor » j^js meaSure was in outright violation of the Party s organcould not be selected through voting, but were recommended izational principles of democratic centralization, and had never through consultations by the Central Committee and the Party before occurred in the Party's history. core leading groups of revolutionary committees in various prov- In March 1969 before the convening of the 9th Congress inces, municipalities and autonomous regions. This provided the incidents of armed conflict at the border area occurred as Soviet chance for Lin Biao and Jiang Qing to arrange their company into iroons intruded into the area of Zhenbao Island in Heilongjiang the ranks of the 9th Congress, making the congress far from pure Province on several occasions. Before the congress met, Mao organizationally. ' Zedong discussed the question of preparedness against war at a At the congress, Lin Biao, on behalf of the Party Central briefin° with members of the Central Cultural Revolution Cr roup. Committee, delivered the political report. The &quot;theory of contin- Four years earlier, in 1965, in light of the international situation ued revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat&quot; was the China faced, the Party Central Committee had made a grim basic idea in the report, and was looked upon as the latest aonraisal of' the danger of war. This time, it exaggerated the development of Mao Zedong Thought. The term &quot;theory of possibility of war breaking out as even more imminent. The continued revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat&quot; report to the 9th Congress contained references to making ready had specific implications determined by the particular historical lo ^ an eariy war? a big war and a nuclear war with the Soviet background. It was the generalization and summation of Mao's Union and the United States. Preparations against war not only erroneous &quot;Left&quot; deviationist viewpoints on class struggle in the became an important topic for discussion at the congress, but also was a guiding principle for all work. Before long, a nationwide campaign was begun to dig air-raid shelters, speed up construction of the third line region and undertake other work in preparation against war. The congress elected 170 members and 109 alternate members to the Central Committee. Only 32 percent of the original members or alternate members of the 8th Central Committee (not counting the deceased) were admitted into the 9th Central Committee. A large number of prestigious veteran cadres were excluded from the Central Committee. Quite a number of followers and trusted supporters of Lin Biao and Jiang Qing became members or alternate members of the Central Committee. At the 1st Plenary Session of the 9th Central Committee of the CPC, Mao Zedong was elected Chairman, and Lin Biao, the only vicechairman of the Central Committee. The members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee were Mao Zedong, Lin Biao (the following were listed in the order of the number of strokes of the surnames), Chen Boda, Zhou Enlai, and Kang Sheng. Among the newly-elected members of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee, more than 50 percent were the followers and trusted supporters of Lin Biao and Jiang Qing. Chen Yun, Li Fuchun, Chen Yi, Xu Xiangqian, Nie Rongzhen were elected as members of the Central Committee, but excluded from the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee. As an outstanding feature, the 9th National Congress was dominated from beginning to end by an atmosphere full of &quot;Left&quot; deviationist thinking and fanatical worship of the personality cult of Mao Zedong. Mao's brief opening address to the congress was interrupted as many as several dozen times by strident slogans of &quot;Long live ... long, long live...&quot; The congress had legitimized the erroneous theory and practice of the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; and solidified the position of Lin Biao and Jiang Qing in the Party Central Committee. The ideological, political and organizational guidelines of the 9th Congress were utterly wrong. The congress failed to play any positive role at all in the Party's history. On many occasions, Mao predicted that &quot;cultural revolution&quot; CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 663 would show good results in one to two years, or two to three years. Even to a leader like Mao, it was still hard to have the situation well in hand, and many of his predictions failed to materialize. The 9th Congress had been convened, but it had not initiated any trend towards bringing the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; to a victorious end as he had expected. On the contrary, because ideological and political &quot;Left&quot; deviationist errors escalated, while organizational life deteriorated and there were more undesirable persons in the Party, actually, a more profound crisis smoldered behind the scenes; sharper and more complicated struggles were brewing.<br /> <br /> === The Downfall of the Lin Biao Clique and Frustration in Correcting &quot;Left&quot; Errors ===<br /> Implementing the &quot;Left&quot; Policy of Struggle-Criticism-Transformation After the 9th Party Congress, the movement of strugglecriticism-transformation was unfolded throughout the country according to Mao Zedong's plan. Mao said, &quot;Struggle-criticismtransformation in a factory, on the whole, goes through the following stages: Establishing a three-in-one revolutionary committee; carrying out mass criticism and repudiation; purifying the class ranks, consolidating the Party organization, and simplifying the administrative structure; changing irrational rules and regulations and sending office workers to the workshops.&quot; Although here only factories were mentioned, the same method was actually applied in all other fields. Mao personally participated in the experiment of struggle-criticism-transformation in six of Beijing's plants and two of its universities (namely, the Beijing General Knitwear Mill, the Xinhua Printing House, the Beijing No. 3 Chemical Plant, the Beijing Beijiao Timber Mill, the Beijing &quot;February 7&quot; Locomotive and Rolling Stock Plant, Qinghua University and Beijing University), and demanded that other places sum up their experiences and follow suit. Mao Zedong attempted to realize his ideal of &quot;great order across the land&quot; through struggle-criticism-transformation, which also by implication included his intention to end the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; However, the movement itself was an expression of the &quot;Left&quot; policy. As a matter of fact, the struggle-criticism-transformation carried the &quot;Left&quot; errors of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; to specific embodiment in all fields. As a result, social contradictions as well as contradictions within the Party continued to intensify and there was little improvement in the social order or in stale affairs. Party consolidation and Party building was an important task during this period. One of Mao's instructions called the &quot;fiftycharacter guiding principle for Party-building,&quot; read: &quot;The Party organization should be composed of the advanced elements of the proletariat; it should be a vigorous vanguard organization capable of leading the proletariat and the revolutionary masses in the fight against the class enemy.&quot; Under socialist conditions, in which the exploiting class had been eliminated as a class and class struggle only existed in a certain situation, the &quot;fight against the class enemy&quot; was regarded as the sole purpose of Party building, with not a word on state construction of material and spiritual civilizations. The &quot;class enemy&quot; then mainly referred to the so-called &quot;bourgeois headquarters&quot; represented by Liu Shaoqi and its &quot;agents&quot; all over the country. Such a Party building principle was obviously wrong and harmful. In Party consolidation and Party building, the Party organizations were required, in accordance with this principle, to carry out rectification and absorb new Party members. That was called &quot;getting rid of the stale and taking in the fresh.&quot; As a result, some qualified Party members couldn't resume their regular membership activities in the Party, or were erroneously expelled from the Party, while among the new Party members taken in, some were by no means qualified. Because of the incorrect guiding principle, many problems emerged during that period of Party consolidation and Party building. Outrageous ideas and behavior during the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; involving the personality cult, the scramble for power and profit, sabotage of the Party's organization and discipline and CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 665 rampant factionalism which undermined and harmed the Party, were basically impossible to overcome. The relations between Party members and between the Party and its members were abnormal. But of course the re-establishment of Party organizations at all levels and the restoration of regular activities for most Party members helped in some degree to stabilize the situation and promote industrial and agricultural production. The so-called &quot;educational reform&quot; was carried out in this period. With the launching of the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; institutions of higher learning stopped enrollment and &quot;suspended classes to make revolution&quot; for four years. According to Mao's instruction that &quot;students should be selected from among workers and peasants with practical experience, and they should return to production after a few years' study,&quot; in June 1970, the Party Central Committee decided to resume enrollment experimentally in some colleges and universities and instructed that the past nationwide entrance examinations and the method of enrolling those with excellent marks be abolished in the institutions of higher education. Instead, students were to be enrolled &quot;through recommendation by the masses, approval by their leaders and re-examination by the school authorities.&quot; Students enrolled in this way were called &quot;worker, peasant and soldier students.&quot; The period of schooling was shortened to two or three years. Later, the students were assigned the task of &quot;studying in the university, administering it and transforming it with Mao Zedong Thought.&quot; This so-called reform entailed harmful results: teachers were relegated to the status of having to be reformed, making it difficult for them to fulfill their proper role; normal teacherstudent relationships and procedures were thrown into disorder; the educational level of many new students was quite low; professional and cultural courses were drastically reduced, seriously lowering the quality of education; the practice of entering university &quot;through the back door&quot; came into vogue. But most teachers, under the extremely unfavorable conditions, remained devoted to their work and many students did their best to achieve good records. However, generally speaking, the prolonged &quot;suspension of classes and making revolution&quot; and &quot;educational re form&quot; seriously weakened education and the growth of a whole generation of teenagers. In 1971, a National Educational Conference was held in Beijing. The conference passed the summary, finalized with modifications by Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, which made &quot;two assessments,&quot; namely, in the seventeen years since the founding of the New China, &quot;Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line has not been implemented in the main, as a result of which the bourgeoisie has exercised dictatorship over the proletariat&quot;; and the great majority of teachers &quot;still remain basically bourgeois in their world outlook.&quot; At the time, Mao Zedong pointed out: Don't go too far in assessing the seventeen years, it is not the majority; instead, it is only a handful of people who have implemented an erroneous line under the proletarian dictatorship; most intellectuals still support the socialist system. Nevertheless, disregarding these opinions, Zhang Chunqiao and others pushed the &quot;Left&quot; tendency to the extreme. The completely wrong two assessments written into the conference summary acted as heavy spiritual shackles on the teachers and other intellectuals for a long period of time. Since colleges enrolled no students and factories recruited no workers following the launching of the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; the commercial and service industries stagnated and middle school graduates in cities could neither continue higher education nor be assigned to jobs. In December 1968 Mao sent out the call: &quot;It is highly necessary for young people with education to go to the countryside to be re-educated by the poor and lower-middle peasants.&quot; This brought about an upsurge of educated young people going to mountainous areas and the countryside. The movement was advocated as highly significant for &quot;combatting and preventing revisionism&quot; and &quot;reducing the differences between town and country, industry and agriculture, physical and mental labor.&quot; In a few years, over 16 million educated youths went to the mountainous areas and the countryside. Although they tempered themselves and made contributions in developing China's backward rural and frontier areas, they lost the opportunity to receive formal schooling when they were young. This left a gap in the training of professional personnel, and brought CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION1 667 long-term difficulties to the country's modernization drive. To settle them down, the government, the enterprises and other institutions spent at least 10 billion yuan. In addition, the movement aggravated the burdens of the teenagers' families as well as of the peasants in some areas. That constituted one of the main factors in the social unrest at that time. During this period, a large number of cadres and intellectuals from governmental organizations and institutions went down to the countryside to do manual labor in various &quot;May 7&quot; cadre schools. Although they were tempered by the labor and had a better understanding of the countryside, they for a long time were deprived of the opportunity to carry on their professional work and scientific and cultural research, causing heavy losses to China's modernization construction. What is more ludicrous is that some workers in state-owned plants were also sent to the countryside &quot;to learn from the poor and lower-middle peasants&quot; because of insufficient production tasks or factional strife, thus artificially aggravating social contradictions. After the Lin Biao incident, struggle-criticism-transformation was seldom mentioned. The Downfall of the Lin Biao Clique Mao Zedong thought that the issue of Party building had been initially resolved and he shifted the emphasis to government building. On March 8, 1970, Mao proposed to convene the 4th National People's Congress and revise the Constitution. Meanwhile, he proposed to abolish the state chairmanship. The Lin Biao clique visualized the coming 4th People's Congress as an opportunity to grab more power. This factional group was gradually formed on the basis of personal ambition during the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; Since Lin held the position of &quot;deputy commander&quot; during the early stage of the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; the clique's power rapidly swelled and reached its peak through the 9th Party Congress and the 1st Plenary Session of the 9th Party Central Committee. By that time, Lin's position as &quot;successor&quot; had been formally written into the Party Constitution and the clique's other principal members including Huang Yongsheng, Wu Faxian, Ye Qun, Li Zuopeng and Qiu Huizuo had all entered the Political Bureau of the Central Committee. Through the special organization of the General Office of the Military Commission of the Central Committee, they were actually in charge of the routine military work. Chen Boda, who became powerful through the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; joined the Lin Biao clique at a time when his contradiction with Jiang Qing was sharpening. These people plotted to take advantage of the 4th National People's Congress and the revision of the Constitution to raise Lin Biao to the state chairmanship. Although Mao declared time and again that the office of chairman of the People's Republic of China should be abolished and that he himself would not take up the post, on April 11, 1970, Lin made a counter proposal by suggesting that Mao be the chairman. The real intention, however, was revealed by Ye Qun privately in their group in July 1970 when she asked: &quot;What about Lin Biao if the state chairmanship is abolished? Where will he be placed?&quot; During the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing cliques colluded with each other on the one hand, while on the other hand, fought without scruples against each other for more power. These careerists took every opportunity available to make trouble and played vile tricks under the most high-sounding pretexts. In examining the draft revised Constitution, contradictions between the two cliques surfaced. At a meeting of the Constitution working team on August 13, 1970, and at the Political Bureau meeting the following day, Wu Faxian insisted on adding three qualifiers to the Constitution— &quot;with genius, comprehensively and creatively&quot;— in the sentence stating that Mao had developed Marxism. Kang Sheng and Zhang Chunqiao opposed the addition, bringing on a fierce debate. Superficially, that was only an argument over wording, but actually, it was seizing on an incidental difference of opinion to exaggerate matters, and symbolized the prelude of a bigger strife. On August 23, 1970, the 2nd Plenary Session of the 9th Central Committee of the CPC was held in Lushan, presided over by Mao Zedong. Right at the beginning of the session, Lin Biao seized the CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION669 initiative to make a speech in which he persisted in his proposal not to abolish the office of the state chairman. He directed the spearhead at the Jiang Qing clique by advocating the idea that &quot;Mao Zedong is a genius.&quot; Group meetings were held on the afternoon of August 24 to discuss Lin's speech. Previously, Chen Boda had compiled some material entitled &quot;Quotations trom Engels, Lenin and Mao Zedong on Genius.&quot; At the meetings, the members of the conspiratorial group made speeches explaining the material— Chen Boda in the North China Group, Ye Qun m the Central China Group, Wu Faxian in the Southwest China Group, and Li Zuopeng in the Northwest China Group. In a veiled attack on Zhang Chunqiao without naming him, they also brought up two issues: namely, the need to resume the office of state chairman, and the title of genius, in accordance with the proposals in Lin's speech. Their speeches, printed in Bulletin No.2 of the North China Group that evening, aroused strong responses in all the other groups. Most of the participants were indignant on hearing that some people &quot;deny that Mao Zedong is a genius, &quot;depreciate Mao Zedong Thought&quot; and &quot;don't agree that Mao Zedong should be state chairman.&quot; They demanded that people like that be &quot;ferreted out,&quot; bringing on a strained situation. At this point, Mao became aware of the factional activities carried on by Lin Biao and his followers in scrambling for personal power. On August 25, at an enlarged meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee called by Mao Zedong, it was decided to stop discussing Lin Biao's speech, recall Bulletin No.2 of the North China Group and instruct Chen Boda to make a self-criticism. On the 31st, Mao wrote &quot;An Opinion of Mine&quot; in which he severely criticized Chen Boda's &quot;launching of a sudden attack, stirring up trouble and fearing only failure to bring on nationwide chaos, striking with powerful bravado, as if to blast Lushan flat and stop the rotation of the earth.&quot; Mao said that &quot;on no account should the people get mixed up with Chen Boda's rumors and sophistry&quot; or &quot;be fooled by those who claim to know Marx but actually know nothing about Marx.&quot; The plenary, on the proposal of Mao Zedong, exposed and criticized Chen. Wu Faxian and others were also criticized. The plenary session resumed its pre-planned agenda on September 6, passed in the main the revised draft Constitution and suggested that the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress hold its 4th National Congress at an appropriate time; approved the State Council's report on the National Planning Conference and the National Economic Plan for 1970 and the report of the Military Commission of the Central Committee on strengthening preparedness against war. During the session, the Central Committee proposed that Chen Boda be investigated. After the session closed, the Central Committee issued a directive in November calling on senior cadres to study Marxist and Leninist works, saying that &quot;only after reading some basic works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin can the highranking cadres distinguish genuine from sham Marxism.&quot; Then the Central Committee held the North China Convention and for more than one month, exposed and criticized Chen Boda. In addition, the Central Committee appointed new persons into the General Office of the Military Commission controlled by the Lin Biao clique. In April 1971, the Central Committee convened a meeting to report on &quot;criticism of Chen Boda and Party rectification&quot; at which Huang, Wu, Ye, Li and Qiu of the Lin Biao clique were instructed to make self-criticisms. On April 29, the Central Committee issued a circular announcing a decision to expand the campaign of &quot;criticism of Chen and Party rectification&quot; to grassroots units throughout the country. Measures taken by the Party Central Committee and Mao Zedong after the 2nd Plenary Session of the 9th Central Committee weakened the power of the Lin Biao clique. The clique, thrown into confusion, fell into a passive position, and seeing that the situation was unfavorable, decided, in a reckless move, to stage an armed coup d'etat. Early in October 1969, the then Air Force Commander Wu Faxian appointed Lin Liguo, the son of Lin Biao, as deputy director of the General Office and concurrently of the War Department of the PLA Air Force Headquarters. In October 1970, Lin Liguo took advantage of his position and power to secretly organize members to form the backbone for the coup CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 671 d'etat, the code name of which was &quot;combined fleet.&quot; They set up secret strongpoints in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and stored up firearms, ammunition, transceivers and taping devices, and collected confidential documents of the Party and state. Meantime, they organized &quot;fighting platoons&quot; and &quot;training units&quot; made up of meticulously culled members in Guangzhou and Shanghai to receive special training. In March 1971, the main figures of the &quot;combined fleet&quot; met in Shanghai and settled on the plan for an armed coup d'etat, the code name for the plan being &quot;Outline of ‘Project 571'&quot; (in Chinese pronunciation, 571 sounds similar to &quot;armed rebellion&quot;). The &quot;outline&quot; analyzed the situation and stipulated the main points in the procedure, the slogans and the tactics. In mid-August just when the &quot;combined fleet&quot; actively prepared to trigger the crime, Mao went on an inspection tour of south China. In Wuhan, Changsha and Nanchang, Mao Zedong had conversations with Party, government and army leaders of provinces and autonomous regions including Hubei, Henan, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Jiangxi, Jiangsu and Fujian. In the talks, he stressed the struggle at the 2nd Plenary Session of the 9th Party Congress and criticized by name Lin Biao, Huang, Wu, Ye, Li and Qiu. He pointed out: &quot;Someone is impatient to be chairman of the state and wants to split the Party and seize power.&quot; &quot;The recent Lushan meeting was another struggle between two headquarters.&quot; He also said that &quot;What has happened at Lushan is not over yet. The problem remains to be solved&quot; and Lin Biao &quot;should, of course, be held responsible to some extent.&quot; By sharply raising the problem of Lin Biao, Mao made known that he did not trust Lin any longer. On the contrary, he thought Lin had become the head of another headquarters against him. Lin Biao and Ye Qun, who were at Beidaihe then, learned of Mao's remarks from reports sent by their followers and were thrown into a panic. On September 7, Lin Liguo ordered the &quot;combined fleet&quot; to enter into &quot;first-degree combat readiness.&quot; On the 8th, Lin Biao issued his hand-written order for approving the act and decided to assassinate Mao during his tour. Simultaneously, they made preparations to flee south to Guangzhou with their followers and to set up another Party center there. On September 3, Mao arrived in Hangzhou from Nanchang. After he had been alerted to certain suspicious circumstances, he returned to Beijing promptly on the 12th ahead of schedule, thus defeating the plot of the &quot;combined fleet.&quot; At 10:30 pm on the 12th, Zhou Enlai received a telephone report from the Central Guards Bureau saying that Lin Liguo had flown a Trident plane from Beijing to Shanhaiguan that evening. Zhou ordered an investigation into the sudden flight of the plane to Shanhaiguan and demanded that the plane immediately return to Beijing. Seeing that their intrigue to flee south was exposed, Lin Biao, Ye Qun and Lin Liguo hurriedly got on board the plane and fled the country in the small hours of the 13th. The plane crashed at Undur Khan, Mongolia, killing them all. The remaining principal figures of the &quot;combined fleet&quot; either committed suicide or were arrested. The plot to mount a counterrevolutionary armed coup d'etat was thus scattered to the winds. These were the events making up what is now known as the &quot;September 13th Incident.&quot; The incident of the Lin Biao counter-revolutionary clique intriguing to seize supreme power and plotting the armed coup d'etat was a disastrous effect of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; due to overthrowing a series of basic Party principles. In the five years following the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; the Party's leading role was greatly weakened and the Party's organizational disciplines were undermined. A large number of experienced veteran cadres who stuck to revolution were overthrown or expelled. The Party organizations at all levels were lax and the state's democracy and legality were trampled on. Factionalism and strife over power and profit burst into the open and became legitimized. The whole country was plunged into chaos. All these created conditions in which the Lin Biao counter-revolutionary clique could run amuck and dare to hatch a reckless plot. From this imbroglio, people saw clearly that Lin Biao, the very person who so enthusiastically advocated the personality cult, went so far as to plot the assassination of the chairman of the Party, the &quot;great teacher, great leader, great commander and great helmsman&quot; whom he 673 had lauded so vociferously; that he, named as the chairman s &quot;successor,&quot; in the Party Constitution, went on to commit treason and flee the country; that six newly-promoted Political Bureau members altogether engaged in the counter-revolutionary activities— all this, and more. The events roused people to serious thought: What result and prospect did the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; bring to the Party and nation? Was the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; necessary and rational? Why must great order across the land be reached through great disorder under heaven? Was it necessary to &quot;continue revolution&quot; under the proletarian dictatorship? Was it true that those overthrown by the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; were people in authority taking the capitalist road? Was China really faced with the danger of capitalist restoration then? In other words, could the cultural revolution&quot; possibly advance the interests and hopes of any stratum of the Chinese people? What social support had the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; relied on in the five years since it was launched? What was the significance of all the losses and disasters it brought on? What point was there in continuing it any longer. The &quot;Incident of September 13&quot; woke up many cadres and masses to the fanatical personality cult and objectively declared the bankruptcy of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; both in theory and practice. Mao himself was also painfully disappointed by it. Readjustment of the National Economy Following Ups and Downs in the Turmoil During 1967-68, the national economy speedily deteriorated in the social turmoil following the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; In the second half of 1966, the Red Guard movement and the travels made by the so-called revolutionaries to other cities to agitate and to exchange experiences in making revolution across the country brought great losses to industry, communications and transportation Because the turmoil mainly took place in cultural and educational departments and Party and governmental institutions at that stage, the system of production, by and large, remained intact, which, together with the relatively sound foundation in the national economy as a result of the preceding five-year readjustment, all fields of production made comparatively satisfactory achievements in 1966. Industrial and agricultural output value reached 253.4 billion yuan, an increase of 13.4 percent over 1965. The output of major industrial and agricultural products also increased by a great margin. The state's financial revenue increased by 18 percent over the previous year and there was a surplus of 1.72 billion yuan after revenue and expenditure were balanced. Many production and construction projects were completed or surpassed the state's annual quotas. But soon by the end of 1966 the turmoil spread to industrial and communications enterprises, wreaking disaster to economic construction. &quot;Going all out to seize power&quot; threw the leadership, adjustment and management systems in economic work into a state of semi- or complete paralysis, throwing the national economy out of control. The 1967 national economic plan was impossible to implement and as a matter of fact, it was cast aside. It was not even possible to draw up a 1968 annual economic plan. These were the only two years in which the annual planning failed to be implemented since China first established the economic planning system. Many effective rules and regulations in the enterprises, especially the relatively complete policies formed in the previous five years of readjustment, such as the seventy articles for industry, were trampled on as &quot;revisionist&quot; rules to &quot;interfere, block and suppress.&quot; Even the system of overall leadership by the factory director led by the Party committee, the distribution principle of &quot;to each according to his work&quot; and profit targets were discarded as bourgeois trappings. Thus followed chaotic enterprise management, low product quality, high cost, lax labour discipline and increased industrial accidents. With workers leaving their posts, transportation obstructed, materials supply blocked, cooperation discontinued and poor social security, many industrial, mining and transport enterprises completely or partly suspended operation. Production during the two years dropped drastically. In 1967, industrial and agricultural output value fell by 9.6 percent compared with that of 1966, and in 1968, the figure dropped another 4.2 percent lower than that in 1967. The national income CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 675 in 1968 was 13.3 percent lower than that of 1966 The ftnancial revenue greatly decreased, market supplies tightened and the people's livelihood deteriorated. Residents received fewer ration coupons for heating-coal and cotton cloth. With the establishment of provincial, city- and county-level revolutionary committees, together with the convocation of the Party's 9th Congress and restoration of Party organizations at all levels, China's domestic situation gradually stabilized and the national economy slowly recovered. In February 1969, the national planning conference was re sumed after two years of abeyance. The 1969 National Econ°™‘c Planning Outline (draft) was discussed at the meeting and later distributed to lower levels as a key document to while being implemented. At the time, leaders like Zhou Enlai, who was in charge of government work, grasped the opportunity to restore the work in the major industrial departments and other comprehensive economic fields, thus strengthening the macrocontrol over the national economy. Their efforts were instrume tal in reviving the 1969 national economy to some degree^Industnal and agricultural output value for the year reached 261.3 billion yuan, an increase of 23.8 percent over the preceding year and the national income hit 161.7 billion yuan, an increase of 19.3 percent However, the increase was obviously of a recuperative nature for most production indexes of major industria and agricultural products were still below or equivalent to the levels of 1966. Many difficulties and problems in economic work caused by the &quot;Left&quot; errors still remained as serious repercussions^ The national planning conference during February and March 1970 drew up the Outline for the 1970, and the Fourth Five-Year National Economic Plan (draft). Due to over-estimation of the possible war danger caused by foreign aggression interna lonally and over-optimism in regard to the domestic economic situation, emphasis was placed on &quot;preparation against war as the guiding principle, concentration on strengthening the strategic rear area, establishing self-sufficient area of economic cooperation Mmd promoting a &quot;new leap forward&quot; in the economy. The Planning outline drawn up according to this guideline repeated the prob lems of over-anxiety to get quick results and blind pursuit of high indexes and high speed. Also problems arose because of a rapid and blind transference of enterprise managing power to local authorities. In 1970, measures in economic construction were adopted to expedite the swift, extensive building of a strategic rear area against war (mainly construction of the national defense industry). The local &quot;five small&quot; (small iron-and-steel, machinery, chemical fertilizer, coalpits and small cement works) industries developed swiftly and the widespread transfer of enterprises and institutions from the central departments to local authorities triggered abrupt changes in the economic structural system. Consequently, the 1970 national economy underwent a relatively big development. The actual levels of the year's economic progress basically fulfilled the major indexes of the Third Five-Year Plan. The output of most industrial and agricultural products surpassed the 1966 indexes. But the blind and rash construction and structural changes inevitably gave rise to many serious problems. By the year's end, economic development was beset by a series of contradictions. For instance, the production of grain and economic crops fell short of the requirements of industrial development and population increase; the raw materials industry could not keep up with the development of the processing industry; the many, large scale capital construction projects made the rate of accumulation exceedingly high; product quality deteriorated, maintenance of equipment was neglected, accidents increased and so on. Economic construction in 1971, however, was carried on without regard for all these contradictions and without hesitation in pressing for the high indexes stipulated in the Fourth Five-Year Plan outline. loo much enterprise managing power being too quickly transferred to the local authorities greatly weakened the central government's macro-control. In order to establish their own &quot;small but complete&quot; economic system, the localities mounted their work on too large a scale, proposing to &quot;double production.&quot; Meanwhile, the proportion of investments in rear area construction and military projects remained steadily high. Thus, in 1971, the scale of capital construction did not diminish but further expanded and the rash drive for economic CHAPTER EIGHT TIIE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 677 construction only accelerated. By the end of 1971, a serious nroblem of &quot;three breakthroughs&quot; emerged in Chinas national economy, namely, the number of workers and of lice stalf exceeded 50 million, the total payroll was over 30 billion yuan and the volume of marketable grain sales topped 80 billion jin, all three figures much higher than the pre-planned mdexes. In 1972, the problem of the &quot;three breakthroughs&quot; continued to mount so as to seriously affect the nation's supplies of grain in storage which, in turn, led to a series of disastrous results such as severe imbalance in the national economy, tight market supplies and deterioration of the people's living standards. During 1972-73, according to Zhou Enlai's instruction, the State Council adopted all kinds of measures for readjusting the national economy. First of all, great efforts were made to solve the problem of the &quot;three breakthroughs,&quot; by reducing the scale of capital construction, streamlining the payroll, strengthening the management of labour wages and rectifying the work of grain marketing. Etlorts were also made to readjust the ratio between agriculture, light industry and heavy industry and accord agriculture the first place in the national economy; readjust the relationships between the national defense construction and economic construction and cut down national defense expenditure to a proper level; lower the excessively high economic indexes in the Fourth Five-Year Plan, strengthen the centralized and unified leadership in economic work and stress unified planning and discipline. Although the overall &quot;Left&quot; errors were not basically corrected and lots of problems still remained in economic work, readjustment for nearly two years alleviated to a large degree the disastrous effects of the rash advance in economic work, particularly in the second half of 1973. The economic situation took an obvious turn for the better and economic work, including foreign economic and technological exchanges, developed decisively. In 1973, China imported a number of technologically advanced single pieces of machinery as well as complete sets of equipment, including thirteen complete sets of equipment for chemical ferti izer four sets for synthetic fiber manufacture and three sets for the petrochemical industry. Major targets of the 1973's national economic plan were fulfilled or surpassed. Industrial and agricultural output value hit 396.7 billion yuan, with an increase of 9.2 percent over the previous year; the national income reached 231.8 billion yuan, an increase of 8.3 percent, and the financial revenue, 80.97 billion yuan, an increase of 5.6 percent, while revenue and expenditure were balanced. The year 1973 turned out to be economically the best in that period. The achievements in construction by no means represented any merits of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; but rather the concerted, successful efforts of cadres at all levels together with the broad masses. This period of time also witnessed conspicuous achievements in some key engineering and scientific projects. In railway construction, the Chengdu-Kunming railway was completed in July 1970, the Zhuzhou-Guiyang railway in October 1972 and the Xiangfan-Chongqing railway in October 1973. These railways, together with the previously built Baoji-Chengdu, ChongqingGuiyang and Guiyang-Kunming railways, opened up southwestern China which had languished in prolonged seclusion from the outside world because of underdeveloped transportation. These arterial railways were constructed under extremely arduous and harsh conditions. Their completion was not only an outstanding feat of pioneering in China's railway history but also rare in the world. In the realm of science and technology, April 1970 saw the successful launching of China's first man-made earth satellite which signalled a historical breakthrough in China's astronautics. The Daqing Oilfield, as a major pillar of China's energy resources construction, was not immune to &quot;Left&quot; obstruction either. But the Daqing people staunchly withstood the disturbances and steered exploitation of the oilfield onto normal channels beginning from 1971. Crude oil production increased steadily and rapidly over a long period. By 1975, annual output reached 46.259 million tons, laying a foundation for the country to surpass 100 million tons in crude oil output. In addition, China accumulated rich technological and managerial experience in building extra large oilfields like Daqing. All these demonstrate that despite the long social turmoil, workers, engineers, technicians and cadres on the industrial, scientific and technological fronts, like the cadres CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 679 and masses on other fronts, had always put the Party s, nations and people's interests above everything. At their own positions, they worked hard and surmounted untold difficulties to make contributions to the socialist cause. Their contributions are an embodiment of the Chinese people's great strength released under the banners of patriotism and socialism. Frustration in Efforts to Correct &quot;Left&quot; Mistakes After the Lin Biao incident, Mao Zedong, with the assistance of Zhou Enlai, adopted a series of measures to solve important problems related to it. The CPC Central Committee dismissed Huang Yongsheng, Wu Faxian, Li Zuopeng and Qiu Huizuo tro their official positions to reconsider and make a clean breast of all they did. The Central Committee also decided to disband tbe General Office of the Military Commission and established the Military Commission Work Council, with Ye Jianying in charge of the daily affairs of the Military Commission. The Lir i Biao incident was reported to cadres and Party fromf entral to lower levels. Beginning from December 1971 the CPC Central Committee successively distributed three installments of materials concerning the struggle to put down the counter-revolutionary coup d'etat of the Lin Biao clique. A rectification campaign to criticize Lin Biao was conducted nationwide to expose and condemn the crimes of the Lin Biao clique and to ferret out people and clarify events related to its intrigues and activities. The results of all the measures were useful and considerable. However although Mao learnt some lessons from the incident and readjusted policies to a certain degree, he failed to fully realize the encompassing mistake of the &quot;cultural revo ution itself. He let Jiang Qing and her followers continue to play an important role in the political life of the Party and state. With the problem remaining basically unresolved, big relapses in the political situation were bound to appear later. . Following the Lin Biao incident, Mao himself took care of implementation of the cadre policy. Zhou Enlai's close cooperation proved a good help. On November 14, 1971, when he met with the participants in the Chengdu Forum, Mao said, indicating Ye Jianying, &quot;Don't call him an exponent of the ‘February adverse current' any longer. What was the nature of the ‘current'? It was opposition to Lin Biao, Chen Boda, Wang Li, Guan Feng and Qi Benyu.&quot; Thus Mao reversed the verdict on the case of the &quot;February adverse current.&quot; On January 10, 1972, Mao attended the funeral ceremony for Chen Yi. Mao's words and Zhou Enlai's memorial speech delivered at the ceremony confirming Chen Yi's great, life-long contributions to the revolutionary cause rehabilitated Chen. During April 1972, acting on Zhou's instruction, the People's Daily carried an editorial which pointed out that veteran cadres who had been tempered in long years of revolutionary struggles were precious assets of the Parly; and that it was necessary to carry out correctly the Party's cadre policy, to criticize Lin Biao's erroneous political and organizational line and to remove obstacles from both the &quot;Left&quot; and the Right. To implement the policy, many veteran cadres or their relatives wrote to Mao and the Central Committee asking to have the facts set straight. Mao wrote instructions or comments on some of the letters and Zhou repeatedly urged departments concerned to speed up their investigations of special cases so that some former important officials could have their reputations restored and a large number of responsible Party, governmental and military cadres at all levels, who had gone down to the countryside to labor or who had been directed to &quot;stand aside,&quot; could return to leading positions. A number of specialists, scholars and professors also came back to their working posts. Although their situation was still hard, most of them tried their best to promote the difficult development of the socialist undertaking, difficult as were the prevailing conditions. On March 10, 1973, the CPC Central Committee decided to reinstate Deng Xiaoping to enable him to participate in the regular activities of the Party and to work in his former position as vice-premier. In December the same year, during a conversation with participants in a Military Commission conference, Mao suggested that He Long, Luo Ruiqing, Yang Chengwu, Yu Lijin and Fu Chongbi be rehabilitated. Mao made a self-criticism, admitting that he had CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION 681 believed one-sidedly in Lin Biao's words and made mistakes These actions had a powerful political influence within and outside the Party. f ,, , • During this period, Zhou Enlai combined criticism of the L Biao counter-revolutionary clique's crimes with criticism of t c ultra-&quot;Left&quot; trend. The action was an extension of the correct proposals put forward in February 1967 by many leading comrades of the Central Committee who early on had called tor correcting the errors of the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; Zhou raised the issue of criticizing the ultra-&quot;Left&quot; tendency at some important national conferences as well as on other occasions. He pointed out that the people would lack courage to implement the Party s correct line unless the ultra-&quot;Left&quot; tendency was completely repudiated. As to the cadres' misgivings regarding the production and professional work, he pointed out, &quot;The movement and vocational work should not be placed in opposition and politics in command&quot; &quot;should be expressed in one's vocation.&quot; He encouraged cadres at all levels to engage in production and professional work with perfect assurance. In accordance with his suggestions, economic departments under the State Council worked out specific rules and measures to rectify the enterprises and strengthen economic management. With regard to work in the countryside, the CPC Central Committee reaffirmed that rural work must be conducted according to the sixty articles on agriculture. Additionally the Central Committee issued instructions on distribution m the commune, to solve problems such as failure to honor commitments and equalitarianism in remuneration, which serious y dampened the peasants' enthusiasm for production. In regard to culture and education, Professor Zhou Peiyuan of Beijing University, in line with Zhou Enlai's opinions, proposed three points for strengthening teaching and research in basic theories. The article was carried in the Guangming Daily for propaganda. 1 he People's Daily also published experiences of Shacheng Middle School in Huailai County, Hebei Province, in educational reform. It was proposed that middle school education should center around classroom teaching and book knowledge. This sort of propaganda reportage reflected the earnest hopes of scientists, researchers, teachers and students. However, the Jiang Qing clique which had established itself through the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; and the ultra-&quot;Left&quot; trend were certainly not about to leave the matter at that. They continued to grasp at the supreme power, in the path of which the downfall of Lin Biao meant to them only one less obstacle. The efforts made by cadres in all fields to fight off the effects of the ultra&quot;Left&quot; tendency, restore production and a proper routine of work, achieved results. These were welcomed by the broad masses, but opposed by Jiang Qing and her followers. They denounced the articles carried in the Guangming Daily and the People's Daily, repudiating the u!tra-&quot;Left&quot; trend, and directed the People's Daily office internally to carry out proceedings criticizing the comeback of Right deviation among its staff members. Meantime, they directed the Shanghai-based Werihui Bao to attack Zhou Peiyuan's views emphasizing the basic theories of natural sciences. In 1973, the State Planning Commission, according to instructions given by Zhou Enlai, drafted &quot;Regulations on Adhering to Unified Planning and Improving Economic Management&quot; to be submitted for discussion at the National Planning Conference. Twenty-eight provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions were all in favor of the document, while only Shanghai under the control of Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, opposed it. Zhang brazenly said, &quot;I am strongly opposed to pressure from the majority. It's an honor to be isolated.&quot; Consequently, the 1972 and 1973 documents of the National Planning Conference were not officially distributed. Mao Zedong was not completely wakened by the Lin Biao incident. He was still dreaming that the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; might have a certain satisfactory end close to the one he originally envisioned. When the leading cadres headed by Zhou Enlai came into sharp confrontation with the Jiang Qing clique on the issue of criticizing the ultra-&quot;Left&quot; trend, Mao erroneously supported the stand of Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao. The &quot;cultural revolution&quot; was an outcome of &quot;Left&quot; errors. Criticism of the ultra-&quot;Left&quot; trend, if it developed, would inevitably lead to repudiation of the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; That was unbearable for 683 Mao; he made the erroneous decision that the Lin Biao clique was ultra-Right beyond all doubt, and by no means ultra-&quot;Left&quot;; therefore it was permissible to criticize only the ultra-Right. This cut short Zhou Enlai's efforts to correct &quot;Left&quot; mistakes. During August 24-28, 1973, the 10th National Congress of the CPC was held in Beijing. This was one year in advance of the Party Constitution stipulation that a congress be held every five years. Presided over by Mao, it was attended by 1,249 deputies representing 28 million Party members throughout the country. The 10th Party Congress continued the &quot;Left&quot; errors of the 9th Congress. It passed the political report and Party Constitution drafted by Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen, which did not correctly analyze the reason for the Lin Biao incident, nor sum up necessary lessons. On the contrary, it affirmed that &quot;both the political and organizational lines of the 9th Congress were correct.&quot; As formerly, the whole Party was called upon &quot;to persist in the continued revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat&quot; and the &quot;proletarian cultural revolution.&quot; It maintained, as an &quot;objective law,&quot; that &quot;great disorder across the land leads to great order and it will be repeated every seven or eight years.&quot; In addition, it was predicted that &quot;the struggle between the two lines within the Party will exist for a long time to come.&quot; The criticism of Lin Biao's &quot;ultra-Right nature&quot; was listed as a primary task. Guided by such a wrong &quot;Left&quot; policy, the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; was slated to go on and on with increasingly disastrous results. The congress elected 195 members and 124 alternate members to the Central Committee. Some veteran cadres including Deng Xiaoping, Wang Jiaxiang, Ulanhu, Li Jingquan, Tan Zhenlin and Liao Chengzhi, who had been persecuted during the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; and excluded from the 9th Party Central Committee, were elected to the new Central Committee. Although more core members of the Jiang Qing clique were balloted in, the re-entry of some revered veteran cadres displayed another significant trend. On August 31, 1973, the 1st Plenary Session of the 10th Central Commmittee of the CPC elected the Party's central organs. Mao Zedong was made chairman, and Zhou Enlai, Wang Hongwen, Kang Sheng, Ye Jianying and Li Desheng vicechairmen, of the CPC Central Committee. Wang Hongwen made his name as a rebel in Shanghai. Then merely because he was relatively young and had been a soldier and factory cadre, he was suddenly promoted to the high, position of vice-chairman. Kang Sheng, although a veteran Party member, had made many serious mistakes, but because of his close link with Jiang Qing and her followers during the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; he was also elevated to the high rank of vice-chairman. After the 10th National Party Congress, Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen formed the &quot;gang of four&quot; in the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee. The force of the Jiang Qing clique was strengthened and they became more reckless in their ambitious attempts and activities to usurp supreme Party and state power. However, through the Lin Biao incident, many cadres and Party members had their political consciousness and discernment raised. The issue of whether to affirm or negate the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; was becoming an increasingly intense struggle<br /> <br /> === Creating a New Situation in Diplomatic Work ===<br /> Diplomatic Disputes Caused by &quot;Left&quot; Mistakes In the early period of the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; the work of the Party on foreign affairs was seriously disrupted by &quot;Left&quot; way of thinking. Lin Biao, Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng and their cohorts created a great deal of trouble by meddling in departments which handled foreign affairs. They even went so far as to usurp the power of the Central Committee in that sphere. They wilfully negated the major achievements of the previous seventeen years in this field by attacking the relevant Party line of that period. They repudiated the conduct of foreign affairs as tantamount to &quot;three capitulations plus one liquidation&quot; (capitulation to imperCHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 685 ialism, revisionism and reactionaries of various countries and the liuuidaiion of people's revolution). At their instigation, leading officials in departments which handled foreign affairs became targets of attack. Work in these departments was sabotaged for a considerable period of time. Practically all the ambassadors were recalled from abroad to take part in the &quot;cultural revolution and many of them were persecuted. Under the influence of anarchism and ultra-leftist thinking, some people in these departments skir ed state policies and acted according to their own inclinations^ Violations of discipline occurred from time to time In Publicity oriented to foreign audiences, no attention was paid to the pr cinle of drawing a distinction between propaganda geared to the outside and that devoted to the home front. The propagation of Mao Zedong Thought was made the main task in China sforeig activities This led to the mistake of assuming ourselves to be the only revolutionary Party or country in the world and °f.trylng &quot; impose our own ideology on others. Our mistaken dealings with fordgn countries also included adopting overly rude attitudes or overreacting in disregard of the norms for international exChTwas natural that all this should have aroused the suspicion and uneasiness of the governments and officials of the countries in which Chinese embassies had been established. China r tions with the Western countries became very strained, particu larly as a result of the serious incident that took place in August 1967, when some 10,000 people m Beijing encircled the British charge d'affaires' office and set the office building on fire. Within a year or more, among the over forty countries which had established full or partial diplomatic relations with China, close to thirty had become drawn into disputes Some of these result of mishandling by China. This seriously impaired Chinas image in the world and made its diplomatic work increasingly difficult. Premier Zhou Enlai and most cadres dealing with foreign affairs always opposed such ultra-&quot;Left mistakes and tried^their best to prevent them. Mao Zedong also criticized these mistakes and asked for their correction. The deviations in handling foreign affairs were rectified and abnormalities eliminated soon after remedial measures were taken. Compared with other fields, the damage done to the work in foreign affair was smaller, and the time of the disruption shorter. On May First International Labour Day in 1969, Mao Zedong met with some of the foreign diplomatic envoys to China on the grandstand over the Tiananmen rostrum and had a friehdly talk with them. This was to pass on a message that China wanted to improve and develop its relations with other countries. Not long after that, China began sending out its diplomatic envoys, charged with adopting the initiative in mending relations with their resident countries and repairing the damage, which had been done mainly because of ultra-&quot;Left&quot; actions on the part of China. In this way, China's foreign relations were again put back on the track of normal development. Relaxation of Sino-U.S. Relations and Establishment of Diplomatic Relations Between China and Japan Tremendous changes took place in the world situation in the 1970s following the enormous development of events in the more than twenty years since the end of World War II. Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, after making a careful examination of the new world situation, made an important and timely policy decision which showed their farsightedness, courage and resourcefulness. This, coupled with the adoption of flexible measures, enabled China's foreign relations to take a turn for the better, resulting in a new situation for Chinese diplomacy. The key link in the favourable change was the amelioration of Sino-U.S. relations. For twenty years, ever since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the United States had maintained a hostile attitude towards it. Under the impetus of a changed world, leaders of both China and the United States saw the need as well as the possibility of holding talks to improve and normalize their relations. From the point of view of the United States, the serious problem facing it was the antagonism between itself and the Soviet Union. However, a few power centers had already arisen, with China as an important force among them. The United States found it necessary to improve its relations with China in order to CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION1 687 eliminate the after-effects of the Viet Nam war as soon as oossible, to stop the decline of its world position as a superpower, and to meet the challenge of the Soviet Union. The worsening o Sino-Soviet relations made this idea feasible. From its own perspective, China also wanted a rapprochement with the Um ed States in order to deal with the direct, serious threat posed by the concentration of large numbers of Soviet troops along its northern borders to achieve the great cause of national unification by solving the Taiwan issue, and to restore and expand its relations with other countries. After Richard Nixon became president m January 1969, tne United States began to approach China through various channe In July 1971, Dr. Henry Kissinger, special assistant to the president in national security, made a secret trip to China, rhe news, when published, shook the world. In February 1972, Pres ident Nixon visited China, met with Chairman Mao Zedong and held talks with Premier Zhou Enlai. Through the talks the Sino-U.S. Joint Communique was signed on February 28 in Shanghai. This marked the beginning of the process of norma 1zation of relations between the two countries. In the joint communique, both sides stated their own principled positions and recognized the need to implement the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence and oppose the threat of hegemonism. On the Taiwan issue, which had impeded the lm provement of Sino-U.S. relations for a long time, the American side expressed its recognition that all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Straits maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China. Later, leaders of the two governments held talks on the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The Chinese government stated that, in order to achieve this objective, the U.S. government should sever its &quot;diplomatic relations&quot; with Taiwan, withdraw all its armed forces and military equipment from the island and abolish the Mutual Defence Treaty&quot; it had signed with Taiwan, and recognize th Government of the People's Republic of China as the sole legitimate government of China. In accepting China's stated principles with regard to the Taiwan issue, the United States constantly put up obstacles to normalization by expressing certain reservations, such as demanding a statement by China pledging peaceful solution of the Taiwan issue as a pre-condition for U.S. troop withdrawals and abolition of the said treaty. The Chinese government, for its part, clearly pointed out that the Taiwan question is its own internal affair and how the question will be solved should be decided by China alone. In December 1975, President Gerald Ford visited China and held talks with Vice-premier Deng Xiaoping. At that time, the attitude of the U.S. government indicated a retrogression from the previous commitments made by the Nixon administration on the Taiwan question. Sino-U.S. normalization was delayed owing to the fact that the American government had not made up its mind to solve these problems. However, a liaison office was established in each other's capital in 1973, and for several years exchanges in trade, science, culture and technology experienced substantial growth. The protracted hostility between the two countries was ended and initial steps were taken towards normalization. This was without a doubt a major event in the history of Sino-U.S. relations. It also had a great impact on the international situation. Sino-U.S. detente made way for improvement in Sino-Japanese relations. The Japanese government had long toed the line of the U.S. government by maintaining a hostile attitude towards China. I he fact that the United States had taken the lead in carrying out diplomatic activities aimed at rapprochement with China produced profound repercussions in Japan both in the government and the public at large. Public opinion strongly demanded diplomatic relations with China as quickly as possible so as to attain a favourable competitive position politically and economically vis-a-vis other countries. With the help and support of many political parties, social organzations and personages friendly to China, the Japanese Premier Tanaka Kakuei began his visit to China on September 25, 1972. Chairman Mao Zedong met with the Japanese premier and other guests. Premier Zhou Enlai held talks with him which resulted in the signing of a joint statement on the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries on September 29. The statement declared the ending of 689 the abnormal situation in Sino-Japanese relations. The Japanese side, sharply aware of its responsibilities in causing tremendous losses to the Chinese people during the war, expressed the desire to make a deep self-examination. The Japanese government recognized the government of the People's Republic of China as the sole legitimate government of China, and Taiwan as an inseparable part of the territory of the People's Republic of China. Consequently, Japan severed its &quot;diplomatic relations with t Taiwan authorities. In early 1973, each country set up an embassy in the other's capital and the two countries exchanged ambassadors A series of agreements were signed regarding trade, aviation, ocean transport, fishery, science and culture resulting m the rapid development of exchanges in all these spheres. The two countries commenced their talks on the signing of a treaty of peace and friendship beginning 1975. The establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Japan put an end to their history of long-standing hostility and opened a new chapter in the history of neighbourliness and friendship between the two nations. This was of great significance for both countries as well as for world peace and development. Those years were also a peak period in which many Western European countries established diplomatic relations with China. With the increase in their political and economic strength since the end of the war, their drive to compete with the two superpowers became increasingly stronger. Their tendency toward mutua support and cooperation with China in defending world peace and the independence and prosperity of their countries was also growing. China had the same desire as these countries. Betore 1969 of all the Western, Northern and Southern European countries* only six had full diplomatic relations with China, while Britain and Holland had such relations with China as were compatible with maintaining a charge d'affaires' office in respective capitals. By the end of the 1970s, Chma had established diplomatic relations with all the countries in these regions, with the exception of Andorra and three other small nations. Relations were also normalized between China and the European Economic Community. In the early 1970s, China successively normalized diplomatic relations with Canada, Australia and New Zealand in North America and the southwest Pacific region, respectively. Since then, China has developed cooperative exchanges with these countries in the economic, scientific, technological and cultural fields. The Restoration of China's Rightful Seat in the UN On October 25, 1971, the 26th General Assembly of the United Nations passed a resolution on the restoration of the rightful seat of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations and the immediate expulsion of the representatives of the Kuomintang clique from all UN organizations. For a long time since its founding, the People's Republic of China had been deprived of its rightful seat in the United Nations due to obstruction by the United States. The Chinese government had waged a consistent struggle for its restoration. With China's position steadily improving in the world community, and the successive admission of newly-independent Asian and African countries into the United Nations, the United States found it more and more difficult to go on putting up obstacles. In the course of deliberation on China's seat at the 26th UN General Assembly, obstructions put up by the United States and some other countries, now in the form of a &quot;two Chinas&quot; scheme, were removed, and the problem finally resolved, thanks to the joint efforts of many Asian, African and other countries which upheld justice. This was a major victory on China's diplomatic front. From then on, as a permanent member of the Security Council of the United Nations, China has worked unceasingly for the realization of the objectives of the United Nations—the maintenance of world peace, the strengthening of friendship and cooperation among nations, and the promotion of the cause of human progress. Sino-Soviet Negotiations and the Worsening of Sino- Vietnamese Relations The crucial issue between China and the Soviet Union in the 1970s was the threat to China's security posed by the latter. While CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 691 intensifying a political campaign against China, the Soviet Union concentrated large numbers of troops along the Sino-Soviet borders sent troops into the Mongolian People s Republic and pro voked armed conflicts on the borders. Under these circumstances, China was forced to strengthen war preparations while at the same time seeking to improve the strained relations between the two nations. In September 1969, when Premier Zhou Enlai met with Soviet Prime Minister Kossigin in Beijing, an understanding was reached between the two sides that negotiations on the border question should be held under circumstances where no threat existed, and that in order to achieve this, an agreement should be signed first of all to maintain the status quo along the border avoid armed conflicts and disengage the armed forces of both sides in the disputed areas. The Soviet side initially opposed the discussion of signing such an agreement. Later when they could not icfuse to carry on discussions, they denied the existence of disputed areas, a question which Kossigin had agreed to discuss. From the middle of the 1960s onwards, the Soviet Union, taking advantage of the decline of the United States asasuperpower intensified its expansion abroad in its rivalry with the United States for world hegemony. The Communist Party of China and the Chinese government, while opposing the hegemomsm of the United States, waged a resolute struggle against the hegemomsm and big-nation chauvinism of the Soviet Union which were manifested in the way they handled Sino-Soviet relations and other international affairs. A deep-rooted friendship between the peoples of Chma and Viet Nam was forged through their long-term struggles against imperialism and colonialism. After the founding of New Chma, the Communist Party of China and the Chinese Government, despite their own difficulties and hardships at a time when everything had to be started from scratch, gave full support to the Vietnamese people's resistance against French and American aggression and later to reconstruction of their country, rendering them tremendous and selfless assistance both militarily and economically. However, after the Vietnamese completed the liberation of their whole territory in 1975, following the withdrawal of the American troops from south Viet Nam in 1973, the Vietnamese authorities pursued a course of regional hegemonism in an attempt to set up a &quot;federation of Indo-China states.&quot; It was natural that China should adopt an attitude of opposition to this scheme. The Vietnamese authorities reacted by adopting an anti-China policy. In a flagrant manner, they provoked border disputes, invaded Chinese territory, and ruthlessly persecuted and expelled large numbers of Chinese residents from Viet Nam. Since 1975, China had repeatedly proposed negotiations on the border question, but Viet Nam used various pretexts to postpone the talks. After the invasion of Kampuchea by Viet Nam, its leaders closely linked this action with their attack on China, claiming that China was their &quot;most direct and dangerous enemy.&quot; Proceeding from the fact that China always treasured the traditional friendship between the two peoples, the Chinese side gave them repeated warnings and remonstrations. But since the Vietnamese leaders thought they could count on the support of the Soviet Union, they went farther and farther down the road in their opposition to China, resulting in a serious deterioration of the Sino-Vietnamese relations. After the 1970s, China's relations with several East European countries, including Poland, Democratic Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria, improved in various degrees. Trade and exchanges in science and technology were restored. Since both China and Rumania advocated the principle of independence in international affairs, they were able to support each other and cooperate closely in the international arena. China's relations with Yugoslavia also improved outstandingly after 1970. Developing Friendship and Cooperation with Third-World Countries Building friendly and cooperative relations with the thirdworld countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America was one of the notable achievements made by China during the 1970s. The number of third-world countries which had established normal relations with China greatly increased, reaching another hightidc of diplomatic successes on a more extensive scale. During this period, a large number of countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, South America, including the Caribbean region, Western Asia and Oceania, established diplomatic relations with China. The friendship and cooperation between China and these countries and their coordination in international affairs was strengthened all round. The overwhelming majority of the thirdworld countries, though they had gained national independence, were still faced with the serious task of fighting imperialism, colonialism and hegemonism. Some faced the task of combating racism in South Africa, and foreign expansionism of Israel. China gave resolute support in various ways to these countries in theit just struggle to defend their national independence and state sovereignty, oppose foreign aggression and interference, and maintain peace in their respective regions as well as in the whole world. China always worked earnestly in the common struggle to promote third-world unity, change the old international order under which big nations bully small ones, rich countries exploit poor ones, and to set up a new international order based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence. In the first half of the 1970s, while engaged in an appraisal of the international situation, Mao Zedong gradually formed a concept of the three worlds. He maintained that the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, belonged to the first world, and the other developed countries in the West, as well as the East European countries, belonged to the second world, while the developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America which were great in number, belonged to the third world. In making this distinction, he highlighted the contradiction between the Soviet Union and the United States, countries which were on a head-long course of hegemonism on the one hand, and the world forces who opposed them on the other, and emphasized the important role of the third-world countries in the fight against world hegemony. The importance of uniting with the secondworld countries in this fight and exploiting the contradictions between the two superpowers was also stressed, as was the fact that China belonged to the third world and therefore it should unite with all possible forces in the world to form the broadest international united front in a common struggle to defeat aggression, control and oppression by the superpowers, and work for world peace. From a theoretical point of view, although some of these analyses did not accord with reality, they certainly played a positive role in providing guidelines for Chinese diplomacy in the fight against superpower hegemonism and the threat of war, as well as in the work to build friendly and cooperative relationships with third-world and other types of countries, including the work on Sino-U.S. normalization. To a certain extent, these guidelines also paved the way for the implementation of China's open policy in later years.<br /> <br /> === The Downfall of the Jiang Qing Clique and the Conclusion of the &quot;Cultural Revolution&quot; ===<br /> Although the 10th National Party Congress fully reaffirmed the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; the masses of cadres and people felt growing weariness, doubts and grievances toward it. Zhou Enlai's efforts to rectify the &quot;Left&quot; mistakes, though thwarted halfway, won general approval and support. Mao Zedong wanted to see the end of the abnormal situation that had existed for a long time, and had already corrected some of the mistakes he had come to recognize, in the hope that there would be stability and unity and China's economy would recover and grow. On the other hand, he was worried about a possible &quot;restoration and retrogression,&quot; and the negation of the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; In fact, he was experiencing a sharp mental conflict. Re-Emergence of the Turmoil and Struggle Around the 4th NPC Around the time when the 10th National Party Congress was in session, on several occasions, Mao Zedong stated that the criticism of Lin Biao should be linked up with the criticism of CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 695 Confucius and Confucianism and the promotion of the legalist school of thought. In his talk with Wang Hongwen and Zhang Chunqiao in July 1973, he said that Lin Biao, like the Kuomintang, was a worshiper of Confucianism and an opponent of the legalist school of thought. In January 1974, a selection of statements by Lin Biao on the one hand, and Confucius and his disciples on the other, which was entitled &quot;Lin Biao and the Doctrines of Confucius and Mencius,&quot; was issued to all Party organizations for the purpose of criticism. A nationwide campaign to criticize Lin Biao and Confucianism soon swept the country. Mao Zedong launched the campaign not only because he wanted to bring out criticism of Lin Biao and his clique who were promoting the ideological principles of Confucius and Mencius—criticism which was to be made by tracing the clique's ideology to its origin—but also because he wanted to uphold the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; by propagating the idea that historically speaking, the exponents of the legalist school of thought were in favour of reforms while the followers of Confucianism were always against them. The Jiang Qing clique, in order to consolidate and expand the power they had gained during the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; tried their best to make use of the campaign. When they realized that in July 1973, Mao Zedong had criticized the work of the Foreign Ministry, which was under the leadership of Zhou Enlai, and the work of the Military Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, which was in the charge of Ye Jianying (in December), the situation seemed to offer opportunities for them to spearhead the attack on Zhou Enlai and other revolutionary veterans in the course of the campaign. On two occasions in January 1974, Jiang Qing made speeches at large assemblies attended by army cadres in the Beijing area and by officials from central Party and government organizations, calling on them to take an active part in the criticism of Lin Biao and Confucianism. Assuming herself to be the leader of the campaign, she attacked by name a number of cadres at the central and local levels and cadres in the army, and thus put Zhou Enlai and Ye Jianying in a position facing all the blame. In another speech, she openly declared that there was a &quot;very important Confucian&quot; and called for the criticism of the &quot;present-day Confucian.&quot; Using her own name, she wrote letters to some army units and government organizations and sent them relevant materials, instigating them to &quot;ignite the fuse and fire the cannon&quot; and to &quot;seize power.&quot; She also sent people to some army units, instructing them to &quot;start a prairie fire.&quot; A group of writers under her control published many critical essays attacking by innuendo certain correct policies and measures of the pre-&quot;cultural revolution&quot; period which had been abandoned for some time only to be resumed recently. The measures included the re-appointment of some revolutionary veterans to official posts in keeping with the Party's policy on cadres. All these innuendoes were made under the name of criticizing the Confucian doctrines of &quot;restraining oneself in order to restore the old rituals,&quot; and &quot;restoring the toppled state, re-establishing heirless family line and reappointing dismissed officials &quot; Jiang Qing and her followers resorted to distortions and provocations in opposing what they called &quot;attempts to turn the tide and make a comeback&quot; while at the same time, they set up models for &quot;going against the tide.&quot; At their instigation and direction, meetings were held in all possible places to denounce revolutionary veterans and to criticize personages in cultural and educational circles. This again created a highly strained political atmosphere. Factional strife recurred following the re-appearance of liaison offices, of visiting groups from the localities to seek help from higher authorities, groups sending up reports and of other factional cliques. Some people raised slogans such as &quot;Stop production under the erroneous line,&quot; aimed at provoking strikes and walkouts. Some of the leading cadres were again toppled or forced to leave their posts, while others became involved in factional strife, helping one faction to push aside another faction. This, again, paralyzed the leadership in many areas and departments. The campaign to criticize Lin Biao and Confucius wrought new havoc on the initial political stability and economic growth—both of which had been but recently achieved through arduous efforts following the Lin Biao incident. Industry again took a downward turn. According to statistics gathered from January to May of 1974, the production of coal dropped 6.2 percent as compared with the corresponding period in the previous year, railway freight transport dropped 2.5 percent, steel production, 9.4 percent, and chemical fertilizers, 3.7 percent. Financial revenues were 500 million yuan less, while expenditures were 2,500 million yuan more than the previous year. Mao Zedong, while supporting the campaign to criticize Lin Biao and Confucius, did not want to see the recurrence of a big social upheaval. To prevent a more turbulent situation, the Party Central Committee, with the approval of Mao Zedong, issued a notice on the 10th of April, instructing that no fighting squads or similar mass organizations should be formed, and no effort should be made to establish tics between the different trades and regions. In the notice issued by the Party Central Committee which was entitled &quot;Circular on Grasping Revolution and Promoting Production,&quot; fallacious slogans such as &quot;Stop working for the erroneous line&quot; were criticized. The circular pointed out that the manipulators who were instigating strikes behind the scenes should be exposed and criticized. Mao Zedong, who had detected the ulterior motives of Jiang Qing and her ilk in making use of the campaign to further their own interests, criticized them on many occasions. On July 17, at a meeting of the Politburo, he warned her against &quot;establishing two plants—an iron and steel works and a label making factory—and sticking labels on people at her own will.&quot; He openly declared before many people: &quot;She doesn't represent me; she only represents herself.&quot; Mao Zedong also criticized Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen for their factional activities and admonished them: &quot;You should watch your step and avoid forming a small faction of four!&quot; These criticisms made them pull in their horns for some time. On October 11, 1974, the Party Central Committee issued a circular on the decision to convene the 4th National People's Congress within a short period. The circular passed on Mao Zedong's comments: &quot;It is already eight years since the beginning of the proletarian Cultural Revolution. At present, it would be good if stability prevails. The whole Party and the whole army should unite.&quot; Disregarding Mao's opinions, the &quot;gang of four&quot; intensified their underhanded activities, as they saw in the forthcoming NPC new opportunities for them to seize more power. On October 4, Mao Zedong proposed Deng Xiaoping for the post of first vicepremier of the State Council. Jiang Qing and her cohorts were very dissatisfied with this. On many occasions at Politburo meetings, they created trouble and attacked Deng, who justly and forcibly refuted their attacks. After plotting for a long time, the &quot;gang of four&quot; sent Wang Hongwen to Changsha on October 18 to make a report to Mao Zedong, which consisted of false accusations against Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping. This was done behind the back of the majority of the Politburo members with a view to preventing Deng from becoming first vice-premier and &quot;forming a cabinet&quot; by the &quot;gang of four.&quot; Mao Zedong warned Wang Hongwen on the spot, asking him to set a watch on Jiang Qing and not to gang up with her. Mao then asked Wang to go back and see the premier and Ye Jianying for a talk, saying that if he had any comments to make, he should make them in front of the people concerned. Mao dismissed Wang's way of accusing Zhou and Deng behind their backs as no good. On October 20, Mao sent a message to Zhou Enlai and Wang Hongwen by word of mouth reaffirming that the premier was still the man to exercise over-all control, and that the preparatory work for the 4th N PC and the appointment of senior officials at the congress should be handled by the premier and Wang Hongwen. On December 23, 1974, Zhou Enlai, who was seriously ill, went with Wang Hongwen to Changsha to make a work report to Mao Zedong. In his talk, Mao again warned Wang against &quot;forming a gang of four,&quot; advising him to &quot;refrain from forming any cliques, since those who do are bound to trip and fall.&quot; He also said: &quot;Jiang Qing has wild ambitions. Don't you think so? I think she has.&quot; Mao asserted that Deng Xiaoping was strong politically and ideologically and that he was a rare talent not easy to find. He proposed that Deng should hold three posts simultaneously—first vice-premier, vice-chairman of the Military Commission of the Party Central Committee and the chief of the general staff of CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 699 the PLA. Back in December 1973, at the suggestion of Mao Zedong, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China decided that Deng should become a member of the Politburo and take part in the work of leadership of the Central Committee a decision to be confirmed by the 2nd Session of the 10th Central Committee of the Party. It was also decided that Deng should become a member of the Military Commission and take pan in the work of leadership of the commission. On January 5, 1975, at the suggestion of Mao Zedong, the Party Central Committee issued a document appointing Deng Xiaoping as a vice-chairman of the Military Commission of the Party Central Committee and concurrently the chief of the General Staff of the PLA, and Zhang Chunqiao as the director of the General Political Department of the PLA. At the 2nd Session of the 10th Party Central Committee held in early January, the decision to make Deng Xiaoping a member of the Politburo was al firmed and he was elected a vice-chairman of the Party Central Committee and a member of its Standing Committee. The fact that Mao Zedong continued to criticize Jiang Qing and her ilk on many occasions, his re-assertion that Zhou Enlai was in charge of the day-to-day work of the Party Central Committee and of the government, and the fact that Deng Xiaoping was again entrusted with important jobs—all these played an important role in thwarting the &quot;gang of four&quot; in their plot to form a cabinet of their own, and in ensuring the smooth convocation of the 4th NPC. Between the 13th and 17th of January 19/5, the 1st Session of the 4th NPC was held in Beijing. In his report on the work of the government, Zhou Enlai re-asserted the blueprints proposed by the 3rd NPC in December 1964 concerning the two steps to be taken in developing the Chinese economy—the first step was to use fifteen years to accomplish, before 1980, the building of an independent and relatively complete industrial system and national economic system, and the second step was to fully realize the modernization of agriculture, industry, national defence, science and technology within this century so that China's economy would be in the forefront of the world. The NPC re-elected Zhu De chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, and elected Dong Biwu, Soong Ching Ling and twenty others vice-chairmen of the NPC Standing Committee. The congress decided that Zhou Enlai continue to be the premier and Deng Xiaoping, Zhang Chunqiao, Li Xiannian, Hua Guofeng and eight others to be the vice-premiers. The congress reaffirmed the objective of achieving the four modernizations (although the time set for their completion was too short to be realistic). The appointment of Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping to the key posts of the State Council was a great inspiration to the Chinese people and aroused new hopes in them. Work of Consolidation in 1975 and Reversals After the 1st Session of the 4th NPC, Zhou Enlai's illness became more serious. With the support of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping took charge of the day-to-day work of the Party Central Committee and of the State Council. By that time, work in every field had suffered from interference and sabotage by the &quot;gang of four&quot; and was in a state of serious chaos. It was at this critical juncture that Deng Xiaoping was entrusted with the important job. Disregarding the fact he had just been rehabilitated and was beset with a great number of difficulties, he showed great revolutionary courage, wisdom and leadership talent and soon succeeded in changing the situation. Basing himself on Mao Zedong's instructions on the need to maintain stability and unity and to boost the economy, he presided over various types of meetings where he clearly and firmly put forward the guiding principle of consolidation in all spheres of work. He stressed that every sphere of work in the country required consolidation, which was essential for industry, agriculture, commerce, finance and trade, culture and education, science and technology, as well as for the armed forces. He pointed out that the central issue was the consolidation of the Party, with the consolidation of the leadership as the key to the solution of all other problems. Through the work of consolidation, it was essential to set up a leadership which was powerful and bold. He emphasized the need to maintain stability and unity and develop the socialist economy; it was also necessary to strengthen Party leadership, to give play to the 701 Party's good style of work and wage a resolute struggle against factionalism. Those involved in factions had all sorts of wild ambitions, he said. They jostled for power and gain, resorted to vicious plots and intrigues, stirred up trouble and strife. Deng maintained that one must not budge an inch in the struggle against factionalism. He called the attention of people to the implementation of the Party's policies, including the policies towards cadres of old, middle and young age, the policies towards model workers, veteran workers and intellectuals—all this was aimed at calling into play the initiative of people in all spheres. He also set forth the important Marxist viewpoint that science and technology represented a force of production and stressed the need to do a good job in these fields. These and other statements made by him awakened a lot of people who had long been influenced by the trend of &quot;Left&quot; thinking and gave them great encouragement and inspiration. Under Deng's leadership, and with the full support and cooperation of Ye Jianying, Li Xiannian and many other veteran comrades who had resumed work in leadership posts, bold and resolute steps were taken to consolidate the work in every field, with the result that notable achievements were soon registered. Because of factional contention and strife, rail transport under the railway bureaus at Xuzhou, Nanjing, Nanchang and other places was obstructed for a long period, preventing smooth operation of the four trunk lines of the Tianjin-Pukou, BeijingGuangzhou, Lianyungang-Lanzhou and Hangzhou-Nanchang Railways and interfering with transportation over other trunk lines. This posed a serious threat to industrial production and normal city life and stood as the major obstacle to improvement of the situation countrywide. In late February, the Party Central Committee convened a meeting of Party secretaries in charge of industry and made a decision on March 5 on the solution of railway transportation and other problems. Work teams were sent out which cooperated with the local Party committees in starting the work of reorganization at railway bureaus with serious problems. The work teams aroused the masses and mobilized them to criticize factionalism, removed a number of trouble-making fac tionalist leaders, rehabilitated people who had been wronged, reshuffled the leadership in certain organizations, and reinstituted and improved relevant rules and regulations. These measures, which proved highly effective, won the support of the great majority of railway workers and staff members. By April, nineteen out of twenty railway bureaus had overfulfilled their transportation plans. The daily average loading of freight cars amounted to more than 53,700, which was more than 10,000 over the February figure of the same year. The numbers of freight cars loaded with coal daily reached 7,800. This was the first time in five years that the plan for coal transport by rail was completed. The work of railway consolidation served as an example for all other industries, first of all, for the iron and steel industry. The total amount of iron and steel produced in the first four months of 1975 fell short of the original planned target by 1.95 million tons. This was attributed primarily to the unsatisfactory performance of the big iron and steel mills in Baotou, Wuhan, Anshan and Taiyuan. In May, the Party Central Committee held a forum on the iron and steel industry. After a month's work of consolidation, the production of iron and steel showed a clear upward turn. In June, the average daily production of steel reached 72,400 tons, which exceeded the planned daily average figure for the whole year and helped to make up for the shortfall of the previous months. After several months of consolidation, the economic situation showed steady improvement. According to a State Council report on industrial production for the first half of the year, &quot;Industrial production and communications have improved month by month since March.&quot; In May and June, the production of crude oil and coal, electricity, chemical fertilizers, cement, diesel engines, paper and paperboard, railway transportation—all these recorded their highest monthly level in history. In 1975 the total production value of industrial and agricultural production was 11.9 percent higher than the corresponding period of the previous year. Industrial production increased 15.1 percent; agricultural production increased 4.6 percent. This shows that the work of consolidation in this period was highly fruitful. In the same period, vigorous measures were also taken to carry on the work of consolidation in the armed forces, agriculture, science and technology, culture and education. Outstanding results were achieved in every field. Great progress was made in consolidating the army with regard to reshuffling the leadership of some major units and implementation of the Party's policies on the question of cadres. Jhe Science and Technology Commission for National Defence succeeded in solving the knotty problem of factional strife between two large groupings in the Seventh Machinery Ministry. In literature and art, the Party's policy of &quot;let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend&quot; was emphasized, and the ban on the publication and performance of a number of good works was lifted. The literary field, which had been lying fallow, with all the flowers withering, began to show signs of life. ~ , Particularly noteworthy were two documents—one, drafted by the State Planning Commission entitled &quot;Certain Questions on Speeding Up the Development of Industry&quot; (abbreviated as the &quot;Twenty Articles for Industry&quot;) and the other drafted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences entitled &quot;A Report Outline on the Work of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.&quot; Both documents were important for their systematic rectification of &quot;Left&quot; mistakes, and the restoration and formulation of correct policies in the fields of industry, science and technology. Not confined to the work on consolidation, the two documents put forward many important, far-sighted ideas on the reform of industry, science and technology. In fact, they paved the way for the reform in these fields which took place in subsequent years. From the very beginning, the &quot;gang of four&quot; obstructed and resisted the all-round consolidation carried out under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, seizing every opportunity to raise objections. On October 20, 1974, while discussing the theoretical question of the dictatorship of the proletariat in meeting with Danish Prime Minister Paul Hartling, Mao Zedong said, &quot;In a word, China is a socialist country. Before liberation she was much the same as a capitalist country. Even now she practises an eightgrade wage system, distribution according to work and exchange through money, and in all this differs very little from the old society. What is different is that the system of ownership has been changed.&quot; On December 26, he also touched upon this question in his talk with Zhou Enlai and others in Changsha. He said, &quot;Our country at present practices a commodity system; the wage system is unequal, too, as in the eight-grade wage scale, and so forth. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat such things can only be restricted. Therefore, if people like Lin Biao come to power, it will be quite easy for them to rig up the capitalist system.&quot; These statements made by Mao Zedong led people to think that distribution according to labour and commodity exchange were of a capitalist nature or apt to turn capitalist. They were an extension of his conceptions about socialism which were tinted with utopianism. These erroneous statements were exaggerated and played up by the &quot;gang of four&quot; and were used as weapons in their opposition to the work of consolidation. On February 9, 1975, the People's Daily published an editorial entitled &quot;Do a Good Job in Studying the Theory of Dictatorship of the Proletariat,&quot; making public Mao Zedong's statements on theoretical questions. A movement to study these statements soon swept the country. At the direction of the &quot;gang of four,&quot; a large number of articles were published in the press in refutation of &quot;empiricism,&quot; calling on people to &quot;abolish bourgeois right&quot; and instigating them to &quot;attack the strongholds.&quot; They slandered the various measures adopted in the work of consolidation as &quot;empiricist,&quot; which was a direct attack on Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and other Party and state leaders with rich experience. By &quot;attacking the strongholds,&quot; they meant that the cadres, intellectuals and the rank and file of people who opposed the &quot;Leftist&quot; mistakes, were like the enemy in the strongholds in the period of the democratic revolution, and should be subjected to &quot;over-all dictatorship.&quot; Mao Zedong detected the ulterior motive behind the gang of four's opposition to empiricism and criticized them for this. In the light of Mao's opinions, the Politburo held several meetings to criticize the &quot;gang of four.&quot; But their wild ambitions proved to be irrepressible. They seized upon every chance to create trouble. On August 14, 1975, in answer to a request from a woman teacher 705 at Beijing University, Mao Zedong gave his personal views on the classical Chinese novel Outlaws of the Marsh. The gang of four immediately seized on this subject to launch a country-wide publicity campaign in the press for so-called comments on Outlaws of the Marsh. Jiang Qing brazenly fabricated the story that &quot;the crucial thing in Outlaws of the Marsh was isolating Chao Gai and and turning him into a mere figurehead.&quot; By innuendo she falsely accused Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping of havmg deprived Mao Zedong of his power. Learning this, Mao Zedong refuted Jiang Qing's statements. This was another blow to the arrogance and aggressiveness of the &quot;gang of four. The situation in 1975 took a noticeable turn for the better, thanks to the common effort and struggle of many leading comrades in the Politburo and the State Council represented by Deng Xiaoping, a measure of restraint put on the gang of tour by Mao Zedong, the popular desire for law and order and the enthusiasm of the broad masses of people as well as of the Party members and the cadres in their work and production. The various regional armed conflicts were brought to a halt, social order became stabilized in most areas, and the reviving economy swung rapidly upward. However, the work of consolidation carried out in each sphere inevitably went against many of the &quot;Leftist&quot; policies and theories implemented during the cultural revolution,&quot; and gradually constituted a systematic rectification of these erroneous policies and theories. This represented a tendency towards a radical negation of the &quot;cultural revolution This situation aroused not only the frenzied opposition of the &quot;gang of four,&quot; but also the dissatisfaction of Mao Zedong After Mao Zedong fell seriously ill in the winter of 1971, his condition varied, sometimes taking a turn for the better, sometimes for the worse. Nevertheless, he continued to be responsible for all major decisions of the Party and the state As the persons who could approach him and enjoy his trust grew fewer and fewer in number, his understanding of the real situation became poorer and poorer, and therefore his proposals and ideas on important matters of the Party and the state became more and 1 more ablatter half nf 1975. to such a degree that he could hardly walk or speak. The little contact he had with other members of the Politburo was maintained through a liaison person. Under such circumstances, he failed even more to have a complete picture of actual conditions. The distorted and provocative information provided him by the &quot;gang of four&quot; played an extremely insidious role in eliciting erroneous policy decisions from him. In November 1975, Mao Zedong believed the false accusations of the &quot;gang of four&quot; against Deng Xiaoping, and his trust in the latter wavered. He decided to remove Deng from most of his posts. Not long after, Deng Xiaoping was accused of supporting Liu Bing, the deputy Party secretary of Qinghua University who had written a letter of complaint against two confidants of the &quot;gang of four.&quot; Tiic pretext was that Liu's letter had been handed to Mao through Deng and that the letter was directing an attack on Mao. Thus a campaign to &quot;criticize Deng and counter the Rightist wind to reverse verdicts&quot; was launched. However, after ten years of turmoil, the masses of cadres and people now had an understanding which was quite different from what they had entertained in the early period of the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; The achievements of the consolidation work sponsored by Deng Xiaoping were universally acknowledged. The campaign to &quot;criticize Deng and counter the Rightist wind to reverse verdicts&quot; went against reason as well as the will of the people, and was widely boycotted from the very beginning. From the printed materials prepared for the criticism of Deng, people in fact acquired a better understanding of him. They developed a greater trust in Deng as a person who persisted in the Party's correct principles and policies.2 Obviously, this was far from what the &quot;gang of four&quot; had anticipated. In early February 1976, leaders of the Party Central Committee convened several meetings, to which responsible comrades of the provinces, municipalities, autonomous regions and the area military commands were invited in groups. These meetings were held to inform them of the statements made on many occasions by Mao Zedong concerning the current campaign. In these statements, Mao Zedong stressed repeatedly that &quot;Class struggle is the key link, all other things are secondary.&quot; He also said, &quot;What is the Cultural Revolution? It is class struggle.&quot; According to him, the reason why some veteran revolutionaries were &quot;dissatisfied with the cultural revolution&quot; was that &quot;their thinking still remained at the stage of the bourgeois democratic revolution.&quot; He said, &quot;You are making the socialist revolution, and yet don't know where the bourgeois is. It is right in the Communist Party—those in power taking the capitalist road. The capitalist-roaders are still on the capitalist road.&quot; Mao Zedong assessed the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; in general as &quot;30 percent versus 70 percent; i.e., 70 percent representing achievements, with 30 percent consisting of mistakes.&quot; The mistakes were: 1. down with everything; 2. a full-scale civil war. To the great majority of cadres at lhat time, the arguments he put forward in these statements in favour of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; were hardly convincing. This campaign, which was very unpopular, upset the relatively stable situation which had just emerged. Many correct policies and measures pul forward in the course of consolidation were negated, leading officials who resolutely implemented these policies were persecuted, while factionalists and leaders of factions who had been dismissed or removed from office now returned to their jobs. Factional strife again raged in certain regions, bringing on work stoppages and communication tie-ups. Chaos again reigned throughout the country. This situation aggravated the dislike which the masses of people had for the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; and helped them see the real features of the &quot;gang of four,&quot; who had brought disasters upon the nation and people. Feelings of uncertainty, discontent and indignation, which had accumulated in their minds over a long period, grew very quickly and could easily explode like a huge keg of gunpowder with a fuse which could be lit at any time. Victory in Smashing the Jiang Qing Counter-Revolutionary Clique On January 8, 1976, Zhou Enlai, one of the main leaders of the Party and the state, passed away. He was boundlessly loyal to the Party and people to the last breath of his life. Placed in a ver&gt; difficult position during the &quot;cultural revolution, he put the overall interests of the nation above everything else, worked very hard and tolerated all kinds of unjust criticism. He spent all his energies and wisdom in a tireless effort to carry on his normal work for the Party and state, to reduce to a minimum the losses caused by the turmoil, and to protect large numbers of cadres both inside and outside the Party. He waged a struggle against the &quot;gang of four&quot; in various ways. His death aroused boundless grief within the Party, army and among all nationalities of the country. The tragic and moving scene of tens of thousands of people lining the street when the hearse carrying his body drove through Chang'an Avenue in Beijing, reflected the infinite sorrow of the people in losing their leader at a time when the Party and the state were in great jeopardy, and their sincere yearning for a way to free the nation from its disastrous situation and open up the prospect for a bright future. During the preparations for Zhou Enlai's funeral, the &quot;gang of four&quot; issued a series of prohibitions in an effort to obstruct and malign the mourning activities of the people which were being carried on an immense scale. This could not but arouse the indignation of the great numbers of cadres and people involved. Commencing in late March, people from all walks of life in Nanjing, Hangzhou, Zhengzhou, Xi'an, Taiyuan and other cities broke down the restrictions put up by the &quot;gang of four,&quot; and held solemn commemorative activities to honour the late premier by making use of the old Chinese tradition of paying respects to one's ancestors during the Qing Ming Festival on April 5. At the end of March, people in Beijing began to converge spontaneously at Tiananmen Square to hold memorial activities in honour of Zhou Enlai, and this continued for several days on end. Wreaths and baskets of flowers were laid at the Monument of the People's Heroes. People also put up handwritten memorials, recited poems of their own composition, and delivered speeches in honour of the late premier and also in denunciation of the evil deeds of the &quot;gang of four.&quot; On April 4, the commemorative activities in Beijing reached their climax. Some two million people, including many from other parts of the country, went to Tiananmen Square in disregard of repeatedly stated official restrictions. The scene was just magnificent! Popular indignation mounted, with the &quot;gang of four&quot; as the target of censure. On the evening of April 4, Hua Guofeng presided over a meeting of the Politburo (Ye Jianying and Li Xianman being absent) to discuss the situation at Tiananmen Square. Hua Guofeng had worked in Hunan province for many years both before and after the outbreak of the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; and was transferred to work in the State Council in 1971. He was a member of the 9th and 10th Central Committees of the CPC and a member of the Politburo of the 10th Central Committee. In January 1975, he was appointed a vice-premier by the 4th National People's Congress. After the death of Zhou Enlai, during the campaign to &quot;criticize Deng and counter the rightist wind to reverse verdicts,&quot; he was appointed acting premier and was put in charge of everyday work of the Party's Central Committee by Mao Zedong in February. Under the manipulation of Jiang Qing and her ilk, the Politburo meeting defined Tiananmen event as a counter-revolutionary incident, which had allegedly interfered with the orientation of the campaign. It was also decided at the meeting that all the wreaths and slogans be removed from Tiananmen Square that very night. A report of the proceedings as well as the decisions of the meeting were written up by the liaison person and handed by him to Mao Zedong, who gave his approval after reading the report. In the early morning of April 5, on discovering that all the wreaths, poems and memorial couplets had been removed from the square, people became very angry and some of them came into serious conflict with the militiamen, police and soldiers who were on the spot. At 9:30 that evening, 10,000 militiamen and police armed with wooden clubs were ordered to march into the square to drive away, beat and arrest people in the square. On the night of April 7, it was broadcast nationwide over the radio that at the suggestion of Mao Zedong, and with the approval of the Politburo, Hua Guofeng had been made first vice-chairman of the Party's Central Committee and premier of the State Council, and Deng Xiaoping had been removed from all posts both inside and outside the Party, while still retaining his Party member ship. The Tiananmen Incident was a concentrated expression of the people's protest movement against the &quot;gang of four,&quot; an event which had developed under the influence of the correct leadership of the Party. The disastrous &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; which had lasted almost ten years, was increasingly detested by the masses of cadres and people, who pinned their hopes on veteran revolutionaries like Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping for the restoration of social order and of the correct policies of the Party. Yet it was these veteran revolutionaries who were now receiving unjust treatment. This poured oil on the flames of the people's anger against the &quot;gang of four,&quot; which finally burst out so vehemently with the outbreak of the Tiananmen Incident. This movement of protest was also an expression of support for the correct leadership of the Party represented by Deng Xiaoping. Clearly demonstrating what the people supported as well as what they opposed, it helped to dig the grave of the Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary clique. On July 6, 1976, Zhu De, another important leader of the Party and the state, passed away, only to be followed by the death of Mao Zedong, the principal leader of the Party and state, on September 9. The death of the three outstanding leaders within less than a year immersed the whole Party, the whole army and the people of all nationalities in great sorrow. This was because millions upon millions of people had high respect and a deep sense of gratitude for the three leaders for the great achievements and magnificent contributions they had made in founding the Party, the army and the state, in leading the Chinese democratic revolution and socialist construction, and in applying and developing Marxism under China's own circumstances. After the death of Mao Zedong, the &quot;gang of four&quot; intensified their activities to seize the supreme power of the Party and state. Wang Hongwen circumvented the official unit on 24-hour duty under the Party Central Committee's General Office, and on September 11 set up a separate office for similar functions in Zhongnanhai. He informed the Party committees of all provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions that they should report to CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 711 Wang Hongwen and company through this office and ask for instructions. This move on the part of the &quot;gang of four&quot; was an attempt to sever contacts between the Party Central Committee and the various localities and put the whole country under their direct control. Moreover, the &quot;gang of four&quot; ordered their faithful followers in Shanghai to redouble their arms build-up of the militia which could be called into use as a strong backing in their eventual bid for power. They also falsified what they called the last words of Mao Zedong which stated: &quot;Act according to set principles.&quot; They publicized this statement time and again in the press, posing as the legitimate arbiters of the Party's principles and policies. An openly menacing press release of theirs stated that &quot;any revisionist ringleader who dares to temper with the Chairman Mao's set principles will come to no good end. This insinuating remark was a slanderous attack on Hua Guofeng, Li Xiannian and others then in charge of the work of the Party Central Committee. ■ „ The blatant intrigues of the &quot;gang of lour to seize the supreme power of the Party and state aroused the deep concern and anxiety of the veteran revolutionaries. Although most of them were in a difficult position, they exchanged information through various channels and discussed ways to solve the problem. Under attack by the &quot;gang of four,&quot; Hua Guofeng, who directed the work of the Party Central Committee as its first vice-chairman, was well aware of the need to eliminate this bane, which festered in the body of the Party and the state like an ulcer. He repeatedly studied the matter and discussed it with Ye Jianying and Li Xiannian. With the approval of the majority of the Politburo members, a decision was made to adopt resolute measures. Representing the Politburo and fulfilling the will of the Party and the people, Hua Guofeng and Ye Jianying put Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Wang Hongwen, Yao Wenyuan and the faction s core members in Beijing under investigation on the night of October 6. That same night, the Politburo held a meeting to discuss the major issues to be dealt with by the Party and the state after heading off the conspiracy. The meeting passed a resolution naming Hua Guofeng as chairman of the Party Central Committee and of its Military Commission; this was later confirmed by the 3rd Plenary Session of the 10th Central Committee of the CPC held in July 1977. On hearing the news that Jiang Qing and others were being held under investigation, their faithful followers and the core members of their faction desperately mobilized an armed rebellion. This was a last-ditch struggle to save the Jiang Qing counterrevolutionary clique from demise. The Party Central Committee, through effective measures to control the situation in Shanghai, thwarted the plot to launch an armed insurrection. The news of the overthrow of the &quot;gang of four&quot; was published by the Party Central Committee on October 14. It was received with the greatest of joy and excitement. People could hardly wait to be the first to inform their friends and neighbours. It was difficult to list all the crimes the &quot;gang of four&quot; had committed during the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; Their downfall realized the common hopes of the Party and the people and crowned the combined, long-term struggle that had been waged against them. Hua Guofeng, Ye Jianying and Li Xiannian played an important role in smashing the &quot;gang of four.&quot; The Party and the people, after ten years of hardships and setbacks, at long last put an end to the disastrous &quot;cultural revolution&quot; by overthrowing two counter-revolutionary cliques, one headed by Lin Biao, the other by Jiang Qing. These victories helped social order to return to normal, and put the work of the Party and the state back onto the track of sound development. They also ushered in a new era of development in the history of the Party. This was a great triumph of the Party and of the people; it was also a great triumph of Marxism and socialism. The &quot;cultural revolution&quot; which lasted more than ten years, marked a period when &quot;Left&quot; mistakes dominated for the longest time in the history of the Party, and caused the greatest damage; when all kinds of social contradictions were revealed in sharp focus and full range, and when extremely rich experiences and lessons were accumulated and learned. The protracted upheavals in the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; caused great losses and reverses to the Party, state and Chinese people of 713 all nationalities. These setbacks, the most serious since the founding of the PRC, greatly weakened the Party organizations and state power. Large numbers of cadres and ordinary citizens were persecuted. Democracy and law were trampled upon and the whole country was gripped in a political and social crisjs. during the ten years, national income suffered a loss of about 500 billion yuan, and the living standard of the people declined. Science, culture and education were seriously damaged, and the gap in science and technology between China and the advanced countries of the world widened. The cultural heritage left by history was destroyed on an enormous scale. The fine traditions of the Party and the excellent moral fibre of the people were seriously undermined. Metaphysics and idealism ruled the day. Anarchism and extreme individualism ran riot. The &quot;cultural revolution was not in any sense a revolution or a form of social progress. It was a tumult of civil strife which had been launched under wrong leadership and made use of by counter-revolutionary cliques, and which brought serious internal disorder to the Party, the state and the people of all nationalities. During the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; the Party and people never ceased their struggle against &quot;Left&quot; mistakes and the two counterrevolutionary cliques, one headed by Lin Biao, the other by Jiang Qing. The struggle was extremely difficult and took a zigzag course The severe test of the &quot;cultural revolution showed that the Party's 8th Central Committee, and the overwhelming majority of the members in the Politburo, the Standing Committee of the Politburo, and the Secretariat elected by the Central Committee stood on the correct side in the struggle. Many of them suffered severe attacks and persecution. Nevertheless, they took the interest of the whole nation into account, showed great tolerance, and kept a close watch on the major acts and future prospects of the Party and state. They did everything within their power to render valuable service to the Party. Some, out of a strong sense of justice, made outright criticisms of Left mistakes Others persevered in cool-headed deliberations, took up writing in all seriousness, and produced theoretical works or memoirs of past events in order to sum up positive experiences in Party history. Still others drew up suggestions and proposals to the Party concerning certain major issues in practical work, or made known the Party's fine traditions to the people they came in contact with. In fact, all these activities represented the various forms of combatting or boycotting the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; Unfortunately, some of these comrades, such as Liu Shaoqi, Peng Dehuai, He Long and Zhang Wentian, who were members of the Politburo of the Sth Central Committee before the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; failed to survive its ordeals. These leaders of the Party and state had made outstanding contributions to the people's revolution and construction in China. Their boundless loyalty and selfless spirit of dedication to the Party and the people will live forever in the minds of the people of various nationalities. The overwhelming majority of the Party cadres, whether they had unjustifiably been toppled, or had been able to persist in their work, or had resumed work earlier or later, were loyal to the Party and people and had displayed a firm faith in socialism and communism. Those intellectuals, model workers, patriotic democrats, patriotic returned overseas Chinese, and cadres and people of different social strata of the various nationalities who had been under attack or had suffered in other ways, never wavered in their love for their motherland or their support for the Party. It was precisely because of the struggle and boycott launched by the Party as a whole, along with the masses of workers, peasants, soldiers and commanders of the PLA, intellectuals, young people and cadres at various levels, that the destructive role of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; was held in abeyance to a certain degree. Despite all the tremendous losses during this difficult period, the Chinese economy continued to make some progress thanks to the joint efforts of the masses and the cadres. Grain production was steadily on the increase, reaching 286.3 billion kilogrammes in 1976, an increase of 91.75 billion kilogrammes over the 1965 figure. A number of major achievements were made in industry, communications, capital construction, science and technology. The production of crude oil in 1976 was 6.7 times the 1965 figure. The construction of certain new railways, at times involving CHAPTER EIGHT THE &quot;CULTURAL REVOLUTION' 715 exceptional feats of engineering, was completed, and these were opened to traffic along with the magnificent bridge spanning the Changjiang River at Nanjing. A number of large enterprises equipped with advanced technology went into production. Success was scored in the crossbreeding of a new strain of rice and in its promotion. Outstanding achievements were also attained in the fields of nuclear technology, artificial satellites, carrier rockets and other branches of high-tech research. Under the circumstances of a nationwide turmoil, the PLA continued to pertorm its duties in safeguarding the security of the country. A new situation was created in China's diplomatic work. Quite understandably, all these advances were by no means results of the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; Greater achievements would have been made if the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; had not taken place. During the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; the Party, the people's government, the people's army and the society as a whole did not change in nature. History again proved that the Chinese people are a great people, and that the Communist Party of China and the socialist system have immense, powerful vitality. „ The &quot;cultural revolution&quot; was launched and led by Mao Zedong and, therefore, he was mainly responsible for this over-all &quot;Left&quot; mistake which lasted for so long. However, the mistake was made after all, by a great revolutionary of the proletariat in his pursuit of a pure, perfect socialist society and a new way to prevent capitalist restoration and build socialism. In actual tact, Mao Zedong was tied to an abstract conception which was divorced from reality. When he was making serious mistakes, he always thought that his theory and practice were Marxist, and were necessary for the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is where his tragedy lies. While insisting on carrying out the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; which was an overall mistake, he stopped and corrected a number of mistakes on specific questions, such as giving protection to certain leading Party officials and celebrities outside the Party, and helping to put a number of responsible comrades back to important posts. He had entrusted members of the Lin Biao clique with important jobs. But it was also he who was leading the struggle to liquidate this counter-revolutionary clique. He had once placed high trust in Jiang Qing and other members of the counter-revolutionary clique. But he also made important criticisms and exposures of them and prevented them from attaining their ambition of usurping supreme power. This was vital to the Party's subsequent struggle to smash the &quot;gang of four.&quot; Even in his late years, he was on the alert in safeguarding the security of the country, and stood up against the great pressure exerted on China by Soviet big-power hegemonism. He implemented a correct foreign policy, and gave resolute support to the peoples of various countries in their just struggles. During the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; our Party was not destroyed and was able to retain unity, the State Council and the PLA were still able to perform duties which were required of them, the foundations of socialism continued to exist, socialist economic construction was still in progress, and our country retained its unity and played an important role on the international stage; all these facts were part and parcel of the great role which Mao Zedong had played. The &quot;cultural revolution&quot; was the consequence of going astray in the effort to explore China's own road in building socialism; it was an incorrect practice carried out under the guidance of an incorrect theory. It fully revealed, in very stark forms, the defects of our Party and state, both in respect to their work and structure. It also presented profound lessons to be learned so that a serious mistake like another &quot;cultural revolution&quot; or any similar disastrous upheavals would never be repeated. A scientific summing up of the lessons of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; will help us to find the correct road to build socialism with Chinese characteristics and march triumphantly along this road. 717 liched article entitled &quot;A Discussion on the General Guidelines for _ the Work in * i, cnheres for the Whole Party and Country,&quot; which was written by the Poll y Research1 2 De par t men t of the Stite Council on the basis of the instructions given by Deng Xiaoping.<br /> <br /> == Dawn of a New Prospect in Socialist Construction ==<br /> <br /> === Two Years of Hesitant Progress ===<br /> The liquidation of the Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary clique was greeted with joy and enthusiasm throughout the nation. People rejoiced to see the final collapse of the &quot;gang of four&quot; and with it an end to the ten years' turbulence of the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; The fact that the Communist Party of China was able to excise the malignant tumour in its own body strengthened the people's confidence in the Party. In Beijing and many other cities, the masses of people celebrated by joining in huge parades and rallies to express their heartfelt happiness, their support for the Communist Party, and their demand for the restoration of social order and a return to a normal, regular life. A great many serious political and social problems had accumulated during ten years of turbulence. The Party faced an arduous task. Monumental, urgent work was required to restore normal order in all Party organizations, revive the fine traditions and working style of the Party, re-establish normal order in the political life of the nation, invigorate the organs of political power at all levels to ensure their smooth operation, consolidate and develop the people's democratic united front, and restore normal order in economic, cultural and educational undertakings which had been disastrously undermined. Countless collapsed endeavours cried out for resuscitation, numberless slackening enterprises awaited invigorating. In a word, reconstruction had to be undertaken in practically all fields. 718 719 Despite the downfall of the &quot;gang of four,&quot; the power in some party and state organs remained in the hands of remnants of the Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary faction. In certain localities, they had struck deep roots and still had a definite influence, and in some places, turbulence had not ended. These were the most pressing problems that had to be solved. On October 18, 1976, the Party Central Committee issued a document entitled &quot;Circular on the Incident of the Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, Jiang Qmg and Yao Wenyuan Anti-Party Clique.&quot; Commencing on December 10, the Party Central Committee issued three documents providing more evidence of their crimes. The documents exposed and criticized the attempts of Jiang Qing and others to seize the supreme power of the Party and state, and to frame Zhou Enlai and other veteran revolutionaries, as well as the harm caused on all sides by their ultra-&quot;Left&quot; line. At the same time, a nationwide screening was carried out to find out their entire factionalist organizational connections, and the events and persons involved in their plot to usurp the supreme power of the Party and state^ The leadership at various levels was gradually readjusted and strengthened. Resolute measures were taken to expose the factionalist leaders and core members and to put them under investigation The Party Central Committee sent work teams to the remaining few turbulent areas to stop the armed conflicts and restore normal social order. By the first half of 1977, the armed conflicts and turmoil caused by factional strife were basically stopped and a stable political situation gradually emerged. By 1978 the work of screening was basically completed in the grea majority of areas and work-units, and the counter-revolutionary political force which had brought great disasters to the people throughout the country for a decade was thus destroyed and the power usurped by them retrieved. With the situation in the whole country returning to normal, the 3rd Plenary Session of the 10th Party Central Committee was convened between July 16 and 21, 1977. The session decided to expel Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, Jiang Qmg and Yao Wenyuan from the Party once and for all and remove them Irom all posts both inside and outside the Party. To reverse the unjust verdicts made during the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; and rehabilitate the innocent victims was one of the most pressing tasks at the time. But the work in this field made very slow progress. At a Party Central Committee's work meeting convened in March 1977, Chen Yun made a written proposal to restore the work of Deng Xiaoping, and to reverse the wrong judgment concerning the Tiananmen Incident as well as other major unjust verdicts. At the meeting, Wang Zhen also expressed the same opinions. It was not until the 3rd Plenary Session of the 10th Central Committee that an official decision was made to restore Deng Xiaoping to his previous posts as member of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee, Standing Committee member of the Politburo, vice-chairman of the CPC Central Committee and its Military Commission, vice-premier of the State Council and chief of the General Staff of the PLA. At the same time, work had started on sorting out and solving the problems left over from the political movements preceding the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; In the fields of science, education and culture, a completely new situation emerged, thanks to the leading role of Deng Xiaoping. Setting things right in these fields was particularly significant because it was just there that the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; had started. Science and education were put under Deng Xiaoping's leadership after he had resumed work. In August 1977, at a forum on the work of science and education held by the Party Central Committee, he pointed out that the main aspects of the work in the seventeen years since the founding of the PRC on the educational and scientific fronts represented a red (correct) line, and that the overwhelming majority of Chinese intellectuals served socialism willingly and voluntarily. By making this statement, he negated the claims made by Lin Biao and Jiang Qing that &quot;a dictatorship of the black line&quot; had existed in the field of literature, art and education. Deng Xiaoping called on people to respect mental labour and talents. In March 1978, at the National Science Congress held in Beijing, Deng Xiaoping emphasized the Marxist viewpoint that science and technology were forces of production. He also pointed out that mental labourers in the 721 service of socialism were part of the working people. From then on the leftist policy towards intellectuals which had been practised for so many years was corrected and attention was again paid to the importance of knowledge and intellectuals. This was a great inspiration to the intellectuals working m the fields of science, education, literature and art. The ban on a great number of good films and plays and other literary and art works, both Chinese and foreign, was lifted. Mass organizations such as the Chinese Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the Chinese Writers' Association resumed their activities. Creative work in various spheres of literature and art began to be revitalized step by step. From late 1977 to early 1978, the examination system in schools that had been abandoned during the &quot;cultural revolution was restored, and new college students were once again enrolled through a nationwide unified examination. In the economic field, chaotic conditions prevailed in production as after-effects of the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; particularly in manufacturing, mining, communications and transportation. Harmful consequences were also reflected in obtructions in commercial transactions, serious imbalances between the various sectors of the national economy, and the lack of improvement over a long period in the people's material well-being. Soon after the smashing of the &quot;gang of tour, the State Council adopted resolute measures to eliminate traffic jams along the railway lines. Beginning in December 1976 and during the first half of 1977, the Party Central Committee and the State Council held a series of meetings to discuss the urgent need to put things in order in the enterprises, and to work out various rules and regulations for restoring and developing production. After the work of consolidation, a number of enterprises on the brink of collapse began to emerge from their previous chaotic situation in production. National economy recovered rapidly and even made some progress in certain respects. In agriculture, a bumper harvest was reaped in 19/8, with grain production exceeding 300 billion kilogrammes, the highest figure on record. The total value of industrial production, which increased 14.3 percent in 1977 over the previous year, again increased 13.5 percent in 1978. Financial revenues, which increased 12.6 percent in 1977 over the previous year, registered an even higher increase of 28.2 percent in 1978. A financial balance was achieved both years, even with a little surplus. The living standards of the people were also on the rise. For the first time in many years, 60 percent of the workers and other employees throughout the country received various raises in pay in 1977. In 1978, the level of consumption among both the urban and rural residents rose 5.1 percent as compared with the previous year. Between August 12 and 18, 1977, only four years after the 10th Party Congress, the 11th Party Congress was held. Its convocation ahead of schedule was obviously necessary in order to decide on the major principles in the work of the Party and to elect a new Central Committee. Some 1,510 deputies attended the congress, representing more than 35 million Party members. Hua Guofeng made the political report on behalf of the Parly Central Committee. Ye Jianying gave a report on revision of the Party Constitution. Deng Xiaoping delivered the closing speech. The congress summed up the struggle against the Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary clique and announced the conclusion of the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; which had lasted ten years. It re-alfirmed the building of China into a powerful modernized country within the present century as the fundamental task in the new period. The congress also revised the Party Constitution. The new Party Central Committee elected Hua Guofeng chairman of the CPC Central Committee, and elected Ye Jianying, Deng Xiaoping, Li Xiannian and Wang Dongxing its vice-chairmen. In February and March 1978, the 1st Session of the 5th National People's Congress was held. As the previous National People's Congress was elected in early 1975 when the &quot;gang of four&quot; still posed a serious threat to the country, the election of a new National People's Congress ahead of schedule was completely necessary. At the session, Hua Guofeng made a report on the work of the government on behalf of the State Council. The congress elected Ye Jianying chairman of the Standing Commit tee of the NPC, re-appointed Hua Guofeng as premier of the State Council, and appointed Deng Xiaoping, Li Xiannian, Xu Xiangqian and nine others as vice-premiers. ^ , Simultaneously with the National Peoples Congress, the 1st Session of the 5th National Committee of the Chinese People s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) was also held. Deng Xiaoping was elected chairman of the National Committee. The revival of the CPPCC, which had been completely inactive during the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; was highly significant in enhancing cooperation between the CPC and the democratic parties and strengthening the people's democratic united front. The 11th Party Congress and the 1st Session of the 5th were unable to accomplish the task of formulating a correct hne and policies for the new period following the c0&quot;c u , the ime &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; The reasons for this were that at the time the Party Centra! Committee, in its basic flunking had ^not yet been able to make a clean sweep of the Left mistakes not on y of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; but also of many years standing within the Party, and that Hua Guofeng, then chairman of the CPC continued to make &quot;Left&quot; mistakes on a series of major ^ifwas indeed not easy lo eliminate within a short time the political and ideological confusion caused by the cultural revolution&quot; which had lasted ten years. The confusion was due partfy to the interference and sabotage by two counter-revolutionary cliques one headed by Lin Biao, the other by Jiang Qing; it was also the result of some of the decisions and measures adopted by Mao Zedong under a &quot;Left&quot; guideline, and was connected with the &quot;Left&quot; tendency that had existed within the Party for a long time Although Hua Guofeng had performed a meritorious role in the struggle to smash the Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary clique and had attempted lo put an end to the confusion caused by the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; he failed to have a fundamental understanding of the problem of the &quot;cultural revolution, particularly of the relationship between the &quot;cultural revolution and Mao Zedong's mistakes in his late years. Hua Guofeng also lacked &quot;e insight and courage to solve the complicated problem of dealing with and eliminating thoroughly the mistakes of the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; and at the same time upholding the historical position of Mao Zedong and the role of Mao Zedong Thought as the guiding ideology of our Party. He failed to realize that, only by honestly pointing out Mao Zedong's mistakes in his late years in launching and persisting in the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; and correcting them, would it be possible to carry on the fine traditions of the Communist Party of China and the Chinese revolution with Mao Zedong and Mao Zedong Thought as their banner. He maintained that in order to uphold Mao Zedong's heritage, it was impermissible to negate his important ideas and decisions in the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; Proceeding from this wrong position, Hua Guofeng continued to persist in promoting the idea of &quot;taking class struggle as the key link,&quot; and &quot;continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat&quot; even afier the liquidation of the &quot;gang of four.&quot; It was due to his obstructions that progress was slow and further advance was difficult with regard to restoring the work of veteran cadres and reversing unjust verdicts in history (including that of the 1976 Tiananmen Incident). These ideas of Hua Guofeng's found concentrated expression in two of his statements: &quot;We should firmly uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made; we should always follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao issued.&quot;1 In fact, this &quot;two-whatevers&quot; approach, which denied the necessity to do any analysis, far from upholding the historical position of Mao Zedong and the authority of Mao Zedong Thought, could only serve to destroy them. Hua Guofeng regarded himself as the successor to Mao Zedong. While maintaining the old personality cult, he cultivated and accepted a new personality cult of himself. The tact that the 11th National Party Congress and the 1st Session of the 5th NPC, instead of correcting the erroneous theories, policies and slogans of the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; fully confirmed them, of course had something to do with the historical limitations of the time, but it was mainly the result of the influence of Hua Guofeng's mistakes. The Party Constitution that had been revised by the 1 1th Party Congress still contained &quot;Left&quot; mistakes. The work on revising the 725 PRC Constitution at the 1st Session of the 5th NPC restored many good points in the contents of the 1954 constitution. Nevertheless, it failed to thoroughly correct the mistakes contained in the 1975 Constitution. In economic work, just as stated in previous passages, Chinese economy was freed from a state of paralysis or semi-paralysis within the two years following the collapse of the &quot;gang of four. This was an achievement. But it was just at this time an overanxious desire for achievements resulted in rash advance and a one-sided stress on speed. Starting from the winter of 1976, Hua Guofeng and the departments concerned in the Party Central Committee successively set unrealistically high targets in agricultural mechanization, the production of grain, petroleum, coal, steel and chemicals, and raised lofty slogans which could never be realized. In a report written by the State Council in July 19/ /, it was stated that &quot;a situation is emerging which represents a new leap forward in the national economy.&quot; At the National People s Congress held in February 1978, Hua Guofeng put forward a programme of the State Council on the development of the national economy during the ten years from 1976 to 1985, which was based on a proposal made by the State Planning Commission and other related departments. According to this programme, by 1985 the production of steel should have reached 60 million tons (the actual output turned out to be 31.78 million tons in 1978), that of petroleum should have reached 250 million tons (the actual output was 104 million tons in 1978), and so forth. The unrealistic nature of these targets can be illustrated by the example of petroleum. The target for petroleum production was set without the necessary data obtained from geological surveys. As a matter of fact, petroleum production had not reached 14U million tons by the end of the 1980s. The extraordinarily high targets could not but require correspondingly high capital construction investment. According to the programme, capital construction investment during the eight years between 1978 and 1985 was equivalent to the total capital construction mvestment of the previous twenty-eight years. Although the programme had only been submitted to the National People's Congress for deliberation and had not yet been made public, it already played a destructive role in practical work. In 1978, the accumulation fund increased 30.6 percent over the previous year, while the fund for consumption increased only 8.4 percent. The 36.5 percent increase in the accumulation rate made 1978 the year with the highest increase rate in the twenty years since the &quot;great leap forward&quot; in 1958. The 31 percent increase in capital construction investment over the previous year also made 1978 the year with the biggest capital construction investment and the highest increase rate in investment in the twenty years since the &quot;great leap forward.&quot; In light of the scientific and technological progress in foreign countries, Hua Guofeng put forward the watchwords &quot;Don't be complacent and conservative&quot; and &quot;Guard against parochial arrogance&quot; (which were actually the words of Mao Zedong). These were, of course, correct. However, proceeding from these watchwords, Hua Guofeng attempted to realize his plans for high-speed development by relying on foreign loans and premature, excessive import of foreign equipment and technology. The plans for highspeed development in metallurgical and chemical industrial departments were based on large-scale imports, and the funds needed for such imports were to be raised by means of foreign loans. The domestic capacity of supplying the corresponding equipment and of digesting the imported technology was not taken into account, nor was China's capacity for repaying its debts considered. That was why the plan was called a &quot;rash advance planned on the basis of foreign resources.&quot; Although the implementation of such plans had just started, and some of the planned projects were completed in later years and produced some results, these plans were on the whole inadvisable. Despite some differences in socio-economic conditions, the &quot;rash advance&quot; planned for this period bore some resemblance to the &quot;great leap forward&quot; in the 1950s, with both originating from a &quot;Left&quot; ideological guideline which ignored objective conditions. The recent &quot;rash advance&quot; was planned for a period when the economy badly needed recuperation after suffering from the highly destructive 10-year-long turbulence. This was tantamount 727 to asking a sick person to run swiftly after just beginning to recover from a prolonged serious illness. The results could only run contrary to one's wishes. This &quot;rash advance&quot; violated the law of proportionate development of various sectors of the national economy by one-sidedly emphasizing the development of iron and steel, petroleum, chemical and other heavy industries, and by seeking high speed, huge accumulation and heavy investment. This could not improve, but could only aggravate the imbalances between the different sectors of the national economy. Considering the situation as a whole, although the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; had been brought to an end, and progress had been made in various spheres of work in the two years since the counter-revolutionary clique headed by Jiang Qing was toppled, the Party's ideological guideline failed to undergo a fundamental change. This seriously obstructed the entire work of the Party and the state. The situation, which was marked by two years of hesitant progress, was only ended by the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee held in December 1978. The continuation of the &quot;Left&quot; ideological guideline in these two years, for which Hua Guofeng was mainly responsible, caused new ideological confusion among people both inside and outside the Party, and was also boycotted in various degrees by some Party members as well as ordinary people. On the one hand, there was a demand among people for making a distinction between what is right and what is wrong after a long period of turbulence and for eliminating &quot;Left&quot; mistakes, a demand which had not been met; on the other hand, there was a feeling of doubt and even of total distrust among some people towards Mao Zedong Thought, the leadership of the Party and socialism as a result of the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; which had tarnished the image of the Party and socialism. It was obvious that it would be difficult to withstand arid overcome this erroneous tendency without distinguishing between the rights and wrongs and eliminating the &quot;Left&quot; mistakes. Before he resumed work, Deng Xiaoping pointed out in his letter of April 10, 1977, to the Party Central Committee that it was essential to have a precise and full understanding of the system of Mao Zedong Thought, a viewpoint which was put forward in contradistinction to the &quot;two-whatevers&quot; approach. In May, he clearly stated that the &quot;two-whatevers&quot; approach was erroneous. In his speech at the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, he warned against interpreting Mao Zedong Thought by hanging on his individual phrases or sentences, and stressed the need to be good at studying and grasping the system of Mao Zedong Thought and using it as a guide in our work in all fields. Only in this way, he added, can we avoid taking Mao Zedong Thought out of context or distorting it. The dissatisfaction and protest over the continued &quot;Left&quot; ideological guideline within the Party, from the top leadership to the rank and file, found their concentrated expression in the big debate on the criterion for judging truth which started in May 1978. On May 11, the Guangming Daily published an article under the by-line of Special Commentator which was entitled &quot;Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Judging Truth.&quot; This article reiterated the basic Marxist principle on the theory of cognition that practice is the sole criterion for judging truth. It sharply pointed out that the mental shackles imposed on people by the &quot;gang of four&quot; were far from being completely broken, that people should dare to go and touch the &quot;forbidden zone&quot; set up by the &quot;gang of four&quot; and have the courage to thrash out what is right and what is wrong, that people should not apply set tormulas to limit, misuse or delete revolutionary practice which is boundlessly rich and forging ahead with flying speed, and that people should be brave enough to look into new problems posed by most recent practice. This article attracted great public attention for its refutation of the erroneous &quot;two-whatevers&quot; approach from the viewpoint of basic theory, and gradually led to a discussion. At this moment, Hua Guofeng instructed the propaganda departments under the Party Central Committee to refrain from making any comments and avoid getting involved. Wang Dongxing criticized this article on a number of occasions. But the discussion could no longer be cooled down by their will. Commencing in June, leaders of the Party and government depart 729 ments and the armed forces at the central level, and of most provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the administration of the central government, and the big military area commands made open speeches or had articles published supporting or expressing agreement with the viewpoint contained in this article. Veteran revolutionaries including Deng Xiaoping, Ye Jianying, Chen Yun, Li Xiannian, Hu Yaobang, Nie Rongzhcn, Xu Xiangqian and Luo Ruiqing supported the discussion. On different occasions, they emphasized the principle of seeking truth from facts, and stressed the need to restore the fine traditions of the Party, to follow the principle of acting in the light of China's resources in economic construction and to resist and overcome the &quot;Left&quot; tendency that still existed. On June 2, 1978, in his speech at a meeting on the political work in the PLA, Deng Xiaoping reiterated Mao Zedong's viewpoint of seeking truth from facts. He criticized certain comrades who &quot;speak about Mao Zedong Thought every day, but forget, abandon or even oppose the basic Marxist viewpoint and approach of Comrade Mao Zedong on seeking truth from facts, proceeding from practice and integrating theory with practice.&quot; He said that &quot;proceeding from their point of view, it is enough to copy, to pass on and to follow the original words of Marx, Lenin and Comrade Mao Zedong.&quot; Deng further pointed out that anyone who opposed seeking truth from tacts could not claim to be following Marxism-Leninism or Mao Zedong Thought, but could only lead us to idealism and metaphysics and cause damage to our work and failure of the revolution. Basing himself on this belief, he maintained that &quot;it is essential to make a clean sweep of the poisonous influence of Lin Biao and the ‘gang of four,' set things right, shatter mental shackles and achieve the great emancipation of our minds.&quot;2 With the leadership of Deng Xiaoping and other veteran revolutionaries, and with the support of the masses of people both inside and outside the Party, the Party was finally able, by the end of 1987, to start solving the problems which had not been solved in the two years of hesitant progress.<br /> <br /> === A Great Turning Point—the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee ===<br /> The 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the CPC held in December 1978 was an event of far-reaching significance and marked a great turning point in the history of the Party since the founding of the People's Republic of China. The session put an end to the two years' meandering in efforts to set things right following the downfall of the &quot;gang of four.&quot; But as a great turning point, its significance went far beyond this. In the long years of revolution and construction, the Party Central Committee and Mao Zedong always upheld the Marxist principle of seeking truth from facts, stressed the importance of proceeding from reality in all matters as well as of integrating theory with practice, and after the socialist transformation was completed, made great efforts towards the industrialization of China which resulted in great achievements. But starting from the &quot;great leap forward&quot; in 1958, a &quot;Left&quot; ideological guideline repeatedly emerged within the Party in the course of the its etlort to break down fetishes and superstitions and explore China's own road to socialism. This seriously impaired the Party's correct ideological guideline as well as its correct line of action, eventually leading to the 10-year-long turbulence of the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; In the zigzag course of advance during the years from 1957 to 1966, the Party Central Committee and Party organizations at various' levels, Mao Zedong and many other leaders of the Party Central Committee, and leading officials at various levels as well as ordinary Party members, put forward many good ideas, proposals and schemes which accorded with China's real conditions, and therefore were beneficial to the development of socialism. Some of these produced initial results when implemented, while others were put into practice only on a limited scale. But practically all of them were engulfed and jettisoned in the turbulence of those ten years. After the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; the fine traditions of the Party should have been restored, all the good 731 ideas that had been put forward in previous years adopted and developed on a new basis, thereby eliminating the &quot;Lett ideological guideline and all its manifestations as they had proved through practice extremely harmful to the cause of the Party and of the people. These objectives, which the two years of meandering progress failed to achieve, were attained by the 3rd Plenary Session of the 1 1th Central Committee. This is why the 3rd Plenary Session was recorded as a great turning point in Party history. . , At a Central Committee work meeting held betore the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, Chen Yun and many other veteran revolutionaries raised some important issues that were of common concern to people both inside and outside the Party. They maintained that the mistakes of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; should be thoroughly corrected and unjust verdicts of the past years, such as in the case of Peng Dehuai, be rescinded. At the closing session of the Central Committee work meeting, Deng Xiaoping made an important speech entitled &quot;Emancipate the Mind, Seek Truth from Facts, Unite as One and Adopt a Forward-Looking Approach.&quot; This in fact provided the basic guideline for the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, which was held between December 18 and 22 immediately following the work meeting. According to Hua Guofeng's original plan for the session, the main topic of discussion at the session was to have been focused on economic questions. The speeches and statements made by Deng Xiaoping and many other veteran revolutionaries at the work meeting enlarged the sphere of discussion and changed the session into an important meeting aimed at setting things right and creating a new situation in all aspects of work. . In his speech, Deng Xiaoping emphatically pointed out that in realizing the four modernizations, just as in making revolution in the earlier years, the principle of seeking truth from facts must be followed; this was the foundation of the proletarian world outlook and of Marxist ideology. At present, he argued, the restoration of the tradition of seeking truth from facts required emancipation of the mind and overcoming the ossified thinking that existed in the Party for various reasons. He sharply pointed out that without emancipation of the mind, thinking was bound to become ossified. The result would be &quot;strange phenomena&quot;: people would be wrapped up in the trammels of conventional ideas, bend in whatever direction the wind blew, and practise book worship which was divorced from reality. He said that &quot;there would be no hope for China's four modernizations if ossified thinking was not done away with, or bold steps were not taken to emancipate the minds of cadres and of the people.&quot;3 The 3rd Plenary Session of the 1 1th Central Committee expressed agreement with the contents of Deng Xiaoping's speech by stating in its communique: &quot;The plenary session highly appraised the discussion on practice being the sole criterion for judging truth and considered that it had a profound historical significance for the entire Party and people in promoting emancipation of the mind and in correcting the ideological guideline. No Party, state or nation will be able to make progress, or grow in vitality, but will instead court its own destruction, if it proceeds from book worship in everything and if its thinking is ossified.&quot; By breaking the shackles of the &quot;two- whate vers&quot; approach in people's minds, this statement laid the ideological foundation for overcoming the &quot;Leftist&quot; ideological guideline that had prevailed for many years, restoring the Party's fine traditions, and seeking China's own road to socialism along a correct direction. The plenary session earnestly discussed the question of shifting the emphasis of the Party's work. It maintained that the nationwide campaign to expose and criticize Lin Biao and the &quot;gang of four&quot; had achieved tremendous successes, and that the emphasis of the Party's work and the focus of attention of the entire people should be resolutely and opportunely shifted to socialist construction and modernization. This was an extremely important decision. The 11th National Party Congress held in 1977 had played a positive role in mobilizing the entire Party to build China into a powerful, socialist, modernized country. But the Party was then also faced with the task of exposing and criticizing Lin Biao and the &quot;gang of four.&quot; Moreover, the erroneous theories, policies and slogans of the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; which the 1 1th Party Congress had contin ued to confirm, ran counter to the cause of socialist construction and modernization. Only on the basis of emancipating the mind and overcoming &quot;Left&quot; ossified thinking, could the great historic task of shifting the emphasis of the work of the entire Party to construction for modernization be accomplished. The communique of the plenary session pointed out: &quot;The realization of the four modernizations requires an increase by a large margin in the forces of production; it also calls for changes in the relations of production and the superstructure, methods of management, form of activity and ways of thinking which do not accord with the development of the forces of production; therefore, it represents an extensive and deep-going revolution.&quot; This means that the relations of production and the superstructure, methods of management, and forms of activity and ways of thinking are subject to change, but changes must meet the need for development of the forces of production and be conducive to their increase. This was a basic break with the harmful standpoint of trying to change, according to one's own will, the relations of production and the superstructure in disregard of the level of development of the forces of production— actually nothing but a &quot;Left&quot; idea of making revolution for the sake of revolution. In his speech, Deng Xiaoping said: &quot;Democracy is an important condition for the emancipation of the mind.&quot; &quot;In a fairly long period in the past, democratic centralism was not really practised, centralism was talked about in isolation from democracy, and there was too little democracy.... Without changing this situation, how can you expect people to emancipate their minds and activate their brains? How can the four modernizations be realized?&quot; Therefore, for the good of socialist construction and modernization, it was necessary to strengthen democracy and practise democratic centralism in a correct way. While stressing democracy, Deng Xiaoping pointed out that there were still a small number of counter-revolutionaries in China and that we should, of course, not lessen our vigilance against them. The communique of the plenary session elaborated in detail on the issues of democracy and dictatorship, democracy and centralism, and democracy and the legal system. The plenary session held that in view of the existence of an extremely small number of counter-revolutionaries and other criminals, the dictatorship of the proletariat must definitely not be weakened. In dealing with the class struggle in a socialist society, a strict distinction must be made between the two types of contradictions which are different in nature and must be handled correctly. Only in this way can we ensure stability and unity which are essential to socialist construction and modernization. In the ideological and political life witnin the ranks of the people, only democratic methods can be adopted, whereas methods of repression and attack should not be used. Socialist construction and modernization require centralized, unified leadership and the strict implementation of various rules and regulations and labour discipline, but full democracy is also needed for the correct implementation of centralism. In this historical period, stress on democracy and a relationship of dialectical unity between democracy and centralism is particularly needed. To guarantee people's democracy, it is necessary to strengthen the socialist legal system and institutionalize and legalize the democratic system so as to ensure the stability, continuity and maximum authority of this system as well as of the laws. All this will help to create a situation where people can resort to law and must abide by the law, where law is strictly implemented and violations of law are invariably dealt with, where all the people are ensured of being equal before their own laws, and where no one is allowed any special privilege of being above the law. Apart from political democracy, Deng Xiaoping delivered a special discourse on economic democracy. He said that in our economic structure, power was too much centralized, and that bold measures should be taken, step by step, to decentralize the power so that the initiative of the four sides— the state, the locality, the enterprise and the labourer as an individual—could be called into full play. What was most pressing at the time, he added, was to give more power to the factories and mines as well as the production teams in the rural areas; this would enable every factory and production team to display, in one thousand and one ways, a spirit of initiative and creativity. In discussing 735 economic problems, the plenary session expressed complete agreement with Deng Xiaoping's opinions. While confirming the P™ciple of decentralizing power, it pointed out that bold steps should be taken to streamline the economic administrative organs at various levels, that people should resolutely act according to the laws governing economic affairs, that they should pay great attention to the role of the law of value, that earnest effort should be made to solve the problems in differentiating the tunctions between the Party, government organizations and enterprises, such as the problem of Party organizations superseding the power of the government, the problem of government organizations superseding the power of the enterprises, and so on. The plenary session attached great importance to agriculture, the base of national economy. In order to call into play the socialist initiative of the millions upon millions of peasants, the session worked out a series of policies and economic measures, including raising the prices for the planned purchase of grain by the state while lowering the prices for marketing industrial goods used in agriculture. The plenary session adopted the Decision on Certain Questions in Speeding Up the Development of Agriculture (draft), and started eliminating the &quot;Left&quot; mistakes m agricultural work. It clearly stated the need &quot;to strengthen labour organizations and establish a strict production responsibility system &quot; The session also endorsed the system of contracting a job with the production team as the basic accounting unit and of linking remuneration with output. In his speech, Deng Xiaoping put forward a major policy by saving- &quot;I am of the opinion that it should be allowed for some of the localities, enterprises, workers and peasants to have a bigger income or larger revenues and a higher standard of living as a result of their hard work and greater achievements. The tact that they enjoy a good life before others will definitely serve as a nowerful example for their neighbours, enabling other localities, work-units and individuals to learn from them. In this way, the whole national economy will continually be pushed forward in a wave-like manner, with the result that the people of all nationalities in the country will become well off fairly rapidly. Deng said this was &quot;a policy which can influence and propel the whole national economy forward.&quot;4 Subsequent events proved the great positive role of this policy, since it was in keeping with the requirements of objective laws. In a word, while persisting in socialism as the pre-condition, the plenary session already took the first decisive step toward a much-needed reform in economic system and a corresponding reform in political system. In view of the actual situation in the economic sphere, the session called for an effort within a few years to gradually readjust the serious imbalances that existed in the economy, eliminate the confusion in production, construction, circulation and distribution, and solve the problems in the lives of the people which had accumulated over the years. In opposition to the proposed &quot;rash advance&quot; based on foreign resources, the plenary session stressed the need for an over-all balance and a step-by-step advance in capital construction in the light of the country's own resources. The session also put forward the principle of opening China to the outside world and the principle of attaching great importance to science and education. In its communique, it was said, &quot;On the basis of self-reliance, we should actively develop economic cooperation characterized by equality and mutual benefit with other countries of the world, try our best to adopt the world's advanced technology and equipment, and exert every effort to strengthen the work on science and education which are essential to the realization of the four modernizations. In light of the experience and lessons in Party history, the plenary session decided to strengthen the system of democratic centralism, to round out the Party's rules and regulations and to strictly implement discipline. It stressed the importance of collective leadership in the Party Central Committee and the Party committees at various levels; it required that the press and the literary and art works of the whole country should sing more praises of the masses of workers, peasants, soldiers, the Party and veteran revolutionaries, and give less publicity to individuals. The plenary session laid it down that leading cadres at all levels should be the first to observe Party discipline, that whoever CHARTER NINE A NEW PROSPECT IN SOCIALIST CONSTRUCTION 737 violates the Party's discipline should be subject to punishment, that Party organizations should be strict and fair in appraising merits and demerits and in meting out awards and punishments, and that they should promote healthy tendencies while combatting unhealthy ones. The decisions made in these respects were highly significant in redressing the damage inflicted on Partyorganizations by the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; and the abnormalities that still existed during the two years of meandering progress. In order to uphold the Party's rules and regulations, and cultivate a good style of work for the Party, the plenary session established through election the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection with Chen Yun as the first secretary. The plenary session held a serious discussion on some major political events that had taken place during the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; and some other questions left over by history before the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; It decided to annul the erroneous documents issued in 1976 concerning the campaign to &quot;counter the Rightist wind to reverse verdicts&quot; and concerning disposition of the Tiananmen Incident. It examined and corrected the wrong judgments on Peng Dehuai, Tao Zhu, Bo Yibo, Yang Shangkun and other comrades, and proposed that in solving problems left over by history, the principle of seeking truth Irom facts and correcting whatever mistakes are found must be followed. Some people were perplexed by the possibility that correcting the &quot;Left&quot; mistakes of the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; and earlier periods might lead to the negation of Mao Zedong and of Mao Zedong Thought. The plenary session, while persisting in solving the problems left over by history according to the principle of seeking truth from facts, fully affirmed the great merits and achievements of Mao Zedong in the light of historical reality. It further pointed out that to require a revolutionary leader to be free of shortcomings and mistakes was not Marxist, and did not accord with the appraisal Mao Zedong made of himself over the years. As to the overall work of summing up the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; the session left it for later consideration at an appropriate date (it was taken up at the 6th Plenary Session of lltn Party Central Committee two and a half years later ). The session solemnly declared: &quot;The lofty task facing the Party Central Committee on the theoretical front is to give guidance and education to the entire Party membership and the entire people in recognizing the great merits and achievements of Comrade Mao Zedong from a historical and scientific perspective, to have an overall and precise understanding of the scientific system of Mao Zedong Thought, and to integrate the universal theories of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought with the concrete practice of socialist construction and modernization and develop them under new historical conditions.&quot; The plenary session elected Chen Yun additional member of the Central Committee Politburo and of the Standing Committee of the Politburo, and vice-chairman of the Central Committee; Deng Yingchao, Hu Yaobang and Wang Zhen additional members of the Politburo; and Huang Kecheng, Song Renqiong, Hu Qiaomu, Xi Zhongxun and Wang Renzhong additional members of the Central Committee. Although Hua Guofeng remained as chairman of the Party Central Committee after the plenary session (Hu Yaobang was soon appointed secretary-general in charge of the everyday work of the Central Committee), Deng Xiaoping had become the leading core of the Party Central Committee in terms of the ideological guideline and practical work of the Party.<br /> <br /> === Setting Things Right and Starting China's Reform and Opening to the Outside World ===<br /> The guiding principles of the 3rd Plenary Session of the 1 1th Central Committee won the resolute support of the entire Party membership and the people of various nationalities throughout China. Having gained the initiative in setting things to rights after the session, the Party in the period from 1979 to 1982, step by step, solved many problems left over by history since the founding of the PRC and dealt with many new problems which had emerged in everyday life. It made readjustments in the various social relations which had been seriously upset during the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; undertook the arduous task of construction and reform, and succeeded in creating an excellent political and economic situation. Correcting the Ideological Guideline Emphasis in the overall work was to be shifted to socialist construction and modernization. A smooth transition required an earnest effort by the Party to sort out the &quot;Left mistaken ideas on the relationship between economic construction and^ class struggle After resolutely abandoning use of the slogan grasp class struggle as the key link,&quot; the Party Central Committee made a new correct exposition of the main contradiction m socialist society. In March 1979, Deng Xiaoping pointed out: Our forces of production still remain at a very low level of development and lag far behind the needs of our people and our country. This is our main contradiction in the present period. To solve this main contradiction is our central task.&quot; This does not mean, of course, that there will be no class struggle m the future. He expl^fd' &quot;Class struggle in socialist society is an objective fact, which should neither be understated, nor overstated.&quot; Understatement or overstatement will lead to serious mistakes. On the basis of this understanding, the Party went a step ^ theory of &quot;continuing the revolution under the dictatorship oft proletariat,&quot; which served as the fundamental ideol^ical guideline for the &quot;cultural revolution. It was pointed out that thi theory, according to the interpretation at the time, had been aimed at &quot;seizing power from capitalist-roaders, pushing the Party committee aside to make &quot;revolution&quot; and &quot;Down with everything!&quot; Practice proved this theory to be erroneous. From then on, slogans with unclear implications such as these which might again become factors of instability, should therefore no l0Ihi the course of setting things to rights, the masses of cadres and people were freed from the mental shackles of the Personality cult and dogmatism that had prevailed for a period of time. Th was much liveliness in the intellectual life of people both inside and outside the Party, stimulating them to work hard in studying new situations and solving new problems. This represented the mainstream at the time. In the meantime, certain phenomena also appeared which required attention and vigilance. On the one hand, some comrades showed a lack of understanding of the Party's line and policies adopted since the 3rd Plenary Session, and even harboured a feeling of resentment towards them. This indicated that they had not yet shaken off the yoke of &quot;Left&quot; ideology. On the other hand, there was a handful of people who, taking advantage of the Party's effort to set things to rights, waved the banner of &quot;social reform&quot; and distorted the meaning of the slogan of &quot;emancipating the mind.&quot; They used the tactic of &quot;attacking a person for a single fault without considering his other aspects,&quot; and of exaggerating the Party's mistakes to the utmost extent. In this way they tried to negate the leadership of the Party and the road to socialism pointed out by the Party. Some of them, by raising demagogic slogans such as &quot;Oppose hunger&quot; and &quot;Struggle for human rights,&quot; instigated people to hold demonstrations, break into Party and government organizations by force, or even organize illegal organizations and publish clandestine journals, establish ties between the different localities of the country, and work in collaboration with the hostile political forces in Taiwan and certain foreign countries. Inside the Communist Party, there was an extremely small number of people who wavered ideologically when the Party exposed and corrected its own mistakes. Instead of recognizing the danger of this trend of bourgeois liberalization, which manifested itself in opposing the leadership of the Communist Party and the socialist system, they supported it directly or indirectly to a certain extent. This state of affairs, if allowed to go unchecked, was bound to disrupt the situation of stability and unity, leading to grave consequences. In view of all this, Deng Xiaoping, as entrusted by the Party Central Committee, issued a declaration at the Forum on the Party's Theoretical Work held in March 1979. Adopting a clearcut stand, he stated that the four cardinal principles of upholding the road of socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat or peo 741 nle's democratic dictatorship, the leadership of the Communist Party and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought are the fundmental pre-conditions for realization of the four modernizations.&quot; &quot;Wavering in any of these four cardinal principles, added, &quot;will endanger the cause of socialism as a whole, as ell as the entire cause of construction and modernization While criticizing the &quot;Left&quot; tendency of doubting the line of the 3rd Plenary Session, Deng Xiaoping put the emphasis on sharpy exposing the capitalist essence of the so-called social reform advocated by certain people. He clearly pointed out that Ch should introduce the advanced technology and other useful things of the capitalist countries selectively and in a planned way, bu would never emulate or bring in the capitalist system with all its ugliness and decadence. He also gave a scientific definition of the phrase &quot;the emancipation of the mind,&quot; stating that cmanupat ing the mind means the application of the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought to the study of new situations and the solution of new problems&quot; with the aim of promoting the cause of socialism in China. We should never a low some people to use it to attack Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, he warned. His speech demonstrates that from the very beginning, the reform and open policy carried out by the Communist Party of China had a clear socialist orientation. The Party Central Committee was of the opinion that m order to completely overcome the &quot;Left&quot; and Right deviations and help the entire Party membership and the people of the whole country o identify themselves with the line of the 3rd Plenary Session, it was necessary to have a correct understanding of the historical path the Party had travelled since the founding of the PRC and to sum up in a scientific manner the historical experience gained by the Party during this period. This was because it was necessary not mily to bring order out of the chaos created by Lm Biao and 1 the gang of four &quot; but also to correct the mistakes made by Mao Zedong in his later years. Such correction was essential as it was indispensable to the complete shattering of the &quot;Left&quot; mental shackles and t e further advance of the cause of the Party. But in order to do so, it was necessary to deal with the problem of how to appraise the cartel and thinking of Mao Zedong. However, the career and thinking of Mao Zedong &quot;are not the career and thinking of himself alone, they are at the same time the career and thinking of his comrades-inarms, the Party and the people; they are the crystallization of the experience of the Chinese people in their revolutionary struggle in more than half a century.&quot;8 If the Party had not been able to handle this problem properly, there would have been serious confusion within the Party and among the people, and the Party would have lost its bearings. The 4lh Plenary Session of the 1 1th Central Committee convened in September 1979, discussed and endorsed Ye Jianying's speech which was to be made at the rally in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the PRC. This speech gave an initial summing-up of the history of the Party since the founding of the PRC. In November of the same year, the Party Central Committee started work on drafting the Resolution on Certain Historical Questions of the Party Since the Founding of the PRC, with Deng Xiaoping in charge. He pointed out the general ideological guideline for the resolution consists of three points: 1. Establish the historical position of Mao Zedong, persist in and develop Mao Zedong Thought. This is the most crucial point; 2. It is necessary to make an honest analysis of the major events in the thirty years since the founding of the PRC and see which are correct and which are wrong. This should include a fair appraisal of the merits and demerits, rights and wrongs of some leading comrades ; 3. Make a basic summing-up of the past events.9 After the draft for discussion was completed, it was submitted to 4,000 Party comrades for their deliberation and then revised in the light of opinions from various quarters. In June 1981, the 6th Plenary Session of the Party's 1 1th Central Committee adopted the resolution. As the resolution pointed out, the history of the Party since the founding of the PRC, taken as a whole, was one in which the Party led the people of various nationalities of the country in carrying out socialist revolution and socialist construction and gaining great achievements under the guidance of MarxismLeninism and Mao Zedong Thought. Owing to the Party leadership's lack of experience, deviations of a subjectivist nature 743 occurred in its analysis of situations and its understanding of the country's conditions, with the result that the Party committed mistakes of enlarging the scope of class struggle and making impetuous and rash advances in economic construction, includmg such serious mistakes as the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; which affected all spheres of work and lasted for a long time. However, the achievements gained in the last thirty-two years are primary. It would be wrong to ignore or cover up the mistakes, or to ignore or negate the achievements and the successful experience behind them. The resolution appraised the historical position of Mao Zedong in a matter-of-fact way, and fully expounded the great significance of Mao Zedong Thought as the guiding thought for the Party. It pointed out that Mao Zedong was a great Marxist, proletarian revolutionary, strategist and theoretician. Considering his lilc as a whole, his contributions towards the Chinese revolution far outweighed his mistakes. His contributions were primary while his mistakes were secondary. Mao Zedong Thought is the application and development of Marxism-Leninism in China. It represents the correct theoretical principles and the summing-up of experience concerning the Chinese revolution and its correctness has been borne out by practice; it is the crystallization of the collective wisdom of the Communist Party of China. The resolution made a scientific summary of Mao Zedong Thought in all its aspects as well as of the stand, viewpoint and method that run through all its component parts. The resolution stressed that Mao Zedong Thought is an invaluable intellectual treasure of the Party which shall serve as a guide for our action for a long time, that we must continue to uphold it and enrich and develop it with new principles and conclusions that accord with reality. This resolution made a scientific analysis and criticism of the &quot;Left&quot; mistakes that had existed for many years and of Mao Zedong's mistakes in his later years, while on the other hand, resolutely upheld the Party's fine traditions that had formed through long struggles, as well as the scientific system of Mao Zedong Thought and the historical position of Mao Zedong. Thus it drew a clear distinction between right and wrong, corrected the &quot;Left&quot; and Right erroneous points of view existing at the time, and achieved ideological unity in the Party and among the people of the whole country. The resolution provided the fundamental guarantee for maintaining unity in the Party and among the entire people as well as for the smooth development of socialist construction. The fact that this resolution could be drawn up not long after the ending of the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; providing correct conclusions on extremely important and complicated historical questions, fully demonstrates the foresight, the sagacity and the high level of political maturity of the collective leadership of the Party Central Committee with Deng Xiaoping at the core. The adoption of the resolution marked the victorious conclusion of the Party's task of correcting the ideological guideline. In the course of discussing the draft resolution, many comrades criticized the mistakes made by Hua Guofeng in his work since the smashing of the &quot;gang of four,&quot; and asked for a change in his post. At the Politburo meeting held in November and December 1980, it was pointed out that Hua Guofeng had done some useful work in the previous four years, but his mistaken ideas on some questions of principle had not fundamentally changed, and obviously he lacked the political and organizational ability required as chairman of the Party Central Committee. At the suggestion of the Politburo, the 6th Plenary Session of the Party's 11th Central Committee held in June 1981, simultaneously with the adoption of the resolution, decided to endorse Hua Guofeng's request to resign from his posts as chairman of the Party Central Committee and of its Military Commission (prior to this, at the suggestion of the CPC Central Committee, the 3rd Session of the 5th National People's Congress held in August and September 1980 had decided that he no longer hold the premiership of the State Council, a post which was taken over by Zhao Ziyang). The session elected Hu Yaobang chairman of the Party Central Committee,10 'Deng Xiaoping chairman of the Military Commission of the Central Committee, and Hua Guofeng vice-chairman of the Central Committee. In view of the need for younger comrades to assume leadership in the Party Central Committee, and of the fact that Hu Yaobang had many years' work experience in the Red Army, the Party and the Youth League and that he had made outstanding achievements in the work of bringing order out of chaos and reversing unjust verdicts after the &quot;cultural revolution,&quot; he was elected chairman (general secretary) of the Party Central Committee. Readjusting Social Relations One of the important measures for readjusting social relations was to reverse large numbers of unjust verdicts made during the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; and handle step by step the many problems left over by history since the founding of the PRC. Although after the downfall of the &quot;gang of four,&quot; the work on reversing unjust verdicts was partially carried out, progress was quite slow. After 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, Party, government and other organizations at the central and local levels all quickened their pace in reversing unjust verdicts according to the principle of seeking truth from facts and correcting whatever mistakes were found. Cadres in these Party, government and army organizations who had been persecuted were rehabilitated, and democratic personages and intellectuals who had been attacked, framed or persecuted in other ways had their names cleared. In February 1980, the 5th Plenary Session of the 1 1th Central Committee decided to annul the various false charges against Liu Shaoqi and the wrong resolution concerning him, and restored his reputation as one of the great Marxists, proletarian revolutionaries, and principal leaders of the Party and state, thus reversing the biggest unjust verdict made since the founding of the People's Republic. The Party also re-examined some of the major cases which had occurred in the periods before the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; The work mainly consisted of reversing the wrong verdict made in 1955 on the &quot;Hu Feng counter-revolutionary clique,&quot; correcting in April 1 978 the wrong verdicts passed on those who had been unjustifiably labelled as &quot;Rightists&quot; in 1957, and reversing the unjust verdicts passed on those who had been labelled as &quot;Right opportunists&quot; in the campaign to &quot;combat Right opportunism&quot; in 1959. By the end of 1982, the extensive work on reversing unjust verdicts had been basically completed, and unjust verdicts involving more than three million cadres had been reversed. With a light heart, they went back to work or were appointed to new jobs. Tens of millions of people who were their family members, relatives or close colleagues and who had been treated unfairly because of such relationships no longer suffered from discrimination. With their minds relieved, they plunged heart and soul into the cause of socialist construction and modernization. The names of the comrades who had been persecuted to death also had their names cleared. In the course of carrying out this work, the Party's fine tradition of seeking truth from facts was restored and developed. WThile calling the initiative of the cadres into play through reversing unjust verdicts, the Party adopted measures to readjust all types of social relations with the aim of mobilizing all possible positive factors and trying all possible means to turn negative factors into positive ones: 1. Beginning in January 1979, landlords and rich peasants were allowed to discard their class labels and were treated as rural commune members, while the class status of their children was uniformly defined as that of commune member. During the land reform, to classify the landlords and rich peasants as such was necessary; because the situation changed, it was also necessary to change their class status. 2. Commencing in January 1979, the Party's policies were implemented with regard to former Kuomintang personnel who had taken part in a rebellion against the Kuomintang authorities or who had come over to our side. Soon after, release from custody was granted to those still being held among the former Kuomintang officials and officers who had worked in the Kuomintang Party, government, army or secret service and who were of a rank no higher than a county magistrate or a regimental commander. Besides, the Party's policies were also implemented towards Taiwan compatriots residing on the mainland and the family members and relatives of people who had left the mainland for Taiwan. 3. Beginning in November 1979, work started on differentiat 747 ing small traders, peddlers, small handicraftsmen and other labouring people from former industrialists and businessmen. By 1981, out of the original 860,000 industrialists and businessmen, some 700,000 had their class status re-defined as labourers. Not long after, it was clearly stated that former industrialists and businessmen had become labourers in the socialist society and their class status changed to that of cadres or workers. 4. An earnest effort was made to implement the Party's policy towards intellectuals and attention was paid to improving their working and living conditions. The state began to set up a system of academic degrees and restored the standards for evaluating academic and professional titles. Work was accelerated on the training and promotion of professionals and a number of unemployed scientific and technical personnel were given appropriate jobs. 5. Support was given to the democratic parties to resume their activities, develop their party organizations, and play an active role in political life, economic construction and in the fields of culture, education, science and technology. In August 1980, Deng Xiaoping pointed out: &quot;We must further strengthen on a broad scale the unity among all socialist labourers, patriots who support socialism and patriots who uphold the unity of our motherland. Our united front became further expanded and consolidated. 6. In 1980 and 1981, the Secretariat of the Party Central Committee held several meetings to discuss questions concerning Tibet, Yunnan, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia and to make an earnest effort to implement the Party's policies on minority nationalities. The central and local authorities took the tags off comrades who had been labelled as &quot;local nationalist elements.&quot; 7. In March 1982, the Secretariat of the Party Central Committee issued a document on religious questions during the period of socialism which elaborated on the Party's relevant basic viewpoints and policies. Around this time, patriotic religious organizations resumed their activities; monasteries, temples and shrines were re-opened after being repaired or reconstructed and the Party's religious policies were implemented. 8. The Party reaffirmed its policies towards overseas Chinese, protecting and praising their enthusiasm in loving their country and homeland, and encouraged them to make contributions in support of national construction. The readjustments made in the Party's policies and their implementation, both of which are described above, were a correct handling of a series of contradictions among the people; they played an important role in effectively calling into play the initiative of people of various social strata, promoting social stability and unity, consolidating and expanding the patriotic united front, and propelling the cause of construction and modernization forward. Strengthening Party-Building During the ten years of turbulence, the Party's fine traditions and good style of work were seriously damaged. Party discipline slackened, ideas of individualism and anarchism were rampant, and corrupt practices also spread among some cadres. A lot of effective work had to be done in Party building so that the Party could play its role even better as the core of leadership in socialist construction and modernization. in order to implement the decision of 3rd Plenary Session of 11th Central Committee on perfecting Party rules and regulations, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection held its first plenary session in January 1979. The session studied and formulated practical measures to strengthen disciplinary education and the work on maintaining a good style of work, and started solving some outstanding problems in Party building. Party commissions for disciplinary inspection at various levels seriously dealt with infractions of discipline by Party members. In November 1979, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council jointly issued a document entitled &quot;Regulations Concerning Living Conditions and Benefits for High-Ranking Cadre,&quot; reaffirming some of the regulations laid down in the periods before the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; which had proved effective. In issuing these regulations, the Party Central Committee and the State Council stressed that the high-ranking cadres should take the lead in displaying the fine traditions of the Party. The 5th 749 Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee held in February 1980 adopted &quot;Guiding Principles for Inner-Party Political Lite. It laid down basic regulations on 12 questions related to persisting in the Party line, upholding collective leadership, and maintaining centralism and unity of the Party. At a forum convened in November of the same year by the Central Commission tor Disciplinary Inspection, Chen Yun sharply pointed out: The style of a political party in power determines its very survival. He called for a better understanding of the question by Party organizations at all levels and greater effort made by them in Party-building. The Party Central Committee seriously summed up and learned from the experiences and lessons in the political life of the Party and the state and began to raise the question of rcfoim of the leadership system of the Party and state. The enlarged meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee held in August 1980 discussed and approved Deng Xiaoping's important speech entitled &quot;Reforming the Leadership System of the Party and the State.&quot; Deng Xiaoping pointed out: &quot;It is true that our various mistakes in the past had something to do with the thinking and style of work of certain leaders, but more important were the problems of organizational set-up and work systems. He maintained that the socialist system had great superiority, but &quot;many malpractices exist in the current specific institutions of our Party and state which hinder or even seriously ^impede the display of the superiority of the socialist system. The major malpractices are bureaucracy, over-concentration of power, patriarchal behaviour, and leading cadres enjoying life-long tenure and privileges of all kinds.&quot; The crucial problem was the overconcentration of power. Most of these malpractices were caused by an unscientific approach to the solution of certain problems due to lack of experience. But they were &quot;more or less tainted with feudalism.&quot; Therefore, while opposing the influence of bourgeois ideology, there was the problem of eliminating the influence of feudal ideas. But we should oppose feudal ideas with socialist ideology, and should never allow opposition to socialism under the guise of opposing feudalism. The idea that one is entitled to propagating capitalist ideology in order to eliminate the remnant influence of feudalism is totally wrong.12 This speech provided the basic guiding thought for reform of the system of leadership of the Party and the state. The Party took the first steps in the reform of the cadre system in order to meet the need of modernization. The Party Central Committee stressed that the selection and promotion of cadres, especially from among the middle-aged and young people, must be carried out according to principles of moral integrity and professional expertise. Moral integrity is primarily represented by upholding the road of socialism and the leadership of the Party as well as the revolutionization of the cadres as individuals. With this as the prerequisite, the contingent of cadres should be made up of younger, more educated and more professional persons. In February 1982, the Parly Central Committee adopted the &quot;Decision on Institututing the Retirement System for Veteran Cadres,&quot; whereby the de facto life tenure of leading cadres was abolished. In response to the call of the Central Committee, many veterans willingly retired, left their posts or &quot;withdrew to the second front,&quot; as as the saying goes. A large number of middle-aged and young tested cadres assumed leadership in succession. The step-by-step replacement of the veterans by new cadres was a strategic move adopted by the Party to ensure the steady advance of the socialist cause and the continuity of the Party's line and policies. Under the leadership of the Central Committee's Military Commission headed by Deng Xiaoping, the quality of the People's Liberation Army has been raised both in its military and political aspects; this has been achieved through an effort to make it a modernized and standardized armed force. The Party assumed absolute leadership over the army. The PLA has made tremendous achievements in cementing the relationship between the armed force and the people, in defending China's borders, protecting China's security and participating in socialist construction. In February and March 1979, Chinese border troops launched a successful campaign of self-defense against the Vietnamese invaders. This dealt a blow at the arrogance of the Viet Nam authorities and their regional hegemonism, and brought a 751 relatively long period of stability to the Sino-Vietnamese borders. With a consolidated defense as a pre-condition, the proportion of military expenditures in the national budget has been reduced year by year since 1979 in order to divert more funds to construction. (Military expenditures accounted for l7-5 Percenl °[ thc national budget in 1979, and only 8 percent m 1988 ) 19^' China decided to cut down the armed forces by a million, and smoothly completed a reduction the scale of which has rarely been seen anywhere. The implementation of this major policy decision was highly significant for the maintenance of world peace, promoting China's four modernizations and the building of its modernized armed forces. Readjustment of National Economy and Rural Reform After the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, the Party shifted the focus of its work to socialist modernization. This brought an end to the economic stagnation and retrogression with a change for the better, but the serious imbalances among the major relationships within the national economy persisted. Chen Yun and Li Xiannian wrote to the Central Committee proposing that &quot;there should be a period of two or three years for readjusting the economy so that the various imbalances can be basically eliminated.&quot;13 Only by solving this problem, Li Xiannian added, could better conditions be created for f uture growth of the national economy, and a good start be made for the work of the entire Party and the country as a whole after the shift of emphasis is completed.'* The Central Committee s Work Conference convened in April 1979, formulated a principle for the allocation of three years to &quot;readjust, restructure, consolidate and improve&quot; the national economy (the principle was called the eight-character policy for brevity). . f Readjusting the national economy was in fact a process of exploring the way to socialist modernization suited to Chinese conditions; it was also a process of carrying out reform and opening to the outside world. Deng Xiaoping pointed out, &quot;In carrying out construction, there is also the problem of acting according to Chinese conditions and finding a Chinese way to modernization.&quot; In modernizing China, he maintained, there are at least two major features one must pay attention to. One is that China has a poor foundation; the other is China has a large population and little arable land.15 Chen Yun also noted that the major Chinese socioeconomic hallmark lies in the fact that rural people account for 80 percent of the population, the population as a whole is very large, while the area of arable land is small. One must clearly realize that our four modernizations are to be carried out under these circumstances.16 In readjusting the economy, the Party resolutely corrected the mistakes made in economic work in the previous years, eliminated the influence of the &quot;Left&quot; mistakes that had existed for a long time, and made an initial summing up of the experiences and lessons in economic construction since the founding of the People's Republic. It was pointed out that economic construction must proceed from the actual conditions in China; it must accord with economic laws and natural laws; it must be carried out in the light of China's own resources; it must advance in an orderly way, undergo corroboration and strive for practical results; the development of production must go hand in hand with improvement of people's livelihood ; economic cooperation and technological exchange with foreign countries must be actively promoted on the basis of independence and self-reliance. The entire work of economic readjustment was carried out under the guidance of these principles. As the initial stage in implementing the eight-character policy centered around readjusting the economy, most of the Party leaders at various levels, failing to fully comprehend the seriousness of the economic situation, were rather slow in addressing the problems. In 1979 and 1980, the work on readjusting the economy proved ineffective since the total scale of capital construction had not been reduced sufficiently. Commencing in 198 1, under the leadership of the Central Committee, the entire Party membership carried out the policy in real earnest. This resulted in a rapid turn for the better in the economic situation. A further gain was the gradual rationalization of the various relationships in the national economy, such as the proportion between accumulation and consumption, between agriculture and industry, between light and heavy industry. An inappropriately high rate of accumulation had long existed along side an extremely backward agriculture and light industry; this situation underwent a fundamental change. While making readjustments in the economy, the Party Central Committee led the people in taking giant steps toward reform and opening to the outside world. Engels pointed out long ago that socialist society, like all previous societies, is not an invariable entity; it is a society subject to continual development and reform. The basic system of socialism has struck roots on the land of China and has initially manifested its superiority. However, there are still many shortcomings and drawbacks in the economic, political and cultural structures as well as certain specific institutions. The socioeconomic structure of the past, in which the state exercised overall control over everything, was necessary under the circumstances at the time and proved effective at a certain historical stage. If continued today, it would put an unbearable burden on the state, hamper the growth of all vital forces in the society, bring about an ossified situation, and seriously hinder the further development of the forces of production. Therefore, it is imperative to reform those parts in the relations of production which do not accord with the forces of production, as well as those parts in the superstructure which do not accord with the economic base. By so doing, the vitality of the socialist system can be maintained and its superiority further called into play. When the work on readjusting the economy started, Deng Xiaoping emphatically pointed out: &quot;In order to realize the four modernizations in an effective way, we must make an earnest effort to solve the various problems in the economic structure.&quot;17 Of course, reform is a difficult and complicated undertaking. What is the correct way to carry out reform and opening to the outside world? How can economic growth be promoted through reform and opening while at the same time consolidating and strengthening the ground already gained by socialism? This was a completely new task facing the Party and the people. To accomplish it, there had to be a stage of exploration, a process of accumulating experiences on the basis of practice. In the process, twists and turns, and even mistakes, were well-nigh inevitable. Progress in economic structural reform achieved its first breakthroughs in the rural areas. Following agricultural cooperation, the forces of production in the countryside increased to a considerable extent on the basis of a collective economy. However, the people's commune, where government administration and commune management were integrated, practised a management system which was highly centralized and a distribution system which leaned too much towards egalitarianism. This kind of structure failed to arouse the enthusiasm of the peasants for production, and seriously offset the tremendous agricultural input provided by the state. Consequently, advance in rural production and improvement in the livelihood of the peasants were slow. In 1978, there were still more than 100 million peasants who did not have adequate food or clothing. To overcome the difficulties in agricultural production and peasants' livelihood, the Provincial Party Committees of Anhui and Sichuan Provinces relaxed their policies and followed the principle of &quot;rest and recuperation.&quot; In these two provinces rural cadres at the grass roots and peasants started experimenting with a responsibility system in which the fixing of output quotas was based on the household or the team. When the eight-character policy was first introduced, the Central Committee of the Party worked out twelve major measures in April 1979, the first of which was to &quot;concentrate its major effort on increasing agricultural production and readjusting the relationship between agriculture and industry.&quot; Apart from raising the price for planned state purchase of grain and lowering the cost price and market price of industrial products for agricultural use, which had already been called for by the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Party Central Committee, the proportion of state investment in agriculture was increased, while restrictions were put on the quota for planned state purchases of grain. All these measures greatly enhanced the enthusiasm of the peasants for production. The &quot;Decision on Certain Questions Concerning the chapter nine a new prospect in socialist constriction 755 Acceleration of Agricultural Development,&quot; which was passed as a draft resolution at the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Party Central Committee, was formally adopted by the 4th Plc&quot;‘‘^' Session of the Central Committee in September 1979. The Deu sion stressed that no instructions or comments made by governments at different levels, except &quot;those stipulated by law, should be imposed on the communes or production teams through administrative methods. They should be allowed under the guidance of an overall state plan, to act in the light of their lo cal conditions, to follow their own schedules, exercise self-management, and to bring their initiative into phiy These principles encouraged the peasants to create new exper cnee through practice, and in this way threw the door wide open for the structural reform in the rural areas. The greater enthusiasm and initiative shown by the peasants in their work gradually led to breakthroughs in the original management system of the people's communes. Responsibility systems in different forms quickly emerged m the rural areas. In the begin ning, most of them were based on team management, linking the total output with remuneration for all the team members. La er, they developed into systems of management based on the individual and then on the household, with the team leadership reaching an agreement or signing a contract with each household on the farm output quota or tax-plus-sales quota to be fulfilled a leaving farm management, as well as any products over and above the quota, entirely to the households. At that time, many cadres both inside and outside the Party were worried by these new forms of farm management, fearing that they might result in a departure from soctahsm. The understanding of the Party Central Committee on this question also underwent a course of development. In a Party document issued in September 1979, it was noted that the responsibility system based on household management could be adopted by families engaged in certain kinds of sideline production where specie circumstances required it or by families living in remote iso ated mountainous regions where transportation was diffi .cult, but not under normal conditions in other areas. In May 1980, Deng Xiaoping made a speech entitled &quot;On the Question of Rural Policy,&quot; noting that &quot;after the relaxation of rural policy, good results and rapid changes have occurred in some places which are suitable for the household management system.&quot; He pointed out that there was no reason to worry about whether this kind of system would affect the collective economy. So long as production was developed in these areas, he added, so long as the social division of labour and the commodity economy was promoted, collectivization at a low level would move to one of a higher level, and collective economic units which were not consolidated would become consolidated.18 In September 1980, the Parly Central Committee issued a document entitled &quot;On Certain Questions Concerning the Further Strengthening and Improvement of the Responsibility Systems in Agricultural Production.&quot; While stressing the need to make further improvements on the collectiveeconomy, the document pointed out: &quot;The responsibility system based on household management, which is practised under production team leadership, depends for its existence on the socialist economy; it is not a departure from the socialist track and does not represent any danger of capitalist restoration.&quot; Later on, the Party Central Committee further confirmed the household management system as a form of responsibility system of the socialist collective economy, a layer of management in the cooperative economy. Encouraged and promoted by the Party Central Committee, the household management system had by early 1983 spread nationwide to 93 percent of the production teams, most of which carried out the tax-plus-sales quota system. After the household responsibility system was introduced, the collectively-owned land was parcelled out to peasants for their use on a long-term basis. Agricultural production was carried out virtually with the household as the basic unit for management, as well as accounting, each responsible for its own losses and gains. &quot;After ensuring the needs of the state and the collective, the remaining farm produce belongs to the peasants themselves.&quot; This responsibility system gave peasants the decision-making power with regard to production and distribution, and integrated responsibility, power and interests. Not only did it overcome the egalitarianism in distribution by doing away with the old practice of &quot;eating from the same big pot,&quot; but also corrected the drawbacks of highly centralized management and a single-commodity production. The household responsibility system was established on public ownership of the land; between the collective and the household there existed a relationship bound by contract. 1 he collective was responsible for the management and use of big pieces of farm equipment as well as water conservancy projects. It had a public fund collected from the households and undertook to look after the families of army men and martyrs, the five guarantees family (the aged, the infirm, old widows and widowers and orphans) and other families which were in difficulty; it was also responsible for making overall plans for capital construction of farmland. Therefore, this type of family responsibility system was different from the small private economy that had existed before agricultural cooperation. It was not a negation of the superiority of the collective economy that had appeared since agricultural cooperation. It integrated unification and division, exhibiting the superiority of the collective economy and at the same time bringing into play the positive factors of peasant household management. This system was well received by peasants everywhere. It enhanced their labour enthusiasm and promoted the growth of agricultural production. The rapidity with which it produced desired results was beyond expectation. In many places, the changes were noticeable within a single year. Peasants' income, increasing remarkably, sometimes doubled or even redoubled. Some production teams, brigades or even people s communes did not adopt the household responsibility system. Neither did they preserve the original collective managerial system intact, but made necessary changes or reforms, and in this way moved towards what Deng Xiaoping described as &quot;collectivization at a higher level.&quot; Some communes and teams where collective economy had been relatively steady in previous years failed to make use of the superiority of the collective economy in the course of promoting the responsibility system. This was a shortcoming. Nevertheless, they continued to make use of many of the successful experiences of the collective economy and applied them to the building of a new collective economy on the basis of the household responsibility system. Other shortcomings also showed up in the course of promoting the rural responsibility system. For example, inadequate attention was paid to the protection of collective properties, including water conservancy and other public facilities. The division of land for the use of peasants was too scattered, which made it difficult to promote mechanization and irrigation. After discovering these problems, the Party Central Committee instructed the various localities to adopt measures for their gradual solution. The economic structural reforms in the cities were far more complicated than the rural reforms. Experiments in this field began after the 3rd Plenary Session of the 1 1 th Central Committee. These included expanding the decision-making power on the part of the enterprises, putting some of the enterprises original ly administered by the central, provincial or autonomous regional authorities under the control of city governments, making enterprise independent of the government, and experimenting with the comprehensive reform of urban economic structure in some cities. In the late 1970s, more than 10 million educated youths who had gone to the countryside during the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; began to come back to the cities in great numbers. Their urgent demand for jobs aggravated the problem of insufficient employment already caused by the newly emerging labour force in the cities. It was impossible for the state to find jobs for them all. After the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Party Central Committee, the Party proposed solutions to this problem by enlivening the whole economy and creating more opportunities, and by adopting, under unified planning and guidance of the state, a multi-channel approach—introducing job opportunities to people through labour departments, getting people organized to create new jobs, and asking people to look for jobs themselves. By October 1981, more than 20 million people had found jobs. In the meantime, collective and joint enterprises mushroomed alongside private businesses. A situation began to emerge in which various forms of ownership and management existed side by side, with 759 public ownership occupying the dominant position, and in which different forms of distribution were practiced, with the principle of &quot;to each according to his work&quot; playing the major role. Commerce, service trades and enterprises producting consumer goods quickly flourished. This was conducive to readjusting the composition of industry. All these gave impetus to the subsequent structural reform of the economy. In the same period, two major steps were taken in opening China to the outside world. One took place in July 1979 when the Party Central Committee and the State Council, in view of the fact that the two provinces of Guangdong and Fujian had the advantages of proximity to Hong Kong and Macao and of their role as the homeland of numerous overseas Chinese, decided that the two provinces implement special policies and enjoy preferential treatment in foreign economic transactions. The other one was the establishment of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) in Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou of Guangdong Province and in Xiamen of Fujian Province. In these SEZs, foreign investment and the introduction of foreign advanced technology and management was encouraged through the adoption of various forms of cooperation, such as the processing and assembling of imported materials or parts, compensation trade, joint ventures, cooperative projects and enterprises based solely on foreign capital. In August 1980, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress approved &quot;Regulations Concerning the Economic Zones in Guangdong Province.&quot; Construction of the SEZs soon started one after another. The readjustments in the national economy as well as the introduction of reform and opening China to the outside world began to reap good results. The achievements had become evident by 1982 even though work on readjustment had not yet been completed. Between 1978 and 1982, total industrial and agricultural output value increased at an annual average rate of 7.3 percent. This rate of increase which represented a relatively rapid growth, was achieved under circumstances in which the major relationships in the economy were becoming much more proportionate and better coordinated. During the same period, people's livelihood also improved at an unprecedentedly fast rate. Take the year 1982, for example. The average income of peasants reached 270 yuan, which was double the 1978 figure. Living expenses in urban families averaged 500 yuan a year, an increase of 38.3 percent over 1978, taking into account the factor of inflation. Bank deposits reached 67.5 billion yuan, a 220 percent increase over the 1978 figure. It was on this basis that the Party Central Committee started working out a grand development strategy for China's socialist modernization.<br /> <br /> === The 12th National Party Congress and Full-Scale Reform and Opening to the Outside World ===<br /> Formulating the Programme for Creating a New Situation in Socialist Modernization On September 1, 1982, the 12th National Party Congress opened in Beijing. Attending the Congress were 1,545 deputies and 145 alternate deputies, representing more than 39 million Party members. Deng Xiaoping made the opening speech. On behalf of 1 1th Party Central Committee, Hu Yaobang delivered a report entitled &quot;Create a New Situation in All Fields of Socialist Modernization.&quot; Ye Jianying and Chen Yun made speeches on issues of cooperation between old cadres and younger ones who would eventually succeed them. Li Xiannian made the closing speech. In his opening speech, Deng Xiaoping emphasized the following points: &quot;In carrying out our modernization programme, we must proceed from the realities of China. Both in our revolution and construction, we should also learn from foreign countries and draw on their experience. But mechanical copying and application of foreign experience and models will get us nowhere. We have had many lessons in this respect. To integrate the universal truth of Marxism with the concrete realities of China, blaze a path of our own and build socialism with Chinese characteristics—this is the basic conclusion we have reached in summing up long, historical experience.&quot;19 The idea put forward by Deng 761 Xiaoping on building socialism with Chinese characteristics was the ideological guideline of the 12th Party Congress; it is also the ideological guideline for the entire new historical period of reform, opening and modernization. It is under the guidance of this idea that China's reform, opening to the outside world and its modernization effort have achieved great successes. As proposed by the 12th National Party Congress, the general task of the Communist Party of China in the new historical period was: To unite the people of all nationalities to work hard, strive for regeneration through our own ellorts, and step by step modernize our industry, agriculture, national defence, science and technology to make China a culturally advanced and highly democratic socialist country. The most important task, according to the congress, was to press forward with economic construction in order to bring about an all-round new situation. In keeping with proposals made by Deng Xiaoping since 1979, the congress decided that the general objective of China's economic construction for the two decades between 1981 and the end of this century was: while steadily working for more and better economic results, to quadruple the gross annual value of industrial and agricultural production—from 710 billion yuan in 1980 to 2,800 billion yuan or so by the year 2000, thus enabling the Chinese people to become comparatively well-off. The change from the earlier objective of achieving modernization by the end of this century to the stage where people would be comparatively well-off was a decision made in accordance with China's realities—her economic backwardness and extremely uneven development. In terms of strategic thinking, this solved the problem of impetuosity in seeking quick results, a mentality which had existed for a long time. Impetuosity and rashness, which had led people to mistakenly setting unattainably high objectives for the immediate future, was a major cause of the U-shaped up-and-down cycle in economic construction that had occurred repeatedly since the late 1950s. In a spirit of seeking truth from facts, the congress pinpointed agriculture, energy, transportation, education, science and technology as the key areas in economic development which were of strategic importance. The congress mapped out a strategic plan consisting of two major steps: the first ten years would be mainly devoted to building a relatively solid base, accumulating strength, and creating favourable conditions; the next decade would usher in a new period of upsurge in China's economy. The key to bringing about an all-round upsurge in socio-economic development, the congress maintained, was to concentrate funds on major economic development projects. In accordance with the principle &quot;first, feed the people, and second, build the country,&quot; the congress stressed the need to continue improving people's livelihood. The leading position of the state economy was to be upheld while developing diverse economic forms. Also stressed at the congress were the leading role of planned economy and the supplementary role of market regulation, as well as the principle of persevering in self-reliance while expanding economic and technological exchanges with foreign countries. All these were problems in socio-economic development which demanded urgent solutions at the time. A special feature of this congress was the proposition that while setting objectives for economic construction, China must strive to attain a high level of socialist culture and ideology and a high level of socialist democracy. The congress pointed out socialist culture and ideology constitutes an important characteristic of the socialist system and a major aspect of its superiority. Generally speaking, socialist culture and ideology embodies two aspects, the cultural and the ideological. The socialist character of our culture and ideology is determined by ideological education, important aspects of which include revolutionary ideals, morality and discipline. It is essential to propagate revolutionary ideas and spirit so as to inspire the masses of people to take part in socialist construction with great enthusiasm and enable more and more members of our society to become working people with lofty ideals, moral integrity, education and a sense of discipline. This is a strategic principle in building socialism. The congress pointed out that sustained socialist democracy provides the guarantee and support for the building of a socialist material civilization and a socialist culture and ideology. To attain a high level of socialist democracy is therefore one of our fundamental goals and 763 tasks. It is imperative to closely link the building of socialist democracy with that of the socialist legal system, so that socialist democracy is institutionalized and codified into laws. The fact that these theories and tasks were put forward reflects the overall requirements of socialist modernization. They have enriched the theories of scientific socialism and helped people to gain a more comprehensive and deeper understanding of socialism. The congress called for the building of the Party into a strong leading core for the cause of socialist modernization; it also adopted a new Party Constitution. In the new Party Constitution, the &quot;Left&quot; errors in the Constitution adopted in 1979 by the 11th Congress were discarded, while the merits of the Party constitutions passed respectively by the 7th and 8th Congresses were carried forward. The General Programme section in the new Constitution includes Marxist stipulations concerning the character and guiding ideology of the Party, the principal contradiction in our society at the present stage and the general task of the Party, and the correct way to bring into play the Party's leading role in the life of the state. The ideological, political and organizational requirements this Constitution sets for Party members and cadres are stricter than those in all previous constitutions. According to the new Constitution, the Central Committee has no chairman but only a general secretary. Advisory commissions are to be established at the central and provincial levels as transitional organizations for the succession of younger cadres to the old ones, so that many veteran comrades rich in political experience who have retired from their former posts may act as consultants in the service of the Party's cause. The congress stressed the need to improve the Party's system of democratic centralism and further normalize inner-Party life; to reform the leading bodies and the cadre system and ensure that the ranks of the cadres become more revolutionary, younger in average age, better educated and more professionally competent; to strengthen the Party's work among the workers, peasants and intellectuals, and establish close ties between the Party and the masses. In view of the fact that impurities in ideology, style and organization still existed within the Party, the congress pointed out with all serious ness that the style of a political party in power determines its very survival. As decided by the congress, an overall rectification of the Party style and consolidation of Party organizations would begin from the latter half of 1983. The congress elected a new Central Committee, Central Advisory Commission, and Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. At the 1st Plenary Session of the 12th Central Committee that immediately followed the congress, Hu Yaobang was elected general secretary, Hu Yaobang, Ye Jianying, Deng Xiaoping, Zhao Ziyang, Li Xiannian and Chen Yun were elected members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee. At the 1st Plenary Meeting of the Central Advisory Commission, Deng Xiaoping was elected chairman of the Commission. At the 1st Plenary Meeting of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Cheri Yun was elected first secretary of the Commission. At that time new members were made part of the Party central leading collective, in addition to veteran revolutionaries. Beginning from September 1980, Deng Xiaoping, Li Xiannian and Chen Yun no longer held the posts of vice-premiers of the State Council. But together with Ye Jianying, they still played an important role in leading the work of the Party and the state, with Deng Xiaoping at the the core of this generation of collective leadership. The 12th Party Congress was important in Party history inasmuch as it had summed up the experience of setting things right, mapped out a correct programme for creating an all-round new situation in socialist modernization, and worked out a new, improved Party Constitution. In November and December 1982, two months after the 12th Party Congress, the 5th Session of the 5th National People's Congress was convened. Fresh revisions of the Constitution were made, with Peng Zhen presiding over the work. The new Constitution adopted by the National People's Congress not only thoroughly corrected still remaining shortcomings of the 1978 Constitution, but also enriched its original contents and included new stipulations suited to socialist modernization. This is the &quot;Constitution of the People's Republic of China&quot; in operation at present. As the 1st Session of the 6th National People's Congress held in June 1983 pointed out, the main task for the next five years was to mobilize people of all nationalities to strive for the comprehensive overfulfilment of the Sixth Five-Year Plan, for the drawing up and implementation of the Seventh Five-Year Plan, and forging ahead with all undertakings centred around economic construction. The National People's Congress elected Li Xiannian president of the People's Republic of China, Peng Zhen chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's congress, appointed Zhao Ziyang as premier of the State Council, and elected Deng Xiaoping chairman of the State Central Military Commission. All-Round Implementation of Reform and Opening to the Outside World Following the 12th National Party Congress, economic structural reform was rapidly carried out on a nationwide scale. Its main features were: rural reform deepened on a solid basis; the focus of national reform gradually shifted from the countryside to the cities; economic reform spread from a small number of cities selected for experiment to all urban areas; reform in other spheres also took giant steps forward. Rural reform concentrated on the main task of stabilizing and improving the household responsibility system which linked remuneration with output. By 1987, the system was adopted by 180 million peasant households, accounting for 98 percent of the national total. In early 1984, it was announced that the peasants' tenure of the land covered by this responsibility system would be extended to more than 15 years. For those long-term development projects, such as fruit orchards, forests, the utilization of barren hills and wasteland, the land tenure was even longer. The implementation of the household responsibility system engendered changes in the rural people's communes. In October 1983, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council jointly issued the &quot;Circular on Separating the Functions of Government from Commune Management and Establishing Township People's Government.&quot; Township or town government would be established as the basic organ of state power. At the same time, village committees would be universally set up as a mass organization for self-government. By the end of 1984, the separation of government from the people's commune had basically been completed throughout the country and 91,000 township and town governments had been set up alongside 926,000 village committees. By then, the system of rural people's communes had in fact ceased to exist. The universal implementation of the household responsibility system and the abolition of the people's communes created favourable conditions for the growth of rural commodity economy. The Party Central Committee grasped this good opportunity to speed up the process of turning the traditional rural economy into a commodity economy. In January 1985, the Party Central Committee and the State Council proclaimed the &quot;Ten Policies on Further Enlivening the Rural Economy.&quot; The proclamation abolished the previous planned or compulsory purchases of agricultural and sideline products by the state, and introduced new ways of planned state purchases of only a few important items of farm products such as grain and cotton, which were to be done on the basis of contracts signed between the state and the peasants. This reflected a new policy which showed respect for peasants' power of decision. Products other than those purchased by the state according to contracts could be sold freely by the peasants, or sold to the state at negotiated price. Control on most other products was to be relaxed gradually so that they could be traded freely. The state would no longer issue mandatory production plans to the peasants. Agricultural tax, which had been paid in kind, was to be paid in cash. In this way, the planned purchase and marketing by the state, which had been practised for more than thirty years, was basically changed. The rural economy was channelled into the mainstream of planned commodity economy, thus enabling the traditional way of farming to move towards a specialized, commodity-oriented and modernized agriculture. A big windfall from rural reform was the upsurge of township enterprises. The implementation of the household responsibility system released a large amount of labour from the countryside. 767 Under the impact of reform and opening to the outside world, collective and private enterprises and family businesses soon multiplied. In 1987, there were 88.05 million people working in township enterprises; their output value reached 476.4 billion yuan, or 50.4 percent of total output value in rural China. This was the first time that the output value of township enterprises surpassed that of agricultural production, marking a historical change in the Chinese rural economy. The rise of the township enterprises not only helped to increase peasants' incomes, promote agricultural production and bring greater prosperity to the rural economy—while at the same time playing a tremendous role in changing the peasants' outlook—it also added more revenue and earned more foreign currency for the state, thus making important contributions to China's industrialization. With the development of township enterprises, a great number of small towns entered the scene. This new thing, which emerged in the course of building socialism with Chinese characteristics, occupies a place of strategic importance in China's socioeconomic development. The rural economic reform was not established at a single stroke, nor was it brought about in a rush. It was done by proceeding from realities, opportunely summing up the creations of the masses of peasants, leading them along when conditions were ripe, and promoting the trend in a proper way—the whole process represents a successful example of how the Party gives guidance to social reform. The deep-going social reform, which was carried out smoothly among several hundred million people in the Chinese countryside, has profoundly influenced the development not only of the rural economy, but of the entire Chinese economy including the reform in other spheres. The successful experience of rural reform and the new demands put on the cities by rural development created favourable conditions for the entire economic reform with emphasis on urban reform. The experiments and explorations with urban retorm carried out in a small number of cities since the 3rd Plenary Session of the 1 1 th Central Committee also achieved remarkable results, accumulated important experience and laid the foundation for further reform. Opening China to the outside world broadened people's horizons, helped them see opportunities and challenges for China's economic development in the new worldwide technological revolution, and made them understand more keenly the urgency of economic structural reform. The &quot;Decision on Economic Structural Reform&quot; adopted by the 3rd Plenary Session of the 12th Central Committee in October 1984 summed up experience since the founding of the Republic, especially the experience of economic structural reform since the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, put forward and elaborated more systematically a series of important questions, both theoretical and practical, concerning this issue. It is a programmatic document for carrying out overall economic structural reform. The important theoretical contribution made by the Decision was that it shattered the traditional concept of setting planned economy against commodity economy, and confirmed that our socialist economy was a planned commodity economy based on public ownership. This is the basic theory and practice of our structural economic reform. Taking this as the point of departure, the Decision goes on to give an exposition of the major problems to be solved in establishing a socialist economic structure full of vigour: enhancing the vitality of enterprise, which remains the key issue of economic structural reform; establishing a planning system which would enable the purposeful use of the law of value in the development of socialist commodity economy; setting up a reasonable pricing system and paying full attention to the role of economic leverage; separating enterprise from government; giving government organizations a proper role in economic management; setting up various forms of the economic responsibility system; strictly implementing the principle of &quot;to each according to his work&quot; in matters of distribution; actively developing various economic forms and expanding domestic and international economic and technological exchanges. The Decision also stressed the importance of promoting a new generation of leaders, of training large numbers of cadres for the management of the socialist economy, and of strengthening Party leadership in order to ensure the smooth progress of reform. 769 Under the guidance of the spirit of the Decision, the entire economic structural reform with emphasis on the cities unfolded full-scale in 1985. By 1987, the year when the 13th National Party Congress was convened, the reform had made noticeable progress. The main achievements were: First, diverse economic forms were further developed while public ownership retained its dominant position in the economy and continued to grow. The original economic structure consisting only of the single economic form of public ownership, which did not fully accord with the current level of productivity, had undergone a great change. The state-owned enterprises still held a predominant position. Of China's total industrial output value, their share decreased from 77.6 percent in 1978 before the reform to 59 7 percent in 1987, despite a considerable increase in their output value; in the same period, the share represented by the collective economy increased from 22.4 percent to 34.6 percent, the share of individual economy, private economy, joint ventures, cooperative ventures, foreign-capital owned enterprises and other non-public businesses, all of which had been virtually nonexistent in the past, now accounted for 5.6 percent. Of the total value of retail sales of social commodities, the share of stateowned commercial enterprises decreased from 54.6 to 38.7 percent that of collective commercial enterprises decreased from 43.3* percent to 35.7 percent; while that of the non-public sector of commerce increased from 2.1 to 25.6 percent. The number o individuals engaged in their own industrial or commercial undertakings increased from 150,000 to 5.69 million. The changes in economic structure in terms of different forms of ownership played a positive role in developing economy, making life more convenient for the people and offering them more job opportunities. Second, in accordance with the principle of separating enterprise from government and the proper separation of ownership and management, the previous form of management m the stateowned enterprises, under which they obtained operating funds from the state and turned over their gains to the state, changed, and their power of decision was enlarged. Compared with 1978, the profits they retained for themselves increased from 3.7 per cent of the total amount of profits to more than 40 percent in 1987 (or about 20 percent of the total after taxes and other expenses were deducted). This enhanced their capacity to renovate and expand. By 1987, more than 80 percent of state-owned enterprises throughout China had been implementing some kind of management responsibility system on a contractual basis. Within the enterprise, a system of reform was carried out in which the main task was to implement the director's (or manager's) responsibility. Third, the scope and form of macroscopic regulation and control by the state was readjusted and improved by reforming the system of administration through planning. Compared with the pre-reform period, in 1987 the number of items of industrial products under mandatory plans of the State Planning Commission decreased from 120 to 60, with their proportion in the total industrial output value decreasing from 40 percent to 17 percent; the materials whose distribution was monopolized by the state decreased from 259 to 26 in number; the type of commodities controlled by state plans decreased from 188 to 23 in number; of the total amount of funds used for production and construction, those from state revenues decreased from 76.6 percent to 31.2 percent, while those from banks increased from 23.4 percent to 68.8 percent. The role of economic leverage in macroscopic regulation and control had obviously strengthened. Progress was also made in varying degrees in the reform of financial, taxation, pricing and monetary systems, as well as commercial, labour and wage systems. Through these reforms, an unprecedented, flourishing situation emerged in urban economic life. Meanwhile, certain confusion occurred as a result of inadequate measures in strengthening and improving macroscopic control by the state in the course of laying more stress on relaxing policies and invigorating enterprises. Nevertheless, the changes as a whole were positive; they were changes towards a new system of planned commodity economy based on public ownership. With both rural and urban reforms spreading gradually over the land, structural reforms in science and technology and edu 771 cation were also placed on the agenda. In March 1985, the Party Central Committee adopted the &quot;Decision on Structural Reforms in Science and Technology.&quot; The main contents of the Decision were: reforming the system of fund allocation; developing the technology market; cultivating the capacity of scientific and technological institutions to develop themselves and enhancing their vigor and initiative in serving economic construction; strengthening enterprises in their capacity to absorb and develop new technology; promoting the cooperation and integration of scientific, designing, and higher educational institutions with enterprises; changing the situation where research institutions were somewhat isolated from enterprises, while departments and localities also worked in isolation from each other; encouraging the reasonable flow of personnel. The main purpose of these measures was to turn technological achievements into commodities and accelerate their transformation into forces of production, so as to meet the developmental needs of a socialist commodity economy. The subsequent reforms in science and technology were developed in this direction. In May of the same year, the Party Central Committee made the &quot;Decision on Structural Reform in Education.&quot; It included proposals that the management system be reformed, more power of decision be given to the schools, the educational structure readjusted, the labour and personnel system modified correspondingly, educational concepts, contents and methods which did not accord with socialist modernization be changed. The objective of these reforms was to enable various kinds and levels of education to take positive steps toward adapting to the diverse needs of socio-economic development on their own initiative. Education was invigorated through the implementation of the Decision. After the 12th National Party Congress, simultaneously with the steady advance of the rural and urban reforms, several major steps were also taken in opening China to the outside world. In April 1983, by decision of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, certain policies practised in the SEZs were granted to Hainan Island, giving it enlarged powers of decision to expedite its development. In April 1988, Hainan Island was made a province and declared a Special Economic Zone. Earlier, in April 1984, fourteen port cities—Tianjin, Shanghai, Dalian, Qinhuangdao, Yantai, Qingdao, Lianyungang, Nantong, Ningpo, Wenzhou, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Zhanjiang and Beihai—were opened to the outside world. This was a major step in expanding the open policy. In February 1985, the Changjiang Delta, Zhujiang Delta and the Xiamen-Quanzhou-Zhangzhou Delta in southern Fujian were opened as coastal economic development areas. Thus, in implementing the open policy, a multi-level framework with several emphases and a combination of cities and areas was formed—which started with the Special Economic Zones, and extended to the coastal open cities, the coastal economic development areas and finally to the interior, altogether comprising two cities directly under the administration of the central authorities, 25 provincial cities and 67 counties, involving 150 million people in the coastal regions of China now opened to the outside world. The introduction of foreign capital and advanced technology and equipment was speeded up, more Chinese goods exported, and more foreign currency earned. By 1987, 10,350 contracts were signed involving the use of foreign capital up to an agreed total amount of 62,509 million U.S. dollars, of which direct investment by foreign capital reached 25,773 million. In the fourteen port cities, technical revamping projects numbered 5,000, with transactions valued at 3,450 million U.S. dollars. This gave great impetus to the revamping of the current enterprises, the upgrading of products and the readjustment of product mix. New technologies were introduced and a number of new products developed, some of which helped to fill up certain blanks in Chinese industries. Fulfilment of the Sixth Five-Year Plan and Adoption of the Seventh Five-Year Plan After the 12th National Party Congress, economic development was relatively smooth for several years, especially for the first two years. Achievements in economic construction found expression mainly in the successful completion of the Sixth 773 Five-Year Plan (National Economic and Social Development Plan for the 1981-1985 Period). Thanks to the realistic nature of the plan and the economic readjustments made in the previous years, the major proportional relationships in the economy became more balanced. This created a favourable environment for economic growth. The urban and rural reforms, in particular, called into play the initiative of all parties concerned, and became a great driving force for economic development. By the end of 1985, the Sixth Five-Year Plan was overfulfilled in an all-round way. The total industrial and agricultural output value increased from 770.7 billion yuan in 1980 to 1,333.5 billion yuan in 1985. Calculated in terms of the constant prices of 1980, the annual average increase was 1 1 percent. Gross national product increased from 447 billion yuan to 856.8 billion yuan. Again, calculated according to the constant prices of 1980, the annual average increase was 10 percent, surpassing the planned increase rate of 4-5 percent. Major industrial and agricultural products increased in quantity by a wide margin. Economic results and efficiency took an upward turn and state revenues, which had declined year by year during the later period of the Fifth Five-Year Plan, began to climb each year and helped achieve a basically balanced budget. Capital construction and technological transformation made notable progress. Investment in capital construction during these five years was 46 percent over that of the Fifth Five-Year Plan, while investment in technological transformation increased 77 percent. During the Sixth Five-Year Plan period, foreign economic relations and trade and technological exchanges opened up new vistas. The total amount of imports and exports more than doubled the figures of the Fifth Five-Year Plan period, bringing about a notable change in China's position in world trade. Science and technology flourished side by side with education and culture. The income of urban and rural people rose remarkably, and so did their level of consumption. The national consumption level of residents, which averaged 227 yuan in 1980, rose to 406 yuan in 1985. Taking into account the factor of inflation, the annual average increase rate was 8.7 percent, which was much higher than the average increase rate of 2.6 percent of the previous years (1953-80). The fulfulment of the Sixth Five-Year Plan brought a happy solution to many perplexing problems of long duration. The steep increase in grain and cotton production created conditions for solving the problem of feeding and clothing the people. As a result of the relatively sufficient supplies of consumption goods, many commodities, with the exception of grain and vegetable oil, were sold without any restrictions, and many types of ration coupons formerly in use were abolished. Certain shortcomings and mistakes in economic development also occurred during this period. The arrangements set by the 12th Party Congress for the next ten years, which had been mainly aimed at laying a solid foundation, were not implenmented in earnest. In fact, Hu Yaobang did not agree with the principle of readjusting the economy, nor with the principle that economic construction should proceed on a solid basis, that the various relationships in the economy should be properly readjusted, a solid foundation be laid for a steady, measured advance. In his talks with leaders of various localities, he stressed high speed, high targets, fulfillment of plans to redouble production figures ahead of schedule and competing for top place. He put consumption before production and stressed promoting production by stimulating consumption. The second half of 1984 saw overheating of the economy hand in hand with an excessive issue of paper currency and a distribution of national income characterized by overspending. New elements of instability emerged in economic life as a result of excessively high-speed industrial growth, drastic increase of investment in fixed assets, and excessive expansion of consumption funds, and sharp price hikes for some commodities. These created difficulties for economic growth in the next few years. However, taking everything into account, the Chinese economy made rapid progress and attained notable successes during the years of the Sixth Five-Year Plan period. Its smooth implementation enabled the Party Central Committee to begin drafting the Seventh Five-Year Plan (1986-90) early in 1983. In September 1985, the National Party Conference approved the &quot;Proposal for the Seventh Five-Year Plan for Na 775 tional Economic and Social Development (draft).&quot; The proposal put forward the basic guideline concerning economic work, the major targets related to overall socio-economic development and its orientation, the strategic principles, major policies and measures for its implementation, as well as the tentative ideas and planned steps for carrying out economic structural reforms. The State Council, in accordance with the Proposal put forward by the Party Central Committee, made deeper researches into the proposed arrangements, tried to achieve an overall balance, and finally worked out &quot;The Seventh Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China.&quot; In April 1986, the plan was approved for implementation by the 4th Session of the 6th National People's Congress. Party Consolidation and Building Socialist Culture and Ideology Overall work on Party rectification was begun following a decision made at the 2nd Plenary Session of the 12th Central Committee held in October 1983 and based on a decision of the 12th National Party Congress. The tasks of Party consolidation were: first, to unify thinking, to attain a high level of ideological and political unity throughout the Party, correct all erroneous tendencies, either &quot;Left&quot; or Right, which violated the Four Cardinal Principles or deviated from the line pursued by the Party since the 3rd Plenary Session of the 1 1th Central Committee; second, to rectify the Party style, give full play to the revolutionary spirit of serving the people wholeheartedly, thwart any attempts to make use of one's position and power to seek private gains, and combat bureaucracy which showed an irresponsible attitude towards the Party and the people; third, to strengthen discipline, uphold the organizational principle of democratic centralism, oppose patriarchism, factionalism, anarchism and liberalism, all of which were against organizational principles and discipline, and overcome the flabbiness and lack of unity within certain Party organizations; fourth, to purify the Party ranks by acting according to the Party Constitution, resolutely ferreting out those elements who firmly oppose and endanger the Party and expelling them from the Party. The crucial task was to clear out three kinds of people: rebels who climbed to relatively high positions by following the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary cliques, persons with serious factionalist ideas, and those who had engaged in reckless beating, smashing and looting. Party consolidation was carried out under unusual circumstances. Impurities in ideology, style and organization as well as slack discipline left over by the &quot;cultural revolution&quot; still posed serious problems within the Party, and the entire state and social life, still in the midst of many profound changes, were stirred up as never before. For these reasons, the masses of people both inside and outside the Party were bound to be deeply concerned about Party consolidation, and to place high hopes on it, while at the same time many unexpected problems were bound to crop up during the process. All these made the task extremely arduous and complicated. However, Hu Yaobang, who was concurrently chairman of the Central Committee's Directorate for the Work on Party Consolidation, did not pay enough attention to the job. He willfully steered the task of &quot;attaining ideological unity&quot; to &quot;rectifying professional guidelines,&quot; and adopted a one-sided approach by advocating the &quot;promotion of economy through Party consolidation, and testing the result of Party consolidation by the economy.&quot; This made it all the more difficult to accomplish the task well. Party consolidation, carried out among Party members in groups and at different times, extended over a period of three and a half years and was basically brought to a conclusion in May 1987. On the whole, through Party consolidation, improvement was made with regard to ideology, style, organization and discipline of the entire Party. The situation took a favourable turn in the effort to eliminate impurities in ideology, style and organization which had existed to a serious degree within the Party, and important experience was gained in the correct handling of inner-Party contradictions. This helped to lay a solid foundation for strengthening and promoting Party building in the new period. According to statistics, through membership registration and other organizational procedures, 33,896 members were expelled, 90,069 were denied registra 777 tion, 145,456 were not allowed to register for the time being, 184,071 were accorded disciplinary measures of one kind or another—put on probation, removed from Party posts and suggested to be removed from other posts, served an inner-Party serious warning or warning. However, Party consolidation was uneven in its development. Some Party and government organizations, including certain high- or middle-level leading organizations, failed to fully accomplish the four tasks of Party consolidation, or worse, just went through the motions. . The 12th National Party Congress gave a prominent place to the building of a socialist society with an advance culture and ideology. Generally speaking, the building of material civilization made it necessary to strengthen the building of socialist culture and ideology. Specifically, the development of commodity economy and the objective environment of reform and opening to the outside world made it more imperative to strengthen the building of socialist culture and ideology. As a matter of tact, under the circumstances when the development of commodity economy and reform and opening to the outside world were so much stressed, there did exist a lack of attention to the building of socialist culture and ideology. This facilitated the spread of the trend of bourgeois liberalization. At a time when the Party exerted itself to correct &quot;Left&quot; mistakes, a Right erroneous tendency appeared which went against the Four Cardinal Principles. At the 2nd Plenary Session of the 12th Central Committee held in October 1983, Deng Xiaoping took a clear-cut stand, saying: On the ideological front, spiritual contamination should not be allowed^ The essence of spiritual contamination was to spread all sorts of corrupt and decadent ideas of the bourgeoisie and other exploiting classes, and disseminate feelings of distrust of socialism, communism and the leadership of the Party. Spiritual contamination was extremely harmful; it could bring havoc to the country and people. He sharply exposed the confusion existing on the ideological front, pointing out that speaking about human values and humanitarianism in abstract terms, propagating democracy in an abstract sense and setting it against the leadership of t e Party contradicted the fundamentals of Marxism and might lead young people astray. He pointed out that one must use Marxism to analyse, judge and criticize the modern bourgeois culture of the West, and should not hold it in esteem without discrimination. &quot;The use of Western decadent bourgeois culture to corrupt young people should no longer be tolerated.&quot;20 He said that it was still necessary to continue the criticism and correction of &quot;Left&quot; mistaken ideas in the ideological and theoretical fields. But it should be clearly pointed out that the current problem on the ideological front calling for prior solution was the Right tendency of flabbiness and laxity. The Party committees at all levels should effectively strengthen their leadership over the ideological front. The struggle against spiritual contamination, or bourgeois liberalization, which was to be unfolded in accordance with the spirit of the plenary session, fizzled out as a result of the passive attitude on the part of the Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang. The consequences were quite serious. To strengthen the building of socialist culture and ideology, the 6th Plenary Session of the 12th Central Committee held in September 1986 made the &quot;Resolution on the Guiding Principles for the Building a Socialist Society with an Advanced Culture and Ideology.&quot; The Decision elaborated on the strategic role of and the fundamental tasks in building socialist culture and ideology. It called for using the common ideal of building socialism with Chinese characteristics to arouse and unite the people of all nationalities throughout the country in establishing and developing socialist morality, strengthening education in socialist democracy, the legal system and discipline, spreading and raising the level of education, science and culture, while at the same time upholding the guiding role of Marxism in the building of socialist culture and ideology. The Decision called on Party organizations at all levels and the masses of Party members to take the lead in building socialist culture and ideology. The Decision pointed out socialist culture and ideology with Marxism as the guide constituted an important characteristic of socialist society; it provided spiritual and intellectual support for the development of material civilization, while guaranteeing the correct orientation for its development, and therefore it was a matter of great importance which might determine the rise or fall, the success or failure of the cause of socialism. The Decision further pointed out that the overall reform and opening to the outside world put new and higher demands on the building of socialist culture and ideology. Whether it could meet these demands, whether the decadent ideas of capitalism and feudalism could be effectively resisted, and whether the various dangers of losing one's bearings could be averted—this was a great historic test. The Decision stressed that bourgeois liberalization was a negation of the socialist system and advocation of the capitalist system, that it went diametrically against the interests of the people and the historical trend and was firmly opposed by the masses of people. Countering the erroneous view expressed at the session that no mention should be made of &quot;bourgeois liberalization,&quot; Deng Xiaoping clearly pointed out. Liberalization itself was bourgeois, and pushing liberalization would mean leading us onto the road of capitalism. &quot;If this ideological trend were not resisted, once combined with the many dirty and evil things that would inevitably come in when China opened its doors, they would become a destructive force against our four socialist modernizations, which was not to be ignored.&quot; Therefore, he added, &quot;We should talk about opposing bourgeois liberalization, not only this time, but keep on talking for ten or twenty years.&quot;21 In March 1987, Deng Xiaoping said that not only should we talk about it for ten or twenty years, but &quot;for fifty more years.&quot;22 The important ideas on strengthening the guiding role of Marxism in the building of socialist culture and ideology and opposing bourgeois liberalization, which had been much stressed by the Decision, were not immediately and vigorously put to practice, while no struggle was effectively waged against a real erroneous Right tendency existing at that time. Towards the end of 1986, student unrest spread to quite a few cities. Deng Xiaoping made a speech entitled &quot;Take a Clear-Cut Stand in Opposing Bourgeois Liberalization.&quot; This speech and his speech made at the 6th Session of the 12th Central Committee on the same subject, which was conveyed to Party members and people throughout China, gave them an ideological weapon for combatting bourgeois liberalization. Following the &quot;Circular on Party Members Strict Observation of the Party Constitution,&quot; which was issued by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, a handful of Party members who openly advocated bourgeois liberalization were expelled from the Party. Thanks to timely and competent guidance, student unrest soon subsided. The direct causes leading to student unrest varied with different localities and different schools, including feelings of distrust towards Party leadership caused by the mistakes made by the central, local or school authorities in their work. But taking the problem as a whole, student unrest was the result of lack of a clear-cut, firm position towards bourgeois liberalization. Flabbiness and confusion prevailed on the ideological front both at the central and local levels. In school forums as well as in many other places, there was failure to resist the assault of bourgeois liberalization, resulting in its rampancy. A handful of Communist Party members played an extremely harmful role by taking a lead in touting bourgeois liberalization. For all these, Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang was largely responsible. On January 16, 1987, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee called an enlarged meeting, where Hu Yaobang made selfcriticisms for violating the principle of collective leadership, and for mistakes made on major political questions of principle in his capacity as the general secretary of the Party Central Committee, and requested the Central Committee to allow him to resign his post as Party general secretary. The meeting made serious criticisms of his mistakes in a comradely manner, and at the same time made a realistic appraisal of his achievements. The meeting approved his request for resignation, but allowed him to retain his posts as member of the Political Bureau and member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau. In view of the fact that prior to 1980, Zhao Ziyang had made achievements in his work at the provincial level, and after becoming the premier in September 1980, had also made accomplishments in the field of economy, he was elected acting general secretary of the Party Central Committee. The Decisions at this enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau were confirmed by the 7th Plenary Session of the 12th Central Committee which was held in October of the same year. In view of the lessons learned from the student unrest, the 6th 781 Session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress made the &quot;Decision on Strengthening Education in the Legal System and Maintaining Stability and Unity&quot; on January 22 1987. On January 28 of the same year, the Party Central Committee issued the &quot;Circular on Questions of Combating Bourgeois Liberalization.&quot; The Circular required Party organizations at various levels to acquire a full understanding of the importance and long-term nature of the struggle against bourgeois liberalization and to conduct education among Party members about the need to firmly uphold the Four Cardinal Principles, and fully and correctly understand and implement the line, principle and policies formulated since the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee. The Circular also contained a number of specific policies on opposing bourgeois liberalization.<br /> <br /> === The 13th National Party Congress, Beginning of Economic Rectification and Quelling of Turbulence in 1989 ===<br /> The 13th National Party Congress systematically expounded the theory of the primary stage of socialism and its basic Party line. This theory and line were drawn up in reference to experiences in economic reform and opening up and in the construction of socialist modernization following the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, as well as in recognition of the national strength and the summarizing of practical experience. The 13th National Party Congress and the Basic Party Line for the Primary Stage of Socialism The 13th National Party Congress was held from October 25 to November 1, 1987, in Beijing. The 1,936 deputies represented more than 46 million Party members. At the congress, Zhao Ziyang on behalf of the 12th Central Committee delivered a report entitled &quot;Advance Along the Road of Socialism With Chinese Characteristics.&quot; The congress approved the report, revised some articles of the Party Constitution and elected a new Party Central Committee, Central Advisory Commission and Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. The salient contribution made by the 13th Party Congress was its systematic exposition of the theory of the primary stage of socialism and the basic Party line for this stage. Soon after the convention of the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, while summing up historical experiences, the Party Central Committee instituted a study of the ideological reasons for the mistakes made in the previous period from the angle of recognizing Chinese socialist society as being in the developing stage. Earlier, in September 1979, in a speech approved by the 4th Plenary Session of the 1 1 th Central Committee and delivered at a meeting to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Ye Jianying pointed out that China is still a developing socialist country. Its socialist system is still immature and imperfect, while the economy and culture are still under-developed. China's socialist modernization must pass from a lower to a higher level and its socialist system is still in its infancy. This initially revealed the ideas on the primary stage of socialism. The &quot;Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China,&quot; adopted by the 6th Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee in June 1981, clarified for the first time that our socialist system is still in an early phase and must undergo a long process of development before it can be perfected. Later this thesis of socialism as being in its early phase was reaffirmed in the report to the 12th Party Congress and in the &quot;Resolution on the Guiding Principles for Building a Socialist Society with an Advanced Culture and Ideology,&quot; adopted at the 6th Plenary Session of the 12th Central Committee. In light of these probings, the 1 3th Party Congress summed up fresh experience in the reform and opening up and carried understanding of the primary stage of socialism in China a big step forward. The congress pointed out that the correct understanding of the histor ical period of current Chinese society is the paramount issue in building socialism with Chinese characteristics and constitutes the basic reference for stipulating and implementing correct lines congress also pointed out that this thesis implies first that China is already a socialist society and must persevere m and not deviate from socialism, and second, that China s socialist socie y is still in its primary stage; we must proceed from this reality and h age cannot * shipped. Under the specific historic* 1 conditions of contemporary China, failing to recognize that the Chinese people can take the socialist road without going through *he stage of fully developed capitalism is a mechanistic view on he question of revolutionary development. This is the cognitive root of Right deviationist mistakes. On the other hand, to believe that it is possible to skip the primary stage of socialism without the massive development of the productive forces ms a _utop«n view on this question. This is the major cogmt.ve root of Left &quot; Theecongress made a profound analysis of China's present society pointing out, on one hand, the socialist economic system based on public ownership of the means of production, the socialist political system of the people's democratic dictatorship and the guiding position of Marxism in the ideological field have already established. The system of exploitation and exploiting classes have been eliminated, national economic strength has increased tremendously and education t science and culture have nroeress. On the other hand, China has a targe population and poor foundation. Also, China ranks f&quot; behlnd other countries in per-capita gross national product. Jhe back wardness of the forces of production determines that with regard To the relations of production, the degree of socialization of production required for the promotion of socialist Pu&quot;'= shiD is still very low. The commodity economy and domestic market are still underdeveloped while the socialist economic system is immature and imperfect. In superstructure a series of economic and cultural conditions necessary for building a high level socialist democracy and politics are also highly ma equa The influence of decadent feudalist and capitalist ideas and the forces of tradition engendered by small production is still widespread and has time and again penetrated into the ranks of Party cadres and state administrators. All this shows that China has not passed beyond the primary stage of socialism. These scientific theses have offered a key to understanding both the successes and failures in socialist construction following the nationwide liberation and have also provided a powerful theoretical weapon for the reform and opening up and for building China into a socialist country with Chinese characteristics. This is an important contribution made by the Chinese Communists to the theory of scientific socialism. The congress has systematically expounded the Party's basic line for building socialism with Chinese characteristics in the primary stage of socialism. The line is: leading and uniting with the people of all nationalities, focusing on economic construction, persisting in the four cardinal principles, firmly push forward the reform and opening up, self-reliance, hard work and building our country into a prosperous, democratic, civilized modern socialist country. This basic line is summed up as &quot;one central task and two basic points,&quot; the central task being economic construction, while the two basic points refer to persisting in the four cardinal principles and the reform and opening up. This is a principle our Party has consistently maintained since the 3rd Plenary Session of the 1 1 th Central Committee. Practice proves that the implementation of this basic line is a fundamental guarantee of success in work of all kinds. Departing from it would lead to committing mistakes of one kind or another. The Party congress stipulated a three-step strategy of economic development. The first step is to double the 1980 GNP and ensure that the people have enough food and clothing. The second step is to quadruple the 1980 GNP by the end of this century and guarantee a comparatively more comfortable life for the people. The last step is to increase the per-capita GNP to the level of the second rung developed countries by the mid-21st century. Then the people will be well-off and modernization will be basically realized. This strategy is a further enrichment and development of the strategy of economic development stipulated by the 12th Party Congress based on the thesis of the primary stage of socialism. The three-step strategy was advanced by Deng Xiaoping in 1985 after serious consideration. The central task of the 13th Party Congress was to speed up and deepen the reform. The congress proposed that reform of the economic system should focus on transformation of the operatmg mechanism of enterprises. The accompanying reform of the sys terns of planning, investment, materials and equipment supp y, finances 'and foreign trade should advance in stages ,n order o establish a general framework of a new planned commodity economic system. So the congress called for enlivening the stateowned enterprises according to the principle of separating ownership from management power, further promoting mter-enterprise economic cooperation, boosting establishment of a socialist market system, perfecting a macro-economic regulation system based on indirect control, continuously developing an economy with various systems of ownership with public ownership as its main body and introducing a diversified system of payment based on distribution according to work and a correct po ® ' *e experience of previous years, the congress analysed the arduous nature of the reform of the economic system and changed the basic objective for achieving a new economic systein in five years or longer which had been advanced by the Party Central Com mittee in its Seventh Five-Year Plan. The congress pointed out, &quot;Assessment of the current situation indicates that it will take a longer time than expected for establishing the framework of a new system.&quot;23 This demonstrates the spirit of seeking truth from The 13th Party Congress pointed out that the implementation •md deepening of reform of the economic structure has raised an urgent demand for reform of the political system. The objective of reform of the political system for the near future is to establis a leadership structure which can increase efficiency, invigorate vitality and file enthusiasm on all sides. According to Deng Xiaoping's speech entitled &quot;Reform of the Party and i State Lead ership System&quot; delivered at an enlarged conference of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee held in August 1980, the Party and the state have adopted a series of important measures in this field and made marked progress in separating Party from government administration, decentralizing the decision-making power to lower-level units, strengthening estab-. lishment of a legal system and eliminating the system of life-long tenure of leaders. These reform measures were being implemented all along, both before and after the 13th Party Congress. The congress also pointed out that in the process of combining Marxism with Chinese practice in the last sixty years or more there were two leaps of historical significance. The first leap was in the new democratic revolutionary period. During this period, the Chinese Communists summed up both successful and unsuccessful experiences, found a revolutionary road which was characteristically Chinese and led the revolution to success. The second leap occurred after the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee. During this period, the Chinese Communists, based on the positive and negative experiences summed up in the thirty years and more following the founding of New China and on the study of international experience and the world situation, found a road for building socialist China with Chinese characteristics and entered a new stage of socialist construction. Advancing along this road is the basic guarantee for leading our cause to victory. The 1st Plenary Session of the 13th Central Committee held on November 2 elected Zhao Ziyang, Li Peng, Qiao Shi, Hu Qili and Yao Yilin members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau with Zhao Ziyang as the general secretary. At the session, Deng Xiaoping was appointed chairman of the Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee, Zhao Ziyang its first vice-chairman, and Yang Shangkun standing vice-chairman; Chen Yun was approved chairman and Bo Yibo and Song Rcnqiong vice-chairmen of the CPC Central Advisory Commission; and Qiao Shi secretary of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. The Standing Committee of the Political Bureau proposed to the session that although Deng Xiaoping had retired from his positions on the Central Party Committee and 787 Standing Committee of the Political Bureau, his status and function as a policy-maker on important Party and national issues should not change. He was needed to control the helm in an exigency. This was needed for the Party's cause. This proposal was agreed to by all deputies to the session. The 1st Session of the 7th National People's Congress held in March and April 1988 elected Yang Shangkun president of the People's Republic of China, and Wan Li chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress; appointed Li Peng premier of the State Council and elected Deng Xiaoping chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission. Beginning of Economic Readjustment In the five years from the 12th to the 13th Party Congress, China achieved great progress in economic reform and opening up But there were still a lot of problems and difficulties. Some of them had accumulated over many years and could not be solved in a short period of time, while some arose during the past few years in the process of advance. While implementing correct strategies, principles and policies, the Party Central Committee and the State Council made some mistakes in concrete guidance on economic construction and reform and opening up. In regard to agriculture, the Party Central Committee and the State Council were once over-optimistic about the situation in the country side, slackened their guidance and decreased their assistance to agricultural production. This resulted in fluctuation and stagnation in grain production for several consecutive years after a bumper harvest in 1984. In industry they were ineffective in their efforts to correct the indiscriminate expansion of the processing industry. In the course of reforming the overcentralized and over-tightly controlled economic system, they neglected necessary and suitable centralization. While emphasizing micro-economic enlivening, they neglected overall balance and weakened macro control. Lacking an overall, deep understanding of conditions m the country, they were anxious for quick results in both constru tion and reform. Although the 1 3th Party Congress issued the call once again to seek truth from facts in economic construction, in the actual work, the trend of seeking quick results failed to be corrected. All these problems in economic construction are inseparable from weaknesses in the Party's leadership and ideologicalpolitical work. Overheating of the economy and other problems became apparent beginning in the second half of 1984. The Party Central Committee and the State Council failed to adopt effective measures in time to keep it within limits. At that time Zhao Ziyang, who was then premier, advocated the so-called &quot;soft landing.&quot; The result showed not even an inclination to &quot;land.&quot; On the contrary, the overheating trend continued to develop. Although the dual principle of tightening revenue and credit was adopted in 1987, it was not put into effect resolutely enough. This caused more problems to pile up, such as higher inflation, an imbalance between social production and consumption, and an economy structurally irrational and in disorder. The main problem in development of the economy deeply penetrating all levels was that total social demand far exceeded total social supply. From 1984 to 1988, the national income increased by 70 percent (by 149 percent calculated at the then current prices), but the fixed capital investment rose by 214 percent and urban and rural residents' currency income by 200 percent. Owing to ups and downs in grain production in a row of years and the overexpansion of the population (guidance over family planning work had been relaxed for a period), the per-capita grain output decreased while industrial production went up too quickly, resulting in a new imbalance between industrial and agricultural production. In the industrial field, basic industry and infrastructural construction were not proportionally in balance with the processing industry. Energy, communications and supply of raw materials lagged behind the over-expanded processing industry. Great quantities of industrial production capacity lay idle for long periods. The distribution power over funds, foreign exchange, materials and equipment was over-decentralized. From 1984 to 1988, the proportion of the state revenue to the national income decreased from 26.7 percent to 22 percent and that of the central 789 revenue to the total revenue dropped from 56.1 percent to 47 2 percent. As a result the state's macro-control capacity was weakened. The fields of production, construction and circulation fields saw a common phenomenon of high consumption, investment and expenditure but low efficiency, output and benefits. From 1985 to 1988, inflation rose drastically. In 1988, the national retail price index rose by 18.5 percent after big consecutive increases in the previous years, scoring the biggest rise in many years. This seriously upset wide sections of the population. Accompanying this steep inflation, price reform was improperly introduced in the summer of 1988. In August, the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee discussed and in principle passed the &quot;Initial Plan for Price and Wage Reform.&quot; Although the conference called for the adoption of strong measures for controlling inflation in a comprehensive way, it still emphasized that now was the favourable opportunity for implementing price and wage reform. Reform of the price system was undoubtedly necessary. But announcement of this big step, with inflation climbing day by day, and without ample consideration of how the state and enterprises could bear it, how the people could endure it, in fact fired a burst of panic purchasing countrywide in the second half of 1988. That same year in September, in this grim economic situation, the 3rd Plenary Session of the 13th Central Committee proposed to improve the economic environment, rectify the economic order and deepen overall economic reform. The session also decided to shift the focus of reform and construction in 1989 and 1990 to improvement of the economic environment and rectification of the economic order. The plenary session pointed out that the main purpose of improving the economic environment was to decrease overall social demand, control inflation and rectify the economic order. That meant correcting disorders of all kinds in economic life, particularly in the field of circulation. Resolute and effective measures were to be adopted in these two fields. Improvement of the economic environment and rectification of the economic order were in keeping with the objective requirements of economic construction and reform of the economic system. Political Upheaval in 1989 The campaign to oppose bourgeois liberalization started in early 1987 could not keep going because of Zhao Ziyang's passive attitude. In mid-May, Zhao arbitrary asserted that the conservative tendency to oppose reform and opening up was as dangerous as the ideological tendency of bourgeois liberalization and both should be opposed equally. Since then the orientation of the campaign was changed and the ideological tendency of bourgeois liberalization ran rampant again. Zhao also seriously neglected Party-building, the building of an advanced socialist culture and ideology and political-ideological work. He suggested the &quot;reform&quot; of political-ideological work and denied some fine traditional and effective methods of Party political-ideological working methods. He failed to adopt effective measures to curb or solve the problem of the deteriorating Party style and social order, and severe decadence among some Party cadres and, in particular, among a very small number of leading cadres. For a time, the Parly's prestige among the people declined and its fighting power dwindled. The price hikes and economic disorder brought widespread complaints from the people. The temporary difficulties which arose during the economic rectification also caused misunderstanding and worry on the part of the masses. These factors were used by persons both in and outside the Party who were keen on bourgeois liberalization to attack the Party leadership. On the pretext of reforming the political system, they published their political views and directly demanded cancellation of the four cardinal principles, all-out Westernization and the introduction of a capitalist economic and political system. At this time antagonistic forces abroad were trying their best to promote a strategy of peaceful evolution and to exert influence on China through various channels. Furthermore, the trend of thought in favour of &quot;democratic socialism&quot; was widespread and activities of anti-socialist forces were rampant in some socialist countries of Eastern Europe. The pro-bourgeois-liberalization forces in China were encouraged and began to hold political gatherings and write letters to the state leading organs in some big cities, especially in Beijing, in late 1988 and early 1989, in an 791 attempt to change the system of the country. An upheaval was taking shape. On April 15, 1989, Hu Yaobang died of heart failure. His death acted as a fuse to touch off the outbreak of turbulence. In some institutions of higher learning in Beijing, a few anti-Party and anti-socialist conspirators had been scheming and manipulating underground for a long time. In order to confuse people and poison their minds they spread rumours that Hu had died of political persecution. The memorial activities quickly developed into a political demonstration. For a while, rumours were spread everywhere, while numerous big-character posters and slogans appeared attacking the chief Party and state leaders, the Party's leadership and the socialist system. In just a few days, serious incidents occurred; crowds gathered outside the Xinhuamen Gate of Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council; illegal occupation of Tiananmen Square and massive street demonstrations took place. At the same time, such serious criminal activities as beating, smashing and looting were perpetrated in Xi'an, Changsha, Chengdu and other cities. During this period, the fabricators of the disturbances used the student unrest to put forward a series of programmatic political demands. The two main ones were: first, they demanded reappraisal of Hu's merits and shortcomings and cancellation of the Party Central Committee's decision to dismiss him from his post in 1987; second, they demanded complete negation of the opposition to bourgeois liberalization, and called for rehabilitation of those who were criticized and punished in the campaign to oppose bourgeois liberalization. Thus, these demands, made at the very beginning of the turbulence, showed the diametrical opposition between bourgeois liberalization and the four cardinal principles. Confronted with this serious situation, Zhao Ziyang, then general secretary of the Party Central Committee, like Hu Yaobang, did not oppose or resist it. In fact, he supported the students and connived with their demonstrations. On April 24, Li Peng presided over a conference attended by the Standing Committee members of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee (Zhao Ziyang had left for a visit to Korea on the previous day) to study the situation. The Standing Committee believed that China was confronted with a planned, organized political upheaval which was against the Party and socialism. The conference decided to establish a group under the Party Central Committee to stop the disturbance. Also the People's Daily issued an editorial explaining the essence of the struggle to the whole Party and the country. On April 25, Deng Xiaoping in an important speech expressed his complete agreement with and support for the decision of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau. He also offered a profound analysis of the essence of the unrest pointing out that the demonstrations were not ordinary student strikes, but political upheavals rejecting the leading role of the Party and denying the socialist system. On April 26, People's Daily published an editorial entitled &quot;A Clear Stand Against the Turbulence Is Essential.&quot; The editorial pointed out that a few people &quot;flaunted the banner of democracy to undermine the democratic legal system, their purpose being to spread disunity among the people, throw the country into confusion and destroy the political situation of stability and unity. This was a planned conspiracy, a situation of turmoil. Its essence was basically to deny the leadership of the Communist Party of China and the socialist system from the foundation. This was a serious political struggle confronting the Party and people of all the nationalities throughout the country.&quot; The editorial made clear the essence of the turbulence for the vast majority of the cadres, and many students began to realize the seriousness of the issue. After May 4, about 80 percent of the students who had participated in the demonstrations went back to school and order was quickly restored throughout the country. At this point, Zhao Ziyang, who had only been back for a few days from his visit abroad suddenly changed his original attitude of support for Deng's speech and said the People's Daily editorial, based on the decision of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau and on Deng's speech, had misjudged the nature of the student unrest. He demanded correction of this mistake. His wrong proposal was opposed and resisted by other members of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee. Without solicit 793 ing ideas from other Political Bureau members, he expressed opinions differing from the stand and principles of the Central Committee when meeting with representatives from various countries and regions at the meeting of the Council of the Asian Development Bank on May 4. He said, &quot;There will be no big turmoil in China,&quot; ignoring the disturbances which had already surfaced. A host of facts had proved that the real aim of the turmoil was to negate the Communist Party leadership and the socialist system. Disregarding this, he still insisted, &quot;T hey by no means oppose our fundamental system.&quot; When facts proved a handful of people were making use of the student unrest to instigate a turmoil, he simply said that it was &quot;unavoidable&quot; that &quot;some people would take advantage of this.&quot; He totally negated the correct judgment of the Party Central Committee that a few people were creating turmoil and in so doing, brought out into public the differences within the Party Central Committee. Inspired by his speech, the engineers of the disturbance hectically redoubled their activities, again stirring up trouble in a situation which had already tended to subside. On May 6, Zhao Ziyang, while meeting with comrades in charge of publicity and ideological work under the Central Committee, said, &quot;Loosening up a bit and reporting on the demonstrations increases the degree of press openness a bit. There's no great risk in this.&quot; Soon the media began supporting the student demonstrations and the turmoil, misleading public opinion. The scale of demonstrations in the capital and other cities expanded and the number of participants increased. The instigators of the turbulence adopted a dual policy. On the one hand they expressed their willingness to hold &quot;dialogues&quot; with the government leaders, and on the other, organized a hunger strike. Commencing on May 13, they incited and forced some students to hold a hunger strike at Tiananmen Square, and used these students as &quot;hostages&quot; and &quot;stakes&quot; lor realizing their political plot. The students' hunger strike aroused the feelings of a section of the people who sympathized with the students from different angles, together with the misleading publicity; more and more people came forward to express their support, from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. The Sino-Soviet high ranking talks suffered serious interference and some state affairs had to be suspended or cancelled. At the same time, demonstrations in big cities and provincial capitals expanded quickly, and some appeared in a number of small and medium-sized cities as well. The situation was unprecedented. In this dangerous turn of events, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held an emergency meeting on the evening of May 16. The majority considered that in face of this situation, it was absolutely impermissible to retreat, but necessary to counterattack resolutely and gain control over the turmoil. Zhao Ziyang disagreed with the majority and still insisted on retreating. The next day, attendance at the demonstrations and attacks on Deng Xiaoping increased on an unprecedented scale. Also, slogans extolling Zhao were aired above Tiananmen Square and in the ranks of the demonstrators. To prevent worsening of the situation and in consideration of the inadequate police force in Beijing to maintain normal production, work, communication and social order, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee decided at a meeting held on May 17 to implement martial law in some areas in Beijing. On the evening of May 19, a conference attended by leading members from the Party, the government and military institutions in Beijing was held. It called for emergency action and decided to adopt resolute measures to stop the turmoil. Zhao Ziyang opposed the CPC Central Committee's decision and refused to attend the conference, openly revealing his split with the Party. According to the State Council's decision, starting at 10 a.m. on May 20, some areas in Beijing were put under the martial law. The engineers of the turbulence still occupied Tiananmen Square and tried to spread the disturbances and escalate the disorders. Finally, the upheaval in Beijing developed into a counter-revolutionary rebellion. Throughout the progress of the student demonstrations and the hunger strike, the Party and government were patient and did what they could. But as the Chinese saying goes, &quot;The tree may prefer calm, but the wind will not subside.&quot; On June 3, while the martial law troops were heading for their positions in the capital 795 according to schedule, the ringleaders of some illegal organizations instigated people to set up roadblocks to halt military vehicles. They burnt some of the vehicles and killed PLA soldiers and army officers. Moreover, they took advantage of the next day being Sunday to incite more people to take to the streets. This was for the purpose of creating momentum for an insurrection to overthrow the government and usurp state power. At this crucial moment, the CPC Central Committee, the State Council and the CPC Central Military Commission were compelled to act resolutely. They ordered the martial law troops stationed around the capital to move in by force on the night of June 3 to put down the counter-revolutionary rebellion. During their advance into their positions, the troops met with fierce attacks from large gangs of marauders and had to adopt necessary armed action in selfdefense. In the early morning of June 4, several thousand students withdrew peacefully from Tiananmen Square following patient persuasion by the army soldiers, and the square was cleared again. As the square returned to the hands of the people and the martial law troops entered the areas under the martial law, the counter-revolutionary rioting was quelled. The situation in Beijing was quickly brought under control; order was restored in other big and medium-sized cities fairly soon. The occurrence of this unrest and counter-revolutionary rebellion had a profound social and historical background. As Deng Xiaoping said, &quot;This storm was bound to break out sooner or later. As determined by the international and domestic climate, it was bound to happen and was independent of man's will.&quot;24 The international situation had a significant bearing on the events. Since World War II, the capitalist world was restored following the post-war crisis, and began to develop again. The new science and technology in particular brought about a rapid development in production and speeded up the transfer of new achievements to productivity. Some people were puzzled by this situation and failed to see the uncompromising, sharp contradictions still existing in the capitalist system. At the same time, some socialist countries made serious decision-making mistakes which caused numerous difficulties to economic construction and social progress. As a result the superiority of the socialist system could not be brought into full play consistently from beginning to end, and the image of socialist society among the people was undermined. In this way, the idea that &quot;socialism is not as good as capitalism&quot; began to spread unchecked. The political forces in some Western countries advocated a strategy of peaceful evolution and strengthened penetration of their ideological thought and politics into socialist countries in a planned way and through various channels, and gave all-out support to all kinds of anti-Communist Party and anti-socialist activities in an attempt to shake and seize the precincts socialism was occupying. The serious effects of this &quot;big climate&quot; on intellectuals, young students and some Party members in socialist countries including China should not be underestimated in the least. At home, the tendency of bourgeois liberalization appeared after the overthrow of the &quot;gang of four.&quot; Some people blindly worshipped the &quot;democracy&quot; and &quot;freedom&quot; of the Western capitalist countries and negated socialism and the leadership of the Communist Party. When this tendency emerged in early 1979, Deng Xiaoping took a clear-cut stand in his speech &quot;Uphold the Four Cardinal Principles.&quot; Later, he seriously proposed the task of opposing spiritual pollution and bourgeois liberalization. But the principle of opposing bourgeois liberalization was not conscientiously implemented in the following years. After Zhao Ziyang took over Hu Yaobang's work in the Central Committee, the tendency of bourgeois liberalization was not checked. On the contrary, it was allowed to expand steadily and run wild. A group of diehards who persisted in their stand on bourgeois liberalization and engaged in political conspiratorial activities became the main instigators and organizers of the turmoil and riots. Zhao Ziyang who connived at, encouraged and supported bourgeois liberalization, became the representative within the Party of those who supported the turmoil. The victory in quelling the turmoil and counter-revolutionary rebellion has consolidated our socialist position and the 10-year reform and opening up. It provides invaluable experiences and lessons for the Party and the people.<br /> <br /> === Advance Further in Economic Improvement and Rectification and Deepening the Reform ===<br /> The 4th Plenary Session of the 13th Party Central Committee and Formation of the New Central Leadership After winning a decisive victory in quelling the counterrevolutionary rebellion in Beijing area, the Communist Party held its 4th Plenary Session of the 1 3th Central Committee in late June 1989, in Beijing. Before the session, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held an enlarged meeting to make necessary preparations. The main task of the session was to discuss the serious mistakes committed by Zhao Ziyang during the anti-Party, anti-socialism turbulence and to adopt disciplinary measures against him. The session examined and approved the Political Bureau's &quot;Report on Comrade Zhao Ziyang's Mistakes in the Anti-Party, Anti-Socialism Turmoil&quot; delivered by Li Peng. It held that at a juncture involving the destiny of the Party and the whole country, Zhao Ziyang made the mistake of supporting the turmoil and splitting the Party. He bore unshirkable responsibility for the formation and development of the rebellion. The nature and consequences of his mistakes were very serious. Although some of the things he had done were beneficial to China's reform, opening to the outside world and economic development when he held leading posts in the Party and the government, he departed from guidelines and erred in practical work. Especially after coming to the leading position in the Central Committee, he took a passive approach towards upholding the four cardinal principles and opposition to bourgeois liberalization, and neglected Party building, cultural and ethical development and ideological and political work, causing serious losses to the cause of the Party. In view of his mistakes, the session decided to dismiss him from his posts of general secretary of the Central Committee, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau, member of the Political Bureau, member of the CPC Central Committee and first vice-chairman of the Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee. Later at the 8th Session of the Seventh NPC Standing Committee, he was dismissed from his post of vicechairman of the Central Military Commission of the People's Republic of China. The session made the necessary adjustments in the Party's central leadership. Jiang Zemin was elected general secretary of the Central Committee (Jiang held leading positions in industrial departments for a long period, once served as mayor of Shanghai and secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee); was elected member of the 12th and 13th CPC Central Committees and member of the Political Bureau at the 1st Plenary Session of the 13th Central Committee. Jiang Zemin, Song Ping and Li Ruihuan were elected members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee; the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau was made up of Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, Qiao Shi, Yao Yilin, Song Ping and Li Ruihuan; Li Ruihuan and Ding Guangen were made members of the Secretariat of the Central Committee; Hu Qili and two others were removed from their positions in the Political Bureau and the Secretariat of the Central Committee for supporting Zhao Ziyang's wrong stand during the turmoil. Before the plenary session, Deng Xiaoping pointed out that the political turmoil of the late spring and early summer &quot;prompts us to calmly think about the past and consider the future&quot; and that it also &quot;will enable us to more speedily correct our mistakes and better develop our strong points.&quot;25 In this spirit, the plenary session initially summed up lessons and clarified the Party's principles and tasks for the present and the future. Should we continue to resolutely implement the Party's line laid down at the 3rd Plenary Session of the 1 1 th Party Central Committee? Should we still follow the basic line of &quot;one central task, two basic points&quot; summed up at the 13th Party Congress? These were problems our Party and the whole nation thought 799 about calmly after the turmoil. They were also issues of close concern to the whole world. The 4th Plenary Session pointed out clearly that &quot;the line, principles and policies adopted since the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee will continue to be resolutely implemented, and the basic line of the ‘one central task and two basic points' established at the 1 3th Party Congress will also continue to be resolutely carried out. The four cardinal principles, as the foundation of national construction, must be adhered to unswervingly and consistently, and the policy of reform and opening to the outside world, as the road to prosperity, must be implemented as usual in a steadfast manner. The country must not return to the old, closed-door path.&quot;26 Practice proved that the line, principles and policies laid down since the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee were correct. But these principles and policies were not implemented consistently and were not used as the basic concept to educate the people, the students, the cadres and the Party members. Therefore the Party's task was, on the basis of conscientiously summing up experience, to &quot;persevere in what is right, correct what is wrong, and do a bit more where we lag behind.&quot;27 This was none other than the approach adopted by the new leading group of the Party Central Committee for dealing with this most fundamental problem. In face of the grim reality in which some people, who persist in bourgeois liberalization, advocate &quot;full Westernization or capitalism under the banner of &quot;reform and opening up, and by absorbing the lessons drawn from Zhao Ziyang's mistakes of separating the reform and opening up from the Four Cardinal Principles and opposing the one against the other, Jiang Zemin spoke at the plenary session. He stressed, &quot;As proposed by Deng Xiaoping, the reform and opening up which we resolutely carry out and implement is that carried out under the principles of persisting in the socialist road, the people's democratic dictatorship, the leadership of the Communist Party and Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. In stark contrast, the &quot;reform and opening up&quot; advocated by those who stubbornly stick to bourgeois liberalization is one for realizing Western capitalism, giving up the people's democratic dictatorship, cancelling the leadership of the Communist Party and abandoning Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. The purpose of their reform and opening up is to bring about capitalism. Of course, this is absolutely unacceptable to our Party and the people.&quot;28 Jiang's speech provided a principled distinction between socialist and capitalist &quot;reform and opening up.&quot; His remarks were of special importance to overall understanding by the broad masses of the Party members and cadres and to their conscious implementation of the line stipulated since the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee and to the healthy development of China's construction and reform and opening up, along the socialist orientation. The 4th Plenary Session of the 13th Central Committee also made an earnest study of the current situation and called on the whole Party to do the following four things well: the first was to resolutely stop the turmoil and quell the counter-revolutionary rebellion, strictly distinguish between the two different types of contradictions and further stabilize the situation of the whole country; the second was to persist in the policy of improving the economic environment and rectifying the economic order so as to better implement the policies of reform and opening to the outside world and develop the economy in a sustained, steady and co-ordinated way; the third was to earnestly improve ideological and political work and make great efforts to carry out education in patriotism, socialism, independence and self-reliance, plain living and hard work, and strictly oppose bourgeois liberalization; the fourth was to greatly enhance the building of the Party, democracy and the legal system, resolutely penalize corruption, and accomplish a few items of popular concern so as to live up to the people's expectations of the Party. The successful convening of the plenary session symbolizes the Parly's &quot;decisive victory won in a life-and-death struggle&quot;29 of the Party and the country in stopping the turmoil and quelling the counter-revolutionary rebellion. After the plenary session, the new central leading group has resolutely implemented the Parly's basic line in an overall way. It strengthened the economic im 801 provement and rectification and deepened the reform and opening up. At the same time it strengthened ideological and political work and Party-building, overcoming the problem of stressing material advance to the neglect of cultural and ideological progress. As a result, the nationwide political situation was stabilized rapidly, the economic situation improved and affairs in the ideological field took a turn for the better. On several occasions before and after the 4th Plenary Session of the 13th Central Committee, Deng Xiaoping said: Soon after the new leading group has established its prestige, he would resolutely retire from his position on the Central Committee. He hoped everyone would unite around Jiang Zemin. He explained several times that it is extremely unhealthy and indeed very dangerous to place the fate of a country on the prestige of one or two persons. On the eve of the 5th Plenary Session of the 13th Central Committee held in November 1989, Deng Xiaoping, considering that the new central leading group was effectively carrying on its work and had gradually gamed the trust of the Party and the people, again handed to the Central Committee his resignation as chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission undepressed his willingness to set an example in establishing a retirement procedure to end the existing system of life-long tenure in the leading posts of the Party and state. On November 9 1989, based on his request, the 5th Plenary Session of the 13th Central Committee adopted the Decision Endorsing Comra e Deng Xiaoping's Resignation from the Chairmanship of the CPC Central Military Commission and appointed Jiang Zemin to the post. The session paid great tribute to Deng's revolutionary career and outstanding service, stressing, &quot;The series of viewpoints and theories he has put forth under the principle of combining Marxism and Leninism with China's realities constitute an important component of Mao Zedong Thought and an inheritance and development of Mao Zedong Thought under new historical conditions, and are a priceless ideological treasure of the Communist Party of China and the Chinese people.&quot; The session asked all Party members to &quot;conscientiously study Comrade Deng Xiaoping's works so that they will play an important guiding role in the great process of our country's socialist modernization in the years to come.&quot;30 After the 4th and 5th Plenary Session, the second generation of the central leading group with Deng as its nucleus smoothly and gradually transferred its leadership to the third generation of the central leading group with Jiang Zemin as its nucleus as planned. (The first generation was established after the Zunyi Meeting with Mao Zedong as its nucleus.) This was of great significance for guaranteeing the stability and continuity of Party policies and the lasting security of the country. It also attested to the high political maturity and organizational strength of the Party. Strengthen Party-Building and Improve Ideological and Political Work After the 4th Plenary Session, the Party Central Committee first of all concentrated on strengthening Party building. The struggle to stop disturbances and to quell the counterrevolutionary rebellion proved that, in general, the Communist Party of China was strong and the majority of Party organizations and members were good. No hostile forces could shake them. Also the turmoil exposed some serious problems in the Party. Some Party members were involved in the riots to various degrees and a few even became organizers and manipulators of the disturbances and rebellion. Some Party organizations were weak and ineffective and gave up their leadership. A few even supported the demonstrations. The serious corruption of some Party cadres, especially a few leading members, became one of the main factors causing such a large number of people to become involved in the unrest instigated by the conspirators. Therefore, Deng Xiaoping warned the new central leading group, &quot;It is time to strengthen Party-building; otherwise it will be too late.&quot;31 To help the whole Party realize the significance and urgency of strengthening Partybuilding, Jiang Zemin stressed: While analysing the situation within the Party, we should not underestimate the impact on the Party of foreign hostile forces' attempt to change socialist counCHAFTER NINE A NEW PROSPECT IN SOCIALIST CONSTRUCTION 803 tries by means of peaceful evolution. We also should not underestimate the damage to the Party-building caused by the unchecked bourgeois liberalization and confusion Zhao Ziyang's mistakes brought to the Party and the harm done to the actual work.32 As &quot;the problems mainly stemmed from the Party organization, the Party Central Committee asked &quot;the Party committees at various levels to concentrate their efforts on doing a good job of Partybuilding according to the requirements of the Party's basic line, and determine to solve current urgent problems in the building of the Party.&quot;33 Only then could the Party stand the tests of the role of a ruling party, of the reform and opening up, development of commodity economy and opposition to peaceful evolution under the new historical conditions. In the autumn and winter of 1989 and in the next year, the Party organizations under the Party Central Committee undertook to deal with the impurity of some Party organizations. They checked all the key persons who had participated in the turmoil and rebellion and sorted out the major events involved. After the checkup was basically finished, the whole Party carried out education among its members on the standards for qualified Communists. Based on the principle to be severe with Party members, some departments proceeded with re-registration of their Party members. The purpose was to solve problems within the Party which were exposed in the turmoil and rebellion, as well as the outstanding problems which existed in the daily life of the Party. The work of checking and sorting out was combined with testing and judging cadres, mainly Party cadres at county level or above. The standards related to whether they held the same viewpoint as the Party Central Committee in regard to both ideological recognition and actual behaviour in the curient polit ical struggle; whether they upheld the four cardinal principles, persisted in the reform and opening up, opposed bourgeois liberalization; and whether they were honest and law-abiding in performing their official duties as well as brave in opposing corrupt tendencies. According to the resulting judgments, the leading groups of some organizations and departments were readjusted, with the aim of guaranteeing that the Party's leadership at various levels remained in the hands of Marxists who upheld the four cardinal principles and the reform and opening up, and of building the leadership at various levels into a strong nucleus for implementing the Party's line, principles and policies. Considering that the future of socialism in China depended to a great extent on the younger generation, the Party Central Committee called on the whole Party to do its best to train large numbers of successors to the socialist cause. Jiang Zemin also warned the whole Party that unless we went ahead to solve this problem, it would be impossible for our Party to have strong reserve forces and to advance successfully. This was a problem of great strategic significance determining whether our socialist cause could long endure and keep developing.34 Party-building should be strengthened first of all in the Party's ideological enhancement, especially in the field of theory. The Party Central Committee proposed that to help Party and government leaders at county level and above to draw a clear distinction between right and wrong, and to maintain the correct orientation in a complicated situation, it was necessary to educate them in the basic theories of Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, and to make it a regular, systematic practice. In the future all new leading members should be trained in Party schools. Other leading members should also, in turn, study for a certain period of time in Party schools. At the same time the Party Central Committee paid great attention to the summing up and publicity of experiences in stepping up Party building at the grassroots units, particularly in stepping up the building of grassroots Party organizations in rural areas, and commended those who had done excellent work in this field. One important aspect in strengthening Party-building was to carry out the Party's fine traditions, forge closer relations between the Party and the masses, promote clean and honest government and to resolutely oppose corruption and degenerates. In July 1989, the Party Central Committee and the Stale Council made the &quot;Decision to Do Several Things of Concern to the Masses in the Near Future.&quot; In keeping with this decision, the 805 Party and the government took up the following seven items, further checking up and reorganizing companies, resolutely prohibiting the children of high-ranking cadres from engaging in business, cancelling the &quot;special supply&quot; of a small number of foodstuff for high-ranking cadres, assigning cars strictly according to state regulations and forbidding the import of sedan cars and limousines, strict prohibition against holding dinner parties or giving gifts at state expense, strict control over visits abroad by leading cadres, investigation and severe punishment of corruption, bribery, speculation and other criminal activities, particularly of big cases. People appreciated this work. The 6th Plenary Session of the 13th Central Committee held m March 1)90 passed the &quot;Decision on Strengthening Party's Connection with the Masses.&quot; The session held that the line of trusting and relying on the masses and the principle of &quot;from the masses, to the masses&quot; which was created and developed by the Party in its long struggles, was the basic working line of the Parly, one of its finest traditions and greatest political superiority. The session pointed out that relations between the Party and the masses as well as between the cadres and the masses were good in general. But bureaucracy, subjectivism, formalism and other negative and corrupt tendencies, which seriously divorced the Party rom the masses have affected some Party organizations and cadres in the preceding few years. In view of this, all Party members were enjoined to maintain sharp vigilance and to struggle against these tendencies, and also strive hard to restore and carry forward the fine traditions and working style of forging close links with the masses. The session pointed out that work in the seven lields mentioned should be done well so as to strengthen the Party s tics with the people. After the session, the Standing Committee members of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee took the lead in going deep into the grassroots units and among the masses to do investigation and research. The Party and government departments at various levels stipulated relevant measures and implemented them conscientiously. All these efforts promoted Party-building. In November of the same year, the Party Central Committee approved the &quot;Opinions on Improving the Party Style and Strengthening the Building of a Clean and Honest Government&quot; put forward by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, and called on Party organizations at various levels to enforce Party discipline, seriously investigate all breaches of discipline and handle them properly. The Party Central Committee also made the suggestion to correct unhealthy tendencies and disregard for the law and discipline on the part of those Party and government cadres who illegally build and equip homes for themselves with public money according to standards higher than those stipulated by the state. The Party Central Committee emphasized that improving Party style and building a clean and honest government must start with the leading organizations and cadres, and should be implemented resolutely and consistently. In December 1989, the Party Central Committee passed the &quot;Views on Upholding and Perfecting the Multi-Party Cooperation and Political Consultation System Under the Leadership of the Communist Party of China&quot; emphasizing that the system was China's basic political system. The opinions also reaffirmed that &quot;long-term coexistence, mutual supervision, esteem for each other, and sharing honour or disgrace jointly&quot; are the basic principles guiding cooperation between the Communist Party of China and other democratic parties. The Party Central Committee decided to strengthen cooperation and consultation of the Communist Party with various democratic parties, further bring into full play the role of the democratic party members as well as of personages without party affiliation in the people's congresses; recommend democratic party members and non-party personages to take leading positions in governments at various levels and judicial organs; further bring into play the role of the democratic parties at the people's political consultative conferences and support the self-construction of the democratic parties. Since restoration of their activities, the democratic parties have played an important role as participants in the administration and discussion of state affairs, the development of education, science and technology and the application of knowledge in the construction of the border CHARTER NINE A NEW PROSPECT IN SOCIALIST CONSTRUCTION 807 areas. The CPC Central Committee pointed out that persisting in and perfecting the system of multi-party cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the Communist Party of China was of important significance to the building of socialist, democratic politics in China. While consolidating the Party building, ideological work among the masses, especially ideological and political work among students, was also strengthened. After the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Party Central Committee, the ideological and propaganda work made positive contributions to criticism of the &quot;two whatevers,&quot; and emancipation of the mind as well as to exploration of the laws governing socialist modernization and the reform and opening up. But afterwards, some erroneous tendencies, especially the decadent bourgeois ideas of Western countries, have been coming in a continuous stream and some quite serious problems have been exposed. Ideas such as preoccupation with moneymaking, scorning lofty ideals and worshipping, or having blind faith in whatever is foreign, have spread, while vulgar, or even degenerate and decadent moods have developed. Unhealthy practices which were eliminated in the early post-liberation years have reappeared. While there are many t actors behind their reappearance, one important reason is the weakening of ideological work. For a period of time, Zhao Ziyang opposed those comrades who upheld the Four Cardinal Principles and resisted decadent ideas and bad practices. As a result, part of the media and ideological and cultural front were no longer in the hands of the Party and the people. Therefore the CPC Central Committee emphasized that the related departments must adopt resolute measures to restore a wholesome situation. In July 1989, the CPC Central Committee issued the &quot;Circular on Strengthening Propaganda and Ideological Work.&quot; The whole Party was alerted to clearly understand that China's reform and opening up and modernization construction were being carried out in a complicated international situation. Hostile forces in the Western countries were carrying out political and ideological infiltration in various ways. They have tried their best to advocate sham &quot;democracy,&quot; &quot;freedom&quot; and &quot;human rights,&quot; and have instigated and supported bourgeois liberalization in China. We must adopt a clear stand and carry out sustained, resolute struggles against their attempts and activities to bring about &quot;peaceful evolution.&quot; The Party organizations at various levels should attach great importance to this. They should strengthen their leadership over propaganda and ideological work in order to check bourgeois liberalization and ensure that socialist ideas dominate the field of ideology. Great efforts over a period of time brought a change for the better. Stressing material progress to the neglect of cultural and ideological progress was counteracted in the following fields: Education in basic theory of Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought was emphasized again. From 1990 to the first half of 1991, education in socialist ideas was carried out among the Party and government cadres and the broad masses. Education in modern and contemporary Chinese history and the present situation in China was regarded as important from many sides. A group of convincing theoretical articles on socialism and criticism of bourgeois liberalization were published. These measures fundamentally changed the situation in which works propagating reactionary bourgeois and decadent ideas had spread unchecked in ideological and cultural fields. Some effective ideological and educational systems and working methods which had been followed for a long time in the past but which had been set aside for a time, were restored and improved. Education was strengthened in patriotism, collectivism, independence, self-reliance, hard work and respect for law and discipline. Through a series of programmes such as praising pace-setters and outstanding workers and learning from such heroic persons as Lei Feng, Jiao Yulu and Lai Ning, a more healthy socialist atmosphere was created. The Party's fine traditions and working styles shone again in splendour. The anti-pornography campaign (the nationwide effort to rectify and check on the markets selling books, magazines and video-audio tapes, especially those emblazoning sex, violence, feudalism and superstition) checked the spread of bourgeois 809 decadent ideas and evil social tendencies. The leading groups of some ideological departments were readjusted and consolidated; some newspapers and publications, social and scientific research institutes, and literary and art troupes, which had committed mistakes of political orientation, were rectified ideologically and organizationally in an earnest WdOn the premise of adhering to Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, the principle of &quot;letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend&quot; was conscientiously implemented. Rectification was strengthened while literature and art was flourishing. All this resulted in the production of a group of good works in the fields of philosophy, social science, literature and art. . In a word, a series of positive changes have taken place in tne fields of ideology and propaganda. . The improvement in Party building and ideological and political work played a positive role in China's political and social stability; it also provided important political and ideological conditions for the rectification and the improvement and deepening of reform in the field of economy. Economic Improvement and Rectification; Completion of the Seventh Five-Year Plan The 3rd Plenary Session of the 13th CPC Central Committee, held in September 1988, decided to improve the economic environment, rectify economic order, and deepen reforms. But, as it was nearing the end of the year, little time was left to take practical measures. Furthermore, the steps that had been adopted proved to be ineffective in a short time. Overheating of the economy and inflation had not been eased in 1988. Rather, social demand continued to swell that year. Compared with the previous year, in 1988 total investment in fixed assets surged by 23.5 percent; the average per-capita income of urban and rural residents for living expenses increased by 22.2 percent and 17.7 percent, respectively, far above the 11.1 percent of growth rate of the national income. The gross industrial output value rose by 20.7 percent. The growth rate of the processing industry went beyond what the energy and raw material industries could cope with. Contradictions within the industrial structure had intensified, while tensions in transportation and communications deepened. In agriculture, the output of grain, cotton and edible oil had shrunk to some extent due to frequent natural disasters and policy mistakes. Under the pressure of excessive social demand, the issue of currency was increased by a big margin. This resulted in a massive financial deficit. The retail price index rose by 1 8.5 percent, a scale unmatched in many years. The situation created difficulties for economic development in 1989. Moreover, the political turmoil in 1989 seriously interfered with the economic improvement and rectification and the deepening of reform, to the further detriment of China's economy. Western capitalist powers imposed &quot;econorhic sanctions&quot; against China on the excuse of the incident of the recapturing Tiananmen Square by the martial law enforcement troops in Beijing (a justified deed that was grossly distorted by the Western media). This further exacerbated China's economic troubles. All these factors demonstrate how great China's economic difficulties were in June 1989, when the 4th Plenary Session of the 13th CPC Central Committee was convened. In this serious economic situation, the Party Central Committee, while grappling to stabilize the political situation, resumed improvement and rectification of the economy to bring about social and economic stability and development. In the early days of November 1989, the 5th Plenary Session of the 13th CPC Central Committee made the decision to further carry out the policy of economic improvement and rectification and deepen the reform. The meeting projected a period of three or more years beginning in 1989, for reaching this goal. To this end, the meeting stressed the reduction of total social demand and implementation of a policy for stringent control over finance and credit. It focused on strengthening basic fields of production such as agriculture, adjusting the structure of industry, earnestly rectifying economic order, especially in the circu lation area, raising economic efficiency by all means, deepening the reform and opening the door wider. As determined at the meeting, the Party's leadership in achieving these aims was to be strengthened effectively. On the basis of summing up experience, the meeting proposed that economic construction must adhere to a long-term policy of sustained, stable and concerted developResolutions made at the meeting helped the entire Party to unify its views on the economic situation. Thanks to the implementation of the Party's economic policies coupled with correction of Zhao Ziyang's mistakes in economic guiding thought and measures, China's economy, though still in difficulty, was gradually brought back onto the path of healthy development. By the latter half of 1989, the improvement and rectification policy had gained initial success, while greater achievements were scored in 1990: , „ J . , —Inflation was brought under control. Reduction of investment in fixed assets and curb of rapidly increasing consumer fund had somewhat allayed the contradiction between rising total social demand and inadequate supply, which had been the mainspring of the inflation spiral. Beginning in October 1989, the price-rise fell below 10 percent. Retail prices in 1990 were only 2.1 percent higher than the year before. As compared with the period of panic buying in 1988, commodities now were plentiful and prices were stable.—Industrial restructuring started. Of investment in basic capital construction, the proportion allocated for agriculture, energy resources, transport and communications—the weak links in the national economy—was increased. Investment in productive enterprises rose, while the construction of such non-productive projects as buildings, halls and hotels was curbed. With the building of key state projects accelerated, a string of them were established and put into production.—Disorders in the field of circulation were rectified on a preliminary level. According to statistics, by the end of 1990, more than 100,000 companies, 35.2 percent of the total number of firms of one kind or another, were disbanded or merged. Most of the companies operated by the Party and government institutions were dismantled or detached from these institutions. Party and government officials could no longer concurrently hold their positions and accept jobs in these companies. The haphazard proliferation of companies in the sphere of circulation was hemmed in and market order was greatly improved.—The national economy grew at an appreciable rate. In 1989, the GNP increased by 3.9 percent and in the following year by 5 percent. Grain output witnessed bumper harvests in two straight years, 1989 and 1990, up from the stagnation of the previous four years. Following the sluggish market and slow growth in the latter half of 1989 and the first half of 1 990 ( unavoidable when fighting inflation and cooling an overheating economy), industry gradually resumed a normal growth rate in the latter half of 1 990. In 1 989 and 1990, industrial production growth averaged 8.1 percent.—Foreign trade and economic and technical exchanges continued to develop. Exports increased by 10.5 percent in 1989 and 18.1 percent the following year. Exports of finished industrial products, especially machinery and electrical equipment, increased significantly, while imports of high-grade consumer goods were cut down. The mix of import and export commodities was improved. China continued to absorb foreign capital in proper amounts. The international tourist industry gradually returned to normal. Thanks to reduced imports and expanded exports, as well as to an increase in foreign exchange from sources other than trade, China reached a favorable international balance, overcoming several years of deficit. Cash balances increased substantially. Opening up to neighboring countries advanced apace. The Shanghai Pudong New Development Area was established.—Science, technology, education and various social undertakings continued to develop. New progress had been made in the spread and popularization of new technologies. Important achievements were scored in key scientific and technological projects. China's science and technology reached the world's advanced level in many fields, as indicated by: the successful launching of the Asia No.l communications satellite and the Long March No.2 cluster carrier rocket; the construction and normal operation of 5 megawatt low-temperature nuclear heatsupply test reactor; and the successful trial run of 10,000-ton combined trains on the Datong-Qinhuangdao Railway. Various educational ventures continued to prosper. China had splendidly hosted the XI Asian Games, firing the national spirit and promoting the nurture of socialist culture and ideology. To the surprise of many, China, beset by internal difficulties and external pressure, had curbed the rising inflation and turned the national economy onto a path of healthy development in a short period. This demonstrated China's huge economic potential and correct macro-economic policies. Economic stability was conducive to social stability on which economic stability itseli was based. . . . , , Economic improvement and rectification were interlocked with the deepening of reform. They required the support of structural reform, and at the same time created conditions tor the deepening of reform and its healthy development. While the locus was on improvement and rectification, economic restructuring continued to be carried out by centering on this focus and serving its aims. A rural socialized service system emerged. The enterprise contract responsibility system was constantly perfected. The establishment of enterprise groupings made headway. The system of foreign trade was revamped by establishing export-oriented enterprises responsible for their own profits and losses. The pricing system was also revamped by focusing on the priceadjustment of coal, grain, edible oil, labor service, and transport fees. In all these reforms, the anticipated successes were achieved. China's multi-type economy with public ownership as the main body continued to grow. The economic sphere of non-public ownership which was expanding in the national economy contributed to economic growth during the period of economic improvement and rectification. The Seventh Five-Year Plan expedited by improvement, rectification and the deepening of reform was fulfilled by the end of 1990. The majority of targets for national economic and social development were fulfilled or over-fulfilled. I he annual average growth rate of the GNP reached 7.8 percent, and the national income, 7.5 percent, surpassing the requirements of the Seventh Five-Year Plan. The gross agricultural output value annually increased by 4.7 percent, above the prescribed 4 percent. Overall growth took place in farming, forestry, animal husbandry, sideline production and fishery. The equipment was up-graded somewhat. The gross industrial output value grew by an average of 13.1 percent. This exceeded the planned 7.5 percent, gaining the third highest rate of speed next to that of the First Five-Year Plan and the Sixth Five-Year Plan periods. Industrial production capacity expanded and the technical level was raised. Average annual output of major industrial products increased greatly in comparison with the previous five-year period. People's living standards rose further. Real income for consumption in urban and rural areas increased by an average of 4.1 percent. Net income increase for farmers averaged 2.4 percent each year. In the last two years of improvement and rectification, the living standards of the majority of urban and rural residents were assured, and even raised somewhat. Since reform and opening were introduced, China's socialist modernization drive had scored substantial achievements that attracted worldwide attention. China's social and economic image underwent a profound change. Between 1978 and 1990, China's GNP increased by 2.74 times (during 1980 and 1990, the average annual growth rate was 9 percent, three times that of the world economy in the 1980s). Gross industrial output value rose by 3.89 times; of this steel rose by 2.1 times, raw oil 32.7 percent and electricity 2.4 times. The level of industrialization was raised to a new high. Gross agricultural output value increased by 2.03 times. Science, technology, culture and education further developed. China's defenses continued to be strengthened. China has basically settled the problem of feeding and clothing the people, and the living standards of the urban and rural people have generally improved. In 1990, farmers' bank deposits totalled 184.1 billion yuan. The whole outlook in the rural areas has changed conspicuously. The per-capita income of residents in cities and towns increased by 68.1 percent as compared to 10 years earlier. Urban service facilities have expanded. The family CHAPTER NINE A NEW PROSPECT IN SOCIAL, ST CONSTRUCTION &quot;shopping-baskets&quot; carry supplies of ever greater .™«ya*i worth The historical achievements made by the Ormese l«ople indicate that China's socialist construction towards modernrza tion has passed through an important stage. The 7th Plenary Session of the 13th CPC : Central Committee and Beginning of Implementation of the Ten- Year Programme and the Eighth Five-Year Plan When the Seventh Five-Year : Plan had been fulfilled and implementation of the Eighth Five-Year Plan 0991 95) w^ about to begin, the 7th Plenary Session of he IMiCPC ^Centra Committee met to examine and approve the Proposals 01 &quot;e_ CPC Central Committee for the Drawing- P ° Year Programme (1991-2000) and the Eighth Five-Year rU (1991-95) for National Economic and Social Developmen . The proposal was worked out after full deliberation and full preparation. Early in 1990, theStateCouncilset outto wnte Ten-Year Programme and the Eighth Five-Year Plan. The method of planning, which differed from past method , was ad vantageous . Hrst, it integrated the Frve-Year Plan into the Ten-Year Programme. This was because many issues in economic Ind lodal development are continuous, therefore need a longer time for consideration. Some key construction projects scientrfm and technical topics for solving key problems, and the fostering of personnel cannot be completed within only one five-year plan neriod A five-year plan based on the general tendencies and targets of the ten-year economic development is bound to be more effSecondalthefbasfc train of thought for drawing up the ten-year nrneramme and five-year plan had been studied, domestic conditions and the international situation were ^sed whde the direction and policies for construction and reform were consid ered in their broader aspects before specific formulations were W°Thlrd°Uin writing the proposals, opinion were repeatedly -sobcited from provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities undirect central control, the departments under the CPC Central Committee, government organizations, major army units, people's organizations, scholars and specialists, as well as leaders of democratic parties. Thanks to the democratic ' process and to following the mass line, the proposals had concentrated the wisdom from all sides rather successfully, thereby winning endorsement and support. The &quot;Proposals&quot; stipulated that in the last ten years of this century China would realize the second step of the strategic objective and raise the quality of the national economy as a whole to a new level. This would be a more important stage in modernization construction. The basic requirements are: to increase the GNP at an average annual rate of about 6 percent in order to quadruple the 1980 GNP by the end of this century in terms of constant price, by dint of greatly improving economic efficiency and optimizing the economic structure; to raise the people's living standards from just having enough to cat and wear to a state of leading a fairly comfortable life; to expand educational undertakings, promote scientific and technological progress, improve economic management, readjust the economic structure, and give priority to key construction projects so as to lay the material and technological foundation for China's sustained economic and social development in the early 21st century; to initially establish an economic structure and operating mechanism, which suit the development of a socialist-planned commodity economy based on public ownership and which combine planning with market regulation; and to raise socialist culture and ethics to a new level, and further improve socialist democracy and the legal system. These basic requirements of the second step of the strategic objective reflect the historical process of China's national economic and social development and express the Chinese people's earnest wish and ambitions for re-energizing the nation to create a strong and prosperous homeland. The gist of the document includes: 1. Stressing economic construction as the center and regarding economic development as the basis on which people's living standards improve and social progress is made; setting a clear-cut demand on the speed and 817 quantity of economic development, and laying more emphasis on the improvement of the quality of economic growth and the quality of the national economy. 2. Underlining further economic structural reform and opening wider to the outside world and strengthening the cultivation of a socialist spiritual civilization, democracy and a legal system. These will provide guarantees for the fulfillment of the second step of the strategic objemive and the sustained development of the economic system, politics, ideol oev and other aspects in the early 21th century. The 7th Plenary Session, on the basis of summing up historical and practical experience, set the fundamental guiding princip e^ for the drawing-up and implementation of the Ten Year Programme and the Eighth Five-Year Plan. These were. 8—Firmly follow the road of building socialism with Chinese characteristics. The &quot;Proposals&quot; summed up the basic theory and oractice of building socialism with Chinese characteristics and advanced twelve principles. Some of these principles, which had been consistently adhered to by the Party in previous decades, now had new contents added under the new historical conditions, others were a summation of new experience m modern zation construction, reform and opening. In all, this was the crystalh t&quot; the wisdom of the whole Party and the people of all nationalities- and it incorporated Deng Xiaoping s outstanding contribution' to the carrying on and development of Mao Zedong Thought under new historical conditions. The twelve PnnclPf&quot; signify that the Party's understanding of building socialism wi Chinese characteristics is deepening and that the Party is becom ins more mature. The fundamental guarantee tor the realization of objectives in the 1990s is to adhere to the path of building socialism with Chinese characteristics. . « --Firmly push forward reform and opening to the outsid world Reform in our country is a process by which the socialist system improves itself and develops, and it aims at promoting th growth of the productive forces and all-round social Pro^ss' ^ giving full play to the superiority of the socialist system, go on deepening the reform and open still wider to the outside world on the basis of summing up the relevant experiences gained in the 1980s and in line with the objective requirements for developing the productive forces, so that they can become a stronger impetus in pushing forward our economic and social development. —Firmly implement the principles of developing the national economy in a sustained, stable and coordinated way. It is necessary to strike a basic balance between aggregate social demand and supply; conscientiously follow the principle of doing what is within our capacity in arranging for economic construction and the people's livelihood; guard against and surmount overeagerness for success. While potential of resources is brought to a full play to promote economic growth, excessive allocation of the national income should be avoided, to guard against rekindling inflation. —Firmly follow the principle of self-reliance, hard struggle and building up the country through thrift and diligence. China is a big developing socialist country and must base economic construction on its own efforts. The use of foreign capital and technology must go along with the efforts to develop China's economy and enhance its capacity for self-reliance, so as to fulfill the strategic goal of social and economic development. The realization of China's modernization requires the hard work of several generations. For a long time to come, we must persist in the principle of building the country through thrift and diligence, practice economy in all fields of work, do everything with diligence and thrift, and eliminate extravagance and waste that exist to a serious extent in various fields. —Firmly implement the principle of promoting both material civilization and socialist culture and ethics. The promotion of socialist culture and ethics is one of the fundamental tasks in building socialism with Chinese characteristics. In face of the complicated international situation and the arduous tasks of reform and construction at home in the 1990s, it is all the more necessary for us to promote socialist culture and ethics in real earnest. We should make sustained efforts to carry out the struggle against bourgeois liberalization; we should strengthen ideological and political work in real earnest, carry out in-depth educa tion in patriotism, collectivism and socialism, re-energizethe national spirit, and improve the general mood of society. These will guarantee the healthy development of reform and opening and economic construction. _ r , • The plenary session pointed out that the last decade of th century will be crucial in the process of China's socialist modernization This is determined by the current domestic and international situation. We must consolidate and carry on the achievements made in the 1980s and greatly promote economic growth and social progress, to ensure that China enters the 21st century full of vitality. Party members as a whole and people of al nationalities must consolidate and develop the political siUiation of stability and solidarity, and concentrate on economic construction, reform and opening. In this way, our great country will emerge more dynamic and prosperous. , ft In accordance with the &quot;Proposals&quot; of the meeting, draft outlines of the the Ten-Year Programme and Eighth Five-Year Plan hammered oul by the State Council were being approved by the 4th Plenary Session of he Standing Committee of the NPC in March and April of 1 991 . The successful completion of the Seventh Five-Year Plan, the formulation and execution of the Ten-Year Programme &gt; and the Eighth Five-Year Plan signify China's emergence from the drffi culties of 1989 and entrance onto a new stage of development in China's socialist modernization.<br /> <br /> === Readjustment in Foreign Relations and Progress in Reunification ===<br /> After the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the CPC in December 1978, the Party made necessary and important re-arrangements in foreign relations to adjust to the changing international situation and the demands of domestic construction. In this work along these lines, the Party and state presented a new image. In this work, as in that of socialist construction at home, the chief architect was Deng Xiaoping. Foreign Policy at the New Stage In his speech early in the 1980s entitled &quot;The Present Situation and Tasks,&quot; Deng stated, &quot;It can be said that internationally the eighties are an extremely turbulent period, full of crises, but we believe that war can be put off and peace maintained for a longer time if the struggle against hegemonism is carried on effectively. This is possible, and it is precisely what we are working for. Like the people of the rest of the world, we really need a peaceful environment, and thus, for the interest of our own country the goal of our foreign policy is a peaceful environment for achieving the four modernizations.&quot;35 This put forward a new concept for the Party and state in setting general and specific policies in international affairs. Later in his talks with foreign guests and on other occasions, Deng repeatedly explained that, following the 3rd Plenary Session of the 1 1th Central Committee of the CPC, there has been some change in China's long-term viewpoint which had laid stress on the danger of war. Although the danger still remains, the forces checking the war are growing encouragingly. With the further development of global peace-maintaining forces, a large-scale world war was not likely to break out for a relatively long period of time and there was hope of preserving world peace. In May 1987, Deng said to guests from a West European country, &quot;Concerning the overall international situation, in my opinion, it is possible to maintain peace for a rather long time. War is avoidable.&quot;36 This re-appraisal of the issue between war and peace served as the starting point for the foreign policy of the Party and state in the new stage. Practice in the past years has proved the judgement is correct. To say war is avoidable refers to a world war. Possibilities for a long-term peace require the concerted efforts of all peace-loving forces. In fact, regional wars have been occurring every year, even one such as the 1991 Gulf War which the United States and many 821 other countries became involved in. Striving for peace requires optsUion o hegemonism and power politics. In his abovementioned talks fn the early 1980s. Deng said that one of the three major tasks facing us in the 1980s was &quot;to op^se hegemonism and maintain world peace in international affairs As tor opposition to hegemonism. the Party tasten™* den Mn ts international policy both in the new period and before. In March 1985 Deng pointed out, &quot;In the days when Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai were leading the country, China was already opposed to superpower hegemony, regarding it as th source of war&quot; &quot;It follows that opposing superpower hegemony means preserving world peace. Since the downfall of the gang of four,' we too have made it a state policy to oppose superpower heeemonv and uphold world peace. 3S ... f The Communist Party of China and the People s : Republic of China under the leadership of the CPC have adhered to th principle of independence and self-reliance, never giving in to any foreign pressures or obeying the baton of any foreign country. During the new stage, China's policy of independence and seUreliancc is embodied in the policy of non-alignment &quot; his talks with the head of a Latin American country m May 1984, Deng said &quot;China's foreign policy is independent and truly no aligned ChTna does not align itself with any country but invanably pursues a policy of independence. It will not play the Unit St^es card or fte ‘Soviet Union card.' Nor will it allow others to play the 'China card.'&quot;3' China's independent foreign policy of peace and non-alignment conforms to the highest m‘e^es« the Chinese people, and is conducive to world peace and stability. It &quot;m£mm contribution to the preservation of world peace. During the new stage, China will continue to uphold the five principles of peaceful co-existence advanced by Chinese leaders in the 1950s and to develop normal relations with other coun nes in the world based on these principles. China pays special att tion to relations with the third world nations. In his talks in May 1984, Deng Xiaoping said, China 'T alwavs belong to the third world, and this position is the founda to of our forcign policy. It means that China, being a poor country, belongs to the third world as a matter of course, that it shares a common destiny with all third world countries and that it will remain one of them even when it becomes prosperous and powerful, because China will never seek hegemony or bully others, but will always side with the third world.&quot;40 A major problem facing the third world countries is the development of their national economy. Deng summarized the current world problems as consisting of two: peace and development. Development requires the establishment of equal and mutually beneficial economic relations among countries in a bid to help narrow the expanding economic gap between the developed countries and the developing countries, and to reverse the tendency toward widening imbalance and growing instability in the world economy. Therefore, China should strive to maintain world peace, and at the same time, improve North-South relations, strengthen SouthSouth ties, and jointly promote a common economic prosperity among all the countries in the world. At the 3rd Plenary Session of the 1 1th CPC Central Committee, the focus of the whole Parly's work was shifted to modernization in socialist construction. The adjustment in foreign policy was in line with the shift in the focus of the Party's work. China, made up of a quarter of the world's population, is economically backward and must stick to the socialist road in its drive towards modernization. Deviating from the socialist road would make it impossible for China to realize the four jnodernizations. In its modernization drive, China needs a peaceful environment. It is most advantageous for China's construction if lasting world peace can be achieved. In his above-mentioned talks with the head of a Latin American country, Deng stressed, &quot;The aim of China's foreign policy is world peace. Always bearing that aim in mind, we are wholeheartedly devoting ourselves to the modernization programme to develop our country and to build socialism with Chinese characteristics. &quot;We are now devoting ourselves wholeheartedly to the modernization of our country, and therefore we sincerely hope that no war will break out and that we can gain a long-lasting peace,&quot;41 823 Deng added. At the 3rd Plenary Session of the 1 1th Central Committee, the Party initiated the policy of opening up to the outside world. Unless a big country like China mainly relies on its own efforts in socialist construction, it will not work. But at the same time it will not work unless China opens up. In his talks with Japanese guests in June 1984, Deng Xiaoping pointed out that the current world is an open one. He said, &quot;After the founding of the People's Republic, we were blockaded, and so the country remained closed to some extent, which created difficulties for us. Some ‘Left' policies and the ‘cultural revolution' in particular were disastrous for us. In short, the experience of the past thirty years or more proves that a closed-door policy would hinder construction and inhibit development.&quot; &quot;As for our relations with foreign countries, we shall pursue the policy of opening still wider to the outside world,&quot;42 he added. Because China has adopted a long-term policy of opening, it must establish and develop diplomatic, economic and cultural ties with all countries in the world based on the five principles of peaceful co-existence. During the new period following the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, the Party has carried on the policies proved to be correct in practice in foreign relations, and at the same time, it has made necessary adjustments and added some new factors to conform to the new international situation and to meet the needs of socialist construction. Foreign Affairs Work of the Party and State China's foreign policy in the new stage is embodied in the work involving both state diplomatic affairs and other foreign matters, and in the Parly's own foreign liaison work. Beginning in the early 1980s, the Communist Party of China readjusted its relations with foreign parties. The 12th National Congress of the CPC held in 1982 made the decision to adhere to four principles in developing relations with foreign communist parties: independence and self-reliance, full equality, mutual respect, and non-interference in each other's internal affairs. In accordance with these principles, the Party has improved and strengthened its friendly relations with some parties, resumed once-broken ties with others and newly established links with still others. Early in 1977, the CPC resumed relations with the party of Yugoslavia. In 1980, ties between the CPC and the communist parties of Italy and Spain were restored. Then, the communist parties of Greece, France and the Netherlands sent delegates to visit China. In turn, the CPC dispatched delegates to attend these parties' conventions. In May 1989, in the wake of normalized state-to-state relations between China and the Soviet Union, the relations between the two parties were also restored. Prior to this development, the CPC had resumed its suspended relations with some East European communist parties. In addition, the CPC established relations with socialist parties, social democratic parties and labor parties of many nations such as Japan, France, Australia and New Zealand. Various links and contacts with the nationalist parties in third world countries were also established. By the first half of 1991, the CPC had made contacts of one kind or another with more than 270 political parties in the world. In the last two years, more than thirty foreign political parlies began to have contacts and exchanges with the CPC. The principles governing relations with foreign communist parties, put forward by Deng Xiaoping and approved by the 12th National Party Congress, are likewise applicable to relations with foreign social parlies, social democratic parties, labor parties and nationalist parties. Developing relations with different countries and parties of various kinds will not be influenced by fine distinctions, or outright disparity in ideology. The preface of China's Constitution, passed by the National People's Congress in December 1982, stipulates: &quot;China consistently carries out an independent foreign policy and adheres to the five principles of mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence in developing diplomatic relations and economic and cultural exchanges with other countries. China consistently op 825 poses imperialism, hegemonism and colonialism, works to strengthen unity with the people of other countries, supports the oppressed nations and the developing countries in their just struggle to win and preserve in national independence and develop their national economies, and strives to safeguard world peace and promote the cause of human progress.&quot; This formalized the state's foreign policy in legal terms. After years of negotiations during the 1970s, China and the United States issued the &quot;Joint Communique on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations&quot; on December 16, 1978. According to its stipulation, China and the U.S. established diplomatic relations on January 1, 1979, realizing normal ties. The Taiwan issue is an important one between China and the U.S. Through negotiations, the U.S. government finally recognized the Chinese government's position that there is only one China, that Taiwan is part of China, and that the Government of the People's Republic of China is the only legitimate government of China. The U.S. government also made the commitment that after establishing diplomatic relations with China, it would immediately suspend its &quot;diplomatic relations&quot; with Taiwan, and withdraw U.S. military forces and facilities from Taiwan and the Taiwan Straits. On this basis, China and the U.S. reached the agreement on the establishment of diplomatic relations. However, soon after, the United States suddenly passed the &quot;Taiwan Relations Act.&quot; Actually, the law deliberately treated Taiwan as a state and the Taiwan authorities as a government. Many stipulations of the act violated the principles of the communique. The Chinese government solemnly warned Washington that failure to abide by the agreement on the Taiwan issue and attempts to interfere in China's internal affairs would only damage Sino-U.S. relations and result in no advantage at all to either side. The establishment of Sino-U.S. diplomatic ties ushered in a new period in the two countries' relations and thus was welcomed by all countries in the world. However, the U.S. had not completely given up its intentions to meddle in China's internal matters, and this cast a shadow on Sino-U.S. ties. Since the establishment of Sino-U.S. diplomatic relations, the exchanges and cooperation between China and the U.S. and the other Western countries have increased in the fields of economy, culture, science and education, thanks to China's adherence to reform and opening, and her independent foreign policy of peace and self-reliance. After China and Japan established diplomatic relations in 1972, the two countries concluded the Sino-Japanese treaty on peace and friendship. During their exchange of visits in 1982 and 1983, top leaders of the two nations put forward the four principles of &quot;peace and friendship, equality and mutual benefit, mutual trust and long-term stability,&quot; laying the foundation for long-term, friendly cooperation on an equal footing. While SinoJapanese ties arc developing and expanding, the Chinese government and the Chinese people, from their position of preserving peace in the Asia-Pacific region, are concerned about the attempt of some Japanese to revive militarism. In the late 1980s, China and the Soviet Union normalized relations after they had settled or partially settled some of the issues which had presented obstacles, conforming to the wish of the peoples of the two countries. In May 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev, general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, visited China, making a breakthrough in normalization of relations between the two countries and the two Parlies that had been suspended for more than twenty years. The tours to the Soviet Union of Chinese Premier Li Peng in 1990 and CPC General Secretary Jiang Zemin in 1991 further enhanced the goodneighborly relations. The restoration of Sino-Soviet relations fundamentally reversed the situation of confrontation which had prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s, but did not revive the alliance which existed in the 1950s. These good-neighbourly relations are based on the five principles of peaceful co-existence and arc of worldwide importance. The internal political situations in the East European countries changed dramatically in 1989. In accordance with the existing foreign policy and the five principles of peaceful co-existence, China's normal relations with these countries were maintained, 82 except in the case of the German Democratic Republic, which later merged with the German Federal Republic (West GerWhile China maintains and develops relations with the West, some powerful political interests in the United States and the West keep attempting to realize peaceful evolution in China; that is, to turn socialist China onto the path of capitalism through economic and cultural exchanges as well as other channels. The Communist Party, government, and people of China maintain vigilance over this tendency. At the turn of spring and summer of 1989, some Western backstage provocateurs became deeply involved in China s political turmoil. Afterwards, certain Western nations imposed socalled &quot;sanctions&quot; aimed at putting pressure on China, meddling in China's internal affairs, and reversing China's socialist direction. Setbacks and complications arose in China's relations with the U.S. and other Western countries to different degrees. China s foreign trade was damaged to some extent. The People's Republic of China did not yield to the unreasonable &quot;sanctions, just as in the past it had never yielded to pressure from outside. To isolate China and to impose &quot;sanctions&quot; were unfavorable not only to China, but to those who implemented them. Since the second halt of 1990, some Western countries have come to see the importance of restoring and maintaining normal relations with China and have set about to improve them. Those Western political lorces that attempted to impose sanctions and put pressure on China to give in failed. China stood the test, was tempered and came out even more resolute in continuing reform and opening along the socialist path. , . China has long maintained friendly relations with the countries and the peoples of the third world. These relations were strengthened after Western powers imposed &quot;sanctions&quot; against China That is one of the reasons why some of them had to halt the &quot;sanctions.&quot; In the 1980s, China established diplomatic relations with more countries in Latin America, Africa, Western Asia and the South Pacific. During 1990 and 1991, there were frequent exchanges of visits between Chinese leaders and leadeis of countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania. In 1990 alone, China established diplomatic relations with four countries -Namibia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the Marshall Islands, and in the case of Indonesia, restored diplomatic relations which had been suspended for nearly twenty-three years. In addition, China normalized relations with Mongolia and Laos. Because of the anti-China policy of expelling ethnic Chinese from Viet Nam carried out for many years by the Vietnamese authorities, and following massive military aggression by Viet Nam against Democratic Kampuchea, Sino- Vietnamese relations sharply deteriorated. By 1990 and 1991, the Vietnamese Party and the government expressed hopes to restore friendly and neighbourly relations with China, following which ties between the two countries improved. Thanks to the framework document issued by the five UN Security Council permanent members and supported by painstaking efforts of the ASEAN countries, and thanks to China and Viet Nam's shared hopes for an early settlement of the Kampuchean question, the emergence of a peaceful, independent and non-aligned Kampuchea, the long cherished hopes of the Kampucheans, begins to look possible. In accordance with the principles that all countries, big or small, should be equal and should not interfere in each other's internal affairs, that all countries have an equal right to development, and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, China joined other developing countries in advancing a proposal for building a new international economic and political order. This aroused wide attention throughout the world and an especially warm response from the developing countries. As a member of the United Nations and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China has played a positive role in this organization. China has been a strong advocate of the maintenance of world peace, easing of international tension, disarmament—in particular, the reduction of nuclear arms and other arms of the superpowers—opposition to all kinds of aggression and hegemon ism. China's activities in the UN are characterized by firmly standing with broad third-world countries, in a ceaseless endeavor to implement the UN Charter and its principles. In 829 addition to affairs involving world peace and each individual country's own security problems, China also enthusiastically participates in international economic, social and cultural cooperation. In 1990, China played a special role in the efforts of the United Nations to solve the Gulf crisis. In the 1980s, China settled the problems of the return of Hong Kong and Macao. This was an important event in China's history and a great victory for China's foreign policy. On Deng Xiaoping's initiative, representatives of the Chinese government and the British government negotiated on the Hong Kong issue. On December 19, 1984, following two years of talks, the heads of the two governments formally signed a joint declaration on Hong Kong in Beijing. The document clearly stipulates that the Government of the People's Republic of China will resume sovereignty over Hong Kong as of July 1, 1997. The settlement of the Hong Kone issue set an example for the settlement of the lutuie of Macao. Representatives of the Chinese government and the Portuguese government held negotiations and on April 13, 1987, the heads of the two governments signed a joint declaration in Beijing on the Macao issue. It states that the Government of the People's Republic of China will resume the sovereignty over Macao as of December 20, 1999. Hong Kong and Macao have been part of China's territory from the very beginning. However, the two regions have long been occupied by Britain and Portugal tor reasons buried in history. It is a historically-inherited problem which could not have been solved or even dreamt of being solved by governments of the past. The idea of &quot;one country, two systems&quot; put forward by Deng Xiaoping provided favorable conditions for an agreement over Hong Kong and Macao. When China and Britain reached basic consensus during the talks on the Hong Kong problem, Deng said to Sir Jeffrey Howe, British foreign secretary at the time, &quot;1 am confident that the ‘one country, two systems' concept will work. International reaction to such a solution will be favorable, and the solution will set an example for other nations in settling disputes which history has imposed upon them.&quot;4' &quot;One Country, Two Systems&quot; Scheme and the Great Cause of Reunification of Motherland Restoration of China's sovereignty over Hong Kong and Macao is a matter of diplomacy which requires negotiations with the British and Portuguese governments. However, after Hong Kong and Macao return to the motherland, what policy China follows in the two regions is China's own internal affairs, in the SinoBritish and Sino-Portugucsc joint declarations, the Government of the People's Republic of China reaffirmed its basic future policy towards Hong Kong and Macao. After China resumes sovereignty over the two regions, it will set them up as two special administrative regions. The two regions will enjoy substantial self-government, except in foreign affairs and national defense, which will be controlled by the central government. Their current social and economic systems as well as life styles will remain unchanged. Further detailed explanation regarding this kind of basic policy was provided by the Chinese government and attached to the joint communique as an appendix. It concretely specifies that when the two special administrative regions are established, the socialist system and its policies will not be introduced, and that Hong Kong and Macao's existing capitalist system and life styles will remain unchanged for fifty years. This is the &quot;one country, two systems&quot; programme. The Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, passed by the National People's Congress in April 1990, spells out the programme in greater detail. It explains how the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region within socialist China is to operate the capitalist system. The Basic Law of the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China drawn up by the NPC drafting committee was also discussed and passed by the National People's Congress. Why will China implement a special policy in Hong Kong and Macao after regaining national sovereignty there? This was an important decision; its point of departure, the actual historical situation. Hong Kong and Macao have long been carrying out the capitalist system. To maintain their original socio-economic sys 831 tern is conducive to the sustained prosperity and stability of the two regions; and to maintain the prosperity and stability of the two regions is not only conducive to the people in them but to China as a whole. The main part of China is socialist. In a big socialist country, to allow a tiny region to practice capitalism will not hurt the overall course of socialism, but, will benefit it. The idea of &quot;one country, two systems&quot; was first presented as a means of settling the Taiwan issue. The policy on Taiwan's return to the motherland and the peaceful reunification (the nine-point declarations), put forward on the eve of the 1981 National Day by Ye Jianying, then chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, actually proposed &quot;one country, two systems,&quot; though the term was not used. How could the Taiwan problem be solved and cleavage between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits be removed and reunification realized? Force should not be used unless Taiwan moves towards &quot;independence&quot; or imperialists launch armed invasion of Taiwan. The problem should be settled in a peaceful way. How, then, can the question be settled in a peaceful way? in his speech on February 22, 1984, Deng Xiaoping pointed out, &quot;The plan we have proposed for reunifying the mainland with Taiwan is fair and reasonable. After reunification, Taiwan can go on practicing capitalism while the mainland practices socialism, all within the same unified China. One China, two systems.&quot;44 A concrete programme has been formed gradually on the basis of the only reasonable proposal leading to China's reunification. An official of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the CPC Central Committee said on June 7, 1991, ‘&quot;One country, two systems' means that two different political, economic and social systems will be practiced in one country. Neither Of the two parties seeks the defeat of the other; instead, they respect each other and share prosperity. In accordance with the policy, after the reunification, China's mainland will carry out the socialist system while Taiwan will practice capitalism. The current political, economic and social systems as well as life styles will remain unchanged. Taiwan, as a special administrative region, will have a high degree of autonomy with an independent judiciary; the final judgement will not rest with Beijing. Also, Taiwan can keep its army. The fundamental interests of the Taiwan authorities, parties concerned and the Taiwan people will be guaranteed. This is not a measure of expediency but a basic, long-term policy.&quot; The officia. formally proposed that &quot;the CPC and the Kuomintang send representatives to establish contact in order to create conditior.; for negotiations towards the formal ending of hostilities between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits and gradual peaceful reunification. They can also, while adhering to the principle of one China as a premise, discuss other problems that the Taiwan authorities are concerned about. Representatives of other political parties and groups of the two sides can be invited to the negotiations.&quot;45 &quot;One country, two systems&quot; is a bold, highly creative policy. Socialism, as China's main form, has made great achievements in the modernization drive and has unlimited vitality. The state does not seek to obtain even one penny from Hong Kong and Macao after reunification. (It is stipulated that the entire revenue of the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao should be used for local purposes, and not to be handed over to the central people's government, and nor should it levy taxes on the two regions. This principle is also applicable to Taiwan after peaceful reunification.) The mainland is not fearful of capitalism practiced in several other regions. It believes that reunification will make China even more prosperous in its modernization drive. Although the Taiwan problem is an internal one, it is related to Sino-U.S. relations. A peaceful settlement of the Taiwan problem will be favorable to the whole world. On October 31, 1984, Deng Xiaoping said, &quot;The question of Taiwan constitutes the main obstacle to better relations between China and the United States, and it is even possible that this question could develop into a crisis between the two nations. If the ‘one country, two systems' approach is adopted, not only would China be reunified, but the interests of the United States would not be impaired. There are some influences in the United States today who, carrying on the ‘Dulles doctrine,' regard Taiwan as a U.S. ‘aircraft carrier' or as a territory within the US sphere of influence. Once the Taiwan 833 question is solved through peaceful coexistence, the issue will be defused and these people will shed their illusions accordingly. This would be a very good thing lor the peace and stability of the Pacific region and of the rest of the world. 46 The great unity of the motherland including Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao is a trend certain to reach fulfillment. Hong Kong and Macao will return to the motherland in the 1990s and follow the plan of &quot;one country, two systems.&quot; Using the same approach, all kinds of obstacles will be solved concerning the Taiwan problem, with the long-standing efforts by mamlanders, Taiwanese and overseas compatriots, and with the increasing exchanges and deepening of mutual understanding between the people on both sides of the Taiwan Straits as well as with the motherland becoming stronger and more prosperous.<br /> <br /> == Advance Along the Road of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics ==<br /> After its founding in 1921, the Communist Party of China, continuing the efforts put forth by generations of its advanced predecessors, resolutely took up the cause of the nationaldemocratic revolution in order to change China's fate as a semicolonial and semi-feudal nation. The Party led the Chinese people in a struggle lasting twenty-eight years to gain the great victory of the new-democratic revolution, and finally in 1949 found the People's Republic of China. China then entered upon a historical period of establishing and developing socialism. The 42nd anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic was celebrated three months after the 70th anniversary of the founding of the CPC. This meant that it had been forty-two years since China entered the socialist period, which is still continuing. Before the victory of the new-democratic revolution, the Party Central Committee called on the whole party and people to struggle for the building of an independent, united, democratic, prosperous and strong new China. Have all these goals been attained? First, independence. The People's Republic of China was founded against the will of the imperialist countries which had oppressed, exploited and controlled China for a long time. Subjected to foreign pressure of all kinds after its founding, the republic nevertheless succeeded in maintaining its independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and national dignity. It triumphed over the isolation, blockade, interference and provo836 CONCLUSIONS 837 cation leveled against it by foreign aggressive forces. China has built up a strong enough national defense to safeguard its security. New China stands erect in the East as an independent and sovereign state, developing equal exchanges with the rest of the world and actively participating in world affairs. Second, unification. This represents a fundamental change in the state of disintegration China fell into as a result of the scramble for entry. The unity of the whole people and among all nationalities has been increasingly strengthened. This unity is based on the people's democracy, a situation which had never emerged in China's modern history or even in China's entire past history China will go on to bring about the unification of Hong Kong,' Macao and Taiwan with the motherland according to the principle of &quot;one country, two systems.&quot; Third, democracy. The founding of New China put an end to the rule of the exploiting classes which had lasted for thousands of years, as well as to the rule of the reactionary classes supported by imperialism. I t also ended infringement upon the most elcmentarv rights of the broad masses to existence. The people have become masters of the country and society. Their right to 1 reedom is guaranteed; workers and peasants who had been oppressed at the lowest stratum of the old society have stood up. The Constitution stipulates: The People's Republic of China is a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. The dictatorship is aimed at only a handful of enemies who try to sabotage the basic state systems. The broad masses of workers, peasants, intellectuals and people of other classes and strata enjoy political, economic and cultural democratic rights. Through various channels and forms, they can participate in the management of state affairs, economic and cultural aflairs and other social affairs. . , . Fourth, prosperity. Old China's industry was extremely backward, its agricultural production could not satisfy the baicst needs of the population and the country had almost totally lost the ability to defend itself. 'This impoverishment and weakness have gone forever. New China has established an independent and complete industrial setup and national economic system which is initially thriving and prosperous. The output of major industrial and agricultural products has leaped to leading places in the world. Without economic development, the state's independence and unification could not have been guaranteed, neither would the people's democracy. At present, China is striving to accomplish its construction of socialist modernization and there is still a long way to go before it attains the prosperity desired by the people. However, the 42-year struggle has laid a solid foundation for the country's prosperity and an inspiring perspective is within reach. Independence, unification and prosperity are goals which several generations in modern Chinese history aspired to but failed to reach. Now all these goals have been attained. They were possible only because of the victory of the new-democratic revolution and after it, setting out on the socialist road. China's new-democratic revolution and socialist revolution and construction are all led by the Communist Party. Without its leadership, there would have been no victory of the newdemocratic revolution or of socialism, let alone of any of the above-mentioned goals. Historically, practice has fulfilled the prediction of Mao Zedong. Early on in the late 1930s, he expounded the whole process of the Chinese revolution. He said the whole revolution led by the Communist Party of China includes two stages— the democratic revolution and the socialist revolution. Because China's bourgeois-democratic revolution could win victory only under the leadership of the proletariat through the Communist Party, it is a new-democratic revolution. The first stage prepares conditions for the second and the two stages must dovetail, allowing no bourgeois dictatorship between to intervene. The victory of the new-democratic revolution inevitably leads to socialism. The Communist Party of China is a great party capable of leading the whole course of the Chinese revolution, including the new-democratic revolution, the socialist revolution and socialist construction. conclusions 839 Tortuous Course Just as during the new-democratic revolution, the Party during the 42-year socialist period struck a path which was neither smooth nor straight. After the founding of the People's Republic, the Party spent seven years in basically finishing the task of the socialist revolution to realize the transition from new democracy to socialism. That is an amazing achievement. To realize this transition, the Party, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, creatively solved many' complicated problems. With the socialist system basically set up, the Party was confronted by a number of questions such as how to continue to advance, how to undertake socialist construction and how to improve and perfect the socialist system. Generally speaking, there was no ready-made experience anywhere in the world, and according to Marxist principles, no country's history can be a repetition of another country s. Every party and people must pursue a road of development that suits the specific conditions of its own country. In particular, China was a big, backward agricultural country in the East, different from European countries. It had accumulated its own experiences during long-term revolutionary struggles and formed its own traditions. Furthermore, the painful lessons from indiscriminately copying the Soviet experience prohibited China from copying that of other countries. In the early days of socialist construction, China learned from the Soviet Union in many aspects (not copying indiscriminately). But the Chinese communists headed by Mao Zedong soon found out that the experience of the Soviet Union was not completely successful and that China must take warning from its unsuccessful aspects. China's socialist road, like the road of the democratic revolution, must be discovered by the Chinese themselves. The Party Central Committee with Mao Zedong at the core led the whole party and people to seek this road. They made tremendous efforts, achieved magnificent results and accumulated wide experience, both positive and negative. As practice has proved, both in the democratic revolution and the socialist undertaking, the general principles of Marxism and Leninism must be combined with China's concrete realities. To work out such a combination, especially a good one, is particularly difficult, considering that socialism is a brand-new undertaking in the history of mankind and China is building its socialism on an extremely backward foundation. There is the problem of correctly understanding China's concrete realities—that is, China's national conditions—viewed from the angle of socialist construction and also the problem of how to properly grasp the principles of Marxism and Leninism concerning socialist society. Not until the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee held in 1978 could the Communist Party of China, under the leadership of its Central Committee with Deng Xiaoping at the core, finally find a road for socialist construction with Chinese characteristics. This road is generalized as having &quot;one central task and two basic points.&quot; This is also a road adhering to the principles of Marxism and Leninism on socialism and one proceeding from the reality in everything. The 42-year history of the CPC after the founding of New China can be divided into two periods. The first period consists of the twenty-nine years before the 3rd Plenary Session of the 1 1th Party Central Committee and the second, of the following thirteen years. . . During the thirteen years, China made far greater achievements in all aspects of its socialist undertaking compared with the preceding twenty-nine years. Although there were some small setbacks during this period, the Party could always correct its deviations in time, solve problems and gain new' experience. Practice has proved that the Party's lines and policies since the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee are correct. History cannot be disjoined. The recent thirteen years can not be separated from the preceding twenty-nine years. Without the achievements of the preceding twenty-nine years as the foundation, there could not have been the greater achievements of the next thirteen years, or the correct road after the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee. The lines and policies following the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee were made on the basis of both positive and negative experiences CONCLUSIONS 841 of the previous twenty-nine years. Except for the beginning seven years which were relatively smooth, it can be said that the road traveled by China during all the twenty-nine years was rough and bumpy. In its socialist undertaking, the Party made two big mistakes which brought it two big setbacks. One mistake, made between 1958 and I960 was epitomized by the &quot;great leap forward&quot;; the other, between 1966 and 1976, was marked by the &quot;cultural revolution.&quot; These two mistakes and setbacks were caused by serious deviations during the Party's independent search for China's own socialist road. How should these mistakes be viewed? It would be quite wrong to say that the Party was devoid of any merit and to describe it as an utter failure just because it had made mistakes, since that is not in accordance with the facts. On the other hand, to disregard these mistakes and refuse lo investigate them or to sum up experience and lessons from them, would also be wrong. The two big mistakes and setbacks during the twenty-nine years were manifestations of the &quot;Left&quot; guiding ideology. During that time, the Party launched several incorrect struggles against the Right' deviation. This does not mean that Right errors should not be opposed and corrected. The Party had made the Rightdeviationist errors during the period of the new-democratic revolution and it assimilated experiences in correcting these errors Even after the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Party Central Committee, the Party corrected, in time, a number of Right tendencies which would have been otherwise very harmtul. The experience of many foreign parties also enabled us to see the serious harm of the Right deviation. Historical experience warns us that in the period of socialist construction, the Right tendency may lead to the abandonment of socialism and the Party leadership. Therefore, it is necessary to guard against and oppose Right tendency. &quot;Left&quot; tendency, under Chinese conditions, usually reveals itself as impatience lo make headway, over-anxiety lor quick results, and the blind pursuit of advanced production relations together with speedy development of the forces of production regardless of objective conditions and laws. The other manifestation of &quot;Left&quot; tendency consists of undue emphasis on class struggle, magnifying it without overall objective investigation and analysis of the actual social, economic and political situation. As a matter of fact, &quot;Left&quot; tendency never leads to development and progress but only causes chaos and retrogression. &quot;Left&quot; tendency can fabricate &quot;class struggle&quot; and wreak havoc within its own ranks. It cannot use proper methods to handle or solve class contradictions and class struggle which really do exist within a definite sphere. Therefore, in socialist construction, &quot;Left&quot; tendency can similarly lead to the abandonment of socialism and the Party's leadership and thus must also be prevented and opposed. There is no party which is immune to making mistakes. What is important is whether it can learn lessons from them, and from those of others as well. Its own errors are usually better textbooks. Big mistakes are, of course, very bad, but since they usually reflect profound problems, they are especially worth earnest study as textbooks. Error is often the precursor of what is correct, but this is not unconditional. The key point lies in knowing how to sum up experience. The CPC is a great, glorious and correct party not because it never makes mistakes but because it is good at summing up experiences and lessons, understanding objective laws better through errors, and amending errors as well as making them the precursors of correct action. During the new-democratic revolution, the Party made two big mistakes which accounted for the two big defeats in 1927 and 1 934 The Party learned lessons from these two big mistakes and defeats so that it could take the correct road in the late 1930s and win the great victory of the new-democratic revolution at the end of the 1940s. The 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Party Central Committee became an epoch-making turning-point, because the Party Central Committee with Deng Xiaoping at the core summed up, carried forward and enhanced the past positive experiences and ideas; furthermore, it profoundly, rather than shallowly, comprehensively rather than lopsidedly, learned lessons from past errors and derived the correct line, principles and policies. CONCLUSIONS 843 This is why we should pay attention to negative experiences as we5 as learn the positive ones as we study the Party's history We are fully confident in the future of Chma s socialist und taking under the leadership of the Communist Party. This .is not nnlv because the Party has scored great achievements in this endeavor but also because the Party has made ser'ous 1 &quot;Thad and through the lessons and experiences comprehends what failed to understand in the past. ComAt the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Sf&quot; munist Party. General Secretary Jiang Zemin said These nast 'seventy ffears show that our Party, armed with MarxismLeninism and Mao Zedong Thought and endowed with revolutionary fireativity, has been able to maintain independence and tionary creau y the masses, struggled made endless sacrifices for the fundamental inerest of the Chinese people. It has held fast to what is right and j j wh„t wrong And it was able to stand the trials of r^ess and setbaerhigh and low tides, favorable and unfavob able circumstances, proving that no enemy or adJers^ ever crush or destroy it. Enduring countless ordeals, °ar Par y has never gone into decline; tempered by innumerable hardships, hw ill 'become even stronger. Our Party has proved itself to be a great, glorious and correct party! Great Achievements in Forty-two Years Reviewing the past forty-two years, people keep saying that if there had been no setbacks, we would have made ^ater &quot;hieve ments Although we may make this hypothesis, the development Tnd progress of human society have never gone ahead in a straight fine. In the search of a new road for socialist constructi on the basis of an extremely backward economy and culture left by old China, mistakes in work and setbacks in d5vel°PI&quot;&quot;t inevitable. Various factors determine how great the complications are, but one cannot conceive of there being no complications 31 One must realize that in spite of the tortuousness and setbacks,generally speaking, China has made remarkable achievements during its forty-two years of socialist construction. The following are some facts and figures: In 1990, China's gross national product (GNP) reached 1,768.6 billion yuan, with the national income hitting 1,442.9 billion yuan. The price factor taken into consideration, the national income was 20.23 times that of 1949. From 1950 to 1988, the total investment in fixed assets by units owned by the entire population reached 2,153.8 billion yuan; 4,393 big and medium-sized projects were constructed and put into operation, adding 1,561.9 billion yuan to the fixed assets. An independent and relatively complete industrial setup and a national economic system have been established. Statistics show that the daily production of major industrial products is equivalent to the production of two months in 1949. This means that the whole year's production in 1949 can now be finished in six days. In 1990, steel output climbed to 66.35 million tons, raw coal 1.08 billion tons, crude oil 138.31 million tons and generated electricity 621.2 billion kwh. They were 419.9 times, 33.8 times, 1,152.6 times and 144.5 times that of 1949, respectively. As to agriculture, in 1990, grain output was 446.24 million tons, cotton 4.51 million tons, oil crops 16.13 million tons, pork, beef and mutton 25.14 million tons and aquatic products 12.37 million tons. They were, respectively, 3.9 times, 10.2 times, 6.3 times, 11.4 times and 27.5 times that of 1949. It is considered a miracle that China feeds 22 percent of the world's population with only 7 percent of the world's land. Great progress has been made in science, education, culture, public health and sports. In 1990, units owned by the entire population boasted 10.808 million scientists and technicians, 25.4 times the number in 1952. All along during the forty-two years, important achievements in scientific and technological research were being scored. Some technological levels in the fields of atomic energy, biology, agronomy, high-energy physics, computer technology, carrier rocket and satellite communications have reached or approached international standards. In 1990, the attendance rate of school-age children reached CONCLUSIONS 845 97.9 percent. Students in institutes of higher learning, secondary schools and primary schools were 17.63 times, 36.17 times and 5 02 times that of 1949. By 1988, the number of graduates from, and postgraduates in, institutes of higher learning was 30 times of the total in the thirty-seven years prior to the founding of New ChASato public health and medical care, in 1990 the country had 3 898 million professional medical personnel with 2.624 million hospital beds, 7.72 times and 30.87 times, respectively, that of 1949. Simultaneously, cultural and sports undertakings also dc veloped rapidly. . . The people's living standards show conspicuous improvement. In 1990, the actual consumption level of the Chinese people rose from an annual 76 yuan per person in 1952 to 714 yuan The price rise considered, the annual average increase rate was 3.5 percent. The problem of food and clothing in China has been basically solved and some of the people have begun to live a comparatively comfortable life. The death rate has decreased to &gt;6.67 per thousand (it was as high as 25 per thousand m old China before the Anti-Japanese War) and average life expectancy rose to 70 years from only 35 years in old China before the War of Resistance Against Japan. , . . . . e. Although the socialist system established in China is imperfect, contains flaws and has even experienced big setbacks in the course of its construction, the 42-year economic development relying on the socialist system, has been fast as compared with developed capitalist countries and developing countries taking the capitalist road during the same period. From 1949 to 1989, the average annual GNP increase rate was 7.37 percent in China, 3.1 7 percent in the United States, 6.98 percent in Japan and 4.01 percent in India. The average annual per capita GNP increase rate during the same period was 5.44 percent in China (despite the rapid increase of population), 1.87 percent in the United States, 5.95 percent in Japan and 1.73 percent in India. As or industrial production, the average annual increase rate was 1 1.5 percent in China during 1953-1988, compared with 4.2 percent in developed countries, 5.9 percent in developing countries and 4.4 percent in the world as a whole, between 1951 and 1986. Since the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the CPC, China has conducted a policy of reform and opening up. As a result, the speed of China's economic development greatly surpassed that of major capitalist countries. From 1979 to 1989, the average annual GNP increase rate was 2.6 percent in the United States, 4.3 percent in Japan, 2.1 percent in Federal Germany, but 9.1 percent in China. The average annual increase rate in industrial production during 1979-90 was 2.2 percent in the United States, 4.1 percent in Japan, 1.9 percent in the German Federal Republic, and 12.0 percent in China. Of course, these kinds of comparisons are relative, because they involve factors which cannot be compared. However, one basic fact is certain: socialist China is one of the countries of relatively high speed in economic development; the economic gap between China and the developed countries is not widening. On the contrary, it is narrowing. This is illustrated by the toremost places occupied by major Chinese industrial and agricultural products in the world. Comparing 1989 with 1949, China's steel output rose from 26th to 4th place, raw coal from 9th to 1st, crude oil from 27th to 6th and generated electricity from 25th place to 4th; grain from 3rd in 1957 to 1st in 1987, cotton and pork, beef and mutton from 4th and 3rd in 1949 to 1st in 1987. Some other products have also reached a leading place in the world. For example, cement, cloth and television sets occupy 1st place, sulphuric acid and chemical fertilizer the 3rd, and chemical fibre the 4th. China's GNP has also risen to the 8th in the world. But generally speaking, the level of China's social development is relatively low in the world. Calculated by the method used in &quot;the World Bank Atlas,&quot; i.e., calculating a country's per capita GNP in U.S. dollars according to the exchange rate in that specific year, although China's GNP doubled in the 1980s, its per capita GNP is only U.S.$300 or so, ranking after the 100th in the world, due to the several reductions in the exchange rate of Renminbi against the U.S. dollar. Because the exchange rate between the Renminbi and the U.S. dollar reflects only a price relation in foreign trade, the per capita GNP calculated according conclusions 847 to this method does not completely show the level of economic increase and the people's consumption level. To compare the per capita GNP among countries in dillerent stages of development is a complicated matter. This is because the extent of commercialization and the price levels vary in different countries, while in addition, the exchange rate between the currency of each country and the U.S. dollar keeps changing. Therefore the above-mentioned method is limited and otten leads to underestimation of the development and income levels in developing countries. Chinese scholars make estimations according to purchasing power parity, a method tried out by the World Bank in scores of countries, and calculated that China's per capita GNP has reached U.S. $500 to U.S.$700. Economic index alone is not enough to have a correct and comprehensive judgement of the degree of society s progress. Early in the 1960s, developed capitalist countries and some international organizations set up a new social index system to assess and monitor the trend of social development and various social problems. Considering Chinese conditions and referring to the theoretical framework of the foreign index system, Chinese researchers made an analysis of the social index system consisting of 16 major indexes. In 1987, the average score of 120 countries and regions was 76 points, with China scoring 68 points and ranking 70th in the world. That was 33 percent higher than the average 51 points of 39 low-income countries, and 13 percent lower than the average 78 points of 48 medium-level income countries. China's general level of social development is lower than medium. This estimation is similar to that made by foreign scholars. According to the human development indexes of the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report of 1990, which was based on average life expectancy, adult literacy rate and per capita GNP, China was placed 65th among the 1 30 countries that were brought into comparison. Through these comparisons with other countries, we should learn to recognize our deficiencies as well as our achievements. Due to historical reasons, there is still a big gap between China and the developed countries in economy and culture. The devel oped capitalist countries are still advancing fast and they will set up various obstacles against socialist China. If we fail to catch up with them, the narrowing gap will become larger again, since China has a huge population, relatively speaking, but a limited amount of arable land, water and other natural resources. All these are difficulties China must confront over a long time, and we must do our utmost to surmount them. In the 1990s and early in the next century, China will go on as before it will continue to develop diplomatic, trade and cultural relations with all countries in the world on the basis of the five principles of peaceful co-existence, develop good-neighbourly relations with surrounding countries, continue its friendly relations of cooperation with the third world countries and make contributions to maintaining world peace, improving North-South relations and establishing a new international order of equality and mutual benetit. We believe that all these efforts will result in considerable achievements since they conform to the interests of peace and progress for all mankind. However, we must bear in mind an objective factor independent of man's will to change; i.e., the Western powers' basic policy of seeking to dominate the world and to sabotage socialist countries will never change. Therefore, the Chinese people must remain aware of this harsh international factor. While giving full play to the advantages of the socialist system, China must develop its economy, culture and science and technology in the midst of fierce international competition and struggle. Currently, science and technology are making giant strides. Although China has made progress in science and technology, it still has a long way to go to reach the world advanced level. We must try to master all advanced science and technology, otherwise we will lag behind. Historical conditions have determined that only by maintaining its socialist system can China stand erect in the world as an independent and strong nation. Deviating from the socialist road, China will fall behind, sink into chaos and collapse. Even though we have the correct policies and line for socialist construction, backwardness will be inevitable if we are content with the victoCONCLUSIONS 849 ries already won and fail to sense the urgency of working with a will to make the country strong. A backward China can be attacked, insulted and even reduced to the status of a semicolonial dependency. In today's world, negative examples of this which constantly emerge present a disturbing sight. As attested by seventy years' history, the Chinese people will not resign themselves to backwardness and the Communist Party of China is fully competent to lead them to get rid of poverty and advance along the socialist road. In the future, the Party and the nation as a whole must keep up the spirit of &quot;sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall&quot; (strengthening resolve to wipe out national humiliation) as well as the spirit of the Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains. Concerted efforts must be pooled to surmount all kinds of difficulties and hardships so as to make China a strong and really great socialist country. Upholding the socialist system in the past, we have made brilliant achievements in China, a country with a huge population and a poor foundation. Looking into the future and upholding socialism as a premise, so long as we continue to improve our economic and political systems (namely reform) and absorb all the achievements of world civilization (namely opening up), we can certainly accomplish a great deal more. The Road Ahead and Its Objectives General Secretary Jiang Zemin said in his speech celebrating the Party's 70th anniversary, &quot;In the struggle of the past seventy years, our Party has accumulated a wealth of experiences. This experience boils down to one point: we must integrate the fundamental principles of Marxism with the concrete realities of the Chinese revolution and national construction and keep to our own road.&quot; Beginning from the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee and through the 12th and 13th National Party Congresses, our Party has re-established the ideological line of emancipating the mind and seeking truth from facts. Combining the general truth of Marxism with China's concrete realities as a principle and taking the profound study of historic and present practical experience as the foundation, the Party has advanced the scientific thesis that China is in the primary stage of socialism and drawn up its basic line of focusing on economic construction, upholding the Four Cardinal Principles and persisting in reform and opening up. In keeping with the basic line, a series of effective policies was adopted. In regard to the basic theory and practice of building socialism with Chinese characteristics, the whole Party has reached a common understanding. As for the building of socialist road with Chinese characteristics, the Proposals for Drawing Up the Ten-Year Programme and the Eighth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development adopted by the 7th Plenary Session of the 13th Central Committee held in December 1990 made the following generalizations: 1 Adhere to the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of the workers and peasants; continue to perfect the system of the people s congresses of multi-party cooperation and of the political consultation led by the Communist Party; steadily consolidate and develop the widest patriotic united front and try to strengthen the construction of socialist democracy and a socialist legal system. 2 Develop the social forces of production as the fundamental task of socialism; concentrate on the successful construction of modernization and keep raising the people's material and cultural living standards. 3 Perfect the socialist economy, political structure and systems of management in other fields through reform, and fully mobilize the initiative and creativity of the central and local governments, enterprises as well as of the broad masses of working people. 4 Continuously broaden the opening up to the outside world by adopting various forms such as developing foreign economic and trade relations, using foreign investments and introducing advanced technology, as well as by establishing special economic zones and economic development zones and carrying out neces sary special policies and flexible measures. 5 Stick to the ownership structure with socialist public ownership as the main form, in co-existence with various other economCONCLUSIONS 851 ic sectors; impose correct management and guidance on individual economy, private economy and other economic sectors in order to enhance their function as supplementary and beneficial to the public-owned economy. 6. Actively develop the socialist planned commodity economy, combine the planned economy with market regulation and try to promote the sustained, stable and co-ordinated development of the national economy. _ 7. Implement the distribution system of to each according to his work&quot; as the main form with other methods of distribution existing as supplementary; permit and support some people and some areas to get rich first through honest labour and legal operation and encourage those getting rich first to help those who are still poor so that the Chinese people as a whole and various regions can gradually get rich together. 8. Under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, inherit and carry on the outstanding Chinese cultural legacy, borrow and assimilate all excellent cultural achievements in the world and continue to raise the whole nation s ideological and moral level as well as its scientific and cultural qualities to build a socialist society with an advanced culture and ideology. 9 Among the nationalities, establish and develop socialist relationships based on equality, mutual help, unity, cooperation and common prosperity, persist in and perfect the system of regional national autonomy and oppose racial discrimination, ethnic oppression and separatism. 10. Further the motherland's reunification according to the concept and practice of &quot;one country, two systems.&quot; 11. Stick to the peaceful diplomatic policy of maintaining independence and keeping the initiative in our own hands develop friendly relations with all countries on the basis of the live principles of peaceful co-existence, oppose hegemomsm and power politics, support the just struggle of the oppressed nations and peoples, maintain world peace and promote the progress of mankind. * . _ 12. Adhere to the leadership of the Communist Party, improve the Party's system of leadership, working style and methods of leadership, strengthen Party-building politically, ideologically, theoretically and organizationally so that the Party can always be the strong leading core of the socialist undertaking. In his speech at the Party's 70th anniversary, Jiang Zemin said, &quot;In short, the Party's basic line and the twelve principles point to the need to build a socialist economy, political system and culture with Chinese characteristics through the self-improvement and self-development of the socialist system, in order to facilitate and promote the continued development of the social productive forces and social progress in all fields and achieve socialist modernization.&quot; The twelve basic principles specify the basic line of &quot;one central task and two basic points&quot; and clearly outline the socialist road with Chinese characteristics. If over ten years ago we had little idea of what socialism with Chinese characteristics meant or of how socialism with Chinese characteristics was to be built, we are now clearer. Looking backward, we feel proud; looking ahead, we are full of confidence. After the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Party Central Committee, the Central Committee decided on the strategic plan that China's construction of socialist modernization should be divided into three steps. The strategic objectives of the first step, i.e., double the 1980 GNP and solve the people's problem of food and clothing were basically fulfilled in the late 1980s. In the 1990s, efforts must be pooled to realize the strategic objectives of the second step. China's output of major agricultural and industrial products are to increase by a big margin. By the year 2000, it is predicated that grain output will reach 500 million tons; steel, over 80 million tons; coal, 1.4 billion tons; and generated electricity, 1,100 billion kwh. The production categories will be more complete, the levels of science, technology and management will be higher and the national defence further strengthened. The building of socialist material civilization and socialist culture and ideology will proceed hand in hand. By then, China's composite strength will have been risen to a new level. On reaching the second-step strategic objectives, the standards of living will see a rather big improvement on the basis of CONCLUSIONS 853 economic development, so that people will be relatively well off By well off, we mean an upgraded quality of life on the basis of enough food and clothing, which includes not only an improved material life but also a rich spiritual life, and not only a rise in people's individual consumption level but also the betterment of social welfare and work environment. After attaining the second-step strategic objectives, we will strive to realize the strategic objectives of the third step. A development of thirty to fifty years will help basically achieve socialist modernization and approach the level of moderately developed countries. The road of building socialism with Chinese characteristics opened in the 1980s provides a firm guarantee for realizing the strategic objectives of the second step. The enormous achievements made in the reform and opening-up drive and modernization construction laid a solid foundation for social-economic development in the 1990s. We are confident that the second-step objectives will definitely be fulfilled by the year 2000 and the third-step objectives, in the 2050s or earlier, given the concerted efforts of the Party and the people. More than 140 years ago, Marx and Engels clearly proclaimed in The Communist Manifesto that the ultimate aim of the Communist Party is the realization of communism. At its founding, the Communist Party of China also clearly proclaimed its aim to be the establishment of a communist society. Over the past seventy years, the Party has led the people in carrymg out the new-democratic revolution, the socialist revolution and socialist construction. All these efforts were aimed at the realization of communism. In the days to come, we will firmly continue the struggle to build communism. So long as we advance victoriously on the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics, we can surely reach the magnificent goal of socialist modernization, and the lofty ideals of communism will certainly be realized at last.<br /> [[Category:Library works about China]]<br /> [[Category:Library documents from China]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:The_fight_against_terrorism_and_extremism_and_human_rights_protection_in_Xinjiang&diff=76004 2024-09-30T12:46:59Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=The fight against terrorism and extremism and human rights protection in Xinjiang|author=The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China|published_date=March 2019|type=White paper|source=https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2019/03/18/content_281476567813306.htm}}<br /> == Foreword ==<br /> Terrorism is the common enemy of humanity, and the target of joint action by the international community. Terrorist forces, by means of violence, sabotage and intimidation, pose a serious threat to world peace and security by scorning human rights, slaughtering innocent people, endangering public security, and creating fear and panic in society. The infiltration and spread of extremism is a hotbed for violence and terror, constituting a direct threat to human rights. The Chinese government stands firmly against all forms of terrorism and extremism, and is relentless in striking hard, in accordance with the law, at any conduct advocating terrorism and extremism and any action that involves organizing, planning and carrying out terrorist activities, or infringing upon citizens’ human rights.<br /> <br /> For some time China’s Xinjiang, under the combined influence of separatists, religious extremists and terrorists, has seen frequent incidents of terrorist attacks, which have been detrimental to the life and property of people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang and have trampled on people’s dignity. In the face of these real threats, Xinjiang has taken resolute action to fight terrorism and extremism in accordance with the law, effectively curbing the frequent occurrences of terrorist activities and ensuring, to the maximum extent, the rights to life and development of people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang.<br /> <br /> A country under the rule of law, China respects and protects human rights in accordance with the principles of its Constitution. China’s fight against terrorism and extremism is an important part of the same battle being waged by the international community; it is in keeping with the purposes and principles of the United Nations to combat terrorism and safeguard basic human rights.<br /> <br /> == I. Xinjiang Has Long Been an Inseparable Part of Chinese Territory ==<br /> Xinjiang is situated in northwest China and the hinterland of the Eurasian Continent, covering an area of 1.66 million sq km. It borders eight countries: Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Since ancient times, Xinjiang has been home to various ethnic groups, and different cultures and religions coexist. It has also been an important channel for communication between civilizations of the East and the West, and was an important section of the famed Silk Road which linked ancient China with the rest of the world. In the long historical process, these ethnic groups have communicated and merged with each other, while living, studying, working and developing together in harmony.<br /> <br /> Xinjiang has long been an inseparable part of Chinese territory. The vast areas both north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, called the Western Regions in ancient times, were in close contact with the Central Plains as early as the pre-Qin period (c. 2100-221 BC). With the establishment of the unified feudal dynasties Qin (221-206 BC) and Han (206 BC-AD 220), multi-ethnic unification has been the norm in China’s historical development, and therefore Xinjiang has always been part of a unitary multi-ethnic China. In 60 BC, government of the Western Han Dynasty established the Western Regions Frontier Command in Xinjiang, officially making Xinjiang a part of Chinese territory. <br /> <br /> In 123, during the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Western Regions Frontier Command was replaced by the Western Regions Garrison Command, which continued exercising administration over the Western Regions. The Kingdom of Wei (220-265) of the Three Kingdoms Period adopted the Han system, stationing a garrison commander to rule the Western Regions. The Western Jin Dynasty (265-316) stationed a garrison commander and a governor to exercise military and political administration over the Western Regions. The Sui Dynasty (581-618) ended the long-term division of the Central Plains, and expanded the areas in the Western Regions that adopted the system of prefectures and counties. In the Tang Dynasty (618-907), the central government strengthened its rule over the Western Regions by establishing the Grand Anxi Frontier Command and the Grand Beiting Frontier Command to administer the Western Regions. The ruling clan of the Kingdom of Yutian asserted it was related by blood to the Tang Dynasty and changed its surname to Li, the surname of the Tang ruling house. In the Song Dynasty (960-1279), local regimes of the Western Regions paid tribute to the central authorities. The king of one of the regimes, the Gaochang Uygur Kingdom, honored the imperial Song court as “Uncle” and called himself “Nephew in the Western Regions”; while the Karahan Kingdom sent envoys many times to pay tribute to the Song court. In the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), the central government strengthened administration over the Western Regions by establishing the Beiting Command and the Pacification Commissioner’s Office to manage military and political affairs. In the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the central authorities set up the Hami Garrison Command to manage local affairs. In the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the imperial court quelled a rebellion launched by the Junggar regime, defining the northwestern border of China. It then adopted more systematic policies for governing Xinjiang. In 1762, the Qing government established the post of Ili General and adopted a mechanism combining military and political administration; in 1884, it established a province in Xinjiang. <br /> <br /> In 1949, the People’s Republic of China was founded, and Xinjiang was liberated peacefully. In 1955, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was established. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, Xinjiang has witnessed fundamental social and economic change, and it is in its best period of prosperity and development. Although there were some kingdoms and khanates in Xinjiang in the past, they were all local regimes within the territory of China and constituted part of the country; they were never independent countries. It is indisputable that Xinjiang is an inseparable part of Chinese territory.<br /> <br /> Xinjiang has been a multi-ethnic region since ancient times. Down the ages, many ethnic groups have lived here, frequently migrating and communicating with each other. The earliest explorers of Xinjiang included the Sai, Rouzhi, Wusun, Qiang, Qiuci, Yanqi, Yutian, Shule, Shache, Loulan and Cheshi in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770-221 BC). Following them were peoples entering Xinjiang in large numbers in different periods: the Xiongnu (Hun), Han, and Qiang in the Qin and Han dynasties; the Xianbei, Rouran, Gaoche, Yeda, and Tuyuhun in the period of the Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties (220-589); the Turk, Tubo, and Ouigour peoples in the period of the Sui and Tang dynasties (581-907); the Khitans in the period of the Song, Liao, and Jin dynasties (916-1279); the Mongolian, Jurchen, Dangxiang (Tangut), Kazak, Kirgiz, Manchu, Xibe, Daur, Hui, Uzbek, and Tatar peoples in the period of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties (1279-1911). By the end of the 19th century, 13 ethnic groups – the Uygur, Han, Kazak, Mongolian, Hui, Kirgiz, Manchu, Xibe, Tajik, Daur, Uzbek, Tatar, and Russian – had settled in Xinjiang, with the Uygurs having the largest population. The multi-ethnic region constitutes an integral part of the Chinese nation.<br /> <br /> The Uygur ethnic group came into being in the long process of migration and ethnic integration; they are not descendants of the Turks. The main ancestors of the Uygurs were the Ouigour people living on the Mongolian Plateau during the Sui and Tang dynasties. We find that many different names were used to refer to the Ouigour people in historical records. Historically, to resist oppression and slavery by the Turks, the Ouigour people united with some of the Tiele tribes to form the Ouigour tribal alliance. In 744, the Tang court conferred a title of nobility on Kutlug Bilge Kaghan, who united the Ouigour tribes. In 788, the then Ouigour ruler wrote to the Tang emperor, requesting to have their name changed to “Huihu” (Uygur). After the Uygur Khanate suffered a major defeat in war in 840, some of them moved inland to live with the Han people, the rest of the surviving Uygurs were divided into three sub-groups. One of the sub-groups moved to the Turpan Basin and the modern Jimsar region, where they founded the Gaochang Uygur Kingdom. Another moved to the Hexi Corridor, where they merged with local ethnic groups to become what was later known as the Yugu people. The third sub-group moved to the west of Pamir, scattered in areas from Central Asia to Kashgar, and joined the Karluk and Yagma peoples in founding the Karahan Kingdom. There they merged with the Han people in the Turpan Basin and the Yanqi, Qiuci, Yutian, Shule, and other peoples in the Tarim Basin to form the main body of the modern Uygur group. In the Yuan Dynasty, ancestors of the modern Uygur people were called the “畏兀儿” people in the Chinese language. In the Yuan and Ming dynasties, the various ethnic groups in Xinjiang further merged; Mongolians, especially those of the Chagatai Khanate, were fused with the Uygurs, adding fresh blood to the Uygur group. In 1934, Xinjiang issued a government order, stipulating that “维吾尔” would be the standard Chinese name for Uygurs, which for the first time expressed the accurate meaning of “Uygur”: to maintain unity among the people.<br /> <br /> Xinjiang ethnic cultures are an inseparable part of Chinese civilization. As early as the pre-Qin period, Xinjiang was in close contact with the Central Plains. Archaeological studies demonstrate that painted pottery-ware unearthed in Xinjiang shows the influence of the Yangshao Culture in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, while many articles made from Xinjiang’s Hetian jade were unearthed from the Shang Dynasty (c.1600-c.1100 BC) Tomb of Fu Hao in Anyang, Henan in central China. After the Western Han (206 BC-AD 25) united Xinjiang, Chinese language became one of the official languages used in government documents of that region. Agricultural production techniques, the system of etiquette, books, and music and dances of the Central Plains spread widely in Xinjiang. Pipa (the four-stringed Chinese lute), the Qiang flute, and other musical instruments were introduced to the Central Plains from or via Xinjiang and exerted a great influence on local music. The treasure house of Chinese culture boasts elements of the Uygur Muqam, the Kazak Aytes art, the Kirgiz epic ''Manas'', the Mongolian epic ''Jangar'', and many other cultural gems of various ethnic groups. It is undeniable that Xinjiang was influenced by Islamic culture, but this did not halt the flow of local cultures into the Chinese civilization, nor did it alter the fact that they were part of Chinese culture. Having a stronger sense of identity with Chinese culture is essential to the prosperity and development of ethnic cultures in Xinjiang. Only by regarding Chinese culture as an emotional support and spiritual home, can we promote the prosperity and development of ethnic cultures in Xinjiang.<br /> <br /> Xinjiang has long been a multi-religious region. In primitive society, Xinjiang residents followed primitive religion from which Shamanism evolved. Before the fourth century BC primitive religion was practiced in Xinjiang. Later, a succession of religions popular in the East and the West were introduced into Xinjiang via the Silk Road, the first of which was Zoroastrianism. <br /> <br /> Around the first century BC Buddhism was introduced into Xinjiang and gradually became the major religion, coexisting with many other religions, and Yutian, Shule, Qiuci, Gaochang, and other renowned Buddhist centers were formed. From the fourth to the 10th century, Buddhism reached its peak, while in the same period Zoroastrianism proliferated throughout Xinjiang, particularly in the Turpan area. Around the fifth century, Taoism was introduced into Xinjiang, becoming prevalent mainly in Turpan and Hami. It spread to most parts of Xinjiang and experienced a revival during the Qing Dynasty. In the sixth century, Manichaeism and Nestorianism were introduced into Xinjiang. From the 10th to the 14th century, Nestorianism flourished as the Uygur and some other peoples converted to it in many parts of Xinjiang.<br /> <br /> In the late ninth and early 10th century, Islam was introduced into southern Xinjiang, changing the religious profile of Xinjiang again. After the Karahan Khanate accepted Islam, in the mid-10th century it launched a religious war against the Buddhist Kingdom of Yutian, and the war lasted for more than 40 years. In the early 11th century, the Karahan Khanate conquered Yutian and imposed Islam in that region. Thereafter, Islam dominated southern Xinjiang while Buddhism dominated northern Xinjiang. In the mid-14th century, the rulers of the Eastern Chagatai Khanate spread Islam to the northern edge of the Tarim Basin, the Turpan Basin and Hami by war and compulsion. By the early 16th century many religions coexisted in Xinjiang, with Islam predominant. Beginning in the 18th century, Protestantism, Catholicism, and the Eastern Orthodox Church were introduced into Xinjiang. Islam has ever since been the principal religion in Xinjiang, coexisting with a number of other religions.<br /> <br /> The history of Xinjiang shows that the coexistence of multiple religions with one or two predominant has always been a basic characteristic of the religious structure of Xinjiang, and blending and coexistence of different religions has been the norm there. Islam is neither an indigenous belief of the Uygurs and other ethnic groups, nor the sole one of the Uygur people. Today in Xinjiang, a fairly large number of people do not believe in religion or believe in religions other than Islam.<br /> <br /> == II. The Origin of Terrorism and Extremism in Xinjiang ==<br /> Separatism is the hotbed in which terrorism and extremism take root in Xinjiang. For a long time terrorist and extremist forces have been beating the drum for separatist activities by distorting, fabricating and falsifying the history of Xinjiang, exaggerating the cultural differences between ethnic groups, instigating isolation and hatred, and advocating religious extremism.<br /> <br /> At the turn of the 20th century, separatists and religious extremists in and outside China, inheriting the so-called theories of “Pan-Turkism” and “Pan-Islamism” created by former colonialists, spread the word that Uygurs were the only “masters” of Xinjiang, that the ethnic cultures of Xinjiang were not Chinese culture, and that Islam was the only religion practiced by ethnic groups of Xinjiang. They incited all ethnic groups speaking Turki and believing in Islam to join in creating the theocratic state of so-called “East Turkistan”. They denied the history of China jointly built by all its ethnic groups, and clamored for “opposition to all ethnic groups other than Turks” and for the “annihilation of pagans”.<br /> <br /> From the early 20th century to the late 1940s, the “East Turkistan” forces, in an attempt to split and control Xinjiang and establish their state, promoted and spread the ideas of “Pan-Turkism”, “Pan-Islamism”, and violence and terrorism. They organized and planned a series of separatist activities. In 1915 separatist Maswud returned to Ili, opened a school and publicly preached separatism to the students. On November 12, 1933, Mohammad Imin founded the so-called “East Turkistan Islamic Republic”, but the farce ended in less than three months because of strong opposition from the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang. On November 12, 1944, separatists led by Elihan Torae founded the so-called “Republic of East Turkistan”, which soon collapsed a year later. Afterwards, a series of separatist organizations and individuals continued their subversive and separatist activities under the banner of “East Turkistan” in a vain attempt to establish their own state.<br /> <br /> Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang have, under the leadership of the CPC, worked together to build a better Xinjiang; they have maintained social stability, achieved economic growth, and improved lives for the people. The “East Turkistan” forces, however, have not resigned themselves to defeat. With the support of international anti-China forces, the “East Turkistan” forces have resorted to all means, fair or foul, to organize, plan and carry out acts of separatism and sabotage. In the early 1950s the separatists instigated many riots in Xinjiang, calling on Uygurs to “unite under the moon-and-star banner to create a republic of Islam”. In the 1960s there were the riots in Ili and Tacheng on the China-Russia border, the riot of the “East Turkistan People’s Revolutionary Party”, and the armed rebellion of the Gang of Ahongnof in southern Xinjiang. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, religious extremism made further inroads into Xinjiang. It soon blended with terrorism to stir up social unrest in the region, seriously undermining local stability and security.<br /> <br /> Since the 1990s, especially after the September 11 attacks in the US, the “East Turkistan” forces inside and outside China have stepped up their collaboration as terrorism and extremism spread around the globe, trying desperately to establish “East Turkistan” through “Jihad” (holy war). In the name of ethnicity and religion, they deceitfully used people’s ethnic identity and religious belief to instigate religious fanaticism, spread religious extremism, and incite the common people to join in violent and terrorist activities. They brainwashed people with the “Jihad”, abetting them to “die for their belief in order to enter heaven”. Some of the most susceptible followers, no longer possessed of any self-control, became extremists and terrorists who heartlessly slaughtered innocent people.<br /> <br /> Religious extremism under the banner of Islam runs counter to Islamic doctrines. It is not Islam. For a long time separatists have tied extremism to religion, to religious believers, and to society as a whole. They tell people not to obey anyone but Allah and incite them to resist government management. They abuse those who do not follow the path of extremism as pagans, traitors and scum, urging their followers to verbally assault, reject, and isolate non-believers, Party members and officials, and patriotic religious individuals. They deny and reject all forms of secular culture, preaching a life without TV, radio and newspaper, forbidding people to weep at funerals or laugh at weddings, imposing bans on singing and dancing, and forcing women to wear heavily-veiled black long gowns. They over-generalize the “Halal” concept, stamping food, medicine, cosmetics, clothing, etc. with the Halal symbol. They turn a blind eye to the diverse and splendid cultures of Xinjiang created by all its ethnic groups, trying to sever the ties between the Chinese culture and the ethnic cultures of Xinjiang. All this indicates their denial of modern civilization, rejection of human progress, and gross violation of the human rights of their fellow citizens.<br /> <br /> == III. Violent Terrorism and Religious Extremism Are Grave Abuses of Human Rights ==<br /> Terrorist and extremist forces in Xinjiang, driven by the goal of separatism, engaged in wildly sabotaging activities. This badly undermines local stability and brings enormous suffering to all ethnic groups in the region. Incomplete statistics show that from 1990 to the end of 2016, separatist, terrorist and extremist forces launched thousands of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, killing large numbers of innocent people and hundreds of police officers, and causing immeasurable damage to property.<br /> <br /> Killing ordinary people. On February 5, 1992, while the whole of China was celebrating the Spring Festival, a terrorist group planted bombs on a No. 52 and a No. 30 bus in Urumqi, blowing up the 2 buses, killing 3 people and injuring 23 others. On February 25, 1997, “East Turkistan” terrorists caused explosions on a No. 2, a No. 10 and a No. 44 bus in Urumqi, destroying the 3 buses, killing 9 and causing serious injury to 68. On July 30, 2011, two terrorists hijacked a truck at the junction of a food street in Kashgar City, stabbed the driver to death, drove the truck into the crowd, and then attacked the public with their knives. In this incident, 8 were killed and 27 injured. The next day, knife-wielding terrorists randomly attacked pedestrians on Xiangxie Street, Renmin West Road, killing 6 and injuring 15. On February 28, 2012, nine knife-wielding terrorists attacked civilians on Xingfu Road, Yecheng County, Kashgar Prefecture, resulting in 15 deaths and 20 injuries. On March 1, 2014, eight knife-wielding Xinjiang terrorists attacked passengers at the Kunming Railway Station Square and the ticket lobby, leaving 31 dead and 141 injured. On April 30, 2014, two terrorists hid in the crowd at the exit of Urumqi Railway Station. One attacked people with his knife and the other detonated a device inside his suitcase, killing 3 and injuring 79. On May 22, 2014, five terrorists drove two SUVs through the fence of the morning fair of North Park Road of Saybagh District, Urumqi, into the crowd, and then detonated a bomb, claiming the life of 39 and leaving 94 injured. On September 18, 2015, terrorists attacked a coal mine in Baicheng County, Aksu Prefecture, causing 16 deaths and 18 injuries. <br /> <br /> Assassinating religious leaders. On August 24, 1993, two terrorists stabbed Senior Mullah Abulizi, imam of the Great Mosque in Yecheng County, Kashgar Prefecture, leaving him seriously wounded. On March 22, 1996, two masked terrorists broke into the house of Akemusidike Aji, vice president of the Islamic Association of Xinhe County, Aksu Prefecture, and assistant imam of a mosque, and shot him dead. On May 12, 1996, Aronghan Aji, vice president of the China Islamic Association and president of Xinjiang Islamic Association, and hatip of Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar was stabbed 21 times by four terrorists on his way to a mosque and seriously wounded. On November 6, 1997, a terrorist group, under the command of the “East Turkistan” organization stationed abroad, shot and killed Senior Mullah Younusi Sidike, member of the China Islamic Association, president of Aksu Islamic Association and imam of the Great Mosque of Baicheng County, on his way to the mosque for worship. On January 27, 1998, this same group shot and killed Abulizi Aji, imam of the Great Mosque of Baicheng County on his way to the mosque for worship. On July 30, 2014, the 74-year-old Senior Mullah Juma Tayier, vice president of Xinjiang Islamic Association and imam of the Id Kah Mosque, was brutally killed by three terrorists on his way home after morning Fajr prayer.<br /> <br /> Endangering public security. On May 23, 1998, the East Turkistan Liberation Organization dispatched trained terrorists from abroad into Xinjiang who placed more than 40 incendiary devices with self-ignition equipment in crowded places such as shopping malls, wholesale markets and hotels in Urumqi, resulting in 15 arson cases. On March 7, 2008, terrorists carried a disguised explosive device that could cause catastrophic crash onto Flight CZ6901 from Urumqi to Beijing, intending to blow up the plane. On June 29, 2012, six terrorists attempted to hijack Flight GS7554 from Hotan to Urumqi following the example of the September 11 attacks. On October 28, 2013, three Xinjiang terrorists drove a jeep carrying 31 barrels of gasoline, 20 ignitors, 5 knives, and several iron bars onto the sidewalk on the east of Tiananmen Square in central Beijing and accelerated it towards tourists and policemen on duty, until it crashed into the barrier of the Golden Water Bridge. They then ignited the gasoline to set the jeep on fire, resulting in deaths of 2 people including 1 foreigner and injuries to over 40.<br /> <br /> Attacking government organs. On August 27, 1996, six terrorists drove to the seat of Jianggelesi Township government, Yecheng County, Kashgar Prefecture, cut the telephone line, and killed a deputy township head and a policeman on duty. They then kidnapped three security men and a plumber, drove them to the desert ten kilometers away, and killed them. On October 24, 1999, a group of terrorists armed with guns, knives, and explosive devices attacked a police station in Saili Township, Zepu County, Kashgar Prefecture. They threw incendiary bottles and explosive devices at the station, shot dead a public security guard and a criminal suspect in custody, injured a policeman and a public security guard, and burned 10 rooms, 1 jeep and 3 motorcycles in the police station. On August 4, 2008, terrorists drove a stolen dump truck into the back of a queue of armed frontier police at drill on Seman Road, Kashgar City, and threw homemade grenades, leaving 16 dead and 16 injured. On April 23, 2013, when terrorists were found making explosives at their home in Selibuya Town, Bachu County, Kashgar Prefecture by three visiting community workers, they killed them on the spot and then attacked local government staff and police coming to their rescue, resulting in 15 deaths and 2 severely injured. On June 26, 2013, terrorists launched attacks at the police station, patrol squadron, seat of local government and construction sites of Lukeqin Township, Shanshan County, Turpan Prefecture, resulting in 24 deaths and 25 injuries. On July 28, 2014, terrorists with knives and axes attacked the government building and police station of Ailixihu Town, Shache County, Kashgar Prefecture. Some then moved on to Huangdi Town where they attacked civilians and smashed and burned passing vehicles, causing 37 deaths and 13 injuries and destroying 31 vehicles. On September 21, 2014, the police station and farmer’s market of Yangxia Town, the police station of Tierekebazha Town, and a store at the Luntai county seat, Bayingol Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture were hit by bomb blasts which claimed the life of 10, caused injuries to 54 and damaged 79 vehicles. On December 28, 2016, four terrorists drove into the courtyard of Moyu County government, Hotan Prefecture, detonated a homemade explosive device, and attacked government staff, leaving 2 dead and 3 injured.<br /> <br /> Planning riots. On April 5, 1990, incited by the East Turkistan Islamic Party (also known as Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, East Turkistan Islamic Party of Allah, East Turkistan Islamic Hezbollah), a group of terrorists with submachine guns, pistols, explosive devices and grenades, mustered over 200 people to attack the government building of Baren Township, Akto County, Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture, kidnapping 10 people, killing 6 armed police officers, and blowing up 2 vehicles. From February 5 to 8, 1997, this organization again perpetrated the Yining Incident. In the riots 7 people were killed and 198 injured, including civilians, public security officers and armed police officers, 64 of whom were severely wounded; more than 30 vehicles were damaged and 2 houses were burned down. On July 5, 2009, the “East Turkistan” forces inside and outside China engineered a riot in Urumqi which shocked the whole world. Thousands of terrorists attacked civilians, government organs, public security and police officers, residential houses, stores and public transportation facilities, causing 197 deaths and injuries to over 1,700, smashing and burning down 331 stores and 1,325 vehicles, and damaging many public facilities. <br /> <br /> The violent crimes committed by terrorists are bloody and heinous. These inhuman, anti-social and barbaric acts have brought enormous suffering to all ethnic groups in Xinjiang. <br /> <br /> == IV. Striking at Terrorism and Extremism in Accordance with the Law ==<br /> It is important to stick to the principles of rule of law and a law-based approach in combatting terrorism and extremism in Xinjiang. The situation is severe and complex; members of all ethnic groups are insistent in their demands that violent and terrorist crimes be punished, and that their lives and property should be protected. Therefore, in accordance with the law, the local government strikes at all sorts of violent and terrorist activities that violate human rights, endanger public security, undermine ethnic unity, and split the country. <br /> <br /> Counterterrorism and de-radicalization in Xinjiang has always been conducted in accordance with the law. Currently, China’s anti-terrorism law system is composed of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Criminal Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China, the National Security Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Counterterrorism Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Regulations on Religious Affairs, and the Opinions on Certain Issues Concerning the Application of Law in Handling Criminal Cases Involving Terrorism and Extremism jointly issued by the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of Justice. <br /> <br /> In view of local reality and in accordance with the Legislation Law of the People’s Republic of China and the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Regional Ethnic Autonomy, Xinjiang has accelerated the enactment of local regulations, including the Regulations of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Religious Affairs, the Measures of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Implementing the Counterterrorism Law of the People’s Republic of China, and the Regulations of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on De-radicalization. These laws and regulations are powerful legal instruments to contain and combat terrorism and extremism. In line with the above-mentioned laws and regulations, the local government upholds the principles of protecting lawful activities, curbing illegal actions, containing extremism, resisting infiltration, and preventing and punishing crimes. The local government fully respects and safeguards civil rights including freedom of religious belief. It protects lawful religious activities, fulfills the reasonable religious demands of believers, protects the legitimate rights and interests of citizens and organizations, strikes severely at all forms of terrorism, and forbids violations of the law and crimes such as spreading extremism, inciting ethnic hatred, and dividing the country by means of religion. Since 2014, Xinjiang has destroyed 1,588 violent and terrorist gangs, arrested 12,995 terrorists, seized 2,052 explosive devices, punished 30,645 people for 4,858 illegal religious activities, and confiscated 345,229 copies of illegal religious materials. <br /> <br /> With facts as the basis and the law as the criterion, judicial organs in Xinjiang adopt a policy that strikes the right balance between compassion and severity. Ringleaders, core members, and major offenders who are held accountable for organizing, planning and implementing violent, terrorist and religious extremist crimes are severely punished in accordance with the law; repeat offenders – those who have previously received administrative and criminal punishment or have been exempt from criminal punishment after committing violent, terrorist and religious extremist crimes are found committing the same crimes again – are severely punished in accordance with the law; minor offenders who have pled guilty are sentenced leniently in accordance with the law; juvenile offenders, deluded offenders and coerced offenders are sentenced leniently in accordance with the law; offenders who have voluntarily surrendered themselves or who have helped in cracking the cases are sentenced leniently or have their prison terms reduced in accordance with the law. Punishment is used effectively to reform the offenders and prevent crimes. While they make sure real criminals are punished, judicial organs in Xinjiang protect the defendants’ right to defense and the right to use their own language in litigation to guarantee procedural justice and protect basic civil rights. <br /> <br /> Law-based de-radicalization has been launched in Xinjiang to deal with illegal religious activities, illegal religious publicity materials, and illegal spread of religions through the internet, which has effectively curbed the breeding and spread of religious extremism. Religious extremism’s interference in administration, judicial affairs, education, marriage and medical services has been eradicated; school enrollment rate has increased significantly and continues to rise; the public has become more aware of the dangers of religious extremism. At the same time, lawful religious activities have been protected more effectively through the promulgation and amendment of local regulations concerning religious affairs, including the Regulations of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Religious Affairs. These local regulations specify the rights and interests of religious groups, religious staff, and venues for religious activities, and draw a clear line between lawful and illegal religious activities, providing legal guarantees for people of all ethnic groups to engage in lawful religious activities. In recent years, in particularly, mosques in Xinjiang have been equipped with running water, electricity, natural gas, radio and television facilities and libraries. Roads leading to mosques have been paved to make access easier. Bathing equipment and flushing toilets have been installed in Juma mosques. Other facilities newly installed or added to mosques include medical services, LED screens, computers, electric fans or air conditioners, fire-fighting equipment, drinking water facilities, shoe coverings or automatic dispenser of shoe coverings, and lockers. All this has greatly improved the conditions of venues for religious activities and better satisfy the reasonable religious demands of believers. <br /> <br /> Our law-based de-radicalization effort and the fight against terrorism are a just cause that has met the expectations for safety of people from all ethnic groups in Xinjiang. Through such effort, we have maintained social harmony and stability.<br /> <br /> == V. Giving Top Priority to a Preventive Counterterrorism Approach ==<br /> Terrorism and extremism jeopardize human rights and sustainable development as they propagate intolerance between different religions, cultures and societies, challenge human justice and dignity, and do great harm to peace and security. Fighting terrorism and extremism is a common issue and arduous task faced by the entire world. For years, many countries and regions have been actively exploring concrete approaches and measures for combating and preventing terrorism and extremism that accord with their own conditions. <br /> <br /> Based on experience learned from the international community, China has been active in implementing the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly concerning the United Nations Global Counterterrorism Strategy (60/288), and has been working hard to wipe out the conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism and to prevent and combat terrorism. Based on its own conditions, Xinjiang has been making intensive counterterrorism and de-radicalization efforts. Upholding the principle of fighting and preventing terrorism at the same time, the autonomous region has been taking aggressive action against violent terrorist crimes, and at the same time, addressing the problem at its source. It has been making every effort to protect the fundamental human rights of citizens from violation by terrorism and extremism. Specific measures include improving public wellbeing, promoting knowledge of the law through education, and offering education and aid through vocational education and training centers in accordance with the law.<br /> <br /> Making great efforts to ensure and improve public wellbeing. Public wellbeing is vital to people’s happiness and to social harmony and stability. In the past, some areas in Xinjiang suffered from terrorism, and religious extremism infiltrated people’s work and daily life, causing great damage and posing a threat to social stability, economic development, and security. In recent years, following a people-centered approach to development, Xinjiang has focused on ensuring and improving people’s standard of living and implementing projects that benefit the public in employment, education, medical care, social security, and other fields. These include: <br /> <br /> * implementing the plan of transfer employment for 100,000 laborers in southern Xinjiang in three years (2018-2020) and having realized the transfer employment of 75,000 people from families suffering extreme poverty;<br /> * adding a total of 1.4008 million new urban jobs and transferring 8.305 million surplus rural laborers for employment in Xinjiang from 2016 to 2018 through developing labor-intensive industries, organized transfer for employment, and creating jobs through business startups;<br /> * popularizing nine-year compulsory education and providing free three-year preschool education in urban and rural areas in southern Xinjiang;<br /> * offering free universal health check-up; ensuring full coverage of serious illness insurance, and ensuring full coverage of centralized treatment of 15 serious illnesses and contracted services for chronic illnesses for the poverty-stricken rural population;<br /> * improving the social security system, and ensuring that the standard of subsistence allowance for impoverished urban and rural residents is raised continuously.<br /> <br /> As people’s standard of living improves, the public will provide greater support to the government’s counterterrorism, de-radicalization and stability-maintaining effort. <br /> <br /> Popularizing understanding of the law and strengthening the sense of the rule of law. Rural residents in Xinjiang have a relatively weak sense of the rule of law, lack understanding of the law, and are vulnerable to instigation and intimidation by terrorist and extremist forces, resulting in criminal behavior. Attaching great importance to popularizing understanding of the law, Xinjiang has issued a series of legal documents, including Regulations of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Promoting Publicity and Education on the Law, Opinions on Developing Bases for Youth Education and Practice on the Rule of Law in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and Opinions on Implementing the Guideline on Adopting a Responsibility System for State Organs with the Principle that Law-Enforcing Departments Are Responsible for Publicizing the Law. <br /> <br /> Focusing on the overall goal of long-term social stability, Xinjiang has carried out various forms of publicity activities on the rule of law, including “Year of Community-level Promotion of Rule of Law”, “Month of Publicizing the Constitution and Other Laws”, “Day of Universal Education on State Security”, “Promotion of Rule of Law in Communities”, “Teaching Rule of Law under the National Flag”, and “Strengthening Public Legal Awareness at Bazaars”, so as to help people of various ethnic groups to distinguish between legal and illegal conducts and improve citizens’ abilities to consciously resist the infiltration of religious extremism. These activities are designed to influence the general public, including young people, with a goal of promoting the concept of rule of law, cultivating a belief in rule of law, and advancing the practice of rule of law. They focus on raising people’s awareness about the rule of law and development of institution. They use traditional media and internet as platforms and are supported by the establishment and improvement of a community-level public service network for promoting the rule of law.<br /> <br /> Actively providing help and aid through education. Education and training centers have been established with the goal of educating and rehabilitating people guilty of minor crimes or law-breaking and eradicating the influence of terrorism and extremism, in order to prevent them from falling victim to terrorism and extremism, and to nip terrorist activities in the bud.<br /> <br /> At present, the trainees at the centers fall into three categories: <br /> <br /> # People who were incited, coerced or induced into participating in terrorist or extremist activities, or people who participated in terrorist or extremist activities in circumstances that were not serious enough to constitute a crime;<br /> # People who were incited, coerced or induced into participating in terrorist or extremist activities, or people who participated in terrorist or extremist activities that posed a real danger but did not cause actual harm, whose subjective culpability was not deep, who made confessions of their crimes and were contrite about their past actions and thus can be exempted from punishment in accordance with the law, and who have demonstrated the willingness to receive training;<br /> # People who were convicted and received prison sentence for terrorist or extremist crimes and after serving their sentences, have been assessed as still posing potential threats to society, and who have been ordered by people’s courts to receive education at the centers in accordance with the law.<br /> <br /> In accordance with Articles 29 and 30 of the Counterterrorism Law of the People’s Republic of China, people in the first and third categories will be placed at the centers to receive support and education. With regard to people in the second category, a small number of them should be punished severely, while the majority should be rehabilitated in accordance with the policy of striking a balance between punishment and compassion. Confession, repentance, and willingness to receive training are preconditions for leniency, and these people will receive education to help reform their ways after they have been exempted from penalty in accordance with the law.<br /> <br /> Education and training centers are institutions established in accordance with the law. They have clear goals and methods of training, criteria for program completion, and methods of assessment, which are stated in the agreements they signed with trainees. When trainees meet the standards of assessment, they will be presented with completion certificates. The centers’ curricula consist of standard spoken and written Chinese language, law, vocational skills, and courses on the eradication of extremism. They are staffed by quality teachers and senior vocational trainers. They formulate teaching plans, compile and print teaching materials, and develop teaching systems in a unified manner. They offer tailored and even individualized education to different types of trainees. Teaching and studying at the centers have been standardized. A step-by-step approach has been adopted in the process of study and training, which begins with learning standard spoken and written Chinese language, then moves on to studying the law, and concludes with learning vocational skills.<br /> <br /> In view of the fact that some trainees have been influenced by religious extremism, have not received good education, are weak in the use of standard spoken and written Chinese language, slow in acquiring modern knowledge, and have poor communication skills, the centers fully ensure citizens’ constitutional right to learn and use standard Chinese language and provide conditions for them to learn. Through education and training, the trainees have improved their competence in the use of standard Chinese language and broadened their channels to acquire modern knowledge and information. They have realized that only by mastering standard Chinese language can they better adapt to contemporary society.<br /> <br /> In view of the fact that the trainees have a weak awareness of rule of law, the centers regard an understanding of the law as a key link in helping the trainees to increase their sense of state, citizenship, and rule of law. They have invited judges, public procurators, and lawyers to give lectures on laws and regulations such as the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China, General Provisions of the Civil Law of the People’s Republic of China, Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China, Education Law of the People’s Republic of China, Counterterrorism Law of the People’s Republic of China, Public Security Administration Punishment Law of the People’s Republic of China, and Regulations of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on De-radicalization. Many trainees were influenced by religious extremism and their conducts closely followed the “religious law” and “domestic discipline” concocted by terrorists and extremists. They defied the law of the state, and even interfered with and sabotaged the implementation of state law. Through study, the trainees have realized that as citizens they have an obligation to abide by the Constitution and laws of the state and they should conduct themselves in accordance with the rights and obligations endowed to them by the Constitution and laws.<br /> <br /> In view of the fact that some trainees lack vocational skills and have difficulties finding employment, the centers regard learning vocational skills as an important way to enhance trainees’ ability to find work. Based on local demand and employment conditions, they set up training programs in the making of garments, footwear and hats, food processing, assembly of electronic products, typesetting and printing, cosmetology and hairdressing, e-business, and other courses. To those who have the will to learn multiple skills and meet the relevant qualifications, they provide such training as to ensure that the trainees can master one or two vocational skills upon completing their study at the centers. The centers attach importance to the integration of study and practice, and have elevated trainees’ practical abilities. Through training, trainees have gained rudimentary vocational skills, and some of them have completed their study at the centers and found jobs.<br /> <br /> In view of the fact that trainees have been influenced by religious extremism to various degrees, the centers integrate de-radicalization into the whole process of education and training. Through progressive study of laws and regulations, policies on ethnic and religious affairs, and religious knowledge, and through unveiling the hazards of terrorism and extremism, trainees have realized that religious extremism is totally against religious doctrines and constitutes the ideological base of ethnic separatism and violent terrorism. They gain a thorough understanding of the very nature and perils of terrorism and extremism, and free themselves from the influence and control of ideological terrorism and extremism.<br /> <br /> The centers adopt a boarding school management system, and are staffed with instructors, doctors and personnel for logistic services and management to provide trainees with a normal study and life routine. Trainees can have home visits on a regular basis and can ask for leave to attend to private affairs. The centers are equipped with indoor and outdoor sports and cultural facilities and regularly hold such activities. The centers fully respect and protect the customs and habits of trainees of different ethnic groups, care for their mental health, offer psychological counseling services, and help them solve real-life problems. In accordance with the law, the centers adopt a policy of separating education and religion. Trainees may not organize and participate in religious activities at the centers.<br /> <br /> Thanks to these preventive measures, Xinjiang has witnessed a marked change in the social environment in recent years. A healthy atmosphere is spreading, while evil influences are declining. The citizens’ legal awareness has been notably enhanced. The trend in society is now to pursue knowledge of modern science and technology and a cultured way of life. Citizens now consciously resist religious extremism. The ethnic groups of Xinjiang now enjoy closer relations through communication, exchange and blending. People have a much stronger sense of fulfillment, happiness and security.<br /> <br /> == VI. Finding Experience for Counterterrorism and De-radicalization ==<br /> Counterterrorism and de-radicalization effort in Xinjiang is based on the reality in Xinjiang and the rest of the country, while drawing on the experience of other countries. The government prioritizes safeguarding the fundamental interests of all ethnic groups. Starting by addressing deep-seated problems, China has worked to explore effective and law-based approaches to counterterrorism and de-radicalization to protect people of all ethnic groups from the scourge of terrorism and extremism, and identified successful experiences and effective measures.<br /> <br /> – Combating terrorism in accordance with the law and protecting human rights. Safety is a prerequisite for human rights protection, and human rights cannot be guaranteed if we fail to strike at terrorism. Fighting terrorist activities and protecting lives and property are fundamental to protecting human rights. <br /> <br /> Terrorist activities were once frequent in Xinjiang, destroying local peace, order, unity, and progress, and showing callous disdain for the people’s right to life, health, development and other basic human rights. In the face of terrorist atrocities, the local government has launched preventive and punitive countermeasures in accordance with the law and perseveres with deterrence against terrorist forces, maximizing its efforts to protect basic human rights from terrorism and extremism. No violent or terrorist activities have occurred in Xinjiang for more than two years; the number of criminal cases and public security cases has fallen significantly; the infiltration of extremism has been curbed, and peace and harmony has returned to society. In 2018, tourism in Xinjiang grew rapidly: Tourists from inside and outside China numbered over 150 million, a year-on-year increase of 40 percent; foreign tourists totaled 2.4032 million, a year-on-year increase of 10.78 percent; tourist spending totaled RMB252.2 billion, a year-on-year growth of 41.6 percent.<br /> <br /> At the same time, Xinjiang has paid special attention to human rights protection in its counterterrorism effort, preventing any violation of human rights caused by counterterrorist measures. To this end, the local government has enhanced legislation on counterterrorism, so as to keep its counterterrorism activities within the law and punish acts of terrorism in accordance with the law. It has made every effort to ensure that its counterterrorist measures do not infringe the basic rights, interests and freedoms of local ethnic groups as endowed by the law, and that normal social order is maintained.<br /> <br /> – Counterterrorism does not target any specific region, ethnic group or religion. It is stipulated in the Counterterrorism Law of the People’s Republic of China that “In counterterrorism work, citizens’ freedom in religious belief and ethnic customs shall be respected, and any discrimination based on regions, ethnic groups, religions and other grounds shall be prohibited.” <br /> <br /> Xinjiang is inhabited by multiple ethnic groups composed of believers in multiple religions. In the course of counterterrorism and de-radicalization, the local government forbids any organization or individual from using religion to split the country, spread religious extremism, incite ethnic hatred, undermine ethnic unity, disturb social order, harm citizens’ physical or mental health, hinder the implementation of the country’s administrative, judicial, educational and cultural systems, or harm national security, national interests, public interests and civil rights and interests. It prevents ill-intentioned people from using religion or religious activities to create disorder or commit crimes.<br /> <br /> The local government also abides by the policies and stipulations in the Constitution, other state laws and administrative regulations concerning freedom of religious belief. In the course of counterterrorism and de-radicalization, the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang have their freedom of religious belief fully protected. Citizens are entitled to choose to be religious believers or non-believers, and no organization or individual may force citizens to believe in a religion or not, nor discriminate against believers or non-believers. <br /> <br /> Xinjiang attaches equal importance to services and management in addressing religious affairs. The local government has worked to enhance the training of religious staff, expand channels for them to acquire religious knowledge, and improve the conditions of venues for religious activities, so that the religious sentiments, beliefs and needs of believers are fully respected. <br /> <br /> – Balancing compassion and severity and taking measures for prevention, education and rehabilitation. Xinjiang follows the criminal justice policy of balancing compassion and severity, and taking the approach of reforming the offenders through education. A few leaders and core members of violent and terrorist gangs who have committed heinous crimes or are inveterate offenders will be severely punished in accordance with the law so as to protect citizens’ basic human rights from the scourge of terrorism and extremism. Offenders who have committed minor crimes under the influence of religious extremism will be educated, rehabilitated and protected through vocational training, through the learning of standard Chinese language and labor skills, and acquiring knowledge of the law; these people are large in number. The approach to the second group of people is rehabilitation rather than punishment, care instead of rejection. Through such education, they will improve their ability to distinguish right from wrong, to resist infiltration, and to correct themselves. They will rid themselves of terrorist influence, the extremist mindset, and outmoded cultural practices. They will increase their employability, expand their employment channels, and become more confident in life. This approach clearly demonstrates the humanitarian stance of the Chinese government. <br /> <br /> – Maintaining stability and improving the standards of living. Happiness is the most important human right. Safeguarding and improving people’s lives contributes to public wellbeing and social harmony and stability. <br /> <br /> Some areas in Xinjiang were severely disturbed by terrorism and the infiltration of religious extremism. For this reason, some people cannot speak, read or write in standard Chinese, have a weak understanding of rule of law, and have difficulty finding employment through a lack of employable skills. As a result, such people are more inclined to be incited or coerced into criminality by terrorist and extremist forces. <br /> <br /> Social stability and better lives promote all-round human development. The people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang are leading a new life. They pursue a cultured way of life, and consciously resist religious extremism. More than ever before, ethnic groups in Xinjiang are united and live in harmony, and popular support for counterterrorism, maintenance of stability and de-radicalization is increasing. The people of Xinjiang are full of hope for a better future. <br /> <br /> == VII. International Counterterrorism Exchanges and Cooperation ==<br /> The global spread of terrorism and extremism over the years has inflicted agony on humanity. Some of the most notorious terrorist attacks include: the September 11 attacks in 2001 that killed 2,996 people in the US; the Bali bombings on October 12, 2002 that killed 202 people in Indonesia; the Madrid train bombings on March 11, 2004 that killed 190 and injured over 1,500 people in Spain; the Beslan school siege on September 1, 2004 that killed 335 people, including 186 minors, and injured 958 people in Russia; the London bombings on July 7, 2005 that killed 52 and injured over 700 people in the UK; the Mumbai attacks on November 26, 2008 that killed 195 and injured close to 300 people in India; the shooting on July 22, 2011 that killed 77 people in Oslo, Norway; the Westgate shopping mall attack on September 21, 2013 that killed 72 and injured 168 people in Nairobi, Kenya; the Paris attacks on November 13, 2015 that killed 132 and injured more than 300 people in France; the Brussels bombings on March 22, 2016 that killed 35 and injured over 300 persons in Belgium; the Berlin truck attack on December 19, 2016 that killed 12 and injured 49 people in Germany; the Istanbul nightclub shooting on January 1, 2017 that killed 39 and injured 69 people in Turkey; the Sinai mosque attack on November 24, 2017 that killed 235 and injured 109 people in Egypt. According to incomplete statistics, in 2018 there were 1,127 terrorist attacks globally, causing 13,000 deaths.<br /> <br /> Throughout the world terrorism and extremism gravely threaten peace and development, and endanger the life and property of individuals. Striking aggressively at terrorism and furthering the de-radicalization effort is the common responsibility of the international community and essential to the protection of human rights.<br /> <br /> China opposes all forms of terrorism and extremism, and opposes double standards on fighting terrorism. It opposes linking terrorism and extremism with specific countries, ethnic groups or religions. It advocates comprehensive measures to address both the symptoms and the root causes, with the dual purposes of striking at terrorist activities and eliminating poverty, so that there will be no room for terrorism to breed. It supports more pragmatic international cooperation in the fight against terrorism on the basis of mutual respect and consultation on an equal footing.<br /> <br /> As a responsible member of the international community, China supports the United Nations in playing a leading and coordinating role in international cooperation against terrorism. China upholds the UN Charter and other principles and norms of international law. It has supported a series of resolutions on combating terrorism adopted by the UN Security Council, and contributed to the full implementation of the UN Global Counterterrorism Strategy. China has joined most of the international counterterrorism conventions, including the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings, International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, and the International Convention against the Taking of Hostages.<br /> <br /> Under the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), China and countries involved have signed the following documents: the Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism, Cooperation Between SCO Member States on Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism, SCO Convention on Combating Terrorism, SCO Convention on Combating Extremism, SCO Cooperation Programme on Fighting Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism for 2019-2021, and SCO Plan of Action for Cooperation with Islamic Republic of Afghanistan on Fighting Terrorism, Drug Trafficking and Organized Crimes.<br /> <br /> China has carried out a number of fruitful counterterrorism exchanges and cooperation with relevant countries through such bilateral and multilateral mechanisms as joint anti-terrorism exercises, joint border defense operations, and suppression of illegal cyberspace activities by terrorist, separatist and extremist forces, as well as security cooperation, intelligence exchange, and judicial cooperation during major international events. It has played an important role in maintaining international and regional security and stability.<br /> <br /> Xinjiang is a key battlefield in the fight against terrorism in China. In recent years, under the care and support of the central government, Xinjiang has established cooperation mechanisms with neighboring countries on fighting terrorism in border areas and between law-enforcement departments. Pragmatic exchanges and cooperation have been carried out in intelligence, joint border control, the investigation and capture of suspected terrorists, cutting off funds for terrorism, suppression of cyberspace terrorism and transnational crimes, judicial assistance, and cross-border oil and gas pipeline security. Drawing experience from global efforts, Xinjiang has contributed to the international fight on terrorism through effective counterterrorism and de-radicalization campaigns based on its regional realities.<br /> <br /> == Conclusion ==<br /> There is no doubt that Xinjiang’s fight against terrorism and extremism is an important component of the global struggle, and has made an important contribution to the latter. While preventing and combating terrorism and extremism in accordance with the law, Xinjiang has maintained social stability and promoted social progress in the region, meeting the people’s aspirations for a safe and stable environment to live and work in, and ensuring the basic rights of all ethnic groups to the greatest extent.<br /> <br /> In today’s world, faced with the severe challenges of terrorism and extremism, no country can shy away from them. Only by strengthening our community of shared future, abandoning double standards, enhancing political mutual trust, reaching strategic consensus, and promoting exchanges and cooperation, can we effectively curb and combat terrorism and extremism in the interests of world peace and stability.<br /> <br /> Under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Xi Jinping at the core, with the strong support of the people across the country, and through the joint effort of all the ethnic groups of Xinjiang, China has made significant progress in its counterterrorism and de-radicalization efforts in Xinjiang. However, the three forces of terrorism, separatism and extremism are not gone; their influence can still be felt. And the “East Turkistan” forces are in search of opportunities to create trouble. We still face a severe and complex situation in combating terrorism and extremism in Xinjiang. Focusing on social stability and lasting peace, Xinjiang will continue to fight terrorism in accordance with the law, ensure human rights, develop the economy, improve people’s lives, and build a united, harmonious, prosperous, and culturally advanced socialist society where people live and work in peace and contentment.<br /> [[Category:Library works about China]]<br /> [[Category:Library documents from China]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:The_Maidan_Massacre_Trial_and_Investigation_Revelations:_Implications_for_the_Ukraine-Russia_War_and_Relations&diff=76002 2024-09-30T12:46:59Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=The Maidan Massacre Trial and Investigation Revelations: Implications for the Ukraine-Russia War and Relations|image=The Maidan Massacre Trial and Investigation Revelations cover.jpeg|author=Ivan Katchanovski|written in=2023|type=Research paper|source=[https://brill.com/view/journals/rupo/8/2/article-p181_5.xml Brill]|display_title=yes}}<br /> <br /> == Abstract ==<br /> This study analyzes revelations from the trial and investigation in Ukraine concerning the mass killing that took place in Kyiv on 20 February 2014. This Maidan massacre of protesters and police led to the overthrow of the Yanukovych government and ultimately to the Russian annexation of Crimea, the civil war and Russian military interventions in Donbas, and the Ukraine-Russia and West-Russia conflicts which Russia escalated by illegally invading Ukraine in 2022. The absolute majority of wounded Maidan protesters, nearly 100 prosecution and defense witnesses, synchronized videos, and medical and ballistic examinations by government experts pointed unequivocally to the fact that the Maidan protesters were massacred by snipers located in Maidan-controlled buildings. To date, however, due to the political sensitivity of these findings and cover-up, no one has been convicted for this massacre. The article discusses the implications of these revelations for the Ukraine-Russia war and the future of Russian-Ukrainian relations.<br /> <br /> Keywords: Political violence; conflict; Ukraine; Maidan; Euromaidan; Russia; massacre; Ukraine-Russia war; justice&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets; it is the rule’.&lt;ref&gt;''Complete works of Voltaire: Philosophical Dictionary'', (Paris: Chez Th. Desoer, 1817): 788.<br /> <br /> &lt;/ref&gt;<br /> Voltaire&lt;/blockquote&gt;…&lt;blockquote&gt;Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.&lt;ref&gt;John Patrick Diggins, ed., ''The Portable John Adams'', (New York: Penguin Books, 2004): 255.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> John Adams at the Boston massacre trial&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;∵<br /> <br /> The massacre of protesters and police during the ‘Euromaidan’ mass protests on February 20, 2014, in Ukraine was a tipping point in the conflict in Ukraine and in the Ukraine-Russia and the West-Russia conflicts.&lt;ref&gt;Earlier versions of this study were presented at the 22nd Annual World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities in Columbia University, New York, May 4-6, 2017; the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Boston, August 29-September 2, 2018; the Regimes and Societies in Conflict: Eastern Europe and Russia since 1956 conference by Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University and British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies in Uppsala, Sweden, September 13-14, 2018; the Virtual 52nd Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, November 5-8 and 14-15, 2020; and the virtual 10th World Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies, August 3-8, 2021.&lt;/ref&gt; This mass killing led to the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and launched spiral of conflict escalation which included the Russian annexation of Crimea and the civil war and Russian military interventions in Donbas.&lt;ref&gt;J.L. Black and Michael Johns, eds., ''The Return of the Cold War: Ukraine, the West and Russia'' (Abingdon: Routledge); Gordon M. Hahn, ''Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West and the “New Cold War”'' (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Books, 2018); Ivan Katchanovski, “The ‘Snipers’ Massacre” on the Maidan in Ukraine,” Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, September 3-6, 2015, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2658245&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 1 March 2022); Ivan Katchanovski, “The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine: A Summary of Analysis, Evidence, and Findings” in Black and Johns, ''The Return''; 220-224; Ivan Katchanovski, “The Separatist War in Donbas: A Violent Break-up of Ukraine?” ''European Politics and Society'' 17, no 4 (2016): 473-489; Ivan Katchanovski, “Crimea: People and Territory before and after Annexation”, in Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska and Richard Sakwa, eds., ''Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives'', (Bristol, E-International Relations, 2015): 80-89; Serhiy Kudelia, “The Donbas Rift”, ''Russian Politics &amp; Law'' 54, no 1 (2016): 5-27; Richard Sakwa, ''Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands''. (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015).&lt;/ref&gt; Russia escalated these conflicts on February 24, 2022, with its illegal invasion and the war with Ukraine, which has become a proxy war with the West.&lt;ref&gt;Ivan Katchanovski, “The Russia-Ukraine War and the Maidan in Ukraine”, Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Montreal, September 15-18 2022, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4246203&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 10 March 2023).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Maidan massacre is important not only because it is a crucial case of political violence, but also from the perspectives of human rights, democracy, the rule of law, and conflict resolution. This study analyses the evidence revealed by the Maidan massacre trials and government investigation in Ukraine. The research question is as follows: what does the evidence made public by the trial and government investigation reveal about which party of the conflict was involved in this mass killing?<br /> <br /> The dominant narrative in Ukraine and the West attributes the Maidan massacre of the protesters to the Yanukovych government and mostly ignores the killings of the police.&lt;ref&gt;Oliver Boyd-Barrett, ''Western Mainstream Media and the Ukraine Crisis: A Study in Conflict Propaganda'', (New York: Routledge, 2016).&lt;/ref&gt; With some exceptions, the Western and Ukrainian media also did not report the Maidan massacre trial and investigation revelations concerning snipers in the Maidan-controlled buildings.<br /> <br /> The official investigation by the Prosecutor General Office of Ukraine (GPU) charged the Berkut police with the massacre of the Maidan protesters on February 20 on the orders of President Viktor Yanukovych and his heads of the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The GPU arrested and charged two Berkut commanders and three members of this police unit with terrorism and the murder of 48 out of 49 killed Maidan protesters and attempted murder of 80 out of 157 wounded protesters on February 20 on Yanukovych’s orders. In 2019 the Prosecutor General of Ukraine announced that the investigation of the Maidan massacre had been completed.<br /> <br /> Yanukovych along with his heads of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Internal Troops, and the Security Service of Ukraine, and Berkut commanders were then charged in absentia for ordering the Maidan massacre of the protesters, but no such orders were revealed. Yanukovych, his ministers, and Berkut commanders denied that they had ordered the massacre and stated that the protesters and the police were shot by Maidan snipers. However, they did not produce specific evidence in support of their claims.<br /> <br /> In contrast to the dominant narrative in the Western media, a German television channel ''ARD'' presented evidence showing that snipers had been based in the Hotel Ukraina, and that the government investigation was manipulated.&lt;ref&gt;“Monitor”, No 660, ''ARD'', 10 April 2014, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www1.wdr.de/daserste/monitor/videos/video-todesschuesse-in-kiew-wer-ist-fuer-das-blutbad-vom-maidan-verantwortlich-100&lt;/nowiki&gt; .html (accessed 10 January 2023).&lt;/ref&gt; An investigative report by the ''BBC'' presented similar evidence, along with a confession by one of Maidan snipers who had shot at the police from the Music Conservatory.&lt;ref&gt;Gabriel Gatehouse, “The untold story of the Maidan massacre”, ''BBC News'', 11 February 2015, &lt;nowiki&gt;http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31359021&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 10 January 2023).&lt;/ref&gt; Subsequently, several other protesters from far-right-linked Maidan company admitted in the Ukrainian media and social media to shooting and killing the police.<br /> <br /> In later interviews for the American, Italian, Israeli, Macedonian and Russian media seven Georgian self-admitted members of Maidan sniper groups testified that they and other sniper groups from Georgia and the Baltic States and the far-right-linked sniper group from Ukraine received orders, weapons, and payments from specific members of the Maidan leadership and former Georgian government leaders to shoot at both protesters and police in order to prevent a peace agreement from being signed by Yanukovych and Maidan leaders. They stated that snipers shot the police and protesters from the Music Conservatory and the Hotel Ukraina.&lt;ref&gt;“The hidden truth about Ukraine – Part 1”, 2017, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR1NFI6TBH0&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 10 January 2023); “The hidden truth about Ukraine – Part 2”, 2017, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0rR2Fh1(accessed&lt;/nowiki&gt; 10 January 2023); Anna Stephan, “Ploshhad’ Razbityh Nadezhd”, 2018, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-7xjDxFSQc&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 10 January 2023); Michael R. Caputo, “The Ukraine Hoax”, 2022, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://rumble.com/v1e6fr9-the-ukraine-hoax.html&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 10 January 2023).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Prosecutor General Office of Ukraine, Maidan victims’ lawyers, self- styled ‘fact-checking’ websites, and, with rare exceptions, the Ukrainian media claimed that these Georgians were fakes or actors.&lt;ref&gt;“Four Inaccuracies in Disinformation about Georgian Snipers Allegedly Opening Fire on Protesters Rallying on Maidan”, ''Myth Detector'', 22 February 2018, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://mythdetector.ge/en/four-inaccuracies-in-disinformation-about-georgian-snipers-allegedly-opening-fire-on-protesters-rallying-on-maidan/&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 10 January 2023).&lt;/ref&gt; To corroborate their testimonies, most of these Georgians provided their names, passport numbers and border stamps, copies of plane tickets, photos from the Georgian military, and a video of one of them in the Trade-Union building during the Odesa massacre. They stated that they had entered Ukraine during the “Euromaidan” with forged passports, using false names and were not stopped at the border. The head of the Georgian Legion de facto confirmed that one of these Georgians, whose identity and testimony were dismissed as fake because of spelling error in his Georgian Ministry of Defense id, served as an adviser in this ministry.&lt;ref&gt;“Four Inaccuracies.”&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Despite of its central importance to the conflicts in Ukraine and the world, only a few academic studies have analyzed the Maidan massacre. Most studies found that the Maidan massacre was a ‘false flag operation’ organized and covertly conducted by elements of the Maidan leadership and the far right in order to win the asymmetric conflict during the ‘Euromaidan’ and seize power in Ukraine. Analysis of synchronized videos, eyewitnesses, and bullet holes and wound locations showed that both the police and the protesters had been shot at from Maidan-controlled buildings.&lt;ref&gt;Katchanovski, The “Snipers;” Katchanovski, The Maidan; Ivan Katchanovski, “The far right, the Euromaidan, and the Maidan massacre in Ukraine”, ''Journal of Labor and Society'' 23, no 1 (2020): 5-29; replicated by Hahn, ''Ukraine.''&lt;/ref&gt; These Maidan massacre studies were cited by over 100 other studies, overwhelmingly favorably.&lt;ref&gt;See, for example, Moniz Bandeira, ''The World Disorder: US Hegemony, Proxy Wars, Terrorism and Humanitarian Catastrophes'' (Cham: Springer, 2019); Stephen F. Cohen, ''War with Russia: From Putin &amp; Ukraine to Trump &amp; Russiagate'' (New York: Hot Books, 2018); Hahn, ''Ukraine''; Volodymyr Ishchenko, “Far right participation in the Ukrainian Maidan protests: an attempt of systematic estimation”, ''European Politics and Society'' 17, no 4 (2016): 453-472; David Lane, “The International Context: Russia, Ukraine and the Drift to East-West Confrontation”, ''International Critical Thought'' 6, no 4 (2016): 623-644; David Mandel, “The Conflict in Ukraine”, ''Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe'' 24, no 1 (2016): 83-88; Sakwa, ''Frontline'', 90-92.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Based on secondary sources, Serhiy Kudelia has argued that the violence was initiated by the far-right Maidan protesters, who killed and wounded many policemen and that the Berkut police then massacred unarmed protesters in turn.&lt;ref&gt;Serhiy Kudelia, “When Numbers are Not Enough: The Strategic Use of Violence in Ukraine’s 2014 Revolution”, ''Comparative Politics'' 50, no 4 (2018): 501-521.&lt;/ref&gt; At least two other studies also found significant involvement of the far right in violence during the Maidan but did not examine the Maidan massacre specifically.&lt;ref&gt;Ishchenko, Far right; Volodymyr Ishchenko, “Insufficiently diverse: The problem of nonviolent leverage and radicalization of Ukraine’s Maidan uprising, 2013-2014”, ''Journal of Eurasian Studies'' 11, no 2 (2020): 201-215.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Some studies attributed the massacre to the Berkut anti-riot police, or snipers from the Security Service of Ukraine and Internal Troops. However, they did not research the massacre specifically and relied uncritically on claims made by the Maidan politicians and sympathetic Ukrainian and Western media concerning perpetrators and organizers of this massacre.&lt;ref&gt;David R. Marples and Frederick V. Mills, eds., ''Ukraine’s Euromaidan. Analyses of a Civil Revolution'' (Stuttgart: ''Ibidem,'' 2015).&lt;/ref&gt; Some studies relied on a 3D model reconstruction of the killings made by a New York architectural company.&lt;ref&gt;Paul D’Anieri, ''Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War'' (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019).&lt;/ref&gt; However, this model misrepresented the wound locations specified in the forensic reports and consequently the location of the shooters.&lt;ref&gt;Ivan Katchanovski, “The Buried Maidan Massacre and Its Misrepresentation by the West,” ''Consortium News'', 22 April 2019, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/22/the-buried-maidan-massacre-and-its-misrepresentation-by-the-west/&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 22 March 2023).&lt;/ref&gt; The SITU Research head stated that “… eventually, there is a consensus that there was a third party acting,” “it is clear from forensic evidence that people were shot in the back,” and “somebody was shooting from rooftops.”&lt;ref&gt;“Bradley Samuels: Experiments at the Intersection of Art, Law and Innovation,” 2017, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTsr6eN8TmI&amp;t=3374s&lt;/nowiki&gt; (56:15) (accessed 20 November 2021).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Most importantly, previous studies did not examine comprehensively the evidence revealed by Maidan massacre trial and investigation.<br /> <br /> == 1 Data and Methodology ==<br /> In my analysis, I looked at nearly 1,000 hours of official video recordings of the Maidan massacre trial, the Yanukovych treason trial, and information concerning investigations of this massacre in over 2,500 court decisions in the official online Ukrainian court decisions database.&lt;ref&gt;“Zasidannya pro « Vbyvstva lyudei 20.02.2014 pid chas Yevromajdanu »”, ''Sudova vlada Ukrainy'', &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzpaJLOcXiHBDQjH4EKdh4aZ3gUzLBn_m&lt;/nowiki&gt;; (accessed 10 January 2023); ''Yedynyi derzhavnyi reyestr sudovykh rishen''’, &lt;nowiki&gt;http://www.reyestr.court.gov.ua/&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 10 January 2023).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> My study also analyzes the testimonies of wounded protesters and prosecution and defense witnesses, and other witnesses at the trial and investigation. It examines videos presented at the trial, the results of forensic ballistic and medical examinations, and investigative experiments made by government experts for the investigation and the trial. Two online video compilations include brief relevant segments of testimonies of wounded protesters and prosecution witnesses at the trial and the investigation (Video Appendix A and B).&lt;ref&gt;Video Appendix A: Maidan Massacre Trial and Investigation Testimonies by 52 Wounded Maidan Protesters about Snipers in Maidan-Controlled Locations, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://youtu.be/p1XuVpWTaq0&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 24 March 2023); Video Appendix B: Testimonies by Dozens of Prosecution Witnesses at the Maidan Massacre Trial &amp; Investigation Concerning Snipers in Maidan-Controlled Locations, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://youtu.be/9aLmHPZfKU0&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 24 March 2023).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === 1.1 Videos, Photos, and Audio Recordings ===<br /> The prosecution presented various videos and photos of Berkut policemen and specific Maidan protesters as evidence that the specific protesters were shot by Berkut. The prosecution charges that about two dozen members of the special Berkut company massacred the protesters during brief police advance on the ground near Zhovtnevyi Palace, and then from behind two barricades on Instytutska Street.<br /> <br /> A synchronized video compilation, which was sponsored by GPU, produced anonymously by Jus Talionis group, and presented at the trial as evidence that the Berkut massacred the protesters, however shows that the times and the directions of Berkut shooting did not coincide with times of the killings of those Maidan protesters on film.&lt;ref&gt;“Vysota “Zhovtnevyi” (2-e vydannia) Chastyna 2: 08:53-11:00 (20.02.2014),” Talionis, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cRx_fjfB9w&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 10 January 2023); “Vysota “Zhovtnevyi” (2-e vydannia) Chastyna 3: 10:58-17:31 (20.02.2014), Jus Talionis Reconstruction Lab &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hve1CHcGq9c&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 10 January 2023).&lt;/ref&gt; These Berkut policemen were filmed in numerous videos and National Bank security cameras for almost entire time from their deployment to the end of the massacre, making it impossible for them to have shot the majority of the protesters who were killed. In addition, synchronized videos and other evidence presented during the trial confirmed that three protesters were killed on Instytutska Street even before the special Berkut company first appeared and started shooting.<br /> <br /> In contrast, Berkut lawyers showed that the time and direction of a protester shooting from a hunting rifle in videos and photos match the time of killing of a Berkut policeman and a direction of the gunshot determined by government forensic experts. They identified the Maidan shooter, but he was not charged.<br /> <br /> Several videos examined at the trial showed Maidan snipers, in particular, the commander and members of a far-right-linked company in the Hotel Ukraina. The far-right Svoboda Party stated before the massacre that it had taken the Hotel Ukraina under its control and guard (Photo Appendix 1).&lt;ref&gt;Photo Appendix 1. The statement by the far-right Svoboda party about taking the Hotel Ukraina under its control and guard before the Maidan massacre in Ukraine (Google translation), &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369503642_Photo_Appendix_1_The_statement_by_the_far-right_Svoboda_party_about_taking_the_Hotel_Ukraina_&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> <br /> under_its_control_and_guard_before_the_Maidan_massacre_in_Ukraine (accessed 24 March 2023).&lt;/ref&gt; Videos show Svoboda deputies and activists guarding the hotel entrance, accompanying snipers from the far-right linked Maidan company into the building, and searching the hotel during the massacre.&lt;ref&gt;Katchanovski, “The ‘Snipers’;” Katchanovski, “The far right”.&lt;/ref&gt; A recording of a live broadcast of Espresso TV shows a Maidan protester giving a Kalashnikov-type firearm to another protester at the Maidan barricade in front of the Maidan stage during a standoff with the police, and another protester shooting from a hunting rifle in the direction of the police.<br /> <br /> Un-broadcast segments of video made by Belgian television channel VRT were demonstrated at the trial and show that two Maidan protesters lured a group of protesters to advance shortly before they would be shot at. It shows a protester shouting to the other protesters in this group not to move ahead because snipers from the Hotel Ukraina were shooting all the protesters and that he saw gunshot flashes from there. The VRT video then shows a bullet hitting a tree in the direction of this group of the protesters, who turn back, point at the hotel and shout to the snipers there not to shoot.&lt;ref&gt;Ivan Katchanovski, “Shooting of Maidan Protesters from Maidan-Controlled Locations”, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHok-Df7kYs&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 18 January 2023).&lt;/ref&gt; A majority of wounded protesters from this group, including Serhii Trapezun and Serhii Tityk, testified that they and their group were shot at from this hotel and other Maidan-controlled buildings nearby, witnessed snipers there, or were told by other protesters about them (Video Appendix A).<br /> <br /> Ukrainian security forces’ Alfa snipers and commanders testified at the trial as prosecution witnesses that recordings of their intercepted radio communications were selectively edited and were made when they were deployed to the Cabinet of Ministers building to locate snipers in the Maidan controlled Hotel Ukraina and other buildings after the massacre was almost over (Video Appendix B). These audio recordings were widely publicized in the Ukrainian media after the Maidan massacre as evidence that government snipers had massacred the Maidan protesters.<br /> <br /> === 1.2 Eye-Witness Testimonies ===<br /> 51 out of 72 wounded Maidan protesters, with whose shooting on February 20 Berkut policemen are charged and whose testimonies were revealed, testified at the trial and the investigation that they had been shot by snipers from Maidan-controlled buildings or areas, had themselves witnessed snipers there, or had been told by other Maidan protesters about such snipers. 31 of these wounded protesters testified at the trial and/or the investigation that they had been shot from the Hotel Ukraina, the Bank Arkada, and Zhovtnevyi Palace, the buildings on Muzeinyi Lane and Horodetskyi Street, or other Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. At least 33 wounded protesters testified that they had either witnessed snipers there and/or were told about snipers in these Maidan-controlled locations, mostly in the Hotel Ukraina, by other protesters. (Video Appendix A).<br /> <br /> The absolute majority of the wounded protesters stated at the trial and investigation that they were shot from the Hotel Ukraina or witnessed snipers there. Other protesters testified at the trial that the snipers in the Hotel Ukraina who massacred the protesters were Maidan snipers. One protester, who was filmed by the BBC running for cover along with other protesters and the BBC journalists after they saw a sniper from the hotel shooting at them, revealed that he was told then by other protesters that this was “our sniper.” He saw that after this shooting a sniper on another floor of the Hotel Ukraina made visual signs to protesters not to reveal the snipers in the hotel. (Video Appendix B, 2:33). The GPU investigation revealed that one of the far-right Svoboda leaders lived in that hotel room at the time of the massacre. Another protester testified that other protesters during the massacre told him about snipers in the Hotel Ukraina and were wondering why ‘our own were shooting our own’. (Video Appendix B, 1:41). He was featured in the ‘Winter on Fire’ documentary, but this revelation was not shown in that Oscar-nominated documentary.<br /> <br /> A female Maidan medic, who was reported in the numerous Western media as wounded on the Maidan, testified at the trial not as a wounded but as a witness. She admitted in an interview with a Ukrainian journalist that she had not been wounded. This journalist reported that the wounding of this Maidan medic had been staged by the Maidan Self-Defense leadership, and that surgery she has undergone shortly before the massacre was misrepresented as fresh wounds.&lt;ref&gt;“Zhurnalist poobshhalsja s devushkoj-medikom, jakoby « ranennoj v sheju » snajperom vo vremja Evromajdana. Okazalos’, ranenie moglo byt’ inscenirovkoj”, ''tk.media'', 3 February 2020, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://tk.media/news/zhurnalist-razoblachil-devushku-medika-yakoby-ranennuyu-v-sheyu-snayperom-vo-vremya-evromaydana-okazalos-ranenie-bylo-instse&lt;/nowiki&gt; nirovkoy-2020-02-03 (accessed 26 January 2022).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Another protester testified that he saw a sniper shooting from the Main Post Office roof and killing a person matching the description of Viktor Smolensky, who was shot next to this female medic. This building was then the headquarters of the Right Sector. (Video Appendix B, 16:29).<br /> <br /> The testimonies by the absolute majority of wounded protesters generally agree with the videos of snipers in these buildings, and the findings of forensic medical examinations that protesters were shot from steep directions from the sides or the back. They are also consistent with several hundred witness testimonies in social media about such snipers. A video compilation of over 80 such witness testimonies was shown at the trial.&lt;ref name=&quot;:0&quot;&gt;“Zasidannia vid 5.10.2021” &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmXrx2SKBWw&amp;t=1469s&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 26 January 2022); Ivan Katchanovski, “Over 80 Witness Testimonies Concerning Snipers in Maidan-Controlled Buildings and Areas”, 2019, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMyWOaNhIbM&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 26 January 2022).&lt;/ref&gt; Maidan politicians and activists testified that they witnessed involvement of specific Maidan leaders from the oligarchic parties and far right organizations in the massacre and cover-up of snipers. Dozens of Maidan protesters and Ukrainian and foreign journalists testified about witnessing snipers in the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled buildings.&lt;ref name=&quot;:0&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> The trial admitted and showed as evidence a testimony of one of the Georgians who confessed to being a member of a group of Maidan snipers.&lt;ref&gt;“Zasidannia vid 14.12.2021”, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://youtu.be/iwaXGtd1Pe8?t=6026&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 26 January 2022).&lt;/ref&gt; The Ukrainian border guards confirmed his identity and that he visited Kyiv shortly before the start of the Euromaidan. He and two other Georgians testified at the Prosecutor General’s Office of Belarus, at the request of the Prosecutor General Office of Ukraine, following an appeal by the lawyers for the Berkut policemen. Three self-admitted Georgian snipers also gave written depositions for the trial and offered to testify via a video link. Armenian, Belarusian, and, as noted, Ukrainian authorities all confirmed the identities of these Georgians.<br /> <br /> Their testimonies and testimonies by the majority of wounded Maidan protesters concerning snipers in Maidan-controlled locations are consistent with the testimony of several dozen prosecution witnesses and relatives of those killed. These witnesses for the prosecution were supposed to provide supporting testimony for the prosecution, but they testified instead to the existence of snipers in the Maidan-controlled buildings and areas massacring protesters and the police. (Video Appendix B).<br /> <br /> The commanders of Alfa, Omega, and UDO sniper units testified that government snipers were deployed only after the massacre was underway, and that they had orders to locate the snipers who were shooting at the police and protesters. They too confirmed that snipers were located in the Maidan-controlled buildings, and that those snipers shot not only at the protesters, but also at the police and snipers from their units. (Video Appendix B). Dozens of defense witnesses also testified about Maidan snipers or snipers in the Maidan-controlled buildings and areas, in particular, shooting the police and the protesters.<br /> <br /> By contrast, the Berkut policemen and two Omega servicemen, who were arrested and charged with the massacre, denied that they had shot at the protesters. The absolute majority of testimonies of wounded Maidan protesters about being shot by the Berkut on the ground, or by snipers in government-controlled buildings are not corroborated by videos, forensic medical examinations, or other evidence. In the remaining cases, the evidence of their involvement is either absent or contradictory.<br /> <br /> Nor did the government investigations and subsequent trials reveal any evidence of an order to shoot at the Maidan protesters by then President Yanukovych, or the commanders of Internal Affairs troops, police, or the Ukrainian Security Forces. The same concerns “titushki” hired by the Yanukovych government or any “third force.” The Prosecutor General of Ukraine and the head of its department in charge of the Maidan massacre investigation stated that they did not have evidence about involvement of the Russian government and Russian snipers in the Maidan massacre.&lt;ref&gt;“SBU ne peredala GPU dokazatel’stva uchastiia Surkova v rasstrele Evromaidana, – Shokin”, 27 May 27 2015, ''112 Ukraina'', &lt;nowiki&gt;http://112.ua/politika/sbu-ne-peredala-gpu-dokazatelstva-uchastiya-surkova-v-rasstrele-evromaydana--shokin-232196.html&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 26 January 2019); Alla Shershen’, “Glavnyj sledovatel’ po delu Maidana: Udivljaius’, kak oni ostaiutsia na dolzhnostiah”, 19 May 19 2015, ''Ukrinform'', &lt;nowiki&gt;http://www.ukrinform.ua/rus/news/glavniy_sledovatel_po_delu_maydana_ya_udivlyayus_kak_oni_mogut_rabotat_na_svoih__dolgnostyah_1746015&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 26 January 2022).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Yanukovych’s trial for state treason revealed testimony and evidence suggesting that he fled from Kyiv, and later from Ukraine, not because he had ordered the massacre (as the prosecution insisted), but because of the number of assassination attempts being made on his life. Witnesses at his trial testified that right after the Maidan massacre, the president’s motorcade was fired upon at a checkpoint manned by activists of far-right Right Sector and Svoboda. This is corroborated by photos of his car with visible bullet impacts. His former bodyguards also testified that his security detail had information about a plan involving Svoboda activist to assassinate him during a congress in Kharkiv.&lt;ref&gt;See, for example, “Eks-okhoronets’ Yanukovycha: Pershyi napad buv 19 liutoho 2014 roku”, 4 May 2018, ''Ukrainska Pravda'', &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2018/05/4/7179458&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 16 May 2022).&lt;/ref&gt; The helicopter pilots, who flew him there after the massacre, testified that the air traffic controllers relayed to them an order from Maidan leaders to land the helicopter with Yanukovych under threat of its shot-down by military planes. Leonid Kravchuk, the first president of Ukraine, revealed during this trial that shortly before the Maidan massacre he received information about a plot code named ‘Ceausescu’ to assassinate Yanukovych.&lt;ref&gt;“U Kravchuka byla informaciija ob ubiistve Yanukovicha – advokat”. 3 August 3, 2018, ''Vesti'', &lt;nowiki&gt;https://vesti-ukr.com/politika/297639-u-kravchuka-byla-informatsija-ob-ubijstve-janukovicha-advokat&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 26 January 2022).&lt;/ref&gt; Ceausescu, the last communist leader of Romania, was assassinated soon after snipers massacred anti-government protesters in a false-flag operation. The former Romanian president, prime-minister, and a number of other leaders of the “revolution” were charged by the Romanian prosecutors in 2018 and 2019 with crimes against humanity for orchestrating killings of their own supporters right after seizing power in 1989.&lt;ref&gt;“Romanian Ex-President Iliescu Indicted For ‘Crimes Against Humanity.’” ''RFE/RL'', December 21, 2018, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.rferl.org/a/romanian-ex-president-iliescu-indicted-for-crimes-against-humanity-/29669414.html&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 26 January 2022).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === 1.3 Results from the Forensic Examinations ===<br /> The findings of forensic medical examinations done by government experts for the prosecution were first made public during the Maidan massacre trial, and revealed that the absolute majority of protesters were shot from the side or back, and from top to bottom. Most videos and photos, however, show that the absolute majority of those killed and wounded had the Berkut police in front of them and at ground level, whereas that the Maidan-controlled buildings were generally behind them and on the left and right side.<br /> <br /> Forensic medical examinations indicate that 40 out of the 48 killed protesters were shot from a high angle. At least 36 of them were killed at a time when the Berkut policemen were filmed on the ground. Just one protester was killed from a bullet that entered and exited his body horizontally, but he was shot from the side. Of 7 protesters killed who had not forensic information about their wounds, four were shot by hunting pellets before the Berkut special company appeared on the Maidan.<br /> <br /> 48 out of 51 wounded protesters had steep entry wounds, consistent with the theory that they were shot by snipers in Maidan-controlled buildings, or on the roofs of these buildings.<br /> <br /> The forensic ballistic examinations presented at the trial found that 19 protesters were killed on February 20 by bullets which match the calibers not only of AKM Kalashnikov assault rifles, but also of hunting versions of Kalashnikovs, and other weapons. They found that Ivan Bliok was killed from a hunting version of Kalashnikov machine gun.&lt;ref&gt;“Zasidannia vid 30.06.2016”, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iFGip3tB3k&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 26 January 2022).&lt;/ref&gt; Videos showed protesters with hunting firearms in the Hotel Ukraina during the massacre. Four protesters were killed by pellets that are used in hunting; two were killed by expanding hunting bullets whose calibers differed from those used by Berkut.&lt;ref&gt;“Zasidannya vid 30.06.2016;” “Zasidannia vid 05.07.2016”, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL5zSVAB5FM&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 12 January 2022).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> A forensic ballistic examination conducted by government experts with use of an automatic computer-based IBIS-TAIS system, found that the bullets extracted from killed protesters, trees, and the Hotel Ukraina rooms did not match police database for Kalashnikov assault rifles of members of the entire Kyiv Berkut regiment, including the special Berkut unit deployed.&lt;ref&gt;See “Zasidannia vid 21.06.2016”, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfHQLOp5PlE&lt;/nowiki&gt;, (2:39:23) (accessed 26 January 2022).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Instead, government ballistic experts found that six Maidan protesters had been killed, and at least ten wounded from the Hotel-Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. The prosecution did not use forensic ballistic experts to determine trajectories of bullets and locations of shooters of the absolute majority of the Maidan protesters. The investigation also determined based on their testimonies, investigative experiments, and forensic examinations that almost half of protesters (77 out of 157) were wounded from sectors where no Berkut police were located, and did not charge anyone with these shooting.&lt;ref&gt;“GPU: Slidstvom identyfikovano 24 kuli, vylucheni z til poranennykh i zahyblykh na Maidani”, 2016, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCxT2q2dnyc&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 26 June 2021).&lt;/ref&gt; This evidence confirming that the protesters were wounded by snipers in the Maidan-controlled areas was not made public.<br /> <br /> The bullet holes identified in the government’s forensic reports showed that the Berkut police generally shot above protesters, on the second floor and above the Hotel Ukraina, into electric poles, and trees. Forensic examinations by government investigators did not report a single bullet hole in the hotel’s ground floor, which is located at the height of the protesters.<br /> <br /> == 2 Evidence of a Cover-Up ==<br /> It is striking that, more than nine years after one of the best documented cases of the mass murder in history, there is not a single person convicted or still under arrest for the Maidan massacre of the protesters and the police. As noted, the prosecution did not charge anyone for wounding 77 protesters, or almost half the total wounded on February 20, after the investigation determined that they had not been shot from Berkut positions but from elsewhere. Similarly, nobody was charged with killing of a Georgian protester from the party of the former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili. Circumstances of his death were not revealed. His body was reportedly found in the Maidan-controlled area shortly after the massacre.<br /> <br /> A likely reason for this is that the Prosecutor General’s Office has been headed by either politicians from the Svoboda and Peoples Front parties, or close allies of presidents Poroshenko and Zelensky. The fact that leading members of Svoboda and Peoples Front parties were selected to head the Prosecutor General Office, even though these parties were accused by other Maidan activists and self-admitted Georgian members of the Maidan sniper groups of having been directly involved in the massacre suggests a cover- up and stonewalling. Maidan victims lawyers, who were themselves Maidan activists, supported the government investigation and the prosecution after initial criticism.<br /> <br /> One Ukrainian journalist who headed the civic council of the Prosecutor General Office of Ukraine after the Maidan, stated that the heads of the GPU investigation of the Maidan massacre had been selected by one of the Maidan leaders.&lt;ref&gt;“Yak Horbatyuk pleminnyka na robotu v DBR vlashtovuvav”, ''Naspravdi.Today'', 4 January, 2020, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://naspravdi.today/uk/2020/01/04/yak-horbatiuk-pleminnyka-na-robotu-v-dbr-vlashtovuvav&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 12 January 2022).&lt;/ref&gt; Self-admitted Georgian snipers, as well as members of the Yanukovych government alleged that this member of the Maidan leadership was one of the organizers of the Maidan massacre. He was filmed by a Ukrainian TV evacuating a Maidan protester with a rifle and a scope on February 18, when mass shooting of the police and the protesters started. The person who helped him became an aide to the Minister of Internal Affairs very soon after the ‘Euromaidan’.&lt;ref&gt;“Tajna so snajperskoj vintovkoi Sergeia Pashinskogo uhodit korniami k Arsenu Avakovu”, 2015, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd3YXGD57Yw&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 12 May 2020).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Similarly, the main pro-Maidan parties blocked the creation of a parliamentary commission concerning the Maidan massacre during Petro Poroshenko’s presidency.&lt;ref&gt;“Syroid dopuskaet prichastnost’ predstavitelej segodnjashnej vlasti k sobytijam, proishodivshim na Evromaidane”, ''112 Ukraina'', 18 February 18, 2017, &lt;nowiki&gt;http://112.ua/politika/syroid-dopuskaet-prichastnost-predstaviteley-segodnyashney-vlasti-k-sobytiyam-proishodivshim-na-evromaydane-372879.html&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 12 January 2020) and personal communication, 10 May, 2017.&lt;/ref&gt; An amnesty law, adopted by the Ukrainian parliament on February 21, 2014, granted blanket immunity from prosecution for Maidan participants for a variety of serious crimes, including murder, terrorism, and seizure of power. The law also prohibited the investigation of any Maidan participant for such crimes, and specified that any evidence that had already been collected had to be destroyed.<br /> <br /> The release from a prison to house arrest and escape from Ukraine of the Berkut company commander charged with the massacre, is consistent with the cover-up theory. A Ukrainian journalist who, in 2014 headed the Civic Council of the GPU, stated that the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine was involved in transferring this Berkut special company commander from Ukraine to Russia.&lt;ref&gt;“Vilna terytoriia. Shist’ rokiv trahichnykh podii na Maidani”, 21 February 2020, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBLawMNBuD0&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 15 January 2022).&lt;/ref&gt; By order of President Zelensky, all five Berkut policemen, who were tried for the Maidan massacre, were released in exchange for Donbas separatists within months of the expected verdict in 2019. This decision stopped the Maidan massacre trial, which resumed only after two of these Berkut members returned voluntarily from separatist-controlled Donbas in order to prove their innocence.<br /> <br /> Despite the evidence presented at the trial suggesting that the Berkut police could not have massacred the Maidan protesters, an impartial judgement from the court’s final verdict, which is expected in Fall of 2023, would be difficult. The Ukrainian courts lack independence, especially in high-profile and highly politicized cases, and often issue their decisions in such cases on directives from the presidential administration. Impartiality would be especially difficult because three exchanged Berkut policemen, who are now tried by the Kyiv court in absentia for the Maidan massacre, are in Russian-annexed Donbas during the Ukraine-Russia war. In addition, the trial was also repeatedly attacked and threatened by far-right activists, while the trial judge was beaten by a pro-Maidan activist.<br /> <br /> The GPU investigators simply denied apriori that there were any snipers in Maidan-controlled buildings and did not investigate them. Likewise, public statements by eight different Maidan politicians and activists and several self-admitted Georgian snipers about involvement of Maidan snipers and Maidan leaders in the massacre were never investigated. Statements by two Svoboda members that a Western government representative had told them before the massacre that the Western governments would turn on Yanukovych if casualties among the protesters reached 100 were also not investigated, although the victims were quickly dubbed the ‘Heavenly hundred’.&lt;ref&gt;Katchanovski, “The far right”, 15.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The GPU initially stated, in March 2014, that it had identified the snipers, their locations, and even seized their weapons.&lt;ref&gt;“Siloviki ustanovili lichnosti snajperov, kotorye rasstrelivali ljudej na Maidane”, ''Glavred'', 18 March 2014, &lt;nowiki&gt;http://glavred.info/politika/siloviki-ustanovili-lichnosti-snayperov-kotorye-rasstrelivali-lyudey-na-maydane-274477.html&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 11 January 2022).&lt;/ref&gt; In April 2014 the GPU issued a statement saying that the protesters had been shot with a Simonov ‘sniper rifle’ from the Hotel Ukraina.&lt;ref&gt;“Prikaz rasstrelivat’ mitinguiushhih otdaval Yanukovich – GPU”. ''UNIAN'', 2 April 2014, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.unian.net/politics/903462-prikaz-rasstrelivat-mitinguyuschih-otdaval-yanukovich-gpu.html&lt;/nowiki&gt;. The Simonov rifle is not a sniper rifle but a semi-automatic carbine of the same caliber bullets as the AKM; the Simonov was generally removed from military and police service in Ukraine and was available as a hunting rifle.&lt;/ref&gt; Very soon afterwards, however, the heads of the Prosecutor General Office, the Security Service of Ukraine, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs all reversed their finding about the Hotel Ukraina, and instead insisted that a special Berkut company had massacred the Maidan protesters.<br /> <br /> An International Advisory Panel of the Council of Europe reported in 2015 that, contrary to public statements, the official investigation in Ukraine had evidence of the killing at least three Maidan protesters from the Hotel Ukraina or the Music Conservatory, and that at least 10 other protesters had been killed by snipers from nearby rooftops. The report also asserted that the investigation was being stalled, in particular, by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the GPU.&lt;ref&gt;“Report of the International Advisory Panel on its Review of the Maidan Investigations, 31 March 31 2015, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://rm.coe.int/CoERMPublicCommonSearchServices/DisplayDCTMContent?documentId=09000016802f038b&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 12 January 2022).&lt;/ref&gt; The Prosecutor General Office reversed without any explanations their own previous investigation findings that at least three protesters were killed from the Hotel Ukraina and 10 others were also killed from significant heights and charged the Berkut policemen with killings of all these protesters. The GPU did not initially charge the Berkut police company members with killings of 10 of the protesters.<br /> <br /> Its investigation also failed to conduct a ballistic determination of the bullet trajectories by forensic ballistic experts, even after the Maidan massacre trial judge ordered such examinations, specifically to determine if these trajectories were from the Maidan-controlled buildings. A Berkut lawyer stated that these trial-ordered investigative experiments ceased after government forensic experts determined that the first few Maidan protesters were shot from the Maidan-controlled Hotel Ukraina and Music Conservatory.&lt;ref&gt;“Zasidannia vid 18.10.2022”, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csHxh6BYqzg&lt;/nowiki&gt; (5:46) (accessed 30 January 2022).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> A government forensic expert revealed at this trial that he witnessed investigators using lasers to determine locations of shooters, but the prosecution omitted this crucial evidence. The investigation, with some exceptions, instead of ballistic experts used complex forensic examinations by medical experts to determine sectors of fire without on-site visits and any measurements and explanations provided. Forensic medical experts testified that, for the first time in their experience, they and not ballistic experts had been asked to conduct such examinations to determine the locations of the shooters. The judge even questioned the findings of their reports, in particular, their reversals of their own forensic medical examinations and of the testimonies of wounded protesters that shots had been fired from Maidan-controlled buildings and areas.&lt;ref&gt;“Zasidannia vid 19.01.2022”, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlmLEwkYcuI&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 12 January 2022).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The SITU 3D model reconstruction of the killings of three Maidan protesters that was produced by a New York architecture company for the Maidan victims’ lawyers&lt;ref&gt;“Euromaidan Event Reconstruction”, 2018, &lt;nowiki&gt;http://maidan.situplatform.com/&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 20 November 2021).&lt;/ref&gt; was cited by these lawyers, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, and the media, in particular, the New York Times, as definite evidence that the Maidan protesters were massacred by the Berkut police.&lt;ref&gt;“Who Killed the Kiev Protesters? A 3-D Model Holds the Clues”, ''New York Times'', 30 May 2018, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/magazine/ukraine-protest-video.html&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 30 June 2019).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In this 3D model, however, the wound locations of three protesters killed Maidan do not match the entry and exit wound locations indicated in the government forensic medical examinations of their bodies and clothes. This model changed the steep angle wounds, whose exact locations, heights, and directions were specified in forensic medical examinations, to be nearly horizontal, and moved them from the sides or back of the bodies to the front in order to match the location of the Berkut police barricades in front of these three killed protesters. The SITU model was not admitted as evidence by the Maidan massacre trial.<br /> <br /> The many unexplained reversals of testimonies by wounded protesters at the trial, compared to their statements during the investigation, also suggest either a cover-up or evidence tempering. The same concerns the unexplained reversal of the forensic examinations of bullets just a few weeks before the prosecution submitted its the case to court and then again in 2019. These new findings, that bullets fired from Berkut Kalashnikovs had killed the protesters, reversed, without explanation, the findings of nearly 40 previous forensic ballistic examinations, including those conducted by the same experts using the same methods and conducted by the automatic computer-based IBIS-TAIS system.<br /> <br /> Synchronized content analysis of the videos of the Berkut police and several such killed and wounded protesters along with locations and directions of wounds in forensic medical examination, testimonies of eyewitnesses among Maidan protesters, and on-site investigative experiments by government ballistic experts show that Maidan protesters were shot from Maidan-controlled buildings and could not have been physically shot from the Berkut positions contrary to findings of new examinations of bullets. This, in particular, concerns the Berkut policemen who are charged with the massacre.<br /> <br /> The Maidan massacre trial also revealed examples of evidence tampering. Bullets, allegedly of those killed and wounded protesters, appeared without any chain of custody documentation, or disappeared, changed size, shape and packaging. For example, the Maxym Shymko autopsy report listed three grey and one yellow bullet fragment, but in the forensic ballistic examinations, a new yellow bullet piece of much larger size replaced one of grey pieces. This new bullet piece was then matched to a Berkut Kalashnikov, reversing multiple previous forensic examinations, without any explanation. This newfound bullet was the only piece of evidence linking a Berkut policeman, who was exchanged to Donbas separatists and has been tried in absentia, to the shootings.&lt;ref&gt;“Zasidannia vid 26.10.2022”, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRZMn1eO_pM&amp;t=1654s&lt;/nowiki&gt; (27:34) (accessed 12 January 2022).&lt;/ref&gt; The forensic medical examination, meanwhile, showed that the protester involved had been shot from a steep angle.<br /> <br /> A lengthy video by German state television (ARD), was introduced at the trial by the Maidan victims’ lawyers, but it had no sound track during the most important part of the massacre.&lt;ref&gt;“Nove video rozstriliv na Maidani”, ''TyzhdenUA'', 2017, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gquj-Gf7cVQ&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 16 January 2018).&lt;/ref&gt; A Ukrainian journalist, writing on social media, said that he had filmed this video for ARD, and that the video shown at the trial had been cut. The video content and his statements both indicate that the video was filmed from the same Hotel Ukraina room rented by German television channel ZDF, and in which snipers from the far-right-linked Maidan company were filmed shooting at the Maidan protesters. Since this video simultaneously captured the killing and wounding of the protesters and the position of the Berkut police, had the missing audio of the gunshots been available, it could have demonstrated that the specific times of the shooting of specific protesters coincided with loud sound of gunshots from this Maidan-controlled hotel and not with more distant sound of Berkut gunshots from their barricade.<br /> <br /> The Maidan massacre trial was restarted in 2016, then suspended for one year after the exchange of the five Berkut policemen to separatists by President Zelensky. Several attacks by the neo-Nazi C14 and other far right groups disrupted and threatened the trial. There is no such evidence of systematic cover-up by the Yanukovych government leaders and Berkut members. Ultimately, two out of the five Berkut policemen who were arrested for several years and tried for the Maidan massacre were released in 2019 because of lack of evidence that they killed or wounded any specific protesters.<br /> <br /> In addition, key pieces of evidence of the massacre on February 20, 2014 have simply disappeared while they were under the Maidan opposition or Maidan government control or in the possession of the GPU. This includes almost all shields and helmets of killed and wounded protesters (bullet holes in them could have helped to identify the locations of shooters), several bullets extracted from the bodies of protesters and police, from the trees, soil, and flower box at the Maidan buildings have disappeared. Some trees with bullets and/or bullet holes in the area were cut down, including at the request of the prosecution. Many online streams and web camera recordings of the Maidan from the early morning of February 20 also disappeared immediately after the massacre, along with security camera recordings from the Hotel Ukraina, the Bank Arkada, and other Maidan-controlled buildings.<br /> <br /> The evidence of sniper positions, as reported by the head of the Maidan Self-Defense Andrii Parubii, found in the Hotel Ukraina are also missing, as are the Kalashnikov bullet boxes, shown by Svoboda activists to Guardian journalists during their investigation of the Hotel Ukraina.&lt;ref&gt;Ian Traynor and Harriet Salem, “Snipers stalk protesters in Ukraine as Kiev hotel becomes makeshift morgue”, ''Guardian'', &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/20/ukraine-snipers-kiev-hotel-makeshift-morgue&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 1 March 2023).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The first Prosecutor General of Ukraine appointed by President Zelensky, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, admitted that the investigation of the Maidan massacre and other Maidan crimes had been sabotaged, and that a significant part of the evidence had disappeared during prior investigations.&lt;ref&gt;“Chastyna materialiv znykla, ne xotily vyjty na zamovnykiv, – Ryaboshapka pro spravy Maidanu,” ''24 kanal'', 30 January 30 2020, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://24tv.ua/chastina_materialiv_znikla_ne_hotili_viyti_na_zamovnikiv__ryaboshapka_pro_spravi_maydanu_n1272252&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 30 January 2020).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Investigations of the massacres of the police and the protesters were separated even though they happened on the same days and in the same places. There were no forensic examinations comparisons of bullets extracted from bodies of the police and the protesters in spite of various evidence that they were shot by same groups of snipers. Nobody is convicted or arrested for killing and wounding the police despite confessions in the media and social media by several snipers and forensic ballistic examinations confirming them.<br /> <br /> The commander of the far-right-linked Maidan company, who along with several members of his company, publicly admitted in the media interviews shooting the police from the Music Conservatory and was filmed along with snipers from his company in the Hotel Ukraina during the massacre of the protesters, was not even interrogated by the GPU. He threatened from the Maidan stage to use weapons to overthrow Yanukovych by blaming him for the Maidan massacre and also admitted that his company forced members of the Ukrainian parliament to participate in the votes to dismiss Yanukovych and his government from power and to elect the Maidan opposition leaders in their place.&lt;ref&gt;Oksana Kovalenko, “Sotnyk, yakyj perelomyv khid istoriyi: Treba bulo dotyskaty,” ''Ukrainska pravda'', 24 February, 2014, &lt;nowiki&gt;http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2014/02/24/7016048&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 30 January 2020).&lt;/ref&gt; The GPU also did not interrogate members of his far-right Maidan company, with few exceptions, even though it obtained a list of their names and places of residence.<br /> <br /> Berkut lawyers throughout this trial and in closing arguments also stated that there is no evidence that the Berkut policemen, who are charged with the massacre, massacred any specific Maidan protesters. They stated based on testimonies of dozens of wounded Maidan protesters, defense and prosecution witnesses, videos, on-site investigative experiments, and medical and ballistic forensic examinations, that snipers in the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled buildings and areas shot both the police and the protesters. The Berkut lawyers suggested that key evidence, such as bullets and the last few forensic ballistic examinations, which reversed results of some 40 previous forensic ballistic examinations, was tampered with.&lt;ref&gt;See, for example, “Zasidannia vid 18.10.2022,” &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csHxh6BYqzg&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 15 January 2023); “Zasidannya vid 14.11.2022;” &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX3bGBx0o9c&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 15 January 2023).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Maidan massacre memorial proposed by the Government would completely change the landscape and the street. The site of the massacre is to become a park with a new Maidan massacre museum. The construction of this memorial will erase any remaining evidence and make it physically impossible to conduct any more on-site investigative experiments to determine bullet trajectories.&lt;ref&gt;“Arkhitekturnyi proyekt Natsional’noho memorialu Heroyiv Nebesnoyi Sotni”, ''National Memorial to the Heavenly Hundred Heroes and Revolution of Dignity Museum'', &lt;nowiki&gt;https://www.maidanmuseum.org/uk/node/1291&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 20 November 2021).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Similarly to the Maidan massacre, the Ukrainian government investigations in three related cases during the “Euromaidan” found evidence that they were staged false-flag operations but covered-up these findings and failed to prosecute those responsible. The Ukrainian police closed in 2020 its investigation of kidnapping, torture, and crucifixion of Dmytro Bulatov, one of Automaidan leaders during the “Euromaidan,” because the investigation determined based on testimonies of other Automaidan leaders and forensic examinations that the crime “was absent” and could have been “staged.”&lt;ref&gt;Anatolii Sharij, “Skrepy Maidana. Raspiatyi malchik”, 11 April 2020, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://youtu.be/02ML-MzAy0M&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed July 1, 2021).&lt;/ref&gt; The Military Prosecutor Office in Lviv found based on forensic ballistic examinations of bullet trajectories that an elderly female protester was killed and several protesters wounded in Khmelnytskyi by another Maidan protester from the regional headquarters of the Security Service of Ukraine porch which was then occupied by Maidan protesters. However, the Prosecutor General Office reversed this investigation as politically inappropriate and charged SBU Alfa officers for shooting the protesters. The government investigation also determined based on forensic examinations that the first three Maidan protesters were killed in January 2014 from a few meter distances in the Maidan-controlled areas, while the police lines were several dozen meters away from the Maidan positions. The results of these forensic examinations were also reversed without any explanations, and nobody is charged with their killings.&lt;ref&gt;Katchanovski, The Far-Right.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == 3 Conclusion ==<br /> Careful analysis of publicly available evidence revealed during the Maidan massacre trials and investigations, shows beyond reasonable doubt that the four killed and several dozen wounded policemen, and nearly all of the 49 killed and 157 wounded Maidan protesters, were shot by snipers in Maidan-controlled buildings and areas. Even the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s investigation determined that about half of Maidan protesters were wounded from locations other than the Berkut police positions and did not charge anyone with their attempted murder. The GPU investigation also initially found that the snipers in the Hotel Ukraina massacred the protesters. This hotel was controlled at the time by the far-right Svoboda party, which stated before the massacre that it took it under its control and guard.<br /> <br /> The absolute majority of wounded Maidan protesters, with whose shooting Berkut policemen are charged and whose testimonies were revealed at the trial, testified at the trial and the investigation that they were shot by snipers from the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled buildings or witnessed snipers there. Nearly 200 witnesses, including dozens of the prosecution witnesses, also testified about snipers in these Maidan-controlled locations, in particular, massacring the police and the protesters.<br /> <br /> Synchronized videos presented at the trial show that the times and directions of the shots by the Berkut policemen did not coincide with the times and directions at which specific protesters were killed. Other videos showed Maidan protesters being lured into positions that were exposed to snipers from such Maidan-controlled buildings as the Hotel Ukraina.<br /> <br /> Forensic medical examinations by government experts determined that the majority of the protesters were shot from a steep angle from either the side or back. This is consistent with locations of the Maidan-controlled buildings, and inconsistent with the locations of the Berkut police on the ground. Also, the initial ballistic examinations did not match the bullets extracted from the bodies of killed and wounded to the Kalashnikov rifles used by Berkut.<br /> <br /> Nor did the trials and investigations reveal any evidence that President Yanukovych or his law enforcement ministers and commanders ordered the massacre. Forensic examinations of the bullet holes by the government experts and the videos they presented showed that the Berkut policemen were mostly shooting above the Maidan protesters, and in particular into the Hotel Ukraina, which was the main location of the snipers.<br /> <br /> The accidental killing and wounding of a small number of protesters by the Berkut police by ricochet bullets, or in a crossfire with snipers in the Maidan- controlled buildings, cannot be completely excluded because of the lack of publicly available data or because of contradictory data. But their killing and wounding together with other protesters suggests that they were also likely shot by the Maidan snipers.<br /> <br /> There are various indications of stonewalling and cover-up of key evidence. It is noteworthy that the government investigation denied presence of any snipers in the Maidan-controlled buildings, in spite of its own initial findings that no fewer than 13 protesters were killed, and at least 77 wounded, from shot fired from the Maidan-controlled buildings and areas. When bullet trajectories, as determined by government ballistic experts and lasers in on-site-investigative experiments, showed that many Maidan protesters had been shot at from the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled buildings, this result was covered-up and ballistic experts were no longer used. The GPU did not use ballistic experts to determine the bullet trajectories and locations of shooters even after being ordered to do so by the judge and the jury.<br /> <br /> Unexplained reversals of results of some 40 forensic ballistic examinations, including computer-based examination which showed that bullets of Berkut Kalashnikovs did not match bullets from bodies of killed Maidan protesters, also suggest a cover-up and evidence tampering. Synchronized content analysis of the videos of the Berkut police and killed and wounded protesters along with locations and directions of wounds in forensic medical examination, testimonies of eyewitnesses among Maidan protesters, and on-site investigative experiments by government ballistic experts show that Maidan protesters could not had been physically shot from the Berkut positions,<br /> <br /> Not a single person has been convicted or is currently under arrest for the Maidan massacre after more than nine years of investigation and trials, despite this being one of the best documented cases of mass murder in history, and one of the most significant human rights violations in independent Ukraine. This massacre, and the subsequent assassinations attempts against President Yanukovych, resulted in the violent overthrow of the Ukrainian government, and this ‘false-flag’ mass killing must be seen as a key part of this violent and undemocratic overthrow of the government in Ukraine.<br /> <br /> These findings have major implications for understanding the ‘Euromaidan’ and the origins of the violent conflict in Ukraine and the conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and between Russia and the West. This false-flag massacre led to the de facto Western-backed violent overthrow of the Ukrainian government, which spiraled into the annexation of Crimea by Russia, the civil war, and Russian military interventions in Donbas.<br /> <br /> The trials and investigation revelations show that not popular “Euromaidan” protests but this staged mass killing and assassination attempts against Yanukovych were decisive in his overthrow. They demonstrate that, contrary to the dominant narratives in Ukraine and the West, the political transition during the “Euromaidan” was undemocratic. This mass killing of the protesters and the police also was one of the most significant political crimes and human rights violations in history of independent Ukraine.<br /> <br /> The failure of the Ukrainian law enforcement and justice system to provide proper justice in the case of the Maidan massacre undermined the rule of law and prospects for reconciliation within the Ukrainian society, which was divided to various degree and largely along regional lines in terms of support for the Maidan protests and on many other political issues during and after the “Euromaidan.” The Maidan massacre trial verdict is unlikely to ensure justice because of the politization of this case and lack of independence of the judicial branch, especially at the time of the Ukraine-Russia war. The same concerns the failure of international organizations, such as the International Criminal Court, the Council of Europe, and the UN Security Council, to ensure justice in this crucial case.<br /> <br /> The far-right involvement in the Maidan massacre of the police and the protesters and the failure to investigate, prosecute, and punish the far right for this mass killing resulted in the far right attaining oversize influence in the Ukrainian politics and de facto immunity for other violence or threats of violence.<br /> <br /> The Maidan massacre gave start to conflicts between Ukraine and Russia and between the West and Russia, which Russia drastically escalated by invading Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders claim that a fascist coup in Ukraine was conducted during the Maidan, with Western government involvement, and that a Nazi regime is in power in Ukraine. He has used this claim to justify the Russian invasion of February 24, 2022. However, scholarly studies show that the Russian government exaggerates the role of neo-Nazis during and after the Maidan, that the Ukrainian governments are not Nazi or neo-Nazi, and that the Russian invasion is illegal under the international law.&lt;ref&gt;See, for example, Katchanovski, The Far-Right; Katchanovski, The Russia-Ukraine.&lt;/ref&gt; Simply put, the Maidan massacre does not justify the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine. Conversely, the Russian invasion does not justify the Maidan massacre of the police and the protesters.<br /> <br /> The Maidan massacre, the oligarchic and far-right elements involved in this mass killing, and the lack of justice in this crucial case of political violence had significant negative consequences to Ukraine and Ukrainians directly and indirectly, i.e., as result of spiraling conflicts that it provoked. This was one of factors that indirectly contributed to Ukraine’s loss of largely pro-Russian Crimea as result of the Russian annexation, and to the loss of most of Donbas as result of separatist rebellion and Russian military interventions in August 2014 and January 2015. Understanding the Maidan massacre and bringing to justice its perpetrators could have helped to resolve peacefully the conflicts in Ukraine and Ukraine-Russia conflicts and to prevent the Ukraine-Russia war.<br /> <br /> The Maidan massacre and those who were involved in this mass killing by starting the conflicts spiral and the failure to bring justice by failing to prevent conflict escalation also indirectly contributed to the Ukraine-Russia war with its large human and economic costs to Ukraine and Ukrainians and likely permanent loss of annexed Donbas and parts of other Eastern and Southern regions of Ukraine.&lt;ref&gt;Ivan Katchanovski, “The hidden origin of the escalating Ukraine-Russia conflict”, ''Canadian Dimension'', 22 January 2022, &lt;nowiki&gt;https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-hidden-origin-of-the-escalating-ukraine-russia-conflict&lt;/nowiki&gt; (accessed 23 March, 2023).&lt;/ref&gt; Ukraine is unlikely to defeat Russia without the direct Western participation in this war.<br /> <br /> This does not absolve Russia of direct responsibility for its illegal invasion, military interventions, and annexations in Ukraine and human and economic toll of the Ukraine-Russia war. The outcome of this war would determine not only the future of Ukraine but also of the future of Ukrainian-Russian relations and the world order.<br /> <br /> The Maidan massacre trial and investigation did not reveal evidence of Russian or Western governments involvement in this crucial mass killing. The de facto backing by the West of the violent overthrow of the democratically elected and relatively pro-Russian government in Ukraine by means of the Maidan massacre and assassination attempts also contributed to the start of the conflicts in Crimea and Donbas and conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and Russia and the West which now escalated into the Ukraine-Russia war and a proxy war between the West and Russia in Ukraine, which became a US client state after the “Euromaidan.” Therefore, the Maidan massacre and the failure to ensure justice ultimately have significant indirect global consequences, which can further increase in unlikely but not excluded case of a direct war between NATO and Russia with a danger of a nuclear war over Ukraine. The puzzling misrepresentation of the Maidan massacre by the West and its failure to help advance justice in this case requires further research.<br /> &lt;references /&gt;<br /> [[Category:Library works about the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian conflict]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about geopolitics]]<br /> [[Category:Library works by non-marxists and other authors]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Killing_Hope&diff=76003 2024-09-30T12:46:58Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions since World War II|image=Killing Hope Cover.png|author=William Blum|publisher=[[Common Courage Press]]|published_date=1995|published_location=[[Maine]]|edition_date=2008|type=Book|isbn=978-1-56751-252-6|source=[https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/13/130AEF1531746AAD6AC03EF59F91E1A1_Killing_Hope_Blum_William.pdf PDF]|audiobook=[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8_PuB9oSaxrYWXuUmMgJrUnf3FWiGBqB Audiobook]}}<br /> <br /> == Author's note ==<br /> In addition to those described in this book, accounts of many other serious American post-World War II interventions can be found in another book by William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, chapter 17, although not in the rich detail found in the present book.<br /> <br /> —January 2005<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> Excerpts from the Introduction, 1987 edition<br /> <br /> A brief history of the Cold War and anti-communism&lt;blockquote&gt;Our fear that communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.&lt;/blockquote&gt;—Michael Parenti&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It was in the early days of the fighting in Vietnam that a Vietcong officer said to his American prisoner: &quot;You were our heroes after the War. We read American books and saw American films, and a common phrase in those days was &quot;to be as rich and as wise as an American&quot;. What happened?&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> An American might have been asked something similar by a Guatemalan, an Indonesian or a Cuban during the ten years previous, or by a Uruguayan, a Chilean or a Greek in the decade subsequent. The remarkable international goodwill and credibility enjoyed by the United States at the close of the Second World War was dissipated country by country, intervention by intervention. The opportunity to build the war-ravaged world anew, to lay the foundations for peace, prosperity and justice, collapsed under the awful weight of anti-communism.<br /> <br /> The weight had been accumulating for some time; indeed, since Day One of the Russian Revolution. By the summer of 1918 some 13,000 American troops could be found in the newly-born state, the future Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Two years and thousands of casualties later, the American troops left, having failed in their mission to &quot;strangle at its birth&quot; the Bolshevik state, as Winston Churchill put it.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The young Churchill was Great Britain's Minister for War and Air during this period. Increasingly, it was he who directed the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Allies (Great Britain, the US, France, Japan and several other nations) on the side of the counter-revolutionary &quot;White Army&quot;. Years later, Churchill the historian was to record his views of this singular affair for posterity:&lt;blockquote&gt;Were they [the Allies] at war with Soviet Russia? Certainly not; but they shot Soviet Russians at sight. They stood as invaders on Russian soil. They armed the enemies of the Soviet Government. They blockaded its ports, and sunk its battleships. They earnestly desired and schemed its downfall. But war—shocking! Interference—shame! It was, they repeated, a matter of indifference to them how Russians settled their own internal affairs. They were impartial—Bang!&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;What was there about this Bolshevik Revolution that so alarmed the most powerful nations in the world? What drove them to invade a land whose soldiers had recently fought alongside them for over three years and suffered more casualties than any other country on either side of the World War?<br /> <br /> The Bolsheviks had had the audacity to make a separate peace with Germany in order to take leave of a war they regarded as imperialist and not in any way their war, and to try and rebuild a terribly weary and devastated Russia. But the Bolsheviks had displayed the far greater audacity of overthrowing a capitalist- feudal system and proclaiming the first socialist state in the history of the world. This was uppityness writ incredibly large. This was the crime the Allies had to punish, the virus which had to be eradicated lest it spread to their own people.<br /> <br /> The invasion did not achieve its immediate purpose, but its consequences were nonetheless profound and persist to the present day. Professor D.F. Fleming, the Vanderbilt University historian of the Cold War, has noted:&lt;blockquote&gt;For the American people the cosmic tragedy of the interventions in Russia does not exist, or it was an unimportant incident long forgotten. But for the Soviet peoples and their leaders the period was a time of endless killing, of looting and rapine, of plague and famine, of measureless suffering for scores of millions—an experience burned into the very soul of a nation, not to be forgotten for many generations, if ever. Also for many years the harsh Soviet regimentations could all be justified by fear that the capitalist powers would be back to finish the job. It is not strange that in his address in New York, September 17, 1959, Premier Khrushchev should remind us of the interventions, &quot;the time you sent your troops to quell the revolution&quot;, as he put it.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In what could be taken as a portent of superpower insensitivity, a 1920 Pentagon report on the intervention reads: &quot;This expedition affords one of the finest examples in history of honorable, unselfish dealings … under very difficult circumstances to be helpful to a people struggling to achieve a new liberty.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> History does not tell us what a Soviet Union, allowed to develop in a &quot;normal&quot; way of its own choosing, would look like today. We do know, however, the nature of a Soviet Union attacked in its cradle, raised alone in an extremely hostile world, and, when it managed to survive to adulthood, overrun by the Nazi war machine with the blessings of the Western powers. The resulting insecurities and fears have inevitably led to deformities of character not unlike that found in an individual raised in a similar life-threatening manner.<br /> <br /> We in the West are never allowed to forget the political shortcomings (real and bogus) of the Soviet Union; at the same time we are never reminded of the history which lies behind it. The anti-communist propaganda campaign began even earlier than the military intervention. Before the year 1918 was over, expressions in the vein of &quot;Red Peril&quot;, &quot;the Bolshevik assault on civilization&quot;, and &quot;menace to world by Reds is seen&quot; had become commonplace in the pages of the New York Times.<br /> <br /> During February and March 1919, a US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee held hearings before which many &quot;Bolshevik horror stories&quot; were presented. The character of some of the testimony can be gauged by the headline in the usually sedate Times of 12 February 1919:&lt;blockquote&gt;DESCRIBE HORRORS UNDER RED RULE. R.E. SIMONS AND W.W. WELSH TELL SENATORS OF BRUTALITIES OF BOLSHEVIKI—STRIP WOMEN IN STREETS—PEOPLE OF EVERY CLASS EXCEPT THE SCUM SUBJECTED TO VIOLENCE BY MOBS.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Historian Frederick Lewis Schuman has written: &quot;The net result of these hearings … was to picture Soviet Russia as a kind of bedlam inhabited by abject slaves completely at the mercy of an organization of homicidal maniacs whose purpose was to destroy all traces of civilization and carry the nation back to barbarism.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Literally no story about the Bolsheviks was too contrived, too bizarre, too grotesque, or too perverted to be printed and widely believed—from women being nationalized to babies being eaten (as the early pagans believed the Christians guilty of devouring their children; the same was believed of the Jews in the Middle Ages). The story about women with all the lurid connotations of state property, compulsory marriage, &quot;free love&quot;, etc. &quot;was broadcasted over the country through a thousand channels,&quot; wrote Schuman, &quot;and perhaps did more than anything else to stamp the Russian Communists in the minds of most American citizens as criminal perverts&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; This tale continued to receive great currency even after the State Department was obliged to announce that it was a fraud. (That the Soviets eat their babies was still being taught by the John Birch Society to its large audience at least as late as 1978.)&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By the end of 1919, when the defeat of the Allies and the White Army appeared likely, the New York Times treated its readers to headlines and stories such as the following:&lt;blockquote&gt;30 Dec. 1919: &quot;Reds Seek War With America&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;9 Jan. 1920: &quot;'Official quarters' describe the Bolshevist menace in the Middle East as ominous&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;11 Jan. 1920: &quot;Allied officials and diplomats [envisage] a possible invasion of Europe&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;13 Jan. 1920: &quot;Allied diplomatic circles&quot; fear an invasion of Persia&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;16 Jan. 1920: A page-one headline, eight columns wide:&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Britain Facing War With Reds, Calls Council In Paris.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Well-informed diplomats&quot; expect both a military invasion of Europe and a Soviet advance into Eastern and Southern Asia.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The following morning, however, we could read: &quot;No War With Russia, Allies To Trade With Her&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;7 Feb. 1920: &quot;Reds Raising Army To Attack India&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;11 Feb. 1920: &quot;Fear That Bolsheviki Will Now Invade Japanese Territory&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Readers of the New York Times were asked to believe that all these invasions were to come from a nation that was shattered as few nations in history have been; a nation still recovering from a horrendous world war; in extreme chaos from a fundamental social revolution that was barely off the ground; engaged in a brutal civil war against forces backed by the major powers of the world; its industries, never advanced to begin with, in a shambles; and the country in the throes of a famine that was to leave many millions dead before it subsided.<br /> <br /> In 1920, The New Republic magazine presented a lengthy analysis of the news coverage by the New York Times of the Russian Revolution and the intervention. Amongst much else, it observed that in the two years following the November 1917 revolution, the Times had stated no less than 91 times that &quot;the Soviets were nearing their rope's end or actually had reached it.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> If this was reality as presented by the United States' &quot;newspaper of record&quot;, one can imagine only with dismay the witch's brew the rest of the nation's newspapers were feeding to their readers.<br /> <br /> This, then, was the American people's first experience of a new social phenomenon that had come upon the world, their introductory education about the Soviet Union and this thing called &quot;communism&quot;. The students have never recovered from the lesson. Neither has the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> The military intervention came to an end but, with the sole and partial exception of the Second World War period, the propaganda offensive has never let up. In 1943 Life magazine devoted an entire issue in honor of the Soviet Union's accomplishments, going far beyond what was demanded by the need for wartime solidarity, going so far as to call Lenin &quot;perhaps the greatest man of modern times&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; Two years later, however, with Harry Truman sitting in the White House, such fraternity had no chance of surviving. Truman, after all, was the man who, the day after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, said: &quot;If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious in any circumstances.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Much propaganda mileage has been squeezed out of the Soviet-German treaty of 1939, made possible only by entirely ignoring the fact that the Russians were forced into the pact by the repeated refusal of the Western powers, particularly the United States and Great Britain, to unite with Moscow in a stand against Hitler;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; as they likewise refused to come to the aid of the socialist-oriented Spanish government under siege by the German, Italian and Spanish fascists beginning in 1936. Stalin realized that if the West wouldn't save Spain, they certainly wouldn't save the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> From the Red Scare of the 1920s to the McCarthyism of the 1950s to the Reagan Crusade against the Evil Empire of the 1980s, the American people have been subjected to a relentless anti-communist indoctrination. It is imbibed with their mother's milk, pictured in their comic books, spelled out in their school books; their daily paper offers them headlines that tell them all they need to know; ministers find sermons in it, politicians are elected with it, and Reader's Digest becomes rich on it.<br /> <br /> The fiercely-held conviction inevitably produced by this insidious assault upon the intellect is that a great damnation has been unleashed upon the world, possibly by the devil himself, but in the form of people; people not motivated by the same needs, fears, emotions, and personal morality that govern others of the species, but people engaged in an extremely clever, monolithic, international conspiracy dedicated to taking over the world and enslaving it; for reasons not always clear perhaps, but evil needs no motivation save evil itself. Moreover, any appearance or claim by these people to be rational human beings seeking a better kind of world or society is a sham, a cover-up, to delude others, and proof only of their cleverness; the repression and cruelties which have taken place in the Soviet Union are forever proof of the bankruptcy of virtue and the evil intentions of these people in whichever country they may be found, under whatever name they may call themselves; and, most important of all, the only choice open to anyone in the United States is between the American Way of Life and the Soviet Way of Life, that nothing lies between or beyond these two ways of making the world.<br /> <br /> This is how it looks to the simple folk of America. One finds that the sophisticated, when probed slightly beneath the surface of their academic language, see it exactly the same way.<br /> <br /> To the mind carefully brought to adulthood in the United States, the truths of anti-communism are self-evident, as self-evident as the flatness of the world once was to an earlier mind; as the Russian people believed that the victims of Stalin's purges were truly guilty of treason.<br /> <br /> The foregoing slice of American history must be taken into account if one is to make sense of the vagaries of American foreign policy since the end of World War II, specifically the record, as presented in this book, of what the US military and the CIA and other branches of the US government have done to the peoples of the world.<br /> <br /> In 1918, the barons of American capital needed no reason for their war against communism other than the threat to their wealth and privilege, although their opposition was expressed in terms of moral indignation.<br /> <br /> During the period between the two world wars, US gunboat diplomacy operated in the Caribbean to make &quot;The American Lake&quot; safe for the fortunes of United Fruit and W.R. Grace &amp; Co., at the same time taking care to warn of &quot;the Bolshevik threat&quot; to all that is decent from the likes of Nicaraguan rebel Augusto Sandino.<br /> <br /> By the end of the Second World War, every American past the age of 40 had been subjected to some 25 years of anti-communist radiation, the average incubation period needed to produce a malignancy. Anti-communism had developed a life of its own, independent of its capitalist father. Increasingly, in the post-war period, middle-aged Washington policy makers and diplomats saw the world out there as one composed of &quot;communists&quot; and &quot;anti-communists&quot;, whether of nations, movements or individuals. This comic-strip vision of the world, with righteous American supermen fighting communist evil everywhere, had graduated from a cynical propaganda exercise to a moral imperative of US foreign policy.<br /> <br /> Even the concept of &quot;non-communist&quot;, implying some measure of neutrality, has generally been accorded scant legitimacy in this paradigm. John Foster Dulles, one of the major architects of post-war US foreign policy, expressed this succinctly in his typically simple, moralistic way: &quot;For us there are two sorts of people in the world: there are those who are Christians and support free enterprise and there are the others.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; As several of the case studies in the present book confirm, Dulles put that creed into rigid practice.<br /> <br /> The word &quot;communist&quot; (as well as &quot;Marxist&quot;) has been so overused and so abused by American leaders and the media as to render it virtually meaningless. (The Left has done the same to the word &quot;fascist&quot;.) But merely having a name for something—witches or flying saucers—attaches a certain credence to it.<br /> <br /> At the same time, the American public, as we have seen, has been soundly conditioned to react Pavlovianly to the term: it means, still, the worst excesses of Stalin, from wholesale purges to Siberian slave-labor camps; it means, as Michael Parenti has observed, that &quot;Classic Marxist-Leninist predictions [concerning world revolution] are treated as statements of intent directing all present-day communist actions.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; It means &quot;us&quot; against &quot;them&quot;.<br /> <br /> And &quot;them&quot; can mean a peasant in the Philippines, a mural-painter in Nicaragua, a legally-elected prime minister in British Guiana, or a European intellectual, a Cambodian neutralist, an African nationalist—all, somehow, part of the same monolithic conspiracy; each, in some way, a threat to the American Way of Life; no land too small, too poor, or too far away to pose such a threat, the &quot;communist threat&quot;.<br /> <br /> The cases presented in this book illustrate that it has been largely irrelevant whether the particular targets of intervention—be they individuals, political parties, movements or governments—called themselves &quot;communist&quot; or not. It has mattered little whether they were scholars of dialectical materialism or had never heard of Karl Marx; whether they were atheists or priests; whether a strong and influential Communist Party was in the picture or not; whether the government had come into being through violent revolution or peaceful elections … all have been targets, all &quot;communists&quot;.<br /> <br /> It has mattered still less that the Soviet KGB was in the picture. The assertion has been frequently voiced that the CIA carries out its dirty tricks largely in reaction to operations of the KGB which have been &quot;even dirtier&quot;. This is a lie made out of whole cloth. There may be an isolated incident of such in the course of the CIA's life, but it has kept itself well hidden. The relationship between the two sinister agencies is marked by fraternization and respect for fellow professionals more than by hand-to-hand combat. Former CIA officer John Stockwell has written:&lt;blockquote&gt;Actually, at least in more routine operations, case officers most fear the US ambassador and his staff, then restrictive headquarters cables, then curious, gossipy neighbors in the local community, as potential threats to operations. Next would come the local police, then the press. Last of all is the KGB—in my twelve years of case officering I never saw or heard of a situation in which the KGB attacked or obstructed a CIA operation.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Stockwell adds that the various intelligence services do not want their world to be &quot;complicated&quot; by murdering each other.&lt;blockquote&gt;It isn't done. If a CIA case officer has a flat tire in the dark of night on a lonely road, he will not hesitate to accept a ride from a KGB officer—likely the two would detour to some bar for a drink together. In fact CIA and KGB officers entertain each other frequently in their homes. The CIA's files are full of mention of such relationships in almost every African station.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Proponents of &quot;fighting fire with fire&quot; come perilously close at times to arguing that if the KGB, for example, had a hand in the overthrow of the Czechoslovak government in 1968, it is OK for the CIA to have a hand in the overthrow of the Chilean government in 1973. It's as if the destruction of democracy by the KGB deposits funds in a bank account from which the CIA is then justified in making withdrawals.<br /> <br /> What then has been the thread common to the diverse targets of American intervention which has brought down upon them the wrath, and often the firepower, of the world's most powerful nation? In virtually every case involving the Third World described in this book, it has been, in one form or another, a policy of &quot;self- determination&quot;: the desire, born of perceived need and principle, to pursue a path of development independent of US foreign policy objectives. Most commonly, this has been manifested in (a) the ambition to free themselves from economic and political subservience to the United States; (b) the refusal to minimize relations with the socialist bloc, or suppress the left at home, or welcome an American military installation on their soil; in short, a refusal to be a pawn in the Cold War; or (c) the attempt to alter or replace a government which held to neither of these aspirations; i.e., a government supported by the United States.<br /> <br /> It cannot be emphasized too strongly that such a policy of independence has been viewed and expressed by numerous Third World leaders and revolutionaries as one not to be equated by definition to anti-Americanism or pro-communism, but as simply a determination to maintain a position of neutrality and non-alignment vis-à-vis the two superpowers. Time and time again, however, it will be seen that the United States was not prepared to live with this proposition. Arbenz of Guatemala, Mossadegh of Iran, Sukarno of Indonesia, Nkrumah of Ghana, Jagan of British Guiana, Sihanouk of Cambodia … all, insisted Uncle Sam, must declare themselves unequivocally on the side of &quot;The Free World&quot; or suffer the consequences. Nkrumah put the case for non-alignment as follows:&lt;blockquote&gt;The experiment which we tried in Ghana was essentially one of developing the country in co-operation with the world as a whole. Non-alignment meant exactly what it said. We were not hostile to the countries of the socialist world in the way in which the governments of the old colonial territories were. It should be remembered that while Britain pursued at home co-existence with the Soviet Union this was never allowed to extend to British colonial territories. Books on socialism, which were published and circulated freely in Britain, were banned in the British colonial empire, and after Ghana became independent it was assumed abroad that it would continue to follow the same restrictive ideological approach. When we behaved as did the British in their relations with the socialist countries we were accused of being pro-Russian and introducing the most dangerous ideas into Africa.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;It is reminiscent of the 19th-century American South, where many Southerners were deeply offended that so many of their black slaves had deserted to the Northern side in the Civil War. They had genuinely thought that the blacks should have been grateful for all their white masters had done for them, and that they were happy and content with their lot. The noted Louisiana surgeon and psychologist Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright argued that many of the slaves suffered from a form of mental illness, which he called &quot;drapetomania&quot;, diagnosed as the uncontrollable urge to escape from slavery. In the second half of the 20th-century, this illness, in the Third World, has usually been called &quot;communism&quot;.<br /> <br /> Perhaps the most deeply ingrained reflex of knee-jerk anti- communism is the belief that the Soviet Union (or Cuba or Vietnam, etc., acting as Moscow's surrogate) is a clandestine force lurking behind the facade of self-determination, stirring up the hydra of revolution, or just plain trouble, here, there, and everywhere; yet another incarnation, although on a far grander scale, of the proverbial &quot;outside agitator&quot;, he who has made his appearance regularly throughout history … King George blamed the French for inciting the American colonies to revolt … disillusioned American farmers and veterans protesting their onerous economic circumstances after the revolution (Shays' Rebellion) were branded as British agents out to wreck the new republic … labor strikes in late-19th-century America were blamed on &quot;anarchists&quot; and &quot;foreigners&quot;, during the First World War on &quot;German agents&quot;, after the war on &quot;Bolsheviks&quot;.<br /> <br /> And in the 1960s, said the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, J. Edgar Hoover &quot;helped spread the view among the police ranks that any kind of mass protest is due to a conspiracy promulgated by agitators, often Communists, 'who misdirect otherwise contented people'.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The last is the key phrase, one which encapsulates the conspiracy mentality of those in power—the idea that no people, except those living under the enemy, could be so miserable and discontent as to need recourse to revolution or even mass protest; that it is only the agitation of the outsider which misdirects them along this path.<br /> <br /> Accordingly, if Ronald Reagan were to concede that the masses of El Salvador have every good reason to rise up against their god-awful existence, it would bring into question his accusation, and the rationale for US intervention, that it is principally (only?) the Soviet Union and its Cuban and Nicaraguan allies who instigate the Salvadoreans: that seemingly magical power of communists everywhere who, with a twist of their red wrist, can transform peaceful, happy people into furious guerrillas. The CIA knows how difficult a feat this is. The Agency, as we shall see, tried to spark mass revolt in China, Cuba, the Soviet Union, Albania, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe with a singular lack of success. The Agency's scribes have laid the blame for these failures on the &quot;closed&quot; nature of the societies involved. But in non-communist countries, the CIA has had to resort to military coups or extra-legal chicanery to get its people into power. It has never been able to light the fire of popular revolution.<br /> <br /> For Washington to concede merit and virtue to a particular Third World insurgency would, moreover, raise the question: Why does not the United States, if it must intervene, take the side of the rebels? Not only might this better serve the cause of human rights and justice, but it would shut out the Russians from their alleged role. What better way to frustrate the International Communist Conspiracy? But this is a question that dares not speak its name in the Oval Office, a question that is relevant to many of the cases in this book.<br /> <br /> Instead, the United States remains committed to its all-too- familiar policy of establishing and/or supporting the most vile tyrannies in the world, whose outrages against their own people confront us daily in the pages of our newspapers: brutal massacres; systematic, sophisticated torture; public whippings; soldiers and police firing into crowds; government-supported death squads; tens of thousands of disappeared persons; extreme economic deprivation … a way of life that is virtually a monopoly held by America's allies, from Guatemala, Chile and El Salvador to Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia, all members in good standing of the Holy War Against Communism, all members of &quot;The Free World&quot;, that region of which we hear so much and see so little.<br /> <br /> The restrictions on civil liberties found in the communist bloc, as severe as they are, pale by comparison to the cottage- industry Auschwitzes of &quot;The Free World&quot;, and, except in that curious mental landscape inhabited by The Compleat Anti- Communist, can have little or nothing to do with the sundry American interventions supposedly in the cause of a higher good.<br /> <br /> It is interesting to note that as commonplace as it is for American leaders to speak of freedom and democracy while supporting dictatorships, so do Russian leaders speak of wars of liberation, anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism while doing extremely little to actually further these causes, American propaganda notwithstanding. The Soviets like to be thought of as champions of the Third World, but they have stood by doing little more than going &quot;tsk, tsk&quot; as progressive movements and governments, even Communist Parties, in Greece, Guatemala, British Guiana, Chile, Indonesia, the Philippines and elsewhere have gone to the wall with American complicity.<br /> <br /> During the early 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency instigated several military incursions into Communist China. In 1960, CIA planes, without any provocation, bombed the sovereign nation of Guatemala. In 1973, the Agency encouraged a bloody revolt against the government of Iraq. In the American mass media at the time, and therefore in the American mind, these events did not happen.<br /> <br /> &quot;We didn't know what was happening&quot;, became a cliché used to ridicule those Germans who claimed ignorance of the events which took place under the Nazis. Yet, was their stock answer as far-fetched as we'd like to think? It is sobering to reflect that in our era of instant world-wide communications, the United States has, on many occasions, been able to mount a large- or small-scale military operation or undertake another, equally blatant, form of intervention without the American public being aware of it until years later, if ever. Often the only report of the event or of US involvement was a passing reference to the fact that a communist government had made certain charges—just the kind of &quot;news&quot; the American public has been well conditioned to dismiss out of hand, and the press not to follow up; as the German people were taught that reports from abroad of Nazi wrong-doings were no more than communist propaganda.<br /> <br /> With few exceptions, the interventions never made the headlines or the evening TV news. With some, bits and pieces of the stories have popped up here and there, but rarely brought together to form a cohesive and enlightening whole; the fragments usually appear long after the fact, quietly buried within other stories, just as quietly forgotten, bursting into the foreground only when extraordinary circumstances have compelled it, such as the Iranians holding US embassy personnel and other Americans hostage in Teheran in 1979, which produced a rash of articles on the role played by the United States in the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953. It was as if editors had been spurred into thinking: &quot;Hey, just what did we do in Iran to make all those people hate us so?&quot;<br /> <br /> There have been a lot of Irans in America's recent past, but in the absence of the New York Daily News or the Los Angeles Times conspicuously grabbing the reader by the collar and pressing against his face the full implication of the deed … in the absence of NBC putting it all into real pictures of real people on the receiving end … in such absence the incidents become non-events for the large majority of Americans, and they can honestly say &quot;We didn't know what was happening.&quot;<br /> <br /> Former Chinese Premier Chou En-lai once observed: &quot;One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory.&quot;<br /> <br /> It's probably even worse than he realized. During the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in Pennsylvania in 1979, a Japanese journalist, Atsuo Kaneko of the Japanese Kyoto News Service, spent several hours interviewing people temporarily housed at a hockey rink—mostly children, pregnant women and young mothers. He discovered that none of them had heard of Hiroshima. Mention of the name drew a blank.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And in 1982, a judge in Oakland, California said he was appalled when some 50 prospective jurors for a death-penalty murder trial were questioned and &quot;none of them knew who Hitler was&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> To the foreign policy oligarchy in Washington, it is more than delightful. It is sine qua non.<br /> <br /> So obscured is the comprehensive record of American interventions that when, in 1975, the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress was asked to undertake a study of covert activities of the CIA to date, it was able to come up with but a very minor portion of the overseas incidents presented in this book for the same period.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> For all of this information that has made its way into popular consciousness, or into school texts, encyclopedias, or other standard reference works, there might as well exist strict censorship in the United States.<br /> <br /> The reader is invited to look through the relevant sections of the three principal American encyclopedias, Americana, Britannica, and Colliers. The image of encyclopedias as the final repository of objective knowledge takes a beating. What is tantamount to a non-recognition of American interventions may very well be due to these esteemed works employing a criterion similar to that of Washington officials as reflected in the Pentagon Papers. The New York Times summarized this highly interesting phenomenon thusly:&lt;blockquote&gt;Clandestine warfare against North Vietnam, for example, is not seen … as violating the Geneva Accords of 1954, which ended the French Indochina War, or as conflicting with the public policy pronouncements of the various administrations. Clandestine warfare, because it is covert, does not exist as far as treaties and public posture are concerned. Further, secret commitments to other nations are not sensed as infringing on the treaty-making powers of the Senate, because they are not publicly acknowledged.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The de facto censorship which leaves so many Americans functionally illiterate about the history of US foreign affairs may be all the more effective because it is not so much official, heavy-handed or conspiratorial, as it is woven artlessly into the fabric of education and media. No conspiracy is needed. The editors of Reader's Digest and U.S. News and World Report do not need to meet covertly with the representative from NBC in an FBI safe-house to plan next month's stories and programs; for the simple truth is that these individuals would not have reached the positions they occupy if they themselves had not all been guided through the same tunnel of camouflaged history and emerged with the same selective memory and conventional wisdom.<br /> <br /> &quot;The upheaval in China is a revolution which, if we analyze it, we will see is prompted by the same things that prompted the British, French and American revolutions.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; A cosmopolitan and generous sentiment of Dean Rusk, then Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs, later Secretary of State. At precisely the same time as Mr. Rusk's talk in 1950, others in his government were actively plotting the downfall of the Chinese revolutionary government.<br /> <br /> This has been a common phenomenon. For many of the cases described in the following pages, one can find statements of high or middle-level Washington officials which put into question the policy of intervention; which expressed misgivings based either on principle (sometimes the better side of American liberalism) or concern that the intervention would not serve any worthwhile end, might even result in disaster. I have attached little weight to such dissenting statements as, indeed, in the final analysis, did Washington decision-makers who, in controversial world situations, could be relied upon to play the anti-communist card. In presenting the interventions in this manner, I am declaring that American foreign policy is what American foreign policy does.<br /> <br /> === Excerpts from the Introduction, 1995 edition ===<br /> In 1993, I came across a review of a book about people who deny that the Nazi Holocaust actually occurred. I wrote to the author, a university professor, telling her that her book made me wonder whether she knew that an American holocaust had taken place, and that the denial of it put the denial of the Nazi one to shame. So broad and deep is the denial of the American holocaust, I said, that the denyers are not even aware that the claimers or their claim exist. Yet, a few million people have died in the American holocaust and many more millions have been condemned to lives of misery and torture as a result of US interventions extending from China and Greece in the 1940s to Afghanistan and Iraq in the 1990s. I enclosed a listing of these interventions, which is of course the subject of the present book.<br /> <br /> In my letter I also offered to exchange a copy of the earlier edition of my book for a copy of hers, but she wrote back informing me that she was not in a position to do so. And that was all she said. She made no comment whatsoever about the remainder of my letter—the part dealing with denying the American holocaust—not even to acknowledge that I had raised the matter. The irony of a scholar on the subject of denying the Nazi Holocaust engaging in such denial about the American holocaust was classic indeed. I was puzzled why the good professor had bothered to respond at all.<br /> <br /> Clearly, if my thesis could receive such a non-response from such a person, I and my thesis faced an extremely steep uphill struggle. In the 1930s, and again after the war in the 1940s and '50s, anti-communists of various stripes in the United States tried their best to expose the crimes of the Soviet Union, such as the purge trials and the mass murders. But a strange thing happened. The truth did not seem to matter. American Communists and fellow travelers continued to support the Kremlin. Even allowing for the exaggeration and disinformation regularly disbursed by the anti-communists which damaged their credibility, the continued ignorance and/or denial by the American leftists is remarkable.<br /> <br /> At the close of the Second World War, when the victorious Allies discovered the German concentration camps, in some cases German citizens from nearby towns were brought to the camp to come face-to-face with the institution, the piles of corpses, and the still-living skeletal people; some of the respectable burghers were even forced to bury the dead. What might be the effect upon the American psyche if the true-believers and denyers were compelled to witness the consequences of the past half- century of US foreign policy close up? What if all the nice, clean-cut, wholesome American boys who dropped an infinite tonnage of bombs, on a dozen different countries, on people they knew nothing about—characters in a video game—had to come down to earth and look upon and smell the burning flesh?<br /> <br /> It has become conventional wisdom that it was the relentlessly tough anti-communist policies of the Reagan Administration, with its heated-up arms race, that led to the collapse and reformation of the Soviet Union and its satellites. American history books may have already begun to chisel this thesis into marble. The Tories in Great Britain say that Margaret Thatcher and her unflinching policies contributed to the miracle as well. The East Germans were believers too. When Ronald Reagan visited East Berlin, the people there cheered him and thanked him &quot;for his role in liberating the East&quot;. Even many leftist analysts, particularly those of a conspiracy bent, are believers.<br /> <br /> But this view is not universally held; nor should it be.<br /> <br /> Long the leading Soviet expert on the United States, Georgi Arbatov, head of the Moscow-based Institute for the Study of the U.S.A. and Canada, wrote his memoirs in 1992. A Los Angeles Times book review by Robert Scheer summed up a portion of it:&lt;blockquote&gt;Arbatov understood all too well the failings of Soviet totalitarianism in comparison to the economy and politics of the West. It is clear from this candid and nuanced memoir that the movement for change had been developing steadily inside the highest corridors of power ever since the death of Stalin. Arbatov not only provides considerable evidence for the controversial notion that this change would have come about without foreign pressure, he insists that the U.S. military buildup during the Reagan years actually impeded this development.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;George F. Kennan agrees. The former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, and father of the theory of &quot;containment&quot; of the same country, asserts that &quot;the suggestion that any United States administration had the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous domestic political upheaval in another great country on another side of the globe is simply childish.&quot; He contends that the extreme militarization of American policy strengthened hard-liners in the Soviet Union. &quot;Thus the general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Though the arms-race spending undoubtedly damaged the fabric of the Soviet civilian economy and society even more than it did in the United States, this had been going on for 40 years by the time Mikhail Gorbachev came to power without the slightest hint of impending doom. Gorbachev's close adviser, Aleksandr Yakovlev, when asked whether the Reagan administration's higher military spending, combined with its &quot;Evil Empire&quot; rhetoric, forced the Soviet Union into a more conciliatory position, responded:&lt;blockquote&gt;It played no role. None. I can tell you that with the fullest responsibility. Gorbachev and I were ready for changes in our policy regardless of whether the American president was Reagan, or Kennedy, or someone even more liberal. It was clear that our military spending was enormous and we had to reduce it.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Understandably, some Russians might be reluctant to admit that they were forced to make revolutionary changes by their arch enemy, to admit that they lost the Cold War. However, on this question we don't have to rely on the opinion of any individual, Russian or American. We merely have to look at the historical facts.<br /> <br /> From the late 1940s to around the mid-1960s, it was an American policy objective to instigate the downfall of the Soviet government as well as several Eastern European regimes. Many hundreds of Russian exiles were organized, trained and equipped by the CIA, then sneaked back into their homeland to set up espionage rings, to stir up armed political struggle, and to carry out acts of assassination and sabotage, such as derailing trains, wrecking bridges, damaging arms factories and power plants, and so on. The Soviet government, which captured many of these men, was of course fully aware of who was behind all this.<br /> <br /> Compared to this policy, that of the Reagan administration could be categorized as one of virtual capitulation. Yet what were the fruits of this ultra-tough anti-communist policy? Repeated serious confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union in Berlin, Cuba and elsewhere, the Soviet interventions into Hungary and Czechoslovakia, creation of the Warsaw Pact (in direct reaction to NATO), no glasnost, no perestroika, only pervasive suspicion, cynicism and hostility on both sides. It turned out that the Russians were human after all—they responded to toughness with toughness. And the corollary: there was for many years a close association between the amicability of US-Soviet relations and the number of Jews allowed to emigrate from the Soviet Union.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt; Softness produced softness.<br /> <br /> If there's anyone to attribute the changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to, both the beneficial ones and those questionable, it is of course Mikhail Gorbachev and the activists he inspired. It should be remembered that Reagan was in office for over four years before Gorbachev came to power, and Thatcher for six years, but in that period of time nothing of any significance in the way of Soviet reform took place despite Reagan's and Thatcher's unremitting malice toward the communist state.<br /> <br /> The argument is frequently advanced that it's easy in hindsight to disparage the American cold-war mania for a national security state—with all its advanced paranoia and absurdities, its NATO-supra-state-military juggernaut, its early-warning systems and air-raid drills, its nuclear silos and U-2s—but that after the War in Europe the Soviets did indeed appear to be a ten-foot- tall world-wide monster threat.<br /> <br /> This argument breaks up on the rocks of a single question, which was all one had to ask back then: Why would the Soviets want to invade Western Europe or bomb the United States? They clearly had nothing to gain by such actions except the almost certain destruction of their country, which they were painstakingly rebuilding once again after the devastation of the war.<br /> <br /> By the 1980s, the question that still dared not be asked had given birth to a $300 billion military budget and Star Wars.<br /> <br /> There are available, in fact, numerous internal documents from the State Department, the Defense Department, and the CIA from the postwar period, wherein one political analyst after another makes clear his serious skepticism of &quot;The Soviet Threat&quot;—revealing the Russians' critical military weaknesses and/or questioning their alleged aggressive intentions—while high officials, including the president, were publicly presenting a message explicitly the opposite.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Historian Roger Morris, former member of the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, described this phenomenon:&lt;blockquote&gt;Architects of U.S. policy would have to make their case &quot;clearer than the truth,&quot; and &quot;bludgeon the mass mind of top government,&quot; as Secretary of State Dean Acheson … puts it. They do. The new Central Intelligence Agency begins a systematic overstatement of Soviet military expenditures. Magically, the sclerotic Soviet economy is made to hum and climb on U.S. government charts. To Stalin's horse-drawn army—complete with shoddy equipment, war- torn roads and spurious morale—the Pentagon adds phantom divisions, then attributes invasion scenarios to the new forces for good measure.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;U.S. officials &quot;exaggerated Soviet capabilities and intentions to such an extent,&quot; says a subsequent study of the archives, &quot;that it is surprising anyone took them seriously.&quot; Fed by somber government claims and reverberating public fear, the U.S. press and people have no trouble.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Nonetheless, the argument insists, there were many officials in high positions who simply and sincerely misunderstood the Soviet signals. The Soviet Union was, after all, a highly oppressive and secretive society, particularly before Stalin died in 1953. Apropos of this, former conservative member of the British Parliament Enoch Powell observed in 1983:&lt;blockquote&gt;International misunderstanding is almost wholly voluntary: it is that contradiction in terms, intentional misunderstanding—a contradiction, because in order to misunderstand deliberately, you must at least suspect if not actually understand what you intend to misunderstand. … [The US misunderstanding of the USSR has] the function of sustaining a myth—the myth of the United States as &quot;the last, best hope of mankind.&quot; St. George and the Dragon is a poor show without a real dragon, the bigger and scalier the better, ideally with flames coming out of its mouth. The misunderstanding of Soviet Russia has become indispensable to the self-esteem of the American nation: he will not be regarded with benevolence who seeks, however ineffectually, to deprive them of it.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;It can be argued as well that the belief of the Nazis in the great danger posed by the &quot;International Jewish Conspiracy&quot; must be considered before condemning the perpetrators of the Holocaust.<br /> <br /> Both the Americans and the Germans believed their own propaganda, or pretended to. In reading Mein Kampf, one is struck by the fact that a significant part of what Hitler wrote about Jews reads very much like an American anti-communist writing about communists: He starts with the premise that the Jews (communists) are evil and want to dominate the world; then, any behavior which appears to contradict this is regarded as simply a ploy to fool people and further their evil ends; this behavior is always part of a conspiracy and many people are taken in. He ascribes to the Jews great, almost mystical, power to manipulate societies and economies. He blames Jews for the ills arising from the industrial revolution, e.g., class divisions and hatred. He decries the Jews' internationalism and lack of national patriotism.<br /> <br /> There were of course those Cold Warriors whose take on the Kremlin was that its master plan for world domination was nothing so gross as an invasion of Western Europe or dropping bombs on the United States. The ever more subtle—one could say fiendishly-clever—plan was for subversion … from the inside … country by country … throughout the Third World … eventually surrounding and strangling the First World … verily an International Communist Conspiracy, &quot;a conspiracy,&quot; said Senator Joseph McCarthy, &quot;on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man.&quot;<br /> <br /> This is the primary focus of this book: how the United States intervened all over the world to combat this conspiracy wherever and whenever it reared its ugly head.<br /> <br /> Did this International Communist Conspiracy actually exist?<br /> <br /> If it actually existed, why did the Cold Warriors of the CIA and other government agencies have to go to such extraordinary lengths of exaggeration? If they really and truly believed in the existence of a diabolic, monolithic International Communist Conspiracy, why did they have to invent so much about it to convince the American people, the Congress, and the rest of the world of its evil existence? Why did they have to stage manage, entrap, plant evidence, plant stories, create phony documents? The following pages are packed with numerous anti-commiespeak examples of US-government and media inventions about &quot;the Soviet threat&quot;, &quot;the Chinese threat&quot;, and &quot;the Cuban threat&quot;. And all the while, at the same time, we were being flailed with scare stories: in the 1950s, there was &quot;the Bomber Gap&quot; between the US and the Soviet Union, and the &quot;civil defense gap&quot;. Then came &quot;the Missile Gap&quot;. Followed by &quot;the Anti-ballistic missile (ABM) Gap&quot;. In the 1980s, it was &quot;the Spending Gap&quot;. Finally, &quot;the Laser Gap&quot;. And they were all lies.<br /> <br /> We now know that the CIA of Ronald Reagan and William Casey regularly &quot;politicized intelligence assessments&quot; to support the anti-Soviet bias of their administration, and suppressed reports, even those from its own analysts, which contradicted this bias. We now know that the CIA and the Pentagon regularly overestimated the economic and military strength of the Soviet Union, and exaggerated the scale of Soviet nuclear tests and the number of &quot;violations&quot; of existing test-ban treaties, which Washington then accused the Russians of.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt; All to create a larger and meaner enemy, a bigger national security budget, and give security and meaning to the Cold Warriors' own jobs.<br /> <br /> Post-Cold War, New-World-Order time, it looks good for the Military-Industrial-Intelligence Complex and their global partners in crime, the World Bank and the IMF. They've got their NAFTA, and soon their World Trade Organization. They're dictating economic, political and social development all over the Third World and Eastern Europe. Moscow's reaction to events anywhere is no longer a restraining consideration. The UN's Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations, 15 years in the making, is dead. Everything in sight is being deregulated and privatized. Capital prowls the globe with a ravenous freedom it hasn't enjoyed since before World War I, operating free of friction, free of gravity. The world has been made safe for the transnational corporation.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Will this mean any better life for the multitudes than the Cold War brought? Any more regard for the common folk than there's been since they fell off the cosmic agenda centuries ago? &quot;By all means,&quot; says Capital, offering another warmed-up version of the &quot;trickle down&quot; theory, the principle that the poor, who must subsist on table scraps dropped by the rich, can best be served by giving the rich bigger meals.<br /> <br /> The boys of Capital, they also chortle in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century—without exception—has either been crushed, overthrown, or invaded, or corrupted, perverted, subverted, or destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or movement—from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in Salvador—not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home.<br /> <br /> It's as if the Wright brothers' first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of the world looked upon this, took notice of the consequences, nodded their collective heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Man shall never fly.<br /> <br /> == China 1945 to 1960s: Was Mao Tse-tung just paranoid?==<br /> For four years, numerous Americans, in high positions and obscure, sullenly harbored the conviction that World War II was &quot;the wrong war against the wrong enemies&quot;. Communism, they knew, was the only genuine adversary on America's historical agenda. Was that not why Hitler had been ignored/tolerated/appeased/aided? So that the Nazi war machine would turn East and wipe Bolshevism off the face of the earth once and for all? It was just unfortunate that Adolf turned out to be such a megalomaniac and turned West as well.<br /> <br /> But that war was over. These Americans were now to have their day in every corner of the world. The ink on the Japanese surrender treaty was hardly dry when the United States began to use the Japanese soldiers still in China alongside American troops in a joint effort against the Chinese communists. (In the Philippines and in Greece, as we shall see, the US did not even wait for the war to end before subordinating the struggle against Japan and Germany to the anti-communist crusade.)<br /> <br /> The communists in China had worked closely with the American military during the war, providing important intelligence about the Japanese occupiers, rescuing and caring for downed US airmen.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; But no matter. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek would be Washington's man. He headed what passed for a central government in China. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS, forerunner of the CIA) estimated that the bulk of Chiang's military effort had been directed against the communists rather than the Japanese. He had also done his best to block the cooperation between the Reds and the Americans. Now his army contained Japanese units and his regime was full of officials who had collaborated with the Japanese and served in their puppet government.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; But no matter. The Generalissimo was as anti-communist as they come. Moreover, he was a born American client. His forces would be properly trained and equipped to do battle with the men of Mao Tse-tung and Chou Enlai.<br /> <br /> President Truman was up front about what he described as &quot;using the Japanese to hold off the Communists&quot;:&lt;blockquote&gt;It was perfectly clear to us that if we told the Japanese to lay down their arms immediately and march to the seaboard, the entire country would be taken over by the Communists. We therefore had to take the unusual step of using the enemy as a garrison until we could airlift Chinese National [Chiang's] troops to South China and send Marines to guard the seaports.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The deployment of American Marines had swift and dramatic results. Two weeks after the end of the war, Peking was surrounded by communist forces. Only the arrival of the Marines in the city prevented the Reds from taking it over.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; And while Mao's forces were pushing into Shanghai's suburbs, US transport planes dropped Chiang's troops in to seize the city.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In a scramble to get to key centers and ports before the communists, the US transported between 400,000 and 500,000 Nationalist troops by ship and plane all over the vastness of China and Manchuria, places they could never have reached otherwise.<br /> <br /> As the civil war heated up, the 50,000 Marines sent by Truman were used to guard railway lines, coal mines, ports, bridges, and other strategic sites. Inevitably, they became involved in the fighting, sustaining dozens, if not hundreds of casualties. US troops, the communists charged, attacked areas controlled by the Reds, directly opened fire on them, arrested military officers, and disarmed soldiers.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; The Americans found themselves blasting a small Chinese village &quot;unmercifully&quot;, wrote a Marine to his congressman, not knowing &quot;how many innocent people were slaughtered&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> United States planes regularly made reconnaissance flights over communist territory to scout the position of their forces. The communists claimed that American planes frequently strafed and bombed their troops and in one instance machine-gunned a communist-held town.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; To what extent these attacks were carried out by US airmen is not known.<br /> <br /> There were, however, American survivors in some of the many crashes of United States aircraft. Surprisingly, the Reds continued to rescue them, tend to their wounds, and return them to US bases. It may be difficult to appreciate now, but at this time the mystique and the myth of &quot;America&quot; still gripped the imagination of people all over the world, and Chinese peasants, whether labeled &quot;communist&quot; or not, were no exception. During the war the Reds had helped to rescue scores of American fliers and had transported them through Japanese lines to safety. &quot;The Communists&quot;, wrote the New York Times, &quot;did not lose one airman taken under their protection. They made a point of never accepting rewards for saving American airmen.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> When 1946 arrived, about 100,000 American military personnel were still in China, still supporting Chiang. The official United States explanation for the presence of its military was that they were there to disarm and repatriate the Japanese. Though this task was indeed carried out eventually, it was secondary to the military's political function, as Truman's statement cited above makes abundantly clear.<br /> <br /> The American soldiers in China began to protest about not being sent home, a complaint echoed round the world by other GIs kept overseas for political (usually anti-communist) purposes. &quot;They ask me, too, why they're here,&quot; said a Marine lieutenant in China at Christmas-time, 1945. &quot;As an officer I am supposed to tell them, but you can't tell a man that he's here to disarm Japanese when he's guarding the same railway with [armed] Japanese.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Strangely enough, the United States attempted to mediate in the civil war; this, while being an active, powerful participant on one side. In January 1946, President Truman, apparently recognizing that it was either compromise with the communists or see all of China fall under their sway, sent General George Marshall to try and arrange a cease-fire and some kind of unspecified coalition government. While some temporary success was achieved in an on-and-off truce, the idea of a coalition government was doomed to failure, as unlikely as a marriage between the Czar and the Bolsheviks. As the historian D.F. Fleming has pointed out, &quot;One cannot unite a dying oligarchy with a rising revolution.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Not until early 1947 did the United States begin to withdraw some of its military forces, although aid and support to the Chiang government continued in one form or another long afterward. At about this same time, the Flying Tigers began to operate. The legendary American air squadron under the leadership of General Claire Chennault had fought for the Chinese against the Japanese before and during the world war. Now Chennault, Chiang's former air force adviser, had reactivated the squadron (under the name CAT) and its pilots-of-fortune soon found themselves in the thick of the fray, flying endless supply missions to Nationalist cities under siege, dodging communist shell bursts to airlift food, ammunition, and supplies of all kinds, or to rescue the wounded.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; Technically, CAT was a private airline hired by the Chiang government, but before the civil war came to an end, the airline had formally interlocked with the CIA to become the first unit in the Agency's sprawling air-empire-to-be, best known for the Air America line.<br /> <br /> By 1949, United States aid to the Nationalists since the war amounted to almost $2 billion in cash and $1 billion worth of military hardware; 39 Nationalist army divisions had been trained and equipped.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; Yet the Chiang dynasty was collapsing all around in bits and pieces. It had not been only the onslaught of Chiang's communist foes, but the hostility of the Chinese people at large to his tyranny, his wanton cruelty, and the extraordinary corruption and decadence of his entire bureaucratic and social system. By contrast, the large areas under communist administration were models of honesty, progress and fairness; entire divisions of the Generalissimo's forces defected to the communists. American political and military leaders had no illusions about the nature and quality of Chiang's rule. The Nationalist forces, said General David Barr, head of the US Military Mission in China, were under &quot;the world's worst leadership&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Generalissimo, his cohorts and soldiers fled to the offshore island of Taiwan (Formosa). They had prepared their entry two years earlier by terrorizing the islanders into submission—a massacre which took the lives of as many as 28,000 people.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; Prior to the Nationalists' escape to the island, the US government entertained no doubts that Taiwan was a part of China. Afterward, uncertainty began to creep into the minds of Washington officials. The crisis was resolved in a remarkably simple manner: the US agreed with Chiang that the proper way to view the situation was not that Taiwan belonged to China, but that Taiwan was China. And so it was called.<br /> <br /> In the wake of the communist success, China scholar Felix Greene observed, &quot;Americans simply could not bring themselves to believe that the Chinese, however rotten their leadership, could have preferred a communist government.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; It must have been the handiwork of a conspiracy, an international conspiracy, at the control panel of which sat, not unexpectedly, the Soviet Union. The evidence for this, however, was thin to the point of transparency. Indeed, ever since Stalin's credo of &quot;socialism in one country&quot; won out over Trotsky's internationalism in the 1920s, the Russians had sided with Chiang more than with Mao, advising the latter more than once to dissolve his army and join Chiang's government.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt; Particularly in the post-World War II years, when the Soviet Union was faced with its own staggering crisis of reconstruction, did it not relish the prospect of having to help lift the world's most populous nation into the modern age. In 1947, General Marshall stated publicly that he knew of no evidence that the Chinese communists were being supported by the USSR.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But in the United States this did not prevent the rise of an entire mythology of how the US had &quot;lost&quot; China: Soviet intervention, State Department communists, White House cowards, military and diplomatic folly, communist dupes and fellow-travelers in the media … treachery everywhere …<br /> <br /> The Truman administration, said Senator Joseph McCarthy with characteristic charm, was composed of &quot;egg-sucking phony liberals&quot; who protected the &quot;Communists and queers&quot; who had &quot;sold China into atheistic slavery&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Yet, short of an all-out invasion of the country by large numbers of American troops, it is difficult to see what more the US government could have done to prevent Chiang's downfall. Even after Chiang fled to Taiwan, the United States pursued a campaign of relentless assaults against the communist government, despite a request from Chou En-lai for aid and friendship. The Red leader saw no practical or ideological bar to this.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt; Instead, the United States evidently conspired to assassinate Chou on several occasions.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Many Nationalist soldiers had taken refuge in northern Burma in the great exodus of 1949, much to the displeasure of the Burmese Government. There, the CIA began to regroup this stateless army into a fighting force, and during the early 1950s a number of large- and small-scale incursions into China were carried out. In one instance, in April 1951, a few thousand troops, accompanied by CIA advisers and supplied by air drops from American C46s and C47s, crossed the border into China's Yunnan province, but they were driven back by the communists in less than a week. The casualties were high and included several CIA advisers who lost their lives. Another raid that summer took the invaders 65 miles into China where they reportedly held a 100-mile-long strip of territory.<br /> <br /> While the attacks continued intermittently, the CIA proceeded to build up the force's capabilities: American engineers arrived to help construct and expand airstrips in Burma, fresh troops were flown in from Taiwan, other troops were recruited from amongst Burmese hill tribes, CIA air squadrons were brought in for logistical services, and enormous quantities of American heavy arms were ferried in. Much of the supply of men and equipment came in via nearby Thailand.<br /> <br /> The army soon stood at more than 10,000 men. By the end of 1952, Taiwan claimed that 41,000 communist troops had been killed and more than 3,000 wounded. The figures were most likely exaggerated, but even if not, it was clear that the raids would not lead to Chiang's triumphant return to the mainland—although this was not their sole purpose. On the Chinese border two greater battles were raging: in Korea and Vietnam. It was the hope of the United States to force the Chinese to divert troops and military resources away from these areas. The infant People's Republic of China was undergoing a terrible test.<br /> <br /> In between raids on China, the &quot;Chinats&quot; (as distinguished from the &quot;Chicoms&quot;) found time to clash frequently with Burmese troops, indulge in banditry, and become the opium barons of The Golden Triangle, that slice of land encompassing parts of Burma, Laos and Thailand which was the world's largest source of opium and heroin. CIA pilots flew the stuff all over, to secure the cooperation of those in Thailand who were important to the military operation, as a favor to their Nationalist clients, perhaps even for the money, and, ironically, to serve as cover for their more illicit activities.<br /> <br /> The Chinats in Burma kept up their harassment of the Chicoms until 1961 and the CIA continued to supply them militarily, but at some point the Agency began to phase itself out of a more direct involvement. When the CIA, in response to repeated protests by the Burmese Government to the United States and the United Nations, put pressure on the Chinats to leave Burma, Chiang responded by threatening to expose the Agency's covert support of his troops there. At an earlier stage, the CIA had entertained the hope that the Chinese would be provoked into attacking Burma, thereby forcing the strictly neutral Burmese to seek salvation in the Western camp.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; In January 1961, the Chinese did just that, but as part of a combined force with the Burmese to overwhelm the Nationalists' main base and mark finis to their Burmese adventure. Burma subsequently renounced American aid and moved closer to Peking.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; For many of the Chinats, unemployment was short-lived. They soon signed up with the CIA again; this time to fight with the Agency's grand army in Laos.<br /> <br /> Burma was not the only jumping-off site for CIA-organized raids into China. Several islands within about five miles of the Chinese coast, particularly Quemoy and Matsu, were used as bases for hit-and-run attacks, often in battalion strength, for occasional bombing forays, and to blockade mainland ports. Chiang was &quot;brutally pressured&quot; by the US to build up his troops on the islands beginning around 1953 as a demonstration of Washington's new policy of &quot;unleashing&quot; him.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Chinese retaliated several times with heavy artillery attacks on Quemoy, on one occasion killing two American military officers. The prospect of an escalated war led the US later to have second thoughts and to ask Chiang to abandon the islands, but he then refused. The suggestion has often been put forward that Chiang's design was to embroil the United States in just such a war as his one means of returning to the mainland.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Many incursions into China were made by smaller, commando-type teams air-dropped in for intelligence and sabotage purposes. In November 1952, two CIA officers, John Downey and Richard Fecteau, who had been engaged in flying these teams in and dropping supplies to them, were shot down and captured by the communists. Two years passed before Peking announced the capture and sentencing of the two men. The State Department broke its own two-year silence with indignation, claiming that the two men had been civilian employees of the US Department of the Army in Japan who were presumed lost on a flight from Korea to Japan. &quot;How they came into the hands of the Chinese Communists is unknown to the United States … the continued wrongful detention of these American citizens furnishes further proof of the Chinese Communist regime's disregard for accepted practices of international conduct.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Fecteau was released in December 1971, shortly before President Nixon's trip to China; Downey was not freed until March 1973, soon after Nixon publicly acknowledged him to be a CIA officer.<br /> <br /> The Peking announcement in 1954 also revealed that eleven American airmen had been shot down over China in January 1953 while on a mission which had as its purpose the &quot;air-drop of special agents into China and the Soviet Union&quot;. These men were luckier, being freed after only 2 1/2 years. All told, said the Chinese, they had killed 106 American and Taiwanese agents who had parachuted into China between 1951 and 1954 and had captured 124 others. Although the CIA had little, if anything, to show for its commando actions, it reportedly maintained the program until at least 1960.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> There were many other CIA flights over China for purely espionage purposes, carried out by high-altitude U-2 planes, pilotless &quot;drones&quot;, and other aircraft. These overflights began around the late 1950s and were not discontinued until 1971, to coincide with Henry Kissinger's first visit to Peking. The operation was not without incident. Several U-2 planes were shot down and even more of the drones, 19 of the latter by Chinese count between 1964 and 1969. China registered hundreds of &quot;serious warnings&quot; about violations of its air space, and on at least one occasion American aircraft crossed the Chinese border and shot down a Mig-17.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It would seem that no degree of failure or paucity of result was enough to deter the CIA from seeking new ways to torment the Chinese in the decade following their revolution. Tibet was another case in point. The Peking government claimed Tibet as part of China, as had previous Chinese governments for more than two centuries, although many Tibetans still regarded themselves as autonomous or independent. The United States made its position clear during the war:&lt;blockquote&gt;The Government of the United States has borne in mind the fact that the Chinese Government has long claimed suzerainty over Tibet and that the Chinese constitution lists Tibet among areas constituting the territory of the Republic of China. This Government has at no time raised a question regarding either of these claims.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;After the communist revolution, Washington officials tended to be more equivocal about the matter. But US actions against Tibet had nothing to do with the niceties of international law.<br /> <br /> In the mid-1950s, the CIA began to recruit Tibetan refugees and exiles in neighboring countries such as India and Nepal. Amongst their number were members of the Dalai Lama's guard, often referred to picturesquely as &quot;the fearsome Khamba horsemen&quot;, and others who had already engaged in some guerrilla activity against Peking rule and/or the profound social changes being instituted by the revolution. (Serfdom and slavery were, literally, still prevalent in Tibet.) Those selected were flown to the United States, to an unused military base high in the Colorado mountains, an altitude approximating that of their mountainous homeland. There, hidden away as much as possible from the locals, they were trained in the fine points of paramilitary warfare.<br /> <br /> After completing training, each group of Tibetans was flown to Taiwan or another friendly Asian country, thence to be infiltrated back into Tibet, or elsewhere in China, where they occupied themselves in activities such as sabotage, mining roads, cutting communication lines, and ambushing small communist forces. Their actions were supported by CIA aircraft and on occasion led by Agency contract mercenaries. Extensive support facilities were constructed in northeast India.<br /> <br /> The operation in Colorado was maintained until some time in the 1960s. How many hundreds of Tibetans passed through the course of instruction will probably never be known. Even after the formal training program came to an end, the CIA continued to finance and supply their exotic clients and nurture their hopeless dream of reconquering their homeland.<br /> <br /> In 1961, when the New York Times got wind of the Colorado operation, it acceded to a Pentagon request to probe no further.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt; The matter was particularly sensitive because the CIA's 1947 charter and Congress's interpretation of it had traditionally limited the Agency's domestic operations to information collection.<br /> <br /> Above and beyond the bedevilment of China on its own merits, there was the spillover from the Korean war into Chinese territory—numerous bombings and strafings by American planes which, the Chinese frequently reported, took civilian lives and destroyed homes. And there was the matter of germ warfare.<br /> <br /> The Chinese devoted a great deal of effort to publicizing their claim that the United States, particularly during January to March 1952, had dropped quantities of bacteria and bacteria-laden insects over Korea and northeast China. It presented testimony of about 38 captured American airmen who had purportedly flown the planes with the deadly cargo. Many of the men went into voluminous detail about the entire operation: the kinds of bombs and other containers dropped, the types of insects, the diseases they carried, etc. At the same time, photographs of the alleged germ bombs and insects were published. Then, in August, an &quot;International Scientific Committee&quot; was appointed, composed of scientists from Sweden, France, Great Britain, Italy, Brazil and the Soviet Union. After an investigation in China of more than two months, the committee produced a report of some 600 pages, many photos, and the conclusion that:&lt;blockquote&gt;The peoples of Korea and China have indeed been the objectives of bacteriological weapons. These have been employed by units of the U.S.A. armed forces, using a great variety of different methods for the purpose, some of which seem to be developments of those applied by the Japanese during the second world war.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The last reference has to do with the bacteriological warfare experiments the Japanese had carried out against China between 1940 and 1942. The Japanese scientists responsible for this program were captured by the United States in 1945 and given immunity from prosecution in return for providing technical information about the experiments to American scientists from the Army biological research center at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The Chinese were aware of this at the time of the International Scientific Committee's investigation.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It should be noted that some of the American airmen's statements contained so much technical biological information and were so full of communist rhetoric—&quot;imperialist, capitalist Wall Street war monger&quot; and the like—that their personal authorship of the statements must be seriously questioned. Moreover, it was later learned that most of the airmen had confessed only after being subjected to physical abuse.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But in view of what we have since learned about American involvement with chemical and biological weapons, the Chinese claims cannot be dismissed out of hand. In 1970, for example, the New York Times reported that during the Korean War, when US forces were overwhelmed by &quot;human waves&quot; of Chinese, &quot;the Army dug into captured Nazi chemical warfare documents describing Sarin, a nerve gas so lethal that a few pounds could kill thousands of people in minutes. … By the mid-nineteen-fifties, the Army was manufacturing thousands of gallons of Sarin.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And during the 1950s and 1960s, the Army and the CIA conducted numerous experiments with biological agents within the United States. To cite just two examples: In 1955, there is compelling evidence that the CIA released whooping-cough bacteria into the open air in Florida, followed by an extremely sharp increase in the incidence of the disease in the state that year.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt; The following year, another toxic substance was disseminated in the streets and tunnels of New York City.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> We will also see in the chapter on Cuba how the CIA conducted chemical and biological warfare against Fidel Castro's rule.<br /> <br /> In March 1966, Secretary of State Dean Rusk spoke before a congressional committee about American policy toward China. Mr. Rusk, it seems, was perplexed that &quot;At times the Communist Chinese leaders seem to be obsessed with the notion that they are being threatened and encircled.&quot; He spoke of China's &quot;imaginary, almost pathological, notion that the United States and other countries around its borders are seeking an opportunity to invade mainland China and destroy the Peiping [Peking] regime&quot;. The Secretary then added:&lt;blockquote&gt;How much Peiping's &quot;fear&quot; of the United States is genuine and how much it is artificially induced for domestic political purposes only the Chinese Communist leaders themselves know. I am convinced, however, that their desire to expel our influence and activity from the western Pacific and Southeast Asia is not motivated by fears that we are threatening them.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> == Italy 1947-1948: Free elections, Hollywood style ==<br /> &quot;Those who do not believe in the ideology of the United States, shall not be allowed to stay in the United States,&quot; declared the American Attorney General, Tom Clark, in January 1948.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In March, the Justice Department, over which Clark presided, determined that Italians who did not believe in the ideology of the United States would not be allowed to emigrate to, or even enter, the United States.<br /> <br /> This was but one tactic in a remarkable American campaign to ensure that Italians who did not believe in the ideology of the United States would not be allowed to form a government of a differing ideology in Italy in their election of 1948.<br /> <br /> Two years earlier, the Italian Communist Party (PCI), one of the largest in the world, and the Socialist Party (PSI) had together garnered more votes and more seats in the Constituent Assembly election than the Christian Democrats. But the two parties of the left had run separate candidates and thus had to be content with some ministerial posts in a coalition cabinet under a Christian Democrat premier. The results, nonetheless, spoke plainly enough to put the fear of Marx into the Truman administration.<br /> <br /> For the 1948 election, scheduled for 18 April, the PCI and PSI united to form the Popular Democratic Front (FDP) and in February won municipal elections in Pescara with a 10 percent increase in their vote over 1946. The Christian Democrats ran a poor second. The prospect of the left winning control of the Italian government loomed larger than ever before. It was at this point that the US began to train its big economic and political guns upon the Italian people. All the good ol' Yankee know-how, all the Madison Avenue savvy in the art of swaying public opinion, all the Hollywood razzmatazz would be brought to bear on the &quot;target market&quot;.<br /> <br /> Pressing domestic needs in Italy, such as agricultural and economic reform, the absence of which produced abysmal extremes of wealth and poverty, were not to be the issues of the day. The lines of battle would be drawn around the question of &quot;democracy&quot; vs. &quot;communism&quot; (the idea of &quot;capitalism&quot; remaining discreetly to one side). The fact that the Communists had been the single most active anti-fascist group in Italy during the war, undergoing ruthless persecution, while the Christian Democrat government of 1948 and other electoral opponents on the right were riddled through with collaborators, monarchists and plain unreconstructed fascists … this too would be ignored; indeed, turned around. It was now a matter of Communist &quot;dictatorship&quot; vs. their adversaries' love of &quot;freedom&quot;: this was presumed a priori. As one example, a group of American congressmen visited Italy in summer 1947 and casually and arbitrarily concluded that &quot;The country is under great pressure from within and without to veer to the left and adopt a totalitarian-collective national organization.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> To make any of this at all credible, the whole picture had to be pushed and squeezed into the frame of The American Way of Life vs. The Soviet Way of Life, a specious proposition which must have come as somewhat of a shock to leftists who regarded themselves as Italian and neither Russian nor American.<br /> <br /> In February 1948, after non-Communist ministers in Czechoslovakia had boycotted cabinet meetings over a dispute concerning police hiring practices, the Communist government dissolved the coalition cabinet and took sole power. The Voice of America pointed to this event repeatedly, as a warning to the Italian people of the fate awaiting them if Italy &quot;went Communist&quot; (and used as well by anti-communists for decades afterward as a prime example of communist duplicity). Yet, by all appearances, the Italian Christian Democrat government and the American government had conspired the previous year in an even more blatant usurpation of power.<br /> <br /> In January 1947, when Italian Premier Alcide de Gasperi visited Washington at the United States' invitation, his overriding concern was to plead for crucial financial assistance for his war-torn, impoverished country. American officials may have had a different priority. Three days after returning to Italy, de Gasperi unexpectedly dissolved his cabinet, which included several Communists and Socialists. The press reported that many people in Italy believed that de Gasperi's action was related to his visit to the United States and was aimed at decreasing leftist, principally Communist, influence in the government. After two weeks of tortuous delay, the formation of a center or center-right government sought by de Gasperi proved infeasible; the new cabinet still included Communists and Socialists although the left had lost key positions, notably the ministries of foreign affairs and finance.<br /> <br /> From this point until May, when de Gasperi's deputy, Ivan Lombardo, led a mission to Washington to renew the request for aid, promised loans were &quot;frozen&quot; by the United States for reasons not very clear. On several occasions during this period the Italian left asserted their belief that the aid was being held up pending the ouster of leftists from the cabinet. The New York Times was moved to note that, &quot;Some observers here feel that a further Leftward swing in Italy would retard aid.&quot; As matters turned out, the day Lombardo arrived in Washington, de Gasperi again dissolved his entire cabinet and suggested that the new cabinet would manage without the benefit of leftist members. This was indeed what occurred, and over the ensuing few months, exceedingly generous American financial aid flowed into Italy, in addition to the cancelation of the nation's $1 billion debt to the United States.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At the very same time, France, which was also heavily dependent upon American financial aid, ousted all its Communist ministers as well. In this case there was an immediate rationale: the refusal of the Communist ministers to support Premier Ramadier in a vote of confidence over a wage freeze. Despite this, the ouster was regarded as a &quot;surprise&quot; and considered &quot;bold&quot; in France, and opinion was widespread that American loans were being used, or would be used, to force France to align with the US. Said Ramadier: &quot;A little of our independence is departing from us with each loan we obtain.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As the last month of the 1948 election campaign began, Time magazine pronounced the possible leftist victory to be &quot;the brink of catastrophe&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;It was primarily this fear,&quot; William Colby, former Director of the CIA, has written, &quot;that had led to the formation of the Office of Policy Coordination, which gave the CIA the capability to undertake covert political, propaganda, and paramilitary operations in the first place.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; But covert operations, as far as is known, played a relatively minor role in the American campaign to break the back of the Italian left. It was the very overtness of the endeavor, without any apparent embarrassment, that stamps the whole thing with such uniqueness and arrogance—one might say swagger. The fortunes of the FDP slid downhill with surprising acceleration in the face of an awesome mobilization of resources such as the following:&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  A massive letter writing campaign from Americans of Italian extraction to their relatives and friends in Italy—at first written by individuals in their own words or guided by &quot;sample letters&quot; in newspapers, soon expanded to mass-produced, pre-written, postage-paid form letters, cablegrams, &quot;educational circulars&quot;, and posters, needing only an address and signature. And—from a group calling itself The Committee to Aid Democracy in Italy—half a million picture postcards illustrating the gruesome fate awaiting Italy if it voted for &quot;dictatorship&quot; or &quot;foreign dictatorship&quot;. In all, an estimated 10 million pieces of mail were written and distributed by newspapers, radio stations, churches, the American Legion, wealthy individuals, etc.; and business advertisements now included offers to send letters airmail to Italy even if you didn't buy the product. All this with the publicly expressed approval of the Acting Secretary of State and the Post Office which inaugurated special &quot;Freedom Flights&quot; to give greater publicity to the dispatch of the mail to Italy.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The form letters contained messages such as: &quot;A communist victory would ruin Italy. The United States would withdraw aid and a world war would probably result.&quot; … &quot;We implore you not to throw our beautiful Italy into the arms of that cruel despot communism. America hasn't anything against communism in Russia [sic], but why impose it on other people, other lands, in that way putting out the torch of liberty?&quot; … &quot;If the forces of true democracy should lose in the Italian election, the American Government will not send any more money to Italy and we won't send any more money to you, our relatives.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;These were by no means the least sophisticated of the messages. Other themes emphasized were Russian domination of Italy, loss of religion and the church, loss of family life, loss of home and land.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Veteran newsman Howard K. Smith pointed out at the time that &quot;For an Italian peasant a telegram from anywhere is a wondrous thing; and a cable from the terrestrial paradise of America is not lightly to be disregarded.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The letters threatening to cut off gifts may have been equally intimidating. &quot;Such letters,&quot; wrote a Christian Democrat official in an Italian newspaper, &quot;struck home in southern Italian and Sicilian villages with the force of lightning.&quot; A 1949 poll indicated that 16 percent of Italians claimed relatives in the United States with whom they were in touch; this, apparently, was in addition to friends there.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  The State Department backed up the warnings in the letters by announcing that &quot;If the Communists should win … there would be no further question of assistance from the United States.&quot; The Italian left felt compelled to regularly assure voters that this would not really happen; this, in turn, inspired American officials, including Secretary of State George Marshall, to repeat the threat. (Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.)&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  A daily series of direct short-wave broadcasts to Italy backed by the State Department and featuring prominent Americans. (The State Department estimated that there were 1.2 million shortwave receivers in Italy as of 1946.) The Attorney General went on the air and assured the Italian people that the election was a &quot;choice between democracy and communism, between God and godlessness, between order and chaos.&quot; William Donovan, the wartime head of the OSS (forerunner of the CIA) warned that &quot;under a communist dictatorship in Italy,&quot; many of the &quot;nation's industrial plants would be dismantled and shipped to Russia and millions of Italy's workers would be deported to Russia for forced labor.&quot; If this were not enough to impress the Italian listeners, a parade of unknown but passionate refugees from Eastern Europe went before the microphone to recount horror stories of life behind &quot;The Iron Curtain&quot;.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Several commercial radio stations broadcast to Italy special services held in American Catholic churches to pray for the Pope in &quot;this, his most critical hour&quot;. On one station, during an entire week, hundreds of Italian-Americans from all walks of life delivered one-minute messages to Italy which were relayed through the short-wave station. Station WOV in New York invited Italian war brides to transcribe a personal message to their families back home. The station then mailed the recordings to Italy.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Voice of America daily broadcasts into Italy were sharply increased, highlighting news of American assistance or gestures of friendship to Italy. A sky-full of show-biz stars, including Frank Sinatra and Gary Cooper, recorded a series of radio programs designed to win friends and influence the vote in Italy. Five broadcasts of Italian-American housewives were aired, and Italian-Americans with some leftist credentials were also enlisted for the cause. Labor leader Luigi Antonini called upon Italians to &quot;smash the Muscovite fifth column&quot; which &quot;follows the orders of the ferocious Moscow tyranny,&quot; or else Italy would become an &quot;enemy totalitarian country&quot;.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;To counter Communist charges in Italy that negroes in the United States were denied opportunities, the VOA broadcast the story of a negro couple who had made a fortune in the junk business and built a hospital for their people in Oklahoma City. (It should be remembered that in 1948 American negroes had not yet reached the status of second-class citizens.)&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Italian radio stations carried a one-hour show from Hollywood put on to raise money for the orphans of Italian pilots who had died in the war. (It was not reported if the same was done for the orphans of German pilots.)&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  American officials in Italy widely distributed leaflets extolling US economic aid and staged exhibitions among low-income groups. The US Information Service presented an exhibition on &quot;The Worker in America&quot; and made extensive use of documentary and feature films to sell the American way of life. It was estimated that in the period immediately preceding the election more than five million Italians each week saw American documentaries. The 1939 Hollywood film &quot;Ninotchka&quot;, which satirized life in Russia, was singled out as a particularly effective feature film. It was shown throughout working-class areas and the Communists made several determined efforts to prevent its presentation. After the election, a pro-Communist worker was reported as saying that &quot;What licked us was 'Ninotchka'.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  The Justice Department served notice that Italians who joined the Communist Party would be denied that dream of so many Italians, emigration to America. The State Department then ruled that any Italians known to have voted for the Communists would not be allowed to even enter the terrestrial paradise. (A Department telegram to a New York politico read: &quot;Voting Communist appears to constitute affiliation with Communist Party within meaning of Immigration Law and therefore would require exclusion from United States.&quot;) It was urged that this information be emphasized in letters to Italy.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  President Truman accused the Soviet Union of plotting the subjugation of Western Europe and called for universal military training in the United States and a resumption of military conscription to forestall &quot;threatened communist control and police-state rule&quot;. During the campaign, American and British warships were frequently found anchored off Italian ports. Time, in an edition widely displayed and commented upon in Italy shortly before the election, gave its approval to the sentiment that &quot;The U.S. should make it clear that it will use force, if necessary, to prevent Italy from going Communist.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  The United States and Italy signed a ten-year treaty of &quot;friendship, commerce and navigation&quot;. This was the first treaty of its kind entered into by the US since the war, a point emphasized for Italian consumption.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  A &quot;Friendship Train&quot; toured the United States gathering gifts and then traveled round Italy distributing them. The train was painted red, white and blue, and bore large signs expressing the friendship of American citizens toward the people of Italy.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  The United States government stated that it favored Italian trusteeship over some of its former African colonies, such as Ethiopia and Libya, a wholly unrealistic proposal that could never come to pass in the post-war world. (The Soviet Union made a similar proposal.)&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  The US, Great Britain and France maneuvered the Soviet Union into vetoing, for the third time, a motion that Italy be admitted to the United Nations. (The first time, the Russians had expressed their opposition on the grounds that a peace treaty with Italy had not been signed. After the signing in 1947, they said they would accept the proposal if other World War II enemies, such as Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania were also made members.)&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  The same three allied nations proposed to the Soviet Union that negotiations take place with a view to returning Trieste to Italy. Formerly the principal Italian port on the Adriatic coast, bordering Yugoslavia, Trieste had been made a &quot;free city&quot; under the terms of the peace treaty. The approval of the Soviet Union was necessary to alter the treaty, and the Western proposal was designed to put the Russians on the spot. The Italian people had an intense sentimental attachment to Trieste, and if the Russians rejected the proposal it could seriously embarrass the Italian Communists. A Soviet acceptance, however, would antagonize their Yugoslav allies. The US prodded the Russians for a response, but none was forthcoming. From the Soviet point of view, the most obvious and safest path to follow would have been to delay their answer until after the election. Yet they chose to announce their rejection of the proposal only five days before the vote, thus hammering another nail into the FDP coffin.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  A &quot;Manifesto of peace to freedom-loving Italians&quot;, calling upon them to reject Communism, was sent to Premier de Gasperi. Its signatories included two former US Secretaries of State, a former Assistant Secretary of State, a former Attorney General, a former Supreme Court Justice, a former Governor of New York, the former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and many other prominent personages. This message was, presumably, suitably publicized throughout Italy, a task easy in the extreme inasmuch as an estimated 82 percent of Italian newspapers were in the hands of those unsympathetic to the leftist bloc.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  More than 200 American labor leaders of Italian origin held a conference, out of which came a cable sent to 23 daily newspapers throughout Italy similarly urging thumbs down on the Reds. At the same time, the Italian-American Labor Council contributed $50,000 to anti-Communist labor organizations in Italy. The CIA was already secretly subsidizing such trade unions to counteract the influence of leftist unions,&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; but this was standard Agency practice independent of electoral considerations. (According to a former CIA officer, when, in 1945, the Communists came very near to gaining control of labor unions, first in Sicily, then in all Italy and southern France, co-operation between the OSS and the Mafia successfully stemmed the tide.)&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  The CIA, by its own later admission, gave $1 million to Italian &quot;center parties&quot;, a king's ransom in Italy 1948,&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; although another report places the figure at $10 million. The Agency also forged documents and letters purported to come from the PCI which were designed to put the party in a bad light and discredit its leaders; anonymous books and magazine articles funded by the CIA told in vivid detail about supposed communist activities in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; pamphlets dealt with PCI candidates' sex and personal lives as well as smearing them with the fascist and/or anti-church brush.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  An American group featuring noted Italian-American musicians traveled to Rome to present a series of concerts.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  President Truman chose a month before the election as the time to transfer 29 merchant ships to the Italian government as a &quot;gesture of friendship and confidence in a democratic Italy&quot;. (These were Italian vessels seized during the war and others to replace those seized and lost.)&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Four days later, the House Appropriations Committee acted swiftly to approve $18.7 million in additional &quot;interim aid&quot; funds for Italy.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Two weeks later, the United States gave Italy $4.3 million as the first payment on wages due to 60,000 former Italian war prisoners in the US who had worked &quot;voluntarily&quot; for the Allied cause. This was a revision of the peace treaty which stipulated that the Italian government was liable for such payments.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Six days before election day, the State Department made it public that Italy would soon receive $31 million in gold in return for gold looted by the Nazis. (The fact that only a few years earlier Italy had been the &quot;enemy&quot; fighting alongside the Nazis was now but a dim memory.)&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Two days later, the US government authorized two further large shipments of food to Italy, one for $8 million worth of grains. A number of the aid ships, upon their arrival in Italy during the election campaign, had been unloaded amid ceremony and a speech by the American ambassador.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;A poster prominent in Italy read: &quot;The bread that we eat—40 per cent Italian flour—60 per cent American flour sent free of charge.&quot; The poster neglected to mention whether the savings were passed on to the consumer or served to line the pockets of the baking companies.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Four days before election day, the American Commission for the Restoration of Italian Monuments, Inc. announced an additional series of grants to the Italian Ministry of Fine Arts.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  April 15 was designated &quot;Free Italy Day&quot; by the American Sympathizers for a Free Italy with nation-wide observances to be held.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  The American ambassador, James Clement Dunn, traveled constantly throughout Italy pointing out to the population &quot;on every possible occasion what American aid has meant to them and their country&quot;. At the last unloading of food, Dunn declared that the American people were saving Italy from starvation, chaos and possible domination from outside. His speeches usually received wide coverage in the non-left press. By contrast, the Italian government prohibited several of its own ambassadors abroad from returning home to campaign for the FDP.&lt;/blockquote&gt;In his historic speech of 12 March 1947, which came to be known as &quot;The Truman Doctrine&quot;, the president had proclaimed:&lt;blockquote&gt;I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;It scarcely needs to be emphasized how hypocritical this promise proved to be, but the voices which spoke out in the United States against their government's crusade in Italy were few and barely audible above the roar. The Italian-American Committee for Free Elections in Italy held a rally to denounce the propaganda blitz, declaring that &quot;Thousands of Americans of Italian origin feel deeply humiliated by the continuous flow of suggestions, advice and pressure put on the Italians, as though they were unable to decide for themselves whom to elect.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Progressive Party also went on record, stating: &quot;As Americans we repudiate our Government's threat to cut off food from Italy unless the election results please us. Hungry children must not go unfed because their parents do not vote as ordered from abroad.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; The party's candidate for president in 1948 was Henry Wallace, the former vice-president who was an outspoken advocate of genuine detente with the Soviet Union. History did not provide the opportunity to observe what the reaction would have been—amongst those who saw nothing wrong with what the United States was doing in Italy—if a similar campaign had been launched by the Soviet Union or the Italian left in the United States on behalf of Wallace.<br /> <br /> Though some Italians must have been convinced at times that Stalin himself was the FDP's principal candidate, the actual Soviet intervention in the election hardly merited a single headline. The American press engaged in speculation that the Russians were pouring substantial sums of money into the Communist Party's coffers. However, a survey carried out by the Italian bureau of the United Press revealed that the anti-Communist parties spent 7 1/2 times as much as the FDP on all forms of propaganda, the Christian Democrats alone spending four times as much.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; As for other Soviet actions, Howard K. Smith presented this observation:&lt;blockquote&gt;The Russians tried to respond with a few feeble gestures for a while—some Italian war prisoners were released; some newsprint was sent to Italy and offered to all parties for their campaign. But there was no way of resisting what amounted to a tidal wave.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;There is evidence that the Russians found the show getting too rough for them and actually became apprehensive of what the American and British reaction to a Communist victory at the polls might be. (Russia's concern about conflict with the West was also expressed within a month of the Italian elections in one of the celebrated Cominform letters to Tito, accusing the Yugoslavs of trying to involve the Soviets with the Western powers when &quot;it should have been known … that the U.S.S.R. after such a heavy war could not start a new one&quot;.)&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The evidence Smith was alluding to was the Soviet rejection of the Trieste proposal. By its timing, reported the New York Times, &quot;the unexpected procedure caused some observers to conclude that the Russians had thrown the Italian Communist Party overboard.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt; The party's newspaper had a difficult time dealing with the story. Washington did as well, for it undermined the fundamental premise of the Italian campaign: that the Italian Communist Party and the Soviet Union were indistinguishable as to ends and means; that if you buy the one, you get the other as well. Thus the suggestion was put forth that perhaps the Soviet rejection was only a tactic to demonstrate that the US could not keep its promise on Trieste. But the Soviet announcement had not been accompanied by any such propaganda message, and it would not explain why the Russians had waited several weeks until near the crucial end to deliver its body blow to their Italian comrades. In any event, the United States could only come out smelling a lot sweeter than the Russians.<br /> <br /> When the Broadway show had ended its engagement in Italy, the Christian Democrats stood as the clear winner with 48 percent of the vote. The leftist coalition had been humiliated with a totally unexpected polling of but 31 percent. It had been a crusade of the kind which Aneurin Bevan had ascribed to the Tories: &quot;The whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century,&quot; the British Labour leader wrote, &quot;is being deployed to enable wealth to persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power.&quot;<br /> <br /> == Greece 1947 to early 1950s: From cradle of democracy to client state ==<br /> Jorge Semprun is a Spaniard, a Frenchman, a novelist and film-writer, former Communist, former inmate of Buchenwald. He was at the infamous Nazi concentration camp in 1944 with other party members when they heard the news:&lt;blockquote&gt;For some days now, we had talked of nothing else. … At first some of us had thought it was a lie. It had to be. An invention of Nazi propaganda, to raise the morale of the people. We listened to the news bulletins on the German radio, broadcast by all the loudspeakers, and we shook our heads. A trick to raise the morale of the German people, it had to be. But we soon had to face up to the evidence. Some of us listened in secret to the Allied broadcasts, which confirmed the news. There was no doubt about it: British troops really were crushing the Greek Resistance. In Athens, battle was raging, British troops were retaking the city from the ELAS forces, district by district. It was an unequal fight: ELAS had neither tanks nor planes.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;But Radio Moscow had said nothing, and this silence was variously interpreted.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The British army had arrived in Greece during October and November 1944, shortly after the bulk of the Germans had fled, an evacuation due in no small part to ELAS, the People's Liberation Army. Founded during the course of 1941–42 on the initiative of the Greek Communist Party, ELAS and its political wing EAM cut across the entire left side of the political spectrum, numbering many priests and even a few bishops amongst its followers. The guerrillas had wrested large areas of the country from the Nazi invaders who had routed the British in 1941.<br /> <br /> ELAS/EAM partisans could be ruthless and coercive toward those Greeks who did not cooperate with them or who were suspected of collaboration with the Germans. But they also provided another dramatic example of the liberating effects of a world war: the encrusted ways of the Greek old guard were cast aside; in their place arose communities which had at least the semblance of being run by the local residents, inchoate institutions and mechanisms which might have been the precursor of a regenerated Greek society after the war; education, perhaps geared toward propaganda, but for the illiterate education nonetheless; fighting battalions of women, housewives called upon for the first time to act independently of their husbands' control … a phenomenon which spread irrepressibly until EAM came to number some one to two million Greeks out of a population of seven million.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> This was hardly the kind of social order designed to calm the ulcers of the British old guard (Winston Churchill for one) who had long regarded Greece as their private manor. The Great Man was determined that the Greek king should be restored to his rightful place, with all that that implied, and the British military in Greece lost no time in installing a government dedicated to that end. Monarchists, quislings, and conservatives of all stripes found themselves in positions of political power, predominant in the new Greek army and police; members of EAM/ELAS found themselves dead or in prison.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the early days of the world war, when defeating the Nazis was the Allies' overwhelming purpose, Churchill had referred to ELAS as &quot;those gallant guerrillas&quot;, and ELAS's supporters had welcomed the British in early November 1944 with a sign reading, &quot;We Greet the Brave English Army. … EAM.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But the following month, fighting broke out between ELAS and the British forces and their Greek comrades-in-arms, many of whom had fought against ELAS during the war and, in the process, collaborated with the Germans; others had simply served with the Germans. (The British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, acknowledged in August 1946 that there were 228 ex-members of the Nazi Security Battalions—whose main task had been to track down Greek resistance fighters and Jews—on active service in the new Greek army.)&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; Further support for the campaign against ELAS came from the US Air Force and Navy which transported more than two British divisions into Greece.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; All this while the war against Germany still raged in Europe.<br /> <br /> In mid-January 1945 ELAS agreed to an armistice, one that had much of the appearance and the effect of a surrender. There is disagreement amongst historians as to whether ELAS had been militarily defeated or whether the Communists in the ELAS and EAM hierarchy had received the word from Stalin to lay down the gun. If the latter were the case, it would have been consistent with the noted agreement between Stalin and Churchill in October 1944, whereby spheres of influence in Eastern Europe were allocated between the two powers. In this cynical (as Churchill acknowledged) Monopoly game Britain had landed on Greece. Churchill later wrote that Stalin had &quot;adhered strictly and faithfully to our agreement of October, and during all the long weeks of fighting the Communists in the streets of Athens not one word of reproach came from Pravda or Izvestia&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; Nor, as Jorge Semprun noted, from Radio Moscow.<br /> <br /> &quot;It is essential to remember,&quot; Professor D.F. Fleming has pointed out in his eminent history of the cold war, &quot;that Greece was the first of the liberated states to be openly and forcibly compelled to accept the political system of the occupying Great Power. It was Churchill who acted first and Stalin who followed his example, in Bulgaria and then in Rumania, though with less bloodshed.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A succession of Greek governments followed, serving by the grace of the British and the United States; thoroughly corrupt governments in the modern Greek tradition, which continued to terrorize the left, tortured them in notorious island prison camps, and did next to nothing to relieve the daily misery of the war-torn Greek people.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; &quot;There are few modern parallels for government as bad as this,&quot; CBS's chief European correspondent Howard K. Smith observed at the time.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the fall of 1946 the inevitable occurred: leftists took to the hills to launch phase two of the civil war. The Communists had wrenched Stalin's strangulating hand from their throats, for their very survival was at stake and everything that they believed in.<br /> <br /> The British were weighed down by their own post-war reconstruction needs, and in February 1947 they informed the United States that they could no longer shoulder the burden of maintaining a large armed force in Greece nor provide sizeable military and economic aid to the country. Thus it was that the historic task of preserving all that is decent and good in Western Civilization passed into the hands of the United States.<br /> <br /> Several days later, the State Department summoned the Greek chargé d'affaires in Washington and informed him that his government was to ask the US for aid. This was to be effected by means of a formal letter of request; a document, it turned out, to be written essentially by the State Department. The text of the letter, the chargé d'affaires later reported, &quot;had been drafted with a view to the mentality of Congress … It would also serve to protect the U.S. Government against internal and external charges that it was taking the initiative of intervening in a foreign state or that it had been persuaded by the British to take over a bad legacy from them. The note would also serve as a basis for the cultivation of public opinion which was under study.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In July, in a letter to Dwight Griswold, the head of the American Mission to Aid Greece (AMAG), Secretary of State George Marshall said:&lt;blockquote&gt;It is possible that during your stay in Greece you and the Ambassador will come to the conclusion that the effectiveness of your Mission would be enhanced if a reorganization of the Greek Government could be effected. If such a conclusion is reached, it is hoped that you and the Ambassador will be able to bring about such a reorganization indirectly through discreet suggestion and otherwise in such a manner that even the Greek political leaders will have a feeling that the reorganization has been effected largely by themselves and not by pressure from without.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The Secretary spelled out a further guideline for Griswold, a man the New York Times shortly afterwards called the &quot;most powerful man in Greece&quot;:&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;During the course of your work you and the members of your Mission will from time to time find that certain Greek officials are not, because of incompetence, disagreement with your policies, or for some other reason, extending the type of cooperation which is necessary if the objectives of your Mission are to be achieved. You will find it necessary to effect the removal of these officials.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;These contrivances, however, were not the most cynical aspects of the American endeavor. Washington officials well knew that their new client government was so venal and so abusive of human rights that even confirmed American anti-communists were appalled. Stewart Alsop for one. On 23 February 1947 the noted journalist had cabled from Athens that most of the Greek politicians had &quot;no higher ambition than to taste the profitable delights of a free economy at American expense&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; The same year, an American investigating team found huge supplies of food aid rotting in warehouses at a time when an estimated 75 percent of Greek children were suffering from malnutrition.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> So difficult was it to gloss over this picture, that President Truman, in his address to Congress in March 1947 asking for aid to Greece based on the Greek &quot;request&quot; (the &quot;Truman Doctrine&quot; speech), attempted to pre-empt criticism by admitting that the Greek government was &quot;not perfect&quot; and that &quot;it has made mistakes&quot;. Yet, somehow, by some ideological alchemy best known to the president, the regime in Athens was &quot;democratic&quot;, its opponents the familiar &quot;terrorists&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> There was no mention of the Soviet Union in this particular speech, but that was to be the relentless refrain of the American rationale over the next 2 1/2 years: the Russians were instigating the Greek leftists so as to kidnap yet another &quot;free&quot; country and drag it kicking and screaming behind the Iron Curtain.<br /> <br /> The neighboring Communist states of Bulgaria, Albania, and particularly Yugoslavia, in part motivated by old territorial claims against Greece, did aid the insurgents by allowing them important sanctuary behind their borders and furnishing them with military supplies (whether substantial or merely token in amount is a debatable question). The USSR, however, in the person of Joseph Stalin, was adamantly opposed to assisting the Greek &quot;comrades&quot;. At a meeting with Yugoslav leaders in early 1948 (a few months before Yugoslavia's break with the Soviet Union), described by Milovan Djilas, second-in-command to Tito, Stalin turned to the foreign minister Edvard Kardelj and asked: &quot;Do you believe in the success of the uprising in Greece?&quot;&lt;blockquote&gt;Kardelj replied, &quot;If foreign intervention does not grow, and if serious political and military errors are not made.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Stalin went on, without paying attention to Kardelj's opinion: &quot;If, if! No, they have no prospect of success at all. What, do you think that Great Britain and the United States—the United States, the most powerful state in the world—will permit you to break their line of communication in the Mediterranean? Nonsense. And we have no navy. The uprising in Greece must be stopped, and as quickly as possible.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The first major shiploads of military assistance under the new American operation arrived in the summer of 1947. (Significant quantities had also been shipped to the Greek government by the US while the British ran the show.) By the end of the year, the Greek military was being entirely supported by American aid, down to and including its clothing and food. The nation's war-making potential was transformed: continual increases in the size of the Greek armed forces … fighter-bombers, transport squadrons, air fields, napalm bombs, recoilless rifles, naval patrol vessels, communication networks … docks, railways, roads, bridges … hundreds of millions of dollars of supplies and equipment, approaching a billion in total since the end of the world war … and millions more to create a &quot;Secret Army Reserve&quot; fighting unit, composed principally of the ex-members of the Nazi Security Battalions referred to earlier.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The US Military Mission took over the development of battle plans for the army from the ineffective Greek generals. The Mission, related British military writer Major Edgar O'Ballance, &quot;took a tough line and insisted that all its recommendations be carried into effect, at once and in full&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt; Eventually, more than 250 American army officers were in the country, many assigned to Greek army divisions to ensure compliance with directives; others operated at the brigade level; another 200 or so US Air Force and Navy personnel were also on active duty in Greece.<br /> <br /> All military training methods and programs were &quot;revised, revitalized and tightened up&quot; under American supervision&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;… infantry units made more mobile, with increased firepower; special commando units trained in anti-guerrilla tactics; training in mountain warfare, augmented by some 4,000 mules (sic) shipped to Greece by the United States … at American insistence, whole sections of the population uprooted to eliminate the guerrillas' natural base of operation and source of recruits, just as would be done in Vietnam 20 years later.<br /> <br /> &quot;Both on the ground and in the air, American support was becoming increasingly active,&quot; observed C.M. Woodhouse, the British colonel and historian who served in Greece during the mid-1940s, &quot;and the theoretical line between advice, intelligence and combat was a narrow one.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Greek leftists held out for three terrible years. Despite losses of many tens of thousands, they were always able to replenish their forces, even increase their number. But by October 1949, foreseeing nothing but more loss of lives to a vastly superior destruction-machine, the guerrillas announced over their radio a &quot;cease fire&quot;. It was the end of the civil war.<br /> <br /> The extent of American hegemony over Greece from 1947 onwards can scarcely be exaggerated. We have seen Marshall's directives to Griswold, and the American management of the military campaign. There were many other manifestations of the same phenomenon, of which the following are a sample:<br /> <br /> In September 1947, Vice-Prime Minister Constantine Tsaldaris agreed to the dissolution of the government and the creation of a new ruling coalition. In doing so, said the New York Times, Tsaldaris had &quot;surrendered to the desires of Dwight P. Griswold … of [US] Ambassador MacVeagh, and also of the King&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; Before Tsaldaris addressed the Greek legislature on the matter, MacVeagh stepped in to make a change to the speech.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Over the next several years, each of the frequent changes of prime minister came about only after considerable American input, if not outright demand.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt; One example of the latter occurred in 1950 when then American Ambassador Henry Grady sent a letter to Prime Minister Venizelos threatening to cut off US aid if he failed to carry out a government reorganization. Venizelos was compelled to step down.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt; The American influence was felt in regard to other high positions in Greek society as well. Andreas Papandreou, later to become prime minister himself, has written of this period that &quot;Cabinet members and army generals, political party leaders and members of the Establishment, all made open references to American wishes or views in order to justify or to account for their own actions or positions.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Before undertaking a new crackdown on dissidents in July 1947, Greek authorities first approached Ambassador Macveagh. The ambassador informed them that the US government would have no objection to &quot;preventive measures if they were considered necessary&quot;. Reassured, the Greeks went ahead and rounded up 4,000 people in one week.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> An example of what could land a Greek citizen in prison is the case of the EAM member who received an 18-month sentence for printing remarks deemed insulting to Dwight Griswold. He had referred to the American as &quot;the official representative of a foreign country&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;In the economic sphere,&quot; Andreas Papandreou noted, the United States &quot;exercised almost dictatorial control during the early fifties requiring that the signature of the chief of the U.S. Economic Mission appear alongside that of the Greek Minister of Co-ordination on any important documents.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Earlier, American management of the economy may have been even tighter. A memorandum from Athens dated 17 November 1947, from the American Mission to Aid Greece to the State Department in Washington, read in part: &quot;we have established practical control … over national budget, taxation, currency issuance, price and wage policies, and state economic planning, as well as over imports and exports, the issuance of foreign exchange and the direction of military reconstruction and relief expenditures.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> There was, moreover, the creation of a new internal security agency, named and modeled after the CIA (KYP in Greek). Before long, KYP was carrying out all the endearing practices of secret police everywhere, including systematic torture.<br /> <br /> By the early 1950s, Greece had been molded into a supremely reliable ally-client of the United States. It was staunchly anti-communist and well integrated into the NATO system. It sent troops to Korea to support the United States' pretence that it was not simply an American war.<br /> <br /> It is safe to say that had the left come to power, Greece would have been much more independent of the United States. Greece would likely have been independent as well of the Soviet Union, to whom the Greek left owed nothing. Like Yugoslavia, which is also free of a common border with the USSR, Greece would have been friendly towards the Russians, but independent.<br /> <br /> When, in 1964, there came to power in Greece a government which entertained the novel idea that Greece was a sovereign nation, the United States and its Greek cohorts, as we shall see, quickly and effectively stamped out the heresy.<br /> <br /> == The Philippines 1940s and 1950s: America's oldest colony ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed (to) Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way—I don't know how it was, but it came: (1) That we could not give them [the Philippine Islands] back to Spain—that would be cowardly and dishonorable; (2) that we could not turn them over to France or Germany—our commercial rivals in the Orient—that would be bad business and discreditable; (3) that we could not leave them to themselves—they were unfit for self-government—and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was; and (4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died.&lt;/blockquote&gt;—William McKinley, President of the United States, 1899&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> William McKinley's idea of doing the very best by the Filipinos was to employ the United States Army to kill them in the tens of thousands, burn down their villages, subject them to torture, and lay the foundation for an economic exploitation which was proudly referred to at the time as &quot;imperialism&quot; by leading American statesmen and newspapers.<br /> <br /> After the Spanish had been driven out of the Philippines in 1898 by a combined action of the United States and the Filipinos, Spain agreed to &quot;cede&quot; (that is, sell) the islands to the United States for $20 million. But the Filipinos, who had already proclaimed their own independent republic, did not take kindly to being treated like a plot of uninhabited real estate. Accordingly, an American force numbering at least 50,000 proceeded to instill in the population a proper appreciation of their status.<br /> <br /> Thus did America's longest-lasting and most conspicuous colony ever come into being.<br /> <br /> Nearly half a century later, the US Army again landed in the Philippines to find a nationalist movement fighting against a common enemy, this time the Japanese. While combatting the Japanese during 1945, the American military took many measures aimed at quashing this resistance army, the Huks (a shortening of Hukbalahap—&quot;People's Army Against Japan&quot; in Tagalog). American forces disarmed many Huk units, removed the local governments which the Huks had established, and arrested and imprisoned many of their high-ranking members as well as leaders of the Philippine Communist Party. Guerrilla forces, primarily organized and led by American officers and composed of US and Filipino soldiers of the so-called US Army Forces in the Far East, undertook police-type actions which resulted in a virtual reign of terror against the Huks and suspected sympathizers; disparaging rumors were spread about the Huks to erode their support amongst the peasants; and the Japanese were allowed to assault Huk forces unmolested.<br /> <br /> This, while the Huks were engaged in a major effort against the Japanese invaders and Filipino collaborators and frequently came to the aid of American soldiers.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In much of this anti-Huk campaign, the United States made use of Filipinos who were collaborating with the Japanese, such as landlords, large estate owners, many police constables, and other officials. In the post-war period, the US restored to power and position many of those tainted with collaboration, much to the distaste of other Filipinos.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Huk guerrilla forces had been organized in 1942, largely at the initiative of the Communist Party, in response to the Japanese occupation of the islands. Amongst American policy makers, there were those who came to the routine conclusion that the Huks were thus no more than a tool of the International Communist Conspiracy, to be opposed as all such groups were to be opposed. Others in Washington and Manila, whose reflexes were less knee-jerk, but more cynical, recognized that the Huk movement, if its growing influence was not checked, would lead to sweeping reforms of Philippine society.<br /> <br /> The centerpiece of the Huk political program was land reform, a crying need in this largely agricultural society. (On occasion, US officials would pay lip-service to the concept, but during 50 years of American occupation, nothing of the sort had been carried out.) The other side of the Huk coin was industrialization, which the United States had long thwarted in order to provide American industries with a veritable playground in the Philippines. From the Huks' point of view, such changes were but prologue to raising the islanders from their state of backwardness, from illiteracy, grinding poverty, and the diseases of poverty like tuberculosis and beri-beri. &quot;The Communist Hukbalahap rebellion,&quot; reported the New York Times, &quot;is generally regarded as an outgrowth of the misery and discontent among the peasants of Central Luzon [the main island].&quot;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A study prepared years later for the US Army echoed this sentiment, stating that the Huks' &quot;main impetus was peasant grievances, not Leninist designs&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, the Huk movement was unmistakably a threat to the neo-colonial condition of the Philippines, the American sphere of influence, and those Philippine interests which benefited from the status quo.<br /> <br /> By the end of 1945, four months after the close of World War II, the United States was training and equipping a force of 50,000 Filipino soldiers for the Cold War.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; In testimony before a congressional committee, Major General William Arnold of the US Army candidly stated that this program was &quot;essential for the maintenance of internal order, not for external difficulties at all&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; None of the congressmen present publicly expressed any reservation about the international propriety of such a foreign policy.<br /> <br /> At the same time, American soldiers were kept on in the Philippines, and in at least one infantry division combat training was re-established. This led to vociferous protests and demonstrations by the GIs who wanted only to go home. The inauguration of combat training, the New York Times disclosed, was &quot;interpreted by soldiers and certain Filipino newspapers as the preparation for the repression of possible uprisings in the Philippines by disgruntled farm tenant groups.&quot; The story added that the soldiers had a lot to say &quot;on the subject of American armed intervention in China and the Netherlands Indies [Indonesia],&quot; which was occurring at the same time.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> To what extent American military personnel participated directly in the suppression of dissident groups in the Philippines after the war is not known.<br /> <br /> The Huks, though not trusting Philippine and US authorities enough to voluntarily surrender their arms, did test the good faith of the government by taking part in the April 1946 national elections as part of a &quot;Democratic Alliance&quot; of liberal and socialist peasant political groups. (Philippine independence was scheduled for three months later—the Fourth of July to be exact.) As matters turned out, the commander-in-chief of the Huks, Luis Taruc, and several other Alliance members and reform-minded candidates who won election to Congress (three to the Senate and seven to the House) were not allowed to take their seats under the transparent fiction that coercion had been used to influence voters. No investigation or review of the cases had even been carried out by the appropriate body, the Electoral Tribunal.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; (Two years later, Taruc was temporarily allowed to take his seat when he came to Manila to discuss a ceasefire with the government.)<br /> <br /> The purpose of denying these candidates their seats was equally transparent: the government was thus able to push through Congress the controversial Philippine-US Trade Act—passed by two votes more than required in the House, and by nothing to spare in the Senate—which yielded to the United States bountiful privileges and concessions in the Philippine economy, including &quot;equal rights … in the development of the nation's natural resources and the operation of its public utilities&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; This &quot;parity&quot; provision was eventually extended to every sector of the Philippine economy.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The debasement of the electoral process was followed by a wave of heavy brutality against the peasants carried out by the military, the police, and landlord goon squads. According to Luis Taruc, in the months following the election, peasant villages were destroyed, more than 500 peasants and their leaders killed, and about three times that number jailed, tortured, maimed or missing. The Huks and others felt they had little alternative but to take up arms once again.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Independence was not likely to change much of significance. American historian George E.Taylor, of impeccable establishment credentials, in a book which bears the indication of CIA sponsorship, was yet moved to state that independence &quot;was marked by lavish expressions of mutual good will, by partly fulfilled promises, and by a restoration of the old relationship in almost everything except in name. … Many demands were made of the Filipinos for the commercial advantage of the United States, but none for the social and political advantage of the Philippines.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The American military was meanwhile assuring a home for itself in the Philippines. A 1947 agreement provided sites for 23 US military bases in the country. The agreement was to last for 99 years. It stipulated that American servicemen who committed crimes outside the bases while on duty could be tried only by American military tribunals inside the bases.<br /> <br /> By the terms of a companion military assistance pact, the Philippine government was prohibited from purchasing so much as a bullet from any arms source other than the US, except with American approval. Such a state of affairs, necessarily involving training, maintenance and spare parts, made the Philippine military extremely dependent upon their American counterparts. Further, no foreigners other than Americans were permitted to perform any function for or with the Philippine armed forces without the approval of the United States.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By early 1950, the United States had provided the Philippines with over $200 million of military equipment and supplies, a remarkable sum for that time, and was in addition to the construction of various military facilities.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; The Joint US Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) reorganized the Philippine intelligence capability and defense department, put its chosen man, Ramon Magsaysay, at its head, and formed the Philippine army into battalion combat teams trained for counter-insurgency warfare.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; The Philippines was to be a laboratory experiment for this unconventional type of combat. The methods and the terminology, such as &quot;search-and-destroy&quot; and &quot;pacification&quot;, were later to become infamous in Vietnam.<br /> <br /> By September, when Lt. Col. Edward G. Lansdale arrived in the Philippines, the civil war had all the markings of a long, drawn-out affair, with victory not in sight for either side. Ostensibly, Lansdale was just another American military adviser attached to JUSMAG, but in actuality he was the head of CIA clandestine and paramilitary operations in the country. His apparent success in the Philippines was to make him a recognized authority in counter-insurgency.<br /> <br /> In his later reminiscences about this period in his life, Lansdale relates his surprise at hearing from informed Filipino civilian friends about how repressive the Quirino government was, that its atrocities matched those of (or attributed to) the Huks, that the government was &quot;rotten with corruption&quot; (down to the policeman in the street, Lansdale observed on his own), that Quirino himself had been elected the previous year through &quot;extensive fraud&quot;, and that &quot;the Huks were right&quot;, they were the &quot;wave of the future&quot;, and violence was the only way for the people to get a government of their own. (The police, wrote a correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post, were &quot;bands of uniformed thieves and rapists, more feared than bandits … the army was little better.&quot;)&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Lansdale was undeterred. He had come to do a job. Accordingly, he told himself that if the Huks took over there would only be another form of injustice by another privileged few, backed by even crueller force. By the next chapter, he had convinced himself that he was working on the side of those committed to &quot;defend human liberty in the Philippines&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As a former advertising man, Lansdale was no stranger to the use of market research, motivation techniques, media, and deception. In CIA parlance, such arts fall under the heading of &quot;psychological warfare&quot;. To this end, Lansdale fashioned a unit called the Civil Affairs Office. Its activities were based on the premise—one both new and suspect to most American military officers—that a popular guerrilla army cannot be defeated by force alone.<br /> <br /> Lansdale's team conducted a careful study of the superstitions of the Filipino peasants living in Huk areas: their lore, taboos, and myths were examined for clues to the appropriate appeals that could wean them from supporting the insurgents. In one operation, Lansdale's men flew over these areas in a small plane hidden by a cloud cover and broadcast in Tagalog mysterious curses on any villagers who dared to give the Huks food or shelter. The tactic reportedly succeeded into starving some Huk units into surrender.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Another Lansdale-initiated &quot;psywar&quot; operation played on the superstitious dread in the Philippine countryside of the asuang, a mythical vampire. A psywar squad entered a town and planted rumors that an asuang lived in the neighboring hill where the Huks were based, a location from which government forces were anxious to have them out. Two nights later, after giving the rumors time to circulate among Huk sympathizers in the town and make their way up the hill, the psywar squad laid an ambush for the rebels along a trail used by them. When a Huk patrol passed, the ambushers silently snatched the last man, punctured his neck vampire-fashion with two holes, held his body by the heels until the blood drained out, and put the corpse back on the trail. When the Huks, as superstitious as any other Filipinos, discovered the bloodless comrade, they fled from the region.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Lansdale regularly held &quot;coffee klatsches&quot; with Filipino officials and military personnel in which new ideas were freely tossed back and forth, à la a Madison Avenue brain session. Out of this came the Economic Development Corps to lure Huks with a program of resettlement on their own patch of farm land, with tools, seeds, cash loans, etc. It was an undertaking wholly inadequate to the land problem, and the number that responded was very modest, but like other psywar techniques, a principal goal was to steal from the enemy his most persuasive arguments.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt; Among other tactics introduced or refined by Lansdale were: production of films and radio broadcasts to explain and justify government actions; infiltration of government agents into the ranks of the Huks to provide information and sow dissension; attempts to modify the behavior of government soldiers so as to curtail their abuse of people in rural areas (for the Huks had long followed an explicit code of proper conduct towards the peasants, with punishment meted out to violators), but on other occasions, government soldiers were allowed to run amok in villages—disguised as Huks.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> This last, revealed L. Fletcher Prouty, was a technique &quot;developed to a high art in the Philippines&quot; in which soldiers were &quot;set upon the unwary village in the grand manner of a Cecil B. De Mille production&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; Prouty, a retired US Air Force colonel, was for nine years the focal point officer for contacts between the Pentagon and the CIA. He has described another type of scenario by which the Huks were tarred with the terrorist brush, serving to obscure the political nature of their movement and mar their credibility:&lt;blockquote&gt;In the Philippines, lumbering interests and major sugar interests have forced tens of thousands of simple, backward villagers to leave areas where they have lived for centuries. When these poor people flee to other areas, it should be quite obvious that they in turn then infringe upon the territorial rights of other villagers or landowners. This creates violent rioting or at least sporadic outbreaks of banditry, that last lowly recourse of dying and terrorized people. Then when the distant government learns of the banditry and rioting, it must offer some safe explanation. The last thing that regional government would want to do would be to say that the huge lumbering or paper interests had driven the people out of their ancestral homeland. In the Philippines it is customary for the local/regional government to get a 10 percent rake-off on all such enterprise and for national politicians to get another 10 percent. So the safe explanation becomes &quot;Communist-inspired subversive insurgency.&quot; The word for this in the Philippines is Huk.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The most insidious part of the CIA operation in the Philippines was the fundamental manipulation of the nation's political life, featuring stage-managed elections and disinformation campaigns. The high-point of this effort was the election to the presidency, in 1953, of Ramon Magsaysay, the cooperative former defense department head.<br /> <br /> Lansdale, it was said, &quot;invented&quot; Magsaysay.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt; His CIA front organizations—such as the National Movement for Free Elections—ran the Filipino's campaign with all the license, impunity, and money that one would expect from the Democratic or Republican National Committees operating in the US, or perhaps more to the point, Mayor Daley operating in Chicago. Yet the New York Times, in an editorial, was moved to refer to the Phillippines as &quot;democracy's showcase in Asia.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA, on one occasion, drugged the drinks of Magsaysay's opponent, incumbent president Elpido Quirino, before he gave a speech so that he would appear incoherent. On another occasion, when Magsaysay insisted on delivering a speech which had been written by a Filipino instead of one written by Lansdale's team, Lansdale reacted in a rage, finally hitting the presidential candidate so hard that he knocked him out.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Magsaysay won the election, but not before the CIA had smuggled in guns for use in a coup in case their man lost.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Once Magsaysay was in office, the CIA wrote his speeches, carefully guided his foreign policy, and used its press &quot;assets&quot; (paid editors and journalists) to provide him with a constant claque of support for his domestic programs and his involvement in the US-directed anti-communist crusade in southeast Asia, as well as to attack anti-US newspaper columnists. So beholden was Magsaysay to the United States, disclosed presidential assistant Sherman Adams, that he &quot;sent word to Eisenhower that he would do anything the United States wanted him to do—even though his own foreign minister took the opposite view&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One inventive practice of the CIA on behalf of Magsaysay was later picked up by Agency stations in a number of other Third World countries. This particular piece of chicanery consisted of selecting articles written by CIA writer-agents for the provincial press and republishing them in a monthly Digest of the Provincial Press. The Digest was then sent to congressmen and other opinion makers in Manila to enlighten them as to &quot;what the provinces were thinking&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Senator Claro M. Recto, Magsaysay's chief political opponent and a stern critic of American policy in the Philippines, came in for special treatment. The CIA planted stories that he was a Communist Chinese agent and it prepared packages of condoms labeled &quot;Courtesy of Claro M. Recto—the People's Friend&quot;. The condoms all had holes in them at the most inappropriate place.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Agency also planned to assassinate Recto, going so far as to prepare a substance for poisoning him. The idea was abandoned &quot;for pragmatic considerations rather than moral scruples.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After Magsaysay died in a plane crash in 1957, various other Filipino politicians and parties were sought out by the CIA as clients, or offered themselves as such. One of the latter was Diosdado Macapagal, who was to become president in 1961. Macapagal provided the Agency with political information for several years and eventually asked for, and received, what he felt he deserved: heavy financial support for his campaign. (Reader's Digest called his election: &quot;certainly a demonstration of democracy in action&quot;.)&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Ironically, Macapagal had been the bitterest objector to American intervention in the Magsaysay election in 1953, quoting time and again from the Philippine law that &quot;No foreigner shall aid any candidate directly or indirectly or take part in or influence in any manner any election.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Perhaps even more ironic, in 1957 the Philippine government adopted a law, clearly written by Americans, which outlawed both the Communist Party and the Huks, giving as one of the reasons for doing so that these organizations aimed at placing the government &quot;under the control and domination of an alien power&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By 1953 the Huks were scattered and demoralized, no longer a serious threat, although their death would be distributed over the next few years. It is difficult to ascertain to what extent their decline was due to the traditional military force employed against them, or to Lansdale's more unorthodox methods, or to the eventual debilitation of many of the Huks from malnutrition and disease, brought on by the impoverishment of the peasantry. Long before the end, many Huks were also lacking weapons and ammunition and proper military equipment, bringing into question the oft-repeated charge of Soviet and Chinese aid to them made by Filipino and American authorities.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt; Edward Lachica, a Filipino historian, has written that &quot;The Kremlin did pay lip service to the Communist movement in the Philippines, praising the Huks for being part of the 'global struggle against the U.S.', but no material support was offered.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Since the destruction of Huk military power,&quot; noted George Taylor, &quot;the social and political program that made the accomplishment possible has to a large extent fallen by the wayside.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Fortress America, however, was securely in place in southeast Asia. From the Philippines would be launched American air and sea actions against Korea and China, Vietnam and Indonesia. The Philippine government would send combat forces to fight alongside the United States in Vietnam and Korea. On the islands' bases, the technology and art of counter-insurgency warfare would be imparted to the troops of America's other allies in the Pacific.<br /> <br /> == Korea 1945-1953 Was it all that it appeared to be? ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true.&lt;/blockquote&gt;—H.L. Mencken, 1919<br /> <br /> How is it that the Korean War escaped the protests which surrounded the war in Vietnam? Everything we've come to love and cherish about Vietnam had its forerunner in Korea: the support of a corrupt tyranny, the atrocities, the napalm, the mass slaughter of civilians, the cities and villages laid to waste, the calculated management of the news, the sabotaging of peace talks. But the American people were convinced that the war in Korea was an unambiguous case of one country invading another without provocation. A case of the bad guys attacking the good guys who were being saved by the even better guys; none of the historical, political and moral uncertainty that was the dilemma of Vietnam. The Korean War was seen to have begun in a specific manner: North Korea attacked South Korea in the early morning of 25 June 1950; while Vietnam … no one seemed to know how it all began, or when, or why.<br /> <br /> And there was little in the way of accusations about American &quot;imperialism&quot; in Korea. The United States, after all, was fighting as part of a United Nations Army. What was there to protest about? And of course there was McCarthyism, so prevalent in the early 1950s, which further served to inhibit protest.<br /> <br /> There were, in fact, rather different interpretations to be made of what the war was all about, how it was being conducted, even how it began, but these quickly succumbed to the heat of war fever.<br /> <br /> Shortly after the close of the Second World War, the Soviet Union and the United States occupied Korea in order to expel the defeated Japanese. A demarcation line between the Russian and American forces was set up along the 38th Parallel. The creation of this line in no way had the explicit or implicit intention of establishing two separate countries, but the cold war was soon to intrude.<br /> <br /> Both powers insisted that unification of North and South was the principal and desired goal. However, they also desired to see this carried out in their own ideological image, and settled thereby into a routine of proposal and counter-proposal, accusation and counter-accusation, generously intermixed with deviousness, and produced nothing in the way of an agreement during the ensuing years. Although both Moscow and Washington and their hand-picked Korean leaders were not always displeased about the division of the country (on the grounds that half a country was better than none), officials and citizens of both sides continued to genuinely call for unification on a regular basis.<br /> <br /> That Korea was still one country, with unification still the goal, at the time the war began, was underscored by the chief US delegate to the UN, Warren Austin, in a statement he made shortly afterwards:&lt;blockquote&gt;The artificial barrier which has divided North and South Korea has no basis for existence either in law or in reason. Neither the United Nations, its Commission on Korea, nor the Republic of Korea [South Korea] recognize such a line. Now the North Koreans, by armed attack upon the Republic of Korea, have denied the reality of any such line.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The two sides had been clashing across the Parallel for several years. What happened on that fateful day in June could thus be regarded as no more than the escalation of an ongoing civil war. The North Korean Government has claimed that in 1949 alone, the South Korean army or police perpetrated 2,617 armed incursions into the North to carry out murder, kidnapping, pillage and arson for the purpose of causing social disorder and unrest, as well as to increase the combat capabilities of the invaders. At times, stated the Pyongyang government, thousands of soldiers were involved in a single battle with many casualties resulting.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A State Department official, Ambassador-at-large Philip C. Jessup, speaking in April 1950, put it this way:&lt;blockquote&gt;There is constant fighting between the South Korean Army and bands that infiltrate the country from the North. There are very real battles, involving perhaps one or two thousand men. When you go to this boundary, as I did … you see troop movements, fortifications, and prisoners of war.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Seen in this context, the question of who fired the first shot on 25 June 1950 takes on a much reduced air of significance. As it is, the North Korean version of events is that their invasion was provoked by two days of bombardment by the South Koreans, on the 23rd and 24th, followed by a surprise South Korean attack across the border on the 25th against the western town of Haeju and other places. Announcement of the Southern attack was broadcast over the North's radio later in the morning of the 25th.<br /> <br /> Contrary to general belief at the time, no United Nations group—neither the UN Military Observer Group in the field nor the UN Commission on Korea in Seoul—witnessed, or claimed to have witnessed, the outbreak of hostilities. The Observer Group's field trip along the Parallel ended on 23 June. Its statements about what took place afterward are either speculation or based on information received from the South Korean government or the US military.<br /> <br /> Moreover, early in the morning of the 26th, the South Korean Office of Public Information announced that Southern forces had indeed captured the North Korean town of Haeju. The announcement stated that the attack had occurred that same morning, but an American military status report as of nightfall on the 25th notes that all Southern territory west of the Imjin River had been lost to a depth of at least three miles inside the border except in the area of the Haeju &quot;counter attack&quot;.<br /> <br /> In either case, such a military victory on the part of the Southern forces is extremely difficult to reconcile with the official Western account, maintained to this day, that has the North Korean army sweeping south in a devastating surprise attack, taking control of everything that lay before it, and forcing South Korean troops to evacuate further south.<br /> <br /> Subsequently, the South Korean government denied that its capture of Haeju had actually taken place, blaming the original announcement, apparently, on an exaggerating military officer. One historian has ascribed the allegedly incorrect announcement to &quot;an error due to poor communications, plus an attempt to stiffen South Korean resistance by claiming a victory&quot;. Whatever actually lay behind the announcement, it is evident that very little reliance, if any, can be placed upon statements made by the South Korean government concerning the start of the war.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> There were, in fact, reports in the Western press of the attack on Haeju which made no mention of the South Korean government's announcement, and which appear to be independent confirmations of the event. The London Daily Herald, in its issue of 26 June, stated that &quot;American military observers said the Southern forces had made a successful relieving counter-attack near the west coast, penetrated five miles into Northern territory and seized the town of Haeju.&quot; This was echoed in The Guardian of London the same day: &quot;American officials confirmed that the Southern troops had captured Haeju.&quot;<br /> <br /> Similarly, the New York Herald Tribune reported, also on the 26th, that &quot;South Korean troops drove across the 38th Parallel, which forms the frontier, to capture the manufacturing town of Haeju, just north of the line. The Republican troops captured quantities of equipment.&quot; None of the accounts specified just when the attack took place.<br /> <br /> On the 25th, American writer John Gunther was in Japan preparing his biography of General Douglas MacArthur. As he recounts in the book, he was playing tourist in the town of Nikko with &quot;two important members&quot; of the American occupation, when &quot;one of these was called unexpectedly to the telephone. He came back and whispered, 'A big story has just broken. The South Koreans have attacked North Korea!'&quot; That evening, Gunther and his party returned to Tokyo where &quot;Several officers met us at the station to tell us correctly and with much amplification what had happened … there was no doubt whatever that North Korea was the aggressor.&quot;<br /> <br /> And the telephone call? Gunther explains: &quot;The message may have been garbled in transmission. Nobody knew anything much at headquarters the first few hours, and probably people were taken in by the blatant, corrosive lies of the North Korean radio.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> There is something a little incongruous about the picture of American military and diplomatic personnel, practicing anti-communists each one, being taken in on so important a matter by communist lies—blatant ones no less.<br /> <br /> The head of South Korea, Syngman Rhee, had often expressed his desire and readiness to compel the unification of Korea by force. On 26 June the New York Times reminded its readers that &quot;on a number of occasions, Dr. Rhee has indicated that his army would have taken the offensive if Washington had given the consent.&quot; The newspaper noted also that before the war began: &quot;The warlike talk strangely [had] almost all come from South Korean leaders.&quot;<br /> <br /> Rhee may have had good reason for provoking a full-scale war apart from the issue of unification. On 30 May, elections for the National Assembly were held in the South in which Rhee's party suffered a heavy setback and lost control of the assembly. Like countless statesmen before and after him, Rhee may have decided to play the war card to rally support for his shaky rule. A labor adviser attached to the American aid mission in South Korea, Stanley Earl, resigned in July, expressing the opinion that the South Korean government was &quot;an oppressive regime&quot; which &quot;did very little to help the people&quot; and that &quot;an internal South Korean rebellion against the Rhee Government would have occurred if the forces of North Korea had not invaded&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, in his reminiscences, makes it plain that the North Koreans had contemplated an invasion of the South for some time and he reports their actual invasion without any mention of provocation on that day. This would seem to put that particular question to rest. However, Khrushchev's chapter on Korea is a wholly superficial account. It is not a serious work of history, nor was it intended to be. As he himself states: &quot;My memories of the Korean War are unavoidably sketchy.&quot; (He did not become Soviet leader until after the war was over.) His chapter contains no discussion of any of the previous fighting across the border, nothing of Rhee's belligerent statements, nothing at all even of the Soviet Union's crucial absence from the UN which, as we shall see, allowed the so-called United Nations Army to be formed and intervene in the conflict. Moreover, his reminiscences, as published, are an edited and condensed version of the tapes he made. A study based on a comparison between the Russian-language transcription of the tapes and the published English-language book reveals that some of Khrushchev's memories about Korea were indeed sketchy, but that the book fails to bring this out. For example, North Korean leader Kim Il-sung met with Stalin to discuss Kim's desire &quot;to prod South Korea with the point of a bayonet&quot;. The book then states unambiguously: &quot;Kim went home and then returned to Moscow when he had worked everything out.&quot; In the transcript, however, Khrushchev says: &quot;In my opinion, either the date of his return was set, or he was to inform us as soon as he finished preparing all of his ideas. Then, I don't remember in which month or year, Kim Il-sung came and related his plan to Stalin&quot; (emphasis added).&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On 26 June, the United States presented a resolution before the UN Security Council condemning North Korea for its &quot;unprovoked aggression&quot;. The resolution was approved, although there were arguments that &quot;this was a fight between Koreans&quot; and should be treated as a civil war, and a suggestion from the Egyptian delegate that the word &quot;unprovoked&quot; should be dropped in view of the longstanding hostilities between the two Koreas.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; Yugoslavia insisted as well that &quot;there seemed to be lack of precise information that could enable the Council to pin responsibility&quot;, and proposed that North Korea be invited to present its side of the story.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; This was not done. (Three months later, the Soviet foreign minister put forward a motion that the UN hear representatives from both sides. This, too, was voted down, by a margin of 46 to 6, because of North Korea's &quot;aggression&quot;, and it was decided to extend an invitation to South Korea alone.)&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On the 27th, the Security Council recommended that members of the United Nations furnish assistance to South Korea &quot;as may be necessary to repel the armed attack&quot;. President Truman had already ordered the US Navy and Air Force into combat by this time, thus presenting the Council with a fait accompli,&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; a tactic the US was to repeat several times before the war came to an end. The Council made its historic decision with the barest of information available to it, and all of it derived from and selected by only one side of the conflict. This was, as journalist I.F. Stone put it, &quot;neither honorable nor wise&quot;.<br /> <br /> It should be kept in mind that in 1950 the United Nations was in no way a neutral or balanced organization. The great majority of members were nations very dependent upon the United States for economic recovery or development. There was no Third World bloc which years later pursued a UN policy much more independent of the United States. And only four countries of the Soviet bloc were members at the time, none on the Security Council.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Neither could UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie, of Norway, be regarded as neutral in the midst of cold war controversy. In his memoirs, he makes it remarkably clear that he was no objective outsider. His chapters on the Korean War are pure knee-reflex anti-communism and reveal his maneuvering on the issue.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; In 1949, it was later disclosed, Lie had entered into a secret agreement with the US State Department to dismiss from UN employment individuals whom Washington regarded as having questionable political leanings.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The adoption of these resolutions by the Security Council was possible only because the Soviet Union was absent from the proceedings due to its boycott of the United Nations over the refusal to seat Communist China in place of Taiwan. If the Russians had been present, they undoubtedly would have vetoed the resolutions. Their absence has always posed an awkward problem for those who insist that the Russians were behind the North Korean invasion. One of the most common explanations offered is that the Russians, as a CIA memorandum stated, wanted &quot;to challenge the US specifically and test the firmness of US resistance to Communist expansion.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; Inasmuch as, during the existence of the Soviet Union, the same analysis was put forth by American political pundits for virtually every encounter between the United States and leftists anywhere in the world, before and after Korea, it would appear that the test was going on for an inordinately long period and one can only wonder why the Soviets never came to a conclusion.<br /> <br /> &quot;The finishing touch,&quot; wrote I.F. Stone, &quot;was to make the 'United Nations' forces subject to MacArthur without making MacArthur subject to the United Nations. This came on July 7 in a resolution introduced jointly by Britain and France. This is commonly supposed to have established a United Nations Command. Actually it did nothing of the sort.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; The resolution recommended &quot;that all members providing military forces and other assistance … make such forces and other assistance available to a unified command under the United States&quot; (emphasis added). It further requested &quot;the United States to designate the commander of such forces.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt; This would be the redoubtable MacArthur.<br /> <br /> It was to be an American show. Military personnel of some 16 other countries took part in one way or another but, with the exception of the South Koreans, there could be little doubt as to their true status or function. Eisenhower later wrote in his memoirs that when he was considering US military intervention in Vietnam in 1954, also as part of a &quot;coalition&quot;, he recognized that the burden of the operation would fall on the United States, but &quot;the token forces supplied by these other nations, as in Korea, would lend real moral standing to a venture that otherwise could be made to appear as a brutal example of imperialism&quot; (emphasis added).&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The war, and a brutal one it was indeed, was fought ostensibly in defense of the Syngman Rhee regime. Outside of books published by various South Korean governments, it is rather difficult to find a kind word for the man the United States brought back to Korea in 1945 after decades of exile in America during the Japanese occupation of his country. Flown into Korea in one of MacArthur's airplanes, Rhee was soon maneuvered into a position of prominence and authority by the US Army Military Government in Korea ([[United States Army Military Government in Korea|USAMGIK]]). In the process, American officials had to suppress a provisional government, the Korean People's Republic, that was the outgrowth of a number of regional governing committees set up by prominent Koreans and which had already begun to carry out administrative tasks, such as food distribution and keeping order. The KPR's offer of its services to the arriving Americans was dismissed out of hand.<br /> <br /> Despite its communist-sounding name, the KPR included a number of conservatives; indeed, Rhee himself had been given the leading position of chairman. Rhee and the other conservatives, most of whom were still abroad when chosen, perhaps did not welcome the honor because the KPR, on balance, was probably too leftist for their tastes, as it was for the higher echelons of the USAMGIK. But after 35 years under the Japanese, any group or government set up to undo the effects of colonialism had to have a revolutionary tinge to it. It was the conservatives in Korea who had collaborated with the Japanese; leftists and other nationalists who had struggled against them; the make-up of the KPR necessarily reflected this, and it was reportedly more popular than any other political grouping.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Whatever the political leanings or intentions of the KPR, by denying it any &quot;authority, status or form&quot;,&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt; the USAMGIK was regulating Korean political life as if the country were a defeated enemy and not a friendly state liberated from a common foe and with a right to independence and self-determination.<br /> <br /> The significance of shunting aside the KPR went beyond this. John Gunther, hardly a radical, summed up the situation this way: &quot;So the first—and best—chance for building a united Korea was tossed away.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt; And Alfred Crofts, a member of the American military government at the time, has written that &quot;A potential unifying agency became thus one of the fifty-four splinter groups in South Korean political life.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Syngman Rhee would be Washington's man: eminently pro-American, strongly anti-Communist, sufficiently controllable. His regime was one in which landlords, collaborators, the wealthy, and other conservative elements readily found a home. Crofts has pointed out that &quot;Before the American landings, a political Right, associated in popular thought with colonial rule, could not exist; but shortly afterward we were to foster at least three conservative factions.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Committed to establishing free enterprise, the USAMGIK sold off vast amounts of confiscated Japanese property, homes, businesses, industrial raw materials and other valuables. Those who could most afford to purchase these assets were collaborators who had grown rich under the Japanese, and other profiteers. &quot;With half the wealth of the nation 'up for grabs', demoralization was rapid.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> While the Russians did a thorough house-cleaning of Koreans in the North who had collaborated with the Japanese, the American military government in the South allowed many collaborators, and at first even the Japanese themselves, to retain positions of administration and authority, much to the consternation of those Koreans who had fought against the Japanese occupation of their country. To some extent, these people may have been retained in office because they were the most experienced at keeping the country running. Another reason has been suggested: to prevent the Korean People's Republic from assuming a measure of power.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And while the North soon implemented widespread and effective land reform and at least formal equality for women, the Rhee regime remained hostile to these ideals. Two years later, it enacted a land reform measure, but this applied only to former Japanese property. A 1949 law to cover other holdings was not enforced at all, and the abuse of land tenants continued in both old and new forms.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Public resentment against the US/Rhee administration was aroused because of these policies as well as because of the suppression of the KPR and some very questionable elections. So reluctant was Rhee to allow an honest election, that by early 1950 he had become enough of an embarrassment to the United States for Washington officials to threaten to cut off aid if he failed to do so and also improve the state of civil liberties. Apparently because of this pressure, the elections held on May 30 were fair enough to allow &quot;moderate&quot; elements to participate, and, as mentioned earlier, the Rhee government was decisively repudiated.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The resentment was manifested in the form of frequent rebellions, including some guerrilla warfare in the hills, from 1946 to the beginning of the war, and even during the war. The rebellions were dismissed by the government as &quot;communist-inspired&quot; and repressed accordingly, but, as John Gunther observed, &quot;It can be safely said that in the eyes of Hodge [the commander of US forces in Korea] and Rhee, particularly at the beginning, almost any Korean not an extreme rightist was a communist and potential traitor.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> General Hodge evidently permitted US troops to take part in the repression. Mark Gayn, a correspondent in Korea for the Chicago Sun, wrote that American soldiers &quot;fired on crowds, conducted mass arrests, combed the hills for suspects, and organized posses of Korean rightists, constabulary and police for mass raids.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt; Gayn related that one of Hodge's political advisers assured him (Gayn) that Rhee was not a fascist: &quot;He is two centuries before fascism—a pure Bourbon.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Describing the government's anti-guerrilla campaign in 1948, pro-Western political scientist John Kie-Chiang Oh of Marquette University has written: &quot;In these campaigns, the civil liberties of countless persons were often ignored. Frequently, hapless villagers, suspected of aiding the guerrillas, were summarily executed.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A year later, when a committee of the National Assembly launched an investigation of collaborators, Rhee had his police raid the Assembly: 22 people were arrested, of whom 16 were later found to have suffered either broken ribs, skull injuries or broken eardrums.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At the time of the outbreak of war in June 1950, there were an estimated 14,000 political prisoners in South Korean jails.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Even during the height of the war, in February 1951, reported Professor Oh, there was the &quot;Koch'ang Incident&quot;, again involving suspicion of aiding guerrillas, &quot;in which about six hundred men and women, young and old, were herded into a narrow valley and mowed down with machine guns by a South Korean army unit.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Throughout the war, a continuous barrage of accusations was leveled by each side at the other, charging the enemy with engaging in all manner of barbarity and atrocity, against troops, prisoners of war, and civilians alike, in every part of the country (each side occupied the other's territory at times), trying to outdo each other in a verbal war of superlatives almost as heated as the combat. In the United States this produced a body of popular myths, not unlike those emerging from other wars which are widely supported at home. (By contrast, during the Vietnam War the inclination of myths to flourish was regularly countered by numerous educated protestors who carefully researched the origins of the war, monitored its conduct, and publicized studies sharply at variance with the official version(s), eventually influencing the mass media to do the same.)<br /> <br /> There was, for example, the consensus that the brutality of the war in Korea must be laid overwhelmingly on the doorstep of the North Koreans. The Koch'ang Incident mentioned above may be relevant to providing some counterbalance to this belief. Referring to the incident, the British Korea scholar Jon Halliday observed:&lt;blockquote&gt;This account not only serves to indicate the level of political violence employed by the UN side, but also confers inherent plausibility on DPRK [North Korea] and Southern opposition accusations of atrocities and mass executions by the UN forces and Rhee officials during the occupation of the DPRK in late 1950. After all, if civilians could be mowed down in the South on suspicion of aiding (not even being) guerrillas—what about the North, where millions could reasonably be assumed to be Communists, or political militants?&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;(Emphasis in original.)&lt;/blockquote&gt;Oh's account is but one of a number of reports of slaughter carried out by the South Koreans against their own people during the war. The New York Times reported a &quot;wave of [South Korean] Government executions in Seoul&quot; in December 1950.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt; René Cutforth, a correspondent for the BBC in Korea, later wrote of &quot;the shooting without trial of civilians, designated by the police as 'communist'. These executions were done, usually at dawn, on any patch of waste ground where you could dig a trench and line up a row of prisoners in front of it.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; And Gregory Henderson, a US diplomat who served seven years in Korea in the 1940s and '50s, has stated that &quot;probably over 100,000 were killed without any trial whatsoever&quot; by Rhee's forces in the South during the war.&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt; Following some of the massacres of civilians in the South, the Rhee government turned around and attributed them to Northern troops.<br /> <br /> One way in which the United States contributed directly to the war's brutality was by introducing a weapon which, although used in the last stage of World War II, and in Greece, was new to almost all observers and participants in Korea. It was called napalm. Here is one description of its effect from the New York Times.&lt;blockquote&gt;A napalm raid hit the village three or four days ago when the Chinese were holding up the advance, and nowhere in the village have they buried the dead because there is nobody left to do so. … The inhabitants throughout the village and in the fields were caught and killed and kept the exact postures they had held when the napalm struck—a man about to get on his bicycle, fifty boys and girls playing in an orphanage, a housewife strangely unmarked, holding in her hand a page torn from a Sears-Roebuck catalogue crayoned at Mail Order No. 3,811,294 for a $2.98 &quot;bewitching bed jacket—coral&quot;. There must be almost two hundred dead in the tiny hamlet.&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The United States may also have waged germ warfare against North Korea and China, as was discussed earlier in the chapter on China.<br /> <br /> At the same time, the CIA reportedly was targeting a single individual for termination—North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. Washington sent a Cherokee Indian, code-named Buffalo, to Hans V. Tofte, a CIA officer stationed in Japan, after Buffalo had agreed to serve as Kim Il Sung's assassin. Buffalo was to receive a considerable amount of money if his mission succeeded. It obviously did not, and nothing further has been revealed about the incident.&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Another widely-held belief in the United States during the war was that American prisoners in North Korean camps were dying off like flies because of Communist neglect and cruelty. The flames of this very emotional issue were fanned by the tendency of US officials to exaggerate the numbers involved. During November 1951, for example—long before the end of the war—American military announcements put the count of POW deaths at between 5,000 and 8,000.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt; However, an extensive study completed by the US Army two years after the war revealed that the POW death toll for the entire war was 2,730 (out of 7,190 held in camps; an unknown number of other prisoners never made it to the camps, being shot in the field because of the inconvenience of dealing with them in the midst of combat, a practice engaged in by both sides).<br /> <br /> The study concluded that &quot;there was evidence that the high death rate was not due primarily to Communist maltreatment … it could be accounted for largely by the ignorance or the callousness of the prisoners themselves.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt; &quot;Callousness&quot; refers here to the soldiers' lack of morale and collective spirit. Although not mentioned in the study, the North Koreans, on several occasions, claimed that many American POWs also died in the camps as a result of the heavy US bombing.<br /> <br /> The study of course could never begin to catch up with all the scare headlines to which the Western world had been treated for three years. Obscured as well was the fact that several times as many Communist prisoners had died in US/South Korean camps—halfway through the war the official figure stood at 6,600&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt;—though these camps did hold many more prisoners than those in the North.<br /> <br /> The American public was also convinced, and probably still is, that the North Koreans and Chinese had &quot;brainwashed&quot; US soldiers. This story arose to explain the fact that as many as 30 percent of American POWs had collaborated with the enemy in one way or another, and &quot;one man in every seven, or more than thirteen per cent, was guilty of serious collaboration—writing disloyal tracts … or agreeing to spy or organize for the Communists after the war.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt; Another reason the brainwashing theme was promoted by Washington was to increase the likelihood that statements made by returning prisoners which questioned the official version of the war would be discounted.<br /> <br /> In the words of Yale psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton, brainwashing was popularly held to be an &quot;all-powerful, irresistible, unfathomable, and magical method of achieving total control over the human mind.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt; Although the CIA experimented, beginning in the 1950s, to develop just such a magic, neither they nor the North Koreans or Chinese ever possessed it. The Agency began its &quot;behavior-control&quot; or &quot;mind-control&quot; experiments on human subjects (probably suspected double agents), using drugs and hypnosis, in Japan in July 1950, shortly after the beginning of the Korean War. In October, they apparently used North Korean prisoners of war as subjects.&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt; In 1975, a US Navy psychologist, Lt. Com. Thomas Narut, revealed that his naval work included establishing how to induce servicemen who may not be naturally inclined to kill, to do so under certain conditions. He referred to these men using the words &quot;hitmen&quot; and &quot;assassin&quot;. Narut added that convicted murderers as well had been released from military prisons to become assassins.&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Brainwashing, said the Army study, &quot;has become a catch phrase, used for so many things that it no longer has any precise meaning&quot; and &quot;a precise meaning is necessary in this case&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The prisoners, as far as Army psychiatrists have been able to discover, were not subjected to anything that could properly be called brainwashing. Indeed, the Communist treatment of prisoners, while it came nowhere near fulfilling the requirements of the Geneva Convention, rarely involved outright cruelty, being instead a highly novel blend of leniency and pressure … The Communists rarely used physical torture … and the Army has not found a single verifiable case in which they used it for the specific purpose of forcing a man to collaborate or to accept their convictions.&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;According to the study, however, some American airmen, of the 90 or so who were captured, were subjected to physical abuse in an attempt to extract confessions about germ warfare. This could reflect either a greater Communist resentment about the use of such a weapon, or a need to produce some kind of corroboration of a false or questionable claim.<br /> <br /> American servicemen were also subjected to political indoctrination by their jailers. Here is how the US Army saw it:&lt;blockquote&gt;In the indoctrination lectures, the Communists frequently displayed global charts dotted with our military bases, the names of which were of course known to many of the captives. &quot;See those bases?&quot; the instructor would say, tapping them on the chart with his pointer. &quot;They are American—full of war materiel. You know they are American. And you can see they are ringing Russia and China. Russia and China do not have one base outside their own territory. From this it's clear which side is the warmonger. Would America have these bases and spend millions to maintain them were it not preparing to war on Russia and China?&quot; This argument seemed plausible to many of the prisoners. In general they had no idea that these bases showed not the United States' wish for war, but its wish for peace, that they had been established as part of a series of treaties aimed not at conquest, but at curbing Red aggression.&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The Chinese Communists, of course, did not invent this practice. During the American Civil War, prisoners of both the South and the North received indoctrination about the respective merits of the two sides. And in the Second World War, &quot;democratization courses&quot; were held in US and British POW camps for Germans, and reformed Germans were granted privileges. Moreover, the US Army was proud to state that Communist prisoners in American camps during the Korean War were taught &quot;what democracy stands for&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;51&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The predicted Chinese aggression manifested itself about four months after the war in Korea began. The Chinese entered the war after American planes had violated their air space on a number of occasions, had bombed and strafed Chinese territory several times (always &quot;in error&quot;), when hydro-electric plants on the Korean side of the border, vital to Chinese industry, stood in great danger, and US or South Korean forces had reached the Chinese border, the Yalu River, or come within a few miles of it in several places.<br /> <br /> The question must be asked: How long would the United States refrain from entering a war being waged in Mexico by a Communist power from across the sea, which strafed and bombed Texas border towns, was mobilized along the Rio Grande, and was led by a general who threatened war against the United States itself?<br /> <br /> American airpower in Korea was fearsome to behold. As would be the case in Vietnam, its use was celebrated in the wholesale dropping of napalm, the destruction of villages &quot;suspected of aiding the enemy&quot;, bombing cities so as to leave no useful facilities standing, demolishing dams and dikes to cripple the irrigation system, wiping out rice crops … and in those moving expressions like &quot;scorched-earth policy&quot;, &quot;saturation bombing&quot;, and &quot;operation killer&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;52&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;You can kiss that group of villages good-bye,&quot; exclaimed Captain Everett L. Hundley of Kansas City, Kansas after a bombing raid.&lt;sup&gt;53&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;I would say that the entire, almost the entire Korean Peninsula is just a terrible mess,&quot; testified Major General Emmett O'Donnell before the Senate when the war was one year old. &quot;Everything is destroyed. There is nothing standing worthy of the name.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;54&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And here, the words of the venerable British military guide, Brassey's Annual, in its 1951 yearbook:&lt;blockquote&gt;It is no exaggeration to state that South Korea no longer exists as a country. Its towns have been destroyed, much of its means of livelihood eradicated, and its people reduced to a sullen mass dependent upon charity and exposed to subversive influences. When the war ends no gratitude can be expected from the South Koreans, but it is to be hoped that the lesson will have been learned that it is worse than useless to destroy to liberate. Certainly, western Europe would never accept such a &quot;liberation&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;55&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The worst of the bombing was yet to come. That began in the summer of 1952 and was Washington's way of putting itself in a better bargaining position in the truce discussions with the Communists, which had been going on for a full year while the battles raged. The extended and bitter negotiations gave rise to another pervasive Western belief—that it was predominantly Communist intransigence, duplicity, and lack of peaceful intentions which frustrated the talks and prolonged the war.<br /> <br /> This is a lengthy and entangled chapter of the Korean War story, but one does not have to probe too deeply to discover the unremarkable fact that the barriers were erected by the anti-Communist side as well. Syngman Rhee, for example, was so opposed to any outcome short of total victory that both the Truman and Eisenhower administrations drew up plans for overthrowing him;&lt;sup&gt;56&lt;/sup&gt; which is not to suggest that the American negotiators were negotiating in the best of faith. The last thing they wanted to be accused of was having allowed the commies to make suckers of them. Thus it was that in November of 1951 we could read in the New York Times:&lt;blockquote&gt;The unadorned way that an apparently increasing number of them [American soldiers in Korea] see the situation right now is that the Communists have made important concessions, while the United Nations Command, as they view it, continues to make more and more demands. … The United Nations truce team has created the impression that it switches its stand whenever the Communists indicate that they might go along with it.&lt;sup&gt;57&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;At one point during this same period, when the Communists proposed that a ceasefire and a withdrawal of troops from the combat line should take place while negotiations were going on, the United Nations Command reacted almost as if this were a belligerent and devious act. &quot;Today's stand by the Communists,&quot; said the UNC announcement, &quot;was virtually a renunciation of their previously stated position that hostilities should continue during armistice talks.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;58&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Once upon a time, the United States fought a great civil war in which the North attempted to reunite the divided country through military force. Did Korea or China or any other foreign power send in an army to slaughter Americans, charging Lincoln with aggression?<br /> <br /> Why did the United States choose to wage full-scale war in Korea? Only a year earlier, in 1949, in the Arab-Israeli fighting in Palestine and in the India-Pakistani war over Kashmir, the United Nations, with American support, had intervened to mediate an armistice, not to send in an army to take sides and expand the fighting. And both these conflicts were less in the nature of a civil war than was the case in Korea. If the US/UN response had been the same in these earlier cases, Palestine and Kashmir might have wound up as the scorched-earth desert that was Korea's fate. What saved them, what kept the US armed forces out, was no more than the absence of a communist side to the conflict.<br /> <br /> == Albania 1949-1953: The proper English spy ==<br /> &quot;To simultaneously plan and sabotage this ill-fated venture must have been a severe test of his energy and ingenuity,&quot; wrote one of Kim Philby's biographers.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; The venture was the clandestine attempt, begun in 1949, by the United States and Great Britain to overthrow the pro-Soviet regime of Enver Hoxha through guerrilla-fomented uprisings.<br /> <br /> It ended in disaster, in part because the Russians had apparently been alerted by Philby, the proper Englishman who had gone to all the right schools and penetrated the highest ranks of British and American intelligence, though he had been a Soviet spy since the age of 21.<br /> <br /> Philby had moved to Washington the year before to act as the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) liaison to the CIA. In that capacity he served as a co-director of the CIA-SIS task force engaged in planning the Albanian operation. The choice had fallen upon Albania because it was regarded as the most vulnerable of the socialist states, the smallest and the weakest, not sharing a border with the Soviet Union, isolated between a US-controlled Greece and a Yugoslavia that was a renegade from the Soviet bloc. Moreover, a recent agreement between the Soviet Union and Albania involved aid for Albania in return for a Soviet right to build a submarine base with direct access to the Mediterranean.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; By the rules and logic of the cold-war board game, this was a move the United States was obliged to thwart.<br /> <br /> The task force began by recruiting scattered Albanian émigrés who were living in Italy, Greece and elsewhere. They were exposed to basic military training, with a touch of guerrilla warfare thrown in, at sites established on the British island of Malta in the Mediterranean, in the American occupation zone of West Germany, and, to a lesser extent, in England itself.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; &quot;Whenever we want to subvert any place,&quot; confided Frank Wisner, the CIA's head of covert operations, to Philby, &quot;we find that the British own an island within easy reach.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Intermittently, for some three-and-a-half years, the émigrés were sent back into their homeland: slipping up into the mountains of Greece and over the border, parachuting in from planes which had taken off from bases in Western Europe, entering by sea from Italy. American planes and balloons dropped propaganda leaflets and goods as well, such items in scarce supply in Albania as flour, halvah, needles, and razor blades, along with a note announcing that they were a gift from the &quot;Albanian National Liberation Front&quot;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;—another instance of the subtle &quot;marketing&quot; touch that the CIA, born and raised in America, was to bring to so many of its operations.<br /> <br /> In outline, the plan, or the hope, was for the guerrillas to make for their old home regions and try to stir up anti-Soviet and anti-Communist sentiments, eventually leading to uprisings. They were to distribute propaganda, obtain political, economic and military information, engage in sabotage, recruit individuals into cells, and supply them with equipment. Later infusions of men and material would expand these cells into &quot;centers of resistance&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Cold-war conventional wisdom dictated that the masses of Eastern Europe were waiting to be sparked into open rebellion for their freedom. Even if this were the case, the choice of ignition was highly dubious, for the guerrillas included amongst their numbers many who supported a reinstitution of the Albanian monarchy in the person of the reactionary King Zog, then in exile, and others who had collaborated with the Italian fascists or Nazis during their wartime occupations of Albania.<br /> <br /> To be sure, there were those of republican and democratic leanings in the various émigré committees as well, but State Department papers, later declassified, reveal that prominent Albanian collaborators played leading roles in the formation of these committees. These were individuals the State Department characterized as having &quot;somewhat checkered&quot; political backgrounds, who &quot;might sooner or later occasion embarrassment to this government&quot;. They were admitted to the United States over the Department's objections because of &quot;intelligence considerations&quot;. One of the checkered gentlemen was Xhafer Deva, minister of interior during the Italian occupation, who had been responsible for deportations of &quot;Jews, Communists, partisans and suspicious persons&quot; (as a captured Nazi report put it) to extermination camps in Poland.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the name of the CIA-funded National Committee for a Free Albania, a powerful underground radio station began broadcasting inside the country, calling for the nation's liberation from the Soviet Union. In early 1951, several reports came out of Albania of open organized resistance and uprisings.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; To what extent these happenings were a consequence of the Western infiltration and agitation is impossible to determine. Overall, the campaign had little to show for its efforts. It was hounded throughout by logistical foul-ups, and the grim reality that the masses of Albanians greeted the émigrés as something less than liberators, either from fear of the harsh Hoxha regime, or because they supported the social changes taking place more than they trusted what the émigrés had to offer.<br /> <br /> Worst of all, the Albanian authorities usually seemed to know in which area the guerrillas would be arriving, and when. Kim Philby was not the only potential source of disclosure. The Albanian groups were almost certainly infiltrated, and careless talk indulged in by the motley émigrés could have contributed to the fiasco. Philby, referring to the CIA-SIS task force members' habit of poking fun at Albanians, wrote: &quot;Even in our more serious moments, we Anglo-Saxons never forgot that our agents were just down from the trees.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> So lax was security that New York Times correspondent Cyrus L. Sulzberger filed several dispatches from the Mediterranean area touching upon the intervention which required virtually no reading between the lines.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; (The articles carried no attention-grabbing headlines, there was no public comment about them from Washington, no reporters asked government officials any embarrassing questions … ergo: a &quot;non-event&quot; for Americans.)<br /> <br /> Despite one failure after another, and without good reason to expect anything different in the future, the operation continued until the spring of 1953, resulting in the death or imprisonment of hundreds of men. It was not simply the obsession with chopping off one of Stalin's fingers. Professional prestige and careers had been invested, a visible success was needed to &quot;recoup past losses&quot; and &quot;justify earlier decisions&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; And the men who were being lost were, after all, only Albanians, who spoke not a word of the Queen's English, and did not yet walk upright properly.<br /> <br /> There was, however, the danger of the action escalating into conflict with the Soviet Union. The Soviets did in fact send some new fighter planes to Albania, presumably in the hope that they could shoot down the foreign aircraft making drops.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; The operation could not fail to remind Stalin, Hoxha, and the entire socialist bloc of another Western intervention 30 years earlier in the Soviet Union. It could only serve to make them yet more &quot;paranoid&quot; about Western intentions and convince them to turn the screw of internal security yet tighter. Indeed, every now and again over the ensuing years, Hoxha mentioned the American and British &quot;invasion&quot; and used it to justify his policy of isolation.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the early 1960s, Hoxha himself did what the CIA and SIS had failed to do: He pulled Albania out of the Soviet orbit. The Albanian leader purged pro-Soviet officials in his government and aligned his country with China. There was no military retaliation on the part of the USSR. In the mid-1970s, Hoxha forsook China as well.<br /> <br /> == Eastern Europe 1948-1956: Operation Splinter Factor ==<br /> Jozef Swiatlo surfaced at a press conference in Washington on 28 September 1954. Swiatlo was a Pole; he had been a very important one, high up in the Ministry of Public Security, the secret police. The story went that he had defected in West Berlin the previous December while on a shopping trip, and now the State Department was presenting him to the world to clear up the mystery of the Fields, the American citizens who had disappeared in 1949. Swiatlo revealed that Noel Field and his wife Herta had been arrested in Hungary, and that brother Hermann Field had suffered the same fate in Poland at the hands of Swiatlo himself, all in connection with the trial of a leading Hungarian Communist. The State Department had already dispatched strong letters to the governments of Hungary and Poland.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> There is a more expanded and more sinister version of the Jozef Swiatlo story. This story has Swiatlo seeking to defect to the British in Warsaw back in 1948 at a time when he was already in his high security position. The British, for various reasons, turned his case over to the United States and, at the request of Allen Dulles, Swiatlo was told to remain at his post until further notice.<br /> <br /> At this time Dulles was not yet Director of the CIA, but was a close consultant to the Agency, had his own men in key positions, and was waiting only until November for Thomas Dewey to win the presidential election and appoint him to the top position. (Harry Truman's surprising re-election postponed this for four years, but Dulles did become Deputy Director in 1951.)<br /> <br /> Noel Field, formerly a State Department Foreign Service Officer, was a long-time Communist fellow-traveler, if not a party member in the United States or Europe. During the Second World War, his path converged with Dulles's in intrigue-filled Switzerland. Dulles was an OSS man, Field the representative of the Unitarian Church in Boston helping refugees from Nazi occupation. Field made it a point particularly to help Communist refugees, of which there were many inasmuch as Communists were second only to Jews on the German persecution list. The OSS aided the operation financially; the Communists in turn were an excellent source of information about happenings in Europe of interest to Washington and its allies.<br /> <br /> Toward the end of the war, Field induced Dulles to provide American support for a project which placed agents in various European countries to prepare the way for the advancing Allied troops. The men chosen by Field, unsurprisingly, were all Communists and their placement in certain Eastern European countries helped them to get their hands on the reins of power long before non-Communist forces were able to regroup and organize themselves.<br /> <br /> It could be concluded from this that Allen Dulles had been duped. Moreover, the OSS, under Dulles's direction and again with Field involved, had financed the publication of a clandestine newspaper inside Germany; anti-fascist and left-wing, the paper was called Neues Deutschland, and immediately upon liberation became the official newspaper of the East German Communist Party.<br /> <br /> After the war these incidents served as jokes which intelligence services of both East and West could and did appreciate. Before long, the joke fell heavily upon Noel Field.<br /> <br /> In 1949 when Field visited Poland he was regarded with grave suspicion by Polish authorities. He was seen to have worked during the war in a position which could easily have been a front for Western espionage, a position which brought him into regular contact with senior Communist Party members; and he had, after all, worked closely with Allen Dulles, famous already as a spymaster, and the brother of John Foster Dulles, prominent in Washington official circles and already making his calls for the &quot;liberation&quot; of the Soviet bloc nations.<br /> <br /> At the time of Field's arrival in Poland, Jozef Swiatlo was looking to implicate Jakub Berman, a high party and state official whom Swiatlo was suspicious of and detested. It was his failure to convince the Polish president to act against Berman that reportedly drove Swiatlo to try to defect the year before. When Noel Field wrote to Berman asking his help in obtaining a job in Eastern Europe, Swiatlo learned of the letter and saw his chance to nail Berman.<br /> <br /> But first Noel Field had to be established as an American spy. Given the circumstantial evidence pointing in that direction, that would not be too difficult for a man of Swiatlo's high position and low character. Of course, if Field really was working with US intelligence, Swiatlo couldn't very well be exposing him since the Polish security officer was now himself an American agent. Accordingly, he sent his first message to the CIA, describing his plan about Berman and Field and the harm it could do to the Communist Party in Poland. He concluded with: &quot;Any objections?&quot;<br /> <br /> Allen Dulles had none. His reaction to Swiatlo's message was one of pleasure and amusement. The time had come to settle accounts with Noel Field. More importantly, Dulles saw that Swiatlo, using Noel Field, &quot;the American spy&quot;, as a bludgeon could knock off countless leading Communist officials in the Soviet bloc. It could put the whole of the bloc into a state of acute paranoia and set off a wave of repression and Stalinist tyranny that could eventually lead to uprisings. Dulles called his plan: Operation Splinter Factor.<br /> <br /> Thus it was that Jozef Swiatlo was directed to find spies everywhere in Eastern Europe. He would uncover American plots and British plots, &quot;Trotskyist&quot; conspiracies and &quot;Titoist&quot; conspiracies. He would report to Soviet secret-police chief Lavrenti Beria himself that at the center of the vast network was a man named Noel Haviland Field.<br /> <br /> Field was arrested and wound up in a prison in Hungary, as did his wife Herta when she came looking for him. And when his brother Hermann Field sought to track down the two of them, he met the same fate in Poland.<br /> <br /> Swiatlo was in a unique position to carry out Operation Splinter Factor. Not only did he have the authority and command, he had the files on countless Communist Party members in the bloc countries. Any connection they had had with Noel Field, anything that Field had done, could be interpreted to show the hand of American intelligence or an act of real or potential subversion of the socialist states. The Soviets, and Stalin himself, were extremely interested in the &quot;Fieldists&quot;. Noel Field had known almost everyone who was anyone in the Soviet bloc.<br /> <br /> Just in case the level of paranoia in the infant, insecure governments of Eastern Europe was not high enough, a CIA double agent would &quot;corroborate&quot; a vital piece of information, or introduce the right rumor at the right time; or the Agency's Radio Free Europe would broadcast certain tantalizing, seemingly-coded messages; or the CIA would direct the writing of letters from &quot;East European expatriates&quot; in the United States to leading Communists in their homelands, containing just the bit of information, or the phrase, carefully designed to lift the eyebrows of a security officer.<br /> <br /> Many of the victims of Swiatlo's purges were people who had spent the war years in the West rather than in the Soviet Union and thus had crossed Field's path. These were people who tended to be more nationalist Communists, who wanted to put greater distance between their countries and the Soviet Union, as Tito had done in Yugoslavia, and who favored a more liberal regime at home. Dulles brushed aside the argument that these were people to be supported, not eliminated. He felt that they were potentially the more dangerous to the West because if their form of Communism were allowed to gain a foothold in Eastern Europe then Communism might become respectable and accepted; particularly with Italy and France threatening to vote Communists into power, Communism had to be shown at its worst.<br /> <br /> There were hundreds of trials all over Eastern Europe—&quot;show trials&quot; and lesser spectacles—in which the name of Noel Field played an important part. What Operation Splinter Factor began soon took on a life of its own: following the arrest of a highly-placed person, others fell under suspicion because they knew him or had been appointed by him; or any other connection to an arrested person might serve to implicate some unlucky soul.<br /> <br /> Jozef Swiatlo had his counterpart in Czechoslovakia, a man firmly entrenched in the upper rungs of the Czech security apparatus. The man, whose name is not known, had been recruited by General Reinhard Gehlen, the former Nazi intelligence chief who went to work for the CIA after the war.<br /> <br /> Czechoslovakia was the worst case. By 1951 an unbelievable 169,000 card-carrying members of the Czech Communist Party had been arrested—ten percent of the entire membership. There were tens of thousands more in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and Bulgaria. Hundreds were put to death, others died in prison or went insane.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After Swiatlo defected in December 1953, East European intelligence services came to realize that he had been working for the other side all along. Four weeks after Swiatlo held his Washington press conference, the Polish government announced that it was releasing Hermann Field because investigation had revealed that the charges which had been brought against him by &quot;an American agent and provocateur&quot;, Jozef Swiatlo, were &quot;baseless&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Field was later paid $50,000 for his imprisonment as well as having his convalescence at a sanitorium paid for.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Three weeks after Hermann Field's release, Noel and Herta Field were freed in Hungary. The government in Budapest stated that it could not justify the charges against them.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; They were also compensated and chose to remain in Hungary.<br /> <br /> Once Noel Field had been officially declared innocent, the cases of countless others in East Europe had to be reviewed. First in trickles, then in rushes, the prisoners were released. By 1956 the vast majority stood outside prison walls.<br /> <br /> Throughout the decade following the war, the CIA was fanning the flames of discontent in Eastern Europe in many ways other than Operation Splinter Factor. Radio Free Europe (RFE, cf. Soviet Union chapter), broadcasting from West Germany, never missed a (dirty) trick. In January 1952, for example, after RFE learned that Czechoslovakia was planning to devalue its currency, it warned the population, thus stimulating a nation-wide buying panic.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; RFE's commentaries about various European Communists were described by Blanche Wiesen Cook in her study of the period, The Declassified Eisenhower. She wrote that the broadcasts:&lt;blockquote&gt;involved a wide range of personal criticism, tawdry and slanderous attacks ranging from rumors of brutality and torture, to corruption, and to madness, perversion, and vice. Everything was used that could be imagined in order to make communists, whether in England or in Poland, look silly, undignified, and insignificant.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;One of the voices heard frequently over RFE on the subject of Communist obnoxiousness was none other than Jozef Swiatlo, who had earned the nickname of &quot;Butcher&quot; for his proclivity to torture. Needless to say, the born-again humanitarian made no mention of Splinter Factor or his double role, although some of his broadcasts reportedly shook up the Polish security system for the better.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Any way the US could stir up trouble and nuisance … supporting opposition groups in Rumania&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; … setting up an underground radio station in Bulgaria&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; … dropping propaganda from balloons over Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland (on one day in August 1951 alone, 11,000 balloons carrying 13 million leaflets)&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; … dropping people as well: four American airmen, presumably intelligence operatives, landing in Hungary&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; …<br /> <br /> In 1955, Eastern Europeans could be found at Fort Bragg, North Carolina training with the Green Berets, learning guerrilla warfare tactics, hopefully to be used in their native lands.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By the following year, hundreds of Hungarians, Rumanians, Poles and others were being trained by CIA paramilitary specialists at a secret installation in West Germany. When, in October 1956, the uprising in Hungary occurred, these men, according to the CIA, were not used because they were not yet ready.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; But the Agency did send its agents in Budapest into action to join the rebels and help organize them.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; In the meantime, RFE was exhorting the Hungarian people to continue their resistance, offering tactical advice, and implying that American military assistance was on the way. It never came.<br /> <br /> There is no evidence that Operation Splinter Factor contributed to the Hungarian uprising or to the earlier ones in Poland and East Germany. Nonetheless, the CIA could point to all the cold-war, anti-Communist propaganda points it had won because of the witch hunts in the East, the human cost notwithstanding.<br /> <br /> [continued on page 471]<br /> <br /> == Germany 1950s: Everything from juvenile delinquency to terrorism ==<br /> Within a period of 30 years and two world wars with Germany, the Soviet Union suffered more than 40 million dead and wounded, enormous devastation to its land, and its cities razed to the ground. At the close of the Second World War, the Russians were not kindly disposed toward the German people. With their own country to rebuild, they placed the reconstruction of Germany far down on their list of priorities.<br /> <br /> The United States emerged from the war with relatively minor casualties and its territory completely unscathed. It was ready, willing and able to devote itself to its main priority in Europe: the building of an anti-Communist bulwark in the West, particularly in the strategic location of Germany.<br /> <br /> In 1945, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson has written, official American policy was explicitly &quot;to bring home to the Germans that they could not escape the suffering they had brought upon themselves … [and] to control [the] German economy to … prevent any higher standard of living than in neighboring nations.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;From the outset,&quot; Acheson added, US officials in Germany believed this plan &quot;to be unworkable&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Acheson did not explain what lay behind this prognosis, but its correctness soon became apparent for three distinct reasons: (1) influential American business and financial leaders, some of them occupying important government positions, had too great a stake in a highly-industrialized Germany (usually dating back to before the war) to allow the country to sink to the depths that some American policy-makers advocated as punishment; (2) a revitalized West Germany was seen as an indispensable means of combatting Soviet influence in the Eastern sector of the country, if not in all of Eastern Europe. West Germany was to become &quot;the showcase of Western democracy&quot;—dramatic, living proof of the superiority of capitalism over socialism; (3) in American conservative circles, and some liberal ones as well, wherein a Soviet invasion of Western Europe remained perpetually imminent, the idea of tying West Germany's industrial hands was one which came perilously close to being &quot;soft on communism&quot;, if not worse.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Dwight Eisenhower echoed this last sentiment when he later wrote:&lt;blockquote&gt;Had certain officials in the Roosevelt administration had their way, Germany would have been far worse off, for there were those who advocated the flooding of the Ruhr mines, the wrecking of German factories, and the reducing of Germany from an industrial to an agricultural nation. Among others, Harry Dexter White, later named by Attorney General Brownell as one who had been heavily involved in a Soviet espionage ring operating within our government … proposed exactly that.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Thus it was that the de-industrialization of West Germany met the same fate as the demilitarization of the country would in the coming years, as the United States poured in massive economic assistance: $4 billion of Marshall Plan aid and an army of industrial and technical experts.<br /> <br /> At the same time, the Soviet Union was pouring massive economic assistance out of East Germany. The Soviets dismantled and moved back home entire factories with large amounts of equipment and machinery, and thousands of miles of railroad track. When added to war reparations, the toll reached into the billions of dollars.<br /> <br /> By the early 1950s, though social services, employment, and cultural life in East Germany were on a par or superior to that in West Germany, the Western sector had the edge in those areas of prosperity with the most sex appeal: salaries were higher, the eating was better, consumer goods more available, and the neon lights emblazoned the nights along the Kurfürstendamm.<br /> <br /> American cold warriors, however, as if discontent with the game score or with leaving so much to chance, instituted a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion against East Germany designed to throw the economic and administrative machinery out of gear. The CIA and other US intelligence and military services in West Germany (with occasional help from the likes of British intelligence and the West German police) recruited, equipped, trained and financed German activist groups and individuals of West and East. Finding recruits for such a crusade was not difficult, for in post-war Germany, anti-communism lived on as the only respectable vestige of Naziism.<br /> <br /> The most active of these groups, which went by the name of Fighting Group Against Inhumanity, admitted that it had received financial support from the Ford Foundation and the West Berlin government.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; Subsequently, an East Berlin news magazine published a copy of a letter from the Ford Foundation confirming a grant of $150,000 to the National Committee for a Free Europe &quot;so that it, in turn, could support the humanitarian activities of 'The Fighting Group Against Inhumanity'.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; The National Committee for a Free Europe, in turn, was a CIA front organization which also ran Radio Free Europe.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Association of Political Refugees from the East, and the Investigating Committee of Freedom-minded Jurists of the Soviet Zone, were two of the other groups involved in the campaign against East Germany. The actions carried out by these operatives ran the spectrum from juvenile delinquency to terrorism; anything &quot;to make the commies look bad&quot;. It added up to the following remarkable record:&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  through explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods they damaged power stations, shipyards, a dam, canals, docks, public buildings, gas stations, shops, a radio station, outdoor stands, public transportation;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned 12 cars of a freight train and destroyed air pressure hoses of others;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  blew up road and railway bridges; placed explosives on a railway bridge of the Berlin-Moscow line but these were discovered in time—hundreds would have been killed;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  used special acids to damage vital factory machinery; put sand in the turbine of a factory, bringing it to a standstill; set fire to a tile-producing factory; promoted work slow-downs in factories; stole blueprints and samples of new technical developments;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  killed 7,000 cows of a co-operative dairy by poisoning the wax coating of the wire used to bale the cows' corn fodder;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  added soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  raided and wrecked left-wing offices in East and West Berlin, stole membership lists; assaulted and kidnapped leftists and, on occasion, murdered them;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  set off stink bombs to disrupt political meetings;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  floated balloons which burst in the air, scattering thousands of propaganda pamphlets down upon East Germans;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  were in possession, when arrested, of a large quantity of the poison cantharidin with which it was planned to produce poisoned cigarettes to kill leading East Germans;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  attempted to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out forged invitations, false promises of free bed and board, false notices of cancellations; carried out attacks on participants with explosives, firebombs, and tire-puncturing equipment; set fire to a wooden bridge on a main motorway leading to the festival;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  forged and distributed large quantities of food ration cards—for example, for 60,000 pounds of meat—to cause confusion, shortages and resentment;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  sent out forged tax notices and other government directives and documents to foster disorganization and inefficiency within industry and unions;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•&quot;gave considerable aid and comfort&quot; to East Germans who staged an uprising on 17 June 1953; during and after the uprising, the US radio station in West Berlin, RIAS (Radio In the American Sector), issued inflammatory broadcasts into East Germany appealing to the populace to resist the government; RIAS also broadcast warnings to witnesses in at least one East German criminal case being monitored by the Investigating Committee of Freedom-minded Jurists of the Soviet Zone that they would be added to the committee's files of &quot;accused persons&quot; if they lied.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Although many hundreds of the American agents were caught and tried by East Germany, the ease with which they could pass back and forth between the two sectors and infiltrate different enterprises without any language barrier provided opportunities for the CIA unmatched anywhere else in Eastern Europe.<br /> <br /> Throughout the 1950s, the East Germans and the Soviet Union repeatedly lodged complaints with the Soviets' erstwhile allies in the West and with the United Nations about specific sabotage and espionage activities and called for the closure of the offices in West Germany they claimed were responsible, and for which they provided names and addresses. Inevitably the East Germans began to tighten up entry into the country from the West.<br /> <br /> The West also bedeviled the East with a vigorous campaign of recruiting East German professionals and skilled workers. Eventually, this led to a severe labor and production crisis in the East, and in August 1961, to the building of the infamous Berlin Wall.<br /> <br /> While staging their commando attacks upon East Germany, American authorities and their German agents were apparently convinced that the Soviet Union had belligerent designs upon West Germany; perhaps a textbook case of projection. On 8 October 1952, the Minister-President of the West German state of Hesse, Georg August Zinn, disclosed that the United States had created a secret civilian army in his state for the purpose of resisting a Russian invasion.<br /> <br /> This force of between 1,000 and 2,000 men belonged to the so-called &quot;Technical Service&quot; of the German Youth Federation, the latter characterized by the New York Times as &quot;a Right-wing youth group frequently charged with extremist activities&quot; (a reference to the terrorist tactics described above). The stalwarts of the Technical Service were hardly youths, however, for almost all appeared to be between 35 and 50 and most, said Zinn, were &quot;former officers of the Luftwaffe, the Wehrmacht and the S.S. [Hitler's Black-shirts]&quot;. For more than a year they had received American training in infantry weapons and explosives and &quot;political instruction&quot; in small groups at a secluded site in the countryside and at a US military installation.<br /> <br /> The intelligence wing of the Technical Service, the state president revealed, had drawn up lists and card indexes of persons who were to be &quot;put out of the way&quot; when the Soviet tanks began to roll. These records, which contained detailed descriptions and intimate biographical information, were of some 200 leading Social Democrats (including Zinn himself), 15 Communists, and various others, all of whom were deemed &quot;politically untrustworthy&quot; and opponents of West German militarization. Apparently, support for peaceful co-existence and detente with the Soviet bloc was sufficient to qualify one for inclusion on the hit-list, for one man was killed at the training site, charged with being an &quot;East-West bridge builder&quot;. It was this murder that led to the exposure of the entire operation.<br /> <br /> The United States admitted its role in the creation and training of the guerrilla army, but denied any involvement in the &quot;illegal, internal, and political activities&quot; of the organization. But Zinn reported that the Americans had learned of the plotting in May and had not actually dissolved the group until September, the same month that German authorities arrested a number of the group's leaders. At some point, the American who directed the training courses, Sterling Garwood, had been &quot;supplied with carbon copies of the card-index entries&quot;. It appears that at no time did US authorities communicate anything of this matter to the West German Government.<br /> <br /> As the affair turned out, those who had been arrested were quickly released and the United States thwarted any further investigation in this the American Zone of occupied Germany. Commented Herr Zinn: &quot;The only legal explanation for these releases can be that the people in Karlsruhe [the Federal Court] declared that they acted upon American direction.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> To add to the furor, the national leader of the Social Democrats accused the United States of financing an opposition group to infiltrate and undermine his party. Erich Ollenhauer, whose name had also appeared on the Technical Service's list, implied that American &quot;clandestine&quot; agencies were behind the plot despite the disapproval of high-ranking US officials.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The revelations about the secret army and its hit-list resulted in a storm of ridicule and denunciation falling upon the United States from many quarters in West Germany. In particular, the delicious irony of the Americans working hand-in-glove with &quot;ex&quot;-Nazis did not escape the much-castigated German people.<br /> <br /> This operation in Germany, it was revealed many years later, was part of a much wider network—called &quot;Operation Gladio&quot;—created by the CIA and several European intelligence services, with similar secret armies all over Western Europe. (See Western Europe chapter.)<br /> <br /> == Iran 1953: Making it safe for the King of Kings ==<br /> &quot;So this is how we get rid of that madman Mossadegh,&quot; announced John Foster Dulles to a group of top Washington policy makers one day in June 1953.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; The Secretary of State held in his hand a plan of operation to overthrow the prime minister of Iran prepared by Kermit (Kim) Roosevelt of the CIA. There was scarcely any discussion amongst the high-powered men in the room, no probing questions, no legal or ethical issues raised.<br /> <br /> &quot;This was a grave decision to have made,&quot; Roosevelt later wrote. &quot;It involved tremendous risk. Surely it deserved thorough examination, the closest consideration, somewhere at the very highest level. It had not received such thought at this meeting. In fact, I was morally certain that almost half of those present, if they had felt free or had the courage to speak, would have opposed the undertaking.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Roosevelt, the grandson of Theodore and distant cousin of Franklin, was expressing surprise more than disappointment at glimpsing American foreign-policy-making undressed.<br /> <br /> The original initiative to oust Mossadegh had come from the British, for the elderly Iranian leader had spearheaded the parliamentary movement to nationalize the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), the sole oil company operating in Iran. In March 1951, the bill for nationalization was passed, and at the end of April Mossadegh was elected prime minister by a large majority of Parliament. On 1 May, nationalization went into effect. The Iranian people, Mossadegh declared, &quot;were opening a hidden treasure upon which lies a dragon&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As the prime minister had anticipated, the British did not take the nationalization gracefully, though it was supported unanimously by the Iranian parliament and by the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people for reasons of both economic justice and national pride. The Mossadegh government tried to do all the right things to placate the British: It offered to set aside 25 percent of the net profits of the oil operation as compensation; it guaranteed the safety and the jobs of the British employees; it was willing to sell its oil without disturbance to the tidy control system so dear to the hearts of the international oil giants. But the British would have none of it. What they wanted was their oil company back. And they wanted Mossadegh's head. A servant does not affront his lord with impunity.<br /> <br /> A military show of force by the British navy was followed by a ruthless international economic blockade and boycott, and a freezing of Iranian assets which brought Iran's oil exports and foreign trade to a virtual standstill, plunged the already impoverished country into near destitution, and made payment of any compensation impossible. Nonetheless, and long after they had moved to oust Mossadegh, the British demanded compensation not only for the physical assets of the AIOC, but for the value of their enterprise in developing the oil fields; a request impossible to meet, and, in the eyes of Iranian nationalists, something which decades of huge British profits had paid for many times over.<br /> <br /> The British attempt at economic strangulation of Iran could not have gotten off the ground without the active co-operation and support of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations and American oil companies. At the same time, the Truman administration argued with the British that Mossadegh's collapse could open the door to the proverbial communist takeover.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; When the British were later expelled from Iran, however, they had no alternative but to turn to the United States for assistance in toppling Mossadegh. In November 1952, the Churchill government approached Roosevelt, the de facto head of the CIA's Middle East division, who told the British that he felt that there was &quot;no chance to win approval from the outgoing administration of Truman and Acheson. The new Republicans, however, might be quite different.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> John Foster Dulles was certainly different. The apocalyptic anti-communist saw in Mossadegh the epitome of all that he detested in the Third World: unequivocal neutralism in the cold war, tolerance of Communists, and disrespect for free enterprise, as demonstrated by the oil nationalization. (Ironically, in recent years Great Britain had nationalized several of its own basic industries, and the government was the majority owner of the AIOC.) To the likes of John Foster Dulles, the eccentric Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh was indeed a madman. And when the Secretary of State considered further that Iran was a nation exceedingly rich in the liquid gold, and that it shared a border with the Soviet Union more than 1,000 miles long, he was not unduly plagued by indecision as to whether the Iranian prime minister should finally retire from public life.<br /> <br /> As matters turned out, the overthrow of Mossadegh in August 1953 was much more an American operation than a British one. Twenty-six years later, Kermit Roosevelt took the unusual step of writing a book about how he and the CIA carried out the operation. He called his book Countercoup to press home the idea that the CIA coup was staged only to prevent a takeover of power by the Iranian Communist Party (The Tudeh) closely backed by the Soviet Union. Roosevelt was thus arguing that Mossadegh had to be removed to prevent a Communist takeover, whereas the Truman administration had felt that Mossadegh had to be kept in power to prevent one.<br /> <br /> It would be incorrect to state that Roosevelt offers little evidence to support his thesis of the Communist danger. It would be more precise to say that he offers no evidence at all. Instead, the reader is subjected to mere assertions of the thesis which are stated over and over, apparently in the belief that enough repetition will convince even the most skeptical. Thus are we treated to variations on the theme such as the following:<br /> <br /> &quot;The Soviet threat [was] indeed genuine, dangerous and imminent&quot; … Mossadegh &quot;had formed an alliance&quot; with the Soviet Union to oust the Shah … &quot;the obvious threat of Russian takeover&quot; … &quot;the alliance between [Mossadegh] and the Russian-dominated Tudeh was taking on a threatening shape&quot; … Mossadegh's &quot;increasing dependence on the Soviet Union&quot; … &quot;the hand of the Tudeh, and behind them the Russians, is showing more openly every day&quot; … &quot;Russian backing of the Tudeh and Tudeh backing of [Mossadegh] became ever more obvious&quot; … the Soviet Union was &quot;ever more active in Iran. Their control over Tudeh leadership was growing stronger all the time. It was exercised often and, to our eyes, with deliberate ostentation&quot; …&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But none of this subversive and threatening activity was, apparently, ever open, obvious, or ostentatious enough to provide Roosevelt with a single example he could impart to a curious reader.<br /> <br /> In actuality, although the Tudeh Party more or less faithfully followed the fluctuating Moscow line on Iran, the relation of the party to Mossadegh was much more complex than Roosevelt and other cold-war chroniclers have made it out to be. The Tudeh felt very ambiguous about the wealthy, eccentric, land-owning prime minister who, nonetheless, was standing up to imperialism. Dean Acheson, Truman's Secretary of State, described Mossadegh as &quot;essentially a rich, reactionary, feudal-minded Persian&quot;,&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; hardly your typical Communist Party fellow-traveler.<br /> <br /> On occasion the Tudeh had supported Mossadegh's policies; more often it had attacked them bitterly, and in one instance, on 15 July 1951, a Tudeh-sponsored demonstration was brutally suppressed by Mossadegh, resulting in some 100 deaths and 500 injured. The Iranian leader, moreover, had campaigned successfully against lingering Soviet occupation of northern Iran after World War II, and in October 1947 had led Parliament in its rejection of a government proposal that a joint Irano-Soviet oil company be set up to exploit the oil of northern Iran.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> What, indeed, did Mossadegh have to gain by relinquishing any of his power to the Tudeh and/or the Soviet Union? The idea that the Russians even desired the Tudeh to take power is no more than speculation. There was just as much evidence, or as little, to conclude that the Russians, once again, were more concerned about their relationship with Western governments than with the fate of a local Communist Party in a country outside the socialist bloc of Eastern Europe.<br /> <br /> A secret State Department intelligence report, dated 9 January 1953, in the closing days of the Truman administration, stated that Mossadegh had not sought any alliance with the Tudeh, and that &quot;The major opposition to the National Front [Mossadegh's governing coalition] arises from the vested interests, on the one hand, and the Tudeh Party on the other.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Tudeh Party had been declared illegal in 1949 and Mossadegh had not lifted that ban although he allowed the party to operate openly, at least to some extent because of his democratic convictions, and had appointed some Tudeh sympathizers to government posts.<br /> <br /> Many of the Tudeh's objectives paralleled those espoused by the National Front, the State Department report observed, but &quot;An open Tudeh move for power … would probably unite independents and non-Communists of all political leanings and would result … in energetic efforts to destroy Tudeh by force.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The National Front itself was a coalition of highly diverse political and religious elements including right-wing anti-communists, held together by respect for Mossadegh's personal character and honesty, and by nationalistic sentiments, particularly in regard to the nationalization of oil.<br /> <br /> In 1979, when he was asked about this State Department report, Kermit Roosevelt replied: &quot;I don't know what to make of that … Loy Henderson [US ambassador to Iran in 1953] thought that there was a serious danger that Mossadegh was going to, in effect, place Iran under Soviet domination.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; Though he was the principal moving force behind the coup, Roosevelt was now passing the buck, and to a man who, as we shall see in the Middle East chapter, was given to alarmist statements about &quot;communist takeovers&quot;.<br /> <br /> One can but wonder what Roosevelt, or anyone else, made of a statement by John Foster Dulles before a Senate committee in July 1953, when the operation to oust Mossadegh was already in process. The Secretary of State, the press reported, testified &quot;that there was 'no substantial evidence' to indicate that Iran was cooperating with Russia. On the whole, he added, Moslem opposition to communism is predominant, although at times the Iranian Government appears to rely for support on the Tudeh party, which is communistic.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The young Shah of Iran had been relegated to little more than a passive role by Mossadegh and the Iranian political process. His power had been whittled away to the point where he was &quot;incapable of independent action&quot;, noted the State Department intelligence report. Mossadegh was pressing for control of the armed forces and more say over expenditures of the royal court, and the inexperienced and indecisive Shah—the &quot;King of Kings&quot;—was reluctant to openly oppose the prime minister because of the latter's popularity.<br /> <br /> The actual sequence of events instigated by Roosevelt which culminated in the Shah's ascendancy appears rather simple in hindsight, even naive, and owed not a little to luck. The first step was to reassure the Shah that Eisenhower and Churchill were behind him in his struggle for power with Mossadegh and were willing to provide whatever military and political support he needed. Roosevelt did not actually know what Eisenhower felt, or even knew, about the operation and went so far as to fabricate a message from the president to the Shah expressing his encouragement.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At the same time, the Shah was persuaded to issue royal decrees dismissing Mossadegh as prime minister and replacing him with one Fazlollah Zahedi, a general who had been imprisoned during the war by the British for collaboration with the Nazis.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; Late in the night of 14/15 August, the Shah's emissary delivered the royal decree to Mossadegh's home, which was guarded by troops. Not surprisingly, he was received very coolly and did not get in to see the prime minister. Instead, he was obliged to leave the decree with a servant who signed a receipt for the piece of paper dismissing his master from power. Equally unsurprising, Mossadegh did not abdicate. The prime minister, who maintained that only Parliament could dismiss him, delivered a radio broadcast the following morning in which he stated that the Shah, encouraged by &quot;foreign elements&quot;, had attempted a coup d'état. Mossadegh then declared that he was, therefore, compelled to take full power unto himself. He denounced Zahedi as a traitor and sought to have him arrested, but the general had been hidden by Roosevelt's team.<br /> <br /> The Shah, fearing all was lost, fled with his queen to Rome via Baghdad without so much as packing a suitcase. Undeterred, Roosevelt went ahead and directed the mimeographing of copies of the royal decrees for distribution to the public, and sent two of his Iranian agents to important military commanders to seek their support. It appears that this crucial matter was left to the last minute, almost as an afterthought. Indeed, one of the two Iranians had been recruited for the cause only the same day, and it was only he who succeeded in winning a commitment of military support from an Iranian colonel who had tanks and armored cars under his command.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Beginning on 16 August, a mass demonstration arranged by the National Front, supporting Mossadegh and attacking the Shah and the United States, took place in the capital city, Teheran. Roosevelt characterizes the demonstrators simply as &quot;the Tudeh, with strong Russian encouragement&quot;, once again failing to offer any evidence to support his assertion. The New York Times referred to them as &quot;Tudeh partisans and Nationalist extremists&quot;, the latter term being one which could have applied to individuals comprising a wide range of political leanings.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Among the demonstrators there were as well a number of individuals working for the CIA. According to Richard Cottam, an American academic and author reportedly in the employ of the Agency in Teheran at this time, these agents were sent &quot;into the streets to act as if they were Tudeh. They were more than just provocateurs, they were shock troops, who acted as if they were Tudeh people throwing rocks at mosques and priests&quot;, the purpose of which was to stamp the Tudeh and, by implication, Mossadegh as being anti-religion.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During the demonstrations, the Tudeh raised their familiar demand for the creation of a democratic republic. They appealed to Mossadegh to form a united front and to provide them with arms to defend against the coup, but the prime minister refused.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt; Instead, on 18 August he ordered the police and army to put an end to the Tudeh demonstrations which they did with considerable force. According to the accounts of Roosevelt and Ambassador Henderson, Mossadegh took this step as a result of a meeting with Henderson in which the ambassador complained of the extreme harassment being suffered by US citizens at the hands of the Iranians. It is left unclear by both of the Americans how much of this harassment was real and how much manufactured by them for the occasion. In any event, Henderson told Mossadegh that unless it ceased, he would be obliged to order all Americans to leave Iran at once. Mossadegh, says Henderson, begged him not to do this for an American evacuation would make it appear that his government was unable to control the country, although at the same time the prime minister was accusing the CIA of being behind the issuance of the royal decrees.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt; (The Tudeh newspaper at this time was demanding the expulsion of &quot;interventionist&quot; American diplomats.)&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Whatever Mossadegh's motivation, his action was again in sharp contradiction to the idea that he was in alliance with the Tudeh or that the party was in a position to grab the reins of power. Indeed, the Tudeh did not take to the streets again.<br /> <br /> The following day, 19 August, Roosevelt's Iranian agents staged a parade through Teheran. With a fund of some one million dollars having been established in a safe in the American embassy, the &quot;extremely competent professional 'organizers',&quot; as Roosevelt called them, had no difficulty in buying themselves a mob, probably using but a small fraction of the fund. (The various accounts of the CIA role in Iran have the Agency spending from $10,000 to $19 million to overthrow Mossadegh. The larger amounts are based on reports that the CIA engaged in heavy bribery of members of Parliament and other influential Iranians to enlist their support against the prime minister.)<br /> <br /> Soon a line of people could be seen coming out of the ancient bazaar, led by circus and athletic performers to attract the public. The marchers were waving banners, shouting &quot;Long live the Shah!&quot; Along the edges of the procession, men were passing out Iranian currency adorned with a portrait of the Shah. The demonstrators gathered followers as they went, people joining and picking up the chants, undoubtedly for a myriad of political and personal reasons. The balance of psychology had swung against Mossadegh.<br /> <br /> Along the way, some marchers broke ranks to attack the offices of pro-Mossadegh newspapers and political parties, Tudeh and government offices. Presently, a voice broke in over the radio in Teheran announcing that &quot;The Shah's instruction that Mossadegh be dismissed has been carried out. The new Prime Minister, Fazlollah Zahedi, is now in office. And His Imperial Majesty is on his way home!&quot;<br /> <br /> This was a lie, or a &quot;pre-truth&quot; as Roosevelt suggested. Only then did he go to fetch Zahedi from his hiding place. On the way, he happened to run into the commander of the air force who was among the marching throng. Roosevelt told the officer to get hold of a tank in which to carry Zahedi to Mossadegh's house in proper fashion.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Kermit Roosevelt would have the reader believe that at this point it was all over but the shouting and the champagne he was soon to uncork: Mossadegh had fled, Zahedi had assumed power, the Shah had been notified to return—a dramatic, joyful, and peaceful triumph of popular will. Inexplicably, he neglects to mention at all that in the streets of Teheran and in front of Mossadegh's house that day, a nine-hour battle raged, with soldiers loyal to Mossadegh on one side and those supporting Zahedi and the Shah on the other. Some 300 people were reported killed and hundreds more wounded before Mossadegh's defenders finally succumbed.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Roosevelt also fails to mention any contribution of the British to the whole operation, which considerably irritated the men in MI6, the CIA's counterpart, who claim that they, as well as AIOC staff, local businessmen and other Iranians, had indeed played a role in the events. But they have been tight-lipped about what that role was precisely.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The US Military Mission in Iran also claimed a role in the action, as Major General George C. Stewart later testified before Congress:&lt;blockquote&gt;Now, when this crisis came on and the thing was about to collapse, we violated our normal criteria and among the other things we did, we provided the army immediately on an emergency basis, blankets, boots, uniforms, electric generators, and medical supplies that permitted and created the atmosphere in which they could support the Shah … The guns that they had in their hands, the trucks that they rode in, the armored cars that they drove through the streets, and the radio communications that permitted their control, were all furnished through the military defense assistance program.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The latter part of the General's statement would, presumably, apply to the other side as well.<br /> <br /> &quot;It is conceivable that the Tudeh could have turned the fortunes of the day against the royalists,&quot; wrote Kennett Love, a New York Times reporter who was in Teheran during the crucial days of August. &quot;But for some reason they remained completely aloof from the conflict. … My own conjecture is that the Tudeh were restrained by the Soviet Embassy because the Kremlin, in the first post-Stalin year, was not willing to take on such consequences as might have resulted from the establishment of a communist-controlled regime in Teheran.&quot;<br /> <br /> Love's views, contained in a paper he wrote in 1960, may well have been inspired by information received from the CIA. By his own admission, he was in close contact with the Agency in Teheran and even aided them in their operation.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Earlier in the year, the New York Times had noted that &quot;prevailing opinion among detached observers in Teheran&quot; was that &quot;Mossadegh is the most popular politician in the country&quot;. During a period of more than 40 years in public life, Mossadegh had &quot;acquired a reputation as an honest patriot&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In July, the State Department Director of Iranian Affairs had testified that &quot;Mossadegh has such tremendous control over the masses of people that it would be very difficult to throw him out.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A few days later, &quot;at least 100,000&quot; people filled the streets of Teheran to express strong anti-US and anti-Shah sentiments. Though sponsored by the Tudeh, the turnout far exceeded any estimate of party adherents.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But popularity and masses, of the unarmed kind, counted for little, for in the final analysis what Teheran witnessed was a military showdown carried out on both sides by soldiers obediently following the orders of a handful of officers, some of whom were staking their careers and ambitions on choosing the winning side; some had a more ideological commitment. The New York Times characterized the sudden reversal of Mossadegh's fortunes as &quot;nothing more than a mutiny … against pro-Mossadegh officers&quot; by &quot;the lower ranks&quot; who revered the Shah, had brutally quelled the demonstrations the day before, but refused to do the same on 19 August, and instead turned against their officers.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> What connection Roosevelt and his agents had with any of the pro-Shah officers beforehand is not clear. In an interview given at about the same time that he finished his book, Roosevelt stated that a number of pro-Shah officers were given refuge in the CIA compound adjoining the US Embassy at the time the Shah fled to Rome.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt; But inasmuch as Roosevelt mentions not a word of this rather important and interesting development in his book, it must be regarded as yet another of his assertions to be approached with caution.<br /> <br /> In any event, it may be that the 19 August demonstration organized by Roosevelt's team was just the encouragement and spark these officers were waiting for. Yet, if so, it further illustrates how much Roosevelt had left to chance.<br /> <br /> In light of all the questionable, contradictory, and devious statements which emanated at times from John Foster Dulles, Kermit Roosevelt, Loy Henderson and other American officials, what conclusions can be drawn about American motivation in the toppling of Mossadegh? The consequences of the coup may offer the best guide.<br /> <br /> For the next 25 years, the Shah of Iran stood fast as the United States' closest ally in the Third World, to a degree that would have shocked the independent and neutral Mossadegh. The Shah literally placed his country at the disposal of US military and intelligence organizations to be used as a cold-war weapon, a window and a door to the Soviet Union—electronic listening and radar posts were set up near the Soviet border; American aircraft used Iran as a base to launch surveillance flights over the Soviet Union; espionage agents were infiltrated across the border; various American military installations dotted the Iranian landscape. Iran was viewed as a vital link in the chain being forged by the United States to &quot;contain&quot; the Soviet Union. In a telegram to the British Acting Foreign Secretary in September, Dulles said: &quot;I think if we can in coordination move quickly and effectively in Iran we would close the most dangerous gap in the line from Europe to South Asia.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt; In February 1955, Iran became a member of the Baghdad Pact, set up by the United States, in Dulles's words, &quot;to create a solid band of resistance against the Soviet Union&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One year after the coup, the Iranian government completed a contract with an international consortium of oil companies. Amongst Iran's new foreign partners, the British lost the exclusive rights they had enjoyed previously, being reduced now to 40 percent. Another 40 percent now went to American oil firms, the remainder to other countries. The British, however, received an extremely generous compensation for their former property.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1958, Kermit Roosevelt left the CIA and presently went to work for Gulf Oil Co., one of the American oil firms in the consortium. In this position, Roosevelt was director of Gulf's relations with the US government and foreign governments, and had occasion to deal with the Shah. In 1960, Gulf appointed him a vice president. Subsequently, Roosevelt formed a consulting firm, Downs and Roosevelt, which, between 1967 and 1970, reportedly received $116,000 a year above expenses for its efforts on behalf of the Iranian government. Another client, the Northrop Corporation, a Los Angeles-based aerospace company, paid Roosevelt $75,000 a year to aid in its sales to Iran, Saudi Arabia and other countries.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt; (See the Middle East chapter for Roosevelt's CIA connection with King Saud of Saudi Arabia.)<br /> <br /> Another American member of the new consortium was Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey (now Exxon), a client of Sullivan and Cromwell, the New York law firm of which John Foster Dulles had long been the senior member. Brother Allen, Director of the CIA, had also been a member of the firm.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt; Syndicated columnist Jack Anderson reported some years later that the Rockefeller family, who controlled Standard Oil and Chase Manhattan Bank, had &quot;helped arrange the CIA coup that brought down Mossadegh&quot;. Anderson listed a number of ways in which the Shah demonstrated his gratitude to the Rockefellers, including heavy deposits of his personal fortune in Chase Manhattan, and housing developments in Iran built by a Rockefeller family company.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The standard &quot;textbook&quot; account of what took place in Iran in 1953 is that—whatever else one might say for or against the operation—the United States saved Iran from a Soviet/Communist takeover. Yet, during the two years of American and British subversion of a bordering country, the Soviet Union did nothing that would support such a premise. When the British Navy staged the largest concentration of its forces since World War II in Iranian waters, the Soviets took no belligerent steps; nor when Great Britain instituted draconian international sanctions which left Iran in a deep economic crisis and extremely vulnerable, did the oil fields &quot;fall hostage&quot; to the Bolshevik Menace; this, despite &quot;the whole of the Tudeh Party at its disposal&quot; as agents, as Roosevelt put it.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; Not even in the face of the coup, with its imprint of foreign hands, did Moscow make a threatening move; neither did Mossadegh at any point ask for Russian help.<br /> <br /> One year later, however, the New York Times could editorialize that &quot;Moscow … counted its chickens before they were hatched and thought that Iran would be the next 'People's Democracy'.&quot; At the same time, the newspaper warned, with surprising arrogance, that &quot;underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A decade later, Allen Dulles solemnly stated that communism had &quot;achieved control of the governmental apparatus&quot; in Iran.&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt; And a decade after that, Fortune magazine, to cite one of many examples, kept the story alive by writing that Mossadegh &quot;plotted with the Communist party of Iran, the Tudeh, to overthrow Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi and hook up with the Soviet Union.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And what of the Iranian people? What did being &quot;saved from communism&quot; do for them? For the preponderance of the population, life under the Shah was a grim tableau of grinding poverty, police terror, and torture. Thousands were executed in the name of fighting communism. Dissent was crushed from the outset of the new regime with American assistance. Kennett Love wrote that he believed that CIA officer George Carroll, whom he knew personally, worked with General Farhat Dadsetan, the new military governor of Teheran, &quot;on preparations for the very efficient smothering of a potentially dangerous dissident movement emanating from the bazaar area and the Tudeh in the first two weeks of November, 1953&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The notorious Iranian secret police, SAVAK, created under the guidance of the CIA and Israel,&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt; spread its tentacles all over the world to punish Iranian dissidents. According to a former CIA analyst on Iran, SAVAK was instructed in torture techniques by the Agency.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt; Amnesty International summed up the situation in 1976 by noting that Iran had the &quot;highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> When to this is added a level of corruption that &quot;startled even the most hardened observers of Middle Eastern thievery&quot;,&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt; it is understandable that the Shah needed his huge military and police force, maintained by unusually large US aid and training programs,&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt; to keep the lid down for as long as he did. Said Senator Hubert Humphrey, apparently with some surprise:&lt;blockquote&gt;Do you know what the head of the Iranian Army told one of our people? He said the Army was in good shape, thanks to U.S. aid—it was now capable of coping with the civilian population. That Army isn't going to fight the Russians. It's planning to fight the Iranian people.&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Where force might fail, the CIA turned to its most trusted weapon—money. To insure support for the Shah, or at least the absence of dissent, the Agency began making payments to Iranian religious leaders, always a capricious bunch. The payments to the ayatollahs and mullahs began in 1953 and continued regularly until 1977 when President Carter abruptly halted them. One &quot;informed intelligence source&quot; estimated that the amount paid reached as much as $400 million a year; others thought that figure too high, which it certainly seems to be. The cut-off of funds to the holy men, it is believed, was one of the elements which precipitated the beginning of the end for the King of Kings.&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Guatemala 1953-1954: While the world watched ==<br /> To whom do you turn for help when the police are assaulting you? The old question.<br /> <br /> To whom does a poor banana republic turn when a CIA army is advancing upon its territory and CIA planes are overhead bombing the country?<br /> <br /> The leaders of Guatemala tried everyone—the United Nations, the Organization of American States, other countries individually, the world press, even the United States itself, in the desperate hope that it was all a big misunderstanding, that in the end, reason would prevail.<br /> <br /> Nothing helped. Dwight Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles had decided that the legally-elected government of Jacobo Arbenz was &quot;communist&quot;, therefore must go; and go it did, in June 1954.<br /> <br /> In the midst of the American preparation to overthrow the government, the Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Guillermo Toriello, lamented that the United States was categorizing &quot;as 'communism' every manifestation of nationalism or economic independence, any desire for social progress, any intellectual curiosity, and any interest in progressive liberal reforms.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Toriello was close to the truth, but Washington officials retained enough contact with reality and world opinion to be aware of the inappropriateness of coming out against nationalism, independence or reform. Thus it was that Secretary of State Dulles asserted that Guatemalans were living under a &quot;Communist type of terrorism&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; … President Eisenhower warned about &quot;the Communist dictatorship&quot; establishing &quot;an outpost on this continent to the detriment of all the American nations&quot;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; … the US Ambassador to Guatemala, John Peurifoy, declared that &quot;We cannot permit a Soviet Republic to be established between Texas and the Panama Canal&quot;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; … others warned that Guatemala could become a base from which the Soviet Union might actually seize the Canal … Senator Margaret Chase Smith hinted, unmistakably, that the &quot;unjustified increases in the price of coffee&quot; imported from Guatemala were due to communist control of the country, and called for an investigation&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; … and so it went.<br /> <br /> The Soviet Union could be excused if it was somewhat bewildered by all the rhetoric, for the Russians had scant interest in Guatemala, did not provide the country with any kind of military assistance, did not even maintain diplomatic relations with it, thus did not have the normally indispensable embassy from which to conduct such nefarious schemes. (During this period, the height of McCarthyist &quot;logic&quot;, there were undoubtedly those Americans who reasoned: &quot;All the better to deceive us!&quot;)<br /> <br /> With the exception of one occasion, the countries of Eastern Europe had as little to do with Guatemala as did the Soviet Union. A month before the coup, that is, long after Washington had begun preparation for it, Czechoslovakia made a single arms sale to Guatemala for cash, something the Czechs would no doubt have done for any other country willing to pay the price. The weapons, it turned out, were, in the words of the New York Times, &quot;worthless military junk&quot;. Time magazine pooh-poohed the newspaper's report and cited US military men giving a better appraisal of the weapons. It may be that neither Time nor the military men could conceive that one member of the International Communist Conspiracy could do such a thing to another member.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The American propaganda mill made much of this arms transaction. Less publicized was the fact that Guatemala had to seek arms from Czechoslovakia because the United States had refused to sell it any since 1948 due to its reformist governments, and had pressured other countries to do the same despite Arbenz's repeated pleas to lift the embargo.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Like the Soviets, Arbenz had reason to wonder about the American charges. The Guatemalan president, who took office in March 1951 after being elected by a wide margin, had no special contact or spiritual/ideological ties with the Soviet Union or the rest of the Communist bloc. Although American policymakers and the American press, explicitly and implicitly, often labeled Arbenz a communist, there were those in Washington who knew better, at least during their more dispassionate moments. Under Arbenz's administration, Guatemala had voted at the United Nations so closely with the United States on issues of &quot;Soviet imperialism&quot; that a State Department group occupied with planning Arbenz's overthrow concluded that propaganda concerning Guatemala's UN record &quot;would not be particularly helpful in our case&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; And a State Department analysis paper reported that the Guatemalan president had support &quot;not only from Communist-led labor and the radical fringe of professional and intellectual groups, but also among many anti-Communist nationalists in urban areas&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Nonetheless, Washington repeatedly and adamantly expressed its displeasure about the presence of communists working in the Guatemalan government and their active participation in the nation's political life. Arbenz maintained that this was no more than proper in a democracy, while Washington continued to insist that Arbenz was too tolerant of such people—not because of anything they had done which was intrinsically threatening or offensive to the US or Western civilization, but simply because they were of the species communist, well known for its infinite capacity for treachery. Ambassador Peurifoy—a diplomat whose suit might have been pinstriped, but whose soul was a loud check—warned Arbenz that US-Guatemalan relations would remain strained so long as a single communist remained on the public payroll.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The centerpiece of Arbenz's program was land reform. The need for it was clearly expressed in the all-too-familiar underdeveloped-country statistics: In a nation overwhelmingly rural, 2.2 percent of the landowners owned 70 percent of the arable land; the annual per capita income of agricultural workers was $87. Before the revolution of 1944, which overthrew the Ubico dictatorship, &quot;farm laborers had been roped together by the Army for delivery to the low-land farms where they were kept in debt slavery by the landowners.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The expropriation of large tracts of uncultivated acreage which was distributed to approximately 100,000 landless peasants, the improvement in union rights for the workers, and other social reforms, were the reasons Arbenz had won the support of Communists and other leftists, which was no more than to be expected. When Arbenz was criticized for accepting Communist support, he challenged his critics to prove their good faith by backing his reforms themselves. They failed to do so, thus revealing where the basis of their criticism lay.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The party formed by the Communists, the Guatemalan Labor Party, held four seats in Congress, the smallest component of Arbenz's ruling coalition which commanded a total of 51 seats in the 1953-54 legislature.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; Communists held several important sub-cabinet posts but none was ever appointed to the cabinet. In addition, there were Communists employed in the bureaucracy, particularly in the administration of land reform.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Lacking anything of substance they could accuse the Guatemalan left of, Washington officials were reduced to condemnation by semantics. Thus, communists, unlike normal human beings, did not take jobs in the government—they &quot;infiltrated&quot; the government. Communists did not support a particular program—they &quot;exploited&quot; it. Communists did not back Arbenz—they &quot;used&quot; him. Moreover, communists &quot;controlled&quot; the labor movement and land reform—but what type of person is it who devotes himself in an under-developed country to furthering the welfare of workers and peasants? None other than the type that Washington calls &quot;communist&quot;.<br /> <br /> The basic idea behind the employment of such language—which was standard Western fare throughout the cold war—was to deny the idea that communists could be people sincerely concerned about social change. American officials denied it to each other as well as to the world. Here, for example, is an excerpt from a CIA report about Guatemala, prepared in 1952 for the edification of the White House and the intelligence community:&lt;blockquote&gt;Communist political success derives in general from the ability of individual Communists and fellow travelers to identify themselves with the nationalist and social aspirations of the Revolution of 1944. In this manner, they have been successful in infiltrating the Administration and pro-Administration political parties and have gained control of organized labor … [Arbenz] is essentially an opportunist whose politics are largely a matter of historical accident … The extension of [communist] influence has been facilitated by the applicability of Marxist 'cliches' to the anti-colonial and social aims of the Guatemalan Revolution.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The first plan to topple Arbenz was a CIA operation approved by President Truman in 1952, but at the eleventh hour, Secretary of State Dean Acheson persuaded Truman to abort it.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; However, soon after Eisenhower became president in January 1953, the plan was resurrected.<br /> <br /> Both administrations were pressured by executives of United Fruit Company, much of whose vast and uncultivated land in Guatemala had been expropriated by the Arbenz government as part of the land reform program. The company wanted nearly $16 million for the land, the government was offering $525,000, United Fruit's own declared valuation for tax purposes.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> United Fruit functioned in Guatemala as a state within a state. It owned the country's telephone and telegraph facilities, administered its only important Atlantic harbor, and monopolized its banana exports. A subsidiary of the company owned nearly every mile of railroad track in the country. The fruit company's influence amongst Washington's power elite was equally impressive. On a business and/or personal level, it had close ties to the Dulles brothers, various State Department officials, congressmen, the American Ambassador to the United Nations, and others. Anne Whitman, the wife of the company's public relations director, was President Eisenhower's personal secretary. Under-secretary of State (and formerly Director of the CIA) Walter Bedell Smith was seeking an executive position with United Fruit at the same time he was helping to plan the coup. He was later named to the company's board of directors.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Under Arbenz, Guatemala constructed an Atlantic port and a highway to compete with United Fruit's holdings, and built a hydro-electric plant to offer cheaper energy than the US-controlled electricity monopoly. Arbenz's strategy was to limit the power of foreign companies through direct competition rather than through nationalization, a policy not feasible of course when it came to a fixed quantity like land. In his inaugural address, Arbenz stated that:&lt;blockquote&gt;Foreign capital will always be welcome as long as it adjusts to local conditions, remains always subordinate to Guatemalan laws, cooperates with the economic development of the country, and strictly abstains from intervening in the nation's social and political life.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;This hardly described United Fruit's role in Guatemala. Amongst much else, the company had persistently endeavored to frustrate Arbenz's reform programs, discredit him and his government, and induce his downfall.<br /> <br /> Arbenz was, accordingly, wary of multinationals and could not be said to welcome them into his country with open arms. This attitude, his expropriation of United Fruit's land, and his &quot;tolerance of communists&quot; were more than enough to make him a marked man in Washington. The United States saw these policies as being inter-related: that is, it was communist influence—not any economic or social exigency of Guatemalan life—which was responsible for the government's treatment of American firms.<br /> <br /> In March 1953, the CIA approached disgruntled right-wing officers in the Guatemalan army and arranged to send them arms. United Fruit donated $64,000 in cash. The following month, uprisings broke out in several towns but were quickly put down by loyal troops. The rebels were put on trial and revealed the fruit company's role in the plot, but not the CIA's.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Eisenhower administration resolved to do the job right the next time around. With cynical glee, almost an entire year was spent in painstaking, step-by-step preparation for the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Of the major CIA undertakings, few have been as well documented as has the coup in Guatemala. With the release of many formerly classified government papers, the following story has emerged.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Headquarters for the operation were established in Opa Locka, Florida, on the outskirts of Miami. The Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza lent/leased his country out as a site for an airstrip and for hundreds of men—Guatemalan exiles and US and Central American mercenaries—to receive training in the use of weapons and radio broadcasting, as well as in the fine arts of sabotage and demolition. Thirty airplanes were assigned for use in the &quot;Liberation&quot;, stationed in Nicaragua, Honduras and the Canal Zone, to be flown by American pilots. The Canal Zone was set aside as a weapons depot from which arms were gradually distributed to the rebels who were to assemble in Honduras under the command of Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas before crossing into Guatemala. Soviet-marked weapons were also gathered for the purpose of planting them inside Guatemala before the invasion to reinforce US charges of Russian intervention. And, as important as arms, it turned out, hidden radio transmitters were placed in and around the perimeter of Guatemala, including one in the US Embassy.<br /> <br /> An attempt was made to blow up the trains carrying the Czech weapons from portside to Guatemala City; however, a torrential downpour rendered the detonators useless, whereupon the CIA paramilitary squad opened fire on one train, killing a Guatemalan soldier and wounding three others; but the convoy of trains made it safely to its destination.<br /> <br /> After the Czech ship had arrived in Guatemala, Eisenhower ordered the stopping of &quot;suspicious foreign-flag vessels on the high seas off Guatemala to examine cargo&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; The State Department's legal adviser wrote a brief which concluded in no uncertain terms that &quot;Such action would constitute a violation of international law.&quot; No matter. At least two foreign vessels were stopped and searched, one French and one Dutch. It was because of such actions by the British that the United States had fought the War of 1812.<br /> <br /> The Guatemalan military came in for special attention. The US ostentatiously signed mutual security treaties with Honduras and Nicaragua, both countries hostile to Arbenz, and dispatched large shipments of arms to them in the hope that this would signal a clear enough threat to the Guatemalan military to persuade it to withdraw its support of Arbenz. Additionally, the US Navy dispatched two submarines from Key West, saying only that they were going &quot;south&quot;. Several days later, the Air Force, amid considerable fanfare, sent three B-36 bombers on a &quot;courtesy call&quot; to Nicaragua.<br /> <br /> The CIA also made a close study of the records of members of the Guatemalan officer corps and offered bribes to some of them. One of the Agency's clandestine radio stations broadcast appeals aimed at military men, as well as others, to join the liberation movement. The station reported that Arbenz was secretly planning to disband or disarm the armed forces and replace it with a people's militia. CIA planes dropped leaflets over Guatemala carrying the same message.<br /> <br /> Eventually, at Ambassador Peurifoy's urging, a group of high-ranking officers called on Arbenz to ask that he dismiss all communists who held posts in his administration. The president assured them that the communists did not represent a danger, that they did not run the government, and that it would be undemocratic to dismiss them. At a second meeting, the officers also demanded that Arbenz reject the creation of the &quot;people's militia&quot;.<br /> <br /> At one point, the CIA offerred Arbenz himself a large sum of money, which was rejected. The money, which was deposited in a Swiss bank, presumably was offered to induce Arbenz to abdicate or to serve as a means of later claiming he was corrupt.<br /> <br /> On the economic front, contingency plans were made for such things as cutting off Guatemalan credit abroad, disrupting its oil supplies, and causing a run on its foreign reserves.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; But it was on the propaganda front that American ingenuity shone at its brightest. Inasmuch as the Guatemalan government was being overthrown because it was communist, the fact of its communism would have to be impressed upon the rest of Latin America. Accordingly, the US Information Agency (USIA) began to place unattributed articles in foreign newspapers labeling particular Guatemalan officials as communist and referring to various actions by the Guatemalan government as &quot;communist-inspired&quot;. In the few weeks prior to Arbenz's fall alone, more than 200 articles about Guatemala were written and placed in scores of Latin American newspapers.<br /> <br /> Employing a method which was to become a standard CIA/USIA feature all over Latin America and elsewhere, as we shall see, articles placed in one country were picked up by newspapers in other countries, either as a result of CIA payment or unwittingly because the story was of interest. Besides the obvious advantage of multiplying the potential audience, the tactic gave the appearance that independent world opinion was taking a certain stand and further obscured the American connection.<br /> <br /> The USIA also distributed more than 100,000 copies of a pamphlet entitled &quot;Chronology of Communism in Guatemala&quot; throughout the hemisphere, as well as 27,000 copies of anti-communist cartoons and posters. The American propaganda agency, moreover, produced three films on Guatemala, with predictable content, and newsreels favorable to the United States for showing free in cinemas.<br /> <br /> Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York, a prelate possessed of anti-communism, a man who feared social change more than he feared God, was visited by the CIA. Would his Reverence arrange CIA contact with Archbishop Mariano Rossell Arellano of Guatemala? The Cardinal would be delighted. Thus it came to pass that on 9 April 1954, a pastoral letter was read in Guatemalan Catholic churches calling to the attention of the congregations the presence in the country of a devil called communism and demanding that the people &quot;rise as a single man against this enemy of God and country&quot;, or at least not rally in Arbenz's defense. To appreciate the value of this, one must remember that Guatemala's peasant class was not only highly religious, but that very few of them were able to read, and so could receive the Lord's Word only in this manner. For those who could read, many thousands of pamphlets carrying the Archbishop's message were air-dropped around the country.<br /> <br /> In May, the CIA covertly sponsored a &quot;Congress Against Soviet Intervention in Latin America&quot; in Mexico City. The same month, Somoza called in the diplomatic corps in Nicaragua and told them, his voice shaking with anger, that his police had discovered a secret Soviet shipment of arms (which had been planted by the CIA) near the Pacific Coast, and suggested that the communists wanted to convert Nicaragua into &quot;a new Korean situation&quot;. A few weeks later, an unmarked plane parachuted arms with Soviet markings onto Guatemala's coast.<br /> <br /> On such fare did the people of Latin America dine for decades. By such tactics were they educated about &quot;communism&quot;.<br /> <br /> In late January 1954 the operation appeared to have suffered a serious setback when photostat copies of Liberation documents found their way into Arbenz's hands. A few days later, Guatemala's newspapers published copies of correspondence signed by Castillo Armas, Somoza and others under banner headlines. The documents revealed the existence of some of the staging, training and invasion plans, involving, amongst others, the &quot;Government of the North&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The State Department labeled the accusations of a US role &quot;ridiculous and untrue&quot; and said it would not comment further because it did not wish to give them a dignity they did not deserve. Said a Department spokesperson: &quot;It is the policy of the United States not to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. This policy has repeatedly been reaffirmed under the present administration.&quot;<br /> <br /> Time magazine gave no credence whatsoever to the possibility of American involvement in such a plot, concluding that the whole exposé had been &quot;masterminded in Moscow&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The New York Times was not so openly cynical, but its story gave no indication that there might be any truth to the matter. &quot;Latin American observers in New York,&quot; reported the newspaper, &quot;said the 'plot' charges savored of communist influence.&quot; This article was followed immediately on the page by one headed &quot;Red Labor Chiefs Meet. Guatemalan Confederation Opens Its Congress&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And the CIA continued with its preparations as if nothing had happened.<br /> <br /> The offensive began in earnest on 18 June with planes dropping leaflets over Guatemala demanding that Arbenz resign immediately or else various sites would be bombed. CIA radio stations broadcast similar messages. That afternoon, the planes returned to machine-gun houses near military barracks, drop fragmentation bombs and strafe the National Palace.<br /> <br /> Over the following week, the air attacks continued daily—strafing or bombing ports, fuel tanks, ammunition dumps, military barracks, the international airport, a school, and several cities; nine persons, including a three-year-old girl, were reported wounded; an unknown number of houses were set afire by incendiary explosives. During one night-time raid, a tape recording of a bomb attack was played over loudspeakers set up on the roof of the US Embassy to heighten the anxiety of the capital's residents. When Arbenz went on the air to try and calm the public's fear, the CIA radio team jammed the broadcast.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the Agency's army had crossed into Guatemala from Honduras and captured a few towns, but its progress in the face of resistance by the Guatemalan army was unspectacular. On the broadcasts of the CIA's &quot;Voice of Liberation&quot; the picture was different: The rebels were everywhere and advancing; they were of large numbers and picking up volunteers as they marched; war and upheaval in all corners; fearsome battles and major defeats for the Guatemalan army. Some of these broadcasts were transmitted over regular public and even military channels, serving to convince some of Arbenz's officers that the reports were genuine. In the same way, the CIA was able to answer real military messages with fake responses. All manner of disinformation was spread and rumors fomented; dummy parachute drops were made in scattered areas to heighten the belief that a major invasion was taking place.<br /> <br /> United Fruit Company's publicity office circulated photographs to journalists of mutilated bodies about to be buried in a mass grave as an example of the atrocities committed by the Arbenz regime. The photos received extensive coverage. Thomas McCann of the company's publicity office later revealed that he had no idea what the photos represented: &quot;They could just as easily have been the victims of either side—or of an earthquake. The point is, they were widely accepted for what they were purported to be—victims of communism.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In a similar vein, Washington officials reported on political arrests and censorship in Guatemala without reference to the fact that the government was under siege (let alone who was behind the siege), that suspected plotters and saboteurs were the bulk of those being arrested, or that, overall, the Arbenz administration had a fine record on civil liberties. The performance of the American press in this regard was little better.<br /> <br /> The primary purpose of the bombing and the many forms of disinformation was to make it appear that military defenses were crumbling, that resistance was futile, thus provoking confusion and division in the Guatemalan armed forces and causing some elements to turn against Arbenz. The psychological warfare conducted over the radio was directed by E. Howard Hunt, later of Watergate fame, and David Atlee Phillips, a newcomer to the CIA. When Phillips was first approached about the assignment, he asked his superior, Tracy Barnes, in all innocence, &quot;But Arbenz became President in a free election. What right do we have to help someone topple his government and throw him out of office?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;For a moment,&quot; wrote Phillips later, &quot;I detected in his face a flicker of concern, a doubt, the reactions of a sensitive man.&quot; But Barnes quickly recovered and repeated the party line about the Soviets establishing &quot;an easily expandable beachhead&quot; in Central America.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Phillips never looked back. When he retired from the CIA in the mid-1970s, he founded the Association of Retired Intelligence Officers, an organization formed to counteract the flood of unfavorable publicity sweeping over the Agency at the time.<br /> <br /> American journalists reporting on the events in Guatemala continued to exhibit neither an investigative inclination nor a healthy conspiracy mentality. But what was obscure to the US press was patently obvious to large numbers of Latin Americans. Heated protests against the United States broke out during this week in June in at least eleven countries and was echoed by the governments of Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile which condemned American &quot;intervention&quot; and &quot;aggression&quot;.<br /> <br /> Life magazine noted these protests by observing that &quot;world communism was efficiently using the Guatemalan show to strike a blow at the U.S.&quot; It scoffed at the idea that Washington was behind the revolt.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt; Newsweek reported that Washington &quot;officials interpreted&quot; the outcry &quot;as an indication of the depth of Red penetration into the Americas&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt; A State Department memo at the time, however, privately acknowledged that much of the protest emanated from non-communist and even pro-American moderates.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On 21 and 22 June, Guatemalan Foreign Minister Toriello made impassioned appeals to the United Nations for help in resolving the crisis. American UN Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge tried to block the Security Council from discussing a resolution to send an investigating team to Guatemala, characterizing Toriello's appeals as communist maneuvers. But under heavy pressure from UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, the Council was convened. Before the vote, while Lodge worked on the smaller nations represented on the Council, Eisenhower and Dulles came down hard on France and Great Britain, both of whom favored the resolution. Said the President of the United States to his Secretary of State: &quot;The British expect us to give them a free ride and side with them on Cyprus. And yet they won't even support us on Guatemala! Let's give them a lesson.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As matters turned out, the resolution was defeated by five votes to four, with Britain and France abstaining, although their abstentions were not crucial inasmuch as seven votes were required for passage. Hammarskjöld was so upset with the American machinations, which he believed undercut the strength of the United Nations, that he confided that he might be forced &quot;to reconsider my present position in the United Nations&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During this same period, the CIA put into practice a plan to create an &quot;incident&quot;. Agency planes were dispatched to drop several harmless bombs on Honduran territory. The Honduran government then complained to the UN and the Organization of American States, claiming that the country had been attacked by Guatemalan planes.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Arbenz finally received an ultimatum from certain army officers: Resign or they would come to an agreement with the invaders. The CIA and Ambassador Peurifoy had been offering payments to officers to defect, and one army commander reportedly accepted $60,000 to surrender his troops. With his back to the wall, Arbenz made an attempt to arm civilian supporters to fight for the government, but army officers blocked the disbursement of weapons. The Guatemalan president knew that the end was near.<br /> <br /> The Voice of Liberation meanwhile was proclaiming that two large and heavily armed columns of invaders were moving towards Guatemala City. As the hours passed, the further advance of the mythical forces was announced, while Castillo Armas and his small band had actually not progressed very far from the Honduran border. The American disinformation and rumor offensive continued in other ways as well, and Arbenz, with no one he could trust to give him accurate information, could no longer be certain that there wasn't at least some truth to the radio bulletins.<br /> <br /> Nothing would be allowed to threaten the victory so near at hand: A British freighter docked in Guatemala and suspected of having arrived with fuel for Arbenz's military vehicles, was bombed and sunk by a CIA plane after the crew had been warned to flee. It turned out that the ship had come to Guatemala to pick up a cargo of coffee and cotton.<br /> <br /> A desperate Toriello pleaded repeatedly with Ambassador Peurifoy to call off the bombings, offering even to reopen negotiations about United Fruit's compensation. In a long cable to John Foster Dulles, the foreign minister described the aerial attacks on the civilian population, expressed his country's defenselessness against the bombings, and appealed to the United States to use its good offices to put an end to them. In what must have been a deeply humiliating task, Toriello stated all of this without a hint that the United States was, or could be, a party to any of it. The pleas were not simply too late. They had always been too late.<br /> <br /> The Castillo Armas forces could not have defeated the much larger Guatemalan army, but the air attacks, combined with the belief in the invincibility of the enemy, persuaded Guatemalan military officers to force Arbenz to resign. No Communists, domestic or foreign, came to his aid. He asked the head of the officers, Army Chief of Staff Col. Carlos Díaz, only that he give his word not to negotiate with Castillo Armas, and Díaz, who despised the rebel commander as much as Arbenz did, readily agreed. What Díaz did not realize was that the United States would not be satisfied merely to oust Arbenz. Castillo Armas had been groomed as the new head of government, and that was not negotiable.<br /> <br /> A CIA official, Enno Hobbing, who had just arrived in Guatemala to help draft a new constitution (sic) for the incoming regime, told Díaz that he had &quot;made a big mistake&quot; in taking over the government. &quot;Colonel,&quot; said Hobbing, &quot;you're just not convenient for the requirements of American foreign policy.&quot;<br /> <br /> Presently, Peurifoy confronted Díaz with the demand that he deal directly with Castillo Armas. At the same time, the Ambassador showed the Guatemalan colonel a long list of names of some leaders, requiring that Díaz shoot them all within 24 hours.<br /> <br /> &quot;But why?&quot; Díaz asked.<br /> <br /> &quot;Because they're communists,&quot; replied Peurifoy.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Although Díaz was not a communist sympathizer, he refused both requests, and indicated that the struggle against the invaders would continue.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt; Peurifoy left, livid with anger. He then sent a simple cable to CIA headquarters in Florida: &quot;We have been doubled-crossed. BOMB!&quot; Within hours, a CIA plane took off from Honduras, bombed a military base and destroyed the government radio station. Col. Castillo Armas, whose anti-communism the United States could trust, was soon the new leader of Guatemala.<br /> <br /> The propaganda show was not yet over. At the behest of the CIA, Guatemalan military officers of the new regime took foreign correspondents on a tour of Arbenz's former residence where they could see for themselves rooms filled with school textbooks published in … yes, the Soviet Union. The New York Times correspondent, Paul Kennedy, considered to be strongly anti-Arbenz, concluded that the &quot;books had been planted&quot; and did not bother to report the story.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; Time made no mention of the books either, but somehow came upon the story that mobs had plundered Arbenz's home and found &quot;stacks of communist propaganda and four bags of earth, one each from Russia, China, Siberia and Mongolia.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt; Time's article made it clear enough that it now knew of the American role in Arbenz's downfall (although certainly not the full story), but the magazine had nothing to say about the propriety of overthrowing a democratically elected government by force.<br /> <br /> Castillo Armas celebrated the liberation of Guatemala in various ways. In July alone, thousands were arrested on suspicion of communist activity. Many were tortured or killed. In August a law was passed and a committee set up which could declare anyone a communist, with no right of appeal. Those so declared could be arbitrarily arrested for up to six months, could not own a radio or hold public office. Within four months the committee had registered 72,000 names. A committee official said it was aiming for 200,000.&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt; Further implementation of the agrarian reform law was stopped and all expropriations of land already carried out were declared invalid.&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt; United Fruit Company not only received all its land back, but the government banned the banana workers' unions as well. Moreover, seven employees of the company who had been active labor organizers were found mysteriously murdered in Guatemala City.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The new regime also disenfranchised three-quarters of Guatemala's voters by barring illiterates from the electoral rolls and outlawed all political parties, labor confederations and peasant organizations. To this was added the closing down of opposition newspapers (which Arbenz had not done) and the burning of &quot;subversive&quot; books, including Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, Dostoyevsky novels, and the works of Guatemala's Nobel Prize-winning author Miguel Angel Asturias, a biting critic of United Fruit.&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, John Foster Dulles, who was accused by Toriello of seeking to establish a &quot;banana curtain&quot; in Central America,&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt; was concerned that some &quot;communists&quot; might escape retribution. In cables he exchanged with Ambassador Peurifoy, Dulles insisted that the government arrest those Guatemalans who had taken refuge in foreign embassies and that &quot;criminal charges&quot; be brought against them to prevent them leaving the country, charges such as &quot;having been covert Moscow agents&quot;. The Secretary of State argued that communists should be automatically denied the right of asylum because they were connected with an international conspiracy. The only way they should be allowed to leave, he asserted, was if they agreed to be sent to the Soviet Union. But Castillo Armas refused to accede to Dulles's wishes on this particular issue, influenced perhaps by the fact that he, as well as some of his colleagues, had been granted political asylum in an embassy at one time or another.&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One of those who sought asylum in the Argentine Embassy was a 25-year-old Argentine doctor named Ernesto &quot;Che&quot; Guevara. Guevara, who had been living in Guatemala since sometime in 1953, had tried to spark armed resistance to the invading forces, but without any success. Guevara's experience in Guatemala had a profound effect upon his political consciousness. His first wife, Hilda Gadea, whom he met there, later wrote:&lt;blockquote&gt;Up to that point, he used to say, he was merely a sniper, criticizing from a theoretical point of view the political panorama of our America. From here on he was convinced that the struggle against the oligarchic system and the main enemy, Yankee imperialism, must be an armed one, supported by the people.&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In the wake of the coup, the United States confiscated a huge amount of documents from the Guatemalan government, undoubtedly in the hope of finally uncovering the hand of The International Communist Conspiracy behind Arbenz. If this is what was indeed discovered, it has not been made public.<br /> <br /> On 30 June, while the dust was still settling, Dulles summed up the situation in Guatemala in a speech which was a monument to coldwarspeak:&lt;blockquote&gt;[The events in Guatemala] expose the evil purpose of the Kremlin to destroy the inter-American system … having gained control of what they call the mass organizations, [the communists] moved on to take over the official press and radio of the Guatemalan Government. They dominated the social security organization and ran the agrarian reform program … dictated to the Congress and to the President … Arbenz … was openly manipulated by the leaders of communism … The Guatemalan regime enjoyed the full support of Soviet Russia … [the] situation is being cured by the Guatemalans themselves.&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;When it came to rewriting history, however, Dulles's speech had nothing on these lines from a CIA memo written in August 1954 and only for internal consumption no less: &quot;When the communists were forced by outside pressure to attempt to take over Guatemala completely, they forced Arbenz to resign (deleted). They then proceeded to establish a Communist Junta under Col. Carlos Díaz.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And in October, John Peurifoy sat before a congressional committee and told them:.&lt;blockquote&gt;My role in Guatemala prior to the revolution was strictly that of a diplomatic observer … The revolution that overthrew the Arbenz government was engineered and instigated by those people in Guatemala who rebelled against the policies and ruthless oppression of the Communist-controlled government.&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Later, Dwight Eisenhower was to write about Guatemala in his memoirs. The former president chose not to offer the slightest hint that the United States had anything to do with the planning or instigation of the coup, and indicated that his administration had only the most tangential of connections to its execution.&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt; (When Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs were published in the West, the publisher saw fit to employ a noted Kremlinologist to annotate the work, pointing out errors of omission and commission.)<br /> <br /> Thus it was that the educated, urbane men of the State Department, the CIA and the United Fruit Company, the pipe-smoking, comfortable men of Princeton, Harvard and Wall Street, assured each other that the illiterate peasants of Guatemala did not deserve the land which had been given to them, that the workers did not need their unions, that hunger and torture were a small price to pay for being rid of the scourge of communism.<br /> <br /> The terror carried out by Castillo Armas was only the beginning. It was, as we shall see, to get much worse in time. It continued without pause for more than 40 years.<br /> <br /> In 1955, the New York Times reported from the United Nations that &quot;The United States has begun a drive to scuttle a section of the proposed Covenant of Human Rights that poses a threat to its business interests abroad.&quot; The offending section dealt with the right of peoples to self-determination and to permanent sovereignty over their natural wealth and resources. Said the newspaper: &quot;It declares in effect that any country has the right to nationalize its resources …&quot;&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Costa Rica mid-1950s: Trying to topple an ally, part I ==<br /> If ever the CIA maintained a love-hate relationship, it was with José Figueres, three times the head of state of Costa Rica.<br /> <br /> On the one hand, Figueres, by his own admission in 1975, worked for the CIA &quot;in 20,000 ways … all over Latin America&quot; for 30 years.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &quot;I collaborated with the CIA when we were trying to topple Trujillo,&quot; he divulged, speaking of the Dominican Republic dictator.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On the other hand, Figueres revealed that the Agency had twice tried to kill him.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; He did not elaborate, although he stated at the same time that he had tried for two years to get the Bay of Pigs invasion called off. This may have precipitated one or both of the assassination attempts.<br /> <br /> The CIA also tried to overthrow the Figueres government. In 1964, the first significant exposé of the Agency, The Invisible Government, disclosed that:&lt;blockquote&gt;in the mid-1950s CIA agents intruded deeply into the political affairs of Costa Rica, the most stable and democratic republic in Latin America. Knowledgeable Costa Ricans were aware of the CIA's role. The CIA's purpose was to promote the ouster of José (Pepe) Figueres, the moderate socialist who became President in a fair and open election in 1953.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Figueres remained in office until 1958, in this his first term as president; he had headed a liberal junta in the late 1940s.<br /> <br /> The Agency's &quot;major grievance was that Figueres had scrupulously recognized the right of asylum in Costa Rica—for non-Communists and Communists alike. The large influx of questionable characters complicated the agency's job of surveillance and forced it to increase its staff.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA's problems with Figueres actually went somewhat deeper. Costa Rica was a haven for hundreds of exiles fleeing from various Latin American right-wing dictatorships, such as in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and Figueres was providing groups of them with material and moral support in their plans to overthrow these regimes.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; To Figueres, this was entirely in keeping with his anti-totalitarian beliefs, directed against the left as well as the right. The problem was that the dictators targeted for overthrow were all members in good standing of the United States' anti-Communist, &quot;Free-World&quot; club. (The American attitude toward Trujillo was later modified.) Moreover, Figueres had on occasion expressed criticism of the American policy of supporting such dictatorships while neglecting the economic and social problems of the hemisphere.<br /> <br /> These considerations could easily outweigh the fact that Figueres had established his anti-Communist credentials, albeit not of the &quot;ultra&quot; variety, and was no more a &quot;socialist&quot; than US Senator Hubert Humphrey. Although Figueres spoke out strongly at times against foreign investment, as president he was eminently accommodating to Central America's bêtes noires, the multinational fruit companies.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In addition to providing support to Figueres's political opponents,&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; the CIA, reported The Invisible Government, tried:&lt;blockquote&gt;to stir up embarrassing trouble within the Communist Party in Costa Rica, and to attempt to link Figueres with the Communists. An effort to produce evidence that Figueres had been in contact with leading Communists during a trip to Mexico was unsuccessful. But CIA agents had better luck with the first part of their strategy—stirring up trouble for the Communists. They succeeded in planting a letter in a Communist newspaper. The letter, purportedly from a leading Costa Rican Communist, put him on record in opposition to the Party line on the [1956] Hungarian revolution. Unaware that the letter was a CIA plant, the leading officials in the American Embassy held an urgent meeting to ponder its meaning. The political officer then dispatched a long classified report to Washington, alerting top policy makers to the possibility of a startling turn in Latin American Communist politics.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In 1955 the Agency carried out an action against Figueres that was more immediately threatening. A deep personal and political animosity between Figueres and Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza had escalated into violence: an attempt against Somoza's life, launched from Costa Rica with Figueres's support, was countered by an invasion from Nicaragua by land and air. Figueres's biographer, Charles Ameringer, has related that:&lt;blockquote&gt;Figueres accused the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency of aiding the Somoza movement against him. He claimed that the CIA felt indebted to Somoza for the help he had given in overthrowing the Arbenz regime. He asserted that the same pilots and planes (the F-47) that had participated in the attack upon Guatemala, &quot;afterwards came from Nicaragua and machine-gunned eleven defenseless towns in our territory.&quot; According to Figueres, at the same time that the U.S. Department of State arranged the sale of fighter planes for Costa Rica's defense, CIA planes and pilots were flying sorties for the rebels.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;It is interesting to note that during this period, when virtually nothing had yet been revealed about such blatant CIA covert activities, the fact that the Agency had been caught red-handed tapping Figueres's telephone was worthy of condemnatory editorial comment by the Washington Post and a like statement by Senator Mike Mansfield on the floor of the Senate.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> José Figueres did not regain the presidency of Costa Rica until 1970, at which time a renewed CIA effort to overthrow him was undertaken, for not very different reasons.<br /> <br /> == Syria 1956-1957: Purchasing a new government ==<br /> &quot;Neutrality,&quot; proclaimed John Foster Dulles in 1956, &quot;has increasingly become an obsolete conception, and, except under very exceptional circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The short-sightedness of the neutralist government lay perhaps in its inability to perceive that its neutralism would lead to John Foster Dulles attempting to overthrow it.<br /> <br /> Syria was not behaving like Washington thought a Third World government should. For one thing, it was the only state in the area to refuse all US economic or military assistance. Damascus did not much care for the strings which came attached—the acceptance of military aid usually meant the presence of American military advisers and technicians; furthermore, the US Mutual Security Act of 1955 specified that the recipient country agree to make a contribution to &quot;the defensive strength of the free world&quot;, and declared it US policy &quot;to encourage the efforts of other free nations … to foster private initiative and competition [i.e., capitalism].&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Another difficulty posed by Syria was that, although its governments of recent years had been more or less conservative and had refrained from unpleasant leftist habits like nationalizing American-owned companies, US officials—suffering from what might be called anti-communist paranoia or being victims of their own propaganda—consistently saw the most ominous handwritings on the walls. To appreciate this, one has to read some of the formerly-secret-now-declassified documents of the National Security Council (NSC), based in part on reports received from the American embassy in Damascus during 1955 and 1956 …<br /> <br /> &quot;If the popular leftward trend in Syria continues over any considerable period, there is a real danger that Syria will fall completely under left-wing control either by coup or usurpation of authority&quot; … &quot;the fundamental anti-US and anti-West orientation of the Syrians is stimulated by inevitable political histrionics about the Palestine problem&quot; … &quot;Four successive short-lived governments in Syria have permitted continuous and increasing Communist activities&quot; … &quot;the Communists support the leftist cliques [in] the army&quot; … &quot;apathy towards Communism on the part of politicians and army officers&quot; is a threat to security … &quot;the Arab Socialist Resurrectionist Party (ASRP)&quot; and &quot;the Communist Party of Syria are capable of bringing about further deterioration of Syrian internal security&quot; … danger of ASRP &quot;coup d'etat&quot; and &quot;increased Communist penetration of government and army&quot; … &quot;Of all the Arab states Syria is at the present time the most wholeheartedly devoted to a neutralist policy with strong anti-Western overtones&quot; … &quot;If the present trend continues there is a strong possibility that a Communist-dominated Syria will result, threatening the peace and stability of the area and endangering the achievement of our objectives in the Near East&quot; … we &quot;should give priority consideration to developing courses of action in the Near East designed to affect the situation in Syria and to recommending specific steps to combat communist subversion&quot; …&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It would appear that the idea of military men who were leftist and/or apathetic to communists must truly have been an incongruous phenomenon to the American official mind. But nowhere in any of the documents is there mention of the leftists/Communists/ASRP having in fact done anything illegal or wicked, although the language employed is similar to what we saw in the Guatemala chapter: These people don't join anything, they &quot;infiltrate&quot;, they &quot;penetrate&quot;; they &quot;control&quot;, they're &quot;opportunistic&quot;. In actuality, the behavior described is like that of other political animals: trying to influence key sectors of the society and win allies. But to the men holding positions of responsibility in the National Security Council and the State Department, the evil intent and danger of such people was so self-evident as not to require articulation.<br /> <br /> There is one exception, perhaps expressed to explain away an uncomfortable observation:&lt;blockquote&gt;In fact, the Communist Party does not appear to have as its immediate objective seizure of power. Rather it seeks to destroy national unity, to strengthen support for Soviet policies and opposition to Western policies and to exacerbate tensions in the Arab world. It has made significant progress toward these objectives.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;There is no indication of what the author had in mind by &quot;national unity&quot;.<br /> <br /> A leftist-oriented or communist-dominated Syrian government, reasoned the US ambassador to Syria, James Moose, Jr., would clearly threaten American interests in neighboring Turkey, which, in turn, could outflank all the states of the NATO alliance, and so forth and so on.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; It was clear that since the Syrian government could not be relied upon to do anything about this major impending disaster, something would have to be done about the Syrian government.<br /> <br /> To this we add the usual Middle-Eastern intrigue: in this case, Iraq plotting with the British to topple the governments in both Syria and Nasser's Egypt; the British pressuring the Americans to join the conspiracy;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; and the CIA compromising—leave Nasser alone, at least for the time being, and we'll do something about Syria.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> An implausible scenario, scandalous, but in the time-honored tradition of the Middle East. The British were old hands at it. Dulles and the Americans, still exulting in their king-making in Iran, were looking to further remake the oil region in their own image.<br /> <br /> Wilbur Crane Eveland was a staff member of the National Security Council, the high-level inter-agency group in Washington which, in theory, monitors and controls CIA clandestine activities. Because of Eveland's background and experience in the Middle East, the CIA had asked that he be lent to the Agency for a series of assignments there.<br /> <br /> Archibald Roosevelt was, like his cousin Kermit Roosevelt, a highly-placed official of the CIA; both were grandsons of Teddy. Kermit had masterminded the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953. Archie had fond hopes of doing the same in Syria.<br /> <br /> Michail Bey Ilyan had once served as Syria's foreign minister. In 1956 he was the leader of the conservative Populist Party.<br /> <br /> At a meeting of these three men in Damascus, Syria on 1 July 1956, as described by Eveland in his memoirs, Roosevelt asked Ilyan &quot;what would be needed to give the Syrian conservatives enough control to purge the communists and their leftist sympathizers. Ilyan responded by ticking off names and places: the radio stations in Damascus and Aleppo; a few key senior officers; and enough money to buy newspapers now in Egyptian and Saudi hands.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Roosevelt probed further. Could these things, he asked Ilyan, be done with U.S. money and assets alone, with no other Western or Near Eastern country involved?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Without question, Ilyan replied, nodding gravely.&quot;<br /> <br /> On 26 July, Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser announced that his government was taking over the operation of the Suez Canal. The reaction of the British and French was swift and inflamed. The United States was less openly hostile, though it was critical and Egyptian government funds in the US were frozen. This unexpected incident put a crimp in the CIA's plans, for—as Ilyan explained to Eveland in despair—Nasser was now the hero of the Arab world, and collaboration with any Western power to overthrow an Arab government was politically indefensible.<br /> <br /> Eventually the coup was scheduled for 25 October. The logistics, as outlined by Ilyan, called for senior colonels in the Syrian army to:&lt;blockquote&gt;take control of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, and Hamah. The frontier posts with Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon would also be captured in order to seal Syria's borders until the radio stations announced that a new government had taken over under Colonel Kabbani, who would place armored units at key positions throughout Damascus. Once control had been established, Ilyan would inform the civilians he'd selected that they were to form a new government, but in order to avoid leaks none of them would be told until just a week before the coup.&lt;/blockquote&gt;For this operation, money would have to change hands. Ilyan asked for and received half a million Syrian pounds (approximately $167,000). The Syrian further stipulated that to guarantee their participation the Syrian plotters would require assurance from the highest level of the American government that the US would both back the coup and immediately grant recognition to the new government. This, Ilyan explained, could be communicated as follows: in April, President Eisenhower had said that the United States would oppose aggression in the Middle East, but not without congressional approval. Could the president repeat this statement, in light of the Suez crisis, he asked, on a specified date when Ilyan's colleagues would be told to expect it? Eisenhower's words would provide the guarantees they were seeking.<br /> <br /> An affirmative reply to Ilyan's plan arrived in Damascus from Washington the next day. A proper occasion for the requested statement would have to be found and Secretary Dulles would be the one to use it. The scheme was for Dulles to make public reference to Eisenhower's statement between 16 and 18 October, thus giving Ilyan the week he needed to assemble his civilian team.<br /> <br /> Before long, John Foster Dulles held a press conference. In light of recent Israeli attacks on Jordan, one of the reporters present asked whether the United States might come to Jordan's aid per &quot;our declaration of April 9&quot;.<br /> <br /> Yes, replied the Secretary of State, repeating the reference to the April statement. The date was 16 October.<br /> <br /> But following close on the heels of this was a message from Ilyan in Damascus to Eveland in Beirut postponing the date of the coup for five days to 30 October because Colonel Kabbani had told Ilyan that his people weren't quite ready.<br /> <br /> The postponement was crucial. Early in the morning of the 30th, a very distraught Michail Ilyan appeared at Eveland's door. &quot;Last night,&quot; he cried, &quot;the Israelis invaded Egypt and are right now heading for the Suez Canal! How could you have asked us to overthrow our government at the exact moment when Israel started a war with an Arab state?&quot;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The leftist-trend-in-Syria bell continued to ring in Washington. In January 1957, wrote President Eisenhower later, CIA Director Allen Dulles &quot;submitted reports indicating that the new Syrian Cabinet was oriented to the left&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; Two months later, Dulles prepared a &quot;Situation Report on Syria&quot; in which he wrote of an &quot;increasing trend toward a decidedly leftist, pro-Soviet government&quot;. Dulles was concerned with &quot;organized leftist officers belonging to the Arab Socialist Resurrection Party&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; That same month, a State Department internal document stated:&lt;blockquote&gt;The British are believed to favor active stimulation of a change in the present regime in Syria, in an effort to assure a pro-Western orientation on the part of future Syrian governments. … The United States shares the concern of the British Government over the situation in Syria.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Then, in June, an internal Department of Defense memorandum spoke of a possible &quot;leftist coup&quot;. This was to be carried out, according to the memo, against &quot;the leftist Syrian Government&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Thus it was that in Beirut and Damascus, CIA officers were trying their hands again at stage-managing a Syrian coup. On this occasion, Kermit Roosevelt, rather than cousin Archibald, was pulling the strings. He arranged for one Howard (&quot;Rocky&quot;) Stone to be transferred to Damascus from the Sudan to be sure that the &quot;engineering&quot; was done by a &quot;pro&quot;. Stone was, at thirty-two, already a legend in the CIA's clandestine service as the man who had helped Kim Roosevelt overthrow the Iranian government four years earlier, though what Stone's precise contribution was has remained obscure.<br /> <br /> The proposed beneficiary of this particular plot was to be Adib Shishakly, former right-wing dictator of Syria, living covertly in Lebanon. Shishakly's former chief of security, Colonel Ibrahim Husseini, now Syrian military attaché in Rome, was secretly slipped into Lebanon under cover of a CIA-fabricated passport. Husseini was then to be smuggled across the Syrian border in the trunk of a US diplomatic car in order to meet with key Syrian CIA agents and provide assurances that Shishakly would come back to rule once Syria's government had been overthrown.<br /> <br /> But the coup was exposed before it ever got off the ground. Syrian army officers who had been assigned major roles in the operation walked into the office of Syria's head of intelligence, Colonel Sarraj, turned in their bribe money and named the CIA officers who had paid them. Lieut. Col. Robert Molloy, the American army attaché, Francis Jeton, a career CIA officer, officially Vice Consul at the US Embassy, and the legendary Howard Stone, with the title of Second Secretary for Political Affairs, were all declared personae non gratae and expelled from the country in August.<br /> <br /> Col. Molloy was determined to leave Syria in style. As his car approached the Lebanese border, he ran his Syrian motorcycle escort off the road and shouted to the fallen rider that &quot;Colonel Sarraj and his commie friends&quot; should be told that Molloy would &quot;beat the shit out of them with one hand tied behind his back if they ever crossed his path again.&quot;<br /> <br /> The Syrian government announcement which accompanied the expulsion order stated that Stone had first made contact with the outlawed Social Nationalist Party and then with the army officers. When the officers reported the plot, they were told to continue their contacts with the Americans and later met Shishakly and Husseini at the homes of US Embassy staff members. Husseini reportedly told the officers that the United States was prepared to give a new Syrian government between 300 and 400 million dollars in aid if the government would make peace with Israel.<br /> <br /> An amusing aside to the affair occurred when the Syrian Defense Minister and the Syrian Ambassador to Italy disputed the claim that Husseini had anything to do with the plot. The Ambassador pointed out that Husseini had not been in Syria since 20 July and his passport showed no indication that he had been out of Italy since that time.<br /> <br /> The State Department categorized the Syrian charge as &quot;complete fabrications&quot; and retaliated by expelling the Syrian ambassador and a Second Secretary and recalling the American ambassador from Syria. It marked the first time since 1915 that the United States had expelled a chief of mission of a foreign country.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the wake of the controversy, the New York Times reported that:&lt;blockquote&gt;There are numerous theories about why the Syrians struck at the United States. One is that they acted at the instigation of the Soviet Union. Another is that the Government manufactured an anti-U.S. spy story to distract public attention from the significance of Syria's negotiations with Moscow.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In the same issue, a Times editorial speculated upon other plausible-sounding explanations.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; Neither in its news report nor in its editorial did the New York Times seem to consider even the possibility that the Syrian accusation might be true.<br /> <br /> President Eisenhower, recalling the incident in his memoirs, offered no denial to the accusation. His sole comment on the expulsions was: &quot;The entire action was shrouded in mystery but the suspicion was strong that the Communists had taken control of the government. Moreover, we had fresh reports that arms were being sent into Syria from the Soviet bloc.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Syria's neutralism/&quot;leftism&quot; continued to obsess the United States. Five years later, when John F. Kennedy was in the White House, he met with British Prime Minister Macmillan and the two leaders agreed, according to a CIA report, on &quot;Penetration and cultivation of disruptive elements in the Syrian armed forces, particularly in the Syrian army, so that Syria can be guided by the West.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Decades later, Washington was still worried, though Syria had still not &quot;gone communist&quot;.<br /> <br /> == The Middle East 1957-1958: The Eisenhower Doctrine claims another backyard for America ==<br /> On 9 March 1957, the United States Congress approved a presidential resolution which came to be known as the Eisenhower Doctrine. This was a piece of paper, like the Truman Doctrine and the Monroe Doctrine before it, whereby the US government conferred upon the US government the remarkable and enviable right to intervene militarily in other countries. With the stroke of a pen, the Middle East was added to Europe and the Western hemisphere as America's field of play.<br /> <br /> The resolution stated that &quot;the United States regards as vital to the national interest and world peace the preservation of the independence and integrity of the nations of the Middle East.&quot; Yet, during this very period, as we have seen, the CIA initiated its operation to overthrow the government of Syria.<br /> <br /> The business part of the resolution was contained in the succinct declaration that the United States &quot;is prepared to use armed forces to assist&quot; any Middle East country &quot;requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism&quot;. Nothing was set forth about non-communist or anti-communist aggression which might endanger world peace.<br /> <br /> Wilbur Crane Eveland, the Middle East specialist working for the CIA at the time, had been present at a meeting in the State Department two months earlier called to discuss the resolution. Eveland read the draft, which stated that &quot;many, if not all&quot; of the Middle East states &quot;are aware of the danger that stems from international communism&quot;. Later he wrote:&lt;blockquote&gt;I was shocked. Who, I wondered, had reached this determination of what the Arabs considered a danger? Israel's army had just invaded Egypt and still occupied all of the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. And, had it not been for Russia's threat to intervene on behalf of the Egyptians, the British, French, and Israeli forces might now be sitting in Cairo, celebrating Nasser's ignominious fall from power.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The simplistic and polarized view of the world implicit in the Eisenhower Doctrine ignored not only anti-Israeli sentiments but currents of nationalism, pan-Arabism, neutralism and socialism prevalent in many influential quarters of the Middle East. The framers of the resolution saw only a cold-war battlefield and, in doing so, succeeded in creating one.<br /> <br /> In April, King Hussein of Jordan dismissed his prime minister, Suleiman Nabulsi, amidst rumors, apparently well-founded, of a coup against the King encouraged by Egypt and Syria and Palestinians living in Jordan. It was the turning point in an ongoing conflict between the pro-West policy of Hussein and the neutralist leanings of the Nabulsi regime. Nabulsi had announced that in line with his policy of neutralism, Jordan would develop closer relations with the Soviet Union and accept Soviet aid if offered. At the same time, he rejected American aid because, he said, the United States had informed him that economic aid would be withheld unless Jordan &quot;severs its ties with Egypt&quot; and &quot;consents to settlement of Palestinian refugees in Jordan&quot;, a charge denied by the State Department. Nabulsi added the commentary that &quot;communism is not dangerous to the Arabs&quot;.<br /> <br /> Hussein, conversely, accused &quot;international communism and its followers&quot; of direct responsibility for &quot;efforts to destroy my country&quot;. When pressed for the specifics of his accusation, he declined to provide any.<br /> <br /> When rioting broke out in several Jordanian cities, and civil war could not be ruled out, Hussein showed himself equal to the threat to his continued rule. He declared martial law, purged the government and military of pro-Nasser and leftist tendencies, and abolished all political opposition. Jordan soon returned to a state of relative calm.<br /> <br /> The United States, however, seized upon Hussein's use of the expression &quot;international communism&quot; to justify rushing units of the Sixth Fleet to the eastern Mediterranean—a super aircraft carrier, two cruisers, and 15 destroyers, followed shortly by a variety of other naval vessels and a battalion of marines which put ashore in Lebanon—to &quot;prepare for possible future intervention in Jordan&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Despite the fact that nothing resembling &quot;armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism&quot; had taken place, the State Department openly invited the King to invoke the Eisenhower Doctrine.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; But Hussein, who had not even requested the show of force, refused, knowing that such a move would only add fuel to the fires already raging in Jordanian political life. He survived without it.<br /> <br /> Sometime during this year the CIA began making secret annual payments to King Hussein, initially in the millions of dollars per year. The practice was to last for 20 years, with the Agency providing Hussein female companions as well. As justification for the payment, the CIA later claimed that Hussein allowed American intelligence agencies to operate freely in Jordan. Hussein himself provided intelligence to the CIA and distributed part of his payments to other government officials who also furnished information or cooperated with the Agency.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A few months later, it was Syria which occupied the front stage in Washington's melodrama of &quot;International Communism&quot;. The Syrians had established relations with the Soviet Union via trade, economic aid, and military purchases and training. The United States chose to see something ominous in this although it was a state of affairs engendered in no small measure by John Foster Dulles, as we saw in the previous chapter. American antipathy toward Syria was heightened in August following the Syrian government's exposure of the CIA-directed plot to overthrow it.<br /> <br /> Washington officials and the American media settled easily into the practice of referring to Syria as a &quot;Soviet satellite&quot; or &quot;quasi-satellite&quot;. This was not altogether objective or spontaneous reporting. Kennett Love, a New York Times correspondent in close contact to the CIA (see Iran chapter), later disclosed some of the background:&lt;blockquote&gt;The US Embassy in Syria connived at false reports issued in Washington and London through diplomatic and press channels to the effect that Russian arms were pouring into the Syrian port of Latakia, that &quot;not more than 123 Migs&quot; had arrived in Syria, and that Lieutenant Colonel Abdel Hameed Serraj, head of Syrian intelligence, had taken over control in a Communist-inspired coup. I travelled all over Syria without hindrance in November and December [1956] and found there were indeed &quot;not more than 123 Migs&quot;. There were none. And no Russian arms had arrived for months. And there had been no coup, although some correspondents in Beirut, just a two-hour drive from Damascus, were dispatching without attribution false reports fed to them by embassy visitors from Damascus and a roving CIA man who worked in the guise of a US Treasury agent. Serraj, who was anti-Communist, had just broken the clumsy British-US-Iraqi-supported plot [to overthrow the Syrian government]. Syria was quiet but worried lest the propaganda presage a new coup d'état or a Western-backed invasion.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;As if to further convince any remaining skeptics, Eisenhower dispatched a personal emissary, Loy Henderson, on a tour of the Middle East. Henderson, not surprisingly, returned with the conclusion that &quot;there was a fear in all Middle East countries that the Soviets might be able to topple the regimes in each of their countries through exploiting the crisis in Syria&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; He gave no indication as to whether the Syrians themselves thought they were going through a crisis.<br /> <br /> As an indication of how artificial were the crises announced by the White House, how arbitrary were the doomsday pronouncements about the Soviet Union, let us consider the following from a Department of Defense internal memorandum of June 1957, about two months before Henderson went to the Middle East:&lt;blockquote&gt;The USSR has shown no intention of direct intervention in any of the previous Mid-Eastern crises, and we believe it is unlikely that they would intervene, directly, to assure the success of a leftist coup in Syria.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In early September, the day after Henderson returned, the United States announced that the Sixth Fleet was once again being sent to the Mediterranean and that arms and other military equipment were being rushed to Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey. A few days later, Saudi Arabia was added to the list. The Soviet Union replied with arms shipments to Syria, Egypt and Yemen.<br /> <br /> The Syrian government accused the US of sending warships close to her coast in an &quot;open challenge&quot; and said that unidentified planes had been flying constantly over the Latakia area day and night for four days, Latakia being the seaport where Soviet ships arrived.<br /> <br /> Syria further claimed that the US had &quot;incited&quot; Turkey to concentrate an estimated 50,000 soldiers on Syria's border. The Syrians ridiculed the explanation that the Turkish troops were only on maneuvers. Eisenhower later wrote that the troops were at the border with &quot;a readiness to act&quot; and that the United States had already assured the leaders of Turkey, Iraq and Jordan that if they &quot;felt it necessary to take actions against aggression by the Syrian government, the United States would undertake to expedite shipments of arms already committed to the Middle Eastern countries and, further, would replace losses as quickly as possible.&quot; The president had no quarrel with the idea that such action might be taken to repel, in his words, the &quot;anticipated aggression&quot; of Syria, for it would thus be &quot;basically defensive in nature&quot; (emphasis added).&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The American role here may have been more active than Eisenhower suggests. One of his advisers, Emmet John Hughes, has written of how Under-Secretary of State Christian Herter, later to replace an ailing John Foster Dulles as Secretary, &quot;reviewed in rueful detail … some recent clumsy clandestine American attempts to spur Turkish forces to do some vague kind of battle with Syria&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Dulles gave the impression in public remarks that the United States was anxious to somehow invoke the Eisenhower Doctrine, presumably as a &quot;justification&quot; for taking further action against Syria. But he could not offer any explanation of how this was possible. Certainly Syria was not going to make the necessary request.<br /> <br /> The only solution lay in Syria attacking another Arab country which would then request American assistance. This appears to be one rationale behind the flurry of military and diplomatic activity directed at Syria by the US. A study carried out for the Pentagon some years later concluded that in &quot;the 1957 Syrian crisis … Washington seem[ed] to seek the initial use of force by target&quot;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; (emphasis added; &quot;target&quot; refers to Syria).<br /> <br /> Throughout this period, Washington officials alternated between striving to enlist testimonials from other Arab nations that Syria was indeed a variety of Soviet satellite and a threat to the region, and assuring the world that the United States had received a profusion of just such testimony. But Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia all denied that they felt threatened by Syria. Egypt, Syria's closest ally, of course concurred. At the height of the &quot;crisis&quot;, King Hussein of Jordan left for a vacation in Europe. The Iraqi premier declared that his country and Syria had arrived at a &quot;complete understanding&quot;. And King Saud of Saudi Arabia, in a message to Eisenhower, said that US concern over Syria was &quot;exaggerated&quot; and asked the president for &quot;renewed assurances that the United States would refrain from any interference in the internal affairs of Arab states&quot;. Saud added that &quot;efforts to overturn the Syrian regime would merely make the Syrians more amenable to Soviet influence&quot;, a view shared by several observers on all sides.<br /> <br /> At the same time, the New York Times reported:&lt;blockquote&gt;From the beginning of the crisis over Syria's drift to the left, there has been less excitement among her Arab neighbors than in the United States. Foreign diplomats in the area, including many Americans, felt that the stir caused in Washington was out of proportion to the cause.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Eventually, Dulles may have been influenced by this lack of support for the American thesis, for when asked specifically to &quot;characterize what the relation is between Soviet aims in the area and the part that Syria adds to them&quot;, he could only reply that &quot;The situation internally in Syria is not entirely clear and fluctuates somewhat.&quot; Syria, he implied, was not yet in the grip of international Communism.<br /> <br /> The next day, Syria, which had no desire to isolate itself from the West, similarly moderated its tone by declaring that the American warships had been 15 miles offshore and had continued &quot;quietly on their way&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It appears that during this same restless year of 1957, the United States was also engaged in a plot to overthrow Nasser and his troublesome nationalism, although the details are rather sketchy. In January, when King Saud and Iraqi Crown Prince Abdul Illah were in New York at the United Nations, they were approached by CIA Director Allen Dulles and one of his top aides, Kermit Roosevelt, with offers of CIA covert planning and funding to topple the Egyptian leader whose radical rhetoric, inchoate though it was, was seen by the royal visitors as a threat to the very idea of monarchy. Nasser and other army officers had overthrown King Farouk of Egypt in 1952. Ironically, Kermit Roosevelt and the CIA have traditionally been given credit for somehow engineering this coup. However, it is by no means certain that they actually carried this out.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Abdul Illah,&quot; wrote Eveland, &quot;insisted on British participation in anything covert, but the Saudis had severed relations with Britain and refused. As a result, the CIA dealt separately with each: agreeing to fund King Saud's part in a new area scheme to oppose Nasser and eliminate his influence in Syria; and to the same objective, coordinating in Beirut a covert working group composed of representatives of the British, Iraqi, Jordanian, and Lebanese intelligence services.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The conspiracy is next picked up in mid-spring at the home of Ghosn Zogby in Beirut. Zogby, of Lebanese ancestry, was the chief of the CIA Beirut station. He and Kermit Roosevelt, who was staying with him, hosted several conferences of the clandestine planners. &quot;So obvious,&quot; Eveland continued, &quot;were their 'covert' gyrations, with British, Iraqi, Jordanian and Lebanese liaison personnel coming and going nightly, that the Egyptian ambassador in Lebanon was reportedly taking bets on when and where the next U.S. coup would take place.&quot; At one of these meetings, the man from the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) informed the gathering that teams had been fielded to assassinate Nasser.<br /> <br /> Shortly afterwards, Eveland learned from a CIA official that John Foster Dulles, as well as his brother Allen, had directed Roosevelt to work with the British to bring down Nasser. Roosevelt now spoke in terms of a &quot;palace revolution&quot; in Egypt.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> From this point on we're fishing in murky waters, for the events which followed produced more questions than answers. With the six countries named above, plus Turkey and Israel apparently getting in on the act, and less than complete trust and love existing amongst the various governments, a host of plots, sub-plots and side plots inevitably sprang to life; at times it bordered on low comedy, though some would call it no more than normal Middle East &quot;diplomacy&quot;.<br /> <br /> Between July 1957 and October 1958, the Egyptian and Syrian governments and media announced the uncovering of what appear to be at least eight separate conspiracies to overthrow one or the other government, to assassinate Nasser, and/or prevent the expected merger of the two countries. Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the United States were most often named as conspirators, but from the entanglement of intrigue which surfaced it is virtually impossible to unravel the particular threads of the US role.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Typical of the farcical goings-on, it seems that at least one of the plots to assassinate Nasser arose from the Dulles brothers taking Eisenhower's remark that he hoped &quot;the Nasser problem could be eliminated&quot; to be an order for assassination, when the president, so the story goes, was merely referring to improved US-Egyptian relations. Upon realizing the error, Secretary Dulles ordered the operation to cease.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; (Three years later, Allen Dulles was again to &quot;misinterpret&quot; a remark by Eisenhower as an order to assassinate Patrice Lumumba of the Congo.)<br /> <br /> Official American pronouncements during this entire period would have had the world believe that the Soviet Union was the eminence grise behind the strife in Jordan, the &quot;crisis&quot; in Syria, and unrest generally in the Middle East; that the Soviet aim was to dominate the area, while the sole purpose of US policy was to repel this Soviet thrust and maintain the &quot;independence&quot; of the Arab nations. Yet, on three separate occasions during 1957—in February, April and September—the Soviet Union called for a four-power (US, USSR, Great Britain and France) declaration renouncing the use of force and interference in the internal affairs of the Middle Eastern countries. The February appeal had additionally called for a four-power embargo on arms shipments to the region, withdrawal of all foreign troops, liquidation of all foreign bases, and a conference to reach a general Middle East settlement.<br /> <br /> The Soviet strategy was clearly to neutralize the Middle East, to remove the threat it had long felt from the potentially hostile control of the oil region by, traditionally, France and Great Britain, and now the United States, which sought to fill the &quot;power vacuum&quot; left by the decline of the two European nations as Middle East powers.<br /> <br /> History does not relate what a Middle East free from big-power manipulation would have been like, for neither France, Great Britain, nor the United States was amenable to even calling the Soviet &quot;bluff&quot;, if that was what it was. The New York Times summarized the attitude of the three Western nations to the first two overtures as one that &quot;deprecated the Soviet proposals as efforts to gain recognition of a Soviet right to a direct voice in the affairs of the Middle East. They have told the Russians to take up their complaints through the United Nations.&quot;<br /> <br /> Following the September proposal, John Foster Dulles, replying to a question at a press conference, said that &quot;the United States is skeptical of these arrangements with the Soviet Union for 'hands-off'. What they are apt to mean is our hands off and their hands under the table.&quot; This appears to be the only public comment the US government saw fit to make on the matter.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It may be instructive to speculate upon the reaction of the Western nations if the Soviet Union had announced a &quot;Khrushchev Doctrine&quot;, ceding to itself the same scope of action in the Middle East as that stipulated in the Eisenhower Doctrine.<br /> <br /> In January 1958, Syria and Egypt announced their plans to unite, forming the new nation of the United Arab Republic (UAR). The initiative for the merger had come from Syria who was motivated in no small part by her fear of further American power plays against her. Ironically, under the merger arrangement, the Communist Party, already outlawed in Egypt, was dissolved in Syria, an objective which a year and a half of CIA covert activity had failed to achieve.<br /> <br /> Two weeks after the birth of the UAR, and in direct response to it, Iraq and Jordan formed the Arab Union, with the United States acting as midwife. This union was short lived, for in July a bloody coup in Iraq overthrew the monarchy, the new regime establishing a republic and promptly renouncing the pact. The trumpets of Armageddon could once more be heard distinctly in the Oval Office. &quot;This somber turn of events,&quot; wrote Eisenhower in his memoirs, &quot;could, without vigorous response on our part, result in a complete elimination of Western influence in the Middle East.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt; Although the president would not be so crass as to mention a concern about oil, his anxiety attack was likely brought on by the fact that one of the greatest oil reserves in the world was now under rule of a government which might well prove to be not as pliable an ally as the previous regime, and too independent of Washington.<br /> <br /> The time for a mere show of force was over. The very next day, US miltary forces invaded Lebanon lest the popular impulse from Iraq serve to bring down the Lebanese government.<br /> <br /> Of all the Arab states, Lebanon was easily the United States' closest ally. She alone had supported the Eisenhower Doctrine with any enthusiasm or unequivocally echoed Washington's panic about Syria. To be more precise, it was the president of Lebanon, Camille Chamoun, and the foreign minister, Charles Malik, a Harvard Ph.D. in philosophy, who had put all their cold-war eggs into the American basket. Chamoun had ample reason to be beholden to the United States. The CIA apparently played a role in his 1952 election,&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt; and in 1957 the Agency furnished generous sums of money to Chamoun to use in support of candidates in the Chamber of Deputies (Parliament) June elections who would back him and, presumably, US policies. Funds were also provided to specifically oppose, as punishment, those candidates who had resigned in protest over Chamoun's adherence to the Eisenhower Doctrine.<br /> <br /> As is customary in such operations, the CIA sent an &quot;election specialist&quot; along with the money to Beirut to assist in the planning. American officials in Washington and Lebanon proceeded on the assumption, they told each other, that Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia would also intervene financially in the elections. The American ambassador to Lebanon, Donald Heath, argued as well, apparently without ironic intention, that &quot;With both the president and the new chamber of deputies supporting American principles, we'd also have a demonstration that representative democracy could work&quot; in the Middle East.<br /> <br /> To what extent the American funding helped, or even how the money was spent, is not known, but the result was a landslide for pro-government deputies; so much so, that it caused considerable protest within Lebanon, including the charge that Chamoun had stacked the parliament in order to amend the constitution to permit him to seek an otherwise prohibited second six-year term of office the following year.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By late April 1958, tensions in Lebanon had reached bursting point. The inordinate pro-American orientation of Chamoun's government and his refusal to dispel rumors that he would seek a second term incensed both Lebanese nationalists and advocates of the Arab nationalism which Nasser was promoting throughout the Middle East. Demands were made that the government return to the strict neutrality provided for in the National Pact of 1943 at the time of Lebanon's declaration of independence from France.<br /> <br /> A rash of militant demonstrations, bombings and clashes with police took place, and when, in early May, the editor of an anti-government newspaper was murdered, armed rebellion broke out in several parts of the country, and US Information Agency libraries in Tripoli and Beirut were sacked. Lebanon contained all the makings of a civil war.<br /> <br /> &quot;Behind everything,&quot; wrote Eisenhower, &quot;was our deep-seated conviction that the Communists were principally responsible for the trouble and that President Chamoun was motivated only by a strong feeling of patriotism.&quot;<br /> <br /> The president did not clarify who or what he meant by &quot;Communists&quot;. However, in the next paragraph he refers, without explanation, to the Soviet Union as &quot;stirring up trouble&quot; in the Middle East. And on the following page, the old soldier writes that &quot;there was no doubt in our minds&quot; about Chamoun's charge that &quot;Egypt and Syria had been instigating the revolt and arming the rebels&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the midst of the fighting, John Foster Dulles announced that he perceived &quot;international communism&quot; as the source of the conflict and for the third time in a year the Sixth Fleet was dispatched to the eastern Mediterranean; police supplies to help quell rioters, as well as tanks and other heavy equipment, were airlifted to Lebanon.<br /> <br /> At a subsequent news conference, Dulles declared that even if international communism were not involved, the Eisenhower Doctrine was still applicable because one of its provisions stated that &quot;the independence of these countries is vital to peace and the national interest of the United States.&quot; &quot;That is certainly a mandate,&quot; he said, &quot;to do something if we think that our peace and vital interests are endangered from any quarter.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; Thus did one of the authors of the doctrine bestow upon himself a mandate.<br /> <br /> Egypt and Syria, from all accounts, supported the rebels' cause with arms, men and money, in addition to inflammatory radio broadcasts from Cairo, although the extent of the material support is difficult to establish. A UN Observation Group went to Lebanon in June at the request of Foreign Minister Malik and reported that they found no evidence of UAR intervention of any significance. A second UN report in July confirmed this finding. It is open to question, however, what degree of reliance can be placed upon these reports, dealing as they do with so thorny an evaluation and issued by a body in the business of promoting compromise.<br /> <br /> In any event, the issue was whether the conflict in Lebanon represented a legitimate, home-grown civil war, or whether it was the doing of the proverbial &quot;outside agitators&quot;. On this point, historian Richard Barnet has observed:&lt;blockquote&gt;No doubt the Observation Group did minimize the extent of UAR participation. But essentially they were correct. Nasser was trying to exploit the political turmoil in Lebanon, but he did not create it. Lebanon, which had always abounded in clandestine arsenals and arms markets, did not need foreign weapons for its domestic violence. Egyptian intervention was neither the stimulus nor the mainstay of the civil strife. Once again a government that had lost the power to rule effectively was blaming its failure on foreign agents.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;President Eisenhower—continuing his flip-flop thinking on the issue—wrote that it now seemed that Nasser &quot;would be just as happy to see a temporary end to the struggle … and contacted our government and offered to attempt to use his influence to end the trouble.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Camille Chamoun had sacrificed Lebanon's independence and neutrality on the altar of personal ambition and the extensive American aid that derived from subscribing to the Eisenhower Doctrine. Lebanese Muslims, who comprised most of Chamoun's opposition, were also galled that the Christian president had once again placed the country outside the mainstream of the Arab world, as he had done in 1956 when he refused to break relations with France and Great Britain following their invasion of Egypt.<br /> <br /> Chamoun himself had admitted the significance of his pro-American alignment in a revealing comment to Wilbur Crane Eveland. Eveland writes that in late April,&lt;blockquote&gt;I'd suggested that he might ease tensions by making a statement renouncing a move for reelection. Chamoun had snorted and suggested that I look at the calendar: March 23 was a month behind us, and no amendment to permit another term could legally be passed after that date. Obviously, as he pointed out, the issue of the presidency was not the real issue; renunciation of the Eisenhower Doctrine was what his opponents wanted.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Instead of renouncing the doctrine, Chamoun invoked it. Although scattered fighting, at times heavy, was continuing in Lebanon, it was the coup in Iraq on 14 July that tipped the scales in favor of Chamoun making the formal request for military assistance and the United States immediately granting it. A CIA report of a plot against King Hussein of Jordan at about the same time heightened even further Washington's seemingly unceasing sense of urgency about the Middle East.<br /> <br /> Chamoun had, by this time, already announced his intention to step down from office when his term expired in September. He was now concerned about American forces helping him to stay alive until that date, as well as their taking action against the rebels. For the previous two months, fear of assassination had kept him constantly inside the presidential palace, never so much as approaching a window. The murder of the Iraqi king and prime minister during the coup was not designed to make him feel more secure.<br /> <br /> The Eisenhower Doctrine was put into motion not only in the face of widespread opposition to it within Lebanon, but in disregard of the fact that, even by the doctrine's own dubious provisions, the situation in Lebanon did not qualify: It could hardly be claimed that Lebanon had suffered &quot;armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism&quot;. If further evidence of this were needed, it was provided by veteran diplomat Robert Murphy who was sent to Lebanon by Eisenhower a few days after the US troops had landed. Murphy concluded, he later wrote, that &quot;communism was playing no direct or substantial part in the insurrection&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Yet, Eisenhower could write that the American Government &quot;was moving in accord with the provisions of the Middle East Resolution [Eisenhower Doctrine], but if the conflict expanded into something that the Resolution did not cover, I would, given time, go to the Congress for additional authorization&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt; Apparently the president did not place too much weight on John Foster Dulles having already determined that the Resolution's mandate was open-ended.<br /> <br /> Thus it was that American military forces were dispatched to Lebanon. Some 70 naval vessels and hundreds of aircraft took part in the operation, many remaining as part of the visible American presence. By 25 July, the US forces on shore totaled at least 10,600. By August 13, their number came to 14,000, more than the entire Lebanese Army and gendarmerie combined.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;In my [radio-TV] address,&quot; wrote Eisenhower, &quot;I had been careful to use the term 'stationed in' Lebanon rather than 'invading'.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt; This was likely a distinction lost upon many Lebanese, both high and low, supporters of the rebels and supporters of the government, including government tank forces who were prepared to block the entrance into Beirut of US troops; only the last-minute intercession on the spot by the American ambassador may have averted an armed clash.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At a meeting between Robert Murphy and Lebanese Commander-in-Chief General Faud Chehab—related by Eveland who was briefed by Murphy afterwards—the American diplomat was warned that the Lebanese people were &quot;restless, resentful, and determined that Chamoun should resign and U.S. troops leave at once. Otherwise the general could not be responsible for the consequences. For fifteen years his officers had acted behind his back; now, he feared, they might revolt and attack the American forces.&quot;<br /> <br /> Murphy had listened patiently, Eveland relates, and then …&lt;blockquote&gt;escorted the general to a window overlooking the sea. Pointing to the supercarrier Saratoga, swinging at anchor on the horizon, the President's envoy had quietly explained that just one of its aircraft, armed with nuclear weapons, could obliterate Beirut and its environs from the face of the earth. To this, Murphy quickly added that he'd been sent to be sure that it wouldn't be necessary for American troops to fire a shot. Shehab [Chehab], he was certain, would ensure that there were no provocations on the Lebanese side. That, Murphy told me, ended the conversation. It now seemed that the general had &quot;regained control&quot; of his troops.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;None of the parties seem to have considered what would have been the fate of the thousands of American military personnel in a Beirut obliterated from the face of the earth.<br /> <br /> Civil warfare in Lebanon increased in intensity in the two weeks following the American intervention. During this period, CIA transmitters in the Middle East were occupied in sending out propaganda broadcasts of disguised origin, a tactic frequently employed by the Agency. In the case of one broadcast which has been reported, the apparent aim was to deflect anti-US feelings onto the Soviet Union and other targets. But the residents of the Middle East were not the only ones who may have been taken in by the spurious broadcast, for it was picked up by the American press and passed on to an unwitting American public; the following appeared in US newspapers:&lt;blockquote&gt;BEIRUT, July 23 (UPI)—A second mysterious Arab radio station went on the air yesterday calling itself the &quot;Voice of Justice&quot; and claiming to be broadcasting from Syria. Its program heard here consisted of bitter criticism against Soviet Russia and Soviet Premier Khrushchev. Earlier the &quot;Voice of Iraq&quot; went on the air with attacks against the Iraqi revolutionary government. The &quot;Voice of Justice&quot; called Khrushchev the &quot;hangman of Hungary&quot; and warned the people of the Middle East they would suffer the same fate as the Hungarians if the Russians got a foothold in the Middle East.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;On 31 July, the Chamber of Deputies easily chose General Chehab to succeed Chamoun as president in September, an event that soon put a damper on the fighting in Lebanon and marked the beginning of the end of the conflict which, in the final analysis, appears to have been more a violent protest than a civil war. Tension was further eased by the US announcement shortly afterwards of its intention to withdraw a Marine battalion as a prelude to a general withdrawal.<br /> <br /> The last American troops left Lebanon in late October without having fired a shot in anger. What had their presence accomplished?<br /> <br /> The authors of the Pentagon study referred to earlier concluded that &quot;A balanced assessment of U.S. behavior in the Lebanon crisis is made difficult by the suspicion that the outcome might have been much the same if the United States had done nothing. Even Eisenhower expressed some doubt on this score.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> American intervention against the new Iraqi government was more covert. A secret plan for a joint US-Turkish invasion of the country, code-named Operation CANNON-BONE, was drafted by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the coup in 1958. Reportedly, only Soviet threats to intercede on Iraq's side forced Washington to hold back. But in 1960, the United States began to fund the Kurdish guerrillas in Iraq who were fighting for a measure of autonomy.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At the same time, the Iraqis, under Brig. General Abdul Karim Kassem, started to work towards the creation of an international organization to counter the power of the Western oil monopolies. This was to become OPEC, and was not received with joy in certain Western quarters. In February 1960, the Near East Division of the CIA's clandestine services requested that the Agency find a way to &quot;incapacitate&quot; Kassem for &quot;promoting Soviet bloc political interests in Iraq&quot;. &quot;We do not consciously seek subject's permanent removal from the scene,&quot; said the Near East Division. &quot;We also do not object should this complication develop.&quot;<br /> <br /> As matters turned out, the CIA mailed a monogrammed handkerchief containing an &quot;incapacitating agent&quot; to Kassem from an Asian country. If the Iraqi leader did in fact receive it, it certainly didn't kill him. That was left to his own countrymen who executed him three years later.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The significance of the Lebanese intervention, as well as the shows of force employed in regard to Jordan and Syria, extended beyond the immediate outcomes. In the period before and after the intervention, Eisenhower, Dulles and other Washington officials offered numerous different justifications for the American military action in Lebanon: protecting American lives; protecting American property; the Eisenhower Doctrine, with various interpretations; Lebanese sovereignty, integrity, independence, etc.; US national interest; world peace; collective self-defense; justice; international law; law and order; fighting &quot;Nasserism&quot; … the need to &quot;do something&quot; …&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In summing up the affair in his memoirs, president Eisenhower seemed to settle upon one rationale in particular, and this is probably the closest to the truth of the matter. This was to put the world—and specifically the Soviet Union and Nasser—on notice that the United States had virtually unlimited power, that this power could be transported to any corner of the world with great speed, that it could and would be used to deal decisively with any situation with which the United States was dissatisfied, for whatever reason.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At the same time, it was a message to the British and the French that there was only one Western superpower in the post-war world, and that their days as great powers in the Lands of Oil were over.<br /> == Indonesia 1957-1958: War and pornography ==<br /> &quot;I think it's time we held Sukarno's feet to the fire,&quot; said Frank Wisner, the CIA's Deputy Director of Plans (covert operations), one day in autumn 1956.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Wisner was speaking of the man who had led Indonesia since its struggle for independence from the Dutch following the war. A few months earlier, in May, Sukarno had made an impassioned speech before the US Congress asking for more understanding of the problems and needs of developing nations like his own.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The ensuing American campaign to unseat the flamboyant leader of the fifth most populous nation in the world was to run the gamut from large-scale military maneuvers to seedy sexual intrigue.<br /> <br /> The previous year, Sukarno had organized the Bandung Conference as an answer to the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the US-created political-military alliance of area states to &quot;contain communism&quot;. In the Indonesian city of Bandung, the doctrine of neutralism had been proclaimed as the faith of the underdeveloped world. To the men of the CIA station in Indonesia the conference was heresy, so much so that their thoughts turned toward assassination as a means of sabotaging it.<br /> <br /> In 1975, the Senate committee which was investigating the CIA heard testimony that Agency officers stationed in an East Asian country had suggested that an East Asian leader be assassinated &quot;to disrupt an impending Communist [sic] Conference in 1955&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; (In all likelihood, the leader referred to was either Sukarno or Chou En-lai of China.) But, said the committee, cooler heads prevailed at CIA headquarters in Washington and the suggestion was firmly rejected.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, a plane carrying eight members of the Chinese delegation, a Vietnamese, and two European journalists to the Bandung Conference crashed under mysterious circumstances. The Chinese government claimed that it was an act of sabotage carried out by the US and Taiwan, a misfired effort to murder Chou En-lai. The chartered Air India plane had taken off from Hong Kong on 11 April 1955 and crashed in the South China Sea. Chou En-lai was scheduled to be on another chartered Air India flight a day or two later. The Chinese government, citing what it said were press reports from the Times of India, stated that the crash was caused by two time bombs apparently placed aboard the plane in Hong Kong. A clockwork mechanism was later recovered from the wrecked airliner and the Hong Kong police called it a case of &quot;carefully planned mass murder&quot;. Months later, British police in Hong Kong announced that they were seeking a Chinese Nationalist for conspiracy to cause the crash, but that he had fled to Taiwan.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1967 a curious little book appeared in India, entitled I Was a CIA Agent in India, by John Discoe Smith, an American. Published by the Communist Party of India, it was based on articles written by Smith for Literaturnaya Gazeta in Moscow after he had defected to the Soviet Union around 1960. Smith, born in Quincy, Mass. in 1926, wrote that he had been a communications technician and code clerk at the US Embassy in New Delhi in 1955, performing tasks for the CIA as well. One of these tasks was to deliver a package to a Chinese Nationalist which Smith later learned, he claimed, contained the two time bombs used to blow up the Air India plane. The veracity of Smith's account cannot be determined, although his employment at the US Embassy in New Delhi from 1954 to 1959 is confirmed by the State Department Biographic Register.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Elsewhere the Senate committee reported that it had &quot;received some evidence of CIA involvement in plans to assassinate President Sukarno of Indonesia&quot;, and that the planning had proceeded to the point of identifying an agent whom it was believed might be recruited for the job.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; (The committee noted that at one time, those at the CIA who were concerned with possible assassinations and appropriate methods were known internally as the &quot;Health Alteration Committee&quot;.)<br /> <br /> To add to the concern of American leaders, Sukarno had made trips to the Soviet Union and China (though to the White House as well), he had purchased arms from Eastern European countries (but only after being turned down by the United States),&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; he had nationalized many private holdings of the Dutch, and, perhaps most disturbing of all, the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) had made impressive gains electorally and in union-organizing, thus earning an important role in the coalition government.<br /> <br /> It was a familiar Third World scenario, and the reaction of Washington policy-makers was equally familiar. Once again, they were unable, or unwilling, to distinguish nationalism from pro-communism, neutralism from wickedness. By any definition of the word, Sukarno was no communist. He was an Indonesian nationalist and a &quot;Sukarnoist&quot; who had crushed the PKI forces in 1948 after the independence struggle had been won.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; He ran what was largely his own show by granting concessions to both the PKI and the Army, balancing one against the other. As to excluding the PKI, with its more than one million members, from the government, Sukarno declared: &quot;I can't and won't ride a three-legged horse.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> To the United States, however, Sukarno's balancing act was too precarious to be left to the vagaries of the Indonesian political process. It mattered not to Washington that the Communist Party was walking the legal, peaceful road, or that there was no particular &quot;crisis&quot; or &quot;chaos&quot; in Indonesia, so favored as an excuse for intervention. Intervention there would be.<br /> <br /> It would not be the first. In 1955, during the national election campaign in Indonesia, the CIA had given a million dollars to the Masjumi party, a centrist coalition of Muslim organizations, in a losing bid to thwart Sukarno's Nationalist Party as well as the PKI. According to former CIA officer Joseph Burkholder Smith, the project &quot;provided for complete write-off of the funds, that is, no demand for a detailed accounting of how the funds were spent was required. I could find no clue as to what the Masjumi did with the million dollars.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1957, the CIA decided that the situation called for more direct action. It was not difficult to find Indonesian colleagues-in-arms for there already existed a clique of army officers and others who, for personal ambitions and because they disliked the influential position of the PKI, wanted Sukarno out, or at least out of their particular islands. (Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago, consisting of some 3,000 islands.)<br /> <br /> The military operation the CIA was opting for was of a scale that necessitated significant assistance from the Pentagon, which could be secured for a political action mission only if approved by the National Security Council's &quot;Special Group&quot; (the small group of top NSC officials who acted in the president's name, to protect him and the country by evaluating proposed covert actions and making certain that the CIA did not go off the deep end; known at other times as the 5412 Committee, the 303 Committee, the 40 Committee, or the Operations Advisory Group).<br /> <br /> The manner in which the Agency went about obtaining this approval is a textbook example of how the CIA sometimes determines American foreign policy. Joseph Burkholder Smith, who was in charge of the Agency's Indonesian desk in Washington from mid-1956 to early 1958, has described the process in his memoirs: Instead of first proposing the plan to Washington for approval, where &quot;premature mention … might get it shot down&quot;…&lt;blockquote&gt;we began to feed the State and Defense departments intelligence that no one could deny was a useful contribution to understanding Indonesia. When they had read enough alarming reports, we planned to spring the suggestion we should support the colonels' plans to reduce Sukarno's power. This was a method of operation which became the basis of many of the political action adventures of the 1960s and 1970s. In other words, the statement is false that CIA undertook to intervene in the affairs of countries like Chile only after being ordered to do so by … the Special Group. … In many instances, we made the action programs up ourselves after we had collected enough intelligence to make them appear required by the circumstances. Our activity in Indonesia in 1957-1958 was one such instance.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; (Emphasis in original.)&lt;/blockquote&gt;When the Communist Party did well again in local elections held in July, the CIA viewed it as &quot;a great help to us in convincing Washington authorities how serious the Indonesian situation was. The only person who did not seem terribly alarmed at the PKI victories was Ambassador Allison. This was all we needed to convince John Foster Dulles finally that he had the wrong man in Indonesia. The wheels began to turn to remove this last stumbling block in the way of our operation.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; John Allison, wrote Smith, was not a great admirer of the CIA to begin with. And in early 1958, after less than a year in the post, he was replaced as ambassador by Howard Jones, whose selection &quot;pleased&quot; the CIA Indonesia staff.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On 30 November 1957, several hand grenades were tossed at Sukarno as he was leaving a school. He escaped injury, but 10 people were killed and 48 children injured. The CIA in Indonesia had no idea who was responsible, but it quickly put out the story that the PKI was behind it &quot;at the suggestion of their Soviet contacts in order to make it appear that Sukarno's opponents were wild and desperate men&quot;. As it turned out, the culprits were a Muslim group not associated with the PKI or with the Agency's military plotters.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The issue of Sukarno's supposed hand-in-glove relationship with Communists was pushed at every opportunity. The CIA decided to make capital of reports that a good-looking blonde stewardess had been aboard Sukarno's aircraft everywhere he went during his trip in the Soviet Union and that the same woman had come to Indonesia with Soviet President Kliment Voroshilov and had been seen several times in the company of Sukarno. The idea was that Sukarno's well-known womanizing had trapped him in the spell of a Soviet female agent. He had succumbed to Soviet control, CIA reports implied, as a result of her influence or blackmail, or both.<br /> <br /> &quot;This formed the foundation of our flights of fancy,&quot; wrote Smith. &quot;We had as a matter of fact, considerable success with this theme. It appeared in the press around the world, and when Round Table, the serious British quarterly of international affairs, came to analyze the Indonesian revolt in its March 1958 issue, it listed Sukarno's being blackmailed by a Soviet female spy as one of the reasons that caused the uprising.&quot;<br /> <br /> Seemingly, the success of this operation inspired CIA officers in Washington to carry the theme one step further. A substantial effort was made to come up with a pornographic film or at least some still photographs that could pass for Sukarno and his Russian girl friend engaged in &quot;his favorite activity&quot;. When scrutiny of available porno films (supplied by the Chief of Police of Los Angeles) failed to turn up a couple who could pass for Sukarno (dark and bald) and a beautiful blonde Russian woman, the CIA undertook to produce its own films, &quot;the very films with which the Soviets were blackmailing Sukarno&quot;. The Agency developed a full-face mask of the Indonesian leader which was to be sent to Los Angeles where the police were to pay some porno-film actor to wear it during his big scene. This project resulted in at least some photographs, although they apparently were never used.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Another outcome of the blackmail effort was a film produced for the CIA by Robert Maheu, former FBI agent and intimate of Howard Hughes. Maheu's film starred an actor who resembled Sukarno. The ultimate fate of the film, which was entitled &quot;Happy Days&quot;, has not been reported.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In other parts of the world, at other times, the CIA has done better in this line of work, having produced sex films of target subjects caught in flagrante delicto who had been lured to Agency safe-houses by female agents.<br /> <br /> In 1960, Col. Truman Smith, US Army Ret., writing in Reader's Digest about the KGB, declared: &quot;It is difficult for most of us to appreciate its menace, as its methods are so debased as to be all but beyond the comprehension of any normal person with a sense of right and wrong.&quot; One of the KGB methods the good colonel found so debased was the making of sex films to be used as blackmail. &quot;People depraved enough to employ such methods,&quot; he wrote, &quot;find nothing distasteful in more violent methods.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Sex could be used at home as well to further the goals of American foreign policy. Under the cover of the US foreign aid program, at that time called the Economic Cooperation Administration, Indonesian policemen were trained and then recruited to provide information on Soviet, Chinese and PKI activities in their country. Some of the men singled out as good prospects for this work were sent to Washington for special training and to be softened up for recruitment. Like Sukarno, reportedly, these police officers invariably had an obsessive desire to sleep with a white woman. Accordingly, during their stay they were taken to Baltimore's shabby sex district to indulge themselves.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Special Group's approval of the political action mission was forthcoming in November 1957,&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt; and the CIA's paramilitary machine was put into gear. In this undertaking, as in others, the Agency enjoyed the advantage of the United States' far-flung military empire. Headquarters for the operation were established in neighboring Singapore, courtesy of the British; training bases set up in the Philippines; airstrips laid out in various parts of the Pacific to prepare for bomber and transport missions; Indonesians, along with Filipinos, Taiwanese, Americans, and other &quot;soldiers of fortune&quot; were assembled in Okinawa and the Philippines along with vast quantities of arms and equipment.<br /> <br /> For this, the CIA's most ambitious military operation to date, tens of thousands of rebels were armed, equipped and trained by the US Army. US Navy submarines, patrolling off the coast of Sumatra, the main island, put over-the-beach parties ashore along with supplies and communications equipment. The US Air Force set up a considerable Air Transport force which air-dropped many thousands of weapons deep into Indonesian territory. And a fleet of 15 B-26 bombers was made available for the conflict after being &quot;sanitized&quot; to ensure that they were &quot;non-attributable&quot; and that all airborne equipment was &quot;deniable&quot;.<br /> <br /> In the early months of 1958, rebellion began to break out in one part of the Indonesian island chain, then another. CIA pilots took to the air to carry out bombing and strafing missions in support of the rebels. In Washington, Col. Alex Kawilarung, the Indonesian military attaché, was persuaded by the Agency to &quot;defect&quot;. He soon showed up in Indonesia to take charge of the rebel forces. Yet, as the fighting dragged on into spring, the insurgents proved unable to win decisive victories or take the offensive, although the CIA bombing raids were taking their toll. Sukarno later claimed that on a Sunday morning in April, a plane bombed a ship in the harbor of the island of Ambon—all those aboard losing their lives—as well as hitting a church, which demolished the building and killed everyone inside. He stated that 700 casualties had resulted from this single run.<br /> <br /> On 15 May, a CIA plane bombed the Ambon marketplace, killing a large number of civilians on their way to church on Ascension Thursday. The Indonesian government had to act to suppress public demonstrations.<br /> <br /> Three days later, during another bombing run over Ambon, a CIA pilot, Allen Lawrence Pope, was shot down and captured. Thirty years old, from Perrine, Florida, Pope had flown 55 night missions over Communist lines in Korea for the Air Force. Later he spent two months flying through Communist flak for the CIA to drop supplies to the French at Dien Bien Phu. Now his luck had run out. He was to spend four years as a prisoner in Indonesia before Sukarno acceded to a request from Robert Kennedy for his release.<br /> <br /> Pope was captured carrying a set of incriminating documents, including those which established him as a pilot for the US Air Force and the CIA airline CAT. Like all men flying clandestine missions, Pope had gone through an elaborate procedure before taking off to &quot;sanitize&quot; him, as well as his aircraft. But he had apparently smuggled the papers aboard the plane, for he knew that to be captured as an &quot;anonymous, stateless civilian&quot; meant having virtually no legal rights and running the risk of being shot as a spy in accordance with custom. A captured US military man, however, becomes a commodity of value for his captors while he remains alive.<br /> <br /> The Indonesian government derived immediate material concessions from the United States as a result of the incident. Whether the Indonesians thereby agreed to keep silent about Pope is not known, but on 27 May the pilot and his documents were presented to the world at a news conference, thus contradicting several recent statements by high American officials.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt; Notable amongst these was President Eisenhower's declaration on 30 April concerning Indonesia: &quot;Our policy is one of careful neutrality and proper deportment all the way through so as not to be taking sides where it is none of our business.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And on 9 May, an editorial in the New York Times had stated:&lt;blockquote&gt;It is unfortunate that high officials of the Indonesian Government have given further circulation to the false report that the United States Government was sanctioning aid to Indonesia's rebels. The position of the United States Government has been made plain, again and again. Our Secretary of State was emphatic in his declaration that this country would not deviate from a correct neutrality … the United States is not ready … to step in to help overthrow a constituted government. Those are the hard facts. Jakarta does not help its case, here, by ignoring them.&lt;/blockquote&gt;With the exposure of Pope and the lack of rebel success in the field, the CIA decided that the light was no longer worth the candle, and began to curtail its support. By the end of June, Indonesian army troops loyal to Sukarno had effectively crushed the dissident military revolt.<br /> <br /> The Indonesian leader continued his adroit balancing act between the Communists and the army until 1965, when the latter, likely with the help of the CIA, finally overthrew his regime.<br /> <br /> == Western Europe 1950s and 1960s: Fronts within fronts within fronts ==<br /> At the British Labour Party conference in 1960, Michael Foot, the party's future leader and a member of its left wing, was accused of being a &quot;fellow traveller&quot; by then-leader Hugh Gaitskell. Foot responded with a reference to Gaitskell and others of the party's right wing: &quot;But who,&quot; he asked, &quot;are they travelling with?&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> They, it turned out, had been travelling with the CIA for some years. Fellow passengers were Frenchmen, Germans, Dutch, Italians, and a host of other West Europeans; all taking part in a CIA operation to win the hearts and minds of liberals, social democrats, and assorted socialists, to keep them from the clutches of the Russian bear.<br /> <br /> It was an undertaking of major proportions. For some 20 years, the Agency used dozens of American foundations, charitable trusts and the like, including a few of its own creation, as conduits for payments to all manner of organizations in the United States and abroad, many of which, in turn, funded other groups. So numerous were the institutions involved, so many were the interconnections and overlaps, that it is unlikely that anyone at the CIA had a grasp of the full picture, let alone exercised broad control over it or proper accounting. (See Appendix I for a partial organizational chart.)<br /> <br /> The ultimate beneficiaries of this flow of cash were political parties, magazines, news agencies, journalists' unions, other unions and labor organizations, student and youth groups, lawyers' associations, and other enterprises already committed to &quot;The Free World&quot; which could be counted upon to spread the gospel further if provided with sufficient funding.<br /> <br /> The principal front organization set up by the CIA in this period was the grandly named Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). In June 1950, prominent literati and scientists of the United States and Europe assembled in the Titiana Palace Theatre, in the American Zone of Berlin, before a large audience to launch the organization whose purpose was to &quot;defend freedom and democracy against the new tyranny sweeping the world&quot;. The CCF was soon reaching out in all directions with seminars, conferences, and a wide program of political and cultural activities in Western Europe as well as India, Australia, Japan, Africa and elsewhere. It had, moreover, more than 30 periodicals under its financial wing, including, in Europe:&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Socialist Commentary, Censorship, Science and Freedom, Minerva, Soviet Survey (or Survey), China Quarterly, and Encounter in Great Britain;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Preuves, Censure Contre les Artes et la Pensée, Mundo Nuevo, and Cuadernos in France (the last two in Spanish, aimed at Latin America);&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Perspektiv in Denmark, Argumenten in Sweden, Irodalmi Ujsag in Hungary, Der Monat in Germany, Forum in Austria, Tempo Presente in Italy, and Vision in Switzerland.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;There were as well CCF links to The New Leader, Africa Report, East Europe and Atlas in New York.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Generally, the CCF periodicals were well-written political and cultural magazines which, in the words of former CIA executive Ray Cline, &quot;would not have been able to survive financially without CIA funds&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Amongst the other media-related organizations subsidized by the CIA in Europe at this time were the West German news agency DENA (later known as DPA),&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; the international association of writers PEN, located in Paris, certain French newspapers,&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; the International Federation of Journalists, and Forum World Features, a news feature service in London whose stories were bought by some 140 newspapers around the world, including about 30 in the United States, amongst which were the Washington Post and four other major dailies. The Church committee of the US Senate reported that &quot;major U.S. dailies&quot; which took the service were informed that Forum World Features was &quot;CIA-controlled&quot;. The Guardian and The Sunday Times of Great Britain also used the service, which earlier had been called Forum Service. By 1967, according to one of Forum's leading writers, the news service had become perhaps &quot;the principal CIA media effort in the world&quot;, no small accomplishment when one considers that the CIA, in its heyday, was devoting a reported 29 percent of its budget to media and propaganda.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Another important recipient of CIA beneficence was Axel Springer, the West German press baron who was secretly funneled about $7 million in the early 1950s to help him build up his vast media empire. Springer, until he died in 1985, was the head of the largest publishing conglomerate in Western Europe, standing as a tower of pro-Western and anti-communist sentiment. The publisher of the influential West German weekly Der Spiegel, Rudolph Augstein, has observed: &quot;No single man in Germany, before or after Hitler, with the possible exception of Bismarck or the two emperors, has had so much power as Springer.&quot; His relationship with the CIA reportedly continued until at least the early 1970s.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The originator of the American program, the head of the CIA's International Organizations Division, Tom Braden, later wrote that the Agency placed one operative in the CCF and that another became an editor of the CCF's most important magazine, Encounter.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; Presumably there was at least one CIA agent or officer in each of the funded groups. Braden stated that &quot;The agents could … propose anti-Communist programs to the official leaders of the organizations.&quot; He added, however, that it was a policy to &quot;protect the integrity of the organization by not requiring it to support every aspect of official American policy.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Cultural Freedom journals appealed to the non-Marxist left (Forum, by contrast, was conservative), generally eschewing the class struggle and excessive nationalization of industry. They subscribed to Daniel Bell's &quot;the end of ideology&quot; thesis, the raison d'être of which was that since no one could call for dying for capitalism with a straight face, the idea of dying for socialism or any other ideology had to be discredited. At the same time, the journals advocated a reformed capitalism, a capitalism with a human face.<br /> <br /> To the cold warriors in Washington who were paying the bills, however, the idea of reforming capitalism was of minimal interest. What was of consequence was the commitment of the magazines to a strong, well-armed, and united Western Europe, allied to the United States, which would stand as a bulwark against the Soviet bloc; support for the Common Market and NATO; critical analysis of what was seen as the intellectual component of international communist subversion; skepticism of the disarmament, pacifism, and neutralism espoused by the likes of the prominent Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in Great Britain. Criticism of US foreign policy took place within the framework of cold-war assumptions; for example, that a particular American intervention was not the most effective way of combatting communism, not that there was anything wrong with intervention per se or that the United States was supporting the wrong side.<br /> <br /> &quot;Private&quot; publications such as these could champion views which official US government organs like the Voice of America could not, and still be credible. The same was true of the many other private organizations on the CIA payroll at this time.<br /> <br /> In 1960, CND and other elements of the Labour Party's left wing succeeded in winning over the party's conference to a policy of complete, unilateral nuclear disarmament and neutrality in the cold war. In addition, two resolutions supporting NATO were voted down. Although the Labour Party was not in power at the time, the actions carried considerable propaganda and psychological value. Washington viewed the turn of events with not a little anxiety, for such sentiments could easily spread to the major parties of other NATO countries.<br /> <br /> The right wing of the Labour Party, which had close, not to say intimate, connections to the Congress for Cultural Freedom, Encounter, New Leader, and other CIA &quot;assets&quot; and fronts, undertook a campaign to reverse the disarmament resolution. The committee set up for the purpose issued an appeal for funds, and soon could report that many small donations had been received, together with a large sum from a source that wished to remain anonymous. Over the next year, there was sufficient funding for a permanent office, a full-time, paid chairman and paid staff, field workers, traveling expenses, tons of literature sent to a large mailing list within the movement, a regular bulletin sent free, etc.<br /> <br /> Their opponents could not come close to matching this propaganda blitz. At the 1961 conference, the unilateralist and neutralist decisions were decisively overturned and the Labour Party returned to the NATO fold.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Supporters of the CIA have invariably defended the Agency's sundry activities in Western Europe on the grounds that the Russians were the first to be so engaged there and had to be countered. Whatever truth there may be in this assertion, the fact remains, as Tom Braden has noted, that the American effort spread to some fields &quot;where they [the Russians] had not even begun to operate&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; Braden doesn't specify which fields, but it seems that political parties was one: The CIA had working/financial relationships with leading members of the West German Social Democratic Party, two parties in Austria, the Christian Democrats of Italy, and the Liberal Party, in addition to the Labour Party, in Britain,&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; and probably at least one party in every other Western European country, all of which purported to be independent of either superpower, something the various Communist parties, whether supported by the Soviet Union or not, could never get away with.<br /> <br /> The media provides another case in point. Neither Braden, nor anyone else apparently, has cited examples of publications or news agencies in Western Europe—pro-Communist or anti-Nato, etc.—which, ostensibly independent in the cold war, were covertly funded by the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> More importantly, it should be borne in mind that all the different types of enterprises and institutions supported by the CIA in Western Europe were supported by the Agency all over the Third World for decades on a routine basis without a Russian counterpart in sight. The growing strength of the left in post-war Europe was motivation enough for the CIA to develop its covert programs, and this was a circumstance deriving from World War II and the economic facts of life, not from Soviet propaganda and manipulation.<br /> <br /> Operation Gladio<br /> <br /> The rationale behind it was your standard cold-war paranoia: There's a good chance the Russians will launch an unprovoked invasion of Western Europe. And if they defeated the Western armies and forced them to flee, certain people had to remain behind to harass the Russians with guerrilla warfare and sabotage, and act as liaisons with those abroad. The &quot;stay-behinds&quot; would be provided with funds, weapons, communication equipment and training exercises. The planning for this covert paramilitary network, code-named &quot;Operation Gladio&quot; (Italian for &quot;sword&quot;), began in 1949, involving initially the British, the Americans and the Belgians. It eventually established units in every non-communist country in Europe—including Greece and Turkey and neutral Sweden and Switzerland—with the apparent exceptions of Ireland and Finland. The question of whether the units were more under the control of national governments or NATO remains purposely unclear, although from an operational point of view, it appears that the CIA and various other intelligence services were calling the shots.<br /> <br /> As matters turned out, in the complete absence of any Russian invasions, the operation was used almost exclusively to inflict political damage upon domestic leftist movements.<br /> <br /> The Gladio story broke in Italy in the fall of 1990, stemming from a judicial investigation into a 1972 car-bombing which discovered that the explosives had come from one of the 139 secret weapons depots kept for Gladio's forces in Italy. Subsequently, the head of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the matter revealed that &quot;When Gladio was started, the Americans would often insist … that the organization also had to be used to counter any insurgencies.&quot; Retired Greek Gen. Nikos Kouris told a similar story, declaring that a Greek force was formed with CIA help in 1955 to intervene in case of Communist threat, whether external or internal. &quot;There were ex-military men, specially trained soldiers and also civilians. What held them together was one ideological common denominator: extreme rightism.&quot;<br /> <br /> As in Germany (see Germany chapter), the Italian operation was closely tied to terrorists. A former Gladio agent, Roberto Cavallero, went public to charge that there was a direct link between Gladio and Italy's wave of terrorist bombings in the 1970s and early 1980s which left at least 300 dead. He said that Gladio had trained him and many others &quot;to prepare groups which, in the event of an advance by left wing forces in our country, would fill the streets, creating a situation of such tension as to require military intervention.&quot; Cavallero was of course referring to electoral advances of the Italian Communist Party, not an invasion by the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> The single worst terrorist action was the bombing at the Bologna railway station in August 1980 which claimed 86 lives. The Observer of London later reported:&lt;blockquote&gt;The Italian railway bombings were blamed on the extreme Left as part of a strategy to convince voters that the country was in a state of tension and that they had no alternative to voting the safe Christian Democrat ticket. All clues point to the fact that they were masterminded from within Gladio.&lt;/blockquote&gt;One of the men sought for questioning in Italy about the Bologna bombing, Roberto Fiore, has lived in London ever since and the British government has refused to extradite him. He is apparently under the protective wing of MI6 (Britain's CIA) for whom he has provided valuable intelligence.<br /> <br /> The kidnapping and murder in 1978 of Aldo Moro, the leader of the Christian Democrats, which was attributed to the Red Brigades, appears now to have also been the work of Gladio agents provocateur who infiltrated the organization. Just prior to his abduction, Moro had announced his intention to enter into a governmental coalition with the Communist Party.<br /> <br /> In Belgium, in 1983, to convince the public that a security crisis existed, Gladio operatives as well as police officers staged a series of seemingly random shootings in supermarkets which, whether intended or not, led to several deaths. A year later, a party of US Marines parachuted into Belgium with the intention of attacking a police station. One Belgian citizen was killed and one of the Marines lost an eye in the operation, that was intended to jolt the local Belgian police into a higher state of alert, and to give the impression to the comfortable population at large that the country was on the brink of Red revolution. Guns used in the operation were later planted in a Brussels house used by a Communist splinter group.<br /> <br /> As late as 1990, large stockpiles of weapons and explosives for Operation Gladio could still be found in some member countries, and Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti disclosed that more than 600 people still remained on the Gladio payroll in Italy.<br /> <br /> [continued on page 471]<br /> <br /> == 16. British Guiana 1953-1964: The CIA's international labor mafia ==<br /> For a period of 11 years, two of the oldest democracies in the world, Great Britain and the United States, went to great lengths to prevent a democratically elected leader from occupying his office.<br /> <br /> The man was Dr. Cheddi Jagan. The grandson of indentured immigrants from India, Jagan had become a dentist in the United States, then returned to his native Guiana. In 1953, at the age of 35, he and the People's Progressive Party (PPP) were elected by a large majority to head the government of the British colony. Jagan's victory was due in part to the fact that Indians comprised about 46 percent of the population; those of African origin made up about 36 percent.<br /> <br /> The PPP's program in office was hardly revolutionary. It encouraged foreign investment in the mining sectors while attempting to institute liberal reforms such as strengthening the rights of unionists and tenant farmers, creating a public school system that would lessen church control of education, and removing a ban on the import of &quot;undesirable&quot; publications, films and records. But the British Conservative government was not disposed to live with such policies advocated by a man who talked suspiciously like a socialist. The government and the British media, as well as the American media, subjected the Jagan administration to a campaign of red-scare accusations and plain lies in the fashion of Senator McCarthy whose -ism was then all the rage in the United States.<br /> <br /> Four and a half months after Jagan took office, the government of Winston Churchill flung him out. The British sent naval and army forces, suspended the constitution and removed the entire Guianese government. At the same time, the barristers drew up some papers which the Queen signed, so it was all nice and legal.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Her Majesty's Government,&quot; said the British Colonial Secretary during a debate in Parliament, &quot;are not prepared to tolerate the setting up of Communist states in the British Commonwealth.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The American attitude toward this slap in the face of democracy can be surmised by the refusal of the US government to allow Jagan to pass in transit through the United States when he tried to book a flight to London to attend the parliamentary debate. According to Jagan, Pan Am would not even sell him a ticket. (Pan Am has a long history of collaboration with the CIA, a practice initiated by the airline's president, Juan Trippe, the son-in-law of Roosevelt's Secretary of State, Edward R. Stettinius.)&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By this time the CIA had already gotten its foot in the door of the British Guiana labor movement, by means of the marriage of the Agency to the American Federation of Labor in the United States. One of the early offsprings of this union was the Inter-American Regional Labor Organization (ORIT from the Spanish). In the early 1950s, ORIT was instrumental in the conversion of the leading confederation of unions in Guiana, the Trades Union Council, from a militant labor organization to a vehicle of anti-communism. Wrote Serafino Romualdi, at one time the head of AIFLD (see below) and a long-time CIA collaborator: &quot;Since my first visit to British Guiana in 1951, I did everything in my power to strengthen the democratic [i.e., anti-communist] trade union forces opposed to him [Jagan].&quot;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> This was to have serious repercussions for Jagan in later years.<br /> <br /> In 1957, running on a program similar to that of four years earlier, Jagan won the election again. Following this, the British deemed it wiser to employ more subtle methods for his removal and the CIA was brought into the picture, one of the rare instances in which the Agency has been officially allowed to operate in a British bailiwick. The CIA has done so, unofficially, on numerous occasions, to the displeasure of British authorities.<br /> <br /> The CIA set to work to fortify those unions which already tended somewhat toward support of Jagan's leading political opponent, Forbes Burnham of the People's National Congress. One of the most important of these was the civil servants' union, dominated by blacks.<br /> <br /> Consequently, the CIA turned to Public Services International (PSI) in London, an international trade union secretariat for government employees, one of the international networks which exist to export the union know-how of advanced industrial countries to less-developed countries.<br /> <br /> According to a study undertaken by The Sunday Times of London, by 1958 the PSI's &quot;finances were low, and its stocks were low with its own parent body, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions [set up by the CIA in 1949 to rival the Soviet-influenced World Federation of Trade Unions]. It needed a success of some kind. The financial crisis was resolved, quite suddenly, by the PSI's main American affiliate union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).&quot; AFSCME's boss, Dr Arnold Zander, told the PSI executive that he had &quot;been shopping&quot; and had found a donor.<br /> <br /> &quot;The spoils were modest at first—only a couple of thousand pounds in 1958. It was, the kind donor had said, for Latin America. The money went towards a PSI 'recruiting drive' in the northern countries of Latin America by one William Doherty, Jr., a man with some previous acquaintance of the CIA.&quot; (Doherty was later to become the Executive Director of the American Institute for Free Labor Development, the CIA's principal labor organization in Latin America.)<br /> <br /> &quot;The donor was presumably pleased, because next year, 1959, Zander was able to tell the PSI that his union was opening a full-time Latin American section in the PSI's behalf. The PSI was charmed.&quot;<br /> <br /> The PSI's representative, said Zander, would be William Howard McCabe (a CIA labor apprentice). The Times continued:&lt;blockquote&gt;McCabe, a stocky, bullet-headed American, appeared to have no previous union history, but the PSI liked him. When he came to its meetings, he distributed cigarette lighters and photographs of himself doling out food parcels to the peasants. The lighters and the parcels were both inscribed &quot;with the compliments of the PSI&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In 1967, in the wake of numerous revelations about CIA covert financing, the new head of AFSCME admitted that the union had been heavily funded by the Agency until 1964 through a foundation conduit (see Appendix I). It was revealed that AFSCME's International Affairs Department, which had been responsible for the British Guiana operation, had actually been run by two CIA &quot;aides&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> CIA work within Third World unions typically involves a considerable educational effort, the basic premise of which is that all solutions will come to working people under a system of free enterprise, class co-operation and collective bargaining, and by opposing communism in collaboration with management and government, unless, of course, the government, as in this case, is itself &quot;communist&quot;. The most promising students, those perhaps marked as future leaders, are singled out to be sent to CIA schools in the United States for further education.<br /> <br /> The CIA, said The Sunday Times, also &quot;appears to have had a good deal of success in encouraging politicians to break away from Jagan's party and government. Their technique of financing sympathetic figures was to take out heavy insurance policies for them.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During the 1961 election campaign, the CIA's ongoing program was augmented by ad hoc operations from other American quarters. The US Information Service took the most unusual step of showing its films, depicting the evils of Castroism and communism, on street corners of British Guiana. And the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade brought its traveling road show down and spent a reported $76,000 on electoral propaganda which lived up to the organization's name.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; One historian has described this as &quot;a questionable activity for a private organization, which the State Department did nothing to discourage&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; On the other hand, the activities of US government agencies in British Guiana were no less questionable.<br /> <br /> Despite the orchestrated campaign directed against him, Jagan was re-elected by a comfortable majority of legislative seats, though with only a plurality of the popular vote.<br /> <br /> In October, at his request, Jagan was received at the White House in Washington. He had come to talk about assistance for his development program. President Kennedy and his advisers, however, were interested in determining where Jagan stood on the political spectrum before granting any aid. Oddly, the meeting, as described by Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. who was present, seemed to be conducted as if the Kennedy men were totally unaware of American destabilization activities in British Guiana.<br /> <br /> To Jagan's expressed esteem for the politics of British Labour leader Aneurin Bevan, those in the room &quot;all responded agreeably&quot;.<br /> <br /> To Jagan's professed socialism, Kennedy asserted that &quot;We are not engaged in a crusade to force private enterprise on parts of the world where it is not relevant.&quot;<br /> <br /> But when Jagan, perhaps naively, mentioned his admiration for the scholarly, leftist journal, Monthly Review, it appears that he crossed an ideological line, which silently and effectively sealed his country's fate. &quot;Jagan,&quot; wrote Schlesinger later, &quot;was unquestionably some sort of Marxist.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> No economic aid was given to British Guiana while Jagan remained in power, and the Kennedy administration pressured the British to delay granting the country its independence, which had been scheduled to occur within the next year or two.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; Not until 1966, when Jagan no longer held office, did British Guiana become the independent nation of Guyana.<br /> <br /> In February 1962, the CIA helped to organize and finance anti-Jagan protests which used the newly announced budget as a pretext. The resulting strikes, riots and arson were wholly out of proportion to the alleged instigation. A Commonwealth Commission of Enquiry later concluded (perhaps to the discomfort of the British Colonial Office which had appointed it) that:&lt;blockquote&gt;There is very little doubt that, despite the loud protestations of the trades union leaders to the contrary, political affinities and aspirations played a large part in shaping their policy and formulating their programme of offering resistance to the budget and making a determined effort to change the government in office.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The CIA arranged, as it has on similar occasions, for North American and Latin American labor organizations, with which it had close ties, to support the strikers with messages of solidarity and food, thus enhancing the appearance of a genuine labor struggle. The agency also contrived for previously unheard-of radio stations to go on the air and for newspapers to print false stories about approaching Cuban warships.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The centerpiece of the CIA's program in British Guiana was the general strike (so called, although its support was considerably less than total) which began in April 1963. It lasted for 80 days, the longest general strike in history, it is said.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> This strike, as in 1962, was called by the Trades Union Council (TUC) which, as we have seen, was a member in good standing of the CIA's international labor mafia. The head of the TUC was one Richard Ishmael who had been trained in the US at the CIA's American Institute for Free Labor Development along with other Guianese labor officials.<br /> <br /> The strike period was marked by repeated acts of violence and provocation, including attacks on Jagan's wife and some of his ministers. Ishmael himself was later cited in a secret British police report as having been part of a terrorist group which had carried out bombings and arson attacks against government buildings during the strike.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> No action was taken against Ishmael and others in this group by British authorities who missed no opportunity to exacerbate the explosive situation, hoping that it would culminate in Jagan's downfall.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, CIA agents were giving &quot;advice to local union leaders on how to organize and sustain&quot; the strike, the New York Times subsequently reported. &quot;They also provided funds and food supplies to keep the strikers going and medical supplies for pro-Burnham workers injured in the turmoil. At one point, one of the agents even served as a member of a bargaining committee from a Guiana dike workers' union that was negotiating with Dr. Jagan.&quot; This agent was later denounced by Jagan and forbidden to enter the country.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; This is probably a reference to Gene Meakins, one of the CIA's main labor operatives, who had been serving as public relations advisor and education officer to the TUC. Meakins edited a weekly paper and broadcast a daily radio program by means of which he was able to generate a great deal of anti-Jagan propaganda.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Sunday Times study concluded that:&lt;blockquote&gt;Jagan seems to have thought that the unions could hold out a month. But McCabe was providing the bulk of the strike pay, plus money for distress funds, for the strikers' daily 15 minutes on the radio and their propaganda, and considerable travelling expenses. All over the world, it seemed brother unions were clubbing together.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The mediator sent from London, Robert Willis, the general secretary of the London Typographical Society and a man not noted for his mercy in bargaining with newspaper managements was shocked. &quot;It was rapidly clear to me that the strike was wholly political&quot;, he said. &quot;Jagan was giving in to everything the strikers wanted, but as soon as he did they erected more demands&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Financial support for the strike alone, channeled through the PSI and other labour organizations by the CIA, reached the sum of at least one million dollars.<br /> <br /> American oil companies provided a further example of the multitude of resources the US can bring to bear upon a given target. The companies co-operated with the strikers by refusing to provide petroleum, forcing Jagan to appeal to Cuba for oil. During Jagan's remaining year in office, in the face of a general US economic embargo, he turned increasingly to the Soviet bloc. This practice of course provided ammunition to those critics of Jagan in British Guiana, the United States and Great Britain who insisted that he was a communist and thus fraught with all the dangers that communists are fraught with.<br /> <br /> The strike was maintained primarily by black supporters of Forbes Burnham and by employers who locked out many of Jagan's Indian supporters. This inevitably exacerbated the already existing racial tensions, although The Sunday Times asserted that the &quot;racial split was fairly amicable until the 1963 strike divided the country&quot;. Eventually, the tension broke out into bloodshed leaving hundreds dead and wounded and &quot;a legacy of racial bitterness&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Jagan was certainly aware, to some extent at least, of what was transpiring around him during the general strike. After it was over he charged that:&lt;blockquote&gt;The United States, in spite of protestations to the contrary by some of its leaders, is not prepared to permit a Socialist government or a government committed to drastic and basic reforms to exist in this hemisphere, even when this government has been freely elected … It is all too clear that the United States will only support a democratic government if it favors a classic private enterprise system.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In an attempt to surmount the hurdle of US obsession with the Soviet Union and &quot;another Cuba in the Western hemisphere&quot;, Jagan proposed that British Guiana be &quot;neutralized&quot; by an agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union, as the two powers had done in the case of Austria. Officials in Washington had no comment on the suggestion.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Cheddi Jagan's government managed to survive all the provocations and humiliations. With elections on the agenda for 1964, the British and their American cousins turned once again to the gentlemanly way of the pen.<br /> <br /> The British Colonial Secretary, Duncan Sandys, who had been a leading party to the British-CIA agreement concerning Jagan, cited the strike and general unrest as proof that Jagan could not run the country or offer the stability that the British government required for British Guiana to be granted its independence. (Sandys was the founder, in 1948, of The European Movement, a CIA-funded cold-war organization.)&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> This was, of course, a contrived position. Syndicated American columnist Drew Pearson, writing about the meeting between President Kennedy and British Prime Minister Macmillan in the summer of 1963, stated that &quot;the main thing they agreed on was that the British would refuse to grant independence to Guiana because of a general strike against pro-Communist Prime Minister, Cheddi Jagan. That strike was secretly inspired by a combination of U.S. Central Intelligence money and British intelligence. It gave London the excuse it wanted.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The excuse was used further to justify an amendment to the British Guiana constitution providing for a system of proportional representation in the election, a system that appeared certain to convert Jagan's majority of legislative seats into a plurality. Subsequently, the British-appointed Governor of British Guiana announced that he would not be bound to call on the leader of the largest party to form a government if it did not have a majority of seats, a procedure in striking contrast to that followed in Great Britain.<br /> <br /> When, in October 1964, the Labour Party succeeded the Conservative Party to power in Great Britain, Jagan had hopes that the conspiracy directed against him would be squashed, for several high-ranking Labour leaders had stated publicly, and to Jagan personally, their opposition to the underhanded and anti-democratic policy of their Conservative Party foes. Within days of taking office, however, the Labour Party dashed these hopes.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Bowing to United States wishes,&quot; the New York Times disclosed, the Labour Party &quot;ruled out early independence for British Guiana&quot; and was going ahead with the proportional representation elections. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, it was reported, had left the new British Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon-Walker, &quot;in no doubt that the United States would resist a rise of British Guiana as an independent Castro-type state&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt; On a previous occasion, Rusk had urged Gordon-Walker's Conservative predecessor, Lord Home, to suspend the British Guiana constitution again and &quot;revert to direct colonial government&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The intensive American lobbying effort against British Guiana (the actual campaign of subversion aside), led Conservative MP and former Colonial Secretary, Iain Macleod, to observe in the House of Commons: &quot;There is an irony which we all recognize in the fact of America urging us all over the world towards colonial freedom except when it approaches her own doorstep.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The day before the election of 7 December, a letter appeared in a British Guiana newspaper—a bogus pro-Communist letter, a tactic the CIA has used successfully the world over. The letter was purportedly written by Jagan's wife Janet to Communist Party members, in which she stated: &quot;We can take comfort in the thought that the PNC [Burnham's party] will not be able to stay in power long … our communist comrades abroad will continue to help us win eventual total victory.&quot;<br /> <br /> Ms. Jagan quickly retorted that she would not be so stupid as to write a letter like that, but, as in all such cases, the disclaimer trailed weakly and too late behind the accusation.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As expected, Jagan won only a plurality of the legislative seats, 24 of 53. The governor then called upon Forbes Burnham, who had come in second, to form a new government. Burnham had also been named as a terrorist in the British police report referred to earlier, as had several of his new government ministers.<br /> <br /> Jagan refused to resign. British Army troops were put on full alert in the capital city of Georgetown. A week later, Her Majesty's Government waved its hand over a piece of paper, thereby enacting another amendment to the British Guiana constitution and closing a loophole which was allowing Jagan to stall for time. He finally surrendered to the inevitable.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1990, at a conference in New York City, Arthur Schlesinger publicly apologized to Cheddi Jagan, who was also present. Schlesinger said that it was his recommendation to the British that led to the proportional representation tactic. &quot;I felt badly about my role thirty years ago,&quot; the former Kennedy aide admitted. &quot;I think a great injustice was done to Cheddi Jagan.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Four years later, with Jagan again president—having won, in 1992, the country's first free election since he had been ousted—the Clinton administration prepared to nominate a new ambassador to Guyana: William Doherty, Jr. Jagan was flabbergasted and made his feelings known, such that Doherty was dropped from consideration.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> When it was time, in 1994, for the US government to declassify its British Guiana documents under the 30-year rule, the State Department and CIA refused to do so, reported the New York Times, because &quot;it is not worth the embarassment&quot;. The newspaper added:&lt;blockquote&gt;Still-classified documents depict in unusual detail a direct order from the President to unseat Dr. Jagan, say Government officials familiar with the secret papers. Though many Presidents have ordered the CIA to undermine foreign leaders, they say the Jagan papers are a smoking gun: a clear written record, without veiled words or plausible denials, of a President's command to depose a Prime Minister.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&quot;They made a mistake putting Burnham in,&quot; said Janet Jagan looking back at it all. &quot;The regrettable part is that the country went backwards.&quot; And so it had. One of the better-off countries in the region 30 years ago, Guyana in 1994 was among the poorest. Its principal export was people.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Soviet Union late 1940s to 1960s: From spy planes to book publishing ==<br /> Information … hundreds of young Americans and émigré Russians gave their lives so that the United States could amass as much information as possible about the Soviet Union … almost any information at all about the land Churchill had described as &quot;a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma&quot;.<br /> <br /> There is no evidence, however, that any of the information collected ever saved any lives, or served any other useful purpose for the world. Today, tons of files stuffed with reports, volumes of computer printouts, tapes, photographs, etc., lie in filing cabinets, gathering dust in warehouses in the United States and West Germany. Probably a good part of the material has already been shredded. Much of it has never been looked at, and never will be.<br /> <br /> Beginning in the late 1940s, the US military, the CIA and the National Security Agency regularly sent aircraft along the borders of the Soviet Union to collect visual, photographic and electronic data of a military or industrial nature, particularly to do with Soviet missile and nuclear capability. The increasingly sophisticated planes and equipment, as well as satellites, submarines, and electronic listening posts in Turkey and Iran, produced vast amounts of computer input. At times, the planes would unintentionally drift over Soviet territory. At other times, they would do so intentionally in order to photograph a particular target, or to activate radar installations so as to capture their signals, or to evaluate the reaction of Soviet ground defenses against an attack. It was a dangerous game of aerial &quot;chicken&quot; and on many occasions the planes were met by anti-aircraft fire or Soviet fighter planes.<br /> <br /> In both 1950 and 1951, an espionage airplane with a crew of ten was shot down, with no survivors. In 1969, a crew of 31 was lost, this time to North Korean fighters over the Sea of Japan. During the intervening years, there were dozens of air incidents involving American aircraft and Communist firepower, arising from hundreds, if not thousands, of espionage flights. Some of the spy planes made it safely back to base (which might be Turkey, Iran, Greece, Pakistan, Japan or Norway) after being attacked, and even hit; others were downed with loss of life or with crew members captured by the Soviets.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> There has been considerable confusion concerning the number and the fate of US airmen captured by the Soviets after their planes made forced landings or were shot down during the 1950s and '60s. Russian president Boris Yeltsin stated in 1992 that nine US planes had been shot down in the early 1950s and twelve American survivors had been held prisoner, their ultimate fate not yet discovered. Five months later, Dmitri Volkogonov, former Soviet general and co-chairman of a Russian-US commission investigating the whole question of missing Americans, told a US Senate committee that 730 airmen had been captured on cold war spy flights, their fate likewise unclear.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The most notable of these incidents was of course the downing of the U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers on 1 May 1960. The ultra high-flying U-2 had been developed because of the vulnerability to being shot down of planes flying at normal altitudes. The disappearance of Powers and his U-2 somewhere in the Soviet Union ensnared the United States government publicly in an entanglement of a false cover story, denials, and amendments to denials. Finally, when the Russians presented Powers and his plane to the world, President Eisenhower had no alternative but to admit the truth. He pointedly added, however, that flights such as the U-2's were &quot;distasteful but vital&quot;, given the Russian &quot;fetish of secrecy and concealment&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; One of Eisenhower's advisers, Emmet John Hughes, was later to observe that it thus took the administration only six days &quot;to transform an unthinkable falsehood into a sovereign right.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On several occasions, the United States protested to the Soviet Union about Soviet attacks on American planes which were not actually over Soviet territory, but over the Sea of Japan, for example. Though engaged in espionage, such flights, strictly speaking, appear to be acceptable under international law.<br /> <br /> The most serious repercussion of the whole U-2 affair was that it doomed to failure the Eisenhower-Khrushchev summit meeting which took place two weeks later in Paris, and upon which so much hope for peace and detente had been placed by people all over the world.<br /> <br /> Was the U-2 affair the unfortunate accident of timing that history has made it out to be? Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, US Air Force, Ret. has suggested otherwise. From 1955 to 1963, Prouty served as the liaison between the CIA and the Pentagon on matters concerning military support of &quot;special operations&quot;. In his book, The Secret Team, Prouty suggests that the CIA and certain of the Agency's colleagues in the Pentagon sabotaged this particular U-2 flight, the last one scheduled before the summit. They did this, presumably, because they did not relish a lessening of cold-war tensions, their raison d'être.<br /> <br /> The method employed, Prouty surmises, was remarkably simple. The U-2's engine needed infusions of liquid hydrogen to maintain the plane's incredible altitude, which placed it outside the range of Soviet firepower and interceptor aircraft. If the hydrogen container were only partly filled upon takeoff from Turkey, it would be simply a matter of time—calculable to coincide with the plane being over Soviet territory—before the U-2 was forced to descend to a lower altitude. At this point, whether the plane was shot down or Powers bailed out, allowing it to crash, is not certain. The Soviet Union claimed that it had shot down the U-2 at its normal high altitude with a rocket, but this was probably a falsehood born of four years of frustrating failure to shoot a single U-2 from the sky. In any event, the Russians were able to present to the world a partially intact spy plane along with a fully intact spy pilot, complete with all manner of incriminating papers on him, and an unused suicide needle. The presence of identification papers was no oversight, says Prouty: deliberately, &quot;neither pilot nor plane were sanitized on this flight as was required on other flights&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Powers, in his book, doesn't discuss the liquid hydrogen at all. He believed his plane was disabled and forced to descend by the shock waves of a Soviet near-miss. But he recounts technical problems with the plane even before the presumed near-miss.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In light of the furor raised by the shooting down of a South Korean commercial airliner by the Soviet Union in 1983, which the Russians claimed was spying, it is interesting to note that Prouty also makes mention of the United States at one time using &quot;a seemingly clean national commercial airline&quot; of an unspecified foreign country &quot;to do some camera spying or other clandestine project&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> To the Russians, the spy planes were more than simply a violation of their air space, and they rejected the notion put forth by the US that the flights were just another form of espionage—&quot;intelligence collection activities are practiced by all countries&quot;, said Washington.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; (At the time there had been no indication of Soviet flights over the United States.)&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; The Russians viewed the flights as particularly provocative because airplanes are a means of conducting warfare, they can be considered as the beginning of hostilities, and may even be carrying bombs. The Russians could not forget that the Nazis had preceded their invasion of the Soviet Union with frequent reconnaissance overflights. Neither could they forget that in April 1958, US planes carrying nuclear bombs had flown over the Arctic in the direction of the USSR due to a false warning signal on American radar. The planes were called back when only two hours flying time separated them from the Soviet Union.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> No American plane dropped bombs on the Soviet Union but many of them dropped men assigned to carry out hostile missions. The men who fell from the sky were Russians who had emigrated to the West where they were recruited by the CIA and other Western intelligence organizations.<br /> <br /> The leading émigré organization was known as National Alliance of Russian Solidarists, or the National Union of Labor (NTS). It was composed largely of two distinct groups: the sons of the Russians who had gone to the West following the revolution, and those Russians who, through circumstance or choice, had wound up in Western Europe at the close of the Second World War. Members of both groups had collaborated with the Nazis during the war. Although NTS was generally classified in the right wing of the various émigré organizations, their collaboration had been motivated more by anti-Stalinism than by pro-Nazi sentiments.<br /> <br /> NTS was based primarily in West Germany where, throughout the 1950s, the CIA was the organization's chief benefactor, often its sole support. At a CIA school set up in Germany, under the imposing name of the Institute for the Study of the USSR, as well as at schools in Great Britain and the United States, the Agency provided NTS members with extensive training before airdropping them into Soviet territory. The men landed on their native soil elaborately equipped, with everything from weapons to collapsible bicycles, frogmen suits, and rubber mats for crossing electrically-charged barbed-wire fences.<br /> <br /> The Russians were returned to their homeland for a variety of reasons: to gather intelligence about military and technological installations; commit assassinations; obtain current samples of identification documents; assist Western agents to escape; engage in sabotage, for which they were well trained (methods of derailing trains and wrecking bridges, actions against arms factories and power plants, etc.); or instigate armed political struggle against Communist rule by linking up with resistance movements—a wholly unrealistic goal given the feeble state of such movements, but one which some NTS fanatics swore by.<br /> <br /> It will never be known just how many men the CIA infiltrated into the Soviet Union, not only by air but by border crossings and by boat as well; many hundreds at least. As to their fate … the Soviet Union published a book in 1961 called Caught In the Act (= CIA), in which were listed the names and other details of about two dozen infiltrators the Russians claimed to have captured, often almost immediately upon arrival. Some were executed, others received prison sentences, one allegedly was an individual who had taken part in a mass execution of Jews in German-occupied Soviet territory. The book asserts that there were many more caught who were not listed. This may have been a self-serving statement, but it was a relatively simple matter for the Russians to infiltrate the émigrés' ranks in Western Europe and learn the entire operation.<br /> <br /> The CIA, to be sure, was not naive about this practice. The Agency went so far as to torture suspected defectors in Munich—using such esoteric methods as applying turpentine to a man's testicles or sealing someone in a room and playing Indonesian music at deafening levels until he cracked.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Russians further claimed that some of those smuggled in were furnished with special radio beacons to guide planes where to land other agents, and which could also be used to direct US bombers in the event of war.<br /> <br /> Some of the émigrés made it back to Western Europe with their bits and pieces of information, or after attempting to carry out some other assignment. Others, provided with a complete set of necessary documents, were instructed to integrate themselves back into Soviet society and become &quot;agents in place&quot;. Still others, caught up in the emotions of being &quot;home&quot;, turned themselves in—once again, &quot;the human factor&quot;, which no amount of training or indoctrination can necessarily circumvent.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> No American operation against the Soviet Union would be complete without its propaganda side: bringing the gospel to the heathen, in a myriad of ways that displayed the creativity of the CIA and its team of émigrés.<br /> <br /> Novel mechanisms were developed to enable airplanes and balloons to drop anti-Communist literature over the Soviet Union. When the wind was right, countless leaflets and pamphlets were scattered across the land; or quantities of literature were floated downstream in waterproof packages.<br /> <br /> Soviet citizens coming to the West were met at every turn by NTS people handing out their newspapers and magazines in Russian and Ukrainian. To facilitate contact, NTS at times engaged in black market operations and opened small shops which catered to Russians at cheap prices. From North Africa to Scandinavia, the CIA network confronted Soviet seamen, tourists, officials, athletes, even Soviet soldiers in East Germany, to present them with the Truth as seen by the &quot;Free World&quot;, as well as to pry information from them, to induce them to defect, or to recruit them as spies. Hotel rooms were searched, phones tapped, bribes offered, or blackmail threatened in attempts to reach these ends. Actions were also undertaken to entrap or provoke Soviet diplomatic personnel so as to cause their expulsion and/or embarrass the Soviet Union.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The propaganda offensive led the US government into the book publishing business. Under a variety of arrangements with American and foreign publishers, distributors, literary agents and authors, the CIA and the United States Information Agency (USIA) produced, subsidized or sponsored &quot;well over a thousand books&quot; by 1967 which were deemed to serve a propaganda need.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; Many of the books were sold in the United States as well as abroad. None bore any indication of US government involvement. Of some, said the USIA, &quot;We control the things from the very idea down to the final edited manuscript.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Some books were published, and at times written, only after the USIA or the CIA agreed to purchase a large number of copies. There is no way of determining what effect this financial incentive had upon a publisher or author concerning a book's tone and direction. In some cases, Washington released classified information to an author to assist him or her in writing the book. In 1967, following revelations about CIA domestic activities, this practice purportedly came to an end in the US although it continued abroad. A Senate committee in 1976 stated that during the preceding few years, the CIA had been connected with the publication of some 250 books, mostly in foreign languages.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; Some of these were most likely later reprinted in the United States.<br /> <br /> The actual identity of most of the books, however, is still classified. Among those which have been revealed are: The Dynamics of Soviet Society by Walt Rostow, The New Class by Milovan Djilas, Concise History of the Communist Party by Robert A. Burton, The Foreign Aid Programs of the Soviet Bloc and Communist China by Kurt Muller, In Pursuit of World Order by Richard N. Gardner, Peking and People's Wars by Major General Sam Griffith, The Yenan Way by Eudocio Ravines, Life and Death in Soviet Russia by Valentin Gonzalez, The Anthill by Suzanne Labin, The Politics of Struggle: The Communist Front and Political Warfare by James D. Atkinson, From Colonialism to Communism by Hoang Van Chi, Why Vietnam? by Frank Trager, and Terror in Vietnam by Jay Mallin. In addition, the CIA financed and distributed throughout the world the animated cartoon film of George Orwell's Animal Farm.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;.<br /> <br /> The most pervasive propaganda penetration of the socialist bloc was by means of the airwaves: Numerous transmitters, tremendous wattage, and often round-the-clock programming brought Radio Liberty and Radio Free Russia to the Soviet Union, Radio Free Europe and Radio in the American Sector to Eastern Europe, and the Voice of America to all parts of the world. With the exception of the last, the stations were ostensibly private organizations financed by &quot;gifts&quot; from American corporations, nickel-and-dime donations from the American public, and other private sources. In actuality, the CIA covertly funded almost all of the costs until 1971; exposure of the Agency's role in 1967 (although it had been widely assumed long before then) led to Congress eventually instituting open governmental financing of the stations.<br /> <br /> The stations served the purpose of filling in some of the gaps and correcting the falsehoods of the Communist media, but could not escape presenting a picture of the world, both East and West, shot through with their own omissions and distortions. Their mission in life was to emphasize whatever could make the Communist regimes look bad. &quot;To many in the CIA,&quot; wrote Victor Marchetti, former senior official of the Agency, &quot;the primary value of the radios was to sow discontent in Eastern Europe and, in the process, to weaken the communist governments&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Many of the Russians who worked for the various stations, which broadcast at length about freedom, democracy and other humanitarian concerns, were later identified by the US Justice Department as members of Hitler's notorious Einsatzgruppen, which rounded up and killed numerous Jews in the Soviet Union. One of these worthies was Stanislaw Stankievich, under whose command a mass murder of Jews in Byelorussia was carried out in which babies were buried alive with the dead, presumably to save ammunition. Stankievich wound up working for Radio Liberty. German war criminals as well were employed by the CIA in a variety of anti-Soviet operations.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By every account, the sundry programs to collect strategic information about the Soviet Union, particularly via infiltration into the country and encountering Soviet nationals in the West, were a singular flop. The information reported was usually trivial, spotty, garbled, or out-of-date. Worse, it was often embellished, if not out-and-out fabricated. Many post-war émigrés in Western Europe made their living in the information business. It was their most saleable commodity. From a real or fictitious meeting with a Soviet citizen they would prepare a report which was often just ordinary facts with a bit of political color added on. At times, as many as four versions of the report would be produced, differing in style and quantity of &quot;facts&quot;; written by four different people, the reports would then be sold separately to US, British, French and West German intelligence agencies. The CIA's version contained everything in the other three versions, which were eventually transmitted to the Agency by the other countries without their source being revealed. Analysis of all the reports tended to bring the CIA to the conclusion that the NTS was giving them the fullest picture of all, and that the information all tallied. NTS looked good, and the files grew thick.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA's Russian files in Washington, meanwhile, approached mountainous proportions with the data acquired from opening mail between the Soviet Union and the United States, a practice begun in the early 1950s and continued at least into the 1970s.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt; (Said a Post Office counsel in 1979: &quot;If there was no national security mail cover program, the FBI might be inhibited in finding out if a nation was planning war against us.&quot;)&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Former CIA officer Harry Rositzke, who was closely involved with anti-Soviet operations after the war, later wrote that the primary task of the émigrés infiltrated into the Soviet Union during the early years—and the same could probably be said of the spy-planes—was to provide &quot;early warning&quot; of a Soviet military offensive against the West, an invasion which, in the minds of cold-warriors in the American government, appeared perpetually &quot;imminent&quot;. This apprehension was reminiscent of the alarms sounded following the Russian Revolution (see Introduction to the Original Edition) and similarly flourished despite the fact of a Russia recently devastated by a major war and hardly in a position to undertake a military operation of any such magnitude. Nevertheless, wrote Rositzke, &quot;It was officially estimated that Soviet forces were capable of reaching the English Channel in a matter of weeks. … It was an axiom in Washington that Stalin was plotting war. When would it come?&quot; He pointed out, however, that &quot;The mere existence of radio-equipped agents on Soviet terrain with no early warnings to report had some cautionary value in tempering the war scare among the military estimators at the height of the Cold War.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A secret report of the National Security Resources Board of January 1951 warned: &quot;As things are now going, by 1953 if not 1952, the Soviet aggressors will assume complete control of the world situation.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Rositzke, although a committed anti-Communist, recognized the unreality of such thinking. But, as he explained, his was a minority opinion in official Washington:&lt;blockquote&gt;The facts available even at the time suggested the far greater likelihood that Moscow's postwar strategy, including the conversion of Eastern Europe into a western buffer, was basically defensive. I argued this thesis with some of the CIA analysts working on Soviet estimates and with some Pentagon audiences, but it was not a popular view at the time. It is nonetheless a simple fact that no scenario was written then, nor has it been written since, to explain why the Russians would want to conquer Western Europe by force or to bomb the United States. Neither action would have contributed in any tangible way to the Soviet national interest and would have hazarded the destruction of the Soviet state. This basic question was never raised, for the Cold War prism created in the minds of the diplomatic and military strategists a clear-cut world of black and white; there were no grays.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Several years were to pass, Rositzke pointed out, before it became clear to Washington that there were no warnings, early or otherwise, to report. This, however, had no noticeable effect upon the United States' military build-up or cold-war propaganda.<br /> <br /> == Italy 1950s to 1970s: Supporting the Cardinal's orphans and techno-fascism ==<br /> After the multifarious extravaganza staged by the United States in 1948 to exorcise the spectre of Communism that was haunting Italy, the CIA settled in place for the long haul with a less flamboyant but more insidious operation.<br /> <br /> A White House memorandum, prepared after the 1953 election, reported that &quot;Neither the Moscow war stick nor the American economic carrot was being visibly brandished over the voters in this election.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Covert funding was the name of the game. Victor Marchetti, former executive assistant to the Deputy Director of the CIA, has revealed that in the 1950s the Agency &quot;spent some $20 to $30 million a year, or maybe more, to finance its programs in Italy.&quot; Expenditures in the 1960s, he added, came to about $10 million annually.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA itself has admitted that between 1948 and 1968, it paid a total of $65,150,000 to the Christian Democrats and other parties, to labor groups, and to a wide variety of other organizations in Italy.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; It also spent an undisclosed amount in support of magazines and book publishers and other means of news and opinion manipulation, such as planting news items in non-American media around the world which cast unfavorable light upon communism, then arranging for these stories to be reprinted in friendly Italian publications.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It is not known when, if ever, the CIA ended its practice of funding anti-Communist groups in Italy. Internal Agency documents of 1972 reveal contributions of some $10 million to political parties, affiliated organizations, and 21 individual candidates in the parliamentary elections of that year.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; At least $6 million was passed to political leaders for the June 1976 elections.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; And in the 1980s, CIA Director William Casey arranged for Saudi Arabia to pay $2 million to prevent the Communists from achieving electoral gains in Italy.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Moreover, the largest oil company in the United States, Exxon Corp., admitted that between 1963 and 1972 it had made political contributions to the Christian Democrats and several other Italian political parties totaling $46 million to $49 million. Mobil Oil Corp. also contributed to the Italian electoral process to the tune of an average $500,000 a year from 1970 through 1973. There is no report that these corporate payments derived from persuasion by the CIA or the State Department, but it seems rather unlikely that the firms would engage so extravagantly in this unusual sideline with complete spontaneity.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Much of the money given by the CIA to Italian political parties since World War II, said a former high-level US official, ended up &quot;in villas, in vacation homes and in Swiss bank accounts for the politicians themselves.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A more direct American intervention into the 1976 elections was in the form of propaganda. Inasmuch as political advertising is not allowed on Italian television, the US Ambassador to Switzerland, Nathaniel Davis, arranged for the purchase of large blocks of time on Monte Carlo TV to present a daily &quot;news&quot; commentary by the editorial staff of the Milan newspaper Il Giornale Nuovo, which was closely associated with the CIA. It was this newspaper that, in May 1981, set in motion that particular piece of international disinformation known as &quot;The KGB Plot to Kill the Pope&quot;.<br /> <br /> Another Italian newspaper, the Daily American of Rome, for decades the country's leading English-language paper, was for a long period in the 1950s to the '70s partly owned and/or managed by the CIA. &quot;We 'had' at least one newspaper in every foreign capital at any given time,&quot; the CIA admitted in 1977, referring to papers owned outright or heavily subsidized, or infiltrated sufficiently to have stories printed which were useful to the Agency or suppress those it found detrimental.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Ambassador Davis also arranged for news items which had been placed in various newspapers by the Agency to be read on Monte Carlo TV and Swiss TV, both of which were received in Italy. The programs were produced in Milan by Franklin J. Tonnini of the US Diplomatic Corps, and Michael Ledeen, a reporter with Il Giornale Nuovo.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; (Ledeen, an American, was later a consultant to the Reagan administration and a senior fellow at the conservative think-tank of Georgetown University in Washington, the Center for Strategic and International Studies.)<br /> <br /> The relentless fight against the Italian Communist Party took some novel twists. One, in the 1950s, was the brainchild of American Ambassador Clare Booth Luce. The celebrated Ms. Luce (playwright and wife of Time magazine publisher Henry Luce) decided to make it known that no US Department of Defense procurement contracts would be awarded to Italian firms whose employees had voted to be represented by the Communist-controlled labor union. In the case of Fiat, this had dramatic results: The Communist union's share of the vote promptly fell from 60 to 38 percent.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Then there was the case of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini, another beneficiary of CIA largesse. The payments made to him reveal something of the Agency's mechanistic thinking about why people become radicals. It seems that the good Cardinal was promoting orphanages in Italy during the 1950s and 1960s and, says Victor Marchetti, &quot;The thinking was that if such institutions were adequately supported, many young people would be able to live well there and so would not one day fall into Communist hands.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; The Cardinal, as a Monsignor, had been involved with the Vatican's operation to smuggle Nazis to freedom after World War II. He had a long history of association with Western governments and their intelligence agencies. In 1963, he became Pope Paul VI.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In a 1974 interview, Marchetti also spoke of the training provided by the Agency to the Italian security services:&lt;blockquote&gt;They are trained, for example, to confront disorders and student demonstrations, to prepare dossiers, to make the best possible use of bank data and tax returns of individual citizens, etc. In other words, to watch over the population of their country with the means offered by technology. This is what I call techno-fascism.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;William Colby, later Director of the CIA, arrived in Italy in 1953 as station chief and devoted the next five years of his life to financing and advising center/right organizations for the express purpose of inducing the Italian people to turn away from the leftist bloc, particularly the Communist Party, and keep it from taking power in the 1958 elections. In his account of that period he justifies this program on the grounds of supporting &quot;democracy&quot; or &quot;center democracy&quot; and preventing Italy from becoming a Soviet satellite. Colby perceived all virtue and truth to be bunched closely around the center of the political spectrum, and the Italian Communist Party to be an extremist organization committed to abolishing democracy and creating a society modeled after the (worst?) excesses of Stalinist Russia. He offers no evidence to support his conclusion about the Communists, presumably because he regards it as self-evident, as much to the reader as to himself. Neither, for that matter, does he explain what was this thing called &quot;democracy&quot; which he so cherishes and which the Communists were so eager to do away with.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;.<br /> <br /> Colby comes across as a technocrat who carried out the orders of his &quot;side&quot; and mouthed the party line without serious examination. When Oriana Fallaci, the Italian journalist, interviewed him in 1976, she remarked at the close of a frustrating conversation, &quot;Had you been born on the other side of the barricade, you would have been a perfect Stalinist.&quot; To which, Colby replied: &quot;I reject that statement. But … well … it might be. No, no. It might not.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> American policy makers dealing with Italy in the decades subsequent to Colby's time there did not suffer any less than he from hardening of the categories. Colby, after all, took pains to point out his liberal leanings. These were men unable to view the Italian Communist Party in its indigenous political context, but only as a &quot;national security&quot; threat to the United States and NATO. Yet, all those years, the party was proceeding along a path revisionist enough to make Lenin turn in his grave if he were in one. The path was marked by billboards proclaiming the &quot;democratic advance to socialism&quot; and the &quot;national road to socialism&quot;, the abandonment of &quot;the dictatorship of the proletariat&quot; and the denunciation of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The party pushed its &quot;national&quot; role as responsible opposition, participated in &quot;the drive for productivity&quot;, affirmed its support for a multiparty system and for Italy remaining in the Common Market and in NATO, and was second to none in its condemnation of any form of terrorism. On many occasions, it was the principal political force in city governments including Rome, Florence and Venice, without any noticeable return to barbarism, and was a de facto participant in the running of the Italian state. (The Socialist Party, a prime target of the United States in the 1948 elections, was a formal member of the government for much of the 1960s to the 1990s.)<br /> <br /> In the files of the State Department and the CIA lie any number of internal reports prepared by anonymous analysts testifying to the reality of the Communist Party's &quot;historic compromise&quot; and the evolution of its estrangement from the Soviet Union known as &quot;Eurocommunism.&quot;<br /> <br /> In the face of this, however—in the face of everything—American policy remained rooted in place, fixed in a time that was no longer, and probably never was; a policy that had nothing to do with democracy (by whatever definition) and everything to do with the conviction that a Communist government in Italy would not have been the supremely pliant cold-war partner that successive Christian Democrat regimes were for decades. It would not have been enough for such a government to be independent of Moscow. The problem with a Communist government was that it would probably have tried to adopt the same position towards Washington.<br /> <br /> == Vietnam 1950-1973: The hearts and minds circus ==<br /> Contrary to repeated statements by Washington officials during the 1960s that the United States did not intervene in Vietnam until, and only because, &quot;North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam&quot;, the US was deeply and continually involved in that woeful land from the year 1950 onwards.<br /> <br /> The initial, fateful step was the decision to make large-scale shipments of military equipment (tanks, transport planes, etc.) to the French in Vietnam in the spring and summer of 1950. In April, Secretary of State Dean Acheson had told French officials that the United States government was set against France negotiating with their Northern-based Vietnamese foes, the Vietminh&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; (also spelled Viet Minh or Viet-Minh: the name was short for League for the Independence of Vietnam, a broadly-based nationalist movement led by Communists). Washington was not particularly sympathetic to France's endeavor to regain control of its colony of 100 years and had vacillated on the issue, but the rise to power of the Communists in China the previous autumn had tipped the scale in favor of supporting the French. To the Truman administration, the prospect of another Communist government in Asia was intolerable. There was a secondary consideration as well at the time: the need to persuade a reluctant France to support American plans to include Germany in West European defense organizations.<br /> <br /> During World War II, the Japanese had displaced the French. Upon the defeat of Japan, the Vietminh took power in the North, while the British occupied the South, but soon turned it back to the French. Said French General Jean Leclerc in September 1945: &quot;I didn't come back to Indochina to give Indochina back to the Indochinese.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Subsequently, the French emphasized that they were fighting for the &quot;free world&quot; against communism, a claim made in no small part to persuade the United States to increase its aid to them.<br /> <br /> American bombers, military advisers and technicians by the hundreds were to follow the first aid shipments, and over the next few years direct American military aid to the French war effort ran to about a billion dollars a year. By 1954, the authorized aid had reached the sum of $1.4 billion and constituted 78 percent of the French budget for the war.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The extensive written history of the American role in Indochina produced by the Defense Department, later to be known as &quot;The Pentagon Papers&quot;, concluded that the decision to provide aid to France &quot;directly involved&quot; the United States in Vietnam and &quot;set&quot; the course for future American policy.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> There had been another path open. In 1945 and 1946, Vietminh leader Ho Chi Minh had written at least eight letters to President Truman and the State Department asking for America's help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French. He wrote that world peace was being endangered by French efforts to reconquer Indochina and he requested that the &quot;four powers&quot; (US, USSR, China, and Great Britain) intervene in order to mediate a fair settlement and bring the Indochinese issue before the United Nations.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; (This was a remarkable repeat of history. In 1919, following the First World War, Ho Chi Minh had appealed to US Secretary of State Robert Lansing for America's help in achieving basic civil liberties and an improvement in the living conditions for the colonial subjects of French Indochina. This plea, too, was ignored.)&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Despite the fact that Ho Chi Minh and his followers had worked closely with the American OSS (the forerunner of the CIA) during the recently ended world war, while the French authorities in Indochina had collaborated with the Japanese, the United States failed to answer any of the letters, did not reveal that it had received them, and eventually sided with the French. In 1950, part of the publicly stated rationale for the American position was that Ho Chi Minh was not really a &quot;genuine nationalist&quot; but rather a tool of &quot;international communism&quot;, a conclusion that could be reached only by deliberately ignoring the totality of his life's work. He and the Vietminh had, in fact, been long-time admirers of the United States. Ho trusted the US more than he did the Soviet Union and reportedly had a picture of George Washington and a copy of the American Declaration of Independence on his desk. According to a former OSS officer, Ho sought his advice on framing the Vietminh's own declaration of independence. The actual declaration of 1945 begins with the familiar &quot;All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But it was the French who were to receive America's blessing. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of communist.<br /> <br /> The United States viewed the French struggle in Vietnam and their own concurrent intervention in Korea as two links in the chain aimed at &quot;containing&quot; China. Washington was adamantly opposed to the French negotiating an end to the war which would leave the Vietminh in power, in the northern part of the country, and, at the same time, free the Chinese to concentrate exclusively on their Korean border. In 1952, the US exerted strong pressure upon France not to pursue peace feelers extended by the Vietminh, and a French delegation, scheduled to meet with Vietminh negotiators in Burma, was hastily recalled to Paris.<br /> <br /> Bernard Fall, the renowned French scholar on Indochina, believed that the canceled negotiations &quot;could perhaps have brought about a cease-fire on a far more acceptable basis&quot; for the French &quot;than the one obtained two years later in the shadow of crushing military defeat&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Subsequently, to keep the French from negotiating with the Vietminh, the United States used the threat of a cessation of their substantial economic and military aid.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; (This prompted a French newspaper to comment that &quot;the Indochina War has become France's number one dollar-earning export&quot;.)&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In November 1953, the omnipresent CIA airline, CAT, helped the French air force airlift 16,000 men into a fortified base the French had established in a valley in the North called Dien Bien Phu. When the garrison was later surrounded and cut off by the Vietminh, CAT pilots, flying US Air Force C-119s, often through anti-aircraft fire, delivered supplies to the beleaguered French forces, in this their Waterloo.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By 1954, the New York Times could report that &quot;The French Air Force is now almost entirely equipped with American planes.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; The United States had also constructed a number of airfields, ports and highways in Indochina to facilitate the war effort, some of which American forces were to make use of in their later wars in that area.<br /> <br /> In April 1954, when a French military defeat was apparent and negotiations at Geneva were scheduled, the National Security Council urged President Eisenhower &quot;to inform Paris that French acquiescence in a Communist take-over of Indochina would bear on its status as one of the Big Three&quot; and that &quot;U.S. aid to France would automatically cease&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A Council paper recommended that &quot;It be U.S. policy to accept nothing short of a military victory in Indo-China&quot; and that the &quot;U.S. actively oppose any negotiated settlements in Indo-China at Geneva&quot;. The Council stated further that, if necessary, the US should consider continuing the war without French participation.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Eisenhower administration had for some time very seriously considered committing American combat troops to Vietnam. Apparently this move was not made only because of uncertainty about congressional approval and the refusal of other countries to send even a token force, as they had done in Korea, to remove the appearance of a purely American operation.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; &quot;We are confronted by an unfortunate fact,&quot; lamented Secretary of State John Foster Dulles at a 1954 Cabinet meeting. &quot;Most of the countries of the world do not share our view that Communist control of any government anywhere is in itself a danger and a threat.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In May, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Arthur Radford, sent a memorandum to Defense Secretary Charles Wilson on &quot;Studies With Respect to Possible U.S. Actions Regarding Indochina&quot; which stated that &quot;The employment of atomic weapons is contemplated in the event that such course appears militarily advantageous.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt; (General Charles Willoughby, MacArthur's director of intelligence, put it a bit more poetically when he advocated the use of atomic bombs &quot;to create a belt of scorched earth across the avenues of communism to block the Asiatic hordes&quot;.)&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By this time, two American aircraft carriers equipped with atomic weapons had been ordered into the Gulf of Tonkin, in the North of Vietnam,&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt; and Dulles is, in fact, reported to have offered his French counterpart, Georges Bidault, atomic bombs to save Dien Bien Phu. Bidault was obliged to point out to Dulles that the use of atomic bombs in a war of such close armed conflict would destroy the French troops as well as the Vietminh.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Dulles regularly denounced China, in the ultra-sanctimonious manner he was known for, for assisting the Vietminh, as if the Chinese had no cause or right to be alarmed about an anti-communist military crusade taking place scant miles from their border. As the Geneva conference approached, a CIA propaganda team in Singapore began to disseminate fabricated news items to advance the idea that &quot;the Chinese were giving full armed support to the Viet-Minh&quot; and to &quot;identify&quot; the Viet-Minh &quot;with the world Communist movement&quot;. The CIA believed that such stories would strengthen the non-Communist side at the Geneva talks.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Joseph Burkholder Smith was a CIA officer in Singapore. His &quot;press asset&quot; was one Li Huan Li, an experienced local journalist. It is instructive to note the method employed in the creation and dissemination of one such news report about the Chinese. After Smith and Li had made up their story, Li attended the regular press conference held by the British High Commissioner in Singapore, Malcolm MacDonald. At the conference, Li mentioned the report and asked the Commissioner if he had any comment. As expected, MacDonald had nothing to say about it one way or the other. The result was the following news item:&lt;blockquote&gt;MORE CHINESE SUPPLIES AND TROOPS SPOTTED EN ROUTE TO HAIPHONG. At the press conference of the British High Commissioner for Southeast Asia today, reports of the sightings of Chinese naval vessels and supply ships in the Tonkin Gulf en route from Hainan to Haiphong were again mentioned.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;According to these reports, the most recent of many similar sightings occurred one week ago when a convoy of ten ships were spotted. Among them were two armed Chinese naval vessels indicating that the convoy consisted of troops as well as arms and supplies.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;High Commissioner Malcolm MacDonald would not elaborate further about these reports.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The story was put onto a wire service in the morning, and by the evening had gone around the world, coming back to Singapore on the European relay to Asia.<br /> <br /> The Geneva conference, on 20 July 1954, put a formal end to the war in Vietnam. The United States was alone in refusing to sign the Final Declaration, purely because it was peeved at the negotiated settlement, which precluded any further military effort to defeat the Vietminh. There had been ample indication of American displeasure with the whole process well before the end of the conference. Two weeks earlier, for example, President Eisenhower had declared at a news conference: &quot;I will not be a party to any treaty that makes anybody a slave; now that is all there is to it.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; But the US did issue a &quot;unilateral declaration&quot; in which it agreed to &quot;refrain from the threat or the use of force to disturb&quot; the accords.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The letter and the spirit of the ceasefire agreement and the Final Declaration looked forward to a Vietnam free from any military presence other than Vietnamese or French, and free from any aggressive operations. However, while the conference was still in session in June, the United States began assembling a paramilitary team inside Vietnam. By August, only days after the close of the conference, the team was in place. Under the direction of CIA leading-light Edward Lansdale, fresh from his success in the Philippines, a campaign of military and psychological warfare was carried out against the Vietminh. (Lansdale's activities in Vietnam were later enshrined in two semi-fictional works, The Ugly American and The Quiet American.) Over the next six months, Lansdale's clandestine team executed such operations as the following:&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Encouraged the migration of Vietnamese from the North to the South through &quot;an extremely intensive, well-coordinated, and, in terms of its objective, very successful … psychological warfare operation. Propaganda slogans and leaflets appealed to the devout Catholics with such themes as 'Christ has gone to the South' and the 'Virgin Mary has departed from the North'.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Distributed other bogus leaflets, supposedly put out by the Vietminh, to instill trepidation in the minds of people in the North about how life would be under Communist rule. The following day, refugee registration to move South tripled. (The exodus of Vietnamese to the South during the &quot;regrouping&quot; period that followed the Geneva Accords was often cited by American officials in the 1960s, as well as earlier, as proof of the fact that the people did not want to live under communism—&quot;They voted with their feet&quot; was the catchphrase.) Still other &quot;Vietminh&quot; leaflets were aimed at discouraging people in the South from returning to the North.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Infiltrated paramilitary forces into the North under the guise of individuals choosing to live there.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Contaminated the oil supply of the bus company in Hanoi so as to lead to a gradual wreckage of the bus engines.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Took &quot;the first actions for delayed sabotage of the railroad (which required teamwork with a CIA special technical team in Japan who performed their part brilliantly).&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Instigated a rumor campaign to stir up hatred of the Chinese, with the usual stories of rapes.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Created and distributed an almanac of astrological predictions carefully designed to play on Vietnamese fears and superstitions and undermine life in the North while making the future of the South appear more attractive.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Published and circulated anti-Communist articles and &quot;news&quot; reports in newspapers and leaflets.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Attempted, unsuccessfully, to destroy the largest printing establishment in the North because it intended to remain in Hanoi and do business with the Vietminh.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Laid some of the foundation for the future American war in Vietnam by: sending selected Vietnamese to US Pacific bases for guerrilla training; training the armed forces of the South who had fought with the French; creating various military support facilities in the Philippines; smuggling into Vietnam large quantities of arms and military equipment to be stored in hidden locations; developing plans for the &quot;pacification of Vietminh and dissident areas&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;At the same time, the United States began an economic boycott against the North Vietnamese and threatened to blacklist French firms which were doing business with them.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Another development during this period that had very profound consequences for the coming tragedy was the cancelation of the elections that would have united North and South Vietnam as one nation.<br /> <br /> The Geneva Accords specified that elections under international supervision were to be held in July 1956, with &quot;consultations&quot; to prepare for them to be held &quot;from 20 July 1955 onwards&quot;. The United States, in its unilateral declaration, had reiterated this pledge: &quot;In the case of nations now divided against their will, we shall continue to seek to achieve unity through free elections supervised by the United Nations to insure that they are conducted fairly.&quot;<br /> <br /> The elections were never held. On 16 July 1955, four days before the consultations were scheduled to begin, President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam issued a statement that made it clear that he had no intention of engaging in the consultations, much less the elections.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt; Three days later, North Vietnam sent Diem a formal note calling for the talks, but Diem remained firm in his position. Efforts by France and Great Britain to persuade Diem to begin the talks were to no avail.<br /> <br /> The reason for Diem's intransigence is well known. He, like President Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles, knew that Ho Chi Minh would be a certain winner of any national elections. A CIA National Intelligence Estimate in the autumn concluded that the Diem regime (which Lansdale himself called &quot;fascistic&quot;)&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt; &quot;almost certainly would not be able to defeat the communists in country-wide elections.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt; Later, Eisenhower was to write in his memoirs: &quot;I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80 percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bao Dai.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt; (The latter was Diem's predecessor.)<br /> <br /> The study of the Pentagon papers cited &quot;State Department cables and National Security Council memorandums indicating that the Eisenhower Administration wished to postpone the elections as long as possible and communicated its feelings to Mr. Diem.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> This was support that Diem could not have done without, for, as the Pentagon historians point out: &quot;Without the threat of U.S. intervention, South Vietnam could not have refused to even discuss the elections called for in 1956 under the Geneva settlement without being immediately overrun by the Vietminh armies.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The public statements of Diem and Dulles spoke only of their concern that the elections would not be &quot;free&quot;, which served to obscure the fact that Ho Chi Minh did not need to resort to fraud in order to win, as well as ignoring the announcements of both the United Nations and the International Control Commission (set up in Vietnam by the Geneva Accords) that they were ready to supervise the elections.<br /> <br /> In any event, Diem's commitment to free elections may be surmised from a referendum he held in October 1955 in South Vietnam to invest his regime with a semblance of legality, in which he received 98.2 percent of the vote. Life magazine later reported that Diem's American advisers had told him that a 60 percent margin would be quite sufficient and would look better, &quot;but Diem insisted on 98 percent&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> With the elections canceled, the nation still divided, and Diem with his &quot;mandate&quot; free to continue his heavy, tyrannical rule, the turn to violence in South Vietnam became inevitable.<br /> <br /> As if in knowledge of and preparation for this, the United States sent 350 additional military men to Saigon in May 1956, an &quot;example of the U.S. ignoring&quot; the Geneva Accords, stated the Pentagon study.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt; Shortly afterwards, Dulles confided to a colleague: &quot;We have a clean base there now, without a taint of colonialism. Dienbienphu was a blessing in disguise.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Later Phase<br /> <br /> &quot;If you grab 'em by the balls, the hearts and minds will follow&quot; … &quot;Give us your hearts and minds or we'll burn down your goddamn village&quot; … the end result of America's anti-communist policy in Vietnam; also its beginning and its middle.<br /> <br /> There was little serious effort to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people, even less chance of success, for the price of success was social change, of the kind that Diem was unwilling to accept in Vietnam, the kind the United States was not willing to accept anywhere in the Third World. If Washington had been willing to accept such change—which they have always routinely and disparagingly dismissed as &quot;socialist&quot;—there would have been no need to cancel the elections or to support Diem, no need for intervention in the first place. There was, consequently, no way the United States could avoid being seen by the people of Vietnam as other than the newest imperialist occupiers, following in the footsteps of first the Chinese, then the French, then the Japanese, then the French again.<br /> <br /> We will not go into a detailed recounting of all the horrors, all the deceptions, the destruction of a society, the panorama of absurdities and ironies; only a selection, a montage, lest we forget.<br /> <br /> To the men who walked the corridors of power in Washington, to the military men in the field, Indochina—nay, southeast Asia—was a single, large battlefield.<br /> <br /> Troops of South Vietnam were used in Laos and Cambodia.<br /> <br /> Troops of Thailand were used in Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam.<br /> <br /> Thailand and the Philippines were used as bases from which to bomb the three countries of Indochina.<br /> <br /> Military officers in South Vietnam, Thailand, and Taiwan were trained at American schools in the Philippines.<br /> <br /> CIA-supported forces carried out incursions and invasions into China from Laos, Burma and Taiwan.<br /> <br /> When there was a (much-publicized) pause in the bombing of North Vietnam, more American planes were thus available to increase the bombing of Laos.<br /> <br /> And so it went.<br /> <br /> From 1955 to 1959, Michigan State University, under a US government contract, conducted a covert police training program for the South Vietnamese. With the full knowledge of certain MSU officials, five CIA operatives were concealed in the staff of the program and carried on the university's payroll as its employees. By the terms of a 1957 law, drawn up by the MSU group, every Vietnamese 15 years and older was required to register with the government and carry ID cards. Anyone caught without the proper identification was considered as a National Liberation Front (Vietcong) suspect and subject to imprisonment or worse. At the time of registration, a full set of fingerprints was obtained and information about the person's political beliefs was recorded.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> When popular resistance to Ngo Dinh Diem reached the level where he was more of a liability than an asset he was sacrificed. On 1 November 1963, some of Diem's generals overthrew him and then murdered both him and his brother after they had surrendered. The coup, wrote Time magazine, &quot;was planned with the knowledge of Dean Rusk and Averell Harriman at the State Department, Robert S. McNamara and Roswell Gilpatrick at the Defense Department and the late Edward R. Murrow at the U.S Information Agency.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Evidently Washington had not planned on assassinations accompanying the coup, but as General Maxwell Taylor, President Kennedy's principal military adviser, has observed: &quot;The execution of a coup is not like organizing a tea party; it's a very dangerous business. So I didn't think we had any right to be surprised … when Diem and his brother were murdered.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Donald Duncan was a member of the Green Berets in Vietnam. He has written about his training, part of which was called &quot;countermeasures to hostile interrogation&quot;, ostensibly how Americans captured by Communists could deal with being tortured. Translations of an alleged Soviet interrogation manual were handed out to the class. The manual described in detail such methods as the &quot;Airplane Ride&quot; (hanging by the thumbs), the Cold-Hot Water Treatment, and the lowering of a man's testicles into a jeweler's vise, while the instructor, a Sergeant Lacey, explained some variations of these methods. Then a student had a question:&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Sergeant Lacey, the name of this class is 'Countermeasures to Hostile Interrogation,' but you have spent most of the period telling us there are no countermeasures. If this is true, then the only reason for teaching them [the torture methods], it seems to me, is so that we'll know how to use them. Are you suggesting we use these methods?&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The class laughs, and Lacey looks down at the floor creating a dramatic pause. When he raises his head, his face is solemn but his deep set eyes are dancing. &quot;We can't tell you that, Sergeant Harrison. The Mothers of America wouldn't approve.&quot; The class bursts into laughter at the sarcastic cynicism. &quot;Furthermore,&quot; a conspiratorial wink, &quot;we will deny that any such thing is taught or intended.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;At the US Navy's schools in San Diego and Maine during the 1960s and 1970s, the course had a different name. There, the students were supposedly learning about methods of &quot;survival, evasion, resistance and escape&quot; which they could use as prisoners of war. There was in the course something of survival in a desert, where students were forced to eat lizards, but the naval officers and cadets were also subjected to beatings, jarring judo flips, &quot;tiger cages&quot;—hooded and placed in a 16-cubic-foot box for 22 hours with a coffee can for their excrement—and a torture device called the &quot;water board&quot;: the subject strapped to an inclined board, head downward, a towel placed over his face, and cold water poured over the towel; he would choke, gag, retch and gurgle as he experienced the sensation of drowning, just as was done to Vietcong prisoners in Vietnam, along with the tiger cages.<br /> <br /> A former student, Navy pilot Lt. Wendell Richard Young, claimed that his back was broken during the course and that students were tortured into spitting, urinating and defecating on the American flag, masturbating before guards, and, on one occasion, engaging in sex with an instructor.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Fabrications were required to support the varied State Department claims about the nature of the war and the reasons for the American military actions. A former CIA officer, Philip Liechty, stated in 1982 that in the early 1960s he saw written plans to take large amounts of Communist-bloc arms, load them on a Vietnamese boat, fake a battle in which the boat would be sunk in shallow water, then call in Western reporters to see the captured weapons as proof of outside aid to the Vietcong. This is precisely what occurred in 1965. The State Department's white paper, &quot;Aggression From the North&quot;, which came out at the end of February 1965, relates that a &quot;suspicious vessel&quot; was &quot;sunk in shallow water&quot; off the coast of South Vietnam on 16 February 1965 after an attack by South Vietnamese forces. The boat was reported to contain at least 100 tons of military supplies &quot;almost all of communist origin, largely from Communist China and Czechoslovakia as well as North Vietnam&quot;. The white paper noted that &quot;Representatives of the free press visited the sunken North Vietnamese ship and viewed its cargo.&quot;<br /> <br /> Liechty said that he had also seen documents involving an elaborate operation to print large numbers of postage stamps showing a Vietnamese shooting down a US Army helicopter. The former CIA officer stated that this was a highly professional job and that the very professionalism required to produce the multicolor stamps was meant to indicate that they were produced by the North Vietnamese because the Vietcong would not have had the capabilities. Liechty claimed that letters in Vietnamese were then written and mailed all over the world with the stamp on them &quot;and the CIA made sure journalists would get hold of them&quot;. Life magazine, in its issue of 26 February 1965, did in fact feature a full color blow-up of the stamp on its cover, referring to it as a &quot;North Vietnam stamp&quot;. This was just two days before the State Department's white paper appeared.<br /> <br /> In reporting Liechty's statements, the Washington Post noted:&lt;blockquote&gt;Publication of the white paper turned out to be a key event in documenting the support of North Vietnam and other communist countries in the fighting in the South and in preparing American public opinion for what was to follow very soon: the large-scale commitment of U.S. forces to the fighting.&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Perhaps the most significant fabrication was that of the alleged attack in August 1964 on two US destroyers in the Tonkin Gulf off the coast of North Vietnam. President Johnson used the incident to induce a resolution from Congress to take &quot;all necessary steps, including the use of armed forces&quot; to prevent further North Vietnamese aggression. It was a blanket endorsement for escalation heaped upon escalation. Serious enough doubts were raised at the time about the reality of the attack, but over the years other information has come to light which has left the official story in tatters.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And probably the silliest fabrication: the 1966 US Army training film, &quot;County Fair&quot;, in which the sinister Vietcong are shown in a jungle clearing heating gasoline and soap bars, concocting a vicious communist invention called napalm.&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Johnson administration's method of minimizing public concern about escalation of the war, as seen by a psychiatrist:&lt;blockquote&gt;First step: Highly alarming rumors about escalation are &quot;leaked&quot;.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Second step: The President officially and dramatically sets the anxieties to rest by announcing a much more moderate rate of escalation, and accompanies this announcement with assurances of the Government's peaceful intentions.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Third step: After the general sigh of relief, the originally rumored escalation is gradually put into effect.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The succession of &quot;leaks&quot;, denials of leaks, and denials of denials thoroughly confuses the individual. He is left bewildered, helpless, apathetic.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The end result is that the people find themselves deeply committed to large-scale war, without being able to tell how it came about, when and how it all began.&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Senator Stephen Young of Ohio was reported to have said that while he was in Vietnam he was told by the CIA that the Agency disguised people as Vietcong to commit atrocities, including murder and rape, so as to discredit the Communists. After the report caused a flurry in Washington, Young said that he had been misquoted, that the CIA was not the source of the story. Congressman Cornelius Gallagher, who had accompanied Young on the trip, suggested that it &quot;may well be that he [Young] spoke to a Vietcong disguised as a CIA man&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> From a speech by Carl Oglesby, President of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), during the March on Washington, 27 November 1965:&lt;blockquote&gt;The original commitment in Vietnam was made by President Truman, a mainstream liberal. It was seconded by President Eisenhower, a moderate liberal. It was intensified by the late President Kennedy, a flaming liberal. Think of the men who now engineer that war—those who study the maps, give the commands, push the buttons, and tally the dead: Bundy, McNamara, Rusk, Lodge, Goldberg, the President [Johnson] himself. They are not moral monsters. They are all honorable men. They are all liberals.&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The International Communist Conspiracy in action:<br /> <br /> During the heat of the fighting in 1966-67, the Soviet Union sold to the United States over $2 million worth of magnesium—a metal vital in military aircraft production—when there was a shortage of it in the United States. This occurred at a time when Washington maintained an embargo on supplying Communist nations with certain alloys of the same metal.&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt; At about the same time, China sold several thousand tons of steel to the United States in South Vietnam for use in the construction of new Air and Army bases when no one else could meet the American military's urgent need: this, while Washington maintained a boycott on all Chinese products; even wigs imported into the US from Hong Kong had to be accompanied by a certificate of origin stating that they contained no Chinese hair. The sale of steel may have been only the tip of the iceberg of Chinese sales to the United States during the war.&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In a visit to China in January 1972, White House envoy Alexander Haig met with Premier Chou En-lai. Years later, Haig wrote: &quot;Though he never stated the case in so many words, I reported to President Nixon that the import of what Zhou [Chou] said to me was: don't lose in Vietnam; don't withdraw from Southeast Asia.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1975, a Senate investigating committee began looking into allegations that the CIA had counterfeited American money during the Vietnam war to finance secret operations.&lt;sup&gt;51&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Two Vietcong prisoners were interrogated on an airplane flying toward Saigon. The first refused to answer questions and was thrown out of the airplane at 3,000 feet. The second immediately answered all the questions. But he, too, was thrown out.&quot; Variations of the water torture were also used to loosen tongues or simply to torment. &quot;Other techniques, usually designed to force onlooking prisoners to talk, involve cutting off the fingers, ears, fingernails or sexual organs of another prisoner.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;52&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It is not clear whether these particular Vietnamese were actual prisoners of war, i.e., captured in combat, or whether they were amongst the many thousands of civilians arrested as part of the infamous Phoenix Program. Phoenix was the inevitable consequence of fighting a native population: You never knew who was friend, who was enemy. Anyone was a potential informer, bomb-thrower, or assassin. Safety demanded that, unless proved otherwise, everyone was to be regarded as the enemy, part of what the CIA called the Vietcong infrastructure (VCI).<br /> <br /> In 1971, CIA officer William Colby, the director of Phoenix, was asked by a congressman: &quot;Are you certain that we know a member of the VCI from a loyal member of the South Vietnam citizenry?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;No, Mr. Congressman,&quot; replied Colby, &quot;I am not.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;53&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Phoenix was a coordinated effort of the United States and South Vietnam to wipe out this infrastructure. Under the program, Vietnamese citizens were rounded up and jailed, often in tiger cages, often tortured, often killed, either in the process of being arrested or subsequently. By Colby's records, during the period between early 1968 and May 1971, 20,587 alleged Vietcong cadres met their death as a result of the Phoenix Program.&lt;sup&gt;54&lt;/sup&gt; A similar program, under different names, had existed since 1965 and been run by the United States alone.&lt;sup&gt;55&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Colby claims that more than 85 percent of the 20,587 figure were actually killed in military combat and only identified afterward as members of the VCI.&lt;sup&gt;56&lt;/sup&gt; It strains credulity, however, to think that the tens of thousands of Vietcong killed in combat during this period were picked over, body by body, on the battlefield, for identification and that their connection to the VCI was established.<br /> <br /> The South Vietnam government credited Phoenix with 40,994 VCI deaths.&lt;sup&gt;57&lt;/sup&gt; The true figure will probably never be known.<br /> <br /> A former US military-intelligence officer in Vietnam, K. Barton Osborn, testified before a House Committee that suspects caught by Phoenix were interrogated in helicopters and sometimes pushed out. He also spoke of the use of electric shock torture and the insertion into the ear of a six-inch dowel which was tapped through the brain until the victim died.&lt;sup&gt;58&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Osborn's colleague, Michael J. Uhl, testified that most suspects were captured during sweeping tactical raids and that all persons detained were classified as Vietcong. None of those held for questioning, said Osborn, had ever lived through the process.&lt;sup&gt;59&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, was the man most responsible for &quot;giving, controlling and managing the war news from Vietnam&quot;. One day in July 1965, Sylvester told American journalists that they had a patriotic duty to disseminate only information that made the United States look good. When one of the newsmen exclaimed: &quot;Surely, Arthur, you don't expect the American press to be handmaidens of government,&quot; Sylvester replied, &quot;That's exactly what I expect,&quot; adding: &quot;Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you're stupid. Did you hear that?—stupid.&quot; And when a correspondent for a New York paper began a question, he was interrupted by Sylvester who said: &quot;Aw, come on. What does someone in New York care about the war in Vietnam?&quot;&lt;sup&gt;60&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, hundreds of US servicemen in Asia and Europe were being swindled by phoney American auto dealers who turned up to take down-payments on cars which they never delivered. Commented an Illinois congressman: &quot;We cannot expect our servicemen to fight to protect the free enterprise system if the very system which they fight to protect takes advantage of them.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;61&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On 27 January 1973, in Paris, the United States signed the &quot;Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam&quot;. Among the principles to which the United States agreed was the one stated in Article 21: &quot;In pursuance of its traditional policy, the United States will contribute to healing the wounds of war and to postwar reconstruction of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam [North Vietnam] and throughout Indochina.&quot;<br /> <br /> Five days later, 1 February, President Nixon sent a message to the Prime Minister of North Vietnam reiterating and expanding upon this pledge. The first two principles put forth in the President's message were:&lt;blockquote&gt;(1) The Government of the United States of America will contribute to postwar reconstruction in North Vietnam without any political conditions. (2) Preliminary United States studies indicate that the appropriate programs for the United States contribution to postwar reconstruction will fall in the range of $3.25 billion of grant aid over 5 years. Other forms of aid will be agreed upon between the two parties. This estimate is subject to revision and to detailed discussion between the Government of the United States and the Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.&lt;sup&gt;62&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;For the next two decades, the only aid given to any Vietnamese people by the United States was to those who left Vietnam and those who were infiltrated back in to stir up trouble. At the same time, the US imposed a complete embargo on trade and assistance to the country, which lasted until 1994.<br /> <br /> Are the victims of the Vietnam War also to be found in generations yet unborn? Tens of millions of gallons of herbicides were unleashed over the country; included in this were quantities of dioxin, which has been called the most toxic man-made substance known; three ounces of dioxin, it is claimed, in the New York City water supply could wipe out the entire populace. Studies in Vietnam since the war have pointed to abnormally high rates of cancers, particularly of the liver, chromosomal damage, birth defects, long-lasting neurological disorders, etc. in the heavily-sprayed areas. Other victims were Americans. Thousands of Vietnam veterans fought for years to receive disability compensation, claiming irreparable damage from simply handling the toxic herbicides.<br /> <br /> After the Second World War, the International Military Tribunal convened at Nuremberg, Germany. Created by the victorious Allies, the Tribunal sentenced to prison or execution numerous Nazis who pleaded that they had been &quot;only following orders&quot;. In an opinion handed down by the Tribunal, it declared that &quot;the very essence of the [Tribunal's] Charter is that individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience imposed by the individual state.&quot;<br /> <br /> During the Vietnam war, a number of young Americans refused military service on the grounds that the United States was committing war crimes in Vietnam and that if they took part in the war they too, under the principles laid down at Nuremberg, would be guilty of war crimes.<br /> <br /> One of the most prominent of these cases was that of David Mitchell of Connecticut. At Mitchell's trial in September 1965, Judge William Timbers dismissed his defense as &quot;tommyrot&quot; and &quot;degenerate subversion&quot;, and found the Nuremberg principles to be &quot;irrelevant&quot; to the case. Mitchell was sentenced to prison. Conservative columnist William F. Buckley, Jr., not celebrated as a champion of draft resistance, noted shortly afterward:&lt;blockquote&gt;I am glad I didn't have Judge Timbers' job. Oh, I could have scolded Mr. Mitchell along with the best of them. But I'd have to cough and wheeze and clear my throat during that passage in my catechism at which I explained to Mr. Mitchell wherein the Nuremberg Doctrine was obviously not at his disposal.&lt;sup&gt;63&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In 1971, Telford Taylor, the chief United States prosecutor at Nuremberg, suggested rather strongly that General William Westmoreland and high officials of the Johnson administration such as Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk could be found guilty of war crimes under criteria established at Nuremberg.&lt;sup&gt;64&lt;/sup&gt; Yet every American court and judge, when confronted by the Nuremberg defense, dismissed it without according it any serious consideration whatsoever.<br /> <br /> The West has never been allowed to forget the Nazi holocaust. For 55 years there has been a continuous outpouring of histories, memoirs, novels, feature films, documentaries, television series … played and replayed in every Western language; there have been museums, memorial sculptures, photo exhibitions, remembrance ceremonies … Never Again! But who hears the voice of the Vietnamese peasant? Who has access to the writings of the Vietnamese intellectual? What was the fate of the Vietnamese Anne Frank? Where, asks the young American, is Vietnam?<br /> <br /> == Cambodia 1955-1973: Prince Sihanouk walks the high-wire of neutralism ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;John Foster Dulles had called on me in his capacity as Secretary of State, and he had exhausted every argument to persuade me to place Cambodia under the protection of the South-East Asia Treaty Organization. I refused … I considered SEATO an aggressive military alliance directed against neighbors whose ideology I did not share but with whom Cambodia had no quarrel. I had made all this quite clear to John Foster, an acidy, arrogant man, but his brother [CIA Director Allen Dulles] soon turned up with a briefcase full of documents &quot;proving&quot; that Cambodia was about to fall victim to &quot;communist aggression&quot; and that the only way to save the country, the monarchy and myself was to accept the protection of SEATO. The &quot;proofs&quot; did not coincide with my own information, and I replied to Allen Dulles as I had replied to John Foster: Cambodia wanted no part of SEATO. We would look after ourselves as neutrals and Buddhists. There was nothing for the secret service chief to do but pack up his dubious documents and leave.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Prince Norodom Sihanouk, in his memoirs&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The visits of the Brothers Dulles in 1955 appear to have been the opening salvos in a campaign of extraordinary measures aimed at pressuring the charismatic Cambodian leader into aligning his nation with the West and joining The Holy War Against Communism. The coercion continued intermittently until 1970 when Sihanouk was finally overthrown in an American-backed coup and the United States invaded Cambodia.<br /> <br /> In March 1956, after Sihanouk had visited Peking and criticized SEATO, the two countries which sandwich Cambodia—Thailand and South Vietnam, both heavily dependent upon and allied with the United States—suddenly closed their borders. It was a serious move, for the bulk of Cambodia's traffic with the outside world at that time passed either along the Mekong River through South Vietnam or by railway through Thailand.<br /> <br /> The danger to the tiny kingdom was heightened by repeated military provocations. Thai troops invaded Cambodian territory and CIA-financed irregulars began to make commando raids from South Vietnam. Deep intrusions were made into Cambodian air space by planes based in the two countries.<br /> <br /> To Sihanouk, these actions &quot;looked more and more like preliminary softening-up probes&quot; for his overthrow. He chose to thrust matters out into the open. At a press conference he scolded the US, defended Cambodia's policy of neutrality, and announced that the whole question would be on the agenda of his party's upcoming national congress. There was the implication that Cambodia would turn to the socialist bloc for aid.<br /> <br /> The United States appeared to retreat in the face of this unorthodox public diplomacy. The State Department sent a couple of rather conciliatory messages which nullified a threatened cut-off of certain economic aid and included this remarkable piece of altruism: &quot;The only aim of American policy to Cambodia is to help her strengthen and defend her independence.&quot; Two days before the national congress convened, Thailand and South Vietnam opened their frontiers. The local disputes which the two countries had cited as the reasons for the blockade had not been resolved at all.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The measures taken against Cambodia were counter-productive. Not only did Sihanouk continue to attack SEATO, but he established relations with the Soviet Union and Poland and accepted aid from China. He praised the latter lavishly for treating Cambodia as an equal and for providing aid without all the strings which, he felt, came attached to American aid.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Such behavior should not obscure the fact that Sihanouk was as genuine a neutralist as one could be in such a highly polarized region of the world in the midst of the cold war. He did not shy away from denouncing China, North Vietnam or communism on a number of occasions when he felt that Cambodia's security or neutrality was being threatened. &quot;I foresee perfectly well,&quot; he said at one time, &quot;the collapse of an independent and neutral Cambodia after the complete triumph of Communism in Laos and South Vietnam.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In May 1957, a National Security Council (NSC) paper acknowledged that &quot;the United States has been unable to influence Cambodia in the direction of a stable [i.e., pro-Western] government and non-involvement in the communist bloc.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The following year, five battalions of Saigon troops, supported by aircraft, crossed the Cambodian border again, penetrated to a depth of almost 10 miles and began putting up new boundary markers. Sihanouk's impulse was to try and repel the invaders but, to his amazement, he was informed by the American Ambassador to Cambodia, Carl Strom, that US military aid was provided exclusively for the purpose of opposing &quot;communist aggression&quot; and in no case could be used against an American ally. The ambassador cautioned that if a single bullet were fired at the South Vietnamese or a single US-supplied truck used to transport Cambodian troops to a military confrontation with them, this would constitute grounds for canceling aid.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Ambassador Strom was called back to Washington, told that Sihanouk would now have to go and that US aid would be cut off to precipitate his fall. Strom, however, did not think that this was the wisest move to make at that point and was able to convince the State Department to hold off for the time being.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> William Shawcross, in his elaborately-researched book, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, notes that &quot;NSC papers of the period cited in the Pentagon papers confirm that Washington saw Thai and Vietnamese pressure across the borders as one of the principal weapons to be used in an effort to move Sihanouk toward a more pro-American position.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In addition to Thai and South Vietnamese troops, the CIA had at its disposal two other forces, the Khmer Serei and the Khmer Krom, composed largely of ethnic Cambodians opposed to Sihanouk's rule, who operated out of the two neighboring countries. The Khmer Serei (&quot;Free Cambodians&quot;) were described by Shawcross as the &quot;Cambodian organization with which American officials had had the closest contact&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; Sihanouk once equated them to the &quot;free&quot; Cubans the United States maintained in Florida.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> These forces—recruited, financed, armed and trained by the CIA and the US Special Forces (Green Berets)&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;—began to infiltrate into Cambodia in the latter part of 1958 as part of a complex conspiracy which included, amongst others, a disloyal Cambodian general named Dap Chhuon who was plotting an armed uprising inside the country. At its most optimistic, the conspiracy aimed at overthrowing Sihanouk.<br /> <br /> Sihanouk discovered the plan, partly through reports from Chinese and French intelligence. The French were not happy about the American intrusion into what had been their domain for close to a century.<br /> <br /> By February 1959 the conspirators had been apprehended or had fled, including Victor Masao Matsui, a member of the CIA station in Cambodia's capital city Phnom Penh, who hurriedly left the country after Sihanouk accused him of being a party to the plot. Matsui, an American of Japanese descent, had been operating under State Department cover as an attaché at the embassy.<br /> <br /> The intrigue, according to Sihanouk, began in September 1958 at a SEATO meeting in Thailand and was carried a step further later that month in New York when he visited the United Nations. While Sihanouk was away in Washington for a few days, a member of his delegation, Slat Peou, held several conferences with Americans in his New York hotel room which he did not mention to any of his fellow delegates. Slat Peou, it happened, was a close friend of Victor Matsui and was the brother of General Dap Chhuon. In the aftermath of the aborted conspiracy, Slat Peou was executed for treason.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; Sihanouk was struck by the bitter irony of the CIA plotting against him in New York while he was in Washington being honored by President Eisenhower with a 21-gun salute.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In a similar vein, several years later President Kennedy assured Sihanouk &quot;on his honour&quot; that the United States had played no role in the affairs of the Khmer Serei. &quot;I considered President Kennedy to be an honourable man,&quot; wrote Sihanouk, &quot;but, in that case, who really represented the American government?&quot;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> CIA officer (later Director) William Colby, stationed in Vietnam at the time of the Dap Chhuon plot, has written that the Agency was well aware of the plot and had recruited someone on Dap Chhuon's staff and furnished him with a radio with which to keep the CIA informed. The Agency wanted to be kept informed, Colby asserts, in order to &quot;dissuade the Thai and Vietnamese&quot; from overthrowing Sihanouk. Colby adds:&lt;blockquote&gt;Unfortunately, in putting down the coup, Sihanouk had captured our agent and his radio. And, not unnaturally, he drew the conclusion that CIA was one of the participants, and that the gold and arms furnished from Bangkok and Saigon to be used against him were only part of the overall plot of which the radio was a key element.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The Cambodian leader has attested to several other plots he lays at the doorstep of the CIA. Amongst these was a 1959 effort to murder him which was foiled when the police picked a nervous young man, Rat Vat by name, out of a crowd surrounding Sihanouk. He was found to be carrying a hand grenade and a pistol. Investigation showed, writes Sihanouk, that the would-be assassin was instigated by the CIA and the Khmer Serei. Sihanouk also cites three incidents occurring in 1963: an attempt to blow up a car carrying him and the visiting president of China, Liu Shao Chi; an attempt to smuggle arms into Cambodia in a number of crates addressed to the US Embassy; and a partially successful venture aimed at sabotaging the Cambodian economy and subverting key government personnel through the setting up of a bank in Phnom Penh.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On 20 November of the same year, two days before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Cambodian National Congress, at Sihanouk's initiative, voted to &quot;end all aid granted by the United States in the military, economic, technical and cultural fields&quot;. It was perhaps without precedent that a country receiving American aid voluntarily repudiated it. But Sihanouk held strong feelings on the subject. Over the years he had frequently recited from his register of complaints about American aid to Cambodia: how it subverted and corrupted Cambodian officials and businessmen who wound up &quot;constituting a clientele necessarily obedient to the demands of the lavish bestower of foreign funds&quot;; and how the aid couldn't be used for state institutions, only private enterprise, nor, as mentioned earlier, used against attacks by US allies.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After some American bombings of Cambodian villages near the South Vietnam border in pursuit of North Vietnamese and Vietcong, the Cambodian government, in October 1964, announced that &quot;in case of any new violation of Cambodian territory by US ground, air, or naval forces, Cambodia will immediately sever diplomatic relations with the United States&quot;. The government did just that the following May when American planes bombarded several villages, killing or wounding dozens of peasants.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The pattern over the next few years, as the war in Indochina intensified, was one of repeated forays into Cambodian territory by American, Saigon and Khmer Serei forces in search of Communist supply lines and sanctuaries along the Ho Chi Minh Trail; bombing and strafing, napalming, and placing land mines, with varying numbers of Cambodian civilian casualties; angry accusations by the Cambodian government, followed on occasion by an American apology, promise of an investigation, and the taking of &quot;measures to prevent any recurrence of such incidents&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Sihanouk did not at all relish the intrusions into Cambodia by the Vietnamese Communists, nor was he wholly or consistently antagonistic to American pursuit of them, particularly when there was no loss of Cambodian lives. On at least one occasion he disclosed the location of Communist bases which were promptly bombed by the US. However, Sihanouk then went on the radio and proceeded to denounce the bombings.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt; Opportunist that he often revealed himself to be, Sihanouk was nonetheless truly caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, and by the late 1960s his predicament had compelled him to resume American aid and re-establish diplomatic relations with the United States.<br /> <br /> Despite all the impulsiveness of his personality and policies, Sihanouk's neutralist high-wire balancing act did successfully shield his country from the worst of the devastation that was sweeping through the land and people of Vietnam and Laos. Cambodia had its own Communist insurgents, the Khmer Rouge, who surely would have unleashed a full-scale civil war if faced with a Cambodian government nestled comfortably in the American camp. This is precisely what later came to pass following the overthrow of Sihanouk and his replacement by Lon Nol who was closely tied to the United States.<br /> <br /> In March 1969, the situation began to change dramatically. Under the new American president, Richard Nixon, and National Security Affairs adviser Henry Kissinger, the isolated and limited attacks across the Cambodian border became sustained, large-scale B-52 bombings—&quot;carpet bombings&quot;, in the euphemistic language so dear to the hearts of military men.<br /> <br /> Over the next 14 months, no less than 3,630 B-52 bombing raids were flown over Cambodia.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt; To escape the onslaught, the Vietnamese Communists moved their bases further inside the country. The B-52s of course followed, with a concomitant increase in civilian casualties.<br /> <br /> The Nixon administration artfully played down the nature and extent of these bombings, going so far as to falsify military records, and was largely successful in keeping it all a secret from the American public, the press and Congress.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; Not until 1973, in the midst of the Watergate revelations, did a fuller story begin to emerge.<br /> <br /> It was frequently argued that the United States had every right to attack Cambodia because of its use as a sanctuary by America's foes in Vietnam. Apropos of this claim, William Shawcross has pointed out that:&lt;blockquote&gt;During the Algerian war of independence the United States rejected France's claimed right to attack a Tunisian town inhabited by Algerian guerrillas, and in 1964 Adlai Stevenson, at the U.N., condemned Britain for assaulting a Yemeni town used as a base by insurgents attacking Aden. Even Israel had frequently been criticized by the United States for attacks on enemy bases outside its territory.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;On 18 March 1970, Sihanouk, while on a trip abroad, was deposed as Head of State by two of his leading ministers, Lon Nol and Sirik Matak. To what extent, if any, the United States played a direct role in the coup has not been established, but there are circumstances and testimony pointing to American complicity, among which are the following:&lt;blockquote&gt;•  According to Frank Snepp, the CIA's principal political analyst in Vietnam at this time, in early 1970 the Agency was cultivating both Lon Nol and Son Ngoc Thanh, leader of the Khmer Serei, as possible replacements for Sihanouk. The CIA believed, he says, that if Lon Nol came to power, &quot;He would welcome the United States with open arms and we would accomplish everything.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; (This, presumably, meant carte blanche to wipe out Vietnamese Communist forces and sanctuaries in Cambodia, as opposed to Sihanouk's extremely equivocal position on the matter.) Both men, as matters turned out, served as prime minister in the new government, for which diplomatic recognition was immediately forthcoming from Washington.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  The United States could seemingly also rely on Sirik Matak, a committed anti-Communist who had been profiled by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency as &quot;a friend of the West and … co-operative with U.S. officials during the 1950s.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in his biographic work on Kissinger, states that Sihanouk's &quot;immediate overthrow had been for years a high priority of the Green Berets reconnaissance units operating inside Cambodia since the late 1960s. There is also incontrovertible evidence that Lon Nol was approached by agents of American military intelligence in 1969 and asked to overthrow the Sihanouk government. Sihanouk made similar charges in his 1973 memoir, My War With The CIA, but they were not taken seriously then.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  An opponent of Sihanouk, Prom Thos, who became a minister in the new government, has said that whether Lon Nol had specific promises of American help before the coup is unimportant: &quot;We all just knew that the United States would help us; there had been many stories of CIA approaches and offers before then.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  The CIA's intimate links to the conspiratorial circle are exemplified by an Agency report prepared six days before the coup, entitled &quot;Indications of Possible Coup in Phnom Penh&quot;. It disclosed that anti-Communist demonstrations against the Vietcong and North Vietnamese embassies in the capital the previous day had been planned by Sirik Matak and Lon Nol as part of a showdown policy against Sihanouk and his followers, and that the two men had put the army on alert &quot;to prepare … for a coup against Sihanouk if Sihanouk refused to support&quot; them.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  General William Rosson, deputy to General Creighton Abrams, the Commander of US Forces in Vietnam at the time, has declared that American commanders were informed several days beforehand that a coup was being planned and that United States support was solicited.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Roger Morris, who was serving under Henry Kissinger on the National Security Council staff when the coup took place, reported that &quot;It was clear in the White House that the CIA station in Phnom Penh knew the plotters well, probably knew their plans, and did nothing to alert Sihanouk. They informed Washington well in advance of the coup.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  William Shawcross asserts that had Sihanouk &quot;returned quickly and calmly to Phnom Penh [following the anti-communist demonstrations] he would most likely have been able to avert disaster.&quot; That he did not do so may not have been by chance. Frank Snepp has revealed that the CIA persuaded Sihanouk's mother, the Queen, to send a message to her son abroad reassuring him that the situation was not serious enough to warrant his return.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;With Sihanouk and his irritating neutralism no longer an obstacle, American military wheels began to spin. Within hours of the coup, US and South Vietnam forces stationed in border districts were directed to establish communication with Cambodian commanders on the other side and take steps toward military co-operation. The next day, the Cambodian army called in an American spotter plane and South Vietnamese artillery during a sweep of a Vietcong sanctuary by a battalion of Cambodian troops inside Cambodia. The New York Times declared that &quot;The battle appeared to be the most determined Cambodian effort yet to drive the Vietcong out of border areas.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt; The Great Cambodian War had begun. It was to persist for five terrible years.<br /> <br /> The enemy confronting the United States and its Saigon and Phnom Penh allies was now not simply the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong. The Cambodian Communists—the Khmer Rouge—under the leadership of Pol Pot, had entered the conflict, as had sundry Cambodian supporters of Prince Sihanouk.<br /> <br /> On 30 April 1970, the first full-scale American invasion of the new war was launched. It produced a vast outcry of protest in the United States, rocking university campuses from coast to coast. Perhaps the most extraordinary reaction was the angry resignations of four men from Henry Kissinger's National Security Council staff, including Roger Morris. (Kissinger labeled the resignations as &quot;the cowardice of the Eastern establishment&quot;.)&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By the end of May, scores of villages had been reduced to rubble and ashes by US air power; the long train of Cambodian refugees had begun their march.<br /> <br /> Three years and more than a hundred thousand tons of bombs later, 27 January 1973 to be precise, an agreement was signed in Paris putting an end to a decade of American warfare in Vietnam. The bombing of Cambodia, however, continued.<br /> <br /> Prior to the Paris agreement, the official position of the Nixon administration, repeatedly asserted, was that the sole purpose of bombing Cambodia was to protect American lives in Vietnam. Yet now, the US not only did not cease the bombing, it increased it, in a last desperate attempt to keep the Khmer Rouge from coming to power. During March, April and May, the tonnage of bombs unloosed over Cambodia was more than double that of the entire previous year. The society's traditional economy had vanished. The old Cambodia was being destroyed forever.<br /> <br /> Under increasing pressure from Congress, the Nixon administration finally ended the bombing in August. More than two million Cambodians had been made homeless.<br /> <br /> It does appear rather ludicrous, in the light of this application of brute force, that the CIA was at the same time carrying out the most subtle of psychological tactics. To spread dissatisfaction about the exiled Sihanouk amongst the Cambodian peasantry who revered him, a CIA sound engineer, using sophisticated electronics, fashioned an excellent counterfeit of the Prince's distinctive voice and manner of speaking—breathless, high-pitched, and full of giggles. This voice was beamed from a clandestine radio station in Laos with messages artfully designed to offend any good Cambodian. In one of the broadcasts, &quot;Sihanouk&quot; exhorted young women to aid the cause by sleeping with the valiant Vietcong.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In a farewell press conference in September 1973, the American Ambassador to Cambodia, Emory Swank, called what had taken place there &quot;Indochina's most useless war&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Later, California Congressman Pete McClosky, following a visit to Cambodia, had harsher words. He was moved to declare that what the United States had &quot;done to the country is greater evil than we have done to any country in the world, and wholly without reason, except for our own benefit to fight against the Vietnamese.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On 17 April 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh in victory. Two weeks later, Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong. Incredibly, the Khmer Rouge were to inflict even greater misery upon this unhappy land. And to add to the irony—or to multiply it—the United States supported the Khmer Rouge after their subsequent defeat by the Vietnamese, both by defending their right to the United Nations Cambodian seat, and in their military struggle against the Cambodian government and its Vietnamese allies. In November 1980, Ray Cline, former Deputy Director of the CIA, visited a Khmer Rouge enclave in Cambodia in his capacity as senior foreign policy adviser to President-elect Ronald Reagan. A Khmer Rouge press release spoke of the visit in warm terms.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; This was in keeping with the Reagan administration's subsequent opposition to the Vietnamese-supported Phnom Penh government. A lingering bitter hatred of Vietnam by unreconstructed American cold warriors appears to be the only explanation for this policy.<br /> <br /> == Laos 1957-1973: L'Armée Clandestine ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;For the past two years the US has carried out one of the most sustained bombing campaigns in history against essentially civilian targets in northeastern Laos…. Operating from Thai bases and from aircraft carriers, American jets have destroyed the great majority of villages and towns in the northeast. Severe casualties have been inflicted upon the inhabitants … Refugees from the Plain of Jars report they were bombed almost daily by American jets last year. They say they spent most of the past two years living in caves or holes.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Far Eastern Economic Review, Hong Kong, 1970&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;[The Laos operation] is something of which we can be proud as Americans. It has involved virtually no American casualties. What we are getting for our money there … is, I think, to use the old phrase, very cost effective.&lt;/blockquote&gt;U. Alexis Johnson, US Under Secretary of State, 1971&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The United States undertook the bombing campaign because its ground war against the Pathet Lao had failed.<br /> <br /> The ground war had been carried out because the Pathet Lao were led by people whom the State Department categorized as &quot;communist&quot;, no more, no less.<br /> <br /> The Pathet Lao (re)turned to warfare because of their experiences in &quot;working within the system&quot;.<br /> <br /> In 1957 the Pathet Lao (&quot;Lao nation&quot;) held two ministerial posts in the coalition &quot;government of national union&quot;. This was during John Foster Dulles's era, and if there was anything the fanatic Secretary of State hated more than neutralism it was a coalition with communists. This government featured both. There could be little other reason for the development of the major American intervention into this impoverished and primitive land of peasants. The American ambassador to Laos at the time, J. Graham Parsons, was to admit later: &quot;I struggled for sixteen months to prevent a coalition.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In addition to its demand for inclusion in the coalition government, the Pathet Lao had called for diplomatic relations with the countries of the Soviet bloc and the acceptance of aid from them, as was already the case with Western nations. &quot;Agreement to these conditions,&quot; said Washington, &quot;would have given the Communists their most significant gains in Southeast Asia since the partition of Indochina.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; Others would say that the Pathet Lao's conditions were simply what neutralism is all about.<br /> <br /> In May 1958, the Pathet Lao and other leftists, running a campaign based on government corruption and indifference, won 13 of 21 contested seats for the National Assembly and wound up controlling more than one-third of the new legislature.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; Two months later, however, Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma, a man universally categorized as a neutralist, &quot;resigned&quot; to form a new government which would exclude the Pathet Lao ministers.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; (He subsequently claimed that he was forced to resign due to continued American opposition to Laotian neutrality; as it happened, one Phoui Sananikone, backed by the US, became premier in the reorganized government.)&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; Then, in January 1959, the non-left majority in the National Assembly voted, in effect, to dissolve the Assembly in order &quot;to counteract communist influence and subversion&quot;. The left was now altogether excluded from the government, and the elections scheduled for December were canceled.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> If this wasn't enough to disenchant the Pathet Lao or anyone else with the Laotian political process, there was, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the spectacle of a continuous parade of coups and counter-coups, of men overthrown winding up in the new government, and regimes headed by men who had sided with the French in their war against Indochinese independence, while the Pathet Lao had fought against the colonialists.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; There were as well government-rigged elections, with the CIA stuffing ballot boxes;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; different regimes-cum-warlords governing simultaneously from different &quot;capitals&quot;, their armies fighting each other, switching allies and enemies when it suited them; hundreds of millions of US dollars pouring into a tiny kingdom which was 99 percent agricultural, with an economy based more on barter than money, the result being &quot;unimaginable bribery, graft, currency manipulation and waste&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA and the State Department alone could take credit for engineering coups, through force, bribery or other pressures, at least once in each of the years 1958, 1959 and 1960, if not in others.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; &quot;By merely withholding the monthly payment to the troops,&quot; wrote Roger Hilsman (whose career encompassed both agencies, perhaps covertly simultaneously), &quot;the United States could create the conditions for toppling any Lao government whose policies it opposed. As it turned out, in fact, the United States used this weapon twice—to bring down the government of one Lao leader and to break the will of another.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The American wheeling and dealing centered around giving power to the CIA's hand-picked rightist strongman Phoumi Nosavan, ousting Souvanna Phouma and other neutralists, and jailing Pathet Lao leaders, including the movement's head, Souphanouvong (the half-brother of Souvanna Phouma, both being princes of the royal family). Souphanouvong insisted that neither he nor the Pathet Lao were communist, but were rather &quot;ultra-nationalist&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; Crucial to understanding his statements, of course, is the question of exactly what he meant by the term &quot;communist&quot;. This is not clear, but neither is it clear what the State Department meant when it referred to him as such. The Pathet Lao were the only sizable group in the country serious about social change, a characteristic which of course tends to induce Washington officials to apply the communist label.<br /> <br /> In August 1960, Kong Le, a military officer with his own troop following, staged a coup and set up a neutralist government under Souvanna Phouma, rejecting Pathet Lao help.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; But when this government became a casualty of a CIA coup in December, Kong Le allied himself with the Pathet Lao; later he turned to the United States for aid and fought against the Pathet Lao. Such was the way of the Laotian circus.<br /> <br /> No study of Laos of this period appears to have had notable success in untangling the muddle of who exactly replaced whom, and when, and how, and why. After returning from Laos, writer Norman Cousins stated in 1961 that &quot;if you want to get a sense of the universe unraveling, come to Laos. Complexity such as this has to be respected.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One thing that came through unambiguously, however, was the determination of the United States to save Laos from communism and neutralism. To this end, the CIA set about creating its now-famous Armée Clandestine, a process begun by the US Army in the mid-1950s when it organized Meo hill tribesmen (the same ethnic group organized in Vietnam). Over the years, other peoples of Laos were added, reaching at least 30,000 in the mid-1960s, half of them more or less full-time soldiers … many thousands more from Thailand … hundreds of other Asians came on board, South Vietnamese, Filipinos, Taiwanese, South Koreans, men who had received expert training from their American mentors in their home countries for other wars, now being recycled … an army, said the New York Times, &quot;armed, equipped, fed, paid, guided, strategically and tactically, and often transported into and out of action by the United States&quot; … trained and augmented by the CIA, and by men of every branch of the US military with their multiple specialties, the many pilots of the CIA's Air America, altogether some 2,000 Americans in and over Laos, and thousands more in Asia helping with the logistics. A Secret Army, secret, that is, from the American people and Congress—US military personnel were there under various covers, some as civilians in mufti, having &quot;resigned&quot; from the service for the occasion and been hired by a private company created by the CIA; others served as embassy attachés; CIA pilots were officially under contract to the Agency for International Development (AID); Americans who were killed in Laos were reported to have died in Vietnam&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt; … all this in addition to the &quot;official&quot; government forces, the Royal Laotian Army, greatly expanded and totally paid for by the United States …&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Laos was an American plantation, a CIA playground. During the 1960s, the Agency roamed over much of the land at will, building an airstrip, a hangar, or a base here, a warehouse, barracks, or a radar site there;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt; relocating thousands of people, entire villages, whole tribes, to suit strategic military needs; recruiting warriors &quot;through money and/or the threat or use of force and/or promises of independent kingdoms which it had no intention of fulfilling, and then keeping them fighting long beyond the point when they wished to stop;&quot;&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt; while the &quot;legendary&quot; pilots of Air America roamed far and wide as well, hard drinking, daredevil flying, death defying, great stories to tell the guys back home, if you survived.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Some of the stories had to do with drugs. Flying opium and heroin all over Indochina to serve the personal and entrepreneurial needs of the CIA's various military and political allies, ultimately turning numerous GIs in Vietnam into addicts. The operation was not a paragon of discretion. Heroin was refined in a laboratory located on the site of CIA headquarters in northern Laos. After a decade of American military intervention, Southeast Asia had become the source of 70 percent of the world's illicit opium and the major supplier of raw materials for America's booming heroin market.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At the same time, the hearts and minds of the Laotian people, at least of those who could read, were not overlooked. The US Information Agency was there to put out a magazine with a circulation of 43,000; this, in a country where the circulation of the largest newspaper was 3,300; there were as well USIA wall newspapers, films, leaflet drops, and radio programs.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the face of it all, the Pathet Lao more than held their own. The CIA was overextended, and, unlike the motley band of Asians assembled by the Agency, the soldiers of the Pathet Lao had some idea of what they were fighting for. The Soviet Union, aware of what the United States was doing in Laos, even if the American public was not, was alarmed by the establishment of a pro-American government in the country, and acceded to a cold-war knee-reflex by sending military supplies to the Pathet Lao, though nothing remotely on the order of the US commitment.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Beginning in the early 1960s, the North Vietnamese were aiding them as well. Hanoi's overriding interest in Laos was not necessarily the creation of a Communist state, but the prevention of a belligerent government on its border. In January 1961, the New York Times reported that &quot;Many Western diplomats in Vientiane [capital of Laos] … feel the Communists would have been content to leave Laos alone provided she remained neutral and outside the United States sphere of influence.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Hanoi was concerned not only by the American political and military operations in Laos, but by the actions of US Special Forces teams which were entering North Vietnam to engage in espionage, sabotage, and assassination,&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt; and by the bombings of the country being carried out by the US Air Force&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt; at a time when the war in South Vietnam was still but a shadow of what was to come. Later, as the wars in Vietnam and Laos became intertwined, Laos formed part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the principal route by which Hanoi supplied its comrades in South Vietnam, and the North Vietnamese fought to protect it as well as attacking American radar installations in Laos used to aid US bombing of North Vietnam.<br /> <br /> The nature and extent of North Vietnam's aid to the Pathet Lao before this period is difficult to ascertain from Western sources, because such charges typically emanated from the Laotian government or the State Department. On a number of occasions, their report of a North Vietnamese military operation in Laos turned out to be a fabrication. William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, in A Nation of Sheep, summarized one of these non-events from the summer of 1959:&lt;blockquote&gt;The people of the United States were led to believe that Laos physically had been invaded by foreign Communist troops from across its northern border. Our Secretary of State called the situation grave; our ambassador to the U.N. called for world action; our press carried scare headlines; our senior naval officer implied armed intervention and was seconded by ranking Congressmen … The entire affair was a fraud. No military invasion of Laos had taken place … There seemed no doubt that a war embracing thousands of troops, tanks, planes, and mass battles, was raging. Regardless of how the accounts were worded, this was the picture given the nation.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;It had all been a ploy to induce Congress not to reduce aid for Laos, something seriously being considered because of the pervasive corruption which had been exposed concerning the aid program.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt; The Laotian government and the large American establishment in Laos, each for their own reasons, were not about to let the golden goose slip away that easily.<br /> <br /> On the last day of 1960, the Laotian government announced to the world that seven battalions of North Vietnamese troops had invaded the country. By all accounts, and by the utter lack of evidence, this claim as well cannot be taken seriously.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And in 1962, reported Bernard Fall, the renowned French scholar on Indochina: After a battle between government forces and the Pathet Lao, in spite of the fact that Col. Edwin Elder, the American commander in the area of the battle, immediately stated that there was&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;no evidence to show that Chinese or [North] Vietnamese had participated in the attack&quot;, the Laotians—and much of the U.S. press, and official Washington with them—immediately claimed that they were again faced with a large-scale &quot;foreign invasion&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Shortly after Kennedy became president in January 1961, he made a sustained diplomatic effort to establish a coalition government in Laos, precisely what the Eisenhower administration and the CIA had done their best to sabotage. Although he sometimes fell back on conventional cold-war rhetoric when speaking of Laos, one part of John F. Kennedy realized the absurdity of fighting for the backward country, a land he considered not &quot;worthy of engaging the attention of great powers&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt; Soviet Premier Khrushchev, for his part, was reportedly &quot;bored&quot; with the question of Laos, and irritably asked Kennedy's emissary why Washington bothered so much about the country.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Eventually, in July 1962, a multi-nation conference in Geneva signed an agreement for a coalition government in Laos. But in the mountains and the plains of the country, this was no longer a viable option. The CIA had too much time, effort, material and emotion invested in its Secret Army; it was the best war the Agency had going anywhere; it was great adventure. And the Pathet Lao were much stronger now than a few years earlier. They were not about to buy such shopworn, suspect goods again, although everyone went through the motions.<br /> <br /> Both sides regularly accused each other of violating the agreement, and not without justification. The North Vietnamese, for example, did not withdraw all of their troops from Laos, while the US left behind all manner of military personnel, American and Asian, who remained under AID and other civilian cover, but this was nonetheless a violation of the agreement. Moreover, Christopher Robbins, in his study of Air America, has noted that US &quot;Military advisers and CIA personnel moved across the border into Thailand, where they were flown in every day [to Laos] like commuters by Air America, whose entire helicopter operation was based in Udorn [Thailand].&quot;&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt; Air America, by the early 1970s, had no less than 4,000 employees in Thailand.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Thus it was that the fighting dragged on, though only sporadically. In April 1964, the coalition government, such as it was, was overthrown by the right wing, with the CIA's man Phoumi Nosavan emerging as part of a rightist government headed by the perennial survivor Souvanna Phouma to give it a neutralist fig leaf.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt; The Pathet Lao were once again left out in the cold. For them it was the very last straw. The fighting greatly intensified, the skirmishes were now war, and the Pathet Lao offensive soon scored significant advances. Then the American bombing began.<br /> <br /> Between 1965 and 1973, more than two million tons of bombs rained down upon the people of Laos,&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; considerably more than the US had dropped on both Germany and Japan during the Second World War, albeit for a shorter period. For the first few years, the bombing was directed primarily at the provinces controlled by the Pathet Lao. Of the bombing, Fred Branfman, a former American community worker in Laos, wrote: &quot;village after village was leveled, countless people buried alive by high explosives, or burnt alive by napalm and white phosphorous, or riddled by anti-personnel bomb pellets&quot;&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt; … &quot;The United States has undertaken,&quot; said a Senate report, &quot;… a large-scale air war over Laos to destroy the physical and social infrastructure of Pathet Lao held areas and to interdict North Vietnamese infiltration … throughout all this there has been a policy of subterfuge and secrecy … through such things as saturation bombing and the forced evacuation of population from enemy held or threatened areas—we have helped to create untold agony for hundreds of thousands of villagers.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The American military, however, kept proper records. AID could report to Congress that wounds suffered by civilian war casualties were as follows:&lt;blockquote&gt;1. Type: Soft tissue, 39 percent. Compound fracture, 30 percent. Amputation, 12 percent. Intraabdominal, 10 percent. Intra-thoracic, 3 percent. Intra-cranial, 1 percent.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;2. Location: Lower extremities, 60 percent. Upper extremities, 15 percent. Trunk, 18 percent. Head, 7 percent.&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;There was no happy way out for the Laotian people. In October 1971, one could read in The Guardian of London …&lt;blockquote&gt;although US officials deny it vehemently, ample evidence exists to confirm charges that the Meo villages that do try to find their own way out of the war—even if it is simply by staying neutral and refusing to send their 13-year-olds to fight in the CIA army—are immediately denied American rice and transport, and ultimately bombed by the US Air Force.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The fledgling society that the United States was trying to make extinct—the CIA dropped millions of dollars in forged Pathet Lao currency as well, in an attempt to wreck the economy&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;—was one which Fred Branfman described thus:&lt;blockquote&gt;The Pathet Lao rule over the Plain of Jars begun in May 1964 brought its people into a post-colonial era. For the first time they were taught pride in their country and people, instead of admiration for a foreign culture; schooling and massive adult literacy campaigns were conducted in Laotian instead of French; and mild but thorough social revolution—ranging from land reform to greater equality for women—was instituted.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Following on the heels of events in Vietnam, a ceasefire was arrived at in Laos in 1973, and yet another attempt at coalition government was undertaken. (This one lasted until 1975 when, after renewed fighting, the Pathet Lao took over full control of the country.) Laos had become a land of nomads, without villages, without farms; a generation of refugees; hundreds of thousands dead, many more maimed. When the US Air Force closed down its radio station, it signed off with the message: &quot;Good-by and see you next war.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Thus it was that the worst of Washington's fears had come to pass: All of Indochina—Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos—had fallen to the Communists. During the initial period of US involvement in Indochina in the 1950s, John Foster Dulles, Dwight Eisenhower and other American officials regularly issued doomsday pronouncements of the type known as the &quot;Domino Theory&quot;, warning that if Indochina should fall, other nations in Asia would topple over as well. In one instance, President Eisenhower listed no less than Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Indonesia amongst the anticipated &quot;falling dominos&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Such warnings were repeated periodically over the next decade by succeeding administrations and other supporters of US policy in Indochina as a key argument in defense of such policy. The fact that these ominous predictions turned out to have no basis in reality did not deter Washington officialdom from promulgating the same dogma up until the 1990s about almost each new world &quot;trouble-spot&quot;, testimony to their unshakable faith in the existence and inter-workings of the International Communist Conspiracy.<br /> <br /> == Haiti 1959-1963: The Marines land, again ==<br /> &quot;Duvalier has performed an economic miracle,&quot; remarked a Haitian of his country's dictator. &quot;He has taught us to live without money … to eat without food … to live without life.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And when Francois &quot;Papa Doc&quot; Duvalier's voodoo magic wore thin, he could always count on the US Marines to continue his people's education.<br /> <br /> During the night of 12-13 August 1959, a boat landed on the northern coast of Haiti with a reported 30 men, Haitians and Cubans and perhaps others aboard. The men had set sail from Cuba some 50 miles away. Their purpose was to overthrow the tyrannical Haitian government, a regime whose secret police, it was said, outnumbered its army.<br /> <br /> In short order, the raiding party, equipped with heavy weapons, captured a small army post and began to recruit and arm villagers for the cause.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; The government reported that about 200 persons had joined them.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Haitian exiles in Venezuela, in an apparently coordinated effort, broadcast appeals to their countrymen to aid the invaders. They set at 120 the number of men who had landed in Haiti, although this appears to be an exaggeration.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The initial reaction of the Duvalier government was one of panic, and the police began rounding up opposition sympathizers.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; It was at this point that the US military mission, in Haiti to train Duvalier's forces, stepped in. The Americans instituted an air and sea reconnaissance to locate the rebels. Haitian soldiers, accompanied by US Marines, were airlifted to the area and went into the field to do battle with them.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; Two other US Navy planes and a helicopter arrived from Puerto Rico.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> According to their commander, Col. Robert Debs Heinl, Jr., the American Marines took part in the fighting, which lasted until 22 August.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; The outcome was a complete rout of the rebel forces.<br /> <br /> Information about the men who came from Cuba derives almost exclusively from the Haitian government and the American military mission. These sources claim that the raiding party was composed of about 30 men and that, with the exception of one or two Haitians who led them, they were all Cubans. Another report, referred to in the New York Times, stated that there were ten Haitians and two Venezuelans amongst the 30 invaders.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; The latter ratio is probably closer to the truth, for there was a considerable number of Haitian exiles living in Cuba, many of whom had gained military experience during the recent Cuban revolution; for obvious reasons of international politics and fighting incentive, such men were the most likely candidates to be part of an invasion of their homeland.<br /> <br /> The Castro government readily admitted that the raiding party had come from Cuba but denied that the government had known or approved of it. This claim would seem rather suspect were it not for the fact that the Cuban coast guard had thwarted a similar undertaking in April.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The first members of the American military mission had arrived in Haiti in January, largely in response to another invasion attempt the previous July (originating probably in the Dominican Republic). Regardless of all the horror stories about the Haitian regime—such as the one Col. Heinl tells of his 12-year-old son being arrested when he was overheard expressing sympathy for a group of hungry peasants he saw—Duvalier was Washington's man. After all was said and done, he could be counted upon to keep his Black nation, which was usually accorded the honor of being Latin America's poorest, from turning Red. Heinl has recounted the instructions he received from a State Department Under Secretary in January:&lt;blockquote&gt;Colonel, the most important way you can support our objectives in Haiti is to help keep Duvalier in power so he can serve out his full term in office, and maybe a little longer than that if everything works out.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The Kennedy administration, which came to power in January 1961, had little use for Papa Doc, and supported his overthrow as well as his possible assassination. According to the later testimony of CIA official Walter Elder before a Senate investigating committee, the Agency furnished arms to Haitian dissidents seeking to topple the dictator. Elder added that while the assassination of Duvalier was not contemplated, the arms were provided &quot;to help [the dissidents] take what measures were deemed necessary to replace the government,&quot; and it was realized, he said, that Duvalier might be killed in the course of the overthrow.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But as Cuba increasingly became the United States' bête noire, the CIA's great obsession, Washington's policy changed. Haiti's cooperation was needed for the success of US efforts to have Cuba expelled from the Organization of American States in 1963. From that point on, Duvalier enjoyed the full diplomatic and economic support of the US. When the Haitian leader died on 12 April 1971, the American Ambassador Clinton Knox was the only diplomat present at the midnight swearing-in of 19-year-old Jean-Claude &quot;Baby Doc&quot; Duvalier as the new President for Life, who was to receive the same economic, political and military support as had &quot;Papa Doc&quot;, with only the occasional hiccup of a protest from Washington when the level of repression became difficult to ignore.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Guatemala 1960: One good coup deserves another ==<br /> In November 1960, as John F. Kennedy was preparing to succeed Dwight Eisenhower, the obsessive priority of American foreign policy—to invade Cuba—proceeded without pause. On the beaches and in the jungles of Guatemala, Nicaragua and Florida, the Bay of Pigs invasion was being rehearsed.<br /> <br /> On the 13th of the month, five days after Kennedy's victory, Guatemalan military personnel broke out in armed rebellion against the government of General Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, seizing two military bases and the port city of Puerto Barrios. Reports of the number of officers involved in the uprising vary from 45 to 120, the latter figure representing almost half the Guatemalan Army's officer corps. The officers commanded as many as 3,000 troops, a significant percentage of the armed forces. Their goals, it later developed, were more nationalistic than ideological. The officers were fed up with the corruption in the Ydigoras regime and in the army, and were particularly incensed about the use of their country by a foreign power as a springboard for an invasion of Cuba, some of them being admirers of Fidel Castro for his nationalist policies. One of the dissident officers later characterized the American training base in Guatemala as &quot;a shameful violation of our national sovereignty. And why was it permitted? Because our government is a puppet.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The rebellion was crushed within a matter of days, reportedly by the sole power of the Guatemalan Air Force. Some years later, a different picture was to emerge.<br /> <br /> The rebels were a force to be reckoned with. The ease with which they had taken over the two garrisons and the real possibility of their mutiny spreading to other bases set alarms ringing at the CIA base, a large coffee plantation in a remote corner of southwestern Guatemala, where the Agency and the US Air Force were training the army of Cuban exiles who were to launch the attack upon their homeland. The CIA feared, and rightly so, that a new regime would send them, the Cubans, and the whole operation packing.<br /> <br /> In Washington, President Eisenhower ordered US naval and air units to patrol the Caribbean coast and &quot;shoot if necessary&quot; to prevent any &quot;communist-led&quot; invasion of Guatemala or Nicaragua.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Eisenhower, like Ydigoras, saw the hand of international communism, particularly Cuba, behind the uprising, although no evidence of this was ever presented.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; It was all most ironic in light of the fact that it was the conspiracy of the two leaders to overthrow Cuba that was one of the reasons for the uprising; and that the US naval fleet ordered into action was deployed from Guantánamo Naval Base in Cuba, an American military installation present in that country against the vociferous objections of the Cuban government.<br /> <br /> In Guatemala, meanwhile, the CIA decided upon a solution to the dilemma that was both remarkably simple and close at hand: American and Cuban pilots took off from their training ground and bombed and strafed rebel headquarters outside Guatemala City, and bombed the town and airfield of Puerto Barrios. Caught completely by surprise, and defenseless against this superior force, the rebels' insurrection collapsed.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Back at the coffee plantation, the CIA resumed the function which had been so rudely interrupted, the preparation for the overthrow of the Cuban government.<br /> <br /> No announcement about the bombings was made in Washington, nor did a report appear in the American press.<br /> <br /> The CIA actions were probably not widely known about in Guatemala either, but it became public knowledge that President Ydigoras had asked Washington for the naval and air support, and had even instructed the Guatemalan Ambassador in Washington to &quot;Get in touch immediately with [Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs] Thomas Mann to coordinate your action.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; Thus it was that the Guatemalan president, needing afterward to distance himself a little from so much Yanqui protection, was moved to state that countries like Guatemala are at a disadvantage because &quot;Cuba is a satellite of powerful Russia&quot;, but &quot;we are not a satellite of the United States.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The final irony was that some of the dissident officers who went into hiding became more radicalized by their experience. During their revolt they had spurned offers of support from some of the peasants—though this would necessarily have been very limited in any case—because fighting for social change was not at all what the officers had in mind at the time. But as fugitives, thrown into greater contact with the peasants, they eventually came to be moved by the peasants' pressing need for land and for a way out of their wretched existence.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; In 1962, several of the officers were to emerge as leaders of a guerrilla movement which incorporated &quot;November Thirteen&quot; as part of its name. In their opening statement, the guerrillas declared:&lt;blockquote&gt;Democracy vanished from our country long ago. No people can live in a country where there is no democracy. That is why the demand for changes is mounting in our country. We can no longer carry on in this way. We must overthrow the Ydigoras government and set up a government which represents human rights, seeks ways and means to save our country from its hardships, and pursues a serious self-respecting foreign policy.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;A simple sentiment, stated even simpler, but, as we shall see, a movement fated to come up against the wishes of the United States. For if Washington could casually do away with an elected government in Guatemala, as it had in 1954, it could be moved by a guerrilla army only as rocks by waves or the moon by howling wolves.<br /> <br /> == France/Algeria 1960s L'état, c'est la CIA ==<br /> When John F. Kennedy assumed office in January 1961, he was confronted with a CIA at the zenith of its power and credibility. In the Agency's first 14 years, no formal congressional investigation of it had taken place, nor had any &quot;watchdog&quot; committee been established; four investigations of the CIA by independent task forces during this period had ensured that everything relating to things covert remained just that; with the exception of the U-2 incident the year before, no page-one embarrassments, scandals, or known failures; what had received a measure of publicity—the coups in Guatemala and Iran—were widely regarded as CIA success stories. White House denials and a compliant media had kept the Agency's misadventure in Indonesia in 1958 from the public scrutiny it deserved.<br /> <br /> It is probable that the CIA had more staff officers overseas, under official and unofficial covers, than the State Department, and this in addition to its countless paid agents. Often the CIA Chief of Station had been in a particular country longer than the American ambassador, had more money at his disposal, and exerted more influence. When it suited their purposes, Agency officers would completely bypass the ambassador and normal protocol to deal directly with the country's head of state and other high officials.<br /> <br /> The CIA had its own military capabilities, including its own air force; for all intents and purposes, its own foreign service with, indeed, its own foreign policy, though never at cross-purposes with fundamental US cold-war, anti-communist ideology and goals.<br /> <br /> Seemingly without fear of exposure or condemnation, the Agency felt free to carry out sundry Dr. Strangelove experiments involving control of the human mind and all manner of biochemical weapons, including the release of huge amounts of bacteria into the air in the United States which resulted in much illness and a number of deaths.<br /> <br /> It was all very heady stuff for the officers of the CIA, playing their men's games with their boys' toys. They recognized scarcely any limitation upon their freedom of action. British colonial governors they were, and all the world was India.<br /> <br /> Then, in mid-April, came the disaster at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. The international repercussions had barely begun to subside when the Agency was again catapulted into world headlines. On 22 April four French generals in Algeria seized power in an attempt to maintain the country's union with France. The putsch, which held out but four days, was a direct confrontation with French President Charles de Gaulle, who had dramatically proclaimed a policy leading &quot;not to an Algeria governed from France, but to an Algerian Algeria&quot;.<br /> <br /> The next day, the leftist Italian newspaper, Il Paese, stated that &quot;It is not by chance that some people in Paris are accusing the American secret service headed by Allen Dulles of having participated in the plot of the four 'ultra' generals.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Whether Il Paese was the original source of this charge remains a mystery. Dulles himself later wrote that the Italian daily was &quot;one of the first to launch it&quot; (emphasis added). He expressed the opinion that &quot;This particular myth was a Communist plant, pure and simple.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The New York Times reported that the rumors apparently began circulating by word of mouth on the day of the putsch,&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; a report echoed by the Washington Star which added that some of the rumors were launched &quot;by minor officials at the Elysée Palace itself&quot; who gave reporters &quot;to understand that the generals' plot was backed by strongly anti-communist elements in the United States Government and military services.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Whatever its origins, the story spread rapidly around the world, and the French Foreign Office refused to refute the allegation. Le Monde asserted in a front-page editorial on 28 April that &quot;the behavior of the United States during the recent crisis was not particularly skillful. It seems established that American agents more or less encouraged Challe [the leader of the putsch] … President Kennedy, of course, knew nothing of all this.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Reports from all sources were in agreement that if the CIA had indeed been involved in the putsch, it had been so for two reasons: (1) the concern that if Algeria were granted its independence, &quot;communists&quot; would soon come to power, being those in the ranks of the National Liberation Front (NLF) which had been fighting the French Army in Algeria for several years—the legendary Battle of Algiers. It was with the NLF that de Gaulle was expected to negotiate a settlement; (2) the hope that it would precipitate the downfall of de Gaulle, an end desired because the French President was a major stumbling block to US aspirations concerning NATO: among other things, he refused to incorporate French troops into an integrated military command, and he opposed exclusive American control over the alliance's nuclear weapons.<br /> <br /> By all accounts, it appears that the rebel officers had counted on support from important military and civilian quarters in France to extend the rebellion to the home country and overthrow de Gaulle. Fanciful as this may sound, the fact remains that the French government took the possibility seriously—French Premier Michel Debré went on television to warn the nation of an imminent paratroop invasion of the Paris area and to urge mass opposition.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Reaction in the American press to the allegations had an unmistakably motley quality. Washington Post columnist Marquis Childs said that the French were so shocked by the generals' coup that they had to find a scapegoat. At the same time he quoted &quot;one of the highest officials of the French government&quot; as saying:&lt;blockquote&gt;Of course, your government, neither your State Department nor your President, had anything to do with this. But when you have so many hundreds of agents in every part of the world, it is not to be wondered at that some of them should have got in touch with the generals in Algiers.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Time magazine discounted the story, saying too that the United States was being made a scapegoat and that the CIA had become a &quot;favorite target in recent weeks&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> James Reston wrote in the New York Times that the CIA:&lt;blockquote&gt;was involved in an embarrassing liaison with the anti-Gaullist officers who staged last week's insurrection in Algiers … [the Bay of Pigs and Algerian events have] increased the feeling in the White House that the CIA has gone beyond the bounds of an objective intelligence-gathering agency and has become the advocate of men and policies that have embarrassed the Administration.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;However, C.L. Sulzberger, who had been the man at the New York Times closest to the CIA since its founding, stated flatly that &quot;No American in Algeria had to do with any insurrectional leader … No consular employee saw any rebel.&quot; (A few days later, though, Secretary of State Dean Rusk disclosed that an emissary of the rebellious French generals had visited the US Consulate in Algiers to request aid but had been summarily rebuffed.)<br /> <br /> The affair, wrote Sulzberger, was &quot;a deliberate effort to poison Franco-American relationships&quot; begun in Moscow but abetted by &quot;anti-American French officials&quot; and &quot;naive persons in Washington … When one checks, one finds all this began in a Moscow Izvestia article April 25.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; This last, as we have seen, was incorrect.<br /> <br /> Dean of American columnists, Walter Lippmann, who had seen de Gaulle in Paris shortly before the putsch, wrote:&lt;blockquote&gt;the reason why the French Government has not really exculpated the CIA of encouraging the Algerian rebel generals is that it was already so angry with the CIA for meddling in French internal politics. The French grievance, justified or not, has to do with recent French legislation for the French nuclear weapon, and the alleged effort of CIA agents to interfere with that legislation.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Newsweek repeated the claim that it was &quot;French officials&quot; who had been &quot;the main sources&quot; of the rumors in the first place. When challenged by the American administration the French denied their authorship and tended to soften the charges. Some French officials eventually declared the matter to be closed, though they still failed to explicitly rule out the allegations about American involvement.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In early May 1961, L'Express, the widely-read French liberal weekly, published what was perhaps the first detailed account of the mysterious affair. Their Algerian correspondent, Claude Krief, reported:&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Both in Paris and Washington the facts are now known, though they will never be publicly admitted. In private, the highest French personalities make no secret of it. What they say is this: &quot;The CIA played a direct part in the Algiers coup, and certainly weighed heavily on the decision taken by ex-general Challe to start his putsch.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Not long before, Challe had held the position of NATO Commander-in-Chief, Allied Forces, Central Europe, as a result of which he had been in daily contact with US military officers.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; Krief wrote that certain American officials in NATO and the Pentagon had encouraged Challe, and that the general had several meetings with CIA officers who told him that &quot;to get rid of de Gaulle would render the Free World a great service&quot;. Krief noted that Challe, despite an overweening ambition, was very cautious and serious-minded: &quot;All the people who know him well, are deeply convinced that he had been encouraged by the CIA to go ahead.&quot;<br /> <br /> At a luncheon in Washington the previous year, Jacques Soustelle, the former Governor-General of Algeria who had made public his disagreement with de Gaulle's Algeria policy, had met with CIA officials, including Richard Bissell, head of covert operations. Soustelle convinced the Agency officials, according to Krief, that Algeria would become, through de Gaulle's blundering, &quot;a Soviet base&quot;. This luncheon became something of a cause célèbre in the speculation concerning the CIA's possible role. The New York Times and others reported that it had been given by the Agency for Soustelle.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; US officials, however, insisted that the luncheon had been arranged by someone at the French Embassy at Soustelle's request. This French official, they said, had been present throughout the meeting and thus there could have been no dark conspiracy.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; Why the French Embassy would host a luncheon for a prominent and bitter foe of de Gaulle, a man who only two months earlier had been kicked out of de Gaulle's cabinet for his &quot;ultra&quot; sympathies, was not explained. Nor, for that matter, why in protocol-minded Washington of all places, the CIA would attend. In any event, it seems somewhat fatuous to imply that this was the only chance Soustelle and the CIA had to talk during his stay in the United States, which lasted more than a week.<br /> <br /> A clandestine meeting in Madrid also received wide currency within the controversy. Krief dates it 12 April 1961, and describes it as a meeting of &quot;various foreign agents, including members of the CIA and the Algiers conspirators, who disclosed their plans to the CIA men&quot;. The Americans were reported to have angrily complained that de Gaulle's policy was &quot;paralyzing NATO and rendering the defense of Europe impossible&quot;, and assured the generals that if they and their followers succeeded, Washington would recognize the new Algerian Government within 48 hours.<br /> <br /> It may well be that the French Government did have evidence of the CIA's complicity. But in the unnatural world of international diplomacy, this would not necessarily lead to an unambiguous public announcement. Such a move could result in an open confrontation between France and the United States, a predicament both sides could be expected to take pains to avoid. Moreover, it might put the French in the position of having to do something about it. And what could they do? Breaking relations with the United States was not a realistic option; neither were the French in any position to retaliate economically or militarily. But French leaders were too angry to simply let the matter pass into obscurity. Thus, to complete the hypothetical scenario, they took the backdoor approach with all its shortcomings.<br /> <br /> In a similar vein, the United States knew that the Russians, for at least one year, were intercepting telephone calls in the US of government and congressional officials, but said nothing publicly because it was unable to end the practice for technical reasons.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt; And this concerned an &quot;enemy&quot;, not an ally.<br /> <br /> Between 1958 and the middle of the 1960s, there occurred some 30 serious assassination attempts upon the life of Charles de Gaulle, in addition to any number of planned attempts which didn't advance much beyond the planning stage.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt; A world record for a head of state, it is said. In at least one of the attempts, the CIA may have been a co-conspirator against the French president. By the mid-1960s, differences between de Gaulle and Washington concerning NATO had almost reached the breaking point; in February 1966, he gave NATO and the United States a deadline to either place their military bases in France under French control or dismantle them.<br /> <br /> In 1975, the Chicago Tribune featured a front-page story which read in part:&lt;blockquote&gt;Congressional leaders have been told of Central Intelligence Agency involvement in a plot by French dissidents to assassinate the late French President Charles De Gaulle. Within the last two weeks, a CIA representative disclosed sketchy details of the scheme … Sometime in the mid-1960s—probably in 1965 or 1966—dissidents in the De Gaulle government are said to have made contact with the CIA to seek help in a plot to murder the French leader. Which party instigated the contact was not clear … According to the CIA briefing officer, discussions were held on how best to eliminate De Gaulle, who by then had become a thorn in the side of the Johnson administration because of his ouster of American military bases from French soil and his demands that United States forces be withdrawn from the Indochina War. Thus the following plan is said to have evolved after discussions between CIA personnel and the dissident French. There is, however, no evidence the plot got beyond the talking stage.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;A hired assassin, armed with a poison ring, was to be slipped into a crowd of old soldiers of France when General De Gaulle was to be the host at a reception for them. The killer would make his appearance late in the day when it could be presumed De Gaulle's hand would be weary and perhaps even numb from shaking hundreds of hands. The assassin would clasp the general's hand in lethal friendship and De Gaulle would fail to detect the tiny pin prick of poison as it penetrated his flesh. The executioner would stroll off to become lost in the crowd as the poison began coursing through De Gaulle's veins either to his heart or brain, depending on the deadly poison used. How quickly death would come was not divulged, if that was even discussed at the time …&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;In the outline presented to the congressional leaders, there is no hint of what the CIA's actual role might have been had the plot reached fruition.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The dissidents involved in the alleged plot were embittered French army officers and former Algerian settlers who still bore deep resentment toward de Gaulle for having &quot;sold out French honor&quot; by his retreat from the North African colony.<br /> <br /> There was no mention in the reported CIA testimony about any involvement of Lyndon Johnson, although it was well known that there was no love lost between Johnson and de Gaulle. The French leader was firmly convinced that the United States was behind the failure of his trip to South America in 1964. He believed that the CIA had used its network of agents in South America to prevent a big turnout of crowds.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt; There is some evidence to indicate that the General was not just paranoid. In 1970, Dr Alfred Stepan, a professor of political science at Yale, testified before Congress about his experience in South America in 1964 when he was a journalist for The Economist.&lt;blockquote&gt;When De Gaulle was going to make his trip through Latin America, many of the Latin Americans interviewed [officers of various embassies] said that they were under very real pressure by various American groups not to be very warm towards De Gaulle, because we considered Latin America within the United States area of influence.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;After the appearance of the Chicago Tribune story, CIA Director William Colby confirmed that &quot;foreigners&quot; had approached the Agency with a plot to kill de Gaulle. The Agency rejected the idea, Colby said, but he did not know if the French government had been advised of the plot.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; It is not clear whether the incident referred to by Colby was related to the one discussed in the Tribune.<br /> <br /> In the early evening of Monday, 9 November 1970, Charles de Gaulle died peacefully at the age of 80, sitting in his armchair watching a sentimental television serial called &quot;Nanou&quot;.<br /> <br /> == Ecuador 1960-1963 A textbook of dirty tricks ==<br /> If the Guinness Book of World Records included a category for &quot;cynicism&quot;, one could suggest the CIA's creation of &quot;leftist&quot; organizations which condemned poverty, disease, illiteracy, capitalism, and the United States in order to attract committed militants and their money away from legitimate leftist organizations.<br /> <br /> The tiny nation of Ecuador in the early 1960s was, as it remains today, a classic of banana-republic underdevelopment; virtually at the bottom of the economic heap in South America; a society in which one percent of the population received an income comparable to United States upper-class standards, while two-thirds of the people had an average family income of about ten dollars per month—people simply outside the money economy, with little social integration or participation in the national life; a tale told many times in Latin America.<br /> <br /> In September 1960, a new government headed by José María Velasco Ibarra came to power. Velasco had won a decisive electoral victory, running on a vaguely liberal, populist, something-for-everyone platform. He was no Fidel Castro, he was not even a socialist, but he earned the wrath of the US State Department and the CIA by his unyielding opposition to the two stated priorities of American policy in Ecuador: breaking relations with Cuba, and clamping down hard on activists of the Communist Party and those to their left.<br /> <br /> Over the next three years, in pursuit of those goals, the CIA left as little as possible to chance. A veritable textbook on covert subversion techniques unfolded. In its pages could be found the following, based upon the experiences of Philip Agee, a CIA officer who spent this period in Ecuador.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Almost all political organizations of significance, from the far left to the far right, were infiltrated, often at the highest levels. Amongst other reasons, the left was infiltrated to channel young radicals away from support to Cuba and from anti-Americanism; the right, to instigate and co-ordinate activities along the lines of CIA priorities. If, at a point in time, there was no organization that appeared well-suited to serve a particular need, then one would be created.<br /> <br /> Or a new group of &quot;concerned citizens&quot; would appear, fronted with noted personalities, which might place a series of notices in leading newspapers denouncing the penetration of the government by the extreme left and demanding a break with Cuba. Or one of the noted personalities would deliver a speech prepared by the CIA, and then a newspaper editor, or a well-known columnist, would praise it, both gentlemen being on the CIA payroll.<br /> <br /> Some of these fronts had an actual existence; for others, even their existence was phoney. On one occasion, the CIA Officer who had created the non-existent &quot;Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Front&quot; was surprised to read in his morning paper that a real organization with that name had been founded. He changed the name of his organization to &quot;Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Action&quot;.<br /> <br /> Wooing the working class came in for special emphasis. An alphabet-soup of labor organizations, sometimes hardly more than names on stationery, were created, altered, combined, liquidated, and new ones created again, in an almost frenzied attempt to find the right combination to compete with existing left-oriented unions and take national leadership away from them. Union leaders were invited to attend various classes conducted by the CIA in Ecuador or in the United States, all expenses paid, in order to impart to them the dangers of communism to the union movement and to select potential agents.<br /> <br /> This effort was not without its irony either. CIA agents would sometimes jealously vie with each other for the best positions in these CIA-created labor organizations; and at times Ecuadorean organizations would meet in &quot;international conferences&quot; with CIA labor fronts from other countries, with almost all of the participants blissfully unaware of who was who or what was what.<br /> <br /> In Ecuador, as throughout most of Latin America, the Agency planted phoney anti-communist news items in co-operating newspapers. These items would then be picked up by other CIA stations in Latin America and disseminated through a CIA-owned news agency, a CIA-owned radio station, or through countless journalists being paid on a piece-work basis, in addition to the item being picked up unwittingly by other media, including those in the United States. Anti-communist propaganda and news distortion (often of the most farfetched variety) written in CIA offices would also appear in Latin American newspapers as unsigned editorials of the papers themselves.<br /> <br /> In virtually every department of the Ecuadorean government could be found men occupying positions, high and low, who collaborated with the CIA for money and/or their own particular motivation. At one point, the Agency could count amongst this number the men who were second and third in power in the country.<br /> <br /> These government agents would receive the benefits of information obtained by the CIA through electronic eavesdropping or other means, enabling them to gain prestige and promotion, or consolidate their current position in the rough-and-tumble of Ecuadorean politics. A high-ranking minister of leftist tendencies, on the other hand, would be the target of a steady stream of negative propaganda from any or all sources in the CIA arsenal; staged demonstrations against him would further increase the pressure on the president to replace him.<br /> <br /> The Postmaster-General, along with other post office employees, all members in good standing of the CIA Payroll Club, regularly sent mail arriving from Cuba and the Soviet bloc to the Agency for its perusal, while customs officials and the Director of Immigration kept the Agency posted on who went to or came from Cuba. When a particularly suitable target returned from Cuba, he would be searched at the airport and documents prepared by the CIA would be &quot;found&quot; on him. These documents, publicized as much as possible, might include instructions on &quot;how to intensify hatred between classes&quot;, or some provocative language designed to cause a split in Communist Party ranks. Generally, the documents &quot;verified&quot; the worst fears of the public about communist plans to take over Ecuador under the masterminding of Cuba or the Soviet Union; at the same time, perhaps, implicating an important Ecuadorean leftist whose head the Agency was after. Similar revelations, staged by CIA stations elsewhere in Latin America, would be publicized in Ecuador as a warning that Ecuador was next.<br /> <br /> Agency financing of conservative groups in a quasi-religious campaign against Cuba and &quot;atheistic communism&quot; helped to seriously weaken President Velasco's power among the poor, primarily Indians, who had voted overwhelmingly for him, but who were even more deeply committed to their religion. If the CIA wished to know how the president was reacting to this campaign it need only turn to his physician, its agent, Dr. Felipe Ovalle, who would report that his patient was feeling considerable strain as a result.<br /> <br /> CIA agents would bomb churches or right-wing organizations and make it appear to be the work of leftists. They would march in left-wing parades displaying signs and shouting slogans of a very provocative anti-military nature, designed to antagonize the armed forces and hasten a coup.<br /> <br /> The Agency did not always get away clean with its dirty tricks. During the election campaign, on 19 March 1960, two senior colonels who were the CIA's main liaison agents within the National Police participated in a riot aimed at disrupting a Velasco demonstration. Agency officer Bob Weatherwax was in the forefront directing the police during the riot in which five Velasco supporters were killed and many wounded. When Velasco took office, he had the two colonels arrested and Weatherwax was asked to leave the country.<br /> <br /> CIA-supported activities were carried out without the knowledge of the American ambassador. When the Cuban Embassy publicly charged the Agency with involvement in various anti-Cuban activities, the American ambassador issued a statement that &quot;had everyone in the [CIA] station smiling&quot;. Stated the ambassador: &quot;The only agents in Ecuador who are paid by the United States are the technicians invited by the Ecuadorean government to contribute to raising the living standards of the Ecuadorean people.&quot;<br /> <br /> Finally, in November 1961, the military acted. Velasco was forced to resign and was replaced by Vice-President Carlos Julio Arosemana. There were at this time two prime candidates for the vice-presidency. One was the vice-president of the Senate, a CIA agent. The other was the rector of Central University, a political moderate. The day that Congress convened to make their choice, a notice appeared in a morning paper announcing support for the rector by the Communist Party and a militant leftist youth organization. The notice had been placed by a columnist for the newspaper who was the principal propaganda agent for the CIA's Quito station. The rector was compromised rather badly, the denials came too late, and the CIA man won. His Agency salary was increased from $700 to $1,000 a month.<br /> <br /> Arosemana soon proved no more acceptable to the CIA than Velasco. All operations continued, particularly the campaign to break relations with Cuba, which Arosemana steadfastly refused to do. The deadlock was broken in March 1962 when a military garrison, led by Col. Aurelio Naranjo, gave Arosemana 72 hours to send the Cubans packing and fire the leftist Minister of Labor. (There is no need to point out here who Naranjo's financial benefactor was.) Arosemana complied with the ultimatum, booting out the Czech and Polish delegations as well at the behest of the new cabinet which had been forced upon him.<br /> <br /> At the CIA station in Quito there was a champagne victory celebration. Elsewhere in Ecuador, people angry about the military's domination and desperate about their own lives, took to arms. But on this occasion, like others, it amounted to naught … a small band of people, poorly armed and trained, infiltrated by agents, their every move known in advance—confronted by a battalion of paratroopers, superbly armed and trained by the United States. That was in the field. In press reports, the small band grew to hundreds; armed not only to the teeth, but with weapons from &quot;outside the country&quot; (read Cuba), and the whole operation very carefully planned at the Communist Party Congress the month before.<br /> <br /> On 11 July 1963 the Presidential Palace in Quito was surrounded by tanks and troops. Arosemana was out, a junta was in. Their first act was to outlaw communism; &quot;communists&quot; and other &quot;extreme&quot; leftists were rounded up and jailed, the arrests campaign being facilitated by data from the CIA's Subversive Control Watch List. (Standard at many Agency stations, this list would include not only the subject's name, but the names and addresses of his relatives and friends and the places he frequented—anything to aid in tracking him down when the time came).<br /> <br /> Civil liberties were suspended; the 1964 elections canceled; another tale told many times in Latin America.<br /> <br /> And during these three years, what were the American people told about this witch's brew of covert actions carried out, supposedly, in their name? Very little, if anything, if the New York Times is any index. Not once during the entire period, up to and including the coup, was any indication given in any article or editorial on Ecuador that the CIA or any other arm of the US government had played any role whatever in any event which had occurred in that country. This is the way the writings read even if one looks back at them with the advantage of knowledge and hindsight and reads between the lines.<br /> <br /> There is a solitary exception. Following the coup, we find a tiny announcement on the very bottom of page 20 that Havana radio had accused the United States of instigating the military takeover.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; The Cuban government had been making public charges about American activities in Ecuador regularly, but this was the first one to make the New York Times. The question must be asked: Why were these charges deemed unworthy of reporting or comment, let alone investigation?<br /> <br /> == The Congo 1960-1964: The assassination of Patrice Lumumba ==<br /> Within days of its independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960, the land long known as the Belgian Congo, and later as Zaire, was engulfed in strife and chaos as multiple individuals, tribes, and political groups struggled for dominance or independence. For the next several years the world press chronicled the train of Congolese governments, the endless confusion of personalities and conspiracies, exotic place names like Stanleyville and Leopoldville, shocking stories of European hostages and white mercenaries, the brutality and the violence from all quarters with its racist overtones.<br /> <br /> Into this disorder the Western powers were &quot;naturally&quot; drawn, principally Belgium to protect its vast mineral investments, and the United States, mindful of the fabulous wealth as well, and obsessed, as usual, with fighting &quot;communism&quot;.<br /> <br /> Successive American administrations of Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, looking through cold-war binoculars perceived an East-West battleground. The CIA station in the Congo cabled Washington in August that &quot;Embassy and station believe Congo experiencing classic communist effort [to] takeover government.&quot; CIA Director Allen Dulles warned of a &quot;communist takeover of the Congo with disastrous consequences … for the interests of the free world&quot;. At the same time, Dulles authorized a crash-program fund of up to $100,000 to replace the existing government of Patrice Lumumba with a &quot;pro-western group&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It's not known what criteria the CIA applied to determine that Lumumba's government was going communist, but we do know how the Washington Post arrived at the same conclusion:&lt;blockquote&gt;Western diplomats see … the part [of the Congo] controlled by volatile Premier Patrice Lumumba sliding slowly but surely into the Communist bloc. … Apart from the fevered activity of Communist bloc nations here, the pattern of events is becoming apparent to students of Communist policy. Premier Lumumba's startling changes of position, his open challenge of the United Nations and Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, his constant agitation of the largely illiterate Congolese can be explained in no other way, veteran observers say.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Years later, Under Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon told a Senate investigating committee (the Church committee) that the National Security Council and President Eisenhower had believed in 1960 that Lumumba was a &quot;very difficult if not impossible person to deal with, and was dangerous to the peace and safety of the world.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; This statement moved author Jonathan Kwitny to observe:&lt;blockquote&gt;How far beyond the dreams of a barefoot jungle postal clerk in 1956, that in a few short years he would be dangerous to the peace and safety of the world! The perception seems insane, particularly coming from the National Security Council, which really does have the power to end all human life within hours.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Patrice Lumumba became the Congo's first prime minister after his party received a plurality of the votes in national elections. He called for the nation's economic as well as political liberation and did not shy away from contact with socialist countries. At the Independence Day ceremonies he probably managed to alienate all the attending foreign dignitaries with his speech, which read in part:&lt;blockquote&gt;Our lot was eighty years of colonial rule … We have known tiring labor exacted in exchange for salary which did not allow us to satisfy our hunger … We have known ironies, insults, blows which we had to endure morning, noon, and night because we were &quot;Negroes&quot; … We have known that the law was never the same depending on whether it concerned a white or a Negro … We have known the atrocious sufferings of those banished for political opinions or religious beliefs … We have known that there were magnificent houses for the whites in the cities and tumble-down straw huts for the Negroes.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In 1960, it must be borne in mind, this was indeed radical and inflammatory language in such a setting.<br /> <br /> On 11 July, the province of Katanga—home to the bulk of the Congo's copper, cobalt, uranium, gold, and other mineral wealth—announced that it was seceding. Belgium, the principal owner of this fabulous wealth, never had any intention of giving up real control of the country, and it now supported the move for Katanga's independence, perceiving the advantage of having its investments housed in their own little country, not accountable to nor paying taxes to the central government in Leopoldville. Katanga, moreover, was led by Moise Tshombe, a man eminently accommodating to, and respectful of, whites and their investments.<br /> <br /> The Eisenhower administration supported the Belgian military intervention on behalf of Katanga; indeed, the American embassy had previously requested such intervention. Influencing this policy, in addition to Washington's ideological aversion to Lumumba, was the fact that a number of prominent administration officials had financial ties to the Katanga wealth.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Belgian intervention, which was a very violent one, was denounced harshly by the Soviet Union, as well as many countries from the Afro-Asian bloc, leading the UN Security Council on the 14th to authorize the withdrawal of Belgian troops and their replacement by a United Nations military force. This was fine with the United States, for the UN under Dag Hammarskjöld was very closely allied to Washington. The UN officials who led the Congo operation were Americans, in secret collaboration with the State Department, and in exclusion of the Soviet bloc; the latter's citizens who worked at the UN Secretariat were kept from seeing the Congo cables. Hammarskjöld himself was quite hostile toward Lumumba.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The UN force entered Katanga province and replaced the Belgian troops, but made no effort to end the secession. Unable to put down this uprising on his own, as well as one in another province, Lumumba had appealed to the United Nations as well as the United States to supply him with transport for his troops. When they both refused, he turned to the Soviet Union for aid, and received it,&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; though military success still eluded him.<br /> <br /> The Congo was in turmoil in many places. In the midst of it, on 5 September, President Joseph Kasavubu suddenly dismissed Lumumba as prime minister—a step of very debatable legality, taken with much American encouragement and assistance, as Kasavubu &quot;sat at the feet of the CIA men&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; The action was taken, said the Church committee later, &quot;despite the strong support for Lumumba in the Congolese Parliament.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During the early 1960s, according to a highly-placed CIA executive, the Agency &quot;regularly bought and sold Congolese politicians&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; US diplomatic sources subsequently confirmed that Kasavubu was amongst the recipients.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Hammarskjöld publicly endorsed the dismissal before the Security Council, and when Lumumba tried to broadcast his case to the Congolese people, UN forces closed the radio station. Instead, he appeared before the legislature, and by dint of his formidable powers of speech, both houses of Parliament voted to reaffirm him as prime minister. But he could taste the fruits of his victory for only a few days, for on the 14th, army strongman Joseph Mobutu took power in a military coup designed by the United States.<br /> <br /> Even during this period, with Lumumba not really in power, &quot;CIA and high Administration officials continued to view him as a threat&quot; … his &quot;talents and dynamism appear [to be the] overriding factor in reestablishing his position each time it seems half lost&quot; … &quot;Lumumba was a spellbinding orator with the ability to stir masses of people to action&quot; … &quot;if he … started to talk to a battalion of the Congolese Army he probably would have had them in the palm of his hand in five minutes&quot; …&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In late September, the CIA sent one of its scientists, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, to the Congo carrying &quot;lethal biological material&quot; (a virus) specifically intended for use in Lumumba's assassination. The virus, which was supposed to produce a fatal disease indigenous to the Congo area of Africa, was transported via diplomatic pouch.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1975, the Church committee went on record with the conclusion that Allen Dulles had ordered Lumumba's assassination as &quot;an urgent and prime objective&quot; (Dulles's words).&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; After hearing the testimony of several officials who believed that the order to kill the African leader had emanated originally from President Eisenhower, the committee decided that there was a &quot;reasonable inference&quot; that this was indeed the case.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As matters evolved in the Congo, the virus was never used, for the CIA's Congo station was unable to come up with &quot;a secure enough agent with the right access&quot; to Lumumba before the potency of the biological material was no longer reliable.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Church committee observed, however, that the CIA station in Leopoldville&lt;blockquote&gt;continued to maintain close contact with Congolese who expressed a desire to assassinate Lumumba. CIA officers encouraged and offered to aid these Congolese in their efforts against Lumumba, although there is no evidence that aid was ever provided for the specific purpose of assassination.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Fearing for his life, Lumumba was on the run. For a while he was protected from Mobutu by the United Nations, which, under considerable international pressure, had been forced to put some distance between itself and Washington.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt; But on 1 December, Lumumba was taken into custody by Mobutu's troops. A 28 November CIA cable indicates that the Agency was involved in tracking down the charismatic Congo leader. The cable spoke of the CIA station working with the Congolese government to get the roads blocked and troops alerted to close a possible escape route of Lumumba's.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The United States had also been involved in the takeover of government by Mobutu—whom author and CIA-confidant Andrew Tully described as having been &quot;discovered&quot; by the CIA.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt; Mobutu detained Lumumba until 17 January 1961 when he transferred his prisoner into the hands of Moise Tshombe of Katanga province, Lumumba's bitter enemy. Lumumba was assassinated the same day.<br /> <br /> In 1978, former CIA Africa specialist John Stockwell related in his book how a ranking Agency officer had told him of driving around with Lumumba's body in the trunk of his car, &quot;trying to decide what to do with it&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; What he did do with it has not yet been made public.<br /> <br /> During the period of Lumumba's imprisonment, US diplomats in the Congo were pursuing a policy of &quot;deploring&quot; his beatings and trying to secure &quot;humane treatment&quot; for him, albeit due to &quot;considerations of international opinion and not from tender feelings toward him&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; The immediate and the long-term effect of Lumumba's murder was to make him the martyr and symbol of anti-imperialism all over Africa and elsewhere in the Third World which such American officials had feared. Even Mobutu later felt compelled to build a memorial to his victim.<br /> <br /> Without a clearcut &quot;communist&quot; enemy like Lumumba, the Kennedy administration, which came to power on 20 January 1961, was very divided on the Katanga question. Although the United States wound up supporting—in the name of Congolese stability—the UN military operation in the summer to suppress the secession, Tshombe had outspoken support in the US Congress, and sentiment amongst officials at the State Department and the White House mirrored this division. The sundry economic and diplomatic ties of these officials appear to have been more diverse and contradictory than under the Eisenhower administration, and this is reflected in the lack of a unified policy. However, according to Kennedy adviser and biographer, Arthur Schlesinger, opinions on both sides of the issue were expressed in terms of hindering supposed malevolent Soviet/communist designs in the Congo.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In an even more marked policy division, US Air Force C-130s were flying Congolese troops and supplies against the Katangese rebels, while at the same time the CIA and its covert colleagues in the Pentagon were putting together an air armada of heavy transport aircraft, along with mercenary units, to aid the very same rebels.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt; (This marked at least the third instance of the CIA acting in direct military opposition to another arm of the US government.)&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Washington officials were more in unison when dealing with another prominent leftist—Antoine Gizenga, who had been Vice-Prime Minister under Lumumba. Following the latter's dismissal, according to the Church committee, the CIA station chief in the Congo, Lawrence Devlin, urged &quot;a key Congolese leader&quot; (presumably Mobutu) to &quot;arrest&quot; or undertake a &quot;more permanent disposal of Lumumba, Gizenga, and Mulele.&quot; (Pierre Mulele was another Lumumba lieutenant.)&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt; Gizenga was in fact arrested shortly after Mobutu took power, but a UN contingent from Ghana, whose leader, Kwame Nkrumah, was Lumumba's ally, intervened and freed him.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the continuous musical-chairs game of Congolese politics, the first of August 1961 found Gizenga as the Vice-Prime Minister under one Cyrille Adoula. By the end of the month, Gizenga was as well, and simultaneously, the leader of a rebel force that had set up a regime in the Stanleyville area which it proclaimed as the legitimate government of the entire Congo. He fancied himself the political and spiritual successor to Lumumba.<br /> <br /> The Soviet Union may have believed Gizenga, for apparently they were sending him arms and money, using Sudan, which borders the Congo on the north, as a conduit. When the CIA learned that a Czech ship was bound for Sudan with a cargo of guns disguised as Red Cross packages for refugee relief in the Congo, the Agency turned to its most practiced art, bribery, to persuade a crane operator to let one of the crates drop upon arrival. On that day, the dockside was suddenly covered with new Soviet Kalashnikov rifles. Through an equally clever ploy at the Khartoum (Sudan) airport, the CIA managed to separate a Congolese courier from his suitcase of Soviet money destined for Gizenga.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The State Department, meanwhile, was, in its own words,&lt;blockquote&gt;urging Adoula to … dismiss Gizenga and declare him in rebellion against the national government so that police action can now be taken against him. We are also urging the U.N. to take military action to break his rebellion … We are making every effort to keep Gizenga isolated from potential domestic and foreign support … We have taken care to insure that this [US] aid has been channelled through the central government in order to provide the economic incentive to encourage support for that government.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The CIA was supplying arms and money to Adoula's supporters, as well as to Mobutu's.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt; Adoula, who had a background of close ties to both the American labor movement and the CIA international labor movement (via the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions—see British Guiana chapter), was chosen to be prime minister instead of Gizenga by a parliamentary conference during which the parliamentarians were bribed by the CIA and even by the United Nations. A subsequent CIA memorandum was apparently paying tribute to this when it stated: &quot;The U.N. and the United States, in closely coordinated activities, played essential roles in this significant success over Gizenga.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In January 1962, United Nations forces with strong American backing ousted Gizenga and his followers from Stanleyville, and a year later finally forced Tshombe to end his secession in Katanga. These actions were carried out in the name of &quot;uniting the Congo&quot;, as if this were a matter to be decided by other than Congolese. Never before had the UN engaged in such offensive military operations, and the world organization was criticized in various quarters for having exceeded its charter. In any event, the operations served only to temporarily slow down the dreary procession of changing leaders, attempted coups, autonomous armies, shifting alliances, and rebellions.<br /> <br /> Adding an ironic and absurd touch to the American Congo policy, three months after the successful action against Gizenga, Allen Dulles (thanks to the Bay of Pigs, now the former Director of the CIA) informed a television audience that the United States had &quot;overrated the danger&quot; of Soviet involvement … &quot;It looked as though they were going to make a serious attempt at takeover in the Belgian Congo, well it did not work out that way at all.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Nonetheless, by the middle of 1964, when rebellion—by the heirs of Lumumba and Gizenga—was more widespread and furious than ever and the collapse of the central government appeared as a real possibility, the United States was pouring in a prodigious amount of military aid to the Leopoldville regime. In addition to providing arms and planes, Washington dispatched some 100 to 200 military and technical personnel to the Congo to aid government troops, and the CIA was conducting a paramilitary campaign against the insurgents in the eastern part of the country.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The government was now headed by none other than Moise Tshombe, a man called &quot;Africa's most unpopular African&quot; for his widely-recognized role in the murder of the popular Lumumba and for his use of white mercenaries, many of them South Africans and Rhodesians, during his secession attempt in Katanga. Tshombe defended the latter action by explaining that his troops would not fight without white officers.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Tshombe once again called upon his white mercenary army, numbering 400 to 500 men, and the CIA called upon its own mercenaries as well, a band which included Americans, Cuban-exile veterans of the Bay of Pigs, Rhodesians, and South Africans, the latter having been recruited with the help of the South African government. &quot;Bringing in our own animals&quot; was the way one CIA operative described the operation. The Agency's pilots carried out regular bombing and strafing missions against the insurgents, although some of the Cubans were reported to be troubled at being ordered to make indiscriminate attacks upon civilians.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt; Looking back at the affair in 1966, the New York Times credited the CIA with having created &quot;an instant air force&quot; in the Congo.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> When China protested to the United States about the use of American pilots in the Congo, the State Department issued an explicit denial, then publicly reversed itself, but insisted that the Americans were flying &quot;under contract with the Congolese government&quot;. The next day, the Department said that the flights would stop, after having obtained assurances from &quot;other arms of the [U.S] Government&quot;, although it still held to the position that the matter was one between the Congolese government and civilian individuals who were not violating American law.&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Congolese against whom this array of military might was brought to bear were a coalition of forces. Some of the leading figures had spent time in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union or China and were receiving token amounts of arms and instruction from those countries; but they were never necessarily in the communist camp any more than the countless Third Worlders who have gone to university in the United States and have been courted afterwards are necessarily in the Western/capitalist camp. (This does not hold for professional military officers who, unlike students, tend to be a particularly homogeneous group—conservative, authoritarian, and anti-communist.)<br /> <br /> Africa scholar M. Crawford Young has observed that amongst the coalition leadership, &quot;The destruction of the [Leopoldville] regime, a vigorous reassertion of Congolese control over its own destiny, and a vague socialist commitment were recurrent themes. But at bottom it appeared far more a frame of mind and a style of expression, than an interrelated set of ideas.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt; The rebels had no revolutionary program they could, or did, proclaim.<br /> <br /> Co-existing with this element within the coalition were currents of various esoteric churches, messianic sects, witch-finding movements, and other occult inspirations as well as plain opportunists. Many believed that the magic of their witch doctors would protect them against bullets. One of their leaders, Pierre Mulele, was a quasi-Catholic who baptized his followers in his own urine to also make them immune to bullets. The insurgents were further divided along tribal lines and were rent by debilitating factionalism. No single group or belief could dominate.&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Rebel success created the image of unified purpose and revolutionary promise,&quot; wrote Young. &quot;Only in its subsequent phase of decay and disintegration&quot; did the coalition's &quot;dramatic lack of cohesion&quot; and &quot;disparity in purpose and perception&quot; become fully evident.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The New York Times addressed the question of the coalition's ideology as follows:&lt;blockquote&gt;There is evidence that most supporters of the Stanleyville regime have no ideological commitment but are mainly Congolese who are disillusioned with the corruption and irresponsibility that has characterized the Leopoldville regimes. The rebel leaders have received advice and money from Communists but few if any of the rebels consider themselves Communists. It is probable that few have heard of Karl Marx.&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In the coalition-controlled area of Stanleyville, between 2,000 and 3,000 white foreigners found themselves trapped by the war. One of the rebel leaders, Christopher Gbenye, conditioned their safe release upon various military concessions, principally a cessation of American bombing, but negotiations failed to produce an agreement.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Instead, on 24 November 1964, the United States and Belgium staged a dramatic rescue mission in which over 500 Belgian paratroopers were dropped at dawn into Stanleyville from American transport planes. Much chaos followed, and the reports are conflicting, but it appears that more than 2,000 hostages were rescued, in the process of which the fleeing rebels massacred about 100 others and dragged several hundred more into the bush.<br /> <br /> American and Belgian officials took great pains to emphasize the purely &quot;humanitarian&quot; purpose of the mission. However, the rescuers simultaneously executed a key military maneuver when they &quot;seized the strategic points of the city and coordinated their operation with the advancing columns of Tshombe's mercenary army that was moving swiftly towards the city.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt; Moreover, in the process of the rescue, the rescuers killed dozens of rebels and did nothing to curtail Tshombe's troops when they reached Stanleyville and began an &quot;orgy of looting and killing&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Tshombe may have provided a reminder of the larger-than-humanitarian stake at hand in the Congo when, in the flush of the day's success, he talked openly with a correspondent of The Times of London who reported that Tshombe &quot;was confident that the fall of Stanleyville would give a new impetus to the economy and encourage investors. It would reinforce a big development plan announced this morning in collaboration with the United States, Britain and West Germany.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The collapse of the rebels' stronghold in Stanleyville marked the beginning of the end for their cause. By spring 1965 their fortune was in sharp decline, and the arrival of about 100 Cuban revolutionaries, amongst whom was Che Guevara himself, had no known effect upon the course of events. Several months later, Guevara returned to Cuba in disgust at the low level of revolutionary zeal exhibited by the Congolese guerrillas and the local populace.&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The concluding tune for the musical chairs was played in November, when Joseph Mobutu overthrew Tshombe and Kasavubu. Mobutu, later to adopt the name Mobutu Sese Seko, has ruled with a heavy dictatorial hand ever since.<br /> <br /> In the final analysis, it mattered precious little to the interests of the US government whether the forces it had helped defeat were really &quot;communist&quot; or not, by whatever definition. The working premise was that there was now fixed in power, over a more-or-less unified Congo, a man who would be more co-operative with the CIA in its African adventures and with Western capital, and less accessible to the socialist bloc, than the likes of Lumumba, Gizenga, et al. would have been. The CIA has chalked this one up as a victory.<br /> <br /> What the people of the Congo (now Zaire) won is not clear. Under Mobutu, terror and repression became facts of daily life, civil liberties and other human rights were markedly absent. The country remains one of the poorest to be found anywhere despite its vast natural riches. Mobutu, however, is reputed to be one of the richest heads of state in the world. (See Zaire chapter.)<br /> <br /> William Atwood, US Ambassador to Kenya in 1964-65, who played a part in the hostage negotiations, also saw the US role in the Congo in a positive light. Bemoaning African suspicions toward American motives there, he wrote: &quot;It was hard to convince people that we had provided the Congo with $420 million in aid since independence just to prevent chaos; they couldn't believe any country could be that altruistic.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Atwood's comment is easier to understand when one realizes that the word &quot;chaos&quot; has long been used by American officials to refer to a situation over which the United States has insufficient control to assure that someone distinctly pro-Western will remain in, or come to, power. When President Eisenhower, for example, decided to send troops into Lebanon in 1958, he saw it as a move, he later wrote, &quot;to stop the trend towards chaos&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Brazil 1961-1964: Introducing the marvelous new world of Death Squads ==<br /> When the leading members of the US diplomatic mission in Brazil held a meeting one day in March 1964, they arrived at the consensus that President João Goulart's support of social and economic reforms was a contrived and thinly veiled vehicle to seize dictatorial power.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The American ambassador, Lincoln Gordon, informed the State Department that &quot;a desperate lunge [by Goulart] for totalitarian power might be made at any time.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Brazilian army chief of staff, General Humberto de Alencar Castelo (or Castello) Branco, provided the American Embassy with a memorandum in which he stated his fear that Goulart was seeking to close down Congress and initiate a dictatorship.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Within a week after the expression of these concerns, the Brazilian military, with Castelo Branco at its head, overthrew the constitutional government of President Goulart, the culmination of a conspiratorial process in which the American Embassy had been intimately involved. The military then proceeded to install and maintain for two decades one of the most brutal dictatorships in all of South America.<br /> <br /> What are we to make of all this? The idea that men of rank and power lie to the public is commonplace, not worthy of debate. But do they as readily lie to each other? Is their need to rationalize their misdeeds so great that they provide each other a moral shoulder to lean on? &quot;Men use thoughts only to justify their injustices,&quot; wrote Voltaire, &quot;and speech only to conceal their thoughts.&quot;<br /> <br /> The actual American motivation in supporting the coup was something rather less heroic than preserving democracy, even mundane as such matters go. American opposition to Goulart, who became president in 1961, rested upon a familiar catalogue of complaints:<br /> <br /> US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara questioned Brazil's neutral stand in foreign policy. The Brazilian ambassador in Washington, Roberto Campos, responded that &quot;neutralism&quot; was an inadequate term and explained that &quot;what was involved was really a deep urge of the Brazilian people to assert their personality in world affairs.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> American officials did not approve of some of the members of Goulart's cabinet, and said so. Ambassador Campos pointed out to them that it was &quot;quite inappropriate&quot; for the United States &quot;to try to influence the composition of the cabinet.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Attorney-General Robert Kennedy met with Goulart and expressed his uneasiness about the Brazilian president allowing &quot;communists&quot; to hold positions in government agencies. (Bobby was presumably acting on the old and very deep-seated American belief that once you welcome one or two communists into your parlor, they take over the whole house and sign the deed over to Moscow.) Goulart did not see this as a danger. He replied that he was in full control of the situation, later remarking to Campos that it was as if he had been told that he had no capacity for judging the men around him.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The American Defense Attaché in Brazil, Col. Vernon Walters, reported that Goulart showed favoritism towards &quot;ultra-nationalist&quot; military officers over &quot;pro-U.S.&quot; officers. Goulart saw it as promoting those officers who appeared to be most loyal to his government. He was, as it happens, very concerned about American-encouraged military coups and said so explicitly to President Kennedy.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Goulart considered purchasing helicopters from Poland because Washington was delaying on his request to purchase them from the United States. Ambassador Gordon told him that he &quot;could not expect the United States to like it&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Goulart administration, moreover, passed a law limiting the amount of profits multinationals could transmit out of the country, and a subsidiary of ITT was nationalized. Compensation for the takeover was slow in coming because of Brazil's precarious financial position, but these were the only significant actions taken against US corporate interests.<br /> <br /> Inextricably woven into all these complaints, yet at the same time standing apart, was Washington's dismay with Brazil's &quot;drift to the left&quot; … the communist/leftist influence in the labor movement … leftist &quot;infiltration&quot; wherever one looked … &quot;anti-Americanism&quot; among students and others (the American Consul General in São Paulo suggested to the State Department that the United States &quot;found competing student organizations&quot;) … the general erosion of &quot;U.S. influence and the power of people and groups friendly to the United States&quot;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;… one might go so far as to suggest that Washington officials felt unloved, were it not for the fact that the coup, as they well knew from much past experience, could result only in intensified anti-Americanism all over Latin America.<br /> <br /> Goulart's predecessor, Jânio da Silva Quadros, had also irritated Washington. &quot;Why should the United States trade with Russia and her satellites but insist that Brazil trade only with the United States?&quot; he asked, and proceeded to negotiate with the Soviet Union and other Communist countries to (re)establish diplomatic and commercial relations. He was, in a word, independent.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Quadros was also more-or-less a conservative who clamped down hard on unions, sent federal troops to the northeast hunger dens to squash protest, and jailed disobedient students.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; But the American ambassador at the time, John Moors Cabot, saw fit to question Brazil's taking part in a meeting of &quot;uncommitted&quot; (non-aligned) nations. &quot;Brazil has signed various obligations with the United States and American nations,&quot; he said. &quot;I am sure Brazil is not going to forget her obligations … It is committed. It is a fact. Brazil can uncommit itself if it wants.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In early 1961, shortly after Quadros took office, he was visited by Adolf Berle, Jr., President Kennedy's adviser on Latin American affairs and formerly ambassador to Brazil. Berle had come as Kennedy's special envoy to solicit Quadros's backing for the impending Bay of Pigs invasion. Ambassador Cabot was present and some years later described the meeting to author Peter Bell. Bell has written:&lt;blockquote&gt;Ambassador Cabot remembers a &quot;stormy conversation&quot; in which Berle stated the United States had $300 million in reserve for Brazil and in effect &quot;offered it as a bribe&quot; for Brazilian cooperation … Quadros became &quot;visibly irritated&quot; after Berle refused to heed his third &quot;no&quot;. No Brazilian official was at the airport the next day to see the envoy off.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Quadros, who had been elected by a record margin, was, like Goulart, accused of seeking to set up a dictatorship because he sought to put teeth into measures unpopular with the oligarchy, the military, and/or the United States, as well as pursuing a &quot;pro-communist&quot; foreign policy. After but seven months in office he suddenly resigned, reportedly under military pressure, if not outright threat. In his letter of resignation, he blamed his predicament on &quot;reactionaries&quot; and &quot;the ambitions of groups of individuals, some of whom are foreigners … the terrible forces that arose against me.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A few months later, Quadros reappeared, to deliver a speech in which he named Berle, Cabot, and US Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon as being among those who had contributed to his downfall. Dillon, he said, sought to mix foreign policy with Brazil's needs for foreign credits.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; (Both Berle and Cabot had been advocates of the 1954 overthrow of Guatemalan President Arbenz, whose sins, in Washington's eyes, were much the same as those Goulart was now guilty of.)&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; At the same time, Quadros announced his intention to lead a &quot;people's crusade&quot; against the &quot;reactionaries, the corrupt and the Communists&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As Quadros's vice president, Goulart succeeded to the presidency in August 1961 despite a virtual coup and civil war initiated by segments of the military to block him because he was seen as some sort of dangerous radical. Only the intervention of loyalist military units and other supporters of the constitutional process allowed Goulart to take office.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt; The military opposition to Goulart arose, it should be noted, before he had the opportunity to exhibit his alleged tendencies toward dictatorship. Indeed, as early as 1954, the military had demonstrated its antipathy toward him by forcing President Vargas to fire him from his position as Minister of Labor.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt; The American doubts about Goulart also predated his presidency. In 1960, when Goulart was elected vice president, &quot;concern at the State Department and the Pentagon turned to panic&quot; according to an American official who served in Brazil.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Goulart tried to continue Quadros's independent foreign policy. His government went ahead with resumption of relations with socialist countries, and at a meeting of the Organization of American States in December 1961 Brazil abstained on a vote to hold a special session aimed at discussing &quot;the Cuban problem&quot;, and stood strongly opposed to sanctions against the Castro government.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt; A few months later, speaking before the US Congress, Goulart affirmed Brazil's right to take its own stand on some of the cold-war issues. He declared that Brazil identified itself &quot;with the democratic principles which unite the peoples of the West&quot;, but was &quot;not part of any politico-military bloc&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Time magazine, in common with most US media, had (has) a difficult time understanding the concept and practice of independence amongst America's allies. In November 1961, the magazine wrote that Brazil's domestic politics were &quot;confused&quot; and that the country was &quot;also adrift in foreign affairs. Goulart is trying to play the old Quadros game of international 'independence', which means wooing the East while panhandling from the West.&quot; Time was critical of Goulart in that he had sought an invitation to visit Washington and on the same day he received it he &quot;called in Communist Poland's visiting Foreign Minister, Adam Rapacki, [and] awarded him the Order of the Southern Cross—the same decoration that Quadros hung on Cuba's Marxist mastermind, Che Guevara&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Former Time editor and Latin America correspondent, John Gerassi, commented that every visiting foreign dignitary received this medal, the Cruzeiro do Sul, as part of protocol. He added:&lt;blockquote&gt;Apparently Time thinks that any President who wants to visit us must necessarily hate our enemies as a consequence, and is &quot;confused&quot; whenever this does not occur. But, of course, Time magazine is so unused to the word &quot;independent&quot; that an independent foreign policy must be very confusing indeed. In South America, where everyone would like to follow an independent foreign policy but where only Brazil has, at times, the courage, no one was confused.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Goulart, a millionaire land-owner and a Catholic who wore a medal of the Virgin around his neck, was no more a communist than was Quadros, and he strongly supported the United States during the &quot;Cuban Missile Crisis&quot; of October 1962. He offered Ambassador Gordon a toast &quot;To the Yankee Victory!&quot;,&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt; perhaps unaware that only three weeks earlier, during federal and state elections in Brazil, CIA money had been liberally expended in support of anti-Goulart candidates. Former CIA officer Philip Agee has stated that the Agency spent between 12 and 20 million dollars on behalf of hundreds of candidates.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt; Lincoln Gordon says the funding came to no more than 5 million.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In addition to the direct campaign contributions, the CIA dipped into its bag of dirty tricks to torment the campaigns of leftist candidates.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt; At the same time, the Agency for International Development (AID), at the express request of President Kennedy, was allocating monies to projects aimed at benefiting chosen gubernatorial candidates.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt; (While Goulart was president, no new US economic assistance was given to the central government, while regional assistance was provided on a markedly ideological basis. When the military took power, this pattern was sharply altered.)&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Agee adds that the CIA carried out a consistent propaganda campaign against Goulart which dated from at least the 1962 election operation and which included the financing of mass urban demonstrations, &quot;proving the old themes of God, country, family and liberty to be as effective as ever&quot; in undermining a government.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> CIA money also found its way to a chain of right-wing newspapers, Diarias Associades, to promote anti-communism; for the distribution of 50 thousand books of similar politics to high school and college students; and for the formation of women's groups with their special Latin mother's emphasis on the godlessness of the communist enemy. The women and other CIA operatives also went into the rumor-mongering business, spreading stories about outrages Goulart and his cronies were supposed to be planning, such as altering the constitution so as to extend his term, and gossip about Goulart being a cuckold and a wife-beater.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> All this to overthrow a man who, in April 1962, had received a ticker-tape parade in New York City, was warmly welcomed at the White House by President Kennedy, and had addressed a joint session of Congress.<br /> <br /> The intraservice confrontation which had attended Goulart's accession to power apparently kept a rein on coup-minded officers until 1963. In March of that year the CIA informed Washington, but not Goulart, of a plot by conservative officers.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt; During the course of the following year, the plots thickened. Brazilian military officers could not abide by Goulart's attempts at populist social reforms, though his program was timid, his rhetoric generally mild, and his actions seldom matched either. (He himself pointed out that General Douglas MacArthur had carried out a more radical distribution of land in Japan after the Second World War than anything planned by the Brazilian Government.) The military men were particularly incensed at Goulart's support of a weakening of military discipline and his attempts to build up a following among non-commissioned officers.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt; This the president was genuinely serious about because of his &quot;paranoia&quot; about a coup.<br /> <br /> Goulart's wooing of NCOs and his appeals to the population over the heads of a hostile Congress and state governors (something President Reagan later did on several occasions) were the kind of tactics his enemies labeled as dictatorial.<br /> <br /> In early 1964, disclosed Fortune magazine after the coup, an emissary was sent by some of the military plotters &quot;to ask U.S. Ambassador Lincoln Gordon what the U.S. position would be if civil war broke out&quot;. The emissary &quot;reported back that Gordon was cautious and diplomatic, but he left the impression that if the [plotters] could hold out for forty-eight hours they would get U.S. recognition and help.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The primary American contact with the conspirators was Defense Attaché Vernon Walters who arrived in Brazil after having been apprised that President Kennedy would not be averse to the overthrow of João Goulart.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt; Walters, who later became Deputy Director of the CIA, had an intimacy with leading Brazilian military officers, particularly General Castelo Branco, going back to World War II when Walters had served as interpreter for the Brazilian Expeditionary Force then fighting in Italy with the Allies. Brazil was the only Latin American country to send ground combat troops to the war, and it allowed the United States to build huge aircraft staging bases on its territory.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; The relationship between US and Brazilian officers was continued and enhanced after the war by the creation of the Higher War College (Escola Superior de Guerra) in Rio de Janeiro in 1949. Latin America historian Thomas E. Skidmore has observed:&lt;blockquote&gt;Under the U.S.-Brazilian military agreements of the early 1950s, the U.S. Army received exclusive rights to render assistance in the organization and operation of the college, which had been modeled on the National War College in Washington. In view of the fact that the Brazilian War College became a rallying point for leading military opponents of civilian populist politicians, it would be worth examining the extent to which the strongly anti-Communist ideology—bordering on an anti-political attitude—[of certain officers] was reinforced (or moderated?) by their frequent contacts with United States officers.&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;There was, moreover, the ongoing US Military Assistance Program, which Ambassador Gordon described as a &quot;major vehicle for establishing close relationships with personnel of the armed forces&quot; and &quot;a highly important factor in influencing [the Brazilian] military to be pro-US.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A week before the coup, Castelo Branco, who emerged as the leader of the conspirators, gave Walters a copy of a paper he had written which was in effect a justification for a military coup, another variation on the theme of upholding the constitution by preventing Goulart from instituting a dictatorship.&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> To Lincoln Gordon and other American officials, civil war appeared a real possibility as the result of a coup attempt. As the scheduled day approached, contingency plans were set up.<br /> <br /> A large quantity of petroleum would be sent to Brazil and made available to the insurgent officers, an especially vital commodity if Goulart supporters in the state oil union were to blow up or control the refineries.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A US Navy task force would be dispatched to Brazilian coastal waters, the presence of which would deliver an obvious message to opponents of the coup.&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Arms and ammunition would be sent to Branco's forces to meet their fighting needs.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Concerned that the coup attempt might be met by a general strike, Washington discussed with Gordon the possible need &quot;for the U.S. to mount a large material program to assure the success of the takeover.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt; The conspirators had already requested economic aid from the United States, in the event of their success, to get the government and economy moving again, and had received a generally favorable response.&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At the same time, Gordon sent word to some anti-Goulart state governors emphasizing the necessity, from the American point of view, that the new regime have a claim to legitimacy. The ambassador also met with former president Juscelino Kubitschek to urge him to take a stronger position against Goulart and to use his considerable influence to &quot;swing a large congressional group and thereby influence the legitimacy issue&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Of the American contingency measures, indications are that it was the naval show of force—which, it turned out, included an aircraft carrier, destroyers, and guided missiles—which most encouraged the Brazilian military plotters or convinced those still wavering in their commitment.&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Another actor in the unfolding drama was the American Institute for Free Labor Development. The AIFLD came formally into being in 1961 and was technically under the direction of the American labor movement (AFL-CIO), but was soon being funded almost exclusively by the US government (AID) and serving consistently as a CIA instrument in most countries of Latin America. In May 1963, the AIFLD founded the Instituto Cultural Trabalho in Brazil which, over the next few years, gave courses to more than 7,000 union leaders and members.&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt; Other Brazilians went to the United States for training. When they returned to Brazil, said AIFLD executive William Doherty, Jr., some of them:&lt;blockquote&gt;became intimately involved in some of the clandestine operations of the revolution before it took place on April 1. What happened in Brazil on April 1 did not just happen—it was planned—and planned months in advance. Many of the trade union leaders—some of whom were actually trained in our institute—were involved in the revolution, and in the overthrow of the Goulart regime.&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Doherty did not spell out any details of the AIFLD role in the coup (or revolution as he called it), although Reader's Digest later reported that one of the AIFLD-trained labor leaders set up courses for communication workers in combatting communism in the labor movement in Brazil, and &quot;After every class he quietly warned key workers of coming trouble and urged them to keep communications going no matter what happened.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt; Additionally, Richard Martinez, an unwitting CIA contract employee who was sent to Brazil to work with the Agency's Post, Telegraph and Telephone Workers International (formerly Doherty's domain), has revealed that his field workers in Brazil burned down Communist Party headquarters at the time of the coup.&lt;sup&gt;51&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The coup began on 31 March 1964 with the advance upon Rio of troops and tanks. Officers obtained the support of some units of enlisted men by telling them they were heading for the city to secure it against Goulart's enemies. But at the main air force base pro-Goulart enlisted men, hearing of the move toward Rio, seized the base and put their officers under arrest. Indecision and cold feet intervened, however, and what might have reversed the course of events instead came to nought. Other military units loyal to Goulart took actions elsewhere, but these too fizzled out.&lt;sup&gt;52&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Here and there a scattering of workers went out on strike; several short-lived, impotent demonstrations took place, but there was little else. A number of labor leaders and radicals were rounded up on the orders of certain state governors; those who were opposed to what was happening were not prepared for violent resistance; in one incident a group of students staged a protest—some charged up the stairs of an Army organization, but the guard fired into their midst, killing two of them and forcing the others to fall back.&lt;sup&gt;53&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Most people counted on loyal armed forces to do their duty, or waited for the word from Goulart. Goulart, however, was unwilling to give the call for a civil war; he did not want to be responsible, he said, for bloodshed amongst Brazilians, and fled to Uruguay.&lt;sup&gt;54&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Lincoln Gordon cabled Washington the good news, suggesting the &quot;avoidance of a jubilant posture&quot;. He described the coup as &quot;a great victory for the free world&quot;, adding, in a remark that might have had difficulty getting past the lips of even John Foster Dulles, that without the coup there could have been a &quot;total loss to the West of all South American Republics&quot;. Following a victory parade in Rio on 2 April by those pleased with the coup—a March of Family with God for Liberty—Gordon informed the State Department that the &quot;only unfortunate note was the obviously limited participation in the march of the lower classes.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;55&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> His cable work done, the former Harvard professor turned his attention back to trying to persuade the Brazilian Congress to bestow a seal of &quot;legitimacy&quot; upon the new government.&lt;sup&gt;56&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Two years later, Gordon was to be questioned by a senator during hearings to consider his nomination as Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. &quot;I am particularly concerned,&quot; said the senator, &quot;with the part you may have played, if any, in encouraging, promoting, or causing that overthrow.&quot;<br /> <br /> Said Lincoln Gordon: &quot;The answer to that, senator, is very simple. The movement which overthrew President Goulart was a purely, 100 percent—not 99.44—but 100 percent purely Brazilian movement. Neither the American Embassy nor I personally played any part in the process whatsoever.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;57&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Gordon's boss, Dean Rusk, was not any more forthright. When asked about Cuban charges that the United States was behind the coup, the Secretary of State responded: &quot;Well, there is just not one iota of truth in this. It's just not so in any way, shape, or form.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;58&lt;/sup&gt; While Attorney General Robert Kennedy's view of the affair, stated to Gordon, was: &quot;Well, Goulart got what was coming to him. Too bad he didn't follow the advice we gave him when I was there.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;59&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Gordon artfully combined fast talk with omission of certain key facts about Brazilian politics—his summary of Goulart's rise and fall made no mention at all of the military's move to keep him from taking office in 1961—to convince the assembled senators that Goulart was indeed seeking to set up a personal dictatorship.&lt;sup&gt;60&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Depending on the setting, either &quot;saving Brazil from dictatorship&quot; or &quot;saving Brazil from communism&quot; was advanced as the rationale for what took place in 1964. (General Andrew O'Meara, head of the US Southern [Latin America] Command, had it both ways. He told a House committee that &quot;The coming to power of the Castelo Branco government in Brazil last April saved that country from an immediate dictatorship which could only have been followed by Communist domination.&quot;)&lt;sup&gt;61&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The rescue-from-communism position was especially difficult to support, the problem being that the communists in Brazil did not, after all, do anything which the United States could point to. Moreover, the Soviet Union was scarcely in the picture. Early in 1964, reported a Brazilian newspaper, Russian leader Khrushchev told the Brazilian Communist Party that the Soviet government did not wish either to give financial aid to the Goulart regime or to tangle with the United States over the country.&lt;sup&gt;62&lt;/sup&gt; In his reminiscences—albeit, as mentioned earlier, not meant to be a serious work of history—Khrushchev does not give an index reference to Brazil.<br /> <br /> A year after the coup, trade between Brazil and the USSR was running at $120 million per year and a Brazilian mission was planning to go to Moscow to explore Soviet willingness to provide a major industrial plant.&lt;sup&gt;63&lt;/sup&gt; The following year, the Russians invited the new Brazilian president-to-be, General Costa e Silva, to visit the Soviet Union.&lt;sup&gt;64&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During the entire life of the military dictatorship, extending into the 1980s, Brazil and the Soviet bloc engaged in extensive trade and economic cooperation, reaching billions of dollars per year and including the building of several large hydroelectric plants in Brazil. A similar economic relationship existed between the Soviet bloc and the Argentine military dictatorship of 1976-83, so much so that in 1982, when Soviet leader Brezhnev died, the Argentine government declared a national day of mourning.&lt;sup&gt;65&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It was only by ignoring facts like these during the cold war that the anti-communist propaganda machine of the United States could preach about the International Communist Conspiracy and claim that the coup in Brazil had saved the country from communism. For a typical example of this propaganda, one must read &quot;The Country That Saved Itself,&quot; which appeared in Reader's Digest several months after the coup. The innumerable lies about what occurred in Brazil, fed by the magazine to its millions of readers, undoubtedly played a role in preparing the American public for the great anti-communist crusade in Vietnam just picking up steam at the time. The article began:&lt;blockquote&gt;Seldom has a major nation come closer to the brink of disaster and yet recovered than did Brazil in its recent triumph over Red subversion. The communist drive for domination—marked by propaganda, infiltration, terror—was moving in high gear. Total surrender seemed imminent—and then the people said No!&lt;sup&gt;66&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The type of independence shown by the Brazilian military government in its economic relations with the Soviet Union was something Washington could accept from a conservative government, even the occasional nationalization of American property, when it knew that the government could be relied upon to keep the left suppressed at home and to help in the vital cold-war, anti-communist campaigns abroad. In 1965, Brazil sent 1,100 troops to the Dominican Republic in support of the US invasion, the only country in Latin America to send more than a token force. And in 1971 and 1973, the Brazilian military and intelligence apparatuses contributed to the American efforts in overthrowing the governments of Bolivia and Chile.<br /> <br /> The United States did not rest on its laurels. CIA headquarters immediately began to generate hemisphere-wide propaganda, as only the Agency's far-flung press-asset network could, in support of the new Brazilian government and to discredit Goulart.&lt;sup&gt;67&lt;/sup&gt; Dean Rusk, concerned that Goulart might be received in Uruguay as if he were still Brazil's president on the grounds that he had not resigned, cabled the American Embassy in Montevideo that &quot;it would be useful if you could quietly bring to the attention of appropriate officials the fact that despite his allegations to the contrary Goulart has abandoned his office.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;68&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At the same time, the CIA station in Uruguay undertook a program of surveillance of Brazilian exiles who had fled from the military takeover, to prevent them from instigating any kind of insurgency movement in their homeland. It was a simple matter for the Agency to ask their (paid) friend, the head of Uruguayan intelligence, to place his officers at the residences of Goulart and other key Brazilians. The officers kept logs of visitors while posing as personal security men for the exiles, although it is unlikely that the exiles swallowed the story.&lt;sup&gt;69&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the first few days following the coup, &quot;several thousand&quot; Brazilians were arrested, &quot;communist and suspected communist&quot; all.&lt;sup&gt;70&lt;/sup&gt; AIFLD graduates were promptly appointed by the new government to purge the unions.&lt;sup&gt;71&lt;/sup&gt; Though Ambassador Gordon had assured the State Department before the coup that the armed forces &quot;would be quick to restore constitutional institutions and return power to civilian hands,&quot;&lt;sup&gt;72&lt;/sup&gt; this was not to be. Within days, General Castelo Branco assumed the presidency and over the next few years his regime instituted all the features of military dictatorship which Latin America has come to know and love: Congress was shut down, political opposition was reduced to virtual extinction, habeas corpus for &quot;political crimes&quot; was suspended, criticism of the president was forbidden by law, labor unions were taken over by government interveners, mounting protests were met by police and military firing into crowds, the use of systematic &quot;disappearance&quot; as a form of repression came upon the stage of Latin America, peasants' homes were burned down, priests were brutalized … the government had a name for its program: the &quot;moral rehabilitation&quot; of Brazil … then there was the torture and the death squads, both largely undertakings of the police and the military, both underwritten by the United States.&lt;sup&gt;73&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the chapters on Guatemala and Uruguay, we shall see how the US Office of Public Safety (OPS), the CIA and AID combined to provide the technical training, the equipment, and the indoctrination which supported the horrors in those countries. It was no less the case in Brazil. Dan Mitrione of the OPS, whom we shall encounter in his full beauty as a torturer in Uruguay, began his career in Brazil in the 1960s. By 1969, OPS had established a national police force for Brazil and had trained over 100,000 policemen in the country, in addition to 523 receiving more advanced instruction in the United States.&lt;sup&gt;74&lt;/sup&gt; About one-third of the students' time at the police academies was devoted to lectures on the &quot;communist menace&quot; and the need to battle against it.&lt;sup&gt;75&lt;/sup&gt; The &quot;bomb school&quot; and techniques of riot control were other important aspects of their education.&lt;blockquote&gt;Tortures range from simple but brutal blows from a truncheon to electric shocks. Often the torture is more refined: the end of a reed is placed in the anus of a naked man hanging suspended downwards on the pau de arara [parrot's perch] and a piece of cotton soaked in petrol is lit at the other end of the reed. Pregnant women have been forced to watch their husbands being tortured. Other wives have been hung naked beside their husbands and given electric shocks on the sexual parts of their body, while subjected to the worst kind of obscenities. Children have been tortured before their parents and vice versa. At least one child, the three month old baby of Virgilio Gomes da Silva was reported to have died under police torture. The length of sessions depends upon the resistance capacity of the victims and have sometimes continued for days at a time.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Amnesty International&lt;sup&gt;76&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Judge Agamemnon Duarte indicated that the CCC [Commandos to Hunt Communists, a death squad armed and aided by the police] and the CIA are implicated in the murder of Father Henrique Neto. He admitted that … the American Secret Service (CIA) was behind the CCC.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Jornal do Brazil&lt;sup&gt;77&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Chief of Staff of the Brazilian Army, General Breno Borges Forte, at the Tenth Conference of American Armies in 1973:&lt;blockquote&gt;The enemy is undefined … it adapts to any environment and uses every means, both licit and illicit, to achieve its aims. It disguises itself as a priest, a student or a campesino, as a defender of democracy or an advanced intellectual, as a pious soul or as an extremist protestor; it goes into the fields and the schools, the factories and the churches, the universities and the magistracy; if necessary, it will wear a uniform or civil garb; in sum, it will take on any role that it considers appropriate to deceive, to lie, and to take in the good faith of Western peoples.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;78&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In 1970, a US Congress study group visited Brazil. It gave this summary of statements by American military advisers there:&lt;blockquote&gt;Rather than dwell on the authoritarian aspects of the regime, they emphasize assertions by the Brazilian armed forces that they believe in, and support, representative democracy as an ideal and would return government to civilian control if this could be done without sacrifice to security and development. This withdrawal from the political arena is not seen as occurring in the near future. For that reason they emphasize the continued importance of the military assistance training program as a means of exerting U.S. influence and retaining the current pro-U.S. attitude of the Brazilian armed forces. Possible disadvantages to U.S. interests in being so closely identified with an authoritarian regime are not seen as particularly important.&lt;sup&gt;79&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The CIA never rests. The New York Times reported in 1966:&lt;blockquote&gt;When the CIA learned last year that a Brazilian youth had been killed in 1963, allegedly in an auto accident, while studying on a scholarship at the Lumumba University in Moscow, it mounted a massive publicity campaign to discourage other South American families from sending their youngsters to the Soviet Union.&lt;sup&gt;80&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;[continued on page 471]<br /> <br /> == Peru 1960-1965: Fort Bragg moves to the jungle ==<br /> It was a CIA dream come true. A commando raid by anti-Castro Cubans upon the Cuban Embassy in Lima had uncovered documentary proof that Cuba had paid out &quot;hundreds of thousands&quot; of dollars in Peru for propaganda to foster favorable attitudes toward the Cuban revolution and to promote Communist activities within the country.<br /> <br /> This was no standard broad-brush, cold-war accusation, for the documents disclosed all manner of details and names—the culprits who had been on the receiving end of the tainted money; men in unions and universities and in politics; men who had secretly visited Cuba, all expenses paid.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; To top it all off, these were men the CIA looked upon as enemies.<br /> <br /> The only problem—and it wasn't really a problem—was that some of the documents were counterfeit. The raid had certainly taken place, on 8 November 1960 to be exact. And documents had indeed been seized, at gunpoint. But the most incriminating of the documents, presented a month later with the authentic ones, had been produced by the experts of the CIA's Technical Services Division.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It was a propaganda windfall. The story received wide media coverage in Latin America and the United States, accompanied by indignant anti-communist articles and editorials. The Wall Street Journal was moved to run an extremely long, slightly hysterical piece, obviously based on Washington handouts, strikingly unquestioned, which warned that &quot;mountainous stacks of intelligence data from the 20 nations stretching from Mexico to Argentina tell of a widening Communist push into the hemisphere&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> To be sure, the Cubans insisted that the documents were not genuine, but that was only to be expected. The affair was to cast a shadow over Castro's foreign relations for some time to come.<br /> <br /> The most propitious outcome, from the CIA's standpoint, was that within days after the disclosure the Peruvian government broke diplomatic relations with Cuba. This was a major priority of the Agency in Lima, as in most other CIA stations in Latin America, and led further to the Cuban news agency, Prensa Latina, being barred from operating in Peru. The news agency's dispatches, the Peruvian authorities now decided, were &quot;controlled from Moscow&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A week later, there was further welcome fallout from the incident. The government enacted legislation making it easier to arrest members of the Communist Party, although this was repealed a year later. During its deliberations the Peruvian legislature accepted a sworn statement from one Francisco Ramos Montejo, a recent defector from the Cuban Embassy who had been present during the raid, who &quot;confirmed&quot; that all the documents were genuine. Ramos, who was now living in Miami and working for the CIA, added fresh revelations that there had been detailed plans for the assassination of Peruvian officials and for the overthrow of the government, and that arms had been smuggled into Peru from Bolivia and Ecuador, presumably for these purposes.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Of such stuff is the battle for the hearts and minds of Latin Americans made.<br /> <br /> The political history of Peru has been of the classic South American mold—an oligarchy overthrown by a military coup replaced by another oligarchy … periodically punctuated by an uprising, sporadic violence from the forgotten below to remind those above that they are still alive, albeit barely. Veteran Latin America newsman John Gerassi described the state of those below in the Peru of the early 1960s:&lt;blockquote&gt;In Lima, the capital, whose colonial mansions enveloped by ornate wooden balconies help make it one of the most beautiful cities in the world, half of the 1.3 million inhabitants live in rat-infested slums. One, called El Montón, is built around, over, and in the city dump. There, when I visited it, naked children, some too young to know how to walk, competed with pigs for a few bits of food scraps accidentally discarded by the garbage men … [The peasants] chew cocaine-producing coca leaves to still hunger pains, and average 500 calories a day. Where there is grass, the Peruvian Andes Indian eats it—and also the sheep he kills when it gets so hungry that it begins tearing another sheep's wool off for its food. The peons who work the land of the whites average one sol (4 cents) a day, and … labor from sunup to sundown.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;During this period, a movement led by Hugo Blanco organized peasants into unions, staged strikes and seized land. The movement engaged in little which could be termed guerrilla warfare, using its meagre arms to defend the squatters, and was easily and brutally put down by the police and army, apparently without significant American assistance other than the &quot;routine&quot; arming and training of such forces.<br /> <br /> By 1965, however, several guerrilla groups had evolved in the eastern slopes of the Andes, cognizant of the bare truth that organizing peasants was, by itself, painfully inadequate; some would say suicidal. Inspired by the Cuban revolution, impressed with the social gains which had followed, and, in some cases, trained by the Cubans, these sons of the middle class met in May to plan a common strategy. Guerrilla warfare began in earnest the following month. By the end of the year, however, a joint Peruvian-American counter-insurgency operation had broken the back of three rebel groups, two of them in less than two months. Those guerrillas who remained alive and active were reduced to futile and impotent skirmishes over the next year or so.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The role of the CIA in this definitive military mop-up has been concisely depicted by the former high official of the Agency, Victor Marchetti:&lt;blockquote&gt;Green Berets participated … in what was the CIA's single large-scale Latin American intervention of the post-Bay of Pigs era. This occurred in the mid-1960s, when the agency secretly came to the aid of the Peruvian government, then plagued by guerrilla troubles in its remote eastern regions. Unable to cope adequately with the insurgent movement, Lima had turned to the U.S. government for aid, which was immediately and covertly forthcoming.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The agency financed the construction of what one experienced observer described as &quot;a miniature Fort Bragg&quot; in the troubled Peruvian jungle region, complete with mess halls, classrooms, barracks, administrative buildings, parachute jump towers, amphibious landing facilities, and all the other accoutrements of paramilitary operations. Helicopters were furnished under cover of official military aid programs, and the CIA flew in arms and other combat equipment. Training was provided by the agency's Special Operations Division personnel and by Green Beret instructors on loan from the Army.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In February 1966, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara summed up this effort in a Senate hearing: &quot;In Peru, the Government has already made good progress against guerrilla concentrations, and U.S. trained and supported Peruvian army and air force units have played prominent roles in this counter-guerrilla campaign.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Typically, and ironically, such training would have included instilling in the Peruvian officers the motivation for doing battle with the insurgents in the first place. As US military affairs scholar Michael Klare has pointed out:&lt;blockquote&gt;Many Latin American military officers would rather command elite units like jet fighter squadrons, naval flotillas, or armored brigades than slug it out with the guerrillas in long, unspectacular jungle campaigns. U.S. training programs are designed, therefore, to emphasize the importance of counterguerrilla operations (and to suggest, thereby, that the United States will reward those officers who make a good showing at this kind of warfare).&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The extent to which American military personnel engaged directly in combat is not known. They did, however, set up their headquarters in the center of an area of heavy fighting, in the village of Mazanari, and in September 1965 the New York Times reported that when the Peruvian army opened a major drive against the guerrillas, &quot;At least one United States Army counter-insurgency expert was said to have helped plan and direct the attack.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the urban areas a concurrent round-up of guerrilla supporters was carried out, based materially on CIA intelligence: the list of &quot;subversives&quot; regularly compiled by Agency stations throughout the world for just such occasions.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; The CIA is usually in a much better position to collect this information than the host government, due to its superior experience in the field, funds available for hiring informants, technical equipment for eavesdropping, and greater motivation.<br /> <br /> While this was taking place the war in Vietnam and the militant protest against it had already captured the front pages of American newspapers, and the isolated New York Times dispatch referred to above easily passed into oblivion. Yet, the American objective in Peru—to crush a movement aimed at genuine land reform and the social and political changes inevitably stemming from such—was identical to its objective in Vietnam. And the methods employed were similar: burning down peasants' huts and villages to punish support for the guerrillas, defoliating the countryside to eliminate guerrilla sanctuaries, saturation bombing with napalm and high explosives, even throwing prisoners out of helicopters.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The essential difference, one which spelled disaster for the Peruvian insurgents, was that their ranks were not augmented in any appreciable number by the Indian peasants, a group with little revolutionary consciousness and even less daring; four centuries of dehumanization had robbed them of virtually all hope and the sense of a right to revolt; and when this sense stirred even faintly, such as under Hugo Blanco, it was met head-on by the brick wall of official violence.<br /> <br /> As common in the Third World as it is ludicrous, the bulk of the armed forces employed to keep the peasants pacified were soldiers of peasant stock themselves. It is a measure of the ultimate cynicism of the Peruvian and American military authorities that soldiers were stationed outside their home areas to lessen their resistance when the order was given to shoot.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But it all worked. It worked so well that more than a decade was to pass before desperate men took to arms again in Peru.<br /> <br /> == Dominican Republic 1960-1966: Saving democracy from communism by getting rid of democracy ==<br /> On the night of 30 May 1961, Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo, mass murderer, torturer par excellence, absolute dictator, was shot to death on a highway in the outskirts of the capital city, Ciudad Trujillo.<br /> <br /> The assassination set off a chain of events over the next five years which featured sustained and remarkably gross intervention into the internal affairs of the Dominican Republic by the United States, the likes of which had not been seen in Latin America since the heyday of American gunboat diplomacy.<br /> <br /> The United States had been an accomplice in the assassination itself of the man it had helped to climb to power and to endure for some 30 years. It marked one of the rare occasions that the US government acted to overthrow a right-wing despot, albeit anti-communism was still the motivating force.<br /> <br /> Whatever repugnance individual Washington policy makers may have felt toward Trujillo's incredible violations of human rights over the years, his fervent adherence to American policies, his repression of the left, and, as a consequence, the vigorous support he enjoyed in Congress (where Trujillo's money was no stranger) and in other influential American circles, were enough to keep successive United States administrations looking the other way.<br /> <br /> When, in January 1959, Fulgencio Batista fell before the forces of Fidel Castro in nearby Cuba, a reconsideration of this policy was thrust upon Washington's agenda. This historic event seemed to suggest that support of right-wing governments might no longer be the best way of checking the rise of revolutionary movements in Latin America, but rather might be fostering them. Indeed, in June a force of Dominican exiles launched an invasion of their homeland from Cuba. Although the invasion was a complete failure, it could only serve to heighten Washington's concern about who was swimming around in &quot;The American Lake&quot;.<br /> <br /> &quot;'Batista is to Castro as Trujillo is to______' was the implicit assumption, and Washington wanted to ensure that it could help fill in the blank,&quot; is the way one analysis formulated the problem. &quot;As a result, the United States began to cast about for a way to get rid of Trujillo and at the same time to ensure a responsible successor.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Ironically, it was to Trujillo's Dominican Republic that Batista had fled.<br /> <br /> The decision to topple Trujillo was reinforced in early 1960 when the United States sought to organize hemispheric opposition to the Castro regime. This policy ran head-on into the familiar accusation that the United States opposed only leftist governments, never those of the right, no matter how tyrannical. The close association with Trujillo, widely regarded as Washington's &quot;protegé&quot;, was proving increasingly to be an embarrassment. The circumstances were such that President Eisenhower was led to observe that &quot;It's certain that American public opinion won't condemn Castro until we have moved against Trujillo.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; (The president's apparent belief in the independence of the American mind may have been overly generous, for Washington was supporting right-wing dictatorships in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti and elsewhere before and after Trujillo's assassination, yet the American public fell readily into line in condemning Castro.)<br /> <br /> As early as 1958, the then-CIA chief of station in the Dominican Republic, Lear Reed, along with several Dominicans, had plotted an assassination of Trujillo, one which never got off the ground.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; What the Agency's motivation was, and whether it was acting on its own or at the behest of higher echelons in Washington, is not known. However, in February 1960 the National Security Council's Special Group in Washington gave consideration to a program of covert aid to anti-Trujillo Dominicans.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; Two months later, Eisenhower approved a contingency plan which provided, in part, that if the situation deteriorated still further: &quot;the United States would immediately take political action to remove Trujillo from the Dominican Republic as soon as a suitable successor regime can be induced to take over with the assurance of U.S. political, economic, and—if necessary—military support.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Seemingly unaware of the currents swirling about him, Trujillo continued to live up to his gangster reputation. In June, his henchmen blew up a car carrying Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt, an outspoken critic of the Dominican dictator. As a result, Washington came under renewed pressure from several of the more democratic Caribbean countries for action against Trujillo. Betancourt, who had survived the blast, told US Secretary of State Christian Herter: &quot;If you don't eliminate him, we will invade.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> For a full year, the dissidents and various American officials played cloak-and-dagger games: There were meetings in New York and Washington, in Ciudad Trujillo and Venezuela; Americans living in the Dominican Republic were enlisted for the cause by the CIA; schemes to overthrow Trujillo were drawn up at different times by the State Department, the CIA, and the dissidents, some approved by the Special Group. A training camp was set up in Venezuela for Dominican exiles flown there from the United States and Puerto Rico by the CIA; the dissidents made numerous requests for weapons, from sniper rifles to remote-control detonating devices, for the understood purpose of assassinating Trujillo and other key members of his regime. Several of the requests were approved by the State Department or the CIA; support for the dissidents was regularly reiterated at high levels of the US government … yet, after all was said and done, none of the ambitious plans was even attempted (the actual assassination was essentially a spur-of-the-moment improvised affair), only three pistols and three carbines were ever passed to the anti-Trujillistas, and it is not certain that any of these guns were used in the assassination.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the final analysis, the most significant aid received by the dissidents from the United States was the assurance that the &quot;Colossus to the North&quot; would not intervene militarily to prevent the assassination and would support them afterwards if they set up a &quot;suitable&quot; government. In Latin America this is virtually a sine qua non for such undertakings, notably in the Dominican Republic where American marines have landed on four separate occasions in this century, the last intervention having created a centralized Dominican National Guard which the US placed under the control of a young officer it had trained named Rafael Trujillo.<br /> <br /> The gap between the word and the deed of the American government concerning the assassination appears to have been the consequence of a growing uncertainty in Washington about what would actually take place in the wake of Trujillo's demise—would a pro-Castro regime emerge from the chaos? A secondary consideration, perhaps, was a reluctance to engage in political assassination, both as a matter of policy and as a desire to avoid, as one State Department official put it, &quot;further tarnishing in the eyes of the world&quot; of the &quot;U.S. moral posture&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; This was particularly the expressed feeling of President John Kennedy and others in his administration who had assumed office in January 1961, although they were later to undertake several assassination attempts against Castro.<br /> <br /> The dismal failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April further dampened the enthusiasm of Washington officials for Caribbean adventures (except against Cuba in revenge) and induced them to request a postponement of the assassination. The plotters, however, were well past the point of no return.<br /> <br /> The Dominicans who pulled the triggers and their fellow conspirators were in no way revolutionaries. They came from the ranks of the conservative, privileged sectors of Dominican society and were bound together primarily by an intense loathing of Trujillo, a personal vendetta—each of them, or someone close to them, had suffered a deep humiliation at the hands of the diabolical dictator, if not torture or murder.<br /> <br /> Their plan as to what would follow the elimination of Trujillo was only half-baked, and even this fell apart completely. As matters turned out, the day after the assassination, Rafael (&quot;Ramfis&quot;) Trujillo, Jr. rushed home from his playboy's life in Paris to take over the reins of government. Little had been resolved, either in the Dominican Republic or in Washington. The Kennedy administration was confronted with the same ideological questions which had caused them so much indecision before the assassination, as they had the Eisenhower administration. To wit: What is the best way of preventing the establishment of left-wing governments intent upon radical social change? The traditional iron fist of right-wing dictatorship, or a more democratic society capable of meeting many of the legitimate demands of the populace? How much democracy? Would too much open the door for even greater, and unacceptable, demands and provide the left with a legal platform from which to sway (&quot;dupe&quot;, Washington would call it) the public? And if it is a dictatorship that is to be supported, how are liberal American leaders to explain this to the world and to their own citizens?<br /> <br /> John F. Kennedy and his men from Harvard tended to treat such policy questions in a manner more contemplative than American political figures are usually inclined to do: on occasion, it might be said, they even agonized over such questions. But in the end, their Latin American policy was scarcely distinguishable from that of conservative Republican administrations. A leader who imposed &quot;order&quot; with at least the facade of democracy, who kept the left submerged without being notoriously brutal about it; in short, the anti-communist liberal, still appeared to be the safest ally for the United States.<br /> <br /> &quot;There are three possibilities,&quot; Kennedy said, &quot;in descending order of preference: a decent democratic regime, a continuation of the Trujillo regime or a Castro regime. We ought to aim at the first but we really can't renounce the second until we are sure we can avoid the third.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Rafael Trujillo, Jr. was clearly not ideal. Besides bearing the inescapable stigma of his name and family, he proceeded to carry out a bloodbath of revenge over the next six months.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; But, unlike his father in his last years, Ramfis could be prodded by Washington into making a few token reforms, and both parties might have been content to continue in this fashion indefinitely had not many people of the Dominican Republic felt terribly cheated by the turn of events. Their elation over the assassination had soured in the face of business-as-usual.<br /> <br /> Resentment spilled over into the streets. By October, the protests were occurring daily and were being put down by tanks; students were shot dead by government troops. The United States began to make moves, for the situation in the streets and high places of the government was anarchic enough, Washington feared, to provide an opening for the proverbial (and seemingly magical) &quot;communist takeover&quot;, although, in fact, the left in the Dominican Republic was manifestly insignificant from years of repression.<br /> <br /> American diplomats met in the capital city with the Trujillo clan and Dominican military leaders and bluntly told them that US military power would, if necessary, be used to compel the formation of a provisional government headed by Joaquín Balaguer until elections could be held. Balaguer had been closely tied to the Trujillo family for decades, was serving as president under Trujillo at the time of the assassination, and had remained in the same capacity under Ramfis, but he was not regarded as a threat to continue the tyranny. As Kennedy put it: &quot;Balaguer is our only tool. The anticommunist liberals aren't strong enough. We must use our influence to take Balaguer along the road to democracy.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; Just how committed John F. Kennedy was to democracy in the Dominican Republic we shall presently see.<br /> <br /> To make certain that the Dominicans got the message, a US naval task force of eight ships with 1,800 Marines aboard appeared off the Dominican coast on 19 November, just outside the three-mile limit but in plain sight of Ciudad Trujillo. Spanish-language broadcasts from the offshore ships warned that the Marines were prepared to come ashore; while overhead, American jet fighters streaked along the coastline. Brigadier General Pedro Rodriguez Echevarría, a key military figure, was persuaded by the United States to put aside any plans for a coup he may have been harboring and to support the American action. Rodriguez proceeded—whether of his own initiative is not clear—to order the bombing of the air base outside the capital where Trujillistas had been massing troops. Over the next two days, Ramfis returned to the pleasure temples of Europe while other prominent Trujillistas left for the good life in Florida.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> However, when Balaguer proved to be a major obstacle to beginning the process of democratization and indicated that he did not regard his regime as temporary, the United States added its own special pressure to that of Balaguer's domestic opposition to force him to resign after only two months in office. Washington then turned around and issued another stern warning to General Rodriguez, threatened Dominican leaders with a large loss of aid if they supported a coup, and mounted another naval show-of-force to help other military officers block the general's attempt to seize power.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> While a seven-man &quot;Council of State&quot; then administered the affairs of government, the US continued to treat the Dominican Republic as its private experiment in the prevention of communism. The American Ambassador, John Bartlow Martin, pressed the Council to curb left-wing activity. By his own admission, Martin urged the use of &quot;methods once used by the police in Chicago&quot;: harassment of suspects by repeated arrests, midnight raids on their homes, beatings, etc.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> When street disturbances erupted, US Attorney General Robert Kennedy arranged for riot-control equipment to be sent to Santo Domingo (the original name of the capital, now restored). The equipment came complete with two Spanish-speaking Los Angeles detectives to impart to their Dominican counterparts the fine art of quelling such uprisings that they had acquired in the Mexican barrios of east Los Angeles. In a few weeks, Ambassador Martin could report that the Council had &quot;rewon the streets, thanks almost entirely to those two detectives&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> This riot-control unit remained as a permanent part of the Santo Domingo police force. Known as the Cascos Blancos (white helmets), they came to be much hated by the populace. Shortly afterwards, the US military undertook a long-range program to transform the country's armed forces into what was hoped would be an efficient anti-guerrilla organization, though guerrillas were as rare on the Caribbean island as members of the Trujillo family.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Finally, in December 1962, elections were held, under terms dictated in large part by Ambassador Martin to the two major candidates. His purpose was to introduce into the Dominican Republic some of the features that Americans regard as necessary to a viable and democratic electoral system, but Martin's fiat was inescapably a highly condescending intrusion into the affairs of a supposedly sovereign nation. His instructions extended down to the level of what the loser should say in his concession speech.<br /> <br /> Further, under an &quot;Emergency Law&quot;, the United States and the Council arranged for the deportation of some 125 Trujillistas and &quot;Castro communists&quot; to the United States, from where they were not allowed to leave until after the election in order &quot;to help maintain stability so elections could be held&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The winner, and first more-or-less-democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic since 1924, was Juan Bosch, a writer who had spent many years in exile while Trujillo reigned. Here at last was Kennedy's liberal anti-communist, non-military and legally elected by a comfortable majority as well. Bosch's government was to be the long-sought-after &quot;showcase of democracy&quot; that would put the lie to Fidel Castro. He was given the grand treatment in Washington shortly before he took office in February 1963.<br /> <br /> Bosch was true to his beliefs. He called for land reform, including transferring some private land to the public sector as required; low-rent housing; modest nationalization of business; an ambitious project of public works, serving mass needs more than vested interests; a reduction in the import of luxury items; at the same time, he favored incentives to private enterprise and was open to foreign investment provided it was not excessively exploitative of the country—all in all, standard elements in the program of any liberal Third World leader serious about social change. He was likewise serious about the thing called civil liberties: Communists, or those labeled as such, or anyone else, were not to be persecuted unless they actually violated the law.<br /> <br /> A number of American officials and congressmen expressed their discomfort with Bosch's plans, as well as his stance of independence from the United States. Land reform and nationalization are always touchy issues in Washington, the stuff that &quot;creeping socialism&quot; is made of. In several quarters of the US press Bosch was red-baited and compared with Castro, and the Dominican Republic with Cuba. (Castro, for his part, branded Bosch a &quot;Yankee puppet&quot;.) Some of the press criticism was clearly orchestrated, in the manner of many CIA campaigns.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In both the United States and the Dominican Republic, the accusations most frequently cast at Bosch were the ones typically used against Latin American leaders who do not vigorously suppress the left (cf. Arbenz and Goulart): Bosch was allowing &quot;communists&quot; to &quot;infiltrate&quot; into the country and into the government, and he was not countering &quot;communist subversion&quot;, the latter referring to no more than instances of people standing up for their long-denied rights. Wrote a reporter for the Miami News: &quot;Communist penetration of the Dominican Republic is progressing with incredible speed and efficiency.&quot; He did not, however, name a single communist in the Bosch government. As it happens, the reporter, Hal Hendrix, was a valuable press asset and a &quot;secret operative&quot; of the CIA in the 1960s.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA made a further contribution to the anti-Bosch atmosphere. Ambassador Martin has reported that the Agency &quot;gave rumors [about communists in the Dominican Republic] a credibility far higher than I would have … In reporting a Castro/Communist plot, however wildly implausible, it is obviously safer to evaluate it as 'could be true' than as nonsense.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> John F. Kennedy also soured on Bosch, particularly for his refusal to crack down on radicals. Said the president to Ambassador Martin one day:&lt;blockquote&gt;I'm wondering if the day might not come when he'd [Bosch] like to get rid of some of the left. Tell him we respect his judgment, we're all for him, but the time may come when he'll want to deport 30 or 50 people, when it'd be better to deport them than to let them go. I suppose he'd have to catch them in something.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;When the United States failed to commit any new economic assistance to the Dominican Republic and generally gave the indication that Juan Bosch was a doomed venture, right-wing Dominican military officers could only be encouraged in their craving to be rid of the president and his policies. Sam Halper, former Caribbean Bureau Chief of Time magazine, later reported that the military coup ousting Bosch went into action &quot;as soon as they got a wink from the U.S. Pentagon&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In July, a group of officers formally presented Bosch with a statement of principle-cum-ultimatum: Their loyalty to his regime was conditioned upon his adoption of a policy of rigorous anti-communism. Bosch reacted by going on television and delivering a lecture about the apolitical role required of the military in a democratic society, surely an occult subject to these products of 31 years of Trujilloism.<br /> <br /> The beleaguered president could see that a premature demise lay ahead for his government. His speech on television had sounded very much like a farewell. The failure of Washington to intervene on his behalf could only enlarge the writing on the wall. Indeed, Bosch and some of his aides strongly suspected that the US military and the CIA were already conspiring with the Dominican officers. Several American military officers had disregarded diplomatic niceties by expressing their reservations about Bosch's politics loud enough to reach his ears.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A week before the inevitable coup, the CIA/AIFLD-created union federation in the Dominican Republic, CONATRAL, which had been set up to counter and erode Bosch's support in the labor movement, placed an ad in a leading newspaper urging the people to put their faith in the army to defend them against communism.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The end came in September, a scant seven months after Bosch had taken office. He had not had the time to accomplish much that was worthwhile in this hopelessly corrupt society before the military boots marched, as they have always marched in Latin America.<br /> <br /> The United States, which can discourage a military coup in Latin America with a frown, did nothing to stand in the way of the Dominican officers. There would be no display of American military might this time—although Bosch asked for it—&quot;unless a Communist takeover were threatened,&quot; said the State Department.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Democracy,&quot; said Newsweek magazine, &quot;was being saved from Communism by getting rid of democracy.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> There were the customary expressions of regret in Washington about the death of democracy, and there was the de rigueur withholding of recognition of the new regime. But two months later, when opposition to the yet-again repressive dictatorship began to manifest itself noticeably, the junta yelled &quot;communist&quot; and was quickly embraced by the United States with recognition and the other perquisites which attach to being a member in good standing of the &quot;Free World&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Nineteen months later, a revolution broke out in the Dominican Republic which promised to put the exiled Bosch back in power at the hands of a military-civilian force that would be loyal to his program. But for the fifth time in the century, the American Marines landed and put an abrupt end to such hopes.<br /> <br /> In the early morning of Saturday, 24 April 1965, a group of young army officers of middle rank, acting in concert with civilian Bosch partisans, declared themselves in revolt against the government. The &quot;constitutionalists&quot;, as they called themselves, were soon joined by other officers and their units. Spurred by ecstatic radio proclamations, thousands of Dominicans poured into the streets shouting &quot;Viva Bosch&quot; and grabbed up the arms handed out by the rebel military forces.<br /> <br /> The television station was taken over and for two days a &quot;potpourri of politicians, soldiers, women, children, adventurers, hoodlums and anyone who wished to, shouted against the status quo.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The participants in the uprising were a mixed bag, not all of them sympathetic to Bosch or to social reform; some were on the right, with their own varied motivations. But the impetus clearly lay with the constitutionalists, and the uprising was thus viewed with alarm by the rest of the military and the US Embassy as a movement to restore Bosch to power with all that that implied.<br /> <br /> Philip Geyelin of the Wall Street Journal (and formerly with the CIA), who had access to the official embassy cables and the key actors in the drama, has written:&lt;blockquote&gt;What the record reveals, in fact, is that from the very outset of the upheaval, there was a concerted U.S. Government effort, if not actually a formal decision, to checkmate the rebel movement by whatever means and at whatever cost.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;By Sunday, April 25 … the Santo Domingo embassy had clearly cast its lot with the &quot;loyalist&quot; military cabal and against the rebellion's original aim: the return of Juan Bosch … Restoration of the Bosch regime would be &quot;against U.S. interests&quot;, the embassy counseled. Blocking Bosch could mean further bloodshed, the embassy conceded. Nonetheless, Washington was advised, the embassy military attaches had given &quot;loyalist&quot; leaders a go-ahead to do &quot;everything possible&quot; to prevent what was described as the danger of a &quot;Communist take-over&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The attachés as well as the US Consul made emergency visits to several still-uncommitted Dominican military commanders to persuade them, apparently with notable success, to support the government.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A bloody civil war had broken out in the streets of Santo Domingo. During the first few days, the momentum of battle swung to one side, then the other. By the night of 28 April, however, the military and police inside Santo Domingo had collapsed, and the constitutionalists were preparing to attack the military's last bastion, San Isidro, their main base about 10 miles away.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;The Generals at San Isidro were dejected, several were weeping, and one was hysterically urging 'retreat',&quot; read the cable sent by the American ambassador, W. Tapley Bennett, to Washington in the early evening of the 28th. (Bennett, as we shall see, was given to hyperbole of the worst sort, but the Dominican military certainly were isolated and demoralized.) Bennett added, whether in the same cable or another one is not clear, that if US troops did not immediately land, American lives would be lost and &quot;Castro-type elements&quot; would be victorious.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Within hours, the first 500 US Marines were brought in by helicopter from ships stationed a few miles off the coast. Two days later, American forces ashore numbered over 4,000. At the peak, some 23,000 troops, Marine and Army, were to take up positions in the beleaguered country, with thousands more standing by on a 35-ship task force offshore.<br /> <br /> The American action was in clear violation of several international agreements, including the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS) which prohibited intervention &quot;directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other state&quot;.<br /> <br /> During the entire course of the US military occupation, American pronouncements would have had the world believe that its forces were in the Dominican Republic in a &quot;neutral&quot; capacity: to protect the lives of Americans and other foreigners, establish a ceasefire, ensure free elections, etc. As we have seen, however, the United States had committed itself to one side from the start of hostilities. This continued to be the case. The morning after the landing of the first Marines, Ambassador Bennett was instructed by the State Department that US military officers should be used &quot;to help San Isidro develop operational plans to take the rebel stronghold downtown&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Within a few days, American troops were deployed in an armed corridor through the center of Santo Domingo so as to divide the constitutionalists' zone and cut off their main body from access to the rest of the country, bottling them up in a small downtown area with their backs to the sea. Other American forces were stationed throughout the countryside. The rebel offensive against San Isidro had been prevented. It was the end of their revolution.<br /> <br /> The American forces came to the aid of the Dominican military in a number of ways, supplying them with equipment, food and even their salaries, but it was the direct military involvement that was most telling. On one striking occasion, the sea of American troops parted to allow the Dominican military to pass through and brutally attack and mop up the northern section of the rebel zone while the main rebel force in the south remained helplessly blocked behind the American line. This &quot;smashing victory,&quot; the New York Times reported, was &quot;visibly aided by United States troops&quot;. Other American journalists also reported that US troops took part in the fighting, although Washington officials angrily denied it.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The rebels were reduced to little more than sniping attacks on American soldiers, for which they paid a heavy price. US forces blasted apart a building in downtown Santo Domingo from which sniper fire was coming; advancing into a constitutionalist zone, again after sniper fire, they killed some 67 rebels and bystanders; American paratroops were seen firing at rebels who were retreating, and the constitutionalists' Minister of Justice and Police was &quot;reported to have been killed by United States machine-gun fire as he attempted to capture the empty Presidential Palace in midtown with a squad of his troops.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> When the Johnson administration was not denying such actions outright, it was claiming that they were either contrary to orders, &quot;individual indiscretions&quot;, or &quot;isolated incidents&quot;.<br /> <br /> A covert team of Green Berets arrived at one point to help ensure the safety of American civilians. But when they discovered that some of the Americans were assisting rebel forces, &quot;their main objective shifted from protecting their fellow countrymen to spying on them&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Green Berets also found the time to lay the groundwork for the assassination of one of the leading constitutionalist leaders, Col. Francisco Caamaño. The plot was canceled at the last moment due to the excessive risk involved.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Another group of American visitors was that of some leaders of the National Student Association, ostensibly come to the Dominican Republic to talk with their counterparts about educational matters, but actually there at the behest of the CIA to gather information on local students. This was still two years before the exposé of the long-lasting relationship between the CIA and the prominent student organization.&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Throughout this period, the communication guns of the US government were aimed at the people of the United States, the Dominican Republic and the world to convince them that &quot;communists&quot; were a dominant element amongst the constitutionalists, that they represented a threat to take over the movement, or that they had already taken it over, with frightening consequences for all concerned.<br /> <br /> At various times the Johnson administration released lists of &quot;communists and Castroites&quot; in the ranks of the rebels. These lists totaled 53 or 58 or 77 names and became a cause célèbre as well as an object of media ridicule. Besides the laughably small numbers involved (in a rebellion of tens of thousands with numerous leaders), several of those on the lists, it turned out, were in prison while others were out of the country.<br /> <br /> The American Embassy in Santo Domingo assured reporters that if they went to rebel headquarters, they would see the named communists in the flesh. The newspeople went and looked but could find no identifiable communists (however one identifies a communist). Subsequently, administration officials explained that the reason that newspeople had seen such little evidence of communist activity was that the American landings had scared the Reds into hiding.<br /> <br /> Eventually, American officials admitted their doubt that they could prove that communists had gained control of the constitutionalists, although President Johnson had pressed the CIA and FBI into an intensive search for evidence. (A CIA cable to Washington on 25 April reported that the Communist Party [Partido Socialista Dominicano] had been &quot;unaware of the coup attempt&quot;.)&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Former CIA officer Philip Agee, stationed in Uruguay at the time, wrote later that the new password at his station became &quot;Fifty-eight trained communists&quot;. The proper reply was &quot;Ten thousand marines&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The embassy, and Ambassador Bennett in particular, poured forth &quot;a rising stream of hysterical rumors, atrocity stories, and alarmist reports&quot;&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt; about the rebels, reminiscent of the Bolshevik horror stories which had filled the pages of the American press following the Russian Revolution: embassies being ransacked … &quot;Castroite-style mass executions&quot; … rebels parading in the streets with the heads of their victims on poles …<br /> <br /> President Johnson made reference to the &quot;atrocities&quot; in public statements, but none of the stories were ever proven, for none were true; no one ever located any of the many headless Dominicans; and American officials, in a monument to chutzpah, later denounced the press for reporting such unverified rumors.&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the US Information Agency were conducting their own intensive propaganda campaign in the Dominican Republic to give credence to the American position and discredit Dominican groups opposed to it. Experts on psychological warfare arrived to ply their trade, radio stations and newspapers were covertly set up, rebel radio stations jammed, leaflets airdropped in the countryside. The USIA also secretly subsidized the publication of pro-administration material aimed for distribution in the United States.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> From all the wild charges and the frequent contradictory statements made by American officials, the expression &quot;credibility gap&quot; entered the American popular language and soon came to haunt the Johnson presidency.&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Historian Richard Barnet has noted another interesting side to the American propaganda effort:&lt;blockquote&gt;To justify the intervention, which had aroused violent opposition from traditional friends of the United States because of its crudeness and the swathe of lies in which it was wrapped … [Washington] began a direct assault on the concept of non-intervention, the rhetorical foundation stone of Latin-American policy enshrined in numerous treaties, declarations, and Pan-American Day speeches … Under Secretary Thomas Mann told newspaper correspondents that the OAS and UN charters were drawn up in &quot;19th-century terms&quot; … Averell Harriman remarked in Montevideo that the principle of non-intervention was becoming &quot;obsolete&quot;. By a vote of 315 to 52 the House of Representatives passed a resolution … justifying the unilateral use of force on foreign territory by any nation which considers itself threatened by &quot;international communism, directly or indirectly.&quot; … The President [declared in a speech]: &quot;The first reality is that old concepts and old labels are largely obsolete. In today's world, with enemies of freedom talking about 'Wars of national liberation,' the old distinction between 'Civil War' and 'International War' has already lost much of its meaning … The moment of decision must become the moment of action.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&quot;This is the essence of the Johnson Doctrine,&quot; wrote Barnet, &quot;a virtually unlimited claim of legitimacy for armed intervention in civil strife.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The last American troops did not leave the Dominican Republic until September 1966. The interim period witnessed a succession of ceasefires, broken truces, and protracted negotiations under provisional governments.<br /> <br /> In June 1966, elections were held in which Joaquín Balaguer defeated Juan Bosch by a surprisingly large margin. Yet, it was not all that surprising. For five long years the people of the Dominican Republic had lived under a cloud of chaos and violence. The experience had instilled in them a deep longing for a return to &quot;normalcy&quot;, to order, without foreign intervention, without soldiers patrolling their streets, without curfews, tear gas and bloodshed. With the US Army still very much in evidence and the American distaste for Bosch well known … with the ubiquitous American propaganda hammering home fear of The Red Menace and associating the constitutionalists, and thus Bosch, with communism … with the Dominican military still largely Trujillista in personnel and ideology … a victory for Bosch would be seen by many voters as a danger that all the horrors would rain down upon their heads once more. Bosch, who had returned several months prior to the election, was himself so fearful for his personal safety that he never left his home during the campaign.<br /> <br /> Joaquín Balaguer remained in office for the next 12 years, ruling his people in the grand Latin American style: The rich became richer and the poor had babies, hungry babies; democracy remained an alien concept; the police and military regularly kidnapped, tortured and murdered opponents of the government and terrorized union organizers.&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But the man was not, personally, the monster that Trujillo was. There was relative calm and peace. No &quot;communist threat&quot; hovered over the land. The pot was sweetened for foreign investors, and American corporations moved in with big bucks. There was stability and order. And the men who ran the United States looked and were satisfied. Perhaps some of them had come to the realization that the anti-communist liberal government was an impossible ideal; for any movement seeking genuine democracy and social reform would invariably attract individuals whom the United States would invariably categorize as &quot;communist&quot;; the United States would then feel driven to discredit, subvert and eventually overturn the movement. A Catch 22.<br /> <br /> == Cuba 1959 to 1980s: The unforgivable revolution ==<br /> The existence of a revolutionary socialist government with growing ties to the Soviet Union only 90 miles away, insisted the United States Government, was a situation which no self-respecting superpower should tolerate, and in 1961 it undertook an invasion of Cuba.<br /> <br /> But less than 50 miles from the Soviet Union sat Pakistan, a close ally of the United States, a member since 1955 of the South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the US-created anti-communist alliance. On the very border of the Soviet Union was Iran, an even closer ally of the United States, with its relentless electronic listening posts, aerial surveillance, and infiltration into Russian territory by American agents. And alongside Iran, also bordering the Soviet Union, was Turkey, a member of the Russians' mortal enemy, NATO, since 1951.<br /> <br /> In 1962 during the &quot;Cuban Missile Crisis&quot;, Washington, seemingly in a state of near-panic, informed the world that the Russians were installing &quot;offensive&quot; missiles in Cuba. The US promptly instituted a &quot;quarantine&quot; of the island—a powerful show of naval and marine forces in the Caribbean would stop and search all vessels heading towards Cuba; any found to contain military cargo would be forced to turn back.<br /> <br /> The United States, however, had missiles and bomber bases already in place in Turkey and other missiles in Western Europe pointed toward the Soviet Union. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev later wrote:&lt;blockquote&gt;The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons, and now they would learn just what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointing at you; we'd be doing nothing more than giving them a little of their own medicine. … After all, the United States had no moral or legal quarrel with us. We hadn't given the Cubans anything more than the Americans were giving to their allies. We had the same rights and opportunities as the Americans. Our conduct in the international arena was governed by the same rules and limits as the Americans.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Lest anyone misunderstand, as Khrushchev apparently did, the rules under which Washington was operating, Time magazine was quick to explain. &quot;On the part of the Communists,&quot; the magazine declared, &quot;this equating [referring to Khrushchev's offer to mutually remove missiles and bombers from Cuba and Turkey] had obvious tactical motives. On the part of neutralists and pacifists [who welcomed Khrushchev's offer] it betrayed intellectual and moral confusion.&quot; The confusion lay, it seems, in not seeing clearly who were the good guys and who were the bad guys, for &quot;The purpose of the U.S. bases [in Turkey] was not to blackmail Russia but to strengthen the defense system of NATO, which had been created as a safeguard against Russian aggression. As a member of NATO, Turkey welcomed the bases as a contribution to her own defense.&quot; Cuba, which had been invaded only the year before, could have, it seems, no such concern. Time continued its sermon:&lt;blockquote&gt;Beyond these differences between the two cases, there is an enormous moral difference between U.S. and Russian objectives … To equate U.S. and Russian bases is in effect to equate U.S. and Russian purposes … The U.S. bases, such as those in Turkey, have helped keep the peace since World War II, while the Russian bases in Cuba threatened to upset the peace. The Russian bases were intended to further conquest and domination, while U.S. bases were erected to preserve freedom. The difference should have been obvious to all.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Equally obvious was the right of the United States to maintain a military base on Cuban soil—Guantánamo Naval Base by name, a vestige of colonialism staring down the throats of the Cuban people, which the US, to this day, refuses to vacate despite the vehement protest of the Castro government.<br /> <br /> In the American lexicon, in addition to good and bad bases and missiles, there are good and bad revolutions. The American and French Revolutions were good. The Cuban Revolution is bad. It must be bad because so many people have left Cuba as a result of it.<br /> <br /> But at least 100,000 people left the British colonies in America during and after the American Revolution. These Tories could not abide by the political and social changes, both actual and feared, particularly that change which attends all revolutions worthy of the name: Those looked down upon as inferiors no longer know their place. (Or as the US Secretary of State put it after the Russian Revolution: the Bolsheviks sought &quot;to make the ignorant and incapable mass of humanity dominant in the earth.&quot;)&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Tories fled to Nova Scotia and Britain carrying tales of the godless, dissolute, barbaric American revolutionaries. Those who remained and refused to take an oath of allegiance to the new state governments were denied virtually all civil liberties. Many were jailed, murdered, or forced into exile. After the American Civil War, thousands more fled to South America and other points, again disturbed by the social upheaval. How much more is such an exodus to be expected following the Cuban Revolution?—a true social revolution, giving rise to changes much more profound than anything in the American experience. How many more would have left the United States if 90 miles away lay the world's wealthiest nation welcoming their residence and promising all manner of benefits and rewards?<br /> <br /> After the Cuban Revolution in January 1959, we learned that there are also good and bad hijackings. On several occasions Cuban planes and boats were hijacked to the United States but they were not returned to Cuba, nor were the hijackers punished. Instead, some of the planes and boats were seized by US authorities for non-payment of debts claimed by American firms against the Cuban government.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; But then there were the bad hijackings—planes forced to fly from the United States to Cuba. When there began to be more of these than flights in the opposite direction, Washington was obliged to reconsider its policy.<br /> <br /> It appears that there are as well good and bad terrorists. When the Israelis bombed PLO headquarters in Tunis in 1985, Ronald Reagan expressed his approval. The president asserted that nations have the right to retaliate against terrorist attacks &quot;as long as you pick out the people responsible&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But if Cuba had dropped bombs on any of the headquarters of the anti-Castro exiles in Miami or New Jersey, Ronald Reagan would likely have gone to war, though for 25 years the Castro government had been on the receiving end of an extraordinary series of terrorist attacks carried out in Cuba, in the United States, and in other countries by the exiles and their CIA mentors. (We shall not discuss the consequences of Cuba bombing CIA headquarters.)<br /> <br /> Bombing and strafing attacks of Cuba by planes based in the United States began in October 1959, if not before.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; In early 1960, there were several fire-bomb air raids on Cuban cane fields and sugar mills, in which American pilots also took part—at least three of whom died in crashes, while two others were captured. The State Department acknowledged that one plane which crashed, killing two Americans, had taken off from Florida, but insisted that it was against the wishes of the US government.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In March a French freighter unloading munitions from Belgium exploded in Havana taking 75 lives and injuring 200, some of whom subsequently died. The United States denied Cuba's accusation of sabotage but admitted that it had sought to prevent the shipment.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And so it went … reaching a high point in April of the following year in the infamous CIA-organized invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Over 100 exiles died in the attack. Close to 1,200 others were taken prisoner by the Cubans. It was later revealed that four American pilots flying for the CIA had lost their lives as well.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Bay of Pigs assault had relied heavily on the Cuban people rising up to join the invaders,&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; but this was not to be the case. As it was, the leadership and ranks of the exile forces were riddled with former supporters and henchmen of Fulgencio Batista, the dictator overthrown by Castro, and would not have been welcomed back by the Cuban people under any circumstances.<br /> <br /> Despite the fact that the Kennedy administration was acutely embarrassed by the unmitigated defeat—indeed, because of it—a campaign of smaller-scale attacks upon Cuba was initiated almost immediately. Throughout the 1960s, the Caribbean island was subjected to countless sea and air commando raids by exiles, at times accompanied by their CIA supervisors, inflicting damage upon oil refineries, chemical plants and railroad bridges, cane fields, sugar mills and sugar warehouses; infiltrating spies, saboteurs and assassins … anything to damage the Cuban economy, promote disaffection, or make the revolution look bad … taking the lives of Cuban militia members and others in the process … pirate attacks on Cuban fishing boats and merchant ships, bombardments of Soviet vessels docked in Cuba, an assault upon a Soviet army camp with 12 Russian soldiers reported wounded … a hotel and a theatre shelled from offshore because Russians and East Europeans were supposed to be present there …&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> These actions were not always carried out on the direct order of the CIA or with its foreknowledge, but the Agency could hardly plead &quot;rogue elephant&quot;. It had created an operations headquarters in Miami that was truly a state within a city—over, above, and outside the laws of the United States, not to mention international law, with a staff of several hundred Americans directing many more Cuban agents in just such types of actions, with a budget in excess of $50 million a year, and an arrangement with the local press to keep operations in Florida secret except when the CIA wanted something publicized.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Title 18 of the US Code declares it to be a crime to launch a &quot;military or naval expedition or enterprise&quot; from the United States against a country with which the United States is not (officially) at war. Although US authorities now and then aborted an exile plot or impounded a boat—sometimes because the Coast Guard or other officials had not been properly clued in—no Cubans were prosecuted under this act. This was no more than to be expected inasmuch as Attorney General Robert Kennedy had determined after the Bay of Pigs that the invasion did not constitute a military expedition.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The commando raids were combined with a total US trade and credit embargo, which continues to this day, and which genuinely hurt the Cuban economy and chipped away at the society's standard of living. So unyielding has the embargo been that when Cuba was hard hit by a hurricane in October 1963, and Casa Cuba, a New York social club, raised a large quantity of clothing for relief, the United States refused to grant it an export license on the grounds that such shipment was &quot;contrary to the national interest&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Moreover, pressure was brought to bear upon other countries to conform to the embargo, and goods destined for Cuba were sabotaged: machinery damaged, chemicals added to lubricating fluids to cause rapid wear on diesel engines, a manufacturer in West Germany paid to produce ball-bearings off-center, another to do the same with balanced wheel gears—&quot;You're talking about big money,&quot; said a CIA officer involved in the sabotage efforts, &quot;when you ask a manufacturer to go along with you on that kind of project because he has to reset his whole mold. And he is probably going to worry about the effect on future business. You might have to pay him several hundred thousand dollars or more.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One manufacturer who defied the embargo was the British Leyland Company, which sold a large number of buses to Cuba in 1964. Repeated expressions of criticism and protest by Washington officials and congressmen failed to stem deliveries of some of the buses. Then, in October, an East German cargo ship carrying another 42 buses to Cuba collided in thick fog with a Japanese vessel in the Thames. The Japanese ship was able to continue on, but the cargo ship was beached on its side; the buses would have to be &quot;written off&quot;, said the Leyland company. In the leading British newspapers it was just an accident story.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; In the New York Times it was not even reported. A decade was to pass before the American columnist Jack Anderson disclosed that his CIA and National Security Agency sources had confirmed that the collision had been arranged by the CIA with the cooperation of British intelligence.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt; Subsequently, another CIA officer stated that he was skeptical about the colision story, although admitting that &quot;it is true that we were sabotaging the Leyland buses going to Cuba from England, and that was pretty sensitive business.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> What undoubtedly was an even more sensitive venture was the use of chemical and biological weapons against Cuba by the United States. It is a remarkable record.<br /> <br /> In August 1962, a British freighter under Soviet lease, having damaged its propeller on a reef, crept into the harbor at San Juan, Puerto Rico for repairs. It was bound for a Soviet port with 80,000 bags of Cuban sugar. The ship was put into dry dock and 14,135 sacks of sugar were unloaded to a warehouse to facilitate the repairs. While in the warehouse, the sugar was contaminated by CIA agents with a substance that was allegedly harmless but unpalatable. When President Kennedy learned of the operation he was furious because it had taken place in US territory and if discovered could provide the Soviet Union with a propaganda field-day and could set a terrible precedent for chemical sabotage in the cold war. He directed that the sugar not be returned to the Russians, although what explanation was given to them is not publicly known.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt; Similar undertakings were apparently not canceled. The CIA official who helped direct worldwide sabotage efforts, referred to above, later revealed that &quot;There was lots of sugar being sent out from Cuba, and we were putting a lot of contaminants in it.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The same year, a Canadian agricultural technician working as an adviser to the Cuban government was paid $5,000 by &quot;an American military intelligence agent&quot; to infect Cuban turkeys with a virus which would produce the fatal Newcastle disease. Subsequently, 8,000 turkeys died. The technician later claimed that although he had been to the farm where the turkeys had died, he had not actually administered the virus, but had instead pocketed the money, and that the turkeys had died from neglect and other causes unrelated to the virus. This may have been a self-serving statement. The Washington Post reported that &quot;According to U.S. intelligence reports, the Cubans—and some Americans—believe the turkeys died as the result of espionage.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Authors Warren Hinckle and William Turner, citing a participant in the project, have reported in their book on Cuba that:&lt;blockquote&gt;During 1969 and 1970, the CIA deployed futuristic weather modification technology to ravage Cuba's sugar crop and undermine the economy. Planes from the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in the California desert, where hi tech was developed, overflew the island, seeding rain clouds with crystals that precipitated torrential rains over non-agricultural areas and left the cane fields arid (the downpours caused killer flash floods in some areas).&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In 1971, also according to participants, the CIA turned over to Cuban exiles a virus which causes African swine fever. Six weeks later, an outbreak of the disease in Cuba forced the slaughter of 500,000 pigs to prevent a nationwide animal epidemic. The outbreak, the first ever in the Western hemisphere, was called the &quot;most alarming event&quot; of the year by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Ten years later, the target may well have been human beings, as an epidemic of dengue fever swept the Cuban island. Transmitted by blood-eating insects, usually mosquitos, the disease produces severe flu symptoms and incapacitating bone pain. Between May and October 1981, over 300,000 cases were reported in Cuba with 158 fatalities, 101 of which were children under 15.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; In 1956 and 1958, declassified documents have revealed, the US Army loosed swarms of specially bred mosquitos in Georgia and Florida to see whether disease-carrying insects could be weapons in a biological war. The mosquitos bred for the tests were of the Aedes Aegypti type, the precise carrier of dengue fever as well as other diseases.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt; In 1967 it was reported by Science magazine that at the US government center in Fort Detrick, Maryland, dengue fever was amongst those &quot;diseases that are at least the objects of considerable research and that appear to be among those regarded as potential BW [biological warfare] agents.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt; Then, in 1984, a Cuban exile on trial in New York testified that in the latter part of 1980 a ship travelled from Florida to Cuba with&lt;blockquote&gt;a mission to carry some germs to introduce them in Cuba to be used against the Soviets and against the Cuban economy, to begin what was called chemical war, which later on produced results that were not what we had expected, because we thought that it was going to be used against the Soviet forces, and it was used against our own people, and with that we did not agree.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;It's not clear from the testimony whether the Cuban man thought that the germs would somehow be able to confine their actions to only Russians, or whether he had been misled by the people behind the operation.<br /> <br /> The full extent of American chemical and biological warfare against Cuba will never be known. Over the years, the Castro government has in fact blamed the United States for a number of other plagues which afflicted various animals and crops.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt; And in 1977, newly-released CIA documents disclosed that the Agency &quot;maintained a clandestine anti-crop warfare research program targeted during the 1960s at a number of countries throughout the world.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It came to pass that the United States felt the need to put some of its chemical and biological warfare (CBW) expertise into the hands of other nations. As of 1969, some 550 students, from 36 countries, had completed courses at the US Army's Chemical School at Fort McClellan, Alabama. The CBW instruction was provided to the students under the guise of &quot;defense&quot; against such weapons—just as in Vietnam, as we have seen, torture was taught. As will be described in the chapter on Uruguay, the manufacture and use of bombs was taught under the cover of combating terrorist bombings.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The ingenuity which went into the chemical and biological warfare against Cuba was apparent in some of the dozens of plans to assassinate or humiliate Fidel Castro. Devised by the CIA or Cuban exiles, with the cooperation of American mafiosi, the plans ranged from poisoning Castro's cigars and food to a chemical designed to make his hair and beard fall off and LSD to be administered just before a public speech. There were also of course the more traditional approaches of gun and bomb, one being an attempt to drop bombs on a baseball stadium while Castro was speaking; the B-26 bomber was driven away by anti-aircraft fire before it could reach the stadium.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt; It is a combination of such Cuban security measures, informers, incompetence, and luck which has served to keep the bearded one alive to the present day.<br /> <br /> Attempts were also made on the lives of Castro's brother Raul and Che Guevara. The latter was the target of a bazooka fired at the United Nations building in New York in December 1964.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt; Various Cuban exile groups have engaged in violence on a regular basis in the United States with relative impunity for decades. One of them, going by the name of Omega 7 and headquartered in Union City, New Jersey, was characterized by the FBI in 1980 as &quot;the most dangerous terrorist organization in the United States&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt; Attacks against Cuba itself began to lessen around the end of the 1960s, due probably to a lack of satisfying results combined with ageing warriors, and exile groups turned to targets in the United States and elsewhere in the world.<br /> <br /> During the next decade, while the CIA continued to pour money into the exile community, more than 100 serious &quot;incidents&quot; took place in the United States for which Omega 7 and other groups claimed responsibility. (Within the community, the distinction between a terrorist and a non-terrorist group is not especially precise; there is much overlapping identity and frequent creation of new names.) There occurred repeated bombings of the Soviet UN Mission, its Washington Embassy, its automobiles, a Soviet ship docked in New Jersey, the offices of the Soviet airline Aeroflot, with a number of Russians injured from these attacks; several bombings of the Cuban UN Mission and its Interests Section in Washington, many attacks upon Cuban diplomats, including at least one murder; a bomb discovered at New York's Academy of Music in 1976 shortly before a celebration of the Cuban Revolution was to begin; a bombing two years later of the Lincoln Center after the Cuban ballet had performed …&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The single most violent act of this period was the blowing up of a Cubana Airlines plane shortly after it took off from Barbados on 6 October 1976, which took the lives of 73 people including the entire Cuban championship fencing team. CIA documents later revealed that on 22 June, a CIA officer abroad had cabled a report to Agency headquarters that he had learned from a source that a Cuban exile group planned to bomb a Cubana airliner flying between Panama and Havana. The group's leader was a baby doctor named Orlando Bosch. After the plane crashed in the sea in October, it was Bosch's network of exiles that claimed responsibility. The cable showed that the CIA had the means to penetrate the Bosch organization, but there's no indication in any of the documents that the Agency undertook any special monitoring of Bosch and his group because of their plans, or that the CIA warned Havana.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1983, while Orlando Bosch sat in a Venezuelan prison charged with masterminding the plane bombing, the City Commission of Miami proclaimed a &quot;Dr. Orlando Bosch Day.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt; In 1968, Bosch had been convicted of a bazooka attack on a Polish ship in Miami.<br /> <br /> Cuban exiles themselves have often come in for harsh treatment. Those who have visited Cuba for any reason whatever, or publicly suggested, however timidly, a rapprochement with the homeland, they too have been the victims of bombings and shootings in Florida and New Jersey. American groups advocating a resumption of diplomatic relations or an end to the embargo have been similarly attacked, as have travel agencies handling trips to Cuba and a pharmaceutical company in New Jersey which shipped medicines to the island. Dissent in Miami has been effectively silenced, while the police, city officials, and the media look the other way, when not actually demonstrating support for the exiles' campaign of intimidation.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; In Miami and elsewhere, the CIA—ostensibly to uncover Castro agents—has employed exiles to spy on their countrymen, to keep files on them, as well as on Americans who associate with them.&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Although there has always been the extreme lunatic fringe in the Cuban exile community (as opposed to the normal lunatic fringe) insisting that Washington has sold out their cause, over the years there has been only the occasional arrest and conviction of an exile for a terrorist attack in the United States, so occasional that the exiles can only assume that Washington's heart is not wholly in it. The exile groups and their key members are well known to the authorities, for the anti-Castroites have not excessively shied away from publicity. At least as late as the early 1980s, they were training openly in southern Florida and southern California; pictures of them flaunting their weapons appeared in the press.&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt; The CIA, with its countless contacts-cum-informers amongst the exiles, could fill in many of the missing pieces for the FBI and the police, if it wished to. In 1980, in a detailed report on Cuban-exile terrorism, The Village Voice of New York reported:&lt;blockquote&gt;Two stories were squeezed out of New York police officials … &quot;You know, it's funny,&quot; said one cautiously, &quot;there have been one or two things … but let's put it this way. You get just so far on a case and suddenly the dust is blown away. Case closed. You ask the CIA to help, and they say they aren't really interested. You get the message.&quot; Another investigator said he was working on a narcotics case involving Cuban exiles a couple of years ago, and telephone records he obtained showed a frequently dialed number in Miami. He said he traced the number to a company called Zodiac, &quot;which turned out to be a CIA front.&quot; He dropped his investigation.&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In 1961, amid much fanfare, the Kennedy administration unveiled its showpiece program, the Alliance for Progress. Conceived as a direct response to Castro's Cuba, it was meant to prove that genuine social change could take place in Latin America without resort to revolution or socialism. &quot;If the only alternatives for the people of Latin America are the status quo and communism,&quot; said John F. Kennedy, &quot;then they will inevitably choose communism.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The multi-billion dollar Alliance program established for itself an ambitious set of goals which it hoped to achieve by the end of the decade. These had to do with economic growth, more equitable distribution of national income, reduced unemployment, agrarian reform, education, housing, health, etc. In 1970, the Twentieth Century Fund of New York—whose list of officers read like a Who's Who in the government/industry revolving-door world—undertook a study to evaluate how close the Alliance had come to realizing its objectives. One of the study's conclusions was that Cuba, which was not one of the recipient countries, had&lt;blockquote&gt;come closer to some of the Alliance objectives than most Alliance members. In education and public health, no country in Latin America has carried out such ambitious and nationally comprehensive programs. Cuba's centrally planned economy has done more to integrate the rural and urban sectors (through a national income distribution policy) than the market economies of the other Latin American countries.&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Cuba's agrarian reform program as well was recognized as having been more widesweeping than that of any other Latin American country, although the study took a wait-and-see attitude towards its results.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> These and other economic and social gains were achieved despite the US embargo and the inordinate amount of resources and labor Cuba was obliged to devote to defense and security because of the hovering giant to the north. Moreover, though not amongst the stated objectives of the Alliance, there was another area of universal importance in which Cuba stood apart from many of its Latin neighbors: there were no legions of desaparecidos, no death squads, no systematic, routine torture.<br /> <br /> Cuba had become what Washington had always feared from the Third World—a good example.<br /> <br /> Parallel to the military and economic belligerence, the United States has long maintained a relentless propaganda offensive against Cuba. A number of examples of this occurring in other countries can be found in other chapters of this book. In addition to its vast overseas journalistic empire, the CIA has maintained anti-Castro news-article factories in the United States for decades. The Agency has reportedly subsidized at times such publications in Miami as Avance, El Mundo, El Prensa Libre, Bohemia and El Diario de Las Americas, as well as AIP, a radio news agency that produced programs sent free of charge to more than 100 small stations in Latin America. Two CIA fronts in New York, Foreign Publications, Inc, and Editors Press Service, also served as part of the propaganda network.&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Was it inevitable that the United States would attempt to topple the Cuban government? Could relations between the two neighboring countries have taken a different path? Based on the American record of invariable hostility towards even moderately leftist governments, the answer would appear to be that there's no reason to believe that Cuba's revolutionary government could have been an exception. Washington officials, however, were not immediately ill-disposed towards the Cuban Revolution. There were those who even expressed their tentative approval or optimism. This was evidently based on the belief that what had taken place in Cuba was little more than another Latin American change in government, the kind which had occurred with monotonous regularity for over a century, where the names and faces change but subservience to the United States remains fixed.<br /> <br /> Then Castro revealed himself to be cut from a wholly different cloth. It was not to be business as usual in the Caribbean. He soon became outspoken in his criticism of the United States. He referred acrimoniously to the 60 years of American control of Cuba; how, at the end of those 60 years, the masses of Cubans found themselves impoverished; how the United States used the sugar quota as a threat. He spoke of the unacceptable presence of the Guantánamo base; and he made it clear enough to Washington that Cuba would pursue a policy of independence and neutralism in the cold war. It was for just such reasons that Castro and Che Guevara had forsaken the prosperous bourgeois careers awaiting them in law and medicine to lead the revolution in the first place. Serious compromise was not on their agenda; nor on Washington's, which was not prepared to live with such men and such a government.<br /> <br /> A National Security Council meeting of 10 March 1959 included on its agenda the feasibility of bringing &quot;another government to power in Cuba&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt; This was before Castro had nationalized any US property. The following month, after meeting with Castro in Washington, Vice President Richard Nixon wrote a memo in which he stated that he was convinced that Castro was &quot;either incredibly naive about Communism or under Communist discipline&quot; and that the Cuban leader would have to be treated and dealt with accordingly. Nixon later wrote that his opinion at this time was a minority one within the Eisenhower administration.&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt; But before the year was over, CIA Director Allen Dulles had decided that an invasion of Cuba was necessary. In March of 1960, it was approved by President Eisenhower.&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt; Then came the embargo, leaving Castro no alternative but to turn more and more to the Soviet Union, thus confirming in the minds of Washington officials that Castro was indeed a communist. Some speculated that he had been a covert Red all along.<br /> <br /> In this context, it's interesting to note that the Cuban Communist Party had long supported Batista, had served in his cabinet, and had been unsupportive of Castro and his followers until their accession to power appeared imminent.&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt; To add to the irony, during 1957-58 the CIA was channeling funds to Castro's movement; this while the US continued to support Batista with weapons to counter the rebels; in all likelihood, another example of the Agency hedging its bets.&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> If Castro had toned down his early rhetoric and observed the usual diplomatic niceties, but still pursued the policies of self-determination and socialism which he felt were best for Cuba (or inescapable if certain changes were to be realized), he could only have postponed the day of reckoning, and that not for long. Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala, Mossadegh of Iran, Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana, and other Third World leaders have gone out of their way to avoid stepping on Washington's very sensitive toes unnecessarily, and were much less radical in their programs and in their stance toward the United States than Castro; nonetheless, all of them fell under the CIA axe.<br /> <br /> In 1996 it was revealed that in August, 1961, four months after the Bay of Pigs, Che Guevara had met with Richard Goodwin, President Kennedy's assistant special counsel, at an international gathering in Uruguay. Guevara had a message for Kennedy. Cuba was prepared to forswear any political alliance with the Soviet bloc, pay for confiscated American properties in trade, and consider curbing Cuba's support for leftist insurgencies in other countries. In return, the US would cease all hostile actions against Cuba. Back in Washington, Goodwin's advice to the president was to &quot;quietly intensify&quot; economic pressure on Cuba. In November, Kennedy authorized Operation Mongoose.&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Indonesia 1965: Liquidating President Sukarno … and 500,000 others ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Armed with wide-bladed knives called parangs, Moslem bands crept at night into the homes of communists, killing entire families. … Travellers … tell of small rivers and streams that have been literally clogged with bodies. River transportation has at places been seriously impeded.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Time magazine, December 1965&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Nearly 100 Communists, or suspected Communists, were herded into the town's botanical garden and mowed down with a machine gun … the head that had belonged to the school principal, a P.K.I. [Communist Party] member, was stuck on a pole and paraded among his former pupils, convened in special assembly.&lt;/blockquote&gt;New York Times, May 1966&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Estimates of the total number of Indonesians murdered over a period of several years following an aborted coup range from 500,000 to one million.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the early morning hours of 1 October 1965, a small force of junior military officers abducted and killed six generals and seized several key points in the capital city of Jakarta. They then went on the air to announce that their action was being taken to forestall a putsch by a &quot;Generals' Council&quot; scheduled for Army Day, the fifth of October. The putsch, they said, had been sponsored by the CIA and was aimed at capturing power from President Sukarno. By the end of the day, however, the rebel officers in Jakarta had been crushed by the army under the direction of General Suharto, although some supportive army groups in other cities held out for a day or two longer.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Suharto—a man who had served both the Dutch colonialists and the Japanese invaders&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;—and his colleagues charged that the large and influential PKI was behind the junior officers' &quot;coup attempt&quot;, and that behind the party stood Communist China. The triumphant armed forces moved in to grab the reins of government, curb Sukarno's authority (before long he was reduced to little more than a figurehead), and carry out a bloodbath to eliminate once and for all the PKI with whom Sukarno had obliged them to share national power for many years. Here at last was the situation which could legitimate these long-desired actions.<br /> <br /> Anti-Communist organizations and individuals, particularly Muslims, were encouraged to join in the slaying of anyone suspected of being a PKI sympathizer. Indonesians of Chinese descent as well fell victim to crazed zealots. The Indonesian people were stirred up in part by the display of photographs on television and in the press of the badly decomposed bodies of the slain generals. The men, the public was told, had been castrated and their eyes gouged out by Communist women. (The army later made the mistake of allowing official medical autopsies to be included as evidence in some of the trials; and the extremely detailed reports of the injuries suffered mentioned only bullet wounds and some bruises, no eye gougings or castration.)&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> What ensued was called by the New York Times &quot;one of the most savage mass slaughters of modern political history.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; Violence, wrote Life magazine, &quot;tinged not only with fanaticism but with blood-lust and something like witchcraft.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Twenty-five years later, American diplomats disclosed that they had systematically compiled comprehensive lists of &quot;Communist&quot; operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres, and turned over as many as 5,000 names to the Indonesian army, which hunted those persons down and killed them. The Americans would then check off the names of those who had been killed or captured. Robert Martens, a former member of the US Embassy's political section in Jakarta, stated in 1990: &quot;It really was a big help to the army. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;I know we had a lot more information [about the PKI] than the Indonesians themselves,&quot; said Marshall Green, US Ambassador to Indonesia at the time of the coup. Martens &quot;told me on a number of occasions that … the government did not have very good information on the Communist setup, and he gave me the impression that this information was superior to anything they had.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;No one cared, as long as they were Communists, that they were being butchered,&quot; said Howard Federspiel, who in 1965 was the Indonesia expert at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. &quot;No one was getting very worked up about it.&quot;<br /> <br /> Although the former deputy CIA station chief in Indonesia, Joseph Lazarsky, and former diplomat Edward Masters, who was Martens' boss, confirmed that CIA officers contributed in drawing up the death lists, the CIA in Langley categorically denied any involvement.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The massacre put a horrific end to the well-organized PKI national organization. But it did not put to rest the basic questions underlying the events of 1965, to wit:<br /> <br /> Was there in actual fact a Generals' Council aiming to take over the government within a matter of days? A semi-official account of the whole affair published in Indonesia in 1968 denied the existence of the Council.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; However, a study written and published by the CIA the same year confirmed that there was indeed a Generals' Council but that its purpose was only to devise a way to protect itself from a purported plan of Sukarno to crush the army.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> What was the nature and extent, if any, of PKI involvement in the alleged coup attempt? Did some members of the party know of the junior officers' plans in advance and simply lend moral support, or did they take a more active role? The semi-official account stated that the PKI's aim was not to seize political power for itself but to &quot;prevent the army from eliminating the Party after Sukarno's death.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; (Sukarno had suffered a kidney attack in August, although he quickly recovered. His part in the affair also remains largely a mystery.) The CIA study comes to a similar conclusion: &quot;It now seems clear that the Indonesian coup was not a move to overthrow Sukarno and/or the established government of Indonesia. Essentially, it was a purge of the Army leadership.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> What was the role, if any, of the CIA? Was the coup attempt instigated by an agent provocateur who spread the story of the Generals' Council and its imminent putsch? (The killing, or even the abduction, of the six generals probably could not have been foreseen—three of them were actually slain resisting abduction.)&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; Was PKI participation induced to provide the excuse for its destruction? There are, in fact, indications of an agent provocateur in the unfolding drama, one Kamarusaman bin Ahmed Mubaidah, known as &quot;Sjam&quot;. According to the later testimony of some of the arrested officers, it was Sjam who pushed the idea of the hostile Generals' Council and for the need to counteract it. At the trials and in the CIA Study, the attempt is made to establish that, in so doing, Sjam was acting on behalf of PKI leader Aidit. Presentation of this premise may explain why the CIA took the unique step of publishing such a book; i.e., to assign responsibility for the coup attempt to the PKI so as to &quot;justify&quot; the horror which followed.<br /> <br /> But Sjam could just as easily have been acting for the CIA and/or the generals in the same manner. He apparently was a trusted aide of Aidit and could have induced the PKI leader into the plot instead of the other way around. Sjam had a politically checkered and mysterious background, and his testimony at one of the trials, in which he appeared as a defendant, was aimed at establishing Aidit as the sole director of the coup attempt.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA, in its intimate involvement in Indonesian political affairs since at least the mid-1950s (see Indonesia, 1957-58 chapter), had undoubtedly infiltrated the PKI at various levels, and the military even more so, and was thus in a good position to disseminate disinformation and plant the ideas for certain actions, whether through Sjam or others.<br /> <br /> The desire of the US government to be rid of Sukarno—a leader of the non-aligned and anti-imperialist movements of the Third World, and a protector of the PKI—did not diminish with the failure of the Agency-backed military uprising in 1958. Amongst the various reports of the early 1960s indicating a continuing interest in this end, a CIA memorandum of June 1962 is strikingly to the point. The author of the memo, whose name is deleted, was reporting on the impressions he had received from conversations with &quot;Western diplomats&quot; concerning a recent meeting between President Kennedy and British Prime Minister Macmillan. The two leaders agreed, said the memo, to attempt to isolate Sukarno in Asia and Africa. Further, &quot;They agreed to liquidate President Sukarno, depending upon the situation and available opportunities. (It is not clear to me [the CIA officer] whether murder or overthrow is intended by the word liquidate.)&quot;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Whatever was intended, Sukarno was now, for all practical purposes, eliminated as an international thorn in the flesh. Of even greater significance, the PKI, which had been the largest Communist Party in the world outside the Soviet bloc and China, had been decimated, its tattered remnants driven underground. It could not have worked out better for the United States and the new military junta if it had been planned.<br /> <br /> If the generals had been planning their own coup as alleged, the evidence is compelling that the United States was intimately involved before, during and after the events of 30 September/1 October. One aspect of this evidence is the closeness of the relationship between the American and Indonesian military establishments which the United States had been cultivating for many years. President Kennedy, his former aide Arthur Schlesinger has written, was &quot;anxious to strengthen the anti-communist forces, especially the army, in order to make sure that, if anything happened to Sukarno, the powerful Indonesian Communist Party would not inherit the country.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Roger Hilsman, whose career spanned the CIA and the State Department, has noted that by 1963 …&lt;blockquote&gt;one-third of the Indonesian general staff had had some sort of training from Americans and almost half of the officer corps. As a result of both the civic action project and the training program, the American and Indonesian military had come to know each other rather well. Bonds of personal respect and even affection existed.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;This observation is reinforced by reports of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs:&lt;blockquote&gt;At the time of the attempted Communist coup and military counter-coup [sic] of October 1965, more than 1,200 Indonesian officers including senior military figures, had been trained in the United States. As a result of this experience, numerous friendships and contacts existed between the Indonesian and American military establishments, particularly between members of the two armies. In the post-coup period, when the political situation was still unsettled, the United States, using these existing channels of communication, was able to provide the anti-Communist forces with moral and token material support.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;When the average MAP [Military Assistance Program] trainee returns home he may well have some American acquaintances and a fair appreciation of the United States. This impact may provide some valuable future opportunity for communication as occurred in Indonesia during and immediately after the attempted Communist-backed coup of October 1965.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The CIA, wrote the New York Times, was said &quot;to have been so successful at infiltrating the top of the Indonesian government and army that the United States was reluctant to disrupt CIA covering operations by withdrawing aid and information programs in 1964 and 1965. What was presented officially in Washington as toleration of President Sukarno's insults and provocations was in much larger measure a desire to keep the CIA fronts in business as long as possible.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Finally, we have the testimony of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara before a Senate Committee in 1966:&lt;blockquote&gt;Senator Sparkman: At a time when Indonesia was kicking up pretty badly—when we were getting a lot of criticism for continuing military aid—at that time we could not say what that military aid was for. Is it secret any more?&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;McNamara: I think in retrospect, that the aid was well justified.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Sparkman: You think it paid dividends?&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;McNamara: I do, sir.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;There are other statements which may be pertinent to the question of American involvement. Former US Ambassador Marshall Green, speaking in Australia in 1973 where he was then ambassador, is reported as saying: &quot;In 1965 I remember, Indonesia was poised at the razor's edge. I remember people arguing from here that Indonesia wouldn't go communist. But when Sukarno announced in his August 17 speech that Indonesia would have a communist government within a year [?] then I was almost certain. … What we did we had to do, and you'd better be glad we did because if we hadn't Asia would be a different place today.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> James Reston, writing in the New York Times in 1966:&lt;blockquote&gt;Washington is being careful not to claim any credit for this change [from Sukarno to Suharto] … but this does not mean that Washington had nothing to do with it. There was a great deal more contact between the anti-Communist forces in that country and at least one very high official in Washington before and during the Indonesian massacre than is generally realized. General Suharto's forces, at times severely short of food and munitions, have been getting aid from here through various third countries, and it is doubtful if the [Suharto] coup would ever have been attempted without the American show of strength in Vietnam or been sustained without the clandestine aid it has received indirectly from here.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Neville Maxwell, Senior Research Officer, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Oxford University:&lt;blockquote&gt;A few years ago I was researching in Pakistan into the diplomatic background of the 1965 Indo-Pakistan conflict, and in foreign ministry papers to which I had been given access came across a letter to the then foreign minister, Mr Bhutto, from one of his ambassadors in Europe (I believe Mr J.A. Rahim, in Paris) reporting a conversation with a Dutch intelligence officer with NATO. According to my note of that letter, the officer had remarked to the Pakistani diplomat that Indonesia was &quot;ready to fall into the Western lap like a rotten apple&quot;. Western intelligence agencies, he said, would organize a &quot;premature communist coup … [which would be] foredoomed to fail, providing a legitimate and welcome opportunity to the army to crush the communists and make Soekarno a prisoner of the army's goodwill&quot;. The ambassador's report was dated December 1964.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;It should be remembered that Indonesia had been a colony of the Netherlands, and the Dutch still had some special links to the country.<br /> <br /> The record of the &quot;New Order&quot; imposed by General Suharto upon the people of Indonesia for almost three decades has been remarkable. The government administers the nation on the level of Chicago gangsters of the 1930s running a protection racket. Political prisoners overflow the jails. Torture is routine.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt; … Death squads roam at will, killing not only &quot;subversives&quot; but &quot;suspected criminals&quot; by the thousands.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt; … &quot;An army officer [in the province of Aceh] fires a single shot in the air, at which point all young males must run to a central square before the soldier fires a second shot. Then, anyone arriving late—or not leaving his home—is shot on the spot.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And 200,000 more<br /> <br /> In 1975 Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony of East Timor, which lies at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago and which had proclaimed its independence after Portugal relinquished control. It was the beginning of a massacre that continues into the 1990s. By 1989, Amnesty International estimated that Indonesian troops, with the aim of forcibly annexing East Timor, had killed 200,000 people out of a population of between 600,000 and 700,000.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt; The level of atrocity has often been on a par with that carried out against the PKI in Indonesia itself.<br /> <br /> The invasion of 7 December 1975—of which, said the New York Times: &quot;By any definition, Indonesia is guilty of naked aggression&quot;&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;—was launched the day after US President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger left Indonesia following a meeting with President Suharto. Columnist Jack Anderson later reported:&lt;blockquote&gt;By December 3, 1975, an intelligence dispatch to Washington reported that &quot;Ranking Indonesian civilian government leaders have decided that the only solution in the Portuguese Timor situation is for Indonesia to launch an open offensive against Fretilin [the leading East Timorese resistance movement].&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;But it was essential to neutralize the United States. For the Indonesian army relied heavily on U.S. arms which, under our laws, could not be used for aggression.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;As it happened, President Gerald Ford was on his way to Indonesia for a state visit. An intelligence report forewarned that Suharto would bring up the Timor issue and would &quot;try and elicit a sympathetic attitude.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;That Suharto succeeded is confirmed by Ford himself. The United States had suffered a devastating setback in Vietnam, leaving Indonesia as the most important American ally in the area. The U.S. national interest, Ford concluded, &quot;had to be on the side of Indonesia.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Ford gave his tacit approval on December 6, 1975 … Five days after the invasion, the United Nations voted to condemn the attack as an arrant act of international aggression. The United States abstained. Thereafter, the U.S. delegate maneuvered behind the scenes to resist U.N. moves aimed at forcing Indonesia to give up its conquest.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s, US State Department officials, in statements to the press and in testimony before Congress, consistently supported Indonesia's claim to East Timor (unlike the United Nations and the European Community), and downplayed the slaughter to a remarkable extent. Meanwhile, the omnipresent American military advisers, the training, the weapons, the helicopter gunships, and all the other instruments indispensable to efficient, modern, counter-insurgency warfare, were kept flowing into the hands of the Indonesian military. This may not be all, for Fretilin reported on a number of occasions that American advisers were directing and even participating in the combat.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Ghana 1966: Kwame Nkrumah steps out of line ==<br /> In October of the year 1965, Kwame Nkrumah, the President of Ghana, published his famous-to-be book, Neo-Colonialism—The Last Stage of Imperialism, dedicated to &quot;the Freedom Fighters of Africa, living and dead&quot;. In the book, Nkrumah accused the CIA of being behind numerous setbacks and crises in the Third World and Eastern Europe. He later wrote that &quot;the American Government sent me a note of protest, and promptly refused Ghana $35 million of 'aid'.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Four months later he was overthrown in a CIA-backed military coup.<br /> <br /> To be sure, the coup-makers—members of the Ghanaian army and police—had their own motivations. They were fearful of having their powers stripped from them by a suspicious Nkrumah who was building up his own private army, and they were intent upon furthering their individual professional careers and status. Within days, even hours, of the successful coup in February 1966, majors had become colonels and colonels had become generals. There was more than a touch of the Keystone Kops to the whole episode.<br /> <br /> Kwame Nkrumah was a man who, as a student in the United States during the Great Depression, had roamed Harlem, slept in the subway and lined up at Father Divine's soup kitchens. Later he was to be hailed as &quot;Africa's brightest star&quot;, a leader in the call for an anti-imperialist, pan-African organization and an international movement of nations non-aligned in the cold war. But from all accounts, Nkrumah engaged in idiosyncratic, one-man rule and thought that socialism could be promoted by edict from above. And though he spoke out boldly against neo-colonialism, he was unable, ultimately, to keep Ghana from falling under the sway of the multinationals. When he attempted to lessen his country's dependence on the West by strengthening economic and military ties to the Soviet Union, China and East Germany, he effectively sealed his fate.<br /> <br /> The United States wanted him out. Great Britain, the former colonial power in Ghana when it was known as the Gold Coast, wanted him out. France and West Germany wanted him out. Those Ghanaians who carried out the coup suffered from no doubts that a move against Nkrumah would be supported by the Western powers.<br /> <br /> At the time of the coup, the Soviet press charged that the CIA had been involved, and in 1972 The Daily Telegraph, the conservative London newspaper, reported that &quot;By 1965 the Accra [capital of Ghana] CIA Station had two-score active operators, distributing largesse among President Nkrumah's secret adversaries.&quot; By February, 1966, the report continued, the CIA had its plans ready to end Nkrumah's regime: &quot;The patient and assiduous work of the Accra CIA station was fully rewarded.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It wasn't until 1978, however, that the story &quot;broke&quot; in the United States. Former CIA officer John Stockwell, who had spent most of his career in Africa, published a book in which he revealed the Agency's complicity. Shortly afterwards, the New York Times, quoting &quot;first-hand intelligence sources&quot;, corroborated that the CIA had advised and supported the dissident Ghanaian army officers.<br /> <br /> Stockwell disclosed that the CIA station in Accra &quot;was given a generous budget, and maintained intimate contact with the plotters as a coup was hatched. So close was the station's involvement that it was able to coordinate the recovery of some classified Soviet military equipment by the United States as the coup took place.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA station had also proposed to headquarters in Washington that a small squad of paramilitary experts, members of the agency's Special Operations Group, be on hand at the moment of the coup, with their faces blacked, storm the Chinese Embassy, kill everyone inside, steal their secret records, and blow up the building to cover the fact.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;This proposal was squashed,&quot; Stockwell wrote, &quot;but inside CIA headquarters the Accra station was given full, if unofficial credit for the eventual coup, in which eight Soviet advisers were killed.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; (The Soviet Union categorically denied that any of its advisers had been killed.)<br /> <br /> Other intelligence sources who were in Ghana at the time of the coup have taken issue with Stockwell's view that the CIA deserved full credit for Nkrumah's downfall. But they considered the Agency's role to have been pivotal, and at least some officials in Washington apparently agreed, for the CIA station chief in Accra, Howard T. Bane, was quickly promoted to a senior position in the agency.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;When he was successful,&quot; one of the New York Times sources said of Bane, &quot;everyone in the African division knew it. If it had failed, he would have been transferred and no CIA involvement revealed.&quot;<br /> <br /> Bane, nevertheless, was enraged by the CIA's high-level decision not to permit the raid on the Chinese Embassy, at the time the Peking government's only embassy in Africa. &quot;They didn't have the guts to do it,&quot; he subsequently told an associate.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After the coup, the CIA made a payment of &quot;at least $100,000&quot; to the new Ghanaian regime for the confiscated Soviet material, one item of which was a cigarette lighter that also functioned as a camera.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Ghanaian leaders soon expelled large numbers of Russians as well as Chinese and East Germans. Virtually all state-owned industries were allowed to pass into private hands. In short order the channels of aid, previously clogged, opened wide, and credit, food and development projects flowed in from the United States, the European powers, and the International Monetary Fund. Washington, for example, three weeks after the coup, approved substantial emergency food assistance in response to an urgent request from Ghana. A food request from Nkrumah four months earlier had been turned down.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; One month after his ouster, the international price of cocoa—Ghana's economic lifeblood—had risen 14 percent.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA's reluctance to approve the action at the Chinese Embassy may have stemmed from the fact that the National Security Council had specifically refused to authorize the Agency's involvement in the coup at all. This was, as we have seen, not the first instance of the CIA taking American foreign policy into its own hands. On such occasions, the modus operandi calls for putting as little into writing as feasible, or keeping records out of official CIA files, thus making them immune to Freedom of Information disclosures or congressional investigations; technically the records do not exist, legally they can be destroyed at any time. This was the case with the Ghanaian coup and may explain why more details of the CIA role have never been revealed.<br /> <br /> The American right-wing view of what happened<br /> <br /> According to John Barron, the Reader's Digest's resident KGB expert, Nkrumah was overthrown by only native insurgents, the only foreigners in the picture being 11 KGB officers who were found in Nkrumah's headquarters and summarily executed. The Soviet Union didn't say a word about this, he wrote, because they didn't want &quot;the world to know that KGB officers were actually sitting in the Ghanian President's office running the country.&quot; Barron offers no evidence at all to support his claim of the KGB running the country, nor does he explain why the new government didn't publicize this very interesting fact.<br /> <br /> He goes on to write of &quot;the copious secret files of the Nkrumah regime&quot; which were discovered and then studied and analyzed. The files revealed, he says, that &quot;the KGB had converted Ghana into one vast base of subversion, which the Soviet Union fully intended to use to capture the continent of Africa&quot;. For reasons best known to himself perhaps, Barron fails to offer the reader a single quotation from any of the copious secret files to support his allegations.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Uruguay 1964-1970: Torture—as American as apple pie ==<br /> &quot;The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The words of an instructor in the art of torture. The words of Dan Mitrione, the head of the Office of Public Safety (OPS) mission in Montevideo.<br /> <br /> Officially, OPS was a division of the Agency for International Development, but the director of OPS in Washington, Byron Engle, was an old CIA hand. His organization maintained a close working relationship with the CIA, and Agency officers often operated abroad under OPS cover, although Mitrione was not one of them.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> OPS had been operating formally in Uruguay since 1965, supplying the police with the equipment, the arms, and the training it was created to do. Four years later, when Mitrione arrived, the Uruguayans had a special need for OPS services. The country was in the midst of a long-running economic decline, its once-heralded prosperity and democracy sinking fast toward the level of its South American neighbors. Labor strikes, student demonstrations, and militant street violence had become normal events during the past year; and, most worrisome to the Uruguayan authorities, there were the revolutionaries who called themselves Tupamaros. Perhaps the cleverest, most resourceful and most sophisticated urban guerrillas the world has ever seen, the Tupamaros had a deft touch for capturing the public's imagination with outrageous actions, and winning sympathizers with their Robin Hood philosophy. Their members and secret partisans held key positions in the government, banks, universities, and the professions, as well as in the military and police.<br /> <br /> &quot;Unlike other Latin-American guerrilla groups,&quot; the New York Times stated in 1970, &quot;the Tupamaros normally avoid bloodshed when possible. They try instead to create embarrassment for the Government and general disorder.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; A favorite tactic was to raid the files of a private corporation to expose corruption and deceit in high places, or kidnap a prominent figure and try him before a &quot;People's Court&quot;. It was heady stuff to choose a public villain whose acts went uncensored by the legislature, the courts and the press, subject him to an informed and uncompromising interrogation, and then publicize the results of the intriguing dialogue. Once they ransacked an exclusive high-class nightclub and scrawled on the walls perhaps their most memorable slogan: O Bailan Todos O No Baila Nadie … Either everyone dances or no one dances.<br /> <br /> Dan Mitrione did not introduce the practice of torturing political prisoners to Uruguay. It had been perpetrated by the police at times from at least the early 1960s. However, in a surprising interview given to a leading Brazilian newspaper in 1970, the former Uruguayan Chief of Police Intelligence, Alejandro Otero, declared that US advisers, and in particular Mitrione, had instituted torture as a more routine measure; to the means of inflicting pain, they had added scientific refinement; and to that a psychology to create despair, such as playing a tape in the next room of women and children screaming and telling the prisoner that it was his family being tortured.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;The violent methods which were beginning to be employed,&quot; said Otero, &quot;caused an escalation in Tupamaro activity. Before then their attitude showed that they would use violence only as a last resort.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The newspaper interview greatly upset American officials in South America and Washington. Byron Engle later tried to explain it all away by asserting: &quot;The three Brazilian reporters in Montevideo all denied filing that story. We found out later that it was slipped into the paper by someone in the composing room at the Jornal do Brasil.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Otero had been a willing agent of the CIA, a student at their International Police Services school in Washington, a recipient of their cash over the years, but he was not a torturer. What finally drove him to speak out was perhaps the torture of a woman who, while a Tupamaro sympathizer, was also a friend of his. When she told him that Mitrione had watched and assisted in her torture, Otero complained to him, about this particular incident as well as his general methods of extracting information. The only outcome of the encounter was Otero's demotion.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> William Cantrell was a CIA operations officer stationed in Montevideo, ostensibly as a member of the OPS team. In the mid-1960s he was instrumental in setting up a Department of Information and Intelligence (DII), and providing it with funds and equipment.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; Some of the equipment, innovated by the CIA's Technical Services Division, was for the purpose of torture, for this was one of the functions carried out by the DII.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;One of the pieces of equipment that was found useful,&quot; former New York Times correspondent A. J. Langguth learned, &quot;was a wire so very thin that it could be fitted into the mouth between the teeth and by pressing against the gum increase the electrical charge. And it was through the diplomatic pouch that Mitrione got some of the equipment he needed for interrogations, including these fine wires.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Things got so bad in Mitrione's time that the Uruguayan Senate was compelled to undertake an investigation. After a five-month study, the commission concluded unanimously that torture in Uruguay had become a &quot;normal, frequent and habitual occurrence&quot;, inflicted upon Tupamaros as well as others. Among the types of torture the commission's report made reference to were electric shocks to the genitals, electric needles under the fingernails, burning with cigarettes, the slow compression of the testicles, daily use of psychological torture … &quot;pregnant women were subjected to various brutalities and inhuman treatment&quot; … &quot;certain women were imprisoned with their very young infants and subjected to the same treatment&quot; …&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Eventually the DII came to serve as a cover for the Escuadrón de la Muerte (Death Squad), composed, as elsewhere in Latin America, primarily of police officers, who bombed and strafed the homes of suspected Tupamaro sympathizers and engaged in assassination and kidnapping. The Death Squad received some of its special explosive material from the Technical Services Division and, in all likelihood, some of the skills employed by its members were acquired from instruction in the United States.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; Between 1969 and 1973, at least 16 Uruguayan police officers went through an eight-week course at CIA/OPS schools in Washington and Los Fresnos, Texas in the design, manufacture and employment of bombs and incendiary devices.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; The official OPS explanation for these courses was that policemen needed such training in order to deal with bombs placed by terrorists. There was, however, no instruction in destroying bombs, only in making them; moreover, on at least one reported occasion, the students were not policemen, but members of a private right-wing organization in Chile (see chapter on Chile). Another part of the curriculum which might also have proven to be of value to the Death Squad was the class on Assassination Weapons—&quot;A discussion of various weapons which may be used by the assassin&quot; is how OPS put it.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Equipment and training of this kind was in addition to that normally provided by OPS: riot helmets, transparent shields, tear gas, gas masks, communication gear, vehicles, police batons, and other devices for restraining crowds. The supply of these tools of the trade was increased in 1968 when public disturbances reached the spark-point, and by 1970 American training in riot-control techniques had been given to about a thousand Uruguayan policemen.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Dan Mitrione had built a soundproofed room in the cellar of his house in Montevideo. In this room he assembled selected Uruguayan police officers to observe a demonstration of torture techniques. Another observer was Manuel Hevia Cosculluela, a Cuban who was with the CIA and worked with Mitrione. Hevia later wrote that the course began with a description of the human anatomy and nervous system …&lt;blockquote&gt;Soon things turned unpleasant. As subjects for the first testing they took beggars, known in Uruguay as bichicomes, from the outskirts of Montevideo, as well as a woman apparently from the frontier area with Brazil. There was no interrogation, only a demonstration of the effects of different voltages on the different parts of the human body, as well as demonstrating the use of a drug which induces vomiting—I don't know why or what for—and another chemical substance. The four of them died.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In his book Hevia does not say specifically what Mitrione's direct part in all this was, but he later publicly stated that the OPS chief &quot;personally tortured four beggars to death with electric shocks&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On another occasion, Hevia sat with Mitrione in the latter's house, and over a few drinks the American explained to the Cuban his philosophy of interrogation. Mitrione considered it to be an art. First there should be a softening-up period, with the usual beatings and insults. The object is to humiliate the prisoner, to make him realize his helplessness, to cut him off from reality. No questions, only blows and insults. Then, only blows in silence.<br /> <br /> Only after this, said Mitrione, is the interrogation. Here no pain should be produced other than that caused by the instrument which is being used. &quot;The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect,&quot; was his motto.<br /> <br /> During the session you have to keep the subject from losing all hope of life, because this can lead to stubborn resistance. &quot;You must always leave him some hope … a distant light.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;When you get what you want, and I always get it,&quot; Mitrione continued, &quot;it may be good to prolong the session a little to apply another softening-up. Not to extract information now, but only as a political measure, to create a healthy fear of meddling in subversive activities.&quot;<br /> <br /> The American pointed out that upon receiving a subject the first thing is to determine his physical state, his degree of resistance, by means of a medical examination. &quot;A premature death means a failure by the technician … It's important to know in advance if we can permit ourselves the luxury of the subject's death.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Not long after this conversation, Manual Hevia disappeared from Montevideo and turned up in Havana. He had been a Cuban agent—a double agent—all along.<br /> <br /> About half a year later, 31 July 1970 to be exact, Dan Mitrione was kidnapped by the Tupamaros. They did not torture him. They demanded the release of some 150 prisoners in exchange for him. With the determined backing of the Nixon administration, the Uruguayan government refused. On 10 August, Mitrione's dead body was found on the back seat of a stolen car. He had turned 50 on his fifth day as a prisoner.<br /> <br /> Back in Mitrione's home town of Richmond, Indiana, Secretary of State William Rogers and President Nixon's son-in-law David Eisenhower attended the funeral for Mitrione, the city's former police chief. Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis came to town to stage a benefit show for Mitrione's family.<br /> <br /> And White House spokesman, Ron Ziegler, solemnly stated that &quot;Mr. Mitrione's devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will remain as an example for free men everywhere.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;A perfect man,&quot; his widow said.<br /> <br /> &quot;A great humanitarian,&quot; said his daughter Linda.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The military's entry into the escalating conflict signaled the beginning of the end for the Tupamaros. By the end of 1972, the curtain was descending on their guerrilla theatre. Six months later, the military was in charge, Congress was dissolved, and everything not prohibited was compulsory. For the next 11 years, Uruguay competed strongly for the honor of being South America's most repressive dictatorship. It had, at one point, the largest number of political prisoners per capita in the world. And, as every human rights organization and former prisoner could testify, each one of them was tortured. &quot;Torture,&quot; said an activist priest, &quot;was routine and automatic.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> No one was dancing in Uruguay.<br /> <br /> In 1981, at the Fourteenth Conference of American Armies, the Uruguayan Army offered a paper in which it defined subversion as &quot;actions, violent or not, with ultimate purposes of a political nature, in all fields of human activity within the internal sphere of a state and whose aims are perceived as not convenient for the overall political system.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The dissident Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano, summed up his country's era of dictatorship thusly: &quot;People were in prison so that prices could be free.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The film &quot;State of Siege&quot; appeared in 1972. It centered around Mitrione and the Tupamaros and depicted a Uruguayan police officer receiving training at a secret bomb school in the United States, though the film strove more to provide a composite picture of the role played by the US in repression throughout Latin America. A scheduled premier showing of the film at the federally-funded John F. Kennedy Arts Center in Washington was canceled. There was already growing public and congressional criticism of this dark side of American foreign policy without adding to it. During the mid-1970s, however, Congress enacted several pieces of legislation which abolished the entire Public Safety Program. In its time, OPS had provided training for more than one million policemen in the Third World. Ten thousand of them had received advance training in the United States. An estimated $150 million worth of equipment had been shipped to police forces abroad.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; Now, the &quot;export of repression&quot; was to cease.<br /> <br /> That was on paper. The reality appears to be somewhat different.<br /> <br /> To a large extent, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) simply picked up where OPS had left off. The drug agency was ideally suited for the task, for its agents were already deployed all over Latin America and elsewhere overseas in routine liaison with foreign police forces. The DEA acknowledged in 1975 that 53 &quot;former&quot; employees of the CIA were now on its staff and that there was a close working relationship between the two agencies. The following year, the General Accounting Office reported that DEA agents were engaging in many of the same activities the OPS had been carrying out.<br /> <br /> In addition, some training of foreign policemen was transferred to FBI schools in Washington and Quantico, Virginia; the Defense Department continued to supply police-type equipment to military units engaged in internal security operations; and American arms manufacturers were doing a booming business furnishing arms and training to Third World governments. In some countries, contact between these companies and foreign law enforcement officials was facilitated by the US Embassy or military mission. The largest of the arms manufacturers, Smith and Wesson, ran its own Academy in Springfield, Massachusetts, which provided American and foreign &quot;public and industrial security forces with expert training in riot control&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Said Argentine Minister Jose Lopez Rega at the signing of a US-Argentina anti-drug treaty in 1974: &quot;We hope to wipe out the drug traffic in Argentina. We have caught guerrillas after attacks who were high on drugs. The guerrillas are the main drug users in Argentina. Therefore, this anti-drug campaign will automatically be an anti-guerrilla campaign as well.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And in 1981, a former Uruguayan intelligence officer declared that US manuals were being used to teach techniques of torture to his country's military. He said that most of the officers who trained him had attended classes run by the United States in Panama. Among other niceties, the manuals listed 35 nerve points where electrodes could be applied.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;***********************************************&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> <br /> Philip Agee, after he left Ecuador, was stationed in Uruguay from March 1964 to August 1966. His account of CIA activities in Montevideo is further testimony to the amount of international mischief money can buy. Amongst the multifarious dirty tricks pulled off with impunity by Agee and his Agency cohorts, the following constitute an interesting sample:&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A Latin American students' conference with a leftist leaning, held in Montevideo, was undermined by promoting the falsehood that it was nothing more than a creature of the Soviet Union—originated, financed and directed by Moscow. Editorials on this theme authored by the CIA appeared in leading newspapers to which the Agency had daily access. This was followed by publication of a forged letter of a student leader thanking the Soviet cultural attaché for his assistance. A banner headline in one paper proclaimed: &quot;Documents for the Break with Russia&quot;, which was indeed the primary purpose of the operation.<br /> <br /> An inordinate amount of time, energy and creativity was devoted, with moderate success, to schemes aimed at encouraging the expulsion of an assortment of Russians, East Germans, North Koreans, Czechs, and Cubans from Uruguayan soil, if not the breaking of relations with these countries. In addition to planting disparaging media propaganda, the CIA tried to obtain incriminating information by reading the mail and diplomatic cables to and from these countries, tapping embassy phones, and engaging in sundry bugging and surreptitious entry. The Agency would then prepare &quot;Intelligence&quot; reports, containing enough factual information to be plausible, which then made their way innocently into the hands of officials of influence, up to and including the president of the republic.<br /> <br /> Anti-communist indoctrination of secondary-level students was promoted by financing particular school organizations and publications.<br /> <br /> A Congress of the People, bringing together a host of community groups, labor organizations, students, government workers, etc., Communist and non-Communist, disturbed the CIA because of the potential for a united front being formed for electoral purposes. Accordingly, newspaper editorials and articles were generated attacking the Congress as a classic Communist takeover/duping tactic and calling upon non-Communists to refrain from participating; and a phoney handbill was circulated in which the Congress called upon the Uruguayan people to launch an insurrectional strike with immediate occupation of their places of work. Thousands of the handbills were handed out, provoking angry denials from the Congress organizers, but, as is usual in such cases, the damage was already done.<br /> <br /> The Uruguayan Communist Party planned to host an international conference to express solidarity with Cuba. The CIA merely had to turn to their (paid) friend, the Minister of the Interior, and the conference was banned. When it was shifted to Chile, the CIA station in Santiago performed the same magic.<br /> <br /> Uruguay at this time was a haven for political exiles from repressive regimes such as in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay. The CIA, through surveillance and infiltration of the exile community, regularly collected information on exiles' activities, associates, etc., to be sent to CIA stations in the exiles' homelands with likely transmission to their governments, which wanted to know what these troublemakers were up to and which did not hesitate to harass them across frontiers.<br /> <br /> &quot;Other operations,&quot; wrote Agee, &quot;were designed to take control of the streets away from communists and other leftists, and our squads, often with the participation of off-duty policemen, would break up their meetings and generally terrorize them. Torture of communists and other extreme leftists was used in interrogation by our liaison agents in the police.&quot;<br /> <br /> The monitoring and harassment of Communist diplomatic missions by the CIA, as described above, was standard Agency practice throughout the world. This rarely stemmed from anything more than a juvenile cold-war reflex: making life hard for the commies.<br /> <br /> Postscript: In 1998, Eladio Moll, a retired Uruguayan navy rear admiral and former intelligence chief, testifying before a commission of the Uruguayan Chamber of Deputies, stated that during Uruguay's &quot;dirty war&quot; (1972-1983), orders came from the United States to kill captive members of the Tupamaros after interrogating them. &quot;The guidance that was sent from the US,&quot; said Moll, &quot;was that what had to be done with the captured guerrillas was to get information, and that afterwards they didn't deserve to live.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Chile 1964-1973: A hammer and sickle stamped on your child's forehead ==<br /> When Salvador Allende, a committed Marxist, came within three percent of winning the Chilean presidency in 1958, the United States decided that the next election, in 1964, could not be left in the hands of providence, or democracy.<br /> <br /> Washington took it all very gravely. At the outset of the Kennedy administration in 1961, an electoral committee was established, composed of top-level officials from the State Department, the CIA and the White House. In Santiago, a parallel committee of embassy and CIA people was set up.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;U.S. government intervention in Chile in 1964 was blatant and almost obscene,&quot; said one intelligence officer strategically placed at the time. &quot;We were shipping people off right and left, mainly State Dept. but also CIA, with all sorts of covers.&quot; All in all, as many as 100 American operatives were dedicated to the operation.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> They began laying the groundwork for the election years ahead, a Senate investigating committee has disclosed, &quot;by establishing operational relationships with key political parties and by creating propaganda and organizational mechanisms capable of influencing key sectors of the population.&quot; Projects were undertaken &quot;to help train and organize 'anti-communists'&quot; among peasants, slum dwellers, organized labor, students, the media, etc.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After channeling funds to several non-leftist parties, the electoral team eventually settled on a man of the center, Eduardo Frei, the candidate of the Christian Democratic Party, as the one most likely to block Allende's rise to power. The CIA underwrote more than half the party's total campaign costs,&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; one of the reasons that the Agency's overall electoral operation reduced the U.S. Treasury by an estimated $20 million&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;—much more per voter than that spent by the Johnson and Goldwater campaigns combined in the same year in the United States. The bulk of the expenditures went toward propaganda. As the Senate committee described it:&lt;blockquote&gt;In addition to support for political parties, the CIA mounted a massive anti-communist propaganda campaign. Extensive use was made of the press, radio, films, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, direct mailings, paper streamers, and wall painting. It was a &quot;scare campaign&quot;, which relied heavily on images of Soviet tanks and Cuban firing squads and was directed especially to women. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the anti-communist pastoral letter of Pope Pius XI were distributed by Christian Democratic organizations. They carried the designation, &quot;printed privately by citizens without political affiliation, in order more broadly to disseminate its content.&quot; &quot;Disinformation&quot; and &quot;black propaganda&quot;—material which purported to originate from another source, such as the Chilean Communist Party—were used as well.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The scare campaign played up to the fact that women in Chile, as elsewhere in Latin America, are traditionally more religious than men, more susceptible to being alarmed by the specter of &quot;godless, atheist communism&quot;. One radio spot featured the sound of a machine gun, followed by a woman's cry: &quot;They have killed my child—the communists.&quot; The announcer then added in impassioned tones: &quot;Communism offers only blood and pain. For this not to happen in Chile, we must elect Eduardo Frei president.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Other scare tactics centered around warnings of Russian control, and that the left would confiscate everything near, dear and holy.<br /> <br /> The committee report continued:&lt;blockquote&gt;The propaganda campaign was enormous. During the first week of intensive propaganda activity (the third week of June 1964), a CIA-funded propaganda group produced twenty radio spots per day in Santiago and on 44 provincial stations; twelve-minute news broadcasts five times daily on three Santiago stations and 24 provincial outlets; thousands of cartoons, and much paid press advertising. By the end of June, the group produced 24 daily newscasts in Santiago and the provinces, 26 weekly &quot;commentary&quot; programs, and distributed 3,000 posters daily.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;One poster which appeared in the thousands showed children with a hammer and sickle stamped on their foreheads.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Newspaper articles from elsewhere in Latin America which supported the political lines of the CIA campaign were collected and reprinted in Chile. Undoubtedly, many of these articles had been written in the first place by CIA stations in the particular countries. There were also endorsements of Frei solicited from famous personages abroad, advertisements such as a &quot;message from the women of Venezuela&quot;,&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; and a vitriolic anti-communist radio broadcast by Juanita Castro, sister of Fidel, who was on a CIA-organized speaking tour of South America: &quot;If the Reds win in Chile,&quot; she said, &quot;no type of religious activity will be possible … Chilean mother, I know you will not allow your children to be taken from you and sent to the Communist bloc, as in the case of Cuba.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Senate committee also revealed that:&lt;blockquote&gt;In addition to buying propaganda piecemeal, the [CIA] Station often purchased it wholesale by subsidizing Chilean media organizations friendly to the United States. Doing so was propaganda writ large. Instead of placing individual items, the CIA supported—or even founded—friendly media outlets which might not have existed in the absence of Agency support.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;From 1953 through 1970 in Chile, the Station subsidized wire services, magazines written for intellectual circles, and a right-wing weekly newspaper.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Of one subsidized newspaper, a State Department veteran of the campaign recalls that &quot;The layout was magnificent. The photographs were superb. It was a Madison Avenue product far above the standards of Chilean publications.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The same could be said about the electioneering itself. Besides running political action projects on its own in a number of important voting blocks, the CIA directed the Christian Democrats' campaign along American-style lines, with voter registration, get-out-the-vote drives, and professional management firms to carry out public opinion surveys.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; To top it all off, they sent for a ringer—an election specialist from the staff of that eminent connoisseur and guardian of free elections, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; What the function of Daley's man in Chile was, can only be guessed at.<br /> <br /> Several of the grassroots programs funded by the CIA were those run by Roger Vekemans, a Belgian Jesuit priest who arrived in Chile in 1957 and founded a network of social-action organizations, one of which grew to have 100 employees and a $30 million annual budget. By his own declaration in 1963, Vekemans received $5 million from the CIA as well as a like amount from AID to guide his organizations' resources in support of the Christian Democrats and Eduardo Frei, with whom Vekemans had close relations.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; The Jesuit's programs served the classic function of channeling revolutionary zeal along safe reformist paths. Church people working for the CIA in the Third World have typically been involved in gathering information about the activities and attitudes of individual peasants and workers, spotting the troublemakers, recruiting likely agents, preaching the gospel of anti-communism, acting as funding conduits, and serving as a religious &quot;cover&quot; for various Agency operations. An extreme anti-communist, Vekemans was a front-line soldier in the struggle of the Christian Democrats and the Catholic Church against the &quot;liberation theology&quot; then gaining momentum amongst the more liberal clergy in Latin America and which would lead to the historic dialogue between Christianity and Marxism.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The operation worked. It worked beyond expectations. Frei received 56 percent of the vote to Allende's 39 percent. The CIA regarded &quot;the anti-communist scare campaign as the most effective activity undertaken&quot;, noted the Senate committee.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt; This was the tactic directed toward Chilean women in particular. As things turned out, Allende won the men's vote by 67,000 over Frei (in Chile men and women vote separately), but amongst the women Frei came out ahead by 469,000 … testimony, once again, to the remarkable ease with which the minds of the masses of people can be manipulated, in any and all societies.<br /> <br /> What was there about Salvador Allende that warranted all this feverish activity? What threat did he represent, this man against whom the great technical and economic resources of the world's most powerful nation were brought to bear? Allende was a man whose political program, as described by the Senate committee report, was to &quot;redistribute income [two percent of the population received 46 percent of the income] and reshape the Chilean economy, beginning with the nationalization of major industries, especially the copper companies; greatly expanded agrarian reform; and expanded relations with socialist and communist countries.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A man committed to such a program could be expected by American policy makers to lead his country along a path independent of the priorities of US foreign policy and the multinationals. (As his later term as president confirmed, he was independent of any other country as well.)<br /> <br /> The CIA is an ongoing organization. Its covert activities are ongoing, each day, in each country. Between the 1964 and 1970 presidential elections many of the programs designed to foster an anti-leftist mentality in different sections of the population continued; much of the propaganda and electioneering mechanisms remained in place to support candidates of the 1965 and 1969 congressional elections; in the latter election, financial support was given to a splinter socialist party in order to attract votes away from Allende's Socialist Party; this reportedly deprived the party of a minimum of seven congressional seats.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Senate committee described some of the other individual covert projects undertaken by the CIA during this period:&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Wresting control of Chilean university student organizations from the communists;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Supporting a women's group active in Chilean political and intellectual life;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Combatting the communist-dominated Central Unica de Trabajadores Chilenos (CUTCh) and supporting democratic [i.e., anti-communist] labor groups; and,&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Exploiting a civic action front group to combat communist influence within cultural and intellectual circles.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In 1968, at the same time the CIA was occupied in subverting unions dominated by the Chilean Communist Party, a US Senate committee was concluding that the Latin American labor movement had largely abandoned its revolutionary outlook: &quot;Even the Communist-dominated unions, especially those which follow the Moscow line, now generally accept the peaceful road as a viable alternative.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Thus spoke Henry Kissinger, principal adviser to the President of the United States on matters of national security. The date was 27 June 1970, a meeting of the National Security Council's 40 Committee, and the people Kissinger suspected of imminent irresponsibility were the Chileans whom he feared might finally elect Salvador Allende as their president.<br /> <br /> The United States did not stand by idly. At this meeting approval was given to a $300,000 increase in the anti-Allende &quot;spoiling&quot; operation which was already underway. The CIA trained its disinformation heavy artillery on the Chilean electorate, firing shells marked: &quot;An Allende victory means violence and Stalinist repression.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; Black propaganda was employed to undermine Allende's coalition and support by sowing dissent between the Communist Party and the Socialist Party, the main members of the coalition, and between the Communist Party and the CUTCh.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Nonetheless, on 4 September Allende won a plurality of the votes. On 24 October, the Chilean Congress would meet to choose between him and the runnerup, Jorge Alessandri of the conservative National Party. By tradition, Allende was certain to become president.<br /> <br /> The United States had seven weeks to prevent him from taking office. On 15 September, President Nixon met with Kissinger, CIA Director Richard Helms, and Attorney General John Mitchell. Helms' handwritten notes of the meeting have become famous: &quot;One in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile! … not concerned with risks involved …$10,000,000 available, more if necessary … make the economy scream …&quot;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Funds were authorized by the 40 Committee to bribe Chilean congressmen to vote for Alessandri,&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt; but this was soon abandoned as infeasible, and under intense pressure from Richard Nixon, American efforts were concentrated on inducing the Chilean military to stage a coup and then cancel the congressional vote altogether.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt; At the same time, Nixon and Kissinger made it clear to the CIA that an assassination of Allende would not be unwelcome. One White House options-paper discussed various ways this could be carried out.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A fresh propaganda campaign was initiated in Chile to impress upon the military, amongst others, the catastrophe which would befall the nation with Allende as president. In addition to the standard communist horror stories, it was made known that there would be a cutoff of American and other foreign assistance; this was accompanied by predictions/rumors of the nationalization of everything down to small shops, and of economic collapse. The campaign actually affected the Chilean economy adversely and a major financial panic ensued.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In private, Chilean military officers were warned that American military aid would come to a halt if Allende were seated.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During this interim period, according to the CIA, over 700 articles, broadcasts, editorials and similar items were generated in the Latin American and European media as a direct result of Agency activity. This is apart from the &quot;real&quot; media stories inspired by the planted ones. Moreover, journalists in the pay of the CIA arrived in Chile from at least ten different countries to enhance their material with on-the-spot credibility.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The following portion of a CIA cable of 25 September 1970 offers some indication of the scope of such media operations:&lt;blockquote&gt;Sao Paulo, Tegucigalpa, Buenos Aires, Lima, Montevideo, Bogota, Mexico City report continued replay of Chile theme materials. Items also carried in New York Times and Washington Post. Propaganda activities continue to generate good coverage of Chile developments along our theme guidance.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The CIA also gave &quot;inside&quot; briefings to American journalists about the situation in Chile. One such briefing provided to Time enlightened the magazine as to Allende's intention to support violence and destroy Chile's free press. This, observed the Senate report, &quot;resulted in a change in the basic thrust&quot; of the Time story.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> When Allende criticized the leading conservative newspaper El Mercurio (heavily funded by the CIA), the Agency &quot;orchestrated cables of support and protest from foreign newspapers, a protest statement from an international press association, and world press coverage of the association's protest.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A cable sent from CIA headquarters to Santiago on 19 October expressed concern that the coup still had&lt;blockquote&gt;no pretext or justification that it can offer to make it acceptable in Chile or Latin America. It therefore would seem necessary to create one to bolster what will probably be [the military's] claim to a coup to save Chile from communism.&lt;/blockquote&gt;One of headquarters' suggestions was the fabrication of:&lt;blockquote&gt;Firm intel[ligence] that Cubans planned to reorganize all intelligence services along Soviet/Cuban mold thus creating structure for police state … With appropriate military contact can determine how to &quot;discover&quot; intel[ligence] report which could even be planted during raids planned by Carabineros [the police].&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Meanwhile, the Agency was in active consultation with several Chilean military officers who were receptive to the suggestion of a coup. (The difficulty in finding such officers was described by the CIA as a problem in overcoming &quot;the apolitical, constitutional-oriented inertia of the Chilean military&quot;.)&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; They were assured that the United States would give them full support short of direct military involvement. The immediate obstacle faced by the officers was the determined opposition of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, René Schneider, who insisted that the constitutional process be followed. He would have to be &quot;removed&quot;.<br /> <br /> In the early morn of 22 October the CIA passed &quot;sterilized&quot; machine guns and ammunition to some of the conspirators. (Earlier they had passed tear gas.) That same day, Schneider was mortally wounded in an attempted kidnap (or &quot;kidnap&quot;) on his way to work. The CIA station in Santiago cabled its headquarters that the general had been shot with the same kind of weapons it had delivered to the military plotters, although the Agency later claimed to the Senate that the actual assassins were not the same ones it had passed the weapons to.&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The assassination did not avail the conspirators' purpose. It only served to rally the army around the flag of constitutionalism; and time was running out. Two days later, Salvador Allende was confirmed by the Chilean Congress. On 3 November he took office as president.<br /> <br /> The stage was set for a clash of two experiments. One was Allende's &quot;socialist&quot; experiment aimed at lifting Chile from the mire of underdevelopment and dependency and the poor from deprivation. The other was, as CIA Director William Colby later put it, a &quot;prototype or laboratory experiment to test the techniques of heavy financial investment in an effort to discredit and bring down a government.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Although there were few individual features of this experiment which were unique for the CIA, in sum total it was perhaps the most multifarious intervention ever undertaken by the United States. In the process it brought a new word into the language: destabilization.<br /> <br /> &quot;Not a nut or bolt [will] be allowed to reach Chile under Allende&quot;, warned then-American Ambassador Edward Korry before the confirmation.&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt; The Chilean economy, so extraordinarily dependent upon the United States, was the country's soft underbelly, easy to pound. Over the next three years, new US government assistance programs for Chile plummeted almost to the vanishing point; similarly with loans from the US Export-Import Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, in which the United States held what amounted to a veto; and the World Bank made no new loans at all to Chile during 1971-73. US government financial assistance or guarantees to American private investment in Chile were cut back sharply and American businesses were given the word to tighten the economic noose.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> What this boycott translated into were things like the many buses and taxis out of commission in Chile due to a lack of replacement parts; and similar difficulties in the copper, steel, electricity and petroleum industries. American suppliers refused to sell needed parts despite Chile's offer to pay cash in advance.&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Multinational ITT, which didn't need to be told what to do, stated in a 1970 memorandum: &quot;A more realistic hope among those who want to block Allende is that a swiftly-deteriorating economy will touch off a wave of violence leading to a military coup.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the midst of the near disappearance of economic aid, and contrary to its warning, the United States increased its military assistance to Chile during 1972 and 1973 as well as training Chilean military personnel in the United States and Panama.&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt; The Allende government, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, was reluctant to refuse this &quot;assistance&quot; for fear of antagonizing its military leaders.<br /> <br /> Perhaps nothing produced more discontent in the population than the shortages, the little daily annoyances when one couldn't get a favorite food, or flour or cooking oil, or toilet paper, bed sheets or soap, or the one part needed to make the TV set or the car run; or, worst of all, when a nicotine addict couldn't get a cigarette. Some of the scarcity resulted from Chile being a society in transition: various changeovers to state ownership, experiments in workers' control, etc. But this was minor compared to the effect of the aid squeeze and the practices of the omnipresent American corporations. Equally telling were the extended strikes in Chile, which relied heavily on CIA financial support for their prolongation.&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In October 1972, for example, an association of private truck owners instituted a work-stoppage aimed at disrupting the flow of food and other important commodities, including in their embargo even newspapers which supported the government (subtlety was not the order of the day in this ultra-polarized country). On the heels of this came store closures, countless petit-bourgeois doing their bit to turn the screws of public inconvenience—and when they were open, many held back on certain goods, like cigarettes, to sell them on the black market to those who could afford the higher prices. Then most private bus companies stopped running; on top of this, various professional and white-collar workers, largely unsympathetic to the government, walked out, with or without CIA help.<br /> <br /> Much of this campaign was aimed at wearing down the patience of the public, convincing them that &quot;socialism can't work in Chile&quot;. Yet there had been worse shortages for most of the people before the Allende government—shortages of food, housing, health care, and education, for example. At least half the population had suffered from malnutrition. Allende, who was a medical doctor, explained his free milk program by pointing out that &quot;Today in Chile there are over 600,000 children mentally retarded because they were not adequately nourished during the first eight months of their lives, because they did not receive the necessary proteins.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Financial aid was not the CIA's only input into the strike scene. More than 100 members of Chilean professional associations and employers' guilds were graduates of the school run by the American Institute for Free Labor Development in Front Royal, Virginia—&quot;The Little Anti-Red Schoolhouse&quot;. AIFLD, the CIA's principal Latin America labor organization, also assisted in the formation of a new professional association in May 1971: the Confederation of Chilean Professionals. The labor specialists of AIFLD had more than a decade's experience in the art of fomenting economic turmoil (or keeping workers quiescent when the occasion called for it).&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> CIA propaganda merchants had a field day with the disorder and the shortages, exacerbating both by instigating panic buying. All the techniques, the whole of the media saturation, the handy organizations created for each and every purpose, so efficiently employed in 1964 and 1970, were facilitated by the virtually unlimited license granted the press: headlines and stories which spread rumors about everything from nationalizations to bad meat and undrinkable water … &quot;Economic Chaos! Chile on Brink of Doom!&quot; in the largest type one could ever expect to see in a newspaper … raising the specter of civil war, when not actually calling for it, literally … alarmist stories which anywhere else in the world would have been branded seditious … the worst of London's daily tabloids or the National Enquirer of the United States appear as staid as a journal of dentistry by comparison.&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In response, on a few occasions, the government briefly closed down a newspaper or magazine, on the left as well as on the right, for endangering security.&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Agency's routine support of the political opposition was extended to include the extreme rightist organization Patria y Libertad, which the CIA reportedly helped to form, and whose members it trained in guerrilla warfare and bombing techniques at schools in Bolivia and Los Fresnos, Texas. Patria y Libertad marched in rallies in full riot gear, engaged repeatedly in acts of violence and provocation, and its publications openly called for a military coup.&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA was engaged in courting the military for the same end. Providing military equipment meant the normal presence of US advisers and the opportunity for Americans to work closely with the Chileans. Since 1969, the Agency had been establishing &quot;intelligence assets&quot; in all three branches of the Chilean armed services, and included &quot;command-level officers, field- and company-grade officers, retired general staff officers and enlisted men.&quot; Employing its usual blend of real and fabricated information, along with forged documents, the CIA endeavored to keep the officers &quot;on the alert&quot;. One approach was to convince them that, with Allende's approval, the police investigations unit was acting in concert with Cuban intelligence to gather information prejudicial to the army high command.&lt;sup&gt;51&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Newspapers in Santiago supported by the CIA, particularly El Mercurio, often concentrated on influencing the military. They alleged communist plots to disband or destroy the armed services, Soviet plans to establish a submarine base in Chile, North Korea setting up a training base, and so forth. The papers stirred up hatred against the government in the ranks, and in some cases entire columns were published which were calculated to change the opinion of a single officer, in one case an officer's wife.&lt;sup&gt;52&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Agency also subsidized a number of books and other kinds of publications in Chile. One was a short-lived anti-government newsletter directed at the military.&lt;sup&gt;53&lt;/sup&gt; Later the CIA made use of a weekly humor and political magazine, SEPA, aimed at the same audience. The cover of the 20 March 1973 issue featured the headline: &quot;Robert Moss. An English Recipe for Chile—Military Control.&quot; Moss was identified by the magazine as a British sociologist. A more relevant description would have been that he was a &quot;news&quot; specialist associated with known CIA media fronts. One of these, Forum World Features of London (see Western Europe chapter), published Moss's book, Chile's Marxist Experiment, in 1973, which was widely circulated by the junta to justify its coup.&lt;sup&gt;54&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Moss was associated with a CIA-funded think-tank in Santiago which went by the supremely innocuous name of the Institute of General Studies. The IGS, amongst other activities, conducted seminars for Chilean military officers in which it was explained, in technical, apolitical terms, why Allende was a disaster for the economy and why a laissez-faire system offered a solution to Chile's ills. There is no way of measuring to what extent such lectures influenced future actions of the military, although after the coup the junta did appoint several IGS people to top government posts.&lt;sup&gt;55&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA's Santiago station was meanwhile collecting the operational intelligence necessary in the event of a coup: &quot;arrest lists, key civilian installations and personnel that needed protection, key government installations which need to be taken over, and government contingency plans which would be used in case of a military uprising.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;56&lt;/sup&gt; The CIA later asserted that this information was never passed to the Chilean military, a claim that does not give one the feeling of having been united with the probable. It should be noted in this context that in the days immediately following the coup the Chilean military went directly to the residences of many Americans and other foreigners living in Santiago who had been sympathetic to the Allende government.&lt;sup&gt;57&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The government contingency plans were presumably obtained by the Agency through its infiltration of the various parties which made up Allende's Unidad Popular (UP) coalition. CIA agents in the upper echelons of Allende's own Socialist Party were &quot;paid to make mistakes in their jobs&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;58&lt;/sup&gt; In Washington, burglary was the Agency's tactic of choice for obtaining documents. Papers were taken from the homes of several employees of the Chilean Embassy; and the embassy itself, which had been bugged for some time, was burgled in May 1972 by some of the same men who the next month staged the Watergate break-in.&lt;sup&gt;59&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In March 1973, the UP won about 44 percent of the vote in congressional elections, compared to some 36 percent in 1970. It was said to be the largest increase an incumbent party had ever received in Chile after being in power more than two years. The opposition parties had publicly expressed their optimism about capturing two-thirds of the congressional seats and thus being able to impeach Allende. Now they faced three more years under him, with the prospect of being unable, despite their best and most underhanded efforts, to prevent his popularity from increasing even further.<br /> <br /> During the spring and summer the destabilization process escalated. There was a whole series of demonstrations and strikes, with an even longer one by the truckers. Time magazine reported: &quot;While most of the country survived on short rations, the truckers seemed unusually well equipped for a lengthy holdout.&quot; A reporter asked a group of truckers who were camping and dining on &quot;a lavish communal meal of steak, vegetables, wine and empanadas&quot; where the money for it came from. &quot;From the CIA,&quot; they answered laughingly.&lt;sup&gt;60&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> There was as well daily sabotage and violence, including assassination. In June, an abortive attack upon the Presidential Palace was carried out by the military and Patria y Libertad.<br /> <br /> In September the military prevailed. &quot;It is clear,&quot; said the Senate investigating committee, &quot;the CIA received intelligence reports on the coup planning of the group which carried out the successful September 11 coup throughout the months of July, August, and September 1973.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;61&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The American role on that fateful day was one of substance and shadow. The coup began in the Pacific coast port of Valparaiso with the dispatch of Chilean naval troops to Santiago, while US Navy ships were present offshore, ostensibly to participate in joint maneuvers with the Chilean Navy. The American ships stayed outside of Chilean waters, but remained on the alert. A US WB-575 plane—an airborne communications control system—piloted by US Air Force officers, cruised in the Chilean sky. At the same time, 32 American observation and fighter planes were landing at the US air base in Mendoza, Argentina, not far from the Chilean border.&lt;sup&gt;62&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In Valparaiso, while US military officers were meeting with their Chilean counterparts, a young American, Charles Horman, who lived in Santiago and was stranded near Valparaiso by the coup, happened to engage in conversation with several Americans, civilian and military. A retired naval engineer told him: &quot;We came down to do a job and it's done.&quot; One or two American military men also gave away clues they shouldn't have. A few days later, Horman was arrested in his Santiago residence. They knew where to find him. He was never seen again.&lt;sup&gt;63&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Thus it was that they closed the country to the outside world for a week, while the tanks rolled and the soldiers broke down doors; the stadiums rang with the sounds of execution and the bodies piled up along the streets and floated in the river; the torture centers opened for business; the subversive books were thrown to the bonfires; soldiers slit the trouser legs of women, shouting that &quot;In Chile women wear dresses!&quot;; the poor returned to their natural state; and the men of the world in Washington and in the halls of international finance opened up their check-books.<br /> <br /> One year later, President Gerald Ford was moved to declare that what the United States had done in Chile was &quot;in the best interest of the people in Chile and certainly in our own best interest.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;64&lt;/sup&gt; The remark could have been punctuated with a pinch of snuff.<br /> <br /> What the United States had done in Chile, thought Gerald Ford, or so he said, &quot;was to help and assist the preservation of opposition newspapers and electronic media and to preserve opposition political parties.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;65&lt;/sup&gt; The reporters present were kind, or obsequious, enough not to ask Ford what he thought of the junta's Chile where all opposition, of any kind, in any form, in any medium, was forbidden.<br /> <br /> It was of course de rigueur for some other officials and congressmen to assert that what the United States had really done in Chile was repel the Soviet threat to the Western hemisphere. But Soviet behavior toward the Allende government simply did not tally with any such hypothesis; the language of US intelligence reports confirms that: &quot;Soviet overtures to Allende … characterized by caution and restraint&quot;; &quot;Soviet desire to avoid&quot; another Cuba-type commitment; Russians &quot;advising Allende to put his relations with the United States in order … to ease the strain between the two countries.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;66&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A CIA study of 7 September 1970, three days after Allende's electoral victory, concluded:&lt;blockquote&gt;  1. The U.S. has no vital national interests within Chile. There would, however, be tangible economic losses.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;  2. The world military balance of power would not be significantly altered by an Allende government.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;  3. An Allende victory would, however, create considerable political and psychological costs:&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;a. Hemispheric cohesion would be threatened by the challenge that an Allende government would pose to the OAS [Organization of American States], and by the reactions that it would create in other countries. …&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;b. An Allende victory would represent a definite psychological set-back to the U.S and a definite psychological advantage for the Marxist idea.&lt;sup&gt;67&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The &quot;tangible economic losses&quot; likely referred to the expected nationalization of US copper-mining companies. This in fact occurred, with no compensation paid to the companies by the Unidad Popular, which calculated that due to &quot;excess profits&quot; over many years the companies actually owed Chile money.<br /> <br /> &quot;The reactions that it would create in other countries&quot; … What can this mean but that the people of other countries might be inspired to consider their own socialist solution to the economic and social problems that beset them? Allende's Chile might thus turn out to be that specter that haunted the corridors of official Washington: a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model.<br /> <br /> Washington knows no heresy in the Third World but independence. In the case of Salvador Allende independence came clothed in an especially provocative costume—a Marxist constitutionally elected who continued to honor the constitution. This would not do. It shook the very foundation stones upon which the anti-communist tower is built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that &quot;communists&quot; can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population. There could be only one thing worse than a Marxist in power—an elected Marxist in power.<br /> <br /> == Greece 1964-1974: &quot;Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution,&quot; said the President of the United States ==<br /> &quot;It's the best damn Government since Pericles,&quot; the American two-star General declared.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; (The news report did not mention whether he was chewing on a big fat cigar.)<br /> <br /> The government, about which the good General was so ebullient, was that of the Colonels' junta which came to power in a military coup in April 1967, followed immediately by the traditional martial law, censorship, arrests, beatings, torture, and killings, the victims totaling some 8,000 in the first month. This was accompanied by the equally traditional declaration that this was all being done to save the nation from a &quot;communist takeover&quot;. Corrupting and subversive influences in Greek life were to be removed. Among these were miniskirts, long hair, and foreign newspapers; church attendance for the young would be compulsory.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> So brutal and so swift was the repression, that by September, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands were before the European Commission of Human Rights to accuse Greece of violating most of the Commission's conventions. Before the year was over, Amnesty International had sent representatives to Greece to investigate the situation. From this came a report which asserted that &quot;Torture as a deliberate practice is carried out by the Security Police and the Military Police.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The coup had taken place two days before the campaign for national elections was to begin, elections which appeared certain to bring the veteran liberal leader George Papandreou back as prime minister. Papandreou had been elected in February 1964 with the only outright majority in the history of modern Greek elections. The successful machinations to unseat him had begun immediately, a joint effort of the Royal Court, the Greek military, and the American military and CIA stationed in Greece.<br /> <br /> Philip Deane (the pen name of Gerassimos Gigantes) is a Greek, a former UN official, who worked during this period both for King Constantine and as an envoy to Washington for the Papandreou government. He has written an intimate account of the subtleties and the grossness of this conspiracy to undermine the government and enhance the position of the military plotters, and of the raw power exercised by the CIA in his country.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; We saw earlier how Greece was looked upon much as a piece of property to be developed according to Washington's needs. A story related by Deane illustrates how this attitude was little changed, and thus the precariousness of Papandreou's position: During one of the perennial disputes between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus, which was now spilling over onto NATO, President Johnson summoned the Greek ambassador to tell him of Washington's &quot;solution&quot;. The ambassador protested that it would be unacceptable to the Greek parliament and contrary to the Greek constitution. &quot;Then listen to me, Mr. Ambassador,&quot; said the President of the United States, &quot;fuck your Parliament and your Constitution. America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. If these two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant's trunk, whacked good. … We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about Democracy, Parliament and Constitutions, he, his Parliament and his Constitution may not last very long.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In July 1965, George Papandreou was finally maneuvered out of office by royal prerogative. The king had a coalition of breakaway Center Union Deputies (Papandreou's party) and rightists waiting in the wings to form a new government. It was later revealed by a State Department official that the CIA Chief-of-Station in Athens, John Maury, had &quot;worked in behalf of the palace in 1965. He helped King Constantine buy Center Union Deputies so that the George Papandreou Government was toppled.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> For nearly two years thereafter, various short-lived cabinets ruled until it was no longer possible to avoid holding the elections prescribed by the constitution.<br /> <br /> What concerned the opponents of George Papandreou most about him was his son. Andreas Papandreou, who had been head of the economics department at the University of California at Berkeley and a minister in his father's cabinet, was destined for a leading role in the new government. But he was by no means the wide-eyed radical. In the United States, Andreas had been an active supporter of such quintessential moderate liberals as Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; His economic views, wrote Washington Post columnist Marquis Childs, were &quot;those of the American New Deal&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But Andreas Papandreou did not disguise his wish to take Greece out of the cold war. He publicly questioned the wisdom of the country remaining in NATO, or at least remaining in it as a satellite of the United States. He leaned toward opening relations with the Soviet Union and other Communist countries on Greece's border. He argued that the swollen American military and intelligence teams in Greece compromised the nation's freedom of action. And he viewed the Greek Army as a threat to democracy, wishing to purge it of its most dictatorial- and royalist-minded senior officers.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Andreas Papandreou's bark was worse than his bite, as his later presidency was to amply demonstrate. (He did not, for example, pull Greece out of NATO or US bases out of Greece.) But in Lyndon Johnson's Washington, if you were not totally and unquestioningly with us, you were agin' us. Johnson felt that Andreas, who had become a naturalized US citizen, had &quot;betrayed America&quot;. Said LBJ:&lt;blockquote&gt;We gave the son of a bitch American citizenship, didn't we? He was an American, with all the rights and privileges. And he had sworn allegiance to the flag. And then he gave up his American citizenship. He went back to just being a Greek. You can't trust a man who breaks his oath of allegiance to the flag of these United States.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;What, then, are we to make of the fact that Andreas Papandreou was later reported to have worked with the CIA in the early 1960s? (He criticized publication of the report, but did not deny the charge.)&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; If true, it would not have been incompatible with being a liberal, particularly at that time. It was incompatible, as he subsequently learned, only with his commitment to a Greece independent from US foreign policy.<br /> <br /> As for the elder Papandreou, his anti-communist credentials were impeccable, dating back to his role as a British-installed prime minister during the civil war against the left in 1944-45. But he, too, showed stirrings of independence from the Western superpower. He refused to buckle under Johnson's pressure to compromise with Turkey over Cyprus. He accepted an invitation to visit Moscow, and when his government said that it would accept Soviet aid in preparation for a possible war with Turkey, the US Embassy demanded an explanation. Moreover, in an attempt to heal the old wounds of the civil war, Papandreou began to reintroduce certain civil liberties and to readmit into Greece some of those who had fought against the government in the civil war period.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> When Andreas Papandreou assumed his ministerial duties in 1964 he was shocked to discover what was becoming a fact of life for every techno-industrial state in the world: an intelligence service gone wild, a shadow government with powers beyond the control of the nation's nominal leaders. This, thought Papandreou, accounted for many of the obstacles the government was encountering in trying to carry out its policies.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Greek intelligence service, KYP, as we have seen, was created by the OSS/CIA in the course of the civil war, with hundreds of its officers receiving training in the United States. One of these men, George Papadopoulos, was the leader of the junta that seized power in 1967. Andreas Papandreou found that the KYP routinely bugged ministerial conversations and turned the data over to the CIA. (Many Western intelligence agencies have long provided the CIA with information about their own government and citizens, and the CIA has reciprocated on occasion. The nature of much of this information has been such that if a private citizen were to pass it to a foreign power he could be charged with treason.)<br /> <br /> As a result of his discovery, the younger Papandreou dismissed the two top KYP men and replaced them with reliable officers. The new director was ordered to protect the cabinet from surveillance. &quot;He came back apologetically,&quot; recalls Papandreou, &quot;to say he couldn't do it. All the equipment was American, controlled by the CIA or Greeks under CIA supervision. There was no kind of distinction between the two services. They duplicated functions in a counterpart relationship. In effect, they were a single agency.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Andreas Papandreou's order to abolish the bugging of the cabinet inspired the Deputy Chief of Mission of the US Embassy, Norbert Anshutz (or Anschuetz), to visit him. Anshutz, who has been linked to the CIA, demanded that Papandreou rescind the order. Andreas demanded that the American leave his office, which he did, but not before warning that &quot;there would be consequences&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Papandreou then requested that a thorough search be made of his home and office for electronic devices by the new KYP deputy director. &quot;It wasn't until much later,&quot; says Andreas, &quot;that we discovered he'd simply planted a lot of new bugs. Lo and behold, we'd brought in another American-paid operative as our No. 2.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> An endeavor by Andreas to end the practice of KYP's funds coming directly from the CIA without passing through any Greek ministry also met with failure, but he did succeed in transferring the man who had been liaison between the two agencies for several years. This was George Papadopoulos. The change in his position, however, appears to have amounted to little more than a formality, for the organization still took orders from him; even afterwards, Greek &quot;opposition politicians who sought the ear (or the purse) of James Potts, CIA [deputy] chief in Athens before the coup, were often told: 'See George—he's my boy'.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In mid-February 1967, a meeting took place in the White House, reported Marquis Childs, to discuss CIA reports which &quot;left no doubt that a military coup was in the making … It could hardly have been a secret. Since 1947 the Greek army and the American military aid group in Athens, numbering several hundred, have worked as part of the same team … The solemn question was whether by some subtle political intervention the coup could be prevented&quot; and thus preserve parliamentary government. It was decided that&lt;blockquote&gt;no course of action was feasible. As one of the senior civilians present recalls it, Walt Rostow, the President's adviser on national security affairs, closed the meeting with these words: I hope you understand, gentlemen, that what we have concluded here, or rather have failed to conclude, makes the future course of events in Greece inevitable.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;A CIA report dated 23 January 1967 had specifically named the Papadopoulos group as one plotting a coup, and was apparently one of the reports discussed at the February meeting.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Of the cabal of five officers which took power in April, four, reportedly, were intimately connected to the American military or to the CIA in Greece. The fifth man had been brought in because of the armored units he commanded.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt; George Papadopoulos emerged as the de facto leader, taking the title of prime minister later in the year.<br /> <br /> The catchword amongst old hands at the US military mission in Greece was that Papadopoulos was &quot;the first CIA agent to become Premier of a European country&quot;. &quot;Many Greeks consider this to be the simple truth,&quot; reported Charles Foley in The Observer of London.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At the time of the coup, Papadopoulos had been on the CIA payroll for some 15 years.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; One reason for the success of their marriage may have been Colonel Papadopoulos's World War II record. When the Germans invaded Greece, Papadopoulos served as a captain in the Nazis' Security Battalions whose main task was to track down Greek resistance fighters.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; He was, it is said, a great believer in Hitler's &quot;new order&quot;, and his later record in power did little to cast doubt upon that claim. Foley writes that when he mentioned the junta leader's pro-German background to an American military adviser he met at a party in Athens, the American hinted that it was related to Papadopoulos's subservience to US wishes: &quot;George gives good value,&quot; he smiled, &quot;because there are documents in Washington he wouldn't like let out.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Foley relates that under Papadopoulos:&lt;blockquote&gt;intense official propaganda portrayed Communism as the only enemy Greece had ever had and minimized the German occupation until even Nazi atrocities were seen as provoked by the Communists. This rewriting of history clearly reflects the dictator's concern at the danger that the gap in his official biography may some day be filled in.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;As part of the rewriting, members of the Security Battalions became &quot;heroes of the resistance&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It was torture, however, which most indelibly marked the seven-year Greek nightmare. James Becket, an American attorney sent to Greece by Amnesty International, wrote in December 1969 that &quot;a conservative estimate would place at not less than two thousand&quot; the number of people tortured.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt; It was an odious task for Becket to talk to some of the victims:&lt;blockquote&gt;People had been mercilessly tortured simply for being in possession of a leaflet criticizing the regime. Brutality and cruelty on one side, frustration and helplessness on the other. They were being tortured and there was nothing to be done. It was like listening to a friend who has cancer. What comfort, what wise reflection can someone who is comfortable give? Torture might last a short time, but the person will never be the same.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Becket reported that some torturers had told prisoners that some of their equipment had come as US military aid: a special &quot;thick white double cable&quot; whip was one item; another was the headscrew, known as an &quot;iron wreath&quot;, which was progressively tightened around the head or ears.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Amnesty delegation described a number of the other torture methods commonly employed. Among these were:<br /> <br /> a) Beating the soles of the feet with a stick or pipe. After four months of this, the soles of one prisoner were covered with thick scar tissue. Another was crippled by broken bones.<br /> <br /> b) Numerous incidents of sexually-oriented torture: shoving fingers or an object into the vagina and twisting and tearing brutally; also done with the anus; or a tube is inserted into the anus and water driven in under very high pressure.<br /> <br /> c) Techniques of gagging: the throat is grasped in such a way that the windpipe is cut off, or a filthy rag, often soaked in urine, and sometimes excrement, is shoved down the throat.<br /> <br /> d) Tearing out the hair from the head and the pubic region.<br /> <br /> e) Jumping on the stomach.<br /> <br /> f) Pulling out toe nails and finger nails.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> These were not the worst. The worst is what one reads in the many individual testimonies. But these are simply too lengthy to be repeated here.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The junta's response to the first Amnesty report was to declare that it was comprised of charges emanating from &quot;International Communism&quot; and to hire public relations firms in New York and London to improve its image.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1969, the European Commission of Human Rights found Greece guilty of torture, murder and other violations. For these reasons and particularly for the junta's abolition of parliamentary democracy, The Council of Europe—a consultative body of, at that time, 18 European states, under which the Commission falls—was preparing to expel Greece. The Council rejected categorically Greece's claim that it had been in danger of a communist takeover. Amnesty International later reported that the United States, though not a member of the Council, actively applied diplomatic pressure on member states not to vote for the expulsion. (Nonetheless, while the Council was deliberating, the New York Times reported that &quot;The State Department said today that the United States had deliberately avoided taking any position on the question of continued Greek membership in the Council of Europe.&quot;) The European members, said Amnesty, believed that only the United States had the power to bring about changes in Greece, yet it chose only to defend the junta.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On the specific issue of torture, Amnesty's report concluded that:&lt;blockquote&gt;American policy on the torture question as expressed in official statements and official testimony has been to deny it where possible and minimize it where denial was not possible. This policy flowed naturally from general support for the military regime.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;As matters transpired, Greece walked out before the Council could formalize the expulsion.<br /> <br /> In a world grown increasingly hostile, the support of the world's most powerful nation was sine qua non for the Greek junta. The two governments thrived upon each other. Said the American ambassador to Greece, Henry Tasca, &quot;This is the most anti-communist group you'll find anywhere. There is just no place like Greece to offer these facilities with the back up of the kind of Government you have got here.&quot; (&quot;You&quot;, not &quot;we&quot;, noted the reporter, was the only pretense.)&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The facilities the ambassador was referring to were dozens of US military installations, from nuclear missile bases to major communication sites, housing tens of thousands of American servicemen. The United States, in turn, provided the junta with ample military hardware despite an official congressional embargo, as well as the police equipment required by the Greek authorities to maintain their rigid control.<br /> <br /> In an attempt to formally end the embargo, the Nixon administration asked Papadopoulos to make some gesture towards constitutional government which the White House could then point to. The Greek prime minister was to be assured, said a secret White House document, that the administration would take &quot;at face value and accept without reservation&quot; any such gesture.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> US Vice-president Spiro Agnew, on a visit to the land of his ancestors, was moved to exalt the &quot;achievements&quot; of the Greek government and its &quot;constant co-operation with US needs and wishes&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; One of the satisfied needs Agnew may have had in mind was the contribution of $549,000 made by the junta to the 1968 Nixon-Agnew election campaign. Apart from any other consideration, it was suspected that this was money given to the junta by the CIA finding its way back to Washington. A Senate investigation of this question was abruptly canceled at the direct request of Henry Kissinger.&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Perhaps nothing better captures the mystique of the bond felt by the Greeks to their American guardians than the story related about Chief Inspector Basil Lambrou, one of Athens' well-known torturers:&lt;blockquote&gt;Hundreds of prisoners have listened to the little speech given by Inspector Basil Lambrou, who sits behind his desk which displays the red, white, and blue clasped-hand symbol of American aid. He tries to show the prisoner the absolute futility of resistance: &quot;You make yourself ridiculous by thinking you can do anything. The world is divided in two. There are the communists on that side and on this side the free world. The Russians and the Americans, no one else. What are we? Americans. Behind me there is the government, behind the government is NATO, behind NATO is the U.S. You can't fight us, we are Americans.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Amnesty International adds that some torturers would tell their victims things like: &quot;The Human Rights Commission can't help you now … The Red Cross can do nothing for you … Tell them all, it will do no good, you are helpless.&quot; &quot;The torturers from the start,&quot; said Amnesty, &quot;had said that the United States supported them and that was what counted.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In November 1973, a falling-out within the Greek inner circle culminated in the ousting of Papadopoulos and his replacement by Col. Demetrios Ioannidis, Commander of the Military Police, torturer, graduate of American training in anti-subversive techniques, confidant of the CIA.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt; Ioannidis named as prime minister a Greek-American, A. Androutsopoulos, who came to Greece after the Second World War as an official employee of the CIA, a fact of which Mr. Androutsopoulos had often boasted.&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Eight months later, the Ioannidis regime overthrew the government of Cyprus. It was a fatal miscalculation. Turkey invaded Cyprus and the reverberations in Athens resulted in the military giving way to a civilian government. The Greek nightmare had come to an end.<br /> <br /> Much of the story of American complicity in the 1967 coup and its aftermath may never be known. At the trials held in 1975 of junta members and torturers, many witnesses made reference to the American role. This may have been the reason a separate investigation of this aspect was scheduled to be undertaken by the Greek Court of Appeals.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt; But it appears that no information resulting from this inquiry, if it actually took place, was ever announced. Philip Deane, upon returning to Greece several months after the civilian government took over, was told by leading politicians that &quot;for the sake of preserving good relations with the US, the evidence of US complicity will not be made fully public&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Andreas Papandreou had been arrested at the time of the coup and held in prison for eight months. Shortly after his release, he and his wife Margaret visited the American ambassador, Phillips Talbot, in Athens. Papandreou related the following:&lt;blockquote&gt;I asked Talbot whether America could have intervened the night of the coup, to prevent the death of democracy in Greece. He denied that they could have done anything about it. Then Margaret asked a critical question: What if the coup had been a Communist or a Leftist coup? Talbot answered without hesitation. Then, of course, they would have intervened, and they would have crushed the coup.&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> == Bolivia 1964-1975: Tracking down Che Guevara in the land of coup d'état ==<br /> Victor Paz Estenssoro was given a choice when he was overthrown by yet another Bolivian military coup. He could be taken—one of the officers told him—&quot;either to the cemetery, or to the airport&quot;. The president opted to fly to Lima and exile.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The man who led the coup in November 1964 and replaced Paz was none other than his vice-president, General René Barrientos Ortuño. It marked something like the 185th change of government (no one seems certain of the precise number) in Bolivia's 139 years of independence from Spanish rule, very few by elections.<br /> <br /> Paz was unseated despite support from the American ambassador, Douglas Henderson, for it happened that both the CIA and the Pentagon wanted the president out. Barrientos, the former commander of the air force, had formed a close relationship with both institutions, primarily through the person of Col. Edward Fox, his &quot;flying instructor and drinking companion&quot;, dating back to the Bolivian's military-training days in the United States. The year 1964 found Fox in the Bolivian capital of La Paz working with the CIA, though listed officially as a military attaché.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Not surprisingly, Cuba was one of the sore points between the American colonel and the Bolivian president. Paz had directly opposed American policy by voting against Cuba's expulsion from the Organization of American States in 1962, by declining to join in on the OAS sanctions against the Castro government two years later, and by refusing to break diplomatic relations with Havana. It was not until August 1964, when Bolivian-American relations were &quot;just short of an open quarrel&quot;,&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; that Paz finally broke with the United States' bête noire. &quot;It was a case of conforming or of facing a severe cut in United States aid&quot;, observed a New York Times editorial.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Bolivian government's attempts to attract economic aid and investment from countries other than the United States, such as the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, were a further source of friction between the two countries. Here, too, the Bolivians eventually yielded.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Although Fox and Ambassador Henderson were divided—deeply it was said—on the question of Paz remaining in office,&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; both were uneasy about the political and economic power wielded by the tin miners and their leader Juan Lechín, the former vice-president who was an open candidate for Paz's job. The miners controlled their own area of the country; they had their own radio station and their own armed militia; they were intensely opposed to the military; and they were seen as a force potentially more radical than the president. A volatile four-month strike in the mines in mid-1963 which reached crisis proportion could only have served to ring the alarm bells louder in the American Embassy. The Minister of Mines under Paz, René Zavaleta Mercado, later wrote that &quot;For over a year and a half, the American Embassy, in the form of Mr. Henderson, urged with almost weekly regularity that the army be sent to the mining zones, and threatened that otherwise [an American financial program for the mines] would be suspended.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Paz recognized the challenge to his own rule posed by the miners and Lechín, but the likely political damage ensuing from an armed intervention was more than he was willing to risk.<br /> <br /> The very existence of an army to send in owed more than a little to American efforts to rebuild the shattered Bolivian armed forces. In 1952 that rarity had occurred—an armed popular revolt had defeated the military, displaced the oligarchy, nationalized the tin mines, instituted land reform, and set up a new government under the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario. The MNR reduced the military to a small, impotent and discredited force, at the same time fostering &quot;people's militias&quot;. Decades of coups and other abuses had cut a wide swathe of anti-military sentiment across the Bolivian population. Despite the entreaties of certain segments of the left, however, the traditional armed forces were not completely dismantled. It proved to be a fatal error for the MNR and the country's fledgling democratic institutions.<br /> <br /> Primarily to serve as a counterweight to the strength of the militias, and because of American pressure, both Paz and his predecessor had permitted, however reluctantly, the slow but certain rejuvenation of the military. Under US guidance, the Bolivian army became the first in Latin America to launch a &quot;civic action&quot; program, building roads, schools, etc., designed to improve its image amongst the population.<br /> <br /> &quot;No country in the Western hemisphere is more dependent on Washington's aid,&quot; wrote the New York Times shortly after the coup, &quot;and nowhere has the United States Embassy played a more obtrusive role in establishing that fact.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; Washington employed its potent economic leverage to spur a distinctly more favorable government policy towards the military, one which allowed the US to &quot;professionalize&quot; the armed forces. More money followed, more recruits, new equipment … selected officers were sent to the United States for training … political indoctrination courses for officers given by MNR adherents and academics were allowed to lapse, and were replaced by indoctrination at the US School of the Americas in the Panama Canal Zone … by 1964, some 1,200 Bolivian officers and men had received training either in the United States or Panama, including 20 of the 23 senior Army officers … the military had come a long way towards recouping its former size and efficiency, its prestige and its independence.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The School of the Americas, observed the Washington Post in 1968, &quot;counts so many important Latin officers as alumni … that it is known throughout Latin America as the 'escuela de golpes' or coup school&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Whether the American motivation for reviving the military derived from a desire for an eventual military takeover is impossible to say. At a minimum, it evidenced a basic distrust of the Bolivian revolution with its potential for genuine independence from the United States; and, given the country's history, the culmination of the military process would appear to have been plainly inevitable. The Pentagon has long seen the military of Latin America as its natural partners, the proper &quot;nation builders&quot;. This conviction was spelled out by Col. Truman F. Cook of the American military assistance mission in Bolivia in the foreword to a pamphlet on the use of the army in civic action programs. In the pamphlet, published in Bolivia in 1964 and authored by Bolivian Lt. Col. Julio Sanjinés, a confidant of Pentagon and CIA officers, Cook wrote:&lt;blockquote&gt;the military organization is perhaps the only institution endowed with the organization, order, discipline, and self-sacrificing attitude towards objectives for the common good … Should political and economic institutions fail … then there is a real possibility that the military would move in against graft and corruption in government … [It is] naive to assume that they might not move to power in a classic sense.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Another unknown is at what point General Barrientos and his co-conspirators actually decided to oust Paz. What is certain is: (1) the general's ascendancy to the office of vice-president was a crucial part of the process; (2) the role played by the CIA and the Pentagon in obtaining that office for Barrientos was sine qua non.<br /> <br /> At the MNR's convention in January 1964, Paz sidestepped Barrientos, who had made his candidacy known, and chose a civilian, Frederico Fortún, to be his running mate. Barrientos proved to be a bad loser. He declared publicly that the nomination was a mistake and continued politicking, finally compelling the president to ask for his resignation as air force chief. The general was given one week in which to submit it.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; A few days later, however, a scenario began to unfold which grabbed Barrientos from the edge of the abyss.<br /> <br /> On the evening of 25 February, there supposedly took place a shooting attempt on Barrientos's life. Some accounts have the general near death, others &quot;only wounded&quot;. In either event, it does appear rather incongruous that he was moved by military vehicle to the airport and then flown in a US Air Force plane to an American hospital in the Panama Canal Zone—2,000 miles away. No Bolivian doctor ever examined Barrientos.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the days following, while Barrientos was still in the hospital following a &quot;lengthy operation&quot;, he was extolled as a national hero by the press in Bolivia. This was particularly the case with El Diario, an influential, conservatives and strongly anti-Paz newspaper. According to the later testimony of a member of Barrientos's new cabinet, some of the newspaper's staff worked with the CIA. Moreover, one of El Diario's board members was the aforementioned Lt. Col. Sanjinés. Sanjinés, a graduate of West Point, was an employee of the US Embassy, working on Alliance for Progress programs. After the coup he was appointed minister of economics, later ambassador to Washington.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The press coverage included the story that Barrientos's life was spared only because the bullet had struck the US Air Force silver wings which he wore on his uniform. This became the &quot;silver bullet&quot; affair and great sympathy was generated for the courageous general. On top of this, notes one historian of Bolivia, the commander of the army and the political opposition&lt;blockquote&gt;hinted publicly that Paz's police had been responsible for the alleged attack. Strong pressures from other high officers as well were exerted upon Paz to vindicate both himself and Barrientos by belatedly including the general on the ticket, and Paz felt he could not refuse.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Ten days after the mysterious incident, the president dumped Fortún, replaced him with Barrientos, and went on to re-election.<br /> <br /> Barrientos himself later conceded that without the &quot;silver bullet&quot; (or &quot;magic bullet&quot;, as others dubbed it), he would never have become vice-president.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; His eight months as candidate and as vice-president in office served, in turn, to tie up all the loose ends required for the military to return from 12 years in the political wilderness and stage their coup with a minimum of opposition; indeed, with a measure of support.<br /> <br /> Barrientos's ascendancy furnished a distinct legitimacy to the military, and the general regularly used his platform to champion the armed forces and defend it against the deep-seated anti-militarism. He denounced the militias, called for their dissolution, and took the anomalous step of undermining the government of which he was the vice-president (or to be) by publicly reproaching the president and the MNR—particularly when they were critical of the military—and by throwing his support to anti-government groups. These tactics served to show up the president's weakness and succeeded in rallying to Barrientos's side many of the military officers who had been dubious about the wisdom or safety of re-entering the political arena and unsure of their own political muscle.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It appears that little if anything further was heard of Barrientos's &quot;injury&quot;, although during this period he &quot;miraculously&quot; escaped several other reported assassination attempts, including a bomb which blew up his car when no one was in it and another bomb which somehow found its way to under his bed. He used the latter occasion to declare that he &quot;had more enemies within the MNR than in the ranks of the opposition&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Paz Estenssoro had been &quot;re-elected&quot; because the opposition—claiming, amongst other things, unfair electoral procedure—had decided to abstain. Without pausing for breath, the masochistic, tangled mess that is Bolivian politics continued at his throat. Widespread discontent, arising from long-standing grievances and fueled by a conflux of personal ambitions, erupted in a series of strikes, demonstrations and violent confrontations, with Barrientos lending his weight to the dissident elements, attacking the beleaguered president, and taking upon himself the role of the defender of order. In October, the vice-president withdrew to his home town and declared himself a rebel.<br /> <br /> This period of public chaos and government crisis may have hastened the timing of the coup, at the same time convincing some still-reluctant officers who were disgusted by the constant civilian warfare. When the military finally made its move against Paz at the beginning of November it was not unwelcomed by various segments of the population.<br /> <br /> Three years later, the Washington Post's veteran Latin America correspondent, John Goshko, reported that Paz &quot;still insists that Fox was behind his ouster. Among Bolivians with an awareness of politics, it is hard to find anyone who disagrees.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> René Barrientos pressed an unrelenting hard line against the tin miners. He inflicted upon them an extraordinary 50 percent cut in salary. Miners' boss Juan Lechín and other union and MNR leaders were ordered into exile and a principal labor confederation was banned. All Bolivian unions were directed to reorganize under guidelines designed to produce an apolitical labor movement.<br /> <br /> Then the army moved in. Repeated invasions and occupations of the mining camps over a period of time were needed to pacify the ultra-militant miners. The fighting was bloody, 70 miners losing their lives in one raid alone—La Noche de San Juan as it came to be known.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt; The Revolution of 1952 had come to an end.<br /> <br /> The United States was not a disinterested observer. In February 1966, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, presenting his department's regular &quot;Assessment of the International Situation&quot;, told a congressional committee: &quot;Violence in the mining areas and in the cities of Bolivia has continued to occur intermittently, and we are assisting this country to improve the training and equipping of its military forces.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> This was all that the Defense Secretary had to report about Bolivia—a routine report, routinely written by some faceless Pentagon researcher, routinely delivered by the quintessential technocrat, as if the American action was the most natural and innocuous thing in the world.<br /> <br /> As natural as American financial contributions to Barrientos. Antonio Arguedas, Minister of the Interior under Barrientos, later disclosed that the CIA contributed $600,000 to the Bolivian leader in 1966 when he decided to hold an election. Several right-wing parties received lesser sums. Arguedas, an admitted agent of the CIA who, in 1968, gave the world Che Guevara's diary, claiming that the Agency had pushed him too hard, also revealed that Gulf Oil Corp. donated $200,000 to Barrientos's campaign as well as a helicopter for his tours around the provinces. Gulf subsequently admitted that it had paid Bolivian officials, mainly Barrientos, a total of $460,000 in &quot;political contributions&quot; during the period 1966-69 at the CIA's recommendation, although the company may have needed but little prodding, for the Bolivian president had opened up the economy to multinationals to a greater degree than his predecessors, bestowing upon Gulf especially generous concessions.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the two years following the disappearance of Che Guevara from public view in early 1965, rumours had placed him at different times in the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Guatemala, the Congo (which was true), China, Vietnam, and even New York, &quot;always plotting revolution with some menacing and inscrutable bunch of desperados&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; Word also had it that he had gone mad and was confined to an asylum somewhere, or that he had been imprisoned or executed by his erstwhile comrade-in-arms Fidel Castro for challenging Castro's authority. These latter stories or others like them may well have been CIA handiwork. The Agency, ever inventive, had begun generating unfavorable press speculation about Guevara's disappearance as early as autumn 1965 in the hope that he would reappear in order to put an end to the tales.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> When evidence began to drift back to CIA headquarters in early 1967 that Che was leading a band of guerrillas in the southern mountains of Bolivia, there was understandable skepticism amongst some Agency officials. Nevertheless, obsessed as the CIA was with tracking down the legendary guerrilla, a multi-phased operation was put into motion. In April, American military supplies suitable for combatting guerrilla forces began to arrive in Bolivia: light arms, communication equipment, helicopters, etc. At the end of the month, a unit of 16 Green Berets was dispatched from Fort Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone to Bolivia to provide on-the-spot training in counter-insurgency tactics to a hand-picked battalion of Bolivian Rangers who had little or no experience in the real thing. The Green Berets had at their disposal a team of experts in communications, intelligence and reconnaissance work, and, before long, aerial photographs taken of approximately 23,500 square miles of southern Bolivia. This undertaking made use of an infra-red detection system, sensitive to thermal radiation rather than visible light, and as such could be employed at night and on cloudy days. The infra-red cameras were able to discriminate targets having less than one degree temperature difference with their background, thus picking up campfires, vehicles, even people. Or so the technocrats would have one believe. In any event, the guerrillas rarely built fires or used vehicles.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In La Paz, the CIA station informed Interior Minister Arguedas that it was sending him several &quot;advisors&quot; whose presence was required, it was stated, because of the ineffectiveness of Bolivia's intelligence services. A few days later, according to Arguedas, four Cuban exiles arrived and assumed their &quot;advisory&quot; positions in his ministry. One of them proceeded to set up two houses of interrogation where Bolivians suspected of aiding the guerrillas were brought for questioning. When Arguedas learned of this, and that in some cases the Cubans were resorting to torture, he was furious and demanded that the CIA put a stop to the operation.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Other Cuban CIA agents were attached to the military high command and sent to the area of guerrilla fighting to collect detailed information from prisoners and peasants. This kind of investigation probably contributed more to locating the elusive Guevara than did the CIA's assortment of technological marvels, although the ultimate value of the Agency's role cannot be stated with any precision. What is clear, however, is that it was a case of overkill. Che's guerrilla movement never amounted to much of a threat. Barely more than 50 men and one woman at its peak, reduced to less than half that number at the end, the rebels could show to their credit only a scattering of skirmishes with the army. They had been largely ignored by the left in Bolivia and hardly &quot;swam like fish in the peasants' sea&quot;.<br /> <br /> &quot;The inhabitants of this region,&quot; wrote Che in his diary, &quot;are as impenetrable as rocks. You speak to them, but in the deepness of their eyes you can see that they do not believe you.&quot; As in the Congo, this man who made social revolution his life had failed to win over the peasantry. &quot;You can waken men,&quot; said Alexander Hertzen a century ago in Russia, &quot;only by dreaming their dreams more clearly than they can dream them themselves.&quot;<br /> <br /> On 8 October 1967, Che Guevara was captured. The next day the Bolivian government ordered his execution in cold blood to prevent him from becoming the object of a worldwide clemency campaign, and despite the vociferous objections of CIA men in the country who clung to the hope that Guevara would eventually talk openly about his sundry guerrilla adventures.<br /> <br /> Following the death of René Barrientos in April 1969 (crashing in Gulf's helicopter), Bolivia's statesmen soon reverted to their normal Byzantine convolutions. For a start, the vice-president who succeeded Barrientos lasted but five months before being ousted by General Alfredo Ovando Candia.<br /> <br /> Ovando's long-held nationalist sentiments came to the fore. In his first month, he nationalized the Gulf Oil Corporation. The prevailing attitude toward the multinational, said Bolivian leaders, was that Gulf &quot;constituted itself as a shadow government of vast powers over a poor land&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The nationalization left Bolivia open, as the New York Times expressed it in December, to &quot;the wrath of the United States&quot;.&lt;blockquote&gt;Since the seizure, the United States, which has been the mainstay of Bolivia's economy for years, has indicated that further aid will not be forthcoming … Washington has not been impressed by Bolivia's offer to compensate Gulf for the property, which is valued at $140 million, about 50 per cent more than Bolivia's annual budget … Two Bolivian cabinet ministers interviewed this week said privately that the United States and Argentina were aware, as were most educated people in this capital, that well financed groups were plotting to overthrow the new Bolivian regime.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;This was followed by a dispatch from La Paz of Inter Press Service (a major Latin American news agency) reporting that the United States was planning to bring down the Ovando government through economic strangulation.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt; Then, two days later, the government alerted the public about a conspiracy &quot;that was being organized by the CIA in close collaboration with Gulf Oil and some Bolivian rightists.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> What fire all this smoke pointed to is not known. Ovando, who had walked the corridors of the Bolivian power structure for many years (it was he who had presented Paz with the choice of cemetery or airport), was no stranger to CIA intrigue in his country, and he may have seen the bright spotlight of publicity as the only means of forestalling his overthrow. This would also explain why, in January 1970, the government made it a point to announce the ordinary: that it had uncovered a CIA office in La Paz with radio transmission and bugging equipment.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt; The same month, Ovando also advocated a rapprochement with Cuba, and it looked like he and the CIA were on a collision course.<br /> <br /> But then … it seems … someone got to Ovando with an offer he couldn't refuse. Slowly but surely, the president drifted to the right; amongst other indications: several anti-US student demonstrations were firmly put down by the police, nothing more was heard about Cuba, and Ovando removed General Juan José Torres as commander of the armed forces, a man highly regarded by most of the Bolivian left.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt; By September, matters had progressed to the point that State Department officials were publicly expressing concern that a deepening split between the Ovando government and its former leftist allies was on the brink of open showdown and might result in a &quot;communist&quot; government.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By whatever label, there was indeed fresh political conflict in Bolivia. Two weeks later, the power struggle erupted into a military revolt.<br /> <br /> General Ovando was out. General Torres was in. Ovando had lasted one year.<br /> <br /> Juan José Torres's ten months in office produced the archetypical Latin American political drama. In the opening act, Torres did all the things which make Washington officials see Red: He made overtures of friendship to Allende's Chile and Castro's Cuba; increased commercial ties with the Soviet Union; nationalized tin mines owned by American interests (leading the US to threaten to release large amounts of its tin stockpile onto the world market to deflate the international price); expelled the Peace Corps; and closed down the Inter-American Regional Labor Organization (ORIT, an important vehicle for CIA labor operations in Latin America); on top of all this, Torres indulged at times in Marxist rhetoric, talking of workers' and peasants' power and the like.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Act Two brought on stage one Hugo Banzer, a Bolivian colonel with long and close ties to the American military establishment. He too had attended the escuela de golpes in Panama. Later there was further military training at Fort Hood in Texas; eventually, a posting to Washington as Bolivian military attaché. Along the way he picked up the Order of Military Merit from the United States government. Banzer was also reported to be one of the beneficiaries of Gulf Oil's largesse when he served in Barrientos's cabinet.<br /> <br /> In January 1971, Col. Banzer led a coup attempt which came to nothing except his own exile to Argentina. The CIA in La Paz had known of Banzer's plan at least two weeks earlier, and had advised Washington of it.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt; Over the next six months, as Banzer and his military cohorts diligently plotted their next attempt to oust Torres, Banzer regularly crossed over the Argentine border into Bolivia where he was in close contact with US Major Robert Lundin, an adviser to the Bolivian Air Force School in Santa Cruz.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Act Three, or the coup that succeeded, took place in August, a few days after Torres had announced an agreement with the Soviet Union for a major development of the Bolivian iron industry,&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; a few days before he was to meet with Salvador Allende to reestablish diplomatic relations with Chile.<br /> <br /> When the plotters were in military control of Santa Cruz, a breakdown in their radio communications network caused a delay in rallying other Bolivian military units to their side. At this moment, Major Lundin stepped in to fill the breach by placing the US Air Force radio system at the rebels' disposal.&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> How important this aid was to the success of the coup, which turned out to be very bloody, or what Lundin's role was otherwise, has not been determined.<br /> <br /> One week later, the San Francisco Chronicle reported: &quot;Although it has been officially denied, CIA money, training and advice was liberally given to the rebel strategists who masterminded [the] overthrow of Bolivia's leftist President Juan José Torres.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the finale, we find that the military-political coalition that took power was so far to the right that one of its member parties called itself by the customary fascist designation &quot;Falange&quot;, and that Banzer immediately announced that: his government would maintain very close relations with the United States, efforts to restore ties with Cuba and Chile would be abandoned, the trend toward nationalizations would halt, some already-completed nationalizations would be rescinded, the government would welcome private foreign investment, and all schools would be closed for at least four months because they were hotbeds of &quot;political subversive agitation provoked by anarchists opposed to the new institutional order&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt; Before long, the government ordered the entire Soviet Embassy to leave the country, and Banzer eventually raised a foreign loan to pay Gulf Oil greatly increased compensation.<br /> <br /> At the same time, the time-honored scene known popularly as &quot;reign of terror&quot; was performed: Within the first two years of the new regime, more than 2,000 persons were arrested for political reasons without being brought to trial, &quot;all the fundamental laws protecting human rights were regularly violated&quot;, torture was &quot;commonly used on prisoners during interrogation … beaten, raped and forced to undergo simulated executions … hung for hours with their hands tied behind their backs&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By 1975, Catholic religious groups and clergy had taken upon themselves the dangerous burden of speaking out in defense of human rights in Bolivia. The Banzer government responded with a calculated and methodical campaign to divide the church, to isolate its progressive members, harass and censor them, and smear them as communists. Foreign priests and nuns, who made up the bulk of the country's clergy, were especially vulnerable to arrest and deportation. One of them, an American missionary from Iowa, Father Raymond Herman, was found murdered.<br /> <br /> The CIA, it has been reported, assisted the Bolivian government in this endeavor by &quot;providing full information on certain priests—personal data, studies, friends, addresses, writings, contacts abroad, etc.&quot; The Agency, with its international data network, was particularly valuable concerning the foreign clergy.&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;I will observe the constitution,&quot; said Banzer, &quot;whenever it does not contradict military decrees.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Since the formulation of the current Bolivian Government in August 1971,&quot; stated a report of the US Comptroller General's Office in 1975, &quot;the objective of U.S. military assistance has been to provide stability and security. To assist in the objective, the United States provides materiel and training to develop adequate counter-insurgent forces.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1978, Hugo Banzer was overthrown in yet another Bolivian coup. The new Bolivian strongman, former Air Force General Juan Pereda Asbun, announced, as Banzer had announced, that he was saving the nation from &quot;international communism&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Guatemala 1962 to 1980s: A less publicized &quot;final solution&quot; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Indians tell harrowing stories of village raids in which their homes have been burned, men tortured hideously and killed, women raped, and scarce crops destroyed. It is Guatemala's final solution to insurgency: only mass slaughter of the Indians will prevent them joining a mass uprising.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;This newspaper item appeared in 1983. Very similar stories have appeared many times in the world press since 1966, for Guatemala's &quot;final solution&quot; has been going on rather longer than the more publicized one of the Nazis.<br /> <br /> It would be difficult to exaggerate the misery of the mainly-Indian peasants and urban poor of Guatemala who make up three-quarters of the population of this beautiful land so favored by American tourists. The particulars of their existence derived from the literature of this period sketch a caricature of human life. In a climate where everything grows, very few escape the daily ache of hunger or the progressive malnutrition … almost half the children die before the age of five … the leading cause of death in the country is gastro-enteritis. Highly toxic pesticides sprayed indiscriminately by airplanes, at times directly onto the heads of peasants, leave a trail of poisoning and death … public health services in rural areas are virtually non-existent … the same for public education … near-total illiteracy. A few hundred families possess almost all the arable land … thousands of families without land, without work, jammed together in communities of cardboard and tin houses, with no running water or electricity, a sea of mud during the rainy season, sharing their bathing and toilet with the animal kingdom. Men on coffee plantations earning 20 cents or 50 cents a day, living in circumstances closely resembling concentration camps … looked upon by other Guatemalans more as beasts of burden than humans. A large plantation to sell, reads the advertisement, &quot;with 200 hectares and 300 Indians&quot; … this, then was what remained of the ancient Mayas, whom the American archeologist Sylvanus Morely had called the most splendid indigenous people on the planet.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The worst was yet to come.<br /> <br /> We have seen how, in 1954, Guatemala's last reform government, the legally-elected regime of Jacobo Arbenz, was overthrown by the United States. And how, in 1960, nationalist elements of the Guatemalan military who were committed to slightly opening the door to change were summarily crushed by the CIA. Before long, the ever-accumulating discontent again issued forth in a desperate lunge for alleviation—this time in the form of a guerrilla movement—only to be thrown back by a Guatemalan-American operation reminiscent of the Spanish conquistadores in its barbarity.<br /> <br /> In the early years of the 1960s, the guerilla movement, with several military officers of the abortive 1960 uprising prominent amongst the leadership, was slowly finding its way: organizing peasant support in the countryside, attacking an army outpost to gather arms, staging a kidnapping or bank robbery to raise money, trying to avoid direct armed clashes with the Guatemalan military.<br /> <br /> Recruitment amongst the peasants was painfully slow and difficult; people so drained by the daily struggle to remain alive have little left from which to draw courage; people so downtrodden scarcely believe they have the right to resist, much less can they entertain thoughts of success; as fervent Catholics, they tend to believe that their misery is a punishment from God for sinning.<br /> <br /> Some of the guerrilla leaders flirted with Communist Party and Trotskyist ideas and groups, falling prey to the usual factional splits and arguments. Eventually, no ideology or sentiment dominated the movement more than a commitment to the desperately needed program of land reform aborted by the 1954 coup, a simple desire for a more equitable society, and nationalist pride vis-à-vis the United States. New York Times, correspondent Alan Howard, after interviewing guerrilla leader Luis Turcios, wrote:&lt;blockquote&gt;Though he has suddenly found himself in a position of political leadership, Turcios is essentially a soldier fighting for a new code of honor. If he has an alter ego, it would not be Lenin or Mao or even Castro, whose works he has read and admires, but Augusto Sandino, the Nicaraguan general who fought the U.S. Marines sent to Nicaragua during the Coolidge and Hoover Administrations.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In March 1962, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in protest against the economic policies, the deep-rooted corruption, and the electoral fraud of the government of General Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes. Initiated by students, the demonstrations soon picked up support from worker and peasant groups. Police and military forces eventually broke the back of the protests, but not before a series of violent confrontations and a general strike had taken place.<br /> <br /> The American military mission in Guatemala, permanently stationed there, saw and heard in this, as in the burgeoning guerrilla movement, only the omnipresent &quot;communist threat&quot;. As US military equipment flowed in, American advisers began to prod a less-alarmed and less-than-aggressive Guatemalan army to take appropriate measures. In May the United States established a base designed specifically for counter-insurgency training. (The Pentagon prefers the term &quot;counter-insurgency&quot; to &quot;counter-revolutionary&quot; because of the latter's awkward implications.) Set up in the northeast province of Izabal, which, together with adjacent Zacapa province, constituted the area of heaviest guerrilla support, the installation was directed by a team of US Special Forces (Green Berets) of Puerto Rican and Mexican descent to make the North American presence less conspicuous. The staff of the base was augmented by 15 Guatemalan officers trained in counter-insurgency at the US School of the Americas at Fort Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> American counter-insurgency strategy is typically based on a carrot-and-stick philosophy. Accordingly, while the Guatemalan military were being taught techniques of ambush, booby-traps, jungle survival and search-and-destroy warfare, and provided with aircraft and pilot training, a program of &quot;civil action&quot; was begun in the northeast area: some wells were built, medicines distributed, school lunches provided etc., as well as promises of other benefits made, all aimed at stealing a bit of the guerrillas' thunder and reducing the peasants' motivation for furnishing support to them; and with the added bonus of allowing American personnel to reconnoitre guerrilla territory under a non-military cover. Land reform, overwhelmingly the most pressing need in rural Guatemala, was not on the agenda.<br /> <br /> As matters were to materialize, the attempt at &quot;winning the hearts and minds&quot; of the peasants proved to be as futile in Guatemala as it was in southeast Asia. When all the academic papers on &quot;social systems engineering&quot; were in, and all the counter-insurgency studies of the RAND Corporation and the other think-tanks were said and done, the recourse was to terror: unadulterated, dependable terror. Guerrillas, peasants, students, labor leaders, and professional people were jailed or killed by the hundreds to put a halt, albeit temporarily, to the demands for reform.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The worst was yet to come.<br /> <br /> In March 1963, General Ydigoras, who had been elected in 1958 for a six-year term, was overthrown in a coup by Col. Enrique Peralta Azurdia. Veteran Latin American correspondent Georgie Anne Geyer later reported that &quot;Top sources within the Kennedy administration have revealed the U.S. instigated and supported the 1963 coup.&quot; Already in disfavor with Washington due to several incidents, Ydigoras apparently sealed his fate by allowing the return to Guatemala of Juan José Arévalo who had led a reform government before Arbenz and still had a strong following. Ydigoras was planning to step down in 1964, thus leaving the door open to an election and, like the Guatemalan army, Washington, including President Kennedy personally, believed that a free election would reinstate Arévalo to power in a government bent upon the same kind of reforms and independent foreign policy that had led the United States to overthrow Arbenz.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; Arévalo was the author of a book called The Shark and the Sardines in which he pictured the US as trying to dominate Latin America. But he had also publicly denounced Castro as &quot;a danger to the continent, a menace&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The tone of the Peralta administration was characterized by one of its first acts: the murder of eight political and trade union leaders, accomplished by driving over them with rock-laden trucks.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; Repressive and brutal as Peralta was, during his three years in power US military advisers felt that the government and the Guatemalan army still did not appreciate sufficiently the threat posed by the guerrillas, still were strangers to the world of unconventional warfare and the systematic methods needed to wipe out the guerrillas once and for all; despite American urging, the army rarely made forays into the hills.<br /> <br /> Peralta, moreover, turned out to be somewhat of a nationalist who resented the excessive influence of the United States in Guatemala, particularly in his own sphere, the military. He refused insistent American offers of Green Beret troops trained in guerrilla warfare to fight the rebels, preferring to rely on his own men, and he restricted the number of Guatemalan officers permitted to participate in American training programs abroad.<br /> <br /> Thus it was that the United States gave its clear and firm backing to a civilian, one Julio Cesar Mendez Montenegro, in the election held in March 1966. Mendez won what passes for an election in Guatemala and granted the Americans the free hand they had been chafing at the bit for. He served another important function for the United States: as a civilian, and one with genuine liberal credentials, Mendez could be pointed to by the Johnson administration as a response to human rights critics at home.<br /> <br /> However, whatever social conscience Julio Cesar Mendez may have harbored deep within, he was largely a captive of the Guatemalan army, and his administration far exceeded Peralta's in its cruelty. Yet the army did not trust this former law school professor—in the rarefied atmosphere of Guatemala, some military men regarded him as a communist—and on at least two occasions, the United States had to intervene to stifle a coup attempt against him.<br /> <br /> Within days after Mendez took office in July, US Col. John D. Webber, Jr. arrived in Guatemala to take command of the American military mission. Time magazine later described his role:&lt;blockquote&gt;Webber immediately expanded counterinsurgency training within Guatemala's 5,000-man army, brought in U.S. Jeeps, trucks, communications equipment and helicopters to give the army more firepower and mobility, and breathed new life into the army's civic-action program. Towards the end of 1966 the army was able to launch a major drive against the guerrilla strongholds … To aid in the drive, the army also hired and armed local bands of &quot;civilian collaborators&quot; licensed to kill peasants whom they considered guerrillas or &quot;potential&quot; guerrillas. There were those who doubted the wisdom of encouraging such measures in violence-prone Guatemala, but Webber was not among them. &quot;That's the way this country is,&quot; he said. &quot;The communists are using everything they have including terror. And it must be met.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The last was for home consumption. There was never any comparison between the two sides as to the quantity and cruelty of their terror, as well as in the choice of targets; with rare exceptions, the left attacked only legitimate political and military enemies, clear and culpable symbols of their foe; and they did not torture, nor take vengeance against the families of their enemies.<br /> <br /> Two of the left's victims were John Webber himself and the US naval attaché, assassinated in January 1968. A bulletin later issued by a guerrilla group stated that the assassinations had &quot;brought to justice the Yanqui officers who were teaching tactics to the Guatemalan army for its war against the people&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the period October 1966 to March 1968, Amnesty International estimated, somewhere between 3,000 and 8,000 Guatemalans were killed by the police, the military, right-wing &quot;death squads&quot; (often the police or military in civilian clothes, carrying out atrocities too bloody for the government to claim credit for), and assorted groups of civilian anti-communist vigilantes. By 1972, the number of their victims was estimated at 13,000. Four years later the count exceeded 20,000, murdered or disappeared without a trace.<br /> <br /> Anyone attempting to organize a union or other undertaking to improve the lot of the peasants, or simply suspected of being in support of the guerrillas, was subject … unknown armed men broke into their homes and dragged them away to unknown places … their tortured or mutilated or burned bodies found buried in a mass grave, or floating in plastic bags in a lake or river, or lying beside the road, hands tied behind the back … bodies dropped into the Pacific from airplanes. In the Gualán area, it was said, no one fished any more; too many corpses were caught in the nets … decapitated corpses, or castrated, or pins stuck in the eyes … a village rounded up, suspected of supplying the guerrillas with men or food or information, all adult males taken away in front of their families, never to be seen again … or everyone massacred, the village bulldozed over to cover the traces … seldom were the victims actual members of a guerrilla band.<br /> <br /> One method of torture consisted of putting a hood filled with insecticide over the head of the victim; there was also electric shock—to the genital area is the most effective; in those days it was administered by using military field telephones hooked up to small generators; the United States supplied the equipment and the instructions for use to several countries, including South Vietnam where the large-scale counter-insurgency operation was producing new methods and devices for extracting information from uncooperative prisoners; some of these techniques were finding their way to Latin America.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Green Berets taught their Guatemalan trainees various methods of &quot;interrogation&quot;, but they were not solely classroom warriors. Their presence in the countryside was reported frequently, accompanying Guatemalan soldiers into battle areas; the line separating the advisory role from the combat role is often a matter of public relations.<br /> <br /> Thomas and Marjorie Melville, American Catholic missionaries in Guatemala from the mid-1950s until the end of 1967, have written that Col. Webber &quot;made no secret of the fact that it was his idea and at his instigation that the technique of counter-terror had been implemented by the Guatemalan Army in the Zacapa and Izabal areas.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; The Melvilles wrote also of Major Bernard Westfall of Iowa City who:&lt;blockquote&gt;perished in September 1967 in the crash of a Guatemalan Air Force jet that he was piloting alone. The official notices stated that the US airman was &quot;testing&quot; the aeroplane. That statement may have been true, but it is also true that it was a common and public topic of conversation at Guatemala's La Aurora air base that the Major often &quot;tested&quot; Guatemalan aircraft in strafing and bombing runs against guerrilla encampments in the Northeastern territory.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;F-51(D) fighter planes modified by the United States for use against guerrillas in Guatemala … after modification, the planes are capable of patrolling for five hours over a limited area … equipped with six .50-calibre machine guns and wing mountings for bombs, napalm and 5-inch air-to-ground rockets.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; The napalm falls on villages, on precious crops, on people … American pilots take off from Panama, deliver loads of napalm on targets suspected of being guerrilla refuges, and return to Panama&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; … the napalm explodes like fireworks and a mass of brilliant red foam spreads over the land, incinerating all that falls in its way, cedars and pines are burned down to the roots, animals grilled, the earth scorched … the guerrillas will not have this place for a sanctuary any longer, nor will they or anyone else derive food from it … halfway around the world in Vietnam, there is an instant replay.<br /> <br /> In Vietnam they were called &quot;free-fire zones&quot;; in Guatemala, &quot;zonas libres&quot;: &quot;Large areas of the country have been declared off limits and then subjected to heavy bombing. Reconnaissance planes using advanced photographic techniques fly over suspected guerrilla country and jet planes, assigned to specific areas, can be called in within minutes to kill anything that moves on the ground.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;The military guys who do this are like serial killers. If Jeffrey Dahmer had been in Guatemala, he would be a general by now.&quot; … In Guatemala City, right-wing terrorists machine-gunned people and houses in full light of day … journalists, lawyers, students, teachers, trade unionists, members of opposition parties, anyone who helped or expressed sympathy for the rebel cause, anyone with a vaguely leftist political association or a moderate criticism of government policy … relatives of the victims, guilty of kinship … common criminals, eliminated to purify the society, taken from jails and shot. &quot;See a Communist, kill a Communist&quot;, the slogan of the New Anticommunist Organization … an informer with hooded face accompanies the police along a city street or into the countryside, pointing people out: who shall live and who shall die … &quot;this one's a son of a bitch&quot; … &quot;that one …&quot; Men found dead with their eyes gouged out, their testicles in their mouth, without hands or tongues, women with breasts cut off … there is rarely a witness to a killing, even when people are dragged from their homes at high noon and executed in the street … a relative will choose exile rather than take the matter to the authorities … the government joins the family in mourning the victim …&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One of the death squads, Mano Blanca (White Hand), sent a death warning to a student leader. Former American Maryknoll priest Blase Bonpane has written:&lt;blockquote&gt;I went alone to visit the head of the Mano Blanca and asked him why he was going to kill this lad. At first he denied sending the letter, but after a bit of discussion with him and his first assistant, the assistant said, &quot;Well, I know he's a Communist and so we're going to kill him.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;How do you know?&quot; I asked.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;He said, &quot;I know he's a Communist because I heard him say he would give his life for the poor.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Mano Blanca distributed leaflets in residential areas suggesting that doors of left-wingers be marked with a black cross.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In November 1967, when the American ambassador, John Gordon Mein, presented the Guatemalan armed forces with new armored vehicles, grenade launchers, training and radio equipment, and several HU-1B jet powered helicopters, he publicly stated:&lt;blockquote&gt;These articles, especially the helicopters, are not easy to obtain at this time since they are being utilized by our forces in defense of the cause of liberty in other parts of the world [i.e., southeast Asia]. But liberty must be defended wherever it is threatened and that liberty is now being threatened in Guatemala.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In August 1968, a young French woman, Michele Kirk, shot herself in Guatemala City as the police came to her room to make &quot;inquiries&quot;. In her notebook Michele had written:&lt;blockquote&gt;It is hard to find the words to express the state of putrefaction that exists in Guatemala, and the permanent terror in which the inhabitants live. Every day bodies are pulled out of the Motagua River, riddled with bullets and partially eaten by fish. Every day men are kidnapped right in the street by unidentified people in cars, armed to the teeth, with no intervention by the police patrols.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The US Agency for International Development (AID), its Office of Public Safety (OPS), and the Alliance for Progress were all there to lend a helping hand. These organizations with their reassuring names all contributed to a program to greatly expand the size of Guatemala's national police force and develop it into a professionalized body skilled at counteracting urban disorder. Senior police officers and technicians were sent for training at the Inter-American Police Academy in Panama, replaced in 1964 by the International Police Academy in Washington, at a Federal School in Los Fresnos, Texas (where they were taught how to construct and use a variety of explosive devices—see Uruguay chapter), and other educational establishments, their instructors often being CIA officers operating under OPS cover. This was also the case with OPS officers stationed in Guatemala to advise local police commands and provide in-country training for rank-and-file policemen. At times, these American officers participated directly in interrogating political prisoners, took part in polygraph operations, and accompanied the police on anti-drug patrols.<br /> <br /> Additionally, the Guatemala City police force was completely supplied with radio patrol cars and a radio communications network, and funds were provided to build a national police academy and pay for salaries, uniforms, weapons, and riot-control equipment.<br /> <br /> The glue which held this package together was the standard OPS classroom tutelage, similar to that given the military, which imparted the insight that &quot;communists&quot;, primarily of the Cuban variety, were behind all the unrest in Guatemala; the students were further advised to &quot;stay out of politics&quot;; that is, support whatever pro-US regime happens to be in power.<br /> <br /> Also standard was the advice to use &quot;minimum force&quot; and to cultivate good community relations. But the behavior of the police and military students in practice was so far removed from this that continued American involvement with these forces over a period of decades makes this advice appear to be little more than a self-serving statement for the record, the familiar bureaucratic maxim: Cover your ass.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> According to AID, by 1970, over 30,000 Guatemalan police personnel had received OPS training in Guatemala alone, one of the largest OPS programs in Latin America.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;At one time, many AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people,&quot; disclosed John Gilligan, Director of AID during the Carter administration. &quot;The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By the end of 1968, the counter-insurgency campaign had all but wiped out the guerrilla movement by thwarting the rebels' ability to operate openly and casually in rural areas as they had been accustomed to, and, through sheer terrorization of villagers, isolating the guerrillas from their bases of support in the countryside.<br /> <br /> It had been an unequal match. By Pentagon standards it had been a &quot;limited&quot; war, due to the absence of a large and overt US combat force. At the same time, this had provided the American media and public with the illusion of their country's non-involvement. However, as one observer has noted: &quot;In the lexicon of counterrevolutionaries, these wars are 'limited' only in their consequences for the intervening power. For the people and country under assault, they are total.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Not until 1976 did another serious guerrilla movement arise, the Guatemalan Army of the Poor (EGP) by name. Meanwhile, others vented their frustration through urban warfare in the face of government violence, which reached a new high during 1970 and 1971 under a &quot;state of siege&quot; imposed by the president, Col. Carlos Arana Osorio. Arana, who had been close to the US military since serving as Guatemalan military attaché in Washington, and then as commander of the counter-insurgency operation in Zacapa (where his commitment to his work earned him the title of &quot;the butcher of Zacapa&quot;), decreed to himself virtually unlimited power to curb opposition of any stripe.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Amnesty International later stated that Guatemalan sources, including the Committee of the Relatives of Disappeared Persons, claimed that over 7,000 persons disappeared or were found dead in these two years. &quot;Foreign diplomats in Guatemala City,&quot; reported Le Monde in 1971, &quot;believe that for every political assassination by left-wing revolutionaries fifteen murders are committed by right-wing fanatics.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During a curfew so draconian that even ambulances, doctors and fire engines reportedly were forbidden outside … as American police cars and paddy wagons patrolled the streets day and night … and American helicopters buzzed overhead … the United States saw fit to provide further technical assistance and equipment to initiate a reorganization of Arana's police forces to make them yet more efficient.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;In response to a question [from a congressional investigator in 1971] as to what he conceived his job to be, a member of the US Military Group (MILGP) in Guatemala replied instantly that it was to make the Guatemalan Armed Forces as efficient as possible. The next question as to why this was in the interest of the United States was followed by a long silence while he reflected on a point which had apparently never occurred to him.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As for the wretched of Guatemala's earth … in 1976 a major earthquake shook the land, taking over 20,000 lives, largely of the poor whose houses were the first to crumble … the story was reported of the American church relief worker who arrived to help the victims; he was shocked at their appearance and their living conditions; then he was informed that he was not in the earthquake area, that what he was seeing was normal.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;The level of pesticide spraying is the highest in the world,&quot; reported the New York Times in 1977, &quot;and little concern is shown for the people who live near the cotton fields&quot; … 30 or 40 people a day are treated for pesticide poisoning in season, death can come within hours, or a longer lasting liver malfunction … the amounts of DDT in mothers' milk in Guatemala are the highest in the Western world. &quot;It's very simple,&quot; explained a cotton planter, &quot;more insecticide means more cotton, fewer insects mean higher profits.&quot; In an attack, guerrillas destroyed 22 crop-duster planes; the planes were quickly replaced thanks to the genius of American industry&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt; … and all the pesticide you could ever want, from Monsanto Chemical Company of St. Louis and Guatemala City.<br /> <br /> During the Carter presidency, in response to human-rights abuses in Guatemala and other countries, several pieces of congressional legislation were passed which attempted to curtail military and economic aid to those nations. In the years preceding, similar prohibitions regarding aid to Guatemala had been enacted into law. The efficacy of these laws can be measured by their number. In any event, the embargoes were never meant to be more than partial, and Guatemala also received weapons and military equipment from Israel, at least part of which was covertly underwritten by Washington.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As further camouflage, some of the training of Guatemala's security forces was reportedly maintained by transferring it to clandestine sites in Chile and Argentina.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Testimony of an Indian woman:&lt;blockquote&gt;My name is Rigoberta Menchú Tum. I am a representative of the &quot;Vincente Menchú&quot; [her father] Revolutionary Christians … On 9 December 1979, my 16-year-old brother Patrocino was captured and tortured for several days and then taken with twenty other young men to the square in Chajul … An officer of [President] Lucas Garcia's army of murderers ordered the prisoners to be paraded in a line. Then he started to insult and threaten the inhabitants of the village, who were forced to come out of their houses to witness the event. I was with my mother, and we saw Patrocino; he had had his tongue cut out and his toes cut off. The officer jackal made a speech. Every time he paused the soldiers beat the Indian prisoners.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;When he finished his ranting, the bodies of my brother and the other prisoners were swollen, bloody, unrecognizable. It was monstrous, but they were still alive.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;They were thrown on the ground and drenched with gasoline. The soldiers set fire to the wretched bodies with torches and the captain laughed like a hyena and forced the inhabitants of Chajul to watch. This was his objective—that they should be terrified and witness the punishment given to the &quot;guerrillas&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In 1992, Rigoberta Menchú Tum was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.<br /> <br /> Testimony of Fred Sherwood (CIA pilot during the overthrow of the Arbenz government in 1954 who settled in Guatemala and became president of the American Chamber of Commerce), speaking in Guatemala, September 1980:&lt;blockquote&gt;Why should we be worried about the death squads? They're bumping off the commies, our enemies. I'd give them more power. Hell, I'd get some cartridges if I could, and everyone else would too … Why should we criticize them? The death squad—I'm for it … Shit! There's no question, we can't wait 'til Reagan gets in. We hope Carter falls in the ocean real quick … We all feel that he [Reagan] is our saviour.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The Movement for National Liberation (MLN) was a prominent political party. It was the principal party in the Arana regime. An excerpt from a radio broadcast in 1980 by the head of the party, Mario Sandoval Alarcon …&lt;blockquote&gt;I admit that the MLN is the party of organized violence. Organized violence is vigor, just as organized color is scenery and organized sound is harmony. There is nothing wrong with organized violence; it is vigor, and the MLN is a vigorous movement.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Mario Sandoval Alarcon and former president Arana (&quot;the butcher of Zacapa&quot;) &quot;spent inaugural week mingling with the stars of the Reagan inner circle&quot;, reported syndicated columnist Jack Anderson. Sandoval, who had worked closely with the CIA in the overthrow of Arbenz, announced that he had met with Reagan defense and foreign-policy advisers even before the election. Right-wing Guatemalan leaders were elated by Reagan's victory. They looked forward to a resumption of the hand-in-glove relationship between American and Guatemalan security teams and businessmen which had existed before Carter took office.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Before that could take place, however, the Reagan administration first had to soften the attitude of Congress about this thing called human rights. In March 1981, two months after Reagan's inaugural, Secretary of State Alexander Haig told a congressional committee that there was a Soviet &quot;hit list … for the ultimate takeover of Central America&quot;. It was a &quot;four phased operation&quot; of which the first part had been the &quot;seizure of Nicaragua&quot;. &quot;Next,&quot; warned Haig, &quot;is El Salvador, to be followed by Honduras and Guatemala.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> This was the kind of intelligence information which one would expect to derive from a captured secret document or KGB defector. But neither one of these was produced or mentioned, nor did any of the assembled congressmen presume to raise the matter.<br /> <br /> Two months later, General Vernon Walters, former Deputy Director of the CIA, on a visit to Guatemala as Haig's special emissary, was moved to proclaim that the United States hoped to help the Guatemalan government defend &quot;peace and liberty&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During this period, Guatemalan security forces, official and unofficial, massacred at least 2,000 peasants (accompanied by the usual syndrome of torture, mutilation and decapitation), destroyed several villages, assassinated 76 officials of the opposition Christian Democratic Party, scores of trade unionists, and at least six catholic priests.&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> 19 August 1981 … unidentified gunmen occupy the town of San Miguel Acatan, force the Mayor to give them a list of all those who had contributed funds for the building of a school, pick out 15 from the list (including three of the Mayor's children), make them dig their own graves and shoot them.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In December, Ronald Reagan finally spoke out against government repression. He denounced Poland for crushing by &quot;brute force, the stirrings of liberty … Our Government and those of our allies, have expressed moral revulsion at the police-state tactics of Poland's oppressors.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Using the loopholes in the congressional legislation, both real and loosely interpreted, the Reagan administration, in its first two years, chipped away at the spirit of the embargo: $3.1 million of jeeps and trucks, $4 million of helicopter spare parts, $6.3 million of other military supplies.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt; These were amongst the publicly announced aid shipments; what was transpiring covertly can only be guessed at in light of certain disclosures: Jack Anderson revealed in August 1981 that the United States was using Cuban exiles to train security forces in Guatemala; in this operation, Anderson wrote, the CIA had arranged &quot;for secret training in the finer points of assassination&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt; The following year, it was reported that the Green Berets had been instructing Guatemalan Army officers for over two years in the finer points of warfare.&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt; And in 1983, we learned that in the previous two years Guatemala's Air Force helicopter fleet had somehow increased from eight to 27, all of them American made, and that Guatemalan officers were once again being trained at the US School of the Americas in Panama.&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In March 1982, a coup put General Efraín Ríos Montt, a &quot;born-again Christian&quot; in power. A month later, the Reagan administration announced that it perceived signs of an improvement in the state of human rights in the country and took the occasion to justify a shipment of military aid.&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt; On the first of July, Ríos Montt announced a state of siege. It was to last more than eight months. In his first six months in power, 2,600 Indians and peasants were massacred, while during his 17-month reign, more than 400 villages were brutally wiped off the map.&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt; In December 1982, Ronald Reagan, also a Christian, went to see for himself. After meeting with Ríos Montt, Reagan, referring to the allegations of extensive human-rights abuses, declared that the Guatemalan leader was receiving &quot;a bad deal.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Statement by the Guatemalan Army of the Poor, made in 1981 (by which time the toll of people murdered by the government since 1954 had reached at least the 60,000 mark, and the sons of one-time death-squad members were now killing the sons of the Indians killed by their fathers):&lt;blockquote&gt;The Guatemalan revolution is entering its third decade. Ever since the government of Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown in 1954, the majority of the Guatemalan people have been seeking a way to move the country towards solving the same problems which were present then and have only worsened over time.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The counterrevolution, put in motion by the U.S. Government and those domestic sectors committed to retaining every single one of their privileges, dispersed and disorganized the popular and democratic forces. However, it did not resolve any of the problems which had first given rise to demands for economic, social and political change. These demands have been raised again and again in the last quarter century, by any means that seemed appropriate at the time, and have received each time the same repressive response as in 1954.&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Statement by Father Thomas Melville, 1968:&lt;blockquote&gt;Having come to the conclusion that the actual state of violence, composed of the malnutrition, ignorance, sickness and hunger of the vast majority of the Guatemalan population, is the direct result of a capitalist system that makes the defenseless Indian compete against the powerful and well-armed landowner, my brother [Father Arthur Melville] and I decided not to be silent accomplices of the mass murder that this system generates.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;We began teaching the Indians that no one will defend their rights, if they do not defend themselves. If the government and oligarchy are using arms to maintain them in their position of misery, then they have the obligation to take up arms and defend their God-given right to be men.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;We were accused of being communists along with the people who listened to us, and were asked to leave the country by our religious superiors and the U.S. ambassador [John Gordon Mein]. We did so.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;But I say here that I am a communist only if Christ was a communist. I did what I did and will continue to do so because of the teachings of Christ and not because of Marx or Lenin. And I say here too, that we are many more than the hierarchy and the U.S. government think.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;When the fight breaks out more in the open, let the world know that we do it not for Russia, not for China, nor any other country, but for Guatemala. Our response to the present situation is not because we have read either Marx or Lenin, but because we have read the New Testament.&lt;sup&gt;51&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Postscript, a small sample:<br /> <br /> 1988: Guatemala continues to suffer the worst record of human-rights abuses in Latin America, stated the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in its annual report on human rights in the Western Hemisphere.&lt;sup&gt;52&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> 1990: Guatemalan soldiers at the army base in Santiago Atitlán opened fire on unarmed townspeople carrying white flags, killing 14 and wounding 24. The people had come with their mayor to speak to the military commander about repeated harassment from the soldiers.&lt;sup&gt;53&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> 1990: &quot;The United States, said to be disillusioned because of persistent corruption in the government of President Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo, is reportedly turning to Guatemala's military to promote economic and political stability … even though the military is blamed for human rights abuses and is believed to be involved in drug trafficking.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;54&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> This was reported in May. In June, a prominent American businessman living in Guatemala, Michael DeVine, was kidnapped and nearly beheaded by the Guatemalan military after he apparently stumbled upon the military's drug trafficking and/or other contraband activities. The Bush administration, in a show of public anger of the killing, cut off military aid to Guatemala, but, we later learned, secretly allowed the CIA to provide millions of dollars to the military government to make up for the loss. The annual payments of $5 to $7 million apparently continued into the Clinton administration.<br /> <br /> 1992: In March, Guatemalan guerilla leader, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, was captured and disappeared. For the next three years, his American wife, attorney Jennifer Harbury, waged an impassioned international campaign—including public fasts in Guatemala City (nearly to death) and in Washington—to pressure the Guatemalan and American governments for information about her husband's fate. Both governments insisted that they knew nothing. Finally, in March 1995, Rep. Robert Torricelli of the House Intelligence Committee revealed that Bamaca had been tortured and executed the same year of his capture, and that he, as well as DeVine, had been murdered on the orders of Col. Julio Roberto Alpírez, who had been on the CIA payroll for several years. (Alpírez thus becoming another illustrious graduate of Fort Benning's School of the Americas). The facts surrounding these cases were known early on by the CIA, and by officials at the State Department and National Security Council at least a few months before the disclosure. Torricelli's announcement prompted several other Americans to come forward with tales of murder, rape or torture of themselves or a relation at the hands of the Guatemalan military. Sister Dianna Ortiz, a nun, related how, in 1989, she was kidnapped, burned with cigarettes, raped repeatedly, and lowered into a pit full of corpses and rats. A fair-skinned man who spoke with an American accent seemed to be in charge, she said.&lt;sup&gt;55&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Costa Rica 1970-1971: Trying to topple an ally, part II ==<br /> Jose Figueres, who headed the Costa Rican government three times, was always a rather improbable target of destabilization by the United States. He was a bona fide (North) Americaphile, fluent in English, educated at MIT, lecturer at Harvard and other American universities, well-connected in US intellectual circles, particularly among Kennedyites, accorded an honorary membership in the Americans for Democratic Action. Figueres was typically referred to as an &quot;outstanding friend&quot; of the United States, and had long been associated with the CIA in a variety of activities and fronts in Latin America. And if that weren't enough, both of Figueres's wives had been American.<br /> <br /> Yet, the CIA tried to overthrow him during his term in office in the 1950s and twice tried to assassinate the man (see Costa Rica, mid-1950s chapter) and perhaps tried again to overthrow him in the 1970s.<br /> <br /> To liberal American political figures, Figueres was the quintessential &quot;liberal democrat&quot;, the kind of statesman they liked to think, and liked the world to think, was the natural partner of US foreign policy rather than the military dictators who, somehow, keep popping up as allies.<br /> <br /> To American conservatives, Figueres was of questionable ilk, the type that, if not actually a communist himself, doesn't sufficiently appreciate the nature and degree of The International Communist Conspiracy and consequently allows communists too much room to maneuver.<br /> <br /> It was the latter conviction that was stirred up by Figueres soon after becoming president again in May 1970. He began &quot;building bridges&quot; to the Communist bloc, with Costa Rica becoming the first Central American country to establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.<br /> <br /> &quot;This diplomatic recognition in no way shakes our loyalty to the United States or to the democratic cause,&quot; Figueres cautioned. &quot;People everywhere are tired of the cold war. Russia controls half of Europe, and we want to make the Russians drink coffee [Costa Rica's principal export] instead of tea.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the previous two years the Soviet Union had purchased $10 million worth of coffee from Costa Rica, an &quot;economic offensive&quot; which reportedly &quot;disturbed United States officials&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Earl (Ted) Williamson, officially listed as First Secretary of the US Embassy in San José, but actually CIA Chief of Station, was heard to declare at a party that the Figueres government would not last much longer. He spoke openly against the president's bridge-building endeavors.<br /> <br /> Williamson's comments got back to Costa Rican officials, as did reports of his close ties with Figueres's conservative political opponents, and indiscreet remarks made by his Cuban wife regarding the country's alleged march toward communism. Williamson, who had served in Cuba before the revolution and married the niece of a wealthy sugar baron, was also blamed for the seizure and burning of some Marxist literature coming in through the Costa Rican airport. The blame arose through his involvement in a CIA &quot;technical assistance program on security&quot;.<br /> <br /> By autumn, the Costa Rican government felt compelled to make an informal suggestion through the State Department's Costa Rican desk in Washington that Williamson be removed. The request was ignored.<br /> <br /> Then, on 17 December, a fisherman reported sighting a mysterious ship which had unloaded &quot;long wooden boxes&quot; on a remote Costa Rican beach. The ship was identified as the Waltham and the Costa Rican government later received information that the vessel was registered to the &quot;commercial section of the State Department&quot;. This was never verified. However, the US Commerce Department at that time did own a 455-foot vessel named the Waltham Victory.<br /> <br /> It was first reported that the boxes contained weapons. Subsequently, a story was circulated that it was contraband whisky that had been put ashore.<br /> <br /> The Miami Herald, which had first broken this story, commented that: &quot;The contraband story presumably was put out to dispel rumors of a coup against the government.&quot; Americaphile that he was, Figueres was probably anxious to downplay the entire controversy which must have been acutely embarrassing to him. Three congressmen of his party, however, unencumbered by such loyalties, released a statement that accused the CIA of being involved in the ship movements and the alleged arms drop.<br /> <br /> By early January 1971, the Costa Rican government seriously feared an uprising. It again asked the Nixon administration to recall Williamson. Not long before, Williamson had publicly forecast that the Figueres government would not survive another two weeks.<br /> <br /> The Guardia Civil, Costa Rica's only armed force, was alerted and plans were made to remove Figueres from the capital to a hiding place in the mountains. At Figueres's request, the Panama government covertly delivered over 100 semi-automatic rifles to Costa Rica.<br /> <br /> During this entire period, the American Embassy in San José was reported to be deeply divided between liberals and conservatives. Perhaps the most conservative, along with Williamson, was Ambassador Walter Ploeser, a Nixon political appointee with a long history of ultra-anti-communist activity. Ploeser vehemently defended Williamson and was said to have made no effort to curb the CIA official's public outbursts against Figueres. At the same time, Ploeser fired the director of the US AID program in Costa Rica, Lawrence Harrison, who took a pro-Figueres stand. The two men reportedly clashed over priorities, with Ploeser wanting an increase in military assistance, although Costa Rica, ostensibly, had little use for such, and a reduction in American economic aid to the country.<br /> <br /> Official cables reaching Washington from Ploeser's embassy described the situation in Costa Rica as &quot;dangerous&quot;. Figueres was accused of abandoning the West and facing East, of having accepted financial assistance from the communists for his campaign, and of permitting communists to infiltrate his government.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In February, Williamson was finally recalled by Washington. Costa Rican officials hoped and expected that Ploeser would be replaced as well, as soon as it could be done with the customary diplomatic face-saving. As it was, Ploeser lingered on at his post for a full year before resigning for &quot;personal reasons&quot;.<br /> <br /> The announcement of Williamson's departure was perhaps hastened by the fact that a few days earlier the House Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs had held a briefing to look into the matter. But the congressmen were not about to become the authors of an exposé. After hearing the testimony of two State Department officials, the committee announced that it had all been a big misunderstanding due to &quot;personality conflicts&quot; within the embassy which had &quot;repercussions&quot; outside its walls, and &quot;overzealous actions&quot; by some US officials who would remain nameless, as would everything else heard at the closed-door briefing.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The same day, the Miami Herald stated in an editorial: &quot;What is abundantly clear … is the power and influence of the United States Embassy in a small country such as Costa Rica. An embassy that even quietly passes the word that it opposes the government can stimulate opposition and perhaps inspire efforts to overthrow it. Open antipathy almost asks for it.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Iraq 1972-1975: Covert action should not be confused with missionary work ==<br /> Into the land of ancient Mesopotamia reached the long arm of the CIA, and the Kurdish people of the Zagros and Taurus mountains, but a few decades removed from the life of nomads, joined the Agency's list of clients.<br /> <br /> In May of 1972, President Richard Nixon and his National Security Affairs adviser, Henry Kissinger, went to the Soviet Union to meet their Russian counterparts. Afterward, Kissinger told a press conference in Moscow that the two nations had agreed to defuse the tensions in the Middle East and &quot;to contribute what they can to bringing about a general settlement … such a settlement would also contribute to a relaxation of the armaments race in that area. … Speaking for our side,&quot; he added, &quot;I can say we will attempt to implement these principles in the spirit in which they were promulgated.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Kissinger and Nixon were moved by the spirit for perhaps 24 hours. On their way home, they stopped in Teheran to visit their friend, the Shah of Iran. It seems that Iran and Iraq were embroiled once again in their perennial feud—a border dispute and the like—and the Shah asked his pal Richard for a little favor. Could he help arm the Kurds in Iraq who were fighting for autonomy? Just generally heat things up so as to sap the Iraqi resources and distract them from Iran?&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Anything for a friend and loyal ally, said Richard Milhous, two weeks before the Watergate burglary and still on top of the world.<br /> <br /> The Shah was quite capable of arming the Kurds himself, and in fact was doing so to some extent, but the Kurds didn't trust him. They trusted the United States and wanted to be armed by them. Several years later, the congressional committee known as the Pike Committee, which investigated various CIA operations, put it thusly: &quot;The U.S. acted in effect as a guarantor that the Kurds would not be summarily dropped by the Shah.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Before long, the CIA was reaching into its warehouses and a range of Soviet and Chinese small arms and rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition were on their way to the Kurdish rebels, the Communist origin of the weapons being a standard means of ensuring the standard &quot;plausible denial&quot;. Ultimately, the military aid was to total some $16 million.<br /> <br /> The Kurds are a distinct ethnic group, Muslim but, unlike most other Iraqis, not Arab. Their people are to be found primarily in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. For decades, the Iraqi Kurds had been engaged in intermittent warfare against the government in pursuance of a goal of &quot;autonomy&quot;, a concept not terribly well-defined by them, it being clear only that it fell short of being an independent state, perhaps.<br /> <br /> The political history of the Iraqi Kurds in their recent past was a baffling piece of patchwork. Ten years earlier, they had been in close alliance with the Iraqi Communist Party, such that when the ruling Ba'ath party began to persecute the Communists, they took refuge amongst the Kurds. The Kurdish leader, Mustafa al-Barzani, a man in his seventies, had spent a dozen years in the Soviet Union and spoke Russian. Now, in 1972, the Communists were allies of the Ba'aths in an attempt to suppress the &quot;imperialist agent Barzani&quot;, and Kurdish propaganda emphasized Soviet military support of the Iraqi government, including claims that Russians were flying bombing missions against the Kurds. At the same time the Kurds painted themselves as &quot;social democrats&quot; of the European variety, going so far as to apply for membership in the Socialist International.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; Nonetheless, Barzani stated frequently that &quot;he trusted no other major power&quot; than the United States and asserted that if his cause were successful, the Kurds were &quot;ready to become the 51st state&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; All this on top of desiring to establish a Muslim society.<br /> <br /> In October 1973, when the Yom Kippur surprise attack on Israel took place, and Iraq was preoccupied as an ally of Egypt and Syria, the Kurds were willing to launch a major attack, at Israel's suggestion, that might have been very beneficial to their own cause as well as taking some pressure off Israel by tying down the Iraqi army. But Kissinger refused to let the Kurds move. On 16 October he had the CIA send them a cable which read: &quot;We do not repeat not consider it advisable for you to undertake the offensive military actions that Israel has suggested to you.&quot; The Kurds obeyed.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Pike Report regarded this incident as an example of the apparent &quot;no win&quot; policy of the United States and Iran. The committee stated:&lt;blockquote&gt;The progressively deteriorating position of the Kurds reflected the fact that none of the nations who were aiding them seriously desired that they realize their objective of an autonomous state. A CIA memo of March 22, 1974 states Iran's and the United States' position clearly: &quot;We would think that Iran would not look with favor on the establishment of a formalized autonomous government. Iran, like ourselves, has seen benefit in a stalemate situation … in which Iraq is intrinsically weakened by the Kurds' refusal to relinquish [their] semi-autonomy. Neither Iran nor ourselves wish to see the matter resolved one way or the other.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&quot;This policy,&quot; said the report, &quot;was not imparted to our clients, who were encouraged to continue fighting. Even in the context of covert action, ours was a cynical enterprise.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The day after the CIA memo referred to above, 23 March 1974, Soviet Defense Minister Andrei Grechko, who had befriended Barzani when the latter lived in the Soviet Union, arrived in Iraq to help the government reach a settlement with the Kurds. On the advice of Iran and the United States, however, Barzani refused to come to any terms.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; Earlier that month, the Iraqi government had actually passed a law offering a limited amount of autonomy to the Kurds, but they had rejected that as well, whether or not at the request of their &quot;allies&quot; is not known.<br /> <br /> The congressional committee discovered that &quot;The CIA had early information which suggested that the Shah would abandon the Kurds the minute he came to an agreement with Iraq over border disputes.&quot; Agency documents characterized the Shah's view of the Kurds as &quot;a card to play&quot; in this dispute with Iraq. And a CIA memo characterized the Kurds as &quot;a uniquely useful tool for weakening Iraq's potential for international adventurism&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The last may have been a reference to Iraq signing a pact of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union in April 1972, under which it received military aid and granted the Soviet Navy certain port privileges. Then, in June, super oil-rich Iraq had nationalized the Western-owned consortium, the Iraq Petroleum Company (23.75 percent US), a move warmly applauded by the Soviets, after which the two countries proceeded to conclude a trade and economic accord.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As it was, it was oil that brought Iran and Iraq together. In 1973, the Shah wanted to strengthen Iran's position with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and a crucial part of the inducement to Iraq and other Arab neighbors was Iran's willingness to double-cross the troublesome Kurds.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; None of these countries wanted their own minorities to be getting any ideas from a Kurdish success.<br /> <br /> It was not until March 1975 that the Shah was ready to make his move. Events moved swiftly then. The Shah met with the vice-president of Iraq and, by agreement, the Shah cut off all supplies to the Kurds, including the American part. The next day the Iraqis unleashed their biggest offensive ever. Several days later the stunned Kurds sent a desperate message to the CIA: &quot;There is confusion and dismay among our people and forces. Our people's fate in unprecedented danger. Complete destruction hanging over our head. No explanation for all this. We appeal you and USG [United States government] intervene according to your promises …&quot;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The same day, the Kurds appealed to Kissinger as well:&lt;blockquote&gt;Your Excellency, having always believed in the peaceful solution of disputes including those between Iran and Iraq, we are pleased to see that their two countries have come to some agreement … However, our hearts bleed to see that an immediate byproduct of their agreement is the destruction of our defenseless people … Our movement and people are being destroyed in an unbelievable way with silence from everyone. We feel your Excellency that the United States has a moral and political responsibility towards our people who have committed themselves to your country's policy.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The hapless Kurds received no response to their pleas, from either the CIA or Henry Kissinger. By the end of the month their forces had been decimated. Several hundred Kurdish leaders were executed.<br /> <br /> In conclusion, the Pike report noted:&lt;blockquote&gt;Over 200,000 refugees managed to escape into Iran. Once there, however, neither the United States nor Iran extended adequate humanitarian assistance. In fact, Iran was later to forcibly return over 40,000 of the refugees and the United States government refused to admit even one refugee into the United States by way of political asylum even though they qualified for such admittance.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;When Henry Kissinger was interviewed by the staff of the Pike Committee about the United States' role in this melodrama, he responded with his now-famous remark: &quot;Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Australia 1973-1975: Another free election bites the dust ==<br /> When the leader of a Communist country was removed from office by the Politburo, this was confirmation to the Western mind of the totalitarian, or, at best, the arbitrary, nature of the Communist system.<br /> <br /> What then are we to make of the fact that in 1975 Edward Gough Whitlam, the legally elected prime minister of Australia, was summarily dismissed by a single non-elected individual, one functioning under the title of &quot;Governor-General&quot;?<br /> <br /> Whitlam took office in December 1972 as the head of the first Labor Party government in Australia in 23 years. In short order he set about proving to the opposition parties the correctness of their historical prediction that Labor in power would be &quot;irresponsible and dangerous&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;—to whom, of course, had always been the question.<br /> <br /> The war in Vietnam was an immediate example. Australian military personnel serving there under the command of the United States were called home, conscription was halted, and young men jailed for refusing military service were released.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Moreover, the Whitlam government recognized North Vietnam, several of his ministers publicly denounced American bombing of Hanoi and called for rallies to oppose it, and protesting dock workers felt inspired to impose a temporary boycott on American shipping, although the last was opposed by Whitlam.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Condemnation of President Nixon and his administration volunteered by Labor ministers was most undiplomatic: &quot;corrupt&quot; … &quot;maniacs&quot; … &quot;mass murderers&quot; … were some of the epithets hurled at Washington. American officials were reported to be &quot;shocked and angered&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The overseas side of Australian intelligence (ASIS by acronym), it turned out, was working with the CIA in Chile against the Allende government. Whitlam ordered an immediate halt to the operation in early 1973, although at the time of Allende's downfall in September, ASIS was reportedly still working with the Agency.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Labor government showed itself less than committed to the games security people play at home as well. Whitlam let it be known immediately that he did not wish to have his staff members undergo the usual security checks because he knew and trusted them. The Australian Security and Intelligence Organization (ASIO) was taken aback by such unorthodoxy and informed its CIA colleagues in Australia; cables went to Washington; before long, a political officer at the American Embassy was informing Richard Hall, one of Whitlam's advisers, &quot;Your Prime Minister has just cut off one of his options.&quot; Hall took the remark to be a threat to cut off intelligence information.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; Whether bowing to American/ASIO pressure or not, Whitlam soon afterward agreed to the security checks.<br /> <br /> The new administration also put an end to the discrimination against immigrants who were being denied naturalization for having opposed the military juntas in places like Greece and Chile.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; Most exceptional and alarming to the security professionals was the behavior of the Attorney General who showed up unannounced at ASIO headquarters one day in March 1973 with the police and carted away certain files because he suspected that the intelligence agency was withholding information from him. In all likelihood, ASIO was deliberately keeping certain information from its own government, as does every other intelligence agency in the world. The difference here, once again, was that the Labor government simply refused to accept such a state of affairs as normal.<br /> <br /> A few years later, after Whitlam's ouster, James Angleton, who had been a high CIA officer in 1973 and directly concerned with intelligence relations with Australia, complained to an Australian television interviewer about the &quot;Attorney General moving in, barging in, we were deeply concerned as to the sanctity of this information which could compromise sources and methods and compromise human life.&quot; The CIA, he said, seriously considered breaking intelligence relations with Australia.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As a consequence of Whitlam's unconventional way of running a government, the CIA became rather concerned about the security and continued functioning of its many military and intelligence facilities in Australia. By the Agency's standards, it was a highly important setup, employing thousands of persons—a vital part of the early warning system; a key tracking station in the United States' global spy satellite system of extremely sophisticated photography and monitoring of activities within the Soviet Union; a US naval communications station which dealt with nuclear submarines; a huge electronics control center set up by the US National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept messages, of voice, telex, etc., coming in and out of Australia and its Pacific region—that is, eavesdropping on everybody and everything.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Most of this had been built in the latter part of the 1960s and was run in such secrecy that not even senior members of the Australian Foreign Ministry had been briefed on exactly what went on in those buildings in Australia's wide open spaces, and the CIA connection was never officially acknowledged.<br /> <br /> After the Labor Party took power, some of its members voiced strong criticism of the secret facilities. They increasingly demanded an official explanation for their presence and at times even voted for their removal. This was not carried out because the leaders of the Whitlam administration, for all their radical posturing, were not about to leap into political no-man's-land by cutting off ties to the West. They spoke of neutralism and non-alignment on occasion, but they were willing to settle for independence; which is all the Papandreous wanted before they were ousted in Greece, another site of an American electronics state-within-a-state in which the host intelligence and defense establishments typically demonstrate more loyalty to their American counterparts than to their own &quot;government of the day&quot;.<br /> <br /> In 1976, an investigation by the Australian Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security concluded that for many years members of ASIO had been providing the CIA with potentially damaging information about prominent Australian politicians and governmental officials. The information reportedly ranged from accusations of subversive tendencies to details about personal peccadillos.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Moreover, it was later learned that in addition to Chile, Australian intelligence had aided US operations in Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Whitlam government displayed its independence where it could. In 1973, Whitlam disclosed the existence of an Australian Defence Signals Directorate unit in Singapore—another cold-war toy of the CIA and ASIO which monitored military and civilian radio traffic in Asia. (The DSD is comparable to the American NSA and the British GCHQ.) Later, the Australian prime minister closed the unit down, although he re-established part of it in Australia. His administration also expressed its disapproval of US plans to build up the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia as another military-intelligence-nuclear outpost.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; And in February 1975, the Labor Party conference voted to allow the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Vietnam (the Vietcong) to set up an office in Australia. This was before the fall of Saigon.<br /> <br /> &quot;By the end of 1974,&quot; writes Joan Coxsedge, a Labor Party member of Parliament in the state of Victoria,&lt;blockquote&gt;almost every move by the Whitlam Government or by individual Labor parliamentarians, whether it was a departmental decision, a staff appointment, an international cable, a telex, a phone call, or a confidential letter, quickly became the property of the news media. There was an unparalleled campaign of personal vituperation, hinting at incompetence, dissension, corruption and private scandal within the ranks of the government.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Matters reached the spark point in autumn 1975. Whitlam dismissed the heads of both ASIO and ASIS in separate incidents, the latter because his agency had been secretly assisting the CIA in covert activities in nearby East Timor.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; Then, at the beginning of November, it was revealed in the press that a former CIA officer, Richard Lee Stallings, had been channeling funds to J. Douglas Anthony, leader of the National Country Party, one of the two main opposition parties. It was reported that Stallings was a close friend and former tenant of Anthony's, that the secret facilities in the hinterland were indeed CIA creations, and that Stallings had been the first head of much of the operation.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A year earlier, an Australian political journalist, Ray Aitchison, had published a book called Looking at the Liberals (the Liberal Party, the other important opposition party, was actually rather conservative), in which he claimed that the CIA had offered the opposition unlimited funds in their unsuccessful attempt to defeat the Labor Party in the May 1974 parliamentary elections.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; Subsequently, a Sydney newspaper reported that the Liberals had been on the receiving end since the late 1960s, and quoted the remarks of former CIA officer Victor Marchetti, who confirmed that the CIA had funded both of the major opposition parties.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Whitlam publicly repeated the charges about Stallings and insisted upon an investigation of the facilities, to identify once and for all their true nature and purpose. (Whether any of it was part of a weapons system was one question which seriously concerned the administration.) At the same time he demanded a list of all CIA operatives in Australia.<br /> <br /> The Australian military-intelligence complex appears to have been spurred into a flurry of activity. On 6 November, the head of the Defence Department reportedly met with the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, and afterward declared publicly: &quot;This is the greatest risk to the nation's security there has ever been.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On the eighth, another senior defence official held a meeting with Kerr in which he briefed the Governor-General about allegations from the CIA that Whitlam was jeopardizing the security of the American bases in Australia.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt; The same day, the CIA in Washington informed the ASIO station there that all intelligence links with Australia would be cut off unless a satisfactory explanation was given of Mr. Whitlam's behavior.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt; The Agency had already expressed reservations about releasing intelligence information to certain government ministers.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> If this had been a Third World country, the CIA would likely have already sent the government packing.<br /> <br /> On 9 November, Kerr was received at the Defence Signals Directorate for yet another briefing.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; The following day, the ASIO station in Washington, at the request of the CIA, sent a telex to its headquarters in Australia in which it stated that &quot;CIA can not see how this dialogue with continued reference to CIA can do other than blow the lid off these installations&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; In addition to Stallings, the names of his successors (senior CIA officers) and the CIA station chief in Canberra had appeared in the press.<br /> <br /> Kerr, who was taken with the world of spookery and regularly saw classified material, in all likelihood was aware of the ASIO telex and the CIA ultimatum.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; On the 11th, he dismissed Whitlam as Prime Minister, dissolved both houses of Parliament, and appointed Malcolm Fraser, the leader of the Liberal Party, to head an interim government until new elections could be held on 13 December. In the hours between the appointment of Fraser and the dissolution of Parliament, the Labor majority in the House of Representatives pushed through a no-confidence motion against Fraser, an act which obliged the Governor-General to dismiss the Liberal leader in turn. Kerr chose to ignore this maneuver, which was a legalistic one, although his dismissal of Whitlam was no less a legalistic act.<br /> <br /> On 15 October, the opposition-controlled Senate had refused to vote on a new budget appropriation bill (called &quot;Supply&quot; in Australia) in order to force the government to dissolve Parliament and hold new elections, hoping thus to regain power. Though the constitution gave the Senate the technical right to withhold approval of the budget, it was seldom interpreted literally, as it is in the United States. Precedent was of greater importance, and the fact was that in Australia's 75-year history as a Federation the Senate had never exercised this right against the federal government. Only days earlier, eight leading law professors had publicly declared such action to be constitutionally improper. The opposition tactic was thus at least debatable.<br /> <br /> When Whitlam refused to dissolve Parliament and tried to govern without the budget, a constitutional and financial crisis steadily built up over the course of several weeks. Then Kerr invoked a power as archaic and as questionable as that employed by the Senate. It was the first time a Governor-General had ever dismissed a federal prime minister; it had occurred but once before on a state level.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Melbourne newspaper, The Age (which, said the New York Times, was &quot;generally held to be one of the nation's most responsible papers&quot;),&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt; wrote that Kerr's action was &quot;a triumph of narrow legalism over common sense and popular feeling&quot;. It added:&lt;blockquote&gt;By bringing down the Government because the Senate refused it Supply, Sir John Kerr acted at least against the spirit of the Australian Constitution. Since 1901, it has been a firmly held convention that the Senate should not reject budgets … Sir John has created an awesome precedent—that a hostile Senate can bring down a government whenever it denies it Supply. [Kerr] breathed life into a constitutional relic—the right of kings and queens to unilaterally appoint governments.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The office of Governor-General had traditionally been only that of a figurehead representative of the Queen of England. Kerr's decision, however, appears as a calculated political act. He gave Whitlam no warning or ultimatum before dismissing him, no opportunity to request the dissolution of parliament, which would have permitted him to remain in office. One must read Kerr's own account of his confrontation with Whitlam to appreciate how he maneuvered the Prime Minister into stalking out of the Governor-General's office without requesting the dissolution. Kerr claims he refrained from issuing Whitlam an ultimatum because he feared that the prime minister would leave and then ask the Queen for his removal as Governor-General.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt; But he fails to explain why he didn't give Whitlam an ultimatum that had to be responded to on the spot.<br /> <br /> Kerr had been appointed, at least in theory, by the Queen. Ironically, she had done so at Whitlam's recommendation, which he had made against the wishes of his party's left-wing. Kerr's action added to Whitlam's reputation as a bad judge of character, a man easily taken in.<br /> <br /> Certainly the warning signs were there, for John Kerr had been intimately involved with CIA fronts for a number of years. In the 1950s he joined the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, an organization spawned by the CIA's Congress for Cultural Freedom (see Western Europe chapter). Kerr became a member of the organization's executive board in 1957 and also wrote for its magazine Quadrant. One article, in 1960, was entitled &quot;The struggle against communism in the trade unions&quot;, a program and tactic, as we have seen, the CIA has consistently accorded a high priority to throughout the world.<br /> <br /> In 1966 Kerr helped to found Lawasia (or Law Asia), an organization of lawyers in the Far East funded by the Asia Foundation. The Foundation was one of the most prominent CIA fronts for over a decade, with offices and representatives in all the major capitals of Asia; one of its prime missions, Victor Marchetti has written, was &quot;to disseminate throughout Asia a negative vision of mainland China, North Vietnam, and North Korea&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt; Kerr became Lawasia's first president, a position he held until 1970. He describes the organization as &quot;a non-communist group of Asian lawyers&quot; which the Asia Foundation supported because &quot;the rule of law is a good thing, a strong legal profession is a good thing, and talk between lawyers is a good thing.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;There was a bit of a celebration&quot; in the CIA when Whitlam was dismissed by Kerr, reported Christopher Boyce. Boyce is an American who was working at the time for TRW Systems, Inc., Los Angeles, in a cryptographic communications center which linked CIA headquarters in Virginia with the Agency's satellite surveillance system in Australia. In his position, Boyce was privy to telex communications between the two stations. The CIA, he said, referred to Kerr as &quot;our man&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Boyce also revealed that the CIA had infiltrated Australian labor unions, had been &quot;manipulating the leadership&quot;, and had &quot;suppressed their strikes&quot;, particularly those involving railroads and airports. The last was reportedly because the strikes were holding up deliveries of equipment to the Agency's installations. Some unions as well had been in the forefront of opposition to the installations.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As matters turned out, Whitlam lost the new election.<br /> <br /> One other CIA operation in Australia deserves mention. This is the Nugan Hand Merchant Bank of Sydney, truly a CIA bank. Founded in 1973 by Frank Nugan, an Australian, and Michael Hand, an American formerly with the Green Berets in Vietnam and with the CIA airline Air America, the bank exhibited phenomenal growth over the next few years. It opened branch offices in Saudi Arabia, Hamburg, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, Argentina, Chile, Hawaii, Washington and Annapolis, Maryland, run by men with backgrounds in the CIA, OSS, Green Berets, and similar specialty areas of banking. Former CIA Director William Colby was one of the bank's attorneys.<br /> <br /> The Nugan Hand Bank succeeded in expanding the scope of normal banking services. Among the activities it was reportedly involved in were: drug trafficking, international arms dealing, links to organized crime, laundering money for President Suharto of Indonesia, unspecified services for President and Mrs. Marcos of the Philippines, assisting the Shah of Iran's family to shift money out of Iran, channeling CIA money into pro-American political parties and operations in Europe, transferring $2.4 million to the Australian Liberal Party through one of the bank's many associated companies, attempting to blackmail an Australian state minister who was investigating organized crime (the CIA opened a Swiss bank account in his name and threatened to leak the information), and a host of other socially useful projects.<br /> <br /> In addition, several mysterious deaths have been connected to the bank, including that of a ranking CIA officer in Maryland. And on 27 January 1980, Frank Nugan was himself found shot dead in his car. In June, Michael Hand disappeared without a trace. The Nugan Hand Merchant Bank collapsed, $50 million or so in debt.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Angola 1975 to 1980s: The Great Powers Poker Game ==<br /> It is spring 1975. Saigon has just fallen. The last of the Americans are fleeing for their lives. Fallout from Watergate hangs heavy in the air in the United States. The Pike Committee of the House of Representatives is investigating CIA foreign covert activities. On the Senate side, the Church Committee is doing the same. And the Rockefeller Commission has set about investigating the Agency's domestic activities. The morning papers bring fresh revelations about CIA and FBI misdeeds.<br /> <br /> The CIA and its influential supporters warn that the crescendo of disclosures will inhibit the Agency from carrying out the functions necessary for national security.<br /> <br /> At CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, they are busy preparing for their next secret adventure: Angola.<br /> <br /> To undertake a military operation at such a moment, the reasons, one would imagine, must have been both compelling and urgent. Yet, in the long history of American interventions it would be difficult to find one more pointless or with less to gain for the United States or the foreign people involved.<br /> <br /> The origin of our story dates back to the beginning of the 1960s when two political movements in Angola began to oppose by force the Portuguese colonial government: the MPLA, led by Agostinho Neto, and the FNLA, led by Holden Roberto. (The latter group was known by other names in its early years, but for simplicity will be referred to here only as FNLA.)<br /> <br /> The United States, not normally in the business of supporting &quot;liberation&quot; movements, decided that inasmuch as Portugal would probably be unable to hold on to its colony forever, establishing contact with a possible successor regime might prove beneficial. For reasons lost in the mists of history, the United States, or at least someone in the CIA, decided that Roberto was their man and around 1961 or '62 onto the Agency payroll he went.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At the same time, and during the ensuing years, Washington provided their NATO ally, the Salazar dictatorship in Lisbon, with the military aid and counter-insurgency training needed to suppress the rebellion. John Marcum, an American scholar who walked 800 miles through Angola into the FNLA guerrilla camps in the early 1960s, has written:&lt;blockquote&gt;By January 1962 outside observers could watch Portuguese planes bomb and strafe African villages, visit the charred remains of towns like Mbanza M'Pangu and M'Pangala, and copy the data from 750-point napalm bomb casings from which the Portuguese had not removed the labels marked &quot;Property U.S. Air Force&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The Soviet Union, which had also given some support to Roberto, embraced Neto instead in 1964, arguing that Roberto had helped the discredited Moise Tshombe in the Congo and curtailed his own guerrilla operations in Angola under pressure from Washington.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Before long, another movement, UNITA by name, entered the picture and China dealt itself into The Great Powers Poker Game, lending support to UNITA and FNLA.<br /> <br /> Although MPLA may have been somewhat more genuine in its leftist convictions than FNLA or UNITA, there was little to distinguish any of the three groups from each other ideologically. When the press made any distinction amongst them it was usually to refer to MPLA as &quot;Marxist&quot;, but this was ill-defined, if defined at all, and simply took on a media life of its own. Each of the groups spoke of socialism and employed Marxist rhetoric when the occasion called for it, and genuflected to other gods when it did not. In the 1960s, each of them was perfectly willing to accept support from any country willing to give it without excessive strings attached. Neto, for example, went to Washington in December 1962 to put his case before the American government and press and to emphasize the fallacy of categorizing the MPLA as communist. During the following two years, Roberto appealed for aid to the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, Algeria, and Nasser's Egypt. Later, Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA, approached the same countries (with the exception perhaps of the Soviet Union) as well as North Vietnam, and accepted military training for his men from North Korea.<br /> <br /> Each group was composed predominantly of members of a particular tribe; each tried to discourage aid or recognition being given to the others; they each suffered from serious internal splits and spent as much time fighting each other as they did the Portuguese army. The Vietcong they were not.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Author Jonathan Kwitny has observed that the three tribal nations had a long history of fighting each other …&lt;blockquote&gt;It was not until the latter part of the twentieth century, however, that Dr. Henry Kissinger and other political scientists discovered that the real reason the Mbundu, the Ovimbundu, and the Kongo had been fighting off and on for the past 500 years was that the Mbundu were &quot;Marxist&quot; and the Ovimbundu and Kongo were &quot;pro-Western&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;That the CIA's choosing of its ally was largely an arbitrary process is further underlined by a State Department cable to its African Embassies in 1963 which stated: &quot;U.S. policy is not, repeat not, to discourage [an] MPLA … move toward West and not to choose between these two movements.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Even in 1975, when the head of the CIA, William Colby, was asked by a congressional committee what the differences were between the three contesting factions, he responded:&lt;blockquote&gt;They are all independents. They are all for black Africa. They are all for some fuzzy kind of social system, you know, without really much articulation, but some sort of let's not be exploited by the capitalist nations.&lt;/blockquote&gt;And when asked why the Chinese were backing the FNLA or UNITA, he stated: &quot;Because the Soviets are backing the MPLA is the simplest answer.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;It sounds,&quot; said Congressman Aspin, &quot;like that is why we are doing it.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;It is,&quot; replied Colby.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Nonetheless, the committee, in its later report, asserted that in view of Colby's statement, &quot;The U.S.'s expressed opposition to the MPLA is puzzling&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Finally, it is instructive to note that all three groups were denounced by the Portuguese as communists and terrorists.<br /> <br /> Before April 1974, when a coup in Portugal ousted the dictatorship, the aid given to the Angolan resistance movements by their various foreign patrons was sporadic and insignificant, essentially a matter of the patrons keeping their hands in the game. The coup, however, raised the stakes, for the new Portuguese government soon declared its willingness to grant independence to its African colonies.<br /> <br /> In an agreement announced on 15 January 1975, the three movements formed a transitional government with elections to be held in October and formal independence to take place the following month.<br /> <br /> Since 1969, Roberto had been on a $10,000-a-year retainer from the CIA.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; On 22 January, the Forty Committee of the National Security Council in Washington authorized the CIA to pass $300,000 to Roberto and the FNLA for &quot;various political action activities, restricted to non-military objectives.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; Such funds of course can always free up other funds for military uses.<br /> <br /> In March, the FNLA, historically the most warlike of the groups, attacked MPLA headquarters and later gunned down 51 unarmed, young MPLA recruits.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; These incidents served to spark what was to be a full-scale civil war, with UNITA aligning itself with FNLA against MPLA. The scheduled elections would never take place.<br /> <br /> Also in March, the first large shipment of arms reportedly arrived from the Soviet Union for the MPLA.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; The House investigating committee subsequently stated that &quot;Later events have suggested that this infusion of US aid [the $300,000], unprecedented and massive in the underdeveloped colony, may have panicked the Soviets into arming their MPLA clients&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Soviets may have been as much influenced by the fact that China had sent a huge arms package to the FNLA the previous September and had dispatched over one hundred military advisers to neighboring Zaire to train Roberto's soldiers only a month after the coup in Portugal.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA made its first major weapons shipment to the FNLA in July 1975. Thus, like the Russians and the Chinese, the United States was giving aid to one side of the Angolan civil war on a level far greater than it had ever provided during the struggle against Portuguese colonialism.<br /> <br /> The United States was directly involved in the civil war to a marked degree. In addition to training Angolan combat units, US personnel did considerable flying between Zaire and Angola carrying out reconnaissance and supply missions,&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; and the CIA spent over a million dollars on an ambitious mercenary program.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; Several reports appeared in the US press stating that many American mercenaries were fighting in Angola against the MPLA—from &quot;scores&quot; to &quot;300&quot;—and that many others were being recruited and trained in the United States to join them. But John Stockwell, the head of the CIA's Angola task force, puts the number of American mercenaries who actually made it to Angola at only 24.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt; However, Holden Roberto was using CIA money, with the Agency's tacit approval, to recruit many other mercenaries—over 100 British plus a scattering of French and Portuguese.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt; The CIA was also directly financing the arming of British mercenaries.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt; (The mercenaries included amongst their number the well-known Englishman and psychopath George Cullen who lined up 14 of his fellow soldiers-of-fortune and shot them all dead because they had mistakenly attacked the wrong side.)&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Subsequently, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger informed the Senate that &quot;the CIA is not involved&quot; in the recruitment of mercenaries for Angola.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> There were also well over a hundred CIA officers and American military advisers scurrying about Angola, Zaire, Zambia and South Africa helping to direct the military operations and practicing their propaganda skills.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; Through recruited journalists representing major news services, the Agency was able to generate international coverage for false reports of Soviet advisers in Angola. One CIA story, announced to the press by UNITA, was that 20 Russians and 35 Cubans had been captured. Another fabrication concerned alleged rapes committed by Cuban soldiers in Angola; this was elaborated to include their capture, trial, and execution, complete with photos of the young women killing the Cubans who had raped them.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Both stories were reported widely in the American and British press and elsewhere. Some of the major newspapers, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Guardian of London, were careful to point out that the only source of the information was UNITA and their articles did not attempt to ascribe any special credence to the reports.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; But this could not of course prevent the placing of seeds of belief in the minds of readers already conditioned to believe the worst about communists.<br /> <br /> The disinformation campaign took place within the United States as well. FNLA delegates came to New York in September to lobby for support at the UN and with the New York press, distributing as they went copies of a &quot;white paper&quot; on the Angolan conflict prepared at CIA headquarters but made to look like it was produced in Zaire, French and all.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt; John Stockwell described the paper as sometimes &quot;false to the point of being ludicrous&quot; and other times &quot;simply inaccurate&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Afterward, representatives of UNITA went to Washington and presented to members of Congress, the State Department, the White House and the media, verbal reports about the situation in Angola which were the product of briefings given them by their CIA case officers.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In January 1976, William Colby sat before the Senate investigating committee and solemnly assured the Senators:&lt;blockquote&gt;We have taken particular caution to ensure that our operations are focused abroad and not at the United States to influence the opinion of the American people about things from the CIA point of view.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;There was virtually no important aspect of the Angolan intervention which Colby, Kissinger, and other high officials did not misrepresent to Congress and the media.<br /> <br /> The odds never favored a military victory for the US-backed forces in Angola, particularly in the absence of a relatively large-scale American commitment which, given the political atmosphere, was not in the cards. The MPLA was the most organized and best led of the three factions and early on controlled the capital city of Luanda, which housed almost the entire governmental machinery. Yet, for no reason, apparently, other than anti-Soviet spite, the United States was unwilling to allow a negotiated settlement. When Savimbi of UNITA sent out feelers to the MPLA in September 1975 to discuss a peaceful solution he was admonished by the CIA. Similarly, the following month when an MPLA delegation went to Washington to once again express their potential friendliness to the United States, they received a cool reception, being seen only by a low-level State Department official.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In November MPLA representatives came to Washington to plead for the release of two Boeing jet airliners which their government had paid for but which the State Department would not allow to be exported. John Stockwell relates the unusual development that the MPLA men were accompanied by Bob Temmons, who until shortly before had been the head of the CIA station in Luanda, as well as by the president of Boeing. While the two Angolans and the man from Boeing petitioned the State Department, the CIA man made known to Agency headquarters that he had come to share the view of the US Consul General in Luanda &quot;that the MPLA was best qualified to run the country, that it was not demonstrably hostile to the United States, and that the United States should make peace with it as quickly as possible.&quot;<br /> <br /> The State Department's response to the MPLA representatives was simple: the price for any American co-operation with the Angolan government was Soviet influence out, US influence in.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At one time or another almost two dozen countries, East and West, felt the urge to intervene in the conflict. Principal amongst these were the United States, China, South Africa and Zaire on the side of FNLA/UNITA, and the Soviet Union, Cuba, the Congo Republic and Katangese troops (Zairian rebels) supporting MPLA. The presence of South African forces on their side cost the United States and its Angolan allies dearly in support from other countries, particularly in Africa. Yet, South Africa's participation in the war had been directly solicited by the United States.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt; In sharp contrast to stated American policy, the CIA and the National Security Agency had been collaborating with Pretoria's intelligence service since the 1960s and continued to do so in regard to Angola. One of the principal focuses of the intelligence provided by the US to South Africa was the African National Congress, the leading anti-apartheid organization which had been banned and exiled.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt; In 1962, the South African police arrested ANC leader Nelson Mandela based on information as to his whereabouts and disguise provided them by CIA officer Donald Rickard. Mandela spent almost 28 years in prison.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1977, the Carter administration banned the sharing of intelligence with South Africa, but this was largely ignored by the American intelligence agencies. Two years earlier, the CIA had set up a covert mechanism whereby arms were delivered to the South Africans; this practice, in violation of US law, continued until at least 1978, and a portion of the arms were more than likely put to use in Angola.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt; South Africa in turn helped to ferry American military aid from Zaire into Angola.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In fairness to the CIA, it must be pointed out that its people were not entirely oblivious or insensitive to what South Africa represented. The Agency was very careful about letting its black officers into the Angola program.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A congressional cutoff of aid to the FNLA/UNITA, enacted in January 1976, hammered a decisive nail into their coffin. Congressmen did not yet know the full truth about the American operation, but enough of the public dumbshow had been exposed to make them incensed at how Kissinger, Colby, et al. had lied to their faces. The consequence was one of the infrequent occasions in modern times that the US Congress has exercised a direct and pivotal influence upon American foreign policy. In the process, it avoided the slippery slope to another Vietnam, on top of which stood Henry Kissinger and the CIA with shoes waxed.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By February, the MPLA, with indispensable help from Cuban troops and Soviet military equipment, had all but routed their opponents. The Cuban presence in Angola was primarily a direct response to South African attacks against the MPLA. Wayne Smith, director of the State Department's Office of Cuban Affairs from 1977 to 1979, has written that &quot;in August and October [1975] South African troops invaded Angola with full U.S. knowledge. No Cuban troops were in Angola prior to this intervention.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Savimbi at this time again considered reaching an understanding with the MPLA. The response from Washington was: Keep fighting. Kissinger personally promised UNITA continued support if they maintained their resistance, knowing full well that there was no more support to give. During the two weeks that Savimbi waited for his answer, he lost 600 men in a single battlefield.&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt; Yet, incredibly, less than two months before, the Secretary of State had stated: &quot;We are not opposed to the MPLA as such … We can live with any of the factions in Angola.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt; The man was wholly obsessed with countering Soviet moves anywhere on the planet—significant or trivial, real or imagined, fait accompli or anticipated. He was perhaps particularly driven in this case, for as he later wrote: &quot;Angola represents the first time that the Soviets have moved militarily at long distance to impose a regime of their choice.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> If this seems far removed from how the academics tell us American foreign policy is made, it's still more plausible than the other explanation commonly advanced for the policy in Angola, viz: it was done to please Sese Seko Mobutu, the head of Zaire, characterized as America's most important ally/client in Africa, if not in the Third World.&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt; (Zaire was home to the CIA's largest station in Africa.) Mobutu desired an Angolan government he could sway, primarily to prevent Angola being used as a sanctuary by his arch foes, the rebels from Katanga province in Zaire. Accordingly, the Zairian leader committed his US-equipped armed forces into combat in Angola, on the side of the FNLA, for Holden Roberto happened to be a relation of his, although Roberto and the FNLA had little else going for them. As Professor Gerald Bender, a leading American authority on Angola, testified before Congress in 1978:&lt;blockquote&gt;Although the United States has supported the FNLA in Angola for 17 years, it is virtually impossible to find an American official, scholar or journalist, who is familiar with that party, who will testify positively about its organization or leadership. After a debate with a senior State Department official at the end of the Angolan civil war, I asked him why the United States ever bet on the FNLA. He replied, &quot;I'll be damned if I know; I have never seen a single report or memo which suggests that the FNLA has any organization, solid leaders, or an ideology which we could count on.&quot; Even foreign leaders who have supported Holden Roberto, such as General Mobutu, agree with that assessment. When asked by a visiting U.S. Senator if he thought Roberto would make a good leader for Angola, Mobutu replied, &quot;Hell no!&quot;&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Kissinger himself told the House investigating committee that promoting the stability of Mobutu was one of the prime reasons for the American policy in Angola.&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt; Yet, even if this were one of Kissinger's rare truthful remarks about the Angola situation, and even if this could be a valid justification for serious intervention in a civil war in a third country, his statement challenges, if it does not defeat, comprehension; for in June 1975, a month before the United States shipped its first major arms package to the FNLA, Mobutu had accused the US of plotting his overthrow and assassination, whereupon he expelled the American ambassador (see Zaire chapter).<br /> <br /> The Secretary of State, never at a loss for the glib line custom-made for his immediate audience, also told Israeli officials that failure to stop the Russians in Angola &quot;could encourage Arab countries such as Syria to run risks that could lead to a new attack on Israel, backed up by the Russians.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The American ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Moynihan, did not greatly enhance the level of discussion when he declared that if the United States did not step in &quot;the Communists would take over Angola and will thereby considerably control the oil shipping lanes from the Persian Gulf to Europe. They will be next to Brazil. They will have a large chunk of Africa, and the world will be different in the aftermath if they succeed.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt; A truly baroque train of thought, and another example of what cold-war conditioning could do to an otherwise intelligent and educated person.<br /> <br /> With only a change in place names, similar geo-political-domino theories have been put forth to give a veneer of rationality to so many American interventions. In this case, as in the others where the &quot;communists&quot; won, nothing of the sort ensued.<br /> <br /> &quot;In all respect to Kissinger,&quot; Jonathan Kwitny has written, &quot;one really has to question the sanity of someone who looks at an ancient tribal dispute over control of distant coffee fields and sees in it a Soviet threat to the security of the United States.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The MPLA in power was restricted by the same domestic and international economic realities which the FNLA or UNITA would have faced. Accordingly, it discouraged union militancy, dealt sternly with strikes, exhorted the workers to produce more, entered into commercial contracts with several multinationals, and did not raise the hammer and sickle over the president's palace.&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt; The MPLA urged Gulf Oil Co. to continue its exclusive operation in Cabinda province and guaranteed the safety of the American corporation's employees while the fighting was still heavy. Gulf was completely amenable to this offer, but the CIA and the State Department put pressure on the company to discontinue its royalty payments to the MPLA, thus jeopardizing the entire oil venture in a way that the &quot;Marxist&quot; government never did. One aspect of this pressure was a threat by Kissinger to open an investigation of international bribery by the company. Gulf compromised by putting its payments into an escrow bank account until the civil war came to an end of sorts a few months later, at which time payments to the MPLA were resumed.&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Contrary to accepted Western belief, Cuba did not enter the Angolan war as a Soviet surrogate. John Stockwell has noted that after the war the CIA &quot;learned that Cuba had not been ordered into action by the Soviet Union&quot; but that &quot;the Cuban leaders felt compelled to intervene for their own ideological reasons.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt; In 1977, the New York magazine Africa Report stated that &quot;The Cubans have supported [MPLA leader Neto's] pragmatic approach toward Western investment and his attempts to maintain a foreign policy of non-alignment.&quot; The magazine also reported that on 27 May the Angolan government had announced that, aided by Cuban troops, it had crushed a rebellion by a faction of the MPLA whose leader claimed to have Soviet support.&lt;sup&gt;51&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The civil war in Angola did not actually come to an end in 1976 as it appeared to, for the fighting lingered on intermittently, sometimes moderately, sometimes ferociously.<br /> <br /> In 1984 a confidential memorandum smuggled out of Zaire revealed that the United States and South Africa had met in November 1983 to discuss destabilization of the Angola government. Plans were drawn up to supply more military aid to UNITA (the FNLA was now defunct) and discussions were held on ways to implement a wide range of tactics: unify the anti-government movements, stir up popular feeling against the government, sabotage factories and transport systems, seize strategic points, disrupt joint Angola-Soviet projects, undermine relations between the government and the Soviet Union and Cuba, bring pressure to bear on Cuba to withdraw its troops, sow divisions in the ranks of the MPLA leadership, infiltrate agents into the Angolan army, and apply pressure to stem the flow of foreign investments into Angola.<br /> <br /> The United States branded the document a forgery, but UNITA's representative in Washington would neither confirm nor deny that the meeting took place. He stated, however, that UNITA had &quot;contacts with US officials at all levels on a regular basis&quot;.<br /> <br /> The aim of the operation, according to the memorandum, was to force part of the Angolan leadership to negotiate with UNITA, precisely what Washington had successfully discouraged years earlier.&lt;sup&gt;52&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A month after the reported US-South Africa meeting, the UN Security Council censured South Africa for its military operations in Angola, and endorsed Luanda's right to reparations. Only the United States, abstaining, did not support the resolution.&lt;sup&gt;53&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In August 1985, after a three-year battle with Congress, the Reagan administration won a repeal of the 1976 prohibition against US military aid to rebel forces in Angola. Military assistance began to flow to UNITA overtly as well as covertly. In January 1987, Washington announced that it was providing the rebels with Stinger missiles and other anti-aircraft weaponry. Three months earlier, Jonas Savimbi had spoken before the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France in an appeal for support. Following his talk, however, a plenary session of the Parliament criticized American support for the guerrilla leader and passed a resolution which described UNITA as a &quot;terrorist organization which supports South Africa.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;54&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Finally, in September 1992, elections were held, but when it became apparent that the MPLA would be the winner in a run-off—in polling which the UN certified to be free and fair—Savimbi refused to accept the result. He ended a year-old cease-fire and launched one of UNITA's largest, most sustained offensives of the war, still being supplied by South Africa, and, in recent years, by American &quot;private&quot; airlines and &quot;relief&quot; organizations with interesting histories such as previous contacts to the Nicaraguan contras.&lt;sup&gt;55&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In May 1993, Washington finally recognized the Angolan government. In January, just before the Clinton administration took over, a senior State Department official had declared: &quot;Unita is exactly like the Khmer Rouge: elections and negotiations are just one more method of fighting a war; power is all.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;56&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By this time, the war had taken more than 300,000 lives, producing widespread hunger and what was said to be the highest amputee rate in the world, caused by the innumerable land mines. The death in combat of Savimbi in February 2002 appeared to offer a ray of hope for the future.<br /> <br /> == Zaire 1975-1978: Mobutu and the CIA, a marriage made in heaven ==<br /> By 1975, President Mobutu Sese Seko (née Joseph Mobutu), the Zairian (née Congo) strongman regarded by the CIA as one of its &quot;successes&quot; in Africa, had ruled over his hapless, impoverished subjects for 10 long years. In the process, with a flair for conspicuous corruption that ranks amongst the best this century has to offer, Mobutu amassed a personal fortune estimated to run into the billions of dollars sitting in the usual Swiss, Paris, and New York banks, while most of the population suffered from severe malnutrition.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It can reasonably be said that his corruption was matched only by his cruelty. Mobutu, one observer of Zaire has written,&lt;blockquote&gt;rules by decree with a grotesque impulsiveness that seems to shock even his former [CIA] case officers. One recalled that in June 1971 Mobutu had forcibly enlisted in the armed forces the entire student body of Lovanium University. &quot;He was put out by some student demonstrations,&quot; remembered the official. Mobutu finally relented, but ten of the students were sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes of &quot;public insult&quot; to the Chief of State…. One intelligence source recalls a fervent Mobutu approach, eventually deflected, that either Zaire with CIA help or the Agency alone undertake an invasion against &quot;those bastards across the river&quot; in the Congo Republic (Brazzaville). He's a &quot;real wild man,&quot; said one former official, &quot;and we've had trouble keeping him under rein.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;This may not have been for lack of trying. In June 1975 Mobutu announced that he had uncovered and suppressed a coup attempt aimed at his &quot;physical elimination&quot;. He blamed an unnamed &quot;large foreign power&quot; and Zairian citizens &quot;thirsty for money&quot; (sic). The charges appeared in a government-controlled newspaper in the form of a letter from Mobutu, with an accompanying editorial indicating plainly that the large foreign power was the United States. A few days later, Zairian newspapers asserted that the CIA had organized tribal dissidents and black Americans for a coup against Mobutu planned for 30 September. It is not clear what relation this allegation had to the earlier one.<br /> <br /> Mobutu declared that the &quot;imperialists&quot; were displeased with his breaking off relations with Israel, his nationalization of many foreign-owned businesses, and the &quot;sincere and reciprocal&quot; friendships which were developing between Zaire and China and North Korea. Several high-ranking Zairian military officers as well as other military men and civilians were arrested, their number reportedly including most of the CIA's indigenous agents in Zaire. The government announced that one of the arrested officers had returned four months ago from a US military school, another had been the Zairian military attaché in Washington until two weeks before, and a third had recently returned from studies at Fort Bragg, North Carolina where, as a class assignment, he had prepared a report on &quot;How to plan and carry out a coup d'état against the government of Zaire.&quot; This last is not as ridiculous as it may sound. Such &quot;hypothetical&quot; exercises have been reported before by former students at CIA schools, although without the name of a real country being used and under the cover of learning how to suppress a coup attempt (as torture methods were taught in Vietnam under the cover of &quot;countermeasures to hostile interrogation&quot;; similarly, as we have seen, for the teaching of bombing techniques and chemical/biological warfare).<br /> <br /> Eventually, seven of those arrested were condemned to death for the alleged plot (including some of the CIA's agents), seven men were acquitted, and 27 others given prison sentences. No Americans were named as conspirators, but the US ambassador, Deane R. Hinton, was ordered to leave the country and Zaire recalled its ambassador from Washington.<br /> <br /> The State Department denied the allegations and called upon the Zairian government to provide evidence, which the latter failed to do. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger announced that the charges were based on &quot;totally wrong information that fell into the hands of Zaire&quot; and &quot;was probably the result of forgery&quot;. It is difficult to evaluate Kissinger's assertion inasmuch as the Zairian government had made no public mention of any documents.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Mobutu may indeed have been taken in by forged documents or, scoundrel that he was, he may have built a mountain out of a molehill of truth. It was suggested that his action was a pretext to get rid of certain Zairian military officers or that he was looking for a scapegoat for domestic problems.<br /> <br /> On the other hand, it would not have been the first time that the CIA was involved in a plot to eliminate an ostensible ally of the United States—Trujillo, Figueres and Diem are cases in point. Mobutu, at this time, for his own reasons was deeply involved in the civil war in Angola on the side of the CIA-supported forces. Zaire was serving as an indispensable rear base and training and supply point, and Zairian troops were engaged in the fighting. The Agency may have felt very uneasy that the head of this vital ally in war was a man as erratic, unpredictable and uncontrollable as Mobutu Sese Seko. &quot;Mobutu is screwing up Zaire pretty good, you know,&quot; commented a senior CIA officer upon returning to Washington from a meeting with the Zairian leader, shortly after his accusation against the United States. &quot;He simply has no idea of how to run a country.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Moreover, although Chinese and North Korean military advisers in Zaire were training forces fighting on the same side as the United States in the Angolan free-for-all, the simple tenet of cold-war life was that an American ally does not do things like invite Chinese and North Korean military advisers to their country. And the Zairian &quot;wild man&quot; had twice broken relations with the Soviet Union and twice re-established them. There was no telling what whimsy he might pursue next.<br /> <br /> There is also the matter of the expelled American Ambassador. Deane Roesch Hinton was no ordinary Foreign Service career diplomat. He had worked closely with the CIA since the 1950s and was no stranger to extra-diplomatic operations. From 1967 to 1969 in Guatemala and the following two years in Chile (against Allende), Hinton, under the cover of the Agency for International Development (AID), had played a role in the CIA operations. He then served on a subcommittee of the National Security Council until taking up his post in Zaire in 1974.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After the brouhaha about the alleged coup, both the CIA and Mobutu acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, although the Agency did make an appeal to the Zairian president for the freedom of their agents sitting on death row&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; (outcome unknown), and did seem to be remarkably submissive to Mobutu's usual obnoxious and impulsive behavior. In October, Mobutu asked the CIA to help him annex Cabinda, a province of Angola that was separated from the rest of Angola by a narrow strip of Zairian territory. Mobutu had coveted the province since coming to power in 1965. His greed for it was heightened a few years later when oil was discovered off the Cabindan coastline. The CIA, although busily involved in the Angolan civil war at this time, promptly flew in a one-thousand-man arms package for use by Zairian troops who marched into Cabinda. Agency officials helped to co-ordinate this almost casual invasion of a sovereign nation, but the operation proved to be singularly unsuccessful.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Six months later, in April 1976, the CIA gave Mobutu close to $1.4 million to distribute to US-backed Angolan forces, thousands of whom were refugees in Zaire, desperate and hungry. Mobutu simply pocketed the money. The Agency had been aware of this possibility when they delivered the money to him but, in the words of CIA Africa specialist John Stockwell, &quot;They rationalized that it would mollify him, bribe him not to retaliate against the CIA.&quot; Stockwell added this observation:&lt;blockquote&gt;It is an interesting paradox that the Securities and Exchange Commission has since 1971 investigated, and the Justice Department has prosecuted, several large U.S. corporations for using bribery to facilitate their overseas operations. At the same time, the U.S. government, through the CIA, disburses tens of millions of dollars each year in cash bribes. Bribery is a standard operating technique of the U.S. government, via the CIA, but it is a criminal offense for U.S. business.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The same can be said of murder. A few months earlier, in January 1976, the Justice Department had concluded that no grounds existed for federal prosecution of CIA officials involved in plots to assassinate several heads of state, including Patrice Lumumba of the Congo.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In early March 1977, during a pause in the Angola war, members of the Lunda (or Balunda) tribal group of Zaire who had been in exile in Angola and fighting along with their Angolan tribal kin on the side of the MPLA, crossed the border and invaded Zaire in a resumption of their own civil war. The invaders, numbering at least 2,000, were composed largely of former residents of Katanga (now Shaba) province who had fled the Congo during the early 1960s following the failure of their secessionist movement (see Congo chapter).<br /> <br /> Mobutu urgently requested help from Zaire's traditional arms suppliers, Belgium, France and the United States, to put down this threat to his control of the mineral-rich Shaba province which accounted for about 70 percent of Zaire's foreign exchange. The United States responded immediately with some $2 million of military supplies, reaching $15 million worth within a month, while Belgium and France provided large amounts of arms and ammunition as well as 14 Mirage jet bombers from the latter.<br /> <br /> Jimmy Carter had been in office less than two months when the Zairian conflict broke out, and he was reluctant to involve his administration deeply in a foreign adventure whose ultimate commitment could not be foreseen. The Angolan involvement had only recently wound down under severe congressional criticism. Compared to this and other American interventions, Carter's action in Zaire constituted a fairly mild response, mild enough to enable Washington to pass off its policy as one of &quot;non-intervention&quot; and effectively obscure the fact that it was actively taking sides in a civil war.<br /> <br /> The administration pointed out that its aid was all of a &quot;non-lethal&quot; type (that is, a military transport plane, spare parts, fuel, communication equipment, parachutes, etc.); that the aid represented a drawing of credits already authorized by Congress for Zaire—as if the United States government therefore had no other choice in the matter; and that it had refused a Zairian request for further assistance. President Carter asserted on more than one occasion that the Zaire crisis was an African problem, best solved by Africans, yet he apparently saw no contradiction to this thesis in his own policy, nor did he offer any criticism of France or Belgium, or of China, which sent Mobutu a substantial amount of military equipment.<br /> <br /> Carter denied the suggestion that US aid to Zaire was part of a coordinated venture with France, Belgium, Morocco, Egypt and the Sudan; and, at the same time, the State Department characterized American policy as &quot;a neither help-nor-hinder position&quot; towards Zaire. Yet, only a few days earlier, the United States had given its tacit approval to Morocco's decision to send 1,500 of its American-armed troops to aid Mobutu's cause, while confirming that &quot;both by law and bilateral agreement, Morocco would have to obtain Washington's permission in advance if its army used American weapons outside Morocco&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; Whether the Zairian rebels felt put out by the American non-lethal, non-help-nor-hinder, non-intervention policy was not reported.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In mid-April, Newsday broke a story that the CIA was secretly supporting efforts to recruit several hundred mercenaries in the United States and Great Britain to serve alongside Zaire's notoriously ineffective army. David Bufkin, a 38-year-old Californian who reportedly was an experienced mercenary himself and had recruited other Americans for Angola, said that American &quot;soldiers of fortune&quot; would leave within a week for Zaire to fight against the rebels. Bufkin had advertised for former military men with combat experience for this particular mission.<br /> <br /> The New York newspaper stated that the CIA had &quot;strong links&quot; to Bufkin and had told the Justice Department that it would not cooperate in any investigation of the Californian. (It is a criminal offense in the United States to recruit an American citizen for service with foreign armed forces or to enlist for such service.)<br /> <br /> &quot;Diplomats in Washington,&quot; the New York Times reported, &quot;said they understood that President Mobutu Sese Seko had indicated several weeks ago that Zaire might have to recruit mercenaries to repel the invasion.&quot; They added that the aid from France, Belgium, Morocco, the United States and others may have led Mobutu to abandon the idea.<br /> <br /> Bufkin denied that he was being financed by the CIA. He claimed that his financial aid &quot;is coming from Africa and that's all I can tell you&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; (This, of course, would not rule out the CIA channeling money to Bufkin via Zaire.) Several months later, the soldier of fortune revealed that he had worked with the CIA, without specifying when or where, as well as with the Korean CIA, going into some detail about his operations with the latter.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; What role, if any, was actually played by mercenaries in Zaire has not come to light.<br /> <br /> The more experienced rebels had the upper hand during the first month of the 80-day war, and the continuance of Mobutu's rule was reported to be uncertain. But the repeated pumping of men and supplies into Zaire by at least eight Western and African nations proved too much for the Lunda tribesmen. By the end of May, their offensive had been crushed and they were forced to retreat into Angola once again.<br /> <br /> Although the Lunda were engaged in a struggle for tribal autonomy, of the kind which has erupted in one African country after another following independence, Mobutu knew that it was the cold-war, anti-communist card he had to play if he was to provoke greater military support, particularly from the United States. Accordingly, Zaire began to issue regular accusations against Cuba, which had a large military contingent still stationed in Angola.<br /> <br /> Cuba had trained and armed the rebels, it was charged. This was true to some extent, but it had not been done necessarily to invade Zaire. Some quarters of the international left cloaked the Lunda in a revolutionary mantle, but the inspiration for this had more to do with the rebels being opposed by the likes of Mobutu, the United States and France than with any demonstrated revolutionary virtues. On the contrary, they were originally trained by white mercenaries and supported by Belgium and other Western interests in their secession attempt in Katanga. After fleeing to Angola, in return for sanctuary they served with the colonial Portuguese army in its campaign to put down the black nationalist guerrillas of the MPLA. Then, during the ensuing civil war in Angola, they switched over to fighting on the side of the MPLA and the Cubans.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Cuba was leading the rebels … Cuban, Russian and Portuguese troops were fighting with them, insisted the Zairian government.<br /> <br /> The invasion &quot;could not have taken place—and it could not continue—without the material support or acquiescence of the Soviet Union—whether or not Cuban troops are present&quot;, announced (now former) Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in a choice example of knee-reflex anti-communism/wishful thinking, without any evidence whatsoever.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And so it went. To the credit of the Carter administration, it resisted the temptation to embrace all the unfounded and sometimes silly charges, stating on several occasions that there was no evidence of Cuban involvement, and that the United States did not view the conflict as a confrontation between the Soviet Union and the West. An increasingly petulant Mobutu was finally moved to declare that if the United States had indeed &quot;capitulated&quot; in the face of communist danger, it should announce this clearly.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Why then, did the United States intervene at all?<br /> <br /> The day after the first American shipment of military aid, Washington expressed its concern about the possible &quot;loss&quot; to American mining interests in Zaire. However, there was not necessarily a logical connection between a Lunda capture of Shaba province, or even toppling Mobutu, and a threat to foreign investment and loans, and the Carter administration offered no elaboration of its statement. No matter who controlled the mines, they would be looking to sell the copper, the cobalt, and the other minerals. In 1960, the secession movement of these same Lunda forces in then-called Katanga province had been supported by both Washington and Belgium. (Why Belgium now opposed them was not made clear by events, except that the rebels' sabotage combined with power failure had halted the mines' water pumps, leading to widespread flooding.) And in neighboring Angola, as we have seen, when the &quot;Marxist&quot; MPLA took over control of oil-rich Cabinda province, it cooperated fully in business-as-usual with Gulf Oil Company. The Zaire government, on the other hand, in 1974, took over most small businesses and plantations without compensating the owners, and divided the spoils among political leaders loyal to Mobutu, which went well beyond anything the MPLA did.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The expressed concern about US investments may have been no more than one type of &quot;throwaway&quot; remark that has often been put forth by Washington officials to make a particular foreign involvement sound more reasonable to the American public (most ironic in this case in light of traditional Marxist analysis), while giving the administration time to decide what it is they're actually trying to achieve. No further reference to American investments was made.<br /> <br /> The American intervention in this case seems to have been little more than a highly-developed cold-war reflex action triggered by an invasion originating in a country classified as a member of the Soviet camp, and against a country ostensibly in the American or Western camp. Subsequent developments, or lack of them, may have inspired second thoughts in the administration, producing a dilemma which was succinctly summed up by a New York Times editorial observation a month into the war: &quot;The instinct for intervention seems great but the case for it is not at all clear.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Earlier, the Washington Post had expressed similar doubts. In an editorial entitled &quot;Why Zaire?&quot;, the newspaper stated that it was &quot;a highly dubious proposition for the United States to deepen its involvement in the murk of Zaire in the way that it has.&quot; President Carter, it added, &quot;has not explained the contingencies or stakes which require such an abrupt American response, nor the risks of delay&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By his second year in the White House, Jimmy Carter had managed to acquire the unfortunate image of an &quot;indecisive&quot; man, a president who was yet to demonstrate the proverbial sterling qualities of leadership. His moderate response to the events in Zaire the previous year had contributed to this reputation, particularly amongst the hardline anti-communists in the United States and amongst some of the European and African nations which had come to Mobutu's aid.<br /> <br /> Thus it was, in the middle of May 1978, when the Lunda again left Angola and invaded their home province in Zaire, that the Carter administration was once again drawn into the conflict, for reasons no more compelling than in the year before … &quot;determination this time, particularly with a meeting in 11 days in Washington of heads of NATO Governments, to act decisively&quot;, was the way the New York Times paraphrased &quot;high administration officials&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Within days the United States had sent several million dollars more of &quot;non-lethal&quot; military aid to Mobutu (condemned for human-rights violations only three months earlier by the State Department, under a president who championed human rights) while a fleet of 18 American military transport planes began ferrying Belgian and French troops into Zaire in a rescue mission of (white) foreigners trapped by the war. In the process of evacuating the foreigners, the French troops took a markedly active part in the war against the rebels, inflicting a serious military setback upon them.<br /> <br /> Subsequently, the American airlift was extended to delivering Moroccan armed forces into Shaba province, then army units from Senegal and Gabon, and transporting French troops out of the region as they were replaced by African forces.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The fighting in Shaba this time was over in less than a month. At its conclusion, the New York Times reported that &quot;Discussions with officials in recent days, have produced no single cohesive explanation&quot; for American policy in Zaire.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Times apparently was not placing too much weight upon the explanations already put forth by the administration. There were several of these in addition to the rescue mission and the need to act decisively. The president, for example, had discovered something which, it seems, he had not realized the year before; namely, that aiding Zaire was &quot;in the national security interests of the United States&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; As is customary with such crucial declarations, it was not felt necessary to explain what this actually meant in real-life terms.<br /> <br /> Administration officials also professed &quot;concern for the territorial integrity of all countries in Africa and elsewhere&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; This marvelous platitude not only managed to do away with the previous 80 years of American foreign policy, including the very recent intervention into Angola, but was irrelevant in the context of a civil war … more throwaways.<br /> <br /> Several African governments which came to the aid of Mobutu during these two years likewise expressed regard for the territorial integrity of African states, but what these states found disquieting was that a victory for the Shaba rebels might encourage tribal dissidents within their own vulnerable borders.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Another reason offered by the administration was the belief that Cuba and the Soviet Union, and even Angola, were, after all, somehow responsible. (Mobutu added Algeria and Libya.) But no more evidence to support these charges was forthcoming from any quarter than had been the case the year before, and Carter was obliged to fall back on an accusation of guilt by omission. On 25 May 1978 he declared that Cuba &quot;obviously did nothing&quot; to hold back the invasion. It then came to light that Castro had informed the US government a week earlier that he had learned of the rebel plans to invade Shaba and had tried unsuccessfully to stop it. Administration officials, clearly embarrassed, had no choice but to reply that they had not believed him.<br /> <br /> &quot;It is not a half-lie,&quot; commented Fidel Castro to charges of Cuban involvement. &quot;It is an absolute, total, complete lie.&quot;<br /> <br /> Two days later, the president rejoined: &quot;Castro could have done much more had he genuinely wanted to stop the invasion. He could have interceded with the Katangese themselves; he could certainly have imposed Cuban troops near the border.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the final scene of this light comedy, Mobutu announced that he was holding Cuban prisoners captured in the fighting—the long-awaited proof of Cuban involvement. But when the American embassy in Zaire checked into the matter it found nothing to substantiate the claim. &quot;Let's call it charitably a mistake,&quot; said one official.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Jamaica 1976-1980: Kissinger's ultimatum ==<br /> &quot;I can give you my personal word,&quot; said Henry Kissinger to Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley, &quot;that there is no attempt now underway involving covert action against the Jamaican government.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Manley has written that at this moment &quot;similar assurances given concerning Chile flashed a little ominously across my mind.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; (Kissinger had given his personal word about American non-intervention to the Chilean Ambassador in Washington in 1971 at a time when the US government, and Kissinger in particular, were actively plotting the downfall of the Chilean government. When the ambassador mentioned press references to covert American actions against his country, Kissinger responded: &quot;Absolutely absurd and without foundation.&quot;)&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Michael Manley also knew first-hand that American non-intervention in the affairs of Jamaica was not something to be taken for granted. During the 1972 election campaign, the American Ambassador in Jamaica, Vincent de Roulet, had promised Manley that the United States would not interfere in the campaign if Manley did not make nationalization of the foreign-owned bauxite industry an election issue. De Roulet feared that if Manley did so, he would oblige the opposition Jamaica Labour Party to vie with Manley's party for popular support on the question. According to de Roulet, Manley agreed and both sides kept their promise.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Secretary of State Kissinger had arrived in Jamaica in December 1975 to suggest to Manley that he change his policies or else US-Jamaican relations &quot;would be reviewed&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; Kissinger raised the subject of Jamaica's request for a $100 million trade credit. &quot;He said they were looking at it,&quot; wrote Manley later, &quot;and let the comment hang in the room for a moment. I had the feeling he was sending me a message.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Jamaican prime minister—a graduate of the London School of Economics and the son of Norman Manley who had led Jamaica to independence from the British in 1962—had incurred Washington's displeasure since taking office in 1972 by behavior such as the following:&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Expressing support for the MPLA regime in Angola which the United States was attempting to topple at the very moment of the Kissinger-Manley meeting, an issue that was one of the Secretary of State's obsessions and one which he raised during the talk.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union and maintaining close ties with the Castro government, although &quot;no closer,&quot; said Manley, &quot;than … with Mexico and Venezuela&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Advocating a form of democratic socialism, though maintaining a decidedly mixed economy which featured nothing more radical than could be found in many countries of Western Europe in the areas of health, education, minimum wage, and social services. Manley's party, the People's National Party—whose slogan was &quot;Socialism is Love&quot;—belonged to the Socialist International, as have ruling parties in modern times in Austria, Great Britain, West Germany and Sweden.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  Prevailing against the transnational aluminum companies, principally American, which operated on the island because it is rich in bauxite, the raw material of aluminum. The Jamaican government had imposed a production levy to obtain a significant—and what was regarded as long-overdue—increase in the payments made to it by the companies, and had then persuaded other bauxite-producing countries in the Third World to do the same. The government also intended to buy out 51 percent of the foreign bauxite mining operations, and planned, along with Venezuela and Mexico, to build an international aluminum processing complex outside the multinational system.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Manley was pressured by both Washington and the Jamaican left. &quot;Everyone wants me to be either a capitalist or a communist,&quot; he said at one point. &quot;Why can't they just let me be? … I've always been a democratic socialist and that's what I want in Jamaica.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; He viewed the multinational corporations in a similar vein, declaring that they &quot;have grown used to two types. One is the mendicant of the neo-colonial syndrome. The other is the revolutionary who simply sends in the army to take over the operation. Here they were dealing with neither. This was part of our search for the third path.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Jamaican prime minister did not toe the line Kissinger had drawn. Five days after the Secretary of State had departed, Manley informed him that &quot;Jamaica had decided to support the Cuban army presence in Angola because we were satisfied that they were there because of the South African invasion … I never heard another word about the hundred million dollar trade credit.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At the time of Kissinger's visit, certain destabilization operations had already gotten off the ground, particularly in the area of propaganda, but it was primarily afterward, beginning in the election year of 1976, that covert actions started to escalate. In January, a few weeks after Kissinger had left, the US Embassy in Kingston was increased by seven. Manley has noted: &quot;Yet all aid to Jamaica suddenly slowed to a virtual halt. The pipelines suddenly became clogged. Economic co-operation contracted as the embassy expanded.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Investigative reporters Ernest Volkman and John Cummings, writing in Penthouse magazine in 1977 and citing &quot;several senior American intelligence sources&quot;, stated that the destabilization program drawn up by the CIA station chief in Jamaica (Norman Descoteaux) contained the following elements:<br /> <br /> a) &quot;Covert shipments of arms and other equipment to opposition forces&quot;: Politics in Jamaica had long been spiced with strong-arm tactics, but this now intensified in both frequency and deadliness, and in the use of arson, bombing and assassination. &quot;The CIA quickly sought to organize and expand the violence: shipments of guns and sophisticated communications equipment began to be smuggled into the island. In one shipment alone, which was grabbed by Manley's security forces, there were 500 submachine guns.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Some of the CIA's traveling army of Cuban exiles arrived on the scene. One was Luis Posada Carriles, a former officer in Cuban dictator Batista's secret police, now a CIA-trained explosives expert who was implicated in the mid-air bombing of a Cubana Airlines plane in 1976 which killed 73 people. Posada was reportedly spotted at the scene of more than one bombing in Jamaica.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The well-publicized violence was a body-blow to Jamaica's vital tourist business. The foreign tourists stayed away in droves, forcing many hotels to close their doors and consigning thousands of workers to the ranks of the unemployed.<br /> <br /> b) &quot;Extensive labor unrest&quot;: A wave of strikes by transport, electrical and telephone workers hit the island, reportedly provoked in part by graduates of the American Institute for Free Labor Development, the CIA's principal labor organization in Latin America.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> c) &quot;Economic destabilization&quot;: In addition to the US credit squeeze and curtailment of aid, and the damage to tourism, the fragile Jamaican economy suffered from the actions of the aluminum companies. As an act of retaliation for the bauxite production levy—which had become law in May 1974—and with the tacit encouragement of Washington, the companies systematically reduced production, which hurt Jamaica in several ways.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; In August 1975, the American firm, Revere Copper and Brass Company, closed its aluminum refinery after only four years of operation, saying that it was uneconomical.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt; In January 1976, the company announced that it was suing the Jamaican government over the levy.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt; Whether there was any underlying destabilization motive connected to these actions is not known.<br /> <br /> A cargo of flour, brought to Jamaica on a German ship, the Heidelberg, was discovered to have been contaminated with the poison parathion, an insecticide which had been banned from Jamaica for many years. Much of the flour had already been sold and about 17 people died from it in December 1975 and January 1976. Later in the year, in October, a large shipment of rice from Costa Rica, on board the ship City of Bochum, arrived to relieve a rice shortage Jamaicans had been suffering through for months. This too was found to be contaminated by parathion and had to be destroyed.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt; The two incidents are reminiscent of the contaminations of sugar carried out by the CIA against Cuba (q.v.).<br /> <br /> d) &quot;Covert financial support for the opposition&quot;: This was principally the conservative Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). In June 1976, Jamaican security forces announced the uncovering of a plot to overthrow the government involving leading members of the JLP; another arrested party member was found to be making Molotov cocktails in a mineral-bottling plant he owned.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt; No evidence of CIA involvement in the conspiracy has been revealed.<br /> <br /> e) &quot;Mobilization of the middle class into CIA-created anti-government organizations to carry out well-publicized demonstrations&quot;: Groups with names such as &quot;Silent Majority&quot; and &quot;Christian Women Agitators for Truth&quot; were formed, the latter attacking those who criticized the United States and the CIA. In one instance, the group brought up the example of the famed and revered American doctor, Tom Dooley, who had founded seven hospitals for the poor in southeast Asia. The Christian Women could not have known then that Dr. Dooley had been a witting, active CIA operative in Indochina.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt; There was also an attempt by a newly formed &quot;National Council of Women&quot; to replay the pots-and-pans scenario which had worked so well in Chile, but this fizzled out.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; (This featured women, mostly of the upper classes with their maids, banging on pots and pans in a street march to demonstrate the government's inability to provide enough food for their families.)<br /> <br /> f) &quot;Infiltration of security services and armed forces to turn them against the government&quot;: &quot;With liberal bribes, the CIA turned many security personnel into paid informants for the agency.&quot; Several soldiers were part of a plot to assassinate Manley in July, one of at least three such attempts which &quot;the CIA was directly involved in&quot;; another, in September, employed Cuban exiles; the third turned to Jamaican gunmen to do the job. This last was in December, a final act of desperation on election night; all three attempts failed, not even a shot was fired, and Manley easily won re-election.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During the campaign, CIA officer James Holt was accused of contriving a plot to turn the military against Manley's People's National Party. According to the accusation, a tape of a PNP youth rally was spliced with a message, purporting to be from Fidel Castro, urging young people to rise up in armed struggle against the police and the army. The tape was supposed to fall into the hands of the military and cause dissension.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Press attacks against the government were carried out at a level of integrity only slightly above that of Holt's alleged tape. This was particularly the case with the Daily Gleaner whose campaign was very similar to that of El Mercurio in Chile before the fall of Allende, and it is eminently reasonable to assume that it was similarly financed by the CIA. Both newspapers had close links to the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) of Miami, the Gleaner's Managing Director, Oliver Clarke, being elected to the association's executive in 1976. The IAPA, though not a formal CIA front, had received funding from the Agency and had been a reliable and valuable press asset for it since the 1950s.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Gleaner emphasized the omnipresent Cuban menace and how Manley was a prisoner of Castro and the KGB. One recurrent theme, echoed in the American press, was the presence of Cuban troops in Jamaica, a bald lie and something that would be impossible to conceal on the small island.<br /> <br /> Propagandists arrived from the United States as well. Evangelists and faith healers came down to set up their tents and preach against communism and the government to the highly religious population,&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt; à la the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade in British Guiana during the CIA's campaign against the government of Cheddi Jagan (q.v.).<br /> <br /> With Henry Kissinger removed from formal power, and with the less interventionist Carter administration taking office in January 1977, American policy toward Jamaica was tempered: the economic pipelines were unclogged to some extent and the CIA, without the urgency of an upcoming election, diminished its activities.<br /> <br /> It cannot be said, however, that Washington officialdom had learned to respect Manley's wish to &quot;just let me be&quot;. Pulitzer prize-winner Les Payne reported in Newsday in February 1980 that &quot;the Carter Administration remains determined to drive the country's Socialist prime minister from office unless he moderates his pro-Cuban policies.&quot; In an earlier article, Payne quoted a State Department source: &quot;If within a 6-month testing period, Manley shows some signs of moderating his position, then we will take a softer line. If not, then we will continue to pursue a hard line.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> There was no let-up in the Gleaner's diatribes against Manley and his government. The newspaper reprinted numerous articles from all over the world which bore the standard CIA themes and syntax and undocumented assertions that the Agency's press assets are paid for. The Gleaner openly encouraged disaffection and mutiny in the security forces, and overthrow of the government. The following, from a column by John Hearne in June 1980, was not very unusual:&lt;blockquote&gt;In many other countries, somebody with a disciplined force of men behind him would have long ago taken the Government away from them … In most Third World countries, our Ministers, Ministers of State, Party commanders, heads of statutory boards, among others, would now be in forced exile or buried in common graves.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Throughout, the Gleaner and other anti-Manley newspapers in Jamaica bemoaned the threat to freedom of the press posed by the government—on the premise, apparently, that this is only what one can expect from a &quot;communist&quot; government—and continued to print freely what in other countries would lead to arrest for sedition.<br /> <br /> Manley was defeated for re-election in October 1980, due primarily to a continuing deterioration in the standard of living of the masses of people. While recognizing the importance of this factor, the former prime minister attributed his defeat also to &quot;propaganda and finely calculated violence&quot;, the latter having persisted throughout his second term, being particularly heavy during the election year when 800 people lost their lives in political violence. Manley wrote that &quot;Unless there is overwhelming and widely accepted evidence laying the blame for violence at the door of one party, it tends to damage the government in power, since it is the government that people look to for their personal security.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt; He added:&lt;blockquote&gt;The Jamaican establishment had mastered the ways of destabilization. It knew how to use fact and create fiction for maximum effect. We do not know what was the part played by the CIA in the last year. By then it may not have mattered because the Gleaner and the JLP had clearly reached postgraduate level.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> == 44. Seychelles 1979-1981: Yet another area of great strategic importance ==<br /> Mr. Michael Hoare, in 1981, was an elderly accountant leading a relatively sedate life in Durban, South Africa. There was, however, another side to the man that was somewhat different. In this other role he was &quot;Mad Mike&quot; Hoare, veteran mercenary. He had fought for the CIA in various &quot;trouble spots&quot; of the world, including the Congo in the 1960s, and had done the same for the government of South Africa. In 1981, at the age of 62, he led a mercenary invasion of the Seychelles on behalf of both his old employers.<br /> <br /> The Seychelles is a country made up of a number of small islands in the Indian Ocean, about 800 miles off the coast of Kenya, with a population of some 62,000. The former British Crown Colony is also the site of a US Air Force installation, officially described as a satellite tracking station, and part of an area that the United States regards as being of great strategic importance. (This should be seen in light of the fact that it would be an arduous task to locate an area of the globe that Washington policy makers, at one time or another, have not regarded as being of great strategic importance.)<br /> <br /> After France-Albert René, a socialist, took power in a 1977 coup, he withdrew South African landing rights, and the United States had to use all its formidable powers of economic and political persuasion to retain its base in the country. Moreover, the lease on the installation was to expire in 1990, and Washington, which worries about long-term &quot;national security&quot; needs as well as current trouble spots, was apprehensive that it might not be renewed. The United States was also worried about what it saw as the growing friendship between the Seychelles and the Soviet Union, a concern seemingly as common in Washington as areas of great strategic importance.<br /> <br /> René pursued a policy of non-alignment, a concept which did not preclude friendship with either superpower as long as the terms were not unduly exploitative. He was also a strong advocate of turning the Indian Ocean into a nuclear-free zone, without foreign military bases, including, ideally, the one in his own country. The Seychelles president was particularly critical of American efforts to develop the British-owned Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia into a major air and naval base.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1979, a plot to invade the Seychelles and overthrow René was aborted when it was discovered by his government before the mercenaries were able to leave Durban. An official investigation into the matter by the Seychelles government concluded that the United States and France had been directly involved with the plotters, that the American ambassador in Kenya had been in contact with supporters of James Mancham, the man deposed by René, and that the US Charge d'Affaires in the Seychelles was the link man in the conspiracy.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Several of the 120 Americans employed at the US base were expelled from the country.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Two years later, in November 1981, an invasion force of more than 40 men, pretending to be members of a rugby club, traveled from South Africa to Swaziland whence they flew to the Seychelles aboard a regular commercial flight of the Royal Swazi Airlines. It appears that the attack was not planned for the arrival but for some time later, after the soldiers of fortune had settled in. But some of the arms hidden in their luggage were discovered upon arrival, and a battle broke out at the airport. The would-be invaders were forced to hijack an Air India plane back to Durban, although seven of their number were not so lucky, being caught and detained in the Seychelles.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; But Mad Mike Hoare had survived another close call.<br /> <br /> A few days after this debacle, the Sunday Tribune, published in Durban, where the invasion plot was reportedly hatched, cited &quot;reliable local and foreign sources&quot; for the assertion that the CIA had financed the raising and equipping of the invasion force. &quot;Despite a terse, one-sentence denial by the U.S government yesterday,&quot; the conservative newspaper declared, &quot;separate mercenary sources in South Africa are emphatic that funding for the operation originated with the CIA.&quot; At the same time, the Tribune made clear the complicity of its own government, an act for which several South African editors were duly prosecuted by the authorities.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1982, Hoare and 44 other men went on trial in South Africa for airplane hijacking. Five weeks earlier, all but five of them had been released by the government with a &quot;good-ol'-boys&quot; wave of the hand, but diplomatic protests from Western nations, including the United States, which pointed out that South Africa had formally associated itself with a 1978 anti-hijacking declaration, led to a reversal of the earlier decision.<br /> <br /> Twenty-three of the men were South Africans and most of these, it turned out, were reservists in elite units of the South African Defense Force. The head of the security police said that the men had not been charged at first because they had been misled into thinking they were on an official mission. Who had misled them, or why, was not reported. The picture which emerged from the trial was that the government, at a minimum, was well aware of the plot and ready to be helpful. Hoare produced an invoice, purportedly from the military, certifying the delivery to his home of weapons and ammunition before the flight to the Seychelles. This apparently was not contested by the prosecution. The government also requested that evidence from some defendants about their involvement in army activities in 1981 should not be heard because it could prejudice state security.<br /> <br /> Hoare testified further that he had met someone from the CIA in Pretoria and informed him of the coup plans. The United States was interested, the soldier of fortune said, but he described the CIA man's attitude as &quot;extremely timid&quot; and Hoare didn't suggest that the United States had played an active role. Under cross-examination, however, he acknowledged telling his troops that the CIA had approved the plan.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Motivation seems not to have been an issue raised at the trial. For the mercenaries, the coup attempt was undertaken presumably for money. Of the two governments involved in the matter, the United States had a much greater interest than South Africa in toppling the René government, and had, apparently, tried it before. But it would need the help of South Africa in that part of the world. As we have seen, the US intelligence establishment had been collaborating with Pretoria's intelligence service since the 1960s and continued to do so in the mid-1970s in regard to Angola. Circumstances indicate that this relationship continued, or was renewed, under the Reagan administration, which took office in 1981.<br /> <br /> It appears that Mad Mike Hoare was made a scapegoat, for he was imprisoned—an action he called a &quot;double-cross&quot;, and which he attributed to the government wanting to appear as an innocent party which defended international justice—and was not released until 1985. Almost all his co-conspirators were released in November 1982, after serving but four months in prison.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On 15 December 1981, the UN Security Council decided to send a commission to the Seychelles to investigate the invasion. Although the United States voted for the motion, the American ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick, suggested that to send the commission was to assume that the &quot;Seychelles affair was not purely internal&quot;, and was &quot;prejudging the situation&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; Even by the standards of Kirkpatrick's renowned cold-war-impaired logic, this was a remarkable statement, when it is considered that South Africans made up about half the invasion force, with the others emanating from Great Britain, Rhodesia, the US, Germany, Austria, and elsewhere. The number of Seychellois dissidents amongst their number came to zero.<br /> <br /> It seems that someone was still determined that the René government should not remain in power. In December 1983, South Africa announced that it had arrested five men for attempting to recruit mercenaries in yet another plot to invade the Seychelles.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Grenada 1979-1984: Lying—one of the few growth industries in Washington ==<br /> What can be said about an invasion launched by a nation of 240 million people against one of 110 thousand? And when the invader is, militarily and economically, the most powerful in the world, and the target of its attack is an underdeveloped island of small villages 1,500 miles away, 133 square miles in size, whose main exports are cocoa, nutmeg and bananas … ?<br /> <br /> The United States government had a lot to say about it. The relation which its pronouncements bore to the truth can be accurately gauged by the fact that three days after the invasion the deputy White House press secretary for foreign affairs resigned, citing &quot;damage to his personal credibility&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One of the fundamental falsehoods concerning the invasion of Tuesday, 25 October 1983 was that the United States had been requested to intervene by an urgent plea on the 21st from the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), comprising six countries, and joined in this instance by Barbados and Jamaica. These countries purportedly feared some form of aggressive act from the new ultra-leftist regime in Grenada which had deposed socialist leader Maurice Bishop. Bishop had been expelled from the ruling party on 12 October, placed under house arrest the next day, and murdered on the 19th.<br /> <br /> Even if the fears were valid, it would constitute a principle heretofore unknown under international law, namely that state A could ask state B to invade state C in the absence of any aggressive act toward state A by state C. In Washington, State Department lawyers worked overtime, finally settling on sections of an OECS mutual assistance pact, the Charter of the OAS, and the United Nations Charter as legal justifications for the American action. These documents, however, even with the most generous interpretation, provide for nothing of the sort. Moreover, Article Six of the OECS pact requires all members to approve decisions of the organization's Authority (the heads of government). Grenada, a member, certainly did not approve. It was not even at the meeting, although US officials were present to steer the direction of the discussions.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As matters later transpired, Tom Adams, the Prime Minister of Barbados, stated that the United States had approached him on 15 October concerning a military intervention. (The State Department declined to comment when asked about Adams' statement.)&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Then, &quot;sources close to Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga&quot; asserted that the plea by the Caribbean nations &quot;was triggered by an offer from the United States&quot;—&quot;Issue an appeal and we'll respond&quot; was the message conveyed by Washington.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; Furthermore, on 26 October, the US ambassador to France, Evan Galbraith, stated over French television that the Reagan administration had been planning the invasion for the previous two weeks;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; that is, not only well before the putative request from the Caribbean countries, but, if Galbraith is to be taken literally, even before Bishop was overthrown or before this outcome could have been known with any certainty, unless the CIA had been mixed up in the intra-party feud.<br /> <br /> Eventually it was disclosed that at some point before the invasion the government of Eugenia Charles, the Prime Minister of Dominica, who headed the OECS, had been the recipient of covert CIA money &quot;for a secret support operation&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At the same time, the United States, as if to cover its bets, endorsed (if not in fact devised) the claim by the OECS that the governor-general of Grenada, Paul Scoon, had also sent an urgent appeal for military intervention to the organization. Apart from the highly debatable question of whether Scoon—appointed by the British Queen to his largely ceremonial, figurehead position, a vestige of the days of the Empire—had the constitutional right to make such a momentous decision on behalf of an independent Grenada, there was the mystery of how and when he had sent his request, or, indeed, whether he had sent it at all.<br /> <br /> On 31 October, the London press reported that British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe &quot;was emphatic that there had been no request for intervention from Sir Paul Scoon&quot;. Prime Minister Thatcher unequivocally confirmed this. Scoon, said Sir Geoffrey, &quot;had been seen by a British diplomat last Monday—the day before the invasion—and had not mentioned any such desire.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; The same day (another report places it on Sunday) Scoon spoke by phone to the Commonwealth Secretariat in London and to Buckingham Palace, but, again, made no mention of intervention.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Interviewed later by the BBC, Scoon himself said that an invasion was the &quot;last thing&quot; he wanted.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the end, after the invasion was underway, Scoon signed a piece of paper aboard the USS Guam that made the whole operation nice and legal.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Another justification advanced by the United States for its action, what President Reagan termed &quot;of overriding importance&quot;, was the need to evacuate many hundreds of Americans from the island, mainly students at St George's Medical College who were supposedly in a dangerous position because of the new regime and the chaos surrounding its accession to power.<br /> <br /> To refute this contention one does not have to dig for evidence; there is a surfeit lying on the surface, viz. …<br /> <br /> Two members of the US Embassy in Barbados, Ken Kurze and Linda Flohr, reported over the weekend before the invasion that &quot;US students in Grenada were, for the most part, unwilling to leave or be evacuated. They were too intent on their studies.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; Another report, in the London press, that three US diplomats visited Grenada at the same time and appeared to have agreed on orderly departures for any Americans wishing to leave, may or may not refer to the same thing.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The White House acknowledged that two days before the invasion, Grenada had offered the United States &quot;an opportunity to evacuate American citizens. But officials said the Reagan administration came to distrust the offer.&quot; This was, they said, because the Grenadian government had promised that the airport would be open on Monday for evacuation flights, but it was instead closed.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; Only later did the White House admit that four charter flights had indeed left the airport on Monday.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Some of those who left on Monday were American medical students. The Chancellor of the medical school, Dr. Charles Modica, who was visiting New York, declared on the day of the invasion that he was in touch with amateur radio operators at the college. &quot;I think the President's information is very wrong,&quot; he said, &quot;because some of the Americans started to go out yesterday.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Grenadian government issued instructions that the American students should be treated with utmost consideration by the army; vehicles and escorts were provided for them to shuttle between their two campuses.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Cuban government released documents which showed that it had notified the United States on 22 October that no American or other foreign citizen was in danger and said it was ready &quot;to cooperate in the solution of problems without violence or intervention&quot;. It received no reply until after the invasion had begun.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt; On the 23rd the Cubans sent a message to the Grenadian leaders suggesting that the area around the medical school be demilitarized to avoid providing the United States with an excuse for invasion: &quot;the pretext of evacuating its citizens&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Asked by journalists if there was any concrete information about threats to Americans in Grenada, the White House spokesman responded: &quot;Nothing that I know of.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After subduing the minor resistance of Grenadian soldiers and Cuban construction workers, the US forces discovered several other things to justify their coming: they found, said Ronald Reagan, &quot;a complete base of weapons and communication equipment which makes it clear a Cuban occupation of the island had been planned&quot;. One warehouse &quot;contained weapons and ammunition stacked almost to the ceiling, enough to supply thousands of terrorists&quot;. Grenada, the president declared, was &quot;a Soviet-Cuban colony being readied as a major military bastion to export terror and undermine democracy, but we got there just in time.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Documents discovered by the American military allegedly showed that &quot;the Cubans were planning to put their own government in Grenada&quot; (later, CIA Director William Casey was to admit that the documents &quot;were not a real find&quot;) and there was found what &quot;appeared to have been a terrorist training center&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt; Moreover, missile silos were being built in Grenada … there were 1,100 Cubans on the island, it was announced, almost all professional soldiers; soon the number was 1,600 …&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The US/Grenada/Cuba scenario staged in Washington was comparable at the time to the Soviet Union invading Great Britain and then announcing that it had prevented an American takeover, and Marx-knows what else, because it had discovered 30,000 US servicemen there, over 100 American military bases, a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons, and &quot;enough arms to supply millions of terrorists&quot;. The Soviet president could then have declared that &quot;We got there just in time.&quot;<br /> <br /> Comparable, except that the Soviet discoveries would have been real. The American claims turned out to be as phantom as the other components of the media package, or, at best, highly questionable—a correspondent for The Guardian of London reported that in the warehouse &quot;that contained most of the weapons, there were only five mortars to be seen, one recoilless rifle, one Soviet-made quadri-barrelled anti-aircraft gun, and two Korean-vintage British Bren guns on display&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; The New York Times reported, without further detail, &quot;significant stockpiles of Soviet arms but also a number of antiquated guns, including rifles manufactured in the 1870s&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; Years later it was revealed that a US intelligence report of 30 October had concluded that &quot;the caches of arms and weapons on Grenada were for the army and the militia and were not sufficient or intended to be used in overthrowing the governments in the neighboring islands.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> More to the point, however, is the fact that the Grenadian government had been threatened with destabilization for over four years by the United States. The leaders of the country knew that they had to develop the country's defenses. They were people who had read some recent history.<br /> <br /> The Cuban government announced that there were 784 of their people in Grenada and specified all their jobs: 636 were construction workers, mostly in their forties and fifties (an observation made by several American and British journalists); the remainder, which included 44 women, were doctors, dentists, nurses, public health workers, teachers, etc., and 43 military personnel; thereafter, the United States went by the Cuban figures.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The world was asked to believe that there was a major Cuban military presence with imminent control of the country. Yet the Cubans in Grenada were unable even to save Maurice Bishop and his government which Castro had strongly and warmly supported. The Cuban government had expressed in no uncertain terms its distaste for the Military Revolutionary Council (MRC) which had overthrown Bishop. Before the US invasion, Castro had blamed Bishop's death on &quot;grave errors&quot; by extremists,&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt; and later referred to them as the &quot;Pol Pot Group&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt; He had turned down a request from the MRC for more troops when the American action seemed imminent. The MRC was told that its request was &quot;impossible and unthinkable&quot; after what had happened.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Russians, on the other hand, had indicated their support for the MRC and its coup, although the Soviet interest in Grenada was generally minimal. Cuba was enough of a Caribbean burden and potential spark-point for Moscow. The Soviet Union condemned the American invasion, comparing it to &quot;a daring cavalry attack of armed-to-the-teeth white settlers on a village of Redskins&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt; But this was de rigueur cold-war fare. The lack of real concern on the part of Soviet leaders about the invasion, and the fate of Grenada, was made evident six months later when they announced that the USSR would not take part in the Olympics in Los Angeles. Grenada was not even mentioned amongst their reasons although the circumstances truly cried out for it—four years earlier, the United States had cited the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as its sole reason for boycotting the Moscow Olympics.<br /> <br /> Finally, there was the question of why Cuba or the Soviet Union would have needed Grenada as a springboard for their dastardly deeds in Latin America when there was already Cuba itself, militarily and politically more secure and stable than Grenada.<br /> <br /> After the invasion, after the overthrow of the Grenadian government, after the US forces had killed or wounded hundreds of people … officials of the Reagan administration, reported the New York Times, &quot;acknowledge that in their effort to rally public support for the invasion of Grenada, they may have damaged the Government's credibility by making sweeping charges about Soviet and Cuban influence on the island without so far providing detailed evidence.&quot; The officials simply asked that the public &quot;reserve judgement until all the information is in&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The New Jewel Movement (NJM) under Maurice Bishop had taken power in March 1979 by ousting, to popular acclaim, Eric Gairy, an erratic personality given increasingly to thuggery to maintain his rule. That accomplished, Bishop, a London-educated lawyer, had to deal with the exceedingly more formidable task which faces a socialist revolutionary in power: spurring an underdeveloped country to lift itself up by its own bootstraps when it doesn't have any boots.<br /> <br /> They had to start with the basics: jobs, new schools, teacher training, adult literacy, social services, clean water … the NJM left private business undisturbed, but instituted free health care, free milk for young children, agricultural co-operatives, and the like.<br /> <br /> Nicholas Brathwaite, the Chairman of the US-approved Interim Government following the invasion, and his colleagues, reported The Guardian, &quot;readily praise the [NJM] for giving Grenadians new awareness, self-confidence and national pride and admit it is a hard act to follow.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The World Bank gave the Grenadian government good grades also. In 1980 the Bank praised the NJM's sound fiscal management and two years later wrote that &quot;Government objectives are centered on the critical development issues and touch on the country's most promising development areas.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The New Jewel Movement did not hold elections. Bishop explained this decision on one occasion in the following way:&lt;blockquote&gt;There are those (some of them our friends) who believe that you cannot have a democracy unless there is a situation where every five years, and for five seconds in those five years, a people are allowed to put an &quot;X&quot; next to some candidate's name, and for those five seconds in those five years they become democrats, and for the remainder of the time, four years and 364 days, they return to being non-people without the right to say anything to their government, without any right to be involved in running the country.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In lieu of the traditional system, the NJM claimed, democracy in Grenada was manifested through numerous mass organizations and decentralized structures which received and seriously considered input from large numbers of citizens. However well this form of democracy may have worked, or would have if not interrupted, it inevitably produced resentment as well. People were expected to attend meeting after meeting and were subject to various forms of pressure to conform to the exigencies of the revolution.<br /> <br /> Before long, the leaders of nearby Caribbean states, particularly Tom Adams of Barbados and Eugenia Charles of Dominica, who were prime supporters of the invasion, evidenced hostility towards the Grenadian government. Bishop believed that this derived from fear of their own people's enthusiasm for Grenada's example, an enthusiasm, he said, which was demonstrated at every public appearance by the Grenadian leaders in the region.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt; Charles was regarded by Reagan administration people as passionately pro-American, a &quot;Caribbean Jeane Kirkpatrick,&quot; who &quot;made British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher seem like a kitten&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The United States adopted its adversarial position almost immediately. Washington recognized instinctively that the new Grenadian leaders would not fall easily into line in regard to the American obsession with quarantining Cuba. Indeed, Grenada itself might turn out to be that long-dreaded beast—&quot;another Cuba&quot;. Less than a month after Bishop assumed power, the American ambassador delivered a note to him which read in part:&lt;blockquote&gt;Although my government recognizes your concern over allegations of a possible counter-coup, it also believes that it would not be in Grenada's best interests to seek assistance from a country such as Cuba to forestall such an attack. We would view with displeasure any tendency on the part of Grenada to develop closer ties with Cuba.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The counter-coup the ambassador was referring to was Bishop's fear that Eric Gairy, in exile in the United States, would put together a mercenary army to invade the island. The NJM feared a CIA destabilization operation even more but, in either case, who but &quot;a country such as Cuba&quot; could they turn to for help?<br /> <br /> Before the year 1979 was out, Grenada had discovered hidden transmitters in its UN Mission,&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt; and representatives of the US government were visiting travel agents in the United States, spreading travel-scare rumours to discourage tourism to the island's sunny beaches, a most important source of foreign exchange.&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Over the next four years, Washington tried to harass Grenada in some of the other ways in which it was practiced, more so under Ronald Reagan beginning in 1981 than under President Carter. The United States aggressively lobbied the International Monetary Fund and several other international lending organizations in an attempt to block loans to Grenada although, surprisingly, not with marked success. The IMF, for example, approved a loan to Grenada &quot;despite vigorous opposition from the Reagan Administration&quot;, opposition based ostensibly on &quot;economic grounds&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the summer of 1981, the CIA developed plans &quot;to cause economic difficulties for Grenada in hopes of undermining the political control of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop.&quot; The operation reportedly was scrapped because of objections by the Senate Intelligence Committee. One committee member, however, remarked that &quot;If they were going to do something … I'm not sure they would tell us. I think they would wait until it was all over.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The main thrust of the American campaign against Grenada was in the form of propaganda, the theme of which was that Grenada was a fully paid-up member of the Soviet-Cuban-Nicaraguan Terrorist Network which held a dagger at America's throat. Associating Grenada thusly could serve to further discourage tourism as well as justify an invasion.<br /> <br /> The propagation of this general theme was punctuated by specific accusations which were simply fraudulent. One early hoax was that a Soviet submarine base was being constructed on the south coast of the island. This report was given wide currency until 1983 when a correspondent for the Washington Post visited the supposed site and pointed out that no submarine base could possibly be built in an area where the sea was so shallow.&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In February 1983, an official of the US Defense Department announced, apparently with a straight face, that the Soviet Union had shipped to Grenada assault helicopters, hydrofoil torpedo boats, and supersonic MIG fighters which gave Grenada an air force of 200 (sic) modern planes.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt; The whereabouts of this mighty armada have remained a mystery ever since.<br /> <br /> The charge which received the greatest media play was the canard that the new airport being built in Grenada was intended as a military facility for the Russians and Cubans. Grenada insisted that it was only to encourage tourism, its one growth industry. In March 1983, President Reagan told an American television audience that the airfield would have a 10,000-foot runway, but that&lt;blockquote&gt;Grenada doesn't even have an air force. Who is it intended for? … The rapid build-up of Grenada's military potential is unrelated to any conceivable threat … The Soviet-Cuban militarization of Grenada … can only be seen as a power projection into the region.&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The president displayed aerial photos of the construction site—there were regular American spy flights over the island—as if to imply something hidden and furtive in the operation when, in fact, the site was very much open to the public.<br /> <br /> There is a plethora of evidence that puts Reagan's analysis into question: At least five other Caribbean islands, including Barbados, had similar-sized or larger airfields yet did not possess air forces.&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt; The building of the airfield was encouraged by the World Bank, which also discussed with Grenada the erection of new tourist hotels.&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt; The excavation work was being done by the Layne Dredging Co. of Florida and the communications system installed by Plessey, a British multinational, the Cubans donating labor and machinery.&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt; Plessey rejected the US claim: &quot;The airport … was being built to purely civilian specifications,&quot; it said, and listed a number of technical characteristics of a military airport/base which the new airport would not have.&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Further, the European Common Market had contributed money toward the construction—&quot;In our view the airport is for tourism,&quot; said a spokesman. &quot;We stand by our commitment.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt; The airport was being funded by about a dozen nations as well, including Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. The United States had turned down a request for assistance, and instead had exerted pressure to deter international financing.&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After the invasion, the airport was completed, by the United States. &quot;The decision has been taken to complete it by the military, for the military,&quot; said one of the sub-contractors. &quot;Equipment for that purpose is already being moved on to the site.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;51&lt;/sup&gt; (As far as is known, the United States has not yet used the airport for military purposes.)<br /> <br /> There were also several instances of the Grenadian opposition press featuring entirely unfounded stories of the type mentioned above, as well as fostering harmful local economic rumors. In one case in 1979 a Grenadian newspaper reprinted a story from, of all places, the West German magazine Bunte, which reported that large military and missile bases were being built in Grenada, something which would be impossible to hide on the tiny island, but it was a lie made of whole cloth.&lt;sup&gt;52&lt;/sup&gt; The reprinting-from-abroad tactic, as we have seen, is one often employed by the CIA, and to the NJM leaders it was a clear signal that the Agency had arrived in town. It led eventually to the government closing down independent newspapers. The country, they felt, was simply too vulnerable, even more so than Chile and Jamaica, where the same CIA tactic had been employed.<br /> <br /> It was the same with political prisoners, most of them former members of Gairy's secret police.&lt;sup&gt;53&lt;/sup&gt; The government was afraid to release some of them lest they wind up in a Gairy and/or CIA mercenary force or engage in actions like the June 1980 bombing at an outdoor rally which was apparently designed to remove the entire NJM leadership with one blow, but instead took the lives of three young women.<br /> <br /> As to the invasion itself … 2,000 American marines and paratroopers the first day, by week's end 7,000 on the island, even more waiting offshore … planes bombing everywhere, destroying all manner of structures, including a mental hospital, machine-gunning positions of the People's Revolutionary Army … &quot;The People's Revolutionary Army—are they on our side or theirs?&quot; asks the young Marine&lt;sup&gt;54&lt;/sup&gt;… the home of the Cuban ambassador damaged and looted by American soldiers; on one wall is written &quot;AA&quot;, symbol of the 82nd Airborne Division; beside it the message: &quot;Eat shit, commie faggot&quot;&lt;sup&gt;55&lt;/sup&gt; … captured Cubans used as hostages, ordered to march in front of American jeeps as they advanced on Cuban positions, a violation of the Geneva Convention&lt;sup&gt;56&lt;/sup&gt; … promises of all kinds were made to Cuban prisoners, said Castro, to get them to go to the United States; none accepted&lt;sup&gt;57&lt;/sup&gt; … &quot;I want to fuck communism out of this little island,&quot; says a marine, &quot;and fuck it right back to Moscow.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;58&lt;/sup&gt; … &quot;Britain announced that it was sending a destroyer to assist in the rescue,&quot; said the American radio station to the Grenadian people the first morning; not a half-truth, but a complete lie … Grenadians who heard the broadcasts said they were a powerful encouragement to accept the occupation&lt;sup&gt;59&lt;/sup&gt; … the fighting was over in a week, 135 Americans killed or wounded, 84 Cubans, 400 Grenadians, more or less …<br /> <br /> The land conquered, there remained the people's hearts and minds. At the outset, the invasion radio station engaged in fiery attacks against Bishop—he had brought Grenada into captivity said the announcer.&lt;sup&gt;60&lt;/sup&gt; But then the Americans evidently learned that this was a tactical error, that Bishop was still enormously popular, because for some time afterward, criticism of his regime was usually made more indirectly and without naming him.<br /> <br /> Before long the Psychological Operations Battalion of the US Army was cruising over the island in a helicopter offering the Grenadians, via a loudspeaker, a large serving of anti-Cuban fare: the Cubans had supported those who had killed Bishop, Grenada had been a pawn of Cuba, Castro/communism were still a threat, and so forth. Posters were put up showing alleged captured Cuban weapons with the slogan, &quot;Are these the tools that build airports?&quot; Other posters linked the MRC leaders to Moscow.&lt;sup&gt;61&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In March 1984, a visiting London journalist could report:&lt;blockquote&gt;The island remains visibly under American occupation. Jeeps patrol constantly. Helicopters fly over the beaches. Armed military police watch the villagers and frequent the cafes. CIA men supervise the security at the courthouse. The island's only newspaper pours out weekly vitriol about the years of the revolutionary government, &quot;this gruesome period in our history&quot;. The pressures, in a small community, are heavy.&lt;sup&gt;62&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;And in June we learned that schools called after &quot;heroes of the revolution&quot; had been given back their old names, though not without pupil protests. And the US Information Service was showing school children a film entitled &quot;Grenada: Return to Freedom&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;63&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The invasion was almost universally condemned in Latin America, only the military dictatorships of Chile, Guatemala and Uruguay expressing support. The United Nations voted its disapproval overwhelmingly. To this President Reagan responded: &quot;One hundred nations in the UN have not agreed with us on just about everything that's come before them where we're involved, and it didn't upset my breakfast at all.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;64&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One of the evils of Communist states, we were always told, is that they were oblivious to world opinion.<br /> <br /> There was, however, the supreme irony that most of the people of Grenada welcomed the invasion. In addition to the conservative minority who knew that the &quot;socialist&quot; experiment would now be decisively put to rest, there were the greater number who were overjoyed to see the murderers of their beloved Maurice Bishop receive the punishment due them. Despite all the hostility and lies directed at Bishop by Washington for over four years, it did not seem to occur to the islanders that the invasion had nothing to do with avenging his death and that the United States had merely used the event as a convenient pretext for an action it had desired to carry out for a long time.<br /> <br /> If the average Grenadian seems thus rather ingenuous, with a short political memory, we must consider also that the average American lustily cheered the invasion, believed everything which crossed the lips of Ronald Reagan (as if this were the first US intervention in history), and to this day would be hard pressed to recite a single falsehood associated with the entire affair. The president himself later appeared to have completely repressed the incident. In March 1986, when asked about the possibility of an American invasion of Nicaragua, he replied:&lt;blockquote&gt;You're looking at an individual that is the last one in the world that would ever want to put American troops into Latin America, because the memory of the great Colossus in the north is so widespread in Latin America. We'd lose all our friends if we did anything of that kind.&lt;sup&gt;65&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;On the fourth day of the invasion Reagan made a speech which succeeded in giving jingoism a bad name. The president managed to link the invasion of Grenada with the shooting down of a Korean airliner by the Soviet Union, the killing of US soldiers in Lebanon, and the taking of American hostages in Iran. Clearly, the invasion symbolized an end to this string of humiliations for the United States. Even Vietnam was being avenged. To commemorate the American Renaissance, some 7,000 US servicemen were designated heroes of the republic and decorated with medals. (Many had done no more than sit on ships near the island.) America had regained its manhood, by stepping on a flea.<br /> <br /> Postscript:<br /> <br /> At the end of 1984, former Premier Herbert Blaize was elected prime minister, his party capturing 14 of the 15 parliamentary seats. Blaize, who in the wake of the invasion had proclaimed to the United States: &quot;We say thank you from the bottom of our hearts,&quot;&lt;sup&gt;66&lt;/sup&gt; had been favored by the Reagan administration.&lt;sup&gt;67&lt;/sup&gt; The candidate who won the sole opposition seat announced that he would not occupy it because of what he called &quot;vote rigging and interference in the election by outside forces.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;68&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One year later, the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs reported on Grenada as part of its annual survey of human rights abuses:&lt;blockquote&gt;Reliable accounts are circulating of prisoners being beaten, denied medical attention and confined for long periods without being able to see lawyers. The country's new US-trained police force has acquired a reputation for brutality, arbitrary arrest and abuse of authority.&lt;/blockquote&gt;The report added that an offending all-music radio station had been closed and that US-trained counter-insurgency forces were eroding civil rights.&lt;sup&gt;69&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By the late 1980s, the government began confiscating many books arriving from abroad, including Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana and Nelson Mandela Speaks. In April 1989, it issued a list of more than 80 books which were prohibited from being imported.&lt;sup&gt;70&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Four months later, Prime Minister Blaize suspended Parliament to forestall a threatened no-confidence vote resulting from what his critics called &quot;an increasingly authoritarian style.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;71&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Morocco 1983: A video nasty ==<br /> The government of Morocco, in January 1983, had the sad duty to announce the &quot;grievous death&quot; in a car accident of General Ahmed Dlimi, a confidant of King Hassan for more than 20 years and commander of the Moroccan Army's southern forces.<br /> <br /> When the Le Monde correspondent had the temerity to suggest that Dlimi's death was perhaps not an accident, he was summarily expelled from the country.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Then, in March, Ahmed Rami, a Moroccan political scientist living in exile in Sweden, stated unequivocally that Dlimi had been murdered by Hassan and his security men and that the CIA was deeply implicated.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Ahmed Rami had been a lieutenant in the Moroccan Army and a leader of Le Mouvement des Officiers Libres, the underground movement of army officers dedicated to overthrowing the king and the monarchy as well as the king's personal corruption and his &quot;crimes against human rights&quot;. Rami was living abroad under sentence of death in Morocco for his part in a failed attempt to shoot down a plane carrying Hassan in 1972.<br /> <br /> The dissident officers supported the establishment of a &quot;democratic Islamic Arab Republic of Morocco&quot; and a negotiated settlement in the country's ruinous war with the Polisario guerrillas in the Western Sahara, a war in which US military aid and personnel had reportedly enabled Morocco to maintain a deadlock.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Ahmed Dlimi, while serving as the king's right-hand man, had been secretly associated with Officiers Libres. When he went abroad he would meet with Rami and during 1982 the two men were discussing plans for a coup attempt in July of the following year.<br /> <br /> &quot;Unknown to us, however,&quot; said Rami, &quot;the CIA was investigating him [Dlimi]. When the CIA handed over a dossier to King Hassan in January [1983] it contained videofilm of General Dlimi and I meeting in Stockholm last December. That was enough for Dlimi to be eliminated.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Morocco, said the New York Times, had become the United States' &quot;closest and most useful ally in the Arab world.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; Hassan had clearly tied his fortunes to the Reagan administration. In 1981 alone, he was visited by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State Alexander Haig, as well as the Deputy Director of the CIA, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a host of other high-level Washington officials. The Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security arrived with a team of 23 military advisers and experts; more than 100 Americans were reported to be working with the Moroccan armed forces.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the years previous, Hassan had co-operated extensively with US policies in Africa. In both 1977 and 1978 he sent Moroccan troops to Zaire in support of the American actions there, and since the mid-1970s he had been aiding the UNITA forces in Angola along with the United States and South Africa in their continuing effort to overthrow the MPLA government. At the same time, King Hassan had allowed the CIA to build up its station in Morocco to where it was probably one of the Agency's key posts in Africa.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In these and other important ways, Hassan had earned the gratitude and protection of the United States. Thus it was that the CIA exposed General Dlimi's double life to the king. Dlimi, moreover, had reportedly advocated that Morocco receive aid from France, the former colonial power, rather than from the United States. The CIA saw this as a threat to the American position in the country and insisted that Hassan get rid of his confidants who favored closer relations with France.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At eleven o'clock on the night of 23 January 1983, says Ahmed Rami, Dlimi was called to the palace in Marrakesh. There, ten security men escorted him to an underground interrogation room. At one a.m., &quot;two American officers&quot; arrived with the king and went into the interrogation room for several hours. Dlimi was tortured, and, at five a.m., he was shot. His body was later placed in his car which was exploded in a suburb of the city. No one, not even his family, was allowed to see the body.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Suriname 1982-1984: Once again, the Cuban bogeyman ==<br /> It was unusual, to be sure, that the Director of the CIA would inform Congress in advance of an Agency plan to overthrow a foreign government. President Reagan, said William Casey to the House and Senate intelligence committees in December 1982, had authorized the CIA to try to topple Suriname ruler Col. Desi Bouterse. The Agency's plan reportedly called for the formation of an exile paramilitary force to invade Suriname because Bouterse, who had taken power in a 1980 military coup, was leading the small South American country into the proverbial and dreaded &quot;Cuban orbit&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The congressional committee members, &quot;while not opposed in principle to the idea of attempting to overthrow a foreign government&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; did object to the proposal on the grounds that there was no evidence that Cuba was &quot;manipulating the government in Suriname, or gaining a military foothold in the country&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Inasmuch as rational argument of this sort had never made too deep an impression upon the mind of Ronald Reagan or excessively inhibited the CIA, there was no reason to believe that this was the end of the story.<br /> <br /> Or even the beginning. Two months earlier, in October, the Bouterse regime had threatened to expel two US diplomats it accused of encouraging the country's conservative trade unions and of playing a key role in organizing anti-government demonstrations and strikes aimed at bringing the government down.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; Then, on 8 December, Suriname announced that a coup attempt had been made against the government. A number of alleged plotters were arrested, some of them winding up &quot;shot while trying to escape&quot;, evidently a euphemism for their execution. Bouterse claimed that the arrested men had been conspiring with the CIA.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; One of those who lost his life was conservative union leader Cyril Daal, who had helped organize anti-government demonstrations earlier in the year and who was said to have connections with the CIA through his Moederbond Union's association with the CIA's ubiquitous American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD).&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The following month, the two US diplomats were actually asked to leave because of their &quot;destabilizing activities&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In July 1983 the plot thickened. The New York Times reported that an invasion of Suriname scheduled for the first of the month by Florida-based mercenaries was called off after the plans for it were discovered by the internal security agency of the Netherlands, the former colonial power in Suriname when it was known as Dutch Guiana. The invasion force reportedly would have been composed of some 300 men—half of them US and South American nationals, the others Surinamese—who were to be flown from Florida to the Suriname capital of Paramaribo on the northern tip of South America. The invaders were then to be augmented by Surinamese exiles from the Netherlands. It was this latter group which the Dutch had infiltrated to learn of the plans.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As had become customary concerning American targets in Latin America, stories about the presence of large numbers of Cuban soldiers in Suriname found their way into international circulation. Like their counterparts in Jamaica and Grenada, these warriors remained mythical figures.<br /> <br /> In spring 1983, Suriname entered into agreements with the neighboring right-wing government of Brazil which provided for economic and military aid and military training. By the reasoning of the Reagan administration, Suriname should then have been in &quot;the Brazilian orbit&quot;. The simple truth was that Suriname, like other developing nations, was willing to accept help from wherever it could get it. And in fact, Brazil, which openly admitted that its purpose was &quot;saving Suriname from Cuba&quot;, had made the move at Washington's prodding.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As matters turned out, in October Bouterse expelled almost all Cuban advisers and embassy personnel, including the ambassador, and suspended all agreements with Havana. The expulsion was announced on the day the United States invaded Grenada and was influenced by Bouterse's belief that Cuba had played a part in the overthrow of Maurice Bishop and that he might suffer a similar fate, if not a similar invasion.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; This belief about Cuba, as we have seen, bore no relation to the truth, and may have been encouraged by the United States. Newsweek magazine later reported that &quot;U.S. diplomats in the capital of Paramaribo made sure to keep Bouterse current on evidence that Cuba had aided the Grenadian coup, and the rest was left to his well-prepped paranoia.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Desi Bouterse, by all accounts, left much to be desired as a leader and as a person. Long before the events of October, Cuba and Grenada were reported to be privately &quot;irritated, even angry, at the harm done to the Left's image in the region by what they see as immature revolutionaries leading a premature revolution.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; Although Bouterse had learned to parrot socialist and anti-imperialist clichés, his principles appeared to lie elsewhere. In the words of one diplomat in Suriname, &quot;Bouterse is a chameleon. The first thing for him is his own personal survival. The second thing is his survival as the man-in-charge.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; Bouterse was accused at times of claiming plots against him as a pretext to get rid of some of those opposed to his rule. (Several other coup attempts were alleged in addition to the one of December 1982 mentioned above.)<br /> <br /> During the period December 1983 to January 1984, Suriname was shaken by thousands of striking workers protesting against tax increases and steep price rises, and calling for the dismissal of Prime Minister Errol Alibux; serious acts of sabotage to power and water supplies were carried out as well. Bouterse gave in, removing Alibux and canceling the price rises, but he did not accede to the demand that the military hand power back to civilians.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; Although the scenario was reminiscent of CIA activities in British Guiana, Jamaica, and elsewhere, as well as what the Suriname government had accused the United States of in October 1982, there is no report of the Agency's hand in the disturbances of this period. However, in 1985 it was revealed that the National Endowment for Democracy, which is financed by Congress to support foreign organizations sympathetic to US foreign policy objectives, had been funding organizations in Suriname during the 1983-85 period.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Libya 1981-1989: Ronald Reagan meets his match ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;The great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil … therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Adolf Hitler&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Our evidence is direct, it is precise, it is irrefutable,&quot; announced the President of the United States. He was explaining that the American bombing attack upon Libya of 14 April 1986 was in retaliation for the Libyan bombing nine days earlier of a West Berlin nightclub frequented by American servicemen which had killed two soldiers and one civilian and injured many others.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In actuality, the evidence of Libyan culpability in the bombing was never directly or precisely presented to the world, but little notice was taken of that. For over a decade the American public had been told that Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi was behind one terrorist act after another in every part of the world. A few days before the American attack, President Reagan had referred to him as the &quot;mad dog of the Middle East&quot;. This was just one more example. It all fit.<br /> <br /> The bombs dropped on Libya took the lives of a reported 40 to 100 people, all civilians but one, and wounded another hundred or so. The French Embassy, located in a residential district, was destroyed. The dead included Qaddafi's young adopted daughter and a teenage girl visiting from London; all of Qaddafi's other seven children as well as his wife were hospitalized, suffering from shock and various injuries.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It was not claimed by the United States that any of the people killed or wounded had any connection to the Berlin bombing. Like the mideast terrorists who threw hand grenades at an El Al ticket counter to kill Israelis simply because they were Israelis, and those who planted a bomb on PanAm flight 103 in order to kill Americans simply because they were Americans, the bombing of Libya was an attempt to kill Libyans simply because they were Libyans. After the air attack, White House spokesman Larry Speakes announced that &quot;It is our hope this action will preempt and discourage Libyan attacks against innocent civilians in the future.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Libyan the United States most wanted to kill of course was Qaddafi. The bombing had been an assassination attempt. Said a &quot;well-informed Air Force intelligence officer&quot; cited by the New York Times, &quot;There's no question they were looking for Qaddafi. It was briefed that way. They were going to kill him.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; Which is what you have to do with a mad dog.<br /> <br /> Subsequently, two of Qaddafi's children filed suit in the United States to stop President Reagan from launching more &quot;assassination attempts&quot; on their family. The suit, which was rejected in court, alleged that Reagan and other top officials, in ordering the raids, had violated an executive order that bars attempted assassinations of foreign government leaders.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; Another suit filed in Washington was in behalf of 65 people killed or injured by the bombing.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; Meanwhile, the US Navy was awarding 158 medals to the pilots who dropped 500-pound and 2,000-pound bombs in the dark of night upon sleeping people.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The notion of targeting Qaddafi's family originated with the CIA, which claimed that in Bedouin culture Qaddafi would be diminished as a leader if he could not protect his home: &quot;If you really get at Qaddafi's house—and by extension his family—you've destroyed an important connection for the people in terms of loyalty.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> To make sure the Libyan people got the message, the Voice of America repeatedly told them, following the bombing, things like &quot;Colonel Qaddafi is your tragic burden&quot; and that as long you obey his orders you must &quot;accept the consequences&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The president's claim of irrefutable evidence was based on alleged interceptions of communications between the Libyan capital of Tripoli and the Libyan Embassy in East Berlin. Reagan declared that on 25 March, Libya had sent orders to the embassy &quot;to conduct a terrorist attack against Americans, to cause maximum and indiscriminate casualties&quot;; then the embassy alerted Tripoli on 4 April that the attack would be carried out the next day, that &quot;Tripoli will be happy when you see the headlines tomorrow&quot;, and that after the bombing the embassy reported that the action had been successful and could not be traced to it.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> These are, at best, interpretations and paraphrases. The complete, unedited, unexpurgated, literal texts of the relevant communications were not made public. They were intercepted by the National Security Agency and decoded with the help of the German BND (Federal Intelligence Service) which had broken the Libyan code years before. After the decoding was completed, reported Der Spiegel, Germany's leading newsmagazine, it was still not clear what the wires actually said, there being different versions. Moreover, the NSA and BND came to different conclusions about the meaning of the messages, &quot;but these disagreements were quickly pushed aside for political reasons&quot;. German security officials, who insisted that Libya should not be the only focus of investigation and who cautioned against a &quot;premature accusation&quot;, also looked into rival groups of disco competitors and drug dealers. In January 1987, a senior official in Bonn told investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that the German government continued to be &quot;very critical and skeptical&quot; of the American position linking Libya to the bombing; and at the end of the following year, Germany announced that the investigation was being ended.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Some White House officials had immediate doubts that the case against Libya was clear-cut,&quot; Hersh reported. &quot;What is more, the discotheque was known as a hangout for black soldiers, and the Libyans had never been known to target blacks or other minorities.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As in many other instances that we have seen, however, official Washington's official position, repeated often enough, became official truth. Three years after the incident, Time magazine could state matter-of-factly that &quot;Libyan-backed terrorists bombed a disco in West Berlin&quot;, thereby provoking the American &quot;retaliatory&quot; bombing.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Much of Washington's secret planning for the Libyan operation took place at the same time as the secret talks and arms dealing with Iran. Thus, the Reagan administration was pursuing the elimination of one Middle East source of terrorism while it was arming another. Moreover, the two missions involved some of the same national security people, notably John Poindexter and Oliver North.<br /> <br /> Although the Carter administration did not carry out any overt military attacks upon Libya, it was possibly involved in a very serious covert action. On 27 June 1980, an Italian passenger plane was destroyed by a missile over the Mediterranean, taking 81 lives. At the same time, a Libyan plane which may have been carrying Qaddafi was flying in the vicinity. Italian air controllers listed it as a &quot;VIP 56&quot; flight, denoting that top officials were aboard. In 1988, Italian state television reported that the plane had been mistakenly shot down by a missile belonging to a NATO country, possibly Italy. A year later, an Italian defense ministry report revealed that it was probably a Sidewinder air-to-air missile that was used, a weapon employed by NATO. The Italian press began speculating that a plan to assassinate the Libyan leader had gone awry, and instead the Italian plane had been shot down by a NATO power. (At the time of the disaster, Qaddafi had hinted that the United States was responsible.) The US and France—Libya's chief foes—issued denials, as well as NATO itself, but the Italian military was taking great pains to conceal information about the case. Nevertheless, an air force officer admitted to destroying the radar tape for that evening, and a civilian investigation suggested that many air force personnel were persuaded to lie or &quot;forget&quot; about the incident.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Ronald Reagan and his ultra-ideological comrades took office in January 1981 committed to a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. One of the pivotal ways in which they so artfully reached this end was through huge increases in the military budget; i.e., welfare for the rich, for defense industry friends and business associates, past, present, and future. But in order for the military-industrial-intelligence complex to sell this to the American public and Congress, there had to be a fresh supply of wars, armed conflict, insurgencies, counter-insurgencies … or rumors and &quot;threats&quot; of same … and enemies, ideally of the monster type, to be defended against.<br /> <br /> Qaddafi was a designer-monster: a quirky, unpredictable, super-uppity Third World leader, sitting on the world's ninth largest oil reserve; a man with deep-seated pan-Islamic, pan-Arabic, anti-Zionist, and anti-imperialist convictions, who had closed a strategic US air base in Libya in 1970; an artless braggart mouthing revolutionary rhetoric so juvenile he could serve equally well as bogeyman or buffoon; a man carrying out or supporting enough real terrorist acts so that any exaggeration would be believed.<br /> <br /> There were elements of a bitter personal feud between the two men. Ronald Reagan—a man who played with air strikes as if he were directing movie scenes—had chosen to take on a man who, like himself, was a prisoner of ideology and had left his mark on the world media with a trail of dogmatic observations and actions, as well as plain stupid remarks. (All of the great prophets of modern times, Qaddafi said, have come from the desert and were uneducated: &quot;Mohammed, Jesus and myself.&quot;)&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; The Libyan leader, however, did have a social conscience, not a quality known to be part of Ronald Reagan's DNA. (&quot;You don't see poverty or hunger here. Basic needs are met to a greater degree than in any other Arab country,&quot; reported Newsweek in 1981 about Libya.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;)<br /> <br /> Qaddafi's principal crime in Reagan's eyes was not that he supported terrorist groups, but that he supported the wrong terrorist groups; i.e., Qaddafi was not supporting the same terrorists that Washington was, such as the Nicaraguan Contras, UNITA in Angola, Cuban exiles in Miami, the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala, and the US military in Grenada. The one band of terrorists the two men supported in common was the Moujahedeen in Afghanistan.<br /> <br /> Some of the belligerent American operations against Qaddafi, actual and threatened, and charges of Libyan terrorism, actual and fabricated, were timed to stir up American jingoist juices when Congress was debating the military budget or aid to Reagan's favorite terrorists, whom he called freedom fighters. The 14 April 1986 bombing of Libya, for example, came one day before the House opened a new round of debate on aid to the Contras. Then, speaking on the 15th, Reagan said: &quot;I would remind the House voting this week that this archterrorist Qaddafi has sent $400 million [sic] and an arsenal of weapons and advisers into Nicaragua.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Very shortly after taking office, Reagan announced the appointment of a special group to study &quot;the Libyan problem&quot;. The State Department appeared to have two schools of thought: diplomatic pressure on Qaddafi or a more confrontational view. &quot;Nobody,&quot; one official pointed out, &quot;advocates being nice to him.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Soon a master plan had been drawn up by the CIA, which Newsweek exposed in August, 1981: &quot;a large-scale, multiphase and costly scheme to overthrow the Libyan regime&quot; and obtain what the CIA called Qaddafi's &quot;ultimate&quot; removal from power. The plan called for a &quot;disinformation&quot; program designed to embarrass Qaddafi and his government; the creation of a &quot;counter government&quot; to challenge his claim to national leadership; and an escalating paramilitary campaign of small-scale guerrilla operations.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The escalation was immediate. On 19 August, American planes crossed Qaddafi's &quot;line of death&quot;, the 120-mile limit claimed by Libya in the Gulf of Sidra, and shot down two Libyan jets. The United States, which considered it international waters, as did most of the rest of the world—although this concept is more debatable when applied to aircraft than when applied to ships&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;—purposely chose the area to conduct military exercises. As expected, Libya rose to the bait, at least according to Washington, which claimed that the Libyan planes had fired first.<br /> <br /> An enraged Qaddafi accused the US of &quot;international terrorism&quot; and, in a phone call to the leader of Ethiopia, reportedly threatened to assassinate Reagan.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; An official who served in a national security position under Reagan responded that there was no question that the &quot;only thing to do with Qaddafi was kill him. He belonged dead.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Soon the US media were reporting a barrage of Qaddafi death threats against the life of Reagan or other senior officials. In October, a story appeared that the American ambassador to Italy was hastily flown out of the country after Italian authorities discovered a Libyan plot to assassinate him, &quot;that was aborted when Italian police deported ten suspected Libyan hit men&quot;. But some American officials in Washington and Rome disputed the story, while another government source confirmed it.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A month later, there was a report of an attempt upon the life of an American diplomat in Paris—seven shots were fired at Christian Chapman, but he escaped unharmed. That same day Secretary of State Alexander Haig—who referred to Qaddafi as &quot;the patron saint of terror&quot;—suggested that Libya was behind the attempt, although he admitted that he had &quot;no other information&quot; directly implicating Libya. But Chapman had recently received some threats, said the French government, some of which had been traced to Tripoli.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt; A New York Times analysis of the incident, however, concluded that &quot;something less than an organized assassination attempt might have been involved.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In late November, the administration announced that a number of terrorists trained in Libya had entered the United States with plans to assassinate President Reagan or other officials. This prompted a huge nationwide search for &quot;the Libyan hit squad&quot; and for Americans to whom they might turn for assistance, including the Weather Underground. Then the infamous international terrorist &quot;Carlos&quot; was brought into the picture, and the administration said that it had received first-hand descriptions from informers of the training and plans of the terrorists. Each day new and ominous details arose in the media, which had already forgotten the exposure in August of the initiation of a government disinformation campaign against Libya.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt; &quot;We have the evidence,&quot; Reagan told newsmen, &quot;and he [Qaddafi] knows it.&quot; Reporters pressed the White House to make the evidence public, but were refused. Some officials, however, including some senior FBI officials, were said to be skeptical about the reports.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Syndicated columnist Jack Anderson then described what a shadowy, unreliable group the suppliers of the hit-squad information were, adding that several of them were known to have connections with Israeli intelligence, &quot;which would have its own reasons to encourage a U.S.-Libyan rift,&quot; there being a deep and mutual animosity between Israel and Qaddafi.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In mid-1981 a task force under William Clark, Deputy Secretary of State, had been set up to look into the whole Qaddafi issue. Years later, Seymour Hersh was to report:&lt;blockquote&gt;According to key sources, there was little doubt inside Clark's task force about who was responsible for the spate of anti-Qaddafi leaks—the CIA, with the support of the President, Haig and Clark. &quot;This item [the Libyan hit squad] stuck in my craw,&quot; one involved official recalls. &quot;We came out with this big terrorist threat to the U.S. Government. The whole thing was a complete fabrication.&quot; … One task force official eventually concluded that [CIA Director William] Casey was in effect running an operation inside the American Government: &quot;He was feeding the disinformation into the (intelligence) system so it would be seen as separate, independent reports&quot; and taken seriously by other Government agencies.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;As matters turned out, most of the presumed assassins were Lebanese who had helped Reagan negotiate the release of US hostages in Beirut and who hated Qaddafi.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt; When the story's purpose had been served, it faded away.<br /> <br /> However much some of Qaddafi's reported threats were disinformation, there were real plans by the West to kill him. A February 1981 French plot, with US cooperation under discussion, had to be canceled when French President Giscard was unexpectedly defeated at the polls.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt; In 1984 it went further, with the CIA sharing highly sensitive intelligence, including satellite photographs and communications intercepts, with the French secret service to aid them in at least two major, but unsuccessful, operations to assassinate or overthrow Qaddafi, who was perceived by the French as a threat to what they thought of as their interests in Africa. One of the operations resulted in a pitched battle in Libya between exiles and Qaddafi loyalists.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And in 1985, the State Department had to go to great lengths to head off a White House-sponsored plan for a joint US-Egyptian land and air invasion of Libya. Secretary of State George Shultz called the plan &quot;crazy,&quot; while his department colleagues referred to the free-wheeling staff of the National Security Council as &quot;those madmen in the White House&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At Christmas of that year, after bomb attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports killed about 20 people, including five Americans, all the usual suspects were quickly accused, with Iran and the Palestinian splinter group of the nefarious Abu Nidal heading the list.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt; The Reagan administration soon added Qaddafi, announcing that the CIA had found a strong Libyan connection, when all they had was that the Tunisian passports of three of the terrorists had purportedly been traced to Libya. Within days, Reagan declared that there was &quot;irrefutable&quot; evidence of Qaddafi's role in the airport bombings, although he knew that this was not true. At the same time, new economic sanctions against Libya were announced, &quot;to get economic sanctions out of the way so the next time [we] could do more&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt; The next time was in March 1986. US Navy jets again crossed Qaddafi's &quot;line of death&quot;, daring retaliation. When there wasn't any, they returned the next day and the day after, twice attacking a Libyan anti-aircraft site and destroying three or four ships. Washington asserted that on the second day, Libya had first fired several missiles at the American planes.<br /> <br /> Shortly afterward, one of a group of British electronics engineers working in Libya at the time was interviewed by the Sunday Times of London. The engineer said that he had been watching the radar screens during the two days of fighting and saw American warplanes cross not only into the 12 miles of Libyan territorial waters, but over Libyan land as well.<br /> <br /> &quot;I watched the planes fly approximately eight miles into Libyan air space,&quot; said the engineer. &quot;I don't think the Libyans had any choice but to hit back. In my opinion they were reluctant to do so.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Following the first American attack in March on Libya, Qaddafi spoke on the phone with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who subsequently told US officials that the Libyan leader appeared deeply affected by the violence unleashed against him. The king described Qaddafi as &quot;incomprehensible and disoriented&quot;, a description similar to other reports which appeared during the 1980s which spoke of a very depressed Qaddafi who didn't seem to understand what the United States had against him. Before and after the events of March, he made half a dozen attempts through third parties to open a dialogue with Washington, but Reagan administration officials rebuffed them all. The would-be European and Arab mediators, including King Fahd, were firmly told that the United States was not interested either in &quot;a direct or indirect dialogue&quot; with Qaddafi.&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> That at least was the official policy, the face turned to the public. There were, however, reports that the White House was secretly dealing with the Libyan leader; to what extent is not known. The only certain contact was a November 1985 visit with Qaddafi in Libya by the US ambassador to the Vatican, William Wilson. The meeting was disavowed by official Washington as being unauthorized and Wilson lost his post after it was disclosed.&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, and throughout the term of the Reagan administration, the United States was increasing military assistance to Libya's immediate neighbors and conducting military exercises with Egypt designed to provoke Qaddafi; instituting diverse forms of economic sanctions against Libya with varying degrees of ineffectiveness; trying to unify Libyan exile opposition groups and giving them financial support and encouragement; the same to the governments of Egypt and France for various anti-Qaddafi actions, not excluding assassination. It should be noted that France—the United States' chief &quot;anti-terrorism&quot; partner—in 1985 deliberately sank the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, killing a Greenpeace photographer. This, with the express approval of French President Francois Mitterand.&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Disinformation was a regular part of the process: using the foreign and American press to publicize fictitious new Libyan terrorist plans, and to announce—with each new terrorist act that occurred in the Western world—that Libya &quot;may&quot; be responsible; to make Qaddafi believe that key trusted aides were disloyal, that the Libyan military was plotting against him, that his Russian military advisers were plotting against him, that his troops were deserting en masse, or that a new US military attack was on the horizon; a process they hoped would push the man into &quot;irrational&quot; acts. His imminent downfall was predicted as regularly as that of Castro.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt; One operation involved Navy Seal commandos landing on Libyan beaches and leaving tell-tale signs of the incursions—such as matchboxes and Israeli cigarette butts—to make the Libyans nervous, ever more paranoid.&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> An August 1986 memo from John Poindexter, the president's national security adviser, which spelled out some of the disinformation program, mentions itself that at the time Qaddafi was &quot;quiescent&quot; on the terrorist front.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt; Shortly afterward, a key Reagan administration official admitted to American reporters that if pressed for &quot;hard evidence&quot; of the charges against Libya they wouldn't have any. &quot;It will look like we're crying wolf once again.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt; In response to the Poindexter memo—the exposure of which had caused a mini-scandal—the senior spokesman for the State Department, Bernard Kalb, resigned in protest, because he was &quot;worried about faith in America … American credibility&quot; and &quot;anything which hurts America&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The issue spilled over to the British, whose officials described US intelligence analyses about Libya's intentions as &quot;wildly inaccurate&quot;, which they said were passed to the British in &quot;a deliberate effort to deceive&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In this same period, in light of new US news reports (engendered by the Poindexter memo), of possible further strikes against Libya in retaliation for terrorist actions allegedly being planned by Qaddafi's regime, Libya's effective prime minister called upon the United States to furnish details on the alleged actions so that Libya could &quot;cooperate fully to avert and abort such attacks and apprehend the individuals and put them on trial.&quot; He said that his request, sent to Washington through diplomatic channels, had gone unanswered.&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt; The next day, Qaddafi, in a speech in Libya, challenged the United States to produce bank statements showing that Libya financed terrorism.&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Half the lies they tell about the Irish aren't true,&quot; a son of Erin once observed. The regular employment of disinformation about Qaddafi and Libya by the United States so clouded the historical picture that it is extremely difficult in most cases to separate fact from fiction, to distinguish Libyan moral or token backing or simply promises to a revolutionary movement from major, vital support. The fact that the Reagan administration felt the need to undertake disinformation campaigns against Libya indicates a paucity of smoking guns.<br /> <br /> On 1 September 1969, Captain Muammar el-Qaddafi had led a group of fellow officers in a bloodless overthrow of the monarchy and established the Libyan Arab Republic. Despite his &quot;troublemaking&quot; abroad, he initially kept in the good graces of the West—the US thwarting several serious plots against his rule during his first two years&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt;—because of his fierce anti-communism, which stemmed basically from his taking Marxism's implicit atheism at face value and viewing it as irreconcilably at odds with his Islamic faith. But this did not keep him from trying to institute revolutionary social and economic changes in Libyan society which others called Marxist. This, plus entering into oil development and arms agreements with the Soviet Union, may have spelled the beginning of the end for the West's tolerance of his foreign adventures.&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During the 1970s and '80s, Qaddafi was accused of using his large oil revenues to support—with funds, arms, training, offices, havens, diplomacy and/or general subversion—a wide array of radical/insurgent/terrorist organizations, particularly certain Palestinian factions and Muslim dissident and minority movements in various parts of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia; as well as the IRA and Basque and Corsican separatists in Europe; several groups engaged in struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa; Noriega in Panama, opposition groups and politicians in Costa Rica, St. Lucia, Jamaica, Dominica, and France's Caribbean colonies of Guadeloupe, French Guiana, and Martinique; the Japanese Red Army, the Italian Red Brigades, Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang … the list is without end.<br /> <br /> It was claimed as well that Libya was behind, or at least somehow linked to, the attempt on Pope John Paul's life, the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, mining the Suez Canal, attempting to blow up the US Embassy in Cairo, various plane hijackings, a bomb explosion on an American airliner over Greece, blowing up a synagogue in Istanbul, and seeking to destabilize the governments of Chad, Liberia, the Sudan, and other African countries … and … Qaddafi took drugs, was an extreme womanizer, was bisexual, dressed in women's clothing, wore makeup, carried a teddy bear, had epileptic fits …&lt;sup&gt;51&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> More established is the fact that for several years Qaddafi made use of former CIA staffers, notably Edwin Wilson and Frank Terpil, to supply him with aircraft and pilots, mechanics and Green Beret instructors, all manner of sophisticated weaponry, equipment and explosives, and to help set up paramilitary training camps in Libya.&lt;sup&gt;52&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And Amnesty International, in 1987, concluded that Libya had carried out attacks on at least 37 anti-Qaddafi dissidents abroad since 1980, with 25 being killed.&lt;sup&gt;53&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In January 1989, the State Department added to Qaddafi's credits by asserting that Libya was funding and training &quot;radical individuals and groups whose activities exacerbate local problems&quot; in Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan and New Caledonia. A few months earlier, the CIA had accused Libya of building the largest poison gas plant in the world.&lt;sup&gt;54&lt;/sup&gt; In March 1990, a fire broke out at the plant in question and burned it to the ground. President Bush immediately and personally assured the world that the United States &quot;absolutely&quot; had nothing to do with the fire. A week earlier, the White House spokesman had been asked if the US might take military action to destroy the plant. &quot;We don't rule out anything,&quot; was the reply.&lt;sup&gt;55&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And in Chicago, members of a street gang …&lt;blockquote&gt;were convicted in late 1987 of planning terrorist activities. U.S. prosecutors charged that the gang expected to receive $2.5 million from Libya for assassination attempts on American politicians and for attacks on U.S. aircraft and government facilities.&lt;sup&gt;56&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;That, in its entirety, is how the Los Angeles Times reported it, and it sounded like the bizarre Libyan strongman was at it again. In actuality, &quot;assassination&quot;, planned or concrete, was not one of the charges, and no evidence at all was presented at the trial that Libya had anything to do with originating or encouraging these acts, or had paid or promised any money. The El Rukn gang members, a Moslem sect, and naive in the extreme, had met with Libyan representatives in New York, Panama and Libya, and pathetically tried to impress them with their prowess and loyalty to Qaddafi. They had been inspired by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan purportedly receiving a Libyan promise of $5 million. If El Rukn received a promise of $2.5 million—and we have only their word for it—it would appear that both promises were no more than Qaddafi's revolutionary self-indulgence. (The IRA also claimed that they had not received any money from Libya, contrary to Qaddafi's claim.&lt;sup&gt;57&lt;/sup&gt;) It is perhaps a measure of the hostility toward Libya that had been inculcated in the American people for more than a decade, that the gang members—through government use of a questionable informer and through entrapment—were found guilty by a jury of federal conspiracy charges and sentenced to extraordinarily long sentences. It was reportedly the first time ever that US citizens had been convicted on terrorism charges.&lt;sup&gt;58&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;It is like a grade B horror movie. A dozen times it rises from the dead and lurches towards the audience; a dozen times it is cut to ribbons, staggering back, collapsing in a heap; and a dozen times it rises again and clomps slowly forward. But it is not the mummy's ghost, and it is not haunting the upper Nile. It is the notion that the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar Qaddafi, is responsible for every act of terrorism in the entire world, and it haunts the pages of the western press and the screens of western television sets.&lt;sup&gt;59&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;PanAm flight 103<br /> <br /> On 21 December 1988, PanAm flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, more than half of them Americans. Five months later, the State Department announced that the CIA was &quot;confident&quot; that the villains who planted the bomb were members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), led by Ahmed Jibril, based in Syria, and hired by Iran to avenge the American shooting down of an Iranian airliner.&lt;sup&gt;60&lt;/sup&gt; Though little could be done to apprehend Jibril and his cohorts, this remained the US government's official, certain, and oft-repeated judgment, even though Syria and Iran were viewed as the keys to the release of Western hostages held in Lebanon. Then, in 1990, something strange happened. The United States was preparing to go to war against Iraq, when who should pop up as one of its allies, sending troops to Saudi Arabia in the jihad against Saddam Hussein? None other than the terrorist-haven land of Syria. And whose cooperation in the war was Washington angling for? The wicked Iran. This would not do. In early October, American officials declared that newly uncovered evidence indicated that Libyan intelligence agents may have assembled and planted the bomb. But this, they were quick to point out, did not clear Iran, Syria or the PFLP-GC of complicity.&lt;sup&gt;61&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After the war, little by little, a putative case against Libya was leaked, until 14 November 1991 when two Libyan intelligence operatives were indicted in absentia as the perpetrators. The head of the Justice Department's criminal division asserted the same day that there was no evidence to link either Syria or Iran to the bombing &quot;and he brushed aside suggestions that the conclusion had been influenced by the United States' desire for improved relations with Syria&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;62&lt;/sup&gt; Within the next 20 days, the remaining four American hostages held in Lebanon were released along with the most prominent hostage, Britisher Terry Waite.<br /> <br /> And the evidence against the two Libyans? Two pieces of metal the size of fingernails, allegedly from electronic timing devices. One has to read the detailed account of what the case against Libya rests upon to appreciate its full shakiness.&lt;sup&gt;63&lt;/sup&gt; Moreover, in December 1993, a BBC program, &quot;Silence Over Lockerbie&quot;, presented new findings which cast significant doubt about the case against Libya and indicated that Britain and the United States may have fingered Libya to divert suspicion from Syria and Iran. The key new information was that the Swiss manufacturer of the electronic timers changed his previous story which had named Libya as the only purchaser of such devices. He now remembered that he had sold some of the timers to East Germany as well. There were close links between the East German secret police and the PFLP-GC and other Arab terrorist groups. Even more significant, an engineer with the Swiss company declared that he had told the Lockerbie investigators about the East German connection in late 1990, which means that the international investigators knew that their accusation against Libya had a large, if not fatal, hole in it either before the accusation was made public in October, or shortly thereafter.&lt;sup&gt;64&lt;/sup&gt; &quot;No German judge could, with the present evidence, put the two suspects into jail,&quot; declared Volker Rath, German government prosecutor and specialist in Lockerbie, in 1994.&lt;sup&gt;65&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Postscript: In 2003, the Libyan government accepted &quot;responsibility&quot; for the 1988 bombing—without admitting to an actual role in the event—in the hope of ending US and UN sanctions. Libya agreed to this because in 2001 a Libyan had been found guilty in a trial in the Hague of having planted the bomb. This trial, however, was widely regarded as a farce.&lt;sup&gt;66&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The new Qaddafi?<br /> <br /> It may be that the oft-depressed Muammar el-Qaddafi finally began to understand—finding his way past the verbiage and the disinformation—what the United States and other governments had against him. In the latter half of 1988 he seemed to grow up, instituting a host of progressive changes into Libyan society—freeing up civil liberties, releasing hundreds of political prisoners, removing restrictions on travel abroad, loosening up the economy (&quot;All Libyans are called upon to become bourgeois.&quot;); at the same time, making peace or improving relations with a number of African neighbors.&lt;sup&gt;67&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But as the year 1989 opened and Washington prepared to shift from Ronald Reagan to George Bush, the United States marked the occasion by conducting some more &quot;military exercises&quot; in Libya's back yard and shooting down two more Libyan planes. The State Department then saw fit at this particular time to issue its most detailed account to date of Libyan involvement in international terrorism—&quot;an attempt to maintain international pressure&quot; on Libya, wrote the Los Angeles Times.&lt;sup&gt;68&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Nonetheless, Qaddafi continued to display his new persona. He announced that he had decided to cut off or trim the flow of funds to various foreign groups and he told several Palestinian groups that they would no longer receive direct funding from his government and would have to close their offices in Libya. He also admitted that Libya had bankrolled terrorist groups, but said that it no longer did so—&quot;when we discovered that these groups were causing more harm than benefit to the Arab cause, we halted our aid to them completely and withdrew our support&quot;—adding that he did not wish for any confrontation with Washington.&lt;sup&gt;69&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The United States was not impressed with any of this. It may have felt that it had nothing to gain by relaxing its crusade against Qaddafi, but it did have an enemy to lose.<br /> <br /> == Nicaragua 1978-1990: Destabilization in slow motion ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;I have the most conclusive evidence that arms and munitions in large quantities have been on several occasions … shipped to the revolutionists in Nicaragua … I am sure it is not the desire of the United States to intervene in the internal affairs of Nicaragua or of any other Central American republic. Nevertheless, it must be said, that we have a very definite and special interest in the maintenance of order and good Government in Nicaragua at the present time … The United States cannot, therefore, fail to view with deep concern any serious threat to stability and constitutional government in Nicaragua tending toward anarchy and jeopardizing American interests, especially if such state of affairs is contributed to or brought about by outside influence or by any foreign power.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In this manner did President Calvin Coolidge address the Congress of the United States in 1927. The revolutionaries he was voicing alarm about were those supporters of the Liberal Party (one of whom was Augusto Cesar Sandino) who had taken up arms against the Conservative Party government which they claimed was illegally in office. The foreign power accused of arming the Liberals was the Mexican government, which the Coolidge administration viewed as being &quot;impregnated with Bolshevist ideas&quot;. The American interests thought to be in jeopardy were the usual business investments, flaunted more openly in those days than later. Thus it came to pass that the Marines landed in Nicaragua for the twelfth time in less than three-quarters of a century. (See Appendix II.)<br /> <br /> In the 1980s, it was the revolutionary Nicaraguan government of the Sandinistas which alarmed the administration of Ronald Reagan (who described Coolidge as his political patron saint); the foreign power castigated for arming the Sandinistas was the Soviet Union, impregnated with Bolshevist ideas to be sure; the counter-revolutionaries known as the &quot;contras&quot; were Washington's Marines; as to American &quot;interests&quot;—to the &quot;rationality&quot; of economic imperialism had been added a desire for political hegemony bordering on the pathological.<br /> <br /> When the American military forces left Nicaragua for the last time, in 1933, they left behind a souvenir by which the Nicaraguan people could remember them: the National Guard, placed under the direction of one Anastasio Somoza (just as in 1924 the United States had left Trujillo behind for the people of the Dominican Republic). Three years later, Somoza took over the presidency and with the indispensable help of the National Guard established a family dynasty which would rule over Nicaragua, much like a private estate, for the next 43 years. While the Guardsmen, consistently maintained by the United States, passed their time on martial law, rape, torture, murder of the opposition, and massacres of peasants, as well as less violent pursuits such as robbery, extortion, contraband, running brothels and other government functions, the Somoza clan laid claim to the lion's share of Nicaragua's land and businesses. When Anastasio Somoza II was overthrown by the Sandinistas in July 1979, he fled into exile leaving behind a country in which two-thirds of the population earned less than $300 a year. Upon his arrival in Miami, Somoza admitted to being worth $100 million. A US intelligence report, however, placed it at $900 million.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It was fortunate for the new Nicaraguan leaders that they came to power while Jimmy Carter sat in the White House. It gave them a year and a half of relative breathing space to take the first steps in their planned reconstruction of an impoverished society before the relentless hostility of the Reagan administration descended upon them; which is not to say that Carter welcomed the Sandinista victory.<br /> <br /> In 1978, with Somoza nearing collapse, Carter authorized covert CIA support for the press and labor unions in Nicaragua in an attempt to create a &quot;moderate&quot; alternative to the Sandinistas.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Towards the same end, American diplomats were conferring with non-leftist Nicaraguan opponents of Somoza. Washington's idea of &quot;moderate&quot;, according to a group of prominent Nicaraguans who walked out on the discussions, was the inclusion of Somoza's political party in the future government and &quot;leaving practically intact the corrupt structure of the somocista apparatus&quot;, including the National Guard, albeit in some reorganized form.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; Indeed, at this same time, the head of the US Southern Command (Latin America), Lt. General Dennis McAuliffe, was telling Somoza that, although he had to abdicate, the United States had &quot;no intention of permitting a settlement which would lead to the destruction of the National Guard&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; This was a notion remarkably insensitive to the deep loathing for the Guard felt by the great majority of the Nicaraguan people.<br /> <br /> The United States, moreover, tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the Organization of American States to send in a &quot;peace-keeping force&quot;,&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; a body which could only have stood in the way of the insurgents' military progress; and in neighboring Costa Rica the American ambassador saw fit to complain to the government that Cuba had set up a center to oversee its military support of the Sandinistas, resulting in the Cubans being forced to move their headquarters to their consulate.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After the Sandinistas took power, Carter authorized the CIA to provide financial and other support to their opponents.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; At the same time, Washington pressured the Sandinistas to include certain men in the new government.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; Although these tactics failed, the Carter administration did not refuse to give aid to Nicaragua. Ronald Reagan was later to point to this and ask: &quot;Can anybody doubt the generosity and good faith of the American people?&quot; What the president failed to explain was:<br /> <br /> a) Almost all of the aid had gone to non-governmental agencies and to the private sector, including the American Institute for Free Labor Development, the long-time CIA front. (In 1981, the US Solicitor General, while arguing before the Supreme Court, inadvertently touched upon the link between the AIFLD and the CIA. When this was picked up by the press, he lamely said that he had been speaking hypothetically.)&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> b) The primary and expressed motivation for the aid was to strengthen the hands of the so-called moderate opposition and undercut the influence of socialist countries in Nicaragua.<br /> <br /> c) All military aid was withheld despite repeated pleas from the Nicaraguan government about its need and right to such help&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;—the defeated National Guardsmen and other supporters of Somoza had not, after all, disappeared; they had regrouped as the &quot;contras&quot; and maintained primacy in the leadership of this force from then on.<br /> <br /> In January 1981, Ronald Reagan took office under a Republican platform which asserted that it &quot;deplores the Marxist Sandinista takeover of Nicaragua&quot;. The president moved quickly to cut off virtually all forms of assistance to the Sandinistas, the opening salvos of his war against their revolution. The American whale, yet again, felt threatened by a minnow in the Caribbean.<br /> <br /> Among the many measures undertaken: Nicaragua was excluded from US government programs which promote American investment and trade; sugar imports from Nicaragua were slashed by 90 percent; and, without excessive subtlety but with notable success, Washington pressured the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank, and the European Common Market to withhold loans to Nicaragua.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; The director of the IDB, Mr. Kevin O'Sullivan, later revealed that in 1983 the US had opposed a loan to aid Nicaraguan fishermen on the grounds that the country did not have adequate fuel for their boats. A week later, O'Sullivan pointed out, &quot;saboteurs blew up a major Nicaraguan fuel depot in the port of Corinto&quot;,&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; an action described by an American intelligence source as &quot;totally a CIA operation&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Washington did, however, offer $5.1 million in aid to private organizations and to the Roman Catholic Church in Nicaragua. This offer was rejected by the government because, it said, &quot;United States congressional hearings revealed that the [aid] agreements have political motivations, designed to promote resistance and destabilize the Revolutionary Government.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; Nicaragua had already arrested members of several of the previous recipient organizations such as the Moravian Church and the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP) for involvement in armed plots against the government.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Reagan administration was not deterred. Cardinal Miguel Obando and the Catholic Church in Nicaragua received hundreds of thousands of dollars in covert aid, from the CIA until 1985, and then—after official US government aid was stopped by congressional oversight committees—from Oliver North's off-the-books operation in the White House basement. One end to which Obando reportedly put the money was &quot;religious instruction&quot; to &quot;thwart the Marxist-Leninist policies of the Sandinistas&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As part of a concerted effort to deprive the Nicaraguan economy of oil, several attacks on fuel depots were carried out. Contra/CIA operations emanating in Honduras also blew up oil pipelines, mined the waters of oil-unloading ports, and threatened to blow up any approaching oil tankers; at least seven foreign ships were damaged by the mines, including a Soviet tanker with five crewmen reported to be badly injured. Nicaragua's ports were under siege: mortar shelling from high-speed motor launches, aerial bombing and rocket and machine-gun attacks were designed to blockade Nicaragua's exports as well as to starve the country of imports by frightening away foreign shipping.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt; In October 1983, Esso announced that its tankers would no longer carry crude oil to Nicaragua from Mexico, the country's leading supplier; at this point Nicaragua had a 10-day supply of oil.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Agriculture was another prime target. Raids by contras caused extensive damage to crops and demolished tobacco-drying barns, grain silos, irrigation projects, farm houses and machinery; roads, bridges and trucks were destroyed to prevent produce from being moved; numerous state farms and cooperatives were incapacitated and harvesting was prevented; other farms still intact were abandoned because of the danger.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And in October 1982, the Standard Fruit Company announced that it was suspending all its banana operations in Nicaragua and the marketing of the fruit in the United States. The American multinational, after a century of enriching itself in the country, and in violation of a contract with the government which extended to 1985, left behind the uncertainty of employment for some 4,000 workers and approximately six million cases of bananas to harvest with neither transport nor market.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Nicaragua's fishing industry suffered not only from lack of fuel for its boats. The fishing fleet was decimated by mines and attacks, its trawlers idled for want of spare parts due to the US credit blockade. The country lost millions of dollars from reduced shrimp exports.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It was an American war against Nicaragua, The contras had their own various motivations for wanting to topple the Sandinista government. They did not need to be instigated by the United States. But before the US military arrived in Honduras in the thousands and set up Fortress America, the contras were engaged almost exclusively in hit-and-run forays across the border, small-scale raids on Nicaraguan border patrols and farmers, attacks on patrol boats, and the like; killing a few people here, burning a building down there,&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; there was no future for the contras in a war such as this against a much larger force. Then the American big guns began to arrive in 1982, along with the air power, the landing strips, the docks, the radar stations, the communications centers, built under the cover of repeated joint US-Honduran military exercises,&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; while thousands of contras were training in Florida and California.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> US and &quot;Honduran&quot; reconnaissance planes, usually piloted by Americans, began regular overflights into Nicaragua to photograph bombing and sabotage targets, track Sandinista military maneuvers and equipment, spot the planting of mines, eavesdrop on military communications and map the terrain. Electronic surveillance ships off the coast of Nicaragua partook in the bugging of a nation.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt; Said a former CIA analyst: &quot;Our intelligence from Nicaragua is so good … we can hear the toilets flush in Managua.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, American pilots were flying diverse kinds of combat missions against Nicaraguan troops and carrying supplies to contras inside Nicaraguan territory. Several were shot down and killed.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt; Some flew in civilian clothes, after having been told that they would be disavowed by the Pentagon if captured.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt; Some contras told American congressmen that they were ordered to claim responsibility for a bombing raid organized by the CIA and flown by Agency mercenaries.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt; Honduran troops as well were trained by the US for bloody hit-and-run operations into Nicaragua&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt; … and so it went … as in El Salvador, the full extent of American involvement in the fighting will never be known.<br /> <br /> The contras' brutality earned them a wide notoriety. They regularly destroyed health centers, schools, agricultural cooperatives, and community centers—symbols of the Sandinistas' social programs in rural areas. People caught in these assaults were often tortured and killed in the most gruesome ways. One example, reported by The Guardian of London, suffices. In the words of a survivor of a raid in Jinotega province, which borders on Honduras:&lt;blockquote&gt;Rosa had her breasts cut off. Then they cut into her chest and took out her heart. The men had their arms broken, their testicles cut off, and their eyes poked out. They were killed by slitting their throats and pulling the tongue out through the slit.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Americas Watch, the human-rights organization, concluded that &quot;the contras systematically engage in violent abuses … so prevalent that these may be said to be their principal means of waging war.&quot;<br /> <br /> In November 1984, the Nicaraguan government announced that since 1981 the contras had assassinated 910 state officials and killed 8,000 civilians.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The analogy is inescapable: if Nicaragua had been Israel, and the contras the PLO, the Sandinistas would have long before made a lightning bombing raid on the bases in Honduras and wiped them out completely. The United States would have tacitly approved the action, the Soviet Union would have condemned it but done nothing, the rest of the world would have raised their eyebrows, and that would have been the end of it.<br /> <br /> After many contra atrocity stories had been reported in the world press, it was disclosed in October 1984 that the CIA had prepared a manual of instruction for its clients which, amongst other things, encouraged the use of violence against civilians. In the wake of the furor in Congress caused by the exposé, the State Department was obliged to publicly condemn the contras' terrorist activities. Congressional intelligence committees were informed by the CIA, by present and former contra leaders, and by other witnesses that the contras indeed &quot;raped, tortured and killed unarmed civilians, including children&quot; and that &quot;groups of civilians, including women and children, were burned, dismembered, blinded and beheaded&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt; These were the same rebels whom Ronald Reagan, with his strange mirror language, called &quot;freedom fighters&quot; and the &quot;moral equal of our founding fathers&quot;. (The rebels in El Salvador, in the president's studied opinion, were &quot;murderers and terrorists&quot;.)&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA manual, entitled Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare, gave advice on such niceties as political assassination, blackmailing ordinary citizens, mob violence, kidnapping, and blowing up public buildings. Upon entering a town, it said, &quot;establish a public tribunal&quot; where the guerrillas can &quot;shame, ridicule and humiliate&quot; Sandinistas and their sympathizers by &quot;shouting slogans and jeers&quot;. &quot;If … it should be necessary … to fire on a citizen who was trying to leave the town,&quot; guerrillas should explain that &quot;he was an enemy of the people&quot; who would have alerted the Sandinistas who would then &quot;carry out acts of reprisals such as rapes, pillage, destruction, captures, etc.&quot;<br /> <br /> The contras were advised to explain to the people that &quot;our struggle is not against the nationals but rather against Russian imperialists&quot;. This &quot;will foster the sympathy of the peasants, and they will immediately become one of us.&quot; (Mao himself couldn't have put it better.) Workers were to be told that &quot;the state is putting an end to factories&quot;, and doctors informed that &quot;they are being replaced by Cuban paramedics&quot;.<br /> <br /> When the population sees the light and begins to rise against the government, &quot;professional criminals should be hired to carry out selective jobs&quot; such as &quot;taking the demonstrators to a confrontation with the authorities to bring about uprisings and shootings that will cause the death of one or more people to create a martyr for the cause.&quot; Other people will be &quot;armed with clubs, iron rods and placards and, if possible, small firearms, which they will carry hidden.&quot; Still other &quot;shock troops&quot;, equipped &quot;with knives, razors, chains, clubs and bludgeons&quot;, will &quot;march slightly behind the innocent and gullible participants&quot; as the uprising progresses.<br /> <br /> Finally, a section called &quot;Selective Use of Violence for Propagandistic Effects&quot; informed the contra student that &quot;It is possible to neutralize carefully selected and planned targets, such as court judges, police and state security officials,&quot; and others.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Throughout, the manual reads like what the Western world has always been taught is the way communists scheme and indoctrinate. It proved intensely embarrassing to the Reagan administration, not least because it unequivocally punctured the official balloon which had been floating about bearing the message that the United States was not pursuing the overthrow of the Sandinista government; although at that late date, anyone who still believed that was far enough removed from reality to continue believing it.<br /> <br /> White House officials and President Reagan twisted their tongues into knots trying to explain away the manual: the manual made public was only a first draft which was not the one distributed, they said falsely … the word &quot;neutralize&quot; didn't mean to assassinate, only to remove from office … the author of the manual was some low-level, irresponsible &quot;freelancer&quot; …&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Not long afterward, the manual, with minor changes, could be found in distribution again in Honduras, put out ostensibly by a private American organization, Soldier of Fortune magazine.&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA may have tried to provide its students with some object lessons in neutralization, of the Mafia kind. In June 1983, the Nicaraguan government expelled three US Embassy officials—one of whom was reported to be the CIA's Chief of Station in Managua—charging them with being part of an Agency destabilization network which, amongst other things, was attempting to assassinate Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto. The intended murder weapon was to be a bottle of Benedictine liqueur containing thalium, a poison almost undetectable in the human body. At a press conference, the government presented evidence which included photos and videotapes of American diplomats meeting with the Nicaraguan officials who had pretended to go along with the plot, as well as copies of intercepted CIA messages.&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Two months later, another Agency plot to kill d'Escoto (who is also a Roman Catholic priest) as well as two other Sandinista officials was alleged by the Nicaraguan government. A CIA agent named Mike Tock was charged with being behind this particular conspiracy.&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The following June, according to one of the participants, the CIA sent a contra hit team from Honduras to Managua to do away with all nine comandantes of the Sandinista National Directorate in one fell swoop by blowing up the building they were meeting in. The team made it to Managua, but the explosives failed to arrive and the plot was aborted.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Lord and the fight for freedom have something in common: they both move in mysterious ways. If the CIA's guerrilla manual was not an odd enough tool of liberty, the Agency's comic book surely was. Entitled Freedom Fighters' Manual, the 16-page booklet was supplied to contra forces presumably to distribute amongst the Nicaraguan population. Its 40 illustrations showed the reader how s/he could &quot;liberate Nicaragua from oppression and misery&quot; by &quot;a series of useful sabotage techniques&quot;. Amongst these were: stop up toilets with sponges … pull down power cables … put dirt into gas tanks … put nails on roads and highways … cut and perforate the upholstery of vehicles … cut down trees over highways … telephone to make false hotel reservations and false alarms of fires and crimes … hoard and steal food from the government … leave lights and water taps on … steal mail from mailboxes … go to work late … call in sick … short circuit electricity … break light bulbs … rip up books … spread rumors … threaten supervisors and officials over the phone …&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Until at least the mid-1980s, the primary official explanation for American belligerence towards the Sandinista government, at least the explanation most frequently advanced, was that a significant quantity of military supplies was being sent to the Salvadorean rebels from Nicaragua. (The fact that the United States was at the same time heavily arming the Salvadorean government and that the Salvadorean government was assisting the contras did not enter into Washington's equation.) We shall see in the chapter on El Salvador how lacking in evidence Washington was in support of this charge. Whatever organized supply operation of any significance that had existed appears to have ended in early 1981. In January of that year a Salvadorean cabinet minister announced that Nicaragua was no longer allowing its territory to be used for arms shipments.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt; A few weeks later, the Sandinista government, alarmed by the suspension of US economic aid, pressed the Salvadorean guerrillas to seek a political settlement.&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt; (Similar requests were made by the Sandinistas during the following years.)&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt; And in March, in a meeting at CIA headquarters of Director William Casey and others, the cessation of the supply operation was confirmed.&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> David MacMichael, who served with the CIA from 1981 to 1983 as an analyst of military and political developments in Central America, attended an inter-agency meeting held to discuss CIA plans to support the contras. Of this meeting he noted that &quot;Although the stated objective was to interdict arms going into El Salvador, there was hardly any discussion of the arms traffic … I couldn't understand this failure until months later when I realized, like everyone else, that arms interdiction had never been a serious objective.&quot;<br /> <br /> The former CIA man said that he had had access to the most sensitive intelligence on Nicaragua, including arms shipments to El Salvador, based on which he concluded that &quot;the Administration and the CIA have systematically misrepresented Nicaraguan involvement in the supply of arms to Salvadorean guerrillas to justify [their] efforts to overthrow the Nicaraguan Government.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt; For a man who spent ten years as an officer in the US Marine Corps and four years as a counter-insurgency expert in southeast Asia, in addition to his tour of service at the CIA, David MacMichael's political thinking about US foreign policy in Latin America landed in strange territory.&lt;blockquote&gt;We have control and we don't want to lose it. The ideology of anti-communism then provides the rationalization, although this determination to hold on is actually pathology. Then you have an entire generation of people raised in the foreign policy establishment and specializing in this region who for 25 years have gotten up in the morning and said: &quot;We'll get that bastard Castro today.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The failure of the United States to show large Nicaraguan tracks on the Salvadorean landscape apparently led the ubiquitous Oliver North to try and place some artificial footprints in the ground. In 1988, José Blandón, a former close adviser to Panama's defense chief and de facto ruler, General Manuel Noriega, stated that North had set up a secret operation in 1986 that called for Panama to arrange a large shipment of Soviet-bloc arms and vehicles that could be captured in El Salvador and falsely linked to the Sandinistas. The effort collapsed in June when the ship carrying the military goods was seized by Panamanian officials, two days after the New York Times had published an article concerning illegal activities of Noriega.&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Washington's explanation Number Two put forth for its policy appeared to be that Nicaragua was a military threat to other Central American countries—not simply to the bases in Honduras, which were a daily, calculated provocation—but to Honduras itself and the other nearby states. This was a weak reed to lean on, for Nicaragua had virtually no air force (and it would have been suicidal to attack anyone without proper air cover), even less of a navy, and its tanks were demonstrably unsuitable for the terrain of Honduras.&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt; Still less did the Sandinistas have a sane reason for invasion. It is questionable whether the men of the State Department believed this story themselves, any more than did the supposed neighboring targets. At a conference for journalists in Costa Rica in 1985, the Costa Rican Minister of Information, Armando Vargas, said cheerfully: &quot;No one here really expects Nicaragua to invade us.&quot; … &quot;And nobody in Honduras does either,&quot; said Manuel Gamero, the editor-in-chief of Tiempo, one of that country's leading newspapers.&lt;sup&gt;51&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On other days we were told other reasons why the Sandinistas had to be restrained. It may have been to protect the Panama Canal (sic) or &quot;the free use of the sea lanes in the Caribbean basin and the Gulf of Mexico&quot;. (The danger-to-the-sea-lanes bit has been trotted out by Washington for every corner of the globe in the past 40 years; not once has it materialized.) Or it may have been the threat of &quot;another Cuba&quot; or its corollary, &quot;a Soviet beachhead&quot; in the region. These warnings came complete with pictures—an exhibition of aerial photos of Nicaragua showing &quot;Cuban-style military barracks&quot;, a &quot;Soviet-style physical training area with chin-bars and other types of equipment to exercise the forces, and a running track&quot;, and, most damning of all, a Sandinista garrison &quot;having a standard rectangular configuration like we have seen in Cuba&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;52&lt;/sup&gt; Leave it to those cunning Castroites to devise a rectangular building.<br /> <br /> &quot;The strategic issue is a simple one,&quot; asserted Patrick Buchanan, Reagan's Director of Communications. &quot;Who wants Central America more—the West or the Warsaw Pact?&quot;&lt;sup&gt;53&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Fidel Castro was not in any doubt. On at least two occasions he expressed in no uncertain terms his frustration and annoyance with the Soviet Union for not sufficiently aiding Nicaragua and for what he saw as the Russians' weak and indecisive response to American pressure against the Sandinista government, even in the face of a Russian ship being damaged by CIA mines. The Cuban leader failed to attend the funeral of Soviet leader Chernenko in March 1985 and did not sign the book of condolences at the Soviet Embassy in Havana, apparently to register his displeasure with Soviet policy. Responded a Soviet diplomat: &quot;We obviously place a priority on improving relations with our adversary. We have to seek a balance with the US, so naturally we will say [to the Cubans] calm down, we are not interested in sharpening the situation in Angola and Nicaragua.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;54&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;In the … think-tanks and the academic institutes in Moscow where Soviet policy towards Central America is discussed and debated …&quot;, reported The Guardian of London, &quot;the emphasis is on dialogue and negotiation, and if the Soviet Union agrees on one thing with the United States, it is that there should be 'no more Cubas',&quot; a reference to the heavy economic and political burden Cuba had placed upon Moscow over the years.&lt;sup&gt;55&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Oliver North was not in any doubt either as to who wanted Central America more. Said the lieutenant colonel to one of the private American contributors to the contras: &quot;Russia would never go up against us to save Nicaragua.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;56&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Neither was Poland in doubt. The Warsaw Pact member sold arms to the contras, as did the Communist Chinese.&lt;sup&gt;57&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1987, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev offered to end Soviet military aid to Nicaragua if the United States ended its military support of the contras. Reagan confirmed that Gorbachev had raised this matter with him, but there is no indication that the president followed up in any way.&lt;sup&gt;58&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In January 1983, the so-called Contadora group, composed of Mexico, Panama, Colombia and Venezuela, began to meet periodically in an attempt to still the troubled waters of Central America. Rejecting at the outset the idea that the conflicts of the region could or should be seen as part of an East-West confrontation, they conferred with all the nations involved, including the United States. The complex and lengthy discussions eventually gave birth to a 21-point treaty which dealt with the most contentious issues: civil war, foreign intervention, elections, and human rights. Washington, which was not itself to be a signatory to the treaty, though obviously indispensable to its implementation, pressed Managua to sign, partly for domestic consumption—congressional support of the administration's Nicaragua policy and the 1984 presidential elections—and partly to be able to take jabs at Nicaragua, saying that it would make the country a democracy and halt their &quot;export of revolution&quot;.<br /> <br /> Then, much to Washington's surprise, on 7 September 1984 Nicaragua announced its intention to sign the treaty. Until this moment, the United States had not publicly criticized the treaty's provisions, but immediately Washington began to find things wrong with it and called for changes. The State Department declared that the Contadora group &quot;didn't intend that this [treaty document] be the end of the process&quot;, but a high-ranking diplomat from one of the Contadora countries insisted that &quot;Everyone had treated it as a final document from the beginning&quot;, as had the US representatives.&lt;sup&gt;59&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> What alarmed Washington about the treaty was its provisions for the removal from each country of all foreign military bases; restrictions on foreign military personnel, armaments, and military exercises; and a prohibition on aid to insurgent forces seeking to overthrow a government. It was enough to put an interventionist power out of business.<br /> <br /> The United States refused to give its blessings to the agreement. Commented Rep. Michael Barnes, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere: &quot;The Administration's objections to the treaty reinforce my belief that it's never had any real interest in a negotiated settlement.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;60&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After the Managua announcement, State Department officials admitted that they were concerned that it &quot;might undermine the Administration's efforts to portray the Sandinistas as the primary source of tension in Central America&quot;. Some officials argued that a trip scheduled by Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega to Los Angeles &quot;should not be approved, in part, to punish Mr. Ortega and the Sandinistas for accepting the Contadora peace proposal.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;61&lt;/sup&gt; Nicaragua's willingness to sign the treaty was labeled &quot;a propaganda ploy&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;62&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One month later, an internal National Security Council paper was able to note that the United States, through intensive lobbying efforts, had &quot;effectively blocked&quot; adoption of the treaty as it was written.&lt;sup&gt;63&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During the following three years, the Reagan administration successfully sought to thwart the peace talks among the Contadora group because the talks complicated administration attempts to win funds for the contras in Congress, as well as working against their primary goal of toppling the Nicaraguan government.&lt;sup&gt;64&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> National Security adviser John Poindexter let Panama strongman General Manuel Noriega understand that the United States did not appreciate Panama's role in the Contadora process and suggested that Noriega step down from power. When Noriega refused, the US cut off $40 million in economic assistance. Then, in June 1986, Washington officials briefed American journalists about Noriega's involvement in drug trafficking and money laundering. Thus was a CIA client in good standing suddenly transformed into Public Enemy Number One in the United States. (Similarly, in 1985, when Honduran President Roberto Suazo impeded contra aid shipments, the US blocked an aid package to Honduras and leaked some dirt about Suazo.)<br /> <br /> In February 1986, the US threatened Mexico—which was, along with Panama, the most active member of the Contadora group—that if it lobbied Congress on behalf of the Contadora process, the administration would throw its support behind the opposition National Action Party (PAN) in upcoming Mexican elections. Convicted Contragate player Carl Channell later told representatives of PAN that Reagan would help them if they helped the contras. In an extremely unusual move, administration officials went before Congress in May to denounce the Mexican government for corruption, drug trafficking and economic mismanagement.&lt;sup&gt;65&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In August 1987, a &quot;Central American Peace Accord&quot;, generated by President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica as a successor to the unsuccessful Contadora process, was signed by Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Its key provisions concerning foreign military intervention were similar to those in the various Contadora versions.<br /> <br /> The Reagan administration, however, still had its heart set on a military victory. According to former officials, some in the administration wanted to see the failure of peace talks convened under the Arias plan.&lt;sup&gt;66&lt;/sup&gt; The war in Nicaragua continued.<br /> <br /> The argument most often advanced by the Reagan administration to explain its reluctance to accept a Contadora agreement during 1983 and 1984 was that Nicaragua was not prepared to hold a truly free election as called for by the treaty. Washington labeled the election held in November 1984, which the Sandinistas won by a two-to-one margin, a &quot;sham&quot;.<br /> <br /> On the face of it, by the (flawed) standards of Western elections, the Nicaraguan election cannot be much faulted; by the standards of Latin America, it was a veritable paragon of democracy; the fact that there were no deaths reported in connection with the election, by itself, made it rather unique in Latin America; the appearance of minor parties on the ballot in every department (state) of the nation distinguished it from the typical presidential election in the United States.<br /> <br /> The election was open to all parties and candidates, no fraud in the polling was reported, or even seriously charged; it was observed by a reported 400 foreigners from 40 different countries, and on election day the Washington Post could report:&lt;blockquote&gt;even U.S. diplomats here acknowledge that the Sandinistas have allowed expression of a wide range of political views, including some that were harshly critical of the government. The Sandinistas eased censorship of the sole opposition newspaper, La Prensa, at the start of the campaign, and the state television and radio channels have given air time—although limited—for the small but vocal opposition parties to make their case.&lt;sup&gt;67&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Washington's criticism of the election centered on the boycott of it by the Democratic Coordinating Alliance (DCA), a significant coalition of opposition groups headed by Arturo José Cruz. On several occasions, Cruz and his followers were physically harassed by crowds when they appeared in public and on at least one occasion it was reported that many of the protestors had been brought to town in government vehicles. Whether the Sandinistas deliberately intended to harass Cruz or discourage him from running is not clear; what is clear is that the government had much more to lose than to gain by keeping the DCA off the ballot. In any event, harassment of a serious nature appears to have been short-lived and did not remain as a stumbling block to Cruz running. The DCA's most persistent stated objection was that not enough time had been allowed for campaigning.<br /> <br /> The chronology of events is as follows: the 4 November election date was announced on 21 February; in May, registration of parties and candidates was set for 25 July, at which time seven parties registered: the Sandinistas, three parties which could be considered to their left, and three to their right.&lt;sup&gt;68&lt;/sup&gt; The DCA declined to register and Cruz announced that he would not run unless the government opened a dialogue with the contras, as if the contras had been fervently demanding this for some time, only to be rebuffed by the government. The DCA dropped this request three weeks later, stating that the contras had told them they would abide by any accord reached between the party and the government.&lt;sup&gt;69&lt;/sup&gt; The failure to register, it should be noted, occurred before any special harassment had taken place.<br /> <br /> Cruz also contended at this time that for five years the population had been too indoctrinated by the government for the opposition to stand a chance,&lt;sup&gt;70&lt;/sup&gt; a charge which could be made with considerable validity by any opposition party in any nation of the world.<br /> <br /> The day of registration, several of Cruz's aides met with the government and asked that the deadline for registration be extended,&lt;sup&gt;71&lt;/sup&gt; a move indicating perhaps a split in the DCA ranks. The Sandinistas at first refused, but on 22 September announced that registration was being extended to 1 October. The DCA again failed to register, stating that the election date had to be moved from November to January.&lt;sup&gt;72&lt;/sup&gt; The Sandinistas suspected, and said so openly, that the DCA knew it would lose anyway and was abstaining from the election at the behest of the United States in order to throw a question mark over the whole process. In August, some of Cruz's backers had in fact stated that they hoped to &quot;discredit the election and force the Sandinistas to grant political concessions&quot;. &quot;What we really need,&quot; they declared, &quot;is Arturo in jail.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;73&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One unmistakable sign of the CIA's hand in the election was the full-page advertisements which appeared in August in newspapers in Venezuela, Costa Rica and Panama. Signed by a fictitious organization called &quot;Friends of Tomas Borge&quot;, the ads attempted to split the Sandinista leadership by promoting Borge's candidacy over that of Daniel Ortega who had already been chosen as the Sandinista candidate. &quot;Neither Ortega nor Cruz!&quot; proclaimed the ads.&lt;sup&gt;74&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Throughout this period, the DCA made one demand after another concerning electoral procedures as its price for taking part in the election. By any reasonable standard of power relationships, the government showed itself to be flexible. On 21 September, the New York Times reported that the opposition had stated that the Sandinistas had made substantial concessions and that the only major proposal left was postponing the election until January. This was important, said the DCA, because the campaign could not have properly begun before certain things had been agreed upon. The government's position was that it would grant the postponement—a major concession and inconvenience—only if the DCA would arrange a ceasefire with the contras. The party replied that it didn't have the power to do so, and negotiations continued through all of October with many confusing and contradictory reports coming out of the talks until, finally, time ran out.<br /> <br /> The United States could certainly have arranged a ceasefire if it was interested in testing the Sandinistas' commitment to what Washington would call a free election. That the US had such an interest is questionable in light of what the New York Times revealed two weeks before the election:&lt;blockquote&gt;The Reagan Administration, while publicly criticizing the Nov. 4 elections in Nicaragua as &quot;a sham,&quot; has privately argued against the participation of the leading opposition candidate for fear his involvement would legitimize the electoral process, according to some senior Administration officials.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Since May, when American policy toward the election was formed, the Administration has wanted the opposition candidate, Arturo José Cruz, either not to enter the race or, if he did, to withdraw before the election, claiming the conditions were unfair, the officials said.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;The Administration never contemplated letting Cruz stay in the race,&quot; one official said, &quot;because then the Sandinistas could justifiably claim that the elections were legitimate, making it much harder for the United States to oppose the Nicaraguan Government.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Several Administration officials who are familiar with the Administration's activities in Nicaragua said the Central Intelligence Agency had worked with some of Mr. Cruz's supporters to insure that they would object to any potential agreement for his participation in the election.&lt;sup&gt;75&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;A few days before election day, some rightist parties on the ballot claimed that US diplomats had been pressing them to drop out of the race.&lt;sup&gt;76&lt;/sup&gt; One of these, the Independent Liberal Party, had already announced that it was no longer in the running.<br /> <br /> Having exposed the administration's plan to sabotage the election's credibility, a plan centering around Arturo Cruz, and having reported the above about parties being pressured to drop out, the New York Times, after the election, inexplicably published an editorial which said in part:&lt;blockquote&gt;Only the naive believe that Sunday's election in Nicaragua was democratic or legitimizing proof of the Sandinista's popularity. … The Sandinistas made it easy to dismiss their election as a sham. Their decisive act was to break off negotiations with Arturo Cruz, an opposition democrat whose candidacy could have produced a more credible contest. … The opposition … was finally shrunk to four small left-wing groups and factions of two traditional parties. Even so, and after five years of unchallenged power, the Sandinistas appear to have won less than two-thirds of the vote.&lt;sup&gt;77&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The American ambassador to Costa Rica likened Nicaragua under the Sandinistas to an &quot;infected piece of meat&quot; that attracts &quot;insects&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;78&lt;/sup&gt; President Reagan called the country a &quot;totalitarian dungeon&quot;,&lt;sup&gt;79&lt;/sup&gt; and insisted that the people of Nicaragua were more oppressed than blacks in South Africa.&lt;sup&gt;80&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Members of the Kissinger Commission on Central America indicated that Nicaragua under the Sandinistas was as bad or worse than Nicaragua under Somoza. Henry Kissinger believed it to be as bad as or worse than Nazi Germany.&lt;sup&gt;81&lt;/sup&gt; Reagan was in accord—he compared the plight of the contras to Britain's stand against Germany in World War II.&lt;sup&gt;82&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Central America,&quot; noted Wayne Smith, former head of the US Interests Section in Havana, &quot;now exercises the same influence on American foreign policy as the full moon does on werewolves.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;83&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> So all-consuming, so unrelenting, was the hatred, that Kissinger demanded that the American ambassador to Nicaragua be removed simply because he reported that the Sandinista government was &quot;performing fairly well in such areas as education&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;84&lt;/sup&gt; And in the wake of the terrible devastation in Nicaragua wrought by Hurricane Joan in October 1988, the Reagan administration refused to send any aid nor to help private American organizations do so.<br /> <br /> So eager was the State Department to turn the Sandinistas into international pariahs, that it told the world, without any evidence, that Nicaragua was exporting drugs, that it was anti-Semitic, that it was training Brazilian guerrillas.&lt;sup&gt;85&lt;/sup&gt; When the CIA was pressed about the alleged Sandinista drug connection, it backed down from the administration's claim.&lt;sup&gt;86&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Secretary of State Alexander Haig referred to a photograph of blazing corpses and declared it an example of the &quot;atrocious genocidal actions that are being taken by the Nicaraguan Government&quot; against the Miskito Indians. We then learned that the photo was from 1978, Somoza's time.&lt;sup&gt;87&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Loathing of this magnitude had to be institutionalized. Thus it was that an Office of Public Diplomacy was set up in 1983, nominally in the State Department, but operating as an arm of the National Security Council. The OPD was characterized by a US official as &quot;a huge psychological operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in denied or enemy territory&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;88&lt;/sup&gt; Only in this case the target population was the American people. OPD Deputy Director Col. Daniel Jacobowitz, a military &quot;psy-ops&quot; specialist, described the media campaign in a March 1985 &quot;confidential-sensitive&quot; strategy paper: &quot;Overall theme: the Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters (NFF) are fighters for freedom in the American Tradition, FSLN [Sandinistas] are evil.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;89&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Rolling off the OPD disinformation assembly line, with the imagination of Oliver North ever active, were stories about Nicaragua acquiring chemical weapons, an &quot;Iran-Nicaragua&quot; link (not to be confused with the real US/Oliver North-Iran link we later learned of), a &quot;Soviet MIGs in Nicaragua&quot; hoax, the Sandinista massacre of 50 political prisoners … as well as a number of other claims, misleading at best.&lt;sup&gt;90&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Opinion pieces and &quot;news&quot; stories prepared by OPD staffers or contractors were planted in major media outlets under the signatures of contra leaders or ostensibly independent scholars, pretending to offer independent confirmation of White House claims, while other materials were distributed to thousands of university libraries, faculties, editorial writers, and religious organizations. Private sector public relations experts, lobbying groups, and think tanks were also enlisted for the cause and paid large chunks of taxpayer money to promote the OPD agenda. By OPD's own assessment, its work significantly changed public and congressional opinion, including winning approval in the House of $100 million in contra aid in June 1986.&lt;sup&gt;91&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Within a rational framework, it would be proper to inquire what the Sandinistas had done that made it impossible for the United States to share the same planet with them. David MacMichael observed that there was no casus belli between the two countries:&lt;blockquote&gt;There are no examples of US citizens being killed there. No US property has been expropriated without due process or compensation. These people are so backward that they haven't even bothered to kill any American priests or nuns.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Now any half-respectable country in the world can do that, but the Sandinistas don't seem to get round to it.&lt;sup&gt;92&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;What the United States did to the Nicaraguan revolution is clearer.<br /> <br /> To transform Nicaraguan society, even if left in peace, would have been uphill all the way. The Sandinistas inherited a country of crushing poverty, backward in most respects (there were, reportedly, but two elevators in Nicaragua), and with a foreign debt of $1.6 billion which they decided to honor (with the exception of money owed to Israel and Argentina for arms shipments to Somoza).&lt;sup&gt;93&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Then came the American body-blows to foreign trade and credit, to industry and agriculture, and a war which forced the government to devote an increasing portion of its national budget and an inordinate amount of its labor power to warfare and security. In 1980, half the national budget had been allocated to health and education, and military spending accounted for about 18 percent. By 1987, the military effort consumed more than half the budget, health and education less than 20 percent.<br /> <br /> On top of this: the historically familiar post-revolutionary flight abroad of capital and middle-class professionals; the equally familiar sabotage by those who remain&lt;sup&gt;94&lt;/sup&gt;—facile in a society where most of the businesses and farms were still in private hands—and the Nicaraguan economy went onto a life-support machine: a trail of inefficiencies and shortages of all kinds; taxis and buses and machines grinding to a halt for want of an American spare part; a failure to meet the great expectations of the population, mitigated only partly by the progress in agrarian reform, health care, literacy, and other social programs … many who had been sympathetic to the revolution drifted away, some into protest and opposition.<br /> <br /> Individuals are turned away from, or attracted to, social revolutions for a multitude of reasons, ideological and/or personal. All must be approached with caution. The most prominent defector from the Sandinistas, Edén Pastora, in between (semi-coherent) political statements, declared that &quot;They [the Sandinistas] attack me for my success with women, out of jealousy because they are all queer and I can make love to their women.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;95&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Few US officials now believe the contras can drive out the Sandinistas soon,&quot; reported the Boston Globe in February 1986. &quot;Administration officials said they are content to see the contras debilitate the Sandinistas by forcing them to divert scarce resources toward the war and away from social programs.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;96&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Forty years of anti-communist indoctrination under Somoza and American cultural influence had also left their marks. A government militant put it this way:&lt;blockquote&gt;Tell a Nicaraguan factory worker … that we are building a system in which workers will control the means of production, in which income will be redistributed to benefit the proletariat, and he will say &quot;yes—that's what we want.&quot; Call it Socialism and he will tell you he doesn't want any part of it. Tell a peasant—in whom the problem of political education is even more acute—that the revolution is all about destroying the power of the big latifundistas, that the agrarian reform and the literacy campaign will incorporate the peasantry into political decisions … and he will be enthusiastic, he will recognize that this is right and just. Mention the word Communism and he will run a mile.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;97&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In the face of dissension, the Sandinistas often showed themselves unable to distinguish sincere and valid criticism from intentions to destabilize. Some opponents were harassed and jailed, civil liberties were curtailed, although never in a draconian manner. And credentials of loyalty to the revolution increasingly became a priority in filling positions high and low. This, interestingly enough, was precisely what was taking place in Washington at the same time, as the ultra-ideological Reagan administration was stuffing the bureaucracy with confirmed conservative loyalists.<br /> <br /> Subsequent disclosures, however, established that the Sandinistas were not simply paranoid. In September 1988, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Jim Wright, citing &quot;clear testimony from CIA people&quot;, revealed that the Agency had employed people in Nicaragua to organize and promote anti-government rallies and protests in hopes of provoking a crackdown or some other overreaction by the government, which, besides making the Sandinistas look bad, &quot;was calculated to be disruptive to the peace talks&quot; that the Reagan administration was publicly supporting.&lt;sup&gt;98&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The shutting down of the prominent opposition newspaper La Prensa on several occasions was also judged harshly by civil libertarians. But this policy raised an important historical question: During World War II, did the US government allow the publication of pro-German or pro-Japanese newspapers in the United States? Has any government at war, particularly a war for its very survival, fought on its own soil, permitted the enemy to freely publish or broadcast at home, or allowed unrestricted dissent? During the American Civil War, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and put enemy sympathizers in army jails without trial.<br /> <br /> La Prensa indeed represented the enemy. At various times in the 1980s, one of the paper's chief editors was Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, Jr. During part of the same time, he was a member of the directorate of a contra umbrella group, The Nicaraguan Resistance of Washington, D.C.&lt;sup&gt;99&lt;/sup&gt; And Chamorro would go off on speaking tours in the United States to enlist support for the contras.<br /> <br /> The newspaper was financed by the enemy as well, covertly by the CIA since 1979, and by millions of dollars from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Washington and various &quot;private&quot; American groups beginning in 1984.&lt;sup&gt;100&lt;/sup&gt; NED receives its money from Congress and was set up in 1983 in the wake of all the negative revelations about the CIA in the 1970s. Its raison d'être is to do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades—manipulate the political process in a target country by financing political parties, labor unions, book publishers, newspapers, etc.—and thus, hopefully, eliminate the stigma associated with CIA covert activities.&lt;sup&gt;101&lt;/sup&gt; Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, and also founded the Center for Democracy, one of NED's funding middlemen, was candid about this when he said in 1991: &quot;A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;102&lt;/sup&gt; NED, like the CIA before it, calls what it does supporting democracy. The governments against whom the financing is targeted call it destabilization.<br /> <br /> In any event, covert funding did not pass away. Both the CIA and Oliver North's multifarious operation channeled large sums of money to anti-Sandinista politicians and other elements of the internal opposition, including, as we have seen, the Catholic Church.&lt;sup&gt;103&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During a period in which military aid to the contras was prohibited by Congress, North's network purchased large quantities of arms for the rebels from Manzer al-Kassar, a man whose US criminal record labels him &quot;TERRORIST!&quot; at the top of the page. Kassar was a known associate of those reputed to be responsible for the 1985 Christmas massacres in the Rome and Vienna airports, the hijacking of the liner Achille Lauro, and other notorious attacks.&lt;sup&gt;104&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Another apostle of decency enlisted for the cause was the government of South Africa, which sent 200,000 pounds of military equipment to contra leader Edén Pastora.&lt;sup&gt;105&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By the time the war in Nicaragua began to slowly atrophy to a tentative conclusion during 1988-89, the Reagan administration's obsession with the Sandinistas had inspired both the official and unofficial squads to embrace tactics such as the following in order to maintain a steady flow of financing, weaponry and other aid to the contras: dealings with other middle-eastern and Latin American terrorists, frequent drug smuggling in a variety of imaginative ways, money laundering, embezzlement of US government funds, perjury, obstruction of justice, burglary of the offices of American dissidents, covert propaganda to defeat domestic political foes, violation of the neutrality act, illegal shredding of government documents, plans to suspend the Constitution in the event of widespread internal dissent against government policy … and much more, as revealed in the phenomenon known as Iran/Contra … all of it to support the band of rapists, torturers and killers known as the contras.&lt;sup&gt;106&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> This, then, was the level of charm reached by anti-communism after 70 years of refinement. The imperial sensibility of America's leaders could be compared favorably with that of Britain circa 1925.<br /> <br /> But it worked.<br /> <br /> On 25 February 1990, the Sandinistas were defeated in national elections by a coalition of political parties running under the name National Opposition Union (UNO). President George Bush called it &quot;a victory for democracy&quot;… Senator Robert Dole declared that &quot;The final outcome is a vindication of the Reagan policies.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;107&lt;/sup&gt; … Elliott Abrams, former State Department official and Iran/Contra leading light, said &quot;When history is written, the contras will be folk heroes.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;108&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The opposing analysis of the election was that ten years of all-encompassing war had worn the Nicaraguan people down. They were afraid that as long as the Sandinistas remained in power, the contras and the United States would never relent in their campaign to overthrow them. The people voted for peace. (As the people of the Dominican Republic had voted in 1966 for the US-supported candidate to forestall further American military intervention.)<br /> <br /> &quot;We can't take any more war. All we have had is war, war, war, war,&quot; said Samuel Reina, a driver for Jimmy Carter's election monitoring team in Juigalpa. In some families &quot;one son has been drafted by the Sandinistas and another has joined the contras. The war has torn families apart.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;109&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The US invasion and bombing of Panama just two months earlier, with all its death and destruction, could only have intensified the commitment of hardcore Sandinistas to resist yanqui imperialismo, but it could not have failed to serve as a caution to the large bloc of undecided voters.<br /> <br /> The Nicaraguans were also voting, they hoped, for some relief from the grinding poverty that five years of a full American economic embargo, as well as the war, had heaped upon their heads. Commented Paul Reichler, a US lawyer who represented the Nicaraguan government in Washington at the time: &quot;Whatever revolutionary fervor the people once might have had was beaten out of them by the war and the impossibility of putting food in their children's stomachs.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;110&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Aqui no se rinde nadie. For ten years the people of Nicaragua had shouted that slogan—Here, no one gives up. But in February 1990, they did exactly that. (Just as the people of Chile had chanted &quot;The people united will never be defeated&quot;, before succumbing to American power.)<br /> <br /> The United States had more than war and embargo at its disposal to determine the winner of the election. The National Endowment for Democracy spent more than $11 million dollars, directly and indirectly, on the election campaign in Nicaragua.&lt;sup&gt;111&lt;/sup&gt; This is comparable to a foreign government pouring more than $700 million dollars into an American election, and is in addition to several million dollars more allocated by Congress to &quot;supporting the electoral infrastructure&quot; and the unknown number of millions the CIA passed around covertly.<br /> <br /> As a result of a controversy in 1984—when NED funds were used to aid a Panamanian presidential candidate backed by Noriega and the CIA—Congress enacted a law prohibiting the use of NED funds &quot;to finance the campaigns of candidates for public office.&quot; The ways to circumvent the letter and/or spirit of such a prohibition were not difficult to conceive. NED first allocated millions to help organize UNO, building up the parties and organizations that formed and supported the coalition. Then a variety of other organizations—civic, labor, media, women's, etc.—run by UNO activists received grants for all kinds of &quot;nonpartisan&quot; and &quot;pro-democracy&quot; programs, for voter education, voter registration, job skills, and so on. Large grants made to UNO itself were specified for items such as office equipment and vehicles. (Rep. Silvio Conte of Massachusetts pointed out that the $1.3 million requested for vehicles would pay for renting 2,241 cars for a month at $20 per day.) UNO was the only political party to receive US aid, even though eight other opposition parties fielded candidates. Money received by UNO for any purpose of course freed up their own money for use in the campaign and helped all of their candidates. Moreover, the US continued to fund the contras, some of whom campaigned for UNO in rural areas.&lt;sup&gt;112&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Afterwards, critics of the American policy in Nicaragua called it &quot;a blueprint&quot; for successful US intervention in the Third World. A Pentagon analyst agreed: &quot;It's going right into the textbooks.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;113&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Panama 1969-1991: Double-crossing our drug supplier ==<br /> El Chorrillo, that's what they called the tenement barrio in Panama City … 20,000 people had been packed into it; the December 1989 invasion—10 hours of heavy assault—left 15,000 homeless. … Marcia McFarland was asleep with her daughters when the assault on the nearby military building began; she was leading them out of her house when a shard of shrapnel took a pound of her thigh and all but tore off her two-year old daughter's foot. … Artillery shells and rockets; tanks, machine guns, and flame throwers; and then the ground troops, &quot;the Yanqui soldiers, with their faces painted, they were all screaming, they looked like Indians&quot;; people burning to death in the incinerated dwellings, leaping from windows, running in panic through the streets, cut down in cross fire, crushed by tanks, human body fragments everywhere. … Heriberto Pitti worked for Eastern Airlines; when US troops attacked the airport, Pitti, Pablo Diaz and another colleague jumped into an Eastern pickup and raced out of the hangar; the truck took seven rounds through the windshield, killing all three men; Pitti left a widow and two daughters; Diaz left a widow and 12 children.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Five hundred-something Panamanian dead is the official body count, what the US and Panamanian governments admit to; other sources, with no less evidence, insist that thousands died, their numbers obscured in mass graves; 3,000-something wounded; 23 American dead, 324 wounded.<br /> <br /> Question from reporter: &quot;Was it really worth it to send people to their death for this? To get Noriega?&quot;<br /> <br /> George Bush: &quot;… every human life is precious, and yet I have to answer, yes, it has been worth it.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Born to Inform&quot; would be a suitable inscription on a T-shirt worn by Manuel Antonio Noriega. In his younger days, in the 1950s and early '60s, he was already passing on information to one or another US intelligence agency, about colleagues in a socialist party he belonged to, about leftist students at his Peruvian military academy.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Noriega followed a military career, falling under the right mentor, National Guard General Omar Torrijos. On two occasions the general had to intervene to save the ruthless Noriega from rape charges. In October 1968, Torrijos took power in Panama in a coup. He was, by Latin American standards, a not-very-brutal dictator; he was as well a liberal reformer, who was wary of the excesses of North American power in Central America.<br /> <br /> In December 1969, conservative military officers tried, unsuccessfully, to overthrow Torrijos, claiming the government was heading toward a pro-communist dictatorship. Only hours before the coup attempt began, one of the principal plotters had met with a US official. After the coup, the same plotter and others escaped from a high-security jail in a sophisticated commando operation and turned up in the US-run Panama Canal Zone before going into exile in Miami.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Noriega, who had proven his loyalty to Torrijos during the coup attempt, was soon elevated to head the intelligence unit of the National Guard. He was now in the right place to carry out all forms of mischief and enhance his reputation as a thug.<br /> <br /> As early as 1971, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (forerunner of the Drug Enforcement Administration), had &quot;hard evidence&quot; about Noriega's heavy involvement in drug trafficking, &quot;sufficient for indictment&quot;. But the legal and diplomatic obstacles involved were considerable, and Noriega was already too valuable to the CIA. President Nixon, however, wanted him &quot;removed&quot;. Among the options discussed to achieve this end was assassination. It went as far as sending a member of the infamous &quot;plumbers&quot; unit to Mexico to await further orders to go to Panama and carry out the execution. But the would-be assassin got no further.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During the Watergate hearings in 1973, former White House counsel John Dean testified that the White House had contracted E. Howard Hunt, &quot;former&quot; CIA officer and Watergate burglar, to assassinate Omar Torrijos because of his uncooperative stance on the Panama Canal treaty negotiations and his government's role in drug trafficking.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; (Inasmuch as Hunt may have been the &quot;plumber&quot; referred to above, and since Dean stated that Hunt had his team in Mexico before the mission was aborted, there is possibly some confusion here.)<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, US government cash (primarily that of the CIA and the Pentagon) was making its way into Manuel Noriega's bank accounts. With the exception of President Carter's term, 1977-81,&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; the payments to Noriega continued until 1986; this included the period that George Bush was the Director of the CIA (1976), at which time the Panamanian intelligence chief was reportedly receiving in excess of $100,000 per year.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And a lot of looking the other way. During the Panama Canal negotiations in October 1976, three bombs went off under cars parked in the Canal Zone. American officials believed that the bombings were an expression of nationalism carried out by Noriega's National Guard.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; Yet, in December, Bush met with the Panamanian in Washington and gave him a VIP tour of the CIA. Noriega spent his time in Washington as the house guest of Bush's Deputy Director, the infamous Vernon Walters.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> When Omar Torrijos died in an air crash in 1981, Noriega became part of a ruling military junta. (In 1987, Colonel Robert Díaz Herrera, who was a cousin of Torrijos and had been one of the members of the junta, declared that Torrijos had died because of a bomb placed aboard his plane. Díaz named Noriega, the CIA, US General Wallace Nutting, head of the U.S. Southern Command in Panama at the time of the air crash, and others as being part of the conspiracy.)&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By August 1983, Noriega had maneuvered himself into the position of commander of the National Guard (whose name he soon changed to Panama Defense Forces). He was the effective chief of state, and his value to his American paymasters increased accordingly.<br /> <br /> Six months earlier, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had reported that &quot;Witnesses in Panama consider it common knowledge that the [National] Guard has links—and receives payments—from various traffickers in drugs, arms and other kinds of contraband.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In November, however, Noriega received the red-carpet treatment in Washington, marked by luxury and meetings with officials of the White House, State Department and Pentagon, and enjoyed a four-hour lunch with CIA Director William Casey. Casey, probably Noriega's biggest supporter in Washington, met with the Panama strongman at least six times in Washington and Panama during the 1980s.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Noriega earned Washington's money and tolerance over the years by providing numerous services, such as information about a host of regional matters, including his meetings with Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega; giving haven to the Shah of Iran in December 1979; allowing the United States to set up listening posts in Panama, with which they monitored sensitive communications in all of Central America and beyond; and aiding the American warfare against the rebels in El Salvador and the government of Nicaragua; in the latter conflict, Noriega facilitated the flow of money and arms to the contras, allowed the US to base spy planes in Panama in clear violation of the canal treaties, gave the US permission to train contras in Panama (it is not certain that this actually took place), and provided information and direct action for the American campaign of sabotage inside of Nicaragua.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But what information, American officials wondered, was the same Manuel Antonio Noriega giving Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega about the United States? Washington already knew that he was helping Cuba circumvent the American economic embargo and that at various times in his career he'd helped to get weapons for the Sandinistas and for the guerrillas in El Salvador and Colombia, as well as transferring high technology to Eastern Europe.<br /> <br /> On 12 June 1986, the New York Times carried a front-page story recounting many of Noriega's questionable activities, including his drug-trafficking and money-laundering operations, and the murder of a political opponent. It was the most detailed and damning report on Noriega to appear in the US media.<br /> <br /> Noriega assumed, probably incorrectly, that the article had the blessings of the White House. And though the Reagan administration reassured him that he need not be overly concerned about the story, the Panamanian felt threatened.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In August, through a go-between, he proposed to Oliver North that in exchange for a promise from Washington to help clean up his image and a commitment to lift the US government ban on military sales to the Panamanian Defense Forces (imposed because of the Times article), Noriega would assassinate the Sandinista leadership. North evidently declined the offer, noting in a written memo that an executive order barred American participation in assassinations.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; However, as we have seen, the CIA in Nicaragua, not long before, had been engaged in precisely the same undertaking.<br /> <br /> The following month North and Noriega met in London to discuss the latter's contribution to the Nicaraguan sabotage campaign. In return, North arranged for an American public relations firm to work on improving Panama's and Noriega's image.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Noriega's principal periods of drug trafficking and money laundering appear to have been the early 1970s and the early 1980s, the latter period involving the Medellin, Colombia cartel. At other times, for reasons best known to his opportunistic self, he generally enforced the law against such activities. On his orders, Panamanian-flagged ships were searched in international waters, fugitive drug traffickers were sent to the United States for trial, and Panamanian banking laws were breached—all at the behest of American authorities.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Noriega's American patrons were pleased. At various times, he received warm letters of praise from the State Department, the U.S. Southern Command in Panama, US Attorney General William French Smith, CIA Director William Webster, and more than one DEA official. In 1987, more than a year after the New York Times had revealed his drug involvements in a front-page story, the head of the DEA, John Lawn, praised Noriega's &quot;personal commitment&quot; in helping to solve a major money-laundering case.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt; The same year found high US law enforcement officials, including Lawn, working alongside Noriega at a meeting of Interpol, even advising him on how to achieve a better public image.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Eventually, his luck ran out. A few enthusiastic DEA agents and US Attorneys, keeping a low profile, set the ball rolling in 1985 that eventually led to an indictment of Noriega in Florida on Federal drug charges in February 1988. In the interim, the Iran-Contra scandal broke out, followed by congressional hearings, making it much more awkward for Noriega's prominent administration defenders, such as Oliver North and William Casey, to pull the strings of the law. Then, in November 1986, North was relieved of his duties. The following May, Casey died. In June, the Senate passed a resolution calling for Noriega's immediate removal. It passed over the objections of the administration.<br /> <br /> Ironically, it appears that Noriega had really gone straight. With one exception—a drugs-for-arms deal in March 1986—all the crimes he was indicted for in 1988 occurred in June 1984 or earlier. The DEA was deeply divided between those who investigated him as a criminal and those who swore by the authenticity of his cooperation with their agency.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;The Yankees,&quot; Noriega said shortly before they invaded, &quot;seem to adore the product [drugs] and then become upset with Latin Americans, as if we somehow were seducing them.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Thus it was that the Reagan administration found itself with an indictment on its hands. The situation called for disassociation. George Bush, campaigning for the presidency in 1988, said repeatedly that he knew of no clear evidence that the Panamanian leader was involved in drugs until he was indicted.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; (He also initially denied, but later acknowledged, that he had met with Noriega when he was CIA Director in 1976.)&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; It should be noted that Bush was head of the Reagan administration's Task Force on Drugs.<br /> <br /> It would clearly be better for all concerned if Noriega would step down. Consequently, the Reagan administration offered to drop the indictment if he resigned and went into exile; they isolated him diplomatically; and undertook a campaign of severe and multifaceted economic sanctions against Panama; but Noriega held fast, although the sanctions eventually led to what the New York Times described as &quot;a festering economic depression and the collapse of thousands of businesses.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the summer of 1988, the United States drew up a covert plan for a group of dissident Panamanian officers to oust Noriega without violence. If this failed, the proposal called for the support of military action of a rebel force composed of a Panamanian military officer and his followers, who were in exile in Miami and on the CIA payroll.<br /> <br /> The Senate Intelligence Committee turned down the plan on the ground that it might result in the illegal assassination of Noriega.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A presidential election was scheduled in Panama for May 1989, and the United States expected that it would be stolen for Noriega's candidate, as had been the case in the previous election of 1984. Accordingly, the CIA provided more than $10 million in aid to the opposition, as well as clandestine radio and television broadcasts.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt; Noriega didn't disappoint his critics. When the ballot counting indicated his man losing heavily, he simply put an end to the whole process and allowed his goons to beat up opposition candidates and their supporters.<br /> <br /> Washington expressed its moral indignation about the fraudulent election, but this should be viewed in light of what had transpired five years earlier. In that election, Noriega's man, Nicolás Barletta, was declared the winner, the final count being announced ten days after the election. The opposition cried &quot;fraud&quot; and demonstrated for weeks, but the result stood. The CIA, it turned out, along with the Medellin cocaine cartel, had helped finance Barletta's campaign.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt; And after his victory, Barletta was welcomed by President Reagan to the Oval Office, Secretary of State George Shultz attended the inauguration, and heaven was in its place. Meanwhile, a political officer at the American Embassy in Panama was meticulously examining huge stacks of voting documents and reports he had managed to collect. His conclusion was inescapable: there had been egregious fraud. Barletta had been defeated by at least four thousand votes.<br /> <br /> The US ambassador's main concern was that the report not reach the press. No American official pressured Panama for a recount. The political officer's report lies somewhere in a file in the bowels of Foggy Bottom.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On 3 October 1989, elements of the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) attempted a very short-lived military overthrow of Noriega. When they apprised US officials in Panama of their plan beforehand, they were not discouraged from undertaking it. But during the execution they received virtually no help at all, even though they had Noriega in custody for at least two hours and were willing to turn him over to the US military.<br /> <br /> The reasons which were later advanced by the Bush administration at different times to explain the lack of American support included: we didn't know what was going on; we didn't think the rebels had Noriega in custody; they may have had him in custody but they didn't want to release him to us; the US military commander in Panama was not authorized to seize Noriega (later we learned that he was); the rebels were not to our liking politically; our hands were tied by congressional intelligence committees; and, we suspected the whole thing was a ruse to provoke and embarrass the US government.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The US military in Panama failed to block the road loyalist forces used to rescue Noriega. The administration said later that by the time it was certain of the troop movements it was too late. However, a convoy of loyalist trucks rumbled by the American Embassy itself; moreover, the United States had a number of helicopters in the air (reportedly as many as a dozen) observing developments.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Some reports have it that the rebels were willing to turn Noriega over to the US military only if the Americans would come and grab him to make it appear that he was being seized against the will of his Panamanian captors. But the administration has denied this as well.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At one point, the American Embassy reported to the State Department and the CIA in Washington that the rebels wanted to turn Noriega over, and the CIA went to brief members of the congressional intelligence committees. Administration officials later said that the embassy had misunderstood what the US military had told it because telephone communications in Panama were poor at the time.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Did the Bush administration decline Noriega as a gift during the October coup attempt because it was determined to have its invasion? One circumstance may indicate a negative response to this question: On 12 October, US officials met at the State Department with Noriega's attorney to negotiate, once again, the Panamanian peacefully stepping down from power. Nothing came of this meeting.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After the US invasion began at one a.m. on 20 December, another incident occurred which further raises the question of whether the apprehension of Noriega was the White House's sole, or even primary, concern.<br /> <br /> A European diplomat in Panama City (representing a major US ally) claimed that less than three hours after the invasion began he telephoned the US military to inform them that Noriega was two houses away in the flat of his mistress's grandmother, but the military disregarded the information. The diplomat said later that he was &quot;100 percent certain&quot; of Noriega's location. &quot;But when I called, SouthCom [the U.S. Southern Command] said it had other priorities.&quot; The diplomat had met several times with Noriega and his mistress, who had recently moved into the diplomat's own apartment building. Other residents of the two apartment buildings confirmed the diplomat's assertion about Noriega's presence. Neither Southern Command officials nor the American Embassy would respond to inquiries about the matter.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Did the US decline to capture Noriega in the first few hours of the invasion because it was determined to first cripple his base of power, the PDF, and score a grand military triumph that would enable George Bush to shred the wimp image that plagued him? Did military muscle have to be flexed to illustrate the need for a big combat-ready force even in the absence of a &quot;Soviet threat&quot;, just weeks after the fall of the Berlin wall? Or to send a clear message to the people of Nicaragua who had an election scheduled in two months?<br /> <br /> When George Bush and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney were asked why they had made 180-degree turns on previous explicit rejections of a war against Panama, they each referred to the same incident of the night of 16-17 December.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> According to the Defense Department, four American servicemen, unarmed and in civilian clothes, got lost and inadvertently drove up to a PDF roadblock, where they were manhandled. As they drove away, they were shot at, killing one and wounding another. At the same time, an American Navy officer and his wife who witnessed this scene were roughed up considerably by the PDF.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One year later, the Los Angeles Times reported that the incident was not the unprovoked act of aggression by the PDF portrayed by Washington. Instead, it was a step in a pattern of aggressive behavior by a small group of US troops who frequently tested the patience and reaction of Panamanian forces, particularly at roadblocks, which they would &quot;dare&quot; by driving up and then refusing to stop or suddenly pulling away. The Americans in this case were not lost; and they were armed. They drove up to a very sensitive roadblock and when told to leave the car by the PDF, the Americans all gave them the finger, shouted an obscenity, and drove off. The Panamanians then opened fire.&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Lending credence to this report is, oddly enough, a recorded phone conversation of a young Marine guard at the American Embassy speaking to his mother in the United States the next morning. The four Americans, he said, &quot;were out of bounds, owing to the fact that they had no reason to be there. The whole world knows that they shouldn't have gone there. They messed up. If the United States set up a barricade anywhere and someone acted in the same way we would also start firing.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> There had been other provocation as well. For months prior to the incident, the United States had been engaging in military posturing in Panama. US troops, bristling with assault weapons, would travel in fast-moving convoys, escorted by armored vehicles, looking for all the world as if they planned to attack someone. US Marines descended from helicopters by rope to practice emergency evacuation of the embassy. Panamanian military camps were surrounded and their gates rattled amid insults by US servicemen. In one episode, more than 1,000 US military personnel conducted an exercise that appeared to be a rehearsal of a kidnap raid, as helicopters and jet aircraft flew low over Noriega's house and American raiders splashed ashore nearby.&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In late September, Gen. Max Thurman had been appointed the new Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Command. He was briefed by Adm. William Crowe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who apprised him that there was a very high probability that Bush would call for large-scale military action in Panama in the near future. &quot;We're going to go [but] I can't tell you when.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After the invasion, the mother of one of the American soldiers killed said that her son had called her on 14 December to say he was going on a dangerous mission. &quot;He called to say goodbye … and that (he) might not be home again.&quot; This was before the roadblock incident. Another serviceman, speaking to reporters after the invasion, said that the soldiers had found out about it &quot;maybe four or five days before you did&quot;. When a reporter asked when that was, an Army officer prevented the soldier from answering.&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It would appear from this evidence that the war had been planned before the American serviceman was shot. All that was needed was a pretext, an incident.<br /> <br /> Two days after the incident, an off-duty American lieutenant was leaving a laundry when he was approached by a Panamanian police (or army) officer. The American shot and wounded the Panamanian twice. &quot;The U.S. serviceman felt threatened,&quot; the Bush administration claimed, admitting that its earlier story that the Panamanian had pulled a gun was false.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt; It was not reported that Panama invaded the United States as a result of this incident.<br /> <br /> Thus it came to be that a superpower crushed one of the smallest armies in the hemisphere. (It was the seventh time the United States had invaded Panama since it had kidnapped the province from Colombia in 1903 to build the canal—see Appendix II.) The new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin Powell, declared at the time of the invasion: &quot;We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, 'Superpower lives here'.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But the Superpower still had to show a decent respect to the opinions of mankind. Accordingly, the leading legal minds of the Justice Department, the State Department, and the Defense Department put their heads together and came to the unanimous conclusion that the invasion of the sovereign nation of Panama, the abduction of its leader, and his criminal trial in the United States were all legal and proper.<br /> <br /> The invasion was called &quot;Operation Just Cause&quot;, perhaps for acts like the following carried out by the American military:&lt;blockquote&gt;•  searched out and arrested hundreds of civilian supporters of Noriega even though they did not face American or Panamanian criminal charges; houses were broken into to apprehend some of the individuals;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  forced ambulances—with emergency lights flashing and sirens sounding as they rushed patients to hospitals—to halt, to be searched for Noriega loyalists disguised as patients;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  fired into the air without warning while walking through busy streets;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  imposed and enforced curfews;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  organized tours of Noriega's home and office for reporters to gawk at and pry into all of the man's personal belongings, from his photos to his underwear; publicized and ridiculed everything from his sexual practices to his religious beliefs;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  invaded prisons and released prisoners; the commander of the new Panamanian Public Force, appointed by the US, blamed the extraordinary wave of crime and violence that hit Panama after the invasion on what he said were hundreds of dangerous criminals freed by the US; he declared that the rate of assaults, murders, and other crimes was &quot;much worse&quot; than under the Noriega regime;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  wearing painted faces and firing machine guns into the air, raided the Nicaraguan ambassador's home; the ambassador was wrestled to the ground; he and seven other people were held at gunpoint while US soldiers ransacked the house and confiscated weapons, $3,000 in cash, and personal items; the money was never returned, the ambassador said;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;•  surrounded the Vatican Embassy, where Noriega had taken sanctuary, and for several days blasted the ears of the entire neighborhood with ear-splitting rock and roll music over loudspeakers. US soldiers near the Vatican Embassy sang a parody of Woody Guthrie's old song: &quot;This land is my land, that land is my land, there's no land here that isn't my land.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&quot;Many Panamanians initially welcomed the U.S. intervention,&quot; reported the Los Angeles Times. &quot;But as fighting continued through a fourth day on Saturday, some reports from Panama suggested that resentment of the U.S. presence was also widespread. … The Panamanian people feel more threatened since the Americans arrived than they did when Noriega still held power, an [American] administration official said.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On the first anniversary of the invasion, Panamanians couldn't agree whether to mark the day as a holiday or a day of mourning. So President Endara proclaimed a National Day of Reflection.&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;From Mexico to Argentina, Latin American governments today roundly condemned the use of force by the United States against Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega of Panama.&quot;<br /> <br /> News report, 20 December 1989&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;I appreciate the support that we've received, strong support from the United States Congress, and from our Latin American neighbors.&quot;<br /> <br /> George Bush, 21 December 1989&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Organization of American States approved a resolution &quot;to deeply regret the military intervention in Panama&quot; by a vote of 20 to 1 (the one being the United States).<br /> <br /> &quot;We are outraged,&quot; said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. The OAS, he declared, &quot;missed an historic opportunity to get beyond its traditional narrow concern with non-intervention.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Afterword<br /> <br /> During 1990, the United States was instrumental in setting up a highly secretive intelligence office, with the all-encompassing name of the Council of Public Security and National Defense. The new agency was headed by a man who twice served as a senior minister in Noriega's puppet governments. A government official said that the CIA was assisting in personnel training for the new agency and that further assistance was being received from a US Justice Department police training mission in Panama.<br /> <br /> Reportedly, one of the agency's missions was to gather information on &quot;troublemakers&quot;, including opposition figures organizing mass demonstrations. Another target was the newly organized National Police, formed from remnants of Noriega's old army. &quot;We'll watch the police,&quot; said an official. &quot;We can't let the monster arise again.&quot; This left open the question of who would watch the new agency.&lt;sup&gt;51&lt;/sup&gt; At the same time, the US Army's 4th Psychological Operations Group established a hotline for the public to denounce Noriega backers, criminals, subversives and anti-US fighters, who were then picked up by American troops and consigned to detention camps.&lt;sup&gt;52&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In December 1990, when President Guillermo Endara was faced with a military rebellion he was unable to put down, he called upon US troops to intervene and quell the uprising.&lt;sup&gt;53&lt;/sup&gt; Endara had been sworn in as president on a US military base in Panama during the invasion a year earlier. The official Pentagon study of the Panama occupation notes that the original post-invasion plans called for outright US military government, with the head of the Southern Command as Panama's de facto ruler. At the last minute a decision was made to install Endara as president, but his government was, as the study put it, &quot;merely a facade&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;54&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The United States confiscated thousands of boxes of Noriega government documents and refused to hand over any of them to Panamanian investigators. &quot;The United States is protecting robbers and thieves and obstructing justice,&quot; complained the government's chief prosecutor. &quot;We are the owners of the documents. If I am to complete my work, I have to see the documents.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;55&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Panamanian businessmen reported that they'd lost as much as $700 million because of the looting and rioting that followed the invasion, very little of it covered by insurance. One year after the invasion, unemployment was running at more than 25 percent, and invasion damage, looting, and the US sanctions of 1988-89 had shrunk Panama's economy by 30 percent.&lt;sup&gt;56&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The new president, one of the two vice-presidents, and the attorney general, it turned out, all had links to drug trafficking and money laundering.&lt;sup&gt;57&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By the spring of 1991 it could be reported that Colombian drug cartels and associates of Noriega had once again turned Panama into a narcotics trans-shipment center; there were as well far more cocaine production facilities than ever existed under Noriega, and drug use in Panama was reportedly at a far higher level. The new drug trafficking and money laundering activity centered on associates of cabinet officials, particularly in the president's and the attorney general's offices. When American officials told the Panamanians that Foreign Ministry legal adviser Julio Berrios was under US investigation for money laundering, the Panamanians did nothing. Berrios was subsequently appointed to Panama's delegation for negotiations with the United States on the treaty to end money laundering.&lt;sup&gt;58&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Washington insisted that Panama change its prized banking secrecy laws to facilitate US efforts to pursue suspected lawbreakers, principally launderers of drug money. Panama's Controller General pointed out that the United States wanted Panama to pursue acts which were crimes in the US but not in Panama. &quot;We can't change the whole legal system because of one thing [drugs],&quot; he argued.<br /> <br /> Eventually, after many American threats to cut off aid, Panama signed a treaty in April 1991 giving US authorities partial access to Panamanian banking records and the right to prosecute individuals depositing illegal drug profits. However, foreign banks, particularly Colombian ones, found ways to circumvent the new requirements and were soon back in the money-laundering business.&lt;sup&gt;59&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;***********************************************&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> <br /> An American helicopter gunship was strafing what it perceived to be enemies in the street. Ernesto Cubilla was in his kitchen. A stray round went through his roof. His son rushed in to find him spread out in the corner. He lost a lung and a kidney and suffered liver damage.&lt;sup&gt;60&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Women and children naturally went to the window and looked out when they heard the fighting,&quot; said Roberto Troncoso, president of the Panamanian Committee for Human Rights, &quot;and the nervous [American] soldiers shot them.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;61&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A few hours before the invasion, while all the details were being finalized, George Bush, wearing a bright red and green Christmas tie, holding his granddaughter, sang Christmas carols at a White House Christmas party.&lt;sup&gt;62&lt;/sup&gt; Two days later he declared that his &quot;heart goes out to the families of those who have died in Panama.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;63&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One of Bush's advisers said that the president felt that Noriega &quot;was thumbing his nose at him&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;64&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == 51. Bulgaria 1990/Albania 1991: Teaching communists what democracy is all about ==<br /> For American anti-communist cold-warriors, for Bulgarian anti-communist cold-warriors, it couldn't have looked more promising.<br /> <br /> The cold war was over. The forces of Western Civilization, Capitalism and Goodness had won. The Soviet Union was on the verge of falling apart. The Communist Party of Bulgaria was in disgrace. Its dictatorial leader of 35 years was being prosecuted for abuses of power. The party had changed its name, but that wouldn't fool anybody. And the country was holding its first multiparty election in 45 years.<br /> <br /> Then, the communists proceeded to win the election.<br /> <br /> For the anti-communists the pain was unbearable. Surely some monstrous cosmic mistake had been made, a mistake which should not be allowed to stand. It should not, and it would not.<br /> <br /> Washington had expressed its interest early. In February, Secretary of State James Baker became the most senior American official to visit Bulgaria since World War II. His official schedule said he was in Bulgaria to &quot;meet with opposition leaders as well as Government officials&quot;. Usually, the New York Times noted, &quot;it is listed the other way around&quot;. Baker became deeply involved in his talks with the opposition about political strategies and how to organize for an election. He also addressed a street rally organized by opposition groups, praising and encouraging the crowd. On the State Department profile of Bulgaria handed to reporters traveling with Baker, under the heading &quot;Type of Government&quot;, was written &quot;In transition&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In May, three weeks before election day, a row broke out over assertions by the leader of the main opposition group. Petar Beron, secretary of the Union of Democratic Forces, a coalition of 16 parties and movements, said that during UDF's visits to Europe and the United States, many politicians pledged that they would not provide financial assistance to a socialist Bulgaria. This would apply even if the Bulgarian Socialist Party—the renamed Communist Party—won the elections fairly. Beron stated that:&lt;blockquote&gt;Western leaders want lasting contacts with governments which are building Western-style democracy and economies. The British Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, was particularly categorical. He said he was drawing up a declaration to go before the European Community to refuse help for the remaining socialist governments in Eastern Europe.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Meanwhile, the National Endowment for Democracy, Washington's specially created stand-in for the CIA (see Nicaragua chapter), with funding in this case primarily from the Agency for International Development, was pouring some $2 million into Bulgaria to influence the outcome of the election, a process the NED calls &quot;promoting democracy&quot;. This was equivalent to a foreign power injecting more than $50 million into an American electoral campaign. One major recipient of this largesse was the newspaper of the opposition Union of Democratic Forces, Demokratzia, which received $233,000 worth of newsprint, &quot;to allow it to increase its size and circulation for the period leading up to the national elections&quot;. The UDF itself received another $615,000 of American taxpayer money for &quot;infrastructure support and party training&quot; … &quot;material and technical support&quot; … and &quot;post-electoral assistance for the UDF's party building program&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The United States made little attempt to mask its partisanship. On June 9, the day before election day, the US ambassador to Bulgaria, Sol Polansky, appeared on the platform of a UDF rally.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; Polansky, whose early government career involved intelligence research, was a man who had had more than a passing acquaintance with the CIA. Moreover, several days earlier, the State Department had taken the unusual step of publicly criticizing the Bulgarian government for what it called the inequitable distribution of resources for news outlets, especially newsprint for opposition newspapers, as if this was not a fact of life for genuine opposition forces in the United States and every other country in the world. The Bulgarian government responded that the opposition had received newsprint and access to the broadcast outlets in accordance with an agreement between the parties, adding that many of the Socialist Party's advantages, especially its financial reserves, resulted from the party's membership of one million, about a ninth of Bulgaria's population. The government had further provided the printing plant to publish the UDF newspaper and had given the opposition coalition the building from which to run its operations.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Socialists' lead in the polls in the face of a crumbling economy perplexed the UDF, but the Bulgarian Socialist Party drew most of its support from among pensioners, farm-workers and the industrial workforce, together representing well over half the voting population.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; These sectors tended to associate the BSP with stability, and the party capitalized on this, pointing to the disastrous results—particularly the unemployment and inflation—of &quot;shock therapy&quot; free enterprise in Russia.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; Although the three main parties all proposed moving toward a market economy, the Socialists insisted that the changes had to be carefully controlled. How this would be manifested in practice if the BSP were in charge and had to live in an extremely capitalist world, could not be predicted. What was certain, however, was that there was no way a party named &quot;Socialist&quot;, née &quot;Communist&quot;, recently married to the Soviet Union, could win the trust and support of the West.<br /> <br /> As it turned out after the second round of voting, the Socialists had won about 47 percent of the vote and 211 seats in the 400-seat parliament (the Grand National Assembly), to the UDF's 36 percent and 144 seats. Immediately following the first round, the opposition took to the streets with accusations of fraud, chanting &quot;Socialist Mafia!&quot; and &quot;We won't work for the Reds!&quot; However, the European election observers had contrary views. &quot;The results … will reflect the will of the people,&quot; said the leader of a British observer delegation. &quot;If I wanted to fix an election, it would be easier to do it in England than in Bulgaria.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;If the opposition denounces the results as manipulated, it doesn't fit in with what we've seen,&quot; a Council of Europe delegate declared.<br /> <br /> Another West European observer rejected the opposition claims as &quot;sour grapes&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Utter rot&quot; was the term chosen by a conservative English MP to describe allegations of serious fraud. He asserted that &quot;The conduct of the poll was scrupulously fair. There were just minor incidents that were exaggerated.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;The opposition appear to be rather bad losers,&quot; concluded one Western diplomat.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> These opinions were shared by the many hundreds of observers, diplomats and parliamentarians from Western Europe. Nonetheless, most of the American observers were not very happy, saying that fear and intimidation arising from &quot;the legacy of 45 years of totalitarian rule&quot; had produced &quot;psychological&quot; pressures on Bulgarian voters. &quot;Off the record, I have real problems with this,&quot; said one of the Americans. Asked if his team's report would have been as critical had the opposition won, he replied: &quot;That's a good question.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Members of the British parliamentary observer group dismissed reports that voting was marred by intimidation and other malpractices. Most complaints were either &quot;trivial&quot; or impossible to substantiate, they said. &quot;When we asked where intimidation had taken place, it was always in the next village,&quot; said Lord Tordoff.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Before the election, Socialist Prime Minister Lukanov had called for a coalition with opposition parties if his Bulgarian Socialist Party won the election. &quot;The new government,&quot; he said, &quot;needs the broadest possible measure of public support if we are to carry through the necessary changes.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; Now victorious, he repeated the call for a coalition. But the UDF rejected the offer.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; There were, however, elements within the BSP which were equally opposed to a coalition.<br /> <br /> The opposition refused to accept the outcome of the voting. They were at war with the government. Street demonstrations became a daily occurrence as UDF supporters, backed by large numbers of students, built barricades and blocked traffic, and students launched a wave of strikes and sit-ins. Many of the students were acting as part of the Federation of Independent Student Societies (or Associations), which had been formed before the election. The chairman of the student group, Aptanas Kirchev, asserted that the organization had documentation on electoral abuses which would shortly be made public. But this does not appear to have taken place.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The student movements were amongst the recipients of National Endowment for Democracy grants, to the tune of $100,000 &quot;to provide infrastructure support to the Federation of Independent Student Associations of Bulgaria to improve its outreach capacity in preparation for the national elections&quot;. The students received &quot;faxes, video and copying equipment, loudspeakers, printing equipment and low-cost printing techniques&quot;, as well as the help of various Polish advisers, American legal advisers, and other experts—the best that NED money could buy.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The first victory for the protest movement came on 6 July, less than a month after the election, when President Mladenov was forced to resign after a week of protests—including a hunger strike outside of Parliament—over his actions during an anti-governmental demonstration the previous December. His resignation came after the UDF released a videotape showing Mladenov talking to his colleagues and appearing to say: &quot;Shouldn't we bring in the tanks?&quot; Said a UDF official of the resignation, &quot;We are rather happy about all this. It has thrown the Socialists into chaos.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The demonstrations, the protests, the agitation continued on a daily basis during July. A &quot;City of Freedom&quot; consisting of more than 60 tents was set up in the center of Sofia, occupied by people who said they would stay there until all senior Bulgarian politicians who served under the old communist regime were removed. When they were denied what they considered adequate access to the media, the protesters added to their demands the resignation of the head of Bulgarian television.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt; At one point, a huge ceremonial pyre was built in the street in which text books from the communist era were burnt, as well as party cards and flags.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The next head to fall was that of the interior minister, Atanas Smerdjiev, who resigned in a dispute over the extent to which the questioning of former dictator Todor Zhivkov should be public or behind closed doors. The Bulgarian people indeed had a lot to protest about; primarily a rapidly declining standard of living and a government without a president which seemed paralyzed and unable to enact desperately-needed reforms. But the question posed by some MPs—as thousands of hostile demonstrators surrounded the Parliament building during the Smerdjiev affair—was &quot;Are we going to be dictated to by the street?&quot; &quot;The problem,&quot; said Prime Minister Lukanov, &quot;is whether Parliament is a sovereign body or whether we are going to be forced to make decisions under pressure.&quot; His car was attacked as he left the building.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt; Finally, on 1 August the head of the UDF, Zhelyu Zhelev, was elected unopposed by Parliament as the new president.<br /> <br /> A few weeks later, another demand of the protesters was met. The government began to remove communist symbols, such as red stars and hammer-and-sickles, from buildings in Sofia. Yet, two days later, the headquarters of the Socialist Party was set afire as 10,000 people swarmed around it. Many of them broke into the building and ransacked it before it wound up a gutted and charred shell.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The protest movement in Bulgaria was beginning to feel and smell like the general strike in British Guiana to topple Cheddi Jagan in 1962, and the campaign to undermine Salvador Allende in Chile in the early '70s—both operations of the CIA—where as soon as one demand was met, newer ones were raised, putting the government virtually under siege, hoping it would over-react, and making normal governing impossible. In Bulgaria, women demonstrated by banging pots and pans to signify the lack of food in the shops,&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt; just as women had dramatically done in Chile, and in Jamaica and Nicaragua as well, where the CIA had also financed anti-government demonstrations. In British Guiana, the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade had come down from the US to spread the gospel and money, and similar groups had set up shop in Jamaica. In Bulgaria in August, representatives of the Free Congress Foundation, an American right-wing organization with lots of money and lots of anti-communist and religious ideology, met with about one-third of the opposition members in Parliament and President Zhelev's chief political adviser. Zhelev himself visited the FCF's Washington office the following month. The FCF—which has received money from the National Endowment for Democracy at times—had visited the Soviet Union and most of the Eastern European countries in 1989 and 1990, imparting good ol' American know-how in electoral and political techniques and for shaping public policy, as well as holding seminars on the multiple charms of free enterprise. It is not known whether any of the students were aware of the fact that one of the FCF's chief Eastern European program directors, Laszlo Pasztor, was a man with genuine Nazi credentials.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; By October, a group of American financial experts and economists, under the auspices of the US Chamber of Commerce, had drawn up a detailed plan for transforming Bulgaria into a supply-side free-market economy, complete with timetables for implementing the plan. President Zhelev said he was confident the Bulgarian government would accept virtually all the recommendations, even though the BSP held a majority in Parliament. &quot;They will be eager to proceed,&quot; he said, &quot;because otherwise the government will fall.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Witnesses and police claimed that Konstantin Trenchev, a fierce anti-communist who was a senior figure in the UDF and the leader of the Podkrepa independent trade union, had called on a group of hardcore demonstrators to storm the BSP building during the fire. He had also called for the dissolution of Parliament and presidential rule, &quot;tantamount to a coup d'etat&quot; declared the Socialist Party. Trenchev went into hiding.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Trenchev's Podkrepa union was also being financed by the NED—$327 thousand had been allocated &quot;to provide material and technical support to Bulgaria's independent trade union movement Podkrepa&quot; and &quot;to help Podkrepa organize a voter education campaign for the local elections&quot;. There were computers and fax machines, and there were advisers to help the union &quot;get organized and gain strength&quot;, according to Podkrepa's vice president. The assistance had reached Podkrepa via the Free Trade Union Institute,&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt; set up by the AFL-CIO in 1977 as the successor to the Free Trade Union Committee, which had been formed in the 1940s to combat left-wing trade unionism in Europe. Both the FTUC and the FTUI had long had an intimate relationship with the CIA.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the first week of November, several hundred students occupied Sofia University once again, demanding now the prosecution, not merely the removal, of leading figures in the former communist regime, as well as the nationalization of the Socialist Party's assets. The prime minister's rule was shaky. Lukanov had threatened to step down unless he gained opposition support in Parliament for his program of economic reform. The UDF, on the other hand, was now demanding that it be allowed to dominate a new coalition government, taking the premiership and most key portfolios. Although open to a coalition, the BSP would not agree to surrender the prime minister's position; the other cabinet posts, however, were open to negotiation.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The movement to topple Lukanov was accelerating. Thousands marched and called for his resignation. University students held rallies, sit-ins, strikes and protest fasts, now demanding the publication of the names of all former secret police informers in the university. They proclaimed their complete distrust in the ability of the government to cope with Bulgaria's political and economic crisis, and called for &quot;an end to one-party rule&quot;, a strange request in light of the desire of Lukanov to form a coalition government.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt; In June The Guardian of London had described Lukanov as &quot;Bulgaria's impressive Prime minister … a skilled politician who impresses business executives, bankers and conservative Western politicians, while maintaining popular support at home, even among the opposition.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On the 23rd of November, Lukanov (barely) survived a no-confidence motion, leading the UDF to storm out of Parliament, announcing that they would not return for &quot;an indefinite period&quot;. Three days later, the Podkrepa labor organization instituted a &quot;general strike&quot;, albeit not with a majority of the nation's workers.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the student protests continued, although some of their demands had already been partly met. The Socialist Party had agreed to restore to the state 57 percent of its assets, corresponding to subsidies received from the state budget under the previous regime. And the former party leader, Todor Zhivkov, was already facing trial.<br /> <br /> Some opposition leaders were not happy with the seemingly boundless student protest movement. UDF leader Petar Beron urged that since Bulgaria had embarked on the road to parliamentary democracy, the students should give democracy a chance and not resort to sit-ins. And a UDF MP added that &quot;The socialists should leave the political arena in a legal manner. They should not be forced into doing it through revolution.&quot; Student leaders dismissed these remarks out of hand.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The end for Andrei Lukanov came on 29 November, as the strike spread to members of the media, and thousands of doctors, nurses and teachers staged demonstrations. He announced that since his proposed economic program had not received the broad support he had asked for, he had decided that it was &quot;useless to continue in office&quot;. A caretaker coalition would be set up that would lead to new general elections.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Throughout the period of protest and turmoil, the United States continued to give financial assistance to various opposition forces and &quot;whispered advice on how to apply pressure to the elected leaders&quot;. The vice president of the Podkrepa union, referring to American diplomats, said: &quot;They wanted to help us and have helped with advice and strategy.&quot; This solidarity gave rise to hopes of future American aid. Konstantin Trenchev, the head of Podkrepa, apparently out of hiding now, confirmed that opposition activists had been assured of more US assistance if they managed to wrest power from the former communists.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> These hopes may have had as much to do with naiveté as with American support for the UDF. The Bulgarians, like other Eastern Europeans and Soviet citizens, had led very sheltered political and intellectual lives. In 1990, their ideological sophistication was scarcely above the equation: if the communist government was bad, it must have been all bad; if it was all bad, its principal enemy must have been all good. They believed such things as: American government leaders could not stay in office if they lied to the people, and that reports of homelessness and the absence of national health insurance in the United States were just &quot;communist propaganda&quot;.<br /> <br /> However, the new American ambassador, H. Kenneth Hill, said that Washington officials had made it clear to Bulgarian politicians that future aid depended on democratic reform and development of an economic recovery plan acceptable to Western lenders, the same terms laid down all over Eastern Europe.<br /> <br /> The Bulgarian Socialists, while not doubting Washington's commitment to exporting capitalism, did complain that the United States had at times violated democratic principles in working against the leadership chosen by the Bulgarian people. One reform-minded Socialist government official contended that Americans had reacted to his party's victory as if it represented a failure of US policy. &quot;The U.S. government people have not been the most clean, moral defenders of democracy here,&quot; he said. &quot;What cannot be done at home can be gotten away with in this dark, backward Balkan state.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the years since, the Bulgarian people, particularly the students, may have learned something, as the country has gone through the now-familiar pattern of freely-rising prices, the scrapping of subsidies on basic goods and uilities, shortages of all kinds, and IMF and World Bank demands to tighten the belts even further. Politically, there's been chaos. The UDF came to power in the next elections (with the BSP a very close second) but, due to the failing economy, lost a confidence vote in Parliament, saw its entire cabinet resign, then the vice president, who warned that the nation was heading for dictatorship. Finally, in July 1993, protesters prevented the president from entering his office for a month and demanded his resignation.<br /> <br /> By 1994, we could read in the Los Angeles Times, by their most anti-communist foreign correspondent:&lt;blockquote&gt;Living conditions are so much worse in the reform era that Bulgarians look back fondly on communism's &quot;good old days,&quot; when the hand of the state crushed personal freedom but ensured that people were housed, employed and had enough to eat.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;But for Washington policy makers, the important thing, the ideological bottom line, was that the Bulgarian Socialist Party could not, and would not, be given the chance to prove that a democratic, socialist-oriented mixed economy could succeed in Eastern Europe while the capitalist model was failing all around it.<br /> <br /> Nor, apparently, would it be allowed in nearby Albania. On 31 March 1991, a Communist government won overwhelming endorsement in elections there. This was followed immediately by two months of widespread unrest, including street demonstrations and a general strike lasting three weeks, which finally led to the collapse of the new regime by June.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt; The National Endowment for Democracy had been there also, providing $80,000 to the labor movement and $23,000 &quot;to support training and civic education programs&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> == Iraq 1990-1991: Desert holocaust ==<br /> &quot;This is the one part I didn't want to see,&quot; said a 20-year-old private. &quot;All the homeless, all the hurting. When we came through the refugee camp, man, that's something I didn't need.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;It's really sad,&quot; said the sergeant. &quot;We've got little kids come up and see my gun, and they start crying. That really tears me up.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;At night, you kill and you roll on by,&quot; said another GI. &quot;You don't stop. You don't have to see anything. It wasn't until the next morning the rear told us the devastation was total. We'd killed the entire division.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> While many nations have a terrible record in modern times of dealing out great suffering face-to-face with their victims, Americans have made it a point to keep at a distance while inflicting some of the greatest horrors of the age: atomic bombs on the people of Japan; carpet-bombing Korea back to the stone age; engulfing the Vietnamese in napalm and pesticides; providing three decades of Latin Americans with the tools and methods of torture, then turning their eyes away, closing their ears to the screams, and denying everything … and now, dropping 177 million pounds of bombs on the people of Iraq in the most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world.<br /> <br /> What possessed the United States to carry out this relentless devastation for more than 40 days and nights against one of the most advanced and enlightened nations in the Middle East and its ancient and modern capital city?<br /> <br /> It's the first half of 1990. The dismantling of the Berlin wall is being carried out on a daily basis. Euphoria about the end of the cold war and optimism about the beginning of a new era of peace and prosperity are hard to contain. The Bush administration is under pressure to cut the monster military budget and institute a &quot;peace dividend&quot;. But George Bush, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, former Texas oil man, and former Director of the CIA, is not about to turn his back on his many cronies in the military-industrial-intelligence complex. He rails against those who would &quot;naively cut the muscle out of our defense posture&quot;, and insists that we must take a cautious attitude towards reform in the USSR.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; In February, it's reported that &quot;the administration and Congress are expecting the most acrimonious hard-fought defense budget battle in recent history&quot;; and in June that &quot;tensions have escalated&quot; between Congress and the Pentagon &quot;as Congress prepares to draft one of the most pivotal defense budgets in the past two decades.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; A month later, a Senate Armed Services subcommittee votes to cut military manpower by nearly three times more than recommended by the Bush administration … &quot;The size and direction of the cuts indicate that President Bush is losing his battle on how to manage reductions in military spending.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During this same period Bush's popularity was plummeting: from an approval rating of 80 percent in January—as he rode the wave of public support for his invasion of Panama the previous month—to 73 in February, down to the mid-60s in May and June, 63 on 11 July, 60 two weeks later.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> George Herbert Walker Bush needed something dramatic to capture the headlines and the public, and to convince Congress that a powerful military was needed as much as ever because it was still a scary and dangerous world out there.<br /> <br /> Although the official Washington version of events presented Iraq's occupation of neighboring Kuwait as an arbitrary and unwarranted aggression, Kuwait had actually been a district of Iraq, under Ottoman rule, up to the First World War. After the war, to exert leverage against the abundantly oil-rich Iraq, the British Colonial Office established tiny Kuwait as a separate territorial entity, in the process cutting off most of Iraq's access to the Persian Gulf. In 1961, Kuwait became &quot;independent,&quot; again because Britain declared it to be so, and Iraq massed troops at the border, backing down when the British dispatched their own forces. Subsequent Iraqi regimes never accepted the legitimacy of this state of affairs, making similar threats in the 1970s, even crossing a half-mile into Kuwait in 1976, but Baghdad was also open to a compromise with Kuwait under which Iraq would gain access to its former islands in the Gulf.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The current conflict had its origins in the brutal 1980-88 war between Iraq and Iran. Iraq charged that while it was locked in battle, Kuwait was engaged in stealing $2.4 billion of oil from the Rumaila oil field that ran beneath the vaguely defined Iraq-Kuwait border and was claimed in its entirety by Iraq; that Kuwait had built military and other structures on Iraqi territory; and worst of all, that immediately after the war ended, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates began to exceed the production quotas established by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), flooding the oil market, and driving prices down. Iraq was heavily strapped and deeply in debt because of the long war, and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declared this policy was an increasing threat to his country—&quot;economic war&quot;, he called it, pointing out that Iraq lost a billion dollars a year for each drop of one dollar in the oil price.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; Besides compensation for these losses, Hussein insisted on possession of the two Gulf islands which blocked Iraq's access to the Gulf as well as undisputed ownership of the Rumaila oilfield.<br /> <br /> In the latter part of July 1990, after Kuwait had continued to scorn Iraq's financial and territorial demands, and to ignore OPEC's request to stick to its assigned quota, Iraq began to mass large numbers of troops along the Kuwaiti border.<br /> <br /> The reaction to all this by the world's only remaining superpower and self-appointed global policeman became the subject of intense analysis and controversy after Iraq actually invaded. Had Washington given Iraq a green light to invade? Was there, at a minimum, the absence of a flashing red light? The controversy was fueled by incidents such as the following:<br /> <br /> 19 July: Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney stated that the American commitment made during the Iran-Iraq war to come to Kuwait's defense if it were attacked was still valid. The same point was made by Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, at a private luncheon with Arab ambassadors. (Ironically, Kuwait had been allied with Iraq and feared an attack from Iran.) Later, Cheney's remark was downplayed by his own spokesman, Pete Williams, who explained that the secretary had spoken with &quot;some degree of liberty&quot;. Cheney was then told by the White House: &quot;You're committing us to war we might not want to fight,&quot; and advised pointedly that from then on, statements on Iraq would be made by the White House and State Department.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> 24 July: State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutweiler, in response to a question, responded: &quot;We do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait, and there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.&quot; Asked whether the United States would help Kuwait if it were attacked, she said: &quot;We also remain strongly committed to supporting the individual and collective self-defense of our friends in the gulf with whom we have deep and longstanding ties&quot;—a statement that some Kuwaiti officials said privately was too weak.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> 24 July: The US staged an unscheduled and rare military exercise with the United Arab Emirates, and the same Pete Williams then announced: &quot;We remain strongly committed to supporting the individual and collective self-defense of our friends in the gulf with whom we have deep and longstanding ties.&quot; And the White House declared: &quot;We're concerned about the troop buildup by the Iraqis. We ask that all parties strive to avoid violence.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> 25 July: Saddam Hussein was personally told by the US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, in a now-famous remark, that &quot;We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.&quot; But she then went on to tell the Iraqi leader that she was concerned about his massive troop deployment on the Kuwaiti border in the context of his government's having branded Kuwait's actions as &quot;parallel to military aggression&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> 25 July: John Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, killed a planned Voice of America broadcast that would have warned Iraq with the identical party-line words used by Tutweiler and Williams.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; Hussein may not have known of this incident, although in April he had been personally assured by visiting Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole, speaking in behalf of the president, that the Bush administration dissociated itself from a Voice of America broadcast critical of Iraq's human-rights abuses and also opposed a congressional move for economic sanctions against Iraq.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> 27 July: The House and Senate each voted to impose economic sanctions against Iraq because of its human-rights violations. However, the Bush administration immediately reiterated its opposition to the measure.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> 28 July: Bush sent a personal message to Hussein (apparently after receiving Glaspie's report of her meeting with the Iraqi leader) cautioning him against the use of force, without referring directly to Kuwait.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> 31 July: Kelly told Congress: &quot;We have no defense treaty relationship with any Gulf country. That is clear. … We have historically avoided taking a position on border disputes or on internal OPEC deliberations.&quot;<br /> <br /> Rep. Lee Hamilton asked if it would be correct to say that if Iraq &quot;charged across the border into Kuwait&quot; the United States did &quot;not have a treaty commitment which would obligate us to engage U.S. forces&quot; there.<br /> <br /> &quot;That is correct,&quot; Kelly responded.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The next day (Washington time), Iraqi troops led by tanks charged across the Kuwaiti border, and the United States instantly threw itself into unmitigated opposition.<br /> <br /> Official statements notwithstanding, it appears that the United States did indeed have an official position on the Iraq-Kuwait border dispute. After the invasion, one of the documents the Iraqis found in a Kuwaiti intelligence file was a memorandum concerning a November 1989 meeting between the head of Kuwaiti state security and CIA Director William Webster, which included the following:&lt;blockquote&gt;We agreed with the American side that it was important to take advantage of the deteriorating economic situation in Iraq in order to put pressure on that country's government to delineate our common border. The Central Intelligence Agency gave us its view of appropriate means of pressure, saying that broad cooperation should be initiated between us on condition that such activities be coordinated at a high level.&lt;/blockquote&gt;The CIA called the document a &quot;total fabrication&quot;. However, as the Los Angeles Times pointed out, &quot;The memo is not an obvious forgery, particularly since if Iraqi officials had written it themselves, they almost certainly would have made it far more damaging to U.S. and Kuwaiti credibility.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt; It was apparently real enough and damaging enough to the Kuwaiti foreign minister—he fainted when confronted with the document by his Iraqi counterpart at an Arab summit meeting in mid-August.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> When the Iraqi ambassador in Washington was asked why the document seemed to contradict US Ambassador Glaspie's avowal of neutrality on the issue, he replied that her remark was &quot;part and parcel of the setup&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Was Iraq set up by the United States and Kuwait? Was Saddam provoked into his invasion—with the conspirators' expectation perhaps that it would not extend beyond the border area—so he could be cut down to the size both countries wanted?<br /> <br /> In February 1990, Hussein made a speech before an Arab summit which could certainly have incited, or added impetus to, such a plot. In it he condemned the continuous American military presence in the Persian Gulf waters and warned that &quot;If the Gulf people and the rest of the Arabs along with them fail to take heed, the Arab Gulf region will be ruled by American will.&quot; Further, that the US would dictate the production, distribution and price of oil, &quot;all on the basis of a special outlook which has to do solely with U.S. interests and in which no consideration is given to the interests of others.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In examining whether there was a conspiracy against Iraq and Saddam Hussein, we must consider, in addition to the indications mentioned above, the following:<br /> <br /> Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat has asserted that Washington thwarted the chance for a peaceful resolution of the differences between Kuwait and Iraq at an Arab summit in May, after Saddam had offered to negotiate a mutually acceptable border with Kuwait. &quot;The US was encouraging Kuwait not to offer any compromise,&quot; said Arafat, &quot;which meant there could be no negotiated solution to avoid the Gulf crisis.&quot; Kuwait, he said, was led to believe it could rely on the force of US arms instead.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Similarly, King Hussein of Jordan revealed that just before the Iraqi invasion the Kuwaiti foreign minister stated: &quot;We are not going to respond to [Iraq] … if they don't like it, let them occupy our territory … we are going to bring in the Americans.&quot; And that the Kuwaiti emir told his military officers that in the event of an invasion, their duty was to hold off the Iraqis for 24 hours; by then &quot;American and foreign forces would land in Kuwait and expel them.&quot; King Hussein expressed the opinion that Arab understanding was that Saddam had been goaded into invading, thereby stepping into a noose prepared for him.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The emir refused to accede to Iraq's financial demands, instead offering an insulting half-million dollars to Baghdad. A note from him to his prime minister before the invasion speaks of support of this policy from Egypt, Washington and London. &quot;Be unwavering in your discussions,&quot; the emir writes. &quot;We are stronger than they [the Iraqis] think.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After the war, the Kuwaiti Minister of Oil and Finance acknowledged:&lt;blockquote&gt;But we knew that the United States would not let us be overrun. I spent too much time in Washington to make that mistake, and received a constant stream of visitors here. The American policy was clear. Only Saddam didn't understand it.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;But we have seen perhaps ample reason why Saddam would fail to understand.<br /> <br /> Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz declared that a sharp drop in the price of oil was something the Kuwaitis, with their vast investment holdings in the West, could easily afford, but which undercut the oil revenues essential to a cash-hungry Baghdad. &quot;It was inconceivable,&quot; said Aziz, that Kuwait &quot;could risk engaging in a conspiracy of such magnitude against a large, strong country such as Iraq, if it were not being supported and protected by a great power; and that power was the United States of America.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt; There is, in fact, no public indication that the United States, despite its very close financial ties, tried to persuade Kuwait to cease any of its provocative actions against Iraq.<br /> <br /> And neither Washington nor Kuwait seemed terribly concerned about heading off an invasion. In the week prior to the Iraqi attack, intelligence experts were telling the Bush administration with increasing urgency that an invasion of at least a part of Kuwait was likely. These forecasts &quot;appear to have evoked little response from Government agencies.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt; During this period Bush was personally briefed and told the same by CIA Director William Webster, who showed the president satellite photos of the Iraqi troops massed near the Kuwaiti border. Bush, reportedly, showed little interest.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt; On 1 August, the CIA's National Intelligence Officer for Warning (sic) walked into the offices of the National Security Council's Middle East Staff and announced: &quot;This is your final warning.&quot; Iraq, he said, would invade Kuwait by day's end, which they did. This, too, did not produce a rush to action.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt; Lastly, a Kuwaiti diplomat stationed in Iraq before the invasion sent many reports back to his own government warning of an Iraqi invasion; these were ignored as well. His last warning had specified the exact date (Kuwaiti time) of 2 August. After the war, when the diplomat held a press conference in Kuwait to discuss the government's ignoring of his warnings, it was broken up by a government minister and several army officers.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In July, while all these warnings were ostensibly being ignored, the Pentagon was busy running its computerized command post exercise (CPX), initiated in late 1989 specifically to explore possible responses to &quot;the Iraqi threat&quot;—which, in the new war plan 1002-90, had replaced &quot;the Soviet threat&quot;—the exercise dealing with an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait or Saudi Arabia or both.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt; At a war-games exercise at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., participants were also being asked to determine the most effective American response to a hypothetical invasion of Kuwait by Iraq.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt; While at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, another war &quot;game&quot; involved identifying bombing targets in Iraq.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And during May and June, the Pentagon, Congress and defense contractors had been extensively briefed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies of Georgetown University on a study of the future of conventional warfare, which concluded that the most likely war to erupt requiring an American military response was between Iraq and Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Another person who seems to have known something in advance was George Shultz, who was Reagan's Secretary of State and then returned to the Bechtel Corp., the multinational construction giant. In the spring of 1990, Shultz convinced the company to withdraw from a petrochemicals project in Iraq. &quot;I said something is going to go very wrong in Iraq and blow up and if Bechtel were there it would get blown up too. So I told them to get out.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Finally, there was this disclosure in the Washington Post:&lt;blockquote&gt;Since the invasion, highly classified U.S. intelligence assessments have determined that Saddam took U.S. statements of neutrality … as a green light from the Bush administration for an invasion. One senior Iraqi military official … has told the agency [CIA] that Saddam seemed to be sincerely surprised by the subsequent bellicose reaction.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;On the other hand we have the statement from Iraqi Foreign Minister Aziz, who was present at the Glaspie-Hussein meeting.&lt;blockquote&gt;She didn't give a green light, and she didn't mention a red light because the question of our presence in Kuwait was not raised. … And we didn't take it as a green light … that if we intervened militarily in Kuwait, the Americans would not react. That was not true. We were expecting an American attack on the morning of the second of August.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;But one must be skeptical about so casual an attitude toward an American attack. And these remarks, in effect denying that Iraq was played for a sucker, must be considered in light of the Iraqi government's stubborn refusal for some time to admit the harm done to the country by US bombing, and to downplay the number of their casualties.<br /> <br /> The Bush administration's position was that Iraq's Arab neighbors, particularly Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, had urged the United States all along not to say or do anything that might provoke Saddam. Moreover, as Ambassador Glaspie emphasized, no one expected Hussein to take &quot;all&quot; of Kuwait, at most the parts he already claimed: the islands and the oilfield.<br /> <br /> But, of course, Iraq had claimed &quot;all&quot; of Kuwait for a century.<br /> <br /> The Invasion<br /> <br /> When Iraq invaded, the time for mixed signals was over. Whatever devious plan, if any, George Bush may have been operating under, he now took full advantage of this window of opportunity. Within hours, if not minutes, of the border crossing, the United States began mobilizing, the White House condemned Iraq's action as a &quot;blatant use of military aggression&quot;, demanded &quot;the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all Iraqi forces&quot;, and announced that it was &quot;considering all options&quot;; while George Bush was declaring that the invasion &quot;underscores the need to go slowly in restructuring U.S. defense forces&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Before 24 hours had passed, an American naval task force loaded with fighter planes and bombers was on its way to the Persian Gulf, Bush was seeking to enlist world leaders for collective action against Iraq, all trade with Iraq had been embargoed, all Iraqi and Kuwaiti assets in the United States had been frozen; and the Senate had &quot;decisively defeated efforts to end or freeze production of the B-2 Stealth bomber after proponents seized on Iraq's invasion of Kuwait to bolster their case for the radar-eluding weapon&quot;; the attack, they said, &quot;demonstrates the continuing risk of war and the need for advanced weapons&quot; … Said Senator Dole: &quot;If we needed Saddam Hussein to give us a wake-up call at least we can thank him for that.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;One day after using Iraq's invasion of Kuwait to help save the high-tech B-2 bomber, senators invoked the crisis again Friday to stave off the mothballing of two World War II-vintage battleships.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Within days, thousands of American troops and an armored brigade were stationed in Saudi Arabia. It was given the grand name of Operation Desert Shield, and a heightened appreciation for America's military needs was the prevailing order of the day …&lt;blockquote&gt;Less than a year after political changes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union sent the defense industry reeling under the threat of dramatic cutbacks, executives and analysts say the crisis in the Persian Gulf has provided military companies with a tiny glimmer of hope.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;If Iraq does not withdraw and things get messy, it will be good for the industry. You will hear less rhetoric from Washington about the peace dividend,&quot; said Michael Lauer, an analyst with Kidder, Peabody &amp; Co. in New York.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&quot;The possible beneficiaries&quot; of the crisis, added the Washington Post, &quot;cover the spectrum of companies in the defense industry.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By September, James Webb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, felt moved to speak out:&lt;blockquote&gt;The President should be aware that, while most Americans are laboring very hard to support him, a mood of cynicism is just beneath their veneer of respect. Many are claiming that the buildup is little more than a &quot;Pentagon budget drill,&quot; designed to preclude cutbacks of an Army searching for a mission as bases in NATO begin to disappear.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Remarkably, yet another cynical former Assistant Secretary of Defense was heard from. Lawrence Korb wrote that the deployment of troops to Saudi Arabia &quot;seems driven more by upcoming budget battles on Capitol Hill than a potential battle against Saddam Hussein.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But can anything be too cynical for a congressman stalking re-election? By the beginning of October we could read:&lt;blockquote&gt;The political backdrop of the U.S. military deployment in Saudi Arabia played a significant role in limiting defense cuts in Sunday's budget agreement, halting the military spending &quot;free fall&quot; that some analysts had predicted two months ago, budget aides said. Capitol Hill strategists said that Operation Desert Shield forged a major change in the political climate of the negotiations, forcing lawmakers who had been advocating deep cuts on the defensive.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;    The defense budget compromise … would leave not only funding for Operation Desert Shield intact but would spare much of the funding that has been spent each year to prepare for a major Soviet onslaught on Western Europe.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Meanwhile, George Bush's approval rating had recovered. The first poll taken in August after the US engagement in the Gulf showed a jump to 74 percent, up from 60 percent in late July. However, it seems that the American public needs the rush of a regular patriotic-fix to maintain enthusiasm for the man occupying the White House, for by mid-October, due to Bush's extreme obfuscation of why the US was in the Persian Gulf, the rating they granted him was down to 56—since Bush's first month in office, it had never been lower; and it stayed close to that level until the citizenry's next patriotic-invasion-fix in January, as we shall see.&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Prelude to War<br /> <br /> As Iraq went about plundering Kuwait and turning it into Iraqi Province 19, the United States was building up its military presence in Saudi Arabia and the surrounding waters, and—employing a little coercion and history's most spectacular bribes—creating a &quot;coalition&quot; to support US-fostered United Nations resolutions and the coming war effort in a multitude of ways: a figleaf of &quot;multinational&quot; respectability, as Washington had created in Korea, Grenada and Afghanistan, for what was essentially an American mission, an American war. Egypt was forgiven many billions of dollars in debt, while Syria, China, Turkey, the Soviet Union, and other countries received military or economic aid and World Bank and IMF loans, had sanctions lifted, or were given other perks, not only from the US but, under Washington's pressure, from Germany, Japan and Saudi Arabia. As an added touch, the Bush administration stopped criticizing the human rights record of any coalition member.&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But Washington and the media were unhappy with Germany for not enthusiastically jumping on the war bandwagon. The Germans who only yesterday were condemned as jackbooted fascists marching through Poland, were now called &quot;cowards&quot; for marching for peace in large demonstrations.<br /> <br /> Washington pushed a dozen resolutions through the Security Council condemning Iraq, imposing severe economic sanctions, and getting &quot;authorization&quot; to wage war. Only Cuba and Yemen voted against any of them. When Yemen's delegate received some applause for his negative vote on the key use-of-force resolution of 29 November, US Secretary of State Baker, who was presiding, said to his delegation: &quot;I hope he enjoyed that applause, because this will turn out to be the most expensive vote he ever cast.&quot; The message was relayed to the Yemenis, and within days, the tiny Middle-East nation suffered a sharp reduction in US aid.&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar acknowledged that &quot;It was not a United Nations War. General Schwarzkopf [commander of the coalition forces] was not wearing a blue helmet.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt; The American control of the United Nations prompted British political commentator Edward Pearce to write that the UN &quot;functions like an English medieval parliament: consulted, shown ceremonial courtesy, but mindful of divine prerogative, it mutters and gives assent.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The paramount issue in the United States soon became: how long should we wait for the sanctions to work before resorting to direct military force? The administration and its supporters insisted that they were giving Hussein every chance to find a peaceful, face-saving way out of the hole he had dug himself into. But the fact remained that each time President Bush made the Iraqi leader any kind of offer, it was laced with a deep insult, and never offered the slightest recognition that there might be any validity to Iraq's stated grievances.&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt; Indeed, Bush had characterized the Iraqi invasion as being &quot;without provocation&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt; The president's rhetoric became increasingly caustic and exaggerated; he was putting it on a personal level, demonizing Saddam, as he had done with Noriega, as Reagan had done with Qaddafi, as if these foreigners did not have pride or reason like Americans have. Here's how the Los Angeles Times viewed it:&lt;blockquote&gt;Shortly after Iraq's invasion … Bush carefully compared Iraq's aggression with the German aggression against Poland that launched World War II. But he stopped short of a personal comparison of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with Adolf Hitler. That caution went out the window last month, when Bush not only compared Hussein to Hitler but also threatened Nuremberg-style war crime trials. Then, last week, Bush went further, briefly maintaining that the Iraqi leader is worse than Hitler because the Germans never held U.S. citizens as &quot;human shields&quot; at military sites.&lt;/blockquote&gt;After this trivializing of the Holocaust, Bush went on to warn that any acceptance of uncontrolled aggression &quot;could be world war tomorrow&quot;. Said one of his own officials: &quot;Got to get his rhetoric under control.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;51&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Saddam Hussein could not help but soon realize that by seizing all of Kuwait—not to mention sacking and pillaging it—he had bitten off substantially more than he could chew. In early August and again in October, he signaled his willingness to pull Iraqi forces out of the country in return for sole control of the Rumaila oil field, guaranteed access to the Persian Gulf, the lifting of sanctions, and resolution of the oil price/production problem.&lt;sup&gt;52&lt;/sup&gt; He also began to release some of the many foreigners who had had the misfortune of being in Iraq or Kuwait at the wrong time. In mid-December the last of them was freed. Earlier that month, Iraq began laying out a new Iraqi-Kuwait border, which might have meant a renunciation of its claim of Kuwait being a part of Iraq, though its meaning was not clear.&lt;sup&gt;53&lt;/sup&gt; And in early January, as we shall see, his strongest peace signal was reported.<br /> <br /> The Bush administration chose to not respond in a positive manner to any of these moves. After Saddam's August offer, the State Department &quot;categorically&quot; denied it had even been made; then the White House confirmed it.&lt;sup&gt;54&lt;/sup&gt; A later congressional summary of the matter stated:&lt;blockquote&gt;The Iraqis apparently believed that having invaded Kuwait, they would get everyone's attention, negotiate improvements to their economic situation, and pull out. … a diplomatic solution satisfactory to the interests of the United States may well have been possible since the earliest days of the invasion.&lt;/blockquote&gt;The Bush administration, said the congressional paper, wanted to avoid seeming in any way to reward the invasion. But a retired Army officer, who was acting as a middle man in the August discussions, concluded afterward that the peace offer &quot;was already moving against policy&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;55&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After a certain point in the American military buildup, could the United States have given peace a chance even if it wanted to? Former Assistant Defense Secretary Lawrence Korb observed in late November that all the components of the defense establishment were pushing to get in on the action, to prove their worth, to prove that there was still a need for them, to assure their continued funding …&lt;blockquote&gt;By mid-January … the United States will have over 400,000 troops in the Gulf [it turned out to be over 500,000] from all five armed services (yes, even the Coast Guard is there). This is about 100,000 more troops than we had in Europe at any time during the Cold War. The Army will eventually have eight divisions on the ground in Saudi Arabia, twice as many as it had in Europe. … two-thirds of the entire Marine Corps' combat power [will be there] … The Navy will deploy six of its 14 aircraft carrier battle groups, two of its four battleships and one of its two amphibious groups … The Air Force already has fighters from nine of its 24 active tactical wings … as well as bombers … Even the combat reserves are scheduled to be sent … The reserve lobby recognized that their future funding may be jeopardized if their units do not get involved. … Just as every service wants to be involved in the deployment, will not each want a piece of the real action?&lt;/blockquote&gt;And would the military high-command be able to resist the pressures from each service, Korb wondered. The Navy, which had moved some of its carriers into the narrow and dangerous waters of the Gulf just to be closer to the action? The Marines, who might want to demonstrate the continuing viability of amphibious warfare by staging an assault on the coast? And could the Army lay back while air power carried the day?&lt;sup&gt;56&lt;/sup&gt; [They couldn't, and it prolonged the war.]<br /> <br /> The US military and President Bush would have their massive show of power, their super-hi-tech real war games, and no signals from Iraq or any peacenik would be allowed to spoil it. Fortune magazine, in an ingenuous paean to Bush's fortitude, later summed up the period before the war began thusly:&lt;blockquote&gt;The President and his men worked overtime to quash freelance peacemakers in the Arab world, France, and the Soviet Union who threatened to give Saddam a face-saving way out of the box Bush was building. Over and over, Bush repeated the mantra: no negotiations, no deals, no face-saving, no rewards, and specifically, no linkage to a Palestinian peace conference [a point raised by Iraq on several occasions].&lt;sup&gt;57&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;On 29 November, the UN Security Council authorized the use of &quot;all necessary means&quot; to compel Iraq to vacate Kuwait if it didn't do so by 15 January. Over Christmas, we have learned, George Bush pored over every one of the 82 pages of Amnesty International's agonizing report of Iraqi arrests, rape, and torture in Kuwait. After the holiday, he told his staff that his conscience was clear: &quot;It's black and white, good vs. evil. The man has to be stopped.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;58&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It's not reported whether Bush ever read any of Amnesty's many reports of the period on the equally repulsive violations of human rights and the human spirit perpetrated by Washington's allies in Guatemala, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Angola and Nicaragua. If he did, the literature apparently had little effect, for he continued to support these forces. Amnesty had also been reporting about Iraq's extreme brutality for more than a decade, and only a few months before the August invasion had testified about these abuses before the Senate, but none of this had filled George Bush with righteous indignation.<br /> <br /> As the 15 January deadline neared, the world held its breath. Was it possible that in five and a half months no way could have been found to avoid inflicting another ghastly war upon this sad planet? On the 11th, Arab diplomats at the UN said that they had received reports from Algeria, Jordan and Yemen, all on close terms with Iraq, that Saddam planned an initiative soon after the 15th that would express his willingness &quot;in principle&quot; to pull out of Kuwait in return for international guarantees that Iraq would not be attacked, an international conference to address Palestinian grievances, and negotiations on disputes between Iraq and Kuwait. The Iraqi leader, the diplomats said, wanted to wait a day or two after the deadline had passed to demonstrate that he had not been intimidated.<br /> <br /> For the United States, with half-a-million troops poised for battle in Saudi Arabia, this was unacceptable. Saddam Hussein will &quot;pass the brink at midnight, January 15&quot;, said Secretary of State Baker, and could not expect to save himself by offering to pull out of Kuwait after that time.&lt;sup&gt;59&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The multiple explanations of George Bush&lt;blockquote&gt;Our jobs, our way of life, our own freedom, and the freedom of friendly countries around the world will suffer if control of the world's great oil reserves fell in the hands of that one man, Saddam Hussein.&lt;sup&gt;60&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Thus spaketh George Herbert Walker Bush to the people of America. As Theodore Draper observed:&lt;blockquote&gt;These reasons were both mundane and implausible. That &quot;jobs&quot; should have been mentioned first suggested that Bush, as in a domestic political campaign, sought primarily to appeal to the voters' pocketbook. It was, however, a peculiarly crass reason to go to war, if it came to that, halfway around the world.&lt;sup&gt;61&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;During the entire lengthy buildup to the war, during the war, after the war, no one was sure they understood why Bush had intervened in the Persian Gulf, and then taken the United States into war. Congressmen, journalists, editors, plain citizens kept asking, almost pleading at times, for the president to clearly and unambiguously explain his motivations, and without contradicting what he had said the previous week. (Economists and think-tank intellectuals found it professionally awkward to admit their uncertainty, and thus wound up writing lots of authoritative-sounding mumbo-jumbo.)<br /> <br /> The prevailing bewilderment prompted the Wall Street Journal to assemble a group of &quot;voters&quot; to discuss the issues. &quot;They are confused about what's happening and are crying out for more information,&quot; reported the newspaper about the participants. &quot;And they are unsettled by the perception that Mr. Bush seems to be switching his reasoning day to day.&quot; Said one participant: &quot;So far it's been like David Letterman's Top 10 Reasons for Being There. There's a different story every week or so.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;62&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Taking place in the Persian Gulf, as it all did, of course lent itself to the belief that the liquid gold had a lot, if not everything, to do with the conflict. This, however, is a thesis which cannot be supported by the immediate circumstances. Supply was not a problem—the Energy Department acknowledged that there was not an oil shortage, and Saudi Arabia and other countries increased their production to more than make up for the oil lost from Iraq and Kuwait, which, in any event, together accounted for only about five percent of American consumption. There was a whole world ready to supply more oil, from Mexico to Russia, as well as large untapped American sources. This indicates the difficulties faced by any single producer—Hussein or anyone else—who might try to control or dominate the market; which in turn raises the question: what would such a country do with all the oil, drink it? By December it was reported that &quot;OPEC is pumping oil at the highest levels since early summer, and unless a war in the Middle East disrupts supplies, there's a prospect again of an oil glut and sharply lower prices.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;63&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As to the price of oil: Did oilmen George Bush and James Baker and the depressed American oil states want it to go up or down? A case could be made for either hypothesis. (In January 1990 the US had secretly urged Saddam to try to raise the OPEC oil price to $25 a barrel.)&lt;sup&gt;64&lt;/sup&gt; And how easily could Washington control it either way in a chaotic situation? As it is, oil prices fluctuate on a regular basis, often sharply—between 1984 and 1986, for example, the price of a barrel of oil fell from around $30 to less than $10, despite the ongoing Iraq-Iran war which cut into the production of both countries.<br /> <br /> However, this analysis of the immediate circumstances does not take into consideration the formidable and continual influence of the &quot;mystique of oil&quot; upon the thinking of American policy makers. If Bush was looking for a &quot;crisis&quot; to impress upon the congressional mind the enduring danger of the world we live in, then getting involved in a conflict between two major oil producing countries would certainly generate the desired effect much more readily than if he had seized upon Bolivia attacking Paraguay, or Ghana occupying Ivory Coast.<br /> <br /> The president's remark about the American way of life and everyone's freedom reflects the life-and-death seriousness that he and other policy makers publicly ascribe to oil. (What these men really believe and feel in each instance is something we are not privy to.) Earlier in the year, CIA Director William Webster had told Congress that oil &quot;will continue to have a major impact on U.S. interests&quot; because &quot;Western dependence on Persian Gulf oil will rise dramatically&quot; in the next decade; while General Schwarzkopf, who had lifelong ties to the Middle East, testified:&lt;blockquote&gt;Mideast oil is the West's lifeblood. It fuels us today, and being 77 percent of the Free World's proven oil reserves, is going to fuel us when the rest of the world has run dry. … It is estimated that within 20 to 40 years the U.S. will have virtually depleted its economically available oil reserves, while the Persian Gulf region will still have at least 100 years of proven oil reserves.&lt;sup&gt;65&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;It was actually 69 percent at the time, and since the Soviet Union has joined the &quot;Free World&quot;, it's even less.&lt;sup&gt;66&lt;/sup&gt; It should also be noted that the good general's prediction for the US is rather speculative, and that the term &quot;economically available&quot; is a reference to the fact that US domestic oil reserves are more costly to exploit than those in the Gulf. But this only makes it a profit problem, not an oil-supply problem. Moreover, the vast potential residing in alternative energy sources must be included in the equation.<br /> <br /> At this time, the United States—seemingly in a panic about danger to the Gulf oil supply—was receiving about 11 percent of its oil from the region, while Japan, which got 62 percent of its oil, and Europe which got 27 percent from there, were hardly stirred up at all, except for Margaret Thatcher who foamed at the mouth when it came to Saddam and former colony Iraq.&lt;sup&gt;67&lt;/sup&gt; Germany's figure was about 35 percent, yet both Bonn and Tokyo had to have their arms twisted by Washington to support the war effort. The two countries may, in fact, have been leery about helping the United States acquire greater influence and control over the region's oil.<br /> <br /> Official Washington's embrace of the oil mystique has given rise to a long-standing policy, expressed as follows by political analyst Noam Chomsky:&lt;blockquote&gt;It's been a leading, driving doctrine of U.S. foreign policy since the 1940s that the vast and unparalleled energy resources of the Gulf region will be effectively dominated by the United States and its clients, and, crucially, that no independent, indigenous force will be permitted to have a substantial influence on the administration of oil production and price.&lt;sup&gt;68&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;This has not always meant the use of force. In 1973, when OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, used substantial price increases and an oil boycott in an attempt to force Washington to influence Israel into withdrawing from its recently occupied territories, the United States did not launch, or even threaten, an invasion. The matter was resolved through extensive diplomacy without a shot being fired. What saved the OPEC states from a violent fate may have been the combination of the Vietnam war still hanging heavy in the air in Washington, and the Nixon administration on the verge of being swallowed up by Watergate.<br /> <br /> In addition to issuing several dire warnings early on about the invasion's severe economic consequences for the United States, which never came to pass, Bush warned of an even worse fate if Iraq took over Saudi Arabia. The danger-to-Saudi Arabia explanation was a non-starter. Iraq never had any designs on Saudi Arabia, as a simple look at a map makes clear. The Iraqis have a long border with that country; they didn't have to go through Kuwait to invade the Saudis; and even if they did, they could have moved into Saudi Arabia virtually unopposed during the three weeks following their takeover of Kuwait, as General Colin Powell later conceded.&lt;sup&gt;69&lt;/sup&gt; Bush administration officials in fact admitted that neither the CIA nor the Defense Intelligence Agency thought it probable that Iraq would invade Saudi Arabia.&lt;sup&gt;70&lt;/sup&gt; The Saudis didn't think so either, until Defense Secretary Cheney flew to Riyadh on 5 August and personally told King Fahd that his country stood in great potential danger and desperately needed a very large infusion of American military forces to defend it.&lt;sup&gt;71&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Bush backed away from the oil rationale when critics charged that he was only trying to protect the interests of the oil industry. In October, he was interrupted while making a speech by some people calling out: &quot;Mr. President, bring our troops home from Saudi Arabia! No blood for oil!&quot; To which George Bush replied—as the hecklers were hustled out—&quot;You know, some people never get the word. The fight isn't about oil. The fight is about naked aggression that [we] will not stand.&quot; A month later, if not sooner, the president again began to play the oil card, tying America's economic security to that of Saudi Arabia. Shortly afterward, he returned to &quot;the devastating damage being done every day&quot; to the US and international economies by the disruption of oil markets.&lt;sup&gt;72&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As to Iraq's naked aggression—a remark requiring selective-memory skills of a high order coming from a government that held all modern records for international aggression, naked or otherwise, and from a man who, less than a year before, had nakedly invaded Panama—both Syria and Israel had invaded Lebanon and still occupied large portions of that country, Israel bombarding Beirut mercilessly in the process, without a threat of war emanating from Washington. Saddam Hussein, perhaps wondering when they had changed the rules, said to the United States: &quot;You are talking about an aggressive Iraq … if Iraq was aggressive during the Iran war, why then did you speak with [us] then?&quot;&lt;sup&gt;73&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During Iraq's epic struggle against the Ayatollah Khomeini, the United States of course had more than spoken to Baghdad. Washington—choosing Iraq as the lesser evil against Shiite extremism—was responsible for huge amounts of weaponry, military training, sophisticated technology, satellite-photo intelligence, and billions of dollars reaching a needy Hussein, who was also lavishly supported by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, they being concerned that Iran's anti-monarchist sentiments might spread to their own realms. Indeed, there is evidence that Washington encouraged Iraq to attack Iran and ignite the war in the first place.&lt;sup&gt;74&lt;/sup&gt; And during this period of American support of Hussein, he was certainly the same odious, repressive, beastly thug as when he later came under American moralistic rhetorical fire. Similarly, absent Washington's prodding, the UN did not condemn Iraq's invasion, nor did it impose any sanctions or lay down any demands.<br /> <br /> Even as it officially banned arms sales to either combatant, the US secretly provided weapons to both. The other bête noire of the region, the Ayatollah, received American arms and military intelligence on Iraq during the war, so as to enhance the ability of the two countries to inflict maximum devastation upon each other and stunt their growth as strong Middle-East nations.<br /> <br /> In contrast to Iraq-the-enemy now were the two &quot;allies&quot; most involved, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Although Washington did not make a big thing about the &quot;virtue&quot; of either country, official policy was always that the United States had a principled commitment to defending the former and liberating the latter. And they were not a pretty pair. Saudi Arabia regularly featured extreme religious intolerance, extrajudicial arrest, torture, and flogging.&lt;sup&gt;75&lt;/sup&gt; It also practiced gender apartheid and systematic repression of women, virtual slavery for its foreign workers, stoning of adulterers, and amputation of the hands of thieves. US chaplains stationed in the country were asked to remove crosses and Stars of David from their uniforms and call themselves &quot;morale officers&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;76&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Kuwait, oddly enough, was virulently anti-American in its foreign policy.&lt;sup&gt;77&lt;/sup&gt; Though more socially enlightened than Saudi Arabia (but less than Iraq), it was nonetheless run by one family as an elitist oligarchy, which closed down the parliament in 1986, had no political parties, and forbade criticism of the ruling emir; no more than 20 percent of the population possessed any political rights at all. After the country had been returned to its rightful dictators, it behaved very brutally toward its large foreign-worker population, holding them without charge or trial for several months; death squads executed scores of people. &quot;Torture of political detainees was routine and widespread,&quot; said Amnesty International, and at least 80 &quot;disappeared&quot; in custody. The targets of the campaign, which took place in the presence of thousands of US troops, were primarily those who were accused of collaboration with the Iraqis, although this was something most of them had no choice in, and those who were involved in a nascent pro-democracy movement. Additionally, some 400 Iraqis were forced to return to Iraq despite fears that they would be harmed or executed there.&lt;sup&gt;78&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The elite of the region did not display much gratitude for all that George Bush said America was doing for them. Said one Gulf official: &quot;You think I want to send my teenaged son to die for Kuwait?&quot; He chuckled and added, &quot;We have our white slaves from America to do that.&quot; A Saudi teacher saw it this way: &quot;The American soldiers are a new kind of foreign worker here. We have Pakistanis driving taxis and now we have Americans defending us.&quot; Explaining the absence of expressed gratitude on the part of Gulf leaders, a Yemeni diplomat said: &quot;A lot of the Gulf rulers simply do not feel that they have to thank the people they've hired to do their fighting for them.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;79&lt;/sup&gt; Apart from anything else, people in the Arab world were very sensitive about the killing of Muslims and Arabs by foreigners, as well as foreign military presence on Arab soil, a reminder of a century of Western, white colonialism.<br /> <br /> Bush also warned that Iraq posed a nuclear threat. True enough. But so did the United States, France, Israel, and every other country that already had nuclear weapons. Iraq, on the other hand, according to American, British and Israeli experts, was five to ten years away from being able to build and use nuclear weapons.&lt;sup&gt;80&lt;/sup&gt; It's unlikely that the president himself believed there was any such danger. His warning came only after a poll showed that a plurality of Americans felt that preventing Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons was the most persuasive argument for going to war.&lt;sup&gt;81&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One factor not mentioned by Bush as a reason for the intervention, but which, in fact, probably played an important role, was the Pentagon's desire to make or strengthen agreements with Gulf-region countries for an ongoing US military presence; and considerable progress along these lines appears to have been made.&lt;sup&gt;82&lt;/sup&gt; General Schwarzkopf had earlier told Congress that &quot;U.S. presence&quot; in the Gulf is one of the three pillars of overall military strategy, along with security assistance and combined exercises, all of which lead to all-important &quot;access&quot;, which one can take as a euphemism for influence and control.&lt;sup&gt;83&lt;/sup&gt; After the war, the existence of a network of military-communication-systems &quot;superbases&quot; in Saudi Arabia was revealed. Ten years in the building by the United States, in maximum secrecy, its cost of almost $200 billion paid for by the Saudis, its use during the Gulf War indispensable, it may explain why Bush moved so quickly to defend Saudi Arabia, albeit against a non-existent threat.&lt;sup&gt;84&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Stop me before I kill again!&quot;<br /> <br /> Josef Stalin studied for the priesthood … Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian and anti-smoking … Herman Goering, while his Luftwaffe rained death upon Europe, kept a sign in his office that read: &quot;He who tortures animals wounds the feelings of the German people.&quot; … This fact Elie Wiesel called the greatest discovery of the war: that Adolf Eichmann was cultured, read deeply, played the violin … Mussolini also played the violin … Charles Manson was a staunch anti-vivisectionist …<br /> <br /> About Panama, as we have seen, after he ordered the bombing, George Bush said that his &quot;heart goes out to the families who have died in Panama.&quot; And when he was asked, &quot;Was it really worth it to send people to their death for this? To get Noriega?&quot;, he replied, &quot;… every human life is precious, and yet I have to answer, yes, it has been worth it.&quot;<br /> <br /> About Iraq, Bush said: &quot;People say to me: 'How many lives? How many lives can you expend?' Each one is precious.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;85&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Just before ordering the start of the war against Iraq in January, Bush prayed, as tears ran down his cheeks. &quot;I think,&quot; he later said, &quot;that, like a lot of others who had positions of responsibility in sending someone else's kids to war, we realize that in prayer what mattered is how it might have seemed to God.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;86&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> God, one surmises, might have asked George Bush about the kids of Iraq. And the adults. And, in a testy, rather un-godlike manner, might have cracked: &quot;So stop wasting all the precious lives already!&quot;<br /> <br /> Tanks pulling plows moved alongside trenches, firing into the Iraqi soldiers inside the trenches as the plows covered them with great mounds of sand. Thousands were buried, dead, wounded, or alive.&lt;sup&gt;87&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> US forces fired on Iraqi soldiers after the Iraqis had raised white flags of surrender. The navy commander who gave the order to fire was not punished.&lt;sup&gt;88&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The bombing destroyed two operational nuclear reactors in Iraq. It was the first time ever that live reactors had been bombed, and may well have set a dangerous precedent. Hardly more than a month had passed since the United Nations, under whose mandate the United States was supposedly operating, had passed a resolution reaffirming its &quot;prohibition of military attacks on nuclear facilities&quot; in the Middle East.&lt;sup&gt;89&lt;/sup&gt; Sundry chemical, including chemical-warfare, facilities and alleged biological-warfare plants, were also targets of American bombs. General Schwarzkopf then announced that they had been very careful in selecting the means of destruction of these as well as the nuclear facilities, and only &quot;after a lot of advice from a lot of very, very prominent scientists,&quot; and were &quot;99.9 percent&quot; certain that there was &quot;no contamination&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;90&lt;/sup&gt; However, European scientists and environmentalists detected traces of chemical-weapons agents that the bombings had released; as well as chemical fallout and toxic vapors, also released by the air attacks, that were killing scores of civilians.&lt;sup&gt;91&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The American government and media had a lot of fun with an obvious piece of Iraqi propaganda—the claim that a bombed biological warfare facility had actually been a baby food factory. But it turned out that the government of New Zealand and various business people from there had had intimate contact with the factory and categorically confirmed that it had indeed been a baby food factory.&lt;sup&gt;92&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The United States also made wide use of advanced depleted uranium (DU) shells, rockets and missiles, leaving tons of radioactive and toxic rubble in Kuwait and Iraq. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, in an April 1991 secret report, warned that &quot;if DU gets in the food chain or water this will create potential health problems.&quot; The uranium-238 used to make the weapons can cause cancer and genetic defects if inhaled. Uranium is also chemically toxic, like lead. Inhalation causes heavy metal poisoning or kidney or lung damage. Iraqi soldiers, pinned down in their bunkers during assaults, were almost certainly poisoned by radioactive dust clouds.&lt;sup&gt;93&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The civilian population suffered in the extreme from the relentless bombing. Middle East Watch, the human-rights organization, has documented numerous instances of the bombing of apartment houses, crowded markets, bridges filled with pedestrians and civilian vehicles, and a busy central bus station, usually in broad daylight, without a government building or military target of any kind in sight, not even an anti-aircraft gun.&lt;sup&gt;94&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On 12 February, the Pentagon announced that &quot;Virtually everything militarily … is either destroyed or combat ineffective.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;95&lt;/sup&gt; Yet the next day there was a deliberate bombardment of a civilian air raid shelter that took the lives of as many as 1,500 civilians, a great number of them women and children; this was followed by significant bombardment of various parts of Iraq on a daily basis for the remaining two weeks of the war, including what was reported for the 18th in The Guardian of London as &quot;one of [the coalition's] most ferocious attacks on the centre of Baghdad.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;96&lt;/sup&gt; What was the purpose of the bombing campaign after the 12th?<br /> <br /> The United States said it thought that the shelter was for VIPs, which it had been at one time, and claimed that it was also being used as a military communications center, but neighborhood residents insisted that the constant aerial surveillance overhead had to observe the daily flow of women and children into the shelter.&lt;sup&gt;97&lt;/sup&gt; Western reporters said they could find no signs of military use.&lt;sup&gt;98&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> An American journalist in Jordan who viewed unedited videotape footage of the disaster, which the American public never saw, wrote:&lt;blockquote&gt;They showed scenes of incredible carnage. Nearly all the bodies were charred into blackness; in some cases the heat had been so great that entire limbs were burned off. … Rescue workers collapsed in grief, dropping corpses; some rescuers vomited from the stench of the still-smoldering bodies.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;99&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Said White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater after the bombing of the shelter: It was &quot;a military target … We don't know why civilians were at this location, but we do know that Saddam Hussein does not share our value in the sanctity of life.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;100&lt;/sup&gt; Said George Bush, when criticized for the bombing campaign: &quot;I am concerned about the suffering of innocents.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;101&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The crippling of the electrical system multiplied geometrically the daily living horror of the people of Iraq. As a modern country, Iraq was reliant on electrical power for essential services such as water purification and distribution, sewage treatment, the operation of hospitals and medical laboratories, and agricultural production. Bomb damage, exacerbated by shortages attributable to the UN/US embargo, dropped electricity to three or four percent of its pre-war level; the water supply fell to five percent, oil production was negligible, the food distribution system was devastated, the sewage system collapsed, flooding houses with raw sewage, and gastroenteritis and extreme malnutrition were prevalent.&lt;sup&gt;102&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Two months after the war ended, a public health team from Harvard University visited health facilities in several Iraqi cities. Based on their research, the group projected, conservatively, that &quot;at least 170,000 children under five years of age will die in the coming year from the delayed effects&quot; of the destruction of electrical power, fuel and transportation; &quot;a large increase in deaths among the rest of the population is also likely. The immediate cause of death in most cases will be water-borne infectious disease in combination with severe malnutrition.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;103&lt;/sup&gt; One member of both the Harvard group and a later research group which visited Iraq testified before Congress that &quot;Children play in the raw sewage which is backed up in the streets … Two world renowned child psychologists stated that the children in Iraq were 'the most traumatized children of war ever described'.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;104&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Despite repeated statements by American authorities about taking the greatest of care to hit only military targets, using &quot;smart bombs&quot; and laser-guided bombs, and &quot;surgical strikes&quot;, we now know that this was little more than an exercise in propaganda, just as referring to this suffering as &quot;collateral damage&quot; was. After the war, the Pentagon admitted that non-military facilities had been extensively targeted for political reasons.&lt;sup&gt;105&lt;/sup&gt; Comprehensive post-World War II government studies had concluded that &quot;the dread of disease and the hardships imposed by the lack of sanitary facilities were bound to have a demoralizing effect upon the civilian population&quot;, and that there was a &quot;reliable and striking&quot; correlation between the disruption of public utilities and the willingness of the German population to accept unconditional surrender.&lt;sup&gt;106&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the Iraqi case there was a further motivation: to encourage desperate citizens to rise up and overthrow Saddam Hussein. Said a US Air Force planner:&lt;blockquote&gt;Big picture, we wanted to let people know, &quot;Get rid of this guy and we'll be more than happy to assist in rebuilding. We're not going to tolerate Saddam Hussein or his regime. Fix that, and we'll fix your electricity.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;107&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Those who tried to escape the bombing horror in Iraq by fleeing to Jordan were subjected to air attacks on the highway between Baghdad and the Jordanian border—buses, taxis, and private cars were repeatedly assaulted, literally without mercy, by rockets, cluster bombs and machine guns; usually in broad daylight, the targets clearly civilian, with luggage piled on top, with no military vehicles or structures anywhere to be seen, surrounded by open desert, the attacking planes flying extremely close to the ground … busloads of passengers incinerated, and when people left the vehicles and fled for their lives, planes often swooped down upon them firing away. … &quot;You're killing us!&quot; cried a Jordanian taxi driver to an American reporter. &quot;You're shooting us everywhere we move! Whenever they see a car or truck, the planes dive out of the sky and chase us. They don't care who we are or what we are. They just shoot.&quot; His cry was repeated by hundreds of others. … The US military, it appears, felt that any vehicle, including those filled with families, might be a cover for carrying military fuel or other war materiel, some perhaps related to Scud missiles; and even carrying civilian fuel was a violation of the embargo.&lt;sup&gt;108&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> At the very end, when the hungry, wounded, sick, exhausted, disoriented, demoralized, ragged, sometimes barefoot Iraqi army, which had scarcely shown any desire to fight, left Kuwait and headed toward Basra in southern Iraq, Saddam tried to salvage a pathetic scrap of dignity by announcing that his army was withdrawing because of &quot;special circumstances&quot;. But even this was too much for George Bush to grant. &quot;Saddam's most recent speech is an outrage,&quot; declared the president, forcefully. &quot;He is not withdrawing. His defeated forces are retreating. He is trying to claim victory in the midst of a rout.&quot;<br /> <br /> This could not be permitted. Thus it was that American air power in all its majesty swept down upon the road to Basra, bombing, rocketing, strafing everything that moved in the long column of Iraqi military and civilian vehicles, troops and refugees. The nice, god-fearing, wholesome American GIs, soon to be welcomed as heroes at home, had a ball … &quot;we toasted him&quot; … &quot;we hit the jackpot&quot; … &quot;a turkey shoot&quot; … &quot;This morning was bumper-to-bumper. It was the road to Daytona Beach at spring break … and spring break's over.&quot;<br /> <br /> Again and again, as loudspeakers on the carrier Ranger blared Rossini's &quot;William Tell Overture&quot;, the rousing theme song of the Lone Ranger, one strike force after another took off with their load of missiles and anti-tank and anti-personnel Rockeye cluster bombs, which explode into a deadly rain of armor-piercing bomblets; land-based B-52s joined in with 1000-pound bombs. … &quot;It's not going to take too many more days until there's nothing left of them.&quot; … &quot;shooting fish in a barrel&quot; … &quot;basically just sitting ducks&quot; … &quot;There's just nothing like it. It's the biggest Fourth of July show you've ever seen, and to see those tanks just 'boom,' and more stuff just keeps spewing out of them … they just become white hot. It's wonderful.&quot;<br /> <br /> The British daily, The Independent, although it supported the war, denounced the glee with which the Americans carried out the barrage, saying it &quot;turned the stomachs&quot; and was &quot;sickening to witness a routed army being shot in the back&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;109&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A BBC Radio reporter summed up the attack by asking: &quot;What threat could these pathetic remnants of Saddam Hussein's beaten army have posed? Wasn't it obvious that the people of the convoy would have given themselves up willingly without the application of such ferocious weaponry?&quot;&lt;sup&gt;110&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And all this against a foe that had for five days been calling for a cease-fire.<br /> <br /> But heaven forbid that the Americans should offend any of the people of the Gulf. Thus it was that GIs were taught things like never to use their left hand when offering food or drink, for that hand is traditionally reserved for sanitary functions; and the proper way to beckon an Arab with one's hand and fingers, so as not to confuse it with beckoning a dog.&lt;sup&gt;111&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> We also have the story of the American pilot who, during an earlier bombing operation, stuffed into his identification packet a $20 bill and a note written in Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and English. It said: &quot;I am an American and do not speak your language. I bear no malice toward your people.&quot; Then he was off, roaring through the skies toward Iraq with his payload of bombs.&lt;sup&gt;112&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Did the GIs bear any malice toward their female soldiers-in-arms? One post-war study found that more than half the women who served in the Gulf War felt that they had been sexually harassed verbally, while eight percent (almost 3,000) had been the objects of attempted or completed sexual assaults.&lt;sup&gt;113&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And immediately after George Bush ordered the bombing to begin, his rating with the American people jumped for joy: an 82 percent approval rating, the highest ever in his two years in office, higher even than after his invasion of Panama.&lt;sup&gt;114&lt;/sup&gt; One journalist later noted:&lt;blockquote&gt;One minute of nightly truth on this &quot;popular&quot; war would have changed American public opinion. … if for just 60 seconds the 6 o'clock Monday news had shown 5,000 Iraqi soldiers with hideous phosphorous burns that alter human anatomy followed by 60 seconds Tuesday night of the slaughter at the Baghdad bomb shelter … What if on Wednesday Americans had seen 10,000 Iraqi soldiers incinerated by American high-tech weapons?&lt;sup&gt;115&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Ever since the Iraqi invasion in August, and despite the many confusing soundbites and heavy rhetoric emanating from the White House, one thing seemed clear enough: if Iraq agreed to withdraw from Kuwait, military attacks against it would not take place, or would cease, whatever other punishment or sanctions might continue. Thus, it seemed like a ray of hope, however late, when the Soviet Union succeeded on 21-22 February 1991 in getting Iraq to agree to withdraw completely the day after a cease-fire of all military operations went into effect. The agreement came with specified timetables and monitoring.&lt;sup&gt;116&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> George Bush refused to offer a cease-fire, per se. He could not even bring himself to mention the word in his replies. All he would say was that the retreating Iraqi forces would not be attacked (which turned out to be untrue), and that the coalition &quot;will exercise restraint.&quot; Saddam could have chosen to take this as the cease-fire, but he was as proud and stubborn as George.<br /> <br /> The point Bush emphasized the most during these two crucial days, as well as earlier, was that Iraq must comply with all 12 UN resolutions. In evaluating Bush's legalistic demands, it should be kept in mind that the policy and practice of the American war had repeatedly violated the letter and the spirit of the United Nations Charter, the Hague Conventions, the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Tribunal, the protocols of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the US Constitution, amongst other cherished documents.&lt;sup&gt;117&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the end, Bush gave Saddam 24 hours to begin withdrawing from Kuwait, period. When the time came and went, the United States launched the long-expected ground war, while the aerial attacks—including the carnage on the road to Basra—continued until the end of the month.<br /> <br /> Said Vitaly Ignatenko, a spokesman for Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev: &quot;It seems that President Gorbachev cares more about saving the lives of American soldiers than George Bush does.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;118&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In a postwar survey, a United Nations inspection team declared that the allied bombardment had had a &quot;near apocalyptic impact&quot; on Iraq and had transformed the country into a &quot;pre-industrial age nation&quot; which &quot;had been until January a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;119&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It will never be known how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died from the direct and indirect effects of the war; the count is added to every day. With the United States refusing to end the embargo against Iraq, everything has continued: malnutrition, starvation, lack of medicines and vaccines, contaminated drinking water, human excrement piling up, typhoid, a near-epidemic of measles, several other diseases … Iraq's food supply had been 70 percent dependent on imports, now billions of dollars were frozen in overseas accounts, and with prohibitive restrictions on selling its oil … an inability to rebuild because vital parts could not be imported, industry closing its doors, mass unemployment, transportation and communications broken down&lt;sup&gt;120&lt;/sup&gt; … By September 1994, with Washington still refusing to release its death grip on the embargo, the Iraqi government announced that since the sanctions had begun in August 1990 about 400,000 children had died of malnutrition and disease.&lt;sup&gt;121&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After the war, when the Iraqi government was repressing a Kurdish revolt—which the US had encouraged, then failed to support—Bush said: &quot;I feel frustrated any time innocent civilians are being slaughtered.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;122&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> This was the second time the United States had led the Kurdish lambs to slaughter with a broken commitment. (See Iraq 1972-75 chapter.)<br /> <br /> Washington had also encouraged the Shiite Muslims in Iraq to rebel, then did not back them. The US was not looking to foster a Kurdish government that would upset Turkey, nor a Shiite government that might well become an ally of Iran or inspire Muslim fundamentalists elsewhere in the Middle East.<br /> <br /> American mental hospitals and prisons are home to many people who claim to have heard a voice telling them to kill certain people, people they'd never met before, people who'd never done them any harm, or threatened any harm.<br /> <br /> American soldiers went to the Persian Gulf to kill the same kind of people after hearing a voice command them: the voice of George Herbert Walker Bush.<br /> <br /> == Afghanistan 1979-1992: America's Jihad ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;His followers first gained attention by throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. CIA and State Department officials I have spoken with call him &quot;scary,&quot; &quot;vicious,&quot; &quot;a fascist,&quot; &quot;definite dictatorship material&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;This did not prevent the United States government from showering the man with large amounts of aid to fight against the Soviet-supported government of Afghanistan. His name was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He was the head of the Islamic Party and he hated the United States almost as much as he hated the Russians. His followers screamed &quot;Death to America&quot; along with &quot;Death to the Soviet Union&quot;, only the Russians were not showering him with large amounts of aid.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The United States began supporting Afghan Islamic fundamentalists in 1979 despite the fact that in February of that year some of them had kidnapped the American ambassador in the capital city of Kabul, leading to his death in the rescue attempt. The support continued even after their brother Islamic fundamentalists in next-door Iran seized the US Embassy in Teheran in November and held 55 Americans hostage for over a year. Hekmatyar and his colleagues were, after all, in battle against the Soviet Evil Empire; he was thus an important member of those forces Ronald Reagan called &quot;freedom fighters&quot;.<br /> <br /> On 27 April 1978, a coup staged by the People's Democratic Party (PDP) overthrew the government of Mohammad Daoud. Daoud, five years earlier, had overthrown the monarchy and established a republic, although he himself was a member of the royal family. He had been supported by the left in this endeavor, but it turned out that Daoud's royal blood was thicker than his progressive water. When the Daoud regime had a PDP leader killed, arrested the rest of the leadership, and purged hundreds of suspected party sympathizers from government posts, the PDP, aided by its supporters in the army, revolted and took power.<br /> <br /> Afghanistan was a backward nation: a life expectancy of about 40, infant mortality of at least 25 percent, absolutely primitive sanitation, widespread malnutrition, illiteracy of more than 90 percent, very few highways, not one mile of railway, most people living in nomadic tribes or as impoverished farmers in mud villages, identifying more with ethnic groups than with a larger political concept, a life scarcely different from many centuries earlier.<br /> <br /> Reform with a socialist bent was the new government's ambition: land reform (while still retaining private property), controls on prices and profits, and strengthening of the public sector, as well as separation of church and state, eradication of illiteracy, legalization of trade unions, and the emancipation of women in a land almost entirely Muslim.<br /> <br /> Afghanistan's thousand-mile border with the Soviet Union had always produced a special relationship. Even while it was a monarchy, the country had been under the strong influence of its powerful northern neighbor which had long been its largest trading partner, aid donor, and military supplier. But the country had never been gobbled up by the Soviets, a fact that perhaps lends credence to the oft-repeated Soviet claim that their hegemony over Eastern Europe was only to create a buffer between themselves and the frequently-invading West.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, for decades Washington and the Shah of Iran tried to pressure and bribe Afghanistan in order to roll back Russian influence in the country. During the Daoud regime, Iran, encouraged by the United States, sought to replace the Soviet Union as Kabul's biggest donor with a $2 billion economic aid agreement, and urged Afghanistan to join the Regional Cooperation for Development, which consisted of Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. (This organization was attacked by the Soviet Union and its friends in Afghanistan as being a &quot;branch of CENTO&quot; the 1950s regional security pact that was part of the US policy of &quot;containment&quot; of the Soviet Union.) At the same time, Iran's infamous secret police, SAVAK, was busy fingering suspected Communist sympathizers in the Afghan government and military. In September 1975, prodded by Iran which was conditioning its aid on such policies, Daoud dismissed 40 Soviet-trained military officers and moved to reduce future Afghan dependence on officer training in the USSR by initiating training arrangements with India and Egypt. Most important, in Soviet eyes, Daoud gradually broke off his alliance with the PDP, announcing that he would start his own party and ban all other political activity under a projected new constitution.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Selig Harrison, the Washington Post's South Asia specialist, wrote an article in 1979 entitled &quot;The Shah, Not the Kremlin, Touched off Afghan Coup&quot;, concluding:&lt;blockquote&gt;The Communist takeover in Kabul [April 1978] came about when it did, and in the way that it did, because the Shah disturbed the tenuous equilibrium that had existed in Afghanistan between the Soviet Union and the West for nearly three decades. In Iranian and American eyes, Teheran's offensive was merely designed to make Kabul more truly nonaligned, but it went far beyond that. Given the unusually long frontier with Afghanistan, the Soviet Union would clearly go to great lengths to prevent Kabul from moving once again toward a pro-western stance.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;When the Shah was overthrown in January 1979, the United States lost its chief ally and outpost in the Soviet-border region, as well as its military installations and electronic monitoring stations aimed at the Soviet Union. Washington's cold warriors could only eye Afghanistan even more covetously than before.<br /> <br /> After the April revolution, the new government under President Noor Mohammed Taraki declared a commitment to Islam within a secular state, and to non-alignment in foreign affairs. It maintained that the coup had not been foreign inspired, that it was not a &quot;Communist takeover&quot;, and that they were not &quot;Communists&quot; but rather nationalists and revolutionaries. (No official or traditional Communist Party had ever existed in Afghanistan.)&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; But because of its radical reform program, its class-struggle and anti-imperialist-type rhetoric, its support of all the usual suspects (Cuba, North Korea, etc.), its signing of a friendship treaty and other cooperative agreements with the Soviet Union, and an increased presence in the country of Soviet civilian and military advisers (though probably less than the US had in Iran at the time), it was labeled &quot;communist&quot; by the world's media and by its domestic opponents.<br /> <br /> Whether or not the new government in Afghanistan should properly have been called communist, whether or not it made any difference what it was called, the lines were now drawn for political, military, and propaganda battle: a jihad (holy war) between fundamentalist Muslims and &quot;godless atheistic communists&quot;; Afghan nationalism vs. a &quot;Soviet-run&quot; government; large landowners, tribal chiefs, businessmen, the extended royal family, and others vs. the government's economic reforms. Said the new prime minister about this elite, who were needed to keep the country running, &quot;every effort will be made to attract them. But we want to re-educate them in such a manner that they should think about the people, and not, as previously, just about themselves—to have a good house and a nice car while other people die of hunger.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Afghan government was trying to drag the country into the 20th century. In May 1979, British political scientist Fred Halliday observed that &quot;probably more has changed in the countryside over the last year than in the two centuries since the state was established.&quot; Peasant debts to landlords had been canceled, the system of usury (by which peasants, who were forced to borrow money against future crops, were left in perpetual debt to moneylenders) was abolished, and hundreds of schools and medical clinics were being built in the countryside. Halliday also reported that a substantial land-redistribution program was underway, with many of the 200,000 rural families scheduled to receive land under this reform already having done so. But this last claim must be approached with caution. Revolutionary land reform is always an extremely complex and precarious undertaking even under the best of conditions, and ultra-backward, tradition-bound Afghanistan in the midst of nascent civil war hardly offered the best of conditions for social experiments.<br /> <br /> The reforms also encroached into the sensitive area of Islamic subjugation of women by outlawing child marriage and the giving of a woman in marriage in exchange for money or commodities, and teaching women to read, at a time when certain Islamic sectors were openly calling for the reinforcement of purdah, the seclusion of women from public observation.<br /> <br /> Halliday noted that the People's Democratic Party saw the Soviet Union as the only realistic source of support for the long-overdue modernization.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; The illiterate Afghan peasant's ethnic cousins across the border in the Soviet Union were, after all, often university graduates and professionals.<br /> <br /> The argument of the Moujahedeen (&quot;holy warriors&quot;) rebels that the &quot;communist&quot; government would curtail their religious freedom was never borne out in practice. A year and a half after the change in government, the conservative British magazine The Economist reported that &quot;no restrictions had been imposed on religious practice&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; Earlier, the New York Times stated that the religious issue &quot;is being used by some Afghans who actually object more to President Taraki's plans for land reforms and other changes in this feudal society.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; Many of the Muslim clergy were in fact rich landowners.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; The rebels, concluded a BBC reporter who spent four months with them, are &quot;fighting to retain their feudal system and stop the Kabul government's left-wing reforms which [are] considered anti-Islamic&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The two other nations which shared a long border with Afghanistan, and were closely allied to the United States, expressed their fears of the new government. To the west, Iran, still under the Shah, worried about &quot;threats to oil-passage routes in the Persian Gulf&quot;. Pakistan, to the south, spoke of &quot;threats from a hostile and expansionist Afghanistan&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; A former US ambassador to Afghanistan saw it as part of a &quot;gradually closing pincer movement aimed at Iran and the oil regions of the Middle East.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; None of these alleged fears turned out to have any substance or evidence to back them up, but to the anti-communist mind this might prove only that the Russians and their Afghan puppets had been stopped in time.<br /> <br /> Two months after the April 1978 coup, an alliance formed by a number of conservative Islamic factions was waging guerrilla war against the government.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; By spring 1979, fighting was taking place on many fronts, and the State Department was cautioning the Soviet Union that its advisers in Afghanistan should not interfere militarily in the civil strife. One such warning in the summer by State Department spokesman Hodding Carter was another of those Washington monuments to chutzpah: &quot;We expect the principle of nonintervention to be respected by all parties in the area, including the Soviet Union.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; This while the Soviets were charging the CIA with arming Afghan exiles in Pakistan; and the Afghanistan government was accusing Pakistan and Iran of also aiding the guerrillas and even of crossing the border to take part in the fighting. Pakistan had recently taken its own sharp turn toward strict Muslim orthodoxy, which the Afghan government deplored as &quot;fanatic&quot;;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; while in January, Iran had established a Muslim state after overthrowing the Shah. (As opposed to the Afghan fundamentalist freedom fighters, the Iranian Islamic fundamentalists were regularly described in the West as terrorists, ultra-conservatives, and antidemocratic.)<br /> <br /> A &quot;favorite tactic&quot; of the Afghan freedom fighters was &quot;to torture victims [often Russians] by first cutting off their noses, ears, and genitals, then removing one slice of skin after another&quot;, producing &quot;a slow, very painful death&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt; The Moujahedeen also killed a Canadian tourist and six West Germans, including two children, and a U.S. military attaché was dragged from his car and beaten; all due to the rebels' apparent inability to distinguish Russians from other Europeans.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In March 1979, Taraki went to Moscow to press the Soviets to send ground troops to help the Afghan army put down the Moujahedeen. He was promised military assistance, but ground troops could not be committed. Soviet Prime Minister Kosygin told the Afghan leader:&lt;blockquote&gt;The entry of our troops into Afghanistan would outrage the international community, triggering a string of extremely negative consequences in many different areas. Our common enemies are just waiting for the moment when Soviet troops appear in Afghanistan. This will give them the excuse they need to send armed bands into the country.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In September, the question became completely academic for Noor Mohammed Taraki, for he was ousted (and his death soon announced) in an intra-party struggle and replaced by his own deputy prime minister, Hafizullah Amin. Although Taraki had sometimes been heavy-handed in implementing the reform program, and had created opposition even amongst the intended beneficiaries, he turned out to be a moderate compared to Amin who tried to institute social change by riding roughshod over tradition and tribal and ethnic autonomy.<br /> <br /> The Kremlin was unhappy with Amin. The fact that he had been involved in the overthrow and death of the much-favored Taraki was bad enough. But the Soviets also regarded him as thoroughly unsuitable for the task that was Moscow's sine qua non: preventing an anti-communist Islamic state from arising in Afghanistan. Amin gave reform an exceedingly bad name. The KGB station in Kabul, in pressing for Amin's removal, stated that his usurpation of power would lead to &quot;harsh repressions and, as a reaction, the activation and consolidation of the opposition&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt; Moreover, as we shall see, the Soviets were highly suspicious about Amin's ideological convictions.<br /> <br /> Thus it was, that what in March had been unthinkable, in December became a reality. Soviet troops began to arrive in Afghanistan around the 8th of the month—to what extent at Amin's request or with his approval, and, consequently, whether to call the action an &quot;invasion&quot; or not, has been the subject of much discussion and controversy.<br /> <br /> On the 23rd the Washington Post commented &quot;There was no charge [by the State Department] that the Soviets have invaded Afghanistan, since the troops apparently were invited.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> However, at a meeting with Soviet-bloc ambassadors in October, Amin's foreign minister had openly criticized the Soviet Union for interfering in Afghan affairs. Amin himself insisted that Moscow replace its ambassador.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; Yet, on 26 December, while the main body of Soviet troops was arriving in Afghanistan, Amin gave &quot;a relaxed interview&quot; to an Arab journalist. &quot;The Soviets,&quot; he said, &quot;supply my country with economic and military aid, but at the same time they respect our independence and our sovereignty. They do not interfere in our domestic affairs.&quot; He also spoke approvingly of the USSR's willingness to accept his veto on military bases.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The very next day, a Soviet military force stormed the presidential palace and shot Amin dead.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> He was replaced by Babrak Karmal, who had been vice president and deputy prime minister in the 1978 revolutionary government.<br /> <br /> Moscow denied any part in Amin's death, though they didn't pretend to be sorry about it, as Brezhnev made clear:&lt;blockquote&gt;The actions of the aggressors against Afghanistan were facilitated by Amin who, on seizing power, started cruelly repressing broad sections of Afghan society, party and military cadres, members of the intelligentsia and of the Moslem clergy, that is, the very sections on which the April revolution relied. And the people under the leadership of the People's Democratic Party, headed by Babrak Karmal, rose against Amin's tyranny and put an end to it. Now in Washington and some other capitals they are mourning Amin. This exposes their hypocrisy with particular clarity. Where were these mourners when Amin was conducting mass repressions, when he forcibly removed and unlawfully killed Taraki, the founder of the new Afghan state?&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;After Amin's ouster and execution, the public thronged the streets in &quot;a holiday spirit&quot;. &quot;If Karmal could have overthrown Amin without the Russians,&quot; observed a Western diplomat, &quot;he would have been seen as a hero of the people.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Soviet government and press repeatedly referred to Amin as a &quot;CIA agent&quot;, a charge which was greeted with great skepticism in the United States and elsewhere.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt; However, enough circumstantial evidence supporting the charge exists so that it perhaps should not be dismissed entirely out of hand.<br /> <br /> During the late 1950s and early '60s, Amin had attended Columbia University Teachers College and the University of Wisconsin.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt; This was a heyday period for the CIA—using impressive bribes and threats—to regularly try to recruit foreign students in the United States to act as agents for them when they returned home. During this period, at least one president of the Afghanistan Students Association (ASA), Zia H. Noorzay, was working with the CIA in the United States and later became president of the Afghanistan state treasury. One of the Afghan students whom Noorzay and the CIA tried in vain to recruit, Abdul Latif Hotaki, declared in 1967 that a good number of the key officials in the Afghanistan government who studied in the United States &quot;are either CIA trained or indoctrinated. Some are cabinet level people.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt; It has been reported that in 1963 Amin became head of the ASA, but this has not been corroborated.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt; However, it is known that the ASA received part of its funding from the Asia Foundation, the CIA's principal front in Asia for many years, and that at one time Amin was associated with this organization.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In September 1979, the month that Amin took power, the American chargé d'affaires in Kabul, Bruce Amstutz, began to hold friendly meetings with him to reassure him that he need not worry about his unhappy Soviet allies as long as the US maintained a strong presence in Afghanistan. The strategy may have worked, for later in the month, Amin made a special appeal to Amstutz for improved relations with the United States. Two days later in New York, the Afghan Foreign Minister quietly expressed the same sentiments to State Department officials. And at the end of October, the US Embassy in Kabul reported that Amin was &quot;painfully aware of the exiled leadership the Soviets [were] keeping on the shelf&quot; (a reference to Karmal who was living in Czechoslovakia).&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt; Under normal circumstances, the Amin-US meetings might be regarded as routine and innocent diplomatic contact, but these were hardly normal circumstances—the Afghan government was engaged in a civil war, and the United States was supporting the other side.<br /> <br /> Moreover, it can be said that Amin, by his ruthlessness, was doing just what an American agent would be expected to do: discrediting the People's Democratic Party, the party's reforms, the idea of socialism or communism, and the Soviet Union, all associated in one package. Amin also conducted purges in the army officer corps which seriously undermined the army's combat capabilities.<br /> <br /> But why would Amin, if he were actually plotting with the Americans, request Soviet military forces on several occasions? The main reason appears to be that he was being pressed to do so by high levels of the PDP and he had to comply for the sake of appearances. Babrak Karmal has suggested other, more Machiavellian, scenarios.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Carter administration jumped on the issue of the Soviet &quot;invasion&quot; and soon launched a campaign of righteous indignation, imposing what President Carter called &quot;penalties&quot;—from halting the delivery of grain to the Soviet Union to keeping the US team out of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.<br /> <br /> The Russians countered that the US was enraged by the intervention because Washington had been plotting to turn the country into an American base to replace the loss of Iran.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Unsurprisingly, on this seemingly clear-cut anti-communist issue, the American public and media easily fell in line with the president. The Wall Street journal called for a &quot;military&quot; reaction, the establishment of US bases in the Middle East, &quot;reinstatement of draft registration&quot;, development of a new missile, and giving the CIA more leeway, adding: &quot;Clearly we ought to keep open the chance of covert aid to Afghan rebels.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt; The last, whether the newspaper knew it or not, had actually been going on for some time. For some period prior to the Soviet invasion, the CIA had been beaming radio propaganda into Afghanistan and cultivating alliances with exiled Afghan guerrilla leaders by donating medicine and communications equipment.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt; US foreign service officers had been meeting with Moujahedeen leaders to determine their needs at least as early as April 1979.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; And in July, President Carter had signed a &quot;finding&quot; to aid the rebels covertly, which led to the United States providing them with cash, weapons, equipment and supplies, and engaging in propaganda and other psychological operations in Afghanistan on their behalf.&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Intervention in the Afghan civil war by the United States, Iran, Pakistan, China and others gave the Russians grave concern about who was going to wield power next door. They consistently cited these &quot;aggressive imperialist forces&quot; to rationalize their own intervention into Afghanistan, which was the first time Soviet ground troops had engaged in military action anywhere in the world outside its post-World War II Eastern European borders. The potential establishment of an anti-communist Islamic state on the borders of the Soviet Union's own republics in Soviet Central Asia that were home to some 40 million Muslims could not be regarded with equanimity by the Kremlin any more than Washington could be unruffled about a communist takeover in Mexico.<br /> <br /> As we have seen repeatedly, the United States did not limit its defense perimeter to its immediate neighbors, or even to Western Europe, but to the entire globe. President Carter declared that the Persian Gulf area was &quot;now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan&quot;, that this area was synonymous with US interests, and that the United States would &quot;defend&quot; it against any threat by all means necessary. He called the Soviet action &quot;the greatest threat to peace since the Second World War&quot;, a statement that required overlooking a great deal of post-war history. But 1980 was an election year.<br /> <br /> Brezhnev, on the other hand, declared that &quot;the national interests or security of the United States of America and other states are in no way affected by the events in Afghanistan. All attempts to portray matters otherwise are sheer nonsense.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Carter administration was equally dismissive of Soviet concerns. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski later stated that &quot;the issue was not what might have been Brezhnev's subjective motives in going into Afghanistan but the objective consequences of a Soviet military presence so much closer to the Persian Gulf.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The stage was now set for 12 long years of the most horrific kind of warfare, a daily atrocity for the vast majority of the Afghan people who never asked for or wanted this war. But the Soviet Union was determined that its borders must be unthreatening. The Afghan government was committed to its goal of a secular, reformed Afghanistan. And the United States was intent upon making this the Soviets' Vietnam, slowly bleeding as the Americans had. At the same time, American policymakers could not fail to understand—though they dared not say it publicly and explicitly—that support of the Moujahedeen (many of whom carried pictures of the Ayatollah Khomeini with them) could lead to a fundamentalist Islamic state being established in Afghanistan every bit as repressive as in next-door Iran, which in the 1980s was Public Enemy Number One in America. Neither could the word &quot;terrorist&quot; cross the lips of Washington officials in speaking of their new allies/clients, though these same people shot down civilian airliners and planted bombs at the airport. In 1986, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whose emotional invectives against &quot;terrorists&quot; were second to none, welcomed Abdul Haq, an Afghan rebel leader who admitted that he had ordered the planting of a bomb at Kabul airport in 1984 which killed at least 28 people.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt; Such, then, were the scruples of cold-war anti-communists in late 20th century. As Anastasio Somoza had been &quot;our son of a bitch&quot;, the Moujahedeen were now &quot;our fanatic terrorists&quot;.<br /> <br /> At the beginning there had been some thought given to the morality of the policy. &quot;The question here,&quot; a senior official in the Carter administration said, &quot;was whether it was morally acceptable that, in order to keep the Soviets off balance, which was the reason for the operation, it was permissible to use other lives for our geopolitical interests.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But such sentiments could not survive. Afghanistan was a cold-warrior's dream: The CIA and the Pentagon, finally, had one of their proxy armies in direct confrontation with the forces of the Evil Empire. There was no price too high to pay for this Super Nintendo game, neither the hundreds of thousands of Afghan lives, nor the destruction of Afghan society, nor three billion (sic) dollars of American taxpayer money poured into a bottomless hole, much of it going only to make a few Afghans and Pakistanis rich. Congress was equally enthused—without even the moral uncertainty that made them cautious about arming the Nicaraguan contras—and became a veritable bipartisan horn of plenty as it allocated more and more money for the effort each year. Rep. Charles Wilson of Texas expressed a not-atypical sentiment of official Washington when he declared:&lt;blockquote&gt;There were 58,000 dead in Vietnam and we owe the Russians one … I have a slight obsession with it, because of Vietnam. I thought the Soviets ought to get a dose of it … I've been of the opinion that this money was better spent to hurt our adversaries than other money in the Defense Department budget.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The CIA became the grand coordinator: purchasing or arranging the manufacture of Soviet-style weapons from Egypt, China, Poland, Israel and elsewhere, or supplying their own; arranging for military training by Americans, Egyptians, Chinese and Iranians; hitting up Middle-Eastern countries for donations, notably Saudi Arabia which gave many hundreds of millions of dollars in aid each year, totaling probably more than a billion; pressuring and bribing Pakistan—with whom recent American relations had been very poor—to rent out its country as a military staging area and sanctuary; putting the Pakistani Director of Military Operations, Brigadier Mian Mohammad Afzal, onto the CIA payroll to ensure Pakistani cooperation.&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt; Military and economic aid which had been cut off would be restored, Pakistan was told by the United States, if they would join the great crusade. Only a month before the Soviet intervention, anti-American mobs had burned and ransacked the US embassy in Islamabad and American cultural centers in two other Pakistani cities.&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The American ambassador in Libya reported that Muammar Qaddafi was sending the rebels $250,000 as well, but this, presumably, was not at the request of the CIA.&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Washington left it to the Pakistanis to decide which of the various Afghan guerrilla groups should be the beneficiaries of much of this largesse. As one observer put it: &quot;According to conventional wisdom at the time, the United States would not repeat the mistake of Vietnam—micro-managing a war in a culture it did not understand.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Not everyone in Pakistan was bought out. The independent Islamabad daily newspaper, the Muslim, more than once accused the United States of being ready to &quot;fight to the last Afghan&quot; … &quot;We are not flattered to be termed a 'frontline state' by Washington.&quot; … &quot;Washington does not seem to be in any mood to seek an early settlement of a war whose benefits it is reaping at no cost of American manpower.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It's not actually clear whether there was any loss of American lives in the war. On several occasions in the late '80s, the Kabul government announced that Americans had been killed in the fighting,&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt; and in 1985 a London newspaper reported that some two dozen American Black Muslims were in Afghanistan, fighting alongside the Moujahedeen in a jihad that a fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran says all believers in Islam must do at least once in their lives.&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt; Several of the Black Muslims returned to the United States after being wounded.<br /> <br /> Soviet aggression … Soviet invasion … Soviet swallowing up another innocent state as part of their plan to conquer the world, or at least the Middle East … this was the predominant and lasting lesson taught by Washington official pronouncements and the mainstream US media about the war, and the sum total of knowledge for the average American, although Afghanistan had retained its independence during 60 years of living in peace next door to the Soviet Union. Zbigniew Brzezinski, albeit unrelentingly anti-Soviet, repeatedly speaks of the fact of Afghanistan's &quot;neutrality&quot; in his memoirs.&lt;sup&gt;51&lt;/sup&gt; The country had been neutral even during the Second World War.<br /> <br /> One would have to look long and hard at the information and rhetoric offered to the American public following the Soviet intervention to derive even a hint that the civil war was essentially a struggle over deep-seated social reform; while an actual discussion of the issue was virtually non-existent. Prior to the intervention, one could get a taste of this, such as the following from the New York Times:&lt;blockquote&gt;Land reform attempts undermined their village chiefs. Portraits of Lenin threatened their religious leaders. But it was the Kabul revolutionary Government's granting of new rights to women that pushed orthodox Moslem men in the Pashtoon villages of eastern Afghanistan into picking up their guns. … &quot;The government said our women had to attend meetings and our children had to go to schools. This threatens our religion. We had to fight.&quot; … &quot;The government imposed various ordinances allowing women freedom to marry anyone they chose without their parents' consent.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;52&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Throughout the 1980s, the Karmal, and then the Najibullah regimes, despite the exigencies of the war, pursued a program of modernization and broadening of their base: bringing electricity to villages, along with health clinics, a measure of land reform, and literacy; releasing numerous prisoners unlawfully incarcerated by Amin; bringing mullahs and other non-party people into the government; trying to carry it all out with moderation and sensitivity instead of confronting the traditional structures head-on; reiterating its commitment to Islam, rebuilding and constructing mosques, exempting land owned by religious dignitaries and their institutions from land reform; trying, in short, to avoid the gross mistakes of the Amin government with its rush to force changes down people's throats.&lt;sup&gt;53&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Selig Harrison, writing in 1988, stated:&lt;blockquote&gt;The Afghan Communists see themselves as nationalists and modernizers … They rationalize their collaboration with the Russians as the only way available to consolidate their revolution in the face of foreign &quot;interference&quot;. … The commitment of the Communists to rapid modernization enables them to win a grudging tolerance from many members of the modern-minded middle class, who feel trapped between two fires: the Russians and fanatic Muslims opposed to social reforms.&lt;sup&gt;54&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The program of the Kabul government eventually encouraged many volunteers to take up arms in its name. But it was a decidedly uphill fight, for it was relatively easy for the native anti-reformists and their foreign backers to convince large numbers of ordinary peasants that the government had ill intentions by blurring the distinction between the present government and its detested and dogmatic predecessor, particularly since the government was fond of stressing the continuity of the April 1978 revolution.&lt;sup&gt;55&lt;/sup&gt; One thing the peasants, as well as the anti-reformists, were undoubtedly not told of was the US connection to the selfsame detested predecessor, Hafizullah Amin.<br /> <br /> Another problem faced by the Kabul government in winning the hearts and minds of the people was of course the continuing Soviet armed presence, although it must be remembered that Islamic opposition to the leftist government began well before the Soviet forces arrived; indeed, the most militant of the Moujahedeen leaders, Hekmatyar, had led a serious uprising against the previous (non-leftist) government as well, in 1975, declaring that a &quot;godless, communist-dominated regime&quot; ruled in Kabul.&lt;sup&gt;56&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As long as Soviet troops remained, the conflict in Afghanistan could be presented to the American mind as little more than a battle between Russian invaders and Afghanistan resistance/freedom fighters; as if the Afghanistan army and government didn't exist, or certainly not with a large following of people who favored reforms and didn't want to live under a fundamentalist Islamic government, probably a majority of the population.<br /> <br /> &quot;Maybe the people really don't like us, either,&quot; said Mohammed Hakim, Mayor of Kabul, a general in the Afghan army who was trained in the 1970s at military bases in the United States, and who thought that America was &quot;the best country&quot;, &quot;but they like us better than the extremists. This is what the Western countries do not understand. We only hope that Mr. Bush and the people of the United States take a good look at us. They think we are very fanatic Communists, that we are not human beings. We are not fanatics. We are not even Communists.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;57&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> They were in the American media. Any official of the Afghan government, or the government as a whole, was typically referred to, a priori, as &quot;Communist&quot;, or &quot;Marxist&quot;, or &quot;pro-Communist&quot;, or &quot;pro-Marxist&quot;, etc., without explanation or definition. Najibullah, who took over when Karmal stepped down in 1986, was confirmed in his position in 1987 under a new Islamized constitution that was stripped of all socialist rhetoric and brimming with references to Islam and the holy Koran. &quot;This is not a socialist revolutionary country,&quot; he said in his acceptance speech. &quot;We do not want to build a Communist society.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;58&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Could the United States see beyond cold war ideology and consider the needs of the Afghan people? In August 1979, three months before the Soviet intervention, a classified State Department Report stated:&lt;blockquote&gt;the United States's larger interests … would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan. … the overthrow of the D.R.A. [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] would show the rest of the world, particularly the Third World, that the Soviets' view of the socialist course of history as being inevitable is not accurate.&lt;sup&gt;59&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Repeatedly, in the 1980s, as earlier, the Soviet Union contended that no solution to the conflict could be found until the United States and other nations ceased their support of the Moujahedeen. The United States, in turn, insisted that the Soviets must first withdraw their troops from Afghanistan.<br /> <br /> Finally, after several years of UN-supported negotiations, an accord was signed in Geneva on 14 April 1988, under which the Kremlin committed itself to begin pulling out its estimated 115,000 troops on 15 May, and to complete the process by 15 February of the next year. Afghanistan, said Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, had become &quot;a bleeding wound&quot;.<br /> <br /> In February, after the last Soviet forces had left Afghanistan, Gorbachev urged the United States to support an embargo on arms shipments into Afghanistan and a cease-fire between the two warring sides. Both proposals were turned down by the new Bush administration, which claimed that the Afghan government had been left with a massive stockpile of military equipment. It is unclear why Washington felt that the rebels who had fought the government to a standstill despite the powerful presence of the Soviet armed forces with all their equipment, would now be at a dangerous disadvantage with the Russians gone. The key to the American response may lie in the State Department statement of the prior week that the United States believed that the Kabul government on its own would not last more than six months.&lt;sup&gt;60&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> By raising the question of an arms gap (whether it was for real or not), Washington was assuring the continuation of the arms race in Afghanistan—a microcosm of the cold war. At the same time, the Bush administration called upon the Soviets to support &quot;an independent, nonaligned Afghanistan&quot;, although this was precisely what the United States had worked for decades to thwart.<br /> <br /> Two days later, President Najibullah criticized the American rejection of Gorbachev's proposal, offering to return the Soviet weapons if the rebels agreed to lay down their weapons and negotiate. There was no reported response to this offer from the US, or from the rebels, who in the past had refused such offers.<br /> <br /> It would appear that Washington was thinking longer term than cease-fires and negotiations. On the same day as Najibullah's offer, the United States announced that it had delivered 500,000 made-in-America textbooks to Afghanistan which were being used to teach Grades one through four. The books, which &quot;critics say bordered on propaganda&quot;, told of the rebels' fight against the Soviet Union and contained drawings of guerrillas killing Russian soldiers.&lt;sup&gt;61&lt;/sup&gt; Since the beginning of the war, the Moujahedeen had reserved its worst treatment for Russians. Washington possessed confirmed reports that the rebels had drugged and tortured 50 to 200 Soviet prisoners and imprisoned them like animals in cages, &quot;living lives of indescribable horror&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;62&lt;/sup&gt; Another account, by a reporter from the conservative Far Eastern Economic Review, relates that:&lt;blockquote&gt;One [Soviet] group was killed, skinned and hung up in a butcher's shop. One captive found himself the centre of attraction in a game of buzkashi, that rough and tumble form of Afghan polo in which a headless goat is usually the ball. The captive was used instead. Alive. He was literally torn to pieces.&lt;sup&gt;63&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Meanwhile, much to the surprise of the United States and everyone else, the Kabul government showed no sign of collapsing. The good news for Washington was that since the Soviet troops were gone (though some military advisers remained), the &quot;cost-benefit ratio&quot; had improved,&lt;sup&gt;64&lt;/sup&gt; the cost being measured entirely in non-American deaths and suffering, as the rebels regularly exploded car bombs and sent rockets smashing into residential areas of Kabul, and destroyed government-built schools and clinics and murdered literacy teachers (just as the US-backed Nicaraguan contras had been doing on the other side of the world, and for the same reason: these were symbols of governmental benevolence).<br /> <br /> The death and destruction caused by the Soviets and their Afghan allies was also extensive, such as the many bombings of villages. But individual atrocity stories must be approached with caution, for, as we have seen repeatedly, the propensity and the ability of the CIA to disseminate anti-communist disinformation—often of the most far-fetched variety—was virtually unlimited. With the Soviet Union the direct adversary, the creativity lamp must have burning all night at Langley.<br /> <br /> Amnesty International, with its usual careful collection methods, reported in the mid-'80s on the frequent use of torture and arbitrary detention by the authorities in Kabul.&lt;sup&gt;65&lt;/sup&gt; But what are we to make, for example, of the report, without attribution, by syndicated columnist Jack Anderson—who had ties to the American Afghan lobby—that Soviet troops often marched into unfriendly villages in Afghanistan and &quot;massacred every man, woman and child&quot;?&lt;sup&gt;66&lt;/sup&gt; Or the New York Times recounting a story told them by an Afghan citizen of how Afghan soldiers had intentionally blinded five children with pieces of metal and then strangled them, as a government supporter he was with just laughed. To the newspaper's credit, it added that &quot;There is no way of confirming this story. It is possible that the man who told it was acting and trying to discredit the regime here. His eyes, however, looked like they had seen horror.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;67&lt;/sup&gt; Or a US congressman's charge in 1985 that the Soviets had used booby-trapped toys to maim Afghan children,&lt;sup&gt;68&lt;/sup&gt; the identical story told before about leftists elsewhere in the world during the cold war, and repeated again in 1987 by CBS News, with pictures. The New York Post later reported the claim of a BBC producer that the bomb-toy had been created for the CBS cameraman.&lt;sup&gt;69&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Then there was the Afghan Mercy Fund, ostensibly a relief agency, but primarily in the propaganda business, which reported that the Soviets had burned a baby alive, that they were disguising mines as candy bars and leaving other mines disguised as butterflies to also attract children. The butterfly mines, it turned out, were copies of a US-designed mine used in the Vietnam war.&lt;sup&gt;70&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> There was also the shooting down of a Pakistan fighter plane over Afghanistan in May 1987 that was reported by Pakistan and Washington—knowing with certainty that their claim was untrue—to be the result of a Soviet-made missile. It turned out that the plane had been shot down by a companion Pakistani plane in error.&lt;sup&gt;71&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Throughout the early and mid-'80s, the Reagan administration declared that the Russians were spraying toxic chemicals over Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan—the so-called &quot;yellow rain&quot;—and had caused more than ten thousand deaths by 1982 alone, (including, in Afghanistan, 3,042 deaths attributed to 47 separate incidents between the summer of 1979 and the summer of 1981, so precise was the information). Secretary of State Alexander Haig was a prime dispenser of such stories, and President Reagan himself denounced the Soviet Union thusly more than 15 times in documents and speeches.&lt;sup&gt;72&lt;/sup&gt; The &quot;yellow rain&quot;, it turned out, was pollen-laden feces dropped by huge swarms of honeybees flying far overhead. Then, in 1987, it was disclosed that the Reagan administration had made its accusations even though government scientists at the time had been unable to confirm any of them, and considered the evidence to be flimsy and misleading.&lt;sup&gt;73&lt;/sup&gt; Even more suspicious: the major scientific studies that later examined Washington's claims spoke only of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand; no mention at all was made of Afghanistan. It was as if the administration—perhaps honestly mistaken at first about Indochina—had added Afghanistan to the list with full knowledge of the falsity of its allegation.<br /> <br /> Such disinformation campaigns are often designed to serve a domestic political need. Consider Senator Robert Dole's contribution to the discussion when he spoke in 1980 on the floor of Congress of &quot;convincing evidence&quot; he had been provided &quot;that the Soviets had developed a chemical capability that extends far beyond our greatest fears … [a gas that] is unaffected by … our gas masks and leaves our military defenseless.&quot; He then added: &quot;To even suggest a leveling off of defense spending for our nation by the Carter administration at such a critical time in our history is unfathomable.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;74&lt;/sup&gt; And in March 1982, when the Reagan administration made its claim about the 3,042 Afghan deaths, the New York Times noted that: &quot;President Reagan has just decided that the United States will resume production of chemical weapons and has asked for a substantial increase in the military budget for such weapons.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;75&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The money needed to extend American propaganda campaigns internationally flowed from the congressional horn of plenty as smoothly as for military desires—$500,000 in one moment's flow to train Afghan journalists to use television, radio, and newspapers to advance their cause.&lt;sup&gt;76&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It should be noted that in June 1980, before any of the &quot;yellow rain&quot; charges had been made against the Soviet Union, the Kabul government had accused the rebels and their foreign backers of employing poison gas, citing an incident in which 500 pupils and teachers at several secondary schools had been poisoned with noxious gases; none were reported to have died.&lt;sup&gt;77&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One reason victory continued to elude the Moujahedeen was that they were terribly split by centuries-old ethnic and tribal divisions, as well as the relatively recent rise of Islamic fundamentalism in conflict with more traditional, but still orthodox, Islam. The differences often led to violence. In one incident, in 1989, seven top Moujahedeen commanders and more than 20 other rebels were murdered by a rival guerrilla group. This was neither the first nor the last of such occurrences.&lt;sup&gt;78&lt;/sup&gt; By April 1990, 14 months after the Soviet withdrawal, the Los Angeles Times described the state of the rebels thusly:&lt;blockquote&gt;they have in recent weeks killed more of their own than the enemy. … Rival resistance commanders have been gunned down gangland-style here in the border town of Peshawar [Pakistan], the staging area for the war. There are persistent reports of large-scale political killings in the refugee camps … A recent execution … had as much to do with drugs as with politics. … Other commanders, in Afghanistan and in the border camps, are simply refusing to fight. They say privately that they prefer [Afghan President] Najibullah to the hard-line Moujahedeen fundamentalists led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.&lt;sup&gt;79&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The rebel cause was also corrupted by the huge amounts of arms flooding in. Investigative reporter Tim Weiner reported the following:&lt;blockquote&gt;The CIA's pipeline leaked. It leaked badly. It spilled huge quantities of weapons all over one of the world's most anarchic areas. First the Pakistani armed forces took what they wanted from the weapons shipments. Then corrupt Afghan guerrilla leaders stole and sold hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of anti-aircraft guns, missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 automatic rifles, ammunition and mines from the CIA's arsenal. Some of the weapons fell into the hands of criminal gangs, heroin kingpins and the most radical faction of the Iranian military. … While their troops eked out hard lives in Afghanistan's mountains and deserts, the guerrillas' political leaders maintained fine villas in Peshawar and fleets of vehicles at their command. The CIA kept silent as the Afghan politicos converted the Agency's weapons into cash.&lt;sup&gt;80&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Amongst the weapons the Moujahedeen sold to the Iranians were highly sophisticated Stinger heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles, with which the rebels had shot down many hundreds of Soviet military aircraft, as well as at least eight passenger planes. On 8 October 1987, Revolutionary Guards on an Iranian gunboat fired one of the Stingers at American helicopters patrolling the Persian Gulf, but missed their target.&lt;sup&gt;81&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Earlier the same year, the CIA told Congress that at least 20 percent of its military aid to the Moujahedeen had been skimmed off by the rebels and Pakistani officials. Columnist Jack Anderson stated at the same time that his conservative estimate was that the diversion was around 60 percent, while one rebel leader told Anderson's assistant on his visit to the border that he doubted that even 25 percent of the arms got through. By other accounts, as little as 20 percent was making it to the intended recipients. If indeed there was a deficiency of arms available to the Moujahedeen compared to the government forces, as George Bush implied, this was clearly a major reason for it. Yet the CIA and other administration officials simply looked upon it as part of doing business in that part of the world.&lt;sup&gt;82&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Like many other CIA clients, the rebels were financed as well through drug trafficking, and the Agency was apparently as little concerned about it as ever as long as it kept their boys happy. Moujahedeen commanders inside Afghanistan personally controlled huge fields of opium poppies, the raw material from which heroin is refined. CIA-supplied trucks and mules, which had carried arms into Afghanistan, were used to transport some of the opium to the numerous laboratories along the Afghan-Pakistan border, whence many tons of heroin were processed with the cooperation of the Pakistani military. The output provided an estimated one-third to one-half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe. US officials admitted in 1990 that they had failed to investigate or take action against the drug operation because of a desire not to offend their Pakistani and Afghan allies.&lt;sup&gt;83&lt;/sup&gt; In 1993, an official of the US Drug Enforcement Administration called Afghanistan the new Colombia of the drug world.&lt;sup&gt;84&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The war, with all its torment, continued until the spring of 1992, three years after the last Soviet troops had gone. An agreement on ending the arms supply, which had been reached between the United States and the Soviet Union, was now in effect. The two superpowers had abandoned the war. The Soviet Union no longer existed. And the Afghan people could count more than a million dead, three million disabled, and five million made refugees, in total about half the population.<br /> <br /> At the same time, a UN-brokered truce was to transfer power to a transitional coalition government pending elections. But this was not to be. The Kabul government, amidst food riots and army revolts, virtually disintegrated, and the guerrillas stormed into the capital and established the first Islamic regime in Afghanistan since it had become a separate and independent country in the mid-18th century.<br /> <br /> A key event in the downfall of the government was the eleventh-hour defection to the guerrillas of General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum, who previously had been referred to in the US media as a &quot;Communist general&quot;, now metamorphosed into an &quot;ex-Communist general&quot;.<br /> <br /> The Moujahedeen had won. Now they turned against each other with all their fury. Rockets and artillery shells wiped out entire neighborhoods in Kabul. By August at least 1,500 people had been killed or wounded, mostly civilians. (By 1994, the body count in this second civil war would reach 10,000.) Of all the rebel leaders, none was less compromising or more insistent upon a military solution than Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.<br /> <br /> Robert Neumann, a former US ambassador to Afghanistan, observed at this time:&lt;blockquote&gt;Hekmatyar is a nut, an extremist and a very violent man. He was built up by the Pakistanis. Unfortunately, our government went along with the Pakistanis. We were supplying the money and the weapons but they [Pakistani officials] were making the policy.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Washington was now very concerned that Hekmatyar would take power. Ironically, they were afraid that if he did, his brand of extremism would spread to and destabilize the former Soviet republics of large Moslem populations, the same fear which had been one of the motivations behind the Soviets intervening in the civil war in the first place.&lt;sup&gt;85&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> It was to the forces of Hekmatyar that the &quot;Communist general&quot; Dostum eventually aligned himself.<br /> <br /> Suleiman Layeq, a leftist and a poet, and the fallen regime's &quot;ideologue&quot;, watched from his window as the Moujahedeen swarmed through the city, claiming building after building. &quot;Without exception,&quot; he said of them, &quot;they follow the way of the fundamentalist aims and goals of Islam. And it is not Islam. It is a kind of theory against civilization—against modern civilization.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;86&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Even before taking power, the Moujahedeen had banned all non-Muslim groups. Now more of the new law was laid down: All alcohol was banned in the Islamic republic; women could not venture out in the streets without veils, and violations would be punished by floggings, amputations and public executions. And this from the more &quot;moderate&quot; Islamics, not Hekmatyar. By September, the first public hangings were carried out. Before a cheering crowd of 10,000 people, three men were hung. They had been tried behind closed doors, and no one would say what crimes they had committed.&lt;sup&gt;87&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In February 1993, a group of Middle Easterners caused a powerful explosion at the World Trade Center in New York City. Most of them were veterans of the Moujahedeen. Other veterans were carrying out assassinations in Cairo, bombings in Bombay, bloody uprisings in the mountains of Kashmir, and guerilla warfare in the Philippines.<br /> <br /> This, then, was the power and the glory of President Reagan's &quot;freedom fighters&quot;, who had become yet more anti-American in recent years, many of them backing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf conflict of 1990-91. Surely even Ronald Reagan and George Bush would have preferred the company of &quot;communist&quot; reformers like President Noor Mohammed Taraki, Mayor Mohammed Hakim or poet Suleiman Layeq.<br /> <br /> But the Soviet Union had bled. It had bled profusely. For the United States it had also been a holy war.<br /> <br /> == 5El Salvador 1980-1994: Human rights, Washington style ==<br /> The United States was supporting the government of El Salvador, said President Ronald Reagan, because it was trying &quot;to halt the infiltration into the Americas, by terrorists and by outside interference, and those who aren't just aiming at El Salvador but, I think, are aiming at the whole of Central and possibly later South America and, I'm sure, eventually North America.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Psychiatrists have a term for such perceptions of reality. They call it paranoid schizophrenia.<br /> <br /> If the insurgents in El Salvador, the smallest country by far in all of Central and South America, were engaged in what Ronald Reagan perceived as a plot to capture the Western Hemisphere, others saw it as the quintessential revolution.<br /> <br /> Viewed in the latter context, it cannot be asserted that the Salvadorean people rushed precipitously into revolution at the first painful sting of repression, or turned to the gun because of a proclivity towards violent solutions, or a refusal to &quot;work within the system&quot;, or because of &quot;outside agitators&quot;, or any of the other explanations of why people revolt so dear to the hearts of Washington opinion makers. For as long as anyone could remember, the reins of El Salvador's government had resided in the hands of one military dictatorship or another, while the economy had been controlled by the celebrated 14 coffee and industrial families, with only the occasional, short-lived bursting of accumulated discontent to disturb the neat arrangement.<br /> <br /> In December 1980, New York Times, reporter Raymond Bonner asked José Napoleón Duarte &quot;why the guerrillas were in the hills&quot;. Duarte, who had just become president of the ruling junta, responded with an answer that surprised Bonner: &quot;Fifty years of lies, fifty years of injustice, fifty years of frustration. This is a history of people starving to death, living in misery. For fifty years the same people had all the power, all the money, all the jobs, all the education, all the opportunities.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the decades following the famed peasant rebellion in 1932, which was crushed by an unholy massacre, a reform government had occupied the political stage only twice: for nine months in 1944, then again in 1960. The latter instance was precipitated by several thousand students of the National University who staged a protest against the curtailment of civil liberties. The government responded by sending in the police, who systematically smashed offices, classrooms, and laboratories, beat up the school's president, killed a librarian, bayoneted students, and raped dozens of young women. Finally, when the students amassed anew, troops opened fire upon them point-blank.<br /> <br /> The bloody incident was one of the turning points for a group of junior military officers. They staged a coup in October aimed at major social and political reforms, but the new government lasted only three months before being overthrown in a counter-coup which the United States was reportedly involved in.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Dr. Fabio Castillo, a former president of the National University and a member of the ousted government, testified years later before the US Congress that in the process of overthrowing the reform government, the American Embassy immediately began to &quot;intervene directly&quot;, and &quot;members of the U.S. Military Mission openly intensified their invitation to conspiracy and rebellion&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Throughout the 1960s, multifarious American experts occupied themselves in El Salvador by enlarging and refining the state's security and counter-insurgency apparatus: the police, the National Guard, the military, the communications and intelligence networks, the co-ordination with their counterparts in other Central American countries … as matters turned out, these were the forces and resources which were brought into action to impose widespread repression and wage war. Years later, the New York Times noted:&lt;blockquote&gt;In El Salvador, American aid was used for police training in the 1950's and 1960's and many officers in the three branches of the police later became leaders of the right-wing death squads that killed tens of thousands of people in the late 1970's and early 1980's.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;If during the 1960s, the apparatus could not be charged with the level of murder or torture or disappearance of political opponents reached in Guatemala and elsewhere in Latin America, it had more to do with the modest degree of outspoken dissent and violent unrest it faced than with greater respect for human rights; those opposition groups which were not outlawed were those regarded as unthreatening; the bloated stomachs of mainourished peasant children were not regarded as threatening at all.<br /> <br /> For apparently no better reason than the fact that even militarists cherish a veneer of legitimacy, during the 1960s certain political organizations of generally urban middle-class membership were allowed to run candidates for municipal and legislative office. They did well, though the government-calculated returns consistently left the opposition as a minority in the legislature; i.e., without real power. In 1967, the government went through the motions of the first contested election for the presidency since 1931. After declaring its party, PCN, the winner, the government promptly banned one of the major contending parties, PAR, on the grounds that it supported principles &quot;contrary to the Constitution&quot;. According to a PAR spokesperson, the &quot;principle&quot; involved was support for agrarian reform. Another source reports that the party was declared illegal &quot;allegedly for dispensing Communist ideologies&quot;, which, within the government's frame of reference, may well have been one and the same.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Undeterred, a center-left coalition, UNO by acronym, was formed and put forth Christian Democrat José Napoleón Duarte as its presidential candidate in 1972. Though UNO was confronted by violence against its candidates and campaigners, including the murder of an aide of Duarte, and the sabotaging of the coalition's radio broadcasts, it arrived at election day with high expectations. Two days after the polling, the Central Election Board, after first announcing a victory for PCN, shocked everyone by declaring that a recount had shown UNO to be the winner instead. The government quickly imposed a news blackout and for the next two days nothing was heard concerning the election results. On the third day, the Election Board announced that PCN was indeed the winner after all.<br /> <br /> In the 1974 and 1976 legislative elections, and again in the 1977 presidential election, the government employed similar creative counting along with gross physical intimidation of candidates, voters, and poll watchers, to assure its continuance in office.&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A mass demonstration following the 1977 polling, protesting against electoral fraud, was surrounded by government security forces who opened fire. The result was nothing less than a bloodbath, the death toll measurable in the hundreds. In the immediate aftermath, top leaders of UNO were exiled and the party's followers became liable to arrest, torture and murder.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; The country's president, Col. Arturo Molina, blamed the protests on &quot;foreign Communists&quot;. His response to charges of electoral fraud was: &quot;Only God is perfect.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Government political violence of this sort had been sporadic in the 1960s, but became commonplace in the 1970s as more and more Salvadoreans, frustrated by the futility of achieving social change through elections, resorted to other means. While some limited themselves to more militant demonstrations, strikes, and occupations of sites, an increasing number turned to acts of urban guerrilla warfare such as assassination of individuals seen as part of the repressive machinery, bombings, and kidnappings for ransom. The government and its paramilitary right-wing vigilante groups—&quot;death squads&quot; is the self-named modern genre—countered with a campaign centered upon leaders of labor unions, peasant organizations and political parties, as well as priests and lay religious workers. &quot;Be Patriotic—Kill a Priest&quot; was the slogan of one death squad. Church people were accused of teaching subversion to the peasants, what the church people themselves would call the word of God, in this the only country in the world named after Christ. The CIA and the US military played an essential role in the conception and organization of the security agencies from which the death squads emanated. CIA surveillance programs routinely supplied these agencies with information on, and the whereabouts of, various individuals who wound up as death squad victims.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In October 1979, a cabal of younger military officers, repelled by the frequent government massacres of groups of protesters and strikers, and wishing to restore the military's &quot;good name&quot;, ousted General Carlos Romero from the presidency and took power in a bloodless coup. A number of prominent civilian political figures were given positions in the new administration, which proclaimed an impressive program of reforms. But it was not to be. The young and politically inexperienced officers were easily co-opted by older, conservative officers, and by pressure exerted by the United States, to install certain military men into key positions.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; The civilian members of the government found themselves unable to exercise any control over the armed forces and were left to function only as reformist camouflage.<br /> <br /> Washington had supported the removal of the brutal Romero because only three months earlier the Sandinistas had overthrown the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, and the Carter administration did not wish to risk the loss of a second client state in Central America in so short a space of time, but brakes had to be applied to keep the process within manageable bounds.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the security forces did not miss a beat as they continued to fire into crowds: the body count in the first month of the &quot;reformist&quot; government was greater than in the first nine months of the year. By January 1980, almost all the civilian members had resigned in disgust over government-as-usual.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; The experience was the straw which broke the backs of many moderates and liberals, as well as members of the Salvadorean Communist Party, who still clung to hopes of peaceful reforms. The Communist Party had supported the new government, even contributed the Minister of Labor, &quot;because we believe it is going to comply with its promises and open the possibility of democratizing the country.&quot; The party was the last group on the left to join the guerrilla forces.&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One of the civilians, Minister of Education Salvador Samayoa, in front of the TV cameras, simultaneously announced his resignation and his enlistment with a guerrilla group.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; For those who continued to harbor illusions, a steady drumbeat of terrorism soon brought them into the fold. A demonstration march by a coalition of popular organizations on 22 January was first sprayed with DDT by crop-duster planes along the route of the march; then, when the demonstrators reached San Salvador's central plaza, snipers fired at them from surrounding government buildings; at least 21 dead and 120 seriously wounded was the toll, some of which reportedly resulted from the demonstrators' undisciplined return of fire.<br /> <br /> On 17 March, a general strike was met by retaliatory violence—54 people killed in the capital alone.<br /> <br /> A week later, the Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, an outspoken critic of the government's human-rights violations, who had called upon President Carter, &quot;Christian to Christian&quot;, to cease providing military aid, was assassinated. In his last sermon, he had addressed the security forces with these words: &quot;I beseech you, I beg you, I order you, in the name of God: stop the repression.&quot; The next day he became the eleventh priest murdered in El Salvador in three years.<br /> <br /> At the funeral of the martyred Archbishop—who had been a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize the year before, 23 members of the US House of Representatives being among his nominators—a bomb was thrown amongst the mourners in the plaza, followed by rifle and automatic fire, all emanating from the National Palace and some of the office buildings flanking the plaza, just as in January. At least 40 people were reported killed and hundreds injured.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Junta president Duarte tried to put the blame for the funeral carnage on the left. His case rested apparently on bald statement and nothing else, for all eyewitness reports stated that the bomb and gunfire came from the National Palace and the other government buildings. A statement issued by eight bishops and 16 other foreign church visitors who had been present denied the government's version.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Seven years were to pass before Duarte, elected to the presidency in 1984, accused former army Major Roberto d'Aubuisson, the prominent leader of the country's right wing, with having ordered Romero's murder. Though this was a belief already widely held, the public accusation created a stir in El Salvador and the United States. The CIA, it turned out, knew the facts no later than one year after the assassination. (D'Aubuisson, it should be noted, was a man who once told three European reporters: &quot;You Germans are very intelligent. You realized that the Jews were responsible for the spread of communism, and you began to kill them.&quot;) The American-trained former intelligence officer was never arrested because of immunity arising from his being a deputy in the National Assembly. He died in 1992.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During the early months of 1980, the government, with direct American influence and input, enacted a program of agrarian reform, the sine qua non of social change in El Salvador. Its key provision—tenant farmers gaining title to the plots they worked—was similar to programs the US had advocated in a number of other Third World hot spots since the 1950s, and for the same reasons: as a counter-insurgency tactic—stealing the guerrillas' thunder; and to make the government receiving US military aid appear more deserving, in the eyes of Congress and the world. A memorandum from the Agency for International Development (AID) in mid-1980, commenting on reaction in El Salvador to the program of &quot;Land to the Tiller&quot;, says in part:&lt;blockquote&gt;Many believe it is a &quot;symbolic&quot; and &quot;cosmetic&quot; measure which was proposed because it would look good to certain American politicians and not necessarily because it would be beneficial or significant in the Salvadorean context.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The reaction of the Salvadorean agrarian elite could have been predicted. They expelled many thousands of peasants from their meager plots to preclude land being turned over to them. This was not the worst …<br /> <br /> The testimony of a technician of the Instituto Salvadoreño de Transformación Agraria, established to oversee the program:&lt;blockquote&gt;The troops came and told the workers the land was theirs now. They could elect their own leaders and run it themselves. The peasants couldn't believe their ears, but they held elections that very night. The next morning the troops came back and I watched as they shot every one of the elected leaders.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;This was not an isolated case. The Assistant Minister of Agriculture, Jorge Alberto Villacorta, in his resignation letter in March 1980, stated that &quot;During the first days of the reform—to cite one case—5 directors and 2 presidents of new campesino organizations were assassinated and I am informed that this repressive practice continues to increase.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Force,&quot; wrote Karl Marx, &quot;is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.&quot; Revolution was now the only item of importance on the political agenda of the opposition, united as never before—united more by a common enemy than by a common ideology, but many saw this pluralism as strength rather than weakness. Leftists would now be fighting alongside (former) Christian Democrats whom, only shortly before, they had accused of serving US imperialism.<br /> <br /> If Jimmy Carter's trumpeted devotion to human rights was to be taken seriously, his administration clearly had no alternative but to side with the Salvadorean opposition, or at least keep its hands strictly out of the fighting. The Carter administration, however, with only an occasional backward glance at its professed principles, continued its military support of the government. Within days before his term ended in January 1981, Carter ordered a total of $10 million in military aid along with additional American advisers to be sent to El Salvador, an action characterized by one observer as &quot;President Carter's foreign policy establishment's last convulsive effort to evade responsibility for having been 'too soft' in dealing with the Salvadorean rebels.&quot; (Two years later, private citizen Carter stated: &quot;I think the government in El Salvador is one of the bloodthirstiest in [the] hemisphere now.&quot;)&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Reagan administration, to whom &quot;human rights&quot; was a suspect term invented by leftists, had little fear of the too-soft label. Its approach to the conflict was threefold: (a) a sharp escalation, both quantitatively and qualitatively, in the American military involvement in El Salvador; (b) a public relations campaign to put a human face on the military junta; (c) a concurrent exercise in news management to convince the American public and the world that the Salvadorean opposition had no legitimate cause for revolution; which was to say that what the Salvadoreans had experienced during the previous two decades, indeed for half a century, had little or nothing to do with their uprising—this, it turned out, was the inspiration of (unprovoked, mindless) &quot;left-wing terrorists&quot; abetted by the Soviet Union, by Nicaragua, by Cuba. The Red Devils were at it again.<br /> <br /> Military Escalation<br /> <br /> El Salvador did not turn into another Vietnam quicksand for the United States as many critics of the left and center warned. But for the Salvadorean people the war and its horror dragged on as interminably as it did for the Vietnamese, and for the same reason: American support of a regime—one even more loathsome than in Vietnam—which would have crumbled dismally if left to its own resources. Despite overwhelmingly superior military might, the government could hold the insurgents to no more than a stalemate.<br /> <br /> The amount of American military aid to El Salvador from 1980 to the early 1990s, for the hardware alone, ran into the billions of dollars. Six billion is the figure commonly used in the press, but the true figure will never be known. The Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus, a bipartisan congressional group, accused the Reagan administration in the mid-1980s of supplying &quot;insufficient, misleading and in some cases false information&quot; concerning aid to El Salvador. The administration, concluded the Caucus study, categorized most military aid as &quot;development&quot; aid, and undervalued the real cost of the hardware even when it was properly categorized as military aid.&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> To this must be added the cost of training Salvadorean military personnel by the thousands in the United States, and the Panama Canal Zone, as well as in El Salvador; the further training which was provided in the earlier years by Argentina, Chile and Uruguay at US behest; and the substantial military aid routed through Israel, a maneuver employed by the United States elsewhere in Central America as well.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> One telling result of this massive provision of weapons and training, as well as the money to pay higher salaries, was the sizeable expansion of the Salvadorean armed forces and other security services. From an estimated seven to twelve thousand men in 1979, the army alone jumped to more than 22,000 by 1983, with an additional 11,000 civilian security forces; three years later, the total of these two forces had spiraled to 53,000.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; The equipment available to them flowed endlessly; when, for example, in January 1982, the rebels destroyed 16 to 18 aircraft in a raid upon an airport, the United States replaced them in a matter of weeks with 28 new aircraft.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt; Part of the air power available to the government were US reconnaissance planes fitted with sophisticated surveillance equipment which could provide almost instant intelligence on guerrilla movements before and after combat operations, and designate bombing targets.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt; The guerrillas had neither air power nor a practical anti-aircraft capability until November 1990 when they used a Soviet-made surface-to-air missile for the first time.<br /> <br /> Predictably, the bombing, as well as the strafing and napalming, took the lives of many more civilians than guerrillas who had better learned how to avoid the attacks; countless dwellings were leveled in the process, villages destroyed, a nation of refugees created. Civilian deaths, whether from air or ground raids, were not necessarily accidental, as the many massacre stories make evident. It is a basic tenet of counter-insurgency: kill the sympathizers and you win the war.<br /> <br /> Officially, the US military presence in El Salvador was limited to an advisory capacity. In actuality, military and CIA personnel played a more active role on a continuous basis from as early as 1980. About 20 Americans were killed or wounded in helicopter and plane crashes while flying reconnaissance or other missions over combat areas.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt; Moreover, the American program for training Salvadorean pilots, bombardiers and gunners could easily serve to conceal the advisers' direct participation in these operations while accompanying their trainees.<br /> <br /> Considerable evidence surfaced of a US role in the ground fighting as well. There were numerous reports of armed Americans spotted in combat areas,&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt; a report by CBS News of US advisers &quot;fighting side by side&quot; with government troops,&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt; and reports of other Americans, some ostensibly mercenaries, killed in action.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt; The extent of American mercenary involvement in El Salvador is not known, but Lawrence Bailey, a former US Marine, has stated that he was part of a team of 40 American soldiers of fortune paid by wealthy Salvadorean families living in Miami to protect their plantations from takeover by the rebels.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> During the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987, it was disclosed that at least until 1985, CIA paramilitary personnel had been organizing and leading special Salvadorean army units into combat areas to track down guerrillas and call in air strikes.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> These bit-by-bit disclosures pointed to a frequent, if not routine, American involvement in the ongoing combat. In September 1988 another news item related that US military advisers were caught in a gun battle between Salvadorean army forces and guerrillas and that, in &quot;self-defense&quot;, they opened fire on the rebels.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The degree of overall control of the military operation by the United States is perhaps best captured by an excerpt from an interview given to Playboy magazine in 1984 by President Duarte, one of the few Christian Democrat leaders of the earlier days still working within the government.&lt;blockquote&gt;Playboy: Do the American military advisers also tell you how to run the war?&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Duarte: This is the problem, no? The root of this problem is that the aid is given under such conditions that its use is really decided by the Americans and not by us. Decisions like how many planes or helicopters we buy, how we spend our money, how many trucks we need, how many bullets and of what caliber, how many pairs of boots and where our priorities should be—all of that … And all the money is spent over there. We never even see a penny of it, because everything arrives here already paid for.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In Duarte's previous incarnation as a government opponent, his view of the Yanquis was even harsher. US policy in Latin America, he said in 1969, was designed to &quot;maintain the Iberoamerican countries in a condition of direct dependence upon the international political decisions most beneficial to the United States, both at the hemisphere and world levels. Thus [the North Americans] preach to us of democracy while everywhere they support dictatorships.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Duarte's ideology, however, appears to have been a flexible and marketable commodity. At some point in the 1970s, if not earlier, he began to covertly supply the CIA with intelligence.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A Human Face<br /> <br /> On 28 January 1982, President Reagan certified to Congress that the El Salvador government was &quot;making a concerted and significant effort to comply with internationally recognized human rights&quot; and that it was &quot;achieving substantial control over all elements of its own armed forces, so as to bring to an end the indiscriminate torture and murder of Salvadorean citizens by these forces.&quot; The language was that imposed by Congress upon the administration if the flow of arms and American military personnel was to continue.<br /> <br /> Two days earlier, the American and foreign press had carried the story of how government troops had engaged in a massacre of the people of the village of El Mozote in December. From 700 to 1,000 persons were reported killed, mostly the elderly, women and children. When a very long, detailed account of this incident appeared eventually, in 1993, it became more apparent than ever that this was one of the most repulsive and cruelest massacres of the 20th century carried out by ground troops face-to-face with their victims—people hacked to death by machetes, many beheaded, a child thrown in the air and caught on a bayonet, an orgy of rapes of very young girls before they were killed … &quot;If we don't kill them [the children] now, they'll just grow up to be guerrillas,&quot; barked an army officer to a reluctant soldier … anti-communism at its zenith.<br /> <br /> Both immediately and thereafter, the massacre was attended by denials and a coverup by the State Department, with abundant media complicity.&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; The State Department's defense of its position before a congressional committee left the committee members conspicuously underwhelmed, even though the congressmen did not yet know the full story.&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Two days after the president's certification, the world could read how Salvadorean soldiers had pulled about 20 people out of their beds in the middle of the night, tortured them, and then killed them, meanwhile finding the time to rape several teenage girls.&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Earlier the same month, the New York Times had published an interview with a deserter from the Salvadorean Army who described a class where severe methods of torture were demonstrated on teenage prisoners. He stated that eight US military advisers, apparently Green Berets, were present. Watching &quot;will make you feel more like a man,&quot; a Salvadorean officer apprised the recruits, adding that they should &quot;not feel pity of anyone&quot; but only &quot;hate for those who are enemies of our country.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Another Salvadorean, a former member of the National Guard, later testified: &quot;I belonged to a squad of twelve. We devoted ourselves to torture, and to finding people whom we were told were guerrillas. I was trained in Panama for nine months by the [unintelligible] of the United States for anti-guerrilla warfare. Part of the time we were instructed about torture.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Officers of the National Guard were also trained in the United States. In August 1986, CBS Television reported that three senior Guard officers who had been linked to rightwing death squads received training at a police academy in Phoenix.&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1984, Amnesty International reported that it had received:&lt;blockquote&gt;regular, often daily, reports identifying El Salvador's regular security and military units as responsible for the torture, &quot;disappearance&quot; and killing of non-combatant civilians from all sectors of Salvadorean society … A number of patients have allegedly been removed from their beds or operating theaters and tortured and murdered … Types of torture reported … by those who have survived arrest and interrogation included beatings, sexual abuse, use of chemicals to disorient, mock executions, and the burning of flesh with sulphuric acid.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In light of the above, and many other reports of a similar nature,&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt; it can be appreciated that the Reagan administration had to exercise some creativity in getting around congressional hesitation about continued military aid to the government of El Salvador. Thus it was that in March 1984 the administration tacked on a request for additional military aid to legislation to send US food supplies to starving Africans.&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt; (A few days later, it tacked on a request for support of the Nicaraguan contras to a bill to provide emergency fuel spending for the poor in parts of the United States which were suffering a severe winter.)&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Death squad executions … military massacres … the legion of the disappeared … the numbers reached well into the tens of thousands. And the death squads may have reached their arm into the United States. A number of Americans and Salvadoreans living in Los Angeles and working with refugees or actively opposing US military aid to El Salvador received death threats in 1987. Rev. Luis Olivares, a Catholic priest whose church is part of the &quot;sanctuary&quot; movement, was sent an anonymous letter bearing the letters &quot;EM&quot;, which were often found on the doors or buildings of people who were targeted in El Salvador. The letters stand for Escuadrón Muerto [death squad].&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In July 1987, a Salvadorean woman named Yanira Corea who had received threatening phone calls and letters was kidnapped outside the Los Angeles office of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). Two men, speaking with what she described as Salvadorean accents, forced her at knifepoint into a van, interrogated her about her political activities and colleagues, cut her hands with a knife, burnt her fingers with cigarettes, sexually assaulted her with a stick, then raped her. A month earlier, she had narrowly escaped being abducted, along with her three-year-old son. Other activists had their cars smashed or vandalized.&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> For several years under the Reagan administration, the FBI conducted a nationwide investigation of CISPES. During this period, some of the organization's offices were broken into with nothing of value taken except files. &quot;It is imperative at this time to formulate some plan of attack against CISPES …&quot;, reads one FBI teletype later made public.&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On some days during the 1980s, Washington officials issued warnings to the Salvadorean government to improve its human rights record, or told Congress that the record was improving, or told the world how much worse that record would be if not for American influence. On most other days, the United States continued to build up each and every component of the military and paramilitary forces engaged in the atrocities. In 1984, in an interview with the New York Times, Col. Roberto Eulalio Santibáñez, a former Salvadorean military official who had served at the highest level of the security police, confirmed—for those who may still have entertained doubts—that the network of death squads had been shaped by leading Salvadorean officials and was still directed by them. He also revealed that one of these officials, Col. Nicolas Carranza, the head of the Treasury Police, which &quot;have long been considered the least disciplined and most brutal of the Salvadorean security forces&quot;, had been receiving more than $90,000 a year during the previous five or six years from the CIA. Although some members of the Treasury Police were linked by the Reagan administration itself to death-squad activities, the United States continued to train and equip them.&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In a visit to San Salvador in February 1989, Vice President Dan Quayle told army leaders that death squad killings and other human rights violations attributed to the military had to be ended. Ten days later, the US-trained Atlacatl Battalion—which was believed to have a US trainer assigned to it at all times—attacked a guerrilla field hospital, killing at least ten people, including five patients, a doctor and a nurse, and raping at least two of the female victims before shooting them. Sources close to the El Salvador military said afterward that Quayle's warning was not taken seriously, but as rhetoric aimed at the US Congress and the American public.&lt;sup&gt;51&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In October 1989, former Salvadorean Army commando Cesar Vielman Joya Martinez, in an interview on the CBS Evening News, related that he and others in his unit—the intelligence section of the army's First Brigade—had acted as a clandestine death squad, that the two US military advisers attached to the unit were aware of the assassinations, although they refused to hear the details, and that the advisers supplied money to his unit that helped maintain two civilian vehicles used for death-squad operations and a safehouse that served as a secret base of operations and storage of weapons. In subsequent interviews with the American press, Joya Martinez stated that the advisers had used the names Mauricio Torres and Raul Antonio Lazo, that his unit had carried out 74 assassinations of Salvadorean dissidents between April and July of 1989, and that he himself had been personally involved in eight torture murders. Apropos of deadly bombings in El Salvador in November of dissident organizations (a union hall and an organization of mothers of the disappeared), he added that his unit had received explosives training from US advisers. The Salvadorean Embassy in Washington, while denying any government involvement in death-squad activities, did confirm that &quot;Joya Martinez was a member of the intelligence unit of the First Brigade&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;52&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In July 1990, an aide to Rep. Joseph Moakley (D-Mass.), chairman of the Speaker's Task Force on El Salvador, declared: &quot;The fact that Joya Martinez has been in the U.S. since last August, given all kinds of interviews, been arrested, and no one from the government has bothered to question him, seems pretty strange, unless people don't want to find the answers.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;53&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On the twelfth of that month Joya Martinez had been arrested for having illegally entered the United States after being deported six years earlier. After a lengthy legal battle, he was ordered deported back to El Salvador in October 1992. His supporters in the United States expressed their concern about his safety in El Salvador, to which a State Department official responded, presumably with a straight face, that Joya Martinez &quot;has admitted to killings and torture and it would be callous to the victims to prevent him from standing trial.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;54&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A few weeks after Joya Martinez went public in the United States, one of the most shocking atrocities in this war of shocking atrocities occurred. Six Jesuit priests at the University of Central America in San Salvador were shot to death in cold blood at their campus residence, along with their housekeeper and her young daughter. A witness, whom the killers failed to observe, Lucia Barrera de Cerna, said she saw five armed men in uniform carry out the murders. The Salvadorean military—whom the Roman Catholic order had often criticized for human rights violations—were the immediate and logical suspects. Because of an extraordinary outcry against the crime, in the United States and internationally, including the creation of the special congressional task force referred to above, two months later nine officers and enlisted men were arrested—a platoon from the Atlacatl Battalion, seven of whom, it turned out, had only two days before the murders participated in combat training exercises supervised by the U.S. Special Forces (Green Berets) in El Salvador.<br /> <br /> Almost two years passed before any of those arrested were convicted of the crime—two relatively low-level officers; their higher-ups who gave the order were not touched. Yet, this was an achievement in a country where thousands of people had been killed by military death squads, and no officer had ever before been tried, let alone convicted, for murder or other human-rights abuse. The Salvadorean military tolerated the trial of the officers because Congress had made prosecution of the killers a condition for continuing military aid.<br /> <br /> During the two-year period, as well as after the convictions, officials of the Bush administration appeared to be trying to thwart the investigation and aid in a coverup, by such tactics as the following:<br /> <br /> a) grossly intimidating Cerna and labeling her a liar;<br /> <br /> b) refusing on grounds of national security to provide a Salvadorean court with classified documents that dealt with the case; withholding, on the same grounds, substantive material from journalists making Freedom of Information Act requests;<br /> <br /> c) refusing for a long time to allow questioning, by the investigating judge, of US Army Major Eric Buckland, stationed in El Salvador, who had learned of the Salvadorean military's culpability shortly after the murders from Salvadorean Col. Carlos Aviles; then imposing a series of conditions on Buckland's questioning that served to conceal much of his story;<br /> <br /> d) putting Buckland through such horrendous interrogation that he underwent an apparent nervous breakdown;<br /> <br /> e) immediately informing the Salvadorean high command about what Aviles had revealed to Buckland (which caused Aviles much grief).<br /> <br /> Father Charles Beirne, vice rector of the Jesuit university, declared in 1991 that &quot;the Americans were helping to protect the [Salvadorean army] high command all along. They were afraid the whole house of cards would fall if the investigation went any further.&quot; A year later, United Nations investigators were still complaining that the United States was slow in turning over vital information about the case.&lt;sup&gt;55&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The cruelty level of the guerrillas' military and political campaign generally stood in sharp contrast to that of the government. Newsweek reported in 1983 that when the rebels &quot;capture a town, they treat the civilians well, paying for food and holding destruction to a minimum. And they have begun to free most of the government troops they capture, which helps to persuade other soldiers to surrender rather than fight to the death.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;56&lt;/sup&gt; Eventually, however, the guerrillas began to treat civilians more harshly, in particular those suspected of informing or of other collaboration with the government, or those refusing to collaborate with rebel forces; some peasants reportedly were forced to leave their villages and farms as punishment; several village mayors were killed; young men were forcibly recruited to join the rebels.<br /> <br /> However, given the numerous instances of disinformation disseminated by the Salvadorean government about the rebels, reports of guerrilla ruthlessness must be approached with caution. The following case is instructive (see the notes for reference to other examples):<br /> <br /> In February 1988, the New York Times, reported that:&lt;blockquote&gt;Villagers say guerrillas publicly executed two peasants … because they had applied for and received new voter registration cards. According to the villagers, the guerrillas placed the voting cards of [the two men] in their mouths after executing them as a warning to others not to take part in the elections.&lt;sup&gt;57&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The story was included in a State Department booklet to highlight the guerrillas' &quot;campaign of intimidation and terrorism&quot;. The booklet was mailed to Congress, newspaper editors, and other opinion makers. But the story, it turned out, was the invention of a Salvadorean Army propaganda specialist who had placed it in the San Salvador newspaper El Mundo. From there it was picked up by the New York Times reporter who gave the impression that he had interviewed villagers with firsthand knowledge of the incident, instead of attributing the story to the military as had El Mundo. The Times later recanted the story.&lt;sup&gt;58&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Outside Agitators<br /> <br /> &quot;Sometimes I feel like Sisyphus,&quot; said a senior Reagan administration official involved in developing US Latin America policy in March 1982. &quot;Every time we head up the hill to explain or justify our policy, the stone comes crashing down on top of us.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;59&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Two weeks earlier, Secretary of State Alexander Haig had asserted that the United States had &quot;overwhelming and irrefutable&quot; evidence that the insurgents were controlled from outside by non-Salvadoreans. Haig, however, declined to provide any details of the evidence, saying it would jeopardize intelligence sources. Challenged to prove his charges two days later, the good general insisted that the United States had &quot;unchallengeable&quot; evidence of Nicaraguan and Cuban involvement in the command and control of the operation in El Salvador and, oddly enough, only the day before a Nicaraguan military man had been captured there. As it turned out, according to the Mexican Embassy in San Salvador, the man was a student on his way back to school in Mexico from Nicaragua, traveling overland because he couldn't afford to fly.&lt;sup&gt;60&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The following week, a Nicaraguan was captured fighting with the guerrillas. He told US Embassy and Salvadorean Army officials that he had been trained in Cuba and Ethiopia, then sent to El Salvador by the Nicaraguan government. The State Department was understandably excited. It presented the young man at a press conference in Washington, at which time he declared that he had never been to Cuba or Ethiopia, had joined the guerrillas on his own, and had made his previous statements under torture by his Salvadorean captors. He added that he had never seen another Nicaraguan or Cuban in El Salvador and denied that Nicaragua had provided aid to the guerrillas.&lt;sup&gt;61&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;Then there were two Nicaraguan air force defectors,&quot; reported Time magazine during the same period, &quot;who were scheduled to bear witness to their country's involvement in El Salvador but by week's end were judged 'not ready' to face the press.&quot; Time entitled its story: &quot;A Lot of Show, but No Tell: The U.S. bungles its evidence of foreign subversion in El Salvador.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;62&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In January 1981, US diplomats disclosed that five boats had landed in El Salvador containing 100 &quot;well-armed, well-trained guerrillas&quot;, allegedly from Nicaragua. They knew the boats had come from Nicaragua because &quot;they were made from wood of trees not native to El Salvador.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;63&lt;/sup&gt; No sign, dead or alive, of any of the hundred invaders was ever found, however.<br /> <br /> One hundred seemed to be the number of choice for the Reagan administration. That was the count of Cuban combat troops, said a senior State Department policy maker, who were sent to El Salvador in the fall of 1981 by way of Nicaragua. &quot;They were brought in clandestinely and given operational responsibilities in El Salvador,&quot; he asserted.&lt;sup&gt;64&lt;/sup&gt; The later whereabouts and actions of the Cubans likewise remained a mystery.<br /> <br /> The world was also informed that Soviet and Chinese weapons had been seized from rebels and this was cited as further proof of outside Communist aid.&lt;sup&gt;65&lt;/sup&gt; The weapons capture may have been real—although the CIA has long had warehouses full of Communist weapons of all kinds, suitable for all occasions—but then what were we to make of the US, Israeli, Belgian and German weapons which, by Washington's admission a month later, were also to be found amongst the rebels?&lt;sup&gt;66&lt;/sup&gt; The world arms traffic is indeed wide open and fluid. (In neighboring Honduras, the US-supported contras were using Soviet-made missiles to shoot down Soviet-made helicopters of Nicaragua.)&lt;sup&gt;67&lt;/sup&gt; Moreover, the Salvadorean rebels captured weapons from government forces and they claimed that they also purchased arms from corrupt Salvadorean Army officers, a practice common to other Latin American guerrilla wars. A source cited by the New York Times corroborated the rebels' claim.&lt;sup&gt;68&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The centerpiece of the Reagan administration's campaign to prove the international-conspiracy nature of the revolution in El Salvador was its White Paper issued a month after taking office and based largely on purported &quot;captured guerrilla documents&quot;, some of which were included in the report. Amongst the various analyses of the White Paper which cast grave doubts upon its claims was the one in the Wall Street Journal by Jonathan Kwitny. This included an interview with a State Department official, Jon D. Glassman, who was given the major credit for the White Paper. Admitted Mr Glassman: parts of the paper were possibly &quot;misleading&quot; and &quot;over-embellished&quot; … it contained &quot;mistakes&quot; and &quot;guessing&quot;. Said the Wall Street Journal: &quot;A close examination … indicates that, if anything, Mr. Glassman may be understating the case in his concession that the White Paper contains mistakes and guessing.&quot;<br /> <br /> Amongst the many specific shortcomings of the paper pointed out in the article was that:&lt;blockquote&gt;Statistics of armament shipments into El Salvador, supposedly drawn directly from the documents, were extrapolated, Mr. Glassman concedes. And in questionable ways, it seems. Much information in the White Paper can't be found in the documents at all.&lt;sup&gt;69&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;It was not merely the accuracy of the White Paper that was questioned, but the authenticity of the documents themselves. Apropos of this, former US Ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White (sacked by Reagan because of excessive commitment to human rights and reforms), commented: &quot;The only thing that even makes me think that these documents were genuine was that they proved so little.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;70&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> When pressed to state what proof his government had of Nicaraguan intervention, President Duarte declined to answer on the grounds that the world would not believe him anyway.&lt;sup&gt;71&lt;/sup&gt; But President Reagan had some evidence to offer. He saw the hand of foreign masters pulling strings in the fact that demonstrators in Canada carried &quot;the same signs&quot; as demonstrators in the United States: &quot;U. S. Out of El Salvador.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;72&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But all of this was essentially besides the point. Revolutions are not exported like so many cartons of soap. We have seen what the circumstances were in El Salvador for decades which finally provoked people to take up the gun. Ambassador White, no champion of the rebels' cause, observed that &quot;The revolution situation came about in El Salvador because you had what was one of the most selfish oligarchies the world has ever seen, combined with a corrupt security force … Whether Cuba existed or not, you would still have a revolutionary situation in El Salvador.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;73&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Education-minister-turned-guerrilla, Salvador Samayoa, speaking in 1981, asserted that US charges that the Soviet bloc was directing the guerrilla movement &quot;reveals Washington's deep ignorance of our movement&quot;. He pointed out that three of the five guerrilla groups that made up the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) were &quot;strongly anti-Soviet&quot;. Samayoa added: &quot;To say we are run by Cuba because we have a relationship with Cuba is like saying we're a Christian movement because we have received enormous help from the church. … Instead of seeing us as Communist subversives, the U.S. should see us as a people struggling to survive.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;74&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Despite American patrol boats in the Gulf of Fonseca (which separates El Salvador from Nicaragua), AWAC surveillance planes in the skies over the Caribbean, and an abundance of aerial photographs, despite a large US radar installation in Honduras manned by 50 American military technicians, the finest electronic monitoring equipment modern technology had to offer, and all the informers that CIA money could buy&lt;sup&gt;75&lt;/sup&gt;… despite it all, the Reagan administration singularly failed to support its case that the fires of the Salvadorean revolution were stoked by Nicaraguan and Cuban coals; nor by the Soviet Union, Vietnam, the PLO, Ethiopia, or any of the other countries indicted at one time or another as important suppliers of military aid.<br /> <br /> In any case, whatever military support the Salvadorean insurgents actually received from abroad—necessarily limited to what could be carried by the occasional clandestine small truck or boat—plainly did not belong in the same league, nor on the same planet, as the huge transport-planefuls and shipfuls of American aid, in all its forms, to the Salvadorean government. The United States had waged ruthless war against the Salvadorean revolution, and threatened worse—in April 1991, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, announced that &quot;if necessary, [the civil war in El Salvador] can be resolved the way it was in the Persian Gulf.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;76&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In early 1992, the war came to an official end when a United Nations commission, after a year-and-a-half effort, finally got the warring sides to agree to a cease fire and a peace agreement. A major offensive launched by the guerrillas in late 1989—in which they &quot;brought the war home&quot; to wealthy neighborhoods and Americans in the capital—had made clear to Washington and its Salvadorean allies, once again, finally, that the war was unwinnable. In February 1990, Gen. Maxwell Thurman, the head of the US Southern Command, told Congress that the El Salvador government was not able to defeat the rebels and that the only way to end the fighting was through negotiation.&lt;sup&gt;77&lt;/sup&gt; Moreover, the ostensible end of the cold war had undermined the United States' professed rationale for—and may have relaxed its obsession with—defeating &quot;communism&quot; in El Salvador. At the same time, Congress was balking more and more about continuing military aid to the Salvadorean government, an attitude that had been growing ever since the November 1989 murder of the Jesuit priests.<br /> <br /> One of the many provisions of the complex peace agreement was the establishment of a UN Commission of the Truth &quot;to investigate the worst acts of violence since 1980&quot;. In March of 1993 the Commission presented its report. Among its findings and conclusions were the following:<br /> <br /> The military forces, supported by the government and the civilian establishment, were plainly the main perpetrators of massacres, executions, torture and kidnappings during the civil war. These acts could not be blamed on the excesses of war but on premeditated and ideologically inspired decisions to kill.<br /> <br /> The commission called for the dismissal of more than 40 high-ranking military personnel—including Defense Minister Gen. Rene Emilio Ponce, a long-time favorite of US officials—whom it found had given the orders that led to the murders of the priests, and stipulated that none should ever be allowed to return to military or security duty and should be banned from other public and political life for 10 years.<br /> <br /> Dismissal and a 10-year ban was also specified for government officials and bureaucrats who abused human rights or took part in a cover-up of the abuses, including the President of the Supreme Court. (Right-wing parties in the Salvadorean National Assembly quickly pushed through an amnesty law barring prosecution for any crimes committed during the war.)<br /> <br /> Several leaders of the left were singled out for the assassinations of 11 mayors during the war.<br /> <br /> A special investigation of death squads was called for. These squads, said the report, were &quot;often operated by the military and supported by powerful businessmen, landowners and some leading politicians.&quot; (The peace accords did not put an end to this: dozens of leaders and members of the FMLN were assassinated during 1992 and 1993, as well as a few from the right.)<br /> <br /> Cited as the most notorious of the death squad leaders by the report was Roberto d'Aubuisson, the principal founder of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena) party, the party of the country's current president, Alfredo Cristiani. D'Aubuisson, the report confirmed, hired the sharpshooter who killed Archbishop Romero.<br /> <br /> Other sins laid at the doorstep of the government were the rapes and killings of three American nuns and a female religious worker in 1980, the murder of two American labor advisers in 1981, and the assassination, in 1982, of four Dutch journalists, whose reports were evidently considered favorable to the guerrillas.<br /> <br /> The Commission did not focus on any American role in the abuses and cover-up. &quot;The role of the United States in El Salvador is a role more effectively studied by the U.S. Congress,&quot; said Commission member Thomas Buergenthal, an American jurist, at a news conference. However, the Commission did chastise the United States for failing to rein in Salvadorean exiles in Miami who &quot;helped administer death squad activities between 1980 and 1983, with apparently little attention from the U.S. government. Such use of American territory for acts of terrorism abroad should be investigated and never allowed to be repeated.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;78&lt;/sup&gt; (Cuban exiles, of course, have been using Miami as a base for terrorism abroad, as well as in the US, for 30 years.)<br /> <br /> Members of Congress, outraged by the findings of the Commission of the Truth, called for the declassification of State Department, Defense Department, and CIA files on El Salvador to help determine whether the Reagan and Bush administrations had concealed evidence from Congress about widespread human rights abuses by their Salvadorean allies. &quot;It [the Commission's report] simply verifies what a number of us knew all through the '80s,&quot; said Rep. David Obey, &quot;that our own government was lying like hell to us.&quot; The report proves that the Reagan administration was willing to &quot;lie … and … certify to anything … to get the money it wanted.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;79&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Various of the more than 12,000 once-secret documents released by the Clinton administration unequivocally confirmed Obey's charge. Other papers revealed that …<br /> <br /> The current Vice President, Francisco Merino, had organized death squads.<br /> <br /> The CIA referred to Roberto d'Aubuisson as &quot;egocentric, reckless and perhaps mentally unstable&quot;; he trafficked in drugs and smuggled arms; his paramilitary unit was responsible for thousands of murders; and in 1983 he and his advisers were invited by American Ambassador Deane Hinton to have lunch with the visiting US representative to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick. Six years later, shortly before the CIA reported that d'Aubuisson's inner circle had plotted to assassinate President Cristiani, Ambassador William G. Walker invited him to the embassy's Fourth of July party.&lt;sup&gt;80&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> American military advisers trained a militia of some 50 wealthy Salvadoreans, ostensibly for them to be able to defend their own lavish homes against a rebel attack, but the group was actually linked to d'Aubuisson and their militia was a &quot;cover for the recruitment, training and possible dispatch of paramilitary civilian death squads&quot;. Ambassador Walker halted the training as soon as he learned of it, despite protests from the chief of the US military advisory mission. (Another memo, written by a Defense Department official, argued that the wealthy Salvadoreans might fund death squads, but would not get blood on their own hands.)&lt;sup&gt;81&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On 20 March 1994, the ruling party Arena and its main ally scored a victory in elections held to choose a new president, National Assembly, and hundreds of municipal governments. With the exception of a few reforms touching upon civil liberties, whose significance remains to be seen, the outcome left the society at essentially the same place it was in 1980 when the war had just begun and José Napoleón Duarte had said: &quot;For fifty years the same people had all the power, all the money, all the jobs, all the education …&quot; One could now say: &quot;For more than sixty years …&quot;<br /> <br /> Why had more than half the people of El Salvador, most of them very poor, voted for parties intimately connected with not only the wealthy, but with death squads? The new president, Armando Calderon Sol, had long and close ties to death-squad godfather Roberto d'Aubuisson, a large portrait of whom hung in his office. The declassified documents referred to above raised questions about Calderon Sol himself—connections to a kidnapping and to a group of young Arena militants who bombed the Ministry of Agriculture and wreaked other havoc in the early 1980s in an attempt to destabilize the government whose new agrarian reform was supposed to take land from the wealthy.<br /> <br /> Arena's sophisticated multimillion-dollar campaign relied heavily on nurturing two kinds of fears: the traditional fear of &quot;communism&quot;, inculcated by decades of authoritarian rule; and the supposed economic incompetence of the left, as typified by the Sandinista rule in Nicaragua. Further, ignoring their own violent history, Arena portrayed the left as terrorists who were exclusively responsible for the war's death and destruction.<br /> <br /> How honest and fair had the actual voting been? Was the right willing to end a half-century of political exclusion of the left? Besides having a great deal more money at its disposal than its opponents, the Arena party in power had controlled the press in El Salvador for many years—the one daily paper, Diario Latino, which had dared to show a brief independence, was destroyed by bombs.&lt;sup&gt;82&lt;/sup&gt; Moreover, the makeup of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), which supervised the election, was based on the election of 1991 which the FMLN had boycotted; it was thus dominated by Arena, with no one from the FMLN.<br /> <br /> Many points of contention were raised about the voting, such as the following:<br /> <br /> A large number of people who registered to vote were unable to do so because they didn't receive their voting card. According to United Nations monitors, as of 1 February these cases came to more than half a million, equal to 20 percent of the electorate. After the election, the FMLN estimated the number of such non-voters at 340,000.<br /> <br /> 74,000 other applicants were rejected because they couldn't produce a birth certificate; often this was because the local office of records had been destroyed in the war.<br /> <br /> Another large block of people held valid voting cards but couldn't vote because they had no transportation to a distant polling station. This was exacerbated, reportedly, by a slowdown in bus service by bus companies owned by Arena supporters and the Arena-controlled bus drivers' union.<br /> <br /> Many made it to the polling stations with their voting cards only to be kept from voting because their names did not appear on the voter-registration lists, or were spelled incorrectly (at least 25,000 such cases according to the UN; several times that, said the FMLN).<br /> <br /> Other potential voters left the stations without casting their ballots because very long lines and an extremely cumbersome and snail-paced processing system left them still waiting when the polls closed.<br /> <br /> These problems of course affected the poor, the rural, the less educated, and the first-time voters the most, the base of the FMLN's support.<br /> <br /> The TSE refused international advice, declined to spend money to transport voters to the polls, and made voting unnecessarily complicated, UN observers said. &quot;There was frightening mismanagement of the election beyond our worst expectations,&quot; said a senior UN official. &quot;There was widespread lack of trust by the electorate before the voting, [and] now it's much worse. The [TSE] is completely discredited and has therefore tarnished the election.&quot;<br /> <br /> The FMLN claimed the irregularities cheated the party out of several municipal and legislative seats, a contention lent credence by the UN observers who stated that thousands of people were denied voting cards in 30 towns where the FMLN was strong. The party challenged the results in 37 cities and towns, but the TSE rejected all the claims—a decision that Rafael Lopez Pintor, who headed the UN electoral division, called &quot;shocking&quot;.<br /> <br /> A team of observers representing the US government also said it was &quot;troubled&quot; that &quot;many of the procedures cited as administrative defects&quot; in previous elections continued to be practiced.<br /> <br /> In the days immediately following the vote, election authorities delayed the release of official results. Then on the third day, they abruptly cut off access to party monitors to computerized tabulations. The FMLN said that initial tabulations showed that many ballot boxes contained more votes than the legal maximum of 400, some of them two to three times as many. They also claimed that in San Miguel, one of the country's largest cities, a group of Arena militants had absconded with 15 ballot boxes.<br /> <br /> As it turned out, in the announced result for the presidency, Arena got 641,000 votes, 49 percent of the total, while the Democratic Coalition, which included the FMLN, was credited with 326,000 votes, or 25 percent. Failure of any party to win a majority necessitated a run-off election a month later, at which time Arena won 68 percent of the vote to the Coalition's 32 percent. Because the winner of the run-off was a completely foregone conclusion, there were undoubtedly many poor people who didn't vote because they were unwilling to go through the great inconvenience and uncertainty a second time.<br /> <br /> There was also the matter of intimidation. According to observers from the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES):&lt;blockquote&gt;Meanwhile, army helicopters buzzed cities where the opposition was strong. Soldiers set up checkpoints and machine-gun nests in towns traumatized by army massacres during the war. The government did its best to instill fear in the electorate, and must have scared many voters into staying home.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Before the election, some workers were warned that if the FMLN won, heads would roll, or they would be fired. Inasmuch as a polling official tore off the corner of each ballot, containing the same number as on the ballot, a voter could see that someone could save his number and check how he voted later.<br /> <br /> The Los Angeles Times reported the story of the master of ceremonies at a rally staged by Arena, attended by a number of peasants, farmers and market vendors.&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;All those who support Arena, raise your hats!&quot; the emcee implored the crowd.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;A few people lifted their hats.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;All those who support Arena, raise your hats!&quot; he tried again. &quot;And those who don't raise their hats are terengos!&quot; he added, invoking a slang word for &quot;terrorists&quot; used by the army throughout this country's brutal civil war.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;A lot of people took their hats off.&lt;sup&gt;83&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;For the benefit of which Salvadoreans did Arena remain in power? For which of them had 75,000 civilians been killed? For whom was the US Treasury reduced by $6 billion? Two reports from the New York Times …&lt;blockquote&gt;Over canapes served by hovering waiters at a party, a guest said she was convinced that God had created two distinct classes of people: the rich and people to serve them. She described herself as charitable for allowing the poor to work as her servants. &quot;It's the best you can do,&quot; she said.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The woman's outspokenness was unusual, but her attitude is shared by a large segment of the Salvadoran upper class.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The separation between classes is so rigid that even small expressions of kindness across the divide are viewed with suspicion. When an American, visiting an ice cream store, remarked that he was shopping for a birthday party for his maid's child, other store patrons immediately stopped talking and began staring at the American. Finally, an astonished woman in the checkout line spoke out. &quot;You must be kidding,&quot; she said.&lt;/blockquote&gt;One of their class, who had had enough and was leaving, commented to the Times: &quot;I can't accept the fact that if you're born a peasant here, you die a peasant and your children are going to be peasants. There's no vision that kids of farmhands should be going to Harvard and running this country one day. There's no vision of a modern society.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;84&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;After taking part in Washington's decade-long effort to train and reform the Salvadoran Army, many American military advisers have left here angry over the Salvadorans' resistance to change … [they] say they feel manipulated and betrayed by the Salvadoran officers. … the advisers described Salvadoran officers as being mainly interested in amassing wealth and power, as willing to deprive troops of equipment to further the officers' own ends and as allowing the regular killing or mistreatment of prisoners. … None went so far as to say the effort to help the Salvadoran armed forces in their war against a leftist insurgency had been futile. They thought human rights abuses would have been worse or that the guerrillas might have won the war without their presence.&lt;sup&gt;85&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The Times apparently did not ask the advisers whether they believed that the United States government had in some way been forced to take sides in the civil war. And if not, what had their government's ultimate motive been? And if so, why had they not taken the side of the insurgents? And how bad would the human rights abuses have been if the armed forces had not been provided by Washington with a never-ending supply of every weapon and implement and training known to man to bring destruction, pain and suffering to the greatest number of people?<br /> <br /> == Haiti 1986-1994: Who will rid me of this turbulent priest? ==<br /> When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.<br /> <br /> When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.<br /> <br /> Dom Helder Câmara<br /> <br /> What does the government of the United States do when faced with a choice between supporting: (a) a group of totalitarian military thugs guilty of murdering thousands, systematic torture, widespread rape, and leaving severely mutilated corpses in the streets … or (b) a non-violent priest, legally elected to the presidency by a landslide, whom the thugs have overthrown in a coup? …<br /> <br /> But what if the priest is a &quot;leftist&quot;?<br /> <br /> During the Duvalier family dictatorship—Francois &quot;Papa Doc&quot;, 1957-71, followed by Jean-Claude &quot;Baby Doc&quot;, 1971-86, both anointed President for Life by papa—the United States trained and armed Haiti's counter-insurgency forces, although most American military aid to the country was covertly channeled through Israel, thus sparing Washington embarrassing questions about supporting brutal governments. After Jean-Claude was forced into exile in February 1986, fleeing to France aboard a US Air Force jet, Washington resumed open assistance. And while Haiti's wretched rabble were celebrating the end of three decades of Duvalierism, the United States was occupied in preserving it under new names.<br /> <br /> Within three weeks of Jean-Claude's departure, the US announced that it was providing Haiti with $26.6 million in economic and military aid, and in April it was reported that &quot;Another $4 million is being sought to provide the Haitian Army with trucks, training and communications gear to allow it to move around the country and maintain order.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Maintaining order in Haiti translates to domestic repression and control; and in the 21 months between Duvalier's abdication and the scheduled elections of November 1987, the successor Haitian governments were responsible for more civilian deaths than Baby Doc had managed in 15 years.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA was meanwhile arranging for the release from prison, and safe exile abroad, of two of its Duvalier-era contacts, both notorious police chiefs, thus saving them from possible death sentences for murder and torture, and acting contrary to the public's passionate wish for retribution against its former tormenters.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; In September, Haiti's main trade union leader, Yves Richard, declared that Washington was working to undermine the left before the coming elections. US aid organizations, he said, were encouraging people in the countryside to identify and reject the entire left as &quot;communist&quot;,&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; though the country clearly had a fundamental need for reformers and sweeping changes. Haiti was, and is, the Western Hemisphere's best known economic, medical, political, judicial, educational, and ecological basket case.<br /> <br /> At this time Jean-Bertrand Aristide was a charismatic priest with a broad following in the poorest slums of Haiti, the only church figure to speak out against repression during the Duvalier years. He now denounced the military-dominated elections and called upon Haitians to reject the entire process. His activities figured prominently enough in the electoral campaign to evoke a strong antipathy from US officials. Ronald Reagan, Aristide later wrote, considered him to be a communist.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; And Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Elliott Abrams, saw fit to attack Aristide while praising the Haitian government in a letter to Time magazine during the election campaign.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Catholic priest first came to prominence in Haiti as a proponent of liberation theology, which seeks to blend the teachings of Christ with inspiring the poor to organize and resist their oppression. When asked why the CIA might have sought to oppose Aristide, a senior official with the Senate Intelligence Committee stated that &quot;Liberation theology proponents are not too popular at the agency. Maybe second only to the Vatican for not liking liberation theology are the people at Langley [CIA headquarters].&quot;<br /> <br /> Aristide urged a boycott of the elections, saying &quot;The army is our first enemy.&quot; The CIA, on the other hand, funded some of the candidates. The Agency later insisted that the purpose of the funding program had not been to oppose Aristide but to provide a &quot;free and open election&quot;, by which was meant helping some candidates who didn't have enough money and diminishing Aristide's attempt to have a low turnout, which would have &quot;reduced the election's validity&quot;. It is not known which candidates the CIA funded or why the Agency or the State Department, which reportedly chose the candidates to support, were concerned about such goals in Haiti, when underfunded candidates and low turnouts exist permanently in the United States.<br /> <br /> The CIA was &quot;involved in a range of support for a range of candidates&quot;, said an intelligence official directly active in the operation. Countering Aristide's impressive political strength appears to be the only logical explanation for the CIA's involvement, which was authorized by President Reagan and the National Security Council.<br /> <br /> When the Senate Intelligence Committee demanded to know exactly what the CIA was doing in Haiti and which candidates it was supporting, the Agency balked. Eventually, the committee ordered the covert electoral action to cease. A high-ranking source working for the committee said the reason the program was killed was that &quot;there are some of us who believe in the neutrality of elections.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; Nevertheless, it cannot be stated with any certainty that the program was actually halted.<br /> <br /> The elections scheduled for 29 November 1987 were postponed because of violence. In the rescheduled elections held in January, the candidate favored by the military government was declared the winner in balloting widely perceived as rigged, and in the course of which the CIA was involved in an aborted attempt of unknown nature to influence the elections.&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> There followed more than two years of regular political violence, coup attempts, and repression, casting off the vestiges of the Duvalier dictatorship and establishing a new one, until, in March 1990, the current military dictator, General Prosper Avril, was forced by widespread protests to abdicate and was replaced by a civilian government of sorts, but with the military still calling important shots.<br /> <br /> The United States is not happy with &quot;chaos&quot; in its client states. It's bad for control, it's bad for business, it's unpredictable who will come out on top, perhaps another Fidel Castro. It was the danger of &quot;massive internal uprisings&quot; that induced the United States to inform Jean-Claude Duvalier that it was time for him to venture a life of struggle on the French Riviera,&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; and a similar chaotic situation that led the US Ambassador to suggest to Avril that it was an apt moment to retire; transportation into exile for the good general was once again courtesy of Uncle Sam.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Thus it was that the American Embassy in Port-au-Prince pressured the Haitian officer corps to allow a new election. Neither the embassy nor Aristide himself at this time had reason to expect that he would be a candidate in the election scheduled for December, although he had already been expelled from his religious order, with the blessings of the Vatican, because, amongst other things, of &quot;incitement to hatred and violence, and a glorifying of class struggle&quot;. Aristide's many followers and friends had often tried in vain to persuade him to run for office. Now they finally succeeded, and in October he became the candidate of a loose coalition of reformist parties and organizations.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> On the eve of the election, former US Ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, visited Aristide and asked him to sign a letter accepting Marc Bazin, the US-backed and funded candidate, as president should Bazin win. Young reportedly said there was fear that if Aristide lost, his followers would take to the streets and reject the results.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; Young was said to be acting on behalf of his mentor, former president Jimmy Carter, but presumably the White House also had their finger in the pie, evidencing their concern about Aristide's charisma and potential as a leader outside their control.<br /> <br /> Despite a campaign marred by terror and intimidation, nearly a thousand UN and Organization of American States (OAS) observers and an unusually scrupulous Haitian general insured that a relatively honest balloting took place, in which Aristide was victorious with 67.5 percent of the vote. &quot;People chose him over 10 comparatively bourgeois candidates,&quot; wrote an American Haiti scholar who was an international election observer, &quot;because of his outspoken and uncompromising opposition to the old ways.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; Aristide's support actually included a progressive bourgeois element as well as his larger popular base.<br /> <br /> The president-priest took office in February 1991 after a coup attempt against him in January failed. By June, one could read in the Washington Post:&lt;blockquote&gt;Proclaiming a &quot;political revolution,&quot; Aristide, 37, has injected a spirit of hope and honesty into the affairs of government, a radical departure after decades of official venality under the Duvalier family dictatorship and a series of military strongmen. Declaring that his $10,000 monthly salary is &quot;not just a scandal, but a crime&quot;, Aristide announced on television that he would donate his paychecks to charity.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The Catholic priest had long been an incisive critic of US foreign policy because of Washington's support of the Duvalier dynasty and the Haitian military, and he was suspicious of foreign &quot;aid&quot;, commenting that it all wound up in the pockets of the wealthy. &quot;Since 1980, this amounted to two hundred million dollars a year, and these were the same ten years during which the per capita wealth of the country was reduced by 40 percent!&quot;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Aristide did not spell out a specific economic program, but was clear about the necessity of a redistribution of wealth, and spoke more of economic justice than of the virtues of the market system. He later wrote:&lt;blockquote&gt;I have often been criticized for lacking a program, or at least for imprecision in that regard. Was it for lack of time?—a poor excuse. … In fact, the people had their own program. … dignity, transparent simplicity, participation. These three ideas could be equally well applied in the political and economic sphere and in the moral realm. … The bourgeoisie should have been able to understand that its own interest demanded some concessions. We had recreated 1789. Did they want, by their passive resistance, to push the hungry to demand more radical measures?&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Seriously hampered by the absence in Haiti of a strong traditional left, and confronted by a gridlocked parliament that constitutionally had more power than the president, Aristide didn't succeed in getting any legislation enacted. He did, however, initiate programs in literacy, public health and agrarian reform, and pressed for an increase in the daily wage, which was often less than three dollars, a freeze on prices of basic necessities, and a public-works program to create jobs. He also increased the feeling of security amongst the population by arresting a number of key paramilitary thugs, and setting in motion a process to eliminate the institution of rural section chiefs (sheriffs), the military's primary instrument of unfettered authority over the lives of the peasants.<br /> <br /> In office, though not the uncompromising revolutionary firebrand many anticipated, Aristide frequently angered his opponents in the wealthy business class, the parliament, and the army by criticizing their corruptness. The military was particularly vexed by his policies against smuggling and drug trafficking, as well as his attempt to de-politicize them. As for the wealthy civilians—or as they are fondly known, the morally repugnant elite—they did not much care for Aristide's agenda whereby they would pay taxes and share their bounty by creating jobs and reinvesting profits locally rather than abroad. They were, as they remain, positively apoplectic about this little saintly-talking priest and his love for the (ugh) poor.<br /> <br /> However, Aristide's administration was not, in practice, actually anti-business, and he made it a point to warm up to American officials, foreign capitalists and some elements of the Haitian military. He also discharged some 2,000 government workers, which pleased the International Monetary Fund and other foreign donors, but Aristide himself regarded these positions as largely useless and corrupt bureaucratic padding.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Jean-Bertrand Aristide served less than eight months as Haiti's president before being deposed, on 29 September 1991, by a military coup in which many hundreds of his supporters were massacred, and thousands more fled to the Dominican Republic or by sea. The slightly-built Haitian president who, in the previous few years, had survived several serious assassination attempts and the burning down of his church while he was inside preaching, was saved now largely through the intervention of the French ambassador.<br /> <br /> Only the Vatican recognized the new military government, although the coup of course was backed by the rich elite. They &quot;helped us a lot,&quot; said the country's new police chief and key coup plotter, Joseph Michel Francois, &quot;because we saved them.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> No evidence of direct US complicity in the coup has arisen, though, as we shall see, the CIA was financing and training all the important elements of the new military regime, and a Haitian official who supported the coup has reported that US intelligence officers were present at military headquarters as the coup was taking place; this was &quot;normal&quot;, he added, for the CIA and DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) were always there.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> We have seen in Nicaragua how the National Endowment for Democracy—which was set up to do overtly, and thus more &quot;respectably&quot;, some of what the CIA used to do covertly—interfered in the 1990 election process. At the same time, the NED, in conjunction with the Agency for International Development (AID), was busy in Haiti. It gave $189,000 to several civic groups that included the Haitian Center for the Defense of Rights and Freedom, headed by Jean-Jacques Honorat. Shortly after Aristide's ouster, Honorat became the prime minister in the coup government. In a 1993 interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, he declared, &quot;The coup was justified by the human rights record of Aristide.&quot; Asked what he himself had done as prime minister to halt the massive human rights violations that followed the overthrow, Honorat responded: &quot;I don't have my files here.&quot;<br /> <br /> In the years prior to the coup, the NED also gave more than $500,000 to the Haitian Institute for Research and Development (IHRED). This organization played a very partisan role in the 1990 elections when it was allied with US-favorite Marc Bazin, former World Bank executive, and helped him create his coalition (just as NED was instrumental in creating the coalition in Nicaragua which defeated the Sandinistas earlier in the year). IHRED was led by Leopold Berlanger who, in 1993, supported the junta's sham election aimed at ratifying the prime ministership of Bazin, Honorat's successor and a political associate of Berlanger.<br /> <br /> Another recipient of NED largesse was Radio Soleil, run by the Catholic Church in a manner calculated to not displease the dictatorship of the day. During the 1991 coup—according to the Rev. Hugo Triest, a former station director—the station refused to air a message from Aristide.<br /> <br /> The NED has further reduced the US Treasury by grants to the union association Federation des Ouvriers Syndiques, founded in 1984 with Duvalier's approval, so that Haiti, which previously had crushed union-organizing efforts, would qualify for the US Caribbean Basin Initiative economic package.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> But despite its name and unceasing rhetoric, the National Endowment for Democracy did not give a dollar to any of the grassroots organizations that eventually merged to form Aristide's coalition.<br /> <br /> Within a week of Aristide's overthrow, the Bush administration began to distance itself from the man, reported the New York Times, &quot;by refusing to say that his return to power was a necessary pre-condition for Washington to feel that democracy has been restored in Haiti.&quot; The public rationale given for this attitude was that Aristide's human rights record was questionable, since some business executives, legislators and other opponents of his had accused him of using mobs to intimidate them and tacitly condoning their violence.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt; Some of Haiti's destitute did carry out acts of violence and arson against the rich, but it's a stretch to blame Aristide, whatever his attitude, given that these were enraged people seeking revenge for a lifetime of extreme oppression against their perceived oppressors, revenge they had long been waiting for.<br /> <br /> A year later, the Boston Globe could editorialize that the Bush administration's &quot;contempt for Haitian democracy has been scandalous … By refusing to acknowledge the carnage taking place in Haiti, the administration has all but bestowed its blessing on the putschists.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Two months earlier, in testimony before Congress, the CIA's leading analyst of Latin American affairs, Brian Latell, had described coup leader Lieut. Gen. Raoul Cédras as one of &quot;the most promising group of Haitian leaders to emerge since the Duvalier family dictatorship was overthrown in 1986&quot;. He also reported that he &quot;saw no evidence of oppressive rule&quot; in Haiti.&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Yet the State Department annual human-rights report for the same year stated:&lt;blockquote&gt;Haitians suffered frequent human rights abuses throughout 1992, including extra-judicial killings by security forces, disappearances, beatings and other mistreatment of detainees and prisoners, arbitrary arrests and detention and executive interference with the judicial process.&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The New York Times' one-year-post-coup status report was remarkably blunt:&lt;blockquote&gt;Since shortly after the overthrow—when Secretary of State James Baker echoed President Bush's famous &quot;this aggression will not stand&quot; statement about Iraq—little consideration has been given to backing up American principles in Haiti with American muscle. … Recently, an adviser of the [coup government] repeated Father Aristide's longtime complaint when he said that &quot;all it would take is one phone call&quot; from Washington to send the army's leadership packing. … supporters and opponents of Father Aristide agree, nothing more threatening than a leaky and ineffective embargo, quickly imposed … has ever been seriously contemplated, which reflects Washington's deep-seated ambivalence about a leftward-tilting nationalist [who] often depicted the United States as a citadel of evil and the root of many of his country's problems. … Despite much blood on the army's hands, United States diplomats consider it a vital counterweight to Father Aristide, whose class-struggle rhetoric … threatened or antagonized traditional power centers at home and abroad.&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;During this period, numerous nocturnal arrivals of US Air Force planes in Port-au-Prince were reported in Haitian clandestine newspapers. Whether this had any connection to the leaking embargo may never be known. When asked, a US embassy official said the flights were &quot;routine&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA's Clients<br /> <br /> I. From the mid-1980s until at least the 1991 coup, key members of Haiti's military and political leadership were on the Agency's payroll. These payments were defended by Washington officials and a congressman on the House Intelligence Committee as being a normal and necessary part of gathering intelligence in a foreign country.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt; This argument, which has often been used to defend CIA bribery, ignores the simple reality (illustrated repeatedly in this book) that payments bring more than information, they bring influence and control; and when one looks at the anti-democratic and cruelty levels of the Haitian military during its period of being bribees, one has to wonder what the CIA's influence was. Moreover, one has to wonder what the defenders of the payments would have thought upon learning during the cold war that congressmen and high officials in the White House were on the KGB payroll. Even after the supposed end of the cold war, we must consider the shocked reaction to the case of CIA officer Aldrich Ames. He was, after all, only accepting money from the KGB for information. In any event, money paid by the CIA to these men, as well as to the groups mentioned below, was obviously available to finance their murderous purposes. When Qaddafi of Libya did this, it was called &quot;supporting terrorism&quot;.<br /> <br /> Did the information provided the CIA by the Haitian leaders include advance notice of the coup? No evidence of this has emerged, but four decades of known CIA behavior would make it eminently likely. And if so, did the Agency do anything to stop it? What did the CIA do with its knowledge of the drug trafficking which the Haitian powers-that-be, including Baby Doc, were long involved in?&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> II. In 1986 the CIA created a new organization, the National Intelligence Service (SIN). The unit was staffed solely by officers of the Haitian army, widely perceived as an unprofessional force with a marked tendency toward corruption. SIN was purportedly created to fight the cocaine trade, though SIN officers themselves engaged in the trafficking, and the trade was aided and abetted by some of the Haitian officials also on the Agency payroll.<br /> <br /> SIN functioned as an instrument of political terror, persecuting and torturing Father Aristide's supporters and other &quot;subversives&quot;, and using its CIA training and devices to spy on them; in short, much like the intelligence services created by the CIA elsewhere in the world during the previous several decades, including Greece, South Korea, Iran, and Uruguay; and created in Haiti presumably for the same reason: to give the Agency a properly trained and equipped, and loyal, instrument of control. At the same time that SIN was receiving between half and one million dollars a year in equipment, training and financial support, Congress was withholding about $1.5 million in aid for the Haitian military because of its abuses of human rights.<br /> <br /> Aristide had tried, without success, to shut SIN down. The CIA told his people that the United States would see to it that the organization was reformed, but that its continued operation was beyond question. Then came the coup. Afterwards, American officials say, the CIA cut its ties to SIN, but in 1992 a US Drug Enforcement Administration document described SIN in the present tense as &quot;a covert counternarcotics intelligence unit which often works in unison with the C.I.A.&quot; In September of the same year, work by the DEA in Haiti led to the arrest of a SIN officer on cocaine charges by the Haitian authorities.&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> III. Amongst the worst violators of human rights in Haiti was the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), actually a front for the army. The paramilitary group spread deep fear amongst the Haitian people with its regular murders, public beatings, arson raids on poor neighborhoods, and mutilation by machete. FRAPH's leader, Emannuel Constant, went onto the CIA payroll in early 1992 and, according to the Agency, this relation ended in mid-1994. Whatever truth lies in that claim, the fact is that by October the American Embassy in Haiti was openly acknowledging that Constant—now a born-again democrat—was on its payroll.<br /> <br /> The FRAPH leader says that soon after Aristide's ouster an officer of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, Col. Patrick Collins, pushed him to organize a front that could balance the Aristide movement and do intelligence work against it. This resulted in Constant forming what later evolved into FRAPH in August 1993. Members of FRAPH were working, and perhaps still are, for two social service agencies funded by the Agency for International Development, one of which maintains sensitive files on the movements of the Haitian poor.<br /> <br /> Constant—who has told in detail of having attended, on invitation, the Clinton inauguration balls—was the organizer of the dockside mob that, on 11 October 1993, chased off a ship carrying US military personnel arriving to retrain the Haitian military under the UN agreement (see below). This was while Constant was on the CIA payroll. But that incident may have been something out of the Agency's false-bottom world. Did Washington really want to challenge the military government? Or only appear to do so? Constant actually informed the United States beforehand of what was going to happen, then went on the radio to urge all &quot;patriotic Haitians&quot; to join the massive demonstrations at the dock. The United States did nothing before or after but allow its ship to turn tail and run.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the summer of 1993, United Nations-mediated talks on Governors Island in New York between Aristide, living in exile in Washington, and the Haitian military government, resulted in an accord whereby the leader of the junta, Gen. Cédras, would step down on 15 October and allow Aristide to return to Haiti as president on 30 October. But the dates came and went without the military fulfilling their promise, meanwhile not pausing in their assaults upon Aristide supporters, including the September murder of a prominent Aristide confidant who was dragged out of church and shot in full view of UN officials, and the assassination a month later of Aristide's justice minister, Guy Malary.<br /> <br /> Pleased with its &quot;foreign-policy-success&quot; in securing the agreement in New York, the Clinton administration seemingly was willing to tolerate any and all outrages.<br /> <br /> But an adviser to Cédras declared afterward that when the military had agreed to negotiate, &quot;the whole thing was a smokescreen. We wanted to get the sanctions lifted. … But we never had any intention of really agreeing to Governors Island, as I'm sure everyone can now figure out for themselves. We were playing for time.&quot;<br /> <br /> Aristide himself never liked the UN plan, which granted amnesty to those who mounted the coup against him. He declared that the United States had pressured him to sign.&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Speaking to congressmen in early October, CIA official Brian Latell—who had previously praised Cédras and his rule—now characterized Aristide as mentally unbalanced. Was this perhaps amongst the information provided the CIA by their agents in the Haitian military? (During the election campaign, Aristide's detractors in Haiti had in fact spread the rumor that he was mentally ill.)&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt; Latell also testified that Aristide &quot;paid little mind to democratic principles&quot;, and had urged supporters to murder their opponents with a technique called &quot;necklacing&quot;, in which gasoline-soaked tires are placed around victims' necks and set afire. Neither Latell nor anyone else has provided any evidence of Aristide engaging in an explicit provocation, although this is not to say that necklacing was not carried out as an act of revenge by Haiti's masses, as it was in 1986 following the ouster of Duvalier.<br /> <br /> At the same time, congressmen were exposed to a document purporting to describe Aristide's medical history, claiming that he had been treated in a mental hospital in Canada in 1980, diagnosed as manic depressive and prescribed large quantities of drugs. This claim was described in the media as emanating from the CIA, but the Agency denied this, saying it had seen the document before and had judged it to be a partial or complete fake, but adding that it still stood by its 1992 psychological profile of Aristide which concluded that the deposed president was possibly unstable.<br /> <br /> The claims were denied by Aristide and his spokesman and independent checks with the hospital in Canada showed no record of his being a patient there. Nonetheless, congressional opponents of Aristide now had a rationale for trying to limit the extent of US support to him, and some of them argued that the United States should not embroil itself in Haiti on behalf of such a leader.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> &quot;He [Latell] made it the most simplistic, one-dimensional message he could—murderer, psychopath,&quot; said an administration official familiar with Latell's briefing.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt; (In 1960, the Eisenhower administration had regarded another black foreign leader who didn't buy into Pax Americana, Patrice Lumumba, as &quot;unstable&quot;, &quot;irrational, almost psychotic&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt; Nelson Mandela was often described in a similar fashion by his opponents. Some of those who make such charges may indeed believe that conspicuously rejecting the established order is a sign of insanity.)<br /> <br /> The junta, which was concerned that President Clinton might order military action against Haiti, was pleased. A spokesman observed that &quot;after the information about Aristide got out from our friends in the CIA, and Congress started talking about how bad he is, we figured the chances of an invasion were gone.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Though the Clinton administration publicly repudiated the claims about Aristide's mental health in no uncertain terms, it nonetheless continued to negotiate with Haiti's military leaders, a policy which stunned supporters of the Catholic priest. &quot;Apparently,&quot; marveled Robert White, a former US ambassador to El Salvador and an unpaid adviser to Aristide, &quot;nothing will shake the touching faith the Clinton administration has in the Haitian military's bona fides.&quot;<br /> <br /> Aristide supporters asserted that such faith reflected long and continuing relations between American military officers and Haiti's top commanders, Cédras and Francois, the police chief, both of whom had received military training in the United States. Time magazine suggested that &quot;the U.S. attitude toward some of Haiti's henchmen is not as hostile as American rhetoric would indicate.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> This attitude was commented upon by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights:&lt;blockquote&gt;Faced with [Aristide's] talk of radical reform, an old and deep-rooted American instinct has taken hold. Repeated in countless countries, both during and after the Cold War, it is this: When in doubt, look to the military as the only institutional guarantee of stability and order.&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;It had indeed been to the military that the Reagan and Bush administrations had looked to provide these qualities, praising the sincerity of the Haitian army's commitment to democracy on several occasions.&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Clinton administration was as hypocritical on the Haiti question as were its predecessors, exemplified by its choice for Secretary of Commerce—Ron Brown had been a well-paid and highly-active lobbyist for Baby-Doc Duvalier.&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt; Cédras's spit-in-the-face deceit on the Governors Island accord appeared to bother Washington officials much less than the fact that Aristide would not agree to form a government with the military.&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt; By February 1994, it was an open secret that Washington would as soon be rid of the Haitian priest as it would the Haitian strongmen. The Los Angeles Times reported: &quot;Officially it [the US] supports the restoration of Aristide. In private, however, many officials say that Aristide … is so politically radical that the military and the island's affluent elite will never allow him to return to power.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Ideologically, if not emotionally, the antipathy of the administration's senior officials to Aristide's politics was hardly less than that of his country's ruling class. Moreover, the predominant reason the strongmen were in disfavor in Washington's eyes had little to do with their dreadful human-rights record per se, but rather that the repression in Haiti was provoking people to flee by the tens of thousands, causing the United States an enormous logistical headache and image problem in the Caribbean and Florida, as well as costing hundreds of millions of dollars.<br /> <br /> The gulf between the administration and Aristide widened yet further when Secretary of State Warren Christopher announced that a group of Haitian parliamentarians, whom he characterized as &quot;centrists&quot;, had put forth a plan which would pardon the army officers who engineered the coup, and which called for Aristide to name a prime minister, who in turn would create a cabinet acceptable to Aristide's domestic foes. These steps, the plan anticipated, would establish a coalition government and clear the way for Aristide's eventual return to office.<br /> <br /> Aristide, who had not been consulted at all, flatly rejected the proposal that would have allowed some awful villains to escape punishment, made no mention of a date or timetable for his restoration, contained no guarantee that he would ever be able to return to power at all, and would require him to share power with a politically incompatible prime minister and some cabinet members of similar ilk.<br /> <br /> Christopher added that any strengthening of the embargo against Haiti would depend on Aristide's acceptance of the plan. The United States, he said, was wary of tougher sanctions because they would increase the suffering in Haiti.&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt; At the same time, the State Department's chief Haiti expert, Michael Kozak, blamed &quot;extremists on both sides&quot; for scuttling the plan. This, said a Haitian supporter of Aristide, &quot;created a moral equivalency between Aristide and the military. That put Aristide on the same level as the killers.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Bush administration, employing the UN and the OAS as well, had pressed similar proposals and ultimatums upon the beleaguered Aristide on several occasions. His failure to embrace them had stamped him as &quot;intransigent&quot; amongst some officials and media.&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Aristide's rejection of the plan can perhaps be better understood if one considers whether Washington would ever insist to the Cuban exiles in Miami that if they wanted US support for their return to Cuba, they would have to agree to a coalition government with Castroites, or that Iraqian exiles would have to learn to live with Saddam Hussein. The repeated insistence that Aristide accept a &quot;broad-based&quot; government, or a government of &quot;national consensus&quot; is ironic coming from the Bush and Clinton administrations, in which one cannot find an open left-liberal, much less a leftist or socialist, scarcely even a plain genuine liberal, in any high-level position. Nor has the severe suffering of the Cuban people from the American embargo had any noticeable effect upon the policy of either administration.<br /> <br /> It soon developed that the plan, which had been labeled &quot;a bipartisan Haitian legislative initiative&quot; had actually originated with a State Department memo; worse, the Haitian input had come from supporters of Aristide's overthrow, including Police Chief Francois himself.&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> A further symptom of the administration's estrangement from Aristide was a report from the US Embassy in Haiti to the State Department in April. While conceding widespread and grave violations of human rights by the military regime, the report claimed that Aristide &quot;and his followers consistently manipulate and even fabricate human-rights abuses as a propaganda tool.&quot; The Aristide camp was described as &quot;hardline ideological&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;47&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Congressional liberals, particularly the Congressional Black Caucus, were becoming disturbed. In the midst of their growing criticism and pressure, State Department Special Envoy to Haiti Lawrence Pezzullo, by this time openly described as the author of the &quot;legislative&quot; plan, resigned. A week later several congressmen, attended by wide media coverage, were arrested in a protest outside the White House.<br /> <br /> By early May, given the congressional pressure, the Grand Haitian Plan discredited and abandoned, the sanctions an international joke, the refugees still washing up on Florida shores, while many thousands of others were filling up Guantánamo base in Cuba, the Clinton administration was forced to the conclusion that—though they still didn't like this man Jean-Bertrand Aristide with his non-centrist thoughts—they were unable to create anything that smelled even faintly like a rose without restoring him to the presidency. Bill Clinton had painted himself into a corner. During the campaign in 1992, he had denounced Bush's policy of returning refugees to Haiti as &quot;cruel&quot;. &quot;My Administration,&quot; he declared, &quot;will stand up for democracy&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;48&lt;/sup&gt; Since that time the word &quot;Haiti&quot; could not cross his lips without being accompanied by at least three platitudes about &quot;democracy&quot;.<br /> <br /> Something had to be done or another &quot;foreign-policy failure&quot; would be added to the list the Republicans were drooling over in this election year … but what? Over the next four months, the world was treated to a continuous flip-flop—numerous permutations concerning sanctions, handling of the refugees, how much time the junta had to pack up and leave (as much as six months), what kind of punishment or amnesty for the murderous military and police, whether the US would invade … this time we mean it … now we really mean it … &quot;our patience has run out&quot;, for the third time … &quot;we will not rule out military force&quot;, for the fifth time … the junta was not terribly intimidated.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, an OAS human-rights team was accusing the Haiti regime of &quot;murder, rape, kidnaping, detention and torture in a systematic campaign to terrorize Haitians who want the return of democracy and President Jean-Bertrand Aristide&quot;, and Amnesty International was reporting the same.&lt;sup&gt;49&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Time was passing, and each day meant less time for Aristide to govern Haiti. He had already lost almost three of the five years of his term, plus the eight months he had served.<br /> <br /> By the summer, what Bill Clinton wanted desperately was to get the junta out of power without having to deal with the thorny question of congressional approval, without a US invasion, without any American casualties, without going to war on behalf of a socialist priest. If Washington's heart had really been set on the return to power of Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the CIA could have been directed to destabilize the Haitian government any time during the previous three years, using its tried and trusted bribery, blackmail, and forged documents, its disinformation, rumors, and paranoia, its weapons, mercenaries, and assassinations, its multinational economic strangleholds, its instant little armies, its selective little air assaults imbuing the right amount of terror in the right people at the right time … the Agency had done so with much stronger and more stable governments; governments with much more public support, from Iran and Guatemala, to Ecuador and Brazil, to Ghana and Chile.<br /> <br /> Much of what was needed in Haiti was already in place, beginning with the CIA's own creation, the National Intelligence Service, as well as a large network of informants and paid assets within other security forces such as FRAPH, and knowledge of who the reliable military officers were.&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt; US intelligence even had a complete inventory of Haitian weaponry.&lt;sup&gt;51&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The failure of Clinton to make use of this option is particularly curious in light of the fact that many members of Congress and some of the administration's own foreign policy specialists were urging him to do so for months.&lt;sup&gt;52&lt;/sup&gt; Finally, in September 1994, officials revealed that the CIA had &quot;launched a major covert operation this month to try to topple Haiti's military regime … but so far the attempt has failed&quot;. One official said the effort &quot;was too late to make a difference&quot;. The administration, we were told, had spent months debating what kind of actions to undertake, and whether they would be legal or not.&lt;sup&gt;53&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Or they could have made the famous &quot;one phone call&quot;. Like they meant it.<br /> <br /> Betrayal<br /> <br /> &quot;The most violent regime in our hemisphere&quot; … &quot;campaign of rape, torture and mutilation, people starved&quot; … &quot;executing children, raping women, killing priests&quot; … &quot;slaying of Haitian orphans&quot; suspected of &quot;harboring sympathy toward President Aristide, for no other reason than he ran an orphanage in his days as a parish priest&quot; … &quot;soldiers and policemen raping the wives and daughters of suspected political dissidents—young girls, 13, 16 years old—people slain and mutilated with body parts left as warnings to terrify others; children forced to watch as their mothers' faces are slashed with machetes&quot; …&lt;sup&gt;54&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Thus spaketh William Jefferson Clinton to the American people to explain why he was seeking to &quot;restore democratic government in Haiti&quot;.<br /> <br /> The next thing we knew, the Haitian leaders were told that they could take four weeks to resign, they would not be charged with any crimes, they could remain in the country if they wished, they could run for the presidency if they wished, they could retain all their assets no matter how acquired. Those who chose exile were paid large amounts of money by the United States to lease their Haitian properties, any improvements made to remain free of charge; two jets were chartered to fly them with all their furniture to the country of their choice, transportation free, housing and living expenses paid for the next year for all family members and dozens of relatives and friends, totaling millions of dollars.&lt;sup&gt;55&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The reason Bill Clinton the president (as opposed, perhaps, to Bill Clinton the human being) could behave like this is that he—as would be the case with any other man sitting in the White House, like Jimmy Carter who told Cédras that he was a man of honor and that he had great respect for him—was not actually repulsed by Cédras and company, for they posed no ideological barrier to the United States continuing the economic and strategic control of Haiti it's maintained for most of the century. Unlike Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a man who only a year earlier had declared: &quot;I still think capitalism is a mortal sin.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;56&lt;/sup&gt; Or Fidel Castro in Cuba. Lest there be doubt here, it should be noted that shortly before Clinton made the remarks cited above, Vice President Gore declared on television that Castro has a worse record on human rights than the military leaders of Haiti.&lt;sup&gt;57&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The atrocities of the Haitian government were simply trotted out by President Clinton to build support for military intervention, just as he cited the junta's drug trafficking; after all these years, this was now discovered, as Noriega's long-time dealings were finally condemned when it was time for a military intervention into Panama.<br /> <br /> But the worst of the betrayal was yet to come.<br /> <br /> Per the above agreement with Raoul Cédras, US armed forces began arriving in Haiti 19 September to clear the way for Aristide's arrival in mid-October. The Americans were welcomed with elation by the Haitian people, and the GIs soon disarmed, arrested, or shot dead some of the worst dangers to life and limb and instigators of chaos in Haitian society. But first they set up tanks and vehicles mounted with machine guns to block off the streets leading to the residential neighborhoods of the morally repugnant elite, the rich being Washington's natural allies.&lt;sup&gt;58&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Jean-Bertrand Aristide's reception was a joyous celebration filled with optimism. However, unbeknownst to his adoring followers, while they were regaining Aristide, they may have lost Aristidism. The Los Angeles Times reported:&lt;blockquote&gt;In a series of private meetings, Administration officials admonished Aristide to put aside the rhetoric of class warfare … and seek instead to reconcile Haiti's rich and poor. The Administration also urged Aristide to stick closely to free-market economics and to abide by the Caribbean nation's constitution—which gives substantial political power to the Parliament while imposing tight limits on the presidency. … Administration officials have urged Aristide to reach out to some of his political opponents in setting up his new government … to set up a broad-based coalition regime. … the Administration has made it clear to Aristide that if he fails to reach a consensus with Parliament, the United States will not try to prop up his regime.&lt;sup&gt;59&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Almost every aspect of Aristide's plans for resuming power—from taxing the rich to disarming the military—has been examined by the U.S. officials with whom the Haitian president meets daily and by officials from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other aid organizations. The finished package clearly reflects their priorities. … Aristide obviously has toned down the liberation theology and class-struggle rhetoric that was his signature before he was exiled to Washington.&lt;sup&gt;60&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Tutored by leading Clinton administration officials, &quot;Aristide has embraced the principles of democracy [sic], national reconciliation and market economics with a zeal that Washington would like to see in all leaders of developing nations.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;61&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Aristide returned to Haiti 15 October 1994, three years and two weeks after being deposed. The United States might well have engineered his return under the same terms—or much better of course—two to three years earlier, but Washington officials kept believing that the policy of returning refugees to Haiti, and when that was unfeasible, lodging them at Guantánamo, would make the problems go away—the refugee problem, and the Jean-Bertrand Aristide problem. Faced ultimately with an Aristide returning to power, Clinton demanded and received—and then made sure to publicly announce—the Haitian president's guarantee that he would not try to remain in office to make up for the time lost in exile. Clinton of course called this &quot;democracy&quot;, although it represented a partial legitimization of the coup.&lt;sup&gt;62&lt;/sup&gt; As can be deduced from the above compilation of news reports, this was by no means the only option Aristide effectively surrendered.<br /> <br /> His preference for the all-important position of prime minister—who appoints the cabinet—was Claudette Werleigh, a woman very much in harmony with his thinking, but he was forced to rule her out because of strong opposition to her &quot;leftist bent&quot; from political opponents who argued that she would seriously hurt efforts to obtain foreign aid and investment. Instead, Aristide wound up appointing Smarck Michel, one of Washington's leading choices.&lt;sup&gt;63&lt;/sup&gt; At the same time, the Clinton administration and the international financial institutions (IFIs) were carefully watching the Haitian president's appointments for finance minister, planning minister, and head of the Central Bank.&lt;sup&gt;64&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Two of the men favored by Washington to fill these positions had met in Paris on 22 August with the IFIs to arrange the terms of an agreement under which Haiti would receive about $700 million of investment and credit. Typical of such agreements for the Third World, it calls for a drastic reduction of state involvement in the economy and an enlarged role for the private sector through privatization of public services. Haiti's international function will be to serve the transnational corporations by opening itself up further to foreign investment and commerce, with a bare minimum of tariffs or other import restrictions, and offering itself, primarily in the assembly industries, as a source of cheap export labor—extremely cheap labor, little if any increase in the current 10 to 25 cents per hour wages, distressingly inadequate for keeping body and soul together and hunger at bay; a way of life promoted for years to investors by the US Agency for International Development and other US government agencies.&lt;sup&gt;65&lt;/sup&gt; (The assembly industries are regarded by Washington as important enough to American firms that in the midst of the sanctions against Haiti, the US announced that it was &quot;fine-tuning&quot; the embargo to permit these firms to import and export so they could resume work.)&lt;sup&gt;66&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The agreement further emphasizes that the power of the Parliament is to be strengthened. The office of the president is not even mentioned. Neither is the word &quot;justice&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;67&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As of this writing (late October 1994), Aristide's dreams of a living wage and civilized working conditions for the Haitian masses, a social security pension system, decent education, housing, health care, public transportation, etc. appear to be little more than that—dreams. What appears to be certain is that the rich will grow richer, and the poor will remain at the very bottom of Latin America's heap. Under Aristide's successor—whomever the United States is already grooming—it can only get worse.<br /> <br /> Aristide the radical reformer knew all this, and at certain points during September and October he may have had the option to get a much better deal, for Clinton needed him almost as much as he needed Clinton. If Aristide had threatened to go public, and noisily so, about the betrayal in process, spelling out all the sleazy details so that the whole world could get beyond the headlined platitudes and understand what a sham Bill Clinton's expressed concerns about &quot;democracy&quot; and the welfare of the Haitian people were, the American president would have been faced with an embarrassment of scandalous proportion.<br /> <br /> But Aristide the priest saw the world in a different light:&lt;blockquote&gt;Let us compare political power with theological power. On the one hand, we see those in control using the traditional tools of politics: weapons, money, dictatorship, coups d'état, repression. On the other hand, we see tools that were used 2,000 years ago: solidarity, resistance, courage, determination, and the fight for dignity and might, respect and power. We see transcendence. We see faith in God, who is justice. The question we now ask is this: which is stronger, political power or theological power? I am confident that the latter is stronger. I am also confident that the two forces can converge, and that their convergence will make the critical difference.&lt;sup&gt;68&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> == The American Empire: 1992 to present ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;We assert that no nation can long endure half republic and half empire, and we warn the American people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home.&lt;/blockquote&gt;—Democratic Party (U.S.) National Platform, 1900<br /> <br /> Following its bombing of Iraq in 1991, the United States wound up with military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.<br /> <br /> Following its bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the United States wound up with military bases in Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia.<br /> <br /> Following its bombing of Afghanistan in 2001-2, the United States wound up with military bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Yemen and Djibouti.<br /> <br /> Following its bombing and invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States wound up with Iraq.<br /> <br /> This is not very subtle foreign policy. Certainly not covert. The men who run the American Empire are not easily embarrassed.<br /> <br /> And that is the way the empire grows—a base in every neighborhood, ready to be mobilized to put down any threat to imperial rule, real or imagined. Fifty-eight years after World War II ended, the United States still has major bases in Germany and Japan; fifty years after the end of the Korean War, tens of thousands of American armed forces continue to be stationed in South Korea.<br /> <br /> &quot;America will have a continuing interest and presence in Central Asia of a kind that we could not have dreamed of before,&quot; US Secretary of State Colin Powell declared in February 2002.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Later that year, the US Defense Department announced: &quot;The United States Military is currently deployed to more locations than it has been throughout history.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Equally unsubtle are the announcements beginning in the early 1990s—coinciding with the pivotal demise of the Soviet Union—and continuing to the present, trumpeting Washington's desire, means, and intention for world domination, while assuring the world of the noble purposes behind this crusade. These declarations have been regularly put forth in policy papers emanating from the White House and the Pentagon, as well as from government-appointed commissions and think tanks closely associated with the national security establishment.<br /> <br /> Here is the voice of the empire in 1992:&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. … we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. … we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;1996:  &quot;We will engage terrestrial targets someday—ships, airplanes, land targets—from space. … We're going to fight in space. We're going to fight from space and we're going to fight into space.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;1997:  &quot;With regard to space dominance, we have it, we like it, and we're going to keep it.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;2000:  &quot;The new [military preparedness] standard is to maintain military superiority over all potential rivals and to prepare now for future military rivalries even if they can not yet be identified and their eventual arrival is only speculative. … Military requirements have become detached from net assessments of actual security threats. Generic wars and generic capabilities are proffered as the basis for planning. … Particularities of real threat scenarios have become secondary to the generalized need to show raw U.S. power across the globe.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;2001:  &quot;The presence of American forces in critical regions around the world is the visible expression of the extent of America's status as a superpower and as the guarantor of liberty, peace and stability.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;2001:  &quot;If we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do very well, and our children will sing great songs about us years from now.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;2001:  The Bush administration's &quot;Nuclear Posture Review&quot;, directing the military to prepare contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries—China, Russia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Syria—and to build smaller nuclear weapons for use in certain battlefield situations.&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;2002:  In September, the White House issued its &quot;National Security Strategy&quot;, which declared:&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States. … America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed. … We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed. … We cannot let our enemies strike first. … To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Preemptiveness is essentially the rationale imperial Japan, without being overly paranoid, used to justify its attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and which Nazi Germany, as a sham pretext, used to justify its invasion of Poland in 1939.<br /> <br /> To one observer, the meaning of the &quot;National Security Strategy&quot; was this:&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;It dashes the aspirations of those who had hoped that the world was moving toward a system of international law that would allow for the peaceful resolution of conflicts, through covenants and courts. In place of this, a single power that shuns covenants and courts has proclaimed that it intends to dominate the world militarily, intervening preemptively where necessary to exorcise threats. … Those who want a world in which no power is supreme and in which laws and covenants are used to settle conflicts will begin a new debate—about how to contend with imperial America.&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;So intoxicated with the idea of dominance is the US national security state that when it announced, in November 2002, the formation of a public affairs group that would travel to battlefields &quot;to interact with journalists, assist U.S. commanders and send news and pictures back to headquarters for dissemination,&quot; it described the operation as an attempt at &quot;information dominance&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The Cold War is Over. Long live the Cold War.<br /> <br /> It is remarkable indeed that in the 21st century the government of the United States is still going around dropping huge amounts of exceedingly powerful explosives upon the heads of innocent and defenseless people. It wasn't supposed to be this way.<br /> <br /> In the mid 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms instituted the beginning of the end for the Soviet police state. In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, and people all over Eastern Europe were joyfully celebrating &quot;a new day&quot;. The United States then joined this celebration by invading and bombing Panama, only weeks after the Wall fell. At the same time, the US was shamelessly intervening in the election in Nicaragua to defeat a leftist government.<br /> <br /> Soon thereafter, South Africa freed Nelson Mandela and apartheid began to crumble, and before the year 1990 was over Haiti held its first free election ever and chose a genuine progressive as president. It seemed like anything was possible, optimism was as widespread as pessimism is today.<br /> <br /> However, when Bulgaria and Albania, &quot;newly freed from the grip of communism&quot;, as the American media would put it, dared to elect governments not acceptable to Washington, Washington just stepped in and overthrew those governments.<br /> <br /> The same period found the US bombing Iraq and its people, 40 days and nights without mercy, for no good or honest reason.<br /> <br /> And that was that for our hope for a different and better world.<br /> <br /> But the American leaders were not through. In 1993 they were off attacking Somalia, trying to rearrange the country's political map, more bombing and killing.<br /> <br /> They intervened to put down dissident movements in Peru, Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador, just as if it were the Cold War in the 1950s in Latin America, and the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, still doing it in the 1990s, and into the new century.<br /> <br /> In the latter part of the 1990s, Washington could be found engaged in serious meddling in the elections in territories which had once been part of the Soviet sphere: Russia, Mongolia, and Bosnia.<br /> <br /> In 1999, they bombed the people of Serbia and Kosovo for 78 seemingly endless days, the culmination of Washington's master plan of breaking up the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, demonized as &quot;the last of the Communists&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And once again, in the fall of 2001, grossly and openly intervened in an election in Nicaragua to prevent the left from winning.<br /> <br /> At the same time, bombarding Afghanistan, and in all likelihood killing more innocent civilians than were killed in the United States on 11 September 2001,&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; as well as taking the lives of countless &quot;combatants&quot; (i.e., anyone who defended against the invasion of the land they were living in). Most of the so-called &quot;terrorists&quot; of foreign nationality residing in Afghanistan at the time, including those training at al Qaeda camps, had come there to fight against the Soviet forces or to help the Taliban in their later civil war; for them these were religious missions, nothing to do with terrorism or the United States. Amongst the thousands of victims of the American invasion, not one has been identified as having a connection to the events of that tragic day. The 11 September terrorists had chosen symbolic buildings to attack and the United States then chose a symbolic country to retaliate against.&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> While continuing to savage Afghanistan in 2002, Washington found time to lend its indispensable support to a plot to overthrow Hugo Chavez and his populist government in Venezuela, Chavez having made it abundantly clear that Venezuela was not prepared to become a foreign outpost of the empire.&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> And all these years, still keeping a choke hold on Cuba; still, after a century of imperialist occupation, refusing to vacate Guantanamo Base in Cuba, converting it in 2002 to a modern Devil's Island for the illegal and grim imprisonment of men, as well as several children, kidnapped in various localities of the world in the so-called War on Terrorism.<br /> <br /> There was none of the &quot;peace dividend&quot; that had been promised for the end of the Cold War, not for Americans nor for the rest of the world.<br /> <br /> What do we have here? The American people had been taught for nearly half a century that the Cold War, including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the huge military budgets, all the US invasions and overthrows of governments—the ones they knew about—they were taught that this was all to fight the same menace: The International Communist Conspiracy, headquarters in Moscow.<br /> <br /> But then the Soviet Union was dissolved. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved as well. The East European satellites became independent. The former communists even became capitalists.<br /> <br /> And nothing changed in American foreign policy.<br /> <br /> Even NATO remained, NATO which had been created—so we were told—to protect Western Europe against a Soviet invasion, even NATO remained, ever increasing in size and military power, a treaty on wheels which could be rolled in any direction to suit Washington's current policy—acting as a US surrogate ruling over the Balkans as a protectorate, invoking its charter to justify its members joining the US in the Afghanistan invasion.<br /> <br /> And as Russia closed down its Cold War bases in Eastern Europe, Vietnam and Cuba, the United States was opening military bases in the territories of the former Soviet Union and in other regions of the world. While Russia closed down its radio intelligence station at Lourdes, Cuba, the United States was building a powerful communications listening station in Latvia, on the Russian border, as part of Washington's worldwide eavesdropping system.<br /> <br /> The whole thing had been a con game. The Soviet Union and something called communism per se had not been the object of Washington's global attacks. There had never been an International Communist Conspiracy. The enemy was, and remains, any government or movement, or even individual, that stands in the way of the expansion of the American Empire; by whatever name the US gives to the enemy—communist, rogue state, drug trafficker, terrorist …<br /> <br /> Is the United States Against Terrorism?<br /> <br /> Are we now to believe that the American Empire is against terrorism? What does one call a man who blows up an airplane killing 73 civilians for political reasons; who attempts assassinations against several diplomats; who fires cannons at ships docked in American ports; who places bombs in numerous commercial and diplomatic buildings in the US and abroad? Dozens of such acts. His name is Orlando Bosch, he's Cuban and he lives in Miami, unmolested by the authorities. The city of Miami once declared a day in his honor—Dr. Orlando Bosch Day.&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; He was freed from prison in Venezuela in 1988, where he had been held for the airplane bombing, partly because of pressure from the American ambassador at the time, Otto Reich, who in 2002 was appointed to a high position in the State Department by President Bush.<br /> <br /> After Bosch returned to the US in 1988, the Justice Department condemned him as a totally violent terrorist and was all set to deport him, but that was blocked by President Bush, the first, with the help of son Jeb Bush in Florida.&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt; So is President Bush, the second, and his family against terrorism? Well, yes, they're against those terrorists who are not allies of the empire.<br /> <br /> The plane that Bosch bombed, in 1976, was a Cuban plane. He's wanted in Cuba for that and a host of other serious crimes, and the Cubans have asked Washington to extradite him. To Cuba he's like Osama bin Laden is to the United States. But the US has refused. Imagine the reaction in the United States if bin Laden showed up in Havana and the Cubans refused to turn him over. Imagine the reaction in the United States if Havana proclaimed Osama bin Laden Day?<br /> <br /> Washington's commitment to fighting terrorism can be further questioned in light of its support of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo who comprised the Kosovo Liberation Army. The KLA, in furtherance of its political-ethnic agenda, have carried out numerous terrorist attacks for years in various parts of the Balkans, but they've been US allies because they've attacked people out of favor with Washington. This despite the fact that the KLA has had ideological and personal ties to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, and despite being categorized as a terrorist organization by the US State Department.&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Moreover, in the 1980s and 90s, anti-communist Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians resident in the United States financed and instigated their countrymen abroad in bombings and other attacks on their governments and citizens, hoping to destabilize those governments; at times they traveled from the US to those countries to carry out attacks themselves; these actions—terrorism by definition—were carried out with the tacit approval of the American government, which turned a blind eye to the Neutrality Act, which prohibits American citizens or residents from using force to overthrow a foreign government.&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> George W. Bush has also spoken out vehemently against harboring terrorists—&quot;those who harbor terrorists threaten the national security of the United States&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt; Does he really mean that?<br /> <br /> We must ask: Which country harbors more terrorists than the United States? Orlando Bosch is only one of the numerous anti-Castro Cubans in Miami who have carried out many hundreds of terrorist acts, in the US, in Cuba, and elsewhere; all kinds of arson attacks, assassination attempts and bombings. They have been harbored in the US in safety for decades; as have numerous other friendly terrorists, torturers and human rights violators from Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, Indonesia and elsewhere, all allies of the empire.&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The CIA was busy looking for terrorists in caves in the mountains of Afghanistan at the same time as the Agency sat in bars in Miami having drinks with terrorists.<br /> <br /> The Imperial Mafia<br /> <br /> What are we to make of all this? How are we to understand United States foreign policy? Well, if one were to write a book called &quot;The American Empire for Dummies&quot;, page one should say: Don't ever look for the moral factor. US foreign policy has no moral factor built into its DNA. One must clear one's mind of that baggage which only gets in the way of seeing beyond the clichés and the platitudes.<br /> <br /> It's rather difficult for most Americans and Americophiles throughout the world to accept such a notion. They see American leaders on television smiling and laughing, telling jokes; they see them with their families, hear them speak of God and love, of peace and law, of democracy and freedom, of human rights and justice, and even baseball. These leaders know how to condemn the world's atrocities in no uncertain terms, with just the right words that decent people love to hear, just the right catch in their throat to show how moved they are. How can such people be monsters, how can they be called immoral?<br /> <br /> They have names like George and Dick and Donald, not a single Mohammed or Abdullah in the bunch. And they all speak English. People named Mohammed or Abdullah cut off people's hands as punishment for theft. Americans know that that's horrible. Americans are too civilized for that. But people named George and Dick and Donald drop cluster bombs on cities and villages, and the many unexploded ones become land mines, and before very long a child picks one up or steps on one of them and loses an arm or a leg, or both arms or both legs, and sometimes their eyesight; while the cluster bombs which actually explode create their own kind of high-velocity, jagged steel horror.<br /> <br /> But these men are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they just don't care … the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them … then they just don't care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home—the ones who make it back alive—with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things.<br /> <br /> When I was writing my book Rogue State during 1999-2000 I used the term &quot;American Empire&quot; with some caution because it was not in common usage and I wasn't sure the American public was quite ready for the idea. But I needn't have been so cautious. The idea of United States world hegemony has come to be discussed not only openly, but proudly, by supporters of the empire—prominent American intellectuals such as Dinesh D'Souza of the Hoover Institution, who wrote an article entitled &quot;In praise of American empire&quot;, in which he argued that &quot;America is the most magnanimous imperial power ever.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer has spoken of America's &quot;uniquely benign imperium.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Michael Hirsch, editor of Newsweek magazine, added to the chorus of self-love songs with this: &quot;U.S. allies must accept that some U.S. unilateralism is inevitable, even desirable. This mainly involves accepting the reality of America's supreme might—and truthfully, appreciating how historically lucky they are to be protected by such a relatively benign power.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Robert Kagan, a leading light of the American foreign policy establishment, had written earlier: &quot;And the truth is that the benevolent hegemony exercised by the United States is good for a vast portion of the world's population. It is certainly a better international arrangement than all realistic alternatives.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In this way are people who are wedded to American foreign policy able to live with it—they conclude, and proclaim, and may even believe, that such policies produce a humane force, an enlightened empire, bringing order, prosperity and civilized behavior everywhere, and if the US is forced to go to war it conducts it in a humanitarian manner.<br /> <br /> As the reader will have noted, the present book documents in minute detail the exact opposite, showing the remarkable violence and cruelty, the suppression of social change, and the many other abhorrent consequences of US interventions for people in every corner of the globe for half a century.<br /> <br /> The empire's scribes appear to be as amoral as the officials in the White House and the Pentagon. After all, the particles of depleted uranium are not lodging inside their lungs to radiate for the rest of their lives; the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are not bankrupting their economy and slashing their basic services; it's not their families wandering as refugees in the desert.<br /> <br /> The leaders of the empire, the imperial mafia—George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, et al.—and their scribes as well, are as fanatic and as fundamentalist as Osama bin Laden. Allah Akhbar! God is great! … USA! USA! USA!<br /> <br /> Kagan, an intellectual architect of an interventionism that seeks to impose a neo-conservative agenda upon the world, by any means necessary, has declared that the United States must refuse to abide by certain international conventions, like the international criminal court and the Kyoto accord on global warming. The US, he says, &quot;must support arms control, but not always for itself. It must live by a double standard.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> There is also Robert Cooper, a senior British diplomat and advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair. Cooper writes:&lt;blockquote&gt;The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards. When dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era—force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself.&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;His expression, &quot;every state for itself&quot;, can be better understood as any state not willing to accede to the agenda of the American Empire and the school bully's best friend in London.<br /> <br /> So there we have it. The double standard is in. The golden rule of do unto others as you would have others do unto you is out.<br /> <br /> The imperial mafia, and their court intellectuals like Kagan and Cooper, have a difficult time selling or defending their world vision on the basis of legal, moral, ethical or fairness standards. Thus it is that they decide they're not bound by such standards.<br /> <br /> The Liquid Gold, Again<br /> <br /> The American occupation of Afghanistan served the purpose of setting up a new government that would be sufficiently amenable to Washington's international objectives, including the installation of military bases and listening stations and the running of secure oil and gas pipelines through Afghanistan from the Caspian Sea region once the country had been pacified.<br /> <br /> For years, the American oil barons had had their eyes on the vast oil and gas reserves around the Caspian Sea, envisioning an Afghanistan-Pakistan route to the Indian Ocean. The oilmen had been quite open about this, giving frank testimony before Congress on the matter.&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> After Afghanistan, they turned their lust to the even greater oil reserves of Iraq. Once again, the American public had to be primed. Renowned espionage novelist John le Carré has observed: &quot;How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> As this is written in April 2003, the United States has just completed the bombing, invasion and takeover of the beleaguered Iraqi society, causing great destruction, killing thousands of innocent people—civilians and soldiers—in the process, leaving countless others maimed and otherwise ruined. &quot;It looks like it's a bombing of a city, but it isn't,&quot; declared US Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld, in defense of American &quot;precision bombing&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Washington looked at the results of its military actions, which others would call horrific, and labeled it &quot;liberation&quot;, because the Saddam Hussein regime had been overthrown.<br /> <br /> Prior to this, the imperial mafia had staged a year-long propaganda show to convince Americans and the world that the world's only superpower had no choice but to attack a sovereign and crippled country that had not attacked the United States, that had not threatened to attack the United States, that knew it would mean instant mass suicide for them if they attacked the United States. The imperial mafia's thesis was odd not simply because Iraq was not a threat—as the war's easy military victory demonstrated—but because the imperial mafia knew that Iraq was not a threat, at all. They'd been telling the world one story after another about why Iraq was a threat, an imminent threat, a threat increasing in danger with each passing day, a nuclear threat, a chemical threat, a biological threat, that Iraq was a terrorist state, that Iraq was tied to al Qaeda … only to have each story amount to nothing. They insisted repeatedly that Iraq must agree to having the UN weapons inspectors back in, and when Iraq agreed to this the imperial mafia declared that it wasn't good enough and proceeded to disparage the effort.<br /> <br /> For it was war that the White House yearned for, and it was war that they got, as they thumbed their nose at the greatest anti-war protests the world has ever seen as well as the sweeping opposition of the United Nations and humanity's hard-won concepts of international law and collaboration for a more peaceful planet. It remains to be seen whether and how the world body will survive being relegated to humiliating irrelevance on the most important question that it can face, the UN being an institution which declared in the very first sentence of its Charter the determination &quot;to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our life-time has brought untold sorrow to mankind.&quot;<br /> <br /> Did any of Washington's policy make sense? This sudden urgency of fighting a war in the absence of a fight? It did if one understood that the invasion was not about Sadaam Hussein's evilness or his alleged weapons of mass destruction. When weeks of US military occupation of Iraq failed to uncover any such weapons, the White House declared that WMD were not, after all, the real reason for the invasion. What they were really doing, they assured the world, was delivering various blows to terrorism. &quot;We were not lying,&quot; said one official. &quot;But it was just a matter of emphasis.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Amongst other reasons, the war was about the US replacing Hussein and installing a puppet government, as it did in Afghanistan; in this case an American occupation government, enabling American oil companies to move into Iraq to enjoy a laissez-faire feast; at the same time opening the country to all manner of transnational corporations as Iraq takes its place in the new world order of globalized economies, and the American Empire adds another country and a few more bases from which to further control and remake the Middle East in the imperial mafia's endearing amoral style, for which, presumably, the children of the region will sing great songs in years to come.&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> US agreement to allow the UN weapons inspectors to return to Iraq in December 2002 had been no more than a bluff to cater to unexpectedly strong world opposition to Washington's planned invasion. Three months of inspections before the invasion began turned up nothing in the way of unambiguously prohibited weapons. Over the course of about seven years in the 1990s the UN inspectors had found and destroyed huge amounts of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq. Scott Ritter, chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, stated in 2002 that:&lt;blockquote&gt;Since 1998 Iraq has been fundamentally disarmed; 90-95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been verifiably eliminated. This includes all of the factories used to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and long-range ballistic missiles; the associated equipment of these factories; and the vast majority of the products coming out of these factories.&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In the same period, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed El Baradei, reported that his agency had:&lt;blockquote&gt;dismantled extensive nuclear weapons-related facilities. We neutralized Iraq's nuclear program. We confiscated its weapon-usable material. We destroyed, removed or rendered harmless all its facilities and equipment relevant to nuclear weapons production.&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;This, then, was the alarming threat of Iraq which had to be wiped out, a society already terribly enfeebled by 12 years of sanctions, which US National Security Advisor Samuel Berger called &quot;the most pervasive sanctions ever imposed on a nation in the history of mankind&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> US Foreign Policy: A Laboratory for Growing the Anti-American Terrorism Virus&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;We leveled it. There was nobody left, just dirt and dust.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;—US Army Major Gen. Franklin Hagenbeck, speaking of the destruction of three villages in the Shahikot Valley in Afghanistan.&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The American bombing of Afghanistan, begun on 7 October 2001 and followed by a military occupation of much of the country, gave rise to dozens of terrorist actions against American individuals and institutions, as well as Christian and other Western targets, in South Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere; a dozen or so attacks in Pakistan alone (including the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt;) and the most disastrous one in Bali, Indonesia, on 12 October, which killed more than 180 people, almost all Australians, Americans, or British; the two leading suspects arrested in that case each stated that he had acted in retaliation for the US attack on Afghanistan and Muslims.&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The subsequent attack on Iraq—a war nobody wanted except the imperial mafia—may have recruited thousands more throughout the Muslim world as the next generation of terrorists to carry out the jihad against The Great Satan.<br /> <br /> Has the American power elite learned anything from being the frequent target of terrorism over the years? Here's James Woolsey, former Director of the CIA and member of the Defense Department's Policy Board, speaking two months after the beginning of the US bombing of Afghanistan, advocating an invasion of Iraq and unconcerned about the response of the Arab world: The silence of the Arab public in the wake of America's victories in Afghanistan, Woolsey said, proves that &quot;only fear will re-establish respect for the U.S.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In a similar light, a phrase attributed to various leaders of the Roman Empire has been used by Bush administration officials: oderint dum metuant—&quot;Let them hate so long as they fear.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The State Department may have learned something. At the time of the first anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack and subsequently as well, the Department held conferences on how to improve America's image abroad in order to reduce the level of hatred. But it's image they were working on, not change of policies. And the policies score-card reads as follows: From 1945 to 2003, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements fighting against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US bombed some 25 countries, caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair.<br /> <br /> &quot;The idea is to build an antiterrorist global environment,&quot; a senior Defense Department official told the New York Times in 2003, &quot;so that in 20 to 30 years, terrorism will be like slave-trading, completely discredited.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The world can only wonder this: When will American wars of aggression, firing missles into the heart of a city, and using depleted uranium and cluster bombs against the population become completely discredited?<br /> <br /> They already have become such, but the United States, which wages war on the same scale other nations apply to mere survival, does not yet know it. Instead, it practices perpetual war for perpetual peace.<br /> <br /> [[Category:Library works by William Blum]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about imperialism]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about the United States of America]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about China]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about the DPRK]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about Albania]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about Cuba]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:This_Soviet_World&diff=76001 2024-09-30T12:46:58Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=This Soviet World|author=Anna Louise Strong|written in=1936|publisher=Henry Holt and Company, Inc.|type=Book|source=https://comlib.encryptionin.space/epubs/this-soviet-world/|pdf=https://annas-archive.org/md5/3c2da922ea78b91c28c2b81b5c2da556}}<br /> <br /> === ON INTERPRETING A WORLD ===<br /> <br /> A leading Russian Communist said to me a year ago “The mind of our people is changing so fast under the conditions of socialism that it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to speak to the rest of the world. We find it harder to understand them, and they us.”<br /> <br /> We who go back and forth between the Soviet world and the world of capitalism—not only in space from New York to Moscow but also in spirit from intimate life with Soviet people to intimate life in America—feel keenly this difficulty. Important words like freedom, democracy, dictatorship have different meanings on different sides of the border. The Soviet world is sharply conscious of planning its future; the capitalist world is always arriving where it hadn’t intended. And Soviet officials are not always helpful in making their acts intelligible; they often assume that only deliberate malice can doubt them and that the only needed explanation is the appropriate citation from Marx.<br /> <br /> To explain the swiftly growing Soviet world to that other world out of which it was born is a task that becomes steadily more complex. For if its outer achievements are every year more able to speak for themselves, its inner life more and diverges from that of capitalism in a hundred subtle ways.<br /> <br /> In the Berlin station a giant sign greets me with three-foot letters: “Think of your hair!” My mind flashes back to the world I have left. What are Soviet people thinking of? The Stakhanov drive, the Moscow city plan, Marie and her sugar beets, the conquest of the north. And hair and perfume, O yes, of course. Everyone knows of the rising standard of living and firmly believes in a cultural life—more bath-tubs, radios, books and dramatic clubs and doubtless more hair. But their individuality is expressed not by possessions and polish but by the various ways in which men create. Dynamic is the word; their civilization is dynamic.<br /> <br /> The regimentation of life by property is my next shock in the capitalist world. The obscene phrases “damages for alienation of affections” or “a $50,000 man” or the remark: “I do it only for the money that is in it”—what degradation they imply of human life and work! I see able engineers spending creative power on little models in a government relief job just to keep alive. I see a journal of high standard, the life-work of an able editor submerged by a new owner’s wish for quick profit. Lives are conditioned in the Soviet world also, by trends and sages of organization, but not by the profits of a boss.<br /> <br /> The difference appears in the use of pronouns. People under capitalism are contrasting “I” and “they.” “Too bad it couldn’t have been on my land,” a man remarks of a California oil-strike. Soviet folk would be hailing “our new oil-wells”; to them the idea of a private oil-well is already as quaint as a private postal system. I note a remark about American unemployment: “If it gets any worse, they’ll have to do something.” Who is this ultimate, uncontrollable “they”? The term betrays the class society of which the speakers are unconscious; they are waiting for some boss to act. To hear a debate: “Is America going fascist?” and think how much less passively Soviet folk would word it. “Shall we go fascist? No. Then exactly how shall we prevent it?” Soviet folk say “we” of one-sixth of the earth’s surface. Uzbek cotton-pickers, toiling under the sun of Central Asia, say: “We are conquering the Arctic; we rescued the Chelyuskinites.” Ukrainian farmers who never went up in an airplane talk of “our stratosphere records” and “the loss of our Maxim Gorky airplane” as they take up collections to build ten new ones. But even Mrs. Roosevelt asks me: “Are Russian peasants getting more reconciled to accepting direction?” I feel the hopelessness of language as I answer: “No, they are learning better to organize and direct themselves.”<br /> <br /> Americans often ask me whether Russians are not naturally more altruistic than Americans, more fit for communism, they imply. No, it is something quite different. Russians at the time of Revolution were more medieval than Americans, which means “naturally” more petty, unreliable, inefficient, given to bargaining and cheating. Traits of the Asiatic market-place were widespread and occasionally still annoy the visitor. But these traits are disappearing under the fact of joint ownership, which brings identity of individual with community good.<br /> <br /> Joint possession of the country’s resources and productive mechanism is the economic reality which unifies Soviet life and makes it dynamic. It is this that washes out the antagonism between personal and public good, that makes men say “we.” It is this that makes men conscious planners of the future; for owners plan but non-owners can only fight or drift. The chief quality of Soviet civilization is the sense that the world is “ours,” to seize, understand and make over.<br /> <br /> This Soviet world is my theme; I give scant space to those fast disintegrating forces that fought it. I tell not the “whole truth,” for truth is never “whole”; there are always at least two truths in conflict: the truth that is dying and the truth that is coming into existence. American Tories who intrigued for King George had their truth also, but it remains only as piquant sauce to romance; the truth of the Continental armies remained to build the modern republic. They themselves recalled the frozen feet of Valley Forge less as suffering than as heroism; their raids on hungry farms passed into memory not as banditry but as necessity and daring. History’s greatest gift to victors is that not only they, but their truth survives.<br /> <br /> Yet I do no injustice to those many lives which in greater or less degree were wrenched or broken by the coming of the new Soviet order. Even for them the new years obliterate the past. They also change to seek their new future in the new system; Lives broken in terms of property are being remade in terms of work. Saboteurs reform and win posts of honor; kulaks come back from exile to factories and farms; children have an equal start now regardless of fathers. For this war differs from other battles in that all men, even the conquered foes, are absorbed into the ranks of the conquerors—joint heirs to all the fruits of victory.<br /> <br /> A. L. S.<br /> <br /> == PART I: MEN MAKE THE SOVIET WORLD ==<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER I: THE PLAN FOR REMAKING THE WORLD ===<br /> <br /> {{Quote|“The philosophers have only interpreted the world; our business is to change it.”|Karl Marx|Theses on Feuerbach}}<br /> <br /> Whenever I ask myself what brings increasing visitors to Moscow, what they want here and what they find, and why the eyes of the world turn more and more to the Soviet Union with a questing hope that hardly yet dares call itself belief, there flashes into my mind the remark made to me in 1930 at Dnieprostroy by the young and disillusioned son of a Wall Street millionaire.<br /> <br /> Dnieprostroy in those days was the first of the famous giants of the new Soviet Russia, “the largest power dam in the world.”&lt;ref&gt;Since then surpassed by the Boulder Dam.&lt;/ref&gt; Hour after hour we climbed the cliffs and ravines of its mighty construction. We fled from screaming sirens that warned of blasting rock. We saw great stone-crushing plants, saw-mills, locomotive repair shops, temporary power station—all sizable works harnessed to the task of making a greater power station which should in turn serve plants a hundred times their scope. We visited the “socialist city” where discussion raged between advocates of individual cottages or big apartment houses for the future town. We saw hurriedly constructed club houses where thousands of workers busily grabbed knowledge—reading, writing, political economy and the technique of their new job.<br /> <br /> Night fell. We stood on the shore of the yet unharnessed river, destined to rise to bury those high banks beneath a man-impounded lake. We far down at the great sweep of electric brilliance that had already shattered the age-old darkness of the Ukrainian steppe. It was then that my companion said: “I think that Dnieprostroy has answered the question that brought me to Russia.”<br /> <br /> “What question?” I asked.<br /> <br /> “Whether the world is to be changed by trying one at a time to improve human beings or by changing the social environment that makes human beings.”<br /> <br /> In the pause that followed the sounds of construction came to us incessantly, rising from the bowels of earth and filling the horizon. The short, sharp puffs of engines, the roar of cliffs torn asunder, the ceaseless beat of mills grinding stone into concrete, the rasp of drills eating down into river granite. Sharpened by night and softened by distance, they blended into a mighty symphony—music of man, the builder, subduing, the earth.<br /> <br /> Dark beyond the circling lights lay Hortitz Island, in ancient days the last stand of free-booting bandit chieftains against oppressors. We remembered the husky peasant girl from the island whom we had seen in overalls that morning, gang-boss over twelve men who excavated rock by explosions of liquid air. Dnieprostroy had changed her in a few months from a farm servant to a “brigadier.” We remembered the blacksmith whom we had asked in the glare of foundry fires how he liked his work and who burst forth with fiery will: “You know, we’re going to finish her in 1932”—a simple workman pushing ahead by one year the estimate of Hugh L. Cooper’s world-experienced engineers.&lt;ref&gt;The workman’s estimate won out. The dam was finished in 1932 a year ahead of schedule.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> We recalled how competitions between workers of right and left bank drove the dam ahead, doubling the concrete-laying estimates of the Americans by force of newly awakened will. Signals night by night across the raging torrent told in red and green lights the day’s total, celebrated over-fulfillment of plan by a great red star. Night by night, week by week each bank fought to keep its red star shining. We remembered motion pictures, dramas, concerts, lectures which brought the city’s culture to these thousands who had come from the scattered farms of the Ukraine. The fine new polytechnic institute where workers chosen from the river-gangs were being turned in forty classrooms into engineers. We saw on the high bank the homes of the American consultants, who understood better than the Russians the technique of the great job but were eternally puzzled by its spirit.<br /> <br /> Yes, Dnieprostroy gave the answer to my companion’s question. Dnieprostroy was a new form of production under a new social system. It was remaking individuals by wholesale.<br /> <br /> Increasingly in the past five years Americans have come to the Soviet Union, scientists, engineers, artists, economists all bent on their own pursuits, dogmatic or bewildered tourists, seeking proof of an old belief or material for a new one. Especially since the crash of 1929 smashed the world which was “inevitably getting better,” they have come, fleeing from the ruins of that earthquake to learn what, if anything, the Soviet Union offers. By no means all of them put their question as clearly as did my young companion; by no means all interpret so swiftly the essence of the first construction job they see. But the question he asked is basically what brings most of them, an ancient quest of man which has troubled philosophers no less than baffled tourists: “Can our world be remade? And how to remake it?”<br /> <br /> The problem is especially pressing upon the American middle class of today, which has seen its old world taken from it in ways that it hardly understands. The independent small property owners, mostly farmers, who formed a hundred years ago 80 per cent of the American people except in the slave South, bequeathed to their descendants ideals of democracy and freedom, the “liberty and equality of men owning their own means of livelihood.”&lt;ref&gt;See Lewis Corey: “Crisis of the Middle Class” ''The Nation'', Aug. 14, 1935.&lt;/ref&gt; But large scale industry, developing through a century, wiped out the small enterprisers, increased the number of salaried employees and made the farmer dependent on banks and markets, thus changing America to a “nation of hired workers.” Only 12 per cent of the people live by ownership of their own property, in place of 80 per cent a century ago.<br /> <br /> The myth of property remained long after the reality had vanished. Millions of these salaried people still felt hat they owned something—no longer a store, a small workshop, an unencumbered farm, but savings in stocks, bonds, insurance—which lifted them somewhat above the ranks of laboring hands. Crashingly the world economic crisis destroyed this illusion. As if to emphasize how little control these small people had over their own property, the value of their liquid wealth shrank from twenty-seven billion dollars in 1929 to four billion in 1932.&lt;ref&gt;Figures from Robers R. Doane on liquid wealth of persons with incomes under $5,000. Quoted by Corey.&lt;/ref&gt; Millions of the middle class were thrown into the same abyss of ruin with millions of wage-workers; they wait together on bread-lines, study together the government relief programs, hunt together for a boss. For all of them alike, as long as the capitalist world remains, most put their trust in bosses, someone who owns and will give them access to the means of production and of life.<br /> <br /> Their situation is the more distressing because for most of our Western world the past hundred years has been what John Strachey aptly calls the “century of the great hope.”&lt;ref&gt;John Strachey, ''The Menace of Fascism''.&lt;/ref&gt; Millions of men became better fed, better housed, better clothed through the industrial revolution which took production out of the home workshop into the factory and knit together the ends of earth by railroad, steamship, telegraph. Especially America—where the arrival of the new machines and technical methods coincided with a continent-wide expansion into lands of vast wealth, developed by energetic oilers from all nations for the first time unhampered by any remnants of feudalism the belief in inevitable progress and increasing prosperity was both a conscious and unconscious national faith. The little red schoolhouse bade every boy aspire to be president. “Go west, young man.” . . . “Don’t be a bear on America,” said successful plutocrats. But far deeper than these conscious preachings spread the atmosphere of determined optimism which made every man who was not a good booster seem subtly immoral to his friends. Did not the great lands of America, the efficient industries of America, the productive energy of America, offer the basis for a good standard of life for everyone—an “American standard”? It was easy to prove that they did—and do!<br /> <br /> What happened to that faith in inevitable progress? If it still survives in some circles as a despairing habit, elsewhere it has been replaced by belief in inevitable doom. “Inevitable drift to fascism,” “inevitable twilight of the West,” “the old standard of prosperity can never return,” are phrases common on lips that not long since hailed inevitable advance. Others begin a frenzied search into the faiths of past ages, to know if elsewhere than with us abides the truth. These learn that belief in the inevitability of progress has never been a universal faith. It has been confined to definite periods of economic advancement, and to certain nations within those periods or certain classes within nations. Did not whole centuries of the Middle Ages view the world as an essentially unchanging garden of human souls from which religion culled a few for heaven, leaving the rest for hell? Even today do not hundreds of millions of people—those great suppressed races of the East—find life’s processes so fundamentally evil that their essential faith is Buddhism in which Nothingness is bliss?<br /> <br /> Even in our West, as capitalism decays into fascism, there arise new denials of the inevitability of progress. Ideals of the past—the Roman Empire, the Germanic gods, the feudal Britain featured by fascist-striving novels—gild with emotional glamor the tenets of fascism: that science and machine production are evil, that democracy, peace and the conquest of poverty are futile dreams of a decadent society, that murderous war is man’s noblest end. For fascism is the last stand of a desperate capitalism which can no longer use the fruits of science and machine production, which dare no longer permit either peace or democracy, since it must brutally refuse to its victims that abolition of poverty which is already technically possible in the world.<br /> <br /> Can human reason find a way to reorganize human society—a way which human wills can follow? Must we go backing blindly into the future, cheered now by faith in inevitable progress, damned now by faith in inevitable doom, and claiming from some supernatural world a just and rational balancing of the unjust, irrational chaos found in this? Or can that continuous, collective application of human thought known as science, which we have learned to take as our best, though still unperfected guide in rationalizing and controlling subhuman phenomena, be expanded to rationalize and control our human destiny? Can man master the machines he has made which today threaten increasingly to enslave him? Can he subdue to his will those tremendously productive forces which his science and technical knowledge have released, and which seem adequate to abolish poverty, yet which at present give increasing unemployment, economic crises, wars?<br /> <br /> We are asking, in other words, can men master destiny? Are all those gleams of human reason which have given us increasing dominion over material phenomena but will-o’-the-wisps, luring to a swamp which will engulf us the more blackly for the false, brief light they gave? Or are they gleams of dawn that may brighten into an ever-increasing daylight, in which not only a few isolated phenomena but the whole of man’s own nature and his organized society can be planned by human reason and carried through by human wills?<br /> <br /> No less than this is the search that brings men over the seas to the Soviet Union. For if to millions in our Western world the century now passing was the century of the great hope, there are other millions in two great half-continents uniting Europe and Asia, who look upon it rather as the century of the great plan. The reference is not to that Five-Year Plan which the Soviet Union made famous, but to a plan far more comprehensive which prepares and includes all five-year plans in all lands and all the future. A plan for remaking the world drawn up eighty-eight years ago on instructions from a London congress of working-men of many nations, and issued in 1848 under the title ''Communist Manifesto'', the work of the German economists Frederick Engels and Karl Marx.<br /> <br /> The ''Communist Manifesto'' is usually thought of as the defiance flung at the world by an illegal revolutionary party of hunted people. So it was. But it was also man’s first attempt to apply science to the analysis of human society in order to draw up a plan for remaking the world. Previous attempts to analyze the world were exercises of philosophers, not directed towards change. Previous attempts to change the world were confined to threats or exhortations to secure specific conversions or reforms. Many Utopian pictures had existed of how beautiful society might be when once made over. But the ''Communist Manifesto'' tried to answer the question: How can the thing be done? Born in the middle years of that century in which the scientific method was consciously remaking the material world, it sought to analyze the elements of human society, the nature and cause of the changes we see in history, for the purpose of producing social change in a desired direction. That is why it claims to be Scientific Socialism.<br /> <br /> The followers of Marx see in him the genius who combined the three chief currents of thought of the nineteenth century—classical German philosophy, classical English political economy and French revolutionary doctrines. The philosophic basis of Marxism is “dialectics,” which views every reality, whether of nature, the mind, or society, as in process of continual change through the development and clash of “inner contradictions.” This theory applied to the study of history shows how economic, political and social systems are constantly changing, at times slowly, at times by leaps, catastrophes, revolutions. American capitalism of the Civil War period is not the capitalism of today. The democracy of the New England town-meeting is not the democracy of the modern imperial nation. They may be called by the same but names deceive; the thing changes even while you look at it to disdain or admire. Even your disdain and admiration changes, the meaning of your words and concepts. What was true, right, desirable yesterday may not be true, right, desirable tomorrow. Systems have their day and cease to be.<br /> <br /> Is there any law in this change? Is there in this constant interaction and conflict of systems and ideas anything basic, changing which will change the rest? “The economic structure,” says Marx, is “the real foundation. . . . The mode of production . . . determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life.”&lt;ref&gt;Preface to a ''Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy''.&lt;/ref&gt; For Marx the fundamental thing about any human society is not its system of ideas or religions, nor the form of government nor the nature of its family life. These things are important but derivative. They are determined by the ways in which human beings get food, clothing, shelter, by the stage of their advance and the tools they use in these fundamental operations. In a world whose economic structure fails to reward honesty and altruism, a Marxist would not spend his efforts preaching these virtues, but in creating an economic system where honesty really prospered, where each man’s success must be build on the success, rather than the ruin, of others. The new economic system would make new people; under it, education in the new ideals would be swift and hopeful.<br /> <br /> How then do economic systems change? Marx finds the key in his theory of “class struggle.” Man’s science and invention create new ways of production, and these in turn create new “classes” of human beings, i.e., groups of people who have different and conflicting relations to production. Between these classes a struggle goes on around the ownership of the process of production, which is the means of life. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”&lt;ref&gt;''Communist Manifesto'', 10-11.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Thus at different stages of human history new classes arise from new ways of working and the struggle between them produces social change. Modern capitalism has not done away with class antagonisms, but it has this distinctive feature—it has simplified them. “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into . . . two great classes directly facing each other—bourgeoisie and proletariat,”&lt;ref&gt;''Communist Manifesto'', 11.&lt;/ref&gt; those who live by owning and those who can live only by selling their labor power, by seeking a boss.<br /> <br /> Between these two remain for a time the middle classes, distraught survivors of those small property owners and independent craftsmen who once embodied the demand for private property against a feudal past. They suffer deeply under advancing capitalism which dislodges them steadily and painfully into the ranks of hired hands. They struggle against their fate, but their strivings are confused, for their instinctive desire is to go back to small scale property. Their cry is to “share the wealth,” to start over again that old society of small owners which led to the present-day monopolies and which would lead to them again if it could be revived. The right to private property was once revolutionary pledge of freedom, but this also has changed with the passing of history. Private property in farm plots and hand tools freed serfs from feudal masters; private property in steel mills creates a new slavery. Even small ownership today, wherever it survives or comes into being, is at the mercy of large scale finance.<br /> <br /> Who owns the world? That is the basic question conditioning all hopes of social change. What is wrong with the world today, according to Marxists, is private ownership of the great productive processes which are socially operated. The way out is not backward to subsistence farms and handicrafts it is forward to social ownership. Not “share the wealth,” but jointly owned wealth, jointly organized by and for all who work. Only thus can the great machines be subjugated; only thus can science and modern technique produce plenty for all mankind. Only thus can the present vision of men into owners and workers be abolished, a division which is wrecking the world by social strife and international war. It must be superseded by one united class of people—joint worker-owners of the world. From this economic equality, all other forms of equality will grow. First a stage of socialism where men have equal access to labor and receive according to their work. Then when the habits of human beings have been changed by joint ownership, will come the stage of communism in which men freely co-operate in work according to their abilities and receive according to their needs.<br /> <br /> Who will bring about this change of ownership? Clearly not the present private owners: their interests lie the other way. Nor can the disintegrating middle classes achieve it, except insofar as they come to understand that their future lies with the workers. Only one class of people can develop the will to carry through this difficult long epoch of change—the working class which is bound to the mighty mechanism of modern production, mastering it yet enslaved by it. Joint ownership is their only path to freedom; when they understand this, they will accomplish it. They are thus the “really revolutionary class,” in whom social ownership of modern production is a living need and can become a flaming passion carrying humanity forward to a higher stage.<br /> <br /> The task of every Marxist is to help them understand, to make them “class-conscious,” aware of their power and function as creators of social progress. Millions of Americans resent the very idea of classes, and are indignant at “inflaming class-consciousness” where it does not yet exist. But Marxian classes are not epithets inciting to riot; they are categories in a scientific analysis. Marxists say that unless human society is to go down in a catastrophe of slavery, war and ruin, men must own their tools and the wealth which these create; that tools and wealth have grown too complexly social to be owned individually and must therefore be socially owned; and that only the working class can develop the fighting will to seize the power of ownership and through it remake society. The less the workers are organized, the less conscious they are of their power and function, the more will the coming changes in human society be protracted, painful and blind. The more conscious the workers are of their great task in history, the better they are organized, the more they are able to rally around them the middle classes, the swifter will be the change and the less will be the human suffering.<br /> <br /> Two generations of economists in many countries developed the Marxian theory. Lenin built on it the Bolshevik Party which in 1917 carried through the Russian Revolution. Stalin is honored today by Bolsheviks not only as statesman and organizer, but as the far-seeing analyst and guider of social change, who continues and develops the scientific method of Marx, Engels, Lenin. One-sixth of the world today is being remade according to the Marxian program—the first consciously devised pattern that men ever applied to society as a whole.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER II: THE PARTY OF REVOLUTION ===<br /> <br /> {{Quote|“To distinguish those who worked from those who talked.”|Lenin}}<br /> <br /> Not by accident did the first socialist revolution take place in Russia. The World War imposed great strains on many countries and the chain of world imperialism broke at its weakest link.&lt;ref&gt;Hillquit called the Russian revolution an “historical accident,” since it occurred in a backward peasant land. Norman Thomas on the contrary holds it occurred just because the Russians were so backward that they would endure a dictatorship such as no other people would stand. &lt;br /&gt;  Stalin says: “The objective conditions for the revolution exist throughout the whole system of imperialist world economy, which is an integral unit.” Answering the theory that the revolution must come first “where the proletariat forms the majority, where culture is more advanced, where there is more democracy,” he says: “No, not necessarily where industry is most developed; it will be broken where the chain of imperialism is weakest, for the proletarian revolution is the result of the breaking of the of world imperialism at its weakest link.” From Stalin’s Lectures to Sverdlov Students.&lt;/ref&gt; More than any other land, Russia was tormented by war and ravenous for peace. Tsardom, that hideous hangover from the Middle Ages, had lost all moral authority and was hated by the entire people. For decades revolution had been brewing in Russia.&lt;ref&gt;Marx noted this as far back as 1877 in his Letter to Zorge. See ''Letters of Marx and Engels''.&lt;/ref&gt; The World War added the last unbearable pressure and the explosion came.<br /> <br /> Not least among the factors which made the revolution possible and helped determine its form was the existence of the Bolshevik Party.&lt;ref&gt;Today called Communist Party (of Bolsheviks).&lt;/ref&gt; This was no spontaneous creation, born at the moment of revolt; for fourteen years it had been consciously welded by painstaking thought and desperate struggle. Its traditions indeed went back much further. The whole last half of the nineteenth century advanced thinkers in Russia, under the oppression of tsardom, had sought eagerly for the effective revolutionary path. Through fifty years of torment, sacrifice, heroism, incredible energy, careful study, they had tested many methods. They had tried to educate and organize the peasantry; they had tried the terrorist assassination of tyrants. They had failed. They had checked their failures by the history of other nations and a section of them had come to Marxism as the correct program for remaking the world.<br /> <br /> If Marx furnished the general program, it was Lenin who developed the theory and tactics, proletarian revolution, and built the organization for the seizure of power. Bolshevism, as a trend of political thought and a political party, exists since 1903, when the Social-Democratic Party of Russia split into groups known as Bolsheviks (majority) and Mensheviks (minority), which correspond to Communists and Social-Democrats today in other countries. The older leaders wanted to “widen” the Party, to take in all “supporters” and give them all a voice in determining the Party’s program. Lenin, though recognizing that any social change must rely on wide masses, not only of workers but of many other “allies,” insisted that membership in the Party itself “must be given a narrow definition to distinguish those who worked from those who talked.”&lt;ref&gt;Lenin’s Account of Second Congress, ''Selected Works'', II&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> To organize and train the Party of Revolution became thenceforth the central task and the greatest achievement of that world-renowned leader, Lenin, who gave his whole life to the study and practice of the science of political power. Power was to him no mere personal achievement of office; it was the organized lifting of the human race one stage forward in history. He studied how to ride the turbulent upheaval which the conflicts in modern society would inevitably produce, how to prepare and lead men for the seizure of the state and the creation of a new order, how at last to organize them for the conquest of nature and of their own destiny. This was to Lenin the science of power.<br /> <br /> Starting with the Marxian thesis that the working class is the group in modern society which can be organized to take power and to build a new order, Lenin created for this class a “vanguard” of leaders. They must be men of intelligence, will, daring; yet they must act in a disciplined manner, reinforcing a common direction. They must make the revolution a life-long profession, steadily studying the economic, political and social forces of the society in which they live. They must apply this knowledge in action. They must take active part not only in elections and political movements, but in strikes, trade union work, demonstrations, distribution of literature and all the other prosaic or dangerous activities through which the working class becomes organized and conscious of its power. They must keep close to the workers, learning from them and assisting them, and win the right to lead by the confidence they inspire.<br /> <br /> How are such leaders to be found among the great hordes of the dispossessed and discontented? How, if found, are they to be welded into a disciplined, fighting force? Lenin had no illusions; he knew that the mass of exploited men who are squeezed out by the dislocations of capitalism, and who turn in hope or despair towards communism, contains many fools, knaves, fanatics and self-pitying failures as well as men of intelligence and will. He foresaw a long period of difficult struggle, in which men fit to lead would be tested by fire, men capable of learning would be trained by experience, and others would weed themselves out by their follies. Lenin himself gave most of his years to the slow work of building up and training a not very large but thoroughly tested Party, which could give leadership when the hour of revolution came. I have met simple workers to whom Lenin devoted hours of individual teaching, and who remember today the exact phrases he used with them forty years ago. The making of real Communists able to lead the masses is a long and costly process.<br /> <br /> Nothing could be more absurd than the two contradictory views of Communists promulgated today by their opponents. They are usually pictured as planless inciters to violence and riot, people who have a crazy desire for chaos, in the hope that something vaguely called communism may somehow ensue. A more sophisticated view, to which no less a person than Sinclair Lewis falls victim in ''It Can’t Happen Here'', portrays them as brainless sheep required to act in blind obedience to the orders of their superiors for the sake of discipline. Neither of these types could possibly lead a successful strike, much less a revolution. A communist who increased risks by recklessness would be early eliminated; a man who only took orders would be useless as a leader. Communists must learn the difficult combination of intelligence with daring; they must learn to act together but they must all know why.<br /> <br /> “What we build cannot be built by passive people,” said one of the secretaries of the Russian Communist Party to me. “We all had strong convictions; we fought for them and went to jail for them,” said another veteran Bolshevik. “Then in jail we fought with our imprisoned comrades over details of past policies, studying and learning from past errors. Often we found that the mistake of a few words in our theory had cost us a year in prison.” Again and again groups which could not agree split off from the others. Lenin made no effort to detain them; he distinguished sharply between those allies with whom co-operation was possible for a longer or shorter period, and the smaller group which would stick through everything. Thus was built up that Party of men who had placed their lives in each other’s hands so often that they could rely on each other with absolute assurance, not through blind submission but through a habit of mutual consultation and swift acceptance of joint decisions.<br /> <br /> The most famous picture of the ideal Communist is given by Krupskaia, widow of Lenin, in an article entitled: “What a Communist Should Be Like.” “First of all a Communist is a social person, with strongly developed social instincts, who desires that all people should be well and be happy. Second, he must understand what is happening about him in the world—the mechanism of the existing régime, the history of the growth of human society, the history of economic development, of the growth of property, the division of classes, the growth of state forms. He must clearly picture whither society is developing—to a régime where the happiness of some will not be based on the slavery of others and where there will be no compulsion except strongly developed social instincts. And the Communists must clear the road, as you clear a path in the wilderness, to hasten its coming.<br /> <br /> “Third, the Communist must know how to organize creatively. If he is a medical worker, for instance, he must know medicine, then the history of medicine in Russia and other lands, then the Communist approach to the problem of medicine, i.e., how to organize wide masses to create from the ranks of the toilers a powerful sanitary organization in the cause of health. He must know not only what Communism is and what is coming, what his own job in it may be and his approach to the masses. Fourthly, his personal life must be submitted to and guided by the interests of Communism. No matter how much he regrets giving up the comforts and ties of home, he must if necessary cast all aside and go into danger wherever assigned. . . . Body and soul he must be devoted to the interests of the toiling masses, of Communism.”<br /> <br /> Men who have risen high in the Communist Party are characterized by these qualities listed by Krupskaia. They are usually reticent about their deepest motives; it is not the thing to gush one’s devotion. One learns of their qualities chiefly through others. Krupskaia, speaking to intimate Party friends at the funeral of her husband Lenin, found the completest expression in the words: “Lenin deeply loved the people.” Radek tells how Stalin, answering greetings sent him by the Party on his fiftieth birthday, “said something which, in the mouth of such a reserved man, sounded as though it came from the very depths of his being. Stalin said that he was ready to shed his blood ‘drop by drop’ for the proletariat.”&lt;ref&gt;Radek, ''Problems of Soviet Literature'', 144.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref group=&quot;ProleWiki&quot;&gt;This seems to refer to Radeks speech at the Soviet Writers Congress in August 1934. A copy is available on [https://www.marxists.org/archive/radek/1934/sovietwritercongress.htm marxists.org]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Men who would lead the masses in changing the world by the Marxian method must obviously strive for constant growth in two directions: in ever-deepening understanding of social and economic forces and in ever-widening participation in workers’ struggles. Perhaps the first thing that strikes an outsider is the amount of time which all Communists devote to the study of Marxian theory. Managers of great steel plants and busy county officials under the pressure of harvest will find time, at unearthly hours like eleven at night or seven in the morning, for their study of Marxism or their class in current events, deeming these things as essential as their other pressing work.<br /> <br /> Visitors to the Soviet Union are not infrequently amazed to find that a Party secretary in a rural township can discuss international affairs with an assurance and abundance of detail which few foreign editors of an American metropolitan news-paper can show, and will handle statistics and history with a good deal more ease than the “Brain Trust.” A prominent American politician once expressed to me doubts of the accuracy of the published interview of H. G. Wells with Stalin. Stalin’s references to the Cromwellian revolution seemed to him too detailed to have been available for conversation. “People,” he said, “don’t talk that way” But any Communist in the Soviet Union who did not know the essentials of Cromwellian revolution, and of other historic revolutions from which he is expected to learn, would join a class to “raise his ideological level.” A Communist who allowed himself to become as ignorant of world affairs as is the average American politician would be ruthlessly “cleaned out” of the Party, or told to join the group of “sympathizers” to learn what he has to know.<br /> <br /> The emotional vagueness which is a feature of all capitalist political platforms, and which is indeed desired in order to win wide support without being too definite, is the exact opposite of Communist statement. The Communists even seem to be painfully definite, to “take refuge in formulæ,” or to split hairs over the exact interpretation of phrases. All science and technical knowledge, however, advance by just this splitting of hairs to find the exact chemical formula which produces the alloy or the mathematical relation which strengthens the arch of the bridge; discussions in any congress of physiologists or electricians are full of this “dull theory” without which no scientific progress can be attained. Communists take Marxism as such a science; to rise to eminence among them demands years, even decades, of close and penetrating study of social forces. This is no dogma to be learned once for all; it is a developing body of thought, constantly applied to and affected by new conditions. By the very theory of dialectics, these forces are changing. The speeches of Lenin and Stalin and other Party leaders never deal in stirring oratory or spell-binding generalities but in close and careful analysis. Stalin would no more attempt to sway a Communist congress by “force of personality” expressed in brilliant oratory and colorful phrasing, than Edison would have expected to convince a group of American engineers of the reliability of some new formula by emotional words. One such attempt would ruin either an Edison or a Stalin.<br /> <br /> But Communists must not only be scientific; they must also learn to work with the masses. In this they face a special difficulty; the man who has thought for years in Marxian categories may find it as hard to explain them to simple people as an electrical engineer would find it to explain the theory of turbines to men in a candle-lighted world. This is more serious for the Communist than for the engineer; for the latter can build his turbines without help from the candle-lighted individuals, but the Communist cannot make a revolution without the people. Fortunately actions may speak as well as words, and all Communists are required to do active work which brings them in touch with the masses. When intellectuals apply for Party membership, it is a common practice to give them some tasks around a factory, such as teaching night classes in Russian language, civics or Marxism, or practical assistance in trade union work. After a year or two of such testing, the opinion of the workers is taken as to whether the candidate is fit to be a Party member.<br /> <br /> Any Communist Party at any stage in its development in any country considers persons who cannot co-operate with workers’ movements as unfit for Party membership. In the Soviet Union where the rank and file of non-Party workers have already considerable knowledge of the Party’s ideals, it has become a common thing for them to assist in helping the Party in its selection of members. Two hundred thousand workers who joined the Party some two years ago were actually nominated by the non-Party workers, through repeated meetings and discussions as to what persons in their ranks should be recommended for Party membership. From time to time the Party “cleans out” its membership, and this is always done at open meetings to which all workers of the given institution are invited. Each Communist in the institution must give before this public an extended account of his life and activities, submit to and answer all criticism, and prove before the assembled workers his fitness to remain in the “leading Party.” Members may be cleaned out not only as “hostile elements, double-dealers, violators of discipline, degenerates, career-seekers, self-seekers, morally degraded persons” but even for being merely “passive,” for having failed to keep learning and growing in knowledge and authority among the masses.<br /> <br /> People admitted to the Communist Party—this admission demands a period of study and probation—must give considerable time to unpaid “Party work” i.e., the various tasks of strengthening the organization and organizing the masses around it. Having chosen as the chief purpose of their life the achievement of the socialist revolution, they must learn how to build a joint program. They take part in the discussions from which arise the decisions of the Party and they are expected to carry out these decisions energetically but never blindly. For they must know why the decisions are made; they must understand the Party Line and be able to promote it without bothering other people for orders. They must have strong opinions and fight for them; but they must know when to fight and when to yield. If they cannot learn this, they will find themselves outside the Party, thrown out either as “passive” or as “opposition.” It is not an easy lesson; there have been many political mortalities.<br /> <br /> Party members must learn to decide and act collectively, not only in determining the general line, but also in deciding their own work in it. They must consult and accept their comrades’ judgment as to where they themselves can be of most use. In the Civil War Communists were expected to be the first to volunteer for every battle-front. In the Soviet Union today they are first to be sent to difficult posts in industry and farming. They may be torn from jobs in which they are successful and sent to work which they hate; they must there-upon cease to hate it and do it well as an important task. I know of a high official who was taken from a train by a telegram sent through an obscure local secretary in a town through which he passed, and ordered to return for a different assignment. But no order is ever the command of a superior officer; it is the decision of a group of comrades with whom one has chosen to work. This is the famous Party discipline; known as “iron” discipline but also as “conscious” discipline, for it is based not on passive submission but on understanding participation and collective choice. The reward for this discipline is conscious participation in the making of history.<br /> <br /> The Communists expect not only to lead the masses, but to learn from them in a constant interaction. They must “organize the proletariat”; they must “guide it in its class struggle.”&lt;ref&gt;Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.&lt;/ref&gt; They must “see ahead of the working class,” and be the “experienced general staff” which “every army at war must have if it is to avoid certain defeat.”&lt;ref&gt;Stalin, ''Leninism'', I, 88-89, Cooperative Publishers, Moscow.&lt;/ref&gt; But they do not consider themselves a separate caste of leaders, but a “vanguard” intimately a part of the working class they lead. They modify their program to grant temporarily some “backward” demand of the masses, or to include permanently some new form or method which the masses invent. An example of the first was Lenin’s response to the peasants’ demands for splitting up the land, a backward step taken to secure peasant support and “in order that they may educate themselves by fulfilling their desires.” An example of the second was the adoption of “soviets” in government and “artels” in farming, neither of which forms had been foreseen by the Party until they arose. It is the working class which must dictate and not the Party; in 1925 when Zinoviev argued for dictatorship by the Party, Stalin fought against this “narrow point of view,” saying that the confidence between the masses of the people and the Party must not be destroyed by any peculiar Party rights, “because in the first place, the Party might be mistaken, and even if it were not, the masses might take some time to see that it was right.”&lt;ref&gt;Stalin, ''Leninism'', I, 51.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> How can three million Communists lead one hundred and seventy million people? Because they are not alien to those millions, but are the most energetic part of them, whose capacity to lead has been repeatedly tested and recognized by the others. Millions of non-Party people today in the Soviet Union work loyally, even enthusiastically under Party direction, yet do not venture to call themselves Communists. One of my best friends was a woman who gave her life to the care of homeless children, and who said to me once: “My life began with the Soviet Power; it alone gave me the chance to fight for children. . . . I care more for the Party’s success than for anything in life.” Yet when her fellow-workers voted her “worthy of being a Communist,” she declined the honor, knowing she could not honestly join while she disagreed on one or two points in the Party program.<br /> <br /> A fifty-two-year-old wheelwright, Rosenberg, whom I met in the Jewish Autonomous Territory of Birobidjan, had courageously dismantled his home in the Ukraine and taken his family of ten to pioneer in the Far East. He had fought through incredible hardships to build a collective industry which made carts; he was now a member of the city government giving much unpaid time to civic work. “When the Party decided to develop Birobidjan,” he explained, “I knew it would be a great future. It goes higher and higher to the building of socialism. I myself can’t build it, but if I work and others work, we’ll build it.” Few could have expressed the Communist goal more sincerely than Rosenberg, yet he did not think of joining the Party. “I don’t know enough,” he said. “I am just studying the first political courses. Serious reading is not so easy for me. I am fifty-two years old.”<br /> <br /> In the Far North fourteen years ago I met Rimpalle, who had risked his life to run the Finnish border and “help the Revolution.” He organized the first quarries and mines in a hungry Arctic land; he created a trade union, a co-operative and a night-school for illiterate natives of the forests. He made $100,000 for the state that first summer and got for himself—it was the time of War Communism—only “rations of potatoes and good, fat gravy and one resoling of my boots.” Rimpalle said to me: “It’s a useful job. Up here so near the border and the propaganda of the White Finns, we needed to have an industry to give food to the people.” He was already a candidate for the Communist Party, expecting to be admitted to full membership in a few months.<br /> <br /> These examples show what is required of Communists. Devoted activity under Communist direction, such as the Jewish wheelwright gave, is not enough. Ninety per cent allegiance, such as the social worker offered, is not enough. Nor was it enough for Rimpalle to work self-sacrificingly to increase socially owned wealth; he must understand consciously the political purpose of his work. I have in the course of fifteen years in the Soviet Union met an occasional Communist who was a grafter, and many more who were stubborn bureaucrats and unenlightened fanatics. But I have also seen how the Party throws out dead wood—not always accurately—and renews itself from the working class it leads.<br /> <br /> Such is the organized Party which carried through the Revolution and which today welds into shape the great masses of the Soviet Union, with its vast distances, its once backward populations, its hundred and eighty-two nationalities, its foes on all borders. It succeeds by choosing its members with discrimination, by keeping them firmly organized, forever studying and continuously on the job.<br /> <br /> The Communist Party does not expect to last forever. “When classes disappear and the dictatorship of the proletariat dies out, the Party also will die out.”&lt;ref&gt;Stalin, ''Leninism'', I, 96.&lt;/ref&gt; It sees its task as belonging to a definite stage in human society, with a beginning, a development and an end. No other political party in the world has this type of historic consciousness, this supreme confidence; all others live from election to election, and make no long time plans. The Communist Party considers that it has a specific job in history and confidently expects to stay in power for the time required to carry it through.<br /> === CHAPTER III: THE DICTATORSHIP ===<br /> <br /> {{Quote|“The conquest by the proletariat of such political power as will enable it to suppress all resistance on the part of the exploiters.”|Program of Russian Communist Party}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|“The dictatorship of the proletariat is not an end in itself. . . . (It) is a means, a path leading to socialism”|Stalin in Address to Sverdlov Students, June 1925}}<br /> <br /> Most Americans shrink from the word “dictatorship.” “I don’t want to be dictated to,” they say. Neither, in fact, does anyone. But why do they instinctively take the word in its passive meaning, and see themselves as the recipients of orders? Why do they never think that they might be the dictators? Is that such an impossible idea? Is it because they have been so long hammered by the subtly misleading propaganda about personal dictatorships, or is it because they have been so long accustomed to seek the right to life through a boss who hires them, that the word dictatorship arouses for them the utterly incredible picture of one man giving everybody orders?<br /> <br /> No country is ruled by one man. This assumption is a favorite red herring to disguise the real rule. Power resides in ownership of the means of production—by private capitalists in Italy, Germany and also in America, by all workers jointly in the USSR. This is the real difference which today divides the world into two systems, in respect to the ultimate location of power. When a Marxist uses the word “dictatorship,” he is not alluding to personal rulers or to methods of voting; he is contrasting rule by property with rule by workers.<br /> <br /> The heads of government in America are not the real rulers. I have talked with many of them from the President down. Some of them would really like to use power for the people. They feel baffled by their inability to do so; they blame other branches of government, legislatures, courts. But they haven’t analyzed the real reason. The difficulty is that they haven’t power to use. Neither the President nor Congress nor the common people, under any form of organization whatever, can legally dispose of the oil of Rockefeller or the gold in the vaults of Morgan. If they try, they will be checked by other branches of government, which was designed as a system of checks and balances precisely to prevent such “usurpation of power.” Private capitalists own the means of production and thus rule the lives of millions. Government, however chosen, is limited to the function of making regulations which will help capitalism run more easily by adjusting relations between property and protecting it against the “lawless” demands of non-owners. This constitutes what Marxists call the dictatorship of property. “The talk about pure democracy is but a bourgeois screen,” says Stalin, “to conceal the fact that equality between exploiters and exploited is impossible. . . . It was invented to hide the sores of capitalism . . . and lend it moral strength.”&lt;ref&gt;Stalin, ''Leninism'', I, 46.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Power over the means of production—that gives rule. Men who have it are dictators. This is the power the workers of the Soviet Union seized in the October Revolution. They abolished the previously sacred right of men to live by ownership of private property. They substituted the rule: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.”<br /> <br /> What characteristics of the new régime most obviously showed its dictatorial character? They were the following:<br /> <br /> First, the Bolsheviks took power without waiting for a majority vote—in the elections to the Constituent Assembly they had just received nine million out of thirty-six million ballots—but relying on their overwhelming majority among the industrial workers, and an overwhelming superiority in that part of the army near the capital cities. They maintained power by a shrewd analysis of social classes, and by satisfying the demands of the sections of the population whose support they needed.<br /> <br /> Second, they organized the new government on the basis of the workers’ organizations, thus dis-franchising those classes which lived by private ownership, and giving a greater proportionate representation in the higher government bodies to workers than to peasants during the first eighteen years when equal voting by great masses of illiterate small owners would have wrecked policies of social ownership.&lt;ref&gt;This difference is commonly stated as a five to one proportion, but such was not the case. Industrial districts had in the higher organs one representative for 25,000 ''electors'', while rural districts had one for 125,000 ''population'', which included children. The proportion is thus nearer two to one, a much less disproportion than exists (in the reverse direction) between rural and city votes for many state legislatures in America. This disproportion in the Soviet Union was abolished when the rural districts reached literacy and large-scale farming. See next chapter.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Third, they took control of schools, press and all means of expression, and while encouraging the widest latitude of criticism by workers interested in augmenting or improving the public properties, suppressed any expressions which seemed to the government likely to strengthen the rights of private property or injure the efficiency of socially owned production. At certain periods when they felt their social ownership of production threatened, whether by sabotage, graft, or the strengthening of private owners, they suppressed these dangers as drastically as they thought necessary by means which varied from economic discrimination to deportation or shooting.<br /> <br /> These are real characteristics which constitute dictatorship rather than any personal prestige of Stalin. Great men attain leadership under all forms of government; the technical forms through which Stalin leads are fully as democratic as those by which an American president governs, and infinitely more democratic than the dominance of a Morgan. Nor is the existence of a single Party necessarily a bar to democratic self-expression, which can find its way as well through one party as a dozen, as later chapters will show. But the above characteristics are definite indications of dictatorship, a rule to which not all men have equal access. They are the tactics of all owners in all countries and all periods of history when they feel themselves threatened. They are the tactics to which owners of private property resorted in Italy and Germany when the rising votes of communist and socialist workers threatened their ownership. They are resorted to today in sections of America where property feels threatened, whether by farmhands in Imperial Valley or sharecroppers in Arkansas and Alabama. They will be resorted to on a wider scale if American capitalism really feels itself slipping. Nothing in Soviet history indicates that the Bolsheviks were any more “dictatorial” or ruthless than owners of property anywhere under similar stresses. Certainly they were far less bloody and oppressive than any of the “dictatorships of the right”—whether in Hungary, Finland, China, Italy or Germany—established in retaliation or prevention by private ownership which really felt itself in danger.<br /> <br /> What were the conditions which made the Bolsheviks establish a dictatorship? Why could they not wait until they were voted into power, and then take over one by one, by government decree or by taxation, the large-scale properties which they believed must be socially owned? The history of fascist seizures of power in face of the threat of socialist voting is beginning to give the world the answer to this question. The Bolsheviks knew the answer from their Marxian analysis of history. No owning class ever gave up ownership without struggle. The holding of government office is not itself power.<br /> <br /> The power of ownership over the means of life is the day-by-day power which works incessantly, buying brains, corrupting or confusing governments, persistently re-establishing itself against any “will of the people.” Anyone who has experienced in a single American city, as I have in Seattle, the intensity and variety of methods which the capitalists use to fight so mild a thing as public ownership of street-cars, anyone who knows what they did to the war-time government-owned railroads, or today to the Tennessee Valley Corporation, must realize the resources possessed by capitalism against anything so mild as a popular vote. When they can no longer prevent a municipally owned utility, they corrupt it. They make it inefficient through graft or sabotage; they subordinate it to control by private banks. Meantime they continue to play through all the arts of high-paid propaganda on the minds of the electors, who waver and turn to other cures.<br /> <br /> “The change from capitalism to communism is a whole epoch of history,” said Lenin. “Till it is ended, the exploiters inevitably have the hope of restoration.” Even after capitalists are overthrown on a local scale or on the scale of a single country, they remain for some time “stronger than the workers who overthrew them.” Their strength lies in their foreign connections with international capital, in the money and movable property which they still possess, in their organizing and administrative ability, their superior education, their knowledge of all the secrets of administration, their superiority in the art of war. They are furthermore helped by the force of habit and traditional ways of thinking which remain even in the minds of workers and especially in large sections of the middle classes for a considerable period after capitalism is overthrown.&lt;ref&gt;Quoted and condensed from Lenin, ''The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky'', Chap. 3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Marxists therefore hold that the working class must maintain a dictatorial power for an “entire epoch of history” both to prevent attempts at restoration of capitalism and to re-educate the entire population in habits suited to socially owned production. “You will have to go through fifteen, twenty, fifty years of civil wars and international wars,” said Marx to the workers, “not only to change external conditions, but in order to change yourselves and to make yourselves fit for the exercise of political power.”&lt;ref&gt;Marx, ''Revelations on the Communist Trial in Cologne'', 1851.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The tactics used by the dictatorship in the Soviet Union were conditioned by the economic development of the land and its international relations. In the first years they were affected by foreign intervention and civil war; in later, years they conformed to and created the rapid economic advance and increasing international prestige of the country. Four chief epochs may be noted: the period of Workers’ Control in the first year of the Revolution; War Communism for the two and a half years of intervention; the New Economic Policy from 1921 to 1928; and the final offensive against capitalism ushered in by the first Five-Year Plan.<br /> <br /> The new workers’ state inherited a country economically broken by the strain of World War. Peasants were seizing lands of landlords; factories had closed and their workers were hungry; banking was demoralized by the rapid fall of the currency; soldiers without food or munitions were fleeing home from the front. “Peace, land and bread,” was the cry of the country. The capitalists could not satisfy it and this brought the Bolsheviks to power. They at once gave land to the peasants, repudiated all state debts, nationalized banks and transport and created a state monopoly of foreign trade. Industry was left in private hands, but “workers’ control” committees were established from the workers in each industry. These examined all accounts, studied the source of raw materials and fought to keep up production against the attempt of private capitalists to close down the factories as unprofitable. Internal trade remained private; on the second day of the Revolution a proclamation urged traders to continue business as usual. A policy however was announced for the gradual combining of factories into large-scale trusts, which should then be nationalized, and for the gradual socializing of internal trade through co-operatives.<br /> <br /> These policies—the normal reaction of a workers’ government wishing to rebuild the economic life of a ruined country with as little upheaval and disruption as possible, for the sake not of profit but of human welfare—united around the government the overwhelming majority of the population, including both workers and peasants. Opposition came from landlords, capitalists and the upper strata of engineers, civil servants and professional people; but if these used violence or sabotage against the new policy, they were suppressed by governing organizations composed of great masses of the common people.<br /> <br /> A vivid example of dictatorship in this period is given by Lenin, in a contrast drawn between dictatorship by property and dictatorship by workers. “The state has forcibly to evict a family from a house. This is done time and again by the capitalist state and will be done by our proletarian state. . . . The capitalist state evicts the workers’ family which has lost its breadwinner and is unable to pay rent.” After describing the enforcement by a squad of police of the rights of property against poor people, Lenin continues with the picture of the dispossession of a rich man by the workers’ state.<br /> <br /> “Our detachment of workers’ militia consists, let us say, of fifteen people—two sailors, two soldiers, two class-conscious workers (of whom only one, let us assume, is a member of our Party or a sympathizer), one intellectual, and eight members of the toiling poor; at least five are necessarily women, domestic servants, unskilled workers, and so on. They come to the rich man’s house, inspect it, and find that there are five rooms occupied by two men and two women. “This winter, citizens, you must confine yourselves to two rooms and place two rooms at the disposal of two families that are now living in cellars. For the time being, until with the help of engineers (you are an engineer, I think?) we build good dwellings for all, you will have to put yourselves to inconvenience. Your telephone will serve ten families. This will save about a hundred hours’ work in running to the stores and so forth. The student citizen in our detachment will write out two copies of the text of this state order and you will be kind enough to give us a signed declaration that you undertake to abide by it faithfully.”&lt;ref&gt;Lenin, ''Will the Bolsheviks Retain Power?'' published October, 1917.&lt;/ref&gt; This is a vivid example of a dictatorship over property enforced by great masses of the common people.<br /> <br /> Under pressure of foreign intervention and civil war, the limited nationalization of “Workers’ Control” merged into the period of “War Communism.” Attacking armies separated Soviet Russia for two and a half years from her chief food and fuel bases. The granary of the Ukraine, the cotton of Turkestan, the coal of the Donetz, the oil of Baku, the mines of the Urals were in enemy hands. The dictatorship adopted “War Communism,” the tactics of a besieged land. It requisitioned all grain and necessities of life, and rationed them under direct government control; it seized all factories and used the broken machines of one as spares to repair the scarcely less broken machines of another. This policy alienated large sections of the peasantry by crop requisition. It ruined industry more thoroughly than any modern industry has ever been ruined, being an efficient device for using up the last ounce of raw material and the last spare bolt. But the policy of “War Communism” enabled an already exhausted land to carry on for two and a half more years against the attacking armies of the world.<br /> <br /> Soviet power survived. With the coming of peace Lenin at once introduced the New Economic Policy, an attempt to build up the country’s economic life as rapidly as possible by a “two-sided process of the development of capitalism and the development of socialism.”&lt;ref&gt;Stalin, ''Leninism'', I, 314.&lt;/ref&gt; Grain requisitions were replaced by limited taxes with permission for free trade. Private capitalists were allowed to enter both trade and industry, the state retaining the “commanding heights” of land, finance, heavy industry, transport, and foreign trade. This policy brought the peasant, small enterpriser and professional classes back to loyalty—a wavering loyalty, for if some had been won to socialism, others now hoped to grow personally rich. Capitalist nations abroad echoed the belief that Russia was swinging back to the ancient order. But the Soviet workers, led by the Communists, gave time on holidays to great collective drives for repairing factories, making street-cars and new equipment as donations to their country. During “War Communism” they had worked for rations; now they worked for low but steadily increasing wages, building up out of their own sacrifice the first socialist accumulation which should give them economic power for the final offensive against capitalism. Thus industry which in 1921 produced one-fifth the pre-war standard was driven by fivefold increase in 1928 to “normalcy.”<br /> <br /> Russia in 1928 was only half socialist. Most of industry was socially owned but farming was in the hands of peasant proprietors, the stronger of whom were petty capitalists, struggling not only to survive but to grow. Class strife went on between these emerging rural capitalists and the impoverished farmhands. Youth was leaving the farms and flooding the cities with unemployment. Discussion had racked the Communist Party as to whether socialism could be built in a single country, particularly a backward peasant land. Following the analysis of Stalin, the Party decided that it could be done by swiftly creating modern heavy industry and simultaneously industrializing farming. The Soviet Union plunged into that now famous struggle known as the Five-Year Plan, and emerged with large-scale industry and the largest scale farming in the world, both of them socially owned.<br /> <br /> It was a bitter fight, carried through against the upper sections of the peasantry and part of the middle class. An epidemic of sabotage broke out in the industries among the higher engineering staff, who had consciously or half-consciously expected to advance towards privilege and wealth. Men high in the canning industry put broken glass, animal hair and fish tails into food destined for workers. A township veterinary who hated collectivization inoculated six thousand horses with plague. An irrigation engineer tried to discourage the policy of settling yellow-skinned nomads on the soil by using antiquated surveys which he knew would not deliver the water. These cases and thousands more are taken from confessions of men who were later repentant. The dictatorship fought back, shooting the most serious offenders, imprisoning and exiling others. The energy of loyal workers and engineers carried through the Five-Year Plan. Its success won over many earlier saboteurs so that by 1931 Stalin was able to announce that the intellectuals were turning towards the Soviet Government, and should be met by a policy of co-operation.&lt;ref&gt;Speech delivered at Conference of Leaders of Industry, June 23, 1931.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The most spectacular act of ruthlessness which occurred in those years was the exiling of several hundred thousand kulaks—rural property-owners who lived by trade, money-lending or by exploiting small mills, threshers, and hired labor—from farm homes in European Russia and the Ukraine to Siberia or the northern woods. The usual assumption outside the Soviet Union is that this exiling occurred through arbitrary action by a mystically omnipotent G.P.U. That organization did of Course organize the deportation and final place of settlement in labor camps or on new land. But the listing of kulaks who “impede our farming by force and violence” was done by village meetings of poor peasants and farmhands who were feverishly and not too efficiently organizing collectively owned farms with government loans of machinery and credits. The meetings I personally attended were as seriously judicial as a court trial in America. One by one there came before the people the “best families,” who had grabbed the best lands, exploited labor by owning the tools of production as best families normally and historically do, and who were fighting the rise of the collective farm—which had the right to take the best lands away from them—by every means up to arson, cattle-killing and murder. Obviously the situation offered chances for wreaking private grudges. Obviously the occasional agitator from the city was unconcerned with kulak “rights.” The meeting of farmhands and poor peasants discussed each case in turn, questioned the kulaks, allowed most of them to remain but asked the government to deport some as “trouble-makers.”<br /> <br /> It was a harsh, bitter and by no means bloodless conflict, but not one peculiar to Russia. I was reminded of it again in 1933 by the cotton-pickers’ strike in San Joaquin Valley of California. California local authorities deported pickets who interfered with the farming of ranchers; Soviet authorities deported kulaks who interfered with the collectively owned farming of the poor. In both cases central governments sent commissions to guard against the worst excesses. But the “property” which could count on government support was in California that of the wealthy rancher; in the USSR it was the collective property of the poor.<br /> <br /> Through all these struggles of eighteen years in the Soviet Union the Marxists had guessed right—one class held firm. Steadily the industrial workers supported and fought for their socialist state. Theirs was the dictatorship, the ownership, the rule. Led by Communist analysis, they made alliances with other parts of the population—with the great mass of the people to overthrow big landlords and capitalists and later with the poorer peasants to overthrow the richer. The middle classes changed back and forth in their loyalty; but the workers held through.<br /> <br /> Today the chief fight of the dictatorship is against corruption and bureaucracy. The workers, in other words, struggle with their own government, not to overthrow it but to improve it by weeding out inefficiency. A vivid example of this was given by a letter from three railway-workers published in ''Pravda''. They told how the workers of their station, hearing that Sizran station was considered a model, chose three delegates to go and study it. “The election fell on us. However, to our great regret, we convinced ourselves that Sizran is no model.” The letter proceeds to expose fictitious bookkeeping which compelled engineers to list repeated repairs as new in order to protect the reputation of the repair shops, and other false entries which hid inefficiencies. They noted employees who had been demoted for calling too open attention to troubles. They did a thorough and technically accurate job of debunking Sizran, a station on a different railroad to which they had gone in search of good methods. Imagine workers from a station on the Erie giving this attention to study, analyze and reform a station on the Pennsylvania! Imagine their securing ready access to all the records of an alien line! Imagine this as routine news in a metropolitan daily paper, leading to check-up and reprimands of railway superintendents for inaccuracy in reporting their work!<br /> <br /> This is today’s routine in the Soviet Union. Scores of letters like this appear daily in the press throughout the land. Some of them are ironic, some statistical, some outraged. But all of them express men who know themselves owners, and through ownership dictators of the land in which they live.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER IV: THE GROWING DEMOCRACY ===<br /> <br /> {{Quote|“Soviet Power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.”|Lenin}}<br /> <br /> Step by step the Soviet Union fights forward towards that complete democracy which has never yet existed anywhere on earth. For democracy is neither absolute nor static. It varies in type, extent and intensity. It may grow or diminish. In the Soviet Union it grows.<br /> <br /> What are the functions of government in the Soviet Union? How wide is the participation of the people? How much of their life can they control? Whence come the ideas that are followed in the land? What initiative and creative energy is expressed? Who rises to high posts and by what means? All these questions must be considered in determining what kind of democracy exists.<br /> <br /> Let us take first the formal facts of voting, though this is far from exhausting in the Soviet citizen’s participation in government. The Soviet Union has today the largest body of voters any where in the world. Moreover a larger percentage of them come out to elections than in any other country; they give more time to their elections and decide a greater variety of questions.<br /> <br /> All “toilers” over the age of eighteen may elect and be elected; the word is interpreted to include students, housewives, old people who have passed the age of work as well as those more formally known as workers. Voting thus extends to a younger age than is common elsewhere, and there are no disqualifications for transient residents, paupers, migratory workers, soldiers, sailors, such as exist in most countries; even non-citizens may vote if they work in a Soviet industry. There are no restrictions for sex, creed or color, nor even for illiteracy. The only significant restriction relates to “exploiting elements,” but the steady decrease of privately owned enterprises has cut the disfranchised to 2.5 per cent of the population in the 1934 elections; by 1937 it is expected that all will have the vote. In the 1934 elections 91,000,000 people were entitled to vote, and of these 77,000,000, or 85 per cent, actually participated, which is double the proportion found in most countries.<br /> <br /> Let us take a motion picture of a Soviet election. In December 1934 the Moscow streets were thronged with processions, continuing for several days. Special street-cars, gay with banners, carried people to meetings. Men and women gathered in side streets, formed in line with merry chatter and went with bands and flags to the building secured for their election meeting.<br /> <br /> All over the country for more than a month elections had been going on in far-away factories and villages. Soviet elections do not take place on a single day but are determined by local convenience within a period of several weeks prior to the convening of an All-Union Congress. Localities choose dates which will enable their outgoing governments to finish their business, and give the incoming governments time to prepare demands for the All-Union Congress. These candidates and demands had been subjects of much discussion. But the attitude to the elections expressed itself rather in action than in talk. Hundreds of thousands of peasants were joining collective farms “to break with the past and enter the elections as collective farmers.” Factory workers were energetically completing new models of locomotives, turbines, inventions, to send as presents to the coming congress. There were, in fact, so many of these presents that the sending of most of them was ordered confined to reports.<br /> <br /> In wooded mountains of Siberia the dark-skinned Oirots announced proudly: “We have abandoned the wandering life of wigwams; we have raised our literacy rate from 6 to 89 per cent; we enter these elections as educated farmers, settled on our own soil.” From the Turkoman Republic they were matching this claim with another: “Our once suppressed women have increased the proportion who turn out to elections from 2.5 per cent to 73 per cent in these eight years.” The historic city of Kiev was boasting: “Half our elected deputies are women. We lead the Soviet Union in the proportion of women elected to office; this means that we lead the world.” But their boast was matched by the textile city Tver, now renamed Kalinin, which has fully as many.<br /> <br /> Young Pioneers were reciting poems to urge on their elders:<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;That we may build more firmly,&lt;br&gt;Advancing more confidently to victory,&lt;br&gt;We choose to our Soviets firm, tested fighters,&lt;br&gt;Close-welded, the best of our best.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> On the southern Kazak steppe an aged yellow-skinned herdsman, dying, sent a last message to his son who had been village president and who was now elected delegate to the All-Union Congress: “All the years of my life were dark with toil and hunger. But I lived to see the new day. Take care of the Soviet power, my son; it is our power, our happiness.”<br /> <br /> Along the Arctic coast the autumn herring run began a few days before the date set for local elections. The fishermen went to sea. Some of the election commissioners held elections in the absence of a considerable number of voters and were roundly denounced for it by ''Pravda'', central organ of the Communist Party. “A gross violation of Soviet democracy! What right have commissioners to hold elections when workers cannot come? We are glad to note that many of the fishermen had a better sense of their obligations. Many crews held their own meetings and sent deputies ashore with their instructions. But they should not have been forced to this irregularity. The proper course was found by those commissioners who held regular election meetings on the boats and thus combined enthusiastic work for a good herring catch with the collective decision of what to do with it.”<br /> <br /> All of this, taken together and multiplied by millions, makes plain the essence of the Soviet election. It is an act of joint owners deciding what to do with their production, how to build a good life on the proceeds. The task of officials is not to enforce some precedent but to find ways of adjusting election machinery to voters. “The hottest elections we ever had,” they bragged of the 1934 elections, proud of the increasing popular participation in government, which is relied on to check bureaucracy and make state enterprises efficient.<br /> <br /> The basic unit for government is the working institution, the factory or office; in rural districts it is the village. Deputies are chosen to the local government, the village or city soviet.&lt;ref&gt;The word “soviet” means “council.” City soviet is city council.&lt;/ref&gt; The basis of representation and size of the local soviet depends on the size of the community: Gulin village, whose election I visited, has one deputy for every forty voters and a village soviet of thirteen members. Moscow city elects one deputy for fifteen hundred voters and has more than two thousand members in its city soviet. These local deputies meet soon after election to form the new government. They divide among themselves the various departments, which range from the five sections of Gulin village—farming, livestock, culture, roads and finance—to twenty-eight sections, each with over forty deputies, through which Moscow city does business. Besides the more commonly known functions, these local governments own and manage local industry, which in a large city like Moscow includes many municipally owned factories, the street-cars, subway, lights, water, and housing. They receive revenue from public properties, but their budgets may also be augmented by taxes and state loans. Some cities actually bring in revenue—it will be remembered that they get all the house rents; others need help from the higher governments.<br /> <br /> On these local governments is built up the whole structure of central government.&lt;ref&gt;A new constitution is in preparation which will change many details, but it will hardly change the principle of close connection between local, state and central bodies in one system.&lt;/ref&gt; Local soviets elect deputies to a congress of soviets; the township congress elects to the province, and so on up to the All-Union Congress of Soviets, the highest body in the country. Each of these congresses elects its executive committee and the heads of its various departments; for the highest government these are the great Commissariats of heavy and light industry, finance, health, and so forth. Local departments are both horizontally and vertically controlled, by local governments and by the corresponding department in the higher government. Thus a township health department is responsible both to the township executive committee and to the provincial health department. If orders clash, if a local soviet takes the hospital for some other use, its health department appeals to the provincial health department which brings pressure on the local soviet through the provincial government in the interests of public health.<br /> <br /> The greater part of this intricate yet unified system of government is carried on by unpaid work. Elected deputies, whether to village or the All-Union Congress, receive no salaries of office. They draw their usual wages from the factory or institution which sends them and in which they keep on working, except insofar as they may be “released from production” for the needs of government; this varies with the importance of the work they do. There is thus no hard and fast line between the citizen and the man in office. Deputies are a link between the collective life of the factory and the larger collective life of the country. Any worker may approach them conveniently any day in their place of work to ask about the fulfillment of instructions given by the voters. They may be recalled by their constituents at any time simply through a factory meeting.<br /> <br /> If voters thus constantly call on their deputies, the deputies are equally entitled to call on the voters for help in carrying out the election program they have voted. A deputy is no substitute for the people, no ruler; he is the representative who organizes them in their own tasks of voluntary government work. Millions of citizens take active part in the sections of the government—housing commissions, school commissions, taxing commissions, labor inspection and so on. Those who develop a taste for running public affairs will be chosen at some election for more continuous and responsible work. Those who specialize in some field, such as health, courts, housing, may be sent on pay for some months or years of study and become full-time civil servants in these departments.<br /> <br /> The growth of democracy in the Soviet Union thus depends directly on the extent to which citizens can be interested in taking part in operations of government. This interest is in part assured by the fact that government is so clearly the direct organizing of all aspects of the citizen’s life. In a million matters the citizens give direct instructions during the election. They order the increase of school-houses or sound films, the improvement in the quality of bread, the increase of retail stores, the transport of goods in big cities by night; they demand the breaking-up of housing trusts into smaller co-operatives, or the introduction of a less specialized education in the schools. All of these were part of some 48,000 instructions issued directly by Moscow voters to their city government, which reported within three months on the fulfillment of many hundred demands and on the disposition made of all. When instructions clash, as when some citizens want an odorous industrial plant removed from their neighborhood while others want it to stay, commissions are formed which try to satisfy not merely the majority, but as nearly as possible everybody, not through a showing of hands in opposition, but through various adjustments to the suggestions made by all. Capitalist ownership of private property limits the citizen’s participation, in government to an approval or rejection—expressed in conflict—of general policies. Socialist ownership causes government policies to grow directly and naturally from the correlated demands of millions of people, all of whom are interested in improving the country’s wealth.<br /> <br /> The interest of citizens in government is also consciously promoted by the Communist Party which stirs up wide competitions between factories, villages, cities, as to the extent and energy of their participation. An industrial plant where less than 95 per cent of the workers come to the election hangs its head in shame as an institution lacking in civic consciousness. Candidates never make speeches or election promises; this would be considered highly indelicate. But the voters pride themselves on picking deputies whose previous work has been notable and who therefore give promise of being widely useful. They select a fellow worker, not an outside politician. Students choose a student, auto-workers choose an auto-worker, the Moscow Grand Opera elects a famous singer. The future task of these deputies is to extend on a wider scale the type of work for which they are already known. The opera singer will organize connections between the Moscow Grand Opera and the villages, sending out artists to help rural singing classes. The printer on the ''Peasants’ Gazette'' who mechanized its mailing list of two million subscribers was elected to the Moscow city soviet with instructions to help mechanize all the newspapers of the city. A textile worker who helps organize a good day nursery in her factory will be elected by her fellow workers to help improve the city’s day nurseries, and will choose to work on the health section of the local government.<br /> <br /> The operation of Soviet democracy is thus so intimate, continuous and organic that the observer fresh from capitalist politics hardly recognizes it as government. Where is the debate? Who determines general policies? Can the people throw out the upper officials? Can they throw out Stalin? The Communist Party? The Soviet voter, when asked these last questions, replies in a puzzled way: “Why should we want to?” The questioner thinks he has been evaded. But all elections presuppose an existing economic system, which voting is powerless to change. Voters in America cannot change Rockefeller’s method of operating oil companies for private profit. Similarly no Soviet election raises the issue of returning public properties to private hands: this was settled by the Revolution, and forms the foundation beneath the whole government.<br /> <br /> Barring that question, there is nothing whatever that Soviet voters cannot change. They actually do change thousands of officials at every election, and as their acquaintance with the wider problems of the country grows, the forms of democracy are being widened to include direct control of the highest officials. Stalin’s chief post is not in the government, but as general secretary of the Communist Party, which would certainly remove him if his policy and actions should ever discredit him with the people; at present he is by far the most popular man in the country. To throw out the Communist Party bodily would be to throw out all the leading and organizing elements in all factories, farms, schools and enterprises; it could clearly be done only by upheaval leading to chaos. But the citizens are constantly at work changing the very membership of the Party, any member of which may be “cleaned out” on protest of his non-Party associates that he is too dictatorial, too rough towards workers, or merely not a fit leader.&lt;ref&gt;This is discussed in Chaps. 1 and 5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Several elections which I attended will show concretely how soviet democracy functions. Four election meetings were held simultaneously in different hamlets of Gulin village, which had no assembly hall big enough for all. One of these meetings threw out the Party candidate, Borisov, because they felt that he neglected their instructions; they elected a non-Party woman who had displayed energy in improving the village and were praised by the election commissioner—himself a Party member—for having discovered good government timber which the Party had neglected. The central meeting in Gulin expected 235 voters; 227 appeared and were duly checked off by name at the door. There ensued personal discussion of every one of nine candidates, of whom seven were chosen. Mihailov “did good work on the roads.” The most enthusiasm developed over Menshina, a woman who “does everything assigned her energetically; checks farm property, tests seeds, collects state loans.” Dr. Sharkova, head of the Mothers’ Consultation, was pushed by the women: “We need a sanitary expert to clean up our village.” The incoming soviet was instructed to “increase harvest yield within two years to thirty bushels per acre, to organize a stud farm, get electricity and radio for every home, organize adult education courses, football and skiing teams, and satisfy a score of other needs.<br /> <br /> In the Moscow Architectural Institute where 1,500 men and women are qualifying to become architects, every class in the school held three sessions on the elections, discussing first the shortcomings of the outgoing government, then instructions to the new government, and lastly candidates. The fourteen hundred instructions sent in by the students included more and better draughting pencils, evening schools in drawing, more money for students’ excursions to see new architecture, more exhibitions of foreign architecture, fruit trees to beautify Moscow, artists to be held responsible for designs of state-made texiles, township architects to be appointed to advise the new construction on farms. Similarly the 1,500 voters of the ''Peasants’ Gazette'' turned in 1,500 proposals, which were carefully worked over by committees, published in a special newspaper issued for the voters, and given to their deputy to put through with their help. These included adequate textbooks for all pupils in the schools, an increase in the number of children’s theaters, strengthening the fight against hooliganism, closing the sale of liquor on Suchevski Street opposite school Twenty-two—the latter being the common form of the fight against alcohol.<br /> <br /> Instructions thus adopted become the program of incoming governments, which they use as a weapon to get what they require from provincial and central authorities. Some of the demands can be put through by the electors themselves with the help of their deputy; others need central assistance. When the All-Union Congress meets it knows how many villages are demanding air-dromes, sound films, textbooks, electrification. These demands, correlated by engineers and economists, form the content for future development of the life of the country in the direction its citizens choose. But the citizens themselves expect to work to accomplish it. If villagers ask for a seven-room school or a landing field for farm airplanes, they expect deputies to investigate possible fields, make recommendations, get the needed machines from some central authority; but they themselves expect to haul the timber or pay the men who haul it with labor days credited against the joint harvest.<br /> <br /> Democracy in Soviet life is not confined to government. Trade unions organize many aspects of workers’ life; collective farms and co-operatives organize production and distribution for the farmers. Their organization is separate from that of government; it is also democratically controlled. In the past two years democracy has become more intimate and decentralized in both these directions. The administration of social insurance, which in 1936 will have eight billion rubles for hospitals, day nurseries, diet kitchens, invalid benefits, old-age pensions and the like, was two years ago given over to the trade unions, as was also the inspection of factories and of workers’ food stores. Similarly the whole organization of collective farming, including the relation between fields operated jointly and plots individually worked by farm members, is today in the hands of the farmers themselves, decided by the general meeting at which not less than two-thirds are present. Thus democracy grows more flexible, the intermediate apparatus is lessened, and the various functions of government are handled by those whom they most directly concern.<br /> <br /> The extension of social ownership into the farms and the growth in the intelligence of the entire electorate has made possible a third extension of democracy. A new constitution is being drafted by the collective labor of thousands of people in all parts of the land. Economists and historians are studying the constitutions of all countries and considering every detail of democratic technique; their reports will be further discussed in every factory and farm of the country before the constitution takes final form. It is known, however, that it will include direct election, secret ballot, and equal representation for all citizens, replacing the inequality which hitherto obtained between city workers and peasants. At is also expected to abolish all disfranchised classes, since by 1937 social ownership will be universal and all citizens will belong to one toiling-owning class.<br /> <br /> “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” was said once of the democracy of capitalist society whereby small private owners protected their rights. But socialism demands more than vigilance. Eternally co-operating human energy is the price of socialism and of that complete democracy which operates jointly owned means of production for the expanding life of all. This is the final stage towards which the present Soviet democracy struggles and grows.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER V: THE UNION OF NATIONS ===<br /> <br /> {{Quote|“No nation can be free if it oppresses other nations.”|Lenin}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|“Soviet power is to toiling Kazaks like rain in the desert.”|Letter of Kazak peasant to Peasants’ Gazette.}}<br /> <br /> When the All-Union Congress of Soviets meets in Moscow, it presents a vivid and colorful assembly. Flat-faced Tartars from old Kazan, yellow-skinned Uzbeks and Tajiks from the hills and irrigated valleys in the heart of Asia, slant-eyed Tunguz from the Far Northeast over against Alaska, mix with many score nationalities from the Caucasus to pass the laws which shall govern all these peoples. Many of them are dark-skinned peoples, formerly exploited by the Russians, but equal citizens now under the Soviets. It is as if Congress in Washington contained a score of southern Negroes, half a dozen Mexican farmers from Arizona and California, scattered representatives of the surviving tribes of Indians, an Eskimo, a Hawaiian, an Indian from Porto Rico, a mixed-blood from Panama, all legislating on equal terms with auto-workers from Detroit, steel-workers and miners from the Pittsburgh valley, and American farmers from the great west, A British governing assembly similarly formed would show an overwhelming majority from the dark-skinned peoples of Asia and Africa.<br /> <br /> Tsarist Russia was known as the “prison of nations.” No imperialist power has a history of more brutal racial and national oppression, Nation after nation of the proud mountaineers in the Caucasus was literally driven into the Black Sea by the conquering Russians. The Tartars of Crimea perished by tens of thousands in their flight across the Black Sea to Turkey. The tribes of the great plains and the primitive peoples of the Arctic were debauched in the time-honored imperialist way by the vodka of their conqueror and subdued in soul by the emissaries of his religion, that they might be more easily robbed of lands and furs. Even more bitter, perhaps, than the robbery was the insulting “superiority of the conquerors. “They cheated us and afterwards despised us,” said a flashing-eyed woman Tunguz from the Arctic. &quot;Eh, but it was bad in the old days; all my life I hated Russians.”<br /> <br /> The country which fell to the Soviet power to organize was seething with national hates, incited and nurtured by the oppression of centuries. Tsarist imperialism, like all imperialisms, not only oppressed directly, but also set one nation against another. Turks massacred Armenians, Armenians massacred Turks, Ukrainian peasants, stirred up by Russian gendarmes, murdered Jews. The Soviet Government faced in all its intensity that “national problem&quot; which made Austria and the Balkans for generations the tinder box of Europe and has added bitterness to the great conflicts of the modern world.<br /> <br /> The Communist policy on nationality was developed over a period of decades by applying the Marxian analysis to the history of nations. Stalin, a Georgian, member of a proud nation which had for centuries been decimated by the wars of its greater neighbors in that hotbed of national hates, the Caucasus, was one of the ablest theoreticians. We find him in the years before the World War developing the exact definition of “nation” as a “historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture,&quot;&lt;ref&gt;''Marxism and the National Question'', 1913.&lt;/ref&gt; and defending this conception against those who viewed a nation as a matter of &quot;race,” the precursors of today’s fascists, Capitalism both combines nations and drives them asunder. It knits together peoples of earth by the railroad, the steamboat, the rapid mail, the newspaper. It creates the material basis for the brotherhood of all nations but the methods of its expansion brutally thwart that hope It advances into the backward lands of earth by plunder and annexation. The “civilized” people rob the &quot;uncivilized&quot; ones and finally war among themselves for the right to rob. Imperialism steadily increases both the economic unity of the earth, and the national hates which tear the unity asunder.<br /> <br /> The national policy adopted on the basis of the analysis by the Social-Democratic Party of Russia in the years before the war repudiated every form of compulsion of nationalities, recognized the right of each people to determine its destiny, and stated that a durable union of peoples could be accomplished only by voluntary consent and was possible only through the overthrow of capitalism. The first practical test of this principle came in May of 1917, when the Kerensky government of Russia refused the demand of Finland to secede. Lenin declared at the conference of the Social-Democratic Party on May 12: “We say to the Russian people: don’t dare rape Finland; no nation can be free that oppresses other nations.” Stalin expressed the belief that, “now after the overthrow of tsardom nine-tenths of the peoples will not desire secession,” but that those who did wish to, must if course be allowed to secede, while a system of regional economy should be set up for the peoples which decided to remain.<br /> <br /> When the October Revolution brought the Bolsheviks into power, they at once renounced all rights to Finland, evacuated the Russian troops from northern Persia and canceled the claims of the Russian imperialists in Mongolia and China. The breaking up of tsarist Russia gave an opportunity to the imperialist powers of the world to fish in troubled waters. England, France, and Germany backed the aspirations of various border nationalities with funds. Yet it was the Bolsheviks and not those imperialist backers who first recognized Latvia, Esthonia, Lithuania as separate states. The Soviets, however, did not only recognize nations; they recognized the right of the workers and peasants to revolt. The Ukrainian workers and peasants overthrew the Ukrainian bourgeois Rada; the poor peasants of Turkestan threw out their so-called autonomous government; the “national councils” of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan were supported by foreign money but not by their own masses. Peasants’ and workers’ uprisings in these countries were assisted by the Bolsheviks as part of the October Revolution. The newly rising governments of workers and peasants were given military and economic and drawn into a socialist “federation.”<br /> <br /> This federation at first was loosely organized. Regional autonomy expressed itself in a variety of flexible forms. Some of these local governments retained their own foreign offices; others issued their own money. Each nationality received the amount of freedom which its workers and peasants demanded. The Communists relied on the pressure of mutual common interests to bring and hold these peoples together, once capitalist exploitation, the source of their bitterness, was removed. Meanwhile, they paved the way by abolishing all the special privileges of the <br /> <br /> “colonizers,” i.e., those Russian and Cossack groups which had received special lands and privileges from the tsar in return for their services in suppressing their neighbors. The Communists also pushed the policy of recruiting local governments from local people, established schools, courts, administrations, in the native languages, and rapidly trained from formerly illiterate and suppressed natives the future teachers and leaders of their people.<br /> <br /> The fruits of this policy were seen on December 30, 1922, when, on the initiative of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia, later joined by the Ukraine and White Russia, the amalgamation of all the Soviet Republics into a union took place at the very time when the states if post-war Europe were increasingly dividing into hostile camps. Thus was formed the Soviet Union, a union of nations. The name “Russian&quot; was dropped from the official title of the country which is known as the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, of which the Russian republic is only one.&lt;ref&gt;There are seven constituent republics, the Russian, the Ukrainian, the White Russian, the Transcaucasian, the Uzbek, the Turkoman, the Tajik. Many of these, and especially the Russian, which is by far the largest, contain smaller autonomous republics within them. The number of nations represented by delegates in the All-Union Council of Nationalities is forty-two.&lt;/ref&gt; Nearly half of its 170 million people belong to nationalities other than Russian. The number of these nationalities is variously given; the census of December, 1926, showed 182 different nationalities with 149 languages. They are people of different races and colors. They range from the reindeer keeping Eskimo of the north, to the Kazak sheep herder of southern deserts, from the flax growers of White Russian swamps through the many-nationed Volga wheat lands to the cotton producers of Central Asia.<br /> <br /> The classic statement of the contrast between the national policy of capitalism and that of socialism was given in the preamble to the Constitution of the new union: “There in the camp of capitalism we have national animosity and inequality, colonial slavery and chauvinism, national oppression and pogroms, imperialist brutalities and wars.<br /> <br /> “Here, in the camp of socialism, we have mutual confidence and peace, national freedom and equality, the peaceful co-existence and fraternal collaboration of peoples.<br /> <br /> &quot;The attempts made by the capitalist world during the course of decades to solve the problem of nationalities by combining the free development of peoples with the system of exploitation of man by man have proved fruitless.... The bourgeoisie has proved itself utterly incapable of bringing about the collaboration of peoples.<br /> <br /> “Only in the camp of the Soviets... has it proved possible to abolish national oppression root and branch, to create an atmosphere of mutual confidence, and to lay the foundations for the fraternal collaboration of peoples.”<br /> <br /> The preamble mentioned, as reasons for a closer union, the economic needs of the war-ruined land, the need of a joint foreign and military policy in the midst of encircling foes, and said that “the very structure of Soviet government, which is internationalist in its class character, impels the toiling masses of the Soviet republics to unite into one socialist family.” It concluded with a guarantee of equal status for all people, the right of secession for each republic and the right of admission for “all Soviet Republics, whether now existing or hereafter to arise.&quot;<br /> <br /> The Bolsheviks did not rest content with the formal act of union. The Central Congress, elected on the basis of population, which put the Russian nationality in a dominant position, was supplemented by a “council of nationalities.&quot; It is one of the two chambers of the legislative and administrative government of the country, no legislation involving national rights may be passed without it. Besides this legal status of equality, a policy was adopted assisting the more backward nationalities in their economic and cultural development, which alone could give them actual equality with the more developed nationalities. New industrial centers were established, modern methods of agriculture and irrigation introduced, peasant and handicraft co-operatives organized. Every national republic was encouraged in the fullest development of a culture, “national in form, socialist in content.&quot;<br /> <br /> The meaning of that phrase, &lt;nowiki&gt;''&lt;/nowiki&gt;national in form and socialist in content,” was vividly expressed for me by a Jew of Birobidjan, the autonomous Jewish territory rising in the Soviet Far East. “We distinguish between nationalism and nationality,” he said. &quot;If we should claim that the Jews are a chosen people, the best and brainiest in the world, that’s nationalism. It’s dangerous nonsense, the kind of murderous nonsense that leads Turks to attack Armenians or white Americans to lynch Negroes. The assertion of the right of one culture to dominate another, or even to pre-eminence—that is the capitalist wish to exploit, and it leads to war. We have no right to exploit or to claim pre-eminence; but we have the same rights as others to develop our own characteristic culture in peace. The free development of all kinds of national culture adds to the variety and significance of the world. Our policy in this matter is part of the Soviet respect for human individuality—which again is different from individualism. We have no respect for the individuals who hold back history; but all those individuals who help push history forward—workers, writers, all productive elements—must be helped to fullest expression. Hence the Soviet Union has respect for even the smallest national culture, since each of them enriches all human culture and each of them is unique. Eventually, we shall no doubt all merge in one nation and one language, but the road to it is not by suppression and impoverishment, but by the fullest development of all variety.”<br /> <br /> National prejudices still exist in the minds of some Russians, due to their past privilege of superiority. National grudges still remain in the minds of formerly suppressed peoples, who long learned to distrust the Russians. These form the final problem. If they lead to even minor conflicts based on nationality, they are firmly dealt with. Ordinary drunken brawls between Russians may be lightly handled as misdemeanors, but let a brawl occur between a Russian and a Jew in which national names are used in a way insulting to national dignity, and this becomes a serious political offense. Usually, the remnants of national antagonisms require no such drastic methods; they yield to education. But the American workers who helped build the Stalingrad Tractor Plant will long remember the clash which Lewis and Brown had with the Soviet courts after their fight with the Negro Robinson, in the course of which they called him “damn low-down nigger.&quot; The two white men went back to America, disgraced in Soviet eyes by a serious political offense; the Negro remained and is now a member of the Moscow City Government.<br /> <br /> What has been the result of this national policy of the Communists, applied to people in all stages of development from the nomads of the great plains to the proudly cultured Georgians? It <br /> <br /> has welded the strength of scores of formerly subject peoples around the Revolution and enabled the Russian workers to beat back their enemies. It has abolished age-long hates with unbelievable speed. It has released tremendous energy of devotion which gave a great economic and cultural impetus. It has dealt a mortal blow to that legend of “inferior” and “superior&quot; races into which capitalism divided the earth, the former of which are the doomed objects of exploitation, while the latter bear “the white man’s burden,”—the mission to exploit. Over against this legend, exalted today by fascism into a religion, stands the whole experience of the USSR. The liberated non-European nations, once drawn into the channel of Soviet development, are no less capable than Europeans of truly progressive civilization.<br /> <br /> New centers of industry have risen m the national republics more rapidly than in the rest of the Soviet Union, as part of the Communist policy to ‘equalize the backward districts with the center.’ During the first Five-Year Plan, when the industrial output of the entire country doubled, it increased 3.5 times in the national republics. The progress was most rapid in the most backward; the great plains of Kazakstan saw a 4.5 times increase in industrial output, which the Central Asian Republics attained a sixfold growth. Based on these economic achievements was the growth in education and culture. Seventy nationalities adopted the Latin alphabet during the first Five-Year Plan. Many nationalities had no alphabet at all before the Revolution; they received their written language as a gift from the Soviet power. Among all the nations spectacular increases had been made in literacy, in the growth of books and in the arts. The first All-Union Theatrical Olympiad held some years ago showed that many nations have developed a truly national theater, which in some cases has already reached the level of high art.<br /> <br /> An important chapter in Soviet national policy is the story of how ten million nomads are being transformed into stable fanners. The Kirghiz, the Kalmyk, the Gypsy, the reindeer herders of the Far North and the mountain people of Central Asia and the Caucasus—tribes which for centuries led a semi-barbaric existence under the threefold oppression of the tsars’ officials, their native chieftains and the medicine men—arc already developing collective farms. Seven million of those who roamed the plains and hills and tundra have already settled, it is planned to settle the remaining three million by the end of the second Five-Year Plan. The Soviet Government gave them land for tilling and pasture, irrigated their fields; provided money and building materials for barns and blacksmith shops, homes and bath-houses, for the purchase of livestock and seed. Soviet farm experts taught them methods of farm cultivation.<br /> <br /> Especially picturesque are the peoples of the Arctic tundra. Twenty-six nations have been listed in this vast region, the most populous of which, that of the Tunguz, numbers only 60,000. Before the Revolution none of these peoples had an alphabet, a written language or a school. Today most of them have received a written language, and printed books. Several hundred schools in the native tongue have pushed their way along the Arctic coast, some traveling with the reindeer herds of the nomads, others building dormitories where children spend the winter.<br /> <br /> &quot;Once they looked upon us as wild beasts,&quot; wrote a member of the Nentsi people, reindeer herders of the North. &quot;There are still Nentsi living who were exhibited in the tsarist time in zoological gardens of Russia and foreign lands. They called us 'Samoyeds’ (cannibals) and the tsar's government legalized this as our shameful name—but now we begin to sing new songs.<br /> <br /> For our tundra is new. An experimental farm center has risen beyond the Arctic circle; we have raised vegetables! On the Pechora meadows has appeared the first tractor. When the first radio came, how it frightened us Nentsi. But now every day the number of literate people grows.”<br /> <br /> During the past year many of the national republics celebrated their fifteenth anniversary. Briefly they flamed across the columns of the Soviet press—Daghestan with its thirty languages; Kazakstan, largest and most arid of all the republics; northern Karelia of forests and marble mountains, “where every fisherman has a lake of his own&quot;; far-south Armenia, centuries old in civilization and suffering; each of them told its achievements under Soviet power.<br /> <br /> To Alma-Ata, new capital of the yellow-skinned, once nomad, Kazaks, who, as late as 1919 were believed by one of their own nationalist leaders to be “doomed to a slow death,&quot; came a congress of 748 scientific and cultural workers to report on the country's educational growth. Before the Revolution there were 13,000 children in the schools of this vast area; now there are half a million. A national theater, an opera, a symphony orchestra, seventeen institutions of higher learning are counted among the cultural achievements. They arise on the industrial basis of Karaganda copper, the Turksib railroad, the great mines at Ridder, the Emba-Orsk oil pipeline.<br /> <br /> On the borders of Afghanistan the youngest Soviet republic, the Tajiks, celebrated ten years of existence. Soviet power has meant to them 100 million rubles’ worth of irrigation, the erection of great textile plants, the sinking of mines, the creation of a network of technical schools. Scientific excursions have mapped their high Pamirs, finding gold and precious minerals on the slopes. Tens of thousands of tractors, plows, harrows and modern farm implements have come to the cotton fields where once the camel pulled the wooden plow. On the site of an ancient village has grown the new capital, Stalinabad, an industrial center. Airplanes land in mountain villages whose inhabitants before the Revolution never saw a wheeled cart. Soviet power found only half of one per cent of the Tajiks literate; today nine-tenths of the children attend public school.<br /> <br /> One by one the list unrolls of 182 nationalities, which have created industries, modern farming, schools and a national culture under Soviet power. Nor are the nationalities mere recipients of blessings from the more advanced Russians. Creative energy pours increasingly from them all to enrich their common Soviet life. Some of the smaller nationalities have already made records which place them in the vanguard of the Soviet Union. Armenia, once ravaged by national massacres, us today a model republic of the Transcaucasus, celebrated for its thriving industries. Kabardino-Balkaria, a district of two Mohammedan peoples on the northern slopes of the Caucasus, has created the most famous collective farms of the USSR. It developed the idea of “socialist farm cities” designed by architects, which is spreading through the whole Soviet Union, and the policy of making older farmers inspectors of quality, which brought happiness and self-respect to hundreds of thousands of aged men in the Soviet land.<br /> <br /> The devotion of suppressed peoples, both within and without its borders, is the prize which the Soviet national policy has won. ‘Soviet power is toiling Kazaks like rain in the desert,” is a proverb of the Kazak old men quoted in the Soviet press by Kliumov, eighteen-year-old president of a Kazak village. “The Party of Lenin and Stalin has resurrected peoples from the dead, peoples who less than dust. Now these peoples have themselves conquered the earth and have come to report their victory to their leader,&quot; said the Tajik poet Lahuti, arriving in Moscow with a delegation of triumphant record-making cotton-pickers. “The past is a stairway of years carpeted with pain and beggary,&quot; said Arith Shakirov, one of the cotton-pickers. “The Uzbeks feared to go along the road of the Arabs, the Tajiks carried sticks when they walked through the Uzbek quarter. Hardly anyone could read. The past is gone. On its ruins we build a bright new life. Woe unto anyone who tries to take it away from us.”<br /> <br /> When Turkoman horsemen made a spectacular run from their capital, Ashkhabad, to Moscow, in August, 1935, the cities through which they passed on their 4,300-kilometer way were decorated to meet them. “From beyond the boundless expanse of our great fatherland, across the hot sands of the Kara-Kum, the Ust-Urta steppes and the limitless collective fields,&quot; thus ran their greeting. They spoke of the “invincible brotherhood of nations replacing the prison of nations—tsarist Russia—which has gone into the past never to return.” One of the group, Chary Kary, had been in Moscow before. “But then,&quot; he said, “it was the city of my enemy and every person in it seemed my personal foe. Now Moscow is the heart of my great fatherland and every nationality in it is my nation.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;The friendship between the peoples of the USSR is a great and signal victory,&quot; said Stalin to one of those many delegations of Central Asiatic workers who stormed the Kremlin with their exploits in late 1935. “As long as this friendship exists the people of our country shall be free and invincible.&quot; But the influence of the Soviet national policy goes far beyond its borders. More than any other Soviet policy it has undermined the imperialisms of the world.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER VI: THE TECHNIQUE OF LEADERSHIP ===<br /> <br /> {{Quote|“Among the masses of people, we are but drops in the ocean, and we will be able to govern only when we properly express that which the people appreciate. Without this the Communist Party will not lead the proletariat, the proletariat will not take the lead of the masses, and the whole machine will fall to pieces.”|Lenin at Eleventh Party Congress}}<br /> <br /> If by some cataclysm of war a section of the Soviet Union should be cut off from Moscow and compelled for a time to exist alone, government in these isolated areas would continue unchanged except insofar as it was crushed by invading armies. A picturesque example of this was given me by a Yakut woman, who boasted that her district of forests and tundra a thousand miles north of the Trans-Siberian Railway had had “Soviet Power” continuously since 1917. The years of civil war that raged along the railway had never penetrated so far north. To my query how this backward bit of territory knew what policies to follow she replied that a few Bolshevik exiles had remained among them and they got occasional news from Moscow over the Great Northern Telegraph which traversed their region. Many other sections of the country were isolated during the Civil War for considerable periods, yet continued to follow a common policy.<br /> <br /> For eighteen years the authority of the Communist Party in the life of the Soviet Union has grown steadily stronger; it has kept power now for a considerably longer time than any Party in any other country in the world. The accumulating discontents which in other lands throw out governments do not seem to worry it. The Party itself organizes discontent for the sake of progress. In spite of exposures of graft, inefficiency, bureaucracy, and stupid excesses—indeed through these very exposures—the hold of the Communist Party increases.<br /> <br /> To manage the state affairs of the most extensive republic on earth—covering one-sixth of the world’s land surface—might be considered enough for a political party. But to run the state is only one of the Communists’ tasks. For their plan of remaking the world the apparatus of government is insufficient. Great popular organizations like trade unions, co-operatives, physical culture societies and scores of voluntary social agencies must also move in a common, yet flexible plan. But the action of these organizations must be voluntary, arousing the initiative of their members, or their energy and life will die.<br /> <br /> How then does the Communist Party lead the country? By the energy and discipline of its members, their contact with all organizations in the land, and by the authority of repeated success. In all government bodies and voluntary organizations the Communists belonging to them act together to induce them to follow the “Party Line.” This line, however, while firm, is not rigid; Party policy itself grows from the discussions and active struggles of its members, each of whom is in touch with some aspect of the country’s life. The members serve as a living conscious bridge between the Party and all the other organizations. They explain to the Party the desires of the people with whom they are associated, and explain to the people the policies developed by the Party in regard to their demands.<br /> <br /> The primary Party organizations are set up in factories, offices, state farms, red army units, universities, villages, in any institution which has three Party members or more. In a typical iron and steel plant in the Ukraine, for instance, where 1,600 persons—workers, engineers, office staff—work in the rolling mill, 55 are Party members, 85 belong to the Young Communist League and 30 are enrolled as “sympathizers,” an organized group which is studying Communism with the presumable intent to join the Party. One Communist is paid a salary by the Party as full time organizer; the others are scattered in ordinary jobs through all the working gangs of the factory. Each of them has his assigned “Party work.” Some are editors of the sixteen “wall newspapers” which are posted in every working gang of the mill, filled with news and discussions of the gang’s successes and failures. Others read regular newspapers aloud during lunch hour and conduct discussions on current events. Others stir up “socialist competition” between different working gangs so that skill and production may increase. Others are active in the trade union or help promote sports. Every Communist, Young Communist and sympathizer does some unpaid public work of this kind; those who had none or failed to do it would be dropped from the Party as “passive.”<br /> <br /> Some years ago I visited an open meeting of a Party organization in a factory near Moscow. Not only the Communists but many non-members had gathered to hear the semi-annual report of the Party secretary of the plant. As he sat down a storm of questions arose. “Why have we no report about the Young Pioneers? . . . Has the Party looked into the question of our workers’ club building and observed that we have no summer playground? Why haven’t we a sanitary organization? Why haven’t we a ‘Friends of Aviation’? Does the co-operative housing organization report regularly to the Party, and if so, when are we going to get the houses?” From the secretary’s answers it became clear that this factory had many voluntary organizations among its members: a “Friends for Children,” an “International Labor Defense,” an organization to “Increase Production,” a “Society for Contacts with Rural Districts,” and many more. All of these had been launched with Party co-operation, usually first as small committees, and had then grown into larger organizations by the influx of people who were not Communists. The number of organizations that would be started would depend partly on popular demand and partly on the capacity of Party members to stimulate and organize interest. It would be difficult for an organization to start without Party sanction; it would not be precisely forbidden, but a score of difficulties would discourage it. On the other hand, if a popular demand arose for any new kind of organization—from a drama club to an Anti-Tuberculosis Society—some Party members would take part in it either on their own initiative or by request of the workers or the Party, and would be expected by everyone to keep the organization in touch with any Party policies which affected it.<br /> <br /> There were several ironic remarks and cat-calls in the meeting during a report by the plant’s director, who was clearly not popular with the workers. I happened to know that the Party secretary had recently recommended to the higher organizations that the director be removed to some other plant where he could profit by the mistakes he had made in this one and start without the accumulated friction. The manager also knew that his transfer had been recommended, and quite possibly concurred. At the meeting, however, the Party secretary said no word of this recommendation but put himself in the unenviable position of explaining the manager’s actions to a group which was almost howling him down. Both he and the manager were disciplined Communists, who did not wish to increase dissension but to work together for the good of the plant.<br /> <br /> The proportion of Communists in rural districts is very much less than in factories, as might be expected from the fact that the factory workers were the most active elements in the Revolution and also more literate than the peasants. A typical Party organization in a village of two hundred families—I take here the collective farm “Postishev” in the Ukraine—has five Party members, ten “sympathizers,” and twenty-seven members of the Young Communist League. The latter organization is nearly always much larger than the Party in the villages, since it is the youth on the farms which is progressive.<br /> <br /> Of the five Party members in this village, one of them, Povlichenko, is organizer, giving full time to Party work. He was born in the village, worked some years in a city factory, and was sent back in 1931 on Party order to help organize collectivization. From comments of peasant women I judge he was high-handed in that period and stirred up some antagonisms which he has not lived down. He is, however, a very energetic person, a once half-starved, half-educated farmhand with a passion for schooling which the Revolution enabled him to realize. He runs the Party school where members study Party history and current politics, teaches an elementary course in Leninism and the Soviet Constitution for the sympathizers, and organizes talks and discussions on special events, such as Party congresses, or new decrees affecting the farms. At the time of my visit these remote villagers were studying, more or less assiduously, the reports of Dimitroff and others at the recent congress of the Communist International. Povlichenko also takes active part in pushing the local school, the village club, the motion pictures, the local newspaper and all forms of education and culture.<br /> <br /> The second Communist is a local peasant, president of the collective farm since 1931, but now leaving for a three-year course in an agricultural school. His salary comes from the farm, not from the Party. The third is an electrician sent to this village because “we needed a Communist in every field brigade.” When he came he was entirely ignorant of farming, but his craft made him useful in a village just beginning to import electricity from the great power plant on the Dnieper. Recently the Party planned to transfer him to township work, but the local farmers checked this by electing him president of the village. “The Party,” he said, “always considers the desires of the masses.” He may or may not have helped organize those desires. For Party work he is attached to the third field brigade and is also adviser of the Young Communist League. The fourth party member is a woman who earns her living as saleswoman in the co-operative store, and whose Party assignment is to help the village women organize a day nursery, a first-aid society and get vacation on pay from the collective farm at time of childbirth. This right is automatic in state-owned enterprises, but not all the farmers’ organizations give it yet. The fifth Party member is manager of the local co-operative store, who, since he makes twenty or more trips to the city every month, is used by the Party for city contacts rather than for regular village work.<br /> <br /> It is plain that these five Party members have their hands on the whole life of the village. Besides their general work, the first three each keep in touch with a different field brigade of forty or more workers whom they are expected to know personally. “I must know what they want, their economic conditions and working abilities. This is called political watchfulness. If we did not know this, it would be bad for us. We could not possibly lead the masses,” said Povlichenko.<br /> <br /> The Party organization of this village is open to criticism from strict Party principles in that its members hold too many local government jobs. They are supposed to keep a better balance between office-holders and members “in production,” and to stimulate and train non-Party people for some of the government work. Hogging the offices by Party members is considered a bad sign; it means that they have not stirred up wide enough interest. The Postishev organization is trying to do this through their work with the ten sympathizers and the Young Communists, each of whom has also Party work of a less responsible character. They read and discuss the newspapers in the field brigades, organize traveling libraries, chess games, football teams, initiate competitions in reaping and threshing, help start the musical or dramatic circle, or assist in the “cottage laboratory” where sixty farmers are studying scientific methods.<br /> <br /> These primary Party organizations are correlated by the township&lt;ref&gt;Rayon, a district about equivalent to a township.&lt;/ref&gt; organization which in turn comes under the larger regions up to the All-Union organization. The lower bodies elect the higher but are in turn subordinate to their decisions; the system is known as “democratic centralism.” The highest power within each organization is vested in its general meeting or congress which elects a standing committee to serve between sessions. The highest power of the entire Party is the All-Union Party Congress and between its sessions the Central Committee. The Central Committee organizes a political bureau for the day-by-day determination of political policy, an organizational bureau for general guidance of organizational work, and a secretariat. Stalin is general secretary of the Party, but there are several other secretaries who share this work.<br /> <br /> Some years ago I saw a district congress of the Communist Party in action in the city of Red Lugansk of the Donetz Basin, the valley of coal and steel. Four or five hundred men and women gathered for a two day session—miners and mine managers, employees and head of the locomotive works, some teachers and health department officials—Communists all, sent as delegates from the local Party organizations of the factories and mines of the district. The problems for discussion were the policy for heavy industry and for minor nationalities. They had been announced by the Central Committee as the immediate pressing problems; “theses” on them had been published by the leading authorities and every local Party organization had discussed them for weeks.<br /> <br /> The delegates wasted no time in preliminaries and compliments. Man after man spoke hotly and strongly on the concrete difficulties of heavy industry in the mines and factories they knew. They prepared reports based on the industry of their district and elected delegates to carry their hottest criticisms to the regional Party Congress in the coal center, Bakhmut, where delegates were again chosen to the All-Ukrainian Party Congress. Then all over the Soviet Union the special trains began running. From Kharkov, from Tiflis, from Minsk, from Central Asia and Siberia, they bore the chosen delegates to Moscow where two weeks’ discussion in the All-Union Party Congress hammered out the “Party Line.” Thence the results rolled back again to the Donetz, the Caucasus, the Far East to Vladivostok, borne by returning delegates whose first duty was to explain and carry through the decisions through trade unions, cooperatives, farms, government, whatever organizations they influenced.<br /> <br /> This is the most widely organized thinking ever attempted in history. It is actually the energetic thinking of three million men and women, gathering up the ideas of tens of millions of their neighbors, which beats upon the All-Union Party Congress and affects its decisions. The ideas are worked over by the ablest economists of the Party, familiar with the experience of the revolutionary movement in all countries. The decisions reached are explained to the country through every channel of organized publicity; they are discussed and studied in every field brigade and factory and put into action simultaneously throughout the land. For the test of organized thinking is organized action.<br /> <br /> The Communists do not merely reflect the will of the masses, as a ballot might, or a showing of hands. They do not merely analyze what the “majority want” and hand it out. It is their job to lead, to organize the people’s will. No group of unurged soldiers would ever vote to storm a trench. Certainly the workers of the Soviet Union would not have voted, unurged, unled, for the hardships of the Five-Year Plan of rapid industrialization taken out of their own food and comforts, for the painful speed of farm collectivization without adequate machines or organizers. But when the Communist Party analyzed, urged and demanded, showing the world situation and the need of making the USSR well prepared industrially and for defense, showing the enemy classes which must be abolished to attain the goal of a socialist state, they were able to find, organize and create, deep in the heart of the masses, a will that carried through. Without that will in tens of millions, the three million could have done little. “To bring about a revolution, a leading revolutionary minority is required,” Stalin told H. G. Wells. “But the most talented, devoted and energetic minority would be helpless if it did not rely upon the at least passive support of millions.”&lt;ref&gt;H. G. Wells’ Interview with Joseph Stalin, July 23, 1934&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> As an example of the interrelation of Party, government and voluntary workers in action, let me take the “mobilization” of automobiles and mechanics in the spring of 1931 to save flax sowing in Moscow province. Collective farming came that year to the province in a great drive of organization and propaganda backed by hundreds of new tractors, which were being used chiefly to increase the area of flax. In the first week of sowing, telegrams from the newly organized tractor stations poured into Moscow, announcing that there was a “break.” Tractors all over the province stood in the fields, not moving, for causes yet to be analyzed.<br /> <br /> Who moves in such a case? The Moscow Committee of the Party moves. Sorting over in its office the reports of all Moscow’s daily emergencies, it decides that the break in flax is serious and calls for a “mobilization” of mechanics.<br /> <br /> The call goes out to Party organizations in a hundred shops and factories. It is announced by trade-union shop committees and factory newspapers. Not a single mechanic is compelled to answer, but any mechanic willing to give a day or two for tractor repair to help the sowing will be helped by foreman and fellow workers to arrange his job. He may work at this sanctioned public task without forfeiting wages, while others fill in the gap in his regular work. What is the motive? The fun of participating in saving the sowing, of helping the country, of living a varied, useful life. Automobiles also are “mobilized” to carry the mechanics to the farms, and those who lend machines for such public work may hope for a cut in automobile taxes. I volunteered for a two-day trip.<br /> <br /> One hundred and fifty miles north of Moscow we came to the tractor station to which we were assigned. Of thirty-three new tractors from Putiloff Works, eleven could not move out of the railway station. The rest were breaking down in the fields, under the hands of worried peasant boys and girls who had seen their first machine one month before. All night our volunteer mechanics repaired tractors. All night the local tractor drivers stood up to watch in their eagerness to learn. The following day I drove my car to Moscow with sleeping mechanics in the seats. They had worked twenty hours on end in a public emergency about which they would report next morning to their interested fellow workers in Moscow factories. They had also prepared a technical report charging the Putiloff tractor with certain grave defects. It was printed within two days in the Industrial Gazette, the organ of heavy industry, and led to a conference of industrial leaders on improving the Putiloff tractor. Three weeks later the flax sowing of Moscow province, which in early season threatened to lag at 50 per cent of plan, went over the top 108 per cent, the best flax record in the Union.<br /> <br /> “It was the work of the social organizations that saved us,” said the Moscow Tractor Center. What were the organizations concerned? The state, the Party, the trade unions, the automobile association had all taken part. The state owned the Putiloff Works, financed the tractor stations, and also owned, through the Commissariat of Heavy Industry, the Industrial Gazette which exposed the defects. The trade unions organized the volunteers and took care of their jobs during absence. The automobile association organized autos. But the driving will that saved the situation was the will of thousands of Moscow workers organized and assigned to their tasks by the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party, of which most of the mechanics were not even members.<br /> <br /> Even on vacations Communists are supposed to be always watchfully aware of their responsibility for organizing the life of the country. I was slipping down the mighty Volga on a large passenger steamer when I saw a sign asking members of the Party who might be traveling to register with the secretary of the boat organization. I learned that any Communist traveling on the boat was likely to be drafted into speaking at a meeting on deck among the peasants, or at a political school for Communists of the crew. Some of the city Communists used the occasion to criticize hotly the boat Communists for lack of attention to sanitation. The river Communists, mostly untrained sailors, thus got their first lesson in modern hygiene.<br /> <br /> The ultimate destination towards which the Soviet ship of state is steering was fixed by the Revolution. The rate of speed and the daily and early course is charted by the Central Committee of the Party to take advantage of varying winds and tides. Yet it is a course which every active worker or farmer may take part in fixing. It arises from the experience of three million Party members, each keeping in touch with some section of the people, all of them interacting, discussing, comparing results. Communists of longest experience and best records have the greatest authority; but, be it noted, they do not call it “power.” “Power” resides in the will of the working masses; “authority” is that prestige of character and insight which enables its possessor to organize and release this power.<br /> <br /> It is authority rather than power that Stalin possesses. Though his standing is far higher than that of any man in the Soviet Union, though he is cheered and quoted at all congresses as high authority, men never speak of “Stalin’s will” or “Stalin’s power,” but of the “Party Line” which Stalin reports but does not make. The Party Line is accessible to all to study, to know and to help formulate. The greatness of the man is known by the range over which he can do this. “I can plan with the workers of one plant for a year,” said a factory manager to me. “Others much wiser than I, like the men in our Central Committee, can plan with wider masses for years. Stalin in this is our ablest. He sees the inter-relation of our path with world events, and the order of each step, as a man sees the earth from the stratosphere.”<br /> <br /> “The earth from the stratosphere”—the man who said this was himself an aviation engineer. Men in the Soviet Union tend to see Stalin in terms of their craft. Railway workers call him “locomotive driver of the Revolution.” An economist said to me, speaking of the leaders of Party and government in the Red Square on May-day: “Our brains are there in the tribune.” Harvester-combine operators addressed Stalin as “friend and teacher”; managers of industry say informally “the boss.” Yellow-skinned Kazaks of the desert on the fifteenth anniversary of their republic hailed him “great leader of toiling humanity.”<br /> <br /> Millions of simple folk in all callings have felt the direct impact of Stalin’s analysis, giving a solution for the chief problem of their lives. It was sometimes a way that was harsh to follow, but it was the one clear path to the goal that the millions desired. There have been statements by Stalin that ushered in great changes, as when he told the agrarian Marxist conference that the time had come to “abolish kulaks as a class.” Yet he only announced the time for a process which every Marxist knew was on the program. His famous article “Dizziness from Success” which called sudden halt on March 2, 1930, to widespread excesses of Communists in rural regions, was regarded by foreign correspondents and peasants alike as an “order from Stalin.” Stalin at once disclaimed any personal prestige therefrom accruing, stating in the press: “Some people think that the article is the result of the personal initiative of Stalin. That of course is nonsense. The Central Committee does not exist to permit personal initiative of anybody in matters of this kind. It was a reconnaissance undertaken by the Central Committee.”<br /> <br /> Stalin does not rule personally. To a lifelong habit of collective action he adds his personal genius, that of supreme analyst of situations, personalities, tendencies. He leads as supreme combiner of many minds and wills, When Emil Ludwig asked him who really made decisions, he answered: “Single persons cannot decide. . . . Experience of three revolutions has shown us that out of a hundred individual decisions which have not been tested and corrected collectively, ninety are biased. The leadership of our Party in the Central Committee, which directs all the Soviet and Communist organizations, consists of about seventy people. Among those seventy members of our Central Committee there are to be found the best of our industrial leaders, our cleverest specialists and the men who best understand every branch of our activities. It is in this Supreme Council that the whole wisdom of our Party is concentrated. Each man is entitled to challenge his neighbor’s opinion or suggestion. Each man may give the benefit of his own experience. If it were otherwise, if individual decisions were admitted, there would be serious mistakes in our work.”&lt;ref&gt;Joseph Stalin’s Interview with Emil Ludwig, Dec. 13, 1931.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> “The art of leadership is a serious matter,” said Stalin earlier, in concluding his article “Dizziness from Success.” “One must not lag behind a movement because to do so is to become isolated from the masses. But one must not rush ahead, for this is to lose contact with the masses. . . . Our Party is strong and invincible because, while leading a movement, it knows how to maintain and multiply its contacts with the millions of the workers and peasant masses.” This may be taken as Stalin’s analysis of leadership.<br /> <br /> There are plenty of stupidities and violences in the Soviet Union, yes-men and careerists, hardship and injustice, wastage of youth and life. All man’s essential progress costs heavily in human suffering; the Soviet Union has not escaped this law. What makes it endurable is just this fact that it is caused not by behest of one man or even of three million, but is part of the slow process—history will not call it slow—whereby the tens of millions achieve the organized and conscious planning of their lives.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER VII: BUILDING THE NEW ECONOMY ===<br /> <br /> {{Quote|“Either perish or overtake the advanced countries and surpass them. . . . This is how history has put the question.”|Lenin}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|“Millions make the plan.”|Stalin}}<br /> <br /> One of the most striking characteristics of Soviet life to a new arrival is the passionate interest which citizens show in new industries, modern equipment, figures of carloadings, economic statistics generally. The “romantic passion” of the Russians for machinery, the visitor is apt to call it. He himself is long since bored by machinery which has recently put him out of work; he finds it difficult to understand this passion. He has come to see “the revolution,” to study the characteristics of planned economy or the amazing change in human concepts. He finds the revolutionary background taken for granted by Soviet citizens; they want to show him factories.<br /> <br /> The mood of the Soviet Union today is a mood of tremendous struggle and incredible conquest in which individual values and problems pale before the brightness of one great problem whose solution is told off by the ever-rising curve of production, the opening of steel mills, the successful mastery of tractor plants, machine building works, textile factories. It is a mood in which a newly literate servant girl will hail the rain running into her leaky shoes if that rain means harvest. Harvest somewhere far off on farms she never sees.<br /> <br /> It is not surprising that economic facts have a vital interest for Soviet citizens. The changes in the country’s economic life since the Revolution have been stupendous and the results are felt in every person’s daily living. Fifteen years ago when first I entered the Soviet Union, the country was ravaged by famine and pestilence. Civil war and foreign intervention had ruined farming, industry, transport. Street-cars were not running in Moscow, street lights had long since burned out without replacements, and two fuelless winters had so destroyed the entire city’s plumbing that water pressure could not rise above the second floors. In the best hospital of Samara, where I lay ill in 1921 with typhus, there were but two clinical thermometers for hundreds of patients. Thermometers, light bulbs, water pipes were only a few of the million articles which long war and blockade kept out of the Soviet Union and which could not be manufactured in the few and backward factories of that vast agricultural land.<br /> <br /> I have lived through fifteen years of incredibly rapid progress which have almost wiped out all memory of the past. To dwellers in the Soviet Union, the pre-war period seems already pre-historic, and even 1921 seems a century ago. We have seen in these fifteen years a more than ten-fold increase in industrial production; we have seen a leap in farming from the sixteenth century into the twenty-first. We have lived through a series of epochs sharply distinct from each other in the regulations affecting our daily existence, but all these periods have been characterized by one continuous fury of energetic endeavor.<br /> <br /> The reasons for energetic endeavor were very plain to the people of a land just emerging from foreign intervention and long blockade. “War is implacable,” said Lenin. “It puts the question with merciless sharpness. Either perish or overtake the advanced countries and surpass them. . . . Either full steam ahead or perish. This is how history has put the question.”&lt;ref&gt;Quoted by Stalin in Report on ''Results of the First Five-Year Plan''.&lt;/ref&gt; All Communists hold that in the present epoch of worldwide imperialist expansion, it is the fate of economically backward lands to be parceled out among the imperial nations. Soviet Russia, unless she could make herself economically independent, had to fear the fate which has overtaken China, “a military field of operations of foreign enemies and pecked at by everybody who cares to do so.”&lt;ref&gt;Stalin, ''Results of the First Five-Year Flan''.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> If a rapid rate of economic development was necessary to preserve even the independence of the country, it was still more necessary as a prerequisite for a socialist commonwealth. The abundant life for every toiler which socialism implies demands lavish production; it cannot be attained in a country where the means of production is the individually owned tool. The material conditions for a prosperous socialist commonwealth exist today in America far more than they ever existed in Russia. Sharing the wealth cannot take place until there is really wealth to share. Socially owned wealth must be based on socially owned factories. Russia had the problem of first building the factories.<br /> <br /> The rapid development of Soviet Russia’s economic wealth was considered of crucial importance by Lenin, not only for the welfare of the Russian people, but even for the future of world-wide socialism. Faced by the handicap of a backward, semi-feudal land, the workers of the new revolutionary country had nonetheless one advantage—they were the joint owners of their country and all of its productive wealth. They must prove to the world that even against great difficulties this one advantage was decisive. Even in 1921 in the depths of economic ruin Lenin said: “We are exercising our main influence on the international revolution by our economic policy. All eyes are turned on the Soviet Russian republic. . . . If we solve this problem, then we shall have won on an international scale for certain and finally. That is why questions of economic construction assume for us absolutely exceptional significance.”&lt;ref&gt;May 28, 1921. ''All-Russian Conference of the Communist Party''&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> There is a strange paradox in the economic development of the Soviet Union which even foreign resident must notice. It is that every slight achievement costs infinite effort, yet mighty achievements are won in an incredibly short time. The penalty for Russia’s ancient backwardness is to be found in an inefficiency which hampers every movement—taking a tramway, buying a spool of thread, securing a room. The difficulty of making even one blast furnace function properly arouses frantic despair in the hearts of foreign specialists. Yet in spite of these difficulties, the Soviet Union advances at a speed unknown even to the most efficient capitalist countries.<br /> <br /> This speed is due to the tremendous energy and initiative of millions of workers and farmers who are conscious owners now of their own means of production, and who know that whatever they create will be their own permanent gain. Their initiative is correlated by a system of social planning. Thus arises that paradoxical combination of individual inefficiency with tremendous social momentum. In the most developed capitalist countries the efficiencies of ten million individuals pull in conflicting directions, giving small gain to society. But each new achievement in the Soviet planned structure, attained with such painful difficulty, reinforces the sum total of a million gains.<br /> <br /> So obvious and so widely known are these benefits of social planning in the Soviet Union that in recent years it has become a common dream in many countries to transfer painlessly the technique of planning to the capitalist system, thus gaining the blessings of socialism without the harsh shock of revolution. In America especially, where the highly developed processes of production could so obviously produce plenty for all, the illusion arises that somehow some genius, some group of super-brains sitting in New York or in Washington, ought to be able to find the magic secret of putting those processes to work. It is clear that an individual owner can plan his factory and bring it to a relatively high state of efficiency as compared with the days of handicraft. But can a government brain trust, however brilliant, plan the disposal of Rockefeller’s oil wells, or the internal organization of U. S. Steel? To ask this question is to answer it, if it has not been answered already by the history of the NRA. Only owners can plan an industry and dispose of its products. Under capitalism plans of different owners clash.<br /> <br /> For a socialist state, the simplest and most basic act of government is the planning by worker-owners of the expansion and improvement of their jointly owned properties. Planning of this type takes place not only in those central institutions of Moscow where the foreign visitor habitually looks for it; it begins simultaneously at the workers’ bench. Production meetings after work discuss shop problems, what holds back production, how much it can be increased, and by what means. These discussions are enlarged on a factory scale; they go from the factory to the central offices of the industrial trusts. Word comes back from the central organizations to the shop that the country needs certain new machines. “Can we make them in our plant?” Delegates from other industries which need the machines arrive, explain, mutually consult. The inventions and suggestions of the local workers thus widen into a nation’s plan.<br /> <br /> The plan is, however, no mere blueprint to be fulfilled with exactness. In the absolute and technical sense, one cannot speak of it as a final “plan” at all. For although every factory, farm, school and government institution checks its monthly and annual achievements by its plan, yet the proudest boast is always to have overfulfilled it, i.e., broken the plan by doing more than intended. The plan is therefore a standard of what is expected, a flag of challenge, but in no sense a limit. There is no limit set in the Soviet Union. The aim is the fullest development of the creative and productive powers of the country. The more production, the better. It will be seen at once how impossible such a conception of planning becomes under capitalism. It is based on the assumption that the worker-owners of the nation’s production will be able to use everything that they care to make.<br /> <br /> Socialism is not created in a day; it is not achieved by voting and not even by seizure of power. Seizure of power is only a prerequisite. Socialism involves the expansion and organization of the collectively owned properties of the country and the building of a good life for everyone thereon. This was the purpose of the October Revolution, and in spite of all the accounts in the press of the world for eighteen years about Soviet “changes of policy,” this purpose has never changed in the slightest degree. The tactics used have, however, been conditioned by both internal strength and international relations. Not until 1921, when the new workers’ state had beaten back the armies of intervention, was it possible to begin the building of the national economy.<br /> <br /> When the wars of invasion were over, industry had sunk to one-fifth of pre-war, the production of cotton goods was only 7 per cent of normal, iron and steel production had almost entirely ceased. Grain reserves were exhausted, and the drought of 1921 led directly to the greatest famine in Russian history. The New Economic Policy, adopted at that time, encouraged all forms of economic development, both those of capitalism and those of socialism. Meantime each year the Communists led the working class of the country to concentrate a desperate, organized struggle for victory in one important field after another—victories often achieved at the expense of heavy temporary sacrifices elsewhere.<br /> <br /> The year 1922 saw the successful fight to establish a state bank and a partially stable currency by high banking charges which ruthlessly exploited all the industries of the country. In 1923 emphasis turned to the hard-pressed industries; for the first time since the revolution, their balance sheets reached “self-support,” at the expense of excessively high prices to the consumer. There followed a two years’ effort to cut prices; consumers’ co-operatives were widely developed as a link between the state factories and the peasants. By 1926 co-operative and government trade had increased threefold, successfully passing the private middle-man who had previously controlled over 80 per cent of the rural turnover. During the next two years, emphasis turned again to the restoration of industry, which reached by 1928 the pre-war standard of production. The Soviet workers had rebuilt their war-devastated country without the aid of the foreign credits which flowed to help all the war-injured capitalist lands of Europe.<br /> <br /> Yet this attainment was still of low standard, the pre-war production of backward tsarist Russia. The ancient plants were working to full capacity, but they could not begin to supply the needs of workers and farmers who expected a higher standard of life than before the Revolution. Each year the shortage of goods increased. Soviet industry could not expand further except by extension of basic capital, new buildings, more machines. Any threatening war would still find the country lacking not only in commodities, but in that heavy industry on which, in our modern mechanized world, is based the means of production in peace and of defense in war.<br /> <br /> Could Soviet Russia develop her industries rapidly and make herself economically independent, or must she live, as tsarist Russia did, by export of farm products, chancing her future on a hostile capitalist world? This problem set sharply the still more fundamental problem whether socialism could be built in one country and if so, by what means. Russia’s basic industry was state-owned but this industry was insufficient to supply the people with goods. The primitive farming system, made still more primitive by the splitting up of the former landlords’ estates into small subsistence farms, which partly consumed and partly wasted much formerly marketed grain, was increasingly failing to feed the growing cities. In 1927 the Russian farms attained the pre-war sown area of 280,000,000 acres and the pre-war grain production of somewhat over 80,000,000 tons, but only about half of the pre-war marketed grain was reaching the market. Socialized industry was like an island in an ocean of medieval agriculture, whose tides constantly threatened to undermine the base of socialism. “As long as we live in a small peasant country,” Lenin had said, “there will be a more solid economic basis for capitalism than for Communism.”&lt;ref&gt;''Collected Works'', Russian edition, XXVI, 46.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Farming must be brought out of the Middle Ages, modernized and made efficient. For this two roads of development were possible. The employing peasants, known as kulaks, who already owned the best of the rural means of production, better plows, more horses, occasional threshers, creameries and flour mills, might be allowed to expand, to acquire tractors, combines, and the additional land which these machines could cultivate, dispossessing more and more landless peasants into the ranks of unemployed. Thus capitalist farming grew in other countries out of the feudal ages. The price of such growth for Soviet Russia under the world conditions of the modern era would be not only continued class war in rural districts, not only swiftly increasing unemployment, not only the steady submergence of all socialist industry by an expanding capitalism, but the complete dependence of this young Russian capitalism on the financial oligarchs of the imperialist world. Such, at least, was the analysis made by Stalin and the Communist Party in adopting in 1928 the now famous Five-Year Plan.<br /> <br /> The Five-Year Plan proposed the rapid industrialization of the country, more rapid than any industrialization known in the world before. Heavy industry must first be built, the machines that make machines for other industry and for farming. Lighter industries to raise the standard of living must rapidly follow. Farming must be industrialized, not by strengthening a class of rural capitalists, but by the voluntary uniting of all non-exploiting peasants, beginning with the poorest, into collective groups farming their lands jointly with machinery which the developing state industry would supply. This was necessary to make farming modern, while giving the benefits of its modernization to all farmers. It was necessary to make Russia socialist, or even to preserve the half-socialism which the city workers had begun. It was necessary for the independence of the country and the very existence of the Soviet government. “We could not refrain,” said Stalin, “from whipping up a country which was a hundred years behind and which owing to its backwardness was faced with mortal danger.”&lt;ref&gt;Report to Joint Plenum of Central Committee and Central Control Commission on ''Results of Five-Year Plan'', 1933.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In less than five years—for the Five-Year Plan was 96 per cent completed in four and a quarter years from October 1928 through December 1932—Stalin was able to announce that the former backward agricultural Russia had become the second industrial country in the world. The number employed in industry doubled from eleven million to twenty-two million. The volume of industrial output also doubled, from 15.7 billion rubles in 1928 to 34.3 billion in 1932 (calculated at prices prevailing in 1926-7); it was three times the pre-war production. At the same time a rapid industrialization of farming combined some twenty million tiny, uneconomic subsistence farms into 200,000 large collectively operated farms (by 1936 there were 250,000) based on machine power, scientific methods, division of labor. The relative proportion of industrial to agricultural output grew from 48 per cent at the beginning of the plan to 70 per cent at the end of 1932, thus changing Russia from an agricultural to a predominantly industrial country.<br /> <br /> “Formerly we did not have an iron and steel industry. Now we have such an industry,” reported Stalin in January 1933 at the plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.<br /> <br /> “We did not have a tractor industry. Now we have one.<br /> <br /> “We did not have an automobile industry. Now we have one.<br /> <br /> “We did not have an engineering industry. Now we have one.<br /> <br /> “We did not have a big and modern chemical industry. Now we have one.<br /> <br /> “We did not have a real solid industry for the production of modern farm machinery. Now we have one.<br /> <br /> “We did not have an aviation industry. Now we have one.<br /> <br /> “In production of electric power we were last in the list. Now we are among the first in the list...<br /> <br /> “And we have achieved these enormous new branches of industry on a scale that makes the scale of European industry pale into insignificance. . . .” Such was only part of the success reported.<br /> <br /> The Five-Year Plan cost heavily in dislocation of populations, exhaustion of youth, disorganization of harvests and many privations which attended the rationing of food and other commodities. But never in history was such an advance gained at less cost and certainly never so swiftly; and it was gained unprecedentedly without long-term credits or foreign loans. Had the pace been less swift, had the Communists postponed this breathless drive towards full industrialization, they believe that Soviet Russia would already have had “not pacts of non-aggression, but war.” “We would have been unarmed in the midst of a capitalist environment which is armed with modern technique.”&lt;ref&gt;Stalin, ''Results of the First Five-Year Plan''.&lt;/ref&gt; The advance of Japan into Manchuria in 1931 and the stated intention of Nazi Germany to expand into Soviet Ukraine are warnings today which anyone may read of the fate which might already have overtaken the Soviet Union but for its swiftly rising economic and military strength.<br /> <br /> With the conclusion of the first Five-Year Plan at the end of 1932, the Soviet Union plunged into the second. “We have already laid the foundations of a socialist society . . . and all we have to do now is to erect the edifice—a task which undoubtedly is easier,” said Stalin at the Seventeenth Party Congress in early 1934. Industry and trade were already 99 per cent socialized; three-fourths of agricultural production was socialized. On the base thus established, the second Five-Year Plan proposed to abolish “all private property in the means of production, all class distinctions, all exploitation of man by man.&amp;quot;&lt;ref&gt;Molotov, ''Tasks of the Second Five-Year Plan''.&lt;/ref&gt; It proposed three times as much new construction as had been achieved in the first Five-Year Plan. It proposed a doubling and tripling of the standard of living through the final technical reconstruction of the whole national economy, the mastery of the most modern methods and the most complex machines.<br /> <br /> Already as the year 1936 opens, it is clear that the second Five-Year Plan can be accomplished in less than five years. In the last months of 1935 the total monthly output of heavy industry was already five times as high as in 1928.&lt;ref&gt;From 404.9 million rubles, average monthly output in 1928 to 2,180.6 million in Nov. 1935, stable rubles of 1926-7.&lt;/ref&gt; Grain production has known three record harvests surpassing all pre-collectivization years. Rapid increase in the standard of living—more food, better clothing, expanding art and science—is evident in all parts of the country. Cotton pickers, sugar-beet growers, combined-harvester operators, timber workers, machinists and miners are descending triumphantly on Moscow to celebrate their achievements in production and win the plaudits of the land.<br /> <br /> With hammer blows the figures of the 1935 achievements were given by Molotov in January 1936 to the Central Executive Committee. A 20.4 per cent increase in industrial production over 1934, in place of the 16 per cent planned; 23 per cent increase in freight car loadings, 45 per cent in raw cotton, and 43 per cent in sugar beets. A grain harvest running close to one hundred million tons, nearly ten million above the highest previous harvest; horses up 5 per cent, cattle 18 per cent, sheep and goats 25 per cent, hogs 38 per cent—all increases of a single year.<br /> <br /> The abolition of the card system of rationing, reported Grinko, Commissar of Finance, had lifted the trade turnover from 60 to 80 billion rubles; the profits from socialist economy were 7.8 billion rubles; the planned state budget receipts had been exceeded and the planned expenditures cut, leaving a surplus for expansion. But the most important result of the year, said Molotov, was the Stakhanov movement “which leads to an entire revolution in industry and transport, and opens the first page of the great advance in socialist productivity of labor.”<br /> <br /> Then, with confidence born of experience, Valery Meshlauk, head of the State Planning Commission, gave page after page of the carefully plotted future. “The 1936 plan provides for a further and accelerated upsurge of the whole national economy.” The increase set for large-scale industry is 23 per cent, a 15 billion ruble advance, which is greater than the entire output of this industry in 1927. The increase set for agriculture is 24 per cent, for commodity circulation 25, railway transport 19.8, capital construction 34.8. The financial income of the population is to rise from 101 to 118 billion rubles, in the face of steadily dropping prices. Social and cultural services in the central and local budgets are to rise from 16 to 21 billion, the social insurance alone from 6.7 to 8 billion. But darkly across this shining future run figures of army expansion, from the 6.5 billion planned to 8.2 billion actually spent in 1935 and 14.8 billion planned for 1936. For beyond the borders of the triumphantly planned growth of Soviet national economy lie the unpredictable dangers of the chaotic capitalist world.<br /> <br /> If a map of the Soviet world could be drawn pictorially and changed with each changing year, it would show countless new cities arising on formerly barren land. It would show tens of millions of tiny, uneconomic farm plots merging into a rhythm of horizon-touching fields. It would show thousands of geological expeditions penetrating uncharted wildernesses to discover and chart nationally owned wealth. Following these there would flash across the scene surveyors, engineers, new railroads, steel plants, textile mills. New timber areas open, new coal and oil fields. If the map had a sound film attachment one would hear the summons sent forth to young Communists, to workers in the older, better-organized factories, demanding heroic personnel for the conquest of the wastes. The conquering march of man reaches northward to settle the Arctic and eastward to the wild coasts opposite Alaska. And a long green strip of a million and a half acres of new forest-zone moves steadily southward across treeless plains of Kazakstan as a mighty screen to protect the grain lands of South Russia from the desert winds of Asia.<br /> <br /> For the past two years the Communist leaders have begun to speak of socialism as “victorious”; its economic base is secure.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER VIII: THE STRUGGLE FOR PEACE ===<br /> <br /> {{Quote|“The Soviet Union needs no foreign wars for transforming the world.”|Manuilski at Congress of Communist International, 1935}}<br /> <br /> A socialist country craves peace for development. As the life of the Soviet people grows richer and more varied, the one great dread which hangs above it is the threat of war. Soviet citizens are never subject to the illusion—most diabolical of all the contradictions of capitalism—that war may bring a feverish, blood-bought prosperity and eliminate unemployment by turning men into the pursuits of destruction. The prosperity of socialism is based on harmonious correlation of production and needs, and there is no unemployment. The Soviet world sees war as naked destruction of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Even the need of preparing for war it sees as a waste of resources which might otherwise go in direct benefits to the population.<br /> <br /> In the eighteen years of its existence, the Soviet Union has been widely recognized as a champion of peace. Even its foes admit that the USSR does not want war for the present. Yet so confused is the world’s thinking on the subject of war and peace—a confusion promoted by diplomats and statesmen—so instinctive under capitalism has become the assumption that every advancing nation must seek in the end the test of war, that the Soviet hunger for peace is at times confused either with cowardice or hypocrisy. Are they not perhaps just watchfully waiting until their economic building is accomplished, and their strength is sure? What are they doing in the League of Nations? Why are they increasing the Red Army? Do they not after all want world revolution, which world war presumably might usher in? How permanent is the Soviet wish for peace? And, even if sincere, can it be effective?<br /> <br /> There are two ways to approach this question: by the detailed examination of Soviet history and by understanding the theory behind every Soviet action. We shall take each of these methods in turn.<br /> <br /> Behind all Soviet action is the Marxian theory that the cause of war is neither permanent in human nature, as militarists claim, nor to be found in lack of goodwill and in the character of rulers, as idealist pacifists think. Marxists hold that war arises from class conflicts. Wars in the present period of world history, according to this analysis, arise from the struggle of capitalism to survive and grow by investment in new markets. This leads the major nations to engage first in small wars of colonial oppression, the forcing of their goods and investment upon undeveloped peoples; these lead to wars between the imperialist nations over the territories which both sides wish to exploit. A socialist commonwealth where the people own jointly their means of production and receive all the fruits of their toil, wants no expanding market for surplus profits but only equal interchange of goods which encourages peace.<br /> <br /> A socialist world would thus attain peace permanently. But a single socialist country lives in a world of foes. Can peace be attained under these conditions? Not permanently and not with assurance, as long as capitalism survives. The capitalist world system from its nature breeds war. None the less, each specific war has specific causes, which may be studied, analyzed, hampered and delayed. Peace may be won from month to month and year to year by specific, well-considered actions, as an able engineer postpones collapse inherent in a faulty structure by accurate balancing of specific strains and stresses. This is an unstable peace, but better than none, for every curtailment of war prevents human suffering.<br /> <br /> In applying this analysis to our present period of history, Soviet policy holds that the economic world today is one and indivisible, and that every war must affect the whole world. No fair words of politicians can keep a nation out of it; no policy of isolation can be a guarantee. For behind all those words and beneath all such policies the economic pressures inexorably act. Trade in goods of war begins to flow towards even a minor conflict and steadily the traders are drawn further in. Thus was America drawn into the World War by increasing financial commitments, till at last an American ambassador cabled from London that a panic would shake the whole United States unless American boys followed American dollars into the battles of Britain and France. When that stage occurs, no country keeps out of it; the president who “kept us out of war” turns about and marches in.<br /> <br /> Even those nations which are technically neutral—the number of these decreases with the seriousness of the war—are involved only slightly less than those who battle. “Any war,” says Litvinoff, “sooner or later, will bring distress to all countries, both to the combatants and the non-participants. We must never forget the lesson of the World War, the consequences of which are felt to this day by combatants and neutral countries alike. The impoverishment of the whole world, the lowering of the living standards of all categories of labor, both physical and mental, unemployment when no one is sure of tomorrow, to say nothing of the collapse of cultural values, the reversion of certain countries to medieval ideas—these are the consequences of the World War which are clearly felt sixteen years after its end.”<br /> <br /> To maintain peace is therefore a permanent policy for the Soviet Union. To maintain peace not only for itself but in the world. But peace is not to be had by expecting it. It may not even be won by refusing to fight. China refuses to fight, but gets no peace. Neither preparedness nor unpreparedness is a safeguard; unarmed and well-armed folk have alike gone to war. The only safeguard for even that partial peace possible under capitalism is clear, sincere study of the whole world situation, the choosing of a policy which prevents war or lessens it, and the backing of that policy by all available power. One must struggle for peace; it will not come otherwise. The methods change as the situations change.<br /> <br /> For eighteen years the Soviet Union has made this struggle. “Peace, land and bread” was the slogan of the October Revolution. The hunger for peace of a war-exhausted people brought the Bolsheviks to power. Their first official act on November 8, 1917, was to propose “to all warring peoples and their governments to begin immediate negotiations for a just and democratic peace.” As an attack upon the war and to remove causes of future war, the new revolutionary government exposed and denounced the secret treaties by which England, France and Russia had agreed to redivide the world. They annulled oppressive tsarist treaties which had been enforced on Persia and Turkey, and withdrew the Russian army from Persia.<br /> <br /> The strength of the new government was not equal to its understanding. The Entente Powers—England, France and the United States—denounced the Bolsheviks for daring to speak of peace and left their former ally to the mercy of Germany. The German general staff marched onward into a prostrate country offering the Bolsheviks “robber terms.” The position of the Soviet state was further weakened by Trotsky’s attempt to deal with advancing troops by clever phrases. He refused to sign terms but protested in the formmula: “Neither war nor peace”—an appeal to the conscience of the German people. But general staffs are not expected to have a conscience, and no Germans acted to save the Russians. The invading army marched far into the Ukraine and took possession, giving in the end worse terms than those originally offered. Trotsky’s appeal reached the consciences of idealists; I recall that it thrilled me far out in Seattle. But it was Ukrainian peasants and workers who suffered; idealist gestures are dangerous tactics in war.<br /> <br /> If Germany offered the Bolsheviks only a robbers’ peace, their former allies gave them no peace at all. On April 5, 1918, the Japanese landed in Vladivostok; following them the English, French and American armies invaded Siberia. Allied armies landed on the Arctic coast to seize the northern part of Russia; the British grabbed Baku, oil capital of the south. Agents of the Entente incited and participated in armed uprisings of Czechoslovak prisoners of war along the Volga, leading them against the Bolshevik government. From east and west and north and south the armies of all the major capitalist powers surrounded the Revolution with an iron ring of war and blockade.<br /> <br /> Across this iron ring the starving people of the new state sent appeal after appeal to all those governments which refused to deal with them but especially to President Wilson. Beginning on November 24, 1918, and repeating their query through Raymond Robins, head of the American Red Cross in Russia, and also by direct cables to the State Department, they offered to consider any peace terms whatever: recognition of debts, concessions of territory, control of mines and natural resources. Rather than deal in any way with Bolsheviks, Wilson and the Allied governments sitting in Versailles issued a call to all the “organized groups in Russia” to meet at the Principo Islands, a proposal which clearly presaged the dividing of Russia into spheres of influence after the style of China. The Bolsheviks were not invited, but they accepted; the other governments refused and the scheme fell through. There followed the famous trip of William Christian Bullitt to Moscow in March 1919 as President Wilson’s semi-official representative. The hard-pressed Soviet government was ready to agree to Bullitt’s proposal that it accept all financial obligations of all past Russian governments, and divide the territory of Russia among all those governments which should be in armed possession when the treaty should be signed. But the treaty was never signed; President Wilson refused to receive the report of his own envoy. Bolsheviks were made to realize that no peace can be had from the imperialist powers of earth by any backward nation. Not even the price of slavish submission buys peace for China; nor could the offer of territory and gold buy it for Russia.<br /> <br /> Not by appeals for peace and not by offers of concessions, but by the desperate struggle and courage of the Revolutionary Red Army was peace and independence finally won. It was secured in slow stages, first cessation of battle, then trade agreements, then, much more slowly, diplomatic recognition. At each stage the strength of the new state was again and again probed and tested by a capitalist world unwilling to yield it the right to exist. Under such conditions the Soviet government stabilized its borders by granting swift recognition to the new Baltic States. Then, in the first international conference to which it was admitted, in April 1922 in Genoa, the Soviet delegate proposed a plan for strengthening general peace in Europe.<br /> <br /> “The forces directed towards restoration of world economy will be strangled as long as above Europe and above the world hangs the threat of new wars,” said Chicherin. “The Russian delegation intends to propose a general limitation of armaments and to support any proposition which has the aim of lightening the burdens of militarism.” The Soviet representatives again agreed to recognize debts of past Russian governments but now demanded in return the right to compensation for the destruction caused to Russia by unprovoked intervention. Failing to get response to either proposal, Soviet Russia signed with Germany the famous Rapallo agreement, whereby both nations canceled the debts of the other and renewed relations on the basis of equality. This was the first gesture made by any nation to cure the wounds of the World War and to deal with vanquished Germany on a basis which set foundations for peace. Had the other nations followed this example the bitter history of Europe of the past thirteen years might have been different.<br /> <br /> After the Genoa Conference, the Soviet struggle for peace was marked by slow but steady establishment of diplomatic relations with the major powers of the world. This in itself was an element of stability in Europe, but normal relations were still much shaken by frequent raids on Soviet embassies and consulates in many countries, conducted on shallow pretexts and accompanied by forged letters and provocatory accusations unprecedented in diplomatic history.&lt;ref&gt;Such as the assassination of Vorovsky during the Lausanne conference, which coincided with an ultimatum from the British Foreign Office; the raid on the Soviet Embassy in Peking, April 1927, followed by the execution of many of its Chinese staff; the raid on the Soviet trading agency in London May 12, 1927; the forged “Zinoviev letter” which swayed a British election. These were only the most spectacular of a whole series of raids, attacks and attempted assassinations which made being a Soviet ambassador a hazardous occupation.&lt;/ref&gt; Similar attacks on nations in the past have counted as causes of war. The Soviet Union responded to these attacks by steadily widening its pacts of non-aggression with minor or hard-pressed nations—Turkey first in December 1925, followed by Germany, Lithuania, Persia, Latvia, Afghanistan and others. Unlike all previous alliances and ententes, these pacts were non-exclusive. They were offered to all nations.<br /> <br /> When the Preparatory Commission for Disarmament of the League of Nations held its fourth session on November 30, 1927, the newly invited Soviet delegation startled the world by proposing to disarm. Five years earlier Chicherin had made a similar proposition at Genoa; it went unnoticed and was soon forgotten. But Litvinoff’s statement in 1927 came from a nation which had proved its economic and political stability over a term of years. It came moreover at a time when the peoples of the world were beginning to be disillusioned by the ever-repeated fruitless conferences with which European governments sought to hide from their peoples the chaos which followed the World War.<br /> <br /> Litvinoff broke the polite façade by suggesting actual disarmament, stating that the Soviet Government was ready to agree to total disarmament or any percentage of disarmament which the other powers would accept. He made this challenge time after time in the sight of the peoples of the world, until the constant evasion of the militarists made it apparent that no capitalist power was willing even to reduce armaments, and that the Disarmament Conference itself was little more than a mask for the old rearmament race.<br /> <br /> As armaments grew, the Soviet Union steadily extended pacts of non-aggression and began to press for an internationally accepted “definition of the aggressor,” designed to mobilize world opinion against the provokers of war. None of the major imperialist powers was willing to accept Litvinoff’s definition, which denounced as aggression the sending of any armed forces into any other nation. A dozen or more of the smaller countries signed it; the Soviet Union began to win the post of champion of the rights of smaller powers, which it was later to expand by its participation in the League of Nations.<br /> <br /> The will to peace of the Soviet Union and its intelligence in maneuvering to keep out of war was soon severely tested by the growing tensions in the Far East. Japan’s invasion of Manchuria has been recognized by the whole world as a violation of the League of Nations Covenant, the Washington Nine-Power Pact and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, to all of which Japan was signatory. It carried her troops to the Soviet borders and occasionally across them in forays by armed patrols which killed Soviet border guards and peasants. The most serious source of contention was the possession by the Soviet Government of the Chinese Eastern Railway, which crosses Manchuria as the shortest route to Vladivostok. Attacks by alleged bandits and arrests by Japanese military authorities put Soviet railway employees in peril hardly less than that of war. A report by the Soviet director of the road related over 3,000 cases of armed attack which had resulted in the murder of 56 people, the wounding of 825, the destruction of four kilometers of main line track and of hundreds of passenger and freight cars. On October 9, 1933, the USSR was able to publish four Japanese secret documents which discussed the “great necessity for assimilating the railway,” and made it plain that most of the attacks were inspired by Japanese military forces.<br /> <br /> The answer of the USSR to these provocations was neither that of the strong capitalist nation which would long since have “protected its interests and citizens” by declaring war, nor was it that of a defenseless colonial nation like China, which continually submits. The Soviet Union built strong fortifications on its entire Far Eastern border, obviously of a defensive nature; and simultaneously removed a source of conflict by selling the railroad to Manchukuo at a price hardly one-fifth of the sum originally invested by the Russians. I was present in Tokyo when the sale occurred and noted the lessening of tension. “The Japanese people are for the time being convinced of our peaceful purposes; it will be some months before their militarists will be able to inflame them against us,” said a Soviet diplomat to me, making the distinction which Communists always make between people and governments. The Japanese militarists were even then laying a basis for further provocation by suggesting the purchase of Soviet Saghalin. Yet for even a temporary lessening of tension, the USSR thought it worth while to make concessions.<br /> <br /> In September 1934 the Soviet Union entered the League of Nations, an act which startled both friend and foe. Yet it was the logical consequence of the changing conditions of Europe and the growing strength of the USSR. The Soviet Union views the League analytically rather than emotionally. What is it? What has it to give? The League is not a territory nor a state nor a super-power; still less is it an ideal or a formula which will somehow miraculously bring peace. The League is a diplomatic instrument through which a group of powers meet and come to an agreement. Its policy is decided by the powers that are in it and by the relative strength and courage of those powers.<br /> <br /> Behind the idealistic phrases with which at different stages each participating power has veiled its use of the League, the purpose of the League changes. Wilson started it as the organization of Europe on a basis of nationality; his plan involved also “freedom of the seas.” But “freedom of the seas” meant to Britain the domination of the world by American gold instead of by the British fleet; and Europe on a basis of nationality appalled Clemenceau, who knew quite well that there are twice as many Germans as French in Europe, and that “the interests of France” demand the splitting up of the Germans into minorities among many nations. The League, with America out, became the arena where Britain and France struggled for control of Europe, France wishing to crush Germany utterly and Britain willing to help Germany expand slightly. as a balance against France. Wall Street helped Britain by the Dawes and Young plans of reparations, scaling them down to “Germany’s capacity to pay,” i.e., the amount which it was thought German capitalists could squeeze from industrious German workers for several generations without revolt. Germany came into the League, hailed by phrases on the “United States of Europe,” which meant to the Soviet Union the united attempt of world capitalism to placate Germany for the Versailles deprivations by financing her in a drive to the East.<br /> <br /> But Dawes guessed wrong. The world economic crisis broke Germany’s “capacity to pay” and ability to wait. Japan and Germany both left the League to seek expansion by their own armed might. The war danger increased but the League itself became, by their disaffection, an organization of powers which had more to lose than to gain from immediate war. “The League might become a hindrance to warlike tendencies,” said Stalin. It still contained robber powers who exploited colonial peoples, and small unstable states built up on the loot of Versailles. The Soviet Union admits the justice of the German grievance, but never the right of war to enforce those claims. “Injustices perpetrated by one war,” said Litvinoff, “can never be rectified by a new one, which only perpetrates worse injustices.” The Soviet Union entered the League to strengthen it against the tendency of Germany, Japan and now Italy to throw a torch into the powder magazine of the world. She thus upholds territorial gains of robber nations in order to increase the chances of world peace.<br /> <br /> She even goes further. By pacts of mutual assistance concluded with France and Czechoslovakia, she has placed the might of her increasing Red Army behind the status quo of Europe. She joins with these “robber powers” to blockade Italy, herself the first to agree to the sanctions. Yet when oil sanctions are not agreed to, she continues to sell this commodity to Italy,&lt;ref&gt;In steadily decreasing amounts, in spite of American headlines to the contrary. It is America’s sales that increase.&lt;/ref&gt; bewildering the idealists of many nations. Why? Because no high example can check Italians in Abyssinia or stop the spread of the war infection through the trade channels of the world. Because idealist gestures are dangerous tactics against general staffs of armies: that lesson was learned at Brest-Litovsk. Because isolated action might turn against the Soviet Union a fascist drive from a disintegrating Europe, helped to disintegration by her choice of an individual stand. Only the threat of might may possibly halt the explosive drive towards war of a desperate fascism—the might of Europe organized through the League. The Soviet Union throws herself into the task of organizing it&lt;ref&gt;She tried first to organize an “Eastern Locarno,” a pact of many nations against anyone who started an aggression. It failed through the refusal of Poland and Germany. Soviet policy is still to expand security pacts to all possible nations, including Germany and Poland, not even the present pacts being exclusive in nature.&lt;/ref&gt; through security pacts which she seeks to widen. For the status quo is evil, but war is worse.<br /> <br /> To strengthen this might the Soviet Union increases her Red Army, the only armed force on which she can really depend. Britain and France are camps of conflicting interests; on this the Communists have no illusions. In both these countries are strong popular forces supporting the USSR and the League of Nations in the policy of collective security against aggressors, and other strong reactionary forces which would prefer to support Nazi Germany in the looting of Russia. This would launch world war with all the gigantic means of modern destruction. Hence the struggle against world war today becomes inextricably linked with the struggle against fascist tendencies in the major imperialist countries.<br /> <br /> This war, if it comes, will be no mere war between nations. It will arouse class conflicts throughout the world. Not at first perhaps, but in the end in every country. This the Red Army understands thoroughly; its loyalty is not alone to Russia but to the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, wherever they exist or come into being. But not unless invaded will the Soviet Union intervene in any other country, either by war or by interference in its affairs. Marxian analysis tells them that this would hamper the revolutionary development of the other country; it would turn workers towards the capitalists of their own country under the name of patriotism. If the world war starts, the Red Army will advance with a rifle in one hand and pamphlets in the other It has shells to distribute tens of thousands of leaflets calling on the brotherhood of all workers; it has also the means of effective war. As the world’s most politically conscious, most mechanized army, trained in many languages, it is able to lead and equip partisan war on the territory of foes. It is told to get results with a minimum of suffering.<br /> <br /> I well remember a talk in Moscow with a high Soviet authority on the subject of Japan in the tense winter of 1933. It was clear to us both that the Soviet air fleet was superior and in easy reach of Tokyo. We looked from high windows on the ice in Moscow river and discussed the chances of war.<br /> <br /> “A good, industrious folk, the Japanese,” he said slowly. “It would be a pity to bomb them. Do you think any Communist likes to set aflame whole towns of toiling folk? . . . If war should come in the East between us and Japan, we have not the slightest doubt that it would be the end of capitalist Japan. Revolution would start in Manchukuo and spread southward through China, till all Asia was Communist. Every imperialist power in the world would fight this, till at last revolt flamed up in their own lands. The world revolution might thus be accomplished, but the world that survived would be badly ruined. It would cost the lives of tens of millions of toiling folk; it would mean famine and pestilence sweeping all Asia. The world revolution will be secured with much less suffering, if peace can be maintained.”<br /> <br /> “The Soviet Union needs no foreign wars for transforming the world,” said Manuilski in 1935 at the Congress of the Communist International. Her struggle for peace is no temporary slogan. With every year of peace the Soviet Union strengthens, not only as a nation, but as a shining example which the world will follow. As socialism advances in the Soviet Union, it begins to attract scientists, engineers, artists; it draws away from allegiance to capitalism wider and wider hosts. With every year of peace—granted the steadily advancing Soviet Union—the international relation of world forces shifts to the side of the Soviet world and to the disadvantage of capitalism.<br /> <br /> Capitalism breeds war, yet world war is not inevitable. For capitalism itself is no longer inevitable in the world. If the struggle for peace can avail month by month and year by year, to check, delay and hamper the forces that drive towards war, capitalism itself may collapse in one war-inciting country after another on a sufficient scale to prevent world war altogether. Or world war, if it comes, may be greatly shortened by the revolt of all those people who suffer unbearably from war.<br /> <br /> This is the hope behind the Soviet struggle for peace. But whether in peace or in war, the growing strength and prosperity of the Soviet Union, achieved through two Five-Year Plans, insures the direction and is the pledge of the whole world’s future. The only question now is how deep and bitter will be the struggle—even the wars—before the far-flung peoples know and copy. But nothing any longer can stop the advance of their worldwide forces. They have both strength and knowledge and a conscience about the world.<br /> <br /> == PART II: THE SOVIET WORLD MAKES MEN ==<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER IX: THE FACTORY COLLECTIVE ===<br /> <br /> In all the recent congresses in Moscow, when miners, auto-workers, weavers, engineers and lathe-hands come up to celebrate their latest achievements in production and to receive honors for increasing a nation’s wealth, a phrase recurs which has no counterpart under capitalism, because the reality which it expresses could not exist there. Even in the Soviet Union the widening use of the phrase is recent, an instinctive expression of a new and growing reality.<br /> <br /> “I bring you greetings from our factory collective.” “Our factory collective pledges its full support.”<br /> <br /> The factory collective is not the plant administration. Nor is it the trade union, the shop committee or even the Party organization of the factory. All these organizations are a part of it, having their well-defined functions in its vivid life. The factory collective is the sum total of all the people in the plant in all their organized functions, the basic living cell of Soviet society.<br /> <br /> The concept of the factory collective did not spring into being full grown. It derives steadily from the joint ownership of the means of production which has now existed for eighteen years. This is the economic reality which is steadily determining the minds of men and the forms of their social life. A worker attached to a machine must be either its slave or its owner; under capitalism he is its slave. In the Soviet Union he knows himself owner of the machine but not the sole owner. It is entrusted to him to master, to get from it all that modern technical skill can give. The product belongs to him and his fellows; through his work in the plant he connects with all society. This gives back to man the old unity of life around the process of production which was riven in twain when the tools by which men created passed into alien hands. It returns on a wider scale and at a higher level by as much as the modern machine is more powerful than the ancient tool.<br /> <br /> An American who had worked for some years in a Soviet factory told me that two things especially impressed him: the relation of workers to administration and the cultural life around the factory. “The foreman always asks the workers’ advice in all problems; the relations are those of two friends instead of a boss. In America my factory was just a place to make a living, just another day to get through as soon as you could. Here it is your club, your center of culture, the thing that is closest in life.”<br /> <br /> The life of the factory collective has three main aspects: production, workers’ life, and relation to the rest of the country. Each of these aspects has its own control. The director and his assistants are responsible for organizing production. The trade union is responsible for organizing the workers’ life, including factory conditions, insurance, education and social activities. The Party organization is responsible for the political training of the workers, for widening their knowledge of the country’s policies and of their plant’s function in the building of socialism.<br /> <br /> These three together—director, trade union organizer, and Party secretary—form the “triangle,” the highest authority in the plant. Each has his clearly defined function; all three together consult on questions affecting the fundamental life of the factory. Orders of the director must be taken without question in production, and he is held responsible for everything that happens in the plant. But any director who failed to get on with the Party and trade union organization wouldn’t last long. As a Russian worker explained it: “If the factory collective doesn’t like the director you may be sure the Commissariat of Heavy Industry won’t leave him there.”&lt;ref&gt;See Chap. 6 for an example of this.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The relation between workers and management was thus described to me by the American worker: “The whole working gang is interested in production. The program for next month is discussed with all of us. The foreman calls a meeting and tells us that the administration wants us to put out 3,000 milling tools next month. How shall we do it? We discuss in detail; each of us says what he can do. It all adds up to 4,000. So the foreman goes to the administration and raises the plan to 4,000. If we fulfill or surpass our plan, we get a premium which we divide among the workers on the basis of what each has done. To help us estimate this, the shop economist gives us each month a list of each worker’s production, spoilage, idle time, breakdown of machines. Naturally we give the most of the premium to the best workers because they helped the whole gang win. The factory honors the winning brigade not only with a premium but with a red banner which waves each month among the lathes for everyone who passes to see. The best factories get honor and premiums from the whole country because everyone knows that the more we produce the more everyone will have.”<br /> <br /> When conflicts occur in a factory between the management and the trade union, there are various ways in which they may be resolved. Often the Party organization of the plant can settle it by discussion within this wider group to which members both of administration and trade union belong. Serious disagreements are appealed by the shop committee to its central trade union, or even to the All-Union Council of Trade Unions which has governmental powers to enforce the rights of workers. For individual cases of injustice appeal is often made direct to the courts. These struggles may be time-consuming, but men who feel convinced enough of their case to fight it through rarely fail of satisfaction. The head of the Nijni Auto Works was removed in 1932 after an investigation by the trade unions which began with a fight over living conditions started by the foreign workers. In another case that I know, an engineer who sharply criticized the plant’s manager in the factory newspaper was later fired on grounds that he thought insufficient. Failing to interest the shop committee in his case he took it to the city organization of the Party, which ordered an investigation that resulted in his reinstatement, with wages paid for all time lost. The director was reprimanded, and the reprimand printed on the front page of the factory newspaper, in order, as one worker expressed it, that “the director may know he is not God.”<br /> <br /> More common are the conflicts in which local management and trade union unite to compel action by the central offices of the trust. The shop committee demands certain safety appliances or new construction for the health of the workers. The manager replies that his budget does not allow it. He has no objection, however, to the shop committee making the strongest possible case through the trade union to the central organization which supplies the budget. Since the manager has no personal profit to make by cutting out improvements, but advances in reputation and position rather through his ability to maintain an enthusiastic organization of productive workers, his interest lies on the side of supplying their demands.<br /> <br /> Workers, on the other hand, do not want a boss who is soft and sentimental. They want one who can efficiently organize their work. They know that their prosperity depends directly on the success of their factory. They themselves will ask to have workers transferred who make much spoilage, or even expelled if they steal or persistently disorganize production. They consider it desertion for a worker to shift jobs without reason or without training someone to take his place. If health or family matters require a change, or if a factory cannot use his highest skill or give him a chance to develop, he applies for and gets “release.” But to shift merely because another factory, better organized, can give him higher wages and better conditions is considered cowardly.<br /> <br /> “Somebody has to make this factory a good one. Why shouldn’t he? His going makes it that much harder for the rest of us; we have to break in a green man. Why should he run off to another place that other folks organized because he finds things difficult here?” Here is an attitude similar to that of partners in a business.<br /> <br /> Production, however, is only part of existence. Around this center of jointly owned production is built the whole unity of the worker’s life. Through his factory collective he enters into the duties and privileges of citizenship; it is the primary organization which elects deputies to the local Soviets. Through his shop committee he receives his social insurance, his opportunities for education, his excursions, sports and vacations, and takes part in a score of voluntary social activities from government commissions to parachute clubs.<br /> <br /> Let us take an example of the internal organization of a factory collective, the Red Proletarian Plant in Moscow. The smallest unit in the plant is the production brigade which may have thirty to fifty workers. There are one hundred and fifty brigades in the plant, under one shop committee. These brigades not only compete in production records, rewarded by red banners and premiums, but also in social activity. Homiakov’s brigade, for instance, has twenty-nine workers, Every one of them does some social work. Some check the norms of production and standards of piece-work; some watch over the social insurance; three edit the wall newspaper which criticizes the shortcomings of the plant and of the workers. One middle-aged man was inactive socially and this was a great shame to the group, which tried to locate some tasks to interest him. They finally elected him president of the Red Aid Branch; within a month he signed up a big membership and had an active circle going.<br /> <br /> The brigade decides the list of “udarniks,” champion workers who get special privileges; but its list will be further checked by the trade union if it is too large or if there are complaints. Does a worker need a free vacation at a sanatorium? The brigade discusses it and sends a recommendation to the shop committee, which has a definite quota of places, and can fight for more. Safety devices on machinery, raising the technical knowledge of each operator, financial help to workers who are in straits, are matters which start with the brigade and are sent with their recommendation to the trade union. The union itself as a whole is actively pushing the completion of the new model dining-room, the expansion of the day nursery and clinic facilities—all these on demands which originally start in the brigades. All this work is democratically initiated, organized, carried through and checked by the rank and file members.<br /> <br /> Not the least important aspect of factory life is the cultural activity. Educational opportunities range from simple classes in reading and writing for newly arrived peasants, which characterized the earlier years of Soviet power, to the present university courses and institutions of scientific research. “You come to your factory to study, to attend a university,” said a worker to me. “You think, ‘My factory is going to make an engineer of me.’ After work you take a hot shower and go to the library or gliding club. Artists and singers come from the theaters to sing for us during the dinner hour. Famous authors come to discuss their books with us. If you want to write or act, you join the dramatic club or literary circle. Maybe some day you may go away to enter a theater or a newspaper, but even then you will sometimes come back to your factory.”<br /> <br /> The intimate sense of possession which a Soviet worker feels in his factory was strikingly shown to me by my step-daughter Ducia, who worked in a large electric plant near Moscow. I accompanied her on her return to the factory after she had been ill at home with grippe. As we approached the plant she grew excited; a vividness came into her gestures which had been lacking during her two weeks at home. She insisted that I notice and admire the factory laboratory where she worked, the power plant, the restaurant, the big workers’ club building; she pointed out the pathway between the shops that led to the park and stadium. I suddenly realized that Ducia had been positively homesick for her factory.<br /> <br /> Her reason for having chosen this particular factory to work in had little to do with wages. She chose it because it had a good reputation as an educational and social center, with a strong organization of Communist youth and a first class university. This offered her the well-rounded life which she demanded from her labor. Her working day was only six hours long, but she not infrequently spent twelve hours or more in and around the factory. She would go half an hour before her work began, drop into the Red Corner to get her newspaper or to discuss with the other girls the work of the political courses; she would come home late in the evening after her skiing club, German class or musical circle, or perhaps still later from a group party at the theater.<br /> <br /> In Ducia’s set it is the accepted view, which she does not even stop to formulate, that every human being should engage in three kinds of serious activity: productive work whereby he justifies his right to a share in the commonly produced goods of the country; voluntary social work, which holds together the whole apparatus of society; and study which improves individual capacities. Besides this serious activity there are recreations. All this many-sided life Ducia finds in her factory.<br /> <br /> The study takes different forms from year to year. In addition to courses in physics, German and political science which she takes regularly, various campaigns urge special study upon her. It may be her Young Communist League which makes a drive to have all members study the history of the Communist movement of youth. One year it was the drive for “technical minimum,” to raise the skill of all workers in the country. Ducia’s technical minimum was fixed for her by a committee of engineers who visited her laboratory, and discussed with each employee separately the special subjects needed for his work. She studied these subjects for several months, assisted by a voluntary teacher, one of the engineers of the plant who agreed to help several girls as his form of social work. “The whole laboratory is like a university,” said Ducia, “with the six hours’ work like practice on our subjects. When girls meet on the stairs, they are always asking whether you have finished such a formula.”<br /> <br /> Like most of her associates, Ducia also does social work; in her case it is the organization of the twelve current-events’ courses for young people in the various shops of the factory She takes much pride in keeping these running well. Not all social work is as serious as Ducia’s. One of the girls organizes a group for parachute jumping, another gets up theater parties, a third helps to plan excursions. Social work is not something that an individual does “for others”; it is the extension of his own interests, the organization in a social manner of what he himself most likes to do. It is also of value to the community and a direct preparation for participation in government. In a sense it is already taking part in government, which is increasingly built up from these voluntary social activities. A man whose financial ability is shown as dues collector for his union, may rise to full or part-time work as assistant chief of the city taxes. A woman who shows interest and efficiency in organizing the factory day nursery may later become chief of the city’s motherhood and infancy bureau.<br /> <br /> This is in fact the normal path to political office in the Soviet Union. I recall, for instance, Gribkova, who ten years ago was a young, illiterate farm servant. Wishing to better herself, she got a job as longshoreman on the Volga, thus entering the public services where, as she put it, “the road lay open to all life.” Working downstream she reached a textile mill and took employment as unskilled worker. Here she found the natural center for education and advancement. She learned to read and write, took technical courses and to handle a machine, took political courses and became an “active one” in her factory. From this point her specialization was possible in two directions: through technical training to higher posts in industry, or through social work and political training to posts in government. Gribkova chose the latter; she became interested in the voluntary tasks of factory inspection, and was later chosen by her fellow workers as part of their quota for a two-year training course which prepared professional factory inspectors. She is now a full-time official, head of inspection for a township. Hundreds of thousands have followed a similar path; this is the typical relation between factory life and the public activities of the country.<br /> <br /> The life of a great factory is continuous. Just as its productive life goes on for three shifts, so its social life continues nearly twenty-four hours a day. If one chances to come at six-thirty in the morning to the great Stalin Auto Works in Moscow, he may see in Day Nursery No. 41 the beginning of the day’s life. Mothers bring their children to the nursery before reporting to work. Each child receives a swift medical examination as he enters; if this indicates illness, the mother is excused from work to care for her child or to take it to the hospital. In the case of nurslings, the mother is given an hour off at the end of every three hours’ work to nurse her child. These day nurseries are considered as essential a public service as public schools of other countries. But whereas education is compulsory, day nurseries are not. The picture spread abroad of a stern Soviet government forcibly taking children from their mothers would arouse incredulous laughter in any Soviet home. The Soviet mother regards a day nursery as a facility which relieves her of the child certain hours of the day, and as a center of scientific information, whose employees can assist her in its proper care. She demands the day nursery and fights for its quality. If any factory administration fails to supply adequate funds to enlarge and improve its day nursery, the working women will see that the director is reminded.<br /> <br /> About the time that the mothers are saying good-by to their children in the nursery, the newspaper office inside the plant begins to bustle with activity. Six thousand copies of Moscow daily papers and 8,500 copies of the four-page daily of the plant, ''Overtake and Surpass'', must be delivered by eight or nine o’clock to subscribers in various shops. The plant newspaper is full of the daily life of the 35,000 workers. It organizes campaigns for production, for quality, for good housing, co-operative stores, clubs, schools, day nurseries; it contains complaints by workers about all these facilities; it is the organ through which these thousands of workers communicate with each other.<br /> <br /> In the midst of the great shops of the auto works, a small green square contains both the central dining room and the central polyclinic. The latter is maintained by the Moscow Board of Health, but its connection with the factory collective is very intimate. The health record of every worker is kept on file in a smaller dispensary in the shop where a doctor, medical assistant and statistician are constantly on hand for first aid and general care of this particular group of workers. For all special services the worker goes to the central polyclinic where a medical personnel of 300 includes specialists in all diseases. One interesting feature of this polyclinic is its direct connection with the diet kitchen of the factory which immediately gives the workers without extra charge the particular diet which the doctor prescribes.<br /> <br /> It is no sentimental glorification of manual labor which causes the grouping of Soviet institutions around the factory. It derives naturally from the unity of man as owner, creator and user, which under socialism replaces the capitalist division of men into bosses, hands, and buyers of goods. Even under capitalism men feel a deep human joy in creation and mastery, a mastery which may be widened and deepened by the machine. But capitalism poisons this joy at its source. A crane man in Seattle once told me that when he sat aloft picking up great loads with power and deftness, he felt “like one of those Greek giants or ancient gods.” Then he suddenly realized that he had no claim to that crane, but might face any morning, at the owner’s whim, the sign: “Closed down,” and he felt himself degraded from a god to a slave.<br /> <br /> Under capitalism the association of men in production is made hateful by a clash of interests; they seek their real life elsewhere, building it from disjointed fragments. Under socialism this association is strengthened by a thousand ties of mutual interest and becomes the solid foundation on which the whole structure of political and social life is frankly and realistically built. Life becomes unified; from worker to manager, to scientist, to artist there is at no point a break. A worker studies and becomes an engineer; he is active in the factory committee on inventions, and becomes a scientist; he shows talent in the dramatic circle and becomes an actor; he devotes himself to social work and rises in the government. Any of these interests may become professional and take him out of the factory into a wider or more specialized life. But the factory remains the social home from which he launched into life, and to which he often returns, either actually or emotionally.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER X: FARMING A CONTINENT ===<br /> <br /> Among the many flaming words which poured from the hearts of two hundred combined-harvester operators meeting in December 1935 in Moscow with the heads of Party and government, amid jubilation over present success and promises to make the future even more victorious, there was one poignant phrase of contrast with the past.<br /> <br /> “We sons and daughters of peasants—had there been no Soviet power, no Party of Lenin-Stalin, our lot would have been slavery to kulaks, or dawnless poverty in the mire of small peasant farming.”<br /> <br /> These words illumine with a piercing ray the tremendous changes that have taken place in the Soviet rural districts in a span of years so brief that the past still remains vivid in the minds of men not yet thirty years old. “When I worked as a fourteen-year-old farmhand under the tsar,” said the combine operator Kapusta, “I never saw the leaders of the government, never saw even the boss for whom I worked. . . . I never expected from life such happiness, such joy.”<br /> <br /> Five years ago Kapusta was an unskilled worker. But not Kapusta alone; so were they all. What else but unskilled workers were there on the backward individual farms of peasant Russia, where fifteen years ago the tractor was stoned as a “devil machine?” Even five years ago, who among Russian peasants had ever seen a combine-harvester? Today not only are millions of peasants acquainted by sight with the most modern farm machinery, but hundreds of thousands have mastered its operation and make a more continuous use of it than is possible on the private farms of America, which are too small to utilize profitably this modern machine. The combine is already a machine too good for capitalism. The American average harvesting record per combine is 578 acres, while the Soviet average secured in 1935 was 643. The champion operators who met in Moscow spurned this average. They had made records of a thousand, two thousand and even twenty-five hundred acres for the harvest season, and were swearing a solemn oath to train before next harvest many more operators like themselves.<br /> <br /> The time of this great advance has been so short that they can all look back as if to yesterday and recall the days of ignorance and poverty, when they slaved for wealthier farmers or wasted nine-tenths of their labor trudging from strip to strip of their medieval peasant fields. Today the very word “peasant” is passing from their vocabulary. They speak of themselves as “kolhozniks,” members of the collective economy, joint owners and users of the large-scale farm on which they work. They know quite well that if there had been no collectivization of farming, their slavery and darkness would have continued. For if modern machines had come to the Russian soil under capitalist conditions, a minority of successful farmers would have gained the means of production and risen to a brief wealth on the impoverishment of millions—brief until they in turn were robbed by the big banks of the cities, as farmers are under capitalism.<br /> <br /> The years 1930 to 1933 will go down in mankind’s story as the turning point in the farm history of the world. No other events of those years will be so long remembered—not the struggles of the League of Nations, nor the American New Deal; not even the world-wide economic crisis which was but one more, the worst, of many crises. Even the rise of the Chinese Soviets and the turning of Central Europe to fascism may receive less space in future history books than the collectivization of Soviet farming, whereby men won the dream of centuries, security on the soil.<br /> <br /> Security on the soil! Security from drought, from floods, from mortgages, from the chances of nature and the exploitations of man! Even to attain fragments of such security, if not for themselves then for their children, men of all ages have struggled and died. American families left the comforts of settled regions to homestead in dugouts, for the security promised by land ownership. Then drought or the foreclosure of mortgages showed that security based on private property in land is illusion. Markets collapsed and land was taken away for bare taxes. Soviet farmers today are winning not only security against taxes and mortgages and markets but even against drought and floods. Farming is industrialized on the basis of modern machinery and division of labor. Crop losses through “acts of God” are minimized by better tillage, crop insurance, and assistance from the more fortunate areas. The control of the joint farm is democratically organized; the general meeting not only elects the management, but decides the plan of the farm and the division of work. Security on the land thus co-exists with free initiative.<br /> <br /> This change has occurred among people whose farming was formerly notoriously backward. Ten years ago in the central grain-growing regions of Russia, there were three homemade wooden plows for every metal plow. One-third of the peasants had no horse at all but labored for others to pay for the plowing of their own soil. Lands were divided according to a medieval system; the twenty acres of a single family might be divided into a dozen strips scattered miles apart. Scientific crop rotation and seed selection were unknown. The primitive methods of tillage steadily exhausted the soil. A typical study of grain crops in the Kirsanov district showed a steady decline of average yield from thirteen bushels per acre in 1896-1905 to ten and a half bushels in the five years preceding the World War. On this same land since the collective farm was organized in 1930 the yield rose by better tillage to an average of seventeen bushels in 1930-33, and twenty bushels in 1934-35.<br /> <br /> In four earth-shaking years, the Soviet Union changed from a country of tiny, badly tilled holdings, worked with wooden plow and hand sickle, to the largest scale farms in the world.&lt;ref&gt;In the United States farms of a thousand acres or more comprise only 7.5 per cent of the total tilled area; in the USSR in 1935, nine-tenths of the tilled area was made up of farms averaging thirteen hundred acres.&lt;/ref&gt; The initiative was taken by the poorer peasants and farm hands, urged and organized by the Communists, and assisted by government credits and machines. When the Five-Year Plan swiftly increased the farm machinery available, the new collective farm proved able to attract ever wider and wider groups of farmers. The movement was bitterly fought by the small rural capitalists known as kulaks, who farmed with hired labor, lived by money-lending, or owned small mills, threshers and other means of production and used these facilities to exploit their neighbors.&lt;ref&gt;Writers unacquainted with Russian rural life often confuse kulaks with peasants generally, which leads them to describe the whole collectivization movement as an attack on the peasants. But for half a century students of Russian rural districts have spoken of kulaks. In 1895 Stepniak wrote that “hard unflinching cruelty” was their main characteristic; in 1904 Wolf von Schierhand wrote of the kulak as a “usurer and oppressor in a peasant’s blouse.” In 1918 Dr. E. J. Dillon, in ''The Eclipse of Russia'', said: “Of all the human monsters I have ever met in my travels, I cannot recall any so malignant and odious as the Russian kulak.”&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The state’s donation to farming and the technical help supplied by city workers proved decisive. During the years from 1930 to 1935, the Soviet government issued more than a billion dollars of direct credits to the farms for livestock and implements and spent an additional three billion for farm machinery loaned through the tractor stations;&lt;ref&gt;For tractor stations 5.5 billion rubles, for direct loans 1. billion; these were “hard rubles” whose value may be estimated as fifty cents.&lt;/ref&gt; it also gave food and seed loans of 157 million bushels of grain to farms in distress. At the call of the Communist Party tens of thousands of skilled workers, bookkeepers, machine repairmen, teachers and organizers, poured into the rural districts to help organize the farms. The most difficult period was from the 1932 to the 1933 harvest when kulak sabotage, added to difficulties of inefficient organization, caused a grain shortage that put the whole country on short rations. Success was won by the 1933 harvest which reached nearly 90 million tons of grain, the largest harvest ever known in the Russian land; it was succeeded by an equal or larger grain crop in 1934 and 1935. These harvest successes helped create a government budget surplus in 1934 of 437 million rubles, which was at once applied to cancel debts owed to the state by the farmers for early expenses of organizing and equipping the collectives. This wiped out 53 per cent of the still outstanding indebtedness, including all debts incurred prior to 1933.<br /> <br /> The economic results of collectivization have been an increase in the sown area of 30 million acres, from 293 to 323 million; a grain crop which for three years has been 15 to 20 million tons higher than the average for the five years before the collectives were formed;&lt;ref&gt;The average before collectivization was 78 to 80 million tons; in 1933 and 1934, 90 million; in 1935 nearly 100 million tons. Cotton area 688,700 hectares in 1913; 802,000 in 1927, and 2,051,000 in 1933. Sugar-beet area 648,700 in 1913; 665,000 in 1927, and 1,212,000 in 1933.&lt;/ref&gt; an area sown to sugar beets which is double the pre-war or any previous record; and an area sown to cotton which is two and a half times either the pre-war or the re-collectivization area. Livestock suffered catastrophically during the early years of collectivization but has been climbing rapidly back in the past three years.&lt;ref&gt;See Chap. 7.&lt;/ref&gt; The indications for the future are even brighter, since the rapidly improving methods of tillage and increase of fertilizer are counted upon to increase harvest yield year by year.&lt;ref&gt;As an example 46 per cent of all spring seeding in 1935 was done on winter-fallowed land, as compared with 25 per cent in 1930, and three-fourths of the autumn sowing in 1935 was done on summer-fallowed land as compared with 30 per cent in 1930. Similar increases have occurred in the use of selected seed, of fertilizer, scientifically planned crop rotations, and so forth.&lt;/ref&gt; At the end of 1935 Stalin in conference with the harvester-combine operators announced that “in the very near future, in three or four years,” 120 to 130 million tons of grain would be expected from the farms.<br /> <br /> By 1935, the new forms of collective farming were sufficiently stabilized for the permanent fixing of boundaries. For at least two years practically no members had wished to leave the collective farms to return to individual farming; crop rotations and the location of fields were becoming settled. The Soviet Government thereupon issued a decree granting “perpetual use of land” to the farm collectives. All over the country today rapid surveying of boundaries goes on followed by village celebrations which record the deed for perpetual use. Speakers celebrate the change of recent years, recalling days when most of the land was owned by landlords and tenant peasants worked in the slavery of debt, when freehold peasants sold their land bit by bit to pay taxes. “From perpetual debt to perpetual ownership is the change we have made,” said a Tartar farmer.<br /> <br /> In place of the old disused boundary posts with the tsarist eagle and the inscription “Each for his own,” there arise new boundary posts with the sickle and hammer and the letters, “USSR.” All the land is unitedly owned by the whole country of workers and farmers, say these symbols; its use is granted perpetually to specific organizations of working farmers. As Soviet citizen, the farmer is ultimate owner, as working farmer, he is permanent user. Both ownership and use are democratically organized and the relation of the smaller group to the whole country is fixed in part by permanent law and in part by annual contracts designed to encourage efficient production and to guarantee right to the fruits of toil. Security is gained by the permanent use of land which cannot be alienated by sale, lease, or mortgage. Freedom is secured by the democratic organization of both farm and country.<br /> <br /> What is this group which thus becomes permanent user? The model constitution adopted by the Congress of “Farm Udarniks”&lt;ref&gt;A delegate congress from the farms that have made the best records; their recommendations have weight as expressing the best farm practice.&lt;/ref&gt; and ratified by the Soviet Government February 17, 1935, states that it is a “voluntary union of working farmers” who unite “in order to build with joint means of production and jointly organized labor a collective, i.e., a social husbandry, to secure full victory over the kulak and over all exploiters, to secure full victory over need and darkness, over the backwardness of small individual husbandry, to create high productivity of labor and thus insure a better life for the members.<br /> <br /> “All boundaries formerly dividing the fields of the members are abolished. . . .<br /> <br /> “All draft animals, farm implements, seed reserves, fodder for the collective livestock, and buildings necessary to carry on the joint farming and the processing of the farm products are socialized. . . .<br /> <br /> “Living quarters, family cattle and fowls and the buildings necessary for their use are not socialized but remain for the private use of the members’ family.”&lt;ref&gt;Up to two head of milch cattle, one brood sow and her brood, ten sheep and goats, unlimited rabbits and chickens and twenty bee-hives in the grain, cotton, and beet regions; larger numbers are allowed for individual use in the regions devoted to livestock.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> All persons over sixteen who toil on the farm have equal vote. The general meeting elects the management, accepts or expels members, decides in conference with state experts the plan for farm production, crop rotation and new improvements and sets aside within certain limits private family garden plots ranging from half to one and a half acres for the individual use of members. It also contracts for the use of machinery from the Machine Tractor Station, a service center which supplies machines and expert knowledge over about a fifteen mile radius. These stations were originally organized and financed by the state but are becoming in part co-operatively owned through shares taken by the collective farms they serve. The farm must make certain deliveries of crops to the state at low prices fixed by a state commission; it must also pay the tractor station in kind. These two payments amount to about one-fourth of the average Crop; as tractor station service increases and with it the payments for machinery, the direct deliveries to the state somewhat diminish, moving towards a time when the state will receive its quota as direct payment for machinery.<br /> <br /> When these deliveries are made, and the seed and fodder fund set aside, the rest of the harvest may be divided among the members in proportion to the work they have done. The “work-day” is the unit for payment, but work-days are of different value according to the quantity and quality of work done. A tractor driver’s day may count as two ordinary work-days, a night watchman’s as three-quarters of a day. When possible, work-days are related to a definite amount of labor done—an area plowed or harvested—and additions or subtractions are made for work above or below the norm. The general meeting also sets aside part of the income for expansion and common uses such as field kitchens and day nurseries. This at first led to abuses by over-zealous farm officials wishing to build up central funds, but these amounts are now limited. In the past two years, the increased harvests have led to an increasing surplus above the government deliveries and the food required by the members. This may be freely sold, either individually or collectively, and either in town markets or through the village co-operatives, which have been greatly strengthened during the past year.<br /> <br /> Some fifty miles from the railway, in a northern flax and rye district, the Kalinin Collective Farm showed me its “Farm Plan,” a document of eighteen long pages, neatly stitched into a pamphlet. It was a printed form issued by the Commissariat of Agriculture, with details filled out by the local organization. Acreage, meadows, arable land, orchards, crop rotations, farm implements, draft animals, cows, pigs and chickens—everything you could wish to know about the Kalinin farm is here recorded. Not only are all people listed but allowance is made for babies yet unborn; an estimated 2 per cent annual increase of population must be provided with a growing standard of living. The farm plans to provide food for people and animals, produce the marketable crops recommended for the district, erect new buildings, reclaim new fields and create an increasingly prosperous life for its members. To this end work must be assigned to use as far as possible the entire working-time of the hundred able-bodied members.<br /> <br /> The farmer-members have discussed this plan for months before they adopted it. The township surveyor helped them plot the fields; the township land office and the Soviet newspapers have informed them that the country’s standard of living is to double by 1937, and that they must do their share. This involves increasing wheat at the expense of rye, doubling the oat ration of their horses, increasing fats and meats. They know that the state expects from them a certain amount of flax, the chief marketable crop of their district. On the basis of all this knowledge they plan for the coming year, counting on a constantly increasing crop yield through more machines and fertilizer and better methods, and on a constantly increasing prosperity through the rational assignment of work to the members. The plan includes the labor organization, with the number of total work-days needed for sowing and harvest, and the amount of labor left over for building a new library, equipping a playground and stadium or installing electricity and radios. No one need be out of a job, for all labor can be utilized to increase in various ways the prosperity and culture of the village; all will be paid by shares in the joint harvest, according to the quantity and quality of work done.<br /> <br /> When the entire plan is accepted by the general meeting, it is registered with the township office and becomes part of the economic plan of the whole country, which is derived from and in turn controls all lesser plans. Sowing and harvest are not the affair of the individual farmer only; they are the great annual rhythm on which the nation’s life depends. The whole country knows this and relates itself consciously to the plans of the farmers. Scientific conferences consider questions of insect pests and seed selection; heavy industry makes plans to manufacture more tractors. Government and Party congresses outline the changing demands which the growing life of the land makes on farming—increase of area or yield, or a change in the proportion of crops. Congresses of farmers meet by township, province and on national scale to discuss problems of tillage and farm organization. The Russian winter which in former days was a season of hibernation in snow-bound villages, is today a season of active farm-planning on a nationwide scale. Not even the farthest farm is isolated; visits of experts and newspaper campaigns keep it in touch with the life of the country.<br /> <br /> When spring begins in the south, hundreds of press correspondents pour forth to cover the sowing. ''Izvestia'' alone sends a dozen staff correspondents and tells sixty local correspondents to concentrate on farm news. The ''Peasants’ Gazette'' keeps several small airplanes busy, each as the center of a group of a dozen persons covering the farms. The news-gathering organization which some of the Soviet newspapers put on the sowing or harvest is beyond the scope of the biggest dailies in the capitalist world. Every provincial paper adds its reporters. The story is the world’s biggest annual story with more reporters than covered the World War!<br /> <br /> These reporters are not mere observers; their reporting is planned to help the harvest. One journalist of my acquaintance spent forty-four days in an airplane covering harvest in the North Caucasus; he visited one hundred farms and forty Tractor Stations, and slept in the fields without one night in a bed. His reporting was for a concrete purpose; he would drop in a field, apply his yardstick and count the grain ears lost on a square yard of harvested ground; he compared various farms, discovered which ones harvested best and how they did it. Within three days he was meeting with other journalists who made similar surveys; they discussed the chief harvest problems of the season and the best ways in which these were being met. These results were at once radioed to all the farms and published through the press of the country for the benefit of other farmers as the harvest traveled north. Every season hundreds of new ideas are thus culled from the experience of the farmers and broadcast by press and radio for the use of other farms.<br /> <br /> “A characteristic trait of the collective farm system,” says Vaviloff, chief of the Plant Institute. of Leningrad, “is its ability to assimilate new technical methods and make new scientific experiments.”<br /> <br /> The most striking example of the organization of great masses of farmers under the leadership of science was shown by the united fight of 1934 against the great drought which affected the whole southern half of Europe, including large areas in the Ukraine and Crimea. In many places no rain fell from April till harvest. In days of individual peasant farming, the peasants would have killed cattle for food and gone to the cities for work, putting back agriculture for several years. The collective farmers met swiftly in delegate congresses to declare “War Against Drought.” They took stock of all resources and made plans to suit each region. Near the Dnieper river they seeded the overflow meadows. On the slopes of the Caucasus the Kabardinians dug thousands of miles of irrigation ditches, declaring: “We have mountains; we don’t need rain.” Other farms organized continuous hauling of water by fire-department wagons, or planted swamps and forest glades. Children stormed the fields in organized detachments to pull up every moisture-sucking weed. Scientists busily determined for each district what second crops could best grow where winter wheat had failed. The press gave directions about this second planting; the government shot in by fast freight the necessary seed. The USSR secured a crop equal to the bumper harvest of 1933, and even most farms in the drought-stricken regions came through with food for man and beast, and with organization strengthened.<br /> <br /> The Soviet farmer has come out of his old isolation; he stands on the highways of the world. Through his collective farm, like the industrial worker through the factory collective, he connects with the wider life of science and art. Seven thousand farms in the Ukraine have established during the past two years their “laboratory cottages,” where the farmers carry on scientific experiments based on their own fields. In a typical one I found exhibits of wheat grown under varying conditions, samples of new crops, collections of insect pests, instruments for weather recording. “Sixty farmers take part in our experiments,” they told me. “We exchange data with the Zaporozhe Experimental Station.” These not long since illiterate peasants who grubbed the soil blindly are farmer-scientists now, collecting nationally useful data for the conquest of harvest yields.<br /> <br /> More than a hundred thousand drama circles for self-expression have sprung up on Sovict farms. Sport and recreation of all types grow also with tremendous speed. Farmers learn gliding, parachute jumping, even aviation. The small farm airplane which can land on a harvested field is a not infrequent visitor in farm campaigns. Extra-early sowing done by air into the mud of melting snow is a recognized means of combating drought in many regions.<br /> <br /> By no means all Soviet farms are yet well organized, but efficiency steadily increases. By no means all of them are prosperous, but prosperity steadily grows. The change which is most apparent is in the faces of the farmers. They have lost the dull, unresponsive stare of the peasant; they are more vivid, alert. “Formerly even the peasant with the best income lived like a pig,” said a Soviet farmer to me. “His only use for his surplus was to get drunk. Today he has a reading-room, a hospital, a school, a laboratory; he reads the newspapers and knows about the world. His children go from the village to build factories, to discover minerals, to conquer the Arctic, to become ‘heroes of the Soviet Union.’”<br /> <br /> More than two million letters 2 year from farmers pour into the offices of the ''Peasants’ Gazette'' in Moscow, a high-piled mountain covering many tables. I asked an editor how their contents revealed the changing life of the farm. “When our paper began its existence,” he said, “in the years before collectivization, we got chiefly individual complaints and requests for simple information on farm technique. ‘My taxes are too high!’ ‘How shall I care for my cow?’ Such were the letters.<br /> <br /> “What do they write about now? The education of children, the position of women, the farm theater, the economic crisis in foreign lands. We got five hundred original poems on the death of Kirov and seventy on the disaster to the Maxim Gorky airplane. They comment on world affairs, on China and Italy. You can’t compare them with what they were ten years ago. Instead of ‘my horse and cow,’ their interest is wide as the world.”<br /> <br /> On the northern slopes of the Caucasus mountains, a small district of once suppressed non-Russians, known as Kabardinia, prides itself on creating “the farms of tomorrow.” Its collective farmers have been known to vote the greater part of a harvest surplus to add to the government’s school fund and build for their own village “the best school in the valley.” They bring architects from Moscow to help them plan “farm-cities,” settlements which shall combine expert farming with the culture of the town, high schools, laboratories, libraries, sound-film theaters. A forty-mile highway runs through the Kabardinian valley. Last summer travelers passing, on foot or by cart, found seven rest-stations at five-mile intervals. Brightly painted, tile-roofed pavilions were furnished with wash-basins and beds with fresh linen; large plates of watermelon were placed on the table to quench the visitor’s thirst. An old man attendant refused all payment for the refreshment, saying: “This is the farm ‘Dawn of Socialism’; we planted two extra acres of melons for the traveler.”<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XI: THE FREEING OF WOMEN ===<br /> <br /> {{Quote|“Every kitchen maid must learn to rule the state.”|Lenin}}<br /> <br /> Throughout the world a struggle goes on for women’s equality and freedom, with varying methods and varying success. The methods most commonly known are those of different women’s organizations which fight, decade after decade, for new specific increases in women’s “rights.” They count their victories by the number of women who one by one attain high office, by the number of rights slowly secured, the right to vote, to enter industry, to inherit property, to divorce, to some individual status after marriage.<br /> <br /> Undoubted gains they have known, and also many disillusions. A tireless woman in New England recently told me that she had fought for thirty years to get “a decent inspection of women’s labor in our state” and that they would “probably lose it at the next election.” Nor does the elevation of the occasional woman to high position necessarily improve the lot of women generally. From Cleopatra down to America’s women officials, exceptional women have occasionally been permitted to rule; it is not recorded that the mass of women gained more consideration from them than from men rulers. Women the world over are still unequal to men, bound by a thousand discriminations. In the backward lands of the East hundreds of millions of women are still a subject sex. Not even in the most advanced capitalist countries are they quite equal with men; the long list of disabilities against which the National Women’s Party protests in America is evidence of that. Nowhere in capitalist lands have they equal access to all universities, equal pay for equal work in all industry, equal right to advance in all professions, equal rights in marriage and in the care and custody of children. Even those rights which they have attained are today under attack by fascism, which under the phrases of chivalry drives women back to the Middle Ages.<br /> <br /> It is therefore the more amazing that Soviet women should have gained so swiftly an equality unknown elsewhere in the world. They receive equal pay for equal work and no jobs are closed to them. They have equal opportunity in education and in government. They have equal rights and duties in marriage; they are free to have or not to have children. They have full political, economic, legal and social equality, as human beings and citizens. This has been attained in eighteen years in a country where women were once suppressed not only in the European but also in the Asiatic manner. Tsarist law made Russian wives the property of their husbands “in duty bound to render him love, respect and in all things obedience to his wishes.” They had no right to separate passports; if they ran away, the police returned them to their husbands. This law was reinforced by brutal peasant customs; Gorky relates the sight of an unfaithful wife bound naked to a cart and flogged by her peasant husband into unconsciousness in the midst of a jeering, applauding crowd. In tsarist Central Asia millions of dark-skinned Mohammedan women lived in the seclusion of harems and behind black veils.<br /> <br /> The freeing of women takes place in the Soviet Union swiftly because it is not a woman’s fight alone. It comes as part of the freeing of human beings by giving them joint ownership over the country’s means of production, irrespective of sex, color or race. . . . “The emancipation of women is not only the work of women Communists but of men Communists also, just as the fight for socialism is a mutual fight,” said Krupskaia, widow of Lenin. The Communists hold that the gains in women’s freedom made through centuries have been chiefly due to change in methods of production. The modern factory freed women from the patriarchal home, but imposed its own form of slavery; it used women to cut down wages, thus increasing the antagonism of the sexes. Economic slavery is the basis of all other inequalities, the key-log in the jam which must first be loosed that all others may rush free.<br /> <br /> No freedom comes without battle. The October Revolution created the economic, legal and political basis of woman’s equality. The industrialization of the country was the consciously applied weapon for making woman equal with man. Yet in every village and factory women still had to fight their way over the traditional habits of centuries, which lingered in their own souls and in the souls of men. But these barriers of the past were no longer buttressed by ancient law and by the need of private industry for cheap woman’s labor.<br /> <br /> The first women to establish their freedom were the workers in the factories who took part with their men in the Revolution. I recall Dunia, who was once an illiterate textile worker, living with husband and children in the same room with another family, nine people in all. Dunia was one of those who in the first year of Revolution seized the manager’s house for a day nursery so that her children might have space to grow. She learned to read and began to rise in political and social work, as did simultaneously millions of others. She said to me: “Once life went on without us workers, still more without us women. The father gave her to the husband; she was slave to her man and her factory. Now I am slave to no one. The road is open to all life.” This phrase of the “open road to life” I have heard hundreds of times from working women.<br /> <br /> The emancipation of peasant women came more slowly. Scores of women presidents of villages have told me of their difficulties with the peasant men who jeered at “petticoat rule.” “They laughed at the first woman we elected to the village Soviet so much that she could do nothing; at the next election we put in six women and now it is we who laugh.” This was a typical statement.<br /> <br /> The widespread collectivization of farming in 1930 gave women’s freedom in the rural districts its needed economic base. Farm women everywhere in the collective farms are awakening to the implications of their independent income. Drunken husbands are no longer masters in the home. “I got for myself a warm new coat, a dress and shoes; I got clothes for the children,” said a farm woman displaying her purchases in the local market. “But my man spent his money on drink and I’ll buy him nothing. I’ve told him if he gets drunk again I’ll throw him out of the house and not even feed him. The farm will back me up, unless he quits drinking and loafing. I can get along without him in the collective farm.” Some thirty million farm women from Leningrad to Vladivostok are awakening to the amazing fact that they can get along economically without their husbands.<br /> <br /> Most cruel and bloody of all was the fight for women’s freedom in those lands of Central Asia where for centuries veiled women had been sold like chattels to the harems. Here local religion and custom supported men who murdered their wives for the crime of unveiling. When young folks in Tashkent schools spent vacations agitating for women’s freedom, one girl’s body was sent back in a cart. Accompanying the hacked pieces were the words: “This is your women’s freedom.” In another locality of Central Asia, nine murders of women occurred before any were discovered by central authority; every attempt of a woman to get justice was met by local vengeance.<br /> <br /> But the women of Central Asia, led by the hope which the new government gave them and the new industries encouraged, fought their way into freedom. The blood of martyrs stirred them to greater struggle; fifty thousand women marched at the funeral of the Tashkent girl student. In Bokhara, citadel of Mohammedan orthodoxy, a spectacular unveiling of women in great meetings and processions took place on International Women’s Day, March 8, 1928. Amid indescribable enthusiasm they tore off veils, stamped on them, threw them on the streets and at the feet of speakers. When one woman was murdered by her husband for this unveiling, a public trial was held in a great mass meeting; the murderer was swiftly condemned and executed. From that time women walked unveiled in holiest Bokhara. Today a woman, Abidova, who at the age of twelve was sold in marriage to pay a fifteen-ruble debt of her father, is vice-president of the Uzbek Republic, and its permanent representative in Moscow.<br /> <br /> These women of the East are quite aware of the relation of their new freedom to the socially owned means of production.<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;The roar of the factory is in me.&lt;br/&gt;It gives me rhythm,&lt;br/&gt;It gives me energy,&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> sing the Uzbek girls of the state silk mill which brought them out of the harems. Another song makes the application wider:<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Flower of the East,&lt;br/&gt;the time has come To cast off the veil and the paranja. . . .&lt;br/&gt;For a thousand years you slept in darkness under the yoke.&lt;br/&gt;When you awake, when you arise from deep sleep,&lt;br/&gt;The workers of the world await you!&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> Steadily the share of Soviet women in industry and in public life has climbed upward. The percentage of women among industrial workers has risen by a steady 3 per cent a year during the Five-Year Plan, and is now (1935) 42 per cent of all persons gainfully employed. In technical higher schools 36 per cent of the students are women, in medical schools 75 per cent; in no institution of learning is there any discrimination against women. The percentage of women who took part in elections rose from 28 per cent of all eligible women in 1926 to 80.3 per cent in 1934. Women constituted 18.2 per cent of the membership of city soviets in 1926; this rose to 32.1 per cent in 1934. The change in the rural districts was greater; a 9.9 percentage of women in 1926 in village soviets rose to 26.4 per cent in 1934. Only 0.6 per cent of the villages had women presidents in 1926, though even this figure testified to the successful fight of thousands of women; by 1934 the figure was over 8 per cent. More than a million women today hold some form of public office in the soviets, including 400,000 elected members of soviets, 400,000 members of local government commissions, 112,000 “co-judges” in the courts, a function similar to but somewhat more specialized than that of our jurors, and 100,000 members of managing boards of co-operatives.<br /> <br /> The city of Tver, now renamed Kalinin, gives an example of the varied kinds of work done by women. As a textile town, its population included a large proportion of women textile workers before the Revolution, a fact which explains its present status as a progressive city, boasting itself among the first Soviet cities in which women attained their full half of the seats in the city government. (Other cities are steadily following, as women through initiative and education take advantage of their legal right to equality.) Tver’s two most important women are Anna Kaligina, city secretary of the Communist Party, than which no higher post in the city exists, and Feodorova, who held till recently the prize of “best weaver” for the USSR. Thousands of others follow in the footsteps of these leaders.<br /> <br /> Policeman Lily travels fearlessly through dark woods about the city to round up criminal gangs. On one occasion, when she was convoying a prisoner caught setting fire to turf fields, she was set upon in the woods by two of his accomplices and brought back to jail not one criminal but three. That same evening she played the part of fragile heroine in lilac gown in the local dramatic club, for Lily is an ardent amateur actress specializing in dainty feminine parts. Black-eyed Katya is a street-car conductor, with the best record among the twenty-seven woman conductors of Tver. She is also in the second year of the workers’ college, where she studies Turgenieff and geometry. Morosov, the motorman, writes poems about her.<br /> <br /> All the young men admire Nina, eighteen-year-old glider pilot, who three days a week sails through the air on light wings. Her regular job is in the car Works, making valves for railway cars. But her pastime is the aviation club and she expects some day to be an aviator. Zoya is champion motor mechanic in a clothing factory and also chairman of its shop committee, handling trade union affairs for five hundred and sixty women; in her spare time she is an enthusiastic ski runner, who took second place in a contest held by the clothing workers of five provinces. Marusia is studying to be a doctor; Tonia is a former spinner who did such good work on the wall newspaper that she is now a full time writer. Dusia was the first woman chauffeur in the city; the boys used to run after her yelling, “girl driver.” One by one the girls of Tver have conquered every trade and profession. So have the women throughout the USSR.<br /> <br /> Foreign visitors are occasionally shocked to find women taking part in heavy and dirty labor, field work, street-cleaning, even digging the subway. But Soviet women are still of the generation of peasants, who worked in the fields. They know that in all ages women have done heavy labor; it is the skilled work from which they have been barred. They know that equal share in labor means in the USSR equal share in ruling and in all opportunities of life. So young girls fought for the right to equal work on the subway, against engineers and miners who didn’t want to let the women underground. They worked knee-deep in water alongside experienced men, challenged them to records and often beat them. “The subway was the richest experience of my life,” said a prize-winning girl.<br /> <br /> There are, however, regulations governing women’s labor, which prohibit work proved by experience more dangerous to women than to men. Women may not engage in trades involving danger of lead poisoning, may not lift weights above a certain amount. Special regulations, reinforced by medical observation, surround the whole period of pregnancy, and the last six to eight weeks women may not work.&lt;ref&gt;Six weeks before and six weeks after childbirth for office jobs; eight weeks before and eight weeks after for physical labor; longer periods may be ordered at any time by the doctor, and are given without loss of wages.&lt;/ref&gt; Many labor processes are constantly under investigation to determine whether or not they are injurious to women; when experiment shows that they are, they are prohibited. This is no sex discrimination but part of the ordinary routine of the public health service, which steadily investigates the effect of occupations and bars from them those groups of the population which might be injured. Thus sand-blasting trades are prohibited to youth, which is more susceptible than older people are to tuberculosis from sand-blasting. No trade or profession is prohibited in advance as “unwomanly”; any trade may be barred after investigation to any group or individual on grounds of public health.<br /> <br /> Not access to heavy labor but to skilled professions distinguishes Soviet women from those of other lands. Anna Kofanova won fame as operator of a combined-harvester, harvesting 1,500 acres in one season, the township record. Natalia Mikhailova is director of a machine tractor station entirely manned by women which services the 15,000 acres of thirty-two collective farms. Shchetinina, a ship captain, navigates the ocean. The envelopes of Soviet stratostats were designed by a woman chemist. Irene Rousinova was the first woman polar explorer, wintering several seasons in the north; she has been followed by hosts of others, including Nina Demme, who for two years has managed the scientific station on North Land. Galina Medovnik weeded tobacco in tsarist days as a girl of eight, fought in the Red Army during the civil war and was several times condemned to death; she escaped to become today a representative of housewives in the Moscow Soviet, where she superintends the building of apartment houses for workers.<br /> <br /> Equality in work has given to women equality in every field of life: education, politics, marriage. The assumption behind the Soviet marriage code is the equal human dignity of both parties in deciding their intimate relations—a decision with which the state has no right to interfere. State action is limited to protection of children and prevention of force or fraud. Young couples appearing at the Marriage Registry Bureau are therefore required to give name, residence, occupation, past marital history, any children, and the future name which each intends to take. Questions to each are identical. The same name is often taken but not always. A person who infects another with disease is criminally liable. Property owned before marriage remains individual; that later acquired is jointly owned. Any married person who desires a divorce gets it, nor has the state the right to ask the reason. Both parties are responsible for the care and support of children up to eighteen and for giving the other partner any needed temporary economic aid to establish the independent relation. Recent much publicized changes in the divorce code were only a better bookkeeping, insuring that both persons actually knew of the divorce and were actually held for the support of children.<br /> <br /> Recent comments of Soviet leaders that more time should be given to family life are similarly part of the general emphasis on richer human relations now possible through increasing leisure rather than any belated recognition of the family. Casual attitudes toward marriage have been discouraged from the beginning; no one was more emphatic on this than Lenin. But the pressure is social rather than legal. Trade unions, collective farms and Party organizations will penalize, even to the point of expulsion, persons who cause social havoc through their sexual instability. But they consider concrete situations, not traditions. The continuous and open living together of two people is respected, whether or not they are “registered”; it constitutes marriage in both the social and legal sense. Taking advantage of another person is penalized, through whatever forms accomplished. Peasants who took advantage of the marriage code to secure brief brides for harvest work soon stopped when they found this gave the woman equal right to the harvest. One notorious case some years ago was that of a man who seduced a girl by marriage and threw her out next morning; he was convicted of rape, which is legally defined as sex relations obtained through force or fraud, and was punished by imprisonment. The fact of the marriage registration was rather an aggravation than otherwise; he had used a Soviet office to assist fraud.<br /> <br /> Problems occasionally arise in marriage from the fact that both partners have jobs. I met a girl tractor-driver in Siberia who married a tractor-driver on another field brigade. They spent their honeymoon some miles apart; once each week the young man walked ten or twelve miles on his free day to stay with his bride. The girl never met him half-way; she was boss of the winning brigade and took no chances. To my casual query why they did not get into the same field-gang, both exclaimed: “Desert my brigade in sowing-time!”<br /> <br /> A woman’s relation to the state is always individual; it is never through her husband. Not even the wives of great men may live by reflected glory. When Stalin’s wife died, the black-bordered announcements in the press gave her own name and occupation in the artificial silk industry, and only after this mentioned that she was the “close friend and companion of Stalin.” Kalinin’s wife wins recognition by creating a state farm and center of culture in the Altai Mountains, where they call her by her own name, not by the name of the president.<br /> <br /> The tradition that love is “woman’s whole existence” is challenged by a new assumption, a refusal to admit that any human being’s happiness can be completely dependent on one other human being. When Salima, a young woman of Turkestan, accepted a scholarship to study in Tashkent, her husband ordered her to return, and, on her refusal, divorced her, boasting by letter that he had taken another wife “obedient and illiterate.” Salima showed her quality by replying: “I received your letter telling me that you have another wife. I will have my revenge. When I finish my studies I will come back to the village and teach your second wife to read and write.” The older generation may be horrified by the flippant Salima, but the new Soviet generation will applaud her as free and self-reliant citizen.<br /> <br /> The freedom of every woman to dispose of her own body, to marry or not to marry, to have children or not to have them, irrespective of marriage, is taken for granted by Soviet law, and is restrained only by social opinion, not by legal penalry. Dr. Milashkevich, head of the Gynecological section of the great polyclinic, where a medical personnel of three hundred serves the thirty-five thousand workers of Stalin Auto Works, told me that all women working in the plant come to her as part of their routine health examination. “If they are married I ask them: ‘Do you want children?’ Then I give them medical advice according to their intentions. If they do not want children, the poly-clinic supplies the means of prevention.” She further informed me that every attempt was made to discourage abortion, by urging grounds of health, and by sending nurses and even neighbors to reason with the wife and husband, but never by absolute refusal. “To compel a woman either to have or not to have children we would consider an infringement of human rights,” said Dr. Milashkevich. “If she decides to have them, the state gives every assistance, through free medical and hospital care, special funds for milk and children’s clothing and the use of day nurseries to care for children during her working hours.” That the women are deciding to have children is clear from the average increase of population of three million annually—in the past two years of growing prosperity three and a half million&lt;ref&gt;Figures from Soviet Statistical Dept. 1936.&lt;/ref&gt;—an increase unparalleled in any other land.<br /> <br /> Every year the Soviet Union produces its crop of national heroes, who spring into fame for some notable achievement and whose methods are widely copied. In 1935 the names most heard were those of Stakhanov, a miner, and Marie Demchenko, a farm woman. A former farm servant of the sugar beet districts, Marie had risen through collectivization of farming, and the knowledge she gained in the laboratory cottage, to challenge in spring of 1935 all the beet growers of the land. Let us flood the land with sugar. My brigade will get twenty tons of beets per acre.” Hundreds of letters accepted; hundreds of visitors came to inspect the fields which Marie’s determined brigade of women nine times hoed, and eight times cleared of moths by setting fires at night. They conquered a rainless August by the local fire-fighting apparatus, pouring twenty thousand buckets of water on their fields. They won twenty-one tons per acre and came to the November celebrations in Moscow to receive the Order of Lenin amid the plaudits of the entire country.<br /> <br /> Who were these women singled out for honor? They were women who got down in the dirt to dig sugar beets, who soiled their hands with slimy insects that a beet crop might be improved. What made their achievement honored? This—that their beets were no commodity for private profit, but sugar for the workers of a nation. They were leaders in the public task of farming a continent. This made of the hitherto unregarded toil of farm women a heroic collective epic, worthy to be classed with the work of explorers who raid the Arctic or scientists who storm the stratosphere.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XII: THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF SCIENCE ===<br /> <br /> “Russian is now recognized in American universities as a scientific language,” said a young Californian who was visiting with me the Leningrad Institute for Plant Protection. “Four years ago the universities wouldn’t take it as one of the two languages required for a scientific degree. But now my professors tell me that for my specialty of farm pests, it is the most important language of all. More original work is appearing in it than in any other language. German and French research is older and was translated some years ago. But our universities haven’t funds today to translate all this new research appearing in Russian.”<br /> <br /> This American youth hardly connected in his mind the decline in German and French research and the lack of American university funds for translation with the world-wide economic crisis. He knew little of the collectivization of Soviet farming and the stimulus it had given to his branch of science. But across two seas and two continents the results of these causes had reached the aloof halls of a university in California, interpreted thus “Russian—a scientific language—original research not yet found in translation.”<br /> <br /> Visiting scientists at the Fifteenth International Physiology Congress which met in Leningrad in August 1935, expressed an appreciation not untinged with amazement at the high respect paid science by the Soviet government and the rapid strides made by Soviet science in recent years. “No government ever ‘took up’ science as has this government. . . .” “Even the Americans are startled by the amount of resources which can be placed at the disposal of science by a government planning on a national scale. . . .” Such were some of the comments which found their way into the press of New York. Professor Walter B. Cannon, of the Harvard Medical School, told the Congress how science suffers today in all the capitalist countries, and added: “In the Soviet Union, where the social importance of science is appreciated, the funds made available for the development and prosecution of science are greater than in any country in the world.” The report of the Congress later given in ''Science'', official organ of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, noted “the respect with which scientists are treated,” “the important position which science, pure as well as applied, occupies in the national economy,” and the “ardor of the army of young scientific workers.”<br /> <br /> Soviet citizens take it for granted—Marxists in fact have taken it for granted ever since the days of Marx—that science must naturally reach a much freer and fuller development under socialism than is possible under capitalism. Capitalism, whose early expansion a century or more ago encouraged and boasted its science, has already reached the stage where science is an embarrassment, since the possibilities of human development which it reveals are unrealizable under private ownership. Science itself under capitalism suffers from a lack of aim. In England the head of the oldest agricultural experiment station in the world told a visiting Russian scientist that he hardly knew what to investigate since the declining condition of farming in England and the antagonisms in Egypt and India prevented the application of everything he discovered. In America the hostility between science and capitalism is only in its first stages, and is marked by increasing suppression of new knowledge which would interfere with profit. In Germany where a collapsing capitalism has taken the form of fascism, there is already a deep distrust of human reason and a propaganda against the very existence of science.<br /> <br /> In the Soviet Union science is rapidly expanding. Communism demands the thorough-going application of science to remake all human life; it assumes that the intellect of man can progressively understand and subdue nature to his collective will. “A new historical epoch will begin,” said Engels, “when men and their work will improve to such an extent that all previous achievements will seem as but a feeble shadow.” “We are confident that in our epoch we are entering an era of unparalleled progress in science,” is a typical editorial comment today in 2 Moscow newspaper. President Karpinsky, of the All-Union Academy of Science, spoke of the USSR as “the country where science is given a place of honor,” when he greeted the visiting physiologists “on behalf of hundreds of research institutes.” Even the famous physiologist, L. P. Pavlov, who was always antagonistic to Bolshevik ideas, said recently that he wanted to live to be a hundred because “the Soviet government has given millions for my scientific work and my laboratories flourish as never before.”<br /> <br /> Those doubters who fear that state subsidies for science interfere more with scientific freedom than do the subsidies of individual millionaires, and who promote abroad the idea that the Soviets “persecute scientists,” ignore the fact that a high esteem for science is quite consistent with a deep suspicion of individual scientists. Conflicts did persist between the Soviet government and certain scientists who used their knowledge to fight the Revolution. That sabotage by scientists and engineers occurred on a very wide scale during the early years of the first Five-Year Plan has been acknowledged by thousands of former saboteurs. Only when the victory of the Five-Year Plan was assured beyond question did these waverers finally come over to find that socialism gives far greater opportunities for their science than capitalism ever did or could.&lt;ref&gt;See details in Chap. 3, page 52-3.&lt;/ref&gt; The Academy of Science has been greatly expanded from the three departments, mathematics, natural sciences, and historical philology, which it comprised before the Revolution. It is the center for planning and co-ordinating the scientific activity of the entire country through its twenty-one large departments and its frequent inter-departmental sessions. It works hand in hand with the State Planning Commission which indicates to it the requests for widespread scientific research in particular fields needed for the development of the country. It is also the court of appeal for all scientists who disagree with government departments or research institutes on questions of their work, or who want to do research for which no appropriation yet exists. In all conflicts on the objectives of research the Academy decides, being liberally financed directly under the All-Union government. The city of Moscow has recently assigned to the Academy 1,250 acres on the Moscow River, where the first of forty-two projected buildings are now being built.<br /> <br /> More than one thousand scientific research institutes in the USSR, employing 41,000 scientific workers, were claimed at the Physiology Congress by Akulov, Secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the government. Many of these institutes are of monumental size and scope. The All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine, for instance, is the organizing center of all medical research in the USSR. Scientists, doctors and engineers worked for two years on the construction plan of its new home where 5,500 employees are to study “the biology and pathology of the human being from every aspect.” Hospitals of the institute make continuous study of typical cases of various diseases and healthy people are also studied as “controls.”<br /> <br /> One of the largest of the scientific institutions is the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, which correlates the work of nearly sixty institutes for research in soil chemistry, plant protection, livestock breeding, microbiology, agrometeorology and similar branches of science. The work of the agricultural institutes is based upon material obtained in 200 experiment stations and more than 1,500 smaller research stations in state and collective farms. Each of the subordinate institutes is an important organization in itself; the Institute for Plant Protection, for instance, has a central staff of 250 scientific workers and dozens of branches all over the country.<br /> <br /> The expansion of Soviet science arises not only from the need of socialism for scientific planning, but from the wide interest and co-operation on the part of the people. The Academy of Science is no secluded institution of the aristocracy; it is the unity of the scientific brains of the country with the masses. Science in the Soviet Union is dear to all the people, for every citizen knows that its discoveries will become his own possession and not the property of a small privileged group. “We scientists used to feel ourselves rather unimportant, since we had already discovered so much more than people were able to apply, but now that the collective farms demand our science, we see our work for several thousand years,” said Vaviloff, Vice-Chairman of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences and world-famous discoverer and creator of new plants.<br /> <br /> The wide interest of the Soviet population in science expresses itself not only in honor to scientists but in active participation in scientific work by great numbers of people. Every scientific institution receives much popular co-operation, from workers, farmers, even from children. When the All-Union geological survey sent some two thousand annual expeditions with seventy to eighty thousand participants to explore and map the resources of the Soviet Union during the first Five-Year Plan, these official expeditions became the correlating center of a still broader popular movement. Thousands of grammar school children became “discoverers of our country,” going with their teachers to study geological outcroppings. Tens of thousands of hikers learned from geologists what to look for on cliffs and mountain slopes and occasionally made discoveries of significance. One of the stimulating causes of the first great Pamir expedition came from a Khirghiz nomad who carried a gold nugget several days journey to Samarkand and fought his way through many bureaucratic offices because he “thought the government ought to know about the gold in the Pamirs.”<br /> <br /> Every large factory has its bureau of workers’ inventions through which inventive genius of workers finds connection with the wider world. Workers and farmers who make practical discoveries are often asked to report them in their own non-technical words at scientific congresses. Scientists in turn give frequent lectures in factories on subjects applicable to the work of the plant. Analysis of steel by the spectrum method will be reported to a machine-building plant, and discussions on organic chemistry will be given by scientists at a rubber works to a large attendance of interested workers.<br /> <br /> So deep and thorough is the interest taken by workers in science that the cleavage between workingmen and scientists already lessens, presaging that time predicted by Marx when the distinction between mental and manual labor will disappear. At a banquet held by the Academy of Science in the Neskuchny Palace in Moscow, a number of leading factory workers were present as guests. A foreign newspaperman, wishing to interview Professor Bach, a well-known member of the Academy, approached a man who was pointed out to him from 2 distance. They chatted half an hour about the revolution in culture, the creation of a new life, and the new type of human being now appearing under socialism. In parting, the correspondent asked for the Academician’s autograph. The man to whom he was speaking started in surprise. “My name Is Ivanov; Bach is the person sitting next to me,” he said, pointing to a man who had been attentively listening. “I myself am a locksmith from the ball-bearing plant.”<br /> <br /> One of the most striking examples of the democratization of science is the “laboratory cottage,” which has developed in the last two years on the collective farms. Seven thousand of these centers of experiment are reported in the Ukraine alone. The head of the laboratory is sometimes a teacher of the village school, but more often a self-educated farmer who has the scientific instinct and whose enthusiasm has organized other farmers to make experiments in their fields and correspond with scientific stations.<br /> <br /> “This scientific tendency in human beings takes such varied forms,” said an editor, “that one cannot even classify them. In the past these scientific instincts often died stillborn because of poverty. Today we seek them out through many agencies; one of these is our ''Peasants’ Gazette''. Today a new type of experimenter is developing who does not experiment secretly but organizes the masses around him to discover and carry out new ideas. There is often some waste of time and destruction of machinery in these experiments. But this does not worry us. What is important and valuable is that the human being is striving to change, to improve. Waste of time and destruction of materials matters nothing, if thereby we add even one drop of knowledge which enables man to increase his understanding and control of nature.”<br /> <br /> One such natural scientist was Akulov, a peasant of the Genichesk district. As a World War prisoner in Austria, he saw one head of grain much bigger than the surrounding heads. He kept it and eventually brought it home to his own garden to breed new giant heads. When the collective farm was formed in his village in 1930, Akulov had four bushels of this special grain to give them. The big heads were planted and cherished until there were several score acres of them. The samples were then sent to the All-Union Institute of Plants and found to be a new variety existing nowhere else in the world.<br /> <br /> Seventy-five-year-old illiterate Barashev was another such natural scientist. For nearly twenty years he worked to produce a frost-resistant flax; the collective fields of his farm are harvesting it this year. Pechtilief, in the Leningrad district, stirred up such an interest among his neighbors in discovering why two fields on the same farm gave such different yields, that the whole village became one vast experimental farm, planting several thousand acres in various ways and comparing the results of different types of tillage. Pechtilief appeared before the Congress of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences to demand that scientists find a way to produce a new variety of wheat which should combine the high milling quality of one variety with the non-shattering characteristics of a second. Kolosev, another collective farmer, has challenged the scientists to work out types of seeds and tillage which will insure different ripening times for the various crops and thus get an even load of work through a maximum period for the harvesting machine.<br /> <br /> The assimilation of new scientific ideas proceeds far faster under the new collective farm system than under the old individual farming. Some entire districts have already become agricultural experiment stations. In Zhadryansk district, near Cheliabinsk, several thousand experiments were carried on in a single summer with oats, wheat, green peas, sunflower seeds and other crops. Special conferences were held attended by two hundred or more delegates from the various laboratory cottages. All these popular experiments are in constant touch with the scientific organizations of the Commissariat of Agriculture, and are protected against undue loss by a government policy of crop insurance.<br /> <br /> Several achievements of Soviet agricultural science are already of world significance. The method of “vernalization,” which changes winter wheat to spring wheat, late cotton to early cotton and biennial to annual plants, has made it possible to grow Algerian wheat beyond the Polar circle, at 67.4 degrees of latitude in Khibiny. The northernmost botanical gardens in the world are on the Kola Peninsula, where experiments with six hundred plants found twenty-five that could be adapted to the Arctic. The Soviet Union has developed its own rubber industry from the newly discovered “rubber” plants, tau-sagiz and kok-sagiz, found in the mountains of Turkestan and cultivated later as far north as the Ukraine. The brilliant work of Michurin in developing frost-resistant varieties of fruits made him famous not only among scientists of the world but among millions of Soviet farmers, tens of thousands of whom journey annually to his plant-breeding station to report on their use of his varieties.<br /> <br /> New machines have been developed, a machine for retching flax which is revolutionizing the flax industry, a “northern” combined-harvester suitable for grain of high moisture content. Even the ordinary combine first imported from America has undergone sixty improvements and is said by experts to be the best in the world. Research into soil microbiology has made, according to Vaviloff, “the role of micro-organisms in the soil a calculable factor.” The artificial fertilization of livestock, in which the spermatozoa are sent by mail or airplane from experimental stations to the laboratory cottages, is today applied to half the country’s livestock, insuring rapid improvement of stock from pure-bred males. Under the constant co-operation of collective farmers with scientific centers, the agricultural map of the country is rapidly changing. Sugar beets expand towards the Urals, cotton appears in South Ukraine, irrigation and tree-planting begins to reclaim the wastes beyond the Volga, and wheat marches steadily towards the Arctic. Thousands of acres are today successfully farmed in the Murmansk district on the Arctic Ocean, in place of a scant twelve acres a few years ago.<br /> <br /> The most spectacular example of the planned advance of man under the leadership of science is the conquest of the Polar regions, which has stirred the imagination and enthusiasm of the whole Soviet land. Scientists of the All-Union Arctic Institute first seriously broached the idea of a Great Northern Sea Route in 1930, though other scientists declared that traffic along the northern coast of Europe and Asia was “impracticable during the present glacial epoch.” The Soviet government backed its bolder scientists, established the Central Administration of the Northern Sea Route and gave it ships and funds. Step by step the rapid advance was made, first by dozens of expeditions which mapped coasts and charted waters, then by thirty-nine Polar scientific stations, equipped with radio and airplane service, then by trading fleets led by ice-breakers first from the west, then from the east, and then along the whole Polar coast from Atlantic to Pacific.<br /> <br /> The whole world remembers the epic of the Chelyushkin, its tragic wreck northwest of Bering Straits, the skillful landing on ice which was crashing around them, the two months of heroic organization of “normal life” in their floating home on the ice-floe, where Professor Schmidt, dressed in deer-skin coat and fur cap, delivered lectures on dialectic materialism or the Freudian theory, and found time to edit the galleys of the ''Unabridged Soviet Encyclopedia'' which he had brought from Moscow, and to write a preface to a book on higher mathematics. The history of Polar expeditions has known many examples of daring, but never such courageously casual organization of normal routine under abnormal conditions as this “Soviet Republic on the Ice” which got out its “wall newspaper” with cartoons and self-criticism, and comments on the Communist Party Congress then taking place in Moscow, received by the Chelyushkinites by radio.<br /> <br /> Today special ships are built in Soviet shipyards, embodying the experience of the Chelyushkin for the conquest of the northern seas. Steadily the designs of airplanes and clothing have been adapted to Arctic weather and the plane is now the “eyes of the north.” Four ordinary freighters in the summer of 1935 made the whole trip around the north of Europe and Asia, and scores will follow in 1936. The network of heroic scientists, wintering in thirty-nine stations, begins to be supplemented by miners, timber-workers, even farmers. Extensive prospecting has been done for minerals, especially coal and oil to serve the northern trade route. A new type of man is following the explorers and scientists—engineers, technicians, builders of the Arctic. And science pushes farther north in the expedition of the Sadko, to discover, at latitude 82° 40’—the farthest north ever reached in free sailing—the re-emergence of a warm section of the Gulf Stream which may make the northern sea route practicable for more months of the year. Of all the world’s eight ships which have reached during the past half century the latitudes around 80°, two were American, two Scandinavian and four were Soviet ships of the past few years.<br /> <br /> It is the support of the whole Soviet country which strengthens these men of the north in their conquests. The entire Soviet population regards these Arctic subduers as their representatives and champions. It shares their lives by radio hook-ups Moscow talks through the six months’ night with Dixon Island, which issues the Arctic Radio News. All Russia thrilled when a young ex-criminal, sent to the far north to “make himself over,” was reassured across three thousand frozen miles by the voice of his factory sweetheart urging him to make good. When a winter childbirth in a distant Arctic station developed complications, the neighbors got the Dixon Island surgeon on the radio and for more than three hours he directed over the air every detail while the whole of a much-worried Arctic listened in. When the child and mother were safe, congratulations poured in from thousands of miles of icebound waterfront.<br /> <br /> Even under capitalism science breaks the boundaries of nations, steadily to lift the power of man. Under socialism it becomes the consciously applied and swiftly expanding strength of the whole population, conquering for man his world.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XIII: THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF ART ===<br /> <br /> {{Quote|“Heroic people call into being heroic artists.”|Editorial in Soviet ''Literary Critic''}}<br /> <br /> If science is the instrument of man’s dominance over nature, art is the means of his self-expression. Tens of millions of people from earth’s most backward races have awakened in the Soviet Union from long slumber. They are seeking self expression. They themselves write, sing and paint; they push up from their ranks novelists, poets and dramatists. They love these poets and dramatists; they criticize them and make serious demands from them. Soviet art is not private property, it is the wealth of the nation, and the nation is jealous and proud of its wealth.<br /> <br /> When the first All-Union Congress of Soviet writers met in Moscow in August, 1934, thousands of letters poured in from all corners of the union, congratulating, greeting, giving practical suggestions and advice. Workers, collective farmers, students, Young Pioneers, scientists, engineers and artists thus expressed their interest in the Congress. In Moscow alone, more than two hundred factory conferences were held between readers and authors. Delegations representing millions of readers came to speak at the Congress. Each day after the meetings, authors found throngs of workers who had been unable to enter the crowded hall waiting outside to hail their favorite writers with applause. Throughout the country, millions of people concentrated their attention on questions of esthetics, the function of poetry, the form of literature best suiting the present age, subjects reported in detail in the press. Literary work in the land of the Soviets is becoming the affair of all the toilers.<br /> <br /> There are no bounds to the desire for every variety of culture. Soviet Russia in its first fifteen years published five billion books, as contrasted with two billion in the last thirty years of tsardom. The number keeps growing. At the end of the first Five-Year Plan, book production in the USSR was greater than that of England, Germany and France together. Especially amazing is the growth of literature among the national minorities whose self-expression was suppressed under tsardom. Every year since 1929 has seen the publication of more books in the Ukrainian language than were published in the whole 118 years before the Revolution. One publishing house alone, the Moscow International Book House, publishes books in eighty-five languages, some of which had formerly no alphabet—novels, textbooks, folk tales, technical works, translations of classics, short stories and dictionaries.<br /> <br /> The Soviet world feels itself the heir of the ages. Anniversaries of poets, scientists and artists of all countries are widely celebrated. The ancient Persian poet Firdousi, the English Shakespeare, the German Goethe, the famous French writers, are honored by mass meetings and columns in the press. The best works of Flaubert, Mérimée, Maupassant, Victor Hugo, Mark Twain and Jack London appear by the hundreds of thousands of copies and disappear almost as quickly from the shelves of bookstores which never expect to retain volumes more than a few weeks. Russian classics are even more popular. Lermontov, Nekrassov, Korolenko, Gogol, Turgenev, Chekhov appear in editions of seventy to a hundred thousand. The favorite poet Pushkin has been issued for several years in repeated editions of two hundred thousand copies, and his collected works in six volumes now face a subscription demand of three hundred thousand copies, exclusive of sales to the shops. Tolstoy is the most popular of all; eleven and a half million copies of his works have been sold since the Revolution.<br /> <br /> The Soviet reader demands not only the art of the past but the art of today. The most popular novels are those like Sholokhov’s ''Quiet Don'' and ''Soil Upturned'', which paint on a wide canvas the personalities, difficulties, struggles and victories of the present. “No artist of the past had such material at his disposal as is given by the earth-shaking events occurring in the USSR in the last eighteen years,” said the Soviet writer Panferov speaking at a Paris congress. “The working class built a dam on the surging Dnieper and made its unruly waters serve man. It transformed the misty Urals into an industrial center, mastered the wild and distant Kuzbas. . . . In remaking the country the working class at the same time remade itself. . . . The outcast dweller of the mountains, the illiterate, solitary Yakut, the northern Nentsi, the wild Bashkir, the Mordvin with his trachoma, the persecuted Kalmyk—tens of millions of peoples in scores of scattered nationalities went into the furnace of civil war and are energetically rebuilding the country, conquering the strongholds of culture, bringing new life to the whole world. . . . Socialist realism was the inevitable phenomenon of the proletarian era—active, cheerful, bold and daring, like the era of the proletarian revolution itself.”<br /> <br /> These tens of millions of people are not only the subjects for art, they are also the artists, readers and audience. They show a wide interest in all forms of artistic expression. Theaters are constantly crowded; art museums are packed with visitors; popular exhibitions sometimes have lines before the museum entrances waiting until there is room to go in. Nor are the factory workers and collective farmers at all backward in expressing their opinion on the products of brush and pen. Are they not all also writers, artists, musicians and actors, if and when the mood seizes them? They are not only consumers of art, millions of them are amateur producers of it.<br /> <br /> More than one hundred thousand “circles for self-expression” have grown up in the past two years in the USSR. The drama circles alone have 1,200,000 members, while the total number in the singing, music, dancing and graphic art circles exceeds five million. Writers, cartoonists and photographers for the local press or wall newspapers are probably as many more. A chief characteristic of the new type of person now emerging in the Soviet Union is his dynamic energy in self-expression, usually in some collective form.<br /> <br /> The first and most direct self-expression of large numbers takes the form of participation in the press. They write their opinions about corrupt officials or inefficient farm management for the hand-lettered sheet posted on a factory wall or a village tree-trunk; more important communications they send, often with several signatures, to the great metropolitan ''Pravda'' or ''Izvestia'' with their million and a half subscribers. Two million letters a year pour into the office of the ''Peasents’ Gazette'' in Moscow, reflecting the life and problems of the farm; only part of them can be published but all of them are answered, filed, and carefully studied as material for novels, for history, and for the lawmaking of the state.<br /> <br /> In a northern township, fifty miles from the railroad, where before the Revolution only six people subscribed to any newspaper at all, I visited a congress of some two hundred rural press correspondents preparing for a sowing campaign. These were only part of the energetic writers of this township. Its collective farms had 470 field brigades, every one of which during the sowing campaign posted up a wall newspaper. One picturesque seventeen-year-old boy in a vivid shirt of old rose sateen under a black jacket proudly reported the overthrow of the corrupt management of his collective farm by his articles and editorials. “We got out nine numbers,” he explained to the meeting, “then we stopped for want of paper. But we had already aroused the farmers, and the general meeting removed the president and two members of the management.”<br /> <br /> Nine single sheets of crude newsprint stuck in successive weeks on a tree, protected from the rain by an overhanging board, had deposed the management of a farm, shamed idlers, carried the sowing through to success, finished the hoeing and brought the brigade on record time to the haying season. The number of these collective farm wall-newspapers throughout the country is estimated by the ''Peasants’ Gazette'' as half a million, with at least ten village correspondents for each. There are more than three thousand factory newspapers; these range from weeklies of a few hundred copies to dailies with a circulation of twenty thousand and more in the larger plants. These newspapers are both an organizing center for factory and farm life and a training school for young writers. With such a writing and reading public, it is not surprising that there are more than eleven thousand printed newspapers in the Soviet Union with a circulation of more than thirty-six million copies—thirteen times as great as before the Revolution.<br /> <br /> An ever-growing stream of writers enters literature through the gateway of the factory and farm newspapers, which make modest but insistent demands on the humblest worker able to use a pen. Literary groups arise in centers like the Urals and the Donetz basin, or around some tractor station which serves the nearby villages. Many of the Donbas group of writers embarked on their literary careers when through with their day’s work of furnishing coal. Their magazine ''Literary Donbas'' has produced a noteworthy crop of stories and poems widely popular among miners.<br /> <br /> The literary society of collective farmers at the machine tractor station in Voronovo village had as members two stablemen, a blacksmith, a reaper, a tractor-driver, a bookkeeper, a warehouseman, four day-nursery attendants, three teachers, two presidents of collective farms, one village president, three editors of field newspapers and sixteen farm women. In one year the members published through their own printshop two books of verses, the play ''Miscalculated'', and 2 book of character sketches, ''Bolsheviks of the Politodels''. They announced for the following year a play, ''According to Merit'', a novel ''Quiet Subversion'', ''The Diary of a Tractor Driver'', and ''The History of the Machine Tractor Station''.<br /> <br /> It is difficult to conceive of the wide extent of amateur art activities of all kinds. Thousands of short-line popular stanzas known as ''chastyshki'' appear in the most distant parts of the Soviet Union celebrating the freedom of woman, the heroism of tractor-drivers, the growing prosperity of collective life. They vary in merit from mere doggerel giving rhymed technical guidance for reapers and cattle herders to verse of real beauty. The Donetz coal region alone reports more than eight hundred brass bands, three hundred orchestras, two hundred and fifty choruses, thousands of dramatic circles and even forty-two ballet schools. Some of the Soviet dancers who attracted attention at a recent London dance festival came from these “self-expression groups.” Amateur circles in drawing and painting also exist all over the country, and give local exhibitions which often unearth talent.<br /> <br /> A constant interchange of ideas and personnel goes on between professional and non-professional groups. The Soviet press takes active part in establishing these connections. The newspaper ''Culture and Sport'' publishes reproductions of the best art from famous galleries. It encourages would-be artists to correspond and send in their work to be judged by well-known artists; those who show talent are sent to art schools. The magazine ''Collective Farm Theater'' every month issues eight or ten special supplements containing plans of caravan theaters, rural pageants and festivals, choral programs, texts of one-act plays. It connects the self-expression groups with the nearest professional theater which can help them in their technique. There are today one hundred rural theaters of professional standing.<br /> <br /> One among many movements which swept the farms in the summer of 1935 was a campaign to discover musical talent among children. Hundreds of local musical festivals were held to many of which professors from the Moscow Conservatory came by airplane to act as judges. As a result, 715 of the most talented children are being sent to special musical schools; the twenty-five best ones were brought to a specially created branch in the Moscow Conservatory of Music.<br /> <br /> Not only in music but in poetry, drama and dancing, nation-wide “Olympiads were held in the summer of 1935. In Leningrad, for instance, juries of artists visited the factories to select eleven hundred contestants for the district Olympiad from fifteen thousand amateur musicians, singers, dancers, acrobats, orators, accordion players and even jugglers. On a collective farm in Smolensk, an illiterate peasant woman of sixty-four years wrote a play, dictating it to a younger woman; the young folks of the farm produced it at the Olympiad in Smolensk. Besides the Olympiads, many “culture expeditions” of both scholars and composers penetrate the wilderness where live Khirgiz, Buryat-Mongols, Tajiks, Uzbeks, to seek and preserve the music and poems which shed light on early culture. A symphony orchestra recently organized made its first tour, playing old Cossack melodies in modern style, across what not so long ago was the steppe of half-savage nomads. Collective farms sent delegations hundreds of miles to insist that the orchestra visit them.<br /> <br /> Out of this artistic ferment in the lives of millions, arises the vigor of Soviet art, which feels itself called upon to find adequate expression for the awakening genius of the people. Soviet writers today, if they would be popular, must not confine themselves to delving in the depths of a single human soul; they must depict the vast variety of changing social relations. They spend much time in deepening their contacts with intimate details of factory or of farm; Sholokhov, for instance, makes his permanent residence in the village whose changing life is the subject of a whole series of novels.<br /> <br /> Nor is the artist’s human material passive; the human material talks back. The Vakhtangov Theater invites the audience to discuss plays between the scenes and at the end with the actors; witty and fruitful discussions occur. Meetings between writers and readers have become a popular feature of factory life. Authors like Sholokhov and Tretyakov have long adopted the custom of reading drafts of semi-finished manuscripts to audiences of workers and farmers. Frequently a worker is able to give sound advice on the handling of an industrial character. “Our reader, while a friend, is also a very severe critic,” says the Soviet writer, Vsevolod-Ivanov. “Intercourse with him is the best and most precious school.”<br /> <br /> Soviet readers demand simplicity and vividness of writing. They are not interested in complex analysis of burdened souls. Their whole life faces outward. Their interest is in people who do things, who change the relations of society. In the first decade after the Revolution, a typical theme in literature and drama was the hero who died in the moment of victory while the collective achievement marched on. The hero might be a Chapayev shot down before his victorious comrades appear on the scene, or a village organizer killed by a kulak and drawn to his grave in triumphal procession by the newly-arrived tractor which his labor had secured. The victory was collective, attained through the sacrifice of the heroic individual. Thus was the natural expression of the period of revolution and civil war.<br /> <br /> New themes begin to dominate Soviet literature and drama of recent years. The hero no longer dies; he struggles, achieves, learns, and is himself made over, not by introspection but by the clash of action. He is the optimist—builder type creating a glorious and happy future. What the people demand of writers, they demand also of the graphic arts: an art that is inspired by and in torn inspires the great moods of the day. The workers of Stalingrad sent a famous open letter to the artists: “Don’t give us colored photographs, we are tired of them. We expect from you an art that is stirring and inspiring.”<br /> <br /> If the responsive demand of a great new public is a constant stimulus to Soviet artists, a second stimulus is found in co-operation with members of their craft. Writers, actors, painters—all have their organizations. They maintain club houses for social contacts, discussions and exhibitions; they have country retreats to which members withdraw for rest and creative work. They assist beginners with loans and subsidies; they foster high standards; they assist members in the sale of their work. The writers’ organization issues literary journals, organizes courses, consultations and criticisms for new writers and runs a literary university for workers. The actors’ club holds special midnight performances where its members meet famous visiting artists and see the season’s best in music, dance and drama.<br /> <br /> Four thousand artists belong to a co—operative which not only handles exhibitions all over the country, but also owns numerous factories producing artists’ supplies, workshops for stone-cutting, metal-casting and frame-making and studios for lithography and engraving. This co-operative has a yearly turnover of forty-two million rubles. It accepts on behalf of its members orders from city soviets, large industries, and workers’ clubs which wish decorations and paintings; some of these orders run over the million-ruble mark. When the ten-year reconstruction plan of Moscow creates a demand for architecture, sculpture, landscaping and monumental art, the artists’ organizations arrange discussions and excursions of sculptors and architects and initiate experimental fresco work on a large scale. Instead of being an isolated craftsman, the Soviet artist is part of a rich and influential organization which connects him with the government planning departments and the organized life of the country.<br /> <br /> From this close association of artists with their fellow craftsmen and with their public has arisen a method of collective production which is becoming increasingly popular; it extends to the collective writing of books by a score of writers and even by whole factories. Thirty professional writers combined to produce ''Belomor'', the famous tale of the building of the Baltic-White Sea Canal. “We tried to tell how a canal was built in a far, cold and rocky place and how the chekists made new men out of prisoners,” said Vsevolod-Ivanov. “We were authors entirely different in taste and in age, but we all tried to make that book united, wide-horizoned and mighty. That book is dear to me even today. In writing it, I learned that we writers are really not such individualists as we like to call ourselves.” The Events of the High Mountain, which told the history of an iron mine in the Urals, was written by more than one hundred miners. The miners consulted, wrote and improved it in common, as together they created and improved their mine. The book is a great political and artistic document, energetic, fresh and vital.<br /> <br /> ''The History of the Civil War'', the ''History of Factories'' and the now projected ''History of the Russian Village'' contain whole series of books, each of which compiles the experiences of hundreds or even thousands of people. The characters are not described by others; they describe themselves, each seeking in consultation with the others a significant artistic form. The meeting of two hundred village correspondents which I attended, decided to issue a book giving artistic form to the history of the township. They selected the best writers from each of twenty-five villages to work with two professional authors who had come from Moscow. Each local writer chose with the help of his village some vivid and significant episode or character whose story illumined the changes made by the Revolution. One contrasted the intimate family relations in his father’s household with those in his own Soviet home. Another described the people who had successively looked out of the windows of a certain ancient building—once a school for the daughters of the nobility and now the central club of the collective farm. The result was a book which was lacking in style and finish but vivid and unforgettable with actual life. It was not yet art, but it made part of the rich soil out of which great art may well grow in the next few decades.<br /> <br /> Great art movements in the past have followed periods of economic expansion which gave stimulus to new creative life. “We are already in the great epoch; artistic values of permanent worth are already appearing but not yet the great masterpieces. Where else in the world are there even high artistic values?” said a Soviet writer to me. In literature Ostrovski’s ''How Steel is Welded'', Sholokhov’s ''Quiet Don''; in motion pictures, ''Potemkin'', ''Chapayev'', the ''Youth of Maxim'', are among the many lasting contributions which the Soviets have already made to art. The Moscow subway is one of the first significant expressions of the epoch in architecture. As forums and temples expressed the spirit of ancient Rome, cathedrals and castles the Middle Ages, and skyscrapers the power of centralized finance, so this beautiful subway expresses the rhythm of millions of workers in efficient motion. The Lenin library in Moscow and the House of State Industry in Kharkov, and some of the new factories, children’s centers, and sanitoriums, also foreshadow the new architecture.<br /> <br /> Are Soviet artists “in uniform?” Only in so far as they lack intelligence to respond to their social environment and the will to fight their way through to expression. Artists whose souls were formed by an old world felt the coming of the new as a thwarting of impulses. They had to find their way about among new publishers and new officials, who were trying more or less intelligently to protect the new order. Often groups of rising artists hogged the Revolution and organized to lord it over their fellows. Thus the RAPP (Association of Revolutionary Writers) succeeded in imposing its narrow standards for a considerable period, till other authors learned the new environment and smashed the RAPP. The social environment also changes; when that excellent play, ''Days of the Turbines'', featured a tsarist officer as hero before post-war audiences where budding capitalists cheered him, Young Communist organizations fresh from fighting those officers protested wrathfully and had the play suppressed. When Nepmen followed the civil war into the past, the play revived to more tolerant audiences.<br /> <br /> All authors everywhere adjust themselves to editors, publishers and readers; these are necessary media no less than words or paint. Not even in America could “proletarian authors” come into being, until there were new readers who pushed them up. Soviet society also presses in various ways on artists. We authors deal with publishers who are worried by their paper quota; their criterion is “importance” rather than profit, since any half-good book is sure to sell. They rely in part on “political editors,” officials of the Commissariat of Education, whose function is to give advice on the demands of the educational field and the political significance of the work. My own conversations with these political editors—they dislike the name censors—are singularly like those with publishers’ readers in America. They make suggestions, some extremely valuable, some moderately useful and some of which I protest; they themselves yield to reason and prefer authors who know what they do. Only crude authors take them as enemies; through mutual discussion the product is improved. If differences lie too deep, one seeks another publisher; in the Soviet Union there is also the wider appeal. No one autocrat censors everything. Political editors more and more become highly educated specialists. Important plays are usually previewed by selected audiences of leading critics and persons familiar with their theme, both children and educators previewing a drama or motion picture destined for children. Only on military matters and material likely to injure the Soviets’ international relations is the censor absolute;&lt;ref&gt;The most striking recent example was the suppression of information during the difficult year of 1932, a suppression which turned several American journalists permanently against the Soviets. The Soviets believed with some reason that derailed knowledge of their difficulties would provoke the threatened Japanese invasion.&lt;/ref&gt; and these matters are hardly the realm of art.<br /> <br /> If art survived the censoring by the whims of princelings in the feudal ages, and by the profit-motives of American publishers, why should it not survive the decisions of educational authorities and experienced critics who estimate its importance for a socialist society? To the artist now growing up in a Soviet environment, art is the natural expression of the collective life of millions given significant form by his own special talent or genius. Such an artist feels no repression in this new environment; he feels its great creative urge. Millions of rural journalists, thousands of dramatic clubs, tens of thousands of farm and factory orchestras furnish an alert and appreciative public. The leisure made possible by the social ownership of great modern machines is already widely used in the Soviet Union for pursuits of science and art. The barriers thus begin to wear thin between manual and mental labor; the same person does both. Genius, wherever it arises, finds ready access to widening expression. From such a soil, watered by the artistic strivings of millions, great art must grow. More than great art—a people to whom art becomes man’s natural self-expression, which no longer flames and dies.<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XIV: REMAKING HUMAN BEINGS ===<br /> <br /> When the All-Union Song and Dance Olympiad was held in the summer of 1935 in Moscow, the first prize for dance groups was won by a troupe who would be classed in the capitalist world as convicts. They were sentenced criminals who were still living in Labor Commune Number Two, to which they had been sent for reformation. Their performance of an Ukrainian folk-dance “The Snowstorm” took first place against fifty thousand entrants. To anyone unfamiliar with the Soviet technique for handling criminals, the dancing of the group was less amazing than their free association with other groups of artists in all the local and provincial dance festivals, which brought them at last to Moscow.<br /> <br /> The remaking of criminals is only one specialized form of the process of remaking human beings which goes on consciously today in the Soviet Union. Unlike those who justify ancient abuses with the formula, “You can’t change human nature,” the Marxist knows that human nature is constantly changing. The serf of the Middle Ages was a different human being from the highly skilled industrial worker of today, not only in methods of work but in mental outlook, nervous reactions, and even physical motions. Today a remaking of people in greater or less degree takes place across the entire Soviet Union. Illiterate, slow-moving peasants become attuned to rapid work in a collective labor process. Scientists, artists, engineers, doctors, once accustomed to depend upon capitalists for their living, adjust themselves to the new controls of a socialist state as employer. Some welcome the change, others resent it, but in all men the habits derived from the past are at war with the demands imposed by the present, and this struggle changes both the human beings and their environment.<br /> <br /> To some the process of change is only half conscious, and therefore bewildering and painful. To the happiest it is a consciously welcomed process. For men in all ages have desired to change, to become in some direction “better.” Moral teachers have urged them to effect this by an emotional decision to be good, honest, industrious. But this is a struggle in the dark with forces which the human being does not understand. His emotional conversion lasts as long as he can focus will and attention. But if the old environment continues, the old habits reassert themselves.<br /> <br /> To a limited extent a human being may change himself under any social system, not by efforts of will but by calmly analyzing himself and his environment and placing himself under the impact of other forces which will change him. So much free will man has. But these individual efforts are limited by the social possibilities. Can a prostitute change her environment so that street-walking will become unnecessary? Only if an honest job is somewhere accessible. Can gangsters reform? Only if honesty is really the best policy; for him who would prosper under capitalism there is a time to be honest and a time to steal, and the criminal is the unlucky or stupid person who stole at the wrong time and in the unaccepted manner. Only a social system which insures to ordinary honest labor greater rewards than can be obtained by even the luckiest dishonesty will produce instinctively honest men.<br /> <br /> A remarkable tale of the change in social standards is written by a newspaper correspondent from the Ural gold fields. Formerly, according to the writer, everybody admired clever miners who were able to steal nuggets which legally belonged to the private owners of the fields. This attitude persisted long after the mines were owned by the government. But recently at a party given to celebrate a betrothal, the young man in the heat of dancing pulled out his handkerchief and with it a gold nugget which fell to the floor. There was a sudden silence and the party broke up without comment, even the girl turning away from the man thus revealed. “Everyone knew him for an enemy,” wrote the correspondent.<br /> <br /> The sharpest test of conscious remaking of human character is found in the Soviet policy for handling law-breakers. The Soviet criminologist holds neither of the theories on which the prevalent systems of prison régime in capitalist countries are based. He does not believe in the existence of “born criminals” whose will must be broken by brutal suppression nor does he rely on emotional appeals to the “better nature” of the criminal, for he knows that this better nature exists as yet only in rudimentary form. “We don’t assume that a man of anti-social habits will be at once reclaimed by gifts of chocolate, nice bathrooms, and soft words,” a leading Soviet penologist told me. “Men are made over by a new social environment and especially by their work done collectively.”<br /> <br /> Soviet law aims to make over social misfits while protecting society from their attacks. Punishment as vengeance has no place in such an aim: revenge merely incites revenge in return. To make prisoners sit in solitude and think of their sins produces a fixation on crime. To “break a man’s will” or lessen his human dignity in any way injures him material for a creative socialist society. Soviet justice therefore aims to give the criminal a new environment in which he will begin to act in a normal way as a responsible Soviet citizen. The less confinement the better; the less he feels himself in prison the better. Soviet justice began to fight crime under the harsh conditions of civil war, replying with ruthless measures to counter-revolutionary plots. “We have a double approach” said Attorney-General Vishinsky in an interview. “Active, confirmed enemies of our Soviet power who stick at nothing to injure us must be ruthlessly crushed. But even among these alien elements, among nobles, landlords, tsarist officers, capitalists, whom we had robbed of their private property, we had to be able even there to find those individuals who could be made over into useful workers. We cannot begin with clean hands and fresh bricks to build socialism; we must use even old bricks for the new building. But if we had tried to apply the idea of absolute humanitarianism to bitter enemies we wouldn’t be here today.”<br /> <br /> Many social offenses are handled without bringing them into ordinary courts at all. A whole series of “comradely courts,” in factories, schools and apartment houses, try informally people who disturb their neighbors. These courts have the right to fix small fines for the benefit of the local club or library; they refer cases which they cannot handle to the public courts. There are even “children’s courts” in which children judge each other in the presence of interested adults. One such children’s court in an apartment house tried a boy for cruelty in killing a cat, and came finally to the conclusion that the real culprit was the superintendent of the apartment house who persistently failed to provide a place to play. The superintendent, who was present, accepted the decision, and organized with the children a committee to make good the shortcoming.<br /> <br /> “Not only in the court but out of the court my job is social protection,” a rural judge told me. “I must prevent court cases when I can.” He told how he had prevented crime at a recent saints’ festival. “Men always drink hard on such occasions; they fight and knife each other. So I called together the presidents of collective farms an the Party members, and we went through the crowd before drinking began and took away the knives and canes. They got drunk later, but nobody was badly hurt.”<br /> <br /> I sat in the court session which this judge held under the village trees and heard a dozen cases—stealing hay, bootlegging and the like—disposed of in an afternoon. The commonest sentence was “compulsory labor” which did not remove the offender from his home but required him to do without pay some socially useful work, such as road-building, school-construction or even office work in the village soviet. Only one serious case appeared: more than half the calves in a collective dairy had died under circumstances which seemed to implicate the dairy manager of something worse than the criminal negligence charge which had been brought. The judge found that he was “guilty of negligence at least,” but held the case over for further investigation to see whether he was guilty of “something more,” i.e., intentional conspiracy to smash the farm. In that case he would be “sent away” from the village to a labor camp for a period of perhaps three years.<br /> <br /> The labor camp is the prevalent method for handling serious offenders of all kinds, whether criminal or political. Most of the old prisons have been abolished; I have found them in rural districts converted into schools. The labor camps have won high reputation throughout the Soviet Union as places where tens of thousands of men have been reclaimed. They have, however, been the center of some of the most spectacular attacks on the Soviet Union in recent years. Allegations of brutal treatment and even of torture have found their way widely into the foreign press. While it is clearly impossible to check every one of these accusations, they are contradicted by every competent observer who has ever seen the camps. Dr. Mary Stevens Callcott, the American penologist who has studied prisons all over the world and who has had the unique experience of visiting the larger part of the Soviet camps, including those for the worst—and for political—offenders, has commented both in her book ''Soviet justice'' and in conversations with me personally, on the “amazingly normal” life that differentiates these camps from prisons in any other part of the world.<br /> <br /> She notes the freedom of movement over large areas of territory, the very small amount of guarding, the work done under normal conditions—seven hours for ordinary labor to ten for men whose tasks, such as driving a truck, permitted frequent rests during work. She could find no speed-up; laws of labor protection operated as in factories. Wages were the same as those outside, with deductions for living expenses; all above this could be sent by the prisoner to his family, saved or spent as he chose. “No uniforms with their psychological implications, no physical abuse; isolation only in extreme instances. Privileges and special rewards replace the system of special penalties.” Among these special rewards are the two weeks’ vacation in which the prisoner may leave the camp, and the opportunities given for his family not only to visit him but even to live with him for extended periods. Normal human association goes on; men and women meet and may even marry while serving sentence, in which case they are given separate quarters.<br /> <br /> What most impressed Dr. Callcott, however, was the type of men in charge of these camps, and the relation they had to the prisoners. She tells of going through the Moscow-Volga Canal camp with its director. Prisoners hailed him with obvious pleasure and informality. A girl rushed up to detain him by seizing the belt of his uniform lest he get away before she could tell him something. A teacher whose term was about to expire expressed a wish to stay on and work under him. There were only five officials in the central administration office of this camp of many thousand prisoners; all the work, including most of the guarding, was done by the convicted men themselves. “In fact,” said Dr. Callcott, “I could never see what kept men in this camp unless they wanted to stay there. No convicts I have known would have any difficulty if they wanted to break away.” Both prisoners and officials, of whom Dr. Callcott asked this question—she talked with prisoners freely without the presence of officials—replied they didn’t run away because if they did, “nobody in my working gang would speak to me when I came back. They would say I disgraced them.” There are, however, a certain number of incorrigibles who run away repeatedly, and these are given somewhat closer guarding for a time. Political prisoners, she noted, were treated like everyone else, except that those who had been persistent and dangerous in their attacks on the government were sent further away from the possibility of connection with their past associates. In all her conversations with these “politicals,” she was unable to find one who had been sentenced merely for expressing anti-Soviet views. All were charged with definite action against the government.<br /> <br /> “I did everything I could to destroy this government,” one such man frankly told her, “sabotage of the most serious kind. But the way they have treated me here has convinced me that they are right.”<br /> <br /> Another prisoner, who had been in Sing Sing, San Quentin, as well as in jails of England, Spain and Germany, before he was picked up by the Soviets for grand larceny, had been reclaimed by the Baltic-White Sea Canal. He had done a bit of engineering in his youth, and was promptly given a chance to work at this specialty. He won a medal, pursued his studies further, and was doing brilliant work on the Moscow-Volga Canal when Dr. Callcott met him. To her query about his reformation he replied:<br /> <br /> “In the other countries they treated me like a prisoner, clapped me in jail and taught me my place. Here they clapped me on the back and said ‘What can we do to make you into a useful citizen?’” Dr. Callcott conversed with many men now high in Soviet industry who had previously been reclaimed by the labor camps. Nothing in their attitude or that of those about them showed any stigma remaining from their prison life. “Of course, when it’s over, it’s forgotten,” one of them said to her. “That,” says Dr. Callcott, “is real restoration.”<br /> <br /> Information from many other sources and from my own observation corroborates Dr. Callcott. In August 1935 I visited the town of Bear Mountain, center of the administration of the Baltic-White Sea Canal, which is widely known in the USSR not only as a great construction job but as the place where tens of thousands of men won new lives for old. It is still the distributing center for the labor camps of this district.<br /> <br /> The chauffeur who drove me over twenty miles of wilderness without a guard in sight was one of the prisoners. He talked quite freely and said that he didn’t like the north but at least he had a chance to study a trade or become an engineer. A dozen types of industry had been established to utilize and train all kinds of workers. They took pride in their modern equipment and the high quality of goods produced. In the holiday celebration going on in the public square during my visit, one could not always tell who were prisoners, who were free workers and who were “guards.” The atmosphere was that of any new construction job in the country. Such, indeed, was the intention—to establish the atmosphere of normal constructive life, with certain old associations shut out.<br /> <br /> What most interested me was the splendid theater, whose director boasted of his production of the opera ''Eugene Onegin'', the ''Red Poppy'' ballet, and many of the latest Moscow plays. We learned later that he was a well-known Moscow producer, sent north for a serious crime. The camp authorities at once decided to build a theater, in order to utilize his abilities to the full. The theater cast itself consisted of lawbreakers, government officials, free workers and the families of all of them, mixing in the democratic intimacy of a dramatic performance. One wonders which of all his achievements this director will most boast of in old age, his work in Moscow or the northern theater created in Bear Mountain.<br /> <br /> Many former prisoners from the Baltic-White Sea Canal, after receiving freedom together with special prizes and high honors for their good work, went of free choice to help build the Moscow-Volga Canal, another convict-labor job. Here they were especially valued because through their own experience they understood the process through which new prisoners had to go and were especially skilled in helping them make themselves over. As in other Soviet construction camps, the workers on this canal had their art studio under professional direction, their musical circle and literary magazine, and their bureau of inventions through which four thousand proposals to improve the work of the canal have been offered by the prisoners themselves. Several prisoners, given their freedom because of inventions, refused to leave until the canal should be finished.<br /> <br /> So well known and effective is the Soviet method of remaking human beings that criminals occasionally now apply to be admitted. I met one such man in Gulin village. Notorious locally as thief and drunkard, he had a dozen convictions to his discredit, till at last he went to the authorities saying: “I’m a man destroyed, but I want to be made over.” They sent him to a labor camp whence he returned a qualified worker. Bolshevo Commune, the most famous “cure” for criminals, can be entered only by application approved by the general meeting of members. Its waiting list is so long that it accepts only the most hardened cases, priding itself on being able to make over persons who cannot become cured in any other institution. Its strength lies in its large membership of intelligent former criminals, who apply to new entrants their intimate knowledge of the criminal mind.<br /> <br /> Crime today is rapidly diminishing in the Soviet Union. From 1929 to 1934 sentences for murder decreased by one-half while sex crimes fell off to one-fourth. The cause is found in the growing strength of the Soviet environment to remake human beings; the penal policy is only a supplementary force. A striking example of the play of both causes may be found in the figures of prostitution. Pre-war Moscow had 25,000 to 30,000 prostitutes; these sank by 1928 to about 3,000,&lt;ref&gt;Material from Dr. V. Bronner, head of Institute of Venereal Diseases, Commissariat of Health.&lt;/ref&gt; diminution clearly due to economic causes. In 1931, after the Five-Year Plan -had abolished unemployment, the number sank still further to about eight hundred. To reclaim the more habituated, prophylactoria were established. These rose to the number of thirty-four in the whole USSR in 1934, and then swiftly declined to nineteen as their work was done. They are still declining for want of inmates; only one of the original five is left in Moscow. No woman was ever compelled to go to a prophylactorium; the chief punishment for breaking rules was to be put out. Nine-tenths of those who entered left cured both of physical disease and of old habits and were accepted without comment into the normal working life of the city.<br /> <br /> An eventual disappearance of crime is expected by Soviet authorities as the mental habits produced by a socialist system become established in Soviet life. For crime, in the Marxian view, arises from the conflicts of a class-exploiting society and will follow classes and exploitation into oblivion. In the first years of the new system, the sharp conflict with classes from whom it took privileges led to a decided increase both in crimes and in the repressive measures used by the state. Kulaks committed arson, cattle-killing, murder, and were exiled in large numbers; anti-Soviet engineers and officials sabotaged and were sent to labor camps. Today the kulaks have been amnestied, not only because many of them have recovered their civil status by honest labor, but also because the collective farms in the villages are strong enough to withstand their attack and absorb them. The labor camps which supplanted prisons are themselves diminishing, partly because they have “cured” their inmates, and still more because the normal free life of Soviet society is becoming strong and prosperous enough to have a direct regenerative influence on those social misfits that remain.<br /> <br /> In unforgettably lyric language the Soviet writer Avdeyenko, who a few years ago was by his own confession 2 “two-legged beast of prey,” told the Congress of Soviets, to which in 1934 he was a delegate, the story of the degrading of a youth into a criminal and the subsequent remaking of the criminal into an honorable and famous man. “In 1926,” he said, “under one of the cars of the Moscow-Tashkent express, lay two little passengers, myself and my comrade, voyagers making our way closer to the sun, searching for good people who would not be offended when we robbed them.” He tells how the conductor threw them out on the damp earth, how they wandered in rain and sleet, seeking warmth and light, thrown out everywhere till exhaustion turned to anger, anger to despair, despair to a great hatred for mankind. In this hatred they fired a haystack set against a house. “A warm, calm feeling filled my heart. Tears of joy and vengeance came into our eyes. We embraced, laughing and crying, and spent the rest of the night in a public toilet, pressing against the warm wall to warm first our backs and then our chests till we fell asleep standing.<br /> <br /> “I was destined to live many years—one—fifth of my life—with the feelings of hatred, malice, revenge that were born in me at that station. After that I robbed and threatened without remorse.” He tells how he stole fur coats and jars of butter, robbed drunkards in dark alleys, hooked vagrants off freight cars to steal their clothing, till he gradually became “a human beast, that most fearful two-legged blood-thirsty species without love or goodness or feeling or pity. Today it is frightful for me even to remember such a person.<br /> <br /> “Today in this historic hall, I stand on the tribune, a member of government. I am a citizen with full rights. I am strong. I cherish the best human feelings: love, devotion, honesty, self-sacrifice, heroism. I write books. I dream of creating an unforgettable production. I love a girl unselfishly. I am continuing my race—it will be a happy one.<br /> <br /> “I am happy, full of the joy of life, unshakably exuberant. I go to sleep with regret, I awake with joy. I shall live a hundred years. I can fly to the moon, go to the Arctic, make a new discovery, for my creative energy is not trod on by anyone.<br /> <br /> “Today I recall my past for the last time. In filling out my application blank, under ‘places of work,’ I wrote: “Till 1931 socially harmful activity. I begin the story of life from 1931’ And they answered: ‘So be it.’ So you see I am four years old, the youngest here.”<br /> <br /> Avdeyenko gives the stories of other former law-breakers who have been made over. He traces the source of their anti-social past to the heritage of capitalist exploitation; he finds the force that redeemed them in the new socialist industries and the life that arises around them. “All of you know the institutions where such people are re-educated. But our whole Soviet system is one big workshop for re-educating men. I know people of two generations whose lives were no better than mine. We are engineers, writers, aviators, journalists, machinists, administrators of cities, scientists, Arctic explorers. The industries of our country remade us, and the industries were established by the Stalinist policy of industrializing the country. Comrade Molotov spoke of the newly created factories, cities and whole industrial regions, but he did not refer to the giving of life, human life, to the two-legged beasts of prey I have described.”<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XV: YOUTH SET FREE ===<br /> <br /> {{Quote|“The generation which is now fifteen years old will see Communism and will itself build it.”|Lenin}}<br /> <br /> “Life is good and to live is good—in such a land, in such an epoch! . . . We, young owners of our country, called upon to conquer space and time. . . .”<br /> <br /> In June of 1935 these words of Anna Mlynek, young valedictorian of the first Moscow class to complete the new ten-year school, awakened in thousands of hearts the world over a realization of what youth’s outlook might be in a socialist land. To youth in capitalist countries the outlook is gloomy. They look outward and see unemployment; they look inward and find confusion. They are developing, rational beings propelled into a world whose irrationality even their parents and teachers cannot explain to them. Those who love them best offer only a host of illusions; they are taught to look at the past and go backing into the future. So there goes on within them what the well-known psychiatrist, Dr. Frankwood Williams, calls a “mighty struggle in the dark . . . with all the emotional complexities and uncertainties that home, school, community have woven into their being.”<br /> <br /> Soviet youth have not escaped struggle. Their birth was in the flames of civil war. Their childhood endured the famine years. Their adolescence was strained by great tasks of constructing a country. Many young lives were cut short or crippled in heart or lung or nerve in those years of battle and building. Even today they see across the future the dark threat of world war which may be launched at any time by the capitalist chaos beyond their borders, and in which they know that many of them must perish.<br /> <br /> What then is the source of the explosive joy which becomes increasingly plain in the words, the sports, the celebrations of Soviet youth? It lies in those words “young owners.” Men in the past have been subjects of kings or even proud citizens of democracies. Never till socialism dared they call themselves owners of the land in which they live. Ownership brings freedom in planning, clearness of goal, harmony of intellect and will in expanding life. Joint ownership brings comradeship reinforcing freedom, and a new, widened will to conquer space and time.<br /> <br /> A letter sent by thirty-one young men and girls from a collective farm to Moscow to greet the assembling of congress in early 1935 expresses it: “We go a road that is rich with life. We know our goal. What we are doing we do with clear consciousness. We know that what we do is important, necessary, great and glorious. We know the aim of our collective farm tasks. We know what will be tomorrow for we ourselves create it. Today is good, tomorrow will be better, the day after tomorrow immeasurably better. We often think of the glorious future of our farm, our township, our dear district, all our beloved land. We think of the bright future of all mankind which will be freed by the world-wide proletarian revolution.”<br /> <br /> Not on any mystic faith do these thirty-one young people base their hope for the future, but on homely details of daily fact that seem at first sight quite inadequate to explain their joy. They relate the changing of poor soil to good soil. “Our village never knew wheat till the Bolsheviks pushed it to the north!” They tell the expansion of music, drama, sport and science built on the firm economic foundation of their increasing harvest. They see the clear connection between their farm’s success and the success of their country, and base on this their expectation of international revolution. Their life is an integrated whole from the farm to the world. They have grown up and been formed by a new social order.<br /> <br /> What are the qualities demanded of joint owners, which the Soviet schools seek consciously to develop? Neither the combativeness nor the submission which are the contradictory demands of capitalism, but a high degree of initiative and scientific interest, a high development of individual variety combined with highly developed social instincts. The aim of the Soviet school is not to create standardized people, suited to the demands of some undefined future boss, but to help youth discover and develop its own desires and capacities. In a hundred ways the schools are constantly asking: What do you most like to do? In a hundred ways they help this developing choice relate itself to the equally developing choice of others.<br /> <br /> An American teacher who has taught for years in Soviet schools tells me that the approach to the child is far more individual than in America. Persistent efforts are made to find the child’s particular aptitudes and interests. In the elementary grades there are two types of teachers:—group teachers remain with one group of children for several years, visiting their homes, becoming thoroughly acquainted with them and relating them to the special teachers who develop special aptitudes. By the seventh grade, which is roughly equivalent to second year of high school in America, psychological tests help the child decide what he can do best; they tell him his capacities but impose no compulsion on his choice.<br /> <br /> Summer camps and excursions are also planned to help children discover their special interests and widen the field of their choice. The best camps, such as the famous Artek in the Crimea, maintain amateur work of a high order in geology, botany, care of animals, study of sea-life and construction of airplane and automobile models. Children spending their summer in such camps discover and develop hobbies which may, or may not, develop into their life’s work. Newspaper discussions also draw out the self-expression of children; a special newspaper, the Pioneer Pravda, is written almost entirely by children.<br /> <br /> Last summer I met twenty young “Arctic explorers” under sixteen years of age on the Murmansk train bound for Polar regions. Their energetic study of maps, Arctic cruises, Northern peoples had been sufficient to win from their teachers a recommendation which included them in an organized cruise of the north. They would meet adult Arctic explorers who would treat them smilingly but courteously as possible future colleagues. Ten of the best pupils in botany were similarly allowed to make an expedition at government expense to the Altai mountains, where they hiked two thousand kilometers and found twenty-seven new varieties of black currants and a type of onion which resists 45° of frost. Two of these young explorers went as delegates to deliver the plants to the aged plant-creator Michurin: When he asked: “Weren’t you afraid to cross wild rivers and sleep at night in the woods?” they answered: “Sometimes we were afraid. We feared that our expedition would fail to find any new plants and we would disgrace ourselves as Michurin’s grandchildren.”<br /> <br /> Such trips are the reward of marked aptitude, but all children take some part in the “grown—up” activities of the country. In Molvitino township the farm children told me proudly of scores of tons of bird droppings and wood ashes collected to fertilize the exhausted fields. In the 1934 “war with drought,” when a chief harvest problem in the south was the low, dry stand of easily broken grain, children’s groups of gleaners followed the reapers and competed to save great piles of grain heads. Every Soviet child knows the heroism of Mitia who caught three harvest thieves red-handed. In Artek Camp I met a child who had prevented a train wreck by reporting a loose rail and another who saved an aviator by lighting a bonfire at night to guide the errant plane: these children won wide renown among other children and were rewarded by a summer at Artek. Children of railway workers in Tiflis built and operate a half-mile railroad in the Park of Culture and Rest; it is a serious enterprise which carries passengers, takes in a thousand rubles each holiday and spends the money in proper Soviet style to “expand the road.”<br /> <br /> These out-of-school activities of children became at one time so absorbing that they threatened health and education. Young Pioneers “saved the harvest,” reclaimed drunken parents, denounced village grafters and debated whether their first duty was to the school or to “help the country.” Today children are reminded that “learn, learn, learn” is Lenin’s statement of the three most necessary things for young humans to do. School dominates and organizes all other child activities. But it never excludes them. In all their learning many forms of activity have part.<br /> <br /> The early discipline of children is largely through mass pressure, highly effectively organized by the children themselves. Children often come to a teacher with suggestions about the best way to handle difficult cases. They inform the teacher of home conditions which have made certain children backward in study or in comradeliness. They organize committees to go with the teacher to the homes. Children will themselves expose violations of child labor laws, or write to the papers about parents who beat other children. The highest honor given to able children is to be asked to help more backward ones with their studies in a spirit not of condescension but of good team-work, like that of a basket-ball player who helps his team excel. The strongest penalty in any school is given when children ask to have a child excluded on the round that his conduct disturbs their work.<br /> <br /> All these activities of children directly reflect and prepare for their coming adult life. The encouragement of individual variety harmonized by regard for the rights of others expands into the more definite yet wider interests of youth. By the end of the ten-year school, which is roughly equivalent to a combination of the American elementary grades and high school, the boy or girl usually has some interest which he wants to test in serious work. Some young folks go to work even earlier, spending part of the years between fourteen and eighteen in a factory trade school with part-time work. Some go direct from the secondary school to the university. But the commonly encouraged procedure is to finish ten years of school and then go to work in the late teens for a period of self-testing before deciding on specialization.<br /> <br /> These are not odd jobs to earn one’s way through college, such as are known in American life. They are part of a youth’s conscious self-education in the actual world of production. They are related to his already appearing interests, which they test and develop. I know a boy of nineteen who chose to work on a farm in the summer. Since he already knew that he wanted to become an entomologist, the farm was expected to give him scientific work. He sorted apples for diseases, staked cabbages to count the bugs in sample areas, and otherwise used his special interest for farm production, improving his scientific technique while he worked. If an emergency had occurred, he would have helped in other ways, but emergencies which waste the time of young people in blind alley tasks are a blot on the reputation of any Soviet industry. When four girls of my acquaintance went to work in a chemical laboratory in Siberia and found it so disorganized that there was nothing really useful to do, they protested to the Party against this waste of their time, and the organization which was employing and paying them was censured and ordered to release them for other work. The time of youth is a precious treasure of the community. The most accepted reason which any youth can give for leaving a job is that it offers nothing more for him to learn.<br /> <br /> At no time in life is there any gap between work and schooling. Education is not a commodity purchased by money and consumed in childhood or in four charmed years of isolated university life. It is a personal and public necessity, without limits, freely available from childhood to old age. Courses of general culture are not crammed into a special period; they are taken after work in any quantity desired. They are paid for by state or trade union; any group of workers anywhere may decide to study chemistry, music or parachute-jumping and call on their trade union to pay the teachers. When young people feel that they have chosen a permanent specialty, for which they need some years of concentrated study, they apply to enter a university or a research institute. For these institutions their ability and seriousness is tested by severe entrance examinations. If they pass, study becomes their regular work, paid for as such by the state. It is fully as strenuous as the factory; they spend six or seven hours a day in class rooms and laboratories in courses chosen on a broad basis, but all consciously directed towards preparation for their profession.<br /> <br /> I visited the dormitory attached to three institutions of higher education in mining, metallurgy and non-ferrous metals. A pretty girl was specializing in blast furnaces, a former book-binder was studying mining engineering, a factory-worker was becoming a geologist for Central Asia, a broad-faced yellow Kazak was preparing to work in copper in the newly opened mines of Kazakstan. All of them were paid for their study by the Commissariat of Heavy Industry. Their stipends ranged from one to two hundred rubles monthly, the higher pay rewarding the best students. Every summer they chose their “practice work” from a dozen localities which offered, and as soon as they found some place where they wished to sign up for a job after graduation, they got additional wages from their chosen industry. The majority decided by the third or fourth year of the five-year course. Thereafter they felt themselves bound to work, for at least a time after they finished the university, for the institution which had paid for their education. This was not felt by them as compulsion but as the intelligent specializing of their own choice on the basis of a wide range of opportunities. Any good reason, such as personal health or the demand of some national emergency, would be recognized by them and their fellows as grounds for release. But a frivolous change of occupation without reason would brand a youth as undependable, while to give up a job because conditions proved difficult would be stigmatized as cowardly. For what was he trained if not to make the conditions better? Has he not at his disposal for this all the resources of the land?<br /> <br /> What jobs does youth choose? By no means the easy ones. When has youth, when free to choose, ever asked for the easy way? Youth wants conquest. Youth is explosive energy, so explosive that under capitalism it must be befogged with illusions, lest it wreck the world’s ancient ways. Soviet youth is encouraged to make the world over; it responds to the call. In every difficult struggle faced by the Soviet state from its beginning, a mighty host of youth has volunteered.<br /> <br /> Youth does not wait to be asked; it takes the initiative. Through its organization, the Young Communist League, it repeatedly demands the right to battle on each new important “front.” I know young women who fought in the civil war, divorcing the husbands who would have prevented their going. The Stalingrad Tractor Plant, the first Soviet conveyor, was built and manned by young folks coming from every part of the country. “We give our youth to this struggle,” they said to me six years ago. “We do not spend it in ease or amusement. We shall not stop till we have built the socialist city of Stalingrad.” I have vivid memory of the boat that came at eleven o’clock one night for a long-expected boat-ride after a hot day and was turned down by young voices, with-out a word from their elders, as too late. “Got to go home; got to be fresh for the line tomorrow,” they said as they turned away.<br /> <br /> Thus was launched in the far northeast of Asia the new ship-building port Comsomolsk on the shores of the Ohotsk Sea, a city proudly carved from mosquito-ridden forests by the forces of youth alone. Thus was built the Moscow subway in a titanic drive by youth to create “the most beautiful subway in the world.” Moscow’s Young Communists left office jobs, postponed university courses and requalified as underground ditch-diggers to build it. Every great construction job has its special tasks seized by youth; they take over the building of a blast furnace in competition with one raised alongside by their elders. They organize special farms which make proud records. They pour into the new industries, master the new technique, form the new staff of engineers.<br /> <br /> Like young folks everywhere, Soviet youths have the problem of the relation between work and marriage. This is never a question of whether they can afford to get married; that is taken for granted. The problem is to find time for a satisfying family life. One troubled youth writes to the ''Komsomolskaya Pravda'' in the discussion recently held on this question: “I am a turner. I am also a Young Communist. Besides that I am working on an invention. My days are so full that I don’t have time to breathe. I see my wife only at night and then I'm so dead tired that I fall down and sleep like a corpse. Lydia weeps. I am not a beast; I am sorry about Lydia. But I try to organize my time and I can’t even find an hour for my class on planning, much less for my family.”<br /> <br /> This is an extreme case; it is balanced by young Kuznetsova who lays down her specifications for a husband: “I wouldn’t have a man who was not a good social worker. But neither will I live with one who is interested only in his factory. I don’t want a one-sided man. I want a husband who will play volley ball with me, do skiing, appreciate the theater, music, general culture, read a book with me and argue about it afterwards. All these things have place in a well-rounded life.” These are the problems of a rich, abundant existence, which needs only to be organized. Soviet youth never feels that it must renounce any of these satisfactions.<br /> <br /> Each year when September First brings the International Youth celebration, hundreds of telegrams pour into the offices of ''Komsomolskaya Pravda'', organ of Communist Youth, announcing achievements of youth and the gifts which it offers the country. A group of young steel men wire that they have dismantled and reassembled an open hearth furnace in six days instead of the usual ten; a group of young miners sends an extra train of coal manned by a train crew especially chosen from scores who competed for the honor. Other groups announce the organization of “cultured field camps” where music, drama and books enliven the evening’s work on the farm. Still other groups blazon sport records on floats in the great demonstration which storms the Red Square. Young Communists of the Red Dawn Telephone Factory hiked to the Mongolian border, 5,400 miles in 180 days. Another group is back from climbing the Altai, covering 1,200 miles on foot. They celebrate the Baikal-Murmansk ski-run across half Asia and half northern Europe; they announce Alpine and parachute records made by youth. Nor is there any sharp line between records in sport and in steel-mills. All are one unified, advancing life.<br /> <br /> Not in conflict with work but around it in the social life of the factory collective, Soviet youth develops activities of sport and recreation which make up a well-rounded life. Tsarist Russia possessed thirty thousand members of sport and athletic clubs; there are six million today. Tens of thousands of cheering spectators turn out to soccer matches between Moscow, Leningrad, Central Asia, Turkey and Spain. Soviet sportsmen begin to invade world records. But the characteristic of Soviet sport is not the straining for records in one field at the expense of all round physical fitness; its symbol is the GTO badge—“Ready for Labor and Defense”—to receive which one must pass certain standards in walking, running, swimming, rowing, skiing, jumping and every kind of summer and winter sport. Two and a half million persons have qualified for this symbol, and a second degree of GTO is now established, requiring high diving, parachute jumping and other difficult tests.<br /> <br /> Parachute jumping has become almost a national sport in the Soviet Union, typical of its sky-storming youth. Flying, gliding, jumping, youth fills the heavens above Tushino field several times each summer with its aviation festivals. One hundred and fifty at a time they leap from great carrier airplanes and come sailing down under canopies of many-colored silk—red, white, blue, orange, lilac—covering the sky with rainbow hues. Week after week they make new records, young men and girls in individual or group jumps. Nina Kameneva, descending from icy space nearly twice the height of Mount Blanc and breaking a world’s record, made the remark which was seized by Soviet youth as a new slogan: “The sky of our country is the highest sky in the world.”<br /> <br /> === CHAPTER XVI: NEW MEN EMERGE ===<br /> <br /> The emergence of new people has been noted with growing frequency in recent years by the Soviet press. Editorial writers have tried to analyze their qualities; novelists have attempted to portray them. A Russian author suggested a year ago to the Moscow News a series of half-column novelettes, each containing the snapshot of a life. To the editor’s query how many of these stories he had, he answered casually: “About a thousand.”<br /> <br /> “A thousand!” exclaimed our editor.<br /> <br /> “That’s not so many,” replied the author, “to describe the great variety of people now appearing in our world.”<br /> <br /> Lincoln Steffens told me of meeting one of these new people, a Soviet youth in Hollywood, “so new that he could not understand these United States. . . . He was a unit; he thought and acted together. He was constantly puzzled by the tactics of American capitalists, considered from the standpoint of their own survival.”<br /> <br /> Increasingly I also meet new people in the Soviet Union. Not infrequently I have misunderstood them; their approach to life was different from anything I had known. Their respect for my will, their unwillingness to use their personality to convince my intellect, I mistook for aloofness, so accustomed was I to the salesman’s method of putting himself over. On another occasion, traveling on a Siberian train, I made the opposite mistake and took for promiscuous flirtation the expansive joy of a high official whose deft approaches to every person he met drew forth answering flashes of life. Then I saw him evade a kiss from “Little Slant-Eyes,” a Tartar girl with whom for two days he had been joking.<br /> <br /> “Kissing is for the beloved one,” he said, smiling. “But the joy of life is to be shared with everybody.”<br /> <br /> “Do you know what they have thought of you on this train?” I asked him then.<br /> <br /> “What they think affects them, not me. They will also learn if it is in them.”<br /> <br /> Never had I seen a more poised personality. Later he remarked, “We Bolsheviks, as Kirov always said, must be the happiest people in the world. But I must be one of the happiest even among Bolsheviks. Our older men are marked by too many years of combat. Our younger men can hardly appreciate the grimness of what they have never known. But I spent my childhood in oppression and my youth fighting for freedom; I am old enough to know the conquered past, yet young enough for a whole new life.”<br /> <br /> Is it possible yet to say in what direction this new humanity is developing? Are there any characteristics common to these millions of people who are becoming subtly differentiated from the past? Many attempts are being made to analyze them. When the Turkoman horsemen descended on Moscow after their amazing 4,300 kilometer run across the deserts, Stalin said: “Only clearness of goal, perseverance in attaining the goal, and firmness of character breaking through every hindrance can achieve such a glorious victory.” Pravda elaborated this theme into an editorial on the Soviet ideal of character, declaring it to be the exact opposite of that “unquestioning obedience” which Hitler had previously demanded in an impassioned speech to fascist youth.<br /> <br /> “Strong and original individuality,” was claimed by Pravda as the basic quality of a Soviet citizen. Not the “rugged individualism” which capitalism in its early stages glorifies for its upper classes, and which sinks into gangsterism in the fascist decline. Not conforming obedience responding under all conditions to “God and country,” the capitalist ideal which under fascism becomes blinder submission for men whose destiny it is to be bossed. Not that ability to look on both sides of the question which intellectuals under capitalism prize as a sign of high intelligence, but which Pravda disdains as “division of personality and double-mindedness, Hamletism in romantic colors.”<br /> <br /> “Not submission and blind faith does the Communist Party implant, but consciousness, daring, decision. It is just from the clear goal, seen by millions, from fighting perseverance and firmness that there grows that remarkable voluntary discipline which bourgeois society cannot even imagine. . . . Clearness of aim, perseverance and firmness won the victory in the civil war, restored our ruined economy and created socialist industry and collective farming. Clearness of aim, perseverance and firmness made way through the ice of the Arctic, lifted our heroes of the air into the stratosphere and brought close to the Communist Party many of the great representatives of science, literature and art. . . . The Communist Party draws out from all the toilers of our great fatherland the quality of strong individuality, inseparably connected with the strong collective of the toilers. . . .”<br /> <br /> To many persons in capitalist countries these words will be only partly intelligible. They have been so accustomed to considering that their own life is “free” and Soviet life “regimented” that they cannot at once grasp a viewpoint which holds the exact opposite. Yet even the casual observer of human beings today in the Soviet Union notices that while they have certain characteristics in common they are by no means regimented into uniformity, but show a vivid individuality at least as great as is found anywhere in the world. A business man in Chicago who had never seen Moscow but who was something of an art critic, told me that he was especially impressed in all Soviet photographs, whether of demonstrations in the Red Square or of athletes and factory workers, by the quality of will in the faces. “Utterly different from the sheepish or brutal faces of Nazi pictures,” he added. It is clear to anyone who talks with Soviet workers or the more advanced of the collective farmers that they feel themselves possessed not only of freedom, but of a peculiar type of reinforced and collectively supported freedom which is strong enough to conquer all the obstacles in the world.<br /> <br /> Freedom is never absolute; it is concrete and specific. It means different things to different classes and generations of men. The American pioneer faced the wilderness ax in hand with the mood of a free creator, saying: “What shall I build?” His freedom was conditioned by the loans he made or failed to make for his migration, by the railroad that came or failed to come, and by the subtler limitations of his own skill and character, yet with ax in hand, he felt free. His ownership of his primitive means of production was the source and guarantee of his sense of freedom.<br /> <br /> When the means of production became the factory, the meaning of freedom slowly changed. Freedom became to the owner the right to fix prices and wages, to the worker the right to drift from job to job, seeking an easier boss. Freedom in government became the “right to choose one’s rulers,” not the right to own and rule. Freedom of thought and speech became the right to complain, to voice transient shifts of opinion, not the right to drive one firm consistent thought into life. As capitalism advanced, men became diversified in their work and capacities, but standardized in their instinctive reference to a boss. Soviet workers notice this quality in Americans who come to their factories. “They know how to complain and make suggestions, but not how to desire and will.”<br /> <br /> “Desire and will” is the form which freedom takes when men are owners. When they are joint owners, a form of will develops—not unlike that in a family, a partnership or a committee—which determines itself by consultation. “He does not make individual decisions,” is already a compliment in the Soviet Union; it is applied to Stalin. It is as if one said of a scientist that he refuses to base conclusions on a single experiment. Men always have made up what they call their own minds through the influence of other minds as well; but now they grow conscious of these sources of their choice; they organize even these sources. They criticize, but from within, not from aloof isolation. Workers express discontent not by strikes against an alien owner, but by joint fights against bureaucracy to improve the organization of the land. Freedom becomes less a protest and more a steadily burning choice; not a fight, but a seeking. It is seen not as absence of restraint, but as conscious selection of one particular, individual place in a living complex mechanism whereby a thousand similar freedoms are welded into flame and power.<br /> <br /> In the latter half of 1935 the Stakhanovites began to shake the country. People compared it to an explosion, an earthquake. The movement appeared simultaneously in a hundred places and a score of industries. Despite the great variety of its people, the fundamental characteristics were the same. Workmen operating new machines began to shatter past standards of production often against the indifference or opposition of engineers and managers but accompanied by the strained attention of their fellow workers. Each of them had to fight his way against old concepts and habits; one or two of them were killed by angry workers, outraged by this sudden burst of speed. But overwhelming public opinion hailed and copied the innovators. Swiftly, in the midst of their local elation, they found themselves acclaimed across the land as heroes.<br /> <br /> Within two months every country in the world was forced to take notice, disguising the information as best they could under the name “speed-up.” For this was no mere routine news from Russia. This was a storming of the world frontiers of productivity and science. Miners in the Donbas were doubling Ruhr production. Blacksmiths in Gorky Auto Works broke standards set by Ford. Shoemakers in Leningrad made records 50 per cent higher than the world record held by the Bata factories of Czechoslovakia. Young girl weavers ran far ahead of America’s best achievements. Swedish saw-mill machinery, standardized to cut ninety-six cubic meters of lumber, was impertinently pushed to nearly three hundred by woodsmen in Archangel.<br /> <br /> Hundreds of American engineers and workers, who tried five years ago to “teach the Russians,” and who today are scattered in jobs and out of jobs all over the world, must have grumbled glumly when they heard of it: “Why couldn’t they do it when we showed them how?” For the events which have happened are externally obvious. The Soviet Union equipped itself throughout with modern machinery and methods, and drew eleven million greenhorns into industry to operate them. The greenhorns broke machines, wasted material and learned. They could not learn at once when their teachers told them; it had to grow in their nervous systems. But what they have learned is not only the technical skill of America. It is all that skill with the pride of ownership added. Ownership of the whole great mechanized process that makes the modern world.<br /> <br /> People who were allowed to attend the first All-Union Congress of Stakhanovites—and everyone in Moscow wanted to go—told of the indescribable enthusiasm, the irrepressible, thundering cheers. The Soviet press grew lyric over “taming the fiery steed of science,” “washing out the barriers between manual and mental labor,” “preparing the way from socialism to communism where each shall receive according to his needs.” Stalin was saying to the assembled delegates: “We leaders of the government have learned much from you. Thanks, comrades, for the lesson, many thanks.” Those men in the Congress believed—and the country believed with them—that the plan made by Marx was coming true. They had established a new economic system. They had painfully equipped it with modern methods. They had slowly learned to manage it jointly, and now the predicted results appeared. Socialism was beating capitalist production, just as capitalism beat feudalism.<br /> <br /> What are the characteristics of these Stakhanovites? A joyously dynamic initiative, a pride in mastery of complex technical processes, a conscious co-operation with society, a hunger to learn. Every phrase dropped in their discussions shows exultant power in creation and desire to share the new skill with others. Busygin, the blacksmith who made the crankshaft record in the forge of the Gorky Auto Works, declares, “There’s nothing I dream of so much as studying. I want to be not only a smith but to know how hammers are made and to make them. . . .” Marie Demchenko who made the sugar-beet record asked as a reward a course at an agricultural college—and got it. Stakhanov himself went down in the mines to make his record as the chosen representative of his fellows. “International Youth Day was approaching and I wanted to mark the day with a record in productivity. For some time my comrades and I had been thinking how to break the shackles of the norm, give the miners free play, force the drills to work a full shift.” When Slavnikova wanted to beat the record on a machine she had carefully studied but never yet used, the foreman opposed her. “I'm a fearless parachute jumper; that norm doesn’t scare me; I'll upset it,” she replied. She drove the machine to a five-fold record. She relates the sequel: “At four in the afternoon we had a meeting and they gave us flowers for our good work.”<br /> <br /> Bobilev, the steel smelter, wants you to know that he is a scientist: “We are no sportsmen. We tested out our open hearth; we repaired her and asked how much she could give. She told us 11.33 tons.” Vasiliev, the blacksmith who holds the record for forging connecting-rods, uses the words “boiled up” and “exploded” to describe his feelings about his forge. When his 1934 record was beaten by Andrianov, he “boiled up” and went back to the works with four days left of his vacation. I beat Sam Andrianov but I saw in a newspaper that a Kharkov smith had made more than a thousand. Then I exploded! I made 945 in one shift. The smith Stadnik also exploded and made 975. I consulted my gang how to organize our work-place; we got 1,036. We talked it over with the foreman and told him how to change the furnace; with true Stakhanov zeal he gave us in four days a furnace that could heat 1,500 in a shift. What stops us now? We talked it over and placed the metal in such order that it would be easier to take up. On October 27 I made an all-Union record 1,101 in a single shift. Comrades, I haven’t yet got out of that hammer all she’ll give, but I'm going to get it out to the very bottom.”<br /> <br /> Characteristic of the Stakhanovites is their disdain for overtime work as a confession of inefficiency; their insistence that a rhythm shall be found which shall not be physically exhausting—“if the work is done right you feel better and stronger”; and their zeal in teaching the new skill to their fellows. The locomotive engineer Omelianov, demands the “worst engineer” as a pupil, and makes him also a beater of records. Slavnikova is asked by an inefficient woman: “You’re a Young Communist; why don’t you teach me?” She gives time to instruct the older woman, who also begins to improve.<br /> <br /> Life in the new factories is by no means ease and harmony. It is more like an explosion or a battle. An engineer of my acquaintance finds the Stakhanovites frankly terrifying. “They put up signals over their lathes when out of material. These signals pop up everywhere and I have to keep them satisfied, or they’ll say I sabotage. You can lose your reputation. You can be cleaned out of the Party. I'm sitting up nights to plan the flow of work.” The demands of these new men are breaking the old technical processes. For “every worker knows,” says the weaver Lisakova, “that over-fulfillment of the norm will not only improve labor conditions in the factory, but also the kindergartens, nurseries, dining-rooms. All this depends on the efficiency of organization, the spirit of solidarity, the fulfillment of the plan.”<br /> <br /> It no longer even occurs to these joint owners that a rise in productivity might throw men out of work. Shifts of workers there will be from one job to another; but industry bears the expense of retraining workers. Conflicts there will be, harsh problems and many, but they feel quite sure that they can plan and achieve. They have won through civil war, pestilence, famine; they tightened their belts to build the first Five-Year Plan. They are driving rapidly through a second, which increases food, clothing, housing visibly each year. They haven’t the faintest doubt that as owners of their country they will always have worthwhile things to do.<br /> <br /> “Ten years hence,” said a Stakhanovite to me, “farming and industry may cease to be our main occupations. But there are other occupations when once we produce all the goods we need. Human development, exploration, science—to these there are no limits!”<br /> <br /> Whatever kind of world will be made by these new builders, one thing is certain: it will be built on conscious planning and will. Not regimentation but choice will make it, a choice that develops its own social guidance. If more people want geology, there will be more geology; if more want medicine, there will be more medicine. More comforts or more leisure, more music or more exploration of the Arctic? Our new world will be what we choose to make it. And if excess of choice in one direction leaves any fields unfilled, the social ways of influencing choice are clear and conscious. A combination of material rewards with social recognition, is already the method of attracting volunteers. The announcement in January, 1933, that agriculture was the most important front, brought hosts of recruits from the ablest people of the country. Calls for help through the League of Communist Youth supplied the driving personnel for Stalingrad Tractor Plant and the Moscow subway. Increased wages and shortened hours have supplemented statements of public need to attract more people into fields as diverse as medicine and mining.<br /> <br /> Are there any bounds whatever to man’s advance? These new men recognize none. “If in so short a time and with so backward folk we owners of one-sixth of earth have done so much, what shall we men not do when we own the resources of our planet, unhindered by the fear of wars? If the earth grows old, shall we not remake it to suit us? If the solar system runs down, shall we not find ways to give heat to our sun? Need we fix any limit to attainment, when the earth is our jointly owned workshop and home?”<br /> <br /> Such is their confident philosophy. So they answer, when they take time to discuss at all. A new religion? No, that is a word disdained. A widening science, they would say. Their approach to ultimate reality is not one of faith and submission, on which all religions have been based. It is one of defiance and conquest through intellect and will. When the conflicts between slave and master, serf and baron, worker and capitalist are ended, and the classless society is attained, there begins the titanic conflict of conscious men with unconscious nature. Not by faith but by analysis, not by submission but by defiance shall we rise in that unending battle. Unending? Relatively only, not absolutely. But that end is beyond our present power even to imagine.<br /> <br /> &lt;references /&gt;<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;ProleWiki&quot;/&gt;<br /> <br /> [[Category:Library works by Anna Louise Strong]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about the Soviet Union]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Wikipedia%E2%80%99s_Intentional_Distortion_of_the_History_of_the_Holocaust&diff=76000 2024-09-30T12:46:58Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work<br /> | title = Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust<br /> | written by = Jan Grabowski &amp; Shira Klein<br /> | author=Jan Grabowski &amp; Shira Klein<br /> | published = 2023<br /> | type = Essay<br /> | source= [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939 Taylor and Francis Online]<br /> | image =<br /> | image_size =<br /> | image_upright =<br /> | image_alt =<br /> | caption =<br /> }}<br /> This essay uncovers the systematic, intentional distortion of Holocaust history on the English-language [[Wikipedia]], the world’s largest encyclopedia. In the last decade, a group of committed Wikipedia editors have been promoting a skewed version of history on Wikipedia, one touted by right-wing Polish nationalists, which whitewashes [[Polish collaboration with Nazi Germany|the role of Polish society in the Holocaust]] and bolsters stereotypes about Jews. Due to this group’s zealous handiwork, Wikipedia’s articles on the Holocaust in Poland minimize Polish antisemitism, exaggerate the Poles’ role in saving Jews, insinuate that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles (Żydokomuna or [[Judeo–Bolshevism]]), blame Jews for their own persecution, and inflate Jewish collaboration with the Nazis. To explain how distortionist editors have succeeded in imposing this narrative, despite the efforts of opposing editors to correct it, we employ an innovative methodology. We examine 25 public-facing Wikipedia articles and nearly 300 of Wikipedia’s back pages, including talk pages, noticeboards, and arbitration cases. We complement these with interviews of editors in the field and statistical data gleaned through Wikipedia’s tool suites. This essay contributes to the study of Holocaust memory, revealing the digital mechanisms by which ideological zeal, prejudice, and bias trump reason and historical accuracy. More broadly, we break new ground in the field of the digital humanities, modelling an in-depth examination of how Wikipedia editors negotiate and manufacture information for the rest of the world to consume.<br /> <br /> ==Introduction==<br /> This essay will show how the English-language Wikipedia, the world’s largest encyclopedia, whitewashes the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolsters stereotypes about Jews. We will show how a handful of editors steer the historical narrative away from evidence-driven research toward a skewed version of history touted by right-wing Polish nationalists. Throughout Wikipedia’s numerous articles on Polish–Jewish relations, there are dozens of statements that deviate from historical fact, and which, in the aggregate, perpetuate potent myths about Polish–Jewish relations before, during, and after the Holocaust. We will also explain why it is so difficult to counter the impact of these editors and conclude with some suggestions to rectify this problem.<br /> <br /> This essay contributes to the area of Holocaust memory, revealing the digital mechanisms by which ideological zeal, prejudice, and bias trump reason and historical accuracy. More broadly, our study breaks new ground in the field of the digital humanities, modeling an in-depth examination of how Wikipedia editors negotiate and manufacture information for the rest of the world to consume. Quantitative studies researching Wikipedia are plentiful, ranging from big-data analyses of citation patterns to large-scale surveys on editors’ gender gap and measurements of Wikipedia’s web traffic.&lt;ref group=&quot;Note&quot; name=&quot;:0&quot;&gt;Of 1,974 Wikipedia-focused publications listed in the encyclopedia itself, the majority fall under computer science and data analytics. “Wikipedia:List of academic studies about Wikipedia,” revision from 08:12, March 7, 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:List_of_academic_studies_about_Wikipedia&amp;oldid=1075716512.&lt;/ref&gt; While important in their own right, quantitative studies cannot identify Wikipedia’s distortions, juxtapose article content with scholarship, or evaluate the intentionality of misinformation. A few seminal studies have taken just such a qualitative approach, each dissecting a handful of Wikipedia articles.&lt;ref group=&quot;Note&quot;&gt;See the following references in order, as they are in chronological order.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|author=Pamela Graham|newspaper=Project Muse|title=‘An Encyclopedia, Not an Experiment in Democracy’: Wikipedia Biographies, Authorship, and the Wikipedia Subject|date=2015-08-24|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/589985}}&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|author=Brendan Luyt|newspaper=Emerald Insight|title=Debating Reliable Sources: Writing the History of the Vietnam War on Wikipedia|date=2015-5-11|url=https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JD-11-2013-0147/full/html}}&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|author=Daniel Wolniewicz-Slomka|newspaper=Adeptus|title=Framing the Holocaust in Popular Knowledge: 3 Articles About the Holocaust in English, Hebrew and Polish Wikipedia|date=2016|url=https://doi.org/10.11649/a.2016.012}}&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|author=Sangeet Kumar|newspaper=Taylor and Francis Online|title=A river by any other name: Ganga/Ganges and the postcolonial politics of knowledge on Wikipedia|date=2017-3-15|url=https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1293709}}&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|author=Henry Jones|newspaper=Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics|title=Wikipedia, Translation and the Collaborative Production of Spatial Knowledge(s): A socio-narrative analysis|date=2018-12-31|url=https://research.aston.ac.uk/en/publications/wikipedia-translation-and-the-collaborative-production-of-spatial}}&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|author=Mark Shuttleworth|newspaper=Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics|title=Translation and the Production of Knowledge in &quot;Wikipedia&quot;: Chronicling the Assassination of Boris Nemtsov|date=2018|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26496376}}&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|author=Stephen Harrison|newspaper=Slate|title=How the Russian Invasion of Ukraine Is Playing Out on English, Ukrainian, and Russian Wikipedia|date=2022-03-01|url=https://slate.com/technology/2022/03/wikipedia-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-edits-kyiv-kiev.html}}&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;{{Citation|author=Heather Ford|year=2022|title=Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age|title-url=https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262046299/writing-the-revolution/|publisher=The MIT Press|isbn=9780262046299}}&lt;/ref&gt; Our research, however, examines Wikipedia’s portrayal of an entire historical subfield, namely, the Holocaust in Poland.<br /> <br /> This study is the first of its kind both in scope and method: we examine 25 public-facing Wikipedia articles (known as mainspace pages) and nearly 300 of Wikipedia’s back pages, including talk pages (where editors discuss articles), noticeboards (where editors ask questions and request assistance), diffs (where the system displays the difference between versions of the same Wikipedia page), and arbitration cases (where editors take their disputes). We complement these with interviews of editors in the field and statistical data gleaned through Wikipedia’s tool suites. This study lays the ground for researchers in other fields to trace the vast universe of Wikipedia’s mainspace and back pages and illuminate the production of digital knowledge.<br /> <br /> Why should we care so much about Wikipedia? Most scholars would say that there’s no expectation Wikipedia should be reliable in the first place; that’s what peer-reviewed scholarship is for. Yet, the importance of Wikipedia is tremendous because of its visibility. Wikipedia is the seventh most visited site on the internet, with 7.3 billion views a month.&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|newspaper=WMCloud|title=Wikipedia Site Views Analysis|url=https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/siteviews/?platform=all-access&amp;source=pageviews&amp;agent=user&amp;start=2021-02&amp;end=2022-01&amp;sites=en.wikipedia.org}}&lt;/ref&gt; Its articles show up in over 80 percent of the first page of search engine results and over 50 percent of the top three results. Browser searches yield more links to the English-language Wikipedia than to any other website in the world, and Wikipedia predominates in knowledge panels, the information boxes that show up in Google searches, which are visible to users without scrolling.&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|author=Nicholas Vincent &amp; Brent Hecht|newspaper=PACM on Human Computer Interaction|title=A Deeper Investigation of the Importance of Wikipedia Links to the Success of Search Engines|date=2021-04-22|url=https://doi.org/10.1145/3449078}}&lt;/ref&gt; Multiple websites mirror Wikipedia’s content and students read it for their college papers; indeed, even judges rely on Wikipedia to rule on cases.&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|author=Marte Blikstad-Balas|newspaper=Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research|title=“You get what you need”: A study of students’ attitudes towards using Wikipedia when doing school assignment|date=2015-08-25|url=https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2015.1066428}}&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|author=Sook Lim|newspaper=Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology|title=How and why do college students use Wikipedia?|date=2009-06-06|url=https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21142}}&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|author=Neil Thompson, Brian Flanagan, Edana Richardson, Brian McKenzie &amp; Xueyun Luo|newspaper=Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Jurisprudence|title=Trial by Internet: A Randomized Field Experiment on Wikipedia’s Influence on Judges’ Legal Reasoning|date=2022-07-01|url=https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4174200}}&lt;/ref&gt; <br /> <br /> Wikipedia plays a critical role in informing the public about the Holocaust in Poland. The Wikipedia article ‘Holocaust’ tops the charts with an average of nearly 270,000 monthly views, but even more obscure articles, such as ‘Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust,’ receive as many as 1,700 views a month. <br /> [[File:Monthly views of Poland-focused articles relating to the Holocaus.jpeg|center|thumb|297x297px|Monthly views of Poland-focused articles relating to the Holocaust.&lt;ref group=&quot;Note&quot;&gt;Chart generated by running each article through Pageviews Analysis (https://pageviews.toolforge.org/).&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|newspaper=Chapman University Digital Commons|title=Data from: Wikipedia’s Intentional Warping of Polish–Jewish History|url=https://doi.org/10.36837/chapman.000405}}&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|author=Omer Benjakob|newspaper=Haaretz|title=The Fake Nazi Death Camp: Wikipedia’s Longest Hoax, Exposed|date=2022-07-07|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191003201543/https:/www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-fake-nazi-death-camp-wikipedia-s-longest-hoax-exposed-1.7942233}}&lt;/ref&gt;]]<br /> <br /> This exposure surpasses that of any monograph or journal article, suggesting that Wikipedia shapes public knowledge about the Holocaust far more than scholarship does. Scholars have been aware of a problem in Wikipedia’s articles in this area for some years.&lt;ref&gt;{{Citation|author=Jan Grabowski|year=2020-11-14|title=Upload Nonsense to Wikipedia. How Polish Nationalists Sell Nonsense to Foreign Audiences|title-url=https://wyborcza.pl/alehistoria/7,121681,25732654,wrzuc-brednie-na-wikipedie-polscy-nacjonalisci-wciskaja-kit.html|publisher=Gazeta Wyborcza|trans-lang=Wrzuć brednię na Wikipedię. Polscy nacjonaliści wciskają kit zagranicznym czytelnikom}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The misrepresentation of Polish–Jewish history is nothing new, and far predates the online encyclopedia or indeed the internet. For decades after the end of the war, the dominant approach in Poland held that most Poles were disgusted by German antisemitism, and that many risked their lives to save their Jewish neighbors. Research, especially from the last three decades, shows otherwise. Some Poles did help Jews, at great risk, but antisemitism existed among all swaths of Polish society, including the Polish underground, and anti-Jewish violence was a common occurrence.&lt;ref name=&quot;:0&quot;&gt;{{Citation|author=Joshua Zimmerman|year=2003|title=Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and its Aftermath|title-url=https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzacecdce7vkpftxfibojmeswvj4rmj3pp5hwjsjbqo4ujyosv354rnc6?filename=Joshua%20D.%20Zimmerman%20-%20Contested%20Memories_%20Poles%20and%20Jews%20during%20the%20Holocaust%20and%20Its%20Aftermath-Rutgers%20University%20Press%20%282003%29.pdf|chapter=Introduction|pdf=https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzacecdce7vkpftxfibojmeswvj4rmj3pp5hwjsjbqo4ujyosv354rnc6?filename=Joshua%20D.%20Zimmerman%20-%20Contested%20Memories_%20Poles%20and%20Jews%20during%20the%20Holocaust%20and%20Its%20Aftermath-Rutgers%20University%20Press%20%282003%29.pdf|publisher=Rutgers University Press}}&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;{{Citation|author=Robert Cherry &amp; Annamaria Orla-Bukowska|year=2007|title=Rethinking Poles and Jews: Troubled Past, Brighter Future|isbn=9780742546660}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the 1980s, some Catholic Poles began to concede on the point of their own society’s role in the persecution of Jews. ‘Yes, we are guilty,’ admitted the literary critic and professor of Polish literature Jan Błoński, in a groundbreaking piece in 1987, although even he was unable to admit that parts of Polish society had taken part in the German genocidal project.&lt;ref&gt;{{Citation|author=Jan Błoński|year=2008|title=The Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto|page=321-336|quote=Yet, when one reads what was written about Jews before the war, when one discovers how much hatred there was in Polish society, one can only be surprised that words were not followed by deeds. But they were not (or very rarely). God held back our hand. Yes, I do mean God, because if we did not take part in that crime, it was because we were still Christians, and at the last moment we came to realize what a satanic enterprise it was.}}&lt;/ref&gt; Soon, scholars of the Holocaust were to go far beyond Błoński’s conclusions. A rich body of scholarship emerged in the 2000s among Polish academics, with new studies on interwar antisemitism, postwar anti-Jewish violence – especially the notorious Kielce (1946) and Kraków (1945) pogroms – and on the Church’s connection with and involvement in anti-Jewish hostility.&lt;ref name=&quot;:0&quot; /&gt; This scholarly drive came on the heels of the publication of Jan Gross’s seminal book, ''Neighbors'' (published in Polish in 2000) about the gruesome murder of the Jews of Jedwabne in the summer of 1941 by their Polish neighbors.&lt;ref&gt;{{Citation|author=Jan T. Gross|year=2002|title=Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland|title-url=http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=AD4A202A6FFA18F3950EDB0C8D1CD535|chapter-url=|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=9780691234304|lg=http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=AD4A202A6FFA18F3950EDB0C8D1CD535}}&lt;/ref&gt; The majority of non-Polish and Polish historians alike accepted the basic findings of Gross’s research, even if a healthy debate arose on the particulars.&lt;ref group=&quot;Note&quot;&gt;Even the IPN (state institution enforcing the official narrative in matters of history) confirmed that the murders in Jedwabne were committed by the Poles. See Paweł Machcewicz and Krzysztof Persak (eds.), ''Wokół Jedwabnego'', 2 vols. (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2002).&lt;/ref&gt; Since Gross, growing numbers of historians both in Poland and elsewhere have researched Polish–Jewish wartime relations, critically and dispassionately.&lt;ref&gt;{{Web citation|author=Joanna Beata Michlic|newspaper=Taylor and Francis Online|title=‘At the Crossroads’: Jedwabne and Polish Historiography of the Holocaust|date=2017-12-05|url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23256249.2017.1376793}}&lt;/ref&gt; One illustration of the Poles’ greater willingness to face its past was the government-appointed historical agency, the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). In the early 2000s, the IPN temporarily embraced research on the most painful subjects of Polish–Jewish history.&lt;ref&gt;{{Citation|author=Joanna Beata Michlic|year=2017|title=‘Memories of Jews and the Holocaust in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: The Case of Poland’}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ==Notes==<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;Note&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> ==References== <br /> &lt;references /&gt;<br /> [[Category:Library works about fascism]]<br /> [[Category:Library works by non-marxists and other authors]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Marx:_...so,_revolution&diff=75998 2024-09-30T12:46:57Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Marx: ...so, revolution|author=Nia Frome|publisher=Twitter|published_date=2020-12-29|type=Thread|source=https://twitter.com/NiaFrome/status/1343917651165401088}}<br /> <br /> marx: ...so, revolution <br /> <br /> batman: sounds criminal <br /> <br /> foucault: sounds normie <br /> <br /> marx: no it's not normie, it's the way one class overthrows another, and thus its regime of exploitation <br /> <br /> gandalf: is this not to become just as bad as the enemy? <br /> <br /> marx: god dammit gandalf<br /> <br /> <br /> machiavelli: it is always in the prince's interest to depict all challengers to his rule as just as vicious as he, if not more so<br /> <br /> frodo: well i'm sure there's some way we can sort out the good from the bad, decide whether the challenger really is better<br /> <br /> socrates: sure, are you?<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: the proletariat is the first class in history to be dominated by objectified labor itself, not any lord or master in particular. by overthrowing this domination, it wins—not just for itself but for the whole of humanity—emancipation from the realm of necessity.<br /> <br /> <br /> dr. manhattan: the realm of necessity is all there is<br /> <br /> ayn rand: capitalism is all there is, or was, or ever will be<br /> <br /> fred flintstone: yep, i can vouch for that<br /> <br /> george jetson: same tbh<br /> <br /> <br /> death: ᴀʜᴇᴍ. ᴇᴠᴇʀʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴅɪᴇs.<br /> <br /> <br /> yoda: spirit are we, not this crude matter <br /> <br /> marx: are you suggesting, master yoda, that capitalism may be eternal just like the soul is considered eternal? <br /> <br /> yoda: ...not say that did i <br /> <br /> marx: but it's what you believe <br /> <br /> yoda: uncomfortable defending that thesis i am<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: capitalism comes into the world covered in blood and dirt. conditions for it must be *established*, they aren't just given naturally. people have to be dispossessed, separated from the means of subsistence, so that they can be put to work as &quot;free labor&quot;<br /> <br /> <br /> jean-luc picard: i can confirm that in the future we have no use for capitalism, as the conditions for it have disappeared <br /> <br /> ayn rand: weren't you with the borg for a while? <br /> <br /> jean-luc picard: well, yes, but- <br /> <br /> ayn rand: he's a collectivist, you guys! get him!<br /> <br /> <br /> the avengers: we're a collective the <br /> <br /> a-team: we're a collective the <br /> <br /> x-men: we're a collective <br /> <br /> the fellowship of the ring: we're a collective <br /> <br /> leonardo, donatello, raphael and michelangelo: we're a collective<br /> <br /> <br /> popper: that's different, you're open societies, we're talking about totalitarianism, where the individual is subordinated to the collective <br /> <br /> marx: i'm sure someone who spends nine hours a day doing whatever their boss tells them to do never feels subordinated to the collective<br /> <br /> <br /> elon musk: they should be grateful for the opportunity to participate in realizing one heroic individual's grand vision! <br /> <br /> marx: wasn't your &quot;grand vision&quot; basically to make existing technology cheaper?<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: that's the thing, that's all capitalism lets anybody envision. the imperative to accumulate *is* the evil homogenizing force you're all so afraid of <br /> <br /> heidegger: no, it's technology <br /> <br /> nietzsche: no, it's slave morality <br /> <br /> postmodernists: no, it's modernity<br /> <br /> <br /> morpheus: we can hack technology <br /> <br /> aesop: slave morality just *is* morality. normative ideas can't be inherently evil because they're the only basis we have for calling anything good or evil <br /> <br /> socrates: i'm sorry, what the hell is &quot;modernity&quot;?<br /> <br /> <br /> holden caulfield: it's when everyone is a phony and stuff <br /> <br /> t. s. eliot: it's when everything just seems to be getting shittier <br /> <br /> virginia woolf: it's when women start publishing under their own names<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: exactly! &quot;modernity&quot; is an idealist and vaguely reactionary account of processes that can be much more concretely specified and analyzed. once you do that, it becomes clear that current trends are necessarily self-undermining, containing the seeds of their own destruction<br /> <br /> <br /> the dude: why you gotta be all about destruction, man? can't we just coexist? <br /> <br /> van helsing: not with the undead <br /> <br /> marx: thank you!<br /> <br /> <br /> hannibal lecter: this compulsive othering of capitalism makes it seem like you're compensating for something<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: the same could be said of any commitment whatsoever. if we read all commitment as pathological, then the only winner is whatever we do without thinking about it. but these are commitments too! i opt for consciousness over unconsciousness <br /> <br /> morpheus: ditto<br /> <br /> <br /> dream: 𝔴𝔥𝔶 𝔭𝔯𝔦𝔳𝔦𝔩𝔢𝔤𝔢 𝔠𝔬𝔫𝔰𝔠𝔦𝔬𝔲𝔰𝔫𝔢𝔰𝔰 𝔬𝔳𝔢𝔯 𝔲𝔫𝔠𝔬𝔫𝔰𝔠𝔦𝔬𝔲𝔰𝔫𝔢𝔰𝔰? <br /> <br /> marx: because consciousness can be directly contested. it's public, and therefore democratic. it is the space that i have best access to, and where i direct my appeals to you<br /> <br /> <br /> nietzsche: but notice you've made the assumption that democracy, communication, contestability etc. are values, which i would deny. all that has dignity is the absolutely independent act <br /> <br /> marx: aristocrats depend on workers, you ass<br /> <br /> <br /> arendt: but those workers, once ensconced in positions of power, tend to act like new aristocrats <br /> <br /> killmonger: why did all the forces of reaction ally against me, if i was going to do things just the same as the old boss?<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: exactly! the old boss depends on a certain configuration of exploitative relations, and will fight to the death to defend that configuration. the new boss, if they are to win, must set up a new and broader base, capable of greater coordination and cooperation within itself<br /> <br /> <br /> postmodernists: sounds very providential, everything always working out for the best. are all coups progressive then?<br /> <br /> <br /> harry potter: sometimes coups are done by death eaters <br /> <br /> marx: right, representatives of a previously ousted class seeking to roll back the clock. these are not revolutions but pseudo-revolutions, which is obvious enough to anyone paying attention to where their money comes from<br /> <br /> <br /> john mcclane: it's always about money <br /> <br /> marx: it is and it isn't <br /> <br /> death: ᴍᴏɴᴇʏ ᴛᴏᴏ ᴡɪʟʟ ᴅɪᴇ sᴏᴍᴇ ᴅᴀʏ <br /> <br /> marx: and the different non-commodified arrangements that will replace it have already begun to sprout<br /> <br /> <br /> rick deckard: buddy, money's never gonna go out of style<br /> <br /> <br /> sherlock holmes: that's funny, money's never been an issue for me <br /> <br /> james bond: me neither <br /> <br /> marx: right, it fades into irrelevance when you *have* it. communism cannot be built on generalized want, but on generalized abundance<br /> <br /> <br /> milton friedman: such a utopia can only ever be the preserve of a small elite, scarcity is the natural state of the universe <br /> <br /> marx: well then our defining trait as human beings seems to be thumbing our noses at the natural state of the universe<br /> <br /> <br /> icarus: careful there buddy <br /> <br /> marx: why? will the heat of communism melt our wings? isn't it more likely that as more people's needs are met, the old way of doing things will decay all the more rapidly? it's capitalism that requires constant injections of state violence to stay up<br /> <br /> <br /> gandhi: you yourself are not a paragon of nonviolence <br /> <br /> spartacus: why should he be? what matters is whether you are upholding or demolishing social structures that, by their very nature, entail endless war and degradation <br /> <br /> sarah connor: ...or even extinction<br /> <br /> <br /> burke: this revolutionary attitude seems to fit the bill, since it entails endless war of the have-nots vs. the haves <br /> <br /> hobbes: we'd all be much better off if no one were able to revolt <br /> <br /> marx: capitalism seems to produce a great many revolutionaries, why have you no quarrel w/ it?<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: as long as there are haves and have-nots, that is, as long as private property is the governing norm, you will not see the peace you claim to desire. to think otherwise is to indulge in the deepest fantasy. of course it may be that your true desires are something else...<br /> <br /> <br /> marquis de sade: and so what if they are? there is no god, why should we fear to be evil, to indulge, to wreak violence upon the innocent, if it amuses us? <br /> <br /> marx: you are free to be a symptom, to be wholly determined by your unfortunate class position, to be as cruel as property<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: but you will command no respect, you will earn no love, and you will be crushed, in time, without pity or remorse. no one will mourn your passing. no one will cherish your memory. the species will move on from you, and you will have been as tiny and insignificant as a flea<br /> <br /> <br /> rustin cohle: that was going to happen anyway <br /> <br /> marx: i dunno about you, but it certainly hasn't happened to me<br /> <br /> <br /> hannibal lecter: so it is, ultimately, nothing more than an ego trip<br /> <br /> <br /> robin hood: if i rob from the rich to give to the poor, and enjoy the love they give me in return, does that make me prince john's equal, because we're both motivated by ego? <br /> <br /> dr. house: all that matters are results<br /> <br /> <br /> kant: so the ends justify the means, do they? <br /> <br /> jack bauer: uh, yes <br /> <br /> james bond: duh <br /> <br /> the avengers: absolutely they do<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: if ends don't justify means, what does? where is the list of right stuff and wrong stuff laid out simply and unambiguously so that we can follow the rules which never contradict each other and all our ethical conundrums are solved?<br /> <br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt;everyone starts talking at once*<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: ...so, that said, let's pay attention to the world, to causes and effects. humanity can thereby extend its grasp and reach greater levels of freedom, consciousness, and responsibility. <br /> <br /> thanos: no, too much people <br /> <br /> marx: oh for fuck's sake not this again<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: if more than half the world's wealth is in the hands of 1% of its population and as a member of that 1% i claim that it's poor people's fault for daring to exist, i'm obviously just trying to shield my hoard from richly-deserved blame<br /> <br /> <br /> john locke (not the one from LOST): what's wrong with wealth i've earned through my own sweat? <br /> <br /> gordon gekko: if you're sweating, you're doing it wrong<br /> <br /> <br /> machiavelli: it is important that the prince always give the appearance of thrift, hard work, etc. but only so that he may cultivate this attitude in his subjects and gain access to their useful labor <br /> <br /> robert california: quite so<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: the capitalist creation myth about thrifty farmers saving up beaver pelts isn't actually how any major fortunes ever came into being; all great accumulations of wealth are born out of naked theft, pillage, murder, and slavery. locke is a writer of children's stories<br /> <br /> <br /> hayek: is your &quot;revolution&quot; any exception? it would rob and pillage and make everyone slaves of the state <br /> <br /> leslie knope: i don't *think* i'm a slave... <br /> <br /> harriet tubman: yeah you definitely fucking are not<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: slaves don't get to vote, they don't have recallable representatives deciding who sits on the central committee, they don't have rights or any way to get justice when they are wronged<br /> <br /> <br /> dr. strangelove: ze soviets have none of zis, zey know nussink of rights, zey are like animals who must be put down for zeir own velfare <br /> <br /> everyone: ...<br /> <br /> <br /> said: the west has never viewed the east as fully human, nor any of its institutions as fully civilized sacha <br /> <br /> baron cohen: *audibly gulps*<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: the crimes of colonialism, which europe commits abroad, are rarely counted among the defects of the liberal system. but those states that pursue development without enslaving other peoples are criticized for doing violence to &quot;their own people!&quot; in tones of outrage<br /> <br /> <br /> frank underwood: i'll tell you a little secret about patriotism: it's always bullshit, but it sure comes in handy sometimes<br /> <br /> <br /> fanon: always?<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: there's obviously a big difference between &quot;patriotism&quot; in the imperialist countries, which is just chauvinism, and patriotism in countries that are struggling to throw off the yoke of imperialism <br /> <br /> the crystal gems: indubitably<br /> <br /> <br /> petyr baelish: every power on earth is a would-be empire <br /> <br /> marx: even though it sounds scary and cynical there's no contradiction between that and saying that a more equal, multipolar distribution of power would allow for greater freedom and flourishing<br /> <br /> <br /> eduard bernstein: how very modest and incrementalist of you <br /> <br /> marx: both continuity and rupture are laws of nature. i don't rule out either one a priori like *some* people<br /> <br /> <br /> mycroft holmes: it's becoming rather difficult to discern what it is you *do* rule out, herr doktor. are we to understand that no criticism of you or your &quot;communism&quot; is possible, since you both contain so many multitudes?<br /> <br /> <br /> ricky lafleur: maybe you should worry aboot your own damn self and quit hasslin my buddy carl. whys it so important for you to cristicize him when all hes cristicizing is the real shit real people are going through, you ever think aboot that? go eat a fuck you fuckin dick<br /> <br /> tywin lannister: i suppose this is the level of discourse one ought to expect when one opens the door to the rabble <br /> <br /> lucius malfoy: precious few people still know how to keep a civil tongue<br /> <br /> pippin (whispering to merry): did he just threaten to cut that guy's tongue off? <br /> <br /> merry (whispering to pippin): i think so, pippin <br /> <br /> pippin (whispering to merry): that's pretty fucked<br /> <br /> marx: classes whose rule is coming to an end cling desperately to the signifiers they mistakenly credit with preserving or justifying that rule. tone policing is a magical, and so ultimately futile, attempt to reverse a tectonic shift in the balance of class forces<br /> <br /> superman: if the only reality is these tectonic class forces, seems like there isn't much room in your theory for ordinary human decency, the small acts of kindness that express our basic moral instincts <br /> <br /> marx: decency's great! but our freedom to be decent is under siege<br /> <br /> captain america: there's always a choice <br /> <br /> gollum: i suppose i just made some bad choices then, did i? <br /> <br /> captain america: that's different, that's an addiction <br /> <br /> marx: who isn't addicted to commodities?<br /> <br /> <br /> jonathan kent: you work hard, you don't spend more than you earn, you buy some land, and you try to be good to people, help 'em out. plenty of freedom to be decent there. there's a world o' difference between buying groceries on main street and being addicted to hard drugs<br /> <br /> <br /> sitting bull: i suppose we'll be glossing over how you lot came by that land? <br /> <br /> pat robertson: now remember christ's message, you just have to turn the other cheek there buddy, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: maybe human decency is ordinary, and maybe human cruelty is ordinary. i know choosing not to see or think about the past causes or future effects of our economic activity, the way this stuff ripples outwards, means choosing insensitivity, which is fertile ground for cruelty<br /> <br /> <br /> george costanza: sounds exhausting <br /> <br /> the dude: yeah i liked what that other guy was saying about just going with the flow, following your instincts etc. <br /> <br /> jerry seinfeld: you got instincts, george? <br /> <br /> george costanza: do i *look* like a man who has instincts? i'd kill for an instinct<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: capitalism makes it prohibitively complicated to figure this stuff out at the same time it's robbing you of any other standard or compass to go by. communism means production run on the basis of human need, and one of those needs is to avoid getting overwhelmed and fried<br /> <br /> <br /> jed bartlet: well i've heard it described elsewhere in not quite so flattering terms, maybe you've heard them: &quot;dictatorship of the proletariat&quot; <br /> <br /> marx: you got here late, didn't you<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: here's a question for my friend montgomery. if you ran the economy, would you prioritize a) the environment, b) standard of living, or c) profits? <br /> <br /> mr. burns: oh definitely c <br /> <br /> marx: you see my point? the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is like an insane clown with a bazooka<br /> <br /> <br /> mad pierrot: rude <br /> <br /> marx: the dictatorship of the proletariat means just that the working class jealously defends its own hegemony, its own monopoly on legitimate force, because sharing that shit with capitalists is *always* a bad idea<br /> <br /> <br /> merlin: shouldn't we oppose monopoly in general? like you said, a more equal distribution of power is better <br /> <br /> v: *all* governments should be afraid of their people <br /> <br /> gandalf: you run the risk of becoming precisely that which you sought to destroy <br /> <br /> dumbledore: ehhhhhhh<br /> <br /> <br /> snape: sometimes you *must* become that which you seek to destroy <br /> <br /> marx: any class that doesn't constitute itself as power doesn't stand a chance of usurping another's hold on power. the more equal distribution comes from the fact that the proletariat is bigger and poorer<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: since their livelihood doesn't depend on capitalist exploitation, the proletariat as ruling class can begin to coolly and rationally reorder society in such a way that capitalist exploitation becomes impossible, meaning the flows of power to concentrated wealth dry up<br /> <br /> <br /> velma dinkley: in my experience capitalists will pull out all the stops to make sure those flows keep flowing <br /> <br /> marx: no doubt. the status quo is a war of all against all<br /> <br /> <br /> dana scully: so you're saying what we need's a leviathan? <br /> <br /> marx: yes, and its name is the party, its main advantage is in numbers, and its principal tool is words, getting there first, smothering violence and exploitation with education and economic development<br /> <br /> <br /> don draper: you're a natural-born ad man, karl, i'll give you that. who doesn't melt for these glittering palaces in the sky? but let's get down to brass tacks: what does this revolution of yours actually look like? isn't it more likely to just be a bunch of suffering and muck?<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: the utopia is in thinking that capitalism can be sustained indefinitely. a revolution looks like the rest of world history: a collapse here, a rise there, an outburst at the wrong time, always combined and uneven, with protracted economic conflicts running all through it<br /> <br /> <br /> rorschach: the suffering and the muck are the only constants <br /> <br /> steven universe: what are you *talking* about? there's so much else!<br /> <br /> <br /> isaiah berlin: exactly. there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in marxist philosophy, which is why we need pluralism, not revolution <br /> <br /> marx: asked and answered, my dude<br /> <br /> [link back to ''marx: that's the thing, that's all capitalism lets anybody envision'' line]<br /> <br /> <br /> isaiah berlin: that's not good enough. you need everyone to be on the same page, don't you? proletarian dictatorship means *more* conformity among the population, it means an illiberal attitude towards free speech <br /> <br /> marx: didn't you work for the CIA?<br /> <br /> <br /> debate bro: excuse me, that's an ad hominem <br /> <br /> marx: to show that my project is especially intolerant, you have to identify a more tolerant one. if no such project exists, then the charge can't stick—the metric of tolerance is shown to provide no way of distinguishing between us<br /> <br /> john locke (the one from LOST): so forget tolerance. what about virtue? communism seems like it would just give you a bunch of lazy hedonistic do-nothings<br /> <br /> <br /> shaggy rogers: not cool, man<br /> <br /> <br /> daniel plainview: these subversives and degenerates will never know the joy of a hard day's work. they'll never know what it means to test their mettle against the elements and stake an honest claim to this great nation's bounty <br /> <br /> marx: dude come the fuck on<br /> <br /> <br /> holly golightly: sounds dreadfully dull to me <br /> <br /> marx: testing your mettle against the elements might be a fun macho pastime or whatever, but what you *really* care about, the reason it *is* so fundamentally dull, is the claim. your ownership of the thing takes the highest priority<br /> <br /> <br /> galadriel: 𝑜𝓃𝑒 𝒾𝓈 𝒶𝓁𝓁 𝓉𝑜𝑜 𝑒𝒶𝓈𝒾𝓁𝓎... 𝒸𝑜𝓃𝓈𝓊𝓂𝑒𝒹 𝒷𝓎 𝒾𝓉 <br /> <br /> marx: which is why capitalist ideas about the virtue of hard work are all crap. humans should work as hard as they like at whatever they decide to work on. but once this fixation sets in...<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: you're not doing it for a reason any more. the work itself becomes secondary—whatever you wanted to achieve by it, whatever good you thought you were doing, or self-improvement you were pursuing, they slip away<br /> <br /> <br /> jesse pinkman: ain't that the truth<br /> <br /> <br /> george orwell: but working for big brother isn't any more ennobling. you would have us submit our labors to an all-powerful state, where they become just as empty and rote <br /> <br /> marx: i didn't make it so that people became globally interdependent, capitalism did that<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: the choice that confronts us is between a universal interdependence in which a few rule and a few benefit, or a universal interdependence in which every person shares in decision-making and enjoyment. i hate to break it to you, but we do live in a society<br /> <br /> <br /> dr. house: and you trust the people to make decisions? have you *met* people? <br /> <br /> marx: i've met members of the ruling class<br /> <br /> <br /> james madison: the poor masses you would see take power tend to be short-sighted and impulsive. they couldn't possibly agree on anything or govern themselves for more than a week <br /> <br /> marx: i can't stop you from despising humanity, but in my experience freedom is the best teacher<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> lex luthor: your optimism is quite charming, albeit dangerously naive <br /> <br /> marx: isn't it more naive not to recognize the way misanthropy is so obviously a self-fulfilling prophecy told by people who are scared stiff at the possibility of seeing their privileges crumble?<br /> <br /> <br /> cersei lannister: a few people will always be blessed with privilege. all you're doing is increasing the turnover <br /> <br /> death: ᴀʜᴇᴍ.<br /> <br /> <br /> marx: &quot;privilege&quot; is abstract enough that i can imagine many dimensions of privilege lasting well into socialism—maybe i get better service at restaurants because i'm a famous food critic. the point is to eliminate the kind that kills people<br /> <br /> [[Category:Library works by Nia Frome]]<br /> {{DEFAULTSORT:''Marx: ...so, revolution'' (Nia Frome)}}</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:On_Khrushchov%E2%80%99s_Phony_Communism_and_Its_Historical_Lessons_for_the_World&diff=75997 2024-09-30T12:46:57Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work<br /> | title = On Khrushchov’s Phony Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World: Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU<br /> | written by = [[Mao Zedong]]<br /> |author=Mao Zedong| written in = 1964<br /> | published = Foreign Languages Press, Peking 1964<br /> | type = Article<br /> | source= [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1964/phnycom.htm Marxists Internet Archive]<br /> | image =<br /> | image_size =<br /> | image_upright =<br /> | image_alt =<br /> | caption =<br /> }}<br /> {{Foreword|date=2023-10-10|foreword='''''On Khrushchov’s Phony Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World''''' was a series of articles first published by [[Mao Zedong]] in 1964, in the [[People's Daily]] and [[Red Flag]] periodicals. It served as a comprehensive critique of the [[revisionist]] turn of [[Khrushchev]]'s [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]], specifically numerous remarks made by Krushchev at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU.<br /> <br /> It is considered the seminal work explaining the [[Communist Party of China]]'s rationale behind the [[Sino-Soviet split]].}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> The theories of the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat are the quintessence of Marxism-Leninism. The questions of whether revolution should be upheld or opposed and whether the dictatorship of the proletariat should be upheld or opposed have always been the focus of struggle between Marxism- Leninism and all brands of revisionism and are now the focus of struggle between Marxist-Leninists the world over and the revisionist Khrushchov clique.<br /> <br /> At the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, the revisionist Khrushchov clique developed their revisionism into a complete system not only by rounding off their anti-revolutionary theories of &quot;peaceful coexistence&quot; and &quot;peaceful transition&quot; but also by declaring that the dictatorship of the proletariat is no longer necessary in the Soviet Union and advancing the absurd theories of the &quot;state of the whole people&quot; and the &quot;party of the entire people&quot;.<br /> <br /> The Programme put forward by the revisionist Khrushchov clique at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU is a programme of phoney communism, a revisionist programme against proletarian revolution and for the abolition of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the proletarian party.<br /> <br /> The revisionist Khrushchov clique abolish the dictatorship of the proletariat behind the camouflage of the &quot;state of the whole people&quot;, change the proletarian character of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union behind the camouflage of the &quot;party of the entire people&quot; and pave the way for the restoration of capitalism behind that of &quot;full-scale communist construction&quot;.<br /> <br /> In its Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement dated June 14, 1963, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China pointed out that it is most absurd in theory and extremely harmful in practice to substitute the &quot;state of the whole people&quot; for the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the &quot;party of the entire people&quot; for the vanguard party of the proletariat. This substitution is a great historical retrogression which makes any transition to communism impossible and helps only to restore capitalism.<br /> <br /> The Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the press of the Soviet Union resort to sophistry in self-justification and charge that our criticisms of the &quot;state of the whole people&quot; and the &quot;party of the entire people&quot; are allegations &quot;far removed from Marxism&quot;, betray &quot;isolation from the life of the Soviet people&quot; and are a demand that they &quot;return to the past&quot;.<br /> <br /> Well, let us ascertain who is actually far removed from Marxism- Leninism, what Soviet life is actually like and who actually wants the Soviet Union to return to the past. <br /> == Socialist Society and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat ==<br /> What is the correct conception of socialist society? Do classes and class struggle exist throughout the stage of socialism? Should the dictatorship of the proletariat be maintained and the socialist revolution be carried through to the end? Or should the dictatorship of the proletariat be abolished so as to pave the way for capitalist restoration? These questions must be answered correctly according to the basic theory of Marxism-Lenin- ism and the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> The replacement of capitalist society by socialist society is a great leap in the historical development of human society. Socialist society covers the important historical period of transition from class to classless society. It is by going through socialist society that mankind will enter communist society.<br /> <br /> The socialist system is incomparably superior to the capitalist system. In socialist society, the dictatorship of the proletariat replaces bourgeois dictatorship and the public ownership of the means of production replaces private ownership. The proletariat, from being an oppressed and exploited class, turns into a ruling class and a fundamental change takes place in the social position of the working people. Exercising dictatorship over a few exploiters only, the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat practices the broadest democracy among the masses of the working people, a democracy that is impossible in capitalist society. The nationalisation of industry and collectivization of agriculture open wide vistas for the vigorous development of the social productive forces, ensuring a rate of growth incomparably greater than that in any older society.<br /> <br /> However, one cannot but see that socialist society is a society born out of capitalist society and is only the first phase of communist society. It is not yet a fully mature communist society in the economic and other fields. It is inevitably stamped with the birth marks of capitalist society. When defining socialist society Marx said:<br /> <br /> What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. &lt;ref&gt;[Marx, &quot;Critique of the Gotha Programme&quot;, Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1958, Vol. 2, p. 23.]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Lenin also pointed out that in socialist society, which is the first phase of communism, ''&quot;Communism cannot as yet be fully ripe economically and entirely free from traditions or traces of capitalism&quot;'' &lt;ref&gt;[Lenin, &quot;The State and Revolution&quot;, Selected Works, FLPH, Mos- cow, 1952, Vol. 2, Part 1, p. 302.]&lt;/ref&gt;.<br /> <br /> In socialist society, the differences between workers and peasants, between town and country, and between manual and mental labourers still remain, bourgeois rights are not yet completely abolished, it is not possible &quot;at once to eliminate the other injustice, which consists in the distribution of articles of consumption ‘according to the amount of labour performed’ (and not according to needs)&quot;, and therefore differences in wealth still exist. [Ibid., p. 296.]<br /> <br /> The disappearance of these differences, phenomena and bourgeois rights can only be gradual and long drawn-out. As Marx said, only after these differences have vanished and bourgeois rights have completely disappeared will it be possible to realize full communism with its principle, &quot;from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs&quot;.<br /> <br /> Marxism-Leninism and the practice of the Soviet Union, China and other socialist countries all teach us that socialist society covers a very, very long historical stage. Throughout this stage, the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat goes on and the question of &quot;who will win&quot; between the roads of capitalism and socialism remains, as does the danger of restoration of capitalism.<br /> <br /> In its Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement dated June 14, 1963, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China states:<br /> <br /> For a very long historical period after the proletariat takes power, class struggle continues as an objective law independent of man’s will, differing only in form from what it was before the taking of power.<br /> <br /> After the October Revolution, Lenin pointed out a number of times that:<br /> <br /> a) The overthrown exploiters always try in a thousand and one ways to recover the &quot;paradise&quot; they have been deprived of.<br /> <br /> b) New elements of capitalism are constantly and spontaneously generated in the petty-bourgeois atmosphere.<br /> <br /> c) Political degenerates and new bourgeois elements may emerge in the ranks of the working class and among government functionaries as a result of bourgeois influence and the pervasive, corrupting influence of the petty bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> d) The external conditions for the continuance of class struggle within a socialist society are encirclement by international capitalism, the imperialists’ threat of armed intervention and their subversive activities to accomplish peaceful disintegration.<br /> <br /> Life has confirmed these conclusions of Lenin’s.<br /> <br /> In socialist society, the overthrown bourgeoisie and other reactionary classes remain strong for quite a long time, and indeed in certain respects are quite powerful. They have a thousand and one links with the international bourgeoisie. They are not reconciled to their defeat and stubbornly continue to engage in trials of strength with the proletariat. They conduct open and hidden struggles against the proletariat in every field.<br /> <br /> Constantly parading such signboards as support for socialism, the Soviet system, the Communist Party and Marxism-Leninism, they work to undermine socialism and restore capitalism. Politically, they persist for a long time as a force antagonistic to the proletariat and constantly attempt to overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat. They sneak into the government organs, public organizations, economic departments and cultural and educational institutions so as to resist or usurp the leadership of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> Economically, they employ every means to damage socialist ownership by the whole people and socialist collective ownership and to develop the forces of capitalism. In the ideological, cultural and educational fields, they counterpose the bourgeois world outlook to the proletarian world outlook and try to corrupt the proletariat and other working people with bourgeois ideology.<br /> <br /> The collectivization of agriculture turns individual into collective farmers and provides favourable conditions for the thorough remoulding of the peasants. However, until collective ownership advances to ownership by the whole people and until the remnants of private economy disappear completely, the peasants inevitably retain some of the inherent characteristics of small producers. In these circumstances spontaneous capitalist tendencies are inevitable, the soil for the growth of new rich peasants still exists and polarization among the peasants may still occur.<br /> <br /> The activities of the bourgeoisie as described above, its corrupting effects in the political, economic, ideological and cultural and educational fields, the existence of spontaneous capitalist tendencies among urban and rural small producers, and the influence of the remaining bourgeois rights and the force of habit of the old society all constantly breed political degenerates in the ranks of the working class and Party and government organizations, new bourgeois elements and embezzlers and grafters in state enterprises owned by the whole people and new bourgeois intellectuals in the cultural and educational institutions and intellectual circles.<br /> <br /> These new bourgeois elements and these political degenerates attack socialism in collusion with the old bourgeois elements and elements of other exploiting classes which have been overthrown but not eradicated. The political degenerates entrenched in the leading organs are particularly dangerous, for they support and shield the bourgeois elements in organs at lower levels.<br /> <br /> As long as imperialism exists, the proletariat in the socialist countries will have to struggle both against the bourgeoisie at home and against international imperialism. Imperialism will seize every opportunity and try to undertake armed intervention against the socialist countries or to bring about their peaceful disintegration. It will do its utmost to destroy the socialist countries or to make them degenerate into capitalist countries. The international class struggle will inevitably find its reflection within the socialist countries.<br /> <br /> Lenin said:<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The transition from capitalism to Communism represents an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch has terminated, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope is converted into attempts at restoration.<br /> <br /> ''[Lenin, &quot;The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky&quot;, Selected Works, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, Part 2, p. 61.]''}}<br /> <br /> He also pointed out:<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The abolition of classes requires a long, difficult and stubborn class struggle, which after the overthrow of the power of capital, after the destruction of the bourgeois state, after the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, does not disappear (as the vulgar representatives of the old Socialism and the old Social-Democracy imagine), but merely changes its forms and in many respects becomes more fierce.<br /> <br /> ''[Lenin, &quot;Greetings to the Hungarian Workers&quot;, Selected Works, FPLH, Moscow, Vol. 2, Part 2, pp. 210-11.]''}}<br /> <br /> Throughout the stage of socialism the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the political, economic, ideological and cultural and educational fields cannot be stopped. It is a protracted, repeated, tortuous and complex struggle. Like the waves of the sea it sometimes rises high and sometimes subsides, is now fairly calm and now very turbulent. It is a struggle that decides the fate of a socialist society. Whether a socialist society will advance to communism or revert to capitalism depends upon the outcome of this protracted struggle.<br /> <br /> The class struggle in socialist society is inevitably reflected in the Communist Party. The bourgeoisie and international imperialism both understand that in order to make a socialist country degenerate into a capitalist country, it is first necessary to make the Communist Party degenerate into a revisionist party.<br /> <br /> The old and new bourgeois elements, the old and new rich peasants ad the degenerate elements of all sorts constitute the social basis of revisionism, and they use every possible means to find agents within the Communist Party. The existence of bourgeois influence is the internal source of revisionism and surrender to imperialist pressure the external source.<br /> <br /> Throughout the stage of socialism, there is inevitable struggle between Marxism-Leninism and various kinds of opportunism – mainly revisionism -- in the Communist Parties of socialist countries. The characteristic of this revisionism is that, denying the existence of classes and class struggle, it sides with the bourgeoisie in attacking the proletariat and turns the dictatorship of the proletariat into the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> In the light of the experience of the international working- class movement and in accordance with the objective law of class struggle, the founders of Marxism pointed out that the transition from capitalism, from class to classless society, must depend on the dictatorship of the proletariat and that there is no other road.<br /> <br /> Marx said that<br /> <br /> {{Quote|&quot;the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat&quot;.<br /> <br /> ''[&quot;Marx to J. Wedemeyer, March 5, 1852&quot;, Selected Works of Marx and Engels, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, p. 452.]''}}<br /> <br /> He also said:<br /> <br /> {{Quote|Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> ''[Marx, &quot;Critique of the Gotha Programme&quot;, Selected Works of Marx and Engels, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, pp. 32-33.]''}}<br /> <br /> The development of socialist society is a process of uninterrupted revolution. In explaining revolutionary socialism Marx said:<br /> <br /> {{Quote|This socialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations.<br /> <br /> ''[Marx, &quot;The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850&quot;, Selected Works of Marx and Engels, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 1, p. 223.]''}}<br /> <br /> In his struggle against the opportunism of the Second International, Lenin creatively expounded and developed Marx’s theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. He pointed out:<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The dictatorship of the proletariat is not the end of class struggle but its continuation in new forms. The dictatorship of the proletariat is class struggle waged by a proletariat which has been victorious and has taken political power in its hands against a bourgeoisie that has been defeated but not destroyed, a bourgeoisie that has not vanished, not ceased to offer resistance, but that has intensified its resistance.<br /> <br /> ''[Lenin, &quot;Foreword to the Speech ‘On Deception of the People with Slogans of Freedom and Equality’&quot;, Alliance of the Working Class and the Peasantry, FLPH, Moscow, 1959, p. 302.]''}}<br /> <br /> He also said:<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The dictatorship of the proletariat is a persistent struggle – bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative – against the forces and traditions of the old society.<br /> <br /> ''[Lenin: &quot;‘Left-Wing’ Communism, an Infantile Disorder&quot;, Selected Works, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, Part 2, p. 367.]''}}<br /> <br /> In his celebrated work On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People and in other works, Comrade Mao Tse-tung, basing hismelf on the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism and the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat, gives a comprehensive and systematic analysis of classes and class struggle in socialist society, and creatively develops the Marxist-Leninist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> Comrade Mao Tse-tung examines the objective laws of socialist society from the viewpoint of materialist dialectics. He points out that the universal law of the unity and struggle of opposites operating both in the natural world and in human society is applicable to socialist society, too.<br /> <br /> In socialist society, class contradictions still remain and class struggle does not die out after the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production. The struggle between the two roads of socialism and capitalism runs through the entire stage of socialism. To ensure the success of socialist construction and to prevent the restoration of capitalism, it is necessary to carry the socialist revolution through to the end on the political, economic, ideological and cultural fronts. The complete victory of socialism cannot be brought about in one or two generations; to resolve this question thoroughly requires five to ten generations or even longer.<br /> <br /> Comrade Mao Tse-tung stresses the fact that two types of social contradictions exist in socialist society, namely, contradictions among the people and contradictions between ourselves and the enemy, and that the former are very numerous. Only by distinguishing between the two types of contradictions, which are different in nature, and by adopting different measures to handle them correctly is it possible to unite the people, who constitute more than 90 per cent of the population, defeat their enemies, who constitute only a few per cent, and consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> The dictatorship of the proletariat is the basic guarantee for the consolidation and development of socialism, for the victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie and of socialism in the struggle between the two roads.<br /> <br /> Only by emancipating all mankind can the proletariat ultimately emancipate itself. The historical task of the dictatorship of the proletariat has two aspects, one internal and the other international.<br /> <br /> The internal task consists mainly of completely abolishing all the exploiting classes, developing socialist economy to the maximum, enhancing the communist consciousness of the masses, abolishing the differences between ownership by the whole people and collective ownership, between workers and peasants, between town and country and between mental and manual labourers, eliminating any possibility of the re-emergence of classes and the restoration of capitalism and providing conditions for the realization of a communist society with its principle, &quot;from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs&quot;.<br /> <br /> The international task consists mainly of preventing attacks by international imperialism (including armed intervention and disintegration by peaceful means) and of giving support to the world revolution until the peoples of all countries finally abolish imperialism, capitalism and the system of exploitation.<br /> <br /> Before the fulfilment of both tasks and before the advent of a full communist society, the dictatorship of the proletariat is absolutly necessary.<br /> <br /> Judging from the actual situation today, the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat are still far from accomplished in any of the socialist countries. In all socialist countries without exception, there are classes and class struggle, the struggle between the socialist and the capitalist roads, the question of carrying the socialist revolution through to the end and the question of preventing the restoration of capitalism.<br /> <br /> All the socialist countries still have a very long way to go before the differences between ownership by the whole people and collective ownership, between workers and peasants, between town and country and between mental and manual labourers are eliminated, before all classes and class differences are eliminated and a communist society with its principle, &quot;from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs&quot;, is realized. Therefore, it is necessary for all the socialist countries to uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> In these circumstances, the abolition of the dictatorship of the proletariat by the revisionist Khrushchov clique is nothing but a betrayal of socialism and communism. <br /> == Antagonistic Classes and Class Struggle Exist in the Soviet Union ==<br /> In announcing the abolition of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union, the revisionist Khrushchov clique base themselves mainly on the argument that antagonistic classes have been eliminated and that class struggle no longer exists.<br /> <br /> But what is the actual situation in the Soviet Union? Are there really no antagonistic classes and no class struggle there?<br /> <br /> Following the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat was established in the Soviet Union, capitalist private ownership was destroyed and socialist ownership by the whole people and socialist collective ownership were established through the nationalization of industry and the collectivization of agriculture, and great achievements in socialist construction were scored during several decades. All this constituted an indelible victory of tremendous historic significance won by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet people under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin.<br /> <br /> However, the old bourgeoisie and other exploiting classes which had been overthrown in the Soviet Union were not eradicated and survived after industry was nationalized and agriculture collectivized. The political and ideological influence of the bourgeoisie remained. Spontaneous capitalist tendencies continued to exist both in the city and in the countryside. New bourgeois elements and kulaks were still incessantly generated. Throughout the long intervening period, the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and the struggle between the socialist and capitalist roads have continued in the political, economic and ideolgical spheres.<br /> <br /> As the Soviet Union was the first, and at the time the only, country to build socialism and had no foreign experience to go by, and as Stalin departed from Marxist-Leninist dialectics in his understanding of the laws of class struggle in socialist society, he prematurely declared after agriculture was basically collectivized that there were &quot;no longer antagonistic classes&quot; &lt;ref&gt;''[1: Stalin, &quot;On the Draft Constitution of the U.S.S.R&quot;, Problems of Leninism, FLPH, Moscow, 1954, p. 690.]''&lt;/ref&gt; in the Soviet Union and that it was &quot;free of class con- flicts&quot; &lt;ref&gt;''[2: Stalin, &quot;Report to the Eighteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.) on the Work of the Central Committee&quot;, Problems of Leninism, FLPH, Moscow, p. 777.]''&lt;/ref&gt;, one-sidely stressed the internal homogeneity of socialist society and overlooked its contradictions, failed to rely upon the working class and the masses in the struggle against the forces of capitalism and regarded the possibility of restoration of capitalism as associated only with armed attack by international imperialism. This was wrong both in theory and in practice.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, Stalin remained a great Marxist-Leninist. As long as he led the Soviet Party and state, he held fast to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist course, pursued a Marxist-Leninist line and ensured the Soviet Union’s victorious advance along the road of socialism.<br /> <br /> Ever since Khrushchov seized the leadership of the Soviet Party and state, he has pushed through a whole series of revisionist policies which have greatly hastened the growth of the forces of capitalism and again sharpened the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and the struggle between the roads of socialism and capitalism in the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> Scanning the reports in Soviet newspapers over the last few years, one finds numerous examples demonstrating not only the presence of many elements of the old exploiting classes in Soviet society, but also the generation of new bourgeois elements on a large scale and the acceleration of class polarization.<br /> <br /> Let us first look at the activities of various bourgeois elements in the Soviet enterprises owned by the whole people.<br /> <br /> Leading functionaries in some state-owned factories and their gangs abuse their positions and amass large fortunes by using the equipment and materials of the factories to set up &quot;underground workshops&quot; for private production, selling the products illicitly and dividing the spoils. Here are some examples.<br /> <br /> {{Quote|In a Leningrad plant producing military items, the leading functionaries placed their own men in &quot;all key posts&quot; and &quot;turned the state enterprise into a private one&quot;. They illictly engaged in the production of non-military goods and from the sale of fountain pens alone embezzled 1,200,000 old roubles in three years. Among these people was a man who &quot;was a Nepman...in the 1920’s&quot; and had been a &quot;lifelong thief&quot;.<br /> <br /> ''[Krasnaya Zvezda, May 19, 1962.]''}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|In a silk-weaving mill in Uzbekistan, the manager ganged up with the chief engineer, the chief accountant, the chief of the supply and marketing section, heads of workshops and others, and they all became &quot;new-born entrepreneurs&quot;. They purchased more than ten tons of artificial and pure silk through various illegal channels in order to manufacture goods which &quot;did not pass through the accounts&quot;. They employed workers without going through the proper procedures and enforced &quot;a twelve-hour working day&quot;.<br /> <br /> ''[Pravda Vostoka, Oct. 8, 1963.]''}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The manager of a furniture factory in Kharkov set up an &quot;illegal knitwear workshop&quot; and carried on secret operations inside the factory. This man &quot;had several wives, several cars, several houses, 176 neck-ties, about a hundred shirts and dozens of suits&quot;. He was also a big gambler at the horse-races.<br /> <br /> ''[Pravda Ukrainy, May 18, 1962.]''}}<br /> <br /> Such people do not operate all by themselves. They invariably work hand in glove with functionaries in the state departments in charge of supplies and in the commercial and other departments. They have their own men in the police and judicial departments who protect them and act as their agents. Even high-ranking officials in the state organs support and shield them. Here are a few examples.<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The chief of the workshops affiliated to a Moscow psychoneurological dispensary and his gang set up an &quot;underground enter- prise&quot;, and by bribery &quot;obtained fifty-eight knitting machines&quot; and a large amount of raw material. They entered into business relations with &quot;fifty-two factories, handicraft co-operatives and collective farms&quot; and made three million roubles in a few years. They bribed functionaries of the Department for Combating Theft of Socialist Property and Speculation, controllers, inspectors, instructors and others.<br /> <br /> ''[Izvestia, Oct. 20, 1963, and Izvestia Sunday Supplement, No. 12, 1964.]''}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The manager of a machinery plant in the Russian Federation, together with the deputy manager of a second machinery plant and other functionaries, or forty-three persons in all, stole more than nine hundred looms and sold them to factories in Central Asia, Kazakhstan, the Caucasus and other places, whose leading functionaries used them for illicit production.<br /> <br /> ''[Komsomolskaya Pravda, Aug. 9, 1963.]''}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|In the Kirghiz SSR, a gang of over forty embezzlers and grafters, having gained control of two factories, organized underground production and plundered more than thirty million roubles’ worth of state property. The gang included the Chairman of the Planning Commission of the Republic, a Vice-Minister of Commerce, seven bureau chiefs and division chiefs of the Republic’s Council of Ministers, National Economic Council and State Control Commission, as well as &quot;a big kulak who had fled from exile&quot;.<br /> <br /> ''[Sovietskaya Kirghizia, Jan. 9, 1962.]''}}<br /> <br /> These examples show that the factories which have fallen into the clutches of such degenerates are socialist enterprises only in name, that in fact they have become capitalist enterprises by which these persons enrich themselves. The relationship of such persons to the workers has turned into one between exploiters and exploited, between oppressors and oppressed.<br /> <br /> Are not such degenerates who possess and make use of means of production to exploit the labour of others out-and-out bourgeois elements? Are not their acomplices in government organizations, who work hand in glove with them, participate in many types of expolitation, engage in embezzlement, accept bribes, and share the spoils, also out-and-out bourgeois elements?<br /> <br /> Obviously all these people belong to a class that is antagonistic to the proletariat – they belong to the bourgeoisie. Their activities against socialism are definitely class struggle with the bourgeoisie attacking the proletariat.<br /> <br /> Now let us look at the activities of various kulak elements on the collective farms.<br /> <br /> Some leading collective-farm functionaries and their gangs steal and speculate at will, freely squander public money and fleece the collective farmers. Here are some examples.<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The chairman of a collective farm in Uzbekistan &quot;held the whole village in terror&quot;. All the important posts on this farm &quot;were occupied by his in-laws and other relatives and friends&quot;. He squandered &quot;over 132,000 roubles of the collective farm for his personal ‘needs’&quot;. He had a car, two motor-cycles and three wives, each with &quot;a house of her own&quot;.<br /> <br /> ''[Selskaya Zhizn, June 26, 1962.]''}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The chairman of a collective farm in the Kursk Region regarded the farm as his &quot;heredetary estate&quot;. He conspired with its accountant, cashier, chief warehouse-keeper, agronomist, general store-manager and others. Shielding each other, they &quot;fleeced the collective farmers&quot; and pocketed more than a hundred thousand roubles in a few years.<br /> <br /> ''[Ekonomicheskaya Gazeta, No. 35, 1963.]''}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The chairman of a collective farm in the Ukraine made over 50,000 roubles at its expense by forging purchase certificates and cash-account orders in collusion with its woman accountant, who had been praised for keeping &quot;model accounts&quot; and whose deeds had been displayed at the Moscow Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy.<br /> <br /> ''[Selskaya Zhizn, Aug. 14, 1963.]''}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The chairman of a collective farm in the Alma-Ata Region specialized in commercial speculation. He bought &quot;fruit juice in the Ukraine or Uzbekistan, and sugar and alcohol from Djambul&quot;, processed them and then sold the wine at very high prices in many localities. In this farm a winery was created with a capacity of over a million litres a year, its speculative commercial network spread throughout the Kazakhstan SSR, and commercial speculation became one of the farm’s main sources of income.<br /> <br /> ''[Pravda, Jan. 14, 1962.]''}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The chairman of a collective farm in Byelorussia considered him- self &quot;a feudal princeling on the farm&quot; and acted &quot;personally&quot; in all matters. He lived not on the farm but in the city or in his own splendid villa, and was always busy with &quot;various commercial machinations&quot; and &quot;illegal deals&quot;. He bought cattle from the outside, represented them as the products of the collective farm and falsified output figures. And yet &quot;not a few commendatory newspaper reports&quot; had been published about him and he had been called a &quot;model leader&quot;.<br /> <br /> ''[Pravda, Feb. 6, 1961.]''}}<br /> <br /> These examples show that collective farms under the control of such functionaries virtually become their private property. Such men turn socialist collective economic enterprises into economic enterprises of new kulaks. There are often people in their superior organizations who protect them. Their relationship to the collective farmers has likewise become that of oppressors to oppressed, of exploiters to exploited. Are not such neo-exploiters who ride on the backs of the collective farmers one-hund-red-per-cent neo-kulaks?<br /> <br /> Obviously, they all belong to a class that is antagonistic to the proletariat and the labouring farmers, belong to the kulak or rural bourgeois class. Their anti-socialist activities are precisely class struggle with the bourgeoisie attacking the proletariat and the labouring farmers.<br /> <br /> Apart from the bourgeois elements in state enterprises and collective farms, there are many others in both town and country in the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> Some of them set up private enterprises for private production and sale; others organize contractor teams and openly undertake construction jobs for state or co-operative enterprises; still others open private hotels.<br /> <br /> {{Quote|A &quot;Soviet woman capitalist&quot; in Leningrad hired workers to make nylon blouses for sale, and her &quot;daily income amounted to over 700 new roubles&quot;.<br /> <br /> ''[Izvestia, April 9, 1963.]''}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The owner of a workshop in the Kursk Region made felt boots for sale at speculative prices. He had in his possession 540 pairs of felt boots, eight kilogrammes of gold coins, 3,000 metres of high-grade textiles, 20 carpets, 1,200 kilogrammes of wool and many other valuables.<br /> <br /> ''[Sovietskaya Rossiya, Oct. 9, 1963.]''}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|A private entrepeneur in the Gomel Region &quot;hired workers and artisans&quot; and in the course of two years secured contracts for the construction and overhauling of furnaces in twelve factories at a high price.<br /> <br /> ''[Izvestia, Oct. 18, 1960.]''}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|In the Orenburg Region there are &quot;hundreds of private hotels and trans-shipment points&quot;, and &quot;the money of the collective farms and the state is continuously streaming into the pockets of the hostlery owners&quot;.<br /> <br /> ''[Selskaya Zhizn, July 17, 1963.]''}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|Some engage in commercial speculation, making tremendous profits through buying cheap and selling dear or bringing goods from far away. In Moscow there are a great many speculators engaged in the re-sale of agricultural produce. They &quot;bring to Moscow tons of citrus fruit, apples and vegetables and re-sell them at speculative prices&quot;. &quot;These profit-grabbers are provided with every facility, with market inns, store-rooms and other services at their disposal&quot;.<br /> <br /> ''[Selskaya Zhizn, July 17, 1963.]''}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|In the Krasnodar Territory, a speculator set up her own agency and &quot;employed twelve salesmen and two stevedores&quot;. She transported &quot;thousands of hogs, hundreds of quintals of stolen slag bricks, whole wagons of glass&quot; and other building materials from the city to the villages. She reaped high profits out of each re-sale.<br /> <br /> ''[Ekonomicheskaya Gazeta, No. 27, 1963.]''}}<br /> <br /> {{Quote|Others specialize as brokers and middlemen. They have wide contacts and through them one can get anything, in return for a bribe. There was a broker in Leningrad who &quot;though he is not the Minister of Trade, controls all the stocks&quot;, and &quot;though he holds no post on the railway, disposes of wagons&quot;. He could obtain &quot;things the stocks of which are strictly controlled, from outside the stocks&quot;. &quot;All the store-houses in Leningrad are at his service.&quot; For delivering goods, he received huge &quot;bonuses&quot; – 700,000 roubles from one timber combine in 1960 alone. In Leningrad, there is &quot;a whole group&quot; of such brokers.<br /> <br /> ''[Literaturnaya Gazeta, July 27 and Aug. 17, 1963]''}}<br /> <br /> These private entrepreneurs and speculators are engaged in the most naked capitalist exploitation. Isn’t it clear that they belong to the bourgeoisie, the class antagonistic to the proletariat?<br /> <br /> Actually the Soviet press itself calls these people &quot;Soviet capitalists&quot;, &quot;new-born entrepreneurs&quot;, &quot;private entrepreneurs&quot;, &quot;newly-emerged kulaks&quot;, &quot;speculators&quot;, &quot;exploiters&quot;, etc. Aren’t the revisionist Khrushchov clique contradicting themselves when they assert that antagonistic classes do not exist in the Soviet Union?<br /> <br /> The facts cited above are only a part of those published in the Soviet press. They are enough to shock people, but there are many more which have not been published, many bigger and more serious cases which are covered up and shielded. We have quoted the above data in order to answer the question whether there are antagonistic classes and class struggle in the Soviet Union. These data are readily available and even the revisionist Khrushchov clique are unable to deny them.<br /> <br /> These data suffice to show that the unbridled activities of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat are widespread in the Soviet Union, in the city as well as the countryside, in industry as well as agriculture, in the sphere of production as well as the sphere of circulation, all the way from the economic departments to Party and government organizations, and from the grass-roots to the higher leading bodies. These anti-socialist activities are nothing if not the sharp class struggle of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.<br /> <br /> It is not strange that attacks on socialism should be made in a socialist country by old and new bourgeois elements. There is nothing terrifying about this so long as the leadership of the Party and state remains a Marxist-Leninist one. But in the Soviet Union today, the gravity of the situation lies in the fact that the revisionist Khrushchov clique have usurped the leadership of the Soviet Party and state and that a privileged bourgeois stratum has emerged in Soviet society.<br /> <br /> We shall deal with this problem in the following section.<br /> <br /> == The Soviet Privileged Stratum and the Revisionist Khrushchov Clique ==<br /> The privileged stratum in contemporary Soviet society is composed of degenerate elements from among the leading cadres of Party and government organizations, enterprises and farms as well as bourgeois intellectuals; it stands in opposition to the workers, the peasants and the overwhelming majority of the intellectuals and cadres of the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> Lenin pointed out soon after the October Revolution that bourgeois and petty-bourgeis ideologies and force of habit were encircling and influencing the proletariat from all directions and wre corrupting certain of its sections. This circumstance led to the emergence from among the Soviet officials and functionaries both of bureaucrats alienated from the masses and of new bourgeois elements. Lenin also pointed out that although the high salaries paid to the bourgeois technical specialists staying on to work for the Soviet regime were necessary, they were having a corrupting influence on it.<br /> <br /> Therefore, Lenin laid great stress on waging persistent struggles against the influence of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideologies, on arousing the broad masses to take part in government work, on ceaselessly exposing and purging bureaucrats and new bourgeois elements in the Soviet organs, and on creating conditions that would bar the existence and reproduction of the bourgeoisie. Lenin pointed out sharply that &quot;without a systematic and determined struggle to improve the apparatus, we shall perish before the basis of socialism is created.&quot; &lt;ref&gt;''[Lenin, &quot;Plan of the Pamphlet ‘On the Food Tax’&quot;, Collected Works, 4th Russian ed., Moscow, Vol. 32, p. 301.]''&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> At the same time, he laid great stress on adherence to the principle of the Paris Commune in wage policy, that is, all public servants were to be paid wages corresponding to those of the workers and only bourgeois specialists were to be paid high salaries. From the October Revolution to the period of Soviet economic rehabilitation, Lenin’s directives were in the main observed; the leading personell of the Party and government organizations and enterprises and Party members among the specialists received salaries roughly equivalent to the wages of workers.<br /> <br /> At that time, the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union adopted a number of measures in the sphere of politics and ideology and in the system of distribution to prevent leading cadres in any department from abusing their powers or degenerating morally or politically.<br /> <br /> The Communist Party of the Soviet Union headed by Stalin adhered to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the road of socialism and waged a staunch struggle against the forces of capitalism. Stalin’s struggles against the Trotskyites, Zinovievites and Bukharinites wre in essence a reflection within the Party of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and of the struggle between the two roads of socialism and capitalism. Victory in these struggles smashed the vain hopes of the bourgeoisie to restore capitalism in the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> It cannot be denied that before Stalin’s death high salaries were already being paid to certain groups and that some cadres had already degenerated and become bourgeois elements. The Central Committee of the CPSU pointed out in its report to the 19th Party Congress in October 1952 that degeneration and corruption had appeared in certain Party organizations.<br /> <br /> The leaders of these organizations had turned them into small communities composed entirely of their own people, &quot;setting their group interests higher than the interests of the Party and the state&quot;. Some executives of industrial enterprises &quot;forget that the enterprises entrusted to their charge are state enterprises, and try to turn them into their own private domain&quot;.<br /> <br /> &quot;Instead of safeguarding the common husbandry of the collective farms&quot;, some Party and Soviet functionaries and some cadres in agricultural departments &quot;engage in filching collective-farm property&quot;. In the cultural, artistic and scientific fields too, works attacking and smearing the socialist system had appeared and a monopolistic &quot;Arakcheyev regime&quot; had emerged among the scientists.<br /> <br /> Since Khrushchov usurped the leadership of the Soviet Party and state, there has been a fundamental change in the state of the class struggle in the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> Khrushchov has carried out a series of revisionist policies serving the interests of the bourgeoisie and rapidly swelling the forces of capitalism in the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> On the pretext of &quot;combating the personality cult&quot;, Khrushchov has defamed the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist system and thus in fact paved the way for the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union. In completely negating Stalin, he has in fact negated Marxism-Leninism which was upheld by Stalin and opened the floodgates for the revisionist deluge.<br /> <br /> Khrushchov has substituted &quot;material incentive&quot; for the socialist principle, &quot;from each according to his ability, to each according to his work&quot;. He has widened, and not narrowed, the gap between the incomes of a small minority and those of the workers, peasants and ordinary intellectuals. He has supported the degenerates in leading positions, encouraging them to become even more unscrupulous in abusing their powers and to appropriate the fruits of labour of the Soviet people. Thus he has accelerated the polarization of classes in Soviet society.<br /> <br /> Khrushchov sabotages the socialist planned economy, applies the capitalist principle of profit, develops capitalist free competition and undermines socialist ownership by the whole people.<br /> <br /> Khrushchov attacks the system of socialist agricultural planning, describing it as &quot;bureaucratic&quot; and &quot;unnecessary&quot;. Eager to learn from the big proprietors of American farms, he is encouraging capitalist management, fostering a kulak economy and undermining the socialist collective economy.<br /> <br /> Khrushchov is peddling bourgeois ideology, bourgeois liberty, equality, fraternity and humanity, inculcating bourgeois idealism and metaphysics and the reactionary ideas of bourgeois individualism, humanism and pacifism among the Soviet people, and debasing socialist morality. The rotten bourgeois culture of the West is now fashionable in the Soviet Union, and socialist culture is ostracized and attacked.<br /> <br /> Under the signboard of &quot;peaceful coexistence&quot;, Khrushchov has been colluding with U.S. imperialism, wrecking the socialist camp and the international communist movement, opposing the revolutionary struggles of the oppressed peoples and nations, practising great-power chauvinism and national egoism and betraying proletarian internationalism. All this is being done for the protection of the vested interests of a handful of people, which he places above the fundamental interests of the peoples of the Soviet Union, the socialist camp and the whole world.<br /> <br /> The line Khrushchov pursues is a revisionist line through and through. Guided by this line, not only have the old bourgeois elements run wild but new bourgeois elements have appeared in large numbers among the leading cadres of the Soviet Party and government, the chiefs of state enterprises and collective farms, and the higher intellectuals in the fields of culture, art, science and technology.<br /> <br /> In the Soviet Union at present, not only have the new bourgeois elements increased in number as never before, but their social status has fundamentally changed. Before Khrushchov came to power, they did not occupy the ruling position in Soviet society. Their activities were restricted in many ways and they were subject to attack. But since Khrushchov took over, usurping the leadership of the Party and the state step by step, the new bourgeois elements have gradually risen to the ruling position in the Party and government and in the economic, cultural and other departments, and formed a privileged stratum in Soviet society.<br /> <br /> This privileged stratum is the principal component of the bourgeoisie in the Soviet Union today and the main social basis of the revisionist Khrushchov clique. The revisionist Khrushchov clique are the political representatives of the Soviet bourgeoisie, and particularly of its privileged stratum.<br /> <br /> The revisionist Khrushchov clique have carried out one purge after another and replaced one group of cadres after another throughout the country, from the central to the local bodies, from leading Party and government organizations to economic and cultural and educational departments, dismissing those they do not trust and placing their protégés in leading posts.<br /> <br /> Take the Central Committee of the CPSU as an example. The statistics show that seventy per cent of the members of the Central Committee of the CPSU who were elected at its 19th Congress in 1952 were purged in the course of the 20th and 22nd Congresses held respectively in 1956 and 1961. And nearly fifty per cent of the members who were elected at the 20th Congress were purged at the time of the 22nd Congress.<br /> <br /> Or take the local organizations. On the eve of the 22nd Congress, on the pretext of &quot;renewing the cadres&quot;, the revisionist Khrushchov clique, according to incomplete statistics, removed from office forty-five per cent of the members of the Party Central Committees of the Union Republics and of the Party Committees of the Territories and Regions, and forty per cent of the Municipal and District Party Committees. In 1963, on the pretext of dividing the Party into &quot;industrial&quot; and &quot;agricultural&quot; Party committees, they further replaced more than half the members of the Central Committees of the Union Republics and of the Regional Party Committees.<br /> <br /> Through this series of changes the Soviet privileged stratum has gained control of the Party, the government and other important organizations.<br /> <br /> The members of this pivileged stratum have converted the function of serving the masses into the privilege of dominating them. They are abusing their powers over the means of production and of livelyhood for the private benefit of their small clique.<br /> <br /> The members of this privileged stratum appropriate the fruits of the Soviet people’s labour and pocket incomes that are dozens or even a hundred times those of the average Soviet worker and peasant. They not only secure high incomes in the form of high salaries, high awards, high royalties and a great variety of personal subsidies, but also use their privileged position to appropriate public property by graft and bribery. Completely divorced from the working people of the Soviet Union, they live the parasitical and decadent life of the bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> The members of this privileged stratum have become utterly degenerate ideologically, have completely departed from the revolutionary traditions of the Bolshevik Party and discarded the lofty ideals of the Soviet working class. They are opposed to Marxism-Leninism and socialism. They betray the revolution and forbid others to make revolution. Their sole concern is to consolidate their economic position and political rule. All their activities revolve around the private interests of their own privileged stratum.<br /> <br /> People have seen how in Yugoslavia, although the Tito clique still displays the banner of &quot;socialism&quot;, a bureaucratic bourgeoisie opposed to the Yugoslav people has gradually come into being since the Tito clique took the road of revisionism, transforming the Yugoslav state from a dictatorship of the proletariat into the dictatorship of the bureaucrat bourgeoisie and its socialist public economy into state capitalism. Now people see the Khrushchov clique taking the road already travelled by the Tito clique. Khrushchov looks to Belgrade as his Mecca, saying again and again that he will learn from the Tito clique’s experience and declaring that he and the Tito clique &quot;belong to one and the same idea and are guided by the same theory&quot;. &lt;ref&gt;'[N. S. Khrushchov, Interview with Foreign Correspondents at Brioni in Yugoslavia, Aug. 28, 1963.]''&lt;/ref&gt; This is not at all surprising.<br /> <br /> As a result of Khrushchov’s revisionism, the first socialist country in the world built by the great Soviet people with their blood and sweat is now facing an unprecedented danger of capitalist restoration.<br /> <br /> The Khrushchov clique are spreading the tale that &quot;there are no longer antagonistic classes and class struggle in the Soviet Union&quot; in order to cover up the facts about their own ruthless class struggle against the Soviet people.<br /> <br /> The Soviet privileged stratum represented by the revisionist Khrushchov clique constitutes only a few per cent of the Soviet population. Among the Soviet cadres its numbers are also small. It stands diametrically opposed to the Soviet people, who constitute more than 90 per cent of the total population, and to the great majority of the Soviet cadres and Communists. The contradiction between the Soviet people and this privileged stratum is now the principal contradiction inside the Soviet Union, and it is an irreconcilable and antagonistic class contradiction.<br /> <br /> The glorious Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which was built by Lenin, and the great Soviet people displayed epoch-making revolutionary initiative in the October Socialist Revolution, they showed their heroism and stamina in defeating the White Guards and the armed intervention by more than a dozen imperialist countries, they scored unprecedently brilliant achievements in the struggle for industrialization and agricultural collectivization, and they won a tremendous victory in the Patriotic War against the German fascists and saved all mankind. Even under the rule of the Khrushchov clique, the mass of the members of the CPSU and the Soviet people are carrying on the glorious revolutionary traditions nurtured by Lenin and Stalin, and they still uphold socialism and aspire to communism.<br /> <br /> The broad masses of the Soviet workers, collective farmers and intellectuals are seething with discontent against the oppression and exploitation practised by the privileged stratum. They have come to see ever more clearly the revisionist features of the Khrushchov clique which is betraying socialism and restoring capitalism.<br /> <br /> Among the ranks of the Soviet cadres, there are many who still persist in the revolutionary stand of the proletariat, adhere to the road of socialism and firmly oppose Khrushchov’s revisionism. The broad masses of the Soviet people, of Communists and cadres are using various means to resist and oppose the revisionist line of the Khrushchov clique, so that the revisionist Khrushchov clique cannot so easily bring about the restoration of capitalism. The great Soviet people are fighting to defend the glorious traditions of the Great October Revolution, to preserve the great gains of socialism and to smash the plot for the restoration of capitalism. <br /> == Refutation of the So-Called State of the Whole People ==<br /> At the 22nd Congress of the CPSU Khrushchov openly raised the banner of opposition to the dictatorship of the proleatriat, announcing the replacement of the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat by the &quot;state of the whole people&quot;. It is written in the Programme of the CPSU that the dictatorship of the proletariat &quot;has ceased to be indispensable in the U.S.S.R.&quot; and that &quot;the state, which arose as a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, has, in the new, contemporary stage, become a state of the entire people&quot;.<br /> <br /> Anyone with a little knowledge of Marxism-Leninism knows that the concept of the state is a class concept. Lenin pointed out that &quot;the distinguishing feature of the state is the existence of a separate class of people in whose hands power is concentrated&quot;. &lt;ref&gt;''[Lenin, &quot;The Economic Content of Narodism and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve’s Book&quot;, Collected Works, FLPH, Moscow, 1960, Vol. 1, p. 419.]''&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The state is a weapon of class struggle, a machine by means of which one class represses another. Every state is the dictatorship of a definite class. So long as the state exists, it cannot possibly stand above class or belong to the whole people.<br /> <br /> The proletariat and its political party have never concealed their views; they say explicitly that the very aim of the proletarian socialist revolution is to overthrow bourgeois rule and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. After the victory of the socialist revolution, the proletariat and its party must strive unremittingly to fulfil the historical tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat and eliminate classes and class differences, so that the state will wither away. It is only the bourgeoisie and its parties which in their attempt to hoodwink the masses try by every means to cover up the class nature of state power and describe the state machinery under their control as being &quot;of the whole people&quot; and &quot;above class&quot;.<br /> <br /> The fact that Khrushchov has announced the abolition of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union and advanced the thesis of the &quot;state of the whole people&quot; demonstrates that he has replaced the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the state by bourgeois falsehoods.<br /> <br /> When Marxist-Leninists criticized their fallacies, the revisionist Khrushchov clique hastily defended themselves and tried hard to invent a so-called theoretical basis for the &quot;state of the whole people&quot;. They now assert that the historical period of the dictatorship of the proletariat mentioned by Marx and Lenin refers only to the transition from capitalism to the first stage of communism and not to its higher stage. They further assert that &quot;the dictatorship of the proletariat will cease to be necessary before the state withers away&quot; and that after the end of the dictatorship of the proletariat, there is yet another stage, the &quot;state of the whole people&quot;. &lt;ref&gt;''[Pravda editorial board’s article, &quot;Programme for the Building of Communism&quot;, Aug. 18, 1961.]''&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> These are out-and-out sophistries.<br /> <br /> In his Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx advanced the well-known axiom that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the state of the period of transition from capitalism to communism. Lenin gave a clear explanation of this Marxist axiom. He said:<br /> <br /> {{Quote|In his Critique of the Gotha Programme Marx wrote: &quot;Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.&quot; Up to now this axiom has never been disputed by Socialists, and yet it implies the recognition of the existence of the state right up to the time when victorious socialism has grown into complete communism.<br /> <br /> ''[Lenin, &quot;The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up&quot;, Collected Works, International Publishers, New York, 1942, Vol. 19, pp. 269-70.]''}}<br /> <br /> Lenin further said:<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The essence of Marx’s teaching on the state has been mastered only by those who understand that the dictatorship of a single class is necessary not only for the proletariat which has overthrown the bourgeoisie, but also for the entire historical period which separates capitalism from &quot;classless society&quot;, from Communism.<br /> <br /> [Lenin, &quot;The State and Revolution&quot;, Selected Works, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, Part 1, p. 234.]}}<br /> <br /> It is perfectly clear that according to Marx and Lenin, the historical period throughout which the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat exists, is not merely the period of transition to the first stage of communism, as alleged by the revisionist Khrushchov clique, but the entire period of transition from capitalism to &quot;complete communism&quot;, to the time when all class differences will have been eliminated and &quot;classless society&quot; realized, that is to say, to the higher stage of communism.<br /> <br /> It is equally clear that the state in the transition period referred to by Marx and Lenin is the dictatorship of the proletariat and nothing else. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the form of the state in the entire period of transition from capitalism to the higher stage of communism, and also the last form of the state in human history. The withering away of the dictatorship of the proletariat will mean the withering away of the state. Lenin said:<br /> <br /> {{Quote|Marx deduced from the whole history of Socialism and of the political struggle that the state was bound to disappear, and that the transitional form of its disappearance (the transition from state to nonstate) would be the &quot;proletariat organized as the ruling class&quot;.<br /> <br /> ''[Ibid., pp. 256-57.]''}}<br /> <br /> Historically the dictatorship of the proletariat may take different forms from one country to another and from one period to another, but in essence it will remain the same. Lenin said:<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The transition from capitalism to Communism certainly cannot but yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> ''[Ibid, p. 234.]''}}<br /> <br /> It can thus be seen that it is absolutely not the view of Marx and Lenin but an invention of the revisionist Khrushchov that the end of the dictatorship of the proletariat will precede the withering away of the state and will be followed by yet another stage, &quot;the state of the whole people&quot;.<br /> <br /> In arguing for their anti-Marxist-Leninist views, the revisionist Khrushchov clique have taken great pains to find a sentence from Marx and distorting it by quoting it out of context. They have arbitrarily described the future nature of the state (Staatswesen in German) of communist society referred to by Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Programme as the ‘state of communist society’, which is no longer a dictatorship of the proletariat&quot;. &lt;ref&gt;''[M. A. Suslov, Report at the Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU, February 1964 (New Times, English ed., No. 15, 1964, p. 62.]''&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> They gleefully announced that the Chinese would not dare to quote this from Marx. Apparently the revisionist Khrushchov clique think this is very helpful to them.<br /> <br /> As it happens Lenin seems to have foreseen that revisionists would make use of this phrase to distort Marxism. In his Marxism on the State, Lenin gave an excellent explanation of it. He said, &quot;...the dictatorship of the proletariat is a ‘political transition period’... . But Marx goes on to speak of ‘the future nature of the state (gosudarstvennost in Russian, Staatswesen in German) of communist society’!! Thus, there will be a state even in ‘communist society’!! Is there not a contrdiction in this?&quot; Lenin answered, &quot;No.&quot; He then tabulated the three stages in the process of development from the bourgeois state to the withering away of the state:<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The first stage – in bourgeois society, the state is needed by the bourgeoisie – the bourgeois state.<br /> <br /> The second stage – in the period of transition from capitalism to communism, the state is needed by the proletariat – the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> The third stage – in communist society, the state is not necessary, it withers away.}}<br /> <br /> He concluded: &quot;Complete consistency and clarity!!&quot;<br /> <br /> In Lenin’s tabulation, only the bourgeois state, the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the withering away of the state are to be found. By precisely this tabulation Lenin made it clear that when communism is reached the state withers away and becomes non-existent.<br /> <br /> Ironically enough, the revisionist Khrushchov clique also quoted this very passage from Lenin’s Marxism on the State in the course of defending their error. And then they proceeded to make the following idiotic statement:<br /> <br /> {{Quote|In our country the first two periods referred to by Lenin in the opinion quoted already belong to history. In the Soviet Union a state of the whole people – a communist state system, the state of the first phase of communism, has arisen and is developing.<br /> <br /> ''[&quot;From the Party of the Working Class to the Party of the Whole Soviet People&quot;, editorial board’s article of Partyinaya Zhizn, Moscow, No. 8, 1964.]''}}<br /> <br /> If the first two periods referred to by Lenin have already become a thing of the past in the Soviet Union, the state should be withering away, and where could a &quot;state of the whole people&quot; come from? If the state is not yet withering away, then it ought to be the dictatorship of the proletariat and under absolutely no circumstances a &quot;state of the whole people&quot;.<br /> <br /> In arguing for their &quot;state of the whole people&quot;, the revisionist Khrushchov clique exert themselves to vilify the dictatorship of the proletariat as undemocratic. They assert that only by replacing the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat by the &quot;state of the whole people&quot; can democracy be further developed and turned into &quot;genuine democracy for the whole people&quot;. Khrushchov has pretentiously said that the abolition of the dictatorship of the proletariat exemplifies &quot;a line of energetically developing democracy&quot; and that &quot;proletarian democracy is becoming socialist democracy of the whole people&quot;. &lt;ref&gt;''[N. S. Khrushchov, &quot;Report of the Central Committee of the CPSU&quot;, and &quot;On the Programme of the CPSU&quot;, delivered at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, October 1961.]''&lt;/reF&gt;<br /> <br /> These utterances can only show that their authors either are completely ignorant of the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the state or are maliciously distorting them.<br /> <br /> Anyone with a little knowledge of Marxism-Leninism knows that the concept of democracy as a form of the state, like that of dictatorship, is a class one. There can only be class democracy, there cannot be &quot;democracy for the whole people&quot;.<br /> <br /> Lenin said:<br /> <br /> {{Quote|Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people – this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to Communism.<br /> <br /> ''[Lenin, &quot;The State and Revolution&quot;, Selected Works, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, Part 1, p. 291.]''}}<br /> <br /> Dictatorship over the exploiting classes and democracy among the working people – these are the two aspects of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is only under the dictatorship of the proletariat that democracy for the masses of the working people can be developed and expanded to an unprecedented extent. Without the dictatorship of the proletariat there can be no genuine democracy for the working people.<br /> <br /> Where there is bourgeois democracy there is no proletarian democracy, and where there is proletarian democracy there is no bourgeois democracy. The one excludes the other. This is inevitable and admits of no compromise. The more thoroughly bourgeois democracy is eliminated, the more will proletarian democracy flourish. In the eyes of the bourgeoisie, any country where this occurs is lacking in democracy. But actually this is the promotion of proletarian democracy and the elimination of bourgeois democracy. As proletarian democracy develops, bourgeois democracy is eliminated.<br /> <br /> This fundamental Marxist-Leninist thesis is opposed by the revisionist Khrushchov clique. In fact, they hold that so long as enemies are subjected to dictatorship there is no democracy and that the only way to develop democracy is to abolish the dictatorship over enemies, stop suppressing them and institute &quot;democracy for the whole people&quot;.<br /> <br /> Their view is cast from the same mould as the renegade Kautsky’s concept of &quot;pure democracy&quot;.<br /> <br /> In criticizing Kautsky Lenin said:<br /> <br /> {{Quote|...&quot;pure democracy&quot; is not only an ignorant phrase, revealing a lack of understanding both of the class struggle and of the nature of the state, but also a thrice-empty phrase, since in communist society democracy will wither away in the process of changing and becoming a habit, but will never be &quot;pure&quot; democracy.<br /> <br /> ''[Lenin, &quot;The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky&quot;, Selected Works, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, Part 2, p. 48.]''}}<br /> <br /> He also pointed out:<br /> <br /> {{Quote|The dialectics (course) of the development is as follows: from absolutism to bourgeois democracy; from bour- geois to proletarian democracy; from proletarian democracy to none.<br /> <br /> ''[Lenin, Marxism on the State, Russian ed., Moscow, 1958, p. 42.]''}}<br /> <br /> That is to stay, in the higher stage of communism proletarian democracy will wither away along with the elimination of classes and the withering away of the dictatorship of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> To speak plainly, as with the &quot;state of the whole people&quot;, the &quot;democracy for the whole people&quot; proclaimed by Khrushchov is a hoax. In thus retrieving the tattered garments of the bourgeoisie and the old-line revisionists, patching them up and adding a label of his own, Khrushchov’s sole purpose is to deceive the Soviet people and the revolutionary people of the world and cover up his betrayal of the dictatorship of the proletariat and his opposition to socialism.<br /> <br /> What is the essence of Khrushchov’s &quot;state of the whole people&quot;?<br /> <br /> Khrushchov has abolished the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union and established a dictatorship of the revisionist clique headed by himself, that is, a dictatorship of the privileged stratum of the Soviet bourgeoisie. Actually his &quot;state of the whole people&quot; is not a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat but a state in which his small revisionist clique wield their dictatorship over the masses of the workers, the peasants and the revolutionary intellectuals.<br /> <br /> Under the rule of the Khrushchov clique, there is no democracy for the Soviet working people, there is democracy only for the handful of people belonging to the revisionist Khrushchov clique, for the privileged stratum and for the bourgeois elements, old and new. Khrushchov’s &quot;democracy for the whole people&quot; is nothing but out-and-out bourgeois democracy, i.e., a despotic dictatorship of the Khrushchov clique over the Soviet people.<br /> <br /> In the Soviet Union today, anyone who persists in the proletarian stand, upholds Marxism-Leninism and has the courage to speak out, to resist or to fight is watched, followed, summoned, and even arrested, imprisoned or diagnosed as &quot;mentally ill&quot; and sent to &quot;mental hospitals&quot;.<br /> <br /> Recently the Soviet press has declared that it is necessary to &quot;fight&quot; against those who show even the slightest dissatisfaction, and called for &quot;relentless battle&quot; against the &quot;rotten jokers&quot; who are so bold as to make sarcastic remarks about Khrushchov’s agricultural policy. &lt;ref&gt;''[Izvestia, Mar. 10, 1964.]''&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> It is not particularly astonishing that the revisionist Khrushchov clique should have on more than one occasion bloodily suppressed striking workers and the masses who put up resistance.<br /> <br /> The formula of abolishing the dictatorship of the proletariat while keeping a state of the whole people reveals the secret of the revisionist Khrushchov clique; that is, they are firmly opposed to the dictatorship of the proletariat but will not give up state power till their doom.<br /> <br /> The revisionist Khrushchov clique know the paramount importance of controlling state power. They need it for clearing the way for the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union. These are Khrushchov’s real aims in raising the banners of the &quot;state of the whole people&quot; and &quot;democracy for the whole people&quot;.<br /> &lt;references /&gt;<br /> [[Category:Library works by Mao Zedong]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:A_Dying_Colonialism&diff=75996 2024-09-30T12:46:57Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=A Dying Colonialism|image=A Dying Colonialism Cover.jpg|author=Frantz Fanon|written in=1959|publisher=[[Grove Press]]|published_date=1959|published_location=[[New York]]|edition_date=July 1st, 1967|type=Book|isbn=978-0-8021-5027-1|source=[https://www.abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Frantz-Fanon-A-Dying-Colonialism.pdf PDF]|audiobook=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEkm8zonZuc Audiobook]}}<br /> == Introduction ==<br /> Revolution is mankind’s way of life today. This is the age of revolution; the “age of indifference” is gone forever. But the latter age paved the way for today; for the great masses of mankind, while still suffering the greatest oppression and the greatest affronts to their dignity as human beings, never ceased to resist, to fight as well as they could, to live in combat. The combatant dignity of humanity was maintained in an unbreakable though not always visible line, in the depths of the life of the masses and in the uninterrupted fight—slandered, attacked, but alive in the very center of history—of little revolutionary vanguards bound to this profound human reality and to its socialist future, and not to the apparent omnipotence of great systems.<br /> <br /> Today the great systems have died or are living in a state of crisis. And it is no longer the age of little vanguards. The whole of humanity has erupted violently, tumultuously onto the stage of history, taking its own destiny in its hands. Capitalism is under siege, surrounded by a global tide of revolution. And this revolution, still without a center, without a precise form, has its own laws, its own life and a depth of unity—accorded it by the same masses who create it, who live it, who inspire each other from across boundaries, give each other spirit and encouragement, and learn from their collective experiences.<br /> <br /> This revolution is changing humanity. In the revolutionary struggle, the immense, oppressed masses of the colonies and semi-colonies feel that they are a part of life for the first time. Life acquires a sense, a transcendence, an object: to end exploitation, to govern themselves by and for themselves, to construct a way of life. The armed struggle breaks up the old routine life of the countryside and villages, excites, exalts, and opens wide the doors of the future. Liberation does not come as a gift from anybody; it is seized by the masses with their own hands. And by seizing it they themselves are transformed; confidence in their own strength soars, and they turn their energy and their experience to the tasks of building, governing, and deciding their own lives for themselves.<br /> <br /> This is the climate in which the immense majority of mankind lives today in one way or another. Algeria has been, and continues to be, one of the great landmarks in this global battle. And Frantz Fanon’s book bears witness to Algeria’s role.<br /> <br /> The book continues to have for the reader years afterwards the same freshness it had at the time it was written, because Fanon’s main preoccupation was not to document the facts of exploitation, nor the sufferings of the people, nor the. brutality of the imperialist oppressor. All this is demonstrated in passing. But his main interest has been to go to the essentials: the spirit of struggle, of opposition, of initiative of the Algerian masses; their infinite, multi­form, interminable resistance; their daily heroism; their capacity to learn in weeks, in days, in minutes, all that was necessary for the struggle for liberation; their capacity and decision to make all the sacrifices and all the efforts, among which the greatest was not giving one’s life in combat, perhaps, but changing one’s daily life, one’s routines, prejudices, and immemorial customs insofar as these were a hindrance to the revolutionary struggle.<br /> <br /> Frantz Fanon died at 37, in December of 1961, days before the appearance of the first edition of &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Les Damnés de la Terre&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-5.xhtml#footnote-001-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-5.xhtml#footnote-001|1]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; He was not a Marxist. But he was approaching Marxism through the same essential door which for many “Marxist” officials and diplomats is closed with seven keys: his concern with what the masses do and say and think, and his belief that it is the masses, and not leaders nor systems, who in the final analysis make and determine history. This is the dominant line of all of Marx’s analyses of historical events, whether in his articles on revolution and counter-­revolution in Spain, or in his moving pages on the centuries-old struggle of the Sicilian people, a struggle which has forged the character, the pride, and the silence of Sicily and which is at the root of its present and its future.<br /> <br /> The masses resist and fight in a thousand ways, not only with arms in hand. These means include violence because in a world where oppression is maintained by violence from above, it is only possible to liquidate it with violence from below. Ultimately, once the struggle reaches a certain point, arms in hand are indispensable.<br /> <br /> On November 1, 1954, a small group of Algerian leaders launched an armed struggle, breaking with a whole pattern of negotiation and procrastination established by the old leaders. In a very short time, they had the entire population behind them. The decision to take arms did not spring full-blown from the heads of this handful of leaders. They simply interpreted what was already there in the population as a whole. And the people, in tum, were influenced by revolutions in the rest of the world. In 1949 China tipped decisively and definitively the balance of world power in favor of revolution. In 1951 she risked her own existence to send hundreds of thousands of volunteers to support the Korean revolution. In 1954, Dien Bien Phu was a culminating disaster, marking the end of French domination in Indo-China. This was the signal for Algeria to launch her struggle. And in 1960–1961, the defeat of French imperialism in Algeria unleashed the great tide of African revolution.<br /> <br /> The revolutionaries of Zanzibar took advantage of this uninterrupted chain of revolutionary struggles to realize one of the greatest deeds of the epoch: storming the center of power with a small nucleus, they expelled imperialism from a backward country with only 300,000 inhabitants. They took the road of socialist revolution, arms in hand, with no other support than the determination of the masses of Zanzibar—barefoot, poor, illiterate, armed as well as they could manage—and their own revolutionary courage.<br /> <br /> Algeria was prepared by the incessant waves of revolution that inundated the world from 1943 onwards, and in its turn opened the gates to Zanzibar, to the Congo, Mali, Portuguese Guinea. The Algerian revolution shares with the revolutions that preceded it and with those that are continuing it, certain essential features which can be summed up in the words “mass participation.”<br /> <br /> The women, the family, the children, the aged—everybody participates. The double oppression, social and sexual, of the woman cracks and is finally shattered; and its essential nature as the social oppression of the family as a whole is revealed. It is simply that its weakest parts—the children, the elderly, the women—must bear the most exaggerated forms of oppression. But in the revolutionary struggle, the relative weakness, the apparent defenselessness of these groups disappear. What was formerly a disadvantage becomes an advantage for the revolution. The old man or woman who walks with halting steps past the military patrol, the timid woman hiding behind a veil, the innocent-faced child do not seem to the enemy to be dangers or threats. So they can pass arms, information, medicine. They can prepare surprise attacks, serve as guides and sentries. They can even take up arms themselves. Every sort of cunning is a legitimate weapon to use against the enemy—and an embattled population is not composed solely of men but also of women, children, and old people.<br /> <br /> This is true not only in Algeria or in armed struggle. The decision of the men never comes alone; it is never isolated. It is supported by the decision of the whole family, of the whole population, united for a common objective. When the striking worker occupies the factory, or makes a decision in a union meeting to stick to the struggle against all odds, it is not he alone who decides. Behind him are his wife, his children, his parents, the entire family supporting him, intervening and deciding with him. This is what happens in Bolivia in the great miners’ strikes; it happens in Argentina in the general strikes; it happened in the great struggles of the North American proletariat, as reflected, for example, in the film &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;The Salt of the Earth.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> It is in this kind of struggle that the woman stands firm in her own strength, throws all the energy she has accumulated during centuries of oppression, her infinite capacity to resist, her courage. It is in this kind of struggle that family relations change and the woman prepares for her role in the society that is being built. She also prepares for it in battle. This is what Fanon describes, and what he describes is no different from what the Chinese and the Cuban women did. The Algerian woman who carries arms or who participates directly in combat is like the wife of the Bolivian miner who takes up arms to defend the occupied mines or who keeps watch, gun in hand and dynamite at her waist, over the hostages taken by the miners to be exchanged for the liberty of their own imprisoned leaders. She is like the Guatemalan peasant woman who diverts the attention of the army at the cost of her own life, to cover the retreat of a guerrilla patrol in which her son, or her husband, or simply her neighbor is marching. This is the kind of life that is being lived and the kind of revolution that humanity is passing through today. And Fanon shows how, after it is over, the place of women can never again be the same as it was before. Women, like the proletariat, can only liberate themselves by liberating all other oppressed strata and sectors of the society, and by acting together with them.<br /> <br /> To describe a revolution one doesn’t have to describe armed actions. These are inevitable, but what defines and decides any revolution is the social struggle of the masses, supported by armed actions. Fanon shows that this was the Algerian way. The guerrillas in the mountains, the army of liberation, did not defeat the French army militarily: it was the whole population supported by the guerrilla army which defeated and destroyed the imperialist enemy as a social force. For each Algerian soldier who died, says Fanon, ten civilians died. This indicates the mass character of the struggle. But it also indicates the complete impotence of an army, of modern weapons, and of all the tactics of powerful nations when it comes to defeating an embattled people with infinite initiative and inexhaustible heroism, a people capable of constant surprises and enormous tenacity. All mass struggles develop these features. The armed combatants, the guerrilla fighters, are only centers of support, of encouragement, of organization for this massive movement that reaches into every nook and cranny of the population.<br /> <br /> For this reason, the power of each guerrilla fighter does not rest simply in himself, his weapon, and his army unit. He is the incarnation of the will of the people to struggle, of the resistance, of the anonymous and innumerable ways in which the people seek to harass and liquidate the oppressor and refuse to collaborate with him. This is the only “magic” the guerrillas have—that they are the representatives of a social force immensely superior to their own numbers and fire power, a social force that constantly encircles, attacks, and intimidates the enemy.<br /> <br /> The capitalist and imperialist armies can go on dozens of ­mopping-­up operations and even achieve some relative successes, militarily speaking. But after the guerrillas have taken root to a certain point, they can no longer be liquidated. For the guerrillas have already become a way of life for the population, a part of its existence, and they will be renewed, reborn, and will go forward whatever the situation or the apparent power of the enemy. The French army announced time after time the “final offensive” and “the last quarter hour.” It was ruined, defeated—as before it had been defeated in Indo-China. It wasn’t simply the guerrilla arms that routed the French, but the constant action, the constant struggle of the entire population who fought them even to the point of listening to the radio and re-inventing the news, as the Guatemalan and Colombian peasants do today.<br /> <br /> For the radio is an instrument of mass struggle. The counter­revolutionary forces believe they have discovered this also, and they use “The Voice of America” in Latin America as yesterday “Radio Alger” was used in Algeria. But the radio is an instrument of struggle only when what it says corresponds to what the masses feel and want. Then they accept it, take it, rely on it to further their cause. And when they cannot hear what it says, why they invent what it says—to the greater glory of the revolution. In contrast, the counter-revolutionary radio is not listened to; its voice is lost in a complete vacuum.<br /> <br /> The Algerian people accepted the radio when it ceased to be an instrument of the enemy and was useful for the revolution. In the same way the Cuban people accepted literacy and achieved it in a year when this became a goal of the revolution, when they saw it was tied to their own concrete interests and not to those of capitalist governments. The transistor radio has been transformed into a revolutionary implement as powerful as the gun. In the mountains of Guatemala and Colombia, the peasants listen to Radio Havana or Radio Peking and live the life of the world revolution.<br /> <br /> In Bolivia the miners have more than transistor radios. The principal mineworkers’ unions have their own radio transmitters. And the miners’ radios are one of the great instruments of progress in Bolivia. When there is an attempt on the part of the press and official radio to hide the fact of a miners’ strike by not reporting it, the miners’ radios inform all of Bolivia—and beyond, for they are short-wave transmitters that can be heard as far away as Peru and Uruguay. When the army tries to isolate one mining district from another, the miners’ radios communicate with each other and unite the different union locals. Via the radio the union members at one mine discuss agreements and situations with those at another. Via the radio, union propaganda is disseminated, as well as the programs and decisions adopted at meetings, calls to action, and proclamations. Via their radios the mineworkers’ militia is called together or the advances of the army are announced. Via the radio came the announcement of the defeat of the Bolivian army at the hands of the mineworkers’ militia in Sora Sora at the end of 1964. And because the miners have radio transmitters, the peasants acquire transistor radios in order to listen to them.<br /> <br /> As in Algeria, the Bolivian miners defend their radio transmitters as part of their collective existence. Many unions have bought their transmitter with voluntary contributions of a day’s, two days’ and even three days’ wages per month from all the workers in the mine. The Bolivian miner earns $20 to $40 per month. One must consider his standard of living in order to understand what it means for him to give up a day’s or two days’ wages each month so that the union can get its radio. But then, the collective pride: “Our union has a radio, too!” When the government or the police have wished to silence or take by assault such a radio (officially they are prohibited, the government having declared them illegal—but in the mining districts the union and not the government commands) the response has been explosive. In Huanuni the miners took back their radio by mobilizing their militia and in retaliation they took over the municipal radio of the district as well, which from then on was controlled by the miners. Though they didn’t know it, Bolivian miners and Algerian masses were united in a single action for a single end. In this way, and not through books, business deals, or international assemblies is the present unity of humanity being forged and constructed.<br /> <br /> Frantz Fanon tells how modern medical techniques, when they were brought in by imperialism, were resisted and rejected by the Algerian population—“ignorant, obstinate, backward” according to the cultured imperialists who were baffled by this rejection. But these same techniques were accepted with dizzying haste when the revolution adopted them. Culture, like truth, is concrete. And for the masses the most elevated form of culture, that is to say, of progress, is to resist imperialist domination and penetration, although this might come wrapped up in valid forms of “culture” or “civilization.” The Algerians kept their women behind veils, rejected the doctors, would not accept the radio. But they were not backward. In their way, they were defending civilization as well as they were able. Civilization, for them, meant first of all to resist imperialism and second to cast it into the sea at whatever cost. And they were right.<br /> <br /> One morning, from the home of the Bolivian miner who was giving me lodging—a home measuring two meters by three, the walls and floor of which were of earth, and which housed his wife and child as well—I saw that there was an ambulance at the corner from the Inter-American Health Service. It was giving free vaccinations against smallpox. I asked my host why he didn’t send his son to be vaccinated. And he answered, “Are you crazy? Who knows what kind of filth these &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;gringos&lt;/span&gt; are injecting, in order to turn us Bolivians into idiots so they can exploit us better?” Thus are the “Alliances for Progress” received. Basically, the miner was right. For in his way he was defending something that was much more important to him than a vaccination.<br /> <br /> But the revolution triumphs and everything changes. A devouring thirst for knowledge invades the entire population, whether in the new nation or in the liberated territories of a nation in revolt. And because of this, Fanon states: “The people who take their destiny into their own hands assimilate the most modern forms of technology at an extraordinary rate.” As in China, in Cuba, in Korea, as with all the oppressed peoples of Latin America, of Asia, of Africa, the revolution is civilization. And also in Portugal, in Spain, in Greece, and in the south of Italy and beyond.<br /> <br /> This book of Fanon covers a particularly crucial period in the Algerian revolution. It was during the first five years—when the people were fighting virtually alone, almost without outside help—that the people decided once and for all to stand firm and laid the foundations for their triumph. Algeria was never completely alone. She had the support of the masses of the Arab countries, who secured the support of their governments—many of which had been dragging their feet on the issue. She had the support of the peoples of the world, who followed her fight very closely. But she was alone in material means, in material support. She had no support from the USSR, and support from China came only in 1959. And in the first years she had to break by means of her own heroism the wall of silence and slander that was being erected not only by the enemy but also by those who later declared themselves to be Algeria’s friends.<br /> <br /> People never forget the past—or what the past teaches that is of importance for the future. The Algerian people have not forgotten that the French Communist Party, at the beginning of the armed revolution in Algeria, denounced it as a “nationalist and reactionary” movement. And for a long time the Party maintained this position or kept aloof while continuing to insist that Algeria was part of France. Neither have the people forgotten that the Algerian Communist Party followed the line of the French Party, although many individual Communists cast their lot with the revolution. Nor have they forgotten those who, during this period, gave lip service to the revolution while in practice supporting Messali Hadj, an instrument of French imperialism who called himself a “socialist” in order to combat the revolutionary mass movement from within Algeria itself. The people haven’t forgotten any of this, because they are practical and they scorn forever those who out of selfishness or criminal blindness fought the liberation movement, denounced it, or betrayed it, meanwhile calling themselves “revolutionaries” or “Communists” or “socialists.” Such people, once the collective experience of the masses is accomplished, are never again influential, no matter what money or means they may have at their disposal.<br /> <br /> But just as they have not forgotten this, the Algerian people have not forgotten either that the sympathy of the masses of the world was embodied in hundreds of thousands of men of flesh and bone who went beyond or ignored the pacifist politics of the French Communist Party and the diplomatic considerations that kept Khrushchev from giving arms to Algeria and made him appear instead to be friendly with a French government in open imperialist warfare against the Algerian people. As Fanon points out, these hundreds of thousands, in France and in Algeria itself, supported Algeria without being Algerians, participated in her struggle, and risked their lives for the Algerian revolution.<br /> <br /> These men were not only Frenchmen or Arabs; they were also Spaniards, Italians, Greeks—the entire Mediterranean supported an Algeria in arms. And from beyond came Englishmen, Dutchmen, Belgians, Germans, Latin Americans. Like every great revolution, the Algerian revolution attracted men from all over the world, and received them as its own. Those who went not only made their contribution to the struggle of that moment but, by the simple fact of their presence in the struggle for liberation, helped to model the future image of the Algeria that is being built today, to move her in the direction of international socialism. As individuals or as groups, they symbolized concretely the will to support the revolution of much broader groups who could find no way to participate directly.<br /> <br /> An important feature of Fanon’s book is that he doesn’t dwell on the torture, the pain, and the sufferings of the Algerian people; rather, he emphasizes their life and inner strength. Certainly he tells about tortures, but he doesn’t stop there. And, above all, he doesn’t want to arouse compassion for the Algerian people, but confidence in their strength. In this he disassociated himself from numerous “defenders” of the revolution—in Algeria or elsewhere—who assumed a protective and compassionate tone and invited us to take pity on an embattled people and to cease the atrocities.<br /> <br /> This was a characteristic of a good many European “friends” of the Algerian revolution, as it is today of many “friends” of the Vietnamese revolution. They approached the Algerians with a terribly paternalistic air to sympathize with their sufferings. In any struggling people this kind of “help” arouses an immediate and instinctive rejection, because they feel that it is the “pacifist” form of the old colonialism and they feel that it damages the innermost source of their fighting power—their faith in their own strength, their confidence in their ultimate superiority over the imperialist enemy. The Algerians rejected all paternalistic defenders, as the Vietnamese reject them today. The images of destruction, of death, of horror, inspire aversion in the combatant, because he doesn’t confront them with pity but with a gun in hand. “Instead of pitying us and being horrified by the atrocities of imperialism, better fight against it in your own country as we do in ours,” said the Algerians, and say other colonial peoples today to their new pacifist protectors. “That is the best way to help us and to put an end to the atrocities.”<br /> <br /> The essence of revolution is not the struggle for bread; it is the struggle for human dignity. Certainly this includes bread. And at the base of any revolutionary situation are economic conditions. But beyond a certain point of development, on this same basis, it is more important for a people to have guns in hand than to eat more than the year before. This is demonstrated by all revolutions. And to the degree that the boundaries of the revolution are extended and become one with those of the globe itself, immediate economic conditions are secondary to the movement of the masses to liquidate all forms of oppression and govern themselves by and for themselves. As a result of this desire for liberation and human dignity, the dominating feature of humanity today, people accept and assume the material sacrifices of years which any revolution requires, because they feel that thus they live a new life, a better life, and that for the first time they are really living their &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;own&lt;/span&gt; lives.<br /> <br /> “The colonized person, who in this respect is like the men in underdeveloped countries or the disinherited in all parts of the world, perceives life not as a flowering or a development of an essential productiveness, but as a permanent struggle against an omnipresent death. This ever-menacing death is experienced as endemic famine, unemployment, a high mortality rate, an inferiority complex and the absence of any hope for the future,” says Frantz Fanon.<br /> <br /> The revolution ends all that; the source of human dignity, it is preparing humanity, through its transformation in the revolution, for the construction of socialism. Without this transformation there will be no material base for the building of socialism. I say &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;material&lt;/span&gt; advisedly since it is not only the means of production which are material, but also the accumulated experience in the heads, hearts, and hands of men.<br /> <br /> For this reason Fanon closes his book with these words: “The revolution in depth, the true one, precisely because it changes man and renews society, has reached an advanced stage. This oxygen which creates and shapes a new humanity—this, too, is the Algerian Revolution.” And it is also, one must add today, the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;socialist&lt;/span&gt; revolution which is advancing in Algeria.<br /> <br /> If the revolution changes a people in this way—if it is capable of illuminating and influencing Europe and Africa as it has been doing, this is because it is part of a global process which knows no boundaries. If, as an example, the Algerians were able to cast out French imperialism, it was not only by the heroism of their struggle but also because in one way or another, and despite the reformist character of their official instructions, French workers continued to resist French capitalism, to threaten it, to undermine it from within. They didn’t have the means to do more, but without their presence French imperialism would have felt strong enough to resist in Algeria for a longer time.<br /> <br /> At the same time, the Algerian victory demonstrated how a revolution can stand firm and triumph without a great deal of outside support, securing or even making its own weapons, if it is capable of uniting the masses of the country in the struggle for liberation. There is no doubt that Algeria, like every revolutionary process in the world, has made its powerful influence felt even inside the Soviet Union. The Soviet people know that it was only at the last minute that their government lent its support to Algeria. Today they have drawn their conclusions, and one of them is that Khrushchev is no more. Other conclusions will come later; they are slowly ripening inside the Soviet Union. For it is certainly obvious that, if in Algeria the masses had and have the inner life of their own that Fanon describes, the same life with the same aims exists in the Soviet Union, although it is expressed in a different form. And just as the Algerian is united with the Cuban, the Bolivian, the Congolese, through certain obvious acts carried out in common, he is also united with the Soviet and the Chinese citizen. The immediate course of history will show the development of this union more and more clearly through more and more palpable deeds.<br /> <br /> And the Algerian is also united with the American. If Algeria was once alone, today this is no longer possible. Khrushchev wanted to ignore Vietnam—and he fell. Vietnam is today the center of the global struggle between revolution and counter-revolution. In a certain sense, it is today what Algeria was during that fifth year of the revolution in 1959. But what a difference! Today the war in Vietnam involves immense powers. The Soviet population, the Chinese population follow hour by hour what is happening in Vietnam, and there cannot be the slightest doubt that they are pressuring for intervention. But the American population is following these events, too. And although their feelings are not clear, and even still terribly confused, one cannot doubt either that the dominant line of pressure, however it may be expressed, is to restrain their own leaders from unleashing a world war. Even in this contradictory form of fears, vacillations, and doubts in the face of the world situation—which did not exist during the war against the Axis powers—the pressure of the world revolution is weighing on the United States. This pressure is building up to produce a more positive response on the part of the student movements—still small but very explicit—opposing American intervention in Vietnam. Never, in any country, does a significant mass of students represent only themselves; they represent a whole sector of the population that has not yet decided to express itself. This is valid for the Soviet Union as well as for the United States.<br /> <br /> To be sure, it is not student demonstrations that will decide whether or not a major war will be launched. The balance of forces is immensely more complex and in the end the decisive buttons are controlled by only a few persons beyond all control, who may feel compelled to act in the face of a situation they consider desperate for their own survival: the imminent threat that in a particular moment the loss of Vietnam would bring in its wake the loss of all Asia may be such a situation.<br /> <br /> But the great value of Fanon’s descriptions of the conduct of the masses is in underlining the importance of their inner life, their private discussions, their resistance, their seemingly indirect actions. All this exists among all the peoples of the world. It is on this deep level that the future—which will later on seem to burst suddenly and without warning into bloom—is being prepared. The same thing happens in the United States. Resistance to the war in Vietnam, however weak it may seem in comparison with the apparent omnipotence of the imperialist apparatus, must be understood as a highly important symptom of what is gestating in the still unconscious depths of broad segments of the population. The United States is not isolated by any &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;cordon sanitaire&lt;/span&gt; from the revolution which is engulfing mankind, and each aggressive step that its government takes along the road of counter-revolution inevitably awakens opposing forces within the country.<br /> <br /> It is worth the trouble to analyze the testimony of Fanon because it illustrates how, in the midst of the worst disasters, the masses find the means of reorganizing themselves and continu-<br /> <br /> xistence when they have a common objective. Systems cannot do this. Nations fall, armies collapse, businesses close or are expropriated, colonists flee, a city is destroyed by bombardment. But the masses go on living; they tenaciously recreate themselves, bury their dead, and go forward. It is worth the trouble to analyze Fanon, for the life of humanity today, as in Algeria, is preparing the life of tomorrow. The desire, the collective decision for social liberation is so rooted in the very life of all mankind that it is as much a part of their existence as is the earth and the air. There is no power, no conventional or atomic weapon that can destroy it. All the rest may disappear—nations, enterprises, cities. That, no.<br /> <br /> This idea is at the bottom of the Chinese strategy against atomic war. And it is also present in the strategy of the Soviet army, one of whose chiefs recently referred to the possible war as “a popular rising of the masses” and described the means being developed for reorganizing the life of the country in case of an atomic attack.<br /> <br /> It is a fact that a people who went through the Algerian war do not feel intimidated by the atomic menace. Nor do the people who are living through the war in Vietnam. Nor even do those who, without experiencing actual warfare, live lives which are “a permanent struggle against an omnipresent death,” as Fanon says. And it is easy to imagine that if one day the transistor radio of a Bolivian miner, or a Colombian peasant, or an Algerian &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fellah&lt;/span&gt; tells them that Moscow and Peking have been destroyed by atomic bombs, they will rise up furiously and instantaneously to destroy in turn all that which represents their enemies. And if in the same moment they are also told that, on the other side, New York has disappeared from the map, their strength will be multiplied because they will see that their enemies no longer have any support, and they will feel that an immense weight has been lifted from their shoulders. The testimony of Fanon—and how much distance has been covered since then!—should make us reflect that humanity, once it has reached such a degree of decision and collective conscience, cannot be destroyed by war, whatever may be the immeasurable damage war can wreak.<br /> <br /> Perhaps this thesis is not very inspiring for a resident of New York. But it was inspiring for the Cubans in 1962 when they faced the imminent prospect of atomic destruction. On the 27th of October few people in Havana doubted that that afternoon they would undergo an atomic attack. Few had illusions about their chances. “They’re going to wipe us out on the spot.” But nobody was afraid or wavered. It was impressive, moving, this collective security. Cuba felt herself to be part of humanity. The entire population felt like the soldier who knows that, though the next skirmish will surely cost him his life, he must not flinch but must help prepare the way for the triumph of his friends. To the end Cuba was able to take her own destiny in hand, and she won. If in that moment she had vacillated, begged for a truce or fallen back, she would have lost, been invaded. Thus her decision was part of the strength that made the enemy draw back. “We’d rather have them kill us all than go back to the old life.” This is what the Cuban said, what the Algerian said in his moment of decision, what the Chinese and the Vietnamese are saying. This very decision makes any threat ineffective and at the same time unites the destiny of the individual and the collectivity with that of humankind. The destiny of humankind is today found in revolution, one of whose stages is described from within by Fanon in this book.<br /> <br /> Only by becoming a part of this worldwide revolution can the resident of New York take his human destiny upon his shoulders. Only thus will he find the door to the future, and only thus can his action be effective. Because this action rests not on humanitarian abstractions but on the real life of human beings today—in Algeria, Vietnam, the Congo, China, Indonesia, all of Latin America.<br /> <br /> When the immense majority of humanity is living through these problems and these experiences, when the real life, the real future of thousands of millions is modelled on this revolutionary life, when humanity is taking its destiny in its hands in this way, it is pure charlatanism to talk of such things as a “cybernetic revolution.” It is human beings—not systems, machines or weapons—who decide their own lives. To ignore this is to isolate a small segment of humanity, the population of the United States, from the life, the problems, and the changes that the immense majority of humanity is experiencing. It is to isolate this segment from the future and from life and to shut it up inside a provincial and pragmatic narrowness. It is the people of Algeria and Vietnam, not the Univacs nor the New York Stock Exchange who, in the final analysis, decide the future and who, together with the American people, will decide tomorrow what to do with the Univacs and with the vast technology which will belong to them.<br /> <br /> Zanzibar, in an even more decisive form than Cuba, has demonstrated that today any revolution against imperialism cannot but lead the way to socialism. There is no anti-imperialist revolution in any colonial country that does not mean over­throwing capitalism at the same time. Algeria is another proof. And in this socialist objective the revolutions in the colonies today find the link which joins them to the coming American revolution. For this reason, any action that unites a segment of the American population, no matter how small it may seem, with the global revolution, represents and introduces in the United States an immense strength, in the same way that the Algerian combatant represented not only the fire power of his gun, but the constant and powerful action of an entire people.<br /> <br /> This book by Fanon testifies not so much to the death of colonialism as to the life of the masses in this age of revolution. It continues to be today, in the still underdeveloped countries, a clarion call to make common cause, without reservations or limitations, with those masses, to become a part of their struggles,&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;and above all to feel and understand as their own the tremendous strength of a united people. This means, really, to submit oneself to the profundity of the inner life—real, not apparent—of one’s own people, to understand the signs and symptoms of the immediate future that will come out of those depths and not out of the superficial remnants of a dead past which still seems, but only seems, to control the future. In reality, Fanon is calling us all to prepare our place in this revolution that is challenging, transforming, and uniting all of humanity.<br /> <br /> Adolfo Gilly<br /> <br /> April, 1965<br /> <br /> Postscript<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;In a small section of the city of Santo Domingo, Dominican people in arms are resisting the military invasion by American troops. Men, women, children, workers, soldiers, students, enclosed in a scant two square kilometers, without supplies, without effective outside support—from Russia or anybody else—are resisting the greatest military power of the capitalist world. That power cannot advance, although it has the military force to wipe out this zone in less than an hour. Who and what is containing it? What is the force that is animating the Dominicans? The people in these two square kilometers are not alone. The entire Dominican population is expressing itself through these armed civilians in these few blocks. But the three and a half million Dominicans are not alone either. The force of the worldwide revolution, which sustained Algeria and is sustaining Zanzibar, has found a point of support in the armed population of Santo Domingo. These people, without declarations, without grand gestures, but simply by resisting with arms in hand, are representing that revolution day by day. They are the greatest symbol of human dignity.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Everything that yesterday permitted the Algerians to resist and conquer, is today being expressed by the Dominican people. If the Dominicans are able to resist in this way, this means that no revolutionary force or tendency, no matter how small it may seem, is alone or isolated if it knows how to represent, in its policies, its acts, and its life, this immense force that is transforming the world. In contrast, alone and isolated are those who, with great power and means, wish to brake this force or refuse to support the Dominicans with more than declarations. The Dominican crisis, like the Sino-Soviet and the Algerian crises, is indicating in its way that the profound reality of the revolutionary transformation is fighting to express itself openly and to do away with external appearances perpetuated from the past. The new content is creating cracks in the old forms which are trying to stifle it.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Tomorrow there will be no more arms. Today arms in the hands of a people change the deepest recesses of their lives. This introduction was already written when the military junta that governs Bolivia set out to snatch the arms, the radios, the workers’ control from the miners, workers, and peasants of Bolivia. The junta could advance and strike because the leadership fled at the first heavy attack. But the miners and workers resisted. More than ten days they fought with arms in hand, and carried out a general strike without centralized leadership and under enormous handicaps. The military junta, assassinating hundreds of people, was able to occupy the mines, take over the unions and the miners’ radios, because there was no leadership to unite the workers and the popular forces which together would have been able to rout the junta. But the junta could not and will not be able to reach its essential objective: the recovery of the arms held by the miners and peasants. The army advanced, but the arms were hidden. Nobody responded to the invitation to turn over their guns. Without leadership the defeat was inevitable and the miners had to retreat. But they were not broken: proof—the hidden arms. Nobody hides a weapon—at the risk of death or of the loss of his wages, which in Bolivia is almost the same thing—if it is not in order to continue the resistance, if he is not already, by this act alone, continuing the battle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;The militias, the unions, and the revolution changed forever the Bolivian people, and this fact no military junta can erase. On the contrary, the permanent dynamism of the worldwide revolution will continue to find support within Bolivia. It will help to regroup forces, as today it is helping the Dominicans to resist, and to take the direction indicated by these forces, which is to wipe out the military junta and its social system and not simply to negotiate with it. For the old leadership’s politics of negotiation simply led to dispersal and flight.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;A single line unites Santo Domingo, Vietnam, Bolivia, Algeria: they are expressions of a single revolution that embraces the world. And from the moment when their peoples succeeded in taking their destiny in their hands by force of arms, nothing and nobody could make them retreat. With difficulty and through crises and conflicts like the Sino-Soviet and the Algerian ones, but stubbornly and inexorably nevertheless, they are making emerge the vanguards and the directions that represent the revolutionary stage of humanity, and they are preparing&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;by their program and methods the advances and the socialist decisions for which humanity is already prepared.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Adolfo Gilly&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-5.xhtml#footnote-000-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-5.xhtml#footnote-000|2]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;June, 1965&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_idFootnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-5.xhtml#footnote-001&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-5.xhtml#footnote-001-backlink|1]]. Published in English under the title &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;The Wretched of the Earth&lt;/span&gt;, New York, 1965.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-5.xhtml#footnote-000&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-5.xhtml#footnote-000-backlink|2]]. Adolfo Gilly is an Argentine journalist who writes for several publications in Latin America, Italy, France and the United States. He is the author of the MR Press book, &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Inside the Cuban Revolution&lt;/span&gt;. This introduction was translated from the Spanish by Nell Salm.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_idGenObjectStyleOverride-1&quot;&gt;<br /> == [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-4.xhtml# idTextAnchor000|Preface]] ==<br /> The Algerian war will soon be entering its sixth year. No one among us in November 1954, no one in the world, suspected that after sixty months of fighting, French colonialism would still not have released its clutch and heeded the voice of the Algerian people.<br /> <br /> Five years of struggle have brought no political change. The French authorities continue to proclaim Algeria to be French.<br /> <br /> This war has mobilized the whole population, has driven them to draw upon their entire reserves and their most hidden resources. The Algerian people have given themselves no respite, for the colonialism against which they are pitted has allowed them none.<br /> <br /> The Algerian war—the most hallucinatory war that any people has ever waged to smash colonial aggression. Its adversaries like to claim that the men who lead the Algerian Revolution are impelled by a thirst for blood. The democrats who were sympathetic to it repeat, for their part, that it has made mistakes.<br /> <br /> It has in fact happened that Algerian citizens have violated the directives of the commanding bodies, and that things that should have been avoided have transpired on the national soil. Almost always, incidentally, these concerned Algerian citizens.<br /> <br /> But what has the Revolution done in such cases? Has it eluded its responsibilities? Has it not penalized those whose acts threatened to compromise the truth of the combat we were waging? Has not Mr. Ferhat Abbas, president of the council of the G.P.R.A.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-006-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-006|3]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, publicly announced the sometimes capital measures taken by the leadership of the Revolution?<br /> <br /> And yet what is psychologically more understandable than these sudden acts of violence against traitors and war criminals? The men who fought in the First French Army campaign had been revolted by the self-appointed dispensers of justice among their fellow-­soldiers who shot at collaborators. Those who had recaptured the Isle of Elba, who had fought the campaign of Italy and had participated in the landing at Toulon were outraged by such fratricidal, illegal and often shamefully conducted settlings of accounts. Yet we do not remember any conviction of French guerrillas for summary executions preceded by tortures of unarmed citizens.<br /> <br /> The National Liberation Front, at the time when the people were undergoing the most massive assaults of colonialism, did not hesitate to prohibit certain forms of action and constantly to remind the fighting units of the international laws of war. In a war of liberation, the colonized people must win, but they must do so cleanly, without “barbarity.” The European nation that practices torture is a blighted nation, unfaithful to its history. The underdeveloped nation that practices torture thereby confirms its nature, plays the role of an underdeveloped people. If it does not wish to be morally condemned by the “Western nations,” an underdeveloped nation is obliged to practice fair play, even while its adversary ventures, with a clear conscience, into the unlimited exploration of new means of terror.<br /> <br /> An underdeveloped people must prove, by its fighting power, its ability to set itself up as a nation, and by the purity of every one of its acts, that it is, even to the smallest detail, the most lucid, the most self-controlled people. But this is all very difficult.<br /> <br /> Whereas in the region of Mascara, exactly six months ago, more than thirty combatants—encircled and having exhausted their ammunition, after having fought with rocks—were taken prisoner and executed before the village, an Algerian doctor in another section detached a military mission from the frontier in order to bring back in haste medicine urgently needed to treat the ailment of a French prisoner. In the course of the journey two Algerian fighters were killed. On other occasions soldiers have been assigned to engage in a diversion maneuver to enable a group of prisoners to reach the regional command post unharmed.<br /> <br /> The French ministers Lacoste and Soustelle have published photographs with a view to sullying our cause. Some of these photographs show things done by members of our Revolution. But there are other photographs that show some of the thousands of crimes of which the Bellounis and the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;harkis&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-005-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-005|4]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; armed by the French Army have themselves been guilty. Finally and above all, there are those tens of thousands of Algerian men and women who have been and continue to be victims of the French troops.<br /> <br /> No, it is not true that the Revolution has gone to the lengths to which colonialism has gone.<br /> <br /> But we do not on this account justify the immediate reactions of our compatriots. We understand them, but we can neither excuse them nor reject them.<br /> <br /> Because we want a democratic and a renovated Algeria, because we believe one cannot rise and liberate oneself in one area and sink in another, we condemn, with pain in our hearts, those brothers who have flung themselves into revolutionary action with the almost physiological brutality that centuries of oppression give rise to and feed.<br /> <br /> The people who condemn us or who blame us for these dark aspects of the Revolution know nothing of the terrible problem faced by the chief who must take disciplinary action against a patriot guilty, for example, of having killed a notorious traitor—or, worse, a woman or child—without having received orders to do so. This man who must be judged in the absence of a code, of any law, only by the conscience that each one has of what is allowable and what is forbidden, may not be a new man in the combat group. He may have given, over a period of months, unmistakable proofs of abnegation, of patriotism, of courage. Yet he must be judged. The chief, the local representative of the ruling body, must apply the directives. He must sometimes be the accuser, the other members of the unit having been unwilling to accuse this brother before the revolutionary court.<br /> <br /> It is not easy to conduct, with a minimum of errors, the struggle of a people, sorely tried by a hundred and thirty years of domination, against an enemy as determined and as ferocious&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;as French colonialism.<br /> <br /> Mrs. Christian Lilliestierna, the Swedish newspaperwoman, talked in a camp with some of the thousands of Algerian refugees. Here is an extract from her report:<br /> <br /> The next in the line was a boy of seven marked by deep wounds made by a steel wire with which he had been bound while French soldiers mistreated and killed his parents and his sisters. A Iieutenant had forcefully kept the boy’s eyes open, so that he would see and remember this for a 1ong time. . . .<br /> <br /> This child was carried by his grandfather for five days and five nights before reaching the camp.<br /> <br /> The child said: “There is only one thing I want: to be able to cut a French soldier up into small pieces, tiny pieces!”<br /> <br /> Does anyone think it is easy to make this child of seven forget both the murder of his family and his enormous vengeance? Is this orphaned child growing up in an apocalyptic atmosphere the sole message that French democracy will leave?<br /> <br /> No one thought that France would defend foot by foot this shameless colonialism for five years, a colonialism which is matched, on the continent, by its homologue in South Africa. Nor did anyone suspect that the Algerian people would make its place in history with such intensity.<br /> <br /> Nor must we delude ourselves. The rising generations are neither more flexible nor more tired than those who launched the struggle. There is, on the contrary, a hardening, a determination to be equal to the historical challenge, a determination, too, not to make light of hundreds of thousands of victims. And there is also an exact appraisal of the dimensions of the conflict, of the friendships and the solidarities, of the interests and the contradictions of the colonialist universe.<br /> <br /> “Having a gun, being a member of the National Army of Liberation, is the only chance the Algerian still has of giving a meaning to his death. Life under the domination has long been devoid of meaning. . . .”<br /> <br /> Such statements, when they are made by members of the Algerian government, are not the expression of an error of judgment or of a “to-the-bitter-end” attitude. They are the plain recognition of the truth.<br /> <br /> There is in Algeria, as the Algerian people see it, an irreversible situation. French colonialism itself has recognized it, and it attempts, anarchically, to tag along behind the historic movement. In the French National Assembly eighty Algerian deputies have seats. But today this serves no purpose.<br /> <br /> The single college&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-004-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-004|5]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; has been accepted by the extremists of the domination, but in 1959 this appears ludicrous, in view of the extraordinary dimensions assumed by the Algerian national consciousness. Question any woman or any man anywhere on the earth’s surface and ask her or him if the Algerian people have not already acquired the right to be twenty times independent. There is no one, in 1959, apart from those Frenchmen who have dragged their country into this horrible adventure, who does not yearn to see the end of this slaughter and the birth of the Algerian nation.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, there is no end in sight, and we know that the French Army is preparing a series of offensives for the coming months. The war goes on.<br /> <br /> Men are therefore entitled to wonder what are the reasons for this obstinacy. One has the duty to understand this entrenchment in a war which has all the earmarks of a morbid infatuation. We want to show in this first study that on the Algerian soil a new society has come to birth. The men and women of Algeria today resemble neither those of 1930 nor those of 1954, nor yet those of 1957. The old Algeria is dead. All the innocent blood that has flowed onto the national soil has produced a new humanity and no one must fail to recognize this fact.<br /> <br /> Having once affirmed that it “would not hand over to the Arabs one million of its sons,” France today proclaims that it will never abandon the Sahara and its resources. Such arguments, to be sure, carry no weight with the Algerian. He replies that the richness of a country is not an excuse for oppressing it.<br /> <br /> We shall show that the form and the content of national existence already exist in Algeria and that there can be no turning back. While in many colonial countries it is the independence acquired by a party that progressively informs the diffused national consciousness of the people, in Algeria it is the national consciousness, the collective sufferings and terrors that make it inevitable that the people must take its destiny into its own hands.<br /> <br /> Algeria is virtually independent. The Algerians already consider themselves sovereign.<br /> <br /> It remains for France to recognize her. This is obviously of utmost importance. But the real situation too is important. It deserves to be known, for it fundamentally limits the military or political hopes of French colonialism.<br /> <br /> Why does the French government not put an end to the Algerian war? Why does it refuse to negotiate with the members of the Algerian government? Such are the questions that an honest man, in 1959, is entitled to ask.<br /> <br /> It is not enough to say that colonialism is still powerful in France. It is not sufficient to say that the Sahara has modified the facts of the problem.<br /> <br /> All this is true, but there is something else. It seems to us that in Algeria the principal point on which men of good will and the French government stumble is the European minority. This is why we have devoted a whole chapter to this question.<br /> <br /> Algeria is a settlers’ colony. The last settlers’ colony to be talked about was South Africa. The points made are familiar to all.<br /> <br /> Algeria’s Europeans have never quite given up hope of breaking with France and of imposing their iron law on the Algerians. It is the sole constant of the colonialist policy in Algeria. Today the French Army is won over to this idea. The rumors of peace that spring up here and there must therefore not be taken seriously.<br /> <br /> France will make peace in Algeria by strengthening its domination over Algeria &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;or by smashing the European feudal interests in Algeria.&lt;/span&gt; Apart from these two solutions, peace will have to be imposed upon it internationally through the agency of the United Nations or militarily by the Algerian forces.<br /> <br /> We can see therefore that peace is not for tomorrow. We shall show that France cannot resume its domination in Algeria, even if this domination were to be lightened and dissimulated. The French government is doomed either to oppose a few hundred war criminals or else to give increasing support to the genocide that is rife in Algeria.<br /> <br /> The French authorities do not make us smile when they declare that “the rebellion has a strength of twenty-five thousand men.” What do all these figures amount to when balanced against the holy and colossal energy that keeps a whole people at the boiling point? Even if it is proven that our forces do not exceed five thousand poorly armed men, what value can such knowledge have since, with a million weapons, we should still be creating malcontents? Hundreds of thousands of other Algerian men and women would not forgive the leaders for not enrolling them, for leaving them unarmed. What would the Algerian government be if it did not have the people behind it?<br /> <br /> The French authorities have recently officially recognized the existence of one million displaced, regrouped Algerians. They wanted to cut the army off from the people. They wanted, so it appears, to avoid the “rotting of Algeria.” But how far can one go?<br /> <br /> One million hostages behind barbed wires, and now the French themselves sound the alarm: “Medication no longer has any effect on these regrouped people, so great is their physiological deterioration.” What then? Colonialism is fighting to strengthen its domination and human and economic exploitation. It is fighting also to maintain the identity of the image it has of the Algerian and the depreciated image that the Algerian had of himself. Well, this has long since become impossible.<br /> <br /> The Algerian nation is no longer in a future heaven. It is no longer the product of hazy and phantasy-ridden imaginations. It is at the very center of the new Algerian man. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;There is a new kind of Algerian man,&lt;/span&gt; a new dimension to his existence.<br /> <br /> The thesis that men change at the same time that they change the world has never been so manifest as it is now in Algeria. This trial of strength not only remodels the consciousness that man has of himself, and of his former dominators or of the world, at last within his reach.<br /> <br /> This struggle at different levels renews the symbols, the myths, the beliefs, the emotional responsiveness of the people. We witness in Algeria man’s reassertion of his capacity to progress.<br /> <br /> Who can hope to arrest this essential movement? Is it not better to open one’s eyes and see the magnificence, but also the naturalness, of this evolution?<br /> <br /> Are we still living in the time when man must fight and die in order to have the right to be the citizen of a nation?<br /> <br /> Is anything more grotesque and humiliating and obscene than the appellation, “French-Moslems”?<br /> <br /> And the wretchedness, the indignity, kept alive and nourished every morning—is this not a sufficient pretext for the most far-fetched crimes?<br /> <br /> Are there, then, not enough people on this earth resolved to impose reason on this unreason?<br /> <br /> “The possibility of victory over the rebellion can no longer be ruled out,” General Challe proclaims. Irony here would be out of place. All the generals-in-chief of all the colonial wars repeat the same things, but how can they fail to understand that no rebellion is ever vanquished? What can it possibly mean, to vanquish a rebellion?<br /> <br /> They tried to vanquish the U.P.C.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-003-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-003|6]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, but did not the Cameroons win their independence? The only difference is that colonialism, before it left, sowed half-treasons, prevarications, rancors in profusion among the Cameroonian people. As a result, the future of the Cameroons is jeopardized for several years to come by an evil and outwardly subtle policy.<br /> <br /> We want to show in these pages that &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;colonialism has definitely lost out in Algeria, while the Algerians, come what may, have definitely won.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> This people, which was lost to history, once again finds a flag, a government already recognized by many States, and it can now no longer draw back. This illiterate people that is writing the finest and the most stirring pages of the struggle for freedom cannot draw back nor be silent.<br /> <br /> French colonialism must know these things. It can no longer hide from itself the fact that the Algerian government can mobilize any Algerian at any time. Even the winners in the last elections, forcibly registered on the administration’s electoral lists, would resign if ordered to do so by the F.L.N.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-002-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-002|7]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Not even the deputies of the 13th of May can long resist the new national authority. What then? An army can at any time reconquer the ground lost, but how can the inferiority complex, the fear and the despair of the past be reimplanted in the consciousness of the people? How can one imagine, as General de Gaulle ingenuously invited them to do, that the Algerians will “go back to their homes”? What meaning can this expression have for an Algerian of today?<br /> <br /> Colonialism shuts its eyes to the real facts of the problem. It imagines that our power is measured by the number of our heavy machine guns. This was true in the first months of 1955. It is no longer true today. First of all, because other elements have their weight in the scales of history. Next, because machine guns and cannons are no longer the weapons of the colonialist alone.<br /> <br /> Two-thirds of the world’s population is ready to give to the Revolution as many heavy machine-guns as we need. And if the other third does not do so, it is by no means because it is out of sympathy with the cause of the Algerian people. Quite to the contrary, this other third misses no opportunity to make it known that this cause has its unqualified moral support. And it finds ways of expressing this concretely.<br /> <br /> The power of the Algerian Revolution henceforth resides in the radical mutation that the Algerian has undergone.<br /> <br /> General de Gaulle, addressing himself to Algeria’s extremists recently, declared that “Papa’s Algeria is dead.” That is quite true. But it is not the whole truth. Big Brother’s Algeria is dead too. There is a new Algeria, an Algerian nation, an Algerian government. These obvious facts will sooner or later have to be recognized.<br /> <br /> We shall see in these pages what transformations the consciousness of the Algerian has undergone. We shall see the fissures that, as they have grown, have been the harbingers of Algeria’s new European society. What we are really witnessing is the slow but sure agony of the settler mentality.<br /> <br /> The new relations are not the result of one barbarism replacing another barbarism, of one crushing of man replacing another crushing of man. What we Algerians want is to discover the man behind the colonizer; this man who is both the organizer and the victim of a system that has choked him and reduced him to silence. As for us, we have long since rehabilitated the Algerian colonized man. We have wrenched the Algerian man from a centuries-old and implacable oppression. We have risen to our feet and we are now moving forward. Who can settle us back in servitude?<br /> <br /> We want an Algeria open to all, in which every kind of genius may grow.<br /> <br /> This is what we want and this is what we shall achieve. We do not believe there exists anywhere a force capable of standing in our way.<br /> <br /> Frantz Fanon<br /> <br /> July 1959&lt;div class=&quot;_idFootnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-006&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-006-backlink|3]]. G.P.R.A.—&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne&lt;/span&gt;, the provisional government of the Algerian Republic. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-005&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-005-backlink|4]]. Bellouni—an F.L.N. leader who went over to the French. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Harki&lt;/span&gt;—an Arab militiaman in the service of the French. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-004&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-004-backlink|5]]. Previously Europeans and natives in Algeria had been elected separately, to separate “colleges” having different powers. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-003&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-003-backlink|6]]. U.P.C.—Union of Cameroon Populations. A party agitating for independence. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-002&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-6.xhtml#footnote-002-backlink|7]]. F.L.N.—the National Liberation Front. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_idGenObjectStyleOverride-1&quot;&gt;<br /> == Algeria Unveiled ==<br /> The way people clothe themselves, together with the traditions of dress and finery that custom implies, constitutes the most distinctive form of a society’s uniqueness, that is to say the one that is the most immediately perceptible. Within the general pattern of a given costume, there are of course always modifications of detail, innovations which in highly developed societies are the mark of fashion. But the effect as a whole remains homogeneous, and great areas of civilization, immense cultural regions, can be grouped together on the basis of original, specific techniques of men’s and women’s dress.<br /> <br /> It is by their apparel that types of society first become known, whether through written accounts and photographic records or motion pictures. Thus, there are civilizations without neckties, civilizations with loin-cloths, and others without hats. The fact of belonging to a given cultural group is usually revealed by clothing traditions. In the Arab world, for example, the veil worn by women is at once noticed by the tourist. One may remain for a long time unaware of the fact that a Moslem does not eat pork or that he denies himself daily sexual relations during the month of Ramadan, but the veil worn by the women appears with such constancy that it generally suffices to characterize Arab society.<br /> <br /> In the Arab Maghreb, the veil belongs to the clothing traditions of the Tunisian, Algerian, Moroccan and Libyan national societies. For the tourist and the foreigner, the veil demarcates both Algerian society and its feminine component.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-023-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-023|8]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; In the case of the Algerian man, on the other hand, regional modifications can be noted: the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fez&lt;/span&gt; in urban centers, turbans and &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djellabas&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-022-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-022|9]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; in the countryside. The masculine garb allows a certain margin of choice, a modicum of heterogeneity. The woman seen in her white veil unifies the perception that one has of Algerian feminine society. Obviously what we have here is a uniform which tolerates no modification, no variant.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-021-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-021|10]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> The &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;haïk&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-020-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-020|11]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; very clearly demarcates the Algerian colonized society. It is of course possible to remain hesitant before a little girl, but all uncertainty vanishes at the time of puberty. With the veil, things become well-defined and ordered. The Algerian woman, in the eyes of the observer, is unmistakably “she who hides behind a veil.”<br /> <br /> We shall see that this veil, one of the elements of the traditional Algerian garb, was to become the bone of contention in a grandiose battle, on account of which the occupation forces were to mobilize their most powerful and most varied resources, and in the course of which the colonized were to display a surprising force of inertia. Taken as a whole, colonial society, with its values, its areas of strength, and its philosophy, reacts to the veil in a rather homogeneous way. The decisive battle was launched before 1954, more precisely during the early 1930’s. The officials of the French administration in Algeria, committed to destroying the people’s originality, and under instructions to bring about the disintegration, at whatever cost, of forms of existence likely to evoke a national reality directly or indirectly, were to concentrate their efforts on the wearing of the veil, which was looked upon at this juncture as a symbol of the status of the Algerian woman. Such a position is not the consequence of a chance intuition. It is on the basis of the analyses of sociologists and ethnologists that the specialists in so-called native affairs and the heads of the Arab Bureaus coordinated their work. At an initial stage, there was a pure and simple adoption of the well-known formula, “Let’s win over the women and the rest will follow.” This definition of policy merely gave a scientific coloration to the “discoveries” of the sociologists.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-019-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-019|12]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> Beneath the patrilineal pattern of Algerian society, the specialists described a structure of matrilineal essence. Arab society has often been presented by Westerners as a formal society in which outside appearances are paramount. The Algerian woman, an intermediary between obscure forces and the group, appeared in this perspective to assume a primordial importance. Behind the visible, manifest patriarchy, the more significant existence of a basic matriarchy was affirmed. The role of the Algerian mother, that of the grandmother, the aunt and the “old woman,” were inventoried and defined.<br /> <br /> This enabled the colonial administration to define a precise political doctrine: “If we want to destroy the structure of Algerian society,&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;its capacity for resistance, we must first of all conquer the women; we must go and find them behind the veil where they hide themselves and in the houses where the men keep them out of sight.” It is the situation of woman that was accordingly taken as the theme of action. The dominant administration solemnly undertook to defend this woman, pictured as humiliated, sequestered, cloistered . . . It described the immense possibilities of woman, unfortunately transformed by the Algerian man into an inert, demonetized, indeed dehumanized object. The behavior of the Algerian was very firmly denounced and described as medieval and barbaric. With infinite science, a blanket indictment against the “sadistic and vampirish” Algerian attitude toward women was prepared and drawn up. Around the family life of the Algerian, the occupier piled up a whole mass of judgments, appraisals, reasons, accumulated anecdotes and edifying examples, thus attempting to confine the Algerian within a circle of guilt.<br /> <br /> Mutual aid societies and societies to promote solidarity with Algerian women sprang up in great number. Lamentations were organized. “We want to make the Algerian ashamed of the fate that he metes out to women.” This was a period of effervescence, of putting into application a whole technique of infiltration, in the course of which droves of social workers and women directing charitable works descended on the Arab quarters.<br /> <br /> The indigent and famished women were the first to be besieged. Every kilo of semolina distributed was accompanied by a dose of indignation against the veil and the cloister. The indignation was followed up by practical advice. Algerian women were invited to play “a functional, capital role” in the transformation of their lot. They were pressed to say no to a centuries-old subjection. The immense role they were called upon to play was described to them. The colonial administration invested great sums in this combat. After it had been posited that the woman constituted the pivot of Algerian society, all efforts were made to obtain control over her. The Algerian, it was assured, would not stir, would resist the task of cultural destruction undertaken by the occupier, would oppose assimilation, so long as his woman had not reversed the stream. In the colonialist program, it was the woman who was given the historic mission of shaking up the Algerian man. Converting the woman, winning her over to the foreign values, wrenching her free from her status, was at the same time achieving a real power over the man and attaining a practical, effective means of destructuring Algerian culture.<br /> <br /> Still today, in 1959, the dream of a total domestication of Algerian society by means of “unveiled women aiding and sheltering the occupier” continues to haunt the colonial authorities.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-018-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-018|13]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> The Algerian men, for their part, are a target of criticism for their European comrades, or more officially for their bosses. There is not a European worker who does not sooner or later, in the give and take of relations on the job site, the shop or the office, ask the Algerian the ritual questions: “Does your wife wear the veil? Why don’t you take your wife to the movies, to the fights, to the café?”<br /> <br /> European bosses do not limit themselves to the disingenuous query or the glancing invitation. They use “Indian cunning” to corner the Algerian and push him to painful decisions. In connection with a holiday—Christmas or New Year, or simply a social occasion with the firm—the boss will invite &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;the Algerian employe and his wife.&lt;/span&gt; The invitation is not a collective one. Every Algerian is called in to the director’s office and invited by name to come with “your little family.” “The firm being one big family, it would be unseemly for some to come without their wives, you understand? . . .” Before this formal summons, the Algerian sometimes experiences moments of difficulty. If he comes with his wife, it means admitting defeat, it means “prostituting his wife,” exhibiting her, abandoning a mode of resistance. On the other hand, going alone means refusing to give satisfaction to the boss; it means running the risk of being out of a job. The study of a case chosen at random—a description of the traps set by the European in order to bring the Algerian to expose himself, to declare: “My wife wears a veil, she shall not go out,” or else to betray: “Since you want to see her, here she is,”—would bring out the sadistic and perverse character of these contacts and relationships and would show in microcosm the tragedy of the colonial situation on the psychological level, the way the two systems directly confront each other, the epic of the colonized society, with its specific ways of existing, in the face of the colonialist hydra.<br /> <br /> With the Algerian intellectual, the aggressiveness appears in its full intensity. The &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fellah,&lt;/span&gt; “the passive slave of a rigidly structured group,” is looked upon with a certain indulgence by the ­conqueror.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-017-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-017|14]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The lawyer and the doctor, on the other hand, are severely frowned upon. These intellectuals, who keep their wives in a state of semi-slavery, are literally pointed to with an accusing finger. Colonial society blazes up vehemently against this inferior status of the Algerian woman. Its members worry and show concern for those unfortunate women, doomed “to produce brats,” kept behind walls, banned.<br /> <br /> Before the Algerian intellectual, racialist arguments spring forth with special readiness. For all that he is a doctor, people will say, he still remains an Arab. “You can’t get away from nature.” Illustrations of this kind of race prejudice can be multiplied indefinitely. Clearly, the intellectual is reproached for limiting the extension of learned Western habits, for not playing his role as an active agent of upheaval of the colonized society, for not giving his wife the benefit of the privileges of a more worthy and meaningful life. . . . In the large population centers it is altogether commonplace to hear a European confess acidly that he has never seen the wife of an Algerian he has known for twenty years. At a more diffuse, but highly revealing, level of apprehension, we find the bitter observation that “we work in vain” . . . that “Islam holds its prey.”<br /> <br /> The method of presenting the Algerian as a prey fought over with equal ferocity by Islam and France with its Western culture reveals the whole approach of the occupier, his philosophy and his policy. This expression indicates that the occupier, smarting from his failures, presents in a simplified and pejorative way the system of values by means of which the colonized person resists his innumerable offensives. What is in fact the assertion of a distinct identity, concern with keeping intact a few shreds of national existence, is attributed to religious, magical, fanatical behavior.<br /> <br /> This rejection of the conqueror assumes original forms, according to circumstances or to the type of colonial situation. On the whole, these forms of behavior have been fairly well studied in the course of the past twenty years; it cannot be said, however, that the conclusions that have been reached are wholly valid. Specialists in basic education for underdeveloped countries or technicians for the advancement of retarded societies would do well to understand the sterile and harmful character of any endeavor which illuminates preferentially a given element of the colonized society. Even within the framework of a newly independent nation, one cannot attack this or that segment of the cultural whole without endangering the work undertaken (leaving aside the question of the native’s psychological balance). More precisely, the phenomena of counter-acculturation must be understood as the organic impossibility of a culture to modify any one of its customs without at the same time re-evaluating its deepest values, its most stable models. To speak of counter-acculturation in a colonial situation is an absurdity. The phenomena of resistance observed in the colonized must be related to an attitude of counter-assimilation, of maintenance of a cultural, hence national, originality.<br /> <br /> The occupying forces, in applying their maximum psychological attention to the veil worn by Algerian women, were obviously bound to achieve some results. Here and there it thus happened that a woman was “saved,” and symbolically unveiled.<br /> <br /> These test-women, with bare faces and free bodies, henceforth circulated like sound currency in the European society of Algeria. These women were surrounded by an atmosphere of newness. The Europeans, over-excited and wholly given over to their victory, carried away in a kind of trance, would speak of the psychological phenomena of conversion. And in fact, in the European society, the agents of this conversion were held in esteem. They were envied. The benevolent attention of the administration was drawn to them.<br /> <br /> After each success, the authorities were strengthened in their conviction that the Algerian woman would support Western penetration into the native society. Every rejected veil disclosed to the eyes of the colonialists horizons until then forbidden, and revealed to them, piece by piece, the flesh of Algeria laid bare. The occupier’s aggressiveness, and hence his hopes, multiplied ten-fold each time a new face was uncovered. Every new Algerian woman unveiled announced to the occupier an Algerian society whose systems of defense were in the process of dislocation, open and breached. Every veil that fell, every body that became liberated from the traditional embrace of the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;haïk,&lt;/span&gt; every face that offered itself to the bold and impatient glance of the occupier, was a negative expression of the fact that Algeria was beginning to deny herself and was accepting the rape of the colonizer. Algerian society with every abandoned veil seemed to express its willingness to attend the master’s school and to decide to change its habits under the occupier’s direction and patronage.<br /> <br /> We have seen how colonial society, the colonial administration, perceives the veil, and we have sketched the dynamics of the efforts undertaken to fight it as an institution and the resistances developed by the colonized society. At the level of the individual, of the private European, it may be interesting to follow the multiple reactions provoked by the existence of the veil, which reveal the original way in which the Algerian woman manages to be present or absent.<br /> <br /> For a European not directly involved in this work of conversion, what reactions are there to be recorded?<br /> <br /> The dominant attitude appears to us to be a romantic exoticism, strongly tinged with sensuality.<br /> <br /> And, to begin with, the veil hides a beauty.<br /> <br /> A revealing reflection—among others—of this state of mind was communicated to us by a European visiting Algeria who, in the exercise of his profession (he was a lawyer), had had the opportunity of seeing a few Algerian women without the veil. These men, he said, speaking of the Algerians, are guilty of concealing so many strange beauties. It was his conclusion that a people with a cache of such prizes, of such perfections of nature, owes it to itself to show them, to exhibit them. If worst came to worst, he added, it ought to be possible to force them to do so.<br /> <br /> A strand of hair, a bit of forehead, a segment of an “overwhelmingly beautiful” face glimpsed in a streetcar or on a train, may suffice to keep alive and strengthen the European’s persistence in his irrational conviction that the Algerian woman is the queen of all women.<br /> <br /> But there is also in the European the crystallization of an aggressiveness, the strain of a kind of violence before the Algerian woman. Unveiling this woman is revealing her beauty; it is baring her secret, breaking her resistance, making her available for adventure. Hiding the face is also disguising a secret; it is also creating a world of mystery, of the hidden. In a confused way, the European experiences his relation with the Algerian woman at a highly complex level. There is in it the will to bring this woman within his reach, to make her a possible object of possession.<br /> <br /> This woman who sees without being seen frustrates the colonizer. There is no reciprocity. She does not yield herself, does not give herself, does not offer herself. The Algerian has an attitude toward the Algerian woman which is on the whole clear. He does not see her. There is even a permanent intention not to perceive the feminine profile, not to pay attention to women. In the case of the Algerian, therefore, there is not, in the street or on a road, that behavior characterizing a sexual encounter that is described in terms of the glance, of the physical bearing, the muscular tension, the signs of disturbance to which the phenomenology of encounters has accustomed us.<br /> <br /> The European faced with an Algerian woman wants to see.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;He reacts in an aggressive way before this limitation of his perception. Frustration and aggressiveness, here too, evolve apace. Aggressiveness comes to light, in the first place, in structurally ambivalent attitudes and in the dream material that can be revealed in the European, whether he is normal or suffers from neuropathological disturbances.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-016-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-016|15]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> In a medical consultation, for example, at the end of the morning, it is common to hear European doctors express their disappointment. The women who remove their veils before them are commonplace, vulgar; there is really nothing to make such a mystery of. One wonders what they are hiding.<br /> <br /> European women settle the conflict in a much less round-about way. They bluntly affirm that no one hides what is beautiful and discern in this strange custom an “altogether feminine” intention of disguising imperfections. And they proceed to compare the strategy of the European woman, which is intended to correct, to embellish, to bring out (beauty treatments, hairdos, fashion), with that of the Algerian woman, who prefers to veil, to conceal, to cultivate the man’s doubt and desire. On another level, it is claimed that the intention is to mislead the customer, and that the wrapping in which the “merchandise” is presented does not really alter its nature, nor its value.<br /> <br /> The content of the dreams of Europeans brings out other special themes. Jean-Paul Sartre, in his &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Réflections Sur la Question Juive,&lt;/span&gt; has shown that on the level of the unconscious, the Jewish woman almost always has an aura of rape about her.<br /> <br /> The history of the French conquest in Algeria, including the overrunning of villages by the troops, the confiscation of property and the raping of women, the pillaging of a country, has contributed to the birth and the crystallization of the same dynamic image. At the level of the psychological strata of the occupier, the evocation of this freedom given to the sadism of the conqueror, to his eroticism, creates faults, fertile gaps through which both dreamlike forms of behavior and, on certain occasions, criminal acts can emerge.<br /> <br /> Thus the rape of the Algerian woman in the dream of a European is always preceded by a rending of the veil. We here witness a double deflowering. Likewise, the woman’s conduct is never one of consent or acceptance, but of abject humility.<br /> <br /> Whenever, in dreams having an erotic content, a European meets an Algerian woman, the specific features of his relations with the colonized society manifest themselves. These dreams evolve neither on the same erotic plane, nor at the same tempo, as those that involve a European woman.<br /> <br /> With an Algerian woman, there is no progressive conquest, no mutual revelation. Straight off, with the maximum of violence, there is possession, rape, near-murder. The act assumes a para-­neurotic brutality and sadism, even in a normal European. This brutality and this sadism are in fact emphasized by the frightened attitude of the Algerian woman. In the dream, the woman-victim screams, struggles like a doe, and as she weakens and faints, is penetrated, martyrized, ripped apart.<br /> <br /> Attention must likewise be drawn to a characteristic of this dream content that appears important to us. The European never dreams of an Algerian woman taken in isolation. On the rare occasions when the encounter has become a binding relationship that can be regarded as a couple, it has quickly been transformed by the desperate flight of the woman who, inevitably, leads the male “among women.” The European always dreams of a group of women, of a field of women, suggestive of the gynaeceum, the harem—exotic themes deeply rooted in the unconscious.<br /> <br /> The European’s aggressiveness will express itself likewise in contemplation of the Algerian woman’s morality. Her timidity and her reserve are transformed in accordance with the commonplace laws of conflictual psychology into their opposite, and the Algerian woman becomes hypocritical, perverse, and even a veritable nymphomaniac.<br /> <br /> We have seen that on the level of individuals the colonial strategy of destructuring Algerian society very quickly came to assign a prominent place to the Algerian woman. The colonialist’s relentlessness, his methods of struggle were bound to give rise to reactionary forms of behavior on the part of the colonized. In the face of the violence of the occupier, the colonized found himself defining a principled position with respect to a formerly inert element of the native cultural configuration. It was the colonialist’s frenzy to unveil the Algerian woman, it was his gamble on winning the battle of the veil at whatever cost, that were to provoke the native’s bristling resistance. The deliberately aggressive intentions of the colonialist with respect to the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;haïk&lt;/span&gt; gave a new life to this dead element of the Algerian cultural stock—dead because stabilized, without any progressive change in form or color. We here recognize one of the laws of the psychology of colonization. In an initial phase, it is the action, the plans of the occupier that determine the centers of resistance around which a people’s will to survive becomes organized.<br /> <br /> It is the white man who creates the Negro. But it is the Negro who creates negritude. To the colonialist offensive against the veil, the colonized opposes the cult of the veil. What was an undifferentiated element in a homogeneous whole acquires a taboo character, and the attitude of a given Algerian woman with respect to the veil will be constantly related to her overall attitude with respect to the foreign occupation. The colonized, in the face of the emphasis given by the colonialist to this or that aspect of his traditions, reacts very violently. The attention devoted to modifying this aspect, the emotion the conqueror puts into his pedagogical work, his prayers, his threats, weave a whole universe of resistances around this particular element of the culture. Holding out against the occupier on this precise element means inflicting upon him a spectacular setback; it means more particularly maintaining “co-existence” as a form of conflict and latent warfare. It means keeping up the atmosphere of an armed truce.<br /> <br /> Upon the outbreak of the struggle for liberation, the attitude of the Algerian woman, or of native society in general, with regard to the veil was to undergo important modifications. These innovations are of particular interest in view of the fact that they were at no time included in the program of the struggle. The doctrine of the Revolution, the strategy of combat, never postulated the necessity for a revision of forms of behavior with respect to the veil. We are able to affirm even now that when Algeria has gained her independence such questions will not be raised, for in the practice of the Revolution the people have understood that problems are resolved in the very movement that raises them.<br /> <br /> Until 1955, the combat was waged exclusively by the men. The revolutionary characteristics of this combat, the necessity for absolute secrecy, obliged the militant to keep his woman in absolute ignorance. As the enemy gradually adapted himself to the forms of combat, new difficulties appeared which required original solutions. The decision to involve women as active elements of the Algerian Revolution was not reached lightly. In a sense, it was the very conception of the combat that had to be modified. The violence of the occupier, his ferocity, his delirious attachment to the national territory, induced the leaders no longer to exclude certain forms of combat. Progressively, the urgency of a total war made itself felt. But involving the women was not solely a response to the desire to mobilize the entire nation. The women’s entry into the war had to be harmonized with respect for the revolutionary nature of the war. In other words, the women had to show as much spirit of sacrifice as the men. It was therefore necessary to have the same confidence in them as was required from seasoned militants who had served several prison sentences. A moral elevation and a strength of character that were altogether exceptional would therefore be required of the women. There was no lack of hesitations. The revolutionary wheels had assumed such proportions; the mechanism was running at a given rate. The machine would have to be complicated; in other words its network would have to be extended without affecting its efficiency. The women could not be conceived of as a replacement product, but as an element capable of adequately meeting the new tasks.<br /> <br /> In the mountains, women helped the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;guerrilla&lt;/span&gt; during halts or when convalescing after a wound or a case of typhoid contracted in the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djebel&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-015-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-015|16]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; But deciding to incorporate women as essential elements, to have the Revolution depend on their presence and their action in this or that sector, was obviously a wholly revolutionary step. To have the Revolution rest at any point on their activity was an important choice.<br /> <br /> Such a decision was made difficult for several reasons. During the whole period of unchallenged domination, we have seen that Algerian society, and particularly the women, had a tendency to flee from the occupier. The tenacity of the occupier in his endeavor to unveil the women, to make of them an ally in the work of cultural destruction, had the effect of strengthening the traditional patterns of behavior. These patterns, which were essentially positive in the strategy of resistance to the corrosive action of the colonizer, naturally had negative effects. The woman, especially the city woman, suffered a loss of ease and of assurance. Having been accustomed to confinement, her body did not have the normal mobility before a limitless horizon of avenues, of unfolded sidewalks, of houses, of people dodged or bumped into. This relatively cloistered life, with its known, categorized, regulated comings and goings, made any immediate revolution seem a dubious proposition. The political leaders were perfectly familiar with these problems, and their hesitations expressed their consciousness of their responsibilities. They were entitled to doubt the success of this measure. Would not such a decision have catastrophic consequences for the progress of the Revolution?<br /> <br /> To this doubt there was added an equally important element. The leaders hesitated to involve the women, being perfectly aware of the ferocity of the colonizer. The leaders of the Revolution had no illusions as to the enemy’s criminal capacities. Nearly all of them had passed through their jails or had had sessions with survivors from the camps or the cells of the French judicial police. No one of them failed to realize that any Algerian woman arrested would be tortured to death. It is relatively easy to commit oneself to this path and to accept among different eventualities that of dying under torture. The matter is a little more difficult when it involves designating someone who manifestly runs the risk of certain death. But the decision as to whether or not the women were to participate in the Revolution had to be made; the inner oppositions became massive,&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;and each decision gave rise to the same hesitations, produced the same despair.<br /> <br /> In the face of the extraordinary success of this new form of popular combat, observers have compared the action of the Algerian women to that of certain women resistance fighters or even secret agents of the specialized services. It must be constantly borne in mind that the committed Algerian woman learns both her role as “a woman alone in the street” and her revolutionary mission instinctively. The Algerian woman is not a secret agent. It is without apprenticeship, without briefing, without fuss, that she goes out into the street with three grenades in her handbag or the activity report of an area in her bodice. She does not have the sensation of playing a role she has read about ever so many times in novels, or seen in motion pictures. There is not that coefficient of play, of imitation, almost always present in this form of action when we are dealing with a Western woman.<br /> <br /> What we have here is not the bringing to light of a character known and frequented a thousand times in imagination or in stories. It is an authentic birth in a pure state, without preliminary instruction. There is no character to imitate. On the contrary, there is an intense dramatization, a continuity between the woman and the revolutionary. The Algerian woman rises directly to the level of tragedy.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-014-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-014|17]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> The growth in number of the F.L.N. cells, the range of new tasks—finance, intelligence, counter-intelligence, political ­training—the necessity to provide for one active cell three or four replacement cells to be held in reserve, ready to become active at the slightest alert concerning the front cell, obliged the leaders to seek other avenues for the carrying out of strictly individual assignments. After a final series of meetings among leaders, and especially in view of the urgency of the daily problems that the Revolution faced, the decision to concretely involve women in the national struggle was reached.<br /> <br /> The revolutionary character of this decision must once again be emphasized. At the beginning, it was the married women who were contacted. But rather soon these restrictions were abandoned. The married women whose husbands were militants were the first to be chosen. Later, widows or divorced women were designated. In any case, there were never any unmarried girls—first of all, because a girl of even twenty or twenty-three hardly ever has occasion to leave the family domicile unaccompanied. But the woman’s duties as mother or spouse, the desire to limit to the minimum the possible consequences of her arrest and her death, and also the more and more numerous volunteering of unmarried girls, led the political leaders to make another leap, to remove all restrictions, to accept indiscriminately the support of all Algerian women.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile the woman who might be acting as a liaison agent, as a bearer of tracts, as she walked some hundred or two hundred meters ahead of the man under whose orders she was working, still wore a veil; but after a certain period the pattern of activity that the struggle involved shifted in the direction of the European city. The protective mantle of the Kasbah, the almost organic curtain of safety that the Arab town weaves round the native, withdrew, and the Algerian woman, exposed, was sent forth into the conqueror’s city. Very quickly she adopted an absolutely unbelievable offensive tactic. When colonized people undertake an action against the oppressor, and when this oppression is exercised in the form of exacerbated and continuous violence as in Algeria, they must overcome a considerable number of taboos. The European city is not the prolongation of the native city. The colonizers have not settled in the midst of the natives. They have surrounded the native city; they have laid siege to it. Every exit from the Kasbah of Algiers opens on enemy territory. And so it is in Constantine, in Oran, in Blida, in Bone.<br /> <br /> The native cities are deliberately caught in the conqueror’s vise. To get an idea of the rigor with which the immobilizing of the native city, of the autochthonous population, is organized, one must have in one’s hands the plans according to which a colonial city has been laid out, and compare them with the comments of the general staff of the occupation forces.<br /> <br /> Apart from the charwomen employed in the conquerors’ homes, those whom the colonizer indiscriminately calls the “Fatmas,” the Algerian women, especially the young Algerian women, rarely venture into the European city. Their movements are almost entirely limited to the Arab city. And even in the Arab city their movements are reduced to the minimum. The rare occasions on which the Algerian woman abandons the city are almost always in connection with some event, either of an exceptional nature (the death of a relative residing in a nearby locality), or, more often, traditional family visits for religious feasts, or a pilgrimage. In such cases, the European city is crossed in a car, usually early in the morning. The Algerian woman, the young Algerian woman—except for a very few students (who, besides, never have the same ease as their European counterparts)—must overcome a multiplicity of inner resistances, of subjectively organized fears, of emotions. She must at the same time confront the essentially hostile world of the occupier and the mobilized, vigilant, and efficient police forces. Each time she ventures into the European city, the Algerian woman must achieve a victory over herself, over her childish fears. She must consider the image of the occupier lodged somewhere in her mind and in her body, remodel it, initiate the essential work of eroding it, make it inessential, remove something of the shame that is attached to it, devalidate it.<br /> <br /> Initially subjective, the breaches made in colonialism are the result of a victory of the colonized over their old fear and over the atmosphere of despair distilled day after day by a colonialism that has incrusted itself with the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;prospect of enduring forever.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> The young Algerian woman, whenever she is called upon, establishes a link. Algiers is no longer the Arab city, but the autonomous area of Algiers, the nervous system of the enemy apparatus. Oran, Constantine develop their dimensions. In launching the struggle, the Algerian is loosening the vise that was tightening around the native cities. From one area of Algiers to another, from the Ruisseau to Hussein-Dey, from El-Biar to the rue Michelet, the Revolution creates new links. More and more, it is the Algerian woman, the Algerian girl, who will be assuming these tasks.<br /> <br /> Among the tasks entrusted to the Algerian woman is the bearing of messages, of complicated verbal orders learned by heart, sometimes despite complete absence of schooling. But she is also called upon to stand watch, for an hour and often more, before a house where district leaders are conferring.<br /> <br /> During those interminable minutes when she must avoid standing still, so as not to attract attention, and avoid venturing too far since she is responsible for the safety of the brothers within, incidents that are at once funny and pathetic are not infrequent. An unveiled Algerian girl who “walks the street” is very often noticed by young men who behave like young men all over the world, but who use a special approach as the result of the idea people habitually have of one who has discarded the veil. She is treated to unpleasant, obscene, humiliating remarks. When such things happen, she must grit her teeth, walk away a few steps, elude the passers-by who draw attention to her, who give other passers-by the desire either to follow their example, or to come to her defense. Or it may be that the Algerian woman is carrying in her bag or in a small suitcase twenty, thirty, forty million francs, money belonging to the Revolution, money which is to be used to take care of the needs of the families of prisoners, or to buy medicine and supplies for the guerrillas.<br /> <br /> This revolutionary activity has been carried on by the Algerian woman with exemplary constancy, self-mastery, and success. Despite the inherent, subjective difficulties and notwithstanding the sometimes violent incomprehension of a part of the family, the Algerian woman assumes all the tasks entrusted to her.<br /> <br /> But things were gradually to become more complicated. Thus the unit leaders who go into the town and who avail themselves of the women-scouts, of the girls whose function it is to lead the way, are no longer new to political activity, are no longer unknown to the police. Authentic military chiefs have now begun to pass through the cities. These are known, and are being looked for. There is not a police superintendent who does not have their pictures on his desk.<br /> <br /> These soldiers on the move, these fighters, always carry their weapons—automatic pistols, revolvers, grenades, sometimes all three. The political leader must overcome much resistance in order to induce these men, who under no circumstance would allow themselves to be taken prisoner, to entrust their weapons to the girl who is to walk ahead of them, it being up to them, if things go badly, to recover the arms immediately. The group accordingly makes its way into the European city. A hundred meters ahead, a girl may be carrying a suitcase and behind her are two or three ordinary-looking men. This girl who is the group’s lighthouse and barometer gives warning in case of danger. The file makes its way by fits and starts; police cars and patrols cruise back and forth.<br /> <br /> There are times, as these soldiers have admitted after completing such a mission, when the urge to recover their weapons is almost irresistible because of the fear of being caught short and not having time to defend themselves. With this phase, the Algerian woman penetrates a little further into the flesh of the Revolution.<br /> <br /> But it was from 1956 on that her activity assumed really gigantic dimensions. Having to react in rapid succession to the massacre of Algerian civilians in the mountains and in the cities, the revolutionary leadership found that if it wanted to prevent the people from being gripped by terror it had no choice but to adopt forms of terror which until then it had rejected. This phenomenon has not been sufficiently analyzed; not enough attention has been given to the reasons that lead a revolutionary movement to choose the weapon that is called terrorism.<br /> <br /> During the French Resistance, terrorism was aimed at soldiers, at Germans of the Occupation, or at strategic enemy installations. The technique of terrorism is the same. It consists of individual or collective attempts by means of bombs or by the derailing of trains. In Algeria, where European settlers are numerous and where the territorial militia lost no time in enrolling the postman, the nurse and the grocer in the repressive system, the men who directed the struggle faced an absolutely new situation.<br /> <br /> The decision to kill a civilian in the street is not an easy one, and no one comes to it lightly. No one takes the step of placing a bomb in a public place without a battle of conscience.<br /> <br /> The Algerian leaders who, in view of the intensity of the repression and the frenzied character of the oppression, thought they could answer the blows received without any serious problems of conscience, discovered that the most horrible crimes do not constitute a sufficient excuse for certain decisions.<br /> <br /> The leaders in a number of cases canceled plans or even in the last moment called off the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fidaï&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-013-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-013|18]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; assigned to place a given bomb. To explain these hesitations there was, to be sure, the memory of civilians killed or frightfully wounded. There was the political consideration not to do certain things that could compromise the cause of freedom. There was also the fear that the Europeans working with the Front might be hit in these attempts. There was thus a threefold concern: not to pile up possibly innocent victims, not to give a false picture of the Revolution, and finally the anxiety to have the French democrats on their side, as well as the democrats of all the countries of the world and the Europeans of Algeria who were attracted by the Algerian national ideal.<br /> <br /> Now the massacres of Algerians, the raids in the countryside, strengthened the assurance of the European civilians, seemed to consolidate the colonial status, and injected hope into the colonialists. The Europeans who, as a result of certain military actions on the part of the Algerian National Army in favor of the struggle of the Algerian people, had soft-pedaled their race prejudice and their insolence, recovered their old arrogance, their traditional contempt.<br /> <br /> I remember a woman clerk in Birtouta who, on the day of the interception of the plane transporting the five members of the National Liberation Front, waved their photographs in front of her shop, shrieking: “They’ve been caught! They’re going to get their what-you-call’ems cut off!”<br /> <br /> Every blow dealt the Revolution, every massacre perpetrated by the adversary, intensified the ferocity of the colonialists and hemmed in the Algerian civilian on all sides.<br /> <br /> Trains loaded with French soldiers, the French Navy on maneuvers and bombarding Algiers and Philippeville, the jet planes, the militiamen who descended on the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;douars&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-012-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-012|19]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and decimated uncounted Algerians, all this contributed to giving the people the impression that they were not defended, that they were not protected, that nothing had changed, and that the Europeans could do what they wanted. This was the period when one heard Europeans announcing in the streets: “Let’s each one of us take ten of them and bump them off and you’ll see the problem solved in no time.” And the Algerian people, especially in the cities, witnessed this boastfulness which added insult to injury and noted the impunity of these criminals who did not even take the trouble to hide. Any Algerian man or woman in a given city could in fact name the torturers and murderers of the region.<br /> <br /> A time came when some of the people allowed doubt to enter their minds, and they began to wonder whether it was really possible, quantitatively and qualitatively, to resist the occupant’s offensives. Was freedom worth the consequences of penetrating into that enormous circuit of terrorism and counter-terrorism? Did this disproportion not express the impossibility of escaping oppression?<br /> <br /> Another part of the people, however, grew impatient and conceived the idea of putting an end to the advantage the enemy derived by pursuing the path of terror. The decision to strike the adversary individually and by name could no longer be eluded. All the prisoners “shot and killed while trying to escape,” and the cries of the tortured, demanded that new forms of combat be adopted.<br /> <br /> Members of the police and the meeting places of the colonialists (cafés in Algiers, Oran, Constantine) were the first to be singled out. From this point on the Algerian woman became wholly and deliberately immersed in the revolutionary action. It was she who would carry in her bag the grenades and the revolvers that a &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fidaï&lt;/span&gt; would take from her at the last moment, before the bar, or as a designated criminal passed. During this period Algerians caught in the European city were pitilessly challenged, arrested, searched.<br /> <br /> This is why we must watch the parallel progress of this man and this woman, of this couple that brings death to the enemy, life to the Revolution. The one supporting the other, but apparently strangers to each other. The one radically transformed into a European woman, poised and unconstrained, whom no one would suspect, completely at home in the environment, and the other, a stranger, tense, moving toward his destiny.<br /> <br /> The Algerian &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fidaï,&lt;/span&gt; unlike the unbalanced anarchists made famous in literature, does not take dope. The &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fidaï&lt;/span&gt; does not need to be unaware of danger, to befog his consciousness, or to forget. The “terrorist,” from the moment he undertakes an assignment, allows death to enter into his soul. He has a rendezvous with death. The &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fidaï,&lt;/span&gt; on the other hand, has a rendezvous with the life of the Revolution, and with his own life. The &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fidaï&lt;/span&gt; is not one of the sacrificed. To be sure, he does not shrink before the possibility of losing his life or the independence of his country, but at no moment does he choose death.<br /> <br /> If it has been decided to kill a given police superintendent responsible for tortures or a given colonialist leader, it is because these men constitute an obstacle to the progress of the Revolution. Froger, for example, symbolized a colonialist tradition and a method inaugurated at Sétif and at Guelma in 1954.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-011-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-011|20]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Moreover, Froger’s apparent power crystallized the colonization and gave new life to the hopes of those who were beginning to have doubts as to the real solidity of the system. It was around people like Froger that the robbers and murderers of the Algerian people would meet and encourage one another. This was something the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fidaï&lt;/span&gt; knew, and that the woman who accompanied him, his woman-arsenal, likewise knew.<br /> <br /> Carrying revolvers, grenades, hundreds of false identity cards or bombs, the unveiled Algerian woman moves like a fish in the Western waters. The soldiers, the French patrols, smile to her as she passes, compliments on her looks are heard here and there, but no one suspects that her suitcases contain the automatic pistol which will presently mow down four or five members of one of the patrols.<br /> <br /> We must come back to that young girl, unveiled only yesterday, who walks with sure steps down the streets of the European city teeming with policemen, parachutists, militiamen. She no longer slinks along the walls as she tended to do before the Revolution. Constantly called upon to efface herself before a member of the dominant society, the Algerian woman avoided the middle of the sidewalk which in all countries in the world belongs rightfully to those who command.<br /> <br /> The shoulders of the unveiled Algerian woman are thrust back with easy freedom. She walks with a graceful, measured stride, neither too fast nor too slow. Her legs are bare, not confined by the veil, given back to themselves, and her hips are free.<br /> <br /> The body of the young Algerian woman, in traditional society, is revealed to her by its coming to maturity and by the veil.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;The veil covers the body and disciplines it, tempers it, at the very time when it experiences its phase of greatest effervescence. The veil protects, reassures, isolates. One must have heard the confessions of Algerian women or have analyzed the dream content of certain recently unveiled women to appreciate the importance of the veil for the body of the woman. Without the veil she has an impression of her body being cut up into bits, put adrift; the limbs seem to lengthen indefinitely. When the Algerian woman has to cross a street, for a long time she commits errors of judgment as to the exact distance to be negotiated. The unveiled body seems to escape, to dissolve. She has an impression of being improperly dressed, even of being naked. She experiences a sense of incompleteness with great intensity. She has the anxious feeling that something is unfinished, and along with this a frightful sensation of disintegrating. The absence of the veil distorts the Algerian woman’s corporal pattern. She quickly has to invent new dimensions for her body, new means of muscular control. She has to create for herself an attitude of unveiled-woman-outside. She must overcome all timidity, all awkwardness (for she must pass for a European), and at the same time be careful not to overdo it, not to attract notice to herself. The Algerian woman who walks stark naked into the European city relearns her body, re-establishes it in a totally revolutionary fashion. This new dialectic of the body and of the world is primary in the case of one revolutionary woman.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-010-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-010|21]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> But the Algerian woman is not only in conflict with her body. She is a link, sometimes an essential one, in the revolutionary machine. She carries weapons, knows important points of refuge. And it is in terms of the concrete dangers that she faces that we must gauge the insurmountable victories that she has had to win in order to be able to say to her chief, on her return: “Mission accomplished . . . R.A.S.”&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-009-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-009|22]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> Another difficulty to which attention deserves to be called appeared during the first months of feminine activity. In the course of her comings and goings, it would happen that the unveiled Algerian woman was seen by a relative or a friend of the family, The father was sooner or later informed. He would naturally hesitate to believe such allegations. Then more reports would reach him. Different persons would claim to have seen “Zohra or Fatima unveiled, walking like a . . . My Lord, protect us! . . .” The father would then decide to demand explanations. He would hardly have begun to speak when he would stop. From the young girl’s look of firmness the father would have understood that her commitment was of long standing. The old fear of dishonor was swept away by a new fear, fresh and cold—that of death in battle or of torture of the girl. Behind the girl, the whole family—even the Algerian father, the authority for all things, the founder of every value—following in her footsteps, becomes committed to the new Algeria.<br /> <br /> Removed and reassumed again and again, the veil has been manipulated, transformed into a technique of camouflage, into a means of struggle. The virtually taboo character assumed by the veil in the colonial situation disappeared almost entirely in the course of the liberating struggle. Even Algerian women not actively integrated into the struggle formed the habit of abandoning the veil. It is true that under certain conditions, especially from 1957 on, the veil reappeared. The missions in fact became increasingly difficult. The adversary now knew, since certain militant women had spoken under torture, that a number of women very Europeanized in appearance were playing a fundamental role in the battle. Moreover, certain European women of Algeria were arrested, to the consternation of the adversary who discovered that his own system was breaking down. The discovery by the French authorities of the participation of Europeans in the liberation struggle marks a turning point in the Algerian Revolution.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-008-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-008|23]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; From that day, the French patrols challenged every person. Europeans and Algerians were equally suspect. All historic limits crumbled and disappeared. Any person carrying a package could be required to open it and show its contents. Anyone was entitled to question anyone as to the nature of a parcel carried in Algiers, Philippeville, or Batna. Under those conditions it became urgent to conceal the package from the eyes of the occupier and again to cover oneself with the protective &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;haïk.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> Here again, a new technique had to be learned: how to carry a rather heavy object dangerous to handle under the veil and still give the impression of having one’s hands free, that there was nothing under this &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;haïk,&lt;/span&gt; except a poor woman or an insignificant young girl. It was not enough to be veiled. One had to look so much like a “fatma” that the soldier would be convinced that this woman was quite harmless.<br /> <br /> Very difficult. Three meters ahead of you the police challenge a veiled woman who does not look particularly suspect. From the anguished expression of the unit leader you have guessed that she is carrying a bomb, or a sack of grenades, bound to her body by a whole system of strings and straps. For the hands must be free, exhibited bare, humbly and abjectly presented to the soldiers so that they will look no further. Showing empty and apparently mobile and free hands is the sign that disarms the enemy soldier.<br /> <br /> The Algerian woman’s body, which in an initial phase was pared down, now swelled. Whereas in the previous period the body had to be made slim and disciplined to make it attractive and seductive, it now had to be squashed, made shapeless and even ridiculous. This, as we have seen, is the phase during which she undertook to carry bombs, grenades, machine-gun clips.<br /> <br /> The enemy, however, was alerted, and in the streets one witnessed what became a commonplace spectacle of Algerian women glued to the wall, on whose bodies the famous magnetic detectors, the “frying pans,” would be passed. Every veiled woman, every Algerian woman became suspect. There was no discrimination. This was the period during which men, women, children, the whole Algerian people, experienced at one and the same time their national vocation and the recasting of the new Algerian society.<br /> <br /> Ignorant or feigning to be ignorant of these new forms of conduct, French colonialism, on the occasion of May 13th, reenacted its old campaign of Westernizing the Algerian woman. Servants under the threat of being fired, poor women dragged from their homes, prostitutes, were brought to the public square and &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;symbolically&lt;/span&gt; unveiled to the cries of &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;“Vive l’Algérie française!”&lt;/span&gt; Before this new offensive old reactions reappeared. Spontaneously and without being told, the Algerian women who had long since dropped the veil once again donned the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;haïk,&lt;/span&gt; thus affirming that it was not true that woman liberated herself at the invitation of France and of General de Gaulle.<br /> <br /> Behind these psychological reactions, beneath this immediate and almost unanimous response, we again see the overall attitude of rejection of the values of the occupier, even if these values objectively be worth choosing. It is because they fail to grasp this intellectual reality, this characteristic feature (the famous sensitivity of the colonized), that the colonizers rage at always “doing them good in spite of themselves.” Colonialism wants everything to come from it. But the dominant psychological feature of the colonized is to withdraw before any invitation of the conqueror’s. In organizing the famous cavalcade of May 13th, colonialism has obliged Algerian society to go back to methods of struggle already outmoded. In a certain sense, the different ceremonies have caused a turning back, a regression.<br /> <br /> Colonialism must accept the fact that things happen without its control, without its direction. We are reminded of the words spoken in an international assembly by an African political figure. Responding to the standard excuse of the immaturity of colonial peoples and their incapacity to administer themselves, this man demanded for the underdeveloped peoples “the right to govern themselves badly.” The doctrinal assertions of colonialism in its attempt to justify the maintenance of its domination almost always push the colonized to the position of making uncompromising, rigid, static counter-proposals.<br /> <br /> After the 13th of May, the veil was resumed, but stripped once and for all of its exclusively traditional dimension.<br /> <br /> There is thus a historic dynamism of the veil that is very concretely perceptible in the development of colonization in Algeria. In the beginning, the veil was a mechanism of resistance, but its value for the social group remained very strong. The veil was worn because tradition demanded a rigid separation of the sexes, but also because the occupier &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;was bent on unveiling Algeria.&lt;/span&gt; In a second phase, the mutation occurred in connection with the Revolution and under special circumstances. The veil was abandoned in the course of revolutionary action. What had been used to block the psychological or political offensives of the occupier became a means, an instrument. The veil&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;helped the Algerian woman to meet the new problems created by the struggle.<br /> <br /> The colonialists are incapable of grasping the motivations of the colonized. It is the necessities of combat that give rise in Algerian society to new attitudes, to new modes of action, to new ways.<br /> <br /> === Appendix ===<br /> On the Algerian earth which is freeing itself day by day from the colonialist’s grip, we witness a dislocation of the old myths.<br /> <br /> Among things that are “incomprehensible” to the colonial world the case of the Algerian woman has been all too frequently mentioned. The studies of sociologists, Islam specialists and jurists are full of observations on the Algerian woman.<br /> <br /> Described by turns as the man’s slave or as the unchallenged sovereign of the home, Algerian woman and her status absorb the attention of theoreticians.<br /> <br /> Others, of equal authority, affirm that the Algerian woman “dreams of being free,” but that a retrograde and ferocious patriarchy opposes this legitimate aspiration. The most recent debates in the French National Assembly indicate the interest attached to a coherent approach to this “problem.” The majority of the speakers describe the fate of the Algerian woman and demand an improvement in her status. This, it is added, is the only means of disarming the rebellion. Colonialist intellectuals consistently use the “sociological case study” approach to the colonial system. Such and such a country, they will say, called for, was crying for conquest. Thus, to take a famous example, the Madagascan was described as having a dependency complex.<br /> <br /> As for the Algerian woman, she is “inaccessible, ambivalent, with a masochistic component.” Specific behaviors are described which illustrate these different characteristics. The truth is that the study of an occupied people, militarily subject to an implacable domination, requires documentation and checking difficult to combine. It is not the soil that is occupied. It is not the ports or the airdromes. French colonialism has settled itself in the very center of the Algerian individual and has undertaken a sustained work of cleanup, of expulsion of self, of rationally pursued mutilation.<br /> <br /> There is not occupation of territory, on the one hand, and independence of persons on the other. It is the country as a whole, its history, its daily pulsation that are contested, disfigured, in the hope of a final destruction. Under these conditions, the individual’s breathing is an observed, an occupied breathing. It is a combat breathing.<br /> <br /> From this point on, the real values of the occupied quickly tend to acquire a clandestine form of existence. In the presence of the occupier, the occupied learns to dissemble, to resort to trickery. To the scandal of military occupation, he opposes a scandal of contact. Every contact between the occupied and the occupier is a falsehood.<br /> <br /> In forty-eight hours the Algerian woman has knocked down all the pseudo-truths that years of “field studies” were believed to have amply confirmed. To be sure, the Algerian Revolution has brought about an objective modification of attitudes and outlook. But the Algerian people had never disarmed. November 1, 1954, was not the awakening of the people, but the signal it was waiting for in order to get into motion, in order to put into practice in full daylight a tactic acquired, and solidly reinforced, in the heyday of the Franco-Moslem period.<br /> <br /> The Algerian woman, like her brothers, had minutely built up defense mechanisms which enable her today to play a primary role in the struggle for liberation.<br /> <br /> To begin with, there is the much-discussed status of the Algerian woman—her alleged confinement, her lack of importance, her humility, her silent existence bordering on quasi-absence. And “Moslem society” has made no place for her, amputating her personality, allowing her neither development nor maturity, maintaining her in a perpetual infantilism.<br /> <br /> Such affirmations, illuminated by “scientific works,” are today receiving the only valid challenge: the experience of revolution.<br /> <br /> The Algerian woman’s ardent love of the home is not a limitation imposed by the universe. It is not hatred of the sun or the streets or spectacles. It is not a flight from the world.<br /> <br /> What is true is that under normal conditions, an interaction must exist between the family and society at large. The home is the basis of the truth of society, but society authenticates and legitimizes the family. The colonial structure is the very negation of this reciprocal justification. The Algerian woman, in imposing such a restriction on herself, in choosing a form of existence limited in scope, was deepening her consciousness of struggle and preparing for combat.<br /> <br /> This withdrawal, this rejection of an imposed structure, this falling back upon the fertile kernel that a restricted but coherent existence represents, constituted for a long time the fundamental strength of the occupied. All alone, the woman, by means of conscious techniques, presided over the setting up of the system. What was essential was that the occupier should constantly come up against a unified front. This accounts for the aspect of sclerosis that tradition must assume.<br /> <br /> In reality, the effervescence and the revolutionary spirit have been kept alive by the woman in the home. For revolutionary war is not a war of men.<br /> <br /> It is not a war waged with an active army and reserves. Revolutionary war, as the Algerian people is waging it, is a total war in which the woman does not merely knit for or mourn the soldier. The Algerian woman is at the heart of the combat. Arrested, tortured, raped, shot down, she testifies to the violence of the occupier and to his inhumanity.<br /> <br /> As a nurse, a liaison agent, a fighter, she bears witness to the depth and the density of the struggle.<br /> <br /> We shall speak also of the woman’s fatalism, of her absence of reaction in the face of adversity, of her inability to measure the gravity of events. The constant smile, the persistence of an apparently unfounded hope, the refusal to go down on her knees, is likened to an inability to grasp reality.<br /> <br /> The humor which is a rigorous appraisal of events is unperceived by the occupier. And the courage that the Algerian woman manifests in the struggle is not an unexpected creation or the result of a mutation. It is the insurrectional phase of that same humor.<br /> <br /> The woman’s place in Algerian society is indicated with such vehemence that the occupier’s confusion is readily understandable. This is because Algerian society reveals itself not to be the womanless society that had been so convincingly described.<br /> <br /> Side by side with us, our sisters do their part in further breaking down the enemy system and in liquidating the old mystifications once and for all.&lt;div class=&quot;_idFootnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-023&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-023-backlink|8]]. We do not here consider rural areas where the woman is often unveiled. Nor do we take into account the Kabyle woman who, except in the large cities, never uses a veil. For the tourist who rarely ventures into the mountains, the Arab woman is first of all one who wears a veil. This originality of the Kabyle woman constitutes, among others, one of the themes of colonialist propaganda bringing out the opposition between Arabs and Berbers. Such studies, devoted to the analysis of psychological modifications, neglect considerations that are properly historical. We shall presently take up this other aspect of Algerian reality in action. Here we shall content ourselves with pointing out that the Kabyle women, in the course of 130 years of domination, have developed other defense mechanisms with respect to the occupier. During the war of liberation their forms of action have likewise assumed absolutely original aspects.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-022&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-022-backlink|9]]. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Djellaba&lt;/span&gt;—a long, hooded cloak. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-021&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-021-backlink|10]]. One phenomenon deserves to be recalled. In the course of the Moroccan people’s struggle for liberation, and chiefly in the cities, the white veil was replaced by the black veil. This important modification is explained by the Moroccan women’s desire to express their attachment to His Majesty Mohammed V. It will be remembered that it was immediately after the exiling of the King of Morocco that the black veil, a sign of mourning, made its appearance. It is worth noting that black, in Moroccan or Arab society, has never expressed mourning or affliction. As a combat measure, the adoption of black is a response to the desire to exert a symbolic pressure on the occupier, and hence to make a logical choice of one’s own symbols.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-020&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-020-backlink|11]]. The &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;haïk&lt;/span&gt;—the Arab name for the big square veil worn by Arab women, covering the face and the whole body. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-019&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-019-backlink|12]]. See Appendix at the end of this chapter.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-018&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-018-backlink|13]]. The ground is prepared in the school establishments as well. The teachers to whom the parents have entrusted their children soon acquire the habit of passing severe judgment on the fate of woman in Algerian society. “We firmly hope that you at least will be strong enough to impose your point of view. . . .” Schools for “young Moslem girls” are multiplying. At their pupils’ approach to puberty, the teachers or the nuns exercise a truly exceptional activity. The mothers are first felt out, besieged, and given the mission of shaking up and convincing the father. Much is made of the young student’s prodigious intelligence, her maturity; a picture is painted of the brilliant future that awaits those eager young creatures, and it is none too subtly hinted that it would be criminal if the child’s schooling were interrupted. The shortcomings of colonized society are conceded, and it is proposed that the young student be sent to boarding school in order to spare the parents the criticism of “­narrow-minded neighbors.” For the specialist in colonial affairs, veterans and the “developed” natives are the commandos who are entrusted with destroying the cultural resistance of a colonized country. The regions are accordingly classified in terms of the number of developed “active units,” in other words, agents of erosion of the national culture that they contain.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-017&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-017-backlink|14]]. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fellah&lt;/span&gt;—a peasant. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-016&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-016-backlink|15]]. Attention must be called to a frequent attitude, on the part of European women in particular, with regard to a special category of evolved natives. Certain unveiled Algerian women turn themselves into perfect Westerners with amazing rapidity and unsuspected ease. European women feel a certain uneasiness in the presence of these women. Frustrated in the presence of the veil, they experience a similar impression before the bared face, before that unabashed body which has lost all awkwardness, all timidity, and become downright offensive. Not only is the satisfaction of supervising the evolution and correcting the mistakes of the unveiled woman withdrawn from the European woman, but she feels herself challenged on the level of feminine charm, of elegance, and even sees a competitor in this novice metamorphosed into a professional, a neophyte transformed into a propagandist. The European woman has no choice but to make common cause with the Algerian man who had fiercely flung the unveiled woman into the camp of evil and of depravation. “Really!” the European women will exclaim, “these unveiled women are quite amoral and shameless.” Integration, in order to be successful, seems indeed to have to be simply a continued, accepted paternalism.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-015&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-015-backlink|16]]. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djebel&lt;/span&gt;—mountain. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-014&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-014-backlink|17]]. We are mentioning here only realities known to the enemy. We therefore say nothing about the new forms of action adopted by women in the Revolution. Since 1958, in fact, the tortures inflicted on women militants have enabled the occupier to have an idea of the strategy used by women. Today new adaptations have developed. It will therefore be understood if we are silent as to these.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-013&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-013-backlink|18]]. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fidaï&lt;/span&gt;—a death volunteer, in the Islamic tradition. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-012&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-012-backlink|19]]. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;douar&lt;/span&gt;—a village. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-011&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-011-backlink|20]]. Froger, one of the colonialist leaders. Executed by a &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fidaï&lt;/span&gt; in late 1956.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-010&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-010-backlink|21]]. The woman, who before the Revolution never left the house without being accompanied by her mother or her husband, is now entrusted with special missions such as going from Oran to Constantine or Algiers. For several days, all by herself, carrying directives of capital importance for the Revolution, she takes the train, spends the night with an unknown family, among militants. Here too she must harmonize her movements, for the enemy is on the lookout for any false step. But the important thing here is that the husband makes no difficulty about letting his wife leave on an assignment. He will make it, in fact, a point of pride to say to the liaison agent when the latter returns, “You see, everything has gone well in your absence.” The Algerian’s age-old jealousy, his “congenital” suspiciousness, have melted on contact with the Revolution. It must be pointed out also that militants who are being sought by the police take refuge with other militants not yet identified by the occupier. In such cases the woman, left alone all day with the fugitive, is the one who gets him his food, the newspapers, the mail, showing no trace of suspicion or fear. Involved in the struggle, the husband or the father learns to look upon the relations between the sexes in a new light. The militant man discovers the militant woman, and jointly they create new dimensions for Algerian society.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-009&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-009-backlink|22]]. R.A.S.—&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Rien à signaler&lt;/span&gt;—a military abbreviation for “Nothing to report.”<br /> <br /> We here go on to a description of attitudes. There is, however, an important piece of work to be done on the woman’s role in the Revolution: the woman in the city, in the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djebel&lt;/span&gt;, in the enemy adminstrations; the prostitute and the information she obtains; the woman in prison, under torture, facing death, before the courts. All these chapter headings, after the material has been sifted, will reveal an incalculable number of facts essential for the history of the national struggle.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-008&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-008-backlink|23]]. See Chapter 5.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-007&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-7.xhtml#footnote-007-backlink|24]]. This text which appeared in &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Résistance Algérienne&lt;/span&gt; in its issue of May 16, 1957, indicates the consciousness that the leaders of the National Liberation Front have always had of the important part played by the Algerian woman in the Revolution.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_idGenObjectStyleOverride-1&quot;&gt;<br /> == This Is the Voice of Algeria ==<br /> We propose in this chapter to study the new attitudes adopted by the Algerian people in the course of the fight for liberation, with respect to a precise technical instrument: the radio. We shall see that what is being called into question behind these new developments in Algerian life is the entire colonial situation. We shall have occasion to show throughout this book that the challenging of the very principle of foreign domination brings about essential mutations in the consciousness of the colonized, in the manner in which he perceives the colonizer, in his human status in the world.<br /> <br /> Radio-Alger, the French broadcasting station which has been established in Algeria for decades, a re-edition or an echo of the French National Broadcasting System operating from Paris, is essentially the instrument of colonial society and its values. The great majority of Europeans in Algeria own receiving sets. Before 1945, 95 per cent of the receivers were in the hands of Europeans. The Algerians who owned radios belonged mainly to the “developed bourgeoisie,” and included a number of Kabyles who had formerly emigrated and had since returned to their villages. The sharp economic stratification between the dominant and the dominated societies in large part explains this state of things. But naturally, as in every colonial situation, this category of realities takes on a specific coloration. Thus hundreds of Algerian families whose standard of living was sufficient to enable them to acquire a radio did not acquire one. Yet there was no rational decision to refuse this instrument. There was no organized resistance to this device. No real lines of counter-acculturation, such as are described in certain monographs devoted to underdeveloped regions, have been shown to exist, even after extensive surveys. It may be pointed out, nevertheless—and this argument may have appeared to confirm the conclusions of sociologists—that, pressed with questions as to the reasons for this reluctance, Algerians rather frequently give the following answer: “Traditions of respectability are so important for us and are so hierarchical, that it is practically impossible for us to listen to radio programs in the family. The sex allusions, or even the clownish situations meant to make people laugh, which are broadcast over the radio cause an unendurable strain in a family listening to these programs.”<br /> <br /> The ever possible eventuality of laughing in the presence of the head of the family or the elder brother, of listening in common to amorous words or terms of levity, obviously acts as a deterrent to the distribution of radios in Algerian native society. It is with reference to this first rationalization that we must understand the habit formed by the official Radio Broadcasting Services in Algeria of announcing the programs that can be listened to in common and those in the course of which the traditional forms of sociability might be too severely strained.<br /> <br /> Here, then, at a certain explicit level, is the apprehension of a fact: receiving sets are not readily adopted by Algerian society. By and large, it refuses this technique which threatens its stability and the traditional types of sociability; the reason invoked being that the programs in Algeria, undifferentiated because they are copied from the Western model, are not adapted to the strict, almost feudal type of patrilineal hierarchy, with its many moral taboos, that characterizes the Algerian family.<br /> <br /> On the basis of this analysis, techniques of approach could be proposed. Among others, the staggering of broadcasts addressed to the family as a whole, to male groups, to female groups, etc. As we describe the radical transformations that have occurred in this realm, in connection with the national war, we shall see how artificial such a sociological approach is, what a mass of errors it contains.<br /> <br /> We have already noted the accelerated speed with which the radio was adopted by the European society. The introduction of the radio in the colonizing society proceeded at a rate comparable to that of the most developed Western regions. We must always remember that in the colonial situation, in which, as we have seen, the social dichotomy reaches an incomparable intensity, there is a frenzied and almost laughable growth of middle-class gentility on the part of the nationals from the metropolis. For a European to own a radio is of course to participate in the eternal round of Western petty-bourgeois ownership, which extends from the radio to the villa, including the car and the refrigerator. It also gives him the feeling that colonial society is a living and palpitating reality, with its festivities, its traditions eager to establish themselves, its progress, its taking root. But especially, in the hinterland, in the so-called colonization centers, it is the only link with the cities, with Algiers, with the metropolis, with the world of the civilized. It is one of the means of escaping the inert, passive, and sterilizing pressure of the “native” environment. It is, according to the settler’s expression, “the only way to still feel like a civilized man.”<br /> <br /> On the farms, the radio reminds the settler of the reality of colonial power and, by its very existence, dispenses safety,&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;serenity. Radio-Alger is a confirmation of the settler’s right and strengthens his certainty in the historic continuity of the conquest, hence of his farm. The Paris music, extracts from the metropolitan press, the French government crises, constitute a coherent background from which colonial society draws its density and its justification. Radio-Alger sustains the occupant’s culture, marks it off from the non-culture, from the nature of the occupied. Radio-Alger, the voice of France in Algeria, constitutes the sole center of reference at the level of news. Radio-Alger, for the settler, is a daily invitation not to “go native,” not to forget the rightfulness of his culture. The settlers in the remote outposts, the pioneering adventurers, are well aware of this when they say that “without wine and the radio, we should already have become Arabized.”&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-034-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-034|25]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> In Algeria, before 1945, the radio as a technical news instrument became widely distributed in the dominant society. It then, as we have seen, became both a means of resistance in the case of isolated Europeans and a means of cultural pressure on the dominated society. Among European farmers, the radio was broadly regarded as a link with the civilized world, as an effective instrument of resistance to the corrosive influence of an inert native society, of a society without a future, backward and devoid of value.<br /> <br /> For the Algerian, however, the situation was totally different. We have seen that the more well-to-do family hesitated to buy a radio set. Yet no explicit, organized, and motivated resistance was to be observed, but rather a dull absence of interest in that piece of French presence. In rural areas and in regions remote from the colonization centers, the situation was clearer. There no one was faced with the problem, or rather, the problem was so remote from the everyday concerns of the native that it was quite clear to an inquirer that it would be outrageous to ask an Algerian why he did not own a radio.<br /> <br /> A man conducting a survey during this period who might be looking for satisfactory answers would find himself unable to obtain the information he needed. All the pretexts put forth had of course to be carefully weighed. At the level of actual experience, one cannot expect to obtain a rationalization of attitudes and choices.<br /> <br /> Two levels of explanation can be suggested here. As an instrumental technique in the limited sense, the radio receiving set develops the sensorial, intellectual, and muscular powers of man in a given society. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;The radio in occupied Algeria is a technique in the hands of the occupier which, within the framework of colonial domination, corresponds to no vital need insofar as the “native” is concerned.&lt;/span&gt; The radio, as a symbol of French presence, as a material representation of the colonial configuration, is characterized by an extremely important negative valence. The possible intensification and extension of sensorial or intellectual powers by the French radio are implicitly rejected or denied by the native. The technical instrument, the new scientific acquisitions, when they contain a sufficient charge to threaten a given feature of the native society, are never perceived in themselves, in calm objectivity. The technical instrument is rooted in the colonial situation where, as we know, the negative or positive coefficients always exist in a very accentuated way.<br /> <br /> At another level, as a system of information, as a bearer of language, hence of message, the radio may be apprehended within the colonial situation in a special way. Radiophonic technique, the press, and in a general way the systems, messages, sign transmitters, exist in colonial society in accordance with a well-defined statute. Algerian society, the dominated society, never participates in this world of signs. The messages broadcast by Radio-Alger are listened to solely by the representatives of power in Algeria, solely by the members of the dominant authority and seem magically to be avoided by the members of the “native” society. The non-acquisition of receiver sets by this society has precisely the effect of strengthening this impression of a closed and privileged world that characterizes colonialist news. In the matter of daily programs, before 1954, eulogies addressed to the occupation troops were certainly largely absent. From time to time, to be sure, there might be an evocation over the radio of the outstanding dates of the conquest of Algeria, in the course of which, with an almost unconscious obscenity, the occupier would belittle and humiliate the Algerian resistant of 1830. There were also the commemorative celebrations in which the “Moslem” veterans would be invited to place a wreath at the foot of the statue of General Bugeaud or of Sergeant Blandan, both heroes of the conquest and liquidators of thousands of Algerian patriots. But on the whole it could not be said that the clearly racialist or anti-­Algerian content accounted for the indifference and the resistance of the native. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;The explanation seems rather to be that Radio-Alger is regarded by the Algerian as the spokesman of the colonial world. Before the war the Algerian, with his own brand of humor, had defined Radio-Alger as “Frenchmen speaking to Frenchmen.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> 1945 was to bring Algeria abruptly onto the international scene. For weeks, the 45,000 victims of Sétif and of Guelma&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-033-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-033|26]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; were matter for abundant comment in the newspapers and information bulletins of regions until then unaware of or indifferent to the fate of Algeria. The tragedy of their dead or mutilated brothers and the fervent sympathy conveyed to them by men and women in America, Europe, and Africa left a deep mark on the Algerians themselves, foreshadowing more fundamental changes. The awakening of the colonial world and the progressive liberation of peoples long held in subjection involved Algeria in a process which reached beyond her and of which, at the same time, she became a part. The appearance of liberated Arab countries at this point is of exceptional importance. The first wholesale introduction of radio sets in Algeria coincided with the setting up of national broadcasting stations in Syria, Egypt and Lebanon.<br /> <br /> After 1947–1948, the number of radios grew, but at a moderate rate. Even then, the Algerian when he turned on his radio was interested exclusively in foreign and Arab broadcasts. Radio-­Alger was listened to only because it broadcast typically Algerian music, national music. In the face of this budding Algerian market, European agencies began to look for “native” representatives. The European firms were now convinced that the sale of radio sets depended on the nationality of the dealer. Algerian intermediaries were increasingly solicited for the handling of radios. This innovation in the distribution system was accompanied by an intensification of the marketing of these sets. It was during this period that a certain part of the Algerian lower middle class became owners of radios.<br /> <br /> But it was in 1951–1952, at the time of the first skirmishes in Tunisia, that the Algerian people felt it necessary to increase their news network. In 1952–1953 Morocco undertook its war of liberation, and on November 1, 1954, Algeria joined the anti-colonialist Maghreb Front. It was precisely at this time, while radio sets were being acquired, that the most important development occurred in the defining of new attitudes to this specific technique for the dissemination of news.<br /> <br /> It was from the occupiers’ reactions that the Algerian learned that something grave and important was happening in his country. The European, through the triple network of the press, the radio and his travels, had a fairly clear idea of the dangers threatening colonial society. The Algerian who read in the occupier’s face the increasing bankruptcy of colonialism felt the compelling and vital need to be informed. The vague impression that something fundamental was happening was strengthened both by the solemn decision of the patriots which expressed the secret yearning of the people and which embodied the determination, still devoid of content even yesterday, to exist as a nation, and more especially by the objective and visible crumbling away of the settler’s serenity.<br /> <br /> The struggle for liberation, reflected in the settler’s sudden affability or in his unexpected, unmotivated bursts of temper, obliged the Algerian to follow the evolution of the confrontation step by step. In this period of setting up the lines of conflict, the Europeans committed many errors. Thus on the farms, settlers would assemble agricultural workers to announce to them that a given “gang of rebels,” which was in fact unknown to the region, had been decimated in the Aurès Mountains or in Kabylia. At other times the servants would be offered a bottle of lemonade or a slice of cake because three or four suspects had just been executed a few kilometers from the property.<br /> <br /> From the first months of the Revolution the Algerian, with a view to self-protection and in order to escape what he considered to be the occupier’s lying maneuvers, thus found himself having to acquire his own source of information. It became essential to know what was going on, to be informed both of the enemy’s real losses and his own. The Algerian at this time had to bring his life up to the level of the Revolution. He had to enter the vast network of news; he had to find his way in a world in which things happened, in which events existed, in which forces were active. Through the experience of a war waged by his own people, the Algerian came in contact with an active community. The Algerian found himself having to oppose the enemy news with his own news. The “truth” of the oppressor, formerly rejected as an absolute lie, was now countered by another, an acted truth. The occupier’s lie thereby acquired greater reality, for it was now a menaced lie, put on the defensive. It was the defenses of the occupier, his reactions, his resistances, that underscored the effectiveness of national action and made that action participate in a world of truth. The Algerian’s reaction was no longer one of pained and desperate refusal. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Because it avowed its own uneasiness, the occupier’s lie became a positive aspect of the nation’s new truth.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> During the first months of the war, it was by means of the press that the Algerian attempted to organize his own news distribution system. The democratic press still existing in Algeria and the newspapers with an anti-colonialist tradition or a policy of objectivity were then avidly read by the native. It was in this sector of news distribution that the Algerian found balance-restoring elements. The power of the colonialist message, the systems used to impose it and present it as &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;the truth&lt;/span&gt; were such that most of the time the colonized had only his own increasingly overshadowed inner conviction to oppose to the eminently traumatizing offensives of the French press and the spectacular manifestations of the military and police power. Confronted daily with “the wiping out of the last remaining guerrilla bands,” the civilian could fight off despair only by an act of faith, by an obstinate belief.<br /> <br /> Progressively the moral (because objective) support provided by the democratic press ceased. The self-censorship of the local newspapers known for their traditional honesty strengthened this impression of incompleteness, of sketchiness, even of betrayal in the realm of news. It seemed to the Algerian that whole sections of truth were hidden from him. He felt the near-certainty that the colonialist power was crumbling before his eyes and that the progress of its dissolution was being kept from him. He fell prey to the sudden fear that this thing, so often hated, wounded to the death in the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djebel&lt;/span&gt;, its days probably numbered, would disappear without his being able to see at close hand its power and its arrogance in the process of disintegration. During this period the Algerian experienced a sense of frustration. His aggressiveness remained in suspense because he could not keep the score, because he could not register the setbacks of the enemy hour by hour, because, finally, he could not measure centimeter by centimeter the progressive shrinking of the occupying power.<br /> <br /> The European, on the whole, sized up the dimensions of the rebellion rather objectively. He did not really believe that some fine morning the revolutionary troops would take over in the city. But he knew more or less precisely how great the forces of the Revolution were and he was constantly comparing them with those represented by the French troops. Every plane that streaked the sky, every armored tank advancing in the dawn were as many spots of sunlight in the settler’s anxious and uncertain world. The European felt the shock, but in those first months of 1955 he believed that nothing was lost, that there was still a future for colonialism in Algeria. The official statements of the radio strengthened him in this position. The Algerian, on the other hand, especially if he lived in the rural areas, supplemented his absence of news by an absolutely irrational overestimation. Reactions occurred at that time which were so disproportionate to objective reality that to an observer they assumed a pathological character. In the first months of 1955 there were rumors in Constantine to the effect that Algiers, for example, was in the hands of the nationalists, or in Algiers that the Algerian&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;flag was hoisted over Constantine, Philippeville, Batna. . . .<br /> <br /> In the small colonization centers the settlers could not always understand the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fellah’s&lt;/span&gt; fierce and sudden assurance, and there were times when they would telephone to the nearest city, only to have it confirmed that nothing unusual had happened in the country. The European became aware of the fact that the life he had built on the agony of the colonized people was losing its assurance.<br /> <br /> Before the rebellion there was the life, the movement, the existence of the settler, and on the other side the continued agony of the colonized. Since 1954, the European has discovered that another life parallel to his own has begun to stir, and that in Algerian society, it seems, things no longer repeat themselves as they did before. The European, after 1954, knew that something was being hidden from him. This is the period in which the old pejorative expression, &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;the Arab telephone&lt;/span&gt;, has taken on an almost scientific meaning.<br /> <br /> In the Maghreb country, the Europeans use the term &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Arab telephone&lt;/span&gt; in speaking of the relative speed with which news travels by word of mouth in the native society. Never at any time was the expression intended to mean anything else. But in 1955 Europeans, and even Algerians, could be heard to refer confidentially, and as though revealing a state secret, to a technique of long-­distance communication that vaguely recalled some such system of signaling, like the tom-tom, as is found in certain regions of Africa. The Algerian gave the isolated European the impression of being in permanent contact with the revolutionary high command. He showed a kind of amplified self-assurance which assumed rather extraordinary forms. There were cases of real “running amuck.”<br /> <br /> Individuals in a fit of aberration would lose control of themselves. They would be seen dashing down a street or into an isolated farm, unarmed, or waving a miserable jagged knife, shouting, “Long live independent Algeria! We’ve won!” This aggressive kind of behavior, which assumed violent forms, would usually end in a burst of machine-gun bullets fired by a patrol. When a doctor was able to exchange words with one of these dying men, the usual kind of expression he heard would be something like, “Don’t believe them! We’ve got the upper edge, our men are coming, I’ve been sent to tell you they’re coming! We’re powerful and we’ll smash the enemy!”<br /> <br /> These hysterical cases were sometimes merely wounded and were given over to the police for questioning. The pathological nature of their behavior would not be recognized, and the accused would be tortured for days until the press reported that he had been shot trying to escape while being transferred to another prison, or that he had died of a recurring ailment. In the dominant group, likewise, there were cases of mental hysteria; people would be seized with a collective fear and panicky settlers were seen to seek an outlet in criminal acts. What made the two cases different was that, unlike the colonized, the colonizer always translated his subjective states into acts, real and multiple murders. We propose to deal with these different problems, arising out of the struggle for liberation, in a study directly based on psychopathology, its forms, its original features, its description.<br /> <br /> On the level of news, the Algerian was to find himself caught in a network strictly confined in space. In a village everyone is informed as to the numerical size and the equipment of the National Army of Liberation. On request, information as to its striking power and plan of operations can be obtained. No one, of course, can give the source of such information, but the reliability is unchallengeable. The description that has been given, when a national army collapses, of the rapidity with which alarming, catastrophic, disastrous news spreads among the people can serve as a system of reference to appraise the opposite phenomenon. In 1940 segments of a Fifth Column may have been discovered which were assigned to inoculate the French people with the virus of defeat, but it must not be overlooked that the ground was already prepared, that there was a kind of spiritual demobilization, due to the setbacks suffered by democracy in Spain, in Italy, in Germany, and especially at Munich. The defeatism of 1940 was the direct product of the defeatism of Munich.<br /> <br /> In Algeria, on the contrary—and this is true for all colonial countries that undertake a national war—all the news is good,&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;every bit of information is gratifying. The Fifth Column is an impossibility in Algeria. It is the recognition of this fact that leads sociologists to rediscover the old explanation according to which the “native” is inaccessible to reason or to experience. War specialists observe more empirically that these men have an iron morale or that their fanaticism is incomprehensible. The group considered as a whole gives the impression of supplementing what it gets in the way of news by an assurance more and more cut off from reality. These manifestations, these attitudes of total belief, this collective conviction, express the determination of the group to get as close as possible to the Revolution, to get ahead of the Revolution if possible, in short &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;to be in on it.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> At the same time, as we have seen, especially in the urban centers, more complex patterns of behavior came to light. Avid for objective news, the Algerians would buy the democratic papers that arrived from France. This meant an undeniable financial benefit for these papers. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;L’ Express, France-Observateur, Le Monde&lt;/span&gt; increased their sales three- and even five-fold in Algeria. The men running newspaper kiosks, almost all of them Europeans, were the first to point out the economic, and secondarily the political danger that these publications represented. In studying the problem of the press in Algeria, one must always bear in mind one peculiarity in the distribution system. The public criers, all young Algerians, sell only the local press. The European papers are not brought to the consumer. These papers have to be bought at the kiosks. The owners of the Algerian press immediately feel the competition of the press coming from France. Campaigns denouncing the press for being “in cahoots with the enemy,” and the repeated seizures of a certain number of these publications obviously assumed a special meaning. More and more newsdealers, when asked for these papers, would reply aggressively that the “s.o.b. papers ­haven’t arrived today.”<br /> <br /> Algerians in the cities, but especially in the rural centers, then discovered that showing concern over the arrival or nonarrival of the said press was sufficient to label them. In Algeria as in France, but of course more markedly, the newspaper kiosk dealer, like the office clerk, is sure to be a veteran with strong backing in ultra-­colonialist circles. For the Algerian to ask for &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;L’Express, L’Humanité,&lt;/span&gt; or &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Le Monde&lt;/span&gt; was tantamount to publicly confessing—as likely as not to a police informer—his allegiance to the Revolution; it was in any case an unguarded indication that he had reservations as to the official, or “colonialist” news; it meant manifesting his willingness to make himself conspicuous; for the kiosk dealer it was the unqualified affirmation by that Algerian of solidarity with the Revolution. The purchase of such a newspaper was thus considered to be a nationalist act. Hence it quickly became a dangerous act.<br /> <br /> Every time the Algerian asked for one of these newspapers, the kiosk dealer, who represented the occupier, would regard it as an expression of nationalism, equivalent to an act of war. Because they were now really committed to activities vital to the Revolution, or out of understandable prudence, if one bears in mind the wave of xenophobia created by the French settlers in 1955, Algerian adults soon formed the habit of getting young Algerians to buy these newspapers. It took only a few weeks for this new “trick” to be discovered. After a certain period the newsdealers refused to sell &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;L’Express, L’Humanité,&lt;/span&gt; and &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Libération&lt;/span&gt; to minors. Adults were then reduced to coming out into the open or else to falling back on &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;L’Echo d’Alger.&lt;/span&gt; It was at this point that the political directorate of the Revolution gave orders to boycott the Algerian local press.<br /> <br /> This decision had a double objective. First, to counter the offensive of the Algerian trusts by a measure having economic consequences. By depriving the Algerian papers of a large proportion of their native customers the revolutionary movement was dealing a rather effective blow to the market of the local press. But above all, the political directorate was convinced that, having to depend solely on colonialist news, the Algerians would gradually succumb to the massive and baneful influence of those pages in which figures and photographs were complacently displayed and where in any case one could clearly read every morning about the elimination of the Revolution.<br /> <br /> On the level of the masses, which had remained relatively uninvolved in the struggle since they couldn’t read the press, the necessity of having radio sets was felt. It must not be forgotten that the people’s generalized illiteracy left it indifferent to things written. In the first months of the Revolution, the great majority of Algerians identified everything written in the French language as the expression of colonial domination. The language in which &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;L’ Express&lt;/span&gt; and &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;L’ Echo d’ Alger&lt;/span&gt; were written was the sign of the French presence.<br /> <br /> The acquisition of a radio set in Algeria, in 1955, represented the sole means of obtaining news of the Revolution from non­French sources. This necessity assumed a compelling character when the people learned that there were Algerians in Cairo who daily drew up the balance-sheet of the liberation struggle. From Cairo, from Syria, from nearly all the Arab countries, the great pages written in the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djebels&lt;/span&gt; by brothers, relatives, friends flowed back to Algeria.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, despite these new occurrences, the introduction of radio sets into houses and the most remote &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;douars&lt;/span&gt; proceeded only gradually. There was no enormous rush to buy receivers.<br /> <br /> It was at the end of 1956 that the real shift occurred. At this time tracts were distributed announcing the existence of a Voice of Free Algeria. The broadcasting schedules and the wave-lengths were given. This voice “that speaks from the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djebels&lt;/span&gt;,” not geographically limited, but bringing to all Algeria the great message of the Revolution, at once acquired an essential value. In less than twenty days the entire stock of radio sets was bought up. In the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;souks&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-032-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-032|27]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; trade in used receiver sets began. Algerians who had served their apprenticeship with European radio-electricians opened small shops. Moreover, the dealers had to meet new needs. The absence of electrification in immense regions in Algeria naturally created special problems for the consumer. For this reason battery-operated receivers, from 1956 on, were in great demand on Algerian territory. In a few weeks several thousand sets were sold to Algerians, who bought them as individuals, families, groups of houses, &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;douars, mechtas.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> Since 1956 the purchase of a radio in Algeria has meant, not the adoption of a modern technique for getting news, but the obtaining of access to the only means of entering into communication with the Revolution, of living with it. In the special case of the portable battery set, an improved form of the standard receiver operating on current, the specialist in technical changes in underdeveloped countries might see a sign of a radical mutation. The Algerian, in fact, gives the impression of finding short cuts and of achieving the most modern forms of news-communication without passing through the intermediary stages.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-031-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-031|28]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; In reality, we have seen that this “progress” is to be explained by the absence of electric current in the Algerian &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;douars.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> The French authorities did not immediately realize the exceptional importance of this change in attitude of the Algerian people with regard to the radio. Traditional resistances broke down and one could see in a &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;douar&lt;/span&gt; groups of families in which fathers, mothers, daughters, elbow to elbow, would scrutinize the radio dial waiting for the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice of Algeria.&lt;/span&gt; Suddenly indifferent to the sterile, archaic modesty and antique social arrangements devoid of brother­hood, the Algerian family discovered itself to be immune to the off-color jokes and the libidinous references that the announcer occasionally let drop.<br /> <br /> Almost magically—but we have seen the rapid and dialectical progression of the new national requirements—the technical instrument of the radio receiver lost its identity as an enemy object. The radio set was no longer a part of the occupier’s arsenal of cultural oppression. In making of the radio a primary means of resisting the increasingly overwhelming psychological and military pressures of the occupant, Algerian society made an autonomous decision to embrace the new technique and thus tune itself in on the new signaling systems brought into being by the Revolution.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;The Voice of Fighting Algeria&lt;/span&gt; was to be of capital importance in consolidating and unifying the people. We shall see that the use of the Arab, Kabyle and French languages which, as colonialism was obliged to recognize, was the expression of a non-racial conception, had the advantage of developing and of strengthening the unity of the people, of making the fighting Djurdjura area real for the Algerian patriots of Batna or of Nemours. The fragments and splinters of acts gleaned by the correspondent of a newspaper more or less attached to the colonial domination, or communicated by the opposing military authorities, lost their anarchic character and became organized into a national and Algerian political idea, assuming their place in an overall strategy of the reconquest of the people’s sovereignty. The scattered acts fitted into a vast epic, and the Kabyles were no longer “the men of the mountains,” but the brothers who with Ouamrane and Krim made things difficult for the enemy troops.<br /> <br /> Having a radio meant paying one’s taxes to the nation, buying the right of entry into the struggle of an assembled people.<br /> <br /> The French authorities, however, began to realize the importance of this progress of the people in the technique of news dissemination. After a few months of hesitancy legal measures appeared. The sale of radios was now prohibited, except on presentation of a voucher issued by the military security or police services. The sale of battery sets was absolutely prohibited, and spare batteries were practically withdrawn from the market. The Algerian dealers now had the opportunity to put their patriotism to the test, and they were able to supply the people with spare batteries with exemplary regularity by resorting to various subterfuges.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-030-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-030|29]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;The Algerian who wanted to live up to the Revolution, had at last the possibility of hearing an official voice, the voice of the combatants, explain the combat to him, tell him the story of the Liberation on the march, and incorporate it into the nation’s new life.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> Here we come upon a phenomenon that is sufficiently unusual to retain our attention. The highly trained French services, rich with experience acquired in modern wars, past masters in the practice of “sound-wave warfare,” were quick to detect the wave lengths of the broadcasting stations. The programs were then systematically jammed, and the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice of Fighting Algeria&lt;/span&gt; soon became inaudible. A new form of struggle had come into being. Tracts were distributed telling the Algerians to keep tuned in for a period of two or three hours. In the course of a single broadcast a second station, broadcasting over a different wave-length, would relay the first jammed station. The listener, enrolled in the battle of the waves, had to figure out the tactics of the enemy, and in an almost physical way circumvent the strategy of the adversary. Very often only the operator, his ear glued to the receiver, had the unhoped-for opportunity of hearing the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice.&lt;/span&gt; The other Algerians present in the room would receive the echo of this voice through the privileged interpreter who, at the end of the broadcast, was literally besieged. Specific questions would then be asked of this incarnated voice. Those present wanted to know about a particular battle mentioned by the French press in the last twenty-four hours, and the interpreter, embarrassed, feeling guilty, would sometimes have to admit that the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice&lt;/span&gt; had not mentioned it.<br /> <br /> But by common consent, after an exchange of views, it would be decided that the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice&lt;/span&gt; had in fact spoken of these events, but that the interpreter had not caught the transmitted information. A real task of reconstruction would then begin. Everyone would participate, and the battles of yesterday and the day before would be re-fought in accordance with the deep aspirations and the unshakable faith of the group. The listener would compensate for the fragmentary nature of the news by an autonomous creation of information.<br /> <br /> Listening to the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice of Fighting Algeria&lt;/span&gt; was motivated not just by eagerness to hear the news, but more particularly by the inner need to be at one with the nation in its struggle, to recapture and to assume the new national formulation, to listen to and to repeat the grandeur of the epic being accomplished up there among the rocks and on the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djebels.&lt;/span&gt; Every morning the Algerian would communicate the result of his hours of listening in. Every morning he would complete for the benefit of his neighbor or his comrade the things not said by the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice&lt;/span&gt; and reply to the insidious questions asked by the enemy press. He would counter the official affirmations of the occupier, the resounding bulletins of the adversary, with official statements issued by the Revolutionary Command.<br /> <br /> Sometimes it was the militant who would circulate the assumed point of view of the political directorate. Because of a silence on this or that fact which, if prolonged, might prove upsetting and dangerous for the people’s unity, the whole nation would snatch fragments of sentences in the course of a broadcast and attach to them a decisive meaning. Imperfectly heard, obscured by an incessant jamming, forced to change wave lengths two or three times in the course of a broadcast, the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice of Fighting Algeria&lt;/span&gt; could hardly ever be heard from beginning to end. It was a choppy, broken voice. From one village to the next, from one shack to the next, the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice of Algeria&lt;/span&gt; would recount new things, tell of more and more glorious battles, picture vividly the collapse of the occupying power. The enemy lost its density, and at the level of the consciousness of the occupied, experienced a series of essential setbacks. Thus the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice of Algeria,&lt;/span&gt; which for months led the life of a fugitive, which was tracked by the adversary’s powerful jamming networks, and whose “word” was often inaudible, nourished the citizen’s faith in the Revolution.<br /> <br /> This &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice&lt;/span&gt; whose presence was felt, whose reality was sensed, assumed more and more weight in proportion to the number of jamming wave lengths broadcast by the specialized enemy stations. It was the power of the enemy sabotage that emphasized the reality and the intensity of the national expression. By its phantom-like character, the radio of the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Moudjahidines&lt;/span&gt;, speaking in the name of Fighting Algeria, recognized as the spokesman for every Algerian, gave to the combat its maximum of reality.<br /> <br /> Under these conditions, claiming to have heard the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice of Algeria&lt;/span&gt; was, in a certain sense, distorting the truth, but it was above all the occasion to proclaim one’s clandestine participation in the essence of the Revolution. It meant making a deliberate choice, though it was not explicit during the first months, between the enemy’s congenital lie and the people’s own lie, which suddenly acquired a dimension of truth.<br /> <br /> This voice, often absent, physically inaudible, which each one felt welling up within himself, founded on an inner perception of the Fatherland, became materialized in an irrefutable way. Every Algerian, for his part, broadcast and transmitted the new language. The nature of this voice recalled in more than one way that of the Revolution: present “in the air” in isolated pieces, but not objectively.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-029-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-029|30]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> The radio receiver guaranteed this true lie. Every evening, from nine o’clock to midnight, the Algerian would listen. At the end of the evening, not hearing the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice&lt;/span&gt;, the listener would sometimes leave the needle on a jammed wave-length or one that simply produced static, and would announce that the voice of the combatants was here. For an hour the room would be filled with the piercing, excruciating din of the jamming. Behind each modulation, each active crackling, the Algerian would imagine not only words, but concrete battles. The war of the sound waves, in the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;gourbi,&lt;/span&gt; re-­enacts for the benefit of the citizen the armed clash of his people and colonialism. As a general rule, it is&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice of Algeria&lt;/span&gt; that wins out. The enemy stations, once the broadcast is completed, abandon their work of sabotage. The military music of warring Algeria that concludes the broadcast can then freely fill the lungs and the heads of the faithful. These few brazen notes reward three hours of daily hope and have played a fundamental role for months in the training and strengthening of the Algerian national consciousness.<br /> <br /> On the psychopathological level, it is important to mention a few phenomena pertaining to the radio which made their appearance in connection with the war of liberation. Before 1954, the monographs written on Algerians suffering from hallucinations constantly pointed out the presence in the so-called “external action phase” of highly aggressive and hostile radio voices. These metallic, cutting, insulting, disagreeable voices all have for the Algerian an accusing, inquisitorial character. The radio, on the normal level, already apprehended as an instrument of the occupation, as a type of violent invasion on the part of the oppressor, assumes highly alienating meanings in the field of the pathological. The radio, in addition to the somewhat irrational magical elements with which it is invested in the majority of homogeneous societies, that is to say societies from which all foreign oppression is absent, has a particular valence in Algeria. We have seen that the voice heard is not indifferent, is not neutral; it is the voice of the oppressor, the voice of the enemy. The speech delivered is not received, deciphered, understood, but rejected. The communication is never questioned, but is simply refused, for it is precisely the opening of oneself to the other that is organically excluded from the colonial situation. Before 1954, in the psychopathological realm, the radio was an evil object, anxiogenic and accursed.<br /> <br /> After 1954, the radio assumed totally new meanings. The phenomena of the wireless and the receiver set lost their coefficient of hostility, were stripped of their character of extraneousness, and became part of the coherent order of the nation in battle. In hallucinatory psychoses, after 1956, the radio voices became protective, friendly. Insults and accusations disappeared and gave way to words of encouragement. The foreign technique, which had been “digested” in connection with the national struggle, had become a fighting instrument for the people and a protective organ against anxiety.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-028-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-028|31]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> Still on the level of communication, attention must be called to the acquisition of new values by the French language. The French language, language of occupation, a vehicle of the oppressing power, seemed doomed for eternity to judge the Algerian in a pejorative way. Every French expression referring to the Algerian had a humiliating content. Every French speech heard was an order, a threat, or an insult. The contact between the Algerian and the European is defined by these three spheres. The broadcasting in French of the programs of &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Fighting Algeria&lt;/span&gt; was to liberate the enemy language from its historic meanings. The same message transmitted in three different languages unified the experience and gave it a universal dimension. The French language lost its accursed character, revealing itself to be capable also of transmitting, for the benefit of the nation, the messages of truth that the latter awaited. Paradoxical as it may appear, it is the Algerian Revolution, it is the struggle of the Algerian people, that is facilitating the spreading of the French language in the nation.<br /> <br /> In psychopathology, sentences in French lose their automatic character of insult and malediction. When they hear French voices, Algerians suffering from hallucinations quote words that are less and less aggressive. It is not uncommon, at a later stage, to note that hallucinations in the language of the occupier assume a friendly character of support, of protection.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-027-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-027|32]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> The occupation authorities have not measured the importance of the new attitude of the Algerian toward the French language. Expressing oneself in French, understanding French, was no longer tantamount to treason or to an impoverishing identification with the occupier. Used by the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice of the Combatants&lt;/span&gt;, conveying in a positive way the message of the Revolution, the French language also becomes an instrument of liberation. Whereas formerly, in psychopathology, any French voice, to one in a delirium, expressed rejection, condemnation and opprobrium, with the struggle for liberation we see the initiation of a major process of exorcizing the French language. The “native” can almost be said to assume responsibility for the language of the occupier.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-026-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-026|33]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> It was after the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Congress of the Soummam&lt;/span&gt;, in August 1956, that the French became aware of this phenomenon. It will be remembered that on this occasion, the political and military leaders of the Revolution met in the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Valley of the Soummam&lt;/span&gt;, precisely in the sector of Amirouche, the then Commander, to lay the doctrinal foundations of the struggle and to set up the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;National Council of the Algerian Revolution&lt;/span&gt; (CNRA). The fact that the discussions were carried on in French suddenly revealed to the occupation forces that the traditional general reticence of the Algerian with regard to using French within the colonial situation might no longer exist, when a decisive confrontation brought the will to national independence of the people and the dominant power face to face.<br /> <br /> The French authorities were curiously baffled by this phenomenon. They first saw in it the proof of what they had always claimed—i.e., the incapacity of the Arabic language to handle the operational concepts of a modern revolutionary war. But at the same time, the decisions reached in the occupier’s linguistic system forced the occupier to realize the relative character of his signs and created confusion and disorder in his defense system.<br /> <br /> The advocates of integration, for their part, here saw a new opportunity to promote a “French Algeria” by making the occupier’s language the sole practical means of communication available to Kabyles, Arabs, Chaouias, Mozabites, etc. This thesis, on the level of language, went back to the very basis of colonialism: it is the intervention of the foreign nation that puts order into the original anarchy of the colonized country. Under these conditions, the French language, the language of the occupier, was given the role of &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Logos&lt;/span&gt;, with ontological implications within Algerian society.<br /> <br /> In either case, using the French language was at the same time domesticating an attribute of the occupier and proving oneself open to the signs, the symbols, in short to a certain influence of the occupier. The French have not made a sufficiently thorough study of this new behavior of the Algerian with regard to their language. Before 1954, most of the work of the congresses of the nationalist parties was carried on in Arabic. More precisely, the militants of Kabylia or the Aures would learn Arabic in connection with their national activities. Before 1954, speaking Arabic, refusing French as a language and as a means of cultural oppression, was a distinct and daily form of differentiation, of national existence. Before 1954, the nationalist parties sustained the hope of the militants and developed the political consciousness of the people by singling out and explaining, one by one, the value of the different configurations, the different characteristics of the occupied nation. The Arabic language was the most effective means that the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;nation’s being&lt;/span&gt; had of unveiling itself.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-025-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-025|34]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> In August 1956, the reality of combat and the confusion of the occupier stripped the Arabic language of its sacred character, and the French language of its negative connotations. The new language of the nation could then make itself known through multiple meaningful channels.<br /> <br /> The radio receiver as a technique of disseminating news and the French language as a basis for a possible communication became almost simultaneously accepted by the fighting nation.<br /> <br /> We have seen that with the creation of the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice of Fighting Algeria,&lt;/span&gt; radio sets multiplied to an extraordinary degree. Before 1954, the receiving instrument, the radiophonic technique of long-distance communication of thought was not, in Algeria, a mere neutral object. Looked upon as a transmission belt of the colonialist power, as a means in the hands of the occupier by which to maintain his strangle hold on the nation, the radio was frowned upon. Before 1954, switching on the radio meant giving asylum to the occupier’s words; it meant allowing the colonizer’s language to filter into the very heart of the house, the last of the supreme bastions of the national spirit. Before 1954, a radio in an Algerian house was the mark of Europeanization in progress, of vulnerability. It was the conscious opening to the influence of the dominator, to his pressure. It was the decision to &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;give voice to the occupier.&lt;/span&gt; Having a radio meant accepting being besieged from within by the colonizer. It meant demonstrating that one chose cohabitation within the colonial framework. It meant, beyond any doubt, surrendering to the occupier.<br /> <br /> We have mentioned the reasons invoked by the people to explain their reticence with respect to the radio. The desire to keep intact the traditional forms of sociability and the hierarchy of the family was then the main justification.<br /> <br /> “We never know what program we are going to pick up.” “There’s no telling what they’re going to say next.” Sometimes a religious argument of a peremptory nature appears: “It’s the infidels’ radio.” We have seen that such rationalizations are arbitrarily created to justify the rejection of the occupier’s presence.<br /> <br /> With the creation of a &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice of Fighting Algeria,&lt;/span&gt; the Algerian was vitally committed to listening to the message, to assimilating it, and soon to acting upon it. Buying a radio, getting down on one’s knees with one’s head against the speaker, was no longer just wanting to get the news concerning the formidable experience in progress in the country, it was &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;hearing&lt;/span&gt; the first words of the nation.<br /> <br /> Since the new Algeria on the march had decided to tell about itself and to make itself heard, the radio had become indispensable. It was the radio that enabled the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice&lt;/span&gt; to take root in the villages and on the hills. Having a radio seriously meant &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;going to war.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> By means of the radio, a technique rejected before 1954, the Algerian people decided to relaunch the Revolution. Listening in on the Revolution, the Algerian existed with it, made it exist.<br /> <br /> The memory of the “free” radios that came into being during the Second World War underlines the unique quality of the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice of Fighting Algeria.&lt;/span&gt; The Polish, Belgian, French people, under the German occupation, were able, through the broadcasts transmitted from London, to maintain contact with a certain image of their nation. Hope, the spirit of resistance to the oppressor, were then given daily sustenance and kept alive. For example, it will be remembered that listening to the voice of &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Free France&lt;/span&gt; was a mode of national existence, a form of combat. The fervent and well-nigh mystical participation of the French people with the voice from London has been sufficiently commented upon to need no amplification. In France, from 1940 to 1944, listening to the voice of &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Free France&lt;/span&gt; was surely a vital, sought-for experience. But listening to the radio was not a new phenomenon of behavior. The voice from London had its place in the vast repertory of transmitting stations which already existed for the French before the war. From the global conflict, a pre-eminent figure emerges through the agency—that of occupied France receiving the message of hope from &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Free France.&lt;/span&gt; In Algeria things took on a special character. First of all, there was the stripping from the instrument its traditional burden of taboos and prohibitions. Progressively the instrument not only acquired a category of neutrality, but was endowed with a positive coefficient.<br /> <br /> Accepting the radio technique, buying a receiver set, and participating in the life of the fighting nation, all these coincided. The frenzy with which the people exhausted the stock of radio sets gives a rather accurate idea of its desire to be involved in the dialogue that began in 1955 between the combatant and the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;nation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> In the colonial society, Radio-Alger was not just one among a number of voices. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;It was the voice of the occupier.&lt;/span&gt; Tuning in Radio-­Alger amounted to accepting domination; it amounted to exhibiting one’s desire to live on good terms with oppression. It meant giving in to the enemy. Switching on the radio meant validating the formula, “This is Algiers, the French Radio Broadcast.” The acquiring of a radio handed the colonized over to the enemy’s system and prepared for the banishing of hope from his heart.<br /> <br /> The existence of the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice of Fighting Algeria&lt;/span&gt;, on the other hand, profoundly changed the problem. Every Algerian felt himself to be called upon and wanted to become a reverberating element of the vast network of meanings born of the liberating combat. The war, daily events of military or political character, were broadly commented on in the news programs of the foreign radios. In the foreground the voice of the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djebels&lt;/span&gt; stood out. We have seen that the phantom-like and quickly inaudible character of this voice in no way affected &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;its felt reality and its power.&lt;/span&gt; Radio-Alger, Algerian Radio-Broadcasting, lost their sovereignty.<br /> <br /> Gone were the days when mechanically switching on the radio amounted to an invitation to the enemy. For the Algerian the radio, as a technique, became transformed. The radio set was no longer directly and solely tuned in on the occupier. To the right and to the left of Radio-Alger’s broadcasting band, on different and numerous wave-lengths, innumerable stations could be tuned in to, among which it was possible to distinguish the friends, the enemies’ accomplices, and the neutrals. Under these conditions, having a receiver was neither making oneself available to the enemy, nor giving him a voice, nor yielding on a point of principle. On the contrary, on the strict level of news, it was showing the desire to keep one’s distance, to hear other voices, to take in other prospects. It was in the course of the struggle for liberation and thanks to the creation of a &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice of Fighting Algeria&lt;/span&gt; that the Algerian experienced and concretely discovered the existence of voices other than the voice of the dominator which formerly had been immeasurably amplified because of his own silence.<br /> <br /> The old monologue of the colonial situation, already shaken by the existence of the struggle, disappeared completely by 1956. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;The Voice of Fighting Algeria&lt;/span&gt; and all the voices picked up by the receiver now revealed to the Algerian the tenuous, very relative character, in short, the imposture of the French voice presented until now as the only one. The occupier’s voice was stripped of its authority.<br /> <br /> The nation’s &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;speech,&lt;/span&gt; the nation’s spoken &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;words&lt;/span&gt; shape the world while at the same time renewing it.<br /> <br /> Before 1954, native society as a whole rejected the radio, turned a deaf ear to the technical development of methods of news dissemination. There was a non-receptive attitude before this import brought in by the occupier. In the colonial situation, the radio did not satisfy any need of the Algerian people.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-024-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-024|35]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; On the contrary, the radio was considered, as we have seen, a means used by the enemy to quietly carry on his work of depersonalization of the native.<br /> <br /> The national struggle and the creation of &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Free Radio Algeria&lt;/span&gt; have produced a fundamental change in the people. The radio has appeared in a massive way at once and not in progressive stages. What we have witnessed is a radical transformation of the means of perception, of the very world of perception. Of Algeria it is true to say that there never was, with respect to the radio, a pattern of listening habits, of audience reaction. Insofar as mental processes are concerned, the technique had virtually to be invented. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;The Voice of Algeria&lt;/span&gt;, created out of nothing, brought the nation to life and endowed every citizen with a new status, &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;telling him so explicitly.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> After 1957, the French troops in operation formed the habit of confiscating all the radios in the course of a raid. At the same time listening in on a certain number of broadcasts was prohibited. Today things have progressed. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;The Voice of Fighting Algeria&lt;/span&gt; has multiplied. From Tunis, from Damascus, from Cairo, from Rabat, programs are broadcast to the people. The programs are organized by Algerians. The French services no longer try to jam these powerful and numerous broadcasts The Algerian has the opportunity every day of listening to five or six different broadcasts in Arabic or in French, by means of which he can follow the victorious development of the Revolution step by step. As far as news is concerned, the word of the occupier has been seen to suffer a progressive devaluation. After having imposed the national voice upon that of the dominator, the radio welcomes broadcasts from all the corners of the world. The “Week of Solidarity with Algeria,” organized by the Chinese people, or the resolutions of the Congress of African Peoples on the Algerian war, link the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fellah&lt;/span&gt; to an immense tyranny-destroying wave.<br /> <br /> Incorporated under these conditions into the life of the nation, the radio will have an exceptional importance in the country’s building phase. After the war a disparity between the people and what is intended to speak for them will no longer be possible. The revolutionary instruction on the struggle for liberation must normally be replaced by a revolutionary instruction on the building of the nation. The fruitful use that can be made of the radio can well be imagined. Algeria has enjoyed a unique experience. For several years, the radio will have been for many, one of the means of saying “no” to the occupation and of believing in the liberation. The identification of the voice of the Revolution with the fundamental truth of the nation has open limitless horizons.&lt;div class=&quot;_idFootnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-034&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-034-backlink|25]]. Radio-Alger is in fact one of the mooring-lines maintained by the dominant society. Radio-Monte-Carlo, Radio-Paris, Radio-Andorre likewise play a protective role against “Arabization.”<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-033&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-033-backlink|26]]. Sétif and Guelma—two central points in a Moslem uprising that occurred in the region of Kabylia in May 1945. In the repression, which lasted some two weeks, aviation and artillery took a heavy toll of lives. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-032&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-032-backlink|27]]. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;souk&lt;/span&gt;—market or shop. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-031&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-031-backlink|28]]. In the realm of military communications, the same phenomenon is to be noted. In less than fifteen months the National Army of Liberation’s “liaison and telecommunications system” became equal to the best that is to be found in a modern army.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-030&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-030-backlink|29]]. The arrival in Algeria by normal channels of new sets and new batteries obviously became increasingly difficult. After 1957 it was from Tunisia and Morocco, via the underground, that new supplies came. The regular introduction of these means of establishing contact with the official voice of the Revolution became as important for the people as acquiring weapons or munitions for the National Army.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-029&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-029-backlink|30]]. Along the same line should be mentioned the manner in which programs are listened to in Kabylia. In groups of scores and sometimes hundreds around a receiver, the peasants listen religiously to “the Voice of the Arabs.” Few understand the literary Arabic used in these broadcasts. But the faces assume a look of gravity and the features harden when the expression &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Istiqlal&lt;/span&gt; (Independence) resounds in the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;gourbi&lt;/span&gt; (shack). An Arab voice that hammers out the word &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Istiqlal&lt;/span&gt; four times in an hour suffices at that level of heightened consciousness to keep alive the faith in victory.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-028&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-028-backlink|31]]. The appearance of themes of morbid protection, their importance as a technique of self-defense and even of self-cure in the historic development of mental disease, have already been studied in classic psychiatry. Plagued by his accusing “voices,” the victim of hallucinations has no other recourse but to create friendly voices. This mechanism of transformation into its antithesis that we here point out has its counterpart in the disintegrating colonial situation.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-027&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-027-backlink|32]]. What is involved here is not the emergence of an ambivalence, but rather a mutation, a radical change of valence, not a back-and-forth movement but a dialectical progression.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-026&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-026-backlink|33]]. On the other hand, the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Voice of Algeria&lt;/span&gt; was imagined to be pronouncing death sentences by certain Algerian collaborators. Suffering from serious fits of depression, these men who usually belonged to the police services, would be attacked, insulted, convicted by the “rebel” radio. Likewise, European women as well as European men in outbreaks of anxiety would very clearly hear threats or condemnations in the Arabic language. Such phenomena were practically unknown before 1954.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-025&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-025-backlink|34]]. At the same period the political directorate decided to destroy the French radio in Algeria. The existence of a national voice led the heads of the movement to contemplate silencing Radio-Alger. Considerable damage was inflicted on technical facilities by the explosion of time bombs. But the broadcasts were soon resumed.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-024&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-8.xhtml#footnote-024-backlink|35]]. In this connection may be mentioned the attitude of the French authorities in present-day Algeria. As we know, television was introduced into Algeria several years ago. Until recently, a simultaneous bilingual commentary accompanied the broadcasts. Some time ago, the Arabic commentary ceased. This fact once again confirms the aptness of the formula applied to Radio-Alger: “Frenchmen speaking to Frenchmen.”<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_idGenObjectStyleOverride-1&quot;&gt;<br /> == The Algerian Family ==<br /> We have seen the transformation of the Algerian woman taking place through her revolutionary commitment and her instrumentalization of the veil. It will readily be understood that this radical change could not occur without having profound repercussions on the other components of Algerian family life.<br /> <br /> The struggle for national liberation and the more and more total character of the repression have inflicted grave traumatisms upon the family group: a father taken into custody in the street in the company of his children, stripped along with them, tortured before their eyes; the sharply experienced brotherhood of men with bare, bruised, bloody shoulders; a husband arrested, dragged away, imprisoned. The women are then left to find ways of keeping the children from starving to death. We shall come back to this special and very important aspect of the Algerian conflict. We would like here to trace the evolution of the Algerian family, its transformation, the great modifications it has undergone because of and in the course of the war for liberation.<br /> <br /> The most important point of this modification, it seems to us, is that the family, from being homogeneous and virtually monolithic, has broken up into separate elements. Each member of this family has gained in individuality what it has lost in its belonging to a world of more or less confused values. Individual persons have found themselves facing new choices, new decisions. The customary and highly structured patterns of behavior that were the crystallization of traditional ideas suddenly proved ineffective and were abandoned. Tradition, in fact, is not solely a combination of automatic gestures and archaic beliefs. At the most elementary level, there are values, and the need for justification. The father questioned by the child explains, comments, legitimizes.<br /> <br /> It is important to show that the colonized father at the time of the fight for liberation gave his children the impression of being undecided, of avoiding the taking of sides, even of adopting an evasive and irresponsible attitude. Such an experience, which is traumatic for a child when its points of reference are confined to the family circle, now loses its harmfulness. This experience, in fact, was occurring on a national scale and was part and parcel of the great upheaval incidental to the creation of a new world which was felt throughout the territory.<br /> <br /> Before 1954, the existence of nationalist parties had already introduced changes into the native private life. The nationalist parties, the parliamentary political action, the spreading of slogans advocating splitting off from France, had already given rise to certain contradictions within the family. These developments invited the inert resistance of the colonized society to turn into action. For the tense immobility of the dominated society, the nationalist parties tried to substitute awareness, movement, creation. The people, as a whole, agreed with these parties, but they had a sharp memory of the legendary ferocity of the French military and police. Witnesses of the colonial invasion, still alive 30 or 40 years ago, had often related to them episodes of the conquest. In many regions of Algeria the accounts of massacres and the burning of villages were still vividly remembered. The conqueror had settled in such numbers, he had created so many centers of colonization, that a certain passivity encouraged by the colonial domination made itself evident and gradually took on a tinge of despair. Before 1954, the son who adopted a nationalist position never did so, really, against his father’s wishes, but his activity as a militant in any case never in any respect modified his filial behavior within the framework of the Algerian family. The relations based on the absolute respect due to the father and on the principle that the truth is first of all the unchallengeable property of the elders were not encroached upon. Modesty, shame, the fear of looking at the father, of speaking aloud in his presence, remained intact, even in the case of the nationalist militant. The absence of actual revolutionary action kept the personality in its customary channels.<br /> <br /> For a long time, political action in a colonized country is a legal action that is carried on within the parliamentary framework. After a certain period, when official and peaceful channels are exhausted, the militant hardens his position. The political party passes over to direct action, and the problems that the son faces are problems of life or death for the country. In a parallel way, his attitude toward his father and the other members of the family frees itself of everything that proves unnecessary and detrimental to the revolutionary situation. The person is born, assumes his autonomy, and becomes the creator of his own values. The old stultifying attachment to the father melts in the sun of the Revolution. In Algeria, after Sétif and the different combats waged by the nationalist parties during the postwar period, positions sharpened and the people’s political maturity markedly progressed.<br /> <br /> On November 1, 1954, the Revolution reopened all the problems: those of colonialism, but also those of the colonized society. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;The colonized society perceived that in order to succeed in the gigantic undertaking into which it had flung itself, in order to defeat colonialism and in order to build the Algerian nation, it would have to make a vast effort of self-preparation, strain all&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;its joints, renew its blood and its soul.&lt;/span&gt; In the course of the multiple episodes of the war, the people came to realize that if they wished to bring a new world to birth they would have to create a new Algerian society from top to bottom. In order to fulfill his aspirations, the Algerian must adapt himself at an exceptional pace to this new situation. The truth, for once, eluded its traditional trustees and placed itself within reach of any seeker. The group, which formerly looked to the father to determine its values, now had to seek these each for himself, as circumstances dictated.<br /> <br /> Every Algerian faced with the new system of values introduced by the Revolution is compelled to define himself, to take a position, to choose.<br /> <br /> The Son and the Father<br /> <br /> At the time when the people were called upon to adopt radical forms of struggle, the Algerian family was still highly structured. But on the level of national consciousness, the father lagged far behind the son. A new world had come into being long before, which the parents knew nothing about, and which was developing with exceptional rapidity. In a confused way, it is true, the father had caught in passing a few snatches of phrases, a few sharp-edged meanings, but never came to the decision to fight the occupant, weapons in hand. Yet there was not an Algerian who had not faced the challenge of the oppression and wondered what was to be done. Every Algerian, at least at one time in his life, in the course of a meeting, or simply a discussion, had wished for the defeat of colonialism. At the market, in a café, on a pilgrimage, in the course of the traditional holidays, there always came a moment when the Algerian plotted against the occupier. But these exchanges were like the desperate lamentations of all the humiliated of all the countries in the world. The deep hold taken by colonial society, its frenzy to transform itself into a necessity, the wretchedness on which it was built, gave to life that familiar tinge of resignation that specialists in underdeveloped countries describe under the heading of &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fatalism.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> And it was in these inauspicious circumstances that the first salvos of November 1954 burst forth. Before the Revolution, which abruptly split the world in two, the father found himself disarmed and a little anxious. This anxiety was transformed into confusion in the presence of the son, who would become absorbed and tense. Thus a whole atmosphere was created, tragic, unrelieved, heightened by the ever-present French police whose vigilance could be sensed, and the whole European city that pointed its hatred, like a gun, at the Algerian quarter. Parents very often react according to a uniform pattern. The kind of observations that had been made before 1954 reappeared, and the familiar prudent advice was brought out. But this was also accompanied by defeatist remarks: “Don’t make a move; the French are too strong; you’ll never succeed.” The son would dodge discussion, avoid answering, would try not to bring out into the open a clash between the new world he was building and the father’s universe of infinite waiting and resignation. Sometimes the father would require that the son remain quiet, give up the struggle, come back to the family and take care of his own. Bachelors were told that they should think about marriage, and married men were reminded of their duties. Disagreement became overt. The young Algerian would feel called upon to defend his position, to justify his line of behavior before his father. He would firmly condemn and reject the father’s counsels of prudence. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;But he would not reject and ban the father.&lt;/span&gt; What he would try to do, on the contrary, would be to convert the family. The militant would replace the son and undertake to indoctrinate the father. But it would not be the son’s words that would convince him. It would be, more than anything, the dimensions of the people’s commitment, the information received as to the repression. The old paternal assurance, already shaken, would collapse once and for all. The father no longer knew how to keep his balance. He would then discover that the only way to do it was to join his son. It was during this period that the father buried the old values and decided to follow along on the new path. Jacques Lanzmann, in his last book, &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Viva Castro&lt;/span&gt;, finds the same phenomenon in Cuban society during the Castro Revolution:<br /> <br /> “From as early as we can remember, in our country, and this was a matter of profound belief and acceptance, the father owed it to himself to teach, to transmit his experience to his son. That experience, señor, was the thread that sewed together the members of the same family. In essential matters, the son always shared his father’s views. You no doubt know the Cuban proverb, ‘Like father, like son?’”<br /> <br /> “Naturally,” I said.<br /> <br /> “Accordingly, the father and the son were as one, until the day when a man who had taken refuge in the mountains and who was himself very young, took our sons from us. That man is a kind of Christ, I tell you! What is a father, compared to a Christ? Nothing, señor. So we fathers asked ourselves why our sons had left us. We tried to find in our poor heads the reason for such a separation and we thought, señor, that our experience of almost a hundred years was wrong. It was no good, our experience, it was just a life of every day that we passed on, somehow, without too much thinking about it, from father to son, for generations. One single man was sufficient, a man who had nothing to offer but idealism and purity. It was&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;better than our experience, our money, our jobs, our relations.”&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-9.xhtml#footnote-038-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-9.xhtml#footnote-038|36]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> This conversion of the father, however, did not totally eliminate traditional patterns of behavior. It was difficult for the father to stifle both his desire to re-establish his collapsed sovereignty and his obsession with the frightful consequences of this open war. Thus new forms of paternal opposition, veiled manifestations of paternal authority, came to light. When, for example, a young Algerian would decide to join the maquis, the father would no longer formally forbid it. He would appeal, rather, to the young man’s sense of discipline as a militant, and would ask if he were leaving in response to a mobilization call or if he were doing so on his own initiative. In the latter case, the father would be the first to remind the militant-son of the principles of discipline: if your chiefs need you, they will call you. Thus in order to oppose an act—going into the maquis—which, after 1956, endangered the lives of other members of the family who remained at home, the father had no other resources than to recognize the new values and to invoke other authorities.<br /> <br /> At no time do we find a really painful clash. The father stood back before the new world and followed in his son’s footsteps. It was the young Algerian who swept the family into the vast national liberation movement. Sometimes, however, the situation was more difficult. The father might be a notorious collaborationist with the colonialist administration. In the very exercise of his profession, this man would find himself cornered into making an irrevocable choice: being a &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;caïd&lt;/span&gt; (a police agent), a &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;bachagha&lt;/span&gt; (an official holding office by virtue of a rigged election), he would be both rejected and condemned by the new Algeria that his son embodied. Very often he would resign. However, it might happen that the contamination was such that he was no longer able to free himself from the colonialist embrace. The long succession of compromises was so imposing that there could be no turning back. Several Algerian families have experienced those atrocious tragedies in which the son, present at a meeting that had to decide the fate of his father who was a traitor to his fatherland, had no other choice but to support the majority and accept the most irrevocable judgments. At other times the son would be called upon in the Committee to set the amount of money that was to be demanded of his parents as their contribution to the Revolution, and one can readily imagine the paradox of the situation of a father complaining to his son as he would to an associate about the enormous sum exacted by the leaders. This defeat of the father by the new forces that were emerging could not fail to modify the relations that had formerly prevailed in Algerian society.<br /> <br /> The Daughter and the Father<br /> <br /> In the Algerian family, the girl is always one notch behind the boy. As in all societies in which work on the land represents the main source of the means of subsistence, the male, who is the privileged producer, enjoys an almost lordly status. The birth of a boy in a family is greeted with greater enthusiasm than that of a girl. The father sees in him a future working partner, a successor to the family plot and after his death a guardian for the mother and the sisters. The young girl, without being humiliated or neglected, cannot help being aware of the fuss made over her brother.<br /> <br /> The girl has no opportunity, all things considered, to develop her personality or to take any initiative. She takes her place in the vast network of domestic traditions of Algerian society. The woman’s life in the home, made up of centuries-old customs, allows no innovation. Illiteracy, poverty, the status of an oppressed people, maintain and strengthen the specific features of the colonized universe, to the point of changing their entire nature. The girl adopts automatically the behavior and the values of Algerian feminine society. From her mother she learns the higher value of the man. The woman in an underdeveloped society, and particularly in Algeria, is always a minor, and the man—brother, uncle or ­husband—represents first of all a guardian. The young girl learns to avoid discussions with the man, not to “aggravate the man.” The facility with which divorce is obtained in Algerian society imposes upon the woman the weight of an almost obsessional fear of being sent back to her family. The boy, for his part, adopts the father’s attitude.<br /> <br /> Rather quickly, in the family, the young girl avoids appearing before the father. When the woman replaces the girl at the time of puberty, there is a kind of tacit agreement to the effect that the father shall never be alone with his daughter. Everything is organized so as to keep the father in ignorance of the fact that his daughter has reached puberty. The father will say that it does not concern him, but in reality he wants to put off facing the girl’s new situation. This necessity that the father feels not to be exposed to the new woman who has come into the home, leads the family to contemplate the girl’s marriage. Early marriage in Algeria is not motivated by the desire to reduce the number of mouths to feed, but quite literally by the wish not to acquire a new woman without status, a childwoman, in the house. The girl who comes to womanhood must marry and have children. To have a girl who has reached puberty in the house is an extremely difficult problem for a family. The girl at puberty is available for marriage, which explains the rigor with which she is kept in the home, protected, and watched over. This also explains the ease with which she is married off.<br /> <br /> Under these conditions it will readily be understood that a girl wanting to choose her own husband or refusing the man proposed to her by her family would encounter considerable opposition. The girl who senses her parents’ anxiety and who experiences the precariousness of her new situation as a childwoman looks upon marriage as a liberation, as a deliverance, as achieving finally her balance. The life of an Algerian woman does not develop according to the three periods known in the West—childhood, puberty, and marriage. The Algerian girl knows only two stages—childhood-puberty, and marriage. The girl who reaches puberty in Algeria and does not marry prolongs an abnormal situation. It must never be forgotten that the illiteracy and the unemployment that prevail in Algeria leave the girl no other solution. In a &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;douar,&lt;/span&gt; the unmarried woman—and a girl becomes a woman at sixteen—must marry. Considered a minor indefinitely, the woman owes it to herself to find a husband as soon as possible, and the father is haunted by the fear of dying and abandoning his daughter without support and therefore unable to survive.<br /> <br /> All these restrictions were to be knocked over and challenged by the national liberation struggle. The unveiled Algerian woman, who assumed an increasingly important place in revolutionary action, developed her personality, discovered the exalting realm of responsibility. The freedom of the Algerian people from then on became identified with woman’s liberation, with her entry into history. This woman who, in the avenues of Algiers or of Constantine, would carry the grenades or the submachine-gun chargers, this woman who tomorrow would be outraged, violated, tortured, could not put herself back into her former state of mind and relive her behavior of the past; this woman who was writing the heroic pages of Algerian history was, in so doing, bursting the bounds of the narrow world in which she had lived without responsibility, and was at the same time participating in the destruction of colonialism and in the birth of a new woman.<br /> <br /> The women in Algeria, from 1955, began to have models. In Algerian society stories were told of women who in ever greater number suffered death and imprisonment in order that an independent Algeria might be born. It was these militant women who constituted the points of reference around which the imagination of Algerian feminine society was to be stirred to the boiling point. The woman-for-marriage progressively disappeared, and gave way to the woman-for-action. The young girl was replaced by the militant, the woman by the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;sister.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> The female cells of the F.L.N. received mass memberships. The impatience of these new recruits was so great that it often endangered the traditions of complete secrecy. The leaders had to restrain the exceptional enthusiasm and radicalism that are always characteristic of any youth engaged in building a new world. As soon as they were enrolled, these women would ask to&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;be given the most dangerous assignments. Only progressively did the political training that was given them lead them away from contemplating the struggle in an explosive form. The Algerian girl learned to contain her impatience and to show unexpected virtues of calm, composure and firmness.<br /> <br /> It would happen that a girl would be sought after by the police or that several members of the group she belonged to would be arrested. The necessity to vanish, to make her getaway, would become urgent. The militant would first leave her family and take refuge with friends. But soon orders would come from the network leadership to join the nearest maquis. After all the previous shocks—the daughter relinquishing the veil, putting on makeup, going out at all hours heaven knew where, etc.—the parents no longer dared protest. The father himself no longer had any choice. His old fear of dishonor had become altogether absurd in the light of the immense tragedy being experienced by the people. But apart from this, the national authority that had decided that the girl should leave for the maquis would have no patience with such reticence on the father’s part. Challenging the morality of a patriot had been ruled out long ago. Moreover, there was the overriding consideration of the combat—hard, intense, implacable. There was no time to lose. So the girl would go up into the maquis, alone with men. For months and months, the parents would be without news of a girl of eighteen who would sleep in the forests or in the grottoes, who would roam the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djebel&lt;/span&gt; dressed as a man, with a gun in her hands.<br /> <br /> The father’s attitude toward the girls remaining at home or toward any other woman met in the street inevitably underwent a radical change. And the girl who had not gone into the maquis, who was not actively engaged, became aware of the important role played by women in the revolutionary struggle. The men’s words were no longer law. The women were no longer silent. Algerian society in the fight for liberation, in the sacrifices that it was willing to make in order to liberate itself from colonialism, renewed itself and developed new values governing sexual relations. The woman ceased to be a complement for man. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;She literally forged a new place for herself by her sheer strength.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> Sometimes the girl would come down from the mountain, carrying a new identity card. She would then have the opportunity of telling the father and the mother what prodigious actions were taking place every day in the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djebel.&lt;/span&gt; She would show photographs. She would speak of her chiefs, of her &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;brothers&lt;/span&gt;, of the population, the wounded, the French prisoners. She would look at the father, she would sit facing the father, would speak to him and not be embarrassed. And the father would not turn his face away; he would not feel shame. On the contrary, he would feel a real joy at seeing his daughter again, at seeing her new personality radiating through the house; he would not be displeased to hear his daughter speaking out and it would absolutely not occur to him to remind her that a woman should be silent. For the three days of her leave, the father would feel no need to question his daughter as to her moral behavior in the maquis. This silence did not betray a lack of interest or a resignation with respect to yesterday’s demand of virginity. It was rather because the father could gauge the immense step taken by society, and these questions that were still present to his mind revealed themselves to be inappropriate and irrelevant. The Algerian girl who was emerging into the agitated arena of history was inviting her father to undergo a kind of mutation, to wrench himself free of himself. To ask of a woman who was daily risking her life whether she was “serious” became grotesque and absurd. The militant girl, in adopting new patterns of conduct, could not be judged by traditional standards. Old values, sterile and infantile phobias disappeared.<br /> <br /> The Brothers<br /> <br /> In Algeria, the eldest brother is the father’s designated successor. The other members of the family very quickly adopt a respectful and deferential attitude toward him. A certain number of things are not done in the eldest brother’s presence. One is careful not to be with him in the same group of youngsters where more or less frivolous jokes are likely to be heard. The attitude of the younger brother toward his big brother is comparable to that of the son toward the father. The disruption that we have seen in the relations of father and son is to be found here too, but is particularly accentuated. Brothers may in fact be active in the same cell and when the network is discovered may join the maquis. They fight in the same unit, suffer together from hunger and at times from shortage of ammunition. The measured and ritual relations of the pre-war period give way to totally new relations. The two brothers are integrated in a specific action and obey a single authority.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-9.xhtml#footnote-037-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-9.xhtml#footnote-037|37]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> The old relationship confined within the closed circuit of the family underwent radical changes. It would even happen that the younger son would be the group leader. And the traditional respect for the big brother did not inhibit the political or military chief. Invested with a power within the framework of the Revolution, the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;brother&lt;/span&gt; was led to go beyond the stereotyped, automatic ways of behavior. The &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;man&lt;/span&gt; who seemed to disappear behind the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;brother&lt;/span&gt; now came to the fore. The older brother was no longer necessarily right, and each one now defined his own values.<br /> <br /> The Couple<br /> <br /> The relations of wife and husband have likewise become modified in the course of the war of liberation. Whereas everyone in the house formerly had well-defined functions, the intensity of the struggle was to impose unanticipated types of behavior.<br /> <br /> Let us take the case of Mustapha. Mustapha has just come home. A little while ago, with another &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fidaï,&lt;/span&gt; he has thrown several grenades into the premises of the Judicial Police where patriots are being tortured night and day. He does not feel like talking. He lies down and shuts his eyes. His wife has seen him come in but has noticed nothing. An hour later, the news floods the district: two patriots have successfully carried out a spectacular coup. In the alleyway and in the court, the casualties of the adversary are estimated. The angry patrols that are already pouring into the streets are irrefutable proof that our people have dealt the colonists a hard blow. The woman comes back into the room, and seeing her husband slumbering, impervious to what has happened, gives vent to her contempt: “You wouldn’t be up to doing a thing like that! It’s easier to sleep and eat.” And she goes on to mention a neighbor who has been thrown into prison, another executed by the enemy, and finally the cousin who has sent pictures from the maquis. Treated as a coward by his wife, Mustapha remains silent, doubly pleased by his wife’s healthy anger and by the success of his assignment.<br /> <br /> This example, a fairly typical occurrence in 1956, is of considerable interest. In relations between men in Algeria, accusing a man of cowardice is an insult for which reparation can be made only in blood. It is not permitted to cast doubt on a man’s courage or on his virility; no one can accept that. And when the accuser is a woman, things become absolutely intolerable.<br /> <br /> The struggle for liberation raised woman to such a level of inner renewal that she is even able to call her husband a coward. Rather&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;frequently, by allusions or explicitly, the Algerian woman would upbraid her husband for his inactivity, his refusal to commit himself, his lack of militancy. This was the period when young girls among themselves would vow never to let themselves be married to a man who did not belong to the F.L.N. The Algerian woman, in throwing caution to the winds, at the same time divests herself of the instinct to protect her home. Reproaching one’s husband for not participating in a combat known to be deadly is a paradoxical kind of behavior, to say the least. But the women no longer consider the man’s conditions as they did before. The man’s job is patriotic activity and no one can affirm his virility if he is not a part of the fighting nation.<br /> <br /> Sometimes, however, the woman was not uninformed as to her husband’s activity. A militant of long standing, the husband would frequently vanish, and sometimes she would find a revolver under his pillow. As the searches multiplied, the woman demanded of her husband that he keep her informed. She would insist on being given certain names and addresses of militants to warn in case the husband should be arrested. It was on the grounds of effectiveness that she persuaded her husband to allow her to become involved in action. She would invoke, for example, the case of a militant who, under torture, had given names and thereby caused the destruction of a whole network, and she would warn her husband against wanting to be “the only one in the know,” out of a false pride concealing itself behind the mask of secrecy. Little by little, resistances disappeared and the united militant couple, participating in the&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;birth of the nation, became the rule in Algeria.<br /> <br /> Sometimes the husband, who had been away in the maquis for several months, would come back on leave. Overcome by the enveloping warmth of the home, he would confide to his wife his desire not to go back “up there.” The wife who had resumed, with an intensity that can be imagined, her dimension as a woman, would share with her husband the need to prolong and not interrupt those completely “lived” hours that seemed to escape time. And as always, in such cases, the frenzy with which every moment was savored was conditioned by the ever possible eventuality of a death that might, any day, separate them forever. Yet it would be the woman who would ask her husband to banish such an idea from his mind. “What will you say to the people of the village when they ask you questions? You promised to come back once independence had been won; you swore to bring back freedom. How can you consider resuming a normal life when all the men are up there or in prison?”<br /> <br /> Often the childless woman, witnessing the mass involvement of the nation, seeing the young girls of the village leaving one after another, would decide to join her husband. She would of course not see him often, but in periods of relative calm the couple could come together. It was not unusual for the woman arriving in the maquis to learn of the death of her husband. Often she would return to the village to her parents’ home, but sometimes the shock would make her decide to stay with the fighters and take part in the struggle for liberation. The woman’s presence in the maquis would disturb the husband much less than her militant activity in the centers. The woman who would set out on a mission three hundred kilometers from her domicile, who would sleep wherever she could, among unknown companions, inevitably created a certain number of problems for the husband. They were never formulated, to be sure, but no revolution can, with finality and without repercussions, make a clean sweep of well-nigh instinctive modes of behavior. “You can’t imagine what it’s like to hear someone asking for your wife on the telephone. You call your wife, you hand her the receiver, and you hear yourself being invited to leave the room; then your wife goes off and sometimes comes back four hours or four days later. You are given no explanation, but you cannot be unaware of the action in which she is involved, since you yourself were the one who mobilized her. You yourself were the one who taught her the strict rules of absolute secrecy.’’<br /> <br /> The Algerian couple has become considerably more closely knit in the course of this Revolution. The sometimes fragile bonds, marked by the precarious nature of the present, of what could be rejected from one moment to the next, were strengthened, or at least changed character. What could formerly be defined as mere cohabitation today includes a multiplicity of points of communication. First and foremost is the fact of incurring dangers together, of turning over in the same bed, each on his own side, each with his fragment of a secret. It is also the consciousness of collaborating in the immense work of destroying the world of oppression. The couple is no longer shut in upon itself. It no longer finds its end in itself. It is no longer the result of the natural instinct of perpetuation of the species, nor the institutionalized means of satisfying one’s sexuality. The couple becomes the basic cell of the commonwealth, the fertile nucleus of the nation. The Algerian couple, in becoming a link in the revolutionary organization, is transformed into a unit of existence. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;The mingling of fighting experience with conjugal life deepens the relations between husband and wife and cements their union. There is a simultaneous and effervescent emergence of the citizen, the patriot, and the modern spouse.&lt;/span&gt; The Algerian couple rids itself of its traditional weaknesses at the same time that the solidarity of the people becomes a part of history. This couple is no longer an accident but something rediscovered, willed, built. It is, as we can see, the very foundation of the sexual encounter that we are concerned with here.<br /> <br /> Marriage and Divorce<br /> <br /> In Algeria marriage is generally decided by the families. It is almost always at the wedding that the husband sees his wife’s face for the first time. The social and economic reasons for this tradition are sufficiently well known and need not be explained here. Marriage in the underdeveloped countries is not an individual contract, but a contract between clan and clan, tribe and tribe, family and family.<br /> <br /> With the Revolution, things were gradually to change. The presence of women in the maquis, the contact between unmarried men and women, created unexpected problems for the local F.L.N. leaders. Men would go to their superior officer and ask to marry such and such a nurse. The F.L.N. officer would hesitate for a long time. No one can give a girl away in marriage, except her father, and in the father’s absence, her uncle or her brother. The officer did not feel he had a right to entertain the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;moudjahid’s&lt;/span&gt; request and sometimes found himself obliged to separate the two lovers. But love is an incontrovertible fact which must be reckoned with, and the leadership of the Revolution gave instructions that marriages could be contracted before a mayor or registry official.<br /> <br /> Registry offices were opened. Marriages, births, and deaths could then be registered. Marriage in the maquis ceased to be an arrangement between families. All unions were voluntary. The future wife and husband had had time to know each other, to esteem, to love each other. Even the case of love at first sight had been anticipated by the directives. Whenever an application for marriage is presented, the instructions read, it is well to postpone any decision for three months. When the father learned of the marriage of his daughter in the maquis, the act would not be contested or condemned. On the contrary, pictures would be asked for, and the babies born in the maquis would be sent to the grandparents who would care for these children of the Revolution as they deserved.<br /> <br /> Such innovations could not fail to have repercussions on the traditional modes of marriage that continued to be practiced in the rest of the country. Algerian women began at first to demand guarantees of the future husband’s patriotism. They would require that the young men who were being proposed to them be members of the F.L.N. The father’s unchallengeable and massive authority let itself be shaken by this new requirement. Before the Revolution, a girl who had been asked for as a wife would leave the family circle for several days and take refuge with relatives. This is explained by the shame felt by the girl at being the object of a sexual pursuit. It was also usual for the young bride to avoid appearing before her father for one or two months after the consummation of the marriage. These modest, infantile patterns of behavior disappeared with the Revolution and today the majority of young married women have themselves been present at the signature of their contract and have naturally been consulted as to their intended. Marriage in Algeria underwent this radical transformation in the very heart of the combat waged by the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Moudjahidines&lt;/span&gt; and the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Moudjahidates.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> Under these conditions, divorce, the separation of husband and wife, was bound to undergo change. The husband’s repudiation of his wife that could be immediately proclaimed at any time and that reflected the fragility of the conjugal bond is no longer automatically legalized. The husband must explain his reasons for wanting a divorce. There are attempts at reconciliation. In any case, the final decision rests with the local officer. The family emerges strengthened from this ordeal in which colonialism has resorted to every means to break the people’s will. In the midst of the gravest dangers the Algerian adopts modern forms of existence and confers on the human person his maximum independence.<br /> <br /> Feminine Society<br /> <br /> The women who participate in the war and who marry in the maquis have initiated within Algerian feminine society radical changes in certain patterns of behavior. A one-sided interpretation of the main changes observed must, however, be avoided. The war waged by French colonialism obliges the Algerian people to be constantly and wholly engaged in the battle. Confronted by an adversary who has sworn to keep Algeria, even without the Algerians, it is difficult to remain oneself, to maintain preferences or values intact. Feminine society undergoes change both through an organic solidarity with the Revolution, and more especially because the adversary cuts into the Algerian flesh with unheard-of violence.<br /> <br /> The women, accustomed to going to the village cemetery or to visiting a local sanctuary on Fridays, interrupt this activity among others when they are regrouped along with tens of thousands of other families.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-9.xhtml#footnote-036-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-9.xhtml#footnote-036|38]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> In the camp they immediately organize themselves in F.L.N.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;cells. They meet women from other regions, exchange their experiences of the repression—but also their experiences from before the Revolution, their hopes. The regrouped Algerian woman, cut off from her husband who has remained with the combatants, takes care of the old and the orphans, learns to read and to sew and often, in a group of several companions, leaves the camp and joins the Army of National Liberation.<br /> <br /> With these considerable shifts in population, the whole social panorama and the perceptual framework are disturbed and restructured. A &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;mechta&lt;/span&gt; evacuated is not a &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;mechta&lt;/span&gt; that has migrated.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-9.xhtml#footnote-035-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-9.xhtml#footnote-035|39]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The chain of events of the operation must be patiently followed: bombardments of the region, multiple raids, able-bodied men taking to the mountains, the dead quickly buried, the hostages taken away by the French, certain members of the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;mechta&lt;/span&gt; taking refuge in a neighboring town with relatives or friends.<br /> <br /> The regrouped &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;mechta&lt;/span&gt; is a broken, destroyed &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;mechta.&lt;/span&gt; It is merely a group of men, women and children. Under these conditions, no gesture is kept intact. No previous rhythm is to be found unaltered. Caught in the meshes of the barbed wires, the members of regrouped Algerian families neither eat nor sleep as they did before. This can be seen, for example, on the occasion of a death. The lamentations, the wails, the grief-stricken faces, and the contortions of the body have today practically disappeared. The classic mourning tears are hardly any longer to be found in Algeria. All this began in 1955 when the French troops, for the fun of it, or in the course of a repression, would overrun a locality and machinegun five or ten men. These collective deaths, without warning, without a previous illness that had been treated and fought, abandoned in the ditch on the edge of the road, cannot set into motion emotional mechanisms that are homogeneous to a society. Lamentations and grief-stricken faces are part of a patterned, stable world. One does not weep, one does not do as before when one is faced with multiple murders. One grits one’s teeth and one prays in silence. One further step, and it is cries of joy that salute the death of a &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;moudjahid&lt;/span&gt; who has fallen on the field of honor. It must not be believed, however, that the traditional ceremonies are repeated in the case of natural deaths, resulting from illnesses or accidents. Even then, it seems virtually impossible to revive the habitual techniques of despair. The war has dislocated Algerian society to such a point that any death is conceived of as a direct or indirect consequence of colonialist repression. Today there is not a dead person in Algeria who is not the victim of French colonialism. It is impossible for an Algerian civilian to remain untouched by the war of colonial reconquest. More than this, there is not a death of an Algerian outside of Algeria which is not attributed to French colonialism. The Algerian people have thus decided that, until independence, French colonialism will be innocent of none of the wounds inflicted upon its body and its consciousness.<br /> <br /> Algeria Dispersed<br /> <br /> The tactic adopted by French colonialism since the beginning of the Revolution has had the result of separating the people from each other, of fragmenting them, with the sole objective of making any cohesion impossible. This effort was at first concentrated on the men, who were interned by tens of thousands. It is well known that in 1955–56, the number of internment centers multiplied rapidly over the national territory. Lodi, Paul Cazelles, Berrouaghia have held fathers and husbands captive for years. The Algerian woman, suddenly deprived of a husband, is obliged to find a means of feeding her children. She finds herself having to go from place to place, to run her errands, to live without the man’s protection. Sometimes she will go and visit her husband interned a hundred or two hundred kilometers from his home. When the men are not interned, they are to be found in the maquis, and the mothers who receive the family allowances distributed by the Liberation Front are left all alone to raise the children. In the cities the prison gates close on an imposing number of Algerian men, and in order to flee the regroupment camps, in order to escape the repeated bombardments of French planes, tens of thousands of families have taken refuge in Tunisia and in Morocco.<br /> <br /> The multiple murders of Algerian men and women by French colonialism have particularly attracted the world’s attention and have given rise to the wave of protests that we have seen. But we must try to look more closely at the reality of Algeria. We must not simply fly over it. We must, on the contrary, walk step by step along the great wound inflicted on the Algerian soil and on the Algerian people. We must question the Algerian earth meter by meter, and measure the fragmentation of the Algerian family, the degree to which it finds itself scattered. A woman led away by soldiers who comes back a week later—it is unnecessary to question her to understand that she has been violated dozens of times. A husband taken away by the enemy who comes back with his body covered with contusions, more dead than alive, his mind stunned. Children scattered to the winds, innumerable orphans who roam about, haggard and famished. When a man welcomes his wife who has spent two weeks in a French camp and he says hello to her and asks her if she is hungry, and he avoids looking at her and bows his head—when such things are a daily occurrence, it is not possible to imagine that the Algerian family can have remained intact and that hatred of colonialism has not swelled immeasurably. French colonialism since 1954 has wanted nothing other than to break the will of the people, to destroy its resistance, to liquidate its hopes. For five years it has avoided no extremist tactic, whether of terror or of torture. In stirring up these men and women, colonialism has regrouped them beneath a single sign. Equally victims of the same tyranny, simultaneously identifying a single enemy, this physically dispersed people is realizing its unity and founding in suffering a spiritual community which constitutes the most solid bastion of the Algerian Revolution.&lt;div class=&quot;_idFootnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-9.xhtml#footnote-038&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-9.xhtml#footnote-038-backlink|36]]. J. Lanzmann, &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Viva Castro&lt;/span&gt;, p. 114.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-9.xhtml#footnote-037&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-9.xhtml#footnote-037-backlink|37]]. In the period before the Revolution, brothers working in the same plant would ask the foreman to be assigned to different jobs. In a hospital, too, two brothers who were nurses would go out of their way to be assigned to different wards.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-9.xhtml#footnote-036&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-9.xhtml#footnote-036-backlink|38]]. The French colonialist forces, as we know, have put more than a million Algerians behind barbed wires. These are the. notorious “regrouping centers” in which, as the French authorities themselves admit, disease and mortality run to abnormally high figures.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-9.xhtml#footnote-035&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-9.xhtml#footnote-035-backlink|39]]. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;mechta&lt;/span&gt;—a hamlet. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_idGenObjectStyleOverride-1&quot;&gt;<br /> == Medicine and Colonialism ==<br /> The Algerian Example<br /> <br /> Introduced into Algeria at the same time as racialism and humiliation, Western medical science, being part of the oppressive system, has always provoked in the native an ambivalent attitude. This ambivalence is in fact to be found in connection with all of the occupier’s modes of presence. With medicine we come to one of the most tragic features of the colonial situation.<br /> <br /> In all objectivity and in all humanity, it is a good thing that a technically advanced country benefits from its knowledge and the discoveries of its scientists. When the discipline considered concerns man’s health, when its very principle is to ease pain, it is clear that no negative reaction can be justified. But the colonial situation is precisely such that it drives the colonized to appraise all the colonizer’s contributions in a pejorative and absolute way. The colonized perceives the doctor, the engineer, the schoolteacher, the policeman, the rural constable, through the haze of an almost organic confusion. The compulsory visit by the doctor to the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;douar&lt;/span&gt; is preceded by the assembling of the population through the agency of the police authorities. The doctor who arrives in this atmosphere of general constraint is never a native doctor but always a doctor belonging to the dominant society and very often to the army.<br /> <br /> The statistics on sanitary improvements are not interpreted by the native as progress in the fight against illness, in general, but as fresh proof of the extension of the occupier’s hold on the country. When the French authorities show visitors through the Tizi-­Ouzou sanitorium or the operating units of the Mustapha hospital in Algiers, this has for the native just one meaning: “This is what we have done for the people of this country; this country owes us everything; were it not for us, there would be no country.” There is a real mental reservation on the part of the native; it is difficult for him to be objective, to separate the wheat from the chaff.<br /> <br /> There are of course exceptions. In certain periods of calm, in certain free confrontations, the colonized individual frankly recognizes what is positive in the dominator’s action. But this good faith is immediately taken advantage of by the occupier and transformed into a justification of the occupation. When the native, after a major effort in the direction of truth, because he assumes that his defenses have been surmounted, says, “That is good. I tell you so because I think so,” the colonizer perverts his meaning and translates, “Don’t leave, for what would we do without you?”<br /> <br /> Thus, on the level of the whole colonized society, we always discover this reluctance to qualify opposition to the colonialist, for it so happens that every qualification is perceived by the occupier as an invitation to perpetuate the oppression, as a confession of congenital impotence. The colonized people as a whole, when faced with certain happenings, will react in a harsh, undifferentiated, categorical way before the dominant group’s activity. It is not unusual to hear such extreme observations as this: “Nobody asked you for anything; who invited you to come? Take your hospitals and your port facilities and go home.”<br /> <br /> The fact is that the colonization, having been built on military conquest and the police system, sought a justification for its existence and the legitimization of its persistence in its works.<br /> <br /> Reduced, in the name of truth and reason, to saying “yes” to certain innovations of the occupier, the colonized perceived that he thus became the prisoner of the entire system, and that the French medical service in Algeria could not be separated from French colonialism in Algeria. Then, as he could not cut himself off from his people, who aspired to a national existence on their own soil, he rejected doctors, schoolteachers, engineers, parachutists, all in one lump.<br /> <br /> In a non-colonial society, the attitude of a sick man in the presence of a medical practitioner is one of confidence. The patient trusts the doctor; he puts himself in his hands. He yields his body to him. He accepts the fact that pain may be awakened or exacerbated by the physician, for the patient realizes that the intensifying of suffering in the course of examination may pave the way to peace in his body.<br /> <br /> At no time, in a non-colonial society, does the patient mistrust his doctor. On the level of technique, of knowledge, it is clear that a certain doubt can filter into the patient’s mind, but this may be due to a hesitation on the part of the doctor which modifies the original confidence. This can happen anywhere. But it is obvious that certain circumstances can appreciably change the doctor-patient relationship. The German prisoner who was to be operated on by a French surgeon would very often, just before being given the anaesthetic, beseech the doctor not to kill him. Under the same circumstances, the surgeon might be more than ordinarily anxious to perform the operation successfully because of the other prisoners, because he realized the interpretation that might be given the event if a patient died on the operating table. The French prisoners in the German camps showed a similar concern when they asked the doctors working in the camp infirmary to assist in the operations performed by German surgeons. Literature and the motion pictures have made much of such situations, and after every war the problems they involve are commercially exploited.<br /> <br /> In colonial territory such situations are to be found in even greater number. The sudden deaths of Algerians in hospitals, a common occurrence in any establishment caring for the sick and the injured, are interpreted as the effects of a murderous and deliberate decision, as the result of criminal maneuvers on the part of the European doctor. The Algerian’s refusal to be hospitalized is always more or less related to that lingering doubt as to the colonial doctor’s essential humanity. It needs to be said, too, although it is not the rule, that in certain hospital services experimentation on living patients is practiced to an extent that cannot be considered negligible.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-047-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-047|40]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> For dozens of years, despite the doctor’s exhortations, the Algerian shied away from hospitalization. Even though the specialist might insist that any hesitation would seriously endanger the patient’s life, the patient would hang back and refuse to be taken to the hospital. It would always be at the last moment, when hardly any hope remained, that consent was given. Even then, the man who made the decision would make it in opposition to the group; and as the case would be a desperate one, as the decision had been too long delayed, the patient would usually die.<br /> <br /> Such experiences would strengthen the group in its original belief in the occupier’s fundamentally evil character, even though he was a doctor. And the Algerian who, after considerable effort, had succeeded in overcoming the traditional prejudice to an appreciable extent, who had forced the decision to hospitalize the patient, would suddenly feel infinitely guilty. Inwardly he would promise not to repeat his mistake. The values of the group, momentarily abandoned, would reassert themselves, in an exacerbated and exclusive way.<br /> <br /> It would be a serious mistake, and it would in any case make such an attitude incomprehensible, to compare such behavior with that already described as characterizing the poor rural populations of European countries. The colonized who resisted hospitalization did not do so on the basis of the fear of cities, the fear of distance, of no longer being protected by the family, the fear that people would say that the patient had been sent to the hospital to die, that the family had rid itself of a burden. The colonized not only refused to send the patient to the hospital, but he refused to send him to the hospital of the whites, of strangers, of the conqueror.<br /> <br /> It is necessary to analyze, patiently and lucidly, each one of the reactions of the colonized, and every time we do not understand, we must tell ourselves that we are at the heart of the drama—that&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;of the impossibility of finding a meeting ground in any colonial situation. For some time it was maintained that the native’s reluctance to entrust himself to a European doctor was due to his attachment to his traditional medical techniques or to his dependence on the sorcerers or healers of his group. Such psychological reactions do obviously exist, and they were to be observed, not too many years ago, not only among the masses of generally advanced countries, but also among doctors themselves. Leriche has reported to us the hesitancies or the refusals of certain doctors to adopt the thermometer because they were accustomed to estimating the temperature by taking the pulse. Examples of this kind could be indefinitely multiplied. It is hardly abnormal, therefore, for individuals accustomed to practicing certain customs in the treatment of a given ailment, to adopting certain procedures when confronted with the disorder that illness constitutes, to refuse to abandon these customs and procedures because others are imposed on them, in other words because the new technique takes over completely and does not tolerate the persistence of any shred of tradition.<br /> <br /> Here again we hear the same refrain: “If I abandon what I am in the habit of doing when my wife coughs and I authorize the European doctor to give her injections; if I find myself literally insulted and told I am a savage [this happens], because I have made scratches on the forehead of my son who has been complaining of a headache for three days; if I tell this insulter he is right and I admit that I was wrong to make those scratches which custom has taught me to do—if I do all these things I am acting, from a strictly rational point of view, in a positive way. For, as a matter of fact, my son has meningitis and it really has to be treated as a meningitis ought to be treated. But the colonial constellation is such that what should be the brotherly and tender insistence of one who wants only to help me is interpreted as a manifestation of the conqueror’s arrogance and desire to humiliate.”<br /> <br /> It is not possible for the colonized society and the colonizing society to agree to pay tribute, at the same time and in the same place, to a single value. If, against all probability, the colonized society expresses its agreement on any point with the colonizing society, there will at once begin to be talk about successful integration. It is now necessary to enter into the tragic labyrinth of the general reactions of Algerian society with respect to the problem of the fight against illness, conceived of as an aspect of the French presence. We shall then see in the course of the fight for liberation the crystallization of the new attitude adopted by the Algerian people in respect to medical techniques.<br /> <br /> The Visit to the Doctor<br /> <br /> The colonized person who goes to see the doctor is always diffident. He answers in monosyllables, gives little in the way of explanation, and soon arouses the doctor’s impatience. This attitude is not to be confused with the kind of inhibiting fear that patients usually feel in the doctor’s presence. We often hear it said that a certain doctor has a good bedside manner, that he puts his patients at ease. But it so happens that in the colonial situation the personal approach, the ability to be oneself, of establishing and maintaining a “contact,” are not observable. The colonial situation standardizes relations, for it dichotomizes the colonial society in a marked way.<br /> <br /> The doctor rather quickly gave up the hope of obtaining information from the colonized patient and fell back on the clinical examination, thinking that the body would be more eloquent. But the body proved to be equally rigid. The muscles were contracted. There was no relaxing. Here was the entire man, here was the colonized, facing both a technician and a colonizer.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-046-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-046|41]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; One must, of course, lend an ear to the observations made by the European doctors who examined the patients. But one must also hear those of the patients themselves when they left the hospital. Whereas the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;doctors&lt;/span&gt; say: “The pain in their case is protopathic, poorly differentiated, diffuse as in an animal, it is a general malaise rather than a localized pain”; the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;patients&lt;/span&gt; say: “They asked me what was wrong with me, as if I were the doctor; they think they’re smart and they aren’t even able to tell where I feel pain, and the minute you come in they ask you what is wrong with you . . .”<br /> <br /> The doctors say: “Those people are rough and unmannerly.” The patients say: “I don’t trust them.” Whereas the doctors claim that the colonized patient doesn’t know what he wants, whether to stay sick or be cured, the native keeps saying, “I know how to get into their hospital, but I don’t know how I’ll get out—&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; I get out.” Fairly soon the doctor, and even the nurse, worked out a rule of action: with these people you couldn’t practice medicine, you had to be a veterinarian.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-045-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-045|42]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; But finally, by sheer persistence, the doctor would more or less get an idea of what the disease was and prescribe a treatment, which would sometimes not be followed. Sociologists would thereupon venture an explanation and classify all these actions under the heading of fatalism.<br /> <br /> The analysis of this pattern of behavior within the colonial framework enables us, on the contrary, to come to other conclusions.<br /> <br /> When the colonized escapes the doctor, and the integrity of his body is preserved, he considers himself the victor by a handsome margin. For the native the visit is always an ordeal. When the advantage assumed by the colonizer is limited to swallowing pills or potions, the colonized has the impression of having won a victory over the enemy. The end of the visit puts an end to the confrontation. The medicines, the advice, are but the sequels of the ordeal. As for fatalism, a father’s apparent refusal, for example, to admit that he owes his son’s life to the colonizer’s operation, must be studied in two lights. There is, first of all, the fact that the colonized person, who in this respect is like the men in underdeveloped countries or the disinherited in all parts of the world, perceives life not as a flowering or a development of an essential productiveness, but as a permanent struggle against an omnipresent death. This ever-menacing death is experienced as endemic famine, unemployment, a high death rate, an inferiority complex and the absence of any hope for the future.<br /> <br /> All this gnawing at the existence of the colonized tends to make of life something resembling an incomplete death. Acts of refusal or rejection of medical treatment are not a refusal of life, but a greater passivity before that close and contagious death. Seen from another angle, this absence of enlightened behavior reveals the colonized native’s mistrust of the colonizing technician. The technician’s words are always understood in a pejorative way. The truth objectively expressed is constantly vitiated by the lie of the colonial situation.<br /> <br /> Medical Supervision, Treatment and the “Double-Power”<br /> <br /> A poor subject in the doctor’s office, the colonized Algerian proves to be an equally unsatisfactory patient. The colonizing doctor finds that his patient cannot be depended upon to take his medicine regularly, that he takes the wrong doses, fails to appreciate the importance of periodic visits, and takes a paradoxical, frivolous attitude toward the prescribed diet. These are only the most striking and the most common peculiarities that he notes. Hence the general impression that the patient plays hide-and-seek with his doctor. The doctor has no hold on the patient. He finds that in spite of promises and pledges, an attitude of flight, of disengagement persists. All the efforts exerted by the doctor, by his team of nurses, to modify this state of things encounter, not a systematic opposition, but a “vanishing” on the part of the patient.<br /> <br /> The first thing that happens is that the patient does not return. This in spite of the fact that it has been clearly explained to him that his ailment, in order to be cured, requires that he be examined several times at given intervals. This is clearly written out in the prescription, it has been explained to him and re-explained, and he has been given a definite appointment with the doctor for a fixed date. But the doctor waits for him in vain. The patient does not arrive. When he does come back, there is the rather shocking discovery that the malady has become very much aggravated. The patient, in fact, comes back five to six months or sometimes a year later. Worse still, he has failed to take the prescribed medicine. An interview with the patient reveals that the medicine was taken only once, or, as often happens, that the amount prescribed for one month was absorbed in a single dose. It may be worth while to dwell on this type of case, for the explanations of it that have been given appear to us quite unsatisfactory.<br /> <br /> The sociological theory is that the “native” entertains the firm hope of being cured once and for all. The native, in fact, sees the ailment, not as progressing little by little but as assaulting the individual in a single swoop, so that the effectiveness of a remedy would not depend so much on its consistent, periodic, and progressive repetition but on its total impact, its immediate effect; this accounts for the natives’ preference for injections. According to this theory, the doctor would always have to heal at a single sitting. Pilgrimages to a sanctuary, the making of amulets or marks written on a piece of paper—these are therapies that are applied immediately with the maximum effectiveness. Just as neglecting a ritual duty or transgressing a given taboo causes the disease to break out, so performing certain actions or following the medicine man’s or the sorcerer’s prescriptions are capable of expelling the disease and restoring the equilibrium between the different forces that govern the life of the group.<br /> <br /> This explanation surely contains an element of truth. But it seems to us, to interpret a phenomenon arising out of the colonial situation in terms of patterns of conduct existing before the foreign conquest, even if this phenomenon is analagous to certain traditional patterns, is nevertheless in certain respects false. Colonial domination, as we have seen, gives rise to and continues to dictate a whole complex of resentful behavior and of refusal on the part of the colonized. The colonized exerts a considerable effort to keep away from the colonial world, not to expose himself to any action of the conqueror. In everyday life, however, the colonized and the colonizers are constantly establishing bonds of economic, technical, and administrative dependence. Colonialism obviously throws all the elements of native society into confusion. The dominant group arrives with its values and imposes them with such violence that the very life of the colonized can manifest itself only defensively, in a more or less clandestine way. Under these conditions, colonial domination distorts the very relations that the colonized maintains with his own culture. In a great number of cases, the practice of tradition is a disturbed practice, the colonized being unable to reject completely modern discoveries and the arsenal of weapons against diseases possessed by the hospitals, the ambulances, the nurses. But the colonized who accepts the intervention of medical technique, if he does not go to the hospital, will be subjected to considerable pressure on the part of his group. The traditional methods of treatment are applied in addition to the modern medical technique. “Two remedies are better than one.” It must be remembered that the colonized who accepts penicillin or digitalin at the same time insists on following the treatment prescribed by the healer of his village or his district.<br /> <br /> The colonized obscurely realizes that penicillin is more effective, but for political, psychological, social reasons, he must at the same time give traditional medicine its due. (The healer fulfills a function and therefore needs to earn a living.) Psychologically, the colonized has difficulty, even here in the presence of illness, in rejecting the habits of his group and the reactions of his culture. Accepting the medicine, even once, is admitting, to a limited extent perhaps but nonetheless ambiguously, the validity of the Western technique. It is demonstrating one’s confidence in the foreigner’s medical science. Swallowing the whole dose in one gulp is literally getting even with it.<br /> <br /> To gradually adopt an almost obsessional respect for the colonizer’s prescription often proves difficult. The other power, in fact, intervenes and breaks the unifying circle of the Western therapy. Every pill absorbed or every injection taken invites the application of a preparation or the visit to a saint. Sometimes the patient gives evidence of the fear of being the battleground for different and opposed forces. This fear gives rise to important stresses and the whole picture of the illness is thereby modified. Once again, the colonial world reveals itself to be complex and extremely diverse in structure. There is always an opposition of exclusive worlds, a contradictory interaction of different techniques, a vehement confrontation of values.<br /> <br /> The Colonized and the Native Doctor<br /> <br /> The colonial situation does not only vitiate the relations between doctor and patient. We have shown that the doctor always appears as a link in the colonialist network, as a spokesman for the occupying power. We shall see that this ambivalence of the patient before medical technique is to be found even when the doctor belongs to the dominated people. There is a manifest ambivalence of the colonized group with respect to any member who acquires a technique or the manners of the conqueror. For the group, in fact, the native technician is living proof that any one of its members is capable of being an engineer, a lawyer or a doctor. But there is at the same time, in the background, the awareness of a sudden divergence between the homogeneous group, enclosed within itself, and this native technician who has escaped beyond the specific psychological or emotional categories of the people. The native doctor is a Europeanized, Westernized doctor, and in certain circumstances he is considered as no longer being a part of the dominated society. He is tacitly rejected into the camp of the oppressors, into the opposing camp. It is not by accident that in certain colonies the educated native is referred to as ‘‘having acquired the habits of a master.”<br /> <br /> For many of the colonized, the native doctor is compared to the native police, to the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;caïd&lt;/span&gt;, to the notable. The colonized is both proud of the success of his &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;race&lt;/span&gt; and at the same time looks upon this technician with disapproval. The native doctor’s behavior with respect to the traditional medicine of his country is for a long time characterized by a considerable aggressiveness.<br /> <br /> The native doctor feels himself psychologically compelled to demonstrate firmly his new admission to a rational universe. This accounts for the abrupt way in which he rejects the magic practices of his people. Given the ambivalence of the colonized with respect to the native doctor and the ambivalence of the native doctor before certain features of his culture, the encounter of doctor and patient inevitably proves difficult. The colonized patient is the first to set the tone. Once the superiority of Western technique over traditional methods of treatment is recognized, it is thought preferable to turn to the colonizers who are, after all, “the true possessors of the technique.” As far as practice goes, it is common to see European doctors receiving both Algerian and European patients, whereas Algerian doctors generally receive only Algerians. Some exceptions could of course be mentioned; but on the whole, this description is valid for Algeria. The native doctor, because of the operation of the complex psychological laws that govern colonial society, frequently finds himself in a difficult position.<br /> <br /> We are dealing here with the drama of the colonized intellectuals &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;before&lt;/span&gt; the fight for liberation. We shall soon see what important modifications have been introduced into Algeria by the national war of liberation.<br /> <br /> The European Doctor During the Struggle for Liberation<br /> <br /> Generally speaking, the colonizing doctor adopts the attitude of his group toward the struggle of the Algerian people. Behind “the doctor who heals the wounds of humanity” appears the man, a member of a dominant society and enjoying in Algeria the benefit of an incomparably higher standard of living than that of his metropolitan colleague.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-044-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-044|43]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> Moreover, in centers of colonization the doctor is nearly always a landowner as well. It is exceptional to see in Algeria, a colony which attracts settlers, a doctor who does not take up farming, who does not become attached to the soil. Whether the land has come to him from his family, or he has bought it himself, the doctor is a settler. The European population in Algeria has not yet clearly marked out for itself the different sectors of economic life. Colonial society is a mobile society, poorly structured, and the European, even when he is a technician, always assumes a certain degree of polyvalence. In the heart of every European in the colonies there slumbers a man of energy, a pioneer, an adventurer. Not even the civil servant transferred for two years to a colonial territory fails to feel himself psychologically changed in certain respects.<br /> <br /> The European individual in Algeria does not take his place in a structured and relatively stable society. The colonial society is in perpetual movement. Every settler invents a new society, sets up or sketches new structures. The differences between craftsmen, civil servants, workers, and professionals are poorly defined. Every doctor has his vineyards and the lawyer busies himself with his rice fields as passionately as any settler. The doctor is not socially defined by the exercise of his profession alone. He is likewise the owner of mills, wine cellars, or orange groves, and he coyly speaks of his medicine as simply a supplementary source of income. Not exclusively dependent on his practice, deriving a sometimes enormous income from his properties, the doctor has a certain conception of professional morality and of medical practice. The colonialist arrogance, the contempt for the client, the hateful brutality toward the indigent are more or less contained in the formula, “I don’t have to sit around waiting for clients to make a living.” The doctor in Besançon, in Liège, or in Basel has left the land and has taken his place in the economic sector defined by his profession. Perpetually in contact with suffering humanity, the world of the sick and the disabled, the doctor has a set of values. Thus he will usually be found to belong to one of the democratic parties, and his ideas are likely to be anticolonialist. In the colonies, the doctor is an integral part of colonization, of domination, of exploitation. In Algeria we must not be surprised to find that doctors and professors of medicine are leaders of colonialist movements.<br /> <br /> The Algerian doctor is economically interested in the maintenance of colonial oppression. This is not a question of values or of principles, but of the incomparably high standard of living that the colonial situation provides him. This explains the fact that very often he assumes the role of militia chief or organizer of “counter-terrorist” raids. In the colonies, in normal times—that is, in the absence of the war of liberation—there is something of the cowboy and the pioneer even in the intellectual. In a period of crisis the cowboy pulls out his revolver and his instruments of torture.<br /> <br /> In this frightful war that is bathing Algeria in blood, an effort is required to understand certain facts, objectively distressing in a normal situation. The murder of certain doctors in Algeria has never been clearly understood by world opinion. In the cruelest wars, it is traditional for the medical corps to be left unscathed. For example in 1944, while freeing a village in the region of Belfort, we left a guard at the entrance to a school where German surgeons were operating on the wounded. The Algerian political men are quite aware of the existence of laws of war. They know the complexity of the problem and the dramatic situation of the European population. How is one to explain those cases, the decisions made to take the life of a doctor?<br /> <br /> It is almost always because the doctor himself, by his behavior, has decided to exclude himself from the protective circle that the principles and the values of the medical profession have woven around him. The doctor who is killed in Algeria, in isolated cases, is always a war criminal. In a colonial situation there are special realities. In a given region, the doctor sometimes reveals himself as the most sanguinary of colonizers. His identity as a doctor no longer matters. Just as he was a doctor in addition to being a property owner, so he becomes the torturer who happens to be a doctor. The dominant authority, for that matter, has organized the over-all behavior of the doctor as it relates to the struggle for liberation. Thus, any doctor treating an Algerian whose wound appears suspicious must, on penalty of legal action, take down the name of the patient, his address, the names of those accompanying him, their address, and communicate the information to the authorities.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-043-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-043|44]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> As for the pharmacists, they were to be given orders not to deliver without a medical prescription such drugs as penicillin, streptomycin, antibiotics in general, alcohol, absorbent cotton, anti-tetanus serum. Moreover, they were strongly urged to note down the identity and the address of the patient.<br /> <br /> A soon as they were known to the people, these measures confirmed their certainty that the colonizers were in complete agreement to fight against them. Convinced that the European doctors and pharmacists would comply with this decision, the French authorities posted police officers in civilian clothes or informers in the vicinity of the pharmacies run by Algerians. The supplying of medicines in certain areas became a difficult and painful problem. Alcohol, sulpha drugs, syringes were refused. In 1955, the French military command in its estimates of Algerian losses nearly always included a certain number of hypothetically wounded who, “for lack of treatment are assumed dead.”<br /> <br /> The colonizing doctor, meanwhile, emphasized his membership in the dominating society by certain attitudes. When judicial inquiries into the cases of Algerians who had not died in the course of police questioning began, it would happen that the defense would ask for a medico-legal examination. This demand would sometimes be met. The European doctor assigned to examine the patient always concluded that there was no evidence to suggest that the accused had been tortured. A few times, early in 1955, Algerians were appointed as experts. But precise instructions prohibiting this were soon issued. Likewise, if it happened that a European doctor noted “the existence of elements that might suggest the hypothesis that acts described by the accused produced his wounds,” another expert opinion was immediately found to contradict him. Obviously, such a doctor was never called in again. Not infrequently the European doctor in Algeria would deliver to the legal authority a certificate of natural death for an Algerian who had succumbed to torture or who, more simply, had been coldly executed. Similarly, it invariably happened that when the demand of the defense for an autopsy was granted, the results would be negative.<br /> <br /> On the strictly technical level, the European doctor actively collaborates with the colonial forces in their most frightful and most degrading practices. We should like to mention here some of the practices engaged in by the European medical corps in Algeria, which shed light on certain “murders” of doctors.<br /> <br /> First of all, the “truth serum.” The principle of this drug is well known: a chemical substance having hypnotic properties is injected into a vein, which, when the operation is carried out slowly, produces a certain loss of control, a blunting of consciousness. As a therapeutic measure used in medicine it is obviously a very dangerous technique, which may cause a serious impairment of the personality. Many psychiatrists, considering the dangers greater than the possible improvements, have long ago abandoned this technique for examining spheres of the unconscious.<br /> <br /> All the Academies of Medicine of all the countries in the world have formally condemned the use of this practice for legal ends and the doctor who violates these solemn proscriptions is obviously contemptuous of the fundamental principles of medicine. The doctor who fights side by side with his people, as a doctor, must respect the international charter of his profession. A criminal doctor, in all countries in the world, is sentenced to death. The example of the doctors in the human experimentation camps of the Nazis is particularly edifying.<br /> <br /> The European doctors in Algeria use the “truth serum” with staggering frequency. We may recall here the experience of Henri Alleg, as related in &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;The Question&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-042-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-042|45]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> We have had occasion to treat men and women who had been subjected to this torture for days. We shall study elsewhere the grave consequences of these practices, but we can point out here that the most important consequence has appeared to us to be a certain inability to distinguish the true from the false, and an almost obsessive fear of saying what should remain hidden. We must always remember that there is hardly an Algerian who is not a party to at least one secret of the Revolution. Months after this torture, the former prisoner hesitates to say his name, the town where he was born. Every question is first experienced as a repetition of the torturer-tortured relationship.<br /> <br /> Other doctors, attached to the various torture centers, intervene after every session in order to put the tortured back into condition for new sessions. Under the circumstances, the important thing is for the prisoner not to give the slip to the team in charge of the questioning: in other words, to remain alive. Everything—heart stimulants, massive doses of vitamins—is used before, during, and after the sessions to keep the Algerian hovering between life and death. Ten times the doctor intervenes, ten times he gives the prisoner back to the pack of torturers.<br /> <br /> In the European medical corps in Algeria, and especially in the military health corps, such things are common. Professional morality, medical ethics, self-respect and respect for others, have given way to the most uncivilized, the most degrading, the most perverse kinds of behavior. Finally, attention must be called to the habit formed by certain psychiatrists of flying to the aid of the police. There are, for instance, psychiatrists in Algiers, known to numerous prisoners, who have given electric shock treatments to the accused and have questioned them during the waking phase, which is characterized by a certain confusion, a relaxation of resistance, a disappearance of the person’s defenses. When by chance these men are liberated because the doctor, despite this barbarous treatment, was able to obtain no information, what is brought to us is a personality in shreds. The work of rehabilitating the man is then extremely difficult. This is only one of the numerous crimes of which French colonialism in Algeria has made itself guilty.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-041-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-041|46]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> The Algerian People, Medical Technique and the<br /> <br /> War of Liberation<br /> <br /> We have had occasion many times to point out the appearance of radically new types of behavior in various aspects of the private and public life of the Algerian. The shock that broke the chains of colonialism has moderated exclusive attitudes, reduced extreme positions, made certain arbitrary views obsolete. Medical science and concern for one’s health have always been proposed or imposed by the occupying power. In the colonial situation, however, it is impossible to create the physical and psychological conditions for the learning of hygiene or for the assimilation of concepts concerning epidemic diseases. In the colonial situation, going to see the doctor, the administrator, the constable or the mayor are identical moves. The sense of alienation from colonial society and the mistrust of the representatives of its authority, are always accompanied by an almost mechanical sense of detachment and mistrust of even the things that are most positive and most profitable to the population.<br /> <br /> We have noted that in the very first months of the struggle, the French authorities decided to put an embargo on antibiotics, ether, alcohol, anti-tetanus vaccine. The Algerian who wished to obtain any of these medications was required to give the pharmacist detailed information as to his identity and that of the patient. Just when the Algerian people decided no longer to wait for others to treat them, colonialism prohibited the sale of medications and surgical instruments. Just when the Algerian was set to live and take care of himself, the occupying power doomed him to a horrible agony. Numerous families had to stand by powerless, their hearts full of rancor, and watch the atrocious death by tetanus of wounded &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;moudjahidines&lt;/span&gt; who had taken refuge in their houses. From the earliest months of the Revolution, the directives of the National Front were clearly given: any wound, no matter how benign, automatically required an anti-tetanus vaccine injection. This the people knew. And when the wound, ugly to look at, had been cleaned of the dirt and grit picked up in the course of the retreat, the comrades of the wounded man would suddenly be seized with the fear of a tetanus infection. But the pharmacists were adamant: the sale of anti-tetanus vaccine was prohibited. Dozens and dozens of Algerians today can describe the slow, frightful death of a wounded man, progressively paralyzed, then twisted, and again paralyzed by the tetanus toxin. No one remains in the room to the end, they say in conclusion.<br /> <br /> Yet the Algerian, when he sometimes would get a European to make his purchases, would see him return with the medicine which he had obtained without difficulty. The same Algerian had previously begged all the pharmacists of the vicinity, and had finally given up, having felt the last pharmacist’s hard and inquisitorial eye on him. The European would return, loaded down with medicines, relaxed, innocent. Such experiences have not made it easy for the Algerian to keep a balanced judgment toward members of the European minority. Science depoliticized, science in the service of man, is often non-existent in the&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;colonies. For this Algerian who for hours has begged unsuccessfully for a hundred grams of sterile cotton, the colonialist world constitutes a monolithic block. Alcohol being similarly prohibited, the wounds would be dressed with lukewarm water and, for lack of ether, amputations would be carried out without anaesthetics.<br /> <br /> Now all these things that could not be found, that were held by the adversary, withdrawn from circulation, were to take on a new value. These medications which were taken for granted before the struggle for liberation, were transformed into weapons. And the urban revolutionary cells having the responsibility for supplying medications were as important as those assigned to obtain information as to the plans and movements of the adversary. Even as the Algerian tradesman discovered ways of supplying the people with radios, so the Algerian pharmacist, the Algerian nurse, the Algerian doctor multiplied their efforts to make antibiotics and dressings available to the wounded at all times. From Tunisia and Morocco, finally, during the crucial months of 1956 and 1957, was to come a steady flow of medical supplies that saved an incalculable number of human lives.<br /> <br /> The development of the war in Algeria, the setting up of units of the National Army of Liberation throughout the territory, brought about a dramatic public health problem. The increase in the number of areas constituting a threat to the adversary led him to interrupt regular activities, such as the visit of the doctor to the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;douars.&lt;/span&gt; From one day to the next, the population was left to shift for itself, and the National Liberaion Front had to take drastic measures. It found itself faced with the necessity of setting up a system of public health capable of replacing the periodic visit of the colonial doctor. This is how the local cell member responsible for health became an important member of the revolutionary apparatus. The problem, moreover, became more and more complex. Bombardments and raids on civilians were now added to natural diseases. It is a known fact that for one Algerian soldier hit, there are ten civilians killed or wounded. There is no lack of testimony from French soldiers to this effect. Under such circumstances, medical supplies and technicians became indispensable. It was during this period that orders were given to medical students, nurses, and doctors to join the combatants. Meetings were organized among political leaders and health technicians. After a short time, people’s delegates assigned to handle public health problems came and joined each cell. All questions were dealt with in a remarkable spirit of revolutionary solidarity.<br /> <br /> There was no paternalism; there was no timidity. On the contrary, a concerted effort was made to achieve the health plan that had been worked out. The health technician did not launch a “psychological approach program for the purpose of winning over the underdeveloped population.” The problem was, under the direction of the national authority, to supervise the people’s health, to protect the lives of our women, of our children, of our combatants.<br /> <br /> We must dwell on the new reality that the rise of a national power has constituted in Algeria since 1954. This national authority has taken upon itself the responsibility for the health of the people, and the people have abandoned their old passivity. The people involved in this fight against death have shown exceptional conscientiousness and enthusiasm in their observance of the directives.<br /> <br /> The Algerian doctor, the native doctor who, as we have seen, was looked upon before the national combat as an ambassador of the occupier, was reintegrated into the group. Sleeping on the ground with the men and women of the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;mechtas&lt;/span&gt;, living the drama of the people, the Algerian doctor became a part of the Algerian body. There was no longer that reticence, so constant during the period of unchallenged oppression. He was no longer “the” doctor, but “our” doctor, “our” technician.<br /> <br /> The people henceforth demanded and practiced a technique stripped of its foreign characteristics. The war of liberation introduced medical technique and the native technician into the life of innumerable regions of Algeria. Populations accustomed to the monthly or biennial visits of European doctors saw Algerian doctors settling permanently in their villages. The Revolution and medicine manifested their presence simultaneously.<br /> <br /> It is understandable that such facts should provide the basis for an incomparable dynamism and the point of departure for new attitudes. The problems of hygiene and of prevention of disease were approached in a remarkably creative atmosphere. The latrines recommended by the colonial administration had not been accepted in the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;mechtas&lt;/span&gt; but they were now installed in great numbers. Ideas on the transmission of intestinal parasites were immediately assimilated by the people. The elimination of stagnant pools was undertaken and the fight against post-natal ophthalmia achieved spectacular results. The problem was no longer that mothers neglected their children, but that aureomycin was at times unavailable. The people wanted to get well, wanted to care for themselves and were anxious to understand the explanations proffered by fellow doctors or nurses.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-040-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-040|47]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Schools for nurses were opened and the illiterate, in a few days, proved capable of making intravenous injections.<br /> <br /> Similarly, old superstitions began to crumble. Witchcraft, &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;maraboutism&lt;/span&gt; (already considerably discredited as a result of the propaganda carried on by the intellectuals), belief in the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djinn,&lt;/span&gt; all these things that seemed to be part of the very being of the Algerian, were swept away by the action and practice initiated by the Revolution.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-039-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-039|48]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Even instructions difficult for highly technological societies to accept were assimilated by the Algerian. We shall give two significant examples of this.<br /> <br /> First of all, a rule was made against giving a drink of water to a man wounded in the abdomen. Instructions were categorical. Lectures were given to the people. Not a boy, not a girl must be allowed to remain uninformed as to this rule: never a drop of water to a soldier wounded in the belly. After a battle, while awaiting the arrival of a doctor, the people gathered round the wounded would listen without weakening to the entreaties of the combatant. For hours, the women would obstinately refuse the wounded the requested swallow of water. And even the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;moudjahid’s&lt;/span&gt; own son did not hesitate to say to his father, “Here is your gun, kill me if you want, but I will not give you the water you ask for.” When the doctor arrived, the necessary operation would be performed, and the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;moudjahid&lt;/span&gt; would have the maximum chance of recovering.<br /> <br /> The second example relates to the strict diet to be followed in the course of a typhus infection. In the hospital the observance of the rules is obtained by the prohibition of family visits. For experience has shown that whenever a member of the family is allowed to visit the patient he lets himself be moved by the typhus patient’s “hunger” and manages to leave him some cakes or some chicken. The result is that often an intestinal perforation results.<br /> <br /> In the colonial situation, these things assume a special significance, for the colonized interprets this medical injunction as a new form of torture, of famine, a new manifestation of the occupant’s inhuman methods. If the typhus patient is a child, one can understand the feelings that can overcome the mother. Out in the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djebel,&lt;/span&gt; on the other hand, the Algerian nurse or doctor is able to win the patient’s family over to a complete cooperation: hygienic precautions, regular administration of medications, prohibition of visits, isolation, and strict observance of diet for several days. The Algerian mother, who had never in her life seen a doctor, would follow the technician’s instructions to the letter.<br /> <br /> Specialists in basic health education should give careful thought to the new situations that develop in the course of a struggle for national liberation on the part of an underdeveloped people. Once the body of the nation begins to live again in a coherent and dynamic way, everything becomes possible. The notions about “native psychology” or of the “basic personality” are shown to be vain. The people who take their destiny into their own hands assimilate the most modern forms of technology at an extraordinary rate.&lt;div class=&quot;_idFootnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-047&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-047-backlink|40]]. French soldiers hospitalized in the psychiatric services of the French Army in Algeria have all seen the experimental epileptic fits produced in Algerians and in infantrymen from south of the Sahara, for the purpose of estimating the specific threshold of each of the different races. These men on whom the French doctors practiced these experiments were brought to the hospital on the “scientific pretext” of having to make further examinations.<br /> <br /> It was left to the Algerian society alone, to the Algerian people alone, to manifest through combat its determination to put an end to such infamies, among others, on the national soil.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-046&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-046-backlink|41]]. This particular observation is related to the overall attitude of the colonized who is hardly ever truthful before the colonizer. The colonized does not let on, does not confess himself, in the presence of the colonizer. The reader is referred to the communication before the 1955 Congress of French-language Psychiatrists and Neurologists on “The Algerian and Avowal in Medico-Legal Practice.”<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-045&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-045-backlink|42]]. There are obviously a certain number of doctors who act normally, who are human. But of them it will be said: “They are not like the others.”<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-044&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-044-backlink|43]]. Medical practice in the colonies very often assumes an aspect of systematized piracy. Injections of twice-distilled water, billed as penicillin or vitamin B-12, chest X-rays, radiotherapy sessions “to stabilize a cancer,” given by a doctor who has no radiological equipment, are examples. In the latter case, the doctor need only place the patient behind a sheet and after 15 or 20 minutes announce that the session is over. It even happens that doctors in rural centers (several examples of this in Algeria are known) boast of taking X-rays with the aid of a vacuum cleaner. We may mention the case of a European doctor practicing in Rabelais (in the region of Orléansville) who explains how he manages, on market days, to earn more than 30,000 francs in the course of a morning. “I fill three syringes of unequal size with salt serum and I say to the patient, ‘Which injection do you want, the 500, the 1000 or the 1500 franc one?’ The patient,” so the doctor explains, “almost always chooses the most expensive injection.”<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-043&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-043-backlink|44]]. With respect to these measures the Council of the Order of Doctors in France adopted a very firm position consistent with the great French tradition.<br /> <br /> Thus, its President, Professor Piedelièvre, in an official letter addressed to the Councils of the Order of Doctors of Algiers, of Constantine, and of Oran wrote: “May I remind you that in no case and under no pretext can professional secrecy be violated! I likewise point out to you that doctors are duty bound to treat all persons with the same conscientiousness, whatever be their religion or their race, whether they are friends or enemies. I wish to draw your attention, finally, to the fact that the Code of Deontology, in its Article Three, has clearly stated: ‘&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;The doctor must treat all his patients with the same conscientiousness, whatever be their condition, their nationality, their religion, their reputation and his feeling toward them.&lt;/span&gt;’” We may add further that many European doctors refused to apply the decisions adopted by the French authorities in Algeria.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-042&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-042-backlink|45]]. H. Alleg, &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;La Question&lt;/span&gt;, Editions de Minuit, 1958.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-041&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-041-backlink|46]]. We have seen military doctors, called to the bedside of an Algerian soldier wounded in combat, refuse to treat him. The official pretext was that there was no longer a chance to save the wounded man. After the soldier had died, the doctor would admit that this solution had appeared to him preferable to a stay in prison where it would have been necessary to feed while awaiting execution. The Algerians of the region of Blida know a certain hospital director who would kick the bleeding chests of the war wounded lying in the corridor of his establishment.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-040&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-040-backlink|47]]. A change in attitude on the part of the Algerian toward the occupier’s hospital centers was likewise to be noted. It would in fact happen that the need of a particular medication or of a surgical operation impossible to carry out in the maquis would cause the doctor to advise the civilian to let himself be transferred to a hospital directed by the French. The hesitations and refusals that had been met with before the Revolution vanished and the population would follow the orders given by the Algerian doctor in the maquis. This new attitude was very marked in 1956–57. I had occasion during this period to visit a great number of hospitals. The European doctors expressed their surprise to me at the time. Since the war, they said, “the Moslems let themselves be treated in the hospitals in the proportion of five to one as compared to the preceding years. One wonders why this is so.” It should also be added that the hospital administrations in the maquis had a strategic interest in having civilians cared for by the French and keeping medical supplies for the soldiers, who could not be evacuated.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-039&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-10.xhtml#footnote-039-backlink|48]]. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;maraboutism&lt;/span&gt;—the practice of medicine by the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;marabout&lt;/span&gt;, the Moslem priest. (Translator’s note)<br /> <br /> The &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djinn&lt;/span&gt; (plural &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djnoun&lt;/span&gt;) is a spirit. He haunts the houses and the fields. Popular belief attributed to him an important role in all the phenomena of life: birth, circumcision, marriage, sickness, death. In the case of disease, any impairment of health was interpreted as the work of a bad &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djinn&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_idGenObjectStyleOverride-1&quot;&gt;<br /> == Algeria’s European Minority ==<br /> In the preceding pages we have on several occasions tried to shed light on certain aspects of Algeria’s European society. We have drawn attention to the often odious behavior of certain Europeans. One would of course have liked to find among Algeria’s European doctors and intellectuals a desire to lessen the tension, to facilitate contacts, to play down the conflict. We know that, instead, European intellectuals have taken over the colonists’ cause. The Sérignys, the Borgeauds, the Laquières&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-075-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-075|50]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; have disappeared or operate in the background. Nor must it be imagined that they act through intermediaries. That period is now closed. The Lagaillardes and the Regards&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-074-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-074|51]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; are not straw men. They have assumed the leadership of the colonialist forces, made direct contacts with the army and the French parties of the right, and do not rule out the possibility of a sudden break from France. The traditionalists of colonization have long ago been outdistanced. Accustomed to parliamentary action, to political pressures, and to backstage maneuvering, these men in the past three months have shown a marked hesitation. This is because the new kingpins of the colonization see the future in apocalyptic terms. Some of Algeria’s European intellectuals, because they have links with the colonial power, have often contributed to giving the Algerian war its hallucinatory character. We have seen doctors assigned full time to the dispensaries of the judicial police, and we know that philosophers and priests, in the relocation or internment centers, assume the mission of brain-washing, of probing souls, of making the Algerian man unrecognizable.<br /> <br /> But we shall see that Algeria’s European minority is far from being the monolithic block that one imagines. Mr. Laffont, the director of the newspaper &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;L’Echo d’Oran&lt;/span&gt;, in declaring recently that Algiers does not represent Algeria, in fact manifests the desire that certain Europeans feel to keep their distance from the colonialist General Staff of Algiers. One could go further and say that the rue Michelet, the rue d’Isly, and a few cafés of Bab-el-Oued do not represent Algeria.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-073-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-073|52]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> In April 1953, at a meeting of the Board of Directors of the M.T.L.D.,&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-072-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-072|53]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; the decision was reached to establish contact with the European population and to initiate exchanges of views with the main groups representing the interests of the European minority. The U.D.M.A. likewise, in its doctrinal publications, constantly reminded its militants of the strategic and political necessity of not consigning all the Europeans to the colonialist side.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-071-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-071|54]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We may mention, incidently, that several Europeans were at that time members of the U.D.M.A.<br /> <br /> Such positions were rapidly to bring rewards. In the cities, more and more meetings were held between Moslem Algerians and European Algerians. These meetings had nothing in common with the Franco-Moslem forces of the colonialist authorities. There was no &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;méchoui,&lt;/span&gt; no exoticism, no paternalism or humility.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-070-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-070|55]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Men and women discussed their future, called attention to the dangers that beset their country.<br /> <br /> Groups of young people would meet during this period, and outings were organized. Associations of girls joined hands and began to work together; the psychological bases for human and really democratic encounters were definitely laid.<br /> <br /> Europeans who were known or supposed to be democrats and anti-colonialists were approached by the leaders. The Algerian question was studied from all angles, and very often, after a complete survey of the colonial situation, the Europeans would be the ones to express surprise that Algeria had not yet drawn the conclusions to which the political failures pointed. Very often these Europeans would themselves reach the realization of the necessity for armed action as the only means of rescuing Algeria from its desperate situation.<br /> <br /> It has often been claimed that the F.L.N. made no distinction among the different members of Algeria’s European society. Those who make such accusations fail to take into account both the policy long defined by the Front with respect to Algeria’s Europeans, and the constant support that hundreds and hundreds of European men and women have brought to our units and to our political cells. What we have said is that the Algerian people are spontaneously aware of the importance of the European population which expresses itself through its oppressive system and especially through the silence and inactivity of the French democrats in Algeria in the face of the affirmed and total violence of the colonialists.<br /> <br /> Other things being equal, it can be said of Algeria’s European democrats what has been endlessly repeated of the French parties of the Left: for a long time history is made without them. They were unable to prevent the sending of contingents to Algeria, unable to prevent Guy Mollet’s capitulation. They were passive under Lacoste, powerless before the military coup of the 13th of May. Nevertheless, their existence has forced the neofascists of Algeria and France to be on the defensive. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;The Left has done nothing for a long time in France.&lt;/span&gt; Yet by its action, its denunciations, and its analyses, it has prevented a certain number of things.<br /> <br /> Algeria’s European democrats, in the framework of the Algerian war, could not as a whole act like their homologues living in France. Democracy in France traditionally lives in broad daylight. In Algeria, democracy is tantamount to treason. A Claude Bourdet, a Domenach, a Pierre Cot can publicly take a position different from that of the government of their country. Being former members of the resistance, having from the beginning devoted their lives to the defense and to the triumph of certain principles, they experience no hesitation. And the threats, when they come, do not budge them. But we must emphasize the fact that within the framework of the French hexagon, democratic traditions have by and large been maintained. France, as an imperialist country, has great racist potentialities, as we have seen more clearly in the past two years, but among Frenchmen there are reflexes that operate spontaneously. This accounts for the relative freedom left to opponents—less and less, however, because France is beginning to be colonized by the Algerian activists—and this also accounts for the outburst of public indignation that greets every revelation that reaches France regarding the tortures practiced in Algeria.<br /> <br /> Because of their own contradictions and because of the power and the radicalism of the reactionary parties, the forces of the Left in France have up to the present time been unable to impose negotiation. But undeniably they are constantly forcing the extremists to unmask themselves, and hence progressively to adopt the positions that will precipitate their defeat.<br /> <br /> In Algeria the forces of the Left do not exist. It is unthinkable for European democrats really to militate in Algeria outside the Algerian Communist Party. We know that even the Algerian Communist Party was for a long time confined within a reformist position of the French Union type, and that for long months after November 1, 1954, the Algerian Communists denounced the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;terroristes provocateurs&lt;/span&gt;—in other words, the F.L.N.<br /> <br /> Algeria’s European democrats have from the beginning lived in a more or less clandestine state. Drowned in the European mass, they live in a world of values that their principles reject and condemn. The European democrat is on the defensive. He has contacts with Algerians but in secrecy. In the European colony he is referred to as “the Arab.” All these phenomena are well known, and they have appeared in Indochina, in Africa south of the Sahara, in Tunisia, and in Morocco.<br /> <br /> This democratic European, accustomed to semi-clandestine contacts with Algerians, unwittingly learns the laws of revolutionary action. And when those whom he used to receive in his home tell him to give shelter to a friend, to find medications, or to transport a parcel, there is as a rule no difficulty. We must emphasize the point that never has a member of the Front deceived a French democrat. It would be out of the question to expose a man or a woman who had always commanded our esteem to the slightest risk, without warning them. The decision to help the F.L.N. was taken quite knowingly, in a wholly responsible way. Never has a French democrat been deceived. Sometimes, especially in the extremely crucial periods of 1957, it would happen that a democrat would hold back and refuse, in despair, the service requested; but never was there an attempt to deceive or to exploit the sincerity and the good will of the Europeans.<br /> <br /> It should perhaps be added that often the European would ask not to be told the details of the matter in connection with which his collaboration was being sought. But the leadership was uncompromising as to this. The F.L.N. wanted responsible people, not people who at the slightest hitch would break down and claim that they had been deceived.<br /> <br /> The European men and women who have been arrested and tortured by the police services and the French parachutists, by their attitude under torture, have shown the rightness of this position taken by the F.L.N. Not a single Frenchman has revealed to the colonialist police information vital to the Revolution. On the contrary, the arrested Europeans have resisted long enough to enable the other members of the network to disappear. The tortured European has behaved like an authentic militant in the national fight for independence.<br /> <br /> For five years the F.L.N. has not considered it necessary to insist on the participation of Europeans in the fight for liberation. This policy is dictated by the consideration that these Europeans should not be made conspicuous, that their action should not be differentiated from that of any other Algerian. The F.L.N. did not want to make of them “show Europeans” in the ranks of the Revolution, on the model of colonial Algeria where the “show” Moslem and Jew were ritually to be found in every committee.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;For the F.L.N., in the new society that is being built, there are only Algerians. From the outset, therefore, every individual living in Algeria is an Algerian. In tomorrow’s independent Algeria it will be up to every Algerian to assume Algerian citizenship or to reject it in favor of another.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> There are, to be sure, the war criminals, all those torturers spawned by the civil strifes of Saigon, Tunis, or Meknès, and who today in Algiers or in Mascara, before the end of the colonial reign whose approach they sense, are bent on shedding the greatest possible amount of blood. Those men belong nowhere. Now that the French colonial empire is being shaken by its last spasms, the French would do well to identify them. If they return to France, these men should be kept under surveillance. Jackals do not take to feeding on milk overnight. The taste of blood and of crime is deeply embedded in the very being of these creatures who, it should be said, must be retrieved by psychiatry.<br /> <br /> There are also the few hundred European colonialists, powerful, intractable, those who have at all times instigated repressions, broken the French democrats, blocked every endeavor within the colonial framework to introduce a modicum of democracy into Algeria.<br /> <br /> The Algerian people need not restate their position with respect to these men who have considered Algeria and the Algerians as a private reserve. The people have excluded them from the Algerian nation and they must not hope to be “taken back.”<br /> <br /> We shall now show in detail that the European minority has in the past few years become diversified and that considerable numbers of non-Arab Algerians have identified themselves with the Algerian cause and collaborate actively in the struggle, while others officially fight in the ranks of the Algerian Revolution.<br /> <br /> Algeria’s Jews<br /> <br /> The Algerian Jews represent one-fifth of the non-Moslem population of Algeria. Their attitude toward the struggle of the Algerian people is obviously not a homogeneous one. A socioeconomic analysis affords a complete explanation of the different attitudes adopted by the members of the Jewish community.<br /> <br /> A first group of Jews has bound its fate very closely with that of the colonial domination. Jewish tradesmen, for example, protected against competition from the Algerians by their status as Frenchmen, would not look too favorably upon the setting up of an Algerian national authority and the disappearance of preferential systems. It is a fact that the banks make it enormously difficult for Algerian tradesmen to borrow money and very often block their transactions and thus actively collaborate in their bankruptcy, or in any case limit the expansion of their business and consequently prevent it from becoming a danger to other tradesmen.<br /> <br /> In every large city in Algeria, however, one or two Algerians can be found who, by dint of tenacity and business acumen, have managed to circumvent the maneuvers and to constitute a threat to the pre-eminence of the Jewish tradesmen.<br /> <br /> “If ever they get their independence,” the tradesmen admit, “they will take our place.” On the level of economic competition, therefore, there is the fear on the part of the Jewish tradesman that equality in the competition that would be set up by an Algerian power would be prejudicial to him. This fear is far&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;from being the exclusive characteristic of Jewish tradesmen. It is to be found in European tradesmen of all origins, in every business, large and small. The end of the colonial regime is looked upon as the end of prosperity.<br /> <br /> It must be pointed out, however, that such a state of mind is not to be found at all levels and in all regions. In the centers where the Jewish tradesman maintains close contacts with the Algerian population and where economic independence is pretty clear, there is a confusion of interests. In these centers, Jewish tradesmen furnish the A.L.N. its supplies of military clothes, blankets. . . .&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-069-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-069|56]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It is no secret that since 1954 several Jewish tradesmen have been arrested for aiding and abetting the Algerian Revolution.<br /> <br /> Jewish civil servants, practically the only administrative personnel recruited locally—Algeria’s Europeans are settlers or else exercise liberal professions—also look upon the prospect of the birth of an Algerian state with fear and trembling. It is easy for them to guess that the freedom of every Algerian to receive schooling and possibly a scholarship, the disappearance of ostracism and of the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;numerus clausus,&lt;/span&gt; would introduce radical modifications in their privileges. One remembers the discontent expressed by European civil servants in Algeria when, in a show of “conscience,” the French authorities waved the spectre of “the accession of Moslems to public service.”<br /> <br /> This state of mind, although frequent in Algeria, does not exclude absolutely opposite positions. We know Jewish police officers who, especially in 1955–56, retarded the arrest of patriots even though it had been ordered on a high level, thus often enabling them to “disappear.”<br /> <br /> Finally, colonial Algeria being an eminently racist country, the different mechanisms of racist psychology are to be found there. Thus the Jew, despised and excluded by the European, is quite happy on certain occasions to identify himself with those who humiliate him to humiliate the Algerian in turn. But it is very rare, except in the region of Constantine where many poor Jews find shelter in the shadow of the colonial reign, to see Jews, in broad daylight, affirm their membership in Algeria’s extremist groups.<br /> <br /> Alongside the two large categories of Jewish tradespeople and civil servants, there is the great majority, a floating, highly Arabized mass having only a poor knowledge of French, considering itself by tradition and sometimes by dress as authentic “natives.” This mass represents three-fourths of the Algerian Jewish population. They are in the Algerian territory the homologues of the Tunisian Jews of the Moroccan &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Djerba&lt;/span&gt; or the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;mellah&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-068-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-068|57]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; For these Jews, there is no problem: they are Algerians.<br /> <br /> We see therefore that the fraction of the Jewish minority actively engaged in the ranks of colonialism is relatively unimportant. Let us now look at the case of Algerian Jews participating in the fight for national liberation.<br /> <br /> At the time when the French authorities decided to create urban and rural militias, the Jewish citizens wished to know what attitude to adopt in the face of this mobilization. A few of them did not hesitate to propose to the F.L.N. that, instead of responding to the requisition order, they join the nearest maquis. The Front as a whole advised caution, merely asking these Jews, within the framework of their professions, to become “the eyes and ears of the Revolution” inside the enemy apparatus.<br /> <br /> Their presence in the militias, moveover, has rendered service to the struggle. Thus the members of a patrol advise the chiefs of the size of the units, the nature of their arms, the route to be followed, the times when the rounds are made. Likewise the chiefs are often kept informed of reprisal operations organized against this or that &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;douar.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> Thus, too, a European of Algeria who has actively participated with his unit in the massacre of Algerians may, a few days later, be the victim of an attempt on his life organized by the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fidaïnes&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-067-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-067|58]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> For the European population ignorant of the events that have determined the decision of the local cell of the F.L.N., the attempt may appear unjust and inexcusable. But for the other members of the militia, who remember the cries of the men murdered in the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;douar&lt;/span&gt; and of the women being raped, the reason for this act is clear. The rightness of popular justice manifests itself in a particularly convincing way. The observer familiar with events in detail may notice in the course of the days following the attempt that several civil servants among the militiamen have asked for their transfer or else have literally fled to Algiers.<br /> <br /> At other times, the Jews participate financially in the struggle and make a monthly contribution through an intermediary.<br /> <br /> It is well for the French to know these things; as for the French authorities, they are well aware of them. It is well for the Jews to know them too, for it is not true that the Jew is in favor of colonialism and that the Algerian people reject him and relegate him to the camp of the oppressors.<br /> <br /> The Algerian people, in truth, did not wait until 1959 to define their position with regard to the Jews. Here in fact is a&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;passage from the appeal addressed in the form of a tract to the Jews of Algeria, at the most difficult moments of the Revolution, that is, in the fall of 1956:<br /> <br /> The Algerian people consider that it is their duty today to address themselves directly to the Jewish community in order to ask it solemnly to affirm its intention to belong to the Algerian Nation. This clearly affirmed choice will dissipate all misunderstandings and will root out the germs of the hatred maintained by French colonialism.<br /> <br /> Already in the issue of the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Plate-forme&lt;/span&gt; published in August 1956, the F.L.N. had declared, on the subject of the Jewish minority:<br /> <br /> Algerians of Jewish origin have not yet overcome their qualms of conscience, nor chosen sides.<br /> <br /> Let us hope they will, in great number, take the path of those who have responded to the call of the generous fatherland, and have given their friendship to the Revolution by already proudly proclaiming their Algerian nationality.<br /> <br /> Jewish intellectuals have spontaneously demonstrated their support of the Algerian cause, whether in the democratic and traditionally anti-colonialist parties or in liberal groups. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Even today, the Jewish lawyers and doctors who in the camps or in prison share the fate of millions of Algerians attest to the multiracial reality of the Algerian Nation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> Various groups of the Jewish population of Algeria have likewise taken an official stand. In August 1956, a group of Jews in Constantine wrote:<br /> <br /> One of the most pernicious maneuvers of colonialism in Algeria was and remains the division between Jews and Moslems. . . . The Jews have been in Algeria for more than two thousand years; they are thus an integral part of the Algerian people. . . . Moslems and Jews, children of the same earth, must not fall into the trap of provocation. Rather, they must make a common front against it, not letting themselves be duped by those who, not so long ago, were offhandedly contemplating the total extermination of the Jews as a salutary step in the evolution of humanity.<br /> <br /> In January 1957, in response to the Front’s appeal, a group of Algerian Jews wrote:<br /> <br /> It is time, today, that we should return to the Algerian community. Attachment to an artificial French nationality is a snare and a delusion at a moment when the young and powerful modern Algerian nation is rapidly taking shape. . . . Jews have joined the ranks of the Algerians fighting for national independence. . . . Some have paid with their lives, others have bravely borne the foulest police brutalities, and many are today behind the doors of prisons and the gates of concentration camps. We also know that in the common fight Moslems and Jews have discovered themselves to be racial brothers, and that they feel a deep and lasting attachment to the Algerian fatherland. In proclaiming our attachment to the Algerian Nation, we put an end to the pretext used by the colonialists when they try to prolong their domination by making the French people believe that the revolt here is only the result of a medieval fanaticism. . . .<br /> <br /> Algeria’s Settlers<br /> <br /> Another myth to be destroyed is that Algeria’s settlers were unanimously opposed to the end of colonial domination.<br /> <br /> Here again, French colonialism must know that the most important backing given by Algeria’s Europeans to the people’s struggle has been and remains that of the settlers. Even the Algerians have been surprised by the frequency with which the settlers have responded to the appeals of the F.L.N. In any case, once contacted by the F.L.N., no settler has ever reported to the French authorities. It has happened that they have refused an appeal, but the secret has always been kept.<br /> <br /> In the countryside, from the first months of 1955, the small settlers, the farmers, the managers were approached by turns. Of course, the known extreme rightists were systematically avoided. Generally speaking, especially in the small and medium population centers, men know one another, and the Algerian for his part has from the beginning put a label on every European. When an F.L.N. cell would decide to contact the Europeans in the region, the members knew at once who were the ones who should automatically be excluded. They also knew, though with less certainty, which ones would probably contribute their help to the Revolution.<br /> <br /> Very often, especially in the small rural centers, only one member of the cell is made responsible for relations with the Europeans. One can readily imagine the vigilance that must be exercised in the first months of the struggle to prevent ill-advised moves on the part of militants not yet sufficiently disciplined. We have seen in fact that the European minority was seen as an undifferentiated whole within the framework of the colonial situation. On November 1, 1954, there was therefore an extreme oversimplification. The outlines and paradoxes of the world stood out in sudden sharpness.<br /> <br /> The settler who helps the Revolution might be led to echo colonialist remarks in public—at the café or in a conversation—in order to assure the other Europeans of his solidarity. “With them the only thing that counts is force. . . . They’re all in cahoots. . . .” The people, who have their ears to the ground, find out that these remarks have been made, and a new body of evidence builds up in the village. That settler is unanimously designated as a target for the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fadaïnes.&lt;/span&gt; It then becomes necessary to intervene tactfully, to prohibit any act of hostility to the person or against the property of that settler and at the same time not give any hint as to the reasons for these instructions.<br /> <br /> Sometimes it may be decided to burn a few haystacks in the fields of a settler who, in a region that has otherwise been razed to the ground by the F.L.N., has paradoxically suffered no damage. The colonialist Europeans sooner or later begin to wonder what is behind the Front’s unusual respect for that settler’s fields. We may mention also that in certain localities we have evidence of fires being set or livestock being slaughtered by European neighbors jealous of the protection a settler seems to enjoy, in contrast to the almost daily raids carried out by units of the A.L.N. on their properties.<br /> <br /> Since 1955, many farms belonging to European settlers have been used by turns as infirmaries, refuges, or relay stations. When the French troops, in the course of their forays, began to make a habit of systematically destroying the grain reserves of the Algerian population, the A.L.N. decided to stock their supplies on the farms of Europeans. Thus several farms belonging to Europeans were transformed into A.L.N. granaries, and at nightfall sections of the A.L.N. units could be seen coining down from the mountains to take delivery of sacks of wheat or semolina.<br /> <br /> At other times weapons would be stored on the farms. This was the period during which, in many areas, meetings would be held on European farms. Deliveries of arms were made under the sacred protection of the European settler. It sometimes happened, too, that settlers would accept the weapons that were delivered them by the French army—on the pretext of self-protection—and hand over to the A.L.N. those that they had had previously. Finally, since the beginning of the Revolution, a great number of European farmers have regularly been helping the Algerian Revolution financially.<br /> <br /> The dozens of European settlers arrested for arms traffic, arms transport, financial support of “the rebellion,” suffice to show the scope of this European participation in the national fight for liberation. The French authorities, since they have discovered this commitment of the Europeans to the cause of the Front, have formed the habit of keeping it hidden, or of branding these Europeans as Communists. This propaganda trick has two objectives: First, to revive the argument that North Africa is a target of Communist infiltration into the N.A.T.O. strategic system, into the heart of Western civilization. Next, to discredit those men, to present them as “foreign agents,” even mercenaries. French colonialism refuses to admit that a genuine European can really fight side by side with the Algerian people.<br /> <br /> European farmers, without engaging in combat, help the Front by refusing, for example, the protection that the French Army offers to provide them. These refusals are sometimes of consequence, for in farms happening to be in a crucial strategic area (a passageway between two mountains, frontier regions) the absence of colonial forces favors the movement of units of the A.L.N. or the supplying of the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;moudjahidines&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-066-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-066|59]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It sometimes happens that the French Army decides, in the course of a control operation in a given sector, to establish a post on a farm despite the settler’s opposition. The owner then never fails to notify the Front that these quarters are being set up without his consent and that he has not asked anyone for protection.<br /> <br /> The settler does his best, in fact, to make things uncomfortable for the French military, and in any case to communicate to the local chiefs of the F.L.N. detailed information as to the size and the morale of the unit posted on the farm.<br /> <br /> Europeans in the Cities<br /> <br /> In the urban centers Algeria’s Europeans were to work essentially in the political cells. With the measures taken by the French ministers Soustelle and Lacoste, we found that pharmaceutical products and surgical instruments were hit by an embargo. We have already pointed out that directives addressed to doctors made it an obligation for them to notify the police authorities of any wounded man who appeared suspect.<br /> <br /> European doctors and pharmacists then began to treat wounded A.L.N. members without discrimination, and to deliver the antibiotics and the ether asked for by the F.L.N. militants. Hundreds of millions of units of penicillin daily made their way to the maquis.<br /> <br /> Other doctors went further and unhesitatingly answered calls to go to the nearby mountains to treat the wounded. Sometimes when the wound was very serious the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;moudjahid&lt;/span&gt; would be taken in the doctor’s car to a friendly clinic and treated for a week or two. The French police learned of these things, for after a certain period some of these clinics were regularly searched.<br /> <br /> European nurses, for their part, found ways of spiriting surgical instruments, sulfa drugs, dressings from the hospitals.<br /> <br /> It would also sometimes happen that, after a wounded prisoner had been operated on by French doctors, while still under the effect of anaesthesia he would disclose certain secrets. The nurse, after the wounded man was entirely awake, would advise him to be cautious and tell him what he had revealed. On the other hand, it could also happen that an intern present in the room would immediately telephone to the police who would then, two hours after a critical operation, subject the patient to real torture sessions.<br /> <br /> European doctors likewise organized clandestine training courses for future medical corpsmen of the A.L.N. Several successive classes of medical corpsmen thus were turned out by these schools and joined those trained in corresponding centers directed by Algerian doctors.<br /> <br /> European girls would put themselves at the disposal of a political cell, obtain paper and mimeograph machines, and would often handle the printing of F.L.N.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;tracts. Youngsters would make themselves responsible for driving members of a network in their cars. European families would take important political leaders under their wing and in a number of cases enabled them to escape General Massu’s dragnets. European political figures, highly placed civil servants, furnished false passports, false identity cards, and false employment cards to F.L.N. cells.<br /> <br /> It was thanks to the involvement of an increasingly large number of Algeria’s Europeans that the revolutionary organization was able, in certain towns, to escape the police and the parachutists.<br /> <br /> We know that many Europeans have been arrested and tortured for having sheltered and saved political or military leaders of the Revolution from the colonialist hounds.<br /> <br /> The Europeans have not contented themselves with carrying medications and men in their cars. They also carry arms. Automatic pistols, cases of grenades, have thus been able to pass through all road-blocks, as Europeans are never searched carefully. It has even happened that, when a European’s car has been searched, the driver, to avoid being molested, has explained the arms by saying he wanted to be ready to “smash the Arabs.” Such an attitude delights the highway police, and this “anti-native” solidarity is frequently toasted in the nearest &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;bistro.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> Finally—and this is quite unexpected, though it has happened several times—members of the police will report to the local cell on planned operations, will warn a given Algerian that he is being watched or, at the last minute, advise him that a tortured prisoner has been made to talk and has named him as the local chief.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-065-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-065|60]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> Apart from the Europeans arrested and often frightfully tortured by the French troops for “complicity with the enemy” there are of course in Algeria a great number of Frenchmen engaged in the fight for liberation. Others have paid for their devotion to the Algerian national cause with their lives. It was thus, to give an example, that Maître Thuveny, an attorney of Oran, who had fought for a long time in the ranks of the F.L.N., died as the result of an assault organized in Morocco by the French Second Bureau.<br /> <br /> === Appendix I ===<br /> The personal experience on which I am reporting—an Algerian European’s awakening to a consciousness of his Algerian nationality—is in no way exceptional. Others have had it before me. It seems to me worth while, however, to show how European students without any past experience of political activity, having simply leftist leanings to begin with, have finally chosen in this war to be Algerians. Very few, to be sure, have carried their ideas through completely and joined the F.L.N. This must not be held against them. I know from experience how heart-rending this radical attitude can be. I should like simply to emphasize a fact too often overlooked: in the course of the Revolution, Europeans of Algeria have become conscious of belonging to the Algerian nation. While they are not a majority, they are nevertheless more numerous than is generally believed in Algeria or in the world. They cannot express themselves. It is in part in their name that I am speaking here.<br /> <br /> When it broke out on November 1, 1954, the Algerian Revolution was suddenly to reveal our ambivalence. We had pronounced ourselves in favor of the right of the Vietnamese people and the Tunisian people to their independence. These positions were purely theoretical, however, as the total absence of political life in our community afforded no opportunity for concrete attitudes. As for the rights of the Algerian people, the question did not even arise, and we took refuge by comfortably and magically denying the problem. The segregation of political life into two “colleges” encouraged us in this: in the second college, the Algerian problems; in the first college, the French problems. So we would discuss and take positions on the C.E.D. and on the role of the French Communist Party in parliament.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-063-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-063|62]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Even the colonial problems were approached from a French point of view. This absence of curiosity with regard to our country’s burning problems had its origin, it must be recognized, in the unconscious race prejudice we all bore within us, having been inoculated by twenty years of colonial life. Being of the Left, we had, to be sure, surmounted the aggressive colonialist racism, but we had by no means rid ourselves of paternalism. Not the least of the shocks that we experienced was the realization that we were still racist in attitude.<br /> <br /> From the very beginning, the colonialists would attack us, would ask us point-blank to choose, to be for or against the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fellagha&lt;/span&gt;,&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-062-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-062|63]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; to be for France or “anti-France.” In the beginning we still were bewitched. Refusing to take a position on the problem, we took refuge in protests against the brutalities of the repression. A committee of students for the defense of civil liberties had been set up. I decided to become a member. It was in this Committee that I was able for the first time to have political discussions with Algerians. Up to that time I had never had such conversations even with my best Moslem friends. A tacit agreement seemed to have been concluded; we recognized the validity of nationalist sentiments among our Moslem friends, but we never spoke of this so as not to break those bonds of friendship whose fragility we sensed. In this students’ committee, relations between Moslems and ourselves were initially rather ambivalent. They wanted to give a political dimension to the committee’s activity, while we felt it should remain on the humanitarian level. After we had passed a few motions condemning the repression, a concrete gesture was proposed to us. A student arrested in Paris had been transferred to Tizi-Ouzou. He had a clean record. It was decided that a delegation would go and bring him a parcel and deliver a letter of protest to the Attorney-General.<br /> <br /> I volunteered. As the rule was to have equal representation of both national groups, the delegation included three Moslems and three Europeans: two Jews and myself. In the course of the trip, the conversation brought out many ideas shared by our Moslem comrades and ourselves: a common love of country, the same aspiration to transform it, to enrich it, the same desire to see it freed of all race prejudice, of any trace of colonialism. But we diverged on the question of the “rebellion.” For my part, I considered it understandable, like an excess made possible by the excesses of colonialism, but I refused to accept the validity of violence. My Moslem comrades did not agree on this point, and we had a long discussion on the subject. They entirely approved of a profession of faith—patriotic, lyrical and passionate—that T———, a Jew, delivered to us in the course of a meal. I was greatly shaken by this profession of faith. It was&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;undoubtedly what I needed to be moved to think about my relationship to the Algerian nation. I still had too much unconscious anti-Arab feeling in me to be convinced by a Moslem Arab. It took the speech by that Algerian Jew to shake me.<br /> <br /> At Tizi-Ouzou we were barely allowed to get a glimpse of our comrade’s lawyer. We were next called in by the police. We were questioned separately. At one point we saw a Moslem comrade coming out of the offices, very pale, supported by two police officers. We first thought he had been maltreated; but this was not the case. He had simply been threatened with reprisals to his family because of his brother in the maquis, who was being sought by the police. His name was Ben M’Hidi. His brother was Lardi Ben M’Hidi, in command of the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;wilaya VI,&lt;/span&gt; a member of the C.C.E.,&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-061-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-061|64]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; since then arrested and murdered by the French troops. I was the last to be questioned. The officer proceeded to lecture me: “You are the only Frenchman in the gang. . . .”<br /> <br /> I broke in to remind him of the official position as formulated by the government: “Algeria is France, Algerians are Frenchmen.”<br /> <br /> “You are from France, of course.”<br /> <br /> “No, I was born in Algiers.”<br /> <br /> “Ahl So you don’t know the real Arabs, who live in the villages.”<br /> <br /> “I have lived for eight years in Orléansville.”<br /> <br /> “Listen, you’re young, you’ve let yourself be carried away. You’ll understand later.”<br /> <br /> We were released only at about eight o’clock at night, after having been put through the criminal anthropometric department. To protest against this violation of rights, our student committee organized a public demonstration in a small hall. Three hundred students, nearly all Europeans, met under the chairmanship of two University professors. A resolution was passed condemning the excesses of the repression, demanding the restoration of democratic rights.<br /> <br /> A few days later, with H&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt;———&lt;/span&gt;, I represented our committee at a meeting which was to organize a big protest gathering. For the first time I was put in contact with Moslem political leaders. These were M.T.L.D. town councillors. (See footnote 5, p. 148.)&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;I was struck by their conscientiousness and their moderation. At the first meeting, discussions took place regarding the date of May 8th chosen for the meeting.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-060-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-060|65]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Although chosen solely for practical reasons, certain Europeans on the organizing committee felt that the choice of this anniversary might look like a deliberate provocation. The M.T.L.D. councillors agreed to a change of date, but H&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt;———&lt;/span&gt; vehemently protested. They had not asked that the meeting be held on May 8th, but since some seemed to consider this anniversary as having a certain importance, he attached to it an even greater importance. “May 8th is a day of mourning for us, and we shall be telling the colonialists that we have not forgotten, that we shall never forget.” These words somewhat shocked the Europeans, and there was a certain uneasiness, the Europeans refusing once again to look political reality in the face, and wanting to remain strictly within the limits of republican legality. In the end, the meeting was prohibited.<br /> <br /> Then, with the third quarter, came preparation for examinations; and the defense of democratic liberties was put on the back shelf. I continued to have discussions with my Moslem friends. Little by little, I was beginning to understand the meaning of the armed struggle and its necessity. But I expressed doubts as to the value of the armed action that was being carried on. Having no other source of information than the local press, we were subjected daily to the colonialist propaganda that made the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fellagha&lt;/span&gt; out to be extremists and highway bandits. We partly accepted these views, but it could not be gainsaid that the horrors of the repression fully counterbalanced the “horrors” of the maquisards. Between the two we were looking for a third way out. I thought at the time that this was possible and that a liberal opinion was to be found in Algeria, capable of joining forces with French liberal opinion and of imposing a solution based on the recognition of the right of the people to make their own choices.<br /> <br /> My discussions with members of my own family and with my friends became less and less frequent and were increasingly discouraging. Race prejudice had crystallized under the pressure of events, and it was impossible to get people to think dispassionately, to have an intellectual approach to the problem. A string of insults would quickly take the place of arguments: “Traitor—s.o.b.—­pro-Arab—Communist—anti-French . . .” and especially the supreme insult, “&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Mendessiste&lt;/span&gt;.” (I had never seen a man so hated as Mendès-France except Soustelle, a &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;“Mendessiste”&lt;/span&gt; and a notorious Jew who betrayed France by wanting to give Algeria to the Arabs.)<br /> <br /> But beneath these racialist outbursts it was easy to discern a deep&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-4&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;anxiety: the fear of being run out of the country. “What will become of us?” was a question that often recurred when day-to-day events were discussed. Paralyzed by their anxiety, these Europeans could imagine no other solution than the perpetuation of the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;status quo.&lt;/span&gt; What Algeria’s Frenchmen were most worried about, in fact, was whether or not they would be able to remain in Algeria. Having to leave—whether for France, Canada or Brazil (as some were contemplating)—meant exile. I was able to calm people only by admitting that I shared their fears and that it was precisely in order to remain in Algeria that I was in favor of negotiation. “Let us frankly recognize,” I said, “that Algeria is not France! Let us admit it openly since we all think it. You will grant that there have been political mistakes and social abuses in Algeria. Let us face it and let us discuss the future with the Algerians.” I would be listened to with the pity bestowed on one who has lost his mind. The idea that one could come to terms with Arabs!<br /> <br /> After endless discussions and mountains of reading, I began to see things more clearly. To fight for the humanization of the repression was futile! It was necessary to fight in order to impose a political solution. But &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;what&lt;/span&gt; solution? It soon became clear to me that if even the embryo of a social revolution was to be created in Algeria, the colonial links with France would have to be broken. Algeria’s very survival required that she promote the needed revolution, and this revolution could be accomplished only through independence. I had in this way come round to the ideals of the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fellagha!&lt;/span&gt; Love of country, the passionate determination to live here, on the one hand, and on the other my revolutionary ideals, or more simply my leftist leanings, drove me toward the same goal as the Moslem nationalists. Yet I was too conscious of the different roads by which we had reached the same aspiration. Independence, yes. I agreed wholeheartedly. But &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;what&lt;/span&gt; independence? Were we going to fight to build a theocratic, feudal, Moslem state that frowned on foreigners? Who could claim that we had a place in such an Algeria?<br /> <br /> This was in July 1955, and until that day I had never read a single tract—a single tract emanating—from whom, indeed? People talked about the F.L.N., about the M.N.A.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-059-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-059|66]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The leaders of the former M.T.L.D. had been released, after being arrested in November, because it was felt they were nonparticipants. Who was at the head of the Revolution? Apart from independence, what were the objectives of the revolutionaries? Was it a theocratic, a reformist, a democratic state that they were planning? T———told me, in answer, that this was certainly important but that in the last analysis it was up to the Algerian people themselves to decide; that one must be with the people, that this was the only way to transform the national revolution into a social revolution. T———, a member of the Algerian Communist Party, was sorry that his ideas were not shared by the Party, which was adopting a deplorable waiting policy. I saw a great deal of T——— in the course of the summer of 1955, and we quickly agreed to work among the students. It appeared important to us to try to rally student liberal opinion at the reopening of the fall session and to launch a campaign of information to open the minds of the students to the idea of independence and of our integration into the Algerian nation. It was at this time that I saw the first tracts issued by the Front. I had previously been told of the democratic character it had acquired after the M.T.L.D. had split off from it. I must admit that these tracts were a relief to me: the future democratic and social state that they advocated was a cause for which it was possible to fight. The events of Philippeville of August 20 then broke out.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-058-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-058|67]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; I attached a good deal of importance to them and I firmly condemned them, but they did not shake my determination to help the Revolution.<br /> <br /> The dissolution of the Algerian Communist Party, the ever greater restrictions on civil liberties, the growing irritation of the Europeans, the rise of fascism that we could observe among our student comrades, confirmed us in our ideas. It was necessary to create a solid leftist force in the University, which would be capable of resisting the fascist upsurge, to bring out an information bulletin which would open the eyes of the European students to begin with, and have an impact on at least a part of the community. Ambitious though it was, this program was not misdirected, as was shown by the importance that the fascist students assumed on February 6th and May 13th. Unfortunately, we were unable to carry it through.<br /> <br /> Within the framework of this plan we made contact with the various student factions. T——— asked me if I would agree to meet some nationalist students of “F.L.N. tendencies.’’ I was of course willing, and one day we met a medical student, L. Khène,&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-057-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-057|68]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; at the El Kattar hospital. The meeting was very cordial. Khène was sceptical as to the results, but he was willing to participate in the first meetings. I. next made contact with students who had formed an association under the convenient label of “progressive and Mandouzist.”&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-056-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-056|69]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; C———, one of the outstanding members, showed no enthusiasm and refused on various pretexts to participate. T——— and I quickly got the impression that C——— had something better to do than to play with students.<br /> <br /> After two or three meetings, nothing came of our group except a few motions that we were unable either to distribute or to have printed in the newspapers. The hope of launching a bulletin and of broadcasting our ideas among the students quickly evaporated. It was then decided to amend our plans. We set up a study group that was to deal with certain economic questions. Wanting to be Algerians, we felt it was obviously the duty of all of us either to betake ourselves to the maquis, or else seriously to prepare ourselves to become the country’s future leaders in the professional and technical fields. Our qualifications as fighters were more than dubious, and as we were not heroes, wisdom easily prevailed. But we were ready to help the Front if it were to call upon us.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile the atmosphere in Algeria was becoming increasingly charged. Morocco’s accession to independence and the dissolution of the National Assembly gave rise to an agitation that kept mounting until the outbreak on February 6th.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-055-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-055|70]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We became more and more known and we were sometimes insulted in the street by people we did not know. On the other hand, “liberal” students increasingly came to ask us to explain things, wanting to be told about the Revolution, concerned over the future of the country and asking to have contact with Moslem students. With the latter and with the U.G.E.M.A.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-054-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-054|71]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; we had frank and open relations, devoid of any misunderstanding. They considered us Algerians. Common activities, even minor ones—mimeographing and distributing together the tracts of the U.G.E.M.A., assuring orderliness during conferences—made us more readily accepted. But the wall of distrust was sometimes slow to vanish.<br /> <br /> On the occasion of elections to the Students’ General Assembly, our small group was able to draw up so-called liberal lists in nearly all the schools to oppose the fascist lists. Aided by the blundering racism of our adversaries and by effective work among the Jewish minority, an effective wave of anti-racism developed. For the first time in its history, the elected General Assembly was a left-wing one, ready to follow the recommendations of the U.N.E.F.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-053-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-053|72]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; against tortures and violations of legality. This quickly became clear when three students were arrested. With Ben Yahia and Ben Batouche we drafted a motion demanding that the legal time limit of incarceration in police headquarters be respected, and warning against physical maltreatment.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-052-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-052|73]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This motion, unanimously adopted, created a certain stir among the students. But the results of the elections to the French National Assembly soon came and swept other concerns into the background. How close we then seemed to our goal! The triumph of the Left in France justified all our hopes. Anxious students kept coming to us in increasing number. “What is going to become of us when negotiations begin and Algeria, perhaps, acquires her independence? Will we still be able to remain?” It then occurred to us to organize meetings of Moslem students and European students. Two or three such meetings took place where everyone spoke freely. The Europeans’ worries were expressed mainly in aggressive terms: respect for the rights of the minority, respect for culture, for religion. On every point the Moslems gave their reply. And as in a psychodrama, the aggressiveness would disappear with the anxiety. I was able to observe that this easing of tension occurred when the Moslems declared: “You are Algerians, just as we are, but if you want to leave the country you are free to do so.” And the Europeans would always answer, “We don’t want to leave and we don’t want to be strangers in this country.” On such a basis fruitful discussions could take place.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile February 6th was approaching. The atmosphere had become nervous, tense, irritating. We received threatening letters and insulting telephone calls.<br /> <br /> The fascists made their first attempt on the deputy Hernu. Then it was Camus’s turn.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-051-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-051|74]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We had gone to his lecture to hear one of our elders and if need be protect him from the fascists. On this point we were not called on to intervene. Camus’s audience had been carefully screened and the approaches to the hall were guarded by the helmeted C.R.S.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-050-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-050|75]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We expected that Camus would take a clear position on the Algerian problem. What we were treated to was a sweet-sister speech. He explained to us at length that the innocent civilian population must be protected, but he was categorically against fund raising in favor of the innocent families of political prisoners. We in the hall were dumbfounded. Outside, the mob of fascists was rhythmically yelling: &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;“Algérie française!”&lt;/span&gt; and screaming: “Camus to the gallows!”<br /> <br /> But these demonstrations seemed to us to be the dying spasms of the colonialist beast. Even the monster-demonstration on the occasion of Soustelle’s departure, even Professor Bousquet’s hysterical appeals and their repercussions among the students did not faze us. We had an immense hope in the new French government invested by the entire Assembly to make the peace. Not for a moment did we doubt that this government would put an end to fascism in Algeria. What Edgar Faure and his majority of the center had done in Morocco, Guy Mollet and his left-wing majority would surely do more easily in Algiers. When I say “we,” I am not only speaking of the Europeans. I am also thinking of the Moslems who thought as we did that the end was near and who were asking us to work together in the imminent peace as we had done in the war.<br /> <br /> Then came February 6th. For two days the whole city had been a seething cauldron of excitement. Columns paraded through the streets waving the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;tricolore&lt;/span&gt; and singing the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Marseillaise,&lt;/span&gt; shouting: &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;“Algérie française!”&lt;/span&gt; Cars wove back and forth, tossing out tracts, honking without let-up. Such was the atmosphere in which Guy Mollet was received. I was not present at the scene of the monument honoring the dead, but my comrades told me about it. Not for a moment had we thought that this welcome could make Guy Mollet come to the grave decisions that followed. We thought, on the contrary, that, irritated by Algeria’s Europeans, he would have fewer scruples, a less uneasy conscience about imposing the negotiated solution that we were all looking forward to. And so we were stupefied to learn at the end of the afternoon of General Catroux’s resignation. It was Ben Batouche who announced it to us. He was overwhelmed. I saw Khène, next to me, turn pale and clench his fists with fury. All around us people were embracing amid great bursts of laughter, singing the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Marseillaise.&lt;/span&gt; The city suddenly took on the appearance of a vast fair. I was nauseated by so much stupidity. As we separated, one of us said, “And now we have no one left but the F.L.N. to speak for us.” It quickly became obvious to us that with France reluctant to make the fascist minority of Algeria toe the mark, it was henceforth up to the F.L.N. to do so. After February 6th we could no longer turn our eyes toward France. Not from her would salvation come. The extraordinary apathy of the French people, confirmed in the course of a trip I took to Paris, convinced me of this.<br /> <br /> In the face of the fascist-Lacoste surge our group disintegrated. What, after all could we do? There was no longer any choice other than between Lacoste and the Front. A third force could have had meaning only if it had been supported by the French Left. Since the French Left was playing the game of Algerian fascism, any attempt to organize liberal action in Algiers was doomed to failure. No one among us had any illusions as to this. And in fact the subsequent so-called liberal movement was in large part composed of metropolitan civil servants on duty in Algeria.<br /> <br /> Our Moslem comrades were soon to join the maquis, and the Communists, after the Maillot case, turned to clandestine action.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-049-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-049|76]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The others performed some minor services on the spot: acting as letter-boxes, providing shelter, etc. I had left Algiers for the psychiatric hospital in Blida, which had the reputation of being a nest of &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fellagha.&lt;/span&gt; As an intern with a doctor known for his anti-­colonialist views, I was soon classified, rejected by some and adopted by others. I remained for eight months in Blida, wholly absorbed in my work as an intern. My solidarity with the Revolution was limited to helping distribute tracts, and passing around copies of &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;El Moudjahid&lt;/span&gt; that I had in my possession. I had agreed to do medical work, but the opportunity to commit myself further never materialized. In late December 1956 I left Blida for Paris. A whole set of arguments accounted for this departure, or this disguised flight. Apart from family reasons, I especially needed perspective. As I was not working for the Front, I realized my uselessness. Besides, the birth of terrorism in the city revived problems of conscience which the super-tense atmosphere of Algeria made impossible to resolve with a cool head. Finally, my wife’s (ill-founded) fear of my being arrested (although arbitrary arrests were daily occurrences) was without doubt the decisive argument.<br /> <br /> In France I thought I would find rest. I found only a bad conscience. Every day the newspapers brought news of arrests and of firings of friends of mine. Every fresh item of news depressed me more. I felt even more useless. I tried to fight, to stir up reactions of protest among those around me, to make them understand. It was wasted effort. The Parisians had their minds only on their evenings out, on the plays they wanted to see, on their vacations that had to be planned three months ahead of time. I found myself detesting them, despising all those Frenchmen who sent their sons off to torture people in Algeria and cared about nothing but their little shops. I rejected any feeling I had about belonging to the French nation. My people were certainly not those bourgeois devoid of any ideal. They were the people who suffered and died every day in the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;djebels&lt;/span&gt; and in the torture chambers.<br /> <br /> These initial reactions, to be sure, became attenuated. I developed sound friendships with democratic fellow interns for whom this colonial war waged by their country was a cause of deep suffering. But I felt at home only with Algerian émigrés.<br /> <br /> This stay in France turned out in the end to be very profitable. It confirmed for me what I already sensed: that I was not French, that I had never been French. Language, culture—these are not enough to make you belong to a people. Something more is needed: a common life, common experiences and memories, common aims. All this I lacked in France. My stay in France showed me that I belonged to an Algerian community, showed me that l was a stranger in France.<br /> <br /> When my draft exemption expired in May 1958, I did not hesitate long. I had already decided to join the F.L.N.<br /> <br /> It is a year now since I have joined the Algerian Revolution. Remembering the difficult and ambiguous contacts I had had at the outset of the Revolution, I had some fear that I might not be welcomed. My fear was unfounded. I was welcomed like any other Algerian. For the Algerians I am no longer an ally. I am a brother, simply a brother, like the others.<br /> <br /> === Appendix II ===<br /> My name is Bresson Yvon. After having spent my entire youth in Algeria, in Bone, I went to France in 1948 to continue my studies there.<br /> <br /> In 1952, after my military service, I took the competitive examination for a commission in the Algerian police. I was admitted and assigned to the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Sécurité Publique&lt;/span&gt; of Saint-Arnaud, a large village of the Upper Constantine Plateaux, some thirty kilometers from Sétif. On May 6, 1953, I took over my post as police officer. I was then twenty-four years old.<br /> <br /> It must be remembered that Saint-Arnaud is located at the center of the region of Sétif, where in 1945 more than 40,000 Algerians were massacred in three days. The Europeans for whose protection I was responsible were the very ones who, ten years before, had participated in the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Arab hunt.&lt;/span&gt; These men were still reminiscing about their exploits in 1953 and comparing their respective records. I had very few private dealings with these Europeans in Saint-Arnaud. On the other hand, I established friendships with Algerians and even with a number of known nationalists. My superiors, superintendents Gavini Antoine and Lambert Marius, of course warned me. The most excited European civilians, whenever the occasion arose, kept reminding me of &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;the rule&lt;/span&gt;: to keep the Arabs down.<br /> <br /> On November 1, 1954, the Revolution broke out.<br /> <br /> Very quickly I came to realize that I belonged in the camp of those who fight for an Algerian nation. The countless tortures that I had occasion to witness in the exercise of my duties were to strengthen my hatred of colonialism: Algerians torn apart by two military trucks driven in opposite directions, classic tortures by water, electricity, hanging by the thumbs or by the testicles.<br /> <br /> One day my wife who had been kept awake all night, as she had for several weeks, by the cries of the tortured (we lived above one of the torture chambers of Saint-Arnaud), unable to stand it any longer, went and violently protested to the soldiers and the C.R.S. responsible for these practices. She was led back to the house with two machine guns digging into her ribs. It was at this period that I was contacted by a member of the local F.L.N. cell. To this cell I was to communicate various items of information useful for the carrying on of the national war of liberation.<br /> <br /> I was able to pass on word as to the hour and place of roundups, as to which Algerians were being followed, as to which cafés were suspected. I passed on the entire secret report addressed by Superintendent Gavini to the Sub-Prefect of Sétif regarding the impending internment of Dr. Lamine Debaghine, the present Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic.<br /> <br /> I had occasion to give the names of Algerian informers employed by the colonialist police. These agents were obviously very dangerous, for they sometimes managed to find out a considerable number of secrets.<br /> <br /> In May I956, Hamou Abdallah, a veteran who ran a Moorish café, one of the most active secret agents, was executed in the middle of the rue Saint-Augustin. A few months later another spy, Aktouf Mustapha, was in turn grievously wounded.<br /> <br /> In June 1956, Superintendent Gavini, exhausted by several months of torture sessions, left on sick leave. I was then put in charge of the &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Commissariat.&lt;/span&gt; In the archives I got hold of a list of names of Algerian suspects who were recommended to be executed in short order. This list was the work of my colleague Sphonix Jean and of Second Lieutenant Varini Camille.<br /> <br /> I made a copy of it, which I immediately passed on to the local chief. Shortly after this I was arrested. Before this, however, I was able to communicate to the chief an inventory of the weapons supplies and ammunition reserves in certain posts. The Political Superintendent of the Southern Zone (the Northern and Southern Zones were separated by the national highway that divided the village in two) decided on the basis of this information to attack several farms and to destroy a number of French Army outposts.<br /> <br /> Before my arrest, on the occasion of the murder of Ben Mihoud Saïd, a burst of machine gun bullets was fired in my direction. I was not hit.&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-7&quot;&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-048-backlink&quot;&gt;[[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-048|77]]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> Summary executions increased in number under the direction of Major Puech. Thus, to give an example, fifty Algerians were executed and buried in a plot belonging to the Mayor of Saint-Arnaud.<br /> <br /> On November 18, 1956, I was arrested by order of General Dufour and brought before the military tribunal which condemned me to five years’ imprisonment with a suspended sentence.<br /> <br /> It is as an Algerian that I have done all these things. I do not have the impression of having betrayed France. I am an Algerian, and like any Algerian I have fought and I continue to fight colonialism. As a conscious Algerian citizen, I felt I must take my place by the side of the patriots. This is what I have done.&lt;div class=&quot;_idFootnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-076&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-076-backlink|49]]. First published in &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Les Temps Modernes&lt;/span&gt;, June, 1959.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-075&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-075-backlink|50]]. Sérigny, Borgeaud, Laquière—leading figures among the French colonists.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-074&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-074-backlink|51]]. Lagaillarde, Regard—young activist leaders.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-073&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-073-backlink|52]]. The rue Michelet, the rue d’Isly—in the heart of the business center of Algiers; Bab-el-Oued—popular district frequented by Europeans.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-072&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-072-backlink|53]]. M.T.L.D.—Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties. An Algerian nationalist party formed before the Revolution. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-071&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-071-backlink|54]]. U.D.M.A.—Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto. Another Algerian nationalist party. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-070&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-070-backlink|55]]. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Méchoui&lt;/span&gt;—traditional Arab mutton dish. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-069&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-069-backlink|56]]. A.L.N.—Army of National Liberation. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-068&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-068-backlink|57]]. Jewish quarters of Moroccan towns.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-067&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-067-backlink|58]]. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fidaïnes&lt;/span&gt;—plural of &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fidaï&lt;/span&gt;, a death volunteer, in the Islamic tradition.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-066&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-066-backlink|59]]. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Moudjahidines&lt;/span&gt;—plural of &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;moudjahid&lt;/span&gt;. Fighters (originally fighters in Moslem Holy War).<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-065&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-065-backlink|60]]. See Appendix II.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-064&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-064-backlink|61]]. This appendix consists of the testimony of Charles Geromini, former intern at the Saint Anne Psychiatric Hospital in Paris.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-063&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-063-backlink|62]]. C.E.D.—The European Defense Community. See note 3, page 27 on the two-college system. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-062&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-062-backlink|63]]. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;fellagha&lt;/span&gt;—Algerian partisans.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-061&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-061-backlink|64]]. &lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;wilaya&lt;/span&gt;—a military region (the Arab word for “province”). C.C.E.—Committee of Coordination and Execution. This was the body later succeeded by the F.L.N., that launched the insurrection. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-060&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-060-backlink|65]]. May 8, 1945—the date of the Kabylian uprising in and around Sétif and Guelma.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-059&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-059-backlink|66]]. M.N.A.—&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Mouvement Nationaliste Algérien&lt;/span&gt;, a middle-of-the-road nationalist movement, whose leader was Messali Hadj, which refused to join forces with the F.L.N. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-058&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-058-backlink|67]]. August 20, 1955—an uprising in the course of which many whites were massacred. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-057&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-057-backlink|68]]. Lamine Khène. Since then, Secretary of State in the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-056&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-056-backlink|69]]. Mandouze, a liberal Catholic professor, detested by the settlers. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-055&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-055-backlink|70]]. February 6, 1956—Departure of Soustelle from Algiers and arrival of Guy Mollet, then the new French Prime Minister, which set off the first major settlers’ demonstration, in the course of which the Premier was pelted with tomatoes and other objects and frightened into abandoning the moderate policy he had come to initiate: (Translator’s note).<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-054&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-054-backlink|71]]. U.G.E.M.A.—&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Union Générale des Etudiants Musulmans Algériens&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-053&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-053-backlink|72]]. U.N.E.F.—&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Union Nationale des Etudiants Français&lt;/span&gt;, a progressive student organization with nation-wide membership in France.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-052&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-052-backlink|73]]. Ben Yahia, the president of the General Union of Algerian Students, who later became a member of the National Council of the Algerian Revolution. Ben Batouche, commander of the Army of National Liberation, who was later killed in battle.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-051&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-051-backlink|74]]. Hernu—a radical-socialist of the Mendès-France persuasion. Albert Camus—the Algerian-born French writer, Nobel prize-winner in 1957.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-050&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-050-backlink|75]]. C.R.S.—&lt;span class=&quot;CharOverride-3&quot;&gt;Compagnie Républicaine de Sécurité&lt;/span&gt;, a national constabulary army corps, independent of the regular army. (Translator’s note)<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-049&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-049-backlink|76]]. Maillot—a young French Algerian non-commissioned officer, a Communist, who dynamited an electric tower and was guillotined.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id=&quot;9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-048&quot; class=&quot;_idFootnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:A Dying Colonialism#9780802162243-11.xhtml#footnote-048-backlink|77]]. Ben Mihoud Saïd, public scribe, was killed by militia-men, on September 26, 1956. He was on the list of suspects to be executed by the government forces.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_idGenObjectStyleOverride-1&quot;&gt;<br /> == Conclusion ==<br /> We have tried in the preceding pages to shed light on a few aspects of the Algerian Revolution. The originality and the impatient richness of the Revolution are now and forever the great victories of the Algerian people. This community in action, renovated and free of any psychological, emotional, or legal subjection, is prepared today to assume modern and democratic responsibilities of exceptional moment.<br /> <br /> The thesis that the launching of a new society is possible only within the framework of national independence here finds its corollary. The same time that the colonized man braces himself to reject oppression, a radical transformation takes place within him which makes any attempt to maintain the colonial system impossible and shocking. It is this transformation that we have studied here.<br /> <br /> It is true that independence produces the spiritual and material conditions for the reconversion of man. But it is also the inner mutation, the renewal of the social and family structures that impose with the rigor of a law the emergence of the Nation and the growth of its sovereignty.<br /> <br /> We say firmly that Algerian man and Algerian society have stripped themselves of the mental sedimentation and of the emotional and intellectual handicaps which resulted from 130 years of oppression. This same colonialism that held the people in the tight meshes of the police and of the army is today wounded to the death. French colonialism in Algeria has always developed on the assumption that it would last forever. The structures built, the port facilities, the airdromes, the prohibition of the Arab language, often gave the impression that the enemy committed himself, compromised himself, half lost himself in his prey, precisely in order to make any future break, any separation, impossible. Every manifestation of the French presence expressed a continuous rooting in time and in the Algerian future, and could always be read as a token of an indefinite oppression.<br /> <br /> It was the size of the European settlement, the rapacity of the settlers and their racist philosophy that required of every French expression in Algeria a maximum of solidity and of weight. Likewise, it was the robustness and the vehemence of French achievements that maintained and reinforced the oppressive category of colonialism.<br /> <br /> To the history of the colonization the Algerian people today oppose the history of the national liberation.<br /> <br /> It remains to be seen whether the French government will become aware of what is still possible. We have reviewed the victorious progress of the colonized on the path of his liberation, as revealed in a number of its particular aspects. We have indicated that strictly on the level of the individual and his tremendous dynamism a revolution—fundamental, irreversible, ever more far-reaching—has occurred.<br /> <br /> It is now time for reason to make itself heard. If the French Government now hopes to revive the conditions that existed before 1954 or even 1958, it is well that it should know that this is now impossible. If on the other hand, it is willing to take account of the changes that have occurred in the consciousness of Algerian man in the last five years, if it is willing to lend an ear to the insistent and fraternal voices that give impetus to the Revolution and that are to be heard in the struggle of a people who spare neither their blood nor their suffering for the triumph of freedom, then we say that everything is still possible.<br /> <br /> The crushing of the Algerian Revolution, its isolation, its asphyxiation, its death through exhaustion—these are mad dreams.<br /> <br /> The Revolution in depth, the true one, precisely because it changes man and renews society, has reached an advanced stage. This oxygen which creates and shapes a new humanity—this, too, is the Algerian Revolution.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;<br /> [[Category:Library works by Frantz Fanon]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about decolonisation]]<br /> __FORCETOC__</div>

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<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work<br /> | title = Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Toward an Investigation)<br /> | written by = [[Louis Althusser]]<br /> |author=Louis Althusser| written in = 1971<br /> | published = &quot;Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays&quot; (Monthly Review Press, 1971)<br /> | type = Essay<br /> | source= [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm Marxists Internet Archive]<br /> | image =<br /> | image_size =<br /> | image_upright =<br /> | image_alt =<br /> | caption =<br /> }}'''''Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Toward an Investigation)''''' is an essay written by [[Louis Althusser]] and published in 1970. The essay was part of a larger work called [[Library:On the Reproduction of Capitalism|On the Reproduction of Capitalism]], which remained untranslated into English until 2014. <br /> <br /> The essay is considered fundamental to Althusser's theory of the [[ideological state apparatus]] and [[ideology]] more broadly.<br /> <br /> == On the Reproduction of the Conditions of Production ==<br /> I must now expose more fully something which was briefly glimpsed in my analysis when I spoke of the necessity to renew the means of production if production is to be possible. That was a passing hint. Now I shall consider it for itself.<br /> <br /> As Marx said, every child knows that a social formation which did not reproduce the conditions of production at the same time as it produced would not last a year.[2] The ultimate condition of production is therefore the reproduction of the conditions of production. This may be ‘simple’ (reproducing exactly the previous conditions of production) or ‘on an extended scale’ (expanding them). Let us ignore this last distinction for the moment.<br /> <br /> What, then, is the reproduction of the conditions of production?<br /> <br /> Here we are entering a domain which is both very familiar (since Capital Volume Two) and uniquely ignored. The tenacious obviousnesses (ideological obviousnesses of an empiricist type) of the point of view of production alone, or even of that of mere productive practice (itself abstract in relation to the process of production) are so integrated into our everyday ‘consciousness’ that it is extremely hard, not to say almost impossible, to raise oneself to the point of view of reproduction. Nevertheless, everything outside this point of view remains abstract (worse than one-sided: distorted) – even at the level of production, and, a fortiori, at that of mere practice.<br /> <br /> Let us try and examine the matter methodically.<br /> <br /> To simplify my exposition, and assuming that every social formation arises from a dominant mode of production, I can say that the process of production sets to work the existing productive forces in and under definite relations of production.<br /> <br /> It follows that, in order to exist, every social formation must reproduce the conditions of its production at the same time as it produces, and in order to be able to produce. It must therefore reproduce:<br /> <br /> 1. the productive forces,<br /> 2. the existing relations of production. <br /> === Reproduction of the Means of Production ===<br /> Everyone (including the bourgeois economists whose work is national accounting, or the modern ‘macro-economic’ ‘theoreticians’) now recognizes, because Marx compellingly proved it in Capital Volume Two, that no production is possible which does not allow for the reproduction of the material conditions of production: the reproduction of the means of production.<br /> <br /> The average economist, who is no different in this than the average capitalist, knows that each year it is essential to foresee what is needed to replace what has been used up or worn out in production: raw material, fixed installations (buildings), instruments of production (machines), etc. I say the average economist = the average capitalist, for they both express the point of view of the firm, regarding it as sufficient simply to give a commentary on the terms of the firm’s financial accounting practice.<br /> <br /> But thanks to the genius of Quesnay who first posed this ‘glaring’ problem, and to the genius of Marx who resolved it, we know that the reproduction of the material conditions of production cannot be thought at the level of the firm, because it does not exist at that level in its real conditions. What happens at the level of the firm is an effect, which only gives an idea of the necessity of reproduction, but absolutely fails to allow its conditions and mechanisms to be thought.<br /> <br /> A moment’s reflection is enough to be convinced of this: Mr X, a capitalist who produces woollen yarn in his spinning-mill, has to ‘reproduce’ his raw material, his machines, etc. But he does not produce them for his own production – other capitalists do: an Australian sheep farmer, Mr Y, a heavy engineer producing machine-tools, Mr Z, etc., etc. And Mr Y and Mr Z, in order to produce those products which are the condition of the reproduction of Mr X’s conditions of production, also have to reproduce the conditions of their own production, and so on to infinity – the whole in proportions such that, on the national and even the world market, the demand for means of production (for reproduction) can be satisfied by the supply.<br /> <br /> In order to think this mechanism, which leads to a kind of ‘endless chain’, it is necessary to follow Marx’s ‘global’ procedure, and to study in particular the relations of the circulation of capital between Department I (production of means of production) and Department II (production of means of consumption), and the realization of surplus value, in Capital, Volumes Two and Three.<br /> <br /> We shall not go into the analysis of this question. It is enough to have mentioned the existence of the necessity of the reproduction of the material conditions of production. <br /> === Reproduction of Labour-Power ===<br /> However, the reader will not have failed to note one thing. We have discussed the reproduction of the means of production – but not the reproduction of the productive forces. We have therefore ignored the reproduction of what distinguishes the productive forces from the means of production, i.e. the reproduction of labour power.<br /> <br /> From the observation of what takes place in the firm, in particular from the examination of the financial accounting practice which predicts amortization and investment, we have been able to obtain an approximate idea of the existence of the material process of reproduction, but we are now entering a domain in which the observation of what happens in the firm is, if not totally blind, at least almost entirely so, and for good reason: the reproduction of labour power takes place essentially outside the firm.<br /> <br /> How is the reproduction of labour power ensured?<br /> <br /> It is ensured by giving labour power the material means with which to reproduce itself: by wages. Wages feature in the accounting of each enterprise, but as ‘wage capital’,[3] not at all as a condition of the material reproduction of labour power.<br /> <br /> However, that is in fact how it ‘works’, since wages represents only that part of the value produced by the expenditure of labour power which is indispensable for its reproduction: so indispensable to the reconstitution of the labour power of the wage-earner (the wherewithal to pay for housing, food and clothing, in short to enable the wage earner to present himself again at the factory gate the next day – and every further day God grants him); and we should add: indispensable for raising and educating the children in whom the proletarian reproduces himself (in n models where n = 0, 1, 2, etc....) as labour power.<br /> <br /> Remember that this quantity of value (wages) necessary for the reproduction of labour power is determined not by the needs of a ‘biological’ Guaranteed Minimum Wage (Salaire Minimum Interprofessionnel Garanti) alone, but by the needs of a historical minimum (Marx noted that English workers need beer while French proletarians need wine) – i.e. a historically variable minimum.<br /> <br /> I should also like to point out that this minimum is doubly historical in that it is not defined by the historical needs of the working class ‘recognized’ by the capitalist class, but by the historical needs imposed by the proletarian class struggle (a double class struggle: against the lengthening of the working day and against the reduction of wages).<br /> <br /> However, it is not enough to ensure for labour power the material conditions of its reproduction if it is to be reproduced as labour power. I have said that the available labour power must be ‘competent’, i.e. suitable to be set to work in the complex system of the process of production. The development of the productive forces and the type of unity historically constitutive of the productive forces at a given moment produce the result that the labour power has to be (diversely) skilled and therefore reproduced as such. Diversely: according to the requirements of the socio-technical division of labour, its different ‘jobs’ and ‘posts’.<br /> <br /> How is this reproduction of the (diversified) skills of labour power provided for in a capitalist regime? Here, unlike social formations characterized by slavery or serfdom this reproduction of the skills of labour power tends (this is a tendential law) decreasingly to be provided for ‘on the spot’ (apprenticeship within production itself), but is achieved more and more outside production: by the capitalist education system, and by other instances and institutions.<br /> <br /> What do children learn at school? They go varying distances in their studies, but at any rate they learn to read, to write and to add – i.e. a number of techniques, and a number of other things as well, including elements (which may be rudimentary or on the contrary thoroughgoing) of ‘scientific’ or ‘literary culture’, which are directly useful in the different jobs in production (one instruction for manual workers, another for technicians, a third for engineers, a final one for higher management, etc.). Thus they learn know-how.<br /> <br /> But besides these techniques and knowledges, and in learning them, children at school also learn the ‘rules’ of good behaviour, i.e. the attitude that should be observed by every agent in the division of labour, according to the job he is ‘destined’ for: rules of morality, civic and professional conscience, which actually means rules of respect for the socio-technical division of labour and ultimately the rules of the order established by class domination. They also learn to ‘speak proper French’, to ‘handle’ the workers correctly, i.e. actually (for the future capitalists and their servants) to ‘order them about’ properly, i.e. (ideally) to ‘speak to them’ in the right way, etc.<br /> <br /> To put this more scientifically, I shall say that the reproduction of labour power requires not only a reproduction of its skills, but also, at the same time, a reproduction of its submission to the rules of the established order, i.e. a reproduction of submission to the ruling ideology for the workers, and a reproduction of the ability to manipulate the ruling ideology correctly for the agents of exploitation and repression, so that they, too, will provide for the domination of the ruling class ‘in words’.<br /> <br /> In other words, the school (but also other State institutions like the Church, or other apparatuses like the Army) teaches ‘know-how’, but in forms which ensure subjection to the ruling ideology or the mastery of its ‘practice’. All the agents of production, exploitation and repression, not to speak of the ‘professionals of ideology’ (Marx), must in one way or another be ‘steeped’ in this ideology in order to perform their tasks ‘conscientiously’ – the tasks of the exploited (the proletarians), of the exploiters (the capitalists), of the exploiters’ auxiliaries (the managers), or of the high priests of the ruling ideology (its ‘functionaries’), etc.<br /> <br /> The reproduction of labour power thus reveals as its sine qua non not only the reproduction of its ‘skills’ but also the reproduction of its subjection to the ruling ideology or of the ‘practice’ of that ideology, with the proviso that it is not enough to say ‘not only but also’, for it is clear that it is in the forms and under the forms of ideological subjection that provision is made for the reproduction of the skills of labour power.<br /> <br /> But this is to recognize the effective presence of a new reality: ideology.<br /> <br /> Here I shall make two comments.<br /> <br /> The first is to round off my analysis of reproduction.<br /> <br /> I have just given a rapid survey of the forms of the reproduction of the productive forces, i.e. of the means of production on the one hand, and of labour power on the other.<br /> <br /> But I have not yet approached the question of the reproduction of the relations of production. This is a crucial question for the Marxist theory of the mode of production. To let it pass would be a theoretical omission – worse, a serious political error.<br /> <br /> I shall therefore discuss it. But in order to obtain the means to discuss it, I shall have to make another long detour.<br /> <br /> The second comment is that in order to make this detour, I am obliged to re-raise my old question: what is a society? <br /> === Infrastructure and Superstructure ===<br /> On a number of occasions[4] I have insisted on the revolutionary character of the Marxist conception of the ‘social whole’ insofar as it is distinct from the Hegelian ‘totality’. I said (and this thesis only repeats famous propositions of historical materialism) that Marx conceived the structure of every society as constituted by ‘levels’ or ‘instances’ articulated by a specific determination: the infrastructure, or economic base (the ‘unity’ of the productive forces and the relations of production) and the superstructure, which itself contains two ‘levels’ or ‘instances’: the politico-legal (law and the State) and ideology (the different ideologies, religious, ethical, legal, political, etc.).<br /> <br /> Besides its theoretico-didactic interest (it reveals the difference between Marx and Hegel), this representation has the following crucial theoretical advantage: it makes it possible to inscribe in the theoretical apparatus of its essential concepts what I have called their respective indices of effectivity. What does this mean?<br /> <br /> It is easy to see that this representation of the structure of every society as an edifice containing a base (infrastructure) on which are erected the two ‘floors’ of the superstructure, is a metaphor, to be quite precise, a spatial metaphor: the metaphor of a topography (topique).[5] Like every metaphor, this metaphor suggests something, makes some thing visible. What? Precisely this: that the upper floors could not ‘stay up’ (in the air) alone, if they did not rest precisely on their base.<br /> <br /> Thus the object of the metaphor of the edifice is to represent above all the ‘determination in the last instance’ by the economic base. The effect of this spatial metaphor is to endow the base with an index of effectivity known by the famous terms: the determination in the last instance of what happens in the upper ‘floors’ (of the superstructure) by what happens in the economic base.<br /> <br /> Given this index of effectivity ‘in the last instance’, the ‘floors’ of the superstructure are clearly endowed with different indices of effectivity. What kind of indices?<br /> <br /> It is possible to say that the floors of the superstructure are not determinant in the last instance, but that they are determined by the effectivity of the base; that if they are determinant in their own (as yet undefined) ways, this is true only insofar as they are determined by the base.<br /> <br /> Their index of effectivity (or determination), as determined by the determination in the last instance of the base, is thought by the Marxist tradition in two ways: (1) there is a ‘relative autonomy’ of the superstructure with respect to the base; (2) there is a ‘reciprocal action’ of the superstructure on the base.<br /> <br /> We can therefore say that the great theoretical advantage of the Marxist topography, i.e. of the spatial metaphor of the edifice (base and superstructure) is simultaneously that it reveals that questions of determination (or of index of effectivity) are crucial; that it reveals that it is the base which in the last instance determines the whole edifice; and that, as a consequence, it obliges us to pose the theoretical problem of the types of ‘derivatory’ effectivity peculiar to the superstructure, i.e. it obliges us to think what the Marxist tradition calls conjointly the relative autonomy of the superstructure and the reciprocal action of the superstructure on the base.<br /> <br /> The greatest disadvantage of this representation of the structure of every society by the spatial metaphor of an edifice, is obviously the fact that it is metaphorical: i.e. it remains descriptive.<br /> <br /> It now seems to me that it is possible and desirable to represent things differently. NB, I do not mean by this that I want to reject the classical metaphor, for that metaphor itself requires that we go beyond it. And I am not going beyond it in order to reject it as outworn. I simply want to attempt to think what it gives us in the form of a description.<br /> <br /> I believe that it is possible and necessary to think what characterizes the essential of the existence and nature of the superstructure on the basis of reproduction. Once one takes the point of view of reproduction, many of the questions whose existence was indicated by the spatial metaphor of the edifice, but to which it could not give a conceptual answer, are immediately illuminated.<br /> <br /> My basic thesis is that it is not possible to pose these questions (and therefore to answer them) except from the point of view of reproduction.<br /> <br /> I shall give a short analysis of Law, the State and Ideology from this point of view. And I shall reveal what happens both from the point of view of practice and production on the one hand, and from that of reproduction on the other. <br /> == The State ==<br /> The Marxist tradition is strict, here: in the Communist Manifesto and the Eighteenth Brumaire (and in all the later classical texts, above all in Marx’s writings on the Paris Commune and Lenin’s on State and Revolution), the State is explicitly conceived as a repressive apparatus. The State is a ‘machine’ of repression, which enables the ruling classes (in the nineteenth century the bourgeois class and the ‘class’ of big landowners) to ensure their domination over the working class, thus enabling the former to subject the latter to the process of surplus-value extortion (i.e. to capitalist exploitation).<br /> <br /> The State is thus first of all what the Marxist classics have called the State Apparatus. This term means: not only the specialized apparatus (in the narrow sense) whose existence and necessity I have recognized in relation to the requirements of legal practice, i.e. the police, the courts, the prisons; but also the army, which (the proletariat has paid for this experience with its blood) intervenes directly as a supplementary repressive force in the last instance, when the police and its specialized auxiliary corps are ‘outrun by events’; and above this ensemble, the head of State, the government and the administration.<br /> <br /> Presented in this form, the Marxist-Leninist ‘theory’ of the State has its finger on the essential point, and not for one moment can there be any question of rejecting the fact that this really is the essential point. The State Apparatus, which defines the State as a force of repressive execution and intervention ‘in the interests of the ruling classes’ in the class struggle conducted by the bourgeoisie and its allies against the proletariat, is quite certainly the State, and quite certainly defines its basic ‘function’. <br /> === From Descriptive Theory to Theory as such ===<br /> Nevertheless, here too, as I pointed out with respect to the metaphor of the edifice (infrastructure and superstructure), this presentation of the nature of the State is still partly descriptive.<br /> <br /> As I shall often have occasion to use this adjective (descriptive), a word of explanation is necessary in order to remove any ambiguity.<br /> <br /> Whenever, in speaking of the metaphor of the edifice or of the Marxist ‘theory’ of the State, I have said that these are descriptive conceptions or representations of their objects, I had no ulterior critical motives. On the contrary, I have every grounds to think that great scientific discoveries cannot help but pass through the phase of what I shall call descriptive ‘theory ‘. This is the first phase of every theory, at least in the domain which concerns us (that of the science of social formations). As such, one might and in my opinion one must – envisage this phase as a transitional one, necessary to the development of the theory. That it is transitional is inscribed in my expression: ‘descriptive theory’, which reveals in its conjunction of terms the equivalent of a kind of ‘contradiction’. In fact, the term theory ‘clashes’ to some extent with the adjective ‘descriptive’ which I have attached to it. This means quite precisely: (1) that the ‘descriptive theory’ really is, without a shadow of a doubt, the irreversible beginning of the theory; but (2) that the ‘descriptive’ form in which the theory is presented requires, precisely as an effect of this ‘contradiction’, a development of the theory which goes beyond the form of ‘description’.<br /> <br /> Let me make this idea clearer by returning to our present object: the State.<br /> <br /> When I say that the Marxist ‘theory’ of the State available to us is still partly ‘descriptive’, that means first and foremost that this descriptive ‘theory’ is without the shadow of a doubt precisely the beginning of the Marxist theory of the State, and that this beginning gives us the essential point, i.e. the decisive principle of every later development of the theory.<br /> <br /> Indeed, I shall call the descriptive theory of the State correct, since it is perfectly possible to make the vast majority of the facts in the domain with which it is concerned correspond to the definition it gives of its object. Thus, the definition of the State as a class State, existing in the Repressive State Apparatus, casts a brilliant light on all the facts observable in the various orders of repression whatever their domains: from the massacres of June 1848 and of the Paris Commune, of Bloody Sunday, May 1905 in Petrograd, of the Resistance, of Charonne, etc., to the mere (and relatively anodyne) interventions of a ‘censorship’ which has banned Diderot’s La Réligieuse or a play by Gatti on Franco; it casts light on all the direct or indirect forms of exploitation and extermination of the masses of the people (imperialist wars); it casts light on that subtle everyday domination beneath which can be glimpsed, in the forms of political democracy, for example, what Lenin, following Marx, called the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> And yet the descriptive theory of the State represents a phase in the constitution of the theory which itself demands the ‘supersession’ of this phase. For it is clear that if the definition in question really does give us the means to identify and recognize the facts of oppression by relating them to the State, conceived as the Repressive State Apparatus, this ‘interrelationship’ gives rise to a very special kind of obviousness, about which I shall have something to say in a moment: ‘Yes, that’s how it is, that’s really true!’[6]<br /> <br /> And the accumulation of facts within the definition of the State may multiply examples, but it does not really advance the definition of the State, i.e. the scientific theory of the State. Every descriptive theory thus runs the risk of ‘blocking’ the development of the theory, and yet that development is essential.<br /> <br /> That is why I think that, in order to develop this descriptive theory into theory as such, i.e. in order to understand further the mechanisms of the State in its functioning, I think that it is indispensable to add something to the classical definition of the State as a State Apparatus. <br /> === The Essentials of the Marxist Theory of the State ===<br /> Let me first clarify one important point: the State (and its existence in its apparatus) has no meaning except as a function of State power. The whole of the political class struggle revolves around the State. By which I mean around the possession, i.e. the seizure and conservation of State power by a certain class or by an alliance between classes or class fractions. This first clarification obliges me to distinguish between State power (conservation of State power or seizure of State power), the objective of the political class struggle on the one hand, and the State Apparatus on the other.<br /> <br /> We know that the State Apparatus may survive, as is proved by bourgeois ‘revolutions’ in nineteenth-century France (1830, 1848), by coups d’état (2 December, May 1958), by collapses of the State (the fall of the Empire in 1870, of the Third Republic in 1940), or by the political rise of the petty bourgeoisie (1890-95 in France), etc., without the State Apparatus being affected or modified: it may survive political events which affect the possession of State power.<br /> <br /> Even after a social revolution like that of 1917, a large part of the State Apparatus survived after the seizure of State power by the alliance of the proletariat and the small peasantry: Lenin repeated the fact again and again.<br /> <br /> It is possible to describe the distinction between state power and state apparatus as part of the ‘Marxist theory’ of the state, explicitly present since Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire and Class Struggles in France.<br /> <br /> To summarize the ‘Marxist theory of the state’ on this point, it can be said that the Marxist classics have always claimed that (1) the state is the repressive state apparatus, (2) state power and state apparatus must be distinguished, (3) the objective of the class struggle concerns state power, and in consequence the use of the state apparatus by the classes (or alliance of classes or of fractions of classes) holding state power as a function of their class objectives, and (4) the proletariat must seize state power in order to destroy the existing bourgeois state apparatus and, in a first phase, replace it with a quite different, proletarian, state apparatus, then in later phases set in motion a radical process, that of the destruction of the state (the end of state power, the end of every state apparatus).<br /> <br /> In this perspective, therefore, what I would propose to add to the ‘Marxist theory’ of the state is already there in so many words. But it seems to me that even with this supplement, this theory is still in part descriptive, although it does now contain complex and differential elements whose functioning and action cannot be understood without recourse to further supplementary theoretical development. <br /> === The State Ideological Apparatuses ===<br /> Thus, what has to be added to the ‘Marxist theory’ of the state is something else.<br /> <br /> Here we must advance cautiously in a terrain which, in fact, the Marxist classics entered long before us, but without having systematized in theoretical form the decisive advances implied by their experiences and procedures. Their experiences and procedures were indeed restricted in the main to the terrain of political practice.<br /> <br /> In fact, i.e. in their political practice, the Marxist classics treated the State as a more complex reality than the definition of it given in the ‘Marxist theory of the state’, even when it has been supplemented as I have just suggested. They recognized this complexity in their practice, but they did not express it in a corresponding theory.[7]<br /> <br /> I should like to attempt a very schematic outline of this corresponding theory. To that end, I propose the following thesis.<br /> <br /> In order to advance the theory of the State it is indispensable to take into account not only the distinction between state power and state apparatus, but also another reality which is clearly on the side of the (repressive) state apparatus, but must not be confused with it. I shall call this reality by its concept: the Ideological State Apparatuses.<br /> <br /> What are the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs)?<br /> <br /> They must not be confused with the (repressive) State apparatus. Remember that in Marxist theory, the State Apparatus (SA) contains: the Government, the Administration, the Army, the Police, the Courts, the Prisons, etc., which constitute what I shall in future call the Repressive State Apparatus. Repressive suggests that the State Apparatus in question ‘functions by violence’ – at least ultimately (since repression, e.g. administrative repression, may take non-physical forms).<br /> <br /> I shall call Ideological State Apparatuses a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions. I propose an empirical list of these which will obviously have to be examined in detail, tested, corrected and re-organized. With all the reservations implied by this requirement, we can for the moment regard the following institutions as Ideological State Apparatuses (the order in which I have listed them has no particular significance):<br /> <br /> the religious ISA (the system of the different churches),<br /> the educational ISA (the system of the different public and private ‘schools’),<br /> the family ISA,[8]<br /> the legal ISA,[9]<br /> the political ISA (the political system, including the different parties),<br /> the trade-union ISA,<br /> the communications ISA (press, radio and television, etc.),<br /> the cultural ISA (literature, the arts, sports, etc.).<br /> <br /> I have said that the ISAs must not be confused with the (Repressive) State Apparatus. What constitutes the difference?<br /> <br /> As a first moment, it is clear that while there is one (Repressive) State Apparatus, there is a plurality of Ideological State Apparatuses. Even presupposing that it exists, the unity that constitutes this plurality of ISAs as a body is not immediately visible.<br /> <br /> As a second moment, it is clear that whereas the unified – (Repressive) State Apparatus belongs entirely to the public domain, much the larger part of the Ideological State Apparatuses (in their apparent dispersion) are part, on the contrary, of the private domain. Churches, Parties, Trade Unions, families, some schools, most newspapers, cultural ventures, etc., etc., are private.<br /> <br /> We can ignore the first observation for the moment. But someone is bound to question the second, asking me by what right I regard as Ideological State Apparatuses, institutions which for the most part do not possess public status, but are quite simply private institutions. As a conscious Marxist, Gramsci already forestalled this objection in one sentence. The distinction between the public and the private is a distinction internal to bourgeois law, and valid in the (subordinate) domains in which bourgeois law exercises its ‘authority’. The domain of the State escapes it because the latter is ‘above the law’: the State, which is the State of the ruling class, is neither public nor private; on the contrary, it is the precondition for any distinction between public and private. The same thing can be said from the starting-point of our State Ideological Apparatuses. It is unimportant whether the institutions in which they are realized are ‘public’ or ‘private’. What matters is how they function. Private institutions can perfectly well ‘function’ as Ideological State Apparatuses. A reasonably thorough analysis of any one of the ISAs proves it.<br /> <br /> But now for what is essential. What distinguishes the ISAs from the (Repressive) State Apparatus is the following basic difference: the Repressive State Apparatus functions ‘by violence’, whereas the Ideological State Apparatuses function ‘by ideology’.<br /> <br /> I can clarify matters by correcting this distinction. I shall say rather that every State Apparatus, whether Repressive or Ideological, ‘functions’ both by violence and by ideology, but with one very important distinction which makes it imperative not to confuse the Ideological State Apparatuses with the (Repressive) State Apparatus.<br /> <br /> This is the fact that the (Repressive) State Apparatus functions massively and predominantly by repression (including physical repression), while functioning secondarily by ideology. (There is no such thing as a purely repressive apparatus.) For example, the Army and the Police also function by ideology both to ensure their own cohesion and reproduction, and in the ‘values’ they propound externally.<br /> <br /> In the same way, but inversely, it is essential to say that for their part the Ideological State Apparatuses function massively and predominantly by ideology, but they also function secondarily by repression, even if ultimately, but only ultimately, this is very attenuated and concealed, even symbolic. (There is no such thing as a purely ideological apparatus.) Thus Schools and Churches use suitable methods of punishment, expulsion, selection, etc., to ‘discipline’ not only their shepherds, but also their flocks. The same is true of the Family.... The same is true of the cultural IS Apparatus (censorship, among other things), etc.<br /> <br /> Is it necessary to add that this determination of the double ‘functioning’ (predominantly, secondarily) by repression and by ideology, according to whether it is a matter of the (Repressive) State Apparatus or the Ideological State Apparatuses, makes it clear that very subtle explicit or tacit combinations may be woven from the interplay of the (Repressive) State Apparatus and the Ideological State Apparatuses? Everyday life provides us with innumerable examples of this, but they must be studied in detail if we are to go further than this mere observation.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, this remark leads us towards an understanding of what constitutes the unity of the apparently disparate body of the ISAs. If the ISAs ‘function’ massively and predominantly by ideology, what unifies their diversity is precisely this functioning, insofar as the ideology by which they function is always in fact unified, despite its diversity and its contradictions, beneath the ruling ideology, which is the ideology of ‘the ruling class’. Given the fact that the ‘ruling class’ in principle holds State power (openly or more often by means of alliances between classes or class fractions), and therefore has at its disposal the (Repressive) State Apparatus, we can accept the fact that this same ruling class is active in the Ideological State Apparatuses insofar as it is ultimately the ruling ideology which is realized in the Ideological State Apparatuses, precisely in its contradictions. Of course, it is a quite different thing to act by laws and decrees in the (Repressive) State Apparatus and to ‘act’ through the intermediary of the ruling ideology in the Ideological State Apparatuses. We must go into the details of this difference – but it cannot mask the reality of a profound identity. To my knowledge, no class can hold State power over a long period without at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the State Ideological Apparatuses. I only need one example and proof of this: Lenin’s anguished concern to revolutionize the educational Ideological State Apparatus (among others), simply to make it possible for the Soviet proletariat, who had seized State power, to secure the future of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the transition to socialism.[10]<br /> <br /> This last comment puts us in a position to understand that the Ideological State Apparatuses may be not only the stake, but also the site of class struggle, and often of bitter forms of class struggle. The class (or class alliance) in power cannot lay down the law in the ISAs as easily as it can in the (repressive) State apparatus, not only because the former ruling classes are able to retain strong positions there for a long time, but also because the resistance of the exploited classes is able to find means and occasions to express itself there, either by the utilization of their contradictions, or by conquering combat positions in them in struggle.[11]<br /> <br /> Let me run through my comments.<br /> <br /> If the thesis I have proposed is well-founded, it leads me back to the classical Marxist theory of the State, while making it more precise in one point. I argue that it is necessary to distinguish between State power (and its possession by ...) on the one hand, and the State Apparatus on the other. But I add that the State Apparatus contains two bodies: the body of institutions which represent the Repressive State Apparatus on the one hand, and the body of institutions which represent the body of Ideological State Apparatuses on the other.<br /> <br /> But if this is the case, the following question is bound to be asked, even in the very summary state of my suggestions: what exactly is the extent of the role of the Ideological State Apparatuses? What is their importance based on? In other words: to what does the ‘function’ of these Ideological State Apparatuses, which do not function by repression but by ideology, correspond? <br /> == On the Reproduction of the Relations of Production ==<br /> I can now answer the central question which I have left in suspense for many long pages: how is the reproduction of the relations of production secured?<br /> <br /> In the topographical language (Infrastructure, Superstructure), I can say: for the most part,[12] it is secured by the legal-political and ideological superstructure.<br /> <br /> But as I have argued that it is essential to go beyond this still descriptive language, I shall say: for the most part, it is secured by the exercise of State power in the State Apparatuses, on the one hand the (Repressive) State Apparatus, on the other the Ideological State Apparatuses.<br /> <br /> What I have just said must also be taken into account, and it can be assembled in the form of the following three features:<br /> <br /> 1. All the State Apparatuses function both by repression and by ideology, with the difference that the (Repressive) State Apparatus functions massively and predominantly by repression, whereas the Ideological State Apparatuses function massively and predominantly by ideology.<br /> <br /> 2. Whereas the (Repressive) State Apparatus constitutes an organized whole whose different parts are centralized beneath a commanding unity, that of the politics of class struggle applied by the political representatives of the ruling classes in possession of State power, the Ideological State Apparatuses are multiple, distinct, ‘relatively autonomous’ and capable of providing an objective field to contradictions which express, in forms which may be limited or extreme, the effects of the clashes between the capitalist class struggle and the proletarian class struggle, as well as their subordinate forms.<br /> <br /> 3. Whereas the unity of the (Repressive) State Apparatus is secured by its unified and centralized organization under the leadership of the representatives of the classes in power executing the politics of the class struggle of the classes in power, the unity of the different Ideological State Apparatuses is secured, usually in contradictory forms, by the ruling ideology, the ideology of the ruling class.<br /> <br /> Taking these features into account, it is possible to represent the reproduction of the relations of production[13] in the following way, according to a kind of ‘division of labour’.<br /> <br /> The role of the repressive State apparatus, insofar as it is a repressive apparatus, consists essentially in securing by force (physical or otherwise) the political conditions of the reproduction of relations of production which are in the last resort relations of exploitation. Not only does the State apparatus contribute generously to its own reproduction (the capitalist State contains political dynasties, military dynasties, etc.), but also and above all, the State apparatus secures by repression (from the most brutal physical force, via mere administrative commands and interdictions, to open and tacit censorship) the political conditions for the action of the Ideological State Apparatuses.<br /> <br /> In fact, it is the latter which largely secure the reproduction specifically of the relations of production, behind a ‘shield’ provided by the repressive State apparatus. It is here that the role of the ruling ideology is heavily concentrated, the ideology of the ruling class, which holds State power. It is the intermediation of the ruling ideology that ensures a (sometimes teeth-gritting) ‘harmony’ between the repressive State apparatus and the Ideological State Apparatuses, and between the different State Ideological Apparatuses.<br /> <br /> We are thus led to envisage the following hypothesis, as a function precisely of the diversity of ideological State Apparatuses in their single, because shared, role of the reproduction of the relations of production.<br /> <br /> Indeed we have listed a relatively large number of Ideological State Apparatuses in contemporary capitalist social formations: the educational apparatus, the religious apparatus, the family apparatus, the political apparatus, the trade-union apparatus, the communications apparatus, the ‘cultural’ apparatus, etc.<br /> <br /> But in the social formations of that mode of production characterized by ‘serfdom’ (usually called the feudal mode of production), we observe that although there is a single repressive State apparatus which, since the earliest known Ancient States, let alone the Absolute Monarchies, has been formally very similar to the one we know today, the number of Ideological State Apparatuses is smaller and their individual types are different. For example, we observe that during the Middle Ages, the Church (the religious Ideological State Apparatus) accumulated a number of functions which have today devolved on to several distinct Ideological State Apparatuses, new ones in relation to the past I am invoking, in particular educational and cultural functions. Alongside the Church there was the family Ideological State Apparatus, which played a considerable part, incommensurable with its role in capitalist social formations. Despite appearances, the Church and the Family were not the only Ideological State Apparatuses. There was also a political Ideological State Apparatus (the Estates General, the Parlement, the different political factions and Leagues, the ancestors of the modern political parties, and the whole political system of the free Communes and then of the Villes). There was also a powerful ‘proto-trade union’ Ideological State Apparatus, if I may venture such an anachronistic term (the powerful merchants’ and bankers’ guilds and the journeymen’s associations, etc.). Publishing and Communications, even, saw an indisputable development, as did the theatre; initially both were integral parts of the Church, then they became more and more independent of it.<br /> <br /> In the pre-capitalist historical period which I have examined extremely broadly, it is absolutely clear that there was one dominant Ideological State Apparatus, the Church, which concentrated within it not only religious functions, but also educational ones, and a large proportion of the functions of communications and ‘culture’. It is no accident that all ideological struggle, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, starting with the first shocks of the Reformation, was concentrated in an anti-clerical and anti-religious struggle; rather this is a function precisely of the dominant position of the religious Ideological State Apparatus.<br /> <br /> The foremost objective and achievement of the French Revolution was not just to transfer State power from the feudal aristocracy to the merchant-capitalist bourgeoisie, to break part of the former repressive State apparatus and replace it with a new one (e.g., the national popular Army) but also to attack the number-one Ideological State Apparatus: the Church. Hence the civil constitution of the clergy, the confiscation of ecclesiastical wealth, and the creation of new Ideological State Apparatuses to replace the religious Ideological State Apparatus in its dominant role.<br /> <br /> Naturally, these things did not happen automatically: witness the Concordat, the Restoration and the long class struggle between the landed aristocracy and the industrial bourgeoisie throughout the nineteenth century for the establishment of bourgeois hegemony over the functions formerly fulfilled by the Church: above all by the Schools. It can be said that the bourgeoisie relied on the new political, parliamentary-democratic, Ideological State Apparatus, installed in the earliest years of the Revolution, then restored after long and violent struggles, for a few months in 1848 and for decades after the fall of the Second Empire, in order to conduct its struggle against the Church and wrest its ideological functions away from it, in other words, to ensure not only its own political hegemony, but also the ideological hegemony indispensable to the reproduction of capitalist relations of production.<br /> <br /> That is why I believe that I am justified in advancing the following Thesis, however precarious it is. I believe that the Ideological State Apparatus which has been installed in the dominant position in mature capitalist social formations as a result of a violent political and ideological class struggle against the old dominant Ideological State Apparatus, is the educational ideological apparatus.<br /> <br /> This thesis may seem paradoxical, given that for everyone, i.e. in the ideological representation that the bourgeoisie has tried to give itself and the classes it exploits, it really seems that the dominant Ideological State Apparatus in capitalist social formations is not the Schools, but the political Ideological State Apparatus, i.e. the regime of parliamentary democracy combining universal suffrage and party struggle.<br /> <br /> However, history, even recent history, shows that the bourgeoisie has been and still is able to accommodate itself to political Ideological State Apparatuses other than parliamentary democracy: the First and Second Empires, Constitutional Monarchy (Louis XVIII and Charles X), Parliamentary Monarchy (Louis-Philippe), Presidential Democracy (de Gaulle), to mention only France. In England this is even clearer. The Revolution was particularly ‘successful’ there from the bourgeois point of view, since unlike France, where the bourgeoisie, partly because of the stupidity of the petty aristocracy, had to agree to being carried to power by peasant and plebeian ‘journées révolutionnaires’, something for which it had to pay a high price, the English bourgeoisie was able to ‘compromise’ with the aristocracy and ‘share’ State power and the use of the State apparatus with it for a long time (peace among all men of good will in the ruling classes!). In Germany it is even more striking, since it was behind a political Ideological State Apparatus in which the imperial Junkers (epitomized by Bismarck), their army and their police provided it with a shield and leading personnel, that the imperialist bourgeoisie made its shattering entry into history, before ‘traversing’ the Weimar Republic and entrusting itself to Nazism.<br /> <br /> Hence I believe I have good reasons for thinking that behind the scenes of its political Ideological State Apparatus, which occupies the front of the stage, what the bourgeoisie has installed as its number-one, i.e. as its dominant Ideological State Apparatus, is the educational apparatus, which has in fact replaced in its functions the previously dominant Ideological State Apparatus, the Church. One might even add: the School-Family couple has replaced the Church-Family couple.<br /> <br /> Why is the educational apparatus in fact the dominant Ideological State Apparatus in capitalist social formations, and how does it function?<br /> <br /> For the moment it must suffice to say:<br /> <br /> 1. All Ideological State Apparatuses, whatever they are, contribute to the same result: the reproduction of the relations of production, i.e. of capitalist relations of exploitation.<br /> <br /> 2. Each of them contributes towards this single result in the way proper to it. The political apparatus by subjecting individuals to the political State ideology, the ‘indirect’ (parliamentary) or ‘direct’ (plebiscitary or fascist) ‘democratic’ ideology. The communications apparatus by cramming every ‘citizen’ with daily doses of nationalism, chauvinism, liberalism, moralism, etc, by means of the press, the radio and television. The same goes for the cultural apparatus (the role of sport in chauvinism is of the first importance), etc. The religious apparatus by recalling in sermons and the other great ceremonies of Birth, Marriage and Death, that man is only ashes, unless he loves his neighbour to the extent of turning the other cheek to whoever strikes first. The family apparatus ...but there is no need to go on.<br /> <br /> 3. This concert is dominated by a single score, occasionally disturbed by contradictions (those of the remnants of former ruling classes, those of the proletarians and their organizations): the score of the Ideology of the current ruling class which integrates into its music the great themes of the Humanism of the Great Forefathers, who produced the Greek Miracle even before Christianity, and afterwards the Glory of Rome, the Eternal City, and the themes of Interest, particular and general, etc. nationalism, moralism and economism.<br /> <br /> 4. Nevertheless, in this concert, one Ideological State Apparatus certainly has the dominant role, although hardly anyone lends an ear to its music: it is so silent! This is the School.<br /> <br /> It takes children from every class at infant-school age, and then for years, the years in which the child is most ‘vulnerable’, squeezed between the Family State Apparatus and the Educational State Apparatus, it drums into them, whether it uses new or old methods, a certain amount of ‘know-how’ wrapped in the ruling ideology (French, arithmetic, natural history, the sciences, literature) or simply the ruling ideology in its pure state (ethics, civic instruction, philosophy). Somewhere around the age of sixteen, a huge mass of children are ejected ‘into production’: these are the workers or small peasants. Another portion of scholastically adapted youth carries on: and, for better or worse, it goes somewhat further, until it falls by the wayside and fills the posts of small and middle technicians, white-collar workers, small and middle executives, petty bourgeois of all kinds. A last portion reaches the summit, either to fall into intellectual semi-employment, or to provide, as well as the ‘intellectuals of the collective labourer’, the agents of exploitation (capitalists, managers), the agents of repression (soldiers, policemen, politicians, administrators, etc.) and the professional ideologists (priests of all sorts, most of whom are convinced ‘laymen’).<br /> <br /> Each mass ejected en route is practically provided with the ideology which suits the role it has to fulfil in class society: the role of the exploited (with a ‘highly-developed’ ‘professional’, ‘ethical’, ‘civic’, ‘national’ and a-political consciousness); the role of the agent of exploitation (ability to give the workers orders and speak to them: ‘human relations’), of the agent of repression (ability to give orders and enforce obedience ‘without discussion’, or ability to manipulate the demagogy of a political leader’s rhetoric), or of the professional ideologist (ability to treat consciousnesses with the respect, i.e. with the contempt, blackmail, and demagogy they deserve, adapted to the accents of Morality, of Virtue, of ‘Transcendence’, of the Nation, of France’s World Role, etc.).<br /> <br /> Of course, many of these contrasting Virtues (modesty, resignation, submissiveness on the one hand, cynicism, contempt, arrogance, confidence, self-importance, even smooth talk and cunning on the other) are also taught in the Family, in the Church, in the Army, in Good Books, in films and even in the football stadium. But no other Ideological State Apparatus has the obligatory (and not least, free) audience of the totality of the children in the capitalist social formation, eight hours a day for five or six days out of seven.<br /> <br /> But it is by an apprenticeship in a variety of know-how wrapped up in the massive inculcation of the ideology of the ruling class that the relations of production in a capitalist social formation, i.e. the relations of exploited to exploiters and exploiters to exploited, are largely reproduced. The mechanisms which produce this vital result for the capitalist regime are naturally covered up and concealed by a universally reigning ideology of the School, universally reigning because it is one of the essential forms of the ruling bourgeois ideology: an ideology which represents the School as a neutral environment purged of ideology (because it is ...lay), where teachers respectful of the ‘conscience’ and ‘freedom’ of the children who are entrusted to them (in complete confidence) by their ‘parents’ (who are free, too, i.e. the owners of their children) open up for them the path to the freedom, morality and responsibility of adults by their own example, by knowledge, literature and their ‘liberating’ virtues.<br /> <br /> I ask the pardon of those teachers who, in dreadful conditions, attempt to turn the few weapons they can find in the history and learning they ‘teach’ against the ideology, the system and the practices in which they are trapped. They are a kind of hero. But they are rare and how many (the majority) do not even begin to suspect the ‘work’ the system (which is bigger than they are and crushes them) forces them to do, or worse, put all their heart and ingenuity into performing it with the most advanced awareness (the famous new methods!). So little do they suspect it that their own devotion contributes to the maintenance and nourishment of this ideological representation of the School, which makes the School today as ‘natural’, indispensable-useful and even beneficial for our contemporaries as the Church was ‘natural’, indispensable and generous for our ancestors a few centuries ago.<br /> <br /> In fact, the Church has been replaced today in its role as the dominant Ideological State Apparatus by the School. It is coupled with the Family just as the Church was once coupled with the Family. We can now claim that the unprecedentedly deep crisis which is now shaking the education system of so many States across the globe, often in conjunction with a crisis (already proclaimed in the Communist Manifesto) shaking the family system, takes on a political meaning, given that the School (and the School/Family couple) constitutes the dominant Ideological State Apparatus, the Apparatus playing a determinant part in the reproduction of the relations of production of a mode of production threatened in its existence by the world class struggle. <br /> == On Ideology ==<br /> When I put forward the concept of an Ideological State Apparatus, when I said that the ISAs ‘function by ideology’, I invoked a reality which needs a little discussion: ideology.<br /> <br /> It is well known that the expression ‘ideology’ was invented by Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy and their friends, who assigned to it as an object the (genetic) theory of ideas. When Marx took up the term fifty years later, he gave it a quite different meaning, even in his Early Works. Here, ideology is the system of the ideas and representations which dominate the mind of a man or a social group. The ideologico-political struggle conducted by Marx as early as his articles in the Rheinische Zeitung inevitably and quickly brought him face to face with this reality and forced him to take his earliest intuitions further.<br /> <br /> However, here we come upon a rather astonishing paradox. Everything seems to lead Marx to formulate a theory of ideology. In fact, The German Ideology does offer us, after the 1844 Manuscripts, an explicit theory of ideology, but ...it is not Marxist (we shall see why in a moment). As for Capital, although it does contain many hints towards a theory of ideologies (most visibly, the ideology of the vulgar economists), it does not contain that theory itself, which depends for the most part on a theory of ideology in general.<br /> <br /> I should like to venture a first and very schematic outline of such a theory. The theses I am about to put forward are certainly not off the cuff, but they cannot be sustained and tested, i.e. confirmed or rejected, except by much thorough study and analysis. <br /> === Ideology has no History ===<br /> One word first of all to expound the reason in principle which seems to me to found, or at least to justify, the project of a theory of ideology in general, and not a theory of particular ideologies, which, whatever their form (religious, ethical, legal, political), always express class positions.<br /> <br /> It is quite obvious that it is necessary to proceed towards a theory of ideologies in the two respects I have just suggested. It will then be clear that a theory of ideologies depends in the last resort on the history of social formations, and thus of the modes of production combined in social formations, and of the class struggles which develop in them. In this sense it is clear that there can be no question of a theory of ideologies in general, since ideologies (defined in the double respect suggested above: regional and class) have a history, whose determination in the last instance is clearly situated outside ideologies alone, although it involves them.<br /> <br /> On the contrary, if I am able to put forward the project of a theory of ideology in general, and if this theory really is one of the elements on which theories of ideologies depend, that entails an apparently paradoxical proposition which I shall express in the following terms: ideology has no history.<br /> <br /> As we know, this formulation appears in so many words in a passage from The German Ideology. Marx utters it with respect to metaphysics, which, he says, has no more history than ethics (meaning also the other forms of ideology).<br /> <br /> In The German Ideology, this formulation appears in a plainly positivist context. Ideology is conceived as a pure illusion, a pure dream, i.e. as nothingness. All its reality is external to it. Ideology is thus thought as an imaginary construction whose status is exactly like the theoretical status of the dream among writers before Freud. For these writers, the dream was the purely imaginary, i.e. null, result of ‘day’s residues’, presented in an arbitrary arrangement and order, sometimes even ‘inverted’, in other words, in ‘disorder’. For them, the dream was the imaginary, it was empty, null and arbitrarily ‘stuck together’ (bricolé), once the eyes had closed, from the residues of the only full and positive reality, the reality of the day. This is exactly the status of philosophy and ideology (since in this book philosophy is ideology par excellence) in The German Ideology.<br /> <br /> Ideology, then, is for Marx an imaginary assemblage (bricolage), a pure dream, empty and vain, constituted by the ‘day’s residues’ from the only full and positive reality, that of the concrete history of concrete material individuals materially producing their existence. It is on this basis that ideology has no history in The German Ideology, since its history is outside it, where the only existing history is, the history of concrete individuals, etc. In The German Ideology, the thesis that ideology has no history is therefore a purely negative thesis, since it means both:<br /> <br /> 1. ideology is nothing insofar as it is a pure dream (manufactured by who knows what power: if not by the alienation of the division of labour, but that, too, is a negative determination);<br /> <br /> 2. ideology has no history, which emphatically does not mean that there is no history in it (on the contrary, for it is merely the pale, empty and inverted reflection of real history) but that it has no history of its own.<br /> <br /> Now, while the thesis I wish to defend formally speaking adopts the terms of The German Ideology (‘ideology has no history’), it is radically different from the positivist and historicist thesis of The German Ideology.<br /> <br /> For on the one hand, I think it is possible to hold that ideologies have a history of their own (although it is determined in the last instance by the class struggle); and on the other, I think it is possible to hold that ideology in general has no history, not in a negative sense (its history is external to it), but in an absolutely positive sense.<br /> <br /> This sense is a positive one if it is true that the peculiarity of ideology is that it is endowed with a structure and a functioning such as to make it a non-historical reality, i.e. an omni-historical reality, in the sense in which that structure and functioning are immutable, present in the same form throughout what we can call history, in the sense in which the Communist Manifesto defines history as the history of class struggles, i.e. the history of class societies.<br /> <br /> To give a theoretical reference-point here, I might say that, to return to our example of the dream, in its Freudian conception this time, our proposition: ideology has no history, can and must (and in a way which has absolutely nothing arbitrary about it, but, quite the reverse, is theoretically necessary, for there is an organic link between the two propositions) be related directly to Freud’s proposition that the unconscious is eternal, i.e. that it has no history.<br /> <br /> If eternal means, not transcendent to all (temporal) history, but omnipresent, trans-historical and therefore immutable in form throughout the extent of history, I shall adopt Freud’s expression word for word, and write ideology is eternal, exactly like the unconscious. And I add that I find this comparison theoretically justified by the fact that the eternity of the unconscious is not unrelated to the eternity of ideology in general.<br /> <br /> That is why I believe I am justified, hypothetically at least, in proposing a theory of ideology in general, in the sense that Freud presented a theory of the unconscious in general.<br /> <br /> To simplify the phrase, it is convenient, taking into account what has been said about ideologies, to use the plain term ideology to designate ideology in general, which I have just said has no history, or, what comes to the same thing, is eternal, i.e. omnipresent in its immutable form throughout history (= the history of social formations containing social classes). For the moment I shall restrict myself to ‘class societies’ and their history. <br /> === Ideology is a ‘Representation’ of the Imaginary Relationship of Individuals to their Real Conditions of Existence ===<br /> In order to approach my central thesis on the structure and functioning of ideology, I shall first present two theses, one negative, the other positive. The first concerns the object which is ‘represented’ in the imaginary form of ideology, the second concerns the materiality of ideology.<br /> <br /> Thesis I. Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.<br /> <br /> We commonly call religious ideology, ethical ideology, legal ideology, political ideology, etc., so many ‘world outlooks’. Of course, assuming that we do not live one of these ideologies as the truth (e.g. ‘believe’ in God, Duty, Justice, etc....), we admit that the ideology we are discussing from a critical point of view, examining it as the ethnologist examines the myths of a ‘primitive society’, that these ‘world outlooks’ are largely imaginary, i.e. do not ‘correspond to reality’.<br /> <br /> However, while admitting that they do not correspond to reality, i.e. that they constitute an illusion, we admit that they do make allusion to reality, and that they need only be ‘interpreted’ to discover the reality of the world behind their imaginary representation of that world (ideology = illusion/allusion).<br /> <br /> There are different types of interpretation, the most famous of which are the mechanistic type, current in the eighteenth century (God is the imaginary representation of the real King), and the ‘hermeneutic ‘ interpretation, inaugurated by the earliest Church Fathers, and revived by Feuerbach and the theologico-philosophical school which descends from him, e.g. the theologian Barth (to Feuerbach, for example, God is the essence of real Man). The essential point is that on condition that we interpret the imaginary transposition (and inversion) of ideology we arrive at the conclusion that in ideology ‘men represent their real conditions of existence to themselves in an imaginary form’.<br /> <br /> Unfortunately, this interpretation leaves one small problem unsettled: why do men ‘need’ this imaginary transposition of their real conditions of existence in order to ‘represent to themselves’ their real conditions of existence?<br /> <br /> The first answer (that of the eighteenth century) proposes a simple solution: Priests or Despots are responsible. They ‘forged’ the Beautiful Lies so that, in the belief that they were obeying God, men would in fact obey the Priests and Despots, who are usually in alliance in their imposture, the Priests acting in the interests of the Despots or vice versa, according to the political positions of the ‘theoreticians’ concerned. There is therefore a cause for the imaginary transposition of the real conditions of existence: that cause is the existence of a small number of cynical men who base their domination and exploitation of the ‘people’ on a falsified representation of the world which they have imagined in order to enslave other minds by dominating their imaginations.<br /> <br /> The second answer (that of Feuerbach, taken over word for word by Marx in his Early Works) is more ‘profound’, i.e. just as false. It, too, seeks and finds a cause for the imaginary transposition and distortion of men’s real conditions of existence, in short, for the alienation in the imaginary of the representation of men’s conditions of existence. This cause is no longer Priests or Despots, nor their active imagination and the passive imagination of their victims. This cause is the material alienation which reigns in the conditions of existence of men themselves. This is how, in The Jewish Question and elsewhere, Marx defends the Feuerbachian idea that men make themselves an alienated (= imaginary) representation of their conditions of existence because these conditions of existence are themselves alienating (in the 1844 Manuscripts: because these conditions are dominated by the essence of alienated society – ‘alienated labour’).<br /> <br /> All these interpretations thus take literally the thesis which they presuppose, and on which they depend, i.e. that what is reflected in the imaginary representation of the world found in an ideology is the conditions of existence of men, i.e. their real world.<br /> <br /> Now I can return to a thesis which I have already advanced: it is not their real conditions of existence, their real world, that ‘men’ ‘represent to themselves’ in ideology, but above all it is their relation to those conditions of existence which is represented to them there. It is this relation which is at the centre of every ideological, i.e. imaginary, representation of the real world. It is this relation that contains the ‘cause’ which has to explain the imaginary distortion of the ideological representation of the real world. Or rather, to leave aside the language of causality it is necessary to advance the thesis that it is the imaginary nature of this relation which underlies all the imaginary distortion that we can observe (if we do not live in its truth) in all ideology.<br /> <br /> To speak in a Marxist language, if it is true that the representation of the real conditions of existence of the individuals occupying the posts of agents of production, exploitation, repression, ideologization and scientific practice, does in the last analysis arise from the relations of production, and from relations deriving from the relations of production, we can say the following: all ideology represents in its necessarily imaginary distortion not the existing relations of production (and the other relations that derive from them), but above all the (imaginary) relationship of individuals to the relations of production and the relations that derive from them. What is represented in ideology is therefore not the system of the real relations which govern the existence of individuals, but the imaginary relation of those individuals to the real relations in which they live.<br /> <br /> If this is the case, the question of the ‘cause’ of the imaginary distortion of the real relations in ideology disappears and must be replaced by a different question: why is the representation given to individuals of their (individual) relation to the social relations which govern their conditions of existence and their collective and individual life necessarily an imaginary relation? And what is the nature of this imaginariness? Posed in this way, the question explodes the solution by a ‘clique’[14], by a group of individuals (Priests or Despots) who are the authors of the great ideological mystification, just as it explodes the solution by the alienated character of the real world. We shall see why later in my exposition. For the moment I shall go no further.<br /> <br /> Thesis II: Ideology has a material existence.<br /> <br /> I have already touched on this thesis by saying that the ‘ideas’ or ‘representations’, etc., which seem to make up ideology do not have an ideal (idéale or idéelle) or spiritual existence, but a material existence. I even suggested that the ideal (idéale, idéelle) and spiritual existence of ‘ideas’ arises exclusively in an ideology of the ‘idea’ and of ideology, and let me add, in an ideology of what seems to have ‘founded’ this conception since the emergence of the sciences, i.e. what the practicians of the sciences represent to themselves in their spontaneous ideology as ‘ideas’, true or false. Of course, presented in affirmative form, this thesis is unproven. I simply ask that the reader be favourably disposed towards it, say, in the name of materialism. A long series of arguments would be necessary to prove it.<br /> <br /> This hypothetical thesis of the not spiritual but material existence of ‘ideas’ or other ‘representations’ is indeed necessary if we are to advance in our analysis of the nature of ideology. Or rather, it is merely useful to us in order the better to reveal what every at all serious analysis of any ideology will immediately and empirically show to every observer, however critical.<br /> <br /> While discussing the Ideological State Apparatuses and their practices, I said that each of them was the realization of an ideology (the unity of these different regional ideologies – religious, ethical, legal, political, aesthetic, etc. – being assured by their subjection to the ruling ideology). I now return to this thesis: an ideology always exists in an apparatus, and its practice, or practices. This existence is material.<br /> <br /> Of course, the material existence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not have the same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a rifle. But, at the risk of being taken for a Neo-Aristotelian (NB Marx had a very high regard for Aristotle), I shall say that ‘matter is discussed in many senses’, or rather that it exists in different modalities, all rooted in the last instance in ‘physical’ matter.<br /> <br /> Having said this, let me move straight on and see what happens to the ‘individuals’ who live in ideology, i.e. in a determinate (religious, ethical, etc.) representation of the world whose imaginary distortion depends on their imaginary relation to their conditions of existence, in other words, in the last instance, to the relations of production and to class relations (ideology = an imaginary relation to real relations). I shall say that this imaginary relation is itself endowed with a material existence.<br /> <br /> Now I observe the following.<br /> <br /> An individual believes in God, or Duty, or Justice, etc. This belief derives (for everyone, i.e. for all those who live in an ideological representation of ideology, which reduces ideology to ideas endowed by definition with a spiritual existence) from the ideas of the individual concerned, i.e. from him as a subject with a consciousness which contains the ideas of his belief. In this way, i.e. by means of the absolutely ideological ‘conceptual’ device (dispositif) thus set up (a subject endowed with a consciousness in which he freely forms or freely recognizes ideas in which he believes), the (material) attitude of the subject concerned naturally follows.<br /> <br /> The individual in question behaves in such and such a way, adopts such and such a practical attitude, and, what is more, participates in certain regular practices which are those of the ideological apparatus on which ‘depend’ the ideas which he has in all consciousness freely chosen as a subject. If he believes in God, he goes to Church to attend Mass, kneels, prays, confesses, does penance (once it was material in the ordinary sense of the term) and naturally repents and so on. If he believes in Duty, he will have the corresponding attitudes, inscribed in ritual practices ‘according to the correct principles’. If he believes in Justice, he will submit unconditionally to the rules of the Law, and may even protest when they are violated, sign petitions, take part in a demonstration, etc.<br /> <br /> Throughout this schema we observe that the ideological representation of ideology is itself forced to recognize that every ‘subject’ endowed with a ‘consciousness’ and believing in the ‘ideas’ that his ‘consciousness’ inspires in him and freely accepts, must ‘act according to his ideas’, must therefore inscribe his own ideas as a free subject in the actions of his material practice. If he does not do so, ‘that is wicked’.<br /> <br /> Indeed, if he does not do what he ought to do as a function of what he believes, it is because he does something else, which, still as a function of the same idealist scheme, implies that he has other ideas in his head as well as those he proclaims, and that he acts according to these other ideas, as a man who is either ‘inconsistent’ (‘no one is willingly evil’) or cynical, or perverse.<br /> <br /> In every case, the ideology of ideology thus recognizes, despite its imaginary distortion, that the ‘ideas’ of a human subject exist in his actions, or ought to exist in his actions, and if that is not the case, it lends him other ideas corresponding to the actions (however perverse) that he does perform. This ideology talks of actions: I shall talk of actions inserted into practices. And I shall point out that these practices are governed by the rituals in which these practices are inscribed, within the material existence of an ideological apparatus, be it only a small part of that apparatus: a small mass in a small church, a funeral, a minor match at a sports’ club, a school day, a political party meeting, etc.<br /> <br /> Besides, we are indebted to Pascal’s defensive ‘dialectic’ for the wonderful formula which will enable us to invert the order of the notional schema of ideology. Pascal says more or less: ‘Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe.’ He thus scandalously inverts the order of things, bringing, like Christ, not peace but strife, and in addition something hardly Christian (for woe to him who brings scandal into the world!) – scandal itself. A fortunate scandal which makes him stick with Jansenist defiance to a language that directly names the reality.<br /> <br /> I will be allowed to leave Pascal to the arguments of his ideological struggle with the religious Ideological State Apparatus of his day. And I shall be expected to use a more directly Marxist vocabulary, if that is possible, for we are advancing in still poorly explored domains.<br /> <br /> I shall therefore say that, where only a single subject (such and such an individual) is concerned, the existence of the ideas of his belief is material in that his ideas are his material actions inserted into material practices governed by material rituals which are themselves defined by the material ideological apparatus from which derive the ideas of that subject. Naturally, the four inscriptions of the adjective ‘material’ in my proposition must be affected by different modalities: the materialities of a displacement for going to mass, of kneeling down, of the gesture of the sign of the cross, or of the mea culpa, of a sentence, of a prayer, of an act of contrition, of a penitence, of a gaze, of a hand-shake, of an external verbal discourse or an ‘internal’ verbal discourse (consciousness), are not one and the same materiality. I shall leave on one side the problem of a theory of the differences between the modalities of materiality.<br /> <br /> It remains that in this inverted presentation of things, we are not dealing with an ‘inversion’ at all, since it is clear that certain notions have purely and simply disappeared from our presentation, whereas others on the contrary survive, and new terms appear.<br /> <br /> Disappeared: the term ideas.<br /> <br /> Survive: the terms subject, consciousness, belief, actions.<br /> <br /> Appear: the terms practices, rituals, ideological apparatus.<br /> <br /> It is therefore not an inversion or overturning (except in the sense in which one might say a government or a glass is overturned), but a reshuffle (of a non-ministerial type), a rather strange reshuffle, since we obtain the following result.<br /> <br /> Ideas have disappeared as such (insofar as they are endowed with an ideal or spiritual existence), to the precise extent that it has emerged that their existence is inscribed in the actions of practices governed by rituals defined in the last instance by an ideological apparatus. It therefore appears that the subject acts insofar as he is acted by the following system (set out in the order of its real determination): ideology existing in a material ideological apparatus, prescribing material practices governed by a material ritual, which practices exist in the material actions of a subject acting in all consciousness according to his belief.<br /> <br /> But this very presentation reveals that we have retained the following notions: subject, consciousness, belief, actions. From this series I shall immediately extract the decisive central term on which everything else depends: the notion of the subject.<br /> <br /> And I shall immediately set down two conjoint theses:<br /> <br /> 1. there is no practice except by and in an ideology;<br /> <br /> 2. there is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects.<br /> <br /> I can now come to my central thesis. <br /> === Ideology Interpellates Individuals as Subjects ===<br /> This thesis is simply a matter of making my last proposition explicit: there is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects. Meaning, there is no ideology except for concrete subjects, and this destination for ideology is only made possible by the subject: meaning, by the category of the subject and its functioning.<br /> <br /> By this I mean that, even if it only appears under this name (the subject) with the rise of bourgeois ideology, above all with the rise of legal ideology,[15] the category of the subject (which may function under other names: e.g., as the soul in Plato, as God, etc.) is the constitutive category of all ideology, whatever its determination (regional or class) and whatever its historical date – since ideology has no history.<br /> <br /> I say: the category of the subject is constitutive of all ideology, but at the same time and immediately I add that the category of the subject is only constitutive of all ideology insofar as all ideology has the function (which defines it) of ‘constituting ‘ concrete individuals as subjects. In the interaction of this double constitution exists the functioning of all ideology, ideology being nothing but its functioning in the material forms of existence of that functioning.<br /> <br /> In order to grasp what follows, it is essential to realize that both he who is writing these lines and the reader who reads them are themselves subjects, and therefore ideological subjects (a tautological proposition), i.e. that the author and the reader of these lines both live ‘spontaneously’ or ‘naturally’ in ideology in the sense in which I have said that ‘man is an ideological animal by nature’.<br /> <br /> That the author, insofar as he writes the lines of a discourse which claims to be scientific, is completely absent as a ‘subject’ from ‘his’ scientific discourse (for all scientific discourse is by definition a subject-less discourse, there is no ‘Subject of science’ except in an ideology of science) is a different question which I shall leave on one side for the moment.<br /> <br /> As St Paul admirably put it, it is in the ‘Logos’, meaning in ideology, that we ‘live, move and have our being’. It follows that, for you and for me, the category of the subject is a primary ‘obviousness’ (obviousnesses are always primary): it is clear that you and I are subjects (free, ethical, etc....). Like all obviousnesses, including those that make a word ‘name a thing’ or ‘have a meaning’ (therefore including the obviousness of the ‘transparency’ of language), the ‘obviousness’ that you and I are subjects – and that that does not cause any problems – is an ideological effect, the elementary ideological effect.[16] It is indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes (without appearing to do so, since these are ‘obviousnesses’) obviousnesses as obviousnesses, which we cannot fail to recognize and before which we have the inevitable and natural reaction of crying out (aloud or in the ‘still, small voice of conscience’): ‘That’s obvious! That’s right! That’s true!’<br /> <br /> At work in this reaction is the ideological recognition function which is one of the two functions of ideology as such (its inverse being the function of misrecognition – méconnaissance).<br /> <br /> To take a highly ‘concrete’ example, we all have friends who, when they knock on our door and we ask, through the door, the question ‘Who’s there?’, answer (since ‘it’s obvious’) ‘It’s me’. And we recognize that ‘it is him’, or ‘her’. We open the door, and ‘it’s true, it really was she who was there’. To take another example, when we recognize somebody of our (previous) acquaintance ((re)-connaissance) in the street, we show him that we have recognized him (and have recognized that he has recognized us) by saying to him ‘Hello, my friend’, and shaking his hand (a material ritual practice of ideological recognition in everyday life – in France, at least; elsewhere, there are other rituals).<br /> <br /> In this preliminary remark and these concrete illustrations, I only wish to point out that you and I are always already subjects, and as such constantly practice the rituals of ideological recognition, which guarantee for us that we are indeed concrete, individual, distinguishable and (naturally) irreplaceable subjects. The writing I am currently executing and the reading you are currently[17] performing are also in this respect rituals of ideological recognition, including the ‘obviousness’ with which the ‘truth’ or ‘error’ of my reflections may impose itself on you.<br /> <br /> But to recognize that we are subjects and that we function in the practical rituals of the most elementary everyday life (the hand-shake, the fact of calling you by your name, the fact of knowing, even if I do not know what it is, that you ‘have’ a name of your own, which means that you are recognized as a unique subject, etc.) – this recognition only gives us the ‘consciousness’ of our incessant (eternal) practice of ideological recognition – its consciousness, i.e. its recognition – but in no sense does it give us the (scientific) knowledge of the mechanism of this recognition. Now it is this knowledge that we have to reach, if you will, while speaking in ideology, and from within ideology we have to outline a discourse which tries to break with ideology, in order to dare to be the beginning of a scientific (i.e. subject-less) discourse on ideology.<br /> <br /> Thus in order to represent why the category of the ‘subject’ is constitutive of ideology, which only exists by constituting concrete subjects as subjects, I shall employ a special mode of exposition: ‘concrete’ enough to be recognized, but abstract enough to be thinkable and thought, giving rise to a knowledge.<br /> <br /> As a first formulation I shall say: all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, by the functioning of the category of the subject.<br /> <br /> This is a proposition which entails that we distinguish for the moment between concrete individuals on the one hand and concrete subjects on the other, although at this level concrete subjects only exist insofar as they are supported by a concrete individual.<br /> <br /> I shall then suggest that ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way that it ‘recruits’ subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or ‘transforms’ the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: ‘Hey, you there!’[18]<br /> <br /> Assuming that the theoretical scene I have imagined takes place in the street, the hailed individual will turn round. By this mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject. Why? Because he has recognized that the hail was ‘really’ addressed to him, and that ‘it was really him who was hailed’ (and not someone else). Experience shows that the practical telecommunication of hailings is such that they hardly ever miss their man: verbal call or whistle, the one hailed always recognizes that it is really him who is being hailed. And yet it is a strange phenomenon, and one which cannot be explained solely by ‘guilt feelings’, despite the large numbers who ‘have something on their consciences’.<br /> <br /> Naturally for the convenience and clarity of my little theoretical theatre I have had to present things in the form of a sequence, with a before and an after, and thus in the form of a temporal succession. There are individuals walking along. Somewhere (usually behind them) the hail rings out: ‘Hey, you there!’ One individual (nine times out of ten it is the right one) turns round, believing/suspecting/knowing that it is for him, i.e. recognizing that ‘it really is he’ who is meant by the hailing. But in reality these things happen without any succession. The existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the same thing.<br /> <br /> I might add: what thus seems to take place outside ideology (to be precise, in the street), in reality takes place in ideology. What really takes place in ideology seems therefore to take place outside it. That is why those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the practical denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, ‘I am ideological’. It is necessary to be outside ideology, i.e. in scientific knowledge, to be able to say: I am in ideology (a quite exceptional case) or (the general case): I was in ideology. As is well known, the accusation of being in ideology only applies to others, never to oneself (unless one is really a Spinozist or a Marxist, which, in this matter, is to be exactly the same thing). Which amounts to saying that ideology has no outside (for itself), but at the same time that it is nothing but outside (for science and reality).<br /> <br /> Spinoza explained this completely two centuries before Marx, who practised it but without explaining it in detail. But let us leave this point, although it is heavy with consequences, consequences which are not just theoretical, but also directly political, since, for example, the whole theory of criticism and self-criticism, the golden rule of the Marxist-Leninist practice of the class struggle, depends on it.<br /> <br /> Thus ideology hails or interpellates individuals as subjects. As ideology is eternal, I must now suppress the temporal form in which I have presented the functioning of ideology, and say: ideology has always-already interpellated individuals as subjects, which amounts to making it clear that individuals are always-already interpellated by ideology as subjects, which necessarily leads us to one last proposition: individuals are always-already subjects. Hence individuals are ‘abstract’ with respect to the subjects which they always already are. This proposition might seem paradoxical.<br /> <br /> That an individual is always-already a subject, even before he is born, is nevertheless the plain reality, accessible to everyone and not a paradox at all. Freud shows that individuals are always ‘abstract’ with respect to the subjects they always-already are, simply by noting the ideological ritual that surrounds the expectation of a ‘birth’, that ‘happy event’. Everyone knows how much and in what way an unborn child is expected. Which amounts to saying, very prosaically, if we agree to drop the ‘sentiments’, i.e. the forms of family ideology (paternal/maternal conjugal/fraternal) in which the unborn child is expected: it is certain in advance that it will bear its Father’s Name, and will therefore have an identity and be irreplaceable. Before its birth, the child is therefore always-already a subject, appointed as a subject in and by the specific familial ideological configuration in which it is ‘expected’ once it has been conceived. I hardly need add that this familial ideological configuration is, in its uniqueness, highly structured, and that it is in this implacable and more or less ‘pathological’ (presupposing that any meaning can be assigned to that term) structure that the former subject to-be will have to ‘find’ ‘its’ place, i.e. ‘become’ the sexual subject (boy or girl) which it already is in advance. It is clear that this ideological constraint and pre-appointment, and all the rituals of rearing and then education in the family, have some relationship with what Freud studied in the forms of the pre-genital and genital ‘stages’ of sexuality, i.e. in the ‘grip’ of what Freud registered by its effects as being the unconscious. But let us leave this point, too, on one side.<br /> <br /> Let me go one step further. What I shall now turn my attention to is the way the ‘actors’ in this mise en scène [setting] of interpellation, and their respective roles, are reflected in the very structure of all ideology. <br /> === An Example: The Christian Religious Ideology ===<br /> As the formal structure of all ideology is always the same, I shall restrict my analysis to a single example, one accessible to everyone, that of religious ideology, with the proviso that the same demonstration can be produced for ethical, legal, political, aesthetic ideology, etc.<br /> <br /> Let us therefore consider the Christian religious ideology. I shall use a rhetorical figure and ‘make it speak’, i.e. collect into a fictional discourse what it ‘says’ not only in its two Testaments, its Theologians, Sermons, but also in its practices, its rituals, its ceremonies and its sacraments. The Christian religious ideology says something like this:<br /> <br /> It says: I address myself to you, a human individual called Peter (every individual is called by his name, in the passive sense, it is never he who provides his own name), in order to tell you that God exists and that you are answer able to Him. It adds: God addresses himself to you through my voice (Scripture having collected the Word of God, Tradition having transmitted it, Papal Infallibility fixing it for ever on ‘nice’ points). It says: this is who you are: you are Peter! This is your origin, you were created by God for all eternity, although you were born in the 1920th year of Our Lord! This is your place in the world! This is what you must do! By these means, if you observe the ‘law of love’ you will be saved, you, Peter, and will become part of the Glorious Body of Christ! Etc....<br /> <br /> Now this is quite a familiar and banal discourse, but at the same time quite a surprising one.<br /> <br /> Surprising because if we consider that religious ideology is indeed addressed to individuals,[19] in order to ‘transform them into subjects’, by interpellating the individual, Peter, in order to make him a subject, free to obey or disobey the appeal, i.e. God’s commandments; if it calls these individuals by their names, thus recognizing that they are always-already interpellated as subjects with a personal identity (to the extent that Pascal’s Christ says: ‘It is for you that I have shed this drop of my blood!’); if it interpellates them in such a way that the subject responds: ‘Yes, it really is me!’ if it obtains from them the recognition that they really do occupy the place it designates for them as theirs in the world, a fixed residence: ‘It really is me, I am here, a worker, a boss or a soldier!’ in this vale of tears; if it obtains from them the recognition of a destination (eternal life or damnation) according to the respect or contempt they show to ‘God’s Commandments’, Law become Love; – if everything does happen in this way (in the practices of the well-known rituals of baptism, confirmation, communion, confession and extreme unction, etc. ...), we should note that all this ‘procedure’ to set up Christian religious subjects is dominated by a strange phenomenon: the fact that there can only be such a multitude of possible religious subjects on the absolute condition that there is a Unique, Absolute, Other Subject, i.e. God.<br /> <br /> It is convenient to designate this new and remarkable Subject by writing Subject with a capital S to distinguish it from ordinary subjects, with a small s.<br /> <br /> It then emerges that the interpellation of individuals as subjects presupposes the ‘existence’ of a Unique and central Other Subject, in whose Name the religious ideology interpellates all individuals as subjects. All this is clearly[20] written in what is rightly called the Scriptures. ‘And it came to pass at that time that God the Lord (Yahweh) spoke to Moses in the cloud. And the Lord cried to Moses, “Moses!” And Moses replied “It is (really) I! I am Moses thy servant, speak and I shall listen!” And the Lord spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am that I am&quot;’.<br /> <br /> God thus defines himself as the Subject par excellence, he who is through himself and for himself (‘I am that I am’), and he who interpellates his subject, the individual subjected to him by his very interpellation, i.e. the individual named Moses. And Moses, interpellated-called by his Name, having recognized that it ‘really’ was he who was called by God, recognizes that he is a subject, a subject of God, a subject subjected to God, a subject through the Subject and subjected to the Subject. The proof: he obeys him, and makes his people obey God’s Commandments.<br /> <br /> God is thus the Subject, and Moses and the innumerable subjects of God’s people, the Subject’s interlocutors-interpellates: his mirrors, his reflections. Were not men made in the image of God? As all theological reflection proves, whereas He ‘could’ perfectly well have done without men, God needs them, the Subject needs the subjects, just as men need God, the subjects need the Subject. Better: God needs men, the great Subject needs subjects, even in the terrible inversion of his image in them (when the subjects wallow in debauchery, i.e. sin).<br /> <br /> Better: God duplicates himself and sends his Son to the Earth, as a mere subject ‘forsaken’ by him (the long complaint of the Garden of Olives which ends in the Crucifixion), subject but Subject, man but God, to do what prepares the way for the final Redemption, the Resurrection of Christ. God thus needs to ‘make himself’ a man, the Subject needs to become a subject, as if to show empirically, visibly to the eye, tangibly to the hands (see St. Thomas) of the subjects, that, if they are subjects, subjected to the Subject, that is solely in order that finally, on Judgement Day, they will re-enter the Lord’s Bosom, like Christ, i.e. re-enter the Subject.[21]<br /> <br /> Let us decipher into theoretical language this wonderful necessity for the duplication of the Subject into subjects and of the Subject itself into a subject-Subject.<br /> <br /> We observe that the structure of all ideology, interpellating individuals as subjects in the name of a Unique and Absolute Subject is speculary, i.e. a mirror-structure, and doubly speculary: this mirror duplication is constitutive of ideology and ensures its functioning. Which means that all ideology is centred, that the Absolute Subject occupies the unique place of the Centre, and interpellates around it the infinity of individuals into subjects in a double mirror-connexion such that it subjects the subjects to the Subject, while giving them in the Subject in which each subject can contemplate its own image (present and future) the guarantee that this really concerns them and Him, and that since everything takes place in the Family (the Holy Family: the Family is in essence Holy), ‘God will recognize his own in it’, i.e. those who have recognized God, and have recognized themselves in Him, will be saved.<br /> <br /> Let me summarize what we have discovered about ideology in general.<br /> <br /> The duplicate mirror-structure of ideology ensures simultaneously:<br /> <br /> 1. the interpellation of ‘individuals’ as subjects;<br /> <br /> 2. their subjection to the Subject;<br /> <br /> 3. the mutual recognition of subjects and Subject, the subjects’ recognition of each other, and finally the subject’s recognition of himself;[22]<br /> <br /> 4. the absolute guarantee that everything really is so, and that on condition that the subjects recognize what they are and behave accordingly, everything will be all right: Amen – ‘So be it’.<br /> <br /> Result: caught in this quadruple system of interpellation as subjects, of subjection to the Subject, of universal recognition and of absolute guarantee, the subjects ‘work’, they ‘work by themselves’ in the vast majority of cases, with the exception of the ‘bad subjects’ who on occasion provoke the intervention of one of the detachments of the (Repressive) State Apparatus. But the vast majority of (good) subjects work all right ‘all by themselves’, i.e. by ideology (whose concrete forms are realized in the Ideological State Apparatuses). They are inserted into practices governed by the rituals of the ISAs. They ‘recognize’ the existing state of affairs (das Bestehende), that ‘it really is true that it is so and not otherwise’, and that they must be obedient to God, to their conscience, to the priest, to de Gaulle, to the boss, to the engineer, that thou shalt ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’, etc. Their concrete, material behaviour is simply the inscription in life of the admirable words of the prayer: ‘Amen – So be it’.<br /> <br /> Yes, the subjects ‘work by themselves’. The whole mystery of this effect lies in the first two moments of the quadruple system I have just discussed, or, if you prefer, in the ambiguity of the term subject. In the ordinary use of the term, subject in fact means: (1) a free subjectivity, a centre of initiatives, author of and responsible for its actions; (2) a subjected being, who submits to a higher authority, and is therefore stripped of all freedom except that of freely accepting his submission. This last note gives us the meaning of this ambiguity, which is merely a reflection of the effect which produces it: the individual is interpellated as a (free) subject in order that he shall submit freely to the commandments of the Subject, i.e. in order that he shall (freely) accept his subjection, i.e. in order that he shall make the gestures and actions of his subjection ‘all by himself’. There are no subjects except by and for their subjection. That is why they ‘work all by themselves’.<br /> <br /> ‘So be it! ...’ This phrase which registers the effect to be obtained proves that it is not ‘naturally’ so (‘naturally’: outside the prayer, i.e. outside the ideological intervention). This phrase proves that it has to be so if things are to be what they must be, and let us let the words slip: if the reproduction of the relations of production is to be assured, even in the processes of production and circulation, every day, in the ‘consciousness’, i.e. in the attitudes of the individual-subjects occupying the posts which the socio-technical division of labour assigns to them in production, exploitation, repression, ideologization, scientific practice, etc. Indeed, what is really in question in this mechanism of the mirror recognition of the Subject and of the individuals interpellated as subjects, and of the guarantee given by the Subject to the subjects if they freely accept their subjection to the Subject’s ‘commandments’? The reality in question in this mechanism, the reality which is necessarily ignored (méconnue) in the very forms of recognition (ideology = misrecognition/ignorance) is indeed, in the last resort, the reproduction of the relations of production and of the relations deriving from them.<br /> <br /> == Postscript ==<br /> P.S. If these few schematic theses allow me to illuminate certain aspects of the functioning of the Superstructure and its mode of intervention in the Infrastructure, they are obviously abstract and necessarily leave several important problems unanswered, which should be mentioned:<br /> <br /> 1. The problem of the total process of the realization of the reproduction of the relations of production.<br /> <br /> As an element of this process, the ISAs contribute to this reproduction. But the point of view of their contribution alone is still an abstract one.<br /> <br /> It is only within the processes of production and circulation that this reproduction is realized. It is realized by the mechanisms of those processes, in which the training of the workers is ‘completed’, their posts assigned them, etc. It is in the internal mechanisms of these processes that the effect of the different ideologies is felt (above all the effect of legal-ethical ideology).<br /> <br /> But this point of view is still an abstract one. For in a class society the relations of production are relations of exploitation, and therefore relations between antagonistic classes. The reproduction of the relations of production, the ultimate aim of the ruling class, cannot therefore be a merely technical operation training and distributing individuals for the different posts in the ‘technical division’ of labour. In fact there is no ‘technical division’ of labour except in the ideology of the ruling class: every ‘technical’ division, every ‘technical’ organization of labour is the form and mask of a social (= class) division and organization of labour. The reproduction of the relations of production can therefore only be a class undertaking. It is realized through a class struggle which counterposes the ruling class and the exploited class.<br /> <br /> The total process of the realization of the reproduction of the relations of production is therefore still abstract, insofar as it has not adopted the point of view of this class struggle. To adopt the point of view of reproduction is therefore in the last instance, to adopt the point of view of the class struggle.<br /> <br /> 2. The problem of the class nature of the ideologies existing in a social formation.<br /> <br /> The ‘mechanism’ of ideology in general is one thing. We have seen that it can be reduced to a few principles expressed in a few words (as ‘poor’ as those which, according to Marx, define production in general, or in Freud, define the unconscious in general). If there is any truth in it, this mechanism must be abstract with respect to every real ideological formation.<br /> <br /> I have suggested that the ideologies were realized in institutions, in their rituals and their practices, in the ISAs. We have seen that on this basis they contribute to that form of class struggle, vital for the ruling class, the reproduction of the relations of production. But the point of view itself however real, is still an abstract one.<br /> <br /> In fact, the State and its Apparatuses only have meaning from the point of view of the class struggle, as an apparatus of class struggle ensuring class oppression and guaranteeing the conditions of exploitation and its reproduction. But there is no class struggle without antagonistic classes. Whoever says class struggle of the ruling class says resistance, revolt and class struggle of the ruled class.<br /> <br /> That is why the ISAs are not the realization of ideology in general, nor even the conflict-free realization of the ideology of the ruling class. The ideology of the ruling class does not become the ruling ideology by the grace of God, nor even by virtue of the seizure of State power alone. It is by the installation of the ISAs in which this ideology is realized and realizes itself that it becomes the ruling ideology. But this installation is not achieved all by itself; on the contrary, it is the stake in a very bitter and continuous class struggle: first against the former ruling classes and their positions in the old and new ISAs, then against the exploited class.<br /> <br /> But this point of view of the class struggle in the ISAs is still an abstract one. In fact, the class struggle in the ISAs is indeed an aspect of the class struggle, sometimes an important and symptomatic one: e.g. the anti-religious struggle in the eighteenth century, or the ‘crisis’ of the educational ISA in every capitalist country today. But the class struggles in the ISAs is only one aspect of a class struggle which goes beyond the ISAs. The ideology that a class in power makes the ruling ideology in its ISAs is indeed ‘realized’ in those ISAs, but it goes beyond them, for it comes from elsewhere. Similarly, the ideology that a ruled class manages to defend in and against such ISAs goes beyond them, for it comes from elsewhere.<br /> <br /> It is only from the point of view of the classes, i.e. of the class struggle, that it is possible to explain the ideologies existing in a social formation. Not only is it from this starting-point that it is possible to explain the realization of the ruling ideology in the ISAs and of the forms of class struggle for which the ISAs are the seat and the stake. But it is also and above all from this starting-point that it is possible to understand the provenance of the ideologies which are realized in the ISAs and confront one another there. For if it is true that the ISAs represent the form in which the ideology of the ruling class must necessarily be realized, and the form in which the ideology of the ruled class must necessarily be measured and confronted, ideologies are not ‘born’ in the ISAs but from the social classes at grips in the class struggle: from their conditions of existence, their practices, their experience of the struggle, etc. <br /> <br /> == Footnotes ==<br /> 1. This text is made up of two extracts from an ongoing study. The sub-title ‘Notes towards an Investigation’ is the author’s own. The ideas expounded should not be regarded as more than the introduction to a discussion.<br /> <br /> 2. Marx to Kugelmann, 11 July 1868, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1955, p. 209.<br /> <br /> 3. Marx gave it its scientific concept: variable capital.<br /> <br /> 4. In For Marx and Reading Capital, 1965 (English editions 1969 and 1970 respectively).<br /> <br /> 5. Topography from the Greek topos: place. A topography represents in a definite space the respective sites occupied by several realities: thus the economic is at the bottom (the base), the superstructure above it.<br /> <br /> 6. See p. 158 below, On Ideology.<br /> <br /> 7. To my knowledge, Gramsci is the only one who went any distance in the road I am taking. He had the ‘remarkable’ idea that the State could not be reduced to the (Repressive) State Apparatus, but included, as he put it, a certain number of institutions from ‘civil society’: the Church, the Schools, the trade unions, etc. Unfortunately, Gramsci did not systematize his institutions, which remained in the state of acute but fragmentary notes (cf. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, International Publishers, 1971, pp. 12, 259, 260-3; see also the letter to Tatiana Schucht, 7 September 1931, in Lettre del Carcere, Einaudi, 1968, p. 479. English-language translation in preparation.<br /> <br /> 8. The family obviously has other ‘functions’ than that of an ISA. It intervenes in the reproduction of labour power. In different modes of production it is the unit of production and/or the unit of consumption.<br /> <br /> 9. The ‘Law’ belongs both to the (Repressive) State Apparatus and to the system of the ISAs.<br /> <br /> 10. In a pathetic text written in 1937, Krupskaya relates the history of Lenin’s desperate efforts and what she regards as his failure.<br /> <br /> 11. What I have said in these few brief words about the class struggle in the ISAs is obviously far from exhausting the question of the class struggle.<br /> <br /> To approach this question, two principles must be borne in mind:<br /> <br /> The first principle was formulated by Marx in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: ‘In considering such transformations [a social revolution] a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.’ The class struggle is thus expressed and exercised in ideological forms, thus also in the ideological forms of the ISAs. But the class struggle extends far beyond these forms, and it is because it extends beyond them that the struggle of the exploited classes may also be exercised in the forms of the ISAs, and thus turn the weapon of ideology against the classes in power.<br /> <br /> This by virtue of the second principle: the class struggle extends beyond the ISAs because it is rooted elsewhere than in ideology, in the Infrastructure, in the relations of production, which are relations of exploitation and constitute the base for class relations.<br /> <br /> 12. For the most part. For the relations of production are first reproduced by the materiality of the processes of production and circulation. But it should not be forgotten that ideological relations are immediately present in these same processes.<br /> <br /> 13. For that part of reproduction to which the Repressive State Apparatus and the Ideological State Apparatus contribute.<br /> <br /> 14. I use this very modern term deliberately. For even in Communist circles, unfortunately, it is a commonplace to ‘explain’ some political deviation (left or right opportunism) by the action of a ‘clique’.<br /> <br /> 15. Which borrowed the legal category of ‘subject in law’ to make an ideological notion: man is by nature a subject.<br /> <br /> 16. Linguists and those who appeal to linguistics for various purposes often run up against difficulties which arise because they ignore the action of the ideological effects in all discourses – including even scientific discourses.<br /> <br /> 17. NB: this double ‘currently’ is one more proof of the fact that ideology is ‘eternal’, since these two ‘currentlys’ are separated by an indefinite interval; I am writing these lines on 6 April 1969, you may read them at any subsequent time.<br /> <br /> 18. Hailing as an everyday practice subject to a precise ritual takes a quite ‘special’ form in the policeman’s practice of ‘hailing’ which concerns the hailing of ‘suspects’.<br /> <br /> 19. Although we know that the individual is always already a subject, we go on using this term, convenient because of the contrasting effect it produces.<br /> <br /> 20. I am quoting in a combined way, not to the letter but ‘in spirit and truth’.<br /> <br /> 21. The dogma of the Trinity is precisely the theory of the duplication of the Subject (the Father) into a subject (the Son) and of their mirror-connexion (the Holy Spirit).<br /> <br /> 22. Hegel is (unknowingly) an admirable ‘theoretician’ of ideology insofar as he is a ‘theoretician’ of Universal Recognition who unfortunately ends up in the ideology of Absolute Knowledge. Feuerbach is an astonishing ‘theoretician’ of the mirror connexion, who unfortunately ends up in the ideology of the Human Essence. To find the material with which to construct a theory of the guarantee, we must turn to Spinoza.<br /> [[Category:Library works by Louis Althusser]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about philosophy]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Human_Rights_in_the_Soviet_Union&diff=75999 2024-09-30T12:46:56Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Human Rights in the Soviet Union|author=Albert Szymanski|written in=1984|type=Book|source=[https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=C597B1232D9EA6B0F3DCB438D7E15A81 Libgen]}}<br /> <br /> To the disappeared persons and thousands of others who have been killed in Latin America since the mid-1960’s for their advocacy of freedom; and for D.R.<br /> <br /> == Acknowledgements ==<br /> This book like all others is, in C. Wright Mills' words, a product of the intersection of biography and history. Its coming into being has been a result of the social forces operating on myself as author, acting through my family, my schooling, my structural position as a US professor of sociology, and my political involvements. This book, perhaps more than others, owes a great deal to the influence of my parents who shaped my fundamental attitudes to equality, tolerance, liberty, authority and freedom. It also owes a great deal to my teachers from Ward Senior High School, through the University of Rhode Island to graduate school at Columbia University, who introduced me to the theories and debates around the questions of freedom and rights. My students and co-teachers at the University of Oregon during the 1970s provided continuing stimulation (usually critical, but sometimes supportive) which had a major impact on the development of the ideas in the book. But most of all, the ideas have been formed through my political involvements since the late 1950s.<br /> <br /> My first political act was to join the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People at the beginning of the civil rights movement in 1959. My second was, as a naive freshman, to send a letter of outrage to the student newspaper comparing the harsh penalties inflicted by the Dean of Women on female students who smoked cigarettes in their dorm rooms to the horrors of George Orwell's ''Nineteen Eighty-four''. In the early 1960s I defined my political commitments as two: support of civil rights for Black people, and support of civil liberties for all, especially for students who were then subject to the (since discarded) university doctrine of ''in loco parentis''. I joined the American Civil Liberties Union and became an outspoken advocate of the right of all to voice their political views. As president of the University of Rhode Island S.D.S. Chapter in 1962, I was responsible, to the considerable irritation of Dean Quinn, for bringing to town the first Communist Party member in 15 years to speak publicly on the campus.<br /> <br /> But gradually, during the mid-1960s, with the intensification of the student and Black movements, as well as the growth in my generation of support for the Cuban, Vietnamese, and Chinese Revolutions, my commitment to abstract civil liberties became transformed into an appreciation of the more fundamental rights of national liberation and self-determination.<br /> <br /> Swept up in the political and intellectual excitement of the last half of the 1960s, I became a Marxist, but retained my earlier concern for questions of liberty and rights.<br /> <br /> Donna Rae Crawford must be specially acknowledged as my research assistant for this book. She carefully checked the references, quotations and calculations, thereby making this work considerably stronger. She must also be thanked for her supportive friendship during the time of this book's production.<br /> <br /> Robert Molteno, Neil MacDonald and Anna Goutlay of Zed Books, as well as Beverly Jones and Lawrence Hill, must be especially thanked for stimulating the growth of this manuscript into a full-fledged book from two long papers on Asian minorities and dissidents in the USSR. Their critical comments and suggestions were vital to the forming and shaping both of the questions dealt with and the content of this work.<br /> <br /> Other individuals who have had an impact on this work through various combinations of intellectual stimulation and friendship include Sue Jacobs, Michel Amieu, Carolyn Dornsife, Catherine Duriez, Gail Lemberger, Evelyn Sparks, Madelene MacDonald, David Elliott, Val Burris, Charlie Kauften, Cheyney Ryan, Mike Goldstein, Harty Humphrties, Ron Wixman, Juan Linz and Terry Hopkins.<br /> <br /> Both Vicki Van Nortwick and Doris Boylan must be thanked for typing the various drafts of the manuscript. The research librarians at the University of Oregon, in particular Robert Lockhart, are also once again thanked for their invaluable assistance. And of course, all the people at my publishers and the printers who did the physical production of the manuscript must be acknowledged.<br /> <br /> My interest in the theoretical questions of freedom and rights has deep roots in my biography, but what compelled me to write this book was the sharp contention in the world, in the 1970s and early 1980s, between the growing forces of national liberation and socialist revolution and the weakening forces of imperialism. In response to the accelerating growth both of socialism and antiimperialist movements throughout the world, the leading forces of the advanced capitalist countries have counter-attacked on the level of ideology. To the nationalist and socialist slogans of national liberation and workers' power they have opposed 'freedom'. By 'freedom' they mean freedom to publicly advocate whatever one wants, freedom of opportunity to get rich, freedom for professionals in the poor countries to emigrate to wealthy countries, and freedom for owners to buy, sell, hire labour and otherwise control the economy, in short 'free enterprise'. Utilizing highly sophisticated Madison Avenue techniques, a powerful ideological war has been waged throughout the world: in the advanced and in the less developed countries, and in the socialist countries themselves by way of radio and travellers. Western 'freedom' has been marketed as a counter to the rising tide of socialism.<br /> <br /> To publicly advocate socialism in the West promptly evokes the retort: What about the lack of freedom, emigration restrictions, political prisoners, refugees and so on, in socialist countries? Statistics on rising living standards, social security, political participation, national independence, equality, never satisfy such criticism. Necessarily, then, all socialists must take a position on the question of civil liberties/repression in the socialist countries. One tendency of the socialist movement argues that some or all of the 'so-called' socialist countries, are not really socialist, but instead new types of class societies, equally, if not more repressive than, the older types. Others answer that because of such problems as economic backwardness and foreign invasion faced by socialism where it has come to power, it has become fundamentally distorted and thus must repress significant numbers of its people in order to survive. Another sector of the left merely dismisses all evidence of political repression as 'capitalist propaganda'.<br /> <br /> Having written a book on the basic economic and political nature of the Soviet Union, it then seemed logical to follow up by attempting to complete the work already begun with a book on what remained the most compelling political and theoretical questions: What about freedom? The position of minorities? What about women? Worker's participation and economic security? What about the dissidents? The prison camps and psychiatric wards used to suppress opposition?<br /> <br /> The book deals with the most politically charged question of the last half of the 20th Century: that of 'freedom'. A slogan for which a great many have shed their blood and suffered persecution on ''both'' sides of the barricades. Probably more than any other question people's feelings about freedom (variously expressed as commitment to 'free' enterprise, to civil liberties, national liberation, self-determination or socialist revolution) run deep.<br /> <br /> == Preface ==<br /> The history of scholarship is a record of the acceptance of and resistance to the ideas of the powerful interests of the day. Bruno was burned at the stake for advocacy of the heliocentric view of the universe, Galileo was put under house arrest and forced publicly to recant his ideas, and Copernicus's works were put on the Church's Index, owing to the conflict between scientific evidence and the word of the Bible. In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries the scientific ideas of evolution fared little better. Ideas about the social world, including the characteristics of various social groups, are integrally related to the dominant political ideology and interests, and thus are rewarded, encouraged, discouraged, repressed, accepted, derided, on account of their social impact, rather than the facts mobilized in their support.<br /> <br /> To quote Stephen Jay Gould:&lt;blockquote&gt;...the history of many scientific subjects is virtually free from such constraints of fact for two major reasons. First, some topics are invested with enormous social importance but blessed with very little reliable information. When the ratio of data to social impact is so low, a history of scientific attitudes may be little more than an oblique record of social change. The history of the scientific view on race, for example, serves as a mirror of social movements. This mirror reflects in good times and bad, in periods of belief in equality and in eras of rampant racism. The death knell of the old eugenics in America was sounded more by Hitler's particular use of once-favored arguments for sterilization and racial purification than by advances in genetic knowledge. Gould 1981, p. 22.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Gould's comments on ideas about race apply to ideas about freedom, rights and socialism even more forcefully.<br /> <br /> Of all social phenomena, those associated with the questions of political power, the effectiveness of different economic systems, the necessity of social inequality, and the potentialities and effects of different modes of production, are the most central and thus particularly subject to acceptance or rejection on the basis of factors extraneous to fact. The questions with the greatest impact and hence where, often, fact is permitted only a minimal role, are those relating to the potentialities of socialism in general, and the inherent compatibility of 'freedom' and the Soviet model of socialism in particular. This book engages the question in which the ratio of fact to social impact has been the lowest. (Less because facts have not been available to those who want to find them than because the denominator is so enormous.) In the last few decades, however, the numerator has grown considerably. By marshalling facts which have become known to most careful Western analysts over recent years, but which are seldom combined to draw the implicit logical conclusions, this book attempts to increase the ratio of fact to social impact to a level generally applicable in the social sciences.<br /> <br /> Intellectuals are political beings whose daily activity deeply affects the political atmosphere of their countries. Usually, the bulk of intellectuals of a given nation are mobilized in support of its prevailing institutions. Such has certainly been the case in the United States and the other 'Anglo-Saxon (Parliamentary) Democracies' in the post-World War II period. The centre of intellectual gravity during this period has been the effort to discredit the liberating potential of socialism, sometimes in quite sophisticated and indirect ways, while celebrating the institutions of capitalism and formal parliamentary forms. To quote Chomsky and Herman:&lt;blockquote&gt;Quite commonly, intellectuals have a strong moral attachment to some favored state — usually their own — and have devoted themselves to lauding its alleged achievements (sometimes real) and concealing its abuses and crimes. At times, the 'herd of independent minds' has succeeded in virtually stifling opposing views. (Chomsky and Herman 1979b, p. 23)<br /> <br /> ...every effort must be made to discredit what is called 'socialism' or 'communism.' In its more vulgar forms, the argument is that 'socialism' or 'Marxism'... leads inevitably to Gulag.... In the United States, this tactic has become virtually a reflex. Bolshevik and later Stalinist crimes have regularly been exploited as a weapon against movements seeking reform or revolutionary change. (Chomsky and Herman 1979b, p. 297)<br /> <br /> ...the general passivity and obedience on the part of the population that is a basic requirement in a state committed to counter-revolutionary intervention was overcome in significant measure, and dangerous feelings of sympathy developed towards movements of national liberation in the Third World. It is an important task for the intelligentsia in  the post-war period to reconstruct the ideological system and to reinstate the patterns of conformism that were shattered by the opposition and resistance to the US war in Indochina. (Chomsky and Herman 1979b, p. 17)&lt;/blockquote&gt;The US Central Intelligence Agency well understands the power of ideas — as did its predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services. In fact, 'psychological warfare' is a fundamental front of the war between socialism and capitalism. Everything issued or pronounced, about the socialist societies and the degree of rights within them, by the authorities of Western governments and the spokespeople of the corporations, as well as by those associated with the institutions established by and funded by them, must thus be evaluated in this light. According to the Office of Strategic Services 'psychological warfare' (to which most of the US CIA's budget is allocated) is defined as:&lt;blockquote&gt;The co-ordination and use of all means, including moral and physical, by which the end is to be attained — other than those of recognized military operations, but including the psychological exploitation of the result of those recognized actions — which tend to destroy the will of the enemy to achieve victory and to damage his political or economic capacity to do so; which tend to deprive the enemy of the support, assistance, or sympathy of his allies or associates or of neutrals, or to prevent his acquisition of such support, assistance, or sympathy; or which tend to create, maintain, or increase the will to victory of our own people and allies and to acquire, maintain, or increase the support, assistance and sympathy of neutrals. (Office of Strategic Services, 1949, p. 99)&lt;/blockquote&gt;The all pervasive influence of the institutions of advanced capitalism permeate not only the work of the mainstream intelligentsia, but also that of the great bulk of the 'radical intelligentsia. For conservative and 'socialist' intellectuals and groups to compete to produce the most anti-Soviet analyses and polemics is not uncommon. The very concepts and definitions employed by the bulk of the Left in the English-speaking advanced capitalist countries are, in good part, a product of mainstream liberal discourse — a discourse quite compatible with monopoly capitalist institutions in times of stability — rather than a product of the Marxist or mainstream socialist traditions. For example, the definition of socialism in traditional anarcho-syndicalist terms of decentralized participatory democracy, and the attention given to intellectual freedom (regardless of its consequences for ordinary working peoples' lives) are very much a product of the classical liberal, rather than the Marxist, tradition. These two axioms of radical discourse in the 'Anglo-Saxon Democracies' alone are sufficient to serve to mobilize the great bulk of otherwise liberal, progressive and social democratic intellectuals to participate in the Great Distortion and become (often indirectly) part of the general NATO mobilization against real, existing socialism and national liberation.<br /> <br /> The high stakes involved in the seemingly 'scholarly' debates on questions related to 'freedom' and 'socialism', and above all in questions at the intersection of these two topics, has meant that, for the proponents and opponents of a given thesis, the required standards of scholarship and proof are unequal. The scales are so heavily weighted on the side of those scholars who argue in favour of their state's positions that, in the normal course of events, they are guaranteed an intellectual victory however few their facts or overwhelming the evidence mobilized by their opponents; this applies equally in socialist, and in advanced capitalist countries. The only difference is that because they are relatively new, socialist countries often employ more direct means to accomplish results obtained just as effectively, but more subtly, by capitalist countries.<br /> <br /> To quote Chomsky and Herman again:&lt;blockquote&gt;The beauty of the democratic systems of thought control, as contrasted with their clumsy totalitarian counterparts, is that they operate by subtly establishing on a voluntary basis presumptions that set the limits of debate. Those who do not accept the fundamental principles of state propaganda are simply excluded from the debate (or if noticed, dismissed as 'emotional', 'irresponsible', etc.). The new propaganda line has been established by endless repetition of the Big Distortions and negligible grant of access to non-establishment points of view... (Chomsky and Herman 1979b, pp. 30, 300)&lt;/blockquote&gt;The theses defended in this book are, of course, unacceptable intellectual discourse both in the US and the other 'Anglo-Saxon Democracies'. Their social impact is such that they can, and most probably will, be dismissed by the majority as 'irresponsible' without first examining the data and arguments presented.<br /> <br /> This book has been written with, perhaps, insufficient caution, but with the sense of an obligation to intervene in the political debates about the potentials of national liberation, socialism and capitalism. Its emotive reception is a reflection of the book's focus on the very nerve of capitalist ideology. I can only hope that a significant number of readers will be able to contain their prior judgments and the commitments they bring to the reading of the book to nevertheless evaluate my arguments reasonably objectively.<br /> <br /> '''Eugene, Oregon'''<br /> <br /> June 1983<br /> <br /> == 1. Introduction ==<br /> The quest for freedom, manifested in the demands for self-determination, liberation or 'human rights', has been an increasingly dominant issue throughout the world since the end of World War Two. The USA and the USSR, each in their own way, have made the issue of freedom a central point of concern in their contention. Each maintains that only under their system can freedom be 'real', and that under that of the other it cannot exist. In this book the notion of freedom and the concept of human rights are scrutinized, and the degree to which basic freedoms or rights are realized within the USA and the USSR are compared.<br /> <br /> In the ideological war between socialism and Western capitalism, the West has attempted to make formal civil liberties the central issue between the two systems. The Western media abundantly disseminates stories of Soviet, Cuban, Vietnamese and East German refugees 'fleeing to freedom' in the US, of the difficulty of emigration from the Socialist countries, the 'repression' of Soviet dissidents, and so on. President Carter's 'human rights' campaign of the 1977-80 period was premised on the assumption that the US would be successful in its propaganda war with the Soviet Union by attempting to establish the battlefield on the grounds of civil liberties, and interpreting the flight of professional and business people from Socialist countries as a flight from repression to 'freedom' in the US. The fairly high level of formal civil liberties obtaining in the US, it was implied, proves the superiority of Western capitalism, while emigration from socialist countries proves the failure of socialism. Further, it was argued that the alleged absence of formal civil liberties in Socialist countries was of greater significance than the rights to national liberation or civil liberties of most of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Dictatorships such as those in Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador, and the Shah's Iran, must ultimately be supported in the fundamental interests of the peoples of these countries, creating the conditions for the later development of formal freedom, or preventing the loss of such freedom as they already have. The topic of this book is thus central to the leading ideological and social struggle of our time: socialism vs capitalism.<br /> <br /> === Freedom: Some Definitions ===<br /> The term 'freedom' has meant many things. It has been seen as a negative concept: freedom ''from'' constraints — e.g. state control — as freedom for each individual to do whatever he or she wants, irrespective of the wants and needs of others; that is, ''formal'' freedom. Conversely, it has been seen as a positive concept: freedom for each individual to be able to achieve the satisfaction of their basic wants and needs; that is, ''substantive'' freedom. The latter definition focuses on the degree to which a society facilitates the realization of national, and women's, rights, job security, a high standard of living social security, and so on. Many formal schema develop a hierarchy of freedom and rights which attempts to counterpose 'substantive' against 'formal' freedoms to the relative advantage/detriment of the other. For example, in the post-1917 world, Western capitalist forces have commonly celebrated the formal freedom from constraints — for individuals or businesses — while socialist forces emphasize the attainment of substantive freedom by ''formerly'' oppressed classes and peoples.<br /> <br /> Before we can systematically analyse the degree of comparison between the US and the USSR on the question of 'freedom', it is essential to define our terms. To avoid the ultimate philosophical question of determinism vs free-will, and attempt to defuse the emotive content of the term 'freedom' generally the term 'rights' rather than 'freedom' will be used. 'Rights', then, is used to mean social freedom, as distinct from 'free will', or other philosophical or ideological concepts of 'freedom'.<br /> <br /> A 'right', then, is the ''legitimate'' (i.e. adjudged as just' or 'proper') claim of an individual or group on society. 'Legitimate' implies that a claim is regarded by those in authority as 'just' or 'proper', and that when a claim is made, it is normally successful. 'Rights' include both the socially guaranteed claims on society's resources (positive) ''and'' the social guarantee of being allowed to exist on equal terms with others, i.e., not discriminated against (negative).<br /> <br /> There is sometimes a tendency to restrict use of the term 'right' to societies with a state. This approach sees rights as something that state power must necessarily guarantee or grant, i.e., an immunity, protection, or access to goods or services. Consequently, that rights cannot exist in stateless societies: in egalitarian or fully communist societies where, since there is no oppression, immunities or protections are superfluous, and since there is no state no claims can be made on its resources. A 'right', in this book, is considered to be a claim on society legitimized and guaranteed by ''either'' a state, or by society itself without the mediation of a state. Legitimate claims on society (rights) can be guaranteed by force (e.g. the police or informal action) or by consensus/social pressure, and thus do not ''necessarily'' require a state.<br /> <br /> Five types of rights may usefully be distinguished:<br /> <br /> 1) ''Property rights'': the right, individually or collectively, to own productive property, including the right to employ, or alternatively, not to be exploited or denied participation in decision making: to alienate property as one chooses, or alternatively, not to lose one's patrimony, rights in property or one's job, and to manage the property as the individual or one's collective sees fit (including the right to invest or not , dispose of the product, operate an enterprise and allocate labour as one sees fit).<br /> <br /> 2) ''Distribution (or consumption) rights'': the right to a guaranteed decent minimum standard of consumption. This includes access to education and health-care, either free or economically accessible to all; retirement and disability benefits; adequate housing; the right to a job and/or unemployment benefits.<br /> <br /> 3) ''Civil rights'': the right to full legal equality for all, including: women, national minorities, ethnic or 'racial' groups, ensuring equal access to education, jobs, social services, the political process, and so on, on the same terms as members of the national majority (or majority ethnic group) and men. This includes the right to use and develop one's own language, to celebrate and develop one's own culture; as well as the right to be free from all discrimination and interpersonal humiliations, such as racism and sexism.<br /> <br /> 4) ''Civil liberties (or formal rights)'': the most basic of these personal rights are what I shall term level I liberties, including the right to leave one's job and find another, the right of internal migration and travel, the right of free marriage and divorce, reproductive rights, the right to privacy, the right to be secure in one's personal property, the right to religious beliefs and practice, personal beliefs, and so on. Civil liberties also include the right to fair treatment by the state, especially by the criminal justice system (including such due process rights as a fair trial; to know the charges against one; to be able to confront one's accusers with contrary evidence: an impartial judge/jury and a right to a speedy trial: freedom from police harassment and torture, and other inhumane punishments etc.).<br /> <br /> 5) ''Political rights'': the right to participate in the society's political decision making processes, and in all other institutions in which one is involved (e.g. neighbourhoods, child-care centres, schools, etc.). (Participation in economic institutions is defined here as part of property rights).<br /> <br /> These liberties, which might be considered as ''process rights'', I shall term level II liberties since their exercise affects other members of society to a greater extent than the exercise of level I liberties; and thus, historically, have been more subject to limitation in the interest of trans-individual considerations.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;In times of revolution, civil war or other major crisis, all societies have found it necessary to restrict such due process rights in the interest of order, mobilization for war or social transformation. In the 20th Century, restrictions in these areas have been more common both in socialist and capitalist societies than restrictions classified as level I liberties. At the same time in both socialist and capitalist societies they have been much less common (or consistently applied) than have restrictions on level III liberties.&lt;/ref&gt; Level III liberties include the ''advocacy rights'' to persuade others, such as freedom of the press, public speech, assembly, religious conversion, and so on, including the right to advocate and organize to achieve the destruction or undermining of existing political and property arrangements, the exercise of which by their very nature will have a direct impact on others. Also included in this third category of liberties is the right to travel or to emigrate from one's country of origin. The exercise of this right may affect both the national economy (through loss of labour power) and the legitimacy of a society's basic institutions (owing to individuals returning from other countries having acquired ideologies that are opposed to those hegemonic in their native country). The potential social impact of the exercise of the level III liberties have resulted in historical states only rarely guaranteeing them.<br /> <br /> In Western capitalist countries, as we have already noted, interpretations of freedom or rights tend to focus on individual civil liberties (formal liberties) based on the notion that ''individuals'' should have an absolute or at least an ''a priori'' just or proper claim on society to be left alone to realize their desires without 'unwarranted' constraints. 'Unwarranted' normally means that the only legitimate constraints a society may impose are those that limit the individual's right to constrain the rights of other individuals (e.g. 'my freedom to move my arm stops where another person's nose begins'). Defenders of Western 'civilization' frequently proclaim such formal liberties in absolutist, ''a priori'' and universalistic terms, but no society has ever allowed wholesale, total civil liberties for any appreciable period of time, neither has any non-Western or socialist society ever totally denied civil liberties to all its people. In every kind of society 'some people are more free than others', i.e., the dominant class enjoys a greater degree of civil liberty to express itself publicly, and to freely associate without 'unwarranted' restraints than do those that present a threat to the prerogatives of that class. Likewise, the definition of 'unwarranted restraint' differs widely in different types of societies and at different periods. From time to time the Western 'democracies' have banned public protests against slavery or war, or public utterance in favour of revolution, on the grounds of warranted restraint (see Chapter 6). While in most socialist societies the rationale for bans on publishing material favourable to the reinstitution of private property is that of 'warranted constraint'. No modern society has ever effectively denied the right to free speech or association to all their people all the time, but at times all societies have formally denied them to certain groups.<br /> <br /> Distributive (or consumption) rights, the socially recognized legitimate individual or group claims for the satisfaction of basic material needs, i.e. economic rights, are the core of every society. The basic function of all societies is to produce the means to satisfy the material needs of its people. A society's ability to successfully perform this function is to a great extent a decisive factor for its success or decay. Indeed, if these fundamental needs remain unfulfilled the other four rights become meaningless. The exercise or restriction of civil liberties, as well as political and participatory rights, are usually concerned with the distribution of material goods and services. Further, civil rights are typically manifested in the reality of such economic rights for different groups; and property rights are also important in that they provide differential access to material goods.<br /> <br /> The political rights, or rights to participation in the society and the institutions in which one is involved within a society must be distinguished from the class nature of society, or the degree to which the actual policies and processes of that society differentially benefit different groups, it is possible for a particular group to benefit even though it is formally excluded from voting or holding office (e.g., the merchant bourgeoisie in feudal societies), or alternatively, a group possessing formal rights of participation might not be a beneficiary of state policies. Socialists, for example, would argue that this is true of the working class in parliamentary democracies where the 'false consciousness' induced by the capitalist mode of production leads the working class to vote against its own interests.<br /> <br /> Property rights subsume three distinct types of property, which must not be confused: (1) personal property; (2) simple, private, productive property which one operates oneself; and (3) property which employs the labour power of others.<br /> <br /> No major society in the 20th Century denies to its people the right of personal property (considered here as a basic or level 1 liberty). All societies consider it just for an individual to own such personal effects as clothing, and for the most part one's own living unit (although there are some exceptions for reasons of urban planning). Personal property is distinct from productive property, i.e., property that produces goods or services which have economic value. Contemporary productive property is of two types: the property owned by a small farmer, artisan or professional and primarily worked by the owner without the employment of other than immediate family members (petty bourgeois property), and capitalist, or productive property, which primarily is operated by hired labour power. Forms of productive property can also utilize slaves, serfs, semi-serfs or sharecroppers rather than wage labourers.<br /> <br /> In some societies the right to acquire and dispose of productive property, including the right to hire or dismiss the labour power of others for a wage is guaranteed. This is the most fundamental right of distinctively capitalist economies in the sense that capitalism would be impossible without such a right. In other, namely socialist, societies such as the USSR and China, such a right is considered to be an unwarranted infringement on the property rights of others, including the infringement of the right to job security and the right to participate in the decision making of one's enterprise; thus these societies explicitly forbid such forms of property.<br /> <br /> It would seem that the right to employ the labour power of others in productive property in contrast to the right to either personal or simple private property in production is inherently contradictory. That is, the exercise of the right of one person to ownership of productive property which employs others necessarily denies those employees the exercise of their right to possess private productive property. This is not to say that the formal universal right to buy productive property (if one has the resources), and the corollary right to sell one's labour power is ''logically'' contradictory, only that its exercise ''necessarily'' results in a concentration of property rights in the hands of a minority; i.e., proletarianization (or deprivation of property rights) for the majority. Nor does the contradictory nature of private property in the means of production imply that such a right is not or never could be 'progressive', or that it could never advance the other four types of rights.<br /> <br /> Civil liberties and, in part, civil rights are based on the notion of freedom ''from'' formal state or social constraints on individuals and social groups. This is in contrast to the substantive distributive rights, as well as to the rights of participation, which are positive legitimate claims on society (in contrast to the legitimate claim to be free of unwarranted constraints). But like civil liberties and civil rights, economic and participatory rights can be consistently stated in universalistic terms, and thus like them differ from property rights. Property rights are inherently and necessarily contradictory, at least in their formulation as ''individual'' property rights.<br /> <br /> Substantive distributive rights and civil rights are based on ''authentic needs'' rather than on conscious desires or wants, as is the case with both civil liberties and participatory rights. Distributive and civil rights, then, must primarily be assessed by objective criteria of the extent to which basic human needs (economic security, housing, education, social welfare, lack of discrimination, cultural autonomy, etc.) are satisfied, ''independently'' of conscious desires or wants. Conversely, assessments of the degree of formal civil liberties and participatory rights can be made ''independently'' of the substance of what people choose to say, do, or how they vote; even while in the real world the actual exercise of these rights is typically constrained if they are used to undermine the dominant social institutions.<br /> <br /> Rights are neither abstract nor universal. To ask the question 'is x free?' or 'does y enjoy rights?' is to ask the question 'freedom for whom?' or 'rights for whom?'. In any modern society, freedom and rights are distributed differentially according to class position. This is most clearly manifested in the case of property rights, that are inherent in class position. If productive property is collectively owned, it necessarily follows that no individual has the right to employ others or to buy or sell that property, i.e., a corollary of collective property is the denial of the right to private productive property. Conversely, the essential right of capitalist society, the right to employ the labour power of others and to alienate productive property at will, systematically denies the exercise of property rights to those that are employed. A similar factor is at work, although not usually so apparent, in the operation of all the other forms of right.<br /> <br /> The substantive right for all members of society to a secure job and all that implies, necessarily denies to some members of society the right to dismiss workers from wage labour, or to enjoy a high living standard while others starve. The right to a relatively equal distribution of income denies the right to become a millionaire, while the right to become a millionaire necessarily denies the rights of some to a decent standard of living.<br /> <br /> The right to political participation in the decision making process of the institutions in which one is involved (e.g. apartments, work places) necessarily negates the rights of owners to make decisions according to their will, just as private property in apartment buildings and factories necessarily denies the right of tenants and workers to authentically participate in decision making. Likewise, authentic political democracy for the whole society necessarily negates the right of those with a claim to make societal decisions (the heirs of royalty, the richest individuals, etc.), just as the right of generals, royalty, or other formal or informal dictators necessarily denies the rights of popular self-determination.<br /> <br /> Civil liberties are also necessarily contradictory although not in an immediate sense as with political, distributive or property rights. A society in which everyone, equally, partook of full, formal liberty to say publicly or write and publish whatever they wanted, can be conceived of in the ''abstract''. However, in reality, such has not been, nor could ever be the case for any significant time in a society in which material benefits, property and involvement in decision making, are radically distributed in favour of a few. In any class society, the right to organize and to speak out without interference from the state is eventually utilized to organize against an unequal distribution of income and property. Given the fact that few benefit at the expense of many, civil liberties combined with political rights tend to lead to government policies which undermine property and wealth, i.e., civil liberties and political rights sooner or later come into contradiction with the right to private property.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Karl Marx put forward this argument in his analysis of the French Constitution of 1848 which attempted both to guarantee the universal franchise and private property in the means of production: 'The comprehensive contradiction of this constitution, however, consists in the following: the classes whose social slavery the constitution is to perpetuate, proletariat, peasants, petty bourgeoisie, it puts in possession of political power through universal suffrage. And from the class whose old social power it sanctions, the bourgeoisie, it withdraws the political guarantees of this power. It forces the political rule of the bourgeoisie into democratic conditions, which at every moment help the hostile classes to victory and jeopardize the very foundations of bourgeois society.’ ''Class Struggles in France 1848-1850'', Karl Marx, 1850, p. 172.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> What is most important in type III civil liberties is the right to advocate what is in one's own interest, above all in one's class interest, not the right to be a dilettante or an academic. Civil liberties in the real world have a definite class content. Further civil liberties within a class society have no substance unless actually exercised in pursuit of class interest.<br /> <br /> Lenin argued that formal civil liberties normally have little relevance or meaning for working people. He maintains that the civil liberty of 'democratic republics':&lt;blockquote&gt;is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in reality, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slaveowners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that 'they cannot be bothered with democracy', 'they cannot be bothered with politics'; in the ordinary peaceful course of events the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;V.l. Lenin (1917B), Vol. Ill, p. 371.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Unequal wealth and access to places of assembly, the media, leisure time, verbal skills, education and other resources mean that 'equal right' effects very ''unequal'' substantive outcomes:&lt;blockquote&gt;... freedom of the press... is a deception so long as the best printing works and the biggest stocks of paper are appropriated by the capitalists, and so long as capitalist rule over the press remains. .. In capitalist usage, freedom of the press means freedom of the right to bribe the press, freedom to use their wealth to mould and fabricate so-called public opinion... the defenders of 'pure democracy'... prove to be deceivers of the people, who, with the aid of plausible, fine, but thoroughly false phrases, divert them from the concrete historical task of liberating the press from capitalist enslavement.... The capitalists have always used the term 'freedom' to mean freedom for the rich to get richer and for the workers to starve to death.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;V.l. Lenin (1917B), Vol. Ill, p. 371.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In fact, the contradiction between civil liberties/political rights and private property rights came to the fore in all but about a dozen capitalist countries at some point in the 1940-80 period, and resulted in the abolition of general civil liberties/political rights. The association of civil liberties/political tights with private property in production is thus an exceptional occurrence, made possible only under exceptional conditions (e.g. rising living standards and increases in economic and civil rights for the majority of the population). This is underlined by the reality of only a small handful of capitalist countries in Asia, Africa or Latin America allowing civil liberties/political rights to the majority of their population, and by the fact that the two dozen or so stable parliamentary capitalist democracies are the richest countries in the world, all of which, until recently, have experienced a consistent growth in working class living standards, as well as in the expansion of workers' distributive rights.<br /> <br /> Civil liberties and the right to formal political participation in the state (universal franchise) can be maintained only as long as they are not effectively used to secure substantive economic and property rights for the majority of the population, i.e., only as long as they remain formal rights and are oz utilized to secure substantive rights. That is to say, people are free to speak in favour of expropriating the wealth of the few and turning it over to working people only as long as few people listen. Such has been the history of almost all capitalist countries in the 20th Century (e.g. Southern, Central and Eastern Europe in the period between the two World Wars, Latin America, the ex-French and British colonies, Turkey, the Philippines, Indonesia, etc.). Ultimately, the exercise of civil liberties and the right of political participation by the working classes is incompatible with the right of the wealthy to their privilege and property. Likewise, the right of the working class to collectively own the means of production and distribute their product in an egalitarian manner is incompatible with the former wealthy property-owning class's right to organize to take their property back (i.e., it is incompatible with any ''universal'' rights of association, public speech, and due process).<br /> <br /> The question of the degree to which formal civil liberties and the rights of political participation are permitted the working people of capitalist societies historically is reduced to the question of the extent to which they are exercised in the interest of realizing the substantive distributive rights of working people, as well as in the attempt to secure collective property rights (i.e. the expropriation of private property in the means of production). In the 20th century, in the most advanced capitalist countries, it has been common, historically, to allow universal franchise and civil liberties for even Socialists and Communists to advocate the expropriation of private property and to allow their parties to put forward candidates for election. They have, however, seldom won a parliamentary majority and been in a position to implement their programme. Czechoslovakia in 1946-7 was a notable exception. The capitalist class control of most of the media and education, and the inertia of traditional values, handed down from generation to generation and reinforced by interpersonal networks, normally succeeds in obtaining a sufficient number of working people to lend their — at least passive — support to the party of property and order; thus, short of a major 'legitimization crisis' the propertied class is able to perpetuate its system. In times of crisis, if a progressive coalition wins an election, or increasing anti-private property measures are taken or threatened, then usually either the military intervene or a fascist party is brought into power. The result in either case is the negation of formal civil liberties and the right of popular political participation, in order to guarantee the right of private property in the means of production.<br /> <br /> The definition of freedom in terms of authentic ''needs'' instead of consciously formulated wants or desires (which may be termed false, that is, not correspond to authentic needs) may be generally more relevant. Socialization, the media, education and interpersonal interactions can create or perpetuate false consciousness of a group's or an individual's real needs. Formal civil liberties and the right of participation can thus be employed by working classes in the interests of the propertied classes, e.g. by voting for pro-business parties, or by joining pro-business organizations. The existence of mere formal liberties tells us little about the real conditions of people. The degree of substantive freedom, and whether or not civil liberties and rights of participation are used in the interests of working people, are the more fundamental questions.<br /> <br /> Civil rights would not be problematic unless fundamental inequality existed between various ethnic/national/sexual groups in a society. The right to freedom from social humiliation and discrimination and, in the case of minorities, to develop one's own culture and institutions, is historically predicated on the previous oppression of a group. Of the five types of rights defined here, that of civil rights is the farthest removed from class considerations. Logically speaking, while it is true that normally, cultural/'racial' groupsare essentially socially ''defined'' by the class position of the majority of their members, there is also generalized discrimination/humiliation applied to all members of the group ''regardless'' of whether or not they are in the class typical of their group. Moreover, other social groups, such as women and/or perhaps 'homosexuals' are ''not'' defined in terms of class because they are present in all classes. Thus, while civil rights are historically associated with social inequality this does not ''necessarily'', logically imply class right or 'right against right' as do the other types of rights. Logically, it is thus possible to have a class society in which authentic civil equality (full realization of civil rights) exists for all. However, given the ''social logic'' of class societies which generates racism and sexism, it is unlikely that such would ever actually come to pass.<br /> <br /> There are inherent contradictions ''within'' a given right — such as the right to private property. There are also inherent contradictions among the different rights. The claim for the abstract and universal character of rights thus cannot stand. In reality, it is not a question of a 'higher' or lower' level of universal rights for all; but rather a question of 'right against right', the right of one class against the right of another. As long as class society exists, or as long as its residues remain and hence the seeds of its rebirth exist, there can be no universal and abstract ''a priori'' rights applicable to all.<br /> <br /> The question of 'right against right' can become rather complex, as there are often more than two classes, or principles of rights, involved. For example, imagine a four cornered argument concerning who has a rightful title to a piece of land in 19th century France. The descendant of the former feudal lords of the land would claim that the land was rightfully his on the grounds of primogeniture and the inalienability of land, since feudal law gave first born sons exclusive right to all their fathers ' land. A capitalist, with a formal deed to the land, bought perhaps from the peasants who were the original beneficiaries of the expropriation of the feudal lord's ancestor (an expropriation which the aristocracy never granted legitimacy) would reject the rules of feudalism and claim the land, on the basis of having bought it 'fair and square' — in an 'equal' contract — from the peasants who were forced by bankruptcy to sell. The farm workers, who actually produced the crops on the land through their labour being, let us assume, socialists, would reject both the claims arguing instead 'that the land belongs to those that work it', 'to each according to their labour'; or perhaps simply, as disciples of John Locke, they would argue that the basis of property is labour, and since they perform the labour, the land and its products are theirs. Still another group could make a claim contrary to all three. Either the pre-feudal indigenous inhabitants (descendants of the primitive Gauls perhaps), or the contemporary unemployed poor, could assert a claim to the land and its products on the basis of ''need''.<br /> <br /> There is no absolute criterion to distinguish between these four mutually contradictory claims. There is no absolute right, independent of class or time. Historically, such conflicting claims have been resolved not by philosophical argument, but by arms. For example, in France, the question of land ownership was resolved by the French Revolution in 1789, just as the original claims of the primitive Gauls had been negated by force of arms and their land became the property of aristocrats. The particular system of property right adopted in 1789 was reaffirmed against socialist challenges in 1871 and again in 1944-47. This mode of resolving conflicting claims over rights has historically also proved to be decisive in the disagreement between the indigenous inhabitants of Australia and the Americas and their European settlers, as well as in the philosophical differences between the former landowning and capitalist classes of China, Russia, Cuba and Vietnam and the working people and peasants of these countries.<br /> <br /> Realism vis-à-vis the resolution of arguments over rights cannot, however, be reduced either to cynicism or a 'force theory' of right: those that win the battles write the philosophy books. Judgments ''can'' be made about conflicting rights and, in the long run, the forcible settlement of rights questions, tend to conform to the secession of 'higher' or more 'progressive' rights. There is no absolute and universal right independent of classes, but at any given time the rights claims of a given class can be judged more ''progressive'' in the dual sense of: (1) facilitating the development of productive forces, and thereby serve as the basis for the greater wealth and higher living standards of society; and (2) advancing civil rights, distributive rights, participatory rights and real civil liberties for a larger segment of the population. Because a greater number of people benefit from the realization of more progressive rights, in the long run, in a struggle of right against right, the more progressive class normally triumphs. Thus, because more people benefited from the capitalist organization of French society than from feudalism, capitalism eventually triumphed. Capitalism, by allowing for an extension of rights (of all five types defined here) for more people, consolidated greater popular support than could feudalism; for similar reasons the socialist revolutions in China, Russia, Vietnam and Cuba triumphed and were consolidated. Socialism, by extending all five types of rights for the working class and peasantry of these countries, secured and consolidated their support in the struggle against the ruling classes.<br /> <br /> The question of superior or more progressive right is historically specific. What is progressive and ''realistically'' realizable at any given time, hence a 'supervisor right', may not be so at another time. Further, rights tend to become transformed into their opposites. A progressive right at one time, advancing the productive forces and expanding all five types of rights for more people, may well develop into its opposite at a future time, and instead hinder the development of the productive forces and lead to the repression of most rights for most people. There can be no trans-historical evaluation of rights any more than there can be a trans-class evaluation.<br /> <br /> Engels, emphasizing this point, argues that not even slavery could be judged to be absolutely right or wrong either from the viewpoint of society as a whole ''or'' the slaves themselves. Engels argued that one point in historical development slavery was progressive, and hence a superior right:&lt;blockquote&gt;It is very easy to inveigh against slavery and similar things in general terms, and to give vent to high moral indignation at such infamies. Unfortunately, all that this conveys is only what everyone knows, namely, that these institutions of antiquity are no longer in accord with our present conditions and our sentiments, which these conditions determine. It was slavery that first made possible the division of labour between agriculture and industry on a larger scale, and thereby also Hellenism, the flowering of the ancient world. Without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science; without slavery, no Roman Empire. But without the basis laid by Grecian culture, and the Roman Empire, also no modern Europe. We should never forget that our whole economic, political and intellectual development presupposes a state of things in which slavery was as necessary as it was universally recognized. In this sense we are entitled to say: Without the slavery of antiquity no modern socialism.... Slavery was an advance even for the slaves; the prisoners of war, from whom the mass of slaves was recruited, now at least had their lives saved, instead of being killed as they had been before, or even roasted, as at a still earlier period.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;F. Engels, 1894, pp. 249-50, 251.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In the same spirit nowhere do Marx and Engels condemn capitalism in universal and abstract terms, neither do they similarly praise or advocate socialism. On the contrary, Marx and Engels write positively of capitalism as a progressive system, at a historically specific point, and defend capitalist right over the previously dominant forms of right.&lt;blockquote&gt;The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors'. The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarcely one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive slumbered in the lap of social labour?&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;K. Marx and F. Engels, 1849, pp. 38-9.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Engels goes on to argue that without capitalism and the historically specific predominance of capitalist right, socialism would not be a realistic historical possibility, i.e., socialist right is premised on the previous triumphs and achievements of capitalist right:&lt;blockquote&gt;Only the immense increase of the productive forces attained by modern industry has made it possible to distribute labour among all members of society without exception, and thereby to limit the labour time of each individual member to such an extent that all have enough free time left to take part in the general — both theoretical and practical — affairs of society. It is only now, therefore, that every ruling and exploiting class has become superfluous and indeed a hindrance to social development, and it is only now, too, that it will be inexorably abolished, however much it may be in possession of 'direct force'.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;F. Engels, 1894, p. 251.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In Lenin's words: 'Capitalism is evil compared with socialism. Capitalism is good compared with medievalism, compared with small production, compared with bureaucracy...'&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;V.l. Lenin, 192IB, Vol. Ill, p. 654.&lt;/ref&gt; In places, Lenin even expresses enthusiasm for the benefits of capitalism for the working class under pre-capitalist conditions:&lt;blockquote&gt;In countries like Russia the working class suffers not so much from capitalism as from the insufficient development of capitalism. The working class is, therefore, most certainly interested in the broadest, freest, and most rapid development of capitalism.... The bourgeois revolution is precisely an upheaval that most resolutely sweeps away survivals of the past, survivals of the serf-owning system (which include not only the autocracy but the monarchy as well)...&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;V.l. Lenin, 1905, Vol. 1, p. 516.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> === The Historical Logic of Restricted Emigration and Exit&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Discussion in this section is based largely on the following sources: Doman 1957; Fleming 1952; Gabin 1959; Glass 1967; Goodman 1966; Hansen 1940; Isaac 1947; Mehl and Rappaport 1978; Parker 1957; Turack 1970; Zo 1978, and Zolberg 1978.&lt;/ref&gt; ===<br /> As we have argued, no right is absolute, since the exercise of virtually any right affects the realization of the rights of others. The right of — say — a doctor to emigrate is no more absolute than the right of, for example, peasants in a poor country to receive the medical care the doctor has been trained to give. Neither, in an absolute sense, is one superior to the other. If, by revolutionary or some other means, legislation is enacted requiring doctors to spend a specific number of years attending to the medical needs of the peasants in their country of origin, before they are permitted to emigrate then, from the upper middle-class doctors' viewpoint, their right to emigrate is seriously infringed. The peasants, however, are more likely to assert that their own and their children's right to a healthy life is more important. But in reality, such philosophical considerations are resolved not by intellectual discourse but by social revolution and emigration restrictions. Whether or not one right is more progressive than the other can be determined on the basis of which right advances the forces of production and the living standards of a poor country and which right best serves to advance the other rights of the greater number of people in the country. The application of such criteria enables one to understand the rationale of the imposition of emigration restrictions in many post-revolutionary countries.<br /> <br /> The right to international travel and emigration is one of the two most celebrated 'unalienable rights' — the other being the right to express publicly ideas contrary to official ideology. To illustrate the underlying forces both of the establishment and celebration of 'human rights' an examination of the history and logic of the imposition of exit restrictions is revealing,<br /> <br /> From their origins, states have routinely regulated the entry and exit of persons to and from their territories in accordance with what they judged to be their national interest. Invariably, the 'rights' of emigration and immigration or international travel have been a derivative of the 'community interest'. Thus, the variations over time and among countries both in the restrictions on the geographical mobility of persons and the celebration of the right of exit must be understood in these terms.<br /> <br /> Virtually all empires and kingdoms, city-states and republics, ancient and modern, have restricted the right of their nationals to travel overseas or permanently to emigrate. The population of a country has historically been part of the wealth that should not be allowed to leave and thereby add to the wealth of another power. This principle, in fact, became a central and explicit tenet of mercantilism in 17th and 18th-Century Europe. Many city-states of Ancient Greece, such as Sparta and Argos, forbade their citizens to go abroad, but citizens of the more commercially developed Athens (but not their slaves) were permitted to do so. For Sparta the consideration of maximizing the number of soldiers for its army was the determinant, while for Athens it was the need to engage in external commerce. Since the wealth of most societies largely depends on international trade, merchants have generally been exempted from travel restrictions.<br /> <br /> Political restrictions on nationals leaving their country have always been common. Persons suspected of potentially engaging in plotting with foreign powers, or of seeking to acquire an ideological or religious education at variance with the official state ideology or religion, have normally been prohibited from overseas travel. Aristocrats and the upper classes were normally subject to restrictions on overseas travel by royalty, since they might conspire with the king's enemies or be away when the king needed them. It was, however, far easier for these classes to travel outside their country of origin than it was for peasants or labourers, whose labour was vital for the creation of national wealth. Artisans and other skilled workers were often especially restricted, as states were anxious to keep them for themselves and prevent them being acquired by other states.<br /> <br /> Conversely, certain political or religious groups have frequently been encouraged to leave their country, or even exiled from it owing to their potentially ideologically disrupting effects; for example, French Huguenots who refused to give allegiance to the state religion. Some groups have been considered to be both redundant to a country's needs as well as competitors for relative advantage, and often have been expelled, e.g. Jewish or Indian merchants, and more recently Asians from Uganda and Ghanians from Nigeria.<br /> <br /> A common corollary of emigration restriction is the encouragement of immigration. Normally, if political/religious ideological homogeneity could be maintained, traditional states or empires encouraged the immigration of additional labourers and potential soldiers — especially those with vital skills. England, for example, encouraged the immigration of Dutch artisans in the 17th and 18th Centuries because they were of great value in developing the economy; simultaneously emigration of her own artisans was very difficult. Since the 1830s, the US has actively encouraged immigration because of the need for labour in its rapidly industrializing economy, while throughout the mid-19th Century continental Europe discouraged it, in order to maintain its level of labour resources.<br /> <br /> European states did not relax restrictions on emigration until commercialization had produced a surplus population. At this point emigration was encouraged, since the alternative would have been either political disruption or heavy state welfare expenses to pacify the unemployed ex-peasants. Holland, the premier commercial economy in the world in the first half of the 17th Century was the first major country to relax emigration restrictions. The next area to allow significant emigration was Ireland, where British commercial agriculture produced a surplus population in the latter part of the 17th century, followed by Scotland and England. The emigration of machinists, however, was not sanctioned by England; their skills were vital for British commercial supremacy in the emerging textile industry; mariners too, vital for British naval supremacy, were similarly restricted. During the 17th and 18th Century Britain generally permitted emigration only to British colonies, in order to secure a labour force to exploit the resources of these areas.<br /> <br /> Throughout the late 19th Century, France maintained controls over the emigration of its population. Both her slower commercial development, and consequent absence of a surplus rural population, as well as her frequent military involvements, dictated a restrictive emigration policy. In common with most continental European states at the time, France increased the penalties for emigration in the mid-17th Century, and in 1666 instituted severe penalties for navigators, shipbuilders, sailors and fishermen who attempted to emigrate.<br /> <br /> Occasionally the French would expel certain groups considered undesirable: the Jews in 1390 because the developing native French bourgeoisie wanted their Jewish competitors eliminated; and in the 16th Century the Huguenots who represented an ideological threat to the Catholic ideology on which the French state was based. France even placed severe restrictions on the migration of French subjects to such French colonies as Canada which as a result remained rather sparsely populated. In Canada itself, the death penalty was enacted for those attempting to leave for non-French areas without authorization.<br /> <br /> Spain and Portugal also prevented emigration to their colonies during the 19th Century because they feared the loss of the labour power of their peasants. Although, in 1791, the Declaration of the Rights of Man proclaimed the right to leave France, in 1792 this right was suspended in the face of France's compelling need for a large army. The secret of French military strength during the Revolution and Napoleonic Wars was that it relied on a massive peasant army fighting for its own land. Restrictions on emigration were increased under the Restoration regime. Not until the 1870s did France remove formal restrictions on leaving the country. Nevertheless, administrative practices acted to deter emigration, except to the French colony of Algeria, for many more years.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Zolberg, 1978, pp. 262-3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Before the 18th Century the various German principalities and kingdoms generally permitted the eastward German colonization of Slavic lands even while maintaining formal emigration restrictions to other areas. Eastern colonies such as the Hanseatic League cities around the Baltic and their hinterland German speaking settlements facilitated trade with Germany. In the 18th Century, however, the German states tightened up their emigration policies as they came to play a stronger role in economic life, and greater emphasis was given to production. The German and Scandinavian states for the most part continued to prohibit emigration throughout the early- and mid-19th Century. Austria largely restricted emigration and foreign travel throughout the 1850s, and Russia, Romania and Serbia restricted emigration until the latter years of the 19th Century. On the eve of World War I these three countries were among the few whose nationals still required official permission to leave. In the decades before World War I such permission was freely given in most cases owing to the surplus ex-peasant population that had developed within their boundaries.<br /> <br /> The Magna Carta, signed by the English King John under pressure from his nobles in 1215, guaranteed to English merchants 'safe and secure exit' and to others freedom 'to go out of our Kingdom and to return, safely and securely, by land or water, saving his allegiance to us, unless it be in time of war, for some short space, for the common good of the Kingdom'. The serfdom prevalent in England at the time, coupled with the general poverty of the peasantry and urban labourers meant that these guarantees were specifically for the nobility and clergy. Common peasants did not normally leave even the domain of their lords without permission, and only then if their services were no longer needed, or their land was compensated for their lost labour. Even if their services were no longer needed, at least a token compensation or fine, for example a few chickens, had to be given to their lord as a symbol of their dependence.<br /> <br /> In 1216, the year after the Magna Carta's implementation, the King suspended the exit guarantees and they disappeared from all subsequent issues of the Charter. Over the next six centuries the Common Law writ of ''ne exeat regno'' prevailed in English law. This legal doctrine granted the King the right to 'command a man that he go not beyond the seas or out of the realm without a licence' by issuing a writ declaring 'that you design to go privately into foreign parts and intend to prosecute there many things prejudicial to us.... '&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;See Ingles, 1964, p. 3.&lt;/ref&gt; Until the beginning of the 19th Century the doctrine implicit in this writ regulated the international travel and emigration of British subjects, although, with the development of a surplus ex-peasant population in the 18th Century, it was less stringently applied. The reliance of England on international trade, however, dictated the continuing guarantee of the right of merchants to travel overseas throughout the Middle Ages and the mercantile period.<br /> <br /> From the beginning of the 17th Century all British subjects who wished to leave the Kingdom were required to possess a formal licence issued by the King (a passport). Numerous statutes were enacted during the 16th and 17th Centuries reaffirming the royal prohibition on travel out of the country without such a licence. In the 1620s, the Privy Council adopted a regulation requiring all noblemen who wished to leave the Kingdom to have a licence signed by the King personally, and all persons of non-noble rank to have licences signed by a Royal Secretary of State. Special restrictions on exit were applied to military personnel at all times, and to everyone in times of war.<br /> <br /> The principle of the state's right to control exit from England continued without interruption through the Commonwealth period. During the 1650s exit permits were issued by the Protectorate Council; the penalty for overseas travel without such a licence was confinement in the Tower of London. Such licences were granted only 'to persons of known affection to the State or to such as give good security'. Thus, the fundamental principle of a guarantee of political loyalty and economic commonwealth prevailed whether or not a king ruled.<br /> <br /> The movement of British clerics was especially closely regulated by the King, in order to prevent them having direct contact with the Vatican. For example, in the 14th Century the King instructed his port officials that no abbots or other religious persons were to be allowed to leave the kingdom. A general prohibition on all travel to Rome (except for merchants) was issued in the latter part of the century. Restrictions on ecclesiastics travelling overseas intensified during the 16th Century in the reigns of Henry VIII and of Elizabeth I; together these monarchs consolidated the independent Church of England and strove to protect it from the ideological influence of the Roman Church. In 1534 King Henry issued a total ban on clerics — and anyone else — leaving the Kingdom for any religious purpose, a ban that was enforced with especial rigour on religious councils. In the 17th Century a number of royal decrees were issued which prohibited children being sent overseas for religious education.<br /> <br /> As the forces of commercialization in Britain began slowly to produce a surplus population the King became increasingly lenient in granting licences for nationals to emigrate to Britain's new dominions, especially in North America. Restrictions on overseas travel and emigration for unskilled British commoners were thus relaxed over the course of the 17th and 18th Centuries. In 1718, however, in an attempt to prevent the loss of machinists and craftsmen, Parliament passed legislation requiring that artisans be forced to deposit a cash security 'not to depart out of the realm for the purpose of carrying on their trade or calling in foreign places'&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Turak, 1970, p. 294.&lt;/ref&gt; After 1720 a further series of Acts were passed restricting the emigration of skilled workmen. The restrictions on mariners leaving England was rigorously enforced until the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. Indeed, one of the factors that aggravated the tension between the US and Britain before the outbreak of the War of 1812, was the British practice of apprehending US merchant ships on the high seas and removing any sailors who had been born in Britain. In 1788 the King's Attorney General reaffirmed 'the constant practice of prohibiting mariners, by proclamation, from departing the realm for the purpose of entering into foreign service, at times when the state of Europe would render it dangerous to weaken the strength of the nation'.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 295.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1803 the obstacles to emigration were considerably increased, especially for the poor, by the implementation of a Passenger Act. This limited the number of passengers that could sail on a ship bound for other than British colonies, thereby greatly increasing the cost of passage. In 1819 the British Parliament began to implement measures that facilitated the emigration of British subjects to British colonies, especially Canada and the Cape Colony. In 1824, Parliament repealed the legal restrictions on the emigration of artisans and seamen, thereby becoming one of the first countries in the world to permit the free emigration of any of their nationals. The 1803 Passage Act was abolished in 1827, and as a result the last of the British restrictions on emigration was removed.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Zolbeig, 1978.&lt;/ref&gt; The rapid pace of industrialization sweeping over British society at that time resulted both in a large surplus population and insufficiently high wages to provide adequate material incentives for a sufficient number of skilled sailors and craftsmen to stay voluntarily in Britain. Further, the early industrial secrets that Britain tried to protect by its emigration restrictions had, by the third decade of the 19th Century, ceased to be a monopoly of the British.<br /> <br /> Through the mid-19th Century the various European colonial powers generally prohibited emigration from the areas under their control, especially for those of non-European stock upon whose labour power colonial wealth was based. For example, until the middle of the 19th Century the Spanish colonial administration forbade all native Filipinos to travel outside the Philippines. They did not, however, forbid the ''immigration'' of Chinese merchants, whose international activities were found to be most advantageous to the Spanish dominated state.<br /> <br /> In general, the period between the 1820s and the 1880s saw the gradual abolition of virtually all restrictions on international travel and emigration throughout the world. Most countries even dropped the formal requirement to secure an exit licence or passport, neither were passports now needed for entry. Indeed, the half century before World War I was unique in so far as it was the first time when international travel within and between most countries was relatively unimpeded by politically imposed restrictions on either emigration or immigration. Millions left the commercializing societies and crossed the oceans without requiring either official permission to leave their country or official permission to work and settle in the country of their choice.<br /> <br /> In 1914, with the outbreak of World War I however, restrictions on international travel were reimposed, initially for purposes of military security and recruitment of nationals into the armed forces. They were then maintained by most countries after 1918 and the Armistice. In the 1930s many European countries once again intensified restrictions on the emigration of their nationals. In its Emergency Powers Act of 1939 Britain once again formally restricted emigration.<br /> <br /> During the interwar period Germany, Italy, Poland and other European dictatorships restricted emigration of their populations on the grounds that the economic and military strength of their nations depended on keeping their populations at home (or in Italy's case, at least in her colonies). In the late 1920s Italy enacted legislation making non-approved attempts to leave the country punishable by six months in prison — or two years for attempting to leave for political reasons. Border guards were empowered to fire at anyone attempting to cross the frontier without authorization. As an Italian government official stated 'Why should Italy still serve as a kind of human fish pond, to feed countries suffering from demographic impoverishment; and why should Italian mothers continue to bear sons to serve as soldiers for other nations?'&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Cited in ibid., p. 272.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1936 Poland issued a passport law that made it illegal for a person to leave the country if there was reason to believe that he or she would jeopardize an important interest of the state or endanger security, public peace or order. The 1936 law continued to be applied by the new socialist regime until 1954 when it was liberalized.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Doman, 1957, p. 310.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The classical Chinese state, like virtually all other historical states and empires, rigorously restricted the exit of its nationals from its territory. For example, an imperial edict of 1712 made emigration a capital offence. In 1729, an edict was issued forbidding any person who had emigrated from ever returning to China. The Ch'ing Dynasty's especially stringent measures against emigration seem primarily to have been motivated by fears of external subversion perpetrated by returning emigres, as well as by the standard desire of states to retain the ultimate sources of all national wealth — labour power — within its frontiers.<br /> <br /> The Chinese ban on all emigration was not officially repealed until 1894. The Western imperialist powers, however, forced China to ''de facto'' allow its nationals to leave by a series of unequal and humiliating treaties, beginning with the Treaty of Nanking which ended the Opium Wars. The T'sien-tsin Treaty of 1858, signed with Britain, specifically provided for legalization of the recruitment of cheap Chinese labour. It read in part:&lt;blockquote&gt;Chinese subjects choosing to take service in the British colonies or other parts beyond the seas are at perfect liberty to enter into engagements with British subjects for that purpose.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Cited in Zo, p. 29.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The US enforced a similar treaty on the Chinese state in 1868: the Burlingame Treaty, that utilized the rhetoric of 'inalienable human rights' for the geographical mobility of individuals to serve the interests of US business in securing cheap labour for West coast railway construction read:&lt;blockquote&gt;The United States of America and the Emperor of China are cordially recognizing the inherent and inalienable right of man to change his home and allegiance, and also the mutual advantage of the free migration and emigration of their citizens and subjects respectively, from one country to the other, for the purpose of curiosity, of trade, or as permanent residents.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 31.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In view of the fact that Western imperial powers forced China to sanction the recruitment of its nationals as cheap contract labourers ('coolies') for their colonies, and to help in the construction of the US, plus the humiliating treatment accorded to these labourers including pogroms, it was not surprising that, in the post-1948 period, China's new Communist government restored the traditional emigration restrictions as a matter of national pride and to protect its people, as well as to conserve labour power to aid in socialist construction. The emigration policy in Socialist China however, has never been as restrictive as that of the pre-1842 period. Unlike the Ch'ing Empire, the Chinese Socialist state has always allowed its nationals to travel abroad or to emigrate for 'good reasons', such as education and the unification of families.<br /> <br /> From the 1930s to the 1950s the Soviet Union tightly restricted international travel and emigration — for similar reasons to those of most states throughout history — i.e. to conserve economic and military strength and to prevent internal subversion through collusion with external enemies with the potential result of undermining the official ideology. During the 1960s and 1970s, however, as its economic, military and legitimacy situations became stronger, Soviet exit policies became increasingly more liberal. In the 1960s university educated emigres were generally required to pay back to the state the costs of their free higher education.<br /> <br /> By the 1970s it became relatively easy for Soviet citizens to emigrate — although a number of obstacles continued to exist in order to discourage emigration. The standard procedure for emigration at that time was the payment of 300 roubles fee for an exit visa; additionally, Soviet citizens who wished to emigrate were required to officially renounce their citizenship, including their right to return. Soviet citizens who emigrate to capitalist countries must pay a fee of 500 roubles to officially renounce their citizenship, while those citizens intending to emigrate to a socialist country must pay 50 roubles. The prerequisite of the renunciation of Soviet citizenship stresses the finality and lack of patriotism inherent in the act of emigration and is a deterrent. The total exit fees (approximately US $1,000) charged to those emigrating to the capitalist world is considered to serve both as partial compensation for the social labour invested in the education of the departing citizen, and an impediment to ill-considered emigration.<br /> <br /> Prospective Soviet emigrés must also secure the consent of their immediate family members. Further, members of the intelligentsia applying for exit visas commonly lose their professional positions and must work as labourers while awaiting approval for their exit. This process usually takes time, partly in order.to investigate persons desiring to leave and ensure that they are not privy to state secrets, and partly as a further obstacle to discourage emigration. Intellectuals involved in scientific or military related work are often denied permission to emigrate on the grounds that they possess state secrets. During the 1970s, not only did the Soviets liberalize the implementation of their emigration policies (tens of thousands emigrated annually), but it also adopted a policy of enforced emigration for prominent dissidents (For example, Solzhenitsyn, Gigorenko, Z. Medvedev). In the 1970s, emigration from the Soviet Union was easier than it had been in the feudal and mercantile states of pre-19th Century Europe: by historical standards then, Soviet exit policies had become quite liberal, thus reflecting the stability, strength and legitimacy of contemporary Soviet society.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Mehr and Rappaport, 1978.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Some socialist countries have permitted and even encouraged the emigration of those (usually of the formerly privileged class) who are ideologically opposed to socialism. Cuba and Vietnam have adopted similar policies. The object being to procure greater ideological homogeneity and remove a source of continuing demoralization. Conversely, the compelling need to retain highly skilled labour, without resorting to grossly inequalitarian pay scales, has led other socialist countries, for example, the German Democratic Republic since 1961, to adopt severely restrictive emigration policies. Still other socialist countries, e.g. Yugoslavia, Poland, 1956-81 and post-1956 Hungary have had no important restrictions on either exit or return for the vast majority of citizens.<br /> <br /> Because throughout its history the US has had sufficient resources and wage levels high enough to attract many more immigrants than those desiring to emigrate, its exit restrictions have been limited only in so far as to deny travel in and out of the country to those who might undermine the legitimacy of its institutions. During the American Revolution, for example, those who wished to cross into British territory had to obtain a pass from the various State governments or military commanders. Generally, a pass was granted only to individuals of known and acceptable 'character and views' and after their promise neither to inform or otherwise to act to the prejudice of the United States. Passes, even for those whose loyalty was guaranteed, were generally difficult to acquire; for example, General Washington was reluctant to grant passes into British controlled areas except 'on very important and necessary occasions'.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Goodman, 1966.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Although it began to issue passports in 1796, the new federal government did not require individuals wishing to leave the country to obtain one; these early US passports served as documents of identification and introduction for persons travelling in foreign countries, and were not exit permits — as they became later. Not until World War I did the Congress make it unlawful to leave the US without a valid passport, but in the 1920s and 1930s passports again became optional. In 1941, once more as a war measure, passports were required as a condition of exit from the US. After the Second World War the US maintained its authority to forbid individuals to travel abroad if, it was thought, this might not be 'in the best interests of the United States'. From 1947 to the mid-1950s numerous individuals were denied the right to leave the US on the grounds of their leftist political associations or beliefs, while blanket prohibitions were applied to travel to certain socialist countries. The US State Department's policy of denying exit from the country to those whose overseas activities might not be in the 'best interests of the United States' was incorporated into the 1950 McCarran Act, which forbade the issue of passports to members of the Communist Party, and the 1954 Internal Security Act, which gave the Secretary of State discretionary powers to refuse to issue an individual a passport. At this time, individuals who left the US without a valid passport (even to go to Mexico or Canada) were subject to criminal penalties on their return. As the Cold War diminished in the late 1950s the Secretary of State's discretionary powers withered away. However, restrictions remained on travel to some countries, for political reasons (for example, Cuba, China, Vietnam, Albania) throughout the mid-1970s, and Iran in 1980, and were reinforced by the threat of criminal action. In 1981, the Reagan administration once again restricted travel to certain countries — for example, to Cuba and Vietnam.<br /> <br /> Unlike 20th Century Europe — a region of ''emigration'' until the present century — the US's main concern has been to regulate ''immigration''. Beginning with restrictions and then absolute prohibitions on immigrants from Asia, in the last two decades of the 19th century, US immigration restrictions became increasingly severe until the 1924 Immigration Act, which prohibited virtually all immigration for any reason whatsoever from most countries of the world, with the exception of North-Western Europe, with its highly skilled, educated and politically reliable populations. Ample reserves of displaced peasants were now available in the Southern US States, Puerto Rico and Mexico meant it was no longer necessary to absorb the surplus peasantries of Eastern and Southern Europe. In fact, had European immigrants been permitted to continue to enter the US, the rapid commercialization of agriculture in the US South would have resulted in a massive redundant labour pool in the Northern US industrial cities. Further, after the First World War many European immigrants had associations with leftist groups in Europe — unlike the US South, or even Puerto Rico and Mexico migrants. The prohibition on European immigration thus served as a politically stabilizing factor in the US.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, North-Western Europe's rapid industrialization created a labour shortage there. In some places this was dealt with by a reinstitution of emigration restrictions in the inter-war years, and increasingly (especially in the 1950s and 1960s) by the immigration of workers from North-Western Europe's periphery. In the post-War period Europe, in common with the US, became primarily concerned with regulating immigration rather than emigration — especially in the 1970s and 1980s as its economies began to stagnate and the supply of immigrants began to exceed the demand.<br /> <br /> In 1965 the US immigration law was changed to allow immigration from any country, with priority given to those with skills needed by the economy. This new law produced a 'brain drain' of educated professionals from India, South Korea and Hong Kong, as well as from Latin America and Europe. Many highly educated individuals took up residence in the US in order to benefit from high incomes, rather than work for lower financial rewards in their own countries, where, in most cases, their services would have made a valuable contribution to the lives of the common people.<br /> <br /> Another priority of US immigration law has been to grant the right of immigration to those (usually upper- and upper middle-class persons) who leave such socialist countries as the USSR, Poland, Vietnam, Hungary and Cuba, both as a gesture of support for those whose political views accord with the US', and as part of its international propaganda war against 'totalitarian socialism' and for 'human rights'.<br /> <br /> The law is worded in terms of granting refugee status to those who leave their countries for reasons of political persecution, but the US has systematically determined that virtually anyone who leaves a socialist country does so for reasons of political persecution (in spite of the well-established fact that in most socialist countries in the 1970s and 1980s there has been relatively little political persecution).&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;See US Department of State, 1981.&lt;/ref&gt; On the other hand, refugees who oppose murderous right-wing regimes operating in their country — regimes such as those in Guatemala, El Salvador and Haiti that protect US business interests and in turn are supported by the US state — are routinely denied refugee status. For the US to acknowledge that their lives would probably be endangered if they were forcibly repatriated, would be an admission of support for countries that disregard basic human rights — in contradiction to one of the major ideological premises justifying US foreign policy.<br /> <br /> It should be noted that the right of Western Europeans (and Poles) to emigrate, and of those individuals with highly saleable skills and 'correct' politics from the less developed countries, is ''de facto'' substantially greater than the right of peasants, workers and the urban unemployed in the less developed countries, even when formal emigration restrictions are the same. If China, India or Haiti allows its citizens to emigrate and Australia, Canada, Japan, the US, the UK and Western Europe (and virtually all other high wage areas) are closed to immigrants from those areas (unless a high level of needed skill or special political assets can be demonstrated) then their emigration policies are irrelevant.<br /> <br /> The brief overview of the history of exit restrictions clearly demonstrates that a state's restrictions on emigration have always been a product of the general economic, military and ideological welfare of a society as assessed by its ruling class, and that virtually all states, almost throughout history, have put serious difficulties in the way of those members of their populations who wished to leave their territory. There are substantial reasons why 'the right to emigrate', together with the right to publicly express political ideas contrary to official ideology have historically been the two most generally restricted 'rights'; both directly affect the common economic health and ideological security. Labour — the source of all wealth — is a vital national resource. If a substantial portion of a country's population, or a substantial proportion of those with specific vital skills, were to leave a country, its overall economic situation would be substantially weakened. Since the purpose of any state is to advance the welfare of that class which controls the wealth of the country, it thus follows logically that no state will allow the exit of any substantial portion of its population, unless the economic and political costs of maintaining it within the national boundaries exceed the costs of allowing it to leave.<br /> <br /> The contemporary elevation of the 'freedom to emigrate' to the status of one of the most important 'inalienable human rights' is largely a product of liberal capitalist ideology, which directly reflects the underlying interests of advanced capitalism and imperialism rather than the interests of working people of the world (as is alleged by the discourse of abstract human rights). In the real world most emigrés are economic refugees leaving their homelands because of inadequate economic opportunities who have the intention of returning after they 'have made their fortunes'. The right to a good job in their native country is obviously more important to them than the 'right' to leave their homeland in search of a job overseas.<br /> <br /> Emigrés who do not leave their countries out of economic desperation do so owing to persecution on grounds of their ethnicity, nationality, or religious or political activities, it is reasonable to assume that emigrés would normally prefer the right to be protected from discrimination, the right to peacefully practice their religion, and to attempt to achieve their political goals, rather than the 'right of emigration', in the real world, the celebration of the right to emigrate typically camouflages the struggle between the rights of capital to obtain a labour force or secure domestic ideological homogeneity (and to score ideological points against socialist societies) and the right of working people to a decent standard of living, as well as a basic guarantee of a life free from structural humiliations.<br /> <br /> The institutionalization of the right to overseas travel and immigration and their associated general liberal ideology of 'freedom' is more firmly established in Dutch, British and American culture than elsewhere because of these countries' particular economic history. The fact that Britain was the first country to undergo capitalist industrialization meant that it was among the first to eliminate emigration restrictions, because it was the first to produce a massive surplus population of ex-peasants which became too economically and politically costly to maintain at home. As a result, emigration restrictions were not only considerably relaxed in the 18th Century, and abolished altogether in the early 19th , but emigration was strongly encouraged — even forced in the case of penal colonies such as Georgia and Australia —in order to ensure a labour force for the British colonies.<br /> <br /> Across the Atlantic, the US — as the primary recipient of most of Burope's emigrants throughout the World War I period, able to attract sufficient labour power without the need to restrict emigration — had every reason to celebrate the 'inalienable right of people to leave their countries', since such discourse was convenient propaganda with which to encourage the older states of Europe and China to release their labour reserve to be utilized by rapidly accumulating US capital. In these latter years of the 20th Century, the US continues to be the world's chief practitioner of the rhetoric of the 'unalienable right to emigrate', since such rhetoric continues to serve it in the appropriation of the highly skilled labour of the less developed world, and simultaneously enables it continuously to score a propaganda victory over the poorer socialist countries. Countries that are attempting to institutionalize egalitarian wage policies and carry out rapid industrialization must deter their more highly skilled workers from emigrating and succumbing to the temptation of the high salaries and luxurious living styles attainable in the US. By asserting that among the most fundamental of all 'human rights' issues is to be permitted to leave one's country, US propaganda categorizes socialist countries' restrictions on emigration as proof of the superiority of inegalitarian capitalism over 'totalitarian' socialism.<br /> <br /> In reality, emigration restrictions are irrelevant to the inherent possibilities of abstract freedom in capitalist and socialist societies, but reflect only the particular circumstances of the latter half of the 20th Century in which most of the highly industrialized countries of the world are capitalist and able to offer its workforce generous financial rewards — especially to the highly skilled. Faced with the emigration of a significant part of the labour force, doubtless the Western capitalist countries would take similar action to that of their predecessor states and other states throughout history and impose exit restrictions on their nationals.<br /> <br /> The relative liberalism of the world's leading capitalist states towards the international mobility of their nationals that has prevailed since the mid-19th Century, has to a large extent been associated with the general liberalism of this period: free trade, free labour (the abolition of slavery, serfdom and the rights of craftsworkers in their jobs), and the freedom of public expression. All these 'rights' have proved to be highly beneficial to the most rich and powerful countries — first Holland, then Britain, then the US, then the rest of Western Europe — and it is for this reason these countries have instituted and celebrated such 'rights' and other countries have not. Under such circumstances 'freedom' is not simply permitted but often enforced. Thus, Britain, the US and other Western powers forced free trade, free emigration, freedom of ideology (i.e. the rights of missionaries to convert), and 'free' labout, upon most of the less developed world. This imperialist discourse of 'inalienable rights', however, has concealed the most crass material interests of expanding capitalism, and the destruction and humiliation of the less developed countties, including the premature deaths of many millions of their people.<br /> <br /> In the late 20th Century the discourse of 'human rights' similarly disguises the interests of those who materially benefit from the emigration of skilled persons from socialist societies. Indeed, this illustrates the general principle that the discourse of 'inalienable' absolute individual or 'inherent human rights' is merely an ideological cloak overlying the class interests of those who employ it.<br /> <br /> The 'community' (i.e. propertied class) interest always prevails and is the real basis of all 'rights' (the rhetoric of social contract or inalienable individual rights notwithstanding). The conceptualization of individual rights as sometimes overridden by the community interest (which reflects an individual vs. society dualism) is fundamentally faulty. It is sufficient to understand the logic of a particular type of society and its level of wealth and stability to know what individual 'rights' will be permitted and celebrated; no other hypotheses are necessary.<br /> <br /> === Comparative Analysis ===<br /> It can be argued legitimately that for purposes of illustrating the condition of rights in the contemporary Soviet Union comparisons would most appropriately be made: (1) with the country's Czarist (pre-1917) past as well as with previous periods in Soviet history, focusing on the rate of change in the advance or regression of rights; (2) with countries at a similar level of the development of the productive forces, either today or at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution; or, (3) with the other major economic and military power and chief representative of the major competing social and economic system in the world today — the USA.<br /> <br /> For those sympathetic to Soviet achievements in the area of rights it would be desirable to assume the first framework. It can easily be demonstrated that the vast majotity of the Soviet people have experienced a significant improvement in all types of rights: (1) basic civil liberties and participatory rights: before 1917 the Russian Empire was a Monarchist absolutism in which no effective participation or civil liberties to oppose the system or to advocate the interests of the working people or minorities were allowed; (2) civil rights: a policy of forced Russification existed as well as a policy of systematic persecution of the Jews; (3) productive property was concentrated in the hands of a few, with most of the urban population being propertyless, workers having no rights in their jobs; and finally, (4) in terms of distributive rights, there was no right to work, housing, education, medicine, social security, etc. for the common people. Similarly, comparisons of conditions in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s with those in the mid-1930s to mid-1955s can (by the consensus of Western scholars) easily demonstrate considerable expansion in the area of popular rights, especially civil liberties and participatory rights. My analysis will refer to the Soviet past, but this will not be the primary mode of comparison.<br /> <br /> That there is an advanced level of rights in the USSR today in comparison with countries with an equivalent level of economic development and living standard of the common people in the Russian Empire in 1917 is also easily demonstrable. The situation in Soviet Central Asia in all five areas (including civil liberties) are considerably more advanced than in those areas across the Soviet Union's southern borders, which traditionally shared the same cultures, for example, Turkey, Iran under the Shah, Afghanistan before its 1978 revolution, as well as such countries as Pakistan. Similarly, the popular rights experienced today in the Slavic and the Baltic and Transcaucasian Republics in comparison with countries such as Argentina, Portugal and Chile, which roughly, were at similar levels of the development of their productive forces in 1917 reflects favourably on the Soviet Union. To a large extent such comparisons form a peripheral strand of my argument, especially in reference to conditions in Soviet Central Asia.<br /> <br /> A somewhat more difficult case for a supporter of the thesis that rights are fairly advanced in the Soviet Union would be to contrast the degree of rights in the Soviet Union with countries which today are on a similar level of development of the productive forces, and hence living standards of the people, for example, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom. While a strong case could be made (at least for the UK and Italy) that there is a higher level of type III civil liberties in the West, it would be more difficult to demonstrate that civil rights for minorities, substantive economic rights, property rights for the majority, or participatory rights were more advanced in capitalist countries. Comparisons between Italy, Spain, the UK and the USSR are made occasionally in this book.<br /> <br /> That rights in the USSR are more advanced in comparison with its chief competitor in the wortld today — the USA 'the land of the free' — is perhaps most difficult of all assertions to maintain. To do so might prove to be the strongest case against those who categorize the competition between the socialist system (as typified by the USSR) and the capitalist system (as typified by the USA) in terms of 'human rights' rather than in terms of living standards.<br /> <br /> In the comparisons between the US and the USSR every effort is made to locate more or less comparable data for the same or comparable time periods. Thus, the history of repression and tolerance in the two countries is taken from the time of their respective revolutions through to about 1980. Comparisons of the conditions of minorities and women in the two countries focuses on the 1960-80 period. Whenever possible, the most recently available Soviet data is compared with data from the US for the same years — or for years as close as possible. In some cases, however, data for the Soviet Union is available in English for only selected time periods, usually because it was reported in a specific study (sometimes done in the mid or late 1960s) and is not regularly updated in any available English language source. Data for the US is sometimes available for its census years only, or in a few cases, solely in special reports which cover only selected years. When it is impossible to locate data for the same (or approximately the same) year for the two countries, ''earlier'' Soviet data is compared with later US data. Such a comparison has a built-in pro-US bias since this gives the US longer to have improved the conditions of minorities or women, than the Soviets. Since such comparisons are inherently biased against demonstrating that the Soviets have made more progress than the US, contrary evidence in such comparisons is strongly indicative that the USSR is more progressive on questions of minority or women's rights than the US. Comparisons for the US and the USSR on economic conditions and rights are made largely from the most recently available 1970s data, which, for the most part, are for comparable time periods.<br /> <br /> In comparing and contrasting the conditions of rights in the Soviet Union and the United States of America this book will focus only on three and a half of the basic types of rights outlined in this chapter: (1) civil rights (the position of national minorities and women); (2) distributive rights; (3) civil liberties; and (4) property rights of working people in relation to job security, workers' participation and other job rights. The question of participation in the state (political rights) and other aspects of property rights were treated in one of my earlier books.&lt;ref group=&quot;1.&quot;&gt;Szymanski, 1979.&lt;/ref&gt; These latter two questions are ''the'' two central aspects of which class has power in the USSR, i.e., whether or not the country is socialist, while the former questions, though not an integral part of socialism, are nevertheless closely linked to it. It is to be expected that an authentically socialist society would create an advanced structure of civil rights for national minorities and women, and that the rights of these groups would be considerably more advanced than under comparable capitalist societies; that the basic social security and job rights (including participation in management) for working people should be considerably more advanced than in capitalist societies; that working people should exercise real civil liberties in participation in public discussions on the development of their society (although not necessarily in publicly expressing anti-socialist ideas); and that working people should enjoy an advanced level of social services as well as the guarantee of the right to work.<br /> <br /> Chapter two examines the position of the major Asian minorities vis-à-vis the extent to which they have maintained a colonial or neo-colonial relationship with the European parts of the USSR. Their economic development, social welfare, education, cultural and linguistic development and political participation are examined, as is the evidence for separatism, anti-socialist or anti-Russian sentiments and movements. Chapter three is a parallel study of the major European nationalities and of the Jews, and concludes that there is little or no semblance of national oppression in the USSR. That considerable advances have been made in virtually all aspects of the life of the minorities, and that little of the previous inferior status of the oppressed nationalities of the USSR remains. The comparison with the USA shows that there is considerably more substantial and rapid progress in these regards in the USSR.<br /> <br /> Chapter four is a systematic analysis of the position of women in the USSR. The legal rights of women, the socialization of child care, the sharing of housework by husbands and wives, the readily availability of abortion, the educational opportunities open to women, the economic integration of women in the economy, the special protections for women workers and the role of women in management, the Party and in the government are closely examined. It is concluded that women have achieved a considerably more egalitarian position in Soviet society than have US women, even though, in 1917, US women were in a considerably better position relative to men: progress for Soviet women has thus been extremely rapid.<br /> <br /> Chapter five covers the question of distributive rights as well as job rights, including participation in the decision making processes of the enterprises. The standard of living of Soviet and Western workers is compared (in terms of necessities, luxuries, housing, etc.). The rights to free education and medical care, as well as retirement and disability benefits are treated. The considerable rights to remunerative employment, job security and participation of Soviet workers is elaborated and contrasted with the rights of US workers. Most areas of distributive and job rights (safety conditions being one exception) are found to be significantly more advanced in the USSR than in the US.<br /> <br /> Chapters six, seven and eight systematically examine civil liberties (especially type III advocacy rights) in the USSR and the USA. Chapter seven traces the history of advocacy and due process rights (and their repression or suspension) from the 1917 revolution to the mid-1950s. The period of cultural revolution (1928-31), and of collectivization of agriculture/famine (1928-33), as well as the period of the so-called 'Great Purge' (1936-38) are concentrated upon, as it is in these periods that 'human rights' are most commonly alleged to have been the most repressed in Soviet history. In this chapter it will be shown that the considerable variations in the level of due process and advocacy rights from 1917 to 1955 were a product of the degree of international and domestic crisis, and not a product of individual personalities. Chapter eight focuses on the contemporary Soviet dissident movement, first defining the range of tolerated public opinion in the country, the extent of and definitions of 'dissidents', their strategy, the sanctions against them, and the different political currents among them. The level of tolerance and repression of those who oppose the Soviet socialist system is carefully compared with the history of repression of those who have opposed the dominant institutions of US society over the 200 years of US history, and concludes that there is no qualitative difference between the two types of societies in this respect. The states of both the USSR and the USA have always done whatever was necessary to preserve their dominant system of property. Periods of increased repression in both countries have corresponded to the degree of the threat to the dominant class, while periods of tolerance have corresponded to periods of latency of opposition movements. As is shown in Chapter six, the difference between the repression practiced in US history during times of crisis and war and that which has been practiced since the mid-1950s in the USSR, while it does not differ in essence or extent, does differ in the dimension of 'who benefits', as one would expect from the qualitatively different class nature of the two countries. Finally, Chapter nine is a summary of the data presented, and outlines a general theory of advocacy rights.<br /> <br /> It must be emphasized that the analysis in Chapters six to nine, on tolerance and civil liberties, is a materialist attempt to explain the causes of tolerance and repression in a given society at a given time and not an attempt to evaluate repression or tolerance as 'bad' or 'good'. The underlying assumption here is that a scientific understanding of why repression or tolerance occurs is more useful than are the all-too-easy value judgements (which fill many library shelves). Armed with an understanding of the causes of repression and tolerance we may be able not only to objectively evaluate the relative liberation potential of capitalism and socialism, but also act in such a way as to avoid misplaced repression ''or'' liberalism in the future.<br /> <br /> It must also be emphasized that the attempt to explain the causes of the more repressive periods of either US or Soviet history in no way 'justifies' or legitimates' such repressions. On the contrary, a scientific understanding of such repressive periods in both countries avoids trivializing them either as simply 'mistakes', or a result of the policies of 'bad' leaders. Again, with an understanding of the structural causes of tolerance and repression we are in a better position to objectively evaluate and explain to others the relative potential of capitalism and socialism to realize 'human rights', as well as to minimize the probability of future mistaken liberalism ''or'' repression.<br /> <br /> === A Note on Sources ===<br /> The discussion of human rights in the USSR and the USA is based almost entirely on fundamentally anti-Soviet, pro-capitalist sources; sources generally considered in Western academic circles to be respectable and objective. Pro-Soviet sources, as a general rule, are not used (with the exception of a few statistics from the Soviet statistical year-book and citations from the Soviet Constitution). The generally anti-Soviet sources utilized almost exclusively in this book can be expected to be biased in the direction of exaggerating the extent of the absence of human rights in the USSR, while at the same time magnifying the West's achievements in this respect. For the most part, these sources can also be expected to approach the study of the USSR within a philosophical framework, or problematic, of rights native to the Western liberal tradition. A framework which emphasizes formal universal and abstract civil liberties and minimizes the emphasis both on substantive rights and the class nature of all rights. Because of their anticipated bias, such works can generally be considered exceptionally reliable when they include evidence for the existence of a high level of rights, especially civil liberties, in the USSR. Since any claims made in pro-Soviet sources can be easily discredited as mere propaganda (and can, in fact, be expected generally to exaggerate the level of rights in the USSR, and play down any failings in Soviet rights) these are not relied upon.<br /> <br /> An examination of the substantial body of scholarly work produced on most aspects of Soviet society since the 1960s in the Anglo-Saxon countries reveals an interesting pattern. The polemic cold war rhetoric that permeated the works of the 'Sovietologists' in the 1950s has largely been replaced by fairly careful and balanced discussions of whatever particular area of Soviet life a writer is covering (such is the case even in official US government publications such as the US International Communications Agency's Problems of Communism). However, the introductions and conclusions of such works (and usually the introductions and conclusions of each chapter as well) sandwich such valuable empirical discussions between generally anti-Soviet and pro-Western analyses, which for the most part are not based on the evidence the writers present. Rather, the generalities, in contrast to the specifics, of such works, seem to be an assertion of 'common sense', 'what we all know', or the assumptions of the field; or perhaps more cynically, what must be said in order to get the works published and to maintain academic respectability (as well as future funding). There seems to be a sincere ambivalence towards the Soviet Union at the heart of contemporary Soviet studies. The USSR's considerable accomplishments are now generally recognized by more careful Western students of that soclety, but very few draw the general, logical conclusions from the corpus of their work, instead preferring the privileges traditional to the practitioners of their field. The present author is deeply indebted to the integrity of their detailed scholarship, but being less cautious, draws the conclusions lying just below the surface of the corpus of their work.<br /> <br /> === References ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;1.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> == 2. The Asian Nationalities in the USSR ==<br /> While Great Britain, France and the other Western European imperialist powers were conquering most of the Caribbean, Africa, India, South-East Asia and the Pacific, Russia was expanding overland towards the Pacific and deep into Central Asia. By the late 19th Century Russia had conquered and secured as colonies a considerable section of Asia including the Transcaucus, Kazakhstan and Turkestan. With the upheavals of the 1917 revolution and the consequent civil war much of this area became temporarily independent under rightist governments. By the early 1920s, however, all of this area again became associated with Russia in the USSR. There was a period of guerrilla type resistance by some conservative sections of the population (the 'Basmachi') for a few years in the early 1920s with the local population divided between progressives supporting socialist transformation and conservatives resisting it.<br /> <br /> Under the Czar, and at the beginning of Soviet rule, the societies of Central Asia and the Islamic parts of the Transcaucus were more or less identical to those in the adjacent areas: parts of the Ottoman or Persian empires, Afghanistan or British India. Their administration differed in no significant way from the colonies and dependencies of Britain, France or the other Western European powers. They were economically exploited for the benefit of the Russian ruling class and kept undeveloped as sources of raw materials and markets. Their populations were impoverished and denied basic welfare services and education, their native languages and cultures were discouraged and they were denied self-government.<br /> <br /> It is important to examine the relationship between the Asiatic areas of the Soviet Union, and the present day Slavic areas of the USSR in order to assess the extent to which the pre-1917 colonial relations between a European colonial power and its Asiatic colonies have been either maintained or transformed during 60 years of Soviet rule. If the Slavic areas of the USSR, particularly Russia, are essentially imperialist, then we would expect the relationship between them and the Asiatic areas to be fundamentally the same as that between the US — as well as other leading capitalist countries — and their colonies and semi-colonies throughout the less developed areas. If, on the other hand, the characteristics of a colonial or neo-colonial relationship are absent, this would lend considerable evidence to the thesis that Russia, and the rest of the Slavic areas, are not imperialist.<br /> <br /> For the purposes of this book, Azerbaidzhan (in the Transcaucus) and the five Republics in the central part of Asia: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kirgizistan, Uzbekistan and Tadzhikistan, are categorized as Soviet Asia. (The latter four are commonly referred to as 'Soviet Central Asia', but I use the term to include Kazakhstan as well.) In order to determine whether or not the relationships between Soviet Asia and Russia are characteristically colonial or neo-colonial, an examination will be made of: economic relations, living standards, including health and education, the development of local language and culture, the degree of self-government and manifestations of nationalism, pan-Islamic sentiments and separatism or anti-Sovietism in Soviet Asia. If there is a strong colonial or neo-colonial character in Russia's relations with Soviet Asia it is to be expected that this will be manifested by exploitation, hindrance of its industrialization, maintenance of low living standards, perpetuation of poor welfare and educational standards, general discrimination against Soviet Asians for good jobs, education and government positions, and discouragement of the use and development of native languages and culture. Further, that such colonial and neo-colonial oppression would result in resentment and resistance by the native populations towards Russian domination and oppression and consequently that riots, Islamic revivalism, hostility to Russians, and dissident movements among intellectuals would arise.<br /> <br /> === Origins of Soviet Power in Central Asia ===<br /> The Bolshevik revolution resonated through Central Asia. Younger Asian intellectuals especially rallied behind the Bolshevik cause in the Civil War against the traditional ruling classes of Central Asia, and in the transformation of the region after 1920. Before the 1917 Revolution there were both strong progressive nationalist and national Communist movements among the Asians. In the decade before 1917, Central Asian nationalists had been moving towards Marxism in reaction to their failure to gain concessions from the Czar. National Marxism thrived in Baku and Kazakhstan. The Bolshevik emphasis on the 'national question' and their sensitivity to the concerns of colonized peoples were well received among the colonized Asians as were the efforts of the Bolsheviks to recruit members. A distinctive 'Muslim National Communism' developed, the predecessor of similar latter day developments in China, Cuba, and elsewhere in the less developed countries. Many Asian leaders of this movement at first proposed autonomy from the Russian dominated CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) and emphasized separate political and cultural development within a federation with European Russia.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Bennigsen and Wimbush, 1979, pp. 5-7, 27.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In June 1918 a separate Muslim Bolshevik Party was created out of the former Socialist Muslim Party. This Party claimed equal status with the Russian Communist Party. Party membership was limited exclusively to persons of Muslim background. In the immediate post-1917 years the Bolshevik parties were joined by a wide variety of radicals, socialists and nationalists who supported the Bolsheviks against their common enemies. By 1920 the Bolsheviks seemed to have gained hegemony among radical intellectuals of Islamic backgrounds, including such non-Marxist nationalist groupings as the Young Bukharans. In some places whole clans and tribes joined. There were relatively few workers in the Muslim Bolshevik Party, with the principle exception of the Baku area, simply because there were few workers in the region; the class background of the new Party was heavily middle class, especially among nationalist intellectuals. Within a few years after its formation the autonomous Muslim Bolshevik Party was merged into the CPSU.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;ibid, pp. 26-33,60.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Muslim troops played a decisive role in the defeat of the counterrevolutionary White armies in the Russian Civil War as well as in establishing Soviet power in Central Asia. In July 1918, about 50,000 Tatar-Bashkir soldiers were fighting with the Sixth Red Army in the East. Early in 1919, approximately a quarter of a million soldiers of Muslim background were fighting with the Red Armies on all fronts. At the beginning of the Civil War the White counter-revolutionary forces were able to recruit, or more usually draft, considerable numbers of Muslims into their armies. However, as the War progressed more and more of these troops defected, typically as whole units, to the Reds. Defecting units often played a positive role in Bolshevik military victories, for example, 2,000 trained Bashkir troops who defected in 1919 on the Urals front made a crucial contribution to Kolchaks defeat. Coincidental with the defection of troops was the desertion of various non-Marxist Asian nationalist groups to the side of the Reds as they came to see what a White restoration would mean for Central Asia. By 1920 the Bolsheviks had secured the support, or at least the neutrality, of almost all radical nationalists in Central Asia.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid, pp. 25, 26,64.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Bolshevik Revolution was first carried into Central Asia by Slavic workers who organized the Tashkent Soviet (composed entirely of Slavs) which took power in Tashkent at the end of October 1917. By allying with the progressive nationalist Young Bukharans the Tashkent Soviet set the pattern throughout Central Asia. In March 1918 the Tashkent Soviet sent a detachment of Russian workers with a larger group of Young Bukharans to overthrow the Emir of Turkestan who had established an independent government in the ancient city of Bukhara; this attempt to overthrow the reactionary Emir was repulsed. Tashkent and its Soviet was cut off from Russia proper by the White armies for more than a year, but with progressive nationalist support it was able to maintain itself until the White encirclement was broken. The policies followed by the Slavic workers who ran the Tashkent Soviet, however, tended to alienate many Asians, and not until Tashkent was again linked up with the mainstream of the Bolshevik Revolution were its policies moderated and its discriminatory measures against Muslims, including excluding them from government posts and the forced appropriation of food from the local population, eliminated. Another separatist nationalist government in Turkestan, set up in December 1918 in the old city of Kokand, was suppressed by the Tashkent Soviet in February 1919.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Wheeler, 1964, pp. 101-8.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Emir of Bukhara, who had been ruling this city and its environs since 1917 in an attempt to consolidate his regime, launched a reign of terror against all progressives, including the nationalist Young Bukharans. He also established relations with the British forces in Persia and other anti-Socialist forces abroad. In September 1920, the Young Bukharans organized a revolt in Bukhara and, aided by the Red Army, finally succeeded in overthrowing the Emir and establishing the People's Republic of Bukhara. Similar events occurred at the same time in Khiva, the other principal Khanate of Central Asia.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Nove and Newth, 1967, p. 29; Wheeler, 1964, pp. 101-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The new Soviet regimes in Central Asia began a campaign of intensive reform that included radical land redistribution; in Turkestan, large stretches of land seized by Russian settlers were returned to Muslim peasants.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Wheeler, 1964; Katz et al., p. 241.&lt;/ref&gt; Intensive campaigns were launched against what were considered to be backward aspects of Islam, such as the cloistering and veiling of women (see Chapter 4) and the Ramadan fast. Such campaigns were combined with a wide range of economic, social and cultural improvements in people's lives, including mass literacy campaigns, universal education, modernization of agriculture, industrialization, and the provision of basic medical and welfare services. Within a relatively short time most of the population was consolidated behind Soviet power.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Wheeler, 1964, pp. 46ff, 128ff.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the 1920-24 period, differences appeared between the non-Marxists, who initially formed the dominant force in the new People's Republics of Khiva and Bukhara, in most of the territory of the old Czarist colony of Tutkestan; the Central Asian National Communists, who aspired to create one large 'Republic of Turan' which would unite all Islamic and Turkic peoples in the old Russian empire into one Soviet Republic to be loosely affiliated with the European Socialist area; and the Moscow centred Bolsheviks. The Central Asian national Communists wanted to use the Republic of Turan in aid of the Bolshevik's policy of extending the Revolution into Asia. One Tatar leader of this persuasion argued:&lt;blockquote&gt;To attract the Muslim proletariat to communism we must offer him a national flag, which will act on him as a magnet.... If we want to sponsor the revolution in the East, we must create in Soviet Russia a territory close to the Muslim East, which could become an experimental laboratory for the building of communism, where the best revolutionary forces can be concentrated.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Bennigsen and Wimbush, 1979, p. 67.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;By 1923-24 Marxist forces had succeeded in displacing non-Marxist elements in the progressive nationalist movements in the People's Republics of Khiva and Bukhara. In 1924 the high degree of autonomy in these two republics ended, and the idea of a unified Republic of Turan was officially rejected. Instead, Central Asia was divided into five Soviet Republics according to traditional ethnic/linguistic lines; separate republics were established for the Uzbeks, Tadzhiks, Turkmen, Kirgiz and Kazakhs. It was argued that only by such means would traditional antagonisms among various ethnic groups (such as that between the sedentary Uzbeks and the nomadic Turkmens) be minimized and the progressive aspects of each group's culture be developed.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Aliworth, 1967, Chapter 10; Katz et al., 1975, p. 266; Wheeier, 1964, Chapter 7.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1918, the Tashkent Soviet's policies towards the native Asians, particularly campaigns to requisition food, drove many of them to rebel, especially those in the more remote areas where traditional religious and political figures remained influential. Initially, many Asians joined with the White armies and later continued their resistance as guerrillas — the Basmachi. In autumn 1919, after the central government had re-established control over the Tashkent Soviet and Muslims were incorporated into it, a more intensive campaign to suppress guerrilla resistance to Soviet power was instituted, under General Frunze. By autumn 1922, the Bolsheviks (both Slavic and Asian) working with the Young Bukharans were able to put down the bulk of traditionalist Basmachi resistance, and although until 1931 scattered resistance continued in some areas, by 1923 violent resistance became almost negligible.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, pp. 286-7; Wheeier, 1967, pp. 108-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Armed resistance to Soviet Power was revitalized on a smaller scale in some areas in response to the rapid collectivization campaigns after 1928. Resistance to collectivization was especially strong among the largely nomadic Kazakhs and Kirgiz who were forced to abandon their nomadic lifestyle.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Nove and Newth, 1967, p. 56; Katz et al., 1975, 217, 241; Wheeier,1964, 129.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === Economic Development ===<br /> Soviet Asia, formerly extremely poor and industrially underdeveloped, was rapidly industrialized and the standard of living brought up to Southern European standards, in sharp contrast to the equivalent areas of the Middle East. The per capita income, in relative terms, in 1970 ranged from Tadzhikistan at 673 roubles per capita (44% below the national average) to Estonia at 1,587 roubles per capita (33% above the national average). See Table 2.1.<br /> <br /> The per capita variation is largely owing to the much higher percentage of children among the Asian nationalities than among the European nationalities. When a calculation is made of roubles per adult, which is more relevant as a measure than income per capita in that it more accurately reflects remuneration per worker, we see a smaller spread. The variation between the richest and poorest republics is then reduced to 17% above the USSR average for Estonia and to 21% below for Tadzhikistan; most of the variance is thus seen to be a result of the age structure. Whereas in per capita terms the average for the five Central Asian republics is 32% below the USSR average, measured in terms per adult it is 11% below. While the per capita income for Azerbaidzhan is 38% below the USSR average the income per adult is only 18% below. The data on wages in 1978 reveals an even more egalitarian picture. Here it is seen that the average wage level in the Asian Republics is only 7% below the all-Soviet average, while Estonia, the Republic with the highest overall wage, has only 11% higher than average wages.<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed&quot;<br /> |+Table 2.1<br /> Produced National Annual Income and Index of Monthly Wages 1978, by Republic<br /> Source: Katz et al., 1975, ''The Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalists'', pp. 443-52; Lane, 1982, p. 87.<br /> !<br /> !Roubles per Capita 1970<br /> !Roubles per Adult (over 20 years old) 1970<br /> !GNP/Capita Equivalent in 1974 US Dollars<br /> !Ratio of Average Monthly Wages to the all-Soviet Average: 1978<br /> |-<br /> |Estonia<br /> |1,587<br /> |2,254<br /> |$ 3,618<br /> |1.11<br /> |-<br /> |Latvia<br /> |1,574<br /> |2,204<br /> |3,589<br /> |1.01<br /> |-<br /> |Lithuania<br /> |1,336<br /> |2,044<br /> |3,046<br /> |.99<br /> |-<br /> |RSFSR<br /> |1,332<br /> |2,078<br /> |3,037<br /> |1.05<br /> |-<br /> |Ukraine<br /> |1,158<br /> |1,725<br /> |2,640<br /> |.91<br /> |-<br /> |Belorussia<br /> |1,092<br /> |1,747<br /> |2,490<br /> |.88<br /> |-<br /> |Kazakhstan<br /> |979<br /> |1,830<br /> |2,332<br /> |1.00<br /> |-<br /> |Moldavia<br /> |969<br /> |1,667<br /> |2,209<br /> |.81<br /> |-<br /> |Armenia<br /> |923<br /> |1,818<br /> |2,104<br /> |.96<br /> |-<br /> |Turkmenia<br /> |878<br /> |1,923<br /> |2,002<br /> |1.07<br /> |-<br /> |Georgia<br /> |871<br /> |1,428<br /> |1,986<br /> |.84<br /> |-<br /> |Kirgizia<br /> |797<br /> |1,634<br /> |1,817<br /> |.90<br /> |-<br /> |Azerbaidzhan<br /> |737<br /> |1,570<br /> |1,680<br /> |.86<br /> |-<br /> |Uzbekistan<br /> |728<br /> |1,609<br /> |1,660<br /> |.92<br /> |-<br /> |Tadzhikistan<br /> |673<br /> |1,514<br /> |1,534<br /> |.88<br /> |-<br /> |USSR average<br /> |1,194<br /> |1,922<br /> |$ 2,720<br /> |1.00<br /> |}<br /> Translating the Soviet conception of National Produced Income into dollars, gives an average of about US $1,700 per capita in 1970 (as calculated in 1974 dollars) for the Asian Republics. In comparison, the figure for Turkey is $630, for Iran $900, for Spain $1,950, for Portugal $1,150 and for Greece $1,850. Soviet Asia compares very favourably with the equivalent parts of the Middle East, being in fact on a similar economic level to Southern Europe. It should also be noted that the gap in even per capita income of Russia proper and the poorest of the Asian republics is significantly less than that between, say, West Germany ($5,650) and Italy ($2,430), and very much less than that between West Germany and the poorest of the Southern European countries, such as Portugal or Greece.<br /> <br /> The income gap between the poorest and richest States in the USA in the 1960s approximated the income spread among Soviet Republics in 1970. In 1960 the per capita income of Mississippi, the poorest state, was 46% below the national average, and 35%. below in 1970. In 1960, Connecticut, the wealthiest state, had a per capita income of 29% above the national average, in 1970 it was 25%. Puerto Rico's per capita income in 1960 was 25% of that of the Continental US, in 1970 it was 36% and in 1978 28%.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;US Department of Commerce 1980a, p. 445.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The income spread among the Soviet Republics is thus virtually identical to that of the US States, and is far more egalitarian than the spread between the US mainland and its colony of Puerto Rico, which is frequently cited as an example of the economic benefits of US colonialism. While per capita income in Central Asia averaged two-thirds the national average (as it did in the 1960s in the deep South of the US) in Puerto Rico, per capita income averaged only one-third. Additionally, unlike the operative trends, both among the 50 States of the US and among the 15 Soviet Republics, the income gap between Puerto Rico and the US increased, rather than decreased over the course of the 1970s, as indication of the qualitatively different relationship between that island and the US on the one hand and that between Central Asia and the Slavic areas of the USSR on the other.<br /> <br /> A UN Economic Commission for Europe report commented that the disparities in living standards between Central Asia and the Soviet average:&lt;blockquote&gt;were probably one-fifth to one-fourth lower than the Soviet average [and that] this regional disparity in living standards cannot be regarded as large compared with those found in other countries. There is hardly any European country without regions where per capita income or consumption is one-fifth or more below the national average.... The conclusion that average living standards in Central Asia are only one-fifth to one-fourth below those of the Soviet Union as a whole is tantamount to saying that they are on much higher levels than those in the neighboring Asian countries, and that they have improved very considerably in the three decades since the end of the Civil War.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;See Wheeier, 1964,pp. 165-6.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The rapid economic growth and improvement in living standards in Soviet Asia is reflected in the rapid industrialization of the area since the Bolshevik Revolution. In Turkmen SSR from 1913 to 1978 industrial output increased by 74 times (11 times since 1940); in Tadzhik SSR by 138 times (16 times since 1940); in Kirghiz SSR by 333 times (34 times since 1940); by 71 times in Uzbek SSR (15 times since 1940); by 232 times in Kazakh SSR (30 times since 1940) and by 62 times in Azerbaidzhan SSR (11 times since 1940). This compares with an increase of 151 times in the Russian Republic since 1913 (and an increase of 17 times since 1940).&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;''USSR in Figures'', 1978, p. 92.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The level of industrialization, as reflected in the proportion of the work force in industry, building and transport, contrasted with agriculture, has not yet reached the Soviet average, but there is considerable movement in this direction. In 1939, in the five Central Asian republics, the proportion of industrial workers in the population was 54% that of the Soviet average, but by 1959 it had risen to 68%.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Nove and Newth, 1967, p. 41.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed&quot;<br /> |+Table 2.2<br /> Percentages of Total Working Population Engaged in Different Economic Sectors<br /> Source: Alec Nove and J. A. Newth, 1967, ''The Soviet Middle East'', p. 41.<br /> ! rowspan=&quot;2&quot; |<br /> ! colspan=&quot;2&quot; |1939<br /> ! colspan=&quot;2&quot; |1959<br /> |-<br /> !Industry Building Transport<br /> !Agriculture<br /> !Industry Building Transport<br /> !Agriculture<br /> |-<br /> |USSR average<br /> |30.1<br /> |50.1<br /> |36.9<br /> |39.8<br /> |-<br /> |RSFSR<br /> |33.9<br /> |45.9<br /> |43.2<br /> |30.4<br /> |-<br /> |Uzbekistan<br /> |14.3<br /> |70.8<br /> |21.1<br /> |58.9<br /> |-<br /> |Kazakhstan<br /> |21.7<br /> |54.0<br /> |33.8<br /> |39.1<br /> |-<br /> |Azerbaidzhan<br /> |23.1<br /> |57.5<br /> |26.5<br /> |49.6<br /> |-<br /> |Kirgizia<br /> |13.9<br /> |70.9<br /> |24.9<br /> |52.2<br /> |-<br /> |Tadzhikistan<br /> |10.9<br /> |75.3<br /> |18.9<br /> |62.0<br /> |-<br /> |Turkmenia<br /> |20.3<br /> |59.1<br /> |26.7<br /> |48.6<br /> |}<br /> In 1956 13% of Iran's working population was employed in industry, building or transport compared to the average of 25% for the five Central Asian republics and 26.5% for Azerbaidzhan in 1959. The contrast between Soviet Asia and the equivalent regions of the mid-East is also seen in Kwh of electrical energy produced per capita. In 1962 it averaged 754 Kwh per capita in the five Central Asian Republics and 1,995 Kwh per capita in Azerbaidzhan, compared to 121 Kwh per capita in Turkey and 32 Kwh per capita in Iran in 1960.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 111.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In both Transcaucasia and Central Asia rural incomes are considerably higher than in Russia and other parts of the European USSR. In 1958, (in cash and kind) they were 1.70 times higher in Central Asia than the USSR average, and in Transcaucasia 1.64 times.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 103.&lt;/ref&gt; The higher incomes and living standards of the rural population in the Asiatic Soviet Union compared to those in the European USSR is largely owing to the long term policies, especially prominent in the 1930s and 1940s, of subsidizing Soviet industrial development and industrial workers' living standards by requiring peasants on collective and state farms to supply the state with such basic foodstuffs as potatoes, wheat, barley, meat, milk and eggs, at very low prices. However, the Asiatic Republics, being semi-tropical, specialized in other products such as cotton, tea, citrus fruits and grapes, which were not required to be supplied at low prices; the higher prices paid for these products stimulated their output.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 94, 95, 114.&lt;/ref&gt; Roy Medvedey, one of the most prominent Soviet dissidents, testifies that with the exception of Moscow, the living standard of people in Azerbaidzhan and Central Asia is higher than in the heart of Russia.<br /> <br /> In the US in the 1970s, a smaller proportion of Blacks than whites was employed in agriculture (a reversal of the traditional situation) but a significantly higher proportion of those of Mexican origin than whites were so employed: 7% and 4% respectively in 1977. Unlike in the USSR, rural incomes are highest in the more developed parts of the US. In 1970, rural wages in the US South averaged $8.35 a day compared to $11.75 in the West and $9.95 in the North-east; furthermore, ethnic minorities in the US earn less than the dominant ethnic groups, again unlike in the USSR. In 1970 non-white rural workers earned $8.00 a day compared to $9.70 for whites.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;US Department of Commerce, 1980a, p. 703.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Average earned income per adult for the five Central Asian republics of the USSR was 11% below the national average in 1970, while average monthly wages were only 5% below in 1978. Though not strictly comparable, this may be considered in the light of the ratio of Black to white family income in the US in 1970 of 61%, that is 39% below the national average.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;US Department of Commerce, i 979, p. 31.&lt;/ref&gt; While the income gap among the nationalities in the USSR has been closing rapidly over the years and has now reached the point where there is relatively little difference between them, in the US during the 1970s the income gap has increased in favour of white families.<br /> <br /> In the Soviet Union, in contrast to the US and other capitalist countries, wage scales are uniform throughout the country (except that supplements are offered above the basic rates in remote areas where economic development is encouraged). Thus, workers throughout Central Asia and the Transcaucus are paid at least the same rate for the same jobs as are workers in Russia proper, i.e., industrial workers of the Asiatic nationalities receive the same pay as Russian workers. According to Nove and Newth, 'There is certainly no evidence of wage discrimination'.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Nove and Newth, 1967, p. 114; Wheeier, 1964, p. 164.&lt;/ref&gt; Because of the lack of development in the past, however, the Asiatic nationalities are still significantly under-represented in the more skilled and higher paying jobs, and in the industrial working class in general; thus they do not benefit fully from the standard all-Union wage scales. Nevertheless, they are rapidly entering all levels of the industrial occupations, consequently the remaining income disparities are disappearing.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Nove and Newth, 1967, pp. 114-15.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Welfare payments, old age pensions, free education and health care, as well as other social services, are also standard throughout the Soviet Union (unlike in the US where welfare benefits in the poorer States are lower than in the richer States). Such services considerably enhance the living standards of the Asiatic population, although Central Asians receive less per capita in social wage benefits because their populations are more rural than the Soviet average; peasants receive less in social benefits from the state than do workers. However,&lt;blockquote&gt;the relatively backward areas share, in terms of formal equality, in the social service benefits of the USSR as a whole, and the financial burden appears to fall disproportionately on the more 'advanced' Russians, Ukrainians, etc.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 66.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Both the Industrialization and the rapid improvement in living standards in Soviet Asia have largely been subsidized by the European USSR. Much of their industrial development, especially before 1955, was financed directly from the Union (rather than the local Republic budgets).&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., Chapter 5.&lt;/ref&gt; Almost all the capital goods imported into Soviet Asia during the period of industrialization were from the European USSR, through allocations from the central plan, in order to develop this region. According to Nove and Newth '... it seems reasonable to conclude that this capital flow, coming in the main from Russia proper, represented a net gain to the republics, after making all allowances for offsetting factors'.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 125.&lt;/ref&gt; The Asiatic Republics have historically been required to provide a smaller proportion of their revenues to the All Union Budget than was requited of the European Republics. Likewise, taxes on enterprises in Soviet Asia provided relatively little to the central budget. Taxes on enterprise profits in Uzbekistan in 1961 for example, were less than half the all-Union average per capita.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 95-7.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;By and large, they were permitted to retain a more than average proportion of all-Union revenues raised in their territories, to finance economic and social development. This was a consequence of the fact that investment, educational and health expenditure in these areas were greater, relatively to local resources, than elsewhere in the Soviet Union... it follows from the financial evidence that the Russian connection, membership of a large and more developed polity, greatly facilitated such social and economic progress as was achieved in these areas.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 97.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In both the US and the USSR there has been a tendency for regional variations in per capita income to disappear; however, there are qualitative differences in the way this process is being achieved in the two countries. The European USSR, unlike virtually all the advanced capitalist countries, has not experienced an immigration of potential industrial and service workers from poorer regions. In the US an inter-migration has occurred with poor whites and Blacks migrating North, as well as migration of Latinos to the US; the United Kingdom has received East and West Indian immigrants; France, Portuguese, Arabs, etc.; and Germany, Turks, Italians, etc. The direction of migration within the USSR has, instead, been from the more developed to the less developed regions; this is consequent upon a state policy of heavy investment in the least developed areas, and the subsequent opening up of job opportunities (especially at the more skilled levels) in the least developed regions. In the capitalist world, labour migration of peripheral peoples to the advanced countries and regions is caused by massive unemployment at home and the potentiality of earning considerably higher wages than would otherwise be possible. In the USSR the migration in the opposite direction is motivated by prospects of job promotion and a more favourable climate, and by wage supplements in the case of the more remote areas. In the capitalist world capital flows to low wage areas in order to minimize costs, but since wages are uniform throughout the USSR minimization of labour cost cannot be a consideration. The differential growth of industry in the less developed regions of the USSR is rather a matter of the state's policy to equalize the level of development throughout the country.<br /> <br /> In good measure the Asiatic republic's industrialization has come to be integrated with local resources. For example, the Uzbek republic is the leading producer of tractors for cotton sowing and cleaning equipment, Azerbaidzhan is the leading producer of oil drilling machinery, and Armenia is a centre for non-ferrous metallurgy, being rich in molybdenum and aluminium as well as more rare metals.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, pp. 144, 190, 284.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Overall, Soviet economic, as well as social, policies have proved to be quite successful in Soviet Asia. So much so that many Western scholars speculate about the 'subversive effect' such a 'Soviet Showplace' could have on the adjacent Middle Eastern regions as their people become aware of conditions on the other side of the bordet.<br /> <br /> It is virtually universally conceded that economic development has been achieved due to Soviet efforts:&lt;blockquote&gt;The Soviet Union in the past fifty years had conducted social experiments... in raising the standards of its Asian minotrities well above those of the neighbours from whom they were virtually indistinguishable in 1917.... The gist of the Soviet 'message' is that a developing country can convert itself reasonably rapidly into a developed industrial one precisely as the Soviet Union has done — with minimal dependence on Western capital, little or no abatement of political hostility to the West, without the introduction of a fully-fledged capitalist system, and with concomitant advancement of education and the social services.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Jukes, 1973, p. 64.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The European areas of the Soviet Union have heavily subsidized the rapid economic growth and industrialization of Soviet Asia and the speedily improving living conditions of the Asiatic peoples of these areas. There is no evidence, either in the flow of resources or in the effects on Asian economic conditions, of a colonial or neo-colonial relationship between Russia and the Asian regions of the USSR. Rather the evidence indicates that considerable efforts have been made to modernize this region and bring it up to the economic standards of the European USSR.<br /> <br /> === Welfare ===<br /> Before the Bolshevik Revolution very few modern medical services were available in Russia's Asiatic colonies. Standards of sanitation and diet were low, and as a result life expectancy was minimal, and infant mortality high. The Soviet system has radically reduced the death rate and thus increased life expectancy. Statistics by Republic are not available for the petiod after the mid-1960s, but the official crude death rate for the five Central Asian Republics was 6.0 per 1,000, and for Azerbaidzhan 7.0 per 1,000, compared to 7.2 for the USSR as a whole. In 1965 the crude death rate in the US was 9.4 for whites and 9.9 for non-whites.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;US Department of Commerce, 1980a, p. 72.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> According to Nove and Newth '...there is some evidence to suggest that regional differences in Soviet crude death rates are now... due principally to differences in age-structure rather than to sanitary or medical conditions.... '&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Nove and Newth, 1967, p. 107.&lt;/ref&gt; In Turkey, in 1959, the crude death rate in towns was 12.9 per 1,000 and much higher in rural areas;&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 106.&lt;/ref&gt; in Iran it was approximately 25 per 1,000.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;UN Demographic Yearbook, 1961, p. 273.&lt;/ref&gt; Nove and Newth estimate that the death rates in Turkey and Iran as a whole may well be three times those in Soviet Central Asia.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Nove and Newth, 1967, pp. 106-7.&lt;/ref&gt; These high death rates — in common with those in Central Asia before the Revolution — are owing primarily to high infant mortality and inferior sanitary conditions. In 1975 the estimated infant mortality rate in Soviet Central Asia, although high by contemporary Western European standards, was 30% of that in Turkey; 38% of Iran's; and 17% of Afghanistan's. The estimated Central Asian infant mortality rate of 46 per 1,000 was roughly equivalent to that of Italy in 1960.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;World Bank, ''Worid Development Report'', 1979, Table 3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Soviet medical and public health care, combined with improved diet, have brought Central Asia up to Western European standards. There is little difference in per capita expenses for medicine in the Asian and European USSR. For example, in 1959, per capita expenditure was 14.1 roubles in Uzbekistan, 16.5 in Kazakhstan, 17.7 in Georgia and 18.9 in Russia.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Nove and Newth, 1967, p. 90.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1968, the number of hospital beds per 10,000 in the five Central Asian Republics was 99.8, and in Azerbaidzhan 87.8. This compares to the USSR average of 104.1 per 10,000. In 1971 there were 21 doctors per 10,000 for the five Central Asian Republics and 25 per 10,000 in Azerbaidzhan, compared to an average of 28 per 10,000 in the USSR. The slight differential between the Slavic and Asiatic areas appears to be caused by the fact that the Asian population is considerably younger — and thus healthier — than the European population.<br /> <br /> The virtually identical medical care available throughout the USSR, reflected in the number of doctors and hospital beds per capita and expenditure on medical care, is a radical improvement on pre-Socialist conditions. For example, in 1913 the number of hospital beds per capita in the five Asiatic Republics was 2 per 10,000 compared to 15 per 10,000 in Russia proper; most of the beds were reserved for European immigrants and officials, and the ratio of doctors to population was 30 per million, compared to 150 per million in Russia.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Mickiewicz, 1973, pp. 108, 112.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The contrast between Soviet Asia and neighbouring areas is particularly revealing. In 1970, Iran had three doctors and 13 hospital beds per 10,000 population; while Turkey had five doctors and 20 hospital beds per 10.000.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;UN Statistical Yearbook, 1971.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed&quot;<br /> |+Table 2.3<br /> Healthcare: 1971<br /> Sources: Katz et al., 1975, ''Soviet Social Science Data Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities'', pp. 443,458; Mickiewicz, 1973, ''Handbook of Soviet Social Stcience Data'', p. 113.<br /> !<br /> !Doctors per 10,000 Population<br /> !Doctors per 10,000 Adults<br /> !Hospital Beds per 10,000 population<br /> !Hospital Beds per 10,000 Adults<br /> |-<br /> |USSR average<br /> |28.3<br /> |45.7<br /> |104.1<br /> |167.6<br /> |-<br /> |Georgia<br /> |36.8<br /> |60.4<br /> |88.0<br /> |144.3<br /> |-<br /> |Latvia<br /> |36.2<br /> |50.7<br /> |116.8<br /> |163.5<br /> |-<br /> |Estonia<br /> |33.8<br /> |48.0<br /> |113.1<br /> |160.6<br /> |-<br /> |RSFSR<br /> |30.1<br /> |47.0<br /> |107.2<br /> |167.2<br /> |-<br /> |Armenia<br /> |29.4<br /> |57.9<br /> |85.3<br /> |168.0<br /> |-<br /> |Lithuania<br /> |28.6<br /> |43.8<br /> |97.6<br /> |149.3<br /> |-<br /> |Ukraine<br /> |28.3<br /> |42.2<br /> |102.5<br /> |152.7<br /> |-<br /> |Belorussia<br /> |26.7<br /> |42.7<br /> |98.5<br /> |157.6<br /> |-<br /> |Azerbaidzhan<br /> |25.1<br /> |53.5<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> |-<br /> |Tatar ASSR<br /> |23.5<br /> |39.7<br /> |109.7<br /> |205.1<br /> |-<br /> |Kazakhstan<br /> |22.9<br /> |42.8<br /> |100.6<br /> |220.5<br /> |-<br /> |Turkmenia<br /> |21.9<br /> |47.9<br /> |94.9<br /> |163.2<br /> |-<br /> |Moldavia<br /> |21.5<br /> |37.0<br /> |98.9<br /> |202.7<br /> |-<br /> |Kirgizia<br /> |21.4<br /> |43.9<br /> |96.9<br /> |214.1<br /> |-<br /> |Uzbekistan<br /> |21.0<br /> |46.4<br /> |93.1<br /> |209.5<br /> |-<br /> |Tadzhikistan<br /> |16.5<br /> |37.1<br /> |<br /> |<br /> |}<br /> The qualitative difference in medical care between Soviet Asia and the equivalent areas of the Middle East should also be stressed. In Iran and Turkey doctors and hospitals are heavily concentrated in the major urban centres and are primarily available only to those who can pay. In Soviet Asia medical care is available both in the rural and urban areas and is available to all on the basis of need. According to the UN Economic Commission for Europe, medical care in Soviet Asia 'has improved so strikingly in the period of Soviet rule that the relevant comparison is no longer with neighbouring Asian countries, but with the countries of Western Europe'.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Cited, Wheeler, 1964, p. 168.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> the progress of even the most backward part of Central Asia is remarkable; by 1961 even Tadzhikistan had one doctor per 850 inhabitants, with three or four auxiliaries supplementing each doctor, and one hospital bed for every 140 inhabitants. This is a state of things which neighbouring states, and even some European states, may well envy...&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Nove and Newth, 1967, p. 89.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> While the ratio of doctors per adult in the USSR in 1971 was 1:63, in the US in 1970 the ratio per capita among the States was 2:62; New York had 233 doctors per 100,000, and Mississippi 89 per 100,000. In the same year Puerto Rico had 91 doctors per 100,000 population, and 35 hospital beds per 10,000 compared to the mainland average of 150 doctors per 100,000, and the US average of 65 hospital beds per 10,000.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;US Department of Commerce, 1980a, pp. 107, 113.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Because of the largely private system of medical care in the US there is a considerable differential in the availability of high quality treatment within any given area — with the poorer ethnic minorities suffering disproportionately. This differential in the standard of health care based on economic factors, combined with inadequate diet, poor sanitary conditions, dangerous jobs and neighbourhoods, and the greater stress associated with manual labour, poverty and racism, produce much higher death rates for most ethnic minorities than for the ethnic majority in the US. In 1977, the death rate of Blacks between the ages of 25 and 44 averaged 2.5 times that of whites, i.e., a Black in the 25-44 age group had a 2.5 times greater probability of dying in a given year than a white of the same age. Blacks in the 45-54 age group die at a rate 2.0 times greater than whites.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 73.&lt;/ref&gt; In ensuring adequate health for its minorities the USSR is clearly much more effective than is the US.<br /> <br /> === Education ===<br /> Before the Bolshevik Revolution, the vast majority of the peoples of Soviet Asia were illiterate. Even in 1926, a decade after the Revolution, only 3.8% of the people in Tadzhikistan, 11.6% of those in Uzbekistan, 14.0% of those in Turkmenistan, and 16.5% of those in Kirgizia were literate; a high proportion of the literates were in fact Russian immigrants. By the end of the 1930s most people throughout the USSR were literate, and by the end of the 1950s literacy was virtually universal (see Table 2.4). The achievement in Soviet Asia was particularly noteworthy among girls and women who, in this largely Islamic area, were traditionally confined to the home.<br /> <br /> In Iran, in 1971, 63.1% of the total population and 74.5% of all women were illiterate, and in 1975, in Turkey, the same applied to 39.7% of the total population and 56.9% of women.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;''UNESCO''; UNESCO Yearbook, 1977, pp. 47, 48.&lt;/ref&gt; The contrast between Soviet Asia and regions of the Near East with ethnically similar populations is obvious.<br /> <br /> The number of school students in the Asiatic Republics increased after the Revolution. In Russia proper the number of students of all types increased by 3.6 times between 1914-15 and 1978-79, compared to over 2,000 times for Tadzhik SSR, over 200 for Uzbek SSR, over 100 for Kirghiz SSR and 90 times for Turkmen SSR (see Table 2.5).<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed&quot;<br /> |+Table 2.4<br /> Literacy: Percentage of Population Aged 9-49<br /> Source: Mickiewicz, 1973, ''Handbook of Soviet Social Science Data'', p. 139.<br /> ! rowspan=&quot;2&quot; |Territory<br /> Urban and Rural:<br /> ! colspan=&quot;2&quot; |Both Sexes<br /> ! colspan=&quot;2&quot; |Male<br /> ! colspan=&quot;2&quot; |Female<br /> |-<br /> !1926<br /> !1959<br /> !1926<br /> !1959<br /> !1926<br /> !1959<br /> |-<br /> |USSR<br /> |56.6<br /> |98.5<br /> |71.5<br /> |99.3<br /> |42.7<br /> |97.8<br /> |-<br /> |Azerbaidzhan<br /> |28.2<br /> |97.3<br /> |36.1<br /> |98.8<br /> |19.2<br /> |96.0<br /> |-<br /> |Kazakhstan<br /> |25.2<br /> |96.9<br /> |35.4<br /> |98.8<br /> |14.5<br /> |95.1<br /> |-<br /> |Kirgizia<br /> |16.5<br /> |98.0<br /> |23.9<br /> |99.0<br /> |8.4<br /> |97.0<br /> |-<br /> |Tadzhikistan<br /> |3.8<br /> |96.2<br /> |6.4<br /> |98.0<br /> |0.9<br /> |94.6<br /> |-<br /> |Turkmenia<br /> |14.0<br /> |95.4<br /> |18.3<br /> |97.7<br /> |8.8<br /> |93.4<br /> |-<br /> |Uzbekistan<br /> |11.6<br /> |98.1<br /> |15.3<br /> |99.0<br /> |7.3<br /> |97.3<br /> |}<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed&quot;<br /> |+Table 2.5<br /> Number of Pupils and Students in the Union Republics (at the beginning of school year; 1,000s)<br /> Source: ''USSR in Figures'', 1978, p. 220.<br /> ! rowspan=&quot;2&quot; |<br /> ! colspan=&quot;2&quot; |Pupils in General Education Schools of All Types<br /> ! rowspan=&quot;2&quot; |Ratio of 1914-15 to 1978-79<br /> |-<br /> !1914-15<br /> !1978-79<br /> |-<br /> |USSR<br /> |9,656<br /> |44,711<br /> |4.6<br /> |-<br /> |RSFSR<br /> |5.684<br /> |20.739<br /> |3.6<br /> |-<br /> |Ukrainian SSR<br /> |2,607<br /> |7,600<br /> |2.9<br /> |-<br /> |Byelorussian SSR<br /> |489<br /> |1,575<br /> |3.2<br /> |-<br /> |Uzbek SSR<br /> |18<br /> |3,876<br /> |21.5<br /> |-<br /> |Kazakh SSR<br /> |105<br /> |3,257<br /> |31.0<br /> |-<br /> |Georgian SSR<br /> |157<br /> |975<br /> |6.2<br /> |-<br /> |Azerbaidzhan<br /> |73<br /> |1,594<br /> |21.8<br /> |-<br /> |Lithuanian SSR<br /> |118<br /> |612<br /> |5.2<br /> |-<br /> |Moldavian SSR<br /> |92<br /> |747<br /> |8.1<br /> |-<br /> |Latvian SSR<br /> |172<br /> |349<br /> |2.0<br /> |-<br /> |Kirghiz SSR<br /> |7<br /> |857<br /> |122<br /> |-<br /> |Tajik SSR<br /> |0.4<br /> |999<br /> |2,498<br /> |-<br /> |Armenian SSR<br /> |35<br /> |616<br /> |17.2<br /> |-<br /> |Turkmen SSR<br /> |7<br /> |698<br /> |99.7<br /> |-<br /> |Estonian SSR<br /> |92<br /> |217<br /> |2.4<br /> |}<br /> In 1939 2.2% of Kazakhs, 1.5% of Uzbeks, 1.4% of Turkmens, 1.2% of Tadzhiks and 0.9% of Kirgiz had received a secondary education (at least seven years of schooling) compared to the USSR average of 8.3%. By 1959, however, 24.2% of Turkmens, 20.8% of Uzbeks, 20.1% of Tadzhiks, 19.9% of Kirgiz, and 18.2% of Kazakhs had received such an education, compared to 28.1% of the Soviet population as a whole (these figures refer to ''nationalities'', not residents of the republics).&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Nove and Newth, 1967, pp. 70-72.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Allowing for the large number of children among the Muslim nationalities, and for the relative backwardness of rural schools which still persists, these nationalities are well on the way to reaching the general level of the whole Soviet population — and all this in the space of a couple of decades. On the foundations of this great advance in secondary education, a fund of highly skilled specialist manpower is being built up....&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 72.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In the US, in 1960, 20.1% of all Blacks over the age of 25 had completed secondary education, compared to 43.2% of whites.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;US Department of Commerce, 1980a, p. 145.&lt;/ref&gt; This Black to white ratio of .47 contrasts with comparable Soviet ratio in 1959 of .74 of Asians to Europeans who completed secondary school. In 1970, Puerto Ricans over the age of 25 averaged a total of only 6.9 years of schooling, compared with 12.2 for the US. These figures reflect the comparably immense progress made by minorities in education in the USSR.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 145, 875.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Soviets' expenditure per capita on education in the non-Asiatic and Transcaucasian republics has been consistently higher than in the European areas. For example, in 1955, annual expenditure per capita in Azerbaidzhan was 1.18 times the USSR average; in Turkmenistan 1.30 times; in Tajikistan 1.27 times; in Kirgizia, 1.15 times and in Uzbekistan 1.00 times the USSR average. This is because of the higher birth rates in Central Asia; in 1955 the Central Asian and Transcaucasian republics had 15% of the population, but 18% of the school children and 18% of the teachers.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Nove and Newth, 1967, p. 85.&lt;/ref&gt; In most cases, the higher proportion of school age children, which corresponds almost exactly to the distribution of teachers, is closely proportional to the additional expenditure in the republics.<br /> <br /> This Soviet practice of allocating resources proportional to the number of students differs radically from the US practice of spending far more per student in wealthy than in poor areas, as well as maintaining significantly lower faculty/student ratios in the wealthier areas and districts. In 1975, New York State spent $409 per primary and secondary school student compared to $194 per student in Kentucky and $197 in Mississippi. In New York City in 1970, the student/teacher ratio was 18.5 to 1 and in San Francisco 19.2 to 1, compared to 29.2 to 1 for Detroit and 28.5 to 1 for St. Louis&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;US Department of Commerce, 1980, pp. 156, 157.&lt;/ref&gt; The variation, both in funds allocated per student and student/teacher ratios is significantly greater between wealthy suburban neighbourhoods and urban ghettos and impoverished rural areas (e.g. the South, Appalachia) than it is between States or cities.<br /> <br /> In higher education the Asiatic peoples have also made great progress. In the USSR in 1970-71, six nationalities had a higher student/population ratio than the national average: Jews 2.60, Georgians 1.43, Armenians 1.34, Russians 1.12 and Azerbaidzhani 1.04. The Asiatic nationalities compared favourably to the European in all cases in this respect; for example, in addition to the Azerbaidzhani, the Kazakhs, Kirgiz and Uzbeks rank above the Ukrainians and Latvians (all of these are at least 80% of the USSR average). Of all the Republics only Uzbekistan is spending significantly less on higher education per pupil than the Russian Republic (here it is about 20% less). The highest expenditure per student is in Armenia and Estonia where it is about 28% higher than in the Russian Republic (see Table 2.6).<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed&quot;<br /> |+Table 2.6<br /> Higher Education by Nationality<br /> Source: Katz et al., 1975, ''Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities'', p. 4506; and Mickiewicz, 1973, ''Handbook of Soviet Social Science Data'', p. 156.<br /> !<br /> !Students per 1,000 Population of Nationality 1970-1971<br /> !Over-representation Index<br /> !Expenditure per Student by Republic 1965 (roubles)<br /> |-<br /> |USSR<br /> |18.95<br /> |1.00<br /> |413<br /> |-<br /> |Jews<br /> |49.19<br /> |2.60<br /> |—<br /> |-<br /> |Georgians<br /> |27.06<br /> |1.43<br /> |322<br /> |-<br /> |Armenians<br /> |22.90<br /> |1.34<br /> |458<br /> |-<br /> |Russians<br /> |21.15<br /> |1.12<br /> |358<br /> |-<br /> |Azerbaidzhani<br /> |19.35<br /> |1.04<br /> |348<br /> |-<br /> |Kazakhs<br /> |18.93<br /> |1.00<br /> |338<br /> |-<br /> |Lithuanians<br /> |18.69<br /> |0.99<br /> |405<br /> |-<br /> |Kirgiz<br /> |18.18<br /> |0.97<br /> |335<br /> |-<br /> |Estonians<br /> |17.78<br /> |0.93<br /> |462<br /> |-<br /> |Uzbeks<br /> |16.39<br /> |0.87<br /> |290<br /> |-<br /> |Ukrainians<br /> |15.25<br /> |0.80<br /> |331<br /> |-<br /> |Latvians<br /> |15.24<br /> |0.81<br /> |347<br /> |-<br /> |Tatars<br /> |14.67<br /> |0.78<br /> |—<br /> |-<br /> |Turkmen<br /> |14.75<br /> |0.78<br /> |328<br /> |-<br /> |Belorussians<br /> |14.38<br /> |0.76<br /> |403<br /> |-<br /> |Tadzhiks<br /> |13.16<br /> |0.69<br /> |338<br /> |-<br /> |Moldavians<br /> |11.42<br /> |0.60<br /> |360<br /> |}<br /> The Soviets have achieved virtual equality for the Asiatic nationalities both in effort invested in higher education and results. To appreciate the Soviet achievement, educational attainments should be compared to the equivalent areas of the Middle East, e.g. Turkey and Iran. In 1959 the number of students in higher education in Iran was 9 per 10,000, and in Turkey 15 per 10,000.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Nove and Newth, 1967, p. 109.&lt;/ref&gt; This compares to 194 per 10,000 for Soviet Azerbaidzhan, 147 for Soviet Turkmenistan and 132 for Soviet Tadzhikistan, which share the same ethnic groups with Turkey and Iran (1970-71 figures). This represents a ratio of about 10 times in favour of the equivalent Soviet populations.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 456.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1970 in the US, the overall student/population ratio in higher education was 239 per 10,000; with 153 for Blacks (64% of the national rate) and 113 for Latins.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;US Department of Commerce, 1980, pp. 160-1.&lt;/ref&gt; The access to higher education of national minorities in the USSR is significantly greater than in the US.<br /> <br /> The educational advances of Soviet Asians are reflected in statistics for the number of scientific workers by nationality. Government policy has been to systematically develop a national intelligentsia in each republic.<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed&quot;<br /> |+Table 2.7<br /> Scientific Workers by Nationality 1971<br /> Source: Katz et al., 1975, ''Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities'', p. 457.<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt;Computed on the assumption that the age structure of each nationality is identical to that of its titular republic.<br /> !Nationality<br /> !Number<br /> !% of Total<br /> !Per Capita<br /> !Index of Over-representation Per Adult Population*<br /> |-<br /> |USSR TOTAL<br /> |1,002,930<br /> |100%<br /> |1.00<br /> |1.00<br /> |-<br /> |Jews<br /> |66,793<br /> |6.66<br /> |7.48<br /> |—<br /> |-<br /> |Armenians<br /> |22,056<br /> |2.20<br /> |1.50<br /> |1.83<br /> |-<br /> |Georgians<br /> |19,411<br /> |1.94<br /> |1.45<br /> |1.48<br /> |-<br /> |Russians<br /> |666,059<br /> |66.41<br /> |1.24<br /> |1.20<br /> |-<br /> |Estonians<br /> |4,959<br /> |0.49<br /> |1.17<br /> |1.03<br /> |-<br /> |Latvians<br /> |6,262<br /> |0.62<br /> |1.05<br /> |.91<br /> |-<br /> |Lithuanians<br /> |8,751<br /> |0.87<br /> |0.79<br /> |.75<br /> |-<br /> |Azerbaidzhani<br /> |13,998<br /> |1.40<br /> |0.77<br /> |1.02<br /> |-<br /> |Ukrainians<br /> |107,475<br /> |10.72<br /> |0.64<br /> |.59<br /> |-<br /> |Belorussians<br /> |20,538<br /> |2.05<br /> |0.55<br /> |.55<br /> |-<br /> |Tatars<br /> |12,619<br /> |1.26<br /> |0.51<br /> |—<br /> |-<br /> |Turkmen<br /> |1,946<br /> |0.19<br /> |0.40<br /> |.55<br /> |-<br /> |Kazakhs<br /> |8,629<br /> |0.86<br /> |0.39<br /> |.45<br /> |-<br /> |Kirgiz<br /> |2,100<br /> |0.21<br /> |0.35<br /> |.45<br /> |-<br /> |Uzbeks<br /> |12,928<br /> |1.29<br /> |0.34<br /> |.47<br /> |-<br /> |Tadzhiks<br /> |2,550<br /> |0.25<br /> |0.28<br /> |.39<br /> |-<br /> |Moldavians<br /> |2,624<br /> |0.26<br /> |0.23<br /> |.25<br /> |}<br /> Although the average number of scientific workers per capita for the seven Asiatic nationalities (including Tatars) is only 43% of the Soviet average, since there was virtually no native scientific intelligentsia in the Asian region before the Bolshevik Revolution, these groups have clearly made considerable progress. It should also be noted that, owing to the fact that compared to the European groups the Asian population is significantly younger, computing a ratio of over-representation on a per capita basis, rather than on a per employed person basis, substantially lowers the index for the Asian peoples and raises it for the older, European populations. When age structure is taken into account the representation index of scientific workers from the Asiatic nationalities rises to over 50%. Nevertheless, because it takes time to develop a native intelligentsia from a backward society, even under the most favourable conditions, many scientific workers in the Asian Republics are people who have migrated from the European USSR. That this is not as a result of Russification' policies or of discrimination is testified to by the low involvement of Slavic intelligentsia in Georgia and Armenia, and the fact that Georgians and Armenians are more strongly represented among the scientific intelligentsia than any other national group with the exception of the Jews. In 1969, 94% of all scientific workers in Armenia were Armenian, while neatly half the total of Armenian scientific workers wotrked outside Armenia.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 154.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> According to Wheeler, '...the same standards of preliminary, secondary and higher education obtained throughout the Union, and academic posts, whether in the social sciences or in technology, appear to be open to all alike ' Wheeler also notes that in the mid-1960s the president of the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences was an Uzbek geologist of international reputation who had notlearnt to read until he was 19 years old.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Wheeler, 1964, p. 206.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === Cultural Development ===<br /> Soviet policy has been to encourage the development of national cultures and the preservation of the native languages.* Under the Czar there existed a policy of Russification, but now education, and all forms of media, are in the native languages. Russian is taught as a second language throughout the country, both as a lingua franca and because, as a major world language, it affords access to a far wider body of literary and scientific writings than it could ever be possible to translate into each of the minor languages.<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;*The Soviet Constitution (Article 36) specifies the formal rights of national minorities in the USSR:&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;Citizens of the USSR of different races and nationalities have equal rights. Exercise of these rights is ensured by a policy of all-round development and drawing together of all the nations and nationalities of the USSR, by educating citizens in the spirit of Soviet patriotism and socialist internationalism, and by the possibility to use their native language and the languages of other peoples of the USSR. Any direct or indirect limitation of the rights of citizens, or establishment of direct or indirect privileges on grounds of race or nationality, or any advocacy of racial or national exclusiveness, hostility or contempt, are punishable by law.&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> Numerous books, magazines and newspapers are published, and are readily available, in all the major minority languages. The relative number of publications in the native languages in the various republics is roughly proportional to the percentage of the local population of that nationality. (see Table 2.8).<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed&quot;<br /> |+Table 2.8<br /> Books and Newspapers Published in Union Republics, 1970<br /> Source: Katz et al., 1975, ''Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities'', pp. 459-60.<br /> !Republic<br /> !% of Book Titles Published, Which are in the Titular Language<br /> !Total Copies of Books Published per 100 Speakers of the Titular Language<br /> !% of All Newspapers which are in the Titular Language<br /> !National Group % in Population of Each Republic<br /> |-<br /> |RSFSR<br /> |93<br /> |562<br /> |93<br /> |82.2<br /> |-<br /> |Ukraine<br /> |37<br /> |226<br /> |80<br /> |74.9<br /> |-<br /> |Belorussia<br /> |21<br /> |110<br /> |75<br /> |81.1<br /> |-<br /> |Uzbekistan<br /> |44<br /> |239<br /> |57<br /> |64.7<br /> |-<br /> |Kazakhstan<br /> |31<br /> |239<br /> |37<br /> |32.4<br /> |-<br /> |Georgia<br /> |73<br /> |370<br /> |86<br /> |66.8<br /> |-<br /> |Azerbaidzhán<br /> |64<br /> |192<br /> |80<br /> |73.8<br /> |-<br /> |Lithuania<br /> |64<br /> |433<br /> |81<br /> |80.1<br /> |-<br /> |Moldavia<br /> |31<br /> |211<br /> |47<br /> |64.6<br /> |-<br /> |Latvia<br /> |52<br /> |739<br /> |64<br /> |56.8<br /> |-<br /> |Kirgizia<br /> |47<br /> |223<br /> |55<br /> |43.8<br /> |-<br /> |Tadzhikistan<br /> |52<br /> |167<br /> |84<br /> |56.2<br /> |-<br /> |Armenia<br /> |75<br /> |212<br /> |88<br /> |88.6<br /> |-<br /> |Turkmenia<br /> |65<br /> |242<br /> |70<br /> |65.6<br /> |-<br /> |Estonia<br /> |74<br /> |890<br /> |72<br /> |68.2<br /> |}<br /> In many republics the share of total circulation of books in the native language is higher than the number of titles, for example, in Kazakhstan, about one-third of the titles published are in Kazakh, but over half the circulation is of Kazakh books.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 225.&lt;/ref&gt; In Azerbaidzhan, 81% of newspapers but 97% of magazine circulation is of Azerbaidzhani language periodicals. In Kirgizia both the magazine circulation and the percentage of the total number of copies of books published in Kirgiz is much higher than the proportion of titles in Kirgiz.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 199, 249.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The annual number of copies of new books published in the native languages of Soviet Asia varies from 2.4 per capita in Tutkmen, Uzbek and Kazakh, to 2.2 in Kirgiz, and 1.9 in Azerbaidzhani to 1.7 in Tadzhik, (see Table 2.8). Before the Bolshevik Revolution virtually no books were published in any of these languages. The few books written by native authors were published outside their native areas in languages other than their native tongue. Printing in Central Asian languages was strictly limited to direct lithography, i.e. reproduction from material written on stone surfaces by hand. Only Kazakh and Turkmen were beginning to assume a literary form.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Wheeler, 1964, p. 215.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the USSR the highest ratio of total copies of new books published per capita annually is in Estonian and Latvian, with ratios of 8.9 and 7.4 per capita in 1970 (see Table 2.8). The ratio of books in Russian per capita published each year in 1970 was 5.6. Naturally, the number of books issued in Russian is considerably higher than for the Asian languages since so much scientific and technical work, as well as world literature and special studies, appear in this language. Russian is read both by experts and the general intelligentsia as a second language throughout the nation. The very high ratios of the Baltic republics bear witness to the fact that this is not as a result of a Russification policy or of suppression of local languages.<br /> <br /> For at least 80% of all the major nationalities of the USSR, with the exception of Jews, their mother tongue is their primary language. The percentage is higher — almost 99% — in Soviet Asia.<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed&quot;<br /> |+Table 2.9<br /> Speakers of Languages of Major Nationalities of USSR, 1970<br /> Source: Katz et al., 1975, ''Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities'', p, 446.<br /> !Language<br /> !% of the Nationality Identifying National Language as Mother Tongue<br /> |-<br /> |Russian<br /> |<br /> |-<br /> |Turkmen<br /> |98.9<br /> |-<br /> |Kirgiz<br /> |98.8<br /> |-<br /> |Uzbek<br /> |98.6<br /> |-<br /> |Tadzhik<br /> |98.5<br /> |-<br /> |Georgian<br /> |98.4<br /> |-<br /> |Azerbaidzhani<br /> |98.2<br /> |-<br /> |Kazakh<br /> |98.0<br /> |-<br /> |Lithuanian<br /> |97.9<br /> |-<br /> |Estonian<br /> |95.5<br /> |-<br /> |Latvian<br /> |95.2<br /> |-<br /> |Moldavian<br /> |95.0<br /> |-<br /> |Armenian<br /> |91.4<br /> |-<br /> |Tatar<br /> |89.2<br /> |-<br /> |Ukrainian<br /> |85.7<br /> |-<br /> |Belorussian<br /> |80.2<br /> |-<br /> |Jewish languages<br /> |17.7<br /> |}<br /> All nationalities of the USSR may choose to be educated in their native languages, and all the major nationalities may receive their entire education through college in the language of their republic.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 340.&lt;/ref&gt; That most students from the various nationalities take advantage of this option without discrimination has been testified to by many Western scholars. For example, in Lithuania, 'students who begin their education in Lithuanian suffer no discrimination at higher levels; university instruction is almost exclusively in Lithuanian.'&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 132.&lt;/ref&gt; Most students in the Baltic countries receive their education in the Baltic languages. In Estonia's general schools, for example, 73% use Estonian and 8% use both Estonian and Russian. In 1960, 89% of higher education students studied in Estonian. Further, a significant number of those of Russian nationality attend Estonian language schools at all levels.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 83.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In Central Asia, however, there is a disproportionate number of non-Asian immigrants in higher education — 30% in 1959 — even though they represented only about 20% of the population. Nevertheless, compared to the situation before the Revolution, or even in the late 1920s, the progress in this context is significant. To quote a Western scholar 'When... this situation is compared with that prevailing thirty years ago when there were no higher educational establishments which Muslims could attend, progress can be seen as remarkable.'&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Wheeler, 1964, p. 206.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> There is no tendency for native languages to be undermined and replaced by Russian; the evidence indicates precisely the opposite, including officially sponsored campaigns to purify the native languages of 'Russianisms'.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 296.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> From 1959 to 1970, the percentage of Azerbaidzhanis speaking their native language increased from 97.6% to 98.2% (and of these only 16.6% said they spoke Russian as a second language).&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 197.&lt;/ref&gt; Similarly among the Uzbeks, of whom, in 1970, only 13% stated they spoke Russian as a second language.<br /> <br /> The US's language policy contrasts very sharply with that of the USSR. The long standing tradition implemented in the policies of American schools, courts and all governmental institutions, has been to make English the only acceptable language. As part of the official 'Americanization' policy, the languages of the various European immigrant groups, as well as those of the native peoples and the Blacks forcibly taken from Africa, the Spanish and other Latin-based languages of recent immigrants from the other Americas, have, along with the traditional cultures and national practices of these groups, been undermined. US policy has been consistently to submit all peoples resident in the US to one 'melting pot' in which the English language and 'American values' were universal. Traditionally, education in all public schools was in English; the legal system operated in English only, as did road signs and so on.<br /> <br /> Beginning in the late 1960s the traditional, enforced mono-linguistic/monocultural Americanization policy was moderated somewhat with the passing of a Federal Bilingual Education Act which gave grants to those schools in districts wishing to set up bilingual education programmes (the decision whether or not to set up such programmes was left entirely to each school district). In 1974, the US Supreme Court ruled that those school districts with large proportions of non-English speaking students were violating the 'civil rights' of those students by not providing bilingual programmes for them, but did not specify how this was to be implemented. In 1975, to comply with the Supreme Court decision, the US Department of Education issued guidelines (which, however, did not have the authority of law) for the establishment of bilingual education programmes. The issue of bilingual education became highly controversial in the latter part of the 1970s and the early 1980s. Some arguing that the basic cutriculum should be taught in all languages where the majority of students did not speak English, others that only special courses to teach English to non-native speakers should be available — designed to prepare them for basic instruction in English; and still others that the traditional policy of 'sink or swim' (with no Federal or State requirements for non-English instruction) should continue at the discretion of each local school district. Finally, at the end of 1980, the Federal government issued strict guidelines requiring those school districts with more than 25 students all speaking the same foreign language to offer them instruction in their own language as well as in English. The first official act of the new Secretary of Education in the Reagan Administration in 1981 was to revoke these requirements as 'harsh, inflexible, burdensome, unworkable and incredibly costly'.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;''New York Times'', 3 February 1981, pp. 1, 9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1980, approximately 500, or 3%, of the US's around 16,500 school districts had some form of bilingual educational programme. In the Fiscal Year 1981, the Federal government provided these 500 districts with $175 million to support their programmes. It has been estimated that in 1980 there were 3.5 million non-English speaking school-age children in the US; 70% of whom were native Spanish speakers. In New York City, for example, 30% of all students in the public schools were Latins.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt; The Federal subsidy for bilingual education averages out to $50 per non-English speaking student, or a third of a million per school district with bilingual programmes. Compared to Soviet language policy, the US effort is insignificant.<br /> <br /> In the USSR Russian is taught as a second language in all republics. To advance in most professional careers beyond a certain point the ability to at least read and write Russian is essential. This is because to quote the prominent Soviet dissident Roy Medvedev:&lt;blockquote&gt;you can't do without the Russian language... which enables the different nationalities to communicate with one another.... Most scientific and literary works are published in Russian in all the republics. A book on mathematics or philosophy published in Georgian, say, would have no circulation outside of Georgia.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Roy Medvedev, 1980, p. 46.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Medvedev goes on to illustrate his point by relating that at one time there was a tendency for official Ukrainian agencies to correspond with other regions of the USSR in their own language only. When a Ukrainian minister wrote to Moscow there was usually someone who could understand the language, but in Georgia or Tadjikistan, there were very few who could. Consequently, they began to respond to the Ukrainians in ''their'' language (which hardly anyone in the Ukraine could understand). Papers at national scientific conferences were often read in the various local languages. In both cases, the problem of each group speaking its own language to other groups soon became apparent, and Russian again became the common language of communication.<br /> <br /> The universality of Russian perhaps makes professional advancement a little easier for those whose mother tongue is Russian. But that such an advantage is minimal is exemplified by the Armenians and Georgians (neither of whose native tongues are Slavic) who are more successful than Russians in pursuing scientific careers.<br /> <br /> Soviet policy, while it favours the development and preservation of native culture and language, also encourages migration of various nationalities throughout the USSR, especially to the resource rich, underpopulated areas of Siberia and much of Central Asia. Thus, large numbers of Slavs, mostly Russians and Ukrainians, have settled in Central Asia, especially in Kazakhstan where they have become the majority of the total population. In recent years, however, apparently largely because of the high birth rates among Soviet Asians, the proportion of the population that is of the titular nationality has increased in all six Asiatic republics (see Table 2.10).<br /> <br /> Soviet policy has always been to encourage preservation and development of the local cultures. In the 1920s, any group that felt itself to be a nationality was officially encouraged to develop its language, culture and sense of social cohesion. This was supported by the state by opening schools, publishing books and periodicals, and wherever the group was sufficiently concentrated geographically, given various degrees of local self-government. Generally, the larger the group, the greater the extent of local autonomy. In the post-World War II period, this policy has been continued for groups of any significant size and geographical concentration.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Nove and Newth, 1967, p. 127.&lt;/ref&gt; From the 1920s, in Soviet Asia, literature in the native languages and native art forms accessible to the people blossomed with government and Party support. The theatre and opera were introduced and proved extremely popular. Theatres built in all the principal towns of Central Asia maintain their own repertory companies which perform works both by local playwrights and of translations into the local languages, of works by Shakespeare, Moliere, Puccini, Jack London, as well as major Russian authors. Ballet and orchestral music have also proved to be very popular in Central Asia. Many native music writers have worked in traditional themes with traditional music.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Wheeler, 1964, pp. 221-2; Katz et al., 1975, p. 222.&lt;/ref&gt; The cinema too has been widely developed. In 1915 there were said to be 52 cinemas throughout Central Asia, but by the 1960s there were approximately 7,000 permanent and mobile cinemas in operation.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Wheeler, 1964, p. 222.&lt;/ref&gt; In Uzbekistan there are 5,820 public libraries with holdings of over 32 million books and magazines.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 298.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Soviets celebrate the native cultures on a Union-wide level. For example, there are regular and widely publicized cultural festivals which give the artists and cultures of the various Republics not only nation-wide but also international publicity. Between 1936 and 1960 25 Republics staged festivals in Moscow, and between 1957 and 1969 14 Republics staged festivals in Uzbekistan.<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed&quot;<br /> |+Table 2.10<br /> Titular Nationality as Percent of Republic Population, 1959-70<br /> Source: Katz et al., 1975, ''Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities'', pp. 10, 444; Sharp, ''The East European and Soviet Data Handbook'', pp. 148-55.<br /> ! rowspan=&quot;2&quot; |Republic<br /> ! colspan=&quot;3&quot; |Titular Nationality as % of Total Republic Population<br /> ! colspan=&quot;2&quot; |% Russian<br /> |-<br /> !1959<br /> !1970<br /> !1979<br /> !1970<br /> !1979<br /> |-<br /> |Armenian SSR<br /> |88.0<br /> |88.6<br /> |89.7<br /> |2.7%<br /> |2.3<br /> |-<br /> |RSFSR<br /> |83.3<br /> |82.8<br /> |82.6<br /> |82.8<br /> |82.6<br /> |-<br /> |Belorussian SSR<br /> |81.1<br /> |81.0<br /> |79.4<br /> |10.4<br /> |11.9<br /> |-<br /> |Lithuanian SSR<br /> |79.3<br /> |80.1<br /> |80.0<br /> |8.6<br /> |8.9<br /> |-<br /> |Ukraine SSR<br /> |76.8<br /> |74.9<br /> |73.6<br /> |19.4<br /> |21.1<br /> |-<br /> |Azerbaidzhan SSR<br /> |67.5<br /> |73.8<br /> |78.1<br /> |10.1<br /> |7.9<br /> |-<br /> |Estonian SSR<br /> |74.6<br /> |68.2<br /> |64.7<br /> |24.7<br /> |27.9<br /> |-<br /> |Georgian SSR<br /> |64.3<br /> |66.8<br /> |68.8<br /> |8.5<br /> |7.4<br /> |-<br /> |Turkmen SSR<br /> |60.9<br /> |65.6<br /> |68.4<br /> |14.5<br /> |12.6<br /> |-<br /> |Uzbek SSR<br /> |61.1<br /> |64.7<br /> |68.7<br /> |12.5<br /> |10.8<br /> |-<br /> |Moldavian SSR<br /> |65.4<br /> |64.6<br /> |63.9<br /> |11.6<br /> |12.8<br /> |-<br /> |Latvian SSR<br /> |62.0<br /> |56.8<br /> |53.7<br /> |29.8<br /> |32.8<br /> |-<br /> |Tadzhik SSR<br /> |53.1<br /> |56.2<br /> |58.8<br /> |11.9<br /> |10.4<br /> |-<br /> |Tatar ASSR<br /> |47.2<br /> |49.1<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> |-<br /> |Kirgiz SSR<br /> |40.5<br /> |43.8<br /> |47.9<br /> |29.2<br /> |25.9<br /> |-<br /> |Kazakh SSR<br /> |30.0<br /> |32.6<br /> |36.0<br /> |42.4<br /> |40.8<br /> |}<br /> This multinational culture developed by the Soviets both gives expression to the various national traditions and promotes the adoption of new Socialist culture.<br /> <br /> Publishing, the theatre and the other arts in the native languages are far more highly developed in Soviet Asia than in the comparable countries of the east. In the words of one Soviet Central Asia expert:&lt;blockquote&gt;Taken on the basis of population, publishing of all forms of literature in Central Asia was soon far to exceed that in any of the other Muslim countries in Asia, and with one or two exceptions the standard of printing and production was much higher. The technical literary quality of modern Central Asian literature in the 1960s was probably as good if not better than that of Middle Eastern literature and it was free from the pernicious rubbish circulating either in original writing or in translation in many non-Soviet Muslim countries. Some of the novels of such Kazakh writers as Auezov and Mukanov, of the Turkmen writer Kerbabayev, and the memoirs of the Tadzhik writer Sadreddin Aini, are works of undoubted literary merit, and many other examples could be cited.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Wheeler, 1964, p. 217.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;For ethnic minorities in the US the situation is radically different. Traditional ethnic cultures are systematically undermined through official policies designed to create an ethnically homogeneous 'American culture'. Virtually nothing is done to encourage either the development or the perpetuation of traditional Black, Indian, Latin, Asian or European cultures of those peoples in the US. The result of the long term 'melting pot' policies has been the destruction or eventual disappearance of all these peoples' traditional cultures.<br /> <br /> Except for a few Republics in the USSR with very low birth rates and a high level of wealth, for example Estonia, most of the non-Russian Republics (and autonomous regions) are becoming ''increasingly'' homogeneous in their titular nationality. The percentage of the population of most republics who speak the titular tongue as their primary language is generally increasing, In the US it has been consistently the opposite. Most of the original European settlers at first tended to settle in relatively ethnically homogeneous enclaves (Scandinavians in various upper Mid-West and North-Western rural areas; Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews, etc. in ethnically distinct neighbourhoods of the Northern cities). Almost all Blacks were originally concentrated in the 'Black Belt' counties of the South, where slavery and share-cropping thrived; and most Latins wetre concentrated in New Mexico and other South-Western enclaves of original settlement. Since World War I all these ethnic concentrations have been rapidly dissipating — the indigenous American Indians have also in good part been dispersed to the cities. European ethnic neighbourhoods are now rare in the US, having been replaced by neighbourhoods geographically segregated by class. Latins are rapidly dispersing out of the South-West (Chicanos) and New York City (Puerto Ricans) to all the major industrial areas. Blacks, 90% of whom lived in the South in 1910, wete, by 1980, almost equally divided between the South and the rest of the country. The process of geographical dispersal continues. In 1960, the State of Mississippi was 42.0% Black, in 1976 35.6%; Alabama was 30.0% Black, in 1976 20.7%. On the other hand, New York State was 8.4% Black in 1960, and 12.5% Black in 1976; Illinois 10.3% and 15.4%; and California 5.6% and 7.8%.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;US Department of Commerce, 1980a, p. 34.&lt;/ref&gt; Again, the pattern is opposite to that in the USSR. Soviet developmental policies which favour the minority areas have resulted in the economically favoured less developed areas retaining their indigenous populations, rather than in their systematic dispersal as in the capitalist countries — where minority areas serve as sources of low paid immigrant wortkers to the industrial heartland.<br /> <br /> === Politics ===<br /> Communist Party membership in the six Asiatic republics is somewhat less than the Soviet average, the ratio of the percentage of all Party members to the percentage of the total adult population here is .78.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 451.&lt;/ref&gt; Communist Party membership of the various nationalities, however, is low relative to their population. The ratio of the percentage of Communist Party members in the six major Asian nationalities to their percentage of the total population in 1971 averaged .54 (see Table 2.11). The main reasons for this disparity are: (1) higher birth rates among the Soviet Asians which results in a significantly younger age structure and thus reduces the number of those eligible for membership; and (2) the CPSU recruitment policy which, especially since the mid-1960s, favours industrial workers and the intelligentsia above rural populations. In spite of the rapid increase both in technical education and urbanization, the rural backwardness of the Asian nationalities has not been entirely eliminated and consequently they are still under-represented in the Party.<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed&quot;<br /> |+Table 2.11<br /> National Composition of CPSU, 1 January 1972: Union Republic Nationalities<br /> Source: Katz et al., 1975, ''Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities'', p. 449.<br /> !Nationality<br /> !No.<br /> !Party Members as% of Union Total<br /> !index of Over-representation<br /> |-<br /> |Georgians<br /> |242,253<br /> |1.66<br /> |1.24<br /> |-<br /> |Russians<br /> |8,927,400<br /> |61.02<br /> |1.14<br /> |-<br /> |Armenians<br /> |223,372<br /> |1.52<br /> |1.04<br /> |-<br /> |Ukrainians<br /> |2,333,750<br /> |15.95<br /> |0.95<br /> |-<br /> |Belorussians<br /> |511,981<br /> |3.50<br /> |0.94<br /> |-<br /> |Azerbaidzhani<br /> |206,184<br /> |1.41<br /> |0.78<br /> |-<br /> |Kazakhs<br /> |246,393<br /> |1.68<br /> |0.77<br /> |-<br /> |Estonians<br /> |45,454<br /> |0.31<br /> |0.74<br /> |-<br /> |Latvians<br /> |60,843<br /> |0.42<br /> |0.71<br /> |-<br /> |Lithuanians<br /> |93,271<br /> |0.64<br /> |0.58<br /> |-<br /> |Kirgiz<br /> |45,205<br /> |0.31<br /> |0.52<br /> |-<br /> |Uzbeks<br /> |282,918<br /> |1.93<br /> |0.51<br /> |-<br /> |Turkmen<br /> |43,111<br /> |0.29<br /> |0.46<br /> |-<br /> |Tadzhiks<br /> |57,271<br /> |0.39<br /> |0.44<br /> |-<br /> |Moldavians<br /> |58,062<br /> |0.40<br /> |0.36<br /> |-<br /> |Other Nationalities<br /> |1,253,821<br /> |8.57<br /> |1.28<br /> |-<br /> |''Total''<br /> |''14,631,289''<br /> |''100.00''<br /> |''1.00''<br /> |}<br /> It should be noted that in 1924 only 8% of the Party members in Kazakhstan were Kazakh, compared to about 40% in the mid-1960s. In this later period the proportion of Kazakhs who were Party members exceeded the proportion of the Kazakhs (about 33%) in the total population of Kazakhstan.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 221.&lt;/ref&gt; Likewise, Kazakhs are over-represented in the Kazakh Supreme Soviet, comprising about 40% of delegates, and among leading party officials. A study of Kazakh party leaders in the 1955-64 period showed that approximately half of all provincial, district and city first secretaries were ethnically Kazakh.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt; In Uzbekistan in 1967, 67% of the deputies of the local Supreme Soviet were Uzbeks compared to about 64% of the population. In general, throughout the Asiatic Republics the official heads of state, most ministers, first party secretaries, and most responsible government officials at all levels (except where Russians predominate) are natives.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Nove and Newth, 1967, pp. 130-1.&lt;/ref&gt; Non-Asians, however, owing to their higher technical qualifications, generally predominate among industrial managers — who usually need to have an engineering degree — and heads of departments where technical expertise is required. The concentration of non-Asians in positions in which high levels of technical competence are necessary, is a result of the time lag in technical education among native peoples rather than discrimination in favour of Slavs, as the substantial role played by Armenians and Georgians as managers and technical experts in Soviet Asia demonstrates.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 167.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> It is sometimes argued that the considerable limits on the political autonomy of the various Republics necessarily means that they are dominated by the Russian Republic. But in fact, all the Republics, including Russia, are centrally controlled by a single Party and economic plan corresponding to a relatively rational division of labour. In the words of the Soviet dissident Roy Medvedev:&lt;blockquote&gt;If our republics have no real political or economic autonomy, that's not because Russia... controls them. The Russian Republic has even less autonomy.... In countries like the Soviet Union, economic planning embraces the interests of the entire state and provides for a division of labour calculated on a state-wide basis. It wouldn't make much sense to convert the cotton plantations of Uzbekistan into wheat fields or Georgia's tea plantations, vineyards, and market gardens, ...to potato cultivation. Nor would it be logical to build a steel mill in Georgia to produce steel only for Georgia&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Roy Medvedev, 1980, pp. 48-9.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In the US where 11.7% of the total population was Black in 1978, 3.0% of all members of the US Congress and 3.5% of all State legislators were Black. In Mississippi, the State with the highest percentage of Blacks in the US (35.6%) 3.5% of legislators were Black; in South Carolina where in 1978 31.6% were Black, 7.7% of the State legislators were Black, and in Louisiana (28.6% Black), 7.0% of State legislators were Black.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;US Department of Commerce, 1980a, pp. 29, 34, 509, 511, 512.&lt;/ref&gt; Blacks, the largest ethnic minority in the US, are significantly under-represented politically — by a factor of 3-4. In the USSR, in contrast, the Asian minorities are at least proportionately represented in their Republics both in leading governmental and Party positions. It should also be noted that while over the 1919-35 period there were no Asians on the Politburo (Praesidium) of the CPSU, and in the 1939-63 period only 2% were Asians, in 1973, 8%, and in 1980 11.5%, were ethnically Asian. The six major Asian nationalities — those with Republics — were 12% of the Soviet population in 1979, and all ethnically Asian about 15% (17% counting Tatars).<br /> <br /> === Soviet Policy Towards Islam ===<br /> All six Asiatic Republics were strongly Islamic before the 1917 Revolution. Immediately after their seizure of power the Bolsheviks appealed to the Muslim nationalities for support, and in December 1917 they issued the following:&lt;blockquote&gt;Muslims of Russia, Tatars of the Volga and the Crimea, Kirgiz and Sarts of Siberia and Turkestan, Chechens and mountain Cossacks! All you, whose mosques and shrines have been destroyed, whose faith and customs have been violated by the Tsars and oppressors of Russia! Henceforward your beliefs and customs, your national and cultural institutions, are declared free and inviolable! Build your national life freely and without hindrance. It is your right. Know that your rights, like those of all the peoples of Russia, will be protected by the might of the Revolution, by the councils of workers, soldiers, peasants, deputies!&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Cited in Wheeler, 1964, p. 188.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;While the Bolsheviks, as we have seen, generally supported the rights of the Muslim nationalities they adopted a policy of undermining the influence of the Islamic religion as part of their general campaign to undermine all religion as superstition. They considered Islam to be as pernicious as other religions because of its past manipulation both by Eastern potentates and Western imperial powers. Primarily, the attack on Islam was directed at its less fundamental aspects, such as the veiling, and the seclusion, of women, polygamy, child betrothal, bride price, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and circumcision, which the Soviets regarded as a barbaric abuse of children.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Wheeler, 1964, p. 189; Jukes, 1973, p. 43.&lt;/ref&gt; The Soviets emphasized women's liberation, especially in Turkestan, where the practice of female seclusion took extreme forms.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 294.&lt;/ref&gt; In the late 1920s and 1930s many mosques were closed and a number of religious leaders either deported or imprisoned. The practice of Islam itself, however, was never proscribed, and, according to at least some Western experts on the area, the campaign against the customs that the Soviets regard as harmful were never as repressive as those taken by the nationalist governments of some non-Soviet Muslim countries, such as Turkey.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Wheeler, 1964, p. 190.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> There are two Islamic theological colleges in the USSR, one in Bukhara, with 63 students in 1980, and one in Tashkent with 36 students.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;''New York Times'', 12 April 1980, p. 6.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1953, the Mufti of Tashkent estimated that there were between 200 and 300 active mosques in Central Asia.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., and Wheeler, 1964, p. 191.&lt;/ref&gt; A limited number of Islamic books are published by the Spiritual Directorate for Sunni Muslims in Central Asia and Kazakhstan, including the Koran, in Arabic, in 1947, and another edition in 1964. Each year it also publishes a limited edition of an Islamic calendar.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p.294.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The theology and rites of Islam in the Soviet Union remain orthodox — mostly Sunni. The leaders of Islam in the Soviet Union have never been accused of heresy (''shirg''), infidelity (''kufr'') or innovation (''bida''). Nevertheless, all religious students trained in the USSR receive a thorough political and social education along with their orthodox theology. Both as a result of the method of selection and of education their political attitudes tend to be progressive and pro-Soviet. Muslim delegations from the Islamic world regularly visit Central Asia and are received by Soviet Islamic leaders; likewise, Muslim delegations from the USSR regularly tour the Islamic countries. Members of such Soviet goodwill delegations speak perfect Arabic and have a thorough knowledge of all aspects of the Islamic faith. These meetings, between Soviet and non-Soviet Islamic delegations, function as an important mechanism for winning friends in the Islamic world.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Bennigsen, 1980, pp. 39, 44.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> While many Islamic customs are maintained, today, according to Jukes, 'the influence of Islam, while difficult to gauge, does not appear great'.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Jukes, 1974, p. 47.&lt;/ref&gt; This appears to apply especially to Azerbaidzhan. ''The Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities'' reports that in Azerbaidzhan 'Islam withered away', and experienced a 'gradual erosion of traditional Islamic life'.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 193; see also Wheeler, 1964, p. 192.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Azerbaidzhan presents two cultural worlds: one urban in which Islam and its traditional customs, art, and literature have largely died; the other rural and isolated in which women still wear black shawls and Moslem values have mote than historical significance. But, in sum, Islam lingers on mote as a source of tradition than as an actively worshipped religion. While such Moslem customs persist as circumcision, religious proverbs, naming of children with Allah's attributes, and early marriage for women, the five pillars of faith are no longer observed. ''Zakat'' [alms] is forbidden, public prayer is quite rare, Ramadan (month of fasting) conflicts with work schedules and is effectively discouraged, and Hajj is limited to a handful of token pilgrims allowed to visit Mecca.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 195.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;To a somewhat lesser degree, what is true of Azerbaidzhan is true of Central Asia. As urbanization and education proceed apace the residues of Islam are everywhere being undermined.&lt;blockquote&gt;That religious Islamic sentiments have become largely eroded throughout Soviet Asia even while some traditional non-religious Islamic customs remain seems virtually to be the consensus of scholarly Western experts, as well as of journalists and diplomats personally familiar with the region. A feature article in the New York Times reported:<br /> <br /> Western and other foreign specialists here are skeptical of a theory widely circulated in the West that the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan was motivated largely by fear that a spread of Islamic fundamentalism through Central Asia might infect the adjacent Soviet Moslem peoples.<br /> <br /> Diplomats and journalists who have travelled recently in the Moslem republics of Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus report that religion has been eroded in the lives of the 40 million or so people of Moslem tradition....<br /> <br /> The Soviet authorities seem to feel complete confidence now in the loyalty of their Moslem peoples, ...Moscow's confidence appears to be illustrated by reports from Afghanistan that many of the soldiers sent for the intervention are Tadzhiks or others of Moslem tradition.<br /> <br /> The atmosphere is even more secular in Central Asia than in Moslem areas of the Caucasus. The mosques, minarets and mausoleums of ancient glory are state museums now, tourist attractions. The small and humble mosques open for worship are sparsely attended by the elderly. Young people are seldom seen there.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;''New York Times'', 13 January 1980, p. A:14, and 12 April 1980, pp. 1, 6.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> === Anti-Soviet and Anti-Socialist Nationalist Attitudes and Movements ===<br /> If the people of the Asiatic republics were, or felt that they were, oppressed by the Soviet regime it is to be expected that in some way this would be manifested by such phenomena as nationalist movements, spontaneous resistance, hostile attitudes expressed by the population against Russians, a resurgence of religion, pan-Islamic sympathies or a dissident movement among intellectuals. Such events have occurred in Lithuania and Estonia, as well as in Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Romania. However, there is virtually no evidence of any such activity in Soviet Asia — most major Western experts on the area seem to agree on this. Acceptance of Soviet institutions appears to be complete and the potential for any significant secessionist or anti-socialist nationalist movement absent.<br /> <br /> One expert, Wheeler, for example, tells us of:&lt;blockquote&gt;The absence of characteristic indications of nationalism or nationalist movement.... [He goes on] Of the existence even in embryo of nationalist movements of the kind experienced in other empires there are few if any characteristic indications. Elsewhere, and before the Revolution in the Russian empire such indications have included the existence of easily identifiable, nationalist leaders either at large or in exile, internal disturbances and acts of sabotage, the existence abroad of dedicated nationalist committees receiving active support from foreign governments, and a more or less steady stream of refugees into adjoining countries. In empires other than the Russian and Soviet thete have been added the phenomena of the nationalist press and literature and the presence of active, or at any rate vocal, opposition groups in parliament. Of all these hitherto characteristic indications of nationalism the only one which can be discerned today in relation to Central Asia is the existence abroad of a few nationalist organizations most of them formed and all of them financed from foreign, usually private, resources.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Wheeler, 1964, p. 152.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Wheeler approvingly quotes another Soviet Central Asian expert, Alexander Bennigsen, who states:&lt;blockquote&gt;...there is no question of opposition to the system; indeed, it seems that the Muslims of the USSR, peasants, workers and intellectuals alike, are really trying to adapt themselves to the way of life of the 'model man' advocated by the authorities.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Cited in ibid., p. 184.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Nove and Newth argue that the lack of any reports in the West of opposition to the Soviet system in Central Asia is evidence of the absence of such opposition, on the grounds that anti-Russian sentiments in other areas, such as the Baltic countries and Georgia are widely reported in the West.&lt;blockquote&gt;The Georgians happen to be particularly open in telling foreign visitors just what they think about Russia and Muscovite rule. It is rarer to hear such things from the Uzbeks and Tajiks. Since the police system is much the same throughout the Soviet Union and since the Georgians appear to have no special difficulty in conveying their views to others, the fact that one hears much less of anti-Russian nationalism in Central Asia cannot be attributed merely to fear.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Nove and Newth, 1967, p. 121.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities reports that no apparent national antagonism exists in Central Asia between the native and Russian intelligentsia. Analyses of interviews with those who have left the Soviet Union confirm the good relationship between Russians and Asians in the Asiatic republics. These anti-Soviet emigrés 'attached little significance to various incidents of national friction which, being prompted, they had been able to recall'&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 305.&lt;/ref&gt; Experts on each of the different Asiatic nationalities reach the same conclusion.&lt;blockquote&gt;If the term 'Uzbek nationalists' is used to mean those who demand a fully independent state for an Uzbek or Turkic nation — complete sovereignty based on separation from the USSR — then Moscow has not had to confront Uzbek nationalists since the 1920s, certainly no later than the 1930s.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p.309.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In Azerbaidzhan 'In recent years no outbreaks of nationalism have been documented by Western sources, Russian official media, or ''samizdat'', and, Nationalism, if it exists, is expressed through a distinctive life style and national pride rather than by political agitation'.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 206-7.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In Turkmenia 'in recent times, manifestations of nationalism have been restricted primarily to activities within established institutions', such as arguing 'that all leading posts should be occupied by Turkmen'.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 279.&lt;/ref&gt; In Kazakhstan there is a 'Tack of expression of nationalist tensions' and 'of dissent, only isolated cases are known and those involved non-Kazakhs'.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p.234.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Wheeler reports&lt;blockquote&gt;active resistance to the process of Westernization gradually disappeared. Although one would hardly expect any extensive labour or social disturbances to be reported in the Soviet press, it is significant that the only disturbances even rumored have been among the non-Asian inhabitants of Central Asia.*&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Wheeler, 1964, p. 169.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;small&gt;*An exception to what almost all Western analysts and observers report as the absence of anti-Russian hostility appears in a 1979 article by Steven Burg, He claimed that there is 'increasing evidence of inter-ethnic conflict and hostility in Soviet Asia', and that very recent emigres from the USSR report a relatively high level of tension between Europeans and Muslims. Interestingly, he argues that this is happening because as Central Asians become more educated and enter into the scientific and technical elite, and occupy more and more responsible positions in the Party and state apparatus, they are experiencing increasing competition with cadres of European background. Burg claims (together with Brzezinski's) should probably be treated as a speculation about possible future developments rather than as empirically documented fact.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Burg, 1979.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> Almost the sole substantive claim relating to nationalism which appears in the Western literature is that younger Asian artists and writers seem to be developing an increasing interest in their past and their cultural traditions. This is not discouraged by Soviet policies, which have consistently aimed to build up national consciousness (as opposed to Islamic or tribal consciousness) among the people of Soviet Asia, and thus, it cannot be considered as a sign of discontent with either socialism or integration into the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> While experts on the area generally agree that there is little or no separatist or anti-Soviet feeling in the Asiatic republics, some do suggest that possibly such sentiments may develop in the future. These predictions tend to be based solely on the fact that Central Asians have an Islamic and Asiatic background:&lt;blockquote&gt;Not all Western students of the nationality question are as convinced that the 'nationality problem' has been resolved in the USSR. In 1971 Zbigniew Brzezinski was quoted as observing: 'It is not inconceivable that in the next several decades the nationality problem will become politically more important in the Soviet Union than the racial issue has become in the United States ' Many Western specialists who deal with Uzbekistan are somewhat mote cautious in their projections, but most agree that difficulties for the Soviet regime are possible.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975; ''Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities'', p. 307.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> === Attitude of Soviet Asians to USSR Intervention in Afghanistan ===<br /> The Soviet system's generally high level of legitimacy among Soviet Asians of Islamic background extends to strong support for Soviet foreign policy in the Near East, especially for the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979. Since the 1920s, most educated Central Asians have tended to press the Soviet government to pursue a more active foreign policy in the Near East, by giving more support to progressive and revolutionary regimes, including the use of the Soviet Army, and incorporation of parts of the region into the Soviet Union. There is a long tradition among Soviet Asian leaders endorsing the 'transfer of revolutionary energies' from Europe to the Muslim world. In the 1920s many Muslims expressed the hope that Central Asia and the Transcaucus would be used as a 'revolutionary springboard' for the liberation of fellow Muslims, especially in Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, whose ethnic groups in good part overlap with those in Soviet Central Asia, and also throughout Asia in general. Educated Soviet Asians are usually highly knowledgeable about and very interested in developments across their borders; generally, they empathize with fellow Muslims who are seeking revolutionary change. This was manifested in the immediate post-World War II period when, with the support of the Soviet Army, revolutionary regimes existed in Iranian Azerbaidzhan and Kurdistan. At this time Central Asians were inclined to argue that both areas should be incorporated into the Soviet Union.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Bennigsen, 1980, pp. 41-2.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December 1979 was seen by Central Asians largely as help to fellow Muslims who had been oppressed by one of the most backward feudal regimes in the world. There are significant populations both of Tadjiks and Uzbeks in Afghanistan, consequently these two peoples have been especially favourable towards Soviet aid to their fellow nationals. Bennigsen, one of the principal Western experts on Soviet Central Asia, argued in the US International Communications Agency's publication ''Problems of Communism'' that: 'It is likely that the present-day elites favor Soviet annexation of, if not the whole of Afghanistan, then at least Afghan Turkestan north of the Hindu Kush.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Bennigsen, 1980, p. 42.&lt;/ref&gt; Before the Soviet Army's intervention in Afghanistan there had been growing Soviet support for that country's revolutionary government which had been installed in April 1978. This support largely took the form of thousands of Soviet Muslims (many of whom spoke Afghan languages as their mother tongue) becoming advisers to the Afghan revolutionary government; not infrequently they would assume governmental positions. The number of Soviet Central Asians working with the Afghan government increased after December 1979. According to Bennigsen, '...far from opposing the occupation of a brother Muslim land, the Central Asian Muslim elites seemed to welcome the adventure'.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 47.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Most of the Soviet troops initially sent into Afghanistan were Central Asians. After the first few months, however, military units with a higher concentration of Slavs began to be introduced into the country, especially in the Pushtun area. Historically, the Pushtuns have been the political and economically dominant group in Afghanistan, and traditionally their attitude has been one of superiority to other ethnic groups which they have ruled, including the Uzbeks, other Turks and Tadjiks — whose Soviet cousins comprised the bulk of the Soviet Army. In Pushtunstan many of the Soviet Turk and Tadjik troops were attacked, and in some cases killed, not so much because of anti-Soviet sentiment, but out of Pushtun resentment against Tadjiks and Turks.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Neatly all analysts and observers of the Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution in Iran report that, while it was welcomed by the people of Central Asia in that it deposed the pro-US and repressive Shah, it had no resonance among the masses of the people. A feature article in the New York Times in April 1980 concluded: '... it seems clear that the Ayatollah's Islamic revival has little chance of infecting Iran's Soviet neighbors with its militancy' The article cites as typical of the attitudes of Soviet Asians a young Tatar woman from Bukhara who told the Times reporter: 'Of course, people here were glad to see the Shah out of Iran. But on the other hand, we don't like the Ayatollah because of his cruelty.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;''New York Times'', 12 April 1980, pp. 1, 6&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In contrast to the Asiatic republics there is documented evidence of significant anti-Russian sentiment in Soviet Georgia, Estonia and Lithuania. There have been significant dissident movements and popular demonstrations in Estonia and Lithuania against various Soviet policies — something virtually unknown in Central Asia. The contrast between the two areas of the USSR is elaborated on in the next chapter.<br /> <br /> === Conclusion ===<br /> Most experts agree that it would be difficult to characterize the relationship between Russia and Central Asia as 'colonial' even though decision making in the USSR is highly centralized.&lt;blockquote&gt;If one's picture of colonialism is associated with exploitation, with grinding the faces of the poor, then clearly the word does not fit the circumstances of the case. It must also be admitted that some of the accusations which are sometimes levelled against the Soviet policy in these areas are wide of the mark. Living standards do compare favourably not only with neighbouring Asian countries but also with Russia itself. The use of the Russian language in schools and universities is in some respects a mere convenience rather than a means of Russification.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Nove and Newth, 1967, p. 120.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ... the fostering of a sense of nationhood, and the long-sustained effort to raise levels of industrialization, personal income, educational standards and availability of social services towards those prevailing in the European USSR go considerably beyond those made by the other colonial powers in their former major possessions, and suggest strongly that the Soviet leaders have consistently striven to avoid treating the  Transcaucasian and Central Asian nationalities in ways which could be defined by a Marxist as 'colonial'.<br /> <br /> For propaganda to Asia, the Soviet Central Asian states offer a number of undoubted showpieces... the economic development of Central Asia and Transcaucasia is an obvious success for the Soviet regime.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Jukes, 1973, p. 49.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The Soviets broadcast their accomplishments in Central Asia, both by sending Central Asians to Africa and Asia as technical specialists to aid these countries' development, and in making a point of having visiting dignitaries and delegations from Asian and African countries visit the Transcaucasian, Central Asian and Siberian minority areas where the visitors can view conditions for themselves.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 64.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Clearly, in no sense can the Asiatic Republics of the USSR be characterized as colonies or neo-colonies of the Slavic areas; they have been rapidly and thoroughly integrated into the USSR while their native languages and cultures have thrived. Their living standards, educational opportunities, and welfare systems have been raised to those of the European USSR. Rather than being exploited by Russia, and their industrialization and all around economic development impeded, their economies have been rapidly industrialized and modernized, largely at the expense of heavy economic subsidies from the European areas. Natives of the Asiatic Republics predominate in the politically responsible positions. The absence of any significant signs of discontent with the Soviet system among Soviet Asians contrasts radically with nationalist and anti-imperialist movements across the Soviet borders in such countries as pre-1979 Iran, and is evidence of the lack of felt national oppression among Soviet Asians.<br /> <br /> Even Soviet dissidents such as Roy Medvedev essentially concur with the opinions of all Western experts on Central Asia:&lt;blockquote&gt;... the West exaggerates the importance of our nationalist movements. The Soviet authorities aren't misrepresenting the facts when they say that the national components of the old tsarist Russian empire... have experienced rapid change in both national-cultural and economic structures, and that they have profited enormously from the October revolution. In the past, the authorities put much effort into solving all kinds of regional issues; therefore I don't believe there's any danger of the USSR breaking up.&lt;ref group=&quot;2.&quot;&gt;Roy Medvedev, 1980, p. 46.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;All the evidence, based not only on statistics but also on the virtually universal opinions of experts on Soviet Asia, points in the same direction. The Soviets have thoroughly transformed the old czarist imperialist relationship between Russia and Asia, and no longer does it bear the marks of a colonial or neo-colonial connection. Elsewhere, Western imperialism's exploitation and humiliations have resulted in independence movements. Only the Soviets have been able to integrate formerly backward, colonial areas into the old European heartland without the development of a nationalist separatist movement. In this respect Soviet socialism must thus be seen as radically different from Western capitalism.<br /> <br /> === References ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;2.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> == 3. The European Nationalities in the USSR ==<br /> In this chapter a careful examination is made of the condition of the non-Russian European Republics, and of the Soviet Jews. The rates of economic growth, industrialization, specialization in raw materials, and so on in the European Republics is scrutinized to detect any tendency for them to become colonial-like appendages of the Russian Republic. The status of their languages and cultures is also carefully examined for any 'Russification' attributes. The historical development of the association of each people first with Russia then with the USSR is treated. Finally, the degree of opposition to membership in the USSR, hostility to socialist institutions, and anti-Russian sentiment in the major areas is examined. Special attention is given to the position of Soviet Jews because of the publicity they have received in the West, and an analysis is made of accusations of anti-Semitism, as well as the recent Jewish emigration.<br /> <br /> === Economic Development ===<br /> While the most rapid improvement in economic conditions, social welfare and cultural development has generally occurred in the Asian Republics of the USSR, the various European national minorities, especially those of the Baltic Republics and the Jews have achieved the highest level of economic development and social welfare in the entire USSR. The three Baltic Republics, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, are respectively the wealthiest of all Republics. In 1970, the average income in roubles per capita for the three Republics was R1,500 (US $3,420 in 1974) — 13% higher than in the Russian Republic. The average income per capita for Georgia and Armenia was R897 (two-thirds of that of the Russian Republics); while the average for the Ukraine, Belorussia and Moldavia was R1,073 (80% of the Russian Republic), (see Table 2.1).<br /> <br /> During pre-1917 Czarist rule, and its independence period before 1940, Lithuania was a relatively backward, largely agricultural economy.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, pp. 119-20.&lt;/ref&gt; Since it became part of the Soviet Union its rate of industrial output has been the most rapid of all the Republics, increasing 54 times between 1940 and 1978, compared to 20 times for the Soviet Union average and 17 times for Russia proper.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;''The USSR in Figures'', 1978, p. 92.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1970, the third richest Republic, after only Estonia and Latvia — Lithuania — had its greatest growth in heavy industry. For example, gross production of electrical energy increased eight times between 1960 and 1970; chemical and oil refining more than 13 times; machine-building and metal-working six times; and the manufacture of construction materials four times. In that decade the proportion of all industrial workers employed in metal-working and machine building increased from 23% to 33%, while the proportion of workers in light industry decreased from 45% and 38%. With only 1.3% of the USSR's population, Lithuania, in 1970, produced 11% of all metal-cutting lathes, and also specialized in the production of machine tools and instruments, automated equipment, electronic computers, radio and television sets and refrigerators.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 120.&lt;/ref&gt; Lithuania's rapid industrialization during the Soviet period has been reflected in the standard of living of its people. In the 1960 to 1970 period it led all Soviet Republics in the rate of growth of national income.<br /> <br /> In 1970, Latvia was second only to Estonia in living standards throughout the USSR.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt; In contrast to Lithuania, Latvia (especially its coastal region) was one of the most industrialized parts of the czarist empire, and its industrial working class played an important role in the movement against the czar. Much of Latvian industry was destroyed or dismantled during World War I and little reindustrialization occurred during the pre-1940 independence period. The policy of the independent Republic's government was to concentrate on the development of agricultural exports, but since 1940 Soviet policy has been to concentrate on the redevelopment of Latvian industry, and in the 1970s Latvia was the most industrialized of all the Soviet Republics with 38% of its labour force employed in industry in 1971, the highest figure in the Union. Between 1940 and 1978 industrial output grew 43 times (a rate of increase exceeded only by Lithuania and Moldavia). Latvian industry is concentrated on machine building and metal-working, which together employed 33% of the industrial labour force in 1970. With less than 1% of the population of the country, in the early 1970s Latvia produced more than half of all the motorcycles, almost half of all the telephones, one-third of the trolley cars, over a quarter of all railway passenger cars, and about a quarter of all radios and record players.<br /> <br /> Estonia is the richest Republic of the USSR; its rate of industrialization has been the same as Latvia's. From 1940 to 1978 its industrial output increased 43 times.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;''The USSR in Figures'', 1978, p. 92.&lt;/ref&gt; As in the other two Baltic Republics heavy industry has been given priority, and Estonia leads the USSR in a number of high technology areas, such as the application of computers to various aspects of management.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Panning and Jarvesoo, 1978, pp. 9-11.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Over the entire 1913 to 1978 period Armenia led all Soviet Republics in rate of industrialization, with, in 1978, an industrial output 335 times higher than that in 1913 (compared to a 151 times increase for Russia proper). Georgia's rate of industrialization has also been rapid, with its industrial output in 1978 144 times higher than that for 1913 — slightly less than the Russian rate of industrial growth. In 1970, Armenia's national income per adult was 87% of the Russian, while Georgia's was 69%.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;''The USSR in Figures'', 1978, p. 92.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1970, Georgia ranked third among all the Union Republics in metallurgical production. It is a major producer of pig iron, steel and rolled metal. The machine building industry (especially metal-cutting lathes, motor vehicles, tractors, electric locomotives and agricultural machinery) as well as the chemical industry have been growing rapidly.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al, 1975, p. 162.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Nonferrous metallurgy is one of the most important economic sectors of Armenia, and it processes much of its own mineral wealth of molybdenum, aluminium and rare metals. Metal-working and machine building employed over one-third of Armenia's industrial labour force in 1969. Recently the chemical industry has also become a major industrial sector. Armenia is also one of the most important Soviet centres for scientific research, and the production of calculators, measuring instruments  employing  semi-conductor  electronics, and computers.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 144.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The rates of industrialization in Moldavia and Belorussia during the period 1940 to 1978 were considerably more rapid than the Russian; in the Ukraine it was somewhat less.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;''USSR in Figures'', 1978, p. 92&lt;/ref&gt; The living standards in Ukraine, Belorussia and Moldavia rank just below Russia proper. Economically, in general, the European Republics have fared very well under Soviet power. Six of them have had a more rapid rate of industrialization than has Russia proper, and two of them less rapid; three of them are more developed than the Russian Republic, and five somewhat less developed. In general, there is no evidence that the economic relationship between the non-Russian European Republics and the Russian Republic is either exploitative, or of a type in which industrial production is concentrated in Russia. All the eight European national minority Republics appear to have derived considerable benefit from their association in the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> === Health Care and Education ===<br /> The improvement in such basic social services as health care and education has also been very significant in the period of Soviet power. Georgia, Latvia and Estonia lead the Russian Republic in the number of doctors per 10,000 population, and in doctors per 10,000 adults. Of the other European major minorities only the Moldavians rank significantly below the Russian majority in this respect (see Table 2.3). There is little difference between the Republics either in hospital beds per 10,000 population or per 10,000 adults.<br /> <br /> Of the eight major European minorities with their own Republics, both Georgia and Armenia have more students per capita in higher education than do the Russians, while the three Baltic nationalities average a ratio of about 80% that of the Russians, the Belorussians and Ukrainians about 70%. and the<br /> <br /> Moldavians a low 53% (see Table 2.6). The general rates of increase in school attendance are largely inversely proportional to the educational level before the Soviet system was instituted; Georgia, Armenia, Lithuania and Moldavia have had higher rates than Russia, while Estonia and Latvia have had significantly lower rates (see Table 2.5).<br /> <br /> Corresponding to their over-representation among university students, Armenia and Georgia have the highest concentration of scientific workers per capita of any of the major Soviet nationalities, except the Jews. The three Baltic nationalities rank just below the Russian over-representation index on this measure. Scientific workers, however, are somewhat underrepresented among Ukrainians and Belorussians, while Moldavians have the lowest concentration of scientific workers of all Soviet nationalities. This reflects the underdeveloped state of this area before it was incorporated into the USSR in 1940, and the relatively short time that has elapsed since the institutionalization of Soviet power enabled the development of a body of scientific workers (see Table 2.7).<br /> <br /> In summary, all the major European nationalities have made considerable progress in the basic social services; there is no observable tendency for Russians to receive preferential treatment in the development of such services. In general, the gap between the European minorities is closing, although Moldavia remains to some extent under-represented in institutions of higher education, and consequently in the number of scientific workers.<br /> <br /> === Cultural Development ===<br /> In the three Baltic Republics, and in Georgia and Armenia, the proportion of books and newspapers printed in the titular language roughly coincides with the percentage of nationals in the population, as Table 3.1 demonstrates.<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed&quot;<br /> |+Table 3.1<br /> Books/Newspapers in the National Language in the Baltic Republics, Armenia and Georgia, compated to % of Nationals<br /> Source: Katz et al, 1975, ''Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities'', pp. 459-60.<br /> !<br /> !% Book Titles<br /> !% Newspapers<br /> !% of Nationals in Total Population of the Republic<br /> |-<br /> |Estonia<br /> |74%<br /> |72%<br /> |68%<br /> |-<br /> |Latvia<br /> |52%<br /> |64%<br /> |57%<br /> |-<br /> |Lithuania<br /> |64%<br /> |81%<br /> |80%<br /> |-<br /> |Armenia<br /> |75%<br /> |88%<br /> |89%<br /> |-<br /> |Georgia<br /> |73%<br /> |86%<br /> |67%<br /> |}<br /> In the Ukraine, Belorussia and Moldavia, however, the proportion of books published in the titular language is significantly smaller than the extent of these nationalities in the Republic's population; but except in Moldavia, the proportion of newspapers published in the native language is proportional to the nationality's share of the population (see Table 2.8). The smaller proportion of books published in Ukrainian and Belorussian is as a result of the similarity of these languages to Great Russian, and the consequent ease of access these nationalities have to the wide corpus of works available in Russian.<br /> <br /> The proportion of titles and newspapers to population in the minority European Republics is reflected in the ratios of total numbers of copies printed to population. In Estonia in 1971 seven newspapers were printed in Russian with a mean run of 18,000 copies. Twenty-seven newspapers were published in Estonian with an average run of 33,000 copies. In Lithuania, 12 newspapers were printed in Russian with a mean run of 13,000 copies, while 72 were printed in Lithuania with a mean run of 22,000 copies. In Armenia, three papers were printed in Russian and 61 in Armenian; both had an average tun of 19,000 copies. In the Ukraine the average run of the 863 Ukrainian newspapers was only slightly less than the 357 Russian language papers.<br /> <br /> Similarly, for books published. In Estonia the 1,505 book titles published in Estonian in 1971 had an average run of 7,000 copies, while the 674 Russian language titles had an average run of 3,000. In Lithuania the 1,351 Lithuanian language titles had an average run of 9,000 while the 421 Russian language books had an average run of 4,000. In Armenia, the 840 Armenian language titles had an average run of 10,000 each, while those in Russian averaged 7,000. In the Ukraine, the average run of the 3,106 Ukrainian titles published was four times that of the Russian language books.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, Tables 2.2, 4.2, 6.2, 7.2.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In numbers of books published per capita in the native languages of the Republics Estonia, with 8.9 per year per capita, followed by Latvia with 7.4, lead the entire Soviet Union. The Russian average is 5.6, Lithuania and Georgia also rank pretty high in this regard with 4.3 and 3.7 per capita per year respectively (see Table 2.8).<br /> <br /> The native languages thrive in all the European Republics, with the possible exception of Belorussia. Only 80% of Belorussians in 1970 identified Belorussian as their native tongue. Ninety-eight percent of Georgians and Lithuanians identified their national language as their mother tongue, as did 96% of Estonians, 95% of Latvians and Moldavians, 91 % of Armenians and 86% of Ukrainians (see Table 2.9). Except possibly in Belorussia there is no tendency for the native languages to fall into disuse and be replaced by Great Russian.<br /> <br /> The proportion of the population of some European Republics who are of the titular nationality does tend to decline, in contrast to the universal pattern for the Asian Republics. This decline is most pronounced in Estonia where, in 1959, 75%, and in 1979, 65% of the population were Estonians. The only other Soviet Republic where a similar decline can be observed is Latvia, where, in 1959, 62% were Latvian, and in 1979, 54%. The proportion of Ukrainians in the Ukraine also declined slightly, from 77% to 74%, as did that of Belorussians in Belorussia (81% to 79%). Lithuania actually experienced an increase (from 79% to 80%), as did Armenia (from 88% to 90%) and Georgia (from 64% to 69%) (see Table 2.10).<br /> <br /> In general, the linguistic and cultural integrity of the European nationalities is being maintained; their cultures, art and literature thrive and show no sign of being submerged into a homogeneous Russian culture.<br /> <br /> === Nationalism and Dissidence in the European Republics ===<br /> The two Soviet Republics with the greatest manifestations of nationalism and anti-Russian (if not also anti-Soviet) sentiments are Lithuania and Estonia, in that order. Both Republics were briefly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940-41, under somewhat controversial conditions, and were permanently incorporated after the Nazis were driven out in 1944. There was some guerrilla warfare/terrorism for about five years after the war in both Republics involving groups opposed to integration into the Soviet Union. Considerable resentment on the part of a significant number of the people in both countries has lingered on. In the 1970s these sentiments were manifested in occasional anti-Russian  (not anti-socialist, or usually not anti-Soviet) nationalist manifestations, especially in Lithuania. By all indications the Soviet system is least popular in these two Republics.<br /> <br /> ==== Estonia ====<br /> In early October 1980, a nationalist demonstration, estimated by Westerners to be composed of about 2,000 high school students, occurred in the Estonia capital directed against the growing Russian immigration into Estonia — possibly with anti-Soviet overtones as well.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;''New York Times'', 5 October 1980, p. 30.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1972, several hundred Tallin Polytechnic students rioted after the Czechs beat the Soviets in an ice-hockey match shouting 'We won'. Dissidents protesting against the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia have been arrested.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 90.&lt;/ref&gt; In Estonia, as in Poland and Hungary, anti-Russian — and often racist — jokes are popular. Such jokes tend to make fun of Russians for their alleged lack of culture and sophistication. Students sometimes chant unorthodox slogans at officially organized demonstrations. It is reported that in Estonia there was significant support for New Leftist ideas among the youth, at least in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Other manifestations of anti-authority sentiments among the young have included the popularity of wearing crosses around the neck, as well as other Western paraphernalia.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 90; Panning and Jarvesoo, 1978, pp. 77-83.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1974, two samizdat reached the West, addressed to the UN Secretary-General and signed the 'Estonian National Front' and the 'Estonian National Movement', which called for the secession of Estonia from the USSR. Four people were arrested in December 1974 for releasing these statements to the Western press.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Panning and Jarvesoo, 1978, pp. 82-3.&lt;/ref&gt; Estonian song festivals are especially popular, one in 1969 was attended by 250,000 people. It is reported that at such festivals Finnish choruses (Estonian is rather closely related to the Finnish language) are applauded enthusiastically, while Russian choruses are applauded only politely, allegedly this is a sign of Estonian nationalism and anti-Russian feeling.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 77.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> It seems that significant numbers of Estonians principally object to increasing Russian influence in their Republic, and especially the increasing settlement of Russians.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 80.&lt;/ref&gt; While there is some sentiment in favour of secession from the Soviet Union, this does not reflect majority opinion. There is little or no evidence of any significant inclination to replace socialism with capitalism, despite significant dissent about the particular forms of Soviet institutions existent today. The benefits to Estonia of being part of the Soviet Union have proved to be immense. Anthony Asrakhand, former Moscow correspondent for the ''Washington Post'', wrote in 1970, 'Nationalism in Estonia and neighbouring Latvia is easy for a visitor to sense, but hard to document. What you see with your eyes is more a wish for cultural autonomy than a plan or dream of seceding from the Soviet Union.'&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Cited ibid., p. 114.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Since the 13th Century Estonia had been dominated by German landowners and merchants, and although it was conquered by the Russian Empire in 1710, the German speaking aristocracy maintained their dominant position until the mid-19th Century. It was in the latter part of the 19th Century that a sense of national consciousness first developed. The new Estonian nationalist movement demanded a voice in local administration and envisaged Estonia as an autonomous unit within a more loosely federated Greater Russia; there was no significant movement for independence until after the 1917 Revolution. Initially, there was strong support for the Bolsheviks within Estonia, as was indicated in the 1917 elections for the Constituent Assembly by the Communist vote of 37%, compared to a national average of about 25% of the total. In reaction to the Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1917 the local propertied groups in Estonia opted for independence, which was declared eatly in 1918. After two years of civil war, in which the anti-Communists received considerable material support from the Western powers, independence was confirmed, establishing Estonia as a capitalist economy with parliamentary political forms.<br /> <br /> The strong Estonian Communist Party was banned in 1924 and its leaders arrested and imprisoned until 1938. Parliamentary forms, however, were maintained in Estonia for longer than in the remainder of capitalist Eastern and Central Europe. Not until 1934 were these abolished in favour of an anti-Soviet, rightist dictatorship. In 1939, with the USSR increasingly afraid of a German invasion, the Estonian government (in common with the governments of Latvia and Lithuania) was forced to sign a treaty of mutual assistance. This treaty permitted Soviet troops to be stationed on Estonian soil. The Soviets, after protesting that the rightist government was not honouring the terms of the treaty, insisted on holding elections which were manipulated in such a way as to guarantee victory for the Communist dominated list —in all three Baltic Republics. In August 1940, the new Communist-led Estonian government asked for incorporation of Estonia into the Soviet Union as a Union Republic.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 76-7.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> There was considerable resistance to the socialist transformation of the Estonian economy and the political integration of the nation with the Soviet Union; and resistance to collectivization on the part of landowners, rich peasants and businessmen. The suppression of this opposition may have resulted in the execution of up to 2,000 people and the deportation of about 19,000 people to Siberia. In 1941 a significant segment of Estonian society, especially the former privileged and wealthy classes, welcomed the Nazi invaders as liberators. It is estimated that during World War II about 25,000 Estonians in German organized military units were killed fighting the Soviets. About 6% of the population, comprising many German collaborators and members of the formerly privileged classes, fled with the retreating German army in 1944. With the restoration of Soviet power in 1944, the number of people deported to Siberia as collaborators has been assessed at perhaps 30,000.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Panning and Jarvesoo, 1978, pp. 25-6; Katz et al., 1975, p. 77.&lt;/ref&gt; The Sovietization of Estonia and its incorporation into the USSR was not a gentle process, and some bitterness remains among significant segments of the population, especially those in the middle classes.<br /> <br /> ==== Lithuania ====<br /> The greatest manifestations of political discontent have occurred in Lithuania. Zhores Medvedev, a prominent dissident in exile, reports that nationalism is much stronger in Lithuania than in Estonia.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1979, p. 27.&lt;/ref&gt; The bulk of the nationalist opposition movement has been centred around the Catholic Church. In 1968, the Catholic clergy initiated a campaign of petitioning against such restrictions on the Church as limits imposed on new admissions to the Catholic seminary. Two priests were arrested, one in 1970 and another in 1971, for violating the law against imparting religious training to children. At the trial of one, a riot broke out involving about 500 people; the priest was sentenced to one year in gaol From 1971 to 1973, as a result of these trials, a campaign of mass petitions took place which collected 60,000 signatures.<br /> <br /> A number of clandestine nationalist/religious groups of intellectuals and students were formed during the late 1960s. An underground ''samizdat'' journal, the ''Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church'', began to appear early in the 1970s; by February 1977, 24 issues had reached the West. In May 1972, a 19-year-old youth who had expressed interest in attending the religious seminary burned himself alive in Kaunas. His funeral precipitated a riot involving clashes with the police, and a number of fires. An estimated 200 rioters were held in gaol for at least 15 days. There were two further self-immolations by fire in 1972. Up to 1975, of the three known attempts to hijack planes in the USSR, two (including the only successful one) have involved Lithuanians.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Allworth (ed.), 1977, pp. 179-80; Katz et al., 1975, pp. 137-8.&lt;/ref&gt; Anti-Russian protest in Lithuania has also taken the form of refusals to speak Russian, defections to the West, a fairly well organized dissident network, petition campaigns, and a riot after a Lithuanian-Russian soccer game in 1977.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, pp. 137-8.&lt;/ref&gt; The relatively strong nationalist movement in Lithuania contrasts sharply with the absence of such movements in Soviet Asia.<br /> <br /> The thrust of most Lithuanian protests is for greater autonomy for the Catholic Church. In the opinion of most Western experts the opposition movement in Lithuania would subside to the extent that the Church was left alone. Nevertheless, it seems that national pride is strong, especially among young people, and the desire for greater autonomy, as opposed to secession from the USSR, or hostility to socialism, is a potent force. Lithuanians are, on the whole, proud of their history and culture, and their ties with the West.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 135-8.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> As in Hstonia (or, for that matter, Georgia) there is a significant anti-Russian sentiment in Lithuania, with strong overtones of racist arrogance toward a people whom they consider to be culturally inferior. But hostility towards Russians, in both Lithuania and Estonia, is reported to be of a rather abstract quality directed towards Russians in general and not so much to individual Russians. Indeed, it is quite common for Estonians or Lithuanians to feel very close to individual Russians while at the same time telling anti-Russian jokes.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Allworth (ed.), 1977, p. 241.&lt;/ref&gt; That anti-Russian feelings are based on nationalist traditions, rather than on any contemporary oppression by Russians, is borne out by analyses of the attitudes of Lithuanian emigrants in the West, who report that their fellow nationals in Lithuania have equal chances for important jobs and official honours with ethnic Russians. They also report that systematic favouritism towards Russians or discrimination against Lithuanians is non-existent.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 240-1.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Unlike Estonia, Latvia, the Ukraine, Belorussia or Moldavia, at one time Lithuania was an important independent state, both on its own and in union with Poland. Nationalist sentiments, including the re-establishment of national independence, have been active since Lithuania was forcibly integrated into the czarist empire in the late 18th Century. After the collapse of czarism these sentiments exploded in an independence movement. In contrast the movements for Estonian and Latvian independence were created after the 1917 Revolution; in Estonia, nationalist sentiment had traditionally been directed toward achieving autonomous status in a federal Greater Russia.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 49.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Unlike Latvia, which was highly industrialized in the czarist period, with a strong socialist working class movement, heavily rural Lithuania had only a small working class and little in the way of a revolutionary socialist movement. Although Vilnius (the traditional capital) was a centre of the Jewish Bund, the Polish Socialist Party and the Lithuanian Social Democrats were based largely among intellectuals.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al, 1975, p. 90.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Red Army took Vilnius in January 1919 and proclaimed a Soviet regime; a civil war with anti-Communist nationalists based in Kaunas then followed. Because of considerable financial and material assistance for the nationalists from Western countries, together with the ultra-left policies of the Bolsheviks, who alienated the bulk of the peasantry with premature collectivization, the Bolsheviks lost. Consequently, an independent, non-socialist Lithuania was established, whose government was consistently hostile to the Soviet Union, and pro-Western.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 122-3.&lt;/ref&gt; Parliamentary forms functioned in the new Lithuanian Republic until 1926 when, after a victory of a Socialist-Populist coalition, there was a military coup, and a rightist dictatorship was established.<br /> <br /> The Lithuanian dictator, Antanas Smetona, was an admirer of Mussolini. His dictatorship was weakened when it was forced to cede Lithuania's principal seaport, Klaipeda (Memel), to Germany in March 1939. As we have seen (p. 105) at the outbreak of World War II the imminent threat this represented to Soviet security prompted the Soviets to issue ultimatums to all three Baltic States requiring them to sign 'mutual assistance pacts'. In 1940, in Lithuania, as in Estonia and Latvia, the Soviets maintained that the government was failing to observe the terms of the pact and insisted on holding elections, which were manipulated similarly to those in Estonia. The new Communist-led government which resulted from this election demanded the formal incorporation of Lithuania into the Soviet Union as a Union Republic.<br /> <br /> Initially, this had a significant degree of support, not only from the Lithuanian left, but also from many nationalists, owing to the reincorporation into the Republic of the historical Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, which for the previous 20 years had been occupied by Poland. The process of Sovietization in 1940 and 1941, however, generated considerable opposition, especially among the peasantry and middle classes. When the Nazis invaded, in June 1941, there was an anti-Soviet, nationalist-led uprising in Lithuania which took control of the majority of cities before the German army arrived. Spurned by the Nazis, whom many had first welcomed as liberators, the Lithuanian nationalists turned to guerrilla warfare against the Germans — warfare that was turned against the Red Army after liberation from the Germans in 1944.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 123.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Although the bulk of resistance was dissipated within two or three years, scattered armed action against the Soviet system continued in Lithuania until 1953. It is estimated that in eight years about 40,000 people (more or less evenly divided between pro- and anti-Soviet forces) were killed (mostly in 1944 and 1945). Except perhaps in the formerly Polish western Ukraine, which was integrated into the USSR at approximately the same time, the length and scope of the fighting against Soviet power was equalled only by the Basmachi resistance in Central Asia in the early 1920s.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Soviet system seems to have achieved basic legitimacy in Lithuania by the mid-1950s, largely owing to the remarkable economic progress and rapid rise in living standards consequent upon incorporation into the Soviet Union. The local Lithuanian Communist Party leadership was given substantial autonomy from Moscow, and the local language, culture, art and so on, has thrived.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt; The extent of resistance to incorporation into the Soviet Union throughout the early 1950s, and the level of ongoing dissident activity, is undoubtedly related to both the strong nationalist traditions of Lithuania and the overt presence of the Roman Catholic Church, which — as in Poland — acts as a counter institution to express discontent with various specific practices of the regime.<br /> <br /> ==== Latvia ====<br /> Latvia, in common with Estonia but unlike Lithuania, had no history as an independent entity before the Bolshevik revolution. A number of small, independent and autonomous states, which did not encompass all of Latvia, had existed on Latvian territory, but for most of the period between the 13th and 18th Century Latvia was divided up by the great powers in the area, including Germany, Poland and Sweden. During this time, the ruling class consisted of German nobles, as in Estonia. Between 1721 and 1795 Latvia was incorporated piecemeal into the Czarist Empire. The first Latvian nationalist movement grew up among young intellectuals in the latter part of the 19th Century.<br /> <br /> Latvia, as we have noted (p. 110), was heavily industrialized under the czars with a strong working class, out of which an effective working-class, socialist movement grew up. In 1904, the Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party was established, and in late 1905 claimed 14,000 members. Latvian workers played a central role in the 1905 Russian Revolution with the ratio of strikers to workers at that time higher in Latvia than in any other part of the Czarist empire. Socialist, as well as nationalist, sentiments remained strong after the suppression of the 1905 Revolution, and again exploded in 1917. As in Lithuania, the German advance in the spring of 1918 overran the country and eliminated Soviet power, and under German protection a provisional anti-Soviet government was set up in Riga. With the withdrawal of German troops in 1919 Latvian units of the Red Army (The Latvian Rifles) re-entered Latvia and a revolutionary civil war commenced with the anti-Socialist nationalist forces. As in Lithuania and Estonia, money and supplies from the West (as well as troops from Estonia) proved decisive, and anti-Soviet forces achieved victory early in 1920.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 98-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Because of the strong revolutionary traditions of the Latvian working class the pro-Bolshevik forces enjoyed considerably more support in Latvia than in either Lithuania or Estonia, and as a result the popular resistance to the Western supported White Army and regime was greater here than elsewhere in the Baltics. In 1920, many revolutionary Latvians fled the White Army victory to seek refuge in the Soviet Union. The Red Latvian Rifles were one of the most reliable military units available to the Bolsheviks, and played an important role in many civil war battles from the Ukraine to Siberia.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt; Latvian revolutionaries played a disproportionately significant role in the building of the Soviet Union in the 1920s.<br /> <br /> Independent, capitalist Latvia, in common with Estonia and Lithuania, began with parliamentary forms, which were overthrown in 1934 when an authoritarian regime, loosely modelled on Mussolini's Italy, was set up. Leftist leaders were gaoled and leftist political parties banned. As in the other Baltic countries, in 1939 the Soviet Army entered Latvia in order to increase Soviet security against a possible German invasion; in June 1940, under Soviet pressure, the rightist regime was forced to resign, a new Communist supported regime was elected and almost immediately requested integration into the Soviet Union as a Union Republic. Rapid Sovietization began, only to be halted by the Nazi occupation in summer 1941; many who resisted Sovietization in 1940-41, as well as those who collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation, were deported to Siberia.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 99-100.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In Latvia, resistance to Sovietization, as well as collaboration with the Nazis, was less common than in either Estonia or Lithuania. This, along with relatively minor manifestations of nationalist dissent in comparison with the other two Baltic States, reflects the long socialist traditions of the Latvian working class and the history of strong pro-Bolshevik sentiments among many Latvians. In strong contrast to her sister Baltic Republics, evidence of demonstrations or ''samizdat'' against Soviet power for more autonomy, or against Russian influence, are quite rare and there seem to be no popular feelings favouring a secession from the Soviet Union.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 113-4.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== Ukraine ====<br /> Until the 14th Century there were a number of small principalities on Ukrainian territory, but from the end of that century the Ukraine was gradually annexed by Lithuania and Poland, and by 1569 it had all been absorbed into the joint Lithuanian-Polish state. In 1648, there was a popular rebellion against Polish rule, which sent the Ukrainians to Moscow for help, and in 1667, the Ukraine was partitioned between Russia and Poland. When Russia absorbed most of Poland in the latter part of the 18th Century the Ukraine, with the exception of Western Galicia (incorporated into Austria), was absorbed into the Czarist Empire.<br /> <br /> Before World War I only a weak nationalist movement had existed in the Russian Ukraine. The weakness of nationalist sentiment became apparent in 1917 when the Russian Provisional Government granted autonomy to the Ukraine but nationalists there were unable to establish either an effective army or political administration. In January 1918, shortly after the Bolshevik seizure of power, the autonomous Ukrainian government, weak though it was, declared independence. The following month this government signed a peace treaty with the Germans and Austrians, whose troops then entered the Ukraine expelling the Red Army. With the withdrawal of the German and Austrian armies, in 1919 the Ukrainian nationalist government was unable to generate much popular support, again failing to establish either an effective administration or army. In 1919 and 1920 a multi-sided civil war raged among right-wing White armies, the moderately leftist nationalist government, Anarchist groups, the Red Army, and an invading Polish army, equipped by the Western powers, which attempted to re-establish Polish domination of the Ukraine. In 1920, the nationalist government, by then in exile in Poland, agreed to cede the western third of the Ukraine to Poland in return for Polish help in defeating the Red Army in the rest of the Ukraine. But the Polish army in the eastern Ukraine was beaten, and a peace treaty signed between the Polish state and Soviet Russia in 1921 ceded the western part of the Ukraine to Poland; the eastern two-thirds were incorporated into the Soviet Union as one of its four original constituent republics in 1922.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 23-4.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The new Soviet Ukrainian Republic enjoyed considerable autonomy and cultural development. In the 1930s, some opposition to Soviet rule developed, especially among the peasantry who were undergoing collectivization. There is, however, little evidence to suggest that such opposition was significantly greater among peasants in the Soviet Ukraine than elsewhere in the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, in the western third of the Ukraine, Ukrainian nationalism grew in opposition to repressive Polish rule. Polish landlords exploited the Ukrainian peasantry and the Polish Ukraine was not granted the autonomy initially promised. The organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), founded in 1929, carried on a campaign of assassinations and sabotage against the Polish government. The OUN'S ideology was explicitly fascist, and it eventually proposed an independent and united Ukraine within Hitler's 'New European Order'. In order to prevent it falling into the hands of the advancing German Armies, which had just conquered Poland proper, the Western Ukraine was occupied by the Soviet Union in August 1939. The former Polish Ukraine was immediately reincorporated into the existing Soviet Ukrainian Republic. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, however, continued its campaign of assassinations and sabotage, now against the expanded Soviet regime in the Western Ukraine. In June 1941, they welcomed the Nazi invasion but soon became disillusioned when the Germans refused any form of co-operation with them. During the war, organized Ukrainian nationalist organizations fought both the Germans and the Soviets in the Western Ukraine, and, although the bulk of OUN resistance was suppressed in 1944 and 1945, armed actions on the part of rightist Ukrainian nationalists there did not end completely until the early 1950s.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 24-5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Except in the Western Ukraine, which was not incorporated into the USSR until 1939, there has been very little history of anti-Soviet or anti-Russian nationalism. In this respect the Ukraine thus differs significantly from Estonia and Lithuania. There has, however, been some history of nationalist dissidence in the Ukraine on a level more or less comparable to that of Latvia. A small group, which considered itself to be the continuation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the 'Ukrainian National Front' was established in 1964. Before being suppressed, it published a ''samizdat'' in 1965-66 advocating resistance to Soviet rule. From 1965-72 a campaign against anti-Soviet pro-Ukrainian nationalism among intellectuals resulted in the arrest of a number of them for anti-Soviet activity.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 44-5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In general, the Soviet system appears to enjoy a very high level of legitimacy in the Ukraine, along with little reported hostility to Russians. However, in the western third of the Ukraine, where armed resistance to incorporation into the Soviet Ukraine continued until the early 1950s, there are still remnants of anti-Soviet sentiment, although this appears to be no longer a significant force. Nevertheless, the Ukrainians generally retain a sense of national identity and pride in their distinctive language, history and culture.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Allworth (ed.), 1977, p. 167; Katz et al., 1975, pp. 44-5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== Belorussia ====<br /> There is virtually no evidence of anti-Soviet, anti-Socialist, anti-Russian or even strongly popular nationalist sentiments or manifestations in Belorussia; the Soviet system, in fact, seems to enjoy an especially high level of legitimacy.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, pp. 67-8.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> From the 13th Century to the latter part of the 18th Century what today is Belorussia was part of Lithuania; and part of the joint Lithuanian-Polish Kingdom from 1569. At the partition of Poland, in the latter part of the 18th Century, it was incorporated into the Czarist Empire. Belorussia has no history as an independent entity, its nobility adopted both the religion (Catholicism) and language of Poland. Polish landlords and merchants dominated the area throughout the Bolshevik revolution.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 51.&lt;/ref&gt; There were, however, stirrings of a Belorussian nationalism in the latter half of the 19th Century.<br /> <br /> The Peace Treaty between Poland and Soviet Russia in 1921 ceded the western part of Belorussia to Poland. In 1922, the bulk of Belorussia became one of the four original constituent Republics of the USSR.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 52.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1939, the western part was reincorporated into the Belorussian Soviet Republic after the Red Army's occupation of the eastern part of the Polish state.<br /> <br /> ==== Armenia ====<br /> The first unified Armenian state came into existence in 190 BC, and reached the height of its power in the early years of the first century BC, but in 55 BC Armenia came under Roman hegemony. Armenia later became an integral part of the Byzantine Empire; many Byzantine emperors were, in fact, Armenian. With the decline of the Empire, Armenia experienced a succession of principalities and states. It became a battleground for the Persians and Ottoman Turks who finally divided it between them in 1639. In 1828, the Russian Czar conquered the Persian half of Armenia (the present Soviet Republic of Armenia) and, although Armenians generally welcomed the Russian conquest, seeing it as protection against the Persians and Turks, they vigorously resisted Russification. Armenia has a very long history as a nation and Armenians have long had a very strong sense of nationalism.<br /> <br /> In the 1918-20 period during the Russian Civil War, a nationalist anti-Communist Party formed the government of an independent Eastern Armenia. The young Soviet government had been forced to cede the entire Transcaucus area to Germany in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which secured peace between Russia and Germany. After 1918, in the wake of the German collapse, Britain and France did their best to encourage an independent non-Socialist Armenia. In December 1920, the Red Army entered Armenia in support of the Armenian Soviet Republic which had been proclaimed by leftists the previous month. Given the immediate threat of a revitalized Turkey (one and a half million Armenians, most of the population of Western Armenia just across the border, had been massacred five years before) the re-establishment of the temporarily broken tie with Russia was generally welcomed, even by many not otherwise sympathetic to the Soviet system. When the Red Army entered Armenia in 1920, a Turkish Army was present in the country preparing for an attack on Yerevan, the capital. Reincorporation into Soviet Russia was welcomed by the vast majority of Armenians at this time since it secured the immediate withdrawal of the invading Turkish Army.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Jukes, 1973, p. 63.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1922, as part of the Transcaucasian Soviet Federation, along with Georgia and Azerbaidzhan, Armenia became one of the four constituent Republics of the new USSR. In 1936, the Federation was dissolved and Armenia became a separate Union Republic.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, pp. 145-6.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Although Armenian nationalism remains strong there is no particular evidence of anti-Soviet sentiment, neither has there been any manifestation of popular desire to withdraw from the USSR (unlike that among some Estonians and Lithuanians). No challenge to basic socialist institutions is apparent, neither is any special resentment, or sense of superiority, towards Russians (as there is among Georgians and Estonians). Expressions of Armenian nationalism during the Soviet period have been directed against the Turks (because of the 1915 massacre) and the Azeris (an Islamic Turkish people) who have been migrating into Armenia. The 50th anniversary of the 1915 Turkish massacre, on 24 April 1965, witnessed spontaneous, violently anti-Turkish outbreaks in Yerevan, the Armenian capital.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al, 1975, p. 158.&lt;/ref&gt; The economic and cultural accomplishments of Soviet Armenia are attested to by the pride with which they are regarded by the vigorously anti-Soviet Armenian nationalist party among overseas Armenians, the Dashnaktsutiun — the governing party in the 1918-20 interim.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 149.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== Georgia ====<br /> Georgia's history as a nation is even longer than Armenia's. The first Georgian state was created in the 5th Century BC, and, like the Armenians, throughout most of their history the Georgians have been dominated by one or another of the great empires of the region. Rome, Byzantium, the Arabs, the Moguls, the Persians, the Ottoman Turks and the Russians have all ruled Georgia, but throughout their long period of domination Georgians have maintained a strong sense of national identity.<br /> <br /> From the end of the 9th to the middle of the 13th Century and for brief periods in the 15th and 16th Centuries Georgia was, however, an independent kingdom, but for most of the period between the 13th and 18th Centuries it was part of the Turkish and/or Persian Empires; independence was re-established in the middle of the 18th Century. In 1782, the Georgian King asked the Russian Czar for protection against Persian reconquest. In 1801, part of Georgia was annexed to Czarist Russia, and the rest was gradually incorporated in the course of the 19th Century as a result of continuing Russian victories over Turkey. As in Armenia, in-corporation into the Russian Empire was welcomed, being seen as a protection against domination by Persians and Turks.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 163-4.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Georgian nationalism was revitalized in the latter part of the 19th Century. Like Estonian nationalism, Georgian nationalism traditionally aimed for autonomy rather than independence.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Jukes, 1973, p. 63.&lt;/ref&gt; From its beginnings, modern Georgian nationalism was fused with Marxism. In the first Russian Duma (following the 1905 Revolution) six of the seven Georgian deputies were Marxists; however, when the Marxist Social Democratic Party split, the majority of Georgian deputies became Mensheviks.<br /> <br /> In May 1918, after Germany had forced the new Soviet Russian government to renounce sovereignty over the Transcaucus region, Georgian Mensheviks formed an independent Georgian government, first in alliance with, and under the protection of, Germany, and after her collapse, with Britain. These powers, in turn, financed and armed the independent Menshevik regime in its attempt to maintain independence from Soviet Russia. At the beginning of 1921 the Bolsheviks led a local insurrection, aided, in February, by the Red Army, whereupon the Menshevik government fled to Western Europe. The reintegration of Georgia with Soviet Russia was generally welcomed.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., and Katz et al., 1975, p. 165.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Soviet system is very popular in Georgia although anti-Russian prejudice, somewhat similar to the Estonian sense of superiority, is common. It could, perhaps, be said that the Soviet system is even more popular in Georgia than it is in Russia, and that essentially complaints converge upon a desire for the entire country, once again, to be run by a Georgian. Joseph Stalin, who remains very popular, is Georgia's most famous native son. Visitors find it difficult to resist the insistence upon them visiting Gori, Stalin's birthplace. In 1956, riots broke out in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, in protest against the 'destalinization' campaign.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 181.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Georgians remain fiercely proud of their culture, language and heritage, and guard it in an almost paranoid fashion. In 1978, a new Georgian Constitution was drafted, which omitted the old clause declaring Georgian as the official language of the Republic. By all indications this omission was owing to the fact that the Georgian language was so firmly established in the Republic, to declare it to be the official language seemed to be an anachronism. Nevertheless, on 14 April 1978, 5,000, mostly young, people marched from the University to the building that houses the Georgian Council of Ministers and demanded the inclusion of the clause in the Constitution; it was reinserted into the draft Constitution the next day. The traditional language clause was also reinserted into the Armenian and Azerbaidzhani draft Constitutions at the same time.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;''New York Times'', 21 December 1979, p. 2.&lt;/ref&gt; Although there are many other stories of the Georgians' insistence on priority for their language, and of their attitudes of superiority to the Russians, there is no real evidence of any significant anti-Socialist or anti-Soviet attitudes.<br /> <br /> ==== Party Membership in the European Minority Republics ====<br /> Georgians have the highest ratio of Party members to population of any of the major Soviet nationalities; the Armenians too, have a ratio above the Union average. Ukrainians and Belorussians are slightly below the Union average; Estonians and Latvians average about 72% of the Union average, and, in 1972, Lithuanians stood at 58%. Moldavians had the lowest ratio (36%) of any major Soviet nationality (Table 2.11). Thus, the Party seems especially popular and important in Georgia and Armenia, and somewhat less influential in Lithuania and Moldavia.<br /> <br /> In general, the various European minority republics have done quite well in the Soviet system. Their economies, cultures and languages have all prospered. Only in Estonia and Lithuania has there been significant anti-Soviet manifestations, and even here the Soviet system has obtained a considerable degree of legitimacy.<br /> <br /> The Estonians' complaint is largely directed to the influx of Russians and their fear of being submerged into a greater Russian culture, while the Lithuanians' complaint focuses primarily on restrictions placed upon their Church. Only in these two Republics could a credible claim perhaps be made that a plebiscite to secede from the Soviet Union would have any chance of success. In the rest of the country, above all in Central Asia, the system has a very high level of legitimacy.<br /> <br /> === The Jewish People in the USSR ===<br /> During the Czarist period the Jewish people, largely confined by imperialist edict to the western part of the Russian Empire (i.e. 'the Pale') (Poland, the Baltic states, the Ukraine and Belorussia) suffered vicious anti-Semitism. Beginning in the last decades of the 19th Century, the Czarist government sponsored violent pogroms against the Jewish people during times of crisis, making them the scapegoat for economic and political problems, and thereby deflecting criticism from itself. Jews were systematically excluded from privileged positions, and many were driven out of the country by discrimination and pogroms in the generation before the 1917 Revolution, large numbers of whom settled in the USA.<br /> <br /> Immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution expressions of anti-Semitism became a crime. In July 1918, the Council of People's Commissars called for the destruction of 'the ant-Semitic movement at its roots' by forbidding 'pogromists and persons inciting to pogroms'.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Korey, 1973, p. 65; Kochan, 1978, p. 97.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1922, the Russian Criminal Code forbade 'agitation and propaganda arousing national enmities and dissensions' and specified a minimum sentence of one year's solitary confinement (and 'death in time of war') as punishment. In 1927, the Russian Republic passed legislation outlawing the dissemination, manufacture or possession of literature calculated to stir national and religious hostility. Article 74 of the Russian Criminal Code, which came into effect in 1961, reads, 'Propaganda or agitation aimed at inciting racial or national enmity or discord... is punishable by loss of personal freedom for a period of six months to three years, or exile from two to five years.'&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Kochan, 1978, p. 97.&lt;/ref&gt; During the Civil War and throughout the 1920s there was an active official government campaign against anti-Semitism, incidents involving, and actions taken against, were frequently reported in the Soviet press. In this period the Party published over 100 books and brochures opposing anti-Semitism.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Korey, 1973, p. 65.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Jewish intellectuals and workers were disproportionately active in the revolutionary movement in the Russian Empire. In 1922, Jews represented 5.2% of Communist Party membership (about five times their percentage of the population). From the late 1920s through to World War II the proportion of Jews in the Party was about 4.3%.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 368.&lt;/ref&gt; During the Civil War large numbers of non-Marxist Jews rallied to the Bolsheviks, the only major non anti-Semitic organized force. The White Armies and their allies systematically promoted pogroms and other forms of anti-Semitism as part of their campaign to defeat the revolution. Many of the top Party leaders were Jews, e.g. Kamenev, Trotsky and Zinoviev (members of Lenin's leadership); Kaganovich and Litvinov (members of Stalin's leadership).<br /> <br /> After the Soviet regime had removed all the traditional Czarist restrictions on Jews, they eagerly took advantage of the new educational, economic and social activities opened to them. As a result both of the elimination of traditional barriers and the general leftist mobilization in which most Jews participated, large numbers gave up their traditional ways, and became part of the mainstream of the newly emerging Soviet society. The majority of the young generation of Jews became alienated from both the religion and the cultural practices of their parents. As a measure of the rapid integration of Jews into Soviet society, intermarriage, which was extremely rare before the Revolution, became quite common.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., and Kochan, 1978, p. 79; Gitelman, 1980, p. 24.&lt;/ref&gt; In the 25 years after the revolution, traditional Jewish life was revolutionized as the Communist Party organized new organizations to impart a socialist content to Jewish culture.<br /> <br /> Special Jewish national districts' for Jewish settlement were set aside in the south of Russia, the Ukraine and Crimea.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Gitelman, 1980, p. 24; Katz et al., 1975, p. 362.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1928, an autonomous Jewish Republic was established within the Russian Republic of Birobidzhan, on the border of Manchuria. This was meant not only as a 'Jewish homeland', but as a means of encouraging development of an undeveloped area of the Fast. Birobidzhan was officially proclaimed an autonomous region in 1934, and although it has attracted relatively few Jewish settlers, it continues to exist as a Jewish Autonomous Republic.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 362.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Jewish culture, within a socialist rather than a religious or Zionist context, thrived in the 1920s and 1930s. Both the Ukrainian and Belorussian Academy of Sciences included Jewish sections which were described as 'a laboratory of scientific thought in the field of Jewish culture'. These institutions focused on the history of the revolutionary movement among Jews and the social and economic condition of their people. In 1919, a Jewish State Theatre was established in Moscow, and by 1934 a further 18 had been established in other cities. Jewish theatre, as well as other expressions of Jewish culture, was strongly supported by the Soviet state. In 1932, 653 Yiddish books wete published with a total circulation of more than 2.5 million (an average run of about 4,000 copies). In 1935, there were Yiddish dailies in Moscow, Kharkov, Minsk and Birobidzhan; in the Ukraine alone ten Jewish dailies were in circulation. During the mass hysteria of the Great Purge Trals (1936-38), essentially caused by the paranoid fear of Japanese and German invasion (see Chapter 8), many Yiddish cultural Institutions, along with many other institutions in Soviet society, were temporarily closed down, to be largely revived during World War II.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 373.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> During World War II a Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was set up in the Soviet Union, to help mobilize both Soviet and non-Soviet Jews against Fascism, and to encourage the development of a socialist oriented Jewish culture. Jews were given priority in evacuation from areas about to be overrun by the Nazi invaders. Virtually all Polish Jews who survived the holocaust (250,000) survived by fleeing to the Soviet Union and being evacuated East. In the immediate post-World War II period, Yiddish culture thrived in the USSR. The Jewish State Theatre continued to prosper in Moscow; a tri-weekly paper, Aynikayt, was published, also in Moscow; between 1946 and 1948 110 books were published in Yiddish. The Soviet Union was the first country to accord diplomatic recognition to Israel.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Korey, 1973, pp. 34, 73.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1948, with the onset of the Cold War, the paranoid atmosphere characteristic of the late 1930s returned to the USSR. There were a number of official accusations that some politically prominent, professional Soviet Jews were involved in 'cosmopolitan', pro-Western or Zionist (anti-Socialist nationalist) plotting against the Soviet state. The hysterical atmosphere of the 1948-53 petiod was induced by fear of another attack, this time by the US and its NATO allies.* There was a tendency to identify most manifestations of Jewish nationalism with 'cosmopolitanism', 'Zionism' and pro-imperialism during these years, in good part owing to the new state of Israel's increasing identification with the West. The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was dissolved; the Jewish State Theatre in Moscow was closed. Shlomo Mikhoels, a prominent actor and head of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, was assassinated (by the KGB according to Zionists) and various Yiddish publishing houses and periodicals closed. Hundreds of prominent Jewish literary figures and political activists were arrested and charged with undermining the Soviet state by working with Western bourgeois or Zionist forces. The height of the anti-Zionism campaign was manifested in an announcement in January 1953, that a group, mostly of Jewish doctors, were plotting to kill prominent Soviet leaders (apparently including Stalin). These doctors were accused of working on behalf of the Zionist 'international Jewish bourgeois national organization' — the Joint Distribution Committee. In February 1953, a month after the announcement of the discovery of 'the doctor's plot' the Soviet Union broke off diplomatic relations with Israel, and shortly thereafter began to support the Arabs in their confrontation with the Zionist state. The Soviet reversal on the Arab-Israeli question was largely motivated by Israel's increasing integration with US imperialism.<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;*The US had a monopoly on the atom bomb until 1949, a far stronger economy than did the war devastated Soviet Union, and was just rearming an independent Western Germany (see Chapter 7).&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> After Stalin's death in March 1953, the campaign against 'the doctor's plot' was quietly dropped. But it had provoked suspicions against many Jews working in medical facilities on the grounds of their alleged Zionist sympathies (and thus anti-Soviet potential). Thousands of Jewish medical specialists were dismissed from laboratories, hospitals, medical institutes and faculties during this campaign.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 34, 73, 76-7.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Many anti-Soviets in the West, especially Zionists, have argued that the 1948-53 campaign against 'cosmopolitanism' and 'Zionism' was really a manifestation of anti-Semitism (analogous to that of Hitler's) but a realistic assessment demonstrates that this argument functioned to serve the interests of Western and Israeli Zionists in their long-term battle with Jewish Marxists for hegemony in the Jewish community, as well as to strengthen Western imperialist support for Israel. Nevertheless, in common with the far more vicious events of 1936-38 the hysteria and the purges of 1948-53 seem to have been the outcome of a considerable over-estimation of the danger from pro-Western Jewish and Zionist forces in the Soviet Union. Many innocent Jews appeared to have suffered, although little permanent harm seems to have resulted either to individuals or to their careers. The Soviets were slow, however, in restoring the various Yiddish cultural institutions that were closed in the 1948-53 campaign, and, combined with the rapid undermining of Yiddish and Yiddish culture through urbanization, education and professionalization; this has meant that distinctive Jewish cultural life never regained the level of the pre-1948 period.<br /> <br /> ==== The Economic Position of Soviet Jews ====<br /> Professionally and economically the Jewish people have fared extremely well in the period of Soviet power. They are, for example, far more highly educated than any other nationality in the Soviet Union, and in 1970-71 the ratio of higher education students per 1,000 population was 49.2. This is almost twice as high as the next highest group, the Georgians, who had a ratio of 27.1 per 1,000. (Russians rank fourth on this indicator with a ratio of 21.1 per 1,000). (see Table 2.6). In the Russian Republic in the early 1970s, of every 1,000 Jews of ten years old and above 344 completed some form of higher education, compared with only 43 out of 1,000 Russians; an 8:1 ratio in favour of the Jews. Comparable ratios in the Ukraine were 6.5:1 in Belorussia 7:1 and in Latvia 5.5:1.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 377.&lt;/ref&gt; In the early 1970s approximately 110,000 Jewish students were in institutions of higher education; this represents 2.55% of the total — an over-representation factor of almost three. In 1960 77,000 Jewish students had been in such institutions.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Korey, 1973, p. 59.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1971, 6.7% of all scientific workers in the Soviet Union were Jews. In that year .9% of all Soviets were Jews, therefore, in this field Jews were over-represented by a factor of 7.5. Armenians, with an over-representation factor of 1.5 in the same year came next, and Russians, with an over-representation factor of 1.2 were fourth in this respect (see Table 2.7). Around 1970 about 68% of all Jews employed in the Russian Republic were specialists with either a higher or secondary special education; this compares with 19% of Russians.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 377.&lt;/ref&gt; In the mid-1960s, 15% of all Soviet doctors, 9% of all writers and journalists. 10% of all judges and lawyers and 8% of all actors, musicians and artists were Jewish.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Kochan, 1978, p. 157.&lt;/ref&gt; The percentage of Jews in the various professions has been declining, even though their absolute numbers have been rising. In 1972, there were 68,000 Jewish scientific workers, approximately double the number of those so employed in 1960; but in that year 9.5% of all scientific workers were Jews compared to 6.1% in 1973. Given the considerable advances of the traditionally backward nationalities, especially the Asians, this is to be expected.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 380; Gitelman, 1980, p. 24.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== The Jewish Religion ====<br /> The practice of Judaism as a religion has received more or less the same treatment as has the practice of other religions, such as Russian Orthodoxy, Islam, Catholicism and Lutheranism. Official policy and practice is to permit religion to be practised, but to discourage its propagation by forbidding organized religious instruction, active conversion and other forms of religious propaganda, while at the same time officially propagating anti-religious and atheistic precepts. The Party considers all religions to be superstitions which will gradually die out, as the oppressive conditions which gave birth to them are eliminated, and the old people brought up in the old religious environments die. When applied to Judaism, the official anti-religious policies in operation for all religions are often singled out by the Western media or by Zionist interests in the West to substantiate the claim that the USSR discriminates against Judaism (in a manner analogous to Hitler), thereby attempting to mobilize world Jewish and public opinion against the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> Ninety-eight percent of Jews in the USSR live in urban areas, mostly concentrated in the larger cities. This fact, together with the remarkable educational and professional progress of Soviet Jews, manifests their central integration into Soviet society, with the corollary of rapid deterioration of traditional Jewish ways. Most Jews, especially the younger, have adopted the secular atheism of Soviet society, few any longer subscribe to Judaism. It is mostly the old, together with nationalist dissidents, who attend religious services or otherwise practise Judaic rites.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Korey, 1973, p. 175.&lt;/ref&gt; As a result the number of active synagogues have been declining.<br /> <br /> In the early 1970s there were about 100 active synagogues in the Soviet Union, although the figure given for 1972 by anti-Soviet Jewish organizations in the West was 58.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 42,44; Katz et al., 1975, p. 370.&lt;/ref&gt; A small ''yeshivah'' operates in Moscow to train rabbis, and limited editions of prayer books are published: 3,000 in 1957, and another edition of 5,000 in 1968. Two Judaic religious rites have been subjected to pressure from the state: Passover and circumcision. Circumcision, which is also traditionally practised by the Islamic peoples, is regarded by the Soviets as a barbaric custom comparable to subincision or clitoridectomy. The Soviets have attempted to suppress this practice since the Revolution; more stringently in the Asian republics than among the Jews. The celebration of Passover is regarded as primarily a Zionist rather than a pious manifestation. Passover commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people from Egyptian bondage and is marked by the recitation of the words 'Next Year in Jerusalem'. That Zionists both inside and outside the Soviet Union, many of whom are atheists, have, in fact, given the celebration of Passover a Zionist and anti-Soviet character (asserting that the modern day Egyptian captor is the Soviet state) has not gone unnoticed by the Soviets. There have been Jewish complaints both inside and outside the USSR that the Soviet state often puts obstacles in the way of securing ''matzo'' (unleavened bread) which is used as part of the Passover celebration.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Korey, 1973, p. 46.&lt;/ref&gt; Such mild harassment of what is officially considered to be anti-Soviet or reactionary aspects of a religion is by no means unique to the treatment of Judaism. For example, the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca, required of devout Islamic men, has been largely suppressed, as has the wearing of the veil for women.<br /> <br /> Soviet anti-religious propaganda in general attacks all religions, and in particular, those aspects that are regarded as specifically harmful within each religion. An analysis of anti-religious propaganda directed at Jews in the 1960s finds such specific themes as: (1) The Jewish religion promotes allegiance to another state, Israel, and to a reactionary, pro-imperalist movement, Zionism; (2) the Jewish religion promotes the notion that the Jewish people are superior to others, 'the chosen people', and thus breeds hatred of other peoples; (3) the Jewish religion elevates the pursuit of material wealth, a pursuit incompatible with the Communist ideal of Soviet society; and (4) the Jewish religion calls for genocide and enslavement of other peoples by the Jews (a reference to the effect of Zionism on the Arabs).&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Kochan, 1978, pp. 186, 326, 329, 334-5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== Jewish Culture ====<br /> Traditional Jewish languages, especially Yiddish, are dying out in the USSR. In 1970, only 17.7% of Jews reported that they spoke a Jewish language as their native tongue; a further 7.7% reported they were able to speak such a language, but that it was not their mother tongue. Those who continue to speak Yiddish, or one of the Oriental Jewish languages, are either old people or those largely concentrated in the peripheral regions that were incorporated into the USSR in 1939-41, or both. Very few younger Russian, Belorussian or Ukrainian Jews now speak or understand Yiddish. This contrasts sharply with the situation before the Revolution, when 97% of all Jews in Russia (including Russian Poland) regarded Yiddish as their mother tongue; by 1926, this figure stood at 70%.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, pp. 371-2; Korey, 1973, pp. 26, 31.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1970, 60% of Jews in Lithuania specified Yiddish as their native tongue, 40% in Latvia and approximately 50% in Moldavia.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Korey, 1973, p. 27.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The rapid decline of Yiddish reflects the general decline of distinctively Jewish culture among a highly urbanized, educated and professionalized population that has become fully integrated into Soviet society. That the responsibility for this decline does not rest upon any Russification policies of the Soviet state is demonstrated by the situation of the various European and Asian minority nationalities that are geographically concentrated. In these areas, rapid economic progress has not undermined traditional languages and cultures. Nevertheless, it should be noted that there have been no Yiddish language schools in the USSR since 1948.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Kochan, 1978, p. 40.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> A small Yiddish cultural establishment still exists in the USSR, although on a much smaller scale than in the pre-1948 period. Yiddish papers, publishing houses and theatres were restored after 1956, following their suppression as part of the 1948-53 'anti-cosmopolitan', anti-Zionist campaign. In the mid-1970s there were two Yiddish periodicals circulated in the USSR: ''Sovetish Heimland'', a literary monthly with a circulation of 25,000, and the thrice weekly newspaper the ''Birobidzhaner Shtern'' with a circulation of 12,000, largely outside the Jewish Autonomous Republic of Birobidzhan where it is published. Yiddish speakers also have access to Yiddish language publications and periodicals published by Jewish Marxists overseas.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 373.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> A few books continue to be published in Yiddish. Between 1948 and 1970, 32 Yiddish language books were published in the USSR.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid.; Korey, 1973, p. 35.&lt;/ref&gt; More important than Yiddish language publications, which can be read by only about one of eight Soviet Jews, are works translated into Russian which originally were published in Yiddish. In recent years there have been a considerable number of these, many of which are issued in quite long press runs. For example, in 1973 50,000 copies of I. Rabin's ''On the Nieman'', originally written in Yiddish, were printed in Russian. Many Russian translations from the Yiddish are of poetic works.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Kochan, 1978, p. 387.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The most conspicuous expression of Jewish culture in the USSR, and that receiving the widest participation, is the Jewish theatre. There are several Jewish song, music and drama companies, the oldest being the Vilnius Jewish People's Theatre, which was established in 1957. Since 1962, the Moscow Dramatic Ensemble, a Jewish theatrical group, many of whose actors were part of the old Jewish State Theatre, has been performing regularly in Moscow; there are also a number of other itinerant Jewish theatre groups, including the Birobidzhan Yiddish People's Theatre and the Kishinev Jewish People's Theatre.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== Political Positions ====<br /> Jews have the highest representation in the Communist Party of any other Soviet nationality. In 1965, 80 out of every 1,000 Jews belonged to the Party, compared to the Soviet average of 51 per 1,000.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Korey, 1973, p. 57.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1969, Jews made up 1.5% of the Party (an over-representation factor of 1.67).&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Kochan, 1978, p. 345.&lt;/ref&gt; As other nationalities, especially Asians, are increasingly brought into the Party, and as the Party's recruitment policies increasingly favour the working class, the percentage of Jews in the Party has been declining, even while their absolute number has been increasing. Between 1920 and 1940 the percentage of Jews in the Party fluctuated around 4.5% to 5.0%.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid.; Katz et al., 1975, p. 368.&lt;/ref&gt; The percentage of Jews in the principal leading body of the Party, the Central Committee, is proportional to the number of Jews in the population. In 1976, three Jews were elected to the 330 person Central Committee.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Kochan, 1978, p. 386.&lt;/ref&gt; In the 1920s, 25% of the Central Committee was Jewish, 10% in the late 1930s, 2-3% in the 1950s, and .3% in the 1960s.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Korey, 1973, p. 56.&lt;/ref&gt; Given the strong representation of members from working class and peasant backgrounds on the Central Committee, and the increasing political mobilization of the more backward nationalities, that the proportion of Jews now accords with their percentage of the population should be considered neither extraordinary nor exemplifying discrimination.<br /> <br /> The number of Jews elected to all local Soviets between 1959 and 1973 has averaged about 7,000 per election, or about .4% of all  Soviet delegates (an under-representation factor of about .50).&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Kochan, 1978, p. 95.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1970 and 1974 six Jews were elected to the Supreme Soviet: roughly proportionate to their share of the population.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 386.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Very few Jews now occupy prominent positions in the Party or government apparatus, in contrast to the pre-1948 situation when Jews were prominent in all major aspects of government and Party activities. In the early 1970s the highest ranking Jewish person was the Deputy Minister for Supplies, V. Dymshits, who was also the highest ranking Jewish person on the Party's Central Committee; another was Alexander Chakovsky, the editor of the influential ''Literary Gazette''. Lev Shapiro, the first secretary of the Birobidzhan Party organization and also a member of the Central Committee, became increasingly influential during the 1970s.<br /> <br /> The evidence seems to point to a certain distrust of Jews in sensitive top leadership positions, initially aroused during the 1948-53 'anti-cosmopolitan'/anti-Zionist campaign, and reborn after the 1967 Israeli-Arab Six Day War, when many Soviet Jews adopted pro-Israeli sympathies — thus manifesting opposition to Soviet policies. While there seems to be no substantial evidence for discrimination against Jews as Party members or in middle level Party and government positions, the evidence is compatible with some political discrimination against them for the top leadership roles as heads of ministries, Politburo members and first secretaries of leading Party organizations. Given the long history of Jews having filled leading roles in the Patty, which continued throughout the Stalin period, this seems to reflect Soviet doubts about historically specific Jewish loyalties on the question of Israel/Zionism, rather than classical anti-Semitic attitudes.<br /> <br /> ==== Anti-Semitism in the USSR ====<br /> Not surprisingly, the virulent anti-Semitism of all classes in the pre-1917 Russian Empire has left remnants of anti-Semitic attitudes, especially among older, less educated and more rural populations, even after two generations of Soviet education. To the extent that such attitudes linger on, in spite of official Party policies designed to eradicate them, must be distinguished from the economic and political policies and educational campaigns of the Party. Evidence concerning whether or not Jews in the Soviet Union experienced a significant amount of interpersonal anti-Semitism is mixed. Studies of recent Soviet emigree's anti-Semitic experiences casts considerable doubt on the theory that interpersonal anti-Semitism is a major factor in the country. A 1973 survey of 2,527 emigrants from the USSR in Israel found that 25% of those who had been nationalist activists in the USSR claimed never personally to have experienced an incident of anti-Semitism. In another survey of emigrants bound for Israel only 39% claimed that anti-Semitism in the USSR was a primary reason for their emigration. It is of interest to note that many more emigrants, bound for the US rather than for Israel, claimed both to have experienced anti-Semitism and that such experiences were the primary reason for their emigration. Anti-Soviet pro-Jewish emigrant observers, such as Gitelman, draw the reasonable conclusion that a language of motives focusing on anti-Semitism has been formulated that maximizes the probability of being accepted into the US, that is, affirms the claim to legitimate refugee status. Asserting the desire to make more money or to advance one's career as the reason for emigration to the US would not be effective.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Gitelman, 1980, p. 30.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== Zionism and Anti-Semitism ====<br /> From the beginning of the Soviet state in 1917, the Soviets, with various degrees of intensity, have systematically attacked Zionism as reactionary, pro-imperialist, racist and, since World War II, essentially Fascist. They share their analysis with most of the rest of the world's Marxists, including many Jewish Marxists, as well as with most progressive movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America; especially those in the Islamic world. Anti-Soviets, especially those sympathetic to Zionism and the Israeli state, often fallaciously accuse the Soviet Union of anti-Semitism because of Soviet attacks on Zionism. But the two are quite different. Anti-Semitism, the ideology that Jews are a race to be despised and that to discriminate against them is justified, is against the law in the Soviet Union and, as far as I can ascertain, totally absent from all official Party and government written matter. Anti-''Zionism'', the notion that Jews should not seek or support a separate state in which all Jews maintain solidarity solely amongst themselves — rather than with individuals of other ethnic groups — is official state and Party policy.<br /> <br /> Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda includes such themes as the following: (1) that most international Jewish organizations in the West are controlled by Jewish capitalists and, therefore, operate against the interest of workers; (2) that Israel endeavours to establish an inherently anti-Communist 'fifth column' inside the Socialist countries; (3) that Zionism and Israel are 'implacable enemies of the socialist camp'; (4) that Israel is intent on building a 'Greater Israel' from the Nile to the Euphrates, where the Israelis would be a kind of master race comparable to that expounded in Nazi ideology for the Aryans; (5) that the Israeli state's ruling class jeopardizes the very existence of Israel as a state by the expansionist and militarist policies they follow; and (6) that Zionism, as practised by the Israeli state in relation to the Arabs, is closely paralleled by the treatment of Jews by German Fascists.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 28; Kochan, 1978, 334-5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Claims that the Soviet Union engages in anti-Semitic propaganda can invariably be reduced to statements such as these about Zionism, or to examples of anti-religious propaganda which, as applied to Judaism, do not differ qualitatively from that applied to Islam or Christianity. It is difficult to see how anti-Zionism and propaganda against the religious aspect of Judaism can justify the claim that, similar to Fascist anti-Semitic propaganda, the USSR considers Jews to be racially inferior. Such, however, is the implication of most statements that employ examples of anti-Zionism to support the contention of Soviet anti-Semitism.<br /> <br /> Indicative of Zionist allegations of official Soviet anti-Semitism was the response of some Jewish dissidents, in November 1980, to an article in the ''Young Pioneer's Newspaper'' which attacked Zionism as 'modern day Fascism' calling it 'the main enemy of peace on Earth'. This article went on to argue that Zionists who control 'the major portion' of the US mass media have 'orchestrated anti-Soviet campaigns and opposed the strategic arms limitation treaty', and that 'Jewish bankers and billionaires' established the Jewish Defence League which 'terrorizes' Soviet diplomats in New York, and that Jewish bankers acted to 'defend their own class interests'. In commenting on this article, Jewish dissidents in the Soviet Union said that:&lt;blockquote&gt;We regard it as one of the worst examples of anti-Semitic writing to have appeared in Soviet publications in recent years... Even more unfortunately, it is the first time in recent memory that anything so blatant has appeared in material intended for children.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;''New York Times'', 8 November 1980, p. 2.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;If such statements are indeed the most blatant examples of official anti-Semitism that Zionist critics of the Soviet system can find, one can be assured that there is no official anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> The Six Day War between Israel and the Arab states, which was won decisively by Israel, generated much sympathy for the Israelis among many Soviet Jews. Given the Soviet's active support for Egypt and Syria in this war, and their strong commitment to opposing Israeli expansionism, and to the creation of a Palestinian state (it should be noted that the Soviets have never advocated the elimination of the state of Israel), such sympathy for its enemies aroused concern. Beginning in 1967 a Zionist dissident movement began to gain credibility within the Soviet Union; it manifested itself in such activities as large numbers of non-religious Jewish youths gathering around synagogues to demonstrate their support for Zionist ideas and Israel's cause, as well as the promotion of emigration to Israel. Jewish dissidents came to participate in the full range of dissident activities which focused on attacking Soviet policies and institutions in interviews with Western reporters, and in documents smuggled out of the Soviet Union.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, pp. 383-5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Soviet government's response was to step up its anti-Zionist propaganda campaign to a considerable extent, emphasizing the six themes itemized above. In 1966 only ten articles attacking Zionism were reported in the Soviet press, in 1969 there were 42, and at the peak of the anti-Zionist campaign in 1970, there were 204.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Gitelman, 1980, p. 26.&lt;/ref&gt; The post-1967 campaign was largely directed towards persuading Soviet Jews not to leave the USSR for Israel.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 25.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== The Post-1967 Jewish Emigration from the USSR ====<br /> Throughout the 1960s about 1,000 Jews a year emigrated from the USSR to Israel; mostly on the grounds of reunification with their families. After the 1967 War, significant numbers of Jews began to apply to leave the USSR for Israel. In 1971, the government, apparently recognizing that its campaign to persuade Zionist Jews to stay was ineffective, began to issue numerous emigration visas for Israel. In 1971, approximately 13,000 Jews emigrated to Israel; approximately equal to the total number of those who had left for Israel in the previous 12 years.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Katz et al., 1975, p. 305.&lt;/ref&gt; From 1972 to 1977 approximately 30,000 Jews left for Israel each year, and in 1978 and 1979, when emigration became easier, roughly 50,000 left each year. Virtually any Jews wishing to leave were granted emigration visas during these latter years. Emigration declined after 1979, indicating that most of those who wished to leave had already done so, as well as a stricter emigration policy coincident with the revived Cold War. Between 1968 and 1976, 133,000 Jews left the USSR, approximately 6.2% of all Soviet Jews; by the beginning of 1980 the percentage had risen to roughly 12%,&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Kochan, 1978, pp. 367, 378-9.&lt;/ref&gt; a total of approximately 250,000. In the early 1970s, Roy Medvedev, usually an accurate source of information about the dissident community in the USSR, estimated that between 200,000 and 300,000 Jews would apply to leave. Maximum estimates from anti-Soviet sources speculated that the figure would reach 500,000, that is 25% of all Soviet Jews.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Korey, 1973, p. 178.&lt;/ref&gt; The decline in emigration in 1980 and 1981 indicated that the Medvedev estimate was probably correct — that is, almost all who had wanted to leave had left.<br /> <br /> Those who left the USSR had been heavily concentrated in certain areas of the country. Over 50% who applied for exit visas between 1968 and 1976 were from the five Republics of Georgia, Uzbekistan, Latvia, Lithuania and Moldovia. Generally, Jews who emigrated, during that period at least, were either from areas newly amalgamated with the USSR (Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia or the Western Ukraine) where they had not yet fully integrated themselves into Soviet life, or from Soviet Georgia where, although conditions were exceptionally good for Jews, their brand of Judaism virtually mandated their emigration to the 'Holy Land'.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Kochan, 1978, pp. 372-3; Korey, 1973, p. 252.&lt;/ref&gt; Over 50% of all Georgian Jews migrated — mostly to Israel — as did 22% of Latvian, 41% of Lithuanian, 13% of Moldavian and 8% of Uzbek Jews between 1968 and 1976. This contrasted sharply with the picture for the Soviet heartland of the Russian Republic, the Ukraine and Belorussia, where, according to the 1970 census, 80% of Soviet Jews live. In the same period only 1.9% of Russian Jews left the country, as did 1.6% of Belorussian Jews and 5.5% of Ukrainian Jews, most of whom were from the western third of the Republic — formerly part of Poland. Less than 12% (about 16,000) of the total Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union between 1968 and 1976 was from Russia proper.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Kochan, 1978, pp. 372-3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> These figures indicate that until the mid-1970s the motives for emigration were overwhelmingly religious and cultural, and neither as a result of anti-Semitism nor general dissatisfaction with Soviet life. Seemingly, the vast majority of Jews who had been part of the USSR since the Revolution were quite content to live in the Soviet Union. The emergence of a different motive in the mid-1970s is. indicated by a radical change in the destination of Jewish emigrants. In 1974, 18.8% chose to go to the US and the other Western capitalist countries rather than to Israel, as did 37.2% in 1975, and 49.1% in 1976, while only 4.2% chose such destinations in 1973. In 1979 and 1980, only about one-third of Soviet Jewish emigres went to Israel, in 1981 20%, most now preferring the higher incomes and professional advancement possible in the US.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Scherer, 1982, p. 379.&lt;/ref&gt; Many Jews who originally migrated to Israel re-emigrated and settled in the US. This suggests that the desire to maintain Jewish culture or help build the Zionist state, has been superseded by the desire for financial gain and to advance one's career.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Kochan, 1978, p. 370.&lt;/ref&gt; An increased proportion of Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian secular Jewish emigrés are another manifestation of this change of motive.<br /> <br /> Perhaps the most significant observation to be made about Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union after 1970 is the relatively small percentage (3% to 4%) who availed themselves of the opportunity to leave the Soviet heartland. Presented with the opportunity either to live in a predominantly Jewish culture in Israel, or obtain a significantly higher standard of living in the USA, 95%-97% chose to remain in the Soviet Union. It should be noted that, over the period 1970-79, only 5.1% of Moscow Jews emigrated, even though in the latter part of this decade it was very easy for Jews to do so.&lt;ref group=&quot;3.&quot;&gt;Scherer, 1982, p. 379.&lt;/ref&gt; Emigrés were mainly those Jews on the margin of the mainstream of Soviet life together with a relatively small number of professionals throughout the country.<br /> <br /> Western attempts to present the Soviet Union as a virulently anti-Semitic society cannot be substantiated. Historically, the Jewish people in the USSR have fared, and continue to fare, very well in almost all respects. Jews are over-represented in the highest paying occupations, in the skilled professions, in the institutions of higher education and in all except the top levels in the Communist Party; but, as was noted previously, Jews are no longer over-represented in state legislative and top administrative positions. There is no evidence of official or Party approved anti-Semitism, and little evidence of interpersonal anti-Semitic expressions. The majority of Jews are fully integrated into Soviet life and demonstrate their support for Soviet institutions.<br /> <br /> === Conclusion ===<br /> As is the case for the Soviet Asian Republics, there is no evidence of exploitation or economic discrimination by the Soviet government in the European Republics; with  rapid industrialization their economies have all prospered. Additionally, education, books, newspapers, theatre and so on in the various native languages have been actively promoted. Although, as a result of the integration of Jewish people into modern Soviet society, traditional Jewish culture is dying out, the Jewish people, too, have thrived. In short, the success of Soviet policy towards the European and Asian Republics in the USSR is one of the principal accomplishments of the Soviet system.<br /> <br /> === References ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;3.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> == 4. Women in the USSR ==<br /> <br /> === The Rights of Women ===<br /> The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was followed by a radical transformation in the legal and economic position of women. Marriage and divorce became matters of mutual consent effected by simple registration. Divorce could be initiated by either patty, and marriage became a formally egalitarian institution with all legally enshrined forms of male dominance eliminated. All restrictions on women's freedom of movement were abolished; a wife was no longer required to reside with her husband or to change her place of residence when he did. Fundamental changes in inheritance and property laws undermined the traditional authority of the husband-father and of the family in general. Women acquired the right to own personal property and to act as the head of a household, and in general, attained equal legal status with men. In addition, abortion was legalized, and socialized forms of childcare were developed, while the distinction between 'legitimate' and 'illegitimate' children was abolished.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978, pp. 59-60.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The radical transformations in the legal status of the family proved to be too advanced for the very backward conditions of the 1920s. This was especially clear during the period of extreme crisis arising from rapid industrialization in the 1930s (see also Chapter 7). The Soviet peasantry, who comprised the majority of the population in the 1920s, still lived in extremely backward and superstition ridden conditions. The liberating climate, both of the intelligentsia, which had provided the leaders of the Communist Revolution, and the urban working class, which provided the leadership, was swamped by the influx of peasants into the cities who came to work in the rapidly expanding industries in the 1930s and 1940s. Many of these men allegedly took advantage of the advanced family legislation to enter into unions in which they had no intention of remaining, misleading their wives and deserting them at will, freed of any legal responsibility, except for the support of any children which may have resulted.<br /> <br /> In the 1920s abortion became widely practised as a form of birth control. In the 1930s this, together with the tendency, facilitated by the early family legislation, for long term unions to be undermined, presented a serious problem, since in order to secure a sound demographical base both for defence and modernization population growth was essential. Divorce was thus made considerably more difficult, and in 1936 abortion was banned, except for medical reasons, and only became legal again in 1955. In 1944 the catastrophic death rate caused by the German invasion provoked a further retreat to more orthodox family legislation and divorce was made even more difficult; requiring the payment of a considerable fee and involving a lengthy and complicated procedure. Suits to establish paternity were banned, with the state taking on the responsibility for supporting the children of unmarried mothers. At the same time, both material and moral incentives were instituted to encourage motherhood. Rigorous measures were considered necessary in order to counter the loss of 20 million, mostly young, people in the War. In the 1950s and 1960s with the recovery from the effects of the war and the rapid improvement in material living standards, most of the more progressive aspects of Soviet family legislation and policies were reinstated.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., 116-7; Janear, 1978, p. 125.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Two articles in the 1977 Soviet Constitution refer directly to women's role in society: Article 35:&lt;blockquote&gt;Women and men have equal rights in the USSR. Exercise of these rights is ensured by according women equal access with men to education and vocational and professional training, equal opportunities in employment, remuneration, and promotion, and in social and political, and cultural activity, and by special labour and health protection measures for women, by providing conditions enabling mothers to work; by legal protection, and material and moral support for mothers and children, including paid leaves and other benefits for expectant mothers and mothers, and gradual reduction of working time for mothers with small children.&lt;/blockquote&gt;and Article 53:&lt;blockquote&gt;Marriage is based on the free consent of the woman and the man; the spouses are completely equal in their family relations. The state helps the family by providing and developing a broad system of childcare institutions, by organizing and improving communal services and public catering, by paying grants on the birth of a child, by providing children's allowances and benefits for large families, and other forms of family allowances and assistance.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Contemporary Soviet family legislation treats husbands and wives as equals. Marriage is considered to be neither a means for the economic support of women, nor for the provision of household services by women. Men have no legal obligation to support their wives or ex-wives; women have no legal obligation to provide their husbands with any services. Forcible sex by husbands is legally defined as rape; women have the right to retain their maiden name, to control an equal share of the communal property and, of course, enjoy equal personal and property rights.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978, p. 240.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Mothers (in contrast to wives) do have special protective legislation; pregnant women, and wives with children under the age of one year, may not be divorced without their consent,&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt; and in the case of divorce child support is mandatory. An ex-husband is required to contribute 25% of his earnings to his former wife if she is looking after one child, and one third if two children are involved, and 50% if there are three or more children. The fact that virtually everyone works in a state-owned enterprise easily facilitates this legal requirement, as deductions are made automatically from paychecks and the money given to the mother. Exceptions to the legal requirement can be made by the courts under conditions of special hardship and a father's conflicting responsibilities. The courts commonly reduce the percentage of income requirement in the case of a father remarrying and taking on the responsibility of contributing to the support of a new family of children.<br /> <br /> After the Revolution, the right, and indeed the obligation, of women to work outside the home became official state and Party policy. This was a realization of the traditional Marxist theory of women's liberation as represented by Engels' classical statement in ''The Origins of Private Property, the Family and the State''. Engels argued that the subordination of women to men is based upon the economic power of the latter over the former, and that the liberation of women would follow from her introduction into public industry and the abolition of the family as the economic unit of society; that is, when both partners have an independent income.<br /> <br /> Especially in the 1930s and 1940s, the policy of encouraging women to work outside the home was also motivated by the need to expand the labour force as rapidly as possible in order to industrialize, beat the Nazis, and reconstruct the country. It was considered wasteful for the majority of women to work only as homemakers, or be confined to menial blue or white collar labour. Women's abilities were tapped in virtually all industrial sectors and levels, including coal-mining, heavy industry, engineering, medicine, administration, science and so on. The introduction of women into 'public industry' required a less radical change in attitudes than a similar process might have done in the West at that time, since the tradition of women's labour being limited to housework (women in Islamic areas excepted) did not operate in the largely peasant country; peasant women were accustomed to work in the fields and in family handicrafts as well as caring for house and family. The transformation of women's economic roles thus largely encompassed the introduction of ex-peasant women into mining, factories, clerical jobs and the technical and scientific intelligentsia. Hard, physical labour was not new to peasant women, the most radical transformation here was the large scale introduction of these women into higher education, and into such fields as science, engineering, agronomy, medicine (as doctors).<br /> <br /> The Soviet Labour Code grants women workers many important rights. Paragraph 73 reads:&lt;blockquote&gt;It is specifically forbidden to refuse employment or lower the pay of any women for the reasons connected with her pregnancy, childbirth, or child nursing. The dismissal of any pregnant or nursing woman, or any woman who has children below the age of one year, is specifically forbidden except in those cases when the enterprise is liquidated altogether, whereupon all such women must be provided with comparable substitute employment.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Women receive the same paid vacations and the same pension rights as men, the only difference in terms of such rights is that women are eligible to receive their pensions at the age of 55 years — five years earlier than men.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;St George, 1973, p. 110.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> After the Revolution the Party initiated a Communist women's movement, aiming to stimulate the actual transformation of relationships, to undermine the traditional attitudes of men and women, to mobilize women in the national effort to reconstruct the country after the destruction wrought by the civil war, and to construct a socialist society. In the 1920s much of the actual mobilization of women, in addition to enabling them to overcome barriers to acquiring literacy, to attend higher education and work in the modern sector, took the form of encouraging them to construct 'institutions of daily life', for example, such as schools, collective dining halls and houses, and to engage in support activities for the Red Army.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978, p. 66.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The strongest impact of the Communist women's movement and of Party and state policy dedicated to the liberation of women, has been upon the traditionally Islamic areas, where the oppression of women was the greatest. With the establishment of Soviet power in Central Asia the most repressive traditional practices were singled out for attack. Forced marriage, marriage by abduction, bride price, polygamy, child marriage, female seclusion and the veil. Such practices were outlawed and made subject to criminal sanctions. The bulk of the new family legislation was introduced simultaneously in Central Asia and in Soviet Europe, but with some, more radical, provisions only gradually introduced into Central Asia.<br /> <br /> In 1927, the traditional Islamic courts were divested of all authority including their ability to adjudicate in family matters; traditionally, two female witnesses were considered the equivalent of one male in such courts. In 1926 a campaign against female seclusion was launched. The first phase of this campaign was directed to the more urban, intellectual and politicized sectors of the population that was most likely to accept it; the second phase was directed to the rest of the population. The Party organized demonstrations where women publicly took off their veils; these demonstrations were often violently disrupted by men. Many Asian women were killed, typically by their brothers, for appearing publicly without the veil, taking jobs outside the home or actively participating in the anti-seclusion campaigns. In the public squares of many cities and towns in Soviet Central Asia today there are monuments to these women. The opposition of the Party and government to such killings was made clear by well publicized arrests, trials and executions of the men involved, and by launching a massive public education campaign against the pernicious effects of traditional Islamic practices.<br /> <br /> The Women's Department of the Party (''Zhenotdel'') was most active in Central Asia, and was committed to eliminating what it considered to be barbaric practices, but also it saw the liberation of women as an important means to mobilize the national minorities of Central Asia behind the Bolshevik Revolution. ''Zhenotdel''&lt;nowiki/&gt;'s strategy in Central Asia was to crystallize discontent around the women's question and channel it into the all-round socialist transformation of society. Asian women were recruited and trained to staff the new political and social institutions, thereby rooting the new Soviet forms in the national minority communities.<br /> <br /> The ''Zhenotdel'' encouraged women to initiate divorce proceedings; traditionally this was the prerogative of men, for whom obtaining a divorce was very easy. Legal advice centres were set up by the ''Zhenotdel'' to help Asian women learn about, and fight for, their new rights. The new civic and property rights established by the Revolution were enforced in order to help release the grip of Islamic traditions on relations between the sexes. Women were recruited into professional and administrative positions with a considerable degree of success, thus breaking the monopoly of men. The ''Zhenotdel'' established women's clubs which engaged in 'consciousness-raising'. Women were encouraged to discuss their problems within the framework of Marxist theory, and the backwardness imposed by the previous social order was contrasted with the liberating potential of socialism.<br /> <br /> Although the ''Zhenotdel'' itself was dissolved in 1929, the campaign against traditional patriarchal practices continued to be actively pursued until the backbone of traditional resistance was crushed. The process was intensified during the collectivization of agriculture and the rapid industrialization of the 1930s and 1940s. Women's councils were established both on the collective farms and in new industries of Central Asia, and functioned to fight the 'survivals of the past way of life', to politically educate women, and to attract them away from the home and into public industry.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid, pp. 61, 66, 67; Dodge, 1966, p. 53; Mandel, 1973, p. 173; Janear, 1978, pp. 59, 127.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The success of Soviet policy on women was highlighted by the number of Asian women in top professional, governmental and administrative positions in Central Asia in the 1970s. There were 18 Uzbek women of cabinet or immediate sub-cabinet rank in the Uzbek Republic in the early 1970s; and 116 women were heads or assistant heads of major industrial enterprises. Eighteen percent of all judges in Uzbekistan were women (this compares with 3% in the US). The ratio of Uzbek women PhDs to the Uzbek population was six times higher than the ratio of Black women PhDs to American Blacks. By 1970, the high school enrolment for Uzbek girls was exactly proportionate to the percentage (49%) of the Uzbek population that was female; in 1955, of the total enrolment, only 25% had been girls. Although in these respects Uzbekistan is perhaps the most advanced of all the Central Asian Republics, comparable advances have been achieved in the rest of Central Asia.<br /> <br /> The Soviet system's contribution to liberating Asian women of Islamic backgrounds must be contrasted with the contemporary condition of women in capitalist or semi-feudal Islamic countries. The majority of Arab countries in the 1970s did not permit women to vote. In most Islamic countries the majority of women are illiterate and few rural girls receive any formal schooling, In only a handful of Arab countries (e.g. Algeria, Sudan) is any significant proportion of women employed outside the home; patriarchy is the rule in the family, and wives are subjected not only to the whims of their husbands and fathers, but to those of their mothers-in-law; throughout most of the Arab world, divorce is still the prerogative of the male. For women, pre-marital chastity, and total constancy to her husband after marriage are decreed, while for men consorting with prostitutes is the norm. It is still common throughout most of the Islamic world for the brothers or husbands of women who have had pre- or extra-marital relationships to kill them for the sake of family 'honour'.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Mandel, 1973, p. 174.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === The Family, Housework and Child-care ===<br /> The Soviet system has wrought fundamental changes in the relative status and power of the sexes within marriage. Legal rights and economic roles have been radically transformed, the division of labour, decision making within the family, and the relative importance of domestic labour for women, have been significantly changed. The majority of wives are at least as well educated as their husbands and, especially among younger women, most wives work full-time outside the home throughout their lives. These facts, combined with the Soviet marriage code and Communist Party policy on the equality of the sexes, have obviously deeply affected personal and domestic relations, even though considerable remnants of older practices still exist.<br /> <br /> The growing economic independence of women is reflected in the trends in the Soviet divorce rate. In 1960, there were 104 divorces per 1,000 marriages, in 1975 there were 325. Apparently neither men nor women are prepared to maintain unsatisfactory relationships.<br /> <br /> Soviet women spend considerably less time on housework than was the pre-Revolutionary norm, and relative to women (and men) in capitalist countries. This is partly because housework has to some extent become mechanized (but far less than in the US) and socialized and partly because men now participate to a greater degree than was customary. Various studies on the relative time spent on housework by women and men in the urban areas of the USSR reveal that household chores are likely to be fairly equally divided when both marriage partners have full-time jobs outside the home, particularly in the younger age groups.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 265, 271; Mandel, 1975, pp. 169, 235; Dodge, 1966, pp. 93, 94; and especially McAuley, 1980, p. 183&lt;/ref&gt; In the US, on the other hand, the tendency is for men to spend much less time on housework than do women.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;''Handbook of Women Workers'', 1975, p. 174.&lt;/ref&gt; While in the USSR in the 1923-24 period only about 20% of the male's contribution to total working time (l.e. time spent on work outside the home, work related activity, and housework) was committed to housework compared to 42% of the women's, in 1972-73 40% of the man's, compared to 48% of the woman's was so spent. McAuley found that in 1972-73 women spent an average of 37.1 hours weekly on housework and related activity and men 29.9 hours. This meant that men spent four-fifths as much time on housework as women — a rather radical change from the comparable percentage of two-fifths as much as women in 1923-24.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;McAuley, 1981, p. 183.&lt;/ref&gt; It thus appears that the introduction of women into the labour force has produced a rather radical transformation in the responsibility for housework within the Soviet family. The traditional 'double day' with housekeeping and child-care as the wife's responsibility would seem to be largely a thing of the past (although still common among older and more rural couples).*<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;*Lapidus (1978, p. 271) argues on the basis of other studies that women still do the bulk of the housework in the USSR. She cites studies which purport to show that the average husband puts 8% of his time into housework, compared to the average wife's 19%. It seems that the discrepancies between the findings of Lapidus and McAuley lie in the latter's much broader definition of housework than the former's. For example, it appears that the bulk of time men spend in child-care is excluded in the Lapidus studies, as is probably home repair and 'handyman' type of housework. It is clear, however, that when all categories of contributions to the family are considered: work, work related activity and all family responsibilities around the house including childcare, that men and women in the Soviet Union now spend about equal amounts of time, while at the same time, in the typical family both the husband and wife work outside the home at a full time waged job.&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> In the USSR the most radical change in women's traditional household responsibilities has been effected by the socialization of child care, primarily in the form of day care centres for families in which both parents work. Subsidized day care is available for all urban and most rural families that desire it. In 1970, there were 103,000 day care centres in the USSR, and 120,000 in 1977, with an enrolment of 12.7 million. The enrolment figure in 1970 was 9.3 million; in 1960 4.4 million and in 1940 1.1 million. The 1970 figure represents more than 50% of all urban pre-school children and about 33⅓% of rural children.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Davis and Feshbach, 1980, p. 19; Lapidus, 1978, Table 2.&lt;/ref&gt; This compares with about 10% of preschool children in the US in 1970 who attended day care centres.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Krebs (ed.), 1976, p. 111.&lt;/ref&gt; Day care centres are located both in neighbourhoods and at places of employment. Soviet legislation requires that all factories with a work force of more than 500 employees must maintain creches.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Conquest, 1967, p. 136.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The very extensive day care system is supplemented by a rapidly growing system of extended day schools, which offer a variety of after school programmes while parents are still at work. In 1970-71, about 5.2 million children were enrolled in such institutions (up from .6 million in 1960).&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978, p. 134.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Nurseries for children under three years old are supervised by the Ministry of Health; in 1977, about one-third of all children in all day care centres (about 3.7 million) were in this age category. Kindergartens for children from three to seven years old are supervised by the Ministry of Education, and provide some basic education and social training.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;George and Manning, 1970, pp. 82-3; Davis and Feshbach, 1980, p. 19.&lt;/ref&gt; The policy of Soviet day care centres is to foster a spirit of co-operation and sharing. According to Western observers they seem to be successful in this. The youngest children engage in group play in communal playpens; while older children are organized into small groups for collective play.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Dodge, 1966, p. 82.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the late 1960s the state covered about 80% of the costs of the running of pre-school institutions, with the balance made up from fees and contributions from unions and enterprises.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Osborn, 1970, p. 58.&lt;/ref&gt; Party policy is gradually to abolish all fees for day care. Fees vary from three to eight roubles a month (about $5 to $12) according to parents' income, and must not exceed 2-3% of that income. The scale of payments rises for 24-hour child care. Reductions of 25% to 50% are available for lower income families, those who maintain more than one child in child care centres, children of war widows, and children of single mothers who earn less than 60 roubles a month. Families with four or more children also receive a reduction of 50%.<br /> <br /> In addition to paying most of the cost of socialized child care (including that of feeding children while in the creches) the state also provides various family allowances to aid the economic support of children in the home. Women who have two or more children are given a grant at the birth of the third and all successive children: from 20 roubles for the third child to 250 roubles for the eleventh and subsequent children, plus a monthly allowance of four roubles a month for the fourth child, rising to 15 roubles a month for the eleventh and subsequent children. Working women who become pregnant receive a set sum of money to help with the purchase of necessary equipment for the child. Unless the father is supporting the children, single mothers receive an allowance of five roubles a month for one child, 7.5 for two, and 10 per month for three or more.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;McAuley, 1979, p. 282; George and Manning, 1980, pp. 53, 54.&lt;/ref&gt; Since 1974 all families with a per capita monthly income of less than 50 roubles have had a monthly income supplement of 12 roubles until the child's eighth birthday.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;George and Manning, 1980, pp. 53-4.&lt;/ref&gt; These programmes are both a manifestation of the stated goal of Soviet welfare policy increasingly to distribute society's resources on the basis of need, and to provide a material incentive to lighten the economic burden of child care in order to increase the birth rate, which, largely because women are more work oriented than family oriented, has declined below replacement levels throughout much of the USSR.<br /> <br /> Abortions are available on demand, with a standard fee of five roubles (about $8), unless a woman's monthly income is less than 60 roubles, or, if the operation is performed for medical reasons, there is no fee.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;St George, 1973, p. 106; Mandel, 1975, p. 116.&lt;/ref&gt; A consequence of this cheap and easy access to abortions, however, seems to be a careless attitude towards contraception. Inter-uterine Devices (IUDs) are available and, since 1968, their use has been encouraged as a matter of state and Party policy, but few women make use of them. In the mid-1970s condoms and the practice of ''coitus interruptus'' were the most common forms of birth control, with about half the women stating that their partners used condoms, and one-third that they employed ''coitus interruptus''; spermicidal foam was also used.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Mandel, 1975, pp. 238, 239, 263.&lt;/ref&gt; The Pill is available, although not generally encouraged, both because of doctors' and women's concern about its effect on health.<br /> <br /> While Soviet women on average each have about six abortions over the course of their reproductive live,&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Davis and Feshbach, 1980, p. 13.&lt;/ref&gt; the US Population Council estimated that for the USSR in the mid-1960s for every live birth there were approximately 2.5 abortions. In 1977 the ratio of (legal) abortions to live births in the US was .4, or one-sixth the Soviet rate. This represents an average of one legal abortion per woman during her life.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;''US Statistical Abstract'', 1979, pp. 64, 69&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === Education ===<br /> Before the 1917 Revolution illiteracy was widespread among peasant women; 88% of all Russian women were illiterate,&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Bartol and Bartol, 1975, p. 527.&lt;/ref&gt; and in the Asian areas almost 100%. Even primary level education was the exception, especially in the rural areas where approximately 90% of the female population lived. By the end of the 1930s almost all girls, even those in rural areas, received some formal education, and illiteracy among women was virtually eliminated. By the 1960s primary and secondary education became universal for both sexes throughout the USSR.<br /> <br /> In 1939, of females over ten years old, only 9% had completed secondary education, compared to 13% of males in the same age group. By 1977 the percentage had risen to 55% of females and 63% of males. The 1977 figure indicates an increase of more than six times in the probability of women having a secondary education over the 1939-77 period; in fact, by 1959 more than half (53%) of all (men and women) who had completed secondary school were women.<br /> <br /> In 1939 only .5% of all women over ten years old had a higher education, compared to 1.1 % of all men. But by 1977 5% of all women over the age of ten had completed higher education, compared to 6% of all men. This represents an increase of over ten times in the probability of a woman receiving a higher education and the almost total elimination of the gap between the sexes. The small remaining differential is a product of more favourable opportunities for men in the past, rather than of recent graduation ratios. In fact, while in 1939 32% of all higher education graduates were women, by 1970 women had achieved parity — being then 49% of all graduates.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978, p. 153.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the US in 1978 slightly more men aged 25 or more had completed high school than had women (65%). In this year in the US the percentage of women to men who had completed secondary education was 98%, compared to the 1977 Soviet average of 87%. It should be noted, however, that while the differential advantage of men in the USSR is being rapidly undermined, the opposite trend has been occurring in the US. In 1960 in the US, the median years of school completed by women was half a year more than for men, but by 1978 it was one fifth of a year less.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;US Department of Commerce, 1980A, p. 145.&lt;/ref&gt; the slight educational advantage for men in the USSR is as a result of educational practices in the 1920s and 1930s, the declining position of women in comparison with men in total education received in the US seems to be a product of contemporary conditions.<br /> <br /> In the USA in 1978, 19.7% of men (25 or older) had a college degree, compared to 12.2% of women.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt; The probability for women to receive a higher education in the US is thus .62 that of men; the equivalent Soviet ratio is .82.<br /> <br /> Table 4.1 illustrates the relative position of women in higher education in the USSR and the USA. It can be seen that in almost all areas Soviet women are significantly ahead of their US counterparts. The remarkable improvement in Soviet women's position is strikingly demonstrated by the fact that in many cases by the 1960s Soviet women had made much more progress than US women had achieved by the late 1970s (see Table 4.1).<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable&quot;<br /> |+Table 4.1<br /> Women's Higher Educational Achievements: Some Comparisons between the USSR and the USA<br /> Sources: Dodge, 1966; Lapidus, 1978;McAuly, 1981.<br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; The years for which the comparisons are made are those in which the studies available in English report data. The fact that the Soviet data is usually about 15 years earlier than the US data makes the Soviet figures all the more striking.<br /> !<br /> !Field<br /> !Degree<br /> !Year<br /> !Percentage Female<br /> |-<br /> |USSR<br /> |Economics/Law<br /> |All degrees<br /> |1975-76<br /> |62%<br /> |-<br /> | rowspan=&quot;3&quot; |USA<br /> |Economics<br /> |Undergraduate<br /> |1977<br /> |23%<br /> |-<br /> |Law<br /> |All degrees<br /> |1977<br /> |13%<br /> |-<br /> |Economics<br /> |Ph.D.<br /> |1977<br /> |11%<br /> |-<br /> |USSR<br /> |Engineering<br /> |Undergraduate<br /> |1975-76<br /> |40%<br /> |-<br /> |USA<br /> |Engineering<br /> |Undergrad and MS.<br /> |1977<br /> |4.5%<br /> |-<br /> |USSR<br /> |Biology<br /> |Undergraduate<br /> |early 1960s<br /> |75%<br /> |-<br /> |USA<br /> |Biology<br /> |Undergraduate<br /> |1977<br /> |36%<br /> |-<br /> |USSR<br /> |Chemistry<br /> |All degrees<br /> |early 1960s<br /> |67%<br /> |-<br /> | rowspan=&quot;2&quot; |USA<br /> |Chemistry<br /> |Undergraduate<br /> |1977<br /> |23%<br /> |-<br /> |Chemistry<br /> |PhD<br /> |1977<br /> |12%<br /> |-<br /> |USSR<br /> |Mathematics<br /> |Undergraduate<br /> |early 1960s<br /> |45%<br /> |-<br /> |USA<br /> |Mathematics<br /> |Undergraduate<br /> |1977<br /> |42%<br /> |-<br /> |USSR<br /> |Physics<br /> |All degrees<br /> |early 1960s<br /> |33%<br /> |-<br /> | rowspan=&quot;2&quot; |USA<br /> |Physics<br /> |Undergraduate<br /> |1977<br /> |12%<br /> |-<br /> |Physics<br /> |PhD<br /> |1977<br /> |6%<br /> |}<br /> It is clear that relative to men: (1) women are more likely to receive either a basic university education or a doctorate degree in the USSR than in the USA; (2) Soviet women are much more likely to be found in the subjects traditionally virtually reserved for men in the USA — especially engineering, economics, law, and the natural sciences, where the relative probability of earning a university degree averages about three times higher in the USSR than in the USA.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 169; 1980B, p. 39.&lt;/ref&gt; In summary, the Soviets are now on par with the US in the probability of providing basic education through secondary school to both sexes. The Soviets surpass the US in the differential probability of women completing college and graduate school, and the number of women graduates in the fields of law and economics, physics, chemistry and the other natural sciences.<br /> <br /> The rapid expansion of women's position in advanced education was deliberate Party and state policy, effected in part by a quota system designed especially to assist women from peasant and worker backgrounds. For example, in 1929 a quota of 25% was set for chemical and textile technical schools. Higher education institutions were assigned a minimum quota of 20% for industrial specializations, 30% for agricultural faculties and 35% for socio-economic specialties.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978, p. 148.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === Labour Outside the Home ===<br /> In 1922, 25% of the total Soviet labour force (male and female) was female, in 1940, 39%, and throughout the 1970s, 51% (roughly the proportion of women in the population). The labour force participation rate for women (the percentage of all women who worked) in the USSR in 1975 was 83.1% for women 16-54 (compared to 62.7% in 1960). This compares with a 55.7% labour-force participation rate for US women in the same age group at the same time.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978, pp. 162-6; Davis and Feshbach, 1980, p. 11; US Department of Commerce, 1980b, pp. 456; McAuley, 1981, p. 37.&lt;/ref&gt; In the US in the mid-1970s women represented 39% of the entire labour force, in Italy 28%, in France 35%, in Spain 21%.<br /> <br /> The most rapid increase in the percentage of women workers has occurred in the USSR's national minority areas, especially the traditionally Islamic Republics. Between 1933 and 1964 the percentage of all workers who were women increased from 19% to 39% in Turkmenistan; in Tadzhikistan from 23% to 37%; in Kirgizia from 21% to 43%; in Uzbekistan from 27% to 40%; and in Azerbaidzhan from 24% to 39%.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Dodge, 1966, p. 182.&lt;/ref&gt; These figures compared with the Russian Republics' percentages of 32% and 51%.<br /> <br /> In 1975, women were 28% of all Soviet construction workers, compared to about 2% in the US at approximately the same time. In the same year they were 24% of all transportation workers (compared to 8% in the US); 42% of metal and machinery workers (compared to 3% in the US). In general, women are much more integrated into the skilled and central industrial occupations in the USSR than they are in the USA.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978; Dodge, 1966, p. 112; Lane and O’Dell, 1978, p. 127.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Soviet women have made the most rapid progress in those industries which traditionally had been virtually closed to them. In 1926, only 1% of machinists and machine adjusters were women, in 1959 they comprised 6% and in 1964 9%, representing a 50% increase from 1959-64.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Mandel, 1975, pp. 106-7.&lt;/ref&gt; In the mid-1970s about 25% of USSR master crafts workers were women,&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lane and O’Dell, 1978, p. 129.&lt;/ref&gt; and in the US in 1975 women comprised 4.6% of 'craftsmen and kindred'.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lane and O’Dell, 1978, p. 129.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Equal pay for equal work is the rule in the Soviet Union but the differential occupational distribution, although much less than in the West, remains quite significant. Women are concentrated in relatively low paid jobs (e.g. white collar work, light industry), while men are disproportionately in more highly paid employment in  heavy industry, skilled manual work, mining and administration.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978, pp. 186, 191-4.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Table 4.2 gives the sectoral distribution of Soviet women in paid employment. The average pay in those sectors in which women comprised less than 40% of the total work force in 1975 was 175 roubles per month, while in those sectors in which they comprised 60% or more, it was 118 roubles per month. Thus, predominantly female sectors tend to receive about two-thirds the pay of predominantly male sectors.<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable&quot;<br /> |+Table 4.2<br /> Distribution of Women Workers and Employees and Average Monthly Earnings, by Economic Sector, 1975 (USSR)<br /> Sources: Tsentral'noe statisticheskoe upravlenie, ''Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 1975g''. (Moscow, 1976), pp. 542-43; 546-7 (cited in Lapidus, 1978:192).<br /> !Economic Sector<br /> !Number of Women Workers and Employees<br /> !Women as Percentage of Labour Force<br /> !Average Monthly Earnings (Roubles)<br /> |-<br /> |Construction<br /> |3,002,000<br /> |28<br /> |176.8<br /> |-<br /> |Transport<br /> |2,211,000<br /> |24<br /> |173.5<br /> |-<br /> |Industry (production personnel)<br /> |1,662,000<br /> |49<br /> |162.0<br /> |-<br /> |Science and scientific services<br /> |2,015,000<br /> |50<br /> |155.4<br /> |-<br /> |''Nationwide average''<br /> |52,539,000<br /> |51<br /> |145.8<br /> |-<br /> |Credit and state insurance<br /> |423,000<br /> |82<br /> |133.8<br /> |-<br /> |Apparatus of government and economic administration<br /> |1,457,000<br /> |65<br /> |130.6<br /> |-<br /> |Education<br /> |5,904,000<br /> |73<br /> |126.9<br /> |-<br /> |Agriculture<br /> |4,530,000<br /> |44<br /> |126.8<br /> |-<br /> |Communications<br /> |1,042,000<br /> |68<br /> |123.6<br /> |-<br /> |Housing and municipal economy, everyday<br /> services<br /> |2,010,000<br /> |53<br /> |109.0<br /> |-<br /> |Trade, public catering, materials &amp; equipment, supply and sales<br /> |6,763,000<br /> |76<br /> |108.7<br /> |-<br /> |Arts<br /> |207,000<br /> |47<br /> |103.1<br /> |-<br /> |Public health, physical culture, social welfare<br /> |4,851,000<br /> |84<br /> |1023<br /> |-<br /> |Culture<br /> |747,000<br /> |73<br /> |92.2<br /> |}<br /> The income differential between men and women in socialist countries in general (and in the USSR in specific) is somewhat less than in the advanced capitalist countries (and the USA in particular). In the USSR the ratio of the average female to male wage in 1972-73 was .66. In Czechoslovakia and Poland in the 1970-72 period, it was .67, and in Hungary .73. On the other hand it was .59 in the United States, .62 in the UK and .63 in France and Switzerland at about the same time.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;See McAuley, 1981, pp. 23, 30.&lt;/ref&gt; Studies of specific industries in the USSR (as in the West) show a significantly smaller earning differential than do the figures for the economy as a whole, indicating that the bulk of the earning differential is effected by the occupational distribution of women workers, rather than by direct pay discrimination for equal work. For example, in 1973 in Kiev, the wages of cotton spinning industries women were 86% of those paid to men, while in 1970 in the Leningrad machine building industry, women's wages were 73% of those paid to men.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 25.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The differential in pay is largely a result of men being both concentrated in higher paying industries and in higher paying positions within given industries. For example, in the construction industries, where women comprise only 28% of the labour force, their average monthly earnings in 1975 were 176.8 roubles and in transport, where they were 24% of the total labour force, their average monthly earnings were 173.5 roubles. In contrast in trade where women comprise 76% of the total labour force, their average monthly earnings were 108.7 roubles, and in public health and social welfare, where 84% are women, their monthly earnings were 102.3 roubles. It should be noted, however, that in some occupations where monthly earnings were above the national average, women accounted for about half the labour force, e.g. production workers in science and industry; while in others, where the average income was less than the national average, men made up the majority, e.g. agriculture. But on average men do tend to be concentrated in the higher paid occupations. The average monthly pay in those sectors which comprised of less than 40% women workers was 175 roubles, while in those sectors with 60% or more of women it was 118 roubles.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978, p. 192.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The differential distribution of men and women in the occupation structure lies in a combination of the effect of: (1) discontinuities in women's occupational careers, especially in her 20s and early 30s where promotion and on-the-job training possibilities are lost to those without major occupational breaks; (2) a greater orientation to family (especially children) than to 'career' among women; and, of less importance (3) protective legislation prohibiting the employment of women in especially dangerous occupations or those that require exceptionally heavy lifting (e.g. such occupations as coal-mining and aspects of heavy construction; these are among the highest paying occupations in the USSR).<br /> <br /> One study of the Russian Republic in the early 1970s found that 54% of women workers had a break in their employment record compared to only 10% of men. Twenty-three percent of all women workers had at one point or another been out of the active labour force for at least one year.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;See McAuley, 1981, p. 193.&lt;/ref&gt; About 75% of breaks in women's employment record were attributed to childbirth. To quote McAuley, 'women still regard their occupations more as a job, and less in terms of a career than do men; they are less responsible to questions of career advancement.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 192.&lt;/ref&gt; Most Soviet sociologists and economists who study the question of earning differentials between men and women attribute it primarily to differential child-care responsibilities.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p.160.&lt;/ref&gt; The effect of such responsibilities on advancement possibilities is manifested in the reduced probability of working women who are also mothers attending continuing education programmes. An early 1970s study found that 12% of working women without children, compared to 5% of those with one child and 3% of those with two children, were involved in a continuing education programme.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1941 in the USSR 31% of all economists were women, while in 1966 women comprised 63% of all economists. In the US in 1970 of all economists 11% were women. In 1970 74% of USSR physicians were women, compared to 9% in the USA in the same year, whilst in the Soviet Union in 1939 61% of physicians were women.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 87; Bartol and Bartol, 1975, pp. 527-8.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1941 there were 44,000 women engineers in the Soviet Union, and by 1970 more than one million (about twice as many as were doctors), that is, more women engineers in the Soviet Union than in the whole of the rest of the world, almost as many as male engineers in the US and over 40 times more than women engineers in the US.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Mandel, 1975, pp. 123, 127; Lapidus, 1978, pp. 182-3.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1970, women comprised 30% of all engineers in the USSR, and 40% of all engineering students. This field of occupation is thus becoming more sex balanced.<br /> <br /> Between the end of World War II and the early 1970s, the percentage of all USSR doctors who were women remained constant at around 75%, declining as the 1970s drew to a close, and, given medical school enrolments, this trend will continue. In the early 1970s about 56% of all medical students were women. Medicine, like engineering, is thus tending to become a more sex balanced profession. In 1970, there were more women physicians in the USSR than throughout the rest of the world with about 20 times more than in the US, (twice as many as male doctors in the US).&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Dodge, 1966, p. 209; Mandel, 1975, pp. 128, 129.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Women within the professions are disproportionately concentrated in the lower level and non-administrative positions, although to a lesser extent than in the US. For example, Soviet women in the mid-1970s represented only 30% of surgeons (compared to 5% in the US), 50% of hospital administrators, and 20% of medical school professors, while they comprised 90% of primary care doctors — comparable percentages for the US are much lower.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;George and Manning, 1980, p. 121.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The percentage of all scientists and scientific technicians represented by women gradually increased from 36% in the 1950s to 40% in 1976; in 1978, in the US 18% of all scientists were women.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;US Department of Commerce, 1980b.&lt;/ref&gt; The number of Soviet women scientists with the approximate equivalent of the US PhD increased from 11,400 (25% of the total) in 1950 to 97,400 (28% of the total) in 1976.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978, Table 9.&lt;/ref&gt; The number of Soviet women scientists with academic positions as associate professor increased from 14.7% of all associate professors in 1950 to 22.9% of all associate professors in 1976, while the percentage of all associate professors who were men correspondingly declined from 85.3% to 77.1%. In the US in 1969, 15% of ''all'' associate professors were women, as were 9% of full professors and 24% of assistant professors. In contrast, the percentage of all US college faculties represented by women declined from 32% in 1950 to 18% in 1970.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Deckard, 1975, pp. 138, 335.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Women's relative position within academic ranks in sciences in the USSR improved considerably between 1970 and 1976. While in 1950 only about 15% of ''all academic women'' held the high rank of associate professor, the remaining 85% occupying other ranks, in 1976 almost 40% of all academic women held this rank. In 1950, there were three times as many women in the junior research associate and assistant category as in the associate professor category, but by 1976 these ranks had equal numbers of women.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978, Table 9.&lt;/ref&gt; Nevertheless, women remain disproportionately concentrated in the relatively lower positions within the sciences, although to a lesser extent than in the West. It is necessary to note that, in 1977, the powerful USSR Academy of Sciences had only 14 women members out of a total of 749.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 189.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Compared to their position in the professions, Soviet women have been less successful in attaining administrative positions, but considered in relation to their earlier position in Russian society and to that of women in the West (both in countries at similar levels of economic development and such highly advanced countries as the USA), they have done very well.<br /> <br /> In 1975 in the USSR, women were 9% of all directors of industrial enterprises, compared to 1% in 1955, while in the US in 1970 women still comprised just 1% of industrial directors. Overall, in 1970 Soviet women held 16% of ''all'' managerial positions in economic enterprises, compared to 7% in the USA in the same year. Women were much more likely to hold managerial positions in retail enterprises and the services than in industry both in the USSR and the USA. For example, in 1970, Soviet women held 64% of all managerial positions in the retail industry, compared to 34% for US women.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 184-5; Bartol and Bartol, 1975, pp. 530-1; Mandel, 1975, p. 133.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the USSR the possession of an engineering degree is a virtual prerequisite for a managerial position in industry. Women are a rapidly growing percentage of all engineers, and this, together with the rapidly increasing percentage of women managers in industrial enterprises, suggests that their role in administrative positions will continue to expand. The previous predominance of men in higher managerial positions was largely as a result of their early preponderance in engineering training, but this is no longer the case for younger administrative personnel. The indication is that younger, technically qualified women will increasingly be promoted to high level positions of responsibility over time.<br /> <br /> In educational institutions a similar pattern holds. In the 1955-56 period, 21% of the directors of secondary schools were women, in 1975-76, 29%; the percentage of women who are directors of primary schools increased from 22% to 33% over the same period.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978, p. 187.&lt;/ref&gt; The proportion of women school administrators in the US has declined over the same period: in 1950, about 50% of all primary school principals were women, but by 1970 only about 20%. From about 6% of all high school principals the percentage declined to 1.4% over the same period. In 1970, there were 50 times as many women high school principals in the Soviet Union as in the United States.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Mandel, 1975, p. 126.&lt;/ref&gt; In institutions of higher education in the USSR in 1950, 12% of department heads, 7% of deans and 4.8% of directors were women; in 1960 these figures were 12%, 9% and 5.39%.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Dodge, 1966, p. 207.&lt;/ref&gt; In Soviet research institutions in the early 1960s women accounted for about one third of heads and deputy heads of branches, 21% of division heads and their deputies, and 16% of directors and their deputies.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p.245.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> It has been suggested that the strong representation of women in science, engineering, and especially medicine (predominantly a woman's occupation) is accounted for by the low prestige of these occupations, and therefore that the extent of women's participation in these fields should not be considered particularly significant. The financial advantage of the engineering and medical professions over manual labour, especially heavy industry and mining is considerably less than in capitalist countries. In general, the income differential between the professions and manual labour in the USSR is significantly less than in the West; further, the manual working class fares particularly well in relation to white collar and professional/managerial positions. Science, engineering and medicine are, in fact, high prestige occupations in the Soviet Union. A study of occupational prestige conducted amongst Leningrad secondary school graduates found that the occupations carrying the highest prestige are physicists, mathematicians and scientists, followed by cultural workers and aircraft pilots; next were physicians, followed by university teachers, and engineers.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lane and O’Dell, 1978, p. 75.&lt;/ref&gt; Another study, among Estonian students, found physicians to have the highest prestige of all occupations, followed by cultural workers, physicists, mathematicians and chemists, then engineers.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 74.&lt;/ref&gt; The Leningrad secondary school graduates study also found that out of 40 occupational categories the most attractive career choice for women was that of physician; among the young men it was ranked as the tenth most attractive, after science, and chemical and mechanical engineering, but ahead of university teaching and construction or metallurgical engineering.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 75.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the US physicians have a particularly high prestige rating. In 1963, on a list of 90 occupations, physicians were ranked second in status, led only by Supreme Court Justices, followed immediately by scientists, and then top government officials. Civil engineers ranked at 21.5 on the 1 to 90 ranking, rather lower than in the Soviet Union.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Bendix and Upset, 1966, p. 324.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === Protective Legislation ===<br /> After the October 1917 Revolution special protective legislation for women workers was instituted. The Soviet Labour Code established provisions for the protection of women's health at work while outlawing types of work that might endanger their ability to have children or the health of any such children. Limits were placed on the number of hours women could work, and certain types of especially dangerous and heavy work were reserved for men.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978, p. 125; Janear, 1978, p. 126.&lt;/ref&gt; The current Soviet labour code forbids enterprises to employ women in any activities which might be hazardous to their health; this is now considered to include work underground. Pregnant or nursing women, or those who have children under the age of one year may not be assigned overtime work. Women with children under the age of eight years may not be sent on out-of-town assignments, or required to work overtime, or on swing or 'graveyard' shifts without their consent. Pregnant women, nursing mothers and mothers with children below the age of one year, who are normally employed in manual labour, must be assigned lighter work, but with no reduction in pay. Women receive 56 days of paid leave both before and after giving birth; this is extended to 70 days for multiple or abnormal births. Women can choose to extend their leave, on an unpaid basis, for up to one year after giving birth without jeopardizing their seniority.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;St George, 1978, pp. 108-9; Dodge, 1966, pp. 68-73.&lt;/ref&gt; Enterprises are forbidden to refuse jobs to pregnant and nursing women, to reduce their pay or to dismiss them, also nursing mothers are entitled to a shorter work day. A new woman graduate who is pregnant or who has children under one year of age is guaranteed work in her speciality in an enterprise proximate to her family residence. Further, as special compensation for their responsibilities both as mothers and workers outside the home, the retirement age for women is five years earlier than that for men (55), with pensions being granted after 20 years, instead of the 25 required for men.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978, p. 126.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === Women in Political Positions ===<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable mw-collapsible&quot;<br /> |+Women Members of the Communist Party as a Percentage of Total Membership:<br /> |1920<br /> |7.4<br /> |-<br /> |1939<br /> |14.5<br /> |-<br /> |1966<br /> |20.6<br /> |-<br /> |1971<br /> |22.2<br /> |-<br /> |1976<br /> |24.3<br /> |-<br /> |1981<br /> |26.5&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Scherer, 1982, p. 31.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> |}<br /> In 1961 there were 1,809,688 women Party members, and in 1981 4,615,576.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 28,31.&lt;/ref&gt; In the period 1976-80, 32.2% of candidate Party members were women; and of the 5,000 delegates at the Party's 26th Congress in 1980, 26.6% were women.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 24.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1975-76, 31.5% and in 1980-81, 35.1% of the Secretaries (leading administrative post) in the Party's primary organizations were women.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The higher in the leadership and administrative structure the fewer women are to be found. At the time of the Revolution, three women served on the Central Committee of the Communist Party — 10% of the total; in the 1930s also an average of three women served on this body, then representing 2.5% of the total. In the 1970s, there were 14-15 women on the Central Committee, about 3.5% of the total. Of the 23 members of the Politburo, the day-to-day leading body of the Party, in the mid-1970s none were women.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1980, p. 219; Janear, 1978, p. 89.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the state apparatus, women fare rather better, especially as delegates to the various levels of the Soviet legislature (Soviets). In 1920, the participation of women in the politically active local Soviets in the urban areas was 1%; in 1934, 32%; stabilizing until the mid-1950s when it began to increase again.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 204.&lt;/ref&gt; The proportion of women delegates has increased at all levels. In 1959, 27% of Supreme Soviet, 32% of Republic Soviet (more or less equivalent to US state legislatures) and 41% of local Soviet representatives were women.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 205.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1975, 35% of the delegates to the Soviets of the Republics and 48% of the representatives to the local Soviets, were women. In 1979 33% of the delegates to the Supreme Soviet were women.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Scherer, 1982, p. 23.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1973, women held 47% of all elective positions (legislative, administrative and judicial) in the USSR.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Mandel, 1975, p. 299.&lt;/ref&gt; Between the mid-1950s and the end of the 1970s only two women held ministerial rank in the Soviet government (Ministers for Culture and Minister for Health). Considerable numbers of women occupy lower level positions in the government administrative structure, although again they tend to be concentrated in such areas as cultural affairs, health, social security, light industry and consumer related services.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978, pp. 17, 22, 216.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1970, 56% of the heads of Soviet Trade Union Branches were women, compared to 5% in the USA, although here, too, women are more likely to be found as head of the local rather than national unions.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Mandel, 1975, p. 178.&lt;/ref&gt; In the judiciary, in 1972, approximately one third of all judges were women, compared with 2-3% in the USA.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 132, 176.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the USA, in 1977, 7.8% of all elected local officials (mayors, local councils) were women,&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;US Department of Commerce, ''Statistical Abstract'', 1980A, p. 513.&lt;/ref&gt; and in 1974 3.4% of all Congress members (Senators and Representatives), 8.0% of all state legislators, and 2% of all state governors were women. In the Nixon administration there was one women, in the Carter administration two, and at the beginning of the Reagan administration (excluding the position of UN ambassador) none.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;''World Almanac'', 1981; US Department of Commerce, 1980B, p. 86.&lt;/ref&gt; Thus, during the 1970s in the US there was an average of one woman at the ministerial level at any given time. There has never been a woman in the US equivalent of the Soviet Politburo, that is: the Presidency, Vice-Presidency, Secretary of State, Attorney General, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defence, Director of the CIA and head of the principal financial institutions and top industrial corporations. In the Supreme Soviet the percentage of women is almost ten times greater than the percentage of women in the US Congress, in the more important Central Committee of the CPSU it is the same as in the US Congress: about 3.5%. Likewise, the proportion of women holding ministerial positions in the two countries is equivalent. At the Republic/State level the proportion represented by women is four times higher in the USSR than in the US. On the local level the Soviet figures are three to six times higher than in the US (depending on whether party membership, headship of local party units or local elected positions are compared). In summary, women are in a far better position at the local and intermediate levels of the political structure in the USSR than they are in the US, but are very rare at the very top levels in either country.<br /> <br /> === Analysis ===<br /> The Soviet achievement in advancing the position of women both in relationship to their own recent (pre-1917) past and to comparable countries in the West (including even the most industrially advanced capitalist countries) is considerable. Women have been fully 'integrated into public industry', and the family 'as the economic unit of society' has been abolished. Women are considerably more independent of men, and far greater opportunities are open to them than ever before, or that exist for women in comparable capitalist countries. Nevertheless, there are two facts which, although of less significance than Soviet accomplishments, require careful scrutiny: 1) that relatively few women attain managerial positions, especially at the highest levels; and 2) the rarity of women in top party positions, and as government ministers.<br /> <br /> Are these as a result of discriminatory policies of educational institutions and hiring and promotion policies? Or of differential sex role socialization, custom, and the inertia of traditional attitudes that in the face of Party policy, either die hard or persist because the schools and the Party have not given adequate attention to undermining them? It is assumed that the innate potentials for accomplishment of both sexes in creative and administrative roles is equal and that there is no differential sexual distribution of maternal or familial inclinations; (this is the traditional Marxist and behaviourist assumption).<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, patriarchal values (attenuated to be sure) continue to be socialized into children, mainly through the family and to a lesser extent in schools. But in addition to Party and government efforts to transform these values, the realities of urban working class and professional life, with their different demands on husbands and wives, and especially the abolition of the family as the economic unit of society vis-à-vis women achieving full economic independence, seem to be transforming the traditional interpersonal relationship between the sexes. Under this dual pressure it is reasonable to assume that household responsibilities will increasingly be shared.<br /> <br /> Evidence on schooling has demonstrated that in recent years the quality or quantity of education received by women and men is equal, and that the career prospects of women are not affected by any discrimination on this account. Among older people, however, who predominate in the leading administrative, Party and government posts, men are considerably better educated than women, reflecting earlier educational practices. Part of the differential, at least in high level administrative positions, must be attributed to this factor, as the rapidly increasing proportion of women administrators seems to indicate, as well as the rising percentage of women engineering graduates. But that the abolition of educational inequalities seems not to have affected the paucity of women in top ministerial and Party posts should not be overlooked.<br /> <br /> That professional women are not overtly discriminated against in promotional policies (those with greater achievements are promoted regardless of sex) seems to be confirmed by studies of the productivity and accomplishments of women scientists and professionals. Women's contributions in professional journals is significantly less than their proportion in all the major professions. Women receive very few Lenin prizes of other rewards for major scientific accomplishments.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Dodge, 1966, pp. 227-42.&lt;/ref&gt; Such indicators may lead us to speculate that rather than being overtly discriminated against in the professions, women are perhaps in good part promoted in spite of relatively poor performance levels (i.e. because of seniority and quotas), but lacking a good analysis of the quality of women's and men's publications and accomplishments this cannot be asserted.<br /> <br /> Overt discrimination in hiring and promotion would be reflected in higher than average achievement by those who are discriminated against. To be hired or promoted in spite of overt discrimination, implies that an individual's accomplishments are better than the average for people not discriminated against. Such, for example, has classically been the case for Black athletes in professional sports in the US and for Jewish students when there were quotas for Jews, but this appears not to apply to Soviet professional women.<br /> <br /> There are no studies on Soviet administrators comparable to the studies on Soviet professionals, so possibly, women's accomplishments here are superior to those of the average men in similar positions, i.e. that overt discrimination could be occurring here. Evidence suggests, however, that women's relatively inferior position in managerial positions is owing to the inertia of custom and tradition rather that overt discrimination. The persistence of custom and tradition, as we have suggested, affects not only older people but younger as well. That this may in part account for the under-representation of women in managerial positions is implied by the significant changes over time in the percentage of administrative positions filled by women.<br /> <br /> Soviet education involves much less sex typing than in the West, but it is not entirely absent. Few, if any, jobs are explicitly portrayed as closed to women; primary school textbooks feature grandmothers who are construction engineers and mothers who drive heavy equipment. Women are not portrayed as primarily wives, mothers and/or sex objects either in textbooks or the mass media, but more often than men they are portrayed in caring roles, for example, crying children typically turn for comfort to a woman rather than a man. The curricula in Soviet schools is the same for both sexes, but for labour training sessions, the sexes are often separated, with more emphasis given to domestic skills for girls, and more to such skills as basic metalworking and carpentry for boys. Thus, boys are subtly encouraged to envisage their futures primarily in terms of jobs and career achievement, while girls, somewhat more in terms of motherhood, as well as career achievement.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lane and O’Dell, 1978, pp. 64-5.&lt;/ref&gt; While in the West, however, mass media extols the housewife/sex object image, in the USSR the accomplishments of women scientists, astronauts and other professionals are celebrated. It is deliberate Party policy to encourage a career orientation among girls and women.&lt;ref group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Dodge, 1966, pp. 232-3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Virtually all Western observers agree that the majority of Soviet professional women in good part still identify with women's traditional role as wife and mother, while being at the same time career oriented; my own conversations with Soviet women confirm this. Opinions on the proportion of child care and housework women consider men should do seem to vary considerably among even professional women. While many women feel that men should not share equally in housework, the conviction that women should have an independent career or occupation appears to be neatly unanimous. Soviet women generally prefer occupations which require less than an eight hour day/five day week, in order to have sufficient time for family affairs.&lt;ref name=&quot;:0&quot; group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Lapidus, 1978, p. 248.&lt;/ref&gt; One reason why the medical profession is so popular with Soviet women is that the normal working day for doctors is six hours. Apparently those occupations and positions which require less than a total commitment of time and energy are preferred by Soviet women, even when their experience and education fully qualify them for highly responsible jobs. Women's greater commitment to the family and associated responsibilities, both because of their desire for such a role, and men's failure to assume equal responsibilities when women wish them to do so, naturally distracts from career advancement, especially in administrative and political leadership positions in which more or less full time commitment is required. It should be noted that full time working women annually take about six more days off work for 'family reasons', for example, caring for sick children, than do men.&lt;ref name=&quot;:1&quot; group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p.265.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Studies have shown that significantly more Soviet men than women base their choice of career on job interest — 42% and 28% respectively. More women (55%) than men (43%) choose their job because 'circumstances allowed no alternative'. Soviet researchers attribute these differential motives to the fact that women choose work that fits into their husbands' career and their family commitments more often than vice versa; these considerations put restrictions on location, as well as working hours.&lt;ref name=&quot;:2&quot; group=&quot;4.&quot;&gt;Janear, 1978, pp. 198-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The majority of men, as well as women, in high level administrative posts, or of the appropriate age for top political and economic positions, were socialized into the traditional values of the peasantry. In the 1970s 80% of top Party and government positions were held by people whose parents were either manual workers or peasants, whereas, for the scientific and technical intelligentsia, the parents of 50% were members of the intelligentsia. Most of those from urban manual working-class backgrounds grew up in families which only recently migrated from the countryside, many during the period of rapid industrialization after 1928. In common with the family structure of other Soviet nationalities, that of the Russian peasant was patriarchal. Owing to the forced industrialization in the 1930s, attitudes generated in this structure were carried into the working class at an accelerated rate. While the emerging attitudes towards women's role, strongly encouraged by the mass media and education, differ significantly from the traditional patriarchal attitudes, the prevalent working-class peasant attitudes of the 1930s still weighed heavily on those who were 50 and over in the 1970s.<br /> <br /> Perhaps the most perplexing fact about the position of women in the USSR is the failure of the proportion of women in top government ministries and Party positions to increase over the last years. It might have been expected that with women increasingly entering managerial jobs, together with the Party's deliberate policy to encourage women to have careers, more women would have attained top positions. In order to encourage other women, those who held positions of responsibility throughout the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s could have been promoted, either on the basis of their past achievements or on that of their potential. Unlike in the United States, the practice of placing token women in top positions (for example, it has become the norm for there to be a woman cabinet member even if the definition of 'the cabinet' must be occasionally expanded to include the UN representative in the case of the Reagan administration) has not been thought necessary. While it clearly could not be expected that women would have achieved anything like equal membership in the Central Committee or top government ministerial positions in the 1970s on the basis of equal achievements (given the weight of traditional socialization and the past differential education), possibly there has been overt discrimination against qualified women who have adequate achievements to be promoted into top level positions. Such discrimination, to the extent it exists, is probably a result of lingering patriarchal attitudes on the part of the top (male) Party leadership — mostly socialized during the first decades of Soviet power in peasant or recently ex-peasant families.<br /> <br /> As a new generation of Soviet leaders emerges such attitudes should be expected to decrease. How much the paucity of women in top leadership positions is due to overt discrimination, how much to the persistence of tradition and how much to the lack of equal training 20-30 years ago is difficult to determine, but it would seem that the latter two factors probably weigh the most heavily. Because of the relatively high level of consciousness of women in the USSR, combined with the legitimacy afforded to the ideology of the equality of the sexes as a matter of active Party policy, it is to be expected that unless significant progress is made in the relatively near future, the Party leadership will experience considerable pressure from women to change. It should not be forgotten that women have experienced both a long term increase in their share of Party membership and a growing share of those in positions of lower and middle level responsibility in the economic state and Party apparatus. Such women can be expected to lead a campaign for promotion into top level jobs.<br /> <br /> The question of why there are not eleven women on the Politburo, 200 women on the Central Committee or 24 women ministers must be seen in perspective. For women as women the sex of the top leadership is of less importance than the policies followed by the leadership which affect women. Whether or not a few hundred or even thousand women 'reach the top' is virtually irrelevant to the life chances and position of the 145 million Soviet women. Overall policies on women of the past and present leadership have been most progressive and, as has been seen, have resulted in the radical improvement of women's lot. In most respects it is difficult to see how these policies could have been significantly improved upon, given the parameters within which the Soviet system has had to operate: the need for rapid industrialization, to improve living standards and militarily to defend the country, have largely dictated that increasing productivity and efficiency must be always among the primary goals of Party policy. Consequently, from time to time, egalitarian social measures have had to take a back seat. However, a future, more feminine leadership might well press harder for the mechanization and socialization of housework. Such a mixed leadership would probably also press more for campaigns both to change women's lingering traditional attitudes towards family concerns which inhibit their careers and to affect quotas (such as were instituted in the 1920s and 1930s in educational institutions) to assist women to develop their potential, to provide role models to inspire other women, and to overcome lingering patriarchal attitudes among those who make promotional decisions.<br /> <br /> === Conclusion ===<br /> In summary, problems remain, but clearly the Soviet Union has made radical and rapid progress in resolving 'the women question'. From being among the most backward countries in Europe, in so far as the subordination of women before the 1917 Revolution was concerned, two generations of Soviet power have improved women's position vis-à-vis men at least to equal, and probably surpass, that of women in any country, however wealthy. This transformation in the position of women must be ranked as one of the principal accomplishments of the regime.<br /> <br /> Even Western feminist critics of the USSR typically credit the Soviets with having made considerable progress on the 'women question'. For example, Lapidus, perhaps the most rigorous of Western feminist critics to have recently written on the USSR, argues:&lt;blockquote&gt;The decline of the family as a productive unit and the separation of household from employment were not accompanied by the separation of large numbers of women from social production, as in the development of the European and American middle class. Instead, female employment occurred in conditions less favourable to family needs but more independent of family control. Finally, to the extent that access to education, occupational status, and income became relatively independent of the family unit, the bases of paternal authority were further weakened.&lt;ref name=&quot;:0&quot; group=&quot;4.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> ...even if Soviet families are indeed undergoing a dramatic evolution from a traditional, patriarchal form of organization characterized by the subordination of women to a modern and egalitarian structure in which authority and power are more equally shared, only comparative investigations will make it possible to distinguish the effect of changes in female resources from the effect of other macro-social forces.<br /> <br /> Clearly, Soviet ideology has altered the fundamental bases of female status through its devaluation of domestic roles and its emphasis on education and employment as the source of social prestige. It is also likely that female access to education, employment, and independent income enhance women's freedom of choice in entering and leaving marriage by reducing the value of the resources gained through marriage relative to those obtainable outside it. These are by no means minor matters, and they have enormous significance in and of themselves for female status and opportunities for self-realization.&lt;ref name=&quot;:1&quot; group=&quot;4.&quot; /&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The general opinion of most Soviet women, that their position has greatly improved under the Soviet system, is also shared by the majority of women emigrés. To cite Jancar:&lt;blockquote&gt;Although the female emigrés I spoke with view the Soviet political system as a contaminating environment, they share with women in the Communist countries their enthusiasm for what the Communists have done for women through legislation and the provision of communal facilities. In one emigré's view, a girl who gets an abortion in Israel or in the United States is a social outcast, but this is not true in the Soviet Union. Others criticize the absence of pre-school facilities and the prevailing attitudes toward women who have large families.<br /> <br /> The emigrés' comments taken together appear to reflect a sense of injustice about the Communist system which does not include Communist policies toward women. The injustice covers such areas as the monolithic state, the tyrannical and ruthless bureaucratic Party hierarchy, religious and racial discrimination, and a host of other ills, but not discrimination on the basis of sex.<br /> <br /> Indirectly, the attitudes of the emigré women confirm the positive identification with the Party and government of the successful women interviewed within the Communist countries. emigré women tend to view the Party and government as having taken progressive steps with regard to women.&lt;ref name=&quot;:2&quot; group=&quot;4.&quot; /&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> === References ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;4.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> == 5. Economic Rights ==<br /> Basic economic rights include the right to eat, to a secure job, to a viable standard of living, to participation in economic decision making, access to medical care, and to education, adequate housing at a reasonable rate, and adequate retirement and disability benefits. In general, the application of such economic rights is more advanced in the Soviet Union than in any Western country, including those on the same level of development as the Soviet Union, and those most advanced Western capitalist countries, such as the US and Japan. Some capitalist countries equal or even exceed the Soviet Union in certain specific social security rights, such as medical care and disability and retirement benefits, for example, the Scandinavian countries and West Germany, but none match it overall.<br /> <br /> === Living Standards ===<br /> The real income of Soviet working people has been rather rapidly increasing since the 1940s. For example, in the 1970-1980 period real disposable personal income increased by an annual average of about 3% a year (which represented an increase of about one third in real income over the decade). Over the entire 1940-1980 period the real wages of Soviet factory and office workers increased by a factor of 3.7 times.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;See Carrigan et al., 1981, p. 57; McAuley, 1979, p. 390; Scherer, 1982, p. 292 and previously.&lt;/ref&gt; By way of comparison it should be noted that the real wages of all US workers declined by about 1% a year over the 1970s and early 1980s.<br /> <br /> The improvement in living standards has been especially marked for lower income groups (particularly rural workers) and industrial workers owing to an increased minimum wage, the elimination of the traditional urban-rural differentials that favour the cities, the expansion of the social benefits which favour lower income groups, and the implementation of wage policies that, since the mid-1950s, have reduced income inequalities in the Soviet Union quite sharply.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Szymanski, 1979, pp. 64-6; Alex Nove, ’Income Distribution in the USSR’, ''Soviet Studies'', Vol. XXXIV, No. 2, April 1982, pp. 286-8.&lt;/ref&gt; Basic foodstuffs (for example, bread, meat, dairy produce, potatoes) are heavily subsidized by the state, and luxury goods — such as cats — are heavily taxed in order to secure funds for these subsidies. The food stamp programme in the US, which subsidizes food purchases for the poor, is the nearest equivalent. Housing and public transport in the USSR are also heavily subsidized; the standard fare on the Soviet subway is five kopecks (about eight cents) — a fare that has remained unchanged since the 1930s. Housing, medicine, transport and insurance account for an average of 15% of a Soviet family's income, compared to 50% in the US;&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Corrigan et al., 1981.&lt;/ref&gt; while such services as higher education and child-care are either free or heavily subsidized.<br /> <br /> The Soviets have increased both the quantity and quality of their diet until it is now comparable to that of Western Europe. This is illustrated by the data in Table 5.1.<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed&quot;<br /> |+Table 5.1<br /> Nutrition: Comparative Figures for the USSR and the West: 1975-77<br /> Source: Food and Agricultural Organization, ''Production Yearbook'', 1978 and 1981, Tables 97,98; see also Sivard, 1980, Table 3.<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; An Increase of 5% since 1966-68<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;**&lt;/nowiki&gt; An Increase of 7% since 1966-68<br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;***&lt;/nowiki&gt; An Increase of 24% since 1966-68<br /> ! rowspan=&quot;2&quot; |<br /> ! colspan=&quot;6&quot; |Average Intake Per Person Per Day<br /> |-<br /> !USSR<br /> !USA<br /> !UK<br /> !W. Germany<br /> !Sweden<br /> !Italy<br /> |-<br /> |Calories<br /> |3,443*<br /> |3,552<br /> |3,247<br /> |3,376<br /> |3,152<br /> |3,463<br /> |-<br /> |Protein (grams)<br /> |103**<br /> |107<br /> |81<br /> |86<br /> |93<br /> |98<br /> |-<br /> |Animal protein (grams)<br /> |51***<br /> |72<br /> |54<br /> |55<br /> |63<br /> |45<br /> |}<br /> <br /> === Imports ===<br /> <br /> ==== Agriculture and Grain ====<br /> It has been claimed that because of the 'failure' of Soviet agriculture the USSR must resort to importing grain from the highly productive Western capitalist economies in order to feed its people, and consequently that the Soviet Union has become increasingly dependent on the capitalist world system. Indeed, the US suspension of Soviet grain purchases in 1980 was premised on this thesis. Let us look at both the trends in Soviet agriculture and the role of the grain trade with the West.<br /> <br /> Table 5.2 shows that between the 1956-61 and the 1975-79 periods the Soviets increased their total grain production by a factor of 1.63 times. In the latter years total Soviet production averaged 199 million metric tons a year, compared to the 1956-61 average of 122 million. Soviet utilization of grains, however, increased even more rapidly, from an annual average of 116 million metric tons to 215 million metric tons — an increase of 1.85 times. From being a net exporter of grains (5.4 million tons in the 1956-61 period) the Soviet Union became a net importer (16 million tons in the 1975-79 period).<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed&quot;<br /> |+Table 5.2<br /> Soviet Grain (Millions of Metric Tons, Annual Averages) Utilization<br /> Source: Judith Goldich, 'USSR Grain and Oilseed Trade in the Seventies', ''Soviet Economy in a Time of Change'', 1979, Vol. 11, p. 174.<br /> ! rowspan=&quot;2&quot; |Annual Averages<br /> ! rowspan=&quot;2&quot; |Domestic Production<br /> ! rowspan=&quot;2&quot; |Imports<br /> ! rowspan=&quot;2&quot; |Exports<br /> ! rowspan=&quot;2&quot; |Total Available<br /> ! colspan=&quot;2&quot; |Utilization<br /> |-<br /> !Feed<br /> !Food<br /> |-<br /> |1956-1961<br /> |122<br /> |1.2<br /> |6.6<br /> |116<br /> |37<br /> |43<br /> |-<br /> |(% of total available)<br /> |105%<br /> |1%<br /> |6%<br /> |100%<br /> |32%<br /> |37%<br /> |-<br /> |1975-1979<br /> |199<br /> |18<br /> |2.3<br /> |215<br /> |111<br /> |46<br /> |-<br /> |(% of total available)<br /> |93%<br /> |8%<br /> |1%<br /> |100%<br /> |52%<br /> |21%<br /> |-<br /> |Ratio of 1956-61 to 1975-1979 average<br /> |1.63X<br /> |15X<br /> |.35X<br /> |1.85X<br /> |3.0X<br /> |1.07X<br /> |}<br /> In the 1956-61 period 37% of available Soviet grain was directly consumed as human food and 32% was fed to animals. In contrast to the 1975-79 period, when only 21% went directly to human consumption (in absolute terms only 7% more than in the earlier period), and over half (52%) was utilized as animal feed; this represented a threefold absolute increase in grain fed to animals (see Table 5.2). This change reflects a major reorientation in Soviet consumer goods policies. In the late 1950s the Soviets rapidly began to increase the meat, egg and dairy product consumption of the Soviet people by increasing the country's animal stock. In order to do this rapidly and steadily there was a decision to import animal feed (reversing the Soviet traditional role as a grain exporter), especially in those years when there was a shortfall in Soviet production.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Goldich, 1979, p. 133.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Table 5.3 illustrates the increase in Soviet cattle, hogs and poultry which occurred in the period 1955 to 1979. In 1979 the Soviets had 114.4 million head of cattle (2.02 times more than in 1955), 74.7 million hogs (2.41 times more than in 1955) and 940.9 million poultry (2.51 times more than in 1955). It should be noted that while the number of cattle, hogs and poultry in the US in 1955 was significantly greater than in the USSR, by the late 1970s the Soviets had surpassed the US figure in every major category. In 1979 the Soviets had three percent more cattle than did the US, 24% more hogs and 133% more poultry.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;US Department of Commerce, ''Statistical Abstract 1980, 1981'', pp. 725, 728.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable&quot;<br /> |+Table 5.3<br /> Soviet Livestock 1955-1979 (Million Head)<br /> Source: Judith Goldich, 'USSR Grain and Oilseed Trade in the Seventies', ''Soviet Economy in a Time of Change'', 1979, Vol. 11, p. 177.<br /> !<br /> !Cattle<br /> !Hogs<br /> !Poultry<br /> |-<br /> |1955<br /> |56.7 (100)<br /> |31.0 (100)<br /> |375.0 (100)<br /> |-<br /> |1960<br /> |74.2 (131)<br /> |53.4 (172)<br /> |514.3 (137)<br /> |-<br /> |1965<br /> |87.1 (154)<br /> |52.8 (170)<br /> |456.2 (122)<br /> |-<br /> |1970<br /> |95.2 (168)<br /> |56.1 (181)<br /> |590.3(157)<br /> |-<br /> |1975<br /> |109.1 (192)<br /> |72.3 (233)<br /> |792.4 (211)<br /> |-<br /> |1979<br /> |114.4 (202)<br /> |74.7 (241)<br /> |940.9 (251)<br /> |-<br /> |1955-1979 Increase<br /> |2.02X<br /> |2.41X<br /> |2.51X<br /> |}<br /> Not only has Soviet animal production increased in the last generation, but Soviet agriculture in general has also radically increased its output over this period. Between 1950 and 1977 total Soviet output in agriculture increased by 147%, while during the same period US agriculture output increased by 64%. The Soviet rate of growth over this period (about 3.5% a year) was more than double that of agricultural output in the US.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Diamond and Davis, 1979, p. 49.&lt;/ref&gt; In terms of its dollar value, total Soviet farm output increased from 62% of US output in the 1950-54 period to 86% in the 1975-77 period, mostly accounted for by the value of livestock, which increased in dollar value from 48% of the US total in the 1950-54 period, to 81% in the 1975-77 period. The dollar value of crop production increased from 72% to 91% of the US output.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 48.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> It should be noted that the Soviet increase in animal stock occurred largely in the socialized sector (not on private plots). For example, while in the period 1966-70 27.9% of cattle were privately owned by peasants, in the 1976-78 period this was down to 20.6%; likewise, the percentage of hogs owned individually by peasants decreased from 26.1% to 20.5% of the total.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Carey and Havelka, 1979, p. 67.&lt;/ref&gt; In general, the private plots have been significantly declining in importance. In addition to their share of total animal production decreasing, their share of total vegetable production fell from 41% of the total in 1965 to 31% in 1979; of milk, from 39% to 29%, and of eggs from 67% to 33%.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Scherer, 1982, p. 235.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Why then the periodic, rather large, purchases of animal feed from the West? The geography of the USSR is such that much of its crop land is vulnerable to climatic variations, and hence its crop yields vary considerably from year to year, making steady increases in livestock and meat production difficult to maintain without imports of animal feed during bad crop years. The growing season in the moist regions of the USSR is too short, while the warmest regions of the USSR are too dry. Only about 10% of the total area of the USSR combines sufficient moisture with adequate heat for all the basic grain crops, compared to about 20% in the USA (including Alaska). More than 30% of the USSR is too cold for any type of agriculture, while an additional 40% is so cold that only hardy, early maturing crops can be grown. In the US, cold is a limiting factor in only about 20% of its total area, against 70% in the USSR.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Diamond and Davis, 1979, p. 24.&lt;/ref&gt; The much greater marginality of utilizable land in the USSR is reflected in the annual variation in crop yields. Soviet annual grain production varies by 12.7% a year, compared to 7.2% in the US. Wheat yield varies by 16.5% in the USSR, compared to 6.1% in the US; corn yield by 14.1%, against 9.2%; oat yield by 14.8% against 8.3%, and barley yield 14.8%, against 6.8%.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 27.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In summary, clearly the import of grain for animal feed does not make the Soviets dependent on the world capitalist economy. Net imports of grain in the 1975-79 period, which averaged about 8% of total grain utilized, were not significant enough to have an important effect on the Soviet economy. A total cut-off of Western grain supplies would simply mean a temporary increase in the slaughter rate of livestock and their slower future growth rate. An initial culling of livestock by the Soviets would need to be followed by stabilization of the availability of feed by storing more grain in good years for use in bad years, rather than relying on purchases in the world grain market to even out the production in different years. Moreover, the existence of a number of major grain exporting countries in the West, together with their tendency to over-produce, suggests the unlikelihood of the Soviets being unable to import the marginal quantities needed for their programme of increasing meat consumption. The 1980-81 attempted grain boycott of the USSR seemed to show that grain farmers in the West are more dependent on Soviet grain imports than the Soviets are on the West.<br /> <br /> As part of their emphasis on increasing the consumption of meat and dairy produce, the Soviet state, since 1965, has raised subsidies both on the production and consumption of meat and dairy products by paying farmers significantly more for these products than they are sold for in the stores. In 1979, for example, the average price of a kilogram of beef was 1.65 roubles, while the average price paid to producers was 3.21 roubles. The state subsidy amounted to 48% of the retail price of all meat and dairy production, and in 1979 this represented about 9% of the total Soviet budget.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;See McAuley, 1982, p. 155.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== Technology ====<br /> The Soviet Union is interested in accelerating the pace of technical modernization of its economy through importing high technology from the West. In order to conserve scarce hard currency and avoid incurring serious debts it has developed two forms of relationships with Western corporations; counter-purchase agreements (which involve a straight barter trade of Soviet products for Western products); and, increasingly more important, compensation agreements (which comprise the import of Western high technology goods into the Soviet Union in exchange for long term payment through a proportion of output from the imported technology).<br /> <br /> One of the most famous counter-purchase agreements has been with Pepsi Cola. In this agreement Pepsi Cola ships Pepsi concentrate to the USSR in exchange for an equivalent Soviet supply of vodka, which Pepsi sells in the West. Another well-known example of this kind is that with the Occidental Corporation, which obtains Soviet ammonia in exchange for US fertilizer.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Barclay, 1979, p.479.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The USSR concluded more than 45 compensation agreements with Western transnationals in the 1970s (worth a total of about $8 billion in Western high technology imports). It is expected that hard currency savings from these agreements will rise from about $1.5 billion in 1978 to about $4 billion by 1985, that is the combined value of repayments in kind plus actual hard currency earnings from additional exports from the facilities constructed with foreign high technology imports.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 465-8.&lt;/ref&gt; The total value of new capital flow into the USSR in the 1973-75 period (the latest years for which data could be obtained) averaged $961 million annually. This represented .8% of total Soviet gross fixed investment, not a very significant proportion of the total.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Desai, 1979, p. 410.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Most of the compensation agreements into which the Soviets have entered have involved the import of equipment, for the production of either natural gas or chemicals, in exchange for the long term repayment in natural gas and chemicals produced through these imports. The first gas-for-pipe deal designed to facilitate the export of natural gas to Europe was signed with an Austrian firm in 1968. Since then similar deals have been signed with Italian, West German and French firms. Since 1978 the Soviets have been able to import from the West pipe and pipeline equipment worth about $2.8 billion; they had also imported $3.2 billion worth of chemical producing equipment. It should be noted that most of the chemical deals usually call only for an ''equivalent'' repayment in Soviet chemicals, while the gas-for-pipe deals normally call for Soviet exports of much greater value than that necessitated by repayment. The Soviets thus anticipate earning considerable hard currency through the ongoing export of natural gas. A few compensation agreements have also been signed with Japanese timber companies, where logging and lumber transport equipment from Japan was exchanged for wood and wood product exports from the USSR. Altogether, between 1968 and 1978, the Soviet Union and Western transnational corporation signed a total of 11 compensation agreements in natural gas, 28 in chemicals, four in wood products and one each in petroleum, aluminium and coal.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Barclay, 1979, p. 408-10, 466-8.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> It should be stressed that neither the counter-purchase nor the compensation agreements entered into by the Soviet state involve any direct investment, leasing, management or co-management rights for the Western corporations in any enterprises within Soviet borders. Although Western technical advisors are involved in the construction of the high technology chemical (and other) plants in the USSR, the ownership and management of all such enterprise is completely in Soviet hands.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Brainard, 1979, p. 106.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Soviet debt to the West increased from $0.6 billion in 1971 to $11 billion in 1978. In proportion to its national product the Soviet debt is minimal, representing only .9% of GNP. In contrast, in 1978, South Korea owed $12.0 billion (26.1% of GNP): Algeria $13.1 (52.6%); Mexico $25.8 (28.7%); Brazil $28.8 (15.6%); Pakistan $7.6 (40.8%); Indonesia $13.1 (27.6%); and Egypt $9.9 (71.5%).&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Hricson and Miller, 1979; World Bank, ''World Development Report 1980'', Table 15.&lt;/ref&gt; It is clear that the Soviet debt to Western banks is not (as it ''has'' been in Poland) an important mechanism of economic integration into the world capitalist economy or dependence.<br /> <br /> ==== Social Consumption and the Social Wage ====<br /> Over the years the Soviets have been increasing the proportion of total consumption of goods and services provided on the basis of need, that is, the 'social wage', or the various social consumption goods and services, have increased in relation to the wage. For example in 1940 the 'social wage' increased from 23% of average take-home monthly cash wages, to 28% in 1950, 34% in 1960, 35% in 1970, and 38% in 1980.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Scherer, 1982, p. 303.&lt;/ref&gt; These figures corresponded to an average annual rate of growth in the real value of the per capita social wage of 4.9% over the 1940-50 period, 7.2% over the 1950-60 period, 6.1% over the 1960-70 period and 3.6% over the 1970-80 period.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;McAuley, 1982, p. 153.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1980 the Soviets were spending an average of 438 roubles per capita on social consumption. This compares to 73 roubles per capita in 1950, 128 in 1960 and 263 in 1970. Because there has been virtually no inflation in the Soviet economy over this period the great bulk of this increase corresponds to the real increase in socially consumed goods and services in the Soviet economy.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;McAuley, 1982, p. 153.&lt;/ref&gt; In the 1970s the Soviets spent 23% of their net material product on social consumption, while social spending in the US was 17% of its GNP. Because the concept of net material product excludes much of what is included in GNP, the differential between the two countries is actually considerably greater than what these two figures suggest.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;George and Manning, 1980, p. 32.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Various studies of the value of total public social consumption expenditures show that the absolute amount received per family tends to vary little regardless of the family earnings. Consequently, in relative terms, the social wage adds considerably more to low than to high income families and, like Soviet pricing policy, thereby acts to increase real income equality, that is, living standards are significantly less disparate than the statistics on wage differentials suggest.<br /> <br /> ==== Housing ====<br /> Low cost housing is considered to be a basic right in the USSR. Most of the urban population in the Soviet Union lives in apartment buildings owned either by the industries where they work or by the local government. About half of the apartments are built by industrial enterprises.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 154.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The average rent in the USSR around 1970 was 2-3% of the average urban family budget. This compares to an average of 20-25% before the Revolution, and 25-30% in the USA in 1970.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 138; McAuley, 1979, p. 289; Sherman, 1969, p. 20.&lt;/ref&gt; It has been estimated that in the late 1970s, rent plus utilities (including laundry and telephone) averaged less than 8% of household income; rents have not been increased in the USSR since 1928, as a result the cost of housing as a proportion of income is being continually reduced.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Corrigan et al., 1981, p. 57.&lt;/ref&gt; Income from rents covers only about one-third of the cost of operating and maintaining Soviet apartments. Thus, by absorbing the entire costs of construction/new construction and two-thirds of the costs of upkeep, the state and the enterprises which own the apartments are providing a substantial subsidy to tenants.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;McAuley, 1979, p.289.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Since the 1950s the Soviets have given high priority to apartment construction. In the 1960s and 1970s investment in housing remained fairly constant at about 5% of national income (17% of all investment). In the latter half of the 1970s the Soviets were constructing 2.1 million new housing units a year (providing new housing for 10.5 million people). This means that 4.1% of the entire Soviet population was provided with new housing in each year; this represented one of the highest rates of housing construction in the world.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;George and Manning, 1980, p. 154; ''The USSR in Figures'', 1978, p. 198.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> By 1977 the Soviets had increased the average housing space per dwelling unit to 51.1 square metres (up from 46.8 in 1970). This compares with an average of 85 square metres for Western Europe, and 120 square metres for the average dwelling unit in the USA in 1976.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Feshbach and Davis, 1980, pp. 14-15.&lt;/ref&gt; The size of Soviet apartments in 1977 averaged about the same as US government-constructed mass housing produced during World War II for workers in war industries, that is, working-class housing standards in the USSR are about a generation behind those of the US.<br /> <br /> The rent paid for Soviet housing is a function of the floor space, family earnings, services provided, and the age of the structure. In the Russian Republic, apartment floor space (bedrooms and living rooms) of up to 9 square metres per person, with full services, is paid for at a rate of 16.5 kopecks per metre per month for apartments constructed since 1924. For additional space, however, the rate is three times higher.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;McAuley, 1979, p. 289.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Housing is allocated on the basis of need (usually according to family size) and time spent waiting to live in a certain area; for housing owned by industries special considerations are given to the need to recruit particular categories of (mostly skilled) workers, as well as certain categories of people such as 'Heroes of Socialist Labour'.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;McAuley, 1979, p. 289.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> An individual or family, once allocated housing, is assaulted of security of tenure. By law, tenants of state owned housing can be evicted without rehousing only in such exceptional cases as lengthy absence or systematic destruction of housing. Tenants in housing owned by enterprises can also be evicted when they have voluntarily left the enterprise, committed a serious crime, or been sacked for due cause (a rarity).&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;George and Manning, 1980, pp. 152-3.&lt;/ref&gt; In sharp contrast, tenants in most of the US can normally be evicted at any time for almost any reason, provided notice (usually 30 days) is given. In Soviet apartment buildings, housing committees elected by the residents play an important role in the management of the buildings, including the reallocation of apartments among tenants, and the allocation of additional space. Such committees supervise affairs within the apartments, advise the state housing office, and act as a mechanism for residents who wish to complain to higher administrative offices.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 152; Voinovich, 1976.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== Health Care ====<br /> The Soviet Union has the highest ratio of doctors to population of any country in the world. In 1977 there were 34.6 doctors per 10,000, compared with 17.6 in the US and 15.3 in the UK. It also has one of the highest ratios of hospital beds to people of any country. In 1977 the USSR had 121.3 beds per 10,000 compared to 63.0 in the USA and 89.4 in the UK.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Sivard, 1980, p. 25.&lt;/ref&gt; The Soviet Union has one of the best health services in the world in terms of accessibility and universality of service, as well as in basic quality of primary health care. The very high ratio of doctors to population has encouraged the expansion of medical services to include comprehensive industrial health care, widespread preventative examinations, especially of those most at risk, and frequently, home visits, which encompass some social work functions.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;George and Manning, 1980, p. 114.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the 1969-78 period the USSR increased the share of GNP spent on health, as well as its spending per capita. In 1969 2.3% of its GNP was spent on health (and 13.6% on the military activities); in 1978 2.4% was spent on health (and 12.2% on military activities). This corresponded to a 59% increase in absolute resources allocated to health. Over the same period the Soviet population grew by 8%; thus, health spending per capita increased by 47% between 1969 and 1978. In 1978, the US spent 3.7% of its GNP on health.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfer, 1969-78, 1979, Table 1.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Drugs supplied in hospitals or prescribed for chronic illness (about 70% of all drugs) are provided free. Private practice is legally permitted, but it is heavily taxed and not widely available. Health care is provided both in neighbourhood polyclinics and at work places.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;George and Manning, 1980, p. 124.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The success of Soviet health (and nutrition) policy is revealed by a look at statistics on Soviet life expectancy, which, in the generation after the Revolution, radically increased. In 1900, in the Czarist Empire it was about 30 years, and about 47 years in the US.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Eberstadt, 1981, p. 23.&lt;/ref&gt; The most rapid increase in life expectancy occurred between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s. Nick Eberstadt, a harsh critic both of the Soviet system and of Stalin, said, 'Stalin managed to raise life expectancy in the Soviet Union from about 44 when he assumed total power, to about 62 when he died.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 28.&lt;/ref&gt; During that period the Soviet system was able to improve health and nutrition, both in its European and Central Asian regions, to a standard roughly comparable to that in Western Europe and, by the 1960s, life expectancy in the USSR had reached approximately the same level as in the USA. In the post-1960 period there was minimal increase: between 1960 and 1975 it increased by only 2.0 years, compared to 3.1 for the USA. In the 1970s life expectancy in the USSR stabilized.<br /> <br /> In 1960, in the USSR, life expectancy was 68.4 years, in 1970 70.0 years and in 1975 70.4 years. In 1975, life expectancy in the US for the white population was approximately 71.0 years (8 months longer than in the USSR in the same year), and 67.9 years for the non-white population. In the major advanced capitalist countries in 1975 the figure was slightly higher than in the USSR: United Kingdom, 72.4 years, Japan 72.9, West Germany 71.3 years. In the Latin American countries in 1975, however, it was considerably lower than in the Soviet Union: Mexico 64.7 years, Chile 62.6, Brazil 61.4 and Argentina 68.2 years. In Finland, which prior to 1917 was part of the Russian Empire and is now more industrialized, with a high living standard and which still continues to have close relations with the USSR, life expectancy in 1975 was 70.1 years.*<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;* For a full discussion of trends in Soviet medical care and life expectancy (with emphasis on infant mortality) see A. Szymanski, 'On the Uses of Disinformation to Legitimize Revival of the Cold War: Health and the USSR', in Science and Society, XLV:4 (Winter) 1981.&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== Education ====<br /> In common with primary and secondary education, all higher education is free, and students in higher education who maintain a 'B' average also receive a stipend. Such stipends vary according to the year of study, the subject studied, the type of school and the student's progress; no stipend is paid for a year that must be repeated.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;George and Manning, 1980, p. 87.&lt;/ref&gt; In the mid-1970s university students received 40-60 roubles 2 month and technical school students 30-45 roubles.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;McAuley, 1979, p. 281.&lt;/ref&gt; Admission to higher education is by examinations for specific institutions; there are no IQ tests or general aptitude tests in the USSR. Students who fail one institution's entrance exam can reapply in future years or apply to other institutions.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;George and Manning, 1980, p. 80.&lt;/ref&gt; Advantages are given to higher education applicants with work experience, for example, quotas, extra points on examinations, special tutorial programmes. In 1967, 30% of admissions to higher education were of people who had been working full time.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt; In general, Soviets are actively encouraged to continue with formal education throughout their lives. Indeed, the Soviets have one of the highest rates of attendance at institutions of higher education in the world.<br /> <br /> === Job Rights ===<br /> The Soviet Constitution promises everyone a job. The extreme shortage of labour throughout the economy ensures the reality of this constitutional guarantee; there is no unemployment problem in the USSR. In contrast, unemployment is a serious problem in capitalist countries where a large 'reserve army' of unemployed is a necessary condition of profitability. Further, workers in the USSR have a right to their job — it is very difficult to dismiss a worker, and this rarely occurs. But one consequence of the structural labour shortage resulting from economic planning for rapid economic growth results in a rather high turnover of staff — higher, in fact, than in the USA.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Gregory and Stuart, 1974, pp. 193-211.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Except in experimental enterprises (see below) the legally permissible reasons for dismissing a worker are: (1) liquidation of the enterprise; (2) a worker's unfitness for the job; (3) a worker refusing a transfer within the enterprise; (4) the systematic nonfulfillment of duties; (5) excessive absenteeism; (6) restoration of a predecessor to a job; (7) long term disability, and (8) criminal acts. Simple lack of work is not generally considered sufficient reason to lay off a worker. With few exceptions, workers may be dismissed for any of the above stated reasons only with the concurrence of the local and factory trade union committees. If the union concurs with the management on a dismissal, the worker can appeal to the courts for reinstatement. Studies have shown that about 50% of workers who appeal against dismissal are reinstated by these courts. Appeals on the grounds that dismissal had been effected without the prior approval of the trade union are almost always successful, even if the court finds that sufficient cause had existed for the dismissal of a worker.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Lane and O’Dell, 1978, p. 37; Conquest, 1967, p. 182.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Beginning in the late 1960s some Soviet enterprises have adopted 'the Shchekino Plan' whereby workers can be declared redundant, that is, workers can be dismissed simply because there is no work for them, while the enterprise retains the funds assigned for the dismissed worker's wage. This plan was adopted on an experimental basis to determine whether or not it would free badly needed labour in the expanding sectors of the economy. In 1979 about 10,000 Soviet enterprises were using either the Shchekino or a similar method.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Scherer, 1982, p. 145.&lt;/ref&gt; In selecting workers to be made redundant the enterprises are required to make their judgments in terms of seniority and family circumstances, such as number of dependants, pregnancy, single parenthood. The enterprise is also responsible for finding another, comparable job for the dismissed worker, or, if this is not possible, to pay the full costs of retraining the worker for another job of equivalent skill and providing a stipend for living expenses during the retraining process.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Brown, 1974, p. 192.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In fact, enterprises (experimental or otherwise) rarely discharge workers or declare them redundant. There is a strong tradition and moral feeling shared both by workers and managers that workers are entitled to their job — a tradition reinforced by the economics of the job market. The structural labour shortage, together with the assignment of wage funds to enterprises by the state, motivates them to hoard labour, even if not all their workers are efficiently employed. The difficulty in finding workers means that in order to be able to fulfil future demands of the economic plan, enterprises prefer not to risk reducing their present labour force.<br /> <br /> Republic-wide commissions exist for placing workers with enterprises that need labour. In addition to serving as labour exchanges, where workers and enterprises can systematically explore openings and available workers, they organize recruitment of wage labour, develop proposals for the employment of persons not currently employed (for example, housewives, older people) and participate in decisions for the location of new industries.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Feshbach, 1974, p. 29.&lt;/ref&gt; In the early 1970s about half of new labour came through the use of these exchanges, the remainder was directly negotiated between individual workers and enterprises, through media advertising, posted openings and word of mouth. The average time between jobs in the Russian Republic of the USSR in the early 1970s was about 12-15 days; and less in most other Republics where the labour shortage was even more severe. About 60% of dismissed workers were able to find new employment within ten days of their dismissal.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Brown, 1974.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Since unemployment is not seen as a problem unemployment benefits are limited to two weeks termination pay, given regardless of reason for termination, and, as already noted, free retraining, with a stipend to cover living expenses during any necessary retraining period and for workers declared redundant. In the US, those workers made redundant are entitled to up to 26 weeks of unemployment benefits, conditional upon actively seeking work; at times of, and in areas of high unemployment, this period may be extended to 39 weeks. About 80% of workers in the US are eligible for these unemployment benefits. In 1977, weekly payment averaged 37% of the former weekly wage.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;US Department of Commerce, 1980A, p. 348.&lt;/ref&gt; Workers who leave voluntarily, dismissed for 'misconduct' or 'refusal to obey orders', or who are engaged in a 'labour dispute' are either excluded from any benefits, or eligible for limited payments only. Benefits, eligibility requirements and duration of payments, etc. vary among the various States. In contrast to the USSR, where there is a shortage of labour, the consistently high unemployment rate in the USA, the low level and short duration of unemployment benefits, and conditions for eligibility, together with the right of an enterprise to dismiss a worker for almost any reason at any time, clearly indicates that job security in the USSR is much higher than in the USA.<br /> <br /> Not only is a job considered to be a worker's right, but also working is considered to be a social duty. Soviet law stipulates that no one can live from rents, speculation, profits or black marketing, as such activities are considered to be living off the labour of another — social parasitism. Living off savings or being supported by parents, friends or spouses is, however, nozillegal. There is no law requiring everyone to work, but social pressure is applied against people who live for lengthy periods without themselves working.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Osbom, 1969, p. 141.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> With few exceptions, workers are free to leave their jobs at any time, only during the War emergency and reconstruction from 1940 to 1950 was this right suspended. The constraints on the workers' total freedom to determine where they will work are that for three years graduates of institutions of higher education must work at a job determined by the state, to be selected by the new graduate from a list of vacant positions. In fact, however, this requirement is not strictly enforced, and it is not uncommon for graduates to refuse or to leave such assignments without incurring any penalty. The second exception has been the use of compulsory job assignments in lieu of gaol, especially for minor criminals; this is in accordance with official ideology that productive labour is a good cure for anti-social behaviour and attitudes, and is more effective than confinement. These two forms of compulsory labour assignment account for only a very small portion of total Soviet jobs.<br /> <br /> The eight hour day and the five day working week have been standard since the late 1960s. The 1977 Soviet Constitution sets the maximum work week at 41 hours. Overtime work is restricted, and generally is not permitted except under exceptional circumstances such as: work 'necessary for the defence of the Republic' or for 'averting public disasters or dangers'; 'socially essential' work (for example, transport, water supply, electric power); 'repair and maintenance work where its interruption would put a significant number of workers out of work'; and, 'on the necessary completion of work begun which if not finished during a continuous working period would result in damage to machinery or materials'.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Conquest, 1967, p. 129.&lt;/ref&gt; Enterprise managers have, however, been known to ignore such regulations and to pressure workers to work overtime — they have also been publicly criticized and penalized for such behaviour.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid, p. 131.&lt;/ref&gt; In the USA, overtime is normally compulsory, at the discretion of the employer, although by law it must usually be reimbursed at 1.5 times the normal wage rate; in the USA compulsory overtime at peak production times is common.<br /> <br /> Three weeks paid annual vacation is the statutory standard throughout the Soviet Union, also workers may take additional, unpaid leave. In 1968 the national average number of holidays was 20.9 days per year. Some categories of workers receive additional paid leave, including certain workers in research, education and cultural institutions and those in especially dangerous and difficult occupations.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 128; McAuley, 1979, p. 280.&lt;/ref&gt; There are no legal requirements for paid holidays in the USA although union contracts, which cover about one in four workers, typically stipulate them, and some other non-union employers grant them voluntarily — usually as a reward for length of service. The only related stipulation in US law is that, under some conditions, extra wages must be paid to workers requited to work on public holidays.<br /> <br /> In the USSR those employed on night work normally work a seven, instead of a full eight-hour shift, but receive full shift pay. In certain occupations a six or seven-hour shift only is worked, at full shift pay, because of the dangerous conditions of labour (for example, coal mining) or for other special circumstances (for example, in medical practice).&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Conquest, 1967, p. 132.&lt;/ref&gt; Workers in potentially harmful occupations or in those involving exposure to abnormal temperatures, dirt, humidity, etc., are entitled to the provision of special protective clothing and equipment.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 133.&lt;/ref&gt; Soviet workers are also entitled to a miscellany of other benefits, including free or subsidized vacations, special diets, education, and job retraining, and sanatorium passes, for which there is no statutory equivalent in the USA, except in cases when the stronger unions have been able to secure some of these privileges for their members.<br /> <br /> === Rights of Participation in the Management of Enterprises ===<br /> Article 8 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution stipulates the right of workers to participate in the decision making processes of their 'work collectives'. It reads:&lt;blockquote&gt;Work collectives take part in discussing and deciding state and public affairs, in planning production and social development, in training and placing personnel, and in discussing and deciding matters pertaining to the management of enterprises and institutions, the improvement of working and living conditions and the use of funds allocated both for developing production and for social and cultural purposes and financial incentives.&lt;/blockquote&gt;The goal of Soviet industrial policy is increasingly to 'draw the workers into participation in the work of management'. This is both a realization of the Soviet notion of socialism as workers' power, and in order to encourage increases in production both through utilizing the ideas of workers developed through their practical experience, and boosting morale and productivity by giving workers a strong sense of identity with the activities of their enterprise. According to a prominent US business analyst '...there is little doubt that worker participation goes considerably beyond that found in American firms'.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Granick, 1961, p. 200.&lt;/ref&gt; Studies of socio-political involvement in Soviet factories find that about 45-50% of workers report that they participate actively and regularly in some organization in the factory and that the time spent, and the proportion of workers actively involved within the factory, have increased considerably over time.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Lane and O’Dell, 1978, p. 35.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Workers participate in running enterprises through three major mechanisms: (1) general meetings of workers to discuss the affairs of the enterprise, and the elected representative body of all plant workers (Permanent Production Conferences); (2) the enterprise branches of the unions; and — perhaps the most important — (3) the enterprise branch(es) of the Communist Party organization, of which workers normally compose the overwhelming majority of members. Workers ' power and influence within the enterprises is also facilitated by: (1) various organizations of 'innovators' and experienced workers meeting regularly with the engineers and managers to improve production methods; (2) the organization of young workers (the Young Communist League); and (3) the fact that the rate of upward mobility between the production workers and the administration is quite high — consequently there is little difference in background, experience, life style and attitudes between the production workers and most administrators, in comparison with the West.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Mandel, 1975, p. 126.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === General Enterprise Meetings and the Permanent Production Conferences ===<br /> At the general meetings of an enterprise the administrative personnel must report to the workers on their performance vis-à-vis the goals of the economic plan, as well as meet the needs and serve the interests of the workers. Managers can be and are criticized at these meetings if they fail to perform adequately. At least one pro-capitalist Western analyst of Soviet industrial relations concluded that the general production meetings were at times quite meaningful, and often quite an ordeal for the managers. Granick reports a conversation with one industrial manager who, when asked whether workers would dare to criticize management replied: 'Any director who suppressed criticism would be severely punished. He would not only be removed, he would be tried'.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Granick, 1961, p. 199.&lt;/ref&gt; But usually, general meetings are not regarded by Western observers as very effective channels of worker involvement in decision making. Soviet leaders themselves have often expressed disappointment with the inadequate level of worker participation.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 202.&lt;/ref&gt; A critique of the effectiveness of general meetings of workers as mechanisms of worker participation produced in the USSR in 1957 concluded:&lt;blockquote&gt;At many enterprises the role of production conferences is played down, they are hurriedly convened without the necessary preparation and are held chiefly in brigades and sectors. Factory and workshop meetings are rarely held, which restricts the opportunities of workers and employees (to take part) in solving questions concerning the activity of the workshop and factory as a whole.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Cited in Conquest, 1967, p. 183.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;As a correction 'Permanent Production Conferences' were established; these are representative bodies elected at general meetings of all workers in enterprises with 100 or more workers, and on the whole are regarded as more effective than general meetings. The Permanent Production Conference comprises representatives of workers and management, representatives from the Trade Union Factory Committee, the Party branch, the Young Communist League branch and representatives of the local Scientific and Technical and Inventors and Rationalizers Societies. The Conferences in turn elect a Presidium of from five to 15 members including a chairperson and a secretary. Permanent Production Conferences participate in: drafting and discussing both current one year and long term economic plans; examining questions of organization of production, labour and wages; improving the quality and decreasing the costs of output; securing the successful working of the enterprise and the fulfilment (or over-fulfilment) of the production plan; increasing labour skills and productivity; reducing waste, idle-standing and inefficient use of machinery; and the allocation of capital investment funds, etc.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Conquest, 1967, pp. 183-4.&lt;/ref&gt; Normally, each Permanent Production Conference must meet at least once monthly, and report back to general meetings of all workers at least once every six months. Although these Conferences have led to increased worker participation, they are secondary in authority to enterprise management.<br /> <br /> === The Role of the Enterprise Branches of the Unions ===<br /> The enterprise union branch is an important mechanism of workers' participation in the management of their enterprises. The union branches are involved with the administrators in working out output norms, the overall production and financial plans of the enterprise, the distribution of the enterprise funds, especially the 'socio-cultural', 'housing' and 'material incentive' funds, and the details of the work incentive plan.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Wilczynski, 1970, p. 101.&lt;/ref&gt; Further, the unions, participate in the allocation of funds to improve working conditions as well as supervise the work of the technical and safety inspectors.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Conquest, 1967, pp. 168-73.&lt;/ref&gt; Apparently the unions do, in fact, defend worker's interests, to quote Jerry Hough and Metle Fainsod:&lt;blockquote&gt;...the causes trade union officials espouse in policy debates in the press are generally those that one would anticipate from trade union officials — better working conditions, stricter observance of labour legislation, less managerial arbitrariness, more labour safety, and so forth. In the major conflict on the degree of wage egalitarianism, the trade unions have been a strong proponent of egalitarianism.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Hough and Fainsod, 1979, p. 405.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Local union branches hold a general meeting of all members at least once a month to discuss union business and accomplishments and problems. Local branches annually elect a leadership body — the Trade Union Factory Committee — which carries out the daily affairs of the union and reports back to the membership. Union members participate in the implementation of various union projects, such as managing social insurance funds. Local enterprise union branches also elect representatives to the city, regional, republic and union wide bodies.<br /> <br /> The union factory branch annually negotiates a collective bargaining contract with the enterprise administrators. These contracts are, however, not concerned with wages, since wage policies are set by the central plan and established through a national agreement between the Central Council of Trade Unions and the appropriate ministries and state committees. Soviet reasoning is that wage policy must be set for the country as a whole at one time, and co-ordinated with the establishment of output priorities in order both to realize the intentions of social justice (distribution of consumer goods) and to allocate resources rationally between individual and social consumption. Decentralized wage negotiations could result in inequities between workers' wages and disparities between wages and consumer goods available, with the consequence of either inflation or shortages of goods.<br /> <br /> The local collective bargaining agreements focus on the conditions of labour including work norms, productivity guidelines, retraining, allocation and classification of workers, fixing workers' grades, promotional policies within the enterprise, the specifics of plan fulfilment and bonus policies and safety conditions.<br /> <br /> If an enterprise director refuses to correct safety abuses, the unions have the right to stop production until such time he/she complies; as union inspectors may close any work place found unsafe.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Lane and O’Dell, 1978, pp. 29-31.&lt;/ref&gt; Unions are responsible for increased production, and workers earn bonuses for fulfilling the planned quotas, therefore counter pressures exist on unions and workers to disregard standards of safety and hygiene. The Western press has reported a number of grievances expressed by workers against such conditions when unions have failed to act,&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 32.&lt;/ref&gt; as well as instances of work stoppages because of unsafe conditions.<br /> <br /> Labour Dispute Commissions, composed equally of enterprise administrators and members of the Trade Union Factory Committee, are charged with dealing with most disputes and grievances arising between workers and administrators. These include such matters as: work transfers, payments for inadequate work, the application of output norms and rates; and payments: for time absent from work, overtime, bonuses, unused leave discharge grants; special clothing and food, wage deductions for material damages, and so on. Workers dissatisfied with the resolution of a grievance by the Labour Disputes Commission may, as in the case of dismissals, appeal to the Trade Union Factory Committee and, if they are still dissatisfied, to the regular People's Courts.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Granick, 1961, p. 195.&lt;/ref&gt; Enterprise managers may lodge an appeal against decisions of the Labour Dispute Commission or the Union Factory Committee only to the People's Courts, and only on a point of law: if it is considered that the decision runs counter to labour legislation.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid; Conquest, 1967, p. 182.&lt;/ref&gt; Numerous labour disputes are, in fact, submitted to the courts. Western analysts have found that in about 50% of such cases the courts rule in favour of workers, against management.&lt;ref name=&quot;:0&quot; group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Sherman, 1969, p. 163; Conquest, 1967, pp. 158-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Soviet unions are not permitted to strike; the rationale for this is similar to that operating in respect to centralization of wage agreements. If workers in individual enterprises struck for higher wages or special conditions goods and privileges would accrue to those in the most strategic industries and undermine the ability of society to realize the overall economic plan. It is claimed by the Soviets that the economic plan is essentially democratically determined and operates in the interests of the working class, both as a whole, and in the long term interests of all its major segments, and thus the no strike rule is essential. On the assumption that the plan truly serves the interests of the workers, rather than of the intelligentsia, or some kind of new ruling stratum antagonistic to the working class, then clearly this principle does not operate to oppress the working class.<br /> <br /> Western observers agree that the role and power of Soviet unions have grown since the mid-1950s, and that collective agreements have become more important as mechanisms of establishing rules and determining allocations within enterprises. Grievance machinery has become more effective. Unions have taken on increased power to plan work quotas, to check on administrators and generally to participate in enterprise management.&lt;ref name=&quot;:0&quot; group=&quot;5.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> The philosophy, and largely the practice of Soviet unionism is very different from either the class conscious or the militant business unionism of Western capitalist countries. The underlying philosophy is that there is an essential unity in the workers' interests in increasing production (upon which their living standards depend) and in protecting the workers' interests on the job. Thus, although concrete antagonisms arise, the fundamental interests of the enterprise directors, e.g. to increase production is not in conflict with the fundamental interests of the workers. The trade unions operate to increase production, fulfil the plan, guarantee workers' participation, safety, job security, fair treatment, and other rights. In fact, Western analysts generally report that the atmosphere in Soviet factories tends to differ from that in capitalist factories, in so far as a feeling of collectivity and a strong sense of identification with one's place of work are evident. (See the various sources cited in this section.)<br /> <br /> === The Role of the Enterprise Branch of the Communist Party ===<br /> The local enterprise branch of the Communist Party, composed primarily of production workers, but also including employees and directors, plays a major role as a mechanism of workers' participation in enterprise management. In industrial enterprises, not only does the substantial majority consist of Party members who are industrial workers, but roughly 20-25% of industrial workers in major enterprises are likely to be Party members; members are recruited into the Party after consultation with the other workers in the enterprise. It should be noted that, in the 1970-80 period, 58% of all new Party members were workers and the percentage was substantially higher in industrial areas.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Scherer, 1982, pp. 23, 27, 29.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Party has fundamental responsibility for general political guidance on all levels of enterprise activity, as opposed to concrete administration. Probably, in practice, the power of the factory Party organizations is comparable to that of the enterprise directors, although focused in a different area.<br /> <br /> The general meetings of the enterprise Party branches as well as the Party executive committees they elect, play a central role in guiding the operation of the enterprises.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Lane and O’Dell, 1978, p. 26.&lt;/ref&gt; General branch meetings of the Party hear reports on all aspects of the enterprises' performance as well as suggestions and criticism of non-party workers. The Party organization has access to all enterprise documents to aid it in its supervisory work.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 24.&lt;/ref&gt; Local Party branches also exert considerable influence through their various specialized commissions in the factories. Such commissions include those on such matters as new technology, quality control and fulfilment of the plan.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;George, 1978, pp. 108-9; Dodge, 1968, pp. 68-73.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Party plays a central role in the selection and evaluation of the enterprise directors. Typically, the appointment of all administrative personnel has to be ratified by the enterprise Party committee (this is the practice known as nomenklatura). The norm is that before there can be any appointments or promotion of people in authority there must be a prior discussion with the work force as a whole or with their representative bodies, usually under the guidance of the Party's enterprise committee.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Lane and O’Dell, 1978, p. 26.&lt;/ref&gt; In the 1970s there was a significant debate in the Soviet Union about whether or not the work force as a whole should have the right actually to elect their enterprise's administrators, rather than simply be consulted as part of the selection process.<br /> <br /> Further, the local Party, together with the Young Communist League and representatives of the trade unions, form an 'Attestation Committee' which monitors the administrators' performance. This Committee is empowered to remove directors from their positions if their performance is unsatisfactory as well as to have them transferred or rewarded.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 24-5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === Job Rights in the USA ===<br /> Workers in the USA have considerably fewer rights than workers in the USSR. Generally the rights of US workers are limited to: (1) organizing into a union and bargaining collectively with their employers (written into law in 1935 with the passage of the Wagner Act, a right exercised by less than 25% of the US labour force in 1980), (2) a safe work place (largely guaranteed since 1970 by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration); (3) not to be subjected to discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin (guaranteed in the Civil Rights Act of 1964); and (4) certain rights to wages (minimum wage, overtime, as well as some protection for money put into pension funds), mostly guaranteed by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Outside these four areas workers have almost no rights, and can be dismissed, demoted, or otherwise reassigned or punished by employers at will, except when a collective bargaining agreement exists, signed with a union by an employer restricting the employer's rights.<br /> <br /> Workers in the USA are neither guaranteed employment, not, once employed, do they acquire any rights in their particular job. An essential aspect of private capitalism is that the owners and managers of enterprises maintain fundamental control over assignment, hiring and dismissal of workers, in order to allocate their resources to maximize their profits. Even strong unions make few inroads into the basic management prerogatives, except in the areas of seniority and procedures for promotion or dismissal. Seniority establishes priority in layoffs, and often in promotions too. In unionized industries seniority is the nearest equivalent to the Soviet statutory provision of guaranteed employment and vested rights in a job.<br /> <br /> US workers have no statutory rights to participate in management, and only rarely do collective bargaining agreements significantly infringe on management prerogatives in running enterprises. Workers are considered the 'agents' of owners and managers, and thus, as the means whereby to make profits for capital.<br /> <br /> Except in exercising the four types of job rights guaranteed to US workers by law, there are no formal freedoms guaranteed to workers (as there is in the USSR). Workers can be dismissed or otherwise punished for their statements or other activities, on or off the job, if these should displease their employer. The only protected activities for workers in the private sector are those in pursuit of unionization or union activity, or in securing rights under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, Civil Rights Act or Fair Labor Standards Act. Workers in the state sector, however, do have rights of speech and association, even if these displease their employer: state workers cannot be dismissed for reasons of their beliefs, nor statements and political activities. In 1974 the US Supreme Court extended the legally guaranteed right of free speech to those companies 'deeply involved' in work for the federal government.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ewing, 1977, pp. 6-11, 30, 100-5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Generally, US workers may not refuse an employer's orders even if to carry through such orders is considered by an employee to be immoral, improper or even illegal, with the exception of engaging in sexual relations — sexual harassment — against which protection does exist. The employer maintains his right to dismiss any worker who refuses to obey such orders; even if an employer commits a crime, workers dismissed for refusing to participate in it will not necessarily be reinstated.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ewing, 1977, p. 8.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Employers are entitled to examine the contents of an employee's locker, desk, files, or other personal effects whether or not he or she is present and with or without their permission.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ewing, 1977, p. 8.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The National Labor Relations Board in the US guarantees workers in most industries the right to have a union with which management must 'bargain in good faith', provided that a majority of workers in the appropriate 'bargaining unit' vote for a union to represent them.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Davis, 1972, pp. 27-8.&lt;/ref&gt; In the US the state places restrictions upon what can be included in a collective bargaining agreement. The law prohibits the inclusion in such a contract such matters as: an agreement to hire members of a union only (the closed shop); in about 40% of the States of the US, the requirement that after a certain period of time, all employees must join a union (the union shop); an agreement that an employer must discharge an employee (for any reason other than non-payment of dues in a union shop where such is legal); agreements to select the employer's collective bargaining representatives; agreements not to handle the products of a third party (i.e. so called 'hot-cargo' agreements which prohibit the employers from handling the goods of firms considered 'unfair' by the union). The state also prohibits many forms of labour activity, such as sympathy strikes, secondary boycotts, picketing and mass picketing, even when there is no imminent threat of violence. The US government prohibits strikes over matters relating to jurisdiction, strikes by federal employees, and, for up to 80 days, strikes in sectors deemed by the President to be crucial for the economy.<br /> <br /> The US government stipulates matters that collective bargaining may concern itself with if either party wants it discussed — so called 'mandatory items'. These include wages, safety, benefits, discharge, shift differentials, vacations, holidays, hours, strikes, etc. There is no requirement that any particular outcome has to be reached on such items, only that they must be discussed and that it is legal to strike over them. There are items which are considered neither 'mandatory' or illegal. These so called 'voluntary' items may be included in a collective bargaining agreement but only when acceptable to both parties. If management refuses to discuss such items the union is prohibited by law from striking over them. Such items excluded by law from inclusion in agreements, unless management agrees to them without coercion, cover, for example, agreements for the union to ratify promotions or demotions in the supervisory ranks; requirements that the company contribute to industry-wide funds, or strike insurance funds; the prices a company charges for food in its cafeteria.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Taylor-Witney, 1971, p. 349.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Once a US labour agreement is signed it has the force of law (unlike many European countries, such as the UK) and is enforcible in the courts. Generally, the union abandons the right to strike during the duration of the contract and, as well, commits its members to specified conditions of labour. Strikes in violation of the contract are thus illegal, and participants as well as the union itself are subject to legal penalties.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 322, 328, 333, 349, 413, 417,447, 479; Richardson, 1977, pp. 99, 101, 114-5, 117; Davcy, 1972, p. 77.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the area of occupational health and safety, US workers, since 1970, have greater protection than their Soviet counterparts. The Occupational Health and Safety Act of 1970 requires that every employer 'shall' provide their employees with a place in which they can work free from 'known perils'. Employers must by law furnish a work environment free from recognized hazards that cause, or are likely to cause, death or serious physical damage. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) set up by the Act has developed detailed criteria to safeguard employees covering virtually all aspects of the work environment. These criteria deal with a wide range of practices, means, methods, operations and processes, both those applying to highly diversified employments ('horizontal standards') and those applicable only to specific employments ('vertical standards'). OSHA' rules are both specific (mandating specific safe practices) and result oriented (leaving it to the employer to devise the specific means whereby an acceptable level of safety or toxicity is obtained). The tendency over time has been for result oriented programmes to grow at the expense of those that impose specific practices on employers. The two most important aspects of safety rights under the OSHA law are those dealing with toxic substances and hazardous physical agents, and the requirement of protective guards for machines.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Commerce Gearing House Guidebook, 1977, pp. 8, 9, 36, 57, 74-5; Anton, 1979, pp. 90-110, 126.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Soviet Constitution, as well as legislation, specifies that a safe working environment should be provided, but although the unions have the power to implement this legal right (including the power to refuse to work in unsafe conditions), most observers report that the general safety and toxicity standards in Soviet enterprises is less rigorous than in the US.<br /> <br /> === Conclusion ===<br /> Generally, the Soviet system of economic rights is considerably more advanced than that cither in the USA or Western capitalist countries at a similar level of economic development, although the social welfare systems of many Northern European capitalist countries, with considerably wealthier economies, are comparable in many respects. The Soviet system is especially advanced in the area of job rights; tremendous advances over their own past have been made in providing basic economic security and adequate standard of living for their working people.<br /> <br /> The Soviet system's accomplishments in the provision of economic and social benefits is generally conceded even by most dissidents and emigrés. Once they have settled in the West, emigrés frequently express stronger support for the Soviet system of health, education and social security than they did upon emigration. The writings of dissidents demonstrate that their criticisms are not of the welfare services and job rights, but of the political system. To quote from a study of emigré attitudes:&lt;blockquote&gt;It is evident from both the quantitative data and the qualitative impressions gathered from the personal interviews, that the refugees most favour those aspects of the Soviet system which cater to their desire for welfare benefits. Such institutions form the cornerstone of the type of society they would like to live in.&lt;ref group=&quot;5.&quot;&gt;Cited in George and Manning, 1980, p. 170.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> === References ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;5.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> == 6. The Land of the Free ==<br /> The remainder of this book is devoted primarily to an examination of the most central (for Westerners) and controversial aspect of human rights: the question of civil liberties. This chapter examines the history of formal civil liberties in the US, and in the following chapter the history of civil liberties (tolerance and repression) in the USSR from the Bolshevik Revolution to the mid-1950s is examined. The penultimate chapter deals with the level of tolerance and repression and the situation of the dissident movement in the USSR in the last generation. In the final chapter an attempt is made to generalize from the experience of the US and the USSR since their respective revolutions to the present, in order to develop a general theory of the variation (comparatively and over time) in the degree of tolerance/repression or civil liberties in any society.<br /> <br /> This present chapter attempts to show that, in fact, there has been no qualitative difference between the civil liberties granted to those who attack the fundamental institutions of US society and the civil liberties granted to those who attack the fundamental institutions of any other society. Whenever dissidence has threatened to promote mass-based assaults on the prevailing property and state system, or the ability of the state to mobilize for external war or intervention, it has been repressed in the US as surely and thoroughly as it has been in the Soviet Union (see the following two chapters). Such is the nature of any state.<br /> <br /> === The American Revolution and Civil Liberties ===<br /> During the American War of Independence from Great Britain (1775-83) there were few civil liberties for Loyalists in areas controlled by the rebels. In this respect, as well as others, the birth of the American Republic was no different from any other revolutionary war.<br /> <br /> There was considerable Loyalist sympathy among the colonists. Approximately one-third of white adults sympathized with the crown and supported British rule against the Americans. It has been estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 Americans served with the British army against the revolutionaries. In 1780 there were perhaps 8,000 Loyalists in the British regular army while Washington's army numbered only 9,000.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Brown, 1969, pp. 97, 227.&lt;/ref&gt; Loyalists were active in all aspects of mobilization and support of the British cause, as well as in direct military actions against the independence forces. Because the exercise of speaking, writing, and of other civil liberties in support of the King endangered the rebel cause, these 'human rights' were suppressed. Everywhere there was unlimited freedom to support the rebel cause, but support of the King, or even criticism of the rebels, brought tar and feathers, if not gaol. 'Liberty of speech belonged solely to those who spoke the speech of liberty.'&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Levy, 1960, p. 176.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Repression of loyalist sentiments began in the mid-1760s with the formation of the Sons of Liberty, who engaged in 'patriotic' violence and intimidation against Tory publishers and other vocal supporters of the King. Boycotts, riotous demonstrations, and mob violence became the fate of authors of articles, pamphlets and newspapers that reflected support of Britain.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Whipple, 1927, p. 2.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Beginning in 1775, states started passing legislation making it a seditious act to libel or defame Congress or the state assemblies; by 1778 all states had such legislation. Eight states formally banished prominent Tories.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 6.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1776, the Congress urged all the states to enact laws to prevent people from being 'deceived and drawn into erroneous opinion'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Levy, 1960, p. 181.&lt;/ref&gt; Loyalty tests and oaths became common. Those who refused to swear that 'the war of the Colonies was just and necessary' and 'renounce all allegiance and obedience to George III and promise fair and true allegiance' to his State were subject to political, legal and civil punishments, including disenfranchisement, loss of legal rights, confiscation of property, banishment, disarming, special taxes, loss of jobs and imprisonment. To practice a profession, one had to secure a certificate of loyalty. In all states, Tories were deprived of the right to vote and prohibited from holding any office. Basic civil rights, such as the right to buy or sell land, travel, or serve on a jury, were denied to Tories in most states.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Whipple, 1927, ch. 1; Brown, 1969, ch. 5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Denunciation of the patriot cause or utterance of remarks deemed to undermine it were severely punished. Legislation was common which imposed penalties from heavy fines or gaol sentences to death and forfeiture of property for utterance of opinions denying the independent authority of the new states and asserting the sovereignty of the King.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Levy, 1960, ch. 5.&lt;/ref&gt; Loyalists were banned from the teaching profession.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Brown, 1969, p. 127; Whipple, 1927, p. 5.&lt;/ref&gt; They were forcibly moved en masse from lesser to greater secure areas, especially when an area was under threat from the British. For example, Rhode Island forcibly relocated some of its Loyalists to the northern part of the state, and New York and New Jersey's Loyalists were shifted to Connecticut.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Brown, 1969, p. 127.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1777 the Continental Congress advised the states to confiscate Loyalist estates. All the states levied special taxes on, or confiscated, considerable numbers of Loyalist properties, including the large Loyalist landed properties in the Hudson River valley.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> As the crisis between Britain and the colonies deepened after 1765, newspapers and printers came under increasing pressure to ban Loyalist or even neutralist material. By 1774, only Boston and New York had a Loyalist Press, and in 1775 only New York. Violence and boycott had done its work even before the Declaration of Independence.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 91.&lt;/ref&gt; During the revolution, Committees of Censorship were set up. The Newport Committee of Inspection justified its suppression of Loyalist printed material by arguing that freedom of the press meant freedom to print 'liberal sentiments', but not 'wrong sentiments respecting the measures now carrying on for the recovery and establishment of our rights'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Levy, 1960, p. 177.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Editors who dared to publish articles critical of the rebels had their presses destroyed and were banished and imprisoned. In early 1776 the printer of a Loyalist tract in New York City had his press broken into and the plates and copies destroyed. Every printer in New York immediately received a copy of the following communique:&lt;blockquote&gt;Sir, if you print, or suffer to be printed in your press anything against the rights and liberties of America, or in favor of our inveterate foes, the King, Ministry, and Parliament of Great Britain, death and destruction, ruin and perdition, shall be your portion. Signed, by order of the Committee of tarring and feathering Legion.&lt;/blockquote&gt;After this, there were no more Loyalist publications printed in New York City.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p.179.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The American revolutionaries systematically employed revolutionary tenor to intimidate Loyalists and inspire revolutionary sentiments. General Nathanael Greene, commander of the American Southern Continental Army from 1780 to 1783, instructed his commanders that the American partisans were 'to strike terror into our enemies and give spirit to our friends'. Greene described a partisan raid against Loyalist supporters as follows. 'They made a dreadful carnage of them, upward on one hundred were killed and most of the rest cut to pieces. It has had a very happy effect on those disaffected persons of which there are too many in this country.'&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Cited in Chomsky and Herman, 1979b, p. 43.&lt;/ref&gt; Greene's scientific understanding of the role of terror in a revolutionary situation in intimidating counter-revolutionaries, while inspiring the morale of the revolutionaries, has been understood by other revolutionaries before and since.<br /> <br /> Not until after the War of 1812 did the various laws discriminating against Tories finally disappear from the statute books.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Whipple, 1927, p. 7.&lt;/ref&gt; The conclusion of peace with Great Britain did not mean the end of persecution of the Loyalists, in fact in some areas persecution increased. Loyalists who had fled or been banished, and tried to return to their homes, often met violence, public humiliation, imprisonment, deportation and even death. Loyalists who were allowed to settle peacefully in their old home areas were often fined and denied political rights.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Brown, 1969, pp. 174-8.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> A great many Loyalists fled (or were forced out of) rebel areas. There was a total of between 80,000 and 100,000 Loyalist refugees who left the 13 colonies during the Revolution, about 4% of the white population (compared to one-half of 1% who left France during the French Revolution).&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 192.&lt;/ref&gt; Thousands fled New York City in panic when the British withdrew; New York had been a haven of Loyalist refugees from Revolutionary persecution and terror throughout the Revolutionary War. In one month alone, 170 ships overcrowded with Tory 'boat people' fled the impending occupation of the city by the Revolutionaries 'on their top-heavy decks were huddled a wretched throng of soldiers and refugees'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chomsky and Herman, 1979b, p. 45.&lt;/ref&gt; Some Loyalists returned to Great Britain, some other nationals returned to their original homelands, some settled in the Caribbean, but about half ended up in Canada: about 35,000 in Nova Scotia and 7,000 in what was to become Ontario. Until 1798, Loyalists continued to migrate to Canada, especially upper Canada. By 1812 about 80% of all white inhabitants of upper Canada had been born in the US (80% of these having left the US since 1783). Loyalist ideology, formed by the experience of persecution and refugee status, long remained a potent force in Canadian nationalism.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Brown, 1969, pp. 192-7.&lt;/ref&gt; The Loyalist flight out of revolutionary America was comparable to that of the flow of anti-revolutionaries after many other revolutions since that time, for example, China, Russia, Vietnam, Eastern Europe. But it should be noted that of 20th Century revolutions only the Cuban (as a matter of deliberate policy) has produced, relatively, a significantly higher number of permanent refugees than did the American Revolution. The percentage of refugees from China or Russia was lower than that reached after the American Revolution. There were, for example, about 2.5 million refugees from the Russian Revolution — almost 1.5% of that country's population.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Isaacs, 1947, p. 40.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === Federalists vs Jeffersonians: 1798-1808 ===<br /> In this period of American history there was sharp conflict between the forces that sponsored the US Constitution — with its centralization of powers, aristocratic orientation, hostility to the interests of small farmers and favour towards the slave owners and wealthy merchants who were the backbone of the ruling Federalist Party, which was hostile to the democratic influences of the French Revolution — and the Jeffersonian Republicans supported by the small farmers who had resisted the implementation of the Constitution, favouring instead greater popular democracy. The Jeffersonians were generally sympathetic to developments in France. In the face of rising public support for the Jeffersonians and growing disenchantment with Federalist principles, the Federalist administration of John Adams attempted to repress criticism through the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chaffee, 1941, p. 27; Levy, 1960, p. 198; Whipple, 1927, pp. 21-31.&lt;/ref&gt; The sedition act punished 'false, scandalous and malicious writings' against the government. The text of its most relevant section follows:&lt;blockquote&gt;Section 2... That if any person shall write, print, utter or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered, or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, etc... any false, scandalous, and malicious writings against the government of the United States, or either House of the Congress... or the President, with intent to bring them into contempt or disrepute or to excite against them... the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition in the United States, or to excite any unlawful combination therein for opposing or resisting any law — or any act of the President of the United States done in pursuance of any such law, or of the powers vested in him by the Constitution or to resist, oppose, or defeat any such law or act, or to aid, encourage, or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation, against the United States, their people, or government, then such person, being thereof convicted before any court in the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Whipple, 1927, p. 22.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;President Adams eagerly urged its enforcement. An associate Justice of the US Supreme Court who presided over some of the Sedition Act trials, argued 'that falsehoods and scandals against the government should be punished with becoming rigour'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Whipple, 1927, p. 22.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Alien and Sedition Acts were used by the Federalists against newspaper editors and other prominent personalities who were enemies of their party. Twenty-five persons were arrested between 1798 and 1801 under the sedition law, eleven cases came to trial and ten persons were convicted. The most important of the prosecutions were against the leading Republican newspapers in the country: ''The Aurora'' (Philadelphia), ''The Examiner'' (Richmond). ''The Argus'' (New York) and ''The Independent Chronicle'' (Boston).&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Whipple, 1927, p. 25.&lt;/ref&gt; The trials against the leading Republican newspaper editors were heavily biased against the defendants with prejudiced Federalist judges closely guiding the proceeding and juries selected on account of their Federalist sympathies.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 26.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The greatest punishment enacted under the Sedition Act, however, was not against a newspaper publisher, but against a labour radical, David Brown, who, in October 1798, erected a liberty pole in Dedham, Massachusetts, with the words: 'No Stamp Act, no Sedition Act, no alien bills, no land tax, downfall to the tyrants of America, peace and retirement to the President, long live the vice-President and the minority; may moral virtue be the basis of civil government. ' As a result he was arrested and sentenced to 18 months in gaol.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 26.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> When the Jeffersonians displaced the Federalists in 1801, all those who were in prison under the Sedition Act were pardoned and all fines were eventually repaid (some not until 1850) by Congress. Once in power, however, the Jeffersonians began to repress the Federalist editors, just as previously they themselves had been repressed, but not by means of the Sedition Act, which expired in 1801. In 1804, a Federalist printer in New York, Croswell, was indicted for 'scandalizing, traducing and vilifying' the President and for 'alienating from him the obedience, fidelity and allegiance of the citizens of New York' by printing a 'malicious libel' in his paper. In Connecticut, in 18006, a federal grand jury teturned indictments of seditious libel against a Superior Court judge and the editors of the Federalist Connecticut ''Conrant'' — a total of six people.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 36; Levy 1969, pp. 302-3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Sedition laws did not die with the resolution of the conflict between the Federalists and Jeffersonians. A number of state governments themselves passed sedition acts. For example, Tennessee, in 1817, passed the following act:&lt;blockquote&gt;Whoever shall be guilty of uttering seditious words or speeches, spreading abroad false news, writing or dispersing scurrilous libels against the state or general government, disturbing or obstructing any lawful officer in executing his office, or of instigating others to cabal and meet together, to contrive, invent, suggest, or incite rebellious conspiracies, riots, or any manner of unlawful feud or differences, thereby to stir the people up maliciously to contrive the ruin and destruction of the peace, safety, and order of the Government, or shall knowingly conceal such evil practices, shall be punished by fine and imprisonment at the discretion of the court and jury trying the case, and may be compelled to give good and sufficient security for his or her good behavior during the courts' pleasure, and shall be incapable of bearing any office of honor, trust, or profit in the State government for the space of three years. It shall be the duty of the judge to give this section in charge to the grand jury, and no prosecutor shall be required to an indictment under this section.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 31-2.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> === The Conflict over Slavery and Civil Liberties: 1830-77 ===<br /> The denial of basic civil liberties during this period was extensive. The most blatant repression of the human rights' of speech, assembly, publication, movement, etc., was the denial of even a semblance of civil liberties to the slaves in the plantation system, in both the seceding and non-seceding states. There were fundamental restrictions on the formal liberties both of white abolitionists and anti-secessionist forces in the South, and pro-Southern forces in the North, as well as on the liberties of anti-Reconstruction forces in the South after 1865.<br /> <br /> ==== The Abolitionists ====<br /> Until 1828, agitation against slavery in the South was tolerated. But after 1828 the various Southern states initiated laws prohibiting speaking or publishing against slavery, and mob violence against abolitionists (informally sanctioned by the Southern states) became prevalent. A typical Southern law read: 'If a person by speaking or writing maintains that owners have no right of property in their slaves, he shall be confined in gaol not more than one year and fined not exceeding $500.' Virginia, in the 1850s, passed legislation banning publications which tended to incite insurrections, under penalty of death. In the 1830s, a teacher of botany, Dr. Reuben Crandall was gaoled in Washington, DC, for eight months for possession and lending of anti-slavery papers. From 1828 to 1860, there were numerous examples of abolitionists being beaten and run out of town, their meetings being broken up, their presses smashed, and halls burned down both in the South and the North.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 89, 90.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Anti-slavery literature was banned from the federal mails in the South through the actions of local postmasters. In 1836, Virginia passed a law authorizing postmasters to exclude 'incendiary publications' and empowering justices of the peace to 'burn publicly' such condemned matter, and to gaol anyone knowingly subscribing to or receiving abolitionist literature. The postmaster of Lynchburg, Virginia sent the following letter to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune:&lt;blockquote&gt;Sir: I inform you that I shall not, in future, deliver from this office the copies of the 'Tribune' which come here, because I believe them to be of that incendiary character which are forbidden circulation by the laws of the land, and a proper regard for the safety of society. You will, therefore, discontinue them.<br /> <br /> Respectfully,<br /> <br /> R.H. Glass, Postmaster.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 112.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Threats to property, in this case in human beings, was not tolerated, and the 'human rights' of critics of slavery were systematically repressed. As in all civil wars, there were no civil liberties for opponents in the American civil war.<br /> <br /> ==== War Measures ====<br /> Southern sympathizers, and even neutrals, were systematically repressed in the North. Habeas corpus was suspended by President Lincoln in April 1861 in the region between Washington and Philadelphia, and in July the suspension was extended to New York. In September 1862 there was a general suspension of the writ of habeas corpus because, according to Lincoln, 'disloyal persons are not adequately restrained by the ordinary process of law'. Lincoln's writ (ratified by Congress in March 1863), read:&lt;blockquote&gt;During the existing insurrection... all rebels and insurgents, their aiders and abetters, within the United States and all persons discouraging voluntary enlistments, resisting military drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practices... shall be subject to martial law and liable to trials and punishments by courts-martial or military commission:<br /> <br /> Second, that the writ of habeas corpus is suspended in respect to all persons arrested, or who are now, or hereafter during the rebellion shall be, imprisoned in any fort, camp, arsenal, military prison, or other place of confinement, by any military authority, or by the sentence of any court-martial or military commission.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 131-2.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Thus, the bill of rights was suspended for the duration of the war for Confederate sympathizers and neutralists. Lincoln, towards the end of the war, justified suspension of civil liberties by arguing that it was necessary to protect the Constitution:&lt;blockquote&gt;My oath to preserve the Constitution imposed on me the duty of preserving by every indispensable means that government, that nation, of which the Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the Constitution? By general law, life and limb must be protected, yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life, but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong I assumed this ground and I now avow it. I could not feel that to the best of my ability I had even tried to save the Constitution, if to save slavery, or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of the government, country, and Constitution, together.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;lbid.,p. 129.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The commanders of the various military departments used their authority to suppress Confederate sympathizers by taking local measures, the most famous of which was General Order 38 of General Burnside, commander of the Department of the Ohio, which read in part '...all persons found within our lines who shall commit acts for the benefit of the enemies of our country will be tried as spies or traitors, and, if convicted, will suffer death.... The habit of declaring sympathy for the enemy will not be allowed in this department'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 136-7.&lt;/ref&gt; Newspapers with Confederate sympathies were suppressed throughout the North, through imprisonment of editors and denial of the mails, as well as executive orders and the military forcibly suppressing papers or forbidding their circulation in certain areas. Henry Reeves of the Greenport, L.1. ''Republican'' was sent to military prison for the treasonable character of his paper. James McMaster, editor of the New York ''Freeman's Appeal'', was arrested in September 1861 and charged with editing a disloyal newspaper. ED. and J.R. Flanders of the ''New York'' ''Frankilin Gazetze'' were imprisoned without trial. James Wall, a contributor to ''The New York Daily News'' (which was suppressed by banning from the US mails) was arrested and placed in military prison because of the pro-Southern articles he had written for that paper.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 151-4.&lt;/ref&gt; Denial of the use of the mails (any class) became a tool to suppress insufficiently patriotic papers. In addition to ''The New York Daily News'' excluded papers included ''The South'' and ''The Exchange'' (both from Baltimore), ''The New York Day Book'', ''The Brooklyn Eagle'', ''The New York Journal of Commerce'' and ''The Freeman's Journal''.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 150.&lt;/ref&gt; The Postmaster General of the US argued in defence of the banning of pro-Confederate or neutralist papers from the mails, as follows:&lt;blockquote&gt;The freedom of the press is secured by high constitutional sanction. But it is freedom and not license.... It cannot aim blows at the Government and the Constitution... and at the same time claim its protection. While, therefore, this department neither enjoyed nor claimed the power to suppress such treasonable publications, but left them free to publish what they pleased, it could not be called upon to give them circulation. The mails established by the United States could not upon any known principle of law or public right, be used for its destruction.... I would not, except in time of war, have adopted the arguments of my predecessors.... These citations show that a course of precedents has existed for twenty-five years — known to Congress, not annulled or restrained by act of Congress — in accordance with which newspapers and other printed matter decided by the postal authorities to be insurrectionary or treasonable, or in any degree exciting to treason or insurrection, have been excluded from the mails... solely by authority of the executive administration. This under the rules as settled by the Supreme Court... as applicable to the executive construction of laws with whose execution the departments are specially charged, would establish my action as within the legal construction of the postal acts....&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 151-2.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The Army of the Republic directly suppressed pro-Confederate papers. In St. Louis ''The Missouri State Journal'', ''The Herald'' and ''The Evening News'' were suspended. All newspapers in Missouri, except those in St. Louis, had to furnish advance copy of each issue to the army for inspection before they could go to press. ''The Chicago Times'' was suppressed in June 1863 by order of the Department of the Ohio. In May 1864 ''The Baltimore Evening Transcript'' was suppressed and ''The Cincinnati Enquirer'' was forbidden to circulate in Kentucky, by order of the military.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 155-8.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> From February 1862 to the end of the war approximately 13,500 civilians were arrested and confined in military prisons for activities in support of the Confederacy. In addition, there were many imprisonments in state and Federal prisons. The total number of Northern political prisoners of all categories was approximated 38,000.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 133-4.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== Reconstructing the South ====<br /> Between March and July 1867 the US Congress passed legislation putting the South under military rule (The Reconstruction Acts). The rebel states were divided into five military districts with all civil and judicial power invested in the army, either to be exercised directly or indirectly through supervising civilian administrations. Under army supervision a general registration of voters took place, with only those able to prove that they did not participate in the rebellion eligible to register. The anti-rebel electorate so created was authorized to elect delegates to constitutional conventions in each state to write new constitutions (generally far more democratic than previous state constitutions) and elect a legislature. Once such reconstructed states satisfied the army and Washington, they were readmitted into the Union. Until Congress had admitted those elected as representatives the state governments remained provisional.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Craven, 1969, pp. 205-6.&lt;/ref&gt; The electorate that came into being as a result of the Reconstruction Acts consisted of a total of 700,000 Blacks and 660,000 whites. It is estimated that a total of almost 200,000 active Confederates were disenfranchised.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Allen, 1937, p. 106.&lt;/ref&gt; Those who participated in the Confederacy were also barred from holding office, both in the new, reconstructed states, and as their representatives to Washington.<br /> <br /> In 1872 an amnesty act reduced the number of disqualified Confederates (who were denied political rights) from between 150,000 and 200,000 to between 300 and 400. In general, however, leading Confederates, although deprived of political rights, were treated leniently, certainly compared to the working-class and peasant rebels who were repressed in other civil wars (e.g. the Paris Commune of 1871). Only one Confederate Captain Henry Wirz, the commander of the Confederate prisoner of war camp at Andersonville, Georgia — was executed. Many leading confederates were gaoled for relatively short periods. But even the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, served only two years in gaol. General Lee was not imprisoned at all, although his citizenship was not restored until the mid-1870s.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Camejo, 1976, p. 59.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> During the reconstruction period the military government of the South limited freedom of the press. In many states newspapers were suppressed and pressured not to oppose reconstruction policy.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Whipple, 1927, p. 158.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In response to the organized violence and intimidation of the Ku Klux Klan during the reconstruction period, the military intervened to suppress the organization. In 1871, President Grant declared martial law in nine counties of South Carolina suspending habeus corpus and arresting between 500 and 600 persons. Between 1870 and 1876 there were 1,200 convictions for interfering with the political and civil rights of citizens.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Whipple, 1927, p. 158.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> As in all civil wars, there were refugees. Many secessionist leaders and confederate officials, fearing harsh treatment, fled the country, along with numerous slave owners who migrated to the slave holding areas of Latin America (mostly Cuba and Brazil).&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;''New York Times'', 19 August 1979, p. 55; Patrick, 1967, p. 27.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1878 and 1879, with the withdrawal of the Army from the South and the overthrow of the Reconstruction governments and the consequent reduction of the Black population to semi-slave status, many Blacks attempted to flee the South. A systematic effort was made by plantation owners and local government officials to prevent this emigration. River crossings were blocked and Blacks attempting to leave the South were forcibly returned to the areas they had left, this in order to guarantee the plantation labour force. Needless to say, there were few effective civil liberties or political rights for Black people in the South from the end of Reconstruction until the 1860s; especially after the 1890s when Blacks were almost completely disenfranchised.<br /> <br /> === The Repression of the Working-Class Movement: 1886-1914 ===<br /> With the rapid growth of the industrial working class, and the spread of anarchist and socialist ideas and organizations, as well as militant trade unionism in this class, repression (including the denial of basic civil liberties) exercised by the powers that controlled the US state as a mechanism to contain the growing danger to their hegemony grew in importance. In the US state militias had been used against strikes as early as 1828; but the first massive use of federal troops was to suppress the spontaneous strikes and large scale rioting that occurred in working-class districts throughout Northern cities in the summer of 1877.<br /> <br /> In America, the first 'red scare' and general repression of the working-class left occurred in 1886 and 1887 in the aftermath of a general strike in Chicago for the eight hour working day. The strike, which began on 1 May 1886, together with the repression that followed, became such a cause celebre in the world-wide socialist and union movement, that it became an annual one day event throughout most of the world. Today its official commemoration is as a public holiday in all the socialist countries, as well as in many others. At a rally in Chicago on 4 May 1880, called to protest at the killing of strikers by the Chicago police, a still unidentified person threw a dynamite bomb into the ranks of the police killing a number of them. In the anti-radical hysteria that followed, the leadership of the anarchist working-class movement in Chicago was arrested and charged with murder, not on the basis of actually having any involvement in the incident, but for preaching anarchist ideology which, allegedly, inspired whoever did the deed. Two of those who were tried, Albert Parsons and George Engel, were not even at the rally when the bomb was thrown. However, these two anarchist leaders, along with two others, were hung, having been convicted at various times in the past of having 'uttered and printed incendiary and seditious language, practically advising the killing of policemen, etc...'&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Whipple, 1927, pp. 255-8; Boyer and Moráis, 1955, pp. 91-104.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The arrest of the Chicago anarchists was followed by police raids on radical homes, headquarters, and presses all over the city. Chicago's gaols were packed, the presses of foreign language newspapers were smashed and the offices of trade unions and other working class organizations were ransacked. Police in other cities soon followed suit as a national 'red scare' hysteria spread. The entire executive board of the Knights of Labor in Milwaukee was arrested and charged with 'rioting and conspiracy', four officers of the Knights of Labor in Pittsburgh were arrested and charged with conspiracy, and the executive board of District 75 of the Knights of Labor in New York, which was engaged in a strike against the Third Avenue Elevated, was also arrested. The Knights of Labor suffered grievously from the suppression and hostile publicity generated by this first national red scare, and soon after folded as an effective labour organization.<br /> <br /> States began to use martial law to suppress strikes in 1892. Declarations of martial law allowed the imprisonment of hundreds of strikers without charges, and suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. In order to suppress strikes martial law was declared in Colorado on ten separate occasions. At Cripple Creek, Colorado in 1903-04, 1,000 troops were sent into the town. The militia immediately rounded up 600 strikers and held them for weeks without charge or trial, denying writs of habeas corpus. During the 1903-04 strike a total of 1345 people were arrested and held. General Sherman Bell, commander of the militia, was made famous by his response to lawyers' writs when he said, 'Habeas corpus, hell. We'll give 'em post mortems', and his equally famous 'To hell with the Constitution! We're not following the Constitution!'&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Boyer and Moráis, 1955, pp. 152-3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Coeur d'Alene, Idaho in 1892 saw a similar event. Martial law was declared by the government during a miners' strike and the militia arrested 500 strikers. Seventy-five (almost none of whom were charged with any crime) were held for months before being released. Again, in a second massive Coeur d'Alene strike in 1899, the militia went even further; this time over 1,000 miners were confined by the military.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 142; Whipple, 1927, pp. 238-40.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Federal Industrial Relations Committee, in its 1915 report, argued that strikers were regularly arrested without having violated laws, 'charged with fictitious crimes, held under excessive bail, and treated frequently with unexampled brutality for the purpose of injuring strikers or breaking the strike'. In summarizing the arrest of 2,238 persons charged with unlawful assembly or disorderly conduct during a strike in Paterson, New Jersey, the report found that the right of bail was generally denied, and when granted was set at the prohibitive level of $500 to $5,000, and that men were arrested for 'ridiculous reasons, as for example, standing on the opposite side of the street and beckoning men in the mills to come out.'&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Whipple, 1927, pp. 227-8.&lt;/ref&gt; In the Lawrence textile strike of 1912 there were 900 arrests with detainees denied bail.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 228.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Denial of freedom to speak in public or to distribute literature in public was frequently used by authorities to suppress radical activities. In response to being banned on the public streets of many Western towns and cities, the Industrial Workers of the World, from 1909 to 1912, engaged in a number of 'Free Speech Fights' in which their tactic was for one person after another to mount a speaker's platform and be arrested, until the gaols were overflowing with 'Wobblies'. Nationwide calls would go out to IWW members from all around the country to 'hop a freight' to the city where the fight was going on. The most famous of such 'free speech fights' were at Spokane, Fresno and San Diego.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 224-5; Preston, 1939, pp. 44-51.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Socialist papers were suppressed during and in the aftermath of strikes. In 1888, the ''Chicago Alarm'' was suspended from 8 April to 14 July because of its alleged anarchistic tendencies. On 5 September 1912 the socialist paper of Butte, Montana was published with three blank columns indicating a censored piece. Copies of ''The Weekly Issue of Passaic'', New Jersey, were confiscated by the police during a strike and its editor was arrested and charged with 'aiding and abetting hostility to the government'. In West Virginia during the strike of 1912-13 the military arrested and held incommunicado the editor of ''The Labor Argus''. During the Coeur d'Alene strike, a local newspaper editor was arrested and detained because of material published in his paper criticizing the martial law decree on the grounds of violating the Constitution. During the Cripple Creek strike, the editor of ''The Victor Record'', along with his staff and printers, who criticized the actions of the militia were arrested and put into the bullpen' with the strikers.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Boyer and Moráis, 1955, p. 155; Whipple, 1927, pp. 297-300.&lt;/ref&gt; Johann Most, a leading anarchist, was arrested in September 1901 for reprinting in his weekly ''Freibeit'', an article allegedly defending political assassinations. Most was convicted of a misdemeanour based on 'breach of the peace' and 'abuse of free speech'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Whipple, 1927, p. 306.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Denial of civil liberties to socialists, anarchists, militant trade unionists and their supporters became so common in this period that in 1914, the American Sociological Society devoted its entire annual meeting to 'Freedom of Communication'. The prominent, early American sociologist, Edward A. Ross (who, in 1900, had been forced to resign from Stanford University for political reasons) said:&lt;blockquote&gt;During the last dozen years the tales of suppression of free assemblage, free press, and free speech, by local authorities or the State operating under martial law have been so numerous as to have become an old story. They are attacked at the instigation of an economically and socially powerful class, itself enjoying to the full the advantages of free communication, but bent on denying them to the class it holds within its power.... It is inexpressibly surprising that the rights of free communication, established so long ago at such cost of patriot blood, time-tested rights which in thousands of instances have vindicated their value for moral and social progress, accepted rights which in the minds of disinterested men are as settled as many principles of human conduct can be, should with increasing frequency be flaunted by strong employers and set at naught by local authorities.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p.274.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;A number of professors besides Ross were forced out of university positions at this time because of their pro-socialist or pro-union attitudes. These included George Herron (Iowa College, 1893); E.W. Bemis (University of Chicago, 1895); E.M. Banks (University of Florida, 1911); Scott Nearing (University of Pennsylvania, 1914); and Joseph Hart (University of Washington, 1914).&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 319-21.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === Repression of the Left: 1917-24 ===<br /> Mobilization for US participation in World War I, the neutrality of the American Socialist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World, followed by Socialist Revolution in Russia, a sympathetic response in certain immigrant worker's circles, and a wave of strikes in 1919, produced a repression as ruthless as any in US history. The American left was systematically denied basic civil liberties in this period.<br /> <br /> In May 1918 the US government passed a sedition act which made it a crime to utter, print, write or publish any&lt;blockquote&gt;disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language, or language intended to cause contempt, scorn, contumely or disrepute as regards the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution, or the flag, or the uniform of the Army or Navy, or any language intended to incite resistance to the United States or promote the cause of its enemies, urging any curtailment of production of any things necessary to the prosecution of the war with intent to hinder its prosecution or to advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of these acts, 'and words or acts supporting or favoring the cause of any country at war with us, or opposing the cause of the United States therein' The maximum penalty set was $10,000 fine, 20 years imprisonment or both.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chaffee, 1941, pp. 40-1.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;By 1920, the majority of the states had also enacted peacetime sedition or criminal syndicalism acts directed against working-class radical activity. The model of the state peacetime sedition acts was that passed by New York State in 1902 as a result of President McKinley's assassination. This act remained a dead letter until the first prosecution under it of a leader of the New York State Socialist Party (Benjamin Gillow) in 1919. The New York Criminal Syndicalism law made it a felony to advocate by speech or writing, or to join any society or attend any meeting that taught or advocated 'the doctrine that organized government should be overthrown by force or violence, or by assassination..., or by any unlawful means.'&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 163.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1919 and 1920 there was a wave of hastily passed state laws based on the New York model. West Virginia made criminal any teaching in sympathy with or favourable to 'ideals hostile to those now or henceforth existing under the constitution and laws of this state'. Montana made it a crime to use 'any language calculated to incite or inflame resistance to any duly constituted state authority'. Arizona made it a criminal offence to advocate the violation of 'the constitutional or statutory rights of another as a means of accomplishing industrial or political ends'. The California criminal syndicalism law passed in 1919 defines criminal syndicalism as:&lt;blockquote&gt;Any doctrine or precept advocating, teaching or aiding and abetting the commission of crime, sabotage (which word is hereby defined as meaning wilful and malicious physical damage or injury to physical property), or unlawful acts of force and violence or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing a change in industrial ownership or control, or effecting any political change.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 326.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Imprisonment of from one to fourteen years became the penalty for anyone who:&lt;blockquote&gt;advocates, teaches, aids or abets criminal syndicalism, who wilfully attempts to justify it; who publishes or circulates any written or printed matter advocating or advising it; who organizes, assists in organizing, or knowingly becomes a member of any group organized to advocate it (without necessarily urging this doctrine himself); or who commits any act advocated by this doctrine with intent to effect a change in industrial ownership or any political change.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 326-7.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Between 1919 and 1924, 504 persons in California were arrested and held for bail of $15,000 each under this statute, and 264 cases were tried.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 327.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the 1917-23 period, 33 states and a number of cities passed laws which forbade the display of a red flag. In most states the penalty for displaying the 'symbol of Communism' was a maximum of six months in gaol and/or a fine of $500. Approximately 1,400 persons were arrested under these laws and about 300 were convicted and imprisoned.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 159; Levin, 1971, p. 64.&lt;/ref&gt; The New York state statute made it a misdemeanour to display the red banner: 'in any public assembly or parade as a symbol or emblem of any organization or association, or in furtherance of any political, social, or economic principle, doctrine or propaganda.' Other states went further and forbade the display of the red flag anywhere, including private homes. Some outlawed the wearing of red neckties or buttons or the use of any emblem of any hue if it is 'distinctive of bolshevism, anarchism, or radical socialism', or indicates 'sympathy or support of ideals, institutions, or forms of government, hostile, inimical, or antagonistic to the form or spirit of the constitution, laws, ideals, and institutions of this state or of the United States.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chaffee, 1941, pp. 159-60.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> There were approximately 2,000 prosecutions under the federal sedition act. During World War I and the immediate post-war period, people were tried for advocating heavier taxation instead of bond issues, for stating that conscription was unconstitutional, that the sinking of merchant vessels was legal, for urging that a referendum should have preceded the declaration of war, for saying that the war was contrary to the teachings of Christ, and for criticizing the Red Cross and the YMCA.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 51.&lt;/ref&gt; A Mrs. Stokes was convicted for saying to a group of women 'I am for the people and the government is for the profiteers.' According to the judge of this case what is said to mothers, sisters and sweethearts may diminish their enthusiasm for the war, and 'our armies in the field and our navies upon the seas can operate and succeed only so far as they are supported and maintained by the folks at home'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 52.&lt;/ref&gt; Mrs Stokes was sentenced to ten years in prison on the grounds that such a statement was '...false ...known to be false and intended and calculated to interfere with the success of our military and naval forces, that it was an attempt to cause insubordination in those forces, and it obstructed recruiting'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 53.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In Connecticut in 1920 a salesman was sentenced to six months in gaol for remarking to a customer that Lenin was 'the brainiest' or 'one of the brainiest' political leaders of the world. The state of Washington prohibited school teachers from answering students' questions concerning Bolshevism or 'any other heresies'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Levin, 1971, p. 28.&lt;/ref&gt; Twenty-seven South Dakota farmers were sentenced to more than a year in prison each for petitioning various state officers for a referendum on the war. The Attorney-General declared that the convictions in this case were 'one of the greatest deterrents against the spread of hostile propaganda, and particularly that class of propaganda which advanced and played upon the theme that this was a capitalists' war.'&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chaffee, 1941, pp. 58-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> On 4 July 1919 in Oakland, California, known radicals were rounded up and gaoled because of suspicions that there would be an organized disruption on that date; for the same reason the mayor of New York suspended all meetings for the same day.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Levin, 1971, p. 35.&lt;/ref&gt; Yetta Stromberg was convicted in California under its Red Flag statute and sentenced to up to five years for displaying a flag at a socialist youth camp that symbolized opposition to government.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chaffee, 1941, pp. 364-5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The US government attempted to suppress the newly formed Communist Party. Anita Whitney was convicted under the California criminal syndicalism act in January 1920 for membership in the Communist Labor Party and attendance at its state convention in Oakland; she was sentenced to between one to 14 years.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 344-5.&lt;/ref&gt; Angelo Herndon, a. Black Communist, was arrested in Atlanta, Georgia and sentenced to between 18 and 20 years in prison for being in possession of communist literature, including membership blanks, and a booklet called ''The Commmunist Position on the Negro Question'', which argued for Black self-determination in the Black Belt counties of the South.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 388-401.&lt;/ref&gt; Benjamin Gitlow, one of the founders of the American Communist Party, was convicted in New York in January 1920 and sentenced to between five and ten years hard labour (of which he served three) for printing the founding manifesto of the Communist Party in the publication of which he was business manager — ''Revolutionary Age''.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 319-20.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), an important revolutionary union with significant influence in certain areas of industry in the period 1905-17, was systematically destroyed by state repression in the 1917-24 period.<br /> <br /> In April 1918, 113 IWW leaders were charged in Chicago with a long list of seditious acts (an average of over 100 per defendant, or a total of over 10,000 charges). After four months of testimony, largely consisting of quotations and citations from IWW newspapers and pamphlets, the jury, after debating for about one hour, returned verdicts of guilty for a// defendants on all counts. Thirty-five of the Chicago defendants were sentenced to five years in prison, 33 to ten years, and 15, including their most prominent leaders, Haywood and St. John, to 20 years. Total fines levied exceeded $2,000,000. The majority served substantial terms at Leavenworth (although a few, including Big Bill Hayworth, skipped bail and fled the country — Haywood died in the Soviet Union, a refugee from American repression).&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Dubovsky, 1969, pp. 434-7.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Chicago indictments were followed by mass arrests of IWW leaders in other parts of the country. Sixty-two IWW members were convicted in January 1919 in California and sentenced to between one and ten years (these defendants, along with other 'Wobblies' ' not tried, had been imprisoned for between ten and twelve months while awaiting trial).&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Preston, 1963, p. 135.&lt;/ref&gt; Twenty-six IWW members received prison terms of between one to nine years in Wichita, Kansas in late 1918. Sixty-four 'Wobblies' were arrested in Omaha, Nebraska in November 1917, and held for a year and a half, before charges against them were dropped.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 135-6; Dubovsky, 1969, pp. 438-44.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In addition to mass arrests and imprisonment of leaders, the IWW was subjected to numerous other forms of repression, including the banning of its publications from the US mails (not only from second class status).&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Preston, 1963, pp. 144-5.&lt;/ref&gt; Sixty-four IWW offices around the country were systematically raided by the federal government on 5 September 1917, who seized tons of official and personal correspondence, organization minutes and financial records, stickers, buttons, cards, membership lists, leaflets, pamphlets, circulars, books and office equipment, much of which was introduced as evidence in the various IWW trials. The US army directly suppressed the IWW in the Pacific Northwest. In Montana, troops raided the Flathead County IWW headquarters and held local members in confinement for several weeks without filing charges against them. In Washington state, the army raided IWW halls, closed the Spokane headquarters, broke up IWW meetings, searched freight trains for 'Wobbly ' workers, arrested organizers and gaoled dozens of 'Wobblies', releasing only those 'willing to work without agitating strikes' and who the army felt would not be 'a menace to the best interests of industry'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 106-7.&lt;/ref&gt; De facto martial law was implemented in the Northwest during World War I, with the courts denying writs of habeas corpus for confined IWW members.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 106.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In September 1917 one of the leading socialist papers in the country, ''The Milwankee Leader'', was deprived of its second class mailing rights and all first class mail addressed to ''The Leader'' was returned to the sender. The District Court of Appeals that upheld the postmaster's decision in this case argued:<br /> <br /> No one can read them without becoming convinced that they were printed in a spirit of hostility to our own government and in a spirit of sympathy for the Central Powers; that through them, appellants sought to hinder and embarrass the government in the prosecution of the war.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chaffee, 1941, p. 248.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The other leading socialist paper, ''The New York Call'', received the same treatment.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 104.&lt;/ref&gt; The post office ban on these two newspapers lasted until December 1919 (13 months after the end of the War).&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt; The socialist ''Seattle Union Record'' received worse treatment. In late 1919 the Attorney General closed its office because it urged workers to 'kick the governing class into the discard at the next election'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt; In January 1920, three men were arrested in Syracuse for distributing leaflets describing ill-treatment of political prisoners and calling for an amnesty meeting, They were sentenced to 18 months in gaol for: 'disloyal language about our form of government and the military forces, language designed to bring them and the Constitution into contempt, inciting resistance to the United States, and obstruction of recruiting'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Numerous other left-wing publications were suppressed by the post office including the ''Nation'' of 14 September 1918, ''The Public'' (for an article suggesting higher taxes and fewer bonds); ''The Freeman's Journal'' and ''Catholic Register'' (for reprinting an article by Jefferson arguing that Ireland should be a republic); ''The Gaelic American'' (for suggesting that the Irish were not enthusiastic about fighting for Britain); ''The Irish World'' (for stating that the trend of French life and ideals had, for a century, been toward materialism); and ''The Masses''. After suppressing the August number of ''The Masses'', the Postmaster refused to admit any future issues to the second class mailing privilege on the ground that the magazine had skipped a number. Books such as Thorstein Veblen's ''Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution'', Latzko's ''Men in War'', and Lenin's ''Soviets at Work'', were also banned from the mails.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 98-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Films, too, were subjected to suppression. In 1917 the government confiscated and destroyed the prints of ''The Spirit of 76'' (a film which had been completed before the US entered the World War) and arrested and convicted its producer, Robert Goldstein, under the sedition act. ''The Spirit of 76'' celebrated the American War of Independence and, as such, not surprisingly, was critical of Great Britain (a US ally during World War I). The verdict of the judge in this case was as follows:&lt;blockquote&gt;Great Britain is an ally of the United States.... this is no time... for the exploitation of those things that may have the tendency... of creating animosity or want of confidence between us and our allies, because so to do weakens out efforts, weakens the chance of our success, impairs our solidarity.... And it is not at all necessary that it should be shown to have such effect (of inciting hatred of England); it is enough if it is calculated reasonably so to excite or inflame the passions of our people or some of them, as that they will be deterred from giving that full measure of co- operation, sympathy, assistance, and sacrifice which is due to Great Britain, simply because... Great Britain... is working with us to fight the battle which we think strikes at our very existence as a nation.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 487.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Goldstein was sentenced to ten years, commuted to three.<br /> <br /> Leftist teachers were banned from the schools. The New York Superintendent of Schools forbade the employment of teachers who belonged to the left wing of the Socialist Party. Some were fired for their beliefs. Not only Bolshevism, but also the League of Nations were banned as legitimate subjects for classroom discussion.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Caute, 1978, p. 431.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> On 2 January 1920, federal agents rounded up more than 4,000 radicals and alleged radicals in co-ordinated raids in 33 cities in 23 states, holding the them for deportation or charging them with seditious acts. Almost every known communist organization was raided, and virtually every known national and local communist leader was arrested. The purpose of the 'Palmer' raids was to destroy the newly formed communist parties in the US, primarily through seizing and deporting their alien members (who were a substantial proportion of their membership). Deportation was an especially efficient process, because deportation proceedings did not require the due process safeguards of criminal proceedings (no indictments, no judge, no jury, no lawyers). Deportation was a purely administrative matter handled by the Department of Labor.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Boyer and Moráis, 1955, p. 212; Levin, 1971, p. 57,&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Attorney General Palmer's instructions to his Secret Service men throughout the country began:&lt;blockquote&gt;INSTRUCTIONS<br /> <br /> Our activities will be directed against the radical organizations, known as the Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party of America, also known as Communists.<br /> <br /> The strike will be made promptly and simultaneously at 8:30 pm in all districts. The meeting places of the Communists in your territory, and the names and addresses of the officers and heads that you are to arrest, are on the attached lists.<br /> <br /> You will also arrest all active members where found.<br /> <br /> Particular efforts should be made to apprehend all the officers, irrespective of where they may be, and with respect to such officers, their residence should be searched and in every instance all literature, membership cards, records and correspondence are to be taken.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chaffee, 1941, pp. 209-10.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Many of the arrests were made without warrants, and of those detained many were held incommunicado and denied the right to counsel; many were not even radicals. Of the 800 incarcerated in Detroit, 300 were released after six days when it became clear that they had no connection whatsoever with radical causes.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Levin, 1971, p. 58.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Palmer raid of 2 January 1920 was by no means the only one directed against seizing and deporting non-citizen radicals. For example, on 7 November 1919, the government conducted raids in 12 cities against the pro-Communist Union of Russian Workers, arresting a total of 250 people and confiscating truckloads of literature. State and local officials followed the federal example.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 55.&lt;/ref&gt; From 1917 to 1921, a total of 900 leftists were deported.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Caute, 1978, p. 229.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The most famous persecution under the federal sedition act was that of Eugene Debs, leader of the Socialist Party and five times its candidate for President (he received 6% of the national Presidential vote in 1912) On 16 June 1918 Debs made a public speech in Canton, Ohio which included the words 'The master class has always declared the war; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose — especially their lives...' On 20 June, Debs was indicted and charged with ten separate violations of the sedition act for ten different statements in his speech, including this one. On 14 September 1918 he was sentenced to ten years in prison, of which he served three before receiving a Presidential pardon. While in prison Debs was the Presidential candidate of the Socialist Party in the 1920 elections, receiving over one million votes.<br /> <br /> The Socialist Party was systematically repressed; its leading papers were banned from the mails; its elected representatives were denied seats in state and federal legislatures. The entire national committee of the Socialist Party was indicted under the sedition act. Scores of leading socialists were imprisoned, including Charles Ruthenberg, Alfred Wagenkneckt, Kate Richards O'Hare, J.O. Bentall, Scott Nearing and Rose Pastor Stokes.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Boyer and Moráis, 1955, pp. 198-201.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Socialists were denied their seats both in the US House of Representatives and in the New York State Assembly. Victor Berger, a leading socialist, was indicted under the sedition act in 1918 on the grounds of five anti-war editorials in ''The Milwaukee Leader'' of which he was editor. In November 1918, before his trial began, he was elected to Congress from Milwaukee. In December 1918 he was convicted and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. Berger was released on bail while waiting an appeal. (His conviction was overturned in January 1921.) In the spring of 1919 at the opening of the new Congress he was declared ineligible for seating and, after a committee report, his seat was declared vacant in November 1919. In a special election in December, Berger received 25,802 votes against the combined Democratic Republican candidate's 19,800. But for the second time the House of Representatives refused to seat him, even though the war had been over for more than a year. Only six Representatives voted in favour of his seating.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chaffee, 1941, pp. 250-1.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In January 1920, five elected members of the New York State Assembly were denied their seats on the grounds that they were members of an organization that had been convicted of a violation of the sedition act. The speaker of the Assembly addressed them arguing 'You are seeking seats in this body, you who have been elected on a platform that is absolutely inimical to the best interests of the State of New York and of the United States'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 270.&lt;/ref&gt; The day after their expulsion ''The New York Times'' commented 'It was an American vote altogether, a patriotic and conservative vote. An immense majority of the American people will approve and sanction the Assembly's action.' In September, all five Socialists were re-elected, but were again denied their seats. In April, the Assembly went further, passing legislation which made the Socialist Party an illegal organization and barred its candidates from the ballot.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Levin, 1971, pp. 64-5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Governmental complicity with organized violence and intimidation of radicals was also an important repressive force in this period. For example, in 1919, a citizen of Indiana, in a fit of rage, shot and killed a man who had yelled 'to hell with the United States'. The jury deliberated for two minutes before acquitting the killer. A man was mobbed in the Waldotf Astoria hotel for shouting 'to hell with the flag'.<br /> <br /> Highly effective repression of the left was effected by organized groups, especially the American Legion and the Ku Klux Klan. The American Legion, founded in May 1919 (by December 1919 it had over one million members), was founded as a patriotic paramilitary organization of veterans committed to suppressing manifestations of 'un-Americanism'. The Legion's first commander ordered his men to be 'ready for action at any time... against the extremists who are seeking to overturn a government for which thousands of brave young Americans laid down their lives'. Legionnaires in some areas ran suspected radicals out of town, tarred and feathered aliens suspected of left sentiments, and beat up Socialists. In Detroit, a local post prided itself on being called 'one thousand Bolshevik bouncers'. In Denver, legionnaires had a pact that they would: 'reply with their fists to any malcontent who talked of revolution or anarchy'. Anti-socialists throughout the country took up the slogan 'Leave the Reds to the Legion'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 65-6.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Ku Klux Klan was revived in the Northern industrial states in areas with high concentrations of European immigrant workers, and were centres of working-class unionism and radical agitation. In 1924, its membership peaked at 4,500,000. The 'second klan' was committed to 100% Americanism'. It was against unions, which it considered a manifestation of communism; Roman Catholicism, the religion of the majority of the new immigrant workers; and Jews, whom it saw as behind the Bolshevik conspiracy. Temporarily, the Klan dominated politics in Indiana, Ohio and Oregon. Like the early Legion, the Klan was a paramilitary organization designed to terrorize, intimidate and suppress all manifestations of working-class radicalism. And like the Legion's early vigilante activities, the authorities — in many states Klan supporters — turned a blind eye to most Klan activity directed against the left.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Boyer and Moráis, 1955, p. 221.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Systematic repression against the left had a devastating effect. Membership of the Communist Party(ies) decreased from about 70,000 at their founding to about 12,000 in 1922. Membership in the Socialist Party, which was decimated both by defections to the Communists and government repression, fell from 110,000 in 1919, to 12,000 in 1922. The IWW was virtually totally destroyed,; its membership of more than 100,000 in 1917 was reduced to less than 10,000 by the mid-1920s — a mere shell of its former self. The union movement was likewise decimated with a sharp decline in membership and influence between 1919 and 1923.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Levin, 1971, p. 87; GIazer, 1961, p. 39; Weinstein, 1967, pp. 239, 332.&lt;/ref&gt; Systematic government repression succeeded in isolating, greatly reducing the influence of, and demoralizing the American left, through the denial of basic civil liberties to its organizations, publications and leaders.<br /> <br /> === Depression, War and Civil Liberties: 1930-45 ===<br /> Social instability, the consequent rise of militant movements challenging the system, war, and the consequent need to mobilize the people, of necessity, produce restrictions on civil liberties. Such was the case in the US during the depression of the 1930s, and World War I, exactly as has been the case in other countries and at other times.<br /> <br /> After 1923 the repression of socialists and communists relaxed since: (1) conditions of economic prosperity returned and (2) the left movement had been fairly effectively destroyed through governmental repression. (The Communist Party, the Socialist Party and the IWW had all been reduced to ghosts of what they had been in the 1917-19 period). The US was neither involved in, nor preparing itself for, any major overseas adventures, and clearly there was no significant threat, or even the potentiality of a threat, from domestic working-class movements. But with the economic collapse of 1929 conditions for the growth of an opposition working-class movement once again returned. With the outbreak of another European war and US involvement increasingly likely, after 1937, the need to mobilize support for US overseas activities grew. Thus, although the restrictions on civil liberties in the 1930-47 period were relatively mild (except for the Japanese Americans), compared to what happened before and after, they were nevertheless considerable.<br /> <br /> Throughout the 1930s there were examples of the continued application of state criminal syndicalism laws against members of the Communist Party, as well as prosecutions of communists under other legislation, both state and federal. For example, in Oregon in 1930 Ben Boloff, a construction labourer who had migrated from Russia in 1910 (and could speak no English) was arrested in Portland for vagrancy and then rearrested and charged with violating the criminal syndicalism act when a Communist Party card was found in his pocket. Boloff was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison, a conviction which was upheld in the Oregon Supreme Court (he was, nevertheless, released). At his trial evidence was offered that showed he attended local Communist Party meetings where the Red Flag was displayed and literature was available which showed men bearing arms and engaging in violence.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chaffee, 1941, pp. 478-9,&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1934 another prosecution was brought under the criminal syndicalism act, against a leader of the Oregon Communist Party, DeJonge. DeJonge was charged with speaking at a public meeting in Portland, called to protest against the shooting of striking longshoremen and raids of workers' halls and homes during the West Coast Longshore strike of that year. Although the meeting was entirely peaceful and non-incendiary it was raided by police, with DeJonge being indicted on the grounds that he:&lt;blockquote&gt;did then and there... conduct and assist in conducting an assemblage of persons, organization, society and group, to with the Communist Party,... which said assemblage of persons, organizations, society and group did then and there... teach and advocate the doctrine of criminal syndicalism and sabotage...&lt;/blockquote&gt;Communist Party literature was offered as the sole proof of the advocacy of 'criminal syndicalism'. DeJonge was sentenced to seven years In prison, his conviction being sustained by the Oregon Supreme Court, but overturned by the US Supreme Court.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 384-5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the late 1930s, New Jersey in general, and Patterson and Jetsey City in particular, put considerable restrictions on the civil liberties of those supporting unions in local strikes. Patterson prohibited labour meetings, as well as meetings to protest against the prohibition of labour meetings. Roger Baldwin, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union, was arrested in Patterson as he started to read the Declaration of Independence in front of the city hall. Jersey City virtually prohibited any but approved speakers from finding a platform of any kind in the city. Owners of public halls were deterred from renting them out; permits for the distribution of handbills were refused; prospective speakers who went to Jersey City were deported back to New York. Speakers permits were not only denied to such prominent socialists as Norman Thomas, but also to several US Congressmen, including Senator Borah, on the grounds that allowing them to speak would incite riots, disturbances or disorder.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 384-5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> With the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the American Communist Party took a neutralist position, identical to that taken by the Socialist and Communist Parties, and the IWW during World War I, identifying the war as one between capitalist countries, in which the workers had no interest. Consequently, in October and November 1939, Earl Browder, general secretary of the Communist Party, and Harry Cannes, foreign editor of ''The Daily Worker'' (along with another CP leader) were arrested under the passport laws. Browder was sentenced, in March 1941, to a four year sentence of which he served a year before being pardoned by Roosevelt (after the Soviet Union and the US had become allies). There were a number of other prosecutions of communists in the 1939-41 period reminiscent of the suppression of the anti-war left in the 1917-19 period, including revocations of citizenship of naturalized citizens, contempt citations by Congressional Committees for refusing to turn over membership lists, and convictions for collecting signatures on Party election partitions during the 1940 election. In Oklahoma, 18 Communist Party members were tried under the Oklahoma criminal syndicalism law and held under $100,000 bail each. Two were sentenced to ten years each, but were shortly released.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Foster, 1952, p. 392.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In June 1940, the US passed another federal sedition act, the Smith Act, directed against those who were opposing growing US involvement in the European war. This Act provided for heavy penalties for 'teaching and advocating the overthrow of the United States government by force and violence', prohibited the advocacy of insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military forces of the US, and required the registration and finger-printing of all non-US citizens.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 392; 510; Chaffee, 1941, p. 441.&lt;/ref&gt; The Smith Act was first used to prosecute the Socialist Workers' Party (Trotskyist) because it refused to support the US involvement in the war, on the grounds that it was an inter-capitalist war. With the changed line of the US Communist Party after Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the restrictions on the civil liberties of communists ceased, not to be resumed until after the war.<br /> <br /> Inevitably, sympathizers with the national enemy during the war and, in the case of the Japanese, those defined by ethnicity as potential sympathizers of Germany and Japan, were systematically denied civil liberties in the 1938-45 period. It should be pointed out, however, that, apparently for racist reasons, restrictions on Japanese Americans were considerably greater than those on sympathizers with the Nazis.<br /> <br /> In 1938, both the federal government and the City of New York began a campaign to destroy the German-American Bund, the leading pro-Nazi organization in the US. The City of New York employed tax laws effectively against the Bund, claiming that the Nazis had violated the tax laws by not reporting income on the street sale of pamphlets and regalia. A detailed study of the Bund's financial records revealed irregularities that were used to convict Bund leaders of embezzlement. Bund funds were frozen during the investigation, making it impossible for it to pay its debts. Bund Fuhrer Kuhn went into hiding after the entry of the US into the war; he escaped to Mexico, where he was arrested and deported back to the US. He was convicted on several counts, including espionage, and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Between July 1942 and January 1944, a total of 42 individuals, 46 organizations, and 46 publications were indicted by federal Grand Juries for sedition under the Smith Act for being supportive of fascist causes. Nazi leader Kuhn, and 19 other prominent Bundists, were indicted under the naturalization acts for retaining allegiance to a foreign power at the time of their naturalization.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 392; 510; Chaffee, 1941, p. 441.&lt;/ref&gt; In general, however, Nazi leaders and sympathizers, while effectively repressed, fared reasonably well during the war years.<br /> <br /> One of the most massive repressions of civil liberties in American history occurred during the war in respect of those of Japanese descent. All Japanese living West of the Mississippi, regardless of the degree of Japanese blood, whether or not they were citizens, or how many years they, or their ancestors, had been in the US, were forcibly removed to isolated relocation camps, The 85% of Japanese Americans who lived West of the Mississippi, a total of 112,000 persons, were given between 48 hours and two weeks to prepare for evacuation to camps in the barren areas of the West. They were allowed to take with them only what they could carry, thus being forced to dispose of their houses, cars, appliances and other possessions — typically to unscrupulous buyers who offered extremely low prices for Japanese possessions, knowing that they had to sell immediately. The Japanese Americans lost hundreds of millions of dollars in this period.<br /> <br /> The West Coast Japanese were put under the authority of the US army. Relocation (concentration) camps were opened in the most desolate areas of California, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Arkansas. Until the relocation camps were ready, the Japanese were put into 15 temporary assembly centres, usually race tracks or fairgrounds. The camps were enclosed by barbed wire, with military sentinels stationed in towers to prevent escape. Families were crowded into single rooms. Employment was offered at the rate of $16.00 a month (which often, although promised, failed to materialize). Strikes against labour conditions in the camp were systematically repressed by the army, which confined strike leaders, isolating them from the rest of the camp population, for the duration of the war. The celebration of Japanese culture and the use of the Japanese language were strongly discouraged, and Japanese schools were forbidden.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Jacobs and Landau, 1971, pp. 189-203.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === Repression of the American Communist Party and Civil Liberties: 1947-56 ===<br /> The Smith Act, which had been passed in 1940, was used against the Communist Party for the first time in July 1948, when indictments were brought against 12 of the 13 members of the national board of the Party, including William Z. Foster (Chairman), Eugene Denis (General Secretary), Robert Thompson (Labour Secretary), Benjamin Davis (New York City Councilman), Henry Winston, John Gates (editor of ''The Daily Worker''), Gilbert Green and Gus Hall. The 12 were charged as follows:&lt;blockquote&gt;...the defendants herein, unlawfully, wilfully, and knowingly, did conspire with each other, and with divers other persons... to organize as the Communist Party of the United States of America, a society, group, and assembly of persons who teach and advocate the overthrow and destruction of the Government of the United States by force and violence, and knowingly and wilfully to advocate and teach the duty and necessity of overthrowing and destroying the Government of the United States by force and violence...&lt;/blockquote&gt;It should be noted that the indictment charged neither that the defendants actually attempted to overthrow the government, nor that they had actually taught the techniques of such an overthrow, merely that they taught the theory that a violent overthrow was justified.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Caute, 1978, p. 187; Foster, 1952, p. 509.&lt;/ref&gt; The government's case in this and other Smith Act trials, was largely based on reading and discussing extracts from ''The Communist Manifesto'', ''The State and Revolution'', ''Problems of Leninism'' and other Marxist classics endorsed by the CPUSA in order to prove its advocacy of violent revolution. All 12 defendants were convicted, eleven being given the maximum five years sentence plus a $5,000 fine. In July 1951, eight of the twelve began serving their sentences, their appeals to the Supreme Court having been denied on the grounds that the Soviet and Communist threat was of such a magnitude that there was a probable (though not immediate) danger of revolution in view of inflammable world conditions. Four of those convicted, Thompson, Hall, Winston and Green, went 'underground' rather than surrender themselves for imprisonment. Hall, however, was soon captured and given an additional three years in jail, the others were never caught, but turned themselves in voluntarily four years later.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Caute, 1978, pp. 193-5.&lt;/ref&gt; The eight spent the full five years in prison, Hall spent seven years.<br /> <br /> The conviction of the Party leadership was followed by the arrest and trial of local communist leaders around the country. In California, in July 1951, 12 state leaders including Oleta O'Connor Yates (State Secretary of the Party), Al Richmond (editor of ''The People's World'') and Dorothy Healy were arrested. All 12 were convicted and given the maximum five years in prison plus a $10,000 fine.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 200-1.&lt;/ref&gt; Six leaders of the Michigan Party wete tried in October 1953, including Saul Wellman, the Michigan Party leader and co-ordinator for the automobile industry. The six were fined $10,000 each and given sentences of from four to five years.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 202-4.&lt;/ref&gt; In Philadelphia, nine leading communists from Oregon and Washington went on trial. This case was unique in that it was the first Smith Act trial in which any of the accused was acquitted (Kitty Larson, who could prove he left the Party in 1946). The others were sentenced to the standard five years.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 202.&lt;/ref&gt; Similar events occurred throughout the US — in Utah, Colorado, Connecticut, Ohio, Hawaii, Missouri, Cleveland, Baltimore, New York City and Pittsburgh.<br /> <br /> Leaders of the Communist Party were also charged under the Smith Act with Communist Party membership, a crime which carried a maximum sentence of ten years. Eight membership prosecutions were brought. The first was against Claude Lightfood, Secretary of the Illinois CP. His sentence of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine was upheld by the US Supreme Court in January 1956. Junius Scales, Secretary of the North and South Carolina CP in 1955, was sentenced to six years in prison, the heaviest single sentence in any Smith Act case (except for Gus Hall).&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 206-7.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Smith Act trials all followed much the same pattern, with the prosecution's cases being built around the combined testimony of ex-party members (much the same handful of witnesses appeared in trial after trial) and the introduction of Party-endorsed literature, both largely focusing on what the Communist Party in fact taught and advocated, and relatively little on what the specific defendants actually did. The prosecution would inevitably quote such phrases from Lenin as, 'The proletarian revolution is impossible without the forcible destruction of the bourgeois state machine', and Stalin '...the law of violent proletarian revolution, the law of the smashing of the bourgeois state machine as a preliminary condition for such a revolution, is an inevitable law of the revolutionary movement of the imperialist countries'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 195-6.&lt;/ref&gt; Witnesses brought by the prosecution testified to the content of books read, discussed and taught by the defendants.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ginger, 1973, p. 118.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Specific charges alleged such offences under the Smith Act as having attended and participated in various CP conventions, having attended classes on the 'History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union', having written and caused to be published an article entitled 'Concentration and Trade Union Work', 'did attend and participate', 'did cause to be used... a safe-deposit box', 'to conceal his true identity... did use the false name..., 'did attend a rally...a conference...an affair...a forum', 'did prepare a press release', of the trials, library hand trucks were wheeled into the courtroom to facilitate citations by both sides from a wide range of Marxist literature.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Caute, 1978, pp. 106, 201, 203.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> When Communist leaders took the stand in their own defence, in order to explain communist teachings, it was standard practice to ask them to talk about the activities of other communists — which they always refused to do. This refusal was frequently interpreted as contempt of court and punished by 30 day sentences for each violation, in the California trial, after the head of the California Party, Mrs Yates, had given eloquent and lengthy testimony about the beliefs of the Communist Party, she was cited for eleven separate contempt charges for refusing to talk about other individuals in the Party, and sentenced to a year in gaol. This technique became a major inhibition to taking the stand in one's... circulated copies of a letter', etc. During some own defence and consequently leaving a bad impression on juries. It also served as an immediate sanction against communist leaders which short-circuited the judicial machinery.<br /> <br /> Legal defence became a problem. Left lawyers were sometimes cited for contempt and sentenced. In order to present a more respectable defence the Party at one point attempted to secure 'respectable' lawyers who were not sympathetic to communism, but found this virtually impossible. The 17 defendants in the Flynn case, in New York in 1952, submitted an affidavit showing that they had approached 28 law firms asking for an interview, had received no reply from 12, and had been refused by 16. Non-communist lawyers did not want to jeopardize their careers by defending Communists.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 196-7.&lt;/ref&gt; By the end of 1956, 108 Communist Party leaders had been convicted under the Smith Act. Of the remaining 37 indictments originally brought by Federal grand juries, there had been five severances, ten acquittals and 22 cases still pending in the courts. It should be noted, however, that as of 1 June 1958, only 28 of the leaders actually spent time in prison ''after'' their conviction.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 208.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Between 1949 and 1952 most of the states passed legislation making it a criminal offence to ''advocate'' violent governmental change, or to join an organization so advocating. By 1953, 39 states had such legislation. In Maryland, leaders of organizations which advocated violent governmental change became subject to a maximum of 20 years in prison, while mere membership was punishable by five years in jail. Maryland also made it a crime to advocate the setting up of a US government under foreign domination, even if violent methods were not advocated.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 70-1.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Connecticut made it a crime to print 'scurrilous or abusive matter, concerning the form of government in the United States, its military forces, flag or uniforms...', or to advocate before ten or more persons any measure 'intended to injuriously affect the government of the United States or the State of Connecticut'. In Michigan in 1950, writing or speaking subversive words could incur a life sentence; Tennessee introduced the death penalty for unlawful advocacy; Indiana made 'unlawful advocacy' punishable by three years in prison. In Massachusetts, to be a member of the Party or to knowingly allow a meeting place to be used by the CP could incur a three year sentence. In Texas, membership of the Communist Party became punishable by 20 years in prison. Towns and cities also passed anti-Communist legislation. Los Angeles County required registration of Communist Party members, and tried Henry Steinberg, a local leader, for refusing to register. Similar registration laws were enacted in a number of local areas. The most severe sentence for refusing to register as a subversive was given in Alabama, when, in August 1954, Matthew Know, a janitor, was sentenced to two years in prison on the basis of communist literature in his room (he did not admit to being a Communist Party member).&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 71-3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Communists and other sympathetic leftists were prosecuted and jailed for contempt of Congress. Congressional committees, especially the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), would subpoena prominent leftists in cities all over the US and require them to answer questions under pain of a prison sentence for contempt of the Committee. From January 1945 to April 1971 there were 174 contempt citations issued by the HCUA and its successor, the House Internal Security Committee. Between 1950 and 1952 Congress cited 117 people for contempt (compared with a total of only 113 contempt citations in the entire period 1857-1949). Congress endorsed all the 226 contempt citations voted by its committees in the period 1945-57. Contempt citations stemmed from such things as refusing to reveal names of contributors or organizational records, or to name individuals involved in Communist Party activities. It should be noted, however, that the majority of contempt citations were eventually overturned in the courts.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp, 96-7.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Communists were also jailed for contempt for invoking the Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate oneself before a grand jury. By July 1949, 16 California communists were thus convicted, with many being jailed. In September 1950, Eugene Brunner was sentenced to six months in prison in California for invoking the Fifth Amendment in regard to past Party membership. Supreme Court rulings in 1950 and 1952, however, established the right to invoke the Fifth Amendment, thus invalidating these convictions.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p.152.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Communist Party was banned as an electoral organization. It was prohibited from entering candidates in elections. New York State banned the Communist Party from the ballot in 1938 (Communists thereafter ran as candidates of the American Labor Party). California followed suit in 1940 with legislation which prohibited from the ballot any party which 'uses... as a part of its party designation the word 'communist' or any derivative'; and any party which is 'directly or indirectly affiliated, by any means whatsoever', with the Communist Party, the Third International, or any other foreign organization, government, etc., or which advocated the overthrow of the government by violence.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., 74-5; Chaffee, 1941, p. 490.&lt;/ref&gt; Indiana, in 1945, passed legislation requiring that each candidate's party must insert a plank in its programme proclaiming that it did not advocate any subversive doctrines. Local electoral boards were given the authority to 'determine the character and nature of the political doctrines' of the candidates. Every candidate for office in Pennsylvania had to file an affidavit that he or she was not 'a subversive person'. By the end of 1952 approximately one-half of the states had barred as candidates individuals and organizations advocating the violent overthrow of the government, sedition, or a foreign dominated government in the US. The state of Washington required that all elected officials swear under oath that they were not members of any organization listed by the US Attorney General as subversive.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Caute, 1978, pp. 50, 75.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1954 the federal government effectively banned the Communist Party from participation in federal elections. The Communist Control Act of 1954 ('An Act to Outlaw the Communist Party') stripped the Communist Party of 'all rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 50, 75.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The right of assembly was severely abridged for the Communist Party and its sympathizers. As already seen, the state of Massachusetts made it a felony to knowingly allow the use of premises for Communist Party meetings. Beginning in 1947, public meeting rooms and halls were more and more frequently denied to the Communist Party, Henry Wallace supporters and other progressives. In August 1950, Madison Square Garden refused to hire its hall to the Council on African Affairs, an organization included in the Attorney General's List. San Francisco denied the use of its City Auditorium for public meetings organized by the Committee to Save the Rosenbergs. The New York Board of Education barred left-wing organizations from school buildings. The town supervisors of Hempstead and Oyster Bay New York in 1956 refused to let W.E.B. DuBois speak in Levittown Hall, because of his 'reputed Communist front affiliations'.<br /> <br /> The mayor of New York ruled that organizations listed on the Attorney General's List were barred from soliciting funds in the streets. In 1953, the annual May Day parade on Eighth Avenue in New York was banned because, as the Police Commissioner put it, the marchers were 'puppets of the Soviet government'. In August 1950, a proposed Communist Party-sponsored protest demonstration against US involvement in the Korean war was banned. When the rally was held without police authorization, 1,000 police broke it up arresting 14 people and beating many more.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 161-2.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Communist press was restricted both through the arrest and imprisonment of the editors of the major Communist papers, and also through the seizure of ''The Daily Worker'' in 1956. In March 1956 the federal Bureau of Internal Revenue raided and seized the offices of ''The Daily Worker'', on the grounds that the Party owed back taxes.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 206.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> There was considerable repression in the cultural field, especially in the film industry, television and radio. Ten leading progressive motion picture writers and directors were indicted in 1947 and sentenced to jail for refusing to tell the House Committee on Un-American Activities their political beliefs and affiliations.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 489-92.&lt;/ref&gt; They and about 250 others were 'blacklisted', including some of the most talented directors, writers and actors in Hollywood.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 504, 515.&lt;/ref&gt; Other leading playwrights and authors were similarly treated. In 1956, Arthur Miller, whose works had long been blacklisted by the film, television and radio industry, was subpoenaed by the HCUA and convicted of contempt for refusing to talk about the activities of other people. Leftists were banned from appearances on radio and television. Leading artists, such as Paul Robeson, were denied access to both the mass media and public concert halls.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 537.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1947, President Truman issued an executive order imposing a loyalty oath on federal employees as a condition of employment. The Attorney General compiled a list of 'subversive organizations' and any members of such organizations were excluded from federal jobs. In 1953 President Eisenhower, through another executive order, changed the standard of eligibility for federal employment from loyalty oaths to security clearance through investigation. During the Truman administration 1,210 people were dismissed and about 6,000 others resigned as a result of the loyalty programme (this compares with only about 100 dismissals during the World War II years). From 1953 to 1956 there were approximately a further 1,500 dismissals and 6,000 more resignations as a result of security investigations. Thus, during the 1947-56 period, there were about 2,700 civilian dismissals and 12,000 resignations as a result of the loyalty and security programmes.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 268-75.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> States and local government also barred 'subversives' from employment. By the end of 1950, 32 states had implemented bans against Communists and 'other subversives' in public employment. The most common, actual grounds for dismissal were Fifth Amendment discharges — refusal to answer questions posed by legislative committees.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 339.&lt;/ref&gt; In October 1950, California legally transformed all public employees into 'civil defence workers' and gave them 30 days to swear that they had not, within the last five years, advocated the violent overthrow of the government nor belonged to any organization that did so. Beginning in 1953, California state employees were also automatically dismissed for refusal to answer any questions put to them by governmental agencies and committees.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 341.&lt;/ref&gt; The County of Los Angeles required its employees to swear that they did not belong to any of 142 'subversive' organizations. As a result of the county, and a similar city ordinance, 45 employees were immediately discharged.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt; New York City's loyalty programme resulted in the dismissal of over 250 city employees between 1943 and 1956. Excluding teachers, it has been estimated that a total of about 500 state, municipal and local government employees were dismissed for political reasons from 1948 to 1956.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 343-5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The federal government imposed security clearances as a condition of work in many occupations in industry and transport. Clearance became a condition of work for maritime workers. By the end of 1956, 3,783 workers (around 2,500 merchant seamen and 1,300 waterfront men) were denied clearance, and hence their jobs. The security programme decimated leftist strength in maritime unions.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 398-9.&lt;/ref&gt; Under the federal Industrial Personnel Security Program, approximately four million private employees were screened for access to confidential, secret or top secret information from 1947 to 1956. Besides the maritime workers another 1,529 were denied clearance, and the majority of them also their jobs. A woman worker in an electrical plant was fired because her sister had signed a communist-sponsored petition and she had refused to stop seeing her. A navy yard employee, temporarily living with his grandmother who was a friend of Mother Ella Bloor, a veteran Communist, was fired.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 365.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> HCUA systematically acted to ensure that radicals lost their jobs. Frequently witnesses were fired as soon as they were subpoenaed. It was a standard practice to sack anyone who refused to testify before a Congressional committee by taking the Fifth Amendment. In June 1954, Roy Cohn, Senator McCarthy's chief aide, stated:&lt;blockquote&gt;The way to get results, sir, is to hold our hearings, get these people in public session, have them claim the Fifth Amendment, have the witnesses name them as Communists, have them fired from the defense plants.... The employers have adopted an arrangement that they will not act against these people unless and until we hold these hearings...&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 260.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Many leading corporations were subject to political pressure to discharge any employee who invoked the Fifth Amendment. Some employers even fired those who had merely been mentioned unfavourably before Congressional committees. Bethlehem Steel fired a half dozen workers in 1954. In 1957, 15 of 22 witnesses who invoked the Fifth Amendment in Baltimore before the HCUA lost their jobs, including seven at Bethlehem Steel (the United Steel Workers refused to support them). A number of workers at the Buick plant in Flint, Michigan were fired after the HCUA exposed them as 'college trained militants'. General Electric announced that it would discharge all employees who refused to testify. A number of workers lost their jobs in Seattle after the HCUA arrived in town, including a 19-year-old dishwasher whose husband and father had been named before HCUA. A member of the Moldet's Union who was 'identified' by HCUA was dismissed after a woman phoned his company every day for several weeks demanding his dismissal.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 359-62, 383.&lt;/ref&gt; A captain in the Seattle fire department lost his job just a few days before he was due to retire, thus losing his pension rights.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 102.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Employers often fired workers on their own initiative, without waiting for prompting from the HCUA or government pressure. A worker was fired by Firestone for expressing provocative comparisons of the US and the USSR during company time; a worker was discharged for signing the Stockholm Peace petition. In 1946 Lockheed fired 18 workers on the grounds that it lacked sufficient proof of their loyalty. In 1947 Curtiss-Wright fired a worker for distributing communist pamphlets. A witness for the defence in the first Communist Smith Act trial lost her job as soon as she testified.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 367-8, 373.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1955, the Supreme Court of California ruled that membership in the Communist Party was in and of itself sufficient grounds for dismissal, as well as for the termination of any collective bargaining contract. The California Court's ruling was upheld by the US Supreme Court in 1956.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 373.&lt;/ref&gt; Those dismissed found it very difficult to find alternative employment in any but low paying jobs. For example, the vice-president of an electronics firm who was denied security clearance had his salary reduced from $18,000 to $4,000 a year. There were suicides, and emigration to Mexico, Canada and Europe in search of work.<br /> <br /> In 1947, the Taft Hartly Act effectively prohibited communists from holding office in trade unions. All union officials had to swear that they wete not members of, or affiliated to, the Communist Party. Unions that refused to file such oaths for their officers were excluded from the government guarantees of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a considerable detriment. In 1954, the Communist Control Act declared that any union which was found to be 'Communist infiltrated' was denied the services of the NLRE, and the right to sue in federal courts to enforce collective bargaining agreements, as well as the right to complain about unfair labour practices.<br /> <br /> In 1949, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) expelled nine unions, representing about 900,000 workers, including the influential West Coast Longshoremen (ILWU) and the United Electrical Workers, for being communist infiltrated. The CIO then proceeded to set up competing unions and encourage its existing unions to raid those unions that were expelled. As a result of the combined assault of the federal government and the CIO, the left-wing unions, except for the ILWU, were decimated.<br /> <br /> Communists and other leftists were banned from office by most unions and many were expelled altogether. By 1954 about 60% of all unions had amended their Constitutions to bar communists from office. Forty percent also banned communists from membership, a serious liability in plants with union shops. Many unions also refused to defend those fired for being 'subversives' or for refusing to testify before Congressional committees.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 352-8; Ginger, 1973, p. 175.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Not only were communists and their sympathizers denied employment, they were also denied the benefits of government social security programmes. In 1955, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare ruled that CP members were ineligible for retirement benefits. Not only did it stop social security payments to known communists, but in some cases it demanded the return of previous payments. William Z. Foster and other leading communists were cut off the security rolls. In June 1956, however, this policy was terminated. In 1954, the Veterans Administration (VA) ruled that no further disability payments would be given to those convicted under the Smith Act. Party leaders Robert Thompson and Saul Wellman were thus cut off from the benefits they had been receiving as a result of their World War II injuries. The VA further demanded that Wellman pay back the $10,000 he had already received; not until 1958 was this policy overturned. Unemployment benefits were often denied to people who were fired for having taken the Fifth Amendment. In 1952, the US Congress passed legislation stipulating that no federally financed housing could be occupied by members of organizations listed as subversive by the Attorney General. Local housing authorities were instructed to demand that all tenants sign a certificate of non-membership of any subversive organization.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Caute, 1978, pp. 180-4.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Numerous universities and school districts dismissed professors and teachers for leftist organization membership and sympathies. In 1948, three tenured members of the University of Washington faculty: Herbert Phillips (philosophy), Joseph Butterworth (English) and Ralph Bundlach (psychology) were fired without severance pay, on the grounds that being members of the Communist Party implied 'neglect of duty'. Three other faculty members were put on probation conditional upon them formally renouncing all connection or sympathy with the Communist Party. None of the three dismissed, tenured faculty members were ever able to find another university position.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 408-10.&lt;/ref&gt; Faculty members were also dismissed for communist ties at other schools, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard and New York University (NYU). Many tenured and untenured faculty members were dismissed simply for taking the Fifth Amendment before a Congressional Committee (e.g. for refusing to reveal names and activities of others). Such occurred at the University of Kansas City (associate professor H.B. Davis); Ohio State (professor Byron Datling); the University of Bermond (Dr Alex Novikoff); Temple University (professor Barrows Dunham), and the University of Michigan (three faculty members). In 1949, Oregon State fired two faculty members, one tenured. One of those, associate professor of chemistry Ralph Spitzer, was fired because he wrote an article in ''The Chemical and Engineering News'' that supported the theories of Lysenko, this being decisive evidence, according to the OSU President, that 'he goes right down the party line without any noticeable deviation'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 407.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The University of Wyoming inspected the textbooks used by the faculty for 'un-American material'. Courses on the Soviet Union were likely to be closely examined by administrations and modified or cancelled as a result. Faculty members grew fearful of recommending radical readings or appearing to be sympathetic to radical ideas in their lectures. The entire US teaching profession was intimidated. The Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism said, 'Today the vast majority of teachers... have learned that promotion and security depend upon conformity to the prevailing... concept of devotion to the public welfare'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 429.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> At the University of California in 1949, a loyalty oath was required of all faculty members, who were required to swear that they were 'not a member of the Communist Party or any other organization which advocates the overthrow of the Government'. Six faculty members were immediately dismissed for refusal to sign, or to cooperate with a special committee on tenure. Another 39 who refused to sign, but who told the committee that they were not communists, were also fired.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 422-3.&lt;/ref&gt; In June 1952, 28 California public and private schools including Stanford and the University of California system decided to collaborate with the state's Un-American Activittes Committee and employ on each campus a representative of the Committee (all of whom were former employees of the FBI or military intelligence) whose job it would be to investigate the loyalty of both current and prospective faculty. Within a year this system had resulted in over 100 dismissals and resignations, and in the prevention of approximately 200 appointments. Professors were also dismissed for refusal to sign disclaimers about Communist Party membership at San Francisco State (seven were fired) and San Diego State College.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 424-5.&lt;/ref&gt; In New York State alone, 58 college and university teachers lost their jobs.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 445.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In June 1949, the HCUA demanded from 81 colleges and high schools lists of the books used in social science, political science, history, government, economics, literature and geography. The Defense Department demanded the right to examine the curricula of approximately 200 colleges and universities engaged in classified work under military contract.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 404.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Colleges and universities systematically banned Marxist and other controversial speakers. In 1955, the University of Washington prohibited J. Robert Oppenheimer from speaking. Leftists who did speak were intimidated by Congressional Committees. Paul Sweezy was subpoenaed by the HCUA to talk about his speech at the University of New Hampshire. His refusal to answer some questions resulted in a contempt citation.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 76, 405.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The dismissal and intimidation of public school teachers became common in this period. Most states imposed disclaimer oaths as a condition of employment. Kansas had a typical oath requirement:&lt;blockquote&gt;I ___, swear that I do not advocate, nor am I a member of any political party or organization that advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States or of the State by force or violence....&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 404.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Thirteen states required disclaimers of membership in any organization on the Attorney General's List. Six specifically barred membership in the Communist Party.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> By the summer of 1953 it was estimated that more than 100 school teachers had been suspended or fired for non-cooperation with Congressional committees. In February 1954, 32 teachers were suspended in Philadelphia, the majority of whom were soon fired; in New York City about 320 school teachers were fired. A total of at least 600 dismissals or forced resignations of school teachers for political reasons can be documented during this period.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 406, 418-9, 445.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Communists, sympathizers and other leftists (including those hostile to the Communist Party) were systematically prohibited from travelling overseas (even to Canada) after 1947. Members of the Communist Party were unable to obtain passports after 1947, except for accredited members of the press. Periodically, ''Daily Worker'' correspondents were denied the right to travel abroad; the passport of ''The Daily Worker''&lt;nowiki/&gt;'s European editor, Joseph Starobin, was revoked in 1953. The Internal Security Act of 1950 made it a crime for members of organizations designated as 'Communist-action groups' even to apply for a passport. The US Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, stated, in May 1952, that it was government policy to withhold passports from all those whom there was 'reason to believe' were in the CP or whose 'conduct abroad is likely to be contrary to the best interests of the United States' and from anyone who might reasonably be believed to be 'going abroad to engage in activities which will advance the Communist movement'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 245.&lt;/ref&gt; Passports wete revoked or denied to Dr Walter Bergman, a prominent member of the Norman Thomas Socialist Party; Howard Fast (the novelist); Willlam O. Douglas (the Supreme Court Justice, for travel to China); Edward G. Robinson, Arthur Miller, Carl Foreman, Rockwell Kent and Max Schactman (leader of the militantly anti-Communist Independent Socialist League); Paul Robeson, the prominent Black entertainer, was not only denied a passport, but was prevented from entering Canada. For the benefit of thousands of Canadians, Robeson gave annual concerts at the Peace Arch Park on the Canadian border with the aid of loudspeakers, from time to time from 1952 to 1955.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 246-50.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Foreign communists, and others whose potential visits to the US were considered to be not in the best interest of the United States, were prohibited entry into the country. The Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 barred from entry into the US all those who advocated 'the economic, international and governmental doctrines of world communism or... of any other form of totalitarianism'. Past or present membership in the Communist Party was deemed sufficient to prohibit entry. Moreover, for purposes of this Act past membership in Nazi or fascist parties were not considered to be included under the definition of 'totalitarian'. Prominent leftists were systematically denied entry into the US, even to attend conferences. Those excluded included leading British Communists: Harry Pollitt and R. Palme Dutt, professor J.D. Bernal, Pablo Picasso, the Dean of Canterbury, Salvador Ocampo (the secretary of the Latin-American Federation of Labor), Oscar Niemeyer (the leading Brazilian architect). Ernst Mandel (a leading Eutopean Trotskyist), and Andre Gunder Frank. The state department's policy of banning entry to those considered hostile to US interests was not waived until ''1978'', in the middle of Carter's Human Rights campaign (because of its obvious hypocrisy);&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 251-3.&lt;/ref&gt; Reagan reviewed the practice.<br /> <br /> Deportation of non-citizens for affiliation or sympathy with the Communist Party was another technique used by the government to repress oppositional sentiment. In 1940, the Immigration Act of 1918 was amended to allow deportation on the basis both of present and pass membership in any organization advocating violent overthrow of the government. In 1950 the Internal Security Act permitted the deportation of anyone who, at the time of their entry, had been an anarchist, communist or a member of any group required to register as a subversive organization. From 1947 to 1953 approximately 300 'political' non-citizens were arrested and held for deportation. In California alone 190 'subversive aliens' were arrested for deportation between 1948 and 1956. Between 1945 and 1954, 163 people were actually deported for political reasons. A principal deterrent to the deportation of non-citizens accused of subversive associations was that all the socialist countries refused to accept as deportees persons who had been born in those countries, thus requiring the US to allow them to stay in the US indefinitely. Non-citizen communists who had been born in Western Europe, Latin America or Canada were more likely to be deported than were those born in Eastern Europe, as their countries of origin refused to accept them. The majority of those subject to deportation orders were thoroughly integrated into American society, many having left Europe as small children, and even being unable to speak the language of the countries to which they were deported. A 1956 study showed that 60% of the deportees had lived in America for more than 40 years, and 81% for more than 30 years, while more than half had children who were American citizens. Twenty percent could neither read nor write the language of their country of birth.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 228-30.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Communists and sympathizers were targeted for forcible removal to 'relocation' camps maintained under the authority of the McCarren Act, which permitted the government to detain persons considered dangerous during a national crisis. In 1951 the FBI's 'Security Index' of persons considered potentially dangerous, and thus detainable during a crisis, contained 13,901 names. By 1954 the Index consisted of approximately 26,000 names. In addition to the Security Index of Communist Party militants, the FBI, from 1948 to 1960, also maintained a 'Reserve Index ' which consisted of people considered sympathetic to the Communist Party. This list also included members of other non-Communist led organization.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Center for Research on Criminal Justice, 1977, pp. 108-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === The 1960s and Political Repression ===<br /> The last half of the 1960s saw a significant increase in domestic opposition both among Blacks and among white students in the US. The American state's response to this revitalized opposition movement was repression — as it had been so many times before. Repression in this period took the form of arrests of radicals — often on fabricated charges — systematic harassment of leftist and Black nationalist organizations, systematic disruption of radical organizations, and even assassinations and the driving of Black leaders into exile.<br /> <br /> In the post-1965 period, there was a tremendous increase in police surveillance of radicals. By the beginning of 1972 more than 500 municipalities were reported to have political police, so called 'Red Squads'. It was estimated that in the US as a whole almost 5,000 agents were assigned to such work. In 1970 the Los Angeles police department's political division had 167 agents in 1972, New York City's 361. In Chicago, in 1969, it was reported that over 1,000 agents were working on political matters (for local, state and federal agencies). The Superintendent of the Illinois State police was quoted at the time as saying, 'I've never seen anything like the intensity of the current investigations in all my years in law enforcement'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Goldstein, 1978, p. 504.&lt;/ref&gt; New York City's political police held files on 1.2 million persons (reduced, in 1973, to 240,000).&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> During the late 1960s and early 1970s 'active surveillance' was maintained on more than 250,000 Americans. A 1976 report of the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that such 'active surveillance' had infringed on a broad scale the freedom and privacy of those under surveillance.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 463.&lt;/ref&gt; Although the FBI's Security Index was formally abolished by an act of Congress in 1971, the FBI continued to maintain the list of 'subversives', merely renaming the old list 'the Administrative Index'. The criteria for inclusion in the renamed index became an individual being 'in a position to influence others to engage in acts inimical to the national defence, or furnish financial aid or other assistance to revolutionary elements because of their sympathy, associations, or ideology'. The new index had 15,259 names. These individuals were marked either for immediate arrest in a national emergency or for 'priority investigation' after those with arrest priority had been confined.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 469.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1970, the FBI instructed its local branches to report on 'every Black Student Union and similar group, regardless of their past or present involvement in disorders together with 'all individuals'  belonging to 'militant New Left campus organizations'. In the same year the FBI initiated a 'Key Black Extremist' programme, designed to locate and monitor 'Black extremists who are cither key leaders or activists and are particularly extreme, agitative, anti-government and vocal in their calls for terrorism and violence'. Such individuals were to be put in the top priority for arrest category in the FBI's Security Index/Administrative Index. In 1971, the FBI initiated an investigation of the New University Conference (an organization of college teachers and graduate students) and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 466.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1968, the FBI's Security Index of those marked for detention in case of a national emergency was expanded to include the categories of 'Black Nationalists' and 'Anarchists' (Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and other new leftists). A 1968 FBI memo to field offices instructed field agents to investigate, with a view to inclusion on the Security Index, individuals in the New Left movement whose 'potential dangerousness' to 'internal security' was 'clearly demonstrated by their statements, conduct and actions' even if 'no membership in a basic revolutionary organization could be established'. The memo specified that individuals with 'anarchistic tendencies' should be included in the Security Index on the basis of statements and actions that 'establish his rejection of law and order and reveal him to be a potential threat to the security of the United States'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 453.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The FBI's anti-radical activities went far beyond mere surveillance and the maintenance of lists of those to be arrested in a national emergency. The FBI was actively engaged in disrupting left organizations and discrediting left leaders. One FBI tactic used against both Marxist and Black Nationalist organizations was to plant information that a certain leader was an FBI agent, in order to discredit him or her. In 1964 a New York Communist Party official was expelled from the Party, accused of being an agent, because of such a planted story.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid.; Blackstock, 1975, p. 152.&lt;/ref&gt; The FBI report on the furore around the expulsion stated that it 'crippled the activities of the New York State Communist organization, and the turmoil within the party continues to this date'. Identical things happened to Black organizations in the late 1960s. For example, a Black organization received a letter purporting to be from a 'soul brother' in a junior position in the FBI which pointed to one of their leaders as an FBI agent. In 1969 an FBI informant originated a story that a local draft counsellor was an FBI agent. This led to the ostracization of the counsellor.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid.; Blackstock, 1975, p. 152.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In May 1968 the FBI launched a systematic campaign to, in their words, 'expose, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize the activities of the various New Left organizations, their leadership and adherents'. It became FBI policy to plant FBI provocateurs in SDS chapters to instigate violence, to disrupt New Left organizations by discrediting leaders, causing splits and aggravating sectarianism among organizations, and to engineer the firing of radical university faculty members.<br /> <br /> FBI policy was to provoke 'personal conflicts or animosities' among New Left leaders by creating or supporting factions, generating stories discrediting leaders and disrupting their personal life, as well as aggravating hostilities among different left organizations. FBI agents were frequently instructed to initiate violent acts including attacking the police, bombing, and disrupting meetings and demonstrations. In Seattle, FBI infiltrators engaged in a series of acts of bombing and burning university and civic buildings.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chomsky, in Blackstock, 1975, pp. 14-15.&lt;/ref&gt; The FBI also sent letters (anonymous or otherwise) to sponsors of anti-war coalition demonstrations, pointing out that members of 'subversive' or 'communist' organizations were involved or 'behind' such activities. Such letters were sent to owners of meeting places in order that the use of such facilities would be denied to anti-war meetings, or to liberal participants in such activities (to cause them to drop out by 'Red Baiting') and to the press (to give them material to run exposes about 'Communist infiltration' of the anti-war movement).&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Blackstock, 1975, pp. 44-5, 139.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The tactic of turning competing groups against each other (i.e. originating or exaggerating sectarianism) was also an FBI ploy, exercised both with the Marxist left and within the Black movement. In 1966 the FBI's 'Operation Hoodwink' was initiated to set the Communist Party and organized crime against each other by sending forged threatening letters to both. Later, in California, a similar technique was used to provoke violence between the Black Panthers and non-Marxist Black nationalists.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Goldstein, 1978, p. 448.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1968 the FBI stirred up factionalism in the Los Angeles SDS by having an informant accuse two leaders of embezzling funds. According to the FBI report on this Incident these accusations culminated in 'fist fights and acts of name calling at several of the recent SDS meetings'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 471.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Documents obtained from the FBI through court action by the Socialist Workers ' Party (SWP) revealed infiltration of the strong Bloomington, Indiana SWP youth group chapter in order to 'bring about a split in philosophy'. These documents also revealed that, by means of provocative anonymous letters, the FBI intervened in Atlanta in January 1970 in order to reopen a split between the SWP and its allies and the Revolutionary Youth Movement.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Blackstock, 1975, pp. 126, 132, 219.&lt;/ref&gt; Such actions reflect a central tactic of the FBI campaign of systematic disruption: sowing sectarianism in order to weaken and divide the left. This tactic worked extremely well, and although the evidence is not decisive, it undoubtedly played an important role in the destruction of the SDS and its disintegration into many small, ineffective and mutually antagonistic factions in the 1969-73 period.<br /> <br /> The FBI was especially concerned about the 'threat' from Black organizations and directed much of its energy into both disrupting and discrediting them and sowing dissention between Black ''and'' predominantly white organizations — as well as animosities among Blacks and white members of the same leftist organizations. In March 1968 the FBI put into operation its 'Cointelpro' strategy against what J. Edgar Hoover labelled, 'Black hate groups'. Hoover's March 1968 memo, which outlined the objectives of this programme, included the following points:&lt;blockquote&gt;(1) prevent the coaliton of militant Black nationalist groups. In unity there is strength.... An effective coalition of Black nationalist groups might be the first step toward a real 'Mau Mau' in America, the beginning of a true Black revolution.<br /> <br /> (2) Prevent the rise of a 'messiah' who could unify, and electrify the militant Black nationalist movement.<br /> <br /> (3) Prevent militant Black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability, by discrediting them to three separate segments of the community. (The 'responsible Black community', the white community and 'Negro radicals'.)<br /> <br /> (4) ...prevent the long range growth of militant Black nationalist organizations, especially among youth.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 30-2.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In addition to the FBI efforts to sow discord between Black Marxist and non-Marxist nationalists, the FBI emphasized preventing unity between Black and white radicals. It was deeply concerned, in 1964 and 1965, when the followers of Malcolm X were becoming close to the Socialist Workers' Party.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 104-5.&lt;/ref&gt; Documents obtained through court action by the SWP revealed that the FBI made concerted efforts to stir up racial antagonisms within that organization by anonymous letters (often racist letters sent to Blacks allegedly from white comrades, and arguments about 'racial imbalance' in favour of whites in leading bodies). One such letter sent to Black SWP leader Paul Boutelle stated:&lt;blockquote&gt;Some of us within the Party are fed up with the subversive effect you are having on the Party, but since a few see your presence as an asset (because of your color only) not much can be said openly.... Why don't you and the rest of your fellow Party monkeys hook up with the Panthers where you'd feel at home?&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 34.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Another anonymous FBI letter, attempting to disrupt the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam by stirring up racial antagonisms and race-baiting argued:&lt;blockquote&gt;Over the past several years the Trotskyites have literally taken control of the body proper and have repeatedly resisted efforts to recruit Black brothers into NMC leadership.... I have been sickened — on more than one occasion — by the promises made to the Black United Front, promises not kept, promises made with the mouth and not the heart. In the main, NMC leadership has been no better than the racist politicians and phony liberals who give lip service to the Black community and turn their backs on any positive action. The NMC leadership has demonstrated an appalling lack of sensitivity towards the largest minority in the country... the situation must be rectified immediately.&lt;/blockquote&gt;This letter ended 'Just for the record — I am not Black'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 168.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> This two-pronged effort by the FBI to drive Blacks out of multinational Marxist organizations by the use of racism, and to disrupt and discredit predominantly white organizations through false claims of white racism (especially by not having a high proportion of Black leaders) also appears to have been very successful. It was developed to undermine the Communist Party in the late 1940s and early 1950s and, according to leading participants, probably played an important role in the Party's notoriously disruptive 'anti-white-chauvinism campaign' in which much of the CP's energy was directed into divisive attacks on itself.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Haywood, 1978, ch. 21.&lt;/ref&gt; The continuing use of both of these devices to divide and demoralize predominantly white organizations, and to hinder the recruitment of minorities by multi-national organizations throughout the 1970s, strongly suggests a continued FBI employment of this tactic throughout this decade. The extremely effective use of both 'racism' and 'race-baiting', 'guilt tripping', because of their appeal to racially sensitive minorities and guilt-ridden young radicals, certainly did not discourage the FBI and other police organizations from promoting or adding to such disruptive activities.<br /> <br /> The FBI also attempted to disrupt the personal lives of leading leftists by writing letters to spouses of activists, claiming that their partners were engaged in extra-marital affairs. Martin Luther King was the subject of such harassment by the FBI. Other 'Cointelpro' operations included attempting to get radical teachers fired from their jobs by writing anonymous letters to employers, mailing abusive anonymous letters to radicals, circulating false information about events, cancelling reservations for meeting places made by leftist groups, distributing phony right-wing campus newspapers attacking local leftists, actual physical assaults on dissidents, burning or disabling of cars owned by radicals, stealing mail, kidnapping of militants, and widespread use of illegal 'bugs'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Goldstein, 1978, pp. 471-2.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The FBI was instrumental in the dismissal of assistant professor Morris Starsky from the University of Arizona in the late 1960s, because:&lt;blockquote&gt;It is apparent that New Left organizations and activities in the Phoenix metropolitan area have received their inspiration and leadership almost exclusively from the members of the faculty in the Department of Philosophy at Arizona State University (ASU) chiefly Assistant Professor Morris Starsky.&lt;/blockquote&gt;FBI tactics used against Starsky included sending anonymous and slanderous letters to those members of the Faculty Committee who heard the charges against him.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chomsky and Herman, 1979, p. 12; Blackstock, 1975, pp. 175-6, 183-6.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> From May 1968 through to the spring of 1971 the New Left was the target of about 290 separate disruptive actions by the FBI. More than half of the 73 individuals who were on the FBI's 'Key Activist' list of New Leftists between 1968 and 1971 were subject to 'some type of prosecutive action' by local or federal officials. Approximately 40% of 'Cointelpro' activity directed against the New Left was devoted to keeping left leaders from speaking, teaching, writing or publishing.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Goldstein, 1978, pp. 452, 472.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> State repression of the New Left and the Black nationalist movement went considerably beyond disruptive tactics and spreading discord. After the first of the major 1960s Black riots, Bill Epton (a Black organizer for the Progressive Labor Party) was arrested and convicted under the New York State 'criminal anarchy' statute (the first time such a charge had been brought in this state in 40 years).&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 434.&lt;/ref&gt; There were a number of major trials for 'conspiracy' to commit felonies against leaders or participants in various political actions. The most famous of these was the so-called 'Chicago Eight' trial against a number of national anti-war leaders who were involved in organizing demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. They were charged with conspiracy to cross inter-state lines with the intent to incite a riot.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 487.&lt;/ref&gt; Other major conspiracy trials took place in Seattle. Eight leaders of the Seattle Liberation Front (SLF) were charged with conspiracy to damage federal property, and rioting. These charges were based on a February 1970 SLF demonstration that ended with paint spraying and window breaking at the Seattle federal courthouse. Although the demonstration was organized only ten days in advance, the indictment charged four of the defendants with crossing state-lines the previous December with intent to incite a riot.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 487.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In September 1969 a leader of a Detroit demonstration was arrested under an old Red Flag law. Many political radicals were arrested and convicted and some sentenced to severe prison terms for possession of marijuana. John Sinclair (the leader of the White Panther Party), was sentenced to nine and a half years for smoking a marijuana cigarette with two undercover agents. Lee Johnson (a Black anti-war organizer) was sentenced to 30 years for giving marijuana to an undercover agent. After lengthy appeals both of these convictions were eventually overturned.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 514.&lt;/ref&gt; There were over 100 documented cases of people being prosecuted under 'flag protection' statutes for such actions as displaying a flag with a peace symbol replacing the stars.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 514.&lt;/ref&gt; Anti-war activists who ran coffee houses near military bases were systematically harassed. Three operators of such a coffee house in Columbia South Carolina were sentenced to six years in prison (eventually reduced to a year of probation and a suspended sentence) and their coffee house padlocked, on a charge of 'keeping and maintaining a public nuisance'. Organizers of another coffee house, near Fort Sill, Oklahoma, were sentenced to six months by a federal judge for trespassing on government property, because, in the words of the federal judge, 'acts of lowering the morale of the troops at Fort Sill are a serious matter'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 517.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> A number of student activists were killed by the police and national guard. The most well-known example was the shooting to death of four Kent State University students in May 1970. Most of the dead and wounded students were shot in the back or side after a student threw a stone at the soldiers. While the local grand jury absolved the National Guard, they indicted 25 students, faculty members and ex-students on felony charges stemming from the incident.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 512.&lt;/ref&gt; A less publicized but equally significant event occurred at the same time at Black Jackson State College in Mississippi. In July 1970 a student activist was killed by police in Madison, Wisconsin, as were two students in Lawrence, Kansas. Two students were also killed by the police at Southern University in Louisiana. The local grand jury investigation concluded that there was 'no justification for the shootings'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 513.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Grand Jury system during 1970-73 was employed as an instrument for intimidating and harassing leftists. Co-ordinated by the Internal Security Division of the Justice Department, Grand Juries went on what came to be called 'fishing expeditions', in the 1970-73 period over 1,000 people were subpoenaed before over 100 Grand Juries to testify about their own and other people's radical activities. Those subpoenaed were requited to testify in secret, without legal counsel, under threat of gaol for contempt. In 1970 a new federal law was passed that denied the right of those subpoenaed to refuse to testify on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate oneself. The new concept of 'use immunity' meant that the Fifth Amendment precluded only the use of one's own testimony against oneself, but that ''all'' questions had to be answered, even if statements were self-incriminating.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 493.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> As in all repressive periods, leftists were dismissed from teaching positions. At San Francisco State three professors were dismissed and two others denied tenure. Staughton Lynd, a leading radical historian, was refused a position at Northern Illinois University, as well as at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, by the Chancellor of the State College system (who overruled the Presidents of the Colleges) because he had travelled to North Vietnam. Angela Davis was dismissed from the University of California because she was a member of the Communist Party. A political science professor at the University of Vermont (Michael Parenti), an economics professor at San Diego State (Peter Bohmer) and a philosophy professor at Arizona State (Morris Starsky) were all fired for their anti-war activities. Other dismissals occurred at the University of Connecticut, the City University of New York, Oklahoma State University and the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 522-3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Again, as in other periods, the state censored literature and other media it considered subversive of the existing order. In May 1967, the Postmaster General banned a journal published in China from the US mails on the grounds that it encouraged Black soldiers to 'sabotage operations' in Vietnam. Films produced in socialist countries (namely Cuba and Vietnam) were prohibited from entry into the country, and were seized by the US government at scheduled showings when copies were obtained in spite of the federal ban.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 435, 438.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The most systematic and effective repressive US government campaign was that against the Black Panther Party. Unlike the white student New Left, the Panthers, an explicitly revolutionary Marxist-Leninist organization, were, in the late 1960s, in the process of acquiring a mass base among working- and lower-class groups within the Black community. The FBI reported that in the spring of 1970, 25% of Blacks and 43% of Blacks under 21, had 'great respect' for the Black Panther Party. The FBI, in a special top secret report to the President, in June of 1970, described the Party as 'the most active and dangerous Black extremist group in the United States'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chomsky, in Blackstock, 1973, p. 14.&lt;/ref&gt; A systematic national campaign organized by the US federal government in co-ordination with state and local police and intelligence units in order to destroy the party, included sowing dissidence, mass arrests, political trials for conspiracy, and assassinations of Panther leaders. Such techniques succeeded in suppressing the Panthers everywhere except in its original home — the Oakland area.<br /> <br /> In 1968 and 1969 Black Panther offices were raided 18 times by the police, three Panthers were deported from the US, and 21 cases of police harassment of individuals were documented. During this period 768 members of the Black Panthers were arrested on a total of 1,003 charges, including 178 charges of possession of weapons, 96 of disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace, 92 of attempted murder, or conspiracy to murder, 38 of conspiracy to bomb, 16 of rioting or conspiring to riot, 36 of illegally selling newspapers, 11 of unlawful assembly and one charge of setting up an unlawful table. A high proportion of the charges were eventually dropped, which suggests that many arrests were for purposes of harassment. In those cases where data exists, there was a conviction rate of 88%.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Wolfe, 1973, pp. 48-50.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton was charged with the murder of a policeman and spent 22 months in gaol before being released. The other most prominent Panther, Bobby Seale, was tried as one of the 'Chicago Eight', for conspiracy to cross state-lines with the intent to riot (although he had participated in the events only at the 1968 Democratic convention as a substitute speaker at a rally). Seale was also arrested and gaoled for alleged involvement in the murder of a New Haven Black Panther. Twenty-one leading New York City Panthers were arrested in 1969 for 'conspiracy to bomb department stores and murder policemen' and were held in gaol for over two years before being acquitted. The climax of the nationally coordinated police suppression of the Panthers occurred in December 1969 when Chicago police raided the apartment of Fred Hampton, head of the Panthers' Chicago section, and killed him in his bed. A Grand Jury investigation of this incident found that 83 to 99 shots were fired, all but one of which were from police weapons.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Goldstein, 1978, pp. 528-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In summary, the US state in the late 1960s responded as it had in any comparable period when there was a growing threat to the dominant system of property and privilege. Repressive measures grew in harshness parallel with the growth in numbers and the radicalism of the left. Repressive measures were focused on what was seen as the most important danger threatening the Black movement and the possibility of Black Nationalist-white Marxist unity. Repressive measures were cancelled and even publicly repudiated in the mid-1970s after both the Black nationalist and New Left movements had been decimated.<br /> <br /> Between 1974 and 1980, there was no challenge of any consequence to the dominant system of property and privilege and no effective movement opposed to US foreign policy, and thus it was one of the most tolerant and least politically repressive periods in US history. When there is no need for repression, there is no repression. In the early 1980s, at the beginning of the Reagan administration and with the imminent probability of a revival of US imperial intervention overseas, cutbacks in social programmes at home, and the consequent probability of a rebirth of the anti-war, student, and national minority movements, it can be expected that the state will once again resort to the appropriate measures to ensure law and order' (privilege and property).<br /> <br /> === United States Support of Repressive Regimes Overseas in the 1960s and 1970s ===<br /> In the 1965-80 period there was a systematic denial of basic civil liberties in most US supported client states of the Far East and Latin America. Suppression in these countries was qualitatively greater than anything experienced in the Soviet Union or in other socialist countries (Kampuchea aside) in the same period. The most brutal suppression of civil liberties at this time was probably in Uruguay, Guatemala and Indonesia, where political opponents were systematically killed on a massive scale, without benefit of even a formal trial.<br /> <br /> Amnesty International, in September 1979, announced that since 1966 more than 20,000 Guatemalans had been killed for political reasons by the military government and its supporting 'death squads' (mostly off duty policemen), 2,000 between mid-1978 and the end of 1979. There have been no convictions for any of these 20,000 murders, it reported that all those arrested for political reasons have been killed, only one of whom was allowed to make contact with friends, relatives or lawyers. Amnesty International does not adopt prisoners of conscience in Guatemala because prisoners of conscience are 'murdered within a short time of their detention'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Amnesty International, 1978, p. 123; ''New York Times'', 6 December 1979, p. A9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> About one in 500 persons in Uruguay in the late 1970s was in gaol or concentration camps for political reasons. Political incarceration at an equivalent rate for the Soviet Union at the same time would mean over 500,000 prisoners, compared to the actual total of between 100 and 500, i.e. the rate of incarceration for political reasons in Uruguay was more than 1,000 times higher than in the Soviet Union (see Chapter 8). It has been estimated that between 1973 and 1978 a total of 40,000 people were gaoled for political reasons, about 1.4% of the population. The comparable number of political prisoners in the Soviet Union would be approximately 3.5 million, i.e. the overall rate of political incarceration in the 1973-78 period was about 10,000 times higher in Uruguay than in the Soviet Union.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Amnesty International, 1978, pp. 140-1; Chomsky and Herman, 1979, pp. 270, 272.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Since the military coup in Argentina in March 1976 through to the end of 1978, 15,000 political opponents 'went missing' without a trace and have been officially declared dead by the government. A year after the coup there were between 5,000 and 10,000 political prisoners, as well as tens of thousands forced into exile.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Amnesty International, July 1979, p. 4; Chomsky and Herman, 1979, pp. 26-7.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Similar data can be reported for other Latin American countries, especially Chile, Brazil, El Salvador and Paraguay, where political opponents systematically 'disappear', many murdered by 'death squads', (consisting mainly of off-duty police and military personnel) unofficially sanctioned and protected by the state. Amnesty International's ''Annual Report'' for 1975-76 notes that more than 80% of the urgent appeals and actions for victims of torture are from Latin America.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chomsky and Herman, 1979, p. 9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> American client states in the Far East have also been especially brutal in their suppression of civil liberties. Estimates of the number of leftists killed after the 1965 military coup in Indonesia run from between 500,000 and more than a million (disproportionately people of Chinese descent). Official government figures report another 750,000 people arrested for political reasons. Amnesty International estimated that in 1977 there were still between 55,000 and 100,000 political prisoners. Indonesia's heavy handed approach to civil liberties was again demonstrated after the December 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor. Estimates of the number of East Timoreans killed by the Indonesian Army run to one-sixth of the population. A report of the Australian Parliament found that the Indonesian Army engaged in 'indiscriminate killing on a scale unprecedented in post-World War II history'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chomsky and Herman, 1979, pp. 130, 208-9; Amnesty International, 1978, pp. 162-6.&lt;/ref&gt; South Korea and the Philippines are also notorious for suppression of civil liberties. By the end of 1977, more than 60,000 persons had been arrested by the Marcos regime. In 1981, 15,000 were imprisoned without trial in South Korea for their writings, speeches, union activity, or for demonstrating.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Amnesty International, 1978, pp. 170-2, 183-5; Chomsky and Herman, 1979, p. 234; ''New York Times'', 20 September 1981, p. 5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Suppression of basic civil liberties is also virtually universal in the various right-wing dictatorships and racist regimes of Southern Africa and the Middle East. Political prisoners in Iran between 1973 and 1976 are estimated at 25,000 to 100,000, and 300 officially acknowledged executions.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chomsky and Herman, 1979, p. 13.&lt;/ref&gt; The Republic of South Africa systematically detains opponents without trial and restricts their freedom of movement, expression and association, as well as tries and convicts opponents of apartheid. Israel engages in similar practices against Palestinians. According to Amnesty International Israel employs 'the use of administrative measures to physically restrict individuals without due process of law, including detaining them without trial'.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;''New York Times'', 11 December 1981, p. 2.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The US state systematically supports the repressive regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America and their use of the repression of civil liberties as a mechanism to secure their rule, and thus consolidate existing property and power arrangements. Table 6.1 shows the relation between increased political repression and denial of civil liberties, ''and'' both increased benefits to US transnational corporations and increased economic and military support from the US.<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed&quot;<br /> |+Table 6.1<br /> US Aid, Investment Climate and Human Rights in Ten Countries<br /> Sources:<br /> 1. Information on torture and political prisoners mostly from the Amnesty International Report on Torture, 1975 and The Amnesty International Report, 1975-76, 1976. Supplemented with data from newspaper articles, journals, and books on the specific countries. Data on investment climate largely from articles, journals, and books on the specific counttries.<br /> 2. Data on aid taken from US Overseas Loans and Grants and Assistance from International Organizations, AID, 1972 and 1976 editions, for years 1962-1975. Data previous to 1962 taken from Historical Statistics of the United States, Bicentennial Edition, Department of Commerce, 1975.<br /> Adapted from Chomsky and Herman, 1979, p. 43.<br /> !Country<br /> !Strategic Political Dates&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> !Positive (+) or Negative(-) Effects on Democracy<br /> !(-) means an increased use of torture or death squads<br /> !(-) means an Increase in No. of political prisoners<br /> !Improvement in Investment Climate: tax laws eased (+)<br /> !Improvement in Investment Climate: labour repressed (+)<br /> !Total Economic and Military Aid (US and International)<br /> !(% change)<br /> |-<br /> |Brazil<br /> |1964<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> | +<br /> | +<br /> | +<br /> |112<br /> |-<br /> |Chile<br /> |1973<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> |NA<br /> | +<br /> | +<br /> | +<br /> |770<br /> |-<br /> |Dominican Republic<br /> |1965<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> |NA<br /> | +<br /> | +<br /> | +<br /> |133<br /> |-<br /> |Guatemala<br /> |1954<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> |NA<br /> | +<br /> | +<br /> | +<br /> |5,300<br /> |-<br /> |Indonesia<br /> |1965<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> | +<br /> |NA<br /> | +<br /> |62<br /> |-<br /> |Iran<br /> |1953<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> | +<br /> | +<br /> | +<br /> |900<br /> |-<br /> |Philippines<br /> |1972<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> | +<br /> | +<br /> | +<br /> |161<br /> |-<br /> |South Korea<br /> |1972<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> | +<br /> | +<br /> | +<br /> |9<br /> |-<br /> |Uruguay<br /> |1973<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> |—<br /> | +<br /> | +<br /> | +<br /> |21<br /> |}<br /> Over 200,000 Latin American military personnel were trained in the US between 1949 and 1980. The US not only trains foreign military personnel in about 150 different bases and schools but also sends military advisory missions to a great many less developed countries. Most of the arrests, confinements, executions and torture of political prisoners in right-wing regimes are carried out by the military police, who are largely trained and often advised by the US, or the Brazilian, military, itself trained by the US.<br /> <br /> SAVAK, the Shah of Iran's secret police, was set up by the CIA in 1957 and its leading officers were trained by the US. Many SAVAK agents received instruction under US police training programmes financed by the Agency for International Development (AID). The US military and intelligence agencies provide training in torture techniques to the police and military as well as providing torture technology.<br /> <br /> The rationale for US support for repression of civil liberties in the right-wing, less developed countries is that repression is essential in order to fulfil the overriding demand for the 'security' necessary to obtain stability for economic development and the consequent prosperity that will render conservative parliamentary capitalist forms viable. Both the US and the various military regimes justify their use of wholesale confinement, torture and execution of opponents as necessary to eliminate the 'terrorist', L.e., revolutionary forces threatening their societies. It is of interest to point out that the tens of thousands of leftists killed in Latin America, from 1973 to 1976, as part of the campaign to stamp out 'terrorism' contrasts with the worldwide total of 292 deaths reported by the State Department's Office for Combating Terrorism in the same period as allegedly caused by 'terrorists', i.e., leftist revolutionaries.&lt;ref group=&quot;6.&quot;&gt;Chomsky and Herman, 1979, pp. 4-5, 46-9, 94.&lt;/ref&gt; In spite of the very large disparity between deaths caused by leftist 'terrorists' and by military regimes, it should nevertheless be pointed out that the massive repression of political opponents has been far from irrational or gratuitous. To preserve and consolidate the system of property which both encompasses base disparities of wealth and income, ''and'' freedom for US and other transnational corporations to invest, communist and other anti-capitalist movements have had to be destroyed or prevented from achieving enough strength to make a revolution.<br /> <br /> === Conclusion ===<br /> This chapter has attempted to demonstrate that the level of civil liberties, tolerance and repression over the course of US history, from its revolution of 1776 to the 1970s has been a product of the threat to the dominant institutions of that society and the need to mobilize for foreign or domestic war. The next two chapters on the Soviet Union over the comparable period in its history from its revolution of 1917 to the 1980s, attempt to demonstrate that most of the variation over time in the level of tolerance and repression in that society, as well as the comparative differences between it and the US, are due primarily to the variations and differences in the degree of internal threat to its prevailing institutions and the need to mobilize for external and internal war. In other words, it will be shown that there is no qualitative difference in this respect between the two countries.<br /> <br /> === References ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;6.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> == 7. Toleration and Repression in the USSR: 1918-54 ==<br /> This chapter and the following one examine the level of tolerance/repression of ideas contrary to the values of the Soviet system, as well as the variations in the level of due process guarantees for political opponents, over the course of Soviet history. This chapter focuses on the period of Civil War (1918-20), the New Economic Policy (1922-27), the Cultural Revolution and Collectivization (1928-31), the so-called 'Great Purge' (1936-38), and the post-War (1948-55) periods. Chapter 8 explores the contemporary (1965-82) period. Chapter 9 interprets the results of Chapters 6, 7 and 8 in an attempt to develop a ''general theory'' of the level of tolerance of public advocacy that can account for variations in 'political repression' in any state society — capitalist or socialist.<br /> <br /> This attempt to develop an analytical framework within which to explain the somewhat radical fluctuations in tolerance and repression over the course of Soviet history should, in no sense, be taken as a justification for the unjust and erroneous action taken against either many innocent, middle and rich peasants in the 1930-31 period of rapid collectivization, or the many innocent leaders and officials of the CPSU and other Soviet institutions who were 'purged' and, in all too many cases, executed, in the 1936-38 period. Those who want both to understand such events, so that they may not happen again, to understand the real liberating potential of socialism and capitalism are perhaps compelled more than others to seek an understanding of the causes of such phenomena. It is insufficient, and scientifically inaccurate, to lightly dismiss actions against innocent people as a result of the personality of a few 'bad' leaders or of merely 'mistaken' policies. If the left is: (1) successfully to avoid such serious errors in the future, and (2) to give a scientific account of these past events to those who today are justly concerned about human rights in socialist societies — and who, because of such legitimate concerns, keep their distance from the left — then it is essential that a careful and non-emotionally charged analysis be developed. The last chapters of this book are an attempt at such an analysis.<br /> <br /> It should be stressed that official contemporary CPSU accounts of the developments of the collectivization and 'Great Purge' periods are not used as evidence here, and that heavy reliance has been accorded to Western, carefully documented sources, as well as the reports of leading opponents of the CPSU leadership during this period, for example, Deutscher, Medvedev, Brzezinski. Unquestionably, (1) many innocent peasants were wrongfully considered to be class enemies and treated accordingly during the height of the campaign for collectivization; and (2) such Soviet leaders as Bukharin, Kamenev, Trotsky, Tukhachevsky, and Zinoviev were neither guilty of any collaboration with Western intelligence agencies, nor guilty of the charges of conspiring to overthrow Soviet Power — as was falsely claimed in the three Moscow trials of 1936-38.<br /> <br /> This chapter attempts to show that the considerable variations in the level of tolerance/repression during the 1918-54 period of Soviet history were essentially a result of the considerable variations in the level of domestic conflict and threat of external invasion. In general, the greater the level of domestic crisis and the perceived probability of external invasions, then the lower the level of tolerance of public advocacy of anti-Bolshevik or anti-leadership ideas. The more secure the international situation, and the higher the level of domestic legitimacy, the greater the tolerance of alternative perspectives — as well as the more secure are due process guarantees, such as that of a fair trial. The variations in tolerance/repression over Soviet history are accounted for without reference to personalities, megalomania, or inherent tendencies to bureaucratization, that is, repression is analysed in materialist terms.<br /> <br /> === Civil War, Invasion, and Relaxation (1918-27) ===<br /> In any revolutionary civil war, both sides act against opponents behind their lines, just as they take direct action opposing organized armed groups. Such was the case in the Russian Revolution and Civil War, as it has been in the American, English, French, Cuban, Vietnamese, Angolan, or any other revolutions.<br /> <br /> Out of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Soviets which organized the seizure of power in October 1917 grew a special security branch, mandated to seek out counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs — the Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-revolution and Sabotage (the CHEKA). Organized under the leadership of the Polish revolutionary Dzerzinski, the early CHEKA was described by John Reed as 'self-restrained and gentle',&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;R. Medvedev, 1971, p. 389.&lt;/ref&gt; an evaluation with which most authorities, including Roy Medvedev and Isaac Deutscher, concur.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., and Deutscher, 1960, p. 346.&lt;/ref&gt; During the first six months of CHEKA activity (throughout the spring of 1918) only 22 people were executed for sabotage or counter-revolutionary activities. During the second half of 1918, however, as the Civil War intensified, 'a wave of conspiracies and terrorist acts swept over the young Soviet Republic and the Party was obliged to respond with the Red Terror'.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1971, p. 390.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The bulk of CHEKA activities took place near the military fronts and were directed against those who were playing an active role in aiding the white armies. According to Roy Medvedev, CHEKA activities:&lt;blockquote&gt;...were thought of not as juridical or investigative agencies. They were military-administrative punitive agencies. Just as a soldier at the front kills his opponent simply because he sees him with a weapon in his hand, so the Cheka's mission was to seek out and destroy counterrevolutionaries and saboteurs, the internal enemy. A civil war is a special kind of conflict; the front passes through every city, every village, every house.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 388.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;During the last six months of 1918, approximately 6,000 people were shot for counter-revolutionary activities and sabotage, and during the next two and a half years of civil war another 7,000; many more people were confined. Given the ferocity of the war, as well as the historical standards of 'white terror' (including that engaged in by the Russian Whites at the time) or other revolutionaries terrors (for example, that of the French Revolution) this 'Red Terror' was mild. According to Bolsheviks at the time, 'if the CHEKA can be accused of anything, it is not excessive zeal in shooting, but insufficient application of the supreme penalty'.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 390.&lt;/ref&gt; According to Medvedev the Red Terror of 1918-21 was a 'question of saving the Soviet state from certain downfall'.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;R. Medvedev, 1979, ch. 9.&lt;/ref&gt; Deutscher, comparing the Red Terror of 1918-21 with that of the French Jacobins in 1793 and 1794 emphasized the Revolution's gentle treatment of its enemies:&lt;blockquote&gt;The Bolshevik regime was nearing the close of its second decade without showing signs of Jacobin-like insanity. To be sure there was no lack of terror in the years of the civil war, from 1918 to 1921. But that terror was still 2 measure of war against an armed and militant counter-revolution. Its methods and objectives were defined by the nature of that war. Unlike the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks did not execute their Girondists. The most eminent spokesmen of Menshevism, Martov, Dan, Abramovich, were either allowed to leave or were exiled from Russia after their party had been banned. A handful of those who stayed behind were imprisoned, but most Mensheviks, reconciling themselves to defeat, loyally served in the Soviet administration and even on the staffs of the leading Bolsheviks.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Deutscher, 1960, p. 346.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;During these early years, not only did other revolutionaries (Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries, etc.) receive liberal treatment, but workers and peasants were treated with considerably greater leniency than those of other class backgrounds — especially landlords and capitalists.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Sec Schapiro, 1960, p. 263.&lt;/ref&gt; Once the tide turned in the Civil War, the extraordinary measures that had been necessary to secure victory in the 1918-19 period were greatly limited. After the Red Army defeated Denikin in January 1920 Lenin instructed Dzerzinski to cease using the death penalty and other extraordinary measures. In his report to the All-Union Central Executive Committee on 2 February, 1920, Lenin argued:&lt;blockquote&gt;We were forced to use terror because of the terror practised by the Entente, when strong world powers threw their hordes against us, not avoiding any type of combat. We would not have lasted two days had we not answered these attempts of officers and White Guardists in a merciless fashion; this meant the use of terror, but this was forced upon us by the terrorist methods of the Entente. But as soon as we attained a decisive victory, even before the end of the war, immediately after taking Rostov, we gave up the use of the death penalty and thus proved that we intend to execute our own programme in the manner that we promised. We say that the application of violence flows out of the decision to smother the exploiters, the big landowners and the capitalists; as soon as this was accomplished we gave up the use of all extraordinary methods. We have proved this in practice.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Cited in Khruschev, 1956, p. 28.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The regime of political prisoners during the Civil War, throughout the 1920s and in many respects until 1937, was both lenient and oriented to rehabilitation. To quote Roy Medvedev:&lt;blockquote&gt;They received extra food, were exempt from forced labour, and were not subject to humiliating inspections. In political gaols self-government was allowed; the politicals elected elders, who dealt with the prison administration. They kept their clothes, books, writing materials and pocket knives; they could subscribe to newspapers and magazines.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Torture was prohibited until 1937. A CHEKA special order issued in December 1929 reads:&lt;blockquote&gt;Information received by the Cheka establishes that members of various anti-Soviet parties arrested in political cases are being kept in very bad conditions.... The Cheka points out that the above listed categories of people must not be regarded as undergoing punishment, but as temporarily isolated from society in the interests of the Revolution. The conditions of their detention must not have a punitive character.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Cited in Medvedev, 1971, p. 274.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The year between the time when it was clear that the Bolsheviks had won the civil war and the Tenth Party Congress was a period of intense public debate among different factions of the Communist Party about how the institutions of socialism ought to be shaped, and what policies of socialist transition ought to be implemented. Perhaps the most controversial debate occurred around the role of unions. Different factions and individuals put forth a wide range of proposals. For example, Trotsky argued there was no need for them; the so-called 'Workers Opposition' that they should directly run the enterprises; Lenin for a middle position.<br /> <br /> Just six days before the Tenth Party Congress was to convene, the Kronstadt mutiny broke out, convulsing both the country and the Party In addition to developing and adopting the New Economic Policy — involving major economic concessions to the peasants — as a way of dealing with the crisis the Party also tightened its internal discipline. It was considered that the extent of public disagreement during the previous year, especially around the question of the role of trade unions (which centred on the recurrent debate among socialists regarding whether workers' councils or a central plan should be primary) reduced both the Party's public and internal effectiveness, and incited the demands of the Kronstadt sailors (who adopted a programme of workers' self-management very similar to that of the 'Workers Opposition' within the Party). In response, the Party Congress passed a resolution which, for the first time, banned organized factions in the Party. The resolution called for the dissolution of all Party groups with separate platforms and provided for expulsion from the party for continued factionalism. The resolution criticized Party groups 'with separate platforms and with the determination to a certain extent to become self-contained and to create their own group discipline' as being incompatible with the Party's social role. It went on to insist that: 'Everyone who criticizes in public must keep in mind the situation of the Party in the midst of the enemies by which it is surrounded....'&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Cited in Schapiro, 1960, p. 211.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> At the end of the Civil War, and once the New Economic Policy had defused the discontent manifested in the Kronstadt rising, there was a regulatization of the judicial and police system. In 1922 a new system of civil and criminal courts was created to replace the revolutionary tribunals, while socialist law codes were promulgated for the first time. The CHEKA was abolished in February 1922. The Bolsheviks, however, realizing that there was a continuing need to investigate, and for limited actions against, both domestic opponents and foreign agents, created the GPU (the State Political Directorate of the Commissariat of the Interior) to carry on such work. The criminal code adopted in 1922, sensitive to the needs of both justice and self-preservation, read:&lt;blockquote&gt;Propaganda, or agitation, or participation in an organization, or cooperation with organizations, have the effect (i.e. the propaganda or agitation) of helping in the slightest way that part of the international bourgeoisie... which is endeavouring to overthrow (the Soviet system) by force, whether by intervention, or blockade, or by espionage, or by financing of the press, or by other means — is punishable by death or imprisonment.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 265-6.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The courts were also given power to punish any 'socially dangerous act', which was defined as any act that menaced the stability of the dictatorship of the proletariat, was an obstacle to the development of socialism, or disorganized social relations.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Ibid., p. 266.&lt;/ref&gt; Thus, like any other state, the consolidated socialist regime organized its repressive apparatus to defend itself both against external enemies, and domestic opponents who actively opposed the system of property relations it was designed to protect as a state it could not act otherwise and survive.<br /> <br /> During the first four years of Soviet power, non-Bolshevik working-class parties continued to operate legally in the Soviet Union. The Left Social Revolutionaries were co-partners with the Bolsheviks on the ruling Council of People's Commissars (occupying seven of the 18 seats) until July 1918. When, in July 1918, the Left Social Revolutionaries declared themselves in opposition to the Bolshevik leadership of the Civil War, and actually organized an armed insurrection, they were temporarily banned from participation in the Soviets. Although they had not supported the seizure of power, the Right Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were active in the Soviets until they were banned from participation, also in June 1918, they were temporarily excluded owing to their failure to support the Reds in the Civil War. But even after their expulsion the three parties continued to operate as legal and active political organizations. The decrees banning Menshevik and Social Revolutionary participation in the Soviets were rescinded in the winter of 1918-19 after these organizations declared themselves opposed to foreign intervention and to collaboration with the bourgeoisie (i.e. had declared their support of the Reds in the Civil War). The Right Social Revolutionaries were allowed to resume publication of their newspaper in 1919, and both groups legally held congresses during 1919. In 1920 the Mensheviks were still electing substantial numbers of representatives to the Soviets in a number of cities, including Moscow. In 1920, the Left Social Revolutionaries decided to merge into the Bolshevik Party — as did the left wing of the Jewish Bund in 1921.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1971, p. 381, 382; Schapiro, 1971, p. 193.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Right Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were banned only in 1921 during the deep crisis in Soviet society caused by the strains of war. Communism and massive peasant — and to a lesser degree worker — discontent was brought to a head by the naval mutiny at Kronstadt. In March 1921 the Kronstadt sailors' mutiny issued a national call to overthrow the Bolshevik leadership of the Revolution. The mutiny's main demands included: the release of all political prisoners; the abolition of the special leading position of the Communist Party; the rights of the peasants to do with their land whatever they wanted; the immediate re-election of the Soviets by 'free and secret ballot'; and the elimination of all restrictions on freedom of speech and the press.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Shapiro, 1960, p. 203.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the summer of 1922 a number of leaders of the Right Social Revolutionaries were put on trial for involvement in counter-revolutionary activities. The Right Social Revolutionaries had led a number of uprisings of peasants in 1920 and, in the same year, formed an alliance with the Left Cadets (a middle-class based liberal party) against the Bolsheviks; additionally, at its 1920 Congress there were appeals for the use of violence against Bolsheviks.<br /> <br /> Roy Medvedev, who argues that the contemporary Soviet Union should establish a multiparty system, nevertheless argues:&lt;blockquote&gt;Although the Bolsheviks' treatment of the other democratic parties was not beyond reproach, it should be pointed out that the Communist Party's monopoly of political activity was a product of history; in a certain period it was an important condition for the realization of the dictatorship of the proletariat.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1971, p. 384.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The reason the Bolsheviks gave for the creation of a single party state in 1921 is that a single cadre party is necessary in order to unify and mobilize the people for the difficult tasks of socialist construction and national defence. It is argued that if separate parties exist, even separate socialist parties based in the working class, artificial divisions and antagonisms will result, largely generated by the needs of organizations and candidates to find and magnify issues with which to provoke and aggravate discontent in order to attempt to win. A single cadre party, it is argued, can, after hearing all sides, aggregate popular sentiments, articulate them through the language of Marxist theory, and test the validity of their explicit formulation, bringing them back to the masses in the form of meaningful slogans, programmes and policies — the process referred to by Mao Tse-Tung as 'the mass line' — in such a manner as to avoid creating dissension and exacerbating discontent, and instead, generating the enthusiasm and solidarity essential for the effective realization of the socialist project.<br /> <br /> It is further argued that it is possible for a single party to be authentically democratic provided it maintains firm roots among the most respected members of the working class and peasantry, who transmit the sentiments and interests of average working people, through the Party's apparatus, to its leading bodies and hence to all social institutions. This conception of democracy reverts to the original usage of the term as rule by the people, rejecting the contemporary notion, predominant in Western parliamentary democracies, that popular rule is possible only by the more or less open competition of different political parties in periodic elections. The Marxist analysis of such multiparty parliamentary forms is that they can be easily manipulated, through a wide range of instrumental and structural mechanisms, to serve the propertied class and their economic system, while single party working-class based systems are much more responsive to the needs of working-class people, that is, are authentically democratic in the original sense of the term.<br /> <br /> Thus, in 1921, the Soviets institutionalized both a one-party system and a monolithic Communist Party without organized internal factions; both institutions remain in the Soviet Union until the present day. The model of the Communist Party established in 1921 has become the model for communist parties almost everywhere, while the pre-1921 multifactioned form of Bolshevik organization, which actually led the Bolshevik seizure of state power in 1917, is largely ignored by those interested in 'building' a party of the Leninist type.*<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;* The Soviet model of a single party society, however, has been adopted by only minority of Socialist societies (e.g. Yugoslavia, Cuba). Many others (e.g. Poland, The German Democratic Republic, China, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia) institutionalized a multiparty system in which the minor non-Communist Parties are allied to the dominant Communist Party in some type of a national unity front which provides a common list of candidates in elections. The amount of autonomy and influence possessed by the minor parties in such systems varies from country to country and, over time, but in all cases they are subordinate to the Communist Party. The two major non-Communist Parties in Poland, for example, The United Peasants Party and the Democratic Party, played a somewhat independent role in the 1956-81 period, especially in the year and a half after the summer of 1980 (mostly in lobbying for the special interests of their constituencies, the peasantry and middle-class intelligentsia respectively).&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> The bans on other political parties remained but, during the period of the New Economic Policy (1921-28) there was a relatively high level of tolerance for diverse perspectives in Soviet society. Restrictions on the press were relaxed and scores of private printing houses and non-party journals were founded.<br /> <br /> In the 1924-25 period nomination rules were relaxed in order to make it easy for candidates not approved by the Communist Party to win election to the local Soviets. In new electoral instructions issued in early 1925, Party organizations were told to cease to 'impose their list at election meetings' and no longer to insist that voters 'be excluded merely because they have been critical of local Soviet authorities'.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Shapiro, 1960, pp. 321-2.&lt;/ref&gt; As a result the majority of those elected to the village Soviets in the rural areas of the Ukraine and Russian Republic were non-Party. After the 1927 elections about 90% of delegates and 75% of local Soviet chairmen in both Republics were non-Party.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 332.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The ban on organized factions in the Party was not rescinded, but a vital internal party life, as well as toleration of widely diverse viewpoints within the Party, continued throughout the period of the New Economic Policy. During the 1920s there was active competition among different leaders and groups within the Party on the resolution of the problems facing Soviet society; the followers of Bukharin, Zinoviev, Trotsky, Tomsky and Stalin contended on questions of agricultural policy, industrialization, and foreign policy. While the centre-right alliance of those around Stalin and Bukharin had the upper hand in the period after Lenin's death (they were united on the continuation of the New Economic Policy and a fairly moderate international line), their left opponents continued to occupy leading positions.<br /> <br /> In April 1926 the 'United Opposition', comprising followers of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev, as well as the remnants of the Workers' Opposition and other leftists, formed to oppose the alliance of Bukharins and Stalin's followers. They opposed the moderate industrial and agricultural policies that the leftists thought were undermining the socialist transition, as well as what was perceived as the leading group's failure to support revolutionary actions in other countries, for example, China.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Hingley, 1974, pp. 171,182-3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> For organizing this loosely knit organization in violation of the 1921 Party statutes, its leaders were expelled from the Central Committee, but not from the Party. On the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the United Opposition organized street demonstrations in Moscow and Leningrad, with a result that Zinoviev and Trotsky, the two most prominent leaders of the left, were expelled from the Party. The 15th Congress held in December 1927 declared 'adherence to the opposition, and propaganda of its views, to be incompatible with membership in the Party.'&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Deutscher, 1960, pp. 311-6.&lt;/ref&gt; Trotsky, unyielding, was forced to go into (comfortable) exile in Central Asia, and finally, at the beginning of 1929, was expelled from the country; he was allowed to take all his personal effects and papers with him. Throughout the mid-1930s, internal opposition within the Party, even of the most aggressive type, such as that of Trotsky, was treated with relative benevolence.<br /> <br /> The relatively high level of tolerance of the New Economic Policy period in Soviet history was brought to an end by a deteriorating international and agricultural situation. In May 1926 there was a military coup in Poland, led by anti-Communist General Pilsudski, 'hero' of the 1920 Polish invasion of the Ukraine. In 1927, the Communist Party of China, which had begun to play a strong and growing role in that country, was repressed and thousands of its members massacred. In 1927 Britain broke off diplomatic relations, while relations with France became strained. Soviet leaders began to predict an imminent economic crisis of capitalism, and hence the outbreak of a new inter-imperialist war. Further, the food supply from the countryside to the cities decreased radically over the 1926-28 period, precipitating a growing crisis in the Party's relationship to the peasantry. In the 1926-28 period, as the agricultural crisis heightened, the independent journals and printing houses were either closed down or co-ordinated with Party policy, to prevent them from becoming alternative centres for the mobilization of public opinion.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1979, p. 187.&lt;/ref&gt; Party discipline was again tightened and the role of the Party in the nomination processes, especially in the rural areas, considerably enhanced.<br /> <br /> === How History Judges I: Famine and Collectivization (1928-34) ===<br /> 1928 witnessed a radical shift in the general approach of the CPSU both to international and domestic questions. At the Sixth Congress of the Communist International held that year, it was predicted that the world capitalist economy would soon collapse into depression and that the resultant shortage of markets would provoke another period of inter-imperialist warfare. Given such conditions, it was expected both that the revolutionary class struggle would revive and that renewed attacks on the Soviet Union could be expected. Such an analysis dictated that the USSR quickly modernize its economy and acquire a modern defensive military establishment in order to protect itself from the expected foreign onslaught. This primary inspiration of the 1928-31 period was sharply articulated in a speech of the Party's general secretary in February 1931:&lt;blockquote&gt;Sometimes people ask whether it is not possible to slow the pace somewhat, to hold back the movement. No, comrades, that is impossible! It is impossible to reduce the pace. On the contrary, it should be increased as much as is within our power.... To reduce the pace means to lag. And the laggards are beaten. But we do not want to be beaten. No, we do not want it! The history of old Russia consisted, among other things, of being beaten continuously for her backwardness. The Mongol khans beat her. The Turkish boys beat her. The Swedish feudal lords beat her. The Polish-Lithuanian landlords beat her. The Anglo-French capitalists beat her. The Japanese barons beat her. All beat her because of her backwardness — because of military backwardness, of cultural backwardness, of governmental  backwardness, of  industrial backwardness, of agricultural backwardness. They beat her because it was profitable and could be done without punishment.... Do you want for our socialist fatherland to be beaten and lose its independence. If you don't want this, you should in the shortest time liquidate its backwardness.... We lag behind the advanced countries by 50 to 100 years. We must make up this distance in 10 years. Either we do this or they crush us.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Cited in Hough and Fainsod, 1979, pp. 163-4.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;A central part of the radical shift in the CPSU's general policies in 1928 was the initiation of a 'cultural revolution' which affected all aspects of educational, artistic, literary, academic, urban as well as industrial and agricultural policy. The cultural revolution's central focus was rapid modernization through central planning, speedy industrialization and modernization of agriculture, while promoting and celebrating working-class and proletarian culture. Social engineering (planning), rank and file attacks on bureaucrats, dissemination of the idea that science, planning and dedication together could produce a great leap forward, rapid promotion of those from working-class backgrounds, insistence that the arts and social sciences adopt a Marxist content, class war against the remnants of the bourgeoisie (especially in the intelligentsia) and the active encouragement of futurist projects, were all major aspects of this first cultural revolution (the Chinese 'Proletarian Cultural Revolution' 35 years later had largely similar aims). To quote Fitzpatrick:&lt;blockquote&gt;Cultural revolution had many facets. It was a worker-promotion movement linked to a political campaign to discredit the 'Right Opposition' within the Party. It was an iconoclastic youth movement  directed against  'bureaucratic' authority. It was a process whereby militant Communist groups in the professions established local dictatorships and attempted to revolutionize their disciplines. It was finally, a heyday for revolutionary theorists and 'hare-brained schemas' whose blueprints for the new society not only attracted  disciplines among the communist cultural militants but also in many cases gained solid institutional support.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Fitzpatrick, 1979, p. 11.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Cultural revolution also involved a response on the part of the leadership to pressures within the Communist movement and the society as a whole. The class-war concept of confrontation between proletariat and bourgeoisie reflected real social  tensions  between the  materially disadvantaged and the privileged. The ant-bureaucratic drive of cultural revolution — often verging on an attack on established authority per se — reflected real grievances of the younger generation. Within the professions, Communists and non-Communists tended to gather in potentially antagonistic camps; the appeal for 'proletarian hegemony' in scholarship and the arts did not originally come from the Party leadership, but from groups within the professions and scholarly institutions.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 18.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In the words of Hough and Fainsod:&lt;blockquote&gt;The cultural revolution in the Soviet Union had, on a somewhat lesser scale, much the same spirit as its Chinese counterpart four decades later. Individual specialists often were harassed by local forces; purges were conducted within the bureaucracy and the universities; culture became politicized as the radical figures in the various cultural realms were unleashed to launch frontal attacks upon the established cultural authorities (the People's Commissariat of Enlightenment, which supervised education and the arts, as well as the non-Communist intelligentsia); and many Utopians took advantage of the situation to push forward their pet projects.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Hough and Fainsod, 1979, p. 149.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;According to Hough and Fainsod:&lt;blockquote&gt;the plan opened up an exhilarating period of struggle and combat, a leap forward into the New Jerusalem.... The air was electric with positions to be stormed, class enemies to be destroyed, and fortresses to be built.... The last remnants of private capitalism and the old 'bourgeois cultural' appeared to be headed for extinction.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Cultural struggle was waged in the universities to establish 'proletarian hegemony' in the various academic disciplines. Socialist realism was actively promoted as the only truly proletarian art and literature. The pre-1928 policies of the People's Commissariat of Enlightenment were attacked by young Communists as too eclectic in their toleration of different art forms, including even the most traditional, and for advancing traditional educational institutions. Anti-Marxist professors were purged from the social science faculties of universities, and Party activists now came to dominate the university governing boards, and insisted that universities both actively recruit students of proletarian background and teach proletarian values. The intelligentsia vigorously debated its role in the new society; students challenged their professors, making them undergo examination and 're-election' to their positions. Younger, more militant scholars, with programmes for focusing their research and writing on problems of practical relevance to society and the economy overthrew the dominance of the older more traditional authorities in  discipline after discipline. Bureaucratic administrative forms were attacked and innovative methods experimented with. Writers enthusiastically read their works before factory audiences and worked with workers on collective histories of industrial enterprises.<br /> <br /> Much of the thrust of the Soviet Cultural Revolution was in education, both in order to quickly create a new generation of Red and expert working class technicians and intellectuals to staff the professional and administrative positions in the rapidly industrializing economy, and to develop a new proletarian culture appropriate to a society which was consolidating proletarian socialist institutions, especially the creation of the New Soviet Man'.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Fitzpatrick, 1978; Hough, 1978; Lapidus, 1978; Starr, 1978; Hough and Fainsod, 1979, p. 149.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Both the first Five Year Plan (for rapid industrialization), and the campaign for the modernization of agriculture through the creation of large scale units utilizing modern industrial technology, were central aspects of the storming the heavens philosophy of which the Soviet Cultural Revolution of 1928-31 was the ideological manifestation. The campaign for the collectivization of agriculture, which was launched in 1928 and radically accelerated in the winter of 1929-30, can be understood only as an integral part of this 'general line'.<br /> <br /> Russian agriculture was extremely backward. Not only had modern agricultural methods not yet made an impact, but one-fourth of the peasants did not even own a horse (less than half had a team of oxen or horses). Many poor dwarf peasants had to pull their homemade and inefficient wooden ploughs themselves. Further, small holdings in many areas were split by inheritance into tiny plots separated by significant distances both from the peasant's dwellings and from each other, as well as serving as a further obstacle to eventual mechanization. While about 25-30% of the peasants were dwarf-holders using wooden ploughs without beasts of burden (i.e. poor peasants), and about 6% were ''kulaks'' (rich peasants) who employed the landless rural proletariat and dwarf peasants (part-time) to produce a significant surplus for themselves. The bulk of the peasantry in the 1920s were 'middle peasants' — those who had more-or less enough land as well as a minimum of equipment and beasts to maintain their families through their own labour.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Strong, 1957, ch. 3; Deutscher, 1960, p. 323.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the 1927-28 period Soviet society experienced an increasingly serious food crisis. Because the peasants were themselves consuming a much higher percentage of their output than they had done before the Revolution, the quantity they sold to the towns from 1923 to 1928 averaged only 50% of that they had provided between 1909 and 1913; in the years 1927 and 1928 the percentage was significantly lower than in the 1923-28 period. In 1927 it was estimated that the grain provided to the cities was only about two-thirds of that required; in 1928 grain deliveries declined to 70% of the 1927 level. Richer peasants' attempts to drive the price of grain up by withholding it from the market coincided with the state's attempt to subsidize the consumption of the working class, while also generating funds for investment in industry.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ulam, 1973, p. 296; Medvedev, 1971, p. 72; Deutscher, 1960, p. 313.&lt;/ref&gt; This action by the rich peasants also radically affected the ability of the Soviet state to import Western technology to facilitate industrialization. Before the War, Russia, as one of the world's leading grain exporters, had exported 12 million tons of grain annually, and in 1926-27, 2 million tons; in 1928 the USSR had to import a quarter of a million tons.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ulam, 1973, p. 305.&lt;/ref&gt; By withholding grain the richer peasants had produced a serious crisis for the socialist regime.<br /> <br /> The Party and government's immediate response was to take 'extraordinary measures' including sending detachments of workers to the countryside to confiscate the hoarded grain. Class struggle was encouraged in the countryside. Poor and landless peasants were mobilized to struggle against the ''kulaks'', e.g. 25% of confiscated grain was to be distributed to the rural poor. The Party's popular mobilization of workers and the rural poor against the ''kulaks'' often led to crude and excessive actions; further, the policy of forced requisitions produced only a short-run increase in food deliveries. The ''kulaks'' response was to decrease production, thus reducing their confiscatable stores.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p.298.&lt;/ref&gt; The Party denounced the ''kulaks'' for 'disrupting the Soviet economic policy' and, in July 1928, directed its cadre 'to strike hard at the ''kulaks''&lt;nowiki/&gt;' (a radical reversal of the New Economic policy of 'alliance with the peasantry' — support which the Party now felt the ''kulaks'' had abused).&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Deutscher, 1960, p. 313.&lt;/ref&gt; At the same time, however, the Party renounced the continuation of extraordinary measures.<br /> <br /> As incentives for the peasants to increase production new directives were issued to raise grain prices by 15 to 20% and to increase the availability of manufactured goods in the countryside. Throughout the second half of 1928, the Party press repeatedly asserted that there would be no more searches and forced seizures of grain.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1970, p. 80.&lt;/ref&gt; But in the winter of 1928-29, the rich peasants' failure to respond by increasing grain deliveries led to further search and seizure operations (less grain, in fact, was delivered than during the previous year; grain rationing now had to be introduced in the cities). Two winters of forced requisitioning interspersed by a period of failed attempts at reconciliation was invoking great antagonism between the Party (with its urban worker and poor peasant backers) and the ''kulaks'', while, in Roy Medvedev's words, 'The country was threatened with the complete disorganization of the whole national economy, and with famine imminent, something had to be done at once....'&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1971, p. 81.&lt;/ref&gt; Collectivization, advocated for many years by the Party's left (e.g. Trotsky, Zinoviev) became increasingly necessary.<br /> <br /> That the progressive nature of the New Economic Policy, which encouraged agricultural production by allowing the peasants to enrich themselves, had largely run its course was becoming obvious by 1927 and 1928. Modernization, and the country's ability to successfully defend itself in the event of a further series of foreign interventions such as had occurred in the 1918-21 period, made the modernization of agriculture essential. Consequently, the decision was taken at the 15th Party Congress to encourage collectivization. The First Five Year Plan, approved at the end of 1928, envisaged 20% of the peasants in collective farms by the end of 1933.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Deutscher, 1960, p. 319.&lt;/ref&gt; A gradual process of persuasion, combined with economic incentives was planned, as the development of large scale units was more or less to keep pace with the growth in output of modern agricultural machinery. The peasants were promised mechanized equipment and state credit if they joined the collectives that were to be set up, 'everything will be supplied — join the collective farms'.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1971, p. 87.&lt;/ref&gt; In autumn 1928, however, in the face of the increased food shortage, the pace of collectivization was radically accelerated.<br /> <br /> The Party had extremely high hopes for the efficacy of collectivization. In 1929 the majority saw it as the mechanism whereby a highly efficient modern agriculture on which to base rapid industrialization could be constructed, as well as flooding the cities with food. The Soviets interpreted the rapid modernization of agriculture in the US as a proof of how agriculture could be rapidly transformed 'to the level of an extractive industry'. It was also seen as a mechanism to develop socialist consciousness in the peasantry. To quote Davies:&lt;blockquote&gt;During the autumn of 1929, plans for mechanization were greatly expanded enthusiasm for American achievements in agricultural technology mounted, and the Soviet leaders became confident that Soviet socialist agriculture could soon outstrip that of the capitalist West. A ''Pravda'' editorial proclaimed that the example of the United States had 'compelled bourgeois economists to admit that in 10-15 years agriculture will have reached the level of an extractive industry.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Davies, 1980, p. 393.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Although the policy of immediate collectivization was a hasty improvisation in face of a serious crisis, it was not seen by the leaders or their supporters as a desperate remedy for a mortal sickness. On the contrary, this was for them a time of great hope. The substantial industrial progress of the past three years and the burgeoning capital construction industry in the summer of 1929 provided a basis for believing that the vast programmes of the revised five-year plans might be achieved. The successful development of industry would in turn make possible within a very few years the supply of agricultural machinery and fertilizers which would transform agricultural production.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 172.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The 'Second Revolution' was begun. In the words of Isaac Deutscher:&lt;blockquote&gt;In its scope and immediate impact upon the life of some 160 million people the second revolution was even more sweeping and radical than the first. It resulted in Russia's rapid industrialization; it compelled more than a hundred million peasants to abandon their small, primitive holdings and to set up collective farms; it ruthlessly tore the primeval wooden plough from the hands of the ''muzhik'' and forced him to grasp the wheel of a modern tractor; it drove tens of millions of illiterate people to school and made them learn to read and write; and spiritually it detached European Russia from Europe and brought Asiatic Russia nearer to Europe. The rewards of that revolution were astounding; but so was its cost.... It takes a great effort of the imagination to gauge the enormousness and the complexity of that upheaval for which hardly any historical precedent can be found.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Deutscher, 1960, pp. 294-5.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Deutscher went on to argue that the collectivization and industrialization policies begun in 1928 were responsible for the defeat of the Nazis:&lt;blockquote&gt;The truth was that the war could not have been won without the intensive industrialization of Russia, and of her eastern provinces in particular. Nor could it have been won without the collectivization of large numbers of farms. The ''muzhik'' of 1930, who had never handled a tractor or any other machine, would have been of little use in modern war. Collectivized farming, with its machine-tractor stations scattered all over the country, had been the peasant's preparatory school for mechanized warfare. The rapid raising of the average standard of education had also enabled the Red Army to draw on a considerable reserve of intelligent officers and men. 'We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this lag in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us' — so Stalin had spoken exactly ten years before Hitler set out to conquer Russia. His words, when they were recalled now, could not but impress people as a prophecy brilliantly fulfilled, as a most timely call to action. And, indeed, a few year's delay in the modernization of Russia might have made all the difference between victory and defeat.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 550.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In October 1928, a total of 200,000, or only 14.5% of Party members were peasants or agricultural workers. There was only one peasant Party member for every 125 peasant households, compared to one in ten for urban workers, and only one Party cell for every four village Soviets (the typical village Soviet included several rural settlements). There were, however, substantially more (about one million) members of the Young Communist League (the Komsomol) in the countryside. It was estimated that each rural settlement averaged around two people who were either full or candidate members of the Party, or members of the Komsomol;&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Davies, 1980, pp. 51-2.&lt;/ref&gt; many of whom were veterans of the Red Army. Thus, the density of active Party cadre in the countryside was clearly inadequate to mobilize the poor and middle peasants for the collectivization movement.<br /> <br /> In order to generate enthusiasm for the collectivization campaign and to lead the organization of collectives the Party transferred large numbers of urban workers and Party cadre to the countryside. The November 1929 Plenum of the Central Committee decided to send 25,000 politically experienced industrial workers to the countryside permanently. Over 70,000 workers volunteered and about 27,000 of these were sent, and were later followed by many more politically conscious workers. It was intended that these workers would win over the peasants to large-scale socialist production, and teach them the necessary technical and organization skills to make the collectives work.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 208; Schapiro, 1960, p. 394.&lt;/ref&gt; In the Ukraine alone 23,000 urban workers went to the countryside to supplement 23,500 administrators in helping organize the collectives.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Davies, 1980, p. 204.&lt;/ref&gt; Altogether about a quarter of a million industrial workers and cadres were eventually sent to the countryside to supplement the cadre already there.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 204, 205.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Those sent to the countryside organized educational programmes for the peasants. In the Ukraine alone in the early weeks of 1930 almost 300,000 peasants received short courses in the operation of collectives, many of these courses were arranged by individual trade unions and factories which were sponsoring the new collective farms. The Red Army also played an active role by releasing 30,000 soldiers specially trained for agricultural work to the collectives in autumn 1929, and began training 100,000 more recruits for the same purpose. The Red Army played an especially important role in training tractor drivers and mechanics as well as large numbers of lower and middle level agricultural specialists.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 207.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In autumn 1929, the Party decided that an acceleration in the pace of collectivization was essential in order to speed the process of agricultural modernization and increase food deliveries to the cities. By 1 July 1929 more than twice as many peasants had joined the new collectives as the original plan had called for, but this still represented only 4% of all peasants. By the end of 1929, 7.6% of peasant households had joined. That collectives encompassed only 3.6% of the cultivated land (less than half of the percentage of peasants in them) indicates that it was mostly poor peasants who were joining. Relatively few middle, and almost no rich, peasants responded to the collectivization campaign.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1971, p. 84.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> At the November 1929 Plenum of the Central Committee a harsh line was taken towards the ''kulaks'' who, it was now decided, must be largely isolated rather than won over. The experience of the previous year with both grain collections to feed the cities and the initial steps towards collectivization had convinced the majority of the Party leadership that this stratum was essentially hostile to collectivization:&lt;blockquote&gt;We cannot re-educate the ''kulak'', and moreover no educational tasks at all in relation to the ''kulak'' — apart from 'educating' him by methods of undeviating and decisive class struggle with him — can be the subject of our solicitude and experimentation. Economic isolation and, if it is needed In a particular case, the use also of administrative measures against the ''kulak'' — this is the line along which we will be able to find the specific forms of the most suitable solution to the problem of the ''kulak'' in a given place and conditions.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Cited in Davies, 1980, pp. 182-3.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Rich peasants were now under official and unofficial pressure to abandon voluntarily and without compensation, farm buildings and draft animals, and share their common product with poor, landless and middle peasants, and perform the bulk of their labour co-operatively.<br /> <br /> On 5 January 1930 the Party's Central Committee decided that stricter measures were necessary; local Party branches were instructed to give the highest priority to persuading the peasants to join. State tractor stations were organized mainly if not exclusively to service the collective farms. The dwarf peasants and landless labourers were mobilized to spearhead the collective movement. These peasants, comprising about 25-30% of the total rural population, were promised a significant improvement in their living standards in the new collectives, which would be endowed with some of the rich peasants' agricultural implements and chattels, as well as with machinery provided by the state. Many, with and without the zealous leadership of local Party officials, applied intimidation, the threat of force, and occasionally actual force to produce the 'spectacular results' of the winter of 1930.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Deutscher, 1960, p. 323; Fain sod, 1958, p. 142; Ulam, 1973, pp. 326-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Party adopted a policy of 'dekulakization' which meant the expropriation of the excess property of the ''kulaks'' and their forced reduction to the economic status of middle peasants. The Party's General Secretary declared: 'This means that we have gone over from a policy of ''limiting'' the exploiting tendencies of the ''kulak'' to a policy of ''eliminating'' the ''kulak'' as a class.'&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Cited in Davies, 1980, p. 187.&lt;/ref&gt; Instructions to rural Party units read:&lt;blockquote&gt;Kulaks shall not be admitted to Kolkhozy; ''kulak'' means of production shall be confiscated and transferred to the Indivisible Funds of Kolkhozy in districts of comprehensive collectivisation in accordance with the decisions of poor and middle peasants combining together in Kolkhozy, and of local Soviets; ''kulaks'' shall be allocated distant land and the worst land, malicious ''kulak'' elements shall be exiled from the districts.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 200.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Open class warfare broke out in the countryside. On 5 February 1930 a decree was issued which, after public hearings, empowered the assemblies of poor and landless peasants to order the deportation of non-cooperative rich peasants, as well as to expropriate all their property except a subsistence minimum of equipment and personal property. The decree, however, also provided that deportation orders would not be final until the local authorities affirmed the decisions and appropriate arrangements had been made for resettlement — usually on virgin land in the East.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Strong, 1957, ch. 7; Medvedev, 1971, p. 100; Fainsod, 1958, pp. 183, 242-51.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the winter of 1930 the mechanisms used to pressure those classified as middle peasants to join the collectives included assigning to those who resisted the worst, most remote land; the old Russian Mir tradition of reallocation of the village land was assumed by the local Soviets. In some districts where over-enthusiastic officials declared that 'collectivization was 100% complete', peasants who elected to remain outside the collectives, in spite of official declarations, received no arable land. High and increasing taxes were imposed on middle peasants who did not join collectives; collective farmers not only received the best land but were taxed at a low level. In many cases actual physical abuse of reluctant middle peasants occurred.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Davies, 1980, pp. 222-3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> That property expropriated from ''kulaks'' was assigned to the new collectives together with the over-zealousness of many Party cadre led poor peasants to take aggressive action against the rich peasants, and treat many recalcitrant middle peasants as ''kulaks''; in some areas 15-20% of peasants were treated as if they were ''kulaks'', contrary both to Party policy and common sense.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1971, p. 100; Ham, 1973, p. 322; Fainsod, 1958, pp. 183, 196-201.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In Roy Medvedev's words,&lt;blockquote&gt;In some places groups of peasants explicitly decreed the expropriation of middle peasants, ordering the confiscation of such luxuries as sewing machines, mirrors, and beds.... investgations revealed that only three of 34 households subjected to dekulakization were actual kulak. There were thousands and thousands of such cases. As a result of such actions (greatly magnified by rumours and paranoia) large numbers of middle peasants ceased equivocating about the new collectivization policy, and whether or not they were successfully pressured to join, came to resist (or at best became hostile to the project).&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1971, p. 100.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Within two months approximately half of all peasants were pressured into joining the collectives. The result of the intense pressure and rural class struggle of January and February 1930 was disarray in the countryside, along with insurmountable organizational problems for the new collectives, flooded with largely unenthusiastic peasants lacking sufficient equipment or materials to begin the 1930 crop. Panic and terror swept the countryside. In Deutscher's words, many peasants,&lt;blockquote&gt;... decided to bring in as little as possible of their property to the collective farms which they imagined to be state owned factories, in which they themselves would become mere factory hands. In desperation they slaughtered their cattle, smashed implements, and burned crops. This was the muzhik's great Luddite-like rebellion.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Deutscher, 1960, pp. 412,420; Deutscher, 1960, p. 325; Ulam, 1973, p. 332.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Some rich peasants slaughtered their animals rather than contribute them to the collectives, more because the fodder to keep them alive was appropriated to feed the cities. Between spring 1929 and spring 1930 the number of farm animals in the USSR fell by 25%. To have continued the hectic measures of January and February would have resulted in famine and possibly collapse of the regime. On 2 March 1930, summing up those measures, the Central Committee of the Party issued a statement criticizing its local cadre and poor peasant supporters for becoming 'dizzy with success', ignoring the basic rule that peasants must join the collectives voluntarily, and alienating the majority of middle peasants who, until the winter of 1930, had been undecided about whether or not to join (thus pushing them into the arms of the kulaks). The Party also emphasized that the collective form socialized only the land, draft animals and larger machinery, leaving cows, sheep, chickens, pigs and other personal property in the hands of the individual peasants. The decree read in part:&lt;blockquote&gt;The Kolkhoz must not be imposed by force. That would be stupid and reactionary. The Kolkhoz movement must be based on the active support of the main mass of the peasantry...<br /> <br /> What can these distortions lead to? To the strengthening of our enemies and the complete discrediting of the idea of the Kolkhoz movement...<br /> <br /> Success often intoxicates people, they begin to get dizzy with success, lose the ability to understand reality; a tendency appears to overestimate one's own strength and to underestimate the strength of one's opponent, and adventurist attempts are made to solve all the problems of socialist construction 'in two ticks'.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Cited in Davies, 1980, pp. 269-70.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;As a result of the March 1930 decree, the errors of the previous two months were largely corrected and pressure on the rich, and especially the middle peasants considerably relaxed. More than half the peasants who, in January and February, had been induced to join the collectives, left them within a few weeks. By September 1930, the percentage of peasants in collectives had dropped to 21% of the total (from a peak of about 58% in early March).&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Schapiro, 1960, p. 385; Ulam, 1973, p. 329.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Subsequently subtler incentive structures (and a balance between collective and individual interests) were employed to induce the middle peasants to join the collectives. Private plots, from which peasants could sell their produce on an individual basis, were institutionalized; profit sharing, rather than set wage payments, became the norm. Most state farms were disbanned and their land and resources given free to the collectives.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Deutscher, 1960, p. 331.&lt;/ref&gt; This more moderate approach after 1930 resulted in a fairly rapid pace of collectivization. By 1933 about 60%, by 1934 about 75%, and by 1940, 97% of peasants were organized in collective or state farms.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Schapiro, 1960, p. 385; Hickley, 1975, p. 205.&lt;/ref&gt; This increased pace was, however, not matched by the ability to successfully organize and equip the new, large scale agricultural units.<br /> <br /> The slaughter of farm animals by rich and middle peasants in the winter of 1930 together with the continuingly serious problems of organization of the collectives and motivation of the peasants meant, in Isaac Deutscher's words, that 'Rapid mechanization of agriculture now became a matter of life and death'. The food crisis continued unabated. In 1929 the average Soviet urban dwellers' annual consumption of meat, poultry and fat was 48 pounds, in 1930 it was 33, falling to 27 in 1931, and less than 17 in the famine year of 1932.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Ulam, 1973, p. 342.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The efficient organization of the collectives was impeded by the continued attempt to generate resources for rapid industrialization of the agricultural sector, as well as by the failure of industry to provide mechanized farm equipment with the promptness planned. To quote Davies:&lt;blockquote&gt;...the unrelenting drive for industrial expansion carried with it a determined effort to squeeze agriculture still further. In the autumn of 1930, the state collections were much larger and covered a much wider range of products; and simultaneously taxes and other payments were substantially increased in the cases of both the Kolkhoz and the individual peasants. Investment in agriculture was limited, both because state credits were restricted and because all kinds of building materials, diverted to the major industrial projects, disappeared from the countryside. All these measures further weakened economic incentives to agricultural production. Secondly, the lag in achieving industrial plans affected the planned expansion of the tractor, lorry and agricultural engineering industries; tractors were not provided in sufficient quantities in the early 1930s to compensate for the reduction in the number of horses.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Davies, 1980, p. 373.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The rich, and many abused (as well as paranoid) middle peasants in the winter of 1930 responded by fighting against the organized poor peasants and Party cadre; many Communists and poor peasant leaders were assassinated. In the words of a leading anti-Soviet historian of the CPSU: 'There was open war in the villages and the desperate peasants did not hesitate to kill any Communists, regarding them as natural enemies'.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Schapiro, 1961, p. 389.&lt;/ref&gt; Other acts of violence were committed against government and Party buildings and personnel; and some riots and small scale insurrections had to be suppressed by the Army. In response to the massive economic sabotage which occurred over the course of a couple of years, as well as violence against the Party and its supporters in the countryside, the Party again adopted extraordinary measures — measures not seen since the Civil War period of 1918-20.<br /> <br /> Rich peasants were classified into three categories: (1) 'active counterrevolutionaries' who were subject to criminal proceedings, which sometimes resulted in execution; (2) 'counter-revolutionary elements' who were exiled and resettled after the confiscation of most of their productive property; and (3) 'those who had to be drawn into socially useful labour and who were given the opportunity for re-education through socially useful production', a category which covered most of the rich peasants.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Cited in Ulam, 1973, p. 343; Fainsod, 1958, p. 243; Davies, 1980, pp. 235-6.&lt;/ref&gt; The total percentage of those classified as ''kulaks'' was not to exceed 3-5% in grain areas and 2-3% in non-grain areas. About 20% of ''kulaks'' were to be classified in categories (1) and (2). Party instructions exempted from expropriation or exile rich peasants who either had sons in the army or offspring who were teachers.<br /> <br /> In the civil war atmosphere which, exacerbated by the growing food crisis, at time erupted in the countryside, the formal procedures and legal guarantees for the rich peasants were sometimes disregarded. In some regions, particularly in the Kuban, Don and Ukraine, there were grain strikes by both individual and collective farm peasants, who cut back their acreage and refused to deliver grain to the state; in many areas thefts from the collective granaries became a serious problem.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Schapiro, 1960, p. 385; Medvedev, 1971, p. 92.&lt;/ref&gt; Economic sabotage by the rich peasants continued. As a result of these serious problems the great promise of collectivization — the development of a modern efficient agriculture with a rapidly expanding output — remained unfulfilled. By 1932 'vast tracts of land were left untilled. Famine stalked the towns and the black steppe of the Ukraine'.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Deutscher, 1960, p. 325.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1933 agricultural production was actually lower than in 1928.<br /> <br /> In response the collectivization policy was further reformed. In January 1933 agricultural procurement was reorganized. Each collective was given a fixed delivery quota in advance of the harvest; that remaining could either be sold in the free market where prices were considerably higher than those paid by the government, or retained for the use of its members. This new system provided considerable incentives for the peasants to exceed their planned targets.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Ulam, 1973, p. 350.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Although neither the measures taken by the Party cadre and poor peasants, nor the level of resistance of those peasants who opposed collectivization ever again reached the level of the winter of 1930, in order to deal with the continually deteriorating food supplies, increased pressure was once more applied to facilitate collectivization. In response, the level of resistance — mostly passive — lack of effort, and individual but widespread acts of theft (usually of grain) increased. Consequently, the measures taken against peasant opposition were again intensified. Collective farms that failed to fulfil their grain procurement quotas were largely denied manufactured goods from the towns which they requested. A decree, issued in 1932, made stealing collective property punishable by death or ten years forced labour, according to the circumstances.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Medvedev, 1971, pp. 92-3; Ulam, 1973, p. 345.&lt;/ref&gt; Although never reaching the 1930-31 level, deportations of those that actively opposed collectivization continued into 1932 and 1933.<br /> <br /> Both the first and 'second' revolutions, because they both were accompanied by (virtually) civil war, necessarily produced the response of any state measures to secure the predominant property relations, as well as its own authority. The extreme desperation and extent both of the civil war emergencies and the great collectivization upheavals was manifested in that both periods (1921 and 1932-3) ended with famine. In addition to invoking 'extraordinary measures' against active opposition, it must be stressed that the result was also a significant moderation of state and party policy in order to provide peasants with sufficient positive incentives to increase food deliveries to the cities.<br /> <br /> The standard penalty for peasants accused of counter-revolutionary activity was confiscation of property and resettlement. Between 300,000 and 380,000 peasant families (1,200,000-1,500,000 individuals) were exiled to distant locations during the 1930-33 collectivization drive (mostly in 1930 and 1931). At the beginning of 1935 there were approximately 1,100,000 exiles, about 650,000 in special settlements attached to industrial, construction or transportation projects and about 450,000 in special collective farms.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Hough and Fainsod, 1979, p. 152; Davies, 1980, p. 412.&lt;/ref&gt; The majority of displaced peasants were deprived of their voting rights and sentenced to exile without confinement and allowed to keep an essential minimum of agricultural instruments to begin life anew as poor/middle peasants. The most active opponents, however, were sentenced to exile with forced labour; most of these served sentences of five years, after which their voting rights were restored. Special settlements were organized for the resettled rich peasants in the virgin lands of the east (in Kazakhstan, Siberia and the Urals). Given the extreme conditions consequent upon food shortages and the virtual civil war atmosphere, conditions during the forced transport of the rich peasants, and during the first years of their resettlement, were rarely generous; thousands died of disease, starvation and exposure during these years.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Medvedev, 1971, p. 100; Deutscher, 1960, p. 33.&lt;/ref&gt; Some left the virgin lands after their period of forced exile was over, but the bulk of them were not allowed to return to their native regions. In late 1941 there were still approximately 930,000 former ''kulaks'' settled where they had been relocated in the early 1930s.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Wheatcroft, 1981, p. 287.&lt;/ref&gt; That the number of ''kulaks'' still in their places of exile both in 1935 and 1941 was approximately the same as the number forcibly relocated in the 1930-33 period, indicates that most of them survived the often harsh conditions of transit and beginning a new life.<br /> <br /> In the famine of 1932-33 hundreds of thousands of peasants (especially infants) of all classes in the countryside died of starvation and illnesses aggravated by malnutrition. The Great Famine of 1932-33 primarily affected the Southern part of the Ukraine and to a lesser degree the northern Caucasus; the Volga region, and Kazakhstan, as well as other parts of Central Asia.<br /> <br /> The number of peasants who died in these periods (including those who died during and immediately after their forced exile, and those executed for counter-revolutionary activity) has been wildly exaggerated. Based on rumour and unjustified assumptions about demographic trends, estimates have ranged as high as the tens of millions. Medvedev, discrediting such wild guesses, states, 'Western publications frequently give exaggerated figures for the number of people who died during the Stalin terror or the years of war' Referring to the gross exaggerations given credibility by Solzhenitsyn, Medvedev argues, 'The simplest demographic calculation shows this to be implausible. For if these figures were regarded as accurate, it would have to be the case that from 1918 to 1953 not one person died a natural death in the Soviet Union.'&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1979, p. 140.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> But Medvedev himself lends credence to the less wild estimates by citing an estimate, made on the basis of gaps in the age structure and demographic projections, of as many as three million infant deaths owing to the 1932-33 famine.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Ibid., pp. 74-5.&lt;/ref&gt; This estimate assumes: (1) that even in conditions of extreme famine, instability, and virtual civil war, peasants would conceive and give birth at the same rate as In less precarious periods; (2) that abortion or infanticide (intentional or not) did not significantly increase; and (3) that there were as many women of maximum reproductive age in 1932-33 as before or after. All of these assumptions are erroneous. All peasants have traditional techniques of birth control and are thus able to limit their reproduction to a significant degree; it is the economic benefit attendant upon having large families which is operative — a factor not applicable during famines — not ignorance of birth control. Legal abortion was so widely practised in this period that, in 1936, the state banned it as part of the campaign to increase the population. Lastly, to quote Wheatcroft:&lt;blockquote&gt;As is well known, the First World War, Civil War and early years of the 1920s caused a great gap in births in these years. The age cohort born in 1914 would have been 16 in 1930 and so would have just been entering the period of major reproduction. Consequently, Lorimer and other scholars have concluded that the age structure of the population would have led to a decline in births throughout the early 1930s and until the missing populations born into the 1914-22 age cohorts had passed on well into the future.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Wheatcroft, 1981, p. 285.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Other exaggerated estimates of the number who died during these periods are based on apparent discrepancies between the 1926 and 1939 (or 1959) census figures, and the number of people who should have been in these census categories assuming earlier rates of population growth or, alternatively, the actual rate of growth of other populations at the same time. Such estimates assume that a decline in the reported population, or its failure to grow at its 'normal' rate, is largely a reflection of deaths from famine, abuse or execution. Not only are fewer live births to be expected during times of famine and trouble — as well as disproportionately high infant mortality — many people emigrate from areas of famine in search of food, work, or refuge. In the Soviet Union in the 1930-33 period millions of destitute peasants migrated to the cities to take up jobs in the industrializing urban economy, others left the regions of greatest destitution to settle elsewhere; some left the Soviet Union altogether especially, it seems, some nomadic peoples of Central Asia, who had largely been required to settle during the collectivization period.<br /> <br /> In 1928 the policies of rapid industrialization, along with collectivization, resulted in increased levels of urban opposition, especially among engineers and other segments of the technical intelligentsia, and consequently a fair degree of political repression. In 1928 the first public trial of members of the technical intelligentsia was held: Shakhty and a number of other Soviet and foreign engineers were tried for industrial sabotage in collaboration with foreign opponents of the USSR. In autumn 1930, eight technical specialists were arrested and publicly tried for 'wrecking and counter-revolutionary activities' (as members of the so-called Industrial Party). Their death sentences were, however, commuted, and within a few years they were restored to their jobs.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1971, pp. 11-15; Ulam, 1973, p. 336.&lt;/ref&gt; In September 1930 48 food distribution officials were tried for sabotaging food supplies; all 48 were shot.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Davies, 1980, p. 374.&lt;/ref&gt; In March 1931 a number of ex-Menshevik leaders were publicly tried and sentenced to prison for 'wrecking' and being counter-revolutionaries.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1971, pp. 115-6.&lt;/ref&gt; By mid-1931, however, the degree of non-cooperation and active sabotage by the technical intelligentsia had lessened considerably, and, in response, the state's attitude was relaxed, in so far as the number of those arrested and tried for such activities decreased after spring 1931, while those convicted now received more lenient sentences.<br /> <br /> An element of paranoia may have actuated some of these arrests and trials. But without question the world's first socialist society's enemies, both outside and inside the USSR, did engage in actions designed to weaken it, and popular mobilization against saboteurs did reduce the level of both active sabotage and passive resistance to socialist construction. (Similar phenomena occurred after the Chinese, Cuban, Angolan and Nicaraguan revolutions.)<br /> <br /> In 1931-32 a general liberalization trend began; the cultural revolution was over. The 'proletarian' guidelines in the social sciences and the arts were relaxed and writers who had been suppressed in 1929 as too bourgeois were allowed to return to their jobs. Educational policies reverted to more traditional practices. Egalitarian wage policies came under increasing attack; deportation of rich peasants for actively resisting collectivization stopped in May 1933. The liberal trend peaked in 1934. In this year the security police (the State Political Directorate of the Commissariat of the Interior), the GPU, was abolished and its functions restructured as part of a reorganized People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, which reflected a curtailed role for the security police. In July, the Ministry of Justice ordered a halt in the campaign of seeking out and prosecuting engineers and enterprise directors for 'wrecking and sabotage'. In the spring a partial amnesty was offered to rebellious ''kulaks'' and in November the size of the private plots for collective farm peasants was increased. Leaders of oppositional tendencies in the Party were once again allowed to address public meetings. Work began on drafting a new liberal constitution which, in fact, culminated in 1936.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Deutscher, 1960, p. 254; Schapiro, 1960, pp. 399-400; Hough and Fainsod, 1979, p. 164; Fitzpatrick, 1978, p. 11; Getty, 1979, pp. 157-8, 321.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> This relative relaxation between 1929-31 and 1932-34 was a result of an improvement in both the industrial and the international situation of the Soviet Union. The technical intelligentsias' resistance to the new rapid industrialization policies decreased as: (1) the new policies proved to be effective in producing rapid rates of industrialization; and (2) a rapidly rising proportion of the technical intelligentsia were recruited from the children of workers and peasants, and trained in socialist institutions (most of the technical intelligentsia of the 1920s were from middle-class backgrounds, were trained in Czarist institutions, and had little sympathy for the revolution). A further factor securing the increased loyalty of the technical intelligentsia was the abolition of the extreme egalitarianism of pay which prevailed in the 1920s. A system of wage differentials provided the highly trained experts considerable positive motivation both to perform and upgrade their skills. In fact, in order to motivate this stratum, as well as the children of the working class and peasantry to obtain technical education quickly, the Party launched a public campaign against the 'egalitarian' errors of the previous period.<br /> <br /> There was a significant relaxation in the international situation too. In the 1930-31 period the USSR feared invasion by the Japanese who were in the process of conquering Manchuria, and thus about to acquire a long border with Siberia. Additionally, there were fears that other Western powers, taking advantage of the disorganization in the countryside, would again intervene in an attempt to overthrow the revolutionary regime (as in 1918-20). Japan did not invade Siberia and the rural situation became sufficiently stable to ensure that such countries as Poland, Britain or France were no longer tempted to intervene. In 1932 France and the USSR signed a nonaggression pact which pledged the two parties to assist each other in the case of an attack by a third power. In 1933, the new Roosevelt administration in the US recognized the USSR, and in 1934 the Soviet Union successfully applied for membership in the League of Nations, shortly after Nazi Germany had resigned. Generally, in the 1933-34 period, it seemed that the Soviet Union was no longer subject to strong international pressure; the Soviets did not yet consider the Hitler regime to be significantly different from that of the previous German government.<br /> <br /> Soviet criminological theory, as well as their Marxist analysis of dealing with their opponents according to their class position, led to the adoption of a progressive position, in focusing on the structural causes of crime and opposition to socialist construction, rather than on punishment of individuals. The famous slogan: 'liquidate the ''kulaks'' as a class', in spite of anti-Soviet portrayals in the Western press at the time, meant just that: the expropriation of the means of production that allowed the rich peasants to live by the exploitation of the labour power of rural proletarians and their re-education through physical labour accompanied by socialist education. Likewise, throughout 1936, except in extraordinary conditions (such as the Civil War of 1918-1920, and the rural conflict of 1930-31) very few opponents were executed. The standard remedy for active opponents of the regime (as it was for common criminals) was socialist re-education, in good part through productive labour. This represented a humane and largely effective strategy, adopted by most other socialist countries, including China (for example, the 7 May Cadre Schools) and Vietnam (its treatment of the cadre of the old regime after 1975). Until 1937, the conditions applying to those actually confined for active opposition to the regime were considerably better than those for ordinary criminals; until 1937 torture was officially prohibited in the USSR (and, in fact, was rare). It was standard practice for those sentenced to a term in labour re-education camps in the remote region of the country to return to their old positions (as engineers, party leaders, etc.) after a relatively short time; the operation of these camps was very similar to the Chinese system operated for wayward bureaucrats and intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution.<br /> <br /> Throughout 1937, ex-Party leaders who had been demoted, expelled, or sent into exile, were routinely brought back into leadership positions. Once they criticized their past practices they were released from banishment (for example, many of Trotsky's supporters, including numerous former supporters of the United Opposition of 1926-27, were released in 1928, after they had endorsed the new rapid industrialization line of the Party) and restored to high level positions in the Party and state.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Schapiro, 1960, p. 380; Deutscher, 1960, p. 350.&lt;/ref&gt; For example, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, Tomsky, leaders of the various oppositional factions in the Party in the 1924-29 period, were restored to leadership positions — although never to the powerful positions they once held. Bukharin, for example, lost his important posts in 1929 including membership on the Politburo, the editorship of ''Pravda'' and the chairmanship of the Comintern for actively opposing the collectivization and rapid industrialization campaign. In the relatively tolerant climate during 1932-34, however, he was first made director of the research department of heavy industry and then given the responsible post of editor of ''Izvestia'', which he held from 1934 to 1937. Tomsky, although he lost his position as leader of the trade unions and his seat on the Politburo (for the same reasons that Bukharin lost his position), remained on the Central Committee of the Party, and was re-eclected at the 16th Party Congress in 1930. At the 17th Party Congress in 1934 both Tomsky and Bukharin were elected as candidate members of the Central Committee, as were other prominent, past opponents of the prevailing Party policies (for example, Rykov), and one of them, Piatakov, was elected as a full member.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Schapiro, 1960, p. 397.&lt;/ref&gt; Zinoviev and Kamenev who, together with Stalin, had represented the maximal leadership of the Party in 1924-26, were removed from the Politburo and other leading positions, and in 1927 they were expelled from the Party for active opposition, including organizing street demonstrations to oppose the Party's continuing endorsement of the moderate New Economic Policy. In 1928, when most of their earlier critique was finally incorporated into the Party's new programme of rapid industrialization and collectivization, they were both re-admitted and assigned relatively minor official posts. In 1932, they were once again expelled (and arrested) for oppositional activities, but again in the tolerant atmosphere prior to the Kirov assassination were re-admitted and again assigned Party work.<br /> <br /> === How History Judges II: The Growing Threat of Invasion and 'The Great Purge' (1935-39) ===<br /> What is generally known in the West as 'the Great Purge'; a term wrought with connotations of intensive terror, massive arrests, show trials, and widespread executions, was actually a convergence of three very different phenomena: (1) a period of general membership screening in the Party; (2) an anti-bureaucracy campaign; and (3) a paranoia about spies, traitors and 'wreckers' attempting to overthrow the regime.<br /> <br /> In Soviet Party history a 'purge' refers to a membership screening designed to rid the Party of lackadaisical, theoretically backward, ill disciplined, passive, opportunist, and so on, members. Purges were implemented either by a process of systematic expulsions organized by special 'purge' commissions, or by local Party leaders, in which charges were brought against unreliable members, or by a process of validation or exchange of Party card in which members had to prove themselves. Such 'purges' had been a regular part of Party life since 1919. Interestingly, the Party purges of 1935 and 1937 resulted in significantly fewer expulsions than the previous four purges that had taken place in 1919, 1921, 1929 and 1933.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Getty, 1979, p. 270.&lt;/ref&gt; All the purges mainly affected rank and file Party members.<br /> <br /> Nineteen thirty-seven saw a partial return to the radicalism of the 1928-31 Cultural Revolution, especially to the campaigns against bureaucracy, which focused on encouraging the rank and file to attack the middle and local level Party leadership's bureaucratic methods, and on re-invigorating rank and file participation in Party life. The so-called 'democracy campaign' of 1937 resulted in the displacement of about half of the Party's middle and lower level leadership from their positions — but ''not'' generally 'purged', that is, not expelled from the Party, or accused of treason, spying or sabotage largely as a result of rank and file activities.<br /> <br /> The 1936-38 period witnessed the arrests (and, in the case of the most prominent persons, public trials), and in many cases executions, of the majority of those in top leadership positions in Soviet society, especially in the military, Central Committee and economy. Additionally, a fair number of other, older political activists, falsely accused of treason, (that is, involvement in a conspiracy, with both the exiled Trotskyist opposition and the Japanese and German intelligence services, to overthrow the Soviet state) were similarly treated. Although significantly fewer people were affected than in the 'purge' and the 'democracy campaign', the prominence of those affected rendered these events the most dramatic of the three. The three spectacular Moscow trials of 1936, 1937 and 1938 invoked intense controversy, continuing even to this day. The 'purges', 'democracy campaign' and the attacks on the top leadership must each be understood as separate phenomenon.<br /> <br /> Communist Party membership involved both special obligations and access to special benefits such as jobs (reserved for politically reliable people), as well as a certain prestige. As a result, many people secured and maintained membership in the Party for other reasons than agreement with the Party's goals and political activism; many people even secured Party cards illegally. Until the mid-1930s the Party was, in practice, a fairly loose organization which exerted relatively little real control over its membership (there were many passive or irresponsible members) who were not held to account. The periodic purges (1919, 1921, 1929, 1933, 1935, 1937) were all designed to deal with this problem and, in the words of Party instructions, were directed to ensure 'iron proletarian discipline in the Party and to cleanse the Party's ranks of all unreliable, unstable and hanger-on elements'.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Cited in Rigby, 1968, p. 201.&lt;/ref&gt; In the 1919 're-registration' 10-15% of the Party's total membership lost their Party cards; in 1921 Party purge 25%; in the 1929 purge, 11% (25% of whom were reinstated after appeals); in the 1933 ''chistka'' 17% were expelled; in the 1935 ''proverka'' 9%; and in the famous 1937 ''Ezhovschina'' again about 9% (the 1935 and 1937 purges were the smallest in terms of numbers affected).&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Getty, 1979, pp. 112, 270, 447.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The decree setting up the rules of the 1933 validation of Party members specified that all Party members must present themselves before open proceedings (attended by both Party and non-Party members), give an account of the facts of their lives, explain how they fulfilled Party tasks, and discuss the efforts made to raise their 'ideological and theoretical level'. Each member was then questioned by the validation commissioners and by rank and file Party and non-Party members.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Fainsod, 1958, p. 222.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The laxness of Party members before the mid-1930s is indicated by such facts as: before the 1933 purge, between 32% and 60% (depending on the organization surveyed) of Party members did not even read the Party press; that the names of 50,000 dead, fictitious, or missing persons were on the active Party rolls at the beginning of 1934 (in some districts over 10% of the membership); and that Party units had lost contact with over 10% of members listed on their rolls.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Getty, 1979, pp. 84, 149.&lt;/ref&gt; The problem of inactive and irresponsible Party members, as well as the loose system of controls over membership, was largely as a result of the emphasis, during the 1920s, on the recruitment of large numbers of working-class members, with little attention given to criteria other than class background.<br /> <br /> In the membership screening of 1929, 22% were expelled for 'defects in personal conduct', 17% for passivity, 12% for criminal offences (mostly involvement in petty crimes), 10% for violations of Party discipline (which includes those accused of factional activity) and 17% for being 'alien elements' or having lied about class background. Similatly in the 1933 ''chistka'', in which 15% were expelled for personal degeneracy, 14% for violating Party discipline, 16% for political reasons, including concealing class background, and 18% for abuse of position.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Rigby, 1968, p. 180; Getty, 1979, p. 129.&lt;/ref&gt; According to Rigby's analysis of the 1933 membership screening,&lt;blockquote&gt;...political considerations play a relatively small part in this sample of expulsions, however, and the great majority were removed either because they made unscrupulous use of their Party membership to secure personal benefits, were immoral or undisciplined in their personal lives or at their job, or simply failed to participate in party activities.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Rigby, 1968, p. 204.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Data for the 1935 purge (which occurred immediately after the Kirov assassination) reveals that the reasons for expulsions were similar to those in the pre-1934 membership screenings; more than 20% were expelled for petty crimes or 'moral turpitude', and most of the remainder for political passivity, 'degeneracy' or abuse of position.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Getty, 1979, pp. 83, 280.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The information on the incidence of the ''proverka'' suggests that it was not a hysterical, political witchhunt, in which helpless rank and file Party members fell in droves for the slightest infraction. Rather, it seems that the ''proverka'' of 1935 was more careful, and less political, in that there is evidence of investigation and of a policy in which a consistent pattern of problems or violations was necessary for expulsion.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 280.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Results for one city in the Smolensk region showed that only 18% of the members against whom charges had been brought were actually expelled, and less than one-third of those formally criticized at meetings received any form of disciplinary treatment at all.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Getty, 1979, p. 241.&lt;/ref&gt; The records of the Smolensk City Party committee reveal that 7% were expelled for passivity, 21% for being petty criminals or degenerates, or corrupt; 28% for untrustworthiness, 22% for being 'class alien persons' who had hidden their class origins, and only 8% for political unreliability.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 272.&lt;/ref&gt; Undoubtedly there was a higher percentage of expulsions for political reasons in the 1937 purge owing to the hysteria engendered by the spy and 'wrecker' mania current at the time. Nevertheless, given the results of previous purges, especially that of 1935, there is no doubt that the reasons for the majority of purges were not political.<br /> <br /> In 1937 the Party again instituted a systematic 'purging' process in order to improve the quality of its cadre. It appears that the bulk of the members who left the Party for any reason in the 1937-38 period were separated on the basis of the screening process involved in validating Party membership and were separated for reasons other than suspected political opposition. As in previous purges all Party members were required to prove that they were conducting themselves as good Communists, and to submit to the criticism of other Party members. Those who failed to meet the test were denied new Party cards and as a result ''de facto'' expelled from the Party.<br /> <br /> In short, the vast majority of those whose Party cards were withdrawn both in the pre and post 1934 membership screenings were expelled not for association with any political opposition, but rather for being 'careerists', 'opportunists', ill-disciplined, 'degenerates', politically passive, 'politically illiterate', 'weak willed', and so on.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Rigby, 1968, pp. 201-4; Fainsod, 1958, pp. 221-2.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the years between the ending of the Cultural Revolution and 1937 a rather ossified and non-responsive bureaucratic tone had taken possession of the CPSU. It seems that in the early years of collectivization and planning, considerable authority to 'get things done' had to be given to local Party leaders. Further, given the shortage of politically loyal administrators, engineers and technicians, detailed economic and administrative decision-making had to be handled — or at least closely supervised — by local Party leaders. The incredibly rapid expansion of economic activities for which the Party was responsible in the early years of planning, as well as the immense problems inherent in collectivization, led to the hasty and often haphazard construction of a massive decision-making apparatus. On a day-to-day basis bureaucracy was largely unresponsive towards both the centre and the rank and file.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Getty, 1979, pp. 89, 202, 203, 286, 321, 398, 523, 554.&lt;/ref&gt; The tremendous increase in the Party's economic responsibilities, the massive shifts in population, the class warfare with the rich peasants, and the obsession with fulfilling the new economic plans all resulted in the Party's ''political'' role beginning to atrophy. Political education, mass political campaigns, and ideology in general, were increasingly neglected as economic administration became progressively important. With the Party leaders' metamorphosis into economic administrators, local Party administration often tended to manifest inertia, incompetence, clumsiness and some-times arrogance. Whatever may have been the case after 1937, during the first decade of planning, the Party apparatus was far from a well-oiled, efficient, co-ordinated machine closely controlled and directed from the top.<br /> <br /> In response to the dual problem of an ossifying bureaucracy the so-called 'democracy/anti-bureaucracy campaign' was launched by the Central Committee in February 1937. This campaign marked a partial return to the anti-bureaucratic mass radicalism of the Cultural Revolution of 1928-31.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Getty, 1979, p.499.&lt;/ref&gt; Its goal was to mobilize the Party's rank and file against bureaucracy in order both to reduce the autonomy of local and middle leadership and make them more responsible to the day-to-day concerns of the rank and file, and the directives of the centre. Combined with this thrust was the attempt to reduce Party leaders' role in the details of economic and political administration and to turn such matters over to the newly educated working-class intelligentsia, and to restore the ''political'' leadership role to Party leaders, that is, leading mass campaigns, organizing, political education.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 492.&lt;/ref&gt; At this time, too, questions of expertise and competence provoked tensions between the older, non-technically educated Party leaders (who had achieved their positions on the basis of politics) and the young, 'red intelligentsia', mostly from working-class and peasant backgrounds who had recently completed their technical education.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 553.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The 'democracy/anti-bureaucracy' campaign of February 1937 had many parallels with the 'Bombard the Headquarters' campaign initiated in China by Mao Tse-tung during 1966-67. Quite probably, together with the 1928-31 Soviet Cultural Revolution, this campaign was the precedent upon which the Chinese Party based itself (the events which took place in the Soviet Union in the 1930s had a profound influence on young Communists throughout the world at the time). That both the Chinese 'Bombard the Headquarters' campaign of 1966-67, which took place 17 years after the seizure of power and 11 years after the revolution entered its explicitly socialist phase, and the 'democracy/anti-bureaucracy campaign' of the Bolshevik Revolution, which took place 20 years after the seizure of power and nine years after the beginning of the second phase of the Revolution, occurred at the same point in the development of the two revolutions, provides strong evidence that both were in response to similar situations and were thus qualitatively similar phenomena. The results in both cases were the reduction in the autonomy of local regional officials and an increased responsiveness to day-to-day concerns of the people by the local Party.<br /> <br /> The notion of 'Putting Politics in Command' was central to both campaigns. A large percentage of the Party's local officials — from above and below — were removed and many were rehabilitated in both campaigns. In the words of G. Arch Getty speaking of 'the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution':&lt;blockquote&gt;While this movement was not as violent (and fatal) as the events in the USSR in the 1930s, the parallels are very strong. In both cases, the centre unleashed the rank and file against the established bureaucracy in the name of political purity, democracy and the rights of the Party rank and file.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 203-4.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Getty himself, concluding his carefully documented and closely argued study, goes even further, arguing that the primary aspect of the totality of the events of the 1937-38 period was the undermining of the bureaucracy:&lt;blockquote&gt;The Ezhovshchina... was not the result of a petrified bureaucracy stamping out dissent and annihilating the old radical revolutionaries. In fact, it may have been just the opposite. It is not inconsistent with the evidence to argue that the Ezhovshchina was rather a radical, even hysterical reaction to bureaucracy. The entrenched bureaucracy was destroyed from above and below in a wave of voluntatism, chaos, and even a kind of perverse revolutionary puritanism.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 557-8.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The February 1937 plenum of the Central Committee, as part of the Party's anti-bureaucracy campaign, announced that there were to be secret ballot elections in the local Party organizations. There was considerable opposition both in the Central Committee and, not surprising, among local Party leaders, to such a departure from the traditional Party practice of open selection of leaders.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 380, 406, 551.&lt;/ref&gt; These elections were held in the spring of 1937, before the fabricated letters implicating the Soviet military leaders in a conspiracy to overthrow the government had been received, (see below) and before the 'spies' and 'wreckers' hysteria among the top leadership of the Party had peaked. As a result of these secret ballot elections about 50% of Party unit and regional first secretaries, as well as leadership committees, lost their positions; they were adjudged by the rank and file to be 'unsatisfactory' in their work. These secret ballots usually took place after long criticism meetings, at which the local leaders often suffered insulting criticism.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 402-7, 553.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Not until June-July did the 'democracy/anti-bureaucracy' campaign, as well as the process of 'purging' the Party, converge with the rising 'spy' and 'wrecker' fears, which began immediately after the Soviets received forged documents from the Nazi Gestapo, via the Czech secret police, implicating the Soviet military general staff in an alleged conspiracy to carry out a coup d'etat. In the hysterical atmosphere that followed, in the summer of 1937, not only were the majority of the top military leaders tried and executed, but many other former oppositional figures, and those associated with them, were also arrested. Also at this time, the security police were, for the first time, given the authority to arrest Party members. Those moderates in Party leadership who had been resisting the anti-bureaucracy campaign, by stressing the importance of economic leadership, and complaining that the campaign was causing disruption, came under the suspicion of involvement in the alleged conspiracy to overthrow the government — especially by 'wrecking'.<br /> <br /> Many of these moderates were or had been close to Bukhatin and shared his scepticism about the mass campaigns and the Stakonovites, as well as towards the need for the purges and arrests of key economic administrators. They favoured, instead, more gradual and established paths towards industrialization. In the latter half of 1937 the purges and arrests — heavily concentrated among the top leadership, but also occurring within the Party's middle and lower level leadership — were extended to those on the right of the Party, including former associates of right-opposition factions.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 426, 442, 550-1.&lt;/ref&gt; In the summer of 1937 the moderate leaning majority in the Central Committee was broken by large scale expulsion, arrests and executions, covered by sensationalist announcements of implication in plots with Trotsky and German and Japanese intelligence to overthrow the government, allegedly through spying, conspiring and above all 'wrecking'.<br /> <br /> === Traitor Mania and the Moscow Trials of 1936-38 ===<br /> The period of increasing tolerance in Soviet history ended abruptly on 1 December 1934 when S.M. Kirov, the head of the Leningrad Party organization, and probably the second most influential Party leader in the country, was assassinated at the Leningrad Party headquarters by a discontented young Party member. The assassin, Nikolayev, had belonged to a circle of young left-wing Communists who had been studying the literature of revolutionary terrorism. Unhappy with the course of events in the Soviet Union, this left opposition circle looked for inspiration to Zinoviev, the former head of the Leningrad Party organization, and for many years a prominent spokesman for the left in the Party — although they had neither any direct nor indirect contact with Zinoviev.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Deutscher, 1960, pp. 354-6.&lt;/ref&gt; The top Party leadership, including Stalin, Molotov, Voroshiklov and Kagonovich, personally directed and participated in the interrogation of Nikolayev, since it was suspected that his organization was part of a much wider conspiracy.<br /> <br /> Nikolayev, along with a number of his political associates, was tried and sentenced to death. Zinoviev, together with his long term close associate, Kamenev, was arrested and charged with 'moral complicity' in the assassination. In the hysterical atmosphere that was beginning to develop Zinoviev was sentenced to ten years imprisonment and Kamenev to five.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 356.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Other extraordinary measures were immediately undertaken to guard against further assassinations (there was an attempt on Molotov) and other acts of violent disruption. Cases of counter-revolutionary crimes were transferred to military courts. The death sentence for terrorist acts was to be liberally utilized and immediately put into effect, as a deterrent to further such actions. Appeals against sentences for counter-revolutionary offences were no longer permitted.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ulam, 1973, p. 381; Medvedev, 1971, p. 162; Hingley, 1974, p. 247.&lt;/ref&gt; In summer 19306, the Central Committee voted the political police (the NKVD) extraordinary powers for one year, to enable them to more effectively contain 'the enemies of the people'. This, in effect, suspended all judicial rights for those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. The NKVD now had authorization to arrest and sentence, without trial or right of appeal, all non-Party members suspected of such activities. In the following year, the June Plenum of the Central Committee extended these extraordinary powers indefinitely.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1971, p. 393.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Until 1937, the regime in the labour re-education camps was, usually, relatively liberal and humane. Political prisoners had a privileged status with many special rights denied to ordinary criminals. The work day during the winter was from four to six hours, and in summer ten. Generous pay was provided which allowed prisoners to send money to their families and to return home with money. Food and clothing was adequate and serious attempts were made to re-educate the prisoners.<br /> <br /> In 1937 this privileged status ended. For the next few years the regime for political prisoners was harsher than that for common criminals. The corrective labour camps were transformed into hard labour camps, with the primary function of punishing suspected counter-revolutionaties while forcing them to aid the socialist transition by physical construction work, with little or no serious attempt at rehabilitation. Labour camp inmates were now treated as hardened 'enemies of the people' who deserved little mercy. Hard labour for ten, and sometime more, hours a day became the rule. Inadequate food, shelter and clothing, and often tyrannical authority, now became common; death from causes associated with overwork, exposure, malnourishment, disease, etc. now became a factor.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Ibid., p. 275; Ulam, 1973, p. 426; Deutscher, 1960, pp. 358-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> For the first 20 years of the Revolution, in the words of Anna Louise Strong: 'the Soviet people had prided themselves on the absence in the gaols, not only of the torture used by the Nazis, but of even the third-degree as practised in the United States.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Strong, 1957, p. 67.&lt;/ref&gt;The year 1937 also saw the introduction of tortute as a permissible police technique. An instruction from the Party's General Secretary issued in January 1939 read:&lt;blockquote&gt;The General Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) explains that the application of methods of physical pressure in NKVD practice is permissible from 1937 on in accordance with permission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).... It is known that all bourgeois intelligence services use methods of physical influence against the representatives of the socialist proletariat and that they use them in their most scandalous form. The question arises as to why the socialist intelligence service should be more humanitarian against the mad agents of the bourgeoisie, against the deadly enemies of the working class and the Kolkhoz workers. The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) considers that physical pressure should still be used obligatorily, as an exception applicable to known and obstinate enemies of the people, as a method both justifiable and appropriate.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Cited in Khrushchev, 1956, p. 41.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Accelerating slowly over the latter half of 1936 and the first half of 1937, largely because of the increasingly tense international situation, the spy scare became hysterical and uncontrolled in June and July 1937, following the arrest and execution of the top military staff who had been implicated in the Gestapo's forged documents.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Getty, 1979, p. 327.&lt;/ref&gt; In Getty's words: 'The increased tension of the spy scare/war scare/vigilance campaign was in vivid contrast to the preceding events, which constituted a lull of nearly two years since the death of Kirov.'&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Getty, 1979, p. 327.&lt;/ref&gt; Concerning the period 1935-36 Getty argues that it would be: 'ridiculous to regard this period as one of rising hysteria or vigilance. With the exchange of Party documents, in fact, the vigilance theme had receded into the background.' In late 1937 and early 1938, the NKVD acquired the power to arrest Party members who had not been subject to action by their Party units, that is, had not been expelled or denied their Party cards. Before this, Party members were immune from the summary actions of the NKVD. To quote Brzezinski:&lt;blockquote&gt;The secret police (known then as the NKVD) had overreached itself, and was endangering the hitherto undisputed supremacy of the Party. The purge of the Party organizations, until then a function of the Party purging commissions and the control commissions, had passed into the hands of the police, which alone decided, frequently on the basis of sources of doubtful reliability, the scope and the timing of the arrests. ...The arrests of local Party leaders by the secret police, without prior expulsion from the Party, became commonplace. Release of arrested relatives or friends through the intercession of the Party organization became more and more difficult....&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Brzezinski, 1956, pp. 117-8.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;This situation lasted only a few months, however, as there was a strong reaction from the rank and file of the Party.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See also Getty, 1979, p. 280.&lt;/ref&gt; This soon resulted in the reassertion of the Party's exclusive control over its own members, and a significant reduction in the authority of the security police.&lt;blockquote&gt;Intimidation reached such a point that effective power was slipping from the hands of the Party officials into the hands of the police... the Party, including the top leadership became seriously concerned about the situation, and by early 1938 was determined to apply remedial measures of no mean consequence.<br /> <br /> ...by early 1938 some efforts to tone down the purge could be discerned. Trials and accusations began to fade into the background, as did efforts to glorify the secret police and Yezhov.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Brzezinski, 1956, pp. 118-9.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ...in 1938 the combined forces of the Party, relying on public resentment against the secret police, thwarted any disruptive developments emanating from the latter. Indeed, eyewitnesses tell of numerous arrests among the NKVD personnel.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 127.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;It appears that the numbers of those arrested by the NKVD who had not been expelled from the Party did not represent a large proportion of those separated from the Party. Expulsions remained commonplace even while the overall scope of the purge diminished. To quote Brzezinski:<br /> <br /> Published statistics on expulsions and changes in leadership showed that, while the tempo of the purge diminished, it still took its toll among the Party cadres. A good many of the expulsions, however, took place during the latter half of 1937 and early months of 1938.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 95.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The most detailed and direct evidence, the records of the Smolensk Party organization which were seized by the invading Nazi armies in 1941 and captured from them by the US at the end of the War, indicates that the standard procedure was to formally expel Party members accused of counterrevolutionary activities. There is little support for the thesis that any significant number of Party members were executed who had not been expelled.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Fainsod, 1958, pp. 132-7, 190-1, 232-7, 423-28.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The 'extraordinary' measures of the 1936-38 period primarily affected Party and ex-Party members, especially leading Party figures, as well as former leading figures in other political organizations. In the words of Brzezinski: 'The major effort of the purge was directed at the Communist Party itself.'&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Brzezinski, 1956, p. 91; see also Medvedev, 1971, p. 234.&lt;/ref&gt; That the 'extraordinary' measures mainly affected the higher levels of the Party is confirmed by the analysis of T.H. Rigby:&lt;blockquote&gt;...while the ''chistka'' of 1933-34 struck mostly at the rank and file, leaving the apparatus virtually untouched, and the 'verification' and exchange of party documents in 1935 affected particularly the lower functionaries, the ''Ezbovshchina'' was aimed primarily at the directing cadres and the intelligentsia, with the rank-and-file figuring now much more as accusers and informers than as victims.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Rigby, 1968, p. 213.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;While the traitor mania began against the traditional 'leftist' factions in the Party (including the tendency with which Nikolayev's group was associated), in 1937 it came to include both the traditional right and the moderate economic leadership.<br /> <br /> The arrests and executions — most of which occurred without public trials or even public announcements — of mostly expelled leading Party members focused mainly on older members who, at one point or another in their lives, had been associated with oppositional factions in the Party; former activists in the now defunct Menshevik, Social Revolutionary, Bundist, anarchist and Cadet organizations; as well as those in leadership positions who had been advanced in their careers by the various leading Bolsheviks tried in the three 'Great Purge Trials'. Refugee Communists from Germany, Poland, Hungary and elsewhere in the capitalist world, who at some point had ties to these figures, were also swept up in the process (many foreigh Communists, of course, were linked at one point or another with Zinoviev or Bukhatin, both of whom had been chairmen of the Communist International).&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Deutscher, 1960, p. 380; Medvedev, 1971, p. 189.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Throughout 1936, thousands of Communists who had at one time ot another been associated with various left factions in the Party, were expelled and arrested. Former activists of other parties were also arrested on suspicion of supporting counter-revolutionary activities. The wave of 'spy' and 'wrecker' mania that swept the country had millions enthusiastically participating in the search for counter-revolutionaries and supporting their trials. In 1937, especially the eight months from May, saw the greatest intensity of arrests and executions. About ten times more people (almost all of whom were innocent) were arrested in 1937 than there had been in 1936.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Khrushchev, 1956, p. 30.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The events of these years were focused on three well publicized trials, known collectively in the West as the 'Moscow Trials' or the 'Great Purge Trials'. The first, held in August 1936, was the trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev and 14 others (the principle leaders of the old left opposition who were falsely charged with planning and instigating the Kirov assassination, no longer with just moral complicity), and with planning the assassination of other Bolshevik leaders including Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov and Zhdanov, in collaboration, it was alleged, with Leon Trotsky, then exiled in Mexico. The second, in January 1937, involved Radek. Piatakov and 15 others ('second level' leaders of the old left opposition) who were publicly tried for 'wrecking' and economic sabotage in collaboration, it was alleged, with the German and Japanese intelligence agencies; again Trotsky was implicated and charges made that these ex-Bolshevik leaders were also involved in the conspiracy to assassinate the current leadership.<br /> <br /> In spring and summer 1937, the false charges of counter-revolutionary activities and treason were extended beyond those who had long been associated with the left-opposition (for example, associates of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Radek, et al.) to those formerly associated with the right opposition. Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky and many of their former followers and associates wetre now arrested, and in March 1938, Bukharin, Rykov and 19 others along with Henryk Yagoda, the former head of the NKVD (who had prepared the evidence for the first purge trial) figured in the third of these well publicized trials. Yagoda was charged with collaboration with German and Japanese intelligence agencies, and, in conspiracy with the others, of falsely accusing many honest revolutionaries of counter-revolutionary activities and thus being responsible for their wrongful execution. In addition to being charged with complicity in the same general conspiracy as the defendants of the two previous trials, Bukharin, Rykov et al. were also falsely accused of being involved in planning a ''coup d'etat'' (also allegedly co-ordinated with German intelligence) with Marshal Tukhachevsky, the leading Soviet general who had been tried and shot in June 1937. Almost all of those tried in these three public trials were executed.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Tucker, 1971, p. 51; Ulam, 1973, pp. 383, 409, 422-3; Deutscher, 1960, p. 373; Medvedev, 1971, p. 172.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In January 1938, the Central Committee criticized local Party organizations for exaggerated vigilance and excessive expulsions. The intensity of the purge then diminished. After the last of the 'Great Purge Trials', expulsions and arrests markedly decreased. Abuses were, in part, attributed to 'careerists trying to gain merit by throwing people out of the Party, trying to gain security for themselves through mass repressions against the rank and file members.'&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Cited in Ulam, 1973, p. 475.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In December 1938, the campaign came to a complete halt. Most pending investigations for counter-revolutionary activities were dropped and the suspects released. Yezhov was dismissed as the head of the NKVD and replaced by L.P. Beria. A number of leading NKVD officers were arrested and some executed for having extracted false confessions. Most regional heads of the security police were purged, and many were subject to criminal actions. Past abuses were widely criticized. Both Yagoda and Yezhov were denounced as enemies of the people. Numerous cases were reinvestigated and quite a few of the sentenced released; conditions in the labour camps were ameliorated.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Schapiro, 1960, p. 432; Ulam, 1973, p. 488; Brzezinski, 1956, pp.122-7; Getty, 1979, p. 475.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> At the 18th Party Congress in March 1939, the events of the previous three years were criticized by Stalin, Molotov and Zhdanov as having been accompanied by 'grave mistakes' and pathological suspicion that had most adversely affected the Party's work. Zhdanov, who gave one of the main political reports at the Congress, reprimanded the local Party organizations for 'stupid excess of zeal', citing instance after instance of faked evidence and presumption of guilt by association. The resolution voted by the Congress summed up the purges as both unjust and ineffective. Party rules adopted at this Congress made new provisions for members' rights of appeal against expulsion, as well as banning the practice of mass purges of membership.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Schapiro, 1960, p. 433; Brzezinski, 1956, p. 122.&lt;/ref&gt; A new rule passed at the 18th Congress read:&lt;blockquote&gt;When the question of the expulsion of a Party member or the reinstatement of an expelled member is discussed, the maximum caution and comradely consideration must be exercised and the grounds for the accusations brought against the Party member thoroughly investigated.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Cited in Brzezinski, 1956, p. 129.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;There was much talk at the Congress of rehabilitating the unjustly condemned. Indeed, thousands were rehabilitated in 1939 and 1940, including many military commanders; many future military heroes of World War II were restored to their positions during these two years. To quote Brzezinski:&lt;blockquote&gt;The Party organizations were exhorted to remember that admission of past mistakes 'does not diminish authority but, on the contrary, actually raises it', and were urged to give full and prompt consideration to appeals of expelled Party members.... The reaction was indeed prompt, even if not entirely satisfactory. Reports from various Party organizations began again to pour in, giving detailed accounts of the process of readmission into the Party, and incidentally, again bearing witness to the scale of the purge. In Georgia, for instance, 485 or 840 appeals had already been considered, but some 1700 still remained on the books; in Kazakhstan 524 members were taken back out of 1,021 appealing; but 3,724 were yet to be processed, the Kiev region had 2,452 appeals still pending. .. One of the major preoccupations of the Party conferences held that year was discussion of what measures would expedite the processing of the thousands of appeals from gradually more emboldened ex-Party workers. The Politburo, through the Central Committee, was forced repeatedly to urge the Party organizations to accelerate the handling of appeals; and charges of inefficiency and laggardness became frequent.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Brzezinski, 1956, p. 123.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> === The Numbers of Those Affected ===<br /> Between December 1935 and December 1938, and November 1936 and March 1939, including 1937, when the 'Great Purge' was at its most intense, roughly 160,000 to 180,000 people left the CPSU (for any reason). This represented about 8% of total Party members, far fewer than those who were expelled in the purge of 1933.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Unger, 1969, p. 327; Rigby, 1968, p. 212.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> To quote T.H. Rigby, the leading Western expert on the membership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union:&lt;blockquote&gt;During 1937 when the bulk of the arrests appear to have occurred, the party membership declined by only 60,000. Since new recruits totalled less than 40,000, the number of current party members who were 'purged' during 1937 must have been under 100,000. Taking the whole period between the renewal of recruitment in November 1936 and the Eighteenth Congress in March 1939, the growth in total Party membership fell short of the number of candidates admitted by only about 180,000, and this appears to be the maximum number who could have been 'purged' during this period, not allowing for deaths of members from natural causes....&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Rigby, 1968, p. 212.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In 1937, at the height of the Great Purge in Moscow, 33,000 (13.4% of the total Moscow Oblast Party organization) left the Party; this compares with 133,000 in 1933 and 45,500 in 1935. These data are especially significant indicators of the effect of the Great Purge since the 1936-38 purge primarily affected older Bolsheviks and higher level cadres who were disproportionately located in the Moscow region.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Wheatcroft 1981, p. 290.&lt;/ref&gt; In general, the higher the position in the Party organization, and the greater the seniority in the Party, the more likely one was to be expelled, arrested or executed.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Khrushchev, 1956, pp. 22-3; see also Ulam, 1976, p. 440; Strong, 1957, pp. 62, 66; Medvedev, 1956, pp. 182, 189, 192, 202.&lt;/ref&gt; For example, between 1937 and 1940 there was a 25% decline in the membership of the Leningrad Party organization of those who had joined the Party before the Revolution, but only an 11% decline in those who had joined between 1917 and 1932.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Wheatcroft, 1971, p. 290.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Great Purge reached ferocious proportions at the very top levels of Soviet society. With the exception of Stalin, all of Lenin's Politburo were executed, including Trotsky who was assassinated in Mexico in 1940. By the beginning of 1939, 110 of the 139 members and candidate members of the Central Committee of the Party elected at the 1934 Congress had been arrested, and 98 of them shot, and of the 1,966 delegates to the 1934 Party Congress, 1,108 had been arrested.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Khrushchev, 1956, pp. 22-3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The officer corps, especially top military leaders, were also hard hit by the purges, arrests and executions. In June 1937, the top military commander, General Tukhachevsky and other leading military officials were tried secretly for allegedly plotting a ''coup d'etat'' against the Party leadership, in collaboration with the other oppositional figures, Trotsky and the Germans. These innocent generals, in common with almost all the leading civilian oppositional figures, were shot. About 90% of all generals, including three of the five marshals, 80% of all colonels, 136 of the 199 division commanders, and all eight first rank admirals were arrested. Between 25% and 50% of all officers were arrested and several thousands were shot.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Deutscher, 1960, pp. 379-81; Schapiro, 1960, p. 420; Medvedev,1971, pp. 210, 213; Hingley, 1974, pp. 247-64.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The standard sentence for most of those arrested for counter-revolutionary activities in the 1936-38 period, however, was five to ten years hard labour.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Brzezinski, 1956, p. 108.&lt;/ref&gt; On the basis of information about their relatives provided by 2,725 defectors who left the Soviet Union during World War II, Brzezinski analysed the sentences received by those arrested for political reasons throughout the 1930s. He found that death sentences represented about 10% of all sentences in both the 1930-35 and the 1936-40 period:&lt;blockquote&gt;The rate of death sentences, in so far as the sample was concerned, remained approximately constant between the years 1930 and 1940: the first five years resulted in 47 death sentences out of 445 arrests; while in the second half-decade 52 were said to have been sentenced to death out of 471 arrests.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 108.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Eyewitnesses to the events of 1937 tended to confirm Brzezinski's analysis. For example, Beck and Goden reported:&lt;blockquote&gt;When the Yezhov period was at its height, sentences of less than five years forced labour were very rare. Normally they were for eight to ten years forced labour, but sentences of twenty-five years' forced labour or imprisonment were not uncommon. Death sentences were said to be frequent, but our impression is that they did not exceed ten per cent.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Beck and Godin, 1951, p. 76.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Even if it is assumed that all those who ceased to be Party members between the end of 1935 and the end of 1938 were arrested for counterrevolutionary activities (a most unreasonable assumption given the wide range of motives for leaving the Party) 10% gives a maximum of about 18,000 for purged Party members who could have been executed in this period. It is clear, however, that of those who left the Party for any reason in the 1936-38 period not all were arrested. Taking into account natural attrition, resignations, (in 1933-34 one-third of the separations from the Party were resignations), expulsions for irresponsibility (the bulk of pre-1936 expulsions were for this reason) and expulsions on minor political charges, most probably less than half of the 180,000 were ever arrested. Thus, an approximate estimate of 10,000 (or less) executions of Party members for counter-revolutionary activities is almost certainly nearer the truth than 18,000. If we assume that the number of non-Party members (including those expelled before November 1936, former cadres of other left parties such as the SRs, anarchists and Mensheviks, and prominent refugees from other countries) arrested for counter-revolutionary activities was roughly equal to those Party members expelled and/or arrested after November 1936, then the figure for those executed in the 1936-38 period would be about 20,000.<br /> <br /> That a significant proportion of non-Party people were not killed during the Great Purge period is born witness to by a published analysis of all those born in 1906 which showed that the 1937 and 1938 Soviet death rate was not significantly higher than that for 1934 or 1935.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Hough and Fainsod, 1979, p. 176.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> It is reasonable to assume that Party members accused of counterrevolutionary activities were more likely to be sentenced to death than others, in so far as they would probably be considered as traitors. However, after January 1938, as the 'Great Purge' wound down and rehabilitation of Party members began, the fact that the number of those who applied for readmission was of the same order as those expelled over the 1936-38 period indicates that few Party members had been shot. As the figures reported by Brzezinski make clear (2,500 appeals from Georgia, about 3,000 from Kiev, 4,800 from Kazakhstan) the total number of appeals during 1939-40 approximate to the number expelled from November 1936 to March 1939 (Georgia had about 2% of the population of the country, Kazakhstan about 3%). Thus, those who had been shot or who had died in labour camps, could be only a small fraction of the total expelled.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Brzezinski, 1956, p. 123.&lt;/ref&gt;* Apparently it was the very top leaders of the Party and Army who were executed, and, relatively rarely, the rank and file.<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;* It should also be noted that the substantial majority of those expelled from the Party who applied for readmission, were readmitted. For example, in the year 1938, 85% of those in Moscow who appealed against their expulsion were reinstated, 57% of those in Kiev, and 60% of those in Belorussia.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Getty, 1979, p. 471.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> The true number of those falsely accused of counter-revolutionary activities who were executed in the 1936-38 period, is probably between 20,000 and 100,000.* Both George Kennan and Jerry Hough&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Kennan and Hough, 1979, p. 177.&lt;/ref&gt; concur that the likely number of executions was closer to the former rather than the latter figure. During the French Revolution about 17,000 people were executed for counter-revolutionary activity in the 1793-94 period of Jacobin Terror,&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Green, 1935.&lt;/ref&gt; representing about .065% of the French population at the time. If the figure of 20,000 for the 1936-38 Red Terror is accurate, this represents .01% of the Soviet population; if the 100,000 figure is correct, this represents .05%. Any reasonable estimate of executions in the 1936-38 period of the Great Purge indicates that, in relative terms, at most they did not exceed those of the Jacobin Terror, and were probably fewer. Clearly, the popular conception of the bloodiness of the Great Purge is a gross exaggeration cultivated by those concerned to discredit developments in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and since, as well as the contemporary revolutionary process in other countries.<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;* The most commonly cited figures in the unsympathetic scholarly literature for those separated from the Party (with or without formal expulsion hearings) daring the Great Purge of 19306-38 is about 850,000.&lt;/small&gt;&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Brzezinski, 1956, pp. 98-9 ; see also Medvedev, 1979, p. 234; Ulam, 1973, pp. 440-1.&lt;/ref&gt; &lt;small&gt;Those who cite this estimate usually go on to guess that about half were executed.&lt;/small&gt;&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See for example, Medvedev, 1971, p. 239; Ulam, 1973, pp. 440-1.&lt;/ref&gt; &lt;small&gt;Thus the figure of about half a million killed during the Great Purge of the late 1930s has gained considerable credibility even in the more scholarly and somewhat less hysterical Western circles. A careful examination of Party membership figures, as well as statistics on the probability of different penalties for those sentenced for counter-revolutionary activities in the 1936-38 period, however, reveals a very different picture. Both Rigby's and Unger's&lt;/small&gt;&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Rigby, 1968, p. 212; Unger, 1969, p. 328.&lt;/ref&gt; &lt;small&gt;more careful analysis reveals that the number of separations during the Great Purge was only a fraction of the 850,000 figure claimed by Brzezinski. To quote Unger:&lt;/small&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;small&gt;The estimate of approximately 850,000 purged Party members given by Brzezinski for the three years 1936-38 is based on an inaccurate reading of the Party membership figures.... the membership figures cited by Brzezinski as relating to the end of 1935 (2,358,714) and the end of 1938 (1,920,000) relate in fact to the beginning of 1935 and 1938 respectively, and are therefore irrelevant to an estimate of the Great Purge. The true figures at the end of 1935 and 1938 were respectively 2,076,842 and 2,306,973, showing not a loss, but an increase of 230,171 members. Thus if Brzezinski's estimate of 410,000 admissions — from the resumption of recruitment at the end of 1936 until the end of 1938 — is correct, the total of purged party members in the three years 1936-38 would be not approximately 850,000 but 410,000 less 230,131, or approximately 180,000 members, expulsions during the two years 1937-38 could not have exceeded 85,000.&lt;/small&gt;&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Unger, 1969, p. 238.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;small&gt;Even if the 850,000 figure were valid, applying the 10% execution-to-arrest ratio to the half or so of those separated from the Party for any reason, gives a figure of about 50,000 executions, ''one-tenth'' of the figure suggested by many sources.&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;Rigby suggests that many of those purged in the early 1930s were perhaps victims of the extraordinary measures of the 1936-38 period (although there is no evidence that this was the case); 'Of course, vast numbers of people who were not members of the Party also fell victim to the Ezhovshchina, including a large (but unknown) proportion of the million and a half communists who had been expelled from the Party before the mass arrests began...' That it is unlikely that very many of the ex-Party members were executed for counter-revolutionary activities (or even that very many were even investigated or arrested) is strongly suggested by Rigby himself when he cites the reasons for the expulsions of the early 1930s. (These earlier expulsions were mostly of newly recruited young workers and peasants who turned out to be non-activists, irresponsible, drunkards, etc., large numbers of whom were carelessly recruited principally on the basis of their class position.) To quote Rigby '...most of the victims in 1933-34 were simply apolitical men and women accused of exploiting their party membership for personal ends....'&lt;/small&gt;&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Rigby, 1968, p. 213.&lt;/ref&gt; &lt;small&gt;'The chistka [of 1933-34] took its main toll among workers and peasants who entered the party during the mass recruitment drive of the collectivization and first Five Year Plan era and scarcely touched those older Party members from which most of the Party's cadres were drawn.'&lt;/small&gt;&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 203.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The proportion of the population killed in these two 'Red Terrors', the Jacobin and the Great Purge of the Bolsheviks, pales in comparison with the 'White Terrors' perpetrated by the propertied class either to prevent social revolutions or to take vengeance on those who tried and failed (for example, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Germany, Argentina).<br /> <br /> Throughout the 1930s and 1940s numerous people were arrested and sent to the labour re-education camps which, after their transformation in 1937, became penal colonies, functioning to aid the construction of the virgin regions. The number of people so confined has been subject to wild speculation in the extensive anti-Soviet literature that developed with the onset of the cold war. Estimates in these sources for those interned in 1938 range from 2 to 12 million; many such estimates are based on the self-interested speculation and rumours of those once assigned to the camps. Others are based on such factors as alleged discrepancies in Soviet census data, where it is assumed that apparent discrepancies between different grand totals are equal to the number of people in (or on the pay-roll of) the labour camps, discrepancies between projections of populations assuming a particular 'normal' birth and death rate and the number of people actually reported in a census; the number of newspaper subscriptions (multiplied by the alleged number of people who read a paper) etc. These highly speculative estimates have been subject to a careful review and criticism by British Soviet expert, S.G. Wheatcroft (1981). After examining the statistical discrepancies, population projections, etc. on which many estimates in the Western literature are based, Wheatcroft argues as follows about the ''logical'' maximum of the number that could have been in the labour camps in 1939:&lt;blockquote&gt;The employment and census data have indicated the impossibility of fitting more than three or four million forced concentration camp labourers into the labour force without a large number of them being included in other registered categories. But it has generally been accepted that only a small number of forced labourers could be included within the standard registered categories because the information available about employment within these categories would not allow a large number to be fitted in. This points to the conclusion that some four to five million is the maximum number of concentration camp labourers who could have existed in 1939. This order of magnitude is quite compatible with data on disenfranchised populations.... It is however considerably lower than the order of magnitude proposed by most former camp inmates and many former officials who must be assumed to be offering exaggerated figures. The one former camp inmate who has access to local archival data also appears to indicate a relatively low figure. The available quantitative data on Party membership turnover and the turnover amongst senior state officials also indicate that the quantitative significance of the 1937-38 purge has also generally been exaggerated.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Wheatcroft, 1981, p. 286.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Wheatcroft affords most credibility to estimated numbers in the labour camps during 1937-39 based on the number of those disenfranchised for counter-revolutionary activities, as well as the number of camp administrations (a public statistic) multiplied by the average number of those confined in a single camp. In 1938 one of the 38 labour camp clusters, Vorkuta, was known to have 15,000 people under detention. To quote Wheatcroft, 'Vorkuta was certainly one of the better known camps, and there is no indication that it was smaller than average'. Assuming the Vorkuta population to be typical gives an estimate of less than 600,000 for the total of those confined in 1938.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Ibid., p. 283.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Estimates of those confined in 1937-38 based on the number of people officially disenfranchised for counter-revolutionary activities usually assume (unreasonably) that most of these were sent to labour camps and often that some who were sent to labour camps did not receive the formality of disenfranchisement (not such a reasonable assumption).&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 272, 289.&lt;/ref&gt; This latter assumption allows them to augment the number of expulsions to guess the number in labour camps. Wheatcroft, however, points out (p. 289) that checking voting registers against the number of people who actually voted reveals too minimal a discrepancy to account for any great number having been assigned to labour camps without disenfranchisement. In 1937 there were about 3.3 million disenfranchised persons in the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> Throughout most of their history the Soviets have practised a wide range of measures against opponents — from public criticism, disenfranchisement, and compulsory labour at ones normal workplace supervised by fellow workers, together with required study; to exile without confinement, assignment to labour re-education centres, imprisonment, and execution. According to Wheatcroft:&lt;blockquote&gt;The category of forced labour without confinement had existed from the 1920s. By the mid-1930s about half of all those sentenced to forced labour served this sentence without confinement, generally at their normal place of work. These sentences were normally for periods of up to six months or in some cases a year. Up to 25% of the normal pay was deducted from wages.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 286.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Exile without confinement was a standard sentence for peasants arrested in connection with the collectivization campaigns. They were also disenfranchised for the duration of their exile; thus, it can be assumed that they account for many of those disenfranchised in the latter half of the 1930s.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 287.&lt;/ref&gt; Therefore, assuming that a significant number of the disenfranchised were neither subject to forced labour nor exile indicates the maximum proportion of those disenfranchised that could have been in labour camps in 1937-38 is probably around 25%, or less than a million. The coincidence of the figures based on known information about the Vorkuta administration and the number of camp administrations, together with a reasonable ratio applied to the disenfranchisement data gives great credibility to an estimate of roughly one million people working in the labour camps in 1937-38, or about .5% of the Soviet population.<br /> <br /> For a sense of the significance of this figure it can be pointed out that in 1978, out of a total US Black population of 23 million, about 200,000 (roughly 1%) were incarcerated.<br /> <br /> Brzezinski's analysis of the sample of the 2,725 Soviet emigrés' relatives who were sentenced to labour camps over the course of the 1930s revealed that about 25% of them died in the labour camps. Assuming an average sentence of about eight years in the latter 1930s, this suggests an annual mortality rate of 3%.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Brzezinski, 1956, p. 108.&lt;/ref&gt; In order to comprehend the significance of this latter figure it must be compared with the mortality rate in US prisons. In fact, 3% was approximately the mortality rate in Southern State penitentiaries in the US, at least throughout the early 1970s. One of the most thorough studies of health and mortality in a US Southern prison found that, in 1972, the death rate in the Tennessee State Penitentiary was 2.0 per 100, and in the Fiscal Year 1972-73, 2.2 per 100.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Jones, 1976, pp. 149, 150.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The mortality rate of 3 per 100 in the Soviet labour camps of the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s should also be compared to the mortality rate for the Soviet population as a whole. Leaving aside the high mortality rate for Soviet soldiers during the 1941-45 period, it is noted that the death rate in the labour camps was the same as the mortality rate in the Czarist empire before World War I. While in 1913 the Russian mortality rate was 2.9 per 100, in 1940 it was 1.8 per 100, and in 1950 1.0 per 100.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See ''The USSR in Figures'' for 1978.&lt;/ref&gt; Thus, while conditions neither in US penitentiaries, in the Czarist empire or Sibetian labour camps were comfortable, it must be concluded that the 3% mortality rate in Soviet labour camps amounted to far less than a death sentence (as is often assumed by anti-Communists in the West.)<br /> <br /> Discussions in the West of the events of the 1930s in the USSR are very much a product of the Cold War. Even though dealing with events of a half century ago, they serve to discredit future possibilities of socialist revolution in other countries, which is why the issue continues to receive such attention. If 'millions died as a result of brutal Bolshevik methods' in the 1930s, then however exceptional the conditions of that decade, or that no executions for political reasons have occurred for a generation in the USSR, or that in many other socialist revolutions far fewer people died, it is still considered justifiable to oppose socialist revolution, and instead to support military dictatorships that systematically massacre their own people in, for example, Indonesia, El Salvador, Chile, Guatemala or Uruguay.<br /> <br /> Not only wild exaggeration, but failure to apply a materialist analysis is characteristic of the NATO intellectuals, who are rewarded with grants, publications, high positions and personal support in proportion to the outrageousness of the figures they generate. It is true that the rural civil war and famine in the USSR in the early 1930s caused much misery, and that thousands of innocent people were executed or otherwise abused in the 19306-38 period. But Western analysis of these events is rarely presented in other than self-serving anti-Communist terms of 'Stalin's power hunger', 'the impossibility of the socialist project' or even simple sadism. Such standards of scholarship would not be acceptable for the study of the history of repression in the US, where the need to win the Revolutionary or Civil War is argued and the consequent suspension of the Bill of Rights, and the forcible relocation of Loyalists excused if not justified; similarly, the need to mobilize during World Wars I and II is seen as a mitigating factor in 'overreactions', such as the internment of the Japanese. The dual standards of scholarship conveniently ignore the serious world crisis within which the Soviet leadership was acting in the 1930s, together with the threat of domestic, rural upheavals, and the absolute imperative of industrializing and feeding the people, aside from the fact that they were attempting to pursue an historically unprecedented course.<br /> <br /> === The Politics of the Executions: 1936-38 ===<br /> A study of 109 prominent 'Old Bolsheviks' (that is, who had joined the Party before 1917) found that 50% (38) of the 76 alive in the mid-1930s were executed for counter-revolutionary activities, in the 1936-38 period.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Getty, 1979, p. 502.&lt;/ref&gt; In 1939 about 5,000 members who had joined the Party before 1917 (when there were about 20,000-25,000 members) still remained. Such Old Bolsheviks, in fact, represented 20% of the delegates to the 1939 Party Congress, and about 30% of the Central Committee elected in 1939 were Old Bolsheviks.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 503.&lt;/ref&gt; Eighty-one percent of the 1934 Central Committee who were executed for treason were Old Bolsheviks, 85% of all members of the 1934 Central Committee were executed.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 516.&lt;/ref&gt; In summary, although the executions took a heavy toll of Old Bolsheviks during the traitor mania period between May 1937 and March 1938, this group by no means was totally decimated, neither did the decimation of top leadership ranks fall upon them disproportionately; so many Old Bolsheviks were executed because so many of them comprised the top leadership.<br /> <br /> The study of the 76 prominent Old Bolsheviks found no significant correlation between age, sex, time in the Party, social origin, pre-Bolshevik Party membership, nationality, and education and the probability of execution for treason in 1937-38. Apart from being slightly younger (by two years) and a little better educated, the 38 who were executed closely resembled the 38 who survived in all these characteristics there were, however, strong correlations between career patterns associated with leading opposition figures and the probability of execution for treason. Of the 76 Old Bolsheviks still living in 1936, 21 had been leaders of various past factions (the Left Communists of 1918, the Democratic Centralists of 1921, the Workers' Opposition of 1921, the Trotskyists of 1923-27, or the United Opposition of 1926-27) and 19 of these (50% of the total 38) were executed.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 504.&lt;/ref&gt; Ten pet cent of the victims (4) had a personal connection with Trotsky in the 1920s while 71% (27) had personally associated with Bukharin, Rykov or Tomsky in the 1930s. Only 18% of the 38 Old Bolsheviks who survived the 1937-38 period had either personal connections with any of these four persons, or any connection with the opposition factions of the 1918-1927 period.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 504-5.&lt;/ref&gt; It might also be noted that Soviet ambassadors to fascist and fascist associated countries ran a high risk of execution, while those to other countries very often survived: Soviet ambassadors to Germany, Latvia, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Romania were executed for treason; while ambassadors to France, the UK, the US, Sweden and Czechoslovakia were not.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 451.&lt;/ref&gt; These strong statistical associations, combined with the lack of significant correlations for other background factors, substantially support the notion that executions for treason were, in fact, executed on false charges&lt;ref name=&quot;:0&quot; group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 199, 450-3.&lt;/ref&gt; of economic sabotage ('wrecking'), as were that is, those whose past or present aroused suspicion tended to be falsely accused of treason.<br /> <br /> Involvement in the military or economic administration was another major factor for potential arrest and execution for treason in 1936-38. Of the 76 Old Bolsheviks studied, it was found that all of those whose occupations were primarily connected with economics were executed for treason, while most of the educators, lawyers, doctors, scientists and other non-economic professionals survived. Officials in the Commissariat of Heavy Industry, Gosplan and the State Bank especially, were likely to be arrested and executed on false charges&lt;ref name=&quot;:0&quot; group=&quot;7.&quot; /&gt; of economic sabotage ('wrecking'), as were the moderate Central Committee majority. Their arrests seemed to be the outcome of their opposition to (or lack of enthusiasm for) the fairly leftist economic policies being implemented, as well as to the ant-bureaucratic/democracy campaign. The ''Eghovshchina'', or Red Terror, of 1937, in fact, eliminated most of those who had been the targets of radical activists over the previous decade.<br /> <br /> It seems that the broadening of the charges of treason away from the traditional Trotsky-Zinoviev left opposition (totally discredited and removed from any position of influence since 1928) towards the right opposition (Bukharin, et al.) which, until 1937, retained some influence, with a position close to a very substantial section of Party leaders, manifested a defeat of the moderates and a victory for the left. As the statistics on Old Bolshevik victims show, the vast majority of those executed were associated with Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, et al., rather than with Trotsky or Zinoviev.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 457.&lt;/ref&gt; In support of the thesis that, however brutal and paranoid the executions of the 1937-38 period, they manifested a victory of the left over the right, is the fact that all the 1934 Central Committee members re-elected to the 1939 Central Committee were from the left of the Party, and none were from the right. It should, however, be noted that a number of prominent radicals and former activists in the 1928-31 Cultural Revolution campaign also perished in the hysteria of 1937-38.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 457.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The September 1936 replacement of Yagoda by Yezhov (a career Party apparatus man associated with the more radical Party activists sympathetic to the policies of the Cultural Revolution of 1928-31) as head of state security indicated a definite move to the left in Party policy in the second half of 1936. In autumn 1936, the leadership of the state security police had been thoroughly purged of moderate career security apparatus personnel and replaced by more radical career Party apparatus people. The new Yezhov leadership of the security police proceeded to actively investigate the Party's moderate leaders (for example, Bukharin, Rykov) who had been vindicated of any involvement in plots against the Party's leadership in the summer of 1936, and the top leadership (mostly moderates) of the economic ministries and planning agencies. In January 1937, Yezhov successfully brought Piatakov, the Commissar for Heavy Industry, to trial for 'wrecking' and sabotage, as well as having Bukharin and Rykov relieved of their posts and arrested on charges of treason. While the first 'Great Purge Trial', of August 1936, focused on attempts on the life of Soviet leaders, the two trials held when Yezhov was head of the security police stressed 'wrecking' and sabotage in a refocused attack on the moderate economic leadership and the Party's right wing. Among other things, Yagoda himself was charged with the equivalent of 'wrecking' for having sabotaged investigations of the Party's economic leadership and the right wing in the name of stability and moderation; in fact, the policy of the moderate majority of the Central Committee.<br /> <br /> === Causes and Effects ===<br /> The 1936-38 arrests, imprisonments and executions of Party, military and other leaders of Soviet society, in contrast to the purge and the demolition of leaders, appear to have been a manifestation of collective paranoia, reinforced by opportunists and agents provocateurs, and with little or no basis in any real conspiracies, sabotage or collaboration with foreign agents. The cadres expelled, imprisoned and shot during this period were mostly good Communists, essentially loyal to Soviet institutions.<br /> <br /> During 1955-56, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union conducted an investigation of the actions taken against Party leaders in the late 1930s. To quote the Secretary General of the CPSU's report to the 20th Party Congress:&lt;blockquote&gt;The Commission has become acquainted with a large quantity of materials in the NKVD archives and with other documents and has established many facts pertaining to the fabrication of cases against Communists, to false accusations, to glaring abuses of socialist legality — which resulted in the death of innocent people. It became apparent that many Party, Soviet and economic activists who were branded in 1937-38 as 'enemies' were actually never enemies, spies, wreckers, etc, but were always honest Communists; they were only so stigmatized, and often, no longer able to bear barbaric tortures, they charged themselves (at the order of the investigative judges — falsifiers) with all kinds of grave and unlikely crimes....<br /> <br /> Stalin put the Party and the NKVD up to the use of mass terror when the exploiting classes had been liquidated in our country and when there were no serious reasons for the use of extraordinary mass terror.<br /> <br /> This terror was actually directed not at the remnants of the defeated exploiting classes but against the honest workers of the Party and of the Soviet state; against them were made lying, slanderous and absurd accusations concerning 'two-facedness', 'espionage'; 'sabotage', preparation of fictitious 'plots'; etc.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Khrushchev, 1956, pp. 22, 29.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The charges against those purged and executed in the late 1930s were largely without foundation, nevertheless, the events of this period are eminently understandable in terms of the social forces operating on Soviet socialism at the time. The imminent threat of a co-ordinated Nazi-Japanese invasion of the USSR (which was without allies, either socialist or reliable capitalist) in the 1937-38 period was determinant. This overwhelming factor, given the assassination and attempted assassination of Soviet leaders, the overseas activities of emigrés (including members of the left opposition of the Bolsheviks themselves, such as Trotsky), the recent strains of  collectivization, famine, rapid industrialization, and the provocative role of German and Japanese intelligence, together produced the paranoia of the late 1930s.<br /> <br /> In January 1933 Hitler became Chancellor of Germany (this did not at first alarm the Soviets, as they then regarded him simply as a transparent instrument of capital, who would facilitate the imminent German revolution). In May 1933 the new Nazi government dissolved the powerful German trade unions and working-class political parties without resistance (outside the USSR the German Communist Party was the biggest in the world).<br /> <br /> In August 1934, after the death of von Hindenburg, Hitler assumed the office of President, and the armed services were now sworn to a personal oath of loyalty to him. In 1934 a non-aggression pact, signed between Poland and Germany, was followed by a general reconciliation between the two countries, manifested in a number of cultural and economic agreements. In 1935, Poland refused to join in a mutual defence treaty with Czechoslovakia, France and the USSR against potential German aggression. After 1935 the Polish military dictatorship became increasingly fascist oriented and vehemently anti-Communist, a policy rewarded by the Germans who granted Poland a piece of Czechoslovakia after they had conquered it in October 1938. In March 1935 Germany introduced general military conscription. The reassertion of German military might, the German left's failure to resist Hitler, and Germany's strident anti-Communism and anti-Slavic racism now aroused considerable concern in the USSR. In 1935 the 7th Congress of the Communist International radically modified its analysis and strategy to target fascism as the greatest danger in the world.<br /> <br /> In March 1936, the German Army occupied the Rhineland, which the Versailles Treaty in 1919 had declared as a demilitarized zone. In May 1936, the Italians completed their conquest of Ethiopia (an aggressive action that, in spite of much public condemnation, evoked no effective response from the Western powers). In July 1936 the Spanish Army, in collaboration with the local fascists, rebelled against the centre-left Republican government and was recognized by Italy and Germany, who soon sent troops, in addition to military supplies, to aid Franco. Also in summer 1936 the NKVD was granted extraordinary powers. The first 'Purge Trial' was held in August. Although the Soviets went to aid the embattled Spanish Republic (the Western capitalist powers declared their neutrality) after a bitter three-year civil war the Communist-aided Spanish Republic was destroyed. In November 1936 the Anti-Comintern Pact, signed by Nazi Germany and Japan, pledged the two countries (which flanked the Western and Eastern borders of the USSR) to co-operate against their mutual opponent. This raised the imminent threat of a co-ordinated attack on the USSR by the world's two most aggressive powers. The Pact was joined by Italy in January 1937 and by Spain in 1939. In July 1937 Japanese troops invaded the northern provinces of China (adjacent to the Soviet protectorate of Mongolia) and continued to expand the territory under their control until 1945. In 1939, massive border battles were, in fact, fought between the Japanese and Soviet armies along the Manchurian border.<br /> <br /> In November 1937 (the month of the second 'Purge Trial') the Nazis declared their intention to conquer additional 'living space' for German settlement (''Lebenstraum'') beyond that already occupied by German speaking peoples. Clearly, that ''Lebenstraum'' was to be found in the East (Poland and the USSR). In March 1938 (the month that saw the last of the three 'Purge Trials') Austria was annexed to the Reich. In April 1938, after months of instability, the French Popular Front government collapsed, to be replaced by a rightist government. By early 1938 it was clear that the Spanish Republic was losing the Civil War. In September 1938 the French and English signed a non-aggression pact (the notorious 'Munich Pact') with Germany, that recognized the Nazi's right to annex much of Czechoslovakia. In October 1938 Czechoslovakia was occupied by the Germans. On 22 June 1941 the German Army invaded the Soviet Union and was in the suburbs of Moscow by November 1941.<br /> <br /> It should be remembered that the charges against top Party leaders and Soviet generals who were tried and executed in the August 1936-March 1938 period were linked by the (false) accusation of involvement with Japanese and German intelligence services in order to secure the destruction of the Socialist system in the USSR by preparing the ground for a co-ordinated Japanese-German invasion. Given the USSR's 1918-20 experience of foreign invasions (including those of Germany and Japan), the seriously threatening anti-Comintern Pact between Japan and Germany in 1936, and the increased collusion of Britain, Poland and France in the aggressive policies of Germany and Italy and in the 1935-38 period, not surprisingly an atmosphere of paranoia, focusing on spy and sabotage mania, was generated in the USSR during 1936-38.<br /> <br /> Exacerbating the 'Great Paranoia', as well as targeting many specific victims, were the disruptive actions of German and Japanese intelligence services who planted false stories that leading Soviets were working for them (much as the CIA did later in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary in the 1948-53 period).&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Steward, 1974.&lt;/ref&gt; The most notorious instance of the operation of German intelligence was their clever forgery and 'leaking' of documents allegedly indicating that General Tukhachevsky (the top Soviet military commander, shot in June 1937 accused of plotting a military coup in collaboration with Germany) was working for them. Hitler himself wrote a note on the forged Tukhachevsky letter and it was arranged for it to be stolen by Czech intelligence agents during a fire (deliberately set for the purpose) and then passed on to the Soviets. Czech leaders passed on stories to the Soviets that had been planted by Germany, alleging negotiations between Hitler and a number of Soviet leaders (including Rykov and Tukhachevsky) to set up a pro-German government in the USSR. This fabrication had a degree of credibility since many top German and Soviet generals knew each other personally from the 1920s when the Soviets allowed the German Army to train secretly in the USSR in return for German industrial and military goods.&lt;ref name=&quot;:1&quot; group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Medvedev, 1971, p. 300; also Schapiro, 1960, p. 425.&lt;/ref&gt; These disruptive actions, as had been intended, succeeded in devastating the top levels of the Soviet officer corps.<br /> <br /> One major effect of the events of the 1936-38 period was the loss of many good, and creative, cadres. Thus, in the short term, weakening Soviet society (manifested, for example, in the embarrassment of the Finnish War in winter 1940) and the rapid promotion of a new generation of 'red Intelligentsia, largely drawn from the working class, to the leading positions of Soviet society. To quote the report to the 20th Party Congress of the General Secretary of the CPSU: 'There is however, no doubt that our march forward towards socialism and towards the preparation of the country's defence would have been much more successful were it not for the tremendous loss of cadre suffered as a result of the baseless and false mass repressions in 1937-38.'&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Cited in Tucker, 1971, p. 66.&lt;/ref&gt; But as Roy Medvedev has argued:&lt;blockquote&gt;Hundreds of thousands of officials had to be pushed up from below. Tens of thousands of Stakhanovite workers became factory directors. Otdinary soldiers became platoon and company commanders, company commanders were placed in charge of battalions and regiments, battalion and regimental commanders rose to command divisions and entire armies. Many rank and file scientists took over laboratories and big institutes.&lt;ref name=&quot;:1&quot; group=&quot;7.&quot; /&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The records of the Smolensk Party organization captured by the German Army and then seized by the US Army at the end of the Second World War illustrate this phenomena in the Smolensk region.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Fainsod, 1958, pp. 191-2.&lt;/ref&gt;*<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;* In winter 1937 the Party's General Secretary argued that the Party needed more 'simple people', and fewer people who had 'mastered Marxism-Leninism'. Arguing against those that maintained that the Party should recruit only people with a high level of theoretical understanding he stated, 'Were we to take this road, we would leave in the Party only intellectuals and learned people. Who needs such a Party?'&lt;/small&gt;&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Cited in Ulam, 1973, p. 440.&lt;/ref&gt; &lt;small&gt;To quote Schapiro:&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;'Since the purges of the 30s made such considerable inroads upon the older Bolsheviks, among whom the greater proportion of members of middle class origin were to be found, it may safely be asserted the predominance among the elite of those who came from the working class, or to a lesser extent the peasants, continued to grow after 1938.'&lt;/small&gt;&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Schapiro, 1960, p. 440.&lt;/ref&gt; &lt;small&gt;'The victory of Stalin over his opponents in the party leadetship had resulted in the elimination of almost all those of middle-class origin who had once formed the great majority of party leaders. All the 'Old Stalinists', with the exception of Molotov, were of working class or peasant origin. This humble origin was less evident among the 'Neo-Stalinists' both Malenkov and Zhdanov, for example, were of middle-class background, and so probably was Beria. But if the top leadership of the party alone be looked at, it was true to say that Stalin's victory had been ensured by men of those social classes in the name of which the Revolution had been made.'&lt;/small&gt;&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 443.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> To quote Isaac Deutscher:&lt;blockquote&gt;In the five years from 1933 to 1938 about a million administrators, technicians, economists, and men of other professions had graduated from the high schools, an enormous number for a country whose educated classes had previously formed a very thin layer of society. This was the new intelligentsia whose ranks filled the purged and emptied offices. Its members... were either hostile to the men of the old guard or indifferent to their fate. They threw themselves into their work with a zeal and enthusiasm undimmed by recent events.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Deutscher, 1960, p. 384.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The purging of innocent Soviet leaders, and the execution of so many greatly weakened Soviet leadership, nevertheless, some observers, such as Roy Medvedev, have pointed out that the paranoid hysteria of these years had the inadvertent consequence of facilitating the development of a high level of national solidarity, a solidarity, Medvedev argues, symbolized in the 'cult of personality' around Stalin.&lt;blockquote&gt;In the thirties, Stalin's cult was strongest among workers, especially in the Party stratum of the working class, and also among the new young intelligentsia, particularly those of worker and peasant origin. It was also strong in the Party and state ''apparat'', especially in the ''apparat'' that took shape after the repression of 1936-38.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1971, p. 430.&lt;/ref&gt;...Throughout the period of his one man rule [Stalin] was popular. The longer this tyrant ruled the USSR... the greater seems to have been the dedication to him, even the love, of the majority of people. These sentiments reached their peak in the last years of his life. When he died in March 1953, the grief of hundreds of millions, both in the Soviet Union and around the world, was quite sincere.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 362.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Just as periods of repression in other societies and at other times have radically increased national unity and generated national enthusiasm, so, apparently, this was the case in the USSR in the 1936-38 period. In US history, the measures against Loyalists during the Revolutionary War, Confederate sympathizers during the Civil War, and Socialists and Anarchists during and immediately after World War I, the internment of the Japanese Americans, the suppression of American Nazis during World War II and of the Communist Party in the late 1940s and early 1950s, were each accompanied by a unifying of the national will and the generation of popular enthusiasm behind the country's leadership. The projection of hostility against internal enemies, real or illusory, commonly has the effect of unifying a people. The paranoid campaign waged in the Soviet Union against spies and saboteurs appears to have generated a higher level of enthusiasm and support for the Party's leadership than had existed previously.<br /> <br /> It must be noted that the strength of the 'cult of personality' by no means indicated that no major differences of opinion existed at the centre of Soviet society, or that Stalin had absolute personal power. The 'cult of personality' served the vital social function of symbolizing the unity and solidarity of Soviet society, a unity and solidarity essential in the 1930s and 1940s, and that could best be quickly created by personalizing it in the form of the celebration of a single individual 'father figure' who was portrayed in a Christ-like fashion as omniscient and benevolent. The cult of Stalin, in fact, took on many of the characteristics of the Russian Orthodox religion, that was the easiest route for the Party to follow in order to secure legitimacy among peasants and ex-peasants. Beneath the facade of monolithic unity and wisdom, however, major debates and factional disputes continued. Whichever idea or faction won was then presented to the people as the personal decision of the 'all-wise' Stalin, in order more effectively to mobilize the people behind it. To quote Getty:&lt;blockquote&gt;The 'cult of personality' which developed around Stalin after 1929 (and around Mao in the 1960s) had many purposes.... It served as a kind of rallying point for much of a population which was used to a system in which one man ruled for life. More importantly, however, the tendency to attribute all things to the 'wise leadership of Comrade Stalin' served to hide inner-Party disputes from the public eye. The oppositional struggles of 1921-1929 had been public disagreements which had nearly torn the Party apart several times. That was not to be allowed in the 1930s. Even though radicals hated moderates and there were serious disagreements about everything from MTS political departments to economic planning, Stalin's cult of personality managed to hide, but not resolve, the splits until 1937.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Getty, 1979, p. 557.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ....Policy disputes and disagreements were hidden behind the iron unity facade of Stalin's leadership. All policy initiatives were customarily attributed to the 'great teacher'.... It would be naive to assume, as many have done, that Stalin controlled and initiated everything and that his lieutenants simply mechanically carried out his directives on everything from hog breeding to transport.... Left and right were still there (and, of course, always would be), but were simply not to be allowed to divide the Party as they did in the 1920s.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 169.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;To paraphrase a wise philosopher, if Stalin had not existed, he would have had to be invented. The Stalin cult of personality was invented to fulfil the need for an apparently monolithic leadership and charismatic inspiration in a period of crisis and rapid transformation of institutions and values. A similar process is common to all societies under similar conditions. The mote acute the crisis, the more rapid the transformation, the more intense is the cult of the leader, for example, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Churchill, Cromwell, Napoleon, Castro, Mao Tse-tung, Khomeini, Attaturk, Hitler, Mussolini, and so on. The personality cults that developed around these top leaders never meant that the struggles of different interests and the conflicting social forces operating behind the scenes were suspended in favour of the arbitrary will of an omnipotent individual.<br /> <br /> A number of highly critical Marxists have summed up the overall results of the politically repressive 1928-39 period of Soviet history as positive. To quote Isaac Deutscher:&lt;blockquote&gt;The nation has, nevertheless, advanced far in most fields of its existence. Its material apparatus of production, which in about 1930 was still inferior to that of any medium-sized European nation, has so greatly and so rapidly expanded that Russia is now the first industrial power in Europe and the second in the world. Within little more than one decade the number of her cities and towns doubled; and her urban population grew by thirty millions. The number of schools of all grades has very impressively multiplied. The whole nation has been sent to school. Its mind has been so awakened that it can hardly be put back to sleep again. Its avidity for knowledge, for the sciences and the arts, has been stimulated by Stalin's government to the point where it has become insatiable and embarrassing, It should be remarked that, although Stalin has kept Russia isolated from the contemporary influences of the west, he has encouraged and fostered every interest in what he calls the 'cultural heritage' of the west. Perhaps in no country have the young been imbued with so great a respect and love for the classical literature and art of other nations as in Russia. This is one of the important differences between the educational methods of Nazism and Stalinism. Another is that Stalin has not, like Hitler, forbidden the new generation to read and study the classics of their own literature whose ideological outlook does not accord with his. While tyrannizing the living poets, novelists, historians, painters, and even composers, he has displayed, on the whole, a strange pietism for the dead ones....<br /> <br /> The whole structure of Russian society has undergone a change so profound and so many sided that it cannot really be reversed. It is possible to imagine a violent reaction of the Russian people itself against the state of siege in which it has been living so long It is even possible to imagine something like a political restoration. But it is certain that even such a restoration would touch merely the surface of Russian society and that it would demonstrate its impotence vis-à-vis the work done by the revolution even more thoroughly than the Stuart and the Bourbon restorations had done. For of Stalinist Russia it is even truer than of any other revolutionary nation that 'twenty years have done the work of twenty generations....'<br /> <br /> The better part of Stalin's work is as certain to outlast Stalin himself as the better parts of the work of Cromwell and Napoleon have outlasted them.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Deutscher, 1960, p. 568-70.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;According to Medvedey, it is these accomplishments that must, in good part, account for the high level of popularity of the Party's General Secretary, especially among the working people of the USSR.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Medvedev, 1971, pp. 362, 430.&lt;/ref&gt; Medvedev concludes:&lt;blockquote&gt;It was known that Party and state leaders were being arrested as 'enemies of the people', but at the same time new schools, factories, and palaces of culture were rising everywhere. Military leaders were being arrested as spies, but the Party was building a strong, modern army. Scientists were being arrested as wreckers, but Soviet science had developed rapidly with the Party's support. Writers were being arrested as Trotskyites and counter-revolutionaries, but some literary works appeared that were real masterpieces. Leaders in the union republics were arrested as nationalists, but the formerly oppressed nationalities were improving their lot, and friendship among the peoples of the USSR was growing. And this obvious progress filled Soviet hearts with pride, engendering confidence in the Party that was organizing it and in the man who stood at the head of the Party.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 372.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> === Invasion, Reconstruction and the Renewed Threat of Invasion: 1941-54 ===<br /> The period of World War II was relatively liberal in Soviet history — at least for all those that supported the 'Great Patriotic War'. Nationalism and religion alike were given considerably wider currency than at any time since the Revolution, while positive attitudes to the West and the possibilities of co-operation with capitalist powers had never been so acceptable, either before or since. Harsh measures were, however, taken against those who collaborated or were falsely suspected of collaborating, and some who were thought to be potential collaborators with the Nazi invaders. The Volga Germans, whose position was similar to that of the Japanese Americans, became suspect owing to their particular language and culture, and were largely relocated to non-strategic areas but, unlike Japanese-Americans, without confinement. At the end of World War II a number of small, mostly traditionally Islamic nationalities, including the Crimean Tartars, were relocated in Central Asia, because of alleged mass collaboration with the Nazis. In the mid-1950s, however, all accusations of mass collaboration were withdrawn, and almost all the people were allowed to return en masse to their previous areas, and in general allowed to reconstitute themselves as autonomous units. The prominent exception has been the Crimean Tartars, and although some individuals have returned to the Crimea, their return en masse has been officially discouraged and they have not been allowed to re-establish an autonomous political unit (as far as can be determined on the grounds of the strategic location of the Crimea). The other important group allowed to return to its old areas in the mid-1950s, but not reconstituted as an autonomous political entity, was the Volga Germans.<br /> <br /> The immediate post-War period in the Soviet Union for the most part continued to be one of relative tolerance. In Roy Medvedev's words:&lt;blockquote&gt;...right after the War the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet decreed an end to the death penalty, even for the most serious crimes. The spy mania and universal suspicion that prevailed before the War tended to disappear, especially in view of the drastic change in the international situation. The Soviet Union was no longer isolated.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 480.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;With the onset of the Cold War in 1947-48, another wave of paranoia swept the Party, largely centring on the possible effect of millions of Soviet citizens (including many former prisoners-of-war) who had spent the War years in the 'cosmopolitan' West, and as a result had, perhaps, been recruited by foreign intelligence agencies; this paranoia was carefully cultivated by US intelligence agencies.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See, for example, Steward, 1974.&lt;/ref&gt; A national campaign against Western imperialist influences (the 'anti-Cosmopolitan' campaign) was launched and, in the 1948-50 period, resulted in the arrests of numerous intellectuals, of whom many were sent to the labour camps for re-education. During this campaign intellectuals were accused of 'praising American technology', 'praising American democracy', 'worshipping the West', etc.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Medvedev, 1971, p. 483; 1979, p. 146; Hingley, 1974, p. 411.&lt;/ref&gt; Possibly a few thousand Party officials were arrested and sentenced to labour camps on suspicion of disloyalty; a few were executed. The most famous case at this time was the so-called 'Leningrad Affair' in which many leaders of the local Party organization were accused of 'cosmopolitanism'; 'Titoism' and conspiring with, or at least serving, Western imperialism by attempting to destroy the unity of the Socialist camp.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Medvedev, 1971, pp. 480, 481; Hingley, 1974, p. 411.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Some of those released from labour camps at the end of the war were again detained, as were some ex-prisoners-of-war, often without concrete charges, but simply on the grounds of 'preventive confinement'. A number of former emigrés, who had returned to the USSR in the liberal 1945-46 period, were also arrested in 1949-50 on charges of 'espionage' or 'anti-Soviet activity abroad'.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;See Medvedev, 1971, p. 485; 1979, p. 146.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> According to Brzezinski:&lt;blockquote&gt;It would seem that the immediate post-war years were ones of reintegration and consolidation, of gradual reassertion of the controls which had grown lax during the war. It was the period of increasing emphasis on political and ideological uniformity and of a return to the orthodox Party line. It was marked by the growing stiffness of the Soviet Union in the international arena, and by increasing application of its coercive powers at home.... Initially under Zhdanov's leadership, this period, frequently referred to as the Zhdanovshchina became characterized by a general tightening up not only in the areas discussed previously but also in the arts, letters, and sciences. Conformity, uniformity, orthodoxy — these were demanded.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Brzezinski, 1956, pp. 147-8.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;But as Brzezinski went on:&lt;blockquote&gt;But none of this could compare either in intensity, scope, or nature of consequences with the pre-war holocaust of the Yezhov era. The purge was comparatively restrained, and conducted with greater caution. The consequences of dismissal or expulsion were not necessarily arrest and forced labour but more frequently transfer or demotion or both. The charges against those purged, which previously emphasized socioeconomic origins (especially during the years 1930-35) or political subversion (1935-40) changed to accusations of inefficiency or corruption....&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 148.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Cleatly the reason for the tightening of control in Soviet society at this ime was primarily the tense international situation. In 1947, for the first time in history, the US instituted a peace-time draft. The Communist Parties were expelled from the governments of France and Italy, and the British. French and Americans decided to unite their zones of occupation in Germany. The implementation of the economic integration of the three Western Zones in June 1948 led to the Soviet attempt to obtain the return of the western part of Berlin to their administration (the Berlin Blockade and Airlift). This marked the beginning of all-out Cold War. In September 1948, the Parliamentary Council for Western Germany was convened and the anti-Marxist Konrad Adenauer became President; and the Federal Republic of Germany was proclaimed in May 1949. Western Germany was then gradually rearmed and, against the strong protest of the Soviets, phased into the Western alliance system. In 1949 the Western European powers and the US established the NATO alliance against further socialist revolutions in Europe. The Korean Civil War broke out in June 1950, after two years of growing hostility between the two regimes — both of which claimed to be the legitimate government of the entire country. In September 1950, the US intervened and within two months had driven the Communist forces to the Chinese and Soviet borders, and threatened to carry their offensive into Manchuria as part of a worldwide strategy of 'rolling back Communism'.<br /> <br /> The US monopoly of the atomic bomb throughout 1949, the devastated state of the Soviet economy (reconstruction from war damage was not completed until 1950) and the strident anti-Communist polemics of the Americans and British, greatly intensified Soviet fears in the 1948-50 period.<br /> <br /> After reaching its peak in 1949 the anti-Western and anti-Titoist campaigns began to subside, and by the end of 1950 arrests of Party leaders and 'cosmopolitan intellectuals' had virtually ended. The level of diversity permitted and encouraged in the media now expanded. The Soviets too, now had the atomic bomb; the reconstruction of the country from Nazi devastation was completed; the Chinese Revolution had triumphed and consolidated itself; the extreme crisis, manifested in the Berlin crisis of 1948-49 and the split with Tito in 1948, had subsided.<br /> <br /> The 1951-52 period, however, again saw a reversal of the liberalization policies as the international situation became threatening. In spring 1951, General Douglas MacArthur called for an all-out war against Communism, including the atom bombing of Manchuria; in September 1951 the Western powers announced the formation of a unified military command in Western Europe, that would include a rearmed Germany. In May 1952, the Federal Republic of Germany formally signed a military treaty with the European Defence Community. Negotiations for a truce in the Korean War broke down in November 1952. The mood in the US became increasingly ugly as McCarthyism intensified and feelings grew that Truman was being too 'soft' on international Communism. Two generals, MacArthur and Eisenhower, were increasingly mentioned as Republican candidates for the Presidency in the November 1952 elections. The rhetoric of 'getting tough on Communism' became ever more prevalent.<br /> <br /> In November 1952 General Eisenhower was elected US President. Taking office in January 1953 he appointed a number of hard line anti-Communist officials to handle foreign policy. The Dulles brothers, who became Secretary of State and CIA Director respectively, threatened a 'roll back of Communism'. They soon organized active interventions to overthrow regimes insufficiently supportive of US imperialist interests, for example, the CIA restoration of the Shah of Iran in 1953 and the overthrow of the democratic government of Guatemala in 1954.<br /> <br /> In response, the political atmosphere within the USSR heated up. In January 1953, immediately after General Eisenhower took office, Pravda revived the theory that 'The more we progress, the more intense will be the struggle of enemies of the people.' ''Pravda'' went on:&lt;blockquote&gt;Fragments of the shattered exploiting classes... masked epigones of defeated anti-Soviet groups — Mensheviks, S-Rs, Trotskyites, Bukharinites, bourgeois nationalists.... all sorts of degenerated elements — people who kowtow to all things foreign, pilferers of  socialist property.... The Anglo-American imperialists are now placing their bets on such people.&lt;ref group=&quot;7.&quot;&gt;Cited in Medvedev, 1971, p. 558.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;There were a few arrests, specifically of a group of allegedly Zionist doctors accused of attempting to assassinate Stalin, and a number of officials and state security agents in Soviet Georgia, little came of this campaign. For about a year after Stalin's death in March 1953 a number of people, including the head of state security Beria, were shot. But both the domestic and international situation soon stabilized, and as a result a level of tolerance unknown in Soviet society since the late 1920s soon developed.<br /> <br /> In July 1953, an armistice was finally signed in the Korean War. In 1954 the Geneva Agreements ending the War in Indochina were signed. In 1955, the first summit meeting since 1945 was held between the top leaders of the USSR and the Western powers, and the treaty permanently neutralizing Austria and providing for the withdrawal of Western and Soviet troops was signed. Peaceful co-existence was in the air and the pressure on the Soviet Union was relaxed. No more under a state of external siege as intense as that in the 1928-53 period, the level of political repression in Soviet society never again approached the level of those years. Further, with socialist reconstruction and collectivization complete, and a high level of legitimacy of the Soviet system achieved, never again was there the extraordinary need for domestic mobilization or for deliberate creation of unifying symbols such as had existed over the previous 25 years of almost permanent crisis.<br /> <br /> In March 1954, the Security Police were divided into a Ministry of Internal Affairs and a Committee of State Security, and their powers considerably weakened. There was a purge of its leading officials and a number of military men and Party officials were put in charge of 'cleaning house'. Labour camps were radically reduced in size and almost all political prisoners released; conditions for political detainees in the few remaining camps were largely restored to the pre-1937 norm of re-education through work and study. The abuses of the 1936-38 period, as well as the deportation of some minor nationalities for allegedly collaborating with the Nazis, were denounced and rehabilitation instituted. Considerable intellectual diversity was now permitted, for example, even Alexander Solzhenitsyn's ''One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'' was officially published.<br /> <br /> In summary, the historical variations in the degree of tolerance of public advocacy (as well as in due process guarantees) in the Soviet Union can be fully explained as a result of the variance in the same kinds of forces that operate on all states to produce similar results. Thus, just as is the case with explaining the considerable historical variation among states and over time in the right to emigrate from one's country, there is no need for further hypotheses.<br /> <br /> As will be seen in the next chapter the rather high level of tolerance of public advocacy and due process rights in the Soviet Union in the 1955-78 period (high by almost any historical standards) was a result of the high level of legitimacy and domestic stability the regime had attained, as well as of the now relatively relaxed international situation. The decrease in the level of tolerance of dissident activities in the 1978-83 period, in turn, was a result of the renewed Cold War atmosphere of these years.<br /> <br /> === References ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;7.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> == 8. Tolerance and Repression in the Soviet Union: 1965-82 ==<br /> The level of repression, and tolerance of public advocacy, in the Soviet Union from 1965 to 1982 is systematically examined in this chapter. 'Dissidence' is defined, the role of the dissident movement explored, and the range of permitted and prohibited debate elaborated. The actual number and class nature of the dissidents are discussed, along with the degree of support for them within the Soviet Union. The methods and strategy of the dissident movement are examined, as are government policies for dealing with them. The wide range of sanctions, from informational warnings to corrective labour camps and categorization as mentally ill, are discussed along with the trends over time in government policy towards them. The various political currents among dissidents are discussed, showing that there are three currents: the traditional authoritarian right; pro-Western liberals; and a smaller, Marxist current, which tends to converge with the liberals.<br /> <br /> === Trends in Contemporary Soviet Policy and the Dissident Movement ===<br /> When, in 1964, Khrushchev was replaced as Party Secretary it at first seemed that further liberalization was about to take place. But in 1965 the new leadership began pressuring the dissident movement that, in the wake of Khrushchev's removal, was becoming vociferous.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Rotberg, 1972, pp. 140, 171.&lt;/ref&gt; In response to the tightening of government policy relating to dissidents in 1965, the oppositional movement became more politicized.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 328.&lt;/ref&gt; The period 1966-68 saw a high level of overt political dissidence in the USSR largely focused against the government restrictions on liberalization in general and around the trial of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel in particular.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Saunders, 1974, p. 39; Tokes, 1975, p. 12.&lt;/ref&gt; Scores of petitions and public letters, self-published journals and newsletters began to appear. Until 1968, the Soviet government was relatively tolerant of this oppositional movement.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Tokes, 1975, pp. 22-25.&lt;/ref&gt; In March 1968, however, the government began to take a harder line; numerous dissidents were interrogated and a few professional leaders were dismissed from their privileged positions.<br /> <br /> From 1971 to 1976 the Soviet government pursued a fairly moderate and consistent policy towards the dissidents. Occasionally, a few of the most prominent and provocative were arrested and sentenced, from time to time a particularly prominent activist was expelled, warnings, police questioning and pressure were generally maintained, but neither especially harsh penalties, mass arrests or deportations, or other forms of heavy crackdowns on political dissidents were in evidence. The government's policy seems to have contained dissidence fairly effectively. It avoided creating martyrs and kept Soviet society reasonably open for the expression of a wide range of opinions, while deterring criticism of the underlying assumptions of Soviet society and thus enhancing the legitimacy of its basic institutions. In these years the state was relatively tolerant towards dissidents.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;R. Medvedev, 1980, p. 68.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1977, however, the state began to take a harder line. Prominent dissidents such as Aleksander Ginzburg, Anatoly Shcharansky, and Yuri Otlov were arrested and tried. During 1979-80, the breakdown of détente and the revival of the Cold War resulted in harsher measures against pro-Western voices whose public statements were picked up by and used by anti-Soviet forces in the West. Through a combination of exile, confinement and, increasingly, expulsion from the country, the post-1978 Soviet campaign to contain pro-Western public dissidents has been effective in largely suppressing such public opposition. Even Sakharov, who for so long was immune from sanctions was exiled, but not confined.<br /> <br /> The increase in arrests, combined with the policies of forcing many dissidents to emigrate, and the lack of popular support for their ideas, depleted the ranks of active dissidents virtually to nil. Roy Medvedev argued in 1980:&lt;blockquote&gt;The weakening and decline of the dissident movement in recent years is an undeniable fact... the pressure of the authorities, emigration from the country, natural weariness, the lack of any clear-cut accomplishments, and gradual but by no means progressive shifts of public mood — all this has largely shaped the dissident movement.... Here we have only a few dozen dissidents left; today there are more of them in Paris and New York than there are in Moscow. The leaders are now all in prison, in internal exile, or abroad.... The outlook is very dark indeed.<br /> <br /> The petition in behalf of Sakharov was signed by barely twenty persons.... For the trials of the '60s there were thousands of signatures...&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 137, 147.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Roy Medvedev's brother, Zhores, argued in 1981:&lt;blockquote&gt;The competition and the disputes between the USSR and the USA, while sharpening political and diplomatic confrontation, weakening détente and inducing some revival of the Cold War, has increased repressive measures within the USSR against political dissidents with a 'Western' orientation and also intensified Western publicity for these groups.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Z. Medvedev, 1981, p. viii.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> === Definition of Dissident Activity in the USSR ===<br /> The Soviet Constitution and legal codes guarantee the right to express an opinion publicly, through speaking, publishing and other peaceful means. These legally guaranteed rights are, in fact, widely practised.<br /> <br /> An extensive range of diverse opinion on a wide range of issues is manifest in the mass media, as well as in specialized journals and conferences within the Soviet Union; the press, too, is full of debates on a great variety of important issues.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Skilling, 1971.&lt;/ref&gt; There is virtual consensus among those in the West who study the Soviet media that the extent of public debate in the USSR has been growing, and that in recent years, essentially all proposals for gradual change in the policy of the Soviet government or Communist Party have been aired in the mass media. Even in the sensitive areas of foreign and nationality policy, where advocacy of basic changes is permitted only in veiled form, inferences emerge out of lively public debate of actual facts.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Hough and Fainsod, 1979, pp. 287-91.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;In the post-Khrushchev era there have been few party policies and few aspects of Soviet society that have been immune from attack if the attack is carefully phrased. There has been almost no proposal for incremental change in Party policy that has not been published in some form or another. Even on foreign policy and nationalities policy, where actual advocacy of policy change is permitted only in the most veiled terms, scholars have been able to debate the facts of the situation and thereby imply contrasting views of the policy that is required.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p.289.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Merely by reading a broad selection of Soviet materials, we can easily see that the post-Stalin leadership has been willing to permit a wide-ranging expression of views in a number of public forums — in general newspapers, in magazines, in scholarly journals, in books, and, even more, of course, in more restricted conferences and meetings. By the mid- and late-1960s, the typical situation had become that found in a survey of Soviet social policies: 'Every policy discussed in this study has been debated vigorously by specialists and middle-level administrators not only in professional journals, but in the daily press as well.'&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 287.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Some specific issues around which considerable public debate has occurred in recent years have included: Khrushchev's attempt — from the late 1950s to 1964 — to proletarianize higher education; the ongoing, sharp debates about the greater access to higher education of children of the intelligentsia, and the consequences of this for the creation of a privileged stratum; and, between 1958 and 1962, the role of the Communist Party in the military. Discussions continue on the role of writers and artists (the relative role of artistic freedom and social responsibility to contribute to constructing socialism); on centralization or decentralization of decision-making; environmental protection issues, the most famous example being the debate on the pollution of Lake Baikal; if the birthrate can best be increased by paying mothers a wage to stay at home, or by improving day-care service; and whether enterprise managers should be elected by workers in the plants.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Kolkowicz, 1971, ch. 5; Osborn, 1970, ch. 4; Simmons, 1971, ch. 8; Gregory and Stuart, 1974, ch. 10; Sherman, 1969, ch. 11; Skilling, 1971; Kelley, 1976; Yanowitch, 1977.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Observers, otherwise quite hostile to the Soviet Union, claim that the public debates, struggles and criticisms, become increasingly penetrating as policy making in the Soviet Union becomes more decentralized and the number of participants constantly increases.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Griffiths, 1971.&lt;/ref&gt; Basic policies are increasingly formulated, discussed and challenged in public forums and editorial statements in periodicals;&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Griffiths, 1971.&lt;/ref&gt; different Soviet papers and journals more or less openly take sides on public issues. This is especially so with proposed new welfare policies, each of which is vigorously debated, both by specialists and ordinary citizens in professional journals and the popular press. Public debate on proposed legislation has become a central political institution; a law is proposed, a period of wide-ranging public debate follows, and a revised version of the law is finally promulgated incorporating the results of the public criticism.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Osborn, 1970.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Generally, both in the West and within dissident circles, observers admit that the range of political tolerance has continually increased since the mid-1950s. For example, Zhores Medvedev argues:&lt;blockquote&gt;Political control has not disappeared but it has become more flexible and provides more freedoms in private life... individual activity and attempts to criticize internal and international Soviet policy from clearly Marxist and socialist positions are more or less tolerated, which is, I believe, a reflection of the new diversity of socialist and communist movements in the world, the appearance of 'Eurocommunist' ideology and its more active influence upon developments within the USSR.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Z. Medvedev, 1981, p. viii.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Letters to the editor in the Soviet press, which often amount to guest editorials or articles, serve as a major forum for the Soviet people to present their opinions and participate directly in the confrontation of often sharply conflicting ideas. Letters to government agencies, party organs, etc., also play a significant role in initiating public discussion and influencing the decision-making process.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Hopkins, 1970, pp. 302-11; Skilling, 1971, pp. 43-4.&lt;/ref&gt; The press serves the function of ombudsman for the Soviet people. In 1970, ''Pravda'' received 360,000 letters and ''Izvestia'' 500,000. Obviously, all these letters cannot be published, but, by law, all must be processed and referred to the agencies concerned, and, by law too, a grievance must be responded to within 15 days.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Hopkins, 1970, pp. 303-4.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Legal reforms have been publicly debated in universities, legal research institutes, jurist's associations, factories, and the public press and journals — for example, in 1961 around the reform of the Civil Law Code. Professional intelligentsia, especially economists and jurists, in their specialized papers, journals, and at conferences, engage in especially wide debate, and set out various public policy options, seeking to convince their colleagues and the public through debates at meetings and their publications.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Skillings, 1971; Judy, 1971; Barry and Berman, 1971.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The range of opinions that can be publicly expressed in the Soviet Union does, however, have its limitations. While the Soviet Constitution of 1977 stipulates (in common with the previous Constitution) a wide and impressive range of freedoms, these are explicitly delimited by the obligation not to employ them to undermine the basic institutions of the society.* Article 39 of the new Constitution states that citizens may not exercise their rights 'to the detriment of the interests of society or the state', and Article 50, which guarantees freedom of expression in various forms, is prefaced by the statement that such rights are guaranteed 'in accordance with the interests of the people and in order to strengthen and develop the socialist system'.<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;* This, of course, is merely a formal expression of the general rule operative in all societies, including (see chapter 6) the United States.&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> The fundamental issues, which are considered as settled and as the basis of the socialist institutions of Soviet society, and thus not matters to be publicly challenged, since this would hinder the construction of socialism are: (1) socialism as a system and communism as an ideal (although not criticisms of specific practices and policies); (2) challenges to the idea of the leading role of the Communist Party in Soviet society or to its fundamental integrity (but not criticisms of either concrete abuses by Party officials or specific policies of the Party); (3) the existence of the military as necessary to defend Soviet society (though not military strategy and the political role of the military). In addition, public criticism of the persons of the top leaders is not permitted (but lower and intermediate leaders, and the policies and programmes of the top leaders, may be criticized).&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Hopkins, 1970, ch. 1; Hough and Fainsod, 1979, pp. 291-4.&lt;/ref&gt; With these exceptions statements critical of every other aspect of Soviet reality appear in the mass media.&lt;blockquote&gt;The Soviet press contains critical statements — often extremely critical in nature — about almost every aspect of the Soviet political system, society, and ideology, but the context in which they are raised, the way in which they are phrased, is all-important....&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Hough and Fainsod, 1979, p. 291.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The range of tolerated opinion varies according to the audience; the widest range is found in the specialized press and informal situations, and the narrowest in the mass press and, above all, in opinions expressed to foreign enemies of the Soviet Union. The theory here is that when threatened by foreign enemies a more or less monolithic image should be conveyed in order to maximize the appearance of strength and thus minimize any external dangers.&lt;blockquote&gt;...the Soviet leadership exercises a kind of selective censorship by restricting the more radical advocacy of policy change or the more comprehensive criticisms of the status quo to specialized journals and papers. Debate on Soviet military strategy is, for example, limited almost exclusively to the military press. Any Soviet citizen is perfectly free to read specialized journals, but since, in practice, few besides the relevant specialists do so, the transmission of some types of information or policy ideas is basically limited to the particular group working in the particular policy area. Thus, to say that vigorous policy debates now take place in virtually every policy area in the Soviet Union and that these debates have involved carefully phrased criticism of the fundamentals of the system is not to say that policy debates are freely conducted in all Soviet arenas.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Hough and Fainsod, 1979, p. 293.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> At one extreme, the greatest freedom of expression seems to be permitted in more or less private gatherings — at a party, with a group of colleagues at work, in a bar.... Certainly it would be absolutely wrong to think that the restrictions on publication of ideas also necessarily apply to oral expression....<br /> <br /> ...within certain limits discussions in scholarly sessions are rather free-swinging — often, in fact, more 'impolite' and unrestrained on a personal level than those in the West. The regime also does not usually seem to impose severe punishment on the transmission of quite radical views directly to the authorities, and it often has even been semi-tolerant of highly 'illegitimate' communications that are confined to the samizdat network with its individual reproductions of documents either by hand or by typewriter.<br /> <br /> At the other extreme, the type of activity that has provoked the quickest and most repressive governmental action has been the attempt to reach a larger audience in a more organized, more formal manner — gathering signatures on a petition, distributing leaflets, making a speech in a public  square, staging a demonstration, transmitting documents to the West.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 293-4.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;It should be stressed that somewhat basic criticisms ''are'' generally tolerated even if technically illegal, unless such criticisms are transmitted to the West and used there as propaganda against the Soviet Union ''or'' actual organizations are formed which engage in subversive activities (i.e. more, than simply circulating critical documents within the Soviet Union through interpersonal networks).&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;See for example, R. Medvedev, 1980, p. 45; and Hough and Fainsod, 1979, p. 281&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Two articles in the Criminal Code of the Russian Republic deal with the violation of the basic assumptions of Soviet society. Article 70, the more serious, specifies as illegal activity carried out with the purpose of subverting or weakening Soviet authority:&lt;blockquote&gt;Agitation or propaganda carried out with the purpose of subverting or weakening Soviet authority or in order to commit particular, especially dangerous, crimes against the state, or the oral dissemination for the same purpose of deliberate fabrications which defame the Soviet political and social system, or the dissemination or manufacture or keeping for the same purpose, of literature of such content, shall be punishable by deprivation of freedom for a period of from six months to seven years, with or without additional exile for a term of two to five years, or by exile for a term of two to five years.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Bloch, 1977, p. 103.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The less severe Articles 190-1 define as illegal activities which deliberately spread 'anti-Soviet falsehoods':&lt;blockquote&gt;The systematic dissemination in oral form of deliberate fabrications which discredit the Soviet political and social system, or the manufacture or dissemination in written, printed or other form of works of such content, shall be punished by deprivation of freedom for a period of up to three years, or by corrective tasks for a period of up to one year, or by a fine of up to 100 roubles.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Dissidents are most frequently charged and tried under these two articles, usually after the material they write or the activities they engage in have been used in the West against the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> Much dissident activity is directed towards eliminating such Articles from Soviet law, and to the defence of those who have clearly violated them. These, together with their public challenges to the assumptions of Soviet society (already noted) and their propensity to release information to the West, in the full knowledge that it will be used to discredit the Soviet system, defines that group of people to whom we will refer as ''political dissidents''. Political dissidents, then, are distinct from those with reservations about the Soviet system or who make specific criticisms of Soviet socialism, but do not publicly attack the system ''per se'' and from national and religious groups such as Ukrainian nationalists or Zionist Jews, who simply desire national independence or emigration to the West.<br /> <br /> === The Extent of the Dissident Movement ===<br /> Those engaged in any form of organized political dissidence in the USSR have been an extremely small minority with little support from any sector of the Soviet population. Estimates of the total number of activists made by people sympathetic to the dissident movement have ranged from a few dozen to ten thousand. The definition of an active dissident is one who is active in the production and distribution of the underground periodicals, the writing and dissemination of political 'samizdat', or the signing and circulation of petitions for formal civil liberties. Estimates of the aggregate total number of signatures on petitions in the 1965-73 period vary between 1,000 and 2,000.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Tokes, 1975, pp. 123-4.&lt;/ref&gt; Roy Medvedev, one of the most prominent of contemporary Soviet dissidents, estimates that the number of active dissidents&lt;blockquote&gt;...varies from time to time: in 1967-68 a few thousand, at the beginning of the '60s a few hundred, now (the late 1970s) a few dozen. Of course, if you include those in confinement, again they would count in the hundreds or two to four thousand.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;R. Medvedev, 1980.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The very small number of active dissidents against the Soviet system has reflected their lack of support in the general population. All active dissidents have generally acknowledged that their ideas and activities are unpopular and elicit no responsive chords in the Soviet population. The Soviet system has a high degree of legitimacy among almost all of its citizens, as is readily admitted by virtually all of its critics both inside and outside the USSR. The legitimacy of the regime was greatly enhanced by the trauma of World War II and the heroic, and very bloody, victory over the Nazi invaders (which not only generated great feelings of solidarity and sacrifice, but also confirmed the national fear of foreign intervention which has lasted until today). The Communist Party's successful industrialization and modernization programme has also generated massive support for the Soviet system, as has the high rate of upward mobility and the considerable Soviet achievements in science, education, public health and other welfare services.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Tokes, 1975, pp. 40-1.&lt;/ref&gt; Western Sovietologists (most of whom are not sympathizers of the Soviet system) essentially concede that there is widespread support for Soviet institutions among the Soviet people as a whole.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Nove, 1975; White, 1974.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Medvedev brothers maintain that:&lt;blockquote&gt;If we refer not to a well-defined government but rather to socialism as a social system, then certainly today it claims the consensus of practically the entire population. Therefore it's no use hoping for a change; that would be about as unrealistic as the idea of turning present-day Europe back to the eighteenth century.<br /> <br /> ...if by the term 'system' we mean not socialism but domination by the party, then I will say that beyond all doubt the vast majority of the population endorses the Soviet Communist Party.... So you see, our present form of government possesses such tremendous reserves that neither external pressures nor dissident agitation could, by themselves, bring about fundamental changes.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;R. Medvedev, 1980, p. 51.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The utopian dreams of some former dissidents, A. Amalrik for instance, predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union by 1984, have proven completely unfounded. Most of these dissidents now live abroad, and the regime which they criticized is now more stable and confident than ever....&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Z. Medvedev, 1981, pp. viii, ix.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The absence of receptivity to dissidents' ideas among the masses of the Soviet people has been reflected both in the failure of attempts to recruit supporters among them and in their general sense of the futility of such an attempt. Leading dissidents frequently bemoan the lack of common values between themselves and the working people — any attempts to reach out to them often result in working people denouncing them to the police. Amalrik, a leading dissident, claimed 'To the majority of the people, the very word &quot;freedom&quot; is synonymous with disorder.... As for respecting the rights of an individual as such, the idea simply arouses bewilderment.' Other dissidents even reject the idea of popular support as a matter of principle, one commented, 'It is high time we were freed from the foolishness of populism. The most important thing is the individual and his rights.' The tiny protest demonstrations organized by dissidents from time to time are harassed by passers-by. One dissident who took part in a protest outside the courthouse during the trial of Alexander Ginzburg noted that, although the majority of those harassing the demonstration were workers from a Moscow auto plant who mobilized for the purpose, passers-by spontaneously joined in denouncing the protestors. Witnesses to the 1968 demonstration against the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia reported similar, spontaneous activity.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Tokes, 1975, p. 131.&lt;/ref&gt; Another dissident reports:&lt;blockquote&gt;An average Soviet man cannot understand that five people went out on Red Square to protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. 'What are they, schizophrenics? Probably the West paid them a lot. They wanted glory.' But the fact that these people simply could not refrain from expressing themselves, this idea, for an average Soviet man, is a crazy idea. He can't believe in it, and to speak of democracy in such a psychological climate is useless. That is why I think that if we are to speak of changes in the Soviet Union we must choose a less effective but more realistic road: gradually teaching the people to get accustomed to these concepts. To accomplish this in Soviet circumstances it is extremely difficult and will be an extremely slow process.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Tokes, 1975, p. 131.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Roy Medvedev admits '...there are practically no links between the dissidents and the masses.'&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;R. Medvedev, 1980, p. 8.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Unlike most popular movements in their early stages the dissident movement has little support among students. The little student oppositional activity there has been in recent years seems mostly to have taken the form of a few, small local groups oriented to Maoism, neo-Marxism or 'Che' Guevara, and to be short lived, engaging only in sporadic activity, which typically ends on graduation.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Tokes, 1975, p. 125.&lt;/ref&gt; The general lack of student interest in the 'democratic' movement suggests little potential mass appeal for the future. The distance maintained from the political dissident movement by somewhat larger, right-wing separatist, nationalist and Zionist immigration movements is further evidence of its unpopularity.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 122-3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Virtually all those involved in dissident activities are of the intelligentsia.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ebenstad, 1981, p. 28.&lt;/ref&gt; One study found that from 1967 and 1970, 80% and 90% of the signatories of petitions and protest letters were members of the technical and cultural intelligentsia.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Tokes, 1975, p. 98; Saunders, 1974, p. 43.&lt;/ref&gt; Another analysis of signatories to petitions found that only 6% were workers.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;White, 1974; Lane, 1976, p. 115.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === Strategy and Tactics of the Dissident Movement ===<br /> In descending order of importance there have been three basic tactics employed by the dissident movement: (1) direct appeals to the Western press and other Western institutions, governments and public opinion in the form of press conferences, statements, books published in the West, participation in foreign conferences, etc; (2) domestic circulation of 'samizdat' criticisms, sometimes formally addressed to leaders and leading bodies in the Soviet Union, periodicals (and sometimes lengthy manuscripts) circulated in typewritten or photographic form among dissident and sympathetic circles (a great many of which reach the hands of Westerners, and are then published in the West) and (3) public protests, such as on the old Soviet Constitution Day 5 December or on specific occasions, such as after the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia. Dissidents frequently engage in actions with the expectation of being detained and perhaps sentenced in order to create martyrs whom they know will be celebrated in the West — thus bringing external pressure on the Soviet regime.<br /> <br /> Periodically, dissidents engage in small demonstrations in public squares on certain public holidays, or at key buildings such as foreign embassies around Moscow. Such demonstrations typically consist of perhaps a half dozen to a dozen and a half people, are peaceful, and often merely take the form of standing in silence. While the right of public demonstration is constitutionally guaranteed in the Soviet Union, this right like all others is qualified as to be exercised 'in the interest of the Soviet people'. Foreign reporters, who normally are notified of such protests in advance, are their primary audience. Consequently such minor protests are reported in the Western press and the demands involved are broadcast back to the Soviet Union. The West celebrates these occasions as signs of the lack of freedom and the existence of domestic discontent — that is, of weaknesses in Soviet socialism. As a result, such demonstrations are frequently stopped by the police and the leaders often charged with disturbing the peace.<br /> <br /> A Soviet tradition that differences should not be resolved publicly is widely accepted by the Soviet people. Public demonstrations, however small and peaceful, violate that norm, especially when, as is typically the case, Western reporters are present. Again, the principle of presenting a monolithic front to foreign enemies is operative. Thus, in so far as any direct influence on the Soviet people or government is concerned, public demonstrations are regarded as counter-productive. They reinforce in most Soviet citizens the feeling that the 'Human Rights Movement' is disloyal; it undermines the image that the liberal wing of the dissident movement tries to create of itself as a non-insurrectionary loyal movement.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Tokes, 1975, pp. 107-8.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Samizdat are publications either one time critical manuscripts (literary or not) or somewhat irregular periodicals, generally reproduced on typewriters with carbon copies (or sometimes by photography) and circulated through a network of personal contacts; manuscripts and news items reach the editor of a periodical through the distribution network in the reverse direction. A person receiving a copy of a samizdat normally types up a few copies and passes them on to sympathetic acquaintances. Usually each person keeps one copy and returns the original to the person from whom it was received. In this manner hundreds or sometimes thousands of copies of a manuscript can be produced and circulated through the dissident network, with some copies given to foreigners for publication in the West.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 266-7.&lt;/ref&gt; Studies of the samizdat materials that reach the West (and are collected by Radio Liberty in Munich, and available at several places in the US and Europe) show that the vast majority are directly concerned with civil liberties, and the remainder relate to such topics as Czechoslovakia or critiques or Marxism or Leninism.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 265-6.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> A major form of criticism circulated through the samizdat network has been the public protest letter, normally addressed to a leading official or government body, also, lengthier programmatic essays or briefs, which combine the protest language of the letter with a more detailed and documented argument.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 106.&lt;/ref&gt; A number of somewhat irregular published dissident periodicals that gather together material from a number of authors also circulate, but typically, after relatively few issues they are suppressed or abandoned, sometimes to reappear after a hiatus of a few years, perhaps under different editorship. The best known of such journals have included ''Syntax'' (edited by Ginzburg, 1958-60), ''Phoenix'' (edited by Galanskov, 1961-66) and ''Sphinxes'' (edited by Tarsis, 1965). Generally, periodicals focus mainly on political essays and poetry.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 106, 109.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The most important tactic of the Soviet dissident movement is to release information to the West which, in various forms, is then broadcast back to the Soviet Union by anti-Soviet radio stations such as Radio Liberty and the Voice of America; thus, potentially, reaching a much wider audience than they are able to reach directly and, more importantly, used by anti-Soviet forces in the West to mobilize pressure against the Soviet Union. This tactic includes holding press conferences for foreign journalists, giving television interviews, releasing samizdat material to Western reporters, making direct appeals to the UN, the US Congress (for example, Sakharov's appeal to the US Senate in support of the Jackson amendment restricting US trade with the USSR), or heads of  Western governments, working with international organizations such as Amnesty International, the World Council of Churches, the International PEN and the Nobel Prize Committee, and participation in international conferences such as the European Security Conference.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 24.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Some dissidents probably overestimate the effect their statements to the Western press have on the Soviet people, others know well that their primary impact lies in providing ammunition to anti-Soviet forces in the West which then lean all the harder on the Soviet Union. Roy Medvedev argues:&lt;blockquote&gt;Without any doubt, foreign news reports provide an important source of information for the Soviet people. Experts calculate that about one fourth of the adults in the cities listen to them, but I think this estimate is exaggerated: those who listen regularly, not just from time to time, are many fewer.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;R. Medvedev, 1980, p. 11.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The lack of popularity and resonance among the Soviet people (especially the workers) has, as we have seen, made dissidents aware of the impossibility of mobilizing and recruiting the Soviet people to their cause; almost universally, dissidents are convinced of the futility of attempting to mobilize the Soviet people in whom popular support of the regime is rooted. Therefore, conscious of the considerable interest of the Western capitalist countries in the Soviet Union — an interest based on hostility to its social, political and economic organization and the threat that growing Soviet influence represents to Western capitalism, especially in the less developed countries — the dissidents attempt to mobilize them in support of their goals. The traditionalist right, such as Solzhenitsyn explicitly endeavours to undermine the legitimacy of socialism, strengthen its enemies, hinder its spread, and strengthen the military might of the US and NATO. The liberals, by encouraging Western governments (especially the US) to restrict trade, cultural and scientific contacts, nuclear disarmament, etc., attempt to pressure the Soviets into conceding their dissident demands for liberalization. While the left, by appealing to foreign Communists and progressive intellectuals to exert pressure through their contacts and media, hope to harness the Soviet desire for smooth relations with leftist forces around the world to their cause. This latter course has proved to be effective only in respect to the reformist oriented Euro-Communist, and, to a lesser extent, the Albanian and Chinese oriented Parties, and similarly oriented leftist intellectuals who are equally likely to support the appeals of such liberals as Sakharov, as they have been of Marxists such as Grigorenko.<br /> <br /> According to Roy Medvedev:&lt;blockquote&gt;Many dissidents, aware of the limited effect they themselves have had and the absence of any mass movement favouring reform, place their hopes on outside pressure, by which we mean not only the pressure of Western public opinion but also pressure from various government institutions, for example, the US Congress and the White House.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 125.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Knowing that there is considerable anti-Communist sentiment in the West, the dissidents have, for the most part, elected to feed to it the information it wants to hear about the Soviet Union. Statements by an individual in the Soviet Union can easily become headlines in the world press or exert considerable influence in the US Congress because of the attention afforded to them by anti-Communist sources. The influence of the small number of dissidents in the USSR is thus magnified out of all proportion to their numbers or support in the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> The more leftist of Soviet dissidents, such as Roy Medvedev, oppose the appeals of liberal and reactionary dissidents to the West, which are designed to undermine détente. In criticizing dissidents such as Sakharov, he has argued:<br /> <br /> Calls are made for an end to trade between the West and the USSR, for boycotting all forms of scientific and cultural exchange, and for non-participation in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Some Soviet emigrés, along with certain Western politicians, have even suggested suspension of the strategic arms limitation talks (SALT).<br /> <br /> To accept these proposals would be to open a new round in the Cold War between East and West, which would do appreciable harm not only to the East, but to the West as well, and would lead to results directly opposite to those intended.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., 1980, pp. 125-6.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === Sanctions against Dissidents ===<br /> As Soviet society became increasingly stable, legitimate and secure in the mid-1950s, there was a radical decrease in coercion as an Instrument for dealing with dissidence. There has been a corresponding increase in the use of persuasion together with a long-term growth in tolerance of divergence viewpoints.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Tokes, 1975, p. 54.&lt;/ref&gt; Furthermore, crimes are fairly well defined, and typically, many warnings are given before prosecution for dissident activities, and penalties are fairly well graded according to the offence. Dissidents thus know reasonably well what will be the consequences of their activities.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 35-6.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> While, prior to the criminal law reform in the 1950s, many forms of oppositional activity ('counter revolutionary activities') were punishable by death, such draconian penal practices were abandoned in the mid-1950s. At that time, too, there was a drastic reduction in the use of labour camps and other forms of detainment and police harassment.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 60.&lt;/ref&gt; Article 3 of the 1960 Russian Republican Criminal Code provides that no person could be punished unless they committed a crime in law.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt; Since the 1950s — contrary to what often happened in the 1930s and 1940s — such legal provisions have been fairly strictly adhered to in practice.<br /> <br /> Article 70 of the 1960 Criminal Code of the Russian Republic which prohibits 'anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda', has been one of the principle articles under which dissidents have been arrested and sentenced. In 1966, a further article was added to the Legal Code which, unlike Article 70, did not assume subversive intent, but merely deliberate propagation of slanders against the Soviet system. Since 1966 this Article has also been widely invoked against dissidents. Amnesty International has found that in the late 1970s there were fewer prosecutions under 'the anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda' statute, and more under the less stringent statute against 'dissemination of fabrications known to be false which defame the Soviet state and social system'.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Amnesty International, 1977, p. 278.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Soviet practice is to warn those who engage in dissident activities a number of times before bringing criminal charges against them. To quote Hough and Fainsod:&lt;blockquote&gt;In practice, the post-Stalin regimes generally have instituted legal proceedings only as a last resort, preferring to use a number of lesser penalties as warnings.<br /> <br /> Dissidents report repeated visits by the police before any action is taken, visits in which the agents attempt to persuade them that they are mistaken and that their speech has unhealthy consequences.<br /> <br /> If the warnings are not heeded, the sanctions can be progressively tightened; first, denial of permission to travel abroad, reduced size in the edition of a book or postponement of its publication, loss of an administrative post or the possibility of one; then rejection of manuscripts, secret police searches of apartments. If the dissident abandons his political activity, he generally is permitted to resume a normal life.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Hough and Fainsod, 1979, pp. 281-2.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;There are a wide range of sanctions against dissident activists, of which only the most harsh is actual imprisonment in labour camps. In the 1960s and 1970s about 15 dissidents a year were judged to be insane (schizophrenics) and committed, usually for relatively short terms, to mental institutions. From time to time prominent dissidents like Solzhenitsyn are either expelled from the country or deprived of citizenship and the right to return when abroad. People in highly paid and high prestige professional jobs and other positions of responsibility (officers in the military, chairman of collective farms, research scientists with military clearance, etc.) are sometimes deprived of their professional positions and required to take jobs as menial labourers.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Tokes, 1975, ch. 1.&lt;/ref&gt; Roy Medvedev has argued:&lt;blockquote&gt;As a rule Soviet dissidents are not allowed to pursue their intellectual profession, but they can work as simple labourers or clerks or ordinary assistants in the sciences. Some are offered jobs in libraries or archives of secondary importance....<br /> <br /> They have a rough time, of course. Some of them work privately at bookbinding, restoring furniture, doing things like that.... But we must remember one thing: that in my country everything of prime necessity, like housing, transportation, bread, milk, and so forth is extremely cheap. And that's an advantage not to be underestimated.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;R. Medvedev, 1980, pp. 19, 22.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Dissidents, like all Soviet citizens, are subject to the 'anti-social parasite' laws which forbid making a living from such activities as collecting rents, profits, blackmarketing, etc. Thus, dissident ex-professionals in secure jobs are immune from prosecution under this legislation since they are working, Some dissidents, however, refuse to take regular employment and, as a result, have been tried and sentenced to a year in a labour camp under the social parasite laws.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Amnesty International, 1979, p. 240.&lt;/ref&gt; However, some dissidents without regular employment live from money sent from the West by friends and relatives, and foreign book royalties (e.g. Roy Medvedev) and are not prosecuted under such laws.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;R. Medvedev, 1980, p. 17.&lt;/ref&gt; University students who engage in dissident activities are liable to expulsion and consequently exclusion from privileged, professional careers.<br /> <br /> Other sanctions, more common than incarceration or loss of professional jobs, include expulsion from the Communist Party, expulsion from one's professional union (with the subsequent loss of fringe benefits, but not deprivation of the right to practise one's profession), search of homes, seizure of personal papers and books, police interrogation, surveillance of telephones and mail, warnings from the government, and public attacks in the media as well as personal abuse by neighbours and work-mates.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Tokes, 1975, p. 66; R. Medvedev, 1980, pp. 17, 141.&lt;/ref&gt; Such relatively mild sanctions, together with measures to tighten party discipline, mobilize party members and supporters, tighten control over professional unions, and intensify political education.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Tokes, 1975, p. 62.&lt;/ref&gt; have proved to be rather effective in limiting the size of the dissident movement.*<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;* It should be noted that the same sanctions were successfully applied by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation in the late 1940s and early 1950s to virtually extinguish the pro-Soviet 'dissident movement' in the USA (see chapter 6).&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> The corrective labour camps for political prisoners received considerable notoriety owing to their generally brutal conditions during 1937-53, a period of exceptional crisis and paranoia as well as of desperate need for economic construction and reconstruction. It must be emphasized that the harsh regimes in these camps, from which many political opponents of the regime never returned, was unique to that period. Conditions were considerably more humane in the pre-1937 period and became so once again in the post-1953 era. Solzhenitsyn's influential exposes (which considerably exaggerate the very real abuses and brutalities of this period) are historically specific.<br /> <br /> Sentencing political dissidents to corrective labour camps is regarded as a process of re-education and therapy, rather than as punishment, similar to the process of sending cadres to work on communes during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The regime in the re-educative labour camps is actually less rigorous than in criminal prisons. Corrective labour camp inmates who violate regulations can be sent for a year or two to a regular criminal prison (where the inmates do not work) as punishment. Zhores Medvedev states that:&lt;blockquote&gt;The locations and conditions of the camps have altered greatly in the past twenty-five years.... Today, many of these camps in the Far North have disappeared: the Siberian camps are generally reserved for repeated professional criminals who are regarded as very dangerous — organizers of armed robberies, for example. For ordinary crimes or political offences, people are sent to camps in their local regions... They are organized around one or other industrial complex, and perform economic functions... The prisoners work there as labourers. Technically, they receive a wage, from which is deducted the cost of the upkeep of their guards, so that the system is economically self-sufficient.... There is no longer widespread hunger in them; but food rations are not generous and can be reduced in the isolators within the camps for violation of discipline.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Z. Medvedev, 1979, p. 22.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Dissidents are also often sentenced to infernal exile, which normally means living and working in a peasant village, or a state or collective farm for a set period. There is little physical maltreatment of prisoners in the USSR. In its 1974 ''Report on Torture'', Amnesty International noted:&lt;blockquote&gt;Though prison conditions and the rights of the prisoners detained on political charges in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union may still be in many cases unsatisfactory, torture as a government-sanctioned, Stalinist practice has ceased. With a few exceptions... no reports on the use of torture in Eastern Europe have been reaching the outside world in the past decade.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Cited in Chomsky and Herman, 1979, p. 8.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Throughout the 1970s the Soviet government increasingly employed exile from the USSR (both voluntary and forced emigration) instead of incarceration, as a punishment for dissidents. About half of the prominent dissidents of the 1960s were either allowed or forced to emigrate in the 1970s. According to Zhores Medvedev (who himself was forced to emigrate to the United Kingdom), '...some 400-500 politically active people have left Russia. Today more or less any dissident can emigrate if they want.'&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Z. Medvedev, 1979, p. 24.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === Dissidents Categorized as Schizophrenic ===<br /> In the mid-1950s there was an intense debate within Soviet psychiatric circles regarding the definition of schizophrenia. The result of this debate was the triumph of an expanded definition, defended by Professor Andrei Snezhnevsky* and other leading Soviet psychiatrists, including Dr Georgy Morozov, Professor Ruben Nadzharov and Professor Daniel Lunts. This expanded concept has permitted certain forms of dissent to be viewed as a symptom of severe mental illness, and some dissidents, considered not to be morally responsible for their actions, thus committed to mental institutions.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Bloch, 1977, pp. 220-1.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;* Director of the Institute of Psychiatry of the Academy of Medical Sciences and editor of the Korsakov Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry during the 1970s.&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> According to the hegemonic Soviet conception, schizophrenia has three different forms, of which one, the 'continuous form', accounts for 25-30% of all schizophrenias diagnosed. 'Continuous' schizophrenia is characterized as follows: first, subtle personality changes occur — withdrawal, apathy and diminished interests; next follows the development of psychotic (or 'positive') symptoms, such as delusions and hallucinations. The continuous form of schizophrenia has two sub-types defined by the rate of progression of the disease: (1) malignant (rapid) and (2) mild (sluggish). Symptoms in the malignant form are obvious and severe. In the mild form, patients retain much of their ability to function in society, but manifest neurotic-type symptoms, with such features as obsessions, hypochondria, hysterical psychopathy and paranoia. Those dissidents categorized as insane and committed to mental institutions are normally diagnosed as having the 'sluggish' variety of continuous schizophrenia, in which the disease is typically manifested in paranoid symptoms of over-evaluation of ones own importance, often exhibiting grandiose ideas of reforming the world.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 246-7.&lt;/ref&gt; Common in commitment reports are phrases such as 'paranoid reformist delusional ideas', paranoid delusions of reforming society', 'over-estimation of his own personality', 'over-inflation of his capabilities'.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 251.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> A single psychiatrist can initiate civil commitment proceedings against a person suspected of mental illness. Once an individual is admitted to a psychiatric institution he or she must be examined by a three-member panel of psychiatrists within 24 hours; this panel is responsible for deciding on the appropriateness of commitment and the need for compulsory treatment. In the case of dissidents who have violated Soviet laws, the evaluations of expert psychiatrists are subject to judicial review.<br /> <br /> Dissidents who are declared to be not responsible for their actions are typically committed for an indefinite period of compulsory treatment at a mental institution. In recent years periods of commitment have tended to be relatively short. Patients in a psychiatric hospital are examined at six-month intervals by a commission of psychiatrists who report to the courts. Upon release from the hospital, patients are required to register at their local psychiatric clinic and to be supervised on an out-patient basis. After release, depending on the degree to which the psychiatrists, in consultation with the police, think the dissident remains a 'social danger', he/she may be subject to police surveillance. Sometimes, released dissidents who are regarded as 'socially dangerous' may be temporarily recommitted for a few weeks, or required to travel out of town on major holidays or during visits by foreign statesmen.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 104-5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The Soviet categorization of relatively few dissidents as mentally ill owing to their strong and active opposition to Soviet institutions, would appear to be an example of the general phenomena emphasized by Thomas Szasz in his influential book, ''The Myth of Mental Illness'' (1961). Szasz suggests that the diagnosis of 'mental illness' by Western upper middle-class psychiatrists in people of very different class and ethnic backgrounds reflects more the lack of understanding of such people than any actual mental disorder. Thus we would expect that wherever there is a high level of consensus or very strong feelings about what is 'proper' or 'true' the ability to understand people who fundamentally disagree is reduced, and hence the likelihood of dismissing them as 'crazy' is enhanced.<br /> <br /> Indeed, in times when, and in circles where US patriotism is very high, those who reject such values and sympathize with Communism or other 'deviant' movements have also been regarded as 'crazy'. US pilots in the Indo-China War who refused to fly bombing missions because of their political objections to the indiscriminate devastation they were causing were committed to mental institutions. One such case involved Charles Clements who, in April 1970, told his superior officers that he would fly no more missions. Failing to convince him that he should resume his flights, they had him confined to a psychiatric hospital for several months, and eventually gave him a psychiatric-based discharge.* It is interesting to note that after his discharge Clements earned degrees as a Doctor of Medicine and a master in public health. In 1982 Clements (as apparent further evidence of his 'insanity') spent a year as a doctor serving with the guerrillas in El Salvador.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;See the ''New York Times'', 16 March 1983.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;* Explaining why he accepted the psychiatric-based discharge, Clements stated: 'I took the craziness they were labelling me with rather than the craziness of that war. The real crazy thing was that I was very loyal.' (New York Times, 16 March 1983).&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> === Numbers of Dissidents Confined ===<br /> Both the few dissidents and the relatively high degree of tolerance of dissident activity in the Soviet Union is manifested in the small number of people who, in the last two decades (that is, since reliable information on the total numbers of detainees has become readily available in the West) have been detained for any form for dissident activities. ''Maximum'' estimates of political prisoners in the USSR supplied by dissident sources and endorsed by anti-Soviet opinion in the West in the late 1970s ranged from about 2,000 to 10,000. Counts of those confirmed to be political prisoners (broadly defined) average around Amnesty International's figure of 350-400. In 1978 Amnesty International, which gives disproportionate and minute attention to dissidents of all types in the Soviet Union had 350 individuals either adopted as 'political prisoners' or under investigation. This total includes inmates of mental institutions, those sentenced to exile, and those undergoing corrective labour without imprisonment.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Amnesty International, 1978, p. 244.&lt;/ref&gt; In April 1980 Amnesty International stated that in the previous four years the Soviets had imprisoned ''or'' ''restricted'' more than 400 dissidents (including at least 100 in psychiatric hospitals).&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;''New York Times'', 30 April 1980, p. 6.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> According to Bloch, a careful analyst deeply sympathetic to the dissidents, between 1962 and 1977 a total of approximately ''600'' individuals (about 40 a year) were sentenced to labour camps for one or another type of dissident activity. Bloch's total includes not only 'political' dissidents, but also those confined for nationalist agitation and active religious propaganda, and for organizing in support of easier emigration and for trying to emigrate illegally.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Bloch, 1977, p. 274.&lt;/ref&gt; According to Hough and Fainsod, 'All in all, according to the most careful Western estimate, approximately 670 persons were sentenced on political grounds between 1960 and 1971.'&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Hough and Fainsod, 1979, p. 282.&lt;/ref&gt; The US Congress Commission on Security and Co-operation in Europe (which monitors compliance with the 1975 Helsinki accords) reported that approximately 560 dissidents were arrested between June 1975 and 1 May 1980 (about 110 a year).&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;''New York Times'', 12 May 1980.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> According to Yelena Bonner (wife of Andrei Sakharov) in 1981 there were approximately 400 political prisoners (broadly defined) in the USSR. According to Bonner, these consisted of 200 'religious dissidents', 110 'nationalists or persons arrested for asking to emigrate' and 90 'human rights dissidents'.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Scherer (ed.), 1982, ch. 9, p. 371.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Estimates of the number of those confined for political reasons sometimes range as high as 10,000. Such figures are not, however, based on actual counts or careful projections as are the figures reported above. For example the CIA guess as to the number of 'political prisoners' in the USSR is 10,000 people.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;See ''New York Times'', 7 November 1982, p. 3.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Probably the actual number of political prisoners is somewhat greater than either the Amnesty International, Bonner or Bloch's counts, since although these are based on a reasonably extensive network of dissident sympathizers who monitor trials and places of internment and have wide contacts among political dissidents, they probably miss out some people, especially isolated individuals tried in small towns or sentenced to smaller, more obscure prisons or labour camps. Conversely, the 10,000 estimate by anti-Soviet groups with an interest in exaggerating the extent of political repression must be generally discounted, especially as it is a self-admittedly unsubstantiated ''guess'', not based on analytical projections from known cases. Possibly a reasonable estimate of the number of political detentions in the 1975 to 1980 period is likely to be something less than 150 a year, and, in 1980, the number of confined political prisoners (broadly defined) is approximately 500. Both these figures as liberal estimates, and include the broadest possible definition both of ''political'' prisoners (those sentenced under Articles 70 and 190-1 of the Criminal Code, plus those sentenced for religious propaganda, those arrested while trying to illegally emigrate, etc.), and ''prisoners'' (those in labour camps, actual prisons, exile, under house arrest, etc.).<br /> <br /> Between 1962 and 1967, approximately 210 individuals (around 15 a year) were known to have been confined in mental institutions, having been adjudged as legally schizophrenic owing to dissident activities (broadly defined). Approximately 115 of these were confined for 'political' reasons, being general protesters. The remainder were committed because of nationalist-separatist agitation, religious agitation, or campaigning for, or actually attempting to, illegally emigrate.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Bloch, 1977, pp. 248-64; see also Amnesty International, 1978, p. 242.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> === Political Tendencies of Dissident Activists ===<br /> Three fundamentally different tendencies may be identified among political dissident activists in the USSR. (1) the authoritarian and traditionalist right, who reject both Communism and Western parliamentary forms in favour of a restoration of something approaching Czarist authoritarian institutions purged of Western 'cosmopolitan' influences of either the Marxist or liberal varieties; (2) the non-Marxist social democrats or 'liberals' who campaign for the development of Western-style political institutions and formal liberties; and (3) Marxists (both revolutionary and Euro-Communists) who maintain that current Soviet policies are a distortion of true socialism. This latter group is the weakest and in good part has converged with the liberals; most prominent dissidents subscribe to one or other of the first two. Given the isolation from the masses of the Soviet people of all three types of dissidents, their small number, and their common interest in protecting each other and securing support in the West, they frequently collaborate with each other, despite their different visions of the desirable future course of Soviet society, at least in so far as supporting the rights of each to exist, and minimizing state interference in their activities.<br /> <br /> ==== The Liberals ====<br /> Liberals tend to envisage a convergence of Western parliamentary capitalism and Soviet socialism toward a parliamentary social democracy through a more or less gradual process of evolution (that is, without an armed overthrow of the Soviet state). They are committed to the development of a political pluralist system without restraints on formal freedoms of expression and organization, a system which operates according to the established traditions of the 'rule of law'.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Tokes, 1975, p. 99; Saunders, 1974, p. 413.&lt;/ref&gt; They also champion the rights of religious groups to greater autonomy and freedom to proselytize, the rights of Jews and others to freely emigrate, and the rights of minority nationalities, such as the Crimean Tartars, to return en masse to the Crimea. They were also highly critical of Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia. But perhaps their central focus is on securing and broadening formal freedoms within the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> In the late 1970s, the most prominent dissident in the Soviet Union was a leading nuclear physicist, Andrei Sakharov. Like Solzhenitsyn he has never been imprisoned for his long term and multifaceted dissident activities, although he was exiled to Gorky in 1980. A member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, who played a key role in the development of Soviet nuclear weapons, Sakharov became the leading liberal spokesman in the 1970s. While remaining a liberal, and thus not sharing the traditionalist authoritarian analysis of such rightists as Solzhenitsyn, over the years Sakharov has moved to the right. After 1968 he came to reject socialism, even as an ideal, and since 1973 has focused increasingly on attacking détente.<br /> <br /> In August 1973 (on the fifth anniversary of the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia) Sakharov held a press conference in Moscow for Western reporters to denounce détente between the USSR and the USA as undermining the rights of dissidents in the Soviet Union. His statement to the Western press read in part:&lt;blockquote&gt;''Détente'' without democratization, ''défente'' in which the West in effect accepts the Soviet rules of the game, would be dangerous. It would not really solve any of the world's problems and would simply mean capitulating in the face of real or exaggerated Soviet power. It would mean trading with the Soviet Union, buying its gas and oil, while ignoring all other aspects.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Tokes, 1975, pp. 386-7.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Sakharov went on to support the 'Jackson Amendment' which makes relaxation of US-USSR trade conditional on allowing free emigration from the Soviet Union. At the 1973 press conference he argued that such a step by the US 'looks like a minimum step, which is important not only by itself, but as a symbol of the fact that détente with the Soviet Union does not preclude some kind of control on this country so that it could not become a danger for its neighbours'.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 387.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In February 1973, Sakharov was publicly criticized in an article in ''Lieraru Gazeta'', an important Soviet paper, which attacked him for his views;&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 389-90.&lt;/ref&gt; following his August 1973 statement to the Western press, however, he came under much heavier criticism in the Soviet media. The world-wide attention his statement received, and the Soviet press campaign against him, resulted in Sakharov granting numerous telephone interviews to the Western media and Western correspondents.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., pp. 404-5.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the late 1970s, just before his enforced exile to Gorky, Sakharov publicly supported the US in the Vietnam War, arguing that they could have done more to defeat the National Liberation Movement in that country:&lt;blockquote&gt;I believe that with greater determination and persistence on the part of America in the military and especially the political sphere tragic developments could have been avoided. Political pressure could have been put on the USSR not to supply arms to North Vietnam, a strong expeditionary force could have been sent there at the right time, the UN could have been brought in, more effective economic aid could have been made available and other Asian and European countries could have been involved; all these things could have so influenced events as to avert the war with its horrific consequences for both sides.... But even when the war had reached a state of deadlock, a combination of diplomatic and determined military effort, if explained to the American people and the rest of the world, could have stabilised the situation.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;A. Sakharov in R. Medvedev, 1981, p. 292.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Unabashedly pro-American attitudes are common among liberal dissidents. For example, Anatoly Radygin, a leading emigré, when asked how he saw his future, answered:&lt;blockquote&gt;I picture it in America. I&lt;nowiki&gt;'ve always felt myself an American. I''m glad I went to Israel first. Had I not done that I would have never forgiven myself that I wasn't there during the Yom Kippur war. I had to come here to find out where I really belong. When I was trying to escape, I was thinking of eventually reaching the States. My ideal is still the American tolerance, the American Constitution, and that is why I, an atheist and a hater of all slogans, began and ended each day in prison with a prayer, 'America, God bless thee from ocean to ocean'&lt;/nowiki&gt;.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Kirk, 1975, p. 27.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== The Traditionalist Right ====<br /> The dissident right, the most prominent individual representative of which, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (who was expelled from the USSR in 1974), advocates the revival of traditional Russian institutions and the purging of both socialist and Western influence from Russian society. For the most part it bemoans the secularization that has occurred in European society since the Renaissance and seeks the reconstitution of a new, ascetic, religious civilization governed by a corporate state and inspired by social Christian ideology, probably through a Russian Orthodox renaissance. Russian Orthodoxy is generally seen as the instrument for the resurrection of the world, while Russia is seen as having the mission of world salvation. This chauvinist Russian position advocates the destruction of the USSR and the creation of an authoritarian unitary state.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Saunders, 1974, p. 425.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> As do most of the traditionalist rightists, Solzhenitsyn speaks of the 'many sided cul-de-sac of Western civilization', of 'the ruinous path of Western civilization'.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Yanov, 1978, p. 91.&lt;/ref&gt; By no means does he hope for or advocate either an adoption of Western parliamentary democratic forms or a convergence between the two systems. His model is a traditional authoritarian regime of the right, 'enlightened authoritarianism' in contrast to 'Communist despotism'. In his letter to the Soviet leaders he argues, 'Thus, perhaps we should recognize that for Russia this path (the struggle against authoritarianism) was mistaken and premature? Perhaps, in the foreseeable future, whether we want that or not, Russia is nevertheless destined to have an authoritarian system? Perhaps it is only ready for this?'&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Economic, scientific and technical progress made by human-kind in the 19th and 20th Centuries is regarded by Solzhenitsyn as 'an insane, ill-considered, furious dash into a blind alley'. He adds that 'Economic growth is not only unnecessary but ruinous'.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Z. Medvedev, 1979, p. 71.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Solzhenitsyn's politics are those of the extreme right in the West. He is opposed to détente, to wars of national liberation, to multiparty parliamentary forms. He advocates an active and aggressive Western offensive against the Soviet Union and the abandonment of détente. He criticizes Western liberals for their 'evenhandedness' in condemning both the Greek military dictatorship and other rightist anti-Communist military regimes and Soviet leaders, as if the crimes of anti-Communists were of the same magnitude as those of Soviet leaders. He argues that anti-Communist authoritarianism is necessary to contain Communism.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Tokes, 1975, p. 26.&lt;/ref&gt; He also strongly criticizes the 'avaricious leaders' of non-aligned nations, and the 'apologists for bloody &quot;national liberation wars&quot;' for not understanding the dangers of Communism.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 25.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== Marxist and Working-Class Dissidents ====<br /> Only a relatively small handful of prominent dissidents in the last generation have argued from a more or less revolutionary Marxist perspective against what they saw as the Communist Party's deviation from correct socialist policies. The most famous of these has been General Peter Grigorenko; well known, too, have been Ivan Yakhimovich (a former collective farm chairman) and Aleksei Kosterin (a writer).&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Saunders, 1974, p. 42.&lt;/ref&gt; There is also some evidence that leftist circles were formed in a few cities, for example in Ryazan, Saratov and Gorky. Fragmentary evidence describes these groups as reading, and basing themselves on Lenin's ''State and Revolution''.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid., p. 415.&lt;/ref&gt; None of these, however, seem to have maintained their leftist critique for very long.<br /> <br /> In late 1977, a group of 43 workers from different regions and industries announced the formation of an independent 'trade union' dedicated to protesting against violations of their rights to the Western press. The announcement to the Western press that such a group existed resulted in considerable publicity in the West because a group of working-class dissidents, rather than of members of the intelligentsia, was unique. But the highly scattered geographical basis of the group, together with their smallness, suggests that the characterization of themselves as a 'labour union' was designed to appeal to Western sympathies and gather support from outside the Soviet Union. As a result of the adverse, worldwide reaction their press conference brought upon the Soviet Union, four of their leaders were arrested and temporarily confined to psychiatric hospitals for examination; three were released after a few days; and another sentenced to one year in a labour camp for 'social parasitism'.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Amnesty International, 1978, pp. 243-4.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The basic document of the Free Trade Union Association of Workers in the Soviet Union is their Charter, which was published in the West for the first time in the AFL-CIO ''Free Trade Union News''. It reads very much as if specifically designed for Western ears and contains no mention of socialism. Thus, this group must be categorized with the liberals. Article 9 of the 'charter' which defines the purposes of the association reads in its entirety:&lt;blockquote&gt;a. to carry out the obligations reached by collective bargaining;<br /> <br /> b. to induce workers and other employees into joining free trade union associations;<br /> <br /> c. to carry out those decisions of the Association which concern the defence of rights and the seeking of justice;<br /> <br /> d. to educate Association members in the spirit of irreconcilability toward deficiencies, bureaucracy, deception, inefficiency and wastefulness, and a negligent attitude to national wealth.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;''Freedom at Issue'', No. 47, p. 21.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;The Charter defines membership as 'open to any worker or employee whose rights and interests have been unlawfully violated by administrative governmental, Party or judicial agencies'; a definition that makes clear that this association is not a trade union designed to deal collectively with management but a 'human rights' organization designed to protest against alleged violation of 'rights and interests'.<br /> <br /> The concluding Article of the charter clearly indicates that this association was formed primarily to appeal to the West, rather than to the organization of Soviet workers:&lt;blockquote&gt;As soon as the Free Trade Union Association of workers in the Soviet Union will be recognized by the International Labor Organization or by professional trade unions of foreign countries, and after it will have received moral and material support, it will review its Charter, keeping in mind the specific conditions of workers in our country. Such a review will be conducted not earlier than one year after the Association's founding.&lt;ref group=&quot;8.&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;To summarize: contrary to prevailing popular opinion in the West, there is, in the Soviet Union, a considerable range of publicly expressed opinions on almost all questions which affect society. Divergent opinions are not only tolerated but actively encouraged by the Party, government and media. Dissident activity is defined in terms of public attacks on the socialist foundations of Soviet society, and generally repressed only when such public attacks are conveyed to the West for use as anti-Communist propaganda. The dissident movement in the late 1970s was very small, at most a few thousand, almost all professional people. Because of the hegemony of Soviet ideology in the Soviet Union (that is, the legitimacy of its socialist institutions), especially among the working people, the dissidents receive a cold response within the USSR. Their appeal is consciously directed to the West, mostly to anti-Socialist forces who not only broadcast their statements back to the Soviet Union but, more importantly, use them in their general campaign against the Soviet Union and the expansion of socialism. The majority of active dissidents appear to have no qualms about the use of their activities to undermine SALT, détente, national liberation movements in Indo-China, Africa or Latin America, cultural and scientific exchange between socialist and capitalist countries, the credibility of the socialist alternative in the West, etc., because they are not socialists and have rejected the Communist ideal. Further, the repression of the active dissidents who feed the anti-Socialist forces in the West with information they want to hear is relatively even-handed — even gentle by comparative and historical standards.<br /> <br /> In short, it appears that the attention given by the West to the repression of 'human rights' in the USSR is out of all proportion to what is actually occurring there. This suggests that the immense publicity the dissident movement receives in the West must have other causes.<br /> <br /> === Comparisons with the USA ===<br /> Close parallels exist between restrictions on formal civil liberties in the US during those periods in which there was a challenge to its hegemonic institutions, and the restrictions on civil liberties in the Soviet Union in the last generation. Both societies have deported those whom it considers undesirables, and both restrict the entry of foreigners considered to be undesirable, and the right of its citizens to travel overseas, although emigration from the USSR has been more restricted than it has in the US. Both societies have employed police harassment, surveillance, seizure of books, etc., against dissidents. There appears to be no significant difference in this regard between the US response to the Red Scare periods of 1917-23 and 1947-56 and the response to dissident activity in the Soviet Union since the 1950s. Both societies have restricted the circulation of published works and the expression of subversive ideas in the mass media. The ban on the expression of leftist ideas in American radio, television, films, mass newspapers, etc. in the 1950s was as thorough as the suppression of anti-socialist ideas in the Soviet Union. On the whole, it appears that the level of repression in the Soviet Union in the 1955 to 1980 period was at approximately the same level as in the US during the McCarthy years (1947-56).<br /> <br /> Cycles of suppression of civil liberties have occurred throughout US history, corresponding to periods when the dominant institutions, namely, the state and the property of the upper class, have been challenged. When neither of these institutions was specifically endangered, but when mobilization for external wars was considered necessary, civil liberties were also repressed. Usually, a combination of both these factors has precipitated periods of the most intense repression of civil liberties in US history.<br /> <br /> Growing repression of the working-class left, which culminated in its virtual destruction during 1917-23, was a rational response of the upper class, and the US state that it dominated, to contain what could have become (as it did in most of the rest of the Western world) a real threat to private property in the means of production. The need to mobilize the American people behind a 'Crusade against Communism' in order to stop the rapid advance of world revolution that occurred in the wake of World War II was determinant. Domestic Communists had to be scapegoated, in much the same way that Jews were traditionally scapegoated in central Europe, in order to mobilize support for the upper class and its wars and interventions. It became 'un-American' to oppose higher taxes for the military, or the draft, or US foreign policies.<br /> <br /> The periodic Red Scares in the US over the last 100 years have served to effectively increase the identification of the American people with the traditional capitalist values of free enterprise and individual mobility, as well as to discredit all forms of socialism and even progressivism as 'un-American'. Socialism has been identified as a 'foreign plot' and identified with the 'horrors' of the Soviet Union. Thus, the legitimacy of the domination of corporate  property has been considerably enhanced concomitantly with the popular discrediting of fairly widespread anti-capitalist sentiments among both farmers and working people in the US. The suppression of the civil liberties of Communists, Socialists, and 'Wobblies' has thus proved to be a most rational course of action on the part of the US ruling class.<br /> <br /> Both the Soviet Union and the US have most strongly repressed those who have identified with the other. In both cases, identification with the foremost foreign opponent seems to provoke outrage rooted in a sense of violation of the patriotic cause, as well as being invoked to mobilize people behind the 'national interest'.<br /> <br /> === References ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;8.&quot; /&gt;<br /> <br /> == 9. Conclusion ==<br /> The preceding chapters have examined the level of civil rights for national minorities and women in the USA and the USSR, and the differential level of economic rights (including both workers' job rights and social and economic security), and level of formal civil liberties (especially advocacy rights) in the two countries. In this chapter the results of the preceding chapters are briefly summarized and their significance drawn out. A general theory of the level of tolerance/repression in any society is developed and the class basis of civil liberties elaborated. The systematic uses of 'disinformation', regarding the level of rights and freedoms for working people in the socialist countries, by those forces in the West concerned to discourage the socialist and national liberation movements will be examined. Finally, the tendencies in the various types of rights both in the capitalist and socialist countries will be examined and some speculations made about the future of freedom in both types of country.<br /> <br /> === Summary ===<br /> In Chapter 2 it was seen that the relations between the Asian (and traditionally Islamic) areas of the USSR and the Slavic areas have lost their former colonial character. Central Asia has rapidly industrialized in the period of Soviet power and the standard of living of its people raised to approximate Southern European levels. This contrasts sharply with the acute differential between the US and Puerto Rico, the colonial character of whose relationship with the US is manifested in a much lower standard of living. Similarly, the very rapid economic progress of Soviet Asian minorities contrasts with the slower progress of Blacks and Latins in the American economy. The vastly improved state of basic industry and consumption is more than matched by that of social welfare and education, which are on virtually an equivalent level in both Soviet Europe and Asia. While Soviet Asians have not yet achieved educational levels on a par with most European nationalities, the gap is rapidly closing. In strong contrast to the US, where a consistent policy of Americanization and Anglicalization of language has been applied to all minorities (indigenous as well as immigrant) the Soviet Union celebrates and encourages the development of the languages and cultures of its diverse nationalities, channelling considerable funds into subsidizing complete education systems, books, newspapers and the full range of cultural forms in all the basic languages of the Union. Minorities are, as a rule, proportionately represented in the various political bodies (both Soviets and party bodies) at all levels within their Republics. The fruits of Soviet nationality policy and the guarantee of a high level of civil (or national) rights for its Asian peoples has been manifested in the desuetude of the traditional religious practices of Islam, the lack of a dissident movement among the Asian intelligentsia, and the virtual absence of either anti-Russian, anti-socialist or anti-Soviet feelings among any segment of the Asian population. The Soviet achievement in Central Asia must be ranked among the most important accomplishments of the regime.<br /> <br /> Although there are significant nationalist and dissident movements in Estonia, Lithuania and among the Jews, as well as popular anti-Russian feelings in Soviet Georgia, Estonia and Lithuania, Soviet nationality policy for the European minorities in the USSR has, in general, been very successful. The Baltic Republics have the highest living standards in the entire country, and are among the most industrialized and most rapidly industrializing, while their health care and educational institutions are inferior to none within the Union. The level of cultural development of most of the European nationalities, especially those of the Baltic Republics, the Ukrainians, the Armenians and the Georgians is very high, with large numbers of books and newspapers published in all their languages. Further, there are heavily subsidized all-around cultural activities, which celebrate the local culture both in the Republics themselves and throughout the Soviet Union. An extensive examination of the position of the Jews in the Soviet Union shows that the Western attempt to colour the Soviet Union as fundamentally anti-Semitic is baseless. In fact, Soviet Jews were found to be heavily over-represented in both professional life and the Communist Party. No evidence of official anti-Semitism and little evidence of popular anti-Semitism was found.<br /> <br /> Along with the achievements of the Soviet system in Central Asia, one of the most prominent achievements of Soviet power has been the rapid and radical transformation of the position of women in society. From being one of the most backward in Europe, as well as in Asia, in these regards, Soviet women are today probably the most advanced of women in any country in their relative position vis-à-vis men, as well as in the availability of socialized child care. The wake of the revolution saw the fundamental transformation of women's legal status and economic role. The Soviet Union was the first country to legalize abortions, develop public child care, bring women into top government jobs, etc. The radical transformation of women's position was most pronounced in the traditionally Islamic areas, where an intense campaign liberated women from extremely repressive conditions. Women's level of education through advanced university degrees is approaching that of men. Women are much more likely to be found in such occupations as engineering, medicine, physics, and the other natural sciences than is the case in the West; and, although still significantly under-represented, they are much more likely to be found in administrative positions than they are in the West. Few women have yet achieved top levels in government or the Party, but large and growing numbers of women are to be found in lower and middle level government and Party positions. Considerable progress is being made in minimizing the time women spend in housework and child care, as well as in persuading men to share in these tasks. In general, radical improvements in women's position have taken place, but problems remain, especially the lack of women in top political positions.<br /> <br /> As one would expect from a Socialist revolution, economic rights (both property and social security rights) for working people have been radically improved. The economic rights of the Soviet people are impressive by Western standards (especially in comparison either to countries at a similar level of economic development or to the USA). The Soviet standard of living has improved considerably since 1955, in sharp contrast to the US, where working-class take-home pay declined between 1965 and 1982. Extensive subsidies for housing, basic food stuffs, child care and transportation, together with free education and medicine are major benefits of the Soviet system for working people. A growing proportion of Soviet consumption is in the form of 'the social wage', that is, goods distributed on the basis of need, rather than on the basis of labour; that is, by the Communist rather than the Socialist principle of distributive justice. The Soviet retirement and disability system (especially for non-job related disabilities) is generous by US standards, especially taking into consideration the heavily subsidized basics of life.<br /> <br /> The strongest contrast between the USA and the USSR is in the area of job rights. Soviet workers have far greater rights in their jobs: both in their right to their particular job (the great difficulty of dismissing a worker); their right to a job in general (freedom from unemployment); and their increasing rights of participation in enterprise management.<br /> <br /> When the anti-Soviet forces in the West attack the Soviet Union the cutting edge of their critique is usually on the level of type III civil liberties (advocacy and emigration rights). Since it is difficult to deny the considerable economic progress, the high level of civil rights for women and minorities, and of economic rights for working people, a picture is painted of a qualitative difference between the 'Free World' and 'totalitarian Communism' where the individual allegedly has 'no rights'. A careful comparison of the dissident movement in the USSR and its treatment by the Soviet state (as well as of the vital Soviet public debates on a wide range of questions) with the level of repression of anti-capitalist forces in the West, demonstrates that, in fact, there is no qualitative difference between the two — that is, that the case made in the West that the Soviet Union is qualitatively more repressive of civil liberties than is the capitalist world is without substance. Both the number of dissidents and the number of political prisoners in the Soviet Union is grossly exaggerated by innuendo, just as the wide range of publicly expressed ideas and debates in that country is ignored in the West. The dissident movement, and political repression in the USSR (at least since the mid-1950s) has largely been a creation of the Western media, rather than an actual phenomenon of any consequence. The level of political repression/tolerance of publicly declared anti-socialist aims and ideas in the Soviet Union in the 1970s was roughly equivalent to the level of political repression/tolerance of anti-capitalist sentiments in the USA in the early 1950s, and ''qualitatively'' repression is /ess than existed in most of Latin America in the 1970s.<br /> <br /> In summary, the Soviet system is distinguished as especially superior to that of the West in the areas of civil rights for minorities and women, in property rights for working people, including participation in economic decision-making, tights to a job, and rights in a job. Given that the USSR is still rather poor, its social security system matches that of any major Western capitalist country, and is clearly superior to that in the US. Concerning advocacy rights, about which those in the West who oppose the Soviet system choose to make comparisons, the reality of effective opposition is not significantly different in the two countries. The high levels of type III civil liberties in the West in the 1950-80 period were historically exceptional and reflect a particularly stable and prosperous phase of capitalist development, rather than any inherent property of capitalism (that is allegedly necessarily tolerant, in contrast to socialism which is allegedly inherently repressive). The intense repression in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s, far from being an inherent characteristic of socialism, was rather a result of the extraordinary crisis in which Soviet society found itself at that time.<br /> <br /> An evaluation of the level of rights in the USSR in terms of the criteria of the Marxist-Leninist tradition shows that the USSR has made considerable advances in terms of its own explicitly held theory of right as originally articulated by Marx, Engels and Lenin. In traditional Marxist-Leninist terms the Soviet Union is in a fairly advanced state of full ''socialism'', making gradual progress in the transition to Communism. Although it characterizes its state as 'a state of the whole people' this essentially amounts to a 'dictatorship of the proletariat' (broadly defined) since the only other classes are the collective farm peasantry (ever smaller in size, and more like state farm workers in their conditions), and the intelligentsia (which, officially, is described as a stratum of the working class). All productive property of consequence has been socialized since the mid-1930s. State owned property co-ordinated through the central plan, and managed, without exploitation, by working people, encompasses most of the economy. Since the 1930s, the principal mode of distribution has been according to labour, although the 'social wage', consisting of basic services, has been growing as a proportion of all consumption, while income differences have been shrinking quite radically (distribution on the basis of need is coming to supplant distribution on the basis of labour contributed). The administrative and technical division of labour is being slowly transcended with increasing automation, increasing skill levels and growing participation in all levels of economic decision making,<br /> <br /> The Soviet Union would seem to have achieved the fundamental level of right laid down in the Marxist classics as characteristic of the socialist stage of the post-revolutionary process. The basic 'democratic rights' of social security, education, medical care, the right to work, etc. have long been established, as have basic civil rights for national minorities and women. Obviously, private property in the means of socialized production is denied to individuals, as one would expect in a socialist society. Political participation, including membership in the single (Communist) Party, is open to all. The role of formal political participation in decision-making, as well as the tendency towards decentralization of decision-making, has been significantly increasing.&lt;ref group=&quot;9.&quot;&gt;Hough and Fainsod, 1979; Szymanski, 1979, ch. 5.&lt;/ref&gt; As one would expect from a socialist dictatorship 'of the Proletariat' (or 'of the people') the rights of public advocacy are limited to what is considered not to be destructive of the process of transition to Communism. Basic individual (level I) liberties, such as the right to leave one's job, find a new one, internal migration, free marriage and divorce, reproductive rights, religious belief, privacy, and so on, are, however, secure. Further, level II liberties of due process rights have become secure since the 1950s: predictable and fair treatment by the courts and police is now general. Emigration and international travel have become subject to less restriction as the accomplishments of the Soviet regime's domestic policies, and its high level of legitimacy, have resulted in such factors being less potentially harmful to further Soviet advance; relatively few people actually want to emigrate, and also the skills of the potential emigrés are not as vital as they were. In summary, the level of right in the Soviet Union closely approximates the classical Marxist-Leninist theory of post-revolutionary transformation and rights projected for a society of the Soviet type. By its own criteria the Soviet Union has to be considered successful.<br /> <br /> === State Power and Civil Liberty ===<br /> All states are primarily concerned with self-preservation, as are all dominant propertied classes. These general principles are independent of the mode of production, nature of the dominant class, or form of government. They apply equally to feudal, slave, capitalist and socialist societies; to absolute, and to constitutional monarchies, to military dictatorships, parliamentary democracies, governments based on workers' councils, and party systems, etc. A state may change its form by peaceful methods (for example, from military dictatorship to parliamentary institutions) but power is rarely transferred from one class to another peacefully and ''never'' transferred from the propertied class to the unpropertied class in a peaceful and non-coercive manner. States, by their very nature, are mechanisms of coercion, existing primarily to enforce particular forms of socio-political conduct upon their people; police, prisons and the army are the very core of the state.<br /> <br /> That all states, at all times, will concentrate their powers — police and ideological — upon self-preservation and the preservation of the dominant institutions of property may, in fact, be postulated as a law. To the extent possible the state will attempt to achieve this goal by engaging the support of those subject to its authority; and to the extent that persuasion fails to achieve this end, coercion will be applied to prevent its opponents from attempting to influence others, and to encourage the repression of such opponents in order to promote national unity and national mobilization. Those in power will endeavour to maintain their position by attempting to neutralize any organizations, individuals and ideologies that threaten their power.<br /> <br /> But police power is only one mechanism by which the state controls the people. The 'ideological State Apparatuses', that is, institutions such as schools, patriotic parades, political speeches, military training, the mass media, the churches, etc., convince, invoke and mobilize the people's support of the propertied classes right to property, and hostility towards the enemies of the propertied class and the state both in the form of domestic challenges and foreign interventions and wars. The state that relies primarily on police repression is weak, while that able primarily to rely on generating national, patriotic enthusiasm is strong;<br /> <br /> Social controls are essential for a society's survival. A viable society also needs a sufficient degree of consensus, or mutual tolerance, to facilitate the co-existence of people and sub-groups in fundamentally constructive ways. Thus, regardless of their class nature, all societies must take measures to control ideas which are seen as potentially powerful forces disruptive of the harmony necessary for societal survival. Subversive ideas and movements must be contained below the level of potential threat to social order, in capitalist societies, this means containing revolutionary socialist ideas and movements, in socialist societies, pro-capitalist ideas and movements, as well as other ideologies fundamentally disruptive of socialist construction must be contained; this includes suppression of racist, 'elitist' or other antidemocratic ideas which, especially in the period after a socialist revolution, can have a most pernicious effect on various social groups (owing to the legacy of pre-revolutionary ideology) as well as hinder the process of socialist construction. It also means that individualistic, anti-collectivist ideologies which hinder the transformation of human motivation, the project for the creation of new, more caring and co-operative people, must be suppressed.<br /> <br /> The denial of public advocacy rights to those opposed to the dominant system of power and property must be considered as 'a continuation of war by other means'. Ideological mobilization and the isolation of ideas and people that would affect popular mobilization negatively are an essential part of modern warfare, which, to be effective, requires massive, enthusiastic participation. Likewise, in the period following civil war or violent revolution, such mobilization and isolation are necessary in order to consolidate the victories and build a new social order — again, independently of the class nature of society. This applies to the post-French Revolutionary period and to the post-Russian Revolutionary period equally.<br /> <br /> The rules apply both to mobilization for external war and for revolutionary (or counter-revolutionary) civil war alike; the interests of military victory require a sufficient degree of popular mobilization, and hence the containment of opposition. Anything less indicates indecisiveness about the goals of the war, and increases the chances of defeat. General Westmoreland, the commander of the US expeditionary force in Vietnam, understood this well. Westmoreland argued that 'Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind. Television is an instrument that can paralyze this country' According to the ''New York Times'' dispatch 'General Westmoreland said that before the Vietnam War the military censored all news articles from a war zone so that they could not damage the morale of the troops and the public' He went on, according to ''The Times'', to argue; 'The armed forces cannot win wars without public support and thus should control the news media in wartime.'&lt;ref group=&quot;9.&quot;&gt;''New York Times'', 21 March 1982, p. 12.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> To show combat troops their opponent's propaganda films, or to present to them a purely neutral and objective appraisal of their opponent's positions, can only raise doubts about the legitimacy of the cause for which they are fighting. To present both sides tends to produce more 'tolerant' people, people less willing to sacrifice, less convinced, less effective troops, people less willing to change. Whether this is bad or good must, of course, be judged on the basis of the relative rightness or wrongness of the causes in contention. To have shown Nazi films to US GIs during World War II, resulting in greater understanding and tolerance for the Nazi cause, or KKK anti-Black films on US television, resulting in increased racism, would clearly be bad ''from the point of view'' of anti-fascism and anti-racism. Conversely, to have shown Viet Cong films to GIs during the Vietnam War, or films promoting Black-White solidarity would, ''from the point of view'' of national liberation or antiracism be good. Tolerance, then, is historically and class specific and must be judged according to its ''effects'' in retarding or promoting greater ''substantive'' freedom, i.e. the ability of working people to achieve dignity, a decent standard of living, and control over their lives and environment.<br /> <br /> Herbert Marcuse has argued:&lt;blockquote&gt;Withdrawal of tolerance from regressive movements before they can become active; intolerance even toward thought, opinion, and word, and finally, intolerance in the opposite direction, that is, toward the self-styled conservatives, to the political Right — these anti-democratic notions respond to the actual development of the democratic society which has destroyed the basis for universal tolerance. The conditions under which tolerance can again become a liberating and humanizing force have still to be created. When tolerance mainly serves the protection and preservation of a repressive society, when it serves to neutralize opposition and to render men immune against other and better forms of life, then tolerance has been perverted. And when this perversion starts in the mind of the individual, in his consciousness, his needs, when heteronomous interests occupy him before he can experience his servitude, then the efforts to counteract his dehumanization must begin at the place of entrance, there where the false consciousness takes form (or rather: is systematically formed) — it must begin with stopping the words and images which feed this consciousness.&lt;ref group=&quot;9.&quot;&gt;Marcuse, 1965, pp. 110-1.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Any state, any ruling group, any dominant class, will use coercion, including the suppression of basic civil liberties, to the extent that its ideological hegemony has broken down. Objectively, then, it makes little difference whether compliance with its interests is achieved by willing subordination or by force. The mechanisms of securing ideological hegemony or willing compliance not only accomplish the same purpose as overt repression, but are more effective in that they do not arouse antagonism, but objectively, they are repressive nonetheless. To overwhelm socialist, or other anti-system ideas, by a monopoly of the media, compulsory education, state co-ordinated patriotic campaigns and religious indoctrination all inculcating pro-system ideology, can most effectively produce compliance, especially when combined with isolation, by means of the denial of basic formal liberties, the active opponents of the system, in order to ensure a virtual monopoly of the means of creating ideology.<br /> <br /> All societies and all social groups socialize and pressure their members to perceive certain things as desirable and impart certain expectations about the probability and reasonableness of obtaining them. But freedom could in one sense be defined as the ability to get what one wants. Freedom of speech to say publicly whatever one wants; freedom of assembly to gather where and around whatever issues one wants; freedom of movement to travel wherever one wants, etc. If society succeeds in convincing us that we want only what it wants in all these cases, are we then truly more free than an individual who refuses to comply with social mores — assuming in both instances that to speak, assemble, etc. is contrary to social edicts. No, in the last instance the difference must be considered not one of degree of real freedom, but rather one of the ''effectiveness'' of socialization, social control or ideological hegemony.<br /> <br /> If there is formal freedom of expression in any media, but that structural and ideological constraints result in so few people using this freedom that no one pays attention and that it has no effect, what kind of freedom is this? If such freedom was so widely employed and elicited a response such that the ideological hegemony of the dominant group were to break down and the dominant property arrangements were thus threatened, then public advocacy would be repressed. Thus, the mere existence of formal freedom, which if employed effectively would be suppressed, cannot be considered as evidence of real freedom.<br /> <br /> To quote Chomsky and Herman:&lt;blockquote&gt;The beauty of the democratic systems of thought control, as contrasted with their clumsy totalitarian counterparts, is that they operate by subtly establishing on a voluntary basis — aided by the force of nationalism and media control by substantial interests — presuppositions that set the limits of debate, rather than by imposing beliefs with a bludgeon.<br /> <br /> The system of brainwashing under freedom, with mass media voluntary self-censorship in accord with the larger interests of the state, has worked brilliantly. The new propaganda line has been established by endless repetition of the Big Distortions and negligible grant of access to non-establishment points of view; all rendered more effective by the illusion of equal access and the free flow of ideas. US dissenters can produce their Samizdats freely, and stay out of jail, but they do not reach the general public or the Free Press except on an episodic basis.&lt;ref group=&quot;9.&quot;&gt;Chomsky and Herman, 1979b, pp. 30, 300.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;It can well be argued that the existence of formal freedoms, which are utilized by only an isolated few to challenge the dominant ideology and institutions, actually contribute to real ''un''freedom; that permitting a few people, who have little or no impact, to speak against the system is, in fact, more repressive of real freedom than the denial of that formal right. The existence of a few small newspapers, critical speakers, university professors or very small leftist parties on the ballot, implies that formal freedom is real, that people are free to choose, and, they ''do'', in fact, choose freely to accept the system. The repression of such formal freedom shows that the people are not free, and that those in power are afraid of critical ideas. To repress alternative ideas can both make them more attractive and generate sympathy for them, as well as strengthen the resolve of those who are repressed — if they feel strongly enough about their ideas. Such 'repressive tolerance' is an important mechanism whereby people in the West are convinced that they are free, and that those in the socialist countries are not. The focus on formal liberties, rather than on either substantive liberties, or on the degree to which people actually use, or are permitted to use, their formal freedom, the range of popular debate or the effect of the exercise of formal freedom, thus comes to serve the capitalist system, which since around 1950 has been very stable in the West, and very effective in preserving its ideological hegemony.<br /> <br /> Outside the approximately dozen wealthiest countries, however, the capitalist world cannot afford the luxury of 'repressive tolerance'. There the most brutal suppression of civil liberties is necessary in order to preserve the capitalist system, just as the most brutal suppression of civil liberties was necessary in the inter-war period, when the ideological hegemony of capitalist rule was no longer effective. The correlation between formal civil liberties/parliamentary forms and capitalism is actually very tenuous. During the 1940-80 period only eight capitalist countries (Australia, the Republic of Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States) maintained a continuous 40 year period of even formal civil liberties/parliamentary forms; and in most of these countries, especially during and after World War II, there has been significant repression of those who tried to exercise their rights of advocacy. In addition, four others (Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium) whose formal civil liberties/parliamentary forms were suspended owing to the Nazi invasion, should be included. Among more than 100 capitalist societies, these dozen wealthy, socially stable, advanced capitalist countries alone have experienced even that comparatively short period in which their people were permitted to exercise formal liberty of advocacy. This is clear evidence that the right of public advocacy in capitalist economic formations exists only in the absence of any challenge to privilege and property that may be effectively facilitated by the exercise of formal liberties.<br /> <br /> In the United States the cycles of tolerance and repression have been directly correlated to the degree of threat presented by movements against privilege and property, either because periods of severe economic or foreign policy crises threatened the hegemony of the capitalist class and/or because radical movements were growing in strength. Many of the peak periods of political repression in the US have been coincidental with times when the working class movement appeared to present a major threat — 1877, 1886, 1894 and 1919 — on each occasion major strikes had called social stability into question. Others coincided with the need to generate patriotic enthusiasm for America's wars: 1775-83; 1861-65; 1917-18; 1940-45; 1950-53; 1968-71. Generally, the intensity of repression has largely been a product of the degree of internal threat and the degree of solidarity that needed to be generated for war. Thus, the periods of strictest repression were during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and the 1917-23 period when the threat of working class radicalism was the greatest. The intense repression during 1917-19 was a result of the concomitant need to mobilize for wat, and the radical threat, a coincidence manifested in the absence of identification with the British-French side in the War by a significant proportion of the US working class born in Central and Eastern Europe, a not inconsequential sector sympathetic to the Bolshevik Revolution.<br /> <br /> It is instructive to examine the different state responses to radical leftist and radical rightist movements. Radical rightist movements have been subject to little or no interference except when they have engaged in overt violence, while leftist groups have been regularly and systematically repressed merely for advocacy of ideas. Historically, the US has permitted the activities of the KKK and other such racist and anti-socialist groups except when they were directly involved in killing and bombings.* The repression of leftist opposition to war (the US Revolution aside) has invariably been considerably harsher than similar rightist opposition. Many Confederate sympathizers were gaoled in the North during the Civil War, but few, if any, were executed, and the treatment of the defeated Confederate leaders was exceptionally mild (one execution) by any historical standards. Likewise, although a few Nazis were imprisoned during World War II, German sympathizers were treated very gently in comparison to the treatment of Soviet sympathizers either in the 1917-23 or 1948-55 periods. This differential treatment of right and left opponents (with the non-violent right virtually immune to persecution and, even when prosecuted, treated very mildly) stems from the fact that the radical right, unlike the radical left, generally ''shares'' the politically dominant capitalist class's positive evaluation of private property and class inequality, as well as a negative evaluation of socialism; it does not then present a systematic threat to the dominant system of power and privilege. Thus, a level of violence, talk of violence, opposition to wars, and so on by the radical right similar to that engaged in by the radical left, is normally treated cither as an ordinary ctime (dealt with on a case by case basis) or, in various degrees, tolerated by state officials sympathetic to their activities, especially when acts of terror against the left are involved. Such radical rightist activities, especially when mobilization for imperialist wars is needed, or working class/minority left threats need to be neutralized, is positively functional for the goals of the state and is often co-ordinated with official state repressive activities; for example, the activities of the American Legion during 1919-23. Fascist groups similarly served the ruling classes of Germany, Italy and the other European countries, both immediately after World War I, and again in the 1930s.<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;*The extent of their suppression even in such instances has, however, normally been far milder than that applied to such groups as the Black Panthers or the IWW when, in fact, the evidence for involvement in similarly violent activities was weaker.&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> === Factors Determining the Level of the Civil Liberty of Public Advocacy ===<br /> A considerable number of factors affect the degree to which public advocacy of ideas which oppose the dominant system of property and the state are tolerated or repressed. The two most important of these: (1) the intensity of the threat to dominant property forms, and (2) the extent of the need to mobilize the people for war, have already been treated at length. Other basic factors which affect all forms of societies are: (3) the strength of the ideological hegemony of the dominant class, and (4) the depth of feelings of popular offence at the violation of the symbols of societal solidarity.<br /> <br /> The state is less likely to suppress public advocacy of ideas that oppose the system if the vast majority of its people willingly subscribe to the legitimacy of the prevailing property system and, thereby, enhance the security of the propertied class.<br /> <br /> The stronger the sentiments of group solidarity — that is, patriotism, nationalism, socialism, religious feeling, and so on — and the deeper the emotional response of a people to the society, then spontaneous anger and outrage is the more readily aroused in the face of public expression of opposition to the fundamental symbols and values of that society. For example, the desecration of sacred objects among deeply religious people; the burning of a flag or substitution of profane words in a national anthem among deeply patriotic people; or stamping on a red banner among deeply socialist people, all tend to evoke the same response of spontaneous anger. Thus at times of the most deeply felt nationalist, religious, or socialist sentiment, the state is more likely to outlaw and actively suppress such public expressions of opposition, and further to ban mere verbal advocacy which is popularly regarded as profane.&lt;ref group=&quot;9.&quot;&gt;Durkheim, 1915.&lt;/ref&gt; This is so, even if there is little or no threat to the dominant institutions. In such cases, the state's response can be seen as an overkill — or even as 'irrational'.<br /> <br /> Other factors which are differentially specific to various types of society include: (1) the relative size of the dominant and dominated groups; (2) the desire to transform the character and consciousness of a people, in contrast to merely conserving the status quo; (3) the relative levels of expectations and skills in a repressed, but formerly dominant group, compared to a new dominant group; and (4) the extent of reliance on moral incentives and ideological mobilization, in contrast to economic incentives and physical coercion.<br /> <br /> We would expect, other things being equal, that the smaller the group that benefits from the operation of a society, and the larger the group that is potentially mobilizable by a challenge to the prevailing property forms, then the greater the level of repression of the advocacy rights of those who attack the dominant property system. Other things being equal, we would expect that the level of repression will be greater in capitalist or other societies with a relatively small dominant group, than in socialist societies where the vast majority of people benefit from the prevailing property system, and thus the threat to the dominant system of property is necessarily less. Accordingly, we find that repression of public advocacy in Latin America, as well as in much of East Asia in the 1970s, was qualitatively greater than that in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, or Cuba.<br /> <br /> We would expect that a dominant group interested merely in conserving the status quo, and not in transforming people, concerned rather to demobilize or depoliticize them, in encouraging them to focus on the problems of their daily life, traditional antagonisms, parochial interests, individualist pursuits and so on, can thus, other things being equal, allow a greater degree of tolerance for diverse viewpoints, whose expression, being highly diverse (right, left and centre) makes systematic change in any direction difficult. On the other hand, a regime that is intent upon popular mobilization in order to transform the people, must limit the range of tolerance, in order to ensure the enthusiasm necessary for transformation. Thus, the Jacobin regime during the French Revolution was necessarily more repressive than its Monarchist predecessor, just as the Bolsheviks in the post-revolutionary generation were necessarily more repressive than their Czarist predecessor. Once there is popular acceptance of a new consciousness, a new way of relating and new values, the level of tolerance can increase, but until then, a too wide level of tolerance can only neutralize and undermine the effort to create a new consciousness.<br /> <br /> Upper- and middle-class groups which, for a considerable time have been displaced by a popular revolution, continue to have expectations of regaining their positions of power and privilege. Further, the average level of their speaking, writing, organizing, etc. skills is much higher than that of average peasants and workers. Such people, too, have been socialized into the habit of command and have acquired leadership skills, while peasants and workers have mainly been conditioned for subordinate roles, respect of authority, and so on. Consequently, by using their superior skills and abilities, a traditional elite may more easily rule workers and peasants, than can workers and peasants dominate a former elite. There is, therefore, greater need for stricter repression by a working people's state over the old ruling groups and of ideologies which reflect the interests of such groups, than for a traditional elite to restrict the public advocacy of working people and peasants. In classical Marxist terminology a period of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' is necessary during which time the previously dominant groups lower their expectations of a counterrevolutionary reversal and come to terms with their situation; and, concomitantly, the working people acquire leadership skills and confidence in their ability to rule. Meanwhile, a new generation is raised, in which propensities to be dominated or to dominate are absent, and which enthusiastically accepts the basic principles of a democratic and co-operative socialist order.<br /> <br /> Societies that employ ideological mobilization or moral incentives, rather than relying primarily on economic incentives or force, to ensure that workers produce and the people in general make a positive contribution to society, will probably need to restrict public challenges to ideological mobilization more severely than will societies that place less reliance on moral incentives. The greater the importance of the prevailing ideology to the general system of social control and motivation, the more important that it shall be secured and advanced. The less important is ideological mobilization for a society, the more tolerant it can be of publicly expressed attacks which undermine ideological hegemony. In capitalist societies the fear of unemployment, the attraction of promotions and pay raises, etc., serve to motivate economic performance, and fear of the negative consequences often motivate people to obey the laws. In socialist societies, which guarantee everyone a job, where pay differentials are less, social security is more advanced, and people are mobilized in good part to police and administer themselves, economic incentives and physical constraints are less important. Instead, ideological mobilization, the generation of enthusiasm, what the Cubans call ''consciencia'' is more central; hence, the fundamental importance of containing threats to the dominant ideology:.<br /> <br /> In addition to the eight social forces that lead to the limiting of advocacy rights there are also a number of general social forces that lead to the widening of tolerance. First is the positive effect of an exchange of ideas on the development of new, creative and positive solutions to problems facing a society. The greater the restrictions on advocacy, other things being equal, the more likely a society is to stagnate and fail to develop original and useful responses to its problems. The greater the width and depth of expression the greater the chance for innovations to be developed. The greater the suppression of ideas, the greater the intimidation of those who might well have good ideas. The maximal solution to the problem of encouraging creativity in the development of positive solutions to social problems, under conditions where significant restrictions on advocacy are necessary, is to impose broad but clear limits on what is and what is not considered to be destructive, thereby repressing clearly negative contributions without inhibiting positive diversity. Soviet policy seems to be aimed at achieving this. But the greater a society's need for innovation, the greater is the range of advocacy rights likely to be practiced.<br /> <br /> A second general force leading to the expansion of civil liberties is the ''legitimating effect'' of free expression versus the ''delegitimizing effect'' of its denial. Those with divergent opinions who are prohibited from expressing them publicly may develop resentment against their society that could well lead to broader and more fundamental opposition. Conversely, those who are enabled to express themselves freely, even if with little effect, are less likely to blame the social institutions for their problems and thus are less likely to become alienated from society. Social stability can be enhanced by allowing people to 'let off steam' that otherwise might prove the more socially dangerous if repressed and thus generate bitterness and resentment; advocacy rights (as well as emigration) perform a 'safety valve' function. Other things being equal, then all societies — to the extent possible — will expand the range of permissible opinions, if only to decrease the potential social discontent consequent upon formal prohibitions on expression.<br /> <br /> In the case of minority ruling class societies this is 'repressive tolerance', the latitude for expression of divergent opinions in order to convince people that they are really free when they in fact are not. Socialist countries (for example, China during the Cultural Revolution, or the Soviet Union in the early 1950s) which prescribed excessively narrow limits on freedom of expression — limits subject to sudden change with formerly prohibited opinions becoming acceptable, and vice versa — are likely to generate popular disaffection, cynicism and scepticism about the wisdom of the leaders. A state is wiser to allow as wide a range of opinions as is compatible with socialist construction in order to prevent undermining the credibility of the system by changes in the Party's line. Further, to permit the expression of all ideas, short of challenging the fundamental postulates of socialism, encourages the people's positive creativity and enables the government (and Party) to be more responsive to their needs.<br /> <br /> A third force leading to the expansion of advocacy rights is the degree of structural diversity of the dominant groups. The more economically diverse the ruling group, the more necessary is free debate and expression among them in order for compromises to be worked out, and to create solidarity and avoid a sense of alienation or oppression within any sub-group. Thus, within class societies, the most developed parliamentary forms and civil liberties for the propertied classes have occurred in commercial societies in general and in capitalist societies in particular. Ancient Athens, the medieval city states, Holland, England, etc., were the cradles both of civil liberties and modern parliamentary forms (for the propertied classes). The modern idea of formal freedom of assembly, speech, demonstration, writing and religion (as well as of emigration) originated in the most commercial of Western societies. The upper class in such societies was considerably more diverse than that in feudal or slave societies where the interests of all members of the upper class tended to be pretty much the same, thus requiring much less divergent expression and compromise to achieve common policies and maintain stability. Commercial societies consist of a wide range of financiers, industrialists, producers of raw materials, transport owners, consumer goods capitalists, etc., each with divergent and partially contradictory interests, each generating somewhat different ideologies and ideas. Modern Western tolerance, then, is in good part a product of commercialism (and capitalism), ''but'' it is tolerance within the limits of what a stable commercial class society requires.<br /> <br /> Fourthly, the free expression of opinions provides those in power elite or decision-making positions in any society important information about social conditions, especially discontent among the masses of people, information which is largely denied to them to the extent that free expression is repressed. Thus, the broader the range of public expression the more accurate the information available to a decision-making elite, and thus the sounder are its decisions, from its own point of view, in a capitalist or pre-capitalist class society, this means that free expression of ideas serves as a 'barometer of discontent', warning the ruling group that trouble is brewing, and that appropriate reforms or repressive measures should be undertaken in order to prevent the transformation of verbal discontent into more practical opposition,. In authentically state socialist societies, this means that the party, government and economic leaders, are better enabled to understand the concerns and problems of the people, the better to modify policies and thus have the state and party better serve the people, correcting abuses, and when necessary, explaining more effectively to the people the need for sacrifices or the cause of difficulties, thus generating greater support and undermining the causes of delegitimization.&lt;ref group=&quot;9.&quot;&gt;See Mao Tse-tung, 1957.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The fifth and final factor that affects the degree of tolerance in a society is the ability of the politically dominant group to effectively repress its opponents without precipitating large scale social disorders ot otherwise endangering its rule. At times the dominated classes/minotity groups in a society have been able to extract significant concessions from the politically dominant groups because of their ability to disrupt society; such concessions typically include freedom to organize parties in radical opposition to the dominant values and maintain media in sharp opposition to the state. In US history, perhaps the clearest example of this was the institutionalization of the Constitution in the late 1780s. Because of widespread discontent with the ability of the loose, post-Revolutionary state to deal with the threats to the dominant propertied interests in the new United States (slave revolts in the South, small farmer revolts in the North, Indians in the West, pirates on the high seas) and advance propertied interests — by protective tariffs, common markets, patent protection, regulation of money, guarantee of debt, isolation of the courts, executive and legislature from popular pressures for egalitarian measures, etc. — a federal Constitution was drafted by representatives of the wealthy, northern merchants and the southern slaveowners. This draft document was submitted to the states for ratification, but failed to achieve a popular majority because of its obvious class bias. In order to gain a majority for ratification in four of the decisive states (including New York, Virginia and Massachusetts, the three most populous) the designers of the document had to agree to make some significant modifications, namely, to add ten ''amendments'': the so called Bill of Rights. This 'Bill of Rights' guaranteed to the small farmers the right to assembly, speech, religion, arms, etc; rights which were ''not'' mentioned in the body of the document. The Bill of Rights was a concession to this class, made necessary by their ability to block the major reorganization of the state in the interests of the wealthy classes that the Constitution represented.&lt;ref group=&quot;9.&quot;&gt;Charles Beard, 1913; Louis Hacker, 1940.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The relatively high degree of tolerance of the left in the 1933-39 period in the US, a period of severe economic crisis which, at other times in the US, and at that time throughout almost all the rest of the world, was associated with severe repression of the left, was a product of the Roosevelt New Deal coalition between progressive capital and the labour movement — within which socialists of various kinds played an important role. It should be noted that in the 1935-39 period the rapidly growing US Communist Party pretty much supported Roosevelt, submerging, meantime, its radical critique of American society. In the period 1941-45, when the Party was allowed to operate freely, it did everything possible to mobilize the US working class behind the War effort. Thus, during 1935-39 and 1941-45 the dominant Marxist movement in the US objectively operated in the interests of capital, both in helping to organize the working class into non-revolutionary unions (a process opposed by the majority of US capital at the time, even though it was in the interests of the capitalist system) and mobilizing for the War; there was, then, no need to repress it. This contrasts sharply with the pre-1935, 1939-41 and post-'47 periods when the thrust of the Communist Party was in sharp opposition to the dominant, domestic propertied interests, as well as foreign imperialist wars: consequently, it was sharply repressed. The situation in France during the Popular Front period of 1936-38 was similar to that in the US from 1935-39.<br /> <br /> There were similar periods of a high level of tolerance for classes/organizations in opposition to the dominant system of property in Western Europe in the post-World War II years, where the need to stabilize and reindustrialize socially and economically devastated societies required cooperation between anti-fascist capital and the Marxist parties. In return for their co- operation the organization of the working class was facilitated by the European governments between 1944 and 1947. In the post-1947 period, in return for their absence of support of revolutionary activity, Marxist organizations were tolerated wherever they were strong, in Italy and France, for example. To reconstruct France or Italy without the co-operation of the Communists in the earlier post-War period would have been difficult; an attempt to repress them in the post-1947 years would probably have resulted in civil war. This policy, first of co-operation, then, because of the prolonged period of prosperity after 1947, tolerance/isolation, successfully neutralized the potential revolutionary bite of the Western European Communist movements without formal repression. In Greece, however, where the Communists refused to co-operate in reconstruction and instead pursued social revolution, they were violently repressed.<br /> <br /> Thirteen factors, determining the level of limitation/tolerance of public advocacy in a society, are summarized below:<br /> <br /> 1) The greater the domestic threat from any movement that attacks the basic system of property and privilege, the less the tolerance of public advocacy that challenges the system.<br /> <br /> 2) The greater the need to mobilize people for war (especially civil war) or overseas intervention, or the greater the threat from external powers, the less will public advocacy of anti-war ideas be tolerated.<br /> <br /> 3) The less secure the ideological hegemony of the dominant class, the less the willing acceptance of the prevailing property and political arrangements, the less the tolerance of public advocacy of ideas that attack property and the state.<br /> <br /> 4)  The greater the popular feelings that the symbols of the society (the flag, patriotic myths, heroes, etc.) are sacrosanct, the greater the sentiments of group solidarity, the greater the emotional enthusiasm, then the lesser the tolerance of public advocacy that attacks or profanes these symbols.<br /> <br /> 5) The fewer the number of people benefiting and the greater the number of people suffering from the operation of a society, the less the tolerance of public advocacy of ideas opposed to the system.<br /> <br /> 6) Regimes which need to dominate former ruling groups with high levels of expectations about returning to power, and high levels of organizational and mobilization skills, are less tolerant of oppositional views than regimes that dominate those with lower levels of expectations and organizational and mobilization skills.<br /> <br /> 7) The more the dominant group of a society is concerned to change (as opposed to preserve) popular consciousness and conduct, the less is public advocacy of anti-system ideas tolerated.<br /> <br /> 8) The more a society relies on moral incentives or ideological mobilization (as opposed to economic incentives and physical coercion) to motivate labour and social contributions, the greater the need to secure the dominant ideology, the lesser the tolerance of conflicting ideologies.<br /> <br /> 9) The greater a society's need for innovation, the greater will be the tolerance of ideas that challenge the system; because the lower the level or tolerance, the less likely are useful and original responses to society's problems to develop and stagnation avoided.<br /> <br /> 10) The greater the economic diversity of the ruling group, the greater the need for open debate and free expression of diverse opinions within it to enable compromises to be negotiated and solidarity maintained. Hence, the greater the level of tolerance of diverse opinions within ruling groups, such as in parliamentary forms and formal public advocacy rights developed in the most commercial societies.<br /> <br /> 11) The corollary of the need for decision-makers in any society to be aware of potential social discontent, etc., is social tolerance of freely expressed opinions; that is, the maintenance of public advocacy rights as a 'barometer of discontent'.<br /> <br /> 12) The public expression of ideas which fail to have a significant social effect serves as a 'safety-valve' for discontent and to legitimate the existing power structure, since such tolerance seems to be 'proof' of freedom. This process has been called 'repressive tolerance' since such formal freedom, in fact, weakens substantive freedom. To formally prohibit the expression of ideas generates potentially dangerous resentments that 'freedom' of expression, even if ineffectual, successfully neutralizes.<br /> <br /> 13) The greater the danger that repression may precipitate large scale social disorder, the greater will be the level of tolerance for those fundamentally opposed to the system to express their ideas publicly.<br /> <br /> For the reasons outlined in theses (11) and (12) under stable conditions societies will tend to expand the range of tolerated opinions in order to strengthen the existing power structure.<br /> <br /> The changes over time in the degree of formal advocacy rights in a given society, or the variation among societies of a given type, is a product of the changes in the relative strength of the above 13 factors. The degree of tolerance and repression then has nothing whatsoever to do with constitutions, national character, abstract civil libertarian commitments, authoritarian personalities, megalomania, totalitarianism, irrationality, traditional intolerance, 'iron laws of oligarchy' etc.<br /> <br /> Thus, in Soviet society, the significant increase in tolerance from the 1930s to 1940s and the 1960s to 1970s would seem to be largely a product of the diminished external threat, the consolidation of the ideological hegemony of socialism, the effective demoralization of old dominant groups, and the reduction of the threat of domestic opposition. Throughout US history, the radical fluctuations in tolerance are a product of periodic involvement in foreign wars, the variation in the domestic threat to private property, and fluctuations in the ideological hegemony of the propertied class. The contemporary variation among the capitalist countries, for example, Guatemala, Uruguay, Indonesia, in contrast to Britain, US 1980 etc., is owing to the far greater level of ideological hegemony of capitalist institutions and the far lesser domestic threat from internal revolutionary forces in the latter countries.<br /> <br /> The somewhat higher level of formal public advocacy in the US compared to the USSR today would seem primarily to be as a result of: (1) the ongoing Soviet project to create 'Soviet Man', that is, to develop a collective consciousness in its people, in contrast to American capitalism's aim to perpetuate an individual, competitive  consciousness; (2) the continuing, greater international pressure on the Soviet Union (as the second strongest, and relatively isolated, world power) than on the US; (3) the continued need for Soviet socialism to constrain the highly skilled and often ambitious professional intelligentsia, and induce them to serve the working people rather than themselves; (4) the Soviet's greater reliance on popular mobilization and ideological incentives to motivate workers to work and the people in general to perform their roles in society, in contrast to the purely economic incentives operative in the US; (5) among wide sectors of the Soviet population, there is apparently a strong emotional attachment to Soviet institutions, and thus a deep, spontaneous sense of outrage in the face of dissident criticisms, whereas in the US, for example, at least in the 1970s, emotional commitment to the patriotic cause appears to have been weaker.<br /> <br /> === The Class Basis of Civil Liberties ===<br /> In the words of Leon Whipple: 'Whoever has power has civil liberties'. Lenin expressed the same principle: 'In the final analysis, force alone settles the great problems of political liberty'.&lt;ref group=&quot;9.&quot;&gt;Lenin, 1905, Vol. I, p. 499.&lt;/ref&gt; To pose the question in terms of 'Freedom' versus 'repression' is, in the last analysis incorrect, for in the real world, the freedom of one group to realize their interests implies the suppression of another's.<br /> <br /> Liberty is class based. Christopher Cauldwell has argued:&lt;blockquote&gt;What, to the proletarian is liberty — the extermination of those bourgeois institutions and relations which hold them in captivity — is necessarily compulsion and restraint to the bourgeois, just as the old bourgeois liberty generated non-liberty for the worker. The two notions of liberty are irreconcilable. Once the proletariat is in power, all attempts to re-establish bourgeois social relations will be attacks on proletarian liberty, and will therefore be repulsed as fiercely as men repulse all attacks on their liberty. This is the meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and why, with it, there is censorship, ideological acerbity, and all the other devices developed by the bourgeois in the evolution of the coercive state which secures its freedom.&lt;ref group=&quot;9.&quot;&gt;Cauldwell, 1971, pp. 201-2&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;How does one judge the superiority of right? Is the right to live in whatever country one wants superior to the right to adequate health care? Is the right of a doctor to emigrate from a less developed socialist country in order to earn $75,000 a year in a highly developed capitalist country superior to the right of a peasant child to be cured of a potentially fatal disease? Right, then, is a class question. A poor country, which makes a socialist revolution must, of necessity, bring its intellectuals and professionals to serve the needs of the people by restricting their relative privileges, and reorienting them towards meeting the needs of the poor. From an upper middle-class doctor's viewpoint, it is entirely proper that he/she should have the right to emigrate to any country he chooses at any time. But from the point of view of the peasantry (whose labour has provided the means for him or her to receive medical training) it is right to demand that their needs be served rather than, for example, those of middle-class Americans. In general, this same argument applies to skilled workers and professionals from poor countries who emigrate to the wealthier countries which can pay them much more. It is a question of right versus right: a class question.<br /> <br /> The claim by one group of the superiority of its right in relation to that of another group cannot be based on abstract and absolute criteria, but rather only on which claim to right is more progressive at a given time. That is upon which best realizes the substantive freedom of the most people, which generates the best standard of living for all, the highest level of human dignity, the most advanced social services and social security, the greatest participation in the decisions that affect one's life. This applies to conflicting claims about property rights (as between feudal landlords, capitalists and workers), about the legitimacy of state power, and to conflicting arguments about the repression of formal liberties. The liberty of the capitalist class to say whatever it likes, go wherever it likes, etc., conflicts with the right of the working people to say whatever they like, go wherever they like, etc., as becomes vividly clear in times of instability, war, and decline of capitalist ideological hegemony, when typically, formal freedoms are suspended. One class's 'freedom' of expression and action necessarily conflicts with another's, as does the freedom of white racists to make anti-Black propaganda necessarily conflict with the freedom of Blacks to civil rights and liberties. The question, therefore, devolves upon whether, at a given time, the predominance of capital over feudalism, of capital over the working class, of the working class over capital, is more, or less, progressive.<br /> <br /> Who is to decide upon the limits of 'free speech' must, then, be answered in terms of which social group, which class's liberties, are the most progressive at any given time. At the time of the bourgeois revolution against feudalism, the representatives of the bourgeoisie decided. At the time of the socialist revolution against capitalism and imperialism, the representatives of the working people decide. Some ''class'' always decides. It is a question only of ''which'' class. Not until a truly classless society, a society without a state, without the means to suppress anyone's civil liberties, comes into being will tolerance of all opinions become, in itself, a progressive and reasonable goal. Only then, when ideas are no longer class based, when basic racist, sexist, individualist, elitist prejudices have been virtually eliminated, when all people have been fully socialized into cooperative social relationships, can there be a truly 'free marketplace of ideas' where ideas can be judged on their own merits, and not on the basis of class interests and implanted prejudices, and thus the situation in which no one should or can decide for others the limits of freedom truly viable.<br /> <br /> === Disinformation and the Cold War ===<br /> As part of national mobilization, each major state will attempt to develop support for its position among those subject to its authority, to undermine support for its competitor states among those subject to their authority, and to win supporters from around the world in its struggle for the system it represents. A primary way to do this is to portray ones own state as the repository, representative and defender of all that is good in civilization. In previous centuries, religion above all else served this purpose.<br /> <br /> In the 20th Century, especially since 1945, the central mobilizing ideas have been 'liberation' and the right to make the decisions that affect one's life — that is, 'freedom'. Both the Communist movement and the 'West', whose leading nation states have been the USSR and the USA respectively, have appealed to sentiments of liberation and self-determination to mobilize the world's people. Both portray themselves as the true defenders of 'real' freedom. However, the specific definition of liberation and self-determination employed by the two competing world systems differs. The US defines freedom in terms of the existence of multi-party parliamentary forms, the existence of formal civil liberties to publicly express opinions in any media without state interference, the right to emigrate, and the right to own and dispose of property in the means of production in any way those with the requisite material resources choose. The Soviets and the world Communist movement (in all its factions) define freedom in terms of the substance of state policies serving the interests of working people, rather than an elite propertied class.<br /> <br /> The Marxist tradition maintains that in a socialist society, advocacy rights should be permitted only to those who offer basically constructive criticism, while such rights should be denied to those opposed to the system, that is, following the traditional theory of 'the Dictatorship of the Proletariat', subversive views should be contained. The majority of non-Socialist states do not formally differ on this point. Almost all the non-Socialist countries of Latin America, Asia, Africa, Europe between the World Wars, and the US in its Red Scare periods, have denied the basic rights of public advocacy to Communists and other anti-capitalist 'subversives'. In times of stability and strong popular support, however, wealthy Western capitalist states, unlike states in the less developed world, are able to maintain parliamentary forms and retain a reasonably high degree of formal advocacy rights. In such times the West criticizes socialist countries on the grounds that they repress formal civil liberties and defines itself as 'free, unlike the USSR'. Such was the basic theme of the Carter administration's Human Rights campaign. Its aim was to generate international support for the cause of the US (a cause that had suffered greatly as a result of US intervention and defeat in Vietnam, and the victorious wave of national liberation movements throughout the less developed world) while attempting to reverse the concomitant significant increase in popular support for the Soviet Union as defender and supplier of so many of these movements.<br /> <br /> The Soviet system has proved itself to be superior to the US economic system as a means to develop poor countries, as an efficient industrial system and in its ability to distribute the economic product fairly. The Soviet rate of economic growth per capita in the 1960-70 period was 1.9 times that of the US; and 2.5 times greater over 1970-77. The annual rate of economic growth per capita of all the centrally planned economies in the 1970-77 period was 5.0%. This compares with 2.3% for all the developed market economies; 3.4% for Latin America; 2.5% for Africa; and 2.7% for the market economies of South and Southeast Asia.&lt;ref group=&quot;9.&quot;&gt;See Szymanski, 1981, Table 10.1.&lt;/ref&gt; Projecting the trends in economic growth per capita into the future, and assuming that the 1970s growth rates in the Soviet and US persist for another 30 or so years, the USSR would reach the 1977 per capita income level of the USA in approximately the year 1995 and actually catch up with the USA around the year 2010.<br /> <br /> The economic distribution of goods within the socialist countries is considerably more egalitarian than in the capitalist countries. In the USSR in 1975 the ratio of the wage exceeded by the top 10% to that [wage] exceeded by 90% was 2.9, while in the US it was 6.2. The astronomical incomes of the richest few thousand Americans are non-existent in the USSR.&lt;ref group=&quot;9.&quot;&gt;See Szymanski, 1979, pp. 64-6.&lt;/ref&gt; Around 1970 the top 5% of households in the German Democratic Republic had 9.2% of total income while the top 20% had 30.7%. This compares with the equivalent figures of 16.6% and 45.7% in the USA; and 37.8% and 63.2% in Mexico at the same time; that is, in the US the richest 5% had 1.8 times more, and in Mexico 4.1 times more, of the total national income than they did in socialist Germany.&lt;ref group=&quot;9.&quot;&gt;Ibid., Table 10.13.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> It is becoming increasingly difficult to convince the people of the world, especially the working people of the less developed countries, that Western capitalism is superior to Soviet socialism on economic grounds. The Soviets are clearly demonstrating that their system can 'deliver the goods'. Part of the West's claim for superiority is, however, still based on the fallacious argument that the standard of living in the West is higher than in the Socialist countries, and correspondingly, that the West's higher standard of living is a result of capitalism. But the West's higher living standards are solely the outcome of advanced capitalist countries' higher level of development when the competition with the socialist system began; neither did they experience anything approaching the level of World War II devastation wrought in the East. As differentials in the standard of living between the East and the West diminish, as the superior growth rates of the socialist countries have their effect, the fallaciousness of this argument becomes obvious.<br /> <br /> Likewise, in terms of basic social welfare, the Soviet system has proved to be far superior to those capitalist countries at the same level of economic development. In terms of basic humaneness and consideration for the day-to-day needs of its people, it would be impossible for the West successfully to compete against the Soviets.<br /> <br /> The one area in which the West can still make a credible case for superiority is in the realm of 'freedom'. Freedom to publish or read anything without restraint, and freedom to attempt to become rich, are the two most important.<br /> <br /> It is no accident that day after day the Western mass media gives prominent attention to the dissidents in the Soviet Union, to the attempted 'escapes' from the German Democratic Republic, to the flight of 'boat people' from Vietnam, the restrictions on books at the Moscow International Book Fair, and so on. But these events are virtually insignificant in comparison with the denial of civil liberties, massive deaths through repression, malnutrition and preventable disease, and other sufferings in US-supported states in Asia and Latin America. The relative handful of Soviet dissidents have been elevated to the status of international heroes and their every proclamation circulated around the world, but hardly anyone in the US realizes that repression is qualitatively greater in US client states, and that very few know the names of any of the hundreds of thousands of people murdered for their political beliefs by 'friendly' governments in these countries in recent years.<br /> <br /> The prominent media and US government concern with 'Human Rights' in the late 1970s, and in a somewhat different way in the early 1980s, was an attempt to resuscitate the cold war with the Soviet Union in order to mobilize the US people to willingly support measures necessary to once again facilitate the US's effective intervention in Asia, Africa and Latin America (and, when necessary, in Europe). After a virtual stalemate since 1949, national liberation movements have made considerable advances since the 1975 victory of the Vietnamese. Not only South Vietnam, Kampuchea and Laos, but also Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan have acquired revolutionary anti-imperialist regimes. In 1978 and 1979, Iran, Nicaragua and Grenada overthrew conservative, US-sponsored regimes, indicating that revolutionary waves could soon spread throughout both the Near East and the Caribbean — and all of Latin America. The best strategy for the US is to portray the rising wave of revolution (Communist and non-Communist led) as Soviet inspired, and thus to mobilize American and world opinion against the Soviet Union, and thereby enable the US state to reinstitute the draft, increase military spending (on conventional as well as nuclear arms) and above all, reverse the 'post-Vietnam syndrome' of resistance to the use of US troops to intervene against revolutions in the less developed countries.<br /> <br /> The 'loss' of Vietnam left a dangerous residue of distaste among the American people for similar interventions. A residue that has seriously obstructed the US's ability to prevent leftist developments in Angola, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, and elsewhere from taking place. The Soviet Union has been a major arms supplier, as well as a source of ideological inspiration and political support for most of the recent revolutions, thus making credible the attempt to identify liberation movements with the USSR. Central to the US campaign to mobilize the American people's support for future interventions was the 'Human Rights' campaign's focus on the limitations on advocacy rights in the USSR, a campaign based on a gross distortion of world reality in the interests of US imperalism. Support for regimes such as those of Thieu in Vietnam, Marcos in the Philippines, Park in South Korea, the military dictatorships of Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Indonesia and Thailand is thus generated in the name of 'freedom'. Such regimes are anti-Communist and anti-Soviet, and take the measures necessary to prevent Communist revolution (which would, 'as in the Soviet Union, deny civil liberties'). Thus virtual 'non-issues' such as the judicious suppression (by historical standards) of the dissident movement in the USSR are employed to obscure the really central issue in the world today — the ongoing struggles of the world's people for national liberation and socialism.<br /> <br /> To quote Chomsky and Herman:&lt;blockquote&gt;The success of the Free Press in reconstructing imperial ideology since the US withdrawal from Indochina has been spectacular. The shift of the United States from causal agent to concerned bystander — and even to leader in the world struggle for human rights — in the face of its empire of client fascism and long vicious assault on the peasant societies of Indochina, is a remarkable achievement. The system of brainwashing under freedom, with mass media voluntary self-censorship in accord with the larger interests of the state, has worked brilliantly. The new propaganda line has been established by endless repetition of the Big Distortions....<br /> <br /> There is, to be sure, an element of absurdity in the constant refrain that socialism equals Gulag, as revealed by events in the underdeveloped societies. A comparison of the problems facing such societies as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Mozambique, etc., with the situation in the industrial West would simply be ridiculed in societies that were not subjected to such effective ideological control as ours. But despite the inherent absurdity of attributing say, revenge killings by Cambodian peasants who were bombed out of their homes by Western force to 'Marxism' or 'atheism', the practice is common and quite successful as a tactic in engineering consent to the priorities and structures of contemporary state capitalism.&lt;ref group=&quot;9.&quot;&gt;Chomsky and Herman, 1979b, pp. 297-300.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> === Trends in Rights in Capitalist and Socialist Societies ===<br /> Owing to the different levels of economic development of Western Europe/the USA/Japan and the Eastern European Socialist countries/Cuba/China/Vietnam, etc., and because of the problems of developing socialist institutions under conditions of systematic opposition by the militarily and economically strongest powers* any comparison between the two sets of countries is necessarily heavily biased in favour of the West. With only 65 years to validate socialist institutions, starting from a very poor economic base without any external assistance, comparisons with the USA which, in 1917, was the richest society in the world, and in 1945 had 50% of the world's GNP, as well as unquestioned military superiority (including a monopoly on atomic weapons) and allies everywhere, are heavily loaded against the USSR. Nevertheless, even with these disadvantages the Soviets have done remarkably well in ''all'' areas of basic rights and freedoms.<br /> <br /> &lt;small&gt;* And for the Soviet Union, the absence of any concrete example to guide policy, two major military interventions by the Western powers, and the need to keep up militarily with the USA.&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> What can be expected (barring a general nuclear catastrophe, tragically a very real possibility), over the next generation in the two sets of countries? With the economic differential in rates of growth and increases in working-class living standards becoming greater in the Soviet Union, with the legitimacy of Soviet institutions showing signs of growth rather than deterioration, and the urbanization and industrialization of Soviet society almost completed, a further increase in economic and participatory rights, as well as in advocacy rights in the USSR can be anticipated. There would appear to be no obstacle to the acceleration of the tendency to increase popular participation at all levels of Soviet society. Likewise, given the system's high level of legitimacy and the decreasing threat of externally supported subversion (as the military and economic power of the Soviet Union in relation to the West increases) there is every reason to project a continuing expansion of the level of tolerance. Economic and social security should also continue to be enhanced. The social wage should continue to increase as a proportion of total consumption, with more and more goods and services provided on the basis of the communist principle of right. The quality of such public services as child care, medicine, and housing will undoubtedly improve, since the quantity of services currently available has finally approximated public demand, that is, intensive rather than extensive strategies of providing goods and services should increasingly predominate.<br /> <br /> Future developments in basic economic rights (social and economic security security) as well as the continuation of the formal rights of political participation and the rather high level of formal advocacy rights characteristic of the advanced capitalist countries in the 1960s and 1970s is contingent upon the continued ability of Western capitalism to prosper and increase the living standards of working people. In the early 1980s, however, there are strong indications that Western capitalism's ability to continually improve living standards has significantly declined, if it has not actually reversed. The expansion of social security/welfare systems, and the continuation of formal political participation/civil liberties in the West in the post-World War II period has been contingent on an 'expanding pie', and consequently on there being no need for the capitalist class to cut down working class living standards. A consequence which would produce a legitimation crisis and, perhaps, a popular anti-capitalist movement which would necessitate a wave of repression of advocacy rights and restrictions on formal participation; such a development would be a repetition of what occurred in most capitalist countries in the 1930s, and in most non-European capitalist countries in the 1970s.<br /> <br /> Movements to curtail social services are becoming increasingly prominent in Western countries (for example, Denmark, the United Kingdom, the United States) as it becomes clear that growing social services are undermining capital accumulation. Funds contributed to popular consumption are not invested, and goods provided as a matter of right (as well as growing job rights) undermine the work incentive of workers, and hence result in lowering productivity.<br /> <br /> The creeping economic crisis of the advanced capitalist countries manifested in a declining rate of productivity increase, declining rates of growth in living standards, the rapid increase in unemployment, and accelerating inflation, could — in an attempt to boost productivity and the funds available for investment, and hence raise profitability and accelerate the capital accumulation process — result in a major reversal of the economic security advances of the post-World War II period. The response to such cut backs in economic rights as well as the stagnation, if not decline, in working class living standards could conceivably be manifested in either a revival of working class radicalism or of massive fascist movements.<br /> <br /> As typically happens in the face of 'social disorders' and growing anti-capitalist movements, it can be expected that the extraordinarily high level of political tolerance and civil liberties characteristic of Western Europe in the post-World War II generation will be undermined. Parliamentary forms will possibly be abolished or greatly constricted in the least prosperous and potentially most unstable of the countries (Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and perhaps France, Germany, Ireland and even the UK) as indeed they were in most cases in the pre-World War II period.<br /> <br /> In the area of minority civil rights, the tendency for the Western capitalist countries to increase the rights of minorities seems to have reached its peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The United Kingdom has progressively adopted more restrictive immigration policies, as has most of continental Europe. Little improvement in the position of Asian, African and Southern European immigrants in Northern Europe should be expected; especially vis-à-vis economic rights, pressure to expel and to increase restrictions on immigrants (and their descendants) should be expected to increase. In times of economic crisis, racist attitudes and measures normally increase and will probably do so in the future. Likewise, in the US, although a proportion of Blacks are becoming integrated into the US middle class, a much larger segment are being frozen into the underclass of the decaying urban ghettos, while a whole new wave of immigrants from Latin America are becoming the primary source of menial labour — and thus increasingly become the primary victims of racism. Many of the new Latin immigrant labourers have no legal status in the US, and thus have fewer rights than the 'guest workers' of Europe. It should be emphasized that capitalist economies generate racism primarily because of their need for a continuing source of cheap, hardworking menial labour from outside the major industrial regions. Racism serves both as a legitimation of the treatment of such workers and as a means to disorganize the working class as a whole by dividing the new immigrant menial workers from the rest of the working class. As long as capitalism exists, racism will be generated. There is no such logic in socialist societies. The contrast between the various minorities in the Soviet Union, especially the Asian peoples, and the position of minorities in capitalist Europe and the US is likely to become all the more stark over the next generation. The same might perhaps also be said of the position of women, while continuing progress is made by Soviet women.<br /> <br /> Projecting oneself into the year 2050 (assuming, probably unrealistically, the absence of a general nuclear war) and looking back on the period of the birth of socialist societies, probably the political repression in the Soviet Union of the 1930s will be seen in a similar light to that in which the repression of aristocrats and their supporters by the French Revolution or Loyalists by the American Revolution is regarded in the 1980s. The historical conjuncture in which the level of civil liberties has been higher in the advanced capitalist countries than in the advanced socialist countries cannot be expected to last. As capitalism declines and is subject to increasing international and domestic pressure, measures similar to those taken in the 1930s in the advanced capitalist countries, and those in most of the poorer capitalist countries in the 1960s and 1970s, can be expected. As more and more countries become socialist, and living standards in the advanced socialist countries come to outstrip those in the West, the process of 'the withering away of the state' should accelerate, with both decentralized participation and ever more vital and unconstricted public debates broadening in their significance. If, in fact, the tendency towards encroaching stagnation of Western capitalism is consolidated, while the current tendencies of Soviet socialism continue, the 21st Century will see a very different picture of civil liberties and standard of living than did the mid-20th Century. As Eastern European living standards come to exceed those in Western Europe we would expect an increased flow of unemployed low paid Western workers emigrating to the socialist countries in search of high paid and secure work. Very possibly, in fact, in the early part of the 21st Century the German Democratic Republic will remove restrictions on emigration, and begin the active recruitment of workers from West Germany. This could well be followed by the West Germans imposing restrictions on the emigration of its citizens to the German Democratic Republic. A flow of workers ''towards'' the socialist countries, which may be expected to become more common over time, would thus be augmented by a similar flow of intellectuals and political activists (and perhaps persecuted minorities) reacting to growing restrictions on formal political and civil liberties in the West — and accelerated by shrinking employment possibilities in the state sector for intellectuals.<br /> <br /> 'Freedom', the most inspiring slogan of the 20th Century, can increasingly be expected to slip from the grasp of Western capitalism (as it already has from most capitalist regimes in Asia and Latin America). A progressive decline and eventual collapse may be anticipated in the credibility of increasingly repressive regimes with stagnant living standards that appeal to their people to support monopoly capitalism, with the claim that their system offers superior civil, economic and participatory rights and civil liberties. With the slogan of 'human rights' and 'freedom' increasingly lost by capitalists to the Socialist world, other means of legitimation will be sought (as they were sought and found in Europe in the 1930s). Nationalist, Christian and Fascist movements (for example, The Moral Majority, the KKK in the US) will probably be revived with the active support of capital, movements which emphasize neither the superiority of capitalism in providing a higher living standard or a higher level of participatory rights, civil liberties or economic rights, but rather stress intangibles such as the national dignity, Christian morality or the 'Aryan race', as well as authoritarian leadership principles, such as the Latin American and Asian dictatorships do today. But in the face of an increasingly prosperous, participatory and tolerant socialist world, an attempt to revitalize nationalism and mysticism in order to justify ever more repressive capitalist regimes will potentially be characterized in the same manner as Marx categorized the regime of Napoleon the III in France: 'The first time as tragedy, the second as farce.'<br /> <br /> === References ===<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;9.&quot; /&gt;<br /> [[Category:Library works about the Soviet Union]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Selections_from_the_Prison_Notebooks&diff=75994 2024-09-30T12:46:56Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Selections from the Prison Notebooks|author=Antonio Gramsci|publisher=Aakar books|edition_date=2018|type=Book|source=https://annas-archive.org/md5/a91625098ebe44f6fab1b3501b53985d}}<br /> <br /> https://annas-archive.org/md5/a91625098ebe44f6fab1b3501b53985d<br /> <br /> Feel free to import<br /> [[Category:Empty library pages]]<br /> [[Category:Library works by Antonio Gramsci]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:I_Have_a_Dream,_a_Blurred_Vision&diff=75993 2024-09-30T12:46:56Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=I Have a Dream, a Blurred Vision|author=Michael Parenti|published_date=2013-09-01|type=Article|source=http://michaelparentiblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/i-have-dream-blurred-vision-by-michael.html}}'''''I Have a Dream, a Blurred Vision''''' is an article by [[Michael Parenti]]. It was first posted to [http://michaelparentiblog.blogspot.com/ his blog] in September 2013, and later added to [https://www.michael-parenti.org/article-i-have-a-dream-a-blurred-vision his website] in November of that same year.<br /> <br /> == Text ==<br /> The 50th anniversary of the [[March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom|March on Washington]]—in which Rev. [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] made his famed &quot;[[I Have a Dream]]&quot; speech—has recently won renewed attention from various print and electronic media in the [[United States of America|United States]]. But the more attention given to King's extraordinary speech, the less we seem to know about King himself, the less aware we are about the serious challenges he was presenting, challenges that remain urgent and ignored to this very day.<br /> <br /> The March on Washington took place on 28 August 1963. Despite repeated fear mongering by certain commentators and public officials who predicted there would be violence in the streets—over 250,000 people descended upon [[Washington, D.C.]] in a massive show of unity and peaceful determination.<br /> <br /> I was there. About two-thirds of the demonstrators were [[Black Americans|African-American]], and about one-third were white. After all these years I still recall how gripped I was by the vast sweep of the crowd moving like [[democracy]]'s infantry across the nation's capital, determined to awaken &quot;our leaders&quot; in [[United States Congress|Congress]] and the [[White House]].<br /> <br /> The high moment of the day was Martin Luther King's &quot;I Have a Dream&quot; speech. It was a call to freedom and enfranchisement for a people who had endured centuries of [[slavery]] followed by [[Racial segregation in the United States|segregation]] and lynch-mob rule. In his speech King reminded us that &quot;the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.&quot;<br /> <br /> He went on: &quot;The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realise that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.&quot;<br /> <br /> King continued to stroke the new militancy: &quot;We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in [[State of Mississippi|Mississippi]] cannot vote and a Negro in [[State of New York|New York]] believes he has nothing for which to vote. [...] Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.&quot;<br /> <br /> Then came his smashing conclusion: &quot;When we allow freedom to ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of [[God in Christianity|God]]'s children,&quot; all colours and creeds &quot;will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'&quot;<br /> <br /> At this, the crowd exploded with thunderous applause and wild cheers. Many of us were left overwhelmed and misty eyed. For all its clichés and overdone metaphors, King's &quot;I Have a Dream&quot; speech remains a truly great oration.<br /> <br /> So impressive is the speech, however, that commentators and pundits to this day have found it easy to focus safely upon it to the neglect of other vital social issues that engaged King.<br /> <br /> The opinion-makers prefer to treat Martin Luther King as an inspirational icon rather than a radical leader. He has been domesticated and sanitised. Today the real King probably would not be invited to the White House because he is too [[Left-wing politics|far left]], too much the agitator.<br /> <br /> In 1967, he was becoming an increasingly serious problem for the defenders of privileged and profit. King came out against the [[Vietnam War]] that year, a fact that is seldom mentioned today. His stance discomforted many [[Liberalism|liberals]] (black and white) who felt they should concentrate on civil rights and not alienate potential supporters with anti-war issues. But for King, the U.S. government had become &quot;the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,&quot; spending far more on death and destruction than on vital social programmes.<br /> <br /> He differed with those who believed we could resist violence and cruelty at home while resorting to violence and cruelty abroad. He condemned &quot;those who make peaceful revolution impossible,&quot; those who &quot;refuse to give up the privileges and pleasures that come from the immense profits from overseas investments [...] the individual [[Capitalism|capitalists]] who [[Imperialism|extract wealth&quot; at the expense of other peoples and places]].<br /> <br /> By 1967 King was treading on dangerous ground. He was connecting the issues. He condemned &quot;the triple evils of [[racism]], economic exploitation, and militarism.&quot; The same interests that brought us slums also brought us wars, he argued, and they were getting richer for the doing.<br /> <br /> By 1968, the year he was [[Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.|assassinated]], King was also waging war against poverty. Civil rights, he dared to say, were linked to economic rights. He was planning a national occupation of Washington D.C., called thee [[Poor People's Campaign]]. Again he was treading on dangerous ground bringing together working-class people of various ethnic groups.<br /> <br /> These class demands go unmentioned in the usual MLK commemorations. The &quot;I Have a Dream&quot; oration now overshadows the other less known messages that King was putting forth not long before he was killed, including the search for economic justice for all working people. The great &quot;dream speech&quot; of 1963 serves less as an inspiration and more as a cloak covering his latter-day radical views regarding [[class struggle]] and [[anti-imperialism]].<br /> <br /> In 1968, at the age of 39, Martin Luther King was killed by a sniper's bullet while standing on the balcony of his motel room in [[Memphis, Tennessee]]. He was in Memphis to lend support to a sanitation workers strike, the very kind of thing his opponents were finding increasingly intolerable.<br /> <br /> A penniless fugitive from the [[Missouri State Penitentiary]], [[James Earl Ray]], while being sought by the police, supposedly took it upon himself singlehandedly to make his way to Memphis where he somehow located King's motel balcony and shot him from a room across the courtyard.<br /> <br /> Then entirely on his own, supposedly with no visible financial support, the fugitive convict and newly established assassin made his way to [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland|England]]. Arrested in [[London]] at [[Heathrow Airport]] with substantial sums of cash in his pocket, Ray was extradited to the United States and charged with the crime. He was strongly advised by [[Percy Foreman|his lawyer]] to enter a guilty plea (to avoid the death penalty) and was sentenced to 99 years. Three days later he recanted his confession. Over the ensuing decades he made repeatedly unsuccessful efforts to withdraw his guilty plea and be tried by a jury. Ray died in prison in 1998, still proclaiming his innocence.<br /> <br /> In 1986 King's birthday was established as [[Martin Luther King Jr. Day|a national holiday]]. Hundreds of streets in America have been renamed in his honour. There are annual commemorations. His resonant voice, memorable words and gripping cadence are played and replayed. But the politico-economic issues he highlighted continue to be passed over by mainstream leaders and commentators.<br /> <br /> In addition, the opinion-makers who celebrate King's birthday every year and hail him as a monumental figure have nothing to say about the many unresolved questions related to his assassination. No one openly entertains the question of whether there were powerful people (certainly more powerful than James Earl Ray) who thought it necessary to do away with this popular leader because he had moved too far beyond &quot;I Have a Dream.&quot;<br /> [[Category:Library works by Michael Parenti]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Eating_Horses_In_Paris&diff=75992 2024-09-30T12:46:56Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Eating Horses In Paris|author=Michael Parenti|published_date=2013-02-28|type=Article|source=http://michaelparentiblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html|display_title=}}'''''Eating Horses in Paris''''' is a short article written by [[Michael Parenti]] in early 2013, discussing the ethicality of meat consumption.<br /> <br /> == Text ==<br /> In 1951, only five years after [[Second World War|World War II]] ended, I managed to make my way to [[Paris]] where I landed a job as a ''courier diplomatique'' (messenger boy) for the [[Sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly|United Nations Sixth General Assembly]]. Despite the years of war and deprivation, Paris still was a special place with its history, its cafés, bridges, ornate edifices, and narrow winding cobblestone streets, some seemingly as old as the city itself.<br /> <br /> Recent reports about how horse meat has been smuggled into certain meat products in [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland|England]], [[Kingdom of Sweden|Sweden]], and elsewhere remind me of one of Paris' unusual features of 1951: the numerous butcher shops that sold horse meat. Such a shop usually sported a mounted life-sized horse head (made of metal or wood) above the store entrance to advertise unequivocally that the butcher specialised in the sale of horse flesh.<br /> <br /> I ate horse meat at a small neighbourhood Parisian restaurant a number of times. It was smoothly textured and more gamy than beef. I wasn't particularly fond of it but it did have the virtue of being affordable. In those post-war days, low-income Parisians were more inclined to eat horses than ride them.<br /> <br /> All the talk today about how undesirable it is to consume horses carries the implication that our immense ingestion of other livestock is perfectly acceptable. We are advised not to eat horses, nor dogs, rabbits, or cats—no matter how close to starvation we might be. But devouring limitless numbers of cattle, pigs, sheep, lambs, chickens, turkeys, and ducks is quite all right.<br /> <br /> This causes us to overlook the real problem, which is not horse meat but meat consumption in general. The world cannot feed itself if it continues to make meat a common staple. Millions upon millions of livestock require vast amounts of grain and water, ultimately far more than the environment will be able to provide.<br /> <br /> Aside from the survival problems raised by the consumption of immense quantities of land, water, and grain in producing meat, there is another menacing aspect: all the poisons and torture that happens along the way from the feedlot to the supermarket. For the health of the planet and for our own health and for the sake of the livestock, we should stop eating animals. Rather than calling for more regulation of meat production, we need to move entirely away from meat meals.<br /> <br /> Originating from the top of the food chain, all animal products menace our health. Pesticides and other toxic runoffs work their way into the food and water consumed by livestock. So with wild and farmed fish, and seafood. Finally, perched at the highest rung of the food chain, we humans feast on the accumulated toxins that concentrate further in our bodies.<br /> <br /> Many of us are unsettled about eating horses, dogs, cats, rabbits, snakes, monkeys, rodents, or alligators—which other people around the world eat. Perhaps we should give more attention to the horrid mistreatment of domesticated livestock, the mass produced cruelties of factory farms, the torturous stalls, the joyless overcrowded feedlots, the loads of antibiotic and hormone additives, the frequent sickness and fatal dismemberments, and the terrible toxic accumulations.<br /> <br /> Save your health and your planet. May all animal consumption go the way of the Paris horse meat butcher shops.<br /> [[Category:Library works about the meat industry]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about veganism]]<br /> [[Category:Library works by Michael Parenti]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Guerrilla_Warfare&diff=75991 2024-09-30T12:46:55Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Guerrilla Warfare|image=Guerrila Warfare Cover.jpg|author=Che Guevara|publisher=SR Books|published_date=1961|published_location=[[Maryland]]|edition_date=2004|type=Book|isbn=9781461637141|source=[https://www.cheguevara.org/Guerrilla-Warfare.pdf PDF]}}&lt;div class=&quot;toc&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;toc_entry&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Preface&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;frontMatter&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The publication of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; in 1960 marked a dramatic moment in Latin American history and in U.S.-Latin American relations. In this landmark book the author, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, declared war against the incumbent regimes throughout Latin America and against U.S. imperialism. Che proclaimed for all to hear that through guerrilla warfare the dictatorships of Central America and the Caribbean would be destroyed and that Cuba would be a vanguard force in the war for liberation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Almost immediately the new Cuban revolutionary government that had taken power in January 1959 began to provide training and small amounts of military assistance to would-be insurrectionists in the Western Hemisphere. Che Guevara took personal control and participated actively in the Cuban efforts to inspire “new Cubas” in Latin America. In response, the United States and most Latin American governments created a vast military counterinsurgency apparatus to destroy the nascent guerrilla organizations and established an “Alliance for Progress” to undermine support for revolutionary movements in the region. Indeed, in many respects, it may be said that U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America from the early 1960s until the early 1990s consisted essentially of defeating the threat, the legacy, and the legend of Ernesto “Che” Guevara—the most important martyr of revolutionary struggle in Latin America in the twentieth century.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Born into a middle-class Argentine family in 1928, Ernesto Guevara overcame frailty in infancy and chronic asthma to become one of the twentieth century’s most glorified fighters—a symbol of the power of human volition and determination. Evolving gradually in his student days from an intense Argentine nationalist into a believer in the unity of anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America, Guevara traveled as an itinerant throughout the region. Working in the grape harvests in Argentina, as a security guard in Chile’s northern mines, as a male nurse aboard an Argentine freighter, in a leper colony in the Amazon region, and as a truck driver and dishwasher, Guevara experienced at first hand the poverty and misery of Latin America’s masses in the early 1950s.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 fm01.html#end en1|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In March 1953 he received a medical degree in Argentina, but less than four months later he again took to traveling throughout the continent. After spending time in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Panama, Guevara walked and hitchhiked to Guatemala. In Guatemala, he lived through the U.S.-sponsored counterrevolution that ousted President Jacobo Arbenz. He met a number of Peruvian Apristas and other leftist Latin American political exiles who dreamed of social revolution.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 fm01.html#end en2|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; He also met Cubans who belonged to the “26th of July Movement,” led by Fidel Castro and named after the 1953 assault by Fidel’s group on the Moncada Barracks in Cuba.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;After the overthrow of Arbenz, Guevara took refuge in the Argentine embassy; shortly thereafter he went to Mexico. There he renewed his association with members of the “26th of July Movement,” including Castro’s younger brother, Raúl. Eventually, Fidel Castro invited Guevara, now nicknamed “Che” (for his typically Argentine habit of calling his friends and ending his sentences with “Che”—meaning “friend” or “buddy”), to join the expeditionary force as a fighter-doctor. Trained by former Spanish Civil War general and guerrilla fighter Alberto Bayo, the eighty-two-man force left Mexico for Cuba on the now-celebrated “yacht” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Granma&lt;/span&gt;. Of these eighty-two, perhaps twenty reached the Sierra Maestra after encounters with dictator Fulgencio Batista’s troops. From this unlikely beginning, the guerrilla fighters sparked a popular insurrection that finally caused Batista to flee the island in January 1959.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The success of the Cuban Revolution generated enthusiastic emulation in other parts of Latin America. Che Guevara, now one of the heroes of the revolutionary victory, proclaimed the desirability and feasibility of adapting the Cuban guerrilla strategy to the overthrow of tyranny in the rest of the region. In January 1959, Guevara’s “Social Projections of the Rebel Army” linked the success of the guerrillas to the organization of the urban working classes and the peasantry against the Cuban dictatorship. For Che, guerrilla warfare involved political as well as military struggle, thereby making student, peasant, and worker organizations potentially “subversive” in the eyes of incumbent governments. By April 1961 his essay “Cuba: Historical Exception or Vanguard in the Anticolonial Struggle?” clearly identified the enemy of the peoples of Latin America as “the great phenomenon of imperialism with its sequel of puppet governments in each country and mercenary armies, disposed to defend each puppet.” He also proclaimed emphatically the objectives of his efforts and those of the guerrillas he inspired: to create “the subjective conditions, of which the most important is the awareness of the possibility of victory over the imperial powers and their internal allies by taking the violent road.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;From the time Che announced his intentions to export Cuba’s revolution to its Latin American brethren, U.S. political and military policy concentrated on finding and destroying the threat of Guevarist-inspired guerrilla movements. After Che’s death in 1967 at the hands of U.S.-trained Bolivian counterinsurgency forces, the legacy of revolutionary guerrilla warfare and the legend, even mystification, of Che, the heroic &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;guerrillero&lt;/span&gt;, inspired new generations of revolutionaries from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, while U.S. foreign policy continued to emphasize the eradication of Che’s legacy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;More often defeated than victorious, the guerrilla movements of the 1960s and 1970s contributed to the establishment of repressive military regimes in much of Latin America. Seemingly successful in their counterinsurgency programs, U.S. and Latin American leaders celebrated the apparent demise of rural guerrilla movements in Central America and the northern tier of South America as well as the defeat of urban guerrillas in Uruguay and Argentina. With harsh military regimes in control ot the Southern Cone and more traditional dictatorships dominating most of Central America, the threat of “more Cubas” appeared defeated.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By 1968 the Soviet Union, at least for the moment, clearly rejected the export of revolution. Even the Cubans—after designating 1968 the Year of the Heroic Guerrilla—subtly attacked Regis Debray’s glorification of Che and the primacy of the guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; (small cadre of revolutionary fighters in the countryside) in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revolution in the Revolution&lt;/span&gt;? Although Fidel Castro never wavered from his commitment to assist Latin American revolutionaries, in 1969 reality seemed to dictate a more patient stance: “We will wait and watch as, one by one, those countries [in Latin America] break away from the past; as, one by one, they make their revolutions. . . . How long will we wait? . . . as long as necessary.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;If guerrilla failures in the 1960s made the Cubans more cautious, it seemed almost as if Che Guevara’s death and the repression of the guerrilla movements diverted the attention of U.S. policymakers and Latin American elites from the unchanging realities that Che had pointed to as “ideal conditions for the fight”: wretched poverty in the countryside, persistence of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;latifundio&lt;/span&gt; (large rural estates that controlled most of the best agricultural land), intensifying urban squalor, and repressive, dictatorial political regimes.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Just as these “ideal conditions for the fight” persisted, so did significant guerrilla movements reappear in the 1970s and early 1980s. Sandinista revolutionaries overthrew the corrupt Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua, and guerrilla fighters threatened the old order in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru. After President Jimmy Carter’s refusal to rescue Anastasio Somoza Debayle contributed to the insurrectionists’ victory, the United States again reacted to the threat of guerrilla warfare—the legacy of Che Guevara—with support for counterinsurgency programs in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras and covert CIA action against the new revolutionary government in Managua.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ironically, as the political and military significance of guerrilla movements resurged in Central and South America, Che Guevara’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; went out of print in English. With the previous edition of this book in 1985 it was made available once more in the belief that students of Latin American history and politics—and U.S. policymakers—could not fully understand the origins or direction of events in Latin America without studying the theoretical contribution to revolutionary literature and, perhaps more important, the inspiration that Che’s example and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; provided to Latin American revolutionaries since the 1960s. In a very real sense &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Che vive&lt;/span&gt;—Che lives—wherever guerrilla movements oppose incumbent regimes in Latin America.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In reprinting &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; in this third edition of our case studies of rural-based insurgencies in Latin America, we have included a brief introductory essay discussing Che’s theoretical contribution to the revolutionary tradition and reviewing several major critiques of Guevara’s thesis by other revolutionary theorists. We have provided, in addition, brief comparative surveys of the major Latin American rural-based guerrilla movements from the 1960s into the 1990s. By the early 1980s the character of these guerrilla movements had changed significantly. None relied strictly on Guevara’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; strategy, and most combined elements of the Nicaraguan insurrectionist model with the Vietnamese one of prolonged wars of attrition that used propaganda victories in the United States and systematic attacks on government capabilities and legitimacy as part of a sophisticated politico-military strategy. The lessons of Nicaragua and Vietnam were added to those of Cuba for the guerrilla fighters of the 1980s. Economic sabotage, alternate cycles of negotiations and warfare, the battle for international public opinion, and recognition that external sanctuaries and sources of supplies were essential for ultimate victory replaced the romantic, “voluntarist” optimism of the early 1960s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In some instances, guerrilla movements became explicit instruments for demanding political and economic reform rather than primarily a strategy for taking power and implementing a socialist revolution. Within guerrilla movements, and among guerrilla organizations in Central and South America, debates over reformist versus revolutionary objectives led to important cleavages, and even to internecine executions (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;ajusticimientos&lt;/span&gt;) of “traitors.” In Colombia, for example, some of these groups exacted political and constitutional reform in exchange for putting down their arms (1989–91), while others renewed their struggle to overturn the state’s facade democracy. In El Salvador (1992) and Guatemala (1994–96), guerrillas negotiated “peace accords” premised on their reincorporation into civil society and radical downsizing and reform of the armed forces. But these accords were only reached after decades of ferocious civil war and numerous bloody struggles within the guerrilla organizations—and after the end of the cold war. And in Mexico, in January 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) boldly announced its insurgency to protest the North American Free Trade Agreement, political corruption, and injustice but not, as their leader, Comandante Marcos, made explicit, to take power and create a socialist regime. As Che Guevara had written, guerrilla warfare was a &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;method&lt;/span&gt;—but it was a method that Mexican, Colombian, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan guerrillas could use in the 1980s and 1990s for purposes other than those espoused by Che, even as it had been used historically for the most varied causes.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As the case studies illustrate, by the 1980s and 1990s guerrilla warfare also became a business and a way of life for thousands of Latin Americans who rejected (or were marginalized by) the neoliberal policies that dominated the region after the recession and debt crisis of the “lost decade” (1980–90). Endemic insurgencies provided alternative economic opportunities, from cattle rustling, smuggling, extortion, and kidnapping to involvement in the international drug and weapons trade. In parts of Peru, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, and elsewhere, guerrillas (and also their military adversaries) had converted the romantic and brutal insurgencies and counterinsurgencies of the 1960s and 1970s into institutionalized sources of income by the 1980s. Guerrillas mixed their ideological and political motives with criminal enrichment; state terrorism and graft degraded government and military institutions in the name of national security across the hemisphere, leaving a legacy of death, destruction, and political cynicism. Neither Che Guevara nor his U.S. and Latin American adversaries could have anticipated these long-term consequences of the guerrilla movements inspired by the Cuban Revolution and U.S. counterrevolutionary policies.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In summarizing the experiences of these guerrilla movements, we consider in each case the extent to which their leadership, ideology, tactics, and politico-military experience conformed to Che’s vision. We also discuss the U.S. response in each case. Finally, a brief postscript provides an assessment of the impact of Che Guevara’s ideas and of U.S. policy response to guerrilla movements in Latin America since 1959.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 fm01.html#end en3|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Without understating Che’s contribution to revolutionary theory, it is essential to remember that his inspiration and faith in ultimate victory was his major legacy to Latin American revolutionaries. Che asserted that the Cuban Revolution had demonstrated that popular forces could win in war against the forces of repression. He further declared that it was not necessary to wait until all the conditions for revolution existed, but that the guerrillas could, themselves, create revolutionary conditions. His call to action, his proclamation of “invincibility” —the ultimate victory of revolutionary forces—whether correct or incorrect, continues to influence the course of Latin American history and international relations even after &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;perestroika&lt;/span&gt; and the apparent death of socialist utopias.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Notes&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;endnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 fm01.html#ref end en1|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For useful biographical material on Che Guevara and assessments of his intellectual contributions, see Rolando E. Bonachea and Nelson P. Valdés, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Che: Selected Works of Ernesto Guevara&lt;/span&gt; (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969); John Gerassi, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Venceremos: The Speeches and Writings of Ernesto Che Guevara&lt;/span&gt; (London: Wiedenfeld and Nicholson, 1968); and Donald C. Hodges, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Legacy of Che Guevara&lt;/span&gt; (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 fm01.html#ref end en2|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For discussion of the Guatemalan counterrevolution of 1954 and the Peruvian Apristas (APRA), see chapters on Guatemala and Peru, this volume.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 fm01.html#ref end en3|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Throughout this book we have attempted to refer in the notes to sources most likely to be available to students in university libraries. Thus, we often cite secondary rather than primary sources.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;part&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;I. Introduction&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;chapter&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Revolutionary Theory, and Revolutionary Movements in Latin America&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Spanish peasants resisting Napoleon’s early nineteenth-century (1808–13) invasion of the Iberian Peninsula popularized the guerrilla fighter in modern military history. Hit-and-run attacks by Spanish irregulars supported by British and Portuguese troops and matériel introduced the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;guerrilla&lt;/span&gt;, or “little war,” into military lexicon (by adding the diminutive suffix to the Spanish word for war, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;guerra&lt;/span&gt;).&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en4|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In historical perspective, however, these Spanish irregulars and armed civilians merely added to the numerous ancient, medieval, and more modern instances of military improvisation by the weak against the strong, by small unconventional units against larger conventional forces. In recent time, most guerrilla warriors, like their Spanish predecessors, have been part of wider international confrontations and clashes of competing ideologies—even if their banners remained strictly nationalist or restorationist. Guerrillas, partisans, irregulars, resistance groups, terrorists, armed revolutionists, social bandits—whatever the immediate terminology—always do better if they can rely on external assistance and strong ideological, nationalist, or religious motivation against an “evil” enemy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guerrilla wars have often frustrated incumbent regimes or armies of military occupation, and frustration breeds brutality and repression. French repression of entire Spanish towns in the Napoleonic Wars proved as little successful, militarily, as British efforts against the Boers in South Africa and the Jews in Palestine early in the twentieth century, or U.S. tactics in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. As one British observer of the Boer War commented in 1901: “If there is one certain education to be drawn from past experience it is that guerrilla tactics, when carved out by a resourceful and persistent enemy, have invariably led to a protracted struggle, during which the invading armies against which they fought have suffered a series of minor disasters and regrettable incidents.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en5|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Historically, guerrilla operations have contributed to or even led: (1) resistance to foreign invasion and occupation; (2) the attainment of political or socioeconomic concessions from incumbent regimes; (3) the overthrow of unpopular governments; (4) wars of national liberation or decolonization; and (5) the creation of new political entities. As in the Spanish case, favorable terrain; hit-and-run tactics; refusal to risk defeat in pitched battles; support from international allies; safe base areas, or “sanctuary”; and reliance upon the local population for support in the form of provisions, intelligence, and personnel have combined to deny the politico-military advantage to superior forces in a variety of nineteenth- and twentieth-century wars.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en6|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Although guerrilla-type military operations considerably antedate explicit theoretical treatment of guerrilla strategies, whether strictly military or as instruments of political movements, the great Prussian military strategist Karl von Clausewitz’s classic &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;On War&lt;/span&gt; enumerates five general conditions for successful irregular warfare “in coordination with operations carried out by a regular army, both actions according to an overall plan.”&lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> # The war must be carried on in the interior of the country.<br /> # The war cannot hinge upon a single battle.<br /> # The theater of war must extend over a considerable area.<br /> # The national character must support the war.<br /> # The terrain must be irregular, difficult, inaccessible.<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;According to Clausewitz,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Militia and armed civilians cannot and should not be employed against the main force of the enemy, or even against sizable units. They should not try to crack the core, but only nibble along the surface and on the edges. They should rise in provinces lying to one side of the main theater of war, which the invader does not enter in force, in order to draw these areas entirely from his grasp. These storm clouds forming on his flanks should also follow to the rear of his advance. . . . The enemy has no other means with which to oppose the actions of armed civilians than the dispatching of numerous detachments to escort his convoys, to occupy posts, defiles, bridges, etc. Just as the first efforts of the people will be insignificant, so these detachments will be weak, because he is afraid of dividing his forces too much. It is on these small units that the spark of popular war really catches fire; at some points, the enemy is overpowered by sheer numbers, courage and enthusiasm grow, and the intensity of the struggle increases until the culmination comes, which will decide the entire issue.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en7|&lt;span&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;For the most part, this assessment of guerrilla activities is reiterated in Che Guevara’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare.&lt;/span&gt; Che refers to guerrilla warfare as “a phase that does not afford in itself opportunities to arrive at complete victory.” Like Clausewitz, he accepts the premise that the final objective of modern warfare (including guerrilla warfare) is “to annihilate the enemy.” Che also emphasizes the critical nature of favorable terrain, operations in the hinterland, and popular support. At the same time, however, he categorically rejects Clausewitz’s assertion that guerrillas can succeed only as support units for conventional forces, insisting rather on the catalytic role of the guerrilla which leads eventually to victory by a “people’s army.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en8|&lt;span&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;If Clausewitz’s formulation is a classic expression of guerrilla tactics as part of modern warfare, T. E. Lawrence is often credited with the first theoretical contribution to understanding guerrilla warfare as a &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;political&lt;/span&gt; movement furthered through unconventional tactics rather than as a military tactic supplementary to conventional warfare. Lawrence’s experience as leader of Arab irregulars supported by the British opposing the Turks in World War I convinced him that guerrilla warfare could not be fought without its own set of rules. According to Lt. Col. Frederick Wilkins, T. E. Lawrence “almost converted the tactics of guerrilla warfare into a science and claimed that no enemy could occupy a country employing guerrilla warfare unless every acre of land could be occupied with troops.” Wilkins elaborates:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;In &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Seven Pillars of Wisdom&lt;/span&gt; Lawrence explained the plan that eventually defeated the Turks in Arabia. “In the Turkish Army materials were scarce and precious, men more plentiful than equipment . . . the aim should be to destroy not the army but the materials.” Eventually 35,000 Turkish casualties resulted from the new change in methods, but they were incidental to the attack on enemy material. The plan was to convince the Turks they couldn’t stay, rather than to drive them out.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Using English demolition specialists, Lawrence had the Arabs blow up railway bridges and tunnels, cut rails, harass fortified railway stations. Medina was no longer the primary objective; the railway to the city was the target. Isolated posts and garrisons were threatened, so that the Turks reinforced them. No further attacks were made, as the heavily reinforced garrison sat about and ate up their rations. In a short time the Turkish troops had additional supply problems. No open battles were allowed by Lawrence. Whenever the enemy concentrated to crush the rebellion, he had his tribesmen scatter and avoid raids. Lulled into a false feeling of security, the Turkish forces would resume their garrison positions—whereupon the raids would start again.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Turkish position gradually became impossible in Arabia. Garrisons withered and the effectiveness of the Turkish field force was largely on paper. Lawrence even wanted to keep it in being in Arabia, as the necessity for feeding the scattered units placed a heavy drain on the already burdened enemy supply system. As they had local success the Arab tribes were gradually joined into one unit, or such was the plan.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en9|&lt;span&gt;6&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Che Guevara’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; incorporates the insights of Lawrence as well as Clausewitz. Like Lawrence, Guevara understood fully that the most significant immediate impact of guerrillas need not be military. Rather, by maintaining systematic pressure on isolated enemy posts as well as on supply convoys and communications by striking from any point of the compass, at any time, “the guerrilla eroded the strength and morale of the enemy forces.” Similarly, energetic political work among the local population developed invaluable military intelligence networks and sources of material support and personnel while winning over or solidifying popular support for the insurgent cause. Thus, guerrilla warfare provided an ideal instrument for revolutionary political struggle when confronted by superior military forces. Indeed, political victories could be achieved without significant military victories. Government credibility and legitimacy could be eroded by successful sabotage, minor skirmishes, jail breaks, bank robberies, and political Robin Hoodism that provoked repression and highlighted government inability to meet the socioeconomic demands of the civilian population. Much after Che’s death in 1967, these lessons served diverse insurgents from Mexico to the Southern Cone—if not to achieve political power, then to induce political reform.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Che’s original contributions on tactical and operational matters, beyond discussion of the initial stages of guerrilla organization and suburban or urban guerrilla warfare, are very limited. In contrast, the very mundaneness of Guevara’s discussion of the importance to guerrilla fighters of soap, tobacco, books, and “war industries” highlights, in a fashion characteristic of military treatises, the role of individual human beings as historical actors who determine the outcome of warfare and revolutionary struggle. Che’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; thus reaffirms the value of human commitment and volition, the importance of individual will and action. No better example of this is his romantic generalization from the Cuban reality that, given suitable operating terrain, land hunger, enemy injustices, and the like, a hard core of thirty to fifty men is enough to initiate armed revolution in any country of Latin America. Although the U.S. response to the Cuban experience made the realization of Che’s vision unlikely, his optimistic view exceeded greatly the assessment of guerrilla capabilities by earlier military theorists.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Just as &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; followed in the general tradition of military theory on irregular warfare, so it consciously adapted the Marxist-Leninist contributions to this tradition.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en10|&lt;span&gt;7&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Lenin specifically accepted tactical flexibility in the revolutionary struggle as well as the concept of “protracted revolutionary conflict.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lenin’s position on partisan warfare, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Partisan skaya voina&lt;/span&gt;, originally appeared October 13, 1906, in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Proletariat.&lt;/span&gt; He emphatically accepted partisan war, terrorism, and robbery to support the revolution: “Marxism does not tie the movement to any particular combat method. It recognizes the possibility that struggle may assume the most variegated forms. For that matter, Marxism does not ‘invent’ those forms of struggle. It merely organizes the tactics of strife and renders them suitable for general use. . . . Marxism never will reject any particular combat method, let alone reject it forever.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en11|&lt;span&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Lenin’s formulation is not totally compatible with the scope of guerrilla warfare as conceived by Che Guevara. Lenin does, nevertheless, discuss the importance of adapting revolutionary tactics to conditions, emphasizing that “one must &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;learn&lt;/span&gt; how to wage war. . . . Marxism asks that the various types of struggle be analyzed within their historical framework. To discuss conflict outside of its historical and concrete setting is to misunderstand elementary dialectic materialism. At various junctures of economic evolution, and depending on changing political, national, cultural, social and other conditions, differing types of struggle may become important and even predominant.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en12|&lt;span&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lenin also introduced the concept of protracted revolutionary war under circumstances when&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;the uprising cannot assume the traditional form of a single blow limited to a very short time and a very small area . . . [and] it is natural and unavoidable that the uprising assume the higher and more complicated form of a protracted civil war enmeshing the entire country. Such a war must be conceived as a series of a few big battles, separated by comparatively long intervals, and a large number of small engagements, which take place during these interim periods . . . then the task of social democracy is to create organizations most suitable to leading masses both in the big battles and, so far as practical, in smaller actions. . . . The [Party] must educate and prepare its organizations in such a way that they will not fail to exploit opportunities through which the strengths of the opponent can be sapped.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en13|&lt;span&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Although Lenin viewed irregular warfare as secondary to educational mass organization and other “combat methods,” he emphasized, as did Guevara later, that objective and subjective historical conditions determine the appropriate forms of struggle. This “flexibility” in Leninist theory allowed Che Guevara to identify closely with Marxist ideals while departing considerably from the strict Leninist position on the role of the vanguard party in the revolutionary struggle. It also allowed Latin American revolutionaries to glorify Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution while rejecting &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foquismo&lt;/span&gt; and Guevara’s limited contribution to strictly military doctrine. The Marxist-Leninist tradition provided ample theoretical and normative foundations for protracted revolutionary wars using guerrillas as one weapon among many in a long-term political struggle to sap the strength and undermine the legitimacy of incumbent regimes. Thus, Latin American guerrilla movements in the 1980s and 1990s could easily honor the spirit and inspiration of Guevara while dramatically departing from the strategic and tactical prescriptions that he provided in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Stalin combined Lenin’s theoretical formulations with his own career as a guerrilla fighter in the Caucasus Mountains to add &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Marxism and the National Question&lt;/span&gt; to Marxist literature on guerrilla warfare. Under Stalin’s direction, Soviet doctrine on guerrilla warfare expanded with &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Russian Partisan Directive of 1933.&lt;/span&gt; This contribution stressed the political, economic, and psychological significance of guerrilla operations in addition to the strictly military objectives.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;During the Russian resistance to the German armies at Moscow in 1941–42, partisans infiltrated German lines, disrupted supply movements, and coordinated their actions with Soviet conventional forces, on the traditional Clausewitzian model. Whereas the guerrillas coordinated their actions with Soviet conventional forces, the guerrilla forces maintained their own chain of command which reached to Stalin himself.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en14|&lt;span&gt;11&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Thus, the Russian experience with partisan warfare during both the revolutionary era and World War II convinced Soviet leaders of the military, political, and psychological value of irregular warfare &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;under the appropriate historical conditions&lt;/span&gt;. Later support for wars of national liberation by insurgents in colonial and neocolonial Asia and Africa or Latin America flowed logically from the basic premises of the Marxist-Leninist tradition and the praxis of revolutionary experience.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin all accepted partisan warfare as an instrument of revolutionary struggle directed by the urban-based vanguard cadres. In China, Mao Tse-tung systematized and attempted to universalize the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;rural&lt;/span&gt;-&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;based&lt;/span&gt; guerrilla strategy that finally proved successful in the Communist victory in that country.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en15|&lt;span&gt;12&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Drawing upon classic Chinese military writings as well as upon Western military theorists such as Clausewitz, Mao connected Marxist-Leninist political theory and the Chinese experience with the concept of protracted war.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en16|&lt;span&gt;13&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In particular, he stressed that political mobilization constituted “the most fundamental condition for winning the war.” Political education, initiating the construction of socialism through the creation of new political values and behavior, became an integral aspect of revolutionary warfare. Citing Clausewitz, Lenin, Stalin, and numerous commentaries on the Soviet experience, Mao blended the classic military, revolutionary Marxist, and Chinese experiences—just as Che Guevara would later add the Cuban experience in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;What is basic guerrilla strategy? Guerrilla strategy must be based primarily on alertness, mobility, and attack. It must be adjusted to the enemy situation, the terrain, the existing lines of communication, the relative strengths, the weather, and the situation of the people.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In guerrilla warfare, select the tactic of seeming to come from the east and attacking from the west; avoid the solid, attack the hollow; attack; withdraw; deliver a lightning blow, seek a lightning decision. When guerrillas engage a stronger enemy, they withdraw when he advances; harass him when he stops; strike him when he is weary; pursue him when he withdraws. In guerrilla strategy, the enemy’s rear, flanks, and other vulnerable spots are his vital points, and there he must be harassed, attacked, dispersed, exhausted and annihilated. Only in this way can guerrillas carry out their mission of independent guerrilla action and coordination with the effort of the regular armies.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en17|&lt;span&gt;14&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Mao’s initial observations go little beyond Clausewitz. He adds, however, a sophisticated, non-Western conception of the role of time and space in protracted warfare and embellishes the yin-yang concept, or the principle of “unity of opposites.” According to this formulation, protracted guerrilla warfare is made possible, in part, by exchanging space (territory) for time. Time means survival of the guerrillas, harassment of the enemy, obtaining popular support for the insurgents, and political education of the revolutionary forces. Territory is not important so long as the first rule—survival—is maintained and the enemy placed under constant, unpredictable pressure.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Essential to the yin-yang theory is that strength conceals weakness, while within weakness there is strength. According to the translator of his work, Mao derives from this postulate that&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;it is a weakness of guerrillas that they operate in small groups that can be wiped out in a matter of minutes. But because they do operate in small groups, they can move rapidly and secretly into the vulnerable rear of the enemy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In conventional tactics, dispersion of forces invites destruction; in guerrilla war, this very tactic is desirable both to confuse the enemy and to preserve the illusion that the guerrillas are ubiquitous.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It is often a disadvantage not to have heavy infantry weapons available, but the very fact of having to transport them has until recently tied conventional columns to roads and well-used tracks. The guerrilla travels light and travels fast. He turns the hazards of terrain to his advantage and makes an ally of tropical rains, heavy snow, intense heat, and freezing cold. Long night marches are difficult and dangerous, but the darkness shields his approach to an unsuspecting enemy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In every apparent disadvantage, some advantage is to be found. The converse is equally true: In each apparent advantage lie the seeds of disadvantage. The yin is not wholly yin, nor the yang wholly yang. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guerrilla tactical doctrine may be summarized in four Chinese characters pronounced “Sheng Tung, Chi Hsi,” which mean “Uproar (in the) East, Strike (in the) West.” Here we find expressed the all-important principles of distraction on the one hand and concentration on the other; to fix the enemy’s attention and to strike where and when he least anticipates the blow.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guerrillas are masters of the arts of simulation and dissimulation; they create pretenses and simultaneously disguise or conceal their true semblance. Their tactical concepts, dynamic and flexible, are not cut to any particular pattern. But Mao’s first law of war, to preserve oneself and destroy the enemy, is always governing.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en18|&lt;span&gt;15&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Mao Tse-tung not only insisted on a flexible guerrilla strategy and the ultimate political objectives of guerrilla warfare but, like Che Guevara later, in regard to the Cuban Revolution, was convinced that the example of the Chinese revolution would have broader implications. If Che Guevara essentially limited his focus (in the early 1960s) to Latin America, Mao dreamed always of the worldwide influence of China’s experience: “Historical experience is written in iron and blood. We must point out that the guerrilla campaigns being waged in China today are a page in history that has no precedent. Their influence will not be confined solely to China in her present anti-Japanese war but will be worldwide.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en19|&lt;span&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Following in the Maoist tradition, the Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap drew lessons from the history of the Vietnamese resistance to the French and Japanese to extend the international revolutionary appeal of a “people’s war,” “protracted war,” and anti-imperialist struggle. It is clear from the following passages from his &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;People’s War, People’s Army,&lt;/span&gt; that General Giap relied heavily on Mao:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The Vietnamese people’s war . . . had to be hard and long lasting in order to succeed in creating conditions for victory. Conceptions born of impatience and aimed at obtaining speedy victory could only be gross errors. It was necessary to accumulate thousands of small victories and to turn them into one great success, gradually altering the balance of forces, transforming our weakness into power, and carrying off final victory.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We contented ourselves with attacking when success was certain, refusing to give battle likely to incur losses to us, or to engage in hazardous actions. In the Vietnamese theater of operations, this method carried off great victories. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The strategy of long-term war and the principle of expansion from guerrilla to regular war were successful. . . . Such were the basic strategy and tactics of the people’s war in a small and backward agricultural country under the leadership of our Party.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en20|&lt;span&gt;17&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Giap, like Lenin and Mao, insisted upon the close tie between the vanguard party and its military instrument, the guerrillas: “Right at the founding of our army, the first armed groups and platoons had their Party groups and branches. The platoons had their political commissars. As soon as they were formed, the regiments had political commissars. The method of the Party committee taking the lead and the commander allotting the work also took shape from the very first days. Officers were provided with handbooks, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Political Commissar’s Book&lt;/span&gt; or &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Political Work in the Army&lt;/span&gt;.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en21|&lt;span&gt;18&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; This emphasis on the priority of a political vanguard, in the form of the Communist party, to direct the revolutionary struggle would be a significant difference between Lenin, Mao, Giap, and other traditional Marxist-Leninists and the generation of Latin American revolutionaries influenced by Che Guevara.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;The Contributions of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;span&gt;Che Guevara’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; consists largely of practical prescriptions concerning the organization, equipment, supply, personal qualities, and modus operandi of the guerrilla band. In most respects it goes very little beyond the strategic and tactical observations of Mao and Giap. At another level, though, Guevara’s work is much more than a simple field manual or blueprint for tactical operations. Above all else, it is a call to action intended to stimulate the creation of the “subjective conditions” and to intensify the “objective conditions” requisite to the revolution proclaimed by Lenin and other Marxist philosophers and social theorists of the twentieth century.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; is a tactical guide for overcoming the inertia of leftist forces, particularly the traditional Communist parties in Latin America in the 1960s. It asserts that the Cuban example demonstrates that (1) victory against the repressive incumbent regimes is possible through armed struggle; and (2) armed struggle, on the Cuban example, should initially take the form of guerrilla movements based in the countryside, mountains, forests, or jungles of the hinterland. Thus &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; is essentially a prescription of politico-military tactics appropriate for the moment.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Che’s own eclectic, pragmatic Marxism is incompatible with a literalist interpretation of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;. Guevara consistently rejected the notion that there is only one correct method for making revolution in Latin America. Rather, guerrilla warfare served as one means whereby, under then-existing conditions, Latin American revolutionaries could further Che’s goal of successful socialist revolution.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; is predicated upon a firm commitment to socialist revolution through armed struggle directed by a revolutionary vanguard. Che’s belief that socialism could be achieved only through destruction of the prevailing repressive military-bureaucratic apparatus of the capitalist states in Latin America raised the question of means, not ends. This is made clear by Che’s later elaboration of themes introduced in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; and his ongoing concern to discover through revolutionary praxis the correct methods of achieving socialism.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en22|&lt;span&gt;19&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; For Che—as for Marx and Lenin—revolution entailed the creation of a new human consciousness, a new Communist consciousness, as an essential component of the new revolutionary society, in which individual human beings overcome the legacy of capitalist alienation.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en23|&lt;span&gt;20&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In this sense, any serious discussion of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; must begin by recognizing that Che Guevara’s ultimate objectives were the destruction of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;ancient régime&lt;/span&gt;, the establishment of socialism in Latin America, and the worldwide transformation of human society into the Communist vision outlined by Marxist theory.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, Che essentially limited the applicability of the tactic of guerrilla warfare to “Caribbean-type” dictatorships (exemplified by Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Somoza in Nicaragua). These Caribbean-type dictatorships were personalist, authoritarian regimes lacking any credible appearance of constitutional legality. Arbitrary rule and routine repression of opposition movements left little hope for peaceful reform through elections or legislative checks on the executive. Guevara explicitly rejected “the guerrilla outbreak” in those cases where formal democracies, however fraudulent, masked the domination of capitalist class rules, “since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1961, Che modified this position, arguing that all of Latin America had the objective conditions for revolution. Only the subjective condition—awareness of the possibility of victory over imperialism and its internal allies—was lacking. This could be created by the armed struggle itself.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en24|&lt;span&gt;21&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The small cadre of revolutionary fighters in the countryside, or &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt;, would create this subjective condition by igniting the spark of rural-based revolution. As elaborated later by Regis Debray, Guevara’s method of revolution became known as &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foquismo&lt;/span&gt; and was harshly criticized by traditional Marxists, Trotskyists, and later (into the 1970s and 1980s) proponents of more sophisticated politico-military strategies of “protracted popular warfare” and guerrilla-induced popular insurrection.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en25|&lt;span&gt;22&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Three years later, Che fundamentally altered his original thesis regarding the impossibility of overthrowing the “oligarchical dictatorship” in “Guerrilla Warfare: A Method.” Although he reiterated the three lessons of the Cuban Revolution and reemphasized that guerrilla warfare was a strategic prescription, “a method for achieving a purpose,” he now clearly extended the applicability of the guerrilla strategy to the struggle against the formal democratic regimes of Latin America, those that had periodic elections, political parties, and civilian governments. Relying on Lenin’s characterization of the bourgeois state in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The State and Revolution&lt;/span&gt; and Lenin’s support for revolutionary civil wars in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Military Program of the Proletarian Revolution&lt;/span&gt;, Che argued the necessity of forcing these “oligarchical dictatorships” to unmask themselves. Guerrilla struggle, he asserted, leaves the capitalist state no choice but to bare its repressive character:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The equilibrium between oligarchical dictatorship and the popular pressure must be changed. The dictatorship tries to function without resorting to force. Thus, we must try to oblige the dictatorship to resort to violence, thereby unmasking its true nature as the dictatorship of the reactionary social classes. This event will deepen the struggle to such an extent that there will be no retreat from it. The performance of the people’s forces depends on the task of forcing the dictatorship to a decision—to retreat or unleash the struggle—thus beginning the stage of long-range armed action.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en26|&lt;span&gt;23&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;To date (1997), no guerrilla movement in Latin America has overcome a formal democratic regime. However, the response to these movements by certain elements of the Latin American political elite and the character of U.S. military and economic assistance certainly contributed to the destruction of formal democratic systems in Brazil (1964), Argentina (1966), Peru (1968), Chile (1973), and Uruguay (1973). In all these countries military dictatorships justified their governments and programs on grounds of the threat of internal subversion and “Castro-Communist” politico-military movements. Guerrilla activities in the 1960s and 1970s in Central America, Venezuela, Colombia, and Bolivia also intensified the repressive actions of military and police forces as well as increasing military participation (without absolute domination) in national politics.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en27|&lt;span&gt;24&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;For Che Guevara such temporary failures, resulting from the Alliance for Progress, counterinsurgency programs, and the repressive responses of Latin American elites, were to be expected. Echoing Lenin’s prediction of the ultimate transition from socialism to Communism, Che declared his faith in ultimate victory: “The outcome of today’s struggles does not matter. It does not matter in the final count that one or two movements were temporarily defeated because what is definite is the decision to struggle which matures every day, the consciousness of the need for revolutionary change, and the certainty that it is possible.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en28|&lt;span&gt;25&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Che proclaimed for all to hear that the revolutionary struggle could not avoid direct confrontation with the United States. If the government of the United States defined Guevara as a dangerous enemy, it did so on the basis of Che’s own unmistakable declaration of war:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Within the frame of this struggle on a continental scale, the battles which are now taking place are only episodes—but they have already furnished their martyrs, who will figure in the history of Our America as having given their necessary quota of blood in this last stage of the fight for the total freedom of man. . . . America, a forgotten continent in the last liberation struggles, which is now beginning to make itself heard through the Tricontinental in the voice of the vanguard of its peoples, the Cuban Revolution, has before it a task of much greater relevance: to create a second or a third Vietnam, or the second and third Vietnam of the world.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en29|&lt;span&gt;26&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Thus, by 1967, Che Guevara had come to view the guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; in each Latin American nation, the “hard core of thirty to fifty men,” as an expendable element in a “long war,” a “cruel war,” against the “imperialist soldiers.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; and Latin American Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;span&gt;Che Guevara’s writing, speeches, and renewed involvement in guerrilla movements in Africa and Latin America generated bitter, violent, and sectarian disputes within the Latin American political left. Theoretical critiques of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; and of the “Guevarist line” contrasted markedly with Guevara’s own pragmatic, antidogmatic, eclectic—indeed, sometimes careless—adaptations of Marxist-Leninist theory to the Latin American context (in Che’s words, “We offer an outline, not a bible”).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guevara’s primary message was that “the duty of revolutionaries is to make revolution,” and that the guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; was part of the struggle to defeat imperialism—the last stage of capitalism—in world confrontation. The Latin American left, however, seemed intent on pursuing sectarian quarrels over the correct tactics for making revolution in individual nations in the region. These theoretical disputes fragmented the revolutionary movements within particular Latin American nations as well as the continental revolutionary forces.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Some of the major theoretical issues raised for Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries in Latin America by the so-called “Guevarist line” included: (1) role of the vanguard party, if any, and its relationship to the guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco;&lt;/span&gt; (2) relative emphasis on the various forms of class struggle (mass organization, labor conflict, general strikes, armed struggle, etc.); (3) comparative importance of rural and urban political and armed struggle—that is, the best “strategic terrain”; (4) relationships between revolutionary forces, bourgeois political parties, and the traditional Communist parties in Latin America; and (5) alternative conceptions of the “continental war of liberation.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en30|&lt;span&gt;27&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Many Trotskyist critics found fault with what they termed the “Guevarist adventurist line.” Peter Camejo, for example, relying on “literalist” Leninism, laments most of all the lack of a central role for the vanguard party in the Guevarist scheme and the Guevarist failure to do the necessary “political work” for the revolution:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;How should the masses be organized? How should revolutionists answer the maneuvers of the ruling class? Guevarism offers no strategy or program for the class struggle as a whole. The fundamental error of Guevarism is that it reduces all of politics to a technical military problem by turning a tactic, guerrilla warfare, into a strategy. The need to build a mass revolutionary party is seen as irrelevant by the Guevarists and they generally oppose building such a party.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;What have been the results of his approach? With the victory of the Cuban revolution a whole new generation was attracted to revolutionary ideas. This new vanguard, however, abstained from the effort to win the masses away from the influence of the populist and Stalinist formations. Instead it devoted itself to the establishment of guerrilla fronts. The masses were left in the hands of the reformists.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en31|&lt;span&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Old-line Communists (pro-Soviet, official Communist parties) in Latin America also resisted the Guevarist thesis. Accustomed as they were to “class alliances” and “peaceful means of class struggle” (elections, labor organization, propaganda, etc.), Communist leaders feared both the lack of control over guerrilla focos and the repressive responses of the Latin American regimes. However, ideological-tactical clashes within particular Communist parties led to significant splits. For example, in Venezuela, Douglas Bravo (former member of the Venezuelan Communist Party’s political bureau and leader of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional) rejected the authority and the “mass line” of the party. He affirmed:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;We are pacifists, but understand us well, we are not the kind of pacifists you find here, like those who oppose the development of the armed struggle. We are fighters who want a peace that is in a sense broader and more profound; as fighters for and lovers of peace, as men striving for a new world, we take up arms. . . . But it must be quite obvious—and everyone must be made objectively aware of this—that the conditions in which the semi-colonial and colonial peoples dominated by North American imperialism and by powerful oligarchies live, make it materially impossible to achieve [the desired] changes through electoral means, through peaceful means.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en32|&lt;span&gt;29&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;In response, the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV) expelled Douglas Bravo. Fidel Castro then bitterly attacked the PCV, which categorically rejected Castro’s “claim to be the one who alone decides what is and what is not revolutionary in Latin America. In Venezuela this question is a matter between the PCV and its people, and no one else.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en33|&lt;span&gt;30&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A similar split or, more accurately, a series of splits occurred in Guatemala from 1962 to 1968. In April 1967, César Montes, a member of the politburo of the Guatemalan Communist Party (PGT) until January 1968, declared:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The fact that some communists are in the FAR [Rebel Armed Forces] does not mean that our movement functions as the armed arm of any party. The FAR is not the armed arm of the PGT. Ours is a broad, patriotic movement with a very simple program: We Guatemalans want to be able to control ourselves without any foreign military, economic, or political intervention. We are creating the people’s organization for the revolutionary war; within the guerrilla, is the germ of the great people’s army which ultimately will be able to offer a power alternative.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en34|&lt;span&gt;31&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;The break between the FAR and the PGT in Guatemala led to the resignation of 50 percent of the PGT’s central committee and 40 percent of its politburo. In March 1968 the PGT central committee responded with a statement designed to clarify the relationship between vanguard functions and guerrilla struggle:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;We should promote political struggle both among the masses, in order to win them over definitively, and in the solution of national problems, pinpointing and combating the vices of the regime and the system. We should promote class struggle in all fields—economic, political, and cultural—on the basis of a minimum program incorporating the struggle against unemployment, for a general rise in the wages, against the high cost of living, against the crisis in the country, against the violation of the rights of man, for social freedom, in defense of sovereignty. We should support the concrete demands of the women, students and young people in general, support the popular forces in the conflicts that break out, and above all, mobilize all strata of the population, organize them and draw them into the struggle.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en35|&lt;span&gt;32&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;This effort to clarify the role of the party failed to reconcile the FAR to the Communists’ reluctance to commit themselves fully to armed struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Literalist interpretation and emulation of the Cuban experience brought little immediate success, but not even Che’s death in Bolivia dissuaded the militant &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foquistas.&lt;/span&gt; Accused by more orthodox Marxist-Leninists and the local Communist parties of neglecting the daily struggle of the working class, of rejecting organizational and trade union agitation, and of relying exclusively upon military attacks on the incumbent regime, groups such as the Bolivian Army of National Liberation (ELN) insisted that, in the insurrectionary stages, the revolution had no indispensable need for a vanguard party. In response, orthodox Communists in Latin America simply recalled the “early” Che Guevara who, in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, had recognized the need for “political work” before a guerrilla foco could hope to succeed. Thus, the Communist party of El Salvador added the following remarks as part of an epilogue to the Salvadoran edition of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Diario de Che en Bolivia&lt;/span&gt; (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Che’s Bolivian Diary&lt;/span&gt;):&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Che has taught us in his &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; that armed struggle can only arise and be developed after political struggle, as a means of attaining power, has been exhausted. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;If Che Guevara and Fidel Castro later changed their views on guerrilla war and came to originate the theory of the armed &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; as the source of the revolutionary process, whether it be &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;a foco&lt;/span&gt; established from within a country or one planted from without, this is a phenomenon that may be explained in terms of complex causes rooted in the social composition of the Cuban revolutionary vanguard and in the development of the Cuban Revolution after the seizure of power. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As all revolutionaries, we desire the least suffering for our people, and we would seize the possibility of peaceful triumph for the revolution with all our strength if that should appear possible in practice; but, as revolutionaries, we are also realists who believe that such an eventuality is not likely for Latin American countries in general and that only exceptionally could a peaceful transformation take place in our continent. In asserting our disagreement with the strategy of the guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco,&lt;/span&gt; we are not, therefore, expressing opposition to armed struggle in order to take power, nor are we even questioning all forms of guerrilla warfare. We question only one form: the guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en36|&lt;span&gt;33&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Gradually, after Che Guevara’s death, revolutionary movements as varied as the urban Tupamaro guerrillas in Uruguay, the ELN in Bolivia, the Argentine Montoneros, and the Chilean Left Revolutionary Movement sought to overcome the “false dilemma.” Thus in “Party or &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Foco:&lt;/span&gt; A False Dilemma” (1971), the Tupamaros concluded that the “&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; is a method of struggle, not a political apparatus like the Vanguard Party. Revolutionaries need not, therefore, choose between the two but could combine them.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en37|&lt;span&gt;34&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Nevertheless, the debates and conflict persisted within the revolutionary left.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In a sense, Che Guevara himself sought to reconcile these opposing views by insisting in his writing and through his actions that the duty of revolutionaries was to &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;make revolution.&lt;/span&gt; He elaborated the role of the vanguard in directing the construction of socialism and emphasized the necessity of immediate armed struggle. To overcome the status quo, he asserted, revolutionary theory must be formulated and reformulated according to concrete historical conditions and in light of social forces in particular societies. His writings and speeches made clear that he could take no pleasure from an insurgency that attained political power but lacked the political vision to establish a socialist society.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As in Venezuela and Guatemala, however, many revolutionaries in the rest of Latin America inspired by Guevarismo and the Cuban revolution became more and more intolerant of anything but the commitment to immediate armed struggle directed by the guerrilla cadres themselves. With this in mind, Che Guevara concluded his message to the Tricontinental in 1967 with a plea for tolerance in tactical disagreements combined with uncompromising dedication to the ultimate strategic objective: Communist victory. He also seemed almost to anticipate his impending death and called upon others to follow in his path: “Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism, and a battle hymn for the people’s unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States of America. Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear, that another hand may be extended to wield our weapons, and that other men be ready to intone our funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine guns and new battle cries of war and victory.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en38|&lt;span&gt;35&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;If, in this message to the Tricontinental, Che Guevara wrote his own epitaph, it was an epitaph that continued to inspire the “staccato singing of the machine guns” throughout Latin America into the 1990s as guerrilla movements in El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, and Peru fought (in part) for social and political change, and new guerrilla movements of varying importance arose in Bolivia and Mexico. Ironically, however, by the 1990s guerrilla warfare had become primarily a tactic to extrude reforms from elected civilian governments rather than a strategy to conquer power and revolutionize society. In Colombia the M-19 pacted with the government to lay down its arms and become part of the political party system in exchange for constitutional and other reforms; in El Salvador the FMLN negotiated a “peace accord” that resulted in its participation in elections and in Congress; in Guatemala in 1996 a peace agreement between the URNG and the government focused on political reform and downsizing of the armed forces; and in Mexico in 1994 the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) called for political reform, democratization, and cleansing the corrupt PRI-dominated polity—but not for revolution. Such outcomes, even without overt renunciation of revolutionary objectives, would surely have been rejected by Che Guevara. The guerrillas had given in to the “oligarchical dictatorships” that he denounced in “Guerrilla Warfare: A Method,” proclaiming that “[the] end, essential and inevitable for any revolutionary, is the conquest of political power,” even as the “oligarchical dictatorship attempts to use the old legal order to change constitutionality and further oppress the proletariat without a frontal clash.” As if foreseeing the temptation (or necessity) of the guerrillas of the 1980s and 1990s, Guevara admonished: “We should never forget the class character, authoritarian and restrictive, which typifies the bourgeois state. . . . To struggle only to restore a certain degree of bourgeois legality without considering the question of revolutionary power is to struggle for the return of a dictatorial order established by the dominant social classes. In other words, it is to struggle for a lighter ball to be fixed to the prisoner’s chain” (see “Guerrilla Warfare: A Method,” in this volume).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;The Response of the United States to&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;span&gt;Che Guevara’s declaration of war against the United States, capitalism, and imperialism did not fall on deaf ears. Interpreted by U.S. foreign policymakers and military strategists as a part of a broad international Communist offensive, Guevara’s writing and the Cuban Revolution became the object of intense intellectual, doctrinal, and military concerns. When Nikita Khrushchev proclaimed Soviet support for “wars of national liberation” in January 1961, U.S. State Department officialdom declared that “the military arm of Mr. Khrushchev’s . . . doctrine is, clearly, guerrilla warfare. . . . we have, indeed, begun to take the problem of guerrilla warfare seriously.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en39|&lt;span&gt;36&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Before the Cuban Revolution, U.S. security policy toward Latin America focused primarily on hemispheric defense from external aggression.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en40|&lt;span&gt;37&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Indeed, in adopting the Mutual Security Act of 1959, Congress specifically used language reaffirming this policy commitment, stipulating that “internal security requirements shall not, unless the President determines otherwise, be the basis for military assistance programs to the American Republics.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en41|&lt;span&gt;38&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Even if, in practice, U.S. military assistance bolstered repressive regimes in Central America, the Caribbean, and South America, U.S. policy did not officially proclaim that support for incumbent governments against internal opposition constituted the principal purpose of the military assistance program.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Cuban Revolution and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; dramatically altered U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America and the rationale, character, and operation of the military assistance programs. Following analyses by a number of Kennedy administration intellectuals, including Walt W. Rostow and Roger Hilsman, official U.S. policy came to be predicated upon certain basic assumptions concerning the timing and international significance of guerrilla insurgency in Latin America.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en42|&lt;span&gt;39&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Simplified, these premises were as follows:&lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> # The nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America are experiencing a process of modernization and social change.<br /> # This process of modernization of traditional society is disruptive and potentially revolutionary.<br /> # Most modernizing nations have relatively weak governments, highly vulnerable to subversion and guerrilla warfare. Even popular governments are hard-pressed to mobilize the resources necessary to combat military insurgency and to meet the social and economic demands of modernization.<br /> # Modernization, therefore, provides opportunities for highly disciplined Communist insurgents to take advantage of the “difficult transitional moments” in the modernization process.<br /> # Communists, thus, are the “scavengers of the modernization process,” and Communism is best understood as a “disease of the transition to modernization.”<br /> # Under these conditions, the central task of the United States is “to protect the independence of the revolutionary process” in the Third World by assisting these nations in their struggle against the “scavengers of the modernization process”—international Communism.<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Rostow asserted that “despite all the Communist talk of American imperialism, we are committed, by the nature of our system, to support the course of national independence,” adding: “We are determined to help destroy this international disease; that is, guerrilla war designed, initiated, and supplied, and led from outside an independent nation. . . . A guerrilla war mounted from outside a transitional nation is a crude act of international vandalism. There will be no peace in the world if the international community accepts the outcome of a guerrilla war, mounted from outside a nation, as tantamount to a free election.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en43|&lt;span&gt;40&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By early 1961 the dramatic change in U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, imposed by the threat of “more Cubas,” reverberated throughout the country with the words of President John F. Kennedy. Adopting Rostow’s conception of Communism as a “disease of the transition to modernization” spread through “international vandalism,” President Kennedy made clear the new administration’s view of international conflict:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Power is the hallmark of this offensive—power and discipline and deceit. The legitimate discontent of yearning peoples is exploited. The legitimate trappings of self-determination are employed. But, once in power, all talk of discontent is repressed—all self-determination disappears—and the promise of a revolution of hope is betrayed, as in Cuba, into a reign of terror. . . . The message of Cuba, of Laos, of the rising din of Communist voices in Asia and Latin America—these messages are all the same. . . . Now it should be clear . . . that our security may be lost piece by piece, country by country, without the firing of a single missile or the crossing of a single border.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en44|&lt;span&gt;41&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Two years later, after the unsuccessful invasion of the Bay of Pigs and confrontation with the Soviet Union over its installation of offensive missiles in Cuba, President Kennedy reiterated his administration’s commitment to eradicating the threat of Communist subversion by providing whatever assistance was necessary to combat the guerrilla forces in Latin America: “The American states must be ready to come to the aid of any government requesting aid to prevent a takeover aligned to the policies of foreign Communism rather than to an internal desire for change. My own country is prepared to do this. We in this hemisphere must also use every resource at our command to prevent the establishment of another Cuba in this hemisphere.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en45|&lt;span&gt;42&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In line with this new perception of inter-American relations, the Kennedy administration adopted a multipronged strategy to counter the “systematic attempt by the Communists to impose a serious disease on those societies attempting the transition to modernization.” To alleviate the conditions that spawn the “Communist disease,” President Kennedy proposed an “Alliance for Progress”—numerous programs of U.S. public and private economic assistance and investment in Latin America over the next decade. To meet the immediate guerrilla threat, the Kennedy administration adopted a variety of military training, supply, and operational assistance programs combined with “civic action”—an effort to win or regain the support of the local population for incumbent regimes through public works, health care, and local support activities carried out by Latin American &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;military&lt;/span&gt; forces.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;The Alliance for Progress&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;span&gt;President Kennedy initiated the Alliance for Progress with great fanfare in August 1961 at the Punta del Este Conference in Uruguay. &lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en46|&lt;span&gt;43&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In theory, a ten-year commitment of twenty billion dollars in public and private U.S. funds for economic and social development in Latin America would be accompanied by internal reforms (land, tax, and electoral reforms; housing and education programs; public works, etc.) throughout the region. According to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, this program would support “the prospects of peaceful change through constructive, democratic processes as an alternative to change through the destructive extremism offered by the Communists. ”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en47|&lt;span&gt;44&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In short, the Alliance for Progress was a U.S. response to the Cuban Revolution and the threat posed by &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;. The United States recognized the accuracy of Che Guevara’s observations on the objective conditions of misery, poverty, and oppression that made all of Latin America vulnerable to revolutionary warfare. To alleviate these conditions, at least enough to buy time for incumbent regimes and allow defeat of the guerrilla movements, the U.S. government intended to promote social and economic reform. The Alliance for Progress would be a prophylactic; it would allow for “progress” (reform)—or the perception of “progress”—by stifling the idea that a new society must be based upon revolutionary change.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Looking back at the years 1961–71, it is clear that the Alliance for Progress failed to achieve most of its social and economic objectives. Nevertheless, in some nations, U.S.-supported programs certainly contributed to improvements in education, public health, and housing as well as, to a more limited degree, in land tenure and rural social conditions.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en48|&lt;span&gt;45&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; It also contributed to the expansion of government programs in rural and urban Latin America while raising the expectations of millions of peasants and urban workers for a better life. When these expectations could not be satisfied, widespread popular frustration placed more severe pressure on the political regimes of the region.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Latin America elites bitterly resisted U.S. intrusions into domestic policymaking, particularly where the Alliance for Progress threatened centuries-old privileges and the very basis of political power: the system of large rural estates. Even if both Rostow and Che Guevara had accurately pointed to the misery of the countryside and the oppression of rural labor as a source of support for insurgency, the Latin American political and social elites would not relinquish to reform what they were willing to wage war to preserve. The United States found only reluctant allies in its Alliance and could promote very little “progress” as intensified rural-urban migration created growing rings of misery around every Latin American capital. Food production stagnated in much of the region, unemployment increased, and reformist regimes gave way to repressive military dictatorships. Summarizing the dilemmas of the first five years of the Alliance for Progress, Simon Hanson noted that&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;the rate of economic growth dropped sharply from the average for 1950–55 and 1955–60 and the change in the growth rate per capita was even more adverse. . . . the distribution of income became even more unsatisfactory as the gap between the rich and poor widened appreciably. . . . a very heavy proportion of the disbursements went to military regimes which had overthrown constitutional governments, and at the end of the period, with almost half of the population of the area under military rule, a significant portion of the aid was going not to assist “free men and free governments” but rather to hold in power regimes to which the people had lost their freedom.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en49|&lt;span&gt;46&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Military Assistance, Counterinsurgency, and Civic Action&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;span&gt;Although the Alliance for Progress largely failed to achieve its social and economic goals, the military and civic action programs experienced great immediate success. From 1962 to 1972 no guerrilla movement in Latin America replicated the Cuban experience. Indeed, in 1967, U.S.-trained and -supported forces in Bolivia even captured and killed Che Guevara, the very symbol of revolutionary guerrilla warfare.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;U.S. military and security policy toward Latin America after 1961 represented a critical departure from pre-Cuban Revolution programs. From World War II until 1960, U.S.-Latin American mutual security policies underwent considerable change, but never did Latin America have a high priority in Washington’s strategic planning or defense policy. Congressional failure to act on the Truman administration’s proposals for a continuing postwar program of hemispheric military cooperation discouraged Latin American military leaders as well as incumbent governments in the region. As in the past, these governments turned to Europe for military matériel and training. Only in 1949 did the new Mutual Defense Assistance Act permit Latin American acquisition of selected, typically obsolete war matériel, oriented often toward coastal defense.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The outbreak of war in Korea in 1950 induced U.S. policymakers to reassert the need for “self-help and mutual aid for defense of the continent.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en50|&lt;span&gt;47&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; From 1951 to 1961, with variations from country to country, and not without considerable congressional debate in Washington, U.S. military assistance was premised upon supporting the Latin American military establishments for their role in defense of the Western Hemisphere. Less dramatic, but perhaps more important, this continuous military cooperation allowed U.S. personnel to establish good personal relationships with Latin American military leaders. The great political value of these contacts was repeatedly emphasized by U.S. policymakers in testimony before Congress and in private discussions. Thus, in 1962, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara testified before a Senate committee:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Probably the greatest return on our military assistance investment dollar comes from the training of selected officers and key specialists at our military schools and training centers in the United States and overseas. These students are handpicked by their own countries to become instructors when they return home. They are the coming leaders in the nations, the men that will have the know-how and impart it to their own forces. I need not dwell on the value of having in positions of leadership men who have firsthand knowledge of how Americans do things and how they think. . . . Each of these men will receive an exposure to democracy at work, to the traditions and philosophies of our Government, and I think he will go back to his nation with a far better understanding of democracy and its possible application to this particular nation than he had before he became a student in one of our schools.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en51|&lt;span&gt;48&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;As indicated above, as late as 1959, Congress and government officials had still emphasized hemispheric defense in the military assistance programs financed by the United States. The Mutual Security Act of 1959, which amended the previous legislation of 1954–58, provided for two basic limitations:&lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> # Military equipment and materials would be furnished to the other American republics only to further missions relating directly to the common defense of the Western Hemisphere which were found by the president to be important to the security of the United States.<br /> # Internal security requirements would not, unless the president determined otherwise, be the basis for military assistance programs to American republics.<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;With regard to the second limitation, Congress had deleted the word “normally” from the old legislation regulating the provision of military assistance and required a specific determination by the president in each case where such assistance involved primary attention to internal security.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;With the success of Fidel Castro in Cuba and the 1961 change of administrations in Washington, the policy focus of U.S. military assistance programs shifted emphatically from hemispheric defense to internal security and counterinsurgency. The military component of the Alliance for Progress—counterinsurgency and civic action—received overriding attention from the Kennedy administration. In June 1961, Secretary of State Dean Rusk explained the basis of the new policy and argued that the increased threats of subversion in Latin America justified deletion of congressional requirements for “special determination” of need for internal security programs. Such restrictions, he believed, were “too large an impediment to swift action.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en52|&lt;span&gt;49&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; A week later, Secretary McNamara repeated the new policy direction: “Our objective . . . is to provide the means for local military establishments, with the support and cooperation of local populations, to guard against external covert intrusion and internal subversion designed to create dissidence and insurrection.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en53|&lt;span&gt;50&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Latin American policy was now clearly a part of the cold war. The United States considered “wars of national liberation” and guerrilla movements to be integral elements in an international conflict with the Soviet Union. If Che Guevara declared war on worldwide imperialism, the United States and its Latin American allies were prepared to meet the challenge of “international Communism.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en54|&lt;span&gt;51&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite the Kennedy administration’s dire warnings of the Communist threat, Congress did not easily accede to its requests for increased authority, increased funding, and deletion of congressional oversight of the military assistance programs. With the passage of Public Law 87-135 (September 4, 1961), however, Congress changed the avowed purpose of military assistance to Latin America from hemispheric defense to the maintenance of internal security. In addition, Section 505 (b) of that law provided authorization for civic action-type programs, a new focus of U.S.-Latin American policy that remained constant into the early 1970s.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en55|&lt;span&gt;52&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The addition of civic action programs to counterinsurgency represented a political response to Che Guevara’s call for political warfare. Although civic action programs originated conceptually as far back as 1951, only with the Kennedy administration did civic action, as part of internal security programs, enter the diplomatic and congressional lexicon.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en56|&lt;span&gt;53&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Through civic action programs, military assistance could create popular support for Latin American military establishments as these groups contributed to local construction, education, health, and security programs. In turn, the local population would be weaned away from the guerrillas, provide military intelligence for the official military forces, and attach their hopes and loyalties to the incumbent regime.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;What U.S. policymakers never understood, however, was that large-scale civic action programs were anathema to most senior military officers in Latin America despite the military’s historical missions in mapping, road building, and disaster relief. First, building latrines, irrigation and water works, sewer systems, schools, and the like requires that soldiers engage in manual labor. For centuries most Spanish (and therefore Spanish-American) military officers have viewed manual labor as demeaning, fit only for women and infidels and, later, Indians and blacks. As one Peruvian general angrily asked one of the authors in the late 1960s: “What does your ambassador think we are—a bunch of Indians?”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Second, it must be remembered that most Latin American nations are divided into military zones or regions with a senior-ranking general in command of each. These zones are as important politically as they are militarily, and the political power of each general depends upon both his zone’s proximity to the national capital and the general’s ability to mobilize the men under his command rapidly in the event of a national political crisis or attempted coup d’état. Scattering troops around the countryside to engage in civic action projects represents a real threat to each general’s political influence.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Nevertheless, while never popular with Latin American military elites, civic action programs became a significant part of the military assistance-counterinsurgency programs funded by the U.S. Congress in the mid-1960s. If nothing else, these programs recognized the political basis for revolutionary guerrilla warfare as outlined by Che Guevara. Civic action sought to take the guerrilla “fish” out of water, to deprive them of the essential cooperation of the local population. Such programs also represented a response to Rostow’s central thesis: socioeconomic alleviation by incumbent regimes of the crisis of modernization would deprive insurgents of the conditions that make possible popular mobilization for revolutionary struggle. Such “civic action” had been a limited part of Latin American army missions since the 1930s and 1940s; by the 1980s and 1990s most officers recognized the military and financial opportunities presented by expanded military roles in public works and government contracts. In the mid-1960s, however, many officers resisted the U.S.-inspired civic action tasks, preferring to fight guerrillas rather than to immunize Indian children, build latrines for civilians, and deliver potable water to the countryside.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Coincident with the intellectual and high-level policy response to events in Cuba, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, and insurgency in Latin America, the reorganized U.S. Southern Command assumed coordination of counterinsurgency programs, arms sales and transfers, and military training programs, and augmented military advisory assistance groups. The Agency for International Development also contributed to the new programs with training for police in counterinsurgency programs and “interrogation” techniques. Across Latin America, a massive U.S.-supported counterinsurgency apparatus moved into action against the threat of “more Cubas” in the hemisphere.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en57|&lt;span&gt;54&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In contrast, Soviet policy proved much less militant than the Soviet rhetoric applauding wars of national liberation would suggest. The high cost of subsidizing the Cuban Revolution’s social and economic initiatives made clear the practical limits to Moscow’s military and economic aid in Latin America. Willing to extend moral support and small amounts of military assistance, often via Cuba, the Soviets nonetheless attempted to minimize their risks in the Western Hemisphere and to sustain the more cautious official Communist parties throughout the region. Thus, the Soviet Union, through Cuba, could extend cold war policies to the U.S. sphere of influence at relatively little cost, even when Cuban and Soviet objectives and methods conflicted.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en58|&lt;span&gt;55&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Latin America became a tactical game on the international chessboard, its peoples the victims of both sides who sacrificed pawns to obtain more important goals.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;U.S. politico-military programs achieved great immediate success in confronting insurgency in Latin America and in buttressing some incumbent regimes in the region. For example, U.S. assistance greatly enhanced the capabilities of reformist regimes in Venezuela (1959–80) and Chile (1964–70). In other cases, however, defeat of the guerrilla movements became secondary to the new political role of self-appointed military saviors. Adaptation of Rostow’s analysis by military intellectuals led to conclusions incompatible with the Kennedy vision of constructive democratic reform. Following the formulations of Brazilian General Golbery do Couto e Silva and like-minded military professionals, military elites in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay—and, later, in Central America—concluded that only a military regime could confront the dual challenges of modernization and the threat to national security posed by Communist insurgency.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the short run, both U.S. policymakers and Che Guevara failed. Instead of either “many Vietnams” or “constructive democratic reform,” the U.S. and Latin American responses to Che’s anti-imperialist struggle gave birth to military governments and terrorist regimes that frequently adopted as public policy institutionalized torture, repression, and antipolitics—the rejection of “politics” with its conflicts among political parties or personalist factions and in its place the establishment of long-term military rule.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en59|&lt;span&gt;56&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Even where civilian governments survived, as in Colombia and Venezuela, guerrilla warfare militarized politics and provoked widespread human rights abuses.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Thus, the legacy of Che Guevara and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; is not only the revolutionary struggle of the 1960s and 1970s, not only the 1979 victory of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, but also the antipolitical and terrorist regimes that seized power in much of Latin America after 1964. Some may see this outcome as confirmation of Che Guevara’s 1963 prediction that the “oligarchical dictatorships,” or formal democracies, would give way to more repressive dictatorships under the pressure of guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; and revolutionary struggle—the necessary “unmasking” of the “oligarchical dictatorships.” Others, however, prefer Che’s original formulation in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; limiting the applicability of the guerrilla strategy to Caribbean-style dictatorships. In either case, the Cuban example, along with &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; and his later writings, fundamentally altered the course of Latin American history, of U.S. foreign policy, of international politics, and, for both better and worse, the human condition in Latin America.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The influence of the Cuban Revolution and of Che Guevara continued to be felt in the 1980s and 1990s in Central America, the Caribbean, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Argentina, and Bolivia, where, as we know, Che met his death at the hands of those he declared his enemies. Even if proved wrong on the ultimate defeat of imperialism and the ultimate victory of socialism, those who follow in his path continue to shape the course of national and international events.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By the early 1980s, Latin American revolutionaries generally rejected &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foquismo&lt;/span&gt;, although, with great variation within the region, they retained commitments to different forms of armed struggle. The setbacks suffered by the 1960s and 1970s guerrilla romantics led to a significant reassessment of their strategies, tactics, political alliances, and long-term objectives. State terrorism and military repression of revolutionaries in most of South America decimated and traumatized the political left. In contrast, the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua and its support by Cuba and the Soviet Union temporarily encouraged revolutionaries in Central America and the Caribbean. Managua became the headquarters for Central American revolutionaries; weapons, supplies, military training, and propaganda from the Eastern bloc, Cuba, Vietnam, and elsewhere sustained the Salvadoran guerrillas for a decade against a massive U.S. military assistance program and “low-intensity conflict” operations.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Efforts to emulate the Sandinista model of “umbrella coordinating committees” to unite the diverse guerrilla factions and leftist political movements were imposed by the Cubans and Nicaraguans as a condition for continued aid; the FMLN-FDR in El Salvador and the URNG in Guatemala were partly a result of this external “encouragement.” Political fronts that adopted the names of nationalist and revolutionary heroes (Farabundo Martí in El Salvador, Francisco Morazán and Lorenzo Zelaya in Honduras) also copied the use made of Augusto César Sandino’s legacy in Nicaragua. None of this was part of Che Guevara’s original formulation of guerrilla warfare tactics, but none of it conflicted with his pragmatism and tolerance for all methods of struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite the Sandinista victory, the gradual transition in Latin America from military to civilian-elected governments beginning with Ecuador (1979) and Peru (1980) changed the domestic context for rural guerrillas and urban revolutionaries. Negotiated transitions to civilian rule that granted impunity and amnesties for human rights violations committed during the counterinsurgency struggles and the “dirty wars” waged by the military regimes against the political left disheartened many people but made possible the reestablishment of formal democracies. As Guevara theorized, the use of elections to relegitimize governments in El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, and Peru undercut political support for guerrilla insurgencies.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;From the late 1980s into the early 1990s political and economic liberalization in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe destroyed the utopian socialist vision that had inspired much of the Latin American left. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Perestroika&lt;/span&gt; and the dissolution of the Soviet Union also brought economic hardship to Cuba and the severe decline of its influence in the hemisphere. By 1990 the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas and the collapse of East European socialism clearly ended the era of the Cuban Revolution in Latin America. Neoliberal economic policies and elected governments dominated the Western Hemisphere.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This outcome was far from predictable in 1980. Guerrilla wars bloodied El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, and Colombia from the Sandinista victory into the 1990s. Internal conflicts and guerrilla warfare persisted in El Salvador until the peace accords of 1992, in Guatemala until the peace accords in 1996, in Peru with great viciousness past the mid-1990s, and in Colombia despite periodic “truces,” amnesties, and incorporation of ex-guerrillas into political parties, Congress, and public administration. The Sandinista government in Nicaragua also had to contend with an army of “freedom fighters,” labelled &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt;, who were financed and supported by the United States. Based in Honduras and, to a lesser extent, in Costa Rica, the counterrevolutionary army was influential in forcing the Sandinistas to participate in the Central American peace negotiations and to hold elections in 1990.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en60|&lt;span&gt;57&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In contrast, Bolivia and Venezuela experienced very limited guerrilla activity after the 1970s (see case studies for further details).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By the mid-1980s, however, with the exception of Nicaragua, Peru (in the early 1990s), and El Salvador’s protracted war of attrition modeled in part on the Vietnamese experience (especially in the failed 1981 and 1989 insurrections), guerrilla warfare did not threaten incumbent governments. Nowhere did the guerrillas cling to the romantic Guevarista notions of the 1960s. Indeed, guerrilla operations became more a tactic to force reform than a strategy for revolution, although admittedly all the guerrilla groups, with the exception of the Zapatistas in Mexico, still claimed that they intended to transform society through armed struggle and to take power—until the moment they negotiated their way back into the political system and sought protection (often unsuccessfully) from death squads and government repression after laying down their arms and exacting promises of reform as a condition for ending their insurgencies. By the late 1980s some guerrilla movements in Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru, and Mexico also demanded more cultural and political autonomy for Indian peoples, a far cry from Guevara’s focus on national revolutions with ties to international socialism.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The U.S.-promoted Alliance for Progress and the Latin American reformers had agreed to such terms, in principle, since the early 1960s. After decades of death, suffering, and destruction, it was not clear what guerrilla wars had achieved that could compensate for the violence and trauma. What “reforms” were conceded in Guatemala and El Salvador that could not have been gained by other means sooner and at less cost in human lives, absent guerrilla war? But for Che Guevara, such questions would be impertinent; the objective was revolution and the construction of socialism. As he wrote, political reform within formal democracies was merely a “lighter iron ball to be fixed to the prisoner’s chain.” For those who transformed the Guevarista vision and fought its battles in the 1980s and 1990s, however, these questions were painful—unless no reforms, no political opening, could have been extruded from Chilean, Brazilian, Argentine, Uruguayan, and even Salvadoran governments while avoiding the state terrorism that responded to insurgency.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Whatever the answer to these counterfactual questions, the guerrilla wars had failed; power remained in the hands of political parties, business groups, the Church, the military—in short, of the enemies that Che Guevara sought to overcome. Even the victorious Sandinistas found themselves in the role of opposition by 1990, and Nicaragua was poorer and more desperate than it had been in the 1950s. The guerrilla organizations had also been transformed. In Peru, Colombia, and parts of Central America and Mexico their ties to international drug dealers and terrorists besmirched their heroic, idealistic images of the 1960s and 1970s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Former guerrillas (and also military veterans of the counterinsurgency struggles) organized armed bands and turned to kidnapping, highway robbery, extortion, and various common crimes to meet the economic and political crises of the 1990s. Increased criminal violence throughout Latin America was a legacy of guerrilla warfare and a product of the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. Even when unmarred by criminal ties, the idealism and optimism of the 1960s and 1970s had largely disappeared. Guerrilla warfare, for some combatants, had become a way of life. War “taxes” on landowners, merchants, truckers, and tourists as well as “expropriations” from banks, extortion, and other forms of revolutionary fund-raising were alternatives to unemployment, or worse, in the neoliberal era.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Che Guevara’s inspiration for revolutionary struggle remained an icon of the political left and of a new youth culture.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#end en61|&lt;span&gt;58&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; It responded to a nostalgia for virtue and common purpose in an era of materialism, individualism, and globalization of national economies. Viewed in hindsight, although Guevara’s contribution to military doctrine and political strategy was minimal, his influence on the course of Latin American history in the last half of the twentieth century was monumental. The guerrillas generally failed to take power, failed to defeat capitalism, and failed to forge the new socialist man. This failure, and that of guerrilla warfare as Che conceived it, did not destroy the myth, the legend, and the totemic symbol of “the heroic guerrilla.” Ironically, Che’s image appeared on tee-shirts, posters, book covers, billboards, and compact disc art in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. He had become a commercial success. Still, his memory inspired fear and hatred in the powerful, hope and empowerment for the powerless. Che Guevara continues as a reminder that human volition, individual action, and political violence have a role in defining the human condition in the coming century.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Notes&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;endnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en4|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a detailed description of Napoleon’s Iberian campaign, see Michael Glover, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Legacy of Glory&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en5|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;J. B. Firth, “The Guerrillas in History,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Fortnightly Review&lt;/span&gt; 70 (1901): 803.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en6|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For surveys of the history and tactics of guerrilla warfare, see Lt. Col. Frederick Wilkin, U.S. Army (Ret.), “Guerrilla Warfare,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings&lt;/span&gt;, March 1954; Franklin M. Osanka, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Modern Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962); Peter Paret and John W. Shy, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrillas in the 1960s&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Praeger, 1962); Lt. Col. T. N. Greene, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Guerrilla and How to Fight Him&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Praeger, 1966); Major (USAF) John S. Pustay, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Counterinsurgency Warfare&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Free Press, 1965); Robert B. Asprey, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History&lt;/span&gt;, vols. 1-2 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975); and Gerard Chaliand, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Strategies: An Historical Anthology from the Long March to Afghanistan&lt;/span&gt; (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). For the theoretical contributions and historical insights of one of the twentieth century’s greatest politico-military guerrilla leaders (heading the Cypriot resistance to the British in the 1950s), see George Grivas, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Memoirs of General Grivas&lt;/span&gt;, ed. Charles Foley (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964); and George Grivas, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;General Grivas on Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, trans. A. S. Pallis (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en7|&lt;span&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Quoted in Paret and Shy, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrillas in the 1960s&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 13-14.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en8|&lt;span&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See “Guerrilla Warfare: A Method,” this volume.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en9|&lt;span&gt;6&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;“Guerrilla Warfare,” in Osanka, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Modern Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, p. 6. See also T. E. Lawrence, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revolt in the Desert&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Doran, 1927); idem, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Seven Pillars of Wisdom&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Doubleday &amp;#x26; Co., 1935); and A. P. Wevell, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Palestine Campaigns&lt;/span&gt; (London: Constable, 1928).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en10|&lt;span&gt;7&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The discussion that follows relies in part on Pustay, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Counterinsurgency Warfare,&lt;/span&gt; especially chapter 3.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en11|&lt;span&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Translated by Regine Elder from volume 10 of the third edition of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Sochineniya&lt;/span&gt; and from volume 10 of the German &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Saemtliche Werke.&lt;/span&gt; Originally published in Orbis, Summer 1958, and reprinted in Osanka, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Modern Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 65–79.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en12|&lt;span&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 75.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en13|&lt;span&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 78.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en14|&lt;span&gt;11&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Brooks McClure, “Russia’s Hidden Army,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Infantry Journal&lt;/span&gt; (July–August 1949), reprinted in Osanka, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Modern Guerrilla Warfare,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 80-99.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en15|&lt;span&gt;12&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;“Strategic Problems of China’s Revolutionary War” (1936); “Strategic Problems in the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla War” (1938); “On the Protracted War” (1938). For a discussion of these writings, see Edward Katzenbach, Jr., and Gene Z. Hanrahan, “The Revolutionary Strategy of Mao Tse-tung,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Political Science Quarterly,&lt;/span&gt; September 1955, reprinted in Osanka, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Modern Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 131—46.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en16|&lt;span&gt;13&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See the commentary by Brig. Gen. Samuel B. Griffith, USMC (Ret.), in his translation of Mao’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Yu Chi Chan&lt;/span&gt; as &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;On Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Praeger, 1961).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en17|&lt;span&gt;14&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Quoted ibid., p. 46.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en18|&lt;span&gt;15&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 26.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en19|&lt;span&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 65.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en20|&lt;span&gt;17&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Quoted in Pustay, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Counterinsurgency Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 41-42; Greene, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Guerrilla,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 151–52. See also General Vo Nguyen Giap, “Inside the Vietminh,” in Greene, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Guerrilla&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 147-77.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en21|&lt;span&gt;18&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Greene, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Guerrilla&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 163-64.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en22|&lt;span&gt;19&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See, in particular, “Cuba: Exceptional Case or Vanguard in the Struggle against Colonialism?” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Verde&lt;/span&gt; Olivo, April 9, 1961, pp. 22-29.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en23|&lt;span&gt;20&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” in Rolando E. Bonachea and Nelson P. Valdés, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Che: Selected Works of&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Ernesto Guevara&lt;/span&gt; (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969), p. 161.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en24|&lt;span&gt;21&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Che Guevara, “Cuba: Exceptional Case or Vanguard in the Struggle against Colonialism?” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Obras, 1957–1967&lt;/span&gt; (Havana, 1970), 2:410–11, cited in Donald C. Hodges, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Legacy of Che Guevara: A Documentary Study&lt;/span&gt; (London: Thomas &amp;#x26; Hudson, 1977), pp. 79-83.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en25|&lt;span&gt;22&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Regis Debray, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revolution in the Revolution?&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967); Guillermo Lora, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Foquismo y&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;revolución&lt;/span&gt; (La Paz, 1971); Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Regis Debray and the Latin American Revolution&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968); and Abraham Guillén, “Lecciones de la guerrilla latinoamericana,” in Donald C. Hodges and Abraham Guillén, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revaloración de la guerrilla urbana&lt;/span&gt; (México, D.F.: El Caballito, 1977), pp. 69-130. For Debray’s critical reassessment of his own earlier writing, see &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;A Critique of Arms&lt;/span&gt;, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Penguin, 1977), especially volume 1, where Debray says: “The guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; is, if you like, the Party in khaki” and “the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foquismo&lt;/span&gt; of the sixties was . . . Leninism in a hurry” (pp. 169, 170).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en26|&lt;span&gt;23&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See “Guerrilla Warfare: A Method,” this volume.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en27|&lt;span&gt;24&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Richard Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971); James Kohl and John Litt, eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1974); Luis Mercier Vega, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrillas in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (NewYork: Praeger, 1969); William E. Ratliff, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Castroism and Communism in Latin America, 1959–1976: The Varieties of Marxist-Leninist Experience&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1976); Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Georges Fauriol, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Latin American Insurgencies&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Center for Strategic Studies and the National Defense University, 1985).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en28|&lt;span&gt;25&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See “Guerrilla Warfare: A Method,” this volume.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en29|&lt;span&gt;26&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See “Message to the Tricontinental,” this volume.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en30|&lt;span&gt;27&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a variety of interpretations of Guevarism, see Hodges, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Legacy of Che Guevara&lt;/span&gt;. See also Michael Lowy, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Marxism of Che Guevara&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973). The most influential propagator of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guevarism&lt;/span&gt; (and, some argue, the most important distorter) is Regis Debray in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revolution in the Revolution?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en31|&lt;span&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Peter Camejo, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guevara’s Guerrilla Strategy: A Critique and Some Proposals&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972), pp. 16–21.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en32|&lt;span&gt;29&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Quoted in Mercier Vega, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrillas in Latin America,&lt;/span&gt; p. 219.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en33|&lt;span&gt;30&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See ibid., p. 224.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en34|&lt;span&gt;31&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See interview with Eduardo Galeano in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guatemala: Clave de Latinoamérica&lt;/span&gt; (Montevideo, 1967), quoted in Ratliff, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Castroism and Communism&lt;/span&gt;, p. 113.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en35|&lt;span&gt;32&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Quoted in ibid., p. 115.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en36|&lt;span&gt;33&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Quoted in Hodges, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Legacy of Che Guevara,&lt;/span&gt; p. 102.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en37|&lt;span&gt;34&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Quoted in ibid., p. 36.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en38|&lt;span&gt;35&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See “Message to the Tricontinental,” this volume.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en39|&lt;span&gt;36&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Walt W. Rostow, “Countering Guerrilla Attack,” in Osanka, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Modern Guerrilla Warfare,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 464-71. Also reprinted in Greene, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Guerrilla,&lt;/span&gt; as “Guerrilla Warfare in Underdeveloped Areas,” pp. 54–61, and in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Army Magazine,&lt;/span&gt; September 1961. Rostow, a foreign policy adviser, made the basic arguments in this article in a speech to the graduating class of the Counter-guerrilla Course of the Army Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 1961.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en40|&lt;span&gt;37&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a summary of U.S. military assistance to Latin America from the 1920s to the early 1960s, see Raymond Estep, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;United States Military Aid to Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, Documentary Research Division, Aerospace Studies Institute, Air University, 1966). Estep reviews World War II lend-lease and postwar programs and appends summaries of World War II military cooperation with individual Latin American nations.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en41|&lt;span&gt;38&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Mutual Security Act of 1959&lt;/span&gt;, Senate Hearings, pt. 2, p. 708. See also the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Mutual Security Act of 1959&lt;/span&gt;, Senate Report no. 412, pp. 11-12, in which Congress attempted to tighten restrictions on military aid for internal security.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en42|&lt;span&gt;39&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Roger Hilsman, “Internal War: The New Communist Tactic,” in Greene, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Guerrilla,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 22–36. Also reprinted in Osanka, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Modern Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 452-63. This report was released by the U.S. Department of State on August 10, 1961, at which time Hilsman was serving as director of intelligence and research in the Department of State.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en43|&lt;span&gt;40&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Rostow, “Countering Guerrilla Attack,” in Osanka, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Modern Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 467–69.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en44|&lt;span&gt;41&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Department of State Bulletin&lt;/span&gt;, May 8, 1961, p. 660.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en45|&lt;span&gt;42&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., December 9, 1963, p. 903. For descriptions and analyses of the U.S.-supported invasion of Cuba in 1961, see Peter Wyden, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bay of Pigs&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Simon &amp;#x26; Schuster, 1979); Arthur Schlesinger, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;A Thousand Days&lt;/span&gt; (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965); Haynes Johnson, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Bay of Pigs&lt;/span&gt; (New York: W. W. Norton, 1964); and David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Invisible Government&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Random House, 1964). For efforts to analyze the Cuban missile crisis, see Graham T. Allison, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Essence of Decision&lt;/span&gt; (Boston: Little, Brown, &amp;#x26; Co., 1971); Robert A. Divine, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Cuban Missile Crisis&lt;/span&gt; (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971); John Plank, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Cuba and the U.S.: The Long Range Prospects&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1967); Robert F. Kennedy, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Norton, 1969); U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Department of Defense Appropriations, Hearings, 88th Cong., 1st sess., 1963; U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Interim Report on Cuban Military Build-up,&lt;/span&gt; 88th Cong., 1st sess., 1963; and Elie Abel, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Missile Crisis&lt;/span&gt; (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1965).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en46|&lt;span&gt;43&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See “Declaration of Punta del Este, 1961” and “The Charter of Punta del Este: Establishing an Alliance for Progress within the Framework of Operation Pan America,” in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;InterAmerican Relations&lt;/span&gt; (printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs), 92d Cong., 2d sess., October 10, 1972, pp. 165–80.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en47|&lt;span&gt;44&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Speech in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Department of State Bulletin,&lt;/span&gt; September 12, 1966, p. 367.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en48|&lt;span&gt;45&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The original objectives of the Alliance for Progress were so ambitious as to practically guarantee failure. See ”The Charter of Punta del Este.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en49|&lt;span&gt;46&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Simon C. Hanson, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Five Years of the Alliance for Progress&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C.: InterAmerican Affairs Press, 1967), p. 1.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en50|&lt;span&gt;47&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;First Report to Congress on the Mutual Security Program,&lt;/span&gt; December 31, 1951 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1952), p. 39.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en51|&lt;span&gt;48&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Foreign Assistance Act,&lt;/span&gt; 1962, Senate Hearings, pp. 61, 77.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en52|&lt;span&gt;49&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Information and Guidance&lt;/span&gt;—&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Military Assistance Program,&lt;/span&gt; 5th ed. (1960), p. 58; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Mutual Security Act of 1959,&lt;/span&gt; Senate Report no. 4005, pp. 11–12.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en53|&lt;span&gt;50&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;International Development and Security Act, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;House Hearings,&lt;/span&gt; pt. 1, p. 73, as cited in Estep, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;United States Military Aid,&lt;/span&gt; p. 75.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en54|&lt;span&gt;51&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., and Senate Hearings, 1959, pt. 2, p. 594, in Estep, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;United States Military Aid.&lt;/span&gt; Acting Assistant Secretary of State Symberley Coen testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee: ”It is clear from such Communist tactics that the immediate threat to Latin America is not the threat of overt aggression toward which we have primarily directed our military aid programs in the past years. . . . You will find that the program submitted this year reflects our awareness of, and places unprecedented emphasis in, the newly demonstrated threat of successful Communist intervention. Such intervention which may at times seem essentially internal, is actually a menacing form of indirect aggression.” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;International Development and Security Act,&lt;/span&gt; House Hearings, pt. 1, p. 425, ibid.; Senate Hearings, 1959, pt. 2, p. 780, ibid. Secretary of Defense McNamara continued to reiterate this theme into the late 1960s. See, e.g., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Foreign Assistance and Related Agencies Appropriations for 1967,&lt;/span&gt; Hearing before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, 89th Cong., 1st sess., 1967, pp. 605-6.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en55|&lt;span&gt;52&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See, e.g., Raymond J. Barrett, ”The Development Process and Stability Operations,” in Brian Loveman and Thomas M. Davies, Jr., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Politics of Antipolitics&lt;/span&gt; (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978), p. 153, reprinted from &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Military Review&lt;/span&gt; 50, no. 2 (November 1972): 58-68.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en56|&lt;span&gt;53&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Raymond Estep &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;(United States Military Aid,&lt;/span&gt; p. 74) summarizes the background to civic action as follows: ”U.S. interest in the subject of internal security manifested itself on many occasions in congressional committee rooms beginning with Lt. Gen. Bolte’s declaration in 1951 that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would favor allocating to Venezuela ‘such things as armored cars or tear gas grenades and so on, to provide for the policing work and internal security against subversion or sabotage if Venezuela could guarantee the ‘uninterrupted’ flow of oil from the Maracaibo area.’ ” Estep goes on to review the history of congressional-executive conflict and debate over military assistance during the next fifteen years. See &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Mutual Security Act of 1951,&lt;/span&gt; Senate Hearings, p. 397; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Mutual Security Act of 1958,&lt;/span&gt; Senate Hearings, pp. 62-63; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Mutual Security Appropriations for 1959,&lt;/span&gt; House Hearings, p. 1096; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Mutual Security Act of 1959&lt;/span&gt;, Senate Hearings, pt. 2, p. 708; and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Mutual Security Act of 1959&lt;/span&gt;, Senate Hearings, pt. 1, pp. 217, 219. In 1959, Congress moved to tighten the restrictions on aid that might be used for internal security purposes by rewording the legislation of 1958 to read: ”Internal security requirements shall not, unless the President determines otherwise, be the basis for military assistance programs to American Republics.” See &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Mutual Security Act of 1959&lt;/span&gt;, Senate Report no. 412, pp. 11–12.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en57|&lt;span&gt;54&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;A thorough leftist critique of these programs, including discussion of the role of SouthCom, U.S. Army School of the Americas, U.S. Army Infantry and Ranger School (Fort Benning, Georgia); Civil Affairs and Military Government School (Fort Gordon, Georgia); John F. Kennedy School of Military Assistance (Fort Bragg, North Carolina); U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas); West Point Inter-American Defense College (Washington, D.C.); and Mobile Training Teams, along with Air Force and Navy programs, can be found in ”U.S. Training Programs for Foreign Military Personnel,” North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;NACLA Latin American and Empire Report&lt;/span&gt; 10, no. 1 (January 1976). See also ”The Politics of U.S. Arms Sales to Latin America” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;NACLA Latin American and Empire Report&lt;/span&gt; 9, no. 2 (March 1975); Michael T. Klare and Cynthia Arnson, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Supplying Repression: U.S. Support for Authoritarian Regimes Abroad&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Policy Studies, 1981); John Saxe-Fernández, ”A Latin American Perspective on the Latin American Military and Pax Americana,” in Loveman and Davies, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Politics of Antipolitics&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 162-69; and John Saxe-Fernández, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Proyecciones hemisféricas de la Pax Americana&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1971).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en58|&lt;span&gt;55&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a cogent discussion of Soviet Latin American policy in the years following the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban missile crisis, see Herbert S. Dinerstein, “Soviet Policy in Latin Ámerica” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;American Political Science Review&lt;/span&gt; 61, no. 1 (March 1967): 80-90.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en59|&lt;span&gt;56&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a fuller description of antipolitics, see Loveman and Davies, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Politics of Antipolitics.&lt;/span&gt; In some cases, notably Peru, and to a lesser extent Ecuador, “military populism” rather than military terrorist regimes emerged from the confrontation between guerrilla movements and counterinsurgency programs. Though still “antipolitical” in character, these regimes adopted less repressive and more reformist policies. See David Scott Palmer, “Reformist Military Rule in Peru, 1968-1980,” in Robert Wesson, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;New Military Politics in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Hoover Institution/Stanford University, Praeger, 1982), pp. 131–49; and Kevin J. Middlebrook and David Scott Palmer, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Military and Political Development: Lessons from Peru&lt;/span&gt; (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1975).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en60|&lt;span&gt;57&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For overviews of the Central American wars of the 1980s and early 1990s, see Jack Child, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Central American Peace Process, 1983-1991: Sheathing Swords, Building Confidence&lt;/span&gt; (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1992); James Dunkerley, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Pacification of Central America&lt;/span&gt; (London: Verso, 1994); and Dario Moreno, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Struggle for Peace in Central America&lt;/span&gt; (Gainesville: University Press of Florida), 1994.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c01.html#ref end en61|&lt;span&gt;58&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley notes that guerrilla leaders exhibit an ”ubiquitous and pervasive sense of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;agency&lt;/span&gt;. . . . When utter failures or temporary setbacks happen to the armed left, a recriminatory emphasis on wrongheaded agency has come regularly to the forefront, at least among those who stay within the ‘armed struggle’; those who return to civilian life are rather more ready to engage in sociological analysis of society and regime to account for their failings.” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Exploring Revolution: Essays on Latin American Insurgency and Revolutionary Theory&lt;/span&gt; (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1991), p. 5.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;part&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;II. Che on Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;chapter&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Dedication to Camilo&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The author would like to claim for this work the approval of Camilo Cienfuegos, who was to have read and corrected it when another destiny intervened.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 ftn01.html#ftn fn1|&lt;span&gt;a&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; These lines and those which follow may be considered the homage of the Rebel Army to its grand captain, to the greatest guerrilla chief that this revolution produced, to a perfect revolutionary and a fraternal friend. Camilo was the companion of a hundred battles, the intimate counselor of Fidel in difficult moments of the war, the stoic fighter who always made of sacrifice an instrument for steeling his own character and forging the morale of his troops. I believe he would have approved of this manual wherein our guerrilla experiences are synthesized, because it is the product of life itself. But he added to the skeleton of words here presented the inner vitality of his temperament, his intelligence and his audacity, all these in such an exact measure as rarely appears in persons of history.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;But Camilo should not be seen as an isolated hero performing marvelous feats only on the impulse of his individual genius, but rather as a true part of the people that formed him, as it always forms its heroes, martyrs, and leaders, by selection in a rigorous struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;I do not know if Camilo had heard of Danton’s maxim for revolutionary movements, “Audacity, audacity, and more audacity.” At any rate, he practiced it in his action and added to it other qualities necessary in a guerrilla fighter: a faculty for precise and rapid analysis of situations and forehanded thought about problems to be resolved in the future.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;These lines, which serve as the homage of the author and of a whole people to our hero, will not attempt to provide his biography or even to relate any anecdotes about him. Camilo was the subject of a thousand anecdotes; he created them naturally wherever he went. To his ease of manner, always appreciated by the people, he added a personality that naturally and almost unconsciously put the stamp of Camilo on everything connected with him. Few men have succeeded in leaving on every action such a distinctive personal mark. As Fidel has said, he did not have culture from books; he had the natural intelligence of the people who had chosen him out of thousands for a privileged position on account of the audacity of his blows, his tenacity, intelligence, and unequaled devotion. Camilo practiced loyalty like a religion; he was its votary, both in his personal loyalty to Fidel, who embodied as no one else the will of the people, and in his loyalty to the people themselves. The people and Fidel march united; and thus joined were the devotions of the invincible guerrilla fighter.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Who killed him?&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We should rather ask: Who destroyed his body? Because men like him continue to live with the people. Their life does not end so long as the people do not will it.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The enemy succeeded in killing him, because there are no safe airplanes; because pilots cannot acquire all the experience necessary; because, overburdened with work, Camilo wished to be in Havana quickly. His own character killed him, too. Camilo did not measure danger; he used it for a diversion, mocked it, lured, toyed, and played with it. In his mentality as guerrilla fighter a plan was not to be postponed on account of a cloud.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It happened after a whole people had come to know him, admire him, and love him. It could have happened earlier, and his history would be the simple one of a guerrilla captain. “There will be many Camilos,” said Fidel; and I can add, there were Camilos, Camilos who finished their lives before completing the magnificent circle that carried Camilo into history. Camilo and the other Camilos (those who did not arrive and those who will come) are the index of the forces of the people. They are the highest expression which a nation produces in a time of war for the defense of its purest ideals, fought with faith in the achievement of its noblest ends.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Let us not try to classify him, to capture him in a mold, that is, kill him. Let us leave him thus, in general lines, without attributing to him a precise social and economic ideology which he never completely defined. Let us emphasize that there was not a soldier to be compared to Camilo in this war of liberation. A thorough revolutionary, a man of the people, a product of this revolution that the Cuban nation made for itself, through his head never passed the lightest shadow of weariness or discouragement. Camilo, the guerrilla warrior, who made this or that thing “something of Camilo,” who put his precise and indelible mark on the Cuban Revolution, is a permanent and daily inspiration. He belongs to those others who did not arrive and to those who are to come.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In his continual and immortal renewal, Camilo is the monument of the people.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;General Principles of Guerrilla&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Warfare&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;1. Essence of Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The armed victory of the Cuban people over the Batista dictatorship was not only the triumph of heroism as reported by the newspapers of the world; it also forced a change in the old dogmas concerning the conduct of the popular masses of Latin America. It showed plainly the capacity of the people to free themselves by means of guerrilla warfare from a government that oppresses them.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We consider that the Cuban Revolution contributed three fundamental lessons to the conduct of revolutionary movements in America. They are:&lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> # Popular forces can win a war against the army.<br /> # It is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them.<br /> # In underdeveloped America the countryside is the basic area for armed fighting.<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Of these three propositions the first two contradict the defeatist attitude of revolutionaries or pseudo-revolutionaries who remain inactive and take refuge in the pretext that against a professional army nothing can be done, who sit down to wait until in some mechanical way all necessary objective and subjective conditions are given without working to accelerate them. As these problems were formerly a subject of discussion in Cuba, until facts settled the question, they are probably still much discussed in America.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Naturally, it is not to be thought that all conditions for revolution are going to be created through the impulse given to them by guerrilla activity. It must always be kept in mind that there is a necessary minimum without which the establishment and consolidation of the first center is not practicable. People must see clearly the futility of maintaining the fight for social goals within the framework of civil debate. When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In these conditions popular discontent expresses itself in more active forms. An attitude of resistance finally crystallizes in an outbreak of fighting, provoked initially by the conduct of the authorities.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The third proposition is a fundamental of strategy. It ought to be noted by those who maintain dogmatically that the struggle of the masses is centered in city movements, entirely forgetting the immense participation of the country people in the life of all the underdeveloped parts of America. Of course, the struggles of the city masses of organized workers should not be underrated; but their real possibilities of engaging in armed struggle must be carefully analyzed where the guarantees which customarily adorn our constitutions are suspended or ignored. In these conditions the illegal workers’ movements face enormous dangers. They must function secretly without arms. The situation in the open country is not so difficult. There, in places beyond the reach of the repressive forces, the inhabitants can be supported by the armed guerrillas.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We will later make a careful analysis of these three conclusions that stand out in the Cuban revolutionary experience. We emphasize them now at the beginning of this work as our fundamental contribution.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guerrilla warfare, the basis of the struggle of a people to redeem itself, has diverse characteristics, different facets, even though the essential will for liberation remains the same. It is obvious—and writers on the theme have said it many times—that war responds to a certain series of scientific laws; whoever ignores them will go down to defeat. Guerrilla warfare as a phase of war must be ruled by all of these; but besides, because of its special aspects, a series of corollary laws must also be recognized in order to carry it forward. Though geographical and social conditions in each country determine the mode and particular forms that guerrilla warfare will take, there are general laws that hold for all fighting of this type.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Our task at the moment is to find the basic principles of this kind of fighting and the rules to be followed by peoples seeking liberation; to develop theory from facts; to generalize and give structure to our experience for the profit of others.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Let us first consider the question: Who are the combatants in guerrilla warfare? On one side we have a group composed of the oppressor and his agents, the professional army, well armed and disciplined, in many cases receiving foreign help as well as the help of the bureaucracy in the employ of the oppressor. On the other side are the people of the nation or region involved. It is important to emphasize that guerrilla warfare is a war of the masses, a war of the people. The guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people. It draws its great force from the mass of the people themselves. The guerrilla band is not to be considered inferior to the army against which it fights simply because it is inferior in firepower. Guerrilla warfare is used by the side which is supported by a majority but which possesses a much smaller number of arms for use in defense against oppression.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area. This is an indispensable condition. This is clearly seen by considering the case of bandit gangs that operate in a region. They have all the characteristics of a guerrilla army: homogeneity, respect for the leader, valor, knowledge of the ground, and, often, even good understanding of the tactics to be employed. The only thing missing is support of the people; and, inevitably, these gangs are captured and exterminated by the public force.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Analyzing the mode of operation of the guerrilla band, seeing its form of struggle, and understanding its base in the masses, we can answer the question: Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery. He launches himself against the conditions of the reigning institutions at a particular moment and dedicates himself with all the vigor that circumstances permit to breaking the mold of these institutions.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When we analyze more fully the tactic of guerrilla warfare, we will see that the guerrilla fighter needs to have a good knowledge of the surrounding countryside, the paths of entry and escape, the possibilities of speedy maneuver, good hiding places; naturally, also, he must count on the support of the people. All this indicates that the guerrilla fighter will carry out his action in wild places of small population. Since in these places the struggle of the people for reforms is aimed primarily and almost exclusively at changing the social form of land ownership, the guerrilla fighter is above all an agrarian revolutionary. He interprets the desires of the great peasant mass to be owners of land, owners of their means of production, of their animals, of all that which they have long yearned to call their own, of that which constitutes their life and will also serve as their cemetery.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It should be noted that in current interpretations there are two different types of guerrilla warfare, one of which—a struggle complementing great regular armies such as was the case of the Ukrainian fighters in the Soviet Union—does not enter into this analysis. We are interested in the other type, the case of an armed group engaged in struggle against the constituted power, whether colonial or not, which establishes itself as the only base and which builds itself up in rural areas. In all such cases, whatever the ideological aims that may inspire the fight, the economic aim is determined by the aspiration toward ownership of land.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The China of Mao begins as an outbreak of worker groups in the South, which is defeated and almost annihilated. It succeeds in establishing itself and begins its advance only when, after the long march from Yenan, it takes up its base in rural territories and makes agrarian reform its fundamental goal. The struggle of Ho Chi Minh is based in the rice-growing peasants, who are oppressed by the French colonial yoke; with this force it is going forward to the defeat of the colonialists. In both cases there is a framework of patriotic war against the Japanese invader, but the economic basis of a fight for the land has not disappeared. In the case of Algeria, the grand idea of Arab nationalism has its economic counterpart in the fact that nearly all of the arable land of Algeria is utilized by a million French settlers. In some countries, such as Puerto Rico, where the special conditions of the island have not permitted a guerrilla outbreak, the nationalist spirit, deeply wounded by the discrimination that is daily practiced, has as its basis the aspiration of the peasants (even though many of them are already a proletariat) to recover the land that the Yankee invader seized from them. This same central idea, though in different forms, inspired the small farmers, peasants, and slaves of the eastern estates of Cuba to close ranks and defend together the right to possess land during the thirty-year war of liberation.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 ftn01.html#ftn fn2|&lt;span&gt;b&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Taking account of the possibilities of development of guerrilla warfare, which is transformed with the increase in the operating potential of the guerrilla band into a war of positions, this type of warfare, despite its special character, is to be considered as an embryo, a prelude, of the other. The possibilities of growth of the guerrilla band and of changes in the mode of fight, until conventional warfare is reached, are as great as the possibilities of defeating the enemy in each of the different battles, combats, or skirmishes that take place. Therefore, the fundamental principle is that no battle, combat, or skirmish is to be fought unless it will be won. There is a malevolent definition that says: “The guerrilla fighter is the Jesuit of warfare.” By this is indicated a quality of secretiveness, of treachery, of surprise that is obviously an essential element of guerrilla warfare. It is a special kind of Jesuitism, naturally prompted by circumstances, which necessitates acting at certain moments in ways different from the romantic and sporting conceptions with which we are taught to believe war is fought.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;War is always a struggle in which each contender tries to annihilate the other. Besides using force, they will have recourse to all possible tricks and stratagems in order to achieve the goal. Military strategy and tactics are a representation by analysis of the objectives of the groups and of the means of achieving these objectives. These means contemplate taking advantage of all the weak points of the enemy. The fighting action of each individual platoon in a large army in a war of positions will present the same characteristics as those of the guerrilla band. It uses secretiveness, treachery, and surprise; and when these are not present, it is because vigilance on the other side prevents surprise. But since the guerrilla band is a division unto itself, and since there are large zones of territory not controlled by the enemy, it is always possible to carry out guerrilla attacks in such a way as to assure surprise; and it is the duty of the guerrilla fighter to do so.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“Hit and run,” some call this scornfully, and this is accurate. Hit and run, wait, lie in ambush, again hit and run, and thus repeatedly, without giving any rest to the enemy. There is in all this, it would appear, a negative quality, an attitude of retreat, of avoiding frontal fights. However, this is consequent upon the general strategy of guerrilla warfare, which is the same in its ultimate end as is any warfare: to win, to annihilate the enemy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Thus, it is clear that guerrilla warfare is a phase that does not afford in itself opportunities to arrive at complete victory. It is one of the initial phases of warfare and will develop continuously until the guerrilla army in its steady growth acquires the characteristics of a regular army. At that moment it will be ready to deal final blows to the enemy and to achieve victory. Triumph will always be the product of a regular army, even though its origins are in a guerrilla army.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Just as the general of a division in a modern war does not have to die in front of his soldiers, the guerrilla fighter, who is general of himself, need not die in every battle. He is ready to give his life, but the positive quality of this guerrilla warfare is precisely that each one of the guerrilla fighters is ready to die, not to defend an ideal, but rather to convert it into reality. This is the basis, the essence of guerrilla fighting. Miraculously, a small band of men, the armed vanguard of the great popular force that supports them, goes beyond the immediate tactical objective, goes on decisively to achieve an ideal, to establish a new society, to break the old molds of the outdated, and to achieve, finally, the social justice for which they fight.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Considered thus, all these disparaged qualities acquire a true nobility, the nobility of the end at which they aim; and it becomes clear that we are not speaking of distorted means of reaching an end. This fighting attitude, this attitude of not being dismayed at any time, this inflexibility when confronting the great problems in the final objective is also the nobility of the guerrilla fighter.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;2. Guerrilla Strategy&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;In guerrilla terminology, strategy is understood as the analysis of the objectives to be achieved in light of the total military situation and the overall ways of reaching these objectives.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;To have a correct strategic appreciation from the point of view of the guerrilla band, it is necessary to analyze fundamentally what will be the enemy’s mode of action. If the final objective is always the complete destruction of the opposite force, the enemy is confronted in the case of a civil war of this kind with the standard task: he will have to achieve the total destruction of each one of the components of the guerrilla band. The guerrilla fighter, on the other hand, must analyze the resources which the enemy has for trying to achieve that outcome: the means in men, in mobility, in popular support, in armaments, in capacity of leadership on which he can count. We must make our own strategy adequate on the basis of these studies, keeping in mind always the final objective of defeating the enemy army.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;There are fundamental aspects to be studied: the armament, for example, and the manner of using this armament. The value of a tank, of an airplane, in a fight of this type must be weighed. The arms of the enemy, his ammunition, his habits must be considered; because the principal source of provision for the guerrilla force is precisely in enemy armaments. If there is a possibility of choice, we should prefer the same type as that used by the enemy, since the greatest problem of the guerrilla band is the lack of ammunition, which the opponent must provide.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;After the objectives have been fixed and analyzed, it is necessary to study the order of the steps leading to the achievement of the final objective. This should be planned in advance, even though it will be modified and adjusted as the fighting develops and unforeseen circumstances arise.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;At the outset, the essential task of the guerrilla fighter is to keep himself from being destroyed. Little by little it will be easier for the members of the guerrilla band or bands to adapt themselves to their form of life and to make flight and escape from the forces that are on the offensive an easy task, because it is performed daily. When this condition is reached, the guerrilla, having taken up inaccessible positions out of reach of the enemy, or having assembled forces that deter the enemy from attacking, ought to proceed to the gradual weakening of the enemy. This will be carried out at first at those points nearest to the points of active warfare against the guerrilla band and later will be taken deeper into enemy territory, attacking his communications, later attacking or harassing his bases of operations and his central bases, tormenting him on all sides to the full extent of the capabilities of the guerrilla forces.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The blows should be continuous. The enemy soldier in a zone of operations ought not to be allowed to sleep; his outposts ought to be attacked and liquidated systematically. At every moment the impression ought to be created that he is surrounded by a complete circle. In wooded and broken areas this effort should be maintained both day and night; in open zones that are easily penetrated by enemy patrols, at night only. In order to do all this the absolute cooperation of the people and a perfect knowledge of the ground are necessary. These two necessities affect every minute of the life of the guerrilla fighter. Therefore, along with centers for study of present and future zones of operations, intensive popular work must be undertaken to explain the motives of the revolution, its ends, and to spread the incontrovertible truth that victory of the enemy against the people is finally impossible. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Whoever does not feel this undoubted truth cannot be a guerrilla fighter&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This popular work should at first be aimed at securing secrecy; that is, each peasant, each member of the society in which action is taking place, will be asked not to mention what he sees and hears; later, help will be sought from inhabitants whose loyalty to the revolution offers greater guarantees; still later, use will be made of these persons in missions of contact, for transporting goods or arms, as guides in the zones familiar to them; still later, it is possible to arrive at organized mass action in the centers of work, of which the final result will be the general strike.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The strike is a most important factor in civil war, but in order to reach it a series of complementary conditions are necessary which do not always exist and which very rarely come to exist spontaneously. It is necessary to create these essential conditions, basically by explaining the purposes of the revolution and by demonstrating the forces of the people and their possibilities.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It is also possible to have recourse to certain very homogeneous groups, which must have shown their efficacy previously in less dangerous tasks, in order to make use of another of the terrible arms of the guerrilla band, sabotage. It is possible to paralyze entire armies, to suspend the industrial life of a zone, leaving the inhabitants of a city without factories, without light, without water, without communications of any kind, without being able to risk travel by highway except at certain hours. If all this is achieved, the morale of the enemy falls, the morale of his combatant units weakens, and the fruit ripens for plucking at a precise moment.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;All this presupposes an increase in the territory included within the guerrilla action, but an excessive increase of this territory is to be avoided. It is essential always to preserve a strong base of operations and to continue strengthening it during the course of the war. Within this territory, measures of indoctrination of the inhabitants of the zone should be utilized; measures of quarantine should be taken against the irreconcilable enemies of the revolution; all the purely defensive measures, such as trenches, mines, and communications, should be perfected.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When the guerrilla band has reached a respectable power in arms and in number of combatants, it ought to proceed to the formation of new columns. This is an act similar to that of the beehive when at a given moment it releases a new queen, who goes to another region with a part of the swarm. The mother hive with the most notable guerrilla chief will stay in the less dangerous places, while the new columns will penetrate other enemy territories following the cycle already described.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A moment will arrive in which the territory occupied by the columns is too small for them; and in the advance toward regions solidly defended by the enemy, it will be necessary to confront powerful forces. At that instant the columns join, they offer a compact fighting front, and a war of positions is reached, a war carried on by regular armies. However, the former guerrilla army cannot cut itself off from its base, and it should create new guerrilla bands behind the enemy acting in the same way as the original bands operated earlier, proceeding thus to penetrate enemy territory until it is dominated.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It is thus that guerrillas reach the stage of attack, of the encirclement of fortified bases, of the defeat of reinforcements, of mass action, ever more ardent, in the whole national territory, arriving finally at the objective of the war: victory.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;3. Guerrilla Tactics&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;In military language, tactics are the practical methods of achieving the grand strategic objectives.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In one sense they complement strategy and in another they are more specific rules within it. As means, tactics are much more variable, much more flexible than the final objectives, and they should be adjusted continually during the struggle. There are tactical objectives that remain constant throughout a war and others that vary. The first thing to be considered is the adjusting of guerrilla action to the action of the enemy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The fundamental characteristic of a guerrilla band is mobility. This permits it in a few minutes to move far from a specific theatre and in a few hours far even from the region, if that becomes necessary; permits it constantly to change front and avoid any type of encirclement. As the circumstances of the war require, the guerrilla band can dedicate itself exclusively to fleeing from an encirclement which is the enemy’s only way of forcing the band into a decisive fight that could be unfavorable; it can also change the battle into a counter-encirclement (small bands of men are presumably surrounded by the enemy when suddenly the enemy is surrounded by stronger contingents; or men located in a safe place serve as a lure, leading to the encirclement and annihilation of the entire troops and supply of an attacking force). Characteristic of this war of mobility is the so-called minuet, named from the analogy with the dance: the guerrilla bands encircle an enemy position, an advancing column, for example; they encircle it completely from the four points of the compass, with five or six men in each place, far enough away to avoid being encircled themselves; the fight is started at any one of the points, and the army moves toward it; the guerrilla band then retreats, always maintaining visual contact, and initiates its attack from another point. The army will repeat its action and the guerrilla band, the same. Thus, successively, it is possible to keep an enemy column immobilized, forcing it to expend large quantities of ammunition and weakening the morale of its troops without incurring great dangers.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This same tactic can be applied at nighttime, closing in more and showing greater aggressiveness, because in these conditions counter-encirclement is much more difficult. Movement by night is another important characteristic of the guerrilla band, enabling it to advance into position for an attack and, where the danger of betrayal exists, to mobilize in new territory. The numerical inferiority of the guerrilla makes it necessary that attacks always be carried out by surprise; this great advantage is what permits the guerrilla fighter to inflict losses on the enemy without suffering losses. In a fight between a hundred men on one side and ten on the other, losses are not equal where there is one casualty on each side. The enemy loss is always reparable; it amounts to only one percent of his effectives. The loss of the guerrilla band requires more time to be repaired because it involves a soldier of high specialization and is ten percent of the operating forces.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A dead soldier of the guerrillas ought never to be left with his arms and his ammunition. The duty of every guerrilla soldier whenever a companion falls is to recover immediately these extremely precious elements of the fight. In fact, the care which must be taken of ammunition and the method of using it are further characteristics of guerrilla warfare. In any combat between a regular force and a guerrilla band it is always possible to know one from the other by their different manner of fire: a great amount of firing on the part of the regular army, sporadic and accurate shots on the part of the guerrillas.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Once one of our heroes, now dead, had to employ his machine guns for nearly five minutes, burst after burst, in order to slow up the advance of enemy soldiers. This fact caused considerable confusion in our forces, because they assumed from the rhythm of fire that that key position must have been taken by the enemy, since this was one of the rare occasions where departure from the rule of saving fire had been called for because of the importance of the point being defended.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Another fundamental characteristic of the guerrilla soldier is his flexibility, his ability to adapt himself to all circumstances, and to convert to his service all of the accidents of the action. Against the rigidity of classical methods of fighting, the guerrilla fighter invents his own tactics at every minute of the fight and constantly surprises the enemy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the first place, there are only elastic positions, specific places that the enemy cannot pass, and places of diverting him. Frequently, the enemy, after easily overcoming difficulties in a gradual advance, is surprised to find himself suddenly and solidly detained without possibilities of moving forward. This is due to the fact that the guerrilla-defended positions, when they have been selected on the basis of a careful study of the ground, are invulnerable. It is not the number of attacking soldiers that counts, but the number of defending soldiers. Once that number has been placed there, it can nearly always hold off a battalion with success. It is a major task of the chiefs to choose well the moment and the place for defending a position without retreat.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The form of attack of a guerrilla army is also different; starting with surprise and fury, irresistible, it suddenly converts itself into total passivity.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The surviving enemy, resting, believes that the attacker has departed; he begins to relax, to return to the routine life of the camp or of the fortress, when suddenly a new attack bursts forth in another place, with the same characteristics, while the main body of the guerrilla band lies in wait to intercept reinforcements. At other times an outpost defending the camp will be suddenly attacked by the guerrilla, dominated, and captured. The fundamental thing is surprise and rapidity of attack.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Acts of sabotage are very important. It is necessary to distinguish clearly between sabotage, a revolutionary and highly effective method of warfare, and terrorism, a measure that is generally ineffective and indiscriminate in its results, since it often makes victims of innocent people and destroys a large number of lives that would be valuable to the revolution. Terrorism should be considered a valuable tactic when it is used to put to death some noted leader of the oppressing forces well known for his cruelty, his efficiency in repression, or other quality that makes his elimination useful. But the killing of persons of small importance is never advisable, since it brings on an increase of reprisals, including deaths.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;There is one point very much in controversy in opinions about terrorism. Many consider that its use, by provoking police oppression, hinders all more or less legal or semiclandestine contact with the masses and makes impossible unification for actions that will be necessary at a critical moment. This is correct; but it also happens that in a civil war the repression by the governmental power in certain towns is already so great that, in fact, every type of legal action is suppressed already, and any action of the masses that is not supported by arms is impossible. It is therefore necessary to be circumspect in adopting methods of this type and to consider the consequences that they may bring for the revolution. At any rate, well-managed sabotage is always a very effective arm, though it should not be employed to put means of production out of action, leaving a sector of the population paralyzed (and thus without work) unless this paralysis affects the normal life of the society. It is ridiculous to carry out sabotage against a soft-drink factory, but it is absolutely correct and advisable to carry out sabotage against a power plant. In the first case, a certain number of workers are put out of a job but nothing is done to modify the rhythm of industrial life; in the second case, there will again be displaced workers, but this is entirely justified by the paralysis of the life of the region. We will return to the technique of sabotage later.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;One of the favorite arms of the enemy army, supposed to be decisive in modern times, is aviation. Nevertheless, this has no use whatsoever during the period that guerrilla warfare is in its first stages, with small concentrations of men in rugged places. The utility of aviation lies in the systematic destruction of visible and organized defenses; and for this there must be large concentrations of men who construct these defenses, something that does not exist in this type of warfare. Planes are also potent against marches by columns through level places or places without cover; however, this latter danger is easily avoided by carrying out the marches at night.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;One of the weakest points of the enemy is transportation by road and railroad. It is virtually impossible to maintain a vigil yard by yard over a transport line, a road, or a railroad. At any point a considerable amount of explosive charge can be planted that will make the road impassable; or by exploding it at the moment that a vehicle passes, a considerable loss in lives and materiel to the enemy is caused at the same time that the road is cut.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The sources of explosives are varied. They can be brought from other zones; or use can be made of bombs seized from the dictatorship, though these do not always work; or they can be manufactured in secret laboratories within the guerrilla zone. The technique of setting them off is quite varied; their manufacture also depends upon the conditions of the guerrilla band.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In our laboratory we made powder which we used as a cap, and we invented various devices for exploding the mines at the desired moment. The ones that gave the best results were electric. The first mine that we exploded was a bomb dropped from an aircraft of the dictatorship. We adapted it by inserting various caps and adding a gun with the trigger pulled by a cord. At the moment that an enemy truck passed, the weapon was fired to set off the explosion.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;These techniques can be developed to a high degree. We have information that in Algeria, for example, tele-explosive mines, that is, mines exploded by radio at great distances from the point where they are located, are being used today against the French colonial power.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The technique of lying in ambush along roads in order to explode mines and annihilate survivors is one of the most remunerative in point of ammunition and arms. The surprised enemy does not use his ammunition and has no time to flee, so with a small expenditure of ammunition large results are achieved.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As blows are dealt the enemy, he also changes his tactics, and in place of isolated trucks, veritable motorized columns move. However, by choosing the ground well, the same result can be produced by breaking the column and concentrating forces on one vehicle. In these cases the essential elements of guerrilla tactics must always be kept in mind. These are: perfect knowledge of the ground; surveillance and foresight as to the lines of escape; vigilance over all the secondary roads that can bring support to the point of attack; intimacy with people in the zone so as to have sure help from them in respect to supplies, transport, and temporary or permanent hiding places if it becomes necessary to leave wounded companions behind; numerical superiority at a chosen point of action; total mobility; and the possibility of counting on reserves.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;If all these tactical requisites are fulfilled, surprise attack along the lines of communication of the enemy yields notable dividends.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A fundamental part of guerrilla tactics is the treatment accorded the people of the zone. Even the treatment accorded the enemy is important; the norm to be followed should be an absolute inflexibility at the time of attack, an absolute inflexibility toward all the despicable elements that resort to informing and assassination, and clemency as absolute as possible toward the enemy soldiers who go into the fight performing or believing that they perform a military duty. It is a good policy, so long as there are no considerable bases of operations and invulnerable places, to take no prisoners. Survivors ought to be set free. The wounded should be cared for with all possible resources at the time of the action. Conduct toward the civil population ought to be regulated by a large respect for all the rules and traditions of the people of the zone, in order to demonstrate effectively, with deeds, the moral superiority of the guerrilla fighter over the oppressing soldier. Except in special situations, there ought to be no execution of justice without giving the criminal an opportunity to clear himself.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;4. Warfare on Favorable Ground&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;As we have already said, guerrilla fighting will not always take place in country most favorable to the employment of its tactics; but when it does, that is, when the guerrilla band is located in zones difficult to reach, either because of dense forests, steep mountains, impassable deserts or marshes, the general tactics, based on the fundamental postulates of guerrilla warfare, must always be the same.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;An important point to consider is the moment for making contact with the enemy. If the zone is so thick, so difficult that an organized army can never reach it, the guerrilla band should advance to the regions where the army can arrive and where there will be a possibility of combat.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As soon as the survival of the guerrilla band has been assured, it should fight; it must constantly go out from its refuge to fight. Its mobility does not have to be as great as in those cases where the ground is unfavorable; it must adjust itself to the capabilities of the enemy, but it is not necessary to be able to move as quickly as in places where the enemy can concentrate a large number of men in a few minutes. Neither is the nocturnal character of this warfare so important; it will be possible in many cases to carry out daytime operations, especially mobilizations by day, though subjected to enemy observation by land and air. It is also possible to persist in a military action for a much longer time, above all in the mountains; it is possible to undertake battles of long duration with very few men, and it is very probable that the arrival of enemy reinforcements at the scene of the fight can be prevented.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A close watch over the points of access is, however, an axiom never to be forgotten by the guerrilla fighter. His aggressiveness (on account of the difficulties that the enemy faces in bringing up reinforcements) can be greater, he can approach the enemy more closely, fight much more directly, more frontally, and for a longer time, though these rules may be qualified by various circumstances, such, for example, as the amount of ammunition.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Fighting on favorable ground and particularly in the mountains presents many advantages but also the inconvenience that it is difficult to capture in a single operation a considerable quantity of arms and ammunition, owing to the precautions that the enemy takes in these regions. (The guerrilla soldier must never forget the fact that it is the enemy that must serve as his source of supply of ammunition and arms.) But much more rapidly than in unfavorable ground the guerrilla band will here be able to “dig in,” that is, to form a base capable of engaging in a war of positions, where small industries may be installed as they are needed, as well as hospitals, centers for education and training, storage facilities, organs of propaganda, etc., adequately protected from aviation or from long-range artillery.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The guerrilla band in these conditions can number many more personnel; there will be noncombatants and perhaps even a system of training in the use of the arms that eventually are to fall into the power of the guerrilla army.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The number of men that a guerrilla band can have is a matter of extremely flexible calculation adapted to the territory, to the means available of acquiring supplies, to the mass flights of oppressed people from other zones, to the arms available, to the necessities of organization. But, in any case, it is much more practicable to establish a base and expand with the support of new combatant elements.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The radius of action of a guerrilla band of this type can be as wide as conditions or the operations of other bands in adjacent territory permit. The range will be limited by the time that it takes to arrive at a zone of security from the zone of operation; assuming that marches must be made at night, it will not be possible to operate more than five or six hours away from a point of maximum security. Small guerrilla bands that work constantly at weakening a territory can go farther away from the zone of security.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The arms preferable for this type of warfare are long-range weapons requiring a small expenditure of bullets, supported by a group of automatic or semiautomatic arms. Of the rifles and machine guns that exist in the markets of the United States, one of the best is the M-1 rifle, called the Garand. However, this should be used only by people with some experience, since it has the disadvantage of expending too much ammunition. Medium-heavy arms, such as tripod machine guns, can be used on favorable ground, affording a greater margin of security for the weapon and its personnel, but they ought always to be a means of repelling an enemy and not for attack.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;An ideal composition for a guerrilla band of 25 men would be: 10 to 15 single-shot rifles and about 10 automatic arms between Garands and hand machine guns, including light and easily portable automatic arms, such as the Browning or the more modern Belgian FAL and M-14 automatic rifles. Among the hand machine guns the best are those of nine millimeters, which permit a larger transport of ammunition. The simpler its construction the better, because this increases the ease of switching parts. All this must be adjusted to the armament that the enemy uses, since the ammunition that he employs is what we are going to use when his arms fall into our hands. It is practically impossible for heavy arms to be used. Aircraft cannot see anything and cease to operate; tanks and cannons cannot do much owing to the difficulties of advancing in these zones.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A very important consideration is supply. In general, the zones of difficult access for this very reason present special problems, since there are few peasants, and therefore animal and food supplies are scarce. It is necessary to maintain stable lines of communication in order to be able always to count on a minimum of food, stockpiled, in the event of any disagreeable development.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In this kind of zone of operations the possibilities of sabotage on a large scale are generally not present; with the inaccessibility goes a lack of constructions, telephone lines, aqueducts, etc., that could be damaged by direct action.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;For supply purposes it is important to have animals, among which the mule is the best in rough country. Adequate pasturage permitting good nutrition is essential. The mule can pass through extremely hilly country impossible for other animals. In the most difficult situations it is necessary to resort to transport by men. Each individual can carry twenty-five kilograms for many hours daily and for many days.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The lines of communication with the exterior should include a series of intermediate points manned by people of complete reliability, where products can be stored and where contacts can go to hide themselves at critical times. Internal lines of communication can also be created. Their extension will be determined by the stage of development reached by the guerrilla band. In some zones of operations in the recent Cuban war, telephone lines of many kilometers of length were established, roads were built, and a messenger service maintained sufficient to cover all zones in a minimum of time.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;There are also other possible means of communication, not used in the Cuban war but perfectly applicable, such as smoke signals, signals with sunshine reflected by mirrors, and carrier pigeons.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The vital necessities of the guerrillas are to maintain their arms in good condition, to capture ammunition, and, above everything else, to have adequate shoes. The first manufacturing efforts should therefore be directed toward these objectives. Shoe factories can initially be cobbler installations that replace half soles on old shoes, expanding afterwards into a series of organized factories with a good average daily production of shoes. The manufacture of powder is fairly simple; and much can be accomplished by having a small laboratory and bringing in the necessary materials from outside. Mined areas constitute a grave danger for the enemy; large areas can be mined for simultaneous explosion, destroying up to hundreds of men.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;5. Warfare on Unfavorable Ground&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;In order to carry on warfare in country that is not very hilly, lacks forests, and has many roads, all the fundamental requisites of guerrilla warfare must be observed; only the forms will be altered. The quantity, not the quality, of guerrilla warfare will change. For example, following the same order as before, the mobility of this type of guerrilla should be extraordinary; strikes should be made preferably at night; they should be extremely rapid, but the guerrilla should move to places different from the starting point, the farthest possible from the scene of action, assuming that there is no place secure from the repressive forces that the guerrilla can use as its garrison.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A man can walk between 30 and 50 kilometers during the night hours; it is possible also to march during the first hours of daylight, unless the zones of operation are closely watched or there is danger that people in the vicinity, seeing the passing troops, will notify the pursuing army of the location of the guerrilla band and its route. It is always preferable in these cases to operate at night with the greatest possible silence both before and after the action; the first hours of night are best. Here, too, there are exceptions to the general rule, since at times the dawn hours will be preferable. It is never wise to habituate the enemy to a certain form of warfare; it is necessary to vary constantly the places, the hours, and the forms of operation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We have already said that the action cannot endure for long, but must be rapid; it must be of a high degree of effectiveness, last a few minutes, and be followed by an immediate withdrawal. The arms employed here will not be the same as in the case of actions on favorable ground; a large quantity of automatic weapons is to be preferred. In night attacks, marksmanship is not the determining factor, but rather concentration of fire; the more automatic arms firing at short distance, the more possibilities there are of annihilating the enemy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Also, the use of mines in roads and the destruction of bridges are tactics of great importance. Attacks by the guerrilla will be less aggressive so far as the persistence and continuation are concerned, but they can be very violent, and they can utilize different arms, such as mines and the shotgun. Against open vehicles heavily loaded with men, which is the usual method of transporting troops, and even against closed vehicles that do not have special defenses—against buses, for example—the shotgun is a tremendous weapon. A shotgun loaded with large shot is the most effective. This is not a secret of guerrilla fighters; it is used also in big wars. The Americans used shotgun platoons armed with high-quality weapons and bayonets for assaulting machine-gun nests.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;There is an important problem to explain, that of ammunition; this will almost always be taken from the enemy. It is therefore necessary to strike blows where there will be the absolute assurance of restoring the ammunition expended, unless there are large reserves in secure places. In other words, an annihilating attack against a group of men is not to be undertaken at the risk of expending all the ammunition without being able to replace it. Always in guerrilla tactics it is necessary to keep in mind the grave problem of procuring the war materiel necessary for continuing the fight. For this reason, guerrilla arms ought to be the same as those used by the enemy, except for weapons such as revolvers and shotguns, for which the ammunition can be obtained in the zone itself or in the cities.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The number of men that a guerrilla band of this type should include does not exceed ten to fifteen. In forming a single combat unit it is of great importance always to consider the limitations on numbers: ten, twelve, fifteen men can hide anywhere and at the same time can help each other in putting up a powerful resistance to the enemy. Four or five would perhaps be too small a number, but when the number exceeds ten, the possibility that the enemy will discover them in their camp or on the march is much greater.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Remember that the velocity of the guerrilla band on the march is equal to the velocity of its slowest man. It is more difficult to find uniformity of marching speed with twenty, thirty, or forty men than with ten. And the guerrilla fighter on the plain must be fundamentally a runner. Here the practice of hitting and running acquires its maximum use. The guerrilla bands on the plain suffer the enormous inconvenience of being subject to a rapid encirclement and of not having sure places where they can set up a firm resistance; therefore, they must live in conditions of absolute secrecy for a long time, since it would be dangerous to trust any neighbor whose fidelity is not perfectly established. The reprisals of the enemy are so violent, usually so brutal, inflicted not only on the head of the family but frequently on the women and children as well, that pressure on individuals lacking firmness may result at any moment in their giving way and revealing information as to where the guerrilla band is located and how it is operating. This would immediately produce an encirclement with consequences always disagreeable, although not necessarily fatal. When conditions, the quantity of arms, and the state of insurrection of the people call for an increase in the number of men, the guerrilla band should be divided. If it is necessary, all can rejoin at a given moment to deal a blow, but in such a way that immediately afterwards they can disperse toward separate zones, again divided into small groups of ten, twelve, or fifteen men.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It is entirely feasible to organize whole armies under a single command and to assure respect and obedience to this command without the necessity of being in a single group. Therefore, the election of the guerrilla chiefs and the certainty that they coordinate ideologically and personally with the overall chief of the zone are very important.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The bazooka is a heavy weapon that can be used by the guerrilla band because of its easy portability and operation. Today the rifle-fired anti-tank grenade can replace it. Naturally, it will be a weapon taken from the enemy. The bazooka is ideal for firing on armored vehicles, and even on unarmored vehicles that are loaded with troops, and for taking small military bases of few men in a short time; but it is important to point out that not more than three shells per man can be carried, and this only with considerable exertion.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As for the utilization of heavy arms taken from the enemy, naturally, nothing is to be scorned. But there are weapons such as the tripod machine gun, the heavy fifty-millimeter machine gun, etc., that, when captured, can be utilized with a willingness to lose them again. In other words, in the unfavorable conditions that we are now analyzing, a battle to defend a heavy machine gun or other weapon of this type cannot be allowed; they are simply to be used until the tactical moment when they must be abandoned. In our Cuban war of liberation, to abandon a weapon constituted a grave offense, and there was never any case where the necessity arose. Nevertheless, we mention this case in order to explain clearly the only situation in which abandonment would not constitute an occasion for reproaches. On unfavorable ground, the guerrilla weapon is the personal weapon of rapid fire.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Easy access to the zone usually means that it will be habitable and that there will be a peasant population in these places. This facilitates supply enormously. Having trustworthy people and making contact with establishments that provide supplies to the population, it is possible to maintain a guerrilla band perfectly well without having to devote time or money to long and dangerous lines of communication. Also, it is well to reiterate that the smaller the number of men, the easier it will be to procure food for them. Essential supplies such as bedding, waterproof material, mosquito netting, shoes, medicines, and food will be found directly in the zone, since they are things of daily use by its inhabitants.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Communications will be much easier in the sense of being able to count on a larger number of men and more roads; but they will be more difficult as a problem of security for messages between distant points, since it will be necessary to rely on a series of contacts that have to be trusted. There will be the danger of an eventual capture of one of the messengers, who are constantly crossing enemy zones. If the messages are of small importance, they should be oral; if of great importance, code writing should be used. Experience shows that transmission by word of mouth greatly distorts any communication.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;For these same reasons, manufacture will have much less importance, at the same time that it would be much more difficult to carry it out. It will not be possible to have factories making shoes or arms. Practically speaking, manufacture will have to be limited to small shops, carefully hidden, where shotgun shells can be recharged and mines, simple grenades, and other minimum necessities of the moment manufactured. On the other hand, it is possible to make use of all the friendly shops of the zone for such work as is necessary.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This brings us to two consequences that flow logically from what has been said. One of them is that the favorable conditions for establishing a permanent camp in guerrilla warfare are inverse to the degree of productive development of a place. All favorable conditions, all facilities of life normally induce men to settle; but for the guerrilla band the opposite is the case. The more facilities there are for social life, the more nomadic, the more uncertain the life of the guerrilla fighter. These really are the results of one and the same principle. The title of this section is “Warfare on Unfavorable Ground,” because everything that is favorable to human life, communications, urban and semiurban concentrations of large numbers of people, land easily worked by machine: all these place the guerrilla fighter in a disadvantageous situation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The second conclusion is that if guerrilla fighting must include the extremely important factor of work on the masses, this work is even more important in the unfavorable zones, where a single enemy attack can produce a catastrophe. Indoctrination should be continuous, and so should be the struggle for unity of the workers, of the peasants, and of other social classes that live in the zone, in order to achieve toward the guerrilla fighters a maximum homogeneity of attitude. This task with the masses, this constant work at the huge problem of relations of the guerrilla band with the inhabitants of the zone, must also govern the attitude to be taken toward the case of an individual recalcitrant enemy soldier: he should be eliminated without hesitation when he is dangerous. In this respect the guerrilla band must be drastic. Enemies cannot be permitted to exist within the zone of operations in places that offer no security.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;6. Suburban Warfare&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;If during the war the guerrilla bands close in on cities and penetrate the surrounding country in such a way as to be able to establish themselves in conditions of some security, it will be necessary to give these suburban bands a special education, or rather, a special organization.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It is fundamental to recognize that a suburban guerrilla band can never spring up of its own accord. It will be born only after certain conditions necessary for its survival have been created. Therefore, the suburban guerrilla will always be under the direct orders of chiefs located in another zone. The function of this guerrilla band will not be to carry out independent actions but to coordinate its activities with overall strategic plans in such a way as to support the action of larger groups situated in another area, contributing specifically to the success of a fixed tactical objective, without the operational freedom of guerrilla bands of the other types. For example, a suburban band will not be able to choose among the operations of destroying telephone lines, moving to make attacks in another locality, and surprising a patrol of soldiers on a distant road; it will do exactly what it is told. If its function is to cut down telephone poles or electric wires, to destroy sewers, railroads, or water mains, it will limit itself to carrying out these tasks efficiently.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It ought not to number more than four or five men. The limitation on numbers is important, because the suburban guerrilla must be considered as situated in exceptionally unfavorable ground, where the vigilance of the enemy will be much greater and the possibilities of reprisals as well as of betrayal are increased enormously. Another aggravating circumstance is that the suburban guerrilla band cannot depart far from the places where it is going to operate. To speed of action and withdrawal there must be added a limitation on the distance of withdrawal from the scene of action and the need to remain totally hidden during the daytime. This is a nocturnal guerrilla band in the extreme, without possibilities of changing its manner of operating until the insurrection is so far advanced that it can take part as an active combatant in the siege of the city.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The essential qualities of the guerrilla fighter in this situation are discipline (perhaps in the highest degree of all) and discretion. He cannot count on more than two or three friendly houses that will provide food; it is almost certain that an encirclement in these conditions will be equivalent to death. Weapons, furthermore, will not be of the same kind as those of the other groups. They will be for personal defense, of the type that do not hinder a rapid flight or betray a secure hiding place. As their armament the band ought to have not more than one carbine or one sawed-off shotgun, or perhaps two, with pistols for the other members.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;They will concentrate their action on prescribed sabotage and never carry out armed attacks, except by surprising one or two members or agents of the enemy troops.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;For sabotage they need a full set of instruments. The guerrilla fighter must have good saws, large quantities of dynamite, picks and shovels, apparatus for lifting rails, and, in general, adequate mechanical equipment for the work to be carried out. This should be hidden in places that are secure but easily accessible to the hands that will need to use it.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;If there is more than one guerrilla band, they will all be under a single chief who will give orders as to the necessary tasks through contacts of proven trustworthiness who live openly as ordinary citizens. In certain cases the guerrilla fighter will be able to maintain his peacetime work, but this is very difficult. Practically speaking, the suburban guerrilla band is a group of men who are already outside the law, in a condition of war, situated as unfavorably as we have described.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The importance of a suburban struggle has usually been underestimated; it is really very great. A good operation of this type extended over a wide area paralyzes almost completely the commercial and industrial life of the sector and places the entire population in a situation of unrest, of anguish, almost of impatience for the development of violent events that will relieve the period of suspense. If, from the first moment of the war, thought is taken for the future possibility of this type of fight and an organization of specialists started, a much more rapid action will be assured, and with it a saving of lives and of the priceless time of the nation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;The Guerrilla Band&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;1. The Guerrilla Fighter: Social Reformer&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;We have already described the guerrilla fighter as one who shares the longing of the people for liberation and who, once peaceful means are exhausted, initiates the fight and converts himself into an armed vanguard of the fighting people. From the very beginning of the struggle he has the intention of destroying an unjust order and therefore an intention, more or less hidden, to replace the old with something new.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We have also already said that in the conditions that prevail, at least in America and in almost all countries with deficient economic development, it is the countryside that offers ideal conditions for the fight. Therefore, the foundation of the social structure that the guerrilla fighter will build begins with changes in the ownership of agrarian property.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The banner of the fight throughout this period will be agrarian reform. At first, this goal may or may not be completely delineated in its extent and limits; it may simply refer to the age-old hunger of the peasant for the land on which he works or wishes to work.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The conditions in which the agrarian reform will be realized depend upon the conditions which existed before the struggle began, and on the social depth of the struggle. But the guerrilla fighter, as a person conscious of a role in the vanguard of the people, must have a moral conduct that shows him to be a true priest of the reform to which he aspires. To the stoicism imposed by the difficult conditions of warfare should be added an austerity born of rigid self-control that will prevent a single excess, a single slip, whatever the circumstances. The guerrilla soldier should be an ascetic.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As for social relations, these will vary with the development of the war. At the beginning it will not be possible to attempt any changes in the social order.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Merchandise that cannot be paid for in cash will be paid for with bonds; and these should be redeemed at the first opportunity.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The peasant must always be helped technically, economically, morally, and culturally. The guerrilla fighter will be a sort of guiding angel who has fallen into the zone, helping the poor always and bothering the rich as little as possible in the first phases of the war. But this war will continue on its course; contradictions will continuously become sharper; the moment will arrive when many of those who regarded the revolution with a certain sympathy at the outset will place themselves in a position diametrically opposed, and they will take the first step into battle against the popular forces. At that moment the guerrilla fighter should act to make himself into the standard bearer of the cause of the people, punishing every betrayal with justice. Private property should acquire in the war zones its social function. For example, excess land and livestock not essential for the maintenance of a wealthy family should pass into the hands of the people and be distributed equitably and justly.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The right of the owners to receive payment for possessions used for the social good ought always to be respected; but this payment will be made in bonds (“bonds of hope,” as they were called by our teacher, General Bayo,&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 ftn01.html#ftn fn3|&lt;span&gt;c&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; referring to the common interest that is thereby established between debtor and creditor).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The land and property of notorious and active enemies of the revolution should pass immediately into the hands of the revolutionary forces. Furthermore, taking advantage of the heat of the war—those moments in which human fraternity reaches its highest intensity—all kinds of cooperative work, as much as the mentality of the inhabitants will permit, ought to be stimulated.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The guerrilla fighter as a social reformer should not only provide an example in his own life, but he ought also constantly to give orientation in ideological problems, explaining what he knows and what he wishes to do at the right time. He will also make use of what he learns as the months or years of the war strengthen his revolutionary convictions, making him more radical as the potency of arms is demonstrated, as the outlook of the inhabitants becomes a part of his spirit and of his own life, and as he understands the justice and the vital necessity of a series of changes of which the theoretical importance appeared to him before, but devoid of practical urgency.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This development occurs very often, because the initiators of guerrilla warfare, or rather the directors of guerrilla warfare, are not men who have bent their backs day after day over the furrow. They are men who understand the necessity for changes in the social treatment accorded peasants, without having suffered in the usual case this bitter treatment in their own persons. It happens then (I am drawing on the Cuban experience and enlarging it) that a genuine interaction is produced between these leaders who with their acts teach the people the fundamental importance of the armed fight, and the people themselves who rise in rebellion and teach the leaders these practical necessities of which we speak. Thus, as a product of this interaction between the guerrilla fighter and his people, a progressive radicalization appears which further accentuates the revolutionary characteristics of the movement and gives it a national scope.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;2. The Guerrilla Fighter as Combatant&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The life and activities of the guerrilla fighter, sketched thus in their general lines, call for a series of physical, mental, and moral qualities needed for adapting oneself to prevailing conditions and for fulfilling completely any mission assigned.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;To the question as to what the guerrilla soldier should be like, the first answer is that he should preferably be an inhabitant of the zone. If this is the case, he will have friends who will help him; if he belongs to the zone itself, he will know it (and this knowledge of the ground is one of the most important factors in guerrilla warfare); and since he will be habituated to local peculiarities, he will be able to do better work, not to mention that he will add to all this the enthusiasm that arises from defending his own people and fighting to change a social regime that hurts his own world.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The guerrilla combatant is a night combatant; to say this is to say at the same time that he must have all the special qualities that such fighting requires. He must be cunning and able to march to the place of attack across plains or mountains without anybody’s noticing him, and then to fall upon the enemy, taking advantage of the factor of surprise, which deserves to be emphasized again as important in this type of fight. After causing panic by this surprise, he should launch himself into the fight implacably without permitting a single weakness in his companions and taking advantage of every sign of weakness on the part of the enemy. Striking like a tornado, destroying all, giving no quarter unless the tactical circumstances call for it, judging those who must be judged, sowing panic among the enemy combatants, he nevertheless treats defenseless prisoners benevolently and shows respect for the dead.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A wounded enemy should be treated with care and respect unless his former life has made him liable to a death penalty, in which case he will be treated in accordance with his deserts. What can never be done is to keep prisoners, unless a secure base of operations, invulnerable to the enemy, has been established. Otherwise, the prisoner will become a dangerous menace to the security of the inhabitants of the region or to the guerrilla band itself because of the information that he can give upon rejoining the enemy army. If he has not been a notorious criminal, he should be set free after receiving a lecture.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The guerrilla combatant ought to risk his life whenever necessary and be ready to die without the least sign of doubt; but, at the same time, he ought to be cautious and never expose himself unnecessarily. All possible precautions ought to be taken to avoid a defeat or an annihilation. For this reason it is extremely important in every fight to maintain vigilance over all the points from which enemy reinforcements may arrive and to take precautions against an encirclement, the consequences of which are usually not physically disastrous but which damage morale by causing a loss of faith in the prospects of the struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;However, he ought to be audacious, and, after carefully analyzing the dangers and possibilities in an action, always ready to take an optimistic attitude toward circumstances and to see reasons for a favorable decision even in moments when the analysis of the adverse and favorable conditions does not show an appreciable positive balance.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;To be able to survive in the midst of these conditions of life and enemy action, the guerrilla fighter must have a degree of adaptability that will permit him to identify himself with the environment in which he lives, to become a part of it, and to take advantage of it as his ally to the maximum possible extent. He also needs a faculty of rapid comprehension and an instantaneous inventiveness that will permit him to change his tactics according to the dominant course of the action.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;These faculties of adaptability and inventiveness in popular armies are what ruin the statistics of the warlords and cause them to waver.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The guerrilla fighter must never for any reason leave a wounded companion at the mercy of the enemy troops, because this would be leaving him to an almost certain death. At whatever cost he must be removed from the zone of combat to a secure place. The greatest exertions and the greatest risks must be taken in this task. The guerrilla soldier must be an extraordinary companion.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;At the same time he ought to be close-mouthed. Everything that is said and done before him should be kept strictly in his own mind. He ought never to permit himself a single useless word, even with his own comrades in arms, since the enemy will always try to introduce spies into the ranks of the guerrilla band in order to discover its plans, location, and means of life.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Besides the moral qualities that we have mentioned, the guerrilla fighter should possess a series of very important physical qualities. He must be indefatigable. He must be able to produce another effort at the moment when weariness seems intolerable. Profound conviction, expressed in every line of his face, forces him to take another step; and this not the last one, since it will be followed by another and another and another until he arrives at the place designated by his chiefs.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;He ought to be able to endure extremities, to withstand not only the privations of food, water, clothing, and shelter to which he is subjected frequently, but also the sickness and wounds that often must be cured by nature without much help from the surgeon. This is all the more necessary because usually the individual who leaves the guerrilla zone to recover from sickness or wounds will be assassinated by the enemy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;To meet these conditions he needs an iron constitution that will enable him to resist all these adversities without falling ill and to make of his hunted animal’s life one more factor of strength. With the help of his natural adaptability, he becomes a part of the land itself where he fights.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;All these considerations bring us to ask: What is the ideal age for the guerrilla fighter? These limits are always very difficult to state precisely, because individual and social peculiarities change the figure. A peasant, for example, will be much more resistant than a man from the city. A city dweller who is accustomed to physical exercise and a healthy life will be much more efficient than a man who has lived all his life behind a desk. But generally the maximum age of combatants in the completely nomadic stage of the guerrilla struggle ought not to exceed forty years, although there will be exceptional cases, above all among the peasants. One of the heroes of our struggle, Comandante Crescencio Pérez, entered the Sierra at 65 years of age and was immediately one of the most useful men in the troop.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We might also ask if the members of the guerrilla band should be drawn from a certain social class. It has already been said that this social composition ought to be adjusted to that of the zone chosen for the center of operations, which is to say that the combatant nucleus of the guerrilla army ought to be made up of peasants. The peasant is evidently the best soldier; but the other strata of the population are not by any means to be excluded nor deprived of the opportunity to fight for a just cause. Individual exceptions are also very important in this respect.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We have not yet fixed the lower limit of age. We believe that minors less than sixteen years of age ought not to be accepted for the fight, except in very special circumstances. In general, these young boys, nearly children, do not have sufficient development to bear up under the work, the weather, and the suffering to which they will be subjected.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The best age for a guerrilla fighter varies between 25 and 35 years, a stage in which the life of most persons has assumed definite shape. Whoever sets out at that age, abandoning his home, his children, and his entire world, must have thought well of his responsibility and reached a firm decision not to retreat a step. There are extraordinary cases of children who, as combatants, have reached the highest ranks of our rebel army, but this is not the usual case. For every one of them who displayed great fighting qualities, there were tens who ought to have been returned to their homes and who frequently constituted a dangerous burden for the guerrilla band.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The guerrilla fighter, as we have said, is a soldier who carries his house on his back like the snail; therefore, he must arrange his knapsack in such a way that the smallest quantity of utensils will render the greatest possible service. He will carry only the indispensable, but he will take care of it at all times as something fundamental and not to be lost except in extremely adverse situations.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;His armament will also be only that which he can carry on his own. Reprovisioning is very difficult, above all with bullets. To keep them dry, always to keep them clean, to count them one by one so that none is lost: these are the watchwords. And the gun ought always to be kept clean, well greased, and with the barrel shining. It is advisable for the chief of each group to impose some penalty or punishment on those who do not maintain their armaments in these conditions.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;People with such notable devotion and firmness must have an ideal that sustains them in the adverse conditions that we have described. This ideal is simple, without great pretensions, and in general does not go very far; but it is so firm, so clear that one will give his life for it without the least hesitation. With almost all peasants this ideal is the right to have and work a piece of land of their own and to enjoy just social treatment. Among workers it is to have work, to receive an adequate wage as well as just social treatment. Among students and professional people more abstract ideas such as liberty are found to be motives for the fight.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This brings us to the question: What is the life of the guerrilla fighter like? His normal life is the long hike. Let us take as an example a mountain guerrilla fighter located in wooded regions under constant harassment by the enemy. In these conditions the guerrilla band moves during daylight hours, without eating, in order to change its position; when night arrives, camp is set up in a clearing near a water supply according to a routine, each group assembling in order to eat in common; at dusk the fires are lighted with whatever is at hand.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The guerrilla fighter eats when he can and everything he can. Sometimes fabulous feasts disappear in the gullet of the combatant; at other times he fasts for two or three days without suffering any diminution in his capacity for work.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;His house will be the open sky; between it and his hammock he places a sheet of waterproof nylon and beneath the cloth and hammock he places his knapsack, gun, and ammunition, which are the treasures of the guerrilla fighter. At times it is not wise for shoes to be removed, because of the possibility of a surprise attack by the enemy. Shoes are another of his precious treasures. Whoever has a pair of them has the security of a happy existence within the limits of the prevailing circumstances.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Thus, the guerrilla fighter will live for days without approaching any inhabited place, avoiding all contact that has not been previously arranged, staying in the wildest zones, knowing hunger, at times thirst, cold, heat; sweating during the continuous marches, letting the sweat dry on his body and adding to it new sweat without any possibility of regular cleanliness (although this also depends somewhat upon the individual disposition, as does everything else).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;During the recent war, upon entering the village of El Uvero following a march of sixteen kilometers and a fight of two hours and forty-five minutes in a hot sun (all added to several days passed in very adverse conditions along the sea with intense heat from a boiling sun), our bodies gave off a peculiar and offensive odor that repelled anyone who came near. Our noses were completely habituated to this type of life; the hammocks of guerrilla fighters are known for their characteristic, individual odor.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In such conditions breaking camp ought to be done rapidly, leaving no traces behind; vigilance must be extreme. For every ten men sleeping there ought to be one or two on watch, with the sentinels being changed continually and a sharp vigil being maintained over all entrances to the camp.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Campaign life teaches several tricks for preparing meals, some to help speed their preparation, others to add seasoning with little things found in the forest, still others for inventing new dishes that give a more varied character to the guerrilla menu, which is composed mainly of roots, grains, salt, a little oil or lard, and, very sporadically, pieces of the meat of some animal that has been slain. This refers to the life of a group operating in tropical sectors.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Within the framework of the combatant life, the most interesting event, the one that carries all to a convulsion of joy and puts new vigor in everybody’s steps, is the battle. The battle, climax of the guerrilla life, is sought at an opportune moment either when an enemy encampment sufficiently weak to be annihilated has been located and investigated, or when an enemy column is advancing directly toward the territory occupied by the liberating force. The two cases are different.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Against an encampment the action will be a thin encirclement and fundamentally will become a hunt for the members of the columns that come to break the encirclement. An entrenched enemy is never the favorite prey of the guerrilla fighter; he prefers his enemy to be on the move, nervous, not knowing the ground, fearful of everything and without natural protections for defense. Whoever is behind a parapet with powerful arms for repelling an offensive will never be in the plight, however bad his situation, of a long column that is attacked suddenly in two or three places and cut. If the attackers are not able to encircle the column and destroy it totally, they will retire prior to any counteraction.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;If there is no possibility of defeating those entrenched in a camp by means of hunger or thirst or by a direct assault, the guerrilla ought to retire after the encirclement has yielded its fruits of destruction in the relieving columns. In cases where the guerrilla column is too weak and the invading column too strong, the action should be concentrated upon the vanguard. There should be a special preference for this tactic, whatever the hoped-for result, since after the leading ranks have been struck several times, thus diffusing among the soldiers the news that death is constantly occurring to those in the van, the reluctance to occupy those places will provoke nothing less than mutiny. Therefore, attacks ought to be made on that point even if they are also made at other points of the column.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The facility with which the guerrilla fighter can perform his function and adapt himself to the environment will depend upon his equipment. Even though joined with others in small groups, he has individual characteristics. He should have in his knapsack, besides his regular shelter, everything necessary to survival in case he finds himself alone for some time.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In giving the list of equipment we will refer essentially to that which should be carried by an individual located in rough country at the beginning of a war, with frequent rainfall, some cold weather, and harassment by the enemy; in other words, we place ourselves in the situation that existed at the beginning of the Cuban war of liberation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The equipment of the guerrilla fighter is divided into the essential and the accessory. Among the first is a hammock. This provides adequate rest; it is easy to find two trees from which it can be strung; and, in cases where one sleeps on the ground, it can serve as a mattress. Whenever it is raining or the ground is wet, a frequent occurrence in tropical mountain zones, the hammock is indispensable for sleeping. A piece of waterproof nylon cloth is its complement. The nylon should be large enough to cover the hammock when tied from its four corners, and with a line strung through the center to the same trees from which the hammock hangs. This last line serves to make the nylon into a kind of tent by raising a center ridge and causing it to shed water.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A blanket is indispensable, because it is cold in the mountains at night. It is also necessary to carry a garment such as a jacket or coat which will enable one to bear the extreme changes of temperature. Clothing should consist of rough work trousers and shirt, which may or may not be of a uniform cloth. Shoes should be of the best possible construction and also, since without good shoes marches are very difficult, they should be one of the first articles laid up in reserve.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Since the guerrilla fighter carries his house in his knapsack, the latter is very important. The more primitive types may be made from any kind of sack carried by two ropes, but those of canvas found in the market or made by a harness maker are preferable. The guerrilla fighter ought always to carry some personal food besides that which the troop carries or consumes in its camps. Indispensable articles are: lard or oil, which is necessary for fat consumption; canned goods, which should not be consumed except in circumstances where food for cooking cannot be found or when there are too many cans and their weight impedes the march; preserved fish, which has great nutritional value; condensed milk, which is also nourishing, particularly on account of the large quantity of sugar that it contains; some sweet for its good taste. Powdered milk can also be carried. Sugar is another essential part of the supplies, as is salt, without which life becomes sheer martyrdom, and something that serves to season the meals, such as onion, garlic, etc., according to the characteristics of the country. This completes the category of the essentials.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The guerrilla fighter should carry a plate, knife, and fork, camping style, which will serve all the various necessary functions. The plate can be a camping or military type or a pan that is usable for cooking anything from a piece of meat to a “malanga” or a potato, or for brewing tea or coffee.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;To care for the rifle, special greases are necessary; and these must be carefully administered—sewing machine oil is very good if there is no special oil available. Also needed are cloths that will serve for cleaning the arms frequently and a rod for cleaning the gun inside, something that ought to be done often. The ammunition belt can be of commercial type or homemade, according to the circumstances, but it ought to be so made that not a single bullet will be lost. Ammunition is the basis of the fight without which everything else would be in vain; it must be cared for like gold.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A canteen or a bottle for water is essential, since it will frequently be necessary to drink in a situation where water is not available. Among medicines, those of general use should be carried: for example, penicillin or some other type of antibiotic, preferably the types taken orally, carefully closed; medicines for lowering fever, such as aspirin; and others adapted to treating the endemic diseases of the area. These may be tablets against malaria, sulfas for diarrhea, medicines against parasites of all types; in other words, fit the medicine to the characteristics of the region. It is advisable in places where there are poisonous animals to carry appropriate injections. Surgical instruments will complete the medical equipment. Small personal items for taking care of less important injuries should also be included.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A customary and extremely important comfort in the life of the guerrilla fighter is a smoke, whether cigars, cigarettes, or pipe tobacco; a smoke in moments of rest is a great friend to the solitary soldier. Pipes are useful, because they permit using to the extreme all tobacco that remains in the butts of cigars and cigarettes at time of scarcity. Matches are extremely important, not only for lighting a smoke, but also for starting fires; this is one of the great problems in the forest in rainy periods. It is preferable to carry both matches and a lighter, so that if the lighter runs out of fuel, matches remain as a substitute.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Soap should be carried, not only for personal cleanliness, but for washing eating utensils, because intestinal infections or irritations are frequent and can be caused by spoiled food left on dirty cookware. With this set of equipment, the guerrilla fighter can be assured that he will be able to live in the forest under adverse conditions, no matter how bad, for as long as is necessary to dominate the situation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;There are accessories that at times are useful and others that constitute a bother but are very useful. The compass is one of these; at the outset this will be used a great deal in gaining orientation, but little by little knowledge of the country will make it unnecessary. In mountainous regions a compass is not of much use, since the route it indicates will usually be cut off by impassable obstacles. Another useful article is an extra nylon cloth for covering all equipment when it rains. Remember that rain in tropical countries is continuous during certain months and that water is the enemy of all the things that the guerrilla fighter must carry: food, ammunition, medicine, paper, and clothing.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A change of clothing can be carried, but this is usually a mark of inexperience. The usual custom is to carry no more than an extra pair of pants, eliminating extra underwear and other articles, such as towels. The life of the guerrilla fighter teaches him to conserve his energy in carrying his knapsack from one place to another, and he will, little by little, get rid of everything that does not have essential value.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In addition to a piece of soap, useful for washing utensils as well as for personal cleanliness, a toothbrush and paste should be carried. It is worthwhile also to carry a book, which will be exchanged with other members of the band. These books can be good biographies of past heroes, histories, or economic geographies, preferably of the country, and works of general character that will serve to raise the cultural level of the soldiers and discourage the tendency toward gambling or other undesirable forms of passing the time. There are periods of boredom in the life of the guerrilla fighter.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Whenever there is extra space in the knapsack, it ought to be used for food, except in those zones where the food supply is easy and sure. Sweets or food of lesser importance complementing the basic items can be carried. Crackers can be one of these, although they occupy a large space and break up into crumbs. In thick forests a machete is useful; in very wet places a small bottle of gasoline or light resinous wood, such as pine, for kindling will make firebuilding easier when the wood is wet.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A small notebook and pen or pencil for taking notes and for letters to the outside or communication with other guerrilla bands ought always to be a part of the guerrilla fighter’s equipment. Pieces of string or rope should be kept available; these have many uses. Also needles, thread, and buttons for clothing. The guerrilla fighter who carries this equipment will have a solid house on his back, rather heavy but furnished to assure a comfortable life during the hardships of the campaign.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;3. Organization of a Guerrilla Band&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;No rigid scheme can be offered for the organization of a guerrilla band; there will be innumerable differences according to the environment in which it is to operate. For convenience of exposition we will suppose that our experience has a universal application, but it should be kept in mind always that there will possibly be new forms that comport better with the particular characteristics of a given armed group.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The size of the component units of the guerrilla force is one of the most difficult problems to deal with: there will be different numbers of men and different compositions of the troop, as we have already explained. Let us suppose a force situated in favorable ground, mountainous, with conditions not so bad as to necessitate perpetual flight, but not so good as to afford a base of operations. The combat units of an armed force thus situated ought to number not more than one hundred and fifty men, and even this number is rather high; ideal would be a unit of about one hundred men. This constitutes a column, and in the Cuban organization is commanded by a comandante. It should be remembered that in our war the grades of corporal and sergeant were omitted because they were considered reminiscent of the tyranny.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 ftn01.html#ftn fn4|&lt;span&gt;d&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;On this premise, the comandante commands this whole force of one hundred to one hundred and fifty men; and there will be as many captains as there are groups of thirty to forty men. The captain has the function of directing and unifying his platoon, making it fight almost always as a unit, and looking after the distribution of men and the general organization. In guerrilla warfare, the squad is the functional unit. Each squad, made up of approximately eight to twelve men, is commanded by a lieutenant, who performs for his group functions analogous to those of the captain, to whom he must always be in constant subordination.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The operational tendency of the guerrilla band to function in small groups makes the squad the true unit. Eight to ten men are the maximum that can act as a unit in a fight in these conditions: therefore, the squad, which will frequently be separated from the captain even though they fight on the same front, will operate under the orders of its lieutenant; there are exceptions, of course. A squad should not be broken up nor kept dispersed at times when there is no fighting. Each squad and platoon should know who the immediate successor is in case the chief falls, and these persons should be sufficiently trained to be able to take over their new responsibilities immediately.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;One of the fundamental problems of the troop is food supply; in this, everyone from the last man to the chief must be treated alike. This acquires a high importance, not only because of the chronic shortage of supplies, but also because meals are the only events that take place daily. The troops, who have a keen sense of justice, measure the rations with a sharp eye; the least favoritism for anyone ought never to be permitted. If in certain circumstances the meal is served to the whole column, a regular order should be established and observed strictly, and at the same time the quantity and quality of food given to each one ought to be carefully checked. In the distribution of clothing the problem is different, these being articles of individual use. Here two considerations prevail: first, the demand for necessities of those who need them, which will almost always be greater than the supply; and, second, the length of service and merits of each one of the applicants. The length of service and merits, something very difficult to fix exactly, should be noted in special booklets by one assigned this responsibility under the direct supervision of the chief of the column. The same should be said about other articles that become available and are of individual rather than collective utility. Tobacco and cigarettes ought to be distributed according to the general rule of equal treatment for everybody.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This task of distribution should be a specifically assigned responsibility. It is preferable that the persons designated be attached directly to the command. The command performs, therefore, administrative tasks of liaison which are very important, as well as all the other special tasks that are necessary. Officers of the greatest intelligence ought to be in it. Soldiers attached to the command ought to be alert and of maximum dedication, since their burdens will usually be greater than those borne by the rest of the troop. Nevertheless, they can have no special treatment at mealtime.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Each guerrilla fighter carries his complete equipment; there is also a series of implements of use to the group that should be equitably distributed within the column. For this, too, rules can be established, depending upon the number of unarmed persons in the troop. One system is to distribute all extra materiel, such as medicines, medical or dental or surgical instruments, extra food, clothing, general supplies, and heavy weapons equally among all platoons, which will then be responsible for their custody. Each captain will distribute these supplies among the squads, and each chief of a squad will distribute them among his men. Another solution, which can be used when a part of the troop is not armed, is to create special squads or platoons assigned to transport; this works out well, since it leaves the soldier who already has the weight and responsibility of his rifle free of extra cargo. In this way, danger of losing materiel is reduced, since it is concentrated; and at the same time there is an incentive for the porter to carry more and to carry better and to demonstrate more enthusiasm, since in this way he will win his right to a weapon in the future. These platoons will march in the rear positions and will have the same duties and the same treatment as the rest of the troop.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The tasks to be carried out by a column will vary according to its activities. If it is encamped, there will be special teams for keeping watch. These should be experienced, specially trained, and they should receive some special reward for this duty. This can consist of increased independence, or, if there is an excess of sweets or tobacco after proportional distribution to each column, something extra for the members of those units that carry out special tasks. For example, if there are one hundred men and one hundred and fifteen packages of cigarettes, the fifteen extra packs of cigarettes can be distributed among the members of the units referred to. The vanguard and the rear guard units, separated from the rest, will have special duties of vigilance; but, besides, each platoon ought to have such a watch of its own. The farther from the encampment the watch is maintained, the greater is the security of the group, especially when it is in open country.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The places chosen should be high, dominating a wide area by day and difficult to approach by night. If the plan is to stay several days, it is worthwhile to construct defenses that will permit a sustained fire in case of an attack. These defenses can be obliterated when the guerrilla band moves, or they can be left if circumstances no longer make it necessary to hide the path of the column.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In places where permanent encampments are established, the defenses ought to be improved constantly. Remember that in a mountainous zone on ground carefully chosen, the only heavy arm that is effective is the mortar. Using roofs reinforced with materials from the region, such as wood, rocks, etc., it is possible to make good refuges which are difficult for the enemy forces to approach and which will afford protection from mortar shells for the guerrilla forces.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It is very important to maintain discipline in the camp, and this should have an educational function. The guerrilla fighters should be required to go to bed and get up at fixed hours. Games that have no social function and that hurt the morale of the troops and the consumption of alcoholic drinks should both be prohibited. All these tasks are performed by a commission of internal order elected from those combatants of greatest revolutionary merit. Another mission of these persons is to prevent the lighting of fires in places visible from a distance or that raise columns of smoke before nightfall; also, to see that the camp is kept clean and that it is left in such a condition when the column leaves as to show no signs of passage, if this is necessary.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Great care must be taken with fires which leave traces for a long time. They must be covered with earth; papers, cans, and scraps of food should also be burned. During the march complete silence must prevail in the column. Orders are passed by gestures or by whispers that go from mouth to mouth until they reach the last man. If the guerrilla band is marching through unknown places, breaking a road, or being led by a guide, the vanguard will be approximately one hundred or two hundred meters or even more in front, according to the characteristics of the ground. In places where confusion may arise as to the route, a man will be left at each turning to await those who follow, and this will be repeated until the last man in the rear guard has passed. The rear guard will also be somewhat separated from the rest of the column, keeping a watch on the roads in the rear and trying to erase tracks of the troops as much as possible. If there is a road coming from the side that offers danger, it is necessary always to have a group keeping a watch on it until the last man has passed. It is more practical that each platoon utilize its own men for this special duty, with each having the obligation to pass the guard to members of the following platoon and then to rejoin his own unit; this process will be continued until the whole troop has passed.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The march should be uniform and in an established order, always the same. Thus, it will always be known that Platoon #1 is the vanguard, followed by Platoon #2 and then Platoon #3, which may be the command; then Platoon #4, followed by the rear guard or Platoon #5 or other platoons that make up the column, always in the same order. In night marches, silence should be even stricter and the distance between each combatant shorter, so that no one will get lost and make it necessary to shout and turn on lights. Light is the enemy of the guerrilla fighter at nighttime.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;If all this marching has attack as its objective, then upon arriving at a given point, the point to which all will return after the objective has been accomplished, extra weight will be set down, such things as knapsacks and cooking utensils, for example; and each platoon will proceed with nothing more than its arms and fighting equipment. The point of attack should have been already studied by trustworthy people who have reconnoitered the ground and have observed the location of the enemy guards. The leaders, knowing the orientation of the base, the number of men that defend it, etc., will make the final plan for the attack and send combatants to their places, always keeping in mind that a good part of the troops should be assigned to intercept reinforcements. In cases where the attack upon the base is to be merely a diversion in order to provoke the sending of reinforcements along roads that can be easily ambushed, a man should communicate the result rapidly to the command as soon as the attack has been carried out, in order to break the encirclement, if necessary to prevent being attacked from the rear. In any case there must always be a watch on the roads that lead to the place of combat while the encirclement or direct attack is being carried out.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By night a direct attack is always preferable. It is possible to capture an encampment if there is enough drive and necessary presence of mind and if the risks are not excessive.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;An encirclement requires waiting and taking cover, closing in steadly on the enemy, trying to harass him in every way, and, above all, trying to force him by fire to come out. When the circle has been closed to short range, the “Molotov cocktail” is a weapon of extraordinary effectiveness.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 ftn01.html#ftn fn5|&lt;span&gt;e&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Before arriving at a range for the “cocktail,” shotguns with a special charge can be employed. These arms, christened in our war with the name of “M-16,” consist of a 16-calibre sawed-off shotgun with a pair of legs added in such a way that with the butt of the gun they form a tripod. The weapon will thus be mounted at an angle of about 45 degrees; this can be varied by moving the legs back and forth. It is loaded with an open shell from which all the shot has been removed. A cylindrical stick extending from the muzzle of the gun is used as the projectile. A bottle of gasoline resting on a rubber base is placed on the end of the stick. This apparatus will fire the burning bottles a hundred meters or more with a fairly high degree of accuracy. This is an ideal weapon for encirclements when the enemy has many wooden or inflammable material constructions, also for firing against tanks in hilly country.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The nomadic life of the guerrilla fighter in this stage produces not only a deep sense of fraternity among the men but at times also dangerous rivalries between groups or platoons. If these are not channeled to produce beneficial emulation, there is a risk that the unity of the column will be damaged. The education of the guerrilla fighter is important from the very beginning of the struggle. This should explain to them the social purpose of the fight and their duties, clarify their understanding, and give them lessons in morale that serve to forge their characters. Each experience should be a new source of strength for victory and not simply one more episode in the fight for survival.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;One of the great educational techniques is example. Therefore, the chiefs must constantly offer the example of a pure and devoted life. Promotion of the soldier should be based on valor, capacity, and a spirit of sacrifice; whoever does not have these qualities in a high degree ought not to have responsible assignments, since he will cause unfortunate accidents at any moment.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The conduct of the guerrilla fighter will be subject to judgment whenever he approaches a house to ask for something. The inhabitants will draw favorable or unfavorable conclusions about the guerrilla band according to the manner in which any service or food or other necessity is solicited and the methods used to get what is wanted. The explanation by the chief should be detailed about these problems, emphasizing their importance; he should also teach by example. If a town is entered, all drinking of alcohol should be prohibited; and the troops should be exhorted beforehand to give the best possible example of discipline. The entrances and exits to the town should be constantly watched.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The organization, combat capacity, heroism, and spirit of the guerrilla band will undergo a test of fire during an encirclement by the enemy, which is the most dangerous situation of the war. In the jargon of our guerrilla fighters in the recent war, the phrase “encirclement face” was given to the face of fear worn by someone who was frightened. The hierarchy of the deposed regime pompously spoke of its campaigns of “encirclement and annihilation.” However, for a guerrilla band that knows the country and that is united ideologically and emotionally with its chief, this is not a particularly serious problem. It need only take cover, try to slow up the advance of the enemy, impede his action with heavy equipment, and await nightfall, the natural ally of the guerrilla fighter. Then with the greatest possible stealth, after exploring and choosing the best road, the band will depart, utilizing the most adequate means of escape and maintaining absolute silence. It is extremely difficult in these conditions at night to prevent a group of men from escaping the encirclement.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;4. The Combat&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Combat is the most important drama in the guerrilla life. It occupies only a short time; nevertheless, these brilliant moments acquire an extraordinary importance, since each small encounter is a battle of a fundamental kind for the combatants.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We have already pointed out that an attack should be carried out in such a way as to give a guarantee of victory. In addition to general observations concerning the tactical function of attack in guerrilla warfare, the different characteristics that each action can present ought to be noted. We will refer initially, for purposes of description, to the type of fight carried out on favorable ground, because this is the original model of guerrilla warfare; and it is in this connection that certain principles must be examined before dealing with other problems through a study of practical experience. Warfare on the plain is always the result of an advance by the guerrilla bands consequent on their being strengthened and on changes in conditions; this implies an increase of experience on the part of the guerrilla and with it the possibility of using that experience to advantage.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the first stage of guerrilla warfare, enemy columns will penetrate insurgent territory deeply; depending on the strength of these columns, two different types of guerrilla attacks will be made. One of these, first in chronological order, is for a fixed number of months to cause systematic losses in the enemy’s offensive capacity. This tactic is carried out on the vanguards. Unfavorable ground impedes flank defenses by the advancing columns; therefore, there must always be one point of the vanguard that, as it penetrates and exposes the lives of its components, serves to give security to the rest of the column. When men and reserves are insufficient and the enemy is strong, the guerrilla should always aim for the destruction of this vanguard point. The system is simple; only a certain coordination is necessary. At the moment when the vanguard appears at the selected place—the steepest possible—a deadly fire is let loose on them, after a convenient number of men have been allowed to penetrate. A small group must hold the rest of the column for some moments while arms, munitions, and equipment are being collected. The guerrilla soldier ought always to have in mind that his source of supply of arms is the enemy and that, except in special circumstances, he ought not to engage in a battle that will not lead to the capture of such equipment.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When the strength of the guerrilla band permits, a complete encirclement of the column will be carried out; or at least this impression will be given. In this case the guerrilla front line must be strong enough and well-enough covered to resist the frontal assaults of the enemy, considering, naturally, both offensive power and combat morale. At the moment in which the enemy is detained in some chosen place, the rear guard guerrilla forces make an attack on the enemy’s rear. Such a chosen place will have characteristics making a flank maneuver difficult; snipers, outnumbered, perhaps, by eight or ten times, will have the whole enemy column within the circle of fire. Whenever there are sufficient forces in these cases, all roads should be protected with ambushes in order to detain reinforcements. The encirclement will be closed gradually, above all at night. The guerrilla fighter knows the places where he fights, the invading column does not; the guerrilla fighter grows at night, and the enemy feels his fear growing in the darkness.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In this way, without too much difficulty, a column can be totally destroyed; or at least such losses can be inflicted upon it as to prevent its returning to battle and to force it to take a long time for regrouping.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When the force of the guerrilla band is small and it is desired above all to detain and slow down the advance of the invading column, groups of snipers fluctuating between two and ten should be distributed all around the column at each of the four cardinal points. In this situation, combat can be begun, for example, on the right flank; when the enemy centers his action on that flank and fires on it, shooting will begin at that moment from the left flank; at another moment from the rear guard or from the vanguard; and so forth.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;With a very small expenditure of ammunition it is possible to hold the enemy in check indefinitely.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The technique of attacking an enemy convoy or position must be adapted to the conditions of the place chosen for the combat. In general, the first attack on an encircled place should be made during night hours against an advance post, with surprise assured. A surprise attack carried out by skillful commandos can easily liquidate a position, thanks to the advantage of surprise. For a regular encirclement the paths of escape can be controlled with a few men and the roads of access defended with ambushes; these should be distributed in such a way that if one is unsuccessful, it falls back or simply withdraws, while a second remains, and so on successively. In cases where the surprise factor is not present, victory in an attempt to take an encampment will depend on the capacity of the encircling force to detain the attempts of the rescue columns. In these cases there will usually be support on the enemy’s side by artillery, mortars, airplanes, and tanks. In favorable ground the tank is an arm of small danger; it must travel by roads that are narrow and is an easy victim of mines. The offensive capacity of these vehicles when in formation is here generally absent or reduced, since they must proceed in Indian file or at most two abreast. The best and surest weapon against the tank is the mine; but in a close fight, which may easily take place in steep places, the “Molotov cocktail” is an arm of extraordinary value. We will not talk yet of the bazooka, which for the guerrilla force is a decisive weapon but difficult to acquire, at least in the first stages. Against the mortar there is the recourse of a trench with a roof. The mortar is an arm of formidable potency when used against an encircled place; but on the other hand, against mobile attackers it loses its effectiveness unless it is used in large batteries. Artillery does not have great importance in this type of fight, since it has to be placed in locations of convenient access and it does not see the targets, which are constantly shifting. Aviation constitutes the principal arm of the oppressor forces, but its power of attack also is much reduced by the fact that its only targets are small trenches, generally hidden. Planes will be able to drop high-explosive or napalm bombs, both of which constitute inconveniences rather than true dangers. Besides, as the guerrilla draws as close as possible to the defensive lines of the enemy, it becomes very difficult for planes to attack these points of the vanguard effectively.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When encampments with wood or inflammable constructions are attacked, the “Molotov cocktail” is a very important arm at a short distance. At longer distances bottles with inflammable material with the fuse lighted can be launched from a sixteen-calibre shotgun, as described earlier.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Of all the possible types of mines, the most effective, although requiring the most technical capacity, is the remotely exploded mine; but contact, fuse, and above all electric mines with their lengths of cord are also extremely useful and constitute on mountainous roads defenses for the popular forces that are virtually invulnerable.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A good defense against armored cars along roads is to dig sloping ditches in such a way that the tank enters them easily and afterwards cannot get out, as the picture shows. These can easily be hidden from the enemy, especially at nighttime or when he has no infantry in advance of the tanks because of resistance by the guerrilla forces.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Another common form of advance by the enemy in zones that are not too steep is in trucks that are more or less open. The columns are headed by armored vehicles and the infantry follows behind in trucks. Depending upon the force of the guerrilla band it may be possible to encircle the entire column, following the general rules; or it can be split by attacking some of the trucks and simultaneously exploding mines. It is necessary to act rapidly in this case, seizing the arms of the fallen enemy and retiring.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;For an attack on open trucks, an arm of great importance which should be used with all its potential is the shotgun. A sixteen-calibre shotgun with large shot can sweep ten meters, nearly the whole area of the truck, killing some of the occupants, wounding others, and provoking an enormous confusion. Grenades, if they are available, are also excellent weapons for these cases.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;For all these attacks surprise is fundamental because, at least at the moment of firing the first shot, it is one of the basic requirements of guerrilla warfare. Surprise is not possible if the peasants of the zone know of the presence of the insurgent army. For this reason all movements of attack should be made at night. Only men of proven discretion and loyalty can know of these movements and establish the contacts. The march should be made with knapsacks full of food, in order to be able to live two, three, or four days in the places of ambush.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The discretion of the peasants should never be trusted too much, first because there is a natural tendency to talk and to comment on events with other members of the family or with friends; and also because of the inevitable cruelty with which the enemy soldiers treat the population after a defeat. Terror can be sown, and this terror leads to someone’s talking too much, revealing important information, in the effort to save his life.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In general, the place chosen for an ambush should be located at least one day’s march from the habitual camp of the guerrilla band, since the enemy will almost always know its location more or less accurately.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We said before that the form of fire in a battle indicates the location of the opposing forces; on one side violent and rapid firing by the soldier of the line, who has the customary abundance of ammunition; on the other side the methodical, sporadic fire of the guerrilla fighter who knows the value of every bullet and who endeavors to expend it with a high degree of economy, never firing one shot more than necessary. It is not reasonable to allow an enemy to escape or to fail to use an ambush to the full in order to save ammunition, but the amount that is to be expended in determined circumstances should be calculated in advance and the action carried out according to these calculations.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ammunition is the great problem of the guerrilla fighter. Arms can always be obtained. Furthermore, those which are obtained are not expended in guerrilla warfare, while ammunition is expended; also, generally, it is arms with their ammunition that are captured and never or rarely ammunition only. Each weapon that is taken will have its loads, but it cannot contribute to the others because there are no extras. The tactical principle of saving fire is fundamental in this type of warfare.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A guerrilla chief who takes pride in his role will never be careless about withdrawal. This should be timely, rapid, and carried out so as to save all the wounded and the equipment of the guerrilla, its knapsacks, ammunition, etc. The rebels ought never to be surprised while withdrawing, nor can they permit themselves the negligence of becoming surrounded. Therefore, guards must be posted along the chosen road at all places where the enemy army will eventually bring its troops forward in an attempt to close a circle; and there must be a system of communication that will permit rapid reports when a force tries to surround the rebels.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the combat there must always be some unarmed men. They will recover the guns of companions who are wounded or dead, guns seized in battle or belonging to prisoners; they will take charge of the prisoners, of removing the wounded, and of transmission of messages. Besides, there ought to be a good corps of messengers with iron legs and a proven sense of responsibility who will give the necessary reports in the least possible time.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The number of men needed besides the armed combatants varies; but a general rule is two or three for each ten, including those who will be present at the scene of the battle and those who will carry out necessary tasks in the rear guard, keeping watch on the route of withdrawal and performing the messenger services mentioned above.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When a defensive type of war is being fought, that is to say, when the guerrilla band is endeavoring to prohibit the passage of an invasion column beyond a certain point, the action becomes a war of positions; but always at the outset it should have the factor of surprise. In this case, since trenches as well as other defensive systems that will be easily observable by the peasants are going to be used, it is necessary that these latter remain in the friendly zone. In this type of warfare the government generally establishes a blockade of the region, and the peasants who have not fled must go to buy their basic foods at establishments located outside the zones of guerrilla action. Should these persons leave the region at critical moments, such as those we are now describing, this would constitute a serious danger on account of the information that they could eventually supply to the enemy army. The policy of complete isolation must serve as the strategic principle of the guerrilla army in these cases.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The defenses and the whole defensive apparatus should be arranged in such a manner that the enemy vanguard will always fall into an ambush. It is very important as a psychological factor that the man in the vanguard will die without escape in every battle, because this produces within the enemy army a growing consciousness of this danger, until the moment arrives when nobody wants to be in the vanguard; and it is obvious that a column with no vanguard cannot move, since somebody has to assume that responsibility. Also encirclements can be carried out if these are expedient; or diversionary maneuvers such as flank attacks; or the enemy can simply be detained frontally. In every case, places which are susceptible of being utilized by the enemy for flank attacks should be fortified.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We are now assuming that more men and arms are available than in the combats described hitherto. It is evident that the blockade of all possible roads converging into a zone, which may be very numerous, requires a large personnel. The various kinds of traps and attacks against armored vehicles will be increased here, in order to give the greatest security possible to the systems of fixed trenches which can be located by the enemy. In general in this type of fight the order is to defend the positions unto death if necessary; and it is essential to assure the maximum possibilities of survival to every defender.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The more a trench is hidden from distant view, the better; above all, it is important to give it a cover so that mortar fire will be ineffective. Mortars of 60.1 or 85 millimeters, the usual campaign calibres, cannot penetrate a good roof made with simple materials from the region. This may be made from a base of wood, earth, and rocks covered with some camouflage material. An exit for escape in an extremity must always be constructed, so that the defender may get away with less danger.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The sketch below shows the form in which these defenses were constructed in the Sierra Maestra. They were sufficient to protect us from mortar fire.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This outline clearly indicates that fixed lines of fire do not exist. The lines of fire are something more or less theoretical; they are established at certain critical moments, but they are extremely elastic and permeable on both sides.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;What does exist is a wide no-man’s-land. But the characteristics of no-man’s-land in guerrilla warfare are that it is inhabited by a civil population, and that this civil population collaborates in a certain measure with either of the two sides, even though in an overwhelming majority with the insurrectionary band. These people cannot be removed &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;en masse&lt;/span&gt; from the zone on account of their numbers and because this would create problems of supply for either one of the contenders who tried to provide food for so many people. This no-man’s -land is penetrated by periodic incursions (generally during the daytime) by the repressive forces and at night by the guerrilla forces. The guerrilla forces find there a maintenance base of great importance for their troops; this should be cared for in a political way, always establishing the best possible relations with the peasants and merchants.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In this type of warfare the tasks of those who do not carry arms, of those who are not direct combatants, are extremely important. We have already indicated some of the characteristics of liaison in places of combat; but liaison is an institution throughout the whole guerrilla organization. Liaison out to the most distant command or out to the most distant group of guerrilla fighters ought to be linked in such a way that messages will travel from one place to another via the most rapid system available in the region. This holds for regions of easy defense, that is to say, in favorable ground, as well as in unfavorable ground. A guerrilla band operating in unfavorable ground will not be able to use modern systems of communication, such as telegraph, roads, etc., except some radios located in military garrisons capable of being defended. If these fall into the hands of the enemy force, it is necessary to change codes and frequencies, a task that is rather troublesome.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In all these matters we are speaking from memory of things that occurred in our war of liberation. The daily and accurate report on all activities of the enemy is complemented with liaison. The system of espionage should be carefully studied, well worked out, and personnel chosen with maximum care. The harm that a counterspy can do is enormous, but even without such an extreme case, the harm that can result from exaggerated information which misjudges the danger is very great. It is not probable that danger will be underrated. The tendency of people in the country is to overrate and exaggerate it. The same magic mentality that makes phantasms and various supernatural beings appear also creates monstrous armies where there is hardly a platoon or an enemy patrol. The spy ought to seem as neutral as possible, not known by the enemy to have any connection with the forces of liberation. This is not as difficult a task as it appears; many such persons are found in the course of the war: businessmen, professional men, and even clergymen can lend their help in this type of task and give timely information.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;One of the most important characteristics of guerrilla warfare is the notable difference between the information that reaches the rebel forces and the information possessed by the enemy. While the latter must operate in regions that are absolutely hostile, finding sullen silence on the part of the peasants, the rebels have in nearly every house a friend or even a relative; and news is passed about constantly through the liaison system until it reaches the central command of the guerrilla force or of the guerrilla group that is in the zone.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When an enemy penetration occurs in territory that has become openly pro-guerrilla, where all the peasants respond to the cause of the people, a serious problem is created. The majority of peasants try to escape with the popular army, abandoning their children and their work; others even carry the whole family; some wait upon events. The most serious problem that an enemy penetration into guerrilla territory can provoke is that of a group of families finding themselves in a tight, at times desperate situation. Maximum help should be given to them, but they must be warned of the troubles that can follow upon a flight into inhospitable zones so far from their habitual places of livelihood, exposed to the hardships that usually befall in such cases.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It is not possible to describe any pattern of repression on the part of the enemies of the people. Although the general methods of repression are always the same, the enemies of the people act in a more or less intensely criminal fashion according to the specific social, historic, and economic circumstances of each place. There are places where the flight of a man into the guerrilla zone, leaving his family and his house, does not provoke any great reaction. There are others where this is enough to provoke the burning or seizure of his belongings, and still others where the flight will bring death to all members of his family. Adequate distribution and organization of the peasants who are going to be affected by an enemy advance must of course be arranged according to the habits that prevail in the war zone or country concerned.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Obviously, preparations must be made to expel the enemy from such territory by moving against his supplies, completely cutting his lines of communication, destroying by means of small guerrilla bands his attempts to supply himself, and in general forcing him to devote large quantities of men to his supply problem.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In all these combat situations a very important factor is the correct utilization of reserves wherever battle begins. The guerrilla army, because of its characteristics, can rarely count on reserves, since it always strikes in such a way that the efforts of every individual are regulated and employed at something. Nevertheless, despite these characteristics it should have at some place men ready to respond to an unforeseen development, to detain a counter-offensive, or to take care of a situation at any moment. Within the organization of the guerrilla band, assuming that the conditions and possibilities of the moment permit, a utility platoon can be held in readiness, a platoon that should always go to the places of greatest danger. It can be christened the “suicide platoon” or something similar; this title in reality indicates its functions. This “suicide platoon” should be in every place where a battle is decided: in the surprise attacks upon the vanguard, in the defense of the most vulnerable and dangerous places, in a word, wherever the enemy threatens to break the stability of the line of fire. It ought to be made up strictly of volunteers. Entrance into this platoon should be regarded almost as a prize for merit. In time it becomes the favorite group of any guerrilla column, and the guerrilla fighter who wears its insignia enjoys the admiration and respect of all his companions.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;5. Beginning, Development, and End of a Guerrilla War&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;We have now abundantly defined the nature of guerrilla warfare. Let us next describe the ideal development of such a war from its beginning as a rising by a single nucleus on favorable ground.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In other words, we are going to theorize once more on the basis of the Cuban experience. At the outset there is a more or less homogeneous group, with some arms, that devotes itself almost exclusively to hiding in the wildest and most inaccessible places, making little contact with the peasants. It strikes a fortunate blow and its fame grows. A few peasants, dispossessed of their land or engaged in a struggle to conserve it, and young idealists of other classes join the nucleus; it acquires greater audacity and starts to operate in inhabited places, making more contact with the people of the zone; it repeats attacks, always fleeing after making them; suddenly it engages in combat with some column or other and destroys its vanguard. Men continue to join it; it has increased in number, but its organization remains exactly the same; its caution diminishes, and it ventures into more populous zones.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Later it sets up temporary camps for several days; it abandons these upon receiving news of the approach of the enemy army, or upon suffering bombardments, or simply upon becoming suspicious that such risks have arisen. The numbers in the guerrilla band increase as work among the masses operates to make of each peasant an enthusiast for the war of liberation. Finally, an inaccessible place is chosen, a settled life is initiated, and the first small industries begin to be established: a shoe factory, a cigar and cigarette factory, a clothing factory, an arms factory, a bakery, hospitals, possibly a radio transmitter, a printing press, etc.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The guerrilla band now has an organization, a new structure. It is the head of a large movement with all the characteristics of a small government. A court is established for the administration of justice, possibly laws are promulgated and the work of indoctrination of the peasant masses continues, extended also to workers if there are any near, to draw them to the cause. An enemy action is launched and defeated; the number of rifles increases; with these the number of men fighting with the guerrilla band increases. A moment arrives when its radius of action will not have increased in the same proportion as its personnel; at that moment a force of appropriate size is separated, a column or a platoon, perhaps, and this goes to another place of combat.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The work of this second group will begin with somewhat different characteristics because of the experience that it brings and because of the influence of the troops of liberation on the war zone. The original nucleus also continues to grow; it has now received substantial support in food, sometimes in guns, from various places; men continue to arrive; the administration of government, with the promulgation of laws, continues; schools are established, permitting the indoctrination and training of recruits. The leaders learn steadily as the war develops, and their capacity of command grows under the added responsibilities of the qualitative and quantitative increases in their forces. If there are distant territories, a group departs for them at a certain moment, in order to confirm the advances that have been made and to continue the cycle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;But there will also exist an enemy territory, unfavorable for guerrilla warfare. There small groups begin to penetrate, assaulting the roads, destroying bridges, planting mines, sowing disquiet. With the ups and downs characteristic of warfare the movement continues to grow; by this time the extensive work among the masses makes easy movement of the forces possible in unfavorable territory and so opens the final stage, which is suburban guerrilla warfare.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sabotage increases considerably in the whole zone. Life is paralyzed; the zone is conquered. The guerrillas then go into other zones, where they fight with the enemy army along defined fronts; by now heavy arms have been captured, perhaps even some tanks; the fight is more equal. The enemy falls when the process of partial victories becomes transformed into final victories, that is to say, when the enemy is brought to accept battle in conditions imposed by the guerrilla band; there he is annihilated and his surrender compelled.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This is a sketch that describes what occurred in the different stages of the Cuban war of liberation; but it has a content approximating the universal. Nevertheless, it will not always be possible to count on the degree of intimacy with the people, the conditions, and the leadership that existed in our war. It is unnecessary to say that Fidel Castro possesses the high qualities of a fighter and statesman: our path, our struggle, and our triumph we owed to his vision. We cannot say that without him the victory of the people would not have been achieved; but that victory would certainly have cost much more and would have been less complete.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Organization of the Guerrilla Front&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;1. Supply&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;A good supply system is of basic importance to the guerrilla band. A group of men in contact with the soil must live from the products of this soil and at the same time must see that the livelihood continues of those who provide the supplies, the peasants; since in the hard guerrilla struggle it is not possible, above all at the beginning, for the group to dedicate its own energies to producing supplies, not to mention that these supplies would be easily discovered and destroyed by enemy forces in a territory likely to be completely penetrated by the action of repressive columns. Supply in the first stages is always internal.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As the guerrilla struggle develops, it will be necessary to arrange supply from outside the limits or territory of the combat. At the beginning the band lives solely on what the peasants have; it may be possible to reach a store occasionally to buy something, but never possible to have lines of supply, since there is no territory in which to establish them. The line of supply and the store of food are conditioned by the development of the guerrilla struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The first task is to gain the absolute confidence of the inhabitants of the zone; and this confidence is won by a positive attitude toward their problems, by help and a constant program of orientation, by the defense of their interests and the punishment of all who attempt to take advantage of the chaotic moment in which they live in order to use pressure, dispossess the peasants, seize their harvests, etc. The line should be soft and hard at the same time: soft and with a spontaneous cooperation for all those who honestly sympathize with the revolutionary movement; hard upon those who are attacking it outright, fomenting dissensions, or simply communicating important information to the enemy army.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Little by little the territory will be cleared, and there will then be a greater ease of action. The fundamental principle that ought to prevail is that of paying always for all merchandise taken from a friend. This merchandise can consist of crops or of articles from commercial establishments. Many times they will be donated, but at other times the economic conditions of the peasantry prevent such donations. There are cases in which the necessities of warfare force the band to take needed food from stores without paying for it, simply because there is no money. In such cases the merchant ought always to be given a bond, a promissory note, something that certifies to the debt, “the bonds of hope” already described. It is better to use this method only with people who are outside the limits of the liberated territory, and in such cases to pay as soon as possible all or at least a part of the debt. When conditions have improved sufficiently to maintain a territory permanently free from the dominion of the opposing army, it is possible to set up collective plantings, where the peasants work the land for the benefit of the guerrilla army. In this way an adequate food supply of a permanent character is guaranteed.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;If the number of volunteers for the guerrilla army is much greater than the number of arms, and political circumstances prevent these men from entering zones dominated by the enemy, the rebel army can put them to work directly on the land, harvesting crops; this guarantees supply and adds something to their record of service looking toward future promotion to the status of combatants. However, it is more advisable that the peasants themselves sow their own crops; this results in work performed more effectively, with more enthusiasm and skill. When conditions have ripened even more, it is possible, depending on the crops involved, to arrange purchases of entire harvests in such a way that they can remain in the field or in warehouses for the use of the army.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When agencies also charged with the duty of supplying the peasant population have been established, all food supplies will be concentrated in these agencies in order to facilitate a system of barter among the peasants, with the guerrilla army serving as intermediary.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;If conditions continue to improve, taxes can be established; these should be as light as possible, above all for the small producer. It is important to pay attention to every detail of relations between the peasant class and the guerrilla army, which is an emanation of that class.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Taxes may be collected in money in some cases, or in the form of a part of the harvest, which will serve to increase the food supplies. Meat is one of the articles of primary necessity. Its production and conservation must be assured. Farms should be established under peasants having no apparent connection with the army, if the zone is not secure; they will devote themselves to the production of chickens, eggs, goats, and pigs, starting with stock that has been bought or confiscated from the large landowners. In the zones of big estates there are usually large quantities of cattle. These can be killed and salted and the meat maintained in condition for consumption for a long period of time.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This will also produce hides. A leather industry, more or less primitive, can be developed to provide leather for shoes, one of the fundamental accessories in the struggle. In general, necessary foods are the following (depending on the zone): meat, salt, vegetables, starches, or grains. The basic food is always produced by the peasants; it may be “malanga,” as in the mountainous regions of Oriente Province in Cuba; it may be corn, as in the mountainous regions of Mexico, Central America, and Peru; potatoes, also in Peru; in other zones, such as Argentina, cattle; wheat in others; but always it is necessary to assure a supply of the fundamental food for the troop as well as some kinds of fat which permit better food preparation; these may be animal or vegetable fats.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Salt is one of the essential supplies. When the force is near the sea and in contact with it, small dryers should be established immediately; these will assure some production in order always to have a reserve stock and the ability to supply the troops. Remember that in wild places such as these, where only some of the foods are produced, it is easy for the enemy to establish an encirclement that can greatly hurt the flow of supplies to the zone. It is well to provide against such eventualities through peasant organization and civil organizations in general. The inhabitants of the zone should have on hand a minimum food supply that will permit them at least to survive, even though poorly, during the hardest phases of the struggle. An attempt should be made to collect rapidly a good provision of foods that do not decompose—such grains, for example, as corn, wheat, rice, etc., which will last quite a long time; also flour, salt, sugar, and canned goods of all types; further, the necessary seeds should be sown.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A moment will arrive when all the food problems of the troops in the zone are solved, but large quantities of other products will be needed: leather for shoes, if it has not been possible to create an industry for supplying the zone; cloth and all the accessory items necessary for clothing; paper, a press or mimeograph machine for newspapers, ink, and various other implements. In other words, the need for articles from the outside world will increase in the measure that the guerrilla bands become organized and the organization becomes more complex. In order for this need to be met adequately it is necessary that the organized lines of supply function perfectly. These organizations are composed basically of friendly peasants. They should have two poles, one in the guerrilla zone and one in a city. Departing and radiating from the guerrilla zones, lines of supply will penetrate the whole territory, permitting the passage of materials. Little by little the peasants accustom themselves to the danger (in small groups they can work marvels) and come to place the material that is needed in the indicated spot without running extreme risks. These movements can be carried out at night with mules or other similar transport animals or with trucks, depending on the zone. Thus, a very good supply may be achieved. This type of line of supply is for areas near places of operation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It is also necessary to organize a line of supply from distant areas. These organizations should produce the money needed for making purchases and also the implements that cannot be produced in small towns or provincial cities. The organization will be nourished with direct donations from sectors sympathetic to the struggle, exchanged for secret “bonds,” which should be delivered. A strict control over the personnel charged with the management of this operation should always be maintained. Serious consequences should follow any neglect of the indispensable moral requisites involved in this responsibility. Purchases can be made with cash and also with “bonds of hope” when the guerrilla army, having departed from its base of operations, menaces a new zone. In these cases there is no way to avoid taking the merchandise from any merchant; he must rely on the good faith and capabilities of the guerrilla armies to make good on his account.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;For all lines of supply that pass through the country, it is necessary to have a series of houses, terminals, or way-stations, where supplies may be hidden during the day while waiting to be moved by night. These houses should be known only to those directly in charge of the food supplies. The least possible number of inhabitants should know about this transport operation, and these should be persons in whom the organization has the greatest confidence.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The mule is one of the most useful animals for these tasks. With an incredible resistance to fatigue and a capacity to walk in the hilliest zones, the mule can carry more than 100 kilograms on its back for many days. The simplicity of its food needs also makes it an ideal means of transport. The mule train should be well supplied with shoes; the muleteers should understand their animals and take the best possible care of them. In this way it is possible to have regular four-footed armies with an unbelievable utility. But frequently, despite the strength of the animal and its capacity to bear up through the hardest days, difficulty of passage will make it necessary to leave the cargo in fixed sites. In order to avoid this necessity, there should be a team charged with making trails for this class of animals. If all these conditions are met, if an adequate organization is created, and if the rebel army maintains excellent relations as needed with the peasants, an effective and lasting supply for the whole troop is guaranteed.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;2. Civil Organization&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The civil organization of the insurrectional movement is very important on both fronts, the external and the internal. Naturally, these two have characteristics that are as different as their functions, though they both perform tasks that fall under the same name. The collections that can be carried out on the external front, for example, are not the same as those which can take place on the internal front; neither are the propaganda and the supply. Let us describe first the tasks on the internal front. Here we are dealing with a place dominated, relatively speaking, by the forces of liberation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Also, it is to be supposed that the zone is adapted to guerrilla warfare, because when these conditions do not exist, when the guerrilla fighting is taking place in poorly adapted terrain, the guerrilla organization increases in extension but not in depth; it embraces new places, but it cannot arrive at an internal organization, since the whole zone is penetrated by the enemy. On the internal front we can have a series of organizations which perform specific functions for more efficiency in administration. In general, propaganda belongs directly to the army, but it also can be separated from the army if kept under its control. (This point is so important that we will treat it separately.) Collections are a function of the civil organization, as are the general tasks of organizing the peasants and workers, if these are present. Both of these classes should be governed by one council.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Raising supplies, as we explained in a previous chapter, can be carried out in various ways: through direct or indirect taxes, through direct or indirect donations, and through confiscations; all this goes to make up the large chapter on supplies for the guerrilla army.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Keep in mind that the zone ought by no means to be impoverished by the direct action of the rebel army, even though the latter will be responsible indirectly for the impoverishment that results from enemy encirclement, a fact that the adversary’s propaganda will repeatedly point out. Precisely for this reason conflicts ought not to be created by direct causes. There ought not be, for example, any regulations that prevent the farmers of a zone in liberated territory from selling their products outside that territory, save in extreme and transitory circumstances and with a full explanation of these interruptions to the peasantry. Every act of the guerrilla army ought always to be accompanied by the propaganda necessary to explain the reasons for it. These reasons will generally be well understood by a peasantry that has sons, fathers, brothers, or relations within this army, which is, therefore, something of their own.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In view of the importance of relations with the peasants, it is necessary to create organizations that make regulations for them, organizations that exist not only within the liberated area, but also have connections in the adjacent areas. Precisely through these connections it is possible to penetrate a zone for a future enlargement of the guerrilla front. The peasants will sow the seed with oral and written propaganda, with accounts of life in the other zone, of the laws that have already been issued for the protection of the small peasant, of the spirit of sacrifice of the rebel army; in a word, they are creating the necessary atmosphere for helping the rebel troops.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The peasant organizations should also have connections of some type that will permit the channeling and sale of crops by the rebel army agencies in enemy territory through intermediaries more or less benevolent, more or less friendly to the peasant class. Joined with a devotion to the cause which brings the merchant to defy dangers in such cases, there also exists the devotion to money that leads him to take advantage of the opportunity to gain profits.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We have already spoken, in connection with supply problems, of the importance of the department of road construction. When the guerrilla band has achieved a certain level of development, it no longer wanders about through diverse regions without an encampment; it has centers that are more or less fixed. Routes should be established varying from small paths permitting the passage of a mule to good roads for trucks. In all this, the capacity of the organization of the rebel army must be kept in mind, as well as the offensive capacity of the enemy, who may destroy these constructions and even make use of roads built by his opponent to reach the encampments more easily. The fundamental rule should be that roads are for assisting supply in places where any other solution would be impossible; they should not be constructed except in circumstances where there is a virtual certainty that the position can be maintained against an attack by the adversary. Another exception would be roads built without great risk to facilitate communication between points that are not of vital importance.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Furthermore, other means of communication may be established. One of these that is extremely important is the telephone. This can be strung in the forest with the convenience that arises from using trees for posts. There is the advantage that they are not visible to the enemy from above. The telephone also presupposes a zone that the enemy cannot penetrate.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The council—or central department of justice, revolutionary laws, and administration—is one of the vital features of a guerrilla army fully constituted and with territory of its own. The council should be under the charge of an individual who knows the laws of the country; if he understands the necessities of the zone from a juridical point of view, this is better yet; he can proceed to prepare a series of decrees and regulations that help the peasant to normalize and institutionalize is life within the rebel zone.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;For example, during our experience in the Cuban war we issued a penal code, a civil code, rules for supplying the peasantry and rules of the agrarian reform. Subsequently, the laws fixing qualifications of candidates in the elections that were to be held later throughout the country were established; also the Agrarian Reform Law of the Sierra Maestra. The council is likewise in charge of accounting operations for the guerrilla column or columns; it is responsible for handling money problems and at times intervenes directly in supply.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;All these recommendations are flexible; they are based upon an experience in a certain place and are conditioned by its geography and history; they will be modified in different geographical, historical, and social situations.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In addition to the council, it is necessary to keep the general health of the zone in mind. This can be done by means of central military hospitals that should give the most complete assistance possible to the whole peasantry. Whether adequate medical treatment can be given will depend upon the stage reached by the revolution. Civil hospitals and civil health administration are united directly with the guerrilla army, and their functions are performed by officers and men of the army, who have the dual function of caring for the people and orienting them toward better health. The big health problems among people in these conditions are rooted in their total ignorance of elementary principles of hygiene. This aggravates their already precarious situation. The collection of taxes, as I have already said, is also a function of the general council.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Warehouses are very important. As soon as a place is taken that is to serve as a base for the guerrilla band, warehouses should be established in the most orderly fashion possible. These will serve to assure a minimum care of merchandise and, most important, will provide the control needed for equalizing distribution and keeping it equitable at later times.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Functions are different on the external front both in quantity and in quality. For example, propaganda should be of a national, orienting type, explaining the victories obtained by the guerrilla band, calling workers and peasants to effective mass fights, and giving news, if there is any, of victories obtained on this front itself. Solicitation of funds is completely secret; it ought to be carried out with the greatest care possible, isolating small collectors in the chain completely from the treasurer of the organization.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This organization should be distributed in zones that complement each other in order to form a totality, zones that may be provinces, states, cities, villages, depending on the magnitude of the movement. In each of them there must be a finance commission that takes charge of the disposal of funds collected. It is possible to collect money by selling bonds or through direct donations. When the development of the struggle is more advanced, taxes may be collected; when industries come to recognize the great force that the insurrectional army possesses, they will consent to pay. Supply procurement should be fitted to the necessities of the guerrilla bands; it will be organized in the form of a chain of merchandise in such a way that the more common articles are procured in nearby places, and the things that are really scarce or impossible to procure locally, in larger centers. The effort always is to keep the chain as limited as possible, known to the smallest number of men; it can thus perform its mission for a longer time.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sabotage should be directed by the civil organization in the external sector in coordination with the central command. In special circumstances, after careful analysis, assaults on persons will be used. In general we consider that this is not desirable except for the purpose of eliminating some figure who is notorious for his villainies against the people and the virulence of his repression. Our experience in the Cuban struggle shows that it would have been possible to save the lives of numerous fine comrades who were sacrificed in the performance of missions of small value. Several times these ended with enemy bullets of reprisal on combatants whose loss could not be compared with the results obtained. Assaults and terrorism in indiscriminate form should not be employed. More preferable is effort directed at large concentrations of people in whom the revolutionary idea can be planted and nurtured, so that at a critical moment they can be mobilized and with the help of the armed forces contribute to a favorable balance on the side of the revolution.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;For this it is necessary also to make use of popular organizations of workers, professional people, and peasants, who work at sowing the seed of the revolution among their respective masses, explaining, providing revolutionary publications for reading, teaching the truth. One of the characteristics of revolutionary propaganda must be truth. Little by little, in this way, the masses will be won over. Those among them who do the best work may be chosen for incorporation into the rebel army or assignment to other tasks of great responsibility.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This is the outline of civil organization within and outside guerrilla territory at a time of popular struggle. There are possibilities of perfecting all these features to a high degree. I repeat once more, it is our Cuban experience which speaks through me; new experiences can vary and improve these concepts. We offer an outline, not a bible.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;3. The Role of the Woman&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The part that the woman can play in the development of a revolutionary process is of extraordinary importance. It is well to emphasize this, since in all our countries, with their colonial mentality, there is a certain underestimation of the woman which becomes a real discrimination against her.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The woman is capable of performing the most difficult tasks, of fighting beside the men; and despite current belief, she does not create conflicts of a sexual type in the troops.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the rigorous combatant life the woman is a companion who brings the qualities appropriate to her sex, but she can work the same as a man and she can fight; she is weaker, but no less resistant than he. She can perform every class of combat task that a man can at a given moment, and on certain occasions in the Cuban struggle she performed a relief role.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Naturally the combatant women are a minority. When the internal front is being consolidated and it is desirable to remove as many combatants as possible who do not possess indispensable physical characteristics, the women can be assigned a considerable number of specific occupations, of which one of the most important, perhaps the most important, is communication between different combatant forces, above all between those that are in enemy territory. The transport of objects, messages, or money, of small size and great importance, should be confided to women in whom the guerrilla army has absolute confidence; women can transport them using a thousand tricks; it is a fact that however brutal the repression, however thorough the searching, the woman receives a less harsh treatment than the man and can carry her message or other object of an important or confidential character to its destination.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As a simple messenger, either by word of mouth or of writing, the woman can always perform her task with more freedom than the man, attracting less attention and at the same time inspiring less fear of danger in the enemy soldier. He who commits brutalities acts frequently under the impulse of fear or apprehension that he himself will be attacked, since this is one form of action in guerrilla warfare.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Contacts between separated forces, messages to the exterior of the lines, even to the exterior of the country; also objects of considerable size, such as bullets, are transported by women in special belts worn beneath their skirts. But also in this stage a woman can perform her habitual tasks of peacetime; it is very pleasing to a soldier subjected to the extremely hard conditions of this life to be able to look forward to a seasoned meal which tastes like something. (One of the great tortures of the war was eating a cold, sticky, tasteless mess.) The woman as cook can greatly improve the diet and, furthermore, it is easier to keep her in these domestic tasks; one of the problems in guerrilla bands is that all works of a civilian character are scorned by those who perform them; they are constantly trying to get out of these tasks in order to enter into forces that are actively in combat.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A task of great importance for women is to teach beginning reading, including revolutionary theory, primarily to the peasants of the zone, but also to the revolutionary soldiers. The organization of schools, which is a part of the civil organization, should be done principally through women, who arouse more enthusiasm among children and enjoy more affection from the school community. Likewise, when the fronts have been consolidated and a rear exists, the functions of the social worker also fall to women who investigate the various economic and social evils of the zone with a view to changing them as far as possible.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The woman plays an important part in medical matters as nurse, and even as doctor, with a gentleness infinitely superior to that of her rude companion in arms, a gentleness that is so much appreciated at moments when a man is helpless, without comforts, perhaps suffering severe pain and exposed to the many dangers of all classes that are a part of this type of war.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Once the stage of creating small war industries has begun, the woman can also contribute here, especially in the manufacture of uniforms, a traditional employment of women in Latin American countries. With a simple sewing machine and a few patterns she can perform marvels. Women can take part in all lines of civil organization. They can replace men perfectly well and ought to do so, even where persons are needed for carrying weapons, though this is a rare accident in guerrilla life.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It is important to give adequate indoctrination to men and women, in order to avoid all kinds of misbehavior that can operate to hurt the morale of the troops; but persons who are otherwise free and who love each other should be permitted to marry in the Sierra and live as man and wife after complying with the simple requirements of the guerrilla band.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;4. Medical Problems&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;One of the grave problems that confronts the guerrilla fighter is exposure to the accidents of his life, especially to wounds and sicknesses, which are very frequent in guerrilla warfare. The doctor performs a function of extraordinary importance in the guerrilla band, not only in saving lives, in which many times his scientific intervention does not count because of the limited resources available to him; but also in the task of reinforcing the patient morally and making him feel that there is a person near him who is dedicated with all his force to minimizing his pains. He gives the wounded or sick the security of knowing that a person will remain at his side until he is cured or has passed danger.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The organization of hospitals depends largely upon the stage of development of the guerrilla band. Three fundamental types of hospital organization corresponding to various stages can be mentioned.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In this development we have a first, nomadic phase. In it the doctor, if there is one, travels constantly with his companions, is just another man; he will probably have to perform all the other functions of the guerrilla fighter, including that of fighting, and will suffer at times the depressing and desperate task of treating cases in which the means of saving life are not available. This is the stage in which the doctor has the most influence over the troops, the greatest importance for their morale. During this period in the development of the guerrilla band the doctor achieves to the full his character of a true priest who seems to carry in his scantily equipped knapsack needed consolation for the men. The value of a simple aspirin to one who is suffering is beyond calculation when it is given by the friendly hand of one who sympathetically makes the suffering his own. Therefore the doctor in the first stage should be a man who is totally identified with the ideals of the revolution, because his words will affect the troops much more deeply than those spoken by any other member.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the normal course of events in guerrilla warfare another stage is reached that could be called “semi-nomadic.” In it there are encampments, more or less frequented by the guerrilla troops; friendly houses of complete confidence where it is possible to store objects and even leave the wounded; and a growing tendency for the troop to become settled. At this stage the task of the doctor is less trying; he may have emergency surgical equipment in his knapsack and another more complete outfit for less urgent operations in a friendly house. It is possible to leave the sick and wounded in the care of peasants who will give their help with great devotion. He can also count on a larger number of medicines kept in convenient places; these should be completely catalogued as well as possible, considering the circumstances in which he lives. In this same semi-nomadic state, if the band operates in places that are absolutely inaccessible, hospitals can be established to which the sick and wounded will go for recovery.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the third stage, when there are zones invulnerable to the enemy, a true hospital organization is constructed. In its most developed form, it can consist of three centers of different types. In the combat category there ought to be a doctor, the combatant the most loved by the troop, the man of battle, whose knowledge does not have to be too deep. I say this because his task is principally one of giving relief and of preparing the sick or wounded, while the real medical work is performed in hospitals more securely situated. A surgeon of quality ought not to be sacrificed in the line of fire.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When a man falls in the front line, stretcher-bearers, if these are available given the organization of the guerrilla band, will carry him to the first post; if they are not available, his companions themselves will perform this duty. Transport of the wounded in rough zones is one of the most delicate of all tasks and one of the most painful experiences in a soldier’s life. Perhaps the transport of a wounded man is harder on all concerned, because of his sufferings and of the spirit of sacrifice in the troop, than the fact itself of being wounded, however grave it may be. The transport can be carried out in different ways according to the characteristics of the ground. In rough and wooded places, which are typical in guerrilla warfare, it is necessary to walk single file. Here the best system is to use a long pole, with the patient carried in a hammock that hangs from it.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The men take turns carrying the weight, one before and one behind. They should yield place to two other companions frequently, since the shoulders suffer severely and the individual gradually wears himself out carrying this delicate and heavy burden.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When the wounded soldier has passed through this first hospital, he then goes with the information as to what has been done for him to a second center, where there are surgeons and specialists depending upon the possibilities of the troop. Here the more serious operations needed for saving life or relieving individuals from danger are performed.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Afterwards, at a third level, hospitals with the greatest comforts possible are established for direct investigation in the zones affected of the causes and effects of illnesses that afflict the inhabitants of the area. These hospitals of the third group, which correspond to a sedentary life, are not only centers of convalescence and of operations of less urgency, but also establishments serving the civil population, where the hygienists perform their orienting function. Dispensaries that will permit an adequate individual surveillance should also be established. The hospitals of this third group can have, if the supply capability of the civil organization permits, a series of facilities that provide diagnosis even with laboratory and x-ray facilities.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Other useful individuals are the assistants to the doctor. They are generally youths with something of a vocation and some knowledge, with fairly strong physiques; they do not bear arms, sometimes because their vocation is medicine, but usually because there are insufficient arms for all who want them. These assistants will be in charge of carrying most of the medicines, an extra stretcher or hammock, if circumstances make this possible. They must take charge of the wounded in any battle that is fought.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The necessary medicines should be obtained through contacts with health organizations that exist in the territory of the enemy. Sometimes they can be obtained from such organizations as the International Red Cross, but this possibility should not be counted upon, especially in the first moments of the struggle. It is necessary to organize an apparatus that will permit rapid transport of needed medicines in case of danger and that will gradually supply all the hospitals with the supplies needed for their work, military as well as civil. Also, contacts should be made in the surrounding areas with doctors who will be capable of helping the wounded whose cases are beyond the capacities or the facilities of the guerrilla band.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Doctors needed for this type of warfare are of different characteristics. The combatant doctor, the companion of men, is the type for the first stage; his functions develop as the action of the guerrilla band becomes more complicated and a series of connected organisms are constructed. General surgeons are the best acquisition for an army of this type. If an anesthetist is available, so much the better; though almost all operations are performed, not with gas anesthesia, but using “largactil” and sodium pentothal, which are much easier to administer and easier to procure and conserve. Besides general surgeons, bone specialists are very useful, because fractures occur frequently from accidents in the zone; they are also frequently caused by bullets producing this type of wound in limbs. The clinic serves the peasant mass mainly, since in general, sicknesses in the guerrilla armies are so easy of diagnosis as to be within the reach of anybody. The most difficult task is the cure of those produced by nutritional deficiencies.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In a more advanced stage there may even be laboratory technicians, if there are good hospitals, in order to have a complete outfit. Calls should be made to all sectors of the profession whose services are needed; it is quite likely that many will respond to this call and come to lend their help. Professionals of all classes are needed; surgeons are very useful, dentists as well. Dentists should be advised to come with a simple campaign apparatus and a campaign-type drill; working with this, they can do practically everything necessary.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;5. Sabotage&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Sabotage is one of the invaluable arms of a people that fights in guerrilla form. Its organization falls under the civil or clandestine branch, since sabotage should be carried out, of course, only outside the territories dominated by the revolutionary army; but this organization should be directly commanded and oriented by the general staff of the guerrillas, which will be responsible for deciding the industries, communications, or other objectives that are to be attacked.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sabotage has nothing to do with terrorism; terrorism and personal assaults are entirely different tactics. We sincerely believe that terrorism is of negative value, that it by no means produces the desired effects, that it can turn a people against a revolutionary movement, and that it can bring a loss of lives to its agents out of proportion to what it produces. On the other hand, attempts to take the lives of particular persons are to be made, though only in very special circumstances; this tactic should be used where it will eliminate a leader of the oppression. What ought never to be done is to employ specially trained, heroic, self-sacrificing human beings in eliminating a little assassin whose death can provoke the destruction in reprisal of all the revolutionaries employed and even more.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sabotage should be of two types: sabotage on a national scale against determined objectives, and local sabotage against lines of combat. Sabotage on a national scale should be aimed principally at destroying communications. Each type of communication can be destroyed in a different way; all of them are vulnerable. For example, telegraph and telephone poles are easily destroyed by sawing them almost all the way through, so that at night they appear to be in normal condition; a sudden kick causes one pole to fall and this drags along with it all those that are weak, producing a blackout of considerable extent.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bridges can be attacked with dynamite; if there is no dynamite, those made of steel can be made to fall very easily with an oxyacetylene blow torch. A steel truss bridge should be cut in its main beam and in the upper beam from which the bridge hangs. When these two beams have been cut at one end with the torch, they are then cut at the opposite end. The bridge will fall completely on one side and will be twisted and destroyed. This is the most effective way to knock out a steel bridge without dynamite. Railroads should also be destroyed, as should roads and culverts; at times, trains should be blown up, if the power of the guerrilla band makes this possible.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The vital industries of each region at certain moments will also be destroyed by utilizing the necessary equipment. In these cases it is necessary to have an overall view of the problem and to be sure that a center of work is not destroyed unless the moment is decisive, since this brings with it as a consequence massive unemployment of workers and hunger. The enterprises belonging to the potentates of the regime should be eliminated (and attempts made to convince the workers of the need for doing so), unless this will bring very grave social consequences.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We reiterate the importance of sabotage against communications. The great strength of the enemy army against the rebels in the battle zones is rapid communication; we must, then, constantly undermine that strength by knocking out railroad bridges, culverts, electric lights, telephones; also aqueducts and in general everything that is necessary for a normal and modern life.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Around the combat lines, sabotage should be performed in the same way but with much more audacity, with much more dedication and frequency. Here it is possible to count on the invaluable aid of the flying patrols of the guerrilla army, which can descend into these zones and help the members of the civil organization perform a given task. Again, sabotage ought to be aimed principally at communications, but with much more persistence. All factories, all centers of production that are capable of giving the enemy something needed to maintain his offensive against the popular forces, ought also to be liquidated.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Emphasis should be placed on seizing merchandise, cutting supplies as much as possible, if necessary frightening the large landowners who want to sell their farm products, burning vehicles that travel along the roads, and using them to blockade the roads. It is expedient in every action of sabotage that frequent contact be made with the enemy army at points not far away, always following the system of hit and run. It is not necessary to put up a serious resistance, but simply to show the adversary that in the area where the sabotage has been carried out there are guerrilla forces disposed to fight. This forces him to take a large number of troops, to go with care, or not to go at all.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Thus, little by little, all the cities in the zone surrounding guerrilla operations will be paralyzed.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;6. War Industry&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Industries of war within the sector of the guerrilla army must be the product of a rather long evolution; they also depend upon control of territory in a geographic situation favorable for the guerrilla. At a time when there are liberated zones and when strict blockades are established by the enemy over all supplies, different departments will be organized as necessary, in the manner already described. There are two fundamental industries, of which one is the manufacture of shoes and leather goods. It is not possible for a troop to walk without shoes in wooded zones, hilly, with many rocks and thorns. It is very difficult to march without shoes in such conditions; only the natives, and not all of them, can do it. The rest must have shoes. The industry is divided into two parts, one for putting on half-soles and repairing damaged shoes; the other will be devoted to the manufacture of rough shoes. There should be a small but complete apparatus for making shoes; since this is a simple industry practiced by many people in such regions it is very easy to procure. Connected with the shoe repair works there ought always to be a shop making all classes of canvas and leather goods for use by the troop, such as cartridge belts and knapsacks. Although these articles are not vital, they contribute to comfort and give a feeling of autonomy, of adequate supply, and of self-reliance to the troop.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;An armory is the other fundamental industry for the small internal organization of the guerrilla band. This also has different functions: that of simple repair of damaged weapons, of rifles, and other available arms; the function of manufacturing certain types of combat arms that the inventiveness of the people will create; and the preparation of mines with various mechanisms. When conditions permit, equipment for the manufacture of powder may be added. If it is possible to manufacture the explosive as well as the percussion mechanisms in free territory, brilliant achievements can be scored in this category, which is a very important one, because communications by road can be completely paralyzed by the adequate employment of mines.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Another group of industries that has its importance will make iron and tin products. In the iron works will be centered all labor connected with the equipping of the mules, such as making their shoes. In the tin works the fabrication of plates and especially of canteens is important. A foundry can be joined with the tin works. By melting soft metals it is possible to make grenades, which with a special type of charge will contribute in an important way to the armament of the troop. There ought to be a technical team for general repair and construction work of varied types, the “service battery,” as it is called in regular armies. With the guerrillas it would operate as such, taking care of all necessities, but without any vestige of the bureaucratic spirit.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Someone must be in charge of communications. He will have as his responsibility not only propaganda communications, such as radio directed toward the outside, but also telephones and roads of all types. He will use the civil organization as necessary in order to perform his duties effectively. Remember that we are in a period of war subject to attack by the enemy and that often many lives depend upon timely communication.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;For accommodating the troop it is well to have cigarette and cigar factories. The leaf can be bought in selected places and carried to free territory where the articles for consumption by the soldiers can be manufactured. An industry for preparing leather from hides is also of great importance. All these are simple enterprises that can operate quite well anywhere and are easy to establish in the guerrilla situation. The industry for making leather requires some small construction with cement; also it uses large amounts of salt; but it will be an enormous advantage to the shoe industry to have its own supply of raw material. Salt should be made in revolutionary territory and accumulated in large quantities. It is made by evaporating water of a high saline concentration. The sea is the best source, though there may be others. It is not necessary to purify it of other ingredients for purposes of consumption, though these give it a flavor that is disagreeable at first.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Meat should be conserved in the form of jerked beef, which is easy to prepare. This can save many lives among the troop in extreme situations. It can be conserved with salt in large barrels for a fairly long time, and it can then be eaten in any circumstances.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;7. Propaganda&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The revolutionary idea should be diffused by means of appropriate media to the greatest depth possible. This requires complete equipment and an organization. This organization should be of two types which complement each other in covering the whole national area: for propaganda originating outside free territory, that is, from the national civil organization; and propaganda originating within, that is, from the base of the guerrilla army. In order to coordinate these two propagandas, the functions of which are strictly related, there should be a single director for the whole effort.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Propaganda of the national type from civil organizations outside free territory should be distributed in newspapers, bulletins, and proclamations. The most important newspapers will be devoted to general matters in the country and will inform the public exactly of the state of the guerrilla forces, observing always the fundamental principle that truth in the long run is the best policy. Besides these publications of general interest there must be others more specialized for different sectors of the population. A publication for the countryside should bring to the peasant class a message from their companions in all the free zones who have already felt the beneficial effects of the revolution; this strengthens the aspirations of the peasantry. A workers’ newspaper will have similar characteristics, with the sole difference that it cannot always offer a message from the combatant part of that class, since it is likely that workers’ organizations will not operate within the framework of guerrilla warfare until the last stages.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The great watchwords of the revolutionary movement, the watchword of a general strike at an opportune moment, of help to the rebel forces, of unity, etc., should be explained. Other periodicals can be published; for example, one explaining the tasks of those elements in the whole island which are not combatants but which nevertheless carry out diverse acts of sabotage, of attempts, etc. Within the organization there can be periodicals aimed at the enemy’s soldiers; these will explain facts of which they are otherwise kept ignorant. News bulletins and proclamations about the movement are very useful.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The most effective propaganda is that which is prepared within the guerrilla zone. Priority will be given to the diffusion of ideas among natives of the zone, offering explanations of the theoretical significance of the insurrection, already known to them as a fact. In this zone there will also be peasant periodicals, the general organ of all the guerrilla forces, and bulletins and proclamations. There will also be the radio.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;All problems should be discussed by radio—for example, the way to defend oneself from air attacks and location of the enemy forces, citing familiar names among them. Propaganda for the whole nation will use newspapers of the same type as those prepared outside free territory, but it can produce fresher and more exact news, reporting facts and battles that are extremely interesting to the reader. Information on international affairs will be confined almost exclusively to commentary on facts that are directly related to the struggle of liberation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The propaganda that will be the most effective in spite of everything, that which will spread most freely over the whole national area to reach the reason and the sentiments of the people, is words over the radio. The radio is a factor of extraordinary importance. At moments when war fever is more or less palpitating in every one in a region or a country, the inspiring, burning word increases this fever and communicates it to every one of the future combatants. It explains, teaches, fires, and fixes the future positions of both friends and enemies. However, the radio should be ruled by the fundamental principle of popular propaganda, which is truth; it is preferable to tell the truth, small in its dimensions, than a large lie artfully embellished. On the radio news should be given, especially of battles, of encounters of all types, and assassinations committed by the repression; also, doctrinal orientations and practical lessons to the civil population; and, from time to time, speeches by the chiefs of the revolution. We consider it useful that the principal newspaper of the movement bear a name that recalls something great and unifying, perhaps a national hero or something similar. Also, it should explain in articles of depth where the armed movement is going. It ought to create a consciousness of the great national problems, besides offering sections of more lively interest for the reader.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;8. Intelligence&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;“Know yourself and your adversary and you will be able to fight a hundred battles without a single disaster.” This Chinese aphorism is as valuable for guerrilla warfare as a biblical psalm. Nothing gives more help to combatant forces than correct information. This arrives spontaneously from the local inhabitants, who will come to tell its friendly army, its allies, what is happening in various places; but in addition it should be completely systematized. As we saw, there should be a postal organization with necessary contacts both within and outside guerrilla zones for carrying messages and merchandise. An intelligence service also should be in direct contact with enemy fronts. Men and women, especially women, should infiltrate; they should be in permanent contact with soldiers and gradually discover what there is to be discovered. The system must be coordinated in such a way that crossing the enemy lines into the guerrilla camp can be carried out without mishap.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;If this is well done with competent agents, the insurgent camp will be able to sleep more quietly.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This intelligence will be concerned principally, as I have already said, with the front line of fire or the forward enemy encampments that are in contact with no-man’s-land; but it ought also to develop in the same measure as the guerrilla band develops, increasing its depth of operation and its potential to foresee larger troop movements in the enemy rear. Though all inhabitants are intelligence agents for the guerrilla band in the places where it is dominant or makes incursions, it is wise to have persons especially assigned to this duty. The peasants, not accustomed to precise battle language, have a strong tendency to exaggerate, so their reports must be checked. As the spontaneous forms of popular collaboration are molded and organized, it is possible to use the intelligence apparatus not only as an extremely important auxiliary but also as a weapon of attack by using its personnel, for example, as “sowers of fear.” Pretending to be on the side of the enemy soldiers, they sow fear and instability by spreading discouraging information. By knowing exactly the places where the enemy troop is going to attack, it is easy to avoid him or, when the time is ripe, to attack him at places where it is least expected. Mobility, the basic tactic, can be developed to the maximum.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;9. Training and Indoctrination&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The fundamental training of the soldier of liberation is the life itself with the guerrilla band, and no one can be a chief who has not learned his difficult office in daily armed exercises. Life with some companions will teach something about the handling of arms, about principles of orientation, about the manner of treating the civil population, about fighting, etc.; but the precious time of the guerrilla band is not to be consumed in methodical teaching. This begins only when there is a large liberated area and a large number of persons are needed for carrying out a combat function. Schools for recruits will then be established.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;These schools then perform a very important function. They are to form new soldiers from persons who have not passed through that excellent sieve of formidable privations, guerrilla combatant life. Other privations must be suffered at the outset to convert them into the truly chosen. After having passed through very difficult tests, they will arrive at incorporating themselves into the kingdom of an army that lives from day to day and leaves no traces of its path anywhere. They ought to perform physical exercises, mainly of two types: an agile gymnastic with training for war of a commando type, which demands agility in attack and withdrawal; and hikes that are hard and exhausting that will serve to toughen the recruit for this kind of existence. Above all, they should live in the open air. They should suffer all the inclemencies of the weather in close contact with nature, as the guerrilla band does.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The school for recruits must have workers who will take care of its supply needs. For this there should be cattle sheds, grain sheds, gardens, dairy, everything necessary, so that the school will not constitute a charge on the general budget of the guerrilla army. The students can serve in rotation in the work of supply, either as punishment for bad conduct or simply as volunteers. This will depend upon characteristics proper to the zone where the school is being held. We believe that a good principle is to assign volunteers and to cover the remaining work quotas with those who have the poorest conduct and show the poorest disposition for learning warfare.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The school should have its small medical organization with a doctor or nurse, according to the possibilities; this will provide the recruits with the best possible attention.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Shooting is the basic apprenticeship. The guerrilla fighter should be carefully trained in this respect, so that he will try to expend the least possible amount of ammunition. He begins by practicing what is called dry shooting. It consists of seating the rifle firmly on any kind of wooden apparatus as shown in the picture. Without moving or firing the rifle the recruits direct the movement of a target until they think they have a hole at the center exactly in the line of sight. A mark is made on a backboard that remains stationary. If the mark for three tries gives a single point, this is excellent. When circumstances permit, practice with 22-calibre rifles will begin; this is very useful. If there is an excess of ammunition or a great need for preparing soldiers, opportunity will be given to fire with bullets.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;One of the most important courses in the school for recruits, one which we hold to be basic and which can be given in any place in the world, is in meeting attack from the air. Our school had been positively identified from the air and received attacks once or twice daily. The form in which the students resisted the impact of these continuous bombardments on their regular places of instruction virtually showed which of the young men had possibilities for becoming useful soldiers in battle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The important thing, that which must never be neglected in a school for recruits, is indoctrination; this is important because the men arrive without a clear conception as to why they come, with nothing more than very diffuse concepts about liberty, freedom of the press, etc., without any clear foundation whatever. Therefore, the indoctrination should be carried out with maximum dedication and for the maximum amount of time possible. These courses should offer elementary notions about the history of the country, explained with a clear sense of the economic facts that motivate each of the historic acts; accounts of the national heroes and their manner of reacting when confronted with certain injustices; and afterwards an analysis of the national situation or of the situation in the zone. A short primer should be well studied by all members of the rebel army, so that it can serve as a skeleton of that which will come later.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;There should also be a school for training teachers, where agreement can be reached on the choice of texts to be used, taking as a basis the contribution that each book can make to the educational process.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Reading should be encouraged at all times, with an effort to promote books that are worthwhile and that enlarge the recruit’s facility to encounter the world of letters and great national problems. Further reading will follow as a vocation; the surrounding circumstances will awaken new desires for understanding in the soldiers. This result will be produced when, little by little, the recruits observe in their routine tasks the enormous advantages of men who have passed through the school over the remainder of the troop, their capacity for analyzing problems, their superior discipline, which is another of the fundamental things that the school should teach.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This discipline should be internal, not mechanical but justified by reasons and designed to produce formidable benefits in moments of combat.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;10. The Organizational Structure of the Army of a Revolutionary Movement&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;As we have seen, a revolutionary army of a guerrilla type, whatever its zone of operations, should also have a non-combatant organization for the performance of a series of extremely important auxiliary missions. We shall see later that this whole organization converges to lend the army maximum help, since obviously the armed fight is the crucial factor in the triumph.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The military organization is headed by a commander-in-chief, in the case of the Cuban experience by a comandante, who names the commanders of the different regions or zones; these latter have authority to govern their respective territories of action, to name column commanders, that is to say, the chiefs of each column, and the other lower officers.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Under the commander-in-chief there will be the zone commanders; under them several columns of varying size, each with a column commander; under the column commanders there will be captains and lieutenants, which, in our guerrilla organization, were the lowest grade. In other words, the first rank above the soldiers was the lieutenant.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This is not a model but a description of one reality, of how the organization worked in one country where it proved possible to achieve triumph over an army that was fairly well organized and armed. Even less here than in other respects is our experience a pattern. It simply shows how as events develop it is possible to organize an armed force. The ranks certainly have no importance, but it is important that no rank should be conferred that does not correspond to the effective battle force commanded. Ranks should not be given to persons who have not passed through the sieve of sacrifice and struggle, for that would conflict with morality and justice.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The description given above refers to a well-developed army, already capable of waging a serious combat. In the first stage of the guerrilla band, the chief can take the rank he likes, but he will still command only a small group of men.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;One of the most important features of military organization is disciplinary punishment. Discipline must be one of the bases of action of the guerrilla forces (this must be repeated again and again). As we have already said, it should spring from a carefully reasoned internal conviction; this produces an individual with inner discipline. When this discipline is violated, it is necessary always to punish the offender, whatever his rank, and to punish him drastically in a way that hurts.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This is important, because pain is not felt by a guerrilla soldier in the same way as by a soldier of the regular army. The punishment of putting a soldier in jail for ten days constitutes for the guerrilla fighter a magnificent period of rest; ten days with nothing to do but eat, no marching, no work, no standing the customary guards, sleeping at will, resting, reading, etc. From this it can be deduced that deprivation of liberty ought not to be the only punishment available in the guerrilla situation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When the combat morale of the individual is very high and self-respect strong, deprivation of his right to be armed can constitute a true punishment for the individual and provoke a positive reaction. In such cases, this is an expedient punishment.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The following painful incident is an example. During the battle for one of the cities of Las Villas province in the final days of the war, we found an individual asleep in a chair while others were attacking positions in the middle of the town. When questioned, the man responded that he was sleeping because he had been deprived of his weapon for firing accidentally. He was told that this was not the way to react to punishment and that he should regain his weapon, not in this way, but in the first line of combat.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A few days passed, and as the final assault on the city of Santa Clara began, we visited the first-aid hospital. A dying man there extended his hand, recalling the episode I have narrated, affirmed that he had been capable of recovering his weapon and had earned the right to carry it. Shortly afterwards, he died.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This was the grade of revolutionary morale that our troop achieved through the continual exercise of armed struggle. It is not possible to achieve it at the outset, when there are still many who are frightened, and subjective currents serve to put a brake on the influence of the Revolution; but finally it is reached through work and through the force of continual example.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Long night watches and forced marches can also serve as punishments; but the marches are not really practical, since they consume the individual to no purpose other than that of punishment, and they require guards who also wear themselves out. The guards suffer the further inconvenience of having to keep a watch on the persons being punished, who are soldiers of scant revolutionary mentality.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the forces directly under my command I imposed the punishment of arrest with privation of sweets and cigarettes for light offenses and a total deprivation of food for worse offenses. The result was magnificent, even though the punishment was terrible; it is advisable only in very special circumstances.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Appendices&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;1. Organization in Secret of the First Guerrilla Band&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Guerrilla warfare obeys laws, some derived from the general laws of war and others owing to its own special character. If there is a real intention to begin the struggle from some foreign country or from distant and remote regions within the same country, it is obvious that it must begin in small conspiratorial movements of secret members acting without mass support or knowledge. If the guerrilla movement is born spontaneously out of the reaction of a group of individuals to some form of coercion, it is possible that the later organization of this guerrilla nucleus to prevent its annihilation will be sufficient for a beginning. But generally guerrilla warfare starts from a well-considered act of will: some chief with prestige starts an uprising for the salvation of his people, beginning his work in difficult conditions in a foreign country.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Almost all the popular movements undertaken against dictators in recent times have suffered from the same fundamental fault of inadequate preparation. The rules of conspiracy, which demand extreme secrecy and caution, have not generally been observed. The governmental power of the country frequently knows in advance about the intentions of the group or groups, either through its secret service or from imprudent revelations or in some cases from outright declarations, as occurred, for example, in our case, in which the invasion was announced and summed up in the phrase of Fidel Castro: “In the year ’56 we will be free or we will be martyrs.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Absolute secrecy, a total absence of information in the enemy’s hands, should be the primary base of the movement. Secondly and also very important is selection of the human material. At times this selection can be carried out easily, but at others it will be extremely difficult, since it is necessary to rely on those elements that are available, long-time exiles or persons who present themselves when the call goes out simply because they understand that it is their duty to enroll in the battle to liberate their country, etc. There may not be the necessary facilities for making a complete investigation of these individuals. Nevertheless, even though elements of the enemy regime introduce themselves, it is unpardonable that they should later be able to pass information, because in the period just prior to an action all those who are going to participate should be concentrated in secret places known only to one or two persons; they should be under the strict vigilance of their chiefs and without the slightest contact with the outside world. Whenever there are concentrations, whether as a preparation for departure or in order to carry out preliminary training or simply to hide from the police, it is necessary always to keep all new personnel about whom there is no clear knowledge available away from the key places.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In underground conditions no one, absolutely no one, should know anything more than the strictly indispensable; and there ought not to be talk in front of anyone. When certain types of concentration have been carried out, it is necessary even to control letters that leave and arrive in order to have a total knowledge of the contacts that the individuals maintain; no one should be permitted to live alone, nor to go out alone; personal contacts of the future member of the liberating army, contacts of any type, should be prevented by every means. However positive the role of women in the struggle, it must be emphasized that they can also play a destructive part. The weakness for women that young men have when living apart from their habitual medium of life in special, even psychic conditions, is well known. As dictators are well aware of this weakness, they try to use it for infiltrating their spies. At times, the relationship of these women with their superiors is clear and even notorious; at other times, it is extremely difficult to discover even the slightest evidence of contact; therefore, it is necessary also to prohibit relations with women.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The revolutionary in a clandestine situation preparing for war should be a complete ascetic; this also serves to test one of the qualities that later will be the basis of his authority, discipline. If an individual repeatedly disobeys orders of his superiors and makes contacts with women, contracts friendships that are not permitted, etc., he should be separated immediately, not merely because of the potential dangers in the contacts, but simply because of the violation of revolutionary discipline.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Unconditional help should not be expected from a government, whether friendly or simply negligent, that allows its territory to be used as a base of operations; one should regard the situation as if he were in a completely hostile camp. The few exceptions that of course can occur are really confirmations of the general rule.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We shall not speak here of the number of persons that should be readied. This depends upon so many and such varied conditions that it is practically impossible to specify. But the minimum number with which it is possible to initiate a guerrilla war can be mentioned. In my opinion, considering the normal desertions and weaknesses in spite of the rigorous process of selection, there should be a nucleus of 30 to 50 men; this figure is sufficient to initiate an armed fight in any country of the Americas with their conditions of favorable territory for operations, hunger for land, repeated attacks upon justice, etc.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Weapons, as has already been said, should be of the same type as those used by the enemy. Considering always that every government is in principle hostile to a guerrilla action being undertaken from its territory, the bands that prepare themselves should not be greater than approximately 50 to 100 men per unit. In other words, though there is no objection to 500 men initiating a war, all 500 should not be concentrated in one place. They are so numerous as to attract attention and in case of any betrayal of confidence or of any raid, the whole group falls; on the other hand, it is more difficult to raid various places simultaneously.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The central headquarters for meetings can be more or less known, and the exiled persons will go there to hold meetings of all types; but the leaders ought not to be present except very sporadically, and there should be no compromising documents. The leaders should use as many different houses as possible, those least likely to be under surveillance. Arms deposits should be distributed in several places, if possible; these should be an absolute secret, known to only one or two people.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Weapons should be delivered into the hands of those who are going to use them only when the war is about to be initiated. Thus a punitive action against persons who are training, while leading to their imprisonment, will not produce a loss of arms that are very difficult to procure. Popular forces are not in any condition to suffer such a loss.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Another important factor to which due attention must be given is preparation of the forces for the extremely hard fight that is going to follow. These forces should have a strict discipline, a high morale, and a clear comprehension of the task to be performed, without conceit, without illusions, without false hopes of an easy triumph. The struggle will be bitter and long, reverses will be suffered; they can be at the brink of annihilation; only high morale, discipline, faith in final victory, and exceptional leadership can save them. This was our Cuban experience; at one time twelve men were able to form the nucleus of the future army, because all these conditions were met and because the one who led us was named Fidel Castro.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Besides ideological and moral preparations, careful physical training is necessary. The guerrillas will, of course, select a mountainous or very wild zone for their operations. At any rate, in whatever situation they find themselves, the basic tactic of the guerrilla army is the march, and neither slow men nor tired men can be tolerated. Adequate training therefore includes exhausting hikes day and night, day after day, increasing gradually, always continued to the brink of exhaustion, with emulation used to increase speed. Resistance and speed will be fundamental qualities of the first guerrilla nucleus. Also a series of theoretical principles can be taught, for example, direction finding, reading, and forms of sabotage. If possible, there should be training with military rifles, frequent firing, above all at distant targets, and much instruction about the way to economize bullets.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;To the guerrilla fighter, economy and utilization of ammunition down to the last bullet should be almost like religious tenets. If all these admonitions are followed, the guerrilla forces may well reach their goal.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;2. Defense of Power That Has Been Won&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Naturally, victory cannot be considered as finally won until the army that sustained the former regime has been systematically and totally smashed. Further, all the institutions that sheltered the former regime should be wiped out. But since this is a manual for guerrilla bands we will confine ourselves to analyzing the problem of national defense in case of war or aggression against the new power.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The first development we meet is that world public opinion, “the respectable press,” the “truthful” news agencies of the United States and of the other countries belonging to the monopolies will begin an attack on the liberated country, an attack as aggressive and systematic as the laws of popular reform. For this reason not even a skeleton of personnel from the former army can be retained. Militarism, mechanical obedience, traditional concepts of military duty, discipline and morale cannot be eradicated with one blow. Nor can the victors, who are good fighters, decent and kind-hearted, but at the same time generally lacking education, be allowed to remain in contact with the vanquished, who are proud of their specialized military knowledge in some combat arm—in mathematics, fortifications, logistics, etc.—and who hate the uncultured guerrilla fighters with all their might.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;There are, of course, individual cases of military men who break with the past and enter into the new organization with a spirit of complete cooperation. These persons are doubly useful, because they unite with their love of the people’s cause the knowledge necessary for carrying forward the creation of the new popular army. A second step will be consequent upon the first: as the old army is smashed and dismembered as an institution and its former posts occupied by the new army, it will be necessary to reorganize the new force. Its former guerrilla character, operating under independent chiefs without planning, can be changed; but it is very important to emphasize that operational concepts of the guerrilla band should still serve as the guide to structure. These concepts will determine the organic formation and the equipment of the popular army. Care should be taken to avoid the error that we fell into during the first months of trying to put the new popular army into the old bottles of military discipline and ancient organization. This error can cause serious maladjustments and can lead to a complete lack of organization.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Preparation should begin immediately for the new defensive war that will have to be fought by the people’s army, accustomed to independence of command within the common struggle and dynamism in the management of each armed group. This army will have two immediate problems. One will be the incorporation of thousands of last-hour revolutionaries, good and bad, whom it is necessary to train for the rigors of guerrilla life and to give revolutionary indoctrination in accelerated and intensive courses. Revolutionary indoctrination that gives the necessary ideological unity to the army of the people is the basis of national security both in the long and short runs. The other problem is the difficulty of adaptation to the new organizational structure.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A corps to take charge of sowing the new truths of the Revolution among all the units of the army should immediately be created. It should explain to the soldiers, peasants, and workers, who have come out of the mass of the people, the justice and the truth of each revolutionary act, the aspirations of the Revolution, why there is a fight, why so many companions have died without seeing the victory. United to this intensive indoctrination, accelerated courses of primary instruction that will begin to overcome illiteracy should also be given, in order to improve the rebel army gradually until it has become an instrument of high technical qualifications, solid ideological structure, and magnificent combat power.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Time will create these three qualities. The military apparatus can continue to be perfected as time goes on; the former combatants can be given special courses to prepare them to serve as professional military men who will then give annual courses of instruction to the people joining voluntarily or by conscription. This will depend on national characteristics, and rules cannot be stated.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;From this point forward we are expressing the opinion of the command of the Rebel Army with respect to the policy to be followed in the concrete Cuban situation, given the menace of foreign invasion, the conditions of the modern world at the end of 1959 or the beginning of 1960, with the enemy in sight, analyzed, evaluated, and awaited without fear. In other words, we are no longer theorizing for the instruction of others about what has already been done; rather, we theorize about what has been done by others in order to apply it ourselves in our own national defense.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As our problem is to theorize about the Cuban case, to locate and test our hypothesis on the map of American realities, we present as an epilogue the following analysis of the Cuban situation, its present and its future.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Epilogue&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;section2&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Analysis of the Cuban Situation, Its Present and Its Future&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;A year has now passed since the flight of the dictator, the culmination of a long armed civil struggle by the Cuban people. The achievements of the government in the social, economic, and political fields are enormous; nevertheless, it is necessary to analyze them, to evaluate each act and to show precisely the dimensions of our Cuban Revolution. This national Revolution, fundamentally agrarian, having the enthusiastic support of workers, of people from the middle class and today even of owners of industry, has acquired a continental and world-wide importance, enhanced by its peculiar characteristics and by the inflexible will of the people.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It will not be possible to present a synthesis, however brief, of all the laws passed, all of them undoubtedly of popular benefit. It will be enough to select a few for special emphasis and to show at the same time the logical chain that carries us forward, step by step, in a progressive and necessary order of concern for the problems of the Cuban people.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The first alarm for the parasitic classes of the country is sounded in the rent law, the reduction of electric rates, and government intervention in the telephone company followed by a reduction in rates, all decreed in rapid succession. Those who had thought Fidel Castro and the men who made this Revolution to be nothing more than politicians of the old style, manageable simpletons with beards their only distinction, now began to suspect that something deeper was emerging from the bosom of the Cuban people and that their privileges were in danger. The word “Communism” began to envelop the figures of the leaders and of the triumphant guerrilla fighters; consequently the word anti-Communism, as the position dialectically opposed, began to serve as a nucleus for all those who resented the loss of their unjust privileges.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The law on vacant lots and the law on installment sales aggravated this sensation of malaise among the usurious capitalists. But these were minor skirmishes with the reactionaries; everything was still all right and possible. “This crazy fellow,” Fidel Castro, could be counseled and guided to good paths, to good “democratic” paths, by a Dubois or a Porter. It was necessary to place hope in the future.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Agrarian Reform law was a tremendous jolt. Most of those who had been hurt now saw clearly. One of the first was Gaston Baquero, the voice of reaction; he had accurately interpreted what was going to happen and had retired to quieter scenes under the Spanish dictatorship. There were still some who thought that “the law is the law,” that other governments had already promulgated such laws, theoretically designed to help the people. Carrying out these laws was another thing. That brash and complex child that had the initials INRA for its familiar name was treated at the beginning with peevish and touching paternalism within the ivory towers of learning, pervaded with social doctrines and respectable theories of public finance, to which the uncultivated and absurd mentalities of the guerrilla fighters could not arrive. But INRA advanced like a tractor or a war tank, because it is tractor and tank at the same time, breaking down the walls of the great estates as it passed and creating new social relations in the ownership of land. This Cuban Agrarian Reform appeared with various characteristics important for America. It was anti-feudal in the sense that it eliminated the Cuban-style latifundia, annulled all contracts that called for payment of rent of land in crops, and liquidated the servile relations that existed principally in coffee and tobacco production, two important branches of our agriculture. But it also was an Agrarian Reform in a capitalist medium to destroy the pressure of monopoly on human beings, isolated or joined together, to help them work their land honorably and to produce without fear of the creditor or the master. It had the characteristic from the first moment of assuring to peasants and agricultural workers, those who give themselves to the soil, needed technical help from competent personnel; machinery; financial help provided through credits from INRA or para-state banks; and big help from the “Association of People’s Stores” that has developed on a large scale in Oriente and is in the process of development in other provinces. The state stores, replacing the old usurers, provide just financing and pay a just price for the harvest.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Compared with the other three great agrarian reforms in America (Mexico, Guatemala, and Bolivia), the most important distinctive characteristic is the decision to carry Cuban reform all the way, without concessions or exceptions of any kind. This total Agrarian Reform respects no rights that are not rights of the people nor singles out any class or nationality for discriminatory treatment: the force of the law falls equally on the United Fruit Company and on the King Ranch, as on the big Cuban landowners.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Under these conditions land is being cleared, mainly for the production of crops which are very important to the country: rice, oil-producing grains, and cotton; these are being intensively developed. But the nation is not satisfied and is going to recover all its stolen resources. Its rich sub-soil, which has been a field of monopolist voracity and struggle, is virtually recovered by the petroleum law. This law, like the Agrarian Reform and all the others promulgated by the Revolution, responds to Cuba’s irresistible necessities, to urgent demands of a people that wishes to be free, that wishes to be master of its economy, that wishes to prosper and to reach ever higher goals of social development. But for this very reason it is an example for the continent and feared by the oil monopolies. It is not that Cuba directly hurts the petroleum monopoly substantially. There is no reason to believe the country to be rich in reserves of the prized fuel, even though there are reasonable hopes of obtaining a supply that will satisfy its internal needs. On the other hand, by its law Cuba gives a palpable example to the brother peoples of America, many of them foraged by these monopolies or pushed into internecine wars in order to satisfy the necessities or appetites of competing trusts. At the same time Cuba shows the possibility of acting in America and the exact hour when action ought to be considered. The great monopolies also cast their worried look upon Cuba; not only has someone in the little island of the Caribbean dared to liquidate the interests of the omnipotent United Fruit Company, legacy of Mr. Foster Dulles to his heirs, but also the empires of Mr. Rockefeller and the Deutsch group have suffered under the lash of intervention by the popular Cuban Revolution.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This law, like the mining law, is the response of the people to those who try to check them with threats of force, with aerial incursions, with punishments of whatever type. Some say that the mining law is as important as the Agrarian Reform. We do not consider that it has this importance for the economy of the country in general, but it introduces another new feature: a 25 percent tax on the amount of product exported, to be paid by companies that sell our minerals abroad (leaving now something more than a hole in our territory). This not only contributes to our Cuban welfare; it also increases the relative strength of the Canadian monopolies in their struggle with the present exploiters of our nickel. Thus, the Cuban Revolution liquidates the latifundia, limits the profits of the foreign monopolies, limits the profits of the foreign intermediaries that dedicate themselves with parasitic capital to the commerce of importation, launches upon the world a new policy in America, dares to break the monopolist status of the giants of mining, and leaves one of them in difficulty, to say the least. This signifies a powerful new message to the neighbors of the great stronghold of monopoly, and causes repercussions throughout America. The Cuban Revolution breaks all the barriers of the news syndicates and diffuses its truth like a shower of dust among the American masses anxious for a better life. Cuba is the symbol of nationality renewed and Fidel Castro the symbol of liberation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By a simple law of gravity the little island of one hundred fourteen thousand square kilometers and six and one-half million inhabitants assumes the leadership in the anticolonial struggle in America, in which serious handicaps in other countries permit Cuba to take the heroic, glorious, and dangerous advanced post. The economically less weak nations of colonial America, the ones in which national capitalism develops haltingly in a continuous, relentless, and at times violent struggle against the foreign monopolies, now cede their place gradually to this small, new champion of liberty, since their governments do not have sufficient force to carry the fight forward. This is not a simple task, nor is it free from danger and difficulties. The backing of a whole people and an enormous charge of idealism and spirit of sacrifice are needed in the nearly solitary conditions in which we are carrying it out in America. Small countries have tried to maintain this post before Guatemala—the Guatemala of Quetzal, that dies when it is imprisoned in a cage, the Guatemala of the Indian Tecum Umam—fell before the direct aggression of the colonialists. Bolivia, the country of Murillo, the proto-martyr of American independence, yielded to the terrible hardships of the struggle after setting three examples that served as the foundation of the Cuban Revolution: the suppression of the army, agrarian reform, and nationalization of mines—maximum source of riches and at the same time maximum source of tragedy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Cuba knows about these previous examples, knows the failures and the difficulties, but it knows also that we are at the dawning of a new era in the world. The pillars of colonialism have been swept aside by the power of the national and popular struggle in Asia and Africa. Solidarity among peoples does not now come from religion, customs, tastes, racial affinity or its lack. It arises from a similarity in economic and social conditions and from a similarity in desire for progress and recuperation. Asia and Africa joined hands in Bandung; Asia and Africa come to join hands with colonial and indigenous America through Cuba, in Havana.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;On the other hand, the great colonial powers have lost ground before the struggle of the peoples. Belgium and Holland are two caricatures of empires; Germany and Italy lost their colonies. France is bitterly fighting a war that is lost. England, diplomatic and skillful, liquidates political power while maintaining the economic connections.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;American capitalism replaced some of the old colonial capitalisms in the countries that began their independent life. But it knows that this is transitory and that there is no real security for its financial speculations in these new territories. The octopus cannot there apply its suckers firmly. The claw of the imperial eagle is trimmed. Colonialism is dead or is dying a natural death in all these places.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;America is something else. It has been some time since the English lion with its voracious appetite departed from our America and the young and charming Yankee capitalists installed the “democratic” version of the English clubs, imposing their sovereign domination over every one of the twenty republics.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This is the colonial realm of North American monopoly, its reason for being and last hope, the “backyard of its own house.” If all the Latin American peoples should raise the flag of dignity, as Cuba has done, monopoly would tremble; it would have to accommodate to a new political-economic situation and to substantial prunings of profits. Monopoly does not like profits to be pruned, and the Cuban example, this “bad example” of national and international dignity, is gaining strength in the countries of America. Each time that an impudent people cries out for liberation, Cuba is accused; and it is true in a sense that Cuba is guilty, because Cuba has shown the way, the way of the armed popular fight against armies supposed to be invincible, the way of struggle in wild places to wear down and destroy the enemy far from his bases, in a word, the way of dignity.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This Cuban example is bad, a very bad example, and monopoly cannot sleep quietly while this bad example remains at its feet, defying danger, advancing toward the future. It must be destroyed, voices declare. It is necessary to intervene in this bastion of “Communism,” cry the servants of monopoly disguised as representatives in Congress. “The Cuban situation is very disturbing,” say the artful defenders of the trusts; we all know that their meaning is: “It must be destroyed.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Very well. What are the different possibilities of aggressive action to destroy the bad example? One could be called the purely economic. This begins with a restriction on credit by North American banks and suppliers to all businessmen, national banks, and even the National Bank of Cuba. Credit is thus restricted in North America, and through the medium of associates an attempt is made to have the same policy adopted in all the countries of Western Europe; but this alone is not sufficient.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The denial of credits strikes a first strong blow at the economy, but recovery is rapid and the commercial balance evens out, since the victimized country is accustomed to living as best it can. It is necessary to apply more pressure. The sugar quota is brought into the picture: yes, no, no, yes. Hurriedly the calculating machines of the agents of monopoly total up all sorts of accounts and arrive at the final conclusion: it is very dangerous to reduce the Cuban quota and impossible to cancel it. Why very dangerous? Because besides being bad politics, it would awaken the appetite of ten or fifteen other supplier countries, causing them tremendous discomfort, because they would all consider they had a right to something more. It is impossible to cancel the quota, because Cuba is the largest, most efficient, and cheapest provider of sugar to the United States, and because sixty percent of the interests that profit directly from the production and commerce in sugar are United States interests. Besides, the commercial balance is favorable to the United States; whoever does not sell cannot buy; and it would set a bad example to break a treaty. Further, the supposed North American gift of paying nearly three cents above the market price is only the result of North American incapacity to produce sugar cheaply. The high wages and the low productivity of the soil prevent the Great Power from producing sugar at Cuban prices; and by paying this higher price for a product, they are able to impose burdensome treaties on all beneficiaries, not only Cuba. Impossible to liquidate the Cuban quota.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We do not consider likely the possibility that monopolists are employing a variant of the economic approach in bombarding and burning sugar cane fields, hoping to cause a scarcity of the product. Rather, this appears to be a measure calculated to weaken confidence in the power of the revolutionary government. (The corpse of the North American mercenary stains more than a Cuban house with blood; it also stains a policy.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 ftn01.html#ftn fn6|&lt;span&gt;f&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; And what is to be said of the gigantic explosion of arms destined for the Rebel Army?&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 ftn01.html#ftn fn7|&lt;span&gt;g&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Another vulnerable place where the Cuban economy can be squeezed is the supply of raw materials, such as cotton. However, it is well known that there is an over-production of cotton in the world, and any difficulty of this type would be transitory. Fuel? This is worth some attention; it is possible to paralyze a country by depriving it of fuel, and Cuba produces very little petroleum. It has some heavy fuel that can be used to operate its steam-driven machinery and some alcohol that can be used in vehicles; also, there are large amounts of petroleum in the world. Egypt can sell it, the Soviet Union can sell it, perhaps Iraq will be able to sell it shortly. It is not possible to develop a purely economic strategy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As another possibility of aggression, if to this economic variant were added an intervention by some puppet power, the Dominican Republic, for example, it would be somewhat more of a nuisance; but the United Nations would doubtless intervene, with nothing concrete having been achieved.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Incidentally, the new course taken by the Organization of American States creates a dangerous precedent of intervention. Behind the shield of the Trujillo pretext, monopoly solaces itself by constructing a means of aggression. It is sad that the Venezuelan democracy has put us in the difficult position of having to oppose an intervention against Trujillo. What a good turn it has done the pirates of the continent!&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Among the new possibilities of aggression is physical elimination by means of an assault on the old “crazy fellow,” Fidel Castro, who has become by now the focus of the monopolies’ wrath. Naturally, measures must be arranged so that the other two dangerous “international agents,” Raúl Castro and the author, are also eliminated. This solution is appealing; if simultaneous assaults on all three or at least on the directing head succeeded, it would be a boon to the reaction. (But do not forget the people, Messrs. Monopolists and agents, the omnipotent people who in their fury at such a crime would crush and erase all those who had anything to do directly or indirectly with an assault on any of the chiefs of the Revolution; it would be impossible to restrain them.)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Another aspect of the Guatemalan variant is to put pressure on the suppliers of arms, in order to force Cuba to buy in Communist countries and then use this as an occasion to let loose another shower of insults. This could give results. “It may be,” someone in our government has said, “that they will attack us as Communists, but they are not going to eliminate us as imbeciles.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Thus, it begins to appear as if a direct aggression on the part of the monopolies will be necessary; various possible forms are being shuffled and studied in the IBM machines with all processes calculated. It occurs to us at the moment that the Spanish variant could be used. The Spanish variant would be one in which some initial pretext is seized upon for an attack by exiles with the help of volunteers, volunteers who would be mercenaries, of course, or simply the troops of a foreign power, well supported by navy and air, well enough supported, shall we say, to be successful. It could also begin as a direct aggression by some state such as the Dominican Republic, which would send some of its men, our brothers, and many mercenaries to die on these beaches in order to provoke war; this would prompt the pure-intentioned monopolists to say that they do not wish to intervene in this “disastrous” struggle between brothers; they will merely limit and confine and freeze the war within its present limits by maintaining vigilance over the skies and seas of this part of America with cruisers, battleships, destroyers, aircraft carriers, submarines, minesweepers, torpedo boats, and airplanes. And it could happen that while these zealous guardians of continental peace were not allowing a single boat to pass with things for Cuba, some, many, or all of the boats headed for the unhappy country of Trujillo would escape the iron vigilance. Also they might intervene through some “reputable” inter-American organ, to put an end to the “foolish war” that “Communism” had unleashed in our island; or, if this mechanism of the “reputable” American organ did not serve, they might intervene directly, as in Korea, using the name of the international organ in order to restore peace and protect the interests of all nations.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Perhaps the first step in the aggression will not be against us, but against the constitutional government of Venezuela, in order to liquidate our last point of support on the continent. If this happens, it is possible that the center of the struggle against colonialism will move from Cuba to the great country of Bolivar. The people of Venezuela will rise to defend their liberties with all the enthusiasm of those who know that they are fighting a decisive battle, that behind defeat lies the darkest tyranny and behind victory the certain future of America. A stream of popular struggles can disturb the peace of the monopolist cemeteries formed out of our subjugated sister republics.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Many reasons argue against the chance of enemy victory, but there are two fundamental ones. The first is external: this is the year 1960, the year that will finally hear the voices of the millions of beings who do not have the luck to be governed by the possessors of the means of death and payment. Further, and this is an even more powerful reason, an army of six million Cubans will grasp weapons as a single man in order to defend its territory and its Revolution. Cuba will be a battlefield where the army will be nothing other than part of the people in arms. After destruction in a frontal war, hundreds of guerrilla bands under a dynamic command and a single center of orientation will fight the battle all over the country. In cities the workers will die in their factories or centers of work, and in the country the peasants will deal out death to the invader from behind every palm tree and from every furrow of the new mechanically plowed field that the Revolution has given them.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;And around the world international solidarity will create a barrier of hundreds of millions of people protesting against aggression. Monopoly will see how its pillars are undermined and how the spider web curtain of its newspaper lies is swept away by a puff. But let us suppose that they dare to defy the popular indignation of the world; what will happen here within?&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The first thing to be noted, given our position as an easily vulnerable island without heavy arms, with a very weak air force and navy, is the necessity of applying the guerrilla concept to the fight for national defense.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Our ground units will fight with the fervor, decision, and enthusiasm of which the sons of the Cuban Revolution are capable in these glorious years of our history. But if the worst occurs, we are prepared to continue fighting even after the destruction of our army organization in a frontal combat. In other words, confronting large concentrations of enemy forces that succeed in destroying ours, we would change immediately into a guerrilla army with a good sense of mobility, with unlimited authority in our column commanders, though with a central command located somewhere in the country giving the necessary direction and fixing the general overall strategy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The mountains would be the last line of defense of the organized armed vanguard of the people, which is the Rebel Army; but in every house of the people, on every road, in every forest, in every piece of national territory the struggle would be fought by the great army of the rear guard, the entire people trained and armed in the manner now to be described.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Since our infantry units will not have heavy arms, they will concentrate on anti-tank and anti-air defense. Mines in very large numbers, bazookas or anti-tank grenades, anti-aircraft cannon of great mobility and mortar batteries will be the only arms of any great power. The veteran infantry soldier, though equipped with automatic weapons, will know the value of ammunition. He will guard it with loving care. Special installations for reloading shells will accompany each unit of the army, maintaining reserves of ammunition even though precariously.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The air force will probably be badly hurt in the first moments of an invasion of this type. We are basing our calculations upon an invasion by a first-class foreign power or by a mercenary army of some other power, helped either openly or surreptitiously by this great power of first magnitude. The national air force, as I said, will be destroyed, or almost destroyed; only reconnaissance or liaison planes will remain, especially helicopters for minor functions.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The navy will also be organized for this mobile strategy; small launches will give the smallest target to the enemy and maintain maximum mobility. The great desperation of the enemy army in this case as before will be to find something to receive his blows. Instead he will find a gelatinous mass, in movement, impenetrable, that retreats and never presents a solid front, though it inflicts wounds from every side.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It is not easy to overcome an army of the people that is prepared to continue being an army in spite of its defeat in a frontal battle. Two great masses of the people are united around it: the peasants and the workers. The peasants have already given evidence of their efficiency in detaining the small band that was marauding in Pinar del Rio. These peasants will be trained principally in their own regions; but the platoon commanders and the superior officers will be trained, as is now already being done, in our military bases. From there they will be distributed throughout the thirty zones of agrarian development that form the new geographical division of the country. This will constitute thirty more centers of peasant struggle, charged with defending to the maximum their lands, their social conquests, their new houses, their canals, their dams, their flowering harvests, their independence, in a word, their right to live.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;At the beginning they will oppose also a firm resistance to any enemy advance, but if this proves too strong for them, they will disperse, each peasant becoming a peaceful cultivator of his soil during the day and a fearsome guerrilla fighter at night, scourge of the enemy forces. Something similar will take place among the workers; the best among them will be trained also to serve thereafter as chiefs of their companions, teaching them principles of defense. Each social class, however, will have different tasks. The peasant will fight a battle typical of the guerrilla fighter; he should learn to be a good shot, to take advantage of all the difficulties of the ground and to disappear without ever showing his face. The workers, on the other hand, have the advantage of being within a modern city, which is a large and efficient fortress; at the same time their lack of mobility is a drawback. The worker will learn first to block the streets with barricades of any available vehicle, furniture, or utensil; to use every block as a fortress with communications formed by holes made in interior walls; to use that terrible arm of defense, the “Molotov cocktail”; and to coordinate his fire from the innumerable loopholes provided by the houses of a modern city.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;From the worker masses assisted by the national police and those armed forces charged with the defense of the city, a powerful bloc of the army will be formed; but it must expect to suffer great losses. The struggle in the cities in these conditions cannot achieve the facility and flexibility of the struggle in the countryside: many will fall, including many leaders, in this popular struggle. The enemy will use tanks that will be destroyed rapidly as soon as the people learn their weaknesses and not to fear them, but before that the tanks will leave their balance of victims.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;There will also be other organizations related to those of workers and peasants: first, the student militias, which will contain the flower of the student youth, directed and coordinated by the Rebel Army; organizations of youth in general, who will participate in the same way; and organizations of women, who will provide an enormous encouragement by their presence and who will do such auxiliary tasks for their companions in the struggle as cooking, taking care of the wounded, giving final comfort to those who are dying, doing laundry, in a word, showing their companions-in-arms that they will never be absent in the difficult moments of the Revolution. All this is achieved by wide-scale organization of the masses supplemented with patient and careful education, an education that begins and is confirmed in knowledge acquired from their own experience; it should concentrate on reasoned and true explanations of the facts of the Revolution.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The revolutionary laws should be discussed, explained, studied in every meeting, in every assembly, wherever the leaders of the Revolution are present for any purpose. Also, the speeches of the leaders, and in our case particularly of the undisputed leader, should constantly be read, commented upon, and discussed. People should come together in the country to listen by radio, and where there are more advanced facilities, to watch by television these magnificent popular lessons that our Prime Minister gives.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The participation of the people in politics, that is to say, in the expression of their own desires made into laws, decrees, and resolutions, should be constant. Vigilance against any manifestations opposed to the Revolution should also be constant; and vigilance over morale within the revolutionary masses should be stricter, if this is possible, than vigilance against the non-revolutionary or the disaffected. It can never be permitted, lest the Revolution take the dangerous path of opportunism, that a revolutionary of any category should be excused for grave offenses against decorum or morality simply because he is a revolutionary. The record of his former services may provide extenuating circumstances and they can always be considered in deciding upon the punishment, but the act itself must always be punished.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Respect for work, above all for collective work and work for collective ends, ought to be cultivated. Volunteer brigades to construct roads, bridges, docks or dams, and schools should receive a strong impulse; these serve to forge a unity among persons showing their love for the Revolution with works.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;An army that is linked in such ways with the people, that feels this intimacy with the peasants and the workers from which it emerged, that knows besides all the special techniques of its warfare and is psychologically prepared for the worst contingencies, is invincible; and it will be even more invincible as it makes the just phrase of our immortal Camilo a part of the flesh of the army and the citizenry: “The army is the people in uniform.” Therefore, for all these reasons, despite the necessity that monopoly suppress the “bad example” of Cuba, our future is brighter than ever.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;chapter&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;“Guerrilla Warfare: A Method” (1963)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;G&lt;/span&gt;uerrilla warfare has been employed on innumerable occasions throughout history in different circumstances to obtain different objectives. Lately it has been employed in various popular wars of liberation when the vanguard of the people chose the road of irregular armed struggle against enemies of superior military power. Asia, Africa, and Latin America have been the scene of such actions in attempts to obtain power in the struggle against feudal, neo-colonial, or colonial exploitation. In Europe, guerrilla units were used as a supplement to native or allied regular armies.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In America, guerrilla warfare has been employed on several occasions. As a case in point, we have the experience of César Augusto [sic] Sandino fighting against the Yankee expeditionary force on the Segovia of Nicaragua. Recently we had Cuba’s revolutionary war. Since then in America the problem of guerrilla war has been raised in discussions of theory by the progressive parties of the continent with the question of whether its utilization is possible or convenient. This has become the topic of very controversial polemics.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This article will express our views on guerrilla warfare and its correct utilization. Above all, we must emphasize at the outset that this form of struggle is a means to an end. That end, essential and inevitable for any revolutionary, is the conquest of political power. Therefore, in the analysis of specific situations in different countries of America, we must use the concept of guerrilla warfare in the limited sense of a method of struggle in order to gain that end.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Almost immediately the question arises: Is guerrilla warfare the only formula for seizing power in all of Latin America? Or, at any rate, will it be the predominant form? Or simply, will it be one formula among many used during the struggle? And ultimately we may ask: Will Cuba’s example be applicable to the present situation on the continent? In the course of polemics, those who want to undertake guerrilla warfare are criticized for forgetting mass struggle, implying that guerrilla warfare and mass struggle are opposed to each other. We reject this implication, for guerrilla warfare is a people’s war; to attempt to carry out this type of war without the population’s support is the prelude to inevitable disaster. The guerrilla is the combat vanguard of the people, situated in a specified place in a certain region, armed and willing to carry out a series of warlike actions for the one possible strategic end—the seizure of power. The guerrilla is supported by the peasant and worker masses of the region and of the&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;SOURCE: &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Cuba Socialista&lt;/span&gt; (Havana), September 1963, pp. 1–17.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt; &lt;span&gt;whole territory in which it acts. Without these prerequisites, guerrilla warfare is not possible.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;We consider that the Cuban Revolution made three fundamental contributions to the laws of the revolutionary movement in the current situation in America. First, people’s forces can win a war against the army. Second, one need not always wait for all conditions favorable to revolution to be present; the insurrection itself can create them. Third, in the underdeveloped parts of America, the battleground for armed struggle should in the main be the countryside. (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Such are the contributions to the development of the revolutionary struggle in America, and they can be applied to any of the countries on our continent where guerrilla warfare may develop.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The Second Declaration of Havana points out:&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In our countries two circumstances are joined: underdeveloped industry and an agrarian system of feudal character. That is why no matter how hard the living conditions of the urban workers are, the rural population lives under even more horrible conditions of oppression and exploitation. But, with few exceptions, it also constitutes the absolute majority, sometimes more than 70 percent of the Latin American population.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Not counting the landlords who often live in the cities, this great mass earns its livelihood by working as peons on plantations earning miserable wages. Or they till the soil under conditions of exploitation no different than those of the Middle Ages. These circumstances determine in Latin America that the poor rural population constitutes a tremendous potential revolutionary force.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The armies are set up and equipped for conventional warfare. They are the force whereby the power of the exploiting classes is maintained. When they are confronted with the irregular warfare of peasants based on their home ground, they become absolutely powerless; they lose ten men for every revolutionary fighter who falls. Demoralization among them mounts rapidly when they are beset by an invisible and invincible army which provides them no chance to display their military academy tactics and their military fanfare, of which they boast so much, to repress the city workers and students.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The initial struggle of small fighting units is constantly nurtured by new forces; the mass movement begins to grow bold, the old order bit by bit breaks into a thousand pieces, and that is when the working class and the urban masses decide the battle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;What is it that from the very beginning of the fight makes those units invincible, regardless of the number, strength, and resources of their enemies? It is the people’s support, and they can count on an ever-increasing mass support.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;But the peasantry is a class which, because of the ignorance in which it has been kept and the isolation in which it lives, requires the revolutionary and political leadership of the working class and the revolutionary intellectuals. Without that, it cannot alone launch the struggle and achieve victory.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the present historical conditions of Latin America, the national bourgeoisie cannot lead the antifeudal and anti-imperialist struggle. Experience demonstrates that in our nations this class—even when its interests clash with those of Yankee imperialism—has been incapable of confronting imperialism, paralyzed by fear of social revolution and frightened by the clamor of the exploited masses.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Completing the foresight of the preceding statements, which constitute the essence of the revolutionary declaration of Latin America, the Second Declaration of Havana in the following paragraphs states:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The subjective conditions in each country, the factors of revolutionary consciousness, of organization, of leadership, can accelerate or delay revolution, depending on the state of their development. Sooner or later, in each historic epoch, as objective conditions ripen, consciousness is acquired, organization is achieved, leadership arises, and revolution is produced.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Whether this takes place peacefully or comes into the world after painful labor does not depend on the revolutionaries; it depends on the reactionary forces of the old society. Revolution, in history, is like the doctor who assists at the birth of a new life: he does not use forceps unless necessary, but he will unhesitatingly use them every time labor requires them. It is a labor which brings the hope of a better life to the enslaved and exploited masses.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In many Latin American countries revolution is inevitable. This fact is not determined by the will of anyone. It is determined by the horrible conditions of exploitation under which the American people live, the development of a revolutionary consciousness in the masses, the worldwide crisis of imperialism, and the universal liberation movements of the subjugated nations.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;We shall begin from this basis to analyze the whole matter of guerrilla warfare in Latin America.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We have already established that it is a means of struggle to attain an end. First, our concern is to analyze the end in order to determine whether the winning of power in Latin America can be achieved in other ways than armed struggle. Peaceful struggle can be carried out through mass movements compelling—in special crisis situations—the governments to yield; thus, eventually the popular forces would take over and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. Theoretically this is correct. When analyzing this in the Latin American context, we must reach the following conclusions: Generally on this continent there exist objective conditions which propel the masses to violent actions against their bourgeois and landlord governments. In many countries there exist crises of power and also some subjective conditions for revolution. It is clear, of course, that in those countries where all of these conditions are found, it would be criminal not to act to seize power. In other countries where these conditions do not occur, it is right that different alternatives will appear and out of theoretical discussions the tactic proper to each country should emerge. The only thing which history does not admit is that the analysts and executors of proletarian policy be mistaken.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;No one can solicit the role of vanguard of the party as if it were a diploma given by a university. To be the vanguard of the party means to be at the forefront of the working class through the struggle for achieving power. It means to know how to guide this fight through shortcuts to victory. This is the mission of our revolutionary parties, and thus the analysis must be profound and exhaustive so that there will be no mistakes.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;At the present time we can observe in America an unstable balance between oligarchical dictatorship and popular pressure. We mean by “oligarchical” the reactionary alliance between the bourgeoisie and the landowning class of each country which has a greater or lesser preponderance of feudalism.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;These dictatorships carry on within a certain “legal” framework which they adjudicated themselves to facilitate their work throughout the unrestricted period of their class domination. Yet we are passing through a stage in which the masses’ pressure is very strong and is straining bourgeois legality so that its own authors must violate it in order to halt the impetus of the masses.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Barefaced violation of all legislation or of laws specifically instituted to sanction ruling-class deeds only increases the tension of the people’s forces. Thus, the oligarchical dictatorship attempts to use the old legal order to change constitutionality and further oppress the proletariat without a frontal clash. Nevertheless, at this point, a contradiction arises. The people no longer support the old, much less the new, coercive measures established by the dictatorship and try to smash them. We should never forget the class character, authoritarian and restrictive, which typifies the bourgeois state. Lenin refers to it in the following manner: “The state is the product and the manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises when, where, and to the extent that class antagonisms objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that class antagonisms are irreconcilable.” (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;State and Revolution&lt;/span&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In other words, we should not allow the word “democracy” to be utilized apologetically to represent the dictatorship of the exploiting classes and to lose its deeper meaning and acquire the meaning of granting the people certain liberties, more or less good. To struggle only to restore a certain degree of bourgeois legality without considering the question of revolutionary power is to struggle for the return of a dictatorial order established by the dominant social classes. In other words, it is to struggle for a lighter iron ball to be fixed to the prisoner’s chain.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In these conditions of conflict, the oligarchy breaks its own contracts, its own mask of “democracy,” and attacks the people, though it will always try to use the superstructure it has formed for oppression. Thus, we are faced once again with a dilemma: What must be done? Our reply is: Violence is not the monopoly of the exploiters; and as such the exploited can use it too and, what is more, ought to use it when the moment arrives. Martí said, “He who wages war in a country, when he can avoid it, is a criminal, just as he who fails to promote war which cannot be avoided is a criminal.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lenin said, “Social democracy has never taken a sentimental view of war. It unreservedly condemns war as a bestial means of settling conflicts in human society. But social democracy knows that as long as society is divided into classes, as long as there is exploitation of man by man, wars are inevitable. In order to end this exploitation we cannot walk away from war, which is always and everywhere begun by the exploiters, by the ruling and oppressing classes.” He said this in 1905. Later in the “Military Program of the Proletarian Revolution,” a far-reaching analysis of the nature of class struggle, he affirmed: “Whoever recognizes the class struggle cannot fail to recognize civil wars, which in every class society are the natural, and under certain conditions, inevitable continuation, development, and intensification of the class struggle. All the great revolutions prove this. To repudiate civil war, or to forget about it, would mean sinking into extreme opportunism and renouncing the socialist revolution.” That is to say, we should not fear violence, the midwife of new societies; but violence should be unleashed at that precise moment in which the leaders have found the most favorable circumstances.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;What will these be? Subjectively, they depend on two factors which complement each other and which deepen during the struggle: consciousness of the necessity of change, and confidence in the possibility of this revolutionary change. Both of these factors, with the objective conditions (which are favorable in all Latin America for the development of the struggle), with the firm will to achieve it as well as the new correlation of forces in the world, will determine the mode of action.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Regardless of how far away the socialist countries may be, their favorable influence will be felt by the people who struggle, just as their example will give the people further strength. Fidel Castro said on July 26 [1963]: “And the duty of the revolutionaries, especially at this moment, is to know how to recognize and how to take advantage of the changes in the correlation of forces which have taken place in the world and to understand that these changes facilitate the people’s struggle. The duty of revolutionaries, of Latin American revolutionaries, is not to wait for the change in the correlation of forces to produce a miracle of social revolutions in Latin America but to take full advantage of everything in it that is favorable to the revolutionary movement—and to make revolution!”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;There are some who say, “Let us admit that in certain specific cases revolutionary war is the best means to achieve political power; but where do we find the great leaders, the Fidel Castros, who will lead us to victory?” Fidel Castro, as any human being, is the product of history. The political and military chieftains who will lead the insurrectional uprisings in America, merged if possible in one man, will learn the art of war during the course of war itself. There is neither trade nor profession that can be learned from books alone. In this case, the struggle itself is the great teacher.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Of course, the task will not be easy, nor is it exempt from grave dangers throughout. During the development of armed struggle, there are two moments of extreme danger for the future of the revolution. The first of these arises in the preparatory stage and the way with which it is dealt will give the measure of determination to struggle as well as clarity of purpose of the people’s forces. When the bourgeois state advances against the people’s positions, obviously there must arise a process of defense against the enemy who at this point, being superior, attacks. If the basic subjective and objective conditions are ripe, the defense must be armed so that the popular forces will not merely become recipients of the enemy’s blows. Nor should the armed defense camp be allowed to be transformed into the refuge of the pursued.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guerrilla warfare may adopt a defensive movement at a certain point, yet it carries within itself the capacity to attack the enemy and must develop it constantly. This capacity is what determines, with the passing of time, the catalytic character of the people’s forces. That is, guerrilla warfare is not passive self-defense; it is defense with attack. And from the moment we recognize it as such, it has as its final goal the conquest of political power.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This moment is important. In social processes the difference between violence and nonviolence cannot be measured by the number of shots exchanged; rather, it lies in concrete and fluctuating situations. And we must be able to see the right moment in which the people’s forces, conscious of their relative weakness and their strategic strength, must take the initiative against the enemy so the situation will not deteriorate. The equilibrium between oligarchical dictatorship and the popular pressure must be changed. The dictatorship tries to function without resorting to force. Thus, we must try to oblige the dictatorship to resort to violence, thereby unmasking its true nature as the dictatorship of the reactionary social classes. This event will deepen the struggle to such an extent that there will be no retreat from it. The performance of the people’s forces depends on the task of forcing the dictatorship to a decision—to retreat or unleash the struggle—thus beginning the stage of long-range armed action.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The skillful avoidance of the next dangerous moment depends on the growing power of the people’s forces. Marx always recommended that once the revolutionary process has begun, the proletariat strike blows again and again without rest. A revolution which does not constantly expand is a revolution which regresses. The fighters, if weary, begin to lose faith; and at this point some of the bourgeois maneuvers may bear fruit—for example, the holding of elections to turn the government over to another gentleman with a sweeter voice and more angelic face than the outgoing tyrant, or the staging of a coup by reactionaries generally led by the army with the direct or indirect support of the progressive forces. There are others, but it is not our intention to analyze such tactical stratagems.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Let us emphasize the military coup mentioned previously. What can the military contribute to democracy? What kind of loyalty can be asked of them if they are merely an instrument for the domination of the reactionary classes and imperialist monopolies and if, as a caste whose worth rests on the weapon in their hands, they aspire only to maintain their prerogatives?&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When, in difficult situations for the oppressors, the military establishment conspires to overthrow a dictator who in fact has been defeated, it can be said that they do so because the dictator is unable to preserve their class prerogatives without extreme violence, a method which generally does not suit the interests of the oligarchies at that point.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This statement does not mean to reject the service of military men as individual fighters who, once separated from the society they served, have in fact now rebelled against it. They should be used in accordance with the revolutionary line they adopt as fighters and not as representatives of a caste.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A long time ago Engels, in the preface to the third edition of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Civil War in France&lt;/span&gt;, wrote:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The workers were armed after every revolution; for this reason the disarming of the workers was the first commandment for the bourgeois at the helm of the state. Hence, after every revolution won by the workers, a new struggle ending with the defeat of the workers. (Quoted by Lenin in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;State and Revolution&lt;/span&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;This play of continuous struggle, in which some change is obtained and then strategically withdrawn, has been repeated for many dozens of years in the capitalist world. Moreover, the permanent deception of the proletariat along these lines has been practiced for over a century.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;There is danger also that progressive party leaders, wishing to maintain conditions more favorable for revolutionary action through the use of certain aspects of bourgeois legality, will lose sight of their goal (which is common during the action), thus forgetting the primary strategic objective: the seizure of power.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;These two difficult moments in the revolution, which we have analyzed briefly, become obvious when the leaders of Marxist-Leninist parties are capable of perceiving the implications of the moment clearly and of mobilizing the masses to the fullest, leading them on the correct path of resolving fundamental contradictions.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In developing the thesis, we have assumed that eventually the idea of armed struggle as well as the formula of guerrilla warfare as a method of struggle will be accepted. Why do we think that, in the present situation of America, guerrilla warfare is the best method? There are fundamental arguments which in our opinion determine the necessity of guerrilla action as the central axis of struggle in Latin America.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;First, accepting as true that the enemy will fight to maintain itself in power, one must think about destroying the oppressor army. To do this, a people’s army is necessary. This army is not born spontaneously; rather, it must be armed from the enemy’s arsenal, and this requires a long and difficult struggle in which the people’s forces and their leaders will always be exposed to attack from superior forces and be without adequate conditions of defense and maneuverability.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;On the other hand, the guerrilla nucleus, established in terrain favorable for the struggle, ensures the security and continuity of the revolutionary command. The urban forces, led by the general staff of the people’s army, can perform actions of the greatest importance. However, the eventual destruction of these groups would not kill the soul of the revolution; its leadership would continue from its rural bastion to spark the revolutionary spirit of the masses and would continue to organize new forces for other battles.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Moreover, in this region begins the construction of the future state apparatus entrusted to lead the class dictatorship efficiently during the transition period. The longer the struggle becomes, the larger and more complex the administrative problems; and in solving them, cadres will be trained for the difficult task of consolidating power and, at a later stage, economic development.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Second, there is the general situation of the Latin American peasantry and the ever more explosive character of the struggle against feudal structures within the framework of an alliance between local and foreign exploiters.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Returning to the Second Declaration of Havana,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;At the outset of the past century, the peoples of America freed themselves from Spanish colonialism, but they did not free themselves from exploitation. The feudal landlords assumed the authority of the governing Spaniards, the Indians continued in their painful serfdom, the Latin American man remained a slave one way or another, and the minimum hopes of the peoples died under the power of the oligarchies and the tyranny of foreign capital. This is the truth of America, to one or another degree of variation. Latin America today is under a more ferocious imperialism, more powerful and ruthless, than the Spanish colonial empire.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;What is Yankee imperialism’s attitude confronting the objective and historically inexorable reality of the Latin American revolution? To prepare to fight a colonial war against the peoples of Latin America; to create an apparatus of force to establish the political pretexts and the pseudo-legal instruments underwritten by the representatives of the reactionary oligarchies in order to curb, by blood and by iron, the struggle of the Latin American peoples.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;This objective situation shows the dormant force of our peasants and the need to utilize it for Latin America’s liberation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Third, there is the continental nature of the struggle. Could we imagine this stage of Latin American emancipation as the confrontation of two local forces struggling for power in a specific territory? Hardly. The struggle between the people’s forces and the forces of repression will be to the death. This too is predicted by the paragraphs cited previously.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Yankees will intervene due to solidarity of interest and because the struggle in Latin America is decisive. As a matter of fact, they are intervening already as they prepare the forces of repression and the organization of a continental apparatus of struggle. But, from now on, they will do so with all their energies; they will punish the popular forces with all the destructive weapons at their disposal. They will not allow a revolutionary power to consolidate; and, if it ever happens, they will attack again, will not recognize it, and will try to divide the revolutionary forces. Moreover, they will infiltrate saboteurs, create border problems, will force other reactionary states to oppose it, and will impose economic sanctions attempting, in one word, to annihilate the new state.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This being the panorama in Latin America, it is difficult to achieve and consolidate victory in a country which is isolated. The unity of the repressive forces must be confronted with the unity of the popular forces. In all countries where oppression reaches intolerable proportions, the banner of rebellion must be raised; and this banner of historical necessity will have a continental character.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As Fidel stated, the cordilleras of the Andes will be the Sierra Maestra of Latin America; and the immense territories which this continent encompasses will become the scene of a life-or-death struggle against imperialism.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We cannot predict when this struggle will reach a continental dimension nor how long it will last. But we can predict its advent and triumph because it is the inevitable result of historical, economic, and political conditions; and its direction cannot change.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The task of the revolutionary forces in each country is to initiate the struggle when the conditions are present there, regardless of the conditions in other countries. The development of the struggle will bring about the general strategy. The prediction of the continental character of the struggle is the outcome of the analysis of the strength of each contender, but this does not exclude independent outbreaks. As the beginning of the struggle in one area of a country is bound to cause its development throughout the region, the beginning of a revolutionary war contributes to the development of new conditions in the neighboring countries.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The development of revolution has normally produced high and low tides in inverse proportion. To the revolution’s high tide corresponds the counterrevolutionary low tide and vice versa, as there is a counterrevolutionary ascendancy at moments of revolutionary decline. In those moments, the situation of the people’s forces becomes difficult; and they should resort to the best means of defense in order to suffer the least damage. The enemy is extremely powerful, it is of continental scope. For this reason, the relative weakness of the local bourgeoisie cannot be analyzed with a view toward making decisions within restricted boundaries. Still less can one think of an eventual alliance by these oligarchies with a people in arms.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Cuban Revolution sounded the bell which gave the alarm. The polarization of forces will become complete: exploiters on one side, and exploited on the other. And the mass of the petty bourgeoisie will lean to one side or the other according to their interests and the political skill with which they are handled. Thus, neutrality will be an exception. This is how revolutionary war will be.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Let us think how a guerrilla focus can start. Nuclei with relatively few persons choose places favorable for guerrilla warfare, with the intention of unleashing a counterattack or to weather the storm, and there they start taking action. However, what follows must be very clear: At the beginning the relative weakness of the guerrillas is such that they should work only toward becoming acquainted with the terrain and its surroundings while establishing connections with the population and fortifying the places which eventually will be converted into bases.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A guerrilla force which has just begun its development must follow three conditions in order to survive: constant mobility, constant vigilance, constant distrust. Without the adequate use of these three conditions of military tactics, the guerrilla will find it hard to survive. We must remember that the heroism of the guerrilla fighter, at this moment, consists of the scope of the planned goal and the enormous number of sacrifices that he must make in order to achieve it. These sacrifices are not made in daily combat or face-to-face battle with the enemy; rather, they will adopt more subtle and difficult forms for the guerrilla fighter to resist physically and mentally.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Perhaps the guerrillas will be punished heavily by the enemy, divided at times into groups with those who are captured to be tortured. They will be pursued as hunted animals in areas where they have chosen to operate; the constant anxiety of having the enemy on their track will be with them. They must distrust everyone, for the terrorized peasants in some cases will give them away to the repressive troops in order to save themselves. Their only alternatives are life or death, at times when death is a concept a thousand times present and victory only a myth for a revolutionary to dream of.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This is the guerrilla’s heroism. This is why it is said that walking is a form of fighting, and to avoid combat at a given moment is also another form. Facing the general superiority of the enemy at a given place, one must find a form of tactics with which to gain a relative superiority at that moment either by being capable of concentrating more troops than the enemy or by using fully and well the terrain in order to secure advantages that unbalance the correlation of forces. In these conditions, tactical victory is assured; if relative superiority is not clear, it is better not to act. As long as the guerrilla is in the position of deciding the “how” and the “when,” no combat should be fought that will not end in victory.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Within the framework of the great politico-military action, of which they are a part, the guerrilla will grow and reach consolidation. Thus, bases will continue to be formed, for they are essential to the success of the guerrilla army. These bases are points which the enemy can enter only at the cost of heavy losses; they are the revolution’s bastions, both refuge and starting point for the guerrilla’s more daring and distant raids.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;One comes to this point if difficulties of a tactical and political nature have been overcome. The guerrillas cannot forget their function as vanguard of the people—their mandate—and as such they must create the necessary political conditions for the establishment of a revolutionary power based on the masses’ support. The peasants’ aspirations or demands must be satisfied to the degree and form which circumstances permit so as to bring about the decisive support and solidarity of the whole population.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;If the military situation will be difficult from the very first moment, the political situation will be just as delicate; if a single military error can liquidate the guerrilla, a political error can hold back its development for long periods. The struggle is politico-military, and as such it must be developed and understood.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the process of the guerrilla growth, the fighting reaches a point where its capacity for action covers a given region for which there are too many men in too great a concentration in the area. There begins the beehive action in which one of the commanders, a distinguished guerrilla, hops to another region and repeats the chain of development of guerrilla warfare. He is, nevertheless, subject to a central command.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It is imperative to point out that one cannot hope for victory without the formation of a popular army. The guerrilla forces can be expanded to a certain magnitude; the people’s forces, in the cities and in other areas, can inflict losses; but the military potential of the reactionaries will still remain intact. One must always keep in mind the fact that the final objective is the enemy’s annihilation. Therefore, all these new zones which are being created, as well as the zones infiltrated behind enemy lines and the forces operating in the principal cities, should be under one unified command.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guerrilla war or war of liberation will generally have three stages: First, the strategic defensive when the small force nibbles at the enemy and runs; it is not sheltered to make a passive defense within a small circumference, but rather its defense consists of the limited attacks which it can strike successfully. After this comes a state of equilibrium in which the possibilities of action on both sides—the enemy and the guerrillas—are established. Finally, the last stage consists of overrunning the repressive army leading to the capture of the big cities, large-scale decisive encounters, and at last the complete annihilation of the enemy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;After reaching a state of equilibrium when both sides respect each other and as the war’s development continues, the guerrilla war acquires new characteristics. The concept of maneuver is introduced: large columns which attack strong points; mobile warfare with the shifting of forces and means of attack of relative potential. But due to the capacity for resistance and counterattack that the enemy still has, this war of maneuver does not replace guerrilla fighting: rather, it is only one form of action taken by the guerrillas until that time when they crystallize into a people’s army with an army corps. Even at this moment the guerrilla, marching ahead of the action of the main forces, will play the role of its first stage, destroying communications and sabotaging the whole defensive apparatus of the enemy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We have predicted that the war will be continental. This means that it will be a protracted war; it will have many fronts; and it will cost much blood and countless lives for a long period of time. But another phenomenon occurring in Latin America is the polarization of forces, that is, the clear division between exploiters and exploited. Thus, when the armed vanguard of the people achieves power, both the imperialists and the national exploiting class will be liquidated at one stroke. The first stage of the socialist revolution will have crystallized, and the people will be ready to heal their wounds and initiate the construction of socialism.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Are there possibilities less bloody? Awhile ago the last dividing up of the world took place in which the United States took the lion’s share of our continent. Today the imperialists of the Old World are developing again—and the strength of the European Common Market frightens the United States itself. All this might lead to the belief that there exists the possibility for us merely to observe as spectators the struggle among the imperialists trying to make further advances, perhaps in alliance with the stronger national bourgeoisie. Yet a passive policy never brings good results in class struggle; and alliances with the bourgeoisie, though they might appear to be revolutionary, have only a transitory character. The time factor will induce us to choose another ally. The sharpening of the most important contradiction in Latin America appears to be so rapid that it disturbs the “normal” development of the imperialist camp’s contradiction in its struggle for markets.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The majority of the national bourgeoisie have united with North American imperialism; thus, their fate shall be the same as that of the latter. Even in the cases where pacts or common contradictions are shared between the national bourgeoisie and other imperialists, this occurs within the framework of a fundamental struggle which will embrace sooner or later &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;all the exploited and all the exploiters&lt;/span&gt;. The polarization of antagonistic forces among class adversaries is up till now more rapid than the development of the contradiction among exploiters over the splitting of the spoils. There are two camps: the alternative becomes clearer for each individual and for each specific stratum of the population.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Alliance for Progress attempts to slow that which cannot be stopped. But if the advance of the European Common Market or any other imperialist group on the American market were more rapid than the development of the fundamental contradiction, the forces of the people would only have to penetrate into the open breach, carrying on the struggle and using the new intruders with a clear awareness of what their true intentions are.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Not a single position, weapon, or secret should be given to the class enemy, under penalty of losing all. In fact, the eruption of the Latin American struggle has begun. Will its storm center be in Venezuela, Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador? Are today’s skirmishes only manifestations of a restlessness that has not come to fruition? The outcome of today’s struggles does not matter. It does not matter in the final count that one or two movements were temporarily defeated because what is definite is the decision to struggle which matures every day, the consciousness of the need for revolutionary change, and the certainty that it is possible.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This is a prediction. We make it with the conviction that history will prove us right. The analysis of the objective and subjective conditions of Latin America and the imperialist world indicates to us the certainty of these assertions based on the Second Declaration of Havana.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;chapter&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;“Message to the Tricontinental” (1967)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Now is the time of the furnaces, and only light should be seen.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;—JOSÉ MARTÍ&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt; <br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;T&lt;/span&gt;wenty-one years have already elapsed since the end of the last world conflagration; numerous publications, in every possible language, celebrate this event, symbolized by the defeat of Japan. There is a climate of apparent optimism in many areas of the different camps into which the world is divided.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Twenty-one years without a world war, in these times of maximum confrontations, of violent clashes and sudden changes, appears to be a very high figure. However, without analyzing the practical results of this peace (poverty, degradation, increasingly larger exploitation of enormous sectors of humanity) for which all of us have stated that we are willing to fight, we would do well to inquire if this peace is real.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It is not the purpose of these notes to detail the different conflicts of a local character that have been occurring since the surrender of Japan, neither do we intend to recount the numerous and increasing instances of civilian strife which have taken place during these years of apparent peace. It will be enough just to name, as an example against undue optimism, the wars of Korea and Vietnam.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the first one, after years of savage warfare, the Northern part of the country was submerged in the most terrible devastation known in the annals of modern warfare: riddled with bombs; without factories, schools, or hospitals; with absolutely no shelter for housing ten million inhabitants.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Under the discredited flag of the United Nations, dozens of countries under the military leadership of the United States participated in this war with the massive intervention of U.S. soldiers and the use, as cannon fodder, of the South Korean population that was enrolled. On the other side, the army and the people of Korea and the volunteers from the People’s Republic of China were furnished with supplies and advice by the Soviet military apparatus. The U.S. tested all sorts of weapons of destruction, excluding the thermonuclear type, but including, on a limited scale, bacteriological and chemical warfare.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In Vietnam, the patriotic forces of that country have carried on an almost uninterrupted war against three imperialist powers: Japan,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;SOURCE: Pamphlet, published in English by the Executive Secretariat of the Organization of the Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Havana, April 16, 1967.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt; &lt;span&gt;whose might suffered an almost vertical collapse after the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; France, who recovered from that defeated country its Indo-China colonies and ignored the promises it had made in harder times; and the United States, in this last phase of the struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;There were limited confrontations in every continent, although in Our America, for a long time, there were only incipient liberation struggles and military coups d’état until the Cuban Revolution resounded the alert, signaling the importance of this region. This action attracted the wrath of the imperialists, and Cuba was finally obliged to defend its coasts, first in Playa Girón, and again during the Missile Crisis.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This last incident could have unleashed a war of incalculable proportions if a U.S.-Soviet clash had occurred over the Cuban question.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;But, evidently, the focal point of all contradictions is at present the territory of the peninsula of Indo-China and the adjacent areas. Laos and Vietnam are torn by a civil war which has ceased being such by the entry into the conflict of U.S. imperialism with all its might, thus transforming the whole zone into a dangerous detonator ready at any moment to explode.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In Vietnam the confrontation has assumed extremely acute characteristics. It is not our intention, either, to chronicle this war. We shall simply remember and point out some milestones.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1954, after the annihilating defeat of Dien Bien Phu, an agreement was signed at Geneva dividing the country into two separate zones; elections were to be held within a term of 18 months to determine who should govern Vietnam and how the country should be reunified. The U.S. did not sign this document and started maneuvering to substitute the emperor, Bao Dai, who was a French puppet, for a man more amenable to its purposes. This happened to be Ngo Dinh Diem, whose tragic end—that of an orange squeezed dry by imperialism—is well known by all.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;During the months following the agreement, optimism reigned supreme in the camp of the popular forces. The last pockets of the anti-French resistance were dismantled in the South of the country—and they awaited the fulfillment of the Geneva agreements. But the patriots soon realized there would be no elections—unless the United States felt itself capable of imposing its will in the polls, which was practically impossible, even resorting to all its fraudulent methods. Once again the fighting broke out in the South and gradually acquired full intensity. At present the U.S. army has increased to over half a million invaders while the puppet forces decrease in number and, above all, have totally lost their combativeness.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Almost two years ago the United States started bombing systematically the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, in yet another attempt to overcome the belligerence of the South and impose, from a position of strength, a meeting at the conference table. At first, the bombardments were more or less isolated occurrences and were adorned with the mask of reprisals for alleged provocations from the North. Later on, as they increased in intensity and regularity, they became one gigantic attack carried out by the air force of the United States, day after day, for the purpose of destroying all vestiges of civilization in the Northern zone of the country. This is an episode of the infamously notorious “escalation.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The material aspirations of the Yankee world have been fulfilled to a great extent, regardless of the unflinching defense of the Vietnamese anti-aircraft artillery, of the numerous planes shot down (over 1,700), and of the socialist countries’ aid in war supplies.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;There is a sad reality: Vietnam—a nation representing the aspirations, the hopes of a whole world of forgotten peoples—is tragically alone. This nation must endure the furious attacks of U.S. technology, with practically no possibility of reprisals in the South and only some of defense in the North—but always alone.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The solidarity of all progressive forces of the world towards the people of Vietnam today is similar to the bitter irony of the plebeians coaxing on the gladiators in the Roman arena. It is not a matter of wishing success to the victim of aggression, but of sharing his fate; one must accompany him to his death or to victory.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When we analyze the lonely situation of the Vietnamese people, we are overcome by anguish at this illogical moment of humanity.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;U.S. imperialism is guilty of aggression—its crimes are enormous and cover the whole world. We already know all that, gentlemen! But this guilt also applies to those who, when the time came for a definition, hesitated to make Vietnam an inviolable part of the socialist world, running, of course, the risks of a war on a global scale—but also forcing a decision upon imperialism. And the guilt also applies to those who maintain a war of abuse and snares—started quite some time ago by the representatives of the two greatest powers of the socialist camp.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We must ask ourselves, seeking an honest answer: Is Vietnam isolated, or is it not? Is it not maintaining a dangerous equilibrium between the two quarrelling powers?&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;And what great people these are! What stoicism and courage! And what a lesson for the world is contained in this struggle! Not for a long time shall we be able to know if President Johnson ever seriously thought of bringing about some of the reforms needed by his people—to iron out the barbed class contradictions that grow each day with explosive power. The truth is that the improvements announced under the pompous title of the “Great Society” have dropped into the cesspool of Vietnam.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The largest of all imperialist powers feels in its own guts the bleeding inflicted by a poor and underdeveloped country; its fabulous economy feels the strain of the war effort. Murder is ceasing to be the most convenient business for its monopolies. Defensive weapons, and never in adequate number, are all these extraordinary soldiers have—besides love for their homeland, their society, and unsurpassed courage. But imperialism is bogging down in Vietnam, is unable to find a way out, and desperately seeks one that will overcome with dignity this dangerous situation in which it now finds itself. Furthermore, the Four Points put forward by the North and the Five Points of the South now corner imperialism, making the confrontation even more decisive.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Everything indicates that peace, this unstable peace which bears that name for the sole reason that no worldwide conflagration has taken place, is again in danger of being destroyed by some irrevocable and unacceptable step taken by the United States.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;What role shall we, the exploited people of the world, play? The peoples of the three continents focus their attention on Vietnam and learn their lesson. Since imperialists blackmail humanity by threatening it with war, the wise reaction is not to fear war. The general tactics of the people should be to launch a constant and a firm attack in all fronts where the confrontation is taking place.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In those places where this meager peace we have has been violated, which is our duty? To liberate ourselves at any price.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The world panorama is of great complexity. The struggle for liberation has not yet been undertaken by some countries of ancient Europe, sufficiently developed to realize the contradictions of capitalism, but weak to such a degree that they are unable either to follow imperialism or even to start on its own road. Their contradictions will reach an explosive stage during the forthcoming years—but their problems and, consequently, their own solutions are different from those of our dependent and economically underdeveloped countries.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The fundamental field of imperialist exploitation comprises the three underdeveloped continents: America, Asia, and Africa. Every country has also its own characteristics, but each continent, as a whole, also presents a certain unity.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Our America is integrated by a group of more or less homogeneous countries, and in most parts of its territory U.S. monopolist capitals maintain an absolute supremacy. Puppet governments or, in the best of cases, weak and fearful local rulers are incapable of contradicting orders from their Yankee master. The United States has nearly reached the climax of its political and economic domination; it could hardly advance much more; any change in the situation could bring about a setback. Their policy is to maintain that which has already been conquered. The line of action, at the present time, is limited to the brutal use of force with the purpose of thwarting the liberation movements, no matter of what type they might happen to be.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The slogan “We will not allow another Cuba” hides the possibility of perpetrating aggressions without fear of reprisal, such as the one carried out against the Dominican Republic or before that the massacre in Panama—and the clear warning stating that Yankee troops are ready to intervene anywhere in America where the ruling regime may be altered, thus endangering their interests. This policy enjoys an almost absolute impunity: the OAS is a suitable mask, in spite of its unpopularity; the inefficiency of the UN is ridiculous as well as tragic; the armies of all American countries are ready to intervene in order to smash their peoples. The International of Crime and Treason has in fact been organized. On the other hand, the autochthonous bourgeoisies have lost all their capacity to oppose imperialism—if they ever had it—and they have become the last card in the pack. There are no other alternatives: either a socialist revolution or a make-believe revolution.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Asia is a continent with many different characteristics. The struggle for liberation waged against a series of European colonial powers resulted in the establishment of more or less progressive governments, whose ulterior evolution has brought about, in some cases, the deepening of the primary objectives of national liberation and in others, a setback towards the adoption of pro-imperialist positions.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;From the economic point of view, the United States had very little to lose and much to gain from Asia. These changes benefited its interests; the struggle for the overthrow of other neocolonial powers and the penetration of new spheres of action in the economic field is carried out sometimes directly, occasionally through Japan.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;But there are special political conditions, particularly in Indo-China, which create in Asia certain characteristics of capital importance and play a decisive role in the entire U.S. military strategy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The imperialists encircle China through South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, South Vietnam, and Thailand, at least.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This dual situation, a strategic interest as important as the military encirclement of the People’s Republic of China and the penetration of these great markets—which they do not dominate yet—turns Asia into one of the most explosive points of the world today, in spite of its apparent stability outside of the Vietnamese war zone.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Middle East, though it geographically belongs to this continent, has its own contradictions and is actively in ferment; it is impossible to foretell how far this cold war between Israel, backed by the imperialists, and the progressive countries of that zone will go. This is just another one of the volcanoes threatening eruption in the world today.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Africa offers an almost virgin territory to the neocolonial invasion. There have been changes which, to some extent, forced neocolonial powers to give up their former absolute prerogatives. But when these changes are carried out uninterruptedly, colonialism continues in the form of neocolonialism with similar effects as far as the economic situation is concerned.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The United States had no colonies in this region but is now struggling to penetrate its partners’ fiefs. It can be said that following the strategic plans of U.S. imperialism, Africa constitutes its long-range reservoir; its present investments, though, are only important in the Union of South Africa, and its penetration is beginning to be felt in the Congo, Nigeria, and other countries where a violent rivalry with other imperialist powers is beginning to take place (in a pacific manner up to the present time).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;So far, it does not have there great interests to defend except its pretended right to intervene in every spot of the world where its monopolies detect huge profits or the existence of large reserves of raw materials.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;All this past history justifies our concern regarding the possibilities of liberating the peoples within a long or a short period of time.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;If we stop to analyze Africa, we shall observe that in the Portuguese colonies of Guinea, Mozambique, and Angola the struggle is waged with relative intensity, with a concrete success in the first one and with variable success in the other two. We still witness in the Congo the dispute between Lumumba’s successors and the old accomplices of Tshombe, a dispute which at the present time seems to favor the latter: those who have “pacified” a large area of the country for their own benefit—though the war is still latent.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In Rhodesia we have a different problem: British imperialism used every means within its reach to place power in the hands of the white minority, who, at the present time, unlawfully holds it. The conflict, from the British point of view, is absolutely unofficial; this Western power, with its habitual diplomatic cleverness—also called hypocrisy in the strict sense of the word—presents a facade of displeasure before the measures adopted by the government of Ian Smith. Its crafty attitude is supported by some Commonwealth countries that follow it, but is attacked by a large group of countries belonging to Black Africa, whether they are or not servile economic lackeys of British imperialism.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Should the rebellious efforts of these patriots succeed and this movement receive the effective support of neighboring African nations, the situation in Rhodesia may become extremely explosive. But for the moment all these problems are being discussed in harmless organizations such as the UN, the Commonwealth, and the OAU.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The social and political evolution of Africa does not lead us to expect a continental revolution. The liberation struggle against the Portuguese should end victoriously, but Portugal does not mean anything in the imperialist field. The confrontations of revolutionary importance are those which place at bay all the imperialist apparatus; this does not mean, however, that we should stop fighting for the liberation of the three Portuguese colonies and for the deepening of their revolutions.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When the black masses of South Africa or Rhodesia start their authentic revolutionary struggle, a new era will dawn in Africa. Or when the impoverished masses of a nation rise up to rescue their right to a decent life from the hands of the ruling oligarchies.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Up to now, army putsches follow one another; a group of officers succeeds another or substitutes a ruler who no longer serves their caste interests or those of the powers who covertly manage him—but there are no great popular upheavals. In the Congo these characteristics appeared briefly, generated by the memory of Lumumba, but they have been losing strength in the last few months.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In Asia, as we have seen, the situation is explosive. The points of friction are not only Vietnam and Laos, where there is fighting; such a point is also Cambodia, where at any time a direct U.S. aggression may start, [as well as] Thailand, Malaya, and, of course, Indonesia, where we cannot assume that the last word has been said, regardless of the annihilation of the Communist Party in that country when the reactionaries took over. And also, naturally, the Middle East.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In Latin America the armed struggle is going on in Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela, and Bolivia; the first uprisings are cropping up in Brazil. There are also some resistance focuses which appear and then are extinguished. But almost all the countries of this continent are ripe for a type of struggle that, in order to achieve victory, cannot be content with anything less than establishing a government of socialist tendencies.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In this continent practically only one tongue is spoken (with the exception of Brazil, with whose people, those who speak Spanish can easily make themselves understood, owing to the great similarity of both languages). There is also such a great similarity between the classes in these countries, that they have attained identification among themselves of an &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;international americano&lt;/span&gt; type, much more complete than in the other continents. Language, habits, religion, a common foreign master, unite them. The degree and the form of exploitation are similar for both the exploiters and the men they exploit in the majority of the countries of Our America. And rebellion is ripening swiftly in it.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We may ask ourselves: How shall this rebellion flourish? What type will it be? We have maintained for quite some time now that, owing to the similarity of their characteristics, the struggle in Our America will achieve, in due course, continental proportions. It shall be the scene of many great battles fought for the liberation of humanity.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Within the frame of this struggle on a continental scale, the battles which are now taking place are only episodes—but they have already furnished their martyrs, who will figure in the history of Our America as having given their necessary quota of blood in this last stage of the fight for the total freedom of man. These names will include Comandante Turcios Lima, Padre Camilo Torres, Comandante Fabricio Ojeda, Comandantes Lobatón and Luis de la Puente Uceda, all outstanding figures in the revolutionary movements of Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;But the active movement of the people creates its new leaders: César Montes and Yon Sosa raise up their flag in Guatemala; Fabio Vázquez and Marulanda in Colombia; Douglas Bravo in the Western part of the country and Américo Martín in El Bachiller, both directing their respective Venezuelan fronts.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;New uprisings shall take place in these and other countries of Our America, as it has already happened in Bolivia, and they shall continue to grow in the midst of all the hardships inherent to this dangerous profession of being modern revolutionaries. Many shall perish, victims of their errors; others shall fall in the tough battle that approaches; new fighters and new leaders shall appear in the warmth of the revolutionary struggle. The people shall create their warriors and leaders in the selective framework of the war itself—and Yankee agents of repression shall increase. Today there are military aides in all the countries where armed struggle is growing; the Peruvian army apparently carried out a successful action against the revolutionaries in that country, an army also trained and advised by the Yankees. But if the focuses of war grow with sufficient political and military insight, they shall become practically invincible and shall force the Yankees to send reinforcements. In Peru itself many new figures, practically unknown, are now reorganizing the guerrillas. Little by little, the obsolete weapons, which are sufficient for the repression of small armed bands, will be exchanged for modern armaments, and the U.S. military aides will be substituted by actual fighters until, at a given moment, they are forced to send increasingly greater numbers of regular troops to ensure the relative stability of a government whose national puppet army is disintegrating before the impetuous attacks of the guerrillas. It is the road of Vietnam; it is the road that should be followed by the people; it is the road that will be followed in Our America, with the advantage that the armed groups could create Coordinating Councils to embarrass the repressive forces of Yankee imperialism and accelerate the revolutionary triumph.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;America, a forgotten continent in the last liberation struggles, which is now beginning to make itself heard through the Tricontinental in the voice of the vanguard of its peoples, the Cuban Revolution, has before it a task of much greater relevance: to create a second or a third Vietnam, or the second and third Vietnam of the world.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We must bear in mind that imperialism is a world system, the last stage of capitalism—and it must be defeated in a world confrontation. The strategic end of this struggle should be the destruction of imperialism. Our share, the responsibility of the exploited and underdeveloped of the world, is to eliminate the foundations of imperialism: our oppressed nations, from where they extract capital, raw materials, technicians, and cheap labor, and to which they export new capital—instruments of domination—arms and all kinds of articles, thus submerging us in an absolute dependence.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The fundamental element of this strategic end shall be the real liberation of all people, a liberation that will be brought about through armed struggle in most cases and which shall be, in Our America, almost indefectibly, a Socialist Revolution.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;While envisaging the destruction of imperialism, it is necessary to identify its head, which is no other than the United States of America.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We must carry out a general task with the tactical purpose of getting the enemy out of its natural environment, forcing him to fight in regions where his own life and habits will clash with the existing reality. We must not underrate our adversary; the U.S. soldier has technical capacity and is backed by weapons and resources of such magnitude that render him frightful. He lacks the essential ideologic motivation which his bitterest enemies of today—the Vietnamese soldiers—have in the highest degree. We will only be able to overcome that army by undermining their morale—and this is accomplished by defeating it and causing it repeated sufferings.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;But this brief outline of victories carries within itself the immense sacrifice of the people, sacrifices that should be demanded beginning today, in plain daylight, and which perhaps may be less painful than those we would have to endure if we constantly avoided battle in an attempt to have others pull our chestnuts out of the fire.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It is probable, of course, that the last liberated country shall accomplish this without an armed struggle and the sufferings of a long and cruel war against the imperialists—this they might avoid. But perhaps it will be impossible to avoid this struggle or its effects in a global conflagration; the suffering would be the same, or perhaps even greater. We cannot foresee the future, but we should never give in to the defeatist temptation of being the vanguard of a nation which yearns for freedom, but abhors the struggle it entails and awaits its freedom as a crumb of victory.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It is absolutely just to avoid all useless sacrifices. Therefore, it is so important to clear up the real possibilities that dependent America may have of liberating itself through pacific means. For us, the solution to this question is quite clear: the present moment may or may not be the proper one for starting the struggle, but we cannot harbor any illusions, and we have no right to do so, that freedom can be obtained without fighting. And these battles shall not be mere street fights with stones against tear-gas bombs, or of pacific general strikes; neither shall it be the battle of a furious people destroying in two or three days the repressive scaffolds of the ruling oligarchies; the struggle shall be long, harsh, and its front shall be in the guerrillas’ refuge, in the cities, in the homes of the fighters—where the repressive forces shall go seeking easy victims among their families—in the massacred rural population, in the villages or cities destroyed by the bombardments of the enemy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;They are pushing us into this struggle; there is no alternative: we must prepare it and we must decide to undertake it.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The beginnings will not be easy; they shall be extremely difficult. All the oligarchies’ powers of repression, all their capacity for brutality and demagoguery will be placed at the service of their cause. Our mission, in the first hour, shall be to survive; later, we shall follow the perennial example of the guerrilla, carrying out armed propaganda (in the Vietnamese sense, that is, the bullets of propaganda, of the battles won or lost—but fought—against the enemy): the great lesson of the invincibility of the guerrillas taking root in the dispossessed masses; the galvanizing of the national spirit, the preparation for harder tasks, for resisting even more violent repressions; hatred as an element of the struggle, a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it: to his home, to his centers of entertainment; a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be, make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move. Then his moral fiber shall begin to decline. He will even become more beastly, but we shall notice how the signs of decadence begin to appear.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;And let us develop a true proletarian internationalism; with international proletarian armies, the flag under which we fight would be the sacred cause of redeeming humanity. To die under the flag of Vietnam, of Venezuela, of Guatemala, of Laos, of Guinea, of Colombia, of Bolivia, of Brazil—to name only a few scenes of today’s armed struggle—would be equally glorious and desirable for an American, an Asian, an African, even a European.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Each spilt drop of blood, in any country under whose flag one has not been born, is an experience passed on to those who survive, to be added later to the liberation struggle of his own country. And each nation liberated is a phase won in the battle for the liberation of one’s own country.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The time has come to settle our discrepancies and place everything at the service of our struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We all know great controversies rend the world now fighting for freedom; no one can hide it. We also know that they have reached such intensity and such bitterness that the possibility of dialogue and reconciliation seems extremely difficult, if not impossible. It is a useless task to search for ways and means to propitiate a dialogue which the hostile parties avoid. However, the enemy is there; it strikes every day and threatens us with new blows, and these blows will unite us, today, tomorrow, or the day after. Whoever understands this first, and prepares for this necessary union, shall have the people’s gratitude.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Owing to the virulence and the intransigence with which each cause is defended, we, the dispossessed, cannot take sides for one form or the other of these discrepancies, even though sometimes we coincide with the contentions of one party or the other, or in a greater measure with those of one part more than with those of the other. In time of war, the expression of current differences constitutes a weakness, but at this stage it is an illusion to attempt to settle them by means of words. History shall erode them or shall give them their true meaning.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In our struggling world every discrepancy regarding tactics, the methods of action for the attainment of limited objectives, should be analyzed with due respect to another man’s opinions. Regarding our great strategic objective, the total destruction of imperialism by armed struggle, we should be uncompromising.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Let us sum up our hopes for victory: total destruction of imperialism by eliminating its firmest bulwark, the oppression exercised by the United States of America. To carry out, as a tactical method, the people’s gradual liberation, one by one or in groups: driving the enemy into a difficult fight away from its own territory, dismantling all its sustenance bases, that is, its dependent territories.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This means a long war. And, once more, we repeat it, a cruel war. Let no one fool himself at the outset and let no one hesitate to start out for fear of the consequences it may bring to his people. It is almost our sole hope for victory. We cannot elude the call of this hour. Vietnam is pointing it out with its endless lesson of heroism, its tragic and everyday lesson of struggle and death for the attainment of final victory.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;There, the imperialist soldiers endure the discomforts of those who, used to enjoying the U.S. standard of living, have to live in a hostile land with the insecurity of being unable to move without being aware of walking on enemy territory—death to those who dare take a step out of their fortified encampment, the permanent hostility of the entire population. All this has internal repercussions in the United States [and] propitiates the resurgence of an element which is being minimized in spite of its vigor by all imperialist forces: class struggle even within its own territory.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;How close we could look into a bright future should two, three, or many Vietnams flourish throughout the world with their share of deaths and their immense tragedies, their everyday heroism and their repeated blows against imperialism, impelled to disperse its forces under the sudden attack and the increasing hatred of all peoples of the world!&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;And if we were all capable of uniting to make our blows stronger and infallible and so increase the effectiveness of all kinds of support given to the struggling people—how great and close would that future be!&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;If we, in a small point of the world map, are able to fulfill our duty and place at the disposal of this struggle whatever little of ourselves we are permitted to give: our lives, our sacrifice; and if some day we have to breathe our last breath on any land, already ours, sprinkled with our blood, let it be known that we have measured the scope of our actions and that we only consider ourselves elements in the great army of the proletariat but that we are proud of having learned from the Cuban Revolution, and from its maximum leader, the great lesson emanating from his attitude in this part of the world: “What do the dangers or the sacrifices of a man or of a nation matter, when the destiny of humanity is at stake?”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism, and a battle hymn for the people’s unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States of America. Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear, that another hand may be extended to wield our weapons, and that other men be ready to intone our funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine guns and new battle cries of war and victory.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;part&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;III. Case Studies of Guerrilla Movements and Political Change&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;T&lt;/span&gt;he case histories that follow are intended as brief summaries of the guerrilla movements in seven Latin American nations—Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and El Salvador—from 1959 to the 1990s. These nations were chosen for consideration because they were the scene of revolutionary guerrilla movements that either were rural-based or counted upon a significant rural component.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 ftn01.html#ftn fn8|&lt;span&gt;h&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In most of these cases the movements failed to achieve their political objectives; in others the struggle continues; and in Nicaragua, after repeated military defeats in the 1960s and early 1970s, the revolutionaries gained military success.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;For each of the countries discussed below there exists a significant professional literature, some of which we have cited in the notes to aid those readers who wish to pursue in more detail the experiences of a particular country. Our intent here is to outline for each country: (1) the political context of the guerrilla struggle; (2) the origins and leadership of the guerrilla movements; (3) the politico-military evolution of the movements until approximately 1970; (4) events from 1970 until the end of the 1980s; and (5) the fate of guerrilla insurgencies after 1989. In addition to a chronological summary, we have highlighted in each case four basic variables critical to Che Guevara’s analyses of the potential for guerrilla movements in Latin America:&lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> # The national political context, including: (a) the existence (or lack thereof) of a Caribbean-type dictatorship; (b) the legitimacy of the incumbent government (that is, whether it came to power through popular elections); (c) the institutional strength (where it existed) of liberal democracy, including continuity and honesty of elections, and strength and diversity of the nation’s labor movement, peasant organizations, and other political movements; and (d) “objective conditions” and “subjective conditions” for revolution.<br /> # The suitability of the physical terrain for guerrilla warfare (“zones difficult to reach, either because of dense forests, steep mountains, impassable deserts or marshes”).<br /> # The salience and political relevance of the “agrarian question” (“the guerrilla fighter is above all an agrarian revolutionary”).<br /> # Revolutionary Marxist traditions and/or historical guerrilla movements that contributed to a popular base for new guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; (“The guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area. This is an indispensable condition!”).<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Beyond these variables explicit in Che Guevara’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, we have also considered for each country the role of the U.S. counterinsurgency programs, the political response of incumbent governments, the nature of political and ideological fragmentation of the guerrilla movements, and, finally, the status of revolutionary guerrilla movements in the 1990s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;chapter&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;u&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Political Chronology&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;tableau&quot;&gt;<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable none&quot;<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1931—44<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Dictatorship of Jorge Ubico.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1944<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Popular uprising ousts Ubico and begins process of political and social reform.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1944—50<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Juan José Arévalo. Constitution adopted providing new rights to labor and peasants. Educational reforms and political “opening” threatens Guatemalan oligarchy.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1951—54<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Jacobo Arbenz. Arbenz institutes agrarian reforms, mobilization of peasantry. Communist party participates in Arbenz government. Expropriation of United Fruit properties provokes U.S. intervention.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1954<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |U.S.-financed and -directed coup ousts Arbenz and installs puppet dictator; reversal of reform program begins.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1954—57<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. Counterrevolution supported by United States; many peasant and labor leaders are executed or “disappear.”<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1957<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Castillo Armas assassinated. Political turmoil ensues.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1958—63<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of General Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, the first military president to face post-1959 guerrilla movements. Abortive coup November 13, 1960, led by Marco Antonio Yon Sosa and Luis Turcios Lima. MR-13 and FAR begin operations (1962). United States provides military assistance against guerrillas after Ydígoras allows Bay of Pigs invasion force to train in Guatemala. Defense Minister Enrique Peralta Azurdia heads coup against Ydígoras (March 1963).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1963—66<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Colonel Enrique Peralta Azurdia. Strong anti-Communist rhetoric accompanies new Law for Defense of Democratic Institutions. Increasing confrontation between FAR and military units. Peralta Azurdia announces “Operation Honesty” to end corruption.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1966—69<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Julio César Méndez Montenegro, the only “civilian” administration from 1958 to 1984. Fierce fighting with guerrillas. Increase in activity of right-wing death squads. Turcios Lima dies in accident (1966). U.S. ambassador assassinated (1968). Guerrillas suffer serious military and political setbacks (1968—70). Colonel Carlos Arana Osorio heads counterinsurgency “Operation Guatemala” in Zacapa.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1970—84<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Sequence of “elected” military administrations.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1970—74<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of General Carlos Arana Osorio; transition to institutionalized military regime. Focus on modernization and attraction of foreign capital. Beginnings of Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP) in Ixcan (1972—75). Fierce repression of Communist party leadership and increase in political murders.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1974—78<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of General Kjell Laugerud García. 1976 earthquake devastates part of Guatemala. Upsurge in urban labor movement and protests. Revival of guerrilla movements in rural areas. U.S. State Department designates Guatemala as a “gross and consistent violator of human rights” (1977).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1978—82<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of General Romeo Lucas García. Massacre of peasants at Panzós (May 1978); riots over bus fares (October 1978); increasing political unrest. Emergence of ESA death squads, increasing control by military over Guatemalan economy and society. Growth of guerrilla movements. Occupation by guerrillas of Spanish embassy in Guatemala City (January 1980); regime responds with military attack. URNG unites FAR, EGP, and ORPA in strategy of “popular revolutionary war” (January 1982).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1982<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Elections in March, followed by “internal coup” that installs General José Efraín Ríos Montt as president.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1982—83<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |General Ríos Montt announces sweeping reforms and war against corruption. Intensification of counterinsurgency programs. Plan Victoria ’82 leaves thousands of civilian casualties in growing civil war. Ríos Montt’s evangelical religion and other disagreements with military and civilian elites provoke coup.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1983<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Coup substitutes General Humberto Mejía Víctores for Ríos Montt. Elections scheduled for March 1984 amid continued political instability, economic recession, and military efforts against growing insurgency.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1984<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Elections for constitutional convention (July).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1985<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Presidential elections; transition to civilian government.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1985—90<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of President Vinicio Cerezo, Christian Democratic party. President survives several coup attempts (May 1987, May 1989). Military opposes concessions to guerrillas. Guatemala takes lead in Central American regional peace process; Central American presidents agree to regional peace plan: Esquipulas II, 1987. Establishment of National Reconciliation Commission (CNR), 1987; first URNG-CNR meeting (August 1988); continued talks until Oslo, Norway, agreements (March 1990); episodic combat continues, operation of death squads. United States hardens stance toward human rights violations by Guatemalan military. Guerrillas’ military capability diminishes but claims army sustained 2,370 casualties in 1989 and sabotages power network in much of country (May 1990); guerrillas still insist on major social and economic reforms as well as constitutional change to end insurgency.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1991—93<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of President Jorge Serrano. Negotiations with URNG continue on reforms required for end of insurgency. Corruption scandals corrode party system and erode legitimacy of Serrano government; president illegally suspends the constitution (May 1993) emulating &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;autogolpe&lt;/span&gt; of Peru’s president Alberto Fujimori (1992); Serrano’s self-coup fails, president goes into exile. Assassination of UCN leader Jorge Carpio (July 1993).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1993—95<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Interim presidency of Ramiro de Le6n Carpio (ex-human rights ombudsman). New peace plan proposed to URNG; URNG claims 1,062 “operations” in 1993—442 military, 568 propaganda, 52 sabotage, in eighteen of country’s twenty-two departments; simultaneous negotiations, military operations continue into 1995 with guerrillas’ strength waning. President eliminates “military commissioners” (June).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1996—<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of President Alvaro Arzú. Limited guerrilla operations continue; kidnappings, sabotage, “taxes” on landowners, merchants, road use; infrequent skirmishes with military. URNG insists on peace negotiation agenda that includes socioeconomic policy, guerrillas’ reincorporation into society, and other items agreed to in early 1990s. Tentative accord (June 1996); negotiations temporarily suspended (November 1996) when one faction of<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |URNG kidnaps prominent politician; some military and political leaders suggest that URNG has been reduced to “criminal element” and should be dealt with by police and courts. Guerrillas attempt to sustain their political leverage with “operations,” forcing the government to conclude negotiations; insist on negotiated end to war rather than “surrender”; peace accord signed to end war (December 1996).<br /> |}<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Background&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The political history of Guatemala is the story of personalist dictatorships, supported by military forces and “legitimized” by periodic “elections.” In the 105 years before 1944 four dictators occupied the presidency of the country for more than 70 years. Between 1954 and 1983 military officers and one civilian president reduced the average tenure of dictators considerably but did nothing to improve the miserable conditions experienced by the majority of the Guatemalan population.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This generalized misery and poverty serve as a permanent seed of social and political discontent. Nurture of the seed by a variety of revolutionary movements and guerrilla cadres since the early 1960s made Guatemala a bloody battleground for followers of Che Guevara’s example and for the forces of counterrevolution and counterinsurgency. Since 1961, Guatemala has been in a more or less permanent state of internal war as the early &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foquistas&lt;/span&gt; evolved toward the strategy of prolonged popular war.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;From 1944 to 1954 a series of political and socioeconomic changes introduced by Presidents Juan José Arévalo (1944—50) and Jacobo Arbenz (1951—54) initiated agrarian reforms, mobilization of urban and rural labor, democratization of the political process, and a surge of Guatemalan nationalism. Inasmuch as these reforms included expropriation of idle agricultural lands owned by the powerful United Fruit Company and participation by Communists and other leftists in Guatemalan politics, U.S. policymakers determined that the Arbenz government represented a Communist threat to the Western Hemisphere.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pressured by United Fruit Company’s public relations campaign against the Guatemalan government and, perhaps more important, determined to protect American investors throughout Latin America from expropriation of their property, the U.S. government adopted an increasingly hostile policy toward Guatemala. Of even more importance than the concern for investors, however, was the belief by high-level policymakers that Guatemala represented the first instance of Soviet penetration of the Western Hemisphere. When conspiracies with Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza and the governments of El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Caribbean nations failed to produce a surrogate invasion force, the United States carried out a “liberationist” coup that installed Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas as the new Guatemalan president and ended what the Eisenhower administration had characterized as “a mortal threat to our own national security.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en62|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Just before the U.S. intervention in Guatemala, U.S. policymakers imposed the “Caracas Declaration of Solidarity” upon the majority of the members of the Organization of American States (OAS). This declaration in many respects set the tone for the next twenty years of cold war-oriented U.S. policy toward Latin America. Clearly aimed at Guatemala, the declaration asserted that “the domination or control of the political institutions of any American State by the international communist movement extending to this Hemisphere the political system of an extra continental power, would constitute a threat to the sovereignty and political independence of the American States, endangering the peace of America.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en63|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The declaration underplayed U.S. concern for American investment in Latin America. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles made it clear that even “if the United Fruit matter were settled, if they gave a gold piece for every banana, the problem would remain as it is today as far as the presence of communist infiltration in Guatemala is concerned. That is the problem, not United Fruit.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en64|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Thus, cold war politics brought U.S. military intervention in Guatemala in the mid-1950s even before the Cuban Revolution and Che Guevara threatened the export of Cuban socialism. Che Guevara’s personal participation on the losing side of this episode in Guatemala would greatly influence his later revolutionary writing and action. U.S. intervention made clear the need for a revolutionary army to defend any revolutionary regime in Latin America and also prepared the Cubans and Che for the Bay of Pigs invasion by U.S.-supported anti-Castro Cubans in 1961—an intervention planned and executed by many of the same people responsible for the Guatemalan “success” of 1954.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Reversals of the agrarian reforms of the Arbenz government; the assassination of peasant, union, and political leaders; and an end to even the superficial forms of democratic processes (with the exception of periodic “elections”) set a precedent for Guatemalan politics for the next three decades. Personalist political parties allied with different factions within the armed forces, along with weak local versions of reformist parties (for example, the Christian Democrats), barely masked the military domination of national politics. Disputes among military factions and their civilian cohorts produced destructive coups and attempted coups whose major effects were to further alienate the majority of the population from politics and to require the United States to replace equipment lost in internecine combat. Though it lacked the “strongman” caudillo (like Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, or Somoza in Nicaragua), Guatemala met the basic requisites of a Caribbean dictatorship with little, but perhaps enough, of the democratic mask that Che Guevara suggested would impede the successful development of guerrilla movements.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Notwithstanding its dictatorial politics and rural poverty, Guatemala, like Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, posed a difficulty for revolutionary guerrilla movements little considered by Che Guevara in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; or its elaboration in 1963, “Guerrilla Warfare: A Method.” Guatemala’s population is predominantly Indian, with as much as 70 percent of the people functionally illiterate in Spanish. Moreover, this Indian population is itself linguistically and ethnically diverse. Centuries-long exploitation of the Indians by Guatemala’s elites and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;ladinos&lt;/span&gt; makes it extremely difficult to rally the overwhelmingly rural population to any ideologically based political movement.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en65|&lt;span&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;However, the mobilization of rural workers and peasants in the early 1950s for agrarian reform and rural unionization programs demonstrated the revolutionary potential in the rural regions. Concrete demands for land, higher wages, and an end to master-servant social relations, rather than ideological consciousness, motivated campesino organization and political participation. During these years more than 200,000 rural workers and peasants affiliated with peasant syndicates supported the reforms initiated by the Arbenz government. By June 1954 over 600,000 hectares of land were expropriated, with accompanying strikes, rallies, and land occupation by peasant organizations.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en66|&lt;span&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Temporary beneficiaries of the reforms, Indian peasants soon paid the price of the U.S.-supported counterrevolution. Many were brutally slaughtered and peasant and union leaders were persecuted and assassinated. The restoration of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;latifundia&lt;/span&gt; once again subordinated the rural population to the approximately 2 percent of landowners who had controlled more than 70 percent of the country’s farmland in 1950.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The memory of this repression and of the reforms that might have been is a two-edged sword. Fear of violence intimidates much of the rural population while the legacy of hope of the Arévalo-Arbenz years provides a powerful symbol for revolutionary cadres. Just as agricultural cooperatives became synonymous with “communism” for the landlords and for reactionary elements in the Church and the military, hope for a new agrarian reform links the peasantry to the guerrilla struggle whenever there is opportunity for effective action. Thus, guerrilla leader César Montes noted:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;In all the peasant areas we have visited, we easily explain ourselves by saying that the FAR [Rebel Armed Forces] struggle is merely the prolongation by other means of the 1944 revolution. The CIA won and Guatemala lost because that revolution was led by the national bourgeoisie. Now the peasants and working class know that they must not put more trust in other classes than in themselves, in their own strength. Despite its limitations the 1944—54 revolution is a great source of lessons for us and plays an important role as a historical national example of revolution. It has kept the revolutionary flame burning in Guatemala—a unique feature of our country—because it provides a real and living example of what a revolution is. That’s a point of reference that anyone can understand.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en67|&lt;span&gt;6&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;The campesinos were not interested in the cold war or “communism”; they recognize their allies and enemies by the practical consequences of revolutionary or counterrevolutionary action. Either side could win them over, in the short run, with pragmatic policies offering minimal economic and social gains.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Added to cultural and linguistic barriers, past failures and repression discourage successful recruitment of the Indian population to movements headed by urban political elites—university students, middle-class army officers, intellectuals, and reformist or revolutionary political parties. Even when people are sympathetic to opponents of the regime, commitment to revolutionary struggle requires, as Che Guevara learned, long-term political education, building of trust, and “mass work” by insurgents. Centuries of changes in regime without benefit to the Indian peoples make their commitment to any political movement a high risk with little expectation of altering the social and economic legacy of the past. No insurgent movement in Guatemala has overcome these obstacles, although leftist Catholic and Marxist efforts in the early 1970s and 1980s seem to have aroused significant levels of opposition to the successive dictatorships and recurrent waves of political assassinations and “disappearances.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Even if the social characteristics of Guatemala made pragmatic deviations from Che Guevara’s principles in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; necessary, certain aspects of Guatemala’s political and social reality conformed precisely to Guevara’s original formulations:&lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> # Guatemala, despite periodic “elections,” lacked any effective semblance of a formal democracy and any effective commitment of the general population to a supposed legitimate political regime. Unlike Cuba or Nicaragua, however, Guatemala lacked the personal embodiment of dictatorship (like Batista in Cuba or Somoza in Nicaragua) to serve as a focus of revolutionary struggle. &lt;span&gt;Guatemala has lacked an effective political party system or moderate political movements that offered realistic alternatives for political reform. Unlike Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, or Colombia, the country has no powerful reformist political organizations with strong ties to urban and rural workers and peasants. And unlike that of El Salvador, the Guatemalan military created no single official party of its own to substitute for an effective, competitive party system.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> # The physical terrain of certain areas of Guatemala provides considerable opportunity for guerrilla operations and the possibility for creating a “counter-state” in the countryside. Again, however, in the isolated rural regions and the highlands the dominant Indian population proved extremely difficult to incorporate into revolutionary movements in the 1960s, somewhat obviating the suitability of physical terrain for guerrilla operations.<br /> # Guatemala was and is a predominantly rural society, with power and wealth based upon the traditional and plantation &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;latifundia&lt;/span&gt;. In the early 1960s over 65 percent of the population was classified as “active in agriculture” and less than 10 percent worked in manufacturing industries. The most important political, social, and economic issues for the population focused on land and agrarian reform. &lt;span&gt;The poverty, misery, and exploitation of the rural population conformed closely to Che Guevara’s portrayal of the general objective conditions that would provide the basis for revolutionary struggle and political recruitment of the rural population by the guerrilla cadres.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> # Guatemala lacked a strong vanguard party, rural cadres, and linkages between urban and rural opposition movements. This meant that substantial “political work” was required to stimulate the creation of appropriate subjective conditions for successful revolutionary efforts in the countryside. It also meant that a guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; might precipitate insurgency, as in Cuba, but would need to work hard to build the necessary links with political parties and urban groups in order to create a broad-based popular coalition for revolutionary action.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Origins of the Guerrilla Movements in the 1960s&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;From the very outset of U.S. counterrevolutionary efforts in the 1960s, Guatemala played a central role. The brother of Guatemala’s ambassador to the United States provided one of his large rural estates as a base for the CIA to train anti-Fidelista Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion and Guatemala’s government assured a supply of prostitutes for the invasion forces-in-training.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en68|&lt;span&gt;7&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This subordination of Guatemalan territory and sovereignty to U.S. politico-military policy alienated a number of young nationalist military offficers. On November 13, 1960, a group of these military officers led a coup attempt similar in many respects to numerous previous coups throughout Latin America and Guatemala. Protesting against government corruption and violations of the constitution, and proclaiming the need for social, economic, and political reform, the young officers also pointed to the use of Guatemala as a training camp for the CIA in explaining the motivation for their uprising. After taking over two garrisons (Fort Matamoros and the military air base at Zacapa), the would-be coup was defeated with support from Cuban exile pilots and U.S. naval units.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en69|&lt;span&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Although the insurrectionists included young officers trained by the United States—Marco Antonio Yon Sosa, Luis Trejos, Luis Turcios Lima—President Miguel Ydígoras (himself later a victim of a U.S.-supported coup) blamed Cuba, former presidents Arévalo and Arbenz, and local Communists for the uprising.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en70|&lt;span&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; After a brief exile in Honduras and El Salvador, Turcios Lima, Yon Sosa, and other insurgents determined to oust Ydígoras found refuge and a small amount of support among the peasantry in the countryside. Thus, dissident military officers seeking political and economic reform provided the initiative and leadership elements for the Guatemalan guerrillas of the early 1960s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;After contacts with Guatemala’s fragmented political parties and labor movements produced little practical support for the insurgency against the Ydígoras government, the young officers and their supporters decided upon guerrilla warfare in the tradition of Sandino in Nicaragua (see the section on Nicaragua in this volume) and Fidel Castro in Cuba. Based in the mountains of Izabal, in the Sierra de Las Minas, the eclectic guerrilla cadre of nationalists, Communists, reformists, and peasant soldiers called upon the Guatemalan people to join their struggle to overthrow the Ydígoras regime: “Democracy vanished from our country long ago. No people can live in a country where there is no democracy. That is why the demand for changes is mounting in our country. We can no longer carry on in this way. We must overthrow the Ydígoras government and set up a government which respects human rights, seeks ways and means to save our country from its hardships, and pursues a serious, self-respecting foreign policy.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en71|&lt;span&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Seemingly intent on a typical ouster of the incumbent government, the rebels attacked military installations, murdered key government officials, and “expropriated” money from the United Fruit Company and from other symbols of the government’s alliance with foreigners. Lacking any clear ideological underpinnings or direction from revolutionary political cadres, the insurgents sought to win over dissident military officers (their former professional colleagues), students, and middle-class professionals. Though much less politically sophisticated, this strategy foreshadowed the popular revolutionary war doctrine of the late 1970s and early 1980s in its effort to bring together a disparate ideological and multiclass coalition.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ydígoras’s notorious subordination to U.S. foreign policy and the demands of the United Fruit Company (despite his earlier anti-U.S. rhetoric), combined with the ambitions of Guatemala’s opposition politicians (Christian Democrats, National Liberation Movement, Revolutionary Party), produced a joint manifesto calling for his resignation.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en72|&lt;span&gt;11&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Student protests and riots in Guatemala City brought the only response that could permit Ydígoras’s political survival: militarization of the regime and intensified repression. On March 16, 1962, Ydígoras turned control of Guatemala City over to the army; a month later a government reorganization left the foreign minister as the only civilian in the cabinet.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The guerrillas melted back into the countryside under military pressure from the Guatemalan army. Efforts to recruit new supporters and renew the military struggle met disastrous results. An attempt made on November 13, 1962, in commemoration of the 1960 uprising, to establish a guerrilla front in the western part of the country failed for lack of peasant support, and the leaders were captured and shot.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en73|&lt;span&gt;12&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; From the military debacle, Turcios Lima and other guerrilla leaders sought new alliances and political direction. Cadres from the weak, outlawed, but determined Partido Guatemalteco de Trabajo (PGT, Guatemalan Communist Party), still recovering from the persecution after the “liberationist” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;golpe&lt;/span&gt; of 1954, joined forces with Turcios Lima and student activists (the “12th of April Movement”) to form the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR).&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en74|&lt;span&gt;13&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Politico-Military Evolution of the Guerrilla Struggle&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Never a homogeneous movement, the &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;FAR&lt;/span&gt; suffered from the outset from disputes over the tactical and moral desirability of supporting candidates in upcoming mayoral and presidential elections, over its relationship to the PGT, over its basic program, and over military operations. When President Ydígoras’s defense minister, Colonel Enrique Peralta Azurdia, carried out a coup on March 30, 1963, because Guatemala was “on the brink of an internal conflict as a result of subversion promoted by pro-Communist sectors, and because of the infiltration of Communists that had become more alarming each day,” this at least eliminated the electoral option as a matter of contention within the FAR. Peralta Azurdia intended to achieve a military resolution of the political crisis; his administration began a reign of terror, while U.S.-supported counterinsurgency forces targeted guerrillas, “Communists,” and opposition political movements of various political persuasions.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en75|&lt;span&gt;14&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Colonel Peralta justified his coup as an effort to avoid an imminent civil war and the establishment of a Communist regime. His government shortly proclaimed a Law for the Defense of Democratic Institutions and decreed prison terms for persons distributing “Communist” literature (two years), membership in the Communist party (ten years), and “terrorism” (fifteen years). Frustrated by its inability to destroy the guerrilla cadres in Esquintla, Zacapa, and Izabal, the government intensified persecution of labor leaders, while incidents of intimidation, torture, and “disappearances” of peasants increased.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In turn, the FAR provoked government repression with attacks on military units, kidnappings of government officials, and sabotage. Never a real military threat to the regime, the guerrillas did challenge the political stability of the country by eroding Peralta Azurdia’s control of his own coalition and providing ammunition for the nonrevolutionary opposition political forces.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Peralta’s nationalist sentiments precluded total acquiescence to the United States, which wished to increase its participation in the counterinsurgency program. Peralta also prided himself on his pledge to clean up Guatemalan politics through “Operation Honesty” and promised to return the country to formal democracy. When election results in March 1966 seemed to reject Peralta’s handpicked candidate (and the string of military governments since 1954), Peralta faced a difficult dilemma. The candidate with a plurality of votes, Julio César Méndez Montenegro (Partido Revolucionario, PR) campaigned on a platform of renewing the 1944—54 reforms and a vague commitment to social justice. Méndez Montenegro’s brother, Mario, the leader of the remnants of the Arbenz coalition, had been assassinated (or committed suicide, depending upon whose version is accepted). His death added to the mystique of the Partido Revolucionario’s 1944— 54 legacy and the desire for a civilian president. Ironically, many of Méndez Montenegro’s supporters criticized the outgoing government for its poor relations with the United States and failure to end the guerrilla insurgency.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Since Méndez Montenegro had won only a plurality of the votes, Congress would determine the next president in a “secondary election.” After a period of Byzantine negotiations and intrigue, including challenges to PR congressmen under the terms of the Law for the Defense of Democratic Institutions and the passage of an amnesty covering all military and police personnel for acts committed in repressing subversion, Julio César Méndez Montenegro was confirmed as Guatemala’s new president—the first civilian in sixteen years.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Méndez Montenegro accepted the presidency having already promised the military and U.S. policymakers to deal harshly with the guerrillas. Less than two weeks after taking office he began a tour of the country’s important military installations. At each base he reassured the military of his esteem and respect for the military institutions. In practice he served at the pleasure of the military, and his vice president, Marroquín Rojas, had close ties to the military and civilian forces that pushed for harsh, systematic repression of the “Communists.” Efforts by the new government to distribute land to small numbers of peasants and to initiate tax reforms incurred the wrath of the ever present extreme right. “Private” death squads, linked to the minister of defense, Colonel Arriaga Bosque, published a death list of supposed Communists and kidnapped, tortured, and executed supposed subversives. The New Anti-Communist Organization (NOA), with the slogan “See a Communist, kill a Communist”; the National Organized Anti-Communist Movement (MANO); and the Anti-Communist Council of Guatemala (CADEG) intensified their terrorist attacks even as the defense minister proclaimed that “all the subversion in Guatemala in recent times has come from Havana.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Colonel Carlos Arana Osorio, commander of military operations in Zacapa, and civilian right-wing terrorists cooperated closely in the anti-Communist campaign. In December 1966 new legislation authorized landowners to serve as surrogate security personnel; from three thousand to five thousand casualties followed in the Zacapa-Izabal sector. Even members of the president’s own Partido Revolucionario suffered attacks by the security forces and their civilian allies. Méndez Montenegro, unable to control the government terrorist apparatus over which he theoretically presided, turned to the United States for more assistance in the antiguerrilla campaign.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The guerrillas responded in kind; a number of U.S. military personnel died in battle while others were assassinated by leftist militants in the years 1965—70. In 1968 the FAR killed U.S. Ambassador John Gordon Mein as he attempted to escape from his would-be kidnappers. Eduardo Galeano, a noted Uruguayan intellectual and author of a study on Guatemala, described the situation in 1967 in the following grim terms:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The Army is the master of the situation in Guatemala. The military brass do not stop to knock on the door of Méndez Montenegro, who is constitutionally—but only constitutionally—their commander-in-chief. The upcoming budget must be slashed because the oligarchy won’t pay taxes. The only untouchable appropriations are those of the Defense Ministry. The President is a virtual prisoner, but the military don’t trust him and never did. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The armed forces’ “civic action” plans consist not only of distributing powdered milk, medicines, and promises to villagers in areas subject to guerrilla influence, but also include intelligence operations often of a “dirty” type. All this is part of the “encircle and annihilate” campaign that the army has carried on against the guerrillas. Murder is blended with demagogy: while one hand kills people, the other distributes goodies. “You have to have a guerrilla unit nearby to get drinking water,” said an Izabal peasant with a sense of humor.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en76|&lt;span&gt;15&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Gradually the guerrilla movements lost ground to the counterinsurgency programs. Defectors, informers, and increased participation by U.S. personnel imposed serious military setbacks on the guerrilla forces. The death of guerrilla leader Turcios Lima in a car accident in October 1966 and penetration of the Sierra de Las Minas by the Guatemalan army led to attempts to reunify the fragmented guerrilla politico-military alliance—and also to César Montes’s bitter reaffirmation of the need for armed struggle and his condemnation of the PGT: “Let us see what the results are, after four years of struggle: 300 revolutionaries fallen in battle and 3,000 common people murdered by the regime of Julio César Méndez Montenegro. The PGT (its ruling clique) contributed the ideas and the FAR the dead.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en77|&lt;span&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;More dead were added when Mexican soldiers killed Yon Sosa in exile (1970). Ultimately even the MR-13 dissolved as a military force of significance. Without strong political support networks, beset by ideological and personalist disputes, lacking sufficient military training and provisions, and unable to create the subjective conditions for a broad popular uprising against the military regimes, the guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; failed in their immediate revolutionary tasks.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;From 1970 to 1984&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;By 1970 the Guatemalan military and its American allies had won a temporary military victory over the fragmented guerrilla movements and the political left. Perhaps more significant in the long term, however, the increased militarization of the Guatemalan government and the erosion of the weak parties and movements of the reformist center pointed toward the next decade of fraudulently elected military dictators who maintained themselves in power through coercion and the spoils of public investment in economic modernization. This modernization brought a 200 percent expansion in lands cultivated in export crops between 1950 and 1978 and a 10 percent decline in acreage in corn, the basic staple of the Guatemalan people. Income distribution became more concentrated and malnutrition more widespread, and the percentage of government budgets allocated to health and education declined. In early February 1976 a devastating earthquake struck Guatemala, increasing the misery suffered by the growing number of urban shantytown dwellers as well as villagers throughout the country. When selected urban unions, including workers at Guatemala City’s Coca-Cola franchise, responded to the deterioration of living conditions and mass dismissals with strikes, the government accused the workers of “political delinquency” and called them “enemies of national reconstruction.” Assassinations of labor leaders throughout the country followed.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en78|&lt;span&gt;17&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; For Guatemala the Alliance for Progress and the modernization of the 1960s and the 1970s brought the very antithesis of “constructive democratic change.” The process that defeated the guerrilla insurgents had also destroyed the limited hope for political pluralism and social reform in Guatemala.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;From 1970 to 1975 sporadic guerrilla operations by remnants of the FAR and by other fighters in the countryside and urban areas met harsh repression by successive military regimes. In 1972 the PGT lost much of its central committee to government security forces. Guatemalan political rhetoric and emphasis on economic modernization more and more resembled that of the military regimes in the Southern Cone of South America. It even seemed at times that Guatemalan military antipolitics and anti-Communism exceeded in virulence the military regimes in Chile and Argentina.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en79|&lt;span&gt;18&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In 1977 the Ejército Secreto Anticomunista (ESA, Secret Anticommunist Army) gained notoriety as a leading right-wing assassination organization, following the bloody path blazed by MANO, NOA, and OJO (“Eye for an Eye”) earlier in the 1970s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Guatemalan regime’s systematic barbarism conflicted with U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s new human rights focus in foreign policy. When a U.S. State Department report in the spring of 1977 severely criticized the military government, the Guatemalans announced in advance of any U.S. formal action that they would reject military assistance conditioned by U.S. intervention in Guatemala’s internal affairs. Relations between the Carter administration and Guatemala deteriorated to the point that the U.S. ambassador lost much of the customary influence enjoyed by his predecessors. To fill the gap left by the cutoff of U.S. military assistance, Guatemala turned to Israel, Argentina, and other anti-Communist allies.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Progressive clergy who worked among the rural and urban poor increasingly became targets of persecution. With agricultural labor unions still illegal, peasants attempted to use agricultural cooperatives and clergy-sponsored “base communities” to improve their living conditions and to defend land tenure claims against the encroachment of large landowners. The identification of Indian and campesino organizations with progressive Catholic leaders made the clergy victims of violence. Several years of government repression culminated in a May 1978 military attack and massacre of protesting peasants, joined arm in arm with nuns and priests, at Panzós in El Quiche.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Meanwhile, fragments of the FAR and other guerrilla forces reorganized to form the core of the Organization of the People in Arms (ORPA, survivors of the Edgar Ibarra Guerrilla Front), isolated in Ixam along with the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP). From 1975 to 1980 the EGP gradually expanded its military and political activities, operating primarily in El Quiche and Zacapa, and reemphasized César Montes’s earlier focus on incorporating the Indian population into the revolutionary struggle. In late January 1980 a group of Indians and guerrillas occupied the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City to draw attention to their demands for the restoration of their lands. Guatemalan security forces stormed the embassy, and numerous casualties resulted from a fire caused by the attack. The EGP also carried out urban guerrilla operations and selective assassinations of military and civilian leaders.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en80|&lt;span&gt;19&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; By 1981 the climate of uncertainty, state terrorism, and guerrilla terrorism practically returned Guatemala to the bloodiest situations of the mid-1960s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The victory of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1979 renewed the hopes of the revolutionary forces and reinforced the determination of the military regime and its civilian allies to repress the resurgence of the guerrilla struggle. Economic recession from 1979 to 1981, combined with rising prices (11 percent per year in 1980 and 1981) and widespread unemployment and underemployment (34 percent of the labor force at the end of 1980), fueled anti-government sentiments.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en81|&lt;span&gt;20&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; An agreement by ORPA and the EGP to form a united front in 1980 and to seek alliances with democratic opposition groups further threatened the incumbent government.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;With the election of President Reagan in 1980, the shift of the United States back to a hard-line, anti-Communist foreign policy greatly encouraged the Guatemalan military. To meet the resurgent guerrilla challenge and to end the personalism and corruption of General Romeo Lucas García’s administration, junior officers and their sympathizers carried out a coup in 1982. The new government, headed by General José Efrain Ríos Montt, a member of a non-Catholic charismatic Christian sect, pledged to end the guerrilla menace and to carry out socioeconomic reforms. Like several of his predecessors in the 1960s, Ríos Montt achieved some early military successes against the EGP guerrillas. He stated: “We have no scorched-earth policy. . . . We have a policy of scorched Communists.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en82|&lt;span&gt;21&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The regime declared victory in 1983.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en83|&lt;span&gt;22&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;After more than two decades of protracted, if uneven, struggle and numerous military defeats, some survivors of the first guerrilla outbreaks—for example, César Montes—continued in their revolutionary efforts. Changes in ideological and tactical emphasis and modifications in military tactics and terrain all reflected the pragmatic adaptation of Che Guevara’s basic doctrines from &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foquismo&lt;/span&gt; to prolonged popular war. In 1983, as in the early 1960s, the United States gave military and economic assistance to the most recent military leaders, though some congressional critics attempted to prevent the formal resumption of military assistance and the certification of improvement in Guatemala’s human rights record. U.S. policy confirmed Che Guevara’s essential analysis of the revolutionary tasks in Central America and the Caribbean, even if the simplistic &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foquista&lt;/span&gt; formulation of the early 1960s had long since been negated by the bloody reality of Guatemalan history from 1960 to 1983.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the 1980s the most prominent replacement for the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; thesis consisted of prolonged popular war—a politico-military alliance of “workers, peasants, Indians, Catholics, Protestants, men and women old enough to think and fight, and all patriotic and democratic sectors.” In early 1982 the EGP, FAR, ORPA, and sectors of the PGT formed a united front called the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) in an effort to coordinate military activity (similar fronts had been formed in Nicaragua and El Salvador). Though unable to overcome the complex ideological and personal differences that fragmented the revolutionary movement in Guatemala, this initiative toward military coordination reflected the lessons of the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua in 1979, the creation of the FMLN in El Salvador, and the growing political sophistication of Guatemala’s revolutionary forces. By April 1982 the URNG pushed for a broader revolutionary coalition of the sort that allowed the 1979 Sandinista victory in Nicaragua. In March 1983 the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) graphically summarized the array of anti-regime, politico-military organizations in Guatemala as follows:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Army of the Poor&lt;/span&gt; (EGP)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Biggest of the four groups, with massive organized support in the Indian highlands of El Quiché, Alta and Baja Verapaz, Huehuetenango, and Chimaltenango. Operates on seven fronts, including the east of Guatemala. The only guerrilla organization with a truly national structure, it works closely with the farmworkers’ CUC. Believes in uniting military and political aspects of the war. Commander-in-Chief: Rolando Morán.&lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Rebel Armed Forces&lt;/span&gt; (FAR)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Descendant of the FAR of the 1960s. Had strong influence in the labor movement of the 1970s. Concentrating on this sector, it only resumed military action in 1978, and has now organized fronts in Guatemala City, Chimaltenango, and three areas of the remote, underpopulated Petén. Commander-in-Chief: Pablo Monsanto.&lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Organization of the People in Arms&lt;/span&gt; (ORPA)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Broke from the FAR in 1971 over its neglect of the indigenous question. Launched publicly in 1979. Unlike the EGP, it has no mass organization, but wide peasant support, and works largely as a military entity. ORPA draws its strength from the Indian departments of San Marcos, Quezaltenango, Sololá, Totonicapán, and Huehuetenango. Commander-in-Chief: Gaspar Horn.&lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guatemalan Labor Party&lt;/span&gt; (PGT)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The traditional Communist party, now split into three wings, divided mainly on the role of armed struggle. The main body, or camarilla, is criticized by dissidents for neglecting the military work agreed [to] at the 1969 Party Congress. In the 1960s the FAR—then a military commission of the PGT—went independent. More recently, the “Leadership Nucleus” (PGT Núcleo de Dirección Nacional) and the PGT Military Commission have also broken away. All three factions are active militarily, but none is strong. In the labor unions, the PGT camarilla has regained considerable strength.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In January 1982 the EGP, FAR, ORPA, and the PGT-Núcleo de Dirección Nacional joined forces in the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG). Discussion is under way to incorporate the remaining PGT factions into the Unity.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A fifth politico-military organization, the Revolutionary Movement of the People (MRP-Ixim), rejects membership in the URNG. Originally formed by ORPA dissidents under the name of Nuestro Movimiento (Our Movement), but later joined by militants expelled from the FAR and EGP, and members of the PGT Military Commission. Began actions as the MRP-Ixim in July 1982.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en84|&lt;span&gt;23&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Despite the renewed repression and apparent military victories of the Ríos Montt regime, the Guerrilla Army of the Poor called for an “agrarian, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist revolution.” It was clear, in light of the last quarter century of struggle, that General Ríos Montt’s victory could be no more permanent than the “victories” of Peralta Azurdia, Méndez Montenegro, Arana Osorio, and the military governments in the decade 1970—80. Indeed, Ríos Montt himself was overthrown in mid-1983 by more traditional officers who disliked his evangelical religious affiliation and cronyism. The legacy of Che Guevara and the recent victories of the Sandinistas continued to threaten the old order through 1983 even as the military regime, like its many predecessors, declared victory over the guerrillas.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In many ways the tragedy of Guatemala epitomized the consequences of U.S. policies that insisted on interpreting political change in Latin America in the framework of a cold war confrontation of superpowers and their surrogates. The 1954 CIA-directed ouster of the Arbenz government in the name of hemispheric security established the precedent for future U.S. actions in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, and Central America. In Guatemala itself U.S. cold war policies buttressed a succession of military regimes which, when juxtaposed to Cuban-supported revolutionary insurgencies, transformed the liberal vision of the Alliance for Progress in Guatemala into the reality of a military terrorist state.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;During 1983 and 1984 thousands of Guatemalan refugees from the continuing guerrilla war became a matter of more serious international concern as the makeshift refugee camps in southern Mexico served also as bases of support for the guerrilla fighters. Occasional encroachments by Guatemalan troops into Mexican territory intensified pressures for the relocation of the camps farther north and for better Mexican control of its territory against both Guatemalan insurgents and Guatemalan government forces. Meanwhile, political uncertainty and economic hardship persisted within Guatemala. As pawns of cold war confrontations between superpowers and their surrogates, the impoverished people of Guatemala faced an apparently permanent state of internal war.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;From 1984 to 1997&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The army’s scorched-earth policies and militarization of the countryside virtually eliminated the guerrillas as an effective national security threat. Confident that the guerrilla movement had been debilitated, the military and its allies joined in the regional “democratization” process, first holding a constitutional convention in July 1984 and then elections for a new congress, followed by presidential elections in 1985. The new constitution, adopted under military tutelage, formalized the institutions of the counterinsurgency regime: Civilian Self-Defense Patrols (PACs), which incorporated from 700,000 to 900,000 rural people into obligatory militia; model villages or “development poles” (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;polos de desarrollo&lt;/span&gt;); and the National Interinstitutional Coordinator Committees (CINs), with military commanders presiding over government agencies in each zone to increase government efficiency and reduce corruption.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en85|&lt;span&gt;24&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In effect, the new constitution made official the militarization of politics and administration that had resulted from years of counterinsurgency.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Guatemalan military leadership had also learned political and ideological lessons from the long war and from their observation of regional developments. It wished to legitimize the government with a civilian face, overcome its awful international image resulting from brutal counterinsurgency tactics, and regain support from the United States. Estimating guerrilla strength at no more than 3,000 effectives, the army leadership adopted a new doctrine (“the thesis of national stability”) to replace the rhetoric of “national security.” In November 1986 the URNG made contact with the Guatemalan embassy in Spain, indicating a desire for conversations with the government. For the next ten years, intermittent informal and formal negotiations continued, punctuated by cease-fires, truces, and renewed operations.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en86|&lt;span&gt;25&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By 1985 the political and military situation of the guerrillas had been weakened. They lacked significant external allies, faced a determined, well-equipped military buttressed by a new constitution and a civilian president, and had little of the internal political networks and support groups cultivated by the FMLN in El Salvador. With the victory of the Christian Democratic candidate, Vinicio Cerezo, in the December 1985 run-off elections, and a slim Christian Democratic majority in Congress, the guerrillas confronted a regime publicly committed to reform, democracy, and respect for human rights. Even though the military still controlled most of the country and political corruption greatly increased, the guerrillas proved incapable of taking advantage of the government’s weakness and declining moral credibility.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The combination of fierce repression and the “transition to democracy” further eroded the guerrilla struggle. For the first time since 1970, Guatemala had a civilian president; as General Hector Gramajo proposed, the government introduced an “integral strategy” to replace “bullets and beans.” Labelled Consolidación ’86, the new strategy was based on the ideas eventually published in Gramajo’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Thesis of National Stability&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en87|&lt;span&gt;26&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Summarizing this doctrine, Gramajo turned Clausewitz’s dictum on its head: “Politics is the continuation of war by other means.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en88|&lt;span&gt;27&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The army sought to isolate the insurgents from the population and destroy their will to continue in armed struggle, which required further strengthening both the army and the credibility of the government. As part of this effort the minister of defense created the Center for Strategic Studies for National Stability, inviting political and business leaders to acquire “a better understanding of the global strategic concept that the army has developed for the actual Guatemalan conjuncture.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en89|&lt;span&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Within this strategic concept, the military permitted the Cerezo administration to undertake limited political reforms, including an “opening” for the organizing of labor and peasant groups, somewhat more freedom for the mass media, and the establishment of the National Reconciliation Commission, a “private” group headed by Bishop Rodolfo Quezada. The government also made public contacts with the URNG in Madrid and, most important, took a lead in the regional peace process. At Esquipulas in 1987 the Central American presidents signed agreements on a plan for a process of regional democratization. The Esquipulas II accords included amnesties for political prisoners, cease-fires with insurgents, an end to aid for guerrilla movements across political frontiers, and a prohibition on guerrillas using the territory of other nations to launch attacks on their neighbors. They also called for “national reconciliation” and “national dialogue.” These accords were opposed by the Reagan administration in Washington, which supported the Contra insurgents’ attacks on Nicaragua from bases in Honduras and Costa Rica, but also were potentially detrimental to the FMLN in El Salvador and to the URNG in Guatemala.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;After the Esquipulas II agreements further talks took place at Oslo, Norway, in March 1990 between the CNR and the URNG, eventually resulting in a “general accord to resolve conflict by political means and set up mechanisms for resolving basic problems of Guatemalan society.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en90|&lt;span&gt;29&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; With this agreement, the guerrillas essentially gave up on armed struggle as a means to take power; it had become an instrument of bargaining for political, social, and economic reforms despite the military’s ability to prevent the Cerezo administration from seriously addressing the issue of human rights abuses of the 1980s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;These documents did not mean that the guerrillas disarmed, ceased their operations, or became irrelevant, nor were the armed forces entirely united behind the peace accords. Dissatisfaction with the Cerezo administration’s “soft” approach to counterinsurgency and General Gramajo’s more sophisticated one provoked much plotting and several important coup attempts from 1987 to 1990. Officers and rightist civilians protested the meetings with guerrilla leaders and demanded a military solution to the war. Although the coups and plots failed to oust Cerezo, they forced the president to devote more resources to the military, back off from his “soft” line toward the insurgents and the political left, and refrain from pushing trials for human rights violations.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Nevertheless, a process of “national dialogue” was established with the participation of various private-sector economic groups (including the powerful Council of Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations, or CACIF), the CNR, popular organizations, political parties, and the URNG. Although the National Dialogue failed to produce any workable agreements, it did increase contact among the adversaries and filter down to divergent sectors of society the idea that a peaceful settlement might be feasible. Additional meetings followed out of the country, including those in Oslo in March 1990, with “observers” from the Guatemalan army, and in Madrid in May 1990. At the Madrid meeting the URNG pledged not to disrupt the 1990 elections; leaders from various political parties promised to work toward legalization of the URNG as a political force—a solution similar to that adopted for the pacification of guerrillas in Venezuela in the 1970s, in Colombia from the 1970s to the late 1980s, and in El Salvador later (1992).&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en91|&lt;span&gt;30&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Meanwhile, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;perestroika&lt;/span&gt;, the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), and the momentum of the Central American “peace process” isolated the URNG, made its revolutionary rhetoric archaic, and weakened its justifications for sabotage of bridges, power lines, and other economic targets. In May 1990, General Gramajo was replaced as minister of defense by General Juan Leonel Bolaños, who unrealistically demanded that the URNG lay down its arms before further negotiations. Its &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;comandante,&lt;/span&gt; Pablo Monsanto, responded that the URNG would only do so if “conditions for true democracy and peace exist in Guatemala.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en92|&lt;span&gt;31&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; These conditions included constitutional reforms; a reduced constitutional role for, and downsizing of, the army; respect for human rights; and special attention to the place of the Indian peoples in Guatemalan society.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In November 1990, Guatemala again experienced presidential and congressional elections; after a runoff in January 1991, President Jorge Serrano Elías took office—a benchmark in the nation’s politics as one civilian president succeeded another via elections. Thirteen candidates, including ex-president Ríos Montt, and two other ex-military officers had been in the original field, supported by more than twenty different parties and political movements. President-elect Serrano had participated in the National Dialogue and in the Madrid meetings with the URNG but had good contacts with the military. He initiated his government with new talks with the URNG, resulting in the so-called Querétaro Accords on democratization in July 1991. The URNG had become, de facto, part of Guatemalan politics, but not before the Sandinistas’ electoral defeat in Nicaragua (1990) further enfeebled the Central American revolutionary left. Many leaders in the army believed that the URNG was negotiating from extreme weakness; without the support of the Soviet Union, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Cuba the guerrillas would wither away. Successful peace accords in El Salvador between the government and the FMLN (1992) put further pressure on both the Guatemalan government and the URNG to reach a settlement.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In April 1992 the URNG published &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guatemala: Una Paz Justa y Democrática: Contenido de la Negociación.&lt;/span&gt; This document began by recognizing that “new national and international conditions permit, and make viable, the [peace] process.” It continued with an analysis of the political moment and the guerrillas’ perspective on the negotiations. In effect, the document contained the principal demands of the guerrillas regarding the procedures and substance of successful peace accords. Beginning with a highly negative, if understated, assessment of the army’s place in society (“the army has not played a democratic role in society; to the contrary it has been an instrument of oppression and repression against the people, except from 1944— 54”), the URNG detailed its peace plan. The document ended with a list of eleven “topics” to be addressed, ranging from subordination of the military to civilian authority, respect for human rights, constitutional reforms, agrarian reform and redefinition of property rights, and resettlement of refugees to changes in labor law and environmental protection. In short, the URNG advanced a political program to be negotiated as conditions of halting the armed struggle, but within the framework of constitutional government. The document contained no mention of abolishing capitalism, establishing socialism, or attacks on imperialism. The guerrilla war was not over yet—but Che Guevara’s call for revolution had been muffled, if not silenced.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In October 1992 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Mayan leader Rigoberta Menchú, further highlighting the massive human rights abuses in the Guatemalan counterinsurgency campaigns of the 1980s and early 1990s. While President Serrano offered his congratulations to Menchú, military leaders claimed that she “had defamed the patria.” Impatient with the stalled negotiations, the army launched a new offensive against the guerrillas in January 1993, even as Serrano offered to better protect human rights if the insurgents agreed on a truce. The URNG insisted on agreements regarding its substantive agenda before ending hostilities, and negotiations came almost to a halt by May 1993. Above all else the army would not agree to trials for human rights abuses or further civilian interference in its “internal affairs.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Serrano’s implementation of a neoliberal economic reform package incited opposition by labor and consumer groups and exacerbated political tensions. Highly publicized corruption scandals and conflicts between the president and Congress brought the country to a crisis. Serrano decreed the suspension of Congress and, in a “self-coup” (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;autogolpe&lt;/span&gt;) modeled on President Fujimori’s usurpation of power in Peru in 1992, sought to restore “order” and impose the neoliberal agenda. At first, Serrano was supported by the army high command. Overwhelmingly negative reaction by the European Economic Community, the United States (which suspended economic assistance), and dissident forces in Guatemala changed the army’s mind. Serrano went into exile; the army allowed Congress to name ex-human rights ombudsman Ramiro de León Carpio as president (June 5), after Vice President Gustavo Espina “resigned.” Congressional elections followed in late 1994.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;De León Carpio was a strong supporter of human rights but a conservative president. Committed to “democracy,” he also adopted the neoliberal economic program that was opposed by nationalists and the URNG. He attempted to restore some credibility to government institutions through “cleansing” and anticorruption campaigns. He also abolished the “military commissioners” used to control rural areas and eliminated the intelligence agency known as The Archive, accused of widespread state terrorism. He did not, however, abolish the PACs, where insurgency persisted.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;President de León Carpio viewed the guerrillas as an ongoing problem, but not one of the highest priority:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The guerrillas are not a confrontational threat. It’s not likely they will reach power or occupy territory. No, it’s a force with great limitations. One day they blow up an electrical tower somewhere and cause a blackout for a few hours; another day they destroy a bridge we later rebuild with some help from the private sector. They destroy; we build. Yet another day there may be an encounter in which one of our patrols is attacked, killing or wounding soldiers or officers. All are sporadic, since they have no permanent presence. Of course, these are human lives, but they do not represent a risk for the nation.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en93|&lt;span&gt;32&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;De León Carpio estimated guerrilla strength at “no more than one thousand” and added that they were “without popular support.” He claimed that “militarily the guerrillas are defeated,” but that their existence “diverts our time and concentration from addressing other grave problems, such as social and economic development.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#end en94|&lt;span&gt;33&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; During his entire administration, peace negotiations continued without success. At the end of 1995 no peace agreement had been signed; the URNG continued sporadic “operations,” persisting in Central America’s longest guerrilla war.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1996, President Alvaro Arzú succeeded de León Carpio. Arzú also committed himself to the peace process and the neoliberal economic agenda as well as to improving respect for human rights and downsizing the army. The guerrillas continued in existence both as a political force and as a sporadic military and terrorist threat. Most Guatemalans were impatient with the URNG’s intransigence and annoyed by economic sabotage. Not even the pretense of revolutionary victory remained—only posturing to obtain symbolic concessions that would frame laying down arms as other than surrender. Tentative accords worked out in June 1996 seemed promising; renewed guerrilla operations and the kidnapping of a prominent elderly citizen apparently suspended negotiations in early November. Then, at the Conference of Latin American Presidents at Viña del Mar, Chile, President Arzú announced a peace agreement with the URNG, to be put into effect by December 29, 1996. The accords dealt with issues ranging from constitutional reform, human rights, and reintegration of the guerrillas into society to land reform—most of the agenda set out by the URNG in 1992.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Into 1997, Guatemalans suffered increasing levels of criminal violence in the cities and the countryside and continued social and economic deprivation. Corruption plagued government operations and penetrated the police, army, and public services. The “objective conditions” of poverty, discrimination, and repression identified by Che Guevara had not disappeared in Guatemala, but the possibility of revolutionary transformations via armed guerrilla struggle seemed, for the moment, exhausted.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Notes&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;endnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en62|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Richard H. Immerman, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention&lt;/span&gt; (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), p. 82. Debate still continues on whether the U.S. intervention in Guatemala in 1954 was motivated primarily by concern for the perceived Communist threat in Latin America or by concern for economic interests, including those of the United Fruit Company. See Stephen Kinzer and Stephen Schlesinger, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the America Coup in Guatemala&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Doubleday, 1982); Cole Blasier, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Hovering Giant: U.S. Responses to Revolutionary Change in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976); Suzanne Jonas and David Tobis, eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guatemala&lt;/span&gt; (Berkeley: NACLA, 1974); Thomas and Marjorie Melville, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guatemala: The Politics of Land Ownership&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Free Press, 1971); Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;My War with Communism&lt;/span&gt; (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963); Ronald M. Schneider, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Communism in Guatemala, 1944—1954&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Praeger, 1958); and U.S. Department of State, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Intervention of International Communism in the Americas&lt;/span&gt;, Department of State Publication no. 5556 (Washington, D.C., 1954).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en63|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;“Caracas Declaration of Solidarity, 1954,” in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Interamerican Relations&lt;/span&gt;, 92d Cong., 2d sess., printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, October 10, 1972, pp. 153-54.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en64|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Immerman, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The CIA,&lt;/span&gt; p. 82.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en65|&lt;span&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For background on Guatemalan ethnic and social structure, see Neale V. Pearson, “Guatemala: The Peasant Union Movement, 1944—1954,” in Henry A. Landsberger, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Latin American Peasant Movements&lt;/span&gt; (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969), pp. 323-73; Comité Interamericano de Desarrollo Agrícola (CIDA), &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Tenencia de la tierra y desarrollo socio-económico del Sector Agrícola: Guatemala&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C.: Pan American Union, 1965); Humberto Flores Alvarado, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La estructura social guatemalteca&lt;/span&gt; (Guatemala: Editorial Rumbos Nuevos, 1968); Nathan Whetten, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guatemala: The Land and the People&lt;/span&gt; (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1961); Eric Wolf, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Sons of the Shaking Earth&lt;/span&gt; (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959); George McBride and Merle A. McBride, “Highland Guatemala and Its Maya Communities,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Geographical Review&lt;/span&gt; 32 (1942): 252-68; Richard N. Adams, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Encuesta sobre la cultura de los ladinos en Guatemala&lt;/span&gt; (Guatemala City: Editorial del Ministerio de Educación, 1955); Richard N. Adams, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Crucifixion by Power: Essays on Guatemalan National Social Structure, 1944—1966&lt;/span&gt; (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970); Robert Carmack, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Quiché Mayas of Utatlán&lt;/span&gt; (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981); and Kay Warren, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Symbolism of Subordination: Indian Identity in a Guatemalan Town&lt;/span&gt; (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en66|&lt;span&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;CIDA, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;; Gerrit Huizer, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Revolutionary Potential of Peasants in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1972), pp. 136-40.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en67|&lt;span&gt;6&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Eduardo Galeano, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guatemala, Occupied Country&lt;/span&gt;, trans. Cedric Belfrage (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), p. 17.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en68|&lt;span&gt;7&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Kinzer and Schlesinger, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bitter Fruit&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en69|&lt;span&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Richard Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971), p. 46.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en70|&lt;span&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ydígoras, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;My War&lt;/span&gt;, p. 160.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en71|&lt;span&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited in Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 52-53, after report from Hsinhua News Agency, February 20, 1962.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en72|&lt;span&gt;11&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Ydígoras’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;My War&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 1 59—60, where he justifies his having allowed the establishment of the anti-Cuban bases in Guatemala and sees a Communist conspiracy to corrupt the Guatemalan military with subversive propaganda.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en73|&lt;span&gt;12&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited by Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, p. 56, after &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Le Monde&lt;/span&gt;, February 7, 1966.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en74|&lt;span&gt;13&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;According to the official history, the FAR was organized in December 1962 as a coalition of the MR-13 or November Revolutionary Movement, the PGT, and the MR-12 de Abril. Thereafter the MR-12 dissolved, and the MR-13, after coming under Trotzkyist influence, left the FAR. The Edgar Ibarra Guerrilla Front included a coalition of Communists (PGT), MR-13, and Communist Youth (Juventud Patriótica del Trabajo, JPT). While affiliated with the FAR, this Guerrilla Front became “virtually autonomous.” In March 1965 the FAR was resurrected by the PGT and Edgar Ibarra Front leadership. This alliance lasted until Turcios’s death in 1966.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Emilio Román, a revolutionary-evangelical pastor, with experience going back to the 1954 slaughter in the countryside, helped incorporate Indian (Cakchiquel) fighters into the Guerrilla Front. See Turcios Lima, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Biografía y documentos&lt;/span&gt; (Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 1969), pp. 32-33. See also Pablo Monsanto, “The Foco Experience: The Guerrillas’ First Years,” in J. L. Fried et al., eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guatemala in Rebellion: Unfinished Revolution&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Grove Press, 1982), pp. 261—64.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en75|&lt;span&gt;14&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;In a letter dated May 4, 1963, Che Guevara commented: “In Guatemala the guerrillas are fighting. The people have to some extent taken up arms. There is only one possibility of slowing the development of a struggle that shows all signs of developing toward a Cuba or Algerian-type revolution. Imperialism has that possibility, although I am not sure if they will bother to use it: ‘free elections’ with Arévalo.” In Ernesto Che Guevara, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Grove Press, 1968), p. 265; cited in Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, p. 58.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en76|&lt;span&gt;15&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Galeano, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 77—78.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en77|&lt;span&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Granma&lt;/span&gt;, February 25, 1968, after Luis Mercier Vega, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrillas in Latin America&lt;/span&gt;, trans. Daniel Weissbert (New York: Praeger, 1969).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en78|&lt;span&gt;17&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See World Bank, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guatemala: Economic and Social Positions and Prospects&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C., 1978); James F. Petras and Morris H. Morley, “Economic Expansion, Political Crisis, and U.S. Policy in Central America,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Contemporary Marxism&lt;/span&gt; no. 3 (Summer 1981): 69-88; Union of Food and Allied Workers Association, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Coca-Cola Guatemala Campaign, 1979—1981&lt;/span&gt; (Geneva, 1981); “Guatemala—The War Is Not Over,” NACLA, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Report on the Americas&lt;/span&gt; 17, no. 2 (March-April 1983): 4-6; and articles from &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Compañero&lt;/span&gt; (San Francisco: Solidarity Publications, 1982), pp. 10-11.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en79|&lt;span&gt;18&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a discussion of antipolitics, see Brian Loveman and Thomas M. Davies, Jr., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Politics of Antipolitics&lt;/span&gt; (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en80|&lt;span&gt;19&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Guatemala’s third-ranking army chief and the head of the IV Corps of the national police was assassinated in 1980; the interior minister and chief of the national police survived assassination attempts. See Daniel L. Premo, “Guatemala,” in Robert Wesson, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Communism in Central America and the Caribbean&lt;/span&gt; (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1982), p. 91. For a collection of articles on the guerrillas in the late 1970s and early 1980s, see Fried et al., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guatemala.&lt;/span&gt; The Institute for Policy Studies’ “Background Information on Guatemala, the Armed Forces, and U.S. Military Assistance,” June 1981, reviews the organization and activity of the military, police, and security apparatus in Guatemala during this period, as well as U.S. military assistance and sales to Guatemala from 1950 to 1982.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en81|&lt;span&gt;20&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;InterAmerican Development Bank, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Economic and Social Progress in Latin America, The External Sector&lt;/span&gt;, 1982 Report (Washington, D.C., 1982).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en82|&lt;span&gt;21&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/span&gt;, December 6, 1982, cited in Darío Moreno, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Struggle for Peace in Central America&lt;/span&gt; (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994), p. 43.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en83|&lt;span&gt;22&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;According to NACLA’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Report on the Americas&lt;/span&gt; (“Guatemala—The War Is Not Over”), the Ríos Montt offensive accomplished the following: “It massacred anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 unarmed campesinos, and uprooted more than a million from their homes. One hundred thousand more languish in Mexican refuge, and all available testimony shows they blame the Army for their trauma. Large stretches of the highlands are devastated; the local economy is in turmoil. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“Yet the Ríos Montt offensive failed to deal the Left a strategic defeat—using the best-trained counterinsurgency army in Central America operating at full strength. The brutality of Plan Victoria ’82 was explicitly aimed at breaking the EGP, strongest of the four guerrilla groups, but it has failed to do so. In the new year, aerial bombing, village raids, and kidnapping expanded to San Marcos in the west, with ORPA the new target. In El Petén in the north, FAR areas too have been hit by Army sweeps, though with less publicity.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en84|&lt;span&gt;23&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 9.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en85|&lt;span&gt;24&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Robert Trudeau, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guatemalan Politics: The Popular Struggle for Democracy&lt;/span&gt; (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993), p. 66.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en86|&lt;span&gt;25&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Héctor Alejandro Gramajo Morales, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;De la guerra . . . a la guerra, La difícil transición política en Guatemala&lt;/span&gt; (Guatemala: Fondo de Cultura Editorial, 1995), Part V.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en87|&lt;span&gt;26&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Héctor Gramajo Morales, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Tésis de la estabilidad nacional&lt;/span&gt; (Guatemala: Editorial del Ejército, 1989).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en88|&lt;span&gt;27&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Gramajo Morales, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Tesis&lt;/span&gt;, p. 258.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en89|&lt;span&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;This effort to “educate” civilian elites in national security doctrine as military allies was patterned on earlier Brazilian experience with the ESG and was also adopted by the Chilean army in the early 1990s. See Centro de Estudios Guatemala, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La democracia de las armas&lt;/span&gt; (Guatemala: El Centro Claves Latinoamericanas, 1994).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en90|&lt;span&gt;29&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For an overview of the peace process, see James Dunkerley, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Pacification of Central America&lt;/span&gt; (London: Verso, 1994), pp. 76—88.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en91|&lt;span&gt;30&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Dunkerley, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Pacification&lt;/span&gt;; Trudeau, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guatemalan Politics&lt;/span&gt;, and Jack Child, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Central American Peace Process, 1983—1991: Sheathing Swords, Building Confidence&lt;/span&gt; (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1992).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en92|&lt;span&gt;31&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited in Trudeau, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guatemalan Politics&lt;/span&gt;, p. 139.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en93|&lt;span&gt;32&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited in Alvaro Vargas Llosa and Santiago Aroca, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Riding the Tiger: Ramón de León Carpio’s Battle for Human Rights in Guatemala&lt;/span&gt; (Miami: Brickell Communications, 1995), p. 154.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c05.html#ref end en94|&lt;span&gt;33&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Vargas Llosa and Aroca, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Riding the Tiger&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 152—53.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;chapter&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Venezuela&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Political Chronology&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;tableau&quot;&gt;<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable none&quot;<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1945—48<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Trienio&lt;/span&gt; administration. Acción Democrática (AD) and Junta Revolucionaria de Gobierno implement reformist program, including agrarian reform, mobilization of peasantry, and modification of oil industry leases.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1948—52<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Military junta. Repression of AD and reformist movements. Labor and peasant movements demobilized and AD leaders go underground or into exile.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1952—58<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, a brutal and corrupt authoritarian administration supported by the United States.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1958—59<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Junta de Gobierno after an uprising and coup against Pérez Jiménez; opposition parties and movements attempt to create basis for coalition and transition to democratic regime.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1959—64<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Rómulo Betancourt (AD). Fidel Castro visits Caracas; anti-government demonstrations, divisions within AD over domestic and foreign policy (1959). MIR leaves AD. Insurrection in Caracas (October 1960). In late 1961-early 1962 first guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; begin operation. Military uprisings at Carúpano and Puerto Cabello, May—June 1962. FALN formally established early 1963. Cuban arms shipment captured (November 1963); relations with Cuba deteriorate. General elections won by AD candidate Raúl Leoni.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1964—69<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Raúl Leoni (AD). Amnesty offered to guerrillas and Communists (PCV). Douglas Bravo expelled from PCV and becomes most visible guerrilla leader. PCV rejects “armed struggle” through &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; and wages ideological conflict with Cuban-supported guerrillas, who suffer numerous casualties without significant military or political successes.<br /> |}<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;tableau&quot;&gt;<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable none&quot;<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1969—74<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Rafael Caldera (COPEI), first administration of Christian Democrats in Venezuela. Caldera announces pacification program. Communist party regains legal status; amnesty offered to prominent guerrilla leaders; renewal of diplomatic relations with Soviet Union and improved relations with Cuba. Sporadic guerrilla operations under Douglas Bravo based in Falcón-Lara region at very low levels.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1974—79<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Carlos Andrés Pérez (AD). Return of most prominent surviving guerrilla leaders to conventional politics; many ex-guerrillas serve in Congress. Nationalization of oil industry undercuts leftist appeals; guerrilla movements practically disappear. Pérez supports Sandinistas against Somoza in Nicaragua.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1979—84<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Luis Herrera Campíns (COPEI). In April 1979, Douglas Bravo accepts new amnesty offer. Termination of last important rural &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt;. Venezuelan economy faces crisis from world recession. Venezuela plays active role in seeking peaceful solution to guerrilla struggles in Central America.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1984—97<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |No significant guerrilla activity. Push for political reforms, administrative decentralization, and growing influence of ex-guerrillas and their political parties as social democratic and democratic socialist influences in Venezuelan politics. Ex-guerrrilla leader Teodoro Petkoff declares in 1987 that in Venezuela “armed struggle was a grave error.”<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1984—89<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Jaime Lusinchi (AD). Ex-guerrillas in MAS party push political and administrative reforms; Teodoro Petkoff (MAS) is unsuccessful presidential candidate (1988); reforms adopted allowing direct election of governors and local government officials. Growing strength of leftist parties and erosion of AD-COPEI domination of electorate; MAS wins Aragua and Bolívar state gubernatorial elections.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1989—94<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Carlos Andrés Pérez (AD). Pérez adopts “shock treatment” for economy; administration accused of widespread corruption; disturbances and riots across the country (February 1989); two unsuccessful coup attempts in 1992; President Pérez impeached and indicted on charges of corruption (May 1993). Interim presidency of Ramón J. Velásquez; elections (December 1993) bring Rafael Caldera back to presidency at head of multiparty coalition that<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |includes ex-guerrillas and supporters of MAS; end to ADCOPEI monopoly on presidency since 1959.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1994—<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Rafael Caldera, Christian Democrat with multiparty coalition that included leftist parties and exguerrillas, especially MAS. As President Caldera’s minister of economy, ex-guerrilla leader Teodoro Petkoff identifies his party with “advanced social democracy.” Other ex-guerrillas and Communist party members in Causa-R party gain influence in Congress and the labor movement.<br /> |}<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Background&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1959, Venezuela took a dramatic turn toward liberal democracy after a century and a half of dictatorship, brutality, civil wars, and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;caudillismo&lt;/span&gt;. Between 1834 and 1888 no civilian presided over Venezuela; from 1892 to 1908 the military rulers returned, followed by the lengthy (1908—35), corrupt, and repressive dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez. Subsequent military presidents (1935—45) softened the repressive character of the Gómez regime, but a brief reformist interlude from 1945 to 1948, the so-called &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;trienio&lt;/span&gt;, was followed by ten more years of personalist military rule by Marcos Pérez Jiménez.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en95|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Like his Dominican counterpart, Rafael Trujillo, dictator Pérez Jiménez would have been an ideal target for Guevarist-inspired guerrillas. Lacking legitimacy, ruthless and venal, brutal in its treatment of political opposition, the Pérez Jiménez regime, despite efforts to mask its illegitimacy with fraudulent elections and a new constitution (1953), ideally fit Guevara’s model of a Caribbean dictatorship. But Pérez Jiménez fled into exile to the Dominican Republic a year before the victory of Fidel Castro’s forces in Cuba. After an interim government under Admiral Wolfgang Larrazábal, national elections, regarded by all concerned as honest, brought Rómulo Betancourt to the nation’s presidency—the first president in Venezuelan history to come to office through popular elections and to turn over power to a popularly elected successor.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Still, in 1959, Venezuela seemed an unlikely candidate for the establishment, let alone institutionalization, of liberal democracy. There was no historical basis for believing that the coup which had ousted Pérez Jiménez and the subsequent elections would lead to a functioning democracy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In Venezuela, however, unlike Guatemala, there had gradually evolved a system of modern political parties with pragmatic and relatively effective leadership. The principal leaders of these parties, men like Betancourt, Rafael Caldera, and Jóvito Villalba, emerged from the youthful “generation of 1928” which had first challenged the Gómez dictatorship. These men had headed the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;trienio&lt;/span&gt; experiment from 1945 to 1948 and then led the opposition to Pérez Jiménez both within Venezuela and from exile. The political parties that developed from these experiences—Acción Democrática (AD, a social democratic party), Comité pro Elecciones Independiente (COPEI, a social Christian movement), and the Union Republicana Democrática (URD, an urban populist party), along with a moderate Communist party (PCV)—established linkages or helped to create urban and rural worker-peasant movements. In time, these movements and parties, though far from consolidated in their position in 1959, came to offer viable alternatives to Caribbean dictatorship.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1958 the three major non-Marxist parties named above had concluded an agreement—the Pact of Punto Fijo—that guaranteed participation of all parties in a coalition government no matter which candidate won the presidential elections of that year. After Betancourt’s victory the pact was honored; and despite later disagreements and defections from the coalition, this initial cooperation of the centrist parties provided a basis for pluralism in national politics and hope for a future for constitutional government.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the next two decades, Venezuelan liberal democracy (what Che Guevara called “oligarchical dictatorship”) survived both rightist coup attempts and leftist guerrilla movements in urban and rural areas without the institutionalization of military terror on the Guatemalan, Bia-zilian, or Argentine models. To a very great extent Venezuela’s successful avoidance of rightist dictatorship and the defeat of leftist guerrilla movements was the result of increasing oil revenues for use in domestic programs and effective political leadership by members of the two major political parties, AD and COPEI. Under pressure from both rightist and leftist opposition, the early AD governments sometimes resorted to firm repression, suspension of constitutional guarantees, extensive use of the secret police and informers, and harsh interrogation of political prisoners. Nonetheless, the Venezuelan regime never adopted on a wide scale the extreme measures of the Guatemalans or, later, the Brazilians, Argentines, or Chileans. Right-wing death squads were not allowed to operate with impunity nor were they encouraged by the government. Indeed, the greatest strength of the government consisted of the broad support it counted upon from the campesinos in the rural areas and from some of the urban working-class organizations. Unlike those of Guatemala, the Venezuelan guerrilla movements never gained the sympathy of the peasantry.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The reason the guerrilla organizations lacked support lay in the recent history of Venezuela. Post-World War II developments in Venezuela began with a premonition of reform and the threat of revolution. Somewhat as in Guatemala from 1945 to 1953, the Venezuelan &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;trienio&lt;/span&gt; government under Betancourt initiated dramatic social, economic, and agrarian reforms; created a Ministry of Labor; and recognized the legitimacy of URD, AD, COPEI, and the Communist party. Electoral reforms, support for unionization of peasants and urban workers, and challenges to foreign domination of the oil industry all represented progressive changes in Venezuelan politics. This reformist climate permitted Rómulo Gallegos of AD to become in 1948 the first president of the country to be chosen directly by the Venezuelan people under the new provisions for universal suffrage.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Labeled subversive and Communist by the Venezuelan oligarchy and its foreign allies, the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;trienio&lt;/span&gt;-AD government fell to a military coup in 1948. The persecution, torture, and murder of opposition forces that followed proved less systematic and more selective, however, than the Guatemalan massacres after 1954.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en96|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Betancourt himself reinforced the charismatic image he had gained in his earlier years of clandestine political activity (1935—45) at the same time that increased persecution by the regime decimated the AD’s strength after 1954. When Seguridad Nacional chief Pedro Estrada emerged as a power in his own right, the infamous Guasina concentration camp became home for numerous opposition political leaders. Unfortunately, the Eisenhower administration paid special homage to Pérez Jiménez’s strong “anti-Communism” and the favorable treatment of U.S. investors by awarding the dictator the Legion of Merit and even inviting Pedro Estrada to Washington to meet with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite exile and the brutality of the U.S.-supported dictatorship, internal political opposition to Pérez Jiménez never disappeared. After 1954 the exiled leaders of the various political parties maintained contact with their clandestine party organizations and with the urban and rural labor movements. Unhindered by significant linguistic or ethnic cleavages like those in Guatemala, Peru, and Bolivia, the working-class movements and organizations, allied with AD, COPEI, URD, and the Communists, as well as students, businessmen, and progressive military officers survived the ten-year dictatorship with strengthened roots to participate in the general strike that ousted Pérez Jiménez in 1958.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en97|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The return of Betancourt in 1959 therefore represented in many ways the culmination of a quarter-century struggle as well as reaffirmation of the hopes and aspirations of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;trienio&lt;/span&gt;. Even as the guerrillas in Guatemala had proclaimed themselves the standard bearers of the ousted Arévalo and Arbenz regimes in that country, Betancourt and AD were elected to renew the struggle for progress in Venezuela.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Just as Fidel Castro overthrew Batista in Cuba in early 1959, the popularly elected administration of Betancourt, drawing upon the legacy of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;trienio&lt;/span&gt;, initiated five years of nationalistic and reformist policies. A new Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons was established to increase Venezuela’s participation in the profits of the oil industry. Agrarian reform, unionization of the peasantry, industrial projects in steel and petrochemicals, and public works, housing, and public service projects were instituted; and, for the first time, the national budget contained a larger allocation for education than for the Ministry of Defense.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Too moderate for Venezuela’s revolutionaries and too revolutionary for the old guard, the Betancourt government nevertheless represented a real reformist departure for Venezuela. As such it was attacked by international and domestic foes at both ends of the ideological spectrum. Dominican dictator Trujillo sent assassination teams to murder Betancourt and supported efforts at military coups within Venezuela.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en98|&lt;span&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Military nationalists attempted several &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;golpes&lt;/span&gt;, and Cuban-inspired (and sometimes -supported) urban and rural guerrillas proclaimed war against the Betancourt administration, rallying splinter movements from Betancourt’s own party to the guerrilla cause.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en99|&lt;span&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The specific political and social conditions in Venezuela in 1959, however, measured by Che Guevara’s criteria in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, seemed less favorable to revolutionaries than did conditions in Guatemala—notwithstanding Guevara’s own strong support for the Venezuelan guerrillas:&lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> # The Caribbean-type dictatorship in Venezuela had been ousted in 1958 and replaced later that year by a popularly elected president. Many Venezuelans remembered Betancourt’s role in the 1945—48 reform movement, and the new government was perceived as legitimate, perhaps more so than any previous government in Venezuelan history. As Che Guevara pointed out in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, this sort of regime made a poor target for guerrilla movements. &lt;span&gt;Moreover, the party system in Venezuela was on the upswing in 1959. Several centrist parties, along with the Communists, competed openly for political office and even participated in the government coalition. These parties all had important linkages to labor, peasant organizations, and student movements. At the least, even when some groups broke with AD and the coalition, political opposition remained possible, if not always assured. As Che Guevara noted, the guerrilla is likely to be most successful where popular belief holds that there is no realistic alternative to revolutionary violence.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> # The physical terrain of Venezuela offered considerable opportunity for the establishment of guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt;. The lack of political roots in the countryside, however, made the rural regions dangerous to guerrilla cadres—particularly the young, urban-bred students, intellectuals, politicos, or nationalist military officers who led the first &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> # Although rural poverty and the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;latifundia&lt;/span&gt; system in Venezuela conformed in some respects to the Latin American image portrayed by Che Guevara, the incumbent regime was sponsoring an agrarian reform program, including support of rural labor organizations. Moreover, the economic, social, and political focus had shifted to urban areas and petroleum in Venezuela, unlike much of Latin America where agriculture played a predominant role. The “agrarian question” had significant salience in Venezuela but less than, for example, in Guatemala. With an urban population of almost 70 percent in 1960 and an ongoing agrarian reform program—including close ties between the major organization and AD—the Venezuelan countryside seemed much less promising for guerrillas than the mountains and coasts of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Peru, or Ecuador. In any case, the Venezuelan guerrillas proved unable to develop an effective “counter-state” in the countryside. &lt;span&gt;The poverty and exploitation of the Venezuelan campesinos and urban poor conformed to a great extent to Che Guevara’s portrayal of the general conditions that would provide the basis for revolutionary struggle in Latin America. However, these groups in the period 1959—63 did not perceive armed struggle as the only means to improve their condition. In this sense Che’s emphasis on subjective conditions was correct—but would work against the guerrilla movements in Venezuela during these years.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> # Venezuela’s revolutionary Marxist tradition was quite recent and relatively weak. The Communist party and the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR)—Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) militants who broke away from AD, COPEI, or URD—faced overwhelming obstacles in creating the appropriate subjective conditions for successful revolutionary movements in the countryside. They therefore combined urban terror and random attacks on government and private property with rural guerrilla operations.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Origins of the Guerrilla Movements in the 1960s&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The Venezuelan guerrillas of the early 1960s came from the universities of Caracas, from dissident elements of AD, URD, and COPEI, and, after 1962, from unsuccessful military uprisings headed by nationalist officers. In addition, before the Venezuelan Communist party’s mid-1960s decision to withdraw temporarily from the military struggle, guerrilla leaders emerged from the PCV and from some Communist-dominated labor organizations. Similar in social class, education, and even political experience to the officials of the incumbent government, the guerrillas lacked well-developed ties to urban or rural working-class organizations. They also lacked, with the exception of defectors from the Venezuelan armed forces, military training or experience. In this respect the Venezuelan guerrillas initially proved even less prepared for armed struggle than the first guerrilla leaders in Guatemala.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The immediate events preceding overt urban terror and the establishment of rural &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; involved splinter political movements within AD and URD. Influenced by developments in Cuba and a rising nationalist, anti-American sentiment in the country, students, political dissidents, and nationalist military officers, along with the PCV, pressured the Betancourt administration to enact sweeping social, economic, and political reforms. By May 1960, Domingo Alberto Rangel, Moisés Moleiro, and Américo Martin led the formation of a splinter party called Acción Democrática Izquierdista. (This development parallels similar events with APRA and APRA Rebelde in Peru and the traditional parties of Colombia during the same period.) Soon thereafter this group changed its name to Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) and proclaimed itself a Marxist movement.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en100|&lt;span&gt;6&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; MIR included most of the AD youth movement and a number of the party’s deputies in Congress. Demonstrations against the Betancourt government in the universities and high schools were met with police repression and closure of the schools by order of the president himself. National guardsmen even violated university autonomy by invading the campuses and confronting student centers of rebellion.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en101|&lt;span&gt;7&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Violence spread to working-class neighborhoods, and the government faced an imminent insurrection in Caracas—where, counter to his overall victory, Betancourt had lost badly in the presidential elections. Continued government suppression of the student uprisings contributed to URD’s withdrawal from the government coalition.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;President Betancourt placed blame for the insurrection on MIR and the Communist party. After suspending constitutional guarantees and appealing to the military to restore order, he declared his enmity toward Cuban-inspired “Castro-Communism” and the local Communists. Subsequently the AD government suffered another setback as Raúl Ramos Jiménez led another split from the party in late 1961, taking an additional twenty-six deputies from the AD congressional delegation and increasing the government’s dependence upon the AD-COPEI alliance.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Beset by reactionary obstructionism and leftist student demonstrations and urban violence, the Betancourt government now faced the first declared rural guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; organized by Communists, Miristas, and a small number of URD dissidents. Weakly organized, ideologically heterogeneous, and militarily inept, the guerrilla bands nevertheless operated in the states of Lara, Falcón, Portuguesa, Mérida, Miranda, Carabobo, Yaracuy, Trujillo, and Zulia. Most of these small, uncoordinated &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; met immediate defeat at the hands of the Venezuelan military assisted by the U.S. counterinsurgency programs and even anti-Fidelista Cubans cooperating with the security forces. Lacking any unified political or military command, poorly trained—indeed, little more than frustrated urban political cadres and intellectuals—the initial &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; achieved even less military success than had their Guatemalan counterparts.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The guerrilla forces received reinforcement from discontented military officers after unsuccessful coup attempts in 1962. In May of that year a naval captain led an uprising at the naval base of Carúpano (250 miles east of Caracas). In words reminiscent of Turcios Lima’s proclamation in Guatemala, Captain Jesús Teodoro Molina Villegas explained the motivation of this rebellion:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;We can no longer ignore the numberless abuses, arbitrary actions, murders and tortures to which the people are subjected, which have led to the destruction of peace and harmony among Venezuelans. The country is reliving, under Betancourt’s reign of terror, the old division of Venezuelans into two groups: those who have every guarantee and those who have none, the persecuted and the persecutors, prisoners and jailers. . . . One of the main aims of our movement is to restore the democratic system where the constitution really holds sway, where the rights of all Venezuelans and the decisions of the National Congress are respected, so that within this framework of real democratic liberties the country can reconstruct its economy, give work to the hundreds of thousands of unemployed, raise the income of the Venezuelans, carry out a genuine Agrarian Reform, and develop the economy on the basis of the higher national interest.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en102|&lt;span&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Though supported by opposition politicians, including the PCV, the Carúpano uprising was quickly defeated by loyal air force and army units. In response the AD government further restricted MIR and PCV political activities. A second rebellion on June 3, 1962, at Puerto Cabello (seventy miles west of Caracas) required bloody counterattacks and hundreds of casualties before forces loyal to the government achieved victory. Many of the defeated officers and soldiers, having no other place to turn, found refuge and purpose with the guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; in Falcon and Lara states.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en103|&lt;span&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Thus, while they did not form the original cadres of the Venezuelan guerrillas, some military officers appealed to their former comrades-in-arms to join the new armed forces of national liberation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By the end of 1962 the AD government, supported by a majority of the rural population and the provincial urban centers, had inflicted military defeat on the rural &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt;, the urban resistance of Caracas (the so-called tactical combat units), and the two principal military uprisings. In addition, the Betancourt administration pushed forward with its reform program in anticipation of the upcoming presidential elections of 1963, thereby undercutting the political appeal of armed struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Military support also proved critical to Betancourt’s success. Like the only Guatemalan civilian president of the 1960s, President Betancourt visited the most important military installations of the country and tried to improve living conditions in the barracks and to impress upon the armed forces the government’s concern with military professionalization and welfare. The administration expanded loan programs for noncoms and officers for the purchase of private housing and provided other concrete, visible benefits to military personnel. Perhaps most important, President Betancourt maintained relatively good channels of communication with the officer corps, informed them of the government’s intentions and programs, and attempted to insulate the military from “politics.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;These efforts yielded excellent results, undermining both leftist and rightist insurrections. In none of the rightist uprisings from 1959 to 1961 did the major garrisons (Caracas and Maracay) participate; in the face of both the leftist-supported coup attempts in 1962 and the FALN, the bulk of the officer corps clearly preferred the reforms of Betancourt to the Fidelista alternative. Military suppression of the guerrilla fighters and participation in limited civic action programs sustained the Betancourt government against the revolutionary challenge.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Faced with four years of bitter conflict and few positive results to show for it, the remnants of the disparate opposition (the PCV, MIR, and URD militants, Carúpano and Puerto Cabello survivors, and other anti-regime forces) formally created in 1963 a “unified” revolutionary movement, the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN). The official leader of the FALN, Captain Manuel Ponte Rodríguez, had led the Puerto Cabello uprising, and initial FALN documents reflected the military education and values of the disaffected officers: FALN combatants were to respect the lives and property of civilians and of police and military personnel not engaged in operations against FALN units, were to use weapons only in self-defense or under official FALN orders, and were to treat prisoners with respect and protect their lives.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en104|&lt;span&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Like their Guatemalan counterparts, the FALN claimed to welcome military defectors into the revolutionary fold. In fact, the FALN seemed to express a sincere hope that patriotic military officers could substantially assist in the revolutionary task: “The creation of the FALN provides a way out for every honest, patriotic, nationalist, democratic or revolutionary officer. We are building popular institutions in which we can really put into practice our sublime ideals of patriotism and heroism in service of the Fatherland and the people.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en105|&lt;span&gt;11&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Communist participation in the FALN was predicated on the formation of a parallel united political leadership group, the Frente de Liberación Nacional (FLN, National Liberation Front), which could offer a political alternative to the AD-COPEI coalition. Just as they sought to dominate the equivalent political front in Guatemala, the Communists dominated the FLN in Venezuela. Communist political strategy was reflected in the effort to create a program appealing to a multiclass popular-front coalition: “The construction of a united front for national liberation is Venezuela’s most urgent task today. Workers, farmers, students, white-collar workers, professionals, artists, writers and poets, businessmen with progressive ideas, sincere clergymen; men and women of all ideologies, religious creeds, and political party backgrounds; all who desire a Venezuela master of her own destiny and her own riches. belong to this broad united front of liberation.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en106|&lt;span&gt;12&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Politico-Military Evolution of the Guerrilla Struggle&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The struggle against the Betancourt government began in the streets of Caracas and was led by urban political cadres, students, and intellectuals. By the fall of 1960 the MIR, through its official publication, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Izquierda&lt;/span&gt;, demanded the overthrow of the government: “The country continues being drowned in the ineptitude of its rulers. There can be no other way out than a change of government, the substitution of the present regime by another which responds to the interests of the people. . . . But it is necessary now to be categorical. We do not advocate the change of government through a barracks revolt or a palace coup. Nor do we impose on the masses an insurrection which they are not capable of carrying out at this moment.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en107|&lt;span&gt;13&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;President Betancourt had been in office less than two years, but the MIR already asserted that the scheduled 1963 presidential elections would offer no possibility of change and that only a mass uprising could institute the needed revolutionary changes. Urban street demonstrations, assaults, kidnappings, and “expropriations” (bank robberies to finance revolutionary activity), intended to undermine the government, instead inspired the resentment and anger of most of the urban population. Bombings, assassinations, sabotage (especially of U.S.-owned installations), and disruption of urban transportation systems further alienated many urban residents, including the poor and unemployed of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;barrios&lt;/span&gt;. (Che Guevara had admonished in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; that “it is necessary to distinguish clearly between sabotage, a revolutionary and highly effective method of warfare, and terrorism, a measure that is generally ineffective and indiscriminate in its results, since it often makes victims of innocent people.”)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Betancourt administration rallied its supporters with pleas to maintain order, and Rafael Caldera, the leader of COPEI, the country’s second most important political party and the AD’s coalition partner, firmly supported the government.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en108|&lt;span&gt;14&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Unsuccessful in urban revolt, the MIR, PCV, and their allies in the FALN turned to the rural &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; —without ever entirely abandoning urban action. The Betancourt administration responded with vigorous military repression and with socioeconomic progress that dealt political defeat to the guerrilla movements.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;U.S. military training, supplies, and participation in the counterinsurgency efforts greatly assisted the Venezuelan forces’ violent suppression of the revolutionary cadres.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en109|&lt;span&gt;15&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Political defeat of the guerrillas occurred long before the revolutionary leaders acknowledged the futility of further armed struggle. As the Betancourt administration moved toward its close, the FALN called for a general strike in November 1963 to emphasize its campaign against the upcoming presidential elections. Not only did the strike fail, but over 90 percent of the Venezuelan electorate participated in the elections and chose AD candidate Raúl Leoni as the country’s next president. Despite FALN threats to execute people waiting in line to vote, those elections provided AD with a majority in both houses of Congress. COPEI’s Rafael Caldera, a strong supporter of the anti-guerrilla campaign and of the AD-COPEI cooperation, finished second. The Venezuelan populace simply did not share the FALN’s rejection of elections and the possibility of democratic reform. Much more than the military defeats, the guerrillas’ inability to create the subjective conditions for revolution (what Che Guevara defined as the essential revolutionary task) ensured their failure.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The open support provided by Fidel Castro to the Venezuelan guerrillas and the Cuban leader’s vitriolic attacks on President Betancourt seemed to arouse Venezuelan nationalism against both foreign involvement and the supra-national loyalties of the guerrilla forces. In any case, the elections of 1963 illustrated emphatically that guerrilla insurgency without lengthy political work at all levels would fail in Venezuela.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1964 the new president, Raúl Leoni, offered a general amnesty to the guerrillas of the PCV, MIR, and FALN who would abandon the armed struggle and return to democratic political competition. This offer divided the FALN even as the government intensified its efforts against the rebels. Political debate within the PCV and MIR (many of whose leaders had been imprisoned, killed, or were in exile) led gradually to a decision by the PCV to abandon the armed struggle.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en110|&lt;span&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Whereas the Venezuelan Communists initially espoused armed struggle much more stridently than had their Guatemalan compatriots, they also withdrew relatively quickly from the guerrilla struggle in response to government efforts at repression and then reconciliation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the period 1965—67, Douglas Bravo, FALN guerrilla leader, and other Communists in the FALN found themselves expelled from the PCV for rejecting the party’s tactical change and discipline. Meanwhile, PCV leaders engaged in bitter rhetorical exchanges with Fidel Castro and the Cuban leadership.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en111|&lt;span&gt;17&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Military defeat, defections, betrayals, and ideological fragmentation of the guerrillas pushed Douglas Bravo further toward a strategy of protracted popular warfare as the short-term prospects of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; tactics looked grimmer.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In March 1966 the AD government released Jesus Farias (secretary general of the PCV) and Domingo Alberto Rangel (well-known intellectual and former leader of the MIR) from prison, where they had been incarcerated since 1963. The government also liberated long-term PCV leaders Eduardo and Gustavo Machado. Acceding to the amnesty program, these former guerrillas and urban revolutionaries moved decisively against Bravo and the FALN, seeking to wrest control of the FLN (the political front) from the proponents of the armed struggle. When Fabricio Ojeda, another eminent FALN guerrilla leader who had earlier participated in the interim government that replaced Pérez Jiménez (1958—59), went to La Guaira to mediate with the PCV, military intelligence units captured him. According to the government, Ojeda subsequently hanged himself in his cell. Whether or not Ojeda’s death resulted from betrayal by the PCV, it meant the loss of a key person in any effort to reforge the revolutionary unity and created another martyr in the ranks of the guerrillas of the 1960s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By 1968, FALN’s situation appeared pathetic. Che Guevara’s death in Bolivia the previous year further disheartened the remnants of the guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos.&lt;/span&gt; Nevertheless, MIR proclaimed its determination to carry on the revolutionary struggle “despite the torture, the desertions, the assassinations, and the vicious propaganda of the enemy.” &lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en112|&lt;span&gt;18&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Its revolutionary proclamations did nothing, however, to overcome reality.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The year 1969 saw a first in Venezuela: the election of an opposition candidate who peacefully assumed the presidency. In his inaugural address, COPEI’s Rafael Caldera offered amnesty to all insurgents in exchange for respect for democratic processes. Moreover, he offered to legalize the PCV (an offer extended to MIR in 1973); to free well-known Communists and guerrilla leaders such as Pompeyo Márquez and Teodoro Petkoff; and to negotiate with Douglas Bravo and the FALN. Although Bravo ultimately rejected the amnesty offer, one authority asserts that Caldera’s new pacification initiative “broke the back of the guerrilla movement” and quotes testimony that&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Orestes Guerra Matos, a member of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist party, . . . said that the guerrillas were tired and dispirited due to their lack of victories since the moment when Caldera became president.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The pacification program succeeded partly because of external developments. Under President Caldera, Venezuela established or reestablished diplomatic relations with various communist countries, including the Soviet Union. The official Soviet position of peaceful coexistence, which generally opposed the export of the revolution through violence, coincided with the pacification program’s aims. The Cuban government’s decision—made in response to strong Soviet pressure—to curtail the support of insurgent groups clearly hurt the Douglas Bravo-led FALN, and made it easier for the guerrillas to consider the promises of pacification.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en113|&lt;span&gt;19&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;After a month of negotiations, Douglas Bravo decided to continue the guerrilla struggle, unlike many former guerrillas who soon occupied a place in the Venezuelan Congress as they returned to civilian life and national politics. At the same time, President Caldera made the pacification program even more palatable to some on the political left by exchanging ambassadors with the Soviet Union and seeking to improve relations with Cuba. Of course, the military defeats inflicted upon the guerrillas by the two AD administrations made the Christian Democratic “pacification” program attractive to many of the leftist politicians and intellectuals tired of clandestinity and discouraged by the Venezuelan people’s rejection of revolutionary violence. Although some guerrilla activity continued, especially in the Falcón-Lara region where Douglas Bravo persisted, the Venezuelan government reported fewer than ten guerrilla fighters killed by government forces from 1969 to 1974.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en114|&lt;span&gt;20&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Venezuelan government provided genuine political options, changes in public policy, and improvements in the living conditions of some of the rural and urban poor. Made possible to a great extent by revenue from the oil industry, this effort on the part of Venezuela’s two major parties confirmed Che Guevara’s prediction that liberal democracy—the appearance of alternatives to armed struggle—would work to the disadvantage of guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; in Latin America. The Venezuelan political system failed to meet the basic social and economic needs of millions of the country’s inhabitants, but the belief that democratic change might still improve their situation—and the clear evidence that changes in regime could occur through elections—undermined both the appeal of revolutionary politics and the support by the vast majority of the population for armed struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;From 1970 to 1997&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Although lacking substantial political support, some guerrilla fighters nevertheless continued military operations in the rural and urban areas into the 1970s. After presidential elections in 1973 and the return of AD to the presidency with the victory of Carlos Andrés Pérez, a number of former guerrillas opposed the new administration from the relative safety of Congress. Included in their numbers was Américo Martín, whom Che Guevara had hailed in the 1960s in his call for “two, three, or many Vietnams,” as leader of one of the Venezuelan &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Nationalization of the oil industry in 1976 further undercut both leftist and rightist critics of Venezuelan democracy. Lacking both an effective agrarian platform, in part because of government agrarian reform policies from the early 1960s, and now losing the nationalist initiative, the Venezuelan left returned almost entirely to conventional opposition party politics. In 1978, Américo Martin presented himself as MIR’s presidential candidate. Defeated handily by the Christian Democrat, Luis Herrera Campíns (and also by the AD candidate as well as by the candidates of other small parties), Martin and his leftist compatriots received less than 15 percent of the vote for congressional seats. Even if this participation in electoral politics is viewed as a temporary tactic, it contributed to the perceived legitimacy of liberal democracy and to the belief in the possibility of social reform without insurgency.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The return of the majority of the surviving guerrilla leaders to conventional political activity culminated in 1979 when the COPEI administration of Herrera Campíns announced an amnesty for more than one hundred political prisoners and remaining guerrillas, including Douglas Bravo. Whereas Bravo had rejected the amnesty offered in 1969 and continued the struggle against the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez, he now agreed to end almost two decades of armed struggle.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en115|&lt;span&gt;21&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In April 1979, Bravo returned to legal public life with a speech in Coro, capital of Falcón state, where he had long led the guerrillas. Acting as a member of a political party, the Partido Revolucionario de Venezuela (PRV, Revolutionary Party of Venezuela), Bravo asked for a minute of silence to honor guerrilla comrades killed in armed struggle—Camilo Torres in Colombia, Carlos Fonseca in Nicaragua, Fabricio Ojeda and Chema Saher in Venezuela, and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;comandante&lt;/span&gt; Che Guevara.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Poverty, misery, and even the “agrarian question”—the objective conditions Che Guevara postulated for the initiation of guerrilla warfare—continued to exist on a wide scale in Venezuela. International recession, a debt crisis shared with other Latin American nations, and rising unemployment in the early 1980s put new pressure on the political system. Since the early 1960s, however, the political response of the national administrations, along with the apparent consolidation of constitutional liberal democracy, made Venezuela a less likely arena for successful armed struggle than many other Latin American nations. As Che Guevara accurately stated, guerrilla warfare is an essentially political struggle. In Venezuela effective statecraft and political leadership, combined with reformist policies financed with oil revenues, proved an effective barrier to the success of guerrilla-based revolutionary warfare.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Along with the strong domestic political leadership and economic advantages that helped to defeat the Venezuelan guerrilla movements, U.S. support for Venezuela’s reformist political parties and U.S. restraint in dealing with the nationalization of the petroleum industry contributed to the survival of constitutional government in Venezuela. The leadership’s explicit rejection of Marxist ideology and of Cuban influence in politics provided no pretext for U.S. intervention even when U.S. economic interests were threatened or adversely affected by new Venezuelan legislation. Unlike the Guatemalan or, later, the Cuban (1959—62) and Nicaraguan (1979—90) governments, Venezuelan governments exercised a moderate nationalism without identifying Venezuelan reforms or foreign policy with international socialist movements or revolution. Thus, Venezuelan political leaders of both major parties successfully maneuvered in the cold war of the 1960s and 1970s without allowing Cuban-supported Venezuelan insurgents or U.S.-sponsored counterinsurgency to transform the nation’s government into a military dictatorship.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By the early 1970s the incorporation of many guerrilla leaders into new political parties and movements delegitimated armed struggle as a political tactic and reaffirmed formal democracy. As Che Guevara had predicted, elections, strong political parties, and reformism were bulwarks against popular support for insurgency. He had been correct in his original assessment: even the appearance of legal alternatives to insurgency and the possibility of changing governments through electoral competition diminish support for revolutionary movements and armed struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Even more so was this premise the case with Venezuela’s popular reformist parties and political leaders, such as Betancourt, Leoni, and Caldera. Peasant attachment to the Acción Democrática party in much of the country and the lack of political presence and cadres by the left in the countryside (which had often meant provisioning the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; from the cities, a fundamental contradiction of Guevara’s insistence on reliance on campesinos and local resources for supplies) impeded guerrilla operations. After their defeat, or the political decision to withdraw from armed struggle, the insurgent &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;comandantes&lt;/span&gt; were given amnesties by various presidents. Gradually the ex-guerrillas became leaders of social democratic and democratic socialist movements and parties. Slowly they attained influence in Congress, the trade unions, the universities, and the mass media. They served as ministers in various presidential cabinets, as functionaries in government agencies, and as researchers in universities and think tanks. They participated in NGOs and even in private business. The political parties they formed, such as MIR, Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), and the Causa-R, played minor roles in the 1970s and gained more influence in the 1980s and 1990s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite debt crises, recession, political corruption, and calls for broad institutional reform in the 1980s, and even two military coup attempts in 1992, no significant new guerrilla movements emerged in Venezuela (as they did in Peru and Mexico), nor did the 1960s and 1970s organizations resurge (as in Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador). Venezuela did not escape, however, massive discontent and violent protests in the 1980s. And the brief popular uprising in Caracas (the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Caracazo&lt;/span&gt;, 1989) protesting the radical shift from statist to neoliberal policies spread across the nation, emphatically illustrating pent-up political frustration.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en116|&lt;span&gt;22&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Dissidence among nationalist military officers, growing dissatisfaction with the political party system, and widespread corruption all threatened governability and regime legitimacy. President Carlos Andrés Pérez was impeached in 1993.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Venezuelans, however, even those who supported the 1992 coup attempts in the name of antipolitics and an end to corruption, continued to profess their commitment to democracy. An exception was the small group of “urban guerrillas” engaged in isolated terrorist acts and seeking recruits in the universities and high schools.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en117|&lt;span&gt;23&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Rumors persisted regarding rural guerrillas “in the east.” While small groups of romantic revolutionaries might seek to resuscitate armed struggle in Venezuela in the name of Che Guevara’s heroic image, his politico-military tactics had, for all practical purposes, lost their remaining influence there by the late 1970s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Commenting in 1987, ex-Communist, guerrilla leader, political prisoner, and founder of MAS Teodoro Petkoff declared:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Even in his book on guerrillas, Che Guevara says—almost on page one—that even in an imperfect democracy, it’s useless to start a guerrilla war. The Cuban Revolution had a great impact on Venezuela. Some of the old pro-Soviet PCV leaders supported Cuban positions, while others grumbled. Most PCV members and middle-level leaders were enthusiastic backers of Cuban policy. But seven or eight years later, the armed movement had reached an impasse. This brought on a process of reflection that led the PCV to suspend armed activities and to get back into politics before we disappeared completely. . . . We considered democratic values sine qua non components of social change, unlike some who understand socialism in terms of its achievements—education, sports, health—and who consider political democracy secondary.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en118|&lt;span&gt;24&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;While some analysts might question whether the last part of this statement is a revisionist interpretation of the Venezuelan Communist party’s (and the guerrillas’) views in the 1960s and 1970s, it was clear by the late 1970s that democratic values and reformist programs had been adopted by Petkoff and most of his ex-comrades. Few people remained who saw the 1960s and early 1970s insurgencies as other than a strategic error, although Juan Vicente Cabezas, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;el comandante Pablo&lt;/span&gt;, could still imagine reopening guerrilla fronts if a &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Pinochetazo&lt;/span&gt; or &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Videlazo&lt;/span&gt; occurred in Venezuela.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en119|&lt;span&gt;25&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When President Caldera (1969—74) legalized the Communist party, established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, gave amnesties to the ex-guerrillas (including the release of Petkoff from prison), and pacified Venezuela, his initiatives anticipated the outcome of the guerrilla struggles in Central America in the 1980s and 1990s. Likewise, the decision by Petkoff, Pompeyo Márquez (MAS), Alfredo Maneiro (late-1970s leader of Causa-R), and others to create social democratic and democratic socialist movements to promote their visions for political change provided examples that would be followed elsewhere in the hemisphere. Rejecting the viability of the guerrilla movements of the 1960s, Maneiro declared at the end of the 1970s: “Broadening and deepening democracy are the ideological commitments of Causa-R . . . democratizing the municipal structure of Caracas, seeking the unity of the left. . . . [My hope] is that some force arises that galvanizes the frustration of this country, of this people, to break the co-dominion of Acción Democrática and COPEI. If that doesn’t happen, we may see a ‘Mexicanization’ of Venezuela.” &lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en120|&lt;span&gt;26&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Joined by other populist, reformist, and Marxist parties, including the Venezuelan Communist party, the Movimiento Electoral del Pueblo (MEP, which had split from AD), and MIR (which merged with MAS in 1988), the Venezuelan left disassociated itself from armed struggle, revolutionary socialism, and anticapitalism. “Renovated” long before &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;perestroika&lt;/span&gt;, the left was not threatened (indeed, perhaps vindicated) by the end of the cold war in contrast to insurgents in El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, and Peru—and Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Not until 1994 did the co-dominion of AD and COPEI over the presidency end. MAS, allied with seventeen other parties and movements, helped elect Rafael Caldera, COPEI founder and now “independent” leader of Convergencia. MAS became part of the government; Causa-R remained a leftist opposition party with growing influence. Not all ex-guerrillas and revolutionaries wished to forget—or at least to suppress—the ideological and political “error” of guerrilla struggle in emulation of the Cuban Revolution. And not all of them believed, like Juan Vicente Cabezas, that “nos derrotaron porque somos unos pendejos” (they defeated us because we’re fools).&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en121|&lt;span&gt;27&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; But well before &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;perestroika&lt;/span&gt; and the collapse of the Soviet Union transformed the still-militarized left in Latin America, the Venezuelan left had taken a more reformist and constitutionalist approach to politics and social change.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#end en122|&lt;span&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Notes&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;endnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en95|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For overviews of Venezuelan politics during the period 1959-84, see Rómulo Betancourt, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La revolución democrática en Venezuela&lt;/span&gt;, 4 vols. (Caracas: Imprenta Nacional, 1968); Robert J. Alexander, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Venezuelan Democratic Revolution&lt;/span&gt; (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1964); idem, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Communist Party of Venezuela&lt;/span&gt; (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1969); idem, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Rómulo Betancourt and the Transformation of Venezuela&lt;/span&gt; (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1982); Loring Allen, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Venezuelan Economic Development: A Politico-Economic Analysis&lt;/span&gt; (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1977); David Blank, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Politics in Venezuela&lt;/span&gt; (Boston: Little, Brown &amp;#x26; Co., 1973); Glen L. Kolb, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Democracy and Dictatorship in Venezuela&lt;/span&gt; (New London: Connecticut College, 1974); Daniel H. Levine, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Conflict and Political Change in Venezuela&lt;/span&gt; (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973); Edwin Lieuwen, Venezuela (London: Oxford University Press, 1961); John D. Martz, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Acción Democrática: Evolution of a Modern Political Party in Venezuela&lt;/span&gt; (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968); and Talton Ray, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Politics of the Barrios of Venezuela&lt;/span&gt; (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en96|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;By 1958—59 some leaders of the Venezuelan Catholic hierarchy also spoke out against the dictatorship; in 1958 the Archbishop of Caracas strongly condemned the Pérez Jiménez regime. This presaged the role of progressive Catholics in revolutionary movements in much of Latin America during the decades 1960-80.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en97|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a description of some of the dictator’s tactics against AD and other opposition groups, see Alexander, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Rómulo Betancourt&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 326-27. Alexander says of the atrocities that “the toll of AD leaders who died in the underground as well as those who perished in exile was very heavy in those years, and many of those who died were long-time friends and associates of Rómulo. Numerous others suffered severely at the hands of Pedro Estrada’s secret police.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en98|&lt;span&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Alexander, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Venezuelan Democratic Revolution&lt;/span&gt;, p. 112.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en99|&lt;span&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Richard Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971), pp. 121—214. According to Robert Alexander (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Rómulo Betancourt&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 543-44), “one of the early leaders of MIR . . . told Betancourt later that he estimated MIR had received as much as $600,000 from Cuba for the purchase of arms during the first year of its existence. . . . In addition to money the Cubans were providing training.” See also Sheldon B. Liss, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Diplomacy and Dependency: Venezuela, the United States, and the Americas&lt;/span&gt; (Salisbury, N.C.: Documentary Publications, 1978), pp. 217—25.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en100|&lt;span&gt;6&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a sympathetic treatment of MIR’s origins, evolution, and objectives, see James Petras, “Revolution and Guerrilla Movements in Latin America: Venezuela, Colombia, Guatemala, and Peru,” in James Petras and Maurice Zeitlin, eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Latin America: Reform or Revolution?&lt;/span&gt; (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1968), pp. 337-43.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en101|&lt;span&gt;7&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;In Latin America, “university autonomy” theoretically means, among other things, freedom from police or military jurisdiction on the campus. In this case, the government responded to student use of the university as a center for revolutionary activity with military intervention, thereby violating the “sanctity” of academia. See Philip B. Taylor, “Venezuela,” in D. M. Condit et al., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Challenge and Response in Internal Conflict&lt;/span&gt;, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: American University, 1968), pp. 474—75.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en102|&lt;span&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 151-52.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en103|&lt;span&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Taylor, “Venezuela,” p. 476; Alexander, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Rómulo Betancourt&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 490-92; Petras, “Revolution,” p. 341.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en104|&lt;span&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 160-61. The FALN departed radically from this original code in a program to “kill a cop a day” and disrupt urban transport.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en105|&lt;span&gt;11&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 165.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en106|&lt;span&gt;12&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., pp. 166-67.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en107|&lt;span&gt;13&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See quotation from &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Izquierda&lt;/span&gt; in Alexander, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Rómulo Betancourt&lt;/span&gt;, p. 485.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en108|&lt;span&gt;14&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;“In the face of those insurrectional outbursts, the perfect schematic elaboration of which we have proof in documents captured by the police, the government adopted an attitude which was called mild. For three or four days hundreds of adolescents were burning vehicles, attacked people and property. The government did not break them up for fear that a boy or girl of fourteen might be hit by a bullet; but there came the moment in which there was established a solid and compact united front among men of the ultra-Left, the remains of the dictatorship, and gangsters. One morning the populous neighborhood ‘&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;23 de Enero&lt;/span&gt;,’ where more than one hundred thousand persons live, saw the spectacle of commercial establishments ransacked and destroyed, homes assaulted, the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Banco Obrero&lt;/span&gt; dismantled. At that moment I assumed before my country and before history the responsibility of calling upon the armed forces to reestablish public tranquility.” See Alexander, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Rómulo Betancourt&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 487—88.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en109|&lt;span&gt;15&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;By 1969 the United States spent almost eight million dollars on military assistance to Venezuela and, even with diminution of the guerrilla threat, continued to provide over one million dollars a year. See U.S. Department of State, “Republic of Venezuela Background Notes,” Washington, D.C., 1969, p. 7.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en110|&lt;span&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Document dated November 7, 1965, and quoted in Fidel Castro’s speech at the University of Havana, March 13, 1967. Cited by Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, p. 189.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en111|&lt;span&gt;17&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Examples of these exchanges are cited above in the Introduction.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en112|&lt;span&gt;18&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;João Batista Berardo, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilhas e guerrilheiros&lt;/span&gt; (São Paulo: Impressão Dag-Dagostino Artes Gráficas, 1981), p. 133.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en113|&lt;span&gt;19&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Donald L. Herman, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Christian Democracy in Venezuela&lt;/span&gt; (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), p. 132.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en114|&lt;span&gt;20&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 133.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en115|&lt;span&gt;21&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ironically, Pérez’s strong support for the Sandinista guerrillas in Nicaragua greatly assisted the overthrow of dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979. See Somoza’s own bitter denunciation of President Pérez in Anastasio Somoza, as told to Jack Cox, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua Betrayed&lt;/span&gt; (Boston: Western Islands, 1980).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en116|&lt;span&gt;22&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For overviews of this period, see Richard S. Hillman, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Democracy for the Privileged: Crisis and Transition in Venezuela&lt;/span&gt; (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994); Louis W. Goodman et al., ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Lessons of the Venezuelan Experience&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C.: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1995); and Jennifer McCoy et al., ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Venezuelan Democracy under Stress&lt;/span&gt; (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1995).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en117|&lt;span&gt;23&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Juan Carlos Navarro, “Venezuela’s New Political Actors,” in Louis W. Goodman et al., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Lessons&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 115-35.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en118|&lt;span&gt;24&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited in Marc Edelman, “Venezuela’s Petkoff, from Guerrilla to Congressman,” in NACLA, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Report on the Americas&lt;/span&gt; 21, no. 3 (May—June 1987): 9.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en119|&lt;span&gt;25&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Mention of a &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Pinochetazo&lt;/span&gt; or &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Videlazo&lt;/span&gt; refers to the military coups in Chile (1973) and Argentina (1976). Agustín Blanco Munoz, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La lucha armada: Hablan seis comandantes&lt;/span&gt; (Caracas: UCV-FACES, 1981), p. 341. For retrospective assessments of the guerrilla experience, see also Agustín Blanco Muñoz, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La lucha armada: Hablan 5 jefes&lt;/span&gt; (Caracas: UCV-FACES, 1980). These interviews provide insight on the guerrilla movements and the development of the Venezuelan political left in the 1970s. In places the interviews are tragic; in others, folkloric.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en120|&lt;span&gt;26&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited in Blanco Muñoz, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La lucha armada&lt;/span&gt; (1981), pp. 380—81, 397.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en121|&lt;span&gt;27&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited in ibid., p. 340.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c06.html#ref end en122|&lt;span&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Steve Ellner, “The Venezuelan Left: From Years of Prosperity to Economic Crisis,” in Barry Carr and Steve Ellner, eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Latin American Left: From the Fall of Allende to&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Perestroika&lt;/span&gt; (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), pp. 139-54.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;chapter&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Colombia&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Political Chronology&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;tableau&quot;&gt;<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable none&quot;<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1930—46<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administrations headed by presidents from the Liberal party.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1930—34<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Enrique Olaya Herrera (Liberal).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1934—38<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Alfonso López Pumarejo (Liberal). Reformist program called “Revolución en Marcha”; populist reforms, expansion of suffrage, tax reforms, liberalization of laws on unions and collective bargaining; resistance by Conservatives and moderate Liberals.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1938—42<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Eduardo Santos (Liberal)—a moderate Liberal administration. Some retrenchment on reforms of past government.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1942—45<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Second administration of Alfonso López Pumarejo, marred by scandal and obstructionism of opposition. Attempted military coup in 1944. President resigns in 1945, replaced by interim coalition headed by Alberto Lleras Camargo. Divisions in Liberal party over populist program and charismatic appeal of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán allow Conservative victory in presidential elections.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1946—50<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Mariano Ospina Pérez (Conservative). Intensified sectarian conflict; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bogotazo&lt;/span&gt; (1948) initiates era of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;la violencia&lt;/span&gt; (1948—ca.1958).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1950—53<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Laureano Gómez and Roberto Urdaneta. President Gómez suffers heart attack in 1951; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;la violencia&lt;/span&gt; spreads. Country immersed in civil war with marauding guerrilla bands.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |June 1953<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Military coup headed by General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. Amnesty for guerrillas; depoliticization of national police; political prisoners released; women given suffrage.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1954—57<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. National Constituent Assembly gives Rojas Pinilla 1954—58 term<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |in office. Efforts to quell &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;la violencia&lt;/span&gt; and establish a populist administration that replaces Liberal and Conservative basis of politics. Economic recession and political difficulties prove too much for Rojas Pinilla’s populism; Rojas attempts to have himself chosen for another four-year term (1957).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |May 1957<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Military coup ousts Rojas Pinilla after student protests, civic strike, and growth of middle-class opposition. New civilian-military coalition.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1957—58<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Fifteen months of interim junta as traditional political parties seek new formula for national politics. Pact of Sitges initiates National Front as Conservatives and Liberals agree to “alternate” the presidency.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1958—62<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Alberto Lleras Camargo (Liberal). MOEC founded (1960) as first Fidelista movement in Colombia ; guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; go into action in 1962. Regime responds with counterinsurgency plans.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1962—66<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Guillermo León Valencia (Conservative). Rise of Colombian focos and guerrilla movements. Plan Lazo counterinsurgency program initiated. ELN created (1964). Simacota Manifesto (1965). Camilo Torres issues call for “popular unity,” joins guerrillas, and dies in combat. FARC created (1966). Guerrilla organizations and “independent republics” suffer defeat at hands of counterinsurgency forces.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1966—70<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Carlos Lleras Restrepo (Liberal). Continued but less significant guerrilla activity. EPL joins in guerrilla struggle (1968). Colombian army almost triples in size (1964—68).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1970—74<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Misael Pastrana Borrero (Conservative). Last official National Front administration; decline of guerrilla movements. Challenge of political reform and other political movements and parties. Two leaders of ELN killed (October 1973); “final” eradication of FARC announced.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1974—78<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Alfonso López Michelsen (Liberal). Resurgence of ELN, FARC. M-19 emerges as leading urban revolutionary organization. Dissatisfaction within Colombian military over failure to destroy guerrillas.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1978—82<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Julio César Turbay Ayala (Liberal). M-19 continues activities in urban areas. Occupation of Dominican embassy in Bogotá (February 1980); Fidel Castro participates in negotiations to resolve impasse. Scandals<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |involving drugs and corruption within military. ELN and FARC renew sporadic rural operations. Government passes new antisubversive legislation; rightist death squads attack “subversives.” Colombia breaks off relations with Cuba (1982).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1982—86<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Belisario Betancur. Conservative “populist” administration offers amnesties to M-19 and other guerrillas; no definitive “pacification” obtained. Betancur participates in efforts to achieve negotiated settlement of insurgencies in Central America, initiates “peace process” (negotiations), and creates Plan Nacional de Rehabilitación to reincorporate guerrillas into legal political system. Army resists president’s efforts to limit autonomy and “peace process”; FARC and Communists create Unión Patriótica as political front; “Battle of the Palace of Justice” (September 1985) discredits M-19, army, and “peace process”; renewed counterinsurgency operations.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1986—90<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Virgilio Barco (Liberal). Creation of Consejería de Reconciliación, Normalización y Rehabilitación to institutionalize “peace process”; guerrillas alternately negotiate and make war as does government; ELN intensifies sabotage and economic warfare; creation of Coordinadora Nacional Guerrillera (1987). M-19 kidnaps Alvaro Gómez Hurtado to pressure government to negotiate (1988); &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;guerra sucia&lt;/span&gt; and political murders reach record level; campaign against &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;narcotraficantes&lt;/span&gt; effectively creates multifront war for government; FARC declares at end of 1989: “With our revolution we seek transformation of the existing unjust structures in the country.” M-19 adopts concept of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;pacto democrático&lt;/span&gt; as a way to end war (1987); M-19 announces its disarmament and decision to participate in legal politics (September 1989); ongoing negotiations between government and EPL, PRT, Quintín Lame.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1990—94<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of César Gaviria (Liberal). President seeks “political solution” to guerrilla war, sustaining contact with EPL, PRT, and Quintín Lame (1990); army attacks FARC base at Casaverde (November 1990) at time of elections for constituent convention; intensified fight against narco guerrillas (1991—94); new constitution adopted (1991). January 1992 brings new guerrilla offensive; new negotiations between government and Coordinadora Nacional Guerrillera fail to achieve agreement; intensified fighting, 1992—93; active participation of ex-guerrillas (M-19) in<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |constitutional convention and Congress (1990—93). Numerous reforms in areas of defense and national security policy; reorganization of national police; upgraded mobile counterinsurgency units deployed (1991—93); &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;ofensiva permanente&lt;/span&gt; and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;guerra integral&lt;/span&gt; announced against guerrillas and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;narcotraficantes.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1994—<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Carlos Samper. Presidential elections of 1994 punctuated by upsurge in political violence; Liberal party and M-19 candidates assassinated. Continued negotiations and violence; accusations of contributions by drug lords to Samper’s campaign and to that of many congressmen ; episodic guerrilla violence and response by army and police.<br /> |}<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Background&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1957, Colombia celebrated the ouster of the populist military dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla and the restoration of civilian government. Unlike their Venezuelan neighbors, however, Colombians had experienced little previous military intervention in national governance in the twentieth century. Before the coup that brought Rojas Pinilla to power in 1953, Colombian elites prided themselves on the continuity of civilian rule. Yet in 1953 they welcomed a military coup that promised to end years of civilian-inspired civil war and bloodshed. Unfortunately, civilian rule did not mean internal peace. Indeed, as a popular saying had it, “En Colombia que es la tierra de las cosas singulares, dan la paz los militares y los civiles dan la guerra” (Colombia is an unusual place; the military brings peace and the civilians bring war).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Political violence has been endemic to Colombia throughout its national history. Unlike many other Latin American nations, Colombia never overcame the nineteenth-century political divisions between Conservatives (clericals) and Liberals (anticlericals), never resolved the nineteenth-century issues of centralism versus federalism, never established a national government that truly forged and administered a nation, and never replaced personalism, factionalism, and the quest for partisan hegemony with a modern political agenda. Unable to accommodate new political groups and movements during the socioeconomic change of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Colombian political system did not even enjoy the benefits of social peace bestowed by “Liberal” dictators like Porfirio Díaz in Mexico or Antonio Guzmán Blanco in Venezuela.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Recurrent civil war, regional insurrections, “revolutions,” “disturbances,” blood feuds, and vendettas throughout the nineteenth century culminated in the “War of a Thousand Days” (1899—1902). This war left over 100,000 dead, thousands more maimed, the economy prostrate, and ended in a draw. Conservatives retained the presidency but concluded separate peace treaties with several Liberal generals in different parts of the country. These treaties presaged the next half century of intraparty and interparty competition and feuds—with no final reconciliation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The years 1902—46 are treated in conventional Colombian historiography as years of “social peace” and evolution of constitutional government.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en123|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In some ways they were. Colombians were spared widespread civil wars, the country was governed by elected civilian presidents, Congress functioned more or less as one would expect from an oligarchic legislature, and coup attempts by the military were infrequent and military dictators nonexistent. Despite the corruption and fraud typical of elections, Colombian citizens of all classes tended to identify with one of the two major parties. Given the economic crisis of the 1930s and the more typical authoritarian response in the Caribbean and Central America, Colombia seemed to represent a “democratic” departure from the Latin American norm.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;During these years Colombian governments included factions of both national parties. Usually the clerical-anticlerical issues and the conflicts over the extent of national administration in the hinterland could be temporarily resolved with appropriate distribution of patronage, government contracts, and gentlemanly accords among the members of the political class, the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;gente decente&lt;/span&gt;, who ruled the nation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;However, Conservative party dominance in the first decades of the twentieth century was accompanied by mounting social tension. Workers’ movements upset the old order, and peasant demands for land reform, better wages, and improved working conditions led to considerable violence.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en124|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Brutal suppression of a strike by the United Fruit Company’s banana workers in 1928, street demonstrations in Bogotá in June 1929, and unsuccessful but widespread insurrections in July 1929 divided the Conservative party before the 1930 presidential elections. This division permitted the election of a Liberal candidate (backed by dissident Conservatives) to begin sixteen years of Liberal party control of the presidency (1930—46).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The first Liberal administration (Enrique Olaya Herrera, 1930— 34) took some halting steps toward social and economic reform without menacing the Colombian oligarchy; the following administration of Alfonso López Pumarejo (1934—38) proved too serious in its reformist policies for the Conservatives and many of the president’s Liberal compatriots. Anticipating to some extent the Guatemalan reforms of 1944—54 and the Venezuelan &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;trienio&lt;/span&gt; (1945—48), López Pumarejo called his program “Revolución en Marcha” (Revolution on the March). Borrowing from the Mexican constitution, the New Deal in the United States, the Cárdenas administration in Mexico, and the Peruvian Apristas, President López Pumarejo’s program focused upon democratization of Colombian politics at the very time that the depression moved many Latin American nations back toward authoritarian personalist dictatorships.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Obstructionism within his party and fierce Conservative resistance frustrated López’s initiatives. The president threatened to resign in 1937 but finished his term without great success in implementing his most essential programs. Having ignited sparks of hope among the working classes and the peasantry, López Pumarejo was reelected in 1942 after the more moderate administration of Eduardo Santos (1938—42). This time, however, even López’s exaggerated moderation could not overcome both Liberal and Conservative antipathy; the president could not complete his terms of office because of scandals involving his family, congressional obstructionism, and an attempted coup in 1944. López resigned in 1945 and was replaced by an interim coalition government headed by Alberto Lleras Camargo. The leadership of the left wing of the Liberal party now passed to Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a student leader of modest social origins and great popular appeal. The division of the Liberal party allowed the Conservatives to regain the presidency for the first time since 1930 just as Conservative factionalism had allowed a Liberal victory in 1930.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Unfortunately for Colombia, the spirit of the Conservative party had grown more and more reactionary, with its principal ideologues committed to restoration of the Hispanic-Catholic tradition. There were frontal attacks on even the moderate reforms achieved during the 1930s and early 1940s, along with religious intolerance. In turn, the Liberal leadership now devolved on the charismatic personage of Gaitán, a long-time supporter of agrarian reform, peasant organization, and workers’ movements. The combination of traditional Conservative-Liberal conflict and the added burden of intensified class conflict made for an irreconcilable confrontation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Jorge Gaitán was no latecomer to Colombian politics. In 1929 he had served as a Liberal congressman and harshly criticized government repression of the banana workers’ strike at Santa Marta.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en125|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Since the workers’ movement confronted a large American firm, Gaitán became a nationalist hero as well as a political patron to the peasantry. Rejected by his Liberal compatriots, Gaitán founded the Union Nacional Izquierdista Revolucionaria (UNIR) and agitated without great success for social and agrarian reform. After returning to the Liberal party, Gaitán served in Congress, the senate, as minister of education, and as mayor of Bogotá. Immensely popular among the working classes and the peasantry, Gaitán represented the progressive hope within the Liberal party.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When López Pumarejo resigned from the presidency in 1945, Gaitán’s oratorical skill, charisma, and over two decades of reformist struggle made him a leading Liberal candidate for the presidency in 1946. However, many members of the Liberal party majority feared Gaitán’s reformist bent, his populist rhetoric, and his personalist appeal. These elements of the party presented Gabriel Turbay, a much more moderate candidate. Gaitán ran his own separate campaign, supported by socialists, Communists, and leftist Liberals. This split in the Liberal ranks permitted Conservative candidate Mariano Ospina Pérez to win the presidency.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en126|&lt;span&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Though willing to compromise with the moderate Liberals, Ospina Pérez found himself the leader of a party moving even further toward reaction. Spiritually motivated by the Hispanist ideology of Laureano Gómez, the Conservative administration essentially rejected liberal democracy and the political participation of labor and peasant organizations won in the 1930s.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en127|&lt;span&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;From 1946 on, direct confrontations between organized labor and the new administration resulted from the government’s efforts to break the influence of organized labor.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en128|&lt;span&gt;6&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Sponsoring the formation of parallel unions, the Conservatives, with the support of moderate Liberals, used all the resources of the government to destroy the emergent popular movements. Threatened by the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;trienio&lt;/span&gt; experiment of the Acción Democrática-military junta regime in neighboring Venezuela, the Colombian oligarchy blamed Communists and Venezuela’s Rómulo Betancourt for the surge of protest in rural and urban Colombia.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Government violence provoked a violent response. Liberal partisans and guerrillas resisted the Conservative onslaught and Colombia entered the era of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;la violencia&lt;/span&gt; (the Violence). Between 1946 and 1953 thousands of Colombians died as Liberal and Conservative militias, guerrillas, and bandits killed, maimed, and butchered their adversaries.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en129|&lt;span&gt;7&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Polarization intensified in June 1947 when the national Liberal party directorate named Gaitán its leader. This represented a victory for the leftist factions within the party and a clear danger to the moderate Liberals and the Ospina Pérez government. Sporadic partisan violence in the countryside and provincial towns was met with increased government coercion and abuse. The Conservative government seemed determined to achieve hegemony and to turn back the clock fifty years—or, as some argued, several centuries.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en130|&lt;span&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In this atmosphere Colombia hosted the Ninth Pan American Conference in Bogotá in April 1948. Attended by distinguished dignitaries from throughout the hemisphere, the conference provided every opportunity for the opposition to embarrass the Conservative government. Yet no one in attendance anticipated the disaster that followed. On April 9 an assassin killed Jorge Gaitán. News of the death spread quickly. Years of frustration exploded into urban insurrection. John Martz, an expert on Colombian politics, suggests that “the death of Gaitán was, for Colombia, comparable to the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en131|&lt;span&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; What followed was more like the urban riots of the 1960s in the United States, but with partisan political overtones.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en132|&lt;span&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Rioters destroyed much of downtown Bogotá. Conservative newspapers, churches, and the homes of government leaders were put to the torch as the movement degenerated into looting and pillage. Many Liberal police joined the mobs, while army troops defended the presidential palace and indiscriminately killed people on the streets. Violence spread to other urban centers quickly; in some places, Liberals ousted Conservative officials and carried out undeclared regional coups. Colombia rapidly fell into chaos.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Thus, just as the 1954 counterrevolution is the starting point for understanding modern Guatemalan politics, so this urban insurrection (called the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bogotazo&lt;/span&gt;) and the ensuing nationwide violence is the benchmark for recent Colombian history. For the next twenty years Colombians tortured, maimed, and slaughtered one another with a viciousness and barbarity that made them unique in twentieth-century Latin America. Liberal and Conservative partisans alike engaged in widespread brutality, massacre, and inhumanity.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en133|&lt;span&gt;11&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Barbarism did not entirely end “normal” partisan politics. After congressional elections in 1949, the Liberals retained control of the legislature. &lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en134|&lt;span&gt;12&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Sectarian violence remained so intense that in September 1949 a gunfight in Congress left one Liberal congressman dead and several others wounded. In anticipation of the upcoming presidential elections and the inevitable Conservative victory through fraud and intimidation, the Liberals decided on a strategy of abstentionism. At the same time they moved to impeach President Ospina Pérez. The president responded by closing down Congress, imposing press censorship, and declaring a state of siege. Two days after a Liberal-sponsored nationwide strike and an abortive coup attempt, the unopposed Conservative candidate, Laureano Gómez, won the presidential election on November 27, 1950.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;For the next three years, even after Gómez’s heart attack in 1951 and his semi-replacement with the minister of war, Roberto Urdaneta Arbalaez. the Gómez administration sought to impose a Hispanist version of dictatorship on Colombia. Downplaying his previous love affair with Franco’s Spain and his support for the Axis powers during World War II, Gómez nevertheless explicitly rejected liberal democracy and made clear the reactionary character of his medieval dream for Colombia.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Repression of Liberalism also entailed persecution of Protestant sects (often equated with Communism), the labor movement, peasant organizations, and all forms of political opposition. Purges of Liberal army officers and police added military expertise to the guerrilla partisans while politicizing the armed forces.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en135|&lt;span&gt;13&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Sponsoring constitutional change to institutionalize this Colombian version of Franco’s Spain, Gómez finally went too far when he attempted to remove General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla from his military command for fear that Rojas Pinilla was becoming too popular or that he offered an alternative to &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;continuismo&lt;/span&gt;. Although Rojos Pinilla was essentially loyal to Gómez and to the Conservative cause, his ambition and his desire to end the violence forced him to assume national direction. For the first time since the nineteenth century, the Colombian military took power, to the great pleasure and relief of the majority of the Colombian people.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en136|&lt;span&gt;14&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite Rojas Pinilla’s initial popularity and his attempts to create a “third force” in Colombian politics, however, his imitative populism ultimately failed to halt the violence in the countryside or to duplicate the mystique of his role model, Juan Perón in Argentina.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en137|&lt;span&gt;15&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Like Perón, Rojas Pinilla sought to create a clientelistic labor movement, gain support from the armed forces, and erode the power of the traditional parties. As in the Argentine case, economic difficulties, the eventual rejection of the “third force” by the Church (even though Rojas Pinilla continued the persecution of Protestants), loss of military support, the recuperation of the political parties, and Rojas Pinilla’s personal indiscretions (including his effort to revise the constitution and extend his term of office to 1962) finally provoked a military coup.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en138|&lt;span&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In late 1958 the provisional military junta returned political authority to an elected coalition government under the new “National Front” format that assured rotating presidencies of Liberals and Conservatives from 1958 to 1974.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;To seal the National Front bargain negotiated in the so-called Pact of Sitges (July 20, 1957) in Spain, Laureano Gómez administered the oath of office to Liberal president Alberto Lleras Camargo. Lleras Camargo declared in his inaugural address that a primary objective of his administration would be to put an end to &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;la violencia&lt;/span&gt; through an “intense campaign of pacification.” By May 1959 the minister of government, Guillermo Amaya Ramírez, announced that the average number of deaths per day from &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;la violencia&lt;/span&gt; had been reduced from 15.2 to 4; two days later, however, renewed violence in Tolima, Caldas, and Valle left over 200 dead.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As the message of Che Guevara swept across Latin America in the early 1960s, Colombia had already experienced several decades of rural violence, guerrilla warfare, and urban disorder. It was a nation whose central government still did not control parts of the countryside, the mountains, and the hinterland. It was also a country in which a new National Front coalition had determined to reassert government control over the national territory. This determination would include redefinition of the political responsibilities of the national police and armed forces as the defenders of the Frente Nacional against internal insurgency.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Given this recent political history of Colombia and the socioeconomic contradictions of the moment (1958—60), Colombians influenced by Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution faced a confusing situation in assessing the possibilities for revolutionary guerrilla warfare:&lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> # Colombia experienced no Caribbean-type dictatorship in all of the twentieth century. The only military populist leader of the century (Rojas Pinilla, 1953—57) was overthrown almost two years before Fidel Castro’s victory in Cuba. The new government installed in 1958 represented a historic effort by the country’s two traditional parties to restore internal peace and “democracy” to Colombia. &lt;span&gt;The major Colombian political parties, Conservative and Liberal, traced their lineage to the nineteenth century and claimed intense, even fanatical loyalties from their multi-class devotees. Indeed, party identification seemed almost “genetic,” passed from generation to generation. Peasant and worker identification with the traditional parties served as a significant barrier to recruitment to leftist and revolutionary movements.&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span&gt;Notwithstanding the apparent strength of the party system, the recent conflicts of the two major parties had contributed to two decades of partisan guerrilla violence, banditry, and savagery involving practically genocidal confrontation among families and entire villages. Rather than serving as institutional supports for peaceful democratic processes, electoral competition between the parties had been used to “justify” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;la violencia&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> # The physical terrain of many parts of Colombia, even more so than Guatemala and Venezuela, offered numerous opportunities for guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt;. In fact, politically inspired guerrilla bands and “independent republics” of peasantry operated for decades outside the control of the national government before the Cuban Revolution. Jungles, mountains, and isolated &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;llanos&lt;/span&gt; separated from urban centers by difficult terrain and poor transportation systems were ideal centers of guerrilla operations.<br /> # In 1959 the agrarian question remained a powerful political, economic, and social issue. Peasant grievances of long standing, labor disputes with landlords, the attempted reoccupation of lands abandoned during &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;la violencia&lt;/span&gt;, the concentration of large amounts of the best agricultural land in some 5,000 &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;latifundios&lt;/span&gt;, and the desire to participate in traditional export agriculture—coffee and, later, marijuana—all provided the objective conditions for guerrilla leaders to assume the role of agrarian revolutionaries according to Che Guevara’s prescription. &lt;span&gt;Whereas recent massive migrations to urban areas in response to &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;la violencia&lt;/span&gt; or in quest of better opportunities had reduced pressure on land resources in some regions, more than half of Colombia’s population lived in rural areas in 1960. Many resided on tiny smallholds (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;minifundio&lt;/span&gt;) too small to support the subsistence needs of a peasant family. Colombia’s agriculture in 1960—62 still contributed 30 percent of the value of gross domestic product (about the same as in Guatemala). This compared with only 3.5 percent in Venezuela. Similarly, agricultural exports accounted, by value, for 70—80 percent of total exports. This meant that any real agrarian reform could have significant economic as well as political implications for public policy.&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span&gt;Colombian political elites emphasized the extent of virgin lands and sponsored “colonization” projects to defuse the agrarian issue. While not successful in practical terms, the existence of new lands did reduce to a limited extent the pressure for land redistribution. It also created the perception by some peasants of a government effort to respond to demands for farmland and economic opportunity. In this sense the frontier could erode support for agrarian revolutionaries.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> # Colombia’s revolutionary Marxist tradition was, like Venezuela’s, quite recent and very weak. Nevertheless, some isolated rural zones with substantial Communist party influence existed as liberated zones or “independent republics.” These areas were for decades outside the effective authority of any national government; they might have served as ideal bases for Guevarist-inspired revolutionary movements. For all practical purposes these zones, and others controlled by Liberal guerrillas, bandits, or simply peasant partisans, already maintained a “counter-state” apparatus that provided for “law and order,” collected taxes, and performed some functions of regional administration. Nowhere else in Latin America did such extensive counter-state institutions exist in the early 1960s; that they antedated the guerrilla revolutionaries of the post-Cuban era provided both opportunities and dilemmas.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Origins of the Guerrilla Movements in the 1960s&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The National Front government came to office promising to restore order and pacify the rural regions subject for years to &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;la violencia.&lt;/span&gt; U.S. policymakers and Colombian elites firmly believed that the remnants of Liberal guerrillas, bandits, peasant partisans, and the existing “independent republics” potentially offered recruits and base areas for revolutionary guerrilla movements on the Cuban model. This fear was not unfounded, for as a Communist party member, Alberto G6mez, reminded readers in the 1960s, “the first major center of guerrilla struggle in Latin America” had been established with the assistance of the Communist party many years before the Cuban Revolution.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en139|&lt;span&gt;17&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The initial rural pacification programs of the Lleras Camargo government failed to prevent urban intellectuals, students, and Liberal party dissidents from taking up the call of Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution. Early in 1960 students in Bogotá founded the Movimiento de Obreros, Estudiantes y Campesinos (MOEC, Workers’ Students’, and Peasants’ Movement), the first self-declared Fidelista organization in the country. This movement sprang originally from a strike protesting an increase in bus fares in the capital (a typical student protest in Latin America). Antonio Larotta and Federico Arango, the movement’s early leaders, both were killed by 1962. A guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; initiated by MOEC in Uraba failed disastrously. Though maintaining its existence into the late 1960s, MOEC’s major contribution would be to provide the basis for one of Colombia’s most important rural guerrilla movements, the National Liberation Army (ELN).&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en140|&lt;span&gt;18&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Also founded in the early 1960s, the Frente Unido de Acci6n Revolucionaria (FUAR, United Front for Revolutionary Action) consisted largely of intellectuals attempting to link the memory and program of Jorge Gaitán to the Cuban Revolution (a tactic the Sandinistas in Nicaragua used with greater success; see the chapter on Nicaragua). An offshoot of the National Popular Gaitanista Movement (MNPG), organized by Gaitán’s daughter and her husband (a former socialist) after a trip to Cuba in 1960, FUAR allied leftist Liberals, socialists, and revolutionary youth. FUAR received financial support from Cuba and for a brief time seemed to be the leading Fidelista movement in Colombia.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en141|&lt;span&gt;19&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Soon, however, Gaitán’s daughter and her husband left the movement, asserting that it had been penetrated by police spies and that it had failed to reach the masses. Despite the revolutionary proclamations, FUAR never created a viable revolutionary threat or guerrilla movement that challenged the incumbent government (with the exception of the pathetic &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; of several hundred followers of Tulio Bayer in the department of Vichada).&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en142|&lt;span&gt;20&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In addition to their inability to emulate the Cuban foco, neither FUAR nor MOEC exhibited any talent for urban guerrilla warfare equal to that of their early Venezuelan counterparts.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Not until the mid-1960s—after the Colombian military with vast U.S. military assistance carried out massive counterinsurgency programs against the previously existing guerrilla movements and “independent republics”—did new revolutionary guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; emerge in Colombia. In January 1965 former militants of MOEC, students, professionals, and peasants led by Fabio Vázquez Castano occupied the town of Simacota in Santander. This action of “armed propaganda” resulted in a political declaration, the Simacota Manifesto, which defined the role of the ELN in the revolutionary struggle ahead:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The wealth belonging to the whole Colombian people is looted by American imperialists. But our people, who have felt the lash of exploitation, poverty, and reactionary violence, is rising up and is ready for war. Revolutionary struggle is the only way for the whole people to overthrow the present rule of deceit and violence. We, who form part of the National Liberation Army, are in the fight for the national liberation of Colombia. Whether Liberals or Conservatives, the people will join together to overthrow the oligarchy of both parties.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en143|&lt;span&gt;21&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Supposedly the ELN had originated in the hut of a peasant named Parmenio in July 1964; since that time it had prepared itself ideologically, logistically, and militarily for its emergence from secrecy.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en144|&lt;span&gt;22&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The ELN program called for the people to seize power and set up a popular and democratic government, which would institute genuine agrarian reform; economic and industrial development, including housing and urban reform; the organization of a people’s credit system ; and the organization of a national public health plan to bring medical services to all sectors of the population. The program sought educational reform, state organization of transportation and upgrading of the country’s road system, incorporation of the small Indian population into national life, freedom of thought and worship, an independent foreign policy in opposition to imperialism, and the formation of a permanent people’s army to guarantee the victories of the popular sectors. In effect, the ELN called for a national popular revolution in the spirit of the Cuban experience.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In March 1965, Camilo Torres, a progressive priest and intellectual from an elite Colombian family, issued a call for a movement of “popular unity.” Attacking the reactionary role of the Colombian Church, U.S. imperialism, and the Colombian oligarchy, Camilo Torres soon headed an urban political movement sympathetic to the Colombian guerrillas. After a bitter confrontation with the Church hierarchy, Camilo Torres left his priestly duties to dedicate himself to organizing and mobilizing a Frente Unido of “unaligned” forces to challenge the incumbent Frente Nacional.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en145|&lt;span&gt;23&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Calling upon Catholics, Communists, dissident Liberals, workers, peasants, students, and patriotic military officers to oppose the farcical, oppressive Frente Nacional, Camilo Torres became the symbol of the new progressive Church in Latin America. Unfortunately, he proved a poor politician. Unable to accomplish his political task, frustrated by Communist and Liberal sectarianism, Camilo Torres joined the ELN in the mountains, becoming the most celebrated guerrilla priest in Latin America in the 1960s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In early 1966, Camilo Torres died in combat against the Colombian military’s counterinsurgency forces. As Richard Gott, an expert on Latin America guerrilla movements, notes, like Che Guevara, “Camilo Torres in death was a more potent symbol than he had been when alive, especially outside his own country.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en146|&lt;span&gt;24&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Though the ELN would achieve few military successes of any consequence in the 1960s, it gave to Marxist revolutionaries throughout Latin America the hope of a new alliance between the guerrillas and Catholic revolutionaries in the anti-imperialist struggle—a hope more and more realized in the 1970s and 1980s with the spread of liberation theology and the recruitment of clerics to the revolutionary cause.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en147|&lt;span&gt;25&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Concerned with the political direction of the revolutionary guerrilla movement in Colombia and the challenge of the ELN, the Colombian Communist party (PCC) decided in early 1966 to assert more formal control over the guerrillas of the southern regions and the remnants of the forces from “independent republics.” In 1964 the Communist party had encouraged a First Southern Guerrilla Conference, which brought together peasants, bandits, and guerrilla leaders from the “independent republics,” along with two urban groups, “to coordinate the groups’ activities under a single command.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en148|&lt;span&gt;26&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; This Communist initiative coincided with a massive campaign (Plan Lazo; see below) by the Colombian military to extend national authority to the autonomous zones. With the peasant guerrillas on the defensive (or, using the Communist euphemism, “having adopted the tactic of mobile guerrilla operations”), the tenth congress of the Colombian Communist party in January 1966 recognized the need for full-scale guerrilla struggle even if the conditions were not right for rural insurgency:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The armed struggle has been going on in Colombia, in its peasant guerrilla form, since even before there could be said to be a revolutionary situation in the country. It would be negative and fatal for the Colombian revolutionary movement to stand by and watch the destruction of this force while waiting for a revolutionary situation to mature before beginning the armed struggle. The armed aggression of the enemy must be met by guerrilla resistance and armed struggle in the countryside. When conditions permit, this should be spread to the cities and working-class areas.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en149|&lt;span&gt;27&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;In April 1966 leaders of the Guerrilla Bloc of the South established the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). In a very real sense the organization of the FARC amounted to a defensive reaction to the Colombian- and U.S.-sponsored attack on the “independent republics.” Even so, Communist support for the FARC proved less than total; like other guerrilla movements in Latin America, the FARC experienced contradictions between the Communists’ desire to direct and control the guerrilla organizations and the party’s vacillating policies in regard to the relative importance of the electoral struggle versus the armed struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Like their FALN counterparts in Venezuela, some FARC leaders resigned from the Communist party in the period 1967—70, when the party entered into legal (electoral) struggle and deemphasized the guerrilla tactic. Inasmuch as this redefinition of priorities coincided with the Liberal administration’s establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, many Colombian guerrillas reacted bitterly. By the end of the 1960s the FARC’s existence as an important latent force in Colombian politics was overshadowed by the temporary lull on the military front.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Joining the ELN and the FARC in resistance to the Frente Nacional in 1968, the Ejército Popular de Liberación (EPL, People’s Liberation Army) added a pro-Peking, Maoist line to the Colombian guerrilla struggle. Some EPL militants had left the Communist party over ideological differences; others came from the old band of the experienced guerrilla leader Manuel Marulanda, former Liberal guerrilla forces, or even Conservative guerrilla cadres. Denouncing the revisionism of the Communists and the FARC, the EPL began military operations in Córdoba province in 1968 after two years of political preparation and organization of the peasantry.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en150|&lt;span&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The EPL made clear its ideological differences with the Guevara-inspired &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foquistas&lt;/span&gt; and the Communists, but also emphasized the lack of alternatives to armed struggle in order to make a revolution in Colombia.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Along with its FARC and ELN compatriots, the EPL remained a very isolated military and political force to the end of the 1960s. Unlike their Venezuelan counterparts, however, the major revolutionary guerrilla movements of Colombia continued in operation into the 1970s despite intense counterinsurgency and civic action programs dedicated ostensibly to their extermination. The legacy of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;la violencia&lt;/span&gt;, the political bankruptcy of the Colombian elites, and the inspiration of the Cuban Revolution contributed to the guerrillas’ survival—if it did not assure their victory.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Politico-Military Evolution of the Guerrilla Struggle&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The basic premise of the Frente Nacional consisted of the return to political power by the traditional political parties, while eliminating the basic source of violent confrontation between them: control of the state apparatus. The coalition agreement provided for even distribution of ministries, governorships, local government positions, and administrative posts between the two parties and among the factions within each party. The presidency would rotate between the two parties (this was the principle of alternation, hotly contested by dissidents within each party). The political truce was to last for sixteen years and to exclude other political forces. In theory this arrangement would allow for the pacification of Colombia, economic stabilization, and an equitable participation by the Liberals and Conservatives in policymaking and the fruits thereof. Through popular referendum the two major parties incorporated this political truce into the national constitution. Gradually, however, the exclusion of other political groups became a legal fiction; by 1970 former dictator Rojas Pinilla almost won the presidency by registering his National Popular Alliance (ANAPO) as a dissident faction of both the Liberal and Conservative parties.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The National Front achieved transfers of government that were peaceful, by Colombian standards, during its tenure (1958—74), but it did not secure a growing attachment to or respect for liberal democracy by the Colombian people because it was an obvious farce. Whereas the democratization of Venezuelan politics from 1959 into the 1970s discouraged revolutionary guerrilla movements, Colombian politicians and political parties inspired disdain, despair, and apathy. In the 1960 congressional elections, less than one-third of the eligible voters bothered to cast a ballot; presidential elections in 1962 brought only 100,000 more voters to the polls, although registration had increased by over 1,000,000 since 1960. Almost 70 percent of Colombia’s eligible voters abstained from the 1978 presidential elections.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en151|&lt;span&gt;29&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Also unlike Venezuela, Colombia gained from the National Front’s vocal acceptance of the Alliance for Progress even though there was very little real agrarian reform, little or no income redistribution, and no effective incorporation of the urban workers and peasants into viable organizations connected to the political system.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en152|&lt;span&gt;30&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Neither of the two major parties, nor even the leftist wing of the Liberals, achieved anything like the linkages that Venezuela’s Acción Democrática or COPEI had established with peasant organizations and the urban labor movement.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;More serious still, the commitment by the first two National Front governments to economic stabilization, diversification, and regional development did almost nothing to ameliorate the miserable working conditions and wages of the majority of the Colombian people. Strikes by workers in a large number of industrial sectors—textiles, banking, soft drinks, transport, petroleum—as well as student protests added urban unrest to the continuing (if somewhat diminished) challenge of rural violence. Personalist factions within each party routinely called into question the legitimacy of the principle of alternation and of the political truce itself. Criticism by the elites of the pact reinforced popular cynicism and undermined the pretense that liberal democracy prevailed in Colombia.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;With the transition to Conservative president Guillermo León Valencia in August 1962, the mockery of the popular will became more obvious. Conservatives clearly lacked majority support, yet the majority of Liberal party leaders supported a patrician Conservative for the presidency. Political alienation increased as even the moderate reforms of the Lleras Camargo years proceeded at a slower pace or were reversed. First priority was given to definitive pacification of the countryside. At the insistence of the United States, this concept extended to the “independent republics” where little overt threat to the government existed, but where government authority failed to reach.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Under Lleras Camargo, pacification of the countryside had incorporated the basic doctrines of U.S. counterinsurgency and civic action along with the periodic amnesties offered previously and co-optation or extermination of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;antisociales&lt;/span&gt; (antisocial elements). As described by Communist militant Alberto Gómez, these policies reduced the level of violence to some extent but far from ended it: “Rehabilitation was selective and aimed at winning the political support of sections of the peasantry, especially the ex-guerrillas and their leaders, or at least neutralizing them. On the other hand, districts whose population continued to regard the government with distrust were denied economic aid. The local organization in these areas were [sic] persecuted as before and many of their leaders, especially ex-guerrillas, were murdered.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en153|&lt;span&gt;31&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Even after these pacification programs, political violence—that is, between Liberal and Conservative partisans as well as “bandit violence” —remained in 1961—62 two-thirds of what it was in 1958. Government estimates suggested that in 1962, more than 160 guerrilla bands operated with about 3,000 fighters.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en154|&lt;span&gt;32&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Plan Lazo, a massive, U.S.-funded counterinsurgency operation, was initiated in July 1962, at the end of the Liberal administration, but unfolded after August 1962 under the direction of General Alberto Ruíz Novoa. Ruíz Novoa had been an active proponent of an expanded role for the armed forces in national development and pacification. His views had been made known in the country’s most important military journals—views highly consistent with the counterinsurgency-civic action programs developed by the United States to defeat Guevarista-inspired insurgency.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en155|&lt;span&gt;33&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Having served as commander of Colombia’s military contingent in Korea, and having absorbed American, French, and Israeli conceptions of civic action and counterinsurgency, Ruíz Novoa combined an intense anti-Communism with a pragmatic vision of a “new army,” a politically committed, modernizing armed force.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Plan Lazo committed the Colombian armed forces to eradicating the guerrilla bands remaining from &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;la violencia&lt;/span&gt; and to destroying the “independent republics” whose existence defied national sovereignty. The plan marshaled all forces of public order—the military, the national police, national detective forces, internal revenue agents, later even civilian self-defense units—in a unified effort to restore public order. “Perhaps the most notable military aspect” of the program, according to one authority, “was the adoption of counterguerrilla warfare techniques that were highly dependent on sophisticated intelligence-gathering and analysis. . . . Army tactical units acquired a &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;comando localizador&lt;/span&gt;, or unconventional warfare shock group, which clandestinely killed or captured guerrilla and bandit leaders. In addition, Mobile Intelligence Groups (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;grupos móviles de inteligencia&lt;/span&gt;) were attached to all major operating units. Their activities seem to have included counterguerrilla work similar to the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;comando localizador&lt;/span&gt;, as well as information-gathering.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en156|&lt;span&gt;34&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Plan Lazo’s success in destroying the “independent republics” and many of the old guerrilla bands contained the seeds of an important failure both for the operation’s director and for Colombia’s dominant political elites. In addition to the harshness of the military campaign itself and the brutal interrogation methods used, Ruíz Novoa’s ever more vocal insistence on a political role for the military in integrating Colombian development led to his forced resignation in 1965. Colombian politicians feared a “Brazilian model” coup, perhaps accurately foreseeing the eventual turn of events in Argentina, Peru, and later Chile and Uruguay. More specifically, the Plan Lazo forced the Communist party and other revolutionaries in Colombia to adopt a mobile guerrilla strategy since their long-held base zones no longer offered security.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en157|&lt;span&gt;35&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Under the pressures of revolutionary guerrilla movements and the impetus of the Plan Lazo, the armed forces nearly trebled in size, increasing from 22,800 in 1964 to 64,000 in 1968. This expansion of the military corresponded to the additional support personnel required for the counterinsurgency programs, including helicopter maintenance and communications equipment.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en158|&lt;span&gt;36&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The destruction of the old guerrilla groups and the “independent republics” resulted in dramatically increased military expenditures and operations rather than a diversion of funds to domestic development.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the subsequent Liberal administration of Carlos Lleras Restrepo (1966—70), the continued, if relatively minor, activities of the FARC, ELN, and EPL, along with urban support networks, required ongoing counterinsurgency operations. Deemphasizing civic action by the military (transferring these programs to civilian agencies), the Lleras Restrepo administration nevertheless carried out Plan Lazo-type counterinsurgency sweeps from 1966 to 1970 in the southern regions and in Córdoba, with a primary emphasis on physical suppression of the guerrillas.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en159|&lt;span&gt;37&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; During this entire period the major achievement of the guerrilla groups consisted of survival.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;With all the special circumstances influencing the development of the guerrilla struggle in Colombia, the immediate military outcome seemed little different than that experienced in Guatemala and Venezuela in the 1960s. With few exceptions the guerrillas operating in isolated rural regions or through urban movements achieved little or no military success. However, the long-term political effect of the Colombian guerrillas and their urban supporters was not yet clear. Into the 1970s the Colombian political system failed to cultivate popular support or to attain legitimacy, but mass popular support for the guerrillas also failed to develop. Leftist factions within the Liberal party, particularly elements of the Movimiento Revolucionario Liberal (MRL, Revolutionary Liberal Movement), student activists, some labor organizations, and many campesinos still looked to the revolutionary, nationalist, anti-imperialist program of Camilo Torres and the guerrilla cadres as Colombia’s only realistic alternative to the existing misery and political putrefaction. The legacy of Camilo Torres, the guerrilla priest, drew other Catholics into the revolutionary struggle; other men of the cloth joined several of the guerrilla fronts.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Whereas the Venezuelan guerrillas lost the political battle for revolutionary change even before their military defeat, the military limitations of the Colombian guerrillas contrasted markedly with the failure of the Colombian oligarchy to consolidate a political, social, and economic bulwark against aspirations for revolutionary change. These aspirations, the legacy of Che Guevara, Camilo Torres, and the still-operative ELN and other guerrilla forces, critically challenged Colombian elites and their U.S. allies as the country moved into the 1970s. With the majority of Colombia’s population politically disaffected but committed neither to the government nor to revolutionary change, the political-military struggle remained undecided.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;From 1970 to 1984&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The National Front pact officially ended with the Conservative administration of Misael Pastrana Borrero (1970—74), notwithstanding the Liberal and Conservative agreement to maintain the coalition arrangement without presidential alternation. Having accomplished the not insignificant feat of reducing the level of rural violence, the National Front partners had nevertheless failed to implement any fundamental structural reforms or to gain wider respect for the principles of liberal democracy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Reducing the level of rural violence had not entirely eliminated the legacy of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;la violencia&lt;/span&gt;; explicitly ideological guerrilla movements continued to plague the civilian regime. Adding to the existing problems of chronic rural violence, guerrilla activity, and partisan conflict, Colombia now became the principal supplier of marijuana and cocaine to the United States. Colombian processing plants and smugglers served as conduits for the coca leaf production of Peru and Bolivia. Thousands of Colombian campesinos increased their incomes from cultivation of the drug crop. Reaching to all levels of Colombian society, the drug economy, in practice much larger than the economy based on the official major export crop, coffee, further corrupted the political process, the criminal justice system, the military, and the highest levels of government administration.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en160|&lt;span&gt;38&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Moving toward the end of the original National Front pact, the Pastrana Borrero administration faced the dilemma of implementing proportional representation (rather than “parity”) for political parties in departmental assemblies and municipal councils (as provided in a constitutional amendment of 1968). Former dictator Rojas Pinilla’s populist ANAPO party represented an important third force in Congress and at the local level; traditional Conservatives and Liberals retained only 46.5 percent of the congressional seats.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en161|&lt;span&gt;39&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; With two-thirds of the congressional votes necessary on many important issues, the legislative system became stalemated even more than before. Although ANAPO’s strength practically disappeared by 1974, a very large increase in voter turnout to support ANAPO in the 1970 elections indicated widespread discontent with the National Front’s performance.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en162|&lt;span&gt;40&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When the Pastrana Borrero administration took power, the revolutionary guerrilla movements of Colombia remained active but very limited in operational capabilities and influence. In 1973 the government and military command made the decision to eradicate the ELN and the FARC “once and for all.” By October 1973 the military had killed two of the three Vásquez Castaño brothers, leaders of the ELN, and captured the organization’s principal ideologue, Lara Parada. For the moment the ELN cadres dispersed in northeastern Antioquia and the region of Medio Magdalena. The military then turned its power against the FARC in southern Tolima and Huila; newspapers periodically announced the “final” eradication of the guerrillas.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en163|&lt;span&gt;41&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Just as rural violence and partisan conflict became endemic in Colombia, however, so the guerrilla movements seemed always to resurge. Under Liberal president Alfonso López Michelsen (1974— 78), the ELN, supposedly destroyed, celebrated ten years of struggle with several major attacks on government targets; the FARC also renewed its operations. In addition, a new revolutionary movement, the M-19, moved into prominence. At first claiming to be the armed branch of ANAPO, the M-19 invaded the Quinta de Bolívar “to defend the honor of the nation.” Evolving slowly, the eclectic M-19 became a more serious urban guerrilla threat to the regime in February 1976. Commemorating the death of Camilo Torres, it initiated a series of urban operations, including “expropriation” of food and consumer goods for distribution to the poor in the city’s shantytowns.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en164|&lt;span&gt;42&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The resurgence of guerrilla activity renewed the debate within the military establishment over counterinsurgency and civic action and the political role of the armed forces. General Álvaro Valencia Tovar took up the mantle of Ruíz Novoa from the 1960s; like Ruíz Novoa in the mid-1960s, Valencia Tovar was dismissed (forced into retirement) amid widespread rumors of a coup. Within the military the general’s ouster meant victory for the hard-line tendency of Defense Minister Varon Valencia (“increased military action against the guerrillas and a firmer line against the labor and student protest movements”). &lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en165|&lt;span&gt;43&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Further unrest in the military followed the involuntary retirement of five more generals in December 1977; the high command called on the government “to implement effective emergency measures and guarantee the armed forces structures and its members the respect they deserve.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en166|&lt;span&gt;44&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The inability of the López Michelsen government and its successor, that of Liberal president Julio César Turbay Ayala (1978—82), to destroy the revolutionary forces pushed Colombia further in the direction of the military regimes in the Southern Cone. Though civilians continued their formal dominance (witness the dismissal of the “political” officers), de facto and de jure military administration over much of the country followed the adoption of “security statutes” that criminalized “subversive propaganda” and “public disorder” (labor or student protests). Military administration—including brutal interrogation, torture, and murder of suspected subversives—belied any pretense of real constitutional government. A massive roundup of “subversives” in the 1979 campaign against the M-19 brought widely protested violations of human rights but still failed to halt M-19 urban operations.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en167|&lt;span&gt;45&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; M-19 activities included a well-publicized raid on the principal military installation in Bogotá and the capture of a large amount of armaments and the February 1980 occupation of the embassy of the Dominican Republic in Bogotá (which obtained the freedom, through exchange of hostages, of numerous political prisoners and M-19 militants). In this latter episode Fidel Castro participated in the negotiations that facilitated a resolution.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Right-wing and military response came quickly. Military intellectuals resuscitated the Ruíz Novoa-Valencia Tovar line in the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revista Militar del Ejército&lt;/span&gt;: “Subversion survives, with greater strength than before; and with the souls of patriotic and loyal soldiers, we have the vague premonition of worse days to come. We are convinced that the army can militarily destroy the guerrillas, but we are also convinced that even with this, subversion will continue as long as the objective and subjective conditions in the economic, social, and political fields, which daily impair and disrupt stability, are not modified.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en168|&lt;span&gt;46&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This emphasis on the military’s role in eliminating the objective and subjective conditions leading to subversion was a backhanded acknowledgment of Che Guevara’s legacy; it also made many Colombians review the recent history of Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, and Chile. President Turbay’s own reaffirmation of democratic institutions rang hollow to anyone who lived the Uruguayan or Chilean experience of 1970—73: “Those who believe in such a possibility [a coup] are mistaken because the armed forces are democratic and loyal to the constitution.” &lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en169|&lt;span&gt;47&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; An academic observer commented, perhaps more realistically: “If the armed forces are drawn to oust the civilian elite because of a threat of social revolution, they will be almost certain to play a conservative role in defense of class and institution. . . . Once confronted with the unlikely prospect of another breakdown in civil order, as in 1953, or with a durable, threatening coalition such as Allende headed in Chile, the armed forces would undoubtedly take control of the government.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en170|&lt;span&gt;48&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Up to 1982 the further militarization of political administration and the lack of any significant reforms by the government reduced the need for an overt military coup. Military participation in the anti-drug programs of the Turbay administration provided additional economic opportunities or, as one writer suggests, “front-line exposure to corruption.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en171|&lt;span&gt;49&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; By the end of the Turbay government, the defense minister, General Camacho Leyva, renewed the propaganda war against the Colombian Communists and Cuba—alleged supporters of the M-19, ELN, and FARC. In March 1982 the government broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba. Two months later the armed forces again declared victory over the guerrillas.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As in Guatemala, however, the military won no real victory over the revolutionary forces despite its immediate tactical successes. Urban violence and sporadic rural guerrilla warfare continued into the administration of the newly elected populist-Conservative president, Belisario Betancur (1982—86), and was met by counterinsurgency operations. U.S. President Reagan’s fiscal year 1982 budget proposal made Colombia the second largest recipient of military assistance after El Salvador, even as President Betancur attempted to move Colombia toward a more independent foreign policy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Meanwhile, the M-19 and other guerrilla groups, after some initially favorable reactions, rejected the new administration’s latest amnesty proposals, declaring that “the question was not about guns, but about social transformation. ”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en172|&lt;span&gt;50&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In the beginning of 1983, Alfonso Yaqui, a member of the M-19 political command, asserted that his organization’s actions represented a new revolutionary option for Colombia: “For us, political-military action became a form of political participation. Contrary to what happened to earlier movements which only confronted the state’s military apparatus, the Army, our actions always had a clear political objective—to force the government to face the problems of the country and seek popular support.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en173|&lt;span&gt;51&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In late 1983 and early 1984 the M-19 and the FARC continued military and political activity despite Betancur’s amnesty offer. In the meantime, rightist death squads and military counterterrorist offensives, which seemed to operate outside the scope of presidential control, assassinated leftists and former guerrillas who had accepted the amnesty. President Betancur sought nevertheless to implement the amnesty on an individual basis and to reincorporate elements of the revolutionary left into the legal political process. The president’s efforts, however, could not overcome generations of conflict. In mid-March 1984 a spectacular M-19 military operation forced Betancur to declare a state of siege in several regions of endemic violence as the guerrilla leadership declared the futility of peaceful reform in Colombia. For Colombia, as for Guatemala, the guerrilla struggle continued in the 1980s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By the end of May 1984, however, President Betancur’s crackdown on drug operations, which, some analysts argued, helped to finance the guerrilla organizations, and a renewed offer of an “armed amnesty” seemed to produce a breakthrough: the major guerrilla movements agreed to a truce with the government. Certain key military leaders vehemently opposed the agreement, causing serious dissension within the military establishment. Nevertheless, the president’s policies, reminiscent of similar efforts in Venezuela in the late 1960s and the 1970s, gained acceptance, and a tenuous peace prevailed by mid-June 1984.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;From 1984 into the 1990s&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;President Betancur attempted to combine political and social reforms and negotiations with the guerrilla groups to bring peace to Colombia. The FARC responded with “democratization of the war” and the hesitant acceptance of a truce. The M-19 preferred “guerril-lization of democracy.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en174|&lt;span&gt;52&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; By 1984 all the guerrilla groups except the EPL had signed cease-fire agreements, but for most of them this decision was tactical rather than a final one to put down their arms and accept liberal democracy for the long term. Just as most of the guerrilla groups resisted overtures for a lasting peace, so did many military officers, who preferred victory on the battlefield to negotiated political settlements.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By the 1980s all the Colombian guerrilla movements had long since dropped Guevara’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; approach. They operated as national or regional political forces, seeking to mobilize popular support for their military struggle but also to become de facto governments in much of rural Colombia. For the moment the FARC maintained its military presence but respected the truce, even participating in the 1985 election under the banner of the Unión Patriótica coalition invented largely by the Communist party. The M-19 reversed Clausewitz’s famous dictum on war, proclaiming that “politics is the continuation of war using other means.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en175|&lt;span&gt;53&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In November 1985 the M-19 carried out a spectacular and disastrous operation in Bogotá, occupying the Palace of Justice. The subsequent army assault to retake it left more than one hundred dead, among them guerrillas, judges, government officials, and visitors to the building. The Palace of Justice tragedy temporarily discredited the M-19 and brought criticism of the armed forces for their sledgehammer tactics. As President Betancur’s term ended, it was clear that his strategy for bringing peace to Colombia through amnesties, negotiations with the guerrillas, and political reform had failed. All of the guerrilla groups except the FARC abandoned the peace process and returned to insurgency.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Betancur’s successor, Liberal President Virgilio Barco (1986—90), faced not only the guerrillas but also the rising power of the drug cartels. From 1986 until 1990 the main guerrilla groups alternately negotiated with the government, signed truce agreements, returned to combat, and then again turned to negotiations.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en176|&lt;span&gt;54&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Guerrillas controlled isolated areas as de facto governments, imposing war “taxes” on landowners and businesses, “tolls” on the roads, and operating “social service” agencies in the territory that they controlled. The Colombian state, weak, ineffective, and corrupt, could neither destroy the guerrillas militarily nor gain enough support from the population to undermine their hold on parts of the country.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As in the past, each guerrilla organization had its own agenda, finances, military and political tactics, and regional or local strongholds. Internal divisions and fears of government penetration led them to purge their organizations and assassinate suspected traitors. Extortion of landowners, oil companies, and businessmen, along with kidnappings and a growing collaboration with drug lords, financed and corrupted most of these organizations. Sometimes the guerrillas fought one another, allied with drug lord gangs, and confused their political objectives with arms and drug trafficking. In some years the Colombian government faced more attacks from drug lord armies than from guerrillas, but it was always afflicted by both. Rather than attacking military bases and seeking battlefield victories, the guerrillas usually put political pressure on the government by attacking economic targets: electric transmission lines, transportation networks, oil pipelines, and commercial farms.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Each of the main guerrilla movements followed its own national and regional strategies.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en177|&lt;span&gt;55&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In 1989 the FARC cut its ties to its formal civilian allies, the Unión Patriótica (UP), and returned to clandestinity. The government had not been able to protect the UP politicians and supporters from death squads; hundreds had been killed, including two presidential candidates. In contrast, the M-19 negotiated an end to the guerrilla struggle in return for access to the political system and a role in the drafting of a new constitution (finally adopted in 1991). Its members also were not immune to political violence, suffering numerous post peace-agreement casualties, but they did not return to the armed struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Taking office in 1990, Liberal President César Gaviria offered an amnesty to the EPL and two smaller insurgent groups. While the EPL agreed, from 1992 to 1994 other guerrilla groups continued their resistance and demands for further political reforms, including cancellation of concessions to foreign oil companies and a more nationalist economic agenda. In the early 1990s guerrillas sabotaged Colombia’s main oil pipeline over a hundred times; in 1993 this interference forced suspension of petroleum exports for three days. By one estimate the sabotage caused over $700 million in losses from 1986 to 1993.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en178|&lt;span&gt;56&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ostensibly, the guerrillas demanded that the government nationalize the oil industry and end foreign investment in key natural resources. This demand was consistent with the anti-imperialist nationalism of 1960s Guevarism and the early declarations of the FARC, ELN, and EPL in their formative years. The nationalist demands were often combined with informal “taxation” of foreign firms and domestic capitalists, though usually more as revenue-raising devices than as revolutionary efforts to overturn the incumbent regime. Guerrilla warfare had become an instrument to promote reform, a business, a permanent occupation for many fighters, and even a way of life in the case of the FARC and ELN. Yet none of these groups sincerely believed that it could topple the government or create a socialist society in Colombia in the late 1980s and early 1990s, unlike some of their counterparts in El Salvador as late as 1990. Romantic Guevarismo had long since disappeared.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Presidential candidates and congressmen campaigned on a platform of peace; guerrillas, drug lords, death squads, the armed forces, and police continued the deadly cycle of violence and counterviolence. Guerrillas kidnapped and assassinated candidates, blew up police stations, and sought to disrupt elections. Paramilitary rightist death squads and the army responded in kind and worse. The M-19 presidential candidate in 1994 was assassinated, as was the Liberal party candidate. Human rights violations and politically inspired murders in Colombia exceeded levels in the worst military dictatorships in South America. Colombia’s many “dirty wars” took more victims than state terrorism, insurgency, and counterinsurgency in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay combined from the 1960s to 1990. Peasants, businessmen, labor leaders, politicians, judges—indeed, virtually anyone—could be victimized by a society at war with itself.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The demise of the utopian Guevarista political cause of the 1960s and early 1970s left Colombia with various politico-guerrilla armies. They were fragmented, ideologically contorted, and without any hope of achieving their original objectives, although revolutionary, anti-imperialist rhetoric survived. From 1982 until 1992 the guerrillas alternately and simultaneously negotiated with succeeding governments, signed truce agreements, obtained amnesties (as did members of the armed forces and police), violated the truces (as did the army and police), and renewed the armed struggle. Many guerrillas now fought for pay; drugs, kidnapping, extortion, cattle rustling, arms trafficking, and assassinations made war a business. At the same time the guerrillas’ exactions of revolutionary “taxes” on landowners, private businesses, and oil companies demonstrated that they were a “parallel government” in certain regions. Prolonged guerrilla warfare thus contributed to the decay of political authority and weakening of governmental institutions.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1987 the M-19, FARC, EPL, and other smaller guerrilla groups founded in the 1970s and 1980s, such as the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT) and the Movimiento Armado Quintín Lame (MAQL, a regional organization defending indigenous demands in Cauca), formed the Coordinadora Guerrillera Simon Bolivar (CGSB). This coalition was created to better negotiate military demobilization, political reform, and “peace” with the government. To add pressure, the M-19 kidnapped Conservative Congressman Alvaro Gómez Hurtado in May 1988 and presented the government with an eleven-point proposal, ranging from a sixty-day cease-fire and a national “summit” of political forces to solve the nation’s problems to a charity benefit for orphans by athletes and artists. Eventually releasing their hostage, the M-19 and other guerrilla groups continued to the end of the decade to use armed struggle combined with political pressure to force reforms.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Now far from the objectives of Che Guevara in the 1960s, the guerrillas no longer believed in the possibility of a military victory that would lead to a socialist regime. Instead, political violence had become a routine method of bargaining for reform as well as a way of life for thousands of Colombians. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Perestroika&lt;/span&gt; and the decline of Cuba ended the utopian socialist dream; guerrilla war as a political method nevertheless survived the demise of the Soviet Union and the 1960s-1970s dream of destroying capitalism and creating a socialist &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;patria.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Fittingly, while other guerrilla groups continued the struggle, the mercurial M-19 announced in 1989 in the country’s leading newspaper that it was disarming—to become a political party and to fight for reform with more traditional political methods. Despite death-squad attacks against its members, as had also occurred with the FARC-related Union Patriótica, the M-19 participated in elections and moved its struggle for reform into Congress, the bureaucracy, the universities, and the media. In 1990 and 1991, M-19 leaders played a key role in writing and ratifying the new (1991) constitution.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Adopted early in the administration of President César Gaviria (1990—94), the new constitution seemed to be a partial victory by the forces of reform and, in a sense, of the decades of guerrrilla warfare. But the new constitution reaffirmed liberal democratic institutions and a capitalist economy, hardly Che Guevara’s purpose in calling for a continental revolution led by guerrilla cadres. Guerrilla struggle provoked reform, but it could not defeat imperialism and capitalism as he had envisioned. President Gaviria’s “National Strategy against Violence” recognized diverse sources of violence, including the armed forces, police, paramilitary groups, and state terrorism.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en179|&lt;span&gt;57&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; He called for an end to “private violence” and for the strengthening of the judicial system, and respect for human rights. These noble sentiments could not overcome the country’s endemic violence; Colombia continued to be bloodied by guerrillas, drug lords, human rights abuses by the armed forces and police, and rampant violent crime. In 1992 former government minister Argelino Durán Quintero died while being held hostage by a dissident EPL faction; President Gaviria suspended peace talks and ordered a new military offensive against the guerrillas. Once again the cycle of war, truce, negotiations, and renewed war repeated itself. Yet the CGSB proclaimed its commitment to a “political solution,” insisting that armed struggle “has simply been a means by which to resist aggression and to fight for democracy and dignity.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en180|&lt;span&gt;58&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Government credibility fell to new lows during the next presidential administration, that of Carlos Samper (1994— ), with congressmen, military officers, the police, the judicial system, and the president all accused of close ties to the drug lords. Samper campaigned on a platform of peace with the guerrillas, but his alleged ties to the drug cartels, the further erosion of the credibility of Colombia’s legislative, judicial, and other government institutions, and serious divisions within the military impeded political resolution of the guerrilla wars that had lasted for over one-half century.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Meanwhile, the FARC and other guerrilla movements of the past continued to fight, suffering defeats and also winning occasional victories. But they were now enmeshed in the web of narcoterrorism, corruption, kidnapping for profit, extortion, and political scandals that afflicted Colombia in the 1990s. Nevertheless, the EPL announced in 1994 that it was ready to negotiate and listed twelve demands as a basis for peace. These demands included a reduction in military spending, changes in the neoliberal economic policies, and an end to impunity for military and police officials who committed human rights abuses. Thus, even the EPL, which originally proclaimed its Maoist inspiration, now proposed political reforms as a bridge to peace rather than its continued commitment to destroying the capitalist system and creating a socialist society. The guerrilla movements brokered reforms with guns, brokered drugs for guns, sold guns for profit, and ruled small enclaves of the country. They supported peasant cultivators of coca against government (and U.S.-imposed) eradication programs and resisted Washington’s pressures on Bogotá to extradite drug lords and money launderers. In some ways they resembled remote descendants of the caudillo bands and regionalist armies of the nineteenth century that had resisted the authority of national governments more than they did the compatriots of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro in the 1960s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Little remained of Che’s political dreams. In Colombia, his vision of a just society born of revolutionary guerrilla warfare had become a permanent nightmare of bloodshed bereft of his romantic utopian idealism and enmeshed in global networks of drug cartels, weapons merchants, and terrorism. A story in the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Los Angeles Times&lt;/span&gt; in early September 1996 reported: “While attacks on police stations and ambushes of small groups of soldiers are fairly common in Colombia, this [attack on an army outpost] is the first major guerrilla offensive of this decade. . . . The guerrillas are believed to receive $20 million a year or more—roughly half their income—from taxes on the drug trade. They tax large coca growers, laboratories, buyers and planes that land to buy coca.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en181|&lt;span&gt;59&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;If some commitment to political reform still inspired the guerrilla struggle, along with anti-Americanism and a vague nationalism, it lacked the overall political vision of the Guevarista revolutionaries of the 1960s. Colombia’s guerrillas had changed with the times; in the 1990s they adapted to economic globalization, the end of the cold war, resurgent ethnic and cultural nationalism, and a strong dose of opportunism. The guerrilla movements preceded the Cuban Revolution by decades (if not a century), and they survived the demise of Guevarismo better than guerrillas anywhere else in Latin America.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1996, President Samper announced a new offensive against the FARC and other such movements. An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 guerrillas remained active, divided primarily among the FARC, ELN, and a dissident (non-demobilized) EPL front. &lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#end en182|&lt;span&gt;60&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Smart bettors wagered that they would be around long after Samper left office.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Notes&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;endnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en123|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For overviews of Colombian politics, see Robert H. Dix, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Colombia: The Political Dimensions of Change&lt;/span&gt; (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967); Orlando Fals Borda, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Subversion and Social Change in Colombia&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969); Vernon Lee Fluharty, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Dance of the Millions: Military Rule and Social Revolution in Colombia&lt;/span&gt;, 1930—1956 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1957); Germán Guzmán Campos et al., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Violencia en Colombia&lt;/span&gt;, 2 vols. (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo, 1963, 1964); John D. Martz, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Colombia: A Contemporary Political Study&lt;/span&gt; (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962, 1964); Robert Maullin, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Soldiers&lt;/span&gt;, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrillas&lt;/span&gt;, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;and Politics in Colombia&lt;/span&gt; (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1973); Paul Ocquist, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Violence, Conflict, and Politics in Colombia&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Academic Press, 1980); James L. Payne, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Patterns of Conflict in Colombia&lt;/span&gt; (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968); and Richard S. Weinert, “Violence in Premodern Societies: Rural Colombia,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;American Political Science Review&lt;/span&gt; 60 (June 1966): 340-47.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en124|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ocquist, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Violence,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 80-89, details numerous case studies of rural conflicts during the period 1920-40 in Quindio, Sumapaz, southern Tolima, northern Huila, Cundimarca, and other regions of Colombia.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en125|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;At the request of the United Fruit Company for restoration of order, the Colombian government violently suppressed the strike, then massacred banana workers at Santa Marta in 1928. Partly in response to these events, dissident Liberals, socialists, and Communists, along with worker and student organizations, initiated an abortive armed insurrection in July 1929.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en126|&lt;span&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Martz, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Colombia&lt;/span&gt;, p. 46, reports the following results: Ospina Pérez, 565,894; Turbay, 437,089; Gaitán, 363,849. Despite the Liberals’ majority position, the split in the party allowed the Conservative candidate to win the election.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en127|&lt;span&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Explaining his political philosophy in 1953, Gómez declared: “Universal suffrage contradicts the nature of society. The management of the State is by definition a product of the intelligence. An elemental observation shows that intelligence is not equally distributed among the members of the human species. In that aspect, society resembles a pyramid whose vertex is occupied by . . . an individual of very outstanding position by his intellectual condition. Below are found those with lesser capacities, who are more numerous. Thus continues a kind of stratification of social capabilities . . . abundant in inverse proportion to the shine of intelligence, until arriving at the base . . . which supports the entire pyramid and is composed of the obscure and inept multitude, where rationality scarcely appears to differentiate between human beings and brutes.” Cited in Martz, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Colombia&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 149—50.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en128|&lt;span&gt;6&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For descriptions of repression of labor organizations from 1945 to 1947, see Ocquist, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Violence&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 112—13; Miguel Urrutia, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Historia del sindicalismo&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;en Colombia&lt;/span&gt; (Bogotá: Ediciones Universidad de los Andes, 1969); Daniel Pecaut, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Política&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;y sindicalismo en Colombia&lt;/span&gt; (Bogotá: La Carreta, 1973); and Robert Alexander, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Communism in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1957), pp. 243—52.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en129|&lt;span&gt;7&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Eric Nordlinger, “Conflict Regulation in Divided Societies” (Cambridge: Harvard University Center for International Affairs, 1977), &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Occasional Papers in International Affairs&lt;/span&gt; no. 29, p. 76.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en130|&lt;span&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Martz, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Colombia&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 148-69; and Antonia García, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Gaitán y&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;el problema&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;de la revolución colombiana&lt;/span&gt; (Bogotá: Cooperativa de Artes Gráficas, 1955), p. 299. Church spokesmen managed to incorporate the whole gamut of religious, partisan, and cold war issues into their calls for “holy war.” Thus, Ocquist, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Violence&lt;/span&gt;, p. 173, cites a pastoral delivered by the bishop of Santa Rosa de Osos which reads in part: “Yes, the battle in these moments in the entire world, and especially in Colombia, is against the powers of Hell, which seek to destroy it. It is the battle of Christ against Belial, of good against evil, of the truth against error, of light against darkness, of Rome against Moscow.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en131|&lt;span&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Eric Hobsbawm suggests that this insurrection represented an incipient social revolution which, for want of leadership, “subsided into a state of disorganization, civil wars, and local anarchy.” “The Revolutionary Situation in Colombia,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;World Today&lt;/span&gt; 19 (June 1963): 248-58.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en132|&lt;span&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Just as Che Guevara participated in the 1954 events in Guatemala, Fidel Castro, as a radical young student, experienced the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bogotazo&lt;/span&gt; in Colombia in 1948.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en133|&lt;span&gt;11&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Norman A. Bailey, “La Violencia en Colombia,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Journal of Inter-American Studies&lt;/span&gt;, October 1967, cited in Richard Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971), p. 225: “Certain techniques of death and torture became so common and widespread that they were given names, such as &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;qpicar para tamal&lt;/span&gt;, which consisted of cutting up the body of the living victim into small pieces, bit by bit. Or &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;bocachiquiar&lt;/span&gt;, a process which involved making hundreds of small body punctures from which the victim slowly bled to death. Ingenious forms of quartering and beheading were invented and given such names as the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;corte de mica, corte de franela, corte de corbata&lt;/span&gt;, and so on. Crucifixions and hangings were commonplace, political prisoners were thrown from airplanes in flight, infants were bayoneted, school children, some as young as eight years old, were raped en masse, unborn infants were removed by crude Caesarian section and replaced by roosters, ears were cut off, scalps removed, and so on.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en134|&lt;span&gt;12&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;This, despite the vehement opposition of much of the Colombian Church hierarchy. Throughout the country local priests and their religious superiors preached against the evils of Liberalism, Marxism, and Protestantism.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en135|&lt;span&gt;13&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Daniel L. Premo, “The Colombian Armed Forces in Search of a Mission,” in Robert Wesson, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;New Military Politics in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1982), pp. 153—55. Numerous studies have attempted to explain the causes of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;la violencia&lt;/span&gt; in Colombia. Paul Ocquist. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Violence&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 129—53, summarizes the great range of explanations, from partisan conflict to family vendettas, local disputes over land and water rights, or fights over the local coffee crop. Ocquist’s list of types of causes—political, socioeconomic, institutional, psychological, cultural, racial—covers a great number of social science theories as well as the particulars of the Colombian case in a highly useful synthesis of the literature.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en136|&lt;span&gt;14&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Rojas Pinilla’s call for a return to “Peace, Law, Liberty, Justice for all, without differentiations or preference for the classes more or less favored,” cited in Martz, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Colombia&lt;/span&gt;, p. 168.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en137|&lt;span&gt;15&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Despite his ultimate ouster in 1957, Rojas Pinilla retained much of his popularity among the urban poor and lower middle class, who remembered his populist policies. This nostalgia almost elected him president of Colombia in 1970. See Dix, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Colombia&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 117—19, for a summary of Rojas Pinilla’s programs.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en138|&lt;span&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For an analysis of the downfall of Rojas Pinilla, see Martz, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Colombia,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 213—27.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en139|&lt;span&gt;17&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Alberto Gómez, “The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and Their Perspectives,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;World Marxist Review,&lt;/span&gt; April 1967, cited in Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, p. 234.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en140|&lt;span&gt;18&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;German Guzmán Campos, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Violencia en Colombia&lt;/span&gt;, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;parte descriptiva&lt;/span&gt; (Cali, Colombia: Ediciones Progreso, 1968), pp. 459-60, offers a critical evaluation of MOEC’s activities in the early 1960s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en141|&lt;span&gt;19&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Dix, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Colombia&lt;/span&gt;, p. 279.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en142|&lt;span&gt;20&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 244—46, for descriptions of the Bayer &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en143|&lt;span&gt;21&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited in Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 259-60.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en144|&lt;span&gt;22&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 258.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en145|&lt;span&gt;23&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See John Gerassi, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revolutionary Priest: The Complete Writings and Messages of Camilo Torres&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Random House, 1972). In his introduction, “Camilo Torres and the Revolutionary Church,” Gerassi analyzes the revolutionary influence and inspiration of Camilo within the Latin American Church.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en146|&lt;span&gt;24&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, p. 300.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en147|&lt;span&gt;25&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Penny Lernoux, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Cry of the People: The Struggle for Human Rights in Latin America&lt;/span&gt;—&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Catholic Church in Conflict with U.S. Policy&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Penguin Books, 1980, 1982); and Gustavo Gutiérrez, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;A Theology of Liberation: History&lt;/span&gt;, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Politics, and Salvation&lt;/span&gt; (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1973).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en148|&lt;span&gt;26&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Maullin, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Soldiers&lt;/span&gt;, p. 30.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en149|&lt;span&gt;27&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited in Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 518—19.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en150|&lt;span&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 304.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en151|&lt;span&gt;29&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Russell H. Fitzgibbon and Julio A. Fernández, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Latin America: Political Culture and Development,&lt;/span&gt; 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1981), p.175.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en152|&lt;span&gt;30&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See R. Albert Berry and Ronald Soligo, eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Economic Policy and Income Distribution in Colombia&lt;/span&gt; (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1980). Peter Dorner and Herman Felstehausen, “Agrarian Reform and Employment: The Colombian Case,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;International Labor Review&lt;/span&gt; 102, no. 3 (September 1970): 221—40, report: “The 1960s programmes, while widely hailed as agrarian reform, have done little to expand income or employment opportunities for peasants or to reorder the overall distribution of land” (pp. 222-23).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en153|&lt;span&gt;31&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Gómez, “The Revolutionary Armed Forces,” p. 248.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en154|&lt;span&gt;32&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Maullin, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Soldiers&lt;/span&gt;, p. 28.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en155|&lt;span&gt;33&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For discussion of Ruíz Novoa, civic action, and the “new mission” of the Colombian military from 1961 to 1965, see Anthony P. Maingot, “Colombia,” in Lyle N. McAlister et al., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Military in Latin American Sociopolitical Evolution: Four Case Studies&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C.: American Institute for Research, 1970), pp. 174-78. Jean Larteguy, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Guerrillas&lt;/span&gt;, trans. Stanley Hochman (New York: World Publishing Co., 1970), p. 161, cites Ruíz Novoa as follows: “The war of the future will be guerrilla warfare. . . . Sometimes it will be Communism that will attempt to seize power by means of subversion. At other times Communism will have to face guerrillas who are trying to recuperate lands for the West. At the moment, it is the West that has to recuperate Colombian lands which have fallen into the hands of the Communists.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en156|&lt;span&gt;34&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Maullin, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Soldiers&lt;/span&gt;, p. 75. For the romanticized memoirs of “an undercover agent of the Colombian Army,” see Evelio Buitrago Salazar, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Zarpazo the Bandit,&lt;/span&gt; trans. M. Murray Lasley (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1977).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en157|&lt;span&gt;35&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For the official Communist party version of the Plan Lazo and formation of the FARC, see &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Colombia en pie de lucha&lt;/span&gt; (Prague: Editorial Paz y Socialismo, 1967).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en158|&lt;span&gt;36&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Premo, “The Colombian Armed Forces,” p. 161.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en159|&lt;span&gt;37&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Maullin, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Soldiers&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 45-49, 79.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en160|&lt;span&gt;38&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a discussion of the diplomatic conflict between the United States and Colombia over the drug traffic, see Daniel L. Premo, “Colombia: Cool Friendship,” in Robert Wesson, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;U.S. Influence in Latin America in the 1980s&lt;/span&gt; (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1982), pp. 104-7.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en161|&lt;span&gt;39&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;ANAPO’s populist character is brought home clearly by Robert Dix, “Political Oppositions under the National Front,” in R. Albert Berry et al., eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Politics of Compromise: Coalition Government in Colombia&lt;/span&gt; (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1980), pp. 131-79.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en162|&lt;span&gt;40&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;By 1974, Rojas Pinilla’s daughter clearly led ANAPO; Rojas Pinilla, old and ill, died in 1975. ANAPO was essentially a populist and personalist movement that could not survive its leader—unlike &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peronismo&lt;/span&gt; in Argentina. For analysis of the 1970 elections, see Reza Rezazadeh and Joseph McKenzie, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Political Parties in Colombia&lt;/span&gt; (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1978).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en163|&lt;span&gt;41&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;J. Mark Ruhl, “The Military,” in Berry et al., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Politics of Compromise&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 196—97.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en164|&lt;span&gt;42&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;João Batista Berardo, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilhas e guerrilheiros&lt;/span&gt; (São Paulo: Impressao Dag-Dagostino Artes Gráficas, 1981), p. 148; Premo, “The Colombian Armed Forces,” pp. 162-63. Later, the M-19 initiated rural operations in isolated Caquetá. See “Colombia: Whose Country Is This, Anyway?” NACLA, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Report on the Americas&lt;/span&gt; 18, no. 3 (May-June 1983).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en165|&lt;span&gt;43&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Premo, “The Colombian Armed Forces,” p. 163.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en166|&lt;span&gt;44&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Espectador&lt;/span&gt;, December 20, 1977, pp. 1, 8, cited in Premo, “The Colombian Armed Forces,” p. 164. For a sophisticated military analysis of the role of Latin America in the cold war and the Colombian situation, see Brigadier General Fernando Landazabal Reyes, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Factores de violencia&lt;/span&gt; (Bogotá: Ediciones Tercer Mundo, 1975).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en167|&lt;span&gt;45&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Berardo, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilhas&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 148-49.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en168|&lt;span&gt;46&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revista Militar del Ejército&lt;/span&gt;, April 1, 1981, as cited in the FBIS, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Daily Report: Latin America&lt;/span&gt;, April 3, 1981, p. vi. Quoted in Premo, “The Colombian Armed Forces,” p. 166.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en169|&lt;span&gt;47&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited in Premo, “The Colombian Armed Forces,” p. 166.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en170|&lt;span&gt;48&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ruhl, “The Military,” p. 201.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en171|&lt;span&gt;49&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Premo, “The Colombian Armed Forces,” p. 167.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en172|&lt;span&gt;50&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;“Colombia, Turbay, and M-19 View Betancur,” NACLA, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Report on the Americas&lt;/span&gt; 17, no. 1 (January—February 1983): 36. See also “Colombia—Another Threat in the Caribbean,” NACLA, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Report on the Americas&lt;/span&gt; 16, no. 5 (September-October 1982).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en173|&lt;span&gt;51&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;NACLA, “Colombia, Turbay,” pp. 38-39.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en174|&lt;span&gt;52&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Vladimir Zabala, “La toma del Palacio de Justicia,” mimeo, 1986, cited in Eduardo Pizarro, “Revolutionary Guerrilla Groups in Colombia,” in Charles Bergquist, Ricardo Peñaranda, and Gonzalo Sánchez, eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Violence in Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective&lt;/span&gt; (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1992), p. 186.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en175|&lt;span&gt;53&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Pizarro, “Revolutionary Guerrilla Groups,” p. 187.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en176|&lt;span&gt;54&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a detailed description of these negotiations and return to combat for the M-19, EPL, PRT, MAQL, and FARC, see Mauricio García Durán, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;De la Uribe a Tlaxcala, Procesos de paz&lt;/span&gt; (Bogotá: CINEP, 1992).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en177|&lt;span&gt;55&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Lawrence Boudon, “Guerrillas and the State: The Role of the State in the Colombian Peace Process,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Journal of Latin American Studies&lt;/span&gt; 28, Part 2 (May 1996): 279-97; Marc Chernick, “Is the Armed Struggle Still Relevant?” NACLA, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Report on the Americas&lt;/span&gt; 27, no. 4 (January-February 1994): 8—14; Jenny Pearce, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Colombia: Inside the Labyrinth&lt;/span&gt; (London: Latin American Bureau, 1990); Jeffrey I. Ryan, “The Impact of Democratization on Revolutionary Movements,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Comparative Politics&lt;/span&gt; 27, no. 1 (October 1994): 27-44; and Matthew S. Shugart, “Guerrillas and Elections: An Institutionalist Perspective on the Costs of Conflict and Competition,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;International Studies Quarterly&lt;/span&gt; 36 (June 1992): 121—31.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en178|&lt;span&gt;56&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Lowell Fleischer and Eduardo Lora, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Colombian Policy in the Mid-1990s&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1994), p. 45.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en179|&lt;span&gt;57&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Francisco Leal Buitrago, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El oficio de la guerra, La seguridad nacional en Colombia&lt;/span&gt; (Bogotá: IEPRI, TM Editores, 1994).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en180|&lt;span&gt;58&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Proclamation of the CGSB (December 2, 1992), reprinted in Chernick, “Is the Armed Struggle Still Relevant?” pp. 8—14.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en181|&lt;span&gt;59&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Juanita Darling, “Guerrillas Hit Colombia Army Outpost, Kill 19,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Los Angeles Times,&lt;/span&gt; September 7, 1996.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c07.html#ref end en182|&lt;span&gt;60&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Boudon, “Guerrillas and the State,” pp. 279-97.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;chapter&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Peru&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Political Chronology&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;tableau&quot;&gt;<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable none&quot;<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1919—30<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Augusto B. Leguía. Attempts at controlled modernization cause dislocations in Peru’s traditional sociopolitical system. APRA founded in 1924 in Mexico by Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1931—33<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Luis Sánchez Cerro, who is assassinated in 1933. Period of repression of APRA and near civil war.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1933—39<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Oscar R. Benavides, selected by Congress to complete term of Sánchez Cerro. Continued repression of APRA and other leftist parties; little reform undertaken.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1939—45<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |First administration of Manuel Prado. APRA remains underground and therefore able to promise all things to all groups.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1945—48<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of José Luis Bustamante y Rivero. APRA becomes legal and adopts a much more conservative political stance. Prominent Aprista leftists leave the party.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1948—56<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |General Manuel A. Odría takes power in military coup following an abortive APRA coup attempt. APRA outlawed; Haya de la Torre held captive in the Colombian embassy, where he can again be all things to all groups (1948—54). Odría, “elected” to six-year term in 1950, rules dictatorially but in a military populist style. CAEM founded in 1950.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1956—62<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Manuel Prado elected to second term after strong challenge from newcomer Fernando Belaúnde Terry. APRA, again legalized, supports Prado’s conservative policies, thereby alienating its leftist supporters. APRA Rebelde founded in 1960. Haya de la Torre wins 1962 elections, but military annuls them and assumes power. Frente de Izquierda Revolucionaria formed in Cuzco to aid Hugo Blanco.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1962—63<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Military junta adopts some reform measures, including land reform, in La Convención Valley. APRA Rebelde changes name to Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria. Ejército de Liberación National (ELN) founded by Hector Béjar.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1963—68<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Fernando Belaúnde Terry elected president, but coalition of APRA and party of Manuel Odría block reforms in Congress. Hugo Blanco organizes in La Convención Valley (1959—63) and is captured in 1963. Elements of the ELN move into action in 1963. Guillermo Lobatón and the Túpac Amaru &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; also move into action in 1965 and are defeated in 1966. Luis de la Puente Uceda and the Pachacutec &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; go into action in 1965 and are destroyed. Héctor Béjar and the ELN move into action in 1965 and are defeated; Béjar is captured.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1968—80<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Belaúnde Terry overthrown in 1968 by Peruvian military, which embarks upon far-reaching program of structural change. The First Phase of General Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968—75) characterized by extensive land reform and politicization of countryside and urban centers. The Second Phase of General Francisco Morales Bermúdez (1975— 80) characterized by sudden slowdown in reform programs, increasing economic decline, and growing popular discontent. The Partido Comunista Sendero Luminoso founded (1970) by Abimael Guzmán.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1980—85<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Military allows elections. Fernando Belaúnde Terry elected to second term. Sendero Luminoso launches guerrilla offensive (1980), attacks prisons, Guardia Civil outposts, power lines, bridges, and public buildings; state of siege imposed in department of Ayacucho. States of siege imposed in much of southern Peru. Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (MRTA), founded in 1982, goes into action in 1984 primarily in urban areas. Floundering economy, mounting foreign debt, and escalating violence cost Belaúnde Terry’s party the 1985 election.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1985—90<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Alan García Pérez (APRA) elected president. Challenges world economic community by offering only 10 percent of export earnings to service foreign debt; cutoff of international aid; mega-inflation rates and economic collapse. Sendero Luminoso and MRTA increase attacks and levels of violence; hundreds of local officials murdered. Frente Democrático (FREDEMO) founded in 1989 by worldrenowned author Mario Vargas Llosa, who runs for president in 1990.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1990—92<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Political unknown Alberto Fujimori forces Vargas Llosa into run-off election (June 1990); Fujimori wins and assumes presidency. Two months later, “Fujishock,” a draconian economic plan, announced; inflation reduced at high social costs. Sendero Luminoso uses crisis to expand and intensify its activities. Fujimori’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;autogolpe&lt;/span&gt; (April 1992). MRTA leader Victor Polay captured (June 1992); Sendero founder Abimael Guzmán and other leaders captured (September 1992). Congressional elections held (November 1992).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1992—97<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |New constitution approved (October 1993). Sendero Luminoso severely weakened but still active; MRTA declared “dead”; staggering economic cost of war and loss of life. Fujimori easily elected to second term in 1995. MRTA storms Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima and takes over five hundred hostages (December 1996); standoff lasts for weeks; military descends on residence, three hostages and all of the guerrillas are killed (April 1997). Fujimori’s popularity increases, then rapidly declines.<br /> |}<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Background&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Peru shares with Bolivia and Guatemala a political and social history of marginal existence for a large indigenous population outside the modern facade of urban areas and enclave industries. It shares with Colombia and, to a lesser extent, Venezuela a symbolic commitment to liberal democracy despite the resistance of elites to political change and social reform inherent in the liberal democratic state.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en183|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The result, in twentieth-century Peru, has been a plethora of laws, superficial reforms, and mountains of rhetoric that little altered the misery and poverty of the country’s indigenous population and the largely mestizo urban working classes.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en184|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The inauguration of Augusto B. Leguía in 1919 constituted a major turning point in Peruvian history. Throughout his eleven-year rule, Leguía sought to restructure Peruvian society, modernize the economy, and reorder the nation’s priorities to favor the urban-industrial sector. Like his successors, Leguía eschewed revolution. On the contrary, he sought to implement certain reforms and structural modifications in order to preserve basically intact the essential features of the old socioeconomic hierarchy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As is usually the result in traditional society, however, those palliative reforms caused severe dislocations in the Peruvian polity and unleashed new forces that were to challenge elite control of the nation for the next sixty years. The new economic and political groups favored by Leguía, upon which he had based his regime, never united into a cohesive political party. Instead, they remained divided and often mutually antagonistic.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Moreover, the 1920s had witnessed an increase in Indian peasant violence and uprisings in the sierra,&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en185|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; and this, coupled with increasing demands and pressure from urban labor and middle-sector groups, produced a potentially volatile climate. Out of this milieu emerged one of the most important Marxist leaders and theoreticians in Latin American history—José Carlos Mariátegui.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en186|&lt;span&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Antedating Che Guevara’s emphasis on the agrarian question as the key to social change in Latin America, Mariátegui sought to formulate an indigenous brand of socialism based on the ancient pre-Colombian Indian communal land tenure system, the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;ayllu&lt;/span&gt;. He argued forcibly that the alleviation of Indian oppression depended solely on land reform: “The agrarian problem presents itself above all as the problem of liquidating feudalism in Peru.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en187|&lt;span&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Peruvian leftists and radicals since, including the guerrillas of the 1960s, have been tremendously influenced by Mariátegui’s analysis, and thus the twin problems of agrarian reform and alleviation of Indian oppression have been viewed as the sine qua non of any revolutionary movement in Peru.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Indian and mestizo peasants of the sierra, however, were almost totally isolated from the mainstream of Peruvian politics and economics. Those who counted most lived on the coast, and most of the moderate reformers and radicals of the 1930s joined Peru’s most important mass-based political party, the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA), founded in 1924 by Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre. Like AD in Venezuela and the MNR in Bolivia, APRA was vertical in organization and cut across class lines through its populist appeals.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en188|&lt;span&gt;6&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The party has been pictured by its admirers as a grass-roots, lower- and middle-class reform movement designed to end foreign and oligarchical domination of the economy, to raise the standard of living of all Peruvians, to incorporate the Indian masses into national life, and to democratize the sociopolitical structure of the country. In contrast, opponents of the party and its leader point to their propensity for violence and usually characterize their program as being designed to obliterate all that was good in Peruvian society and replace it with a godless form of communistic dictatorship that would reduce everyone to the level of pack animals.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Both views are highly simplistic and tend to distort the APRA movement and its role in Peruvian society. Though admittedly extremist in many of his earlier statements and writings, particularly in his more radical student days (1918—23), Haya de la Torre never really called for, nor favored, a leveling social revolution. On the contrary, careful scrutiny of the party’s political platform in the 1930s reveals that the party focused on the better-off elements (usually unionized) of the laboring class in urban centers and on the large coastal haciendas, on white-collar workers in rural and urban centers, on small landowners, and on the middle class in general.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pleasing both lower-class radicals and middle-class reformers would have been an impossibility if Haya and the Apristas had been allowed to function openly. The fact is that Haya and the Apristas were forced underground in the period 1934—44 and again in the years 1948—56. This clandestine status allowed Haya to be all things to all people of all political persuasions. To his middle-sector supporters, he preached modernization and guaranteed that the masses would not get out of control. To his radical and lower-class followers, he promised revolution and violent change.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en189|&lt;span&gt;7&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The result was that APRA retained many of those who might have been expected to join the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) or other more radical political groups. Thus, the revolutionary tradition in Peru in the period 1930—60 is really the tradition of APRA, which helps to explain the fragmentation of the left and the emergence of guerrilla movements in the 1960s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Even without APRA, it would have been almost impossible for other leftist parties or movements to develop in Peru after 1931. Elected president in that year, Colonel Luis Sánchez Cerro immediately adopted the politics of repression, directed primarily at APRA but at other leftist groups as well. Following Sánchez Cerro’s assassination by an Aprista fanatic in 1933, General Oscar R. Benavides assumed control and ruled until 1939. This was a period of economic crisis and civil disorder bordering on civil war, and Benavides ruled with an iron hand, effectively silencing all opposition, both rightist and leftist.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Manuel Prado was elected president in 1939, but the elected government that replaced the dictatorship continued to deny APRA legal participation in the political process, and the party remained underground until Prado left office in 1945. As might be expected from the scion of one of Peru’s most powerful oligarchic families, Prado tolerated neither dissent nor movements to restructure the land tenure system, either by outsiders or by the peasants themselves.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;With the election in 1945 of José Luis Bustamante y Rivero as president, the pattern of authoritarianism was interrupted in Peru, as it was in other parts of Latin America after World War II. APRA, allowed to campaign openly for the first time since 1931, nearly captured control of Congress, and now their more radical followers expected them to fulfill their long-standing commitments to land reform, Indian integration, and removal of foreign capitalists from the economy. Instead, the Apristas adopted a rather conservative position on all these issues and refused to entertain even a moderate land reform program. Moreover, Haya had substantially moderated his position on foreign investment and U.S. imperialism, thereby alienating important leftist elements of the party, just as he would do again in the period 1956—62.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en190|&lt;span&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The experiment with liberal democracy (1945—48) was a failure. The Apristas, believing that they alone were responsible for Bustamante’s election, moved quickly to control both Congress and the executive. When Bustamante refused to yield, the Apristas went on the offensive, harassing the administration at every opportunity. In addition, radical elements within the party grew increasingly restless and prone to use violent means. Finally, in October 1948, Aprista radicals joined some disaffected junior officers and staged a coup attempt. Bustamante responded by outlawing APRA, but senior military officers had had enough; they overthrew Bustamante and installed General Manuel A. Odría, who immediately jailed hundreds of Apristas and forced Haya to remain a prisoner in the Colombian embassy in Lima until 1954.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The eight-year rule of Odría (the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;ochenio&lt;/span&gt;, 1948—56) in some ways resembled the military populism practiced by Juan Perón in Argentina and Gustavo Rojas Pinilla in Colombia. Although he tolerated no political dissent, Odría made a concerted effort to win urban labor support through the granting of seven wage increases and additional fringe benefits. Moreover, he used money generated from Peru’s postwar export boom to finance expanded social security coverage, state subsidies of food prices, and the construction of hundreds of new schools.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en191|&lt;span&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; His wife, María Delgado de Odría, sought to emulate Evita Perón by founding a national charitable association, the María Delgado de Odría Center of Social Assistance, which distributed food and clothing to the poor of Lima’s growing shantytowns (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;barriadas&lt;/span&gt;).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the rural sector, Odría supported the landed oligarchy and moved forcefully against Indian peasant efforts to improve their socioeconomic condition. Indeed, in an effort to stem the flight of peasants to the urban centers of the nation, Odría even instituted a type of internal passport for Indians.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The net result of Odría’s programs was to blunt lower- and middle-class opposition on the coast and suppress all dissent in the sierra. The Communist party was tolerated as long as it operated within very strict parameters. Since Haya and APRA were forced into hiding, they could again adopt the mantle of radicalism, and many young leftists joined the party in the period 1948—56, just as they had done from 1934 to 1945.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The elections of 1956 signified a return to multiparty, liberal-state politics in Peru. Odría, recuperating slowly from a severely fractured leg, supported Hernando de Lavalle. Manuel Prado returned from Europe to run a second time. The most interesting candidate, however, was Fernando Belaúnde Terry, a young architect who entered the contest just a few weeks before the election. Belaúnde drew enthusiastic support from middle-sector groups, young reformers, and even some radicals in both the urban and rural regions and might very likely have won had not the Apristas thrown their considerable strength behind Prado.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The election of Prado signified a continuation of oligarchic control of the nation, particularly in the rural sector. While not overtly oppressive like his predecessor, Prado was forced to adopt austerity measures in order to stave off economic collapse—measures which fell particularly hard on the urban working classes while contributing to a 50 percent rise in income among entrepreneurial and managerial groups. Moreover, almost no resources were invested in the agrarian sector, and this, coupled with an explosion in rural population, resulted in increasing the number of landless peasants and decreasing peasant income.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en192|&lt;span&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Finally, although Prado publicly supported land colonization projects and appointed a commission to make recommendations for a national land reform law, nothing was done to alleviate the plight of the peasantry. &lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en193|&lt;span&gt;11&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By 1961, Peru had one of the most inequitable land distribution patterns in Latin America. The large estates (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;latifundia&lt;/span&gt;), which comprised a mere 1.2 percent of the total landholdings, controlled 75.2 percent of the arable land, while the tiny estates (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;minifundia&lt;/span&gt;) comprised 84.4 percent of the total landholdings yet controlled only 6 percent of the arable land.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en194|&lt;span&gt;12&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Politically, the most important result of Prado’s second term was the further tarnishing of APRA’s reform-radical image. Haya and the Apristas wholeheartedly supported Prado and his fiscal policies under an agreement known as the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;convivencia&lt;/span&gt; (literally, “living together”), thereby earning the enmity of leftists and middle-class reformers all over the nation. This most recent disaffection culminated in another splintering of the party and the formation of APRA Rebelde in 1960 (see below). These Aprista dissidents were, in many ways, ideologically akin to those groups that broke away from the AD in Venezuela and the Liberal party in Colombia.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Thus, the years following the Cuban Revolution found Peru in serious economic trouble, with increasing unrest evident in both the urban and rural sectors. In 1962 seven candidates vied for the presidency, but only four evidenced any real popular support: Belaúnde Terry, running for the new reformist party, Acción Popular; Haya de la Torre for APRA; Héctor Cornejo Chávez for the recently formed Christian Democrats; and Manuel Odría, on a political comeback, for the Union Nacional Odriísta (UNO). Haya won with 557,000 votes, Belaúnde Terry garnered 544,000, while Odría picked up 520,000, but Haya did not have the required one-third of the votes cast, so the election was thrown into Congress. There, Haya struck a deal with his implacable enemy, Odría, whereby Odría would assume the presidency and APRA would control Congress. This was too much for the military; and ten days before Prado’s term expired, the army took power, annulled the elections, and ruled until new elections could be held in 1963.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Those expecting a return to the traditional military politics of the 1930s and 1940s, however, were soon surprised. Part of the difference lay in the fact that the new military rulers were products of the Center for High Military Studies (CAEM). Founded as a military school in 1950, CAEM was patterned after both the Escola Superior de Guerra in Brazil and the War College in the United States.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en195|&lt;span&gt;13&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Simply stated, CAEM military doctrine expanded the concept of national security to encompass all those political, economic, and social conditions that affect the power of a nation. Moreover, the doctrine held that economic development was synonymous with national defense and security. Thus, if they were to fulfill their constitutional &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;and&lt;/span&gt; institutional charge of guarding the fatherland and maintaining internal order, Peru’s generals would have to involve themselves directly in the modernization process. In Peru, this meant a frontal attack on the traditional land tenure system, recognized as the source of a serious economic bottleneck and burgeoning social discontent.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;While its programs did not approach in scope those of the 1968— 80 period, the military junta did move to help low-income families obtain housing in Lima and actually initiated several pilot land reform and colonization projects, including one in La Convención Valley (see below). Clearly the military had come to realize the necessity of socioeconomic reform in Peru.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1963 new elections were held, and although the candidates remained basically the same, the outcome was different. With the support of the Christian Democrats, Belaúnde Terry won more than the required third of the votes (708,000), while Haya (623,000) and Odría (463,000) trailed behind.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Belaúnde was inaugurated amid a popular outpouring of hope and enthusiasm for the future. He was relatively young and extremely charismatic, and had spoken eloquently of his dreams and plans for the betterment of conditions for all Peruvians.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en196|&lt;span&gt;14&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; He had campaigned all over the country and appeared to possess, more than any previous president, an understanding of the complex diversity that is Peru. From the outset, he sought to construct a reform program which would meet the needs of the proletariat and middle-sector elements of the coast, on the one hand, and the Indian and mestizo peasants of the sierra, on the other.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The new administration pledged to decentralize and streamline the government and urged the creation of self-help projects in the sierra. A program of “Popular Cooperation” promised local groups that the government would provide the tools and materials necessary to construct schools, roads, and small public works projects if the people would offer their cooperative labor. Idealistic young Peruvian urbanites also joined Popular Cooperation, a type of domestic Peace Corps, and went off to work in isolated regions.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;President Belaúnde dreamed of opening Peru’s vast jungle region to settlement by constructing a north-south Marginal Highway, hoping thereby to relieve population pressures on sierran lands. In addition, he promised to implement a true land reform coupled with irrigation projects and the technical advice and credit support that the new landowners would require.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In all of these aspirations, Belaúnde enjoyed widespread support, not only from a significant percentage of the population but also from the Catholic Church and the military, two corporate groups that had historically served as bastions of traditionalism. Moreover, his calls for reform coincided nicely with the goals of John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, and the country came alive with energetic priests, young bureaucrats and students, and U.S. Peace Corps volunteers.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Dreams of a new Peru collapsed, however, when confronted with the realities of party politics in Congress. APRA and the supporters of Odría, with a clear majority in both houses of Congress between them, formalized the pact they had made in 1962 and moved to obstruct the president’s program, particularly Cooperación Popular and Belaúnde’s proposed land reform law.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en197|&lt;span&gt;15&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The law that finally passed in 1964 represented a compromise between the two most conservative proposals (those of APRA and UNO) and as such constituted almost no threat to the large landholders. The huge coastal plantations were explicitly excluded from the law, while other exclusions and impossibly long and complicated litigation procedures protected haciendas in the sierra.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en198|&lt;span&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Belaúnde’s acceptance of this law cost him what little leftist support he still retained (he had formally denounced the Communist party and other far-left groups in December 1963) as well as many moderate reform elements. Finally, U.S. Alliance for Progress funds, which were absolutely crucial to Belaúnde’s development plans, were suspended over his refusal to guarantee the International Petroleum Company’s near monopoly of Peruvian petroleum resources.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Given these many political difficulties, a casual observer might have concluded in 1960 or 1965 that Peru was ripe for a Guevara-type revolution. Several aspects of Peruvian reality did indeed conform to Guevara’s formulations; others, however, as in the cases of Guatemala, Colombia, and Venezuela, would prove obstacles to revolutionary guerrilla movements:&lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> # Peru is not and never has been a Caribbean-type dictatorship. Despite periodic military coups and dictatorships, the nation has a long tradition of at least paying lip service to the tenets of the liberal democratic state, and the elections held since 1930 have been relatively honest. As a result, the Peruvian electorate has long viewed the elected officials as legitimate. In the early 1960s both APRA and Acción Popular represented vocal reformist alternatives to violent revolution. No hated dictator (like Batista, Trujillo, or Somoza) served as a symbolic target of revolutionary movements. &lt;span&gt;Moreover, as the oldest, largest, and most powerful of the middle-sector reform parties, APRA has maintained strong ties to coastal plantation workers and urban labor and middle-sector elements along the coast. Despite APRA’s conservative drift over a thirty-year period, it could still marshal at least 30 percent of the electorate in the 1960s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> # The physical terrain of Peru is formidable. Sixty percent of the nation lies east of the Andes mountain chain, with a third of that in the 4,000—11,000-foot range (the Ceja de la Montaña, “the Eyebrow of the Jungle”) and the rest in the nearly impregnable and largely unpopulated Amazon Basin. A sparseness of population would serve more than anything to isolate any guerrillas there. The sierran region, with 30 percent of Peru’s area, is characterized by extreme altitudes (12,000—16,000 feet) and little vegetation. Coastal dwellers (most of the guerrilla leaders) usually fall prey to &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;soroche&lt;/span&gt; (mountain sickness caused by oxygen deprivation); and even if they can function, there is little cover on the treeless, windswept plateaus. The coast contains almost 50 percent of the population but only 10 percent of the area. It is narrow, flat, and dry and does not meet Guevara’s criteria for acceptably difficult terrain.<br /> # Peru was a traditional, rural nation until very recently. In 1940, 35 percent of the population was considered urban, a figure which rose to 47 percent in 1961 and 60 percent by 1972. In 1940, 25 percent of the population resided on the coast while 62 percent lived in the sierra. By 1972, 45 percent lived on the coast and only 44 percent in the sierra.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en199|&lt;span&gt;17&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Moreover, as the percentage of rural sierran dwellers decreased, so did the area’s economic and political strength; in 1960, 55 percent of Peru’s gross national product was produced by the coast, while only 40 percent came from the sierra, rising to over 70 percent in the 1990s. The extreme poverty and wretched social conditions of the rural peasants conform nicely to Guevara’s theories of the necessary objective conditions of rural poverty, but, as in Guatemala, recruitment to revolutionary movements faced extreme difficulty because of cultural and linguistic barriers (many Indian peasants spoke only Quechua or Aymara) and the historic fear and hatred of the Indians for urban &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;mistis&lt;/span&gt;, or whites. Indeed, few Indians joined the guerrilla movements of the 1960s.<br /> # Peru, like Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia, and Bolivia, lacked a strong vanguard party. Indeed, the left in Peru, while relatively large in numbers, was among the most fragmented in Latin America. Moreover, no leftist parties or movements had developed rural cadres; linkages between urban and rural movements were extremely poor. Thus, guerrilla leaders found it almost impossible to create the subjective conditions necessary for successful rural insurgency. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Focos&lt;/span&gt; could be and were established, but the fragmentation of leftist parties, combined with the historical antipathy between rural peoples and urbanites (particularly Indians and whites), precluded the creation of a broad-based popular movement.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Origins of the Guerrilla Movements in the 1960s&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Almost all analysts of the guerrilla movements in Peru begin by labeling them unmitigated disasters, and so they were. But there were three very distinct movements during this period, and it would be historically inaccurate to lump them together except in a very general way.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en200|&lt;span&gt;18&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The first movement, which never developed into a guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt;, was led by Hugo Blanco in La Convención and Lares valleys during the period 1959—63.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en201|&lt;span&gt;19&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The second and third took place in the Cuzco and Ayacucho regions and included the actual establishment of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; by Luis de la Puente Uceda and Héctor Béjar.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Hugo Blanco was born and raised in the southern Peruvian city of Cuzco, the former Inca capital and long a stronghold of both the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) and the Peruvian Socialist party (PSP). After graduating from high school, he went to Argentina and enrolled at the University of La Plata, where he fell under the influence of Hugo Bressano, a professor and leader of a Trotskyist political faction, Palabra Obrera. In 1956 he went to Lima and joined the Peruvian Trotskyist Partido Obrero Revolucionario (POR). Returning to Cuzco in 1958, Blanco soon moved into La Convención Valley, which lies some ninety miles north of Cuzco along the Urubamba River. What happened over the next five years is clear, but Blanco’s role has been distorted. As one writer notes, “The reputation of Blanco was magnified to such legendary proportions as to obscure the important processes which contributed to the emergence of a peasant labor organization in La Convención years before the advent of Blanco.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en202|&lt;span&gt;20&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Indeed, the entire socioeconomic development and structure of the valley made it unique in Peru.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en203|&lt;span&gt;21&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The sixty-mile-long valley is narrow and contains several distinct agricultural ecozones. The upper end is 5,100 feet above sea level, dropping to 2,790 feet at the southern end. The valley floor had long been used for the cultivation of such tropical crops as sugarcane, cacao, coca, and some tea and coffee. The steep slopes of the valley, particularly at the higher elevations, were ideally suited to coffee production, but the lack of a cheap, effective transportation system precluded its development.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The valley was carved up into large estates with a labor force composed primarily of sierran Indians who worked a fixed number of days (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;condiciones&lt;/span&gt;) for the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;hacendados&lt;/span&gt; in return for the use of a plot of land (the plots were always situated on the less desirable slopes). Then an economic revolution occurred. In 1928 a railroad was built from Cuzco to the fabulous Inca ruins of Machu Picchu and later extended to Huadquina at the entrance to La Convención. In 1933 a road was built from Machu Picchu to the provincial capital of Quillabamba.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;These new transportation lines, together with the arrival of middlemen merchants from Cuzco who bypassed the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;hacendados&lt;/span&gt; and offered the peasants direct marketing of their crops, enabled the peasants to grow coffee profitably for the first time. In order to care properly for their coffee trees, the peasants had to reduce the number of work days they owed the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;hacendados&lt;/span&gt;. The first arrivals (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;arrendires&lt;/span&gt;) therefore subcontracted with another peasant (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;allegado&lt;/span&gt;) to work for them in return for part of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;arrendire’s&lt;/span&gt; land. The system became even more complicated when many &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;allegados&lt;/span&gt; also subcontracted with newer arrivals (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;sub-allegados&lt;/span&gt;).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In order to maximize their personal income, each of these groups shared the need to reduce the work &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;condiciones.&lt;/span&gt; The result was the growth of a sophisticated peasant union movement complete with organized protests and petitions to the federal government and close ties with the Federación de Trabajadores de Cuzco (FTC), which supplied the peasant unions with lawyers and labor organizers. When Blanco arrived to work as an &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;allegado&lt;/span&gt;, therefore, the peasants already had a fairly well-developed organizational structure in place. It is true that Blanco, aided by his fluency in Quechua, vastly expanded, redirected, and intensified it, but he did not create it. Finally, it must be remembered that Blanco was primarily a peasant organizer, not a guerrilla fighter. Nevertheless, Blanco’s Marxist ideology clearly threatened the old order of Peru, and in this sense the La Convención movements became part of the broader confrontation between the incumbent regime and Peruvian revolutionaries.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Unlike Blanco, Luis de la Puente Uceda and Hector Béjar were legitimate guerrilla leaders who sought to emulate the successes of Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution. Both were committed to guerrilla warfare as a revolutionary tactic, both established &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; in Peru, and both failed miserably. Moreover, their defeat spelled the end to guerrilla movements in Peru until the rise of the Sendero Luminoso in the 1980s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;De la Puente was born on the strongly Aprista north coast known as the Sólido Norte. He was a distant relative of Haya de la Torre and, in his youth, was a fervent supporter of APRA.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en204|&lt;span&gt;22&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Following the 1948 military coup, de la Puente was jailed and then exiled to Mexico. In 1954 he returned to Peru clandestinely to participate in a revolt against the Odría government. Arrested again, he spent the next two years in prison.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;He returned to the University of Trujillo to study law, specializing in agrarian law. He was critical of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;convivencia&lt;/span&gt; between Manuel Prado and Haya de la Torre, but he remained within Aprista ranks. The real turning point in his political evolution came in 1959 when he traveled to Cuba to attend the International Agrarian Reform Forum. There he engaged in a debate with Cuban president Oswaldo Dórticos regarding the political nature of the Cuban agrarian reform.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en205|&lt;span&gt;23&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In October 1959, at the Fourth National Convention of APRA, de la Puente and other young dissidents presented a motion condemning the policies of the Prado administration and APRA’s public support of them. The signers of the petition were suspended from the party, whereupon they formed a group called the Comité Aprista de Defensa de los Principios y de la Democracia Interna (Aprista Committee for the Defense of Principles and Internal Democracy). Finally, despairing of any hope for change in Haya de la Torre’s position, the group broke away from APRA, much as had the young leftists in 1948, and formed APRA Rebelde. The political efforts of APRA Rebelde were directed almost exclusively toward effecting agrarian reform, and to that end they presented a draft law to Congress in 1961.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en206|&lt;span&gt;24&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;De la Puente himself, on the other hand, continued his radical political development. In 1960 and 1961 he made several trips to Cuba to study at first hand its revolutionary experience. In 1961 he was convicted of the manslaughter of an Aprista thug who had attacked him and was sentenced to a year in jail. While in prison, he continued to direct APRA Rebelde and in April 1962 changed its name to Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR, Revolutionary Left Movement).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;After completing his prison term, de la Puente traveled to La Convención Valley, where in October 1962 he met with Hugo Blanco. By this time, de la Puente was committed to guerrilla warfare, but the two men failed to reach an agreement. Historian Victor Villanueva concludes that “their political and methodological differences precluded them from uniting for the benefit of the revolution.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en207|&lt;span&gt;25&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;During 1963, de la Puente traveled to China, North Vietnam, and North Korea, where he met Mao Tse-tung, Ho Chi Minh, and Kim Il Sung. Returning to Peru, he continued to redefine his ideas. Then in a lengthy speech on February 7, 1964, he vehemently attacked APRA, President Belaúnde and the corrupt policies of the government, the Peruvian bourgeoisie, landowners, the International Petroleum Company, elections, and political agreements. He praised Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, proclaiming that “revolution is the only way left open to our people.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en208|&lt;span&gt;26&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Shortly after this declaration, de la Puente and other MIR leaders went underground and prepared to initiate their guerrilla struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Like de la Puente and the MIR, Hector Béjar and others formed the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN, National Liberation Army), as a splinter movement from a traditional Peruvian political party which they deemed too conservative—the Peruvian Communist Party.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en209|&lt;span&gt;27&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; As Béjar later wrote: “The impact of the Cuban Revolution was very great and it was soon reflected in the political organizations. A group of young people broke off from the APRA,” but “the repercussions were even greater in the Communist Party and they were reinforced by the impact of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union and the polemic with the Communist party of China. In Peru, the party’s whole ideological, theoretical, and practical structure automatically came under discussion.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en210|&lt;span&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Béjar goes on: “From its very beginning the ELN . . . was composed of a small group of young people. Among them were high school and college students, workers, and a few peasants. Many came from the Communist Youth and the Communist Party but, for a variety of reasons, they had ceased to observe party discipline or to work actively in its organizations. . . . The ELN wanted the party to grow but [from] the peasant masses and the dense proletarian agricultural, manufacturing, and mining centers.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en211|&lt;span&gt;29&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Elements of the ELN first went into action on May 2, 1963, when a group of thirty-five to forty men, some of whom had been trained in Cuba, crossed into Peru from Bolivia near the Peruvian town of Puerto Maldonado. Their goal was to link up with Hugo Blanco and supply his peasant organization with guerrilla cadres. From the outset, the venture was a fiasco. Some of the group was captured on May 14, and the next day there was an armed clash in which several died, including the poet Javier Heraud, for whom the ELN’s 1965 guerrilla front was named.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en212|&lt;span&gt;30&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Some did escape and went underground to organize. By 1964 the ELN had elaborated a program of action that was to be implemented through guerrilla warfare. It called for:&lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> # People’s government;<br /> # Expulsion of all foreign monopolies;<br /> # Agrarian revolution;<br /> # Friendship with all the peoples of the world; and<br /> # National sovereignty.<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;According to Béjar, “Two methods were held to be fundamental to our success: armed struggle and popular unity. They complemented each other dialectically since in Peru one is not possible without the other.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en213|&lt;span&gt;31&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Politico-Military Evolution of the Guerrilla Struggle&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The Peruvian guerrilla movements of the mid-1960s suffered from the same ideological, organizational, and personalist fragmentation as their counterparts in Central America, Venezuela, and Colombia. Likewise, the Peruvian guerrilla leadership emerged from urban political movements and parties without good ties in the countryside. Students, intellectuals, party cadres, and idealists, these emulators of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara lacked the experience, training, and political preparation to succeed against the Peruvian government’s counterinsurgency efforts. Bitter conflicts among the revolutionaries exacerbated these difficulties. One of the most charismatic of these revolutionary leaders was Hugo Blanco, whose success as a peasant organizer is well documented. When he arrived in La Convención Valley in 1958, there were six peasant unions, a number that increased to over one hundred by 1962. Moreover, Blanco was an effective strike organizer, particularly among the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;allegados&lt;/span&gt; and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;sub-allegados&lt;/span&gt;; but his tactics and his deep commitment to Trotskyist ideology soon brought him into conflict with the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;arrendires&lt;/span&gt;, the FTC in Cuzco, and the orthodox Communist Party of Peru, which labeled him “a provocateur and agent of Yankee imperialism.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en214|&lt;span&gt;32&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; These divisions were exacerbated by the involvement of the Peruvian Trotskyist party (POR) and the Latin American branch of the Fourth International, the Secretariado Latinoamericano de Trotskyismo Ortodoxo (SLATO, the Latin American Secretariat of Orthodox Trotskyism), based in Buenos Aires.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1960 the POR met in Arequipa and formulated a revolutionary plan which was to include the use of guerrilla warfare, a step that Villanueva has criticized as being overly optimistic and poorly conceived.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en215|&lt;span&gt;33&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Once committed, however, the POR moved quickly to implement the plan and requested assistance from SLATO in Buenos Aires. SLATO did send three of its best organizers to Lima to help with the movement.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en216|&lt;span&gt;34&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1961 the Frente de Izquierda Revolucionaria (FIR, Revolutionary Left Front) was formed to serve as the vanguard party, but from the outset there were deep divisions between the Lima-based POR and Blanco and his followers in Cuzco. As Ricardo Letts Colmenares later wrote, “The whole political apparatus was oddly and mistakenly mixed up with the relatively strong military apparatus. Yet neither of them was at all strongly connected with the other end of this revolutionary axis, the peasant end, the Cuzco and Convención leaders.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en217|&lt;span&gt;35&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Disagreements over goals, tactics, and which group was to wield ultimate power in the national directorate of FIR worsened over the next few months. This was nowhere more evident than in the disastrous efforts to secure funds for the movement. In December 1961 a robbery netted only $2,000 in usable bills, but a second robbery in April 1962 secured approximately $120,000. The problem was how to get the money to Cuzco, and the plan adopted proved extraordinarily ill advised, ending in the capture by the police of all the money and the men transporting it.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Meanwhile, Blanco was encountering difficulties from every direction. Already condemned by the Communist party and in serious conflict with the FTC, which wanted to use elections to strengthen leftist political representation instead of resorting to violence, Blanco ran afoul of even the Trotskyists. In March 1962, Blanco and the Cuzco-based branch of FIR issued an ultimatum that either a national congress of FIR would be held in Cuzco in April or the Cuzco leadership would simply assume overall command of the movement. Bressano responded by removing Blanco and others from their leadership positions.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Buffeted from all sides, Blanco returned to La Convención to resume his organizing but quickly encountered opposition there, too. In 1962 he ran for secretary-general of the Federación Provincial de Campesinos de La Convención y Lares (Provincial Federation of the Peasants of La Convención and Lares). Supported almost exclusively by the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;allegados&lt;/span&gt; and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;sub-allegados&lt;/span&gt;, his election resulted in the withdrawal of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;arrendires&lt;/span&gt; from the Federation.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite these defections, Blanco moved ahead by issuing an agrarian reform decree for the valley which called for the distribution of uncultivated land to the poorest peasants and the granting of plots to the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;arrendires&lt;/span&gt; and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;allegados&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en218|&lt;span&gt;36&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The decree and the violent peasant land invasions which ensued provoked a strong reaction from the Peruvian national police (the Guardia Civil), and in a small skirmish at one Guardia outpost, Blanco shot and killed a policeman. Isolated politically and relentlessly hunted by the police, Blanco was finally captured in May 1963 and later sentenced to twenty years in jail.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;So ended Peru’s first revolutionary movement of the 1960s. It never took the form of a &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt;, and Blanco quite obviously did not view himself as either a guerrilla or a disciple of Che. Still, the Blanco episode is important in the evolution of the guerrilla struggle: first, because of the myth that grew about Blanco the guerrilla leader; and second, because of the reaction of the Peruvian government.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In April 1962, in an effort to ameliorate the situation in La Convención, Manuel Prado issued a presidential decree abolishing the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;condiciones&lt;/span&gt; in the valley but held that the peasants must pay rent on their individual parcels. Then in March 1963 the military junta which had replaced Prado granted the peasants de facto ownership of their parcels on the condition that the peasants would pay the government for the land and the government would, in turn, reimburse the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;hacendados&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en219|&lt;span&gt;37&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Thus, the primary goals of the peasants—ownership of their plots and abolition of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;condiciones&lt;/span&gt;—had been achieved. There was nothing left to be offered by future guerrilla leaders, as Luis de la Puente would discover. Blanco and de la Puente both operated in much the same region, but, as Richard Gott has stated, “They failed to overlap in time. For Hugo Blanco’s movement essentially consisted of organized peasants in desperate need of guerrilla support, while de la Puente’s guerrilla movement failed largely through lack of support from the organized peasantry. Hugo Blanco’s peasants seized the land, but had no guns to defend their gains. De la Puente’s well-armed guerrillas had no peasants to defend.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en220|&lt;span&gt;38&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Without doubt, de la Puente was the premier guerrilla theoretician in Peru. Regarding the salient questions of the creation of the vanguard party and of objective and subjective conditions, he wrote:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;We believe that the party of the Peruvian revolution will shape itself within the insurrectional process, and that its cadres and leaders will emerge from the struggle itself. We do not use a party label; we call ourselves what we really are, a movement which aspires to be a promoter of the party of the Peruvian revolution. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It is unnecessary to speak about the objective conditions because they are not only ripe now but have always been. I think there is not a country in America where infra- and super-structural conditions are so unjust, so rotten, so archaic as in ours.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As to the subjective conditions, we start from the idea that they are not fully ripe, but that the beginning of the insurrectional process will be the triggering factor leading to their development in ways which no one can foresee.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en221|&lt;span&gt;39&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;De la Puente also insisted, along with Che Guevara, that “the Peruvian revolution is part of the continental and world process, which demands progressive forms of integration in every aspect and stage, in order to defeat the oligarchic and imperialist forces which are working together all over the continent.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en222|&lt;span&gt;40&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;De la Puente and others succeeded in establishing several &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt;, but they were quickly destroyed by the Peruvian army owing to a number of errors, including divisions within the Peruvian left and the guerrillas themselves, poor site selection, and a misreading of the political proclivities of the peasants. Moreover, both the Peruvian Communist party and the pro-Chinese Communists condemned the guerrillas for failing to create a vanguard party and, most of all, for failing to create first the necessary subjective conditions in the countryside. Neither group offered any support whatsoever.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en223|&lt;span&gt;41&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The MIR maintained that the revolution should be led by a party: the MIR. The ELN believed that the leadership should be able to assimilate the other revolutionary forces that were operating in the country in 1962. Moreover, the ELN advocated the broad concept of a revolutionary army that we have already described, a plan designed to keep the army from being restricted to the members of one party. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The ELN favored immediate action to be initiated by an armed group that would, in the course of combat, build its own social base. The MIR believed that it was first necessary to build a social base among the peasantry by means of clandestine work in the countryside, using the method of “secret armed propaganda.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;But it would be superficial to point only to disagreement over tactics as the reason for the separation of the MIR and the ELN. One must examine the history of the Peruvian Left to understand why that division was possible.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The cause lay in the fact that almost all the members of the MIR and the ELN, or at least those cadres whose opinions carried decisive weight in the two organizations, were people who had been educated in opposing political camps. The MIR was produced by a split in the APRA, while the ELN was led by former Communist Party cadres. There was an invisible wall between these groups, made up of the prejudices that still tied them to their past, for the struggle between the APRA and the Communist Party had covered several decades of Peruvian political history and still influenced them, even though they wouldn’t admit it. It was difficult for the two groups to find a common language.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en224|&lt;span&gt;42&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;The guerrilla groups never resolved their differences and were crushed individually by the Peruvian armed forces. The MIR established three &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos:&lt;/span&gt; the Túpac Amaru group, headed by Guillermo Lobatón, was situated in the jungle area of Satipo, northeast of the central Andean city of Huancayo; a group in northern Peru inside the Ecuadorian border, headed by Fernando Gasco, never did go into action; and the Pachacutec &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; situated on Mesa Pelado above La Convención Valley and headed by Luis de la Puente and Rubén Tupayachi. Finally, there was the ELN &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; “Javier Heraud,” led by Hector Béjar, in the department of Ayacucho.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guillermo Lobatón and the Túpac Amaru group were the first to go into action in June 1965.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en225|&lt;span&gt;43&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; They attacked several haciendas and police outposts, blew up several bridges, and ambushed a Guardia Civil patrol. At that point, the army moved in several units with support helicopters and air force planes and drove the guerrillas out of their base camp. About the same time, U.S. Green Berets arrived to participate in a CIA-backed effort to aid the Peruvian army.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en226|&lt;span&gt;44&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; By November the army had the guerrillas on the run; and on January 7, 1966, Lobatón and the remnants of his band were killed.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite his ultimate failure, Lobatón had at least lasted seven months. Luis de la Puente and the Pachacutec group were destroyed almost before they could go into action. Even so, one wonders what success they could have hoped to achieve with the peasants in La Convención Valley, given the defeat of Hugo Blanco and the government’s land reform in the area. Moreover, de la Puente’s selection of the Mesa Pelado (literally, a bare plateau) for guerrilla activity was questionable at best. Although the area at the lowest levels was covered with thick jungle growth, the plateau itself has an average altitude of 12,000 feet and is covered with thick clumps of Andean grass, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;ichu&lt;/span&gt;, which provides no cover. In addition, the plateau receives heavy rainfall throughout the year and temperatures at the top are near freezing.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en227|&lt;span&gt;45&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In any event, it took the Peruvian army and air force, aided by U.S. counterinsurgency troops, less than two months to obliterate the guerrillas. The barren terrain also allowed for the use of heavy artillery and extensive bombing runs, including the use of napalm. On October 23, 1965, de la Puente and his followers were killed.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;When Lobatón went into action in June, Béjar and the ELN &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; had been in the Ayacucho region only since April. Though unprepared to launch a full-scale guerrilla war, the ELN chose to move in support of the MIR &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt;. On September 25 they attacked the Hacienda Chapi and executed the owners.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en228|&lt;span&gt;46&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Since the Peruvian army was already fighting a two-front operation against Lobatón and de la Puente, military units were not dispatched against Béjar until the end of November. Once contact was made, however, the guerrillas were quickly defeated on December 17, 1965. Béjar himself escaped but was later captured and imprisoned. With the military overthrow of Belaúnde in 1968, he was released and went to work for the military government in the mistaken belief that they would carry out a true revolution.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en229|&lt;span&gt;47&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;With the defeat of Béjar and the ELN, guerrilla activity in Peru came to an end and would not break out again for fifteen years. The tactics of Guevara had failed miserably in Peru, but they would be attempted again. The reasons for failure were many; some have been noted above. Since only one of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foquista&lt;/span&gt; leaders, Béjar, lived to reflect on the failure, his analysis is important for those who would follow:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The roots of the failure must be sought in the guerrilla unit itself and in its leadership.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In this case as in others, a group of men, most of them from the city, tried to operate militarily in an unknown environment. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;[The guerrillas] left a trail of information behind, which many peasants were not able to keep secret when they were tortured and murdered. The guerrilla band did not foresee, in practice, the severity of the repression to come. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite friendship, language was always a barrier that separated the rebels from the natives. Peasants identify Spanish with the boss, especially in those places like Ayacucho which have a very large Quechua population. For the guerrillas to gain the trust of the peasantry they must be able to speak Quechua, and not just any Quechua, but the dialect spoken in the zone where they are operating (there are significant variations in the language from region to region in Peru). . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In spite of the goodwill that they earned, the guerrillas lacked a deep understanding of local customs. That would have allowed them to distinguish the traitors from their friends with greater precision and to obtain better and more pertinent information concerning the enemy’s movements.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guerrilla tactics, when applied strictly—with their characteristics of mobility, evasion and secrecy, rapid attack and withdrawal —demand a high degree of physical fitness on the part of the combatants and a leadership with great military ability. The entire group must operate with iron discipline and perfect coordination. The ELN’s guerrilla unit, like all the others operating that year, did not possess these qualities to the degree required to overcome the inevitable problems and face a large, well-trained enemy force.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en230|&lt;span&gt;48&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Post-1968 Events&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Barely three years after the death of Luis de la Puente, the Peruvian armed forces overthrew the Belaúnde administration and established the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces (1968—80). Led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado, the new government broke with tradition and embarked upon a far-reaching socioeconomic reform program designed to end internal strife, economic stagnation, and the potential for guerrilla movements by removing the objective conditions and “harmonizing” Peruvian society.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en231|&lt;span&gt;49&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The showpiece of the regime, and the most important achievement in terms of future Guevara-like guerrilla movements, was the 1969 agrarian reform law, second in scope only to that of the Cuban Revolution.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en232|&lt;span&gt;50&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The stated goals of the reform were to give land to the landless peasant and to increase food production. The real goal was to remove the source of peasant discontent, thereby ending the threat of future outbreaks of guerrilla activity in the rural sector. Moreover, the new agrarian structure sought to guarantee control over the peasants by integrating them into a tight, vertical structure controlled and operated by the military, a classic example of “military antipolitics.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en233|&lt;span&gt;51&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite the near-dictatorial control structure and the fact that the peasants in many ways traded one master (the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;hacendado&lt;/span&gt;) for another (a military officer), thousands of acres of land were expropriated and distributed to the various Indian and peasant cooperatives established by the law. Simultaneously, the government mounted an initially effective propaganda and politicization campaign in the countryside to convince the peasants that, in Velasco’s words, “the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;patrón&lt;/span&gt; will no longer feed on your poverty.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en234|&lt;span&gt;52&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The result was that although the rural sector was in ferment in the period 1969—80, it was basically a populist ferment that precluded the mounting of a successful peasant-supported guerrilla movement; and indeed, no one tried.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By the late 1970s, however, the military “experiment” had clearly failed to achieve most of its goals. Internal shifts in the military regime brought more conservative officers into dominant policy positions by 1975. Runaway inflation, combined with high unemployment rates, a decline in agricultural production, and natural disasters, wracked the Peruvian economy. Under these circumstances, the generals turned to the United States, and particularly to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), for assistance. Though that assistance was forthcoming, it was accompanied by the draconian economic measures which the IMF often imposes: currency devaluation, reduction in government budgets and payrolls, and reduction or abolition of government subsidies of staple food prices.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Finally, in 1980, the generals were forced to step down, hold elections, and allow the man they had deposed some twelve years earlier, Fernando Belaúnde Terry, to assume the presidency again. Simply stated, Belaúnde inherited a socioeconomic and political nightmare that worsened in the early 1980s as Peru was wracked by severe floods and droughts.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Out of these circumstances emerged the first guerrilla group in fifteen years—the Partido Comunista Sendero Luminoso (the Communist Party of the Shining Path).&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en235|&lt;span&gt;53&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; It originated in the 1964 split of the Peruvian Communist party into the Moscow-oriented Partido Comunista and the Chinese-oriented Partido Comunista-Bandera Roja. Fragmentation continued until 1970, when the pro-Chinese faction divided into three separate groups, one of which was Sendero Luminoso.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Based at the National University of Huamanga in the south-central department of Ayacucho (one of the most heavily Indian areas of Peru), Sendero Luminoso is led by former professor Abimael Guzmán. One writer has described Sendero as “a strange mix of Gang of Four Maoism and deeply rooted Incan nationalism,”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en236|&lt;span&gt;54&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; and, in fact, as early as 1970, Sendero was sending cadres into the surrounding countryside to learn Quechua and to politicize Indian peasants.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sendero, with some success, sought to capitalize on the millenarian-messianic tradition that was powerfully entrenched in south-central Peru. Indian culture and religion taught that there were many ages or epochs called Pachacutecs, which were characterized by the arrival of a new messiah and a reordering of the cosmos. Moreover, these Pachacutecs almost invariably included racial messages regarding the elimination of whites and mestizos and the reconstitution of Indian greatness.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en237|&lt;span&gt;55&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Sendero used this racist message to identify government officials and the military with ancient Andean beings, such as the Pishtaqu, a white or fair mestizo who attacked and killed Indian women and children. Sendero’s mixed ideology of Andean messianism and confused Maoism distinguished it from all other guerrilla movements from 1959 to the early 1980s.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en238|&lt;span&gt;56&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1980, Sendero launched its armed offensive. This “armed struggle” will, according to the Senderistas, move through five distinct stages: (1) the gathering of support in the countryside; (2) the assault on the symbols of the bourgeois state; (3) the start of guerrilla warfare; (4) the expansion of popular support; and (5) the collapse of the cities and victory.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en239|&lt;span&gt;57&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Rejecting orthodox Maoism and early Guevarism, Sendero opted to operate in the rural and urban areas simultaneously. Apparently deciding to move into stage two, attacks on the symbols of the bourgeois state, the Senderistas began blowing up electrical power-line pylons, public buildings, and tourist hotels and followed with attacks on Guardia Civil outposts and mining operations to secure weapons and dynamite. Sendero singled out and threatened wealthy landowners, merchants, and public officials in the Ayacucho region. Many of those threatened fled, and their property was subsequently distributed to the peasants. Debts owed them were declared null and void. Those who refused to leave were harassed, and many were assassinated. Sendero also began the gruesome practice of hanging dead dogs from poles, a practice which has been interpreted both as a repudiation of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (Mao’s betrayer) and as a historic Indian warning of imminent attack.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en240|&lt;span&gt;58&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1982 the Sendero began a series of kidnappings of “enemies of the people,” followed by “popular trials” and summary executions. One of the more spectacular attacks came in March 1982, when the Senderistas stormed the Ayacucho prison and freed over 250 prisoners, a tactic reminiscent of the Tupamaros of Uruguay. The government responded by increasing the number of Guardia Civil personnel and by dispatching the specially trained counterinsurgency units of the Guardia known as the Sinchis.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Rather than acting as a stabilizing force, however, the ill-trained Guardia and the all-too-often brutal and thug-like Sinchis terrorized the small villages and countryside and, in so doing, increased support for Sendero. Thus, by the end of 1982 most observers concluded that Sendero not only controlled an area of some 25,000 square miles but also enjoyed widespread popular support.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en241|&lt;span&gt;59&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Faced with a fast deteriorating situation, the administration of Fernando Belaúnde Terry was forced to declare a state of siege in Ayacucho and to send in over 2,000 regular army soldiers and paratroopers. Using light planes and helicopter gunships, the army began massive counter-guerrilla operations that seriously damaged Sendero but also resulted in hundreds of casualties among the peasants caught in the conflict. Since journalists were barred from the area, reliable data on the number of killings are impossible to obtain, but there appears little doubt that most of the deaths resulted from government search-and-destroy operations.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;That the government’s military offensive took a heavy toll on the Senderistas is clear, but two other factors also contributed to Sendero’s decline after December 1982. First, instead of consolidating their base of support among the peasants in the area they controlled, the Senderistas instituted rigid economic and political control. Planting quotas were imposed on the small communities in order to reestablish subsistence farming and deny food to the cities. Moreover, the local weekly markets that had flourished since before the Inca Empire were shut down, condemned as bastions of capitalism. Politically, the Senderistas were no more flexible. Once in control in a given area, they vastly increased their efforts to root out “traitors” and “informants,” a campaign which reportedly resulted in the assassination or “execution” of untold numbers of peasants.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Finally, the Senderistas abandoned their peasant allies at the first sign of Peruvian troops, thereby exposing them to the government’s merciless retaliation.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en242|&lt;span&gt;60&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; One Senderista was quoted in September 1983 as follows: “These peasants stand in the way of our success. Many are government informers. Others oppose us actively, do not cooperate with us, and even refuse us food and sustenance.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en243|&lt;span&gt;61&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; They systematically attacked Indian communal government, religion, and culture, ordering the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;comunidad&lt;/span&gt; officials, particularly the Varayocs, to resign and to accept Sendero’s rule. Many officials refused and were brutally murdered in front of the entire &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;comunidad&lt;/span&gt;. The Senderistas may have spoken Quechua, but they were hardly peasants and the Indians knew it.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In its extremism, Sendero seems to have violated Che Guevara’s prescription for political victory. From the outset, Sendero not only rejected all cooperation with other leftists, but it also assailed other Marxists in Peru as “cretins.” Sendero rejected all foreign support as well, asserting that there is no difference between the United States, the Soviet Union, Cuba, and even China under the current regime—all are fascist. The Peruvian left responded in kind, condemning Sendero and its tactics.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Seemingly unable to learn from the failures of the Venezuelan guerrillas in the early 1960s, Sendero threatened to assassinate anyone who participated in the municipal elections of November 1983. The fact that the elections were held and the left scored impressive victories in Lima (electing a Marxist mayor for the first time in history) and even in Ayacucho attests to Sendero’s increasing isolation and decline.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Politics and Guerrilla Movements, 1982—92&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Sendero began to suffer serious military setbacks. In 1983 some 1,977 of its members died, while 3,587 were killed in 1984. In addition, the increasing human rights toll was evidenced by the fact that 1,700 were reported as having “disappeared” in 1983—84.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en244|&lt;span&gt;62&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; There is no doubt that the “dirty war” in Ayacucho was successful in driving Sendero increasingly into the urban areas, particularly into greater Lima.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en245|&lt;span&gt;63&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As if the Belaúnde Terry administration did not have enough problems, in 1984 there appeared yet another guerrilla movement, the Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (MRTA, Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement).&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en246|&lt;span&gt;64&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Founded in 1982, the MRTA had its roots in the political divisiveness that wreaked havoc among the Peruvian left in the transition to civilian government after twelve years of military rule (1968—80). The MRTA served as the armed wing of the Partido Socialista Revolucionario (PSR, Revolutionary Socialist Party) and included remnants of the 1960s MIR. From the outset, the MRTA was similar to the Castro-inspired urban guerrillas who had first emerged in the 1960s and were antagonistic to Sendero. At the same time, however, the MRTA recognized and accepted the Maoist strategy of protracted war.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MRTA militants were urban middle- and upper-middle class, well educated, and centered in the elite Catholic University of Peru in Lima. One cogent and revealing observation held that the&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;MRTA has impressed many analysts because it looks good in terms that many observers can readily understand, both in the United States and in Peru. Túpac Amaru has mastered the art of publicity. It is often on stage. When it is, it is invariably represented by the faces of earnest young men and women of Che Guevara look-alikes adorned in natty uniforms, new web gear, and polished boots. Its leadership has “Society” connections and long-standing ties to the country’s major leftist parties, it boasts a range of foreign revolutionary ties, it is “high tech” by local standards.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en247|&lt;span&gt;65&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;The MRTA opted for the “flashy” operation, taking over radio stations, assaulting banks, occupying buildings and towns, setting off bombs, and masterminding the truly spectacular escape of more than sixty MRTA prisoners from Lima’s high-security Canto Grande prison in July 1990.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en248|&lt;span&gt;66&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Favorite targets were symbols of foreign imperialism: Sears, IBM, Kodak, Diners Club, offices of the U.S. AID and the American embassy, and particularly Citibank (eight attacks) and Kentucky Fried Chicken (six).&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en249|&lt;span&gt;67&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In all of these, the MRTA was extremely careful to avoid the indiscriminate bloodshed that characterized most Sendero operations. For example, between 1985 and 1990, the MRTA was held responsible for 257 deaths, while Sendero’s count was a horrific 11,300. In the words of MRTA leader Victor Polay, his group answered to a higher “moral authority” and would “prefer to avoid war.” Sendero, he said, had become a “killing machine. They force themselves on the people by murdering their leaders, by destroying their organizations, [and] by stating that only they possess the truth.” Polay went on to say that those actions “are not those of true revolutionaries but of murderers” who “made death their raison d’être.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en250|&lt;span&gt;68&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Finally, the MRTA’s ties to the past and particularly to Che Guevara emerge clearly from a 1988 document:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;[The party member must] be a model of surrender, sacrifice, honesty, and consistency. He must reject machismo and sexual discrimination with the same steadfastness with which he opposes the enemy. He must reject individualism and practice collectivism, reject the cult of personality and have genuine respect for his leaders and chiefs. Following the heroic example of so many dear comrades who have given their lives for the revolution, or find themselves in the enemy’s prisons, [the party member] must make an effort to create a New Man, in the image of Che Guevara.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en251|&lt;span&gt;69&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Faced with Sendero and the MRTA, the second half of Belaúnde Terry’s administration was one of steady economic decline.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en252|&lt;span&gt;70&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Prices for Peru’s principal exports (copper, oil, sugar, fish meal, and minerals) continued to be battered on the world market. In 1982 bizarre weather conditions due to El Niño devastated agricultural production in the north, while drought did the same in the south. The end result was that the foreign debt rose from $8.4 billion in 1980 to over $14 billion by 1985.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en253|&lt;span&gt;71&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The declining economy as well as increased political strife defeated Belaúnde’s Acción Popular in the 1985 elections, which garnered only 6 percent of the vote. The Izquierda Unida picked up 23 percent, while the big winner was APRA’s Alan García Pérez, who captured 48 percent of the total vote and a solid majority in both houses of Congress. For the first time, the venerable APRA party held the presidency and Congress, about which Haya de la Torre had only dreamed.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Anyone in Lima in July 1985 could sense the electricity, the euphoria, indeed, the genuine hope for Peru’s future, and President Garcia took some extremely positive measures. He moved against the military and the police, particularly in the realms of corruption and human rights abuses. He also sounded the clarion call of nationalism by announcing in his inaugural address that henceforth Peru would pay only 10 percent of export earnings toward the nation’s onerous external debt. People all over the Western Hemisphere stood up and cheered, but the United States of Ronald Reagan did not. To hard-line, free-market Reaganites, this call was not only heresy, but it was also a dangerously blatant invitation to other Latin American republics to do the same, thereby threatening not only the West’s banking and credit structure but also U.S. economic and political hegemony in the hemisphere.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Washington’s reaction was swift. The Reagan administration effectively cut off international aid to Peru, forcing the Garcia government to rely almost exclusively on foreign currency reserves to pay for imports.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en254|&lt;span&gt;72&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Those reserves, totaling $1.4 billion when he took office, dropped to $886 million in 1986, to $60 million in 1987, and were $275 million in the red by 1988, a situation substantially worsened by García’s announcement in his 1987 Independence Day speech that he was nationalizing all banks, investment banks, and insurance companies.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en255|&lt;span&gt;73&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Garcia reverted to the time-honored “solution” of cranking up the printing presses to issue more currency, with the result that inflation, which had been a modest 70 percent in 1986, exploded to 7,650 percent by 1990.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en256|&lt;span&gt;74&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The most spectacular and visible result of this economic malaise (apart from the millions of people on the verge of starvation) was in the area of currency reform and devaluation. In 1981 the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;sol&lt;/span&gt; stood at 422 to the U.S. dollar. By 1983 it had dropped to 1,629, and at the end of Belaúnde’s term stood at 18,000 to the dollar. At this point, the Peruvians, emulating the Argentines and the Brazilians, created a new currency, the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;inti&lt;/span&gt;, and knocked off three zeros in the process.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en257|&lt;span&gt;75&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the midst of this economic catastrophe, both Sendero Luminoso and the MRTA stepped up their attacks, and violence levels increased almost as quickly as inflation. By 1990 there had been over 18,000 terrorist incidents (Sendero being responsible for approximately 90 percent), resulting in over 20,000 deaths and more than $14 billion in damage to the infrastructure.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en258|&lt;span&gt;76&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Not surprisingly, García’s popularity curve had dropped from the high 90th percentile to below 10 percent by the end of his term.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en259|&lt;span&gt;77&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The physical and psychological toll taken on Peruvians by unbridled violence and economic collapse was evident in the November 1989 municipal elections and the April 1990 presidential contest. In 1989, Sendero announced that either running for office or voting would result in death, a threat often carried out. Over 100 candidates and local officials were killed in 1989, with hundreds of others resigning or withdrawing from the elections out of fear. Approximately “25 percent of Peru’s 1,800 district and provincial councils could not carry out their elections at all.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en260|&lt;span&gt;78&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1989 a new political coalition emerged, the Democratic Front (FREDEMO), composed of rightist parties including Belaúnde’s Acción Popular, Luis Bedoya Reyes’s Partido Popular Cristiano (PPC), and a new party, Libertad (Liberty), established by the famous novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa. FREDEMO captured a majority of the mayorships in 1989 and seemed poised to take the presidency in 1990. Only months before the April elections, Vargas Llosa was heavily favored in the opinion polls, but then a political unknown, Alberto Fujimori, the rector of the National Agrarian University, made his run.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Fujimori garnered 26.9 percent of the vote to Vargas Llosa’s 35.1 percent, far below the 50 percent that he expected or needed for an outright victory. However, Fujimori won the June runoff easily with 57 percent of the vote in a contest marred by religious strife and name-calling between the Catholic Church, which backed Vargas Llosa, and the Evangelical Protestants, who backed Fujimori. Again, both Sendero and the MRTA sought to disrupt the elections but failed.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite his anti-neoliberal campaign rhetoric, Fujimori announced a “Fujishock” economic plan two months into his term. Fujishock was more drastic than anything that Vargas Llosa had threatened. Fujimori promised to end inflation and to reestablish Peru’s credit in the world by paying immediately $2.1 billion overdue to the World Bank and the IMF. The currency was drastically devalued, price controls and subsidies were eliminated, and government expenditures were reduced. The adjustment policies brought negative growth rates and pushed the vast majority of Peruvians well below the poverty line.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en261|&lt;span&gt;79&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;With the usual high social costs of such adjustments, Fujimori succeeded in reducing inflation to 134 percent by 1991 and attracting U.S. assistance, both economic and military, in late 1991 and early 1992. Japan and the Inter-American Development Bank followed suit. Violence, however, rose to record levels. Fujishock had a terrible impact on salaried workers in both the public and private sectors, and there were hundreds of major strikes and violent labor incidents between August 1990 and April 1992. Senderistas took advantage of the crisis and the government’s brutal reaction. They infiltrated all of the major labor unions and confederations, murdering many people who did not join their ranks.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sendero increased the intensity and the breadth of its operations in the early 1990s. In the countryside and the cities, Sendero and the MRTA wreaked havoc. There were 3,745 recorded deaths in 1990 and 3,044 in 1991, and these figures do not include the hundreds who “disappeared.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en262|&lt;span&gt;80&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Speculation abounded on when Sendero would take Lima. In May 1991, Congress granted Fujimori extraordinary legislative powers. He issued the so-called &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;decretos-bomba&lt;/span&gt;—drastic economic reforms “eliminating all barriers to foreign investment, [and] dismantled the entire state sector and privatized public and social services, including education, social security, health care, water and electricity.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en263|&lt;span&gt;81&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite the drastic nature of the economic measures, the “political” reforms caused the greatest opposition. These reforms included vastly expanding the powers of the military in the emergency zones, threatening journalists with ten years in prison for printing anything deemed “secret” by the government, and making Peruvians liable for treason for publishing information in the foreign press critical of the military’s counterinsurgency operations.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en264|&lt;span&gt;82&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The most controversial of all, however, created a “military-dominated ‘Unified Pacification Command’ (CUP) to be headed by the President, who would have powers to appoint the commanders-in-chief of the three branches of the armed forces and other top-ranking security personnel.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en265|&lt;span&gt;83&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Fujimori sought to erase legislative control over the executive in combatting Sendero and the MRTA and in making economic policy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Congressional reaction was mixed but generally hostile to the political &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;decretos,&lt;/span&gt; while accepting the economic measures with only minor adjustments. Fujimori was furious. The result was the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;autogolpe&lt;/span&gt; (“self-coup”) on April 5, 1992. Simply stated, by this act Fujimori “suspended” all facets of democracy in Peru. His decrees abolished Congress, the Constitution of 1979, the General Accounting Office, and the judiciary and issued bench warrants for 134 judges. With the support of the military, he ruled Peru by decree.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en266|&lt;span&gt;84&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The international community took a dim view of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;autogolpe&lt;/span&gt;. The United States suspended all humanitarian and antidrug assistance; the OAS deplored the suspension of democracy; and the Peru Support Group, which was to reinsert the nation into the world economic community, also suspended aid. Japan followed suit soon afterward. In contrast, Peruvian public opinion was sampled again and again over the subsequent months, and the polls showed that while the people wanted democracy rather than dictatorship, they approved of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;autogolpe&lt;/span&gt; in the hope that the economic decline, the almost total breakdown of the traditional political system, and the horrendous violence might end.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en267|&lt;span&gt;85&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Peruvians wanted an end to “terrorism,” a synonym for the Senderistas and MRTA. The guerrillas had clearly lost the war for popular support.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As a result of the international pressure, President Fujimori agreed to elections for a new one-house Congress in November 1992 and for municipal elections in January 1993. Before they could be held, however, there were major developments in the war against Sendero and the MRTA. In June 1992, MRTA leader Victor Polay was recaptured by Peruvian security forces. But the greatest coup came on the evening of September 12. Whether due to luck or brilliant intelligence work, or some combination of both, a special police intelligence unit captured Sendero’s Abimael Guzmán, his companion and second-in-command Elena Iparraguirre, two other ranking members of the Central Committee, and numerous documents. Over the next few months, hundreds of Sendero operatives were also arrested, thus dealing the movement a serious if not fatal blow.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en268|&lt;span&gt;86&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;From 1992 to 1997&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The Fujimori administration turned the capture of Guzmán into a circus, presenting him to the press some two weeks later dressed in prison stripes and locked in a big cage. This success was the high point of Fujimori’s first term, and the “victory” appeared even greater when, in September and October 1993, Guzmán wrote two letters to Fujimori that recognized him as the head of the Peruvian state and asked for formal peace talks. Letters from other captured leaders followed, calling for a cease-fire or requesting Senderista militants “to avoid engaging in desperate, adventurist actions . . . that would undermine and impede the implementation of the proposed Peace Agreement.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en269|&lt;span&gt;87&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Although the president never agreed to talks, Guzman’s capture and capitulation letters, together with a strong economic recovery in 1992—93, provided Fujimori with a political victory in October 1993 when his new constitution was narrowly approved in a national referendum. The new constitution codified Fujimori’s previous &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;decretos&lt;/span&gt;: “It recentralized government authority, set the bases for privatization and economic liberalism, provided the death penalty for terrorism, and allowed for the immediate reelection of the sitting president” [a first in Peruvian history].&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en270|&lt;span&gt;88&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;With Guzmán and most of the Sendero leadership in jail, the Lima government and many analysts declared the group defeated. Nevertheless, it still carried out numerous attacks and bombings in the period from 1993 to 1995. Its new leader, Oscar Ramírez Durand (“Comrade Feliciano”), who before Guzmán’s capture was number three in Sendero’s politburo and in charge of military operations, initially seemed incapable of restoring it to its previous strength. Then came the split between Ramírez Durand and Guzmán over tactics and over additional Guzmán letters that emphasized his leadership and seemed to renounce the peaceful posture of his letters to Fujimori.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The result was that Ramírez Durand sought to “rid himself of Guzmán’s ghost by separating Guzmán the man—imprisoned, defeated and respectfully asking the government to hold peace talks—from Guzmán’s ideas, the enshrined ‘Gonzalo Thought’ that made Guzmán a myth worth dying for.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en271|&lt;span&gt;89&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Still, Ramírez Durand seemed incapable of resurrecting Sendero. Many reasons have been offered for his lack of success, including Jo-Marie Burt and José López Ricci’s view that Sendero has adopted a new position “which is not exclusively or even predominantly military. While the organization continues to carry out military attacks, sabotage and agitprop activities, it seems to be reorienting its efforts to less noticeable political work.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en272|&lt;span&gt;90&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Others have pointed to Fujimori’s decision to give the military carte blanche in the war, resulting in thousands of deaths, many of whom actually were Senderistas. The cost in human lives and massive human rights violations were simply ignored by both the president and his military commanders. And others argue that the civilian militias (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;ronderos&lt;/span&gt;) formed by the military in rural areas had successfully eradicated Sendero from many regions.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en273|&lt;span&gt;91&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; To this must be added the overwhelming weariness of the Peruvian people. From 1980 to 1996 the war had cost 35,000 to 40,000 lives and $26 to $30 billion in damage. It may also be that the impenetrable nature of the Sendero’s cell structure meant that the capture of its high command severely hampered efforts to reconstitute the organization.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Whatever prevented Sendero’s immediate resurrection, both Lima and Peru were relatively calm and almost completely free of terrorist acts in 1995 and 1996. The perception that Fujimori had defeated Sendero and the MRTA enhanced his popularity as had the economic recovery. These views led to his overwhelming victory in the presidential campaign of 1995. To be sure, Sendero still held a powerful position in the cocaine-rich Upper Huallaga Valley and was able to mount a few attacks, such as the August bombing of the police station near the National Palace. But for the first time since 1980, it was possible to travel safely almost anywhere in the country.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Most Peruvians were convinced that Sendero was in its final death throes and that the MRTA was totally dead after the capture of several of its leaders in 1995. That conclusion was flawed. Despite the perceptions of Fujimori’s supporters, the social, economic, and political conditions that had spawned Sendero and the MRTA in the 1980s were no better in 1996 than they had been in 1980. Indeed, most observers believed that they were substantially worse. Unemployment and underemployment were common, economic and ethnic disparities persisted, and there was little, if any, faith in either the government or the judiciary to protect the citizenry. The police and military were corrupted by drug trafficking, and Peruvians were cynical about legislative and party institutions. A drastic slowing of economic growth and increasing tension between Fujimori and his military allies further clouded the country’s future as 1996 ended.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;On the evening of December 17, 1996, in a dazzling surprise attack, fourteen militants of the MRTA captured the Lima residence of Japan’s ambassador to Peru together with over six hundred guests who were attending a celebration in honor of the emperor’s birthday. Hostages included nineteen ambassadors (those from Uruguay and Guatemala were quickly released because the first nation had refused to extradite an MRTA member and the second had signed peace accords with its own guerrillas) and Peruvian officials including the ministers of foreign relations and agriculture, the speaker of the parliament, the president of the Supreme Court, several legislators, at least a dozen generals, and Fujimori’s brother. The guerrillas then eliminated any possible U.S. involvement by freeing all American personnel. Moreover, they quickly pared down the number of hostages to a manageable seventy-two while retaining the most important political and economic personages, particularly those from Peru and Japan.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Initially, the guerrillas made a number of demands, including reversal of the government’s neoliberal economic policies, reduced influence of Japanese and other foreign investors, and free passage for themselves and their four hundred jailed comrades to the Upper Huallaga Valley. While originally vowing not to negotiate with the terrorists, President Fujimori bowed to international pressure (especially from the Tokyo government) and established a Mediatory Commission in December, headed by Archbishop Juan Luis Cipriani and composed of Red Cross chief Michel Minnig, Canadian Ambassador Anthony Vincent, and Japanese Ambassador to Mexico Terusuke Terada. In February 1997, Fujimori traveled to Canada, where he met with Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, and then on to Havana, where Fidel Castro offered the MRTA rebels asylum in a rather symbolic, full-circle return to Che and 1959. In fact, the Commission negotiated with the MRTA up to and including the last day, obviously convinced that the Lima government was acting in good faith, which in retrospect appears doubtful.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;On April 23, after more than four months, the hostage situation ended as abruptly and spectacularly as it had begun. In a daring daylight strike that many observers characterized as ill advised, an elite Peruvian commando team that had trained in the United States stormed the residence and freed seventy-one of the hostages. One hostage, Supreme Court Judge Carlos Giusti, and two soldiers were killed in the attack.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Government denials to the contrary, the Peruvian military clearly had begun tunneling under the residence in January. At the time of the assault, they had dug a primary tunnel with two branches, one of which was under the main dining room where the MRTA rebels played soccer on Wednesday afternoons. The military exploded a bomb under the floor at the same time that other commandos attacked the residence from the front and the rear. Three men on the roof also fired down into the building.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite the fact that they had at least two or three minutes before the commandos entered the residence, the MRTA rebels did not attempt to kill their hostages. Indeed, there is ample evidence that they did not even fight back and that the casualties resulted from friendly fire. One explanation for their actions comes from MRTA expert Gordon McCormick, whose theory is that “the hostages were saved by the rebels’ emotional attachment to them, the reverse of the Stockholm Syndrome, which develops when hostages identify with their captors.” McCormick added that “when push came to shove, the Tupac Amaru chose not to pull the trigger,”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#end en274|&lt;span&gt;92&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; a position supported by numerous reports that several guerrillas, including two females, attempted to surrender. This refusal, together with reports that several guerrillas had been shot between the eyes, plus the refusal of the authorities to release the bodies to relatives, makes it likely that MRTA leader Nestor Cerpa Cartolini and his comrades were summarily shot by the commandos.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The hostage ordeal was unique in Latin American history both in terms of magnitude and duration, but its real importance lay in the fact that guerrillas and guerrilla warfare, and particularly Che Guevara’s symbolic presence, had survived in Andean South America. Periodic government claims that Sendero and the MRTA had been crushed proved just as premature as earlier ones regarding the death of guerrilla movements elsewhere in the region. Poverty, injustice, racism, and authoritarian government remained the breeding ground for guerrilla outbreaks in Peru as well as in neighboring Bolivia, Colombia, and much of Central America.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Notes&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;endnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en183|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a brilliant synthesis of Peru’s struggle with modernization and “democracy,” see Fredrick B. Pike, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The United States and the Andean Republics: Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador&lt;/span&gt; (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), particularly chaps. 6—12; see also his &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Modern History of Peru&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Praeger, 1967). Other important studies include David Scott Palmer, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru: The Authoritarian Tradition&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Praeger, 1980); Henry F. Dobyns and Paul L. Doughty, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru: A Cultural History&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Carlos A. Astiz, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Pressure Groups and Power Elites in Peruvian Politics&lt;/span&gt; (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969); and François Bourricaud, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Power and Society in Contemporary Peru&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Praeger, 1970).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en184|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The best analysis of the development of the Peruvian export economy is Rosemary Thorp and Geoffrey Bertram, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru, 1890&lt;/span&gt;—&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;1977: Growth and Policy in an Open Economy&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978). For an extensive discussion of Indian labor conditions and standards of living in the republican period, see Thomas M. Davies, Jr., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Indian Integration in Peru: A Half Century of Experience, 1900&lt;/span&gt;—&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;1948&lt;/span&gt; (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1974), particularly chaps. 1 and 2. The remainder of Davies’s book is an analysis of the Indian legislation in the twentieth century, concluding that it was, at best, superficial and almost never implemented.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en185|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For an overview of peasant uprisings, see Wilfredo Kapsoli, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Los movimientos campesinos en el Perú, 1875—1965&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Delva Editores, 1977); Jean Piel, “A propos d’un soulèvement rural péruvien au début du vingtième siècle: Tocroyoc (1921),” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine&lt;/span&gt; 14 (1967): 375—405; and Davies, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Indian Integration&lt;/span&gt;, chap. 4.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en186|&lt;span&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Detailed analysis of his life and work falls outside the scope of this essay, but one must begin with his collected works, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Obras completas de José Carlos Mariátegui,&lt;/span&gt; 10 vols. (Lima: Biblioteca Amauta, 1959—70), particularly his classic &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana&lt;/span&gt;, translated into English by Marjorie Urquidi as &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality&lt;/span&gt; (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971). There are literally hundreds of articles and books on Mariátegui, but the best and most complete study is Jesus Chavarría, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;José Carlos Mariátegui and the Rise of Modern Peru&lt;/span&gt; (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en187|&lt;span&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana&lt;/span&gt;, 10th ed. (Lima: Biblioteca Amauta, 1965), pp. 41-42.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en188|&lt;span&gt;6&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Steve J. Stein, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Populism in Peru: The Emergence of the Masses and the Politics of Social Control&lt;/span&gt; (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980), chap.1. The analysis of APRA which follows is based on Thomas M. Davies, Jr., “Peru,” in Mark Falcoff and Fredrick B. Pike, eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Spanish Civil War: American Hemispheric Perspectives&lt;/span&gt; (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), pp. 203-43. See also Davies, “The Indigenismo of the Peruvian Aprista Party: A Reinterpretation,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Hispanic American Historical Review&lt;/span&gt; 51 (1971): 626-45; and Davies and Victor Villanueva, eds., 300 &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;documentos para la historia del APRA: Conspiraciones apristas de 1935 a 1939&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Editorial Horizonte, 1978).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en189|&lt;span&gt;7&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For abortive Aprista revolutions in the 1930s, see Davies and Villanueva, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;300 documentos.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en190|&lt;span&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For charges that Haya betrayed the party principles, see Luis Eduardo Enríquez, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Haya de la Torre: La estafa política más grande de América&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Ediciones del Pacífico, 1951); Magda Portal, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Quiénes traicionaron al pueblo?&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Empresa Editora “Salas é Hijos,” 1950); and Victor Villanueva, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La tragedia de un pueblo y un partido&lt;/span&gt; (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;páginas para la historia del&lt;/span&gt; APRA), 2d ed. (Lima: Talleres Gráficos “Victory,” 1956).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en191|&lt;span&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a succinct analysis of Odría’s populist style, see Pike, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The United States and the Andean Republics,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 295-97.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en192|&lt;span&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a measured account of economic conditions and crises during Prado’s presidency, see Pike, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Modern History of Peru,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 296-99.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en193|&lt;span&gt;11&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Comisión para la Reforma Agraria y la Vivienda, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La reforma agraria en el Perú: Exposición de motivos y proyecto de ley&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Talleres Gráficos P. L. Villanueva, S.A., 1960).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en194|&lt;span&gt;12&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The best analysis of the Peruvian land tenure structure is Comité Interamericano de Desarrollo Agrícola, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Tenencia de la tierra y desarrollo socio-económico del sector agrícola&lt;/span&gt;—&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Perú&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C.: Unión Panamericana, 1966). For an excellent table of land tenure and income in Peru in 1961, see Dobyns and Doughty, Peru, p. 309.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en195|&lt;span&gt;13&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The best study of CAEM is Victor Villanueva, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El CAEM y la revolución de la fuerza armada&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1972). See also Brian Loveman and Thomas M. Davies, Jr., eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Politics of Antipolitics: The Military in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978), particularly chaps. 1, 5, and 6.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en196|&lt;span&gt;14&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See, for example, Fernando Belaúnde Terry, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru’s Own Conquest&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: American Studies Press, 1965).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en197|&lt;span&gt;15&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;All the major parties introduced their own land reform laws, the texts of which are reprinted in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Reforma agraria peruana: 5 proyectos de ley&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Editorial Thesis, 1963).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en198|&lt;span&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;One of the best descriptions of 1960s land reform laws in Latin America is Ernest Feder, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Rape of the Peasantry: Latin America’s Landholding System&lt;/span&gt; (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971), particularly pt. 3.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en199|&lt;span&gt;17&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For this and other population data by departments, see Dobyns and Doughty, Peru, pp. 300—301.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en200|&lt;span&gt;18&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For an excellent survey of the early literature on guerrilla movements in Peru through 1971, see Leon G. Campbell, “The Historiography of the Peruvian Guerrilla Movement,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Latin American Research Review&lt;/span&gt; 8, no. 1 (Spring 1973): 45—70.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en201|&lt;span&gt;19&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The literature on Hugo Blanco and his movement is quite extensive, but one must begin with Blanco’s own account, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Land or Death: The Peasant Struggle in Peru&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972). Other important sources include Victor Villanueva, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Hugo Blanco y la rebelión campesina&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Editorial Juan Mejía Baca, 1967); Hugo Neira, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Cuzco: Tierra y muerte&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Populibros, 1964), later revised, expanded, and published as &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Los Andes: Tierra o muerte&lt;/span&gt; (Santiago de Chile: Editorial ZYX, 1968); Gonzalo Añi Castillo, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Historia secreta de las guerrillas&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Ediciones “Más Alla,” 1967); Wesley W. Craig, Jr., “Peru: The Peasant Movement of La Convención,” in Henry A. Landsberger, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Latin American Peasant Movements&lt;/span&gt; (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), pp. 274-96; Richard Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971), pp. 314-29; Eric J. E. Hobsbawm, “A Case of Neo-feudalism: La Convención, Peru,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Journal of Latin American Studies&lt;/span&gt; 1, pt. 1 (May 1969): 31-50; and Mario Antonio Malpica, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Biografía de la revolución&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Ediciones Ensayos Sociales, 1967), pp. 442-79.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en202|&lt;span&gt;20&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Craig, “Peru,” p. 275.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en203|&lt;span&gt;21&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a superb analysis of this development, see ibid., pp. 274–88. See also Hobsbawm, “A Case of Neo-feudalism.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en204|&lt;span&gt;22&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The early biographical data are taken from Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR), &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Obras de Luis de la Puente Uceda&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Ediciones “Voz Rebelde,” 1980), pp. xxix–xxx; and from Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 336–50. Other important sources for the study of de la Puente’s ideology and guerrilla activity are Luis de la Puente Uceda, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Manual de capacitación ideológica&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Ediciones Illarek-Chaska, 1980); Roger Mercado, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Las guerrillas del Perú: El MIR: De la prédica ideológica a la acción armada&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Fondo de Cultura Popular, 1967); Malpica, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Biografía de la revolución&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 479-522; and Añi Castillo, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Historia secreta de las guerrillas.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en205|&lt;span&gt;23&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a partial text of this debate, see Malpica, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Biografía de la revolución&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 501–5; some of it has been translated into English and reprinted in Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 338–39.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en206|&lt;span&gt;24&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The draft law is reprinted in Carlos Malpica, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerra a muerte al latifundia: Proyecto de ley de reforma agraria del M.I.R.&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Ediciones “Voz Rebelde,” 1963), pp. 19–155.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en207|&lt;span&gt;25&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Villanueva, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Hugo Blanco&lt;/span&gt;, p. 132.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en208|&lt;span&gt;26&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The speech was originally printed in Mercado, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Las guerrillas del Perú&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 66–90. It is also in MIR, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Obras de Luis de la Puente,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 3-20; and in English translation in Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 534-50, and Luis E. Aguilar, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Marxism in Latin America&lt;/span&gt;, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978), pp. 243–51.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en209|&lt;span&gt;27&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Although less has been written about Béjar and the ELN than about de la Puente and the MIR, Béjar himself has published &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru 1965: Notes on a Guerrilla Experience&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970). The most important ELN documents are to be found in Mercado, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Las guerrillas del Perú&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 181-93, much of which has been translated into English and reprinted in Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 373-78.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en210|&lt;span&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Béjar, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru 1965,&lt;/span&gt; p. 47.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en211|&lt;span&gt;29&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., pp. 60, 66.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en212|&lt;span&gt;30&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For sharply differing accounts of this incident, see Perú, Ministerio de Guerra, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Las guerrillas en el Perú y su represión&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Ministerio de Guerra, 1966), pp. 28–29; Ricardo Letts Colmenares, “Perú: Revolución, insurrección, guerrillas,” in Malpica, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Biografía de la revolución&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 476–78; Mercado, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Las guerrillas del Perú,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 55–60; and Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 330-35.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en213|&lt;span&gt;31&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Béjar, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru 1965,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 61-62.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en214|&lt;span&gt;32&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Villanueva, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Hugo Blanco&lt;/span&gt;, p. 77.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en215|&lt;span&gt;33&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., pp. 79-80.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en216|&lt;span&gt;34&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The best account of the Trotskyist activities and the political evolution of the movement is ibid. The major highlights are paraphrased in Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 320-29.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en217|&lt;span&gt;35&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Quoted in Malpica, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Biografía de la revolución,&lt;/span&gt; p. 477, and reprinted in Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, p. 322.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en218|&lt;span&gt;36&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For the complete text of the decree, see Villanueva, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Hugo Blanco&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 127–28.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en219|&lt;span&gt;37&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Perú, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Decreto-Ley No. 14444. Se declara zona inicial de aplicación de la reforma agraria en el Departamento del Cuzco los valles de Lares y de La Convención&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Litografía Huascarán, 1963).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en220|&lt;span&gt;38&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, p. 313.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en221|&lt;span&gt;39&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Luis de la Puente Uceda, “The Peruvian Revolution: Concepts and Perspectives,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Monthly Review&lt;/span&gt; 17, no. 6 (November 1965): 21, 25, 27.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en222|&lt;span&gt;40&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., pp. 24-25.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en223|&lt;span&gt;41&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a good analysis of the Russian and Chinese Communist parties’ positions, including extensive quotations from relevant documents, see Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 381–89.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en224|&lt;span&gt;42&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Béjar, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru 1965&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 70, 72-73.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en225|&lt;span&gt;43&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The best military account of the Peruvian army’s defeat of the guerrillas, albeit biased in the extreme, is Perú, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Las guerrillas en el Perú.&lt;/span&gt; See also Mercado, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Las guerrillas del Perú;&lt;/span&gt; and Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 351-80.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en226|&lt;span&gt;44&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), pp. 124-25.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en227|&lt;span&gt;45&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a good description of the area, together with maps and pictures, see Perú, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Las guerrillas en el Perú&lt;/span&gt;, p. 31.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en228|&lt;span&gt;46&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For accounts of this and subsequent actions, see Béjar, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru 1965&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 88-111; Mercado, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Las guerrillas del Perú;&lt;/span&gt; Perú, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Las guerrillas en el Perú&lt;/span&gt;; and Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 372-80. There is also a semifictional film version entitled &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Principal Enemy.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en229|&lt;span&gt;47&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Hector Béjar, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La revolución en la trampa&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Ediciones Socialismo y Participación. 1976).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en230|&lt;span&gt;48&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Béjar, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru 1965&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 110–11.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en231|&lt;span&gt;49&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The literature on the Peruvian “revolution” is voluminous and covers all aspects of the regime. Space limitations preclude even a representative listing of works, but the reader is directed particularly to Abraham F. Lowenthal, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Peruvian Experiment: Continuity and Change under Military Rule&lt;/span&gt; (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); Cynthia McClintock and Abraham F. Lowenthal, eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Peruvian Experiment Reconsidered&lt;/span&gt; (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); Alfred Stepan, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective&lt;/span&gt; (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); Palmer, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru&lt;/span&gt;; Loveman and Davies, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Politics of Antipolitics;&lt;/span&gt; Villanueva, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El CAEM&lt;/span&gt;; and Victor Villanueva, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El ejército peruano: Del caudillismo anárquico al militarismo reformista&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Librería-Editorial Juan Mejía Baca, 1973).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en232|&lt;span&gt;50&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Perú, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Reforma agraria. Decreto-Ley No. 17716&lt;/span&gt; (Lima, 1969).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en233|&lt;span&gt;51&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Loveman and Davies, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Politics of Antipolitics.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en234|&lt;span&gt;52&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Perú, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Velasco la voz de la revolución: Discursos del Presidente de la Republica General de División Juan Velasco Alvarado&lt;/span&gt;, 2 vols. (Lima: Ediciones Participación, 1972), 1:55.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en235|&lt;span&gt;53&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Since 1984 the literature on Sendero Luminoso—books, articles, and journalistic pieces in newspapers and magazines—has increased exponentially, making it the most extensively studied guerrilla movement in Latin American history. Clearly, space limitations demand that we list only a few titles, but several observations are in order. First, human rights organizations, both Peruvian and international, have maintained a steady flow of pamphlets and books. Of particular importance are the largest and most influential: Americas Watch, Amnesty International, and the Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights; and Peruvian groups such as the Instituto de Defensa Legal, Comisión Andina de Juristas, and various agencies of the Roman Catholic Church.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The two best volumes published through 1996 are Gustavo Gorriti Ellenbogen, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Sendero: Historia de la guerra milenaria en el Perú&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Editorial Apoyo, S.A., 1990); and David Scott Palmer, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Shining Path of Peru&lt;/span&gt;, 2d ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994). The most prolific author is Carlos Iván Degregori, some of whose works are cited below. An extremely valuable bibliography is Peter A. Stern, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Sendero Luminoso: An Annotated Bibliography of the Shining Path Guerrilla Movement, 1980&lt;/span&gt;–&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;1993&lt;/span&gt; (Albuquerque: SALALM Secretariat, General Library, University of New Mexico, 1995).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The principal publishing agents of Sendero itself are the newspaper &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Diario&lt;/span&gt; in Lima, before it was shut down, and the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) of the United States, which publishes all Sendero documents and the pronouncements of Abimael Guzmán. All are “authored” by the Communist Party of Peru since Sendero does not recognize any other party. The RCP publishes under the rubric of Comité de Apoyo a la Guerra Popular en el Perú for Spanish-language materials and Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru for English-language ones. They are based in Berkeley, California. The RCP also publishes two English-language magazines, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The New Flag&lt;/span&gt;, which is devoted entirely to Sendero, and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;A World to Win&lt;/span&gt;, which covers Sendero within the context of the “world-wide struggle” waged by the RCP.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The following titles constitute a mere beginning: James Anderson, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Sendero Luminoso: A New Revolutionary Model?&lt;/span&gt; (London: Institute for the Study of Terrorism, 1988); Carol Andreas, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;When Women Rebel: The Rise of Popular Feminism in Peru&lt;/span&gt; (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill and Co., 1985); Juan Ansión, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Pishtacos de verdugos a sacaojos&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: TAREA, 1989); Michael F. Brown and Eduardo Fernández, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;War in the Shadows: The Struggle for Utopia in the Peruvian Amazon&lt;/span&gt; (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Centro de Estudios y Promoción del Desarrollo, DESCO, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Violencia política en el Perú, 1980&lt;/span&gt;–&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;1988&lt;/span&gt;, vols. 1-2 (Lima: DESCO, 1989); Communist Party of Peru, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Develop Guerrilla Warfare. Don’t Vote! Instead, Expand the Guerrilla War to Seize Power for the People!&lt;/span&gt; (Berkeley: Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru, 1985); idem, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Develop the People’s War to Serve the World Revolution&lt;/span&gt; (Berkeley: Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru, 1988); Carlos Iván Degregori, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Ayacucho, 1969&lt;/span&gt;–&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;1979. El surgimiento de Sendero Luminoso del movimiento por la gratuidad de la enseñanza al inicio de la lucha armada (&lt;/span&gt;Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1990); idem, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Ayacucho, raíces de una crisis&lt;/span&gt; (Ayacucho: Instituto de Estudios Regionales José María Arguedas, 1986); idem, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Qué difícil es ser Dios: ldeología y violencia política en Sendero Luminoso&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: El Zorro de Abajo Ediciones, 1989); Carlos Iván Degregori et al., eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Las rondas campesinas y la derrota de Sendero Luminoso&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, Universidad Nacional San Cristóbal de Huamanga, 1996); José F. W. Lora Cam, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Holocausto, 1879&lt;/span&gt;–&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;1979&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Editorial Tercer Mundo, 1984); Gordon H. McCormick, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;From the Sierra to the Cities: The Urban Campaign of the Shining Path&lt;/span&gt; (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, 1992); idem, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Shining Path and the Future of Peru&lt;/span&gt; (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, 1990); Roger Mercado Ulloa, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Partido Comunista del Perú: Sendero Luminoso&lt;/span&gt;, 3d ed., with interview with Dr. Abimael Guzmán (Lima: Librerías “Studium”-La “Universidad,” 1986); Roberto C. Moral, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Ayacucho: Testimonio de un soldado&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: PUBLINOR, 1989); Partido Comunista del Perú, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerra Popular en el Perú: El pensamiento Gonzalo&lt;/span&gt; (Brussels: Luis Arce Borja, 1989); Deborah Poole and Gerardo Rénique, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru: Time of Fear&lt;/span&gt; (London: Latin American Bureau, 1992); Michael Radu and Vladimir Tismaneanu, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Latin American Revolutionaries: Groups, Goals, Methods&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C.: Pergamon-Brassey’s International Defense Publishers, 1994); Tina Rosenberg, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Children of Cain: Violence and the Violent in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991); Orin Starn, Carlos Iván Degregori, and Robin Kirk, eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics&lt;/span&gt; (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995); Simon Strong, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Shining Path: Terror and Revolution in Peru&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Random House, 1992); Gabriela Tarazona-Sevillano, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Sendero Luminoso and the Threat of Narcoterrorism&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Praeger, The Washington Papers, 1990).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en236|&lt;span&gt;54&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Carol Barton, “Peru: ‘Dirty War’ in Ayacucho,” NACLA, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Report on the Americas&lt;/span&gt; 18, no. 3 (May-June 1983): 36-39.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en237|&lt;span&gt;55&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a brilliant account of an early Indian messianic-millenarian movement, Taqi Onqoy, see Steve J. Stern, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru’s Indian Peoples: Huamanga to 1640&lt;/span&gt;, 2d ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), particularly pp. 51–71.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en238|&lt;span&gt;56&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;In the Andes there are a plethora of gods and goddesses, holy places and evil places, and mythical and magical beings who can either bring danger, sickness, and death or save individuals from those awful fates. Examples of the latter would be the Earth Mother goddess Pachamama (Pacha Mama), or the incredibly numerous Huacas, Wamanis, and Illimanis of their mountain homes.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The most famous and arguably the most dreaded is the Pishtaqu, also known as Nakaq or Kharisiri. The Pishtaqu is an ancient being, but it is with the Spanish invasion and conquest of the Andean region in the 1530s that we find the first written descriptions of him. In almost all the versions, the Pishtaqu is intricately linked to the ruling class—the great landowners, the Spanish colonial government, Roman Catholic priests, the Peruvian national government, and, most recently, the administration of President Alan García. The Pishtaqu represents the outsider, the foreigner, who has come to the Andes to murder and dismember Pachamama’s children. He walks through the sierra and even in the streets of Lima, searching for lone women and children whom he can kill in order to obtain their body fat, which is then used by the foreigners in many ways.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the Spanish colonial period, it was believed that the fat was included in the casting of bells for the Christian churches, poured into the foundations of the churches to ensure immunity against earthquakes, and made into candles for Christian rites and ceremonies. Today, in the mid-1990s, it is claimed that the Pishtaqu still murders, dismembers, and renders the fat of Indian women and children to support Christianity but with a contemporary twist: to obtain grease with which to lubricate modern machinery in both Peru and the outside world in order to keep industry functioning at peak levels—and to grease the helicopter gunships of the Peruvian armed forces that dealt so much death and destruction during the “dirty war” against Sendero Luminoso in the 1980s and 1990s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en239|&lt;span&gt;57&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cynthia McClintock, “Sendero Luminoso: Peru’s Maoist Guerrillas,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Problems of Communism&lt;/span&gt; (September-October 1983): 19-34.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en240|&lt;span&gt;58&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid.; Sandra L. Woy Hazleton, “Political Opposition in Peru: Parliamentary and Revolutionary Challenges,” paper delivered at the September 1983 meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Mexico City.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en241|&lt;span&gt;59&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Barton, “Peru,” pp. 37–38; Kenneth Freed, “Pocket of Terrorism Stirs Fear among Peruvian Peasants,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Los Angeles Times&lt;/span&gt;, February 20, 1983; McClintock, “Sendero Luminoso,” p. 30.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en242|&lt;span&gt;60&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Barton, “Peru,” p. 38; and McClintock, “Sendero Luminoso,” p. 32.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en243|&lt;span&gt;61&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Quoted in McClintock, “Sendero Luminoso,” p. 32.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en244|&lt;span&gt;62&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Palmer, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Shining Path,&lt;/span&gt; p. 14.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en245|&lt;span&gt;63&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For an analysis of Sendero’s move to the urban sector, see McCormick, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;From the Sierra to the Cities.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en246|&lt;span&gt;64&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Compared to Sendero Luminoso, the literature on the MRTA is minuscule indeed. There is only one work devoted entirely to the MRTA: Gordon H. McCormick, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Sharp Dressed Men: Peru’s Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement&lt;/span&gt; (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, 1993). There are references to the MRTA in most of the works on Sendero, but usually to make the point that the MRTA is unimportant in comparison. With the December 1996 assault and takeover of the residence of the Japanese ambassador to Peru and the capture of almost six hundred hostages, that literature will undoubtedly increase.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The following books devote substantial attention to the MRTA and deserve mention: Americas Watch, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru under Fire: Human Rights Since the Return to Democracy&lt;/span&gt; (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Brown and Fernández, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;War in the Shadows&lt;/span&gt;; Centro de Estudios y Promoción del Desarrollo, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Violencia politica en el Perú&lt;/span&gt;, vols. 1-2; Friar Mariano Gagnon, O.F.M., with William and Marilyn Hoffer, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Warriors in Eden&lt;/span&gt; (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1993); Carlos Oviedo V., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Prensa y subversión: Una lectura de la violencia en el Perú&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: MASS Comunicación Editores, 1989); Maria del Pilar Tello, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Sobre el volcán: Diálogo frente a la subversion&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos, 1989); Victor Manuel Quechua, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Perú&lt;/span&gt; . . . &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;13 años de oprobio,&lt;/span&gt; 3d ed. (Lima: Tetis Graf., S.A., 1995).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en247|&lt;span&gt;65&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;McCormick, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Sharp Dressed Men&lt;/span&gt;, p. 3.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en248|&lt;span&gt;66&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;In an operation reminiscent of the spectacular prison escapes by the Tupamaros in Uruguay in the 1960s, the MRTA dug an 1,100-foot tunnel that contained air compressors, electric lights, and various types of engineering equipment. See McCormick, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Sharp Dressed Men&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 27-28; and Poole and Rénique, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 12–13.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en249|&lt;span&gt;67&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;McCormick, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Sharp Dressed Men&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 24-32.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en250|&lt;span&gt;68&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Quoted in ibid., pp. 24–25.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en251|&lt;span&gt;69&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Comité Central, MRTA, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El camino de la Revolución Peruana&lt;/span&gt;, documents from the second plenum meeting of the CC, MRTA, August 1988, translated and reprinted in McCormick, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Sharp Dressed Men,&lt;/span&gt; p. 13.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en252|&lt;span&gt;70&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Palmer, “Introduction,” in Palmer, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Shining Path,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 13–14; and John Crabtree, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru under García: An Opportunity Lost&lt;/span&gt; (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), p. 29.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en253|&lt;span&gt;71&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Palmer, “Introduction,” in Palmer, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Shining Path,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 13-14.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en254|&lt;span&gt;72&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Early in his term, President García sent military planes to Europe and the United States and physically withdrew Peru’s foreign reserves.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en255|&lt;span&gt;73&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Poole and Rénique, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru,&lt;/span&gt; p. 129. See also Richard Webb and Graciela Fernández Baca, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Perú en números. 1991: Anuario estadístico&lt;/span&gt; (Lima: Cuánto, S.A., 1991).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en256|&lt;span&gt;74&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Palmer, “Introduction,” in Palmer, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Shining Path,&lt;/span&gt; p. 15; Poole and Rénique, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 129-31. Webb and Fernández Baca, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Perú en numeros, 1991,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 801-4, offers comparative tables on hyperinflation in the world and Latin America.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en257|&lt;span&gt;75&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Sol&lt;/span&gt; means sun in Spanish and had been the name of Peru’s currency since the early nineteenth century. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Inti&lt;/span&gt; means sun in Quechua, the language of the Incas.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en258|&lt;span&gt;76&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Palmer, “Introduction,” in Palmer, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Shining Path&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 15–16. See also McCormick, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Sharp Dressed Men&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 17-34; and Crabtree, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru under García.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en259|&lt;span&gt;77&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See García’s popularity curve in Crabtree, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru under García,&lt;/span&gt; p. 159.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en260|&lt;span&gt;78&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Palmer, “Introduction,” in Palmer, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Shining Path,&lt;/span&gt; p. 16. See also Poole and Rénique, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 134-35; and a chart on elected local authorities killed or forced to resign, 1986–89, in Crabtree, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru under García&lt;/span&gt;, p. 194. Good background is provided by McCormick, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Shining Path and the Future of Peru.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en261|&lt;span&gt;79&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid.; Carol Graham, “Introduction: Democracy in Crisis and the International Response,” in Joseph S. Tulchin and Gary Bland, eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru in Crisis: Dictatorship or Democracy?&lt;/span&gt; (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994), p. 2. See also Julio Velarde, “Macroeconomic Stability and the Prospects for Growth, 1990–1993,” and Efraín Gonzales de Olarte, “Peru’s Difficult Road to Economic Development,” both in Tulchin and Bland, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru in Crisis&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 139-54, 155-85.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en262|&lt;span&gt;80&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Palmer, “Introduction,” in Palmer, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Shining Path,&lt;/span&gt; p. 17. See also Poole and Rénique, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 153-55.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en263|&lt;span&gt;81&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Poole and Rénique, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru&lt;/span&gt;, p. 157.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en264|&lt;span&gt;82&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en265|&lt;span&gt;83&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en266|&lt;span&gt;84&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;There are hundreds of journal and newspaper articles as well as sections of books on the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;autogolpe.&lt;/span&gt; In addition to Palmer and Poole and Rénique cited above, see Jo-Marie Burt, “Peru: Façade of Democracy Crumbles,” NACLA, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Report on the Americas&lt;/span&gt; 26, no. I (July 1992): 3-6; and a fascinating article by Bruce H. Kay, “ ‘Fujipopulism’ and the Liberal State in Peru, 1990–1995,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs&lt;/span&gt; 38, no. 4 (Winter 1996-97): 55–98. The event was also covered extensively in the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/span&gt; and the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Los Angeles Times.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en267|&lt;span&gt;85&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Poole and Rénique, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 160–62; Palmer, “Introduction,” in Palmer, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Shining Path&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 17-18.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en268|&lt;span&gt;86&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Jo-Marie Burt and José López Ricci, “Shining Path after Guzmán,” NACLA, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Report on the Americas&lt;/span&gt; 28, no. 3 (November-December 1994): 6–9; Palmer, “Introduction,” in Palmer, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Shining Path&lt;/span&gt;, p. 18.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en269|&lt;span&gt;87&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Burt and López Ricci, “Shining Path after Guzmán,” pp. 6-7.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en270|&lt;span&gt;88&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Palmer, “Introduction,” in Palmer, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Shining Path&lt;/span&gt;, p. 18.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en271|&lt;span&gt;89&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Burt and López Ricci, “Shining Path after Guzmán,” p. 8.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en272|&lt;span&gt;90&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 9.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en273|&lt;span&gt;91&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Degregori et al., eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Las rondas campesirtas.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c08.html#ref end en274|&lt;span&gt;92&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;McCormick quoted in Arthur Golden, “Psychologically, the Rebels Just Couldn’t Pull the Trigger,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;San Diego Union-Tribune&lt;/span&gt;, April 24, 1997. There is a huge journalistic literature on the hostage crisis from day one to the end. Without American citizens involved, however, the story quickly dropped off the front pages of U.S. newspapers and magazines. Latin American, and particularly Peruvian, coverage continued to be extensive. Since little time elapsed between the assault and the publication of this volume, no solid studies are yet available.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;chapter&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Bolivia&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Political Chronology&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;tableau&quot;&gt;<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable none&quot;<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1932–35<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Chaco War with Paraguay disrupts traditional Bolivian society. Partido Obrero Revolucionario (POR) founded (1934).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1936–43<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Reform-minded military officers David Toro and Germán Busch take power in 1936 on program of “military socialism”; first “social” constitution written (1938). Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (PIR) founded (1940); Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) founded by Victor Paz Estenssoro (1942).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1943–52<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Military rule in Bolivia, including neofascist administration of Gualberto Villarroel (1943–46).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1952–64<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Bolivian national revolution led by Victor Paz Estenssoro (president, 1952–56,1960–64) and Hernán Siles Zuazo (president, 1956–60) of MNR. Mining companies nationalized and extensive land reform undertaken, particularly in 1956–64. Massive U.S. aid and poor economic planning lead to inflation and discontent, especially among tin miners.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1964–67<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Paz Estenssoro overthrown by military led by General René Barrientos. Che Guevara arrives in La Paz (1966) to lead continent-wide revolution, moves into action in March 1967, is captured and executed in October.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1967–82<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Military rule in Bolivia. René Barrientos killed in crash (1969), replaced by Alfredo Ovando Candía (1969–70), military populist Juan José Torres (1970–71), authoritarian military regime of Hugo Banzer (1971–78), and others.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1982–85<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Hernán Siles Zuazo. Center-left coalition (UDP); creation of UMOPAR, 1983; antidrug operations and militarization of drug wars; peasant opposition to drug crop-eradication programs. COB and Communists collaborate with UDP; civil-military tensions of “disorder” and “unconstitutional procedures.” New air force chief declares that “Bolivia will not become another Central America”; Ejército Guerrillero Túpac Katari (EGTK) founded; economic collapse as mega-inflation reaches 26,000 percent in 1985. Massive popular opposition forces early elections; MNR founder Victor Paz Estenssoro elected president (July 1985).<br /> |}<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;tableau&quot;&gt;<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable none&quot;<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; |1985–89<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; |Administration of Victor Paz Estenssoro. Alliance (Pacto por la Democracia) with former president Banzer’s ADN party; adoption of neoliberal economic package (New Economic Policy, Decree No. 21,060) and its implementation under state of siege; decreasing legitimacy of political parties and popular discontent as result of economic adjustments. EGTK begins guerrilla operations; antidrug war stepped up with U.S. aid; Bolivian military and police pushed into antidrug campaign and suffer further institutional corruption.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; |1989–93<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; |Administration of Jaime Paz Zamora. Continues alliance with Banzer and neoliberal economic program; economic recovery. EGTK announces “Communal War” (June 1991), carries out military operations until April 1992, when most leaders and many militants are captured. MNR retakes presidency in 1993 with &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;indigenista&lt;/span&gt; leader Victor Hugo Cárdenas as vice president.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; |1993–97<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; |Administration of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. Traditional left and labor movement in decline; resurgence of Indian movements and protests against neoliberal model and drug wars; guerrillas essentially dormant.<br /> |}<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Background&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;With the tragic exception of Haiti, no other American republic matches Bolivia’s incredible history of political, economic, and social chaos. One of the two or three poorest nations in the hemisphere, Bolivia has had dozens of presidents and illegal changes of regime since independence (1825), twenty-nine between 1880 and 1952 alone.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en275|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In the early 1950s the fragile Bolivian political system rested on an archaic, manorial social system in which the majority Indian population suffered extreme exploitation and deprivation in the large &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;latifundia&lt;/span&gt; that dominated the rural sector.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A country whose population was overwhelmingly rural (78 percent in 1952), Bolivia had experienced little of the modernization and urbanization typical of its southern neighbors or even Peru. Dependent upon tin mined by Indian workers for its major source of foreign exchange, the Bolivian mono-product economy generally fared even less well than other Latin American mono-product exporters of agricultural or mineral commodities. In the agricultural sector a mere 9.4 percent of landowners controlled 92 percent of the arable land in holdings of more than 1,000 hectares, yet they cultivated less than 2 percent of it. In contrast, 61 percent of farm units controlled .28 percent of total area and 8.1 percent of cultivated land in parcels of less than 5 hectares.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en276|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sharp class divisions and unequal distribution of wealth and income combined in Bolivia with stark racial, linguistic, and cultural barriers. A small white and mestizo elite ruled a vast population of Quechua-, Aymara-, and Guaraní-speaking Indian peasants. Forced to work on the large estates, the Indians did not participate in the economic, social, and political affairs of their nation, except insofar as their labor produced wealth for a tiny minority.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Had this system endured largely unchanged until 1966 when Che Guevara arrived in La Paz to initiate a guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; in Bolivia, the conditions confronting his forces would certainly have been different. In practice, however, Bolivia experienced fundamental changes between 1952 and 1966; the national revolution, one of the three social revolutions experienced in Latin America before 1979, dramatically transformed the mining region and the countryside.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en277|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The revolution had its origins in the Chaco War (1932–35) between Bolivia and Paraguay. Fought over the nearly worthless Gran Chaco, a largely unpopulated region, this senseless conflict cost Bolivia more than 65,000 lives and thousands of square miles of national territory; it also disrupted the nation to such an extent that the traditional order collapsed. The military, led by Colonels David Toro and Germán Busch, disparaged the ineptitude of civilian politicians and the corrupting influence of politics in Bolivian national life. Promising to save Bolivia from the civilian politicians who had impeded the war effort, the military assumed power in 1936 with a program of “military socialism.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en278|&lt;span&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Although marred by coups and political and social violence, the next decade saw the writing in 1938 of a new “social” constitution, patterned after the 1917 Mexican and 1933 Peruvian documents. Three new political parties also emerged: the Partido Obrero Revolucionario (POR, Revolutionary Workers Party), Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (PIR, Party of the Revolutionary Left), and the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR, Nationalist Revolutionary Movement). Founded in 1934, the POR grew to become the most powerful and important Trotskyist party in Latin America, even controlling the Bolivian labor movement for a time in the 1950s. The PIR, founded in 1940, adopted a Marxist stance and called for the socialization of the means of production and the full integration of the Indian population into national life. The third and most important, the MNR, formed in the early 1940s and led by Victor Paz Estenssoro and Hernán Siles Zuazo, was composed largely of young intellectuals and middle-sector groups who sought profound structural changes in Bolivia and looked initially to fascism as their political model.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;All of these parties favored the nationalization of the tin mines and foreign-owned enterprises, supported the rights of the miners, and called for the destruction of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;latifundio&lt;/span&gt; land tenure system and alleviation of the “Indian problem.” Although they were unable to gain power immediately (the MNR did play a major role in the regime of Gualberto Villarroel, 1943–46), these parties continued to grow in membership and strength. Finally, in April 1952 the MNR, backed by miner and civilian militias as well as some national police units, defeated the army and installed Victor Paz Estenssoro as president and Hernán Siles Zuazo as vice president of Bolivia.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By 1952 the MNR had dropped its pro-fascist stance and had become the party of miners, urban labor, and leftist middle-sector civilians. In this it resembled, at least in terms of rhetoric, the APRA in Peru and AD in Venezuela. In terms of actual political action, the MNR vastly outdistanced its Peruvian and Venezuelan counterparts and could legitimately claim to represent many of the radical and reformist elements in the society.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The new government moved swiftly to consolidate its power and carry out the stated goals of the revolution. It created a new labor confederation, Central Obrero Boliviano (COB, Bolivian Workers Central), in which the more radical POR and PIR were allowed substantial representation. It drastically reduced the size of the military and allowed the urban and rural militias to retain their arms. It created a national monopoly over the export and sale of all minerals and nationalized the three largest Bolivian tin companies.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;It was in the areas of land reform and Indian rights, however, that the MNR made its most lasting impact. Responding to Indian pressure for reform and land takeovers, the MNR sought to legitimize peasant unions and gain control of rural organizations. The first major step was to enfranchise the Indian peasants by abolishing literacy requirements, thereby quadrupling the number of eligible voters. Concomitantly, the Indians, with the aid of urban radicals, began to organize, form militias, and take over the large estates upon which they had been forced to work. With the army all but destroyed, and guns in the hands of peasants for the first time in Bolivian history, the way was clear for a wholesale assault on the land tenure system.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Owing to its urban, middle-sector origins, the MNR leadership was extremely reluctant to “unleash” the peasantry and implement a thoroughgoing agrarian reform. Nevertheless, peasant violence in 1952 and early 1953, together with the need to placate their more radical supporters inside and outside the party, forced the MNR leadership to enact a radical agrarian reform law. Although the law provided for compensation through twenty-five-year bonds and ordered the Indians to make restitution for the lands they had already seized, neither of these provisions was ever enforced.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The result was massive destruction of the Bolivian &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;latifundia&lt;/span&gt; system and the immediate distribution of lands to individual Indians and Indian &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;comunidades&lt;/span&gt;. The import of this for future proponents of revolutionary guerrilla warfare in Bolivia cannot be overestimated. One authority, Herbert Klein, has written that&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;with the elimination of the hated hacendados and many of their &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;cholo&lt;/span&gt; middlemen, and the granting of land titles, the Indians became a relatively conservative political force in the nation and actually grew indifferent if not hostile to their former urban worker colleagues. The appeasement of their land hunger turned the Indians inward so that for the next two generations the primary concern of the communities and their &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;sindicatos&lt;/span&gt; was the delivery of modern facilities of health and education and the guaranteeing of their land titles. Otherwise they were receptive to reformist and even conservative policies in the urban centers.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en279|&lt;span&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Paz Estenssoro and his successors recognized fully the political advantages of retaining this bloc of peasant support, particularly as the nation’s economy began to deteriorate in the late 1950s and early 1960s and the miners, urban labor, and the middle sectors grew dangerously restless. Ongoing land reform represented a cheap but effective means of ensuring that support, so the government greatly accelerated its land distribution program in the years after 1956.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en280|&lt;span&gt;6&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In marked contrast to its policies in Guatemala in 1954, the United States supported the Bolivian national revolution, both financially and politically, and then co-opted it. Although the United States had been opposed to the MNR since 1943, it was because of the party’s early fascist leanings, not its later reformist policies. Thus, in 1953, Milton Eisenhower, special ambassador to Latin America, convinced his brother, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, that despite such “politically undesirable” programs as land reform and expropriation, U.S. interests would be best served by supporting the “fascist” MNR rather than risking a Communist takeover.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en281|&lt;span&gt;7&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;U.S. aid and control became most evident during the regime of Hernán Siles Zuazo (1956–60). Runaway inflation, costly featherbedding in the mining industry, high unemployment, and general economic decline made the government highly dependent upon U.S. economic assistance. When the United States insisted that Bolivia repay some $56 million-worth of loans defaulted on in the 1920s, the Bolivian government was forced to accede to the draconian measures demanded by the United States and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), including a balanced budget, an end to subsidies of food prices, cuts in social services, devaluation of the currency, and massive cutbacks in public sector employment. In return, the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) embarked upon one of the most massive aid programs in U.S. history. In 1957, 32 percent of Bolivian treasury revenues came from AID, with an average of 25.9 percent over the next four years.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en282|&lt;span&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The United States also assisted greatly in the rebuilding and “professionalization” of the Bolivian military in the late 1950s and early 1960s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite U.S. aid, however, the negative impact of the IMF demands, together with a continued decline in mining exports, caused severe dislocations in the society and cost the MNR most of its miner and leftist urban support. During his second term (1960–64), Paz Estenssoro was forced increasingly to rely on military and peasant support to remain in power. Though he tried to placate the left by naming a longtime radical labor leader, Juan Lechín, as his vice president, the ploy ultimately failed when Lechín and Siles Zuazo formally broke with the MNR over Paz’s decision (supported by the United States) to seek a third term in 1964.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Isolated from his own party and facing serious opposition from labor, miner, and leftist intellectuals, Paz chose General René Barrientos as his running mate to assuage the military and then won the election with peasant support. Despite his relatively easy victory, however, it quickly became apparent to the army that Paz could not maintain internal order, so he was ousted in November 1964, and General Barrientos assumed the presidency. Thus, by 1964, despite the poverty of rural Bolivians and the history of political instability, the Bolivian revolution had created very special circumstances that challenged any literal application of Che Guevara’s analysis in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> # Despite Bolivia’s chaotic political history, it was definitely not a Caribbean-type dictatorship in the early 1960s. Since 1952, elections had been held on a regular basis and there was a genuine popular commitment to the goals of the revolution. Although General Barrientos replaced Paz Estenssoro in 1964, his fluency in Quechua and support from the Indian population in key regions made him an unlikely surrogate for Batista (Cuba) or Somoza (Nicaragua). &lt;span&gt;Moreover, there was an institutionalized political party system that included both rightist and leftist parties. A centrist political movement, the MNR, seemed to offer a realistic reformist alternative to violent revolution and had indeed carried out some meaningful reforms, particularly in the rural sector.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> # The physical terrain of Bolivia is even more extreme than that of Peru, but the vast majority of the population has always lived on the high &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;altiplano&lt;/span&gt;, which offers almost no cover for guerrillas. The heavily forested and jungle regions to the east are relatively unpopulated, offering spatial opportunities to potential guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; but little opportunity to do political work because of the sparsity of the population.<br /> # Bolivia was a predominantly rural society in which the Indian peasants had traditionally lived and worked under conditions of extreme poverty and oppression. The agrarian reform program of the 1952 revolution altered parts of that picture drastically. Thousands of peasants were given land; and although land redistribution was not accompanied by technical assistance, credit, or marketing agreements, it all but guaranteed that the Indians would move toward a conservative political position and support the government. Although rural poverty remained the common lot of the population, agrarian reform ceased to be a viable rallying point for revolutionary or guerrilla leaders.<br /> # Bolivia most definitely lacked a vanguard party, rural cadres, and linkages between urban and rural opposition movements. The POR, PIR, and the Bolivian Communist Party (PCB) were ineffective in comparison with the MNR, particularly in terms of peasant support. The fact that the majority of peasants remained fiercely loyal to the government meant that it would be almost impossible in much of Bolivia to create the subjective conditions for a successful guerrilla operation. In some ways the MNR ties to the peasantry, like those of AD in Venezuela, APRA in Peru, and Conservatives and Liberals in Colombia, meant that rural guerrilla movements faced not just apathy or distrust but also active hostility.<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Origins of the Guerrilla Movement of the 1960s&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Bolivia’s only guerrilla movement in the 1960s was, from the outset, foreign in origin. Unlike the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; of other nations treated in this volume, the Bolivian &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt;, headed by Che Guevara himself, was created to take advantage of the country’s geographic location to initiate a continent-wide revolution. As a base for such revolution, Bolivia seemed ideal because it shares borders with five of the other nine republics in South America (Peru, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil). There is no doubt that continental revolution was Che Guevara’s goal, and only very secondarily was he interested in Bolivia per se. In this sense, the Bolivian &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; lacked entirely the domestic political roots of the other movements discussed in this book.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Following his disastrous term as Cuban minister of industries, Che Guevara left Cuba in 1965. Although his whereabouts for the next year are still largely unknown, there are sound reasons to believe that he spent several months in Africa, particularly the Congo, and perhaps even visited Vietnam. By the time he returned to Cuba in 1966, Che was firmly committed to leading a Latin American revolution, a notion which, at least then, had the support of Fidel Castro. According to Richard Gott, an authority on the subject, the original plan called for Che to return to Argentina, resurrect the guerrilla movement of Jorge Masetti, work closely with the guerrilla leader Leonel Brizola in Brazil, and rekindle guerrilla activities in Peru. Bolivia was to be used “as a refuge and a training ground.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en283|&lt;span&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;During the summer of 1966, however, the plan was altered; and Bolivia, rather than Argentina, was designated as the continental headquarters. From the outset, the operation was planned and directed from Cuba and could count on neither Bolivian Communist party support nor Bolivian cadres. Of the fifty guerrillas in Che’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt;, seventeen were Cuban, twenty-nine Bolivian, three Peruvian, and one East German. All of the officers, however, were Cuban; no Bolivians were among the leaders.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en284|&lt;span&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Moreover, although Che and the Cubans did make some effort to recruit Bolivians, including Indian miners and peasants, they were hampered by the fact that they could not rely on any Bolivian political party or movement. Che himself noted in late December 1966 that “the Bolivians are good, although there are few of them.” A month later he wrote, “Of all the things foreseen, the one that is going slowest is the recruitment of Bolivian combatants.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en285|&lt;span&gt;11&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Politico-Military Evolution of the Guerrilla Struggle&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;From the very beginning, Che and his Cuban comrades faced a number of almost insurmountable problems as they sought to create a successful guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; in Bolivia: (1) the hostility of the Bolivian Communist party (PCB); (2) a woeful lack of knowledge of Bolivian geography, which resulted in the selection of a questionable site for a &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; base; (3) the popularity of President Barrientos, particularly among the peasants; (4) the Sino-Soviet split and Soviet policies of peaceful coexistence with the United States; and (5) the rapid and effective response of the United States-trained counterinsurgency forces.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en286|&lt;span&gt;12&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the earliest planning stages in Cuba, Mario Monje Molina, the secretary general of the PCB, had been induced to support the operation by a Cuban gift of $25,000 to the PCB and by promises from Fidel Castro that the revolution would be planned and controlled by Bolivians. The money was delivered, but it was perfectly clear throughout that the Cubans had absolutely no intention of relinquishing control to the PCB.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Less than two months after his clandestine arrival in La Paz in November 1966, Che met with Monje Molina. Che’s account of that meeting is revealing indeed:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The meeting was cordial but strained. In the background was the question: What are we here for? . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The conversation with Monje began with generalities but he quickly came down to his fundamental premise, stated in three basic conditions:&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;1) He would resign as party leader but would obtain its neutrality, and cadres would be brought for the struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;2) He would be the political and military leader of the struggle as long as the revolution was taking place in Bolivia.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;3) He would handle relations with other South American parties, trying to persuade them to support liberation movements (he mentioned Douglas Bravo as an example).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;I answered that the first point was a matter for his own judgment as Party Secretary, although I considered his position to be a great mistake. It was vacillating, accommodating, and would protect the good name in history of those who should be condemned for their crookedness. Time would prove me right.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;On the third point, I told him I had no objection to his trying but that he would fail. To ask Codovilla to support Douglas Bravo was equivalent to asking him to support an insurrection within his own Party. Time will tell again. [Douglas Bravo was then the leader of the Castro-oriented guerrillas of the Venezuelan Armed Forces of National Liberation, Vittorio Codovilla the perennial chief of the Moscow-leaning Argentine Communist Party—hence, Che’s sarcastic remark.]&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As for the second point, I could not accept it under any conditions. I was to be the military chief and I would not accept any ambiguities on this matter. Here the discussion stalled into a vicious circle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;We agreed I would think it over and talk to the Bolivian comrades. We went over to the new camp. There he spoke to everybody, laying down the alternative of remaining with us or supporting the party. Everyone stayed, and this seemed to be a blow to him.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en287|&lt;span&gt;13&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;By the end of January 1967, Che made it clear that the break with the PCB was irrevocable: “As was to be expected, Monje’s attitude was evasive since the first moment and treacherous after. Now the party is up in arms against us and I don’t know how far they will go, but this does not scare us, and maybe it will benefit us in the long run. (I’m almost certain of that.) The finest and most combative people will be on our side; they always go through a crisis of conscience more or less serious.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en288|&lt;span&gt;14&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; That the split worsened is obvious in a bitter entry, dated September 24, 1967, in the diary of Pombo, a Cuban whose real name was Harry Villegas Tamayo. Of the PCB he wrote: “1) They have shown no confidence in guerrilla warfare; 2) They have made no efforts to organize themselves, rather, they view it all as not solving anything. They added that they had been concentrating all their efforts toward a general uprising and considered guerrilla warfare as secondary. We asked them what they had done to date; they replied, ‘Nothing.’ We told them we could not sit around 20 years waiting for them.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en289|&lt;span&gt;15&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Isolated from the PCB and lacking any meaningful contacts with other Bolivian parties or even with the volatile miners, Che was forced to rely upon whatever resources he could muster. The selection of a site for the guerrilla base became, therefore, even more crucial. After several months of searching, Che’s Cuban advance men, led by Pombo, found and bought a farm on the Ñancahuazu River. Pombo described the property as being situated&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;in the southwest region of Santa Cruz province, in a mountainous area of exuberant vegetation but scant water in the general area. The property itself has plenty of water. Ñancahuazu is in a canyon between the Serranias de las Pirirendas to the east and the Serranias Incahuasi to the west; their highest peaks are its eastern and western borders. These ranges join up farther south and continue into the Salta range in Argentina. . . . the farm has the specifications for this sort of work, but not on a large scale as yet, although we shall establish the proper conditions by building a house farther in so that it cannot be seen, as the present one is right where the road ends. The problem, however, lies in the transfer of the people, because we have to fool Algaranaz [an inquisitive neighbor].&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Other descriptions of the site are less positive. Daniel James, editor of Che’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivian Diaries,&lt;/span&gt; writes: “The guerrilla base at Ñancahuazu was perched on the edge of a rocky canyon nearly twelve miles long and more than 309 feet deep. Below was a river 30 feet wide which hugged the canyon walls, leaving no path for man or animal to tread. The forest above was so thick that nothing was visible from the air but treetops.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en290|&lt;span&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Richard Gott adds that “the area around Ñancahuazu is characterized by hundreds of knife-edge hills bunched together and separated by deep, impenetrable ravines filled with thick tropical vegetation.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en291|&lt;span&gt;17&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The difficult terrain may have helped the guerrillas early on, but it also contributed to their downfall in that it led to the permanent division of the guerrilla forces.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Toward the beginning of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, Che notes: “Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.” The fact is that President Barrientos enjoyed widespread popular support, particularly among the middle class, the army, and, most important, the Indian peasants. He not only spoke fluent Quechua, but he also traveled extensively by helicopter to remote rural regions to enlist peasant backing. Moreover, he had continued the agrarian reform program of Paz Estenssoro and the MNR. Ironically, in the very area selected by Che, the government land reform program had delivered plots of ten hectares (about twenty-five acres) to many of the 16,000 families in the region.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en292|&lt;span&gt;18&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Thus, there is little wonder that the peasants not only refused to support Che but also actually reported his activities to the police. There was no hope of creating the necessary subjective conditions among the peasantry.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Another devastating element for Che was the state of international relations in 1967. Any hope for uniting the left in the world or in Latin America had been shattered by the Sino-Soviet split after 1964. Even if Che had been able to enlist the aid of Monje Molina and the PCB, the Bolivian left would have remained badly divided, as it was elsewhere. Moreover, as noted in the Introduction to this volume, Soviet Latin American policy after the missile crisis of 1962 changed from support of guerrilla movements to discouragement in order to strengthen the new policy of peaceful coexistence with the United States. Although Fidel Castro obviously favored the export of revolution and the creation of “many Vietnams” in Latin America, his almost total reliance on Soviet economic and military assistance forced him to be more circumspect. The result was that Che found he could count on neither the Soviets nor the Cubans for extensive material support, a fact which contributed to his demise.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en293|&lt;span&gt;19&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The situation was bad enough, but Che compounded his problems by moving prematurely into action. On March 23, 1967, the guerrillas attacked an advance column of Bolivian soldiers, killing seven and capturing another seven. Then, on April 10, the guerrillas again clashed with an army unit, killing ten and capturing thirty. Now out in the open but unable to rely upon support from any group inside or outside Bolivia, it was just a matter of time before the U.S.-trained Bolivian army would isolate and annihilate Che’s forces. Indeed, the United States, acting with great rapidity, moved into Santa Cruz with some twenty Special Forces troops and began immediately to train a Bolivian ranger unit in counter-guerrilla tactics.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en294|&lt;span&gt;20&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Meanwhile, Che committed a fatal error: he divided his forces on April 15 and was never able to reunite them. The first unit, composed of twenty-seven men, was led by Che, while the second group contained seventeen men and one woman—Tania—and was led by Cuban-born Juan Vitalio Acuña Núñez (Joaquín). Throughout May, Che searched unsuccessfully for Joaquín and then moved north across the Río Grande, where for the next two months he and his men clashed periodically with Bolivian troops.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Contrary to what Che believed, however, Joaquín had not moved north but had remained in the Ñancahuazu area. Finally, after two deserters led the army to the guerrillas’ base camp and supply depots in various caves, Joaquín also moved north; but as his unit was crossing the Rio Grande on August 31, it was surprised by the army and destroyed.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The loss of Joaquín’s group and the seizure of all their supplies of food, medicine, and munitions by the army marked the end of the guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco.&lt;/span&gt; Moreover, in mid-September, the U.S. Special Forces completed their training of over six hundred Bolivian rangers, who immediately moved into action. Two weeks later, on October 8, 1967, the army surrounded the remaining guerrillas. Che was captured and later executed; the guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; was eliminated.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en295|&lt;span&gt;21&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;From 1967 into the 1990s&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The death of Che Guevara in 1967 ended significant guerrilla activity in Bolivia. General Barrientos died in a helicopter crash in 1969, and for the next ten years six generals and several interim civilian administrations succeeded to the presidency of the republic. One of the military presidents, Juan José Torres (1970–71), espoused a populist program that included the abolition of Congress and the creation of a people’s assembly. In other instances, civilian politicians temporarily cooperated with the military in sustaining fragile coalitions. From August 1971 until 1978, Colonel (later General) Hugo Banzer, who had commanded the ranger forces, instituted a hard-line anti-Communist administration that banned political party activity and sent many of Bolivia’s leading politicians into exile.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;At the end of his term of office, General Banzer attempted to “democratize” the political system through elections and to impose his hand-picked successor, General Juan Pereda Asbún. However, the inability of the political system to produce “acceptable” results led to three general elections in 1978 and 1979, several different “presidents,” and then a new round of coups. In describing this period, one study concluded: “In less than one hundred days, two new administrations were ushered into the [presidential palace] increasing the number of coups to 201 in Bolivia’s 175-year history.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en296|&lt;span&gt;22&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The political confusion was resolved temporarily when the Bolivian Congress selected Lidia Gueiler Tejada to serve as president for one year until August 6, 1980. Gueiler Tejada also failed to serve out her entire term; another coup in July 1980, headed by General Luis García Meza, returned the country to military rule.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Meanwhile, like the rest of Latin America’s people, Bolivia’s population became more urban (over 50 percent by 1980) and the economy more diversified. New opportunities for middle-class entrepreneurs and the declining importance of tin gave a greater complexity to the socioeconomic system. The proliferation of political movements and parties presented a confusing array of reformist alternatives whose proponents maintained important worker, peasant, and middle-class support. Of course, the military retained a dominant role in policymaking and administration.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As in Colombia, the production of, and commerce in, drugs in the 1970s became a major “off the books” component of the Bolivian economy and a principal source of wealth for leading military officers. Corruption at the highest levels of government and a growing economic and political crisis, including student protests and strikes by organized labor, forced the military regime to speed up the return to civilian government. In early 1982 the military incumbent, General Celso Torrelio, proposed the gradual “democratization” of the political process, an end to the ban on political party activity, and a loosening of restrictions on organized labor. By June 1982 an amnesty for political exiles initiated the return to Bolivia of the old cast of characters for the upcoming elections: Siles Zuazo, Paz Estenssoro, Juan Lechín, and others. Though elections were scheduled initially for June 1983, the worsening crisis pushed the military government in mid-1980 to reconstitute the previously disbanded Congress. Ultimately, in early October 1982, Congress selected former president Hernán Siles Zuazo (1956–60), who now headed the UDP, a left-center coalition, as president of Bolivia.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The new president, one of the old-guard MNR leaders who retained widespread popular support among the peasantry, pledged to end corruption, crack down on the drug trade, and inaugurate a “new period of national revolution”—that is, to reactivate the revolution of 1952. Seeking legitimacy in the present from the social revolution of the 1950s, Siles Zuazo reemphasized the agrarian reform issue, and his minister of agriculture and peasant affairs called for the rapid transfer of all arable land into the hands of the peasantry.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Facing a serious debt crisis, low prices for tin and other primary exports, and pressure from both the political right and the revolutionary left, the Siles Zuazo administration trod a rocky path in mid-1984. Presaging the actions of Peru’s President Alan García, Siles Zuazo called a halt to payments on the foreign debt, disclaimed responsibility for the military’s mishandling of the economy, and refused outright to accept IMF demands. Also anticipating the García program, Siles Zuazo cranked up the printing presses and increased the money supply by 1,000 percent between 1980 and 1984, with the predictable result that inflation soared from about 16 percent per year in the 1970s to 26,000 percent in 1984–85.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en297|&lt;span&gt;23&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The red 100-peso bill was now called a Siles because “es rojo, es viejo, y no vale para nada” (it’s red, it’s old, and it’s not good for anything).&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en298|&lt;span&gt;24&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The social costs of the Siles government’s policies were staggering. Strikes, marches, and demonstrations erupted across the nation and were met with police and army repression. Finally, in seeming desperation, the president called for new elections one year early. Hugo Banzer won a plurality of the vote, but the center-left parties controlled Congress and elected instead seventy-seven-year-old Victor Paz Estenssoro. But he was not the same man who had served as president three times in the 1950s and 1960s. Paz Estenssoro now favored the neoliberal economic policies urged by the IMF and the World Bank.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Paz Estenssoro hired Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard University, who had styled himself a sort of “money doctor” along the lines of Princeton University professor Edwin W. Kemmerer in the 1920s and 1930s.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en299|&lt;span&gt;25&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The result was Decree No. 21,060 (also known as the New Economic Policy, NEP), which included the following measures: “the national currency was devalued, a uniform and free floating exchange rate established, all price and wage controls eliminated, public sector prices substantially raised, government expenditures severely restricted, [and] real wages of government employees reduced.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en300|&lt;span&gt;26&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The new president also raised taxes and launched an unprecedented attack on the state bureaucracy, reducing COMIBOL (Bolivian Mining Corporation), for example, from 30,000 workers to 7,000 and the YPFB (Bolivian State Petroleum Company) from 9,000 to 5,000 in the period 1984-87.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en301|&lt;span&gt;27&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; These drastic cuts seriously wounded labor unions and the COB, which lost much, if not most, of their national power. As in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Peru, shrinking the state and weakening organized labor meant a concomitant loss of the left’s political power. Then, as if on some demonic cue, the International Tin Council, the thirty-two-nation cartel which had controlled the price of tin for decades, went bankrupt, and tin prices collapsed. In the years 1984–85, COMIBOL lost almost $234 million due in part to inefficiency and low-grade ore, but even Malaysia, which had the highest grade ore and the most efficient management in the world, had to close one hundred mines and lay off over 4,000 workers.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en302|&lt;span&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;From 1985 to 1994, 20,000 civil servants lost their positions, while 35,000 workers in the private sector found themselves on the street as a result of free-trade policies that forced the closing of many industries. Moreover, the elimination of state subsidies for food, gasoline, and basic goods resulted in massive price increases.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en303|&lt;span&gt;29&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Nevertheless, the NEP successfully reduced inflation from 26,000 percent to only 9.3 percent by 1993, the lowest in Latin America. It also induced modest economic growth rates from 3 to 4 percent from 1985 to 1993.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As elsewhere in Latin America, however, the combination of transition from military to civilian government, implementation of neoliberal economic policies, and downsizing the public sector (including the armed forces) battered the urban and rural poor, organized labor, and public employees. Antinarcotics campaigns, particularly U.S.-encouraged crop-eradication programs, further agitated parts of rural Bolivia.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The “drug war” in Bolivia meant the creation in 1983 of the Unidad Móvil de Patrullaje Rural (UMOPAR), an increasingly militarized unit of the national police. UMOPAR challenged the army’s monopoly on internal security and antiguerrilla operations with its training in low-intensity conflict and eventually the naming of the former commander in chief of the armed forces (1988–89), General Edwin Peredo Camacho, to head the unit in the early 1990s. U.S. counterinsurgency advisers operated with relative autonomy in assisting and training Bolivian “police” but in reality were creating light infantry units within the national police forces.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This shift of roles worried Bolivia’s army leadership, searching as it was for a suitable role redefinition and rationale for institutional budgets in the wake of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;perestroika&lt;/span&gt; and the rapidly changing landscape of South American geopolitics. Meanwhile, antidrug efforts became the most heavily financed and most “modern” military operations in the country—another indication of the low-level threat perceived from guerrilla and ethnic movements in comparison with other nations in the region—and also the source of increasing concern by the military.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en304|&lt;span&gt;30&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A wave of traditional political and newer ethnic-based protest against government policies in the late 1980s included an incipient Indian-dominated guerrilla movement, as the country again approached presidential elections. In these circumstances the 1989 elections represented a significant break with the past, just as they had in Venezuela, Chile, and, to some extent, El Salvador and Colombia. As in Colombia, Chile, and Venezuela, Bolivia’s political left sought new ways to participate in the process of “democratization” as the cold war ended and economic globalization shattered the previously militant Bolivian labor movement and Marxist parties.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;With the exception of Hugo Banzer, whose political career dated back to the 1970s, the other major candidates were men who had come to prominence after the 1952 revolution. Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, a wealthy, U.S.-educated mine owner, led the MNR ticket, while Jaime Paz Zamora was the candidate of the MIR. Although Banzer again won a plurality of the votes, he lacked the strength in Congress necessary to be named president. As a result, his party, the ADN, formed an alliance (Acuerdo Patriótico) with Paz Zamora, who was elected president (1989–1993).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Perhaps the most important result of the vote was that even though the Katarista movement (see below) received only 23,000 votes, two &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;cholo&lt;/span&gt; parties came to the fore, a clear indication that Indian and cholo disaffection was growing. Indeed, media personality Carlos Palenque and his Conciencia de Patria (Conscience of the Fatherland) party garnered over 173,000 votes from the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;cholo&lt;/span&gt; and Aymara peasant populations of the La Paz region.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en305|&lt;span&gt;31&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Despite his leftist background and the leftist ideology of the MIR, Paz Zamora continued the economic policies of Paz Estenssoro-Sachs and the NEP. The plight of the poor did not improve and in many cases worsened. Such objective conditions, according to Che Guevara, were propitious for the advent of guerrilla warfare; and, indeed, Bolivia was to have its first significant taste of guerrilla resurgence since Che’s death in 1967.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Ejército Guerrillero Túpac Katari (EGTK)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en306|&lt;span&gt;32&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The EGTK originated in Indian militancy, which had been growing since the early 1970s. According to Herbert Klein, Indian leadership had long been alienated from the COB, which viewed the Indians as members of the old peasant-military alliance.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en307|&lt;span&gt;33&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In 1974 the Aymara peasants in the Cochabamba Valley had blockaded roads in protest over government controls on commodity prices. The Banzer administration reacted swiftly and with deadly force resulting in “the first peasant-military confrontation and massacre since 1952.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en308|&lt;span&gt;34&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1976, Aymara peasant leaders in the area around La Paz organized the Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Katari (MRTK); and in 1977 another party, the Movimiento Indio Tupaj Katari (MITKA), appeared, led by Felipe Quispe Wuanca (also spelled Huanca) and Constantino Lima.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en309|&lt;span&gt;35&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; By the late 1970s and early 1980s the movement had subsumed most of the government-sponsored peasant labor unions and formed its own, the CSUTCB (Unified Syndical Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia). The Kataristas seized control of the Aymara peasant unions in 1981 and gained representation in the COB; in the same year, the COB appointed an Indian, Genaro Flores, as one of its officers. Indian parties and movements constituted a rising force in Bolivian politics.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en310|&lt;span&gt;36&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;More militant activists within the MRTK were impatient with the boredom of everyday party politics and were unwilling to accept the slow pace of reform, as was also true of certain members of the MITKA. Quispe Wuanca broke away from the MITKA in about 1982 and formed the Ayllus Rojos Tupac Kataristas, which he then united in 1984 with the Células Mineras de Base, thereby creating a single worker-peasant organization. That organization later changed its name to the Ofensiva Roja, the immediate predecessor of the EGTK.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en311|&lt;span&gt;37&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The biggest surprise in the 1985 elections was that the MRTK, running for the first time, garnered 2 percent of the vote. The massive economic collapse during the disastrous presidency of Hernán Siles Zuazo radicalized much of the nation’s youth, and the EGTK was a partial beneficiary of that radicalization. Attacking government targets and various political parties, the EGTK posed a limited but real threat to economic infrastructure and political stability.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By 1988, Quispe Wuanca was in jail for dynamite attacks against the headquarters of various political parties. While incarcerated, he wrote a book describing the movement and its ideology, asserting that:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;I am Aymara, descendant of the lineage of the valiant Quispes of Azángaro, such as our forefather Diego Qhispi (Quispe): I am a chip from the same trunk and I intend to follow and forge that ideology through armed struggle. Our grandfather Diego Quispe was the most illustrious Indian &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;compañero&lt;/span&gt; ever, a mystical warrior who fought as a soldier under Andrés Tupaj Amaru and then at the side of Julián Apaza “Tupak Katari,” with the rank of Colonel of the Aymara Army of Liberation; because of his political and ideological position regarding armed violence by the Ayllus, he was condemned by his Spanish assassins to the gallows and then drawn and quartered just like Túpak Katari.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en312|&lt;span&gt;38&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;After Quispe Wuanca, the most important leaders of the EGTK were the García brothers, Raúl and Alvaro, who were raised in a Catholic home where their mother was deeply involved in the ecclesial base communities of the liberation theology movement. They both studied at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México for a number of years and returned to Bolivia radicalized. Space precludes a detailed biographical list of all the EGTK leaders, but a perusal of their names and occupations suggests that virtually the entire leadership came from an indigenous and peasant or mining background,&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en313|&lt;span&gt;39&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; in sharp contrast to the urban, middle-class, and even military origins of Latin America’s guerrilla leaders of the 1960s–80s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;On June 23, 1991, the EGTK announced the beginning of what they called a “Communal War” by hanging three red roosters in the city of El Alto, near La Paz. This act was followed by a spate of dynamitings of power pylons (July 4, July 27, August 3), attacks on oil pipelines (July 17 and 26), and assaults against police outposts and the main plazas of small towns (July 17, August 6, September 20, October 6).&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en314|&lt;span&gt;40&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Further attacks took place in early 1992 but, beginning in February and continuing through April, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;carabineros&lt;/span&gt; and army units captured many EGTK militants, including important leaders such as Alvaro García and his wife, Raquel Gutiérrez. Charges of torture and intimidation of the prisoners immediately emerged, but the arrests continued throughout the year, punctuated with the capture of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;jefe máximo&lt;/span&gt;, Felipe Quispe Wuanca, on August 19.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en315|&lt;span&gt;41&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Although there were a few more attacks in 1992 and 1993, the capture of Quispe Wuanca and the García brothers decapitated the movement. By mid-1993 it was dormant, if not dead. Peasant leaders, directors of the CSUTCB, and the Federación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas “Bartolina Sisa” all demanded amnesty for the imprisoned EGTK members, but they lacked the political power at both the local and national levels to pressure the government into easing its stance.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en316|&lt;span&gt;42&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Given the time frame of their activities and the types of attacks which they carried out (hanging dead animals, dynamiting power pylons, blowing up pipelines), many observers within and outside of Bolivia sought to compare the EGTK with Sendero Luminoso in Peru. That comparison is only valid at a superficial level. The most basic difference was that although the Senderistas initially preached neo-Inca revivalism, they quickly turned on their indigenous followers. The EGTK, on the other hand, was committed to the creation of various Indian states within Bolivia, by force of arms if necessary. After noting that rich, Yankeeized, and gringoized Bolivians invoked as their nation’s forefathers such foreigners as Simón Bolívar, Antonio José de Sucre, and Andrés de Santa Cruz, the EGTK argued that “we the workers invoke the names of our own martyrs and heroes such as Túpac Katari, Bartolina Sisa, Tomás Katari, Zarate Willca, and other great men and women who gave their lives for our liberation and the revindication of Indian peoples.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en317|&lt;span&gt;43&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Further, the EGTK declared, “The Guerrilla Army Túpac Katari, with the face of Tata Inti, with rifles on our chests, with the religiosity of Pacha Mama, the Wak’as, and the sacred places, steadfastly gives its warmest and most fervent homage to Qhapax Apu Mallku Túpac Katari, ferociously and cruelly dismembered.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en318|&lt;span&gt;44&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The EGTK also rejected out of hand the so-called Inca communism first praised by José Carlos Mariátegui and picked up later by Sendero Luminoso: “We do not believe in the mystification of the Inca Empire. The truth is that while there were communitarian associations within the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;comunidades&lt;/span&gt;, there were classes and class oppression in that society.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en319|&lt;span&gt;45&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Moreover, the EGTK, and Raúl García in particular, were extremely critical of Sendero’s refusal to recognize the differences among Indian groups and therefore the necessity of different Indian nations, including those of the Amazon Basin. Related to this criticism was the EGTK’s total disavowal of Sendero’s indiscriminate and bloody violence: “We have taken an oath to avoid whenever possible the spilling of innocent blood, something which Sendero has done with much facility.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en320|&lt;span&gt;46&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In short, the EGTK was an Indian movement, led by Indians for Indians, with the stated goal of establishing Indian nations within Bolivia. In comparison to the guerrilla movements of the 1980s and 1990s in Peru, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, the EGTK was short-lived and of little military importance. Nevertheless, it represented a serious effort to rectify five hundred years of oppression and death. It was certainly the most radical expression of the Bolivian &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;indigenista&lt;/span&gt; movement in the last three decades.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National elections in 1993 saw not only an MNR victory with Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada taking the presidency but also with the head of the Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Katari de Liberación, Víctor Hugo Cárdenas, assuming the vice presidency.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en321|&lt;span&gt;47&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; While the political game changed (1993–97), as has its racial and ethnic makeup, those who would pronounce the death knell of guerrilla movements in Bolivia would be advised to heed the words of Herbert Klein: “The capturing of the formal labor movement by the old Marxist parties with their anti-imperialist, nationalist, and state socialist ideas might lead to a new left coalition, though the weakened union structure suggests a less important role for them in the future. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;More probable is the rise of some type of populist, left, and modern indigenista movement taking over the far left political scene, especially as the Indian and cholo masses are beginning to find more direct political expression at the national level.&lt;/span&gt;”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#end en322|&lt;span&gt;48&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The limited post-1990s guerrilla movements in Bolivia shared little with Che Guevara’s ideological or political vision except the use of guerrilla tactics against the incumbent governments. Like most other 1980s guerrilla movements in Latin America, the Bolivian insurgents harkened back to local histories and long-standing demands for social justice and political reform. They also reacted to the harsh consequences of neoliberal reforms, globalization of national economies, and drug crop-eradication programs that directly affected peasant producers and rural marketing systems.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Armed resistance against government policies and armed attacks to press for social and political reforms, including more autonomy and respect for Indian peoples, were a far cry from Guevara’s 1960s call for “two, three, or many Vietnams” to destroy capitalism and build socialist &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;patrias&lt;/span&gt; throughout Latin America. As in Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru, the centuries-long struggle for Indian rights in Bolivia had periodically relied on armed rebellion long before—and now long after—Che Guevara, the Cuban Revolution, and the cold war. With the EZLN in Mexico and Indian movements elsewhere, the Bolivian EGTK was not the first, nor would it be the last, movement to resort to violence and guerrilla tactics to further the cause of the poor and ethnic underclasses of Latin America.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Notes&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;endnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en275|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Herbert S. Klein, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Parties and Political Change in Bolivia, 1880–1952&lt;/span&gt; (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 411. See also Klein’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia: The Evolution of a Multi-ethnic Society&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en276|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Klein, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 227-28, and Ronald J. Clark, “Agrarian Reform: Bolivia,” in Peter Dorner, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Land Reform in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Madison: Wisconsin Land Tenure Center, Land Economics, 1971), p. 129.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en277|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The literature on the revolution is voluminous, but the reader is directed particularly to Robert T. Alexander, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Bolivian National Revolution&lt;/span&gt; (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1958); Jonathan Kelly and Herbert S. Klein, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revolution and the Rebirth of Inequality: A Theory Applied to the National Revolution in Bolivia&lt;/span&gt; (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981); James M. Malloy, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia: The Uncompleted Revolution&lt;/span&gt; (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970); James M. Malloy and Richard S. Thorn, eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Beyond the Revolution: Bolivia since 1952&lt;/span&gt; (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971); and James W. Wilkie, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Bolivian Revolution and U.S. Aid since 1952&lt;/span&gt; (Los Angeles: Latin American Center, University of California at Los Angeles, 1969).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en278|&lt;span&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;By far the best and most complete account of the period 1932-52 is Klein, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Parties and Political Change in Bolivia,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 228-402. See also his &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia&lt;/span&gt;, especially chap. 7.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en279|&lt;span&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Klein, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 235-36. There is an extensive literature on the Bolivian land reform program. The reader is directed particularly to William E. Carter, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Aymara Communities and the Bolivian Agrarian Reform&lt;/span&gt; (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1965); Dwight B. Heath, Charles J. Erasmus, and Hans C. Buechler, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Land Reform and Social Revolution in Bolivia&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Praeger, 1969); and the essays by William E. Carter, Melvin Burke, and Madeline Barbara Leons and William Leons in Malloy and Thorn, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Beyond the Revolution&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 233-39.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en280|&lt;span&gt;6&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Melvin Burke, “Land Reform in the Lake Titicaca Region,” in Malloy and Thorn, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Beyond the Revolution,&lt;/span&gt; p. 303. For a fascinating analysis of how Paz Estenssoro and the MNR viewed Indian peasants and land reform, the new Indianism, see Fredrick B. Pike, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The United States and the Andean Republics: Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador&lt;/span&gt; (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 275-87.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en281|&lt;span&gt;7&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Milton S. Eisenhower, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Wine Is Bitter: The United States and Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963). See also Cole Blasier, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Hovering Giant: U.S. Response to Revolutionary Change in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976), especially chaps. 5 and 7.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en282|&lt;span&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Wilkie, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Bolivian Revolution,&lt;/span&gt; p. 13.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en283|&lt;span&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Richard Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971), pp. 409–10.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en284|&lt;span&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See a list of the guerrillas by name, alias, national origin, military rank, and fate in Daniel James, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Complete Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara and Other Captured Documents&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Stein and Day, 1969), pp. 324-27.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en285|&lt;span&gt;11&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;James, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Complete Bolivian Diaries&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 96, 108.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en286|&lt;span&gt;12&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;There are many accounts of Che Guevara’s Bolivian campaign, but one must begin with Che’s own diary, which was published in two different editions: James, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Complete Bolivian Diaries&lt;/span&gt;; and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Diary of Che Guevara, Bolivia: November 7, 1966–October 7, 1967&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Bantam Books, 1968). The James volume is more complete in that it also contains the diaries of Rolando, Pombo, and Braulio, whereas the latter contains a valuable introduction by Fidel Castro. Also important are Rodolfo Bellani, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La tumba del “Che&lt;/span&gt;” (Buenos Aires: Imprenta López, 1965); Regis Debray, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Che’s Guerrilla War&lt;/span&gt; (London: Penguin Books, 1975); Luis J. González and Gustavo A. Sánchez Salazar, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Great Rebel: Che Guevara in Bolivia&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Grove Press, 1969); Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 395-481; Marta Rojas and Mirta Rodríguez Calderón, eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Tania, the Unforgettable Guerrilla&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Random House, 1971); Jesús Lara, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Inti Paredo&lt;/span&gt; (México, D.F.: Editorial Diógenes, S.A., 1972); I. Lavretski, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Ernesto Che Guevara&lt;/span&gt; (Moscow: Editorial Progreso, 1975); Guido “Inti” Paredo, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Mi campaña junto al “Che”&lt;/span&gt; (La Paz: Oscar Crespo V., Editor, 1970); and Rubén Vásquez Díaz, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia a la hora del Che&lt;/span&gt; (México, D.F.: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, S.A., 1968).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en287|&lt;span&gt;13&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;James, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Complete Bolivian Diaries&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 95–96. Most of Monje Molina’s lengthy rebuttal to Che, which was published later, is translated and reprinted in Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 430-38.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en288|&lt;span&gt;14&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;James, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Complete Bolivian Diaries&lt;/span&gt;, p. 108.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en289|&lt;span&gt;15&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 274.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en290|&lt;span&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 32.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en291|&lt;span&gt;17&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, p. 421.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en292|&lt;span&gt;18&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Pombo’s diary in James, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Complete Bolivian Diaries,&lt;/span&gt; p. 275.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en293|&lt;span&gt;19&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Herbert S. Dinerstein, “Soviet Policy in Latin America,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;American Political Science Review&lt;/span&gt; 61, no. 1 (March 1967): 80-90; James, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Complete Bolivian Diaries&lt;/span&gt;, p. 275.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en294|&lt;span&gt;20&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Gott, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Movements&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 446–51.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en295|&lt;span&gt;21&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a good summary of the military campaign, see ibid., pp. 466-81.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en296|&lt;span&gt;22&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;“Bolivia: The Politics of a Frustrated Revolution,” in Russell H. Fitzgibbon and Julio A. Fernandez, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Latin America: Political Culture and Development&lt;/span&gt;, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1981), p. 226.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en297|&lt;span&gt;23&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Paul Van Lindert and Otto Verkoren, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia in Focus: A Guide to the People, Politics, and Culture&lt;/span&gt;, trans. John Smith (London: Latin American Bureau, 1994), p. 27; Eduardo Gamarra, “Facing the Twenty-first Century: Bolivia in the 1990s” (unpublished manuscript provided to the authors). Much of the data for the period 1980-96 has been drawn from the above authors and from Herbert S. Klein, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia: The Evolution of a Multi-ethnic Society&lt;/span&gt;, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 269-86.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en298|&lt;span&gt;24&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Van Lindert and Verkoren, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia in Focus,&lt;/span&gt; p. 28. One of the authors was in La Paz in September 1985 only days after the government had issued notes of 1, 5, and 10 million pesos (the exchange rate was 1 million pesos to the dollar). However, most people were still using old bills, of which 10,000 pesos was the largest. It was literally necessary to carry large bundles of bills tied with string or rope or a suitcase full of money to buy lunch or a book or two.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en299|&lt;span&gt;25&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Sachs has published widely on neoliberalism and the economic necessities of a strict market economy. See, for example, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Poland’s Jump to the Market Economy&lt;/span&gt; (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993); (with Warwick J. McKibbin), &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Global Linkages: Macroeconomic Interdependence and Cooperation in the World Economy&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1991); (with Carlos E. Paredes), ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Peru’s Path to Recovery: A Plan for Economic Stabilization and Growth&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1991); and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Developing Country Debt and Economic Performance&lt;/span&gt;, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). For a brilliant analysis of Kemmerer and his many “missions” to Latin America, see Paul W. Drake, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Money Doctor in the Andes: The Kemmerer Missions,&lt;/span&gt; 1923–1933 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1989).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en300|&lt;span&gt;26&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Klein, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia,&lt;/span&gt; p. 275.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en301|&lt;span&gt;27&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., pp. 275-76.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en302|&lt;span&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Van Lindert and Verkoren, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia in Focus,&lt;/span&gt; p. 29.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en303|&lt;span&gt;29&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 30.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en304|&lt;span&gt;30&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Raúl Barrios and René Antonio Mayorga, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La cuestión militar en cuestión: Democracia y fuerzas armadas&lt;/span&gt; (La Paz: Centro Boliviano de Estudios Multidisciplinarios, 1994), particularly pp. 99–106.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en305|&lt;span&gt;31&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Van Lindert and Verkoren, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia in Focus,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 39-42; Klein, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia,&lt;/span&gt; p. 284.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en306|&lt;span&gt;32&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;In the political party and labor unions, Túpac is always spelled with a c. The Tupak Katari Guerrilla Army, however, usually spelled Tupac with a &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;k&lt;/span&gt; and omitted the accented &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;ú.&lt;/span&gt; Others have spelled Túpaj with a &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;j.&lt;/span&gt; Except in direct quotes from the Ejército Guerrillero Tupak Katari itself, we will use Túpac with the c and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;ú&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en307|&lt;span&gt;33&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Klein, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia,&lt;/span&gt; p. 273.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en308|&lt;span&gt;34&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 257.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en309|&lt;span&gt;35&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a brilliant and comprehensive account of the rise of Katarismo and its links to the original Túpac Katari of the 1780s, see Xavier Albó, “From MNRistas to Kataristas to Katari,” in Steve J. Stern, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries&lt;/span&gt; (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), pp. 379-419. This article was published before the guerrilla offensive and therefore neither treats it nor anticipates it. See also Klein, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia,&lt;/span&gt; p. 273; and Jaime Iturri Salmón, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;EGTK: La guerrilla aymara en Bolivia&lt;/span&gt; (La Paz: Ediciones Vaca Sagrada, 1992). Iturri Salmón’s work is the most comprehensive analysis of the guerrilla movement available in any language.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en310|&lt;span&gt;36&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Albó, “From MNRistas,” pp. 398-406; and Klein, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia,&lt;/span&gt; p. 273.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en311|&lt;span&gt;37&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Iturri Salmón, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;EGTK&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 14, 27; Albó, “From MNRistas,” pp. 402-5.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en312|&lt;span&gt;38&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Quoted in Iturri Salmón, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;EGTK&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 14–15.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en313|&lt;span&gt;39&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., pp. 14–16. The most important names and occupations are: Macario Tola Cárdenas, miner; Victor Ortiz Quisbert, miner; Féliz Arismendi Caiza, peasant; Jesús Rojas Lucana, peasant leader; Santiago Yanique Apaza, miner; and Silverio Maidana (a.k.a. Mayta) Macias, peasant.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en314|&lt;span&gt;40&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Iturri Salmón, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;EGTK,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 18–19.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en315|&lt;span&gt;41&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., pp. 20–25.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en316|&lt;span&gt;42&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., pp. 23–25.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en317|&lt;span&gt;43&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., pp. 37-38.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en318|&lt;span&gt;44&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 53.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en319|&lt;span&gt;45&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 56.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en320|&lt;span&gt;46&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., pp. 65-66.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en321|&lt;span&gt;47&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Van Lindert and Verkoren, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia in Focus,&lt;/span&gt; p. 43.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c09.html#ref end en322|&lt;span&gt;48&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Klein, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bolivia&lt;/span&gt;, p. 285, emphasis added.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;chapter&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> <br /> === &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Political Chronology&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;tableau&quot;&gt;<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable none&quot;<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1927–33<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |U.S. marines support Nicaraguan government’s unsuccessful efforts against guerrilla movement of Augusto César Sandino. 1932 elections bring Liberal Juan Sacasa to the presidency.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1934<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Sandino assassinated.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1936–56<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Anastasio (“Tacho”) Somoza García dominates Nicaraguan politics through Guardia Nacional, U.S. support, and puppet presidents. Somoza dynasty established as family and related economic cliques control country’s economy.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1956<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Somoza García assassinated; Luis Somoza Debayle selected by Congress to complete his father’s term. Anastasio II (“Tachito”) Debayle heads Guardia Nacional; repression of opposition and incarceration and torture of those suspected to be involved in the assassination.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1957–63<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Luis Somoza Debayle. Initial “liberalization” of political system, followed by several invasions of Nicaragua by internal opposition from bordering countries (1959–61). First focos established in emulation of Cubans (1960–62). FSLN founded in Honduras (1961). Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba launched from Nicaragua. Somoza declares support for anti-Communist policies of United States.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1963–66<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of René Schick, a part of Somoza’s apparatus, who dies in 1966 and is replaced by Interior Minister Lorenzo Guerrero. Country participates in Alliance for Progress programs, Central American Common Market, and CONDECA.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1967<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Luis Somoza Debayle dies of heart attack.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1967–71<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. FSLN attacks Somoza family’s “La Perfecta” dairy (August 1967). Defeat of FSLN Pancasán &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco.&lt;/span&gt; FSLN attempts urban guerrilla operations, 1969–70. FSLN Zinica &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; defeated,<br /> |}<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;tableau&quot;&gt;<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable none&quot;<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1970–71. Growing political opposition to Somozas by non-Marxist political elites. Somoza agrees to political reforms and need for new election law with interim junta.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1971–74<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Triumvirate junta (“Junta of the Three Little Pigs”). Retrenchment of guerrilla movement and FSLN operations.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1972<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Earthquake destroys Managua (December). Somoza assumes control.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1972–74<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Somoza rules by decree. Family and cronies profit from reconstruction of capital.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1974–79<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Tachito (now Tacho II) serves as “elected” president, increasing levels and sources of political opposition, which includes Christian Democrats, progressive clergy, independents, and labor movement. UDEL formed in 1974 as democratic alliance of opposition. FSLN commandos crash Christmas party at home of “Chema” Castillo and almost capture U.S. ambassador. Sporadic guerrilla activity, 1975–76. Somoza’s counterinsurgency operation, Aguila VI, defeats FSLN. FSLN founder Carlos Fonseca Amador killed in November 1976. Carter administration in United States puts pressure on Somoza to respect human rights and democratize Nicaraguan politics, 1977–79. Somoza suffers heart attack in July 1977. Assassination of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro in January 1978 unites opposition; riots and general strike follow. Monimbó uprising in February 1978. FSLN commandos capture Congress in August 1978. Businessmen’s strike and “September uprising”; final offensive in June 1979. Somoza flees July 17, 1979. FSLN enters Managua.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1979–84<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Sandinista regime initiates revolutionary changes in Nicaragua. United States supports counterrevolutionary guerrilla movements in Honduras and Costa Rica against revolutionary regime. Some ex-Sandinista commanders join guerrilla struggle against new government.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1981–84<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Reagan administration finances &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; armies in Honduras, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. Nicaraguan government builds new army and implements counterinsurgency with Soviet and Cuban support. Draft law adopted in 1983. Thousands of automatic weapons distributed to civilians and militia to counter &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras,&lt;/span&gt; 1983–84.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1983<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |United States invades Grenada, ousts pro-Cuban government—a “clear message” to Nicaragua.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1984<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |National elections; Daniel Ortega wins presidency and Sandinistas win 63 percent of vote, 61 of 96 seats in National Assembly (to write constitution).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1985–90<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of President Daniel Ortega and FSLN government. New constitution (1986) implemented in 1987. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Contra&lt;/span&gt; offensive from 1985–87 inflicts thousands of casualties and economic damage. Economy declines, inflation over 30,000 percent in 1988. Sapoá agreements in 1988 between government and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; point toward end of insurgency.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1986<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Iran-&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; scandal in Washington reduces U.S. congressional support for &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras;&lt;/span&gt; Esquipulas I meeting in Guatemala initiates meetings of Central American presidents to negotiate regional peace process.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1987<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Esquipulas II agreements (Arias Plan) become basis for Central American peace accords.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1988<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Sapoá accords (March) bring sixty-day cease-fire between &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; and government. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Contras&lt;/span&gt; to join in “National Dialogue” and participate in opposition political parties. Direct talks between government and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; leaders in Managua (May); talks stall and government orders crack-down on internal opposition, renewed offensive.<br /> |-<br /> | rowspan=&quot;3&quot; class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1989<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Central American presidents (except El Salvador’s ailing José Napole6n Duarte) meet in Caracas at inauguration of President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Ortega agrees to elections in Nicaragua with international observers. Central American presidents meet at Tesoro Beach, El Salvador. FSLN agrees to move up elections to February 1990. Continuing negotiations and “armed episodes” to December. FSLN persists in supplying arms to FMLN in El Salvador.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |(November) FMLN mounts “final offensive” in El Salvador; fails to provoke popular insurrection after battles in San Salvador and other major cities. U.S. and Central American presidents protest FSLN violation of Esquipulas II accords.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |(December) United States invades Panama to “arrest” General Manuel Noriega; Nicaraguan government alerts militia in case “Nicaragua is next.” Central American presidents call emergency summit at San Isidro de Coronado, Costa Rica. President Ortega publicly condemns FMLN violations of Esquipulas II accords, gives Salvadoran President<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Duarte his word of honor on fulfillment of peace process.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1990<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |FSLN loses presidential elections to UNO coalition headed by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (February 25).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1990–96<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. National Disarmament Commission created (November) with Oscar Arias as honorary chairman. Both UNO and FSLN divide. President “governs” with moderate Sandinistas and personal supporters. Episodic violence from ex-&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras,&lt;/span&gt; ex-Sandinista army personnel, and increased crime. United States fails to provide much of promised aid, pressuring government to change army commanders. Government implements stabilization program and neoliberal reforms (1992–96). President Barrios de Chamorro claims unemployment at 60 percent in 1993; strikes, protests, and violence continue. Some 150 ex-&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; led by “El Chacal” take hostage members of disarmament commission, including Sandinista legislators, demanding firing of Humberto Ortega and more assistance for demobilized &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras;&lt;/span&gt; exSandinista officers, “Commandos for Dignity,” retaliate, taking hostage thirty UNO legislators, including Alfredo César and Virgilio Godoy; after five days hostages are released. New constitution ratified (1995). Humberto Ortega retires as army commander (1995). Political polarization intensifies into 1996. Pope John Paul II visits Nicaragua (February 1996). President reports: “General Joaquín Cuadra Lacayo, the new army chief, tells me we are still fighting a silent war.”<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Former Managua mayor and outspoken anti-Sandinista Arnoldo Alemán defeats Daniel Ortega in presidential elections (1996). FSLN denounces fraud and “irregularities” in elections.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1996–<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of President Arnoldo Alemán.<br /> |}<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Background&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1979 decades of struggle against the dictatorial dynasty of the Somoza family culminated in victory for the revolutionary forces in Nicaragua. For the first time since the Fidelista victory in Cuba in 1959, the combination of rural and urban guerrilla operations, student political movements, and multiclass, pluralist political insurrection brought down a “Caribbean dictatorship.” After twenty years of frustration for revolutionaries throughout the hemisphere and in Nicaragua itself, it seemed that Che Guevara’s inspiration and prescriptions had resulted in military and political victory for revolutionary militants in a Latin American country.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In many ways, Nicaragua’s twentieth-century political history resembles that of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Panama, with periodic U.S. military occupation punctuating episodes of violence and civil war.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en323|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; With an economy based on a small number of agricultural exports dependent on fluctuations in international market prices, Nicaragua had been a “banana republic,” a “coffee republic,” and a “banana, coffee, sugar, and cotton republic.” As in many of its Latin American neighbors, nineteenth- and twentieth-century politics in Nicaragua revolved around personalist conflicts and archaic ideological debates between Liberals and Conservatives. Diversification of agriculture and incipient industrialization had fragmented somewhat the dominant Conservative and Liberal oligarchy by the midtwentieth century, but in most respects the terms of political debate in the ruling classes did nothing to challenge the fundamental structure of Nicaraguan society: domination and repression of the vast majority of the population by a small group of landowners, financiers, and foreign investors under the direct administration of the Somoza family and the National Guard.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The uniqueness of the Nicaraguan situation resided in the almost permanent presence of U.S. troops in the country from 1912 to 1933 and the unusually close association between U.S. government officials and U.S. policy in the establishment and maintenance of the Somoza dynasty. Nowhere else in Latin America had U.S. policy been so consistent, so uncompromisingly committed to a personalist, then dynastic dictatorship. Likewise, nowhere else in Latin America did there exist the legacy of a nationalist hero who had successfully resisted, through guerrilla warfare, the first large-scale counterinsurgency adventures of the United States in the hemisphere.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en324|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;From 1912 to 1925, U.S. policy toward Nicaragua centered on maintaining in power the minority governments of a number of Conservative politicians against the threat of Liberal insurrection and civil war. At times as many as 3,000 U.S. marines were required to protect Conservative dictators against Liberal armies; at other times, as few as 100 U.S. troops served as a reminder that the incumbent regime enjoyed American support. In 1925 intraparty conflict and personalist political strife brought Carlos Solórzano to the presidency, supported by a coalition of Conservatives and dissident Liberals. The new president requested that the United States postpone its plans to withdraw the small contingent of marines which remained in the country and the United States agreed, provided that the new government cooperate in the creation of a national constabulary of the sort that the United States had promoted in Haiti, the Philippines, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en325|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Opposition forces protested the U.S. plan, but it was eventually adopted with certain modifications that defined the constabulary as “an urban, rural, and judicial police force” rather than as a substitute for the regular army. Shortly thereafter, the political situation degenerated once again into civil war, with the small constabulary playing a minor role as a supporter of the Conservative cause. In part on the pretext that Mexican and Communist support for the Liberals endangered American interests, Under Secretary of State Robert Olds justified renewed U.S. military intervention in Nicaragua as follows:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The Central American area down to and including the Isthmus of Panama constitutes a legitimate sphere of influence for the United States, if we are to have due regard for our own safety and protection. . . . Our ministers accredited to the five little republics stretching from the Mexican border to Panama . . . have been advisors whose advice has been accepted virtually as law . . . we do control the destinies of Central America and we do so for the simple reason that the national interest absolutely dictates such a course.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;There is no room for any outside influence other than ours in this region. We could not tolerate such a thing without incurring grave risks.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en326|&lt;span&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;By March 1927, U.S. forces supporting the Conservative administration again numbered over 2,000. In the hope of preventing full-scale American involvement in the civil war, President Calvin Coolidge sent former secretary of war Henry Stimson to Nicaragua to arrange a settlement between the warring parties and factions. Stimson imposed an agreement on the Conservative president, Adolfo Díaz, and most of the Liberal opposition, including Liberal general Anastasio Somoza García. This agreement provided for: (1) immediate peace; (2) a general amnesty; (3) Liberal participation in the cabinet; (4) American supervision of the disarmament of the adversaries; (5) retention of the marines in the country until a new nonpartisan National Guard, under American officers, could replace them; and (6) U.S. supervision of the 1928 elections. The new Guardia Nacional created in accordance with this agreement incorporated some of the remaining members of the old constabulary but essentially represented a new departure for Nicaraguan politics. For the next half century the Guardia would be the most important political institution in the country.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The American intervention produced still another novelty in Nicaraguan politics: a relatively fraud-free election that actually resulted in the opposition (Liberal) candidate winning the presidency. However, the new Liberal president and his immediate successor were unable to persuade dissident Liberal Augusto César Sandino to lay down his arms and join the new coalition of political forces that now dominated Nicaraguan society. During the next five and one-half years, Sandino’s guerrillas successfully eluded the American and Nicaraguan military forces and inflicted considerable damage and casualties on them. Adopting a nationalist, and eventually anti-American, posture, Sandino earned the everlasting enmity of the new Guardia, its leader, Anastasio Somoza, and the American military and diplomatic representatives in Nicaragua. Sandino fought against the U.S. marines and the Guardia Nacional from bases in the northern mountains of Nicaragua, taking sanctuary in Honduras when pursuit threatened his forces. Gradually, Sandino’s guerrilla war put pressure on some of the more southerly urban centers of the country, including, in the early 1930s, Managua. Meanwhile, faced with a seemingly unwinnable war, U.S. public opinion turned against this intervention. By 1932 the U.S. government was withdrawing the major part of the marine contingent and “Nicaraguanizing” the war through expansion of the Guardia Nacional. After supervising the 1932 elections, won by the Liberal candidate, Juan Sacasa, the last marines were withdrawn from Nicaragua. Sandino had survived the counterinsurgency campaign and provided Nicaraguans with a legacy of victorious, anti-American nationalism.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1934 the new president and the Guardia commander, themselves contesting for effective control of the country, concluded a pact with Sandino that acknowledged the guerrillas’ control over the northern sections of the country. General Somoza entered into this pact with great reluctance. Not only did he view it as an insult to the Guardia, but he also bitterly opposed official recognition of a de facto political and military power apart from the government and the Guardia. Somoza’s solution was simple and brutal: he invited Sandino and his generals to a state dinner and then had them murdered. Thus, treachery achieved in a day what years of counterinsurgency had failed to produce—the elimination of Sandino.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Although some of Sandino’s lieutenants and followers remained in the mountains as isolated guerrilla forces for some time, the Sandinista movement languished after its leader’s assassination and the defeat and death of the Sandinista military leader, Pedro Altamirano. By 1936, Anastasio Somoza García had maneuvered himself into the presidency, and from that point until his own assassination in 1956 he controlled Nicaragua as president, as commander of the Guardia, or as both. He did so by manipulating and even altering the constitution, electoral laws, and internal Guardia regulations in order to “legalize” his personal, then dynastic, rule. Occasionally, puppet presidents served the family’s interests; at other times, Somoza ruled directly. He repressed genuine Conservative party opposition, though he sometimes extended patronage and political positions to compliant “opponents” of the regime.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Early in his administration, Somoza established the pattern that would prevail throughout the family’s domination, imposing special “taxes” on cattle exports, extracting “contributions” from mining and textile firms and kickbacks from government personnel salaries for the Liberal party coffers, and acquiring real estate at bargain prices through forced sales and then reselling it to the government for highways or other public projects at considerable profit. Somoza quickly became the wealthiest man in the country; loyal subordinates and Guardia officers also participated in black market commerce and took advantage of opportunities to amass fortunes through corruption.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Thus, the U.S. occupation of Nicaragua in the early twentieth century and the creation of the Guardia Nacional established the basis for the next four decades of personalistic dictatorial government. General Somoza turned Nicaragua into a political satrapy in which he, his family, and his associates dominated national commerce and agriculture, looted the public treasury, enriched themselves from public contracts, and stole millions of dollars of American foreign assistance funds from the people of Nicaragua.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Always, however, Somoza (“Tacho”) courted U.S. support and prided himself on the services he provided U.S. governments with his anti-Communism and his willingness to serve as a tool of American intelligence and defense agencies. Throughout the early 1950s he cooperated in U.S.-sponsored intrigues in Central America and the Caribbean, and in 1954 he even boasted of his role in assisting the counterrevolutionary forces that invaded Guatemala under CIA direction. Even when American diplomats sometimes found the Somoza link embarrassing or wished to loosen a bit the ties of “friendship,” the Somoza regime continued to play its submissive role to the United States in inter-American relations.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In September 1956, Rigoberto López Pérez, poet and nationalist, assassinated Tacho Somoza in the city of León as the dictator prepared for his next “reelection” campaign. Somoza’s eldest son, Luis Somoza Debayle, assumed the interim presidency, and his younger legitimate son, Anastasio II (“Tachito”), assumed command of the Guardia Nacional. Vicious and widespread retribution against suspected participants in the assassination plot resulted in the jailing of numerous opponents and the torture of hundreds of others. The victims included General Emiliano Chamorro; Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, the editor of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Prensa&lt;/span&gt;; and Tomás Borge Martínez, who would later play an important role as rebel leaders.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Soon after Somoza’s assassination, the compliant Congress elected Luis to fill the remainder of his father’s term. The Conservative party decided to boycott the forthcoming 1957 “elections,” whereupon, to provide the pretense of an electoral opponent for the presidency, the Somozas revived the Conservative Nationalist party (called the Zancudo, or Mosquito, party by the opposition).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;During the next two years various political opponents conspired against the Somoza regime. Meanwhile, political and economic unrest throughout Nicaragua challenged the dynasty. The Nicaraguan Communist party (Partido Socialista Nicaragüense, PSN), founded in 1944, intensified its clandestine activities at the universities, and student protests led to public demonstrations against the regime. Peasant and worker conflicts with landlords and factory owners put strains on the “social stability” that the Somozas so cherished. The formation of the Nicaraguan Social Christian party (PSCN) and the Popular Christian Democratic Movement led eventually to a series of political and military movements against the regime. And even before Fidel Castro triumphed in Cuba, one of the last veterans of Sandino’s campaigns of the 1930s, Ramón Raudales, opened a guerrilla front in the mountains of the north, but Tachito Somoza transported anti-guerrilla troops to Nueva Segovia by air and easily defeated the forty-odd guerrillas led by the former Sandino compatriot.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en327|&lt;span&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;These initiatives by opponents of the regime produced little in the short term beyond the death, imprisonment, and torture of both Conservative and revolutionary rebels. However, the victory of the Cuban guerrilla movement and the defeat of dictator Batista inspired new hope in the Marxist and reformist opposition political leaders in Nicaragua, as well as in a new generation of radicalized students. It was a hope that tied Nicaragua’s guerrilla hero of the past to the conflict of the present. As Tomás Borge later wrote, Ramón Raudales was “a kind of bridge between the fight directed by Sandino and the struggle of the new generations of Sandinistas.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en328|&lt;span&gt;6&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In many ways the formulations of Che Guevara in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; evoked fear on the part of the Somoza dynasty and stimulated hope for its adversaries. Guevara’s analysis seemed obviously applicable to the Nicaraguan dictatorship, and the legacy of Sandino allowed the Cuban example to be linked to the heroic, nationalist guerrilla resistance of Sandino.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en329|&lt;span&gt;7&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;More specifically, in regard to the socioeconomic and political conditions discussed by Guevara in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, Nicaragua, in 1960, seemed to conform more closely to Guevara’s analyses than Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, or Bolivia.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> # For years Anastasio Somoza García epitomized the Caribbean-type dictatorship described by Che Guevara as the ideal target of the guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt;, and his son’s decision to impose a dynastic dictatorship, if anything, increased the regime’s vulnerability to &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt;-inspired insurgency. Moreover, Nicaragua had an even less effective system of political parties than Guatemala. The Somoza dynasty used the Liberal Nationalist party (PLN) as an instrument of the family’s political control while tolerating token opposition from the Conservative Nationalist party and the Conservative party so as to preserve the facade of democracy. Though a splinter from the Liberal party, the Independent Liberals (PLI), strenuously opposed the dictatorship from the mid-1940s onward (one of their leaders was Tomás Borge), and a weak Social Christian (later Christian Democratic) movement emerged in the late 1940s, no realistic electoral alternative existed while the Somozas controlled the Guardia and manipulated the electoral apparatus. &lt;span&gt;No matter who might win the elections, the Somozas or their temporary puppets won the vote count. In this sense it became clear to middle-class, elite, and revolutionary opposition movements that no alternative to violence existed if they were to rid Nicaragua of the dynasty. This recognition would, as Che Guevara indicated, provide legitimacy for the revolutionary politico-military movements that arose in the 1960s and 1970s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> # In addition to considerable rugged and isolated terrain within Nicaragua suitable for guerrilla operations, sparsely populated areas in neighboring Honduras and Costa Rica offered potential bases for guerrilla movements opposed to the Somoza dynasty. Moreover, the tradition of Sandino offered a psychological climate of great utility to guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; on the model offered by Che Guevara in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;. &lt;span&gt;As in Guatemala, Venezuela, and Colombia, however, the lack of political ties between the rural sector and urban intellectuals, students, and political cadres made the countryside initially quite dangerous for the opponents of the Somoza dictatorship. In addition, the secret police apparatus of the Somozas covered most of the country, thereby greatly increasing the risk for political opponents of the regime.&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span&gt;In contrast to the Guatemalan, Peruvian, and Bolivian cases, however, no serious cultural or linguistic barriers separated the Nicaraguan revolutionaries from the majority of the peasantry. (Exceptions to this included Indian groups in the sparsely populated northeast.) And, in contrast to the Venezuelan and Colombian cases, the government lacked any effective political linkages with the rural and urban working classes. The Somoza regime had never gained peasant and worker allegiance as had the AD party in Venezuela, APRA in Peru, the MNR in Bolivia, or the traditional parties in Colombia. Thus, potential guerrillas had both isolated rural zones in which to train and base an insurrectional &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; and the political space in which to organize the sort of liberated zones that Guevara believed necessary for the successful evolution of a guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> # Also consistent with Guevara’s formulations, Nicaragua remained an essentially rural society in which the concentration of agricultural resources in the hands of a few gave the “agrarian question” great political significance. In 1960 the country had approximately 1,500,000 residents; over 60 percent were classified as “active in agriculture” and only one-third urban, using generous definitions of “urban.” Other than Managua with approximately 350,000 people, none of the other major cities—León, Granada, Masaya, and Chinadega—had 50,000 residents. In short, Nicaragua had one major city, several large urbanizing villages, and a population predominantly rural in employment and orientation. &lt;span&gt;The Nicaraguan economy relied almost exclusively on agriculture for its survival, and as late as 1978 agricultural products (cotton, sugar, coffee, bananas, and livestock) accounted for 94 percent of the value of its exports.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en330|&lt;span&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Moreover, the growing emphasis on export-oriented agriculture worsened an already bad land tenure structure (in the early 1960s, 5 percent of the agricultural holdings accounted for 60 percent of the farmland) and accelerated the process that pushed thousands of peasants off the land in the 1960s and 1970s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> # In contrast to the situations in Cuba, where rural labor was organized long before 1959, and in Venezuela, Colombia, and Peru, the Nicaraguan peasantry lacked any long-standing relationship with revolutionary or reformist political parties to serve as the basis for an insurrectionary &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco.&lt;/span&gt; Indeed, the repressiveness of the Somoza dynasty prevented the evolution of any strong Marxist revolutionary or reformist political institutions in Nicaragua. This political isolation of most of the peasantry would make very difficult and costly in lives the initial efforts by Guevara-inspired Nicaraguans to create guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; in the 1960s. As Che Guevara insisted in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, the essential task of would-be revolutionaries would consist of utilizing the objective conditions of rural misery to create the subjective conditions for victory. &lt;span&gt;In this task the nationalist, anti-American, anti-Somoza legacy of Sandino would give both a name and a symbol of victorious struggle to the group leading the military movement that toppled the dynasty in the late 1970s—the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Origins of the Guerrilla Movements in the 1960s&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Like their counterparts in Venezuela, Guatemala, Colombia, and Peru, the Nicaraguan guerrillas in the 1960s came from student movements, dissident elements of the traditional political parties and the new social Christian movements, former Communists (PSN) who adopted Guevarist principles, and a small number of former military (Guardia) personnel. With the exception of the ex-Guardias and a few veterans of the Sandino campaigns of the 1930s, the rebels of the 1960s lacked military skills, political experience, and practical knowledge of rural life, let alone good contacts with the peasant population. For these reasons, and because the shock troops of the Guardia Nacional proved effective counterinsurgency fighters who could count on informants and paramilitary support in isolated regions, the Nicaraguan &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; of the 1960s led invariably to heavy casualties among the guerrilla fighters.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Armed resistance to the Somoza dictatorship after the Cuban victory included both traditional Conservative party and social Christian “invasions” as well as a number of Guevarista Marxist-inspired military movements. In June 1959 a military force led by Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, editor of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Prensa&lt;/span&gt;, and Enrique Lacayo Farfán of the Independent Liberal party invaded Nicaragua from Costa Rica by land and air.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en331|&lt;span&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Poor planning, lack of familiarity with the invasion zone, and the failure of a rebel-sponsored general strike proved fatal to the movement, which became known as the Movimiento de Olama y Mollejones. The Guardia easily defeated and captured almost all of the approximately one hundred rebels, many of whom were beaten and imprisoned.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en332|&lt;span&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Inexplicable vacillation on the part of Luis Somoza, however, saved the leaders from execution, and by 1960 most of them were out of prison and participating anew in antigovernment movements. Years later the Somozas’ failure to eliminate Pedro Joaquín Chamorro and the young revolutionaries who repeatedly initiated &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; in the 1960s would spell the end of the dynasty.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Shortly after the failure of the Olama y Mollejones invasion, another invasion force—this one clearly supported by Cuba—entered Nicaragua from Honduras. This force, assisted in Cuba by Che Guevara and launched with the blessing of the anti-Somoza president of Honduras from that country’s territory, consisted of radicalized students from Nicaragua, Mexico, and Guatemala and even some Cuban veterans of the Sierra Maestra. Calling themselves the Movimiento 21 de Septiembre in honor of the date of Tacho Somoza’s assassination, the fifty-five guerrillas were commanded by a former officer of the Guardia Nacional, Rafael Somarriba, and supplied with weapons by Cuba at their Honduran frontier camp, El Chaparral.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;U.S. intelligence and the Honduran military, not in sympathy with the Honduran president, Ramón Villeda Morales, located the guerrilla base camp despite his efforts to warn the rebels of the danger. On June 23, 1959, Honduran troops surprised the revolutionaries at their base camp, killed or wounded almost half the force, and took the majority prisoner. Among the wounded guerrillas was Carlos Fonseca Amador, a young revolutionary who would later die in the struggle that he unremittently waged against the Somoza dynasty.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Somozas’ response to these military incidents, beyond harsh and effective suppression of the incipient &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt;, was to remind the United States of the Communist threat to the hemisphere posed by Fidel Castro’s and Che Guevara’s efforts to duplicate the Cuban victory in Central and South America. For his part, President Eisenhower ordered the U.S. Navy to prevent any “Communist-led” interventions into Central America.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en333|&lt;span&gt;11&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Nonetheless, some twenty “armed attacks” or would-be guerrilla movements by a variety of anti-Somoza forces provided bothersome, if ineffective, challenges to the Somozas’ regime during the next two years.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The wave of anti-Somoza military activity coincided with renewed anti-regime activity by student groups, the small leftist labor movement, and dissident political parties, both within the country and among Nicaraguans in exile. One of the most important of these groups was the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Youth (JRN) founded by Carlos Fonseca, Tomás Borge, and Silvio Mayorga. Both Fonseca and Borge had experience with the Nicaraguan Communist party (PSN). Fonseca had participated in Communist student movements in the 1950s and had traveled to the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Cuba. Like many of his contemporaries in the rest of Latin America, however, Fonseca left the PSN in 1960 to follow the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foquista&lt;/span&gt; line of Che Guevara. Thus, these three revolutionaries, along with others they would recruit along the way, formed the intellectual foundations for the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), the movement that eventually led the politico-military insurrection which toppled the Somoza dynasty. In this sense, in Nicaragua as in Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia, and Peru, former militants of the Communist party provided an essential spark for the guerrilla movements of the 1960s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;At about the same time the JRN was founded in Costa Rica, a more broadly based student movement appeared in Managua, calling itself the Patriotic Youth of Nicaragua (JPN). Many eventual leaders and combatants of the FSLN, which was organized later, studied revolutionary theory and learned the politics of opposition to the dictatorship in the JPN. Such FSLN heroes as Doris Tijerino and Julio Buitrago were extremely active in the early days of this student movement. Though ideologically quite diverse, the JPN took the lead in opposing the Somoza regime and served as an important transitional organization for a revolutionary movement that “was in diapers, . . . taking its first steps.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en334|&lt;span&gt;12&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In July 1960 students from the National University of León, participating in the annual student parade, grossly insulted Guardia personnel and hurled rocks at them. The Guardia opened fire, killing some thirty students and wounding many others. Sympathy protests in Managua brought further violence, prompting the government to declare a state of siege, suspend constitutional liberties, and move to restore order. Adding to the political threat, a former Guardia lieutenant led a small contingent of rebels from Honduras against the regime, only to be defeated easily. Subsequent attempts to organize a general strike on the Cuban model failed. Then, in November, another group of rebels waiting to invade Nicaragua from Costa Rica confronted a Costa Rican civil guard unit and shot Commander Alfonso Monge. This action infuriated the Costa Ricans, whose president claimed that the rebels included Cubans.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en335|&lt;span&gt;13&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The Somoza government, with the cooperation of the governments in Honduras and Costa Rica, suppressed the new rebel threat as well as the student movement in the country’s major centers.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;From the general upsurge of anti-Somoza activity—the more than twenty “invasions,” the student protests and demonstrations, the renewed activity of opposition political parties, and labor unrest—emerged the first revolutionary politico-military organization of the 1960s in Nicaragua, the FSLN. Founded in Honduras in July 1961 by a small number of dedicated revolutionaries (Carlos Fonseca, Tomás Borge, and Silvio Mayorga being the principal leaders), the FSLN initially had no political base in Nicaragua. Like other such movements in the early 1960s, the FSLN received ideological inspiration from the Communist PSN, from the leaders’ participation in student movements opposing the Somoza regime, and from direct contacts with the Cuban revolutionary leadership.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This small, isolated group of very young idealists without military training or lengthy political formation—but with experience in the Somozas’ prisons—explicitly modeled their actions during the next decade on the Cuban example and on the theories of Che Guevara. Mayorga and Fonseca both spent time in Cuba in 1960 before organizing the FSLN, and the inspiration and support for the first of several &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; they attempted to create in the 1960s came immediately from Cuban tutelage. Fonseca headed the JRN, a small group of exiles, while Mayorga and another comrade, Marcos Altamirano, gained leadership roles in the more diverse JPN, based among secondary and university students in Managua and the country’s major provincial towns. Fonseca insisted on the symbolic importance of including Sandino’s name in the title of the new movements, but all agreed on basic principles: (1) the struggle in Nicaragua would necessarily be also an anti-imperialist movement; (2) only armed struggle could overthrow the Somoza regime; and (3) a guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; would spark the eventual revolutionary victory.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en336|&lt;span&gt;14&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Clearly inspired by Che Guevara and the success of the Cuban Revolution, the FSLN cadres undertook several “expropriations” or “recuperations” (bank robberies) to finance their activities and then went underground in Honduras. In the early 1960s a small FSLN guerrilla column composed of Nicaraguan students in exile, survivors of the “El Chaparral” movement, and a number of veterans of previous unsuccessful “invasions” and “uprisings” against the Somozas prepared themselves on the Nicaraguan-Honduran frontier for the launching of a guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt;. Armed by Cuba and led by veteran Sandinista colonel Santos López, the youthful revolutionaries sought to topple the Somoza dynasty. As Fidel Castro had drawn strength from the symbolic attachment to the Cuban patriot José Martí, so the young revolutionaries of the FSLN dressed their program in the nationalist garb of Sandinism: “The FSLN leadership had learnt from the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cuban experiences that a socialist revolution can triumph in the Third World only if it mobilizes the nationalist sentiments of the masses, as well as their ideals of liberty and equality. In declaring itself the inheritor and continuator of Sandino’s epic struggle, the FSLN rooted itself in a living Nicaraguan tradition, emerging as the unswerving champion of national independence and identifying against U.S. domination and its local agents.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en337|&lt;span&gt;15&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Politico-Military Evolution of the Guerrilla Struggle&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The initial military operations of the FSLN resulted in unequivocal defeat. After more than a year of preparations in an isolated Honduran frontier region some thirty miles from the Nicaraguan border, the guerrillas attacked and temporarily occupied the villages of Raití and Walquistán. “Expropriating” merchandise from local stores, they acquired supplies for themselves and distributed food and clothing to village inhabitants. A second column, commanded by Colonel Santos López, moved toward the town of Bocay. There they encountered a reinforced Guardia unit and decided to divide their forces into three groups: one, under Modesto Duarte, suffered several casualties and dispersed; a second, led by Tomás Borge, initially remained downriver near Walquistán; the third decided to attack San Carlos, but became lost in the mountains while trying to take a shortcut. &lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en338|&lt;span&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; With the help of some local residents the guerrillas finally reached the small village of Sansán, only to encounter forty Guardias. After a firefight in which several guerrillas were killed or wounded, the Sandinistas abandoned the fight.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en339|&lt;span&gt;17&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In retrospect, Tomás Borge, the only member of the original FSLN cadres still alive in the early 1980s, commented: “We made the mistake of attacking Raití, without knowledge of the land or doing any proselytizing and without securing our supply lines. This was a backward area, not only politically, but culturally. Many of the inhabitants didn’t know Spanish, so we had communication problems.” &lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en340|&lt;span&gt;18&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In short, the FSLN had attempted an invasion of Nicaragua without any popular support, previous political organization, or effective military preparation. In the interim a new military government in Honduras made the older border bases hazardous; the first &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; ended with a number of casualties and most of the guerrillas captured by Honduran troops and then deported to Mexico.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The year 1963 also brought elections. Anxious to obtain increased Alliance for Progress funding and to refurbish the facade of democracy in Nicaragua, Luis Somoza made René Schick the Liberal party candidate. The Conservative candidate, Fernando Agüero-Rocha, requested supervision of the election by the Organization of American States, but Somoza denied the request. When the Conservative candidate led a march to protest this decision, the Somozas placed him under arrest until after the election. In response, the Conservatives announced a boycott, forcing the dynasty to resurrect their puppet opposition, the Conservative Nationalist party.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As expected, the Somozas’ candidate won a massive electoral victory. From 1963 to 1966, President Schick administered the Somozas’ domain, assisted by increasing levels of U.S. military and economic aid. Rewarded for their prompt support of the U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965, the Somozas took advantage of the counterinsurgency emphasis in U.S. inter-American policy to strengthen the Guardia and to prepare for the assumption of the presidency in 1967 by Guardia commander Anastasio Somoza II. To further buttress the family’s hold on the country, Colonel José Somoza, Luis and Tachito’s illegitimate half-brother, assumed command of the Guardia’s most combat-ready unit, the Somoza Battalion. In 1966 this unit participated in two counterinsurgency exercises with other Central American forces as the United States built up the Central American Defense Council (CONDECA) as a regional response to the export of the Cuban Revolution.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;President Schick died in August 1966 and was replaced by Minister of Interior Lorenzo Guerrero. In order to challenge Tachito Somoza’s candidacy in the upcoming 1967 elections, a united opposition front of Conservatives, Independent Liberals, Christian Democrats, and some leftists joined in a National Opposition Union (UNO). Frustrated by the obvious control of elections by the dynasty, opposition leaders, including Fernando Agüero and Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, attempted in January 1967 to incite a popular insurrection in Managua. Thousands of demonstrators called upon the Guardia to overthrow Somoza. Instead, the soldiers turned their guns on the crowds, killing many people and injuring hundreds more. The opposition seized the Gran Hotel, taking 117 hostages. Finally, the Papal Nuncio and representatives of the Nicaraguan Church and the U.S. embassy negotiated a truce.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the meantime, the FSLN continued political work in the urban areas, especially among its student supporters in the Revolutionary Student Front. From 1965 on, this group published sporadically &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Student&lt;/span&gt; and served as a legal front for clandestine activities, propaganda, and political opposition. At the same time, the FSLN protested against the farce of the upcoming elections. It also carried out a number of military operations such as bank robberies and, in August 1967, an attack on the “La Perfecta” dairy controlled by the Somozas, in which security forces surprised the FSLN fighters, killing, wounding, or capturing them. Notwithstanding opposition protests, the “elections” confirmed the dynasty in power. Two months after Tachito’s “election” as president in February 1967, his somewhat less militaristic brother, Luis Somoza, died of a heart attack.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Later in the year the Sandinistas attempted to establish a new rural guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; in a region reconnoitered since the early 1960s by Rigoberto Cruz (Pablo Ubeda). Ammunition and weapons were stored in hidden caches throughout the Pancasán area, situated in the Darien Cordillera fifty kilometers east of Matagalpa. Meanwhile, FSLN guerrilla leaders worked to incorporate local peasants and workers into a network of sympathizers and intelligence gatherers. For approximately three months the thirty-five guerrillas operated without detection. An accidental encounter and exchange of gunfire with local constables confirmed for the Somoza government that a guerrilla column existed in the region and brought a quick response. With the guerrillas divided into three columns—one commanded by Tomás Borge near Matagalpa, one led by Carlos Fonseca at the base camp, and a third led by Silvio Mayorga and Rigoberto Cruz near Quirragua—the Somoza government sent four hundred Guardias of the Somoza Battalion into the area to carry out search-and-destroy missions. Using local constables and informants to locate the guerrillas, the Guardia troops eventually killed all but fifteen of the original Pancasán cadres, including some FSLN founders. The mission lasted another three months as the Guardias interrogated, threatened, and killed hundreds of suspected FSLN sympathizers.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Analyzing the Pancasán &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; in retrospect, the FSLN concluded that the terrain had been unfavorable, that the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; was poorly equipped and lacked military training, and that insufficient attention had been paid to incorporating local peasants into the movement.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en341|&lt;span&gt;19&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Tomás Borge later observed: “We set up a good communication and intelligence network. We gained political control of the area; we had a lot of support. But we had a lot of firefights [with the Guardia] and our military capability was limited.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en342|&lt;span&gt;20&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;With the defeat of the guerrillas, Somoza traveled to the village of Jinotza, north of Pancasán, and proclaimed to the nation, “The guerrillas no longer exist. I want to announce that the National Guard exterminated them. I want to announce to the people of Nicaragua and the world that our country is at peace.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en343|&lt;span&gt;21&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Somoza was so sure of final victory over the FSLN that the elite counterinsurgency troops returned to Managua and the dictator offered to send a Guardia contingent to Vietnam to support the U.S. war effort. The apparent victory coincided with similar military defeats of guerrilla movements in Guatemala (the death of Turcios Lima) and Bolivia (the death of Che Guevara).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The government followed up the Pancasán victory with urban counterinsurgency actions from 1969 to 1970, partly in response to sporadic FSLN operations against banks and government officials and partly as a systematic effort to destroy, once and for all, the leftist threat. Future leaders of revolutionary Nicaragua, such as Daniel Ortega, were imprisoned, and other FSLN militants died in the intensified urban warfare against the Guardia.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en344|&lt;span&gt;22&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Military defeat, imprisonment, torture, and the lack of political success failed to deter the FSLN. By 1970 the Sandinistas were initiating new rural organizational efforts in the Zinica-El Bijao region, some one hundred kilometers north of Pancasán. Despite heavy casualties inflicted by Guardia patrols, the Zinica &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; continued to recruit local support among the peasantry. More favorable topography and better relations with the peasantry allowed many guerrillas to escape the net of the Guardia’s search-and-destroy missions. Although the Zinica &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; resulted eventually in another military defeat for the FSLN, it added to the cumulative experience that was gradually creating a heroic, even mythic, image of the valiant &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;muchachos&lt;/span&gt; (lads) who, against impossible odds, continued to fight the Somoza dictatorship.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Such heroics, however, could not alter the stark political realities of failure: most FSLN leaders of the 1960s were dead, in prison, or in exile. The Nicaraguan guerrillas had, overall, experienced even less military success and generated even less broad-based political support than had the unsuccessful guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; in Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia, and Peru.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Post-1970 Developments: Sandinista Victory&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The Guevarista-inspired guerrilla movements of the 1960s had failed dismally in their efforts to spark a politico-military movement that would overthrow Somoza and take control of the Nicaraguan economy from the dynasty. In 1970 the Somoza family owned more than half of the agricultural production of the country, large amounts of an expanding industrial sector, a steamship line, a share of the national airline, a half interest in the Intercontinental Hotel, and numerous other enterprises.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en345|&lt;span&gt;23&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In addition, the nepotism at high levels of government made Nicaragua an extended patrimonial dictatorship: a cousin headed the National Development Bank, a brother-in-law served as ambassador to the United States, an uncle directed the national electric company, Somoza’s American wife served as director for the social security system, and José Somoza remained a key figure in the Guardia.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Economic expansion in the 1960s had provided opportunities for others besides the Somoza clique. From 1960 to 1970 the value of exports rose at an annual rate of 11.5 percent, tripling in total value. Agribusiness, light industry, finance, construction, and real estate speculation fueled by Nicaragua’s integration into the Central American Common Market stimulated two large capitalist networks not controlled by the Somozas—the Banco Nicaragüense (BANIC) and the Banco de America (BANAMERICA). Foreign investors, encouraged by Somoza or in partnership with the dynasty, contributed to the boom. The proliferation of business groups and interest associations, while initially serving as props for the Somoza regime, would eventually contribute leadership to the anti-Somoza movements of the mid-1970s as Somoza’s greed and primitive patrimonialism excluded even the most powerful independent interests from a share of political power and participation in the new economic opportunities.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1970, Somoza received a new American ambassador, Turner B. Shelton, who became a close friend of and apologist for the dictator. Shelton arranged a meeting between President Richard Nixon and Somoza, who donated one million dollars to Nixon’s 1972 election campaign.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en346|&lt;span&gt;24&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; With the approval of the U.S. State Department and Ambassador Shelton, Somoza initiated a series of maneuvers that would allow the revision of Nicaragua’s constitution (which prohibited a president from succeeding himself immediately) so as to ensure his continued reign beyond his current term, 1967–72.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;To achieve this purpose, Somoza hammered out a pact with the compliant Conservative opposition leader, Fernando Agüero, whereby a three-person junta—two Liberals and one Conservative—would replace Somoza while a constituent assembly studied electoral reforms. In practice, Somoza retained control through the Liberal majority and the Guardia. An agreement on the reforms reached in March 1971 provided for governance shared by the country’s two major parties until the newly scheduled presidential elections of 1974 could be held. In August 1971, Congress duly dissolved itself and Somoza assumed all government functions until a new Congress could be seated after the February 1972 legislative elections. After those “elections,” which Somoza’s Liberal party won handily, the Conservatives were given 40 percent of the seats in the legislative assembly, as per the Somoza-Agüero pact, and Agüero occupied the Conservative minority position on the three-person junta that would officially administer the country until Somoza resumed command in 1974.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Heralded by Somoza and Ambassador Shelton as the beginning of a new era of democracy in Nicaragua, this arrangement irreparably split the Conservative party, for Pedro Joaquín Chamorro and the opposition Conservative elite could not ally themselves with their hated adversary. Under Chamorro’s leadership, the Conservative National Action (ANC) was formed as an alternative to the collusionist Conservatives. In Somoza’s own party, Ramiro Sacasa led a splinter movement called the Constitutionalist Movement (MC). The small but increasingly influential Christian Democratic movement and the new archbishop of Managua, Miguel Obando y Bravo, also opposed the triumvirate (termed the “Junta of the Three Little Pigs”). In May 1972 the junta officially assumed power, but the archbishop boycotted the ceremony and a joint pastoral letter of the Nicaraguan bishops called for “a completely new order.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en347|&lt;span&gt;25&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Thus, joining the traditional Conservative opposition, the influential Nicaraguan Catholic Church entered the struggle against the Somoza dynasty.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Major opposition groups, including elements of BANIC and BANAMERICA, middle-class entrepreneurs, and local organizations, boycotted the presidential elections in September 1974 with the slogan, “There is no one to vote for.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en348|&lt;span&gt;26&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Opposed officially only by the Conservative candidate, Edmundo Paguagua, Somoza won an easy victory for a term that would end in 1981. To punish the opposition for the crime of “inciting to electoral abstentionism” (almost 50 percent of the eligible voters abstained), Somoza had “The Twenty-Seven” (the twenty-seven major opposition leaders) brought to trial, deprived of civil rights for six months, and barred from traveling.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en349|&lt;span&gt;27&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;With Somoza’s “election” the multiclass, ideologically pluralistic opposition formed a coalition called the Democratic Liberation Union (UDEL) under the leadership of Somoza’s longtime adversary, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro. Though the United States failed to recognize the opportunity it presented, UDEL offered a moderate, liberal, capitalist alternative to Somoza that, if successful, would have preempted the revolutionary efforts of the FSLN. As one writer perceptively concludes, “There can be no doubt . . . that in Nicaragua the bourgeois opposition itself opened up the crisis of the Somoza regime and actually led the first phase of the revolution. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;It was only at the end of the process, with the help of Somoza’s intransigence, that the FSLN captured the leadership of the struggle.&lt;/span&gt;”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en350|&lt;span&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Had the United States taken this opportunity to support a moderate political alternative (and had it done so in 1972 or even in 1977 in El Salvador), it is very possible that bloody civil wars in those nations could have been averted.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The mobilization and reorganization of political opposition to Somoza from 1970 to 1974 coincided with socioeconomic changes and natural catastrophes that gradually eroded the dynasty’s hold on the country. From 1970 to 1972 a drought seriously disrupted agricultural production and export earnings, thereby exacerbating the country’s balance of payments problem. Simultaneous inflation, a rise in food prices, and unemployment generated student and worker protests. &lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en351|&lt;span&gt;29&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; While Somoza and Agüero worked out the details of the triumvirate pact, foreign investment stimulated the modernization of agribusiness, disrupted rural Nicaraguan society, and served as a prelude to the crisis of the late 1970s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Still, Somoza managed these problems in the early 1970s directly and firmly through repression of his adversaries by the Guardia. Internal control of the Guardia itself depended on family members in key positions, frequent rotation of field commanders, and lucrative opportunities for graft or special privileges at almost all levels. Significantly, even with the economic difficulties of the early 1970s, Somoza attempted to buttress his position during the triumvirate (1971–74) with substantial pay increases of 50 to 150 percent for Guardia personnel.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Just as Somoza seemed to be succeeding in retaining dynastic control through the triumvirate junta, an earthquake struck Managua on December 23, 1972, reducing the center city to rubble and leaving an estimated 10,000 dead, thousands more injured, and 50,000 homeless. Although the city’s suburban industrial infrastructure was largely unaffected, the earthquake destroyed almost 80 percent of the commercial establishments.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en352|&lt;span&gt;30&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Somoza government’s response to this disaster destroyed all remaining vestiges of its legitimacy, credibility, and moral authority.&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;In the aftermath of the earthquake the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guardia Nacional&lt;/span&gt; actually disintegrated. Most soldiers left their posts to take care of their families or to try to salvage personal belongings. Others, often led by officers, occupied themselves with massive looting, at times using &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guardia&lt;/span&gt; vehicles to remove the stock from damaged stores. For nearly two days, Somoza was unable to muster even a company of troops. As a result, his prestige and that of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guardia&lt;/span&gt; had sunk to an all-time low and the nation seemed on the verge of anarchy. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As the work of reconstruction progressed, the Somozas and higher-ranking officers increasingly found ways to use the disaster as a means of increasing their own wealth. Bribes for guarding damaged property, for issuing new construction permits, or for obtaining import licenses, or even for obtaining food, the distribution of which was for a time a government monopoly, all offered lucrative possibilities.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en353|&lt;span&gt;31&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;The extent of Somoza’s venality is suggested by Pedro Joaquín Chamorro’s report on “Operation Vampire” in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Prensa&lt;/span&gt;: “The emergency assistance included thousands of liters of plasma, more than the available medical teams and hospitals could use. Somoza sent the surplus to the United States, pocketing the profits. This transaction was so lucrative that during the period of reconstruction that followed the earthquake, he created a commercial blood bank through an intermediary . . . and began to buy Nicaraguan blood for pennies, process it, and send it to the United States, where it became dollars.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en354|&lt;span&gt;32&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Somoza and his clique formed demolition companies, real estate firms, and construction enterprises to profit from the reconstruction. His seemingly unlimited avarice, in the words of two analysts, “became the most efficacious promoter of Socialism in Nicaragua, while his brutal repressive campaigns became the most effective device for recruiting new insurrectionists for the FSLN.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en355|&lt;span&gt;33&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;During this period the FSLN adopted a much lower profile in Nicaraguan politics. After the military setback in Zinica in 1970, the Sandinistas decided to abandon guerrilla operations in the countryside temporarily and to emphasize instead urban and rural political work and urban “military” actions. Oscar Turcios Chavarría, second-in-command of the unsuccessful Pancasán &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt;, returned from Cuba to replace the slain Julio Buitrago as head of the FSLN urban directorate. Almost all of the other principal FSLN leaders remained imprisoned or outside the country.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Focusing on mobilization of FSLN-oriented students in the FER and creating alliances with the newly formed Catholic student group, the Christian Revolutionary Movement (MCR), the FSLN sought to broaden the social and ideological base of the anti-Somoza forces. Protests against hikes in gasoline and food prices, the distribution of propaganda leaflets, the organization of neighborhood committees, and work among labor organizations provided for an indirect Sandinista presence even though military activity was essentially dormant. This clandestine political work and the forging of links to the rising Catholic student and worker groups would prove invaluable in the late 1970s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Nevertheless, occasional confrontations with the Guardia or local constables produced casualties and newspaper headlines. In 1973 the Guardia captured, then killed, Oscar Turcios and Ricardo Morales, leaving the FSLN without any of its national directorate in the country. Quickly, however, new cadres took the place of those fallen; the Sandinistas continued political work in the major towns and the “accumulation of forces” in the rural areas.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en356|&lt;span&gt;34&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; According to Humberto Ortega, Nicaraguan minister of defense in the early 1980s, “In the period 1970–74, with greater political-organizational work among the masses, and with a considerable development of the vanguard’s internal structures in the mountains, the city, and the countryside, the Sandinist war took great leaps forward in the accumulation of political, organizational, material, and military [force].”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en357|&lt;span&gt;35&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;At the end of 1974 the FSLN carried out the first of a series of spectacular operations that reinforced its heroic image, embarrassed the Somoza regime, and discredited Somoza with many of his own Guardia hard-liners. On December 27, 1974, an FSLN commando team crashed a party at the home of José María “Chema” Castillo Quant, killed Castillo and several guards, and took prisoner a number of celebrities that included Somoza’s brother-in-law Guillermo Sevilla Sacasa, his cousin Noel Pallais Debayle, several government ministers, and the Chilean ambassador. In response, Somoza imposed martial law, suspended constitutional rights, and ordered the detention of hundreds of suspected FSLN sympathizers.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ultimately, Somoza gave in to the Sandinistas’ demands: freedom for a number of political prisoners, including Daniel Ortega; a ransom of one million dollars (originally the FSLN commandos asked for five million); free passage to Cuba; and the dissemination of a long Sandinista communique over radio and in the press. As the victorious commandos headed toward the airport with the archbishop of Managua, and the ambassadors of Mexico and Spain as “volunteer hostages,” crowds along the route shouted their support and anti-Somoza slogans. Again, the dictator responded in the only way he knew: with intensified repression and counterinsurgency.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite their success in the raid, the FSLN cadres still numbered less than three hundred. By 1975 seemingly minor ideological and strategic differences of the sort experienced by guerrilla movements earlier in the rest of Latin America fragmented the organization into three splinter movements: the proletarian wing; the advocates of a “prolonged people’s war” (GPP); and the “third force” insurrectional group, Terceristas, which included many Catholic and non-Marxist revolutionaries.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en358|&lt;span&gt;36&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The fragmentation of the FSLN allowed the Guardia to attack successfully both guerrilla cadres and numerous front groups among students and neighborhood committees. FSLN militant Dulce María Guillén writes: “The response of the dictatorship was stronger than we had anticipated; in some cases it did us serious structural damage. It was a very difficult period, above all in relation to the masses. The masses became dispirited. . . . They captured many of our people working in clandestinity . . . [and] destroyed some mass organizations . . . entirely that had previously confronted the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guardia.&lt;/span&gt; . . . Entire families disappeared.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en359|&lt;span&gt;37&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Encounters between the FSLN guerrillas and the Guardia brought mixed results in 1975 and 1976 but generally proved unfavorable to the rebels. In March 1975 guerrillas raided an outpost at Río Blanco and occupied the town for six hours. Somoza reacted by making Río Blanco a headquarters for counterinsurgency operations in the north and by initiating “Operation Aguila VI,” during which whole villages suspected of sympathizing with the rebels or providing supplies were subjected to wanton, senseless brutalization and massacre. Protests by Catholic priests—whose denunciations reached the U.S. Congress—and the natural hostility of the population created more and more enemies of the dynasty and a growing tide of unfavorable publicity in the United States. As elsewhere in Latin America, the government’s brutality and indiscriminate terrorism created more guerrillas for the future even as it eliminated the immediate threat.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Aguila VI got rid of a number of FSLN leaders. In November 1976, Eduardo Contreras, leader of the commando unit that attacked the Castillo house in 1974, died in a firefight, and the next day the Guardia killed FSLN founder Carlos Fonseca Amador. One authority suggests that by the time the operation ended, only a few dozen FSLN militants survived.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en360|&lt;span&gt;38&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Once again, Somoza seemed to have defeated the Sandinistas; the widely read periodical &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Latin America&lt;/span&gt; declared the Sandinistas “virtually eliminated as a threat.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en361|&lt;span&gt;39&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Even if the FSLN still lacked political or military strength, however, the increased activity of UDEL, widespread popular resistance to the repression, and a shift in U.S. foreign policy all combined to undermine Somoza’s position. U.S. economic and military support had long been the bulwark of the Somoza dynasty. Military assistance from 1974 to 1976 exceeded support in real terms (corrected for inflation) for the period 1962–66 by 67 percent.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en362|&lt;span&gt;40&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Under the human rights emphasis of the Carter administration’s foreign policy, aid to the Somoza regime declined dramatically.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en363|&lt;span&gt;41&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; John Booth reports that economic assistance for 1977–78 declined by 75 percent in real terms and military aid by almost 45 percent.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en364|&lt;span&gt;42&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Somoza’s supporters in the U.S. Congress could not overcome the growing media attacks (including Jack Anderson’s scathing columns) or the testimony to Congress of Nicaraguan priests and political opponents of the dynasty.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en365|&lt;span&gt;43&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Badly damaged by Ambassador Turner Shelton’s departure in 1975 (under mounting criticism for his obsequious relationship with the dictator), the Somoza regime began to lose the single, most important source of its power: unconditional support by the United States for Somoza’s “anti-Communism.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en366|&lt;span&gt;44&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; From exile in 1980, Somoza bitterly denounced President Carter and his policies, making crystal clear the overwhelming significance he accorded to the shift in U.S. foreign policy from 1976 to 1979: “When it comes to Cuba and Fidel Castro, Mr. Carter and his State Department have consistently used blindfolds and earplugs. I told the proper U.S. authorities on many occasions that Cuba was our common enemy. . . . The reaction was always the same—one of expressed disbelief or non-interest. I wanted the United States to understand that in Cuba we both faced a mortal enemy and that Cuba wanted, and if unopposed would ultimately get, far more than Nicaragua.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en367|&lt;span&gt;45&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Even as President Carter’s new foreign policy pressed Somoza to lift the state of siege imposed after the FSLN attack on the Castillo house in 1974, Anastasio Somoza II suffered a heart attack on July 28, 1977. Flown to Miami for treatment, he could not return home until September 10. Shortly after his return, Somoza lifted the state of siege in hopes of regaining U.S. support, and legal opposition political activity resumed immediately. The FSLN Tercerista group responded quickly, attacking Guardia installations in Ocotal, Masaya, and San Carlos, near the border with Costa Rica. At about the same time a prominent group of anti-Somozans called &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Los Doce&lt;/span&gt; (“The Twelve”) issued a proclamation calling for a popular uprising against Somoza. This group included respected businessmen, an international banker, Catholic priests, a corporation lawyer, an architect, an economist, and the owner of a supermarket chain. Although some of “The Twelve” had ties to FSLN Terceristas, the composition of this group clearly demonstrated that the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie had chosen to oppose the Somoza dictatorship.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Members of affluent families now engaged actively in the anti-Somoza struggle; a minority joined the Sandinistas. The UDEL escalated its demands for Somoza’s departure, and Pedro Joaquín Chamorro’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Prensa&lt;/span&gt; savagely denounced Somoza’s abuses. In November 1977, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Prensa&lt;/span&gt; printed a full-page appeal by “The Twelve” for a democratic alternative to Somoza. Significantly, this appeal, as well as proclamations by the UDEL, now included a place for the FSLN in any new government. In response, Somoza had “The Twelve” tried in absentia and sentenced to prison terms. Two months later, hired killers assassinated Pedro Joaquín Chamorro after &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Prensa&lt;/span&gt; published an expose of Somoza’s blood plasma-export business described above.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en368|&lt;span&gt;46&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This murder incited public outrage throughout the country. It galvanized the anti-Somoza opposition as business, labor organizations, the Catholic Church, UDEL, and the FSLN demanded Somoza’s resignation. In Managua, thousands of people took to the streets in sometimes violent demonstrations; two weeks later a general strike began that practically paralyzed the country for a month. After U.S. Ambassador Mauricio Solaún’s mediation brought a temporary restoration of “normality,” the U.S. diplomatic mission continued its efforts to engineer a transition to a centrist civilian government but vacillated about forcing Somoza out of office. The Somoza lobby and supporters in the U.S. Congress reiterated their fears of a “Communist takeover,” preventing the United States from moving quickly to try to avoid the bloody insurrection and civil war that would engulf Nicaragua for the next eighteen months.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In February 1978 the people of Monimbó, an Indian community in Masaya, planned a celebration to rename a plaza in honor of the murdered Pedro Joaquín Chamorro. Harassed by the Guardia, the crowd attacked them, barricaded the town, and declared it a free territory. After a period of skirmishing, the Guardia, commanded by Somoza’s oldest son, Anastasio III, mounted a fierce assault supported by heavy weapons and aerial attacks and retook the town. Although there were more than two hundred civilian casualties, new spontaneous uprisings occurred at Subtiava and Diriamba, with a similar response from the Guardia. These events were followed in April by massive student strikes. More and more young people and women joined the armed popular insurrection in the capital and provincial towns. Though the FSLN claimed no direct leadership of these popular uprisings, Somoza flatly stated that, in his view, all such opposition was Communist-inspired and his response would be military suppression.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pedro Joaquín Chamorro’s assassination had ignited the spark of insurrection throughout the country, but the general strike in early 1978 failed to end the dynasty. In the government paper, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Novedades&lt;/span&gt;, Somoza proclaimed, “As my father said, I will not go, neither will they force me to go.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en369|&lt;span&gt;47&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; For their part, the non-Marxist, non-FSLN opposition lacked military force and organization, and the United States refused to (or could not) oust Somoza directly. Thus, no choice remained but armed insurrection, and only the FSLN had the capabilities and experience to direct a military struggle against the Guardia. Somoza confirmed Che Guevara’s prediction: a human tragedy of immense proportions and bitter civil war would be required to end the dynasty.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In July 1978 the non-Marxist movements created an expanded political group called the Broad Opposition Front (FAO), uniting Alfonso Robelo’s Nicaraguan Democratic Movement, “The Twelve” (and therefore the FSLN Terceristas), the Social Christian party, and Conservative splinter groups in a more complex anti-Somoza coalition. &lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en370|&lt;span&gt;48&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The FSLN also mobilized a new coalition of student, worker, and neighborhood groups, but rejected any compromise that would install “Somozaism without Somoza.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Then, on August 22, 1978, another spectacular FSLN operation further undermined the Somoza regime. A guerrilla commando group led by Tercerista “Comandante Cero,” Edén Pastora, seized Congress and captured approximately 1,500 people, including 49 deputies and several close friends and relatives of Somoza. Naming the raid “Operation Pigsty,” the Sandinistas had symbolically captured the government of Nicaragua. Worldwide press coverage allowed the Sandinistas to broadcast a lengthy communique that ended with a call for “democratic and revolutionary forces” to fight for a democratic and popular government in Nicaragua. Once again playing a key role in a Sandinista victory, Archbishop Obando y Bravo negotiated the following conditions: release of a number of political prisoners (including Tomás Borge), payment of a large cash ransom, repeated broadcasts and publication of FSLN statements calling for Somoza’s ouster and preparation for the “final offensive,” accession of the government to strike demands of hospital workers, and Mexican, Panamanian, or Venezuelan planes to take the guerrillas out of the country.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en371|&lt;span&gt;49&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite this agreement, Somoza’s elite commanders bitterly resisted giving in to the FSLN demands. A U.S. mercenary leader of an elite group, Michael Echanis, commented: “We could have taken the building in eighteen minutes. I figured maybe two hundred to three hundred would be killed. The plan was to shock the building with tank fire and blow the doors with recoilless rifles. I was going to helicopter in with my commandos and drop down through the roof hatches. The old man wouldn’t buy it and the only reason was they held Papa Chepe’s [José Somoza’s] son. My guys were unhappy.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en372|&lt;span&gt;50&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Rejecting a bloody military attack, Somoza caved in—as he had in 1974. The image of the heroic, daring Sandinistas was perpetuated and they became legendary throughout Latin America.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Less than a month later, the FSLN opened a new military offensive that coincided with a growing number of spontaneous uprisings like that in Monimbó, first in Matagalpa, and then in León, Masaya, Chinadega, and Managua itself. Somoza responded with bombing raids on the town and villages where resistance occurred, and as the Guardia forced the FSLN to withdraw, civilians were treated as a hostile force. Increasing numbers of people, motivated in part by self-preservation, joined the FSLN or followed them out of the besieged towns. The September offensive resulted in more than 5,000 dead, thousands more wounded, and more than 50,000 refugees seeking asylum in neighboring countries.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en373|&lt;span&gt;51&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; However, what seemed a series of military victories for Somoza represented, in reality, the final stage of the dictatorship: full-scale war by Somoza and the Guardia on the Nicaraguan people.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Broad Opposition Front and the United States still sought a negotiated settlement, but Somoza refused to transfer power. In late 1978 a realignment of anti-Somoza student groups, political parties, neighborhood committees, professionals, and front groups formed the United People’s Movement (MPU), a mass-based alternative to the more moderate FAO. This increased popular armed mobilization, together with the casualties of 1978, reinforced the FSLN’s determination to win a &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;political&lt;/span&gt; and military victory that would preclude the installation of “Somozaism without Somoza.” As the war continued, the moderate FAO gradually lost credibility and the Sandinistas emerged as the clear vanguard of the anti-Somoza struggle. To solidify their position, the Sandinistas invited anti-imperialist, anti-dictatorship forces to join them in a coordinated National Patriotic Front (FPN) with their immediate objective the destruction of the Somoza regime. The FPN, to the displeasure of the United States, gradually replaced the FAO as the most visible and viable alternative to Somoza.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en374|&lt;span&gt;52&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Remarkably, many units of the Guardia continued to protect the dynasty. Unlike Batista’s Cuban army in 1958–59, the Nicaraguan Guardia fought fiercely to the end and even defeated the anti-Somoza forces in some encounters. Thus, by February or March 1979 the FSLN military force represented the only viable instrument to overthrow Somoza. It meant that Somoza’s defeat would cost up to 50,000 dead, hundreds of thousands of wounded, and the destruction of some of the country’s major towns and economic infrastructure.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In March 1979 the three FSLN splinter groups reunited, setting up a joint command with three members from each faction.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en375|&lt;span&gt;53&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; This joint command at last combined the rural organizational efforts of the GPP, the work in urban mass organization of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;proletarios,&lt;/span&gt; and the politico-military leadership of the Terceristas, thereby providing a distinctive version of Che Guevara’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt;-based revolution. From its first military initiatives in the early 1960s the FSLN had suffered defeat after defeat; yet, as Che Guevara had predicted, the politico-military struggle was gradually being won.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Guardia waged war on the Nicaraguan population from March to July 1979, while at the same time attempting to defend itself against mounting FSLN attacks on installations throughout the country. When the war reached Managua in May and June, Somoza turned his rightist death squads on FAO leaders as well as on suspected Sandinistas. On June 4 the FSLN called for a general strike to topple the regime; sixteen days later U.S. television viewers witnessed the callous murder of ABC newsman William Stewart—a murder that cost Somoza the last of his public support in the United States.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Still not willing to admit defeat, Somoza ordered his tanks, planes, and helicopters to attack the FSLN in the suburban shantytowns of Managua. Historian Thomas P. Anderson, who was in Managua shortly afterward,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;was reminded of photos of the destruction of Hiroshima. . . . Only a few businesses appeared to have escaped destruction and these were watched over by cold-eyed &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guardia&lt;/span&gt;. These, I was told, were spared because Somoza owned an interest in them. . . . No exact casualty statistics were kept by either side, but estimates of the dead ranged from 40,000 to 50,000. Even accepting the lowest figure, this represented a higher casualty rate than that in the U.S. Civil War. Another 100,000 had been wounded, and lay, often without proper medical attention, in makeshift hospitals about the country; 40,000 children had been orphaned and 8,000 tons of emergency food relief were needed every day to prevent famine.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en376|&lt;span&gt;54&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Finally, on the night of July 16, 1979, U.S. Ambassador Lawrence Pezullo convinced Somoza that the war was lost, and the next day Anastasio II left Nicaragua and eventually sought sanctuary in Paraguay. Fourteen months later he was assassinated in Asunción.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Sandinista victory represented a contradictory reaffirmation of Che Guevara’s message. A guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt;, or rather, many guerrilla focos, sowed seeds that took almost twenty years to bear fruit. Instead of a quick Cuban-like victory, the Nicaraguan &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; ultimately gave rise, after years of military defeat, to a multiclass popular insurrection that plunged the country into bloody civil war.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Nicaraguan experience had proven Che Guevara to be both right and wrong. First, only armed struggle proved sufficient to overthrow Somoza’s version of Caribbean dictatorship but only protracted warfare combined with years of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;political&lt;/span&gt; organization and mobilization brought the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco’s&lt;/span&gt; aspirations to fruition. Second, this mobilization required the incorporation of significant numbers of entrepreneurs, clerics, workers, and traditional political elites to oust the dictator. Third, even this politico-military alliance would likely have failed without extensive assistance from foreign nations, especially Costa Rica, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, and Cuba.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en377|&lt;span&gt;55&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Finally, as in Cuba, the withdrawal of U.S. support from the Nicaraguan dictatorship allowed domestic civil opposition to coalesce around the less numerous FSLN cadres and defeat Somoza. The only two guerrilla victories in Latin America from 1959 to 1989 were preceded by the explicit withdrawal of U.S. support for the incumbent governments. If the Sandinistas inherited Che Guevara’s most important legacy—the inspiration to challenge the dictatorship through armed struggle—they were also forced to modify profoundly the tactical, strategic, and political implications of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foquismo&lt;/span&gt; in order to prevail.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Sandinista Nicaragua, 1980–89&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;In the first five years after defeating Somoza, the FSLN dedicated itself to consolidating political power, attempting to reconstruct the economy, and moving Nicaragua in the direction of a socialist society. Inheriting an economy left in shambles by civil war and Somoza’s last-minute theft of foreign reserves, the Sandinistas faced overwhelming difficulties in bettering the lot of the Nicaraguan people. In addition, the Sandinistas’ socialist orientation and close ties with Cuba both alienated many of the entrepreneurial and non-Marxist groups that had joined the anti-Somoza coalition from 1976 to 1979 and provoked U.S. military and economic attacks from 1981 to 1984. Opposition to Sandinista agrarian policy, to ideological and programmatic impositions, and to police and military brutality provoked anti-Sandinista sentiments among peasants, Indian peoples on the northeast coast, and the urban middle class. Spontaneous armed resistance in the north, including ex-Sandinista guerrillas, foreshadowed the antigovernment insurgency that developed, with U.S. support, from 1982 to 1989. After 1982 the Sandinista government was threatened by a growing number of guerrilla raids from U.S.-supported units based in Costa Rica and Honduras, abetted by the local peasantry.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Historical ironies could not be ignored as the counterrevolutionary guerrillas forced the Sandinistas into “hot pursuit” into Costa Rica and Honduras—just as had Somoza in the 1970s. In late October 1983 the U.S. military invasion of Grenada made all too clear to the Sandinistas that the covert U.S. assistance to anti-government rebels could, if circumstances presented themselves, become more direct, overt, and menacing. The CIA-financed and -directed mining of Nicaraguan ports and sabotage of factories and farms, and the Reagan administration’s requests for increased funding for the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; (the opposition forces that President Ronald Reagan called “freedom fighters”) based in Honduras underlined the U.S. commitment to destabilizing or destroying the Sandinista government, despite a surprise visit to Nicaragua by the U.S. secretary of state in early June 1984.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Internal opposition to the Sandinista government from sectors of the Catholic Church, entrepreneurs, and supporters of a more traditional pluralist polity slowed the movement to a one-party socialist system. Far from having consolidated the revolutionary regime in power, the Sandinistas attempted to mobilize popular support against both internal and external adversaries. With joint U.S.-Honduran military exercises on the Nicaraguan frontier in 1984 and the expansion of the U.S. military presence in Central America, the Sandinistas faced considerable political, economic, and military difficulties in attempting to reconstruct the devastated Nicaraguan economy and stabilize the political situation within the country. Somoza was gone, but Nicaragua’s future remained enmeshed in superpower cold war politics and Central America’s deadly civil wars and insurgencies.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en378|&lt;span&gt;56&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the period from 1981 to 1989 the Sandinistas confronted growing internal dissidence and armed insurgencies. The anti-Sandinista armies were largely financed and equipped by the United States, though initially (1980–81) ex-Sandinistas and non-Sandinista Somoza opponents resisted government policy from hastily organized guerrilla political fronts. These fronts included the Union Democrática Nicaragüense (UDN), the 15th of September Legion, and the Milicias Populares Anti-Sandinistas (MILPAS). Both fervent ex-Somoza supporters (in the 15th of September Legion) and ex-Sandinistas (in the MILPAS) took up arms against the revolutionary government. By the end of 1981 the CIA orchestrated a merger of some of these fighters, nominally led by former Guardia Nacional colonel Enrique Bermúdez, into the newly created Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense (FDN), which received training and financial assistance from Argentine military advisers and the Honduran military with secret U.S. acquiescence and connivance.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;After March 1981, President Reagan authorized CIA operations against the Sandinistas. The CIA and other U.S. government agencies began to establish military, diplomatic, and covert networks throughout Central America to fight the Sandinistas, with major military installations in Honduras near Nicaragua’s northern border.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en379|&lt;span&gt;57&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The Reagan administration intended to debilitate the Nicaraguan economy and destabilize the political system with a strategy of low-intensity conflict (LIC), ostensibly mounted by Nicaraguan resistance fighters opposed to Sandinismo.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The anti-Sandinistas were divided politically, ideologically, geographically, and ethnically. Eventually, three major groups came to the fore: the FDN, whose name and political leadership evolved from 1981 until 1989 with changes in U.S. war assessments and policy; ARDE, founded in 1982 in Costa Rica by Edén Pastora and Alfonso Robelo; and MISURA, an army of indigenous people, many not much older than children, who fought against Sandinista repression of their traditional life-style. The Sandinista troops burned Miskito Indian villages in a 1982 counterinsurgency campaign and killed dozens of prisoners. These abuses made enemies for the Sandinistas just as they had for counterinsurgent armies in El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, and Colombia. The Sandinista army’s brutality and lack of political orientation in the early 1980s created more guerrillas—a pattern common in internal wars.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The anti-Sandinista groups consisted predominantly of peasant fighters and had some popular support. ARDE and MISURA were minor military operations but also were significant political components of the anti-Sandinista war because they featured anti-Somoza, non-Guardia Nacional leaders and, in the case of MISURA, highlighted the Sandinistas’ insensitivity toward indigenous peoples. The anti-Sandinista armies were heavily financed by the CIA; they all suffered internal factionalism and failed to develop sufficient autonomy to resist effectively periodic shifts in U.S. policy toward Nicaragua and the Central American civil wars. After 1984–85, when Robelo and Pastora quarreled and Washington’s assistance was temporarily reduced, ARDE virtually disappeared as a military force. While Sandinista efforts to repair their relations with the Indian groups were only partially successful, the isolation of the northeast coast and the small scale of combat made MISURA much less important than the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; forces based in Honduras. The Honduran-based anti-Sandinista armies remained under the command of former Guardia Nacional officers and soldiers and were supplied erratically but at times generously by the United States, subject to influence from the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa, the CIA, and even telephone calls from the State Department in Washington.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The anti-Sandinista armies had political allies among Nicaragua’s business and middle classes as well as support from peasants and Indian peoples negatively affected by Sandinista policies. They grew from perhaps 15,000 to 18,000 in the mid-1980s, more than double the force levels of Somoza’s National Guard, and were eventually provided with considerable armament, including the first surface-to-air missiles introduced into Central America’s guerrilla wars. Labeled variously “&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt;” (counterrevolutionaries), “Nicaraguan Resistance” (RN), or “freedom fighters” (by President Reagan), they marauded across Nicaragua and significantly damaged the economy through military attacks and sabotage. Between 1985 and 1987 they mounted hundreds of operations, inflicted thousands of casualties, and caused great economic hardship. The &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; remained a military and political threat until 1988, despite the upgraded counterinsurgency units developed under the direction of Cuba’s General Arnaldo Ochoa (who had commanded Cuban forces in Angola) and the deployment of Soviet-supplied helicopter gunship cover.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en380|&lt;span&gt;58&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; They literally bled support from the Sandinistas.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The war forced the Managua government to institute an unpopular military draft in 1983 and to divert more than half of its resources to the internal war. But even at the height of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; military pressure (1985–87), the insurgents did not seriously threaten to oust the Sandinista government by force of arms or to spark popular insurrection. They did make it impossible for the Sandinistas to carry out effective agrarian, social, and economic policies and forced the government to take account of the internal political opposition.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;To counter the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; threat, the government greatly expanded the armed forces (eventually to over 100,000); created special anti-guerrilla forces (BLI); imported directly, and via Cuba, Soviet-bloc weapons and helicopters; and organized a large militia. The Ministry of the Interior stepped up intelligence and counterintelligence operations, jailed dissidents, and expanded police surveillance of opposition (“counterrevolutionary”) activities. The Sandinistas’ heavy-handed police and security measures, press censorship, and ever-closer ties to Cuba and the Soviet Union reinforced U.S. propaganda characterizing Nicaragua as a totalitarian police state. At the same time, fighting the insurgency diverted resources and political energy from economic recovery and development. The war gradually demoralized the Nicaraguan people and undermined the Sandinista government. Estimates on war deaths in this nine-year period range up to 40,000, including &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt;, Nicaraguan army personnel, and civilians.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The insurgents drew not only popular support but also animosity as a result of the civilian casualties and widely advertised human rights violations as well as the destruction of transportation and communication networks, farm equipment, and crops. The &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; units never could hold territory for very long, but reporters traveling with them from 1984 to 1987 wrote of “&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; land”—zones in which peasants and villagers welcomed the insurgents’ presence and gave assistance. From the mid-1980s the Sandinistas modified their agrarian reform policies and actively sought to address peasant concerns to undercut support for the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt;. Political support for the Sandinistas generally remained strong enough in most of the country to deny the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; safe enclaves and “liberated zones” where they could operate as a parallel government, as did guerrilla groups in Colombia and El Salvador. But while the anti-Sandinista armies could not win militarily—that is, use guerrilla warfare to overthrow the Sandinistas and take power—the war left a mounting toll of dead and wounded, undermined Sandinista unity, and pushed the Nicaraguan government to take part in the regional peace process: Contadora (1983–87), and the peace plan initiated by Costa Rican president Oscar Arias and patched together incrementally in a series of Central American presidential summits beginning in Esquipulas, Guatemala, in 1986 and culminating (for Nicaragua) with elections in 1990.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en381|&lt;span&gt;59&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In this sense, President Reagan’s support for the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; was successful in that enough human and economic misery was inflicted on the country to force the Sandinistas to moderate their policies and ultimately to bring about their defeat in the 1990 elections.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en382|&lt;span&gt;60&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In the words of Robert Kagan, former deputy for policy to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, who participated in implementing the program that sustained the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt;: “No Nicaraguan government had ever been driven from office, or been forced to hold an election that could be lost, except by rebel guns or by foreign intervention. Guns alone could force the Sandinistas from power, and guns alone, therefore, provided sufficient pressure to force them to make changes to preserve power. . . . The &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; army was the only threat capable of forcing moderation on the Sandinistas.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en383|&lt;span&gt;61&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By supporting insurgent armies, mining Nicaraguan harbors, bombing oil and gas storage facilities, implementing an economic boycott, and pressuring the Managua government in every possible realm of diplomacy, the United States waged an undeclared war against the Sandinistas. Bracketed by the U.S. invasion of Grenada in October 1983 and of Panama in December 1989, many of these operations violated international law, but the Reagan and Bush administrations justified their actions as part of regional collective security measures to stem the tide of Marxist-Leninist (Soviet-Cuban) -inspired revolution. This surrogate war was part of the price that Nicaragua paid for the Sandinistas’ ongoing support for the FMLN guerrilla forces in El Salvador and elsewhere (which were also acts of intervention and violations of the sovereignty of neighboring states) and for alignment with Cuba in hemispheric affairs. The Grenada and Panama invasions made clear to the Sandinistas that the United States might resort to direct military intervention, if necessary, to achieve its objectives in the region.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;U.S. policy in Nicaragua also made evident the potential and risks of support for low-intensity conflicts as foreign policy instruments. Guerrilla warfare as a method was certainly not a monopoly of either Marxist-Leninist or Fidelista movements. Nicaraguan, Afghan, Ethiopian, and other “progressive” governments could be challenged as Che Guevara had hoped to challenge “oligarchic dictatorships.” U.S.-supported LICs were the flip side of the Soviet-encouraged “wars of national liberation.” And the government abuses that routinely accompanied counterinsurgency campaigns could inspire more guerrilla fighters and political opponents against revolutionary regimes as easily as against colonial regimes, “Caribbean dictatorships,” and facade democracies.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As the regional wars intensified, leaders in Latin America and the Central American states sought solutions that bypassed the superpowers or at least unhitched the conflicts from U.S.-Soviet concerns. The Contadora process (1983–87), and then the Arias peace plan, as accepted by the Central American presidents at Esquipulas in August 1987, focused on three main purposes: both political reconciliation and democratization within each Central American nation; and an end to intervention by governments and irregular forces across national boundaries.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en384|&lt;span&gt;62&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;To implement such agreements meant an end to Nicaraguan support for guerrillas in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and elsewhere. It meant as well an end to U.S. support for &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; armies based in Honduras and Costa Rica. Inasmuch as the FMLN maintained its political command in Managua and relied heavily on transshipment of Cuban weapons via Nicaragua, the FSLN could only abide by the accords by abandoning, or seriously limiting, its historical solidarity with the Salvadoran guerrillas. Similarly, the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; depended on bases in Honduras and Costa Rica as well as on U.S. financing, military intelligence, and logistical support. As an independent guerrilla force, they could not likely survive implementation of the Esquipulas II agreements. Yet many opponents of the Sandinistas, including those in the U.S. Congress, viewed the survival of (and threat of renewed military assistance to) the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; as the most effective leverage to convince the Sandinistas of the need for reform. Again, the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; were an instrument of U.S. policy despite their own fragmented agendas.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt;’ demobilization and reincorporation into civil society had become bargaining chips in a regional high-stakes poker game. As with the demobilization of guerrilla armies in Venezuela and Colombia in the 1960s (and El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1990s), the issue was no longer taking power and destroying incumbent regimes. Rather, the guerrillas’ existence and the threat of continued low-intensity conflict (for the United States but not for Nicaragua) had become methods of political persuasion or extortion. Whereas Venezuelan, Colombian, and Peruvian guerrillas had traded an end to armed struggle for amnesties and reincorporation into “legal politics,” from the 1960s to the 1980s the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; fighters in Honduras mostly rejected this option. But with few exceptions their political leaders (operating out of Miami and Washington and paid salaries by the CIA) recognized that they could not survive militarily without continued U.S. support and Honduran tolerance. Neither of these could be regained after 1987.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Even so, this fact was clearer with hindsight than it was in the war zones and in Managua, San Salvador, Havana, Moscow, and Washington in 1987. Mutual trust was lacking to effectively implement the Esquipulas II accords. The Soviet Union, Cuba, and Nicaragua continued to supply FMLN guerrillas with significant quantities of arms (including surface-to-air missiles) in 1989 until the failed “final offensive” in November that brought the war to San Salvador and other major cities. Likewise, the governments of Honduras, Costa Rica, and El Salvador continued limited support for the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; as leverage against the Sandinistas, even after the 1988 agreements on their demobilization. The United States was a reluctant participant in the peace process before George Bush replaced President Reagan in 1989. It insisted on maintaining the potential for reactivating the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; until the Nicaraguans democratized their society and suspended aid to the FMLN in El Salvador.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;For the Sandinistas, an end to political and military assistance to the FMLN and other guerrilla groups was a distasteful public acknowledgment of their role in regional insurgencies. Such an admission, and the commitment to refrain from supporting revolution in neighboring states, divided the leadership of the FSLN and the army (Ejército Popular Sandinista, EPS). It also required repeated, and repeatedly less credible, private reassurances to FMLN leaders that the public statements were tactical necessities rather than long-term commitments. Intransigent revolutionaries within the FSLN resisted caving in to U.S. demands, just as some &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; insisted on continued military pressure on Nicaragua.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By late 1987 the Sandinistas were willing to trade (though still not publicly) key elements of their support for the FMLN in El Salvador and insurgents elsewhere for an end to the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; war. A new constitution, implemented in 1987, seemed to consecrate the Sandinista Revolution, although its provisions for elections, pluralism, and traditional civil liberties and rights acted as a wedge for the political opposition. The Central American peace process and “pacification” initiated after Esquipulas II recognized the intertwined nature of the insurgencies in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala and their serious repercussions in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Mexico. The Central American presidents emphasized elimination of bases for rebel groups in neighboring nations as well as military support for insurgents across national borders. Such support had been critical to the FSLN in their “final offensive” in 1979 and was critical to the FMLN in El Salvador throughout the 1980s. The Esquipulas II accords committed the Sandinistas and other Central American governments to internal democratization and an end to cross-national support for insurgencies. This seemingly obvious compliance with international law and the principle of nonintervention conflicted in practice with both Sandinista and U.S. foreign policies. Neither “international socialist solidarity” nor Washington’s “regional security” doctrines were compatible with Esquipulas II. Moreover, policymakers in the Reagan administration viewed Sandinista participation in regional negotiations as “typical Communist ‘fight-talk’ tactics”—bargaining to gain time while pursuing the strategic objective of consolidating and expanding Communist-type revolutions.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en385|&lt;span&gt;63&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In addition to the military threat and the coincidental economic sabotage from 1981 to 1989, the Sandinista government faced the U.S. economic blockade, the recession that made the 1980s a “lost decade” for much of Latin America, and the deficiencies of its own economic policies that produced mind-boggling inflation rates of over 20,000 percent per year. By the late 1980s the Nicaraguan government was forced to adopt monetary and structural adjustment programs analogous to the neoliberal policies imposed by the IMF and World Bank elsewhere in the region. The revolutionary government, which had begun the 1980s with populist policies, big promises, and optimism for development, ended the decade with calls for belt-tightening to a population already exhausted by over a decade of warfare.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In February 1988 the Managua government reversed its previous public stance and opened talks with the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; in Guatemala. When the talks bogged down, the Nicaraguan army renewed its offensive against the insurgents and sent troops into Honduras in pursuit of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; forces, attacking the base at Bocay. This reescalation of the conflict threatened to precipitate a regional war with direct U.S. intervention. President Reagan ordered over 3,000 troops to Honduras, and the Honduran president, under great pressure from Washington, sent aircraft against Nicaraguan targets. He threatened to expand the air attacks deep into Nicaragua if the Sandinistas did not withdraw their forces.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en386|&lt;span&gt;64&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The Sandinistas ended their offensive after eleven days and requested UN confirmation of their withdrawal.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en387|&lt;span&gt;65&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;After these military engagements, talks were renewed between the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; and Sandinistas at Sapoá, near the Costa Rican frontier, on March 21–23, 1988, leading to a sixty-day cease-fire to be monitored by Nicaragua’s Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo and OAS Secretary General João Baena Soares. Further negotiations yielded agreements on redeployment of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; into designated “security zones” and on eventual amnesty, “national dialogue,” repatriation, and elections.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en388|&lt;span&gt;66&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Negotiations continued into July, punctuated by episodic fighting and increased bravado of the civilian opposition. After repressing participants at a meeting in Nandaime and arresting many of its leaders, Nicaragua expelled the U.S. ambassador and seven of his staff for “orchestrating destabilization.” The State Department responded by expelling the Nicaraguan ambassador, Carlos Tunnermann.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en389|&lt;span&gt;67&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Meanwhile, declining support for the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; in the U.S. Congress and the approaching presidential elections made their military situation untenable. Scandals over the CIA mining of Nicaraguan harbors and the Iran-&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; affair (1986), which had exposed covert arms sales to Iran to fund the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt;, angered even former supporters of President Reagan’s policies. Members of Congress refused further military (rather than “humanitarian”) aid. And Honduras’s government grew increasingly alarmed over the threat that the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; bases represented to its internal security. The Hondurans also disliked the increased publicity focused on &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; human rights violations and contract murders of Honduran and Salvadoran leftists. By mid-1988 the Hondurans, the Sandinistas, and the principal &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; political leaders all had their own incentives to seek a negotiated settlement—despite resistance from hard-liners in the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; armies, in the FSLN and EPS, and within the Reagan administration.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;On July 19, 1988, the Nicaraguan government unilaterally extended the cease-fire until August 30, then again extended it for the fifth time in late September. In March 1989 the Sandinistas released hundreds of former members of Somoza’s National Guard and readmitted ten priests whom they had expelled from the country in efforts to comply with the Esquipulas accords, thereby creating the proper tone for the upcoming presidential elections.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;With &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;perestroika&lt;/span&gt;, the Soviet political commitment to Nicaragua was eroding though military assistance continued, and the dynamics of the regional peace process pushed the Sandinistas to moderation, albeit grudgingly. The desperate economic situation and the loss of international support made peace a priority for almost all Nicaraguans. Still, the Bush administration retained the option of cranking up the anti-Sandinista armies if the Sandinistas offended the U.S. Congress with an escalation of military operations, blatant shipments of arms to the FMLN in El Salvador, or failure to comply with the ongoing Esquipulas II process. In practice, however, R. Pardo-Maurer, the former &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; political officer in Washington, concluded that “by 1989 the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; were little more than spectators of their own fate.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en390|&lt;span&gt;68&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The Sandinistas as well as the FMLN had learned directly the lessons of the Vietnam War: American public opinion and Congress were key battlefields for insurgents and opponents of U.S. foreign policy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;At the Central American presidential summit in Tela, Honduras, on August 5–7, 1989, Honduras agreed to push for disbanding the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; by December 5, and the presidents called on the OAS and the United Nations to form an International Commission of Support and Verification (CIAV) to oversee implementation of the Esquipulas II agreements. In the United States, the new Bush administration, while still resisting immediate &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; demobilization, supported the agreement in principle. In exchange, Nicaragua dropped its case against Honduras over the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; at the World Court.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ultimately, OAS and UN verification and peacekeeping missions allowed implementation of the modified Esquipulas II agreements. Thus ended Nicaragua’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; guerrilla war—but without fully establishing peace in the country. The Security Council formally created the UN Observer Group in Central America (ONUCA) in November 1989 with a mandate to verify the cessation of aid to irregular forces and insurrectionary movements and the nonutilization of any state’s territory to commit aggression against another state.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en391|&lt;span&gt;69&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Initial deployments began in December 1989 after the failure in El Salvador of the FMLN’s bloody “final offensive” (see the following chapter, this volume). ONUCA’s work in verification would be complemented by the CIAV’s assistance in demobilizing, relocating, and resettling the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; and their families.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Implementing the Esquipulas II agreements meant retrenchment for Nicaraguan and Cuban foreign policy on the Central American isthmus. Agreeing to this restraint on support for insurgents and revolution divided the Sandinista party and its backers. Indeed, elements of the EPS continued to provide new weapons to the FMLN well into 1990.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en392|&lt;span&gt;70&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Despite the necessity to negotiate with the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; and to renounce publicly support for the FMLN, the FSLN remained confident of popular endorsement and a victory in the elections scheduled pursuant to the peace accords. In any case, the FSLN government had survived nine years of U.S.-backed insurgency.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Then came the shock. The multiparty National Opposition Union (UNO) defeated the Sandinistas in the 1990 presidential elections. Much like General Augusto Pinochet in Chile’s 1988 plebiscite, the Sandinistas overestimated the extent to which the electorate’s gratitude for “liberating” the country had endured and underestimated the people’s exhaustion with war and sacrifice. Like General Pinochet, they were supported by a hard core of about 35 percent and were defeated by an opposition united primarily by their rejection of the incumbent government. Three days after the Sandinista electoral defeat, Secretary of State James Baker announced that the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; war was over.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en393|&lt;span&gt;71&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;From 1990 to 1997&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Victorious presidential candidate Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the widow of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, took office in late April 1990. The new government found thousands of Nicaraguans armed to the teeth. Rapid demobilization of the army from over 80,000 to approximately 20,000 sent thousands of disgruntled veterans into a polarized, impoverished society. Ex-&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; and ex-EPS soldiers and officers, sometimes making common cause and other times confronting each other, demanded pensions, land, and economic opportunities while resisting disarmament. The president appointed several ex-&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; to important government positions; she also attempted to cooperate with Humberto Ortega, who remained as army commander, and with “responsive” elements within the FSLN. She quickly lost the support of the more rightist elements in the UNO coalition. Violence by &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;recontras&lt;/span&gt; (ex-&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; who rearmed after April 1990) and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;recompas&lt;/span&gt; (ex-EPS or Sandinista guerrilla fighters) and increased criminal activity plagued the country. Numerous incidents involving ex-&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt;, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;recontras&lt;/span&gt;, and FSLN militants disrupted economic recovery and pacification as the army was further downsized to 15,000 men. In October 1990, two hundred &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; attempted to reoccupy the cooperatives at Waslala and Matagalpa; at least ten deaths resulted. Three months later, ex-&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; commander Enrique Bermúdez was assassinated in Managua. Plots, conspiracies, rumors of new armed conflicts, and paramilitary operations abounded. President Chamorro depended on the Sandinista-controlled army and police to maintain order.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite a January 1992 agreement with the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;recontras&lt;/span&gt; and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;recompas&lt;/span&gt; for definitive disarmament by February 3, over one thousand armed rebels from both sides occupied Ocotal in March. They demanded land and veterans’ benefits. Like the Salvadoran government after the 1992 peace accords in that country, the Chamorro administration lacked resources, administrative capabilities, and the political will to fully implement the peace agreements. The weakness and division of Chamorro’s UNO coalition and also fragmentation of the FSLN further confused the transition.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;By January 1993, twelve of the fourteen UNO coalition parties were in opposition to the administration; Chamorro “governed” in collaboration with moderate FSLN factions, her personal supporters, and independents in a country unable to recover from years of economic decline and warfare. In May 1993 she suspended constitutional guarantees in northern and central Nicaragua in response to roving armed bands of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;recompas&lt;/span&gt;, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;recontras&lt;/span&gt;, outlaws, and criminal gangs.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Political polarization increased and economic conditions for most Nicaraguans improved little from 1993 until 1996, when Managua’s conservative former mayor, Arnoldo Alemán, defeated Daniel Ortega in new presidential elections. Claiming fraud and irregularities, Sandinista protests presaged still more tension as 1996 ended. Regime legitimacy was called into question, and the efficacy of elections as a “free and fair” political instrument was questioned. The specter of renewed or episodic political violence to pressure the government on particular policies, or even to destabilize the regime, remained likely. Hard-line supporters of President-elect Alemán called for &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;pasando la cuenta&lt;/span&gt;—making the Sandinistas finally “pay for the past.” Some Sandinistas demanded armed defense against the government’s neoliberal policies and its supposed return to Somocismo.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The memories of the Sandinista struggle against Somoza, the impacts of the 1981–90 civil war, the continuing weakness of government institutions and the political party system, an armed citizenry, and the desperate poverty of the Nicaraguan people left open the possibility of renewed popular protests and even insurrectionary violence. Most elements in the FSLN had largely dropped their 1960s—80s revolutionary rhetoric and ambitions. They still hoped for a more nationalist, progressive, egalitarian, and prosperous Nicaragua but were no longer tied ideologically to the utopian socialism of Che Guevara. Like their counterparts in South America and Central America, many ex-guerrilla leaders had apparently become social democratic and democratic socialist politicians—and some even had become wealthy in the “privatization” program that the Sandinistas effected before leaving office.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#end en394|&lt;span&gt;72&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; This change did not necessarily preclude violence to attain political ends, but it did imply the end (or transformation) of the dream of a socialist &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;patria&lt;/span&gt; and of Che Guevara’s romantic vision as applied to Nicaragua.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Notes&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;endnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en323|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For background on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Nicaragua, see Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Central America: A Nati6on Divided,&lt;/span&gt; 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Richard Millett, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guardians of the Dynasty&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Orbis, 1977); Jaime Wheelock Román, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua: Imperialismo y dictadura&lt;/span&gt; (Havana, Cuba: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1980); Henri Weber, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua: The Sandinist Revolution&lt;/span&gt;, trans. Patrick Camiller (London: Verso Editions, 1981); John Booth, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution&lt;/span&gt; (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982); Thomas Walker, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua in Revolution&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Praeger, 1982); Thomas P. Anderson, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Politics in Central America: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Praeger, 1982); Claribel Alegría and D. J. Flakoll, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua: La revolución Sandinista, una crónica política&lt;/span&gt;, 1855–1979 (México. D.F.: Ediciones Era, 1982); Walter Lafeber, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America&lt;/span&gt; (New York and London: Norton, 1983); and Peter Rosset and John Vandermeer, eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Nicaraguan Reader&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Grove Press, 1983).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en324|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;On Augusto César Sandino, the guerrilla leader, see Neill Macaulay, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Sandino Affair&lt;/span&gt; (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971); Gregorio Selser, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Sandino general de hombres libres&lt;/span&gt; (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Universitaria Centro Americana, 1979); Carlos Fonseca, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Ideario politico de Augusto César Sandino&lt;/span&gt; (Managua: Secretaría de Propaganda y Educación Política, FSLN, 1980); Humberto Ortega Saavedra, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;50 años de lucha sandinista&lt;/span&gt; (México, D.F.: Editorial Di6genes, 1979); and U.S. Department of State, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;A Brief History of the Relations between the United States and Nicaragua, 1909–1928&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1928).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en325|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Dana G. Munro, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean, 1900–1921&lt;/span&gt; (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en326|&lt;span&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited in Millett, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guardians&lt;/span&gt;, p. 52.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en327|&lt;span&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See NACLA, “Nicaragua,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Latin America and Empire Report&lt;/span&gt; 10, no. 2 (February 1976): 26–27, 31–32; and Bernard Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza and the Legacy of U.S. Involvement in Central America&lt;/span&gt; (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1981), p. 57.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en328|&lt;span&gt;6&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited in Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza&lt;/span&gt;, p. 57.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en329|&lt;span&gt;7&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;In retrospect certain Sandinista leaders have made clear their Marxist inspiration and have even attempted to recast Sandino himself as a “solid anti-imperialist fighter,” though recognizing Sandino’s nationalist rather than Marxist-Leninist orientation. See Tomás Borge, “El FSLN y la Revolución Nicaragüense,” special separate of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Cuadernos del Tercer Mundo&lt;/span&gt; 6, no. 63 (August 1983).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en330|&lt;span&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;James Nelson Goodsell, “Nicaragua,” in Robert Wesson, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Communism in Central America and the Caribbean&lt;/span&gt; (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1982), pp. 52–53; James Wilkie, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Statistical Abstract of Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin America Center, 1976); Alain Birou, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Fuerzas campesinas y políticas agrarias en América Latina&lt;/span&gt; (Madrid: IEPAC, 1971), p. 35.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en331|&lt;span&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Alegría and Flakoll, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 148–53; Millett, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guardians,&lt;/span&gt; p. 225.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en332|&lt;span&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Millett, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guardians,&lt;/span&gt; p. 224; Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 57-60; Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Estirpe sangrienta: Los Somoza,&lt;/span&gt; 2d ed. (México. D.F.: Editorial Diógenes, 1980).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en333|&lt;span&gt;11&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/span&gt;, November 18, 1960, p. 1, cited in Millett, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guardians&lt;/span&gt;, p. 225.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en334|&lt;span&gt;12&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Doris Tijerino, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;lnside the Nicaraguan Revolution&lt;/span&gt; (as told to Margaret Randall), trans. Elinor Randall (Vancouver: New Star Books, 1978), p. 52; see also Booth, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The End&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 138-40.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en335|&lt;span&gt;13&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 60-61.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en336|&lt;span&gt;14&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Alegria and Flakoll, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, p. 168.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en337|&lt;span&gt;15&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Weber, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 35-36.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en338|&lt;span&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See interview with Tomás Borge in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Día,&lt;/span&gt; Mexico City, September 9, 1979, cited in Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza,&lt;/span&gt; p. 70.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en339|&lt;span&gt;17&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Interview in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Día&lt;/span&gt;, Mexico City, September 18, 1979, cited in Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza&lt;/span&gt;, p. 70.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en340|&lt;span&gt;18&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Interview, September 9, 1979, cited in Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza&lt;/span&gt;, p. 69.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en341|&lt;span&gt;19&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Alegría and Flakoll, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, p. 184.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en342|&lt;span&gt;20&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Interview in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Día&lt;/span&gt;, Mexico City, April 4, 1979, cited in Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza,&lt;/span&gt; p. 84.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en343|&lt;span&gt;21&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited in Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza&lt;/span&gt;, p. 85.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en344|&lt;span&gt;22&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., pp. 87-88.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en345|&lt;span&gt;23&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Anderson, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Politics&lt;/span&gt;, p. 154, citing “Nicaragua de las armas al poder: La familia Somoza,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Cuadernos de Amauta&lt;/span&gt; (Lima), no. 1 (August 1979): 15, and “No me voy,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Economist&lt;/span&gt;, September 2, 1978, pp. 66-67.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en346|&lt;span&gt;24&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza&lt;/span&gt;, p. 89.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en347|&lt;span&gt;25&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Millett, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guardians&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 235-36.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en348|&lt;span&gt;26&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Prensa&lt;/span&gt;, June 24, 1974, cited in Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza&lt;/span&gt;, p. 101.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en349|&lt;span&gt;27&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza&lt;/span&gt;, p. 102.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en350|&lt;span&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Weber, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, p. 33 (emphasis added).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en351|&lt;span&gt;29&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 38; Weber, citing official statistics, points to average inflation rates before 1970 of 1.7 percent per year, compared with 9.7 percent per year from 1971 to 1975 and 11 percent in 1977. See also Alegría and Flakoll, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, p. 218.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en352|&lt;span&gt;30&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Millett, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guardians&lt;/span&gt; pp. 236-37; Alegría and Flakoll, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 219–20 ; Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 93–105.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en353|&lt;span&gt;31&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Millett, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guardians&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 238-40.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en354|&lt;span&gt;32&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited in and translated from Alegría and Flakoll, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, p. 221.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en355|&lt;span&gt;33&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Alegría and Flakoll, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, p. 222.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en356|&lt;span&gt;34&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Henry Ruíz, in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, May–June 1980, pp. 18-19, cited in Alegría and Flakoll, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, p. 227.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en357|&lt;span&gt;35&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Humberto Ortega, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;50 Años&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 120-21.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en358|&lt;span&gt;36&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Booth, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The End,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 143-44, for a description of the ideological differences between these FSLN fragments. A slightly different characterization of the three splinters of the FSLN is that of Weber, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 53-55; see also Ricardo E. Chavarría, “The Nicaraguan Insurrection: An Appraisal of Its Originality,” in Walker, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 29-30.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en359|&lt;span&gt;37&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Interview with Dulce María Guillén, November 1979, cited in Alegría and Flakoll, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, p. 235.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en360|&lt;span&gt;38&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Weber, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, p. 53.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en361|&lt;span&gt;39&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (weekly published in London), November 1976.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en362|&lt;span&gt;40&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Booth, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The End&lt;/span&gt;, p. 128.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en363|&lt;span&gt;41&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;John Booth (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The End&lt;/span&gt;, p. 129) cites Somoza’s supporter in the Liberal Nationalist party as follows: “[Jimmy Carter’s] foreign policy, supposedly in favor of human rights, was a cynical instrument of pressure applied selectively to Nicaragua, which has no oil.” Bernard Diederich (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza,&lt;/span&gt; p. 117) notes that “although Jimmy Carter would later receive most of the credit for the United States’ tough human rights policy, it was the 1973–74 Congress which acted first to prohibit military and developmental assistance to gross violators of human rights, unless there were extraordinary circumstances justifying such assistance.” See also William M. LeoGrande, “The United States and the Revolution,” in Walker, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 63-70.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en364|&lt;span&gt;42&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Booth, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The End&lt;/span&gt;, p. 128.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en365|&lt;span&gt;43&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;This refers particularly to Representative Charles Wilson (D-Texas), John Murphy (D-New York), and Jim Wright (majority leader, D-Texas). For the attacks by Jack Anderson, see Jack Anderson and Les Whitten in the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;New York Post&lt;/span&gt;, August 18, 19, and 22, 1975; see also Alan Riding in the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Financial Times&lt;/span&gt; (London), August 13, 1975, and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/span&gt;, August 6, 1975.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en366|&lt;span&gt;44&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;James Cheek, political officer in the Managua embassy, was given the State Department’s Rivkin Award in recognition of his reports through the department’s Dissent Channel that contradicted the rosy reports of Ambassador Shelton. Cheek had described Somoza’s post-earthquake policies in harsh terms and clearly favored a shift in U.S. policy; see Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 104-6, and Millett, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guardians&lt;/span&gt;, p. 241.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en367|&lt;span&gt;45&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Somoza and Cox, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua Betrayed&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 296–97, 301. For support by American intellectuals for Somoza’s anti-Communism, see Council on American Affairs, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua: An Ally under Siege&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C., 1978).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en368|&lt;span&gt;46&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 155–56. Almost all Nicaraguans blamed Somoza for Chamorro’s assassination. Some accounts charge that his son, Anastasio III, led the attack. Others merely state that “guardsmen” killed Chamorro. Somoza claimed that the murder resulted from the anger of the blood bank owner over Chamorro’s article in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Prensa.&lt;/span&gt; See Anderson, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Politics,&lt;/span&gt; p. 157; Booth, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The End&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 157–58; and Chavarría, “The Nicaraguan Insurrection,” p. 30. The Chamorro family had been one of the most politically influential in Nicaragua from the time they provided the country’s first president (1853–55). Other Chamorros had been president of Nicaragua in 1875-79, 1917-21, 1921–33, and 1926. Thus, the assassination of the leader of the aristocratic opposition to Somoza left no one safe from the dictator.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en369|&lt;span&gt;47&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 160.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en370|&lt;span&gt;48&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Booth, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The End&lt;/span&gt;, p. 153; Weber, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua,&lt;/span&gt; p. 41.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en371|&lt;span&gt;49&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 176-88; Chavarría, “The Nicaraguan Insurrection,” p. 31.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en372|&lt;span&gt;50&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Tom Fenton, Associated Press, September 9, 1978, cited in Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza,&lt;/span&gt; p. 180.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en373|&lt;span&gt;51&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Alegría and Flakoll, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 344–71; Anderson, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Politics,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 160–62 ; Chavarría, “The Nicaraguan Insurrection,” pp. 32-34.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en374|&lt;span&gt;52&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Alegría and Flakoll, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 379-82.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en375|&lt;span&gt;53&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., pp. 387–89; Weber, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;, p. 58.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en376|&lt;span&gt;54&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Anderson, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Politics&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 161–62, 165.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en377|&lt;span&gt;55&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Diederich, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Somoza&lt;/span&gt;, p. 217, for description of the worldwide collaboration against Somoza.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en378|&lt;span&gt;56&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See “Target Nicaragua,” NACLA, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Report on the Americas&lt;/span&gt; 16, no. 1 (January-February 1982): 2-45; Susanne Jonas, “The Nicaraguan Revolution and the Reemerging World War,” in Walker, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 375-89; Anderson, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Politics,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 183-93; Booth, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The End,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 222-27; Weber, Nicaragua, pp. 86-144; William M. LeoGrande, “Revolution in Nicaragua: Another Cuba?” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Foreign Affairs&lt;/span&gt; 58 (1979): 28–50; and James Petras, “Whither the Nicaraguan Revolution?” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Monthly Review&lt;/span&gt; 31 ( 1979): 1-22.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en379|&lt;span&gt;57&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The history of the U.S. role in the anti-Sandinista guerrilla war has been treated in numerous books using as sources interviews with former combatants in the various guerrilla groups, Nicaraguan and U.S. government documents, and firsthand accounts. While these histories vary in detail and accuracy regarding dates of skirmishes and battles, types of weapons, motivation of individual actors, roles of U.S. diplomats and intelligence agents in Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Washington, and the extent &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;of contra&lt;/span&gt; and Sandinista human rights violations, all of them agree on the overwhelming role of the United States in sustaining the war against the Nicaraguan government. The CIA attempted to micromanage both the military and political sides of the war; ultimately, decisions made in Washington in Congress regarding funding were more important than the performance of the anti-Sandinistas in battle in determining the nature of the settlement negotiated between 1987 and 1990. For different accounts of the war and the U.S. role, see Christopher Dickey, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Touchstone Books, 1985); R. Pardo-Maurer, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Contras, 1980–1989: A Special Kind of Politics&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Praeger, 1990); Sam Dillon, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Commandos: The CIA and Nicaragua’s Contra Rebels&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Henry Holt, 1991); Peter Kornbluh, “U.S. Role in the Counterrevolution,” in Thomas W. Walker, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revolution and Counterrevolution in Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt; (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 323–49; Roger Miranda and William Ratliff, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Civil War in Nicaragua: Inside the Sandinistas&lt;/span&gt; (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1993); and Robert Kagan, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977–1990&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Free Press, 1996). Pardo-Maurer joined the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras&lt;/span&gt; as a political officer in 1986, serving as a special assistant to the Washington Office of the Nicaraguan Resistance until the Sapoá cease-fire of 1988; Miranda, assistant chief of staff of the Sandinista armed forces from 1982 to 1987 and top aide to Defense Minister Humberto Ortega, defected and became an important source of information to the CIA and the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contras;&lt;/span&gt; and Kagan was deputy for policy to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, 1984-88.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en380|&lt;span&gt;58&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Kagan, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;A Twilight Struggle,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 253–56.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en381|&lt;span&gt;59&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For an overview of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; war and the Sandinista response, see Thomas W. Walker, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Nicaragua: The Land of Sandino&lt;/span&gt;, 3d ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 41–66.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en382|&lt;span&gt;60&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For overlapping treatments of the peace process, see Darío Moreno, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Struggle for Peace in Central America&lt;/span&gt; (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1994); James Dunkerley, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Pacification of Central America&lt;/span&gt; (London: Verso, 1994); and Jack Child, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Central American Peace Process, 1983–1991&lt;/span&gt; (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1992).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en383|&lt;span&gt;61&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Kagan, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;A Twilight Struggle&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 721-22.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en384|&lt;span&gt;62&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;On Contadora, see G. Pope Atkins, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Latin America in the International Political System,&lt;/span&gt; 3d ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), pp. 321-25; Fernando Cepeda Ulloa and Rodrigo Pardo García-Peña, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Contadora: Desafío a la diplomácia tradicional&lt;/span&gt; (Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes, Centro de Estudios Internacionales, 1985); and Moreno, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Struggle for Peace&lt;/span&gt;, passim.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en385|&lt;span&gt;63&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Interview with Constantine Menges, adviser to the National Security Council, Washington, D.C., March 15, 1985, cited by Moreno, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Struggle for Peace&lt;/span&gt;, p. 216, n.10.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en386|&lt;span&gt;64&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Rumors that U.S. pilots flew missions against Nicaraguan targets persisted. In her autobiography, President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro writes: “Two American F-5 bombers reportedly bombed Sandinista army positions. Sandinista troops suffered losses and were surrounded by the Honduran army. The Honduran government issued a deadline to Nicaragua to remove its troops; otherwise they would suffer expulsion by force. On March 18, Humberto Ortega called a halt to the offensive.” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Dreams of the Heart: The Autobiography of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro of Nicaragua,&lt;/span&gt; with Sonia Cruz de Baltodano and Guido Fernández (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p. 253.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en387|&lt;span&gt;65&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Child, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Central American Peace Process,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 51-55.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en388|&lt;span&gt;66&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., p. 54.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en389|&lt;span&gt;67&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Kagan, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;A Twilight Struggle,&lt;/span&gt; pp. 612-19, for details on the crackdown at Nandaime.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en390|&lt;span&gt;68&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Pardo-Maurer, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Contras&lt;/span&gt;, p. 125.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en391|&lt;span&gt;69&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Child, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Central American Peace Process,&lt;/span&gt; chap. 6 passim.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en392|&lt;span&gt;70&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;José Angel Moroni Bracamonte and David E. Spencer, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Strategy and Tactics of the Salvadoran FMLN Guerrillas: Last Battle of the Cold War, Blueprint for Future Conflicts&lt;/span&gt; (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1995), pp. 149-51. Spencer “spent five years between 1987 and 1992 travelling to and studying the guerrilla war in El Salvador. He served as a political consultant to the armed forces.” Moroni Bracamonte is the pen name of “a combatant in the war. He participated in most of the major battles.”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en393|&lt;span&gt;71&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Child, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Central American Peace Process,&lt;/span&gt; p. 90.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c10.html#ref end en394|&lt;span&gt;72&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The last-minute appropriation of all sorts of government assets by the Sandinistas was called &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;la piñata&lt;/span&gt; in Nicaragua—a reference to the traditional scooping up of trinkets after breaking the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;piñata&lt;/span&gt; at children’s parties.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;chapter&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;El Salvador&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> <br /> === &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Political Chronology&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;tableau&quot;&gt;<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable none&quot;<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1931–44<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Dictatorship of General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Matanza&lt;/span&gt; (1932)—massacre of thousands of Indians, peasants, and “subversives”; repression of labor and opposition political movements.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1944<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Popular uprising, student strikes, May–October; internal coup in October, followed by elections.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1945–48<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of General Salvador Castaneda Castro. Amnesty for opposition; mild reforms opposed by Conservative oligarchy and most of military; labor activism and political protests resurge. Elections of 1948 preempted by “progressive” coup in December 1948.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1948–50<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Major Oscar Osorio emerges as strongman of new military government. Election law (1949) outlaws political parties based on religion, sex, class, foreign financial support, or Communist affiliation. Osorio forms new official party (PRUD) to maintain military control.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1950–56<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Colonel Oscar Osorio. PRUD government emphasizes economic modernization, public works programs, and political continuity. Moderate reforms of labor law permit some legal union activity as regime seeks a popular base.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1956–60<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Colonel José María Lemus. Economic recession cripples public works programs; political unrest increases, with small but vocal pro-Cuban forces emerging in 1959–60. Regime resorts to repression and incarceration of opposition but cannot forestall military coup.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1960<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |New junta with three civilian members seeks to “open” political system; amnesty for exiles and political prisoners. Some junta members voice support for the Cuban Revolution.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1961<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |United States supports countercoup headed by Colonel Julio Adalberto Rivera; interim civilian-military directorate governs until elections in April. New official party, PCN, emerges.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1962–67<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Colonel Julio Adalberto Rivera. Close ties with United States and participation in Alliance for Progress and Central American Common Market. Growing strength of populist and Christian Democratic political movements; strong economic growth and modernization.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1967–72<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of General Fidel Sánchez Hernández. Continuation of mid-1960s reforms and economic programs; economic recession dampens support for PCN. “Soccer War” against Honduras (1969) provides nationalist impetus, but growing political opposition threatens PCN dominance. National Opposition Union challenges regime in 1972 elections; Colonel Arturo Armando Molina elected through fraud and intimidation.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1972–77<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Colonel Arturo Armando Molina. With electoral option eliminated, some of opposition turns to armed struggle; FPL initiates military activity; ERP goes into combat (1971–72); FARN and FAPU emerge as “non-Marxist” politico-military alternatives. PCN candidate wins elections in 1977.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1977–79<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of General Carlos Roberto Romero. Faces massive opposition to electoral fraud and continuation of PCN regime. Violence and political opposition increase, as does guerrilla activity against government. Break with Carter administration over human rights issue. Coup ousts Romero (October 1979). United States supports coup in hopes of installing more acceptable administration and gaining popular support to defeat guerrillas.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1979–84<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Political instability; succession of juntas and presidents amid worsening political, economic, and military situation. By 1981–82 country submerged in civil war with growing U.S. commitment to “military solution.” Military operations by government and guerrillas intensify at end of 1983 and beginning of 1984.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1984–89<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of Christian Democrat José Napoleón Duarte. Civil war expands as United States seeks to upgrade Salvadoran military and FDR-FMLN adapts to new counterinsurgency doctrine and operations. Increasing<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |casualties, economic sabotage, and intensity of war; political mobilization and strikes by students, transport workers, government employees.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1984<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Duarte invites guerrillas to negotiate at La Palma (October). Second round of talks at Ayagualo (November). Initial hopes give way to more combat. Kissinger Commission calls for increased military aid to El Salvador, attention to human rights violations.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1985<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |FMLN faction kidnaps Duarte’s daughter; negotiates return and that of captured government officials for release of political prisoners and evacuation of FMLN wounded out of the country.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1986<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Earthquake (October 10); 1,200 dead and many injured; widespread property damage.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1987<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Intermittent negotiations and combat. Central American presidents sign Esquipulas II accords (August); Guillermo Ungo and Rubén Zamora (FDR) return to country from exile; Duarte amnesties four hundred political prisoners and declares fifteen-day cease-fire (November). Political parties, except PDC, withdraw from National Reconciliation Commission (November). Convergencia Nacional formed, includes Zamora and Ungo who air differences with FMLN.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1988<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |ARENA victorious in legislative elections and wins nearly three-quarters of municipalities; splits in PDC weaken Duarte further. FMLN supports forty-eight-hour transport strike (September); FMLN leaders meet with Costa Rican President Arias (October); FMLN attacks national police headquarters (November).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1989<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |FMLN proposes to turn elections into “contribution for peace” and participate if postponed until September; government rejects postponement. Government admits that over fifty mayors have resigned due to FMLN threats and assassinations. Visiting U.S. vice president Dan Quayle warns Salvadoran armed forces to improve human rights record. Alfredo Cristiani wins presidency with 53.8 percent of vote; inaugurated in June.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1989–94<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of President Alfredo Cristiani (ARENA). Negotiations with FMLN; FMLN declares ten-day cease-fire (September). FMLN-government talks in Mexico City. Renewed FMLN offensive in ten provinces (September<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1990). FMLN-government talks in Costa Rica without accords.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1989<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |FMLN launches “final offensive” (November 13), which lasts until November 23 but fails to incite popular insurrection. Jesuits murdered at Universidad Centroamericana during offensive (November 15). Government adopts new antiterrorism law.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1990<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Under UN auspices, FMLN and government sign accords in Geneva to end conflict through political means; government and FMLN agree on negotiating agenda in Caracas (May); talks in Costa Rica deadlocked.<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1990–92<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Negotiations punctuated by guerrilla operations and economic sabotage. FMLN declares unilateral cease-fire (November 1991); government and FMLN sign accords in New York preparing for end of war (December 1991). Peace accords signed at Chapultepec Castle, Mexico City, and Law of National Reconciliation approved (January 1992); cease-fire begins (February 1992); ONUSAL starts verification of peace accords (February 1992). Ad hoc commission begins review of military officers, Truth Commission begins investigation of violence during the war. List of officers to be purged delivered to UN and President Cristiani (September 1992); Day of National Reconciliation marks end of war (December 15, 1992).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1992–94<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Slow implementation of accords. Legislature approves general amnesty law (March 1993). Defense Minister Ponce calls Truth Commission report an insult to Salvadoran armed forces (March 1993). Explosion destroys FMLN arms cache in Managua (May 1993).<br /> |-<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |1994–<br /> | class=&quot;filet_x filet_x&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; valign=&quot;top&quot; |Administration of ARENA President Armando Calderón Sol. Continued difficulties with implementation of peace accords, provision of veterans’ benefits, reincorporation of FMLN militants into civilian life.<br /> |}<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Background&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The political and economic history of El Salvador, like that of most Latin American countries, is the story of agricultural boom and bust tied to a mono-crop export trade that depends on extreme exploitation of the indigenous population and rural poor. Balsam trees, cacao, cochineal dye, indigo, coffee, henequen, cotton, and sugar have provided the basis of wealth and power for several hundred families who controlled the colony, the nineteenth-century republic, and the twentieth-century nation-state. Each of the export booms intensified the misery of the rural labor force and appropriated increasing amounts of the communal lands, smallholds, and tenancies into the hacienda-plantation economy of the rural oligarchy. Finally, in the 1970s, the most recent cycle of agricultural modernization and proletarianization of the rural work force provided the social context for revolutionary civil war.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en395|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Maintaining a colonial type of economy and social structure into the late twentieth century, El Salvador has experienced, in all its history, only the briefest interlude of “political opening”—the optimistic era following World War I. This interlude, coinciding as it did with the export-induced prosperity of the 1920s, ended with the international economic collapse of the Great Depression in the 1930s, a collapse that would ultimately lead in 1932 to the loss of the modest political reforms enjoyed by the nation’s small urban population.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In early 1932 the dictatorship of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez responded to an abortive rural insurrection, which had been encouraged by the country’s Communist party, with the brutal and indiscriminate massacre of thousands of Indians and campesinos. This massacre, called, literally, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Matanza&lt;/span&gt; (the massacre), is the benchmark for modern Salvadoran history in the same way that the counterrevolution of 1954 is the benchmark for modern Guatemalan history.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en396|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;After &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Matanza&lt;/span&gt;, the government outlawed worker organizations, fiercely repressed the Communist party, and restricted freedom of press, assembly, and general political activity. The dictatorship executed Agustín Farabundo Martí, a founder of the Communist party and a militant in the guerrilla forces of Sandino in Nicaragua in the late 1920s, along with other Communist leaders. Martí’s name and the example of his revolutionary endeavors became, in the late 1970s, the symbol of the politico-military organizations that brought revolutionary guerrilla warfare to El Salvador—a country bypassed by the wave of guerrilla movements in the late 1960s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;From the time of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Matanza&lt;/span&gt;, the small Salvadoran oligarchy, with wealth based on coffee, cattle, cotton, sugar, and agribusiness, allied with selected military leaders to maintain firm control of the nation. Despite some important divisions within the elite class based on personalist, ideological, and economic differences, basic agreement existed on the need to preserve social and political order. A dramatic mythology surrounding the peasant insurrection of 1932 buttressed the oligarchy’s determination to prevent a repetition of the “subversion” and the threat to “Western Christian values” by the “great unwashed hordes” of Indians and campesinos who made up the majority of the population. This threat “justified” a permanent vigilance by security forces and National Guardsmen in the rural areas.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;From 1932 to 1944 the dictatorship of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez paralleled the repressive regime of Ubico in Guatemala. Until 1941, vocal supporters of the fascist regimes of Europe occupied important government posts in El Salvador. Bizarre, mystical, and brutal, Hernández Martínez later served as the model for the tyrannical dictator in Gabriel García Márquez’s brilliant novel, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Autumn of the Patriarch.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en397|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Popularly called &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;el brujo&lt;/span&gt; (the warlock), the dictator reportedly responded to a measles epidemic by ordering that streetlights be wrapped in colored cellophane to purify the air and wipe out the pestilence, while at the same time refusing to adopt the measures recommended by international health experts. He expressed his views in homilies such as: “It is good that children go barefoot. That way they can better receive the beneficial effluvia of the planet, the vibrations of the earth”; and “It is a greater crime to kill an ant than a man, because a man who dies is reincarnated while an ant dies forever.” &lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en398|&lt;span&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Surveying the Salvadoran scene in the year before &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Matanza&lt;/span&gt;, a U.S. military attaché to Central America, A. R. Harris, wrote:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;About the first thing one observes when he goes to San Salvador is the number of expensive automobiles on the streets. There seems to be nothing but Packards and Pierce Arrows about. There appears to be nothing between these high-priced cars and the oxcart with its barefooted attendant. There is practically no middle class between the very rich and the very poor. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The situation is ripe for Communism and the Communists seem to have found that out. On the first of December 1931, there was in the Post Office in San Salvador over 3,000 pounds of Communist literature emanating from New York City, which had been confiscated by the postal authorities during the previous month.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The authorities seem to realize that the situation is dangerous and are quite alert in their fight against Communistic influences. One thing in their favor is that the people never go hungry. The poor can always get fruit and vegetables for nothing and they can steal firewood. . . . Also, since they never had anything, they do not feel the want very acutely of things they have never had. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A socialistic or Communistic revolution in El Salvador may be delayed for several years, ten or even twenty, but when it comes it will be a bloody one.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en399|&lt;span&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Not until fifty years later would Major Harris’s predictions be tragically confirmed.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The wave of liberalization that swept Latin America toward the end of World War II ended the reign of most Central American dictators. Student protests, popular unrest, and political pressure from the U.S. embassy over the death of a wealthy American’s son finally pushed the dictator of El Salvador into a hasty resignation and flight from the country in 1944. Shortly thereafter, the country experienced its first labor strikes in twelve years and a brief upsurge of political activity by reformist movements. The threat of the spread of the reformist process from Guatemala and increased worker militancy destabilized the “elected” government of General Salvador Castañeda Castro (1945–48). Convinced of the need for economic modernization, development, and diversification to stave off radical reforms, elements of the Salvadoran military and segments of the ruling oligarchy supported a military coup.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1948, Colonel Oscar Osorio, leader of a military faction favoring modernization of the Salvadoran polity and of the economic infrastructure, came to power in a coup, followed two years later by “elections” to legitimize the new administration. Modernization meant building a small industrial base; government investment in roads, dams, and power facilities; and encouragement of export growth in cotton and cattle. A new constitution recognized limited rights of organization for urban labor and adopted social and labor legislation reminiscent of that incorporated into the Mexican Constitution of 1917. El Salvador was only several decades behind the times. Colonel Osorio even attempted to create a military-dominated political party (Revolutionary Party of Democratic Unification, PRUD) modeled on the successful Mexican ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Economic modernization provided some new opportunities for professionals and middle-class entrepreneurs; it also allowed for the expansion of the government apparatus and the beginnings of a clientelistic political organization, similar to that of Mexico. A small minority of urban workers and migrants found jobs in a nascent manufacturing sector. For the majority of peasants and most of the rural labor force, however, modernization meant a continuation of the process of proletarianization: loss of land, loss of employment opportunities, and loss of hope for a future in the countryside.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en400|&lt;span&gt;6&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1956, Colonel Osorio gave way to his hand-picked successor, the official candidate of PRUD, Colonel José María Lemus. The effort to replicate Mexico’s successful dominant-party system failed, however, as the military proved unable to respond effectively to economic recession, rising unemployment, and popular protests. When the Cuban Revolution inspired new hope in El Salvador’s weak and fragmented leftist and reformist movements, Lemus reacted swiftly, filling the jails with political prisoners and directing the military to suppress forcefully the increasing manifestations of student and worker discontent. Even moderate political opposition was accused of Communist connections, and the torture and beating of some prisoners angered even certain elements of the oligarchy.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Though organized labor, opposition political movements, and the revolutionary organizations of El Salvador were weak, even by the standards of Central America, the political and social ferment of the early 1960s seemed, in some ways, to conform to Che Guevara’s analysis in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;. Certain features of the Salvadoran situation, however, would allow the entire decade of the 1960s to pass without the creation of any significant revolutionary guerrilla movement in the countryside. Thus, in terms of the conditions enumerated by Che Guevara and reviewed in the other case studies in this volume, El Salvador, notwithstanding important similarities, exhibited some significant idiosyncrasies.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> # El Salvador lacked any semblance or history of real liberal democracy, or even distant memories of a substantive reformist era (e.g., Guatemala, 1944–54; Venezuela, 1945–48). The general population lacked any positive identification with the political system. However, there also existed no prototypical Caribbean dictatorship by 1960 to serve as an archetypal enemy for revolutionary campaigns of popular mobilization. &lt;span&gt;Like Guatemala, El Salvador lacked an effective political party system or significant centrist parties before 1960. Indeed, in this respect, El Salvador might have been even further removed from a modern party system than Guatemala. Labor organizations, student movements, and other popular organizations were extraordinarily weak, thereby further reducing the likelihood that liberal democracy and pluralism would develop.&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span&gt;In contrast to the Guatemala case, the military-civilian party, PRUD (later PCN, Party of National Reconciliation), constituted a real electoral machine that also distributed patronage, favors, government contracts, and career opportunities to selected civilians and military officers. At its lowest levels, PRUD/PCN even incorporated lower-middle-class and working-class militants, thereby creating a clientelistic network that provided some support for the regime. This made the political system somewhat more complex and less vulnerable than a typical personalist Caribbean dictatorship (e.g., Somoza’s in Nicaragua).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> # The physical terrain of El Salvador offered little in the way of isolated hinterland where guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;focos&lt;/span&gt; could establish safe training and staging areas or consolidated bases. Notwithstanding some mountainous and volcanic territory, the density of El Salvador’s population and the very small size of the country provided few of the geographic advantages enjoyed by guerrillas in the other nations treated herein. &lt;span&gt;By the late 1970s and early 1980s the revolutionary movements of El Salvador claimed to have made the people their mountains (as shelter). Realistically, however, the physical terrain of El Salvador imposed significant limitations on the development of the sort of guerrilla operations envisaged by Che Guevara in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> # As in Guatemala, Colombia, and Peru, the “agrarian question” in El Salvador was of primary economic and political importance to large numbers of the population. Most of the country’s foreign exchange in 1960 derived from agricultural exports, and over 60 percent of the population still sought to earn a living in the countryside. The recent and continuing loss of peasant lands to capitalist agriculture (1940–60) created conditions of rural proletarianization reminiscent, in some ways, of pre-revolutionary Mexico at the turn of the century. &lt;span&gt;In these respects, opportunities to gain political support with appeals for agrarian reform corresponded closely to Che Guevara’s prescriptions. Moreover, the high degree of concentration of good agricultural land (in 1961 less than 10 percent of agricultural units controlled almost 80 percent of the land), the close relationship between the landowners and security forces, and the overt and systematic political and economic exploitation of the peasantry and rural labor made the objective conditions of the countryside ideal for those revolutionary movements inspired by the message of Che Guevara. These conditions also meant that the elites of El Salvador would fiercely resist any efforts at agrarian reform, opposing even the type of palliative reforms or colonization of new lands that had occurred in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and even Guatemala.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> # El Salvador’s revolutionary Marxist tradition was relatively young and very weak. After &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Matanza&lt;/span&gt; of 1932, the Communist party was all but destroyed and was outlawed. Rural labor organizations were illegal, and only limited organizing occurred even in urban areas before the 1960s. Indian &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;cofradías&lt;/span&gt; of the sort that participated in the 1932 insurrection offered a potential model for clandestine resistance,&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en401|&lt;span&gt;7&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; but before the early 1970s no effective political opposition forces operated in the countryside. &lt;span&gt;These conditions meant that a strictly &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; approach to guerrilla warfare and revolution would confront the dilemma of a largely unorganized and politically unsophisticated population that was intimidated by the presence of National Guard and security force units. Only long, hard political-organizing efforts could even secure a safe staging area for a guerrilla operation. Without a Sierra Maestra and without a strong revolutionary organizational linkage to the rural population (unlike the Communists in Cuba, for example), any Salvadoran guerrilla movement faced a difficult task in creating the subjective conditions needed for revolution.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en402|&lt;span&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;El Salvador in the 1960s&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Colonel Lemus’s government did not survive the socioeconomic ferment of 1960. In October 1960 junior officers and civilian professionals overturned the PRUD administration in a move characterized as a “progressive” coup. Promising genuine elections, a literacy campaign in the countryside, and economic reform, the new junta lasted only three months; fearful of “another Cuba,” the United States orchestrated a “stabilizing coup” by a group of colonels headed by Julio Adalberto Rivera. To emphasize the U.S. commitment, President John F. Kennedy declared: “Governments of the civil-military type of El Salvador are the most effective in containing Communist penetration in Latin America.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en403|&lt;span&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1962, in a move to “legitimize” his administration, Colonel Rivera resigned from the junta, created the Party of National Conciliation, and “won” the presidential election.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en404|&lt;span&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The PCN supported a government-controlled labor movement (Confederación General de Sindicatos, CGS) which, in turn, received funding, training, and anti-Marxist ideology from the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD). With this labor confederation as a centerpiece, the PCN government created a populist image and a facade of political liberalization. Relying heavily on U.S. economic assistance, President Rivera chose the clasped hands of the Alliance for Progress as the logo for the new ruling party and attempted to give a veneer of democracy to the PCN-military regime. Although Rivera and his successor, General Fidel Sánchez Hernández (1967–72), accepted the rhetoric of civic action as well as funding for irrigation projects, schools, roads, and food subsidy programs, neither they nor the Salvadoran oligarchy compromised on the most critical issue of all: agrarian reform. Moreover, in an effort to extend PCN influence and control in the countryside, the governments of the mid-1960s supported the creation of the Organización Democrática Nacionalista, or ORDEN. ORDEN had no formal budget and no formal link to the state apparatus, yet the director of the Guardia, General José Alberto “Chele” Medrano, dispersed government patronage, credit, land, jobs, and access to services to thousands of PCN supporters in the countryside.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This clientelistic system included at its core some ten thousand paramilitary working-class and peasant auxiliaries to buttress the military-political apparatus of the PCN and to serve as part of the counterinsurgency operations in the countryside. Under mounting U.S. pressure to conform to the objectives of the Alliance for Progress, the Rivera administration combined its civic action operations with a slight liberalization of the political process. A new electoral law provided for proportional representation, thereby bringing opposition political parties and movements into the formal arena of political debate. In accord with the times, the Salvadoran leadership attempted to give the country’s political institutions a democratic facade. The nascent Christian Democratic party (founded in 1960), though weaker than its sister parties in Venezuela, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Peru, and Chile, managed to grow quickly and by 1968 challenged the PCN for control of the national legislature and elected mayors in the country’s principal cities.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The “political opening” coincided with an economic boom based on the expanding volume and value of agricultural exports and even a certain growth in industrial output as El Salvador participated in the Central American Common Market. This boom also implied further proletarianization of the peasantry and concomitant migration to the urban areas and to neighboring Honduras. From 1961 to 1975 the proportion of the rural population that was landless increased from 12 percent to 41 percent.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en405|&lt;span&gt;11&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In this sense the economic upturn contained the seeds of future discontent when the export market softened and El Salvador temporarily lost access to the markets of Honduras because of the so-called Soccer War of 1969.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en406|&lt;span&gt;12&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The war resulted, in large part, from the fact that neighboring Honduras also faced U.S. pressure to enact agrarian reforms and to comply with the charter of the Alliance for Progress. Resentful of the asymmetry of Honduran-Salvadoran economic relations and looking for a politically palatable manner of implementing some land redistribution without challenging its own rural oligarchy, the Honduran government notified many of the 300,000 Salvadoran residents that they had thirty days to leave their land and jobs in Honduras. In June 1969, Honduras ended its open border policy, closing the frontier to Salvadoran immigrants. El Salvador attempted to block the reentry of its citizens, fearing the effects of hundreds of thousands of returning peasants and workers, and protested to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. A month later, Salvadoran military forces entered Honduras, defeated Honduran ground forces, and cut the roads to Nicaragua and Guatemala. Only U.S. threats of economic sanctions against El Salvador persuaded that country’s government to end the conflict.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The military victory over its larger neighbor temporarily diverted attention from the growing socioeconomic crisis in El Salvador. But the ultimate repatriation of the majority of the peasants from Honduras so intensified the pressure for land that General Sánchez Hernández proposed a “democratic program” of agrarian reform.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en407|&lt;span&gt;13&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In January 1970 a National Agrarian Reform Congress declared land concentration a major barrier to the country’s development and also urged recognition of the right of rural labor to organize unions.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;For the first time, progressive members of the Catholic Church in El Salvador took a strong public stand favoring agrarian reform. Right-wing terrorists retaliated, anticipating the frequent torture and murder of progressive priests and nuns in El Salvador later in the decade. With modest beginnings, a new “popular church” of “base communities” and politically oriented clerics pushed for reforms and social justice. Just a few years later, following the example of Camilo Torres in Colombia, priests and religious workers died as combatants in the guerrilla struggle or as victims of right-wing death squads.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In spite of this new national focus on the agrarian question and mounting Catholic pressure for social reform, the Salvadoran oligarchy remained intransigent. They were ultimately successful when a rightist-&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;oficialista&lt;/span&gt; victory in the legislative elections of 1970 guaranteed that the proposals for agrarian reform and for limitations on the political power of the landowners in the countryside would be placed on the back burner.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Meanwhile, two new progressive political organizations had joined the Christian Democrats in opposition: the Revolutionary National Movement (MNR), a social democratic type of movement led by Guillermo Ungo,&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en408|&lt;span&gt;14&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; and the Democratic Nationalist Union (UDN), in reality a legal front group for the outlawed Communist party. In September 1971, anticipating the upcoming legislative, mayoral, and presidential elections, the Christian Democrats, the MNR, and the UDN created a united National Opposition Union (UNO). Subjecting this opposition to harassment, physical violence, and, finally, “disqualification,” the official PCN presidential candidate, Colonel Arturo Armando Molina, secured victory only through electoral fraud and administrative irregularities. After further fraud in the legislative election of March 1972, Colonel Benjamín Mejía, commander of the Zapote barracks, led an abortive coup supported by Christian Democratic leader José Napoleon Duarte. The Salvadoran air force bombed the rebel barracks to defend the PCN “victory,” while the U.S.-supported CONDECA (Central American Defense Council) forces of Guatemala and Nicaragua flew arms and equipment to San Miguel to support the regime. Hundreds of deaths, numerous arrests, and the imposition of martial law confirmed the PCN “electoral” victory.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Thus, the “political opening” of the 1960s proved to be a mirage. Encouragement of political opposition and elections did not mean that the oligarchy and their allies in the armed forces were willing to accept a real transfer of power through elections or even military-directed programs of progressive modernization. The ruling elites of El Salvador, unlike those of Venezuela, Colombia, and Peru, demonstrated convincingly that no alternative to violence and revolution existed if significant reforms were to occur. Colonel Molina’s “electoral” victory destroyed the opportunity to make a transition to a regime of moderate civilian reformers, and set the stage for revolutionary guerrilla movements whose leaders had learned many lessons from the military failures of their brethren in other Latin American nations in the 1960s and from the successes of the Viet Cong in Vietnam.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Origins of the Guerrilla Movements and Politico-Military Organizations&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;The tendency toward fragmentation and sectarianism of the political left, so common in Latin America, proved extreme in El Salvador, even though a small country with a small population. From the founding of the first politico-military organization by dissidents of the country’s Communist party (as in Venezuela, Guatemala, and Colombia), a confusing array of revolutionary organizations evolved to challenge the status quo from 1970 through the mid-1980s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1970 the secretary general of the Communist party, Salvador Cayetano Carpio, rejected the official political line of his party. Breaking with the party and its legal front, UDN, Cayetano Carpio and his compatriots formed the Popular Liberation Forces (FPL).&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en409|&lt;span&gt;15&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Years of struggle in the labor movement and within the ranks of the Communist party had convinced Cayetano Carpio that a literalist application of Che Guevara’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; thesis would not succeed. Nevertheless, he and the FPL “armed commandos” attempted to initiate the armed struggle without a vanguard party, planning instead to build, over time, a political vanguard forged in the fires of combat. In Cayetano Carpio’s own words:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The initial group started virtually from zero. We lacked logistics, infrastructure, funds, arms and, if that weren’t enough, we lacked military know-how. But at the same time, the people needed to be shown that on the strength of their own forces, they could and should take up arms against their enemies. . . . So we had to choose between putting off the solution of that necessity and offering the people organizations that were incomplete and had already shown their inefficacy as all-around means of struggle or else form armed commandos. We chose the latter course. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In all honesty, we can state that, from the start, we ruled out the guerrilla &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; theory. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In that regard, we were helped a great deal by the experience of some guerrilla movements in South America and in other countries that were removed from the people, that failed to reach out to them to organize them and that succumbed to militaristic designs. . . . After building support groups, we attained a certain degree of influence among the working class and the student movement. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Therefore, it would appear that we travelled unorthodox paths. . . . But in fact, we set out to create the conditions which, in turn, created the Marxist working class party.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en410|&lt;span&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;For two years the FPL placed primary emphasis on building a political and military base. After the fraudulent elections of 1972, the organization moved into visible military-guerrilla operations. After 1972 the FPL remained one of the most important revolutionary, military, and political organizations in El Salvador, continuing the struggle against succeeding military-civilian governments and juntas, even after Cayetano Carpio took his own life in April 1983 when he learned that Melida Araya Montes, his second-in-command, had been assassinated by supposed revolutionary comrades.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A second politico-military organization, the Peoples’ Revolutionary Army (ERP), emerged in 1971–72 as an alliance of young Communists (Juventud Comunista), radical Christian Democratic youth, intellectuals, and professionals. Initially more narrowly committed to the military struggle than the FPL, ERP urban operations, such as bombings and bank robberies or kidnappings to raise funds for military operations, drew more attention than the quieter political work of the FPL. Though it rejected a literalist &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foquista&lt;/span&gt; line, the ERP emphasized guerrilla-inspired insurrection rather than protracted popular war, thereby following closely the spirit of the Cuban and Nicaraguan experiences. Driven by personalist and ideological divisions, however, the ERP fragmented into several distinct factions; at one point in 1975 internal strife even led to the assassination of the revolutionary poet, Roque Dalton. Moreover, in the view of one writer, the ERP’s early actions had many negative effects on all Salvadoran revolutionary forces—effects that were only partially ameliorated in the late 1970s:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The line regarding short-term victory generated military conceptions and solutions for every type of activity or problem and reflected a profound underestimation, even scorn, for the revolutionary movement of the Salvadorean masses, channeled through different methods, forms and means of struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Militarism for its part not only isolated the ERP from the people but from the very development of the political process in El Salvador. Because it expected a rapid denouement of class contradictions and spent its time preparing the instruments of war, the ERP was unable to influence the forces that were developing in the critical phases of the social movement.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As a logical consequence of the foregoing, the ERP underwent even greater division.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en411|&lt;span&gt;17&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;Joaquín Villalobos, a principal leader of the ERP, recognized some of the errors in the ERP’s tactics, in particular the excessive emphasis on strictly military solutions and the lack of attention to creating the subjective conditions for revolution. To correct this deficiency, the ERP created in 1978 a movement for the masses, the 28th of February Popular Leagues (LP-28), and in 1980 a new revolutionary political party, the Party of the Salvadoran Revolution (PRS), to which, in theory, the military arm, the ERP, would be subordinate.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As a result of the internal divisions in the ERP and the assassination of Roque Dalton for “treason” (not accepting the militarist line), there arose a third politico-military organization, the National Resistance (RN), and its military arm, the Armed Forces of National Resistance (FARN). In 1974 the National Resistance was linked, in turn, to a heterogeneous political movement, the United Popular Action Front (FAPU), that drew together many of the Catholic reformers and revolutionaries who had joined the struggle against the incumbent regime. Urging the establishment of a democratic and revolutionary government, FARN leaders also emphasized the possibility of attracting middle-class and “patriotic” military officer support —as had the guerrilla movements in Venezuela, Colombia, and Guatemala.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The RN and its military arm, the FARN, rejected the “popular armed insurrection” approach of the ERP as well as a narrow &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foquista&lt;/span&gt; line. Instead, the RN emphasized political work and military resistance to government and rightist attacks. This resistance included a number of highly publicized kidnappings of businessmen and managers of multinational corporations and even the assassination of the Israeli consul in El Salvador.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Between 1975 and 1979 the various revolutionary military organizations and political movements placed mounting pressure on the nation’s military governments. In 1979 the Communist party of El Salvador (PCS) finally joined the military struggle officially after decades of electoral and organizational alliances with opposition parties. PCS leader Schafik Jorge Handal explains the party’s decision:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;After the February 20, 1977, ballot-box fraud, large-scale battles took place in the country. It was a week of insurrections, and the PCS played the role of the principal leader in the eyes of the people. It was precisely after those events that the majority of the people began to support armed struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Then, the PCS also changed, with a Political Commission decision in April 1977. However, eleven years of legal struggle and electoral participation had left their mark upon us as well. Over 87 percent of the PCS membership in February 1977 had joined the Party during that period and had been educated in that form of struggle. The time-honored Leninist thesis on the need to be prepared for all forms of struggle to be able to switch from one to another is not easy to apply, as we certainly found out in practice.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;. . . Two years behind the times, we took the step in the direction of armed forms of struggle. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;From the start, we were well aware that the ballot box was not the way to take power, but we were also convinced that it was necessary to lead the people to learn for themselves, in the school of experience. . . .&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Salvadorean people and their candidates running on the ticket of the National Opposition Union (UNO) won the 1972 and 1977 presidential elections by a comfortable margin, but the ballot was not respected.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en412|&lt;span&gt;18&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;During 1979 the PCS began to create armed militias, adopting the name of Armed Forces of Liberation (FAL). Shortly thereafter, the old UDN joined other mass organizations in the Revolutionary Coordination of the Masses (CRM), thereby committing the major Communist-front organization to participation in the revolutionary struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Still another revolutionary military organization took shape in 1979, the Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers (PRTC). Basing its political program on the objective of regional revolution and the defeat of imperialism, the PRTC split in late 1980, with its more “nationalist” elements focusing on the Salvadoran reality. Drawing leaders from the old (1972) ERP and Communist labor organizations, the PRTC remained a minor, though dedicated, force in the revolutionary left.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Thus, by 1980 the variety of politico-military organizations in El Salvador presented a confusing alphabet soup of revolutionary activity. The table, adapted from Liisa North’s study of El Salvador, synthesizes the evolution of organizations on the revolutionary left into the early 1980s.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en413|&lt;span&gt;19&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; (See next page.)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Despite the extreme fragmentation of the revolutionary forces in El Salvador, the victory of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1979 provided immense encouragement to the various insurrectionary movements. “If Nicaragua was victorious, so too will be El Salvador” became a new slogan of the guerrilla armies and political organizations. Increasing political agitation, protests, strikes, and opposition violence pushed the Romero government into even more brutal repression. With the apparent approval of the U.S. embassy and more progressive military officers, General Carlos Roberto Romero was ousted in a bloodless coup in October 1979. Civilian politicians, including Guillermo Ungo, Héctor Dada, Rubén and Mario Zamora, and Ramón Mayorga, attempted to form a reformist junta but were unable to bring the military establishment under political control. A subsequent junta in which the Christian Democrats participated also failed to resolve the fundamental contradictions of the Salvadoran civil war.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the meantime, the committed revolutionary politico-military organizations refused to place any faith in reformist juntas or nonmilitary solutions. The enthusiasm generated by the revolutionary victory in Nicaragua led, in the short term, both to further political unification (the foundation of the Democratic Revolutionary Front [FDR] in April 1980) and to an overly optimistic announcement in January 1981 of a “final offensive” that would bring the revolutionaries to power. After a relatively successful general strike in mid-1980, the “final offensive” inflicted some damage on government installations and intensified pressure on the declining economy. It failed, however, to achieve its principal objective: military victory. Recognizing the failure of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;triunfalismo&lt;/span&gt; (a strategy of quick victory), the revolutionaries retrenched and continued the war.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;illustype_image_tab&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;caption&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Organizations, Associated Popular Organizations, and Political Directorates&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;credits&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Sources&lt;/span&gt;: Liisa North, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bitter Grounds&lt;/span&gt;: &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Roots of Revolt in El Salvador&lt;/span&gt; (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1981); Cynhtia Arson, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Background Information on the Security Forces in El Salvador&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;and U.S. Military Assistance&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Policy Studies, 1980); Ricardo Sol, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Para entender El Salvador&lt;/span&gt; (San José, Costa Rica: Departemento Ecuménico de Investigaciones, 1980); Tommie Sue Montgomery, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revolution in El Salvador&lt;/span&gt; ( Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;With a new presidential administration in the United States, El Salvador received prime billing as the “front-line” of the “Soviet-Cuban-U. S. confrontation” that highlighted the foreign policy agenda of the Reagan administration .&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en414|&lt;span&gt;20&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In the meantime, the polarization of the political-military conflict in El Salvador engendered new levels of ferocity. The year before President Ronald Reagan’s electoral victory in the United States, the number of political assassinations in El Salvador increased greatly, including as their victims leaders of the Christian Democratic party, student leaders, and Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, who had enraged army officers by calling on Salvadoran soldiers to obey God’s law and refuse to kill their brothers. From January through October 1980 numerous beatings, shootings, and atrocities on Church personnel and property made clear the regime’s intolerance of Catholic reformism and calls for social justice. By the end of the year the administrator of the country’s Human Rights Commission, six of the FDR’s executive committee members, and four American women missionaries had joined the thousands of victims of civil war and rightist violence.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en415|&lt;span&gt;21&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Notwithstanding the growing evidence of terrorism on the regime’s part, outgoing president Jimmy Carter authorized renewed military aid to the “centrist” Salvadoran junta in January 1981 and lifted the arms embargo imposed earlier in his administration. At the same time, Cuba and Nicaragua increased their support for the Salvadoran revolutionaries with the formation of the United Revolutionary Directorate (DRU) to coordinate the military activities of the various politico-military organizations. The indigenous origins of the revolutionary organizations now seemed overshadowed by the extent to which the Salvadoran conflict took on regional and international meaning for the United States, the Soviet Union, Cuba, Nicaragua, and the other nations of the Western Hemisphere.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Politico-Military Evolution of the Guerrillas in the 1980s&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;From 1980 to 1984 the revolutionary Salvadoran politico-military organizations were prevented from achieving military victory only by increasing levels of U.S. military and economic assistance, military training, and massive U.S. intervention in Salvadoran politics. Even though centrist reformers and progressive military officers were shunted aside after December 1981, U.S. officials continued to orchestrate and finance elections in an effort to legitimize the succession of juntas and “presidents.” In addition, the U.S. embassy, in a desperate attempt to shore up the old order, encouraged agrarian reform programs modeled on the “pacification” operations carried out in South Vietnam as well as a variety of civic action-public works projects.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en416|&lt;span&gt;22&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Commenting on these efforts, a former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Robert E. White, predicted that “the United States now can only postpone the inevitable day of reckoning when the Right exacts its price, and that price is either the elimination or the total neutralization of the Christian Democrats. That day is coming. Whether it will be in two months or six months, I don’t know.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en417|&lt;span&gt;23&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;From the time the Reagan administration released the so-called white paper on El Salvador in early 1981, it was clear that that nation had become “the place to draw the line” against revolution in the hemisphere. Just as the U.S. administrations of the 1960s had sought to prevent “more Cubas,” the Reagan administration intended to prevent “more Nicaraguas” in Central America. But U.S. military advisers, economic and military assistance, and a hemispheric diplomatic offensive against “Communist subversion” could not create either a willingness among the Salvadoran military to fight or political legitimacy for makeshift governments. Even the large turnout in the national elections of March 1982 (which some observers estimated at 102 percent) served ultimately to reinforce rightist political movements because the left and the FDR-FMLN refused to participate, and the Christian Democrats lost ground to a coalition of rightist and military forces.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Since U.S. policymakers had hoped that a Christian Democratic victory would both consolidate the authority of José Napoleón Duarte and symbolize the moderate-reformist face that the United States wished to paint on the Salvadoran government, the victorious alliance of Robert D’Aubuisson’s ARENA with other rightist forces represented a serious defeat for U.S. policy. ARENA’s campaign slogan promised that El Salvador would be the tomb of the “Reds,” and D’Aubuisson, former director of the National Guard’s Intelligence Service, had even promised to prosecute leading Christian Democrats for treason.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Divisions within the Christian Democratic party from 1980 to 1984, along with the assassination of scores of mayors and party cadres, even while Duarte ostensibly headed the governing junta (March 1981), eroded even the facade of a moderate-reformist administration. In short, there was no viable political center in El Salvador. In the words of the leaders of the FMLN to President Reagan in December 1982: “To pretend that the solution to the Salvadorean conflict is the March elections, is . . . outside reality. How can a democratic process be guaranteed in the context of indiscriminate repression? If you can decide the destiny of the United States, it is because you hold your office by virtue of free elections. North Americans went to elections in peace, and this is the indisputable condition in order for a people to elect their governors.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en418|&lt;span&gt;24&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;This letter convinced the Reagan administration only of the need to step up the military campaign against the guerrillas and their political movements. By the fall of 1983, Americans asked the question, Is El Salvador another Vietnam? For the people of El Salvador—those who supported the counterinsurgency programs, those who wished only for peace, and those who supported or joined the opposition politico-military organizations—the accuracy of Che Guevara’s prediction of regional confrontation between the United States and revolutionary guerrilla movements was little consolation for the widespread death, devastation, and suffering they experienced.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the course of 1982 and 1983 the various revolutionary armed forces wreaked havoc on the Salvadoran economy, destroying bridges, electric installations, and even 70 percent of the Salvadoran air force at the Illopango Air Force Base in an attack in January 1982. Their frequent occupation of regional urban centers and towns embarrassed both the government and the United States. Moreover, the government’s response to the guerrilla operations vastly increased the death toll among combatants and civilians. By early 1983, U.S. policymakers publicly recognized the fragility of the Salvadoran government; massive increases in military assistance, training, and U.S. operations in neighboring Honduras underscored the real military success of the revolutionaries and the political failure of the Salvadoran junta. Nevertheless, by September 1983 this large U.S. commitment and more aggressive military tactics seemed to reverse the tide somewhat and to provide temporary breathing room for the incumbent government. U.S. naval maneuvers and amphibious invasion exercises, as well as open support for an army of Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries based in Honduras, emphasized both the threat against Nicaragua and the determination to defeat the Salvadoran revolutionary forces.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Again in March 1984 the United States promoted elections as a democratic solution to the Salvadoran conflict. The guerrilla organizations refused to participate and called upon their followers to continue the armed struggle. A runoff election in May 1984 made Christian Democrat José Napoleon Duarte president of El Salvador. The Reagan administration, which supported the victor’s candidacy with covert CIA funding and aid programs, declared that El Salvador was making progress toward true democracy. The leftist opposition, however, remained skeptical and the civil war continued.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In contrast to the Colombian, Venezuelan, Peruvian, and Guatemalan military, the Salvadoran armed forces proved incapable, in the early 1980s, of carrying out effective antiguerrilla operations. In 1983 and 1984, U.S. civilian and military personnel for all practical purposes directed, supplied, and managed the counterinsurgency operations of the Salvadoran government and guaranteed, for a while at least, the survival of the regime. Between 1980 and 1984, U.S. funding for El Salvador increased tenfold and the army’s size went from 12,000 to 42,000. These developments contrasted markedly with events in the rest of Latin America. Neither Cuban nor Nicaraguan revolutionary forces had faced an explicit U.S. politico-military commitment to the incumbent regime; indeed, quite the contrary was true. President Carter’s abandonment of the Somoza dynasty after 1977 paralleled the Eisenhower administration’s lack of support for Fulgencio Batista throughout 1958. Thus, in 1984 it was clear that the fragmented revolutionary forces of tiny El Salvador were confronting a far more difficult international and military situation than had the Cubans and Nicaraguans.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;The Course of the War, 1980–92&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Along with the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; war against Nicaragua, the guerrilla war in El Salvador became the central focus of the Reagan administration’s Latin America policy. For the entire 1980s decade, the United States designed, redesigned, and implemented counterinsurgency and political responses to the flexible, tenacious, and often successful guerrilla strategies of the FMLN. Relying heavily on Soviet, Vietnamese, Cuban, and Nicaraguan assistance, the FMLN experimented with various strategies and tactics, adapting to the political and military circumstances created by Salvadoran governments, shifts in U.S. policy, and the international environment.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Cuba and Nicaragua supported the 1981 “final offensive,” contingent on unification of the principal guerrilla factions. With the failure to provoke an immediate insurrection on the 1979 Sandinista model, the FMLN sought to wage conventional war against the armed forces from 1981 to 1984. Military operations focused on contesting political and military control over population and territory with the government and winning international recognition and legitimacy. But the FMLN also established political networks and allies within El Salvador, energetically recruiting support and cadres within peasant, labor, religious, and community organizations as well as among university students and faculty. Of particular importance was the ideological, theological, and personal connections of some FMLN &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;comandantes&lt;/span&gt; to the Jesuit community at San Salvador’s Universidad Centroamericana.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In 1983 the FMLN announced its proposal for a &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;gobierno de amplia participación&lt;/span&gt; (GAP), which would include representatives of all major political groups and integrate the guerrillas into the nation’s armed forces. The government and military viewed this proposal as a Trojan horse stratagem for subverting and conquering power. Still, it indicated a unique doctrinal and tactical flexibility by the FMLN, even if only as a public relations tactic, in its abandonment of exclusively military assaults on power and proposals for a negotiated political end to the war.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The United States responded to the guerrillas’ military successes with accelerated training, reorganization, and reequipment of the Salvadoran armed forces. Creation and training of immediate-reaction infantry battalions (BIRIs), special operations groups, and air cavalry units gradually transformed the armed forces. The first BIRI, the Atlacatl Battalion, led by Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Monterrosa, fought “for the Fatherland and with God” to resist the guerrilla momentum.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en419|&lt;span&gt;25&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In some ways archetypal of the new units, the Atlacatl Battalion became an effective military force, self-characterized as “El Salvador’s best.” It also became infamous for the atrocities attributed to its soldiers: a massacre of over five hundred persons at El Mozote (1981), the murder of civilians near Lake Suchitlán (1983), massacres at Los Llanitos and the Gualsinga River (1984), numerous reported incidents of torture and abuse of captured combatants (1985–87), rapes and executions of FMLN militants (1989), and the murder of six Jesuit priests and two women in the November 1989 rampage at the Universidad Centroamericana. This last action, ordered during the FMLN’s 1989 “final offensive” by the Salvadoran high command as punishment for the Jesuits’ supposed collaboration with that group, eventually cost the armed forces a drastic reduction in U.S. military assistance and increased pressures for a negotiated settlement of the civil war.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en420|&lt;span&gt;26&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;From 1984 to 1992 massive U.S. military and economic assistance, coupled with strategic reorientation that included the Unidos para Reconstruir (United to Reconstruct) counterinsurgency plan (1986), forced the FMLN to vary its tactical responses, although it always retained the ultimate objective of a “strategic counteroffensive” leading to a popular insurrection that would topple the regime. Under the general rubric of “prolonged popular war,” the FMLN waged a deadly and costly war of attrition against the Salvadoran government. By 1983–84 its fighters numbered some 10,000 to 12,000. After 1984 they dispersed into smaller units, making themselves less vulnerable to the guns of A-37 aircraft and helicopter-supported and better trained counterinsurgency forces. The FMLN’s guerrilla fronts varied their tactical operations, but they all carried out campaigns of economic sabotage that damaged or destroyed many of the country’s bridges, water-pumping stations, and power lines; they cut major roads (while charging “tolls” and “war taxes”) and mobilized effective political and militia support groups. Both land mines and political mines (student and labor strikes, mass protests, international propaganda and human rights campaigns) blasted San Salvador’s (and Washington’s) efforts to impose a military solution to the war.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The FMLN’s various factions continued to differ on strategic and tactical approaches but were united in seeking to erode government credibility and to sabotage the economy. They attacked coffee and cotton plantations, industrial enterprises, military and police garrisons, and utility installations. They murdered government officials and political supporters as part of the overall effort to weaken the regime, undermine the economy, and demoralize the army. From 1985 to 1990 the FMLN recruited civilian allies, fomented political fronts, and encouraged antigovernment action by opponents with distinct political agendas. The FDR-FMLN guerrilla politico-military organizations never represented a majority of Salvadorans, but they did make good on the strategic substitution of significant popular suppport for “the mountains.” Clandestine and overt urban, rural, religious, political, and economic networks opposing the government and the armed forces pervaded El Salvador.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The FMLN’s tactics were sometimes counterproductive. Terrorism, kidnapping (including that of President Duarte’s daughter in 1985), murders, the use of explosives and car bombs in urban areas, and extensive deployment of land mines detracted from the guerrillas’ moral credibility and increased military and civilian casualties. Such tactics were denounced by human rights activists and liberation theologians, who in other respects supported the guerrillas’ quest for the political transformation of El Salvador. Meanwhile, U.S. military assistance prevented a guerrilla defeat of the armed forces, and economic assistance served to repair the billions of dollars of damage inflicted by the insurgents on the infrastructure.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;A catastrophic earthquake multiplied the war’s impact in 1986, leaving over thirty thousand families homeless.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en421|&lt;span&gt;27&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; In October 1986 and May 1987 the FDR-FMLN offered to negotiate with any groups, without exclusion, that were interested in a political solution to the conflict. President Duarte decreed an absolute amnesty for political and other crimes associated with the war and a unilateral cease-fire, in the spirit of the Esquipulas II accords. Though promising, the 1987 “peace process” gave way to renewed fighting in El Salvador. The United States and the Salvadoran military still objected to “negotiating with terrorists,” although the influential Jesuit cadre at the Universidad Centroamericana had prophesized that only a negotiated settlement could resolve the Salvadoran conflict as early as 1981.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en422|&lt;span&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The defeat of President Duarte’s Christian Democratic party by the rightist ARENA in the 1988 legislative elections was viewed positively by the FMLN; their most militant leaders still believed that political polarization would prepare the way for the “final offensive” and victorious popular insurrection. Toward the end of 1988 the ERP’s Joaquín Villalobos wrote that objective conditions for a successful insurrection already existed and that the subjective conditions were on the verge of realization.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en423|&lt;span&gt;29&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Victory by ARENA’s Alfredo Cristiani in the 1989 presidential elections (in which the FDR participated and received 3.8 percent of the vote) seemed to doom the U.S. strategic link with the “political center” (Christian Democrats) and literally set the stage for the final act between the FMLN and the political right. Not even the pretense of a centrist solution remained, despite the ongoing peace negotiations initiated with the Esquipulas II accords. By the end of the 1980s the United States had spent over six billion dollars in economic and military assistance to El Salvador to prevent a FMLN victory, but it could not achieve either the political or military victory over the guerrillas envisioned by the Reagan administration. Resistance to reform by El Salvador’s political elite, the corruption and brutality of the armed forces, significant external political and military assistance to the FMLN, and the guerrillas’ creative and resilient responses to the counterinsurgency operations resulted in a stalemate.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en424|&lt;span&gt;30&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In the course of the war the FDR-FMLN became a highly sophisticated politico-guerrilla movement—far more worldly, militarily skilled, and battle-tested than anything imagined by Che Guevara in the 1960s. It organized political fronts and infiltrated popular organizations in rural and urban areas, operated propaganda networks in Europe, the United States, and Latin America, and adapted to changing regional circumstances.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en425|&lt;span&gt;31&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; It was heavily influenced, more so with time, by the Vietnamese experience that its members had learned about in Cuban and more distant training camps, recognizing that no definitive victory was possible unless the United States abandoned the Salvadoran government—as it had abandoned Batista in Cuba and Somoza in Nicaragua. The FMLN made good use of the Salvadoran military’s well-publicized human rights violations while downplaying its own use of political terrorism, murder, and brutality as part of the insurgent movement.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Aware of the fundamentally political nature of the war, the FMLN attempted throughout the 1980s to sabotage, discredit, and delegitimize the sequence of elections that brought a new constitution (1982), a civilian president (1984), a new legislature (1985), legislative renewal (1988), and presidential elections (1989). Parallel to this process of formal democratization, which the FMLN was never able to impede, came partially successful agrarian reforms, banking and tax reforms, and reorganization of the public administration. In 1984, President Duarte, like his Christian Democratic mentor Rafael Caldera in Venezuela in the 1970s, called upon the guerrillas to lay down their arms and reincorporate themselves into legal politics. The 1984 meeting at La Palma, subsequent talks in 1985, and the 1987 Esquipulas II accords failed to end the war but made it clear that Duarte preferred a political resolution rather than war to the death against the guerrillas. It also put pressure on the FMLN to be more responsive to reformist solutions—the same sort of pressure that most guerrilla movements could not resist in the rest of the hemisphere. This pressure was reflected in the writings, public statements, changing doctrine, and FMLN “peace proposals” from 1984 into the early 1990s, although the sincerity of such proposals was also questioned by U.S. policymakers, the Salvadoran armed forces, and ARENA.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en426|&lt;span&gt;32&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Duarte government and the FDR-FMLN maintained formal and informal contacts and exchanged “peace proposals” from 1984 to 1989 simultaneously with military offensives and rhetorical combat by both sides.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en427|&lt;span&gt;33&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; U.S. counterinsurgency strategy and that of the Salvadoran government included a much more complex understanding of the political side of guerrilla warfare in the 1980s than previously, shaped by the bitter Vietnam experience and the lessons of Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and elsewhere. Thus, in the Salvadoran guerrilla war, the government, guerrillas, and external actors synthesized the last three decades of national liberation struggles and low-intensity conflict in Latin America and elsewhere in the Third World—a military and doctrinal focus that unknowingly made a tiny Central American nation a “last battle” in the cold war. The FMLN’s fate and that of El Salvador itself were part and parcel of international and regional conflicts over which neither the nation’s guerrillas nor its government could exercise control.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As El Salvador was bloodied and brutalized, the discourse of 1960s and 1970s revolutionary socialism that had first inspired the guerrilla movements as well as the opposing U.S. anti-Communist rhetoric of the cold war was becoming archaic. Until the early 1990s, however, this change was not obvious to the antagonists in Central America, where Sandinismo battled to survive the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;contra&lt;/span&gt; war and the FDR-FMLN still sought political power in El Salvador using insurgency as its main instrument. Just as the FMLN was not Fidel Castro’s ragtag guerrilla army of late 1950s Cuba, it faced a military machine quite unlike that of Fulgencio Batista’s Caribbean dictatorship as its enemy. The complexity of El Salvador’s guerrilla struggle and the outcome of the prolonged popular war were not fully scripted in Che Guevara’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;. In broad outline, however, Che had anticipated the failure to take power by guerrillas where the semblance of liberal democracy could be sustained or constructed.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;From the 1989 “Final Offensive” to 1997&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;From November 11 to November 23, 1989, the FMLN unleashed its second “final offensive,” relying again, as it had in 1981, on the hope for urban insurrection in the country’s major cities to isolate and defeat the Salvadoran armed forces. Despite surprise tactics, pre-positioning of weapons, extensive clandestine urban organization, and impressively coordinated military operations, the lack of popular insurrection allowed the armed forces to recover from the initial blows and to drive the FMLN back into the countryside. Casualties and damage were heavy on both sides. The FMLN’s bringing the war to the cities and its ensuing withdrawal convinced U.S. policymakers, most of the Salvadoran elite, and even most of the army of the need for negotiations. The losses in blood and materiel and, most important, the miscalculation regarding the insurrectionary disposition of the population also convinced the FMLN that a negotiated settlement was essential, though not without forcing the government to act on demands for extensive constitutional, military, and socioeconomic reforms. Describing the 1989 “final offensive,” George Vickers perceptively captured its complexities:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;The November 1989 offensive resembled the 1968 Tet offensive by Vietnamese revolutionaries in several respects. In both cases, the scope and location of initial attacks caught government defenders by surprise despite prior warnings that an offensive was imminent; in both cases the guerrilla forces overestimated the degree of readiness of the urban population to rise up; in both cases the effort to stimulate an insurrection exposed part of the clandestine structure of the guerrillas in urban areas to repression; in both cases the guerrillas took heavier casualties than necessary because they left their forces exposed for too long a time; in both cases the military costs of the guerrilla offensive were more than offset by the political victories the offensive achieved. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;In the case of the FMLN offensive, the killing of the six Jesuit intellectuals by an army unit ensured that the political loss by the Salvadoran government would more than offset any military setbacks for the FMLN.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en428|&lt;span&gt;34&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;The murder of the Jesuits and the ensuing efforts at coverup by the armed forces doomed continued U.S. support for a military-dominated strategy in El Salvador. The U.S. Congress made further aid contingent on serious negotiations by the San Salvador government with the FMLN and on an investigation and prosecution of the guilty parties in the Jesuit case. Conversely, the casualties, expenditure of supplies and munitions, and failure to induce insurrection (as had occurred in Nicaragua in 1979) convinced the FMLN factions that negotiations were necessary, without as many preconditions as in the past. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the March 1990 electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and the new circumstances in Eastern Europe also influenced the FMLN’s move to negotiate even while the fighting did not end. In April 1990 the FMLN and the government agreed to UN-mediated negotiations, with an agenda that included reforms in the armed forces (and purges of officers guilty of human rights abuses), the electoral system, and the judicial system, guarantees on human rights, constitutional reforms, and a social pact on economic and social policies.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en429|&lt;span&gt;35&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Negotiations were tough; when no accord could be reached by September 1990, military skirmishes and political rhetoric again intensified. Nevertheless, the FMLN announced a new political program. Importantly, it no longer demanded a transition or coalition government as a condition for settlement, and it accepted constitutional democracy as the framework for Salvadoran politics, albeit with many and profound reforms: “an end to militarism; a new socioeconomic order; democratization; recovery of sovereignty and an independent foreign policy.”&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en430|&lt;span&gt;36&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; The FMLN, now as a legal political movement, would compete in a new democratic order much as had occurred with some guerrilla movements in Venezuela and Colombia in the 1970s and 1980s. They had not conquered power, as Che Guevara prescribed, but they could not compete for positions in government openly in contrast to the situation of the early 1970s that had provoked a call for armed struggle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Still, negotiated agreements on the basic agenda items came slowly and painfully. U.S. pressure, expressed in congressional reductions of, and limitations on, military assistance in October 1990, underlined the Bush administration’s commitment to ending the war and to UN mediation. Even the FMLN’s new military offensive (launched in November 1990), and the subsequent violation of the rules of war by executing U.S. servicemen captured after their helicopter was downed by surface-to-air missiles brought into the country from Nicaragua in contravention of the peace accords (January 1991), could not revive U.S. enthusiasm for the war.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The guerrillas and the armed forces, both supported by external agents, had fought to a stalemate. Moreover, the new Nicaraguan government demanded the return of the surface-to-air missiles, a request with which the FMLN partially complied. During 1991, negotiations and sporadic fighting continued; the FMLN also persisted in economic sabotage. More Salvadoran guerrillas, military personnel, and civilians became casualties in the last spasms of the civil war. Increasingly isolated from international support and as tired of war as the San Salvador government, the vast majority of the civilian population, and Washington, the FMLN moved cautiously but deliberately toward a negotiated settlement. Likewise, the Salvadoran government and armed forces, under attack for human rights abuses and pressured by the United States, sought relief in a peace accord. The peace agreement was signed at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City on January 16,1992, in the presence of UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and various heads of state.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en431|&lt;span&gt;37&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As in Nicaragua, the Salvadoran peace accords were difficult to implement. Also as in Nicaragua, however, neither side desired to reinitiate open warfare. Divisions within the FMLN, purges in the armed forces’ officer corps, and significant reductions in army manpower moved the country toward a tenuous and painful “peace” and public “investigation” of the past.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en432|&lt;span&gt;38&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; Presidential elections in 1994 reconfirmed ARENA’s hold on the government with the victory of Armando Calderón Sol; the FMLN became the second most important electoral force in the country with an important congressional delegation.&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#end en433|&lt;span&gt;39&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt; A slow economic recovery, the reappearance of death squads, a wave of violent crime and kidnapping for profit, and the desperate situation of many war veterans, displaced civilians, and exiles challenged the capacity of the “new democracy” as El Salvador entered 1997. Progress in constitutional reforms, the creation of a civilian-directed police force in the Interior Ministry, a redesigned curriculum in the armed forces’ officer training courses, and a fragile, but operative, party system and legislature transferred the nation from the list of “civil wars” to “new democracies.” Whether this move meant that the Salvadoran people had accepted the “lighter iron ball to be fixed to the prisoner’s chain,” as Che Guevara had written of political reforms in the 1960s, or whether they would experience a gradual long-term improvement in living conditions and democratization of politics had not been resolved by the 1992 peace accords at Chapultepec Castle.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Notes&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;endnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en395|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For useful overviews of twentieth-century Salvadoran socioeconomic and political development, see Thomas P. Anderson, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Matanza: El Salvador’s Communist Revolt of 1932&lt;/span&gt; (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971); idem, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The War of the Dispossessed: Honduras and El Salvador,&lt;/span&gt; 1969 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981): and idem, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Politics in Central America: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Praeger, 1982). See also Robert Armstrong and Janet Shenk, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Salvador: The Face of Revolution&lt;/span&gt; (Boston: South End Press, 1982); Enrique Baloyra, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Salvador in Transition&lt;/span&gt; (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982); David Browning, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Salvador: Landscape and Society&lt;/span&gt; (Oxford: Clarenden Press, 1971); James Dunkerley, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Long War: Dictatorship and Revolution in El Salvador&lt;/span&gt; (London: Junction Books, 1982); William H. Durham, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Scarcity and Survival in Central America: Ecological Origins of the Soccer War&lt;/span&gt; (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979); Marvin E. Gettleman et al., eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Salvador: Central America in the New Cold War&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Grove Press, 1981); Tommie Sue Montgomery, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revolution in El Salvador,&lt;/span&gt; 2d ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995); Liisa North, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bitter Grounds: Roots of Revolt in El Salvador&lt;/span&gt; (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1981); Stephen Webre, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Napoleón Duarte and the Christian Democratic Party in Salvadoran Politics, 1960–1972&lt;/span&gt; (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979); Alistair White, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Salvador&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Praeger, 1973); and Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Central America, A Nation Divided,&lt;/span&gt; 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en396|&lt;span&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The best-known analysis of the massacre of 1932 is Anderson’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Matanza&lt;/span&gt;. See also Armstrong and Shenk, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Salvador&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 16–32; North, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bitter Grounds&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 34-41; and Rafael Menjivar, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Formación y lucha del proletariado industrial salvadoreño&lt;/span&gt; (San Salvador: UCA, 1979).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en397|&lt;span&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Gabriel Garcia Márquez, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El otoño del patriarca&lt;/span&gt;, translated by Gregory Rabassa as &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Autumn of the Patriarch&lt;/span&gt; (New York: Avon Books, 1976).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en398|&lt;span&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Roque Dalton, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Las historias prohibidas del pulgarcito&lt;/span&gt; (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1974), pp. 125–26, cited in Armstrong and Shenk, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Salvador,&lt;/span&gt; p. 26.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en399|&lt;span&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited in Armstrong and Shenk, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Salvador&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 26-27.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en400|&lt;span&gt;6&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For data on the expansion of export agriculture and concentration of ownership of farmland in El Salvador, see Dunkerley, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Long War&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 59–66.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en401|&lt;span&gt;7&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a discussion of the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;cofradías&lt;/span&gt;, Catholic brotherhoods with distinctive Indian characteristics, see North, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bitter Grounds&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 36–38; and William L. Wipfler, “El Salvador: Reform as a Cover for Repression,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Christianity and Crisis&lt;/span&gt; 40, no. 8 (May 11, 1980).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en402|&lt;span&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Salvador Cayetano Carpio, a longtime Communist and then guerrilla leader, recognized these problems explicitly in interviews published, before his death, in Mario Menéndez Rodriguez’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Voices from El Salvador&lt;/span&gt; (San Francisco: Solidarity Publications, 1983), pp. 11-45.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en403|&lt;span&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Anderson, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Matanza&lt;/span&gt;, p. 157.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en404|&lt;span&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;In this election, AGEUS, the university student organization, offered a donkey as an opposition candidate, “the only candidate worthy to compete against officialism.” Tommie Sue Montgomery, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revolution,&lt;/span&gt; p. 74, citing Webre, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Duarte&lt;/span&gt;, p.47.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en405|&lt;span&gt;11&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Dunkerley, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Long War&lt;/span&gt;, p. 83, citing T. J. Downing, “Agricultural Modernization in El Salvador, Central America,” Centre for Latin American Studies, Cambridge University, occasional paper no. 32 (1978).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en406|&lt;span&gt;12&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The four-day war between El Salvador and Honduras was called the Soccer War by the media because it broke out after the two countries’ soccer teams had met in the qualifying rounds for the 1969 World Cup. See William H. Durham, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Scarcity and Survival in Central America&lt;/span&gt; (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979); Thomas P. Anderson, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The War of the Dispossessed&lt;/span&gt;; and Mary Jane Reid Martz, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Central American Soccer War: Historial Patterns and Internal Dynamics of OAS Settlement Procedures&lt;/span&gt; (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1978).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en407|&lt;span&gt;13&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Montgomery, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revolution&lt;/span&gt;, p. 82.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en408|&lt;span&gt;14&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;By the fall of 1983, Guillermo Ungo became a principal leader of the political directorate of the allied revolutionary forces (FDR) in El Salvador, after earlier attempting to create a reformist alternative to revolution in the country. Ungo’s father had been a founder of the Christian Democratic party.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en409|&lt;span&gt;15&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The founding and evolution of the FPL is described by Salvador Cayetano Carpio in Mario Menéndez Rodríguez’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Voices&lt;/span&gt;, pp. 13–25.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en410|&lt;span&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., pp. 35, 37-38.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en411|&lt;span&gt;17&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., pp. 90–91.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en412|&lt;span&gt;18&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Ibid., pp. 118–19; the translator has rendered PCS into CPS for English readers.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en413|&lt;span&gt;19&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;North, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bitter Grounds&lt;/span&gt;, p. 79; Montgomery, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revolution&lt;/span&gt;, p. 124.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en414|&lt;span&gt;20&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For strong support of the Reagan administration’s “new Cold War” policies, see Mark Falcoff, “The El Salvador White Paper and Its Critics,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Foreign Policy and Defense Review&lt;/span&gt; 4, no. 2 (1982): 18–24. For a critical view of U.S. policy toward El Salvador, see Arnon Hadar, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The United States and El Salvador: Political and Military Involvement&lt;/span&gt; (Berkeley: U.S.-El Salvador Research and Information Center, 1981); and Jenny Pearce, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Under the Eagle: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Caribbean&lt;/span&gt; (Boston: South End Press, 1982), pp. 205-78.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en415|&lt;span&gt;21&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a chronology of political violence from 1977 to 1981, see appendix 1 in North, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bitter Grounds&lt;/span&gt;, pp. v-xviii.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en416|&lt;span&gt;22&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Montgomery, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revolution&lt;/span&gt;, p.177, for a chronology of the elimination of the progressive officers, headed by Colonel Adolfo Majano, and the civilian reformists from the governing junta in 1981. For a justification of U.S. policy in El Salvador and Central America, see Thomas O. Enders, “The Central American Challenge,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Foreign Policy and Defense Review&lt;/span&gt; 4, no. 2 (1982): 8-17. An unusual insight into “ special operations” and training programs can be found in Rafael Lima, “Combat Surf: The Last Expedition to El Salvador,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Surfer&lt;/span&gt; 24, no. 10 (October 1983): 72–81.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en417|&lt;span&gt;23&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Gettleman et al., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Salvador&lt;/span&gt;, p. 356.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en418|&lt;span&gt;24&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Cited in Montgomery, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revolution&lt;/span&gt;, p. 187.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en419|&lt;span&gt;25&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Monterrosa was killed by the FMLN in 1984.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en420|&lt;span&gt;26&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Teresa Whitfield, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Paying the Price: Ignacio Ellacuria and the Murdered Jesuits of El Salvador&lt;/span&gt; (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994); U.S. Congress Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus, staff memorandum, “The Atlacatl Battalion and Alleged Human Rights Abuses,” Washington, D.C., April 25, 1990; and George Vickers, “The Political Reality after Eleven Years of War,” in Joseph S. Tulchin, ed., with Gary Bland, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Is There a Transition to Democracy in El Salvador?&lt;/span&gt; (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1992), pp. 25–57.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en421|&lt;span&gt;27&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;There are numerous accounts of the war and estimates on casualties, costs of economic damage, and the extent of U.S. economic and military assistance. Several key sources for understanding FMLN and Salvadoran military strategy and the progression of the war are: José Angel Moroni Bracamonte (pseud.) and David E. Spencer, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Strategy and Tactics of the Salvadoran FMLN Guerrillas&lt;/span&gt; (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1995); Sewall H. Menzel, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bullets vs. Ballots: Political Violence and Revolutionary War in El Salvador, 1979–1991&lt;/span&gt; (New Brunswick, N.J.: North-South Center, Transaction Publishers, 1994); Courtney E. Prisk, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Comandante Speaks: Memoirs of an El Salvadoran Guerrilla&lt;/span&gt; Leader (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991); Vickers, “The Political Reality,” pp. 25-57; Benjamin Schwarz, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;American Counterinsurgency Doctrine in El Salvador&lt;/span&gt; (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, 1992); Mario Lungo Uclés, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Salvador en los 80: Contrainsurgencia y revolución&lt;/span&gt; (San José, Costa Rica: EDUCA-FLACSO, 1990); Raúl Benítez Manaut, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La teoría military y la guerra civil en El Salvador&lt;/span&gt; (San Salvador: Universidad Centroamericana, 1989); Max Manwaring and Court Prisk, eds., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;El Salvador at War&lt;/span&gt; (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1988).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en422|&lt;span&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For Ignacio Ellacuría’s insistence on a “third force” and the need for the left and right to negotiate rather than make war, see Whitfield, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Paying the Price&lt;/span&gt;, esp. chap. 10.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en423|&lt;span&gt;29&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Joaquín Villalobos, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Perspectiva de victoria y modelo revolucionario&lt;/span&gt; (San Salvador: Edición Sistema Radio Venceremos, 1988), partially translated and reproduced in “Popular Insurrection: Desire or Reality?” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Latin American Perspectives&lt;/span&gt; 62, no. 3 (16) (Summer 1989).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en424|&lt;span&gt;30&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Schwarz, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;American Counterinsurgency Doctrine&lt;/span&gt;; Vickers, “The Political Reality”; and Kate Doyle and Peter Duklis, “The Long, Twilight Struggle: Low-Intensity Warfare and the Salvadoran Military,” &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Journal of International Affairs&lt;/span&gt; 43 (Winter 1990): 431-60.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en425|&lt;span&gt;31&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For a critical account and denunciation of the FDR-FMLN’s international fronts and propaganda efforts, see J. Michael Waller, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Third Current of Revolution: Inside the ‘North American Front’ of El Salvador’s Guerrilla War&lt;/span&gt; (Lanham, Md.; University Press of America, Council for Inter-American Security Foundation, 1991).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en426|&lt;span&gt;32&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See Menzel, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bullets vs. Ballots;&lt;/span&gt; and Courtney Prisk, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Comandante Speaks&lt;/span&gt; (interviews with a former FMLN leader who defected and provided valuable military intelligence to the Salvadoran armed forces and the United States and who was eventually assassinated by the FMLN).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en427|&lt;span&gt;33&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For texts of the FDR-FMLN and government proposals from 1983 to 1989, see IRIPAZ, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Cronologías de los procesos de paz, Guatemala y El Salvador&lt;/span&gt; (Guatemala City: Instituto de Relaciones Internacionales y de Investigaciones para la Paz, 1991), pp. 129–72.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en428|&lt;span&gt;34&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Vickers, “The Political Reality,” p. 53, n. 41, emphasis added.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en429|&lt;span&gt;35&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For the role of the United Nations in the El Salvador settlement, see &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The United Nations and El Salvador, 1990–1995,&lt;/span&gt; United Nations Blue Books Series, E.95.I.12 (New York, 1996).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en430|&lt;span&gt;36&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;“Proclama del FMLN a la Nación. La Revolución Democrática” (September 1990), cited in Eliseo Francisco Ortiz Rubio and Irene Sánchez, “El Salvador: La construcción de nuevos caminos,” in Carlos Vilas, coord., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Democracia emergente en Centroamérica&lt;/span&gt; (México: UNAM, 1993), pp. 263–74.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en431|&lt;span&gt;37&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;James Dunkerley, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Pacification of Central America: Political Change in the Isthmus&lt;/span&gt;, 1987-1993 (London: Verso Books, 1994), pp. 71-73.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en432|&lt;span&gt;38&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;De la locura a la esperanza, La guerra de 12 años en El Salvador&lt;/span&gt;, report of the Comisión de la Verdad, 1992–93 (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial DEI, 1993).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c11.html#ref end en433|&lt;span&gt;39&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;See George Vickers and Jack Spence, “Elections: The Right Consolidates Power,” NACLA, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Report on the Americas&lt;/span&gt; 27, no. 1 (July-August 1994): 6–11; and Alejandro Cantor, ed., &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Visiones alternativas sobre la Transición, un libro de debate&lt;/span&gt; (San Salvador: Editorial Sombrero Azul, 1993).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;part&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;IV. Postscript&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;chapter&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare into the 1990s&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;span&gt;Since the end of World War II, U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America has been dominated by global cold war concerns. Reagan administration policymakers justified economic and military assistance to Latin American nations as responses to the threat of Soviet imperialism, perceived of as a deadly menace to the very existence of the United States. From the first CIA covert military operation in 1954 through the 1980s, U.S. officials regularly justified their Latin America policy in terms of superpower confrontations.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Even as U.S. concerns for Latin America focused on Soviet-inspired Communist influence, the peoples of Latin America underwent profound socioeconomic change that intensified the already extreme inequities in the distribution of wealth, income, and opportunities throughout the region. The modernization of export agriculture, increased industrialization, and massive urbanization altered the demographic and occupational structure of the hemisphere. These changes placed even more pressure on the fragile yet often repressive governments of the region.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The old order in Latin America offered little hope for the vast majority of the people. Without land to till, adequate nutrition or jobs, housing, health care, or educational opportunities, the majority of Latin Americans cared little about superpower cold war conflicts. The shibboleth of “Communism versus capitalism” and the notion of Soviet threats to hemispheric security meant nothing to the poor and malnourished as they toiled to provide for their daily subsistence. Yet as the region’s rulers routinely and cynically labeled political opponents of all sorts as “Communists,” U.S. policymakers, with few exceptions, identified with the old order against “subversion.” The “logic” of cold war tended to blind these policymakers to the internal conditions that demanded reform or necessitated revolution.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;After 1959 the Cuban revolutionaries’ ideological and political confrontation with the United States, as well as their proclaimed intent to stimulate and support “anti-imperialist” (anti-U.S.) revolutions, exacerbated the United States’ opposition to autonomous political change in the region. Cuban, Soviet, and U.S. international machinations overshadowed the underlying polarization of social, ethnic, race, and class struggle that characterized the period 1959–90. The drama of Latin America, the immense tragedy of repression and despair, appeared to Americans as a minor subplot to the center-stage theater of world politics.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In this context, Che Guevara’s &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; represented a dramatic challenge. His initial call for a handful of “brave and dedicated men” in each nation to spark the struggle that would oust the Caribbean-style dictatorships quickly evolved into a call for continental and international struggle against imperialism. Guevara’s inspiration, combined with the ideological underpinnings of the revolutionary struggles he promoted, contaminated, in the eyes of U.S. policymakers, the battle for social, economic, and political justice in Latin America. The cycles of insurgency and counterinsurgency that followed tore apart the fabric of the region.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;In much of Latin America, this struggle replaced the old oligarchs and Caribbean-style dictatorships with “modernizing” military regimes. Increasingly, the progressive elements in Latin America, whether Christian, Marxist, or social democratic, viewed U.S. policy as a principal obstacle to the creation of a more humane, egalitarian society in the region. More and more, the anti-imperialist vision promoted by Che Guevara, if not the method of guerrilla warfare, became the dominant view of large sectors of non-Marxist Latin Americans.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ironically, Che Guevara’s original formulations in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt; offered authentic reformers and U.S. foreign policymakers hope for the future. His insistence that the guerrilla struggle could not be germinated successfully where “the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted” proved highly accurate. Only where local elites, bolstered by U.S. policy, destroyed beliefs in a democratic alternative did guerrilla and revolutionary politico-military movements achieve notable success. In Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala, farcical elections and repressive dictatorships made “peaceful struggle” a dangerous, often fatal charade. In contrast, in Venezuela, and even in Colombia and Peru, the appearance of alternatives to armed struggle and the existence of real—if not profound—reformist programs offered precisely the obstacles to widespread popular support of guerrilla movements that Guevara predicted.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Che Guevara’s modification, in “Guerrilla Warfare: A Method,” of his original thesis urged that the guerrilla method—armed struggle led by the &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt;—be used against the formal democracies (“oligarchical dictatorships”) of the region. To the obvious targets, such as Somoza, were added the reformers and moderates such as Betancourt in Venezuela or Belaúnde in Peru. The mistaken broadening of the original thesis alienated nationalists, reformists, and democratic forces and legitimized increased U.S. military assistance programs in Latin America. Defending the reforms of Acción Democrática in Venezuela or even the fragile efforts of President Belaúnde in Peru could not be equated in the U.S. Congress or in U.S. public opinion with support for Somoza in Nicaragua or for the Guatemalan military dictators.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;But as Guevara failed to limit the applicability of the guerrilla method to the targets indicated in &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, so, too, did the United States fail to limit its military assistance and political support to the formal democratic regimes most able to resist guerrilla warfare and least likely to engage in institutionalized torture and terrorism. Neither Che Guevara, nor his Latin American disciples, nor the policymakers of the United States recognized the legitimacy of truly &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;national&lt;/span&gt; reformist or revolutionary movements that refused to identify with international socialism or the Western bloc. The overwhelming influence of cold war ideological and security concerns in U.S.-Latin American relations, and in Guevara’s modifications of &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilla Warfare&lt;/span&gt;, contributed to over a quarter century of political polarization, tragedy, and death in the region.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Then the Berlin Wall came down, the cold war ended, and the Soviet Union imploded. In the post-cold war global disorder, Latin America again largely disappeared from the forefront of U.S. foreign policymaking. But the debt crisis of the 1980s as well as the dramatic economic readjustments and restructuring that accompanied the “end of history” and the “victory of democracy” (the replacement of authoritarian regimes with elected governments) made millions of Latin Americans poorer and more desperate. The “lost decade” of the 1980s and armed conflicts in Central America, Colombia, and Peru brought economic deterioration and personal tragedy despite the Bush administration’s optimistic pronouncements as the 1990s began.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Many Latin Americans, voting with their feet, migrated north to escape the wars and lack of economic opportunity. Others intensified the flight to cities from the countryside, exacerbating the stress on inadequate infrastructure and government services in national capitals and major urban areas. The terrible socioeconomic conditions identified by Che Guevara as the sources of discontent that had created the objective conditions for guerrilla warfare in the late 1950s had not been overcome. Indeed, in much of the hemisphere they had become worse. Counterinsurgency had defeated most guerrilla movements and stalemated others, but it had not created the conditions necessary for decent lives and improved opportunities heralded by the Alliance for Progress.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;And political violence, including guerrilla movements, had not been eliminated. In much of the hemisphere, daily violence and ongoing insurgency bloodied civilian populations and combatants alike some thirty years after Che Guevara’s assassination in Bolivia at the hands of his captors. In Colombia the guerrilla war, complicated by the depredations of drug-lord armies and violence as business (kidnapping, extortion, sabotage, murder for hire), persisted despite more than a quarter century of “peace negotiations” and “pacification” campaigns. Much the same was true in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Peru. And in Mexico, new guerrilla movements—the Emiliano Zapata Liberation Front (EZLN), the Revolutionary Peoples Army (ERP), and others&lt;sup&gt;[[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c12.html#end en434|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]]&lt;/sup&gt;—joined political party opposition to the long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) authoritarian rule.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Che Guevara was a romantic—a romantic who believed that human volition and small bands of armed guerrillas could be instruments for overturning tyranny and creating more just and humane societies. If his utopian vision of socialism proved illusory, then it remains true that no new political order has ever been born without violence as a midwife. The entrenched institutions, the embedded values and customs, and the “proper” notions of law and civility give way reluctantly, whether through reform or revolution. The spectacular operations of Mexico’s EZLN and Peru’s Túpac Amaru guerrillas from 1994 to 1997, and the endemic guerrilla operations in Colombia and elsewhere, had no hope of real military success or of ousting governments, but they did make clear that the plight of millions of Latin Americans was not improving, and often getting worse, in the 1990s.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;As Che Guevara (and John F. Kennedy) had predicted, those who make reform impossible make political violence more likely. Ironically, when government policymakers learn this lesson, the guerrillas become effective arguments for reform but also even more unlikely victors in the sort of national liberation wars imagined by Guevara. The United States and the Soviet Union thus could declare an end to the cold war, of which the Latin American guerrillas became a part, but not to the social and economic misery in the Western Hemisphere. As long as such misery exists and humans can imagine political alternatives—by whatever name the utopian alternatives are known— guerrilla fighters and political fronts backed by the threat of violence remain a part of Guevara’s living legacy to Latin America.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Although the guerrilla struggles in Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru, and elsewhere hardly ended as he would have preferred, governments deigned to negotiate with adversaries whom they would rather have eliminated. They not only negotiated but also changed policies and government institutions because eliminating the guerrillas proved impossible, even with massive military assistance from abroad and the waging of horrific “dirty wars.” Of course, the story is not over, nor can the final judgment on Che Guevara’s legacy yet be written. That he is not forgotten—by those who continue the guerrilla struggle and by those who combat the guerrillas—is certain.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;<br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Note&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;endnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;endnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c12.html#ref end en434|&lt;span&gt;1&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;On the EZLN and the ERP in Mexico, see “Contesting Mexico,” NACLA, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Report on the Americas&lt;/span&gt; 30, no. 4 (January-February 1997): 13–40.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index&quot;&gt;<br /> == &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;b&quot;&gt;Index&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ==<br /> &lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Acción Democrática (AD) (Venezuela) ; opposition to guerrilla movements&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Acción Democrática Izquierdista (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Acción Popular (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Acuerdo Patriótico (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Acuña Núñez, Juan Vitalio (pseud. Joaquín)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;AD (Venezuela). See Acción Democrática&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Agüero-Rocha, Fernando&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Alemán, Arnoldo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) (Peru); and Che, viii; ; origins and formation of&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Allende, Salvador&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Altamirano, Marcos&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Altamirano, Pedro&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Alta Verapaz, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Amaya Ramirez, Guillermo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;ANAPO (Colombia). See National Popular Alliance&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;ANC (Nicaragua). See Conservative National Action&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Anderson, Jack&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Anderson, Thomas P.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Angola&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Anti-Communist Council of Guatemala (CADEG)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Antioquia, Colombia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;APRA (Peru). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;APRA Rebelde (Peru) &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See also&lt;/span&gt; Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Arana Osorio, Carlos&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Arango, Federico&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Araya Montes, Melinda (pseud. Ana María)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Arbenz, Jacobo; U.S. ouster of, viii&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;The Archive (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;ARDE (Nicaragua). See Revolutionary Democratic Alliance&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;ARENA (El Salvador). See Alianza Republicana Nacionalista&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Arequipa, Peru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Arévalo, Juan José&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Argentina: aid to Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Arias, Oscar&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Arias Plan&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See also&lt;/span&gt; Esquipulas I; Esquipulas II&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Armed Forces of Liberation (FAL) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) (Venezuela). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Fuerzas Armadas de Liberaci6n Nacional&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Armed Forces of National Resistance (FARN) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Army of National Liberation (ELN) (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Arzú, Alvaro&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Asuncíon, Paraguay&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Atlacatl Battalion (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Autumn of the Patriarch&lt;/span&gt; (García Marquez)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ayacucho, Peru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ayagualo, El Salvador&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ayllus Rojos Tupac Kataristas (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Babezas, Juan Vicente (“Comandante Pablo”)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Baena Soares, João&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Baja Verapaz, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Baker, Thomas&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;BANAMERICA. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Banco de América&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Banco de América (BANAMERICA)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Banco Nicaragüense (BANIC)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;BANIC. See Banco Nicaragiiense&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Banzer, Hugo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Barco, Virgilio&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Barrientos, René&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Batista, Fulgencio&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“Battle of the Palace of Justice” (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bayer, Tulio&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bayo, Alberto&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bay of Pigs invasion&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bedoya Reyes, Luis&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Béjar, Hector&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Belaúnde Terry, Fernando; first administration (1963–68); second administration (1980–85)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Benavides, Oscar R.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Berlin Wall: fall of (1989)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bermúdez, Enrique&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Betancourt, Rómulo; opposition to guerrilla movements&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Betancur, Belisario&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Blanco, Hugo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bocay, Honduras&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bocay, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Boer War&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bogotá, Colombia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Bogotazo&lt;/span&gt; (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bolaños, Juan Leonel&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bolivian Mining Corporation (COMIBOL) (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bolivian State Petroleum Company (YPFB) (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Booth, John&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Borge Martínez, Tomás&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bosque, Arriaga&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Boutros-Ghali, Boutros&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;BPR (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Popular Revolutionary Bloc&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bravo, Douglas&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bressano, Hugo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Brizola, Leonel&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Broad Opposition Front (FAO) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Buenos Aires, Argentina&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Buitrago, Julio&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Burt, Jo-Marie&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Busch, Germán&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bush, George&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Bustamante y Rivero, José Luis&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;CACIF (Guatemala). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Council of Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;CAEM. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Center for High Military Studies&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Caldas, Colombia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Caldera, Rafael&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Calderón Sol, Armando&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Camacho Leyva, General&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Camejo, Peter&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Canto Grande prison (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Carabobo, Venezuela&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Caracas, Venezuela&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Caracas Declaration of Solidarity&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Caracazo (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Cárdenas, Lázaro&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Cárdenas, Victor Hugo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Carpio, Jorge&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Carter, Jimmy&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Carupano, Venezuela: military uprising at&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Castañeda Castro, Salvador&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Castillo Armas, Carlos&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Castillo Quant, José María (“Chema”)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Castro, Fidel; and attack on PCV, early contact with Che, viii; and support for revolutionaries, ix,&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Castro, Raúl, viii&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Catholic University of Peru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Causa-R (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Cayetano Carpio, Salvador&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;CD (El Salvador). See Convergencia Democrática&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Células Mineras de Base (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Center for High Military Studies (CAEM)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Center for Strategic Studies for National Stability (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Central American Common Market&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Central American Defense Council (CONDECA)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Central Obrero Boliviano (COB, Bolivian Workers Central) (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Cerezo, Vinicio&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Cerpa Cartolini, Nestor&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;CGS (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Confederación General de Sindicatos&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;CGSB (Colombia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Coordinadora Guerrillera Sim6n Bolívar&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Chaco War&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Chamorro, Emiliano&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Chamorro, Pedro Joaquín&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Chamorro, Violeta Barrios de&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Chapultepec Castle (Mexico City)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Chimaltenango, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;China. See People’s Republic of China&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Chinadega, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Christian Democratic Party (PDC) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Christian Democrats (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Christian Democrats (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Christian Democrats (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Christian Democrats (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Christian Revolutionary Movement (MCR) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;CIAV (United Nations). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; International Commission of Support and Verification&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;CIN (Guatemala). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; National Interinstitutional Coordinator Committee&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Cipriani, Archbishop Juan Luis&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Civilian Self-Defense Patrols (PACs) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Clausewitz, Karl von; on conditions for successful irregular war&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;CNR (Guatemala). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; National Reconciliation Commission&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;COB (Bolivia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Central Obrero Boliviano&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Coca-Cola: strike at Guatemala City plant&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Codovilla, Vittorio&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Comandante Marcos (Mexico), xi&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;COMIBOL (Bolivia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Bolivian Mining Corporation&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Comité pro Elecciones Independiente (COPEI) (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Committee of Campesino Unity (CUC) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Communist Party (Argentina)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Communist Party (PCB) (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Communist Party (PCC) (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Communist Party (PCS) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Communist Party (PGT) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Communist Party (PSN, Partido Socialista Nicaragüense) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Communist Party (PCP) (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Communist Party (PCV) (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Conciencia de Patria (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;CONDECA. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Central American Defense Council&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Confederación General de Sindicatos (CGS) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Consejería de Reconciliación, Normalización y Rehabilitación (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Conservative National Action (ANC) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Conservative Nationalist Party (ZANCUDO) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Conservative Party (Colombia) passim&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Conservative Party (Nicaragua) passim&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Consolidación ’86 strategy&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Constitutionalist Movement (MC) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Contadora (1983-87): Central American peace proposal&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Contras (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Contreras, Eduardo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Convergencia (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Convergencia Democrática (CD) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Convivencia&lt;/span&gt; (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Coolidge, Calvin&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Cooperación Popular (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Coordinadora Guerrillera Simón Bolívar (CGSB) (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Coordinadora Nacional Guerrillera (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;COPEI (Venezuela). See Comité pro Elecciones Independiente&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Córdoba, Colombia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Cornejo Chávez, Héctor&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Coro, Venezuela&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Council of Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations (CACIF) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Couto e Silva, Golbery&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Cristiani, Alfredo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;CRM (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Revolutionary Coordination of the Masses&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Cruz, Rigoberto (pseud. Pablo Ubeda)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;CSUTCB (Bolivia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Unified Syndical Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Cuadra Lacayo, Joaquín&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Cuba; and collapse of East European socialism; example and inspiration of its revolution ; support for hemispheric revolution&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;CUC (Guatemala). See Committee of Campesino Unity&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Cuzco, Peru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;D’Abuisson, Roberto&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Dada, Hector&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Dalton, Roque&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Day of National Reconciliation (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Debray, Regis: and &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foquismo&lt;/span&gt;, ix,&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Decree No. (Bolivia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; New Economic Policy&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;De León Carpio, Ramiro&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Democratic Liberation Union (UDEL) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Democratic Nationalist Union (UDN) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Democratic and Popular Unity (UDP) (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Deng Xiaoping&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“Development poles” (Guatemala): model villages&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Díaz, Adolfo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Díaz, Porfirio&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Diriamba, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Dórticos, Oswaldo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;DRU (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Unified Revolutionary Directorate&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Duarte, José Napoleón&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Duarte, Modesto&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Dulles, John Foster&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Durán Quintero, Argelino&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Earthquake (Nicaragua, 1972)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Eastern Europe: collapse of socialism in&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Echanis, Michael&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Edgar Ibarra Guerrilla Front&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;EGP (Guatemala). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Guerrilla Army of the Poor&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;EGTK (Bolivia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Ejército Guerrillo Túpac Katari&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Eisenhower, Dwight D.; and overthrow of Arbenz; support for Pérez Jiménez regime&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Eisenhower, Milton&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ejército Guerrillo Túpac Katari (EGTK) (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ejército Popular de Liberación (EPL, People’s Liberation Army) (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ejército Popular Sandinista (EPS) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ejército Secreto Anti-Comunista (ESA, Secret Anti-Communist Army) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“El Chacal,”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“El Chaparral” movement (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;El Mozote massacre (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;ELN (Bolivia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Army of National Liberation&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;ELN (Colombia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; National Liberation Army&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;ELN (Peru). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Ejército de Liberación Nacional&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;EPL (Colombia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Ejército Popular de Liberación&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;EPS (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Ejército Popular Sandinista&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;ERP (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; People’s Revolutionary Army&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;ERP (Mexico). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Revolutionary People’s Army&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;ESA (Guatemala). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Ejército Secreto Anti-Comunista&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Espina, Gustavo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Esquintla, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Esquipulas I (1986)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Esquipulas II (1987)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Estrada, Pedro&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;European Economic Community&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;EZLN (Mexico). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Zapatista National Liberation Army&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;FAL (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Armed Forces of Liberation&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FALN (Venezuela). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FAO (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Broad Opposition Front&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FAPU (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; United Popular Action Front&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FAR (Guatemala). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Rebel Armed Forces&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Farabundo Martí, Augustín&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) (El Salvador) and peace accords (1992)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FARC (Colombia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Farias, Jesús&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FARN (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Armed Forces of National Resistance&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FDN (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FDR (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Democratic Revolutionary Front&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Federación de Trabajadores de Cuzco (FTC) (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Federación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas “Bartolina Sisa” (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Federación Provincial de Campesinos de La Convención y Lares (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FER (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Revolutionary Student Front&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;15th of September Legion (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“Final offensive” (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FIR (Peru). See Frente de Izquierda Revolucionaria&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;First Phase (Peru): Velasco Alvarado program&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;First Southern Guerrilla Conference (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FLN (Venezuela). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Frente de Liberación Nacional&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Flores, Genaro&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FMLN (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Fonseca Amador, Carlos&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Fort Matamoros&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FPL (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Popular Liberation Forces&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FPN (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; National Patriotic Front&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FREDEMO (Peru). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Frente Democrático&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Frente Democrático (FREDEMO) (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Frente de Izquierda Revolucionaria (FIR) (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Frente de Liberación Nacional (FLN, National Liberation Front) (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Frente Nacional (Colombia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; National Front&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) (Nicaragua) passim&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Frente Unido (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Frente Unido de Acción Revolucionaria (FUAR, United Front for Revolutionary Action) (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FSLN (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional; Terceristas&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FTC (Peru). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Federación de Trabajadores de Cuzco&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;FUAR (Colombia). See Frente Unido de Acción Revolucionaria&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense (FDN) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN) (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Fujimori, Alberto; &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;autogolpe&lt;/span&gt;; first term. ; “Fujishock,” second term&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Gaitán, Jorge Eliécer&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Galeano, Eduardo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Gallegos, Rómulo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;GAP (El Salvador). See Gobierno de Amplia Participación&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;García, Alvaro&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;García, Raúl.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;García Márquez, Gabriel&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;García Meza, Luis&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;García Pérez, Alan&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Gasco, Fernando&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Gaviria, César&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Generation of 1928 (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Giap, General. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Vo Nguyen Giap&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Giusti, Carlos&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Gobierno de Amplia Participación (GAP) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Gómez, Alberto&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Gómez, Juan Vicente&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Gómez, Laureano&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Gómez Hurtado, Alvaro&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Gott, Richard&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;GPP (FSLN) (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Prolonged People’s War&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Gramajo, Héctor&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Granada, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Cranma&lt;/span&gt; (boat), viii&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Green Berets&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Grenada: U.S. invasion of&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Gualsinga River massacre (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guardia Civil (Peru); counterinsurgency unit, Sinchi&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guardia Nacional (Nicaragua) passim&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guasina concentration camp (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guatemala: Una Paz Justa y Democrática: Contenido de la Negociación&lt;/span&gt; (1992)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guatemala City, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Gueiler Tejada, Lidia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guerra Matos, Orestes&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guerrero, Lorenzo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guerrilla Bloc of the South (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guillén, Dulce María&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Gutiérrez, Raquel&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guzmán, Abimael&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Guzmán Blanco, Antonio&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Handal, Schafik Jorge&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Hanson, Simon: on dilemmas of Alliance for Progress&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Harris, A. R.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Hashimoto, Ryutaro&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Haya de la Torre, Victor Raúl&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Heraud, Javier&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Hernández Martínez, Maximiliano&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Herrera Campíns, Luis&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Hilsman, Roger&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Hiroshima, Japan&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ho Chi Minh&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Huadquiña, Peru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Huancayo, Peru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Huehuetenango, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Huila, Colombia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Illopango Air Force Base (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;IMF. See International Monetary Fund&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Independent Liberal Party (PLI) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) (Mexico)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Inter-American Commission on Human Rights&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Inter-American Development Bank&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;International Commission of Support and Verification (CIAV) (United Nations)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;International Monetary Fund (IMF)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;International Petroleum Company&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;International Tin Council&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Iparraguire, Elena&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Iran-contra scandal&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Israel: aid to Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ixam, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ixcan, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Izabal, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Izquierda Unida (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Jesuits (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Jinotza, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Joaquín. See Acuna Núñez, Juan Vitalio&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;John Paul II,&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;JPN (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Patriotic Youth of Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;JRN (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Nicaraguan Revolutionary Youth&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“Junta of the Three Little Pigs” (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Junta Revolucionario de Gobierno (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Juventud Comunista (Young Communists) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Kagan, Robert&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Kemmerer, Edwin W.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Kennedy, John F.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Khrushchev, Nikita&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Kim II Sung&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Kissinger Commission&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Klein, Herbert&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Korean War&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Lacayo Farfán, Enrique&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;La Convención Valley, Peru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;La Guaira, Venezuela&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Matanza&lt;/span&gt; (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lame, Quintín&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Laos&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;La Palma, El Salvador&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;La Paz, Bolivia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Prensa&lt;/span&gt; (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lara, Venezuela&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lares Valley, Peru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Larotta, Antonio&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Larrazábal, Wolfgang&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Latifundia&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Laugerud García, Kjell&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lavalle, Hernando de&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La violencia&lt;/span&gt; (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Law for the Defense of Democratic Institutions (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Law of National Reconciliation (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lawrence, T. E.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lechín, Juan&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Left Revolutionary Movement (MIR) (Chile)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Leguía, Augusto B.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lemus, José María&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lenin, Vladimir L, and “protracted revolutionary conflict,”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Le6n, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Leoni, Raúl&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;León Valencia, Guillermo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Letts Colmenares, Ricardo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Liberal Party (Colombia) passim&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Liberal Party (Nicaragua) passim&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Libertad (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lima, Constantino&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lima, Peru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lleras Camargo, Alberto&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lleras Restrepo, Carlos&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lobatón, Guillermo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;López, Santos&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;López Michelsen, Alfonso&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;López Pérez, Rigoberto&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;López Pumarejo, Alfonso&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;López Ricci, José&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Los Llanitos massacre (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;LP-28 (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; 28th of February Popular Leagues&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lucas García, Romeo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Lusinchi, Jaime&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Machado, Eduardo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Machado, Gustavo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Machu Picchu, Peru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Managua, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Maneiro, Alfredo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MANO (Guatemala). See National Organized Anti-Communist Movement&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Mao Tse-tung; and yin-yang concept; rural-based guerrilla strategy&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Maoism&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MAQL (Colombia). See Movimiento Armado Quintín Lame&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Maracay, Venezuela&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Mariátegui, José Carlos&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Márquez, Pompeyo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Marroquín Rojas, Clemente&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Martí, José&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Martín, Américo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Martz, John&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Marulanda, Manuel&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Marx, Karl&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MAS (Venezuela). See Movimiento al Socialismo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Masaya, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Masetti, Jorge&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Matagalpa, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Mayorga, Ramón&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Mayorga, Silvio&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MC (Nicaragua). See Constitutionalist Movement&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;McCormick, Gordon&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;McNamara, Robert&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MCR (Nicaragua). See Christian Revolutionary Movement&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Mediatory Commission (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Medio Magdalena, Colombia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Medrano, José Alberto “Chele,”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Mein, John Gordon&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Mejía, Benjamín&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Mejía Víctores, Humberto&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Menchú, Rigoberta: awarded Nobel Peace Prize&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Méndez Montenegro, Julio César&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Méndez Montenegro, Mario&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MEP (Venezuela). See Movimiento Electoral del Pueblo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Mérida, Venezuela&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Mesa Pelado, Peru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Mexico: support bases for Guatemalan guerrillas in&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Milicias Populares Anti-Sandinistas (MILPAS) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MILPAS (Nicaragua). See Milicias Populares Anti-Sandinistas&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Minifundia&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Minnig, Michel&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MIR (Chile). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Left Revolutionary Movement&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MIR (Peru). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MIR (Venezuela). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Miranda, Venezuela&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Miskito Indians&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Miskitu, Suma, Rama Organization (MISURA) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MISURA (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Miskitu, Suma, Rama Organization&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MITKA (Bolivia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Movimiento Indio Tupaj Katari&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MLP (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Popular Liberation Movement&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;M-19 (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MNPG (Colombia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; National Popular Gaitanista Movement&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MNR (Bolivia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MNR (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Revolutionary National Movement&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Mobile Intelligence Groups (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MOEC (Colombia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Movimiento de Obreros, Estudiantes y Campesinos&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Moleiro, Moisés&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Molina, Arturo Armando&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Molina Villegas, Jesus Teodoro&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Monge, Alfonso&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Monimbó, Nicaragua: uprising in&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Monje Molina, Mario&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Monsanto, Pablo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Monterrosa, Domingo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Montes, César&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Montoneros (Argentina)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Morales, Ricardo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Morales Bermúdez, Francisco&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Moran, Rolando&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Morazán, Francisco&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Movement for Popular Unity (MUP) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Movimiento Armado Quintín Lame (MAQL) (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Movimiento de Obreros, Estudiantes y Campesinos (MOEC, Workers’, Students’ and Peasants’ Movement) (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Movimiento de Olama y Mollejones (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Movimiento Electoral del Pueblo (MEP) (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Movimiento Indio Tupaj Katari (MITKA) (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Movimiento Revolucionario Liberal (MRL) (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR, Nationalist Revolutionary Movement) (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (MRTA) (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Katari (MRTK) (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Katari de Liberación (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Movimiento 21 de Septiembre (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MPSC (El Salvador). See Popular Social Christian Movement&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MPU (Nicaragua). See United People’s Movement&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MR-13 (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MRL (Colombia). See Movimiento Revolucionario Liberal&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MRP-Ixim (Guatemala). See Revolutionary Movement of the People&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MRTA (Peru). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MRTK (Bolivia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Katari&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;MUP (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Movement for Popular Unity&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;NACLA. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; North American Congress on Latin America&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;NAFTA. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; North American Free Trade Agreement&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Nancahuazu River, Bolivia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Napoleonic Wars: and Spanish guerrillas&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Agrarian Reform Congress (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Centrist Union (UCN) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Constituent Assembly (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Dialogue (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Dialogue (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Disarmament Commission (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Front (Colombia); and Pact of Sitges&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Interinstitutional Coordinator Committee (CIN) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Liberation Army (ELN) (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Liberation Movement (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Opposition Union (UNO) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Opposition Union (UNO) (Nicaragua): (1966); (1989)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Organized Anti-Communist Movement (MANO) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Patriotic Front (FPN) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Popular Alliance (ANAPO) (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Popular Gaitanista Movement (MNPG) (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Reconciliation Commission (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Reconciliation Commission (CNR) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;National Resistance (RN) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“National Strategy against Violence” (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;New Anti-Communist Organization (NOA) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;New Economic Policy (NEP) (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Nicaraguan Democratic Movement&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Nicaraguan Resistance (RN) (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See also Contras&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Nicaraguan Revolutionary Youth (JRN) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Nicaraguan Social Christian Party (PSCN) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Nixon, Richard M.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;NOA (Guatemala). See New Anti-Communist Organization&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Noriega, Manuel&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;North, Liisa&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;North Korea&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Nuestro Movimiento (Our Movement) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Nueva Segovia, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;OAS. See Organization of American States&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Obando y Bravo, Archbishop Miguel&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Observadores de las Naciones Unidas en El Salvador (ONUSAL) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ochoa, Arnaldo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ocotal, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Odrfa, Manuel A.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Odrίa, Maria Delgado de&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ofensiva Roja (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ojeda, Fabricio&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;OJO (“Eye for an Eye”) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Olaya Herrera, Enrique&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Olds, Robert&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;ONUCA. See UN Observer Group in Central America&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;ONUSAL (El Salvador). See Observadores de las Naciones Unidas en El Salvador&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“Operation Aguila VI” (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“Operation Guatemala” (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“Operation Honesty” (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“Operation Pigsty” (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“Operation Vampire” (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;ORDEN (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Organizaci6n Democrática Nacionalista&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Organizaci6n Democrática Nacionalista (ORDEN) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Organization of American States (OAS)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Organization of the People in Arms (ORPA) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;ORPA (Guatemala). See Organization of the People in Arms&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ortega, Daniel&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ortega, Humberto&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Osorio, Oscar&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ospina Pérez, Mariano&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Our Movement(Guatemala). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Nuestro Movimiento&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ovando Candía, Alfredo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Pachacutec &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pachacutecs (Andean Indian epochs)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PACs (Guatemala). See Civilian Self-Defense Patrols&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pact of Punto Fijo (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pact of Sitges (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pacto &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;democrático&lt;/span&gt; (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pacto por la Democracia (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Paguagua, Edmundo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Palabra Obrera (Argentine Trotskyist faction)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Palenque, Carlos&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Palestine: and British&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pallais Debayle, Noel&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pan American Conference (Bogotá, 1948)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pancasán, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Panzós, Guatemala: massacre at&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Parada, Lara&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pardo-Maurer, R.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Partido Comunista-Bandera Roja (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Partido Comunista Sendero Luminoso (Peru). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Sendero Luminoso&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (PIR, Party of the Revolutionary Left) (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Partido Guatemalteco de Trabajo (PGT) (Guatemala). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Communist Party&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Partido Obrero Revolucionario (POR) (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Partido Obrero Revolucionario (POR) (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Partido Popular Cristiano (PPC) (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Partido Revolucionario (PR, Revolutionary Party) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT) (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Partido Revolucionario de Venezuela (PRV, Revolutionary Party of Venezuela) (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Partido Socialista Nicaragüense (PSN) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Partido Socialista Revolucionario (PSR) (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Party of National Reconciliation (PCN) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Party of the Salvadoran Revolution (PRS) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pastora, Edén (“Comandante Cero”)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pastrana Borrero, Misael&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Patriotic Youth of Nicaragua (JPN)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Paz Estenssoro, Víctor&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Paz Zamora, Jaime&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PCB (Bolivia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Communist Party&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PCC (Colombia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Communist Party&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PCN (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Party of National Reconciliation&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PCP (Peru). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Communist Party&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PCS (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Communist Party&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PCV (Venezuela). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Communist Party&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PDC (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Christian Democratic Party&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Peace Corps&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;People’s Republic of China; Sino-Soviet split&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Peralta Azurdia, Enrique&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pereda Asbún, Juan&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Peredo Camacho, Edwin&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Perestroika&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pérez, Carlos Andrés; impeached and indicted&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pérez Jiménez, Marcos; awarded Legion of Merit&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Per6n, Evita&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Perón, Juan&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Petén, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Petkoff, Teodoro&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pezullo, Lawrence&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PGT (Guatemala). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Communist Party&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pinochet, Augusto&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Pinochetazo&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PIR (Bolivia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionaria&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pishtaqu&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Plan Lazo (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Plan Nacional de Rehabilitación (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Plan Victoria ’82 (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PLI (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Independent Liberal Party&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Polay, Victor&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Polos de desarrollo&lt;/span&gt; (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Pombo. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Villegas Tamayo, Harry&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ponce, René Emilio&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ponte Rodríguez, Manuel&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Popular Christian Democratic Movement (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Popular Cooperation (Peru). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Cooperación Popular&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Popular Liberation Forces (FPL) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Popular Liberation Movement (MLP) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Popular Revolutionary Bloc (BPR) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Popular Social Christian Movement (MPSC) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;POR (Bolivia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Partido Obrero Revolucionario&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;POR (Peru). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Partido Obrero Revolucionario&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Portuguesa, Venezuela&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PPC (Peru). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Partido Popular Cristiano&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PR (Guatemala). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Partido Revolucionario&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Prado, Manuel&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PRI (Mexico). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Institutional Revolutionary Party&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Prolonged People’s War (GPP) (FSLN) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PRS (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Party of the Salvadoran Revolution&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PRT (Colombia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PRTC (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PRUD (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Revolutionary Party of Democratic Unification&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PRV (Venezuela). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Partido Revolucionario de Venezuela&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PSCN (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Nicaraguan Social Christian Party&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PSN (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Communist Party&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PSP (Peru). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Socialist Party&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;PSR (Peru). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Partido Socialista Revolucionario&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Public Law 87-135 (U.S. military aid to Latin America)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Puente Uceda, Luis de la&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Puerto Cabello, Venezuela: military uprising at&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Puerto Maldonado, Peru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Punta del Este Conference (Uruguay, 1961)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Quayle, Dan&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Querétaro Accords (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Quezada, Bishop Rodolfo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Quezaltenango, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Quiché, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Quillabamba, Peru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Quinta de Bolívar (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Quispe Wuanca, Felipe&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Raitί, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ramírez Durand, Oscar (“Comrade Feliciano”)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ramos Jiménez, Raúl&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Rangel, Domingo Alberto&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Raudales, Ramón&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Reagan, Ronald&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Recompas&lt;/span&gt; (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Recontras&lt;/span&gt; (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Red Cross&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“Revolución en Marcha” (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Revolutionary Coordination of the Masses (CRM) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ARDE) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Revolutionary Movement of the People (MRP-Ixim) (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Revolutionary National Movement (MNR) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Revolutionary Party (PR) (Guatemala). See Partido Revolucionario&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers (PRTC) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Revolutionary Party of Democratic Unification (PRUD) (EL Salvador) See &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;also&lt;/span&gt; Party of National Reconciliation&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Revolutionary People’s Army (ERP) (Mexico)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Revolutionary Student Front (FER) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Río Blanco, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Río Grande, Bolivia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ríos Montt, José Efraín&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Rivera, Julio Adalberto&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;RN (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; National Resistance&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;RN (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Nicaraguan Resistance&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Robelo, Alfonso&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Rojas Pinilla, Gustavo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Romero, Carlos Roberto&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Romero, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Ronderos&lt;/span&gt; (civilian militias) (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Rostow, Walt W.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ruíz Novoa, Alberto&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Rusk, Dean: and Alliance for Progress&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Sacasa, Juan&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sacasa, Ramiro&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sachs, Jeffrey&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Saher, Chema&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Samper, Carlos&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;San Carlos, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sánchez Cerro, Luis&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sánchez de Lozada, Gonzalo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sánchez Hernández. Fidel&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sandinistas. See Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sandino, Augusto César&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;San Isidro de Coronado, Costa Rica&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;San Marcos, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;San Miguel, El Salvador&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sansán, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Santa Cruz, Bolivia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Santa Marta, Colombia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Santander, Colombia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Santos, Eduardo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sapoá accords (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Satipo, Peru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Schick, René&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Second Phase (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Secretariado Latinoamericano de Trotskyismo Ortodoxo (SLATO)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sendero Luminoso (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Serrano Elías, Jorge&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sevilla Sacasa, Guillermo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Shelton, Turner B.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sierra de las Minas, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sierra Maestra, Cuba&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Siles Zuazo, Hernan&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Simacota Manifesto (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sinchis (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;SLATO. See Secretariado Latinoamericano de Trotskyismo Ortodoxo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“Soccer War” (El Salvador-Honduras)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Social Christian Party (PCSN) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Socialist Party (PSP) (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Solaún, Mauricio&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Sololá, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Solórzano, Carlos&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Somarriba, Rafael&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Somoza, Anastasio III,&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Somoza, José&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“Somoza Battalion,”&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Somoza Debayle, Anastasio II (“Tachito”)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Somoza Debayle, Luis&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Somoza family&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Somoza García, Anastasio (“Tacho”)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Soviet Union; Latin America policy; liberalization in; resistance to World War II German invasion; Sino-Soviet split; support of revolution; U.S. relations with&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See also Perestroika&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Stalin, Joseph&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Stewart, William&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Stimson, Henry&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Subtiava, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Tania&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Tegucigalpa, Honduras&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Terada, Terusuke&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Terceristas (FSLN) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Tesoro Beach, El Salvador&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Tijerino, Doris&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Tolima, Colombia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Toro, David&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Torrelio, Celso&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Torres, Camilo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Torres, Juan José&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Totonicapán, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Trejos, Luis&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Tricontinental&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Trienio&lt;/span&gt; (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Triumvirate junta (“Junta of the Three Little Pigs”) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Trotsky, Leon&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Trotskyists&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Trujillo, Rafael L.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Trujillo, Venezuela&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Truman, Harry S.: and military aid to Latin America&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Truth Commission (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Tunnermann, Carlos&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Túpac Amaru &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;foco&lt;/span&gt; (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Tupamaros (Uruguay)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Tupayachi, Rubén&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Turbay, Gabriel&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Turbay Ayala, Julio César&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Turcios Chavarría, Oscar&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Turcios Lima, Luis&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“The Twelve” (&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Los&lt;/span&gt; Doce) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“12th of April Movement” (Guatemala)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“26th of July Movement” (Cuba)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;28th of February Popular Leagues (LP-28) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Ubico, Jorge&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;UCN (Guatemala). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; National Centrist Union&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;UDEL (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Democratic Liberation Union&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;UDN (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Democratic Nationalist Union&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;UDN (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Unión Democrática Nicaragüense&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;UDP (Bolivia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Democratic and Popular Unity&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;UMOPAR (Bolivia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Unidad Móvil de Patrullaje Rural&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ungo, Guillermo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Unidad Móvil de Patrullaje Rural (UMOPAR) (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Unidos para Reconstruir (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Unified Pacification Command (CUP) (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Unified Revolutionary Directorate (DRU) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Unified Syndical Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia (CSUTCB) (Bolivia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Uni6n Democrática Nicaragüense (UDN) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Uni6n Nacional Izquierdista Revolucionaria (UNIR) (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Union Nacional Odriίsta (UNO) (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Unión Patriótica (UP) (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Unión Republicana Democrática (URD) (Venezuela)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;UNIR (Colombia). See Unión Nacional Izquierdista Revolucionaria&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;United Fruit Company; expropriation of property of in Guatemala; workers’ strike in Colombia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;United Nations. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; CIAV; ONUCA; ONUSAL&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;United People’s Movement (MPU) (Nicaragua)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;United Popular Action Front (FAPU) (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;United States (Latin America political, economic, and military policies): Introduction passim; Postcriptpassim. &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See also&lt;/span&gt; Case Studies &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;for individual countries&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;United States War College&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Universidad Centroamericana (El Salvador)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;University of Huamanga (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;University of La Plata (Argentina)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;University of Trujillo (Peru)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;UNO (El Salvador). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; National Opposition Union&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;UNO (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; National Opposition Union&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;UNO (Peru). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Unión Nacional Odriίsta&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;UN Observer Group in Central America (ONUCA)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;UP (Colombia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Unión Patriótica&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Upper Huallaga Valley, Peru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Uraba, Colombia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;URD (Venezuela). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Unión Republicana Democrática&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Urdaneta Arbalaez, Roberto&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;URNG (Guatemala). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Urubamba River, Peru&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Valencia, Varon&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Valencia Tovar, Álvaro&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Valle, Colombia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Vargas Llosa, Mario&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Vázquez Castaño, Fabio&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Velasco Alvarado, Juan&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Velásquez, Ramón J.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Vichada, Colombia&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Vickers, George&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Videlazo&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Viet Cong&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Vietnam, x as model&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Vietnam War&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Villalba, Jóvito&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Villalobos, Joaquín&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Villanueva, Victor&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Villarroel, Gualberto&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Villeda Morales, Ramón&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Villegas Tamayo, Harry (pseud. Pombo)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Vincent, Anthony&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Vo Nguyen Giap&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Walquistán, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;“War of a Thousand Days” (Colombia)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Waslala, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;White, Robert E.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Wilkins, Frederick&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;World Bank&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Yaqui, Alfonso&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Yaracuy, Venezuela&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Ydígoras Fuentes, Miguel; subordination of to U.S. policy&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Yon Sosa, Marco Antonio&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;YPFB (Bolivia). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Bolivian State Petroleum Company&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;index_section&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;span&gt;Zacapa, Guatemala&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Zamora, Mario&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Zamora, Rubén&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;ZANCUDO (Nicaragua). &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;See&lt;/span&gt; Conservative Nationalist Party&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) (Mexico)&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Zelaya, Lorenzo&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Zinica, Nicaragua&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;span&gt;Zulia, Venezuela&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;backMatter&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;section1&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blocktext&quot;&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;footnotes&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;footnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c02.html#ref ftn fn1|&lt;span&gt;a&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Camilo Cienfuegos was lost at sea during an airplane flight from Camagüey to Havana on October 28, 1959.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;footnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c02.html#ref ftn fn2|&lt;span&gt;b&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;The war fought by Cubans for independence from Spain began in 1868 and ended in 1898, with a period of peace from 1878 to 1895.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;footnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c02.html#ref ftn fn3|&lt;span&gt;c&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Colonel Alberto Bayo, a Cuban veteran of guerrilla warfare in Spain, served as instructor of the forces assembled by Fidel Castro in Mexico for training prior to the invasion of Cuba in December 1956.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;footnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c02.html#ref ftn fn4|&lt;span&gt;d&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;Fulgencio Batista first came to power in Cuba as a result of a “sergeants’ revolt” against Gerardo Machado in 1933.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;footnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c02.html#ref ftn fn5|&lt;span&gt;e&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;A Molotov cocktail is a bottle containing three parts kerosene and one part motor oil. The bottle is sealed and wrapped in waste cotton which is sprinkled with gasoline and ignited. When hurled against a target, the bottle breaks and burning kerosene spreads a sheet of flame. Once the encirclement ends with a victory, or, having completed its objectives, is withdrawn, all platoons retire in order to the place where the knapsacks have been left, and normal life is resumed.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;footnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c02.html#ref ftn fn6|&lt;span&gt;f&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;A plane was damaged by the explosion of its own bomb dropped on Cuban territory. It crashed into a house, killing the pilot, who was an American. He carried charts showing that the plane had taken off from a field in Florida. The United States Government apologized.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;footnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 c02.html#ref ftn fn7|&lt;span&gt;g&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;On March 4, 1960, a Belgian ship, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;La Coubré&lt;/span&gt;, loaded with ammunition for the Cuban armed forces, exploded in Havana harbor, killing approximately 100 persons. The cause of the explosion has never been established.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;footnote&quot;&gt;<br /> [[Library:Guerrilla Warfare#e9781461637141 p03.html#ref ftn fn8|&lt;span&gt;h&lt;/span&gt;]] &lt;span&gt;For treatment of the most extensive urban guerrilla movements before the 1980s, see James Kohl and John Litt, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America&lt;/span&gt; (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1974); Abraham Guillén, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Philosophy of the Urban Guerrilla&lt;/span&gt;, trans. and ed. Donald C. Hodges (New York: William Morrow, 1973); Jean Lartéguy, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;The Guerrillas&lt;/span&gt;, trans. Stanley Hochman (New York: New American Library, 1970); Joao Quartim, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Dictatorship and Armed Struggle in Brazil&lt;/span&gt;, trans. David Fernbach (London: New Left Review, 1971); Carlos Marighella, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Escritos de Carlos Marighella&lt;/span&gt; (São Paulo: Editorial Livramento, 1979); João Batista Berardo, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Guerrilhas e guerrilheiros, no drama da América Latina&lt;/span&gt; (São Paulo: Edicoes Populares, 1981); and Donald C. Hodges and Abraham Guillén, &lt;span class=&quot;i&quot;&gt;Revaloración de la guerrilla urbana&lt;/span&gt; (Mexico, D.F.: El Caballito, 1977).&lt;/span&gt;<br /> &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;<br /> [[Category:Library works by Che Guevara]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about military theory]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Patriots,_Traitors_and_Empires&diff=75990 2024-09-30T12:46:55Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>[[Category:Library works about the DPRK]]<br /> {{Library work|title=Patriots, Traitors and Empires|author=Stephen Gowans|publisher=Baraka Books|published_date=2018|type=Book|source=[https://annas-archive.gs/slow_download/6d0f058ebbe237791f3e98f54bd7f8bc/0/2 Anna's Archive]}}<br /> <br /> The Koreans have as little use for an American Korea as they had for a Japanese one. They want a Korean Korea.<br /> <br /> == '''One Country—Two States''' ==<br /> ''There are “not two but three Koreas North,''<br /> <br /> ''South and the American military bases.”''<br /> <br /> —William R. Polk1<br /> <br /> There is only one Korea, but there are two Korean states. One, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea, controls territory in the northern part of the peninsular country. The other state, the Republic of Korea (ROK), or South Korea, controls territory in the southern part. Both states claim sovereignty over all of the country and regard the other as illegitimately occupying territory over which it has jurisdiction by right. Neither state, then, regards the ''de facto'' border that separates them as an international frontier. On the contrary, they see the border, the so-called demilitarized zone, or DMZ, as a cease-fire line only, marking the dividing line between the two states at the end of the Korean War.<br /> <br /> To signal that there is only one Korea, the DPRK is sometimes referred to as north Korea, with “north” in lower case, and its rival the ROK as lowercase “south” Korea. While I’m sympathetic to this protocol, I’ve opted to use the names North Korea and South Korea as informal synonyms of the DPRK and the ROK respectively, in keeping with conventional usage in the Western world. At the same time, I use these informal names to denote states within a single country, and not to designate two separate nations. While this may seem pedantic to some, the distinction is a useful one in understanding the intra-Korean conflict of 1950 to 1953 which has become known, outside of Korea, as the Korean War, but inside the country either as the 6.25 War or the Great Fatherland Liberation War, depending on which side of the DMZ you’re on.<br /> <br /> The two states can also be distinguished by two politically descriptive appellations: the patriot state, in the case of the DPRK, and the traitor state, in the case of the ROK. The DPRK was founded by Korean patriots who spent over a decade fighting for the liberation of Korea from Japanese domination. Japan’s colonial rule over Korea began formally in 1910, and informally five years earlier, when Tokyo declared Korea a protectorate. When the Japanese empire collapsed at the end of the Pacific War in 1945, the DPRK’s future founders insisted that Koreans organize their own affairs, without foreign interference. In other words, they demanded independence after four decades of foreign rule. The demand for liberty, no different from that of any other colonial people, represented the sentiment of virtually every Korean, and has lived on from generation to generation in the political program of the DPRK, which seeks to free Korea from domination by Japan’s successor as foreign hegemon, the United States.<br /> <br /> For the first two decades of its existence, the South Korean state was staffed at its highest levels by quislings—Koreans who had collaborated with the Japanese, including serving in the Japanese military and the colonial police. Some even took Japanese names. One quisling, who would later become president, beamed at the memory of receiving a gold watch from Japan’s Emperor Hirohito, for services to the empire—services which included suppressing the guerrilla war waged by his compatriots to win manumission from Japanese domination. When US forces arrived on the peninsula in 1945, they recruited every Japanese hireling they could find to run their new anti-communist state on the Korean peninsula.<br /> <br /> At the conclusion of the Pacific War, the war in the Pacific theater within the larger global conflict that was World War II, Koreans looked to the Soviet Union for inspiration. The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 had inaugurated the anti-colonial movement, and the Bolsheviks inspired the “wretched of the earth” to emancipate themselves, a project to which the Soviet Union contributed admirably. Across the globe, communism resonated with oppressed peoples. It no less resonated with Kim Il-sung, the founder of the DPRK, a charismatic anti-Japanese guerrilla leader who would very likely have won the national elections planned by the United States and Soviet Union for post-World War II Korea had Washington not scuttled them in favor of elections held within its own occupation zone, whose outcome it could control. The United States blocked the creation of an independent, unified (and very likely communist) Korean state, by creating an alternative state every bit as deserving of the obloquy “puppet state” as was Manchukuo, the state created by Japan in neighboring Manchuria in 1932 under the nominal leadership of the Chinese and actual leadership of the Japanese. The traitors Washington recruited to staff its puppet state served as the public face of the Republic of Korea. They were “advised” behind the scenes by a coterie of US officials, the most important of which were the US ambassador, the CIA station chief, and the top US military official in Korea, the latter of whom had (and continues to have) operational control of the ROK military. The quislings participated in the political partition of Korea to thwart the achievement of their compatriots’ left-wing political aspirations, fought an anti-insurgency war in the south to crush left-wing guerrillas, accepted the occupation of the Korean peninsula by US troops, and acceded to their own military’s subordination to US command.<br /> <br /> Korea has long struggled for freedom, from Japanese control in the first half of the twentieth century, and subsequently from US domination from 1945 to today. This is the story of the patriots who have fought for independence and of the empire-builders and traitors who have opposed them.<br /> <br /> <br /> As a nation, Korea has existed for over a thousand years, within clearly delineated and recognized borders.2 Koreans, however, have had the great misfortune to live on geostrategically significant territory which has been contested by powerful states that have used Koreans as pawns in their rivalries. Korea has been subjected to countless foreign invasions; few other countries have suffered as many.3 As the newspaper of North Korea’s lead political party put it in 2017, the “Korean peninsula has historically been the biggest hotbed in the world where [the] strategic interests of big powers sharply collide [owing to Korea’s] geopolitical position.”4 That observation was made in connection with the reasons North Korea believed it needed nuclear weapons, namely, to defend itself against the depredations of great powers, in particular, against the greatest power of all, the United States.<br /> <br /> Geographically attached to China, Korea was a tributary of the much larger country. It became the object of the First Sino-Japanese War—a conflict fought in the waning years of the nineteenth century between the dominant East Asian power and an emerging one, Japan, for influence in Korea. Japan emerged victorious, and soon after fought Russia, a Eurasian juggernaut, for control of Korea and the contiguous Chinese province of Manchuria, a war occasionally referred to as World War 0. Japan emerged victorious from its contest with the Tsar’s empire, to the consternation of Europe, for a non-white race had defeated for the first time a great power, in a global international order that theretofore had been characterized by unalloyed white supremacy. (East Asia would soon be menaced by another sort of racial supremacy—that of the Yamato, or ethnic Japanese, who would seek to lead a great Asian family, in which Koreans would be reduced to the status of adolescents to be taken in hand and guided by the ''soi-disant'' superior Japanese.) Soon after, Japan abolished Korea as an independent country, renamed it Chosen, and integrated it into its rapidly expanding Empire of the Rising Sun. By the close of the First World War, Japan had built an empire which, apart from Korea, included Taiwan, a chain of Pacific islands, the southern half of Sakhalin, and privileges in the semi-colony of China.5<br /> <br /> With the Japanese empire’s defeat in the Pacific War in 1945, the United States, newly emerged as the world’s greatest power, and an empire itself (if undeclared), established its own presence on the Korean peninsula, bisecting Korea into separate US and Soviet occupation zones, as a temporary measure (it was said) to accept the Japanese surrender. However, by 1947, the growing strength of communist forces in East Asia convinced US officials that withdrawal from Korea would allow emancipatory movements in the region to flourish. US officials had no interest in encouraging movements which fought to overthrow colonial oppression and to bring an end to the exploitation of man by man. On the contrary, they were more interested in replacing the chains of European and Japanese colonialism with the fetters of US imperialism.<br /> <br /> Koreans, US military officials on the ground had observed, aspired to a communist future, and the industrial assets built in Korea by the Japanese would provide fertile soil in which Korean communism could blossom. At the same time, the victory of Mao’s national liberation forces in China was imminent, and that suggested that communism had momentum.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, in Japan, there was an economic crisis, which was proving to be a catalyst for the growth of communism, as post-war Japan looked to a brighter future than the one capitalism, with its frequent downturns, incessant threats of joblessness, growing inequality, omnipresent insecurity, and wars of industrial extermination, had delivered. To counter the communist threat to US financial, industrial and commercial interests, and the geostrategic and military interests with which they were entangled, Washington decided to engineer the political partition of the Korean peninsula. This would offer a number of advantages. Control over Korea south of the 38th parallel, the dividing line US officials had unilaterally drawn in the dying days of the Pacific War, would allow Washington to restore Korea’s economic linkages to Japan. This would facilitate the renewal of Japan’s capitalism, restart the engine of the country’s economic growth, and make the Japanese forget about the attractions of communism. Secondly, Korea’s gravitation to a communist future could be immediately eclipsed in the south, and its expansion from the north contained, if not rolled backed altogether. And finally, the United States would have a permanent perch on the doorstep of China, to contain the Reds in the giant East Asian country. US forces would also be within close range of the Soviet Union, which shared a border with Korea.<br /> <br /> The Republic of Korea was established in 1948 at the instigation of the United States, over the objections of most Koreans, who opposed the political partition of their country. Koreans had expected that before 1950, elections would be held for a pan-Korean government. At least, that’s what they had been promised. The proclamation of the ROK on August 15, 1948, left Koreans in the south aggrieved. Most had opposed the elections that led to the formation of the government. Koreans in the north were also incensed. Like their southern compatriots, they aspired to a single, democratically-elected Korean government, but with this desideratum at least temporarily foreclosed, they proclaimed their own state, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, three weeks later, on September 9. The US-created state in the south would refuse to recognize the DPRK, just as Washington had refused to recognize the Korean People’s Republic, the republic Koreans had proclaimed for themselves on September 6, 1945, before US forces arrived in Korea.<br /> <br /> The United States obtruded its military onto Korea three weeks ''after'' the Japanese surrender, having spilled not a single drop of blood for Korea’s liberation. In contrast, Soviet forces had fought their way into Korea a full month before US forces arrived. The Soviet push into Manchuria and contiguous Korea—and the spilled blood of Soviet soldiers in the campaign–was one of the principal causes of Japan’s surrender. The Japanese had hoped that the Soviets—neutral in the Pacific War until August 8, 1945—would broker a peace. But when the Soviets declared war on Japan, and crossed the frontier into Japan’s empire, Tokyo knew its cause was hopeless. It surrendered one week later.<br /> <br /> The Korean state that would be established in the Soviet occupation zone, the DPRK, was founded by anti-Japanese guerrillas who, like Soviet soldiers, had spilled their blood to liberate Korea. Korean guerrillas had fought the Japanese and their Korean collaborators for years, both within Korea, and from contiguous Manchuria. For 13 long years, Kim Il-sung had been a principal figure in the guerrilla struggle against Japanese imperialism. If anyone deserved to lead a newly independent Korea it was Kim, or Koreans like him, who had devoted their lives to achieving Korea’s freedom from foreign domination, and fought long, arduous battles against the country’s Japanese tormentors. In contrast, Washington installed Syngman Rhee as the head of its new Korean state, a man who had spent nearly four decades in the United States collecting degrees from Ivy League universities, including a Ph.D. from Princeton. When he was finally driven out of Seoul by exasperated Koreans, he returned to the bosom of his imperial master’s embrace, accepting a comfortable retirement in Hawaii. The new South Korean government designated the DPRK not as a state, but as an anti-state organization, deemed to be illegally occupying territory north of the 38th parallel, a designation that remains to this day.<br /> <br /> The Soviets withdrew from Korea on December 25, 1948, three and a half months after the founding of the DPRK, leaving North Koreans free to manage their own affairs (which Soviet occupation forces had largely allowed them to do anyway), and the peninsula free from at least one occupying power. The other occupying power, the United States, declined to quit the country, making a brief show of exiting the peninsula in the summer of 1949 by withdrawing combat troops, but leaving hundreds of military advisers behind and secret protocols in place to keep Korean forces under US operational control. US combat forces in large numbers returned a year later. The US military, then, has had a continuous presence on the Korean peninsula since the summer of 1945. Astonishingly, a US general continues to exercise wartime operational control over the South Korean military, an uncomfortable reality that disproves the comforting myth (for South Koreans and US citizens) that the ROK is a sovereign country and not—what the North Korean media never grow tired of pointing out—a puppet of Washington.<br /> <br /> South Korea’s status as a colony of one empire, the Japanese, and a puppet state of another, the United States, is illustrated by a telling spatial continuity pointed out by Bruce Cumings, a University of Chicago historian who has written widely and compellingly on modern Korean history and whose work I have drawn on extensively to tell the story of Korea’s fight for freedom. Cumings observed that in “1894 the Japanese army established its main base at Yongsan, on the outskirts of old Seoul; it [later became] an American military base—a gigantic complex smack in the middle of an enormous, sprawling, bustling city—contemporary Seoul.” Cumings wrote that he couldn’t “think of another capital city quite like it, where you turn a corner and suddenly see a mammoth swatch of land given over to a foreign army.”6<br /> <br /> Critics would say that the presence of a huge US military base in the middle of the country’s capital is only a reflection of South Korea’s need to defend itself against a belligerent and aggressive North Korea, and of Seoul’s decision to seek US assistance as a security partner. The argument is flawed. First, South Korea is far more deserving of the descriptions “belligerent” and “aggressive” than is North Korea. The ROK has fought unprovoked wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, in all three cases under US command, which is to say, as a “puppet,” or, in the preferred vernacular, as an “allied” military force of the United States. The DPRK, in contrast, has never fought an unprovoked war or deployed military forces beyond the Korean peninsula. Second, despite South Korea’s alleged vulnerability to North Korean attack, its leaders felt secure enough from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s to deploy more than 300,000 troops to Vietnam. Surely, a country which professes to be under imminent threat of attack from its northern neighbor could ill-afford to spare even a single solider to fight a war of choice two-thousand miles away. Third, the US-commanded South Korean military has fabricated a wholly implausible story that it is incapable of defending the ROK without US assistance, despite its overwhelming military superiority over the DPRK. In 2013, the ROK’s defense intelligence director, Cho Bo-geun, said improbably that despite spending many times more than North Korea on defense, the ROK would lose in a one-on-one fight with its northern neighbor. “If South Korea fights alone,” said Cho, “South Korea would lose.” But if “we fight as an alliance with the US under the current operational plan, [we will] win by an overwhelming margin.”7 At a meeting with top military officials in the summer of 2017, newly elected South Korean president Moon Jae-in expressed frustration that his top military advisers insisted that South Korean troops were unable to independently defend the state against North Korea. The ROK is larger than the DPRK in population, GDP, military budget, and the sophistication of its weaponry. How could it be the case, Moon demanded, that the ROK armed forces were incapable of defending South Korea “when our economy has been stronger [than North Korea’s] since the 1970s and our military expenditures have topped theirs for decades now?”8 A previous South Korean president, Roh Moo-hyun, had asked the same question, expressing annoyance over his top generals insisting that a US military presence on the peninsula was indispensable to the ROK’s defense. It’s significant that despite the protests of the country’s highest elected officials, nothing has changed. South Korea remains a base of operations for the Pentagon, its military under US operational control.<br /> <br /> == The Empire of Japan ==<br /> ''Our masters fight to have you, lovely creature''<br /> <br /> ''They race to seize you in their headlong course.''<br /> <br /> ''Each feels most fit to bleed you white in the future''<br /> <br /> ''Most justified in taking you by force.''<br /> <br /> —Bertolt Brecht1<br /> <br /> ''“[In] Korea, Japanese gendarmes and officers are in charge,''<br /> <br /> ''shooting and hanging anybody who dares so much as think of freedom.”''<br /> <br /> ''—''Congress of the Peoples of the East, Baku, September 1920<br /> <br /> Japan’s empire builders “first trained their guns on Korea,”2 wrote Louise Young, a US historian of modern Japan. The decision to build an empire was multifactorial, driven by a network of mutually reinforcing causes that led Japanese leaders to set their sights on the Korean peninsula, the gateway to the Asian continent, with its abundant raw materials, alluring markets, cheap labor, and potential enemies, a short distance, just one thousand kilometers (600 miles) from Japan across the body of water the Japanese call the Sea of Japan and the Koreans call the East Sea.<br /> <br /> As an emerging industrial power, Japan required access to vital raw materials necessary for its industrial development. Unlike the United States and Russia, whose expansive continental empires contained almost all the raw materials a modern industrial economy needed, or France and Britain, whose vast overseas empires teemed with vital natural resources, Japan lacked almost every input the country’s industrialists required, with the exception of coal.3 With Korea under its control, Japan could offer its manufacturers a guaranteed source of raw materials, as well as cheap labor. What’s more, Korea could furnish Japan with a secure supply of agricultural goods. The need for an alternative source of foodstuffs had become increasingly pressing. By the early twentieth century, Japan’s food production was no longer self-sufficient,4 owing to the tensions between its growing population and its mountainous topography, which left little room for farming.5 Japan was also deficient in oil, which would become important later on, as warships converted from coal to oil, and industrial economies increasingly depended on secure sources of petroleum. Securing supplies of oil was not a factor in Japan’s integration of Korea into its empire, but it was significant in the subsequent expansion of the empire and its conflict with the United States. Industrial expansion, moreover, exacerbated Japan’s dependency on foreign markets and raw materials, creating growing pressures to acquire foreign territory. The more Japan industrialized, the more dependent it became on foreign markets and sources of raw materials, and the more dependent it became, the more it was driven to expand its empire.6<br /> <br /> Japan wasn’t the only empire that had set its sights on Korea, and Japanese leaders, recognizing this, moved to pre-empt rival claims to the peninsula. The United States was aggressively expanding. Between 1776 and 1890, a period of 114 years, US territory grew by 3,357,000 square miles, an average of 29,535 square miles per year, or 81 square miles per day. Washington’s acquisition of colonies in the Pacific—Hawaii in 1893, Cuba and the Philippines in 1898, and Samoa in 1899—enkindled fears in Tokyo that US statesmen and industrialists harbored ambitions to acquire Korea as a colony, and might even turn their imperial ambitions on Japan itself.7<br /> <br /> Russia was another looming threat. According to the late US author, lawyer and historian David Fromkin, “Until the end of the decade before the First World War, the Russian Empire had been expanding at the expense of its neighbors at a prodigious rate and for a long time. It has been calculated that, at the time, the Russian Empire had been conquering the territory of its neighbors at an average rate of 50 square miles a day for 400 years.”8 The Romanov Empire was building the Trans-Siberia Railway, which, once completed, would provide the Tsar a route to infiltrate Russian troops into Northeast Asia, where they could embark upon the project of enlarging the Tsar’s domains.9 Russia coveted the Korean peninsula for its warm-water ports, of which it was in short supply. And if Russia expanded its imperial demesne over Korea, how long would it be before the Tsar’s imperial ambitions turned to Japan?<br /> <br /> Japan’s empire builders had seen how the great powers had humiliated China, making it into a colony, not of one great power, but of all of them, as Sun Yat-sen, the founder of modern China, had lamented.10 Japan resolved that it would not fall prey to the same fate. “In an international order where the ‘strong devour the weak,’ the Japanese concluded they could either join the West as a ‘guest at the table’ or be served up with China and Korea as part of the feast,”11 wrote Louise Young. They would, then, emulate the great powers. Japan would build its own empire by devouring as much of its surrounding territory as it could, before the great powers arrived on the scene. “Just as U.S. president James Monroe had informed the great powers that they better stay clear of Latin America,” observed Sarah Paine, a professor of strategy and policy at the US Naval College, “likewise increasing numbers of Japanese favored making East Asia their exclusive preserve.” Marshal of the Imperial Japanese Army, Terauchi Hisaichi believed that eventually all of Asia would fall under Japanese control.12<br /> <br /> The first step in building Japan’s empire would be to wrest Korea from China’s orbit. On July 25, 1894, Japan went to war with China over the question of who would control Korea. The Japanese government resolved to unilaterally impose reforms on Korea, which Tokyo promised would benefit Koreans by lifting them out of poverty through expanded trade. Using language that anticipated the rhetoric Washington would employ more than a century later to justify its leadership of a new global economic order, Japan promised to create a win-win solution for both countries by opening Korea to the global economy.13<br /> <br /> Unsurprisingly, Koreans rejected Japan’s self-proclaimed leadership14 and greeted the First Sino-Japanese War, not as the beginning of a period of Korean efflorescence, but as the commencement of a painful period of imperial Japanese rule15 marked by, among other things, a foreign military base in the middle of Seoul, which would become a seat for ongoing foreign domination of the peninsula that would last through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. The war incubated an intense animus among Koreans toward the Japanese. To counter Tokyo’s imperial ambitions, the Korean monarchy sought out the protection of other great powers. Queen Min, the royal consort, looked to St. Petersburg as a counterpoise to Japan and purged the government of ministers whose sympathies lay with the Japanese. The Japanese government responded by arranging to have her eliminated. She was murdered on October 8, 1895, “to the enduring outrage of the Korean people.”16<br /> <br /> Less than a decade later, Japan fought Russia over the question of which empire would control Korea and the contiguous Chinese province of Manchuria. The war was preceded by a series of negotiations in which the two countries proposed to divide the two territories. In 1896, Tokyo offered to bisect Korea along the 38th parallel, anticipating the United States’ partition of the peninsula along the same parallel 49 years later. Japan proposed to establish a sphere of influence south of the parallel, while Russia’s sphere would lie to the north. The Russians declined, their ambitions set on the warm-water ports of the south, and insisted that all of Korea fall within Russia’s ambit.17 The Japanese tried again in 1903, this time proposing to let Russia have Manchuria in exchange for Japan taking all of Korea. Again, the Tsar balked, demanding an exclusive sphere of influence in Manchuria and a shared sphere in Korea.18 Soon, negotiations between the two empires collapsed, and by 1904 the rivalry escalated into war. Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russian fleet, stationed at what was then called Port Arthur (now Lushunkou District), causing incalculable damage and Russia’s defeat. Japan’s vanquishing Russia stirred all of Asia and horrified Europe. For the first time ever, a non-white nation had defeated a great power in battle.19 A seismic event which shook the Western world, the war touched off the 1905 revolution in Russia, but inaugurated Korea’s enslavement by Japan.<br /> <br /> With Japan now in control of Korea, the United States sought to consolidate its own imperial assets in the Far East. In 1905, US Secretary of War William Howard Taft and Japanese prime minister Count Katsura Taro signed a memorandum in which the United States would recognize Japanese domination of Korea in return for Japan recognizing US control of the Philippines.20 The agreement rankled Kim Il-sung, who would point out years later how the United States had connived with Japan to sell Korea into colonial slavery, in return for Japan recognizing Washington’s own imperial ambitions, a hard truth lost on his Korean compatriots who placed their hope in the United States winning Korea’s manumission from Japanese rule at the Paris Peace Conference following World War I. The widely held but erroneous belief that US President Woodrow Wilson had promised a post-war world of self-determination, and the hostility of the great powers to the colonial peoples’ demands for it, confirmed Kim in the belief, which would play no small role in North Korea’s official philosophy of self-reliance, or ''Juche'', that it “is a tragic lesson that Korea should not count on other nations for independence, because they [do] not care.”21 Instead, Koreans would have to emancipate themselves, in accordance with the communist theory to which Kim subscribed. That theory held that any group that is oppressed can count on none but itself to bring about its liberation. Other people wouldn’t free Koreans; Koreans would have to free themselves.<br /> <br /> The result of Japan’s victory over Russia was that Tokyo established a protectorate over Korea in 1905. Japan would now run Korea’s foreign affairs, its police, and its communications systems, and station Japanese troops on Korean soil.22 The US-supported affront to Korean sovereignty touched off a major insurgency, of such large scope that as many as 15,000 insurgents were killed and up to 10,000 jailed in uprisings between 1905 and 1907, the first martyrs in Korea’s long and enduring war for freedom.23 On August 1, 1907, the Japanese resident general ordered the Korean army disbanded, touching off a new round of riots and intensifying an anti-Japanese insurgency. Between July 1907 and October 1908, 14,000 Koreans were killed fighting to liberate Korea from the Japanese yoke.24 From 1907 through 1910, guerrilla bands numbering nearly 10,000 came close to evicting the Japanese colonizers from Seoul. By Japanese accounts, in 1908, nearly 70,000 Korean guerillas had engaged Japanese troops in almost 1,500 confrontations. This was hardly a war of minor skirmishes, but a determined military effort to expel the Japanese invaders. The Japanese occupation forces, however, proved formidable, and gradually overcame the insurgency. The number of guerrillas dropped to about 25,000 in 1909 and then plummeted to below 2,000, as insurgents fled to the safety of neighboring Manchuria.25 Kim Il-sung would later take up the insurgent cause in the frozen mountains of the Chinese region, forming the core of the future Korean People’s Army (KPA), North Korea’s military force.<br /> <br /> Korea was formally absorbed into the Japanese empire on August 22, 1910, ceasing to exist as a country, and re-named Chosen by the Japanese. That day would become “the darkest day of any subsequent year in Korean history,” observed Bruce Cumings26 and would mark the beginning of what historian Frank Baldwin termed a 35-year period of “particularly intense colonial control compared to other colonial areas, like India and Indochina, which were far from their metropolitan centers.”27<br /> <br /> During the Japanese colonial period, Korean culture was outlawed. All Korean political organizations were disbanded.28 Korean newspapers and public gatherings were prohibited. The education system was Japanized.29 Koreans were forced to speak Japanese, take Japanese names, and worship at Shinto shrines, even though Shintoism, the traditional religion of Japan, was foreign to Korea.30<br /> <br /> The Empire of the Rising Sun built up Korea economically, developing mines, industry, railways, and electric power plants. But the development was geared to the needs of Japan’s empire and its financiers, industrialists, and militarists. Koreans became Japan’s peripatetic, super-exploited workforce, the coerced labor on which the wealth of the empire would be built. In pursuit of Japan’s imperial project, Koreans were reduced to the status of subhumans, dehumanized as machines and beasts of burden, denied the dignity of self-determination, and alienated from their language and culture.<br /> <br /> At the same time, Korea was transformed from a territory whose agricultural activity sustained a Korean population into a Japanese granary. Huge blocks of land were transferred into Japanese hands, and agriculture was steered away from Korean to Japanese needs.31 In 1938, 60 percent of Korea’s harvested rice was exported to Japan. According to the American journalist Anna Louise Strong, “The Japanese ate seven times as much rice per capita as the Koreans, condemning the latter to eat rice huskings and cheaper grains.”32 What land did remain in Korean hands was owned by local landlords whose oppressive rents made the Korean peasantry among the world’s lowliest and most oppressed.33 Korea’s landed families would, after decades of collaboration with the Japanese, become the nucleus of a new post-Japanese South Korean state, and founders of the ''chaebols''—literally “wealth clans”—the hydra-like family-owned conglomerates that dominate South Korea’s economy, including Samsung, Hyundai, and LG.<br /> <br /> Manufacturing and mining, like agriculture, were subordinated to Japan’s needs. Almost all major industry north of the 38th parallel belonged to the Japanese,34 and was engaged in producing semi-finished products which were shipped to Japan. Not a single plant produced finished goods for the Korean market.35 Korean needs were simply not a consideration. On top of this, Korean workers were discriminated against in pay. According to Bruce Cumings, “Japanese workers in Korea got over 2 yen per day in 1937, a Formosan [Taiwanese] worker 1 yen, and a Korean worker .66 yen.”36 The pay was intolerably low, and working conditions were insufferably harsh. In the mines, Koreans were forced to work punishingly long hours, the women bare-breasted.37<br /> <br /> As Japan took steps to expand its empire through military conquest, Koreans were impressed into service as conscripted laborers, sent to every corner of the empire to satisfy the requirements of Japan’s military and economic expansion.38 In 1941, about one of every 17 Koreans was in Japan, half working in Japanese industry. By 1944, one in eight had been relocated outside Korea, to other parts of the empire, where they were needed as laborers. Twenty percent were uprooted, either shipped beyond Korea’s borders or living in Korea outside of areas in which they were born.39 At the close of World War II, one third of the industrial labor force in Japan was made up of Koreans. 40 At least ten thousand Koreans were employed as conscripted laborers in Japanese war plants in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They perished in the US atom bombing of the two cities.41<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; * *<br /> <br /> Echoes of past oppressions can be heard in the present. Those who descend from dominant groups which benefitted from race-, class-, or sex-based discriminations of the past enjoy advantages which have carried forward across generations to the present. Likewise, the disadvantages imposed on groups which suffered under past discriminations continue to be visited upon their descendants, even when the discriminations have formally come to an end.<br /> <br /> Aso Taro, Japan’s prime minister from September 2008 to September 2009, and later deputy prime minister and minister of finance in the government of Abe Shinzo (Abe is known as Shinzo Abe in the West), is an example of historical oppressions profiting contemporary figures through descent. Aso is the scion of a wealthy mining family whose wealth was built on the forced labor of Koreans.42 His considerable advantages, in education, position, wealth, and connections, derive less from his personal qualities (however admirable they may be) than from the conscripted labor of the thousands of Koreans his forbears exploited in their mines. It is from the womb of coerced Korean labor that Aso’s wealth—and all the advantages it confers—was born.<br /> <br /> Aso is the grandson of another former Japanese prime minister, Yoshida Shigeru, who is related by marriage to two other former Japanese prime ministers, Sato Eisaku and Kishi Nobosuke. Kishi was the commerce and industry minister in Japan’s puppet Manchurian state, and later the munitions ministry supremo. He oversaw the coerced labor of hundreds of thousands of Koreans and Chinese in Manchurian-based mines and factories.43 Tojo Hideki, who would lead Japan’s cabinet during the Pacific War, was Manchukuo’s head of military police. Both Kishi and Tojo, as members of the wartime Japanese cabinet, co-signed the declaration of war against the United States in 1941. After the war, Kishi was jailed on war crimes charges.44<br /> <br /> Despite his war criminal status, geopolitical events conspired to transform Kishi into a US asset and esteemed politician. The end of the war brought opportunity to the United States, but also danger. The danger was that the people of the world, the bulk of whom were victims of colonialism and the failures of capitalism, would be inspired by the example of the Soviet Union and the communists who identified with it. Lenin had urged the colonial oppressed to rebel against their imperial masters, and Moscow had furnished national liberation movements with assistance. This inspired the colonial downtrodden, gave them hope, and persuaded them to look favorably on the communists. Moreover, while the rest of the world went backward during the capitalist crisis of the Great Depression, the Soviets forged ahead, building a great industrial economy with full employment. Hadn’t the Soviets, in the space of a decade, turned an underdeveloped country into an industrial behemoth, a model that other underdeveloped countries could emulate? Additionally, the USSR had emerged victorious from the greatest colonial war ever waged, that of Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union, impelled by the German imperialist aim of winning ''lebensraum'' (living space) and enslaving the peoples of Eastern Europe. Almost all of the heavy lifting in the fight to crush Nazism was done by the Soviets. What’s more, the Red Army had played a lead role in toppling the Empire of the Rising Sun, while communists led the resistance to Axis occupation forces throughout Europe and Asia. Communists worldwide were held in high esteem after World War II; they had been in the vanguard of every fight against all that was rotten, reactionary, and exploitative.<br /> <br /> In China, in the years immediately following the Pacific War, communist forces, led by Mao Tse Tung, were advancing toward victory in a great anti-colonial and anti-feudal struggle, offering inspiration to other peoples of East Asia seeking liberation. At the same time, Europe and Japan were reeling from economic breakdown caused by the war. Washington worried that local communist forces would come to power in Germany and Japan, pushed by widespread hardship and pulled by the prestige the communists had won as the most dedicated of the anti-fascist forces. Top US State Department and Pentagon officials feared that if communists came to power in Berlin and Tokyo, German and Japanese industrial potential would be brought under local popular control, tilting the balance of world power away from US hegemony. Real security against the popular revolt against empire-building and the failures of capitalism required the restoration of faltering economies and a crackdown on communists. The solution, in the view of the US power elite, was a stimulus program to put Japan and Germany back to work and the recruitment of anti-communists to take up major posts in the new US-allied post-war states. Kishi—the war criminal who oversaw the use of coerced labor in Manchurian munitions factories—was identified as a promising candidate to lead a new post-war anti-communist Japan.45 Kishi’s reputation was instantly rehabilitated. He was exonerated for wartime opposition to the US empire, and served two terms as Japan’s prime minister, becoming known in some circles as “America’s favorite war criminal.” Under the tutelage of Washington, the new Japan would not be much different from the old one. It would remain implacably opposed to forces of national liberation and hostile to a world of equality and democracy, its leaders chosen from among former enemies for their anti-communist credentials.<br /> <br /> Kishi is held in the highest esteem by yet another Japanese prime minister, Abe Shinzo, Kishi’s maternal grandson. While Kishi was in Manchuria organizing the conscripted labor of Koreans and Chinese, Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of Kim Jong-un, the current leader of North Korea, was in Manchuria leading a guerrilla war against Kishi and other Japanese empire-builders, war criminals and freebooters. Eight decades later, Kim Il-sung and Kishi would meet “again through their grandsons,” observed Bruce Cumings,46 as vectors of contending social forces: revolutionary nationalism vs. imperialism, labor vs. parasitism, emancipation vs. reaction.<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; * *<br /> <br /> The Japanese dragooned Koreans into another form of coerced labor—enslavement to satisfy the lust of Japanese soldiers. Possibly as many as 200,000 women were impressed into a system of sexual slavery. By the time the system was fully established, the vast majority of sexual slaves were Koreans.47<br /> <br /> As Bruce Cumings relates, “Japanese historians had written about the sexual slavery system for decades, but were told time and again by the authorities that no archival documents existed on it.” Then, in 1992, Japanese “historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi walked into a military library and found such documents just sitting on the shelf. His 1995 book, ''Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II'', is now a standard source.”48<br /> <br /> The first documented comfort station, the anodyne term used to sanitize the description of what were ''de facto'' rape stations, was established in Japanese controlled Manchuria in 1932, the year Kim Il-sung launched his insurgency against the empire-builders under whose supervision this miserable institution flourished. By 1938 there were already approximately 30,000 to 40,000 women, mainly Koreans, subjected to regular sexual violence by Japanese soldiers.49<br /> <br /> Sexual slavery carried on even after the fall of the Empire of the Rising Sun, resurrected by the South Korean army during the Korean War.50 It is perhaps of some significance that the ROK Army was, at the time, dominated at its highest levels by Koreans who had served in the Japanese Imperial Army, some of whom had even served in army units tasked with hunting down Kim Il-sung. Is it any surprise, then, that this very same army, with its historical connections to the Japanese through its officer corps, should set up a Japanese-style system of sexual bondage? It’s also of significance that at the time, the South Korean army was, as it has been throughout its history, under the operational control of a US commander. Hence, the United States was complicit in the sexual slavery practiced by the ROK Army.<br /> <br /> The terms “comfort women” and “comfort station” evince a patriarchal bias. Whose comfort was involved? Certainly not that of the women who were kidnapped or otherwise coerced into sexual slavery. “Comfort” is presumably what the institution offered its male beneficiaries—either “comfort” in sexual release, or the “comfort” of domination. But importantly, the institution, and the women who were dragooned into it, are described in terms of what they offered men, as if the interests of men are primary, and those of the female victims, of little moment. The women coerced into sexual slavery weren’t “comfort” women who worked at “comfort stations” but enslaved rape victims impressed into service in rape stations for the satisfaction of soldiers who were raping, both literally and figuratively, an entire nation.<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; * *<br /> <br /> While Japanese counter-insurgency efforts managed to quell the Korean struggle for freedom by 1910, resistance continued, and was never fully expunged at any point during Japan’s colonial rule. In 1912, the insurgency was strong enough that the Japanese had arrested 50,000 Korean rebels. By 1918, 140,000 patriots were arrested by Japanese colonial security forces.51 Koreans had no intention of capitulating to their Japanese conquerors.<br /> <br /> In 1919, mass movements against colonialism swept across the colonial world, and on March 1, Korea erupted in anger. Over the next two months, at least 500,000 Koreans took part in street demonstrations in 600 different locations.52 The police were unable to cope with the disturbances, and the Japanese garrison army was called in to crush the uprising. Clashes between protestors and the army led to hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths,53 adding to the Golgotha of some 30,000 Koreans who had already been martyred in efforts to liberate their country dating from 1905.<br /> <br /> “All the pent up angers and sorrows of living under the Japanese imperialists for ten long years exploded,” wrote Kim Il-sung, many years later.<br /> <br /> Ten years after the annexation, Korea had become a gigantic dungeon, no better than those of the Middle Ages. The Japanese colonists used naked military power to suppress the Korean people’s aspiration to become free again. The Japanese took away our freedom of press, freedom to hold meetings, freedom to form organizations, and freedom to march. They took away our human rights and properties. The Korean people formed secret organizations, independence fights, mass enlightenment activities, and had built up considerable potential energy against the decade of plunder and exploitation by the Japanese.54<br /> <br /> Kim complained that some of the leaders of the movement against Japanese colonization “believed that Korea could be freed by sending petitions to other nations. They took and swallowed US President Woodrow Wilson’s ‘Doctrine of Self-Determination’ and expected the United States and other Western powers to pressure Japan into freeing Korea,” Kim recalled. “They wrote petition after petition, becoming laughing stocks of the imperialists.”55<br /> <br /> Syngman Rhee, whom Washington would recruit to lead South Korea, spent his days in Washington lobbying diplomats and State Department officials. A “gentleman” who spoke impeccable English, Rhee “begged and pleaded with representatives of the imperialist nations,” wrote Kim Il-sung, but the imperialist countries “were more keen on grabbing more colonies for themselves than freeing any colony.”56<br /> <br /> “The end of World War I brought false and rapidly dashed hopes to those on the receiving end of imperialism,” wrote Sarah Paine. US “president Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points nowhere promised (though many interpreted them to promise) national self-determination. The Versailles Peace Treaty did not make good on the promise that was never made and this failure deeply disappointed the colonized worldwide.”57<br /> <br /> Wilson did promise self-determination, though not universally, and only to the peoples of the defeated Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. Wilson’s point 10 of his 14-point plan for the post-WWI order expressed the view that “the people of Austria-Hungary should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development,” while his point 12 recommended that “other nationalities under Turkish rule” be accorded the same opportunities. But Wilson failed to deliver a sweeping, universal call for the manumission of all colonial peoples.<br /> <br /> To be sure, Wilson did dilate on the importance of self-determination, which he defined as the right of all people “to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live,”58 but he implicitly invoked an exclusionary clause that proponents of liberalism have traditionally used to differentially assign rights and privileges within their ostensible system of equality. Wilson implicitly defined “people” as subjects of defeated rival empires, denying the charter of humanity to the subjects of allied empires, such as that of Great Britain, which held hundreds of millions of Indians in thrall, among others, and who would not be subsumed under Wilson’s definition of those worthy of self-determination. Indians, Koreans, Africans—the subject peoples of the allied powers—were tacitly defined as non-people, or sub-humans—intellectually and culturally inferior beings for whom self-governance was impossible.<br /> <br /> The same kind of exclusionary liberalism applied at home. Wilson believed in the supremacy of the white race. As Stephen Kinzer has pointed out, Wilson “removed African-Americans from government jobs, segregated the transit system in Washington, D.C., and had ‘Birth of a Nation’ screened in the White House—saying afterward that its portrayal of noble Klansmen repressing ape-like black thugs was ‘a splendid production.’”59<br /> <br /> In international affairs, Wilsonian liberalism meant equality for whites and the denial of a charter of humanity for non-whites. Self-determination would be the exclusive preserve of Europeans, denied to Koreans, Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, and Palestinians. The falsely labelled paladin of the equality of peoples favored a Jewish Palestine (i.e., a Palestine settled by white Europeans), or, to put it another way, the negation of the rights of (non-white Arab) Palestinians. Neither had Wilson any intention of conferring self-determination upon the people of Central America into whose countries he kept dispatching US Marines to install governments congenial to US business interests. In office, Wilson intervened militarily in Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Russia, unwilling to grant the people of these countries the right of self-determination.60<br /> <br /> “In 1916,” recounts Kinzer, “Wilson drafted a speech to Congress declaring, ‘It shall not lie with American people to dictate to another people what their government shall be.’ He sent it to his secretary of state for review. It came back with this notation in the margin: ‘Haiti, S. Domingo, Nicaragua, Panama.’ Confronted with this inconvenient reminder, Wilson decided not to deliver the speech.”61<br /> <br /> Looking back on the March First movement, Kim Il-sung was scathing in his assessment of Koreans who believed that the United States would sincerely offer relief from Japanese imperialism. He recalled that it was the United States that had brokered the peace treaty between Russia and Japan in 1905 that handed Korea to the Japanese. And it was Washington, through the mechanism of the Taft-Katsura Treaty, that colluded with Tokyo to divide Korea and the Philippines between the two of them.<br /> <br /> Kim thought Korean leaders equally naïve in assuming that demonstrations would move the Japanese to abandon their project of colonialism, a project in which they had invested significantly in time, resources, and manpower. “Many Koreans mistakenly assumed that the Japanese would get out if they marched for several months shouting slogans,” wrote Kim. “They were sadly mistaken; the Japanese were not about to leave Korea on account of mere marches. Japan had fought three wars over Korea. … In the nineteenth century, after the Meiji Reform, the Japanese formulated a plan to take Korea by force. It was asserted that Korea was essential for the Empire to expand. … Japan fought wars with Russia and China over Korea. America and Great Britain supported Japan in these two wars.”62 Japan was not going to abandon its imperial project simply because Koreans expressed their objection in marches and slogans.<br /> <br /> Kim likened Japan and the United States to armed robbers. “An armed robber in your house will not spare your life, just because you plead for your life. Other armed robbers standing outside will not rush inside to help you no matter how loud you scream. If you want to live, you must fight off the armed robber yourself. Armed robbers must be fought with arms.”63<br /> <br /> Instead of taking up arms, and freeing Korea by their own efforts, Koreans who resisted Japanese colonization “died shouting freedom and justice, appealing to the conscience of humanity and human rights advocates of the world, in vain,”64 Kim wrote. It “is a tragic lesson,” he lamented, but true nonetheless, “that Korea [could] not count on other nations for independence, because they did not care.”65 What the “failed March First Movement taught us,” Kim concluded, was that we must “build up our strength on our own.” Koreans “must unite and achieve independence on their own.”66<br /> <br /> As a model, Kim looked not to Wilson and his doctrine of self-determination limited to the subjects of defeated rival empires, nor to the United States, with its agreement to recognize Japanese imperial aims in Korea in exchange for Japan recognizing US imperial aims in the Philippines. Wilson’s “so-called doctrine,” scoffed Kim, “was nothing but an American ruse to counter the October Revolution in Russia.”67 Kim, instead, would look for inspiration to Russia and the Bolsheviks.<br /> <br /> Lenin had called in March 1917 for “the liberation of ''all'' colonies and of ''all'' oppressed nations,”68 (emphasis added) not just those of enemy countries. It would take a superhuman effort to fight the Japanese, Kim had concluded. “We must learn from the Russian revolution and arm the people of Korea, in order to free our nation and build a new Korea of equality, freedom, and justice for all.”69<br /> <br /> Ho Chi Minh, the revolutionary nationalist leader of Vietnam, had himself been seduced and betrayed by Wilson’s faux-liberal rhetoric about self-determination. In fact, Ho had appealed directly to Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference, and to other delegates, to no avail.70 But, Ho, like Kim Il-sung, discovered that the program of the Bolsheviks had the substance that Wilson’s (exclusionary) doctrine of self-determination lacked.<br /> <br /> Ho recalled, after World I, living in Paris, that he “would distribute leaflets denouncing the crimes committed by the French colonialists in Viet Nam.” He was a member of the French Socialist Party, and while he attended meetings regularly, he struggled to follow the discussions, especially those concerning the split within the socialist movement, between the reformists and the communists. “What I wanted to know,” he recalled, was which of the branches of socialism sided “with the peoples of colonial countries.”71<br /> <br /> Today, the split between reformists and communists is remembered to have originated in a disagreement over whether to achieve socialism gradually, through piecemeal reforms within the existing capitalist system, or all at once, through revolution. But there was another point of contention: colonialism. Eduard Bernstein, a leading figure in the reformist movement saw “the colonial enterprise” as desirable, and necessary to the attainment of socialist goals in Europe. Without “the colonial expansion of our economy,” he wrote, “the poverty that still exists in Europe today, which we are trying to eradicate, would be much worse and we would have much less hope of eliminating it. Even when counterbalanced by the crimes of colonialism, the benefits from colonies always weigh more heavily on the scale.”72<br /> <br /> The communists, led by Lenin, had a different point of view. They were advocates of genuine, inclusive, self-determination—self-determination for all peoples, not just for white Europeans.<br /> <br /> The future leader of the Indochinese struggle for independence was given a tract by Lenin, which had been published in ''l’Humanit''é, the newspaper of the French Communist Party. It was titled “Thesis on the National and Colonial Questions.”<br /> <br /> Lenin presented the following argument. The formal or legal equality between person A, who sells his labor, and person B, who buys it, conceals a profound inequality. Person B exploits and person A is exploited. Without redressing the inequality between persons A and B, no true equality exists. “The real meaning of the demand for equality,” wrote Lenin, “consists in its being a demand for the abolition” of exploitation, or the abolition of what we might call “parasitism”—living off the labor of others. This, by itself, however, did not directly answer Ho’s question. Ho insisted on knowing whether Lenin was on the side of the colonial peoples.<br /> <br /> A narrow reading of Lenin would suggest that his concern was with the inequality between workers and capitalists, the principal focus of much of the socialist movement to that point. But Lenin argued that exploitation wasn’t limited to the relationship between classes within countries. It also existed between countries. There exists, Lenin wrote, a “colonial and financial enslavement of the vast majority of the world’s population by an insignificant minority of the richest advanced capitalist countries.” In other words, the unequal relationship that exists between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat also exists between a minority of wealthy capitalist nations and the rest of humanity (much of which those in the wealthy capitalist nations regarded as either subhuman or intellectually, culturally, and morally inferior, incapable of self-government, and suitable only for lives of exploitation as beasts of burden.)<br /> <br /> Democracy among nations, if it is to have any substantial meaning, cannot, Lenin wrote “be restricted to the bare, formal, purely declaratory and actually non-committal recognition of the equality of nations”; it must entail the abolition of the exploitation of one nation by another. To achieve the abolition of exploitation, both within the metropolitan countries and between nations, Lenin called for the exploited of the metropolitan countries to pursue with the exploited of the colonies a joint revolutionary struggle to overthrow the economic elites of the metropole.73 In terms of France’s domination of Vietnam, this meant that the Vietnamese as a people and French workers should pursue a joint revolutionary struggle to overthrow their common enemy, namely, the French shoguns of finance, industry and commerce who exploited both groups. The success of this strategy, of course, would depend on French workers recognizing that the affinity between themselves and the peoples of the French colonies was more significant than the linguistic and cultural affinity they had with the French elite. Nevertheless, in Lenin’s words were found not only a sincere recognition of the colonial peoples’ right to liberation, but a concrete program by which to achieve it.<br /> <br /> Ho was ecstatic. “What emotion, enthusiasm, clear-sightedness and confidence it instilled into me!” he exclaimed. “I was overjoyed to tears. Though sitting alone in my room, I shouted out aloud as if addressing large crowds: ‘Dear compatriots! This is what we need; this is the path to our liberation!”74<br /> <br /> Earlier, Lenin had expanded the definition of socialist revolution beyond what socialist leaders such as Bernstein understood socialism to mean. “The socialist revolution is by no means a single battle,” Lenin wrote in his essay “The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination.” Instead, it is “a whole series of battles around all problems of economic and democratic reforms” including “equal rights for women” and—importantly, from the perspective of people trying to free themselves from colonial subjugation— “self-determination.” Socialism “would remain an idle phrase,” Lenin insisted, “if it were not linked up with a revolutionary approach to all the questions of democracy, including the national question,” by which he meant the right of peoples, including Koreans, to exercise sovereignty over their own affairs, rather than being enslaved by imperialist masters. Lenin envisaged what he termed “a truly democratic, truly internationalist” order, in which each nation is free to set its own course and freely join with other states in relationships of mutual benefit.<br /> <br /> The prescriptive stress in Lenin’s writings on what was called the national question was on ''mutual'' benefit ''contra'' relationships in which benefits are monopolized by a stronger nation at the expense of a weaker one, as they are, for example, in the free trade agreements that dominant economic powers have always insisted upon. The United States, which until the end of WWII had the highest tariff barriers in the world, and had relied on protectionist policies for economic development, from the days of Alexander Hamilton to 1945, now insists on a level playing field. When it was the dominant economic power, Britain, too, insisted on free trade, and the United States, then a developing country, balked. But today, poor, post-colonial countries, whose economic development has been historically stifled, distorted, and yoked to the requirements of their former colonial masters, are not supposed to emulate the development practices of the United States. They cannot possibly compete on a level playing field with empires that have amassed enormous wealth, and have done so not only through their own past protectionist measures, but also through their long histories of plundering the colonies and semi-colonies of their resources, land, and labor.<br /> <br /> A direct line runs from Lenin’s view that the international order ought to be based on the voluntary association of equal partners for mutual (and not coerced and unequal) benefit, to the official view espoused by such countries as the DPRK and the Republic of Cuba. This view, needless to say, runs completely counter to the US view. The US view unabashedly declares the intention of the United States to coerce states, by one means or another, into relationships of subordination to Washington.<br /> <br /> Kim Il-sung’s continuity with Lenin was evident in a speech he made to the 85th Inter-Parliamentary Conference in April 1991, just a few years before his death.<br /> <br /> In order to build the new world aspired to by mankind, it is necessary to abolish the unequal old international order in all fields of politics, the economy and culture and establish an equitable new international order. There are large and small countries in the world, but there cannot be major and minor countries; there are developed nations and less developed nations, but there cannot be nations destined to dominate other nations or those destined to be dominated. All countries and nations are equal members of the international community and as such have the right to independence and equality. No privilege and no arbitrariness should be tolerated in international relations; friendship and cooperation among countries must be fully developed on the principles of mutual respect, non-interference in the affairs of other countries, equality and mutual benefit.75<br /> <br /> Seven months prior to Kim’s statement, US president George H.W. Bush had proclaimed a New World Order, in which all countries would be subordinate to the United States. Washington would exercise “world leadership.”76 The implication of Bush’s New World Order was that the planet would be divided between nations destined to be dominated and one nation, the United States, which would dominate. Only the United States would have the right to independence, and the Pentagon, CIA, and US state and treasury departments would exercise leadership over the affairs of other countries. The expression of Bush’s declaration of US world leadership can be seen in the words of a Pentagon spokesman, Rear Admiral John Kirby, who, in 2015, declared that the United States retains the “right,” the “responsibility,” and “the resources” to intervene in any country unilaterally to achieve US foreign policy goals.77<br /> <br /> Lenin made one other point in his essay which portended what the oppressed peoples of the world would construe as Wilson’s betrayal of their aspirations for freedom. People struggling for manumission from colonial enslavement would find no allies among governments dominated by the proprietary classes of the great powers, the Bolshevik leader warned. The business class “always betrays the interest of the people and of democracy,” and “is always ready for annexations and for oppressing other nations.”<br /> <br /> When the Bolsheviks formed the Communist International in 1919, an organization of communist parties from around the world, they established twenty-one conditions of membership. Condition number eight had enormous appeal to colonial peoples, who had been reduced to the status of ''untermenschen'' (subhumans) to be ruled by a ''Herrenvolk'' (master race.)<br /> <br /> A particularly marked and clear attitude on the question of the colonies and oppressed nations is necessary on the part of the communist parties of those countries whose bourgeoisies are in possession of colonies and oppresses other nations. Every party that wishes to belong to the Communist International has an obligation of exposing the dodges of its ‘own’ imperialists in the colonies, of supporting every liberation movement in the colonies not only in words but in deeds, of demanding that their imperialist compatriots should be thrown out of the colonies, of cultivating in the hearts of the workers in their own country a truly fraternal relationship to the working population in the colonies and to the oppressed nations, and of carrying out systematic propaganda among their own country’s troops against oppression of colonial peoples.78<br /> <br /> Communist ideology would resonate “globally among colonized and downtrodden peoples,” noted the US Naval College’s Sarah Paine79, and the reason why—because it offered the world’s oppressed people the charter of humanity they sought, to use a phrase Jean-Paul Sartre once eloquently crafted80—is evident in the yawning chasm that emerged between the new society of equality the Bolsheviks created and the societies of white supremacy the wealthy capitalist powers maintained.<br /> <br /> In contrast to the ''Herrenvolk'' powers, in 1935, three years after Kim Il-sung embarked on his campaign of guerrilla insurgency against the Japanese, the British intellectuals Beatrice and Sidney Webb described the Soviet Union—Kim Il-sung’s and Ho Chi Minh’s model in contrast to Wilson’s race-based pro-colonial liberalism—as the very antithesis of the imperialist countries’ ''Herrenvolk'' polities. In their voluminous ''Soviet Communism: A New Civilization'', the Webbs contrasted the racial policies of the great powers with those of the USSR, under the heading “The [USSR’s] Insistence on Racial Equality.” Beginning their survey with the British Empire, the couple noted that within this vast area, containing five hundred million inhabitants, only seventy million, or 14 percent, were accorded political rights. The “self-governing Dominions”—South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand—were white supremacist settler states. South Africa differentially accorded rights, privileges, and duties on the basis of race, “while Canada and Australia ignored the native tribes (when they did not exterminate them) as possible citizens of the newly formed state.” And 400 million Indians were denied any political rights at all, their country governed, not by themselves, but by the British civil service.<br /> <br /> But the British Empire was hardly unique, the Webbs observed. In the United States, citizens of African origin, “though assumed to be entitled to vote and to represent voters, [were] by the electoral law and administrative practice of particular states excluded from fully-fledged citizenship with the right to vote and to become representatives.” (In the 1930s, the United States was an anti-Jewish white supremacist country every bit as repressive, persecutory, harassing, menacing, and violent toward its citizens of African origin as was the contemporaneous, white supremacist, anti-Jewish Nazi state toward its Jewish citizens.)<br /> <br /> In contrast, observed the Webbs, an outstanding feature of the Soviet Union was its “absolute refusal to regard racial characteristics” as a legitimate basis on which to assign rights, privileges and duties. Indeed, one “of the reasons for the Anti-Comintern Axis, uniting Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Shintoist Japan in hostility to the Soviet Union, was this insistence by the Bolshevist government on racial equality throughout the USSR. These three Great Powers were all alike intent on extending by force of arms, the dominance of their own race over new territories inhabited by so-called inferior races, who [had] no right to self-determination and were to accept the social order imposed by the conqueror, or to risk extermination.”81<br /> <br /> Parenthetically, a comment made by Lenin in the statement of his thesis on the equality of nations reminds us of how, in some respects, little has changed since the Bolshevik leader wrote his tract in 1920. South Korea, a state established by Washington for reasons of US political, economic, and strategic aims, can without hyperbole be called a puppet state in the way Manchukuo, the state established by the Japanese in Manchuria in the 1930s, is often described. To most Americans and Europeans, South Korea is an independent, sovereign state, and at worse, a semi-sovereign state, but not a puppet. Yet a state which was conceived, midwifed, and suckled by Washington; which oversees an economy built by massive injections of financial and other aid from the United States and significant economic concessions accorded to it in order for it to develop economically to showcase the merits of the capitalist way of life in the Cold War competition with North Korea; which hosts “the largest overseas American military base in the world,” described by the US Army as the largest US power projection platform in the Pacific82; whose military remains under the command of the Pentagon and has been deployed to suppress Koreans who have taken up arms to overthrow the uninvited US presence in their country; which has contributed troops to US wars of aggression in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq: such a state is hardly independent. Lenin thought it was necessary “constantly to explain and expose … the deception systematically practiced by the imperialist powers, which, under the guise of politically independent states, set up states that are wholly dependent on them economically, financially and militarily.” South Korea is a paradigmatic expression of the kind of dependent state Lenin had in mind.<br /> <br /> == Imperialism ==<br /> “''[Unless] the economic essence of imperialism … is studied,''<br /> <br /> ''it will be impossible to understand''<br /> <br /> ''and appraise modern war and modern politics.”''<br /> <br /> —Lenin1<br /> <br /> Koreans were victims of Japanese colonialism, as well as of a higher-level process: imperialism. Imperialism is the activity, enterprise and methodology of building empires. There are a number of ways empires can be built. One is by establishing colonies. But there are other ways, as well.<br /> <br /> Empires can be declared and formal, or undeclared and informal, or both. Whatever form they take, empires are structures predicated on systems of domination, of one country or nation over another. The British, French and Japanese empires were declared and formal but parts of them were also undeclared and informal. The US empire is mainly undeclared and informal, but there are declared parts as well. The US empire incorporates five inhabited “territories”—Puerto Rico, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, United States Virgin Islands and American Samoa (and 11 uninhabited ones)—which are effectively colonies. The people who live on these territories have no meaningful political representation in Washington. But for the most part, the US empire is informal and undeclared.<br /> <br /> There are multiple possible ways a metropole—the empire’s home country—can incorporate other people into its empire. By stationing its troops on the soil of other countries, the United States can directly, though informally, dominate these countries. If the governments of countries that accept a US military presence enact policies the US government dislikes, Washington can use its military to either intimidate the foreign government into altering its policies, or directly intervene to overthrow it, or persuade the host country’s military to do so. Typically, where US troops are deployed abroad, the Pentagon has (usually) decisive influence over the host country’s armed forces. This is often achieved through the integration of the foreign military into the US command structure, either formally or informally, directly or indirectly. South Korea offers a good example. ROK forces are integrated as an auxiliary military force into the US command. Currently, there exists a formal agreement giving the United States operational control of the South Korean armed forces during war. But even if Seoul had formal control of its military, ''de facto'' control would remain with the United States, so long as the US military is present on the Korean peninsula. The Pentagon will never cede operational control of its forces to an allied military. Some in South Korea—embarrassed by the observation of North Korea that the ROK’s military dependency on the United States reveals its status as a US puppet—have pressed for Seoul to assume formal wartime operational control of South Korean military forces. But it is unrealistic to believe that, in the event of war, the Pentagon, which has close to 30,000 troops permanently stationed in South Korea, would place its East Asian-based military assets under the control of a South Korean general. US national security strategy, as we’ll see, is predicated on the notion of US leadership. The United States does not cede military leadership to subordinate parts of its empire.<br /> <br /> A stark illustration of one of the ways in which the United States uses its military to enforce its domination may be conveyed in three points, related to a comment Alexander Haig made to United Press International in 2002 about the reasons why the United States stations tens of thousands of troops in Europe,22 and continues to do so, long after their ostensible purpose for being there—to defend Europe against the (wholly unrealistic) threat that the Soviet Union would attempt to spread socialism to Western Europe by force—had dissolved.<br /> <br /> The first point concerns the position Haig once held, before becoming secretary of state in the Reagan Administration. From 1975 to 1979 Haig was Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Europe—which is to say that he, as a US general, had under his command the combined military forces of NATO’s European members. By design, a US flag officer always commands NATO’s combined forces. Additionally, in “war NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander has the power to suspend Europe’s civilian rules”3—in other words, to exercise a dictatorship over the greater part of Europe. The second point is that Haig explained that the Pentagon had 70,000 US troops in Germany because US troops kept “European markets open to [the United States]. If those troops weren’t there,” explained Haig, “those markets would probably be more difficult to access.”4 The third point is that imperialism is a process of domination guided by economic interests (for example, keeping European markets open to US investment and exports.)<br /> <br /> In 2015, the United States had 52,000 troops in Japan, 38,000 in Germany, nearly 30,000 in South Korea, 11,000 in Italy, and 9,000 in Britain.5 Three of these countries, Germany, Japan, and Italy, are former Axis powers that, in the 1930s and early 1940s, established, or tried to establish, closed economic zones, which had the effect of excluding US foreign investment and exports. During the great global capitalist crisis of the 1930s (one of many economic crises in the history of perpetually crisis-prone capitalism), Great Britain also created a closed economic zone, through an imperial preference system of high tariff walls which encircled the empire. This had the effect of severely attenuating the global profit-making opportunities available to US (and other non-British Empire) businesses and investors. Today, the US military footprint is strongest in countries in which US fears of closed markets have historical resonance. Equally important, the significant US troop deployments to Great Britain and the former Axis countries are manifestations of a US commitment to safeguard the security of former imperial rivals. By taking on the role of guardian, the United States relieves its former competitors of the necessity and expense of building militaries which could be used to rebuild rival empires to challenge the United States. This benefits US foreign policy by eliminating former imperialist adversaries as potential military threats to US hegemony and keeps their markets open to US businesses.<br /> <br /> While the ''degree'' of US military ubiquity is open to debate, there’s no doubt that the US military ''is'' ubiquitous. The five countries named above aren’t the only ones in which the United States has a military presence. Depending on how a military installation is defined, the United States has at least 662 bases in 36 foreign countries,6 or as many as 800 bases in 160 foreign countries and territories.7 By any measure, the Pentagon’s tentacles reach far beyond the frontiers of the US “homeland” (a word which, itself, is redolent of the stench of empire). According to David Vine, the “United States probably has more foreign military bases than any other people, nation, or empire in history.”8 Such a nation could deny that it has built an empire, but to do so would require the construction of a special reality, a ''folie en masse'', or the creation of something tantamount to the “epistemology of ignorance” Charles Mills argued was necessary, to fail to see that the “liberal” political system of the Western world is, and has always been, white supremacist (i.e., illiberal.)9<br /> <br /> Mills’ view, while related to liberalism and race, also illuminates the divergence between the idea of the equality of nations, codified in the United Nations Charter, and the reality of imperialism. The “officially sanctioned reality is divergent from actual reality.” Therefore, one “has to learn to see the world wrongly, but with the assurance that this set of mistaken perceptions will be validated by” the official “epistemic authority,”10 namely, corporate-funded think-tanks, corporate-endowed universities, corporate-owned mass media, and corporate-dominated governments. Thus, on matters related to foreign relations, the official ideology prescribes an inverted epistemology, an epistemology of ignorance, which produces the ironic outcome that the denizens of imperialist countries will in general be unable to understand the world their countries have made.11<br /> <br /> The epistemology of ignorance relies on a lexicon of equivocation. Journalists who write for the US empire’s most distinguished newspapers—the ''New York Times'', the ''Washington Post'', the ''Wall Street Journal''—routinely employ language that acknowledges the United States’ imperialist nature, while at the same time never directly acknowledging the existence of a US empire, and therefore, denying it. For example, the ''Wall Street Journal''’s Michael M. Phillips has written about “new ways the U.S. projects power around the globe,” pointing out that the “U.S. has come to rely on elite military units [special-operations forces] to maintain its global dominance,” and that “America’s special-operations forces have landed in 81 countries, most of them training local commandos to fight so American troops don’t have to.”12 In a few brief sentences Phillips shows that the United States is globally dominant and that one of the ways it maintains its dominance is through special operations forces which project US power in over four score countries. He also reveals one of the indirect mechanisms by which the United States produces and reproduces its empire: by training local commandos to fight as US surrogates. Phillips nowhere uses the words “empire,” “imperialism,” or “system of domination,” although the words British Empire, French Empire, German Empire, Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and even Soviet Empire are all considered acceptable constructions. The United States—which began as 13 former British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America pursuing a “manifest destiny” of continental expansion, (the inspiration for Nazi Germany’s ''lebensraum'' policy); which fought a war with Spain for colonies; which promulgated the Monroe Doctrine asserting a sphere of influence in the Americas; which stole Panama to create a canal; whose special operations forces project US power in 81 countries; whose generals control the militaries of the combined NATO members in Europe and the military forces of South Korea; whose military command stations one hundred thousand troops on the territories of former imperialist rivals, manifestly has an empire.<br /> <br /> And yet this reality is denied, as assuredly as is the reality that the United States, built on the genocide of Native Americans and the slave labor of Africans, overtly white supremacist until the mid-1960s, and covertly white supremacist since, is unequivocally ''not'' a beacon of Enlightenment values, unless liberalism is defined as equality and liberty assigned exclusively to white men who own productive property. Indeed, so antithetical is the United States to the liberal values of the equality of all peoples and nations, freedom from exploitation and oppression, and the absence of discrimination on the bases of class, race, and sex, that it’s difficult to apprehend in what sense the United States has ever been liberal or has in any way had a legitimate claim to being the repository of the values of the Enlightenment.<br /> <br /> Zbigniew Brzezinski, US president Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, and a central figure in the US foreign policy establishment, could compare the United States to the Roman, Manchu, and European empires but could not bring himself to speak of a US empire. Instead, he spoke of a “hegemony of a new type” and described the United States as a “global power,” which has “primacy,” and exercises “supremacy.”13 The philosopher and historian Domenico Losurdo, eschewing euphemism and rejecting the epistemology of ignorance, uses a more fitting and descriptive term for Brzezinski’s equivocations: the international dictatorship of the United States.14<br /> <br /> Helpfully, however, Brzezinski enumerates some of the direct and indirect mechanisms by which the United States exercises “global power” with a “scope and pervasiveness” that is “unique” in world history15—that is, creates and reproduces its international dictatorship.<br /> <br /> First, the United States has a “peerless military establishment, the only one with effective global reach,” allowing it to “project forces over long distances in order to impose” its “political will.”16 Second, it “emphasizes the technique of co-optation (as in the case of defeated rivals—Germany, Japan …) to a much greater extent than the earlier imperial systems did.”17 Third, graduates of US “universities are to be found in almost every Cabinet on every continent.”18 US universities recruit talented individuals from abroad, instill in them US imperialist ideology and values, and equip them with academic credentials and prestige which conduce to their landing important political positions at home. In this way, US imperial goals indirectly structure the political decision-making of other countries. Fourth, the “International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank can be said to represent ‘global’ interests, and their constituency may be construed as the world. In reality, however, they are heavily American dominated and their origins are traceable to American initiative.”19 Bruce Cumings describes the so-called Bretton Woods institutions in similar terms: the United States, he writes, has “a very active foreign economic policy seeking to enmesh developing countries in Asia and Latin America into a host of [US]-influenced multilateral organizations,” including the World Bank and IMF, which are little more than instruments of the US Treasury Department.20 Hence, through a mixture of military, economic, and ideological instruments, the United States has created a globe-spanning system of domination—an empire.<br /> <br /> Before the Great War, the war now known as WWI, most of the world was partitioned among eight great powers. The very fact that the world was partitioned implied empire and imperialism, even if one of the great powers, the United States, shunned the terms. The most powerful of the great powers—those which controlled the greatest territory—were Britain, France, Russia and the United States. A second tier included Germany, Austria-Hungary, Japan, and Italy. Germany, Japan, and Italy would become known as “have not” powers, indicating that their colonial possessions were limited by comparison with the Big Four. The Big Four had colonies—continental and mainly internal in the case of Russia and the United States, and overseas in the case of Britain and France. The “have-not” powers were new industrial powers without the large continental expanse of the United States and Russia or the globe-girding network of colonies and protectorates of Britain and France. The Big Four could rely on their vast empires to furnish them with the raw materials they needed to run their factories, the crops they needed to feed their people, and the land they needed to settle their surplus populations.<br /> <br /> As their industrial economies grew, the have-not powers found themselves pressed to secure sources of raw materials, as well as markets for their finished products. Land on which to settle their teeming populations also became important. Industrialization—including the mechanization of agriculture—had engendered sudden and massive population shifts, as displaced subsistence farmers migrated from the countryside to the city. Germany, for example, was in the early twentieth century a vast warren of urban slums, teeming with people without “living space.” The inability of the industrial capitalist economies of the have-not powers to furnish all their citizens with employment meant that large parts of their populations were “surplus.” This created a potential for unrest and possibly revolution.<br /> <br /> The continual westward expansion of the United States through conquest of Native American territory defused potential revolutionary movements by providing immigrants of European origin with land (that of the indigenous peoples) to settle—a process of turning proletarians into landowners. Likewise, angry Britons without prospects who might take a militant revolutionary path could immigrate to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa to settle on the land of the aboriginal peoples of the British dominions. Their French counterparts also had outlets in the French colonial domain, particularly Algeria. Hence, the problem (from the perspective of the great powers’ ruling classes) of social revolution was solved through the dispossession of indigenous peoples. Cecil Rhodes, the notorious British imperialist—our Hitler, as one black South African aptly described him—told the British ruling class that “Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid [social revolution], you must become imperialists.”21<br /> <br /> There were five important drivers of capitalist imperialism: the need for (1) raw materials, (2) markets, and (3) investment opportunities; the need (4) to hold territory for strategic reasons to protect supply and shipping routes; and the need for (5) outlets to settle surplus populations, made redundant by the mechanization-driven displacement of subsistence farming. Raw materials, markets, and investment opportunities could be freely obtained in an open international trade and investment system, but any great power could deny its rivals access to these necessities as a means of strengthening its own position. This made the up-and-coming powers—Germany, Japan, and Italy—extremely vulnerable. Without vast territorial possessions, they could thrive only in a global economic system that was open to international trade and investment.<br /> <br /> But who, or what, was to guarantee it would remain open? There were obvious incentives for the Big Four to create advantages for their own financiers, industrialists, and commercial concerns by securing for them as much economic space as possible while restricting the space open to their international competitors. With the world already largely divided among the four great powers, Britain, France, the United States, and Russia were thus in a position to stifle the emerging powers by impeding their access to the world’s raw materials, markets, and investment opportunities.<br /> <br /> The Great War did nothing to ameliorate the situation of the three have-not powers. On the contrary, the war made Great Britain and France stronger. The two imperial behemoths divided up the defeated Ottoman Empire and helped themselves to the colonies of the vanquished Germany. Their wartime allies, Italy and Japan, who had been promised territorial gains, were denied them after the war.22 The upshot of the great global conflagration, then, was that Britain and France enlarged their economic space, while Japan and Italy made no gains, and Germany fell behind.<br /> <br /> Japan, whose mountainous topography afforded little room for agriculture, lacked almost all the natural resources a modern industrial economy needed. It was almost entirely dependent on imports of foodstuffs and raw materials, making it extremely vulnerable to naval blockade and placing it at the mercy of the countries and great powers that controlled its industrial economy’s desiderata. Iron ore—necessary for the production of steel—had to be imported from China and Malaya. Japan had virtually no internal source of oil. It relied almost exclusively on foreign sources, and in the first decades of the twentieth century Britain and the United States controlled almost all the world’s supply. The solution to Japan’s vulnerability, as far as the country’s rulers could figure, was to secure control of territory that would provide the inputs Japan’s industrialists needed.23<br /> <br /> Japan’s delegate to the Versailles conference, at which matters pertaining to the settlement of the war were decided, urged a rejection of what he termed “the Anglo-American centered peace.” “No doubt the condition before the war was satisfactory from the viewpoint of Great Britain and America,” wrote Prince Konoe Fumimaro, a future prime minister (1940-1941), “but it cannot be said so, when considered from the viewpoint of justice and humanity. As may be seen in their history of colonization, England and France occupied most of the less civilized countries long ago and made them their colonies. In consequence, Germany and other latecomers could hardly find any land to secure for their expansion. This state of things was contrary to the fundamental principle of equal opportunity and a right to the equal existence of different countries.”24<br /> <br /> Echoing Konoe, the Japanese journalist Kiyoshi Kawakami observed:<br /> <br /> Here is Japan, struggling to resolve, partly at least, her population problem by becoming an industrial and trading nation, and yet harassed by a lack of three essential materials of industry—oil, iron, and coal. If she steps an inch out of her narrow precincts and tries to obtain, say in Siberia or China, the privilege of working such mineral resources, down comes the sword of Damocles in the shape of protest, official or otherwise, from the Western nations. … [The] question is, is the existing world order right, allowing a few nations to monopolize vast territories and enormous resources, and compelling others to eke an existence out of their limited lands and scanty resources.25<br /> <br /> The Great Depression spurred Britain, the United States, and France to step up protectionist measures. This intensified the dissatisfaction of the have-not powers, who wondered how they could flourish in a world in which their access to raw materials and markets was severely restricted. At the best of times, Germany, Japan, and Italy were dependent on the imperial titans to grant them access to the markets and territories the titans controlled. Now, with the global capitalist system in crisis, the doors to the economic spaces dominated by the great powers were slamming shut. The problem facing the emerging industrial powers was now bigger than mere dependency; they could be starved of raw materials and export markets altogether. Thus, efforts to acquire economic space would have to be redoubled, and force used if necessary.26<br /> <br /> Having already acquired Taiwan, Korea, the southern half of Sakhalin, and a string of Pacific islands, Japan now undertook to bring Manchuria and Mongolia into its empire, in order to solve the “critical problems of population and foodstuffs,” as one Japanese officer put it in 1931.27 Japan’s captains of finance, industry, and commerce looked greedily upon China as a new frontier. Its size exercised a magnetic appeal to Japanese business people and investors spellbound by the East Asian giant’s immense market,28 an attraction that has lost none of its power since. Investors worldwide continue to lust after China as a vast reserve of potential customers. At the same time, Manchuria, like Palestine and the American West, was imagined by its colonizers as a ''terra nullius'', that is, an empty space—an almost limitless frontier awaiting Japanese settlement,29 or, making a slight alteration to the words with which white European Zionists justified their theft of Palestinian land for Jewish settlement, a land without people for a people with too little land.<br /> <br /> In September 1931, conspirators in the Japanese army instigated a “false flag” operation in Manchuria to create a pretext to launch a military occupation of the territory. Six months later, a new state was created on the occupied territory.30 Nominally under Chinese control, but actually under Japanese direction, the new state was called Manchukuo, literally “state of Manchuria.” The state is almost invariably described as a puppet state for three reasons. First, it was created by Tokyo on foreign territory Japan occupied militarily. Without Japanese intervention, Manchukuo would never have existed. The state was not of Chinese origin, proclaimed by Chinese for Chinese reasons, but was of Japanese provenance, created for Japanese reasons. Second, while the heads of Manchukuo’s government ministries and departments were Chinese, vice-ministers and advisers were Japanese. Third, Japan and Manchukuo signed a mutual defense treaty making the Kwantung Army, the Japanese garrison in Manchuria, responsible for its national security.31 For these reasons, Manchukuo is so routinely referred to as “the puppet state of Manchukuo” that one might think that “the puppet state of” should be capitalized and made part of Manchukuo’s official name, as in The Japanese Puppet State of Manchukuo.<br /> <br /> In the absence of a theory of the epistemology of ignorance it would be difficult to understand why South Korea isn’t also called a puppet state (except by the North Korean media). There are striking parallels between South Korea and Manchukuo. Both states were created by empires on foreign territory which armies of the empires occupied for reasons related to imperial expansion. While the political offices of the empire-created states were occupied by local actors, fostering the appearance of local sovereignty, imperial advisers played a large role behind the scenes. And in both cases, responsibility for national security was ceded through “mutual agreement” to the empire, whose military remained as an occupying force on the states’ territories.<br /> <br /> Like Brzezinski, who could talk of the US empire, not as an empire, but as a hegemony of a new type, the furthest Western scholars, journalists, and commentators seem to be willing to go to acknowledge that there exists on the Korean peninsula an entity which ought to be rightfully called “the US puppet state of South Korea,” is to acknowledge that South Korea exists “in the soft soil of semi-sovereignty,” and that it has “a weak state vis-à-vis the United States.”32 These are the words of the leading US historian of modern Korea, an acknowledgement, without actually saying it, that the ROK has a status fundamentally equivalent to that of Manchukuo.<br /> <br /> Emboldened by the example of Japan extending its economic space in the face of the imperial titans erecting protectionist walls around the vast territory they controlled, Italy invaded Abyssinia (today’s Ethiopia) on the ground that it “needed the area for its economic survival”33—which is to say, it was driven by the expansionary logic its industrial capitalist economy created. Ethiopia occupied the intervening space between Somalia and Eritrea, which Italy already held as colonies. By acquiring Ethiopia, Italy could control a large contiguous space on the Horn of Africa, which it would call Italian East Africa.<br /> <br /> The Italian position was clear. Britain … was to blame. Its empire spanned the world and hogged the lion’s share of resources without regard to the rights of others. A propaganda leaflet showing John Bull bestriding the globe declared that “England has in its hands or controls almost all the raw materials produced in the world: from cotton to wool, from petroleum to diamonds, from coal to gold.” Because it was aware that without its empire it would be a third-rate power, “England has used the great riches in its possession to impede in every way those who, less favored by nature, have attempted, as is their right, to find new sources of riches and work.” This was not fair, and it could not be tolerated. “At the base of every war and especially those which are being fought nowadays, there is an economic claim. Peoples less rich in raw materials, or densely populated nations, need to procure all that is indispensable for their existence, or to seek in less inhabited territories an outlet for their always growing population. … No one can deny to any people the right to life. … We Italians in particular do not wish to be exposed forever to every possible form of economic suffocation because we lack oil or coal or iron or rubber or wool.”34<br /> <br /> For its part, Germany launched a series of aggressions in Europe in the late 1930s, beginning with the annexation of Austria in 1938, and culminating in Operation Barbarossa, the June 22, 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, initiating the greatest war of colonial expansion in history. Hitler boasted that Germany’s ''Drang nach Osten'', its push to the east, an objective that had long characterized German foreign policy, would secure for the Reich the economic self-sufficiency Germany had craved. “We shall become the most self-supporting State, in every respect … in the world,” the Führer promised. “Timber we shall have in abundance, iron in limitless quantity, the greatest manganese-ore mines in the world.” As for oil, Germany would “swim in it.”35 Under Hitler’s direction, the Third Reich set out to build (by force) a ''Grossraumwirtschaft'', a “greater economic zone,” over most of Europe.<br /> <br /> In a January 1937 article in ''Foreign'' ''Affairs'', the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Wall Street-funded and -directed foreign policy think-tank, Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler’s minister of economics and president of the Reichsbank, adumbrated the causes of Germany’s forthcoming aggressive expansion.36 He titled his article “Germany’s Colonial Demands.”<br /> <br /> Before WWI, Schacht explained, Germany bought industrial inputs all over the world. “The markets where raw materials were procured were completely free.” Additionally, emigration and immigration “was open and was looked on with favor.” But with the collapse of the world (capitalist) economy, all “these elementary principles of international trade and intercourse” had disappeared. Strict regulations governing “immigration into almost all countries where formerly immigrants were welcome” now impeded the outward migration of Germany’s surplus population. In the place of free trade had arisen “quotas and restrictions, to say nothing of constant increases in the more effective tariffs. German investments abroad,” Schacht complained, had “been taken away without compensation, and the markets where raw materials” had been previously obtained were now almost impossible to access.<br /> <br /> For these reasons, and with no other choice, Germany had embarked on a project of autarky, that is, self-sufficiency. The great power critics of Germany’s drive to economic self-sufficiency were hypocritical, Schacht said. “People entirely forget” that autarky has “long since been achieved by such countries as France and Great Britain, not to mention Russia and the United States.” So “vast is the geographical expanse of the United States of America, so enormous its wealth, that it is much less dependent than other countries on an exchange of goods with the outside world.” Similarly, Russia contains “all kinds of raw materials.” What’s more, the British Empire had “more than a quarter of the earth’s surface at its disposal” containing “one-quarter of the world’s wheat, one-half of the world’s wool and rubber, one-quarter of the world’s coal, one-third of the world’s copper, and almost all of the world’s nickel.” Of twenty-five raw materials vital to a modern industrial economy, “the British Empire was amply supplied in its own territory with no less than eighteen, was supplied to a certain extent in two cases, and was deficient in only five.” Germany, in contrast, “was sufficiently supplied by its own production in only four cases, was more or less adequately supplied in two, and was completely without supplies in nineteen.” In Italy and Japan, wrote Schacht, “conditions are equally unfavorable.”<br /> <br /> Returning to the world economic crisis, Schacht pointed out that the quantity of raw materials Germany could procure on the world market was now “far below what Germany” needed “to keep her industries going and maintain the standard of living for her people.” Ominously, he warned, “There will be no peace in Europe until this problem is solved. No great nation willingly allows its standard of life and culture to be lowered and no great nation accepts the risk that it will go hungry.”<br /> <br /> To strengthen his case, Schacht cited the analysis of Colonel Edward M. House, a US diplomat who had been an adviser to Woodrow Wilson. House had written in ''Liberty'' magazine that,<br /> <br /> Germany, Italy and Japan need reservoirs into which to pour their manpower and from which to draw those necessities and raw materials which nature denied them. But the greatest possessing nations—Great Britain, France, the United States and Russia—are unwilling to grant to their less fortunate fellows more than the crumbs that fall from their colonial table. … Great Britain, France, Russia and the United States must receive Italy, Germany and Japan on terms adjusted to present world conditions and recognize their insistence upon being given their proper part of the colonial resources of the world. Chaos and catastrophe will be upon us unless those that have among the Powers are willing to share in some way with those that have not.<br /> <br /> Here, then, was the situation that confronted the world: an “insignificant minority of the richest advanced capitalist countries” had divided up the globe into economic spheres. Central to the relations among these countries was conflict over “the territorial division of the world, of the struggle for colonies, of the ‘struggle for economic territory.’” The world had been partitioned. In the future, only redivision was possible. Japan, Italy, and Germany could not meet the demand for raw materials, markets, and outlets for emigration that their industrial capitalist economies had created, except by conquering new territory. But there was no new territory to conquer. Therefore, only two possible outcomes remained: the great powers in possession of vast territorial extent would either have to voluntarily cede some of their territory to the have-not powers, or the have-not powers would have to take the territory by force.37<br /> <br /> From the point of view of Japan, Italy, and Germany, the division of the world among the great powers was unfair. The emerging industrial nations were denied access to colonies and territory. But what of the overwhelming majority of the world’s people who lived and worked in the territories the great powers coveted? Where were the voices of the people living in the colonies and semi-colonies, who vastly outnumbered the denizens of the industrialized world? The caterwauling of Japan, Italy, and Germany about the denial of their place in the sun was simply a plea to be brought into the club of a few powerful world marauders armed to the teeth, who would exploit the vast majority of humanity.38 After all, “less than one-tenth of the inhabitants of the globe; less than one-fifth, if the most generous and liberal calculations were made, of very rich and very powerful states” were bickering over how much of the plunder of the remaining 80 percent of humanity they each should receive.39<br /> <br /> Lenin had written in 1917 that rivalry among the advanced industrialized countries had “become very keen because Germany has only a restricted area and few colonies,”40 an observation which could have been made with equal validity about Italy and Japan. Without recognizing the economic roots of empire-building, Lenin wrote, it would “be impossible to understand and appraise modern war and modern politics.”41 The cogency of Lenin’s analysis was tacitly acknowledged at the end of World War II by the Allies. Their initial plan (subsequently abandoned) was to de-industrialize Germany and Japan. These two advanced capitalist industrialist powers, which had threatened the economic space of the United States, France, and Britain, in an effort to enlarge their own, would be transformed into agricultural societies, shorn of the drive and the means to launch aggressive wars. This was an acknowledgement that industrial capitalism reposed at the root of the Axis’s aggressive, expansionary, foreign policies.<br /> <br /> For Lenin, the solution to the problem of “powerful world marauders” embroiling “the whole world in their” wars “over the sharing of their booty,” was neither more war nor bringing Germany, Italy, and Japan more fully into the world system of imperial domination as charter members. His solution was to eliminate the world system of imperial domination altogether, and with it, other relationships of domination as well, including those of class and gender.<br /> <br /> Lenin had founded a new organization in 1919, the Third International, which dedicated itself to “the struggle of the working class and the oppressed nations of the whole world to free themselves.”42 The Bolshevik leader had denounced Japan’s “savage tortures of the Korean patriots and barbaric exploitation of Korea.”43 This contrasted sharply with the US position of conniving with Japan to divide up the Philippines and Korea between the two empires. Where the United States and Britain had facilitated Japan’s oppression of the Koreans, Lenin and the Bolsheviks denounced it, and urged Koreans to free themselves. This would inspire patriots in Korea, including Kim Il-sung.<br /> <br /> == The Patriot ==<br /> ''When “the leading scholar of Korean communism, Dae-sook Suh, was finally allowed to explain the real story to a large audience of young people in Seoul in 1989, upon hearing that Kim Il-sung was in fact a hero of the resistance, they all burst into applause''.”1<br /> <br /> Kim Il-sung was born Kim Sung-ju in 1912. He adopted the name Kim Il-sung as a ''nom de guerre'', in the same way Lenin (Ulyanov), Trotsky (Bronstein), Stalin (Jughashvili), and Ho Chi Minh (Nguyen Sinh Cung) and other revolutionaries had done. He was neither a puppet installed in a North Korean Soviet satellite state by Joseph Stalin, as US propagandists would have it, nor an imposter who stole the name of a famous anti-Japanese guerrilla, as South Korean propagandists would allege. Instead, he was a genuine Korean patriot who devoted his life to achieving Korea’s freedom—“recognizably a hero,” as Bruce Cumings would call him—who “fought for a decade in the harshest winter environment imaginable, with temperatures sometimes falling to 50 degrees below zero.”2 On top of 13 years leading an armed struggle against the Japanese, Kim spent over four decades building an independent Korean state on a US-divided peninsula, protecting it from the depredations of the United States, and trying to unify the peninsula as an independent Korean nation. “It is easy to lose a country,” Kim once wrote, “but difficult to win it back.”3 In over six decades of struggle, Kim was never able to fully overcome the difficulties he encountered. The guerrilla leader and state founder recognized that Korea’s independence would be a long-term project, possibly beyond the span of any individual’s lifetime. “India won its independence from England after 200 years of colonial enslavement,” he wrote. “The Philippines and Indonesia won their independence after 300 years. Algeria after 130 years. Sri Lanka after 150 years and Vietnam after nearly 100 years.”4 Korea’s freedom may take centuries, he believed. But he seemed to sense that independence was inevitable if Koreans struggled for it.<br /> <br /> Kim Il-sung was born in a village close to Pyongyang in 1912. His father, a Korean patriot, participated in the 1919 uprising, when Koreans, and other oppressed peoples around the world, erupted in anger at Woodrow Wilson’s failure to deliver self-determination to the colonial oppressed. For the senior Kim’s opposition to Korea’s colonial enslavement he was jailed by Japanese authorities. Released from prison in 1925, Kim’s father followed the footsteps of other patriots, moving his family to Manchuria to escape Japan’s control.5<br /> <br /> As a high school student, Kim Il-sung joined an underground Marxist group and read the works of Marx and Lenin. This led, in 1929, to his arrest and incarceration for a number of months. After Japan created its puppet state in Manchuria in 1931, Kim joined the Chinese Communist Party, and went underground to organize guerilla opposition to the Japanese occupation.6 He founded his first guerrilla unit in the spring of 1932,7 with the long-term objective of liberating Korea.8<br /> <br /> Owing to its freedom from Japanese control prior to 1931, Manchuria had become a refuge for many Koreans, who now formed the majority of resisters to the Japanese conquest of the Chinese province. Approximately eight of every ten anti-Japanese guerrillas in Manchuria were Koreans. And Koreans made up the vast majority of Chinese Communist Party members in the region.9<br /> <br /> By February 1936, Kim was the Communist Party leader in eastern Manchuria, a man of considerable reputation and, while only 24 years of age, a major figure in the resistance movement. Kim’s formal position was as commander of the 3rd Division of the Communist Party-led Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army. Under his command were several Chinese regimental commanders.10<br /> <br /> So significant a figure was Kim that the Japanese army established a special division to hunt him down, headed by General Nozoe Shotoku.11 One of Nozoe’s top officers was a Korean traitor, Kim Sok-won, who had joined the Japanese Imperial Army and taken the Japanese name Kaneyama Shakugen. Kim Sok-won would later become the commander of South Korean forces on the 38th parallel, playing a signal role in the events surrounding the beginning of the Korean War in 1950.<br /> <br /> Kim Sok-won wasn’t the only traitor who worked to hunt down Kim Il-sung and the Korean ''maquis'' (rural guerrillas) led by him. Another was Park Chung-hee, who joined the Japanese Imperial Army, and adopted a Japanese name, Takagi Masao. As a Lieutenant in the emperor’s military, he was assigned to a counter-insurgency unit to hunt down his countrymen.12 Park later became South Korea’s president, and is the father of Park Geun-hye, the disgraced former ROK president, who was forced to resign in 2017 in a scandal. Her term in office overlapped that of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, Kim Il-sung’s grandson.<br /> <br /> By 1937, Kim Il-sung had become the commander of the 6th Division of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, a unit informally known as the division of Kim Il-sung.13 A Soviet journal, in 1937, reported that in “the course of combat with Japanese imperialists great and talented leaders have had the opportunity to distinguish themselves. … Among them the detachment of [Kim Il-sung] stands out, especially.” The article noted that Nozoe’s Special Kim Division had failed to capture the talented guerrilla leader.14<br /> <br /> Galvanized by their persistent failure to snare the elusive Kim and crush the guerillas, the Japanese decided to step up their efforts to eradicate the future North Korean leader and his m''aquis'' army. In August 1939, Tokyo deployed approximately 24,000 troops and police officers to a six-month-long counterinsurgency operation.15 Two Japanese colonels who participated in the hunt told US occupation forces in 1951 that “Kim was ‘the most famous’ of Korean guerrillas in the late 1930s. He was particularly popular among the Koreans in Manchuria, they said, adding that many Koreans praised him as a Korean hero and gave him, secretly, both spiritual and material support.’”16<br /> <br /> As a new decade began, Kim, whose growing reputation would bring him even to the attention of the top US State Department Korean specialist in far-off Washington, was the guerrilla leader in Manchuria who the Japanese feared above all.17 He had risen even higher in the ranks of the Communist-led anti-Japanese army, becoming the commander of the second operational region of its First Army.18 But as the Japanese strengthened their counter-insurgency efforts, the guerilla army began to collapse. Aided by Korean hirelings, the Japanese army eventually whittled Kim’s unit down to 12 fighters, at which point they were reorganized into a brigade of the Soviet Red Army.19 Comprising between 1,000 and 1,700 troops, mainly Chinese with a few hundred Soviet advisers, the brigade was divided into four battalions, one of which Kim commanded.20<br /> <br /> Bruce Cumings observed that as a guerrilla, Kim became “a classic Robin Hood figure,” stealing across the Korean border, taking land from “landlords and Japanese puppets,” giving it to poor peasants, and eliminating “remnants of ‘feudalism’” and “discrimination against women.”21 Kim would build North Korea on the same principles of resisting foreign control, overcoming feudalism, and implementing democratic reforms.<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; * *<br /> <br /> While Kim was playing a lead role in the struggle to expel the Japanese invaders from Manchuria, Tokyo was expanding its empire, constructing what it called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.<br /> <br /> By 1939, Korea and Taiwan were supplying Japan with enough rice to make it self-sufficient. And Manchuria had become an important part of the Japanese economy as a source of coal and iron ore.22 But the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere presented two problems. First, it had to be imposed on other people, who were refractory to Japanese domination, necessitating significant military investments to suppress militant opposition. Second, the sphere contained the world’s principal sources of tin and rubber, two vital raw materials other great powers, including Great Britain and the United States, imperatively needed, but lacked. The need of US and British industrialists for these raw materials and Japan’s near monopoly over them could lead to war.23<br /> <br /> With the rise of the automobile, British investors anticipated the importance of rubber as a lucrative natural resource and invested heavily in rubber plantations in Malaya. British investment would account for three quarters of the world’s output of rubber by the early 1920s. Soon rubber plantations were springing up in the Dutch East Indies as well. Combined, the two areas produced 98 percent of the world’s rubber crop. Rubber took on added importance for Britain as its single largest source of dollar earnings.24<br /> <br /> For the United States, the region the Japanese aspired to fold into their co-prosperity sphere was also the source of one of the few industrial inputs the empire lacked: tin. One US economist forecast doom if US businesses were locked out of the region. The US economy, he wrote, and the US military “cannot be operated without rubber and tin, which at present cannot be obtained in adequate quantity except from the British and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia. And Japan today commands the trade route connecting the west coast of the United States with the Malaysian Straits … Here, ready to hand for Japan, is a safer and more powerful weapon against the United States than the folly of naval attack.”25<br /> <br /> When the ''Wehrmacht'' began its march across Europe in the late 1930s, the East Asian colonial possessions of the defeated European powers came up for grabs. Prostrated by the German juggernaut, Britain, France, and the Netherlands were too weak to defend their East Asian colonies. When the Netherlands and France fell, the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina became tasty morsels, ready to be picked off by a Japan hungry for empire-building opportunities. Focusing on defense of the home island, Britain was unable to commit sufficient forces to protect its East Asian possessions, leaving Hong Kong and Malaya virtually undefended. Japan struck. Alarm bells sounded in Washington, as well as in London, at Whitehall, and at Stratton House, where the Dutch government was in exile. Tokyo’s imperialist impulses had been unleashed, and the Dutch, British, and US empires were in danger. Something had to be done. In response to the threat posed by their Japanese rivals for the plunder of the colonies, the three powers imposed sanctions, froze Japanese assets, and restricted Tokyo’s access to oil, a resource over which the three governments combined had a near monopoly.26<br /> <br /> Rather than bringing Japan to its knees, the oil embargo heightened the determination of the country’s empire-builders to conquer territories rich in oil. The key was to incorporate the Dutch East Indies and British Borneo into the Japanese empire. Together, these two European colonial possessions produced nine million tons of oil annually, enough to satisfy Japan’s requirements.27 But how to accomplish this task, without inviting a blocking military response from Washington?<br /> <br /> The answer, in the view of Japanese planners, was to launch a preventive military strike against the US Pacific fleet based at Hawaii. If the fleet could be sunk in a surprise attack, Japan could buy time to conquer the Western colonies of East Asia before the Americans could respond. While the United States rebuilt its Pacific fleet, Japan could integrate its neighborhood into a formidable self-sustaining empire, which would include all the resources necessary for self-defense and industrial growth, eclipsing the great powers’ capability to block Japan’s development by denying it access to critical resources.28<br /> <br /> The plan worked—for a time. Japan’s surprise attack at Pearl Harbor rendered the United States ''hors de combat'' in the Pacific for nearly half a year. During this period, the Japanese quickly undertook a series of wars for global redivision, seizing a number of US, British and Dutch colonies, which the Americans, British, and Dutch had themselves earlier captured, in some cases from other empires, and in all cases from the indigenous people. This string of annexations included the Philippines, British Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, Borneo, and New Guinea, along with a string of Pacific Islands.29 The Japanese hoped that by the time the United States had recovered sufficiently, it would recognize the construction of the Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere as an accomplished fact. And if not, with access to a large empire from which vital industrial inputs could be obtained, including oil and rubber, Japan would be well-armored to withstand a US-British assault.<br /> <br /> That gamble, however, failed to pay off. Because the United States procured nine-tenths of its tin and virtually all of its rubber from a region now under Japanese control—and because Britain relied heavily on sales of Malay rubber for its foreign exchange—the chances of Washington and London acceding to Tokyo’s efforts to redivide the world were as great as the chances Tokyo would blithely accept being frozen out of the imperial contest.30<br /> <br /> Ultimately, it was Japan’s status as an island state and its failure to invest sufficiently in its navy which led to its undoing. The sources of the imports it needed to run its factories and feed its people reposed across open stretches of water. In order to fight a war against the United States, it would need to defend the sea lanes it depended on for transportation of vital supplies. But that proved to be far too challenging a task for the under-resourced Japanese navy. The United States navy blockaded its East Asian rival, starving Japan of inputs from its colonies.31 As 1944 came to a close, the stream of rice shipments from Taiwan and Southeast Asia had become a trickle, while rice imports from Korea were reduced by half.32 Oil was so scarce that Japanese pilots began to fly Kamikaze missions to preserve fuel. A suicide attack caused five to ten times the damage of a conventional attack, but used only half as much fuel, since there was no return trip.33<br /> <br /> Once Japan’s access to food and industrial inputs was choked off, surrender was only a matter of time. Acutely aware of its increasingly untenable position, Tokyo held out the hope that the Soviet Union—with which it had a non-aggression pact—would broker a peace agreement. But unbeknownst to the Japanese, Stalin had given his commitment to Roosevelt and Churchill at the Yalta conference of February 1945 to enter the war in the Pacific three months after the end of the war in Europe. The war in Europe ended on May 8, 1945. Exactly three months later, on August 8, Stalin sent Soviet forces sweeping into Manchuria and Korea, delivering the ''coup de grace'' which ended the war. In the US-dominated popular history of WWII, it was Washington’s decision to unleash atomic devastation on two militarily insignificant Japanese cities that constituted the final blow against the Japanese. However, this chauvinist narrative completely elides the significance of the Soviet entry into the war. Even before the Soviets declared war on Japan, Japanese leaders recognized that defeat was only a matter of time, and that their only hope was to engage Soviet assistance to sue for peace. When that hope was dashed, Japanese leaders knew that all was lost. Their situation had deteriorated from desperate to hopeless. Within a week, Japan surrendered.<br /> <br /> == The US Occupation ==<br /> “''The people’s committees set up by the south Korean people immediately after liberation were not recognized and, worse still, they were dissolved and their functionaries were arrested and thrown into jail.''”<br /> <br /> —Kim Il-sung, 19461<br /> <br /> At midnight on August 10, 1945, two US army colonels, Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel, were ordered by John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War, to “find a place to divide Korea” to ''temporarily'' partition the peninsula into separate US and Soviet occupation zones to accept the Japanese surrender. McCloy, a Wall Street lawyer, would later serve as president of the World Bank, chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank and chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. Rusk, a future US secretary of state, and Bonesteel, who would command the combined US and ROK forces in Korea in the late 1960s, chose the 38th parallel as a dividing line because it would place Seoul, Korea’s capital, within the US zone.2<br /> <br /> Kim Il-sung, hearing of the planned division of the peninsula, expressed misgivings. Korea, he wrote, was an “ancient nation that” had “known a continuous existence within well-recognized boundaries” for over a millennium.3 There was no internal reason to divide the country. Koreans hadn’t asked for division. And Korea wasn’t a defeated aggressor state, like Germany, to be divided into occupation zones to keep it down. On the contrary, Koreans had “contributed to destroying fascism through their long-drawn-out national-liberation struggle.”4<br /> <br /> “When we were in the Soviet Far East region, we heard the news that the US army would be stationed in Korea south of the 38th parallel,” Kim recalled years later. “This meant that the troops of two big powers would be stationed in our country at the same time.” It was a bad omen. A simultaneous occupation by Soviet and US forces “might turn our country into an area of confrontation between socialism and capitalism, and our national force was liable to be split into left and right, patriots and traitors to the nation.”5<br /> <br /> During the war, the Allies deliberated on what should be done with countries under Axis control, if the Axis was defeated. Washington favored a post-war arrangement for Korea, in which the peninsula would be jointly governed by the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union during a transitional period leading to eventual Korean rule.6 Korea would be granted independence at an appropriate time, determined by the Allies.7 Washington considered Koreans incapable of governing themselves, at least straightaway. It was widely believed by people in the Western world that only white Europeans and North Americans were capable of self-government, and that non-whites would have to be brought under the white man’s tutelage for some period of time to be equipped with the moral, intellectual, and cultural capabilities they were deemed to lack and that were considered necessary for self-government before they would be allowed to govern themselves.<br /> <br /> Empire-builders, some of whom occasionally hypocritically sang paeans to the equality of humankind, viewed the social world as a hierarchy. At the top were the empire-builders themselves—males of the metropole who owned landed, industrial, or financial property. At the bottom lay the “savages”—aboriginal peoples whose existence could be extinguished and their lands expropriated without much concern. Above the savages were the barbarians, the peripheral people of empires, including Koreans, who bore a different culture and spoke different languages from the empire-builders. Interposed between the barbarians and lords of humanity were the ''canaille,'' the common people'','' of the metropolitan countries.<br /> <br /> Koreans were clearly regarded by Japanese and US empire builders as barbarians. To the Japanese they were ethnic cousins, who lacked the cultural and moral equipment of the Japanese people, and so had to be taken in hand and guided. To the Americans, Koreans were adolescents, unschooled in self-government, who would need to be guided, through a long (and in the case of Koreans situated south of the 38th parallel, an indefinite) period of cultural, intellectual, and military development before they would be allowed to fully govern themselves.<br /> <br /> The ideology of the empire-builders is articulated clearly by the French imperial theorist Jules Harmand (1845-1921).<br /> <br /> It is necessary … to accept as a principle and point of departure the fact that there is a hierarchy of races and civilizations, and that we belong to the superior race and civilization. … The basic legitimation of conquest over native peoples is the conviction of our superiority, not merely our mechanical, economic, and military superiority, but our moral superiority. Our dignity rests on that quality, and it underlies our right to direct the rest of humanity. … [We] bring order, foresight, and security to a human society which, though ardently aspiring for these fundamental values without which no community can make progress, still lacks the aptitude to achieve these from within itself. … With these mental and material instruments, which it lacked and now receives, it gains the idea and ambition for a better existence, and the means of achieving it.8<br /> <br /> In contrast, those who belonged to the Leninist tradition, that is, communists, took equality seriously. In the communist view, the social world was not a hierarchy, but flat, egalitarian. The equality of humankind wasn’t to be a matter of rhetoric, but of practice. Communists believed that all peoples were equal, and that social, political, and economic rights should be assigned without regard to social and national origin or gender. From the communist point of view, Koreans, as much as any other people, had a right to self-determination, to direct their own affairs and to associate with other people and nations on the basis of equality and mutual benefit. As far as the communists were concerned, Koreans were not adolescents, who needed to be guided through a period of nonage, as the Americans believed, but full human beings, with rights equal to those of any other human being, including the right to self-governance.<br /> <br /> Communists were the authentic inheritors of the liberal movement of freedom and equality begun by the French Revolution. Communism, indeed, originated in the left wing of the great wave of democratization inaugurated in 1789 by French revolutionaries. Communists took to heart the Rights of Man and declarations of liberty, equality, and human solidarity, from which also originated Olympe de Gouges’s 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Women and of the Female Citizen.<br /> <br /> For white people in metropolitan countries who have no personal history of oppression based on their national origin and race, and who have been fed a steady diet of anti-communism from childhood, it is difficult, perhaps nearly impossible, to understand that people who had been assigned to the lowest rungs of humanity and had felt the sting of oppression flocked to communism with alacrity, as the route to their full incorporation into the community of human beings. Nelson Mandela said, “For many decades communists were the only political group in South Africa who were prepared to treat Africans as human beings. … Because of this, there are many Africans today who tend to equate freedom with communism.”9 The sentiment was equally prevalent among Koreans. As a doctrine of liberation which granted all people the charter of humanity, communism was, and remains, what Hitler hated it for: “the final culmination and distillation of the Enlightenment.”10<br /> <br /> Empire-builders accepted the French Revolution’s “goals of liberty, equality, and fraternity,” wrote the father of fascism studies Robert Paxton, “but they applied them in ways suitable for” the empire-builders themselves.11 Theirs was a truncated liberalism, inclusive of white male property owners, and excluding everyone else in proportion to their social, economic, and cultural distance from the minority the doctrine included. By contrast, communists followed the Enlightenment ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity to their logical destination,12 refusing to stop at a way station which granted rights to white male property owners of the imperial metropole alone. If all humans were equal, then ''all'' humans, male and female, white and non-white, rich and poor, were equal. Slavery, apartheid, racism, colonialism, patriarchy—all of these institutions were unthinkable in a country governed by communists, yet they were accommodated by, indeed, created, defended, and promoted by the self-proclaimed icons of liberal democracy—France, Britain, and the United States.<br /> <br /> France and Britain denied hundreds of millions of colonial subjects their basic humanity, while proclaiming themselves champions of democracy (Britain) and ''liberté, égalité, fraternité'' (France). The United States—founded by slave owners who built a continental empire on a Golgotha of Native Americans; which practiced the vilest form of slavery known to humanity (racial, chattel slavery) for the first nine decades of its existence; which operated a regime of ''de jure'' white supremacy until the mid-1960s, and of ''de facto'' white supremacy thereafter; and whose persecution in the 1930s of descendants of former slaves matched the Nazi’s contemporaneous persecution of Jews—unabashedly and quite incorrectly proclaims itself to be the beacon to the world of the Enlightenment values of freedom and democracy.<br /> <br /> Thomas Metscher defines communism as “a theory of liberation” closely connected to the Enlightenment, concerned with the overthrow of all conditions in which human beings are debased, enslaved, and abandoned. Its goals are human equality13 and the liberation of the downtrodden, the exploited, and the oppressed from their dehumanization. The communist movement is fittingly called the movement for equality, or re-humanization, since it insists that social, economic, and political rights cannot be differentially assigned on the basis of gender or social and national origin. In practice, the communist movement has been at the forefront of struggles for equality and is, in practice, a movement for the liberation of subordinate groups from oppression. Indeed, the Nazism of Hitler and Fascism of Mussolini were deliberately constructed as antitheses to the egalitarian credo of communism. Nazis, Fascists, and Japanese militarists loathed communists for their appeal to equality, an appeal which clashed violently with the empire-builders’ doctrine of the hierarchy of races, civilizations, nations, gender, and class.<br /> <br /> Under Japanese rule, Koreans were unequal and treated as subhumans and non-persons, as dumb beasts to be exploited for the benefit of Japan and, most especially, of the Japanese lords of humanity at the top of the Japanese colonial hierarchy. And so, Koreans quite naturally aspired to reclaim their humanity and dignity. Seeking liberation from their dehumanization they became participants in a great movement for equality, ''viz.'', ''de facto'' communists, even if they weren’t nominally so. Nonetheless, many were. Communist ideology, wrote Sarah Paine, “resonated globally among colonized and downtrodden peoples.”14 This single fact must be understood if the modern history of Korea is to be apprehended. Koreans opposed a hierarchy of humanity in which they were relegated to the bottom. They sought equality, and therefore were drawn to the communist movement because it championed the freedom from dehumanization to which they aspired, and it implacably opposed the hierarchical division of humanity. The yearning of Koreans for independence based on the equality of nations and of all people resonated with the communist program of emancipation, of tearing down hierarchies that divided humanity between those who could exploit and those who were relegated to existences as dehumanized objects of exploitation.<br /> <br /> For all these reasons, the Korean people repudiated Roosevelt’s trusteeship proposal, viewing it as the replacement of one system of domination (Japanese colonialism) by another (shared domination by multiple foreign powers.) Yearning for equality after four decades of subordination to Japanese rule, Koreans bristled at the idea that they were to be subjected to more foreign rule.15 For his part, Stalin considered Roosevelt’s trusteeship plans naïve, and fittingly, as a leader of a world movement for equality, reminded Roosevelt that “Koreans would want independence.”16<br /> <br /> US State Department planners also questioned Roosevelt’s idea of trusteeship—not, however, because it was a system of domination. Their concern was that trusteeship as a system of domination wasn’t strong enough; in its multilateralism it failed to grant the United States monopoly control over Korea, instead sharing control of the peninsula with other powers. Clearly, in either Roosevelt’s multilateral trusteeship or the State Department’s unilateral control, the United States had no intention of allowing Koreans their long sought-after independence. Rejecting Roosevelt’s trusteeship idea, the State Department and Pentagon formulated plans for a post-war US military occupation to assure Washington would have the predominant voice in Korean affairs.17<br /> <br /> However, there remained the Soviet Union to contend with. After much negotiation, Washington and Moscow arrived at an agreement. US and Soviet armies would occupy separate zones in Korea for a period of no more than five years. At the end of the quinquennium, an independent Korean government would be formed on a unified basis.18 The Soviets adhered to their part of the accord, ending their occupation at the close of 1948. The US occupation continues.<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; * *<br /> <br /> Henry Heller, in his book ''The Cold War and the New Imperialism'', described the scene in Korea immediately following the Japanese surrender on August 15, 1945:<br /> <br /> The sudden end of the war in August 1945 set off a popular revolution. In towns and villages across Korea the underground resistance surfaced in the form of a gigantic mass movement of people’s committees. … Seizing local government from the Japanese and their Korean collaborators, they demanded the restoration of Korean independence. … In Seoul, the Korean capital, the national leadership of the popular movement proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic of Korea.19<br /> <br /> The people’s committees usually consisted of community leaders and notable figures, some elected, some not, who organized civic administration, land reform, and the expulsion of the Japanese and their Korean collaborators from government.<br /> <br /> Since the Japanese, along with their Korean turncoats, had controlled civil administration, the Japanese surrender meant (1) that someone had to take over the operation of government; (2) that Koreans, hungry for independence, would quickly fill the void; (3) that quislings were likely to be targeted for reprisals; (4) that the new native Korean administrators were likely to take government in the direction of egalitarianism; (5) that since the fourth point accorded with the Soviet worldview, the people’s committees would be welcome in the Soviet zone; and (6) since the same point clashed with the US worldview, the US occupation would try to crush the people’s committees.<br /> <br /> The Soviets had entered Korea on August 8, fighting Japanese forces until August 15, the date Tokyo surrendered. They had pushed south of the 38th parallel, but once the Japanese had capitulated, the Red Army quickly withdrew to its pre-arranged occupation zone. US forces wouldn’t arrive in Korea until September 8, a full month after the Soviets arrived, and three weeks after the Japanese surrendered. Hence, Soviet blood had been spilled in liberating the peninsula; US blood had not. For three weeks, from Victory over Japan Day forward, no undefeated occupation force was in Korea south of the 38th parallel. During this period Koreans in the south were able take control of civic administration, by their own efforts. They were also able to do the same in the north, where the Soviets allowed the people’s committees to flourish.20 By September 6, the Koreans had organized the people’s committees into a peninsula-wide network, and proclaimed a Korean People’s Republic.<br /> <br /> In 1948, Lee Kang Kuk, head of foreign affairs in the provisional government north of the 38th parallel (the predecessor to the DPRK) told journalist Anna Louise Strong that:<br /> <br /> After the surrender of Japan, we organized People’s Committees and set up local provisional governments all over Korea. We made no division between north and south for the Americans had not yet come. … On September 6, 1945, three weeks after the surrender of Japan, we held our first congress in Seoul, of about one thousand representatives from all parts of the country. They had been chosen quickly and without full formality, but they were a fair representation of all the political tendencies in Korea, except the pro-Japanese. We took the name ‘Korean People’s Republic’ and set up a People’s Committee’ of seventy-five members to hold provisional power and prepare for general elections.21<br /> <br /> When the Red Army swept into Korea, the Soviet commander told Koreans that they had “happiness in [their] own hands” and that they must “make themselves the creators of their own” destiny.22 The message of the US commander in the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur, announcing the arrival of US forces on the peninsula, was very different.<br /> <br /> Proclamation No. 1 by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur<br /> <br /> Yokohama, September 7, 1945<br /> <br /> To the People of Korea:<br /> <br /> As Commander-in-Chief, United States Army Forces, Pacific, I do hereby proclaim as follows:<br /> <br /> * I hereby establish military control over Korea south of 38 degrees north latitude and the inhabitants thereof.<br /> * All powers of Government over the territory of Korea south of 38 degrees north latitude and the people thereof will be for the present exercised under my authority.<br /> * All persons will obey promptly all my orders and orders issued under my authority. Acts of resistance to the occupying forces or any acts which may disturb public peace and safety will be punished severely.<br /> * For all purposes during the military control, English will be the official language.23<br /> <br /> With the stroke of a pen, MacArthur expunged the People’s Republic of Korea. Korea’s liberation from foreign rule had lasted exactly one day.<br /> <br /> Lee Kang Kuk recalled that the Korean People’s Republic sent delegates to greet the US forces. “They refused to deal with us, choosing rather to recognize the Japanese rule. The Americans disregarded and finally suppressed our People’s Committees all over their zone. [The Soviets] recognized these committees as our local provisional government. Thus began the great split between north and south.”24 Lee’s point is significant. The division of Korea into north and south began when the Soviets recognized the nascent indigenous governance structure in the north, which became the DPRK, and the United States refused to recognize the people’s committees, imposing, instead, a military occupation on the south that continues to this day.<br /> <br /> The commander of the US occupation forces, General John R. Hodge, who would become the military governor of the US zone, had a choice: allow the Koreans, through their newly created republic, to take over the reins of government, or retain the Japanese and their Korean collaborators in their positions in the colonial administration. He chose the latter. “We could [have] come as liberators,” Anna Louise Strong lamented, but chose instead to come as conquerors.25<br /> <br /> It was the same throughout East Asia. The journalist Israel Epstein observed that:<br /> <br /> British and Dutch troops landing to ‘liberate’ Java did not disarm conquered enemy units but ordered them to cooperate in subduing the local population, which had formed a government to rule itself. … French forces in Indo-China, again with British support, employed Japanese soldiers against the independent Vietnam government. The British in Malaya allowed the Japanese garrison to keep a considerable part of their arms for ‘self-defense’ and began to hunt down the wartime anti-Japanese guerrillas there. In Burma friction developed between local antifascist forces and the victorious Allies. In the Philippines, General MacArthur disarmed and deported the Japanese. But he became the protector of Filipino landlords, commercial magnates and politicians who had been Japan’s quislings during the occupation.26<br /> <br /> The United States came as a conqueror because Washington wanted to incorporate Korea into the US empire and the aspirations of Koreans, yearning for freedom, were against the US project. “Koreans longed for independence after suffering four decades of Japanese rule,” wrote US historian Melvyn P. Leffler, but the administration of US president Harry S. Truman “feared that…radical nationalists or communists would take control.”27 The US government, therefore, decided to deny Koreans the right to govern themselves. Instead, they brought conservatives and pro-Japanese collaborators to power, to establish a US-superintended hierarchy, with the Americans at the top, Korean elites and quislings immediately below them, and the bulk of Koreans at the bottom, precisely where they had been under Japanese rule. Koreans despised the new US-imposed imperial order, as much as they had despised the Japanese equivalent, and would vigorously oppose it as fervently as they had opposed the hated Japanese. In the war that would develop between a new colonial master and liberation forces, Koreans who had collaborated with the Japanese would play an important part, reprising their role as kapos in a Korean imperial prison, now under the supervision of a new warden.<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; * *<br /> <br /> Japan couldn’t have maintained three and half decades of colonial rule without a fair degree of collaboration. The Japanese sought out Koreans willing to betray their compatriots, and found them. The collaborators were the landed class, the feudal elite who led parasitic lives feeding off the labor of the peasantry. Most Koreans were poor farmers—sharecroppers who paid rent to the landlords by handing over 50 to 80 percent of their crop.28 “Korean landlords maintained relations with tenants that were not fundamentally different from those of the nineteenth century,”29 observed Bruce Cumings. It was these very same parasites who ingratiated themselves with the Japanese.<br /> <br /> The Japanese also found Koreans to fill the ranks of the national police and army. These were traitors, who helped their Japanese overlords quell opposition to colonial rule. Later, the same quislings would help the US occupation authorities suppress opposition to US rule. The collaborators included Chong Il-gwon, who was a captain in Japan’s Manchurian garrison, the Kwantung Army. Chung transitioned easily from the Japanese army to the South Korean military, by way of the English Language School for officers, founded by the US Military Government in December 1945. He would later become the South Korean army’s chief of staff, and after that, prime minister,30 a direct path from collaboration with the enemy to head of the government of a collaborator state.<br /> <br /> Paek Son-yop and Paek In-yop were turncoat officers in Japan’s Kwantung Army. The former was involved in anti-insurgency warfare, hunting down patriots like Kim Il-sung. He would become the first four-star general in the South Korean army. His brother would command South Korea’s 17th Independent Regiment. Park Chung-hee, or Lt. Takagi Masao, as he was known to his Japanese comrades, earned his spurs at an officers’ school in Japan, before enlisting in the Kwantung Army, Japan’s occupation army in Manchuria. A biography recounted how Park—a Japanese “hireling”,31 in the words of Bruce Cumings—had received a gold watch from Emperor Hirohito for his services to the empire—services which likely included hunting down Korean patriots who fought to slough off Japanese rule.32 Kim Chae-gyu also served in the Japanese military as an officer. Both Park and Kim graduated from the US military government-established Korean Military Academy. Park—who was entangled with the Japanese right wing, including America’s favorite war criminal, Kishi Nobusuke, maternal grandfather of Japanese prime minister Abe Shinzo33—became president of South Korea. Kim was his national intelligence director, head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, the KCIA, an organization very much of the same cloth and anti-Left political orientation as the ''Geheime Staatspolizei'', the Gestapo.<br /> <br /> Kim Sok-won, also known by his Japanese name, Kaneyama Shakugen, we have met already. As a colonel in the Japanese Imperial Army, Kim led the hunt for Kim Il-sung in the frozen mountains of Manchuria. The emperor of Japan had decorated him with the Order of Merit for ‘bravery’ in campaigns in the war against China. On June 2, 1948, Kim paraded 2,500 hundred Korean veterans of the Japanese army through the streets of Seoul, in the US occupation zone, an act which speaks volumes about the character of the political regime the United States was implanting in Korea. It is unthinkable that a pro-Japanese collaborator could openly parade a band of traitors through the streets north of the 38th parallel, brazenly celebrating their treachery. One reason why this tableau would never have been realized in the north is because turncoats fled the north, where they were unwelcome, to take up residence in the south, where they could bask in the warm embrace of the US military government. The US occupation government was much more accommodating of collaborators; indeed, they counted on them to run day-to-day affairs in the US occupation zone, as the Nazis had counted on kapos to administer the day-to-day affairs of their concentration camps. Later, Kim would lead a division of the newly-formed, US-commanded, South Korean army. During the Korean War, every division of the US-directed military was led by traitors who had served as officers in the Japanese army.34 This was fitting, since, as veterans of armed forces dedicated to enforcing foreign rule over a recalcitrant population, they had years of experience in a role their new US master was looking for—as anti-insurgency specialists, skilled in the suppression of ''maquis'' resistance to foreign rule. Plus, the United States afforded them protection. If the turncoats were already inclined to collaborate with their foreign masters, their inclination was reinforced by the reality that without the aegis of the US occupation force, they would likely be strung up from light poles and other suitable gibbets by Korean patriots. Hence, a cadre of officers of the former Japanese Imperial Army would become the foundation of the South Korean army. The army would serve as “the preserve,” Bruce Cumings wrote, “of those Koreans who, one would have thought, chose the wrong side during their nation’s moment of maximum trial.”35 This illuminates the nature of the fratricidal intra-Korean war that would be fought in 1950 between, on the one side, an army whose officer corps was almost exclusively drawn from the pool of Korean turncoats who had served in the Japanese army, and on the other, an army whose officer corps was almost exclusively drawn from veterans of the guerrilla resistance to the Japanese—an army of traitors vs. an army of patriots.<br /> <br /> William Langdon, a US State Department adviser to Hodge, wrote that “The old native regime internally was feudal and corrupt but the record shows that it was … disposed toward foreign interests … protecting foreign lives and property and enterprises and respecting treaties and franchise. I am sure that we may count on at least as much from a native government evolved above.”36 And so the landed elite, and traitors who had taken up positions as officers in the Japanese military, became the favored sons of the US occupation authorities. US authorities clearly knew they were siding with the most reviled sections of Korean society. Only a week after Uncle Sam’s swaggering arrival on the Korean peninsula, US military intelligence reported that Koreans who “achieved high rank under the Japanese are considered pro-Japanese and are hated almost as much as their masters.”37 The United States—the self-appointed champion of freedom and democracy—arrogantly strode into Korea, looked about for a local ally, and immediately found one in a numerically insignificant group of parasites and pro-Japanese lickspittles.38<br /> <br /> Washington’s intervention on behalf of the tiny landlord class immediately fanned the flames of Korean resentment. By September 15, US military intelligence was describing southern Korea “as a powder keg ready to explode at the application of a spark.” Denied independence, with their efforts to sweep out the Japanese countermanded by the new US military dictatorship, Koreans seethed with anger. “All groups,” the report revealed, had “the common idea of seizing Japanese property, ejecting the Japanese from Korea, and achieving immediate independence.”39 And now the achievement of their idea had been thwarted. Hodge wrote that there “is growing resentment against all Americans in the area including passive resistance. … Every day of drifting under this situation makes our position in Korea more untenable and decreases our waning popularity. … The word pro-American is being added to pro-Jap, national traitor, and collaborator.”40 All the same, in Hodge’s view, Koreans couldn’t be allowed to run their own affairs. Southern Korea, he observed, was “extremely fertile ground for the establishment of Communism.”41 The masses, he confided, were looking to Russia as a model for their future.42<br /> <br /> == The Patriot State ==<br /> ''“In the night of our ignorance, North Korea''<br /> <br /> ''confirms all stereotypes.”''<br /> <br /> —Bruce Cumings1<br /> <br /> Of the two superpowers, the United States and Russia, the latter was clearly favored by Koreans and the former clearly spurned. Koreans certainly weren’t going to look to the United States to determine their future, for the future Washington offered was one of perpetual Korean subordination to foreign rule within the US empire. Washington had assented to Japan’s colonization of Korea, in return for Japan accepting the United States’ colonization of the Philippines. Wilson had reneged on the promise (he never really made) to colonial peoples to usher in a new age of self-determination. And the United States, which hadn’t spilled a single drop of blood in the liberation of Korea, had marched onto the peninsula, declared a military dictatorship, and rejected Korea’s four decades-long struggle for independence. What’s more, Washington had intervened on behalf of the most reviled groups in the country, and brought the Japanese and their Korean collaborators back into administrative positions, reversing efforts Korean patriots had made to purge them. Washington, then, had a long and ignominious record of opposition to Korean independence.<br /> <br /> On the other hand, Koreans looked to the Soviet Union as a model because the communists genuinely supported national liberation, were against the landlords, and promoted women’s rights. Hodge’s analysis that Koreans were inspired by communism was corroborated by Edwin Pauley, a friend and adviser to US president Harry S. Truman. After touring Korea, Pauley warned the US president that, “Communism in Korea could get off to a better start than practically anywhere else in the world.”2<br /> <br /> “In 1945 Koreans would have worked out a new destiny,” wrote the historian Frank Baldwin in 1975. “That destiny almost certainly would have been a leftist, perhaps a communist, government.”3 Bruce Cumings echoed Baldwin’s (and Hodge’s and Pauley’s) view: a “leftist regime would have taken over quickly, and it would have been a revolutionary nationalist government.”4<br /> <br /> Koreans in the US zone were also looking to the USSR because it was clear that in the Soviet zone, Koreans were allowed to build an independent Korea, emancipated from the exploitation of the indigenous landlord class, and liberated from the treachery of pro-Japanese collaborators. The Soviets, wrote Bruce Cumings, “stayed in the background and let Koreans run the government, they put anti-Japanese resistance leaders out front, and they supported radical reforms of the land system, labor conditions, and women’s rights.”5 To Kim Il-sung, who had returned to Korea on September 19, the Soviet people were “our liberator and helper.”6<br /> <br /> In contrast to the US zone, where the Korean People’s Republic was abolished, in the Soviet zone people’s committees spread rapidly, developed into a network, and quickly evolved into a provisional government, which immediately undertook significant democratic reforms. Land was redistributed from the landlords to those who tilled it. Large enterprises, mainly Japanese owned, were nationalized. An eight-hour workday, an end to child labor, and a program of social insurance, were soon implemented. A law allowing Koreans to be educated in their own language, contrary to Japanese practice, which had discouraged it, was decreed. And Koreans, through their people’s committees, abolished the differential assignment of rights and privileges on the basis of gender.7<br /> <br /> The provisional government was established on February 8, 1946, with Kim Il-sung as its president.8 On the eve of their return to Korea, the top Korean leaders of the Manchurian resistance had agreed that, owing to his reputation and charisma, Kim Il-sung would be promoted as the principal political leader of a liberated Korea.9 Kim had considerable charm10 and his organizational and leadership abilities, demonstrated through his leadership in the Chinese Communist Party and Communist Party-led armies,11 were ''nonpareil.'' His reputation and magnetism would allow him to command popular support, while his leadership and organizational skills made him the perfect candidate to oversee the administration of a new government.12<br /> <br /> Kim’s ascension to power, then, was not a Soviet-orchestrated plan to impose a dictator on a resistant population, as anti-DPRK propaganda, disseminated by US intelligence services and ignorant Western journalists, would have it. The revolutionary situation was endogenous to Korea, and Kim’s elevation to the presidency of the provisional government was an expression of Koreans’ aspirations for independence. The autonomous development of the provisional government from the spontaneously developed people’s committees arose from Korean ambitions to overcome four decades of hardship and humiliation under Japanese rule, while Kim Il-sung’s ability to command the popular support of Koreans in the Soviet zone was attributable to his personal qualities, his undeniable patriotic credentials, and his outstanding commitment to the historical aspirations of Koreans.13 He was not imposed on Koreans by Moscow, and his revolution was not exogenous, imported from the USSR. He had the support of his compatriots, and the reforms his government implemented were demanded by Koreans themselves.<br /> <br /> In some ways, the cult of Kim Il-sung that would grow up around the guerrilla leader obscured the role that Koreans ''en masse'' played north of the 38th parallel in collectively bringing about their liberation. True, the Soviets furnished Koreans space to work out new modalities of independent rule, free from the stifling hand of the United States. Without the Red Army’s presence from 1945 to 1948, Korea’s independence movement in the north would have been quashed by the US empire, as it was in the south; hence Kim Il-sung’s designation of the Soviets as our “liberator and helper.”<br /> <br /> In North Korea, Kim is revered as a semi-deity, a god-like figure who, it might be supposed, single-handedly delivered his people to freedom. There is a parallel with Fidel Castro, another revolutionary nationalist, also of considerable personal magnetism, who is often portrayed as playing a larger-than-life role in his country’s liberation, overshadowing the significant contributions of countless others. When Castro died, historian Louis A. Perez Jr. wrote what might be called a historian’s elegy of a great figure. His remarks on the passing of Castro, however, apply equally to Kim. Replace Castro with Kim, and Perez’s requiem becomes:<br /> <br /> [Kim Il-sung] was in many ways defined through his confrontation with the [Japanese]. His uncompromising defense of [Korean] claims to self-determination as a matter of a historically-determined mandate and a legacy to fulfil more than adequately validated his moral claim to leadership. To confront [Japan, and later the United States] in defense of national sovereignty was to make good on the internal logic of [Korean] history.<br /> <br /> What resonated in [1946] and in the years that followed was the very phenomenon of the [Korean] revolution, of a people summoned to heroic purpose, to affirm the right of self-determination and national sovereignty. [Kim Il-sung] was the most visible representative of that people.<br /> <br /> However large a role [Kim] played in shaping the course of [Korean] history, it bears emphasizing that the success of his appeal and the source of his authority were very much a function of the degree to which he represented the authenticity of [Korean] historical aspirations. [Kim Il-sung] was an actor, of course, but he was also acted upon. He shaped the history of his times in discharge of the history in which he was formed. The meaning of his life must be situated within that history, as it was lived and learned, as the circumstances that acted to forge self-knowledge and knowledge of the world at large, and served to inform the purpose of his presence.<br /> <br /> To subsume outcomes of [decades] of [North Korean] programs and policies to the will of one man is facile. It is bad history. Worse still, it is to dismiss the efforts of countless hundreds of thousands of other men and women who—with ill-will or good intentions—played important roles in the decisions, deliberations and discharge of the purpose that has moved the history of [Korea].14<br /> <br /> How, then, did the countless men and women of the Korean north move the history of Korea? Apart from forming people’s committees through which they consented to their own representatives, Koreans—peasants in the majority—demanded land reform. Six of every 10 members of the provisional government were peasants. Fittingly, on its very first day, the provisional government announced that redistributing land from parasitic landlords to the peasants who toiled it would be its first order of business.15 As president of the provisional government, Kim Il-sung reported:<br /> <br /> Already in March this year [1946], the agrarian reform was carried out in the rural areas of north Korea, bringing about a radical change in production relations. The agrarian reform dealt a decisive blow to the landlord class, the most reactionary class in Korea, wiping out its economic base. The peasantry was freed from feudal exploitation and oppression and became the master of land, which had been their centuries-old aspiration. The peasants have not only come to work the land as their own land which was distributed free by the people’s committee, but also have got rid of the system of exorbitant forced delivery of farm produce plus all kinds of exacting taxes and levies extorted from them in the years of Japanese imperialism and have become free to dispose of their farm produce after delivering only 25 percent of the harvests as tax in kind.16<br /> <br /> “The Land Reform Law was sweeping,” wrote Anna Louise Strong. “It confiscated all Japanese lands, whether public or private, all landlords’ lands, if the landlord owned more than twelve acres, or if, owning less, he systematically rented the land and did not work it himself, and all land of churches and monasteries that exceeded twelve acres.” The lands, recovered on behalf of the people, “were given to village committees to distribute on the basis of the number of people in each farm family, and also with reference to the number of adult workers. Landlords also might get land to till but not more than twelve acres, and this must be in another county where they would have no traditional influence. Of the 70,000 landlords” in the Soviet occupation zone “3,500 took advantage of this permission.”17<br /> <br /> The remainder of the north’s landlords fled to the US occupation zone, where the governing authorities had a more tolerant—indeed, favorable—attitude to parasites. Korean landlords in the US occupation zone continued to oversee the production of rice for export to Japan, a continuation of the colonial regime.18 While completed by 1946 in the north, land reform wouldn’t be carried out in the south until 1950, and it was North Korean forces, advancing south of the 38th parallel, clearing away the landlord regime and their US patrons, that allowed Koreans of the south to implement the land reform their compatriots to the north had already completed. Hence, the advancing force of the DPRK military played the same role the Red Army had played from 1945 to 1948: it created the space Koreans needed to carry out democratic reforms.<br /> <br /> In the north, the work day was set at eight hours for non-hazardous jobs and seven hours for hazardous ones. Workers were guaranteed annual two-week vacations with pay. Workers in hazardous jobs got a full month. This contrasted sharply with labor conditions under the Japanese, marked by work days of 15 hours or more and no paid vacations. Child labor was outlawed, as was discrimination against women in pay.19 Lee Mai-Hwa, a female gold miner, told Anna Louise Strong that during the colonial era she worked 13 hours or more per day, loading ore onto carts underground. In 1949, she was a pneumatic drill operator, working only seven hours per day.20 Kim Il-sung explained: the “Provisional People’s Committee of North Korea promulgated the Labour Law freeing factory and office workers from harsh, colonial-type exploitation and introducing the eight-hour working day and a social insurance system. And a law was passed to guarantee the women social rights equal to those of the men for the first time in the history of our country.”21<br /> <br /> On the heels of the labor reforms, the provisional government nationalized all industry belonging to Japanese and quislings.22 The government, Kim said, had also “proclaimed the law on the nationalization of industrial, transport and communications facilities, and banks which had been owned by the Japanese imperialists, pro-Japanese elements, and traitors to the nation. With this we have brought under national ownership, ownership of the entire people, the backbone of the economy which constitutes the material basis for building a fully independent and democratic state.”23 The new law, Kim pointed out, had “wiped out the foundation of Japanese imperialist colonial rule and deprived the traitors to the nation who had collaborated with Japanese imperialism of their economic footholds.” The institution of paying rent to private landlords was eliminated. “Thus, all the forces that had oppressed and exploited the Korean people hand in glove with Japanese imperialism,” he explained, “were deprived of their economic footholds and politically liquidated.”24<br /> <br /> Concurrently, Kim’s government introduced an economic plan to convert the economy, which had been tailored to meet the needs of Japanese, to meet the needs of Koreans.25<br /> <br /> In 1965, Joan Robinson, the Cambridge economist, visited the DPRK and declared that North Korea was an economic miracle. “There is a complete system of social security for workers and employees,” she wrote. “Pensions are at the level of 50 percent of wages. …The medical service is free.” North Korea, she concluded, is a “nation without poverty.”26<br /> <br /> Reflecting the reforms Kim’s provisional government introduced in 1946, there existed, Robinson observed, in all enterprises “an eight-hour day, with an hour’s break for lunch; there is a six-hour day for heavy work and for occupations dangerous to health. Workers receive holidays with pay for fifteen days a year (a month for heavy and dangerous work).”27<br /> <br /> “Women are 51 percent of the population and 49 percent of the labor force,” Robinson continued, “which means that few except the elderly are not employed.” Women could fully participate in the work force because paid maternity leave, day cares, nursery schools, and prepared meals, freed them from the childcare and domestic burdens they alone had once shouldered. Regarding income inequality, Robinson noted that the “spread of income is very narrow, both between town and country and within industry.”28<br /> <br /> The Soviet zone was a living laboratory whose experiments showed the United States what would happen in their own zone if Koreans of the south were allowed to organize their own affairs. Decisions about public administration would be democratized, driven into the people’s committees, rather than held in the hands of a landlord class answerable to foreign patrons; landlords would be expropriated, and their land distributed to those who worked it; and industry would be nationalized. Since these outcomes would fail to comport with the US vision of a world organized as a hierarchy, with the titans of US finance, industry, and commerce at the top, Korea’s landed elite in the middle, and 98 percent of Koreans at the bottom, the latter group would have to be prevented from ever laying its hands on the levers of power. In order to accomplish this negative goal, the movement for Korean independence in the south would have to be crushed. After it was crushed, it would have to be forever repressed. This would be accomplished by building an anti-communist state, staffed by anti-communist zealots and former Japanese army officers whom Washington would hand pick to operate a police state, as viciously anti-Left as the Nazi’s anti-communist police state. Eventually, the citadel of the Korean independence movement in the north would have to be weakened, degraded, and ultimately destroyed (to borrow the words that a future US president, Barack Obama, would use in connection with ISIS.) But for the moment, the task at hand was to repress the homegrown movement for equality in the south. It was to this immediate task that US military governor General John Reed Hodge turned his attention in November of 1945.<br /> <br /> == The War Against Communists of the South ==<br /> “''We have got to kill them''.” —Senior South Korean intelligence officer, referring to communists of the south.1<br /> <br /> At the end of 1945, Hodge and his advisers created a four-point plan to destroy the movement for independence in southern Korea. First, they would build an army staffed by former officers of the Japanese army to isolate the south from the independence movement in the north. Second, the Korean National Police, the instrument of violence the Japanese had used to suppress opposition to Japanese rule, would be rebuilt. Where the KNP’s original mandate had been to crush opposition to the Japanese occupation, the organization’s new mandate would be to quell opposition to the successor occupation of the United States. Third, the occupation government’s alliance with right-wing, anti-egalitarian, pro-collaborationist forces would be strengthened. And fourth, opponents of the new regime would be rounded up and jailed.2 This amounted to a declaration of war on the Korean People’s Republic.3 By 1948, Hodge’s war on the independence movement in the south had driven the movement’s supporters into graves, into jail, underground, or to the north. “Germany was built up by Hitler to fight Communism,” Hodge had observed.4 The US military governor was building a parallel state in Korea to achieve the same anti-Left goals that had animated the Nazi project in Germany. Hodge and his successors, a string of South Korean strongmen, belonged to the same class as Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Pinochet, and Suharto—dictators whose chief political goal was the extermination of communists.<br /> <br /> Hodge created the Korean Military Academy as the first step toward building a South Korean army. The army’s political function would be to isolate the south from the north so that the KNP would have space and time to eliminate the independence movement in the south. The first graduating class comprised 40 traitors, Korean officers who had served in the Japanese Imperial Army, along with 20 patriots, Koreans who had served in the army of the exile Korean Provisional Government, fighting the Japanese from China. The patriots refused to work with the traitors, and the new south Korean army accordingly became predominantly staffed by turncoats.5 According to Bruce Cumings, “Virtually the entire officer corps of the Republic of Korea army” that Hodge would eventually build “was drawn from Koreans with experience in the Japanese Imperial Army.”6<br /> <br /> The KNP became Hodge’s principal apparatus for crushing the independence movement in the south.7 Hodge recruited the Koreans whom the Japanese had hired to staff their colonial force to staff the new KNP, establishing a continuity between Japanese and US rule.8 US military officials described the KNP as “thoroughly Japanized and efficiently utilized as an instrument of tyranny” during the colonial period,9 making it especially attractive to Hodge as the main instrument of repression to be used by the anti-communist police state he was building.<br /> <br /> Under the Japanese, 40 percent of KNP personnel were Korean traitors. The police carried out a number of colonial functions, from ordinary policing to tax collection, dragooning Koreans for road construction, administering land purchases, enforcing landlord-friendly tenancy agreements, and teaching school.10<br /> <br /> Anna Louise Strong wrote that, “Within a year [of US troops landing in Korea] great uprisings took place in eighty cities and in hundreds of farming villages against the ‘police state’ that the American armed forces kept in power.”11 For his part, Henry Heller wrote that “Following the suppression of the Korean People’s Republic by the United States, widespread strikes, mass demonstrations, rebellions, and, finally, large-scale guerrilla movements continued at the grassroots.”12<br /> <br /> In Bruce Cumings’ words, the US occupation “immediately ran into monumental opposition from the mass of South Koreans. Most of the first year of the occupation, 1945-46, was given over to suppression of many people’s committees that had emerged in the provinces. This provoked a massive rebellion that spread over four provinces in the fall of 1946; after it was suppressed, radical activists developed a significant guerrilla movement in 1948 and 1949.”13 Three years into the US occupation, most villages in the Korean interior south of the 48th parallel were under the control of liberation forces.14<br /> <br /> By December 1947, Hodge’s KNP force had rounded up and jailed 21,458 leftists. Lee Kang Kuk, head of foreign affairs in the north’s provisional government, told Anna Louise Strong that the figure exceeded the number of political prisoners under Japanese rule.15 By 1949, the number swelled to 30,000.16 The magnitude of opposition to the US occupation regime was so great, that the KNP’s jails could not hold all the dissidents the KNP arrested. To handle the excess, concentration camps, euphemistically denominated as ‘guidance camps,’ were established to immure the 70,000 leftists who exceeded the capacity of the overcrowded prisons, already teeming with 30,000 communists.17 Hitler, it should be noted, also relied on concentration camps, or ''konzentrationslager'', to do what Hodge’s forces were doing in Korea. Roger Baldwin, the head of the American Civil Liberties Union, visited Korea in May 1947, reporting that “The country is literally in the grip of a police regime and a private terror.” One prison he toured contained 1,000 inmates who had been jailed for organizing unions and strikes.18 In Bruce Cumings assessment, Hodge had “created one of the worst police states in Asia.”19 The anti-Left ethos of the state, and its police state methods, as we’ll presently see, never disappeared. South Korea very much remains an anti-communist police state today.<br /> <br /> In a 1948 report the CIA described the overt political structure in the US zone “as under the control of ‘extreme Rightists,’” who were “ruthlessly brutal in suppressing disorder” mainly “through the agency of the National Police.” Although membership in leftist organizations was legal, the police ran roughshod over communists, harassing them, jailing them, and not infrequently gunning them down. Moreover, noted the CIA, the “alliance of the police with the Right has been reflected in the cooperation of the police with Rightist youth groups for the purpose of completely suppressing Leftist activity. This alignment has had the effect of forcing the Left to operate as an underground organization since it could not effectively compete in a parliamentary sense even if it should so desire.”20<br /> <br /> In contrast, there was little suppression of political opposition in the north, mainly because there was not much political opposition to suppress. Most Koreans, no matter where they lived on the peninsula, wanted the same things: government by Koreans; land reform; the deportation of the Japanese and expulsion of collaborators from the government; and economic development to meet domestic, not foreign, needs. Kim Il-sung’s government immediately delivered on all of these demands. The opposition would come from landlords and collaborators. But the collaborators had fled to the US zone, and the landlords either accepted the land reform law, and worked the land they were allotted, or migrated to the south. Anna Louise Strong explained the lack of political opposition in the north this way: because the United States “ruled at first through the Japanese and then through the Japanese-appointed Korean officials and police … all of the pro-Japanese Koreans—former police and officials, landlords and stockholders in Japanese companies—fled south” to the US zone.21 The flight of pro-Japanese collaborators and parasitical landlords to the south simplified politics in the Soviet zone, by cleansing it of enemies who would have otherwise needed to be suppressed. At the same time, militants who had been jailed by the Japanese for opposing colonialism were freed from jail, and brought back into politics in the north.22<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; * *<br /> <br /> By 1950, between 100,000 and 200,000 southern patriots had been killed by US occupation forces and their Korean subalterns.23 At the head of the South Korean police state was a fanatical anti-communist who had spent four decades in the United States, accumulating degrees from Ivy League universities and hobnobbing with US government officials while Kim Il-sung battled the Japanese army and Korean turncoats in the frozen mountains of Manchuria. His name was Syngman Rhee.<br /> <br /> Unlike Park Chung-hee, the military dictator who would succeed him as president, Rhee cannot be characterized as a traitor ''tout court''. Park helped the Empire of the Rising Sun keep his native Korea in chains. Rhee, unlike Park, was not a traitor, in the sense of collaborating with the Japanese. Collaborating with the new US occupation, however, was another matter.<br /> <br /> Rhee immigrated to the United States in 1904, before Japan made Korea into a protectorate. He was absent from Korea for the entire Japanese colonial period, returning only in October 1945, aboard a US military aircraft, spirited into the country to head a new pro-US anti-communist police state.<br /> <br /> Rhee opposed the Japanese colonization of Korea and fought against it, lobbying US politicians, including two presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, to intercede on Korea’s behalf. This strategy, thought Kim Il-sung, was tantamount to appealing for help to an armed robber waiting outside your door while another armed robber plunders your house from within. The only effective solution to the problem of occupation, Kim concluded, was to take up arms to drive the robber out, and prevent the other robbers from entering, a strategy Kim would take up, while Rhee pounded the streets of Washington, seeking help from one imperialist power (the United States) against another (Japan).<br /> <br /> Kim Il-sung’s communism made him attractive to many Koreans but ''persona non grata'' to the US government. Syngman Rhee’s anti-communism made him attractive to the US government but ''persona non grata'' to many Koreans. But Rhee had something that other Korean anti-communists lacked: a record free from pro-Japanese collaborationist taint. Exiled in the United States during the course of the Japanese colonial period, Rhee never had the opportunity to collaborate (and may not have taken it if he had.) Plus, he had been the president (though disgraced) of the Provisional Republic of Korea government in exile. Washington hoped that Rhee’s anti-Japanese credentials would make him acceptable to South Korean public opinion.<br /> <br /> As head of a puppet state, Rhee would have other attractions for US officials. His long-time residency in the United States practically made him an American, and certainly inclined him toward the US point of view. He had travelled in the same circles as the US politico-economic elite, meeting US politicians in Washington as a lobbyist and establishing contacts with the US ruling class at the elite universities he attended (BA from George Washington University, MA from Harvard and PhD from Princeton). Indeed, as the US geopolitical strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski pointed out, the transmission of US ruling class ideology and values to talented foreigners who pass through elite US universities ''en route'' to jobs in government back home is one of the foundations of US global power.24 The Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA), with which Rhee worked during the Pacific War,25 valued Rhee above all other exiled Korean leaders for having more of an “American point of view.” Accordingly, it was Rhee, instilled with US ruling class values, whom the OSS selected to install in Korea in October of 1945,26 a Trojan horse in which to smuggle into Korea the thinking of the US ruling elite.<br /> <br /> == Suppressing a Worldwide Movement for Liberty, Equality and the Unity of Humankind ==<br /> “''The ‘national security institutions’ were staffed by Wall Street''<br /> <br /> ''lawyers with a keen interest in American economic supremacy''.”1<br /> <br /> While Hodge was building his Gestapo state in the south to suppress the Korean movement for equality, planners at the US State Department in Washington were worrying about the advance of communism on a world scale. According to Melvyn Leffler, “Elaborate studies undertaken by the State Department and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York demonstrated that” corporate America couldn’t thrive in a world in which its access to foreign markets, raw materials, and investment opportunities was restricted.2 The United States’ opposition to Nazi Germany and militarist Japan was related, not to the Axis powers’ treatment of the peoples they conquered—about whom US leaders cared not one iota—but to Germany’s and Japan’s efforts to construct zones of economic exclusion in Europe and East Asia respectively. It was Axis domination of Eurasia and the concomitant exclusion of US capital from European and Asian markets which thrust Uncle Sam into the wars in Europe and the Pacific.<br /> <br /> Similarly, socialism and revolutionary nationalism abroad threatened US capitalism at home. Socialists and revolutionary nationalists in power brought their countries’ markets, labor, and raw materials under indigenous control, closing off corporate America from important profit-making opportunities, forcing US capital to live with limited money-making opportunities at home. Hadn’t Kim Il-sung nationalized Japanese-established industry in Korea, bringing it under a regimen of economic planning guided by Korean needs, thereby denying potential profit-making opportunities to wealthy US investors and business people? Walter Lippmann, the most renowned US journalist of the time, opined that US capitalism could not “survive in a world that is elsewhere under” the control of socialists and revolutionary nationalists; it needed access to profit-making opportunities on a world scale.3<br /> <br /> The United States had always been “a nation without borders,” as historian Steven Hahn called it.4 Driven by economic interests, it had expanded inexorably, growing from 13 former British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America to a vast continental empire based on the conquest of the land of North America’s indigenous peoples, which would inspire Hitler’s drive for ''lebensraum'' and Mussolini’s wars for ''spaze vitale''. The Spanish-American War added territory, some of which—Puerto Rico and Guam, for example—remain, even today, as ''de facto'' US colonies. The expansion was driven initially by a slave-owning elite’s hunger for land and later by an industrial elite’s hunger for markets and investment opportunities. “The basis for America’s expanding geopolitical ambitions,” wrote Zbigniew Brzezinski, citing the Spanish-American War and the Monroe Doctrine, “subsequently justified by America’s ‘alleged manifest destiny,’” was “provided by the rapid industrialization of the country’s economy,”5 which demanded access to foreign markets and raw materials. The problem was that the people of other countries didn’t always want to give US industrialists and investors access to their labor, markets, and raw materials—at least, not on terms which allowed US investors and business executives to accumulate handsome profits while local populations were left in poverty or driven into pauperism. And sometimes the industrialists and investors of other countries wanted to keep foreign markets and raw materials out of the hands of their US competitors.<br /> <br /> Post-war Western Europe struggled economically, and US officials feared that the region’s economic travails did nothing to shore up the credibility of the capitalist economic order, which was already viewed with suspicion by Europeans who had lived through the failure of capitalism during the Great Depression. With no sign that capitalism was about to pull Western Europe out of its post-war morass, US planners feared a turn toward communism. The US ambassador to Italy warned Washington that “all the indications we receive … show that the Communists are consistently gaining ground.”6 In the Western occupation zone of Germany, food riots led the US military governor, General Lucius Clay, to sound the alarm over what he described as a growing communist movement. French conservatives warned Washington that local communists—who had enjoyed enormous prestige owing to the lead role they had played in the resistance to German occupation—might take power. In Greece, communists had also led the resistance to German occupation, and had significant popular support. If the United States failed to eclipse the growth of Communist parties, vast areas of the globe could be walled off from exploitation by US firms and investors.7 At the same time, if Communist forces were to consolidate their control of Manchuria and northern China, US officials believed that the region’s resources would be forfeited to indigenous anti-colonial and anti-feudal forces, who would use the region’s bounty of natural resources to address local development needs at the expense of corporate America’s profit imperatives.8<br /> <br /> Truman raised the alarm about the world’s growing turn to communism and the implications of this trend for US business in a major foreign policy address delivered at Baylor University in March of 1947. The US president noted that the destruction of national economies during the war and the requirements of reconstruction had compelled governments to favor central planning and internal development at the expense of open markets and free enterprise. The implications for the United States, Truman warned, were grave. Unless Washington acted, corporate America would be forced to operate within attenuated economic frontiers.9 Socialism and revolutionary nationalism abroad were imperiling the US system of free enterprise10—that is, were endangering the profit-making opportunities of the wealthy owners of major US enterprises. Truman didn’t present the problem in quite these terms, portending instead, that the American way of life was at stake, but it was the shareholders and financiers whose wealth depended on open access to the world’s markets, raw materials, and labor who were at risk.<br /> <br /> Truman foresaw the possibility that weaknesses inherent in capitalism could touch off a systemic collapse. “If the countries of middle-western and Mediterranean Europe sink under the burden of despair and become Communist, Scandinavia will fall in the same camp. The strategically and economically vital North African and middle-western areas will follow. The transfer of Western Europe, the second greatest industrial area in the world, and of the essential regions which must inevitably follow such a lead, would radically change the American position. If it should prove that a weakened United Kingdom could not resist so powerful a current, the shift could be cataclysmic.”11 In other words, forces guided by the Enlightenment values of equality and inclusion would become hegemonic. Economies would be reconstructed on the basis of publicly-owned enterprises, organized by a plan, and guided by the goal of satisfying human needs, rather than being based on privately-owned enterprises, organized by markets for the sole reason of channeling profits, rents, and interest to a numerically tiny class of capitalists.<br /> <br /> US planners feared that communist governments would come to power in the industrial core of Western Europe and Japan on a wave of popular support. Governments would take control of local economies through state-owned enterprises and implement programs of industrial planning in order to deliver the economic and social security that the core industrial populations had been denied during the great crisis of capitalism that swept the world from 1929.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, anti-colonial movements in the periphery planned to implement a similar program. They aimed to build planned economies, using tools of nationalization, state ownership, incubation of industry behind protective tariff walls, land reform, subsides to domestic firms, controls on foreign investment, and other measures to lift their countries from their subordinate positions in the international division of labor. For half a millennium, colonial powers had accumulated vast wealth by plundering the periphery, creating a “great divergence,” which saw the core countries shoot ahead economically, militarily, technologically, and culturally, while the plundered periphery lagged behind.<br /> <br /> The communist movement, with its emphasis on social and economic security in the industrial core, and national liberation in the periphery, was decried in Washington as the bearer of a hostile ideology, which, it was feared, might bring the resources of Eurasia under popular control. The conditions of post-war Germany and Japan, marked by economic collapse, demoralization, and widespread disaffection with the capitalist economic order, were viewed by US planners as fertile soil in which attachment to planned economies and social security could take root and flourish.12<br /> <br /> Truman and his advisers “felt real apprehension,” observed Leffler. “The growth of autarky and state planning, the strength of the Communist parties,” the disillusionment of people in Japan and Germany, “and the vitality of revolutionary nationalist movements,” portended a shift to growing equality and democratization on a world scale.13 US officials saw themselves as engaged in an enormous geopolitical struggle whose outcome would determine whether globe-girding US capitalism survived or perished.14 Unless the communist trend was reversed, US corporations and investors would have to turn inward, as people abroad organized their economies to suit their own interests, rather than those of Wall Street. The United States’ political economy—atop which sat its principal beneficiaries, a numerically small inter-marrying class of wealthy bankers and industrialists—was under a threat of a greater magnitude than any it had ever faced, borne by a movement of workers and colonial ''untermenschen,'' whose origins lay in the Bolshevik revolution.15<br /> <br /> Resurrecting Japan was seen by US strategists as the key to breaking the back of the growing democratization movement in Asia. Japan couldn’t be allowed to embrace a communist future. If it did, the socialist bloc would acquire incomparable assets. An army of skilled laborers and a great industrial armamentarium would fall into the hands of a movement which aspired to build a world of plenty, in which the exploitation of man by man was proscribed. The balance of world power would shift away from the United States and its corporate elite toward a worldwide movement of workers and liberated colonial people.16<br /> <br /> But how was Japan to be resurrected? US policymakers worried that pressure to revivify the Japanese economy would compel Japanese politicians to look to Manchuria, north China, Taiwan, and Korea, its traditional sources of raw materials and agricultural goods.17 But these areas were now partially under the control of the communist forces of Mao Tse Tung and Kim Il-sung and might soon come under the complete control of leaders who would use central planning, state-owned enterprises, and cooperatives to develop their economies, and would insist on selling their raw materials only on terms that met domestic needs, if they sold them at all. Might Japan be absorbed into a communist East?<br /> <br /> By 1947, it was clear to US strategists that Japan’s failure to recover economically had become a boon to the Japanese Communist Party, whose popularity was being borne aloft on a rising tide of disenchantment with the capitalist economic order and its attendant plagues of recurring economic crises and industrial wars of extermination.18 Communism, observed Sarah Paine, “resonated among Japan’s poor, threatening” plutocratic rule.19 If Japan was denied access to its former colonies, its economy would remain in crisis, and the tide of Japanese who looked to communism as a solution would become overwhelming.20 Owing to its industrial assets and skilled workforce, Japan was the most valuable country in Asia, in the view of US strategists. These assets might escape the control of the United States.21 A communist Japan would become a model for the world. Communism in Russia and China had been disadvantaged by a low starting point. But a powerful industrial economy, oriented toward the development of human potential rather than profit, and guided by goals of economic and social security, would be a formidable foe in the ideological struggle for the hearts and minds of humanity.<br /> <br /> Furthermore, a highly developed Japan, integrated into the world communist movement, would facilitate the industrial development of China, the Soviet Union, and other socialist bloc countries. The Bolsheviks had always expected that industrially-advanced Germany would come to the aid of Red Russia after it had its own socialist revolution. Lenin and his colleagues expected a revolutionary Germany to help build socialism in under-developed Russia. Now, US officials feared that Japan could play the role the Bolsheviks had once imagined Germany would play.<br /> <br /> The key to re-animating Japan’s economy, and, therefore, to eclipsing the emergence of a communist Japan, US planners believed, was to strengthen Japan’s links to its former colonial possessions, including Taiwan and Korea. At the same time, new links would be established with surrogate peripheral economies to replace the ties severed by revolutions in China and North Korea. The markets and raw materials of Southeast Asia would replace those lost to communist advance in Northeast Asia.22 US planners envisaged a network of interconnections, plugging Japan into the resources, labor, and markets of South Korea, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf.23<br /> <br /> This plan, however, was not without its challenges. Revolutionary nationalists in Indonesia and Vietnam, having ejected the Japanese at the end of the war, were now threatening to overturn the colonial rule Western Europe had sought to re-establish over its former colonial domains. If the liberation forces succeeded, it was unlikely that either country would allow itself to return to its previous role as purveyor of cheap labor, raw materials, and investment opportunities for wealthy Japanese.24<br /> <br /> The efforts of the Indochinese to free themselves from French colonial rule presented another difficulty. Already weakened by the war, the French were embroiled in an expensive campaign to retain their empire in Southeast Asia, expending blood and treasure, and consequently exacerbating the economic crisis at home. French capitalism depended on the plunder of the country’s colonial possessions. But the expense of maintaining these possessions in the face of revolutionary movements of the oppressed was threatening to bankrupt the economy. This redounded to the benefit of the French Communist Party, which increasingly more French citizens saw as offering the only cogent exit from the crisis.<br /> <br /> From Washington’s point of view, it was imperative that the flame of Vietnamese independence be extinguished. Apart from the dangers a Viet Minh victory posed for the capitalist interests of hexagonal France, if Ho Chi Minh’s army succeeded, the people of Malaya might take heart, and try to shake off the oppressions of the British. Malaya was a rich source of tin and rubber, and the dollar earnings the British Empire reaped from its plunder of the Malayan people underwrote London’s financial solvency. Britain’s economy had failed to rebound after the war. Economically prostrated, London was no longer able to suppress revolutionary nationalist movements in its vast overseas colonial empire.25 It was unlikely to survive a further blow. Hence, the United States would have to intervene in Vietnam, to arrest further decay in the French economic position, which was fueling the growth of French communism, and to discourage independence movements in the British Empire, which threatened to precipitate an economic catastrophe in metropolitan Britain, creating fertile soil in which communism could take root and blossom. The consequences for Washington of communist and revolutionary nationalist advance, then, were grim: more economic territory turned to the development of local populations; continued capitalist failure in Western Europe and Japan; the growing chances of Communist revolution in the industrial core; and all of this threatening the project of creating a globe-girding US-led capitalist economic order.<br /> <br /> Into this world of impending doom for the US empire stepped US Secretary of State George Marshall. To provide a fillip to Japan’s economy, in order to arrest the growing attractions of communism, the Korean peninsula—or as much of it as possible—had to be reintegrated into the Japanese sphere. In late January 1947 Marshall sent a note to under-secretary Dean Acheson: “Please have plan drafted of policy to organize a definite government of [South] Korea and connect up its economy with that of Japan.”26 The implication of Marshall’s plan for rescuing capitalism in Japan was that the US occupation zone in Korea would be transformed into a US-aligned state, betokening the country’s indefinite political division.<br /> <br /> Koreans hadn’t asked for a partition. Most vehemently opposed it, and a Calvary of millions—the grim outcome of a war which began three years later to reverse the partition—stands as a testament to their opposition. The few Koreans who weren’t opposed were distinguished by their minority status; they were mainly anti-communists who had collaborated with the Japanese and were no less eager to lick the boots of the Americans. The decision to organize a definite government of South Korea was taken to benefit Japan’s titans of industry, finance and commerce in service to the construction of a US empire, and in opposition to the worldwide movement for liberty, equality and human solidarity.<br /> <br /> == The Political Partition of Korea ==<br /> During WWII, the agreement Washington and Moscow had arrived at on Korea was that the post-war zonal division of the peninsula would be temporary, lasting no more than five years. Within five years, a pan-Korean government would be elected, and US and Soviet troops would withdraw from the peninsula, leaving Koreans to govern themselves. Between 1945 and 1947 the Soviets and Americans met to discuss the formation of a provisional government which would administer Korean affairs preparatory to country-wide elections. “Nothing came of these talks but increasing bitterness,” reported Anna Louise Strong. The United States insisted on including conservative pro-Japanese collaborators in the provisional government. The Soviets demurred. The Soviets insisted on including communist workers and farmers. The Americans objected.1<br /> <br /> By 1947, the United States had abandoned any intention it ever had of honoring its agreement with the Soviet Union on Korea’s future. An ongoing US presence on the Korean peninsula offered too many attractions to Washington to leave Korea to Koreans. Apart from putting Washington in a position to orient the Korean economy to Japan, a continued US military presence on the peninsula would facilitate the goal of containing and possibly rolling back leftist movements in nearby China, Russia, and North Korea. Hence, rather than working towards a democratically elected pan-Korean government and mutual Soviet-US withdrawal, Washington obstructed the plan.<br /> <br /> Abandoning further talks on national elections with their presumed Soviet partners, the Americans persuaded the newly inaugurated and US-dominated United Nations to form a committee to initiate and observe elections in Korea. The committee was stacked with US allies: Canada, Australia, the Philippines (a former US colony which had recently been granted nominal independence), and the Kuomintang (the communists’ hated enemy in China). Since the Americans had walked away from talks held to work out a mutually agreeable plan for the elections, and since the UN committee members could be counted on to follow US directions, Koreans of the north, and the Soviets, refused to endorse the US-initiated, UN-approved plan.2 All the same, the elections would go ahead—in the US occupation zone alone. And the election’s remit wouldn’t be limited to the south but would cover the entire country! Whoever won the election, would form a government to administer all of Korea.<br /> <br /> This not only rankled Moscow, it rankled Koreans, as well, and Koreans more strongly, since they would have to live with the consequences of Washington’s divisive machinations. In an effort to pre-empt the US plan, Koreans organized a National Unity Conference at Pyongyang, which met three weeks before the scheduled date of the US-orchestrated poll. The conference included delegates from both the north and south, who declared themselves implacably opposed to the impending elections, denouncing them as a maneuver by the United States to politically partition Korea by creating a separate government south of the 38th parallel.3 In lieu of fissiparous elections, which virtually no one in Korea wanted, the conference proposed the immediate withdrawal of the two occupation armies, a national political conference to organize a provisional government to draw up a constitution, and elections to follow with the goal of forming a national government.4 US officials ignored the Koreans’ proposal, pushing ahead instead with their own plan to hold a centrifugal election limited to the US occupation zone for a national government.<br /> <br /> Much to Washington’s surprise, even most Korean conservatives, whom US officials counted on to back their scheme, expressed opposition to what appeared as an obvious device to partition the country politically in order to establish a US puppet regime in the south.5 The election was widely viewed by Koreans as signaling their country’s permanent division. For this reason, and owing to the pro-landlord, anti-communist ethos of the Rhee government, parties of the left and center,6 and even some of the right, boycotted the election. In other words, the election was repudiated by the USSR, shunned by the provisional government in the north, and opposed by most Koreans of the south. All the same, the Americans obstinately pushed ahead, unrestrained by even the slightest qualms about trampling upon the aspirations of Koreans. Koreans, after all, weren’t the object of the exercise; the building of a global US empire was. Leaving nothing to chance, the UN allowed the Korean National Police, dominated by pro-Japanese collaborators and assisted by the Korean equivalent of Nazi storm troopers—right-wing thugs recruited to crack communist heads—to organize the voting.7 Voters were threatened with the loss of their land and ration cards if they failed to show up at voting stations.8 Through these illegitimate means, Washington midwifed the birth of a pro-US, anti-communist police state with Syngman Rhee as the state’s nominal leader. Within three weeks of the election, the traitor Kim Sok-won, who had been decorated by Emperor Hirohito for bravery in Japanese military campaigns to colonize China, was leading a parade of twenty-five hundred Korean veterans of the Japanese army through the streets of Seoul. The quisling state had been born.<br /> <br /> “The United States now has a puppet state in South Korea,” wrote Israel Epstein. “Elections held under a ‘protecting umbrella’ of US troops have put a discredited rightist, Dr. Syngman Rhee, in power.”9 The Rhee government formally superseded the US military government, which was replaced by the Korean Military Advisory Group and the Economic Cooperation Administration, the US deep state in South Korea, comprising 500 US personnel. The US military government faded from public view,10 but continued to govern from behind the scenes, much as the Japanese had pulled Chinese strings in Manchukuo. The formal, public agreement Washington struck with Seoul, to create the illusion of South Korean sovereignty, was that the Korean Military Advisory Group would retain operational control of the Korean police and military only so long as US combat troops remained on the peninsula.11 However, secret protocols granted the Pentagon command of South Korean police and troops ''sine die''.12 Even after most US combat troops were withdrawn in the summer of 1949, US advisers continued to be embedded with South Korean army units, US military aircraft continued to transport Korean troops and materiel, and US intelligence officers continued to work with the ROK army and KNP.13<br /> <br /> With the political partition of Korea now a (US-engineered) ''fait accompli'', there was little choice for Koreans in the north but to declare a separate republic, a democratic republic, to operate on behalf of the social strata to which 98 percent of Koreans (i.e., the ''demos'') belonged. The dream of Korean self-determination, seemingly promised by Wilson, urged by Lenin, for which thousands of Korean patriots had been martyred, had been blocked on a pan-Korean scale and restricted to the north. The declaration of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on September 9, 1948, was therefore only a partial victory. “Two months after the end of the Second World War,” wrote Kim Il-sung, “the 30 million Korean people were still intoxicated with the joy of liberation. None of these people, however, imagined that the liberation of the country would end in a territorial division and national split, resulting in a great national disaster.”14 A great national task remained, announced Kim: to “drive the U.S. imperialist aggressors out of south Korea, accomplish the national liberation revolution and realize the reunification of the country.”15<br /> <br /> A day after its birth, the newly formed DPRK, acting as a representative of all Koreans and considering itself on strong grounds to be the sole legitimate government in Korea, asked the Soviet Union and the United States to withdraw their military forces from Korean territory. The Soviets complied, exiting the peninsula by December 25. Washington ignored the request, even though the Soviet withdrawal meant there was no longer a justification for US forces to remain on Korean soil under the terms of the occupation agreement worked out between the two wartime allies.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, in the south, the US-led war against Korean patriots continued. By early 1949, there were between 3,500 and 6,000 guerrillas fighting the ROK government, according to a CIA estimate.16 A declassified February 1949 CIA report noted that South Korea faced a “strong and efficient” communist underground and recognized that US troop withdrawal would be met by “countrywide internal disorders”—in other words, uprisings to topple the government few Koreans wanted—accompanied by “large scale border penetrations.” The CIA warned that in “the face of combined invasion and uprising” the South Korean government would collapse.17 In September of 1949, the head of the US advisory government working behind the scenes, General W.L. Roberts, ordered all ROK army units diverted from the 38th parallel to an anti-insurgency campaign in the interior to wipe out the Korean ''maquis''. Roberts requisitioned additional infantry officers from the Pentagon, to lead the campaign to “''exterminate'' guerrilla bands”18 (emphasis added).<br /> <br /> Rhee set up the National Guidance League to coerce patriots in the south to disavow their commitment to national and social revolution and forced 300,000 of them to join. When war broke out in June 1950, the South Korean military and police, under US command, rounded up league members. Many, presumably executed, were never heard from again.19<br /> <br /> Within four months of the ROK’s proclamation, Rhee introduced the notorious National Security Law, still on the books, which has been used to lock up—sometimes for decades—Korean patriots who have worked for, even only aspired to, the independence of their country. The key to the law lies in South Korea’s definition of the DPRK, not as a state, but as an illegal anti-state organization. With unbridled shamelessness originating in the US-engineered elections to politically divide the country, the ROK defines itself as Korea’s only legitimate government, with jurisdiction over the territory controlled by Pyongyang, which the North Korean state is deemed to be occupying illegally. The law provides for punishment up to and including death or life imprisonment for anyone who joins an anti-state organization, praises or sympathizes with it, furnishes it with money or other material assistance, or communicates with its members. Indeed, the law goes so far as to prohibit the expression of praise of, or sympathy with, the DPRK , a prohibition which extends to publicly articulating the main arguments of this book. Since the advent of the ROK in 1948, its governments have used the law to arrest Koreans for anything from extolling North Korea in casual conversation to running as an opposition candidate in presidential elections.20 By December 1949, the National Security Law had been used to arrest 188,621 people committed to Korean independence and other Leftist causes,21 including members of the National Assembly.22 Hence, in the space of less than four years, a resident of Seoul could have travelled the road from jubilation at the fall of the Japanese empire and an expectation that her country would now be free from foreign domination, to running afoul of the National Security Law and languishing in prison for demanding what the fall of the Japanese empire had presumably signified: self-determination.<br /> <br /> == The Campaign of 1950-1953 ==<br /> ''What you see here, caught in your night defenses''<br /> <br /> ''These steel and glass cocoons for killing people''<br /> <br /> ''With tons of bombs, are just the consequences''<br /> <br /> ''For all, and not the causes of the evil.''<br /> <br /> ''—Bertolt Brecht'' 1<br /> <br /> Our understanding of the Korean War is based on a flawed premise, namely, that there existed on June 25, 1950 the date traditionally marking the beginning of the conflict, a legitimate international boundary separating two countries that, if crossed, would constitute an act of international aggression. The premise is flawed because neither state recognized the other as legitimate; each state claimed the same territory; and the two states did not recognize the ''de facto'' border that separated them as a ''de jure'' international frontier.<br /> <br /> From the perspective of the Republic of Korea, the movement of its military forces north of the 38th parallel did not constitute an act of aggression across an international boundary, since all Korean territory, including that north of the 38th parallel, was territory under its jurisdiction. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea had a parallel view. The advance of its forces south of the 38th parallel was perfectly legitimate, since Korean territory south of this line fell under the DPRK’s purview. In other words, no matter what their differences, both sides agreed on this: the sole legitimate government of Korea could move its military forces into territory over which it had a sovereign claim. The legitimate government of Korea could not invade its own territory.<br /> <br /> Since the United States accepted South Korea’s claim to be the sole legitimate state in Korea, and the Soviet Union accepted North Korea’s parallel claim to be the only state in Korea representing all Koreans, it was clear that the two superpowers also rejected the 38th parallel as a legitimate international frontier. For such a frontier to exist, two separate nations would have to exist on either side, and no party—not Pyongyang, not Seoul, not Moscow, not Washington—recognized the existence of two separate legitimate states on the peninsula. Hence, the condition for an international frontier to exist, was absent.<br /> <br /> The United States acknowledged that the 38th parallel had no legal status as an international border when, on September 30, 1950, lacking a UN mandate to cross the dividing line, MacArthur’s forces did so anyway, pushing north into territory controlled by the DPRK, and the US ambassador to the UN justified the action by dismissing the 38th parallel as “an imaginary line.”2 Yet when DPRK forces earlier crossed the 38th parallel on June 25, Washington obtained a UN mandate to intervene in Korea on the ground that the KPA had committed an act of international aggression across an international border.<br /> <br /> The creation of an imaginary line along the 38th parallel was simply an expedience used by Washington to ''temporarily'' divide the peninsula into separate US and Soviet occupation zones, in order to accept the Japanese surrender in Korea. Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel had no legal authority to draw an international boundary, when, on August 10, 1945, the day after an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, they etched a line along a map to separate Soviet and US forces in Korea. The conflict, then, was not a matter of one state initiating a war of aggression against another by launching a general invasion across an international frontier, since no international frontier existed. But if the war cannot be cogently characterized in these terms, how should it be characterized?<br /> <br /> One view is that it was a civil war, a quarrel between Koreans over how to organize the social, political, and economic life of the peninsula, on whose soil existed a single nation. At the heart of the debate was the question of equality. Are people, as individuals, and peoples, as nations, equal, and should they enter into associations on the basis of mutual benefit, or are some people or nations destined to lead others, and to have rights, responsibilities and privileges senior to others? Should the exploitation of man by man, be prohibited or welcomed? Should the country be aligned with, and integrated into, the US empire, or independent? And who should form the governing elite—collaborators with the Japanese empire, or those who waged war against it? These questions were at the core of the conflict.<br /> <br /> “In the American Civil War,” observed a British cabinet minister in the early 1950s, “the Americans would never have tolerated for a single moment the setting up of an imaginary line between the forces of North and South, and there can be no doubt as to what would have been their reaction if the British had intervened in force on behalf of the South. This parallel is a close one because for [the United States] the conflict was not merely between two groups of [US citizens], but was between two conflicting economic systems as is the case in Korea.”3<br /> <br /> William R. Polk, a former US State Department adviser, marks the beginning of the war, not as June 25, 1950, but as August 15, 1948, the day the quisling state was proclaimed. In Polk’s view, the unilateral creation by the United States of a separate state in the south was a declaration of war. If the state was “allowed to stand,” argues Polk, “that action as Kim Il-sung clearly understood, would have prevented unification. He regarded it as an act of war.”4 Polk’s argument has merit. But was the proclamation of the Republic of Korea an act of war only because it prevented unification, or was it an act of war for other reasons, as well?<br /> <br /> At the most inclusive level, the founding of the Republic of Korea on August 15 was an act of war against the Korean people. The proclamation of the republic imposed on Koreans a political structure they had clearly rejected. Koreans north of the imaginary line objected to the elections that brought the quisling state to life, and Koreans of the south rejected it as well by resisting the election on which the proclamation was based''.'' Thus, the founding of the ROK was an imposition of the will of the United States on the Korean people—a bellicose and profoundly anti-democratic act.<br /> <br /> On another level, August 15 was a declaration of war on Koreans of the south, for it marked the birth of a state whose anti-communist orientation clashed with the pro-communist aspirations of its citizens. Koreans of the south, as much as their compatriots of the north, wanted self-determination, not incorporation into another empire. They also wanted an economy that was directed toward meeting their own needs, not Japan’s. In addition, they wanted land reform. Since the Republic of Korea was pro-landlord and anti-communist, the state would be incessantly at war with its citizens. That the political partition of the peninsula would inevitably lead to war was apprehended at the time the partition was effected. Following the elections, at least one US-based journalist predicted that the creation of a US “puppet state in South Korea … probably marks the birth of a new civil war in which American forces are likely to be heavily involved.”5<br /> <br /> Another view dates the commencement of the civil war to December 1945, the beginning of the war that US military governor General John Reed Hodge would declare on the indigenously founded Korean People’s Republic, using Korean quislings who had served in the Japanese army and colonial police as his front line troops. Hugh Deane’s history of the conflict, ''The Korean War: 1945-1953'', follows along these lines.<br /> <br /> An alternative view is that the civil war began in 1932, when Kim Il-sung formed his first guerrilla unit to fight the Japanese, and collaborators like Park Chung-hee chose another route, joining the Japanese army and the Korean National Police to enforce Japanese rule over their compatriots. This is a perspective offered by Bruce Cumings, who has argued that the Korean War “was a civil war” that was “fought primarily by Koreans from conflicting social systems” that began “in 1932” when Kim Il-sung and other Koreans began “guerrilla, secret society, and bandit resistance” to the Japanese in Manchuria, and that the war “has never ended.”6 In Cumings’s view, the war is a conflict between “North Koreans” and “Korean quislings” who are the North Koreans’ “blood enemies.” The phase of the war that lasted from 1950 to 1953 was a campaign in a continuing civil war that was fought as a way for North Koreans to “settle the hash of the top command of the South Korean army, nearly all of whom served the Japanese.”7<br /> <br /> But while a civil conflict lay at the heart of the war fought on the Korean peninsula from 1950 to 1953, the war was also an international conflict. Apart from Koreans, the participants included combatants from: the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Turkey, Australia, the Philippines, New Zealand, Ethiopia, Greece, Thailand, France, Colombia, Belgium, South Africa, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and China.<br /> <br /> Most of the combatants fell under the US-led UN command. The principal foreign combatant forces were the United States and its auxiliaries—which is to say the US empire, fighting under a UN flag, and the People’s Republic of China, newly emerged from a long but successful anti-colonial and anti-feudal struggle, which had secured for China freedom from foreign control and domination, including by the United States. On an international level, the war was a conflict between forces of empire and forces of self-determination, between imperialists and anti-imperialists. The conflict of 1950 to 1953 was, then, an imperialist war fought on a Korean battlefield overlaid upon a civil war between patriots who rejected empire and traitors who collaborated with it.<br /> <br /> Whether we date the commencement of the civil war from 1932, 1945, or 1948, it continues to be fought today, if only at a low level of intensity. Formally, the imperialist war continues, as well. The end of open hostilities from 1950 to 1953 was secured by an armistice, or cease-fire, and not a peace treaty, though the DPRK has repeatedly offered to sign one, and the United States has just as frequently rejected the DPRK’s offers. As for the ROK, it refused even to sign the armistice agreement ending open hostilities. Technically, then, the United States and South Korea remain at war with the DPRK, despite entreaties by the latter to end the conflict.<br /> <br /> What are the aims of the contending sides in this ongoing civil war? For the DPRK, the goal is to wrest control of Korean territory from the empire which now dominates the southern half of it, and whose domination is enforced through the empire’s military forces stationed on the peninsula and by its Korean representative, the ROK. In effect, the DPRK’s struggle is with the United States (the globally hegemonic empire) and its Korean proxy (the ROK), just as in the 1930s, the struggle of the DPRK’s predecessor, the Manchurian guerrilla army, was with the regionally hegemonic empire of the time (Japan) and its Korean proxies (the quislings, like future ROK president, Park Chung-hee, who fought for the Japanese.) In 1971, Kim Il-sung defined the DPRK goal in the civil conflict as driving “the U.S. imperialist aggressors out of south Korea,” in order to “accomplish the national liberation revolution and realize the reunification of the country.”8 The ROK’s contending objective is to wrest control of the northern half of Korean territory from the anti-imperialists who now dominate it, and to fold the entire Korean peninsula into the US empire.<br /> <br /> “The basic military history of the 1950-53 phase” of the imperialist war has been succinctly summarized by Bruce Cumings. He divides the conflict “neatly into three parts: the war for the South in the summer of 1950, the war for the North in the fall and winter of 1950, and China’s intervention, which soon brought about a stabilization of the fighting along what is now the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, even though a form of trench warfare went on for another two years.”9<br /> <br /> But the campaign might be more insightfully dated from late 1948, with the founding of two separate states, each claiming jurisdiction over the entire peninsula. The Korean War could never have broken out had the United States not drawn a dividing line along the 38th parallel and the Soviet Union not accepted it.10 Without a divided Korea, there would have been no division to fight over. But what turned the division into a potent cause of war was its transformation from a temporary zonal division, scheduled to disappear within five years, to a continuing political division, inaugurated by the ROK’s proclamation.<br /> <br /> What would have happened had neither the United States nor the USSR entered Korea in 1945, and had instead allowed Koreans to direct their own liberation? That’s clear from what did happen up to the point Hodge’s forces arrived in Korea. Koreans purged the Japanese and their collaborators from civil administration, brought civil administration under their own auspices, began land reform, and met to organize a central government and proclaim a republic. The US historian Frank Baldwin figured that in “1945 Koreans would have worked out a new destiny if the US and Soviet Union had not intervened. That destiny almost certainly would have been a leftist, perhaps a communist, government.”11 What would have happened if the United States and the Soviet Union had accepted the Japanese surrender and then quickly left Korea? Bruce Cumings figures “a leftist regime would have taken over quickly, and it would have been a revolutionary nationalist government.”12<br /> <br /> But neither of these potential outcomes materialized. Instead, the Republic of Korea was established, headed by a fanatical anti-communist and US proxy who believed his state had sovereignty over the entirety of the Korean peninsula, and that it was his duty to bring all of its declared domains under his control. Rhee frequently promised to undertake a “northern expedition” to “recover lost territory,” and in the summer of 1949 his army started to provoke fighting along the 38th parallel with the forces of the DPRK.13<br /> <br /> On the other side of the parallel, Kim Il-sung headed a state that had a legitimate claim to represent all Koreans. He had the moral authority of having been the maximal Korean leader in the anti-colonial struggle in Manchuria. He commanded significant support among Koreans in the north, on the strength of his considerable charisma and organizational abilities (in contrast to Syngman Rhee, who had been handpicked by US masters, and then brought to power in a boycotted election held after the US occupation government led a three years-long campaign to exterminate the opposition.) Plus, it was clear to most observers that in fair national elections, Kim Il-sung would have been elected president.<br /> <br /> Kim believed it was his patriotic duty to recover the southern territories held by Rhee’s illegitimate US puppet government in order to unify the country. His forces also provoked fighting along the old zonal division line. Indeed, through 1949 there were numerous skirmishes between ROK and DPRK forces along the separation line. But most skirmishes, according to Bruce Cumings, were started by the ROK army.14 The movement of DPRK forces south of the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950 came after nine months of clashes between the two armies, involving thousands of troops and hundreds of fatalities.15<br /> <br /> Washington regarded Rhee as a hot-head, and worried that his skirmishing with Kim’s forces would escalate into all-out war. And so, the Pentagon declined to supply him with tanks and warplanes.16 US planners recognized that Rhee lacked popular support and would likely take a drubbing if he launched his promised drive to the north.<br /> <br /> A declassified February 1949 CIA report had recognized “an inherent Korean sentiment against foreign interference,” that is, against the US presence on the peninsula. It also noted that Rhee’s government faced a “strong and efficient” Korean patriot underground.17 Hadn’t Hodge, and after him Rhee, spent the last four years rounding up leftists, immuring them in concentration camps, and fighting guerrillas in the countryside? Despite their efforts, culminating in 100,000 to 200,000 Korean patriots killed,18 30,000 in prison and 70,000 in concentration camps,19 the resistance continued. And that’s because Rhee’s government was the manifestation of the foreign interference the CIA observed an inherent Korean sentiment against. So long as the affront to Korean sovereignty existed that was the anti-communist US puppet state, there would be a patriot underground. And that meant the ROK would always be vulnerable to a fifth column liberation movement.<br /> <br /> On June 25, North Korean forces crossed the imaginary line Rusk and Bonesteel had drawn to divide US and Soviet forces. According to the DPRK, ROK forces crossed the line first, and were met by an immediate DPRK counter-offensive.20 The UN issued a report on June 26 blaming the outbreak of the fighting entirely on North Korea. But the report was based on US and South Korean sources—hardly unbiased. In this way, US officials were able “to define the war as they saw fit, making their official story of what happened definitive and lasting,”21 as Bruce Cumings put it. However, it’s not clear which side crossed the 38th parallel first, and while the reigning view, reflecting US ideological hegemony, is that it was the DPRK which initiated a general invasion, the matter of who initiated the fighting remains ''sub judice'' in the court of scholarly research.22 But does it matter? Hostilities had broken out between the two sides months earlier. And does a general invasion across an imaginary line neither side recognized have any significance?<br /> <br /> The ROK collapse was immediate. Syngman Rhee and his inner circle immediately fled, soon followed by the ROK army. Those of the South Korean military who didn’t flee defected to the North Korean side.23 DPRK forces liberated Seoul within three days. By late August, Kim Il-sung’s patriots had liberated nine-tenths of the peninsula from Rhee’s grip. ROK and US forces held on only in Pusan, on the southeast tip of the peninsula.<br /> <br /> The United States sought and obtained a UN mandate to intervene ''manu militari'' in Korea. The authorization of the US-dominated world body was secured in the absence of the USSR, which was boycotting the Security Council for its refusal to recognize the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate holder of China’s seat on the council. (China was represented by the Kuomintang based in Taiwan.) The authorization merely formalized an intervention that had already begun, for US forces were already present on the peninsula and engaged in combat by the time the UN gave its blessing. In the words of Frank Baldwin, the “US government led the UN into the Korean War; the Truman administration then claimed that it was supporting the United Nations by providing forces to fight in Korea!”24<br /> <br /> The US-led force fought under the banner of the UN flag and relied on token troop contributions from UN members to create the impression that it represented an international coalition. In reality, it was a US force under US command dressed in UN camouflage. The UN Commander, Douglas MacArthur, was a US general who reported directly to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, not to the United Nations.25<br /> <br /> In his first radio address after North Korean forces surged into the south, Kim Il-sung called for the restoration of the people’s committees. Kim’s goal was to revivify the people’s committees which had existed prior to the establishment of the DPRK, not to impose the North Korean political structure on the south. As the US puppet regime collapsed, thousands of Korean patriots, of both the north and south, began to resurrect the people’s committees disbanded by Hodge. In Seoul, the city’s people’s committee was re-established, led mainly by southerners. Within weeks it had confiscated the property of the Japanese, traitors, and wealthy industrialists.26<br /> <br /> The advance of DPRK forces into the south also gave patriots space to organize land reform. South Korea’s landed class, the darlings of the Rhee government, had blocked all attempts at democratizing patterns of land distribution. Farmers now set about confiscating land from parasitic landlords and allocating it those who toiled on it. Redistribution was carried out hastily and under conditions of war, but, according to Bruce Cumings, “it cleared away class structures and power that later made possible Rhee’s” mimetic land redistribution program.27<br /> <br /> Rhee’s land reform program was not only made possible by the foundations laid during the brief period of liberation, but was also an effort to win the loyalty of farmers of the south. As Walter Scheidel argues in his book ''The Greater Leveler'', “South Korea undertook land redistribution in order to mollify its peasants and discourage them from allying with communist North Korea.”28 Hence, the ROK’s land reform program owes its existence to the DPRK in two ways: first, in the space the advancing KPA established for peasants to liberate themselves from feudalism, and second, in establishing a model for land reform in the north which Seoul felt compelled to match in order to earn the allegiance of its rural citizens.<br /> <br /> As patriot forces set about reclaiming Korea from the despised Rhee regime, Rhee’s government, which was evocative of the Nazi regime in its fierce anti-communism, did what a fiercely anti-communist police state could be expected to do: carry out a massacre of the left.<br /> <br /> Early in the war the ROK army and Korean National Police, officered by Japanese collaborators and under US command, carried out a program of extermination. Communists held in South Korean prisons and concentration camps were executed, as were people suspected of communist sympathies. The aim was to prevent the Left from aiding advancing DPRK forces. Lee Soon-chang, a member of an ROK militia, “escorted men and women, detained by pro-government villagers on suspicion of being Communist collaborators, to a hill where the police executed them in groups of five and pushed their bodies into an abandoned mine shaft,”29 according to Choe Sang-hun, the ''New York Times’'' Korea correspondent.<br /> <br /> There were “tens of thousands of victims of hurried mass executions carried out … by South Korean authorities, bent on ridding the nation of communists in the early days of the Korean War,”30 reported the Associated Press. According to Korean historian Hun Joon Kim, “at least 300,000 people were detained and executed or simply disappeared by the South Korean government in the first few months after conventional war began.”31<br /> <br /> Bruce Cumings has written about Alan Dower, and Australian journalist, who “witnessed a retinue of hooded women, many with babies, roped together and dragged along by ROK police.” Dower “followed them until they were kneeling before ‘a deep freshly dug pit,’ ringed by machine guns.”32 US soldiers witnessed the ROK army routinely execute North Korean POWs, and occasionally turned over captured DPRK troops to the KNP to be executed on the spot.33 One US GI watched as KNP officers forced scores of civilians, including children, pregnant women and the elderly, to dig their own graves, before being shot.34<br /> <br /> A Truth and Reconciliation commission was established by the ROK government in 2005 to resolve issues related to animosities that carry over from the war. It found that “wartime South Korean authorities … summarily executed … leftist prison inmates or machine-gunned villagers during their mountain operations to exterminate guerrillas, dumping their bodies in the sea or mass graves.”35 According to the Associated Press, family members of the victims “hold not only President Syngman Rhee’s right-wing regime responsible for their loved one’s deaths,” but also the United States, arguing that “the mass killings” would not “have been possible without tacit support from the” United States, which “supplied weapons and ammunition used in the executions and took photographs at some sites.”36 Significantly, the United States had operational control of ROK force as the extermination campaign—reminiscent of the Nazi’s Commissar Order, an order issued by the German High Command during the invasion of the USSR to exterminate communists—was underway.<br /> <br /> There are strong parallels between Rhee’s regime and the fanatically anti-communist Nazi regime, with its concentration camps in which Communists, Socialists and labor activists were the primary victims;37 its abhorrence of the Soviet Union; and its extermination of communist partisans. The only difference is that the Nazis were empire-builders who had a good deal of popular support, while Rhee, the acolyte of US empire-builders, had practically none. In this regard, Rhee’s state was more like the SS, not a state itself, but merely a component of an empire, and the principal instrument of violent political repression on the Korean peninsula. In Bruce Cumings’ words, “South Korea always had a strong state vis-à-vis its own people,”38 beginning with Rhee and continuing to the present.<br /> <br /> The first phase of the war, the war for the south in the summer of 1950, came to an end on September 15 when MacArthur landed his forces at Inchon, the port of Seoul, halfway up the peninsula. Had the United States not landed an invasion force, the DPRK would have quickly won the war, the lives of millions would have been spared, and Koreans would have experienced the sweet taste of freedom for the first time in four decades.39 But this happy occasion did not come to pass. Instead, the second phase of the war, the war for the north in the autumn and winter of 1950, began.40<br /> <br /> MacArthur’s amphibious invasion at Inchon cut off KPA forces from the north. To escape, patriot soldiers were forced to melt into the countryside and retreat. The UN resolution authorizing US intervention had demanded that DPRK forces pull back to the 38th parallel. Therefore, once the KPA had withdrawn from the south, the matter should have been resolved, and MacArthur should have held the line there and gone no further. But on September 11, four days before landing at Inchon, MacArthur had obtained Truman’s authorization to launch an offensive north of the 38th parallel.41 US forces captured Seoul on September 25, and five days later pushed into the north, across the imaginary line Rusk and Bonesteel had drawn five years earlier.<br /> <br /> MacArthur’s northward drive to the Yalu River (one of two riparian boundaries separating Korea and China) brought the Chinese into the war. On October 25, Mao deployed to Korea an army of 300,000 Chinese “volunteers” to arrest the US advance. Mao designated the army a volunteer force, calling it the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army, to avoid a formal clash with the United States.42 Thus began what some have called the Sino-American War. The Chinese virtually eliminated the remnants of the South Korean army and quickly drove US forces back across the 38th parallel by December.43 By December 5, combined PVA and KPA forces had liberated Pyongyang.<br /> <br /> Stunned by the collapse of MacArthur’s forces at the hands of a lightly armed army of peasants, Truman declared a national emergency, and MacArthur called for a nuclear strike, importuning the president to authorize the use of 50 nuclear bombs to reverse the setback.44 Truman declined. But for the next two years the United States set about producing, by conventional means, the equivalent destruction of many nuclear attacks. MacArthur called on US bombers to create a wasteland, ordering the use of incendiaries to burn to the ground every city, every village, and every factory between the 38th parallel and the Chinese border.45 US “planes dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea—that is, essentially on North Korea—including 32,557 tons of napalm, compared to 503,000 tons of bombs dropped in the entire Pacific theatre of World War II. The number of Korean dead, injured, or missing by war’s end approached three million, ten percent of the overall population,”46 wrote historian Charles Armstrong.<br /> <br /> The extent of the physical destruction visited upon Korea north of the 38th parallel by US carpet bombing is horrifying. It’s not clear that every building over one story was destroyed, as some have claimed, but it is clear that the USAF created a desert. Joan Robinson claimed, though with a touch of hyperbole, that by the end of the war “there was not one stone standing upon another” in Pyongyang,47 although the level of destruction was close to Robinson’s account. By the end of the war, only two modern buildings remained standing in Pyongyang.48 US carpet bombing “destroyed some 8,700 factories, 5,000 schools, 1,000 hospitals and 600,000 homes,” according to the DPRK.49 Dean Rusk, when he was the assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs, said that everything “that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another,” we bombed.50<br /> <br /> With the US Air Force spreading its dark wings over North Korea, the DPRK created a subterranean life as a necessity of survival. Factories, schools, hospitals, government offices, and people were moved underground. Farmers worked at night and retreated to underground lairs in the morning.51 Bruce Cumings called North Koreans a “mole people” who “learned to love the shelter of caves, mountains, tunnels and redoubts.”52<br /> <br /> By the autumn of 1952, MacArthur’s ambition to create a wasteland north of the 38th parallel had been realized. No city, town, or building of significance remained to be incinerated.53 So, US forces targeted irrigation dams on the Yalu River. Five reservoirs were destroyed by US bombers, inundating thousands of acres of farmland, flooding towns, and destroying a vital source of sustenance for millions of North Koreans.54<br /> <br /> The number of fatalities produced by the war can only be estimated. Estimates range from 3 to 4.5 million, with Koreans accounting for 2.3 to 3 million deaths. Chinese fatalities in the war ranged from an estimated 600,000 to one million. US fatalities were a comparatively insignificant 36,574, one to two percent of the total. Given that the population of Korea in 1950 was approximately 20 million, the war destroyed 10 to 15 percent of the population.55 Charles Armstrong estimates that the fraction of Koreans killed is in the range of “the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II.”56 About 2.3 million Japanese perished in the Pacific War,57 or roughly three percent of the population, much lower than the Korean fatality rate in the 1950-1953 holocaust. Curtis LeMay, who directed the terror bombing, estimated that “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off—what—20 percent of the population.”58 It’s not clear whether LeMay’s figure was based on a methodical estimate. It was offered more than 30 years after the war ended, and may have been only a very rough guess. In any event, whether 10 percent or 20 percent, it’s clear that the United States exterminated a significant proportion of the Korean population.<br /> <br /> US officials have exhibited no restraint ever since, in threatening to carry out additional demographic holocausts against Koreans of the north. Wesley Clark, for example, a US general who commanded NATO forces in Europe and led NATO’s air war on Yugoslavia in 1999, warned DPRK leaders that the United States had the capability to completely destroy North Korea; it “would literally cease to exist,” he said.59 In 1995, Colin Powell, who had served as chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and would later serve as US secretary of state, warned the DPRK that the United States had the means to turn North Korea into “a charcoal briquette.”60 In 2017, US Senator John McCain, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned the DPRK that the price of acting “in an aggressive fashion … will be extinction.”61 For his part, US president Donald Trump “warned that if North Korea threatened the United States or its allies, Washington would have ‘no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.’”62<br /> <br /> The United States bears the main responsibility for the millions of lives destroyed in the war. At every point, US leaders made decisions that guaranteed that the mountain of corpses would pile ever higher. In the first instance, Washington made war inevitable by politically partitioning the country. Then, when the 1950 conflict broke out, it immediately intervened, rather than allowing a quick resolution with a minimal loss of life, as would have happened, with a DPRK victory, which was imminent. When the KPA withdrew north of the 38th parallel, Washington could have chosen to break off hostilities, as the UN resolution authorizing the use of force indicated it should. Instead, MacArthur pushed forward, intent on rolling back the independence movement in Korea and establishing an anti-communist US puppet state over the entire Korean peninsula. When Chinese forces pushed the United States back over the 38th parallel, Washington could have agreed to end the war. Instead, it fought on for two more years, before finally accepting a restoration of the ''status quo ante''. But in those two years US bombers burned North Korea to the ground. US carpet bombing, observed Bruce Cumings, created “a subterranean world that became the basis for reconstructing the country and a memento for building a fierce hatred through the ranks of the population. The leaders who survived draw a straight line from 1932, when their struggle began, through this terrible war, down to the present.”63<br /> <br /> == The Anti-Communist Police State ==<br /> “''The country is literally in the grip''<br /> <br /> ''of a police regime and a private terror''.”<br /> <br /> —American Civil Liberties Union chief Roger Baldwin1<br /> <br /> After 1953, the movement for liberty and equality in the north deferred plans to exercise sovereignty over all of Korea and concentrated on defending itself against the hostility of Washington, which remained committed to the objective of rolling back communism in Korea. For the movement in the south as well, the primary task was to survive. From the very first moments that Koreans had fought for freedom from foreign domination and exploitation at home, they had met the fierce resistance of traitors backed by empires—Japan, until 1945, and the United States thereafter. Collaborators with the Japanese empire quickly became collaborators with the US empire. In 1960 there remained approximately 600 KNP officers, the main instrument of anti-communist suppression, who had served the Japanese. Nearly all were in senior positions.2 Because the aims of the ROK were antithetical to the goals of national and social revolution which, as indicated above, inspired most Koreans, the South Korean state had to become—and was from its birth to the present—a very strong police state, with all the trappings of one: military dictatorship, extreme ideological control, a security police force recalling the Gestapo, concentration camps for leftists and their extermination during periods of crisis, designation of all socialist countries as enemy states, and a draconian anti-Left National Security Law which locked up Koreans for even sympathizing with the DPRK.<br /> <br /> Joan Robinson had remarked that in the mid-1960s the ideological control of Koreans of the south was so extreme that no “Southern eye can be allowed a peep into the North.”3 Until 1973, Kim Il-sung’s photograph was banned from publication in the ROK. South Korean censors combed through foreign publications, redacting photos of Kim with splotches of black ink.4 Kim, whose contribution to the project of liberating Korea was second to none, was demonized by ROK authorities and traduced. South Korean security agencies disseminated the myth that the DPRK leader was not, in fact, Kim Il-sung, but an imposter beholden to the USSR who had stolen the famed guerilla leader’s identity. Immersed in anti-DPRK slanders, Koreans had no real conception of who Kim Il-sung really was. In 1989, Suh Dae-sook, South Korea’s leading scholar of Korean communism, was granted leave to finally tell the true story of Kim Il-sung. A large audience of South Korean youth erupted in applause when Suh explained that Kim was a hero of the guerilla struggle for Korean independence, this revelation being completely new to them.5 So militantly anti-leftist is South Korea that “a brand of crayon called Picasso was once banned because of the artist’s Communist associations,”6 explained Choe Sang-hun, the ''New York Times''’ Korea correspondent. In 1951, Picasso, a member of the French Communist Party, painted a famous work, ''Massacre in Korea'', which depicted the slaughter of Korean civilians by anti-communist forces during the Korean War. The ROK authorities didn’t take kindly to their atrocities becoming the subject of a famous artwork—and by a communist no less!<br /> <br /> The ROK police state has cracked down, with varying degrees of intensity over the years, on virtually every public expression of leftism, including anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, and anti-imperialism—in other words, all genuine expressions of unalloyed liberalism. What the historian Arno J. Mayer said about Hitler, namely, that he abhorred communism because it “was the final culmination and distillation of the Enlightenment”7 can equally be said about the animus of the South Korean state and its US sponsors toward Korean communism.<br /> <br /> Some degree of intolerance of leftist dissent is emblematic of all states in capitalist societies, and the ROK is assuredly a capitalist state; that’s the way it was designed by its creator, the United States, even if most Koreans wanted a socialist state. But in Washington, where billionaire investors carry the day, the political views of Koreans are of no consequence. As a US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, once famously remarked in connection with Chile: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”8 Kissinger was echoing Woodrow Wilson, whose rhetorical commitment to self-determination was matched only by his actual commitment to overthrowing foreign leaders he didn’t like, even if they happened to be elected by their own people. Wilson would stop intervening in other people’s countries, he said, if only they learned to “elect good men.”9 For the United States, good men meant anti-communists like Syngman Rhee rather than communist national liberation leaders like Kim Il-sung.<br /> <br /> Even in self-declared liberal democratic societies, which are erroneously believed to tolerate dissent to a higher degree than other societies, the security services have had a long history of surveillance against those who challenge the rich and powerful. The history of the political police in such societies is one of conservatism where the targets of surveillance are militant leftists who challenge the ''status quo''. Those who pursue the class war from the bottom are regarded as subverting the established political and economic order and therefore are deemed legitimate subjects for surveillance and disruption.10<br /> <br /> The ROK anti-communist police state differs from that of other capitalist countries in degree only, the difference due to its daily confrontation with the DPRK, which embodies genuine Enlightenment values, and which, in its rejection of foreign domination, acts as an inspiration to many Koreans of the south. It’s virtually impossible to be committed to anti-imperialism and convinced there’s a better alternative to capitalism without espousing values that significantly overlap those of the DPRK. Consequently, it’s virtually impossible for South Koreans who embrace any kind of commitment to authentic Enlightenment values not to be accused of being a DPRK fellow traveler, and therefore of transgressing the National Security Law.<br /> <br /> Consider the platform of the Unified Progressive Party (UPP), a leftist party founded in 2011, which was dissolved in 2015 by the ROK’s Constitutional Court on the ground that its goal was “North Korea-style socialism.” The party sought an end to the US military presence in Korea (as does Pyongyang) and advocated an end to Korea’s subordinate relationship to the United States (another DPRK demand.) The party talked of “rectifying” Korea’s “shameful history tainted by imperialist invasions, the national divide, military dictatorship, the tyranny and plunder of transnational monopoly capital” and large family-owned conglomerates, like Samsung and Hyundai11—also DPRK positions.<br /> <br /> UPP members were widely denounced by conservatives as ''jongbuk'', a derogatory term denoting followers of the DPRK accused of spreading subversive ideas challenging the merits of capitalism and the ROK’s subordinate relationship to the United States.12<br /> <br /> The centerpiece of South Korea’s anti-communist police state is the notorious National Security Law, created by Syngman Rhee in 1948 to criminalize communism, or more precisely, the DPRK, the embodiment of Korean communism, and to criminalize its many supporters, which included the bulk of Koreans, before decades of ROK brainwashing produced an epistemology of ignorance. Criticized by Amnesty International,13 Human Rights Watch,14 and the United Nations,15 the National Security Law has been variously used to lock up South Koreans for any expressions of leftism.16 South Koreans have run afoul of the law for making comments that were construed as supportive of the DPRK, setting up websites with pro-DPRK content, calling for the establishment of a socialist state, discussing alternatives to capitalism in public forums, re-tweeting messages from the DPRK’s Twitter feed, possessing books published in the DPRK, listening to radio broadcasts from Pyongyang, and visiting the DPRK without Seoul’s permission. Promoting conciliation between the two states has also been punished under the law.<br /> <br /> In the 1970s, the poet Kim Chi-ha was jailed because his poems advocated “class division.” In 1976, South Koreans who signed a declaration commemorating an uprising against Japanese rule were imprisoned, under the provisions of the law. In 1987, a publisher was arrested for distributing travel essays written by Korean-Americans who were sympathetic to the DPRK. The law has been used to jail university students for forming study groups to examine DPRK ideology. In 1989, the ROK police state arrested an average of 3.3 citizens per day for infractions of the anti-communist regulations. In the first half of 1998, more than 400 were arrested under National Security Law provisions for demonstrating against unemployment. In 2001, sociology professor Kang Jeong-koo was jailed for visiting the birthplace of Kim Il-sung while on a visit to the DPRK.17<br /> <br /> One man was convicted of having in his possession “printed matter aiding the enemy.” The offending material included E.H. Carr’s ''The Russian Revolution'', Maurice Dobb’s ''Capitalism Yesterday and Today'', Eric Fromm’s ''Socialist Humanism'', and Paul Sweezy’s ''Theory of Capitalist Development''.18 In 2007, Kim Myung-soo was confined to a jail cell so small “he could spread his arms and touch the facing walls.” His crime: aiding the enemy by operating a website that sold Edgar Snow’s ''Red Star over China'', a biography of Karl Marx, and other titles deemed to be pro-DPRK.19 In 2008, ROK military personnel were banned from reading ''Bad Samaritans: The Secret History of Capitalism'' by Chang Ha-Joon (Chang is no Marxist, just critical of capitalism), Noam Chomsky’s ''Year 501: The Conquest Continues'', and Hyeon Gi-yeong’s novel ''A Spoon of the Earth'', all of which were labeled subversive books under an order that banned pro-DPRK, anti-capitalist, and anti-US publications.20<br /> <br /> If Seoul suppresses books, it no less vigorously wipes out online content it doesn’t want South Koreans to see. According to the ''New York Times'', “When a computer user in South Korea clicks on an item on the” DPRK “Twitter account, a government warning against ‘illegal content’ pops up.”21 In 2011, ROK authorities blocked over 53,000 Internet posts for infractions which included having a kind word to say about the state founded by Kim Il-sung.22 In the same year, the ROK deleted over 67,000 web posts that were deemed favorable to the DPRK or which criticized the US or ROK government. Over 14,000 posts were deleted in 2009.23<br /> <br /> In August 2011, Prosecutor General Han Sang-dae “declared ‘a war against fellow-travelling pro-North Korean left-wing elements,’ and said, ‘We must punish and remove them.’”24 The government kept Han’s promise, disbanding the left-wing UPP, stripping its legislators of their parliamentary seats, and jailing a handful of its members, including the lawmaker Lee Seok-ki. Lee was convicted under the National Security Law for, among other things, singing the ''Song of the Red Flag''. The song is a socialist anthem, but so anodyne that even members of the British Labor Party occasionally sing it at party meetings. Another of Lee’s transgressions was his calling Korea “Chosun,” the country’s last official name before colonization by Japan, and the DPRK’s autonym for the country; in contrast, the ROK denotes Korea as Hanguk. The ROK police state regards Chosun as a pro-DPRK shibboleth.25<br /> <br /> Conservatives and liberals have vociferously criticized ''jongbuk'', accusing them of spreading subversive ideas and worming their way into positions of influence. Lee rejoined that ''jongmi'', blindly following the United States, is a problem of far greater magnitude.26 Lee was also accused of calling, at a closed meeting, for the sabotage of South Korean infrastructure in the event of war with the DPRK. He was convicted of inciting an insurrection and sentenced to a nine-year jail term, just one of hundreds of thousands of Koreans who have, since 1905, been locked up for promoting Korean independence and socialism.<br /> <br /> While Lee’s case was before the courts, the ROK government referred the UPP to the Constitutional Court, asking for the party’s dissolution, owing to its program mirroring the aims and values of the DPRK. The government called the UPP’s commitment to “overcoming foreign domination and dissolving” the ROK’s “dependence on the alliance with the US,” as well as its defining South Korea as “not a society where the workers are master, but the reverse, where a privileged few act as masters,” as being “identical to the argument coming from Pyongyang,”27 which indeed it was. The court accepted the government’s brief, ruling that the UPP sought to undermine South Korea’s liberal democracy (hardly a fitting description of a pro-imperialist police state) and its goal was to establish DPRK-style socialism. Far from seeking to undermine an authentic liberal democracy, the UPP was actually seeking to create one. A liberal democracy, by any unbiased definition, unaffected by an epistemology of ignorance, would look exactly like the system Lee advocated: one committed to ''freedom'' (from foreign domination and exploitation in the workplace), ''equality'' (of nations and individuals) and the ''unity of humankind'' (rather than peninsular division to suit the geopolitical goals of a foreign hegemon), i.e., ''liberté, égalité, fraternité''—the liberal democratic goals of the revolution inaugurated in 1789, carried forward by the revolution of 1917, and advanced during the great twentieth century wave of decolonization<br /> <br /> President Kim Dae Jung used the law to arrest people who demonstrated against unemployment and the government’s response to an economic crisis. He also used it to arrest the filmmaker Suh Joon Sik, who screened ''Red Hunt'', a film about anti-communist suppression on Jeju Island in 1948, at the Korean Human Rights Festival in 1997. But Kim refused to prosecute Hyundai Business Group for clandestinely giving nearly $200 million to North Korea, a blatant violation of the law’s prohibition against knowingly providing monetary benefits to the DPRK.28<br /> <br /> Conservatives believe that the law and its enforcement are necessary to prevent political unrest, an acknowledgement that Koreans of the south remain committed to the emancipatory goals of the DPRK’s political program, and that absent the threat of punishment for overtly espousing these values, South Koreans would mobilize to demand change. Conservatives insist that the National Security Law must remain until North Korea abandons its ideology.29 In other words, so long as an ideology of liberation continues to be articulated by Pyongyang, the principal legal instrument of the South Korean police state must remain on the books to suppress the emancipatory movement of the south.<br /> <br /> One South Korean newspaper editorial expressed the trepidation of conservatives this way: “What then would happen if we had completely abolished the National Security Law? There would be no legal way to block a South Korean citizen from joining the North’s Workers Party … Even if one established a [DPRK] ideology research institute … and instruct[ed] the ideology to students, nobody would be able to block it … Few citizens believe that our society is fully capable of digesting such confusions.”30<br /> <br /> The National Security Law has not only been invoked to round up Koreans committed to prosecuting the class war from below, it has also been used to incarcerate Koreans who struggle for national self-determination. Kim Sun Myung served almost 44 years in an ROK prison for political crimes. He was 70 years old when he was finally set free. Kim served over four decades in jail because he was committed to Korea’s struggle for liberation. Despite being threatened with beatings and torture, he never recanted his communist beliefs, obstinately refusing to renounce his advocacy of Korea’s struggle for freedom, despite witnessing the fatal prison tortures of a number of comrades who defied demands to disavow their communism.31<br /> <br /> Kim’s political journey began when Hodge landed at Inchon and refused to recognize the indigenously formed republic. Although an ROK citizen, Kim immediately joined the KPA when DPRK forces crossed the 38th parallel in June 1950, eager to participate in the Pyongyang-led project to unify the country and achieve its long sought-after independence.32<br /> <br /> Kim’s active participation in the project came to an abrupt end on October 15, 1951, when he was taken prisoner. As a South Korean citizen who had joined the North Korean army, Kim faced capital punishment, but was sentenced to life imprisonment. Kim’s prison experience was austere. Placed in solitary confinement, without books or anyone to talk to, his verbal skills atrophied. Prison officials refused to treat his cataracts, leaving him blind. Kim’s immediate family members were harassed and threatened by ROK authorities; they never visited him, fearing their visits would place them at risk of further government harassment.33<br /> <br /> In the 1970s, the anti-communist police state undertook a campaign to use corporal punishment and starvation to induce political prisoners to denounce the DPRK. Prison guards promised Kim meals, only if he renounced his beliefs. He chose hunger.34<br /> <br /> Political prisoners who were thrown into the hell of ROK political prisons, and emerged, say that three factors stiffened the resolve of Kim and his ilk. First, their utter conviction that their cause was just. Second, the inspiration provided by Korean national heroes who had survived torture at the hands of the Japanese. And third, the dignity their resistance offered them, in a prison life otherwise lacking in dignity, where prisoners were forced to bathe in their own urine.35<br /> <br /> Kim Suk Hyun, another Korean inspired by the DPRK, was released at age 79 after serving 32 years in jail for refusing to denounce North Korea. 36<br /> <br /> On the day of his release, Kim Sun Myung was transported through bustling Seoul. Reporters were eager to find out how Kim would react to the vast changes that had transformed the capital city Kim had last seen four and a half decades earlier. Kim wasn’t awed.37 “It’s changed so much that I don’t recognize any of it,” he said, “But this kind of thing doesn’t impress me, because there are still a lot of poor people. These tall buildings are the labor of poor people. Did you ever see any rich people digging on a construction site?” Unbowed, Kim declared that the fight goes on.38<br /> <br /> On the day Kim was released, two dozen DPRK sympathizers continued to languish in prison, each having served more than two decades in ROK dungeons.39 The unbowed conviction of Koreans like Kim Sun Myung, and the conservatives’ fear of what might happen if their compatriots are allowed to openly embrace the values embodied by the DPRK—indeed the very existence of the National Security Law—speaks volumes about the continuing attachment of Koreans of the south to the emancipatory goals that have always animated Korea’s fight for freedom.<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; * *<br /> <br /> In 1961, the same year the ROK government enacted an anti-communist law, declaring all socialist states enemies, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, or KCIA, was founded. The KCIA operated, according to William R. Polk, “like the Gestapo. It routinely arrested, imprisoned and tortured Koreans suspected of opposition.”40<br /> <br /> The KCIA was ubiquitous, infiltrating its agents into newspaper offices, radio stations, TV networks, political parties and discussion groups, trade unions, and classrooms, both in South Korea and abroad.41 KCIA surveillance was panoptic—its agents were everywhere, and watched everyone, all the time. So pervasive was KCIA spying, that South Koreans believed it was best to say nothing about politics to anyone, even loved ones.42 Had the ROK been communist, rather than capitalist, it would have been branded a “totalitarian” state of the very worst kind.<br /> <br /> Recalling trade unions organized by the Nazi Party and Italian Fascists, the KCIA imposed a state-directed trade union structure on South Korean labor, creating workplace unions by sector. In August 1961, the KCIA appointed a committee to found a national labor federation comprised of twelve industrial unions. Labor leaders were required to pledge loyalty to the South Korean state. Once again, the label “totalitarian,” in the West, usually reserved as a term of vilification to be attached to communist countries, is a fitting description of a state in which the political police organized trade unions. Two years later, the state prohibited unions from engaging in political activity.43<br /> <br /> George Ogle, an American United Methodist Church missionary, led a ministry for South Korean factory workers, whose hours were punishing and working conditions often hazardous. He helped found the Urban Industrial Mission, whose goal was to acquaint workers with their rights and offer advice on contract negotiations. When eight workers were arrested under the National Security Law, convicted of treason, and sentenced to death, Ogle sprang to their defense. This ultimately led to his deportation, but not before he was whisked to the KCIA headquarters for interrogation. Ogle was questioned for seventeen hours straight by Yi Tong-taek, chief of the KCIA’s sixth section. How could he possibly defend men about to be executed for treason as socialists, Yi demanded. Wasn’t he aware that one of the defendants “had listened to the North Korean radio and copied down Kim [Il Sung]’s speech?” The KCIA chief screamed,“These men are our enemies. We have got to kill them. This is war. In war even Christians pull the trigger and kill their enemies. If we don’t kill them, they will kill us. We will kill them.”44<br /> <br /> The Agency for National Security and Planning, the successor to the KCIA, had in excess of 70,000 employees in 1998, not counting informal agents and spies, and a yearly budget of about $1 billion, making it the capitalist version of what the East German secret police, the ''Stasi'', was reputed to be, to say nothing of its being a first cousin of the Gestapo. On top of its omnipresence in the mass media, political groups, universities, and trade unions, it also controlled organizations that publish well-placed English-language academic journals.45<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; * *<br /> <br /> The movement against foreign domination of Korea and for what the historian Hakim Adi calls a “people-centered” economy46 was strong enough that despite the regular unimpeded operation of the oppressive instruments of the National Security Law and the secret police, the anti-communist state continued to be threatened by the unremitting democratic demands of South Koreans. These demands included the exit of US forces from Korea and an economy that was responsive to the needs of ordinary people. Whenever pressure for these democratic goals exceeded a red line, the army would oust the civilian government and install a flag officer as president, all with the implicit approval of the US government, whose military commander on the peninsula had operational control of the ROK army. Washington’s interest in the suppression of the democratic demands of Koreans was obvious: it desired a continued US military presence on the peninsula to contain and possibly roll back communism, not only in Korea, but in contiguous China and Russia, as well. Korea was a valuable, geopolitically strategic perch from which the American eagle could overlook communist prey. And the Wall Street bankers and lawyers who played a central role in US policy formulation certainly didn’t want all of Korea converting to a people-centered economy. It was bad enough that the Koreans of the north had taken the socialist path.<br /> <br /> Syngman Rhee had been brought to power by Washington in a flawed election that no one, except the US government and the few Rhee supporters, wanted. Rhee’s popular support was always limited and therefore winning a fair election was always going to be a challenge, and underhanded measures would be needed to pull off an election win. And so, in the weeks leading up to the March 1960 election, Rhee supporters routinely beat opposition supporters. On voting day, March 15, ballot boxes disappeared from areas in which the opposition was expected to win. At the same time, ballots were stuffed with fraudulent votes. All of this happened in full view of US and UN election observers, who, Bruce Cumings observed, “apparently were present to legitimate, not monitor, the validity of election.” Rhee claimed an improbable victory—almost 90 percent of the vote—sparking protests across the south. In the southwest, police killed several demonstrators. The army was called out to suppress the protests—with the approval of the army’s US commander, General Carter Magruder.47<br /> <br /> Midway through August, Kim Il-sung made a proposal to unify the country. The proposal excited the imaginations of South Koreans, but alarmed US collaborators. Kim’s proposal, which he would table repeatedly throughout the years, was for a confederation. It would comprise one nation, one state, and one flag, but would have two sub-national governments, corresponding to the ROK and DPRK, each of which would maintain its own economic system. A national government—which would consist of representatives from both north and south, would look after foreign affairs, national defense, and intra-confederal relations. But there was a ''proviso'' that guaranteed that the US officials who dominated South Korea from behind the scenes would be hostile to the plan: Kim insisted that no foreign troops remain on Korean soil.<br /> <br /> Students of the south were galvanized by the idea and set to work organizing a movement to link up with students of the north, in order to work for unification along the lines Kim proposed. This agitated the right wing and the security services,48 and greatly displeased US planners, for whom maintenance of South Korea as the largest power projection platform in the Pacific (in the words of the US military),49 was essential to the US imperial project.<br /> <br /> In 1991 Kim Il-sung resurrected his proposal. Korea, he said “should be reunified by founding a confederacy based on one nation, one state, two systems and two governments. We consider that this conforms with the desire of the Korean nation to develop independently as one reunified nation and meets the requirement of the present era of independence and peace. We recognise that it is also the most feasible way of reunifying the country peacefully when different ideas and systems actually exist in the north and the south.”50 Once again, the proposal was rejected by ROK leaders. Subordinate to Washington, South Korean officials were duty-bound to reject a plan that demanded the exit of the US military from Korea. Besides, by 1991, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact had dissolved, and Communist East Germany had been absorbed into West Germany. US and ROK officials believed it was only a matter of time before the same scenario of a communist collapse followed by integration into a capitalist neighbor would play out on the Korean peninsula.<br /> <br /> On April 19, 1960, a teeming multitude of angry students, numbering more than 100,000, descended on the presidential palace, demanding an audience with Rhee. Terrified palace guards discharged their weapons directly into the throng, precipitating mayhem on the streets of Seoul. Over 100 students were killed and nearly 1,000 were injured.51<br /> <br /> Nearly a week later, hundreds of university professors held a peaceful demonstration demanding that Rhee step down. Matters became violent later that evening when 50,000 demonstrators attacked the home of the vice-president. The next day, a crowd of 50,000 people was back out on the streets of Seoul. With Rhee’s presidency now obviously untenable, the US ambassador and US military commander—the true power behind the puppet state of South Korea—paid a visit to the embattled president. Three days later he was gone, returning to the metropole from which he had come.52<br /> <br /> Rhee was succeeded by the opposition Democratic Party’s Chang Myon. Chang was from a landlord family, spoke English fluently, and had been ambassador to the United States. As prime minister he consulted with the US ambassador and CIA station chief on most matters, significant and otherwise.53<br /> <br /> Rhee’s succession by Chang Myon began what Bruce Cumings has called, “the ordeal that sent shivers up the spine of Seoul’s ruling groups”—a move to the left.54<br /> <br /> On May 16, 1961, Park Chung-hee and a group of Army and Marine officers under his command seized control of strategic points in Seoul. The Army Chief of Staff, General Chang To-yong, appealed to his superior, the US commander, General Carter Magruder, to mobilize troops to put down the coup. Magruder refused. The next day a conspiracy of senior officers shut down the National Assembly, banned political activity, and pledged anticommunism and fealty to Washington55— precisely what the Americans who ran the show insisted on, and precisely the inverse of what Koreans, who didn’t, demanded. For the next 32 years, military leaders would occupy the presidency.<br /> <br /> Like Rhee, Park was a vehement anti-communist. He was also a quisling, ready to sell out his compatriots to not one, but two empires. He carried with him the vile taint of Japanese collaboration, and added the vile taint of US collaboration. From 1961 until 1979, when Park’s presidency would end in his assassination at the hands of the head of the KCIA, the leaders of Korea’s two contending states were thesis and antithesis. The leader in the south had hired out his services to the Japanese to enforce their colonial rule over his compatriots. The leader in the north had led a guerrilla struggle to free his compatriots from the yoke of Japanese colonialism. The leader in the south nurtured a capital-centered economy, in which Koreans “had the right to work the longest hours in the industrial world at wages barely able to sustain one’s family.”56 The leader in the north preferred a people-centered economy and had introduced an eight-hour work day and social security within months of coming to power. The leader in the south was greatly hemmed in by the influence exercised behind the scenes by the US military commander, US ambassador and CIA station chief. Tens of thousands of US troops occupied the domain over which the southern leader’s state ruled. And his military reported, not to him, but to a US general. In the north, there were no foreign troops, and the leader preached a doctrine of self-reliance, which eschewed dependency on foreign powers. In the south, the top political leader was a traitor to the Korean project of national liberation; in the north, the top political leader was a patriot who had devoted his life to Korea’s liberation. In the south, the state was part of an empire. In the north, the state rejected empire. The state of the south was founded by a foreign hegemon. The state of the north was founded by guerrilla leaders who had fought against foreign hegemony.<br /> <br /> To kick off his regime, Park trod a path blazed by other anti- communist dictators, as his US patrons watched and silently applauded. He dissolved the legislature and suspended the constitution. He rounded up communists and other political dissidents, tossed them into prison, and had them tortured. Among his victims were Kim Dae-jung and Kim Yong-sam, men who would later become presidents.57<br /> <br /> Next, he oversaw the writing of a new constitution to replace the one he had expunged. The new foundational law granted him presidential powers indefinitely. He could appoint and dismiss the prime minister and cabinet at will, and suspend or abolish civil liberties by decree. He also granted himself the authority to exercise whatever additional powers he thought he might need.58 In effect, Park could have accurately declared, “''L’état, c’est moi''.” Except behind Park’s power lurked the far greater authority of Hirohito’s successors, the serial emperors whose abode lay in Washington. In 1973, Park prohibited all work stoppages. The year after he banned all criticism of his government.59<br /> <br /> By 1979 Park’s capital-centered economy was sputtering. Growth had dipped below zero. The economy continued to contract, shrinking six percent in 1980.60 Growing unemployment and economic hardship touched off a wave of unrest. Massive demonstrations unsettled the country as workers and students took to the streets demanding relief from growing hardship.61<br /> <br /> How to arrest the growing distemper? The options were repression or accommodation. On October 26, 1979, Park travelled to a KCIA safe house for discussions with Kim Chae-gyu, the KCIA supremo, on how to bring the distemper to an end. The discussion went horribly wrong, ending with Kim fatally gunning down the president.62<br /> <br /> Park’s presidency was quickly followed by a December 12, 1979 military ''coup d’état'', carried out by General Chun Doo Hwan, commander of the ROK army’s Ninth Division. Chun, at the time, was under the command of US General John A. Wickham, Jr., head of the US-ROK Combined Forces Command.63 A veteran of military intelligence, Chun, in power, expanded the intelligence function as a force of internal repression. The paramilitary riot police force was expanded, until it numbered around 150,000 by the mid-1980s.64 Wickham approved a role for the ROK military in politics. The army would vet political candidates. At the same time, it would supervise all political activity, preventing challenges to the state.65<br /> <br /> In the spring of 1980, students took to the streets of Gwangju to protest Chun’s dictatorship. Wickham approved the deployment of two ROK special forces brigades to quell the disturbance and enforce martial law. On May 18, elite paratroopers landed in the city and began to indiscriminately murder demonstrators, including women and children.66 Outraged, the citizens of Gwangju fought back. Hundreds of thousands of local people drove the soldiers out of the city. It’s estimated that as many as 1,500 people died in the fighting. In the aftermath, a citizens’ council was established. Resembling the Paris Commune, the revolutionary people’s government that ruled Paris in the spring of 1871, the council governed Gwangju for the next five days.67<br /> <br /> As the citizens of Gwangju were driving the US-commanded South Korean army out of the city, the US National Security Council was meeting at the White House to plan a response. US President Jimmy Carter, along with Zbigniew Brzezinski, his national security adviser, and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, decided to approve a military intervention.68 Wickham ordered the ROK army’s Twentieth Division to deploy to Gwangju to crush the rebellion, a mission it successfully carried out a few days later. But Washington took no chances. To guarantee the success of the mission, the arrival of troops in Gwangju was delayed by three days to allow a US naval armada led by the aircraft carrier Midway to reach Korean waters, should reinforcements be required.69<br /> <br /> Less than a year later, Chun had himself inaugurated president. Recalling the Nazi’s use of concentration camps in the early 1930s as instruments of terror against the Left, Chun established a network of concentration camps in mountain areas to terrorize the Left and bring it to heel. The police rounded up and incarcerated 37,000 known or suspected leftists, including journalists, students, teachers, labor organizers, and civil servants.70<br /> <br /> One survivor recalled:<br /> <br /> Right before supper we were beaten out of our minds and at supper-time we were given three spoonfulls of barley rice. Even though we offered thanksgiving for this, we were beaten again. For one laugh—80 lashings. In the morning there is a marching period which is called a screaming time but we were so hungry we couldn’t shout [so] then they beat us with clubs until we screamed. One friend of mine, a Mr.  Chai, could not scream because of a throat infection and therefore, he was beaten to death. Another person, a Mr.  Lee, was also beaten to death. Two out of the eleven in our group were killed.71<br /> <br /> Military leaders would continue to fill the post of president until 1993. Over the entire span of that period, the United States had operational control of the ROK military, the institutional body from which South Korean presidents sprang. Hence, political authority in South Korea ran in a straight line from the White House to the US viceroys in Korea (the US commander of the joint US-ROK military structure, the US ambassador and the CIA station chief), and, last and least, to the Blue House, the official residence of the ROK president.<br /> <br /> == Washington’s Power Projection Platform in the Pacific ==<br /> There was a marked shift in politics in South Korea by 1993, but also profound changes in the larger world, which were causally related. The Berlin Wall had fallen, the German Democratic Republic had dissolved, and Germany had reunified under a capitalist economic system, betokening, it seemed, a model for Korean reunification, in which the DPRK would surrender and willingly accept absorption into the ROK. More significantly, the USSR had thrown in the towel, and the Warsaw Pact had dissolved. The Cold War was over and capitalism had won. Or so it appeared.<br /> <br /> These tectonic shifts ignited a crisis in the Left around the world. Communist parties dissolved, or abandoned communism for social democracy. Social democrats abandoned social democracy and embraced austerity. The threat of the Left to the established order melted away, allowing governments that had been on the frontline of the war against movements for self-determination and people-centered economies to scale back the politically repressive functions of the state. If there’s no Left to repress, the full armamentarium of repressive instruments need no longer be deployed. And since military rule, dictatorship, and concentration camps provoked embarrassing comparisons to Nazism, these institutions could be happily placed in storage, pending future eruptions of leftism.<br /> <br /> Hence, by 1993, the context of global developments allowed political space to open up in South Korea. The military was no longer needed to repress the Left, now in a period of retrenchment. Military rule—from the point of view of the empire-builders in Washington and their collaborators in Seoul—could be shelved and replaced by civilian rule. Of course, the National Security Law would remain to keep the Left reined in, and the secret police would continue to function, carrying out their mandate of penetrating and undermining leftist groups, while shaping the ideological space by covertly funding academic journals, conferences and mass media. But secret police and anti-communist laws would operate in the background. The integument of the South Korean state would become liberal democratic, but the underlying tissue would remain viciously intolerant of the Left.<br /> <br /> At the same time, it would no longer be necessary for Washington to maintain operational control of the ROK military at all times. In 1994, South Koreans were granted command of their military, but during peacetime alone. At a time of war, command would revert to a US general.<br /> <br /> There is an important question of sovereignty here. A country whose military is under foreign command can hardly be said to be sovereign. Indeed, no less than a former commander of US forces in Korea, General Richard Stilwell, described US operational control as the “most remarkable concession of sovereignty in the entire world.”1 Many South Koreans were embittered by their country’s flagrant abnegation of sovereignty to the United States, and the transfer of peacetime operational control of their military was a concession to them—though one of limited significance.<br /> <br /> A military exists to wage war. War-making can be defensive, what it’s supposed to be, or aggressive, what it shouldn’t be, but almost invariably ''is'' where the United States is concerned. Andrew Bacevich, a US historian and retired career US Army officer, points out that the function of the US military is not self- defense, but “power projection”—the use, or threat, of violence to impose Washington’s will on other countries. Self-defense is what Homeland Security does.2 Washington’s granting the ROK control of the South Korean military in peacetime, i.e., when it’s not fulfilling its primary power projection function, is tantamount to the United States yielding control of an asset when it’s not in use but insisting on full command when it’s needed. In other words, Washington’s ceding peacetime operational control of its East Asian army in reserve—a military which has been historically used as a US auxiliary power projection force in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq—was nothing more than a sop to mollify South Koreans.<br /> <br /> Promises were made to grant South Korea full control of its military by 2015, including during times of war, but as the date neared, it was pushed off by South Korea’s military chiefs to the future—sometime in the mid-2020s.3 But as Tim Beal has pointed out, it is inconceivable that the Pentagon would ever allow its forces to fall under the command of a South Korean general. If US forces remain on the peninsula in large numbers, operating conjointly with the ROK military, the combined forces will always be under US command, whether openly or covertly. The United States leads military coalitions, even if leadership is provided from behind, as in the NATO war on Libya or the Saudi war on Yemen, or in placing military advisers with local combat forces. The only conceivable circumstance in which wartime control of ROK forces would devolve to an ROK general, is that in which the United States decided to sit out a war, either because its forces were not necessary to achieve victory, the war did not comport with US objectives, or Washington had abandoned the ROK as a political project. This might explain why transfer of operation control is regularly postponed—because no one of consequence realistically expects it’s ever going to happen, or wants it to.<br /> <br /> Moon pressed ROK commanders to assume wartime operation control, or op-con. The commanders balked. Moon persisted. Eventually Washington stepped in to rein in the South Korean president. As the ''Wall Street Journal'' explained, many South Koreans “see the lack of military control as an embarrassment that exposes the country to criticisms from Pyongyang that South Korea is a puppet state of the U.S.” Accordingly, Moon pushed the United States to allow South Korea “to take control of its own military forces should war break out on the Korean peninsula.” But Washington wasn’t “inclined to relinquish control,” the newspaper reported, adding that US officials had concluded that, “Seoul isn’t ready.” Said one US official, “I don’t think anyone [in Washington] is eager to see op-con transfer.”4 Washington’s denial of Moon’s op-con demand—indeed, even the fact that the South Korean president has to petition the United States for control of the South Korean military—proves a point Pyongyang makes almost daily and which embarrasses South Koreans: the ROK ''is'' a puppet state.<br /> <br /> The ROK military is certainly capable of defending itself against the DPRK without US assistance. Compared to the DPRK, Seoul can draw on twice the population and many times the GDP to meet its military needs; hence, compared to its northern neighbor, the ROK is capable of fielding a much larger military and sustaining a much larger military budget and therefore of purchasing much more lethal weaponry. South Korea’s planned 2018 military budget was $38.4 billion, up from $35.9 billion in 2017.5 The DPRK, in contrast, spends from $3.4 to $9.5 billion on its military, 75-90 percent less, and about as much as the City of New York spends on its police force.6 The ROK has 600,000 active-duty service members, backed by 3.5 million reservists. It’s not clear how large the KPA is, but a “number of scholars both inside [South Korea] and in other countries have concluded that the [KPA] is composed of around 700,000 soldiers”,7 according to the South Korean newspaper, ''The Hankyoreh''. Despite a rough parity in the number of active service personnel between the two militaries, ROK forces have far more sophisticated and deadly weaponry. For example, the ROK air force is equipped with F-15 and F-16 jetfighters, while the KPA has obsolescent MiG fighter jets which are often ''hors de combat'' for lack of aviation fuel or parts.8<br /> <br /> The ROK’s military superiority over its DPRK rival was acknowledged in 2017 by the country’s president. Moon Jae-in reassured South Koreans that ROK forces had “the power to destroy” the DPRK “beyond recovery.”9 Our “economy has been stronger” than the DPRK’s, he said, “since the 1970s and our military expenditures have topped theirs for decades.”10 With comparative advantages like these, only sheer incompetence could put the ROK at a disadvantage in a head-to-head contest with the KPA.<br /> <br /> Military weakness, then, is not the reason the United States maintains operational control of South Korea’s armed forces. The ROK military remains under the command of a US general because it is, and always has been, an extension of the Pentagon, and an instrument of US power projection, which continues to have utility in connection with US foreign policy goals. It was established by the United States, its officers are trained by the United States, its units are equipped by the United States, its component parts are integrated into the military of the United States, and its general staff is under the command of the United States. To be sure, ROK service personnel defend their country, but the ROK itself is an extension of the Pentagon. Therefore, the defense of the ROK is equivalent to the defense of an instrument of US foreign policy. Should South Korean soldiers perish in battle, they will die as cannon fodder sacrificed to the defense of the largest US power projection platform in the Pacific,11 and not in defense of the welfare, dignity, and self-determination of Koreans.<br /> <br /> In 1949, after the Pentagon had withdrawn its combat troops from the peninsula (before rushing them back a year later), the journalist Marguerite Higgins remarked on how the advisers the United States had left behind became “a living demonstration of how an intelligent and intensive investment of 500 combat-hardened American men and officers can train 100,000 guys to do the shooting for you.”12 The 100,000 guys would eventually become 600,000 men and women, with a reserve force of 3.5 million, but the principle is the same. As we’ve seen, the United States puts this principle to work around the globe, using special operations forces to train local militaries to do the shooting for them in over eighty countries.<br /> <br /> In the late 1960s and early 1970s, hundreds of thousands of ROK troops were deployed to Vietnam, where they were integrated into the US military command as mercenary soldiers in a war to crush a communist-led national liberation movement. In effect, South Korean combatants were employed in Vietnam to do what they had already attempted to do under US command in Korea a decade earlier—thwart an anti-colonial struggle for independence. Indeed, the ROK military has only ever been used in campaigns to put down movements to eject US occupation forces.<br /> <br /> In exchange for helping the United States wage a war of empire against an East Asian anti-colonial independence movement, the ROK received injections of cash and economic perks that contributed significantly to South Korea’s subsequent economic take-off. Most accounts of the ROK’s stellar growth conceal this dirty secret.<br /> <br /> Washington injected about one billion dollars into the ROK from 1965 through 1970 (equal to nearly $8 billion in 2018) to cover the cost of ROK troop deployments to Vietnam. These payments accounted for an estimated 7 to 8 percent of South Korea’s GDP from 1966 to 1969 and almost one-fifth of its total foreign earnings.13 In addition, Washington accoutered the ROK military with billions of dollars of equipment and opened up Vietnam to South Korean businesses as a market and sphere of investment.14 Vietnam became a cornucopia of profits for Korean firms, as US officials showered Korean corporations with contracts to support the US war effort. Under US direction, Vietnam soaked up more than 90 percent of the ROK’s steel exports and half of its transportation equipment exports.15<br /> <br /> The South Korean army took on the role of the Pentagon’s East Asian army in reserve. Rather than acting as a means of ROK self-defense, it was deployed as an auxiliary force in the US fight against revolutionary nationalism in Vietnam.16 In the mid-1960s, Washington said it needed 50,000 US troops in Korea to defend the ROK, but arranged to ship hundreds of thousands of South Korean troops from the peninsula to Indochina. It didn’t add up.<br /> <br /> More recently, the ROK has deployed its armed forces to serve under US command in wars of empire in Afghanistan and Iraq. From 2003 to 2008, Seoul sent 20,000 troops to Iraq to help Washington engineer, by force, a transition from a socialist economy under an Arab nationalist government to a capital-centered, foreign-investment-friendly economy, under a government beholden to Washington. From 2001 to 2014, 5,000 ROK military personnel participated in the US-led war on Afghanistan.<br /> <br /> The KPA, in contrast, has never fought beyond Korea’s borders and has never engaged in an aggressive war. Since the latter point challenges a popular misconception that North Korea initiated a war of aggression against a sovereign state on the Korean peninsula in 1950, it is fitting to recapitulate points made earlier on this matter. First, the question of which state initiated the attack ignores the reality that both states had been engaged in a series of reciprocal attacks for months in advance of June 25, 1950, and that most of the attacks were initiated by the ROK. Second, the question of which side opened a general offensive has never been settled and remains a matter of historical uncertainty. The UN determination that it was the North Korean side that was the first to strike was based exclusively on US and ROK reports, hardly unbiased. The DPRK has always hotly contested this claim. Third, an invasion across the 38th parallel by either side was a matter of no moment, since no one recognized the parallel as an international border. A North Korean push to the south could not have been an invasion any more than a South Korean push to the north would have been. Koreans cannot invade Korea. The notion, then, that the KPA initiated a war of aggression in 1950 is without foundation. The only war the KPA has ever fought has been within its own country to establish sovereignty over territory it arguably has the sole legitimate claim to. In contrast, ROK forces have waged four wars (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq), all under US command, and all in defense of US occupations and against forces of national liberation.<br /> <br /> Emblematic of the epistemology of ignorance is the accustomed portrayal of the DPRK as belligerent and the ROK as fairly peace-loving, when exactly the reverse is true. So it is that ''The Diplomat'', a publication which covers the Asia-Pacific region, could describe the Republic of Korea as a state that “has rarely deployed troops outside its borders” (only three times!) while at the same time referring to the DPRK, a state that has ''never'' deployed troops outside its borders, as “a belligerent North Korea.”17 Perhaps the North Korean belligerence the publication refers to pertains to Pyongyang’s rhetoric toward Washington and Seoul, which, to be sure, is often belligerent, but no less bellicose than Moon’s assertion that the ROK has “the power to destroy” the DPRK “beyond recovery,” to say nothing of the highly aggressive threats of total extermination US officials have frequently directed at the DPRK. States which regularly deploy troops beyond their borders and participate in wars for empire, as is true of the United States and the ROK, are not, by any reasonable definition, peace-loving. Conversely, a state which has never deployed troops beyond its borders, and has never participated in a war of empire, can be described fairly as a state that rejects wars of aggression. Indeed, the very idea that the DPRK could engage in a war for empire is inconceivable; it is entirely antithetical to its core values.<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; * *<br /> <br /> There are “not two but three Koreas,” observed William R. Polk: the DPRK, the ROK, and US military bases.18 Actually, there is only one Korea, and that Polk can point to three (or even two) is emblematic of the power Washington has to create artificial political constructions and an ideology to explain them. There is, in reality, one Korea. But grafted onto the one indivisible country is an illegitimate state, the ROK, (“basically set up” by Washington, as Bruce Cumings observes19) and roughly two dozen US military bases on which nearly 30,000 US service personnel are stationed as an occupation force.<br /> <br /> The US military presence in Korea began with the establishment, in 1945, of the US military government, which spent its three-year tenure engaged in a war to suppress the Korean People’s Republic, at the time, the organically created state of the one true Korea, from whose people’s committees the DPRK sprang. Once Soviet forces exited the peninsula at the end of 1948, the reason for US troops to remain in Korea, under the original US-Soviet agreement on Korea’s occupation, dissolved. All the same, Washington maintained its garrison on the peninsula until the summer of 1949. “Americans usually perceive an important gap between the withdrawal of US combat forces in July 1949 and the war that came a year later,” observes Bruce Cumings. But, in reality, the US military never left. US “advisers were all over the war zones in” South Korea, “constantly shadowing” their ROK charges “and urging them on to greater efforts” in the war to suppress the guerrilla uprising against the US-ROK occupation.20<br /> <br /> The number of US soldiers on the Korean peninsula swelled to nearly 330,000 during the conflict of 1950-1953, but a residual force of 50,000-70,000 US troops continued to occupy South Korea in the immediate aftermath of the war. US military advisers trained the ROK military, evaluated its performance, and sent its officers to war colleges in the United States.21 Over the years, the size of the US occupation force has diminished to its current level just shy of 30,000.<br /> <br /> Until 2017, the Pentagon’s main base in Korea was at Yongsan, a facility that had also been the main Korean base of the Japanese Imperial Army during the Japanese colonial period. The base of one imperial army in Korea became the base of its successor. The Yongsan base was a conspicuous foreign implantation in the middle of the ROK’s capital city and a constant reminder of a more than century-long imperial military presence in Korea. Perhaps for this reason the Pentagon moved US forces to a less conspicuous location in 2017. Another reason, more significant, was that the base was within range of KPA artillery.<br /> <br /> The Pentagon built a new main base, Camp Humphreys, at Pyeongtaek, beyond the reach of North Korea’s heavy cannons. Like the base at Yongsan, Camp Humphrey’s has been built on the site of a former Japanese military installation. The base covers an area equivalent to more than four Central Parks. ''The Diplomat'' calls it “the largest overseas American military base in the world.”22<br /> <br /> The US installation has “apartment buildings, sports fields, playgrounds and a water park, and an 18-hole golf course with the generals’ houses overlooking the greens. There is a ‘warrior zone’ with Xboxes and Playstations, pool tables and dart boards, and a tavern for those old enough to drink,” according to ''The Washington Post''—which is to say, all the amenities an occupation army could desire. The base is also outfitted with “two elementary schools, a middle school and a high school,” as well as a “68-bed military hospital.” There is housing to accommodate as many as “1,111 families and a total of about 45,500 people.”23<br /> <br /> Despite the gross imbalance in conventional military force that divides the ROK from the DPRK—an imbalance strongly in Seoul’s favor—South Korean officials have never asked Washington to withdraw US troops. The military imbalance is even greater if nuclear weapons are taken into account. The ROK is, along with some 30 other countries, sheltered under the US nuclear umbrella, and Washington has announced on several occasions that it will reduce North Korea to ashes if ever the DPRK attempts to assert its sovereignty over the entire peninsula. That threat alone, issued by the world’s most formidable nuclear power, ought to be reason enough to believe that the chances of a DPRK attack on the ROK are vanishingly small. The ROK can readily defend itself, a point made by two ROK presidents, (even if to an unreceptive military brass and an equally unreceptive Washington.) In contrast, the DPRK is the weaker military force on the peninsula and no state provides it a sheltering nuclear umbrella.<br /> <br /> The reality that Seoul fails to demand US troop withdrawal hinders the possibility of reunification. “In the question of the country’s reunification,” Kim Il-sung declared in 1971, the US army must be “withdrawn from south Korea.”24 In Kim’s view, reunification and independence are inseparable. In contrast, Seoul insists that any reunification be accompanied by Korean integration into the US military command structure25—in which case there would two Koreas: one of the colonizers, and one of the colonized. The ROK has no intention of building one united, ''independent'', Korea. That aim is embraced by the DPRK alone. For the ROK, the subordination of Korea to the US-dictated global order is a goal whose primacy exceeds the recovery of the one Korea.<br /> <br /> == US Supremacy’s All-Conquering March ==<br /> “''The United States today is, by its own reckoning, the overwhelmingly''<br /> <br /> ''dominant power of the globe in nearly all spheres,''<br /> <br /> ''with the determination to impose its will by one means or another.''”<br /> <br /> —Graham E. Fuller, former vice-chair of the US National Intelligence Council1<br /> <br /> As he was leaving office in 2017 after eight years as US president, Barack Obama wrote a letter to his successor, Donald Trump. “American leadership in this world really is indispensable,” Obama told Trump. “It’s up to us, through action and example, to sustain the international order that’s expanded steadily since the end of the Cold War, and upon which our own wealth and safety depend.”2<br /> <br /> There was nothing new in what Obama had to tell the incoming president. These themes had pervaded the utterances of US administrations, senators, scholars and editorial writers for decades. The themes were that US leadership is necessary; that it maintains an international order; and that the US-created international order is the basis of US prosperity. Senator John McCain, a principal figure in the Republican Party, echoed Obama. “We are the chief architect and defender of an international order governed by rules derived from our political and economic values,” McCain averred. “We have grown vastly wealthier and more powerful under those rules.”3 The dual statements, one by a Democrat, the other a Republican, represented the consensus position of the US foreign policy establishment. The United States has created an international order; that order has made the United States vastly wealthier and more powerful; and the US government intends to enforce the global economic order it created. Unspoken, but true nonetheless, is the reality that the global economic order the United States has created caters, not to US citizens ''en masse'', but to a numerically tiny class of billionaire investors and shareholders who wield an influence in Washington that vastly exceeds their numbers. To construe McCain’s use of the plural pronoun “we” as denoting all Americans is to make what Jean-Paul Sartre called the error of confusing the elite with the genus.4 Anyone who doubts that billionaire investors and shareholders wield inordinate influence in Washington should consider the backgrounds and careers of appointees to the top positions in the US state—the secretaries of defense, treasury, state, and commerce; the national security advisers; ambassadors to the UN; World Bank presidents; and so on. If not immensely wealthy themselves, they are connected to the wealthy in important ways as political lieutenants and acolytes. When Obama and McCain say “our” and “we” they mean the top one percent of US citizens, the stratum of US society that matters in the political and economic life of the country—the United States’ very ''raison d’''être.<br /> <br /> One ought to consider too who US public policy favors. As political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page concluded in their 2014 analysis of over 1,700 US policy issues, “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial impacts on government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”5 In other words, the ''demos,'' ordinary people, have virtually no influence on US public policy, while wealthy business people and their lobbies, who constitute only a tiny fraction of the US population, have substantial impacts. The United States, then, is a plutocracy ruled by the wealthy, not a democracy ruled by the people. And the foreign policy of a plutocracy is one which addresses the concerns, interests, and aspirations of Wall Street, not Main Street.<br /> <br /> The architects of the post-World War II, US-led international order were Wall Street bankers and lawyers, most of whom were members of the Wall Street foreign policy think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). McCain was a member of the CFR, as has been virtually every person who plays, or has played, a significant role in the US departments of state, defense, treasury, national security, US intelligence, the Pentagon, or as ambassador to the UN.6<br /> <br /> The Wall Street politicos—to coin a term denoting people with strong Wall Street connections who take on leading roles in public policy—sought to build a post-war world in which US investors and shareholders would be able to exploit labor and resources over as much of the face of the globe as US power could make possible. Anathema to their vision of a post-war world were Germany’s and Japan’s closed economies, which, for roughly a decade beginning in the mid-1930s, had locked US businesspeople out of lucrative profit-making opportunities in Europe and East Asia. Equally repellent was the people-centered economy being built in the Soviet Union, which clashed strongly with the capital-centered economy on which Wall Street’s very prosperity depended. The last thing Wall Street politicos wanted was the advance of communism, which appeared poised to take off in war-torn Europe and East Asia. The international order the Wall Street politicos would seek to establish would be one of an open world economy; it would be capitalist, and all parts of the globe would be open to exploitation by US investors and shareholders.<br /> <br /> The “containment of Communism and Soviet power,” noted historian Melvyn P. Leffler, “was essential to preserve an open world economy.”7 Hence, gradually, “between 1947 and 1950, the United States took on the role of hegemon in the international system.”8 Washington would assume a “leadership role around the world,”9 as Germany had assumed a “leadership role” in Europe, Japan had done in East Asia, Italy had tried to do in the Mediterranean, and Britain and France had done in Africa and parts of Asia; except that, with other imperialist powers defeated, or greatly weakened, the United States would capitalize on the opportunity to exercise primacy on a world scale, to construct what Brzezinski had called a global power—that is, an unsurpassed empire of unprecedented scope and reach.<br /> <br /> Washington saw itself as having a continuing role in “shaping an emerging global economic order” that continued “to reflect [US] interests and values.” But there were impediments. “Despite its success, our rules-based system,” noted Obama, “is now competing against alternative, less-open models.” These include models based on “state-owned enterprises,”10 which are prevalent in China, Russia, Venezuela, the DPRK, Cuba, Iran, and Syria. Indeed, every country in the Pentagon’s cross-hairs since the dissolution of the USSR, from Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, to Saddam’s Iraq, Gaddafi’s Libya, Assad’s Syria, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, have embraced “alternative, less-open models” of economic organization based on “state-owned enterprises.” In his last address to the United Nations General Assembly, Obama referred to the economy of the DPRK as a “wasteland” and a “dead end.” It too, with its central planning and state control, was an alternative, less open model. In other words, the countries which have come to be the targets of US hostility are the very same ones which have built economies that are non-compliant with the US-led global economic order. The US president promised to address these “challenges.”11<br /> <br /> When McCain said “we” are the chief architect and defender of an international order governed by rules derived from “our” political and economic values, what he really meant was that Wall Street is the system’s chief architect. When he said that “we” have grown vastly wealthier and more powerful under rules which reflect “our” political and economic values, what he really meant was that ''Wall Street'' had grown vastly wealthier and more powerful—and that the rules reflected Wall Street’s political and economic values.<br /> <br /> Even a cursory survey of US society quickly reveals that vast wealth and power can hardly be claimed by Main Street, but is conspicuously evident on Wall Street. Therefore, the use of words such as “we” and “our” to attribute ownership of the global economic order to all Americans, misleadingly conflates the interests of Wall Street with those of all US citizens, the overwhelming majority of whom are not in any way a part of Wall Street and, on the contrary, stand in relation to Wall Street as Korean tenant famers stood in relation to absentee landlords—as the exploited, not beneficiaries. The purpose of conflating Wall Street and Main Street is to disguise the reality that the United States is class-divided, and that the global international order which US citizens are expected to salute and pay homage to as the guarantor of their prosperity is, in reality, the guarantor of the prosperity of a numerically miniscule economic ''uber''-class, the one percent, whose vast wealth is as dependent on the exploitation of its American compatriots as it is on the exploitation of foreign populations.<br /> <br /> “Ideology,” Joan Robinson is reputed to have once remarked, “is like your breath. You never smell your own.” The ideology inhered in the statements of US officials, like one’s own breath, may be difficult to detect. Ideology is a formal concept which denotes a set of ideas used to justify a socially-constructed order. It performs the following functions:<br /> <br /> * presents the interests of a dominant group as universal.<br /> * conceals the exploitation of subordinate groups.<br /> * presents a socially-constructed order as originating in nature or God (and therefore as immutable) rather than being the creation of human beings (and therefore as changeable).<br /> <br /> Washington presents the imposition of its will on the rest of the world, not as imperialism—the process of empire maintenance and building—or as the international dictatorship of the United States, or as despotism, but as “US leadership.” References to US leadership abound in the statements of US politicians, military leaders, and commentators. “We lead the world,” declared US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power.12 “The question is never whether America should lead, but how we lead,” asserted Obama’s National Security Strategy.13 Barbara Stephenson, president of the American Foreign Service Association, described the United States as having a “global leadership role.”14 After Trump was elected, Newt Gingrich said that the new president, a reality TV star, would have a new show to star in: “‘Leading the World.’”15 The political scientist and journalist David J. Rothkopf defines the White House and, more specifically, the National Security Council, as “the nerve center” from which the world is led.16 In his second inaugural address, Bill Clinton described the United States as “the world’s greatest democracy” imbued with a mission to spread its “bright flame … throughout all the world” and to “lead a whole world of democracies,” because “America stands alone as the world’s indispensable nation.”17<br /> <br /> Other statements of US leadership refer explicitly to an international order. US Defense Secretary James Mattis issued a statement “to the Pentagon work force that cast the United States as a bulwark of the international order.”18 Sohrab Ahmari, who had spent years as an editor of the ''Wall'' ''Street'' ''Journal'', defined US leadership as “essential to global order” and opined that the United States’ “combination of military supremacy and decent values makes our leadership essential.”19 John McCain referred to the United States as having “an obligation” to the lead the world and a “duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth.’”20<br /> <br /> US military strategy defines US interests to include “an open international economic system” advanced by “US leadership.” US national security interests are equated with the “security of the global economic system”; and the “presence of US military forces in key locations around the world” is characterized as underpinning this system.21 US military leaders see US leadership as global and enforced by US military supremacy. “If you have a global economy, I think you need a global navy to look after that economy,” remarked the head of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Scott Swift.22 This resonates with Alexander Haig’s admission that tens of thousands of US troops occupy Europe to ensure that European markets remain open to US exports and investment. James Stavridis, who, as a US naval flag officer, had command of all NATO forces in Europe, said that the United States regards the world’s oceans as “a vast American lake” and that the role of its navy is to dominate “a defined sea space anywhere on the globe.”23 (Mussolini regarded the Mediterranean as a vast Italian lake, but then his imperial ambitions were a good deal more modest than Washington’s.) In 2017, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, declared that his country is “a nation that both thinks and acts globally.”24 He might have added that the United States both thinks and acts in terms of global markets, and its military functions to keep those markets open and free from challenges by alternative, less open models that rely on state-owned enterprises.<br /> <br /> US leadership, moreover, is framed as an institution that other countries of the world consent to, and even ask for. Hence, US leaders present themselves as benevolently acceding to the world’s demand to be led. We “welcome our responsibility to lead,” declared Obama, as if the mantle had been thrust on Washington.25<br /> <br /> Washington also presents itself as leading on behalf of universal welfare and universal values. For example, the US National Security Strategy of 2015 declares that American leadership is exercised “in the cause of universal values.”26 Washington tells us that “US leadership is a global force for good” and that there “is no substitute for American leadership … in the cause of universal values.”27 Obama, who left a trail of chaos and destruction across the Muslim world in his wake, could say, with apparent detachment from reality, that “I believe we [the US government] have been a force for good.”28 Delusion? Yes, but only if we assume that Obama was referring to a ''universal'' good. Since it is almost axiomatic that the United States has not acted as a force for universal good, unless Obama was detached from reality, the force for good to which he referred could only be specific to the interests of the Wall Street politicos who shaped the global economic order in whose interests Obama acted. Obama’s presidency was a force for good for a numerically small section of the US population that matters in US political life—billionaire investors and the immediate circle of professionals who attend to their profit-making needs, all of whom continue to enjoy rising wealth at the expense of everyone else.<br /> <br /> Obama’s presidency was marked by true statements delivered with strategic omissions that made them into masterpieces of equivocation. If, through the brilliance of his equivocations, the bulk of the US population believed that the United States acts for the benefit of all, well, then, that was well and good, for the United States could hardly act as a force for the good of its wealthiest citizens without the consent and cooperation of the bottom 99 percent. And the ''menu peuple'' would hardly voluntarily cooperate if they believed that the movement of their government was along an arc defined by the interests of billionaire investors. The function of US presidents, as the principal face through which the Wall Street-dominated US government presents itself, is to manage the ideological environment. They must present Wall Street’s interests as Main Street’s interests and the United States’ interests as the world’s interests; US leadership must be presented as benevolent and universally beneficial, rather than exploitative and aimed at aggrandizing a hyper-wealthy Wall Street-centered minority. And US leadership must be presented, not as constructed and imposed by the United States, but as something everyone desires, except those deemed evil. In an instance of circular reasoning, the turpitude of the latter is defined by their rejection of US leadership. Forces which reject US leadership are evil. How do we know? Because they reject US leadership.<br /> <br /> Over and over, US officials repeat a mantra—US leadership is “indispensable”—but they don’t say who it is indispensable to. The truth of the matter is that US leadership is indispensable to US billionaires as a class; it is a desideratum of their vast wealth and power. But the continual references to indispensability, made with the strategic omission of who US leadership is indispensable to, become invocations of “desirability.” We’re to believe that US leadership is universally desirable and good.<br /> <br /> What qualities does the United States uniquely possess to make its leadership on a global scale desirable? The answer, apparently, is its “unique contributions and capabilities,” according to the 2015 National Security Strategy. But the strategy document fails to spell out what these contributions and capabilities are, leaving us to guess. One argument might be that the United States has constructed an international order that benefits all, and that the United States is the only country wealthy and powerful enough to enforce the universally beneficial international order; consequently, its leadership is desirable. Only an epistemology of ignorance can rescue this view from its utter disregard of reality.<br /> <br /> US ideology has historical resonances. Claims to benevolent leadership have been used by other empires to beautify their projects of domination. Japanese empire-builders made clear their “intent to … lift Korea out of endemic poverty, eliminate governmental dysfunction, and bring prosperity to Korea in the process through expanded trade.” Japan “would open Korea to the global economy, a win-win solution for both countries.”29 We saw how that worked out. The journalist Hugh Byas condemned Japan in 1942 for sharing the same belief as Nazi Germany—the belief that Japan had “unique qualities that [made] it superior to its neighbors and [gave] it a special mission to perform.”30 Who can deny that the same imperial arrogance of superiority, accompanied by a special mission to lead, has not touched US leaders?<br /> <br /> European empires, along with the Empire of Japan, invoked the concept of racial superiority to justify their exploitation of subject peoples. Relationships of domination were presented as relationships of benevolence. The superior race was taking inferior people in hand, and guiding them for their own benefit until they were able to govern themselves. Consider that Washington today refuses to yield op-con to South Korea because it deems Seoul not yet ready to handle its own self-defense. Today, concepts of white (or Japanese) supremacy are no longer formally tolerable, and qualities said (against the evidence) to be unique to, or more fully developed in, the United States (industriousness, inventiveness, equality of opportunity) assume the role previously played by racial superiority.<br /> <br /> The French imperial theorist, Jules Harmand, justified European domination by reference to its “superiority” which provided it with the moral legitimacy to lead in order to bestow its blessings on lesser people. The frequently offered justifications of US leadership come remarkably close to Harmand’s justification of European empire. For example, US ideology constructs an international hierarchy, not of races, but of nations. It declares that the United States is the superior nation, or, if we like, the superior civilization. Its superiority is to be understood as based not merely on mechanical, economic, and military superiority, but on moral superiority, which US presidents and other ideologues define as commitment to “human rights and democracy” (conspicuously absent in US support for every dictator, king, emir, or sultan who facilitates Wall Street’s wealth accumulation). The United States’ right to direct the rest of humanity is presented as springing from its ostensible commitment to universal values which make it a shining beacon on a hill—the last best hope on earth, as John McCain emetically put it.<br /> <br /> Additionally, US ideology presents US leadership as enforcing order on the world, and of bringing security to other countries, on whose soil US military personnel are implanted, for reasons we’re to believe are due to the host countries lacking the aptitude or means to defend themselves. Like European civilization, which flattered itself that it was conferring its blessings on inferior people, the United States establishes missions in the name of spreading democracy, human rights, economic aid, and military assistance on lesser countries implied to be incapable of self-governance, self-defense, or economic policy-making. With these mental and material instruments which “lesser” countries lack and now receive, the inferior countries of the globe, owing to the largesse bestowed upon them by a selfless America, now gain the idea and ambition for a better existence, and the means of achieving it.<br /> <br /> Cutting through the dense, all-surrounding fog of US imperialist ideology, the grand strategy of the US state is revealed to be one in which Washington imposes an economic order on the world, at the center of which lurks Wall Street’s interests, and which is hostile to alternative economic orders that do not prioritize the interests of US capital—namely, those in which the state has a role to play in the economy, through planning or enterprise-ownership or tilting the playing field in favor of local business interests or imposing conditions to protect labor or the environment to a degree corporate America deems to be onerous. If we take “America” to represent the numerically insignificant class of billionaires at the apex of US political and economic life, then US grand strategy is to “corporate Americanize” the world economy—that is, to order it in the interests of Wall Street.<br /> <br /> If that is the United States’ grand global strategy, what then is its Korea strategy? When John Bolton, then US undersecretary of state for arms control, was asked this question in 2003 by ''New York Times''’ reporter Christopher Marquis, Marquis said that Bolton “strode over to a bookshelf, pulled off a volume and slapped it on the table. It was called ‘The End of North Korea.’” That, Bolton said, “‘is our policy.’”31 Richard N. Haas, who was director of policy planning at the US State Department before becoming president of the Council on Foreign Relations, described the goal of US Korea policy as “ending North Korea’s existence as an independent entity and reunifying the Korean Peninsula.”32 In other words, Washington’s goal vis-à-vis Korea is to eliminate the DPRK, and bring the peninsula under the proximal control of the ROK, and therefore, under the distal control of Washington.<br /> <br /> The reason Washington seeks this outcome has more to do with China, and secondarily Russia, than the DPRK itself. China and Russia are strong enough that they cannot be easily coerced by Washington into accepting subordinate roles in the Wall Street-defined global economic order. And both countries, China perhaps more strongly than Russia, have adopted “alternative economic models” which feature a strong role for state-owned enterprises, that vile apparatus of state-directed development so loathed by the owners of private capital. Washington would like to make both countries more open to exploitation by private US economic interests than they already are—that is, the goal is to order US-Chinese and US-Russian economic relationships so that they preponderantly benefit private US enterprises. To that end, Washington aspires to successfully pressure Moscow and Beijing to abandon ''dirigiste'' economic policies which favor local businesses and publicly-owned enterprises.<br /> <br /> Washington also has concerns about the rise of China as an economic power. China’s growing economic dominance threatens to supplant US capital from the Asia-Pacific region. For this reason, the Obama administration began to shift US military forces more heavily toward East Asia and the Pacific to accomplish the goal of what was called “balancing China’s rise,” where “balancing” was used as a euphemism for “eclipsing.” This was the so-called “pivot” to the Far East. In addition, an investor agreement was championed, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to thwart the establishment in Asia and Oceania of a Chinese-centered economic area. The impetus for the agreement was to prevent “countries like China” writing “the rules of the global economy,” announced Obama. “We should write those rules,” he declared.33 Indeed, that is the whole point of US imperialism—to write the rules of the global economic order to favor US free enterprise. By “we” Obama meant Wall Street. Wall Street should write the rules of trade, commerce, and investment, to suit Wall Street’s interests.<br /> <br /> A US military presence in Korea, a country which shares a border with China and Russia, helps Washington pursue its goal of containing these two potential challengers to Wall Street’s hegemony. Washington would like to block Beijing and Moscow from drawing other countries into the Chinese and Russian economic orbits. It also aspires to dislodge countries already strongly economically linked to China and Russia in order to absorb them into the Wall Street-centric global order. To this end, Washington spent $5 billion on regime change to draw Ukraine out of Russia’s economic orbit, and into that of the US-superintended Western European economy.34 While this has no direct relevance to Korea, it does illustrate the lengths to which Washington will go to capture markets and investment opportunities for corporate America.<br /> <br /> Employing Korea as a fixed aircraft carrier, located menacingly on the peripheries of China and Russia, helps Washington create a “security architecture” for Japan. By playing the lead role in guaranteeing Japan’s security against threats from China and Russia, the United States partly relieves Japan of the burden of funding its own self-defense. This in turn makes Japan militarily dependent on the United States, unable to use arms to challenge the US-defined global economic order in favor of one that is more directly congruent with the aspirations of Japanese investors and businesses.<br /> <br /> Of course, a US troop presence in Korea is greatly facilitated by a subservient Korean state. The security needs of the state in the face of the hostility of the DPRK provide a public justification for the presence of tens of thousands of US military personnel. In reality, the ROK is militarily stronger than the DPRK and capable of defending itself. What’s more, the ROK is sheltered beneath a US nuclear umbrella. Washington has declared on several occasions that an attack by North Korea on the ROK will be met by overwhelming force. In short, South Korea does not face a significant security threat from its northern neighbor. Pyongyang has no desire to commit suicide by crossing the armistice line, nor is it unaware of its limited military capabilities vis-à-vis its southern rival.<br /> <br /> Pyongyang long ago abandoned any hope of unifying Korea by military means, recognizing that the imbalance in military strength in the ROK’s favor makes the project quixotic. As an alternative, on many occasions North Korean leaders have proposed a peaceful reunification. Under the plan first sketched out by Kim Il-sung, the South Korean economy would continue to be capitalist, but US troops would quit the country. A united Korea, under one flag and one government, would strongly foster intra-Korean security. And yet, just as often as Pyongyang has proposed this arrangement, Seoul has rejected it. A US military presence, from the point of view of the ROK government, is non-negotiable. US troops must remain on the peninsula for US geostrategic reasons, to stifle China and Russia.<br /> <br /> A related goal of Washington’s Korea strategy is to use the ROK military as an Asian army in reserve. From Washington’s point of view, the 600,000 active-duty personnel of the ROK military, and its 3.5 million reservists, all under US wartime command, are of far greater significance than the comparatively tiny US military garrison in Korea, numbering less than 30,000. From the very beginning, South Korean soldiers trained for, operated on behalf of, and fought for, US goals, under the direction of US advisers and US commanders. The model that journalist Marguerite Higgins observed in the late 1940s, of a comparatively small number of US soldiers training a much larger force of South Koreans to do the shooting for them, is still in place. The significant South Korean military is a chess piece to be moved about on a grand chess board by planners in Washington seeking domination of Eurasia.<br /> <br /> This is in keeping with European colonial tradition. European powers sought colonies, not only as markets, sources of raw material, and soil on which to settle surplus populations, but also as sources of manpower for wars. The British, for example, drew heavily on India to supply their fighting forces in the Great War. Mohandas Gandhi, known today as a great advocate of non-violence, engaged in recruiting 500,000 of his compatriots “for the British army and did it with such zeal as to write to the Viceroy’s personal secretary: ‘I have an idea that if I became your recruiting agent in chief I might rain men on you.’”35 The French, similarly, relied heavily on colonial troops. Canada contributed 600,000 of its citizens to the war, which was declared on its behalf by Britain, with not a single Canadian consulted. David Olusoga’s book, ''The World’s War,'' makes the point that World War I was truly a world war, largely because the European powers at the center of it called on their vast colonial possessions for manpower36. Hence, Washington’s goal in Korea of maintaining a puppet state capable of disgorging trained military personnel to fight in US wars continues a hoary imperial tradition.<br /> <br /> Washington seeks the end of the DPRK, to use John Bolton’s description of US aims, because Pyongyang is against the aforementioned US goals. The DPRK has a people- and Korean-centered economy, rejects US leadership and the idea that countries can be arranged in a hierarchy with the United States at the top, and demands the exit of US troops from the peninsula. North Koreans also repudiate the idea of a US puppet state of Korea. While they’re willing to tolerate a capitalist economy in the south under their proposed plan for reunification, they insist that Korea be a truly sovereign, independent state. No state can be truly independent if it hosts foreign troops on its soil and places its military under foreign command. No country can be truly sovereign if it submits to US leadership. Leadership, as Washington means it, is the negation of sovereignty; it is the process of yielding decision-making authority to Washington and, indirectly, to Wall Street.<br /> <br /> == Sabotaging an Alternative to the US-Led Global Economic Order ==<br /> “''America always targets countries that''<br /> <br /> ''have had an anti-colonial and anti-feudal revolution''.”—Domenico Losurdo1<br /> <br /> The DPRK’s constitution shows that the North Korean state has an orientation that is diametrically opposed to the Wall Street-directed project of empire building. The DPRK defines itself as a socialist state representing the interests of all Koreans, independent and politically, economically, culturally and militarily sovereign, self-sufficient and self-reliant in defense, and guided by the supreme national task of reunifying the country.<br /> <br /> The ROK also seeks, so it says, “unification based on the principles of freedom and democracy,”2 namely, on its own terms, though without defining what “freedom” and “democracy” are to be taken to mean. However, given the state’s history of military dictatorship, concentration camps, extermination of leftists, and anti-Left secret police, we can infer that freedom and democracy are not intended in a universal sense, but as applying exclusively to right-wing collaborators with the US occupation. The ROK speaks of “unification” ''contra'' the DPRK’s “re-unification,” consistent with the former’s shamelessly defining the Republic of Korea as encompassing the Korean peninsula in its entirety.<br /> <br /> The DPRK defines itself as “a revolutionary State” originating “in the struggle to achieve the liberation of the homeland.” The state, then, is conceived as developing out of the national revolution for independence. It is guided by ''Juche'' (self-reliance and independence in matters of politics, economics, culture and the military) and ''Songun'' (the primacy of self-defense in the allocation of resources). ''Juche'' is a reflection of the reality that only Koreans can vouchsafe Korea’s freedom, and ''Songun'' a ''sine qua non'' in the face of the existential threat North Korea has faced from the United States from the very moment of its birth. Absent North Korea’s policies of ''Juche'' and ''Songun,'' the patriot state would have long ago succumbed to the tyranny of the United States. Without US tyranny, the DPRK’s ''Juche'' and ''Songun'' policies would not exist.<br /> <br /> The constitution defines working people as sovereign, with peasants, blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, and soldiers constituting the only groups invested with sovereignty, in contradistinction to those who once generated income by renting out access to land (landlords) or industrial economic assets (mainly Japanese industrialists). With sovereignty vested in laborers as a class, the party which consciously seeks to represent labor, the Workers’ Party, is accorded the lead role of organizing the country’s affairs and defending its revolution and independence from the forces that aspire to return the country to the ''status quo ante'' of servitude to an empire.3<br /> <br /> The external relations of the DPRK emphasize principles that a country which has historically been dominated by larger powers and has carried out a national revolution would wish other countries to embrace: equality, mutual respect, non-interference in the affairs of other nations, and mutual benefit—contrary to the unequal benefit which characterized Korea’s external relations in the past, with great powers imposing relationships of domination which served their interests at Korea’s expense, a situation that carries on in the relationship of the United States to South Korea today.4<br /> <br /> The DPRK also pledges to “promote unity with people all over the world who defend their independence, and resolutely support and encourage the struggles of all people who oppose all forms of aggression and interference and fight for their countries’ independence and national and class emancipation.”5 Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in 2017, DPRK foreign minister Ri Yong-ho expressed his country’s “strong support” and “solidarity” with Cuba in its fight to defend its national sovereignty, with Venezuela in its fight to defend its “national sovereignty and the cause of socialism,” and with “the Syrian government fighting to protect its national sovereignty and security.”6 All three countries are targets of Wall Street-driven US hostility, and Pyongyang’s support for them as a manifestation of its opposition to empire-building is yet another reason Washington seeks to bring about the end of the DPRK.<br /> <br /> North Korea constitutionally prescribes a socialist and independent national economy. Two forms of economic enterprise are permitted: State-owned enterprises and cooperatively-owned ones. State-owned enterprises belong to the people as a whole. All natural resources, railways, air transport service, post and telecommunication establishments, as well as major factories and enterprises, ports, and banks are owned solely by the state. Land, farm machinery, and ships, as well as small and medium-sized factories and enterprises may be owned jointly by workers as cooperatives.7 By contrast, the South Korean constitution prescribes an “economic order” based on “freedom and creative initiative of enterprises”—an allusion to “free” enterprise and the power of a minority to command the labor of others—and prohibits the nationalization of private enterprises “except to meet urgent necessities of national defense or the national economy.”8<br /> <br /> Capitalism, Joan Robinson is reputed to have once remarked, has no goal but to keep the show going. In contrast, North Korea sets “the steady improvement of the material and cultural standards of the people” as the “supreme” goal of its economic system and seeks to leverage technological gains to “free the working people from difficult, tiresome labor.”9 In contrast, employers in the capitalist worlds seek to leverage technological gains to free workers from their jobs and to free themselves from the burden of having to pay wages and salaries. The DPRK works toward a communist society in which technological advancement is harnessed to reduce the burden of ceaseless toil on everyday working lives in order to afford people time to realize their potential as creative human beings.<br /> <br /> North Korea’s constitution limits the work day to eight hours and mandates a shorter work day for people engaged in “arduous tasks.”10 The eight-hour workday’s elevation to a matter of constitutional principle establishes the ''bona fides'' of the country’s claim to have consciously formulated a people-centered system—designed to meet the needs of people, rather than people existing to keep a system of capital accumulation going—that contrasts sharply with the capital-centered economy of the ROK.<br /> <br /> “South Koreans work the second-longest hours among OECD countries,”11 with “many salaried workers at manufacturing companies working for more than 60 hours per week.” Many “do not take their paid vacations.”12 A person working a forty-hour workweek without vacation puts in 2,080 hours per year. In 2014, South Koreans worked an average of 2,124 hours, more than a full week in excess of a forty-hour workweek without vacation, implying that many South Koreans aren’t taking vacation at all; or are taking vacation, but are working punishingly long hours; or both. And that figure was down from the year 2000, when South Koreans averaged 2,512 hours at work per year, 40 percent higher than the number of hours US workers put in on the job and 80 percent more than Germans worked.13 South Koreans, then, work some of the longest hours in the industrial world—which means that conditions haven’t substantially improved from when Japan occupied Korea, and Koreans were compelled to toil long hours in Japanese-owned mines and factories.<br /> <br /> Have long hours made South Koreans marvels of productivity? Apparently not. Despite their lengthy hours on the job, Koreans of the south are less productive than workers in other OECD countries.14 ROK citizens work long hours, ultimately, not to make their lives better, but to enlarge the inherited fortunes of the pampered sons and daughters of the founders of the country’s handful of giant conglomerates which dominate South Korea’s economy. And the privileged children of the country’s corporate elite use their accumulated wealth—accumulated for them by long-toiling South Koreans—to dominate those spaces of the country’s political life left open to indigenous South Korean influence by the otherwise smothering influence of the United States. As a consequence, corporate royalty exists on a legal and material plane high above that of the overworked South Korean ''hoi polloi''.<br /> <br /> The DPRK proscribes child labor, building a minimum working age of 16 years into its highest legal document.15 In contrast, South Korea’s constitution recognizes that child labor exists in the south, but simply pledges that “special protection shall be accorded working children.”16 The ROK’s “Labor Standards Act sets the minimum age for employment at 15 years but provides that children between the ages of 13 and 15 may work if granted a work permit by the Ministry of Employment and Labor.”17<br /> <br /> North Korea’s constitution prescribes the organization of the country’s economic life in accordance with a rationally developed plan. Planning aims at developing the economy in order to provide a steadily rising standard of living, while at the same time providing for the defense of the country against the unremitting threat of external aggression. Threats against the country are significant, indeed, existential, and originate in the hostile activities of a world power, the United States, which is many orders of magnitude more powerful militarily than North Korea. Even the ROK alone, with twice the population of North Korea and a GDP that is 45 times larger—and therefore the capability to field a much larger and more formidably equipped military—is a threat of considerable magnitude to the DPRK. In light of this, the DPRK’s embrace of economic planning—a measure of coordination that Germany turned to in WWI, as did other countries in times of national emergency and war—may be seen as both a matter of necessity and choice. In fact, absent an ideological commitment to socialism, the framers of the DPRK constitution may well have committed the country to an economy guided by a consciously formulated plan as the best way to meet its defense requirements. Central planning in North Korea may, then, be overdetermined—a product of multiple independent and mutually reinforcing causes.<br /> <br /> Contrary to a naïve, but widely held misconception about socialist countries, North Koreans are neither told what jobs they must work at nor paid the same wage. Instead, the DPRK constitution guarantees that all “able-bodied citizens may choose occupations in accordance with their wishes and skills” and further requires that North Koreans be “paid in accordance with the quantity and quality of their work,” a basic socialist principle.18 Lenin gave the principle a biblical flourish, quoting Paul the Apostle: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.”19 Moreover, the state requires all Koreans to work, and maintains a program of full-employment. North Koreans are “provided with stable jobs and working conditions” and “unemployment is unknown.”20<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; * *<br /> <br /> The major aim of Washington’s Korea policy is to maintain a puppet state on the peninsula for the purposes of furnishing the Pentagon with two advantages: (1) a geostrategically important space from which to menace China and Russia as potential threats to a global economy open to US businesses on Wall Street’s terms, and (2) access to a large body of “colonial” soldiers, trained and equipped by US advisers, interoperable with the US military, and under US command, which can be used in furtherance of US military projects in East Asia (and beyond). These goals explain Washington’s hostility to the DPRK. The DPRK is the major organized force in pursuit of a mission of Korean independence that is fundamentally at odds with the goals of the United States on the peninsula. That the DPRK is socialist is also a reason for US hostility, but inasmuch as North Korean socialism reduces Wall Street’s sphere of exploitation only marginally, it is but a nugatory cause of Washington’s inimical stance toward the country; the opportunity cost to corporate America of the DPRK’s people-centered economy is miniscule, since the opportunities for profit-making in northern Korea are insignificant on a world scale. In the simplest terms, the major reason US policy toward the DPRK is “the end of North Korea” is because Washington wants the Korean peninsula as a military outpost in East Asia, and the DPRK wants its country back.<br /> <br /> Before moving on, a final point should be addressed about Washington’s aims. Some argue that US policy toward the DPRK is not the demise of the country, but only its permanent weakening. Weakening the DPRK, the argument goes, allows Washington to attribute North Korea’s crippled state to the DPRK’s alternative, state-owned, enterprise-dependent economic model (rather than to the measures the United States has taken to weaken it). Undermining the DPRK, and then attributing its consequent difficulties to its economic model, has the advantage of strengthening the grip on the public mind of the US-led program of anti-communist slander, producing the mass misconception that alternatives to the US-superintended global economy are a “dead-end” (as Obama called them). It also keeps the DPRK functioning (though barely), so that it can be used as an alleged menace to justify a continued US military presence on the peninsula, and to generate billions of dollars in sales for the US arms industry. Citing North Korea, US president Donald Trump encouraged Japan and the ROK to purchase “massive amounts of military equipment” from the United States.21 The idea is that if the DPRK didn’t exist, it would have to be invented, otherwise the United States would be bereft of a pretext to station troops on Korean soil and the tributary states of the US empire would have difficulty justifying the transfer of their citizens’ tax dollars to US weapons manufacturers.<br /> <br /> To be sure, a pretext for permanently deploying troops to a foreign country is helpful in eliciting the consent of the people affected, but this argument implicitly assumes that there are no pretexts other than defense of South Korea from North Korean aggression for stationing US military personnel on the peninsula. On the contrary, the United States stations troops in scores of countries, none of which are divided, and yet pretexts for extending the Pentagon’s reach to all these countries have never been difficult to construct. A sufficient pretext is a reference to a threat of some kind. Japan isn’t divided, and there is no independent Japanese state from which a dependent US ally must be defended, yet there are 54,000 US troops in Japan.22 The pretext for their presence is the need of the United States to protect an ally from external threat. Were the intra-Korean threat to the ROK eliminated, Washington would simply justify the placement of US military personnel and equipment on the Korean peninsula as a necessity of maintaining the security of an important ally against potential threats from China, or even Russia. Hence, there exists sufficient material to construct more than one pretext for US military occupation of Korea.<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt; * *<br /> <br /> There are two broad methods Washington has used to weaken and undermine the DPRK, with a view to eventually destroying it: isolation and unremitting military pressure. Both are measures of economic warfare. Both are intended to bring about the economic collapse of North Korea. Isolation is achieved through a network of sanctions whose purpose is to deny the DPRK vital economic inputs, forcing it to rely on more expensive surrogates, or to suffer crippling shortages. Unremitting military pressure—that is, the unceasing threat of attack—keeps the DPRK on a permanent war footing, diverting critical resources from its civilian economy to military preparedness. The goal is to place the DPRK on the horns of a dilemma: allocate expenditures to the military sufficient to deter an attack and bankrupt the economy, or allocate sufficient expenditures to the civilian economy to allow it to thrive (as much as is possible with restricted access to inputs) at the expense of self-defense. Neither choice is palatable, and both lead eventually to disaster. As we’ll see, the DPRK decision to build a nuclear weapons capability is a solution to the dilemma with which the United States has presented Pyongyang. Unremitting US hostility is the distal cause of the DPRK’s decision to develop nuclear weapons.<br /> <br /> The history of US sanctions on the DPRK is as old as the DPRK itself. From the moment the DPRK was founded in 1948, Washington has tried to block Pyongyang’s access to vital economic inputs in order to make the state fail. As a rival to Washington’s puppet state in Korea, and hostile to the US project of turning the peninsula into a stationary US aircraft carrier, the DPRK had to be destroyed.<br /> <br /> The United States has attempted to bring about the quietus of other communist states and has used economic warfare in an effort to achieve this goal. Washington’s initial offensive against China, beginning in the late 1940s, was “conducted predominantly on the economic front.” Washington sought to plague China with “‘a general standard of life around and below subsistence level’, ‘economic backwardness’, and a ‘cultural lag’.” The Truman administration declared that there must be “‘a heavy and long protracted cost to the whole social structure.’ A ‘state of chaos’ and ‘catastrophic economic situation’ must ultimately be created, leading China ‘toward disaster’, ‘collapse’.” Successive administrations pursued the same policy, expanding the embargo to include “medicine, tractors and fertilisers.” Walt W. Rostow, an anti-communist economist and principal player in the 1960s US foreign policy establishment, applauded US economic warfare for having retarded China’s economic development by decades. “Metaphorically speaking,” remarked political scientist Edward Luttwak, “it might be said that a ban of Chinese imports is the nuclear weapon that America keeps pointed at China.”23<br /> <br /> Sanctions have effects equivalent to a nuclear attack. In 1999, the political scientists John Mueller and Karl Mueller wrote an important paper in ''Foreign Affairs'', the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, in which they argued that economic sanctions “may have contributed to more deaths during the post-Cold War era than all weapons of mass destruction throughout history.”24 The scholars tallied deaths due to the use of weapons of mass destruction as follows: “The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki together killed more than 100,000 people, and at a high estimate suggests that some 80,000 died from chemical weapons in World War I. If one adds the deaths from later uses of chemical weapons in war or warlike situations … as well as deaths caused by the intentional or accidental use of biological weapons and ballistic missiles, the resulting total comes to well under 400,000.”25 By contrast, the Allied economic blockade of Germany during the Great War is estimated to have caused almost twice as many deaths through hunger and malnutrition26 while “as many as 576,000 Iraqi children may have died” from food scarcity-related diseases caused “by economic sanctions imposed by the Security Council, according to two scientists who surveyed the country for the Food and Agriculture Organization,” whose findings were reported in the ''Lancet'', the journal of the British Medical Association.27<br /> <br /> “So long as they can coordinate their efforts,” the two political scientists wrote, “the big countries have at their disposal a credible, inexpensive and potent weapon for use against small and medium-sized foes. The dominant powers have shown that they can inflict enormous pain at remarkably little cost to themselves or the global economy. Indeed, in a matter of months or years whole economies can be devastated.”28 And part of the devastation can be a death toll which exceeds that producible by a nuclear attack.<br /> <br /> Perhaps Cuba is most comparable to the DPRK as a target of US economic warfare. “Of all the methods devised to obtain a change of regime, none seemed as compelling as the use of political isolation and economic sanctions,” wrote the historian Louis A. Perez Jr. “Officially designated as an ‘economic denial program’, sanctions expanded into a full-blown policy protocol designed to induce economic hardship in Cuba. It should not be supposed that the Cuban people were unintended ‘collateral damage’ of U.S. policy. On the contrary, the Cuban people were the target. Cubans were held responsible for, and made to bear the consequences of, the programs and policies of their government.”29<br /> <br /> Sanctions were designed to create economic chaos, in order to promote disaffection and “inflict adversity as a permanent condition of daily life.” According to US assistant Secretary of State Thomas Mann, US economic warfare aimed to “exert a serious pressure on the Cuban economy and contribute to the growing dissatisfaction and unrest in the country.” US President Dwight Eisenhower defined the aim of sanctions as the creation of “conditions which will bring home to the Cuban people the cost of Castro’s policies and of his Soviet orientation.” Eisenhower anticipated that “as the situation unfolds, we shall be obliged to take further economic measures which will have the effect of impressing on the Cuban people the cost of this communist orientation.” The US president concluded that, “If they are hungry,” Cubans “will throw Castro out.”30 Perez added:<br /> <br /> The intent was to “weaken [the Castro government] economically,” explained one State Department briefing paper, to “promote internal dissension; erode its internal political support … [and] seek to create conditions conducive to incipient rebellion.” Sanctions were designed to create “the necessary preconditions for nationalist upheaval inside Cuba,” the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research explained, to obtain the downfall of the Castro government “as a result of internal stresses and in response to forces largely, if not wholly, unattributable to the U.S.” The idea was to use “economic pressures . . . in order to engender more public discomfort and discontent,” explained Assistant Secretary Rubottom, in the form of “a relentless, firm pressure, [and] a steady turning of the screw.” The “only foreseeable means of alienating internal support,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester Mallory concluded in 1960, “is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.” Mallory recommended that “every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba, . . . [to deny] money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and [the] overthrow of government.”31<br /> <br /> Washington has aimed its sanctions at governments which adopt alternative, state-owned, enterprise-dependent, economic models which compete with Washington’s Wall Street-centric model of an open (to US exploitation) world economy. One of the objectives of carrying out economic warfare against competing economic models is to sabotage them, so that they appear to be inferior alternatives to Washington’s preferred model. Essential to this approach is to conceal the damage Washington’s economic warfare has wrought on an economy and to attribute the targeted state’s economic travails to the adoption of the wrong economic model.<br /> <br /> The experiment with socialism, it is said, showed that public ownership and planning of the economy simply doesn’t work. Didn’t socialism fail in the USSR and Eastern Europe? Not at all. If success is defined as full employment and an unremittingly growing economy, then Soviet socialism was an unqualified success. From the moment in 1928 that the Soviet economy became publicly owned and planned (i.e., socialist), to the point in 1989 that it was steered by Mikhail Gorbachev in a free market direction, Soviet GDP per capita growth exceeded that of all other countries but Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. GDP per person grew by a factor of 5.2, compared with 4.0 for Western Europe and 3.3 for the Western European offshoots (the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand).32 In other words, over the period in which its publicly owned planned economy was in place, the USSR’s record in raising incomes was better than that of the major industrialized capitalist countries. The Soviet Union’s robust growth over this period is all the more impressive considering that the period includes the war years when a major assault by Nazi Germany left a trail of utter destruction in its wake. The German invaders destroyed over 1,500 cities and towns, along with 70,000 villages, 31,000 factories, and nearly 100 million head of livestock.33<br /> <br /> Soviet economic growth was highest until 1970, at which point expansion of the Soviet economy began to slow. However, even during this so-called (and misnamed) post-1970 period of stagnation, GDP per capita grew 27 percent.34 And importantly, during the years of socialism, the Soviet economy never contracted. Contraction only came in the final years, when the Gorbachev government abandoned central planning and embraced markets as a method of regulating all economic activity.<br /> <br /> In reality, the experience of the Soviet Union demonstrates that socialism did, indeed, work. However, the great powers went to extraordinary lengths to sabotage it so that it wouldn’t. From its infancy, the Soviet Union was menaced by a program of sabotage no different from that which Washington has directed at the DPRK. In 1920, the Bolsheviks complained that “Russia, thanks to her Soviet form of economy, could supply Europe … with double and triple the quantity of foodstuffs and raw materials that Tsarist Russia used to supply. Instead of this, Anglo-French imperialism has compelled the Toilers’ Republic to devote all its forces to self-defense.”35 Throughout the Soviet Union’s seven decades of existence, a substantial fraction of its budget was allocated to the military as an imperative of self-defense against aggressive capitalist powers, first imperial Britain and imperial France, followed by the Axis powers (especially Nazi Germany), and then the United States. In all these cases, the USSR had to play catch-up against hostile powers which had economies many times larger, and were therefore capable of fielding militaries many times stronger at a lighter cost burden relative to GDP. Without the crippling effects of incessant military pressure, the Soviet economy would very likely have posted even stronger growth.<br /> <br /> North Korea finds itself in the same situation as a victim of military pressure imposed by a stronger foe. But there’s a critical difference. The Soviet Union was a vast continental country containing almost all the inputs a modern industrial economy needed to thrive, including oceans of oil. It was therefore virtually invulnerable to blockade and could draw on its own natural resources to fuel its economy. In contrast, Cuba and the DPRK, small countries with limited resources, depend on trade to obtain vital economic inputs. Consequently, Washington is in a better position to create havoc on the Cuban and North Korean economies than it was on the Soviet economy, and to attribute the resulting chaos to socialism.<br /> <br /> This point is “essential to the US purpose, for central to US objectives” is “the need to maintain the appearance that the collapse of” the DPRK or Cuba, should they collapse, is “the result of conditions from within” and “the product of government economic mismanagement … thereby avoiding appearances of US involvement.”36 According to Perez:<br /> <br /> In Cuba, [the] “United States sought to produce disarray in the Cuban economy but in such a fashion as to lay responsibility directly on Fidel Castro. The goal of the United States … was to make ‘Castro’s downfall seem to be the result of his own mistakes’. [The US ambassador] in Havana early stressed the importance of appearance: ‘It is important that the inevitable downfall of the present Government not be attributed to any important extent to economic sanctions from the United States as a major factor.’ The United States … sought ‘to make it clear that when Castro fell, his overthrow would be due to inside and not outside causes’! This was the purport of a lengthy memorandum by George Denney, Director of State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research. The idea was to eliminate Castro ‘without resort to invasion or attributable acts of violence and violations of international law’, specifically by ‘creating the necessary preconditions for nationalist upheaval inside Cuba … as a result of internal stresses and in response to forces largely, if not wholly, unattributable to the US’. Denney continued: If the Castro Communist experiment will appear to have failed not on its own merits but as a result of obvious or inadequately disguised US intervention, or as a consequence of the fraudulent invocation … of a unilateral and lopsided Monroe Doctrine, the validity of Castro’s revolutionary course might remain unquestioned. This Castro Communist experiment constitutes a genuine social revolution, albeit a perverted one. If it is interrupted by the force of the world’s foremost ‘imperialist’ and ‘capitalist’ power in the absence of a major provocation, such action will discredit the US and tend to validate the uncompleted experiment … Direct US assistance should be avoided … Excessive US or even foreign assistance or involvement will become known and thus tend to sap nationalist initiative, lessen revolutionary motivation and appeal, and allow Castro convincingly to blame the US.”37<br /> <br /> An egregious example of blaming the target of sanctions for the sanctions’ effects was provided in 2010 by Amnesty International. The Western human rights organization released a report that condemned the DPRK government for failing to meet “its obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the right to health of its citizens,” citing “significant deprivation in [North Koreans’] enjoyment of the right to adequate care, in large part due to failed or counterproductive government policies.” The report documented rundown healthcare facilities which operated “with frequent power cuts and no heat” and medical personnel who “often do not receive salaries, and many hospitals [that] function without medicines and essentials.” Horrific stories were recounted of major operations carried out without anesthesia. Whether the report was accurate or not is difficult to determine, but if we assume, for the sake of argument, that it was, the assessment suffered from a glaring flaw: it made not a single reference, direct or indirect, to the US-led campaign of economic strangulation that has lasted the better part of a century and has been designed to make the DPRK—along with its healthcare system—fail.38 The report’s conclusion was tantamount to attributing the economic devastation caused by the Nazi assault on the Soviet Union to the alleged failures of Soviet policy, rather than the scorched earth policy of Nazi Germany, with the Nazi invasion treated as if it had never happened.<br /> <br /> US sanctions against the DPRK have included the following:<br /> <br /> * limits on the export of goods and services<br /> * prohibition of most foreign aid and agricultural sales<br /> * a ban on Export-Import Bank funding<br /> * denial of favorable trade terms<br /> * prohibition of imports from North Korea<br /> * blocking of any loan or funding through international financial institutions<br /> * limits on export licensing of food and medicine for export to North Korea<br /> * a ban on government financing of food and medicine exports to North Korea<br /> * prohibition on import and export transactions related to transportation<br /> * a ban on dual-use exports (i.e., civilian goods that could be adapted to military purposes)<br /> * prohibition on certain commercial banking transactions39<br /> <br /> In recent years, US sanctions have been complemented by “efforts to freeze assets and cut off financial flows”40 by blocking banks that deal with North Korean companies from access to the US banking system. The intended effect is to make the DPRK a banking pariah that no bank in the world will touch. Former US President George W. Bush was “determined to squeeze” North Korea “with every financial sanction possible” until its economy collapsed.41 The Trump administration took up the same cudgel and wielded it with even fiercer determination.<br /> <br /> Washington has also acted to deepen the bite of sanctions, pressing other countries, including the DPRK’s chief trading partner, China, to join its campaign of economic warfare against a state it faults for maintaining a Marxist-Leninist system and non-market economy.42 This has included the sponsoring of a United Nations Security Council resolution compelling all nations to refrain for exporting dual-use items to North Korea (a repeat of the sanctions regime that led to the crumbling of Iraq’s healthcare system in the 1990s). Dual-use items are goods that have important civilian uses but might also be used for military purposes. In Arab nationalist Iraq, medical “diagnostic techniques that use radioactive particles, once common in [the country, were] banned under [UN] sanctions, and plastic bags needed for blood transfusions [were] restricted.”43 On October 14, 2006 the United Nations Security Council banned the export to the DPRK of any goods, including those used for civilian purposes, which could contribute to WMD-related programs—the very same sanctions that led, at minimum, to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths in the 1990s when the export of potentially weapons-related material, also essential to the maintenance of sanitation, water treatment, and healthcare infrastructure, was held up or blocked.<br /> <br /> Kaesong, a vast industrial park of South Korean factories situated near the armistice line (on the DPRK side) that employed North Korean workers, provides an example of how all-encompassing the dual-use sanctions net has been cast. “U.S. officials blocked the installation of a South Korean switchboard system at Kaesong on the ground that the equipment contained components that could have been adapted for military use. As a result, the 15 companies that operated at Kaesong shared a single phone line, and messages often had to be hand-delivered across the border.”44 While dual-use sanctions may appear to be targeted, just about any item required for the provision of basic healthcare, sanitation, and education—chlorine, syringes, x-ray equipment, medical isotopes, blood transfusion bags, even graphite for pencils—can be construed to have military uses and therefore banned for export. One Western official who worked on her country’s North Korea desk spent much of her time reviewing material for export to the DPRK to determine whether it could be used for military purposes, including corrugated metal for roofing. Since virtually any item has potential military uses, virtually every export item was blocked.<br /> <br /> The DPRK is so heavily sanctioned—the most sanctioned country on earth, according to George W. Bush—that for years US officials doubted that additional sanctions could make any difference. Obama, echoing his predecessor, called the DPRK “the most isolated nation on earth,” and, furthermore, “doubted whether new sanctions would change its behavior.”45 The ''New York Times'' noted that North Korea “is under perhaps the heaviest sanctions on earth,”46 while the ''Wall Street Journal'' added that “North Korea is already an isolated nation, so there isn’t much more economic pressure the U.S. can bring to bear,”47 while historian Bruce Cumings observed that the DPRK has “been isolated by the United States since the regime was formed in 1948.”48<br /> <br /> While economic warfare hasn’t brought about the capitulation of Pyongyang that Washington has long sought, it’s clear that the US-led campaign of economic warfare has set back the DPRK’s economic development. According to a former DPRK diplomat, the decades since the dissolution of the socialist bloc, which North Korea relied on for trade, have been the most difficult:<br /> <br /> This had a major impact on our economy. And with the disappearance of the USSR, the US moved to a policy of intensification, believing that our days were numbered. The US intensified its economic blockade and its military threat. They stopped all financial transactions between the DPRK and the rest of the world. The US controls the flow of foreign currency: if they say that any bank will be the target of sanctions if it does business with the DPRK, then obviously that bank has to go along with them. The US issued such an ultimatum to all companies: if they do business with North Korea, they will be subject to sanctions by the US. This is still in place. The US government thought that if they cut economic relations between the DPRK and the rest of the world, we would have to submit to them. The only reason that we have been able to survive is the single-hearted unity of the people. The people united firmly around the leadership. We worked extremely hard to solve our problems by ourselves.49<br /> <br /> In June 2017, the foreign ministry of the DPRK released a statement on US economic warfare. US sanctions, the ministry said, had “grown utterly vicious and barbaric” and represented an attempt to “obliterate the rights to existence and development of the state and people of the DPRK, destroy modern civilization and bring [North Korea] back into medieval darkness.” The ministry cited a “prohibition on the export of underground resources including coal” and sanctions on dual-use items as measures that were “having adverse consequences for the people’s livelihood and normal economic activities.” So all-encompassing were sanctions that even the importation of “frozen chicken, cosmetics packaging and zipper tab production equipment and materials as well as frequency stabilizers and voltage regulators to be used at fishery stations” was blocked. UNICEF attempted to import “24.4 tons of malaria mosquito repellent” with no success. Over a dozen “mobile X-ray units and the reagent for diagnosis of tuberculosis” were held up for delivery by six months because they were designated as dual-use items. “In January 2017, a hundred thousand ampoules of ephedrine being imported by a health company of the DPRK” were blocked.50 One DPRK source estimated that the damage done by economic sanctions and blockade to 2005 is astronomical.51<br /> <br /> On top of economic warfare, North Korea has faced unceasing US military hostility. The US military has had a continuous presence on the Korean peninsula since 1945, and only for a brief period of roughly 12 months, from the summer of 1949 to the summer of 1950, have there been less than tens of thousands of US troops on Korean soil. Over the same period, the US has had an unceasing and major military presence in nearby Japan. US warships patrol the DPRK’s maritime borders, and US warplanes, including B-2 (Swan of Death) strategic bombers fly menacingly close to its airspace, prowling at times only 12 nautical miles from the North Korean coastline. Washington kept battlefield nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula from the late 1950s to the early 1990s and refuses to renounce the first strike use of strategic nuclear weapons against North Korea—and refused to do so even before Pyongyang acquired its own nuclear weapons capability! Indeed, US nuclear doctrine allows for the use of nuclear weapons in response to any North Korean attack, conventional or otherwise, against any country the United States deems to be an ally or partner.52<br /> <br /> North Korea hasn’t been the only country to face Washington’s hostile treatment. What Felix Greene wrote in 1970 of China and Cuba remains true of North Korea today:<br /> <br /> The United States imposed a 100 percent embargo on trade with these countries; she employs great pressure to prevent her allies from trading with them; she arms and finances their enemies; she harasses their shipping; she threatens them with atomic missiles which she announces are pre-targeted and pre-programmed to destroy their major cities; her spy ships prowl just beyond these countries’ legal territorial waters; her reconnaissance planes fly constantly over their territory. And having done all in their power to disrupt these countries’ efforts to rebuild their societies by means of blockades to prevent essential goods from reaching them, any temporary difficulties and setbacks these countries may encounter are magnified and exaggerated and presented as proof that a socialist revolutionary government is ‘unworkable’.53<br /> <br /> Faced with much larger, hostile adversaries, Pyongyang has been forced to channel a crushingly large percentage of its GDP into defense. In absolute numbers, the DPRK’s military expenditures are small—an estimated $3.4 billion to $9.5 billion per annum,54 roughly on par, as already noted, with the budget of the New York City Police Department. In contrast, the ROK’s military budget was $36 billion in 2017 and was scheduled to increase to $38 billion in 2018—four to eleven times larger than the DPRK’s.55 But as a percentage of its economy, North Korea’s military outlays are colossal. Estimates vary, but Pyongyang’s military expenditures are thought to fall somewhere between 15 and 25 percent of the DPRK’s gross domestic product.56 That puts North Korea in a class all its own. In 2015, the average country spent 2.2 percent of its GDP on its military. The United States spent 3.3 percent and the ROK 2.6 percent.57 However, Pyongyang’s large military expenditure relative to GDP is not out of the ordinary for a country at war. In World War II—a war in which the United States faced no existential threat—US military expense as a percentage of GDP reached as high as 38 percent.58 Considering that the DPRK is in both a ''de jure'' and ''de facto'' state of (cold) war with the United States, South Korea, and other US satellites, and that the military threat to North Korea posed by these forces is existential, the country’s significant military outlays as a percentage of the GDP are far from anomalous. But they are onerous. South Korea is able to spend a very modest percentage of its GDP on its military and still vastly outspend its northern neighbor in absolute terms because it has a much larger economy. The greater relative size of South Korea’s economy is partly a function of differences in population size. South Korea has roughly twice the population of North Korea. Partly it’s a corollary of decades of US-led economic warfare against the DPRK, which has stunted North Korea’s economic development. And partly it’s a consequence of Washington taking unusual steps to accelerate South Korea’s economic growth so that it would outpace its northern rival.<br /> <br /> According to Bruce Cumings, during the Cold War, the “United States was willing to indulge certain countries, especially places like [South] Korea sitting on the fault lines of the Cold War, so that they could become self-supporting and compete in world markets.”59 One of the ways Washington indulged the ROK was through direct injections of aid. “Official sources say that about $12 billion of the [US] treasury went to [South] Korea in the years 1945-1965”60—about $108 billion in today’s dollars. The DPRK also received aid from the socialist bloc, but on nowhere near the same scale. In 1965, when South Korea’s exports totaled only $200 million, Seoul received loans and grants from Japan of $500 million and direct investment from Japanese enterprises of $200 million—an injection of $700 million in total, more than three times the amount of the ROK’s exports, about $5.4 billion in today’s dollars.61<br /> <br /> Seoul’s deployment of hundreds of thousands troops to Vietnam on behalf of Washington’s war of aggression on Ho Chi Minh’s liberation forces netted the ROK billions of dollars in aid. Washington paid Seoul lucre of $7.5 million for every mercenary division it committed to the war. From 1965 to 1970, the South Korean mercenary army earned the state about $1 billion, equal to nearly $8 billion in 2018. Mercenary lucre accounted for an estimated 7 to 8 percent of South Korea’s GDP and for almost one-fifth of its total foreign earnings.62 Additionally, Vietnam became a bonanza for South Korean firms, upon whom Washington showered a wealth of war-related contracts, especially for steel and transportation equipment. As already noted, almost all of the ROK’s steel production during this period was absorbed by the US war effort in Vietnam.63<br /> <br /> At the same time, Washington allowed Seoul to pursue an economic development model that Obama would later decry as a dead-end. US policy turned a blind eye toward the ROK’s pursuit of “a state-led neomercantalist program of protectionism at home and export-led growth abroad, which relied above all on the openness of the vast [US] market”—“the essence of the ‘Asian development state’,” as Bruce Cumings described it. The South Korean economy was to be an engine “of economic growth by any means necessary, because of the great value [it] had in providing an alternative model of development in the global struggle with communism.”64 And yet the model very much resembled the paradigm of state-directed economic development favored by the USSR and China.<br /> <br /> When Park Chung-hee came to power in 1961, he immediately called for economic self-sufficiency65 and implemented a program of import substitution—that is, replacement of foreign imports with domestic production. Keen to secure export markets for corporate America, Washington had traditionally looked unfavorably upon countries which substituted domestic goods for US exports as a development strategy, but equally keen to facilitate South Korea’s economic development, the United States offered Park almost unqualified support for this otherwise routinely deplored policy.66 Park also introduced a succession of five-year plans prepared by an Economic Planning Board,67 recalling the five-year plans of the USSR, and multi-year plans of the DPRK. Moreover:<br /> <br /> [t]he government owned all the banks, so it could direct the life blood of business—credit. Some big projects were undertaken directly by state-owned enterprises—the steel maker, POSCO, being the best example—although the country had a pragmatic, rather than ideological, attitude to the issue of state ownership. If private enterprises worked well, that was fine; if they did not invest in important areas, the government had no qualms about setting up state-owned enterprises … and if some private enterprises were mismanaged, the government often took them over, restructured them, and usually (but not always) sold them off again.68<br /> <br /> Every measure of economic development Washington deplored, and punished countries for pursuing, Washington approved, in order to ensure that South Korea developed faster than its communist rival to the north. Chang Ha-Joon'','' author of ''Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism'', added that:<br /> <br /> [The South] Korean government also had absolute control over scarce foreign exchange (violation of foreign exchange controls could be punished with the death penalty). When combined with a carefully designed list of priorities in the use of foreign exchange, it ensured that hard-earned foreign currencies were used for importing vital machinery and industrial inputs. The [South] Korean government heavily controlled foreign investment as well, welcoming it with open arms in certain sectors while shutting it out completely in others, according to the evolving national development plan. It also had a lax attitude towards foreign patents, encouraging ‘reverse engineering’ and overlooking ‘pirating’ of patented products.69<br /> <br /> A revisionist retelling of the story of South Korea’s economic take-off locates the cause of the ROK’s robust growth in Seoul’s acceptance and vigorous pursuit of the very same open-economy, pro-foreign investment, free-trade, free-enterprise model that today Washington insists every country adopt. And yet the truth is quite the opposite. The United States temporarily bestowed upon the ROK the dual advantages of significant economic aid accompanied by exemption from the stifling constraints on former colonial countries of Washington’s open-economy model. The intended aim was to hothouse the South Korean economy. At the same time, the United States undertook to do whatever it could to cripple the economy of its puppet state’s northern rival, both directly, through economic warfare and unceasing military threat, and indirectly, by seeking to weaken, undermine, and eventually destroy the socialist bloc on which the DPRK depended for trade. And, then, when these efforts had come to fruition, and the South Korean economy began to grow at a faster clip than that of North Korea, Washington masked the exogenous role its policy had played in the divergence and attributed the outcome to endogenous variables—the alleged failures and inadequacies of communism, on the one hand, and the merits of South Korea’s capitalism, on the other.<br /> <br /> Hence, owing to the United States nurturing the South Korean economy and sabotaging that of the DPRK, so that a yawning chasm opened up between the two of them, Seoul is able to (and does) fund its military on a far grander scale than is within the capability of its northern rival. With military expenditures of only 2.6 percent of its GDP the ROK is able to outspend the DPRK in absolute terms many times over. It is impossible for Pyongyang to match this level of expenditure. Indeed, despite allocating as much as one-quarter of its GDP to defense, North Korea is still vastly outspent by Seoul. Far from posing a military threat to the ROK, the DPRK is so militarily weak by comparison that it is forced to sacrifice its civilian economy in order to mount even a fragile defense. The process is self-amplifying. The more Pyongyang sacrifices its civilian economy to its military, the more the gulf widens between the two countries’ economies. The only hope for the DPRK is to break the vicious cycle.<br /> <br /> The vicious cycle is supported by incessant military pressure exerted by Washington and its auxiliary South Korean military on North Korea via annual large-scale war games, the largest on the planet, and Washington’s unremitting threat of overwhelming attack.<br /> <br /> The United States has carried out annual anti-DPRK war game exercises with South Korea since 1976, in the form of what today are called the Ulchi-Freedom Guardian exercises, conducted during the summer, and the Key Resolve exercises, conducted in the late winter and early spring.<br /> <br /> The Key Resolve exercises of March and April 2016 were the largest ever, involving 300,000 South Korean troops and 17,000 US military personnel. The exercises were structured around a hypothetical invasion of North Korea for the purpose of “recovering” the entire territory of the peninsula. Troops rehearsed “decapitation”—which is to say, killing North Korean leaders—and seizing the DPRK’s ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons arsenal.70 In advance of the simulated invasion, the United States flew four advanced F-22 stealth fighter jets over South Korea.71 Every element of the exercise, from the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of troops, to the Pentagon bringing advanced weaponry onto the peninsula, was intended to force the North Koreans to exhaust their limited resources by inducing them to react to the threat by pouring money into mobilization of their own forces to prepare for a possible attack.<br /> <br /> In 2013, the White House approved a detailed plan, called ‘the playbook,’ to ratchet up tension with North Korea during that year’s Key Resolve exercises. The plan called for low-altitude B-52 bomber flights over the Korean peninsula. These were carried out in early March. A few weeks later, two nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers dropped dummy payloads on a South Korean missile range. The flights were deliberately conducted in broad daylight at low altitude, according to a US defense official, to produce the intended minatory effect. “We could fly it at night, but the point was for them to see it.”72 A few days later, the Pentagon deployed two advanced F-22 warplanes to South Korea, also part of the ‘play-book’ plan to intimidate Pyongyang. The White House, according to the ''Wall Street Journal'', knew that the North Koreans would react by threatening to retaliate against the United States and South Korea. Pentagon officials acknowledged that North Korean military officers are particularly agitated by bomber flights because of memories of the destruction wrought from the air during the Korean War.73<br /> <br /> The summer 2017 Ulchi-Freedom Guardian exercises also involved a series of visits to the Korean peninsula by advanced US strategic bombers to practice “attack capabilities,” accompanied by ROK and Japanese warplanes. At the same time, Washington directed a Navy aircraft carrier group to the region—all to North Korea’s consternation, the ''Wall Street Journal'' noted.74 The exercises involved 50,000 ROK soldiers, 17,500 US troops (of which 3,000 came from outside the peninsula) along with the participation of military personnel from seven US satellite countries (including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Columbia, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK) In addition, almost half a million ROK public employees participated in the simulation.75<br /> <br /> War game exercises are provocative for the obvious reason that the mobilization of large numbers of troops and equipment is indistinguishable from the marshaling of armed forces for an invasion. How can the DPRK military leadership know whether the arrival of a US Navy aircraft carrier group in nearby waters, flights by strategic bombers, and the mobilization of 350,000 troops, is a rehearsal for an invasion, or the start of one? These mobilizations, note the DPRK, may “go over to an actual war any time”76 and are an opportunity for a preventive attack.77 Consequently, twice a year (at minimum), the DPRK is forced onto a war footing to defend itself against a possible invasion, placing an enormous strain on its economy. At other times, as in 2017, US exercises become unremitting, with different mobilizations following in rapid succession, forcing the KPA to maintain an unflagging and exhausting state of readiness. While the United States and South Korea, with much larger economies, can easily afford biannual simulations of an attack, and can also readily afford to launch a string of successive troop and equipment mobilizations, for Pyongyang, the cost of mobilizing to deter an attack is crippling. As the ''Wall Street Journal'' noted:<br /> <br /> North Korea upped the tempo of its training flights sixfold, to 700 a day, on the first day of the 2013 U.S. and South Korean “Key Resolve” annual maneuvers. That naturally sent Seoul’s analysts to their calculators, concluding triumphantly that the North was either draining its war reserve or starving its civilian economy of fuel … When the U.S. and Japanese navies are operating in nearby waters, the North must keep its jets in the air and defenses mobilized. When U.S. and South Korean … troops are on the move near its border, it must activate troops in response. … The U.S. and its allies can maintain their mobilization virtually indefinitely. North Korea can’t. Motor fuel is a sore point, but so are food, equipment, and sanitation and health care for troops in the field.78<br /> <br /> In late October and early November of 2017, the Pentagon directed three US carrier strike groups to sail to the waters east of Korea, which Koreans know as the East Sea and the Japanese call the Sea of Japan. A US naval force this large hadn’t been assembled in ten years, and if the North Koreans regarded the anomaly as a premonitory sign of an impending attack, it’s likely that this was the reaction Washington intended to produce. In the midst of what would almost certainly look to North Korean military authorities to be the marshaling of a massive strike force for an attack, a formation of US B1-B strategic bombers took off from Anderson Air Force Base at Guam, passed over Okinawa, and headed toward Jeju Island, off the southern tip of Korea. From there the bombers turned north, picked up an escort of US and ROK jetfighters, and proceeded directly toward the DPRK. Almost certainly, alarm bells went off at KPA headquarters. We can assume the DPRK’s aging jet fighters were scrambled, using up scarce aviation fuel. Before reaching the armistice line, the bombers quickly changed course, and diverted to a US firing range, where they dropped a dummy payload, and then headed home.79 Later, the DPRK media referred to the bomber flight as a “surprise nuclear strike drill,” but during the flight, North Korean generals would surely have wondered whether they were witnessing a drill or the start of a nuclear attack. the ''Wall Street Journal'' noted that US bombers had “buzzed” North Korea, an indisputable act of intimidation—and clearly a provocation—from a state that never tires of accusing North Korea of engaging in provocative acts. During the Reagan years, the United States had used a similar approach to unnerve the Soviets. “A squadron [of nuclear bombers] would fly straight at Soviet airspace, and [Soviet] radars would light up and units would go on alert. Then at the last minute the squadron would peel off and return home.”80<br /> <br /> The objective of anti-DPRK mobilizations by the United States, the ROK, and other US tributaries, is to exhaust the North Korean economy—to hobble it so badly that it fails, or to force the North Koreans to let down their guard. That’s certainly the conclusion Pyongyang has drawn. The “U.S. seeks to steadily escalate tension on the Korean Peninsula,” according to North Korea’s official news agency, KCNA, “through ceaseless joint military exercises and thus make the DPRK exhausted and slacken its alertness.”81 The United States, says ''Rodong Sinmun'', the newspaper of the ruling Workers’ Party, “is plugging the DPRK into an arms race through ceaseless war drills and arms build-up in a sinister bid to throw hurdles in its efforts to develop its economy and improve the standard of its people’s living and force them to live under a touch-and-go situation and thus seek an opportunity for a pre-emptive attack upon it.”82 It’s difficult to argue with this assessment.<br /> <br /> US officials regularly dismiss North Korean complaints that the US-led war games are provocations, by pointing out that the annual mobilizations for war are routine. But the recurring nature of the exercises hardly makes them less provocative—just routinely provocative. No mistake should be made that the exercises could ever be seen by any country against which they were directed as non-threatening, or even that Washington truly believes they can be sincerely characterized as such. This can be seen in the US reaction to far less menacing war games carried out by US adversaries. NATO officials argue that Russian exercises “right up against the borders, with a lot of troops,” are “extraordinarily provocative”83 and “destabilizing.”84 When Russia carried out war games in Belarus in the summer of 2017—which involved less than 40,000 troops and civilians,85 a small fraction of the number of military and civilian personnel who took part in the 2016 Key Resolve exercises on the Korean peninsula—Russian President Vladimir Putin was accused of “saber-rattling” and the exercises were said to raise “fears of aggression.”86 NATO members, “particularly the Baltic States, worried that the drills were a precursor to a potential invasion of their territories.”87 Western analysts expressed fear that Russia’s exercises heightened “the risk of an accident or miscalculation that could touch off a crisis.”88 Additionally, concerns were raised that an “error by an alliance or Russian soldier, such as misreading a drill as an aggressive act, could quickly escalate into a crisis if one side were to respond with force. An incident such as a crashed jet fighter could also raise questions about whether an accident or aggression by the other side occurred.”89<br /> <br /> All of these concerns are legitimate. But they apply just as strongly to US-ROK mobilizations, if not more so, considering that the US-led exercises are on an altogether larger scale, and therefore the possibility of error is all the greater. According to the ''Hankyoreh'', a liberal South Korean newspaper, “The biggest concern among experts is that the growing scale of joint military exercises has increased the potential for misunderstanding by Pyongyang. Robert Litwak, director of international security studies for the Wilson Center, told the ''Hankyoreh'' in a March [2017] interview that exercises [may look] like a defensive maneuver for us, [but] from North Korea’s perspective, they may think we’re preparing an attack when you start bringing B2 fighters’.”90 And yet fostering the impression in Pyongyang that the United States and its Korean puppet state are preparing an attack is precisely the intention. The point isn’t to practice the defense of South Korea against an attack from North Korea (which isn’t going to happen anyway, since North Korea hasn’t the resources to mount a successful invasion) but to keep Pyongyang off balance and pouring its limited resources into deterring an attack from the US-ROK (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Columbia, Denmark, the Netherlands, and UK) side.<br /> <br /> The United States also used a strategy of induced military overburden against the Soviet Union. The Reagan administration spent massively on an arms build-up in the 1980s, in an effort to force the Soviet Union to spend itself into bankruptcy in an effort to keep up.91 As the Soviets struggled to keep pace, their more limited resources were diverted increasingly to arms spending. Improvements in living standards were slowed and investment and consumption expenditures were forced to take a back seat to military outlays. US cold warrior Robert McNamara explained the strategy:<br /> <br /> The Soviet Union came out of the Second World War with a brilliant military victory. With heavy casualty and high economic expenditure … this country had three priorities for its plan after the war. 1. Renewing the country’s infrastructure completely so the Soviet people could reach the promise of communism; 2. Rebuilding and renewing the country’s defense in the face of the stalking capitalist world; 3. Gaining new friends in the world, especially in Eastern Europe and the Third World. …<br /> <br /> If the United States succeeds in engaging the Soviet Union in an arms race, then all these plans would go out the window. … Our goal was very simple: the second priority would, if possible, replace the first priority. In other words, first increasing the military expenditure and last, improving the people’s standard of living … and of course this would affect the third priority as well.<br /> <br /> What is the meaning of this? It means that if the Soviet Union is dragged into an arms race and a massive portion of its budget, 40 percent if possible, is allocated to this purpose, then a lesser amount would be left for improving the people’s lives, and therefore, the dream of communism, which so many people are awaiting around the world, would be postponed and the friends of the Soviet Union and the supporters of the idea of communism would have to wait a long time. … On the basis of this calculation, the arms race may even threaten Soviet ideology in Moscow.92<br /> <br /> US military pressure, combined with economic strangulation, has indisputably threatened the citadel of Korea’s movement for emancipation. But the DPRK still stands. The state has, in recent years, adopted a policy aimed at strengthening its ability to defend itself, while at the same time reducing the military drain on its civilian economy. The policy is called ''byungjin'' (parallel development.) It relies on nuclear weapons as a deterrent, allowing the DPRK to spend less on its armed forces, and more on its civilian economy. And the policy appears to be working. Astonishingly, despite the escalation of Washington’s efforts in recent years to ruin North Korea, the country’s economy grew by an estimated 3.9 percent in 201693—more than either the US or South Korean economies grew. The deterrent value of nuclear arms affords North Korea the space it needs to rebalance it spending away from its military to economic growth. It is perhaps for this reason that the CIA concluded that no amount of pressure would force the DPRK to give up its nuclear program.94 Nuclear weapons are the key to both the DPRK’s survival and to its overcoming the obstacles to its economic development that the United States has placed in its way.<br /> <br /> == ''Byungjin'' ==<br /> ''“Defensive weapons are not provocative unless''<br /> <br /> ''you are an aggressor.”''<br /> <br /> —James Mattis, US Defense Secretary1<br /> <br /> During the Cold War, US nuclear doctrine allowed the Pentagon to use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons in response to ''any'' attack against the United States, its allies, or its partners, even if the attack was carried out by conventional means by a non-nuclear weapons state. Moreover, the attack needn’t have been even directed at the United States for US nuclear doctrine to authorize the use of the Pentagon’s most lethal weapons.2 In principle, the Pentagon could launch a nuclear strike on Country A for using a troop of Boy Scouts to attack Country B with pea-shooters. With regard to Korea, Washington could reach for its nuclear sword to annihilate the DPRK, were it to launch a general invasion across the DMZ in pursuit of its patriotic duty to reunify its country and eject a foreign occupation army.<br /> <br /> The United States contemplated using nuclear weapons against North Korea during the Korean War, both initially, during the war for the south, and later, after the Chinese PVA routed US forces in the north.3 When US president Dwight D. Eisenhower was ready to bring the stalemated war to an end, he backed up his demand for talks by secretly letting Pyongyang and Beijing know that unless they complied, he would order a nuclear strike.4 By 1958, the United States had secretly deployed battlefield nuclear weapons to South Korea, where they would remain until 1991. For decades, Pentagon planners worked out scenarios in which nuclear weapons would be used to defeat DPRK forces in any war on the peninsula.5 Washington was ever ready to be a nuclear bully because there was never any danger that the DPRK could reply in kind. US “generals who previously served in Korea told [Bruce Cumings] that they’d be willing to use nuclear weapons in the Korean but not the European theater because in the Korean theater [the DPRK] had no nuclear weapons,”6 and therefore couldn’t retaliate in kind.<br /> <br /> The DPRK’s first attempt to deter a US nuclear attack was, paradoxically, to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it did in 1985. The treaty, in force from March 5, 1970 onward, commits treaty members “to pursue negotiations in good faith on measures relating to … nuclear disarmament.” The treaty divides signatories into two categories: nuclear weapons and non-nuclear weapons states, based on whether they have “manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to 1 January, 1967.” States with pre-1967 nuclear weapons are designated as nuclear weapons states, and include the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France. Countries that had no nuclear weapons prior to 1967 are called non-nuclear weapons states, even if they have acquired nuclear weapons subsequent to that date.<br /> <br /> The treaty requires that while they remain treaty signatories, non-nuclear weapons states refrain from manufacturing or otherwise acquiring nuclear weapons. In exchange for making this commitment, they are to receive technical advice, know-how, and other assistance from nuclear weapons states in developing peaceful applications of nuclear energy.<br /> <br /> For their part, nuclear weapons states are constrained by two obligations: first, to help non-nuclear weapons states access nuclear technology for civilian purposes; and second, to pursue negotiations in good faith on measures relating to nuclear disarmament. The treaty’s preamble obliges all states to forebear from using the threat of force in their relations with other countries. The preamble specifically recalls “that, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, states must refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”<br /> <br /> Have the nuclear weapons states fulfilled their treaty obligation to work toward disarmament? Given the scant progress these powers have made in bringing about a nuclear weapons-free world, one would be hard pressed to answer in the affirmative. Despite lofty rhetoric, none of the nuclear weapons states has taken any serious step toward eliminating their nuclear arsenals. The US Nuclear Posture Review of 2010, for instance, declares that the United States will never give up its nuclear weapons so long as nuclear weapons exist. That other nuclear weapons states hold the same view guarantees that disarmament will never happen.<br /> <br /> Pessimism is also warranted by the reaction of the nuclear weapons states to the 2017 UN Prohibition on Nuclear Weapons. The United States, France, and Britain issued a statement condemning the treaty, on the ground that they—the most militarily consequential countries on the planet—uniquely needed nuclear weapons to defend themselves.7 At the same time, they insisted that the DPRK, a military pipsqueak by comparison—which, given its New York City Police Department-sized armed forces might have the greatest need for nuclear weapons as a means of self-defense—should be forever denied them.<br /> <br /> What’s more, the prohibition against the use of military threat in international relations promulgated in the UN Charter, and referred to in the treaty’s preamble, is routinely ignored by three of the nuclear weapons states, namely, the United States, Britain, and France. Rather than refraining, in their international relations, from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, these states, led by Washington, are indefatigable in employing force, both actual and threatened, to bend other countries to their will.<br /> <br /> In 1993, the US Strategic Command announced that it was retargeting some of its strategic nuclear weapons (i.e., hydrogen bombs) away from the former Soviet Union to North Korea. A month later, Pyongyang announced that it would withdraw from the NPT, signaling that if Washington was going to dangle a nuclear sword of Damocles over its head, North Korea would take countermeasures.8 The source of fissile material for the DPRK’s nuclear weapons program would be a 30-megawatt nuclear reactor established at Yongbyon in 1987. Pyongyang had imported the reactor from the Soviet Union, intending to substitute nuclear power for coal and imported oil, relying on the DPRK’s substantial uranium deposits. South Korea and Japan were building nuclear reactors too, and were also seeking to reduce dependency on oil imports.<br /> <br /> Washington immediately set to work undermining Pyongyang’s plans to build nuclear weapons. Just as Israel had launched a bombing raid to destroy the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981—an effort to prevent the Arab nationalist government from developing nuclear arms, which would have put it beyond the pale of US and Israeli bullying—the United States would dispatch bombers or launch cruise missiles to destroy the Yongbyon facility. Not only would the DPRK be prevented from acquiring the nuclear fuel it needed to make a nuclear device, Pyongyang’s plans to redress its vulnerabilities in energy production would also be undermined, thus contributing to the achievement of the longstanding US foreign policy goal of bringing about the end of North Korea.<br /> <br /> In the end, Washington chose not to destroy the Yongbyon facility—a decision that almost certainly would have led Pyongyang to shell Seoul, occasioning mass destruction and a major loss of life—when Jimmy Carter, then a former US president, flew to Pyongyang to work out a deal with Kim Il-sung. The deal, called the Agreed Framework, would see North Korea re-enter the NPT and shut down Yongbyon, in return for the US pledging to normalize relations, build two proliferation-safe light water reactors, and, while the reactors were under construction, provide shipments of fuel oil to meet the DPRK’s energy requirements. While this seemed like a workable basis for a long-term agreement, the accord offered a respite only. Washington had no interest in a permanent ''modus vivendi'' with North Korea. US officials believed it was only a matter of a few years before the accumulated effects of its economic sanctions, Pyongyang’s enormous defense expenditures relative to GDP, and the collapse of the DPRK’s export markets, would bring the Korean experiment in anti-imperialist self-sufficiency crashing down. According to the CIA’s projections, North Korea would throw in the towel by 2002.9 If Washington could drag its feet, it wouldn’t have to honor its side of the pact.<br /> <br /> Washington’s go-slow approach to the Agreed Framework hardly enamored Pyongyang to its decision to reverse its initial plan to withdraw from the NPT. It was clear from Washington’s temporizing that it had no real intention of meeting its obligations under the agreement. This became unmistakable when the George W. Bush administration tore up the agreement and went on the offensive. First, it effectively declared war, designating North Korea part of an “Axis of Evil.” Next, it put the DPRK on a list of seven countries deemed possible targets of a nuclear strike. The list also included Russia, China, Syria, Libya, Iran, and Iraq.10 (Note, again, that all of these countries operated economies that failed to comply with the Washington-prescribed model of integration into a US-superintended global economy, open to US investors and businesses.) With the Bush administration renewing hostilities, North Korea gave notice that it would withdraw from the NPT. The “Bush administration’s nuclear attack plan showed,” Pyongyang said, “that the United States … [was] pursuing world domination with force of arms and that the United States [was] not hesitant in launching a nuclear attack on any nation if it [was] regarded as an obstacle to this end.”11<br /> <br /> Echoing these concerns, a North Korean diplomat explained his country’s decision to exit the NPT and embark on the development of nuclear weapons:<br /> <br /> The NPT clearly states that nuclear power states cannot use nuclear weapons for the purpose of threatening or endangering non-nuclear states. So the DPRK thought that if we joined the NPT, we would be able to get rid of the nuclear threat from the US. Therefore, we joined. However, the US never withdrew its right of pre-emptive nuclear strike. They always said that, once US interests are threatened, they always have the right to use their nuclear weapons for pre-emptive purposes.12<br /> <br /> He added:<br /> <br /> The world situation changed again after 11 September 2001. After this, Bush said that if the US wants to protect its safety, then it must remove the ‘Axis of Evil’ countries from the earth. The three countries he listed as members of this ‘Axis of Evil’ were Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Having witnessed what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, we came to realise that we couldn’t put a stop to the threat from the US with conventional weapons alone. So we realised that we needed our own nuclear weapons in order to defend the DPRK and its people.13<br /> <br /> The NPT allows states to exit the accord if they believe their continued participation is injurious to their highest interests. “Each Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.” Clearly, Washington’s overt hostility, the listing of North Korea as a target of a possible nuclear strike, and the Bush administration’s virtual declaration of war, constituted “extraordinary events” which jeopardized the DPRK’s “supreme interests.”<br /> <br /> After North Korea began to develop nuclear weapons, the United States amended its nuclear doctrine in an attempt to bring the DPRK back into the non-proliferation treaty. In 2010, the Obama administration declared that the United States would no longer use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons against countries that did not possess them and were not seeking them. Hence, if the DPRK agreed to relinquish its nuclear weapons, and rejoin the NPT, Washington would forebear from future use of nuclear weapons against the DPRK. “This revised assurance” was “intended to underscore the security benefits of adhering to and fully complying with the NPT, and to persuade non-nuclear weapons states party to the Treaty to work with the United States and other interested parties to adopt effective measures to strengthen the non-proliferation regime,” declared the revised nuclear protocol.14 The offer was, however, too little, too late. And the United States’ record in working out non-proliferation agreements with target countries, and then attacking them after they disarmed, was unpropitious.<br /> <br /> On the day Baghdad fell to invading US forces, one of the Bush administration’s chief war mongers, John Bolton, belligerently warned Iran, Syria, and the DPRK to “draw the appropriate lesson.”15 Three years later, on October 9, 2006, the DPRK announced to the world the lesson it had drawn. On that day, it detonated an atomic bomb. By 2017, North Korea had detonated five more nuclear devices.16<br /> <br /> The lesson learned, namely that disarming is an invitation to an attack, was reinforced when NATO secretly armed Islamist militants and launched an air war to oust Muammar Gaddafi, after the Libyan leader, in a misguided attempt to curry favor with the West, dismantled his weapons of mass destruction, leaving his country vulnerable to attack. Saddam Hussein made the same blunder in Iraq a decade earlier. One DPRK diplomat asked:<br /> <br /> What happened to Libya? When Gaddafi wanted to improve Libya’s relations with the US and UK, the imperialists said that in order to attract international investment he would have to give up his weapons programs. Gaddafi even said that he would visit the DPRK to convince us to give up our nuclear program. But once Libya dismantled all its nuclear programs and this was confirmed by Western intelligence, the West changed its tune.17<br /> <br /> Rudiger Frank, a professor of East Asian Economy and Society at the University of Vienna, argues that three signal events underscored for Pyongyang that the decision it took to develop nuclear weapons was prudent:<br /> <br /> The first such instance was Gorbachev’s foolish belief that his policies to end the arms race and confrontation with the West would be rewarded by respect for the Soviet Union. … On the contrary, [the USSR] was destroyed piece by piece by Western support of anti-communist governments in its European satellites and independence movements in various (now former) Soviet Republics. In the end, the reformer was ousted, NATO was expanded, and his once mighty country was weakened and ridiculed. Others had an even less desirable fate, such as Romania’s Ceausescu or East Germany’s Honecker.<br /> <br /> The second instance was [Arab nationalist] Iraq. Humiliated after a quick defeat in the First Gulf War, [Saddam] accepted Western control over about half of his airspace in 1991 and had to suffer regular small-scale attacks on ground targets for more than a decade. Sanctions led to the ‘oil for food’ program of 1995. However, his compliance did not save [Saddam’s government] from allegations of hiding weapons of mass destruction, and ultimately from complete annihilation in the Second Gulf War.<br /> <br /> Now, there is Libya’s Gaddafi. It was not so long ago that it was popular in political circles to urge [the DPRK] to follow Gaddafi’s example. On February 14, 2005, the conservative South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo even reported that then ROK Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and … UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, was sent to Libya to urge Mr.  Gaddafi to visit North Korea and persuade Kim Jong Il to abandon his nuclear weapons.18<br /> <br /> The culmination of Gaddafi’s attempts to ingratiate himself with the West was his murder at the hands of NATO’s proxy jihadists, but not before one of their number sodomized him with a knife.<br /> <br /> None of this was lost on the North Koreans. A February 21, 2013 commentary by the KCNA noted that, “The tragic consequences in those countries which abandoned halfway their nuclear programs, yielding to the high-handed practices and pressure of the U.S. in recent years, clearly prove that the DPRK was very far-sighted and just when it made the option. They also teach the truth that the U.S. nuclear blackmail should be countered with substantial countermeasures, not with compromise or retreat.”19 ''Rodong Sinmun'' observed that, “Had it not been the nuclear deterrence of our own, the U.S. would have already launched a war on the peninsula as it had done in Iraq and Libya and plunged it into a sorry plight as [it did Yugoslavia] at the end of the last century and Afghanistan early in this century.”20<br /> <br /> The DPRK says it developed nuclear weapons “to protect its sovereignty and vital rights from the U.S. nuclear threat and hostile policy which have lasted for more than half a century,”21 and which culminated in the Bush administration’s nuclear saber rattling and threat of war.<br /> <br /> Compare North Korea’s reasons for having nuclear weapons with those of Britain. The UK government’s 2006 White Paper, “The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent,” states that “The primary responsibility of any government is to ensure the safety and security of its citizens,” and that for “50 years [Britain’s] independent nuclear deterrent has provided the ultimate assurance of [the country’s] national security.” “The UK’s nuclear weapons,” the document declares, are designed “to deter and prevent nuclear blackmail and acts of aggression against our vital interests that cannot be countered by other means.”22<br /> <br /> Russia invokes the same rationale for maintaining its nuclear arsenal.23 And, as we’ve already seen, the United States and France also say they need nuclear weapons to defend themselves.<br /> <br /> The rationale of nuclear weapons states for maintaining a stock of nuclear weapons “applies with even greater force to weak states that may come under threat from stronger ones. The smaller and weaker the state, the greater the need for nuclear weapons to make potential aggressors think twice before threatening or invading them.” Pointing specifically to Britain, researcher David Morrison argues that if “one of the strongest states in this world needs to have nuclear weapons in order to deter potential aggressors,” then it follows that every state needs them. Why should smaller states be uniquely denied the means to deter and prevent nuclear blackmail and acts of aggression against their vital interests? Morrison caps his point by speculating that, “Had Iraq succeeded in developing nuclear weapons, the US/UK would not have invaded in March 2003 (and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died as a consequence would still be alive).”24<br /> <br /> Of course, it’s impossible to know how history would have unfolded, had Iraq been in a position to present the possibility of a nuclear counter-strike as a deterrent to Washington’s drive to war; but the idea that nuclear weapons can deter aggression is not implausible. In 2010, General Kevin P. Chilton, at the time head of US Strategic Command, reminded ''Washington Post'' columnist Walter Pincus that, “Throughout the … history of nuclear weapons, no nuclear power has been conquered or even put at risk of conquest.”25 Explaining the grim logic that compels threatened countries like North Korea to reach for a nuclear sword, Putin wrote in RIA Novosti on February 27, 2012: “If I have the A-bomb in my pocket, nobody will touch me because it’s more trouble than it is worth. And those who don’t have the bomb might” become victims of a US-led campaign of “‘humanitarian intervention’. Whether we like it or not, foreign interference” by the United States and its satellites encourages states which resist integration into the US empire to acquire nuclear weapons as a means of safeguarding their liberty.26 Echoing Putin’s analysis, the chief of the Israeli army’s planning division, Major General Amir Eshel, observed, “Who would have dared deal with Qaddafi or Saddam Hussein if they had a nuclear capability? No way.”27<br /> <br /> “It is ironic,” noted Pincus, that the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, all of whom insist on non-proliferation (for other countries) “are all modernizing their stockpiles.” The “United States has a multi-billion-dollar program to upgrade its three major nuclear warheads and a more costly effort to build new land, sea and air strategic delivery systems. France is modernizing its nuclear bombs and missiles as well as its strategic submarine … Russia and China are modernizing, too.”28 The United States will “spend $80 billion … to maintain and modernize the nation’s nuclear arsenal,”29 while ally Britain announced in 2012 “contract awards of $595 million to begin design of replacements for its four nuclear submarines that carry Trident sub-launched ballistic missiles,” even though it was “in the midst of an austerity program that [included] cutting education, health and retirement programs.”30<br /> <br /> Not only is the United States modernizing its nuclear weapons arsenal, it is also developing new WMD. The Pentagon has been working on a precision-guided atom bomb designed, as the ''New York Times'' puts it, “with problems like North Korea in mind.” The “bomb’s explosive force can be dialed up or down depending on the target, to minimize collateral damage.” Owing to the weapon’s “smaller yields and better targeting,” it is more tempting to use. The bomb, called the B61, “is the first of five new warhead types planned as part of an atomic revitalization estimated to cost up to $1 trillion over three decades. As a family, the weapons and their delivery systems move toward the small, the stealthy and the precise,” making their use “more thinkable.”31<br /> <br /> The Pentagon is also at work on non-nuclear WMD “approaching the level of strategic nuclear arms in their strike capability.”32 The new class of weapons, termed “’Prompt Global Strike’ could be fired from the United States and hit a target anywhere in less than an hour.” The new weapons would “give the president a non-nuclear option for, say, a … pre-emptive attack on … North Korea,” achieving the effects of a nuclear weapon without, it is hoped, “turning a conventional war into a nuclear one.”33<br /> <br /> Some blame the Bush administration’s hostility toward North Korea for precipitating Pyongyang’s decision to acquire nuclear weapons. If only Bush hadn’t ripped up the Agreed Framework, they argue, North Korea wouldn’t have gone down the nuclear path. This is plausible, but would a different administration have behaved differently? The answer, it seems, is: probably not.<br /> <br /> US policy from the moment of the DPRK’s birth has sought to bring about the demise of North Korea. This policy has remained intact, throughout a succession of Democratic and Republican administrations. A policy of permanent peaceful co-existence, and not just one that is tactical and temporary, is not in the cards. Imperialists, Mao once observed, will never lay down their butcher knives and become Buddhists. And the Wall Street politicos in Washington have never contemplated a conversion to pacifism. During the years of the Clinton administration, when the Agreed Framework was in place, US policy was as strongly focused on the goal of bringing about the death of the DPRK as it had ever been. But during those years, it appeared that the long sought-after dissolution of the patriot state was imminent, and that Washington could play along with the illusion that it had arrived at an ''entente'' with Pyongyang, while awaiting the inevitable. And the inevitability of a North Korean collapse, appeared, from Washington’s point of view, to be beyond question. North Korea was reeling from the dissolution of the socialist bloc and the concomitant loss of important trading partners, and had been wracked by a series of natural disasters which left it food-insecure. Its economy was shrinking and its people were hungry. Moreover, the absorption of Communist East Germany into the US-led West Germany seemed to foretell of similar events unfolding on the Korean peninsula. The achievement of US policy goals vis-à-vis North Korea seemed like only a matter of waiting for a foreordained conclusion. Accordingly, Washington tarried, doing little to build the light-water reactors it had promised Pyongyang. But the CIA’s prediction of an imminent North Korean collapse was wrong. By the time Bush arrived on the scene, it was clear that the DPRK was not about to follow East Germany into surrender. If US foreign policy imperatives were to be achieved, pressure on Pyongyang would have to be intensified.<br /> <br /> Once it became clear to Pyongyang that Washington was feigning amicable cooperation, while clutching a knife behind its back, its motivation to remain in the NPT began to melt away. When Bush revealed the knife, and threatened to draw blood, the motivation disappeared altogether. Now, it made sense to exit the treaty and begin work on the development of nuclear weapons to deter US aggression, which, for Pyongyang, hardly seemed hypothetical.<br /> <br /> Pyongyang, however, would use the ultimate weapon, not only to deter nuclear attacks, but to deter conventional attacks, as well. Obama’s offer, made in his 2010 revision to US nuclear doctrine, to drop the provision that allowed the Pentagon to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states, suffered from a serious flaw. It failed to prohibit the US military from using its formidable array of conventional arms to bring about the DPRK’s demise. The United States had already turned North Korea into a charcoal briquette during the Korean War (to invoke language Colin Powell had used in a warning to the DPRK), incinerating territory north of the 38th parallel by dropping an ocean of incendiaries on people and buildings. In the space of more than half a century, US conventional military capabilities had advanced considerably. If the Pentagon could lay waste to North Korea once, it could do so again, except this time more rapidly, and with considerably less effort. The US threat lay, therefore, not with the United States’ nuclear weapons arsenal alone, but also in its stock of conventional weapons, which is capable of transforming the territory of North Korea into a terrain of smoking ruins. When US leaders remind Pyongyang that the United States has within its grasp the power to make North Korea cease to exist, they are not necessarily referring to a US nuclear strike.<br /> <br /> If the United States possesses the awesome power to completely destroy North Korea (for a second time) why doesn’t it use it? The answer is because it cannot do so without incurring a considerable cost, and because there is a less costly alternative, which is therefore more attractive. Although North Korea was burned to the ground in the early 1950s, the United States failed to eliminate the DPRK as a state. North Koreans know the Korean War as the Great Fatherland Liberation War, to mark the liberation of northern Korea after its brief occupation by US, ROK, and other US imperial forces. Destroying a country’s infrastructure, killing millions of its people, and driving the survivors into underground redoubts, may be within the grasp of the United States, but bringing about the surrender of a people is another matter. What’s more, because Seoul, a city of some 25 million, is within range of North Korean artillery, a US-ROK attack on the DPRK would trigger a counterattack resulting in significant cost to Washington’s puppet state in lost and crippled lives and damaged infrastructure. The more attractive option, from the US point of view, is the continued two-pronged campaign of warfare against the North Korean economy, in which DPRK industry is starved of inputs while the KPA is forced to draw resources from the civilian economy in order to deter possible attacks materializing from the planned and surprise US-led war games. Eventually, (Washington hopes), Pyongyang will realize that it’s impossible to simultaneously meet its security obligations and economic goals, and give up.<br /> <br /> In the meantime, attention can be drawn to the DPRK’s precarious economic state as an object lesson to the rest of the world in the folly of pursuing socialist policies. The purported folly can be perceived on two levels, one which attributes North Korea’s economic travails to endogenous factors, and the other which acknowledges the role of exogenous causes. On the first level, the endogenous one, the role of the United States in hobbling the DPRK economy is hidden, and the economic difficulties of North Korea are attributed to Pyongyang adopting “unsound” economic policies (state ownership and central planning) which are presented as inherently unworkable and “a dead end.” This reinforces an ideological hegemony which comports with Wall Street’s interests while fostering the belief among people who could benefit from socialism that public ownership of enterprises and central planning, with their attendant robust social welfare and full employment, while perhaps attractive in principle, are unworkable in practice, and that they lead inevitably to economic hardship, consumer goods shortages, and growing poverty, as proved by the DPRK (and its predecessor socialist bloc states and contemporary Cuba). After all, goes the argument, isn’t capitalist South Korea many times richer than Communist North Korea? On the second level, the exogenous level, Washington’s long campaign to weaken and undermine the North Korean economy is acknowledged and invoked to illustrate the folly of defying the US empire. A socialist path will only arouse the wrath of Washington’s Wall Street politicos, this view warns, and therefore is best avoided in favor of more “realistic” alternatives. Of course, the only “realistic” alternative is submission.<br /> <br /> For Pyongyang, nuclear weapons became a way to steer a course between the Scylla of stunted economic growth and the Charybdis of military vulnerability. The reasoning was that a nuclear counter-strike against the United States and its East Asian army in reserve raised the stakes sufficiently for Washington that it would never seriously contemplate an aggressive war against North Korea. As a consequence, Pyongyang could lighten the economic burden of funding its military. Rather than spending 15 to 25 percent of its GDP on self-defense, Pyongyang could bring the ratio down to a level more congruent with economic growth, confident that a modest nuclear weapons arsenal possessed a far greater deterrent capability than a massive and expensive army equipped with aging equipment.<br /> <br /> It also solved the problem of the growing gulf between the conventional forces of the DPRK and those of its peninsular rival. South Korea’s economy and military budget overshadowed North Korea’s. The situation was unsustainable. Eventually, ROK military dominance would be so overwhelming that the DPRK’s security situation would become intolerably precarious. William Perry, who served as the US Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration, observed that Pyongyang believed “correctly that [DPRK] conventional capabilities [were] not as good as those of South Korea and the U.S., so they compensate[d] for this with their nuclear forces.”34 Indeed, the real choice the DPRK faced was between building a massive and expensive army equipped with obsolescent equipment increasingly incapable of deterring an ROK attack, or building nuclear weapons which raised the stakes of US aggression above the level the US empire was willing to pay.<br /> <br /> The ratio of deterrence to cost vastly favored nuclear weapons over conventional military means, and for a country with a very limited budget, which ran the risk of bankrupting itself in the pursuit of self-defense, the acquisition of nuclear arms became a solution of considerable merit to an otherwise intractable problem. Pyongyang had no choice—other than capitulation and abandonment of Korea’s struggle for freedom—but to develop nuclear arms. Of course, the nuclear weapons solution wasn’t perfect. It failed to address the problem of the US-led campaign to blockade the DPRK’s access to vital industrial inputs, but it did provide Pyongyang with a way to free itself from the horns of the dilemma on which it had been thrust by US-Korea policy that forced North Korea to pit spending on a large army against economic growth.<br /> <br /> A formal linkage between the development of nuclear arms and economic advance was promulgated in May 2015. The DPRK government announced that it would pursue a “’two-track program’ of building the economy and nuclear weapons,” setting this as the country’s ‘permanent strategic course’.”35 The ''New York Times'' summed up the policy, called ''byungjin'', by observing that in the DPRK’s estimation only “a nuclear arsenal” would “make North Korea secure from American invasion and let it focus on growth.”36<br /> <br /> Building nuclear warheads, however, wasn’t enough. North Korea also had to build the means of delivering them to their target. The most economical and realistic option was ballistic missiles, since the DPRK lacked the resources to build and operate a long-range strategic bomber force and didn’t possess the forward operating bases on foreign soil that would place the bombers within range of the United States. On top of mastering ballistic missile technology, DPRK scientists and engineers had to figure out how to miniaturize the warheads to fit atop a missile. Plus, they had to develop heat-resistant shielding to prevent the warheads from burning up during re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere. Washington did all it could to sabotage the development work, running “a highly secret cyber-war against [North Korea] for years, seeking to infect and disrupt its missile program.”37<br /> <br /> More importantly, however, Washington stepped up its program of economic warfare against the DPRK, shepherding a series of sanctions resolutions through the UN Security Council which declared North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests to represent threats to international peace and security. The United Nations Charter authorizes the Security Council to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression.” Once it has identified a threat it is further authorized to “decide what measures shall be taken … to maintain or restore international peace and security.” The United States identified the DPRK’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them as threats to international peace and security, and persuaded the members of the Security Council to go along, thereby successfully passing a number of resolutions that required all UN members to impose various punitive economic measures on North Korea.<br /> <br /> Pyongyang objected on wholly reasonable grounds. To be sure, a first strike ''use'' of ballistic missiles to deliver a nuclear warhead against an adversary is a breach of international peace and security. However, ''testing'' a ballistic missile is not. Sending tanks across an international frontier to cause or threaten harm to an enemy is a breach of international peace and security. Putting tanks through their paces on a proving range is not. If the testing of weapons systems is a threat, then virtually every member of the United Nations—which is to say, any country which has ever tested a rifle, mortar, cannon, or fighter jet—has committed, or is currently committing, acts that violate the UN Charter. The development of the means of self-defense cannot be legitimately classified as a breach of international peace and security.<br /> <br /> Did Pyongyang seek to develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems for self-defense rather than aggression? The evidence in the affirmative is overwhelming. The DPRK’s principal adversary, the United States, has the means to annihilate the DPRK, both through conventional and nuclear means. Recognizing this, the DPRK would never launch a first strike, either against the United States or South Korea. When he was president, Bill Clinton said that if the DPRK leadership ever used nuclear weapons, “it would be the end of their country.” Clinton went on to argue that it was therefore “pointless for [the North Koreans] to try to develop nuclear weapons.”38 However, the US president overlooked the value to the DPRK of a nuclear sword as a means of deterring US aggression. Wesley Clark, the US Army General who commanded the 1999 NATO war on Communist Yugoslavia, remarked that “The leaders of North Korea use bellicose language, but they know very well that they do not have a military option available. … Were they to attack South Korea, their nation would be completely destroyed. It would literally cease to exist.”39 Neither do South Koreans have illusions that the DPRK’s nuclear weapons are intended for aggression. “To South Koreans,” observes the ''New York Times'', “the idea that North Korea would fire a nuclear-armed ICBM at the United States without being attacked is absurd. They argue that [the DPRK leadership] knows the United States would retaliate by destroying the North and that they do not regard [it] as suicidal.”40<br /> <br /> Nor do Korea specialists believe that North Korea’s nuclear arsenal was built with anything more than self-defense in mind. According to the Associated Press, they “generally accept Pyongyang’s stated rationale that it sought its own bomb for defensive reasons.”41<br /> <br /> Pyongyang articulated the DPRK’s nuclear posture in 2013. The patriot state defined nuclear weapons as serving “the purpose of deterring and repelling the aggression and attack of the enemy.” Pyongyang declared that it would limit the use of its nuclear weapons to repulsion of an “invasion or attack from a hostile nuclear weapons state,” and would prohibit their use against “non-nuclear states,” except those which “join a hostile nuclear weapons state in its invasion and attack on the DPRK.”42<br /> <br /> Clark referred to North Korea’s belligerent language. Bellicose language has been used by Pyongyang in response to US-ROK threats, often deliberately provoked, as in the 2013 playbook incident referred to earlier, in which the United States deliberately exacerbated tensions during that year’s Key Resolve troop mobilizations, with the intention of provoking North Korea. In quieter moments, the DPRK media routinely refer to North Korea’s nuclear weapons in pacific, self-defensive terms, for example: “It is natural for DPRK to bolster nuclear deterrent for self-defense”43; “DPRK’s nuclear force is treasured sword to safeguard peace”44; and “DPRK’s nuclear force deters U.S. nuclear war.”45 In fact, Pyongyang has declared repeatedly that its nuclear weapons deter war on the peninsula, believing that in the absence of a nuclear deterrent, the United States would eventually take advantage of North Korea’s obsolescing conventional military equipment, and its diminishing conventional military strength, to launch an attack.<br /> <br /> The UN Charter, argued DPRK foreign minister Ri Yong Ho in 2017, “recognizes the right to self-defense of every state.” And there exists no international law which prohibits the testing of ballistic missiles. If such a prohibition existed, every permanent member of the UN Security Council would be in violation of the law, since all these countries, possess and have tested, ballistic missiles. Neither is the DPRK prevented by law from possessing and testing nuclear weapons. Pyongyang withdrew legally from the NPT, and did so, on the perfectly legitimate ground that the treaty prevented it from developing a credible deterrent to the unceasing threat of war posed by the United States. Given that the open hostilities from 1950 to 1953 were ended by a cease-fire alone, and not a peace treaty, the United States is technically in a state of war with North Korea. And Washington’s Wall Street politicos evince not the slightest interest in bringing the state of war to an end. Repeatedly, Pyongyang has petitioned Washington to negotiate a peace treaty, and repeatedly its petitions have been rebuffed. At one point, Colin Powell, at the time US secretary of state, greeted yet another North Korean entreaty for peace, with this peremptory dismissal: “We don’t do non-aggression pacts or treaties, things of that nature.”46 David Straub, who had been director of the US State Department’s Korea desk from 2002 to 2004, explained why Washington has no interest in arriving at a peace treaty with the DPRK: “North Korea’s closed economic and social system means the country has virtually nothing of value to offer the United States.”47 Plus, North Korea poses not the slightest threat to the United States, so Washington has no incentive to work out an ''entente''.<br /> <br /> Ri pointed out that “there is no provision either in the UN Charter and or in any other international code which stipulates that … nuclear and ballistic rocket activity poses a threat to … international peace and security,” adding that “those countries that had begun [the] same activities far ahead of the DPRK have never been called into question at the UN Security Council.” Ri drew the conclusion that “the UN Security Council is the place where [guilt] is decided not on the basis of justice but by the criterion [of] whether one has … veto power or not.”48 The North Korean foreign minister submitted a formal request to the UN Secretariat for an explanation of “what ground and with what authority the Security Council adopted” resolutions “prohibiting [the] nuclear and ballistic rocket activities of the DPRK.” He asked, “If the Security Council has such ground and authority, why is it that it does not take issue with those countries which conduct the same nuclear and ballistic rocket activities.”49 The DPRK has also challenged the Security Council’s authority to deny the DPRK access to nuclear weapons by pointing out that if it had this authority there would be no need for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; the Security Council would simply issue a ukase limiting possession of nuclear arms to its own permanent members.<br /> <br /> International law, however, rests on a foundation of treaties. Countries agree to be bound by the terms of treaties into which they voluntarily enter. The United States, Britain, and France cannot be bound by the UN Prohibition on Nuclear Weapons because they have refused to join the treaty. No international body can lawfully compel these countries to abide by the terms of a treaty they refuse to be part of. Likewise, no international body can lawfully order the DPRK to abide by the terms of the NPT, since North Korea is no longer a signatory. Nor is any international body authorized to compel the DPRK to refrain from the testing of ballistic missiles; no treaty exists banning their testing or use. Ri submitted his request to the Security Council in 2016 for an explanation of the legal basis on which it has criminalized the DPRK’s self-defensive pursuit of nuclear arms and the means of delivering them. A year later he still hadn’t received a reply. It’s likely he never will, since the Security Council’s actions are ''ultra vires'', beyond its authority, and therefore are not legally defensible.<br /> <br /> The DPRK’s nuclear and ballistic tests are provocative only in the sense of provoking consternation in Washington that its options in bringing about the demise of North Korea had been attenuated by Pyongyang’s development of nuclear arms. David E. Sanger, a ''New York Times'' reporter who is close to the US foreign policy establishment through his membership in the Council on Foreign Relations, revealed why Washington was alarmed by North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile testing. “The fear,” wrote Sanger, “is not that [North Korea] would launch a pre-emptive attack on the [United States]; that would be suicidal, and if [North Korea] has demonstrated anything … [it] is all about survival.” Washington was alarmed, Sanger corrected, because the DPRK had “the ability to strike back.” In other words, nuclear weapons gave Pyongyang a way to defend itself.50 As one North Korean put it, “The army and the people of the DPRK are no longer what they used to be in the past when they had to counter US [nuclear arms] with rifles.”51 That, wrote Sanger, made North Korea “dangerous.”52<br /> <br /> But if the Security Council can construe the testing of weapons as a threat to international peace and security because Washington and Seoul regard these activities as provocations, then a much stronger case can be made for sanctioning the United States and South Korea, along with other members of the US empire, Canada, Great Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands, for regularly carrying out war games on a colossal scale, which have the effect of provoking the DPRK and would provoke any country in North Korea’s position. Indeed, that the regular mobilization of troops and weapons systems is provocative, apart from this being virtually axiomatic, is evidenced by the United States’ own reaction to Russian war games along Russia’s border with NATO countries which Washington has characterized as provocative and destabilizing. Western sources have described Russian troop maneuvers as “belligerent actions” and “an exercise in intimidation that” recall “the most ominous days of the Cold War,” which “could lead to unintended confrontations”53—threats, in their view, to international peace and security. The case to be made that the Ulchi Freedom Guardian and Key Resolve exercises threaten international peace and security is all the stronger considering that these exercises are the underlying cause of the DPRK’s nuclear and ballistic missile testing activities, which the Security Council deplores as threats to international order. The only order the DPRK’s activities threaten, however, is the global economic order that Washington’s Wall Street politicos maintain by using, or threatening to use, military force, including nuclear arms, against countries determined to exercise sovereignty.<br /> <br /> == The First Real Holy War ==<br /> In his 1900 pan-Africanist statement, W.E.B. Dubois wrote that “The problem of the twentieth century” is that of white supremacy—the “tacit but clear modern philosophy which assigns to the white race alone the hegemony of the world and assumes that other races … will either be content to serve the interests of the whites or die out before their all-conquering march.”1 This can be re-stated for the current century: the problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of US supremacy—the tacit but clear modern philosophy which assigns to the United States hegemony over the world and assumes that other countries will either be content to serve the interests of the United States’ dominant economic class or die out before its all-conquering march.<br /> <br /> Korean patriots, who have long struggled for freedom, will not die out before US supremacy’s all-conquering march. Korea remains divided, its southern half under the control of a US-puppet state. Tens of thousands of US troops continue to occupy the country, successors to a preceding Japanese occupation. And the US empire—unprecedented in scope and reach, as Zbigniew Brzezinski described it—remains undiminished in its resolve to smash the anti-imperialist patriot state based at Pyongyang—one of the few top-to-bottom alternatives to capitalism and the interests of the Wall Street politicos. For decades, Washington has waited for the DPRK to collapse, certain its efforts to bring about the end of North Korea would pay off. But the patriot state endures. Kim Il-sung recognized that Korea’s fight for freedom might last hundreds of years. But it would succeed. “India won its independence from England after 200 years of colonial enslavement,” he observed. “The Philippines and Indonesia won their independence after 300 years. Algeria after 130 years. Sri Lanka after 150 years and Vietnam after nearly 100 years.”2 It may take 200 years, maybe 300, but Koreans will one day be free. And one day, all of us, too, will be free from US supremacy’s all-conquering march. The path to freedom is being blazed by Koreans, Cubans, Venezuelans, Syrians, Chinese, Zimbabweans, and others who stand in a direct line of descent from the democratic revolution inaugurated in France in 1789, pushed forward by the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917, and advanced by the national liberation struggles of the twentieth century.<br /> <br /> On September 1, 1920, the communist movement, which had inspired Kim Il-sung and countless other Koreans, issued a manifesto at the close of a congress of peoples of the East, held at Baku.3 The congress had observed that the Western empires had handed over Korea—“that flourishing land with a thousand-years-old culture … to the Japanese imperialists for them to tear to pieces, and [the Japanese] are now with fire and sword making the Korean people submit to” exploitation by Japanese masters. Harking to the “fraudulent” holy war which governments “under the green banner of the Prophet” had, during the Great War, used to mobilize Muslims to serve “only the interests of … self-seeking rulers,” the congress called for “the first real holy war”—a war to be waged under a red banner “for the ending of the division of mankind into oppressor peoples and oppressed peoples, for complete equality of all peoples and races, whatever language they speak, whatever the color of their skin and whatever the religion they profess.” This would be a war, the manifesto declared, “to end the division of countries into advanced and backward, dependent and independent, metropolitan and colonial.” It would be a “holy war for the liberation of all mankind ... for the ending of all forms of oppression of one people by another and of all forms of exploitation of man by man.” Koreans joined the holy war when it was proclaimed at Baku—indeed, before that. And they have never disengaged from it. Koreans, of both the north and south, forever united as one people despite the political division forced upon them by Washington, continue their fight for freedom against the successor to the Japanese occupation, the United States, the “last powerful imperialist predator” which has “spread its dark wings over” the whole world.</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:A_Terrible_Normality&diff=75989 2024-09-30T12:46:55Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=A Terrible Normality|author=Michael Parenti|published_date=2013-01-30|type=Article|source=https://michaelparentiblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-terrible-normality-by-michael-parenti.html}}<br /> <br /> '''''A Terrible Normality''''' is an article written by [[United States of America|Statesian]] political scientist [[Michael Parenti]], posted on his blog on 30 January 2013.<br /> <br /> == Text ==<br /> Through much of [[Human history|history]] the abnormal has been the norm. This is a paradox to which we should attend. Aberrations, so plentiful as to form a terrible normality of their own, descend upon us with frightful consistency.<br /> <br /> The number of massacres in history, for instance, are almost more than we can record. There was [[European colonisation of the Americas|a New World holocaust]], consisting of the extermination of [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|indigenous Native American peoples]] throughout the [[Western Hemisphere|western hemisphere]], extending over four centuries or more, continuing into the [[Amazon rainforest|Amazon region]].<br /> <br /> There were centuries of heartless [[slavery]] in the [[Americas]] and elsewhere, followed by a full century of lynch mob rule and [[Racial segregation in the United States|Jim Crow segregation in the United States]], and today the numerous killings and incarcerations of [[Black Americans|Black]] youth by law enforcement agencies.<br /> <br /> Let us not forget [[Philippine–American War|the extermination of some 200,000 Filipinos]] by the [[United States Armed Forces|U.S. military]] at the beginning of the [[20th Century|twentieth century]], the [[Armenian Genocide|genocidal massacre of 1.5 million Armenians]] by the [[Ottoman Empire (1299–1922)|Turks]] in 1915, and the mass killings of [[Africa|African]] peoples by the western [[Colonialism|colonists]], including [[Herero and Nama Genocide|the 63,000 Herero victims in German Southwest Africa]] in 1904, and [[Congo genocide|the brutalisation and enslavement of millions in the Belgian Congo]] from the late 1880s until [[Congo Crisis|emancipation]] in 1960—followed by years of [[Neocolonialism|neocolonial]] [[free market]] exploitation and repression in what was [[Mobutu Sese Seko|Mobutu]]'s [[Republic of Zaire (1971–1997)|Zaire]].<br /> <br /> [[French conquest of Algeria|French colonisers killed some 150,000 Algerians]]. Later on, several million souls perished in [[Republic of Angola|Angola]] and [[Republic of Mozambique|Mozambique]] along with an estimated five million in the merciless region now known as the [[Democratic Republic of the Congo]]. The twentieth century gave us—among other horrors—more than sixteen million lost and twenty million wounded or mutilated in [[First World War|World War I]], followed by the estimated 62 million to 78 million killed in [[Second World War|World War II]], including some 24 million [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|Soviet]] military personnel and civilians, 5.8 million [[European Jews]], and taken together: several million [[Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929–1941)|Serbs]], [[Republic of Poland (1918–1939)|Poles]], [[Romani people|Roma]], [[LGBT+|homosexuals]], and a score of other nationalities.<br /> <br /> In the decades after World War II, many, if not most, massacres and wars have been openly or covertly sponsored by the U.S. national security state. This includes [[Vietnam War|the two million or so left dead or missing in Vietnam]], along with [[Cambodian Civil War|650,000 Cambodians]], [[Laotian Civil War|100,000 Laotians]], and 58,000 Americans.<br /> <br /> Today in much of [[Africa]], [[Central Asia]], and the [[Middle East]] there are &quot;smaller&quot; wars, replete with atrocities of all sorts. [[Central America]], [[Republic of Colombia|Colombia]], [[Republic of Rwanda|Rwanda]], and other places too numerous to list, suffered the massacres and death-squad exterminations of hundreds of thousands, a constancy of violent horrors. In [[Mexican United States|Mexico]] a &quot;[[Mexican drug war|war on drugs]]&quot; has taken 70,000 lives with 8,000 missing.<br /> <br /> There was [[Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66|the slaughter of more than half a million socialistic or democratic nationalist Indonesians]] by the U.S.-supported [[Indonesian National Armed Forces|Indonesian military]] in 1965, eventually followed by [[East Timor genocide|the extermination of 100,000 East Timorese]] by that same U.S.-backed military.<br /> <br /> Consider the 78-days of [[North Atlantic Treaty Organization|NATO]]'s [[NATO bombing of Yugoslavia|aerial destruction of Yugoslavia]] complete with depleted uranium, and the bombings and the [[United States invasion of Panama|invasion of Panama]], [[United States invasion of Grenada|Grenada]], [[Somali Civil War|Somalia]], [[NATO bombing of Libya|Libya]], [[Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)|Yemen]], [[Bangladesh Liberation War|Western Pakistan]], [[United States invasion of Afghanistan|Afghanistan]], and now [[Syrian Civil War|the devastating war of attrition brokered against Syria]]. And as I write (early 2013), the U.S.-sponsored sanctions against [[Islamic Republic of Iran|Iran]] are seeding severe hardship for the civilian population of that country.<br /> <br /> All the above amounts to a very incomplete listing of the world's violent and ugly injustice. A comprehensive inventory would fill volumes. How do we record the countless other life-searing abuses: the many millions who survive wars and massacres but remain forever broken in body and spirit, left to a lifetime of suffering and pitiless privation, refugees without sufficient food or medical supplies or water and sanitation services in countries like [[Syrian Arab Republic|Syria]], [[Republic of Haiti|Haiti]], [[Republic of South Sudan|South Sudan]], [[Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia|Ethiopia]], [[Federal Republic of Somalia|Somalia]], and [[Republic of Mali|Mali]].<br /> <br /> Think of the millions of women and children around the world and across the centuries who have been [[Human trafficking|trafficked]] in unspeakable ways, and the millions upon millions trapped in exploitative toil, be they slaves, [[Indentured servitude|indentured servants]], or underpaid labourers. The number of impoverished is now growing at a faster rate than the world's population. Add to that, the countless acts of repression, incarceration, torture, and other criminal abuses that beat upon the human spirit throughout the world day by day.<br /> <br /> Let us not overlook the ubiquitous corporate corruption and massive financial swindles, the plundering of natural resources and industrial poisoning of whole regions, the forceful dislocation of entire populations, the continuing catastrophes of [[Chernobyl disaster|Chernobyl]] and [[Fukushima natural disaster|Fukushima]] and other impending disasters awaiting numerous aging nuclear reactors.<br /> <br /> The world's dreadful aberrations are so commonplace and unrelenting that they lose their edge and we become injured to the horror of it all. &quot;Who today remembers the Armenians?&quot; [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] is quoted as having said while plotting his &quot;[[Final Solution|final solution]]&quot; for the [[Judaism|Jews]].&lt;ref group=&quot;Note&quot;&gt;The quote in the original [[German language|German]] is: &quot;Wer redet heute noch von der Vernichtung der Armenier?&quot; (lit. ''&quot;Who still speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?&quot;'').&lt;/ref&gt; Who today remembers the [[Republic of Iraq|Iraqis]] and the death and destruction done to them on a grand scale by [[2003 invasion of Iraq|the U.S. invasion of their lands]]? [[William Blum]] reminds us that more than half the Iraq population is either dead, wounded, traumatised, imprisoned, displaced, or exiled, while their environment is saturated with depleted uranium (from U.S. weaponry) inflicting horrific birth defects.<br /> <br /> What is to be made of all this? First we must not ascribe these aberrations to happenstance, innocent confusion, and unintended consequences. Nor should we believe the usual rationales about spreading democracy, fighting terrorism, providing humanitarian rescue, protecting U.S. national interests and other such rallying cries promulgated by ruling elites and their mouthpieces.<br /> <br /> The repetitious patterns of atrocity and violence are so persistent as to invite the suspicion that they usually serve real interests; they are structural, not incidental. All this destruction and slaughter has greatly profited those plutocrats who pursue economic expansion, resource acquisition, territorial dominion, and financial accumulation.<br /> <br /> Ruling interests are well served by their superiority in firepower and striking force. Violence is what we are talking about here, not just the wild and wanton type but the persistent and well-organised kind. As a political resource, violence is the instrument of ultimate authority. Violence allows for the conquest of entire lands and the riches they contain, while keeping displaced labourers and other slaves in harness.<br /> <br /> The plutocratic rulers find it necessary to misuse or exterminate restive multitudes, to let them starve while the fruits of their land and the sweat of their labour enrich privileged coteries.<br /> <br /> Thus we had a profit-driven imperial rule that helped precipitate [[Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879|the great famine in northern China, 1876-1879]], resulting in the death of some thirteen million. At about that same time the [[Great Famine of 1876–1878|Madras famine in India]] took the lives of as many as twelve million while the colonial forces grew ever richer. And thirty years earlier, the [[Great Famine (Ireland)|great potato famine in Ireland]] led to about one million deaths, with another desperate million emigrating from their homeland. Nothing accidental about this: while the [[Republic of Ireland|Irish]] starved, their [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland|English]] landlords exported shiploads of Irish grain and livestock to England and elsewhere at considerable profit to themselves.<br /> <br /> These occurrences must be seen as something more than just historic abnormalities floating aimlessly in time and space, driven only by overweening impulse or happenstance. It is not enough to condemn monstrous events and bad times, we also must try to understand them. They must be contextualised in the larger framework of historical social relations.<br /> <br /> The dominant socio-economic system today is free-market [[capitalism]] (in all its variations). Along with its unrelenting imperial terrorism, free-market capitalism provides &quot;normal abnormalities&quot; from within its own dynamic, creating scarcity and maldistributed excess, filled with duplication, waste, overproduction, frightening environmental destruction, and varieties of financial crises, bringing swollen rewards to a select few and continual hardship to multitudes.<br /> <br /> Economic crises are not exceptional; they are the standing operational mode of the capitalist system. Once again, the irrational is the norm. Consider U.S. free-market history: after the [[Statesian Revolution|American Revolution]], there were the debtor rebellions of the late 1870s, the [[panic of 1792]], the [[Depression of 1807|recession of 1809]] (lasting several years), the [[Panic of 1819|panics of 1819]] and [[Panic of 1837|1837]], and the recessions and crashes through much of the rest of that century. The serious [[Panic of 1893|recession of 1893]] continued for more than a decade.<br /> <br /> After the industrial underemployments of 1900 to 1915 came the agrarian depression of the 1920s—hidden behind what became known to us as &quot;[[the Jazz Age]],&quot; followed by a horrendous crash and the [[Great Depression]] of 1929-1942. All through the twentieth century we had wars, recessions, inflation, labour struggles, high unemployment—hardly a year that would be considered &quot;normal&quot; in any pleasant sense. An extended normal period would itself have been an abnormality. The free market is by design inherently unstable in every aspect other than wealth accumulation for the select few.<br /> <br /> What we are witnessing is not an irrational output from a basically rational society but the converse: the &quot;rational&quot; (to be expected) output of a fundamentally irrational system. Does this mean these horrors are inescapable? No, they are not made of supernatural forces. They are produced by plutocratic greed and deception.<br /> <br /> So, if the aberrant is the norm and the horrific is chronic, then we in our fightback should give less attention to the idiosyncratic and more to the systemic. Wars, massacres, and recessions help to increase capital concentration, monopolise markets and natural resources, and destroy labour organisation and popular transformative resistance.<br /> <br /> The brutish vagaries of plutocracy are not the product of particular personalities but of systemic interests. [[President of the United States|President]] [[George W. Bush]] was ridiculed for misusing words, but his empire-building and stripping of government services and regulations revealed a keen devotion to ruling-class interests. Likewise, President [[Barack Obama]] is not spineless. He is hypocritical but not confused. He is (by his own description) an erstwhile &quot;liberal [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]],&quot; or as I would put it, a faithful servant of corporate America.<br /> <br /> Our various leaders are well informed, not deluded. They come from different regions and different families, and have different personalities, yet they pursue pretty much the same policies on behalf of the same plutocracy.<br /> <br /> So it is not enough to denounce atrocities and wars, we also must understand who propagates them and who benefits. We have to ask why violence and deception are constant ingredients.<br /> <br /> Unintended consequences and other oddities do arise in worldly affairs but we also must take account of interest-driven rational intentions. More often than not, the aberrations—be they wars, market crashes, famines, individual assassinations, or mass killings—take shape because those at the top are pursuing gainful expropriation. Many may suffer and perish but somebody somewhere is benefitting boundlessly.<br /> <br /> Knowing your enemies and what they are capable of doing is the first step towards effective opposition. The world becomes less of a horrific puzzlement. We can only resist these global (and local) perpetrators when we see who they are and what they are doing to us and our sacred environment.<br /> <br /> Democratic victories, however small and partial they be, must be embraced. But the people must not be satisfied with tinselled favours offered by smooth leaders. We need to strive in every way possible for the revolutionary unravelling, a revolution of organised consciousness striking at the empire's heart with the full force of democracy, the kind of irresistible upsurge that seems to come from nowhere while carrying everything before it.<br /> <br /> == PW Notes ==<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;Note&quot; /&gt;<br /> [[Category:Library works by Michael Parenti]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Neocolonialism,_the_Last_Stage_of_Imperialism&diff=75988 2024-09-30T12:46:54Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work<br /> |title=Neocolonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism<br /> |author=Kwame Nkrumah<br /> |publisher=Thomas Nelson &amp; Sons, Ltd|published_date=1965|published_location=London|type=Book|source=[https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nkrumah/neo-colonialism/index.htm marxists.org]<br /> }}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> The [[Neocolonialism|neo-colonialism]] of today represents [[imperialism]] in its final and perhaps its most dangerous stage. In the past it was possible to convert a country upon which a neo-colonial regime had been imposed—[[Arab Republic of Egypt|Egypt]] in the nineteenth century is an example—into a [[Colonialism|colonial]] territory. Today this process is no longer feasible. Old-fashioned colonialism is by no means entirely abolished. It still constitutes an African problem, but it is everywhere on the retreat. Once a territory has become nominally independent it is no longer possible, as it was in the last century, to reverse the process. Existing colonies may linger on, but no new colonies will be created. In place of colonialism as the main instrument of imperialism we have today neo-colonialism.<br /> <br /> The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.<br /> <br /> The methods and form of this direction can take various shapes. For example, in an extreme case the troops of the imperial power may garrison the territory of the neo-colonial State and control the government of it. More often, however, neo-colonialist control is exercised through economic or monetary means. The neo-colonial State may be obliged to take the manufactured products of the imperialist power to the exclusion of competing products from elsewhere. Control over government policy in the neo-colonial State may be secured by payments towards the cost of running the State, by the provision of civil servants in positions where they can dictate policy, and by monetary control over foreign exchange through the imposition of a [[Bank|banking]] system controlled by the imperial power.<br /> <br /> Where neo-colonialism exists the power exercising control is often the State which formerly ruled the territory in question, but this is not necessarily so. For example, in the case of [[Republic of Vietnam (1955–1975)|South Vietnam]] the former imperial power was [[French Republic (1946–1958)|France]], but neo-colonial control of the State has now gone to the [[United States of America|United States]]. It is possible that neo-colonial control may be exercised by a consortium of financial interests which are not specifically identifiable with any particular State. The control of the [[Democratic Republic of the Congo|Congo]] by great international financial concerns is a case in point.<br /> <br /> The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world. Investment under neo-colonialism increases rather than decreases the gap between the [[Imperial core|rich]] and the [[Imperial periphery|poor]] countries of the world.<br /> <br /> The struggle against neo-colonialism is not aimed at excluding the capital of the developed world from operating in less developed countries. It is aimed at preventing the financial power of the developed countries being used in such a way as to impoverish the less developed.<br /> <br /> [[Non-Aligned Movement|Non-alignment]], as practised by [[Republic of Ghana|Ghana]] and many other countries, is based on co-operation with all States whether they be [[Capitalism|capitalist]], [[Socialism|socialist]] or have a mixed economy. Such a policy, therefore, involves foreign investment from capitalist countries, but it must be invested in accordance with a national plan drawn up by the government of the non-aligned State with its own interests in mind. The issue is not what return the foreign investor receives on his investments. He may, in fact, do better for himself if he invests in a non-aligned country than if he invests in a neo-colonial one. The question is one of power. A State in the grip of neo-colonialism is not master of its own destiny. It is this factor which makes neo-colonialism such a serious threat to world peace. The growth of nuclear weapons has made out of date the old-fashioned balance of power which rested upon the ultimate sanction of a major war. Certainty of mutual mass destruction effectively prevents either of the great power blocs from threatening the other with the possibility of a world-wide war, and military conflict has thus become confined to ‘limited wars’. For these neo-colonialism is the breeding ground.<br /> <br /> Such wars can, of course, take place in countries which are not neo-colonialist controlled. Indeed their object may be to establish in a small but independent country a neo-colonialist regime. The evil of neo-colonialism is that it prevents the formation of those large units which would make impossible ‘limited war’. To give one example: if Africa was united, no major power bloc would attempt to subdue it by limited war because from the very nature of limited war, what can be achieved by it is itself limited. It is, only where small States exist that it is possible, by landing a few thousand marines or by financing a mercenary force, to secure a decisive result.<br /> <br /> The restriction of military action of ‘limited wars’ is, however, no guarantee of world peace and is likely to be the factor which will ultimately involve the great power blocs in a world war, however much both are determined to avoid it.<br /> <br /> Limited war, once embarked upon, achieves a momentum of its own. Of this, the [[Vietnam War|war in South Vietnam]] is only one example. It escalates despite the desire of the great power blocs to keep it limited. While this particular war may be prevented from leading to a world conflict, the multiplication of similar limited wars can only have one end-world war and the terrible consequences of nuclear conflict.<br /> <br /> Neo-colonialism is also the worst form of imperialism. For those who practise it, it means power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress. In the days of old-fashioned colonialism, the imperial power had at least to explain and justify at home the actions it was taking abroad. In the colony those who served the ruling imperial power could at least look to its protection against any violent move by their opponents. With neo-colonialism neither is the case.<br /> <br /> Above all, neo-colonialism, like colonialism before it, postpones the facing of the social issues which will have to be faced by the fully developed sector of the world before the danger of world war can be eliminated or the problem of world poverty resolved.<br /> <br /> Neo-colonialism, like colonialism, is an attempt to export the [[Class struggle|social conflicts]] of the capitalist countries. The temporary success of this policy can be seen in the ever widening gap between the richer and the poorer nations of the world. But the internal contradictions and conflicts of neo-colonialism make it certain that it cannot endure as a permanent world policy. How it should be brought to an end is a problem that should be studied, above all, by the developed nations of the world, because it is they who will feel the full impact of the ultimate failure. The longer it continues the more certain it is that its inevitable collapse will destroy the social system of which they have made it a foundation.<br /> <br /> The reason for its development in the post-war period can be briefly summarised. The problem which faced the wealthy nations of the world at the end of the second world war was the impossibility of returning to the pre-war situation in which there was a great gulf between the few rich and the many poor. Irrespective of what particular political party was in power, the internal pressures in the rich countries of the world were such that no post-[[Second World War|war]] capitalist country could survive unless it became a ‘[[Social democracy|Welfare State]]’. There might be differences in degree in the extent of the social benefits given to the industrial and agricultural workers, but what was everywhere impossible was a return to the mass unemployment and to the low level of living of the pre-war years.<br /> <br /> From the end of the nineteenth century onwards, colonies had been regarded as a source of wealth which could be used to mitigate the class conflicts in the capitalist States and, as will be explained later, this policy had some success. But it failed in ‘its ultimate object because the pre-war capitalist States were so organised internally that the bulk of the profit made from colonial possessions found its way into the pockets of the capitalist class and not into those of the workers. Far from achieving the object intended, the working-class parties at times tended to identify their interests with those of the colonial peoples and the imperialist powers found themselves engaged upon a conflict on two fronts, at home with their own workers and abroad against the growing forces of colonial liberation.<br /> <br /> The post-war period inaugurated a very different colonial policy. A deliberate attempt was made to divert colonial earnings from the wealthy class and use them instead generally to finance the ‘Welfare State’. As will be seen from the examples given later, this was the method consciously adopted even by those working-class leaders who had before the war regarded the colonial peoples as their natural allies against their capitalist enemies at home.<br /> <br /> At first it was presumed that this object could be achieved by maintaining the pre-war colonial system. Experience soon proved that attempts to do so would be disastrous and would only provoke colonial wars, thus dissipating the anticipated gains from the continuance of the colonial regime. [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland|Britain]], in particular, realised this at an early stage and the correctness of the British judgement at the time has subsequently been demonstrated by the defeat of French colonialism in the Far East and [[People's Democratic Republic of Algeria|Algeria]] and the failure of the [[Kingdom of the Netherlands|Dutch]] to retain any of their former colonial empire.<br /> <br /> The system of neo-colonialism was therefore instituted and in the short run it has served the developed powers admirably. It is in the long run that its consequences are likely to be catastrophic for them.<br /> <br /> Neo-colonialism is based upon the principle of breaking up former large united colonial territories into a number of small non-viable States which are incapable of independent development and must rely upon the former imperial power for defence and even internal security. Their economic and financial systems are linked, as in colonial days, with those of the former colonial ruler.<br /> <br /> At first sight the scheme would appear to have many advantages for the developed countries of the world. All the profits of neo-colonialism can be secured if, in any given area, a reasonable proportion of the States have a neo-colonialist system. It is not necessary that they ''all'' should have one. Unless small States can combine they must be compelled to sell their primary products at prices dictated by the developed nations and buy their manufactured goods at the prices fixed by them. So long as neo-colonialism can prevent political and economic conditions for optimum development, the developing countries, whether they are under neo-colonialist control or not, will be unable to create a large enough market to support industrialisation. In the same way they will lack the financial strength to force the developed countries to accept their primary products at a fair price.<br /> <br /> In the neo-colonialist territories, since the former colonial power has in theory relinquished political control, if the social conditions occasioned by neo-colonialism cause a revolt the local neo-colonialist government can be sacrificed and another equally subservient one substituted in its place. On the other hand, in any continent where neo-colonialism exists on a wide scale the same social pressures which can produce revolts in neo-colonial territories will also affect those States which have refused to accept the system and therefore neo-colonialist nations have a ready-made weapon with which they can threaten their opponents if they appear successfully to be challenging the system.<br /> <br /> These advantages, which seem at first sight so obvious, are, however, on examination, illusory because they fail to take into consideration the facts of the world today.<br /> <br /> The introduction of neo-colonialism increases the rivalry between the great powers which was provoked by the old-style colonialism. However little real power the government of a neo-colonialist State may possess, it must have, from the very fact of its nominal independence, a certain area of manoeuvre. It may not be able to exist without a neo-colonialist master but it may still have the ability to change masters.<br /> <br /> The ideal neo-colonialist State would be one which was wholly subservient to neo-colonialist interests but the existence of the socialist nations makes it impossible to enforce the full rigour of the neo-colonialist system. The existence of an alternative system is itself a challenge to the neo-colonialist regime. Warnings about ‘the dangers of [[Communism|Communist]] subversion are likely to be two-edged since they bring to the notice of those living under a neo-colonialist system the possibility of a change of regime. In fact neo-colonialism is the victim of its own contradictions. In order to make it attractive to those upon whom it is practised it must be shown as capable of raising their living standards, but the economic object of neo-colonialism is to keep those standards depressed in the interest of the developed countries. It is only when this contradiction is understood that the failure of innumerable ‘aid’ programmes, many of them well intentioned, can be explained.<br /> <br /> In the first place, the rulers of neo-colonial States derive their authority to govern, not from the will of the people, but from the support which they obtain from their neo-colonialist masters. They have therefore little interest in developing education, strengthening the bargaining power of their workers employed by expatriate firms, or indeed of taking any step which would challenge the colonial pattern of commerce and industry, which it is the object of neo-colonialism to preserve. ‘Aid’, therefore, to a neo-colonial State is merely a revolving credit, paid by the neo-colonial master, passing through the neo-colonial State and returning to the neo-colonial master in the form of increased profits.<br /> <br /> Secondly, it is in the field of ‘aid’ that the rivalry of individual developed States first manifests itself. So long as neo-colonialism persists so long will spheres of interest persist, and this makes multilateral aid—which is in fact the only effective form of aid—impossible.<br /> <br /> Once multilateral aid begins the neo-colonialist masters are faced by the hostility of the vested interests in their own country. Their manufacturers naturally object to any attempt to raise the price of the raw materials which they obtain from the neo-colonialist territory in question, or to the establishment there of manufacturing industries which might compete directly or indirectly with their own exports to the territory. Even education is suspect as likely to produce a student movement and it is, of course, true that in many less developed countries the students have been in the vanguard of the fight against neo-colonialism.<br /> <br /> In the end the situation arises that the only type of aid which the neo-colonialist masters consider as safe is ‘military aid’.<br /> <br /> Once a neo-colonialist territory is brought to such a state of economic chaos and misery that revolt actually breaks out then, and only then, is there no limit to the generosity of the neo-colonial overlord, provided, of course, that the funds supplied are utilised exclusively for military purposes.<br /> <br /> Military aid in fact marks the last stage of neo-colonialism and its effect is self-destructive. Sooner or later the weapons supplied pass into the hands of the opponents of the neo-colonialist regime and the war itself increases the social misery which originally provoked it.<br /> <br /> Neo-colonialism is a mill-stone around the necks of the developed countries which practise it. Unless they can rid themselves of it, it will drown them. Previously the developed powers could escape from the contradictions of neo-colonialism by substituting for it direct colonialism. Such a solution is no longer possible and the reasons for it have been well explained by Mr. Owen Lattimore, the United States Far Eastern expert and adviser to [[Chiang Kai-shek]] in the immediate post-war period. He wrote:<br /> <br /> ‘Asia, which was so easily and swiftly subjugated by conquerors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, displayed an amazing ability stubbornly to resist modern armies equipped with aeroplanes, tanks, motor vehicles and mobile artillery.<br /> <br /> ‘Formerly big territories were conquered in Asia with small forces. Income, first of all from plunder, then from direct taxes and lastly from trade, capital investments and long-term exploitation, covered with incredible speed the expenditure for military operations. This arithmetic represented a great temptation to strong countries. Now they have run up against another arithmetic, and it discourages them.’<br /> <br /> The same arithmetic is likely to apply throughout the less developed world.<br /> <br /> This book is therefore an attempt to examine neo-colonialism not only in its African context and its relation to African unity, but in world perspective. Neo-colonialism is by no means exclusively an African question. Long before it was practised on any large scale in Africa it was an established system in other parts of the world. Nowhere has it proved successful, either in raising living standards or in ultimately benefiting countries which have indulged in it.<br /> <br /> Marx predicted that the growing gap between the wealth of the possessing classes and the workers it employs would ultimately produce a conflict fatal to capitalism in each individual capitalist State.<br /> <br /> This conflict between the rich and the poor has now been transferred on to the international scene, but for proof of what is acknowledged to be happening it is no longer necessary to consult the classical Marxist writers. The situation is set out with the utmost clarity in the leading organs of capitalist opinion. Take for example the following extracts from ''The Wall Street Journal,'' the newspaper which perhaps best reflects United States capitalist thinking.<br /> <br /> In its issue of 12 May 1965, under the headline of ‘Poor Nations’ Plight’, the paper first analyses ‘which countries are considered industrial and which backward’. There is, it explains, ‘no rigid method of classification’. Nevertheless, it points out:<br /> <br /> ‘A generally used breakdown, however, has recently been maintained by the [[International Monetary Fund]] because, in the words of an IMF official, “the economic demarcation in the world is getting increasingly apparent.”’ The break-down, the official says, “is based on simple common sense.”’<br /> <br /> In the IMF’s view, the industrial countries are the United States, the United Kingdom, most West European nations, [[Canada]] and [[Japan]]. A special category called “other developed areas” includes such other European lands as [[Republic of Finland|Finland]], [[Hellenic Republic|Greece]] and [[Republic of Ireland|Ireland]], plus [[Commonwealth of Australia|Australia]], [[New Zealand]] and [[Republic of South Africa|South Africa]]. The IMF’s “less developed” category embraces all of [[Latin America]] and nearly all of the Middle East, non-Communist Asia and Africa.’<br /> <br /> In other words the ‘backward’ countries are those situated in the neo-colonial areas.<br /> <br /> After quoting figures to support its argument, ''The Wall Street Journal'' comments on this situation:<br /> <br /> ‘The industrial nations have added nearly $2 billion to their reserves, which now approximate $52 billion. At the same time, the reserves of the less-developed group not only have stopped rising, but have declined some $200 million. To analysts such as Britain’s Miss Ward, the significance of such statistics is clear: the economic gap is rapidly widening “between a white, complacent, highly bourgeois, very wealthy, very small [[North Atlantic Treaty Organization|North Atlantic]] [[Bourgeoisie|elite]] and everybody else, and this is not a very comfortable heritage to leave to one’s children.”<br /> <br /> “Everybody else” includes approximately two-thirds of the population of the earth, spread through about 100 nations.’<br /> <br /> This is no new problem. In the opening paragraph of his book, ''The War on World Poverty,'' written in 1953, the present British [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] leader, Mr. Harold Wilson, summarised the major problem of the world as he then saw it:<br /> <br /> ‘For the vast majority of mankind the most urgent problem is not war, or Communism, or the cost of living, or taxation. It is hunger. Over 1,500,000,000 people, some-thing like two-thirds of the world’s population, are living in conditions of acute hunger, defined in terms of identifiable nutritional disease. This hunger is at the same time the effect and the cause of the poverty, squalor and misery in which they live.’<br /> <br /> Its consequences are likewise understood. The correspondent of ''The Wall Street Journal'' previously quoted, underlines them:<br /> <br /> ‘... many diplomats and economists view the implications as overwhelmingly—and dangerously—political. Unless the present decline can be reversed, these analysts fear, the United States and other wealthy industrial powers of the West face the distinct possibility, in the words of British economist Barbara Ward, “of a sort of international class war”.’<br /> <br /> What is lacking are any positive proposals for dealing with the situation. All that ''The Wall Street Journal’s'' correspondent can do is to point out that the traditional methods recommended for curing the evils are only likely to make the situation worse.<br /> <br /> It has been argued that the developed nations should effectively assist the poorer parts of the world, and that the whole world should be turned into a Welfare State. However, there seems little prospect that anything of this sort could be achieved. The so-called ‘aid’ programmes to help backward economies represent, according to a rough U.N. estimate, only one half of one per cent of the total income of industrial countries. But when it comes to the prospect of increasing such aid the mood is one of pessimism:<br /> <br /> ‘A large school of thought holds that expanded share-the-wealth schemes are idealistic and impractical. This school contends climate, undeveloped human skills, lack of natural resources and other factors—not just lack of money—retard economic progress in many of these lands, and that the countries lack personnel with the training or will to use vastly expanded aid effectively. Share-the-wealth schemes, according to this view, would be like pouring money down a bottomless well, weakening the donor nations without effectively curing the ills of the recipients.’<br /> <br /> The absurdity of this argument is demonstrated by the fact that every one of the reasons quoted to prove why the less developed parts of the world cannot be developed applied equally strongly to the present developed countries in the period prior to their development. The argument is only true in this sense. The less developed world will not become developed through the goodwill or generosity of the developed powers. It can only become developed through a struggle against the external forces which have a vested interest in keeping it undeveloped.<br /> <br /> Of these forces, neo-colonialism is, at this stage of history, the principal.<br /> <br /> I propose to analyse neo-colonialism, first, by examining the state of the African continent and showing how neo-colonialism at the moment keeps it artificially poor. Next, I propose to show how in practice [[Pan-Africanism|African Unity]], which in itself can only be established by the defeat of neo-colonialism, could immensely raise African living standards. From this beginning, I propose to examine neo-colonialism generally, first historically and then by a consideration of the great international monopolies whose continued stranglehold on the neo-colonial sectors of the world ensures the continuation of the system.<br /> <br /> == Africa's Resources ==<br /> Africa is a paradox which illustrates and highlights neo-colonialism. Her earth is rich, yet the products that come from above and below her soil continue to enrich, not Africans predominantly, but groups and individuals who operate to Africa’s impoverishment. With a roughly estimated population of 280 million, about eight per cent of the world’s population, Africa accounts for only two per cent of the world’s total production. Yet even the present very inadequate surveys of Africa’s natural resources show the continent to have immense, untapped wealth. We know that iron reserves are put at twice the size of America’s, and two-thirds those of the Soviet Union’s, on the basis of an estimated two billion metric tons. Africa’s calculated coal reserves are considered to be enough to last for three hundred years. New petroleum fields are being discovered and brought into production all over the continent. Yet production of primary ores and minerals, considerable as it appears, has touched only the fringes.<br /> <br /> Africa has more than 40 per cent of the world’s potential water power, a greater share than any other continent. Yet less than five per cent of this volume has been utilised. Even taking into account the vast desert stretches of the Sahara, there is still in Africa more arable and pasture land than exists in either the United States of America or the Soviet Union. There is even more than in Asia. Our forest areas are twice as great as those of the United States.<br /> <br /> If Africa’s multiple resources were used in her own development, they could place her among the modernised continents of the world. But her resources have been, and are still being used for the greater development of overseas interests. Africa provided to Britain in 1957 the following proportions of basic materials used in her industries:<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable&quot;<br /> |+<br /> !''Imports to Britain''<br /> !<br /> |-<br /> |tin ore and concentrates<br /> |19%<br /> |-<br /> |iron ore<br /> |29%<br /> |-<br /> |manganese<br /> |80%<br /> |-<br /> |copper<br /> |46%<br /> |-<br /> |bauxite<br /> |47%<br /> |-<br /> |chrome ore<br /> |50%<br /> |-<br /> |asbestos<br /> |66%<br /> |-<br /> |cobalt<br /> |82%<br /> |-<br /> |antimony<br /> |91%<br /> |-<br /> |''French imports from Africa include'' <br /> |<br /> |-<br /> |cotton<br /> |32%<br /> |-<br /> |iron ore<br /> |36%<br /> |-<br /> |zinc ore<br /> |51%<br /> |-<br /> |lead<br /> |85%<br /> |-<br /> |phosphate<br /> |100%<br /> |-<br /> |''To [[Federal Republic of Germany|Germany]], Africa provided''<br /> |<br /> |-<br /> |copper imports<br /> |8%<br /> |-<br /> |iron ore<br /> |10%<br /> |-<br /> |lead ore<br /> |12%<br /> |-<br /> |magnanese ore <br /> |20%<br /> |-<br /> |chrome ore<br /> |22%<br /> |-<br /> |phosphorite<br /> |71%<br /> |}<br /> Yet in none of the new African countries is there a single integrated industry based upon any one of these resources.<br /> <br /> Although possessing fifty-three of the world’s most important basic industrial minerals and metals, the African continent tails far behind all others in industrial development. Gauged on the production of primary products output in the total economic activity, by comparison with the country of most advanced production, the United States of America, the facts can be seen at a glance.<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable&quot;<br /> |+<br /> !'''Country'''<br /> !'''Year'''<br /> !'''Agriculture'''<br /> '''Forestry'''<br /> <br /> '''Fishing'''<br /> !Mining<br /> !Industry Manufacture<br /> !Construction<br /> !Transport Communications<br /> !Commerce<br /> !Public Administration Defense<br /> !Others<br /> |-<br /> |Algeria<br /> |1958<br /> |21<br /> |3<br /> |11<br /> |6<br /> |6<br /> |19<br /> |22<br /> |12<br /> |-<br /> |Congo (L.)<br /> |1958<br /> |26<br /> |16<br /> |12<br /> |6<br /> |9<br /> |7<br /> |14<br /> |16<br /> |-<br /> |[[Republic of Kenya|Kenya]]<br /> |1958<br /> |42<br /> |1<br /> |10<br /> |4<br /> |9<br /> |13<br /> |10<br /> |11<br /> |-<br /> |[[Kingdom of Morocco|Morocco]]<br /> |1958<br /> |34<br /> |6<br /> |18<br /> |4<br /> |*<br /> |15<br /> |10<br /> |13<br /> |-<br /> |[[Federal Republic of Nigeria|Nigeria]]<br /> |1956<br /> |63<br /> |1<br /> |2<br /> |11<br /> |1<br /> |4<br /> |6<br /> |3<br /> |-<br /> |[[Rhodesia]] and [[Malawi|Nyasaland]]<br /> |1958<br /> |20<br /> |14<br /> |11<br /> |8<br /> |9<br /> |10<br /> |4<br /> |24<br /> |-<br /> |[[United Republic of Tanzania|Tanganyika]]<br /> |1958<br /> |59<br /> |4<br /> |7<br /> |6<br /> |7<br /> |5<br /> |7<br /> |5<br /> |-<br /> |[[Republic of South Africa]]<br /> |1958<br /> |12<br /> |13<br /> |2<br /> |5<br /> |8<br /> |12<br /> |10<br /> |20<br /> |-<br /> |U.S.A<br /> |1959<br /> |4<br /> |1<br /> |30<br /> |5<br /> |8<br /> |17<br /> |13<br /> |22<br /> |}<br /> From the ''United Nations Statistical Year Book,'' 1960 (figures are percentages).<br /> <br /> &lt;nowiki&gt;*&lt;/nowiki&gt;Included under 'Others'<br /> <br /> It will be noted that in America agriculture, forestry and fishing provide a mere four per cent of the total national activity, and mining a trifling one per cent. On the other hand, industry, manufacture and commerce provide 47 per cent. In the African countries included in the table, which are, with the exception of Nigeria, those with the highest settler communities and therefore the most exploited, agriculture is predominant. Industry, manufacture and commerce lag far behind. Even in the case of South Africa, the most highly industrialised sector of the African continent, the contribution of agriculture (12 per cent) and mining (13 per cent) are equal to those of industry, manufacture and construction put together.<br /> <br /> However, on the whole, mining has proved a most profitable venture for foreign capital investment in Africa. Its benefits for Africans have by no means been on an equal scale. Mining production in a number of African countries has a value of less than $2 per head of population. As ''Europe (France) Outremer'' puts it, ‘It is quite certain that a mining production of $1 or $2 per inhabitant cannot appreciably affect a country’s standard of living.’ Affirming correctly that ‘in the zones of exploitation, the mining industry introduces a higher standard of living’, the journal if forced to the conclusion that mining exploitations are, however, relatively privileged isolated islands in a very poor total economy.<br /> <br /> The reason for this is seen in the absence of industry and manufacture, owing to the fact that mining production is destined principally for exportation, mainly in primary form. It goes to feed the industries and factories of Europe and America, to the impoverishment of the countries of origin.<br /> <br /> It is also remarked by ''Europe (France) Outremer'' that about 50 per cent of Africa’s mining production remains in the country of origin as wages. Even the most cursory glance at the annual accounts of the mining companies refutes this claim. The excess of revenue over expenditure in many cases proves conclusively by its size that wages received by manual labour form by no means such an exaggerated proportion of value produced as 50 per cent. The considerable sums which go in highly paid salaries to European staffs in the skilled and administrative categories, part of which is returned to their own countries, must in many instances amount to the total received by African labour, to say nothing of the large amounts which swell the yearly incomes of wealthy directors who reside in the metropolitan cities of the west.<br /> <br /> The assumption also ignores another important fact, namely that wages of manual workers, low as they are, are partly spent on goods manufactured abroad and imported, taking out of the primary producing countries a good part of the workers’ wages. In many cases, the imported goods are the products of the companies associated with the mining groups. Frequently, they are sold in the companies’ own stores on the mining compounds or by their appointed agents, the workers having to pay prices fixed by the companies.<br /> <br /> The poverty of the people of Africa is demonstrated by the simple fact that their income ''per capita'' is among the lowest in the world.<br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable&quot;<br /> |+<br /> !Under $80<br /> !$81 - 125<br /> !$126 - 200<br /> !$200 - 250<br /> !Over $400<br /> |-<br /> |[[Kingdom of Lesotho|Basutoland]]<br /> [[Republic of Botswana|Bechuanaland]]<br /> <br /> [[Republic of Burundi|Burundi]]<br /> <br /> [[Republic of Chad|Chad]]<br /> <br /> [[Republic of the Congo|Congo (B.)]]<br /> <br /> [[Republic of Benin|Dahomey]]<br /> <br /> [[Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia|Ethiopia]]<br /> <br /> [[Republic of Guinea-Bissau|Guinea de Sao]]<br /> <br /> Malawi<br /> <br /> [[Republic of Mali|Mali]]<br /> <br /> [[Republic of Mozambique|Mozambique]]<br /> <br /> [[Republic of the Niger|Niger]]<br /> <br /> Nigeria<br /> <br /> [[Republic of Rwanda|Rwanda]]<br /> <br /> [[Federal Republic of Somalia|Somalia]]<br /> <br /> Tanganyika-Zanzibar<br /> <br /> [[Republic of Uganda|Uganda]]<br /> <br /> [[Burkina Faso|Voltaic Republic]]<br /> |[[Republic of Angola|Angola]]<br /> [[Republic of Cameroon|Cameroun Republic]]<br /> <br /> Congo (L.)<br /> <br /> [[Republic of The Gambia|Gambia]]<br /> <br /> [[Republic of Guinea|Guinea]]<br /> <br /> Kenya<br /> <br /> [[Republic of Madagascar|Malagasy Republic]]<br /> <br /> [[Islamic Republic of Mauritania|Mauritania]]<br /> <br /> [[Republic of Sierra Leone|Sierra Leone]]<br /> <br /> [[Republic of the Sudan|Sudan]]<br /> <br /> [[Togolese Republic|Togo]]<br /> <br /> [[United Arab Republic (1958–1971)|United Arab Republic]]<br /> |[[Republic of Liberia|Liberia]]<br /> [[State of Libya|Libya]]<br /> <br /> Morocco<br /> <br /> [[Kingdom of Eswatini|Swaziland]]<br /> <br /> [[Republic of Tunisia|Tunisia]]<br /> |[[People's Democratic Republic of Algeria|Algeria]]<br /> [[Republic of Côte d'Ivoire|Cote d'Ivoire]]<br /> <br /> [[Gabonese Republic|Gabon]]<br /> <br /> Ghana<br /> <br /> [[Republic of Mauritius|Mauritius]]<br /> <br /> [[Republic of Senegal|Senegal]]<br /> <br /> [[Republic of Namibia|South-west Africa]]<br /> <br /> [[Republic of Zambia|Zambia]]<br /> <br /> Rhodesia ([[Republic of Zimbabwe|Zimbabwe]])<br /> |South Africa<br /> |}<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> In some countries, for example Gabon and Zambia, up to half the domestic product is paid to resident expatriates and to overseas firms who own the plantations and mines. In Guinea de Sao, Angola, Libya, Swaziland, South-West Africa and Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), foreign firm profits and settler or expatriate incomes exceed one-third of the domestic product. Algeria, Congo and Kenya were in this group before independence.<br /> <br /> On achieving independence, almost every new state of Africa has developed plans for industrialisation and rounded economic growth in order to improve productive capacity and thereby raise the standard of living of its people. But while Africa remains divided progress is bound to be painfully slow. Economic development is dependent not only on the availability of natural resources and the size and population of a country, but on economic size, which takes into account both population and income ''per capita''. In many African States the population and ''per capita'' products are extremely small, giving an economic unit no longer than a medium-sized firm in a western capitalist country, or a single State enterprise in a European socialist economy.<br /> <br /> Africa is having to pay a huge price once more for the historical accident that this vast and compact continent brought fabulous profits to western capitalism, first out of the trade in its people and then out of imperialist exploitation. This enrichment of one side of the world out of the exploitation of the other has left the African economy without the means to industrialise. At the time when Europe passed into its industrial revolution, there was a considerably narrower gap in development between the continents. But with every step in the evolution of productive methods and the increased profits drawn from the more and more shrewd investment in manufacturing equipment and base metal production, the gap widened by leaps and bounds.<br /> <br /> The Report of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa published in December 1962 under the title of ''Industrial Growth in Africa'' states that the gap between ‘the continents separated by the Mediterranean’ has widened faster during the twentieth century than ever before. True, ''per capita'' output has increased in Africa, particularly in the last two decades, which have seen an increase of some 10 to 20 per cent. Already far ahead, the industrial countries have marked a ''per capita'' advance in the same period of 60 per cent, and their ''per capita'' industrial production may be estimated as high as twenty-five times that in Africa as a whole. The difference for the greater part of Africa, however, is even more marked, since industry on this continent tends to be concentrated in small areas in the north and south. A real transformation of the African economy would mean not only doubling agricultural output but increasing industrial output some twenty-five times. The Report makes plain that industry rather than agriculture is the means by which rapid improvement in Africa’s living standards is possible.<br /> <br /> There are, however, imperialist specialists and apologists who urge the less developed countries to concentrate on agriculture and leave industrialisation for some later time when their populations shall be well fed. The world’s economic development, however, shows that it is only with advanced industrialisation that it has been possible to raise the nutritional level of the people by raising their levels of income. Agriculture is important for many reasons, and the governments of African states concerned with bringing higher standards to their people are devoting greater investment to agriculture. But even to make agriculture yield more the aid of industrial output is needed; and the under-developed world cannot for ever be placed at the mercy of the more industrialised. This dependence must slow the rate of increase in our agriculture and make it subservient to the demands of the industrial producers. That is why we cannot accept such sweeping assessments as that made by Professor Leopold G. Scheidl of the Vienna School of Economics at a recent meeting in London of the International Geographical Congress. Commented Professor Scheidl: ‘People in developing countries seem to think that all that is necessary for them to become as wealthy as the west is to build factories. Most experts agree that it is wiser and more promising to develop agriculture into self-sufficiency and on to the level of a marketing economy’ (''The Times'', 24 July 1964). This train of thought links up directly with that of the chairman of Booker Brothers, Sir Jock Campbell whose combine of companies is busy monopolising sugar and by-product industries in British Guiana, shipping and trading in the Caribbean and East Africa, and is now penetrating into the west of the African continent. Sir Jock Campbell asserted at the Annual address of the African Bureau in London on 29 November 1962 that ‘agriculture was the basis of African development and that plantations were an effective method of increasing economic potential’. He considered that ‘so long as industrialised agriculture employed men free to come and go, it was preferable in terms both of efficiency and liberty to the communised collective farming whose results had fallen so short of expectation in Russia and China’ (''The Times'', 30 November 1962). He does not seem to have convinced the sugar workers of British Guiana, and it is a moot point whether he has been able to impress the benefits of his ‘free to come and go’ plantation philosophy on the workers for his companies in Nyasaland, Rhodesia and South Africa. Even the scientific supporters of the imperialist pattern are aware of the flaws in their injunctions, but they cunningly attribute the emphasis placed by the developing states upon industrialisation to political ambitions rather than to economic and social necessity. A European representative of the University of Malaya, Mr D. W. Fryer, speaking at the meeting of the International Geographical Conference to which reference is made above, said that ‘an increase in the efficiency of traditional export industries in the under-developed countries was an obvious move, but it was politically unattractive. It suggested continued acceptance of the old colonial economy. ... Industrialism was an integral part of the nationalist movement. Its mainspring was not economic but political, and political expediency was often more important than economic efficiency in the location of new industry’.<br /> <br /> The more efficient management of primary production and improvement on a marketing level is imperialism’s gain and our loss. The point has been made quite clearly by no less a person than the chairman of Bolsa (the Bank of London and South America), Sir George Bolton. The latter was reported in ''The Financial Times'' of 6 March 1964 as being confident of a rise in commodity prices, which would have considerable effect on the foreign exchanges. For whose benefit? Sir Goerge provides the answer. ‘It should help the reserve currencies, sterling and the dollar,’ he said. Why? Because being tied to these currencies, ‘the primary producers will be accumulating their surpluses in sterling and dollar balances’. This appears to be nothing short of a direct confession of the major interest of the banking and financial world in the exploitation of the developing countries. It is interesting, therefore, to note that Bolsa’s transfer agents in London are Patino Mines &amp; Enterprises Consolidated, the American-controlled combine operating mines in Latin America and Canada, and intimately associated with the groups engaged in exploiting Africa’s natural resources.<br /> <br /> We are certainly not against marketing and trading. On the contrary, we are for a widening of our potentialities in these spheres, and we are convinced that we shall be able to adjust the balance in our favour only by developing an agriculture attuned to our needs and supporting it with a rapidly increasing industrialisation that will break the neo-colonialist pattern which at present operates.<br /> <br /> A continent like Africa, however much it increases its agricultural output, will not benefit unless it is sufficiently politically and economically united to force the developed world to pay it a fair price for its cash crops.<br /> <br /> To give one illustration. Both Ghana and Nigeria have in the post-war independence period enormously developed their production of cocoa, as the table [below]shows.<br /> <br /> This result has not been obtained by chance, it is the consequence of heavy internal expenditure on control of disease and pests, the subsidising of insecticides and the spraying machines provided to farmers and the importing of new varieties of cocoa seedlings which are resistant to the endemic ills which previously cocoa trees had developed. By means such as these Africa as a whole greatly increased her cocoa production, while that of Latin America remained stationary.<br /> <br /> What advantage has Nigeria or Ghana gained through this stupendous increase in agricultural productivity? In 1954/5 when Ghana’s production was 210,000 tons, her 1954 earnings from the cocoa crop were £85 1/2 million. This year (1964/5) with an estimated crop of 590,000 tons, the estimated external earnings will be around £77 million. Nigeria has suffered a similar experience. <br /> {| class=&quot;wikitable&quot;<br /> |+<br /> ! colspan=&quot;6&quot; |Cocoa Bean Production<br /> |-<br /> |<br /> | colspan=&quot;2&quot; |Long Tons<br /> | colspan=&quot;2&quot; |Index<br /> 1949/50 = 100<br /> |<br /> |-<br /> |<br /> |Ghana<br /> |Nigeria<br /> |Ghana<br /> |Nigeria<br /> |<br /> |-<br /> |1949/50<br /> |248,000<br /> |99,000<br /> |100<br /> |100<br /> |1950<br /> |-<br /> |1950/51<br /> |262,000<br /> |110,000<br /> |106<br /> |111<br /> |1951<br /> |-<br /> |1951/52<br /> |211,000<br /> |108,000<br /> |85<br /> |109<br /> |1952<br /> |-<br /> |1952/53<br /> |247.000<br /> |109,000<br /> |100<br /> |110<br /> |1953<br /> |-<br /> |1953/54<br /> |211,000<br /> |97,000<br /> |85<br /> |98<br /> |1954<br /> |-<br /> |1954/55<br /> |220,000<br /> |89,000<br /> |89<br /> |90<br /> |1955<br /> |-<br /> |1955/56<br /> |237,000<br /> |114,000<br /> |96<br /> |155<br /> |1956<br /> |-<br /> |1956/57<br /> |264,000<br /> |135,000<br /> |106<br /> |136<br /> |1957<br /> |-<br /> |1957/58<br /> |207,000<br /> |81,000<br /> |83<br /> |82<br /> |1958<br /> |-<br /> |1958/59<br /> |255,000<br /> |140,000<br /> |103<br /> |141<br /> |1959<br /> |-<br /> |1959/60<br /> |317,000<br /> |155,000<br /> |128<br /> |157<br /> |1960<br /> |-<br /> |1960/61<br /> |432,000<br /> |195,000<br /> |174<br /> |197<br /> |1961<br /> |-<br /> |1961/62<br /> |410,000<br /> |191,000<br /> |165<br /> |193<br /> |1962<br /> |-<br /> |1962/63<br /> |422,000<br /> |176,000<br /> |170<br /> |170<br /> |1963<br /> |-<br /> |1963/64<br /> |421,000<br /> |217,000<br /> |170<br /> |219<br /> |1934<br /> |-<br /> |1964/65<br /> |590,000<br /> |310,000<br /> |238<br /> |313<br /> |1865<br /> |}<br /> In 1954/5 she produced 89,000 tons of beans and received for her crop £39 1/4 million. In 1965 it is estimated that Nigeria will produce 310,000 tons and is likely to receive for it around £40 million. In other words, Ghana and Nigeria have trebled their production of this particular agricultural product but their gross earnings from it have fallen from £125 million to £117 million.<br /> <br /> A detailed study of production and price shows that it is the developed consuming country which obtains the advantage of the increased production in the less developed one. So long as African agricultural producers are disunited they will be unable to control the market price of their primary products.<br /> <br /> As experience with the Cocoa Producers Alliance has shown, any organisation which is based on a mere commercial agreement between primary producers is insufficient to secure a fair world price. This can only be obtained when the united power of the producer countries is harnessed by common political and economic policies and has behind it the united financial resources of the States concerned.<br /> <br /> So long as Africa remains divided it will therefore be the wealthy consumer countries who will dictate the price of African cash crops. Nevertheless, even in Africa could dictate the price of its cash crops this would not by itself provide the balanced economy which is necessary for development. The answer must be industrialisation.<br /> <br /> The African continent, however, cannot hope to industrialise effectively in the haphazard, ''laisser-faire'' manner of Europe. In the first place, there is the time factor. In the second, the socialised modes of production and tremendous human and capital investments involved call for cohesive and integrated planning. Africa will need to bring to its aid all its latent ingenuity and talent in order to meet the challenge that independence and the demands of its peoples for better living have raised. The challenge cannot be met on any piece-meal scale, but only by the total mobilisation of the continent’s resources within the framework of comprehensive socialist planning and deployment.<br /> <br /> We have noted that in the countries of the highest settler populations, and therefore the most exploited so far in Africa (Algeria, Congo, Kenya, Morocco, Rhodesia, Malawi, South Africa, Tanganyika), agriculture is predominant. In the case of South Africa, the most highly developed area of the African continent, the contribution of agriculture and mining is together, equal to that of industry, manufacture and construction. South Africa’s economy is heavily bolstered by the export of its mining output. Gold contributes up to 70 per cent of the total exports, which makes the economy, for all its apparent boom, and the heavily increasing foreign investment, basically almost as insecure as that of the less developed countries of the continent. For all its pushing secondary industries, its chemicals manufacture, military production, steel processing and the rest, South Africa has so far failed to lay down the basis of solid industrialisation. G. E. Menell, chairman of Anglo-Transvaal Consolidated Investment Company, which controls gold, diamonds and uranium, made a most telling statement in his annual address on 6 December 1963 to the Johannesburg shareholders’ meeting. ‘The nation’s economy is based, to a significant degree, on wasting assets – the gold mines of the Transvaal and Orange Free State. We have become more and more aware of this in recent years as more mines near the end of their lives without any sign of new large goldfields, in spite of the many millions being spent on exploration.’<br /> <br /> Investment in South Africa’s economy comes mainly from Western capital with which local finance, not hardly enough to stand on its own feet, is strongly bound. Quick profits are the incentive, so that while Anglo-Transvaal’s chairman sees the dangers to the economy, he was nonetheless happy to be able to announce that record profits were again achieved in 1963.<br /> <br /> The whole of the economy is geared to the interests of the foreign capital that dominates it. South Africa’s banking institutions, like those of most other African States, are offshoots of the Western banking and financial houses. South Africa is dominated by western monopoly even more than by any other sector of the continent, because the investments are many times greater and the dependence upon gold and other mining as the centre of the economy gears it inextricably to that monopoly. Its vulnerability is intensified by the fact that it is a supplier of crude and semi-finished products to the factories of the west on a larger scale than the rest of Africa, and an earner of greater profits for their financial backers.<br /> <br /> Nigeria tells in a few basic figures a tale of a different kind of economic maladjustment. In 1960 agriculture, forestry and fishing accounted for 63 per cent of the economic activity; mining one per cent. The imbalance is emphasised by the extremely low ratio of two per cent for industry and manufacture, eliminating at once any comparison with the one per cent contribution of mining and four per cent of agriculture to America’s total economic product. In the case of the United States, this low proportion supports a vast superstructure of industry and manufacture. In Nigeria it connotes simply a total disregard under colonialism of Nigeria’s potentialities. The reason for this lies not in the fact that Nigeria is devoid of natural industrial resources, as recent findings of oil and iron confirm. It was that Nigeria’s agriculture provided greater profitability for European investment than the risks that were involved in the larger capital provisions called for by mining exploration and exploitation.<br /> <br /> In 1962 petroleum and petroleum products contributed 9.9 per cent to Nigeria’s exports, but it is Shell-BP that hopes to reap most of the benefits. The bulk of these exports was in crude oil, exceeding three million tons. The oil company is aiming at an export target of five million tons of crude oil by 1965. Processing plants are in Europe, not in Nigeria.<br /> <br /> The oil refinery going up in Port Harcourt is owned by Shell-BP; the natural gas piping is owned by Shell-Barclays D.C. &amp; O. The oil refinery is meant to handle only ten per cent of Nigeria’s crude oil output, and its products will serve only Nigeria’s domestic market. Such an arrangement makes it possible not to disturb operations outside Nigeria while making super profits on Nigerian operations.<br /> <br /> Generally speaking, in spite of the exploration costs, which are written off for tax purposes anyway and many times covered by eventual profits, mining has proved a very profitable venture for foreign capital investment in Africa. Its benefits for the Africans on the other hand, despite all the frothy talk to the contrary, have been negligible.<br /> <br /> This is explained by the absence of industry and manufacture based upon the use of domestic natural resources, and of the trade that is their continent. For mining production is destined principally for exportation in its primary form. Certain exceptions to this generalisation are to be found in South Africa, Zambia and the Congo. Some small conversion has been taking place also in countries like Morocco, Algeria, Mozambique. South Africa’s copper is exported in the form of metal and a small part of its iron is sent overseas as ingots; its gold is refined. But for these exceptions, most exported minerals are shipped from Africa in their primary state. They go to feed the industries and plants of Europe, America and Japan. The ore that is to be produced in Swaziland by the Swaziland Iron Ore Development Company (owned jointly by Anglo-American Corporation and the powerful British steel group, Guest Keen &amp; Nettlefolds) will go at the rate of 1,200,000 tons annually for ten years from 1964 to a Japanese steel combine.<br /> <br /> When the countries of their origin are obliged to buy back their minerals and other raw products in the form of finished goods, they do so at grossly inflated prices. A General Electric advertisement carried in the March/April 1962 issue of ''Modern Government'' informs us that ‘from the heart of Africa to the hearths of the world’s steel mills comes ore for stronger steel, better steel – steel for buildings, machinery, and more steel rails’. With this steel from Africa, General Electric supplies transportation for bringing out another valuable mineral for its own use and that of other great imperialist exploiters. In lush verbiage the same advertisement describes how ‘deep in the tropical jungle of Central Africa lies one of the world’s richest deposits of manganese ore’. But is it for Africa’s needs? Not at all. This site, which is ‘being developed by the French Concern, Compagnie Minière de l'Ogooue, is located on the upper reach of the Ogooue River in the Gabon Republic. After the ore is mined it will first be carried 50 miles by cableway. Then it will be transferred to ore cars and hauled 300 miles by diesel-electric locomotives to the port of Point Noire for shipment to the world’s steel mills’. For ‘the world’ read the United States first and France second.<br /> <br /> That exploitation of this nature can take place is due to the balkanisation of the African continent. Balkanisation is the major instrument of neo-colonialism and will be found wherever neo-colonialism is practised.<br /> <br /> == Obstacles to Economic Progress ==<br /> SPEAKING of West Africa of 1962, the United Nations Economic Commision for Africa pointed out:<br /> <br /> ‘Few other regions of the world show such a multitude of fairly small States both as far as production and population go. The only similar region of some importance is Central America.’<br /> <br /> West Africa is in fact divided into nineteen separate independent States and includes two colonial enclaves possessed by Spain and Portugal. The population of the area is about a third of the total population of Africa, yet the average population of the independent countries, if Nigeria is excluded, is about 2-3 million. It is, however, illusory to regard even Nigeria as an exception to the balkanisation policy practised by the departing colonial rulers. The constitution imposed on Nigeria at independence divided the country into three regions (which have since grown to four) loosely joined on a Federal basis but with sufficient powers left to the regions (which have since grown to four) loosely joined on a Federal basis but with sufficient powers left to the regions to cripple overall economic planning. If the other States of West Africa are examples of political balkanisation, Nigeria is an example of economic balkanisation. Ghana, with a population of over seven million, only escaped a similar fate by the resistance put up by the Conventions People’s Party government to a British plan which would have created no less than five regions, some with a population of less than one million, yet each possessing sufficient powers to defeat central planning.<br /> <br /> Kenya, which was also forced to accept at independence a similar type of constitution, has only recently been able to establish a unified regime.<br /> <br /> When France was faced with the possibility of being forced to accept some form of independence, or at least self-government, for the territories of the old colonial federations of French West and Equatorial Africa, a series of balkanisation measures were adopted by the French Government. The ''Loi-Cadre'' of 1956 established the frontiers of the present French-speaking States. The dismantling process begun by the ''Loi-Cadre'' was completed by the referendum of 1958 on the Constitution of the French Fifth Republic. Each of the territories established by the ''Loi-Cadre'' was called upon to decide separately whether it wished to remain an overseas territory of France, an autonomous Republic within the French Community or to be independent.<br /> <br /> Teresa Hayter, a research assistant of the British Overseas Development Institute, in the April 1965 issue of the journal of the British Royal Institute of International Affairs has described the process:<br /> <br /> ‘The territories were to make separate decisions; it was therefore they and not the Federations of West and Equatorial Africa which were legally to inherit France’s powers; no provision was made for strengthening the Federal institutions and in fact they were dismantled after referendum and came formally to an end in April 1959. The original purpose of the Federations had been to enable the colonies to pay for themselves, through a reallocation of their revenues; ... Senghor in particular has bitterly accused France of “balkanising” Africa in the ''Loi-Cadre''... With the choice so loaded, only Guinea voted against the Constitution; all the others became autonomous republics, members of the Franco-African Community.’<br /> <br /> Fearing that the example of Guinea might be followed by other states which had decided to join the Community, the French Government removed everything of value from the territory. Administrators and teachers were withdrawn. Documents and even electric light bulbs were removed from government buildings. Financial assistance, trade support and the payment of pensions to Guinean war veterans were discontinued.<br /> <br /> Despite the pressure placed on Guinea in this way, the remaining French States were forced by the internal pressure to seek political independence. This destroyed the conception usually associated with General de Gaulle, the originator of the French Community, of a non-sovereign group of African States each separately linked to France. One after another the ‘autonomous Republics’ obtained international sovereignty but under such adverse conditions that they had in fact to maintain all the military, financial, commercial and economic links of the previous colonial period. In order to exist at all as independent States, these former French territories were forced to accept French ‘aid’ even to meet their recurrent expenses.<br /> <br /> French ‘aid’ to developing countries is, in proportion to the French national income, the highest in the world and is, in absolute terms, the second highest. Nearly all of this ‘aid’ is absorbed by commitments in Africa, and nearly half of it goes to the fourteen States which were previously autonomous republics and whose combined population is only slightly larger than that of Nigeria. Aid of this type can dictate African relations with the developed world and, as experience has shown, can be extremely dangerous to the recipients.<br /> <br /> French African aid originally arose from the advantage which French firms and individuals derived from the African franc zone and this has determined the framework in which the aid is still provided. So long as the relationship which the aid provided was profitable to France it naturally continued. It was in effect a levy on French taxpayers for the benefit of French individuals and firms.<br /> <br /> The overall value of the policy to France was that in return for guaranteed markets and prices for colonial primary products, such as coffee, cocoa, groundnuts, bananas and cotton, the African States had to import from France fixed quantities of certain goods, such as machinery, textiles, sugar and flour, which were then uncompetitive in price or surplus in Europe, and in addition the States were forced to limit their imports from countries outside the franc zone. While this scheme made nonsense of any plan for inter-African trade it was a period highly profitable to France. With the fall in the world price of primary commodities these profits began to diminish, as did enthusiasm for ‘aid’ in France. At the present moment the most which can be said in favour of French aid is that it does not now, as it did in the past, make an actual profit for France from the less developed States of its former African empire. Teresa Hayter sums it up:<br /> <br /> ‘France does not gain in its transactions with the States nor does it lose: aid, private investment, French Government expenditures and imports from them are balanced by exports to them, repatriation of capital and remittances of profits and salaries.’<br /> <br /> This state of affairs is considered to be no longer of value to France. The Jeanneney Report published in 1964 and expressing the official French view, pointed out that the protective system of the French zone was no longer in the interests of France and the Report therefore advocated the re-deployment of French aid. In any event, France had to comply with her obligations to the European Common Market. Under the new Convention of Association which came into force in the summer of 1964, the six members of the European Common Market are to achieve in stages a free trade area and this will no longer make it possible for France to discriminate in favour of the African States nor for these States to discriminate against France’s Common Market partners. Exports from these States will by the end of a five-year period have to be aligned to world prices. In consequence the primary production which they have built up on the strength of the promise of guaranteed markets and prices is likely to fail to be competitive in world market conditions. It is difficult to see how Senegal in particular can manage without a French subsidy for her groundnuts, and President Senghor has already called attention to the serious economic position into which this puts his country.<br /> <br /> In fact, the limited neo-colonialism of the French period is now being merged in the collective neo-colonialism of the European Common Market which enables other States, hitherto outside the French preserve, to profit by the system. It also rationalises the division of Africa into economic zones based upon Europe, by drawing in four other States. The Congo (Leopoldville), Burundi and Rwanda are, as previous Belgian colonies, tied to the Belgian economic system and Somalia through its previous association with Italy is also brought in as an associated State of the Common Market.<br /> <br /> A grouping such as this raises the wider problems of African neo-colonialism and emphasises its irresponsible nature. Of the States carved out of the former French colonies one, Guinea, has been able, with great suffering and losses it is true, to cut free from the type of neo-colonialist control imposed on the others. Mali has been forced to accept some of the rules and regulations which govern the relations of the former French colonies to France, but at least she has set up her own currency, limits transfers of money abroad and receives from France only a partial guarantee of the parity of her currency with the French franc. In the case of all the other States their currencies have been stabilised on a fixed parity with the French franc and have a total guarantee from the French Treasury. These States pay their receipts of French francs into operation accounts in the French Treasury. These accounts can be overdrawn and the States can draw on them against their own currencies to an unlimited extent. Obviously, however, whatever the theoretical position, the international financial position of these countries is subject to control in that at any time their operation accounts in the French Treasury could be blocked, as was done in the case of Guinea. Most, at any rate, of the States concerned lack the strength to stand up against such pressure as did Guinea.<br /> <br /> Why then, it may be asked, are these powers not sufficient to enable France to persuade these States to follow present French foreign policy which is based upon a ‘third force’ concept? France did not support the United States and Belgium in their ‘humanitarian’ intervention at Stanleyville in the Congo. Unlike Britain and the other Common Market countries, France has openly opposed the United States policy in Santo Domingo, has recognised the Peoples’ Republic of China and has recommended the neutralisation of Vietnam. Yet only a minority of the African States which would appear to be under French neo-colonial control have followed the French line. The majority of them refuse to recognise China or in any way suggestive of being under United States rather than French influence. The answer to this apparent paradox will, I believe, be found in the following chapters of this book in which I attempt to explain the power and ramifications of international financial control. Here one has a super State which can at times even override the policy wishes of the nominal neo-colonial master.<br /> <br /> The control of the funds of the French neo-colonial African States is exercised by the administrative council of their central banks, which are composed partly of Frenchmen without whose agreement no decision in monetary policy can be taken. This French banking complex, with its absolute control of the currencies and external payments of the French neo-colonial States, could, in theory, dictate that these States follow a French policy. However, the complex is itself subject, in the manner later described, to external pressures which support United States rather than French policies where a difference of opinion arises.<br /> <br /> Part of the value of commencing a study of neo-colonialism in its African context is that it provides examples of every type of the system. It is impossible to define the African situation in terms of independent States, divided into the non-aligned and neo-colonialist camp, colonies and racialist States such as South Africa. In Africa, all former colonies which have now become independent, including particularly South Africa, are subject in some degree to neo-colonialist pressures which however much they wish to resist they cannot entirely escape, struggle as they may. The difference in reality is between those States that accept neo-colonialism as a policy and those which resist it. Similarly, the colonial problem of Africa is in many ways really neo-colonial. The Portuguese African territories appear at first sight only to raise the issue of freedom from colonial rule but in fact they exist as colonies only because Portugal is itself a neo-colonial State. For the last fifty years the great powers have regarded the Portuguese colonies as counters which they can exchange between themselves in order to readjust the balance of power. In 1913 the British and Germans had initiated an agreement for their division and this was only prevented by the outbreak of the first world war. In the appeasement period prior to the second world war, when it was thought that Hitler could be bought off by an offer of colonial territory, the Portuguese colonies were again regarded as the suitable bribe.<br /> <br /> If Portugal controls these colonies now it is only because of the military strength which she derives through her NATO alliance. Portugal is however not a member of NATO because of any military assistance which she could render the alliance but because this is a convenient way by which Portuguese territory can be made available to the forces of other members of the alliance.<br /> <br /> At the other end of the scale is the French colony of Somalia. It continues to exist as a colony not because France would resist pressure to grant it independence but because of African disunity. It is a point of dispute between Somalia and Ethiopia. African disunity maintains this colony. If it were to go on either of its neighbours it would almost inevitably provoke a conflict between them.<br /> <br /> Rhodesia, while theoretically a colony, is really a fossilised form of the earliest type of neo-colonialism which was practised in southern Africa until the formation of the Union of South Africa. The essence of the Rhodesia system is not to employ individuals drawn from the people of the territory itself to run the country, as in the newer type of neo-colonial State, but to utilise instead an alien minority. The majority of the European ruling class of Rhodesia only came to the Colony after the second world war, but it is they and not the African inhabitants, who outnumber them 16 to 1, that Britain regards as ‘the Government’. This racialist State is protected from outside pressure because under international law it is a British colony, while Britain herself excuses her failure to exercise her legal rights to prevent the oppression and exploitation of the African inhabitants (of which of course she officially disapproves) because of a supposed British parliamentary convention. In other words, by maintaining Rhodesia nominally as a colony, Britain in fact gives her official protection as a second South Africa and the European racialists are left free to treat the African inhabitants as they will.<br /> <br /> The Rhodesian system thus has all the hallmarks of the neo-colonial model. The patron power, Britain, awards to a local government over which it claims to have no control unlimited rights and exploitation within the territory. Yet Britain still retains powers to exclude other countries from intervening either to liberate its African population or to bring its economy into some other one of influence. The manoeuvring over Rhodesia’s ‘independence’ is an excellent example of the workings of neo-colonialism and of the practical difficulties to which the system gives rise. A European minority of less than a quarter of a million could not maintain, in the conditions of Africa today, rule over four million Africans without external support from somewhere. When the settlers talk of ‘independence’ they are not thinking of standing on their own feet but merely of seeking a new neo-colonialist master who would, in their view, be more reliable than Britain.<br /> <br /> As will be seen from the chapters which follow, modern neo-colonialism is based upon the control of nominally independent States by giant financial interests. These interests often act through or on behalf of a particular capitalist State, but they are quite capable of acting on their own and forcing those imperial countries in which they have a dominant interest to follow their lead. There is, however, an older type of neo-colonialism which is based primarily on military considerations. A world power, having decided on principles of global strategy that it is necessary to have a military base in this or that nominally independent country, must ensure that the country where the base is situated is friendly. Here is another reason for balkanisation. If the base can be situated in a country which is so constituted economically that it cannot survive without substantial ‘aid’ from the military power which owns the base, then, so it is argued, the security of the base can be assured. Like so many of the other assumptions on which neo-colonialism is based this one is false. The presence of foreign bases arouses popular hostility to the neo-colonial arrangements which permit them more quickly and more surely than does anything else, and throughout Africa these bases are disappearing. Libya may be quoted as an example of how this policy has failed.<br /> <br /> Libya has had a long colonial history. From the sixteenth century onwards it was a Turkish colony, but in 1900, in the heyday of colonialism, France and Italy agreed that if Italy would not oppose France occupying Morocco, France would not oppose Italy occupying Libya. So when in 1911 and 1912 France was occupying Morocco, Italy went to war with Turkey and, defeating her, annexed Libya.<br /> <br /> Despite promises during the second world war to the people of Libya that they would never again be subjected to Italian rule, France tried at the peace settlement to have Italy reinstalled in order to support her own position in Tunisia. This solution proving impossible, Libya became nominally independent but actually under British neo-colonial control.<br /> <br /> According to the figures collated by the British Overseas Development Institute, during the period 1945 to 1963 Libya received no less than 17 per cent of the total bilateral aid which Britain gave to all foreign countries outside the Commonwealth in that period. The Overseas Development Institute notes that ‘although these payments to Libya are counted as “aid” there is no doubt that they are in essence straightforward payments to the Libyan Government in return for the use of bases’. Nevertheless, popular pressure in Libya has now made it necessary for the Libyan Government to terminate the military agreement for the British bases.<br /> <br /> These limitations on the real independence of many countries in Africa should not be allowed to obscure the very great achievements already gained in the struggle for African independence and unity.<br /> <br /> In 1945 Africa largely comprised the colonial territories of European powers, and the idea that the greater part of the continent would be independent within twenty years would have seemed impossible to any political observer in the immediate post-war period. Yet, not only has independence been achieved but considerable progress has been made towards the establishment of African unity. To this unity there are still powerful obstacles but they are no greater than the obstacles already overcome and, if their nature is understood, they are clearly surmountable.<br /> <br /> Already, and this will ultimately be the decisive factor, the mass of the African people support unity in the same way as they previously supported the various local movements for political independence. Many of the political leaders of French West Africa, for example, did not at first support independence. In 1946, in the French National Assembly, of which he was then a member, M. Houphouet-Boigny, the President of the Ivory Coast, claimed ‘there are no separatists on these benches... there is a powerful bond, capable of resisting all tests, a moral bond which unites us. It is the ideal of liberty, fraternity, equality, for whose triumph France has never hesitated to sacrifice its most noble blood’. The same policy of the maintenance of unity with France was also supported at that time by President Senghor of Senegal, who said, ‘The French union must be a conjunction of civilisations, a melting-pot of culture... it is a marriage rather than an association.’<br /> <br /> In the same way as mass pressure made it impossible for an African leader to oppose independence, so today mass pressure makes it impossible for him openly to oppose African unity. Those who are against it can only show their opposition in indirect ways: by suggesting that the pace towards it is too fast; that this or that plan is impracticable or that there are procedural difficulties which prevent them assisting in formulating a practical plan for it. The case for African unity is very strong and the instinct of the mass of the people right.<br /> <br /> It is only when the artificial boundaries that divide her are broken down so as to provide for viable economic units, and ultimately a single African unit, that Africa will be able to develop industrially, for her own sake, and ultimately for the sake of a healthy world economy. A common currency is needed and communications of all kinds must be developed to allow the free flow of goods and services.<br /> <br /> The Economic Commission for Africa has repeatedly emphasised the need for economic planning on a continental scale. The inadequacy of national planning can be demonstrated by a glance at the economies of, for example, Mali, the Upper Volta, Niger and Uganda. These land-locked States, which export large quantities of food products to other African States, cannot remain indifferent to the agricultural self-sufficiency schemes adopted by their neighbours. Similarly, a national government planning the establishment of a new industry may find that a neighbouring State is developing one like it. Such duplication would probably result in wasted resources if each was depending on exporting its surplus to its neighbour.<br /> <br /> Few would argue against the need for economic planning on a national scale. How much stronger is the argument for continental planning. The modern trend is towards larger economic and political units as interdependence of nations and peoples grows. No country can be completely self-sufficient or afford to ignore political events outside its borders. Africa is clearly fragmented into too many small uneconomic and non-viable States, many of whom are having a very hard struggle to survive. As already noted, others have had to cling to old ties with former colonial rulers and have become easy prey to neo-colonialist forces. Some of them have found themselves, whether they liked it or not, drawn into the cold war and into the rivalries between foreign powers. The Congo is a notable example.<br /> <br /> Naturally, each national government is concerned primarily with the welfare of its own citizens. It could only be expected to agree to a policy of unification if the immediate and long-term benefits became so apparent that it would be positively damaging to its citizens ''not'' to co-operate. We are faced here with the problem of uneven economic growth. Some African countries are richer in natural resources than others. The less fortunate will need reassuring that their interests will not suffer at the hands of the more developed States.<br /> <br /> Past economic union experience has not been encouraging. The linking of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland benefited chiefly Southern Rhodesia. Kenya has gained principally from the East African Common Market, Uganda and Tanganyika being at best only marginal gainers. In the former French colonial federations the benefits of economic unity tended to centre in Brazzaville, Abidjan and Dakar. These examples further strengthen the argument for continentally-planned economic growth so that all States can benefit from industrialization and other improvements made possible by unified direction. The richer countries will be able to help the poorer. Resources can be pooled and development projects co-ordinated to raise the living standards of every African.<br /> <br /> The time factor is important. As ECA has pointed out, ''now'' is the time to act, before each State gets too deeply involved in major investment and structural decisions based on narrow, national markets. With each month that passes, the foreign interests of neo-colonialism get a tighter grip on Africa’s economic life.<br /> <br /> The comparatively recent penetration of American big business into Africa points once again to the danger from neo-colonialism. So also does the combining of large firms to form powerful monopolies. How can some of our smaller States hope to bargain successfully with powerful foreign combines some of which control financial empires worth more than the State’s total revenue? The smaller the State, and the more formidable the foreign interests, the less likely are the conditions for economic independence to be met. For example, Ghana, because of its economic size and alternative industries, has been in a stronger position for bargaining with the aluminium companies than much smaller, and economically more limited Togo can hope to be in dealing with French phosphate interests. The domination of Africa’s economy by foreign firms must be ended if we are to achieve rounded economic growth, and this can only be done through unified action.<br /> <br /> Something in the nature of an economic revolution is required. Our development has been held back for too long by the colonial type economy. We need to reorganise entirely so that each country can specialise in producing the goods and crops for which it is best suited.<br /> <br /> With economic unity, those countries in Africa which are beginning to establish modern industries would benefit from wider markets. We would all be in a better bargaining position to obtain higher prices for our goods and to establish adequate taxation of foreign factor earnings. In fact, a whole new pattern of economic development would be made possible. Agriculture could be modernised more quickly with more capital at its disposal. Industries on a larger and more economic scale could be planned. These could afford to make use of new techniques involving heavy capital outlay. Smaller plants planned to meet only national needs are likely to have higher costs, and are eventually less able to reduce costs than optimum-sized units.<br /> <br /> National planning bodies would still have a very important part to play in a unified Africa. They would, for example, supply essential information about local conditions, but their work would be made easier with the experienced advice and help of a single planning body keeping an eye on Africa’s interests as a whole. The research and training in development projects already being carried out by the ECA Development Institute in Dakar would be strengthened to serve both the continental and national bodies. Expensive failures due to lack of co-ordination would be avoided. A case in point is the Inga dam project which is to provide power for a sugar refinery, a plastics and hardboard (from sugar cane waste) complex in Bangui, which in turn will ship bulk plastics to a plastic products industry in Brazzaville. Obviously there should be a planning body able to phase and harmonise construction timing for the Brazzaville and Bangui plants, the power lines from Inga to Bangui and Brazzaville, and the transportation services between Bangui and Brazzaville and the dam itself.<br /> <br /> In the process of obtaining economic unity there is bound to be much hard bargaining between the various States. Integration of different aspects of economic policy will proceed at different rates, and there may be disappointing delays and compromises to be worked out. But given the will to succeed, difficulties can be resolved.<br /> <br /> In general, the broader the front on which economic unity is launched the quicker the goals and policies of a fully developed Africa can be achieved. An all-African planning body could take immediate steps towards the development of large-scale industry and power; for the removal of barriers to inter-African trade; and for the creation of a central bank and the formation of a unified policy on all aspects of export control, tariff and quota arrangements. The ECA has carried out several surveys designed to provide information to help in the making of decisions on these points.<br /> <br /> Among immediate needs are the manufacture in Africa of agricultural machinery of all kinds to speed up the modernisation of agriculture. We need supplies of electrical equipment for use in the growing electric power production essential for industrial growth. Mining and industrial machinery must be produced in Africa to lower the costs of developing our mineral resources. Construction machinery and supplies, chemicals, fertilisers, plastics, are all urgently required, and Africa must produce them for her own requirements. Reports of the ECA Industrial Co-ordination Missions to different regions in Africa suggest that the production of iron and steel, non-ferrous metals, engineering supplies, chemicals and fertilisers, cement, paper and textiles should be developed on an inter-African basis since their efficiency depends on large-scale production. Other industries which can run efficiently on a smaller scale can be planned nationally.<br /> <br /> The location of the various industries will, of course, depend on many factors such as the availability of power, mineral deposits, nearness to processing plants, markets and so on. Production of aluminium and copper, for example, will have to be developed in those countries where the essential resources, ore and cheap power, are available. The manufacturing of aluminium and copper products, however, need not take place in the countries producing the metals. Similarly, the production of cotton is limited to certain climatic regions, while cotton textile industries can be developed further afield.<br /> <br /> Every African State has some contribution to make to the economic whole. There are, for instance, no known deposits of potash in West Africa, but requirements can be met from North Africa, Ethiopia and possibly also from the Congo (Brazzaville) and Gabon. Plans for nitrogenous fertiliser production in Zambia have already been worked out. The plant could be supplied with coal from Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and low-cost power from the Victoria Falls, Kenya, with its large forest reserves, could become the centre of a wood distillation complex able to supply the countries of East and Central Africa with gas, acetone, methanol and tar. There are many other examples too numerous to describe.<br /> <br /> The urgent need to plan industrial development on a continental scale must not, however, blind us to the equally important need to do the same for agriculture, fishing and forestry. In ''The Role of Industry in Development: some Fallacies'', Dudley Seers has pointed out the inter-dependence of agriculture and industry:<br /> <br /> ‘Materials are needed for growing industries; more important, the swelling town labour force needs to be fed, and this implies that a rising surplus of food has to be produced in the countryside. ... To over-emphasize industry, as some countries have found to their cost, leads paradoxically in the end to a slower rate of industrialisation.’<br /> <br /> African States are importing larger amounts of food than ever before from abroad. This trend must be stopped by a carefully planned expansion of our own agriculture.<br /> <br /> As an industry, there can be specialisation so that each region or State concentrates on producing the agriculture products for which it is best suited. For instance, it is wasteful for each West African State to try to be self-sufficient in rice when Senegal’s Casamance district would be well able to supply the need. Equally, Mali and Upper Volta are obvious exporters of fresh, tinned and processed meat, while coastal States would supply fresh, tinned and smoked fish.<br /> <br /> A further argument for unified agricultural policy is implied in the need to step up efforts to combat many of the efforts to combat many of the obstacles to economic growth. Locusts, the tse-tse fly and plant diseases are no respecters of political frontiers. Research into their control would benefit from a pooling of brain power and technical know-how. So also would medicine and social services. How much greater the chance of wiping out major epidemic diseases like river blindness and sleeping sickness if action against them is co-ordinated and unified.<br /> <br /> Transport and communications are also sectors where unified planning is needed. Roads, railways, waterways, air-lines must be made to serve Africa’s needs, not the requirements of foreign interests. Communications between African States are quite inadequate. In many cases it is still easier to travel from an airport in Africa to Europe or America than to go from one African State to another.<br /> <br /> Economic unity to be effective must be accompanied by political unity. The two are inseparable, each necessary for the future greatness of our continent, and the full development of our resources. There are several examples of major unions of States in the world today. In ''Africa Must Unite'' I described some of the more important ones, and warned against the danger of regional federations in Africa.<br /> <br /> Africa today is the main stamping ground of the neo-colonialist forces that seek the domination of the world for the imperialism they serve. Spreading from South Africa, the Congo, the Rhodesias, Angola, Mozambique, they form a maze-like connection with the mightiest international financial monopolies in the world. These monopolies are extending their banking and industrial organisations throughout the African continent. Their spokesmen push their interests in the parliaments and governments of the world and sit on the international bodies that are supposed to exist for the promotion of world peace and the welfare of the less-developed countries. Against such a formidable phalanx of forces, how can we move? Certainly not singly, but in a combination that will give strength to our bargaining power and eliminate so many of the duplications that give greater force and greater advantage to the imperialists and their strategy of neo-colonialism.<br /> <br /> Decolonisation is a word much and unctuously used by imperialist spokesmen to describe the transfer of political control from colonialist to African sovereignty. The motive spring of colonialism, however, still controls the sovereignty. The young countries are still the providers of raw materials, the old of manufactured goods. The change in the economic relationship between the new sovereign states and the erstwhile masters is only one of form. Colonialism has achieved a new guise. It has become neo-colonialism, the last stage of imperialism; its final bid for existence, as monopoly-capitalism or imperialism is the last stage of capitalism. And neo-colonialism is fast entrenching itself within the body of Africa today through the consortia and monopoly combinations that are the carpet-baggers of the African revolt against colonialism and the urge for continental unity.<br /> <br /> These interests are centred on the mining companies of South and Central Africa. From mining they ramify onto an involved pattern of investment companies, manufacturing concerns, transport, public utility organisations, oil and chemical industries, nuclear installations and many other undertakings too numerous to mention. Their enterprises spill across the vast African continent and over the oceans into North America, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, the Caribbean, South America, the United Kingdom, Scandinavia and most of western Europe.<br /> <br /> Connections, direct and indirect, are maintained with many of the giants of American industry and finance. They are supported by leading bankers, financiers and industrialists in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Germany, America and elsewhere. The rotas of their directorates are filled with names that have a familiar ring for those who have the least knowledge of international finance and industry. Names like Oppenheimer, Hambro, Drayton, Rothschild, d'Erlanger, Gilet, Lafond, Robiliart, van der Straeten, Hochschild, Chester Beatty, Patino, Engelhard, Timmins are ubiquitous. Others, equally powerful in the interests they dominate, avoid the publicity of lengthy lists of their directorships, either by complete absence from the pages of directories anxious to advertise their glories, or by coyly hiding their eminence behind a lonely announcement with name and address.<br /> <br /> These intricate inter-connections of the great imperialist monopolies expose the real forces that are behind world events. They indicate also the pattern which links those events to the developing countries at different points of the globe. They reveal the duality of the interests that force the developing countries to import goods and services which are the products of companies combined in the monopoly groups directly exploiting their natural resources or intimately associated with them. This is the double edge to the guillotine that cuts off Africa’s wealth from Africa, to the greater enrichment of the countries which absorb her primary materials and return them to her in the form of finished products.<br /> <br /> In their new-found independence, it is to these very same monopolistic groups that the new African States are obliged to turn to supply the requirements arising from the need to lay the foundations for their economic transformation. The policy of non-alignment, whenever it is exercised, imposes the obligation to ‘shop around’, but since capitalism has come to the peak of monopoly, it is impossible for any of us to avoid dealing with monopoly in some form or another. But it is in the nature of our arrangements with the monopolies that the freedom or otherwise of the African States lies. Where we establish and maintain the integrity of our financial institutions and keep our basic projects free from imperialist control, we leave ourselves room to manoeuvre away from the neo-colonialism that, unfortunately, has closed its grip upon countries whose independence is over-shadowed by a heavy reliance upon extra-African associations. In this atmosphere of relative freedom, the giant combines that open up industrial enterprises on our soil do so on arrangements that are well screened and are part of nationally planned advancement. The national banks are really national banks, formed and run out of the country’s own resources, and our other financial and economic institutions are guarded against neo-colonialist infiltration.<br /> <br /> Unhappily, these conditions are rare in Africa. Most of the territories pass into the state of national sovereignty in unviable circumstances that inhibit even a modicum of free movement within national limits. They could be overcome, but only within the combined strength that continental unity and a central connective socialist policy, free of attachments to other continents, could give. As things are, most of our new States, alarmed at the prospect of the harsh world of poverty, disease, ignorance and lack of financial and technical resources into which they are thrust from the womb of colonialism, are reluctant to cut the cord that holds them to the imperialist mother. Their hesitancy is fostered by the sugared water of aid, which is the stop-gap between avid hunger and the hoped-for greater nourishment that never comes. As a result, we find that imperialism, having quickly adopted its outlook to the loss of direct political control, has retained and extended its economic grip (and thereby its political compulsion) by the artfulness of neo-colonialist insinuation.<br /> <br /> The increasing expansion of productive capacity and potential output of the advanced capitalist countries has its corollary in the necessity to export on a geometrically increasing scale the finished products of industry and the excess capital that could only further inflate competition at home, but brings rapid and high returns from the industrially-starved new nations. Hence the fevered jostling for position in these areas as well as in that of raw materials monopoly, which is using Africa as the playground, not only of the cold war (an aspect of the fight of capitalism for existence against socialism), but of the competitive struggle of international monopoly. North America imports into Africa rose from 10-3 per cent in 1959 to 13-7 per cent in 1962, while those from other western countries and Japan remained the same or declined slightly. This corresponds to the increasing American investments in the continent’s extractive industries and the growth of United States participation in financial establishments on this continent. American banking houses are making inroads into territories formerly catered for solely by European and British banks. The French banks still dominate in the former French countries and the Belgians in the Congo; but this is frequently a front for American participation.<br /> <br /> European financial advisers constantly counsel the African countries on the advantages that they can receive from remaining in association with the erstwhile ‘mother country’, while depreciating the possibilities of inter-African association. Much subtlety is employed by Lombard, the commentator of the ''Financial Times''. In an article which appeared in the issue of 6 February 1964 of this influential London newspaper, a product of an industrial holding company which also produces ''The Economist'', Lombard asserted that ‘there is not much that African countries can do directly to help one another financially at this stage of their economic evolution’. He is therefore ‘glad to see that the independent African countries are now coming to recognise that it is very much in their own interests to preserve the monetary ties with leading European countries they inherited from their colonial days. ... They obviously entertained strong suspicion that the enthusiasm their old mother countries were displaying for allowing them to remain within their monetary areas was motivated largely, if not wholly, by consideration of self-interest. And they are inclined to assume that this implied that their own purpose would be served best by following up political independence with its financial equivalent at the earliest possible opportunity’.<br /> <br /> Lombard assured his readers that the Africans showed wisdom when the secretariat of E.C.A., assisting the Organisation of African Unity to implement its resolution on the possibility of establishing an African clearing house and payments union, had the good sense ‘to seek the advice of the distinguished American monetary authority, Professor Triffin of Yale University’. Need we be surprised that in his report the distinguished American professor pointed out that ‘it would be most unwise lightly to condemn or break up financial arrangements with major trading companies and financial centres’. This, of course, we might consider neo-colonialist penetration, but to Lombard it is only one side of the picture. For there are two worlds, and the African countries ‘should now strive the best of both worlds, by maintaining and even further developing the relations they have with the major international monetary areas and at the same time building their own financial self-help mechanisms’. How is it possible to resolve two contradictions Lombard does not volunteer to explain, but what he does confess is that this unresolvable two-way procedure ‘would meet with nothing but the fullest approval from their (African) present monetary area associates’.<br /> <br /> This says plenty and we have no difficulty in believing what it says, for the simple fact is that those who control the major international monetary areas are placing their time bombs within the ‘self-help mechanisms’ of the African countries. For these mechanisms are controlled by the financial monopolists of imperialism, the bankers and financiers who have been very busy in the past few years setting up establishments throughout Africa, infiltrating into the economic heart of many countries and linking with the most important enterprises that are being established to exploit the continent’s natural resources on a larger scale than ever before for their own private gain.<br /> <br /> Though the aim of neo-colonialists is economic domination, they do not confine their operations to the economic sphere. They use the old colonialist methods of religious, educational and cultural infiltration. For example, in the independent States, many expatriate teachers and ‘cultural ambassadors’ influence the minds of the young against their own country and people. They do this by undermining confidence in the national government and social system through exalting their own notions of how a State should be run, and forget that there is no monopoly of political wisdom.<br /> <br /> But all this indirect subversion is as nothing compared with the brazen onslaught of international capitalists. Here is ‘empire’, the empire of finance capital, in fact if not in name, a vast sprawling network of inter-continental activity on a highly diversified scale that controls the lives of millions of people in the most widely separated parts of the world, manipulating whole industries and exploiting the labour and riches of nations for the greedy satisfaction of a few. Here resides the mainspring of power, the direction of policies that stand against the advancing tide of freedom of the exploited people of Africa and the world. Here is the adamantine enemy of African independence and unity, braced in an international chain of common interest that regards the likely coming together of the new nations as a major blow at its continued domination of the resources and economies of others. Here, indeed, are the real workings of neo-colonialism. Here indeed are the economic ramifications of the monopolies and combines. Their financial and economic empires are pan-African and they can only be challenged on a pan-African basis. Only a united Africa through an All-African Union Government can defeat them.<br /> <br /> == Imperialist Finance ==<br /> THESE are the hard facts of the African situation today, a process that has continued and grown since the invasion of Africa by the European and foreign powers. It has gained tremendous momentum in recent years with the growth of the struggle between the imperialist antagonists and between capitalism and socialism.<br /> <br /> Imperialism was analysed by Lenin as the highest stage of capitalism. His exposition was written in the middle of the first world war (1916), which was waged to determine the first major revision of imperialist supremacy. He traced the unequal development of capitalism which caused the latecomers like Germany and the United States to form into cartels and syndicates before the earlier starters, and so brought them sooner to a higher stage of monopoly from which they challenged each other and the rest of world imperialism.<br /> <br /> Monopoly capitalism by means of mergers, amalgamations, patent agreements, selling arrangements, production quotas, price fixing, and a variety of other common contrivances, had built itself into an international confraternity. However, because of its competitive character, rooted in the principle of production for private gain and the unequal development of capitalism, the struggle of the monopolies went on within the international combinations. The conflicts between the European and American financial and industrial trusts and combines for a redivision of the world’s resources of raw materials and markets for investment capital and manufactured goods, exploded into war when they became too intense to contain within the limits of diplomacy. The 1914-18 war brought a redivision of the globe’s colonial sectors. At the same time it created the opportunity for a socialist break in the chain of imperialism that encircled the world.<br /> <br /> A heavy blow was dealt to international monopoly capitalism with the triumph of the Russian October Revolution. From then on it was faced not only with the struggle for hegemony within its own ranks but, which was much worse, it was forced to engage in a defensive struggle against an opposing ideology. That ideology had achieved a signal success in withdrawing a sixth of the earth’s surface from monopoly capitalism’s field of operations, a fact which it has never and will never forgive, and was threatening to undermine imperialism’s power at other strategic spots which had softened under the blows of war. With the failure of interventionist war to subdue the new socialist State, a ''cordon sanitaire'' was raised around the Soviet Union to prevent the spread of socialist contamination to other parts of Europe. Fascism was encouraged to prop capitalism at points where it had been seriously damaged and was faced with popular discontent, as in Germany and Italy, and to bolster it in those outputs which were and remain semi-colonial appendages to Western imperialism, Spain and Portugal.<br /> <br /> These devices, however, were unable to cope with the recurrent crises that were tearing at the very heart of capitalism and sharpening the bitter contentions between rival imperialism which erupted into a second global war in 1939. From this holocaust, socialism emerged as a much more threatening challenge to imperialism than ver before. At the same time we, the peoples of imperialism’s ‘far flung empires’, had come to realise that we could have control over our own destiny and began to make our bid for independent nationhood. Thus imperialism came to be challenged on another front, the colonialist front, at a time when science has heightened the capabilities of the productive machinery of capitalism, thereby increasing its need for raw materials and markets for new chemically-produced primary materials, manufactured goods and overseas employment of growing capital surpluses. Challenged thus by anti-colonialism and socialism, imperialism is now engaged in a ‘to-the-death’ trial for survival against the forces that are antagonistic to it and that are building up across the globe even while the internecine struggle within itself is becoming more and more brutal. In this multi-sided struggle, imperialism has been forced into the use of many artifices to maintain itself in being by continuing the colonialist process without the benefit of colonial control.<br /> <br /> The great colonial powers were able to monopolise external trade and agricultural and industrial primary materials production in their respective subject territories. The colonies of such a lesser industrialised nation as Portugal, however, which has for centuries has been a pawn of Britain and became a semi-colony of British finance, were dominated by British capital, together with the international banking groups with which it is associated. Belgian financial domination of the Congo, because of the close connections of Belgian banking institutions with such international houses as Rothschilld, Lazard Frères, and Schroder in their turn linked with the Morgan and Rockefeller groups, was shared with British, French and American finance.<br /> <br /> The tribute drawn off by way of colonial and semi-colonial exploitation enabled the capitalist classes of the metropolitan countries to pass some of the crumbs to their working classes and thereby buy them off (especially the trade union and political leaders) when the class conflicts in their societies got critical. At the same time, the competition for sources of raw materials, and the export of capital and commodities intensified as productive methods improved and goods came out of the factories on a more and more massive scale.<br /> <br /> The uneven development of capitalism brought new contenders into the field who joined in the rivalries that had grown up with the original scramble for colonies. These deepened until they erupted in the two world wars, which, notwithstanding all the pious claptrap about their being wars fought for the maintenance of democracy were, in reality, wars fought for the redivision of the world by monopoly capitalism. ‘War’, Clausewitz has told us, ‘is the continuation of policy by other means.’ What the powerful trusts were unable to achieve by ‘peaceful’ competition, their domination over larger and larger areas of the world, they embroiled their countries into military action to achieve for them. This not only gives them a wider sphere of exclusive operation but undermines the power of competing monopolies.<br /> <br /> This redivision of the world is not confined to the less developed sectors but extends to highly industrialised areas. The important industrialised region of Alsace Lorraine was a coveted prize of the German invasions of France in the wars of 1871 and 1939. Hitler’s campaign against Czechoslovakia was inspired by the desire to annex the highly developed manufactories of Bohemia and Moravia to the German trusts. French capitalists long looked with watering mouths at the rich coal mines and chemical and other industries of the Saar, so close to the iron ore range of Lorraine, and seized the opportunity of the 1919 peace arrangements to appropriate them to France as a reparations award. A later plebiscite won the Saar back to Germany. After the second world war, agreement between the de Wendel-Schneider-Krupp trusts achieved a customs union between the German State of the Saar and France, which actually makes the Saar a dependency of the de Wendel coal and steel empire.<br /> <br /> World war two ended in the defeat of Hitler and a temporary rebuff to German capitalism, which had to submit to a revitalising injection of American monopoly finance. At the same time an upheaval was taking place in the colonial world such as to make Winston Churchill remark that he had not been made Prime Minister of Britain to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. All the fair, brave words spoken about freedom that had been broadcast to the four corners of the earth took seed and grew where they had not been intended. Colonial emancipation became the dominating phenomenon of the mid-twentieth century, just as abolition of slavery of the corresponding period of the nineteenth, with just as crucial consequences in national and international politics and economics.<br /> <br /> Post-war capitalism, which had already received one devastating blow after the first world war in the rise of the Soviet Union, took another crushing defeat in the establishment of socialist regimes in a number of countries in central and eastern Europe and in China. Large sources of raw materials and financial investment and commodity markets were withdrawn from its field of exploitation. Domestic reconstruction at first occupied the attention of the European countries. The United States, having already achieved a tremendous headstart by its late intervention into the war, its physical immunity from attack, and the enormous spurt given to its productive and inventive capacity as a main supplier of war materials and services, took over from Britain the leading role in international financial monopoly.<br /> <br /> As a result of its primacy in the financial sphere, United States foreign policy turned in a completely opposite direction from its pre-war position of ‘splendid isolation’ to one of domination in world affairs. The outcropping of new States from colonial submergence raised the pivotal problem of how to retain these countries within the colonial relationship once open control was removed. Thus has opened up a new phase in imperialism, that of the adaptation of colonialism to the new condition of the elimination of political over-lordship of colonial powers, the phase in which colonialism is to be maintained by other means.<br /> <br /> This is not to say that the old outright form of colonialism is completely scrapped. There is plenty of evidence to show how tenaciously imperial powers cling to their colonial territories. Vietnam, Korea, Suez, Algeria, are all examples of how far imperialist nations will go to hold on physically to colonies, an attitude reinforced by the interference of America as a leading protagonist in the struggle for the world monopolist control of financial control. This struggle has been given an ideological content by invoking anti-communism as the mainspring of the battle to bring the socialist sector of the globe back into the exploitative control of Western financial monopoly. Cuba is the outstanding example of the extremist lengths to which these power groups will go in the effort to reimpose their grip where they have been ejected and to maintain what they consider a strategic bastion in the struggle for the renewal of dominion over the socialist anti-imperialist world.<br /> <br /> Control of fuel resources is a prime motivator in the frantic competition between monopolies. The Saar was bandied between France and Germany because of its important coal resources. Similarly, the battle for oil has gone on since before the first world war. Middle Eastern oil, in fact, became an important objective of that war, and the struggle continued after the war by diplomatic and economic means inside the national boundaries and on the international plane. Rockefeller supremacy in oil has been stoutly contested by the Morgan groups, which have extended their influence by breaking into the Anglo-Dutch holdings, a one-time preserve of the Rothschilds, Lazard Frères, the Deutsche Bank, and their associates.<br /> <br /> The frenzied battle for oil monopoly has been a cardinal factor in the suppression of popular movements in colonial and semi-colonial areas of the Near, Middle and Far East, in Latin America and North Africa. The series of events in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Aden, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, and Algeria, that have erupted in violence, revolution and war have been largely stimulated by the struggle for control of oil. Oil finds in European centres, such as Groningen in Holland, have drawn the competition into well industrialised centres, just as the competition for coal and iron did.<br /> <br /> Competition between the oil combines is not confined to production, but extends into the distribution of petroleum products and the new by-product industry of petro-chemicals. A fierce struggle is going on all over the world as a result of the sharp increase in the quantity of oil consumed and the territorial expansion of consumption. The oil industry has from its outset been dominated by the most powerful banking interests, the Rockefellers, Morgans, Rothschilds, because of the spiralling profits it provides. Today, even with the larger royalties the oil combines have been obliged to pay to the oil-producing countries, their profits are still mounting prodigiously.<br /> <br /> Oil trust reserves run into billions. Much has been used in investments abroad, America far and away exceeding all others. To financial reserves from oil must be added those amassed from metal and other raw materials’ monopolies; from monopoly of food supplies and vast industrial and agricultural empires; from military preparations and the several wars that have been fought with colonial peoples since the end of the second world war; from the development of nuclear instruments of destruction and the frenzied race for leadership in the realm of space leadership.<br /> <br /> Capitalism contains many paradoxes, all of them based in the concept of commodity production: the few rich and the many poor; poverty and hunger amid superabundance; ‘freedom from hunger’ campaigns and subsidies for restriction of crop output. But perhaps the most ludicrous is the constant traffic in the same kinds of goods, products and commodities between countries. Everyone is busy, as it were, taking in the other’s washing. This is not done out of need, but out of the compulsion of profit-making and monopoly extension. The European Common Market has become the apotheosis of this process, as well as the dumping ground of international investment, dominated by the giant American banking concerns and their British satellites.<br /> <br /> The European Community, of which the European Common Market is only one aspect, is by no means a new concept. It was foreshadowed by Hobson in his critique of imperialism as ‘a European federation of great powers which, so far from forwarding the cause of world civilisation, might introduce the gigantic peril of western parasites, a group of advanced industrial nations, whose upper classes drew vast tribute from Asia and Africa, with which they supported great masses of retainers, no longer engaged in the staple industries of agriculture and manufacture, but kept in the performance of personal or minor industrial services under the control of a new financial aristocracy’. It is collective imperialism.<br /> <br /> This is precisely what has happened. Competition between the monopolies has produced the phenomenon of vast advertising and public relations organisations which busy themselves selling not only goods and services but personalities as well. These organisations and the media through which they operate – the press, radio, cinema, television – and the businesses dealing with the packaging of goods, employ huge armies of people in what are nothing more than parasitic jobs which would have no place in a sane society producing for consumption instead of profit. As things are, enormous sums are invested and earned by the financial interests that participate in the promotion of these enterprises.<br /> <br /> But this is only a tiny facet of the fevered financial activity which is going on today in the capitalist world. Every week, every day, with almost monotonous regularity, we see the same names repeating themselves as bidders for large companies; as underwriters and issuers of new shares or holders of debentures; as combiners in new financial institutions for more universal methods of investment; as participants in new factories and ventures that will extend monopoly in fresh directions and more territories.<br /> <br /> They are especially industrious in the countries of the ‘Six’ and others which still hope to push into the Common Market as direct or associate members. The lowering of trade barriers was the signal for their entry. For practical purposes, some of the key European countries are financial servants of the dominant banking monopolist groups, the Morgans and the Rockefellers. Despite all the power pertaining to such important banks as the Société Générale de Belgique, Banque de Bruxelles, Kredietbank, Banque Lambert, to such important industrial-finance groups as Solvay, Boel, Brufina-Cofinidus, Petrofina-Belgium, with its appendage Luxemburg, is in reality a financial colony of American investment capital. Thirty-nine new companies were established in Belgium in 1959 by foreigners. In the year 1961 the number of new ‘foreign’ companies set up had grown to 237. Sums invested from abroad had swollen from 2,457 million Belgian francs in 1959 to 6,664 million Belgian francs in 1961. Of this last figure, almost 60 per cent, that is 3,979 million Belgian francs, was furnished from American sources. Henry Coston, in his revealing book on the ramifications of banking finance, ''L'Europe des Banquiers'' (p. 174), declares that this enterprise is not limited to the territory of the kingdom, and that the Belgian ex-colonies have not been ignored. ‘One might even ask if the sanguinary events in the Congo were not caused by the merciless struggle going on between rival financial groups’, he concludes.<br /> <br /> American finance capital, of course, had a field day in Germany during the post-war occupation. German industry and finance, already linked to American industry and finance by cartel and trust arrangements, became even more heavily penetrated by the powerful United States monopoly groups. The giant German banks, Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, Diskonto Gesellschaft, Commerzbank; the mighty German trusts, Krupp, Bayer, Badische Anilin &amp; Soda Fabrik, Hoechst, and Siemens are all strung to American capital and in many ways subordinate to it. Italian banks and industry are in much the same position. The Banco Commerciale Italiano, Banco di Roma, Mediobanca, Credito Italiano, all are in several ways tied up with American finance capital either directly or indirectly. Examples can be stretched across the world, to Japan, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. This financial dependence upon America has been put by Lord Bearsted, chairman of M. Samuel &amp; Co. at the 1963 annual meeting, when he reported the 17 per cent acquisition of the company’s shares by the Morgan group. ‘We will not be the first merchant bank to have part of its capital owned by American interests’.<br /> <br /> This piteous statement is a public confession of Europe’s subservience to American financial monopoly, a monopoly expressed in the strategic and political alliances that bind European capitalism to American capitalism. European statesmen are deeply conscious of their inferior standing but, in the main, feel there is little they can do to adjust the position. Resentment, however, there is, and in France it has expressed itself in General de Gaulle’s stand on an individual French nuclear striking force; in his overtures to Adenauer, former German Chancellor; in his attempts to exclude Great Britain from the Common Market as the long arm of the United States; and more recently in the overtures to China and his tour in Latin America. All these are efforts to arrest America’s dominance of Europe and to exert French independent action on the international front. Such attempts, however, have little chance of success, nor can they make but a passing impression upon the world scene. They are in reality expressions of the deep competitive conflicts within capitalist-imperialism, which exist below the surface federations and alliances, conflicts rooted in the unequal development of the contestants, in the unequal development of capitalism.<br /> <br /> Britain, as the forerunner of the industrial revolution, became the workshop of the world, the carrier of the world’s goods, the foremost thruster for imperialist control from the City of London. Her decline set in with the upsurge of the younger, more vigorous capitalist States of Germany and America. The two world wars were a test of their strength against the older established capitalist countries and against each other. The United States came out triumphant both times. Still, the City of London is only slowly giving way to Wall Street as the symbol of world money power. It hopes to resuscitate itself by spreading into the European Common Market, even though it must do so in alliance with, and subordination to, American financial monopoly. Surplus capital in France was more heavily invested in the less advanced countries of Europe – Russia, Poland, Hungary, Romania – than that of either Britain or Germany, although they, too, had large investments in the same European heavy industries, armaments, mines and oil fields. Everybody, however, turned to the primary producing countries of the world, alienating some as outright colonies under political rule, subserving and exploiting others as spheres of investment on a semi-colonial pattern.<br /> <br /> Because of their late start, German and American capitalism pressed forward with the amalgamation of industrial combines and the monopoly of finance capital more hurriedly than did either Britain and France, whose supremacy on the colonial plane assured their hegemony, inter-related at several points even while competitive, on the international financial level. German financial monopoly took a beating in the defeat 1918, when the colonial world was re-divided, and again in 1945. American capitalism on the other hand, owing to geographical and territorial advantages (the last inherent in its political unions), continued to make rapid strides and was the real victor of both world wars. Expansion of American financial and industrial monopoly, however, was not confined to Europe. The balance of western financial power began to tilt towards Asia and Africa, a process that has been speeded up since the end of the second world war, with the breakdown of colonial rule.<br /> <br /> The many consortia which are being established in the majority of the new States resolve largely about the same financial and industrial groups that have rooted themselves firmly since the inception of colonial rule. Such changes as there are correspond with the changes of influence that have occurred within the groups themselves. The dominating influence is held by the ubiquitous American formations of Morgan and Rockefeller, with their British and European associates following behind. Dying colonialism is reviving in the international coalitions of neo-colonialism. These coalitions of competing organisms reflect the global character that financial monopoly has attained under the dominance of the most powerful imperialism, that of America. They are also a sign of the struggle for survival of the older imperialism against the fierce questing of the more powerful aggressiveness of American imperialism, whose vaster productive force is driving it outwards more and more.<br /> <br /> Attempts are made to sweeten the well-known aims of rapidly disintegrating political colonialism: the maintenance of less developed areas of the world as the provides of cheap raw materials, spheres of investment, and markets for expensive finished goods and services. The finished goods and services, now that the populations of the new nations are asserting demands for a rising standard of life, are taking on a different character and over-spilling into categories formerly neglected. Land-clearing equipment, hydro-electrical projects, road reconstruction, housing, schools, hospitals, harbours, airports, and all the ancillary and supplementary services they call for, are providing new fields of capital investment and profit for financial monopoly, both at home and abroad. They are also keeping in handsomely paid employment a large army of so-called experts, technical and professional people, not always of the highest calibre.<br /> <br /> New sources of extractive and agricultural commodities are also attracting large capital investment sums. Former dependence upon domestic sources of many minerals in the metropolitan countries is giving place to their importation from abroad. Miners in the copper and iron ore producing regions of the United States, for example, are being thrown out of work not only because of automation, but also because bigger profits are being obtained from the greatly stepped-up mining of base materials in Africa and Asia. In some places, their semi-processing also offers greater margins than can be got in the areas of more expensive labour. Puerto Rico and other Latin American countries that offer cheap labour are fast becoming centres of manufactured consumer goods, frequently processed from imported raw materials and sent to the United States to compete with American-produced commodities at only slightly reduced, or the same, prices. This gives greater profits still to finance capital.<br /> <br /> The intricate process of balancing returns from domestic investment against the outflow of capital into more profitable foreign investment is creating serious rifts in the internal economic position of every Western capitalist country. This is felt particularly in the balance of payments position. Even the United States, whose reserves of gold and foreign exchange were so vast that they have carried her through a growing outward current over a long period, has now reached the stage when, like her less fortunate European counterparts, she is herself entering upon an adverse balance of payments crisis.<br /> <br /> Despite the rise in national production and increased productivity, the problems of agriculture even in such rapidly rising economies as Western Germany, Italy and France bedevil the economic situation. In America, the farming small-holder still lives close to and even below the poverty line, while the extensive mechanised farms of banker-financed companies are spoon-fed by a bankers’ Government. Guaranteed prices for produce that goes into government-paid and government-built storages make large-scale farming in the United States highly profitable to finance capital, which passes on to the government the burdensome problem of what to do with unsold surpluses resulting from high prices.<br /> <br /> The need of further outlets for the products of agriculture as well as of the industrial and commercial complexes that are coming under increasing electronic control, and hence acquiring a greatly increased potential, is forcing Western capitalism, particularly American capitalism, into greater and more intensive involvement in highly industrialised foreign countries. The recent ‘chicken’ farce played out against the background of de Gaulle’s anti-American policy which led Franco-German opposition to a continuation of cheaper American poultry importation into Europe, is just one of the lighter examples of the fierce competition going on to unload the output of bank-financed vigorously mechanised mass production. It highlighted for a moment the intrinsically paradoxical nature of the European Market as a monopolistic organism putting up a strong resistance to a dominant competitive monopoly. The competitive tug-of-war is exemplified in the retaliative higher tariffs that have now been put upon French and German small cars imported into the United States, which have lost their main advantage over the home produced article in the consequent higher price.<br /> <br /> Facts and figures prove that trade and investment between the highly industrialised countries are outpacing those with the less developed regions. They effectively support the case that imperialism is not confined to the primary producing sectors of the world. However, the salient fact is that the profit rate from the exploitation of the less developed areas is greater than that received from the more industrialised countries. In the latter, the competition between the monopolies is fiercest and domestic interests, even those which are linked with international finance monopoly, all the time offer the stoutest resistance to the invading ones. Yet, and this is precisely due to their imperialist character, the dominating world financial groups are able to make their constant incursions into the national monopolies, and so deepen their hegemony over larger and larger parts of the globe.<br /> <br /> How much easier then it is for imperialist finance to edge its way more and more into the developing countries where colonial rule has broken, or is breaking, down. Under the necessity of seeking greater and greater capital sums for geological explorations and the opening up of new fields of extractive materials, international finance was called to the aid of the national finance of the respective imperialist countries. This process was stimulated by the fact that the national financial monopolies had already proceeded to the stage of international alliance with the onset of imperialism, a process that has manifoldly quickened in the present epoch of rising nationalism and socialism. Thus, at this present time, all the instruments and mechanics of international imperialism, expressed in monopoly coalitions, are brought to bear in a general descent upon the new, needy countries.<br /> <br /> This new wave of predatory invasion of former colonies operates behind the international character of the agencies employed: financial and industrial consortia, assistance organisations, financial aid bodies, and the like. Friendly co-operation is offered in the educational, cultural and social domains, aimed at subverting the desirable patterns of indigenous progress to the imperialist objectives of the financial monopolists. These are the latest methods of holding back the real development of the new countries. These are the paraphernalia of neo-colonialism, superficially proffering aid and guidance; subterraneously benefiting the interested donors and their countries in old and new ways.<br /> <br /> There are several definitions of ‘aid’, as B. Chango Machyo in his ''Aid and Neo-Colonialism'' has pointed out.<br /> <br /> ‘The definition varies with different blocs. Thus the U.N. has its own definition, the imperialist camp has its own, so has the socialist camp, and probably the non-aligned camp might also have one. But, generally speaking, there are two main definitions: one by the U.N. and another as understood by the so-called donor countries. According to the U.N., “economic aid consists only of outright grants and long-term lending, for non-military purposes, by Government and international organisations'’. But the so-called aid-giving countries include in the term “aid,” private capital investment and export credits, even for relatively short periods, as well as loans for military purposes.’<br /> <br /> As Professor Benham in ''Economic Aid to Underdeveloped Countries'' remarks: ‘It is pleasant to feel that you are helping your neighbours, and at the same time increasing your own profits.’ Before the decline of colonialism what today is known as aid was simply foreign investment.<br /> <br /> == Monopoly Capitalism and the American Dollar ==<br /> THE ‘end of empire’ has been accompanied by a flourishing of other means of subjugation. The British Empire has become the Commonwealth, but the proceeds from the exploitation of British imperialism are increasing. Profits of British tin companies have ranged as high as 400 per cent. The latest dividends to British diamond shareholders are close to 350 per cent. ON one occasion Mr Nehru declared that British profits from independent India had more than doubled and British capital investment in his country rose from Rs. 2,065 m. in 1948 to Rs. 4,460 m. in 1960. Total British investments in Africa have soared to $6,500 m., the French to about $7,000 m. and American to $1,100 m. A recent survey made plain the plunder of British monopolies. It listed 9 out of 20 of Britain’s biggest monopolies as direct colonial exploiting companies: Shell, British Petroleum, British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, Burmah Oil, Nchanga Copper, Rhokana Corporation, Rhodesian Mines and British South Africa, five of which are directly engaged in chiselling away Africa’s natural resources. The others are busily increasing their trading. Their total of £221 m. net profits was over half the combined net profits of the top twenty monopolies. Incredibly the list leaves out two of the world’s greatest combines, those states within a state- Unilever and IMperial Chemical Industries – whose operations are based heavily in their overseas exploitations. The United Africa Company leads for Unilever in Africa; about a third of I.C.I. and its subsidiaries operate overseas.<br /> <br /> Sir Alec Douglas Home, former Prime Minister of Britain’s Tory government, in a speech made on 20 March 1964, professed himself ignorant of the meaning of neo-colonialism. While Sir Alec was talking, Britain was engaged in what its press was busy describing as ‘major crisis areas’ all over the world, putting down ‘troubles’ inspired and perpetrated by neo-colonialism: Aden and Southern Arabia against Yemen; Borneo and Sarawak against Indonesia; Cyprus, British Guiana; ‘maintaining law and order’ in Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda, for the recently independent governments. Is this the end of imperialism? Not according to ''The Economist'', mouthpiece of Britain’s business interests, which felt compelled to comment:<br /> <br /> ‘Military bases, routes to the East, frontier skirmishing, putting down mutinies – all this has a nineteenth-century ring quite naturally disturbing to those who had hoped that the end of colonialism meant the end of military involvement east of Suez. The knobbly truth of the matter turns out to be that for the moment Britain has as many military commitments in that area as it ever had before colonies were replaced by Commonwealth.’ (''Economist'', 23 May 1964.)<br /> <br /> The intention is to hold back the progress of the developing countries. Where circumstances favour the establishment of ventures of a more than token industrial character, the aim is to see that they are made haltingly. The over-riding objective is to induce a merely fractional increase in the industrial scope of the new nations in order that they may continue to provide the sinews of imperialism’s greater concentration of forces for the final tussle of strength within itself and against socialism. What is remarkable is that the major part of the less developed world, and here we must include the U.S.S.R., chose and is choosing the socialist road to national progress. There are, in addition, countries like India where the political system, though patterned on the bourgeois democracies of capitalism, nevertheless proclaims socialism as the socio-economic objective. The nations that have reached their present peaks by passing through the various stages of capitalism cling desperately to the system that has brought them to the heights of imperialism. Each, perched perilously on a narrow summit, must put up a constant battle to guard its own pinnacle.<br /> <br /> Greater intensity is infused into the struggle by the resurgence of rivals, of whom Germany and Japan are the most virile. Both of them have benefited from strong injections of American capital, and U.S. monopolies are drawing off considerable profits from the running that is being made by these two countries in world competition, pointing the contradictions [sic]among the interests involved. Competing against American imperialism, German and Japanese monopolists are frequently in alliance with their U.S.A. opposites, who often put them forward in imperialism’s general offensive against Africa, where open United States private investment might be regarded with more suspicion than others. Germany, moreover, is now second to the U.S.A. in the scale of so-called assistance to the developing countries. Since capitalism is the embodiment of the philosophy of self-interest, the ostensible allies of America’s monopolists must use the position of strength into which they are being thrust to promote their own growth.<br /> <br /> This struggle for ascendancy among the imperialisms is continuous and involves a constant search for renewal of the sinews of strength. Alongside the battle for imperialist supremacy, there wages the fight against the ideological camp of socialism, into which the warring imperialists make an all-out effort to trail the developing countries as their appendages. In this way the anti-communist campaign is used to further imperialist aims. Leaders of monopoly capitalism everywhere build up in the public mind an image of the system in socio-cultural terms by which they transform it into an idealised harmonious civilisation that must be cherished at all costs. They harp upon a way of life that may be altered only to its detriment, and stress its continuity as a major principal in the fight against communism. When Harold Macmillan as Prime Minister of Britain told the South African parliament that ‘what is now on trial is much more than our military strength or our diplomatic and administrative skill – it is our way of life’, he epitomised the metaphysical transmutation of economic impulses into a social philosophy. This, in spite of his reference to ‘winds of change’ blowing across Africa. He echoed the several statesmen of the West, any of whom could have made the statement and, indeed, have at different times and in almost identical words, ‘The great issue in this second half of the twentieth century is whether the uncommitted peoples of Asia and Africa will swing to the East or to the West.’ All the powerful imperialist nations are decided that the new States shall develop along the capitalist path, the provisioners of imperialism’s vital needs, the source of its super profits. National liberation and the obvious advantages of socialist development for nations evolving out of a colonialist domination and without the capital means for making that development, are major factors determining imperialist strategy towards these nations, in both the interests of its internal struggle and in the fight against socialism.<br /> <br /> All countries, even the most deeply involved in monopoly imperialism, have a State sector. Indeed, State involvement in private economy has become an essential part of its process. It should cause no surprise, therefore, that developing countries, particularly in view of the small accumulations of local private capital, are obliged to centralise their economies. The size of the State sector and its planned expansion, however, must depend on the economic system which is chosen, capitalist or socialist. The aim of the imperialist powers, in the application of their aid programmes, is to turn the State sector into an appendage of private capital. In view of the process that has been evolved in the imperialist countries, it would be surprising if this were not so. The declared basic policy of the Agency for International Development (formerly International Co-operation Administration) is ‘to employ United States assistance to aid-receiving countries in such a way as will encourage the development of the private sectors of their economies. Thus I.C.A. will normally not be prepared to finance publicly owned industrial and extractive enterprises, although it is realised that there may be exceptions...’<br /> <br /> Development in the new countries along non-capitalist lines must be frustrated in the interests of Western imperialism. A series of articles which appeared in ''The'' (London) ''Times'' in April 1964 outlines the pattern and made no secret of its reasons: ‘The two great objects of Britain’s foreign policy must be to prevent the non-communist world from being penetrated by Communism ... and secondly, to prevent her own access to trade and investment in any part of the world from being barred or limited.’ Naturally enough, as the articles conclude, ‘both these objects lead straight into the “neo-colonial” issue – the struggle for influence, commercial and political, over the non-communist countries outside Europe and North America’. Thus succinctly does the writer in ''The Times'' expose the true character of the ideological struggle between monopolies. Leading the ideological struggle, because she leads the inter-imperialist struggle, is the U.S.A. As the world’s leading imperialist power, America lays successor claim to the so-called vacua which the retiring colonial powers are said to leave behind as they give way to nationalist governments. Vietnam and Congo are very obvious symbols of this policy of rabid neo-colonialism. They are also examples of bitter antagonisms between American and other imperialisms. According to ''France Observateur'' (issue of 4 June 1964), ‘The darkest accusations are made by the U.S. against French business circles operating in S. Vietnam. ... American experts in Asian affairs assert that French planters are not content with paying their mite to the South Vietnam National Liberation Front. They will even lend assistance and hide the guerillas pursued by the Government’s army.’<br /> <br /> In spite of its policy of open aggression in many parts of the globe, the United States frequently poses as the ‘anti-colonial’ power in the condemnation of British imperialism. ‘The pose is thin, and the mask continually falls, even often over critical anti-colonialist resolutions pressed by the Afro-Asian and socialist majority in the United Nations, when the United States and Britain find themselves alone, or only with France, Portugal, South Africa and Australia voting against or abstaining.’ [''British Colonial Policy and Neo-Colonialist Rivalries'', R. Palme Dutt, International Affairs, Moscow, August 1964.]In the last nine years American investments on this continent have trebled, growing at a faster rate than in any other area. In 1961 alone American monopolies profited by some £11·2 m. which they took out of Africa.<br /> <br /> The rising tide of nationalism in the colonial territories was remarked by the shrewder operators of United States finance capital as America’s opportunity to insinuate itself into what were the jealously guarded preserves of rival imperialisms. Anti-imperialist stirrings had begun to show themselves in Asia and Africa before the outbreak of the last world war. As hostilities progressed, America came out more and more openly for the ending of colonial rule. Press and other public propaganda harked back to America’s own fight against colonialism. The remembrance was linked in people’s minds with the budding nationalist movements that were bringing overt pressure for independence around the globe. War-torn Europe would provide part of the answer to America’s need to export investment capital and goods; but territories newly released from the political power of rival imperialisms would offer practically virgin fields.<br /> <br /> A fabulous growth in American monopoly capitalism occurred during the first forty years of the present century. United States foreign investments vied with those of Europe, overtook and surpassed them. In 1900, American private foreign investments were small by comparison with Europe’s – $500 m. to Britain’s $12,000 m. and France’s $600 m. By 1930 the growth rate of America’s foreign investments had already overleaped those of Britain, standing at $17,000 m. against the latter’s $19,000, and way ahead of France’s $7,000 m. America’s foreign investment position was supreme by 1949 – $19,000 m. against Britain’s $12,000 m., the level at which it had opened the century. France’s level had sunk to $2,000 m. The first world war eliminated Germany’s foreign investments and reduced those of France; the second world war eliminated Germany, Italy and Japan. The American Government, moreover, had added $14,000 m. to its monopolists’ $19,000 m. of private foreign investments. The Government loans ‘are political loans rather than direct profit-making investments. But they enhance the position of United States finance-capital, by providing markets for surplus goods and by increasing profits of private American investors in the borrowing countries’. [See ''American Imperialism'', Perlo, pp. 28-29.]The second world war gave explosive momentum to American capitalism and helped it to increase its overseas investment and exports of manufactured goods to the colonial preserves of European and Japanese imperialism. In the decade 1938-48 America’s share of the imports into these territories rose from 11 per cent to 25 per cent. Her African trade in the period went from $150 m. to $1,200 m., at which figure it represents almost 15 per cent of all Africa’s foreign trade.<br /> <br /> American monopoly’s appetite was whetted by the income $18,000 m. by which it had profited from its foreign investments in the period 1920-48. The prospects in 1948 looked even richer, and proved so. Between 1950 and 1959 private American firms invested $4,500 m. in the developing countries and made three times as much. Net profits came to $8,300 m., to which can be added millions of dollars in trading profits, interest on loans, freight charges and other ancillary operations. All of this was helped along by Marshall Aid (the Economic Co-operation Administration), born out of the marriage between the American State and monopoly. The dollar was brandished as the universal cure-me-quick for Europe, bringing fat super profits to its American owners. In the confusion and devastation left by war, they were to slip unobtrusively into the cosy corners from which the European imperialists would be edged out both from Europe and its territories overseas. American financial and industrial capital used the opportunity which Europe’s post-war weakness offered to draw upon its resources. It fed on war-ruined Europe, though not to the same degree as Western imperialism exploited the colonial and semi-colonial world. The powerful German metallurgical and chemical trusts, Vereinigte Stahlwerke and I. G. Farben, were broken down. The West German State established in 1949 came under a military occupation that controlled its foreign trade, its foreign policy and defence. Of the factories which had escaped wartime destruction, some were dismantled. Many of Germany’s best scientists and technicians were lured to America and Britain. The secrets and patents of the large trusts were appropriated, the archives of the most important bank, the Deutsche Bank, turned over to the occupying forces by Dr Hermann J. Abs, Hitler’s despoiler of Yugoslavia, who was saved from the death to which he was condemned first by the British and then by the American military authorities. Germany was being made safe for the democracy of its imperialist conquerors. The Marshall Plan was used to push American imperialist penetrations into the fragmented German industries and financial institutions, into which it bought heavily. Large sums were also handed out to French and Belgian mining concerns in order to tighten the links with American capitalism and support its domination.<br /> <br /> An eye also had to be kept on the socialism that was advancing in Europe and Asia. Before the opening of the 1950s the cold war began to hot up. It was felt that the threat of heavy German competition which had inspired the limitations put upon it by the victorious imperialisms could be cushioned by drawing Germany into Western strategy and by greater participations from United States capital. Germany’s position in the metallurgical and chemical fields began to change as that country was drawn into the over-all pattern of Western defence.<br /> <br /> More energetic exploration for metal and mineral resources was undertaken in Africa and elsewhere. Africa’s raw materials are an important consideration in the military build-up of the NATO countries, in which are included those of the European Common Market. Their industries, especially the strategic and nuclear factories, depend largely upon the primary materials that come from the less developed countries. Post-war Europe sustained a precarious shortage of basic supplies for its steel manufactures. Belgium needed more rich ores, Sweden more coal and coke, which America supplied in return for fine ores. Britain lacked pig iron and scrap, her coke was short and inferior. Both France and Germany had fallen behind in coke supplies. Production of Lorraine coal was declining because of lack of equipment, German coal because the Ruhr was producing less. Investment in industries ‘with a high value production’, that is, the mineral transformation and heavy industries, while providing the opportunity to influence the European economies and hence their policies towards United States’ ideological domination, did not give the same scope for the quicker and larger profits that production of primary products in the emergent countries offered.<br /> <br /> The Point Four Programme supported the Marshall Planners in opening up Africa to United States capital and its European associates. Before the second world war only three per cent of America’s foreign investments were in Africa and less than five per cent of the continent’s trade was with the United States. Firestone interests in Liberian rubber and small participations in South African and Rhodesian mines accounted for most of the $200 m. invested in Africa. As the war pushed into this continent, military bases and trade connections were established by the Americans, from which they pursued their greater penetrations after the end of the war. E.C.A. (Marshall Plan) funds financed American exploration groups, sent in the best colonial tradition to prepare the way for mining companies and military expeditions. It was announced by E.C.A. in July 1949 that ‘American experts with Marshall Plan aid are probing Africa from the Atlas Mountains to the Cape of Good Hope for agricultural and mineral wealth’, and later on that ‘opportunities for American capital participation were disclosed in French North African lead mining, French Cameroon tin mining, French Congo lead-zinc mining. ...’ An E.C.A. loan to Mines de Zellidja, a French concern under the aegis of the Penarroya company, the fourth largest lead and zinc producer in the world, enabled Newmont Mining Corporation (an American mining and crude oil concern with 30 per cent of its interests in South Africa and Canada) to buy into the company and manage its operations.<br /> <br /> Europe’s post-war instability was turned to United States’ account in the new division of Africa. In the fall of 1949, after America had forced currency devaluation upon the European countries, a committee of leading British and American bankers was formed to push U.S. investments in Africa and other parts of the still remaining British Empire. A similar committee with similar purpose was established two months later between American bankers and those of France. The hand of these establishments is seen today all over Africa in the consortia that are fast laying a grip on the continent’s riches. Rockefeller, Morgan, Kuhn Loeb and Dillon Read institutions; the big British banks, Barclays, Lloyds, Westminster, Provincial, the investment houses pivoted around Hambros, Rothschild, Phillip Hill; the French banks, Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas, Banque de l'Union Parisienne, Banque de l'Indochine, Union Européen Industrielle, Banque Worms, Crédit Lyonnais, Lazard Frères, etc., and the leading German and Italian banks.<br /> <br /> These and their associates are the financial institutions that dominate the monetary and fiscal sectors of many of the newly independent States. They support the new industrial revolution of automation, electronics and nuclear and space development, in which America plays the lead and which has swept U.S. imperialism to its present ascendancy. American groups dominant in the mining and ore processing and finishing industries are involved directly or through their bankers and financing houses in ventures with leading European producers and their financial backers. The finance-capitalists who control the leading corporations in the extractive, metallurgical, chemical, nuclear and space industries of the west are to be seen stretching out across the seven seas and taking command of the sources of primary materials in Asia, Oceania, Australia, New Zealand, Central and South America, and Africa. U.S. investments in Canada in 1962 went up by nearly $700 m., mostly for developing iron ore properties. An additional $270 m. invested in other developed countries went mainly to Australia and Japan. Latin American investments of United States capital increased by $250 m. in 1962. In the previous year the increase was over $400 m. The U.S. Department of Commerce reported that private American investments and assets overseas reached $60,000 m. at the end of 1962 and advanced a further $3,000 m. in the first six months of 1963. Private investors in the United States added $4,300 m. in 1962 to their holdings of assets and investments abroad.<br /> <br /> Direct private American investment in Africa increased between 1945 and 1958 from $110 m. to $789 m., most of it drawn from profits. Of the increase of $679 m. actual new money invested during the period was only $149 m., United States profits from these investments, including reinvestment of surpluses, being estimated at $704 m. As a result African countries sustained losses of $555 m. If allowance is made for grants for ‘non-military’ purposes, estimated then by U.S. Congress at $136 m., Africa’s net total losses still reached $419 m. Official American statistics put the gross profits made by U.S. monopolies in Africa between 1946-59 at $1,234 m., though other estimates place them at $1,500 m. Whichever way they are looked at, it requires no great mathematical mind to make out from these figures the almost hundred per cent profitability on investment in Africa.<br /> <br /> The avid explorations that have gone on apace in the last two or three decades for additional reserves of all the metals and minerals that are important for modern industrial supremacy have been instigated by the drive for monopoly, upon which supremacy and its super-profits rest. A recent example makes the principle clear. Alcan Industries, a British associate of Alcoa (Aluminium Company of America) through Alcan (Aluminium Ltd. of Canada), according to a ''Sunday Times'' headline (issue of 18 October 1964), wrapped up ‘the last of the foil’. That is, Alcan Industries paid £6 m. to take over the last independent firm (Fisher’s Foils) in British aluminium foil making, having already swallowed most of the rest. This was done, it is said, to bring about ‘rationalisation’. But in boardroom talk it has another meaning, ‘sewing up the industry’.<br /> <br /> Part of the objective of gaining control of industries and new-found raw materials’ sources is to deprive rivals of their use. The manipulation of artificial scarcity is another of monopoly’s tactics for maintaining profits. For three years until mid-1964 the big copper companies were running production at between 80 and 85 per cent of capacity to keep up prices. Steel production, too, was held back to something like 80 per cent of capacity. Exploitation under imperialism does not, nor will, always follow upon the finding of new sources of raw materials. Whoever monopolises the major sources of supply controls output by having the decisive voice in what deposits shall or shall not be worked, and to what degree.<br /> <br /> Monopoly allows the monopolists to manipulate the economies of other countries in their interests. In the case of bauxite, for instance, Mellon-dominated Alcoa is sovereign and has drawn into its orbit the other major producers, Kaiser and Reynolds. Because of the tremendous cost of building power plants, upon which the conversion of bauxite into alumina depends, the exploitation of all known reserves of this ore by private capital would defeat the prime incentive of monopoly – profit – for the super-abundant production that would result would depress prices. West Africa is exceptionally rich in bauxite, but the individual countries are not equally favoured with the power to develop resources. Ghana is providing hydro-electric power which could be used to convert alumina in both Ghana and Guinea. This would be a welcome cooperative effort within the framework of a united continental economy.<br /> <br /> Another weapon that is held over the heads of the primary producing countries is the threat of using synthetic alternatives, and the replacement of traditional metals by others. Synthetic diamond plants have been established by De Beers, the world’s monopolist in natural diamonds, by the Belgian company, MIBA, which controls Congo’s natural diamonds, the largest supplier in Africa, by the General Electric Corporation in the U.S. and by Japan. The price of copper was held down by the main producers on the London metal market at a period of recession in its marketing because of the likely use of aluminium in its place for certain purposes, while plastics, on the other hand, are frequently proposed as an alternative to aluminium. Vast sums are expended in research for new materials and in scientific invention of labour-saving machinery and equipment. Thus metals that are being threatened with substitution are at the same time being developed for a wider variety of finished goods. Such research projects and the resultant re-equipment of factories and industries which must be done if the original investment is to be justified, calls for tremendous capital sums which frequently can only be met from the assets of financial and insurance establishments. Consequently, banks and insurance companies dominate industrial finance and exercise a leading role in the push for monopolist ascendancy. The banks and insurance companies have been foremost in the process that has brought monopoly to its present peak, and it is their financial power that supports the increasing movement towards greater and greater concentration of monopoly.<br /> <br /> Today, competition in the thrust to secure and hold monopoly over whole industries and sources of raw materials has intensified to the point where mergers are taking place at a dizzy rate. The struggle is grimly tense and in the ding-dong battle for domination a truce is arranged at critical points, by which influence is divided with mutual consent. Harmony, however, is more apparent than real. The struggle for re-division is proceeding all the time, and the changes that take place within the combining organisations are observed to be more and more frequent.<br /> <br /> Present-day monopoly is highly variegated and spread out. While it draws its strength from its monopolistic position, it is on the other hand seriously exposed to the dangers that face a multiple organism that stretches its limbs to extremity in different directions. A fracture at any one point can lead to a disjunction which may unbalance the structure. And the monopoly’s rivals are always on the alert to spot its most exposed parts in order to deliver a blow that will enable the most relentless competitor to insinuate into the broken organ. Hence monopoly, having passed through the stages of cartelisation, combine, trust and syndicate, is today more and more making use of a further protective safeguard. That is the consortium, through which it aims at immobilising the rivals and disarming the associates who are permitted to join this most ravishing of imperialist contrivances. Usually in a consortium there is a dominant party, either directly or through (and with) affiliates and associates, which enables it to exert the largest influence upon the affairs of the consortium. Furthermore, each of the parties to the consortium will have its own string of appendages or even a principal standing outside the consortium. All continue the fight outside, while those within exercise their efforts to enlarge the importance of their share of the group activities. For example, as a monopoly it will be in control of a complex of companies connected at many levels with the production of primary materials, their processing from the original state right through all the stages of transformation into a variety of semi-finished and finished goods from the most ordinary article to the most complicated and delicate equipment and heavy plant and machinery. The monopoly does not restrict itself to a single raw material, though it will be pre-eminent in one or two. Nor does it restrict itself to any particular department of manufacture or enterprise that may be ancillary to its basic activities, though here again it may specialise in certain lines. Many monopolies branch into real estate and land development projects, as construction and contracting work bring quick and high returns and high rents. This form of capital investment is growing rapidly in the present era of enlarging industrialisation and the growth of new towns, and extends to large-scale agriculture.<br /> <br /> In Africa the consortium is making the most sinister penetrations. It extends from the monopolistic amalgamations of American and European finance-capital, particularly those combined within the European Common Market, where financial consortia have been set up as the most effective means of profiting from the competitive struggle that is spiralling within this so-called unifying organisation. The prime objective is to monopolise Africa’s sources of raw materials, not, as it is claimed, to assist the African countries to develop their economies. For the materials are carried off largely in their raw state or as concentrates to enhance the productive output of the imperialist countries and to be returned to them in the form of heavy equipment for extractive industry and the infrastructure for carrying the resources away.<br /> <br /> It is out of revenue from the trade in these materials that the African countries look to amass part of the capital that will make it possible for them to utilise these same commodities in the service of their own development. Paradoxically, however, these precious counters in Africa’s future are meantime being used to widen the economic gap between her and the highly industrialised countries, which are hurriedly exploiting the opportunity to make good deficiencies in their economies. Since those who are carrying on the exploitation are also the monopolists who manipulate the markets for primary products at the one end and the price for the final products at the other, the countries of origin must be pinned down to a long wait before they can tackle on a major scale the capital problem facing all the developing countries of seriously raising the standard of life of their people, if they make no effort to gird their resources in a more practical and self-supporting manner. This is the answer to those pious economists who assure us that what matters is not what is taken out of our lands but what is left behind.<br /> <br /> The reply has been given by the Commission for Aid to Development of O.E.C.D. in its estimate that if the industrial countries continue to increase their gross national product by three per cent per annum, it will take the less developed countries two hundred years at least to catch up with their standard of living, assuming that the unindustrialised nations reach an annual increase of five per cent. Yet how problematical the achievement of this five per cent remains in the light of the drain on resources from the less developed countries to the highly developed ones. In most African countries the rate of rise in the domestic product has barely kept pace with the rate of population growth of two and a half to three per cent. It is the less developed countries that continue to carry the burden of the increasing development of the highly developed. Firestone, for example, has taken $160 m. worth of rubber out of Liberia in the past quarter century. In return the Liberian Government has received a paltry $8 m. The average net profit made by this American company is three times the entire Liberian revenue.<br /> <br /> From south to north, financial and industrial consortia have spread across Africa, busily staking out claims to mineral, metal and fuel resources, to forest and land produce, and erecting extractive and primary conversion industries in which they are entrenched as stanchions. In Algeria, for example, the really big investment stampede coincided with the war of national liberation. Between 1951 and 1955 there was an inrush of French and French-American investment greater than ever before. Win or lose, the financial and industrial interests were entrenching themselves within the Algerian economy. Throughout Africa the industrial giants are supported by financial institutions which dominate the monetary and fiscal sectors of so many of the independent States. Most heavily engaged are the mammoth banking and insurance institutions and the multi-millionaire companies they control, bolstered by the international institutions like the World Bank and its affiliates. These formidable alliances radiate from the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Holland, Italy, Sweden. They move around the metallurgical and chemical combines with the E.C.S.C. (European Coal and Steel Community), such as Sollac, G.I.S. (Groupement de l'Industrie Sidérurgique), Sidelor (Union Sidérurgique Lorraine), Usinor (Union Sidérurgique du Nord de la France), Krupp, Thyssen, Kuhlmann, Pierrelatte, Farbwerke Hoechst, Bayer, BASF (Badische Anilin &amp; Soda Fabrik), I.C.I. They are in the assemblages of bankers such as Consafrique (Consortium Européen pour le Développement des Ressources Naturelles de l'Afrique), situated at the same address as the International Bank in Luxembourg; Eurofin, Compagnie Bancaire, Finsider, Cofimer, Union Européenne Industrielle et Financière, and others.<br /> <br /> Powerful American corporations like Bethlehem Steel, United States Steel, Republic Steel, Armco Steel, Newmont Mining, Johns Manville, Union Carbide, Olin Mathieson, Alcoa, Kaiser, crop up among all the post-war primary materials producing projects on this continent. Their alliances are spread among the leading metallurgical and financial companies of Europe in combinations that mask the underlying competition. This competitiveness erupts to the surface when circumstances cause a breakdown in the facade of peaceful co-existence between rival imperialists operating in the sovereign States of others, to which they make assumptions of power and use as pawns in the struggle for monopolistic supremacy. Gabon is vocal testimony to these assertions. Mass discontent with the existing regime which led to the disorders of February 1964 was the occasion utilised by France to warn the United States that she would brook no encroachment on the claims she lays to the manganese, uranium, and oil riches of this, her former colony. Neglected under the colonial regime, these resources have assumed inestimable value to France in the struggle against the advance of American imperialism in Europe in the new epoch of atomic rivalry. France sent in paratroopers to force the issue of whose pawn Gabon would remain. United States Steel may have been the dominant participation in Comilog (Cie de l'Ogooue), which is working on the bed of the vastly rich Franceville manganese deposits, but France, through the Cie de Mines d'Uranium de Franceville, controls the uranium field at Mounana, and is urgently occupied in the attempt to foil the aspirations of the American oil barons to undisputed access to Gabon’s offshore petroleum reaches.<br /> <br /> == The Truth behind the Headlines ==<br /> REALLY to understand what goes on in the world today, it is necessary to understand the economic influences and pressures that stand behind the political events. The financial columns of the world’s press give, in fact, ‘the news behind the news’. Every few days we come upon such newspaper announcements as: ‘Morgan Grenfell participates in new French bank'; or ‘African Banking Group'; or ‘Consortium gains voting power in Hulett’ (South African sugar monopoly); or ‘New factoring company set up in Germany’.<br /> <br /> These are newspaper headlines actually taken at random. However, when examined even briefly, the facts reveal an attenuated line of connection between powerful financial groups that exert the most decisive pressure upon the happenings of our time. The facts relate to the men and interests directly involved or indirectly connected with the rearrangements the articles cover. Not that the full facts are ever revealed. On the contrary, they are more often concealed, and it takes knowledge of the careers of the personalities and groups which the articles link to see behind them the inevitable direction of the reported arrangements and their intrinsic meaning in terms of economic and political power.<br /> <br /> Let us take the item of the Morgan Grenfell participation in the new French bank (''Financial Times'', London, 18 December 1962). Morgan Grenfell &amp; Co. acts effectively as the London end of the important American banking house of J. P. Morgan &amp; Co. which, in 1956, already owned one-third of the British company. It should not, therefore, surprise us to learn that the new ‘continental’ bank in which Morgan Grenfell is participating is called Morgan et Cie; more especially, since 70 per cent of the capital of 10 million new francs is held by the Morgan Guaranty International Finance Corporation, and 15 per cent by Morgan Grenfell. What about the remaining 15 per cent? This is divided between two Dutch banks – Hope &amp; Co. of Amsterdam and R. Mees &amp; Zoonen of Rotterdam – both of which the Morgan group has had close association over many years. This association has been drawn even closer by the acquisition in March 1963 of a 14 per cent in both of them by the Morgan Guaranty International Banking Corporation, a subsidiary of Morgan Guaranty Trust.<br /> <br /> How was this done? Through the purchase of stock in Bankier-compagnie, a company that consolidated the activities of the two Dutch banks, which, nevertheless, continue to do business under their own names. This form of one in two is the accepted formula by which the great combinations attempt to delude the world about their compact formations.<br /> <br /> Chairman of Morgan et Cie is Mr Pierre Meynial, vice-president of Morgan Guaranty Trust in Paris, whose brother, Mr Raymond Meynial, is a director of the Banque Worms. Vice-president of Morgan et Cie is the Rt. Hon. Viscount Harcourt, K.C.M.G., O.B.E., a managing director of Morgan Grenfell and chairman of four important British insurance companies – British Commonwealth, Gresham Fire &amp; Accident, Gresham Life Assurance, and Legal &amp; General.<br /> <br /> ‘French African bankinking move’ captions an item of rather less than eight lines in the ''Financial Times'' of 26 July 1963, which informs us shortly that ‘the network of the Banque Commerciale Africaine in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Cameroun and Congo Republic has been taken over by Société Générale, France’s second largest bank’. It is in the single comment the newspaper allows itself that we find the grist: ‘The arrangement will result in a substantial increase in the volume of deposits held by Société Générale’.<br /> <br /> Société Générale was founded under Napoleon the Third in 1864. One of the chief participants was Adolphe Schneider, a member of the Schneider iron and steel empire, who was at the same period also one of the regents of Banque de France. Both Banque de France and Société Générale have now been nationalised. This means in effect that the French Government has a direct interest in the network of the Banque Commerciale Africaine that Société Générale has taken over.<br /> <br /> Nationalisation does not stand in the way of the closest association with the world’s most powerful private banking institutions, as the facts given under the title ‘African banking group’ (''West Africa'', 22 September 1963) illustrate.The title, however, is misleading. There is little that is ‘African’ about the group, the body mainly concerned being the Bankers International Corporation, a subsidiary of Bankers Trust Company, which shares with Morgan Guaranty Trust the commercial business of J. P. Morgan &amp; Co. The others are Société Générale and other unnamed European financial institutions.<br /> <br /> This combination of Western banks, topped by the long-armed Morgan interests, is to extend the formation of banks in just those territories where Société Générale has acquired the interests of Banque Commerciale Africaine, namely, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Cameroun and Congo (Brazzaville). The American Federal Reserve Board has given its approval to the Morgan extension, as have the governments of the African countries concerned. Comment is unnecessary, since we can readily accept the view of the senior vice-president and head of the international banking department of the Bankers Trust, Mr G. T. Davies, who happily announced that participation in these four nations will substantially increase the scope of Bankers Trust company’s activities in Africa, a continent in which we are vitally interested. The news item concludes with the information that Bankers International Corporation has equity interests in the Liberian Trading &amp; Development Bank (Tradevco), and in the United Bank of Africa, Nigeria.<br /> <br /> The fact that another sugar consortium (''Financial Times'', 8 November 1962) has managed to obtain over 50 per cent of the ordinary shares and thereby the majority voting power in the South African sugar monopoly of Sir J. Hulett &amp; Sons appears, on the surface, to be entirely unrelated to the other newspaper items we have already scrutinised. But let us go on with our examination.<br /> <br /> Behind the combination of sugar companies that has gained ascendancy in the Hulett monopoly are visible the hands of two important South African share issuing and underwriting houses, Philip Hill Higginson &amp; Co. (Africa), and Union Acceptances Ltd.<br /> <br /> Harold Charles Drayton is the dominating personality in the Philip Hill chain of financial and investment companies, based in London. Harry F. Oppenheimer of South Africa is chairman of Union Acceptances. Among Mr Drayton’s company appointments are those of chairman of European &amp; General Corporation, Second Consolidated Trust, and director of Midland Bank and Midland Bank Executor &amp; Trustee Co., Eagle Star Insurance Co., Standard Bank, Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa and Ashanti Goldfields Corporation.<br /> <br /> Mr Oppenheimer, among his more than seventy company appointments, includes those of chairman of African Explosives &amp; Chemical Industries, Anglo American Corporation of South Africa, De Beers Consolidated Mines, and First Union Investment Trust. He is a director of African &amp; European Investment Co., Barclays Bank D.C.O., British South African Co. and Central Mining &amp; Investment Corporation.<br /> <br /> Deputy chairman of Anglo American Corporation is Sir K. Acutt, who is also a director of British South Africa Co. and Standard Bank. Co-director with the deputy chairman of Anglo American Corporation on British South Africa Co. is Mr Robert Annan, who sits beside Mr Drayton on the board of Consolidated Goldfields. Mr Annan also has the distinction of being an extraordinary director of Scottish Amicable Life Assurance Society.<br /> <br /> A colleague of Mr Drayton’s on both the Midland Bank and the bank’s Executor &amp; Trust Co. is the Rt. Hon. Lord Baillieu, K.B.E., C.M.G., who happens to be at the same time deputy chairman of the Central Mining &amp; Investment Corporation, on which Harry F. Oppenheimer is to be found. Lord Baillieu sits also on English Scottish &amp; Australian Bank.<br /> <br /> Another director of Standard Bank is Mr William Antony Acton, whose close ties with the banking world are seen in his deputy chairmanship of the National Bank and directorships on the Bank of London &amp; Montreal, Standard Bank Finance &amp; Development Corporation, Bank of London &amp; South America and Bank of West Africa. It is certainly not sheer coincidence that Lord Luke of Pavenham has a seat with H. C. Drayton on the board of Ashanti Goldfields and occupies which Mr Acton is seated. Nor can it be by mere chance that Mr Esmond Charles Baring, former director and London agent of Anglo American Corporation and associated with a number of other companies in the Oppenheimer group, is a member of the family that operates the merchant house of Baring Bros. and maintains the closest links with the investment world.<br /> <br /> Other important personages who graced the board of British South Africa Co. in 1963 were the late Sir Charles J. Hambro, P. V. Emrys-Evans, and Viscount Malvern, P.C., C.H., K.C.M.H. Sir Charles Hambro was the senior director of the Bank of England. He chaired the biggest of the City of London’s merchant banks, the £176 million Hambros Bank, and presided over Union Corporation, the South aFrican mining finance group which embraces numerous of the Anglo American interests associated with the Harry F. Oppenheimer concerns.<br /> <br /> The Standard Bank of South Africa crops up once more among the directorships of Lord Malvern, which included Scottish Rhodesia Finance and Merchant Bank of Central Africa. The last-named bank is a creation of the Rotschild banking group, in which one finds Banque Lambert, one of the important Belgian banks, some 17·5 per cent of whose interests are concentrated in Africa, notably in the Congo. The bank also has an interest in another Rothschild creation, the Five Arrows Securities Co., an investment house operating in Canada, and under Rockefeller influence. Mr Paul V. Emrys-Evans, British South Africa Co.’s vice-president, is now president of Oppenheimer’s expansive Anglo American Corporation and also upon that of Barclays Bank D.C.O. A seat on Rio Tinto Zinc Corporation brings Mr Emrys-Evans into the company of Lord Baillieu, its deputy chairman, and his associations with H. C. Drayton.<br /> <br /> Several of the leading British banks and insurance companies and some of their European associates participate in the Standard Bank. Its chairman, Sir Frank Cyril Hawker, used to represent the Bank of England, and its vice-chairman, Sir F. W. Leith-Ross, represents the National Provincial Bank. W. A. Acton’s banking associations have already been outlined above. H. C. Drayton brings in the interests of his own financial groups, as well as those of the Midland Bank and Eagle Star Insurance. Sir E. L. Hall Patch, a director of the Standard Bank of South Africa who resigned at the July 1963 annual general meeting, is director of Commercial Union Assurance Co. Sir G. S. Harvie-Watt is an associate of H. C. Drayton on Eagle Star Insurance and the Midland Bank. He is chairman of Consolidated Gold Fields and a director of American Zinc Lead &amp; Smelting Co. of the U.S.A.<br /> <br /> John Francis Prideaux brings the interests of the Commonwealth Development Corporation into the bank, as well as those of Westminster Bank, the Bank of New South Wales and sundry other financial and investment concerns. William Michael Robson as vice-chairman of the Joint East &amp; Central African Board of the Standard Bank, brings to bear all those vested interests joined in the Board, while he represents separately the investments of the finance holding, merchant, shipping and plantation companies of the Booker Bros. McConnell group, which has a monopoly grip upon the economy of British Guiana. Charles Hyde Villiers holds a brief for Banque Belge Ltd. and Sun Life Assurance Society. Banque Belge Ltd. is the London outlet of Banque de la Société Générale de Belgique and controls in its turn, among others, Banque du Congo Belge, Belgian-American Banking Corporation, Belgian-American Bank &amp; Trust Co., Continental American Fund (America-fund) of Baltimore, U.S.A., and Canadafund Co., Montreal, Canada.<br /> <br /> The headline, ‘New factoring company set up in Germany’ (''Financial Times'', 4 October 1963), has a superficially innocuous look. However, the briefest glance at the test takes us at once right into the world of international banking. For we meet extensions of British and American capital that have stimulated and supported an international factoring venture which has expanded in a very short time across four continents. The focal point is a Swiss holding company, International Factors AG. of Chur. Its nominal capital is Sw. Frs. 6,000,000 (about £490,000). It has now established activity in Germany, where a company, International Factors Deutschland, has been set up in conjunction with three German banks, the Chur company retaining 50 per cent of the capital. Of the rest, 20 per cent is held by the Frankfurter Bank, 25 per cent by Mittel-rheinische Kreditbank Dr Horback &amp; Co., and five per cent by a private bank in Frankfurt, George Hauck. Frankfurter Bank’s portion, however, will be enlarged by the fact that it has acquired a 51 per cent stake in Horback &amp; Co., by way of a share exchange.<br /> <br /> The heavy banking interests behind the international factoring venture, which has affiliates in Switzerland, Australia, South Africa, Israel, and now Germany, are the First National Bank of Boston, and M. Samuel &amp; Co. of London. A holding company under Samuel influence, Tozer Kemsley &amp; Milbourn (Holdings), is a third. The First National Bank of Boston, once firmly inside the great Morgan financial empire, has, since 1955, come increasingly under Rockefeller influence, though it still has significant ties with Morgan. It is joined with Chase National Bank (Rockefeller) in the American Overseas Finance Corporation.<br /> <br /> Chairman of M. Samuel &amp; Co. is Viscount Bearsted, a director of the Rothschild creation, Alliance Assurance Co. and its affiliate, Sun Alliance Insurance. Chairman of both these insurance companies is Mr T. D. Barclay, a director of Barclays Bank, Barclays Bank (France) and British Linen Bank, a Barclays Bank affiliate.<br /> <br /> At the beginning of February 1963, the First National City Bank of New York, through International Banking Corporation, institutions controlled by the Rockefeller interests, bought a 17 per cent share in M. Samuel &amp; Co., represented by 600,000 ordinary shares, a cost of £1,900,000. First National City placed the chairman of its executive committee, R. S. Perkins, upon the Samuel board. The shot in the arm injected by the Rockefeller capital has enabled the Samuel banking firm to spread itself into the European Market, where it has joined the European bankers association brought together by the important French bank, Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas. This is Groupement d'Etudes pour l'Analyse des Valeurs Européennes, whose purpose is to canalise what is called ‘institutional investment’.<br /> <br /> The house of M. Samuel has also been placed in charge of managing another Common Market organisation, domiciled in London, New European &amp; General Investment Trust, in which it is associated with Banque Lambert, Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, the prominent German banking house of Sal Oppenheim &amp; Cie., the Dutch bankers, Lippmann, Rosenthal &amp; Co., the Credito Italiano of Italy, Banco Urquijo of Spain and Union de Banques Suisses of Switzerland.<br /> <br /> We may appear to have gone at some length into the intricacies of the financial and economic interests behind some innocent-looking headlines. Yet these are in fact the merest directional indications of today’s trend of ever-tightening links between a short list of incredibly powerful groups that dominate our lives on a global scale. The take of taking their detailed significance farther is the main purpose of this book.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, even this brief breakdown provides illuminating evidence of the serpentine interlocking of financial monopoly today. What we observe, above all, is the constant penetration of a few banking and financial institutions into large industrial and commercial undertakings, creating a chain of links that bring them into a connective relationship making for domination in both national and international economy. The influence exercised by this domination is carried into politics and international affairs, so that the interests of the overriding monopoly groups govern national policies. Their representatives are placed in key positions in government, army, navy and air force, in the diplomatic service, in policy-making bodies and in international organisations and institutions through which the chosen policies are filtered on to the world scene.<br /> <br /> This process had already reached a high enough pitch before the outbreak of the first world war to call forth a number of important studies of its growth and potentialities. Two of these studies, ''Imperialism'', by the English Liberal, J. A. Hobson, published in 1902, and ''Finance Capital'', by the Austrian Marxist, Ruolf Hilferding, published in 1910, were used by Lenin as the main basis of his study of ''Imperialism'', which he described as ‘the highest stage of capitalism’.<br /> <br /> It came at the stage at which competition transformed into monopoly, the so-called ''combination'' of production, that is to say, the grouping in a single enterprise of different branches of industry, and monopoly itself became dominated by banking and finance capital. Lenin’s study was written in 1916. Since then the domination of financial monopoly has speeded up tremendously.<br /> <br /> How is it possible that capitalism, rooted in free enterprise and competition, has arrived at a stage where competition is being eroded to the point where pyramidal monopolies exercise dictatorial rights? The possibility lay in the very fact of free enterprise itself. The spur of competition led to invention on several planes. New machinery was devised to increase output and profit, factories grew larger. Small units became unprofitable and were either driven out or swallowed up by bigger ones. Rail communication improved distribution and better ocean transport stimulated overseas trade and the bringing in of foreign raw materials.<br /> <br /> The joint stock company that encouraged the growth of rail and ocean transport served as a forcing instrument for banking and insurance growth. New company laws assisted its extension to industrial and commercial enterprises in which the individual investor’s risk was lessened by the limitation upon his liability.<br /> <br /> Competition moved on to another level. Companies that possessed large capital or were able to call upon it on their own security were able to wield an unequal influence against weaker ones. Profits became hinged to the elimination of competition. The enormous expansion of industry and the end of last century and the beginning of the present, was accompanied by a rapid concentration into even larger enterprises.<br /> <br /> Combination of production was established as a cardinal feature of capitalism. Firms that had begun by concentrating upon one function of an industry spread into a group enterprise that represented the consecutive stages of raw materials processing, or were ancillary to one another. Trading houses extended their activities into distribution and then into actual production of finished goods from primary materials produced from plantations and mines they acquired in overseas territories.<br /> <br /> Hilferding, in his classic work on the subject, ''Finance Capital'', explains the reasons behind this process:<br /> <br /> ‘Combination levels out the fluctuations of trade and therefore assures to the combined enterprises a more stable rate of profit. Secondly, combination has the effect of eliminating trade. Thirdly, it has the effect of rendering possible technical improvements, and consequently, the acquisition of super-profits over and above those obtained by the “pure” (i.e. non-combined) enterprises. Fourthly, it strengthens the position of the combined enterprises compared with that of the “pure” enterprises, strengthens them in the competitive struggle in periods of serious depression, when the fall in prices of raw materials does not keep pace with the fall in prices of manufactured goods.’<br /> <br /> As monopoly of industry and commerce extended, the reliance upon banking capital also increased. New methods of production, the division of factories and businesses into departments, research into the possibilities of new materials and fresh ways of employing both old and new ones – all these, while they eventually reinforced monopoly and enlarged profits, called for capital sums that only the banks and their associates in the insurance world were able to provide. Thus side by side with the process of amalgamation of industrial enterprises went the concentration of banks and their penetration into the large industrial and commercial enterprises to whose capital they heavily contributed.<br /> <br /> From middlemen, originally performing the role of simple moneylenders, the banks grew into powerful monopolies, having at their command almost the whole means of production and of the sources of raw materials of the given country and in a number of countries. This transformation of numerous humble middlemen into a handful of monopolists represents one of the fundamental processes in the growth of capitalism into capitalist imperialism. [''Imperialism'', Lenin, p. 45.]<br /> <br /> Union was established between the industrialist and the banker, in which the latter dominated. In the U.S.A., for instance, the United States Steel Corporation, which was an amalgamation of several giant steel firms controlling half the steel production of the country, was controlled by J. P. Morgan’s banking interests because of the large investments they had in the industry. Before the end of the first decade of the present century, the inter-volutions of industry and banking had already taken place to a high degree. In Germany, for instance, six of the biggest banks were represented by their directors in a total of some 750 companies engaged in the most diverse branches of industry: insurance, transport, heavy industry, shipping, restaurants, theatres, art, publishing, etc. Conversely, there sat on the boards of these six banks in 1910, fifty-one of the biggest industrialists, including Krupp, iron and steel magnate, armaments manufacturer and director of the powerful Hamburg-American shipping line.<br /> <br /> Today this process has gone very much deeper, and is spreading its roots more embracingly every day. The six German banks included the four giants, the Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, Disconto Gesellschaft, Commerzbank, all of which have grown even more powerful. Allied with them today, as in 1910, are the big German industrial trusts and cartels. Krupp, A. E. G Bayer, Badische Anilin &amp; Soda Fabrik, Farbwerke Hoechst (the last three the components into which the great I. G. Farben was broken by the allies at the end of the second world war), the explosives and armaments manufacturers connected with the massive I.C.I. and its continental affiliate, Solvay. For example, the Deutsche Bank is now Germany’s leading bank and is placed as eleventh among the foremost in the world. In 1870 the Deutsche Bank had a capital of 15 million marks which it had been able to increase to 200 million by 1908. In 1962 it disposed of funds amounting to 1,100 billions of old French francs.<br /> <br /> The rule of the financial oligarchy is maintained through the principal device of the ‘holding company’, often established with a purely nominal capital but controlling direct and indirect subsidiaries and affiliates utilising vastly superior finances. Assuming that a 50 per cent holding of the capital is sufficient to control a company (sometimes it can be and is considerably less), it is possible with an investment of, say, £100,000 to control tens of millions in subsidiary and interlocked enterprises.<br /> <br /> Concentrated in the hands of a few, finance capital exercises a virtual monopoly, by reason of which it exacts enormous and ever-increasing profits from company flotations, share under-writings, debenture holdings, state loans, and bond issues. The Deutsche Bank, for instance, adopts a specific procedure for gaining control of enterprises and drawing in fresh profits. When participating in the launching of new ventures or extensions of already existing ones, it finds the whole of the required capital from its own and associated resources. When the formation is complete, the shares are unloaded at a premium, the bank holding just sufficient to give it a commanding voice in the direction of affairs. At the same time, it takes a profit on the original capital.<br /> <br /> Flotation of foreign loans provides one of the highest yielding fields of monopolist profits. Usually a borrowing country is lucky if it gets more than nine-tenths of the loan sum. Frequently it is less, particularly if it is a developing country. Liberia’s loans are a revealing and classic example of how monopoly finance operates in conjunction with governments to increase its profits.<br /> <br /> In Liberia, in 1904, President Arthur Barclay reported that the English seven per cent loan of 1871, originally £100,000, of which only £27,000 actually reached the Liberian Treasury because of certain official defalcations, was the largest item of the country’s indebtedness and would require three years’ revenue to cover it. A desperate Liberian Government succeeded in arranging an international loan of $1,700,000. This was subscribed by British, French, Dutch and German banking house associated with the United States financial institutions of J. P. Morgan, the National City Bank, First National Bank of New York and Kuhn Loeb &amp; Co.<br /> <br /> In this instance, the most arbitrary means were used in applying and securing repayment of the loan. An American Receiver General was appointed by the United States and sub-receivers by Britain, France and Germany, an arrangement which continued until America took over full control of Liberia’s finances during the first world war. Little actual cash went to the Liberian Government, but fancy profits went to the banks and loan issue houses. Bonds to the value of $715,000 were delivered in London, $225,000 in Germany, $460,000 in Amsterdam and $158,000 in New York to creditors of Liberia in payment of their outstanding claims. It required reparations money from the sale of German properties in Liberia to liquidate subsequent debts incurred with the then British Bank of West Africa to try and meet the claims on this loan.<br /> <br /> It was only after a new loan was negotiated with the Firestone Corporation of America in 1926 that the Liberian Government was able to use $1,180,669 to pay off the principal and accumulated interest on the 1912 loan. The loan offered by Firestone was in the region of $5 million, at an interest rate of seven per cent, but by 1945 still only half of this amount had been subscribed. Firestone stipulations included the abolition of the office of Receiver of Customs and its replacement by a Financial Adviser. It was under pressure of these debts that Liberia was obliged to cede large concessions for rubber planting to Firestone, and later to the Goodrich Rubber Company.<br /> <br /> One of the principal functions of finance capital is the issue of securities on which the discount rates are ridiculously high. It is also an important method of consolidating financial oligarchy. In boom periods the profits are immense. During periods of depression, the banks acquire holdings by buying up small or failing businesses, or engage in their reorganisation at a profit. Money is made by the banks and the sphere of control is extended. Financial assistance to land speculators is extended. Financial assistance to land speculators is also a means of entrenching control and inflating profits in times of industrial expansion. Ground rent monopoly merges with communications monopoly, since an important factor governing rise in land prices is good means of communication with town centres.<br /> <br /> In his book ''Monopoly: A Study of British Monopoly Capitalism'' published in 1955 by Lawrence and Wishart, Sam Aaronovitch has shown how the financial resources of Britain have become concentrated in the hands of a small number of big banks and financial institutions. Between them, the ‘Big Five’ banks exercise immense power. In 1951 their 147 directors held 1,008 directorships of which 299, just under a third, were in other financial institutions. Of these 299, 85 were in other banks and discount companies; 117 were in insurance companies and 97 in investment trusts and finance companies.’ (p. 49.)<br /> <br /> ‘Talk about centralisation!’ wrote Karl Marx in ''Capital'' (Vol. 3, Ch. 33):<br /> <br /> ‘The credit system, which has its centre in the so-called national banks and the great moneylenders and usurers about them is an enormous centralisation, and gives to this class of parasites a fabulous power ... to interfere with actual production in a most dangerous manner – and this gang knows nothing about production and has nothing to do with it.’<br /> <br /> Hegemony of the money institutions over industry is assured by the vast reserves built up out of the various ways by which capital is advanced to industry at high profit and drawn from it through holding companies and interlocking directorates. This process emphasises the separation of finance capital from industrial capital. When this separation has attained major proportions and the domination of finance capital has become supreme, the stage of imperialism has been reached. This stage can be said to have been brought to maturity at the turn of the century.<br /> <br /> From free competition, the fundamental characteristic of its early stages, capitalism at its highest stage, has polarised into monopoly, expressed in syndicates, trusts and cartels, with which the capital of a small number of banks has merged. The trusts and cartels have assumed an international character and divided up the world among themselves. Monopoly extends to the control of raw materials and markets, for the possession of which, highly developed capitalism engages in an even more intense struggle.<br /> <br /> At its imperialist stage, finance capital’s primary need is to find spheres of overseas investment which will return profits at a greater rate than can be obtained at home. The export of capital, therefore, becomes the dynamo of imperialism which turns the export of commodities and leads to the capture of colonies as the means of assuring monopolist control. Upon this economic process is built the political ideology, the non-economic superstructure, that infuses the battle for colonial conquest. Hilferding expressed this ideology in a single concise sentence: ‘Finance capital does not want liberty, it wants domination’. Possession of colonies gives a guarantee to the financial oligarchy of the owning country of the monopoly of actual and potential sources of raw materials and outlets for manufactured goods.<br /> <br /> == Primary Resources and Foreign Interests ==<br /> AMERICAN and European companies connected with the world’s most powerful banking and financial institutions are, with the consent of African governments, entering upon major projects designed to exploit new sources of primary products. In some cases these are allied to long-term ventures for the establishment of certain essential industries. In the main, however, they are confining themselves to the production of materials in their basic or secondary stages, with the object of transforming them in the mills and plants owned and run by the exploiting companies in the metropolitan lands.<br /> <br /> Africa has failed to make much headway on the road to purposeful industrial development because her natural resources have not been employed for that end but have been used for the greater development of the Western world. This has been a continuing process that has gained tremendous momentum in recent years, following the invention and introduction of new processes and techniques that have quickened the output of both the ferrous and non-ferrous metal industries of Europe and America in order to keep pace with the ever-increasing demand for finished goods. Military preparations and nuclear expansion have had a considerable impact upon this demand. World output of crude steel almost doubled itself in the decade between 1950 and 1960, from 190 million tons to 340 million tons. Even the regression of 1958 which lasted through the following years failed to halt the progress, which went on in lesser degree in both Eastern and Western countries.<br /> <br /> The general forecast is that this tempo of production will be maintained. As it comes from Western sources, it makes little allowance for expansion of African use of primary products, and envisages a continuance of the present flow as between developing source countries and highly industrialised users. Nor does it take into account the likelihood of a repressive tendency in Western economies that can certainly affect the demand for raw materials. A publication of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in 1959 estimated that the world production of steel between 1972 and 1975 will be in the region of 630 million tons. Before the last war most of the Western world’s iron and steel output was based upon local raw materials. The post-war years, particularly since 1956, have seen an opposite trend. Something like a quarter of the raw materials (90 million tons out of 400 million) used in the world’s metallurgical industries have been imported.<br /> <br /> The countries mainly importing these raw materials are the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. The Soviet Union and the developing countries have at their disposal sufficient quantities of domestic raw materials. At the present time three large areas of primary resources are being exploited for the benefit of the great producer countries. These are Africa, Canada, and South America; in particular Chile and Peru and lately Venezuela. Canada has become a province of American capital investment, which draws off high profits and exploits vast resources of raw products for conversion in American plants. South America and Africa, besides offering these advantages, provide cheap labour and local governmental assistance by way of duty exemption for imported machinery and equipment as well as tax remission.<br /> <br /> Surveys now being carried out in Africa are discovering more and more deposits of valuable raw materials. Western investigators regard them essentially as sources of exploitation for the commerce and industry of their world, ignoring completely the development of the countries in which they lie. Robert Saunal, in an article in ''Europe (France) Outremer'' of November 1961 surveys the possibilities of Africa as a provider of ferrous raw materials for the industries of the great metallurgical countries. He reminds his readers that there are sources of these primary materials in Europe, such as Sweden and Spain, and that for Japan there are the countries of Asia and Oceania.<br /> <br /> He concludes that European participation is a favourable factor in starting off the exploitation of Africa’s mineral resources, but that the new productive capacities in course of development should counsel prudence and a detailed examination of the selling possibilities. These mines are bound to start off in a situation of lively competition, which must have its effect upon price levels. They need, therefore, to be subjected to close preliminary examination before being embarked upon and must depend upon agreement between the exploiting companies and the host States which will give the former a just return and the latter a stable fiscal regime for the functioning of the ‘harmonised exploitation’. In short, the governments of the new States are seen in the role of policemen for the banking and industrial consortia bent upon continuing the old imperialist pattern in Western-African relationships. The ‘stable fiscal regime’ they will guarantee out of such exploitation will, according to Robert Saunal, be based on conditions of depressed prices arising from acute competition.<br /> <br /> There has been a considerable increase in the production of primary materials in Africa since 1945, under the stimulus of post-war rebuilding needs throughout the world, and the exigencies of cold-war stock-piling and armaments requirements. Another driving factor has been the revolution in productive methods and management. The surge of colonial peoples towards independence must also be acknowledged as a force contributing to the extension of raw materials production.<br /> <br /> In some cases the production of primary materials since 1945 has multiplied several times, and in most cases has doubled. The scene in Guinea shows much change, following the discovery of deposits of iron and bauxite. Diamond mining has also made noticeable progress. The Ivory Coast in 1960 was producing diamonds at an annual level of about 200,000 carats, and operations have started in the manganese fields in the neighbourhood of Grand Lahou. Calcium phosphate is being exploited in Senegal, and aluminium and oxidised sand provide some mining activity. The mining of iron ore is under way in Mauritania, where an Anglo-French consortium is planning to produce four million tons as a first stage, to be increased later to six millions tons annually. Deposits are estimated at around 115 million tons of 63 per cent iron grade. Finds of very rich phosphate deposits in Senegal have brought a French-Belgian financial and mining combination into the country to carry out their exploitation. An estimated 40 million tons of raw phosphates are expected to allow a production of 13 million tons of rich phosphates through the extraction of 600,000 tons of concentrates annually for twenty years.<br /> <br /> Phosphates have also been found in Togo, which are to be exploited by a consortium associated with the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas and established mining companies having connections with the Société Générale de Belgique. Manganese, uranium, oil and iron ore finds in Gabon have brought in similar consortia for their exploitation. Cameroun produces little from mining beyond some small amounts of gold, tin and rutile. Though there has been no effective change in Madagascar’s position, there have been discoveries of uranium, monozite, zircon, chromium and other minerals, whose exploitation is being investigated. Iron ore finds in Algeria are estimated at 100 million tons, and we have been hearing a good deal lately about the oil and gas resources of the Sahara desert. Algeria’s fields are now producing at the rate of 450,000 barrels a day (about a third of those of Iran), and Libya has reached 150,000 barrels daily, with the anticipation of achieving 600,000 barrels a day within the next five years. In Algeria’s sector of the Sahara finds of minerals at Tindouf are expected to produce 50 per cent iron.<br /> <br /> The following figures, taken from UN Statistical Year-books, illustrate the great rise in output of minerals in Africa in the post-war period:<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> The highest rate of increase is in South Africa, where a production of 624,108 kg. of gold makes the Republic the producer of half the world’s supplies. An output of 2,838,000 carats of diamonds in 1959, about 40 per cent of which were gem stones, puts it third after the Congo and Ghana, whose output is almost entirely of industrial diamonds, though the value received, because of its control of the industry and the number of gem diamonds, is relatively greater than that of Ghana’s. She also leads in the production of chromium ore and is second in the output of lead from S. W. Africa. Even South Africa’s uranium production of 7,000 tons, obtained largely from gold and copper slimes, is way ahead of the Congo’s 1,761 tons.<br /> <br /> Mining of all kinds in South Africa has reached a stage of exploitation which can be compared with that of Canada, and which is now feverishly beginning to open up in Australia, where the same companies, in alliance with American and other associated interests, are paramount. The close relationship borne out even in the names of mines, particularly in Canada, which frequently duplicate those also to be found in South Africa and the Rhodesias.<br /> <br /> Africa’s possession of industrial raw materials could, if used for her own development, place her among the most modernised continents of the world without recourse to outside sources. Iron ore, mostly of high quality, is to be found in gigantic quantities near to the coast where it can easily be shipped abroad. As for bauxite, Africa’s estimated reserves are more than two-fifths those of the whole world. They are twice those of Australia, which are placed second. Guinea alone is estimated to contain deposits equal to those of the whole of Australia, that is, over 1,000 million tons. Ghana is said to have reserves totalling 400 million tons. Sudan, Cameroun, Congo and Malawi are other known sources of considerable deposits, and the investigation of probable reserves is proceeding in Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Portuguese Guinea and in other parts of Africa.<br /> <br /> Among the base materials essential for the production of iron and steel, manganese has a place of high importance. Besides being used for alloying with pig iron in the manufacture of special steels, it is used in the chemical industry. For certain purposes, under present-day processes, manganese is irreplaceable. It is in constant use at the rate of 18 to 20 kg. to a ton of steel. The Soviet Union and China are practically self-sufficient in the supply of this essential basic material. The other great world steel producers, the United States, Western Europe and Japan, do not have appreciable quantities in their own territories. Their principal sources of supply are Africa, India and Brazil. Of these Africa provides the greatest quantity. Angola, Bechuanaland, Congo, Ghana, Morocco, Rhodesia, South-West Africa and Egypt have been among the producing countries for some time. Others, like the Ivory Coast and Gabon, are now being added to the list.<br /> <br /> North Africa is the world’s greatest producer of phosphates. Morocco alone exports seven million tons out of some nine million tons coming from North Africa. The U.S.A. comes next, with an export of four million tons. New producing countries which have appeared since 1957 are China, with some 600,000 tons in 1960, and North Vietnam with 500,000 tons. Senegal is a producers of aluminium phosphate, her output being about 90,000 tons a year, and Togo is now appearing on the phosphate market.<br /> <br /> Iron ore, like oil, has become one of the more recent mineral discoveries in Africa, North and West Africa being the main centres. Among high-grade ore producers in 1960 were Liberia (68 per cent iron content), Angola (65 per cent), South Africa (62 per cent), Sierra Leone (60 per cent), Morocco (60 per cent), and Rhodesia (55 per cent, the minimum iron content for high-grade ore). There have been discoveries of higher quantities and quality since 1960. It is considered that most countries in West Africa, from Mauritania to Congo (Brazzaville) have iron ore deposits. Enlargement of the production in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone is being planned. Deposits are either being placed under production or are planned for exploitation in Nigeria, Niger, Mauritania, Ghana, Gabon, Cameroun, Senegal and Congo (Brazzaville). Ghana’s reserves, estimated at about a million tons, are in the Shiene area of the Northern Region, and are not easily accessible, and have an average iron content of 46 to 51 per cent. It is proposed to exploit the deposits for domestic use when the Volta lake is opened up for inland transport. The Niger Republic deposits are estimated at more than 100 million tons of 45 to 60 per cent quality. They are at Say, about thirty-five miles from Niamey, at the moment distant from roads, railways and ports. These disadvantages affect also the exploitation of the known deposits in the Kandi region of Dahomey, of 68 per cent quality. Algeria has been an iron ore producer for some time. Exploitation was undertaken there in 1913 by a French enterprise known as La Société de l'Ouenza, operating at Djebel Ouenza in the south of Constantine, close to the Tunisian border, formerly incorporated as a department of France. The company has built its own railway lines connecting its two producing centres to Oued-Keberit, to join with the Bone-Tebessa line. Its plants enable Société de l'Ouenza to export iron principally to Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Low Countries, and the U.S.A. Between the outset of this exploitation and the end of 1960, a total of 46 million tons of mineral has been extracted. Ouenza’s personnel then included 600 European and 1,500 Algerians.<br /> <br /> The existence of iron ore in the Sahara was first indicated in the Gara Djebilet region, some 110 miles south-east of Tindouf, in 1952. Difficulties of situation and water supply are obstacles in the way of exploitation. Nevertheless, a committee composed of representatives of the iron and steel industries of France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands is busily investigating the possibilities, in conjunction with the French Bureau d'Investissements en Afrique. Liberia’s iron ore resources are reputed to stand at 1,000 million tons in the Nimba range and 600 million tons in the deposits near the Sierra Leone border. The Nimba iron ore mine which has been sunk and is being mined by a consortium known as LAMCO Join Venture Enterprise (members of the consortium being LIberian-American-Swedish Minerals Company and Bethlehem Steel Corporation) is estimated to have reserves of over 300 million tons of high-grade hematite ore with an average iron content of over 65 per cent. Long-term contracts are in hand from German, French, Italian and Belgian steelworks, while a considerable part of the output will go to the powerful United States Bethlehem Steel, which has a 25 per cent participation in the venture, the other 75 per cent being taken up by LAMCO. LAMCO is said to be a company shared between the Liberian Government and foreign enterprise on a fifty-fifty basis. The non-Government participant is Liberian Iron Ore Company, a consortium of American and Swedish financial and steel interests.<br /> <br /> Chief of these is the Swedish mining company, Grangesberg, which besides having an important stake in the LAMCO Nimba mine acts as managing agent for this joint venture, in which American capital predominates. Grangesberg, formerly holding 12/28 of the LAMCO syndicate, according to its annual report adopted at its annual general meeting held at Stockholm, on 18 May 1962, increased its participation to 15/28, giving it a majority slice of the equity.<br /> <br /> Grangesberg owns iron ore mines in Central Sweden, as well as power stations, forest and farm properties. It also built and controls the Frovi-Ludviks Jarnvag railway undertaking, and operates the Oxelsund Ironworks, turning out pig iron and heavy plates. In addition it possesses and runs a fleet of ships which, at the end of 1961, comprised thirty-three vessels, and had on order another four for delivery in 1962 and 1963. A subsidiary, Aktiebolaget Hematit, works mines in North Africa, and others include an arms and chemical enterprise, Aktiebolaget Express-Dynamit. The Swedish Government took over holdings which Grangesberg exercised in Luossavaara-Kürunavaara AB – LKAB, but out of the purchase price of Kr. 925 million it received, the company reinvested Kr. 100 million in LKAB.<br /> <br /> The value given to these Government-purchased holdings was almost twice as much as Grangesberg’s fully paid-up capital of Kr. 495,800,000, and even without them its assets at the end of 1961 stood at Kr. 403,719,000 in addition to shares in subsidiary and other companies totalling Kr. 154,380,000. The company’s net profit for the year was Kr. 38,787,251 and dividends absorbed very nearly the same amount at Kr. 35,700,000. Its iron sales increased from 1,620,000 tons in 1959 to 2,560,000 tons in 1961.<br /> <br /> Bethlehem Steel is a heavy investment sphere for Rockefeller’s profits from Standard Oil, which has been pushing to displace British-Dutch oil interests in the Far East. John D. Rockefeller the Third has made himself a specialist on the Far East, with a preference for Japan, where he was a member of John Foster Dulles’ peace treaty mission in 1951. He established the Japan Society Inc. for cultural inter-change. Persistent visits and pressure have boosted Standard Oil Company’s facilities in Japan, Indonesia, New Guinea and India in oil production, refining and sales. The Rockefeller interest in Japan is reflected in the link with the Sumitomo metallurgical group, which has been cemented in the Bethlehem Copper Corporation Ltd., a 1955 British Columbia (Canada) registration. Property claims in the Highland Valley of British Columbia hold ore reserves of 3,304,000 tons grade 1·20 per cent copper and 12,723,000 tons of 0·82 per cent grade. Additional claims are held in the provinces as well as a full subsidiary, Highland Valley Smelting and Refining Co.<br /> <br /> Total output is to go to Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. Ltd. group, which is responsible for bringing the property into production. It has bought 400,000 shares in Bethlehem and has options on further lots in connection with loan promises of $5 million and an agreement to contribute one half of the funds required for expansion. Sumitomo provides Bethlehem’s vice-president and two other directors, one of whom is from the prominent Tanaka family. The first deliveries from the Nimba mine were made during May 1963 and production of 7,500,000 tons is planned for 1965.<br /> <br /> The Nimba iron ore streaks of Liberia stretch into Guinea where prospecting is taking place in the Nimba-Simandou region, about a thousand kilometres from Conakry, close to the Liberia-Ivory Coast borders. A West European banking group representing itself as the Consortium Européen pour le Developpement des Ressources Naturelles de l'Afrique – CONSAFRIQUE – is undertaking investigations by contract with the Guinea Government. The group comprises:<br /> <br /> Banque de l'Indochine, Paris.<br /> <br /> Deutsche Bank A.G., Frankfurt/Main.<br /> <br /> Hambros Bank, London.<br /> <br /> Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij N.V., Amsterdam.<br /> <br /> Société de Bruxelles pour la Finance et l'Industrie – BRUFINA – Brussels.<br /> <br /> S.A. Auxiliaire de Finance et de Commerce – AUXIFI – Brussels.<br /> <br /> Compagnie Franco-Americaine des Metaux et des Minerais – COFRAMET – Paris.<br /> <br /> The Banque de l'Indochine is closely associated with the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas, and has links with the Société Générale de Belgique. Its original sphere of operations has been largely closed by its exclusion from North Vietnam because of the socialist regime established there, while in South Vietnam it has now become subordinate to American finance. The Banque de l'Indochine, which already had a foothold in Algeria, is turning more and more to Africa, where it is grouped in several consortia, usually round the interests connected with the Société Générale de Belgique, the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas and the Deutsche Bank, all leagued with Morgan international interests. The Banque de l'Indochine is represented on the board of Le Nickel, which exploits a variety of minerals in Asia and Oceania and has a substantial interest in Compagnie Francaise des Minerais de l'Uranium. The late H. Robiliart was another director on Le Nickel’s board, as well as J. Puerarai from Penarroya and Les Mines de Huaron, whose former president was the late H. Lafond of the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas. These and other allied French and American interests, grouped around the Société des Minerais et Metaux, Patino and American Metal Climax form the combination known as COFRAMET, several of whom received Marshall Plan credits in the post-war years.<br /> <br /> The Deutsche Bank, which has always concerned itself with exploitation investment in the less developed areas, also has close associations with the Banque de Paris. Even during the war the Deutsche Bank did not relinquish its role of colonialist exploiter, but followed the German army into the conquered territories of Europe. Today it is busy pushing West German interests in Africa, Panama, Chile, Pakistan, Columbia and Puerto Rico. It has floated loans for Argentina, the City of Oslo and Norway. It has a holding in the Pakistan Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation Ltd. It has acted as fiduciary house for such considerable international corporations as General Motors, Philips, Royal Dutch Petroleum and Snia Viscosa. The connection with Royal Dutch Petroleum continues Deutsche Bank’s association with the pre-first world war Mosul oil concession in the part of Turkey that became Iraq, while its activities on behalf of General Motors and Philips emphasise the subservient role the Deutsche Bank plays to the Morgan interests which conduct the international expansion of these vast ramified organisations. On the board of this bank sit directors of the Mannesmann steel interests of the Ruhr, also represented on another German bank, the Dresdner, which is also engaged in a number of investment ventures in Africa.<br /> <br /> The Mannesmann steel company, one of the most important in the German Ruhr, was established in 1885. Its chairman, Dr Wilhelm Zangr, is a director of Algoma Steel Corporation Ltd. of Canada, in which the German interests were linked for some time with the Hawker Siddeley group of Great Britain. Mannesmann is associated in several projects in India and elsewhere with Krupps and its Duisberg affiliate Demag. A. G. Demag works in close collaboration with the American firm of Blaw Knox &amp; Co. This firm which makes equipment for steel mills and for chemical, petroleum and other industries falls within the Mellon sphere of interests. Hence it has links with Bethlehem Steel, which associates with the West German Steel industry, into which the Mellon interests have increasingly pushed. Both the Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank, with which Mannesmann is so closely tied, in alliance with the Morgan Guaranty Trust, have considerable interests in the Oppenheimer companies of southern Africa.<br /> <br /> Hambros Bank (the late Sir Charles Hambro was the link with the Bank of England), Cable &amp; Wireless (Holding) and Oppenheimer holding companies have valuable interests in the diamond, gold and other mining undertakings in Central and Southern Africa. A merchant bank, Hambros has long been associated with the Scandinavian investment market, and has in the past years spread its activities in Europe in anticipation of Britain’s entry into the Common Market. It added a subsidiary in Zurich in 1962, Hambros Investment Company. Like many other financial institutions it has entered a growing field for financial investment, that of leasing equipment to industry. For this purpose Hambros established Equipment Leasing Company (Elco) in 1962. It also engages directly in the business of importation and distribution of motor cars and commercial vehicles from the British Motor Corporation into the United States, through British Motor Corporation-Hambros Inc., a joint fifty-fifty venture. The British Motor Corporation covers Austin, M. G., Morris, Riley, Wolseley motors and subsidiary companies of the Nuffield and other groups. Through its acquisition of the banking firm of Laidlaw &amp; Co., New York, Hambros is strengthening its associations with important American banking interests. Among Hambros Bank’s many other interests is its connection with the bullion firm of Mocatta &amp; Goldsmid, which increased its holdings of bullion in 1961 from £3,750,000 to £6,500,000.<br /> <br /> Another financial-industrial group, headed by the British company, B.I.S.C. (Ore) Ltd., and including French, German and American financial participants, is already working iron ore deposits in Guinea at Kaloum, in immediate proximity to the port of Conakry. These deposits of 50-55 per cent grade ore were discovered in 1904, when construction of the railway line from Conakry to Niger was begun. Prospecting was carried out between 1919 and 1922 by the Mining Company of French Guinea. In 1948 a new company was formed to confirm previous findings. This was the Compagnie Minière de Conakry, whose plant at Kaloum is geared to an annual production of 1,200,000 tons, which can be doubled without any appreciable modifications of the set-up. Alongside its iron production, this company is multiplying its income from the establishment of a complex of industries which includes the manufacture of explosives by the L'Union Chimique de l'Ouest Africain – UCOA. Participation in the Compagnie MInière de Conakry, which is capitalised at 1,500 million Guinea francs, is as follows:<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> Hoesch Werke is a leading West German iron and steel firm, associated with the larger combines like Mannesmann and Phoenix-Rheinruhr, the last of which has lately effected a fusion with the Thyssen group. Before the last war Thyssen was associated with Krupp.<br /> <br /> The West German iron and steel industry is looking increasingly for raw materials supplies for use in German plants. In other parts of the world where less developed countries are making an attempt to industrialise, they are setting up transformation foundries and rolling mills to bring secondary and intermediate stages ores brought in from mines to which they have been granted concessions. Thus the Mannesmann affiliate in Brazil, Companhia Siderurgica Mannesmann, is to achieve a crude steel capacity of 300,000 tons from iron ores from its mines less than five miles from a new blast furnace it is erecting at Belo Horizonte. American capital has large holdings in the German iron and steel industry, in some cases a controlling one, achieved during the post-war American occupation of Western Germany.<br /> <br /> The Morgan banks led this incursion into the West German and other European heavy industry fields, using their European agents and associates in Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland for the purpose. Among these associates is the multiple Rothschild group, already flanking the Morgans in their Southern African ventures. The British section, headed by N. M. Rothschild, has, in the words of one commentator, the Hon. Peter Montefiore Samuel, a member of the London merchant banking house of M. Samuel &amp; Co. Ltd., ‘re-established their ancient connections with de Rothschild Frères’, which go back to the pre-Napoleonic days. The firm of M. Samuel is itself linked with the Banque Lambert of Belgium and the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas of France, all within the investment sphere of the Société Générale de Belgique, in an investment consortium established to exploit the European Common Market. Edmund L. de Rothschild and the Hon. P. M. Samuel sit together on the board of Anglo Israel Securities Ltd. De Rothschild, a director of two insurance companies, the Alliance and Sun Alliance created by the Rothschilds, sits also on the board of the British Newfoundland Corporation, incorporated in Canada, which secured 7,000 square miles of concessionary mineral lands and an additional like extent of oil and gas concessions from the Newfoundland Government, in 1953. The corporation also holds concessions on 35,000 square miles in Labrado. The same de Rothschild further adorns the board of Five Arrows Securities Co. Ltd., of Toronto, in which Barclays Bank and Morgan associates are interested. The Hon. P. M. Samuel is a director of the Shell Oil holding company, Shell Transport &amp; Trading Co. Ltd., as well as of other investment companies, including several operating in Central Africa, such as Heywood Investments Central Africa (Pvt.) Ltd., on which he is joined by another member of the family, the Hon. Anthony Gerald Rothschild, who also sits on the boards of other such concerns, as well as of publishing and publicity firms.<br /> <br /> B.I.S.C. (Ore) Ltd. is also included in a consortium, Société Anonyme des Mines de Fer de Mauritanie – MIFERMA – exploiting iron ore at Fort Gouraud, Mauritania. It is estimated that there is a minimum of 100 million tons of high-grade ore of 64-65 per cent iron contained in this property on the western edge of the Sahara Desert, and it is being prepared to produce an annual output of six million tons. The British group as well as German and Italian groups have substantial holdings, but the major interest is held by a French group headed by the Bureau Minière de France d'Outre Mer. The following are the participants in this venture:<br /> <br /> B.I.S.C. (Ore) Ltd.<br /> <br /> British Ore Investment Corporation Ltd.<br /> <br /> British Steel Corporation Ltd.<br /> <br /> Compagnie du Chemin de Fer du Nord.<br /> <br /> Compagnie Financière pour l'Outremer – COFIMER.<br /> <br /> Denain-Anxain.<br /> <br /> Republique Islamique de Mauritanie.<br /> <br /> Societa FInanciara Siderurgica – FINSIDER.<br /> <br /> Societa Mineraria Siderurgica – FERROMIN.<br /> <br /> Union Siderurgique du Nord de la France – USINOR.<br /> <br /> The company has been capitalised at 13,300 million francs CFA, and has the following affiliates:<br /> <br /> Société d'Acconage et de Manutention en Mauritanie –<br /> <br /> SAMMA (capital: 100,000 francs CFA).<br /> <br /> Société Anonyme d'Hebergement en Mauritanie –<br /> <br /> HEBERMA (capital: 25,000,000 francs CFA).<br /> <br /> Société Anonyme de Transports Mauritaniens –<br /> <br /> SOTRAM (capital: 50,000,000 francs CFA).<br /> <br /> And to prove that though the names may change the components remain the same, the management of the mine will be in charge of Penarroya.<br /> <br /> Finsider is the financing organisation related with the industrial group comprising Ferromin; and the Deutsche Bank was concerned with certain share introductions made by it during 1961-2. The Compagnie du Chemin de Fer du Nord comes within the influence of the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas, as does Union Siderurgique du Nord de la France.<br /> <br /> Gabon, whose timber has hitherto been its main export, has shown signs of possessing iron ore deposits since 1895. Investigations were carried out from 1938 by what was then the French Overseas Mining Bureau, transferred later to the Bureau de Recherches Geologiques et Minières, and joined by the Bethlehem Steel Company. The resultant company, Société des Mines de Fer de Mekambo, was established in 1955, with the major purpose of ‘creating a great centre of production capable of satisfying, at long term, a part of the anticipated needs of Western Europe’s steel industry and the future requirements of Bethlehem Steel’. Thus, in the participation, Bethlehem Steel has a 50 per cent holding. The other parties to the undertaking are:<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> The undertaking is capitalised at 200 million francs CFA, and on its behalf further investigations have been undertaken by the syndicate grouped round the Bureau de Recherches and the European Coal and Steel Community, underlining the interest that the European Community and its Common Market has in Africa’s primary resources. What makes Gabon’s iron ore deposits so interesting is their proximity to important electrical power resources, capable of affording abundant electricity at an estimated rate of one franc CFA per kilowatt.<br /> <br /> Fiat’s inclusion in this consortium is an illustration of the inevitability of monopoly’s extension into capital investment in less developed countries. Fiat is not simply an automobile producing company, but a vast industrial organisation which has penetrated deeply into financial investment in Europe and beyond. Founded in Turin in 1899, Fiat has grown in sixty-three years into the second-largest motor manufacturer in Europe and the fourth largest in the world after General Motors, Ford and Vollkswagen. If Simca, which is linked with Fiat, is added to Fiat’s production, it is larger than that of Volkswagen. But Fiat’s growth came, not through automobile manufacturing, but through industrial production connected with armaments during the first world war, its expansion continuing in the second world war. It made profit out of the devastation that came to Italy and continued to build itself up in the post-war period under its founder, an ex-cavalry officer of a well-to-do Turin family, Giovanni Agnelli, in whom ‘business genius was combined with the ruthlessness of an American railroad or oil tycoon of the old days’.<br /> <br /> In its working year of 1960 the Fiat company had investments in other companies valued at some £26,700,000, a valuation decided by the company, since under Italian company law this is left entirely to ‘the discretion of the company’s accountants, and figures listed in Italian balance sheets under this heading usually bear no relation whatsoever to the market value or even to the face value of the equities and bonds held’. Cement, camera and film manufacture are among the company’s ventures. A subsidiary, Unione Cementi Marchino, produces 16 million tons of cement yearly. The Cinzano vermouth which is so widely enjoyed throughout the world is among Fiat’s undertakings. Its subsidiary, Impresit, is busy wherever hydro-electrical dams are being constructed. It built the Kariba dam in Rhodesia and is working on Ghana’s Volta dam. Fiat owns property all over the world. Practically the whole of the Rue Blanche in Paris’s notorious night-life world is owned by Fiat, as well as land, hotels and pleasure facilities in Sestriere, a leading Italian winter sports resort.<br /> <br /> Like so many of the monopoly organisations that spread their interests over the globe and into manifold undertakings, Fiat has branched into oil, having a 22 per cent holding in Aquila, the Italian subsidiary of the Compagnie Française des Petroles. Aquila is now operating in Austria as well as Italy. Shipping also comes within Fiat’s operational sweep through ownership of a couple of shipping companies. All of these ramifications, which cover more than a hundred companies inside and outside Italy, are almost all vested in the holding company, Instituto Financiario Industriale, found in 1927, and known briefly as J.F.I. In the latter part of 1962 Fiat joined the international group comprising S.A.B.C.A. – Avions Fairey (Belgium), Breguet (France), Focke-Wulf (Germany), Fokker (Holland), Hawker Siddeley Aviation (U.K.) and Republic Aviation (U.S.A.), which submitted designs to NATO for a vertical take-off strike aircraft. Fiat had already maintained co-operation with Bristol Siddeley in the manufacture of Bristol Siddeley Orpheus turbo-jet engines for the G.91, then the standard NATO strike aircraft. And to help mould public opinion in the right direction, Fiat published Italy’s second largest daily paper, ''La Stampa''.<br /> <br /> Compagnie Financière de Suez was in considerable difficulty after the affairs of the Suez Canal were taken over by the Egyptian Government, following the unsuccessful attempt by Anglo-French imperialism to dominate Egypt once more, and has been under pressure from its shareholders. However, the board held off the shareholders and righted its position by looking for investments which will give quick high returns. It has made certain equity purchases in Australia, but is really seeking quick profitability in Saharan oil and African primary materials. Its investment in Coparex is expected to give early good results, since this company had in 1961 large reserves of oil from which it was deriving a substantial income.<br /> <br /> Bauxite in Western and Equatorial Africa is even more plentiful than iron ore, but its exploitation is waiting upon the availability of electrical power. We have already referred to FRIA, the enterprise that has been set up in the Republic of Guinea by the consortium with the Rockefeller firm of Olin Mathieson at its head. The second largest holding in this group is held by Pechiney-Ugine. These same groups, together with Reynolds, Kaiser and Mellon’s Alcan, formed another enterprise, Les Bauxites du Midi, which originally exploited other deposits at Kassa and Boke. Notice, however, was given to the company by the Guinea Government that if, within three months from 24 November 1961 Bauxites du Midi had not made arrangements to set up an aluminium factory at Boke by July 1964, as originally agreed, its installations, works and machinery would be expropriated, as well as its assets, for which reparation would be made. The Guinea Government declared that it waited for the company to renounce ‘its colonial methods based on the simple extraction of minerals whose transformation would be subsequently effected outside the country of production’.<br /> <br /> Pechiney-Ugine is also concerned with the Compagnie Camerounaise d'Aluminium Pechiney-Ugine – ALUCAM – in which a 10 per cent participation is held by Cobeal, a Société Générale de Belgique affiliate. Pechiney-Ugine’s share of Alucam’s total production in 1962 of 52,246 tons was 46,443 tons, obviously the most important.<br /> <br /> Gabon’s natural resources are proving immensely rich. Atomic energy commissions are busy prospecting and investigating uranium sources at Mounana in the Haut-Ogooue region, one of the most isolated in the country. The only means of access is the river Ogooue, cut by rapids over more than 600 km. of its length. At the beginning of 1959, however, a 100-km. road, constructed by the Compagnie Minière de l'Ogooue – COMILOG – put the terminus of the railway which opened in 1962 about 120 km. from Mounana, thus making it more accessible. The ore is to be mined and uranated by the Compagnie des Mines d'Uranium de Franceville, capitalised at 1,000 million francs CFA. A participant in Comilog, the Compagnie de Mokta, is responsible for the management of the mine. Comilog is exploiting Gabon’s manganese deposits at Franceville, which were first investigated by the French Overseas Mining Bureau in collaboration with U.S. Steel, the mammoth American steel firm, controlled by Morgan interests. Together with its affiliates, U.S. Steel has 49 per cent control of Comilog, to which the other parties are the frequently-present Bureau de Recherches Geologiques et Minières (22 per cent), the Compagnie de Mokta (14 per cent) and the Société Auxiliaire du Manganese de Franceville (15 per cent). The enterprise is capitalised at 2,500,000 francs CFA. United States and French monopolists are the chief parties to Comilog.<br /> <br /> Comilog has as its principal shareholder (49 per cent) the largest steel outfit in America, and hence the world, U.S. Steel, ‘a perfectly integrated iron and steel concern’. The manganese bed on which Comilog is working at Franceville in Gabon is one of the most important in the world, with estimated reserves of 200 million tons of 50 per cent ore. The French Cie de Mokta has a 19 per cent interest and, besides being concerned in operating directly the Grand Lahou manganese mine on the Ivory Coast, controls important production of iron, manganese and uranium ores through holdings in Algeria, Spain, Tunisia, Morocco and Gabon. It has, for instance, 40 per cent in the Cie des Mines d'Uranium de Franceville, which is developing the rich uranium mine at Mounana, Gabon. De Mokta is linked directly and by associates with interests radiating from Anglo-American Corporation and the great iron and steel trust of ARBED.<br /> <br /> U.S. Steel and General Electric are world giants in their related spheres. The first, by virtue of its multiple divisions covering all aspects of the steel industry, is the sixth largest industrial company in the United States; the second is the leading producer of electrical equipment and appliances in the world, with affiliates, subsidiaries and associates all over the globe. Its plants affect many sectors of industry: radio, aviation, marine, scientific research, and turn out heavy capital goods, industrial components and materials and defence products, as well as consumer goods. U.S. Steel was founded in 1901 by J. Pierpont Morgan as a holding company controlling over half the American steel industry. Since then the American steel industry has expanded by giant strides and other commanding trusts have forged ahead. But U.S. Steel leads still and today controls 30 per cent of America’s steel and cement production. On the board of General Electric sits Henry S. Morgan, so that it is not difficult to find the relationship between this international monopoly and U.S. Steel in the exploitation of some of Africa’s richest resources to feed the military as well as economic demands of the world’s most dangerous imperialism. Operating universally, its interests are located at every crisis point of the globe.<br /> <br /> It is said that as a result of the most complicated transaction, Tanganyika Concessions ceded to an American financial group closely associated with the leading United States banking houses 1,600,000 of its shares, as a result of which the American group probably has a majority in this British Company which owns 21 per cent of the shares of Union Minière, whose empire is the Congo. [''France Observateur'', 9 July 1964.] American interest in the Congo is motivated by very substantial investments, frequently hidden behind British, French, Belgian and West German cover, and engaging leading personalities in United States political affairs, Mr Adlai Stevenson, for instance, representing his government at U.N.O., presided over the firm of Tempelsman &amp; Son, specialists in exploiting Congo diamonds; and Mr Arthur H. Dean, who leads America’s delegations to disarmament conferences, was vice-president and still is a director of American Metal Climax, a huge consumer of uranium, since it provides 10 per cent of United States production. American Metal, according to an information blurb, forms with its subsidiaries ‘a powerful international mining group, which includes, notably, Rhodesian Selection Trust Ltd.’.<br /> <br /> The NATO powers are interested in Gabon because of her riches. At present American OFFSHORE International has been offered a drilling contract for Société de Petrol Afrique Equatorial (SPAFE) with headquarters in Port Gentil. This company employs over 1,200 Africans who are all subordinate to the over 400 white people. There is no oil refinery at present in Gabon, but Gabon, Chad, Congo, Brazzaville, Central African Republic and Cameroun have agreed to establish a refinery to be financed by their respective governments and France. The first meeting of the representatives of these governments was on 22 July 1964 in Port Gentil. According to the Minister the necessary investigations are going on to start the refinery before the end of 1965. There are, I was told, many oil finds both in the territorial waters of Gabon and deep in the interior in large economic quantities to supply many parts of Africa. My information is that all the petroleum companies now distributing oil in French-speaking Africa have controlling shares in the oil production company in Gabon. Agip is not allowed to hold shares in the company. Readers will recall what caused the downfall of Mr Adoula in the Congo – oil politics. It seems to me, therefore, that two economic issues will influence the duration of French occupational forces in Gabon for many years, namely uranium and oil.<br /> <br /> It is quite likely that Africa could provide enough phosphates not only to fertilise the abundant agricultural production that would cover its future food and industrial requirements, but to leave enough over to supply the needs of many other parts of the globe. At the moment important centres of phosphates are the Djebel-Onk deposits in Algeria, those at Taiba in Senegal, at Lac Togo in the Republic of Togo, and at Khouribga and Youssoufia in Morocco.<br /> <br /> The Société de Djebel-Onk, with a capital of 30 million new francs, comprises the following interests:<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> The Compagnie Senegalaise des Phosphates de Taiba finds the Government of Senegal associating with the Bureau de Recherches Geologiques et Minières, Pechiney, Pierrefitte, Compagnie des Phosphates de Constantine, Compagnie des Phosphates d'Oceanie, Cofimer and the Société Auxon. The same group, headed by the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas and the French interests which it represents made an agreement in February 1963, under the signature of the bank’s director-general, J. J. Reyre, with the International Minerals &amp; Chemicals Corporation, by which the latter became a partner in the consortium which is exploiting what is said to be the world’s largest high-grade phosphate mine, near Dakar. There are several things that are noteworthy in this arrangement.<br /> <br /> First of all, there is something distinctly ominous in an agreement between two foreign combinations, one of which is a participant in a company associated with the State whose raw materials it is exploiting. It accentuates the contemptuous attitude towards the host country implicit in the monopoly’s purpose. International Minerals is the foremost producer of phosphate and phosphate agricultural products in the North American continent, with extensive phosphate mining and chemical processing operations in Florida, U.S.A. It also owns a potash mine at Carlsbad, New Mexico, and another $10 million potash project in Canada. It has a market for its products throughout the Americas and Western Europe. For the Senegalese Government this phosphate mining project, which is to have an output of 500,000 tons a year, has an important place in its four-year plan. It is intended to broaden and develop the economy. However, the purpose of the monopolies controlling the venture is entirely otherwise. ‘This partnership bolsters our world position in regard to strategic phosphate reserves,’ Mr Reyre is reported to have said on signing the partnership agreement the International Minerals (''West Africa'', 17 February 1962).<br /> <br /> Phosphates deposits were uncovered in Togo about eighteen miles from the sea in 1952. Investigations had been going on since 1884 by French and British interests. It was a geological adviser of the Comptoir des Phosphates de l'Afrique du Nord who found in the Akoumape region indications of very important deposits of first quality which extend across Lake Togo. The Republic of Togo has associated itself with the Compagnie Togolaise des Mines de Benin, which is exploiting the deposits, and comprises the interests already engaged in monopolising other phosphate resources in Africa. These are the Compagnie Constantine, Penarroya, Cofimer, the Banque de Paris, Pierrefitte and the Compagnie Internationale d'Armement Maritime Industrielle et Commerciale. Capital is 1,180 million francs CFA. The first shipments were made in September 1961, when they left the new wharf of Kpeme for the United States and American-controlled plants in Japan. The plan is to produce initially 750,000 tons of concentrate yearly, a level it is intended to raise progressively to a million tons if the market possibilities are there.<br /> <br /> There would be no lack of market possibilities if fertilisers were made available to the developing countries at prices which their purchasing power could afford. As it is, the competition in fertilisers from America and other sources is extremely keen, and the British producers, of whom Fison Ltd. and I.C.I. and Shell practically monopolise the trade in the United Kingdom, were the subject of investigation by the British Monopolies Commission in 1959. Fertilisers in the U.K. have been kept at a subsidised price level that led to serious complaints of overcharging. Fison holds 40 per cent of the U.K. market, and it has now entered into an agreement with I.C.I., whereby it will be supplied by the latter with ammonia from their new Immingham plant. This will cut costs in an effort to meet shareholders’ complaints of diminishing profits.<br /> <br /> This co-operation of the largest producers of fertilisers is going on in order to monopolise raw materials’ supplies and markets, so as to sustain prices that will yield higher profits on the considerable investments involved. The chairman of I.C.I’s Billingham Division said the company’s steam naphtha process has completely transformed the economics of ammonia production and has put the company in the position of being a world producer of ammonia, not just a U.K. producer.<br /> <br /> Transportation is an important factor in the cost of fertilisers, and it is easy to appreciate that if phosphates from Africa are taken to Europe for working up and then returned in fertiliser form to Africa, packed in bags, prices cannot be economic for African agriculture. In this connection it is interesting to note that Fison have established in India, in association with the leading iron and steel firm of Tata, a fertiliser producing company, Tata-Fison Ltd., which Sir Clavering Fison, the U.K. Company’s chairman, has described as now being the largest company in the industry. Fison has a partnership in Albatros Super-fosfaatbrieken N.V., of Utrecht, Holland, with which company it established fertiliser and chemical companies in South Africa. During their financial year 1961-2 the Fison-Albatros company admitted into its South African affiliate, Fisons (Pty) Ltd., a local banking undertaking, Federale Volksbeleggings Beperk, which made enough funds available to allow the South African Fison company to enter upon the exploitation of phosphate deposits at Phalaborwa in the Transvaal. Fison has other companies in South Africa concerned with agricultural chemicals and pharmaceuticals. All these companies did well during the 1961-2 year, according to Fison’s chairman, who added that ‘despite the difficult conditions in East Africa and the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, our companies there have maintained their position and earned satisfactory profits’. Its subsidiary in Sudan, Fisons Pest Control (Sudan) Ltd., sprayed a record cotton acreage of over one million acres and achieved profits found satisfactory by the chairman.<br /> <br /> Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Malaya and Nigeria are all countries in which Fison have established companies for the expansion of their fertiliser and agricultural chemical markets, and they have recently begun to extend into South America and Pakistan. Plants for the manufacture of fertilisers have been erected at Zandvoorde, in Belgium, jointly with Union Chimique Belge S.A. Besides fertilisers and related chemicals manufacture, horticulture and scientific apparatus production, Fison are in the food processing and canning firm of John Brown Ltd. ‘for the purpose of selling chemical know-how and plants to the U.S.S.R.’.<br /> <br /> Oil and gas, which are becoming more and more important finds in Africa, particularly in the Sahara, are drawing the feverish competition of the predominant financial and industrial interests that are bringing monopoly into a tighter and tighter ring. Even smaller ones are pushing into this field, which, while it calls for extremely heavy initial capital for prospecting and sounding, offers the fabulous profits that have built up the fortunes of Standard Oil and Mobil-Socony for the Rockefellers, Gulf Oil for the mellons, Continental Oil and Dutch-Shell for the Morgans, Texaco for the Chicago group, Hanover Bank and others. Tennessee Corporation, the Guggenheimer multiple enterprise operating nitrate and copper concessions in South America and holdings in the Congo and other parts of Africa, has extended its interests beyond uranium, fertilisers and chemicals into oil. Its Delaware subsidiary, Tennessee Overseas Co., has started upon oil exploration in Sierra Leone. C. W. Michel, Tennessee’s vice-president is already connected with oil through Dome Petroleum, a subsidiary of the Americo-Canadian Dome Mines Ltd., interlocked with Tennessee by shareholding and Michel’s chairmanship.<br /> <br /> Africa is still paramountly an uncharted continent economically, and the withdrawal of the colonial rulers from political control is interpreted as a signal for the descent of the international monopolies upon the continent’s natural resources. This is the new scramble for Africa, under the guise of aid, and with the consent and even the welcome of young, inexperienced States. It can be even more deadly for Africa than the first carve-up, as it is supported by more concentrated interests, wielding vastly greater power and influence over governments and international organisations.<br /> <br /> == The Oppenheimer Empire ==<br /> THE king of mining in South Africa, indeed in Africa, is Harry Frederick Oppenheimer. One might almost call him the king of South Africa, even the emperor, with an ever-extending empire. There is probably hardly a corner of Southern Africa’s industrial and financial structure in which he has not got a very extended finger of his own or the hook of some affiliate or associate. These fingers and hooks attach the Oppenheimer empire firmly to other empires as great or greater.<br /> <br /> Mr Harry Frederick Oppenheimer is director, chairman or president of some seventy companies. These directorships as well as those held by important colleagues and nominees, whose names recur monotonously on the boards of an ever-expanding complex of company boards, give the lie to the fiction of respectable separateness, even where there is no obvious financial connecting link. Dominating this complex of companies are the Anglo American Corporation of South Africa Ltd. and the Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa Ltd., from which radiate affiliates, subsidiaries, associates, immediately or more tenuously connected, which would provide in themselves a most interesting trade, investment and banking directory. A list of direct interests, by no means complete, would include:<br /> <br /> Anglo American Trust Ltd.<br /> <br /> African &amp; European Investment Co. Ltd.<br /> <br /> Amalgamated Collieries of South Africa Ltd.<br /> <br /> Bamangwato Concessions Ltd.<br /> <br /> Central Mining Finance Ltd.<br /> <br /> Consolidated Mines Selection Co. Ltd. (C.A.S.T.)<br /> <br /> Coronation Collieries Ltd.<br /> <br /> Consolidated Mines of South West Africa Ltd.<br /> <br /> British South Africa Company Ltd.<br /> <br /> Anglo Transvaal Consolidated Investment Co. Ltd.<br /> <br /> De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd.<br /> <br /> Free State Development Co. Ltd.<br /> <br /> Middle Witwatersrand (Western Areas) Ltd.<br /> <br /> Rand Selection Corporation Ltd.<br /> <br /> Rand Mines Ltd.<br /> <br /> Rhodesian Anglo American Corporation Ltd.<br /> <br /> South African Townships Mining &amp; Finance Co. Ltd.<br /> <br /> Vereeniging Estates Ltd.<br /> <br /> West Rand Investment Trust Ltd.<br /> <br /> Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Co. Ltd.<br /> <br /> Rhodesian Broken Hill Development Co. Ltd.<br /> <br /> Transvaal &amp; Delagoa Bay Investment Co. Ltd.<br /> <br /> Rhokana Corporation Ltd.<br /> <br /> Union Corporation Ltd.<br /> <br /> Tsumeb Corporation Ltd.<br /> <br /> Selection Trust Co. Ltd.<br /> <br /> Tanganyika Concessions Ltd.<br /> <br /> Union Minière du Haut Katanga S.A.<br /> <br /> Most of these are holding or investment outfits, established to co-ordinate a specific group of activists, but having their fingers in many other pies. It is difficult, almost impossible at times, to distinguish a delimiting line of operation. Trying to unravel the participations of the Anglo American Corporation and Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa, for instance, leads often to the same involvements. Yet there must be a demarcation line, not only to preserve the semblance of autonomy, but to avoid a duplication of tasks and responsibilities in the interests of industrial and financial economy and profits.<br /> <br /> As a matter of fact there is a constant rearrangement of organisational structure, either as a result of the acquisition of new interests and projects, the abandonment of exhausted mines, the expansion of existing companies and alliances, but above all in order to forestall or meet competition, to stream-line the structure and to correct the tax position.<br /> <br /> For instance, in 1961, Consolidated African Gold Fields of South Africa Corporation underwent a thorough-going reorganisation with the intention of concentrating its administration in its various spheres of operation. Reporting to the annual meeting of the corporation’s activities for the year ending 30 June 1961, the chairman, Sir George Harvie-Watt, fixed the assets, at stock exchange value, at a total of approximately £58 million. Sixty-six per cent of this total was represented by interests in South Africa, ten per cent in North America and six per cent in Australia. Most of the remaining 18 per cent was accounted for by interests in the United Kingdom.<br /> <br /> To supervise these interests and the planned absorption of others, a number of changes were made in the controlling companies, so that the group structure of Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa Ltd. now has the appearance shown in Chart 1.<br /> <br /> Explaining the structure to the shareholders at the annual general meeting held in London on 13 December 1962, the chairman confirmed that the operational supervision of the group’s interests in South Africa was the responsibility of óur wholly owned subsidiary, Gold Fields of South Africa Ltd., which is resident in Johannesburg’. When in 1959 the group acquired both New Union Gold Fields, since renamed Gold Fields Finance (S.A.) Ltd., and the South African H.E. Proprietary Ltd., their management was also vested in Gold Fields of South Africa, although the shares of these companies were held directly by the parent company in London.<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> In Australia, responsibility for administration of the group’s operations is exercised by Consolidated Gold Fields (Australia) Pty Ltd. Gold Fields’ principal investment in Australia is represented by a majority interest in Commonwealth Mining Investments (Australia) Ltd., ‘a mining finance company, which has a broadly based portfolio in Australian, North American and other overseas investments’, according to the chairman’s report.<br /> <br /> A majority interest in another Australian concern, Associated Minerals Consolidated Ltd., gives Consolidated Gold Fields a big break into the rutile and zircon industry. Associated Minerals acquired all the outstanding shares of Z.R. Holdings Ltd., a company originally formed to take possession of Zircon Rutile Pty Ltd., together with that company’s share in, and advanced to other companies. About the same time, Associated Minerals bought the entire share capital of Titanium Materials and the assets of Rye Park Scheelite.<br /> <br /> Experienced enterprises like Consolidated Gold Fields do not allow others to benefit from their efforts. So ‘while Associated Minerals was building up its holdings in the rutile industry’, stated Consolidated’s chairman, ‘we felt it necessary to strengthen our position in Wyong Minerals, another rutile producer in which Commonwealth Mining already had a substantial investment. Accordingly, our wholly-owned subsidiary, Consolidated Gold Fields (Australia) Pty Ltd., made an offer in February 1962 for 50 per cent of all shareholdings in Wyong Minerals other than those held by Commonwealth Mining Investments. This offer was successful and Wyong Minerals is now a subsidiary within the group.’<br /> <br /> Congratulations are owed to Consolidated Gold Fields on their perspicacity. Their position in the rutile field is now pre-eminent. In the words of their chairman, ‘the total rutile productive capacity of our subsidiaries now represents close on one half of the total free world capacity. The expansion programme which Associated Minerals now has in hand should maintain this position.’ May we be forgiven if the qualification ‘free’ in this context looks a trifle dulled to us?<br /> <br /> Rutile is a much sought-after material used in the manufacture of titanium pigment. The demand had the effect of increasing its open market price by some 50 per cent in the financial year 1961/62. Zircon’s price has remained stable in spite of considerably increased supplies.<br /> <br /> A partnership with Cyprus Mines Corporation, a New York company, and the Utah Construction &amp; Mining Co. of San Francisco, has resulted in a joint enterprise named Mount Goldsworthy Mining Associates, to explore and work the potential of iron ore deposits of Mount Goldsworthy in north-western Australia. The construction of a 125-mile railway is involved, to end up at Depuch Island, where a major seaport is under consideration. Sir George Harvie-Watt was pleased to inform Consolidated Gold Fields’ shareholders that ‘negotiations are in progress with the Japanese iron and steel industry regarding the market for this ore (from Mount Goldsworthy) which is thought will be competitive in price and quality with any now available in Japan.’<br /> <br /> In the chairman’s words, the company’s operations in Canada had ‘taken a distinct step forward’. Their subsidiary exploration company, Newconex Canadian Exploration Ltd., was joined by a second, Newconex Holdings Ltd. A decision was made to allow the public to enjoy some of the fruits from the exploration of their country’s resources by foreign concerns. Accordingly, 36 per cent of the capital was offered to Canadians. Those who took up shares were doubtless delighted to know that the 28 1/2 per cent holdings of Newconex Canadian Exploration Ltd. in the Mount Hundere exploration will be turned over to the holding company. A high grade deposit of lead zinc (with some silver) discovered in this south Yukon region inspired the chairman to an admission of its being ‘most gratifying that so soon after its formation Newconex Holdings should be presented by Newconex Exploration with such an encouraging prospect.’<br /> <br /> Moving southwards to the United States, a new company called Gold Fields American Corporation was formed in 1961 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gold Fields Mining &amp; Industrial Ltd. Gold Fields American took over the New York organisation, set up originally in 1911, whose main function in recent years had been to provide administration for Gold Fields’ Tri-State Zinc Inc. and Buell Engineering Co. Inc., as well as secretarial services for the Fresnillo Company.<br /> <br /> Fresnillo Company was reorganised in 1961, when it transferred 51 per cent of its diverse Mexican activities to Metalurgica Mexicana Penoles S.A., under the Mexican Government’s drive to have domestic control of its basic primary resources. A handsome compensation of $5,500,000 was awarded to Fresnillo, payable over a period of five years, for the cession of this holding to Compania Fresnillo S.A., in which it holds 49 per cent to Penoles’ 51 per cent. Fresnillo still retains a 55 per cent interest in Somberette Mining Company, owning another gold-silver property in the State of Zacatecas, Mexico.<br /> <br /> With the ‘coming to the end of their profitable lives’ of Tri-State Zinc’s two mines in Illinois and Virginia, a replacement was sought by a new mine in the New Market area of Tennessee. This mine Tri-State are bringing into production in accordance with a joint venture agreement with American Zinc, Lead &amp; Smelting Co. Under this agreement, Tri-State will mine and mill at least 20 million tons of zinc-bearing ores owned by American Zinc near Tri-State’s New Market property. Profits from the output of a treatment plan, designed to provide a daily capacity of 3,600 tons, will be distributed on a basis varying between 50 and 60 per cent to Tri-State and 50 to 40 per cent to American Zinc, until all capital has been returned, after which profits will be distributed equally.<br /> <br /> American Zinc’s operations are closely connected with the mining and reduction of zinc and lead ores in several of the American States. It also has a 10 per cent interest in Uranium Reduction Co., and 50 per cent in American-Peru Mining Co., among several other affiliated and jointly-owned concerns. Buell Engineering Co., the other beneficiary of Gold Fields American Corporation, has been assisted to expand its fabricating facilities by taking over the entire common stock of the Union Boiler &amp; Manufacturing Co.<br /> <br /> Consolidated Gold Fields’ interests in the United Kingdom are now grouped under Gold Fields Industrial Holdings Ltd., formerly H. E. Proprietary Ltd., as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gold Fields Mining &amp; Industrial Ltd. Its main operations are carried on through its own subsidiaries, Alumasc Ltd., Ambuco Ltd. and Metalion Ltd. Alumasc is a producer of die-cast aluminium casks, notably for the brewing industry. It has lately expanded into the production of aluminium high-pressure bottles for commercial uses. In 1962 Alumasc, in the words of Consolidated’s chairman, ‘broadened its interests geographically and industrially’ by the acquisition of an Australian subsidiary, Lawrenson Alumasc Holdings Ltd., and of two United Kingdom subsidiaries, The Non-Ferrous Die Casting Co. Ltd. and Brass Pressings (London) Ltd., already well established in non-ferrous die-casting and brass pressing.<br /> <br /> Two other U.K. organisational instruments radiate from the London directorate. These are Anglo-French Exploration Co. Ltd. and Mining &amp; Metallurgical Agency Ltd. Anglo-French Exploration, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Consolidated Gold Fields, is an investment and financial business, holding, among others, interests in many of the principal gold-mining companies in South Africa. These interests also cover Northern Rhodesian copper mines, as well as tin-mining companies operating in the United Kingdom, South Africa and the Far East. Apex Mines Ltd. and Rooiberg Minerals Development Co. Ltd. of South Africa, and Anglo-Burma Tin Co. Ltd. are among its principals. Mining &amp; Metallurgical Agency Ltd. was formed to look after the distribution of ores and purchase of supplies, as well as to run a shipping, insurance and general agency business. Fifty per cent of its capital is held by Consolidated Gold Fields.<br /> <br /> Gold Fields of South Africa Ltd. is the wholly-owned subsidiary of Consolidated Gold Fields that is responsible for administering the operations of the group throughout the whole of South Africa. These are of a monumental size. For investments in the South Africa gold and platinum mines remain the major asset of the Consolidated Gold Fields group, and its principal source of income. At 30 June 1961 gold mining accounted for 71 per cent of the group’s quoted investments, and the chairman assured shareholders that since the end of the second world war, Consolidated Gold Fields had invested capital sums approaching £450 million in the South African gold mines. Exploration has continued in South AFrica and Rhodesia, and is in close collaboration with West Witwatersrand Areas Ltd., a company which Consolidated Gold Fields floated in 1932. Since then, West Witwatersrand has itself become an important South African finance mining company with major holdings in the gold mines of the Far West Rand and Orange Free State.<br /> <br /> West Witwatersrand produced in 1962 gold valued at over £57 million, which was twice the size of its production of ten years ago. The Harmony Gold Mining Co. Ltd., in which West Witwatersrand has a holding of 1,247,564 shares through its subsidiary Westwits Investment Ltd., also achieved a record gold output.<br /> <br /> Apart from its interests in the Transvaal and Orange Free State gold and platinum mines, Consolidated Gold Fields has substantial holdings in South West Africa Co. Ltd., and in Rhodesia, in Bancroft Mines Ltd., Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines Ltd., and Rhodesian Anglo American Ltd., all falling within the sphere also of Anglo American Corporation. In Ghana, Consolidated is interested in Konongo Gold Mines Ltd., which has a concession of approximately twenty square miles in the Ashanti-Akim district. On an authorised capital of £675,000, not fully paid up (7,004,175 shares of 1''s''. each issued out of 13,500,000), a working profit of £110,587 was achieved in 1960, increased to £130,378 in 1961, despite an advance in working costs from 86''s''. 6''d''. per ton to 88''s''. 2''d''. per ton. In 1962, Konongo Gold Mines Ltd. informed the Ghana Government that the operation of the Konongo Gold Mine would become uneconomic after April 1965. The Company were therefore contemplating ceasing operations just before that time. In view of the loss of employment that this would mean, the Government decided to purchase the mine in order to provide continued employment for the Ghanian employees. After protracted negotiations, a purchase price of £150,000 was paid by the Ghana Government and the mine is now under the management of the State Gold Mining Corporation.<br /> <br /> Capitalised at £15 million, Consolidated Gold Fields made consolidated profits before tax of £6,826,000 for the year to 1960/61 with dividends absorbing £1,729,299. The year 1962 proved for Consolidated Gold Fields the most profitable yet in its operations, resulting in a consolidated profit before tax of £7,030,000, while, in the chairman’s own words, ‘another satisfactory feature of the accounts is that dividends and interest exceeded £5 million for the first time’.<br /> <br /> Consolidated Gold Fields’ income comes largely from the specialist services which it provides to companies within its own group and those within its associated groups. Varying considerably in size, they number over one hundred, and the total market capitalisation of those quoted on the stock exchange exceeded £170 million at the end of the company’s working year of 1962. It is by these means of investment and management that much larger incomes are built up than from the actual production of the mining and processing of raw materials. That is why so many of the more important mining companies, not alone in Africa but throughout the world, have coalesced into holding and investment concerns behind whom and among whom stand the most important figures in the banking and financial world.<br /> <br /> Here we have touched only on the bare bones of the Consolidated Gold Fields skeletal structure. The flesh and brawn which clothe it are set in layers of rich fat that have created a huge corporation bulge, smugly admired by the owner, but ominous to the lean, starved African observer.<br /> <br /> == Foreign Investment in South African Mining ==<br /> IT has been estimated that over 50 per cent of the foreign capital invested in Africa has been poured into South Africa. British investments probably total nearly $2,800 million and American investments closer to $840 million. A 1957 U.S. government survey of American overseas investments shows the single most profitable area was in the mining and smelting business of South Africa, whose profits are higher than from any comparable investment in the United States. The high profits can be explained largely by the cheapness of African labour. According to the 1962 ''Statistical Abstract'' of the United States, U.S. miners earn an average of $2.70 an hour, which is twenty-seven times the amount earned by South African miners.<br /> <br /> Dominant in South Africa’s economy is the Anglo-American De Beers group, part of the empire of Harry Oppenheimer, which extends into South West Africa and Zambia, and is linked with mining companies in many other African states. The value of the empire has been enhanced by the discovery that uranium can be produced from the residues and slimes which surround old gold mines.<br /> <br /> Extraction of uranium from gold ores and slimes has brought South Africa into the world’s leading place as a producer of uranium. The working of slimes accumulated over the past sixty years, together with those from current gold production, is helping to prolong the life of many exhausted gold mines. In 1956, 8,000,000 lb. of uranium oxide were produced in South Africa, providing exports valued at £39 million. This leaves out of account the quantities that go to the Atomic Energy Board of South Africa, with whom several of the mines have contracts. The profit made from the production of uranium oxide is running ahead of that derived from gold extraction. In fact, ‘the working profits derived from uranium extraction exceeded those derived from gold extraction on the seventeen producing mines taken together, and on five of them they actually offset working losses incurred in the production of the gold’. [''South Africa'', Monica Cole, pp. 313-15, Methuen, 1961. The quotation relates to the year 1955.]<br /> <br /> Harmony Gold Mining Co. Ltd. is one of the more important gold and uranium producing companies within the Anglo American Consolidated Gold Fields’ maze of interests. Its authorised capital of £5 million has been paid up to the amount of £4,500,000. Secretarial services and offices to the company are provided by Rand Mines Ltd., a company that gives executive administrative and technical services to the South African companies of the Central Mining – Rand Mines group.<br /> <br /> Chairman of Harmony is P.H. Anderson, a deputy chairman of Rand Mines. Other directors in common are Messrs. R. E. M. Blakeway and N. W. S. Lewin. Chairman of Rand Mines is C. W. Engelhard, who is also chairman of Rand American Investments (Pty) Ltd., and patently has a watching brief for the United States investors who more and more are infiltrating into primary materials extraction in Africa. All of Rand American’s 2,371,049 issued shares of £1 each are held by De Beers Investment Trust Ltd. (now Randsel), a wholly owned subsidiary of Rand Selection Corporation since the recent re-juggling of the Rand group. Rand American owns nearly all the preference shares and a substantial interest in the issued ordinary shares of Central Mining &amp; Investment Corporation Ltd., as well as a substantial interest in the issued ordinary capital of Rand Mined Ltd. The American link confirms the tie-up forming the Central Mining – Rand Mines group.<br /> <br /> Consolidated Gold Fields and Anglo American Corporation interests converge in Harmony, in which both have appreciable holdings. By the grace of the South African Government, Harmony was able to acquire undermining and mineral rights over some 8,000 acres of land, as well as freehold ownership of farms covering approximately another 10,000 acres. These holdings being rather more than Harmony could cope with, it was found profitable to sell the right to mine precious metals on two portions of its areas on lease until 1967. This right went to another Anglo American concern, Virginia Orange Free State Gold Mining Co. Ltd. Harmony’s remuneration for this friendly gesture to a sister company was a minimum £3 million payable quarterly free of interest.<br /> <br /> Virginia Orange brings us once more into contact with the American marriage to South AFrican mining, our first example being Mr C. W. Engelhard, an American Democrat, who, as president of Engelhard Industries, refiners of precious metals in the United States, sought after steady supplies to keep his plants working. He found them in South Africa, where he linked up with Oppenheimer, and later branched out into baser metals and other fields of profit. Mr Engelhard, following Mr Oppenheimer’s inspiration, has also found a niche in the Canadian, Australian and Columbian mining industries, and distributes his finished goods in Europe through companies established in Paris, Rome and London. Mr Engelhard’s qualities as well as his services to the extension of American interests abroad are recognised in his membership of the U.S. Foreign Policy association.<br /> <br /> With Virginia Orange we are brought near to more considerable American influence than Mr Engelhard is able singly to produce, by the association of the powerful Kennecott Copper Corporation with this gold mining and uranium extracting company. Kennecott had interests in Virginia Orange which it passed over, together with those it owned in the Merriespruit (Orange Free State) Gold Mining Co Ltd., to the reorganised concern formed in 1961 to acquire those interests. The new company bears the combination title, Virginia-Merriespruit Investments (Pty) Ltd., and the rearrangement will enable it to fulfil an outstanding uranium contract with the Atomic Energy Board of South Africa.<br /> <br /> Mr Engelhard is a member of the Virginia-Merriespruit board by virtue of the holding directly bought into it by his Engelhard Industries of Southern Africa Ltd., and his connections with Rand Mines Ltd. and Anglo American Corporation which together with another two associates, Centramic (South Africa) Ltd. and Anglo Transvaal Consolidated Investment Co. Ltd. form the parties to the new company.<br /> <br /> Financiers and dealers in mining and other properties in the Transvaal, Anglo Transvaal has a subsidiary, Anglovaal Rhodesian Exploration Co. (Pty) Ltd., which operates in Northern and Southern Rhodesia, its mineral prospects including coal, copper, chrome, and nickel. With capital authorised at £4,337,500, not fully paid up, Anglo Transvaal is operating on an unsecured short-term loan of £1 million from the National Finance Corporation of South Africa, a private organisation with which Anglo American Corporation’s friends of the international investment world are closely associated, including the house of Morgan, which has a substantial financial interest in Kennecott Copper. Among Kennecott’s extensive mining engagements in Africa is a 30 per cent investment in Anglovaal Rhodesian.<br /> <br /> Primed by Morgan friends, Kennecott knows how to take care of its manifold concerns. Hence, as consideration for cession of its interests in the Virginia and Merriespruit mines, is to receive an amount of £3,500,000, payable in five annual instalments. This does not, however, sever Kennecott’s connection with these valuable Oppenheimer-Engelhard properties. For the American copper corporation will be entitled to an interest of 20 per cent up to a maximum amount of £2,500,000 on any of Virginia-Merriespruit’s net surplus that may accrue after the instalment payments on the cash consideration of £3,500,000 have been fully met. This entitlement, however, will be forfeited in the event of Kennecott taking up at a later date from the members of Virginia-Merriespruit 20 per cent of the then issued share capital.<br /> <br /> These are the tortuous means by which financial clinches are held. It is obvious that the way is being kept wide open for Kennecott’s re-entry into the heart of the company. Meantime it can still feast at the table.<br /> <br /> Kennecott is a foremost copper producer in the United States, whose shares on the ‘futures’ market are valued by knowing operators at around $1.48 billions, even though its present capital of 11,053,051 shares of no nominal or par value issued out of 12,000,000 authorised, have been given a stated value of only $74,806,424. The possessor of copper mines, concentrating mills, smelters, refineries, fabricating works and railways, it has smelting agreements for much of its ores with American Smelting &amp; Refining Co., with whom it has two subsidiaries in common. American Smelting is a producer itself of copper, as well as of silver, lead, zinc and gold, in the United States, Mexico, Canada and Peru. Its interests extend to Australia and Nicaragua, and it has arrangements with Cerro Corporation, Newmont Mining Corporation and Phelps Dodge Corporation, all of whom have substantial investments in South African mining projects, including the Tsumeb Corporation of South West Africa.<br /> <br /> The American chemical industry enters the Kennecott field of operations through a joint venture with the important Allied Chemical &amp; Dye Corporation. The Allied-Kennecott Titanium Corporation is to produce and sell titanium metal, and has put up a pilot plant. A further break-through has been made by the acquisition of 25 per cent in Western Phosphates Inc., 7·3 per cent in the common stock of Molybdenum Corporation of America, and 50 per cent in Garfield Chemical &amp; Manufacturing Corporation. There has been a branching out into mineral exploration in Brazil and Mexico with two subsidiaries, Kenrand Pesquisas Minerals S.A. (60 per cent Kennecott owned) and Cia. Kenmex S.A. respectively. Another subsidiary, Braden Copper Co., works a copper property in Chile.<br /> <br /> Expansion into Canada is by way of Quebec Columbium Ltd., formed by Kennecott with Molybdenum Corporation of America to investigate a columbium property near Montreal, and Quebec Iron &amp; Titanium Corporation, owned two-thirds by Kennecott and one-third by New Jersey Zinc Co. This latter company is linked up with the great oil organisation, Texaco Inc. in a joint enterprise, Texas-Zinc Minerals Corporation, for the construction and operation of a uranium processing mill in Utah. A uranium mine in Utah was bought in 1956 and the mill began operations in 1957, also treating ores from other mines. The uranium concentrate produced is being sold to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission under contract. The New Jersey-Kennecott venture in Quebec Iron &amp; Titanium is going to prove extremely valuable, as titanium is a metal that does not melt at supersonic speeds, and is accordingly in high demand for use in jet aircraft. Greece also figures in Kennecott’s sphere of interests, where its 95 per cent owned Kenbatstos Mining Co. Ltd. works asbestos properties. In West Africa, it has a 76 per cent holding in Tin &amp; Associated Metals Ltd., operating a columbium and tin property in Northern Nigeria. Columbium from this mine provides most of the world’s present production.<br /> <br /> Our examination into Harmony Gold Mining Co. Ltd. has led us a long way round the world and into realms of power and prodigious wealth. This seems inevitable once we begin to trace the external interests that intertwine Africa’s exploitation with that of many other parts of the world. Coming back to Harmony, it is impressive to note that this company, having a gold reduction plant capable of dealing with 200,000 tons of ore a month, also boasts a uranium extraction plant whose capacity is 120,000 tons monthly. This plant began operations in April 1955. Attached to it is a sulphuric acid plant with a daily capacity of 120 tons, which started production in January 1960.<br /> <br /> The uranium extraction plant was erected under arrangements made with the Export-Import Bank of Washington, U.S.A., and the U.K. Ministry of Supply. A loan was obtained from the Atomic Energy Board of South Africa for the entire capital cost of the plant, exclusive of the capacity extension from 80,000 to 120,000 tons monthly. The company is under contract with the combined Development Agency, as well as with the U.K. authority alone, to supply various quantities of uranium at fixed prices, under arrangements which will allow it, without incurring extra cost, to cover by June 1965 the capital expenditure on plant.<br /> <br /> During the year ended 30 June 1961, Harmony milled a total of 2,116,000 tons of ore, which yielded 857,794 oz. of fine gold, providing a working revenue of £10,810,496, with a working profit of £4,090,677; 2,067,100 tons of slimes treated yielded 974,349 lb. of uranium oxide, giving an estimated working profit from uranium, pyrites and acid of £2,680,233.<br /> <br /> Accounts for the following six months to the end of 1961 showed that 2,285,000 tons of ore milled resulted in a working revenue from gold of £4,458,177. Treatment of 2,138,300 tons of slimes produced 953,100 lb. of uranium oxide, giving a working profit from uranium, pyrites and acid of £2,284,647. For the working year 1961-62 the dividend paid was 56 per cent. Net profit for the year 1960-61 was £6,674,739, and dividends paid accounted for £2,497,500. All this can be regarded as most satisfactory for shareholders on a fully paid up capital of £4,500,000.<br /> <br /> Messrs. Engelhard and Oppenheimer must bear a special regard for their friends in the Export-Import Bank for their ready aid in this venture, in a country that makes a mockery of human rights for its non-white inhabitants. Such ease of assistance, if extended to the less developed new nations of the continent by an international banking organisation, would help lessen the gap that the developed countries are forever depreciating but which, by these stealthy means, they serve to widen between the ‘have’ and ‘have not’ countries.<br /> <br /> == Anglo American Corporation ==<br /> BIGGEST octopus in the Oppenheimer sea of operations is probably the Anglo American Corporation Ltd. Its investments are on a threefold scale, and their list of the main ones convey but the barest idea of their very considerable range. These are more or less direct participations and do not include the more intricate holdings held through or in common with subsidiaries and others in a more far-reaching extension of interests. Principally in mining, they nevertheless branch out into processing, transport and communications, landholdings and estate, forestry and timber, industry, as well as into hydro-electrical power schemes like that of the Rhodesia Congo Border Power Corporation.<br /> <br /> Gold, uranium, iron, asbestos and coal mines are among the corporation’s most notable undertakings in South Africa, forming the solid foundation on which the Oppenheimer empire stands. Copper mining is its principal occupation in the Rhodesias, though it exploits also lead, zinc and cadmium, and has the distinction of being the only producer of coal in Rhodesia, where it controls the Wankie Colliery. Through associated companies, its interests spread out into Tanganyika, Uganda, the Congo, Angola, Mozambique, West Africa, and even the Sahara and North Africa, as can be seen by this list of direct investments:<br /> <br /> === Finance and Investment Companies ===<br /> <br /> * African &amp; European Investment Co. Ltd.<br /> * African Loans &amp; Investment Ltd.<br /> * Anglo American Investment Trust Ltd.<br /> * Anglo American Rhodesian Development Corporation Ltd.<br /> * Central Reserves (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Central Reserves Rhodesia (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Consolidated Mines (Investment) Ltd.<br /> * Consolidated Mines Selection Co. Ltd.<br /> * Consolidated Mines Selection (Johannesburg) Ltd.<br /> * De Beers Holdings Ltd.<br /> * De Beers Investment Trust Ltd.<br /> * De Beers Rhodesia Investments Ltd.<br /> * Epoch Investments Ltd.<br /> * Jameson Mining Holdings (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Lydenburg Estates Ltd.<br /> * Orange Free State Investment Ltd.<br /> * New Central Witwatersrand Areas Ltd.<br /> * New Era Consolidated Ltd.<br /> * Overseas &amp; Rhodesian Investment Co. Ltd.<br /> * Rand American Investments (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Rand Selection Corporation Ltd.<br /> * Rhodesian Acceptances Ltd.<br /> * Rhodesian Anglo American Ltd.<br /> * Rhodes Investments Ltd.<br /> * South Africa Mines Selection Ltd.<br /> * South African Townships, Mining &amp; Finance Corporation Ltd.<br /> * Transvaal Vanadium Holdings Ltd.<br /> * Vereeniging Estates Ltd.<br /> * Western Ultra Deep Levels Ltd.<br /> * West Rand Investment Trust Ltd.<br /> * South West Africa Co. Ltd.<br /> <br /> === Diamond Mines ===<br /> <br /> * De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd.<br /> * Consolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa Ltd.<br /> * New Jagersfontein Mining &amp; Exploration Co. Ltd.<br /> * Diamond Abrasive Products Ltd.<br /> * Diamond Development Co. of South Africa (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Philmond (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Premier (Transvaal) Diamond Mining Co. Ltd.<br /> * Williamson Diamonds Ltd.<br /> <br /> === Coal Mines ===<br /> <br /> * Amalgamated Collieries of South Africa Ltd.<br /> * Bleebok Colliery Ltd.<br /> * Coronation Collieries Ltd.<br /> * Natal Coal Exploration Ltd.<br /> * Natal Coal Exploration Co. Ltd.<br /> * New Largo Colliery Ltd.<br /> * South African Coal Estates (Witbank) Ltd.<br /> * Springbok Colliery Ltd.<br /> * New Schoongezicht Colliery.<br /> * Cornelia Colliery Ltd.<br /> * Springfield Collieries Ltd.<br /> * Transvaal Coal Corporation Ltd.<br /> * Vierfontein Coal Holdings Ltd.<br /> * Vierfontein Colliery Ltd.<br /> * Vryheid Coronation Ltd.<br /> * Wankie Colliery Co. Ltd.<br /> * Witbank Coal Holdings Ltd.<br /> <br /> === Copper Mines ===<br /> <br /> * Bancroft Mines Ltd.<br /> * Kansanshi Copper Mining Co. Ltd.<br /> * Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines Ltd.<br /> * Rhodesia Copper Refineries Ltd.<br /> * Rhokana Corporation Ltd.<br /> <br /> === Gold Mines ===<br /> <br /> * Brakpan Mines Ltd.<br /> * Daggafontein Mines Ltd.<br /> * East Daggafontein Mines Ltd.<br /> * Free State Geduld Mines Ltd.<br /> * Jeannett Gold Mines Ltd.<br /> * President Brand Gold Mining Co. Ltd.<br /> * South African Land &amp; Exploration Co. Ltd.<br /> * Spring Mines Ltd.<br /> * Vaal Reefs Exploration &amp; Mining Co. Ltd.<br /> * Welkom Gold Mining Co. Ltd.<br /> * Western Deep Levels Ltd.<br /> * Western Holdings Ltd.<br /> * Western Reefs Exploration &amp; Development Co. Ltd.<br /> * President Steyn Gold Mining Co. Ltd.<br /> * Free State Saiplaas Gold Mining Co. Ltd.<br /> <br /> === Other Mining ===<br /> <br /> * Highveld Development Co. Ltd.<br /> * Iron Duke Mining Co. Ltd.<br /> * King Edward (Cuperiferous) Pyrite.<br /> * Monasite &amp; Mineral Ventures Ltd. (rare earths).<br /> * Munnik Myburgh Chrysotile Asbestos Ltd.<br /> * Rhochrome Ltd.<br /> * Rhodesia Broken Hill Development Co. Ltd.<br /> * Transvaal Manganese (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Transvaal Vanadium Co. (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Umgababa Minerals Ltd. (Ilmenite, rutile and zircon).<br /> * Vereeniging Brick &amp; Tile Co. Ltd.<br /> <br /> === Prospecting ===<br /> <br /> * Anglo American Prospecting Co. Ltd.<br /> * Anglo American Rhodesian Mineral Exploration Ltd.<br /> * Border Exploration &amp; Development Co. (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * De Beers Prospecting (Rhodesian Areas) Ltd.<br /> * Kaffrarian Metal Holdings (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Kalindini Exploration Ltd.<br /> * Kasempa Minerals Ltd.<br /> * Lunga Exploration Ltd.<br /> * Prospecting &amp; Mineral Interests Ltd.<br /> * Swaziland Rift Exploration Co. Ltd.<br /> * Western Rift Exploration Co. Ltd.<br /> <br /> === Industrial and Sundry ===<br /> <br /> * Anglo American (Rhodesia Services) Ltd.<br /> * Anglo Collieries Recruiting Organisation (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Boart &amp; Hard Metal Products (Rhodesia) Ltd.<br /> * Boart &amp; Hard Metal Products S.A. Ltd.<br /> * Clay Products Ltd.<br /> * Easan Electrical (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Electro Chemical Industries Ltd.<br /> * Forest Industries &amp; Veneers Ltd.<br /> * Hansens Native Labour Organisation (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Hard Metals Ltd.<br /> * Inter-Mine Services O.F.S (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Lourenço Marques Forwarding Co. Ltd.<br /> * Northern Rhodesia Aviation Services Ltd.<br /> * Peak Timbers Ltd.<br /> * Pearlman Veneers (S.A.) Ltd.<br /> * Rhoanglo Mine Services Ltd.<br /> * Rhodesia Congo Border Power Corporation Ltd.<br /> * Rhodesia Copper Products Ltd.<br /> * Rhodesian Steel Developments (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Stone &amp; Allied Industries (O.F.S.) Ltd.<br /> * Veneered Plywoods Ltd.<br /> * Zinc Products Ltd.<br /> <br /> === Land and Estate ===<br /> <br /> * Anglo American (O.F.S.) Housing Co. Ltd.<br /> * Anmercosa Land &amp; Estates Ltd.<br /> * Cecilia Park (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Falcon Investments Ltd.<br /> * Orange Free State Land &amp; Estate Co. (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Prestin (Pty) Ltd.<br /> * Welkom Township Co.<br /> <br /> It is interesting to note among the companies two that are engaged in the enlistment of ‘native labour’, namely, Anglo Collieries Recruiting Organisation (Pty) Ltd. and Hansens Native Labour Organisation (Pty) Ltd. Recruiting labour for the South African mines has always been an absorbing problem in connection with which there long ago grew up an efficient organisation for importing workers not only from the reserves of South Africa itself, but also from the protectorates, the Rhodesias and Nyasaland. There are long-standing arrangements with the authorities of the Portuguese colonies, particularly Mozambique, for the recruitment of African labour for work in the mines of South Africa.<br /> <br /> Enforcement of apartheid through the establishment of Bantustans, such as that recently gone through in the Transkei, will force the chiefs, under inducement, to supply increasing numbers of local men for the mines. There is now a plan to stop the employment of workers from Zambia, Rhodesia and Malawi, and even from the protectorates. It may well be thought that these people will be infected with the ‘disease’ of nationalism and hence add fuel to the fire of unrest that has been lit in South Africa itself. It is significant that Mozambique Africans are still to be allowed the privilege of enriching South Africa’s mine owners by their toil, not least among them Anglo American Corporation.<br /> <br /> This company was incorporated in 1917 to draw together a number of mining, investment and industrial companies already controlled by Mr Harry Oppenheimer, and to bring them into tighter organisation with such other interests as Mr C. W. Engelhard, chairman of Rand Mines, Kennecott Copper Corporation, and other associates. As the guardian of these interests, Anglo American acts as technical manager and secretary to an extensive number of mining and investment companies falling within its wide perimeter. In its executive, administrative and secretarial capacities, it also arranges the financial life of the many enterprises coming under its care.<br /> <br /> The list given indicates only the barest bones of Anglo American’s multifarious interests, and if we were to examine them in detail we should find ourselves reaching into a most tangled complex of arteries and sinews. Many of the undertakings are not only important in themselves but have involvements which weave together the mining, industrial and financial world of Africa with that of the rest of the world. Such organisations as the Rand Selection Corporation, Union Corporation, Rhokana Corporation Ltd., and certain others, participate in a self-perpetuating and exclusive ensemble. Inter-action and inter-penetration of interests is a predominant feature emphasising the monopolistic nature of the African mining industry, whose leaders are the powerful arbiters of the continent’s industrial growth, especially south of the Sahara. It is not difficult to understand how, from this position, they and their European and American associates and financial backers wield a preponderant influence upon the policies of their governments in relation to the African scene.<br /> <br /> A look, for instance, at Rand Selection Corporation Ltd. brings us at once upon one of the principal arms of Anglo American Corporation in the working of its vast empire. Rand immediately brings to mind the vision of fevered diamond and gold rushes that followed in the wake of the young Cecil Rhodes and his brother adventurers in the late eighteen-seventies. Rhodes’ quarrel with the Boers was over the fight to penetrate the interior to get at the gold of the Witwatersrand. His political leadership was assumed to make himself king of the mining wealth that had been discovered. It was, according to a committee set up in the Cape to examine Rhodes’ part in the famous Jameson raid, ‘in his capacity as controller of the three great joint-stock companies, the British South Africa Company, the De Beers Consolidated Mines, and the Gold Fields of South Africa, he directed and controlled the combination which rendered such a proceeding as the Jameson raid possible’.<br /> <br /> The Jameson Raid finished Rhodes politically in South Africa. It was then he turned to what is now Rhodesia, where he made the British South Africa Company the power in the land that it has been ever since. Nor has the control of political affairs by all the great mining combines abated in any way since then. Rather has it intensified until they are the powers which control and direct affairs, not in Africa alone, but by their integration with other formidable combinations in Europe and America, they exercise great influence in these continents also and hence internationally.<br /> <br /> De Beers and Gold Fields remain. The intervening years have, naturally, seen an extension of the opening up of mines and their exploitation, accompanied by a constant adaptation of their financial arrangements. Gold Fields heads a vast organisation of its own. De Beers has come within the periphery of Rand Selection Corporation but still controls within its own group of companies the output and distribution of most of the world’s diamonds.<br /> <br /> In its own right, Rand Selection owns around 14,890 acres of freehold property in some of the richest mining areas of South Africa. A number of townships have been laid out by the company, in which it has leasehold rights of a high value. Certain of its rights are secured by a 92 per cent interest in South African Townships, Mining &amp; Finance Corporation LTd. and its wholly owned subsidiaries, African Gold &amp; Base Metals Holdings Ltd., Cecilia Park (Pty) Ltd. and Dewhurst Farms Ltd.<br /> <br /> Rand Selection is, however, a subsidiary of Anglo American, under whose direction its scope was enlarged at the close of 1960 to enable it to participate in any new business undertaken by Anglo American up to 1 October 1970 on an increased percentage basis. The enlargement of Rand Selection was accomplished by the contributing of shares, loans and cash to De Beers Investment Trust by Anglo American, subsidiaries of British South Africa Co., Central Mining &amp; Investment Corporation Ltd. De Beers Consolidated Mines., and Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Co. Ltd., who have been joined by the American-controlled South African company, Engelhard Hanovia Inc., and International Nickel Co. of Canada Ltd. controlled by the American Rockefeller-Morgan groups. Rand Selection then acquired all the issued capital of De Beers Investment Trust in return for the issue of shares of its own to the Investment Trust’s shareholders.<br /> <br /> Under the arrangement, De Beers Investment has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Rand Selection. Yet at the same time by the acquisition of its holdings in Rand Selection, De Beers is now the majority holder of Rand’s 33,085,365 shares issued and fully paid up of the 35 million authorised to comprise its capital of £8,270,000. It is perfectly obvious that the loans and cash advanced to De Beers by the above-listed companies were in order to enable it to facilitate its own and Rand’s enlargement.<br /> <br /> As a result of the 1962 implementation of the agreed rearrangement, De Beers Investment is now known as Randsel Investments Ltd. Its three wholly owned subsidiaries, Rand American Investments (Pty) Ltd., Rhodes Investments Ltd. and Jameson Mining Holdings (Pty) Ltd., are now consolidated within the Rand Selection organisation. The two holding companies, Rand Selection and Randsel, shared also in 1962 in the enlargement of another Anglo American creation, Consolidated Mines Selection Co. Ltd., registered in the United Kingdom in 1897, whose interests cover the major mining activities of Southern Africa.<br /> <br /> The assets of Consolidated Mines were jerked up to £15 million by the acquisition from companies within the Anglo American Sphere of holdings worth over £10,500,000 in the British South Africa Co., Central Mining &amp; Investment Corporation Ltd., Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Corporation Ltd. and Selection Trust Ltd., as well as by smaller holdings in Bay Hall Trust Ltd. and Rhodesian Anglo American Ltd. In return for ceding their shares, the participating companies have acquired shares in Consolidated Mines Selection Co. Ltd.<br /> <br /> At the same time, Rand Selection took up, in association with Anglo American, Consolidated Mines Selection and affiliated companies, an option on the purchase of 400,000 shares in Hudson Bay Mining &amp; Smelting Co. Ltd., one of the three leading copper-gold mining companies of Canada, controlled by United States finance. Exercise of this option was made possible by loans raised in America, probably from the same interests behind Hudson Bay Mining.<br /> <br /> Rand Selection’s operations also coincide with those of Anglo American in the very important Swaziland Iron Ore Development Co. Ltd., which has concluded contracts with two major Japanese steel producers, Yawata Iron &amp; Steel Co. Ltd. and Fuji Iron &amp; Steel Co. Ltd., as well as with General Ore International Corporation, for the sale to them of 12 million tons of iron ore over a period of approximately ten years.<br /> <br /> Anglo American has enabled Rand Selection to participate in the purchase from British Coated Board &amp; Paper Mills Ltd., a United Kingdom firm, of a large holding in South African Board Mills Ltd. ‘This’, stated Mr H. F. Oppenheimer, in his report to the 71st annual general meeting of Rand Selection Corporation Ltd., in Johannesburg, on 26 February 1963, ‘is one of the leading growth companies in South Africa, and is managed by Stafford Mayer &amp; Co., with whom the Anglo American Corporation has long been associated in the coal industry’.<br /> <br /> Contractual arrangements with Anglo American have secured Rand Selection participation in a number of property developments in central Johannesburg. The two have also gone hand in hand in Anglo American’s widespread prospecting activities and in certain development projects. Among them are explorations into the feasibility of the bushveld igneous complex of South Africa.<br /> <br /> Here, indeed, in Anglo American, is the most ramified industrial and financial structure in Africa, powerful and commanding, the organisation that governs the fate of millions on this continent and stretches out its influence overseas. Like all monopolies, Anglo American is never content with the existing boundaries of its empire, but is ever seeking extensions, partly because it cannot afford to be overtaken. Hence it is continually conducting a comprehensive prospecting programme in many parts of Africa and elsewhere, in order to find untapped sources of mineral wealth that can be profitably exploited.<br /> <br /> == The Diamond Groups ==<br /> THE diamond industry of South Africa brought in a revenue of £93 million in 1962. Two-thirds of this was from gem diamonds, whose carat price was recently raised by the industry’s controllers. Of such importance is the diamond industry to South Africa that there is no duty on the export of rough diamonds.<br /> <br /> Diamonds are a major concern of Mr Harry Oppenheimer, and it is through De Beers and the Diamond Corporation, with their associated companies and alliances that the operations of his Anglo American Corporation stretch out from South Africa into South-West Africa, Angola, Congo, East and West Africa, to control until recently the production and sale of pretty well 85 per cent of the world’s diamonds. Even the distribution of the Soviet Union’s quite important production has been added, by the arrangement to dispose of ‘Red’ diamonds through De Beers’ selling organisation.<br /> <br /> The De Beers’ group of companies, as we have seen, is controlled by Rand Selection Corporation Ltd. Tightly interwoven, it interlocks with the gem companies of Angola and Mozambique and the dominating complex that spreads across the Rhodesias and Congo. Rand Selection now dominates the administration of the group by reason of its recent acquisition of the total holdings of De Beers Investment Trust Ltd., now known as Randsel Investments Ltd.<br /> <br /> Chief operating company is De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd., and still on its board is a member of the family of Solly Joel, the East End Londoner with whom Rhodes adventured into diamonds along with Alfred Beit. Consolidation of the De Beers, Kimberley and Griqualand West Mines of South-West Africa was the original purpose of the company. A considerable number of allied and even different interests have since been added. Besides the mines in South Africa, De Beers operates open-cast workings along the southern coast and in Namaqualand, South-West Africa. A 50 per cent interest is held in the Williamson Mine in Tanganyika; the other holder is the Tanganyika Government.<br /> <br /> Among its subsidiary companies, De Beers Consolidated includes Premier (Transvaal) Diamond Mining Co. Ltd., Consolidated Mines of South-West Africa Ltd., Diamond Corporation Ltd. and De Beers Industrial Corporation Ltd. Directly and indirectly, it holds something like 40 per cent of the capital of Diamond Purchasing &amp; Trading Co. Ltd. and Diamond Trading Co. Ltd. and 31·5 per cent of Industrial Distributors (1946) Ltd. All these purchasing and distributing companies are main avenues through which the gem and industrial diamond production of the world’s principal producers are distributed. De Beers Industrial has also interests in diamond production by its control of Griqualand West Diamond Mining Co., Dutoitspan Mine Ltd., New Jagersfontein Mining &amp; Exploration Co. Ltd. and Consolidated Co. Bultfontein Mine Ltd.<br /> <br /> What seems at first glance to be a rather curious interest for a company engaged in the diamond industry is De Beer Consolidated’s 50 per cent holding of the issued share capital of African Explosives &amp; Chemical Industries Ltd. On closer examination it will not appear so odd. The company thought it expedient and profitable to have its own avenue for purchasing explosives used in opening up working areas on its own mines and those of associated companies. That was the original aim, but once in the explosive business it was a short road to their manufacture and expansion into serious production of chemicals, especially those allied to explosives manufacture.<br /> <br /> The present-day operations of African Explosives is by no means so limited, nor is there anything innocent about them or the company’s composition. Through De Beers Industrial Corporation it is jointly owned by De Beers’ principal, Anglo American Corporation, and the South African branch of Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd. I.C.I.’s ramifications and its control of a number of chemicals, synthetics and manufacturing processes make it one of the most powerful monopolies in the world. It long ago reached the stage of cartelisation with other foremost chemicals and armaments organisations. Its cartel arrangements with the major chemical and plastics material company in the world, the I.E. du Pont de Nemours Corporation, link it with the modern military equipment industry that seems to issue inevitably from chemicals manufacture.<br /> <br /> Explosives laid the foundation of the du Pont rise to power. ‘Their first big order was to supply Napoleon in his vain attempt to crush Toussaint L'Ouverture and the people of Santo Domingo, and the next was for the war of the United States – against the so-called ‘Barbary Pirates’. [''The Empire of High Finance'', Victor Perlo. p. 190.]The following quotation is form ''Cartels in Action'' quoted by Victor Perlo in ''The Empire of High Finance'', page 195:<br /> <br /> ‘This established the role of du Pont, which has continued down to the present day, when it dominates the greatest and most profitable single corporation in the world, General Motors.<br /> <br /> Du Pont’s association with I.C.I. goes back about forty years. It was in 1921 that more than half of the General Motors’ shares sold by the House of Morgan were bought by the Explosives Trade Ltd., a British subsidiary of the Nobel industries, with which I.C.I. was connected. Explosives were among I.C.I.’s earliest operations, and its interests in Nobel’s concerns in this and other fields were subsequently absorbed into the heart of the I.C.I. empire.<br /> <br /> Ever since that early coming together the alliance between du Pont and I.C.I. has grown more complex. Both of them had effective patent and processing rights with the great German chemical combine, I. G. Farben, and they divided the world between them. Both du Pont and I.C.I. continued to respect their arrangements with I. G. Farben during the war. Du Pont and I.C.I. have abandoned all pretence of business rivalry in numerous major foreign markets, including Canada, Argentina and Brazil. There they do business as a single, unified concern through jointly owned local companies... they have succeeded in cartelising these tributary chemical markets, thanks to their combined power and prestige.’ If we see I.C.I. in association with Oppenheimer companies in South Africa, this should not astonish us. Monopolies are constantly drawing together, aligned by common industrial and financial interests in a given field and at a given time. The I.C.I.-Oppenheimer combination is not restricted to African Explosives but repeats itself in association with other Oppenheimer offshoots and groups. British blessing is given to the enterprise through the secondment on contract to the company of an expert from the British nuclear arms establishment. Moreover, the military equipment produced at its factories is based on the specifications of the British army, navy and air forces.<br /> <br /> Important though African Explosives is to the Oppenheimer combine and South Africa’s military designs in Africa, it owes its existence to the diamond mining in which it was originally conceived. It is only one of the De Beers Consolidated progeny. There are several others, among them the investment company, De Beers Holding Ltd., of which it controls 84·5 per cent. On the death of J. T. Williamson, De Beers Holding contrived to secure an option on the whole of 1,200 shares constituting the capital of his mine in Tanganyika. A deal was fixed at £4,139,996 with De Beers responsible for estate duty and interest on Williamson’s shares. Satisfaction of these items was made by cession of 320 shares of Williamson Diamonds Ltd. to the Tanganyika Government, which subsequently bought up a further 280. The price of £1,317,272 agreed upon for these was met, together with six per cent total interest, out of dividends received by the Government on its total holding of 600 shares.<br /> <br /> Consolidated Diamond Mines of South-West Africa Ltd., in which De Beers Consolidated has a majority holding, has a concession covering large areas of alluvial diamond deposits in South-West Africa, valid until the close of the year 2010. This was extended by the South-West Administration from a previous expiry date of 1972. A most valuable item in the De Beers’ inventory of profits is the ‘De Pass’ royalty owned by the South-West Financial Corporation Ltd., a full subsidiary of Consolidated Diamond Mines. This royalty gives its owner eight per cent of the gross proceeds from the sale of diamonds produced in the Pomona area of South-West Africa, in which South-West Finance possesses landed property and other mineral rights and royalties.<br /> <br /> Participation in the diamond distributive trade comes to Consolidated Diamond Mines through the following holdings:<br /> <br /> Diamond Corporation Ltd. – 5,996,903 shares.<br /> <br /> Diamond Trading Co. Ltd. – 80,000 shares.<br /> <br /> Diamond Purchasing &amp; Trading Co. Ltd. – 200,000 shares.<br /> <br /> Industrial Distributors (1946) Ltd. – 150,000 shares.<br /> <br /> De Beers Holdings Ltd. – 1,150,000 shares.<br /> <br /> Its own production of diamonds has gone up from 895,744 carats in 1958 to 933,937 in 1960. Taken together with its earnings by way of royalties and investments in the diamond trade, it is small wonder that it has over the past fifteen years been able to declare the following impressive dividends:<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> The company’s fully paid-up and authorised capital stands at £5,240,000. Its net consolidated profit in 1960 was £10,734,468, after providing £4,622,731 for taxation. Dividends absorbed £5,667,437, the major beneficiary being De Beers Consolidated. The estimated profit for 1961 was £12,848,000, after providing £5,410,000 for taxation and £168,000 for dividends on preference shares. The figure for ordinary dividend payments is not included, but it is likely to be higher than the previous year.<br /> <br /> Diamond Mining &amp; Utility Co. (S.W.A.) Ltd. is associated with De Beers Consolidated by reason of a cession to the latter company of a large portion of a diamond area in South-West Africa, in exchange for a 20 per cent interest in the net profit on diamonds recovered. The company has 180,000 shares in Diamond Dredging &amp; Mining Co. (S.W.A.) Ltd. To satisfy this purchase, Diamond Mining &amp; Utility issued at par another 540,000 shares in July 1960, the authorised capital then being increased from £300,000 to £500,000. Its other interests are 114,400 shares in Industrial Diamonds of South Africa (1945) Ltd., which ceased operations in the spring of 1960, but retains 148,200 shares in Diamond Mining &amp; Utility, as well as 197,900 shares in Lorelei Copper Mines Ltd., in which Diamond Mining &amp; Utility also holds 200,000 shares. All in all, this demonstrates what might be described as a tight but cosy combination.<br /> <br /> The most interesting hub of the whirling diamond wheel is the Diamond Corporation, whose £22 million capital is owned mainly by De Beers Consolidated Mines, Diamond Mines of South-West Africa and the ever-present Anglo American Corporation. The Diamond Corporation purchases, on periodical contract, the diamond production of the world’s most important producers, usually on a specific quota basis. These diamonds are then marketed through the Central Selling Organisation, together with the output of the De Beers’ group mines and those from the diggings owned and run by the South African Government, which is in the mining business on State account.<br /> <br /> Where do the other diamond trading companies come in? Diamond Trading Company Ltd. receives and sells to the market diamonds of gem or near gem value. Industrial Distributors (Sales) Ltd. have a corner on drilling material and boart for the mines, which they sell to the market.<br /> <br /> Close associates of De Beers also have interests in these tributary companies of the group. Société Minière du Beceka S.A., a company within the dragnet of the Société Générale de Belgique, has holdings in Industrial Distributors (1946) Ltd., Diamond Trading Co. Ltd., Diamond Purchasing &amp; Trading Co. Ltd., Diamond Development Co. Ltd. and in another of Société Générale’s wards of the diamond world, Société Diamant Boart. Industrial Distributors, also within Société Générale’s direct investment portfolio, increased in 1961 dividend by about 20 per cent over those of previous years. Becceka’s association with the Congo is continued through the Société d'Elevage et de Culture au Congo (S.E.C.) and Cie Maritime Belge (C.M.B.).<br /> <br /> Operating deposits on the Lubilash river in the Congo, which produce mainly industrial diamonds and crushing boart, Beceka has a subsidiary, Société Beceka-Manganese, working manganese deposits near a Congolese railway junction. At the beginning of 1962 Beceka-Manganese established a 500 million franc subsidiary, Société Minière de Kisenga, in which it is the chief shareholder. Kisenga has received certain concessionary and exploitation rights from Beceka-Manganese, which also participated in October 1962 in the creation of the Société Européene des Derives du Manganese – SEDEMA. The main parties to the formation of Sedema are associates of the Société d'Entreprise et d'Investissements du Beceka – SIBEKA – and the Manganese Chemicals Corporation of U.S.A.<br /> <br /> From the report of the Société Générale for 1962, a directing hand behind all this segmentation, it emerges that an extraordinary meeting of Beceka on 21 March 1962 agreed that Beceka should renounce in favour of a new company, Société Minière de Bakwanga, all its mining rights in the Congo (mainly in the Bakwanga region), and should become the Société d'Entreprise et d'Investissements du Beceka, to be known by its abbreviated form, Sibeka. The purpose of Sibeka was re-formed to cover investigation, promoting and financing, by whatever means, in Belgium as well as in the Congo, and other foreign countries, of all kinds of enterprises, whether in mining, industry, commerce, agriculture or transport, especially those having connections with mineral substances of all kinds, as well as with their derivatives and substitutes.<br /> <br /> Within the framework of this new objective, the former participations were increased and new participations were taken up or were in course of examination, in particular certain ones having to do with the production of artificial diamonds. The principal activity of Sibeka, however, is to be its important participation in Société Minière de Bakwanga, known as Miba. Miba’s production in 1961, its first year of working, was nearly 15 million carats of diamonds, which the chairman of Société Générale considered should be its normal ‘rhythm’, having regard to the selling market.<br /> <br /> Sibeka has been busy in South Kasai, where other investments have been placed, including the modernisation of a 150 km. road from Bakwanga to the station at Mwene-Ditu. Société Générale’s participation in Sibeka stands at 525,000 shares of no par value, and it has assisted Beceka-Manganese to place 10 million francs out of the 11 million francs it has been allotted in the 81 million franc capital of Sedema. Sibeka has taken up another 10 million francs. The object of Sedema is the manufacture of manganese composites and manganese metals for the European market.<br /> <br /> It is not long before any endeavour to trace the companies engaged in a particular field of mining leads into associations connecting with other sectors of raw materials production. Thus our examination of the De Beers’ diamond enterprises has taken us into the even vaster world of Société Générale’s interests, which we shall meet again more than once in the course of our journeyings through the tangled maze of international control of Africa’s basic riches. It is also significant that in almost every corner we find lurking some coupling with American major industrial concerns. In the present case, Manganese Chemicals Corporation comes immediately and directly into the picture.<br /> <br /> Looking further into African diamond production, we find another Société Générale off-shoot operating in the Congo. Société Internationale Forestière et Minière du Congo, known briefly as Forminière, concerns itself with mining, commercial, industrial and agricultural pursuits, chiefly in Kasai. Its main preoccupation is diamond mining.<br /> <br /> Forminière is one of King Leopold’s original main concessions in the Congo. He formed the company in 1906 with the help of, among others, two American businessmen, Thomas F. Fortune and Daniel Guggenheim, the last of whom build up a fortune from mining in South America. Today Forminière is part of the vast complex dominated by Société Générale, Tanganyika Concessions and its child, Union Minière du Haut Katanga, which has the Congo’s economic life in the palm of its hand, and is now greedily extended to Angola and Mozambique. Through its subsidiary, Société Internationale Commerciale et Financière de la Forminière – INTERFOR – it has sister interests with Beceka in a number of agricultural companies working plantations in the Congo on a grand scale.<br /> <br /> Other holdings held by Forminière are in mining companies such as Société de Recherches et d'Exploitation des Bauxites du Congo – BAUXICONGO – featured also in Union Minière’s lengthy list of more important interests. Oil is also included in the Société Générale’s empire through Société de Recherches et d'Exploitations des Petroles – SOCOREP. This is among Forminière’s investments.<br /> <br /> The Diamond Corporation acts as the rallying centre for the merchandise offered for sale by all the large producers. In its role as the central buying organisation for the international procurers of diamonds, it is not surprising that it should have a share in some of the most important producing companies outside the South African group. Messrs H. F. Oppenheimer and H. J. Joel of its own directorate are seated on the board of the Angola Diamond Co. (Companhia de Diamantes de Angola), another two members of which, Messrs Albert E. Thiele and A. A. Ryan, adorn the Forminière board. Mr Thiele and important connections with certain powerful American groups. He began his career in 1909 with the Guggenheim brothers, one of whom was so helpful to Leopold II. Thence he graduated to the chairmanship of the Pacific Tin Consolidated Corporation and to directorates in the Kennecott Copper Corporation and its subsidiary, Braden Copper Co. Oil and nitrates are also Mr Thiele’s business. Maracaibo Oil and Barber Oil are numbered among his directorships, as are Chilean Nitrates Sales Corporation, and the chairmanship of the Feldspar Corporation. As a director of Angola Diamond and Forminière, he has most certainly not innocently strayed from his basic moorings, anchored in Guggenheim, Kennecott Copper, oil, tin and nitrates, in which the Morgans have their helping hand. The Morgan Guaranty Trust is one of the main arteries from which flows finance for the Oppenheimer combines. Morgan is also in association with the Banque Belge, the leading banking string in the Société Générale structure, and the biggest bank in Belgium. Represented on the Angola Diamond board is another Angola concern, Companhia de Pesquisas Mineiras de Angola.<br /> <br /> Angola Diamonds has monopoly rights permitting it to work for diamonds over almost 390,000 square miles of Angola, an area almost four times the size of Ghana or Great Britain. Forty-three mines are in operation, three new ones having been opened to replace three whose reserves were running out. Prospecting is going on for further deposits, nineteen groups being at work. Direct interest in the company, registered in Portugal, is held by the Angola Government, the on-the-spot administrative arm of the Portuguese Government. It holds 200,000 shares, slightly in excess of the 198,800 held by the Société Générale. About half the African workers for the company are forced labourers rounded up by the authorities and receiving a monthly wage of around seventy escudos, equivalent to about sixteen shillings. The very handsome profits of the company are divided equally between the Province of Angola and the shareholders after six per cent has been allocated to the managing bodies.<br /> <br /> Shareholders’ profit at the end of trading, 1960, was 137,000,931 escudos, after the same amount had been reserved for the Angola Province and 15,341,649 escudos for legal reserve. Total profits, in fact, amounted to 289,343,511 escudos, of which 114,800,000 escudos had come from profits held in reserve. Interim and final dividends absorbed a sum for the year 1960 of 136,670,000 escudos.<br /> <br /> The company pays no import duties on plant or material and no duties on diamonds exported. It also enjoys a loan from the Angola Government of 100 million escudos, in return for the free issue of 100,000 shares of 170 escudos each to the Province of Angola in 1955. The unheard-of uneconomic rate of interest on this loan is one per cent, repayments to be completed in 1971. Angola Diamond Co. holds 16·266 per cent of the issued capital of Sociedade Portuguesa de Lapidacao de Diamantes.<br /> <br /> Diamond Corporation has contractual arrangements for the purchase of Angola Diamond’s output, which has recently been running at over a million carats and is estimated to give even higher yields, since mechanical excavators and washing plant have been installed, following the proof of extensive alluvial deposits. Gem diamonds represent 65 per cent of the output.<br /> <br /> Diamond Corporation has broken into the Ivory Coast, with the formation of a local subsidiary to purchase diamonds on the open market of that country. How open the market will be is anybody’s guess. Some of the other newly independent African countries are striving to break away from Diamond Corporation domination. Ghana has set up its own diamond market in Accra, and all sellers, including Consolidated African Selection Trust Ltd. (CAST), working a 68 square mile concession in the Akim Abuakwa district, must sell through it. Sierra Leone Selection Trust Ltd. is CAST’s subsidiary operating in Sierra Leone.<br /> <br /> Incredible as it may sound, Sierra Leone Selection once held exclusive diamond mining rights over practically the whole of the country. In 1955, following protestations from the people, especially in the rich diamond region of Konor, the extent of its concession area was reduced to some 209 square miles, then the extent of the company’s existing working. The curtailment of rights, however, was more apparent than real. The concessionary rights are for thirty years, but restricted rights were granted over a further 250 square miles, of which a hundred have since been taken up. The company is also allowed to prospect for deep deposits of diamonds anywhere in Sierra Leone, for a period of not less than ten years; and to mine them.<br /> <br /> That the agreement was a sham is provided by the undertaking given by the then Colonial Government not to grant before 1975 to any applicants other than Sierra Leonians, or companies in which the beneficial interest or greater part of it is held by Sierra Leonians, any diamond prospecting licences or leases without first offering such licences or leases to Sierra Leone Selection Trust. Though this virtually gives a free hand to the company, the Government nevertheless made it a payment of £1,500,000 to compensate for supposedly lost opportunities. All the six million shares issued out of the 6,400,000 authorised to make up the capital of £1,600,000 are held by CAST. What profits the company makes are not publicly known, since accounts are issued only to shareholders.<br /> <br /> The chairman of both CAST and Sierra Leone Selection is Mr A. Chester Beatty, who has as colleagues on both boards Messrs E. C. Wharton-Tigar, T. H. Bradford and P. J. Oppenheimer, Mr P. J. Oppenheimer also sits on the board of the Diamond Corporation, alongside Mr W. A. Chapple, who is another colleague on the CAST board. Both these gentlemen sit together on the London Committee of De Beers Consolidated Mines, Mr P. J. Oppenheimer also occupying a seat on the Johannesburg Committee, on which he is associated with Major-General I. P. de Villiers, C.B., and Mr A. Wilson, the last-named two being also joined together on the directorate of Consolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa Ltd.<br /> <br /> Mr Thomas Horat Bradford represents Selection Trust Ltd., of which he is managing director, on its main associated companies in America, the Rhodesias, Canada and Venezuela. Mr Beatty keeps company with Mr Bradford on several of these boards. Mr Chapple’s connection with the diamond world is on a decidedly high level, if we may judge from his directorship of the Banque Diamantaire Anversoise S.A. Antwerp, which is still the world’s major diamond-cutting centre, employing over 13,000 people in this industry. The Antwerp Diamond Bank occupies an important strategic position. Something like 40,000 to 50,000 carats are cut in Antwerp every week, the bulk of the rough stones coming from the Diamond Trading Company, at the London end of the De Beers’ Central Selling Organisation. But Antwerp searches other sources for its diamond supplies and in 1961 got as much as 30 per cent of its total weight in carats elsewhere.<br /> <br /> It is only too obvious that Mr A. Chester Beatty moves among the exalted ranks of the diamond world, especially that preponderant sector of it dominated by the De Beers’ group and pivoted around the Diamond Corporation and its Selling Organisation. It is therefore difficult to understand the play that Mr Beatty made in connection with the Sierra Leone Government Bill, passed towards the end of 1961, obliging all producers of diamonds in Sierra Leone to sell through the Government Diamond Office.<br /> <br /> Mr Beatty, as chairman of Selection Trust Ltd., as well as of CAST and Sierra Leone Selection, its subsidiary, asserted that the expired contract that CAST had with the Diamond Corporation had not been renewed because of the excessive commission of 12 per cent demanded by it. CAST had offered four per cent, which had been rejected. A contract was therefore made with Harry Winston, Inc., of New York, owners and cutters of the famed Jonker diamond, who were said to be looking for a direct source of supply which would sidestep the Diamond Corporation. In view of the interconnection between Selection Trust and the De Beers’ companies, including the Diamond Corporation, through interdependent shareholdings as well as directorial interweaving, it is strange to witness one of the most prominent links in the chain, Mr A. Chester Beatty, protesting his anxiety to protest Sierra Leone’s interests against the Corporation, of which he is very much a part.<br /> <br /> The protest from Mr Beatty was that if Sierra Leone Selection were obliged to submit its production the Government’s Diamond Office this would ultimately go to the Diamond Corporation, which was the Diamond Office’s end purchaser, precisely what he was fighting against. Moreover, this would mean severing the contract with Winston, for which breach compensation would have to be made. Mr Beatty pointed out that his solicitude for Sierra Leone’s welfare had caused him to secure a revaluation of the Diamond Corporation contract in 1957, so that an additional £2,700,000 had been received in its last three years of operation.<br /> <br /> There is a curious twist here, for Mr Beatty asserts that £500,000 more in revenue would be received by the Sierra Leone Government under the Winston contract than under one concluded with Diamond Corporation. Four pertinent questions arise from this. What increased percentage of revenue was represented by the additional £2,700,000 Mr Beatty said was obtained from the Diamond Corporation on the last three years of the expired contract? How much of this came into the hands of the Sierra Leone Government, and what increased percentage of revenue did it represent for the Government? How is it that Mr Beatty could not obtain similarly advantageous terms from a new contract with Diamond Corporation? Is the eight per cent better price from Winston accurately reflected in the estimate of some £500,000 additional revenue for the Government that would accrue from a contract with Winston?<br /> <br /> But is not all this just a facade aimed at maintaining the fiction that Selection Trust and Diamond Corporation are unrelated entities, a fiction retailed even by a press one would assume knows better? For we have the Freetown correspondent of ''West Africa'' declaring in that journal’s issue of 27 January 1962 that ‘the two European giants in the (diamond) industry – Diamond Corporation and Selection Trust – were clearly loggerheads’. The heart of the matter really lies in Mr Beatty’s complaint that the Sierra Leone Government’s regulation interferes with his company’s freedom, expressly laid down by the former Colonial Government in their concession agreement, to sell as they think fit. Mr Beatty, like the monopolistic interests he represents so efficiently on many boards, does not wish to recognise the winds of change that have come with African independence, giving the new nations the opportunity to order their economies in the way they consider more beneficial for their own good.<br /> <br /> Intrusion into the diamond field has been made lately by a Texan who has more usually appeared wherever oil was bubbling. Mr Sam Collins has put his hands to gathering diamonds from the sea bed of the Chameis Reef on the South-West African coast, reported to contain a minimum reserve of 14 million carats. Mr Collins scouted round for additional capital for his Sea Diamonds Company, holding the operating company, Marine Diamonds. It was reported that Mr Oppenheimer, after watching his activities with some concern, decided to collaborate with Mr Collins. It would appear that General Mining &amp; Finance Corporation and Anglo Transvaal Consolidated, which we have already met as part of the Anglo American complex, had engaged themselves in the venture. They were to make available additional funds up to £500,000 to equalise with a like amount to be put up by Mr Collins and the companies controlled by him. General Mining has an exchange of shares with Anglo American, and De Beers Consolidated Mines is among its portfolio of investments, as is also National Finance Corporation of South Africa, which is so helpful to a number of Oppenheimer companies in the matter of loans.<br /> <br /> De Beers apparently had an option on 25 per cent of Sea Diamonds’ equity and a first refusal on Mr Collins’s holding, said to be about 80 per cent. Sea Diamonds in turn holds some 44 per cent of the share capital of Marine Diamonds, General Mining holding 25 per cent of the balance, Anglo Transvaal 15 per cent, and another Oppenheimer company, Middle Witwatersrand (Western Areas) Ltd., administered by Anglo Transvaal, seven and a half per cent. The remainder is held by the original concession holders. Middle Witwatersrand has a right of 10 per cent participation in any prospecting ventures undertaken by Anglovaal Rhodesian Exploration Ltd., of whose equity 50 per cent is held by Kennecott Copper. Everything seems to move round in circular motion within a ring that has no end. Mr Sam Collins may have acted quickly and shrewdly in staking his claim to an offshore diamond reef, and he will in all probability make a killing. But the greatest winners will certainly prove, in the long run, to be Mr Oppenheimer and his cohorts. The backstage goings-on to obtain control of what promises to be a most highly profitable venture prompted ''The Economist’s'' Johannesburg correspondent to observe that ‘the full story of the recent negotiations, if it ever emerged, might tell of a fierce struggle for control between South Africa’s mining magnate in the tradition of the rough, tough early days of Kimberly and the Rand’ (16 March 1963).<br /> <br /> It is unlikely that De Beers will be able to make its way into the Japanese company now setting up plant in Japan for the manufacture of synthetic diamonds, which will initially turn out 300,000 carats a year to reach 600,000 annually. De Beers, in association with Société Minière de Beceka, have their own plant in South Africa for the manufacture of synthetic diamond grit operated by Ultra High Pressure Units. General Electric of America also has a process for turning out manufactured diamonds. The Japanese say theirs is not the same. And we have referred earlier on to Sibeka’s interest in the possibility of producing artificial diamonds. There have been several attempts to create diamonds by a factory process but they have, until now, proved somewhat uneconomic. With the strong likelihood that synthetic stones which can compete in price and performance with the natural product will soon be produced, another blow may be struck at the developing producer countries of Africa.<br /> <br /> == Mining Interests in Central Africa ==<br /> IF we examine the intricacies of the Anglo-American extension through the exploitation of Africa’s raw materials, we find its strong arm holding down the wealth of Rhodesia, South Africa and South-west Africa both through direct holdings as well as through those of its American Engelhard and Kennecott Copper associates and the British South Africa Company Ltd.<br /> <br /> The British South Africa Company was a creation of Cecil Rhodes’ genius in empire building. Watching the scramble for the lands in South Africa in the early 1890s, he decided that unless he got in quickly, other European adventurers would take up ‘large tracts of valuable country ruled by savage native chiefs in the interior of Africa’. Using his notorious agents, Rudd, Maguire, Rochford and Thompson, war was provoked between the Matabeles of what is now known as Rhodesia and their chief, Lo Benguela. Troops of the South African Company, which was granted a royal charter in 1889, went ostensibly to the support of the chief against his people. This trick of Rhodes, described by certain historians as ‘adroit handling’, secured the company a concession to work mineral rights in the vast expanse of land that now forms the whole of Rhodesia.<br /> <br /> When Lo Benguela woke up to the bitter realisation of the trickery that had divested him and his people of the rights in their own land, he petitioned Queen Victoria as follows:<br /> <br /> ‘Some time ago a party of men came into my country, the principal one appearing to be a man named Rudd. They asked me for a place to dig gold, and said they would give me certain things for the right to do so. I told them to bring what they would give and I would then show them what I would give.<br /> <br /> A document was written and presented to me for signature. I asked what it contained, and was told that in it were my words and the words of these men. I put my hand to it.<br /> <br /> About three months afterwards I heard from other sources that I had given by that document the right of all the minerals of my country. I called a meeting of my Indunas and also of the white men, and demanded a copy of the document. It was proved to me that I had signed away the mineral rights of my whole country to one Rudd and his friends. I have since had a meeting of my Indunas and they will not recognise the paper, as it contains neither my words nor the words of those who got it.<br /> <br /> After the meeting I demanded that the original document be returned to me. It has not come yet, although it is two months since, and they promised to bring it back soon. The men of the party who were in my country at the time were told to remain until the document was brought back. One of them, Maguire, has now left without my knowledge and against my orders.<br /> <br /> I write to you that you may know the truth about this, and may not be deceived.<br /> <br /> With renewed and cordial greetings,<br /> <br /> Lo Benguela.’<br /> <br /> Who in those days gave back land filched by whatever means from ‘savage native chiefs'? And who today will give them back to the people from whom they were taken unless that people insist on their return by their determined and united will expressed by a Union Government?<br /> <br /> At the close of the nineteenth century, Rhodes, dreaming of a Cape to Cairo empire, pushed from Matabeleland into Mashonaland across the Zambesi, into the country now called Zambia. Thus he drove a wedge between the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola. All this was done with the buccaneers of his South Africa Company, which had received three supplementary charters since the initial one was granted in 1889.<br /> <br /> Originally the company had administrative rights over territory in Southern Africa lying to the north Bechuanaland, to the north and west of the Transvaal and west of Portuguese East Africa. It also had rights to extend the Cape railway and telegraph systems northward and to make concessions of mining, forest or other rights, and much more besides. Its administrative and monopoly rights in Northern and Southern Rhodesia were ceded to the British Government only as late as 1923-4. Mineral rights in the Rhodesias, however, were still retained, as well as a half interest for forty years in the next proceeds of the disposal of land in North-western Rhodesia. In return, the British South Africa Company received a cash payment from the British Government of £3,750,000. The commutation of its half interest in the proceeds of land disposal was made in 1956 for an annual payment of £50,000 for the remaining eight years to run from 31 March 1957.<br /> <br /> A cash purchase of the mineral rights was made by the Southern Rhodesia Government in 1933 for £2 million, this time from African taxpayers’ money. This still left the company with its mineral rights in Northern Rhodesia which, by arrangement, it is to enjoy until 1 October 1986. However since 1 October 1949, it was paying to the Government of Northern Rhodesia 20 per cent of the net revenue from these mineral rights, which sum was regarded as an ‘expense’ for the purpose of Northern Rhodesian income tax. Furthermore, ‘net revenue’ was defined as the profits of the company derived from its mineral rights calculated in the same manner as for the purpose of Northern Rhodesian income tax, i.e. after expenses had been charged against it. The arrangement provided for the non-imposition of mineral royalties as such in Northern Rhodesia, while Her Majesty’s Government undertook to secure so far as possible that any government which became responsible during the thirty-seven-year period,that is, up to 1 October 1986, for the administration of Northern Rhodesia should be bound by these arrangements.<br /> <br /> The British South Africa Company, in spite of recent action taken by the government of Zambia to secure mineral rights, is still extremely powerful. It owns forests, agricultural estates and real property in Zambia, Rhodesia, and in Bechuanaland. It also has mineral rights in 16,000 square miles of Malawi territory. It formed Cecil Holdings Ltd. to acquire the whole share capital of British South Africa Company’s subsidiaries, with the exception of Rhodesia Railways Trust Ltd. Another formation, British South Africa Investments Ltd., acquired the greater part of the parent company’s investments in 1958. Other subsidiaries include:<br /> <br /> · British South African Company Management Services Ltd.<br /> <br /> British South Africa Citrus Products Ltd.<br /> <br /> Charter Properties (Pvt) Ltd.<br /> <br /> Indaba Investments (Pvt) Ltd.<br /> <br /> Beit Holdings (Pvt) Ltd.<br /> <br /> Jameson Development Holdings (Pvt) Ltd.<br /> <br /> British South Africa Company Holdings Ltd. (U.K.).<br /> <br /> The British South Africa Company was divested of the greater part of its holdings in companies operating primarily in the Republic of South Africa by its participation in the 1961 exchange of shares with De Beers Investment Trust Ltd. It still retains its holding of 700,000 shares in Union Corporation Ltd.<br /> <br /> The company’s close association with Mr Harry Oppenheimer and the Anglo American Corporation in the Rhodesias is to be drawn tighter by means of a proposed share deal between them by which 1·2 million ordinary ten shilling shares of Anglo American will be exchanged for £2·5 million in £1 shares of New Rhodesia Investments Ltd., a public company registered in Rhodesia and equally owned by Mr Oppenheimer’s Brenthurst Investment Trust (Pty) Ltd. and British South Africa’s tributary, Cecil Holdings.<br /> <br /> New Rhodesia Investments include: mining finance, 45·94 per cent; gold, 14·45 per cent; diamonds, 9·38 per cent; coal 2·49 per cent; sundry companies, 1·9 per cent. On 31 December 1962, the market value of these holdings was put at £10,500,000 while New Rhodesia Investment’s net assets stood at £12,100,000. As for Anglo American Corporation, its net assets at the end of 1961 were £114,500,0000. New Rhodesia’s ‘important block of shares’ in Consolidated Mines Selection Trust Ltd. will be increased as a result of the current financial arrangement with Anglo American, whose own share capital will be augmented from £9 million to £10 million by the creation of another two million ten shilling shares.<br /> <br /> The complicated links between superficially separate entities are shown by their investments in concerns of common interest. New Rhodesia’s major buyings into the Diamond Corporation, Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Co. Ltd. and Rhodesian Anglo American Ltd. tie up closely with Anglo American’s activities in the Rhodesias and in the Congo and Portuguese territories.<br /> <br /> Johannesburg Consolidated is concerned principally with diamonds, copper, gold and platinum. It also carries on prospecting operations, mainly in South Africa and Rhodesia. Its subsidiary companies include, among others, Barnato Brothers Ltd. and Barnato Holdings Ltd., and the important African Asbestos-Cement Corporation Ltd. An associated company, Matte Smelters (Pty) Ltd., is jointly owned by Rustenburg Platinum Mines Ltd. and Johnson Matthey &amp; Co. Ltd. Johnson Matthey, a U.K. firm treating copper, nickel, platinum and other metals, supervised the erection of plant in the vicinity of Rustenerg to treat part of the product of Matte Smelters. Johannesburg Consolidated’s last issue of shares was in 1957, when 600,000 were issued to New Rhodesia Investments.<br /> <br /> Rhodesian Anglo American has large shareholdings in the leading copper mines of Rhodesia. These direct holdings are swollen by those of companies in which it has interest. Thus as a 52·39 per cent interest in the ordinary ‘A’ stock of Rhokana Corporation Ltd. gives it an added interest of 17·63 per cent in Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines Ltd., in which its direct participation is 21·429 per cent. Through its penetration of Rhokana and Nchanga, Rhodesian Anglo American has an indirect interest in Rhodesia Copper Refineries Ltd. Again, its oblique participation in Mufulira Copper Mines Ltd. via Rhokana, increases its own participation of 572,213 shares to 13·29 per cent. In Rhodesian Alloys (Pvt) Ltd. a producer of ferro-chrome, it has 263,226 shares, and in Rhodesia Broken Hill Development Co. Ltd., 1,425,905 stock units. An almost 25 per cent holding of Kansanshi Copper Mining Co. Ltd. has been secured by the acquisition of 394,209 shares. Rhodesian Anglo American’s direct and indirect participation in Bancroft Mines Ltd. amounts to 24·54 per cent. Rhokana gives it an interest in Chibuluma Mines Ltd., while Rhokana in association with Nchanga leads it into Kalindini Exploration Ltd. A holding of 34,100 shares gives it a substantial purchase into Kasempa Minerals Ltd., a company carrying out prospecting operations in the western province of Zambia.<br /> <br /> Nor are other prospecting companies ignored by Rhodesian Anglo American. Thirty-one and a half per cent of Anglo American Prospecting (Rhodesia) Ltd. has come under its control, and 333,375 shares of Chartered Exploration Ltd. Iron, steel and coal also come within its range. It owns 596,600 shares in Lubimbi Coal Areas Ltd., holding prospecting rights for coal over an area of approximately 130 square miles in the Southern Rhodesian mining district of Bulawayo. This share-holding gives Rhodesian Anglo American 65 per cent control of Lubimbi, the other 35 per cent belonging to Wankie Colliery, two million of whose shares are in Rhodesian Anglo American hands. Forty per cent gives it a major part of the Iron Duke Mining Co. Ltd., and it also has a substantial interest in the Rhodesian Iron &amp; Steel Co. Ltd.<br /> <br /> Sundry other interests make Rhodesian Anglo American a leading controller of Zambia’s economic life. Finance and investment are included by, among others, 20 per cent of Rhodesian Acceptances Ltd., and a half share in Overseas &amp; Rhodesian Investment Co. Ltd. Rhoanglo Mine Services Ltd., wholly owned, provides a valuable source of income for administrative and other services. Cement and clay bring it into the building and allied trades through 148,961 shares in Premier Portland Cement Co. (Rhodesia) Ltd. and 25 per cent of Clay Products (Pvt) Ltd.<br /> <br /> Bancroft Mines seems to provide the richest pickings for the cast-iron digestion of the Anglo American hydra. This company was formed only in 1953, to take up from ‘the owners of the mineral rights, the British South Africa Co.’ special grants of mining rights and prospecting rights acquired from Rhokana. Capital is authorised at £13,750,000. The British South Africa Co. took up three million shares, Rhokana 9,500,000 and Rhodesian Anglo American 74,700. There was an iinterchange of shares with Rhokana as well as with Rhodesian Anglo American. In 1955 an additional two million shares were subscribed for by Anglo American and British South Africa Co., who have provided loans of £2 million and £3 million respectively.<br /> <br /> Anglo American, Rhodesian Anglo American, Nehanga and Rhokana were given an option on three million of Bancroft’s ordinary shares up to 31 March 1963. In December 1961, the right was exercised on a million of the shares, of which Rhodesian Anglo American acquired 400,000.<br /> <br /> Rhodesian Anglo American’s own capital is £7 million and its consolidated net profit for the year ended 30 June 1961 was £20,590,783 after providing £11,541,475 for taxation. Dividends absorbed £5,403,535.<br /> <br /> These tightly braided interests are of special concern to the people of Zambia and Rhodesia, whose existence and fate they dominate. Not for nothing is Mr Harry Oppenheimer enlarging his own personal stake through the proposals concerning the share exchange between Anglo American and British South Africa Co. in new Rhodesia Investments, a tributary of British South Africa’s tributary, Cecil Holding. By the arrangements, British South Africa will have wider share in Anglo American’s activities through the establishment of a local Rhodesian Board for the chartered company, under the chairmanship of Sir Frederick Crawford.<br /> <br /> Sir Frederick Crawford is at present the company’s resident director in Rhodesia. As a former Governor of Uganda, he brought with him his proconsular experience in the ruling of ‘natives’. Uganda also provides as local director in Zambia, C. P. S. Allen, until recently Permanent Under-Secretary of State to its Prime Minister. Thus are imperialist agents rewarded for their services to their real masters. Opposition to the establishment of the local board was met by British South Africa Co.’s president, P. V. Emrys-Evans, with the explanation that it will provide a greater degree of autonomy for local management, and will strengthen the company’s representation in Zambia. Mr Emrys-Evans is himself a director of Anglo American Corporation, as well as of Rio Tinto Zinc Corporation Ltd. Mr Emrys-Evans carries the interests of Barclays Bank D.C.O. by his directorship of the bank, and his solicitude for Rhodesia’s development is implicit in his seat on the board of Rhodesia Railways Trust Ltd., a British South Africa Company subsidiary. His further connection with Oppenheimer’s far-flung empire is confirmed by his membership of the London Committee of Rand Selection Corporation Ltd. The death of Lord Robins elevated him from vice-presidency to the head of the British South Africa Co.’s board, where among his colleagues were the late Sir C. J. Hambro, Harry Oppenheimer, L. F. A. d'Erlanger and another former pro-consul, Viscount Malvern, who brings with him the blessings of the Merchant Bank of Central Africa, Scottish Rhodesian Finance Ltd., and the Standard Bank of South Africa.<br /> <br /> A good deal of Mr Emrys-Evans’ 1962 annual report to the shareholders was devoted to what is described as ill-informed criticism of the ‘group’s alleged policy of removing large sums of money from the country while being unwilling to invest in its development’. The attempt to rebut this criticism by the affirmation that over ten years the company had invested over £10 million in the territory, an average of over £1 million a year, would not convince Rhodesian Africans, who were well aware that the company received in gross income from tits Northern Rhodesian copper royalties alone in the year 1961/2 the sum of £10,900,000. Taxation goes to the United Kingdom and South Africa, as also do dividends, which, for the year 1959-60, absorbed £4,128,863 out of a consolidated net profit of £8,148,245, arrived at after writing off almost £1 million for depreciation of investments and over £5,400,000 for taxation.<br /> <br /> Rhodes’ original links with the Rand and Kimberley mines have been knit more closely together by a thousands strands with Rhodesia and Zambia than it was possible for him to envisage at the time, though it was his overriding hope and ambition. This interwoven fabric partly provides the hang-man’s rope that is trying to strangle African independence and the political unification of Africa.<br /> <br /> == Companies and Combines ==<br /> TO give anything like a complete account of the complicated network of foreign companies which at present governs so much of Africa’s economic life, would be impossible within the space of a single book. Yet some reference to the most important of them is necessary, and in many cases their connecting interests can be shown in diagram form. Behind the facade of separateness strong connecting links bind these powerful firms together.<br /> <br /> In East Africa, one of the most powerful concerns is Tanganyika Concessions. The name is misleading. It was actually registered in London towards the end of January 1899. Today control of the company is wielded from Salisbury, Rhodesia, whence it was removed in the latter part of 1950. Operations in Tanganyika have not yet been fully developed, though they cover two important gold mines and a mineral company, and include some prospecting. The company’s writ has greater significance in Zambia, where it acquired from British South Africa Co. a concession over a large area, together with certain prospecting rights. From Zambia its activities spawn into the Congo, where it controls a mineral concession of 60,000 square miles secured from the Katanga (Belgian) Special Committee. For giving Tanganyika Concession rights over this expanse of Congolese land, the Katanga Committee enjoyed the benefit of a 60 per cent share in the royalty paid by Union Minière.<br /> <br /> We must not for one moment, however, allow ourselves to be led into the error of thinking that Tanganyika Concessions thus permitted themselves to be ‘bested’ by the Special Committee. The company became a member of the Committee. In the way of financiers who, cautiously and shrewdly, do not place all their eggs in a single basket, a new organisation was created to take care of a concession covering a surface about three-fifths the sizeof Ghana. This is the celebrated Union Minière du Haut Katanga, whose reputation over the years has become notorious for the merciless exploitation of the Congo.<br /> <br /> Another strategic interest of Tanganyika Concessions is the railway running from Lobito Bay in Angola up to the Angola-Congo border, operated by the Benguela Railway Company (Companhia do Cominho de Ferro de Benguela). The railway company is a creation of Tanganyika Concessions which holds £2,700,000 or 90 per cent of its £2 shares, as well as the whole of the debenture capital. The Benguela Railway, during 1961, built a branch line from the town of Robert Williams into the mining region of Guima, which was opened in August 1962. Commonwealth Timber Industries Ltd., a vast forestry and lumber concern, is also 60 per cent owned by Tanganyika Concessions.<br /> <br /> Novobord (U.K.) Ltd., the English affiliate of Commonwealth Timber, was able, with the assistance of the African companies with which Société Générale is associated, to construct a sawmill and factory for the manufacture of fibrewood panels at Thetford in Norfolk. The factory’s capacity will make possible the production of about 25 million square feet of panels yearly, the capital invested being around £2 million.<br /> <br /> When Tanganyika Concessions was about to change its headquarters from London to Salisbury, it gave an undertaking to H.M. Treasury which no doubt had some bearing on the British government’s vacillating policy in the breakdown of the Central African Federation. It must also colour its behaviour in regard to the Congo and to Portuguese rule in Africa. The undertaking provided that for a minimum period of ten years, Tanganyika Concessions would not, without consent of the British Treasury, ‘dispose of or charge or pledge its interests or any part thereof in Union Minière du Haut Katanga or the Benguela Railway’ except, in the case of the latter, to the Portuguese Government under the terms of the Concessions Agreement.<br /> <br /> The limitation did not end with the expiration of the ten-year period, as a conjunctive clause provided that subsequently ‘no sale or disposal of such interests or any part thereof (except as aforesaid) shall be made without the securities proposed to be sold or otherwise disposed of first being offered to H.M. Treasury at the same price and on the same terms as have been offered to a third party’.<br /> <br /> These provisions have given the British Government a direct concern in the operations of Tanganyika Concessions, Union Minière and the Benguela Railway which is bound to influence their behaviour in relation to the independence struggle in Southern and Central Africa. More particularly, in view of the special relations which Great Britain has had with its oldest ally, Portugal. From the point of view of the companies themselves, they must feel encouraged by this special interest of the British Government in maintaining their strategic position across the great central belt of Africa.<br /> <br /> Tanganyika Concessions, both directly and through Tanganyika Holdings, has an important participation in Rhodesia-Katanga Co. Ltd., with which, in conjunction with Zambesia Exploring, interests were acquired in the Kakamega Goldfield, Kenya, which were transferred to Kentan Gold Areas, in which Rhodesia-Katanga has a substantial holding. Rhodesia-Katanga is indebted to the British South Africa Co. by reason of the perpetual mining rights the latter has granted it over any minerals, including coal but excluding diamonds and precious stones, which may be found in about 2,5000 square miles of Zambia. Additionally, it has perpetual coal mining rights in twenty areas of 300 acres, each subject to 15 per cent interest of the British South Africa Co.<br /> <br /> To complete Tanganyika Concessions’ roster of subsidiaries, there is the wholly owned Tanganyika Properties (Rhodesia) Ltd., registered in Salisbury, Rhodesia. It provides office and staff accommodation together with allied services, as well as holding certain investments.<br /> <br /> Consolidated profit made by Tanganyika Concessions for the year ended 31 July 1961 was £3,296,325 out of a total revenue of £4,462,667. Its current assets are £4,380,163 in shares and debentures of Benguela Railway Co.: £5,300,318 in shares and loan to Commonwealth Timber Industries; £1,317,793 in Tanganyika Holdings; and £4,019,629 in Union Minière, whose ramifications will be examined in a later chapter.<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> Coming to the South-West Africa Co. Ltd. we find Anglo American Corporation and Consolidated Gold Fields merging to exploit a vast section of wealth of southern Africa.<br /> <br /> The South-West Africa Co. Ltd. was registered in London on 18 August 1892, and has a special grant of exclusive prospecting and mining rights over some 3,000 square miles of the Damaraland concession area of South-west Africa. This grant was made by the Administration of South-west Africa for a period of five years from 2 January 1942, and has since been renewed until 2 January 1967. The company also holds mining areas in various other districts of South-west Afrcia. It produces tin-wolfram and zinc-lead concentrates as well as vanadates.<br /> <br /> Large areas of land such as those held by the South-West Africa Co. demand extremely heavy capital investment to exploit and encourage the formation of alliances between groups desirous of controlling output, distribution, and hence the prices of raw materials. Not only that, it facilitates the channelling of their processing through the allied organisations. To pursue this policy of co-ordination, the South-West Africa Co. signed an agreement with a joint Anglo American-Consolidated Gold Fields venture by which it sub-leased certain of its rights to explore and exploit its concessions. See Chart 3.<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> The Newmont Mining Corporation was formed in Delaware, U.S.A., on 2 May 1921. The purpose of the company is to acquire, develop, finance and operate mining properties. For this purpose a share capital of $60 million has been authorised. At 31 December 1961, 2,824,518 of the authorised six million ten-dollar shares had been issued, and paid up. Mining exploration is carried on by the company through Newmont Exploration Ltd. (Delaware), Newmont Mining Corporation of Canada Ltd. and Newmont of South Africa (Pty) Ltd. Chart 4 gives some idea of the extent of their interests.<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> We have already met certain of the Rio Tinto companies in Zambia and Rhodesia, and have touched upon others in connection with the Société Générale de Belgique’s associations with the North American financial and industrial scene. The Rio Tinto complex is one that would be hard to miss in any attempt to examine the ramifications of the international mining world. It stretches from the United Kingdom across Spain into Africa and over the Atlantic into Canada and the U.S.A., with forays into Germany, Belgium, Austria, Australia and elsewhere. The hands of Anglo American Corporation, Consolidated Zinc Corporation and world-embracing aluminium groups are firmly clasped within it, and representatives of the Congo combination of companies adorn the directorates which bear such aristocratic names as Rothschild and Cavendish-Bentinck.<br /> <br /> Though its original interests were mining pyrites in Spain, the Rio Tinto Co. Ltd. was registered in London in 1873. Keeping up with the times and the general trend towards combination and monopoly, the company underwent certain changes. Its directors were among the most fervent supporters of General Franco at the time of the Spanish Civil War. This devotion to the Caudillo’s cause undoubtedly prospered them so that, together with their associates in the wider financial sphere, they have been able to spread their tentacles through the zinc and aluminium industry into the precious metals and general metals’ fields. In 1954 Rio Tinto transferred its Spanish assets to a company which it formed in Spain with a capital of 1,000,000,000 pesetas, under the title of Companhia Espanhola de Minas de Rio Tinto S.A. For this worthy proof of its sensitiveness to Spanish patriotism, it received a compensation of 36,666,830 pesetas in settlement of profits accumulated up to 1 January 1954, and all the 333,333 ‘B’ shares of 1,000 pesetas each in the new company. Additionally it was awarded a sterling payment of £7,666,665. Rio Tinto still draws a retainer as provider of technical and commercial services in London for the Spanish company, in which its holding of all the ‘B’ shares still gives it a direct interest.<br /> <br /> Rio Tinto is now an investment holding company, whose financial operations have brought it into the forefront of industrial entrepreneurship. Africa is well up among its spheres of activity, its most important holdings on the continent being in Rhokana Corporation and Nchanga Copper Mines, where, as we have seen, it is associated with the British South Africa Co., Anglo American Corporation, Union Corporation, Tanganyika Concessions, Union Minière and Rand Selection Trust in their holdings in the important Rhodesian and South Africa mining and industrial ventures.<br /> <br /> So tortuous and incredibly expansile are the links that tie the groups exploiting Africa’s resources with those enriching themselves in other corners of the earth that we should find nothing remarkable in being led back from Rio Tinto in Africa, via some of the most powerful American and British financial forces, into Rio Tinto in Canada.<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> One of the most lively motivating springs of monopoly is to forestall in new or unexplored areas the entry of rival groups, and where this proves abortive or impossible, to collaborate with them. We shall see in a later chapter how Canadian Eldorado forced Union Minière to bring down the price of uranium and how their interests lock through Sogemines representation on the former’s board. In the world of Western free enterprise, competition is being eroded by monopoly’s role of the lone ranger after undivided profits.<br /> <br /> Thus are African riches brought to support the manipulative ramifications of international finance-capital. Between Société Générale and Rio Tinto there is interposed a solid phalanx of interwoven power that moves out stealthily across the world.<br /> <br /> Breaking into the aluminium world, Rio Tinto formed an alliance with Consolidated Zinc Corporation Lt. This merger appeared superficially to bring together two powerful groups having no joint leading strings. This ostensible separation would mislead only the ignorant. Its subterfuge is immediately destroyed by a single glance at its combined directorate, which at once shows up the connections with South African mining and financial interests. P. V. Emrys-Evans is a prominent member, and the Rt. Hon. Lord Baillieu, K.B.E., C.M.G., deputy chairman. Lord Baillieu is also deputy chairman of the Central Mining and Investment Corporation Ltd., a leading investment and finance house within the Anglo American group of companies directed by Harry F. Oppenheimer and C. W. Engelhard. Mr Emrys-Evans is also important in his own right, being vice-president of the British South Africa Co. and a director of Anglo American.<br /> <br /> However, the connection goes further than that. British South Africa Holdings Ltd., and some of its associates, under an agreement dated 7 December 1960, subscribed £10 million to Consolidated Zinc in the form of 5 1/2 per cent loan stock in return for options to acquire 2,285,714 ordinary shares of £1 each in Consolidated Zinc at a price of 87''s.'' 6''d''. a share. Here we enter into the intricate maze of aluminium financial policies into which Consolidated Zinc has made deep incursions by its alliance with the Kaiser Aluminium &amp; Chemical Corporation in Commonwealth Aluminium Corporation (Pty) Ltd., commonly known as Comalco. The options acquired by British South Africa Holdings can be exercised any time between 1 June 1966 and 1 July 1968 or the date on which Commonwealth or its associated operating companies have produced a total of 200,000 long tons of aluminium ingots in the proposed new refinery to be erected by Comalco, whichever is the later.<br /> <br /> Kaiser Aluminium’s principal interest is in its wholly owned Kaiser Bauxite Co., Jamaica. In addition to its mining activities, Kaiser operates processing and chemical plants in the United States and Canada and has investments in aluminium, mining, reduction and fabricating facilities and marketing industries in the United Kingdom, South America, Africa and Asia. It operates through two fully owned subsidiaries: Kaiser Aluminium &amp; Chemical Sales Inc. and Kaiser Aluminium International Corporation. Like Reynolds Metals, Kaiser Aluminium only broke into the United States aluminium industry under the impetus of wartime demands for aircraft metal. Before the second world war, Aluminium Co. of America – ALCOA – was the sole domestic producer of primary aluminium.<br /> <br /> Consolidated Zinc, with an authorised capital of £25 million, has extensive interests which make it a formidable controller of a number of important metals and allied chemical products. Formed less than fifteen years ago, in February 1949, its purposes were ‘to develop, extend and carry on or finance, either itself or through any of its subsidiary or associated companies, the development, extension and carrying on of the lead and zinc mining and other or raw material producing industries and the smelting, refining and manufacturing and other industries associated therewith, throughout the world, and particularly in the Commonwealth’.<br /> <br /> All this apparently has no connection with Africa, but we have only to look at some of the directorates to discover immediately how close the links are with the Oppenheimer network and the financial groups that associate with it.<br /> <br /> Such are the mammoth gold-clad interests that are behind the Consolidated Zinc-Rio Tinto merger. The new holding company, Rio Tinto-Zinc Corporation Ltd., was created by a financial operation that gave shareholders of Consolidated Zinc fifty-eight ordinary shares of ten shillings each in the new company in exchange for every twenty shares of £1 in Consolidated Zinc. Rio Tinto stockholders received forty-one shares of ten shillings each in the new company for every twenty ordinary stock units of ten shillings held in Rio Tinto. Preference shares in both companies were also exchanged for preference shares in the new one.<br /> <br /> The merger brings Rio Tinto-Zinc well into the forefront of the aluminium field, accentuating its already important position in the zinc-lead and non-ferrous metals field. It brings Consolidated Zinc more fully into the sphere of mineral exploitation in Africa by reason of Rio Tinto’s holdings in some of the principal concerns operating in South Africa, Rhodesia and elsewhere. The connections with the American, Canadian and Australian industrial and financial scenes are apparent from the foregoing very brief review. Through these interests, the Rio Tinto-Zinc combine has additional strings which lead back again to Africa.<br /> <br /> === Concentration of Zinc's Interests ===<br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> There are some rare and localised non-metallic materials which are used in basic and secondary industries. These include asbestos, corundum, mica, vermiculite, phosphate rock, gypsum, mineral pigments, fluorspar, and silica. The most important is asbestos. It is found in three principal fibres; chrysolite, crocidolite or blue asbestos, and amosite. All three fibres have certain common characteristics. They are all non-inflammable, non-conductors of heat and electricity; they are practically insoluble in acids and are capable of being spun into textiles.<br /> <br /> It is slight differences in these qualities that give them different uses. Chrysolite is the most resistant to fire, and its strong, fine flexible texture makes it highly suitable for asbestos textiles and for use in brake linings, clutch facings and insulation fittings. It is used also for asbestos boards and asbestos cement products. Blue asbestos has greater tensile strength and resilience, and though not so resistant to fire, withstands acids and sea-water better. It is used chiefly in the manufacture of filter cloth, boiler mattresses, insulation packings and asbestos cement products. Amosite has a fibre length of three to six inches and has greater resistance to heat than crocidolite and greater resistance to sea-water than blue asbestos. These qualities make it particularly suitable for use in spun materials and aircraft. South Africa is at present almost the only place in which both blue asbestos and amosite are found. Canada is the greatest producer of chrysolite; South Africa and Rhodesia are far behind.<br /> <br /> The South African deposits are mainly in Swaziland and Eastern Transvaal. They are in the virtual control of a British firm, Turner &amp; Newall Ltd., registered in 1920, which has in its hands 90 per cent of the British asbestos trade. This fact enabled it to secure an agreement in 1930 with the Soviet Union regulating deliveries to the continental market. An important producer of high grade chrysolite, the Soviet Union ceased export after the last war.<br /> <br /> Superficially unimposing, Turner &amp; Newall’s board has as its chairman Ronald G. Scothill, who is associated with the insurance world as director of Liverpool and Globe Insurance Co. Ltd. and Royal Insurance Co. Ltd., and with finance as director of the District Bank. Its capital, however, is impressive, being authorised at £60 million with almost £50 million paid up. Originally £3 million, the increase in the size of the company’s capital gives an indication of the growth of its dominance of asbestos mining and allied industries.<br /> <br /> This capitalisation becomes more articulate when it is related to the sweep of the Turner &amp; Newall asbestos kingdom, which is rooted in African and Canadian mines. A holding company, it has a network of subsidiaries throughout the world which manufacture and sell asbestos, magnesia and connected products. See Chart 7.<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> A recent survey reveals that some 60 to 70 per cent of the world’s total business activity is controlled by less than 2 per cent of all the companies in the world. The colossal Unilever Trust is a perfect illustration of this monopolistic ratio of control.<br /> <br /> For millions of housewives there is no such thing as a corporate entity called Unilever. There is just the daily routine of choosing between Lifebuoy and Lux, Pepsodent and Gibbs, Orno and Surf – or buying Lipton’s tea, Wall’s sausages and Bird’s Eye frozen foods, Flytox, Stork margarine and Harriet Hubbard Ayer’s cosmetics. From the viewpoint of the tax-collector also, Unilever is still not a corporate entity but two separate companies, ‘Unilever Limited’, the British Company, and ‘Unilever N.V.’, the Dutch company. It has subsidiaries throughout Europe, in Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland. In all these countries it tends to control the production of soups, frozen foods, soap, margarine, insecticides, detergents, cosmetics and edible oils. It has also powerful and century-old interests in Latin America, west, central and South Africa, India, Ceylon, Malaysia, Trinidad, Thailand and the Philippines.<br /> <br /> Unilever’s most robust offshoot overseas is the United Africa Company, through which the Trust became known as the ‘uncrowned King of West Africa’. The United Africa Company is the world’s largest international trading company, and contrary to the belief that the liberation of colonial territories would automatically suppress monopoly capitalism, the Unilever empire continues to flourish. This is because it has known how to adapt its policy to the ‘challenge of the times’, as a company report puts it. And so, Unilever is applying its profit-making objectives to other more yielding sectors. It has accelerated its withdrawal from the West African merchandise and produce trade to concentrate on development in cars, engineering and the pharmaceutical sides of the business. The neo-colonialist aim is not only to export capital but also to control the overseas market. Thus attempts are subtly made to prevent developing countries from taking any decisive steps towards industrialisation, since the exploitation of the indigenous expanding market is not the prime objective. If the attempts to prevent industrialisation fail, then at all costs the Trust must secure a participation in a development it cannot prevent. And by its very nature this participation thwarts any further progress since it ensures a regular flow of payments into the coffers of monopoly capital in the form of royalties, patents, licensing agreements, technical assistance, equipment and other ‘services’. It also gives priority to the assembling and packaging of foreign products often presented under the false labels of indigenous concerns. Unilever’s present emphasis on the packaging industries is also no coincidence.<br /> <br /> The up-to-date Trust relies less on the amount of the dividends than on certain clauses in the Company agreements which make indigenous capital dependent on monopoly capital for the renewal of contracts and for the allocation of funds. It is significant that in a recent issue of the ''New Commonwealth'', the United Africa Company has been referred to as the ‘gentle giant’. Monopoly methods have become more subtle, but Lever’s famous statement still seems to hold true: ‘Afterall we are working for the permanent interests of Britain’.<br /> <br /> == The Tin, Aluminum and Nickel Giants ==<br /> The tin empire of Patino of Canada Ltd. and its associates spreads from South America to the United Kingdom and North America and across Africa into the Pacific and Asia. Capitalised at $10 million, Patino of Canada has issued and paid up 1,971,839 shares of $2. Of these 47·2 per cent are held by a Panamanian financing house within the Patino group, Compania de Bonos Acciones y Negocios Industriales – COBANISA. Patino’s purchase into General Tin Investments Ltd. in 1962 brought this tycoon into a large share of the United Kingdom spread in the tin-mining and dealing world. General Tin Investments is charged with acquiring and holding shares in mining, finance and industrial companies, its principal holdings being in those companies connected with the tin industry. It carries out its financing operations through a wholly-owned subsidiary, General Metal Securities (London) Ltd. A. Patino presides over both boards where he has as colleagues Count G. du Boisbouvray, J. Ortiz-Linares and E. R. E. Carter. Carter is president of Brunswick Mining &amp; Smelting Corporation and of several other companies associated with the Patino group. Brunswick comes within the Morgan sphere of influence through the interest maintained by St Joseph Lead Co. We also know that Sogemines has concerned itself with a substantial investment with the New Brunswick Mines of Brunswick Mining. The spokes that lead out from the Société Générale de Belgique’s African hub into the affairs of the most powerful financial monopolies in the world seem ever-increasing.<br /> <br /> Patino’s direct investments in Canada cover substantial holdings in Copper Rand Chibougama Mines Ltd., Advocate Mines Ltd., Nipissing Mines Co Ltd. and Brunswick Mining. By financial jugglery consolidation of the principal Canadian companies of the group was achieved in 1960. This was done through an agreement between Copper Rand, Nipissing Mines, Chibougama Jaculet Mines Ltd., Portage Island (Chibougama) Mines Ltd., Patino of Canada and Bankmont &amp; Co. a financial house. Copper is the chief mineral mined, but gold and silver are also produced. The Copper Rand property covers some 10,000 acres held in four concessions. Portage Island is a copper-gold property of Copper Rand, and the Jaculet mine a copper property.<br /> <br /> Nipissing enters into the picture as a financial contributor to the development of the Portage Island property. It is the holder of a number of mining claims in Quebec and holds diverse share interests. Its operations branch into the U.S.A. though a wholly-owned subsidiary, Appalachian Sulphides Inc., with mining rights to ore deposits in the States of Vermont and North Carolina. Nipissing bought into Brunswick Mining by acquiring from a Patino subsidiary, Patino Mines &amp; Enterprises Consolidated (Inc.), 137,143 shares and $537,429 worth of 5 per cent bonds of Brunswick, giving to Patino 1,061,145 shares of Nipissing. Patino’s holdings in the Chibougama group and association with Maritimes Mining Corporation and the Irving Oil Co. Ltd. in a 40 per cent purchase of Brunswick mining shares extend the Patino empire substantially into fields other than tin.<br /> <br /> American and Belgian mining and financial interests as powerful as Patino’s have linked together with Patino of Canada in investigating and developing mineral deposits on an exclusive basis across 750 square miles of land on the north-eastern coast of Newfoundland, under rights granted to Advocate. At the end of 1960 proven ore reserves totalled 35 million tons of commercial grade. Advocate is developing asbestos under a project undertaken by Patino of Canada in conjunction with Canadian Johns-Manville Co. Ltd., Amet Corporation Inc. and Financière Belge de l'Asbestos-Ciment S.A. The participants have agreed to place the property on an operating basis by furnishing to Advocate a total sum of $17,900,000. Canadian Johns-Manville will contribute 49·62 per cent, Patino 17·3 per cent, Amet and Financière Belge 16·54 per cent each. Advocate has been capitalised at $23 million and the parties to the agreement share in the capital ratio to the amount of their contributions, based on denominations of $100.<br /> <br /> Canadian Johns-Manville, which is tied up with the Imperial-Commerce Bank, the largest in Canada, upon which sits a director of Johns-Manville, is a fully-owned subsidiary of the Johns-Manville Corporation of the United States. Its main interests are in asbestos, which it processes into fibre and manufactures into building and industrial materials. IT is in control of Advocate’s management, and has also a majority interest in and management control of Coalinga Asbestos Co of California, U.S.A., a joint venture with Kern County Land Co. The part Johns-Manville, of America, manufactures products from asbestos, magnesia and perlite, having manufacturing plants in America, Canada and elsewhere.<br /> <br /> Advocate has advanced certain monies to Maritime Mining, which has close relations with Patino by reason of its associations with the purchase of the St Joseph Lead holdings in Brunswick Mining. Maritimes’ share of this purchase was 46 per cent at a cost of $4,848,000. Maritime works copper on claims in New Brunswick, Canada, and properties in Newfoundland owned directly and also indirectly via a fully-owned subsidiary, Gull Lake Mines Ltd., through which it also owns all the shares of Gullbridge Mines Ltd. It has an arrangement with Falconbridge Nickel Mines giving the latter the right to a maximum one-third participation in any future financing which Maritime might undertake. Maritime and Patino of Canada share a director in W.F. James who is also on the Falconbridge board.<br /> <br /> Quebec Metallurgical is another holding company having wide interests inside and outside Canada. These include a platinum property in South Africa’s Transvaal, a small gold mine in Brazil, and nickel and cobalt interests in New Caledonia, where, through links with Patino, it is associated with Le Nickel.<br /> <br /> Unfortunately for Patino, certain assets in Bolivia have had to be relinquished under a nationalisation programme. Bolivia was for many more years than its people cared about drained by foreign interests of its mineral resources, in which tin predominates, but which also include silver, lead, zinc, antimony, and copper. Its oil deposits were large enough to entice Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Co., who entrenched themselves by working a large concession, while the Guggenheim Brothers of America, as well as British, French and others, gathered in tin and copper over a long period, paying the Indian workers around sixpence a day for their labour.<br /> <br /> The properties of the Delaware incorporated Patino Mines &amp; Enterprises Consolidated were nationalised by the Bolivian Government on 31 October 1952 and vested in a State-owned property, the Corporacion Minera de Bolivia Comibol. These Patino properties consisted of mining and placer claims, water rights, mill sites, reduction, concentrating and hydro-electric plants, as well as a railway connecting the mines with a point on the main line of the Antofagasta-Bolivian Railroad Co. Ltd. Patino Mines formed another Delaware subsidiary in 1959, Patino Enterprises Inc.<br /> <br /> As one of the largest entrepreneurs in the tin industry, A. Patino has a seat on the main consolidated organisations looking after the interests of those engaged in this field, usually in the company of the Count of Boisbouvray and J. Ortiz-Linares. All three of them are to be found on the board of British Tin Investment Corporation Ltd., a United Kingdom company formed in 1932 to take over British-American Tin Corporation Ltd. Together with its wholly-owned subsidiaries, Tin Industrial Finance &amp; Underwriting Ltd. and B.T.I.C. (Overseas) Ltd., British Tin holds large blocks of shares in the Malayan tin-mining industry, as well as investments in companies producing other metals and minerals.<br /> <br /> General Tin Investments has a 55 per cent interest in eastern Smelting Co. Ltd., owning smelting works at Penang, Malaya. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Consolidated Tin, Williams Harvey &amp; Co. Ltd., holds 75 per cent of the issued share capital of Makeri Smelting Co. Ltd. incorporated in Nigeria in 1961. Makeri has built a tin smelter on the Jos Plateau, Northern Nigeria, which began production in December 1961. Vivian, Younger &amp; Bond Ltd., the sole selling agents of Consolidated Tin, are well established in Nigeria.<br /> <br /> London Tin Corporation Ltd. board does not include any of the Patino directors, but the relationship with the Patino interests are obviously established when we note on its board C. Waite, chairman and managing director of Consolidated Tin Smelters and its subsidiary Williams Harvey &amp; Co., and a director of British Tin Investment Corporation and General Tin Investments. Mr Waite also sits on the board of Consolidated Tin subsidiaries: the Penpoll Tin Smelting Co. Ltd., Eastern Smelting Co., Wm. Symington &amp; Sons Ltd. (rubber merchants) and that of the distributing agents, Vivian, Younger &amp; Bond.<br /> <br /> As director of Southern Kinta Consolidated Ltd., Southern Malayan Tin Dredging Ltd., Kamunting Tin Dredging Ltd., Malayan Tin Dredging Ltd., Mr Waite obviously represents on those boards the interests (including those of Patino) of Consolidated Tin. A director, moreover, of the Chartered Bank and a member of the London Board of British &amp; Foreign Marine Insurance Co. Ltd., he certainly represents the financial interests supporting them. This conclusion is backed by the directorial presence of Francis G. Charlesworth on British Tin and as chairman of Malayan Tin Dredging and Southern Malayan Tin. Mr Charlesworth is also a director of certain other tin companies operating in the Malayan area, namely Kramat Pulai Ltd., Ackam Tin Ltd. and Ayer Hitam Tin Dredging Ltd. He is, moreover, a member of the board of Locana Mineral Holdings Ltd., which is honoured by including a scion of the Austro-Hungarian empire, H.I.R.H. The Archduke Robert Charles of Austria.<br /> <br /> Locana is an investment and holding company, connected principally with the Canadian mining industry. Mr Charlesworth is a direct link with the world of tin mining and dealing through his association with British Tin and its interests in Malaya. Sitting alongside Mr Charlesworth on the Locana board are Messrs N. K. Kindhead-Weekes and J. N. Kiek. Both also sit on the boards of important South African and Rhodesian companies.<br /> <br /> Mr. Kiek is a chairman of Chicago-Gaika Development Co. Ltd., a company existing since 1897 and having seventeen gold claims in the Sebakwe district of Matabeland, Rhodesia, which was at one time within the jurisdiction of the British South Africa Company. Mr Kiek’s other associations are with the London and Rhodesian Mining and Land Co. Ltd., owning directly 384 gold-mining claims, base-metal claims and lands covering 757,000 acres in Rhodesia. Some of the properties are leased on a royalty basis, and ranching operations are also carried on.<br /> <br /> Subsidiary companies of London &amp; Rhosdesian include Mazoe Consolidated Mined Ltd., Lonrho Exploration Co. Ltd. and African Investment Trust Ltd., which took over all the company’s investments in 1958, except shares in subsidiaries and trade investments. Its associates include Arcturus Mines Ltd., Homestake Gold Mining Co. Ltd., Coronation Syndicate Ltd. and North Charterland Exploration Co. (1937) Ltd. Among further interests acquired by London &amp; Rhodesian in 1961 were 90 per cent of Consolidated Holdings (Pvt) Ltd., 100 per cent of Mashaba Gold Mines (Pvt) Ltd., which operates the Empress Gold Mine at Mashaba, near Fort Victoria, Rhodesia, 37 per cent of Kanyemba Gold Mines and 51 per cent of Associated Overland Pipelines of Rhodesia (Pvt) Ltd., in exchange for 1,500,000 shares in London &amp; Rhodesian and an option on another 2 million.<br /> <br /> That London &amp; Rhodesian Mining comes within the Oppenheimer group interests there can be no doubt, despite the separate front that is kept up. G. Abdinor, a director of Arcturus Mines, Coronation Syndicate, Homestake, Kenyemba and Mazoe, is also a member of the boards of Calcon Mines Ltd. (Northern Rhodesia), Spaarwater Gold Mining Co. Ltd. and West Spaarwater Ltd., as is also S. F. Dench, who is chairman of West Spaarwater and of Coronation Syndicate and Kanyemba. Spaarwater Gold is among the interests of Consolidated Gold Fields, while Henderson’s Transvaal Estates Ltd., of which Mr Dench is a director, comes within the Oppenheimer African Investment Trust group of holding companies, on whose board sits Mr Kiek. It is, in fact, the total owner of African Exploration Co. Ltd. which gives secretarial aid to West Spaarwater and Coronation Syndicate.<br /> <br /> Interestingly enough, Henderson’s Transvaal Estates has a fully-owned subsidiary, Mineral Holdings Ltd., owning freehold lands in Transvaal and Orange Free State, totalling 3,706 acres, and mineral rights over a further 689,380 acres. In addition, it has two mineral concessions in Swaziland, totalling 84,019 acres.<br /> <br /> Another direct wholly-owned subsidiary of Henderson’s Transvaal is Mineral Holdings Investments Ltd., which holds 720,000 shares in Leslie Gold Mines Ltd. and 200,000 in Bracken Mines Ltd., both of them belonging to the Union Corporation group of the Oppenheimer empire. Both mines enjoy a loan of £1 million each from the National Finance Corporation of South Africa, in which Anglo American Corporation and a number of other groups and institutions associated with it have substantial interests.<br /> <br /> J. N. Kiek also occupied the managing director’s position on Rhodesia Railways Trust Co. Ltd., and two other Oppenheimer financial concerns, Willoughby’s Consolidated Co. Ltd. and Willoughby’s (Investments) Ewell Ltd. Mr Kiek’s associate director N. K. Kindhead-Weekes, is a director of such important Oppenheimer enterprises as Wankie Colliery (linked with Tanganyika Concessions and Union Minière), Chibuluma Mines, Chisangwa Mines and Chambishi Mines, and also Charterland Exploration Ltd., all of them in Rhodesia. Charterland Exploration has been granted exclusive prospecting rights by British South Africa Co. over areas totalling some 118,000 square miles in Zambia.<br /> <br /> The Patino network is shown in Chart 8. Of the organisations dominating the aluminium industry we note first the Aluminium Co. of America (ALCOA) and the aluminium empire of Mellon.<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> This company mines bauxite in Arkansas and has subsidiaries digging and bringing out ore from far-flung places to feed the smelting and processing works in the United States. These are sited mainly in the southern States, though there are works at Massena, New York. Casting and fabricating plants are operating in twelve of the American States, while wholly-owned subsidiaries are exploring for raw materials in Europe, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Australia and Africa.<br /> <br /> Surinam Aluminium Co. is the principal ore-producing subsidiary. It mines bauxite in the Dutch-held territory of Surinam, part of Guiana, which stretches over the north-eastern corner of the South American continent lying north of the Amazon and south of the Orinoco. Under an agreement with the Surinam Government, Surinam Aluminium has a 75-year bauxite-mining concession. It is building power facilities and will construct a 60,000-ton aluminium smelter. The eventual construction of a bauxite refinery utilising local ores is envisaged, according to the company’s publicity material. Another full subsidiary is mining bauxite in the Dominican Republic and, in May 1960, mining rights were acquired over 30,000 acres of Jamaica. Chart 9 shows the extent of Alcoa’s foreign interests.<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> Because of the anti-trust laws there is legally no direct connection between Alcoa and Aluminium Ltd., but they are both owned by the same Mellon-Davis dominated group of United States shareholders. Two brothers, Arthur V. Davis of Alcoa and Edward K. Davis of Aluminium Ltd., were for many years president of the respective companies. When the latter died in 1947 he was succeeded by his son, Nathaniel V. Davis. The size of the Davis block of shares in the Mellon aluminium companies is about a third of that of the Mellons. In 1957 ''Fortune'', the American journal read by all who would be well-informed on matters of big business, listed Arthur V. Davis as one of seven persons with fortunes between $400 million and $700 million. Of the other six, four were Mellons. Aluminium Ltd’s Davis is a director of the Mellon Bank.<br /> <br /> United Kingdom provides as a subsidiary Alcan Industries Ltd. and France contributes a further wholly-owned subsidiary in S.A. des Bauxites et Alumines de Provence, in which Aluminium Ltd. has invested some $100 million. Its mines produced 300,000 tons in 1960, from which alumina is processed. Making itself independent in the sphere of transport Alcan created Saquenay Shipping Ltd., fully financed by itself, to own and charter a fleet of ships for carrying the group’s bauxite, alumina and ingot.<br /> <br /> Though Kaiser and Reynolds set up aluminium companies as an attempt at independence from the Mellon empire, in the case of Kaiser financial alliance was formed early. Reynolds also has not found it possible to keep entirely aloof from the Mellon tentacles. Formed in mid-1928, Reynolds Metals Co. created in 1940 its subsidiary, Reynolds Mining Corporation, to work 6,100 acres of bauxite land which it had obtained in Arkansas and to mine fluorspar in Mexico, which is shipped for processing at the company’s works in America.<br /> <br /> Abroad, Reynolds owns bauxite mines and exploration tracts in north-east British Guiana, as well as in Haiti and Jamaica. The dried ores are shipped to plants in Massachusetts, Delaware, Arkansas and Texas, U.S.A., more than 3 million tons have been mined and shipped during 1961. Other subsidiaries and affiliates operate in Bermuda, Venezuela, Philippines, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Africa, Columbia and other parts of the world. Reynolds Jamaica Mines Ltd. in 1957 acquired the right from the Jamaican Government to mine bauxite for 99 years on all lands then owned or held by it under option in return for ore royalties and taxes. These lands amounted to 74,000 acres. Mining leases have been obtained on 5,822 acres.<br /> <br /> The United Kingdom end of the Reynolds’ aluminium activities is operated through British Aluminium Ltd. At one time it looked as though Mellon would take over the British company, but an alliance between Tube Investment Ltd. and Reynolds secured them 96 per cent control of British Aluminium, T.I. taking 49 per cent and Reynolds 47 per cent. The Commonwealth, Europe, Asia and Africa are embraced within the company’s sphere of activities, its subsidiaries and affiliates controlling power resources, bauxite properties, processing works, even a Grand Hotel, and a pension trust, all of which are listed among Tube Investment’s interests as the major parent company.<br /> <br /> British Aluminium took over Reynolds T.I. Aluminium in mid-1961, owned at the time 51 per cent by T.I. and 49 per cent by Reynolds. Members of the Reynolds’ family sit on the British Aluminium board, which accommodates W. B. C. Perrycoste, director of Ghana Bauxite Co. Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company, registered in London in 1933. Other African interests are represented by E. F. O. Gascoigne, chairman of Tanganyika Holdings, Kentan Gold Areas, Zambesia Exploring and Zambesia Investment, all within the Tanganyika Concessions sphere. The ‘objective’ British press is also represented by the presence on British Aluminium’s board of Sir Geoffrey Crowther, one-time editor of ''The Economist'' and now its deputy chairman. Commercial Union Assurance is also among Sir Geoffrey’s and Lord Plowden’s directorships.<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> FRIA Cie Internationale pour la Production de l'Alumine, Guinea, is one of British Aluminium’s biggest interests in Africa, in which it holds 10 per cent of the shares. The project is to produce, initially, 480,000 tons of alumina annually, of which 10 per cent will be available to British Aluminium.<br /> <br /> The Mellons were the original party directly interested in developing Guinea’s bauxite resources but, unable to force the pressure on the newly independent African State, their people were forced to retire, having fruitlessly disbursed, according to their own estimates, some $20 million. Other partners in Fria are:<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> Olin Mathieson is within the Rockefeller sphere of influence represented on the chemical company’s board by Lawrence Rockefeller, who acts for the family in its activities outside oil. Control, however, is shared with the Morgans. Thus, the Mellon group gave way to an overwhelmingly more powerful compact of interests hidden behind the Olin Mathieson facade.<br /> <br /> The second-largest holder of Fria is a combination of the Pechiney and Ugine companies. Pechiney is an abbreviation of Compagnie des Produits Chimiques et Electrometallurgiques. Among its directors is Paul Gillet, an honorary governor of Société Générale de Belgique, chairman of Union Minière, and associate of many of the foremost concerns exploiting Africa’s resources. Its chairman is Paul de Vitry, a director of the Banque de Paris et des Pay Bas. This bank, of which Henry Lafond was also a director, besides sitting with Paul de Vitry on Pechiney, operates in the Congo and South Africa. In fact it is ubiquitous in the new ventures going forward in Africa, especially those in the new States bordering the Sahara.<br /> <br /> Pechiney, registered in Paris at the opening of the year 1896, is the continuation of a company formed over a hundred years ago in 1855 and, like the other leading mining and metallurgical companies in France, has links with the country’s leading banking houses. Its proliferations are manifold, covering the production of bauxite, barytes and lignite, chemicals manufacture, the processing of aluminium and other metals and electrometallurgical products. It manufactures almost everything from plastics, through iron alloys, graphite products, up to new metals and nuclear products. It holds part and total portions of affiliated companies in France and other countries in Europe, Africa and elsewhere. Its mining operations spread from north to south of France and into Africa.<br /> <br /> Responsible today for four-fifths of France’s output of aluminium, Pechiney’s trading in the metal accounts for nearly 60 per cent of its turnover. Its only sizeable French competitor is Ugine, which collaborates with Pechiney on investment policy, as we note above, and in a joint sales subsidiary, Aluminium Français. Both firms are expanding rapidly, and Pechiney has as widespread operations as the British and American aluminium companies, though the latter have greater output. It is expected that Pechiney-Ugine capacity may reach 300,000 tons by 1963. Pechiney uses 15 per cent of a total French power output, so that the discovery of natural gas as Lacq in south-western France made a considerable contribution to its expansion. It had pushed the aluminium sector of its exports to 37 per cent and hopes to save on its production costs by the introduction of a new process for reducing bauxite to aluminium. A pilot plant has been put into operation and its success will enable Pechiney to expand into new aluminium industries.<br /> <br /> Through the Banque de Paris, which is said to be the biggest shareholder in the important Franco-Norwegian chemical concern, Norsk Hydro, majority-controlled by the Norwegian Government, Pechiney may become linked with the project. The Norwegians are anxious to increase their output from its present level of 200,000 tons to 600,000 tons by 1970. Already Pechiney is in consortia operating in Greece, Spain and the Argentine, and has holdings in Senegal and Madagascar projects. As a matter of fact, there is hardly a new consortium springing up in Africa today, particularly in the Maghreb, in which Pechiney does not have an oar. It certainly has a watchful eye on the vast natural gas deposits of the Sahara, which are not uneconomically distant from the bauxite fields of Mali.<br /> <br /> The international nickel field binds a select coterie of extractive, processing and financing concerns whose control keeps it within fairly exclusive numerical limits. Grouped around the International Nickel Co. of Canada Ltd. – INCO – Falconbridge, Sherritt Gordon Mines Ltd. of Canada and Faraday Uranium Mines Ltd. and Freeport Sulphur Co. of the United States are not geographically confined. In unravelling their engagements, we find their penetrations in Africa as well as in other parts of the world.<br /> <br /> Inco’s direct link with the Oppenheimer mining interests in Africa has already been made apparent through the interlocking directorships of Sir Ronald L. Prain and Sir Otto Niemeyer. We will see further how, through its interests in certain mines, these are connected indirectly with combinations having definite ties with the exploitation of Africa’s mineral resources. It is when the financial interests behind them are examined that we find the continuity of power.<br /> <br /> The name Mond immediately brings to mind nickel, as well as explosives, chemicals and arms, and we find it linked to the most powerful international nickel organisation under the form of International Nickel Co. (Mond) Ltd. It was under the founder of Brunner Mond &amp; Co. Ltd., Ludwig Mond, who, having invented the ammonia soda process and found a cheap source of power from small coal, discovered a method of recovering nickel from low-grade ores. This led to the finding, acquisition and development of mines in Canada, the world’s present chief source, the ores coming almost totally from the Sudbury district of Ontario. Brunner Mond, together with Novel Industries, United Alkali Co. Ltd. (an amalgamation of forty-eight works) and British Dyestuffs Corporation Ltd., were knit together in December 1926 to form Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd.<br /> <br /> Mond Nickel Co. Ltd. was established in 1914 to exploit the mine that adjoined Inco’s properties on the Sudbury range. The interests of both companies were fused in 1928. Change of name to its present form was made in February 1961, and the company is a subsidiary of Anglo Canadian Mining &amp; Refining Co. Ltd., which owns the 9 million shares issued out of the 11 million authorised to compose the capital of £5 million. Anglo-Canadian is itself a wholly-owned subsidiary of Inco.<br /> <br /> Among the extensive properties and plants owned by International Nickel Mond in the United Kingdom are a refining works in South Wales and a precious metals refinery in a London industrial area, a number of rolling mills in various parts of Britain, as well as the entire share capital of Henry Wiggin &amp; Co. Ltd., manufacturers of nickel and nickel alloys and other products. Two interesting items in Nickel Mond’s treasury are the entire capital of Clydach Estates Ltd. and Mond Nickel (Retirement System) Trustees Ltd. This is the United Kingdom end of Inco, which has appointed its delegate board and consolidates the U.K. accounts with its own.<br /> <br /> In order to keep its plants working to fullest capacity Inco has arrangements with associates for the treatment of their products. Hence certain nickel concentrates in excess of its own treatment facilities are worked for Sherritt Gordon Mines, and there is an agreement with Texas Gulf Sulphur Co., covering the operation of a pilot plant to investigate processes for the recovery of elemental sulphur. These agreements issue out of certain common holdings that give identity of interest to apparently competitive concerns, tied up with oil and its allied financial groups.<br /> <br /> The controlling interests in Inco are not apparent as there is no obvious United States parent, although American capital from most of the leading financial groups predominates, and Inco owns the entire capital stock of The International Nickel Co. Inc. which owns the operating assets located in the United States, and of Whitehead Metal Products Co. Inc., American distributors of non-ferrous metals. Laurence Rockefeller is on the United States Inco board. The Canadian company’s chairman is H. S. Wingate, a director of the American banking house of J. P. Morgan &amp; Co., and of the Canadian Pacific Railway. William C. Bolenius, an Inco director, also sits on directorates of various Bell Telephone companies, as well as on that of the Guaranty Trust Co. of New York, Morgan-controlled. Another Inco director, R. S. McLaughlin, is a director of General Motors and on the board of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, which links with du Pont interests. Du Pont itself is under heavy Morgan influence. Donald Hamilton McLaughlin is President of the American Trust Co., which has three interlocking directorates with Morgan banks and insurance companies. He also presides over the board of Homestake Mining Co., linked through its holdings in Idarado Mining Co., with Newmont Mining Co. within the Morgan sphere of influence. Cerro de Pasco, another of D. H. McLaughlin’s directorships, owns a number of companies operating mining and oil properties in Peru. Newmont Mining has a substantial interest in Cerro de Pasco.<br /> <br /> Theodore Giles Montague, another American on Inco’s board, is chairman of the Borden Co., a trustee of the Bank of New York and a director of American Sugar Refining Co. All three of these companies is within the family control of the Rockefellers. John Fairfield Thompson also reflects U.S. interests on the Inco board. Another trustee of the Bank of New York, he represents the same interests on Inco’s American distributing organisation, Whitehead Metal Products Co., and points the link with Texas Gulf Sulphur, under Morgan and Standard Oil (Rockefeller) domination. J. F. Thompson reveals the African interests of these groups by his directorships on American Metal Climax, and its British associates, Amalgamated Metal Corporation and Henry Gardner &amp; Co. Lt., who are also connected with French tin and nickel interests. These are some of the giant combinations involving tin, aluminium and nickel, which are draining away the mineral resources of Africa.<br /> <br /> == ''Union Minière du Haute Katanga'' ==<br /> THERE is perhaps hardly an industrial organisation in the world that has been so widely publicised over the past five years as Union Minière, because of the ducks and drakes it has played with the establishment of Congo independence and unification. This great mining company has been since Congo’s independence the bone of contention between the Congolese government and the secessionist Katanga Province. Principally owned by small shareholders, its control rested with Belgian and British financiers.<br /> <br /> The largest block of stock in the company, 18·14 per cent of the 1,242,000 shares, which formerly belonged to the Belgian colonial administration, passed at independence to the Congolese government, and was held in trust by the Belgian government for a time, pending the settlement of political problems. In November 1964, Moise Tshombe who had by then returned from exile to become Congolese Prime Minister, published a decree which had the effect of transferring control of Union Minière from Belgian banking and other interests to the Congolese government without compensation. The decree gave the Congolese government the entire portfolio of 315,675 shares in Union Minière held by the Comité Special du Katanga, a concession-granting concern, two-thirds of which is owned by the Congolese government and one-third by Belgian interests.<br /> <br /> The Belgian government considered that 123,725 of these shares belonged to the Compagnie du Katanga which is an off-shot of the Société Générale de Belgique. The effect of the decree was to reduce the voting strength in Union Minière of the Société Générale and its associate, Tanganyika Concessions Ltd. from 40 per cent to less than 29 per cent, while the Congolese government’s votes were raised from nearly 24 per cent to nearly 36 per cent. This meant that in any policy dispute the Belgians would have to rally the support of the small shareholders comprising about 36 per cent.<br /> <br /> For weeks the Belgian government and the Congolese government talked of arranging meetings to discuss the situation. Each had a trump card. The Belgian government held the entire portfolio in trust, while the Congolese government’s strength lay in the expiration of Union Minière’s lease in 1990.<br /> <br /> On 28 January 1965, Tshombe arrived in Brussels for talks with the Belgian Foreign Minister, M. Spaak. He asked for the immediate handing over of the portfolio of shares valued at £120 million. These included 21 per cent of the voting rights in Union Minière. The Belgians, on the other hand, demanded compensation for Belgian property damaged in the Congo troubles, and for chartered companies who lost mineral concessions under the November decree. They also insisted that the agreement should cover the interest payable on defaulted Congo bonds.<br /> <br /> After days of hard bargaining, Tshombe scored what appeared to be a great triumph. He secured the £120 million portfolio of shares, and also received a cheque from Union Minière for £660,000 representing royalties and dividends on the Congo’s 210,450 shares in Union Minière, which gave it 24 per cent of the voting rights in the company. With this diplomatic victory he returned to Leopoldville, his hand strengthened to deal with the continuing political and military problems of the country. Since then he has had cause to wonder just how much of a victory he achieved.<br /> <br /> In my address to the Ghana National Assembly on 22 March 1965, I gave details on the Congo situation:<br /> <br /> ‘In the five years preceding independence, the net outflow of capital to Belgium alone was four hundred and sixty-four million pounds.<br /> <br /> When Lumumba assumed power, so much capital was taken out of the Congo that there was a national deficit of forty million pounds.<br /> <br /> Tshombe is now told the Congo has an external debt of nine hundred million dollars. This is a completely arbitrary figure – it amounts to open exploitation based on naked colonialism. Nine hundred million dollars ($900,000,000) is supposed to be owed to United States and Belgian monopolies after they have raped the Congo of sums of £2,500 million, £464 million, and £40 million. Imagine what this would have meant to the prosperity and well-being of the Congo.<br /> <br /> But the tragic-comedy continues. ... To prop up Tshombe, the monopolies decided that of this invented debt of $900 million, only $250 million has to be paid. How generous, indeed!<br /> <br /> Bonds valued in 1959 at £267 million, representing wealth extracted from the Congo, are to be returned to the Congo after ratification by both parliaments. But the monopolies have decided that the value of the bonds is now only £107 million. So the profit to these monopolies is a net £160 million.<br /> <br /> The monopolies further announced a fraudulent programme to liquidate so-called Congolese external debts of £100 million. Upon announcing this, they declare Congo is to be responsible for a further internal debt of £200 million.<br /> <br /> In plain words, they are depriving the Congolese people of another £100 million. And they call this generosity!<br /> <br /> We learn that the monopolies have declared a further burden for the suffering people of the Congo: an internal debt of £200 million on which the Congo must pay additional compensation of £12·5 million to Belgian private interests.<br /> <br /> Beyond this, a joint Congolese-Belgian organisation has been formed. It is withdrawing old bonds and replacing them with forty-year issues valued at £100 million. These will pay interest at 4 per cent per annum.<br /> <br /> Note this: as the old bonds are worthless, the new organisation must pay all interest on the old bonds from the 1960-65 to the monopolies and EACH HOLDER OF THE WORTHLESS OLD BONDS must be given a new bond for every old one. In short, the organisation is a device to take more, to enrich the monopolies further and to defraud the suffering people of the Congo.<br /> <br /> Tshombe has promised not to nationalise investments valued at £150 million and to retain 8,000 Belgians in the Congo. He has set up an Investment Bank to manage all portfolios. The value is placed at £240 million. It is controlled by Belgians.<br /> <br /> In one year, Union Minière’s profits were £27 million. But although the national production in Congo increased 60 per cent between 1950 and 1957, African buying power decreased by 13 per cent. ... The Congolese were taxed 280 million francs to pay for European civil servants, 440 million francs for special funds of Belgium, 1,329 million francs for the army. They were even taxed for the Brussels Exhibition.<br /> <br /> Despite political independence, the Congo remains a victim of imperialism and neo-colonialism ... (but) the economic and financial control of the Congo by foreign interests is not limited to the Congo alone. The developing countries of Africa are all subject to this unhealthy influence in one way or another.’<br /> <br /> If this quotation appears to contain much detail, the newly independent peoples and their leaders have no more urgent task today than to burn into their consciousness exactly such detail. For it is such material that makes up the hard reality of this world in which we are trying to live, and in which Africa is emerging to find its place.<br /> <br /> The full significance of the part played by Union Minière in Congolese affairs can only be understood if an examination is made of the interests involved in this powerful company. Nearly all the large enterprises engaged in exploiting the manifold riches of the Congo come within its immediate embrace or have indirect relations with it. THey do not, however, complete the extent of the company’s engagements. Its connections with leading insurance, financial and industrial houses in Europe and the United States are shown in the following list, as well as its connections with the Rhodesian copperbelt:<br /> <br /> * Compagnie Foncière du Katanga.<br /> * Société Générales des Forces Hydro-electriques – SOGEFOR.<br /> * Société Générale Africaine d'Electricité – SOGELEC.<br /> * Société Générale Industrielle et Chimique de Jadotville – SOGECHIM.<br /> * Société Métallurgique du Katanga – METALKAT.<br /> * Minoteries du Katanaga.<br /> * Société de Recherche Minière du Sud-Katanga – SUDKAT.<br /> * Ciments Métallurgiques de Jadotville – C.M.J.<br /> * Charbonnages de la Luena.<br /> * Compagnie des Chemins de Fer Katanga-Dilolo-Leopoldville – K.D.L.<br /> * Société Africaine d'Explosifs – AFRIDEX.<br /> * Compagnie Maritime Congolaise.<br /> * Société d'Exploitation des Mines du Sud-Katanga – MINSUDKAT.<br /> * Société d'Elevage de la Luilu – ELVALUILU.<br /> * Compagnie d'Assurances d'Outremer.<br /> * Société de Recherches et d'Exploitation des Bauxites du Congo – BAUXICONGO.<br /> * Exploitation Forestière au Kasai.<br /> * Centre d'Information du Cobalt.<br /> * Société Générale Métallurgique de Hoboken.<br /> * Société Anonyme Belge d'Exploitation de la Navigation Aeriènne – SABENA.<br /> * Société Générale d'Enterprises Immobilière – S.E.I.<br /> * Compagnie Belge pour l'Industrie de l'Aluminium – COBEAL.<br /> * Foraky.<br /> * Compagnie Belge d'Assurances Maritimes – BELGAMAR.<br /> * Société Auxiliaire de la Royale Union Coloniale Belge – S.A.R.U.C.<br /> * Wankie Colliery Co. Ltd.<br /> * Belgian-American Bank &amp; Trust Co., New York.<br /> * Belgian-American Banking Corporation, New York.<br /> * Compagnie Générale d'Electrolyse du Palais S.A., Paris.<br /> * Trefileries et Luminoire du havre S.A., Paris.<br /> * Société Belge pour l'Industries Nucleaire – BELCO NUCLEAIRE.<br /> <br /> Tanganyika Concessions is one parent of Union Minière du Haut Katanga. The other was the Katanga (Belgian) Special Committee. Union Minière was formed between them for the stated purpose of bringing together the interests of both organisations in the mineral discoveries Tanganyika Concessions had made under a concession granted to it by the Committee in the Katanga province of the Congo. The concession, which has until 11 March 1990 to run, covers an area of 7,700 square miles, containing rich copper as well as zinc, cobalt, cadmium, germanium, radium, gold, silver, iron ores and limestone deposits. Included is a tin area of some 5,400 square miles.<br /> <br /> Ores mined are processed at a number of plants, passing through smelting and concentration stages. Hydro-electrical energy is supplied from four main power plants, one of which was installed by a subsidiary of Union Minière, the Société Générale des Forces Hydro-electriques. Three others belong to Union Minière itself. These three plants are connected to a distribution network, part of which is devoted to supplying electrical power to the Northern Rhodesian copperbelt at the rate of 600 million kw. Per year. Part of this network is owned by the Société Générale Africaine d'Electricité – SOGELEC – in which Union Minière has a substantial interest. The company’s plants at Elizabethville, Jadotville, Kolwezi and Kpushi consumed 76 million kw. In 1962, during which year certain damages caused to the installations in December 1961 were completely repaired.<br /> <br /> Most of the concerns in which Union Minière is interested are supported by the Société Générale de Belgique. Man also have connections with Anglo American Corporation either direct or by way of Tanganyika Concessions and Union Minière and their subsidiaries. Société Générale has a direct holding of 57,538 shares out of the 1,242,000 shares of no nominal value that constitute the authorised and issued capital of frs. 8,000,000,000 of Union MInière. Other principal shareholders are the Katanga Special Committee and Tanganyika Concessions. Royalty on the concession is paid to the Katanga Committee by way of a sum equivalent to 10 per cent of any dividend distributed over and above a total of frs. 93,150,000 in any year. Tanganyika Concessions, by agreement with the Committee, shares in this special benefit to the extent of 40 per cent. Originally incorporated in the Congo, the company took its seat of administration and all its funds to Belgium during 1960, when the Congo was achieving independence and needed the support of those who, over the years, had drawn such heavy tribute from it.<br /> <br /> Société Générale’s patronage hangs closely over Union Minière. Attached to the Katanga Special Committee is the Compagnie du Katanga. The Katanga Company is within the group of the Compagnie du Congo pour le Commerce et l'Industrie – C.C.C.I. – constituted in 1886 when Leopold II was creating his personal empire in the Congo. It was on the initiative of one of Leopold’s swashbucklers, Captain Thys, that C.C.C.I., according to the chairman of the Société Générale, became the first Belgian enterprise established in the heart of Africa. His name is attached to the repair station of the first railway from Matadi to Leopoldville. Thysville is now an important link in the railway system, and C.C.C.I., in the words of Société Générale’s chairman, has since its inception been connected directly or through its affiliates, with all sectors of economic activity in the Congo by the creation of transport enterprises, agricultural industries, cement works, construction and building concerns, property companies, food industries, as well as commercial firms. The company has, affirmed the chairman, ‘contributed to endow the Congo with an equipage which places the country in the first ranks of the black African states’.<br /> <br /> Several of these interlinked enterprises are included in the list of Union Minière’s interests, which frequently join those of Société Générale. Thus Société Générale Métallurgique de Hoboken, a company in which Société Générale owns 50,000 shares of no par value, processes certain semi-finished products from the Union Minière mines for the market in finished metals of high purity and individual specification. In conjunction with the Fansteel Metallurgical Corporation of Chicago, hoboken created a joint subsidiary, Fansteel-Hoboken, in December 1962, with a capital of 360 million francs. This new company will produce refractory metals, notably tantalum, columbium, tungsten and molybdenum, in various marketable forms.<br /> <br /> Wankie Colliery Co. Ltd. represents Union Minière’s participation in Southern Rhodesia’s coal mines. While its shareholding is not unimportant, Anglo American Corporation predominates and acts as the company’s secretary and consulting engineers. Capitalised at £6,000,000, of which £5,277,810 is paid up, the company owns coal-mining rights over 42,000 acres and surface rights over about 29,000 acres of land in the Wankie district of Southern Rhodesia. The means by which the mining interests dominate the government of the ‘settler colonies’ are many, but the manner in which land is given away by the administration and then leased back from the buyers or lessees exhibits some of the most unashamed and open gerrymandering possible. Thus Wankie Colliery obtained a long-term lease by agreement with the Rhodesian government surface rights to 26,000 acres of land additional to the above-mentioned stretches, in return for which Wankie has graciously leased some 4,000 acres of surface rights in its original landholdings to the government.<br /> <br /> A directorial link, M. van Weyenbergh, associated Wankie Colliery with Société Métallurgique du Katanga – METALKAT – a subsidiary of Union Minière, founded in Belgium in 1948 in conjunction with S.A. des Mines de Fonderies de Zinc de la Vieille-Montagne to construct at Kolwezi a plant capable of producing 50,000 tons of electrolytic zinc annually from concentrated provided by Union Minière’s Prince Leopold mine. The Metalkat plant produces zinc, cadmium and refined copper. With a capital of frs. 750,000,000 represented by 150,000 shares of no par value, the company made a net profit of frs. 160,831,393 in 1961, after providing for various liabilities, among which dividends accounted for frs. 120,000,000 (almost three-quarters of net profit) and directors’ percentages frs. 7,857,517.<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> Union Minière’s partner in Metalkat, Vieille-Montagne, is one of the big European mining concerns producing zinc, lead and silver. A Belgian company, founded in 1837, it has silver-lead-zinc properties in Belgium, France, Algeria, Tunis, Germany and Sweden and metallurgical works in Belgium, France and Germany. Of the 405,000 shares of no par value constituting its capital of frs. 1,000,000,000 Société Générale owns 40,756. Its accounts for the year ended 31 December 1961 showed a net profit of frs. 143,287,506, after various provisions, of which the largest was for re-equipment, amounting to frs. 100,000,000. Dividends took frs. 101,250,000 and taxes thereon frs. 27,700,000. Directors’ percentages took frs. 14,327,760. Legal reserves seem to account for considerable sums which these large companies set aside. This item was credited with frs. 100,000,000 in Vieille-Montagne’s 1961 accounts.<br /> <br /> The Compagnie du Katanga, like Union Minière, attached to the Katanga Special Committee, joined Union Minière in creating in the Congo in 1932 the Société de Rocherche Minière du Sud-Katanga – SUDKAT. Both Compagnie du Katanga and Union Minière had interests in a large area adjacent to the latter’s properties which they decided to combine. With Congolese independence, control of Sudkat as well as its funds were transferred to Belgium. Copper deposits at Musoshi and Lubembe and zinc-lead-sulphur ore bodies at Kengere and Lombe owned by Sudkat were transferred to the Société d'Exploitation des Mines du Sud-Katanga – MINSUDKAT – formed in the Congo in June 1955, with a capital of Congolese frs. 50,000,000.<br /> <br /> Sudkat holds interests in the Companhia Carbonifera de Mocambique, concerned with coal mining, as well as in Bauxicongo and Metalkat. Metalkat created a local company in 1962, the Société Métallurgique Katangaise, with a capital of 600 million francs represented by 150,000 shares, to which it transferred its Katanga installations. The zinc ingots produced are being processed by Metalkat.<br /> <br /> One of Sudkat’s most important investments is in Sogemines Ltd. This company, though registered in Montreal and operating in Canada, is so intimately connected with the Société Générale that it has on its board six of the Société’s directors, two of whom are also on the Union Minière directorate. Société Générale’s investment in Sogemines covers 259,250 preferred shares of $10 each and 1,281,250 ordinary shares of $1 each, representing over one-fifth of the Canadian company’s issued capital. A wholly owned subsidiary, Sogemines Development Co. Ltd., is carrying out exploration work in various parts of Canada and holds minority interests in other mining enterprises. Sogemines Ltd. is an investment and holding company participating in mining, oil and industrial ventures. L. C. and F. W. Park in ''The Anatomy of Big Business'', graphically make the point that its ‘relationships between Canadian and Belgian capital are based on the alliances that operate both in Belgium or the Congo and in Canada’. (p. 157.)<br /> <br /> Sogemines’ parent, Société Générale, devotes considerable space in its annual report to the former’s operations. The most important concern in which they are interested is Canadian Petrofina Ltd. In 1961, Canadian Petrofina made the record profit of $5,516,926. Petrofina is a Belgian oil company with international associations, especially in the new African States, both inside and outside the oil industry. Its connections with Société Générale are not limited to shareholdings and directorial interlocking. Associations are maintained with several leading banks, including the Banque Belge, the Banque de l'Union Français, the Credit Foncier de Belgique, the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas, and a number of insurance companies.<br /> <br /> Under the impetus of Société Générale and certain associates, a subsidiary of Petrofina, Société Chimique des Derives du Petrols – PETROCHIN – underwent a financial reorganisation during 1962, when certain assets were passed to it, principally by Petrofina. Société Générale used the opportunity to make a participation of 29 million francs to the company’s capital, ‘in which several other enterprises within its group equally own interests’. Société Générale’s shareholding is 58,000 shares of no par value. Cobenam, a joint venture of Petrochim and Union Carbide, brings together the banking interests of Société Générale with those interested in the great American chemical corporation, the Continental Insurance Co. and the Hanover Bank, which is involved with Anglo American Corporation and the banking consortia now engaging themselves in ventures in the new African States. There is some Rockefeller influence in the Hanover Bank, and it is linked by financial interchanges with the American Fore group of New York, a principal fire and casualty insurance company.<br /> <br /> Union Carbide &amp; Carbon manufactures enriched uranium, and through the influence of its direct backers, Hanover Bank, and indirect associations with the Rockefeller-Mellon group, has become the major contractor to the government-owned atomic energy plants at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Paducah, Kentucky. For this purpose a separate division was formed, Union Carbide Nuclear Company, uranium and vanadium mines being worked in Colorado, and a tungsten mine and mill in California. Union Carbide’s range of interests in the chemical sphere is wide, it having a very large synthetic materials sector. A Canadian subsidiary of Union Carbide is Shawinigan Chemicals, which it half owns in company with Monsanto Chemical Co. and Canadian Rosins &amp; Chemicals Ltd. An affiliate, B. A.-Shawinigan Ltd., is owned by British American Oil, connected with the Bank of Montreal and Mellon. Shawinigan Chemicals has several subsidiaries which are equally controlled with U.S. companies. Société Générale has its own nuclear concern, Société Belge pour l'Industrie Nucleaire – BELGO NUCLEAIRE – in which we have noted Union Minière’s interest.<br /> <br /> This is only a single short strand of the tangled web that relates predominant banking interests in Europe and America to industrial undertakings in Africa and other parts of the world. It gives only the barest indication of the elastic character of these interests.<br /> <br /> The incursions of Société Générale into the oil world are not confined to Petrofina and its associates. Petrobelge, another company carrying out prospecting in the north of Belgium in association with the Société Campincise de Recherches et d'Exploitations Minerals, has an affiliate operating in Venezuela, Petrobelge de Venezuela. Petrobelge is linked with Petrofina and the Bureau de Recherches et de Participations Minières Marocain in prospecting in Morocco, the first stages of which will be completed in 1963. Italy is another scene of Petrobelge’s activities, where in collaboration with the Italian company, Ausonia Mineraria, and the French organisation, Société Française de Participations Petrolières – PETROBAR – it is investigating hydrocarbons in the concessions obtained by Ausonia. In addition, Petrobelge has associated itself with an Italian-French-German consortium in a venture prospecting seismic regions on the Adriatic coast. Both Petrobelge and Petrofina have got together with the Spanish company, Ciepsa, to prospect for hydrocarbons within a concession owned by Ciepsa.<br /> <br /> Direct links with Belgium’s military programme and, accordingly, with that of NATO, are closely operated through the Poudreries Réunies de Belgique, whose capital was increased during 1962 from 203,900,000 francs to 266,700,000 francs. At the beginning of the year it absorbed the Fabrique Nationale de Produits Chimiques et d'Explosifs at Boncelles, Belgium, whose purchase included a participation in the capital of S.A. d'Arendonk. The acquisition of the latter’s selling organisation has added to the scope of the company’s civil activities. These Belgian concerns are linked with the Société Africaine d'Explosifs – AFRIDEX – in which Union Minière has interests. The military and nuclear interpenetration gives a special emphasis to the uranium output of the Union Minière complex, which in the post-war years upheld the Belgian economy and helped it to refurbish its industrial equipment. Out of the Congo came the spoils that provided for the further exploitation of the territory and the high productive ratio the lately devastated war-ridden and Nazi-occupied country attained so swiftly. Even before the second world war, uranium was already making the Shinkolobwe mine a very important asset to Union Minière and the Belgian government. As one writer puts it, ‘The Union Minière achieved a certain notoriety in the ‘twenties and ‘thirties by obliging would-be purchasers of radium to pay $70,000 a gram, until competition from the Canadian Eldorado company forced the price down to a mere $20,000 a gram, a level at which both companies were able to amke a profit’ (''Anatomy of Big Business'', p. 156). According to the calculation of experts, Union Minière’s profits were estimated to be three billion francs a year, $60 million in terms of American currency, and over £20 million in sterling.<br /> <br /> In spite of the disturbed situation in Katanga and the protests of the company that their business had been seriously impeded, Union Minière’s balance sheet for the year ended 31 December 1960 showed a net profit of frs. 2,365,280,563. Dividends absorbed no less than frs. 1,863,000,000, rather more than half the net profits, carrying a dividend tax which went to the Belgian government of frs. 381,578,313. Emoluments to directors, auditors and staff fund (for Europeans) absorbed frs. 84,609,333, while Permanent Committee members received frs. 7,111,567.<br /> <br /> Eldorado Mining &amp; Refining Ltd. is by no means independent of the big business and financial interests which have Canada’s industry in their grip, and whose associations with Africa and other less developed areas of the world are interwoven. A former private secretary to an ex-minister sits on its board, which is linked with Canadian Aluminium, whose directorate includes a former Governor-General of Canada. As we go along we shall see how these interlockings of international finance and exalted public figures and ‘the people’s representatives’ create an oligarchy of power pursuing and achieving their special interests, which have no relation whatsoever to ‘the public good’, with which they are made to appear synonymous. We shall find that the Royal Bank of Canada, represented on Eldorado’s board by W. J. Bennett, has connections with Société Générale and Union Minière through interlockings via Sogemines and prominent insurance and banking groups.<br /> <br /> Wankie Colliery Co. Ltd., for instance, gives us M. van Weyenbergh, a director of Union Minière, Metalkat and Société Générale, several of whose directorial colleagues sit on Sogemines, whose chairman, W. H. Howard, besides being a vice-president of the Royal Bank and chairman of the Montreal Trust, is linked with the Rothermere newspaper group in Great Britain and is a director of Algoma Steel Corporation Ltd., which owns four coal mines in West Virginia and limestone and dolomite deposits in Michigan State. Algoma supplied the steel for the construction of a $20 million plant at Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, for the Mannesman Tube Co., a subsidiary of the Mannesmann steel company, which is a prominent member of the Ruhr industry of Western Germany. Mannesmann is said to be fast increasing its penetration into Canadian industry. Its board included representatives of the Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank, both of which are much in evidence in the consortia engaged in Africa and connected prominently with Anglo American Corporation. Chairman of Mannesmann since 1934 is W. Zanger, ‘a former member of the Nazi party and of the S.S.; he was one of the group of big German industrialists who financed the Nazi rise to power and provided the armaments for the Nazi war machine. In the days of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Mannesmann opened short-lived affiliates in Kiev and Dniepropetrovsk’ (''Anatomy of Big Business'', pp. 109-110).<br /> <br /> These are the forces that link with the South African, Rhodesian, Congo, Angolan and Mozambique mining magnates and industrialists, and we see them now entering the development projects of many of the new African States, hiding their identity behind government and international agencies, whose real character is at once exposed when their affiliations are carefully examined. They are the real directors of neo-colonialism.<br /> <br /> == Economic Pressure in the Congo Republic ==<br /> ON 30 June 1960, when the Congo became independent, there began what will undoubtedly be regarded by historians as the most stormy and complex chapter in that country’s, and for that matter Africa’s, history. Within a few weeks there was a breakdown of law and order when soldiers of the Force Publique, disappointed because independence did not bring immediate improvement in their position, seized arms, arrested white officers and N.C.O.s and finally broke up into rioting bands. It was at this point that Moise Tshombe, with the help of Belgian advisers, began the proceedings which led to the secession of Katanga Province. The newly independent Republic of the Congo was crippled by disorder and unrest.<br /> <br /> The story of the United Nations intervention and Lumumba’s murder are well known, and so also are the political events which have followed. Less publicised, for obvious reasons, have been the involved economic aspects of the whole Congo tragedy. Yet these are in many ways the more significant and certainly the more sinister since they are dominated by foreign interests whose main concern has always been for their own private gain.<br /> <br /> There was not much American investment in the Congo before 1960. What there was, was largely indirect, through Tanganyika Concessions and Union Minière and the Anglo American holdings of the Oppenheimer group, and came mainly from the Rockefeller group. This group also had participations in the important textile company, Filatures et Tissages Africains, created in 1946 by the Cotton Union and the Société Générale. The Rockefeller family holds 60,000 shares, of which 3,000 are in the hands of Nelson Rockefeller and 26,438 belong to Laurence Rockefeller, who also has minority interests in two other companies of the Société Générale’s group: Cie Générale d'Automobiles et d'Aviation au Congo and Les Ciments du Congo. He owns about 14 per cent of the capital of the company for the manufacture in the Congo of metal boxes and all other articles from enamelled sheets, and the same share in the Congo company for the production and trade in pineapples, ANACONGO. In 1952 both Laurence and David Rockefeller participated in acquiring about 30 per cent of Syndicat pour l'Etude Géologique et Minière de la Cuvette Congolaise. All petroleum products used in the Congo continue to be imported from abroad and the giant Rockefeller trust, l'Esso-Standard, created a distribution subsidiary in the Congo in 1956, l'Esso Congo Belge, rechristened Esso Central Africa in 1960. Another subsidiary, the Socony Vacuum Petrol Company and Texas Petroleum, have minority participations in the Société Congolaise d'Entre Posage des Produits de Petrole.<br /> <br /> There are some American plywood companies there, such as United States Plywood Corporation, with Agrifor and Korina-congo, and in the Syndicat du Papier. Pluswood Industries has an agreement with Cominière, who have together formed the Société Congolais Belgo-Americaine pour la Transformation du Bois du Congo – SOCOBELAM. Olin Mathieson Industries, which have interests in the Pouderies Réunies de Belgique, have participated with Union Minière and several other groups of the Société Générale in creating the Société Africaine d'Explosifs – AFRIDEX. Olin Mathieson have a fifth of the capital. Others investing there include the Industrial and Investing Corporation, New York, Armco Steel, Bell Telephone, General Motors and Otis Elevators.<br /> <br /> Since 1960 the Bank of America has acquired 20 per cent in the Lambert Bank group’s Socobanque; Ford has founded Ford Motors (Congo); Union Carbide has taken a dominant participation in Somilu, created in 1960 to exploit a pyrochlore mine. This mineral contains niobium, a rare metal used in making special steels. David Rockefeller made a tour to the Congo in 1959, for ‘information’, after which his group took up 1,030 out of 26,000 shares in Société de Recherches et d'Exploitation de Bauxites au Congo – BAUXICONGO. In June 1960 he announced that he would take up about eight per cent of the 65 millions of capital in the Cie du Congo pour le Commerce et l'Industrie and C.C.C.I. Dillon Read &amp; Co. and J. H. Whitney &amp; co., bankers of New York, have created an investment company to examine the possibilities of American investment in the Congo. This is the American Eurafrican Fund.<br /> <br /> Interesting as this American penetration into the Congo is, of more immediate concern is the continuing Belgian domination of so much of the Congo’s economy. In ''Les Trusts au Congo'' by Pierre Joye and Rosine Lewin, a clear picture of the events immediately preceding and following independence is given.<br /> <br /> According to their account, the independent State of the Congo, under Leopold II, owned a large part of the capital of the original companies, also of the ‘chartered companies’ created at the time, and of private enterprises. After the Belgian Government took over the administration of the Congo, these participations were increased in a number of ways: by direct intervention in the creation of new organisms of a ‘para-statal’ nature; by the arrogation of certain rights as recompense for the concessions they gave; by exercise of right to subscribe to the increase of the capital of companies in which the Congo State already owned shares. As a result the Belgian Congo held a considerable portfolio of investments which, at the most moderate estimate, were valued at about 40 million francs. In addition it possessed various prerogatives, such as voting rights and the right to nominate representatives to administrative boards, in a whole series of enterprises in which it did not hold capital participations. This portfolio comprised participations and rights in:<br /> <br /> TABLE<br /> <br /> The possession of this important portfolio permitted the public authorities, in principle, to exercise a considerable influence in the Congo economy and even to control completely certain important sectors. Moreover, official statements justified these participations, declaring that they allowed the State to exercise its role of ‘guardian of the public interest and tutor of the natives’.<br /> <br /> The example of the C.S.K. is significant in this respect. Leopold II had controlled this semi-public organism by reserving to the State the right to nominate four out of the six members of its administration. But after the taking over of the Congo by Belgium the C.S.K. was, during fifty years, the docile instrument of the Union Minière, although it had every opportunity to control the great Katanga trust. C.S.K. was by far the biggest shareholder of Union Minière, and the statutes elaborated in 1906 officially conferred on it important rights in Union Minière, notably that of designating the administrative council and a certain number of directors. C.S.K. never used these rights, but on the contrary confided its representation to the most obvious leaders of private capital. The hold of the trusts on the Congo administration was total, the more so since the big companies were able to ensure considerable material advantages to the representatives of the State who passed into their service.<br /> <br /> Before June 1960 the trusts speeded up their manoeuvres to prevent the Congolese people from coming into possession of their patrimony. At the time of the Round Table Conference, the financial press was emphatically insisting on the Belgian government obtaining guarantees from the future Congo Republic. ‘In the very first place, it is necessary to shelter the enterprises from eventual nationalisation.’ The Congolese nationalist parties were, however, unanimous in opposing the maintenance by the Belgian financial groups of an economic protectorate over the Congo after 30 June 1960.<br /> <br /> Consequently, they insisted that the Congo portfolio should be transferred integrally and without conditions to the young Republic, which would be able to make use of the rights arising from it to name its own representatives on the ‘para-statal’ organisms and, if such should be the case, in the private Congolese companies. It was this which frightened Belgian financial circles; the prospect of seeing the Congo Republic making use of the incontestable rights that the possession of the Congolese portfolio would confer upon it.<br /> <br /> To avert this, Raymond Scheyven vainly tried the manoeuvre which was quickly recognised by the Congolese leaders: he proposed to answer the financial needs of the Congo by creating a ‘mixed investment company’, to which the Congo would confer the management of its portfolio, Belgium on its side bringing an annual contribution of one billion francs. If this attempt failed, the Belgian government was all the happier in the case of the chartered companies, whose dissolution ''in extremis'' it would decree a few days before 30 June. It also decided to dissolve C.S.K. and C.N.Ki. before Congo acceded to independence.<br /> <br /> On the occasion of the Round Table Conference, Scheyven parleyed with certain Congolese delegates, whom he tried to persuade that it would be better if the Belgian government itself proceeded with this measure before 30 June. He made them believe that it was preferable because, if the Congolese government did it afterwards, this could create a bad impression abroad, giving rise to the belief that they had something against the private companies.<br /> <br /> The manoeuvre was clever. It was easier to convince the Congolese delegates, since most of them showed an understandable distrust towards the chartered companies. They had only too often had occasion to declare that the companies played the game of the big trusts. As to these, certain Congolese parties had called for the dissolution of the companies and the transfer of their rights to the Congolese State.<br /> <br /> The Belgian officials charged with giving technical enlightenment to the participants at the Round Table Conference were openly careful to indicate that the Congo Republic could repay the colonialists for their part, by using in the interests of the Congolese people the prerogatives in the companies which would devolve upon the State.<br /> <br /> A hurried decree of 27 June 1960, three days before the proclamation of independence, sanctioned the dissolution of the C.S.K. and the division of its assets between the Congo and the Cie du Katanga. At a stroke the Congo Republic lost the possibility of utilising the powerful instruments of command which it would have disposed of in taking over the direction of the C.S.K. and the prerogatives of the Union Minière were preserved.<br /> <br /> Through the intermediary C.S.K., which would have in fact become a Congolese para-statal organism, the Congo Republic would in effect have obtained the statutory right to designate the president of the Katanga trust and a certain number of other directors on its board. And the Congolese government could even have pre-empted its views in the general meetings of the Union Minière, through the C.S.K., which was the biggest shareholder of the company.<br /> <br /> The dissolution of the C.S.K. not only lost to the Congo Republic the possibility of benefiting from the prerogatives of this organism. The convention of 27 June 1960 accorded considerable additional advantages to the Cie du Katanga, which received full ownership of a third of the lands improved by the C.S.K. (allotment zones), its real estate and bankings, as well as the right to a third of the rents which were expected in the future from the mineral concessions allocated by C.S.K.<br /> <br /> If the ground rights and mineral rights not already conceded revert to the Congo, this restitution of rights over the Congolese land and mineral patrimony will not be effected without compensation, since the convention stipulates that the Congo Republic must pay in compensation a forfeiture indemnity of 100 million to the Cie due Katanga.<br /> <br /> The C.N.Ki. was formed for a period which will expire on 31 December 2011. Here again, it would have been sufficient if the Congolese government utilised the rights conferred on it by statute to exercise a preponderant influence in this ‘para-state’ organism. The Belgian authorities, however, concluded with the officials of the C.N.Ki. a convention which decided that the Belgian Congo would withdraw purely and simply as a concession partner and renounce at the same time all its rights in association.<br /> <br /> A decree issued on 30 May 1960 approved this convention and, by a stroke, C.N.Ki. ceased to be a semi-official organism. On 21 June 1960 its shareholders decided, in addition, to transform it into a common stock company called the Société Belgo-Africaine du Kivu – SOBAKI. This company reserved the right to exploit for its own private profit exclusively the mines of C.N.Ki. as well as the integral property of the portfolio which this organism had constituted. If the public authorities take over the administration of the crown lands, the convention provides that the shareholders of Sobaki shall receive in compensation ‘a just indemnity’.<br /> <br /> To give an appearance of legality to these conventions, the representatives of the Belgian government declared that they acted ‘in accordance with the wishes expressed by the economic, financial and social conference which took place in Brussels in the months of April and May 1960’. In reality, in pronouncing the dissolution of the C.S.K. and the C.N.Ki. the Belgian authorities wanted, above all, to place before the new Congolese State an accomplished fact.<br /> <br /> In order to show how indispensable the financial support of Belgium was, the Belgian companies had, in fact, taken care to make massive withdrawals of capital at the same time as they pushed to the maximum the export of Congolese products, and on the other hand, limited to the extreme their imports. The Congolese trade balance resulting from the action gave an exceptionally high surplus in 1959 (13,418 million francs), which did nothing to save the Congo from very great financial difficulties. In fact, a heavy proportion of the sums anticipated from the sale of Congolese products were not returned to the colony, and more than seven billions of private capital left the Congo in the course of the exercise.<br /> <br /> These manoeuvres have cost the young African State sad convulsions and have brought it to the edge of chaos. And they have done nothing to resolve the essential problem for the future of the Congo: how to recover from under-development.<br /> <br /> == Monetary Zones and Foreign Banks ==<br /> THE U.N. Economic Commission for Africa’s Standing Committee for Trade has recently described the African continent as ‘riddled with different trade regimes and payments systems supplemented in most cases by specific economic ties with countries or groupings of countries outside Africa’. [''Background Paper on the Establishment of an African Common Market'', 13 October 1963.]One of the most effective ways in which Britain and France have retained economic ties with former colonial territories is through action to ensure that the new STates remained in the monetary zones centred on London and Paris.<br /> <br /> There are seven major currency groups in Africa, the French franc zone, the sterling area, the Belgian franc area, the Spanish peseta and the Portuguese escudo areas, the South African rand area, and the countries like the United Arab Republic and the Congo (Leopoldville), with separate currency units. By far the greater part of Africa’s trade comes within the sterling area and the French franc zones of Africa.<br /> <br /> The sterling area has been somewhat looser than the franc bloc. For example, Nigeria and Ghana have established their own currencies and their own banks, though they continue for the most part to keep their international reserves in the form of sterling. When I opened the Bank of Ghana at the end of July 1959, I spoke of the decisive part played by a central bank in the economic life of a country: ‘Our political independence will be meaningless unless we use it so as to obtain economic and financial self government and independence. In order to obtain this it is of absolute and paramount importance that a central bank should be set up by the Government.’ In setting up the Bank of Ghana we obtained assistance from the Bank of England, but our bank has always followed a policy designed to secure our economic independence and to foster the general development of the country. The Bank of Ghana, like other banks, set up in a similar way, has no claim on foreign exchange reserves of England, but has complete control over its own foreign exchange earnings.<br /> <br /> The East African Currency Board is the main multinational monetary institution in the sterling area. It embraces Kenya, Tanzania [Tanzania has announced plans for its own currency.]and Uganda in Africa, and Aden outside the region, with a currency freely convertible at a fixed rate to the pound sterling. The member countries of the Currency Board have no control over domestic money supplies. In the long run these are controlled by export and import levels and foreign investment flows, and in the short, by lending policies of the London banks. Under this arrangement nationally directed growth often leads to a shortage of currency which hinders expansion.<br /> <br /> In Britain the names of the ‘Big Five’ banks are household words. These banks with their immense resources are closely linked with big industrialists to form a small and specially powerful group with world-wide interests. In 1951 the 147 directors of the Big Five banks held between them 1,008 directorships of which 299 were in other financial institutions such as other banks, insurance companies and investment trusts. Many of the biggest companies have directors on the boards of more than one of the biggest banks. ‘The more the interlocking takes place, the less one can say “this one is a financier, and that one is an industrialist.” There emerges a group of finance capitalists dominating both finance and industry.’ [''Monopoly: A Study of British Monopoly Capitalism'' by Sam Aaronovitch, p. 54.] The dangers, therefore, of too close ties with foreign banks are apparent. Yet the large participations of foreign banks in African banks may be seen from the following:<br /> <br /> ''Republic of Congo:'' Crédit Congolais is a subsidiary of Barclay’s Bank D.C.O. through its affiliate in Antwerp, the Banque de Commerce; Banque Internationale pour le Commerce et l'Industrie du Congo is a subsidiary of B.N.C.I., Paris, through B.N.C.I. (Afrique); Banque Commerciale Congolaise is a subsidiary of Crédit Lyonnais; Société Générale de Banques au Congo is made up of Bayerische Vereinsbank (5%), Société Générale de Paris (51%), Banco Nazionale del Lavoro, Banque de l'Union Parisienne and Bankers International Corporation (Morgan Guaranty).<br /> <br /> ''Congo (Leopoldville):'' Banque Internationale pour le Commerce is a subsidiary of B.N.C.I.; Société Congolaise de Banque is also a subsidiary of B.N.C.I.; Banque Belge d'Afrique (Banque de Bruxelles and Brufina); Banque Centrale du Congo Belge et du Ruanda-Urundi (Société Générale de Belgique); Banque du Congo Belge (Société Générale de Belgique and Compagnie du Congo pour le COmmerce et l'Industrie); Banque Belgo-Congolaise (Société Générale de Belgique and C.C.C.I.).<br /> <br /> ''Cameroun:'' Société Camerounaise de Banque (Deutsche Bank (5%) and Crédit Lyonnais); Banque Internationale pour le Commerce et l'Industrie (B.I.C.I. du Cameroun is made up of Bayerische Vereinsbank (5%), Société Générale de Paris (51%), Banque de l'Union Parisienne, Banco Nazionale del Lavoro, and Bankers International Corporation (Morgan Guaranty).<br /> <br /> ''Gabon:'' Union Gabonaise de Banque (Deutsche Bank (10%) and Credit Lyonnais).<br /> <br /> ''Liberia:'' Bank of Monrovia is owned 100 per cent by First National City Bank of New York (Morgan); Liberian Trading &amp; Development Bank [Mediobanca (60%) and Bankers International Corporation (Morgan)].<br /> <br /> ''Libya:'' The Sahara Bank (Tripoli) [Bank of America International N.Y., Bank of America, California, Banco de Sicilia, Palerno (Bank of America Associate)].<br /> <br /> ''Central Africa'': Union Bancaire en Afrique Centrale is owned by Société Générale de Paris and Crédit Lyonnais.<br /> <br /> ''Nigeria:'' Barclays Bank D.C.O.; Bank of West Africa; Philip Hill (Nigeria) Ltd. is made up of Philip Hill (40%), Banca Commerciale Italiana (30%); United Bank for Africa [B.N.C.I., Rotterdamsche Bank, Banco Nazionale del Lavoro, and Bankers Trust Corporation (Morgan)]; Nigerian Industrial Development Bank (Chase International Corporation, Bank of America, Northwest International Bank, Irving International Finance Corporation, Bank of Tokyo, Instituto Mobiliare Italiano and Commerzbank have together taken up shares to the value of £480,000; Société FInancière pour les Pays d'Outremer is made up of International Finance Corporation (£490,000), Bank of Nigeria (£490,000), Nigerian private investors (£20,000) and the Investment Company of Nigeria (£500,000). A government loan brings total funds up to £5 million.<br /> <br /> ''Rwanda Burundi:'' Banque de Ruanda Urundi is a subsidiary of B.N.C.I.<br /> <br /> ''Sudan:'' Nilein Bank (Banque des Deux Nils) is a subsidiary of Crédit Lyonnais.<br /> <br /> ''Ivory Coast:'' Société Générale de Banques en Côte d'Ivoire is made up of Bayerische Vereinsbank, Société Générale de Paris, Banque de l'Union Parisienne, Banco Nazionale del Lavoro, and Bankers International Corporation (Morgan Guaranty); Banque Ivoirienne de Crédit is a subsidiary of Crédit Lyonnais; B.I.C.I. du Côte d'Ivoire is a subsidiary of B.N.C.I. and Société Ivoirienne de Banque is made up of Deutsche Bank (16%), Crédit Lyonnais (42%), International Banking Corporation (16%), Banca Commerciale Italiana (16%), and Ivory Coast Government (10%).<br /> <br /> ''Dahomey:'' Société Dahomienne de Banque is a subsidiary of Crédit Lyonnais.<br /> <br /> ''Mali:'' Banque Malienne de Crédit et de Dépôts is a subsidiary of Crédit Lyonnais.<br /> <br /> ''Morocco:'' Banque Franco-Suisse pour le Maroc is made up of Swiss Bank Corporation (50%) and Crédit Commercial de France (50%); Banque Nationale pour le Developpement Economique is made up of Deutsche Bank, Banco Nazionale del Lavoro, and Commerzbank; Caisse Marocaine des Marchés is part-owned by Crédit Foncier de France; Banque Fonçière du Maroc is part owned by Crédit du Nord; Banque Commerciale du Maroc is made up of Cie Industrielle et Commercial (C.I.C.), Credit Lyonnais du Maroc, Union Africaine et Financière Maroc, and Union Européenne Industrielle et Financière.<br /> <br /> ''Tchad:'' Banque Tchadienne de Crédit et de Dépôts (Government of Tchad and Crédit Lyonnais).<br /> <br /> ''Tunisia:'' Union Bancaire pour le Commerce et l'Industrie (B.N.C.I. and Banco di Roma); Banque de Tunisie (C.I.C.); Union Internationale de Banque (Société Tunisienne de Banques, Banca Commerciale Italiana, Commerzbank, and Bank of America); Banque d'Escompte et de Crédit à l'Industrie en Tunisie (B.E.I.T.) is made up of Banque Industrielle pour l'Afrique du Nord (Banque de l'Indochine, 5%), International Banking Corporation (Morgan Guaranty), and Comptoir National d'Escompte de Paris.<br /> <br /> ''Madagascar:'' Banque Malgache d'Escompte et de Crédit (Malagasy Government and Comptoir National d'Escompte de Paris).<br /> <br /> ''South Africa:'' In addition to Barclays D.C.O., Crédit Lyonnais, and other big U.K. and French banks, there are French Bank of South Africa (Banque de l'Indochine), First National City Bank of New York (S.A.) Ltd., Banque Commerciale Africaine (C.I.C., 12,631 shares) and the Standard Bank.<br /> <br /> In addition, there are a number of other banks functioning throughout Africa, such as the British Bank of the Middle East, which operates in Tunisia and Morocco and Libya, and National and Grindlays Bank, with branches and agencies in the Somali Republic. A recently established bank in the Merchant Bank of Central Africa, which is a creation of the Rothschild Banking group. The Banque Lambert has a participation as well as Mediobanca.<br /> <br /> Reports of important French banks for their financial year 1963-4 indicate the way in which they are adapting themselves to the new conditions of independent States without losing any of their former influence. The following report of the Comptoir National d'Escompte de Paris appeared in ''Le Monde'', 16 June 1964:<br /> <br /> ‘We have asserted in a new form our policy in Africa. We opened in April, as we indicated last year, the Banque d'Escompte et de Crédit à l'Industrie en Tunisie (B.E.I.T.) which we have found in Tunis with the Banque Industrielle de l'Afrique du Nord (B.I.A.N.) and the Morgan Guaranty International Banking Corporation; this new establishment has taken over our local branches and those of the B.I.A.N. We also decided to create, with the Malagasy Government, the Banque Malgache d'Escompte et de Crédit (B.A.M.E.S.) to which we have since ceded our agencies in Madagascar, and which is presided over by a Malagasy personality, administered by a joint board and managed by our representative. We hope to give to this traditional sector of our influence a new drive and to emphasise thereby the position which we have held in Madagascar since 1885. In Algeria we are retaining only an agency in Algiers, where in spite of the circumstances we have maintained some activity.’<br /> <br /> Three days earlier, on 13 June 1964, ''Le Monde'' contained a report of the activities of Credit Lyonnais:<br /> <br /> ‘In Morocco we have during the month of February 1963, with the help of the Banque Marocaine du Commerce Extérieur, proceeded to transform our agencies into a company under Moroccan Law. The B.M.C.E.E. has taken up an important participation in the registered capital of six million dirhams in the new company, which functions under the registered title of Crédit Lyonnais-Maroc.<br /> <br /> In Tunisia, where our agencies have obtained satisfactory results, the conversations taken up with the Société Tunisienne de Banque, the Banca Commerciale Italiana, the Commerzbank A.G. and the Bank of America have ended in the creation of the Union Internationale de Banques, with a capital of 700,000 dinars, which has taken over with effect from 2 January 1964 the working of our agencies.<br /> <br /> With the association of the Republic of Chad there was created in February 1963 the Banque Tchadienne de Crédit et de Dépôts, with a capital of 100 million francs CFA. These two participations help to complete our representation in black Africa, where our establishment is now interested in eleven banking companies.’<br /> <br /> The French have maintained close monetary ties with the countries of former French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa. The Banque Centrale des Etats de l'Afrique de l'Ouest (B.C.E.A.O.) controls the currencies of Mauritania, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Dahomey and Niger. The currency issued by the bank is still called the CFA franc, but now, instead of ‘Communauté Financière d'Afrique’, the initials mean ‘Communauté Financière Africaine’. National monetary commissions have been set up in the various States, and there is a limited degree of African representation on the administrative council.<br /> <br /> The same does not apply to the Banque Centrale des Etats de l'Afrique Equatoriale et du Cameroun (B.C.E.A.C.) which is concerned with the Congo (Brazzaville), Gabon, the Central African Republic, Chad and Cameroun. The national monetary commissions have the same powers as those in former French West Africa, but central bank administrators sit on them, and the administrative council is composed of Frenchman.<br /> <br /> As a research group of the Department of Economics in the University of Ghana has pointed out, ‘the most significant feature of these currency blocs is that the foreign exchange reserves of the franc zone countries are still pooled in France itself. They are estimated individually for each member, but cannot be drawn upon beyond a certain margin of credit governed in each case by a bilateral agreement with the French government. Local monetary policy, exchange control and duty policy ... must operate within the framework of this central allocation by the French.’<br /> <br /> Certain former French colonies, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Mali and Guinea have, since independence, established their own banks and currencies, but they have pegged their currencies to the franc.<br /> <br /> The existence of separate monetary zones is having a harmful effect on the growth of trade in Africa. It is leading to illegal trade and revenue losses in many countries and makes an African Common Market difficult. Like the old, artificial political boundaries which are a relic of the colonial period, the various monetary zones help to emphasise differences when the independent African States should all be working for unified economic development. They perpetuate links with former colonial powers and strengthen the forces of neo-colonialism.<br /> <br /> A significant step forward in continental economic cooperation was taken in September 1964, when the African Development Bank was founded. Its headquarters are at Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and its membership is limited to independent African governments. All powers of the Bank rest in the Board of Governors, each Governor being a representative of a member state. The aim of the Bank is to accelerate the economic development and social progress of its member countries, and to accomplish this, the Bank is authorised to promote the investment of public and private capital in Africa.<br /> <br /> While foreign private investment must be encouraged, it must be carefully regulated so that it is directed to important growth sectors without leaving control of such sectors in foreign hands. Here again, we see the need for unified planning. With the support of a Union government and a continental code to govern foreign investment the African Development Bank would be able to accelerate the stimulus it is already giving to the economic development of the continent.<br /> <br /> == New Industries: The Effects on Primary Producing Countries ==<br /> THE second world war, fought as it was on an almost global scale, called for scientific and inventive genius in unprecedented measure, all towards one end: that of destruction. The need for vast quantities of equipment and the supply services that were ancillary to the purpose of wiping out people and cities, animated, as peace never did, governmental support for investigation and research into faster and more rational means of mass production. The United States, which became the prime arsenal and provider for its Western allies, was naturally foremost in adjusting its industrial machinery to the new methods at the close of the war. Since then the demands made by the reconstruction of ruined cities and the rebuilding of disjointed economies have accelerated the trend. The policy of containment, military adventures such as Vietnam, Cyprus and Korea, cold war stock-piling and the race in rocket assembly and space-shit building have added their own quota. Automation and the use of electronics are fast spreading and, as in America, taking hold wherever large-scale production finds it more profitable to replace human labour by push-button thinly-manned mechanisms.<br /> <br /> The resulting tremendous bound forward in productive potential has created an increasing demand for the base materials of industry, and there has sprung up a rapidly enlarging assortment of synthetic raw materials, many of them supplementing natural products and often replacing them. This is having an effect upon the market prices of natural primary products, a fact given prominence by the chairman of Union Minière du Haut Katanga at the 1964 shareholders’ meeting. The London Metal Exchange, the body which still operates the world prices of metals, is largely under the influence of the leading producers and processors like Union Minière itself, and its associates Rhodesian Selection Trust, Conzinc-Rio Tinto, Amalgamated Metal Corporation, Minerais et Metaux and London Tin Corporation.<br /> <br /> Cocoa users, for their part, are constantly threatening the producing countries that they will use synthetic substitutes and rubber-growing countries are up against the increasing use of the artificial product. Just as the high quotations and fluctuations of primary products are influenced by the monopoly producers, so the threat of the use of synthetics is no idle warning, since the controllers of the natural products are also the major producers of the artificial materials. For the same reason, the producers of synthetics will be careful not to compete too vigorously with the natural products. For example, it has been alleged that Dunlop were slow to begin synthetic rubber manufacturing because of their large plantation interests in Malaya.<br /> <br /> All four of the American rubber-producing giants, Firestone, B. F. Goodrich, Goodyear and United States Rubber, are engaged in the production of artificial rubber. United States Rubber works 90,000 acres of rubber plantations in Malaya and Indonesia, as well as concessions in Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia and other Latin American countries. Its synthetic rubber and related plants, with the exception of that at Naugatuck, Connecticut, are placed, like those of its textile division, in the southern States of America, where labour is cheaper than in the north. In 1962 there was ‘significant expansion’ of the company’s plastic facilities, under which the production capacity of its ‘Kralastic’ material was increased. This is described as ‘tough plastic-rubber blend’, for which growing uses are being found in automobiles and various appliances, all formerly using rubber.<br /> <br /> Goodyear, among the first twenty companies in the United States, has its own rubber plantations in Indonesia, Costa Rica, Brazil and Guatemala. It operates synthetic rubber plants at Houston, Texas and Akron, Ohio. A 30 per cent increase was made in the company’s facilities for research in rubber, plastics and other scientific exploration in 1961, for the company has become interested in chemicals and aeronautics.<br /> <br /> Firestone is a byword in West Africa where, until the recent advent of iron-ore exploiting companies, it dominated the economy of Liberia. It is still ‘King of Rubber’ there and, like other rubber giants, gets its rubber also from plantations in the Latin American countries, as well as Ceylon. It has fifty-eight plants throughout the United States, including four for synthetic rubber and one working on what is described as ‘U.S. national defence’. Another fifty-three plants are spread around the world, principally in the western hemisphere.<br /> <br /> B. F. Goodrich Company runs to the same form but, if anything, has wider plastics interests, since it is a producer of vinyl resins under the trade mark Geon, and among a long list of subsidiaries and other holdings controls British Geon, in collaboration with the Distillers Company, a combine controlling the whisky and gin trade of Great Britain, with over a hundred subsidiary companies engaged in biochemicals, industrial alcohol, plastics, magnesium alloys for jet engines, and many other operations. BTR Industries, which controls among other companies British Tyre &amp; Rubber Company and the International Synthetic Rubber Company, is included in Goodrich’s affiliates. Rubber plantations worked by the Goodrich Company are to be found in Liberia as well as in Latin America and Malaya. This company is tied up with A.K.U. (Algemene Kunstzijde Unie) of Holland, in a company that manufactures synthetic rubber for special purposes, and controls the important French rubber manufacturers, Kleber-Colmbes. Like Firestone and United States Rubber, it also has companies in Japan.<br /> <br /> These and the other main international rubber companies, such as the Italian Pirelli, the German companies, Continental and Phoenix, the French Michelin and Kleger-Colombes, and the British Dunlop, more or less complete the small circle of trusts that dominate the world’s production of rubber. They are all engaged in artificial rubber-making and the manufacture of other synthetics. The furious advertising that goes on in every country of the world to push their individual products leaves no doubt about their keen competition for markets, and all of them have factories as well as a multitude of agents and representatives spread across the globe.<br /> <br /> This brief review of the rubber monopolies illustrates their inter-relations and their domination of both natural and synthetic rubber throughout the world. It becomes increasingly obvious as we delve deeper into the operations of the industrial monopolies that they have the developing countries at a complete disadvantage.<br /> <br /> As providers of novel basic products for old and new industries on a continually extending scale, the highly industrialised countries are the major investors in and concessionaires for the starting materials that are obtained primarily from largely sub-industrialised sources. Among these we include Australia and the more advanced Canada, which are, for all practical purposes, financial colonies of American-dominated Western capital.<br /> <br /> Because of the extremely high capital costs involved in discovering and bringing to perfection new products and their uses and in establishing plants and factories for their manufacture and processing, the production of these synthetic materials has become the monopoly of a few mammoth international organisations like Imperial Chemical Industries (I.C.I.), Du Pont de Nemours, Union Carbide, Courtaulds, Snia Viscosa, Montecatini, A.K.U., Unilever, the tripartite group of the former I.G. Farben – Bayer, Hoechst and B.A.S.F. – Dow Chemical, Texas Gulf Sulphur, Lonza and Seichime. The important Japanese offspring of the Mitsui complex, Toyo Rayon Company, is linked to the major American and European giants, Du Pont, I.C.I. and Montecatini by patent arrangements, Du Pont having taken a direct interest in the company during the American occupation of Japan immediately after the war. These giants join forces at certain focal points in the struggle for domination. All the time they carry on a ferocious competition to secure monopoly markets and original source material supplies, not only for synthetics production but for the metallurgical, electronics and nuclear industries that have become part and parcel of their post-war expansion. It is not surprising therefore that even a cursory glance at their interests should reveal involvement in African raw materials’ exploitation, even though their financial shufflings may appear superficially to be very far away from such engagements.<br /> <br /> When Courtauld’s merger with I.C.I. was mooted in 1961 it had ‘world-wide repercussions’, which is not surprising when its own ramifications are reviewed and I.C.I.’s weight in the industrial and commercial markets of the world is recognised. Representing over 30 per cent of the British chemical industry, I.C.I. does 88 per cent of its turnover overseas in some fifty countries. Its issued capital is several times larger than the budget of most African States, standing at the end of 1962 at £303,393,910, larger even than that of South Africa, the continent’s most industrialised country. From chemicals, dyestuffs, paints, pharmaceuticals, fibres, plastics, heavy organic chemicals, explosives and fertilisers this vast organisation created a new holding company in 1962, Imperial Metal Industries Ltd., in order, so runs the company’s literature, to achieve a greater concentration of effort on a side of the company’s business which is materially different from its main chemical manufacturing activities: namely, its non-ferrous metal interests other than aluminium. In the latter field I.C.I. is linked on a fifty-fifty basis in Imperial Aluminium with Alcoa (Aluminium Company of America), the empire of the Mellon interests.<br /> <br /> Imperial Metal Industries has an interest in Extended Surface Tube Company. So has Stewarts &amp; Lloyds, a £60 million company working basic and foundry pig iron up to tubes of all varieties. Through subsidiaries, associated companies and agents throughout the world, Stewarts &amp; Lloyds has a stake in all the international markets. Among these are a 70 per cent interest in Stewarts &amp; Lloyds of South Africa Ltd., which controls six companies operating in South-West Africa, Rhodesia and South Africa itself; and a 13 per cent holding in the major steel conversion project in Zambia, the Rhodesian Iron &amp; Steel Company, a subsidiary of Rhodesian Anglo American Ltd., which is controlled by Anglo American of South Africa. Stewarts &amp; Lloyds have come up against American monopoly competition in South Africa, where their subsidiary has been negotiating for some months with United States and so-called Brazilian groups for establishing a plant beside its existing one at Vereeniging, near Johannesburg. The Americans and their Brazilian vassals were trying to jump the gun by enforcing a clause which would reduce the Stewarts &amp; Lloyds participation from 51 per cent to 25 per cent in the event that the steel industry in the United Kingdom becomes nationalised or, in the opinion of the two outside partners, is likely to be nationalised.<br /> <br /> I.C.I. is assisting the South African Government in building up its chemical and armaments industries through I.C.I. (South Africa) Ltd. and African Explosives &amp; Chemical Industries, in which it partners De Beers. African Explosives will be supplying from its constructing complex at Sasolburg many of the materials for providing polymers to the nylon spinning plant which is being erected by British Nylon Spinners at a cost of £3 million on the site purchased by it in 1963 at Belville, near Cape Town. The Rhodesian subsidiary of African Explosives is behind the proposed £2 million fertiliser plant to be built at Livingstone, Zambia, with the backing of the government, in connection with which the company is constructing another plant at Dorowa, Rhodesia, for the exploitation of phosphate deposits.<br /> <br /> Consumption of fuel and power and common minerals has jumped phenomenally since the war and the western capitalist countries as well as Japan have resorted to non-industrialised countries for quickly growing quantities. Before the war the industrialised countries relied largely upon their own reserves of iron ores or on those of other Western sources. Today the giant iron and steel corporations of Europe, America and Japan, in addition to their investments in Canada and Australia, are turning more and more for their base materials to Africa, where cheap labour, tax concessions and supporting government policies have opened up avenues of richer profits from huge, untapped resources. M. D. Banghart, vice-president of Newmont Mining, a leading American holding company with semi-permanent investments in mining and crude oil, has said that American firms could make a greater profit in Africa than from any comparable investment in the United States. Mr Banghart should know intimately what he is talking about, since Newmont Mining is joined in consortia operating the biggest exploitative undertakings in northern and southern Africa, such as the O'Okiep Copper Co., the Tsumeb Corporation, Palabora Mining, Soc. N.A. du Plomb and Soc. des Mines de Zellidja. It has a 12·1 per cent participation in Cyprus Mines, which gives it a vested interest in maintaining Cyprus for the NATO cause. The fact that United States miners earn an average of $2.70 an hour against the less than 10 cents average paid to African miners in South Africa makes it obvious how such super-profits are achieved. No wonder Newmont’s original investment in Tsumeb multiplied twenty times in value in the space of three years.<br /> <br /> The African countries are faced with the need to turn subsistence economies into organisms that will generate viable and improved conditions of living for their populations. However, many African governments, instead of getting together in united action which would stimulate maximum capital accumulation and the construction of a solid over-all African economy, are granting concessions for the working of mineral, agricultural and forestry resources whose purpose is the drawing off of output to sustain and enlarge the industries and economies of the imperialist countries. Not one of the investing syndicates has any intention of founding in any one of these countries an integrated industrial complex that would give impetus to genuine economic growth. Nor are the returns on the export of primary products from mining, agriculture and forestry likely to provide to any important extent the looked-for capital for investing in industrial foundation.<br /> <br /> Returns to source countries on exports of primary products are niggardly by comparison with the profits made by the monopoly concessionaires, who are both sellers and processors. A fair example to take in this connection might be Union Minière. In Katanga it operates over 34,000 square kilometres of concessions, on which it works three copper mines, one copper and zinc mine, five copper and cobalt mines, an iron mine and a limestone quarry. All of these are linked by road and railways owned by the company. First stage concentrates of copper, cobalt and zinc are milled at six plants. The company owns four electricity generating plants which work the foundry at Lubumbashi and the electrolysis plants at Jadotville-Shituru and Kolwezi-Luilu for the refining of copper and cobalt, of which it produced 295,236 tons and 9,683 tons respectively in 1962. The bulk of the copper and cobalt, however, go in concentrate form to the electrolytic refinery of its associate, Ste Générale Métallurgique de Hoboken, Brussels, which also treats the radium residues and uranium metals from Katanga, as well as refining the germanium also coming from the Union Minière production. The zinc is sent forward from Katanga in the form of raw concentrate.<br /> <br /> The Katanga output is shipped through the Congo by the Cie des Chemins de Fer Katanga-Dilolo-Leopoldville, and overseas by the Cie Maritime Congolaise. Insurance is covered by the Cie Congolaise d'Assurances, the Cie Belge d'Assurances Maritimes or Ste Auxiliaire de la Royale Union Coloniale Belge. Banking is done through the Ste Belge de Banque, the Banque du Congo Belge, the Belgian-American Banking Corporation. Staff is flown in and out by Sabena. Union Minière has holdings in all of them, and many others as well.<br /> <br /> It is the habit of these great monopolies – and we must remember that Union Minière is the world’s third producer of copper and its first of cobalt – to fix prices to suit their ideas of profit, subject to certain swings on the world markets, which frequently they operate and rig. Production at less than full capacity and the holding back of supplies are tactics that are often used. Most copper producers have, for the past three years been operating at no more than 85 per cent capacity, but are now returning gradually to fuller output. Following the strike at Mufulira during 1963, Rhodesian Selection Trust ran its plant at full capacity in order to replenish its stocks, but restricted its sales to 85 per cent. At the end of 1963 there was estimated to be some 300,000 tons a year of idle mine capacity throughout the world as a result of the voluntary restriction of output. Stocks accumulated outside the United States, in order to support prices, were put at 130,000 to 150,000 tons. The price had been stabilised at around £234 a ton for 1962/63. Demand for copper having risen, stocks were exhausted by mid-January 1964 and the price rose on the London Metal Exchange. Rhodesian producers, however, stepped up their price to £236, and from the remarks made by Union Minière’s chairman it would appear that the Exchange was forced into line, even though the producers were reducing their output cutback to 10 per cent. Despite the strike, and reduced output, turnover and net profits of Rhodesian Selection Trust were higher in 1963 than in 1962 and considerably above those of 1960, when prices were higher. Turnover in 1960 was £31,019,000; in 1962, £46,298,000; and in 1963, £50,931,000. Profits after tax were £7,600,000 for 1960; £7,735,000 for 1962; and £8,273,000 for 1963. This was the result of the offloading of stocks.<br /> <br /> We constantly read about the high prices that are earned for copper, tin, zinc and so forth. What is little understood is that these are the prices for the commodities on the industrial market in their processed forms. The metals leave the countries of their origin mainly in their primary condition of ores or concentrates and sometimes in the first stage transformation, which fetch merely token returns to these countries. The returns are even more paltry when measured against the values that are added the moment the materials are placed on board the transportation carrier at the point of exit; the carrier usually, as we have seen in the case of Union Minière, being related directly or indirectly with the actual producer. The many more surpluses that accrue in the course of transit from producing country to the foreign transformation centres and through the subsequent stages of conversion fall to the concessionary combines and the shipping, transport, banking, insurance, manufacturing and selling organisations with which, in most cases, they are linked. As Victor Perlo dramatically summarises in ''American Imperialism'', ‘weak countries, without adequate industry to build ships and airplanes, must pay tolls to the imperialist transportation monopolies for the goods they import and export. Countries without adequate financial resources must pay fees to the centres of finance capital for the use of banking facilities and for insurance’ (p. 62).<br /> <br /> Amounts remaining behind in the producing countries in the form of wages are sadly fractional. Over 50 per cent of the Congo’s national income went regularly to European residents and foreign firms. The rest remained to be distributed over the various sectors of the economy. It is not surprising that the territory’s 14 million inhabitants live in the extremest poverty. In Gabon one-third of the income goes to the non-African population. Two-fifths of Liberia’s total income accrues to foreign firms (U.N. Report E/CN.14/246, 7 January 1964). And when independent African countries attempt to establish a certain rectification by levelling taxes on company profits, they draw resentment that is echoed in dire warnings in the imperialist press that they will stifle foreign investment if they continue such encroachments upon expatriate rights.<br /> <br /> ‘Ashanti hit by Ghana tax,’ shouted a paragraph headline in a London City journal dated 28 January 1964, and set forth figures to show that Ghana Government taxation had cut Ashanti Goldfields 1962/63 profits from £1,111,162 to £609,142. Nevertheless the company was still able to declare a total dividend of 37 1/2 per cent, a fall obviously from the 50 per cent and over that had been kept up for several previous years, but still a whacking return on an original capital of £250,000 which had been built up to its present £3 million from reserves out of past and current profits. That the company was able to pay the dividend is proof of the nicely cushioned reserves that have been accumulated over a period of operations, in addition to what has been drawn back into capital.<br /> <br /> Diamonds are bringing some extra revenue to the West African countries out of new selling arrangements which are taking some of the profit that formerly went to CAST (Consolidated African Selection Trust) and its De Beers’ principals. Ghana has its own diamond market and a government marketing board which takes the commission which used to go to middlemen acting for De Beers. In Sierra Leone CAST profits were higher, but a service fee paid to the government board ‘under protest’ and higher production costs cut them somewhat. Nevertheless, CAST was able to declare a final dividend that left the total dividend for the year 1962/63 unchanged at 3''s''. 6''d''. on a 5''s''. share (70 per cent), of which there were 18,198,654 issued and paid up out of 20 million authorised. This issued capital, amounting to £4,549,663 10''s''. Was achieved in less than twenty years out of reserves made from an original capital of £250,000. Furthermore, stocks of diamonds held by the group at the end of the working year had an estimated value of £6 million.<br /> <br /> Further profits are forced out of Africa in the form of the inflated cost of finished goods, equipment and services she is forced to buy from the monopoly sources that extract the prime materials. This is the big squeeze in which Africa is caught, one that grew tighter from the eve of the first world war. It was estimated by United Nations experts that the dependent countries had to pay $2.5 to $3 billion more for their imports of manufactured goods in 1947 than they would have had to pay if price ratios were the same as in 1913. For the period from 1950 to 1961, according to the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the U.N., the index of returns for primary materials fell from 97 to 91 (70 for cocoa, coffee and tea), while that for manufactured goods rose from 86 to 110. For steel, which is an indispensable commodity on an increasing scale for developing countries, it reaches the very much higher figure of 134. In terms of exchange as between primary producing countries and the exporters of manufactured goods, there has been a decline in ten years from 113 to 82, to the disadvantage of the former. The value of Ghana’s exports in 1962 was the same as that for exports in 1961, but the volume had increased by about six per cent. The value of imports in 1962 was reduced by 16 per cent but the volume fell by only 14 per cent. In the Congo Republic (Brazzaville), while 1962 saw an increase of 77 per cent in exports over 1961, and imports declined by 15 per cent, the value of the exports hardly covered half the value of the imports (E/CN.14/239, Part A, December 1963).<br /> <br /> == The Mechanisms of Neo-Colonialism ==<br /> IN order to halt foreign interference in the affairs of developing countries it is necessary to study, understand, expose and actively combat neo-colonialism in whatever guise it may appear. For the methods of neo-colonialists are subtle and varied. They operate not only in the economic field, but also in the political, religious, ideological and cultural spheres.<br /> <br /> Faced with the militant peoples of the ex-colonial territories in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, imperialism simply switches tactics. Without a qualm it dispenses with its flags, and even with certain of its more hated expatriate officials. This means, so it claims, that it is ‘giving’ independence to its former subjects, to be followed by ‘aid’ for their development. Under cover of such phrases, however, it devises innumerable ways to accomplish objectives formerly achieved by naked colonialism. It is this sum total of these modern attempts to perpetuate colonialism while at the same time talking about ‘freedom’, which has come to be known as ''neo-colonialism.''<br /> <br /> Foremost among the neo-colonialists is the United States, which has long exercised its power in Latin America. Fumblingly at first she turned towards Europe, and then with more certainty after world war two when most countries of that continent were indebted to her. Since then, with methodical thoroughness and touching attention to detail, the Pentagon set about consolidating its ascendancy, evidence of which can be seen all around the world.<br /> <br /> Who really rules in such places as Great Britain, West Germany, Japan, Spain, Portugal or Italy? If General de Gaulle is ‘defecting’ from U.S. monopoly control, what interpretation can be placed on his ‘experiments’ in the Sahara desert, his paratroopers in Gabon, or his trips to Cambodia and Latin America?<br /> <br /> Lurking behind such questions are the extended tentacles of the Wall Street octopus. And its suction cups and muscular strength are provided by a phenomenon dubbed ‘The Invisible Government’, arising from Wall Street’s connection with the Pentagon and various intelligence services. I quote:<br /> <br /> ‘The Invisible Government ... is a loose amorphous grouping of individuals and agencies drawn from many parts of the visible government. It is not limited to the Central Intelligence Agency, although the CIA is at its heart. Nor is it confined to the nine other agencies which comprise what is known as the intelligence community: the National Security Council, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, Army Intelligence, Navy Intelligence and Research, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.<br /> <br /> ‘The Invisible Government includes also many other units and agencies, as well as individuals, that appear outwardly to be a normal part of the conventional government. It even encompasses business firms and institutions that are seemingly private.<br /> <br /> ‘To an extent that is only beginning to be perceived, this shadow government is shaping the lives of 190,000,000 Americans. An informed citizen might come to suspect that the foreign policy of the United States often works publicly in one direction and secretly through the Invisible Government in just the opposite direction.<br /> <br /> ‘This Invisible Government is a relatively new institution. It came into being as a result of two related factors: the rise of the United States after World War II to a position of pre-eminent world power, and the challenge to that power by Soviet Communism...<br /> <br /> ‘By 1964 the intelligence network had grown into a massive hidden apparatus, secretly employing about 200,000 persons and spending billions of dollars a year. [''The Invisible Government'', David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, Random House, New York, 1964.]<br /> <br /> Here, from the very citadel of neo-colonialism, is a description of the apparatus which now directs all other Western intelligence set-ups either by persuasion or by force. Results were achieved in Algeria during the April 1961 plot of anti-de Gaulle generals; as also in Guatemala, Iraq, Iran, Suez and the famous U-2 spy intrusion of Soviet air space which wrecked the approaching Summit, then in West Germany and again in East Germany in the riots of 1953, in Hungary’s abortive crisis of 1959, Poland’s of September 1956, and in Korea, Burma, Formosa, Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam; they are evident in the trouble in Congo (Leopoldville) which began with Lumumba’s murder, and continues till now; in events in Cuba, Turkey, Cyprus, Greece, and in other places too numerous to catalogue completely.<br /> <br /> And with what aim have these innumerable incidents occurred? The general objective has been mentioned: to achieve colonialism in fact while preaching independence.<br /> <br /> On the economic front, a strong factor favouring Western monopolies and acting against the developing world is inter-national capital’s control of the world market, as well as of the prices of commodities bought and sold there. From 1951 to 1961, without taking oil into consideration, the general level of prices for primary products fell by 33.l per cent, while prices of manufactured goods rose 3.5 per cent (within which, machinery and equipment prices rose 31.3 per cent). In that same decade this caused a loss to the Asian, African and Latin American countries, using 1951 prices as a basis, of some $41,400 million. In the same period, while the volume of exports from these countries rose, their earnings in foreign exchange from such exports decreased.<br /> <br /> Another technique of neo-colonialism is the use of high rates of interest. Figures from the World Bank for 1962 showed that seventy-one Asian, African and Latin American countries owed foreign debts of some $27,000 million, on which they paid in interest and service charges some $5,000 million. Since then, such foreign debts have been estimated as more than £30,000 million in these areas. In 1961, the interest rates on almost three-quarters of the loans offered by the major imperialist powers amounted to more than five per cent, in some cases up to seven or eight per cent, while the call-in periods of such loans have been burdensomely short.<br /> <br /> While capital worth $30,000 million was exported to some fifty-six developing countries between 1956 and 1962, ‘it is estimated that interest and profit alone extracted on this sum from the debtor countries amounted to more than £15,000 million. This method of penetration by economic aid recently soared into prominence when a number of countries began rejecting it. Ceylon, Indonesia and Cambodia are among those who turned it down. Such ‘aid’ is estimated on the annual average to have amounted to $2,600 million between 1951 and 1955; $4,007 million between 1956 and 1959, and $6,000 million between 1960 and 1962. But the average sums taken out of the aided countries by such donors in a sample year, 1961, are estimated to amount to $5,000 million in profits, $1,000 million in interest, and $5,800 million from non-equivalent exchange, or a total of $11,800 million extracted against $6,000 million put in. Thus, ‘aid’ turns out to be another means of exploitation, a modern method of capital export under a more cosmetic name.<br /> <br /> Still another neo-colonialist trap on the economic front has come to be known as ‘multilateral aid’ through international organisations: the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-national Bank for Reconstruction and Development (known as the World Bank), the International Finance Corporation and the International Development Association are examples, all, significantly, having U.S. capital as their major backing. These agencies have the habit of forcing would-be borrowers to submit to various offensive conditions, such as supplying information about their economies, submitting their policy and plans to review by the World Bank and accepting agency supervision of their use of loans. As for the alleged development, between 1960 and mid-1963 the International Development Association promised a total of $500 million to applicants, out of which only $70 million were actually received.<br /> <br /> In more recent years, as pointed out by Monitor in ''The Times,'' 1 July 1965, there has been a substantial increase in communist technical and economic aid activities in developing countries. During 1964 the total amount of assistance offered was approximately £600 million. This was almost a third of the total communist aid given during the previous decade. The Middle East received about 40 per cent of the total, Asia 36 per cent, Africa 22 per cent and Latin America the rest.<br /> <br /> Increased Chinese activity was responsible to some extent for the larger amount of aid offered in 1964, though China contributed only a quarter of the total aid committed; the Soviet Union provided a half, and the East European countries a quarter.<br /> <br /> Although aid from socialist countries still falls far short of that offered from the west, it is often more impressive, since it is swift and flexible, and interest rates on communist loans are only about two per cent compared with five to six per cent charged on loans from western countries.<br /> <br /> Nor is the whole story of ‘aid’ contained in figures, for there are conditions which hedge it around: the conclusion of commerce and navigation treaties; agreements for economic co-operation; the right to meddle in internal finances, including currency and foreign exchange, to lower trade barriers in favour of the donor country’s goods and capital; to protect the interests of private investments; determination of how the funds are to be used; forcing the recipient to set up counterpart funds; to supply raw materials to the donor; and use of such funds a majority of it, in fact to buy goods from the donor nation. These conditions apply to industry, commerce, agriculture, shipping and insurance, apart from others which are political and military.<br /> <br /> So-called ‘invisible trade’ furnishes the Western monopolies with yet another means of economic penetration. Over 90 per cent of world ocean shipping is controlled by me imperialist countries. They control shipping rates and, between 1951 and 1961, they increased them some five times in a total rise of about 60 per cent, the upward trend continuing. Thus, net annual freight expenses incurred by Asia, Africa and Latin America amount to no less than an estimated $1,600 million. This is over and above all other profits and interest payments. As for insurance payments, in 1961 alone these amounted to an unfavourable balance in Asia, Africa and Latin America of some additional $370 million.<br /> <br /> Having waded through all this, however, we have begun to understand only the ''basic'' methods of neo-colonialism. The full extent of its inventiveness is far from exhausted.<br /> <br /> In the labour field, for example, imperialism operates through labour arms like the Social Democratic parties of Europe led by the British Labour Party, and through such instruments as the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), now apparently being superseded by the New York Africa-American Labour Centre (AALC) under AFL-CIO chief George Meany and the well-known CIA man in labour’s top echelons, Irving Brown.<br /> <br /> In 1945, out of the euphoria of anti-fascist victory, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) had been formed, including all world labour except the U.S. American Federation of Labor (AFL). By 1949, however, led by the British Trade Union Congress (TUC), a number of pro-imperialist labour bodies in the West broke away from the WFTU over the issue of anti-colonialist liberation, and set up the ICFTU.<br /> <br /> For ten years it continued under British TUC leadership. Its record in Africa, Asia and Latin America could gratify only the big international monopolies which were extracting super-profits from those areas.<br /> <br /> In 1959, at Brussels, the United States AFL-CIO union centre fought for and won control of the ICFTU Executive Board. From then on a flood of typewriters, mimeograph machines, cars, supplies, buildings, salaries and, so it is still averred, outright bribes for labour leaders in various parts of the developing world rapidly linked ICFTU in the minds of the rank and file with the CIA. To such an extent did its prestige suffer under these American bosses that, in 1964, the AFL-CIO brains felt it necessary to establish a fresh outfit. They set up the AALC in New York right across the river from the United Nations.<br /> <br /> ‘As a steadfast champion of national independence, democracy and social justice’, unblushingly stated the April 1965 Bulletin put out by this Centre, ‘the AFL-CIO will strengthen its efforts to assist the advancement of the economic conditions of the African peoples. Toward this end, steps have been taken to expand assistance to the African free trade unions by organising the African-American Labour Centre. Such assistance will help African labour play a vital role in the economic and democratic upbuilding of their countries.'<br /> <br /> The March issue of this Bulletin, however, gave the game away: ‘In mobilising capital resources for investment in Workers Education, Vocational Training, Co-operatives, Health Clinics and Housing, the Centre will work with both private and public institutions. It will also ''encourage labour-management co-operation to expand American capital investment in the African nations.''’ The italics are mine. Could anything be plainer?<br /> <br /> Following a pattern previously set by the ICFTU, it has already started classes: one for drivers and mechanics in Nigeria, one in tailoring in Kenya. Labour scholarships are being offered to Africans who want to study trade unionism in of all places-Austria, ostensibly by the Austrian unions. Elsewhere, labour, organised into political parties of which the British Labour Party is a leading and typical example, has shown a similar aptitude for encouraging ‘Labour-management co-operation to expand . . . capital investment in African nations.'<br /> <br /> But as the struggle sharpens, even these measures of neo-colonialism are proving too mild. So Africa, Asia and Latin America have begun to experience a round of coups d'etat or would-be coups, together with a series of political assassinations which have destroyed in their political primes some of the newly emerging nations best leaders. To ensure success in these endeavours, the imperialists have made widespread and wily use of ideological and cultural weapons in the form of intrigues, manoeuvres and slander campaigns.<br /> <br /> Some of these methods used by neo-colonialists to slip past our guard must now be examined. The first is retention by the departing colonialists of various kinds of privileges which infringe on our sovereignty: that of setting up military bases or stationing troops in former colonies and the supplying of ‘advisers’ of one sort or another. Sometimes a number of ‘rights’ are demanded: land concessions, prospecting rights for minerals and/or oil; the ‘right’ to collect customs, to carry out administration, to issue paper money; to be exempt from customs duties and/or taxes for expatriate enterprises; and, above all, the ‘right’ to provide ‘aid’. Also demanded and granted are privileges in the cultural field; that Western information services be exclusive; and that those from socialist countries be excluded.<br /> <br /> Even the cinema stories of fabulous Hollywood are loaded. One has only to listen to the cheers of an African audience as Hollywood’s heroes slaughter red Indians or Asiatics to understand the effectiveness of this weapon. For, in the developing continents, where the colonialist heritage has left a vast majority still illiterate, even the smallest child gets the message contained in the blood and thunder stories emanating from California. And along with murder and the Wild West goes an incessant barrage of anti-socialist propaganda, in which the trade union man, the revolutionary, or the man of dark skin is generally cast as the villain, while the policeman, the gum-shoe, the Federal agent—in a word, the CIA—type spy is ever the hero. Here, truly, is the ideological under-belly of those political murders which so often use local people as their instruments.<br /> <br /> While Hollywood takes care of fiction, the enormous monopoly press, together with the outflow of slick, clever, expensive magazines, attends to what it chooses to call ‘news. Within separate countries, one or two news agencies control the news handouts, so that a deadly uniformity is achieved, regardless of the number of separate newspapers or magazines; while internationally, the financial preponderance of the United States is felt more and more through its foreign correspondents and offices abroad, as well as through its influence over inter-national capitalist journalism. Under this guise, a flood of anti-liberation propaganda emanates from the capital cities of the West, directed against China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, Ghana and all countries which hack out their own independent path to freedom. Prejudice is rife. For example, wherever there is armed struggle against the forces of reaction, the nationalists are referred to as rebels, terrorists, or frequently ‘communist terrorists'!<br /> <br /> Perhaps one of the most insidious methods of the neo-colonialists is evangelism. Following the liberation movement there has been a veritable riptide of religious sects, the overwhelming majority of them American. Typical of these are Jehovah’s Witnesses who recently created trouble in certain developing countries by busily teaching their citizens not to salute the new national flags. ‘Religion’ was too thin to smother the outcry that arose against this activity, and a temporary lull followed. But the number of evangelists continues to grow.<br /> <br /> Yet even evangelism and the cinema are only two twigs on a much bigger tree. Dating from the end of 1961, the U.S. has actively developed a huge ideological plan for invading the so-called Third World, utilising all its facilities from press and radio to Peace Corps.<br /> <br /> During 1962 and 1963 a number of international conferences to this end were held in several places, such as Nicosia in Cyprus, San Jose in Costa Rica, and Lagos in Nigeria. Participants included the CIA, the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the Pentagon, the International Development Agency, the Peace Corps and others. Programmes were drawn up which included the systematic use of U.S. citizens abroad in virtual intelligence activities and propaganda work. Methods of recruiting political agents and of forcing ‘alliances’ with the U.S.A. were worked out. At the centre of its programmes lay the demand for an absolute U.S. monopoly in the field of propaganda, as well as for counteracting any independent efforts by developing states in the realm of information.<br /> <br /> The United States sought, and still seeks, with considerable success, to co-ordinate on the basis of its own strategy the propaganda activities of all Western countries. In October 1961, a conference of NATO countries was held in Rome to discuss problems of psychological warfare. It appealed for the organisation of combined ideological operations in Afro-Asian countries by all participants.<br /> <br /> In May and June 1962 a seminar was convened by the U.S. in Vienna on ideological warfare. It adopted a secret decision to engage in a propaganda offensive against the developing countries along lines laid down by the U.S.A. It was agreed that NATO propaganda agencies would, in practice if not in the public eye, keep in close contact with U.S. Embassies in their respective countries.<br /> <br /> Among instruments of such Western psychological warfare are numbered the intelligence agencies of Western countries headed by those of the United States ‘Invisible Government’. But most significant among them all are Moral Re-Armament QARA), the Peace Corps and the United States Information Agency (USIA).<br /> <br /> Moral Re-Armament is an organisation founded in 1938 by the American, Frank Buchman. In the last days before the second world war, it advocated the appeasement of Hitler, often extolling Himmler, the Gestapo chief. In Africa, MRA incursions began at the end of World War II. Against the big anti-colonial upsurge that followed victory in 1945, MRA spent millions advocating collaboration between the forces oppressing the African peoples and those same peoples. It is not without significance that Moise Tshombe and Joseph Kasavubu of Congo (Leopoldville) are both MRA supporters. George Seldes, in his book ''One Thousand Americans,'' characterised MRA as a fascist organisation ‘subsidised by . . . Fascists, and with a long record of collaboration with Fascists the world over. . . .’ This description is supported by the active participation in MRA of people like General Carpentier, former commander of NATO land forces, and General Ho Ying-chin, one of Chiang Kai-shek’s top generals. To cap this, several newspapers, some of them in the Western ;vorld, have claimed that MRA is actually subsidised by the CIA.<br /> <br /> When MRA’s influence began to fail, some new instrument to cover the ideological arena was desired. It came in the establishment of the American Peace Corps in 1961 by President John Kennedy, with Sargent Shriver, Jr., his brother-in-law, in charge. Shriver, a millionaire who made his pile in land speculation in Chicago, was also known as the friend, confidant and co-worker of the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen Dulles. These two had worked together in both the Office of Strategic Services, U.S. war-time intelligence agency, and in the CIA.<br /> <br /> Shriver’s record makes a mockery of President Kennedy’s alleged instruction to Shriver to ‘keep the CIA out of the Peace Corps’. So does the fact that, although the Peace Corps is advertised as a voluntary organisation, all its members are carefully screened by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).<br /> <br /> Since its creation in 1961, members of the Peace Corps have been exposed and expelled from many African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries for acts of subversion or prejudice. Indonesia, Tanzania, the Philippines, and even pro-West countries like Turkey and Iran, have complained of its activities.<br /> <br /> However, perhaps the chief executor of U.S. psychological warfare is the United States Information Agency (USIA). Even for the wealthiest nation on earth, the U.S. lavishes an unusual amount of men, materials and money on this vehicle for its neo-colonial aims.<br /> <br /> The USIA is staffed by some 12,000 persons to the tune of more than $130 million a year. It has more than seventy editorial staffs working on publications abroad. Of its network comprising 110 radio stations, 60 are outside the U.S. Programmes are broadcast for Africa by American stations in Morocco, Eritrea, Liberia, Crete, and Barcelona, Spain, as well as from off-shore stations on American ships. In Africa alone, the USIA transmits about thirty territorial and national radio programmes whose content glorifies the U.S. while attempting to discredit countries with an independent foreign policy.<br /> <br /> The USIA boasts more than 120 branches in about 100 countries, 50 of which are in Africa alone. It has 250 centres in foreign countries, each of which is usually associated with a library. It employs about 200 cinemas and 8,000 projectors which draw upon its nearly 300 film libraries.<br /> <br /> This agency is directed by a central body which operates in the name of the U.S. President, planning and coordinating its activities in close touch with the Pentagon, CIA and other Cold War agencies, including even armed forces intelligence centres.<br /> <br /> In developing countries, the USIA actively tries to prevent expansion of national media of information so as itself to capture the market-place of ideas. It spends huge sums for publication and distribution of about sixty newspapers and magazines in Africa, Asia and Latin America.<br /> <br /> The American government backs the USIA through direct pressures on developing nations. To ensure its agency a complete monopoly in propaganda, for instance, many agreements for economic co-operation offered by the U.S. include a demand that Americans be granted preferential rights to disseminate information. At the same time, in trying to close the new nations to other sources of information, it employs other pressures. For instance, after agreeing to set up USIA information centres in their countries, both Togo and Congo (Leopoldville) originally hoped to follow a non-aligned path and permit Russian information centres as a balance. But Washington threatened to stop all aid, thereby forcing these two countries to renounce their plan.<br /> <br /> Unbiased studies of the USIA by such authorities as Dr R. Holt of Princeton University, Retired Colonel R. Van de Velde, former intelligence agents Murril Dayer, Wilson Dizard and others, have all called attention to the close ties between this agency and U.S. Intelligence. For example, Deputy Director Donald M. Wilson was a political intelligence agent in the U.S. Army. Assistant Director for Europe, Joseph Philips, was a successful espionage agent in several Eastern European countries.<br /> <br /> Some USIA duties further expose its nature as a top intelligence arm of the U.S. imperialists. In the first place, it is expected to analyse the situation in each country, making recommendations to its Embassy, thereby to its Government, about changes that can tip the local balance in U.S. favour. Secondly, it organises networks of monitors for radio broadcasts and telephone conversations, while recruiting informers from government offices. It also hires people to distribute U.S. propaganda. Thirdly, it collects secret information with special reference to defence and economy, as a means of eliminating its international military and economic competitors. Fourthly, it buys its way into local publications to influence their policies, of which Latin America furnishes numerous examples. It has been active in bribing public figures, for example in Kenya and Tunisia. Finally, it finances, directs and often supplies with arms all anti-neutralist forces in the developing countries, witness Tshombe in Congo (Leopoldville) and Pak Hung Ji in South Korea. In a word, with virtually unlimited finances, there seems no bounds to its inventiveness in subversion.<br /> <br /> One of the most recent developments in neo-colonialist strategy is the suggested establishment of a Businessmen Corps which will, like the Peace Corps, act in developing countries. In an article on ‘U.S. Intelligence and the Monopolies’ in ''International Affairs'' (Moscow, January 1965), V. Chernyavsky writes: ‘There can hardly be any doubt that this Corps is a new U.S. intelligence organisation created on the initiative of the American monopolies to use Big Business for espionage. It is by no means unusual for U.S. Intelligence to set up its own business firms which are merely thinly disguised espionage centres. For example, according to Chernyavsky, the C.I.A. has set up a firm in Taiwan known as Western Enterprises Inc. Under this cover it sends spies and saboteurs to South China. The New Asia Trading Company, a CIA firm in India, has also helped to camouflage U.S. intelligence agents operating in South-east Asia.<br /> <br /> Such is the catalogue of neo-colonialism’s activities and methods in our time. Upon reading it, the faint-hearted might come to feel that they must give up in despair before such an array of apparent power and seemingly inexhaustible resources.<br /> <br /> Fortunately, however, history furnishes innumerable proofs of one of its own major laws; that the budding future is ''always'' stronger than the withering past. This has been amply demonstrated during every major revolution throughout history.<br /> <br /> The American Revolution of 1776 struggled through to victory over a tangle of inefficiency, mismanagement, corruption, outright subversion and counter-revolution the like of which has been repeated to some degree in every subsequent revolution to date.<br /> <br /> The Russian Revolution during the period of Intervention, 1917 to 1922, appeared to be dying on its feet. The Chinese Revolution at one time was forced to pull out of its existing bases, lock stock and barrel, and make the unprecedented Long March; yet it triumphed. Imperialist white mercenaries who dropped so confidently out of the skies on Stanleyville after a plane trip from Ascension Island thought that their job would be ‘duck soup’. Yet, till now, the nationalist forces of Congo (Leopoldville) continue to fight their way forward. They do not talk of ''if'' they will win, but only of ''when.''<br /> <br /> Asia provides a further example of the strength of a people’s will to determine their own future. In South Vietnam ‘special warfare’ is being fought to hold back the tide of revolutionary change. ‘Special warfare’ is a concept of General Maxwell Taylor and a military extension of the creed of John Foster Dulles: let Asians fight Asians. Briefly, the technique is for the foreign power to supply the money, aircraft, military equipment of all kinds, and the strategic and tactical command from a General Staff down to officer ‘advisers’, while the troops of the puppet government bear the brunt of the fighting. Yet in spite of bombing raids and the immense build-up of foreign strength in the area, the people of both North and South Vietnam are proving to be unconquerable.<br /> <br /> In other parts of Asia, in Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, and now the Philippines, Thailand and Burma, the peoples of ex-colonial countries have stood firm and are winning battles against the allegedly superior imperialist enemy. In Latin America, despite ‘final’ punitive expeditions, the growing armed insurrections in Colombia, Venezuala and other countries continue to consolidate gains.<br /> <br /> In Africa, we in Ghana have withstood all efforts by imperialism and its agents; Tanzania has nipped subversive plots in the bud, as have Brazzaville, Uganda and Kenya. The struggle rages back and forth. The surging popular forces may still be hampered by colonialist legacies, but nonetheless they advance inexorably.<br /> <br /> All these examples prove beyond doubt that neo-colonialism is ''not'' a sign of imperialism’s strength but rather of its last hideous gasp. It testifies to its inability to rule any longer by old methods. Independence is a luxury it can no longer afford to permit its subject peoples, so that even what it claims to have ‘given’ it now seeks to take away.<br /> <br /> This means that neo-colonialism ''can'' and ''will'' be defeated. How can this be done?<br /> <br /> Thus far, all the methods of neo-colonialists have pointed in one direction, the ancient, accepted one of all minority ruling classes throughout history—''divide and rule.''<br /> <br /> Quite obviously, therefore, ''unity'' is the first requisite for destroying neo-colonialism. Primary and basic is the need for an all-union government on the much divided continent of Africa. Along with that, a strengthening of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Organisation and the spirit of Bandung is already under way. To it, we must seek the adherence on an increasingly formal basis of our Latin American brothers.<br /> <br /> Furthermore, all these liberatory forces have, on all major issues and at every possible instance, the support of the growing socialist sector of the world.<br /> <br /> Finally, we must encourage and utilise to the full those still all too few yet growing instances of support for liberation and anti-colonialism inside the imperialist world itself.<br /> <br /> To carry out such a political programme, we must all back it with national plans designed to strengthen ourselves as independent nations. An external condition for such independent development is neutrality or ''political non-alignment.'' This has been expressed in two conferences of Non-Aligned Nations during the recent past, the last of which, in Cairo in 1964, clearly and inevitably showed itself at one with the rising forcesof liberation and human dignity.<br /> <br /> And the preconditions for all this, to which lip service is often paid but activity seldom directed, is to develop ideological clarity among the anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, pro-liberation masses of our continents. They, and they alone, make, maintain or break revolutions.<br /> <br /> With the utmost speed, neo-colonialism must be analysed in clear and simple terms for the full mass understanding by the surging organisations of the African peoples. The All-African Trade Union Federation (AATUF) has already made a start in this direction, while the Pan-African Youth Movement, the women, journalists, farmers and others are not far behind. Bolstered with ideological clarity, these organisations, closely linked with the ruling parties where liberatory forces are in power, will prove that neo-colonialism is the symptom of imperialism’s weakness and that it is defeatable. For, when all is said and done, it is the so-called little man, the bent-backed, exploited, malnourished, blood-covered fighter for independence who decides. And he invariably decides for freedom.<br /> <br /> == Conclusion ==<br /> In the Introduction I attempted to set out the dilemma now facing the world. The conflict between rich and poor in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, which was fought out between the rich and the poor in the developed nations of the world ended in a compromise. Capitalism as a system disappeared from large areas of the world, but where socialism was established it was in its less developed rather than its more developed parts and, in fact, the revolt against capitalism had its greatest successes in those areas where early neo-colonialism had been most actively practised. In the industrially more developed countries, capitalism, far from disappearing, became infinitely stronger. This strength was only achieved by the sacrifice of two principles which had inspired early capitalism, namely the subjugation of the working classes within each individual country and the exclusion of the State from any say in the control of capitalist enterprise.<br /> <br /> By abandoning these two principles and substituting for them ‘welfare states’ based on high working-class living standards and on a State-regulated capitalism at home, the developed countries succeeded in exporting their internal problem and transferring the conflict between rich and poor from the national to the international stage.<br /> <br /> Marx had argued that the development of capitalism would produce a crisis within each individual capitalist State because within each State the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ would widen to a point where a conflict was inevitable and that it would be the capitalists who would be defeated. The basis of his argument is not invalidated by the fact that the conflict, which he had predicted as a national one, did not everywhere take place on a national scale but has been transferred instead to the world stage. World capitalism has postponed its crisis but only at the cost of transforming it into an international crisis. The danger is now not civil war within individual States provoked by intolerable conditions within those States, but international war provoked ultimately by the misery of the majority of mankind who daily grow poorer and poorer.<br /> <br /> When Africa becomes economically free and politically united, the monopolists will come face to face with their own working class in their own countries, and a new struggle will arise within which the liquidation and collapse of imperialism will be complete.<br /> <br /> As this book has attempted to show, in the same way as the internal crisis of capitalism within the developed world arose through the uncontrolled action of national capital, so a greater crisis is being provoked today by similar uncontrolled action of international capitalism in the developing parts of the world. Before the problem can be solved it must at least be understood. It cannot be resolved merely by pretending that neo-colonialism does not exist. It must be realised that the methods at present employed to solve the problem of world poverty are not likely to yield any result other than to extend the crisis.<br /> <br /> Speaking in 1951, the then President of the United States, Mr Truman, said, ‘The only kind of war we seek is the good old fight against man’s ancient enemies. . . poverty, disease, hunger and illiteracy.’ Sentiments of a similar nature have been re-echoed by all political leaders in the developed world but the stark fact remains: whatever wars may have been won since 1951, none of them is the war against poverty, disease, hunger and illiteracy. However little other types of war have been deliberately sought, they are the only ones which have been waged. Nothing is gained by assuming that those who express such views are insincere. The position of the leaders of the developed capitalist countries of the world are, in relation to the great neo-colonialist international combines, very similar to that which Lord Macaulay described as existing between the directors of the East India Company and their agent, Warren Hastings, who, in the eighteenth century, engaged in the wholesale plunder of India. Macaulay wrote:<br /> <br /> ‘The Directors, it is true, never enjoined or applauded any crime. Far from it. Whoever examines their letters written at the time will find there are many just and humane sentiments, many excellent precepts, in short, an admirable code of political ethics. But each exultation is modified or nullified by a demand for money. . . . We by no means accuse or suspect those who framed these dispatches of hypocrisy. It is probable that, written 15,000 miles from the place where their orders were to be carried into effect, they never perceived the gross inconsistency of which they were guilty. But the inconsistency was at once manifest to their lieutenant in Calcutta.<br /> <br /> ‘... Hastings saw that it was absolutely necessary for him to disregard either the moral discourses or the pecuniary requisitions of his employers. Being forced to disobey them in something, he had to consider what kind of disobedience they would most readily pardon; and he correctly judged that the safest course would be to neglect the sermons and to find the rupees.’<br /> <br /> Today the need both to maintain a welfare state, i.e. a parasite State at home, and to support a huge and ever-growing burden of armament costs makes it absolutely essential for developed capitalist countries to secure the maximum return in profit from such parts of the international financial complex as they control. However much private capitalism is exhorted to bring about rapid development and a rising standard of living in the less developed areas of the world, those who manipulate the system realise the inconsistency between doing this and producing at the same time the funds necessary to maintain the sinews of war and the welfare state at home. They know when it comes to the issue they will be excused if they fail to provide for a world-wide rise in the standard of living. They know they will never be forgiven it they betray the system and produce a crisis at home which either destroys the affluent State or interferes with its military preparedness.<br /> <br /> Appeals to capitalism to work out a cure for the division of the world into rich and poor are likely to have no better result than the appeals of the Directors of the East India Company to Warren Hastings to ensure social justice in India. Faced with a choice, capitalism, like Hastings, will come down on the side of exploitation.<br /> <br /> Is there then no method of avoiding the inevitable world conflict occasioned by an international class war? To accept that world conflict is inevitable is to reject any belief in co-existence or in the policy of non-alignment as practised at present by many of the countries attempting to escape from neo-colonialism. A way out is possible.<br /> <br /> To start with, for the first time in human history the potential material resources of the world are so great that there is no need for there to be rich and poor. It is only the organisation to deploy these potential resources that is lacking. Effective world pressure can force such a redeployment, but world pressure is not exercised by appeals, however eloquent, or by arguments, however convincing. It is only achieved by deeds. It is necessary to secure a world realignment so that those who are at the moment the helpless victims of a system will be able in the future to exert a counter pressure. Such counter pressures do not lead to war. On the contrary, it is often their absence which constitutes the threat to peace.<br /> <br /> A parallel can be drawn with the methods by which direct colonialism was ended. No imperial power has ever granted independence to a colony unless the forces were such that no other course was possible, and there are many instances where independence was only achieved by a war of liberation, but there are many other instances when no such war occurred. The very organisation of the forces of independence within the colony was sufficient to convince the imperial power that resistance to independence would be impossible or that the political and economic consequences of a colonial war outweighed any advantage to be gained by retaining the colony.<br /> <br /> In the earlier chapters of this book I have set out the argument for African unity and have explained how this unity would destroy neo-colonialism in Africa. In later chapters I have explained how strong is the world position of those who ''profit'' from neo-colonialism. Nevertheless, African unity is something which is within the grasp of the African people. The foreign firms who exploit our resources long ago saw the strength to be gained from acting on a Pan-African scale. By means of interlocking directorships, cross-shareholdings and other devices, groups of apparently different companies have formed, in fact, one enormous capitalist monopoly. The only effective ''way'' to challenge this economic empire and to recover possession of our heritage, is for us also to act on a Pan-African basis, through a Union Government.<br /> <br /> No one would suggest that if all the peoples of Africa combined to establish their unity their decision could be revoked by the forces of neo-colonialism. On the contrary, faced with a new situation, those who practise neo-colonialism would adjust themselves to this new balance of world forces in exactly the same way as the capitalist world has in the past adjusted itself to any other change in the balance of power.<br /> <br /> The danger to world peace springs not from the action of those who seek to end neo-colonialism but from the inaction of those who allow it to continue. To argue that a third world war is not inevitable is one thing, to suppose that it can be avoided by shutting our eyes to the development of a situation likely to produce it is quite another matter.<br /> <br /> If world war is not to occur it must be prevented by positive action. This positive action is within the power of the peoples of those areas of the world which now suffer under neocolonialism but it is only within their power if they act at once, with resolution and in unity.<br /> [[Category:Library works about imperialism]]<br /> [[Category:Library works by Kwame Nkrumah]]</div>

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<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work<br /> | title = Foucault: The Faux Radical<br /> | subtitle = <br /> | image =<br /> | image_size =<br /> | image_upright =<br /> | image_alt =<br /> | caption =<br /> | author = Gabriel Rockhill<br /> | written in = <br /> | published_date = October 12nd, 2020<br /> | published_location = The Philosophical Salon<br /> | type = Article<br /> | source= [https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/foucault-the-faux-radical/ The Philosophical Salon]<br /> | audiobook = <br /> | display_title =<br /> }}<br /> ==The Radical Recuperator==<br /> Ptolemy constructed an inordinately complex model of the universe in order to make all of the empirical data conform to a central, organizing false assumption, namely, that the earth was at the center. Michel Foucault, as we shall see, made a similar contribution to contemporary social science.<br /> <br /> After decades of working on and out of the Foucauldian heritage, which originally attracted me—like so many others—due to its apparent materialist rigor, ostensible radical historicism, and purported political trenchancy, it has become increasingly clear to me over the years that the entire organizing framework of his histories is fundamentally flawed.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;I have elsewhere demonstrated in detail some of the fundamental problems in Foucault’s work, particularly in his purportedly materialist histories, and I have done much the same for other writings in the Foucauldian tradition, such as those of Jacques Rancière. Regarding Foucault, see for instance Gabriel Rockhill, “Foucault, Genealogy, Counter-History,” Theory &amp; Event 23:1 (January 2020): 85-119; Gabriel Rockhill, “Comment penser le temps présent? De l’ontologie de l’actualité à l’ontologie sans l’être,” Rue Descartes 75 (2012/3): 114-126; Gabriel Rockhill, Interventions in Contemporary Thought: History, Politics, Aesthetics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017); Gabriel Rockhill, Logique de l’histoire: Pour une analytique des pratiques philosophiques (Paris: Éditions Hermann, 2010). For my critiques of Rancière, see Interventions in Contemporary Thought and Radical History &amp; the Politics of Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). For recent criticisms of Judith Butler, whose work and political position emerges out of the Foucauldian—as well as the Derridian-Lévinasian—heritage, see Jared Ijams, “Judith Butler’s Impotent Politics of Nonviolence,” Cosmonaut (May 26, 2020): &lt;https://bit.ly/3h58TVz&gt; and Ben Norton, “Postmodern Philosopher Judith Butler Repeatedly Donated to ‘Top Cop’ Kamela Harris” (December 18, 2019): &lt;https://bit.ly/2ClYHsq&gt;.&lt;/ref&gt; He has, like Ptolemy, constructed a complex orrery, with many intricate and beautifully detailed parts that function in terms of an impressive internal logic, but whose very purpose is to develop a model of the world by excluding in advance, or significantly downplaying, its most fundamental feature: global capitalism, with all of its component parts, including imperialism, colonialism, class struggle, ecological destruction, the gendered division of labor and domestic slavery, racialized exploitation and oppression, and so forth.<br /> <br /> By rejecting the Copernican revolution undertaken by Marxism, which demonstrated through materialist analysis that capitalism is a totalizing system and a central driving force behind the organization of the modern world, Foucault put himself in the position of not being able to adequately explain, in materialist terms, why exactly the systems he attempted to describe had come into existence, what their precise function was within the social totality, or how they could be transformed. Attached as he was to a worldview hostile to the explanatory and transformative power of historical materialism, he could only, at best, add additional orbits or objects to his orrery, in the hopes that the cult of complexification would both lure and confuse intellectuals, thereby distracting them from the profound lack of what Michael Parenti calls a radical analysis.<br /> <br /> One of the reasons for this is that, like many of his fellow French theorists, Foucault was animated by an intense drive to differentiate his work from that of prior forms of knowledge, as well as from the research of his competitors on the so-called marketplace of ideas. His scholarly writings thus place a very high priority on idiosyncratic explanations, conceptual novelties, and neologisms. Rather than drawing on and contributing to the further development of collective traditions of knowledge production, brand Foucault puts forth novel histories that are unique to his individual vision of the past and marketable as such.<br /> <br /> While it is certainly true that these include various elements from material history, and that he has borrowed and adapted many of his most profound insights from the Marxist tradition, these are always combined into unique conceptual configurations that bear his singular imprimatur. An episteme, for instance, is presented as a much more refined, i.e. idealist, way of discussing ideology. Power is introduced as a more urbane—because nebulous and unmoored from class struggle—way of describing what Louis Althusser called the materialist conception of ideology. Archeology and genealogy seek to contest the territory occupied by historical materialism, in part by reducing the complex histories of Marxism to a crass caricature.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Nicos Poulantzas has provided one of the best critical accounts of Foucault’s reductive caricatures of the Marxist tradition in State, Power, Socialism, trans. Patrick Camiller (London: Verso, 2014).&lt;/ref&gt; The discursive practice of critique grandstands as a petty-bourgeois moral authority uniquely capable of saving us from the thoughtless plunge into revolutionary theory and practice.<br /> <br /> If it were widely recognized that Foucault was an instrumentalized intellectual whose capitalist theoretical practice seamlessly coalesced with the needs of the global theory industry, at a moment when a premium was placed on promoting French theorists who turned their backs on the Red Menace, then much of this article would be redundant. However, Foucault is often understood to be a radical for having purportedly questioned the very foundations of Western civilization and challenged its dominant historical myths regarding the development of reason, truth, science, medicine, punishment, sexuality, and so forth. What is more, those who present themselves as Foucauldian, at least within an academic setting, are sometimes perceived to be not only radical but much more radical than many, if not all, of their predecessors (which is due, in no small part, to their criticisms of a strawman they call “Marx”).<br /> <br /> This, then, is the contradiction that I would like to elucidate, which is by no means unique to Foucault. It is the contradiction of the radical recuperator, meaning the intellectual who appears radical in certain circles but whose primary social function is to recuperate truly radical critique within the extant system, thereby policing the left border of critique. What interests me first and foremost, then, is how Foucault’s work—like that of other French theorists, but often with more political panache and historical flair than Derrida, Deleuze, Lacan, and co.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Given Foucault’s apparent dedication to materialist history and political activism, particularly when compared to other French theorists, it is arguable that he is more dangerous because he is, in many ways, the most radical of the recuperators.&lt;/ref&gt;—has played an important role in a much larger historical reconfiguration: the great ideological realignment of the Western intelligentsia, which took a gradual but decisive step to the right by distancing itself from anti-capitalist revolutionary politics. In order to see how this process unfolded in the case of Foucault, which of course involved myriad forces and was nowise due to him alone, it will be helpful to lay out and contextualize the evolution of his mercurial politics. This will allow us to bring to the fore a clear pattern and identify the man behind the many masks.<br /> ==Aristocratic Radicalism==<br /> In his early years, when most of the French intelligentsia was Marxist, Foucault earned the reputation of being a “violent anti-communist” according to his biographer Didier Eribon.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault (Paris: Flammarion, 1989), 237. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own.&lt;/ref&gt; This was in the wake of WWII when the Soviet Union had defeated Nazism, and communism enjoyed extremely wide support in France. His immediate historical context was thus one in which the Right had been overwhelmingly discredited due to its Nazi collaboration, and the anti-capitalist Left was at a highpoint because of the success of its world-historical battle against fascism. It is true that in his student years Foucault, who had grown up in a somewhat conservative upper middle-class family, was briefly swept up in this postwar leftist wave. He even adhered for a few months, under the influence of Althusser, to the French Communist Party. However, his involvement, according to another of his biographers, David Macey, was widely recognized as non-committal and noted for its lack of seriousness. Foucault himself later described his political position at the time with the oxymoronic expression of ‘Nietzschean Marxism.’ Nietzsche was ferociously anti-Marxist, of course, and he repeatedly defended the natural superiority of the master race, while maligning those who sought to overcome social and economic inequalities.<br /> <br /> Although some of Foucault’s early work bears the imprint of his hesitant and circumspect engagement with Marxism, and particularly the influence of Althusser, through the course of the 1960s he came out very strongly against the Marxist tradition. Prior to 1968, according to Bernard Gendron, “he had the reputation of being condescendingly apolitical, a ferocious critic of the French Communist Party […], a Gaullist technocrat, and a denier of the power of human agency.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Bernard Gendron, “Foucault’s 1968,” in The Long 1968: Revisions and New Perspectives, eds. Daniel J. Sherman, Ruud van Dijk, Jasmine Alinder, A. Aneesh (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 23.&lt;/ref&gt; In The Order of Things (1966), which catapulted him into the limelight, he proclaimed that Marxism, far from introducing any real rupture in history or proposing a radical reversal, emerged seamlessly within—and was the result of—the same epistemological configuration as bourgeois economics. Their apparent opposition, from a materialist point of view, was only a surface illusion for Foucault. In a classic idealist inversion, historical materialism was thereby integrated into a system of ideas that was given the status of prime mover. Moreover, Foucault added, in an ex-cathedra pronouncement devoid of any material evidence, that Marxism was like a fish in water in the 19th century, but everywhere else “it stops breathing.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les choses (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1966), 276.&lt;/ref&gt; In short, Marxism was a living theory that died as soon as it succeeded in materially changing the world through the anti-capitalist revolutions of the 20th century. The point, it seems, was to interpret the world, not to change it, and the flight into praxis required a recall to intellectual order.<br /> <br /> It is not surprising that Foucault’s reactionary and idealist position provoked a major public debate with two of the most visible Marxist intellectuals in France at the time: Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The author of The Order of Things flatly declared that Sartre, as a Marxist, was a man of the 19th century whose attempt—like a fish out of water—to think the 20th century was “magnificent and pathetic.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits I: 1954-1969 (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1994), 542.&lt;/ref&gt; Indulging in one of his signature oracular pronouncements, he went so far as to label him “the last Marxist.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Ibid. 542.&lt;/ref&gt; Sartre and Beauvoir returned fire, explaining that Foucault was the last barrier that the bourgeoisie could erect against Marxism: unable to refute its materialist account of history after numerous attempts, it resorted—through the figure of Foucault—to simply eliminating it by peremptorily consigning it to the dustbin of history.<br /> <br /> Whereas Marxist intellectuals like Sartre and Beauvoir were internationalist and invested in anticolonial struggles, Foucault blissfully ignored the revolutionary independence movements that were raging at his doorstep, and he took little or no interest in the global history of imperialism (although he unwaveringly supported Israel).&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;According to David Macey, Foucault’s “pro-Israeli sentiments were as unswerving as his dislike for the PCF” (David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault: A Biography. London: Verso, 2019, 40).&lt;/ref&gt; Instead, he maintained, nearly without exception, a Eurocentric framework of analysis. “Ignoring the imperial context of his own theories,” Edward Said appropriately noted, “Foucault seems actually to represent an irresistible colonizing movement that paradoxically fortifies the prestige of both the lonely individual scholar and the system that contains him.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 278.<br /> &lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> To take what is perhaps the most flagrant example, Foucault ‘missed’ one of the major events of his generation because he did not throw his support behind the struggle for Algerian independence..”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits IV: 1980-1988 (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1994), 58-59.&lt;/ref&gt; Although he claimed in at least one interview that this was because he was abroad at the time (as if this would preclude someone from supporting a movement), he actually returned to France in 1960, whereas the war did not come to an end until 1962. This tendency to retroactively and opportunistically depict his political sympathies as having been in line with struggles that he did not openly support at the time comes up more than once in his biographies, and it was characteristic of his post-1968 repositioning as we will see. During the French state’s terrorist repression of the Algerian liberation movement, Foucault had actually, in the words of Macey, taken “a broadly positive view of the general’s [de Gaulle] handling of the Algerian situation and of the subsequent process of decolonization.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault, 84.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Given Foucault’s general dismissal of anti-capitalist and anti-colonial struggles, as well as his reputation, according to Eribon and others, of supporting de Gaulle and being an elite operator within the power networks of France’s most prestigious institutions, it might seem somewhat surprising that he later came to be identified as a militant leftist. In fact, Francine Pariente, Foucault’s assistant from 1962 to 1966, is on record as saying she never managed to believe his sudden shift to the Left.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Eribon, Michel Foucault, 132.&lt;/ref&gt; Historically speaking, much of this had to do with 1968 and the false analogy established in its wake between the most prominent thinkers of the 1960s and the events that rocked their generation. While it is true that Foucault’s work was highly visible in the years leading up to 1968, there is of course no evidence that it positively contributed to the uprising in any significant way. Cornelius Castoriadis flatly proclaimed that “Foucault did not hide from his reactionary positions until 1968.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Cornelius Castoriadis, La Montée de l’insignifiance (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1996), 35.&lt;/ref&gt; As a matter of fact, Foucault had served on the governmental commission that wrote the Gaullist university reforms, which were widely recognized as one of the principal sparks for the student revolt. He wrote several of the preparatory reports for the commission and showed no clear sign of opposition to the reforms he helped formulate.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;In addition to his biography of Foucault, see the interview with Didier Eribon on the television show “Apostrophes”: &lt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLA2Xklj1kU&amp;t=362s&gt;.&lt;/ref&gt; The fact that he did not get involved in the movement or acts of solidarity (since he was mainly abroad), or even express his public support for it at the time, should thus come as no surprise: if Foucault was on any side of the barricades in 1968, it was on the side fortified by the Gaullist state that he dutifully served.<br /> <br /> It is true, however, that the late 1960s had a radicalizing effect on the author of The Order of Things, beginning with the Tunisian student movement in 1967, and that this partially explains his public image as a leftist. As he himself would later claim on numerous occasions, this moment was his political wake-up call, and he was impressed by the vibrant Marxism of the Tunisian students, whom he discretely supported.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See, for instance, Foucault, Dits et écrits IV, 78-81.&lt;/ref&gt; When he returned to France in the wake of the 1968 revolt, he showed signs of being generally sympathetic to the Maoists, “without sharing their belief in cultural revolution.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault, 263.&lt;/ref&gt; As he moved swiftly to the left to adapt to the new political climate, he came to participate in university occupations and public mobilizations, in part in order to quickly secure the requisite street credentials according to his biographers.<br /> <br /> In the early 1970s, Foucault co-founded and spearheaded the Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons (GIP), which aimed at exposing the conditions of prisons by gathering and disseminating information from those directly involved with them (rather than speaking in their place). It functioned, in the words of member Gilles Deleuze, “as a group that tried to combat the resurgence of Marxism,” but it was not otherwise characterized by a specific ideology or political line (members included Christians, Maoists and ‘nonaligned’ individuals).&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Richard Wolin, The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 289.&lt;/ref&gt; Although the GIP expressed its support for George Jackson, Field Marshall of the Black Panther Party, by publishing an important pamphlet in 1971 on his assassination in prison, Foucault had curiously extolled the BPP in his private correspondence for having developed “a strategic analysis freed from the Marxist theory of society” (the BPP was, however, Marxist).&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits I: 1954-1975 (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2001), 44. Since this claim is from October 1968, it is possible that Foucault was exposed to some of the BPP’s early work that was less explicitly Marxist. However, when he visited Attica in 1972, in the wake of the prison rebellion and subsequent violent repression, he oddly chastised communists for being so beholden to the bourgeois ideology of criminality that they refused to organize the incarcerated unless they were ‘political prisoners’ (“Michel Foucault on Attica: An Interview,” Telos 19 (1974): 154-161). Jackson, whose assassination was seen as a spark for the Attica revolt, was a communist who had been doing the exact opposite of what Foucault claimed. These types of misrepresentations are, unfortunately, rather frequent in Foucault’s work. I have carefully documented his egregious misinterpretations of Descartes, Kant and Nietzsche in the works cited in note 1. Brady Thomas Heiner has provided an analysis of Foucault’s relationship to the BPP that, while misrecognizing or downplaying the profound gap between the French intellectual and Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries, does provide some helpful information: “Foucault and the Black Panthers,” City 11:3 (December 2007): 313-356.&lt;/ref&gt; Joy James and Angela Davis have both pointedly taken Foucault to task for his lack of understanding of the U.S. prison system, as well as his Eurocentrism and his erasure of racial and gendered violence, torture, and terror in the modern prison.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Joy James, ed., The Angela Y. Davis Reader (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 1998) and Joy James, Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender and Race in U.S. Culture (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1996).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Foucault would conceptualize his work at the time as being that of a specific intellectual who mobilized his particular expertise for local power struggles in the field of knowledge and discourse, rather than a universal intellectual—like Sartre and other Marxists—who purported to be able to have access to truth and a systemic account of reality. The latter orientation, he regularly suggested, abiding by one of the most widespread and unproven idealist analogies of the time, was a totalizing intellectual project that was somehow akin to the practice of ‘totalitarianism.’ For idealists, the very act of thinking the social totality is itself a practice of totalizing, and hence ‘totalitarian,’ because ideas are the prime movers of history (and you can use them to free associate between words that sound similar).<br /> <br /> To avoid this supposedly bad way of thinking, Foucault openly embraced academic specialization, the intellectual Taylorism that is integral to institutionalized knowledge production under capital. He also encouraged intellectuals to focus on the anonymous, decentralized ‘microphysics of power’ in their local contexts and thereby abandon the project of elucidating and fighting against the macrophysics of power operative in global class struggle. In this way, and with remarkably few exceptions, he gave carte blanche to the major imperial projects of his lifetime. One need only compare his so-called ‘history of the present’ to the ones written by anti-imperialist intellectuals like William Blum, Michael Parenti or Walter Rodney to clearly see this.<br /> <br /> The period of the late 1960s and early 1970s nonetheless constituted the high-water mark for Foucault’s engagement. He was involved in numerous public actions, signed petitions, publicly or privately supported specific struggles, and so forth. Although he “never became a member of any established political organization,” and he did not stake out a clear and consistent political position in terms of the dominant ideologies on the Left, his desultory politics tended to gravitate toward the Maoist intellectual circles, which also had anarchist, liberal and libertarian elements.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault, 217.&lt;/ref&gt; He did not, however, become a Marxist, and most of his concerns—very much like liberals—were with specific social issues, individual cases, and the morally ‘intolerable,’ rather than with a systemic critique that was embedded in an internationalist framework oriented toward collective social transformation.<br /> <br /> Foucault generally ignored the ecological and feminist movements, which grew rapidly in the wake of 1968, as did the gay liberation movement. While he was sympathetic to the latter and supported it in various ways, he was suspicious of the militant young Front Homosexual d’Action Révolutionnaire (FHAR), which aimed at subverting the bourgeois and hetero-patriarchal state. Foucault feared that FHAR’s activism could lead to new forms of ghettoization, and he expressed his support for the older ‘homophile’ organization, Arcadie, by accepting an invitation to speak at their congress in 1979. According to one of FHAR’s prominent members, Guy Hocquenghem, Arcadie was a fairly bourgeois establishment that was a members-only club and placed great emphasis on respectful discretion. Macey interprets Foucault’s decision to speak at their congress as a deliberate stance in favor of their more conservative approach and against FHAR’s militancy.<br /> <br /> Through the course of the 1970s and early 1980s, Foucault’s mercurial political orientation moved further and further away from what had been a vaguely leftist center of gravity. His evolution was not dissimilar, in many ways, to that of André Glucksmann, who was one of his closest and most regular political collaborators during this period. After operating in elite conservative academic networks, and then becoming briefly enmeshed in or close to the Maoist intellectual circles of the late 1960s, they both came to embrace the ‘anti-totalitarian’ critique of communism and engaged in the pro-Western support of ‘dissident politics’ in the East. Glucksmann and other nouveaux philosophes drew heavily on Foucault’s work and lionized it as an anti-Marxist framework of analysis. Foucault vociferously praised them in return, writing in particular a panegyric to Glucksmann’s anti-communist screed, Les Maîtres penseurs, in which he expressed his support for the idea that Hitler and Stalin had jointly introduced a new form of holocaust (discretely omitting the Red Army’s world-historical defeat of the Nazi war machine).&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;On Foucault’s relationship to the nouveaux philosophes, see Michael Scott Christofferson, French Intellectuals against the Left: The Antitotalitarian Moment of the 1970s (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004); Peter Dews, “The ‘New Philosophers’ and the End of Leftism,” in Radical Philosophy Reader, eds. Roy Edgley and Richard Osborne (London: Verso Books, 1985), 361-384; Peter Dews, “The Nouvelle Philosophie and Foucault,” Economy and Society 8:2 (May 1979): 127-171.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Glucksmann’s virulent anti-communism, much like Foucault’s, merged with an inchoate plebian populism and a metaphysics of the marginalized. International class struggle receded from consciousness and was replaced by an abstract battle between purportedly totalitarian forces of evil and the pristine moral excellence of what they both called ‘the pleb.’ The latter, Foucault openly admitted, did not correspond to any “sociological reality” but was rather a je ne sais quoi—also found within the bourgeoisie—that escapes power relations.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Foucault, Dits et écrits IV, 421.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> It should come as no surprise that the nouveaux philosophes were identified as important assets by the Central Intelligence Agency, and so was Foucault. &lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt; See Gabriel Rockhill, “The CIA Reads French Theory: On the Intellectual Labor of Dismantling the Cultural Left,” Los Angeles Review of Books (February 28, 2017): &lt;http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-cia-reads-french-theory-on-the-intellectual-labor-of-dismantling-the-cultural-left/&gt;.&lt;/ref&gt; On the one hand, they made a major contribution to the demolition of Marxism in France and undertook a massive propaganda war against actually existing socialism. In particular, they aggressively contributed to the media spectacles organized around so-called political dissidents from the East, who were celebrated and promoted by the U.S. national security state.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose rightwing critique of the U.S.S.R. served as the gold standard for Glucksmann and Foucault, was welcomed in the West by Hienrich Böll and the CIA networks he was involved with in Germany (see Hans-Rüdiger Minow’s 2006 documentary for ARTE, Quand la CIA infiltrait la culture: &lt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58QTcf_mFag&gt;).&lt;/ref&gt; On the other hand, they directed nearly all of their critical energies against the supposed evils in the East and paid scant attention to—if they did not openly seek to justify them as ‘humanitarian interventions’—the activities of the major imperial power of the postwar era, the United States, as it went about attempting to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments. Both of these orientations were, of course, perfectly in line with the CIA’s world war on communism, which was directly responsible for the death of at least 6 million people in 3,000 major operations and 10,000 minor operations between 1947 and 1987 (none of which, to my knowledge, were ever so much as mentioned by the most well-known theorist of power relations).&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;These numbers were calculated by the Association for Responsible Dissent, a group composed of 14 former CIA officers. John Stockwell, one of its founding members, discusses their findings here: &lt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD8OOyoavZM&gt;. Also see his book The Praetorian Guard: The U.S. Role in the New World Order (Boston: South End Press, 1991).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> By the late 1970s, the fickle Foucault had come out as a staunch opponent to all forms of actually existing socialism. In a telling interview in 1977, he provided a long list of socialist countries that, in his opinion, provided no glimmer of hope or sign of a useful orientation, including the USSR, Cuba, China and Vietnam. This led him to the grandiose and categorical conclusion that “the important tradition of socialism is to be fundamentally called into question, since everything that this socialist tradition has produced in history is to be condemned.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Foucault, Dits et écrits III, 398 (my emphasis).&lt;/ref&gt; The irony of this pontification on global history should not be lost on us: a self-proclaimed specific intellectual, who declared that scholars should only intervene in areas where they had actual expertise, had no problem announcing the death of socialism, even though none of his historical or philosophic work engaged in any serious way with any of this history or its relevant geographic regions. Perhaps he simply forgot to mention the colonial geography undergirding the idea of the specific intellectual: while the ‘history of the present’ in the West is infinitely intricate and requires expert knowledge, specific European intellectuals can make wild, categorical proclamations with no real knowledge base when it comes to the rest of the world.<br /> <br /> It is particularly telling in this regard that Foucault’s desultory ‘radical’ politics found a new object of interest in yet another area, outside of Europe, where he had no expertise: Iran. He appeared, to some, to rally once again to the cause of revolutionary politics when he came out in strong support of the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79. However, the reason for his support was not that it began as an anti-imperialist struggle against a CIA puppet government. In fact, he does not even mention this in his voluminous writings on the subject. Instead, he was intrigued by what he refers to as a revolution that parted ways with two central tenets of the Marxist tradition (though he provided no materialist analysis of the Marxist forces on the ground in Iran): class struggle and the revolutionary vanguard. Drawing on François Furet, the rabidly anti-Marxist historian whom he regularly praised, and engaging in a not-so-subtle form of Orientalism, Foucault claimed that this ‘backward’ nation was giving birth to a spiritualist politics that had been part of Europe’s past, but without the birth pains of modernization. He was soundly criticized for his views and his general lack of knowledge of the situation, and he discretely stopped publishing journalistic exposés on contemporary politics.<br /> <br /> By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Foucault’s relatively brief infatuation with leftist politics had turned back into utter disgust and dismissal. Already in 1975, he retorted to a demonstrator who asked him if he would be willing to speak to their group about Marx: “Don’t talk to me about Marx any more. I never want to hear of that gentleman again… I’m completely through with Marx.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault, 348-9.&lt;/ref&gt; Like the increasingly reactionary Glucksmann, he came to be more and more fascinated with neoliberalism, which he revealingly described in his 1978-79 lectures as based on the clearly valuable—in his mind—idea of “a society in which there is an optimization of systems of difference, in which the field is left open to fluctuating processes, in which minority individuals and practices are tolerated.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-79, ed. Michel Senellart, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 259-260. The best book on Foucault’s relationship to neoliberalism is Daniel Zamora and Michael C. Behrent, eds., Foucault and Neoliberalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016). Also see Daniel Zamora, “How Michel Foucault Got Neoliberalism So Wrong,” Jacobin (September 6, 2019): &lt; https://bit.ly/3kEqSUN &gt;.&lt;/ref&gt; Unlike all of the rigorous Marxist research on neoliberalism, Foucault directs our attention primarily to its ideological elements, which he valorizes as a purportedly different way of thinking politics, and not to its imperialist and colonial character as a global project of super exploitation and intensified repression.<br /> <br /> At the same time, he explicitly distanced himself from the student and worker movements, asserting that he was a non-active rebel invested in “silence” and “total abstention.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Foucault, Dits et écrits III, 670.&lt;/ref&gt; Like so many other intellectuals of his generation seduced by the ethical turn, Foucault moved away from concrete political struggles and toward a nebulous form of individualist, lifestyle anarchism, or even simple libertarianism, focused on the ‘care of self.’ He questioned the organization of liberation movements, like feminism and gay liberation, that were subordinated to “ideals and specific objectives.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Ibid. 677.&lt;/ref&gt; Describing these movements as forming private and exclusionary clubs, he drew the following conclusion: “True liberation means knowing oneself [La véritable libération signifie se connaître soi-même] and can often not be realized by the intermediary of a group, whichever one it may be.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Ibid. 678.&lt;/ref&gt; If individual enlightenment is the apotheosis of liberation, and collective action is foreclosed, then the armchair intellectual has succeeded in orchestrating a decisive discursive coup by defining their isolated petty-bourgeois activity as liberation itself. Vive la contre-révolution!<br /> <br /> As if this wasn’t enough, Foucault would go on to join the chorus of anti-Marxist intellectuals like Furet and Hannah Arendt by indulging in the reductive and simplistic blackmail of the gulag, claiming that any attempt to radically transform the system of socioeconomic relations through collective political action would inevitably lead to the most horrific of consequences.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt; It bears recalling that, according to a 2016 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 6.6 million people are under correctional supervision in the United States (https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/cpus16pr.pdf). At the end of the Great Purges, the total incarcerated population in the gulag climbed to 2 million, but more than half of all inmates were freed when Stalin died in 1953. Soviet prisons, moreover, were not death camps, and most inmates returned to society, at a rate of 20 to 40 percent of the prison population each year according to archive records. Michael Parenti has provided one of the most rigorous historical accounts of the gulag, which is a welcome antidote to the insipid scare tactics commonly used to circumvent sober analysis, in Blackshirts &amp; Reds: Rational Fascism &amp; the Overthrow of Communism (San Francisco: City Lights Bookstore, 1997), 76-86.&lt;/ref&gt; In one of his most widely read essays from 1984, he wrote:<br /> <br /> {{LQuote|This historical ontology of ourselves must turn away from all projects that claim to be global and radical. In fact, we know from experience that the claim to escape from the system of contemporary reality so as to provide overall programs for another society, another way of thinking, another culture, another vision of the world, has actually only led us to reproduce the most dangerous traditions.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Foucault, Dits et écrits IV, 575.&lt;/ref&gt;|}}<br /> <br /> Eschewing the struggle for real, material social change, Foucault developed, instead, an individual, discursive practice of critique. He inscribed this in a Eurocentric tradition that he traced back to a defender of enlightened despotism (Kant), and that included an aristocratic enemy of the masses (Nietzsche) and an unrepentant Nazi (Heidegger), but excluded Marx. In the case of the progenitor of this tradition, the critical attitude of the Enlightenment, as Foucault understands it, amounted to ‘daring to know’ through reason and discourse, while always obeying the dictates of the social order as they were imposed by the monarch and his army. Nietzsche, who served in many ways as the paragon for Foucault’s preferred form of critique, was not only anti-Marxist, but he was also against socialism, democracy and any political project that sought to give power to the masses. As Domenico Losurdo has explained in detail, Nietzsche was a self-proclaimed ‘radical aristocrat’ whose identification of reason with domination—much like Foucault’s—served as a bulwark against the rational and scientific critique of class, racial, gender and sexual hierarchies.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Domenico Losurdo, Nietzsche, the Aristocratic Rebel, trans. Gregor Benton (Leiden: Brill, 2019).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> ==The Man behind the Many Masks==<br /> Foucault indulged throughout his career in the petty-bourgeois intellectual game of self-fictionalization, capriciously embracing and rejecting various labels and positions, as if they were so many masks to be worn or taken off, but with no identifiable face behind them. The subjective, at least in his case, or rather his mind, trumped the objective. Many of his commentators have celebrated this oxymoronic idea of a sui generis subject, acting as if their maestro—unlike his objects of analysis—could never really be pinned down because he was always outwitting the reductive intellectuals who thought that his whimsical tergiversations followed identifiable patterns that could be historically situated.<br /> <br /> There is reason to believe though, as both of his major biographers point out in numerous instances, that the face behind the masks was one of a political opportunist and petty-bourgeois careerist. In reaction to the postwar communist surge, he briefly tried on a Marxist mask, but not before impishly drawing Nietzsche’s misplaced mustache on it. In the early years of the reactionary Fifth Republic, he was drawn into Gaullism and became overtly anticommunist as his academic career flourished and he collaborated with the government. However, in the wake of the insurgencies of the late 1960s, he quickly recognized that the stage set had been altered, and he appropriately undertook a hasty costume change. By the mid-1970s, when reactionary anti-communism returned with a vengeance in the guise most notably of the nouveaux philosophes, who became an incredible media sensation, Foucault the shape-shifter saw a new opportunity to reinvent himself as his career was taking off in the anti-communist American academy, which unsurprisingly put him on an enormous pedestal. This is not to suggest, of course, that he might not have had some of his own subjective reasons for changing his opinions on certain matters. However, there is a clear pattern behind the supposed playfulness. Like other French theorists, but with his own unique cachet, Foucault was a radical recuperator whose fame in the global theory industry is proportional to his chameleonic ability to appear radical while recuperating critical theory within the pro-capitalist camp.<br /> <br /> In the end, if one has any doubts regarding the social function of Foucault’s work within his historical conjuncture, one only has to look at its material political consequences. Whereas the Marxist tradition has contributed to innumerable liberation struggles and revolutions, the Foucauldian heritage has not produced a single one. However, it has spawned a very powerful cottage industry of anti-communist academics intent on conserving the intricacies of their master’s orrery while cultivating an image of radicality in order to do away, once and for all, with revolutionary theory and practice.<br /> ==Notes:==<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;note&quot;/&gt;<br /> [[Category:Library works by Gabriel Rockhill]]<br /> [[Category:Library]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about philosophy]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about revisionism]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Concerning_the_International_Situation&diff=75986 2024-09-30T12:46:54Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Concerning the International Situation|author=Joseph Stalin|publisher=Foreign Languages Publishing House|published_date=20 September 1924|published_location=Moscow|source=[http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/CIS24.html#s0 marx2mao]}}<br /> In characterising the present international situation, I think that there is no need to take into account all the facts of some degree of importance, absolutely all the specific features of the present state of international affairs. For this purpose it is sufficient to take into account only the principal, decisive factors in the present situation. At the present time there are, in my opinion, three such factors:<br /> <br /> a) the opening of an &quot;era&quot; of bourgeois-democratic &quot;pacifism&quot;;<br /> <br /> b) the intervention of America in European affairs and the Entente's London agreement on reparations;<br /> <br /> c) the strengthening of the Left-wing elements in the European labour movement and the growth of the international weight and prestige of the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> Let us examine these principal factors.<br /> <br /> == The Period of Bourgeois-Democratic &quot;Pacifism&quot; ==<br /> The Entente has proved incapable of coping with the results of its war victories. It fully succeeded in defeating Germany and in encircling the Soviet Union. It also succeeded in drawing up a plan for plundering Europe.<br /> <br /> page 193<br /> <br /> This is shown by the innumerable conferences and treaties of the Entente countries. But it has proved incapable of carrying out that plan of plunder. Why? Because the contradictions between the countries in the Entente are too great. Because they have not succeeded, and will not succeed, in reaching agreement on sharing the loot. Because the resistance of the countries to be plundered is growing stronger and stronger. Because the implementation of the plan of plunder is fraught with military conflicts, and the masses do not want to fight. It is now obvious to &quot;everybody&quot; that the imperialist frontal attack on the Ruhr with the object of annihilating Germany has proved to be dangerous for imperialism itself. It is also obvious that the undisguised imperialist policy of ultimatums, with the object of isolating the Soviet Union, is merely producing results opposite to those intended. A situation was created in which Poincaré and Curzon, while faithfully and loyally serving imperialism, nevertheless, by their &quot;work&quot; intensified the growing crisis in Europe, roused the resistance of the masses to imperialism, and pushed the masses towards revolution. Hence, the bourgeoisie's inevitable transition from the policy of frontal attack to the policy of compromise, from undisguised to disguised imperialism, from Poincaré and Curzon to MacDonald and Herriot. Naked plundering of the world has become dangerous. The Labour Party in Britain and the Left bloc in France[58] are to serve as a cloak to cover the nakedness of imperialism. That is the origin of &quot;pacifism&quot; and &quot;democracy.&quot;<br /> <br /> Some people think that the bourgeoisie adopted &quot;pacifism&quot; and &quot;democracy&quot; not because it was compelled to do so, but voluntarily, of its own free choice, so to<br /> <br /> page 294<br /> <br /> speak. And it is assumed that, having defeated the working class in decisive battles (Italy, Germany), the bourgeoisie felt that it was the victor and could now afford to adopt &quot;democracy.&quot; In other words, while the decisive battles were in progress, the bourgeoisie needed a fighting organisation, needed fascism; but now that the proletariat is defeated, the bourgeoisie no longer needs fascism and can afford to use &quot;democracy&quot; instead, as a better method of consolidating its victory. Hence, the conclusion is drawn that the rule of the bourgeoisie has become consolidated, that the &quot;era of pacifism&quot; will be a prolonged one, and that the revolution in Europe has been pigeonholed.<br /> <br /> This assumption is absolutely wrong.<br /> <br /> Firstly, it is not true that fascism is only the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie. Fascism is not only a military-technical category. Fascism is the bourgeoisie's fighting organisation that relies on the active support of Social-Democracy. Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism. There is no ground for assuming that the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of Social-Democracy. There is just as little ground for thinking that Social-Democracy can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie. These organisations do not negate, but supplement each other. They are not antipodes, they are twins. Fascism is an informal political bloc of these two chief organisations; a bloc, which arose in the circumstances of the post-war crisis of imperialism, and which is intended<br /> <br /> page 295<br /> <br /> for combating the proletarian revolution. The bourgeoisie cannot retain power without such a bloc. It would therefore be a mistake to think that &quot;pacifism&quot; signifies the liquidation of fascism. In the present situation, &quot;pacifism&quot; is the strengthening of fascism with its moderate, Social-Democratic wing pushed into the forefront.<br /> <br /> Secondly, it is not true that the decisive battles have already been fought, that the proletariat was defeated in these battles, and that bourgeois rule has been consolidated as a consequence. There have been no decisive battles as yet, if only for the reason that there have not been any mass, genuinely Bolshevik parties, capable of leading the proletariat to dictatorship. Without such parties, decisive battles for dictatorship are impossible under the conditions of imperialism. The decisive battles in the West still lie ahead. There have been only the first serious attacks, which were repulsed by the bourgeoisie; the first serious trial of strength, which showed that the proletariat is not yet strong enough to overthrow the bourgeoisie, but that the bourgeoisie is already unable to discount the proletariat. And precisely because the bourgeoisie is already unable to force the working class to its knees, it was compelled to renounce frontal attacks, to make a detour, to agree to a compromise, to resort to &quot;democratic pacifism.&quot;<br /> <br /> Lastly, it is also not true that &quot;pacifism&quot; is a sign of the strength and not of the weakness of the bourgeoisie, that &quot;pacifism&quot; should result in consolidating the power of the bourgeoisie and in postponing the revolution for an indefinite period. Present-day pacifism signifies the advent to power, direct or indirect, of the parties of<br /> <br /> page 296<br /> <br /> the Second International. But what does the advent to power of the parties of the Second International mean? It means their inevitable self-exposure as lackeys of imperialism, as traitors to the proletariat, for the governmental activity of these parties can have only one result: their political bankruptcy, the growth of contradictions within these parties, their disintegration, their decay. But the disintegration of these parties will inevitably lead to the disintegration of the rule of the bourgeoisie, for the parties of the Second International are props of imperialism. Would the bourgeoisie have undertaken this risky experiment with pacifism if it had not been compelled to do so; would it have done so of its own free will? Of course, not! This is the second time that the bourgeoisie is undertaking the experiment with pacifism since the end of the imperialist war. The first experiment was made immediately after the war, when it seemed that revolution was knocking at the door. The second experiment is being undertaken now, after Poincaré's and Curzon's risky experiments. Who would dare deny that imperialism will have to pay dearly for this swinging of the bourgeoisie from pacifism to rabid imperialism and back again, that this is pushing vast masses of workers out of their habitual philistine rut, that it is drawing the most backward sections of the proletariat into politics and is helping to revolutionise them? Of course, &quot;democratic pacifism&quot; is not yet the Kerensky regime, for the Kerensky regime implies dual power, the collapse of bourgeois power and the coming into being of the foundations of proletarian power. But there can scarcely be any doubt that pacifism signifies the immense awakening of the masses, the fact that the masses are being<br /> <br /> page 297<br /> <br /> drawn into politics; that pacifism is shaking bourgeois rule and preparing the ground for revolutionary upheavals. And precisely for this reason pacifism is bound to lead not to the strengthening, but to the weakening of bourgeois rule, not to the postponement of the revolution for an indefinite period, but to its acceleration.<br /> <br /> It does not, of course, follow that pacifism is not a serious danger to the revolution. Pacifism serves to sap the foundations of bourgeois rule, it is creating favourable conditions for the revolution; but it can have these results only against the will of the &quot;pacifists&quot; and &quot;democrats&quot; themselves, only if the Communist Parties vigorously expose the imperialist and counter-revolutionary nature of the pacifist-democratic rule of Herriot and MacDonald. As for what the pacifists and democrats want, as for the policy of the imperialists, they have only one aim in resorting to pacifism: to dupe the masses with high-sounding phrases about peace in order to prepare for a new war; to dazzle the masses with the brilliance of &quot;democracy&quot; in order to consolidate the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie; to stun the masses with clamour about the &quot;sovereign &quot; rights of nations and states in order the more successfully to prepare for intervention in China, for slaughter in Afghanistan and in the Sudan, for the dismemberment of Persia; to fool the masses with high-faluting talk about &quot;friendly&quot; relations with the Soviet Union, about various &quot;treaties&quot; with the Soviet government, in order to establish still closer relations with the counter-revolutionary conspirators who have been kicked out of Russia, with the aim of bandit operations in Byelorussia, the Ukraine and Georgia. The bourgeoisie needs<br /> <br /> page 298<br /> <br /> pacifism as a camouflage. This camouflage constitutes the chief danger of pacifism. Whether the bourgeoisie will succeed in its aim of fooling the people depends upon the vigour with which the Communist Parties in the West and in the East expose the bourgeoisie, upon their ability to tear the mask from the imperialists in pacifist clothing. There is no doubt that events and practice will work in favour of the Communists in this respect by exposing the discrepancy between the pacifist words and the imperialist deeds of the democratic servitors of capital. It is the duty of the Communists to keep pace with events and ruthlessly to expose every step, every act of service to imperialism and betrayal of the proletariat committed by the parties of the Second International.<br /> <br /> == The Intervention of America in European Affairs and the Entente's London Agreement on Reparations ==<br /> The London conference of the Entente[59] most fully reflects the false and mendacious character of bourgeois-democratic pacifism. Whereas the advent to power of MacDonald and Herriot and the clamour about &quot;establishing normal relations&quot; with the Soviet Union were intended to cover up and camouflage the fierce class struggle raging in Europe and the deadly enmity of the bourgeois states towards the Soviet Union, the purpose of the agreement that the Entente concluded in London is to cover up and camouflage the desperate struggle of Britain and France for hegemony in Europe, the growing contradiction between Britain and America in the struggle for domination<br /> <br /> page 299<br /> <br /> in the world market, and the superhuman struggle of the German people against Entente oppression. There is no longer any class war, there is an end to revolution, matters can now end up with class co-operation, shout the MacDonalds and Renaudels. There is no longer a struggle between France and Britain, between America and Britain and between Germany and the Entente, there is an end to war, matters can now end up with universal peace under the aegis of America, echo their friends of the London agreement and their brothers in betraying the cause of the working class逆he Social-Democratic heroes of pacifism.<br /> <br /> But what actually happened at the London conference of the Entente?<br /> <br /> Before the London conference the reparations problem was decided by France alone, more or less independently of the &quot;Allies,&quot; for France had a secure majority in the Reparations Commission. The occupation of the Ruhr served as a means for the economic disruption of Germany and as a guarantee that France would receive reparation payments from Germany, coal and coke for the French metallurgical industry, chemical semi-manufactures and dyes for the French chemical industry, and the right to export Alsace textiles to Germany duty-free. The plan was intended to create a material base for France's military and economic hegemony in Europe. As is known however, the plan failed. The occupation method merely led to the opposite results. France received neither payments nor deliveries in kind in any satisfactory quantities. Finally, Poincaré, who was responsible for the occupation, was thrown overboard because of his undisguised imperialist policy, which was fraught with<br /> <br /> page 300<br /> <br /> a new war and revolution. As regards France's hegemony in Europe, it proved a failure not only because the method of occupation and undisguised plunder precluded the possibility of an economic bond between French and German industry, but also because Britain was strongly opposed to the establishment of such a bond, for she could not but be aware that the combination of German coal with French metal is bound to undermine the British metallurgical industry.<br /> <br /> What did the London conference of the Entente produce in place of all this?<br /> <br /> Firstly, the conference rejected the method by which reparation questions were decided by France alone and resolved that, in the last instance, disputes should be settled by an Arbitration Commission consisting of representatives of the Entente headed by representatives of America.<br /> <br /> Secondly, the conference rejected the occupation of the Ruhr and recognised the necessity of evacuation, economic (immediately) and military (in a year's time, or earlier). Motives: the occupation of the Ruhr at the present stage is dangerous from the viewpoint of the political state of Europe, and inconvenient from the viewpoint of the organised and systematic plundering of Germany. There can scarcely be any doubt, however, that the Entente intends to plunder Germany thoroughly and systematically.<br /> <br /> Thirdly, while rejecting military intervention, the conference fully approved of financial and economic intervention, recognising the necessity of:<br /> <br /> a) setting up an emission bank in Germany to be controlled by a special foreign commissioner;<br /> <br /> page 301<br /> <br /> b) transferring to private hands the state railways, which are to be run under the control of a special foreign commissioner;<br /> <br /> c) setting up a so-called &quot;Transfer Committee,&quot; consisting of representatives of the Allies, to have sole control of all reparation payments in German currency, to finance German deliveries in kind out of those payments, to have power to invest some of the reparation payments in German industry (in cases where it is deemed inadvisable to transfer them to France), and thus have full opportunity to control the German money market.<br /> <br /> It scarcely needs proof that this means converting Germany into a colony of the Entente.<br /> <br /> Fourthly, the conference recognised France's right to receive from Germany compulsory deliveries of coal and chemical products for a certain period, but at once added the reservation that Germany had the right to appeal to the Arbitration Commission for a reduction, or even the cessation, of these compulsory payments in kind. By this it nullified, or almost nullified, France's right.<br /> <br /> If to all this we add the loan to Germany of 800,000,000 marks, covered by British and, chiefly, by American bankers, and if we further bear in mind that the conference was bossed by bankers, above all American bankers, the picture will be complete: of France's hegemony not a trace is left; instead of the hegemony of France there is the hegemony of America.<br /> <br /> Such are the results of the London conference of the Entente.<br /> <br /> On these grounds some people think that henceforth the antagonism of interests inside Europe must wane in<br /> <br /> page 302<br /> <br /> view of America's hegemony; that America, interested in exporting capital to Europe, will manage to put the European countries on rations and compel them to sit still while her bankers rake in profits; that, in view of this, peace in Europe, compulsory it is true, may be regarded as more or less ensured for a more or less prolonged period. This assumption is utterly wrong.<br /> <br /> Firstly, in settling the German problem, the conference reckoned without its host, the German people. It is possible, of course, to &quot;plan&quot; Germany's conversion into a regular colony. But to attempt in actual fact to convert a country like Germany into a colony at the present time, when even the backward colonies are being kept in hand with difficulty, means placing a mine under Europe.<br /> <br /> Secondly, France had pushed herself forward too much, so the conference pushed her back somewhat. The natural result of this is that Britain has gained actual preponderance in Europe. But to think that France can resign herself to Britain's preponderance means failing to reckon with facts, failing to reckon with the logic of facts, which usually proves to be stronger than all other logic.<br /> <br /> Thirdly, the conference recognised the hegemony of America. But American capital is interested in financing Franco-German industry, in the most rational exploitation of the latter, for example, along the lines of combining the French metallurgical industry with the German coal industry. There can scarcely be any doubt that American capital will make use of its advantages in precisely this direction, which is the most profitable for it. But to think that Britain will resign herself to such a situa-<br /> <br /> page 303<br /> <br /> tion means not knowing Britain, means not knowing how greatly Britain values the interests of her metallurgical industry.<br /> <br /> Lastly, Europe is not an isolated country; it is bound up with its colonies, it lives on the vital sap from these colonies. To think that the conference can make any change for &quot;the better&quot; in the relations between Europe and its colonies, that it can restrain or retard the development of the contradictions between them, means believing in miracles.<br /> <br /> What conclusion is to be drawn from this?<br /> <br /> Only one: the London conference has not eliminated a single one of the old contradictions in Europe; on the contrary, it has added new ones to them, contradictions between America and Britain. Undoubtedly, Britain will continue as of old to aggravate the antagonism between France and Germany in order to ensure her own political predominance on the continent Undoubtedly, America, in her turn, will aggravate the antagonism between Britain and France in order to ensure her own hegemony in the world market. It is needless for us to speak of the intense antagonism between Germany and the Entente.<br /> <br /> World events will be determined by these antagonisms and not by the &quot;pacifist&quot; speeches of the gallows-bird Hughes, or the grandiloquent Herriot. The law of uneven development of the imperialist countries and of the inevitability of imperialist wars remains in force today more than ever before. The London conference merely masks these antagonisms, only to create new premises for their unprecedented intensification.<br /> <br /> == Strengthening of the Revolutionary Elements in the European Labour Movement. Growth of the International Popularity of the Soviet Union ==<br /> One of the surest signs of the instability of the &quot;pacifist-democratic regime,&quot; one of the most unmistakable signs that this &quot;regime&quot; is froth on the surface of the profound revolutionary processes that are taking place in the depths of the working class, is the decisive victory achieved by the revolutionary wing in the Communist Parties of Germany, France and Russia, the growth of activity of the Left wing in the British labour movement, and lastly, the growth of the Soviet Union's popularity among the toiling masses in the West and in the East.<br /> <br /> The Communist Parties in the West are developing under peculiar conditions. Firstly, their composition is not uniform, for they were formed out of former Social-Democrats of the old school and of young party members who have not yet had sufficient revolutionary steeling. Secondly, their leading cadres are not purely Bolshevik, for responsible posts are occupied by people who have come from other parties and who have not yet completely discarded Social-Democratic survivals. Thirdly, they are confronted by such an experienced opponent as hard-boiled Social-Democracy, which is still an enormous political force in the ranks of the working class. Lastly, they have against them such a powerful enemy as the European bourgeoisie, with its tried and tested state apparatus and all-powerful press. To think that such<br /> <br /> page 305<br /> <br /> Communist Parties can overthrow the European bourgeois system &quot;overnight&quot; is a great mistake. Hence, the immediate task is to make the Communist Parties of the West really Bolshevik; they must train genuinely revolutionary cadres who will be capable of reorganising all party activities along the lines of the revolutionary education of the masses, of preparing for revolution.<br /> <br /> That is how matters stood with the Communist Parties in the West in the still recent past. During the last half year, however, there has been a turn for the better. The last half year is remarkable for the fact that it produced a radical change in the life of the Communist Parties of the West as regards eliminating Social-Democratic survivals, Bolshevising the Party cadres and isolating opportunist elements.<br /> <br /> The danger that Social-Democratic survivals in the Communist Parties can represent for the revolution was strikingly revealed by the sad experience of the Workers' Government in Saxony,[60] where the opportunist leaders tried to convert the idea of a united front, as a means for the revolutionary mobilisation and organisation of the masses, into a means for Social-Democratic parliamentary combinations. That marked a turning point, which opened the eyes of the mass of the Party membership and roused them against the opportunist leaders.<br /> <br /> The second question that undermined the prestige of the Right-wing leaders and brought new revolutionary leaders to the front was the so-called &quot;Russian&quot; question, i.e., the discussion in the R.C.P.(B.). As is known, the Brandler group in Germany and the Souvarine group[61] in France strongly supported the opportunist opposition in the R.C.P.(B.) against the principal cadres of the<br /> <br /> page 306<br /> <br /> R.C.P.(B.), against its revolutionary majority. This was a challenge to the revolutionary mass of the workers in the West, who definitely sympathised with the Soviet government and its leader, the R.C.P.(B.). It was a challenge to the mass of the party membership and the revolutionary wing of the Communist Parties in the West. It is not surprising that this challenge resulted in the utter defeat of the Brandler and Souvarine groups. It is not surprising that this had its repercussion in all the other Communist Parties in the West. If to this we add the complete isolation of the opportunist trend in the R.C.P.(B.), the picture will be complete. The Fifth Congress of the Comintern[62] merely sealed the victory of the revolutionary wing in the principal sections of the Comintern.<br /> <br /> Undoubtedly, the mistakes of the opportunist leaders were an important factor in hastening the Bolshevisation of the Communist Parties in the West; but it is equally beyond doubt that other, more profound, causes also operated here: the successful capitalist offensive during the past few years, the deterioration of the living conditions of the working class, the existence of a vast army of unemployed, the general economic instability of capitalism, the growing revolutionary unrest among the broad masses of the workers. The workers are marching towards revolution, and they want to have revolutionary leaders.<br /> <br /> Summing up. The process of definitely forming genuine Bolshevik parties in the West, parties which will constitute the bulwark of the coming revolution in Europe, has begun. Such is the summing up of the past half year.<br /> <br /> page 307<br /> <br /> Still more difficult and peculiar are the conditions under which the trade unions are developing in the West.<br /> <br /> Firstly, they are narrow owing to their &quot;tried&quot; craft-union practice and are hostile to socialism, for, having arisen before the Socialist parties, and having developed without the aid of the latter, they are accustomed to plume themselves on their &quot;independence,&quot; they place craft interests above class interests, and refuse to recognise anything beyond &quot;a penny a day&quot; increase in wages.<br /> <br /> Secondly, they are conservative in spirit and hostile to all revolutionary undertakings, for they are led by the old, venal trade union bureaucracy, which is being fed by the bourgeoisie and is always ready to place the trade unions at the service of imperialism.<br /> <br /> Lastly, these trade unions, united around the Amsterdam reformists, constitute that vast army of reformism which serves as a prop for the present-day capitalist system.<br /> <br /> Of course, besides the Amsterdam reactionary unions there are the revolutionary unions, which are associated with the Profintern.[63] But, firstly, a considerable section of the revolutionary unions, not wishing to cause a split in the trade union movement, remain in the Amsterdam federation[64] and submit to its discipline; secondly, in the decisive European countries (Britain, France and Germany) the Amsterdamites still represent the majority of the workers. It must not be forgotten that the Amsterdam federation unites no less than fourteen million organised workers. To think that it will be possible to<br /> <br /> page 308<br /> <br /> achieve the dictatorship of the proletariat in Europe against the will of these millions of workers would be a great mistake; it would mean departing from the path of Leninism and courting inevitable defeat. Hence, the task is to win these millions of workers to the side of the revolution and communism, to free them from the influence of the reactionary trade union bureaucracy, or at least to get them to adopt an attitude of benevolent neutrality towards communism.<br /> <br /> That is how matters stood until recently. But during the past few years the situation began to improve. The home of the narrow and reactionary trade unions is Britain, once the industrial-capitalist monopolist of the world market. Her loss of this monopoly is connected with the development of finance capital, characteristic of which is the struggle between a number of the biggest countries for colonial monopoly. The imperialist phase of capitalism is accompanied by an expansion of territory for the narrow, reactionary trade unions, but it also causes a shrinkage of their material base, for imperialist super-profits are the object of the struggle of a number of countries, and the colonies are less and less inclined to remain in the role of colonies. Nor must it be forgotten that the war has seriously undermined production in Europe. As is known, total production in Europe at the present time amounts to not more than 70 percent of pre-war production. Hence the curtailment of production and the successful capitalist offensive against the working class. Hence the wage cuts, the virtual abolition of the 8-hour day, and the series of unsuccessful defensive strikes, which once again demonstrated the betrayal of the working class by the trade union bureaucracy. Hence the colossal unemploy-<br /> <br /> page 309<br /> <br /> ment and the growth of the workers' dissatisfaction with the reactionary trade unions. Hence the idea of a united front in the economic struggle of the working class and the plan to unite the two trade union Internationals into a single International capable of organising resistance to capital. The talk of the reformists at the Vienna Congress of the Amsterdam International (June 1924) about negotiating with the &quot;Russian&quot; trade unions and the appeal of the British trade unions at the Trades Union Congress (beginning of September 1924) for trade union unity are merely a reflection of the growing pressure that the masses are bringing to bear upon the reactionary trade union bureaucracy. The most remarkable thing about all this is the fact that it is precisely the British trade unions, that centre of conservatism and the principal core of the Amsterdam federation, which are taking the initiative in the matter of uniting the reactionary and revolutionary trade unions. The appearance of Left-wing elements in the British labour movement is the surest indication that all is not well &quot;among them, over there,&quot; in Amsterdam.<br /> <br /> Some people think that the campaign for trade union unity is needed precisely at the present time because Left-wing elements have appeared in the Amsterdam federation who absolutely must be supported by all efforts and by all means. That is not true, or, to be more exact, it is only partly true. The point is that the Communist Parties in the West are becoming mass organisations, they are turning into genuine Bolshevik parties, they are growing and are advancing to power simultaneously with the growth of discontent among the broad masses of the workers, and, hence, that things are moving towards proletarian revolution. But the bourgeoisie cannot be over-<br /> <br /> page 310<br /> <br /> thrown unless it is deprived of its prop in the shape of the reactionary Amsterdam federation; the dictatorship cannot be achieved unless that bourgeois citadel in Amsterdam is won to the side of the revolution. That, however, cannot be done by one-sided action from outside. That aim can be achieved at the present time only by combined work inside and outside for obtaining trade union unity. That is why the question of trade union unity and of entering international industrial federations is becoming an urgent one. Of course, the Lefts must be supported and pushed forward. But real support can be rendered the Lefts only if the banner of the revolutionary unions is kept unfurled, if the reactionary Amsterdam leaders are scourged for their treachery and splitting tactics, if the Left leaders are criticised for their half-heartedness and irresolution in the struggle against the reactionary leaders. Only such a policy can prepare the ground for real trade union unity. Otherwise we may get a repetition of what occurred in Germany in October last year, when the reactionary Right-wing Social-Democracy successfully utilised Levi's Left-wing group[65] for the purpose of surrounding the German revolutionary workers.<br /> <br /> Lastly, about the growth of the Soviet Union's popularity among the people in the bourgeois countries. The surest indication of the instability of the &quot;pacifist-democratic regime&quot; is, perhaps, the indubitable fact that, far from waning, the Soviet Union's influence and prestige among the toiling masses in the West and in the East are growing year after year and month after month. The point is not that the Soviet Union is being &quot;recognised&quot;<br /> <br /> page 311<br /> <br /> by a number of bourgeois states. Taken by itself, there is nothing particular in that &quot;recognition,&quot; for it is dictated, firstly, by the needs of capitalist competition between the bourgeois countries, which are striving to obtain &quot;their place&quot; in the Soviet Union market; and secondly, by the &quot;programme&quot; of pacifism, which calls for the establishment of &quot;normal relations&quot; with the Soviet country, the signing of at least some kind of &quot;treaty&quot; with the Soviet Union. The point is that the present-day &quot;democrats&quot; and &quot;pacifists&quot; defeated their bourgeois rivals in the parliamentary elections thanks to their platform of &quot;recognition&quot; of the Soviet Union; that the Mac Donalds and Herriots came into power, and can remain in power, thanks, among other things, to their spouting about &quot;friendship with Russia&quot;; that the prestige of these &quot;democrats&quot; and &quot;pacifists&quot; is the reflection of the Soviet government's prestige among the masses of the people. It is characteristic that even such a notorious &quot;democrat&quot; as Mussolini often deems it necessary to boast to the workers about his &quot;friendship&quot; with the Soviet government. It is no less characteristic that even such notorious appropriators of other people's property as the present rulers of Japan do not want to dispense with &quot;friendship&quot; with the Soviet Union. There is no need to mention the colossal prestige that the Soviet government enjoys among the masses of the people in Turkey, Persia, China and India.<br /> <br /> What is the explanation of the unprecedented prestige and extraordinary popularity among the masses of the people in other countries enjoyed by such a &quot;dictatorial&quot; and revolutionary government as the Soviet government?<br /> <br /> page 312<br /> <br /> Firstly, the fact that the working class hates capitalism and is striving to emancipate itself from it. The workers in the bourgeois countries sympathise with the Soviet government, primarily because it is a government which overthrew capitalism. Bromley, the well-known representative of the British railwaymen, said recently at the Trades Union Congress:<br /> <br /> &quot;The capitalists know that the eyes of the workers of the world are turned towards Russia and that, if the Russian revolution succeeds, the intelligent workers of the world will ask themselves, is it not possible that we also might be successful in throwing off capitalism?&quot;<br /> <br /> Bromley is not a Bolshevik, of course, but what he said expressed the thoughts and aspirations of the European workers. For, indeed, why not throw off European capitalism, considering that for nearly seven years already the &quot;Russians&quot; have been doing without capitalists and are benefiting by it? That is the cause of the immense popularity the Soviet government enjoys among the broad working-class masses. The growth of the international popularity of the Soviet Union is, therefore, an indication of the growth of the hatred of the working class in all countries towards capitalism.<br /> <br /> Secondly, the fact that the masses of the people hate war and are striving to frustrate the war plans of the bourgeoisie. The masses of the people know that the Soviet government was the first to launch the attack against the imperialist war, and by doing so hastened its termination. The masses of the people see that the Soviet Union is the only country that is waging a struggle to prevent the outbreak of a new war. They sympathise<br /> <br /> page 313<br /> <br /> with the Soviet government because it is the banner bearer of peace among the nations and a reliable bulwark against war. The growth of the international popularity of the Soviet government is, therefore, an indication of the growth of the hatred of the masses of the people all over the world towards imperialist war and its organisers.<br /> <br /> Thirdly, the fact that the oppressed masses in the dependent countries and colonies hate the yoke of imperialism and are striving to smash it. The Soviet power is the only power that has smashed the chains of &quot;home&quot; imperialism. The Soviet Union is the only country which is building its life on the basis of the equality and co-operation of nations. The Soviet Government is the only Government in the world which is unreservedly championing the unity and independence, freedom and sovereignty of Turkey and Persia, Afghanistan and China, the colonies and dependent countries all over the world. The oppressed masses sympathise with the Soviet Union because they regard it as their ally in the cause of emancipation from imperialism. The growth of the international popularity of the Soviet government is, therefore, an indication of the growth of the hatred of the oppressed masses all over the world towards imperialism.<br /> <br /> Such are the facts.<br /> <br /> There can scarcely be any doubt that these three hatreds will not serve to strengthen the &quot;pacifist-democratic regime&quot; of present-day imperialism.<br /> <br /> The other day, the United States Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the &quot;pacifist&quot; and Kolchakite Hughes, published a Black-Hundred declaration against the Soviet<br /> <br /> page 314<br /> <br /> Union. Undoubtedly, envy of Poincaré's laurels keeps Hughes awake at night. But there can scarcely be any doubt that Hughes's Black-Hundred-pacifist declaration will serve only to increase still further the Soviet Union's influence and prestige among the toiling masses all over the world.<br /> <br /> Such are the chief factors that are characteristic of the present international situation.<br /> <br /> <br /> [[Category:Library works by Joseph Stalin]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:The_CIA_%26_the_Frankfurt_School%27s_Anti-Communism&diff=75985 2024-09-30T12:46:54Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work<br /> | title = The CIA &amp; the Frankfurt School's Anti-Communism<br /> | subtitle = <br /> | image =<br /> | image_size =<br /> | image_upright =<br /> | image_alt =<br /> | caption =<br /> | author = Gabriel Rockhill<br /> | written in = <br /> | published_date = June 27th, 2022<br /> | published_location = The Philosophical Salon<br /> | type = Article<br /> | source= [https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-cia-the-frankfurt-schools-anti-communism/ The Philosophical Salon]<br /> | display_title =<br /> }}<br /> ==Foundations of the Global Theory Industry==<br /> Frankfurt School critical theory has been—along with French theory—one of the hottest commodities of the global theory industry. Together, they serve as the common source for so many of the trend-setting forms of theoretical critique that currently dominate the academic market in the capitalist world, from postcolonial and decolonial theory to queer theory, Afro-pessimism and beyond. The Frankfurt School’s political orientation has therefore had a foundational effect on the globalized Western intelligentsia.<br /> <br /> The luminaries of the first generation of the Institute for Social Research—particularly Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, who will be the focus of this essay—are towering figures in what is referred to as Western or cultural Marxism. For those familiar with Jürgen Habermas’s reorientation away from historical materialism in the second and then third generations of the Frankfurt School, this early work often represents a veritable golden age of critical theory, when it was still—though perhaps passive or pessimistic—dedicated in some capacity to radical politics. If there is a grain of truth in this assumption, it is only insofar as the early Frankfurt School is compared to later generations that refashioned critical theory as radical liberal—or even just blatantly liberal—ideology.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See my analysis of Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser in “Critical and Revolutionary Theory.”&lt;/ref&gt; However, this point of comparison is setting the bar much too low, as is the case whenever one reduces politics to academic politics. After all, the first generation of the Frankfurt School lived through some of the most cataclysmic clashes in global class struggle of the 20th century, when a veritable intellectual world war was being fought over the meaning and significance of communism.<br /> <br /> In order to avoid being the dupes of history, or of the parochialism of the Western academy, it is therefore important to re-contextualize the Institute for Social Research’s work in relationship to international class struggle. One of the most significant features of this context was the desperate attempt, on the part of the capitalist ruling class, its state managers and ideologues, to redefine the Left—in the words of cold warrior CIA agent Thomas Braden—as the “compatible,” meaning non-communist, Left.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See, for instance, Thomas W. Braden, “I’m Glad the CIA Is ‘Immoral,’” Saturday Evening Post (May 20, 1967). Judging from the fact that W.W. Rostow shared, via CIA Director Richard Helms, Braden’s article with the President of the United States prior to its publication, it is most likely what the Agency calls a “limited hangout.” As former executive assistant to the Deputy Director of the CIA, Victor Marchetti, explained, a limited hangout is a public relations tactic used by clandestine professionals: “When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting—sometimes even volunteering—some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further” (“CIA to Admit Hunt Involvement in Kennedy Slaying,” The Spotlight, August 14, 1978: https://archive.org/details/marchetti-victor-cia-to-admit-hunt-involvement-in-kennedy-slaying-the-spotlight-aug.-14-1978/mode/2up).&lt;/ref&gt; As Braden and others involved have explained in detail, one important facet of this struggle consisted in the use of foundation money and Agency front groups like the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) to promote anti-communism and lure Leftists into taking positions against actually existing socialism.<br /> <br /> Horkheimer participated in at least one junket organized by the CCF in Hamburg.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Gabriel Rockhill, Radical History &amp; the Politics of Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 207-8 and Giles Scott-Smith, “The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the End of Ideology, and the Milan Conference of 1955: ‘Defining the Parameters of Discourse,’” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 37 No. 3 (2002): 437-455. The Paris branch of the Institute for Social Research closely collaborated with Raymond Aron, who was in charge of overseeing which work was appropriate for a French audience (see Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Correspondance: 1927-1969, Vol. I, eds. Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz, trans. Didier Renault (Paris: Klincksieck: 2016), 146. I cite this French edition here and elsewhere because Adorno and Horkheimer’s complete correspondence is not available in English, as far as I know). In the postwar era, Aron became the philosophic figurehead of the CCF and an indefatigable anti-communist ideologue whose public visibility was immensely enhanced by CIA support.&lt;/ref&gt; Adorno published in the CIA-funded journal Der Monat, the largest review of its kind in Europe and the model for many of the Agency’s other publications. His articles appeared, as well, in two other CIA magazines: Encounter and Tempo presente. He also hosted in his home, corresponded and collaborated with the CIA operative who was arguably the leading figure in the German anticommunist Kulturkampf: Melvin Lasky.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;By “operative,” I mean that Lasky worked closely with the CIA—as well as other U.S. government agencies—in his expansive anti-communist propaganda efforts, not that he was himself a CIA “case officer” (which has not been confirmed, as far as I know). Lasky’s collaboration with the CIA and other agencies has been proven by numerous internal documents, as well as the work of researchers like Frances Stonor Saunders, Michael Hochgeschwender, Hugh Wilford and Peter Coleman, amongst others. Some of Lasky’s correspondence with Adorno is available in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Correspondance: 1927-1969, Vol. I-IV, eds. Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz, trans. Didier Renault (Paris: Klincksieck: 2016).&lt;/ref&gt; Founder and chief editor of Der Monat, as well as a member of the original steering committee for the CIA’s CCF, Lasky told Adorno that he was open to every form of collaboration with the Institute for Social Research, including publishing their articles and any other declaration as quickly as possible in his pages.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Adorno and Horkheimer, Correspondance, Vol. III, 291.&lt;/ref&gt; Adorno took him up on the offer and sent him four unpublished manuscripts, including Horkheimer’s Eclipse of Reason, in 1949.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Correspondance, Vol. III, 348.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Horkheimer’s lifelong collaborator was thus closely connected to the CCF networks in West Germany, and his name appears on a document, likely from 1958/59, that outlined plans for an all-German committee of the CCF.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Michael Hochgeschwender, Freiheit in der Offensive? Der Kongreß für kulturelle Freiheit und die Deutschen (München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1998), 488.&lt;/ref&gt; What is more, even after it was revealed in 1966 that this international propaganda organization was a CIA front, Adorno continued to be “included in the expansion plans of the Paris headquarters [of the CCF],” as it was “business as usual” in the part of Germany overseen by the U.S.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Hochgeschwender, Freiheit in der Offensive?, 563.&lt;/ref&gt; This is only the tip of the iceberg, as we shall see, and it is nowise surprising since Adorno and Horkheimer rose to global prominence within the elite networks of the anti-communist Left.<br /> ==A Dialectical Analysis of Theoretical Production==<br /> The analysis that follows is based on a dialectical account of the social totality that situates the subjective theoretical practices of these two founding fathers of critical theory within the objective world of international class struggle. It does not accept the arbitrary dividing line that many petty-bourgeois academics desperately try to erect between intellectual production and the broader socioeconomic world, as if someone’s “thought” could—and should—be separated from their “life,” as well as from the material system of theoretical production, circulation and reception that I will here refer to as the intellectual apparatus. Such a non-dialectical assumption, after all, is little more than a symptom of an idealist approach to theoretical work, which presumes that there is a spiritual and conceptual realm that functions completely independently of material reality and the political economy of knowledge.<br /> <br /> This presupposition perpetuates intellectual commodity fetishism, meaning the idolization of the sacred products of the theory industry that prohibits us from situating them within the overall social relations of production and class struggle. It also serves the interests of those who have or aspire to part of a particular franchise within the global theory industry, if it be “Frankfurt School critical theory” or any other, because it protects the brand image of the franchise itself (which remains unsullied by the actual social relations of production). Whereas intellectual commodity fetishism is a principal feature of consumption within the theory industry, brand image management is the hallmark of production.<br /> <br /> For such a dialectical analysis, it is important to acknowledge that Adorno and Horkheimer did indeed mobilize their subjective agency in formulating significant critiques of capitalism, consumer society and the culture industry. Far from denying this, I would merely like to situate these criticisms within the objective social world, which entails asking a very simple and practical question that is rarely raised within academic circles: if capitalism is recognized as having negative effects, what is to be done about it? The deeper one mines down into their life and work, sifting through the deliberate obscurantism of their discourse, the more obvious their response becomes, and the easier it is to understand the primary social function of their shared intellectual project. For as critical as they sometimes are of capitalism, they regularly affirm that there is no alternative, and nothing can or should ultimately be done about it. What is more, as we shall see, their criticisms of capitalism pale in comparison to their uncompromising condemnation of socialism. Their brand of critical theory ultimately leads to an acceptance of the capitalist order since socialism is judged to be far worse. Not unlike most of the other fashionable discourses in the capitalist academy, they proffer a critical theory that we might call ABS Theory: Anything But Socialism.<br /> <br /> It is not the least bit surprising, in this regard, that Adorno and Horkheimer have been so widely supported and promoted within the capitalist world. In order to shore up the compatible, non-communist Left over and against the threat of actually existing socialism, what better tactic than to champion scholars like these as some of the most important, and even most radical, Marxist thinkers of the 20th century? “Marxism” can thereby be redefined as a kind of anti-communist critical theory that is not directly connected to class struggle from below but rather freely criticizes all forms of “domination,” and which ultimately sides with capitalist control societies over and against the purported “fascist” horrors of powerful socialist states.<br /> <br /> Since benighted anti-communism has been so widely promoted within capitalist culture, this attempted redefinition of Marxism might not be immediately recognizable to some readers as reactionary and social chauvinist (in the sense that it ultimately elevates bourgeois society over any alternative). Unfortunately, major swaths of the population in the capitalist world have been inculcated into the knee-jerk response of uninformed calumny, rather than rigorous analysis, when it comes to actually existing socialism. Since the material history of these projects, with all of their ups and downs—rather than mythological horror stories propagandistically constructed around a communist bogeyman—will be essential to understanding the argument that follows, I take the liberty of referring the reader to the deep and rich work of rigorous historians like Annie Lacroix-Riz, Domenico Losurdo, Carlos Martinez, Michael Parenti, Albert Szymanski, Jacques Pauwels, and Walter Rodney, amongst others. I also encourage the reader to examine the important quantitative comparisons between capitalism and socialism undertaken by exacting analysts like Minqi Li, Vicente Navarro and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See, for instance, Minqi Li, “The 21st Century: Is There an Alternative (to Socialism)?” Science &amp; Society 77:1 (January 2013): 10-43; Vicente Navarro, “Has Socialism Failed? An Analysis of Health Indicators under Capitalism and Socialism,” Science &amp; Society 57:1 (spring 1993): 6-30. Tricontinental has provided numerous in-depth analyses of actually existing socialism and how it compares to actually existing capitalism: https://thetricontinental.org/.&lt;/ref&gt; Such work is anathema to the dominant ideology, and for good reason: it scientifically examines the evidence, rather than relying on hoary tropes and uninformed ideological reflexes. It is the type of historical and materialist work, moreover, that has largely been overshadowed by the speculative forms of critical theory promoted by the global theory industry. <br /> ==Intellectuals in the Age of Revolution and Global Class War==<br /> Although their early lives were marked by the world-historical events of the Russian Revolution and the attempted revolution in Germany, Adorno and Horkheimer were esthetes wary of the supposed morass of mass politics. While their interest in Marxism was piqued by these incidents, it was primarily of an intellectual nature. Horkheimer did become marginally involved in activities around the Munich council republic after WWI, particularly by providing support for some of those involved after the council had been brutally suppressed. However, he—the same is true a fortiori of Adorno—“continued to maintain his distance from the explosive political events of the time and to devote himself primarily to his own personal concerns.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;John Abromeit, Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 42.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Their class standing was far from insignificant in this regard, for it positions them and their political outlook within the larger, objective world of the social relations of production. Both Frankfurt School theorists were from affluent families. Adorno’s father was a “wealthy wine merchant” and Horkheimer’s was a “millionaire” who “owned several textile factories.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Thomas Wheatland, The Frankfurt School in Exile (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 24; Ingar Solty, “Max Horkheimer, a Teacher without a Class,” Jacobin (February 15, 2020): https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/02/max-horkheimer-frankfurt-school-adorno-working-class-marxism; Wheatland, The Frankfurt School in Exile, 13.&lt;/ref&gt; Adorno “had no personal ties at all to socialist political life” and maintained throughout his life “a deep aversion to formal membership of any party organization.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Perry Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism (London: Verso, 1989), 33; Steven Müller-Doohm, Adorno: A Biography, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 94.&lt;/ref&gt; Similarly, Horkheimer was never “an overt member of any working-class party.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism, 33.&lt;/ref&gt; The same is generally true of the other figures involved in the early years of the Frankfurt School: “none of those belonging to the Horkheimer circle was politically active; none of them had his origins either in the labor movement or in Marxism.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance, trans. Michael Robertson (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1995), 104.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the words of John Abromeit, Horkheimer sought to preserve the supposed independence of theory and “rejected the position of Lenin, Lukács, and the Bolsheviks that critical theory must be ‘rooted’” in the working class, or more specifically working-class parties.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Abromeit, Max Horkheimer, 150. Any scant and circumspect hope that Horkheimer had placed in the Soviet Union dissipated in the early 1930s, and “after 1950, Horkheimer began defending the liberal-democratic political traditions of the West in a manner that was […] one-sided” (Abromeit, Max Horkheimer, 15, also see 181).&lt;/ref&gt; He encouraged critical theorists to operate as intellectual free agents rather than grounding their research in the proletariat, which was a type of work that he disparaged as “totalitarian propaganda.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;“Critical theory,” Horkheimer claimed, “is neither ‘deeply rooted’ like totalitarian propaganda nor ‘detached’ like the liberalist intelligentsia” (Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory: Selected Essays, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell and others (New York: Continuum, 2002), 223-4).&lt;/ref&gt; Adorno’s overall position, like Herbert Marcuse’s, was summarized by Marie-Josée Levallée in the following terms: “the Bolshevik party, which Lenin made the vanguard of the October Revolution, was a centralizing and repressive institution which would shape the Soviet State in its image and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into its own dictatorship.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;“Marie-Josée Levallée, “October and the Prospects for Revolution: The Views of Arendt, Adorno, and Marcuse,” The Russian Revolution as Ideal and Practice: Failures, Legacies, and the Future of Revolution, eds. Thomas Telios et al. (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 173.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> When Horkheimer took over the directorship of the Institute for Social Research in 1930, his stewardship was characterized by speculative concerns with culture and authority rather than rigorous historical materialist analyses of capitalism, class struggle and imperialism. In the words of Gillian Rose, “instead of politicizing academia,” the Institute under Horkheimer “academized politics.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt; Gillian Rose, The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 2.&lt;/ref&gt; This was perhaps seen nowhere more clearly than in “the constant policy of the Institute under Horkheimer’s direction,” which “continued to be abstinence, not only from every activity which was even remotely political, but also from any collective or organized effort to publicize the situation in Germany or to support émigrés.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 133. Also see Solty, “Max Horkheimer, a Teacher without a Class” and Rose, The Melancholy Science, 2.&lt;/ref&gt; With the rise of Nazism, Adorno attempted to go into hibernation, assuming that the regime would only target “the orthodox pro-Soviet Bolshevists and communists who had drawn attention to themselves politically” (they would indeed be the first to be put in the concentration camps).&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Müller-Doohm, Adorno, 181.<br /> &lt;/ref&gt; He “refrained from public criticism of any kind of the Nazis and their ‘great power’ policies.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Müller-Doohm, Adorno, 181. “Even in his private letters,” Müller-Doohm writes, “until well into the mid-1930s, we find no more than rather generalized, pessimistic mood-pictures, and no unambiguous statements on the political situation” (181).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> ==Critical Theory American Style==<br /> This refusal to overtly participate in progressive politics was intensified when the leaders of the Institute moved it to the United States in the early 1930s. The Frankfurt School adapted itself “to the local bourgeois order, censoring its own past and present work to suit local academic or corporate susceptibilities.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism, 33. Thomas Wheatland explains that the Horkheimer Circle in New York chose to “remain silent about the major political questions of the day and […concealed] its Marxism almost completely. […] Horkheimer remained unwilling to risk the possible repercussions of political activism or even political engagement with the major topics of the era” (The Frankfurt School in Exile (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 99).&lt;/ref&gt; Horkheimer had words like Marxism, revolution and communism expunged from its publications in order to avoid offending its U.S. sponsors.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Stuart Jeffries, Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School (London: Verso, 2017), 72 and 197.&lt;/ref&gt; Furthermore, any type of political activity was strictly forbidden, as Herbert Marcuse later explained.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Wheatland, The Frankfurt School in Exile, 72 (also see 141).&lt;/ref&gt; Horkheimer put his energy into securing corporate and state funding for the Institute, and he even hired a public relations firm to promote its work in the U.S. Another émigré from Germany, Bertolt Brecht, was thus not fully unjustified when he critically described the Frankfurt scholars as—in the words of Stuart Jeffries—“prostitutes in their quest for foundation support during their American exile, selling their skills and opinions as commodities in order to support the dominant ideology of oppressive U.S. society.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Jeffries, Grand Hotel Abyss, 136. Brecht maintained that “the Frankfurt School perpetrated a bourgeois sleight of hand by posturing as a Marxist institute while at the same time insisting that revolution could no longer depend on insurrection by the working class, and declining to take part in the overthrow of capitalism” (Jeffries, Grand Hotel Abyss, 77).&lt;/ref&gt; They were indeed intellectual free agents unrestrained by any working-class organizations in their pursuit of corporate and state sponsorship for their brand of market-savvy critical theory.<br /> <br /> Brecht’s close friend, Walter Benjamin, was one of the Frankfurt scholars’ most important Marxist interlocutors at the time. He was not able to join them in the United States because he tragically committed suicide in 1940 at the border between France and Spain, the night before he faced near certain apprehension by the Nazis. According to Adorno, he “killed himself after he had already been saved” because he had “been made a permanent member of the Institute and knew it.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Cited in Ulrich Fries, “Ende der Legende: Hintergründe zu Walter Benjamins Tod,” The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory 96:4 (2021), 421, 422. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Helmut-Harry Loewen, who drew my attention to this important article and shared his partial translation of it with me.&lt;/ref&gt; He was “flush with funds” for his trip, in the words of the famous philosopher, and knew “that he could rely completely on us materially.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Cited in Fries, “Ende der Legende,” 422, 422.&lt;/ref&gt; This version of history, which presents Benjamin’s suicide as an incomprehensible personal decision given the circumstances, was an exercise in mendacity for the sake of personal and institutional exoneration, according to a detailed analysis recently published by Ulrich Fries. Not only were the leading figures of the Frankfurt School unwilling to assist Benjamin financially for his flight from the Nazis, Fries argues, but they also ran an extensive cover-up campaign to disingenuously present themselves as his benevolent benefactors. <br /> <br /> Prior to his suicide, Benjamin was financially dependent on the Institute for a monthly stipend. However, the Frankfurt scholars despised the influence of Brecht and revolutionary Marxism on his work. Adorno had no compunction about describing Brecht with the anticommunist epithet “savage” when explaining to Horkheimer that Benjamin needed to be “definitively” liberated from his influence.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Adorno’s letter to Horkheimer on January 26, 1936, published in Adorno and Horkheimer, Correspondance, Vol. I, 110.&lt;/ref&gt; It is not surprising, then, that Benjamin feared losing his stipend due, in part, to Adorno’s critiques of his work and refusal to publish a section of his Baudelaire study in 1938.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See the epistolary exchange between them in Ronald Taylor, ed., Aesthetics and Politics (London: Verso, 1977), 100-141.&lt;/ref&gt; Horkheimer explicitly told Benjamin around the same time, as fascist forces were closing in around him, that he should prepare for the discontinuation of his sole source of income since 1934. He claimed, moreover, that his hands were “unfortunately tied” when he refused to fund Benjamin’s journey to safety by paying for a steamship ticket to the U.S. that would have cost under $200.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Cited in Fries, “Ende der Legende,” 409.&lt;/ref&gt; This was literally “a month after transferring an extra $50,000 to an account at his exclusive disposal,” which was the “second time in eight months” that he had secured an additional $50,000 (the equivalent of just over 1 million dollars in 2022).&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Fries, “Ende der Legende,” 409, 424.<br /> &lt;/ref&gt; In July 1939, Friedrich Pollock also obtained an additional $130,000 for the Institute from Felix Weil, the wealthy son of a capitalist millionaire whose profits from a grain enterprise in Argentina, property speculation and meat trading funded the Frankfurt School.<br /> <br /> It was political will, not money, that was lacking. Indeed, Fries concurs with Rolf Wiggershaus that Horkheimer’s cruel decision to abandon Benjamin was part of a broader pattern according to which the directors “systematically placed the realization of their private life goals above the interests of everyone else,” while propagating the false appearance of “outstanding commitment to those persecuted by the Nazi regime.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Fries, “Ende der Legende,” 414.&lt;/ref&gt; As if to put the last nail in Benjamin’s coffin, his literary estate was later purged of its more explicit Marxist elements according to Helmut Heißenbüttel: “In everything Adorno did for Benjamin’s work, the Marxist-materialist side remains erased. […] The work appears in a reinterpretation in which the surviving controversial correspondent imposes his view.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Cited in Fries, “Ende der Legende,” 410.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Todd Cronan has argued that there was a palpable shift in the Frankfurt School’s overall political orientation around 1940—the year Pollock wrote “State Capitalism”—as it increasingly turned its back on class analysis in favor of privileging race, culture and identity. “It often seems to me,” Adorno wrote to Horkheimer that year, “that everything that we used to see from the point of view of the proletariat has been concentrated today with frightful force upon the Jews.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Quoted in Jack Jacobs, The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives, and Antisemitism (Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 2014), 59-60.<br /> &lt;/ref&gt; According to Cronan, Adorno and Horkheimer “opened up the possibility from within Marxism of seeing class as a matter of power, of domination, rather than economics (the Jews were not a category defined by economic exploitation). And once that possibility was raised, it became the dominant mode of analysis on the left at large.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Todd Cronan, Red Aesthetics: Rodchenko, Brecht, Eisenstein (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman &amp; Littlefield Publishers, 2021), 132.&lt;/ref&gt; In other words, the Frankfurt theorists helped set the stage for a more general shift away from historical materialist analysis grounded in political economy toward culturalism and identity politics, which would become consolidated in the neoliberal era.<br /> <br /> It is highly revealing in this regard that the Institute undertook a massive study of “Anti-Semitism in American Labor” in 1944-45, under Pollock’s stewardship. Fascism had risen to power with extensive financial backing by the capitalist ruling class, and it was still on the war path around the world. Yet, the Frankfurt scholars were hired to focus on the purported anti-Semitism of U.S. workers rather than on the capitalist funders of fascism or the actual Nazis who were fighting a war against the Soviets. They reached the remarkable conclusion that the “communist-run” unions were the worst of all, and that they thus had “fascist” tendencies: “The members of these unions are less communist than fascist-minded.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Cited in Cronan, Red Aesthetics, 151.&lt;/ref&gt; The study in question was commissioned by the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC). One of the JLC’s leaders, David Dubinsky, had numerous ties to the Central Intelligence Agency and was involved, along with the likes of CIA operatives Jay Lovestone and Irving Brown, in the Company’s expansive campaign to take over organized labor and purge it of communists.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt; On the JLC’s leadership, see Catherine Collomp, “‘Anti-Semitism among American Labor’: A Study by the Refugee Scholars of the Frankfurt School of Sociology at the End of World War II,” Labor History 52:4 (November 2011): 417-439. On Dubinsky’s work with the CIA, see the documents available on the CIA’s FOIA Electronic Reading Room (https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/home), as well as Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2008) and Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: The New Press, 1999).&lt;/ref&gt; By identifying the communist unions as the most anti-Semitic, and even “fascist,” the Frankfurt School appears to have provided some of the ideological justification for destroying the communist labor movement.<br /> <br /> Some might consider the Institute for Social Research’s collaboration with U.S. authorities and self-censorship justified due to the anti-communist, and sometimes philofascist, attitudes of the U.S. power elite, not to mention the enemy alien acts and decrees.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See David Jenemann, Adorno in America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 181-2.&lt;/ref&gt; Indeed, based on a detailed overview of the Institute’s history and activities on January 21, 1944, the Federal Bureau of Investigation mobilized numerous stool pigeons to spy on the scholars for about ten years due to the concern that the Institute might be serving as a communist front.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Adorno’s FBI file: https://vault.fbi.gov/theodor-adorno/theodor-adorno-part-01-of-01/view&lt;/ref&gt; The informants included close associates of the Institute like Karl Wittfogel, other professional colleagues and even neighbors. The Bureau found little to no evidence of suspicious behavior, however, and its officers appear to have been reassured when some of their snitches, who were personally close to the Frankfurt scholars, explained to them that the critical theorists “believe there is no difference between Hitler and Stalin as to purpose and tactics.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Adorno’s FBI file: https://vault.fbi.gov/theodor-adorno/theodor-adorno-part-01-of-01/view&lt;/ref&gt; Indeed, as we will see below, they would claim as much in some of their writings, including when they had settled in West Germany and were no longer under the direct threat of FBI surveillance and potential detainment or deportation.<br /> ==Malign the East, Defend—While in the Pay of—the West==<br /> In 1949-50, the intellectual front men of the Frankfurt School moved the Institute back to West Germany, one of the epicenters for the intellectual world war against communism. “In this milieu,” writes Perry Anderson, “in which the KPD [Communist Party of Germany] was to be banned and the SPD [Social Democratic Party of Germany] formally abandoned any connection with Marxism, the depoliticization of the Institute was completed.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism, 34.&lt;/ref&gt; No less than Jürgen Habermas—who occasionally outflanked Adorno and Horkheimer to the left in the early years—accused the latter of “opportunist conformity which was at odds with the critical tradition.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Jeffries, Grand Hotel Abyss, 297. Habermas himself, we should recall, was a member of the Hitler Youth and would later support the Persian Gulf War and NATO’s intervention in Yugoslavia.&lt;/ref&gt; Indeed, Horkheimer had continued his censorship of the Institute’s work, refusing to publish two articles by Habermas that were critical of liberal democracy and spoke of “revolution,” daring to suggest the possibility of an emancipation from “the shackles of bourgeois society.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Horkheimer’s jeremiad against Habermas and Marxism in his letter to Adorno on September 27, 1958 in Adorno and Horkheimer, Correspondance, Vol. IV, 386-399.&lt;/ref&gt; In his private correspondence, Horkheimer candidly submitted to Adorno that “it is simply not possible to have admissions of this sort in the research report of an Institute that exists on the public funds of this shackling society.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Quoted in Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 554.&lt;/ref&gt; This appears to be a forthright admission that the economic base of the Frankfurt School was the driving force behind its ideology, or at least its public discourse.<br /> <br /> It is important to recall, in this regard, that five of the eight members of the Horkheimer circle had worked as analysts and propagandists for the U.S. government and national security state, which “had a vested interest in the continuing loyalty of the Frankfurt School because a number of its members were working on sensitive government research projects.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Jenemann, Adorno in America, 182.&lt;/ref&gt; While Horkheimer and Adorno were not amongst them, since they received more support from the Institute, the latter of the two originally emigrated to the United States to work for Paul Lazarsfeld’s Office of Radio Research, one of the “de facto adjuncts of government psychological warfare programs.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Christopher Simpson, Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare 1945-1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 4.&lt;/ref&gt; This center for communication studies received a substantial grant of $67,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation and worked very closely with the U.S. national security state (government money made up over 75 percent of its annual budget). The Rockefeller Foundation also funded Horkheimer’s first return to Germany in April 1948, when he took up a guest professorship at Frankfurt University.<br /> <br /> Lest we forget, the Rockefellers are one of the greatest gangster families in the history of U.S. capitalism, and they use their foundation as a tax shelter that allows them to mobilize a portion of their stolen wealth “in the corruption of intellectual activity and culture.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 397.&lt;/ref&gt; They were, moreover, directly involved in the national security state during the time of the Frankfurt School’s sponsorship. After serving as the director of the Office of Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (a federal propaganda agency whose work resembled that of the Office of Strategic Services and the CIA), Nelson Rockefeller became, in 1954, the “‘super-coordinator’ for clandestine intelligence operations, with the title of Special Assistant to the President for Cold War Strategy.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;John Loftus, America’s Nazi Secret (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, LLC, 2011), 228.&lt;/ref&gt; He also allowed the Rockefeller Fund to be used as a conduit for CIA money, very much like a large number of other capitalist foundations that have an extensive history of working hand-in-glove with the Company (as revealed by the Church Committee report and other sources).<br /> <br /> With all of these ties to the capitalist ruling class and the U.S. empire, it is nowise surprising that the U.S. government supported the Institute’s move back to West Germany with a very significant grant in 1950 of 435,000 DM ($103,695, or the equivalent of $1,195,926 dollars in 2022).&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 434.&lt;/ref&gt; These funds were administered by John McCloy, the US High Commissioner of Germany. McCloy was a core member of the U.S. power elite, who had worked as a jurist and banker for big oil and IG Farben, and who granted extensive pardons and commutations to Nazi war criminals. After having served as one of the architects of the US national security state during WWII, he—in a career move indicative of the intimate relationship between the deep state and the capitalist ruling class—went on to become the chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, of the Council of Foreign Relations, and of the Ford Foundation. In addition to the funds provided by McCloy, the Institute also received support from private donors, the Society of Social Research, and the city of Frankfurt. In 1954, it even signed a research contract with the Mannesmann corporation, which “had been a founding member of the Anti-Bolshevik League and had financed the Nazi Party.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 479.&lt;/ref&gt; During WWII, Mannesmann used slave labor, and its Chairman of the Board was the Nazi Wilhelm Zangen, the War Economy Leader of the Third Reich.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Robert S. Wistrich, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany (New York: Routledge, 2001), 281.&lt;/ref&gt; The Frankfurt School’s postwar contract with this company was for a sociological study of worker’s opinions, with the implicit implication that such a study would help management stall or prevent socialist organizing.<br /> <br /> Perhaps the clearest explanation of why capitalist governments and the corporatocracy would support the Institute for Social Research is to be found in the words of Shepard Stone. The latter, we should note, had a background in journalism and military intelligence before going on to serve as the Director of International Affairs at the Ford Foundation, where he worked closely with the CIA in funding cultural projects around the world (Stone even became the President of the International Association for Cultural Freedom, which was the new name given to the Congress for Cultural Freedom in a rebranding effort after its CIA origins had been revealed). When Stone was the director of public affairs for the High Commission for Occupied Germany in the 1940s, he sent a personal note to the U.S. State Department to encourage it to extend Adorno’s passport: “The Institute of Frankfurt is helping to train German leaders who will know something of democratic techniques. I believe it is important for our over-all democratic objectives in Germany that such men as Professor Adorno have an opportunity to work in that country.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Cited in Jenemann, Adorno in America, 184. Adorno said as much himself in his affidavit: “The Institute of Social Research at Frankfort [sic] University was founded with the support of HICOG and largely supported by American means. It is the aim of this Institution to develop an integration of American and German research methods and to help in the education of German students in the spirit of American democracy” (Jenemann, Adorno in America, 184).&lt;/ref&gt; The Institute was doing the kind of ideological work that the U.S. state and capitalist ruling class wanted to—and did—support.<br /> <br /> Meeting, and even surpassing, the dictates of ideological conformity to the “shackling society” that funded the Institute, Horkheimer openly expressed his fulsome support for the U.S.’s anti-communist puppet government in West Germany, whose intelligence services had been stocked with former Nazis, as well as its imperial project in Vietnam (which he judged necessary to stop the Chinese).&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;According to Wiggershaus: “Horkheimer did not, like Paul Tillich, defend socialism or, like Hugo Sinzheimer or Hermann Heller, belong to the committed democrats and declared opponents of Nazism” (The Frankfurt School, 112). On Adenauer, see Rockhill, “Critical and Revolutionary Theory,” as well as Philip Agee and Louis Wolf, Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe (New York: Dorset Press, 1978).&lt;/ref&gt; Speaking at one of the Amerika-Häuser in Germany, which were propaganda outposts in the anti-communist Kulturkampf, he solemnly declared in May 1967 that “In America, when it is necessary to conduct a war, – and now listen to me […] it is not so much a question of the defense of the homeland, but it is essentially a matter of the defense of the constitution, the defense of the rights of man.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Quoted in Wolfgang Kraushaar, ed., Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung: Von der Flaschenpost zum Molotowcocktail 1946-1995, Vol. I: Chronik (Hamburg: Rogner &amp; Bernhard GmbH &amp; Co. Verlags KG, 1998), 252-3.&lt;/ref&gt; The high priest of critical theory is here describing a country that was founded as a settler colony, whose genocidal elimination of the indigenous population seamlessly merged with a project of imperialist expansion that has arguably left the bloodiest footprint—as MLK Jr. argued in April 1967—on the history of the modern world (including some 37 military and CIA interventions between the end of WWII and 1967, when Horkheimer broadcast this ignominious claim via a U.S. propaganda platform).&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II (London: Zed Books, 2014).&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Although Adorno often indulged in the petty-bourgeois politics of complicit passivity, avoiding public pronouncements on major political events, the few statements he did make were strikingly reactionary. For instance, in 1956, he co-authored an article with Horkheimer in defense of the imperialist invasion of Egypt by Israel, Britain and France, which aimed at seizing the Suez Canal and overthrowing Nasser (an action condemned by the United Nations). Referring to Nasser, one of the prominent anti-colonial leaders of the non-aligned movement, as “a fascist chieftain […] who conspires with Moscow,” they exclaimed: “No one even ventures to point out that these Arab robber states have been on the lookout for years for an opportunity to fall upon Israel and to slaughter the Jews who have found refuge there.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Quoted in Jeffries, Grand Hotel Abyss, 297.<br /> &lt;/ref&gt; According to this pseudo-dialectical inversion, it is the Arab states that are “robbers,” not the settler colony working with core imperialist countries to infringe upon the self-determination of Arabs. We would be well served to recall Lenin’s trenchant rejection of such sophistry, which is characteristic of much of what counts for “dialectics” in the global theory industry: “Not infrequently have dialectics served […] as a bridge to sophistry. But we remain dialecticians and we combat sophistry not by denying the possibility of all transformations in general, but by analyzing the given phenomenon in its concrete setting and development.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 22 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), 309.&lt;/ref&gt; Such concrete, materialist analysis is precisely what is lacking in idealist inversions à la Adorno and Horkheimer.<br /> <br /> The front men of the Frankfurt School published one of their most overtly political texts the same year. Rather than supporting the global movement for anticolonial liberation and the building of a socialist world, they celebrate—with only a few minor exceptions—the superiority of the West, while repeatedly disparaging the Soviet Union and China. Invoking stock racist descriptions of the “barbarians” in the East, whom they describe using the overtly sub-humanizing vocabulary of “beasts” and “hordes,” they flatly proclaim that they are “fascists” who have chosen “slavery.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;The racialization of communists has been an important part of anti-communist ideology, as Domenico Losurdo explained in War and Revolution, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2015).&lt;/ref&gt; Adorno even chastises Germans who mistakenly think that “the Russians stand for socialism,” reminding them that the Russians are actually “fascists,” adding that the “industrialists and bankers”—with whom he here identifies—already know this.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “Towards a New Manifesto?” New Left Review 65 (September-October 2019), 49.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> “Everything the Russians write slips into ideology, into crude, stupid twaddle,” Adorno brazenly asserts in this text, as if he had read everything they wrote, even though, per usual, he does not cite a single source (nor did he even read Russian, as far as I know).&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Adorno and Horkheimer, “Towards a New Manifesto?” 59.&lt;/ref&gt; Claiming that there is “an element of re-barbarization” in their thinking, which is also to be found in Marx and Engels according to him, he unabashedly asserts that it is “more reified than in the most advanced bourgeois thought.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Adorno and Horkheimer, “Towards a New Manifesto?” 59.&lt;/ref&gt; As if this was not enough disingenuous grandstanding, Adorno has the chutzpah to describe this writing project with Horkheimer as a “strictly Leninist manifesto.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Adorno and Horkheimer, “Towards a New Manifesto?” 57&lt;/ref&gt; This is in a discussion in which they affirm that they “are not calling on anyone to take action,” and Adorno explicitly elevates bourgeois thought and what he refers to as “culture at its most advanced” above the supposed barbarism of socialist thinking.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Adorno and Horkheimer, “Towards a New Manifesto?” 57, 59.&lt;/ref&gt; Moreover, it is in this context that Horkheimer doubled down on their social chauvinism by averring, in a world-historical conclusion that provoked no rebuttal on the part of his “Leninist” collaborator: “I believe that Europe and America are probably the best civilizations that history has produced up to now as far as prosperity and justice are concerned. The key point now is to ensure the preservation of these gains.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Adorno and Horkheimer, “Towards a New Manifesto?” 41. Horkheimer expressed similar pro-capitalist, anti-communist views on numerous occasions. For instance, in a long letter to Adorno dated September 27, 1958, he claimed that “revolution really means the passage to terror” and asserted that what must be defended is “the remainder of bourgeois civilization where the idea of individual freedom and authentic society still has its place” (Adorno and Horkheimer, Correspondance: 1927-1969, Vol. IV, 395). In 1968, to cite another example, he quite explicitly described his position as counter-revolutionary: “An open declaration that even a dubious democracy, for all its defects, is always better than the dictatorship which would inevitably result from a revolution today, seems to me necessary for the sake of truth” (Horkheimer, Critical Theory, viii). After recalling Horkheimer’s condemnation of the “savage barbarism of the East,” Stefan Müller-Doohm writes in his 700-page biography of Adorno that “Adorno and Horkheimer were in agreement in their assessment of the so-called Eastern bloc, i.e. the Soviet Union, but also communist China” (415). Regarding colonialism, Horkheimer wrote to Adorno that although “the European dream of permanent superiority in the colonial era” was “abominable,” it nevertheless had “its good sides” (Adorno and Horkheimer, Correspondance, Vol. IV, 466).&lt;/ref&gt; This was in 1956, when the U.S. was still largely racially segregated, was involved in anti-communist witch hunts and destabilization campaigns around the world, and had recently extended its imperial reach by overthrowing democratically elected governments in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954), while the European powers were waging violent struggles to hold onto their colonies or convert them into neo-colonies. <br /> ==“Fascism and Communism Are the Same”==<br /> One of the most consistent political claims advanced by Adorno and Horkheimer is that there is a “totalitarian” equivalence between fascism and communism, if it manifests itself in socialist state-building projects, anticolonial movements of the “Third World,” or even New Left mobilizations in the Western world. In all three cases, those who think they are breaking out of the “shackling society,” are only making things worse. The patent fact that Western capitalist countries offered no significant bulwark against fascism, which arose within the capitalist world, and that it was precisely the Soviet Union that ultimately defeated it, does not seem to have caused them to reflect on the viability of this benighted and simplistic thesis (which is to say nothing of the importance of socialism to anti-colonial movements and the uprisings of the 1960s). In fact, for all of his moral opining on the horrors of Auschwitz, Adorno appears to have forgotten who actually liberated the infamous concentration camp (the Red Army).<br /> <br /> Horkheimer had formulated his version of horseshoe theory with particular clarity in a limited circulation pamphlet published in 1942, which broke with the Aesopian language of many of the Institute’s other publications. Directly accusing Friedrich Engels of utopianism, he averred that the socialization of the means of production had led to an increase in repression, and ultimately to an authoritarian state. “The bourgeoisie earlier held the government in check through its property,” according to this millionaire’s son, whereas in new societies socialism simply “did not function,” except to produce the mistaken belief that one was—through the party, honored leader, or the supposed march of history—“acting in the name of something greater than oneself.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Max Horkheimer, “The Authoritarian State,” Telos 15 (spring 1973): 16.&lt;/ref&gt; Horkheimer’s position in this piece is perfectly in line with anarcho-anti-communism, which is a very widespread ideology within the Western Left: a “classless democracy” is supposed to emerge spontaneously from the people through “free agreement,” without the supposedly pernicious influence of parties or states. As Domenico Losurdo has insightfully pointed out, the Nazi war machine was ravaging the USSR in the early 1940s, and Horkheimer’s call for socialists to abandon the state and party centralization therefore amounted to nothing less than a demand that they capitulate before the Nazis’s genocidal rampage.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See Domenico Losurdo, El Marxismo occidental: Cómo nació, cómo murió y cómo puede resucitar, trans. Alejandro García Mayo (Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 2019). This book, originally written in Italian, is being translated into English by Steven Colatrella for 1804 Books.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Whereas there are vague suggestions at the end of Horkheimer’s 1942 pamphlet that there might be something desirable in socialism, later texts would bring into full relief their unequivocal rejection of it. For instance, when Adorno and Horkheimer were considering making a public statement on their relationship to the Soviet Union, the former sent the following draft of a planned co-authored piece to the latter: “Our philosophy, as a dialectical critique of the overall social tendency of the age, stands in the sharpest opposition to the politics and doctrine that emanates from the Soviet Union. We are unable to see anything in the practice of the military dictatorships disguised as people’s democracies other than a new form of repression.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, eds. Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, Vol. 18 (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1985), 73. Also see Müller-Doohm, Adorno, 334. Adorno went so far as to explicitly endorse the position of the militant anti-communist and CIA collaborator Arthur Koestler, writing that “communism has become a ‘rightwing party’ (which Koestler highlighted) and […] it has completely identified itself with Russian imperialism” (Adorno and Horkheimer, Correspondance, Vol. IV, 655).&lt;/ref&gt; It is worth noting in this regard, given the overwhelming lack of materialist analysis of actually existing socialism on the part of Adorno and Horkheimer, that even the CIA recognized that the Soviet Union was not a dictatorship. In a report dated March 2, 1955, the Agency clearly stated: “Even in Stalin’s time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist power structure.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;See this document in the CIA’s FOIA Electronic Reading Room: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp80-00810a006000360009-0 I would like to express my gratitude to Colin Bodayle for drawing my attention to this document.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In 1959, Adorno published a text entitled “The Meaning of Working through the Past” in which he recycled the “shameful truth” of “philistine wisdom” referenced in this earlier draft, namely that—in complete conformity with the dominant Cold War ideology in the West—fascism and communism are the same because they are two forms of “totalitarianism.” Openly rejecting the vantage point of “political-economic ideology,” which obviously distinguishes these two warring camps, Adorno claimed to have privileged access to a deeper social-psychological dynamic that unites them.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Theodor Adorno, Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, trans. Henry W. Pickford (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 94.&lt;/ref&gt; As “authoritarian personalities,” he asserted ex cathedra, fascists and communists “possess weak egos” and compensate by identifying themselves with “real-existing power” and “great collectives.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Adorno, Critical Models, 94.&lt;/ref&gt; The very notion of an “authoritarian personality” is thus a deceitful crotchet aimed at synthesizing opposites via psychologizing pseudo-dialectics. It begs the question, moreover, of why psychology and particular ways of thinking appear, at least here, to be more central to historical explanation than material forces and class struggle.<br /> <br /> In spite of this attempt to psychologically identify fascists and communists, Adorno nonetheless suggested, in the same text, that the Nazi assault on the Soviet Union could be retrospectively justified due to the fact that the Bolsheviks were—like Hitler himself had said—a menace to Western civilization. “The threat that the East will engulf the foothills of Western Europe is obvious,” Adorno claimed, “and whoever fails to resist it is literally guilty of repeating Chamberlain’s appeasement.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Adorno, Critical Models, 94.&lt;/ref&gt; The analogy is revealing because, in this case, it would mean appeasing the “fascist” communists if one did not directly fight against them. In other words, as obscure and convoluted as his phraseology is, this appears to be a clarion call for military opposition to the spread of communism (which is perfectly in line with Horkheimer’s support for the U.S.’s imperialist war in Vietnam).<br /> <br /> Adorno’s fierce rejection of actually existing socialism was also on full display in his exchange with Alfred Sohn-Rethel. The latter asked him if Negative Dialectics had anything to say about changing the world, and if the Chinese Cultural Revolution was part of the ‘affirmative tradition’ he condemned. Adorno replied that he rejected the “moral pressure” from “official Marxism” to put philosophy into practice.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Müller-Doohm, Adorno, 438.&lt;/ref&gt; “Nothing but despair can save us,” he asserted with his signature panache of petty-bourgeois melancholia.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Müller-Doohm, Adorno, 438.&lt;/ref&gt; Adding, for good measure, that the events in communist China were no cause for hope, he explained with memorable insistence that his entire thinking life had been resolutely pitted against this form—and presumably others—of socialism: “I would have to deny everything I have thought my whole life long if I were to admit to feeling anything but horror at the sight of it.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Müller-Doohm, Adorno, 438.&lt;/ref&gt; Adorno’s open indulgence in despair and simultaneous abhorrence of actually existing socialism are not simply idiosyncratic, personal reactions but are affects arising from a class position. “The representatives of the modern labor movement,” Lenin wrote in 1910, “find that they have plenty to protest against but nothing to despair about.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 16 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), 332.&lt;/ref&gt; In a description that anticipated Adorno’s petty-bourgeois gloom, the leader of the world’s first successful socialist revolution then proceeded to explain that “despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt; Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 16, 332.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Adorno also pursued this line of thinking, or rather feeling, in his criticisms of anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist student activism of the 1960s. He agreed with Habermas—who had himself been a member of the Hitler Youth and studied for four years under the “Nazi philosopher” (his description of Heidegger)—that this activism amounted to “Left fascism.” He defended West Germany as a functioning democracy rather than a “fascist” state, as some of the students argued.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;As I have argued in “Critical and Revolutionary Theory,” this assessment on the part of the students was fully justified.&lt;/ref&gt; At the same time, he quarreled with Marcuse over what he judged to be the latter’s misguided support for the students and the antiwar movement, explicitly claiming that the answer to the question ‘what is to be done?’, for good dialecticians, is nothing at all: “the goal of real praxis would be its own abolition.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Adorno, Critical Models, 267. Adorno’s faux dialectical praise of inaction as the best form of action is reiterated in his correspondence with Marcuse regarding the student protests: “We withstood in our time, you no less than me, a much more dreadful situation—that of the murder of the Jews, without proceeding to praxis; simply because it was blocked to us. […] To put it bluntly: I think that you are deluding yourself in being unable to go on without participating in the student stunts, because of what is occurring in Vietnam or Biafra. If that really is your reaction, then you should not only protest against the horror of napalm bombs but also against the unspeakable Chinese-style tortures that the Vietcong carry out permanently” (Adorno and Marcuse, “Correspondence on the German Student Movement,” New Left Review 233 (January-February 1999), 127). He makes similar statements elsewhere, such as in his 1969 text on “Resignation” where he celebrates the “utopian moment in thinking” over and against any form of action: “The uncompromisingly critical thinker, who neither signs over his consciousness nor lets himself be terrorized into action, is in truth the one who does not give in. […] Thinking is actually the force of resistance” (Adorno, Critical Models, 293).&lt;/ref&gt; He thereby inverted, through dialectical sophistry, one of the central tenets of Marxism, notably the primacy of practice. It is in this context of turning Marx on his head that he repeated, once again, the ideological mantra of the capitalist world: “fascism and communism are the same.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Adorno, Critical Models, 268.&lt;/ref&gt; Even though he referred to this slogan as a “petit bourgeois truism,” apparently acknowledging its ideological status, he unabashedly embraced it.&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Adorno, Critical Models, 268.&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> Idealism is the hallmark of Adorno and Horkheimer’s reflections on actually existing socialism and, more generally, progressive social movements. Rather than studying the projects that they denigrate with any of the rigor and earnestness with which they sometimes approach other topics, they rely on stock representations and anti-communist canards devoid of concrete analysis (although they occasionally reference a few of the anti-communist publications, like those by the rabid cold warrior Arthur Koestler, that were amply funded and supported by imperialist states and their intelligence services).&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Koestler was a major figure in the networks of the CIA’s Congress for Cultural Freedom and MI6’s Information Research Department.&lt;/ref&gt; This is particularly true in the case of their vilification of socialist state building projects. Their writings on the topic are not only remarkably devoid of references to any rigorous scholarship on the matter, but they proceed as if such serious engagement was not even necessary. These texts genuflect to the dominant ideology, stalwartly insisting on the anti-Stalinist bona fides of their authors, without being concerned with any of the details, nuances or complexities.<br /> <br /> One cannot help but wonder, then, if the students were not correct when, in the late 1960s, they circulated leaflets asserting that these Frankfurt scholars were “left idiots of the authoritarian state” who were “critical in theory, conformist in practice.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Quoted in Esther Leslie, “Introduction to Adorno/Marcuse Correspondence on the German Student Movement,” New Left Review 233 (January-February 1999), 119 and Kraushaar, Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung, Vol. 1, 374.&lt;/ref&gt; Hans-Jürgen Krahl, one of Theodor Adorno’s doctoral students, went so far as to publicly besmirch his mentor and the other Frankfurt professors as “Scheißkritische Theoretiker [shit-critical theorists].”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt; Kraushaar, Frankfurter Schule und Studentbewegung, Vol. 1, 398. Krahl was the only activist not released from jail the same night, and Adorno decided to press charges against him, like he had in 1964 against the student group Subversive Aktion, in spite of pressure to drop the charges.&lt;/ref&gt; He voiced this lapidary critique of these stalwart defenders of ABS Theory when he was being arrested, at the behest of Adorno, for a university occupation related to his involvement in the Socialist German Students’ League. The fact that the author of Negative Dialectics called the police to have his own students arrested is a standard reference point amongst his political critics. As we have seen, however, it is only the very tip of the iceberg. Far from being a bizarre anomaly, it is consistent with his politics, his social function within the intellectual apparatus, his class standing, and his overall orientation within global class struggle.<br /> ==The Tuis of Western “Marxism”==<br /> Brecht proposed the neologism “Tuis” to refer to intellectuals (Intellektuellen) who, as subjects of a commodified culture, get everything backwards (hence Tellekt-uellen-in). He had shared his ideas for a Tui-Novel with Benjamin in the 1930s, and he later wrote a play that emerged out of his earlier notes, entitled Turandot or The Whitewashers’ Congress. Having returned to the German Democratic Republic after WWII to contribute to the socialist state building project, unlike the Frankfurt scholars who settled in West Germany with funding from the capitalist ruling class, Turandot was in part written as a satirical critique of these Western “Marxists.”<br /> <br /> In the play, the Tuis are presented as professional whitewashers who receive a handsome salary for making things appear the opposite of what they are. “The whole country is governed by injustice,” Sen states in Turandot, before providing a concise summary of ABS Theory: “and in the Tui Academy all you get to learn is why it has to be that way.”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Bertolt Brecht, Collected Plays: Six, eds. John Willett and Ralph Manheim (London: Random House, 1998), 189.&lt;/ref&gt; Tui training, like the work of the Institute for Social Research, teaches us that there is no alternative to the dominant order, and it thereby forecloses the possibility of system change. In one of the most striking scenes, the Tuis are shown preparing for the whitewashers’ congress. Nu Shan, one of the teachers in the Academy, operates a pulley system that can raise or lower a basket of bread in front of the speaker’s face. In training a young man named Shi Me to become a Tui, he tells him to speak on the topic “Why Kai Ho’s position is false” (Kai Ho is a revolutionary resembling Mao Zedong). Nu Shan explains that he will raise the bread basket above his head when Shi Me says something wrong and lower it in front of his face when it’s correct. After much raising and lowering in relation to Shi Me’s ability to conform to the dominant ideology, his arguments crescendo to the point of shrill anti-communist slander devoid of rational argumentation: “Kai Ho isn’t a philosopher at all, but just a loudmouth – the basket sinks – a troublemaker, a power-hungry good-for-nothing, an irresponsible gambler, a muckraker, a rapist, an unbeliever, a bandit and a criminal. The basket is hovering just in front of the speaker’s mouth. A tyrant!”&lt;ref group=&quot;note&quot;&gt;Brecht, Collected Plays: Six, 145.&lt;/ref&gt; This scene presents, in microcosm, the relationship between professional intellectuals and their financial backers within class societies: the former earn their bread as academic free agents by providing the best possible ideology for the latter. It is a matter of food for thought.<br /> <br /> What the Frankfurt School had to offer the bread givers of “the shackling society” was nowise insignificant. Mobilizing pseudo-dialectical sophistry, they defended in highfalutin academic language the State Department line that communism is indistinguishable from fascism, even though 27 million Soviets had given their lives to defeat the Nazi war machine in WWII (to mention but one of the most blatant forms of opposition between communism and fascism, although there are of course many others since they are mortal enemies). Moreover, by displacing class struggle in favor of an idealist critical theory severed from practical political engagements, they shifted the very foundations of analysis away from historical materialism toward a generalized theoretical critique of domination, power, and identity thinking.<br /> <br /> Adorno and Horkheimer thus ultimately played the role of radical recuperators. Cultivating an appearance of radicality, they recuperated the very activity of critique within a pro-Western, anti-communist ideology. Like other members of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia in Europe and the United States, which formed the basis of Western Marxism, they publicly expressed their social-chauvinistic disgust with what they described as the savage barbarians in the East, who dared to take up the weapon of Marxist theory à la Lenin and use it to act on the principle that they could rule themselves. From the relative comforts of their capitalist-funded professorial citadel in the West, they defended the superiority of the Euro-American world that promoted them against what they referred to as the levelling project of the bolshevized barbarians in the uncivilized periphery.<br /> <br /> Furthermore, their generalized critique of domination is part of a larger embrace of an anti-party and anti-state ideology, which ultimately leaves the Left bereft of the tools of disciplined organization necessary to wage successful struggles against the well-funded political, military and cultural apparatus of the capitalist ruling class. This is perfectly in line with their overall politics of defeat, which Adorno explicitly embraced through his anti-Marxist defense of inaction as the highest form of praxis. The leaders of the Tui Academy in Frankfurt, amply funded and supported by the capitalist ruling class and imperialist states, including the U.S. national security state, were thus ultimately global spokesmen for an anti-communist politics of capitalist accommodation. Wringing their hands at the infelicities of consumer society, which they sometimes described in remarkable detail, they nonetheless refused to do anything practical about them because of the bedrock assumption that the socialist cure to such misfortunes is much worse than the disease itself.<br /> <br /> * This article draws on and further develops a detailed analysis whose extensive references further support the claims advanced here: Gabriel Rockhill, “Critical and Revolutionary Theory” in Domination and Emancipation: Remaking Critique, Ed. Daniel Benson (London: Roman &amp; Littlefield International, 2021). I am deeply grateful to the friends and colleagues who provided crucial feedback on earlier drafts of this article, including those who expressed reservations about some of the arguments (for which I accept full responsibility): Larry Busk, Helmut-Harry Loewen, Jennifer Ponce de León, Salvador Rangel, and Yves Winter.<br /> ==Notes:==<br /> &lt;references group=&quot;note&quot;/&gt;<br /> [[Category:Library]]<br /> [[Category:Library works by Gabriel Rockhill]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about revisionism]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:ABC_of_Dialectical_and_Historical_Materialism&diff=75984 2024-09-30T12:46:53Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>This book presents in a popular form the fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist philosophy—dialectical and historical materialism. It is intended for the people who are studying philosophy and are trying to understand the problems of our day<br /> <br /> {{Library work|title=ABC of Dialectical and Historical Materialism|author=B. M. Boguslavsky, V. A. Karpushin, A. I. Rakitov, V. Y. Chertikhin, G. I. Bzrin|publisher=Progress Publishers|published_date=1978|published_location=Moscow|type=Book|source=http://library.lol/main/1ea2df27ace048696dc734405f7d977f}}<br /> <br /> == Foreword ==<br /> Many people are trying their best to grasp the meaning of the rapid changes occurring before their eyes and to understand how they are affecting their own lives. They are trying to develop their own view of the world and thus determine their place in it. But it is not simple to form a view of the world without knowledge of existing doctrines and theories. There are diverse theories explaining, each in its own way, the events occurring in the world. And it is vital, though not at all easy, to choose among them the one that is nearest to the truth and that is borne out by life, by the development of science and the real course of history.<br /> <br /> The authors will consider their task rewarded if this book helps the reader to comprehend the phenomena and events in nature and society and to form a scientific, Marxist world outlook.&lt;span id=&quot;index_split_000.xhtml#calibre_toc_2&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> == Dialectical Materialism ==<br /> <br /> === &lt;span class=&quot;s-t&quot;&gt;1. The Fundamental Question of Philosophy&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. The Gist of the Question ====<br /> In March 1881, a man jailed for his active Opposition to the tsarist autocracy sat over a sheet of paper in a solitary confinement cell in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, now Leningrad. The death sentence had already been passed on N. I. Kibalchich, and the day of his execution was not far off. But it was not of his doom he was thinking: his mind was on a fascinating scientific problem to which he had only just, so shortly before his early death, found a solution. There, on the sheet of paper, was the scheme of a jet-propelled aircraft, the first in the history of science.<br /> <br /> Twenty-two years afterwards, in 1903, the eminent Russian scientist K. E. Tsiolkovsky, who had elaborated in detail the design of the jet-propulsion engine, laid the foundations of jet-propulsion theory and demonstrated that jet-propulsion engines could be used for interplanetary flights. Thirty years later, flying vehicles with jet engines were constructed and tested. Soon jet planes appeared, and in 1957, the first artificial earth satellite was launched in the USSR. Following a series of unmanned space flights, the first manned spaceship with the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on board was successfully launched.<br /> <br /> That started a new age. Jet-propelled spaceships set off for the Moon, Venus and Mars.  It could never have happened had the human mind not conceived the principle of jet propulsion and developed relevant scientific theory, and had it not posed to men the task of penetrating space. All man-made cosmic bodies are the products of scientific thought. And as thought need not necessarily be unique to earth-dwellers and there may be other beings in the universe who may well be our intellectual superiors, it is natural to suppose that other cosmic bodies whose origin is so far not clear to us may also be products of thought. Then why not suppose that the Earth with everything there is on it is also a product of thought?<br /> <br /> One could indeed make such a supposition but would it tally with the evidence of science and experience?<br /> <br /> Light travels 9, 440, 000, 000 kilometres a year. This distance is called a light-year. The Milky Way&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;a giant cluster of stars and other bodies, of which the solar system is a part—has a diameter of almost 100, 000 light-years.  It moves among other clusters of stars (galaxies) which are vastly removed from it. The part of the universe which scientists can observe with the aid of powerful optical and radio devices has a diameter of 26, 000, 000, 000 light-years. This vast area is puny, compared with all other areas of the universe as yet out of the range of the available means of observation.  And the Earth, with its continents and oceans, plants, animals and human beings, is an infinitesimal speck in the vast universe.<br /> <br /> According to scientific evidence, life on Earth has existed but a short time compared with the Earth’s existence, while the living organisms make up but an insignificant part of the sum total of bodies we call the Earth. As for the human race, it is relatively young, having appeared just a little over a million years ago.  Space flights and scientific research have conclusively established that between the Earth and its natural satellite, the Moon, no living organisms exist, let alone rational beings.<br /> <br /> Hence, although the universe evidently contains an infinite multitude of life forms, only a very small part of them possess the faculty of thought. Modern science confirms Engels’ observation that “the time of organic life and still more that of the life of beings conscious of nature and of themselves, is just as narrowly restricted as the space in which life and Self-consciousness come into operation….”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-1|1]]&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Modern science suggests that thought is merely one of the numerous products of the universe. The supposition that the universe, which is infinite in space and time, is the product of thought is hardly tenable. Supporters of this view may argue that our scientific knowledge is anything but complete, there being still much that we do not know. That is true enough. Yet, ignorance &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;is&lt;/span&gt; no argument.<br /> <br /> We have thus come to a point which merits close consideration. To form an idea of a science, one should, first of all, be informed of the basic problems it is concerned with. In chemistry, for instance, the question of how atoms join and separate and how, as a result, substances undergo changes of composition, is basic to all other questions. Knowing this, we can already form a basic idea of the science of chemistry. It is so with all other sciences. To know the fundamental question a science &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;i&lt;/span&gt;s concerned with, is to know what it is about.  Hence, in order to form an idea of what philosophy is, we must find out what its &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;fundamental question&lt;/span&gt; is.<br /> <br /> All bodies and the mechanical, physical, chemical and physiological processes they undergo are usually described as material phenomena, or &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;matter&lt;/span&gt;. Pride, shame, joy, and all other feelings supplied by our five senses, as well as thoughts teeming in the mind are usually described as ideal, or spiritual phenomena or &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;consciousness&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> It has long been observed that man’s capacity to distinguish colours, sounds and smells, as well as his feelings and his mind improve with age, as his body develops and as he learns to perform diverse jobs, handling different objects and associating with other people.  Some grave bodily diseases cause aberration or even loss of consciousness while with the destruction of the body sensations, thoughts cease altogether. These facts show that spiritual phenomena are based on material phenomena.<br /> <br /> Other facts have also been noted. When we say that a boy has smashed a window without meaning to, the idea is that he did not intend to smash it. This does not, however, mean that the hand threw the stone of its own accord, irrespective of the boy’s intention. Clearly, his action was prompted by some emotion or idea.  He simply did not aim the stone well and it hit the wrong object.<br /> <br /> Man is not a machine but a creature that thinks and feels. All his actions—reasonable or otherwise—are prompted by his emotions or ideas. Before making a plough and tilling and sowing the field he &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;thinks over&lt;/span&gt; how it should all be done.<br /> <br /> The desire for freedom and anger at social injustice long ago caused slaves to rise up and fight their oppressors. Love of their country moved men to fight invaders to the death. The immediate source from which such actions sprang were, again, men’s ideas and emotions.<br /> <br /> Reflecting on these facts, one was naturally led to conclude that material phenomena were the products of spiritual phenomena which were, therefore, decisive to human activity.<br /> <br /> This view spread particularly when society became divided into the antagonistic classes of toilers, who worked hard and lived in poverty, and masters who did no work and appropriated the wealth produced by others. Education, science and art became the exclusive privilege of a tiny minority—the ruling classes. Their will became law, regulating the behaviour of everyone. That made it seem as if consciousness were primary in relation to the material life of society. Hence the conclusion was made that even outside society, indeed in the whole world, spiritual phenomena dominated material ones.<br /> <br /> Which then derives from which? The material from the spiritual, or vice versa? Does matter originate from consciousness or consciousness from matter? Which is primary, spirit or nature? Philosophers began to argue about it back in antiquity. This problem is the key to all other philosophical problems. The philosophers divided into &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;two camps&lt;/span&gt;: those who regarded nature, the material world, as the product of consciousness, of spirit, which they held to be independent of the material world, of nature, formed the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;idealist camp&lt;/span&gt;; those who regarded consciousness, spirit, as the product of the material world, of nature, formed the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;materialist camp&lt;/span&gt;. Engels said that the question of the relation of consciousness to the material world was the great fundamental question of philosophy as a whole, observing that it also involved the question of whether consciousness was capable of truthfully reflecting the world. The views of various philosophers will be discussed here later. For the time being, let us look at the main question, the subject of long-standing dispute among philosophers.<br /> <br /> ==== §2. Faith or Knowledge? ====<br /> What is primary&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;spirit or nature? If you ask this question of a believer, you may be sure of the answer. For God, whom he believes to be the creator and ruler of the world, is also, to him, the spiritual source of all existence.  True, the believers are unable to prove it be cause, taking religious doctrines on trust as they do, they put faith above knowledge.<br /> <br /> In the middle ages, when the church had political as well as spiritual power, the clergy persecuted scientists, throwing them into dungeons, torturing them, and burning them at the stake. Today, clergymen no longer deny the importance of science. Moreover, they claim that science is quite compatible with faith, although, unlike the immutable, exact and infinite truth of religious faith (as they describe it) scientific knowledge is unstable, inexact and limited. ‘Science has its limits,&amp;quot; wrote the Metropolitan Nicholas. “It has to do merely with what one can see, touch and hear and thereby infer. But there is another realm ...  the realm of faith. Besides the visible world, there is one which is invisible. Science cannot reach it, but faith can.”<br /> <br /> Of course there is much in microcosm and space that we cannot see. Yet, it was science and not religion, that penetrated into the “‘invisible world” with microscopes, telescopes and other instruments and helped obtain exact knowledge of what was going on there. And the theologists’ “invisible world” is still a mystery, like the invisible clothes of the naked king Hans Christian Andersen wrote about in one of his tales. Just as in the tale, faith in the ‘invisible’ is only for those who would not trust their eyes, their ears and their minds.<br /> <br /> Is it true that knowledge and faith are compatible? What is the difference between them?<br /> <br /> In &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;L’ile des pingouins&lt;/span&gt; by Anatole France we find the story of a man with a charge brought against him in the absence of any evidence.<br /> <br /> “That Pyrot had stolen the eighty thousand haycocks certainly no one hesitated to believe.  They never doubted it as their ignorance in the matter gave them no reason to doubt, and doubt is impossible without a reason, because one cannot doubt a thing for no reason the way one can believe a thing for no reason.”<br /> <br /> In Catholic educational institutions the fol lowing rule is effective to this day: ‘‘We must believe that what looks white to us is black if the hierarchic church should choose to describe it so,... persuading ourselves that all this is just, and abandoning with unquestioning obedience any judgements to the contrary.”<br /> <br /> Jean Bodin, an opponent of medieval obscurantism, wrote in the 16th century that a student of mathematics who believed a theorem suggested by the teacher, without understanding it, could be described as having faith without having knowledge. However, once he had understood the demonstration of the theorem and seen its truth for himself, thus achieving knowledge, his faith was lost.<br /> <br /> A scientific assumption may prove to be inexact or even erroneous. But it is still knowledge, not faith, because the assumption was based on evidence, even though this was insufficient. That does not mean we should reject any judgement the reasons for which we do not know. Having thought it over and checked it thoroughly, we must establish whether it may be considered true or untrue. Refusing to control one’s thoughts, blindly following a sudden hunch, common prejudices, or even books is a false path in knowledge. To quote an example, communism, Lenin pointed out, is not blind faith in conclusions picked up from books, but views at which one must arrive after weighing and thinking over thoroughly what one has read comparing the conclusions with the proofs and satisfying oneself that the conclusions have been proved beyond any possible doubt. Lenin wrote: ‘““Communism will become an empty word, a mere signboard, and a Communist a mere boaster, if all the knowledge he has acquired is not digested in his mind,” if he accepted pedantically “the cut-and-dried conclusions he had acquired, without putting in a great deal of serious and hard work and without understanding facts he should examine critically...”.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-2|2]]&lt;/sup&gt; The building of socialism, Lenin wrote, required ‘‘the really enlightened elements for whom we can vouch that they will not take the word for the deed….”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-3|3]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Let us assume that we put the fundamental question of philosophy to one who has never heard of it before, and let us assume that he will say at once: “Certainly, matter is primary and consciousness is secondary”. The important thing then is to see how that person will prove his assertion and disprove the opposite idea. If he fails, we shall have to admit that it is faith, and not knowledge, on his part. It may even seem to him that no arguments can generally be adduced in favour of idealism, so that there really is nothing to disprove, while the truth of materialism is so obvious that it needs no proof. Actually, however, every philosophical doctrine gives definite reasons for its conclusions. If one is seeking knowledge rather than faith, one needs to sort out the conclusions and arguments furnished by different philosophical trends.<br /> <br /> ==== §3. Materialism vs. Subjective Idealism ====<br /> Here is the substance of one such doctrine: We have merely three types of knowledge: (1) that which we hear, see, feel by touch, etc., i.e., our sensations; (2) that which we conceive by reason of memory or imagination, &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;i&lt;/span&gt;.e., our conceptions; (3) we also know ourselves, having an awareness of “self”, of “spirit” which is capable of sensing, remembering, feeling and dreaming. We have a notion of objects solely because we see or smell or feel them, i.e., because we perceive them physically. Without this ability, we would know nothing about the external world. When we see something round, yellow-red on one side and dark-red on the other, feel a smooth rounded surface and perceive a specific smell, we know it is an apple.  The sensations are all we know about this particular object. Thus an apple is nothing but a combination of sensations. Likewise, all objects we observe in the room, street, field or woods, i.e., all external or material things, are combinations of visual, tactile and other sensations.  &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;All&lt;/span&gt; we know about such things are our impressions of them. These impressions exist only in the mind. Men, however, regard a visual or other sensation as a likeness or image of an external thing. What they proceed from is that unless we acknowledge the existence of sensible things outside us, it is impossible to explain how sensations arise. Yet, when we dream we feel sensations, although the things and events we are dreaming of exist only in the mind. Therefore, to explain sensations it is not at all necessary to assume that things have an objective existence. As we need not assume this to explain dreams, so we need not assume it to explain what we feel in our waking hours.<br /> <br /> This doctrine which holds that everything commonly regarded as material exists solely in the mind of the subject (man) is called &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;subjective idealism&lt;/span&gt;, as distinct from &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;objective idealism&lt;/span&gt; which holds that the primary source of being is not man’s consciousness but consciousness without man, some objective spirit independent of human consciousness. We have just stated the reasoning of the subjective idealist George Berkeley (1685-1753), who wrote: “...all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind....”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-4|4]]&lt;/sup&gt; His teaching boils down to two points: (1) outside consciousness there is nothing, and (2) to exist is to be perceived; what nobody perceives does not exist. This doctrine conflicts with the materialist proposition that (1) apart from and independent of the mind there are objects which produce sensory reactions in us, and that (2) sensible objects exist even when they are not perceived by the senses.<br /> <br /> But let us see what Berkeley, the most significant exponent of subjective idealism, has to say further. Asserting that notions emerge and are dropped solely at man’s will, Berkeley wrote: ‘‘But ... the ideas actually perceived by sense have not a like dependence on my will.  When in broad daylight I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I shall see no, or to determine what particular objects Shall present themselves to my view: and so likewise as to the hearing and other senses, the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-5|5]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> In this Berkeley was perfectly correct. But from his words it follows that outside the mind there exist things which, acting on our eyes, ears, etc., cause sensations. In other words, sensations (which are phenomena of consciousness) entirely depend on the objects which cause them and which exist independently of the mind, i.e., on &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;material&lt;/span&gt; objects. That it is indeed so has been established by natural science. Lenin wrote: “...outside us, independently of us and of our minds, there exists a movement of matter, let us say of ether waves... which, acting upon the retina, produce in man the sensation of a particular colour.  This is precisely how natural science regards it.... This is materialism: matter acting upon our sense-organs produces sensation.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-6|6]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Thus scientific evidence and the facts which Berkeley himself has to acknowledge prove &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;the truth of materialism&lt;/span&gt;. But even after recognising the independent existence of the source of sensations Berkeley remains an opponent of materialism. Defending religion, he addresses the materialists thus: ‘’...I assert as well as you that, since we are affected from without, we must allow powers to be without, in a being distinct from ourselves.... But then we differ as to the kind of this powerful being. I will have it to be spirit, you Matter...&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-7|7]]&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Thus to prop up faith in the primacy of spirit, Berkeley has to forego both logic and science and have recourse to god. Yet, while he asserts that god exists, he gives no proof of his existence&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;god is absent from the list of objects of knowledge with which Berkeley opens his discourse. After promising to present philosophical knowledge the truth of which has been demonstrated, he presents us with a proposition to be taken on trust.<br /> <br /> Yet, as he maintains that god is an independent source of sensations, Berkeley acknowledges by the same token that something which exists outside and independently of mind produces sensation; that the object producing the sensations exists whether or not it is perceived.  Thus, this philosopher does, in fact, unwittingly disprove subjective idealism.<br /> <br /> What then, according to Berkeley himself, made him accept that “without a mind” there is something whose existence does not depend on us, and this something produces sensations in us? It was, above all, the indisputable fact that sensations arise and disappear &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;independently&lt;/span&gt; of “the mind”, unlike notions which we can usually evoke in the mind just when we like.  This difference between sensations and notions is a fact which conflicts with subjective idealism. To be consistent, a subjective idealist would have to deny that sensation results from causes which are outside, and are independent of, the mind. That is just what many contemporary subjective idealists do. Rudolf Carnap, for instance, wrote that the line between sensations and notions is “rather arbitrary.”<br /> <br /> This assertion is contrary to fact. For example, I can &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;imagine&lt;/span&gt; myself, if I like, basking in the sun on the beach. But I cannot~however much I may like to-make my body &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;feel&lt;/span&gt; warm with the sun or make my eyes &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;see&lt;/span&gt; the surf.  Transformation of that which we can conceive into that which we can see and feel does not depend on arbitrary choice. There is only one conclusion to be made from this, namely, that subjective idealism, which denies that the sensations we experience have a material source existing outside the mind, conflicts with the facts conclusively established both by science and experience.<br /> <br /> No one in his right mind would deny that illusion and reality are two different things.  How to tell dreams from reality, fact from fancy? The common way is to regard whatever exists solely in the mind as illusion; and whatever exists outside the mind (irrespective of whether or not it is perceived), as reality or fact. Berkeley rejects this method of telling between seeming and being and claims that the objects and events we observe when awake exist merely in the mind in just the same way as those we dream about. No one would subscribe to the view that fact and fancy are the same thing. So Berkeley declares that his philosophy, too, has a method of distinguishing illusion from reality~by comparing notes with other people. The sensation most of them regard as fact is fact, and the one regarded otherwise is illusion. Nevertheless Berkeley himself says that the majority may be in error and often are. Most people denied for thousands of years that the Earth is round and believed that the Sun moved round the Earth.<br /> <br /> Surely opinion polls would not do as a method of differentiating between seeming and being. Still, neither Berkeley nor his successors found any other. Some of them even thought it quite unnecessary to make such surveys because, they said, there was practically no difference between illusion and reality. The subjective idealist Ernst Mach (1838-1916) cited the following: a pencil partly submerged under water seems broken, and this is called an illusion. But Mach was of a different opinion.  He wrote: “It makes practical, but not scientific, sense to speak of &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;illusion&lt;/span&gt; in such instances.  Nor does the oft-repeated question whether the world is real or whether we have merely dreamed it up, make any sense from the scientific point of view. Besides, the weirdest dream is a fact as good as any other.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-8|8]]&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> What Mach means by a “‘scientific point of view” is utterly unacceptable to science because the object of science is to penetrate through what &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;seems&lt;/span&gt; to what &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;actually&lt;/span&gt; is. It is easy to imagine what will happen to a scientist (or anyone for that matter) who will take guidance from Mach’s doctrine, for he will fall into every pit scattered along the path of the rainbow-chaser and wishful thinker.<br /> <br /> Our sensations are all we know about an object, says Berkeley, and consequently “‘... the object and the sensation are the same thing”.  Thus the basic premise of Berkeley's subjective idealism rests on the assertion that we know nothing at all about things save through our sensations of them. Yet we know that a commodity has its value, which is, however, impossible to perceive by the senses. We know that light travels at a speed of 300,000 kilometres a second, which man can neither see nor even imagine. A radio transmitter emits waves whose properties have been thoroughly studied even though they cannot be perceived by the senses. And so &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;ad infinitum&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> Berkeley's doctrine leaves out a most important part of human knowledge&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;concepts&lt;/span&gt; or abstract ideas. Berkeley denied their existence, reducing knowledge entirely to sensations and notions. Such a theory, which rests on the denial of concepts, is incompatible with genuine science.<br /> <br /> Now let us presume that objects are merely combinations of sensations. Then the Earth, with everything and everybody on it, is a combination of sensations. It follows then that each of us is the only person in the world while all others are mere sensations. That is &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;solipsism&lt;/span&gt;.  Berkeley and most of his successors concede that other people also exist, i.e., they reject solipsism. Bertrand Russell, the modern idealist philosopher, remarked: “As against solipsism it is to be said, in the first place, that it is psychologically impossible to believe, and is rejected in fact even by those who mean to accept it. I once received a letter from an eminent logician, Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin, saying that she was a solipsist, and was surprised that there were no others. Coming from a logician, this surprise surprised me.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-9|9]]&lt;/sup&gt; And no wonder.  It is hardly logical for one who would be the sole being in the world to be surprised that nobody else should claim the distinction. Yet, another subjective idealist, Carnap, writes that the very question as to whether other people exist is impermissible in philosophy. Nor is it fortuitous, for subjective idealism immediately leads to solipsism. After all, there are but two possible answers. One may either acknowledge the truth of subjective idealism and agree that every one of us is the only person in existence; or one may acknowledge, with the materialists, that there are other people too and subjective idealism has not a leg to stand on. There is no third answer. Human experience and science alike prove that materialism is correct and knock the bottom out of subjective idealism.<br /> <br /> ==== §4. Materialism vs. Objective Idealism ====<br /> We find a different form of idealism in the teachings of its classical exponents, such as Plato (428/427-347 B. C.) in ancient Greece, and Hegel (1770-1831) in Germany. These philosophers recognise that nature exists independently of mind. According to their reasoning, we perceive with our senses individual objects of which the world consists, but sensory experience yields only superficial knowledge such as even little children can have. Sensory experience does not give us ultimate knowledge, i.e., knowledge of the essence of things. Man can have sensory experience of colour, smell or taste. Recollection of these perceptions will bring specific objects to his mind. Yet, that which is common to them and makes them what they are, i.e., their essence, can neither be perceived by the senses nor imagined.<br /> <br /> Even in Plato’s time science was not confined to sense-data. After all, sensory experience and notions tell us merely what isolated, transient, accidental objects look like. Science, however, seeks to understand their essence. This requires that one should be aware of the common, stable and lasting qualities which are at the basis of and manifest themselves in isolated, contingent facts and things. Briefly, to conceive what the things the world consists of really are, one must form a &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;concept&lt;/span&gt; of them.<br /> <br /> The object of sense-perception or representation is a specific individual thing, e.g., the isosceles triangle drawn in my notebook. The object of thought, on the other hand, is the essence (the essential, principal properties) of all triangles which have ever existed or will ever exist, fixed in the concept of “triangle.” It does not make the slightest difference to the nature of a triangle what material it is made from, what size or colour it is, and so on. The individual features differentiating the innumerable triangles there are in existence are equally of no significance. Yet every triangle must possess all the features of the triangle as such, constituting its essence which is always the same, whatever happens to its innumerable individual expressions.<br /> <br /> Thus, all material things as perceived by the senses are external manifestations of the essence of the given things while their essence is the root, the inner source of phenomena&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;that to which they owe their existence. Sensible material objects exist objectively, outside consciousness. Yet that is but the external aspect of reality. The basis of the material phenomena comprising the world is the eternal essences, which can neither be created nor destroyed, of individual external phenomena.<br /> <br /> What are these essences in Hegel’s view? The essence of a triangle does not depend on its material, size or colour. The essence of all triangles is what is common to all of them, viz., that every triangle is a closed straight-lined figure forming three angles. It is impossible to see or even imagine the essence of a triangle, since one can imagine only things which can be perceived by senses. The triangle I can imagine may be drawn in chalk on a blackboard or in pencil on white paper, but nobody can imagine a ‘“‘triangle in general’. It is not a material object, not even a visual representation, but an abstract idea, i.e., a concept. Essence (heat as such, plant as such, speed as such) becomes comprehensible through thought alone. Does this not suggest that at the basis of all reality there is thought which man can mentally perceive but which exists, without ever appearing or disappearing, independently of whether or not it has been grasped?<br /> <br /> From this Hegel drew the conclusion that the true basis of the world, which exists outside consciousness and which we investigate, is concepts or ideas, while all material objects and facts are products and manifestations of ideas.  Whose ideas? Since they embrace the whole world they must clearly be the ideas of some ‘spirit’ which Hegel calls “world spirit&amp;quot; or the “absolute idea’. According to Hegel, the ‘’absolute idea&amp;quot; and the world are identical. Nature is the “‘other-being of the absolute idea”, and ‘“‘we should ... speak of nature as a system of unconscious thought, as fossilised intelligence’ and of man as the ‘conscious idea” (unlike animals, let alone plants and minerals).&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-10|10]]&lt;/sup&gt;   Like every material object, man is a manifestation of the infinite spirit which is at the basis of the world, but a manifestation possessed of consciousness, of the “finite spirit&amp;quot;, and able to think and grasp the essence of things, or concepts, and conceive the world as the thought process of the world spirit. Consequently, the “world spirit’ knows itself as a spirit, and the “world ideal” thinks of itself through man. Hegel wrote of his philosophy that it was a “‘&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;representation of God in his eternal being prior to the creation of nature and a finite mind&lt;/span&gt;”.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-11|11]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> That is the gist of objective idealism which holds that the world is based on the impersonal spirit, the ‘“absolute idea’ rather than on man’s individual consciousness.<br /> <br /> The starting-point of objective idealism is that we know the material world outside the mind through thought, by forming concepts of the essence of things. Therefore thought is a means of knowing the essence of things, and this knowledge is the concept of their essence.  This is an obvious deduction. The objective idealists, however, say: If we know the essence of things by thinking and forming concepts, then the world outside the mind must consist of concepts, not of objects. But is that logical?  If our &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;knowledge&lt;/span&gt; of the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;essence of things&lt;/span&gt; is a concept, it does not follow at all that the essence of things is a concept. Concepts exist in the mind while both the essence of things and the things themselves exist independently of it.  Consequently, unlike concepts, which are ideal, the essence of things, as well as the things themselves, are material. The essence of the triangle existed when men knew nothing of it, and even when men were not there at all.  As for the concept of the triangle, it emerged when men had attained a high enough standard of knowledge. It is plain that the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;material&lt;/span&gt; essence of things is &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;primary&lt;/span&gt; while the idea or the concept of it is &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;secondary&lt;/span&gt;. Consequently, logic attests the truth of materialism and the unsoundness of objective idealism.<br /> <br /> The objective idealists argue that the real world comprises isolated objects, each having a beginning and an end, while the ideal world comprises abstract concepts which have neither beginning nor end, i.e., are eternal. But while each thing is indeed finite, we cannot say this of the real world as a whole. Every material object springs from other objects (otherwise it would have to spring from nothing), It cannot disappear altogether—as it disappears itself, it gives rise to other material things. Consequently, the real world has neither a beginning nor an end, it is eternal. Certainly the world of concepts shares the fate of mankind which has evolved the concepts and is using them. Yet mankind came into being at a definite point of time, nor did Hegel himself allow it any eternal existence. We know when the concepts “patrician”, ‘fief’, ‘factory’, “electron”, etc., emerged and when the concepts “‘epicycle”, ‘phlogiston&amp;quot;, etc., were dropped. Concepts are mutable and temporal. They emerge at particular stages in the progress of human knowledge and are refined and amplified. Nature, which is infinite, is primary, and its conscious reflection—the world of concepts, which are finite—is secondary.<br /> <br /> In objective idealism, the consciousness of the “infinite world spirit’, which existed prior to the creation of nature and of any ‘‘finite mind”, i.e., man, is considered to be at the basis of the world. But, first, although it is not at all unusual to observe a person without consciousness (e.g., in a dead faint, under ether, and so on), nobody has ever met consciousness without a person. Second, even granting the impossible and conceding that consciousness can exist separately from its material source, can it be allowed that nature is the product of this consciousness? The realisation of an idea indispensably requires the presence of certain material phenomena (present even before its realisation). Basically, it proceeds by way of transforming material phenomena into other such phenomena emerging in the process. Material phenomena are never a product of nothing. These are facts proved by science and experience. No objective idealist has ever been able to disprove them or produce a single piece of evidence to show that nature has been created out of nothing by a bodiless spirit. Only one who sets reason and science at naught can believe such things. ‘‘To help to bring philosophy nearer to the form of science’, to make it “&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;actual knowledge&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;that is what I have set before me,”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-12|12]]&lt;/sup&gt; Hegel wrote. In truth, however, Hegel, like Berkeley, turns his back on scientific knowledge and embraces religion.<br /> <br /> Just as there are subjective idealists who do not believe in god, so are there objective idealists who say god does not exist. But is it possible by deleting the word “god” from a philosophical doctrine to prevent idealism leading to religion? This is how Lenin answers the question: any form of idealism holds nature to be secondary, derived from intelligence. Yet, to produce nature, one must exist independently of it. ‘‘That means that something exists &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;outside&lt;/span&gt; nature, something which moreover &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;produces&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt; nature&lt;/span&gt;. In plain language this is called God.  The idealist philosophers have always sought to change this latter name, to make it more abstract, more vague....&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-13|13]]&lt;/sup&gt; That, however, changes nothing. The idealist solution of the fundamental question of philosophy conflicts with scientific knowledge, with human reason and experience, and therefore &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;any&lt;/span&gt; idealist doctrine, even one whose supporters reject religion, objectively clears the way for religion.<br /> <br /> There is something else subjective and objective idealism have in common. All existence, Hegel taught, whether nature (‘fossilised&amp;quot;, unconscious thought) or human  consciousness (thought knowing itself as thought), is thought.  The essence of objective idealism is the identification of being with thinking. And the subjective idealists hold all existence—both nature and man’s consciousness—to be the subjective experiences of the human spirit. Hence both the objective and subjective idealists are unanimous in reducing all existence—that commonly termed material and that commonly termed ideal—to consciousness or in identifying matter with thought. As a result, any form of idealism contravenes such patent facts as, for instance, that my thinking of a ticket for a performance at the theatre and the ticket itself are two different things. Hard as I may try to persuade the usher that the thought of a ticket and an actual ticket are the same thing, he will never let me in just for thinking of the ticket.<br /> <br /> In everyday life people start from the conviction that all their perceptions, notions, ideas and concepts of things depend on the things themselves, not the other way round. After all, things exist even when we have no notion of them. Hence people in their daily lives naturally share the materialist point of view. They do not usually, however, stop to think why they should share it; they take it for granted. What, then, is the difference between this practical materialism and philosophical materialism? By comparing the arguments for and against philosophical materialism we have learned that the materialist answer to the fundamental question of philosophy is no rash prejudgement but an inference that necessarily follows from all that science has found out about nature, about men and their thinking—in a word, from human experience as a whole.<br /> <br /> We shall now examine two important scien&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;tific&lt;/span&gt; proofs of the materialist answer to the fun&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;d&lt;/span&gt;amental question of philosophy.<br /> <br /> ==== §5. Science of the Earth’s Past and the Fundamental Question of Philosophy ====<br /> No evidence of perception or thought ever being discovered in inanimate objects, science regards life as the first indispensable requisite of consciousness. When did life emerge on earth? Different sciences have helped find the answer to this question. Physicists, for instance, have found that by measuring the number of the first and last terms of the radioactive series of uranium, actino-uranium and thorium and the amount of helium present in minerals and rocks one can make a fairly accurate estimate of the age of geological deposits. Using this method geologists have established not only how old the earth’s crust is (almost 4,000 million years) but also the duration of individual geological epochs. By examining various layers of the crust, geologists and palaeontologists have found that no life, not even the simplest, existed before 3,000 million years ago.<br /> <br /> Microbiological research has shown that microorganisms which are the oldest living things on earth are incapable of sensation, let alone thought. They possess only irritability. The study of fossilised animals (palaeontology) shows that over hundreds of millions of years animals gradually became more complex until, in the Tertiary period (from sixty-nine million to one million years ago), mammals appeared, including the higher animals capable not only of sensation but also of perception and conception.  Nevertheless, consciousness, the ability to think, is found only among humans. And analysis of the products of radioactive decay found in the layers of the earth’s crust which contain the fossilised bones of the hominids, man’s immediate ancestors, attests that man’s separation from the animals took place from five to one million years ago.<br /> <br /> If the Earth with all that is on it is the product of sensations and ideas, then whose sensations and ideas were they during the thousand million years that there was yet no life on earth? The idealists fail to answer this question in the context of knowledge. “Natural science positively asserts,’ Lenin wrote, “that the Earth once existed in such a state that no man or any other creature existed or could have existed on it. Organic matter is a later phenomenon, the fruit of a long evolution. It follows that ... matter is primary and thought, consciousness, sensation are products of a very high development.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-14|14]]&lt;/sup&gt; Thus the only alternative is either the modern natural science and materialism that necessarily follows from it or idealism and the consequent denial of the elementary truths firmly established by science.<br /> <br /> ==== §6. Physiology of the Brain and the Fundamental Question of Philosophy ====<br /> Now let us turn to the physiology of the brain.  Investigation of higher nervous activity has proved that the cerebral cortex has specialised areas where sensations are produced when impulses resulting from the stimulation of sense organs (the eye, the ear, etc.) are transmitted to them by afferent nerves. If one of these areas (in the back of the head) is destroyed, the result is blindness, and if another area located at the temples is injured, the sense of hearing is lost. Destruction of certain areas in the cortex renders a person unable to perceive an object as a whole, although colours will still be perceived. There are areas (or, rather, points) in the cortex whose stimulation by electricity arouses vivid recollections, and so on. The brain Sharply reacts to oxygen deficiency. The slightest drop in the blood supply to the brain gravely affects its function, causing a sudden suspension of consciousness.<br /> <br /> Science has incontrovertibly proved that sensations and ideas depend on the normal functioning of an intricately organised material organ&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;the brain. In other words, consciousness depends on particularly organised matter (the brain) which does not depend on consciousness.  Natural science “inflexibly holds that thought is a function of the brain, that sensations, i.e., the images of the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;external world&lt;/span&gt;, exist &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;within us&lt;/span&gt;, produced by the action of things on our sense-organs&amp;quot;.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-15|15]]&lt;/sup&gt; Subjective idealists, on the other hand, hold that any body, the brain as well, is a combination of sensations, from which it follows that the brain is a product of consciousness rather than consciousness the product of the brain. Therefore the subjective idealist Avenarius, just as Mach, openly rejects the findings of natural science, asserting that ‘the brain is not an organ of thought’ and that notions and sensations are not functions of the brain. By this token, Lenin observes, he “denies the most elementary truth of physiology&amp;quot;.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-16|16]]&lt;/sup&gt; Here again we must choose between the facts firmly established by physiology, and thus materialism, and idealism which makes one deny what has been proved in the physiology of the higher nervous activity.<br /> <br /> ==== §7. What, After All, Is Philosophy? ====<br /> How does philosophical knowledge differ from other scientific knowledge? Before Marx, it was commonly believed that philosophy furnished exhaustive and final answers to literally every question concerning nature, men and thought. The German idealist philosopher Johann G. Fichte (1762-1814) wrote that philosophy “exhausts all human knowledge in its fundamentals.... Each investigation made resolves a question once and for all&amp;quot;.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-17|17]]&lt;/sup&gt; The philosophical systems of the German philosophers Leibniz, Kant and Hegel represent attempts to provide final solutions of all cardinal problems even where essential scientific evidence was not yet available.<br /> <br /> Marx and Engels held a different view of philosophy and its goals. They argued that the problems and laws dealt with by chemistry, botany or any particular science concern merely one sphere or aspect of reality. Yet, there are general problems concerning every sphere, and general laws operating in every sphere of nature, society and thought. These general problems and laws are dealt with neither by chemistry nor botany nor any particular science.  They are investigated by philosophy. As we discussed the fundamental question of philosophy we Saw that its correct solution was a deduction from knowledge obtained by all sciences together. The same goes for all other philosophical problems. Philosophy examines and compares the facts and laws discovered by different sciences, sums up this material, and draws the general conclusions that necessarily follow from it. Consequently philosophy is the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;science of the more general laws governing the development of nature, society and thought&lt;/span&gt;, which is the conclusion of all knowledge amassed by mankind.<br /> <br /> Every scientist, whatever his field, uses such general concepts as the material and the ideal, motion and rest, continuity and discontinuity, cause and effect, truth and error, and so on.  The meaning with which he invests them often seems to him self-evident. In fact, however, the meaning of these concepts intimately depends on a definite understanding of the general problems and laws philosophy is concerned with. In attaching certain meanings to the concepts, the scientist actually proceeds in his research from the solution of certain general problems although he may be unconscious of the fact. As they follow a certain conception of general laws, a certain solution of general problems, scientists, consciously or otherwise, take a definite philosophical stand. This does not prevent some of them being perfectly ignorant of the fact that their principles constitute a definite kind of philosophy, all too like Moliere’s M. Jourdain who had no idea he had been talking in prose all his life.<br /> <br /> The principles or method of research is what the scientist proceeds from, what guides him in his work. And that, as we have just seen, is actually the philosophy he shares. Consequently philosophy is both the conclusion of all sciences (and of the experience on which they rest) and the method of all science and experience.  <br /> <br /> Science does not stand still. Important discoveries often result In revolutionary upheavals in science, making it necessary to more narrowly specify and even revise earlier findings. Lenin wrote: “...natural science is progressing so fast and is undergoing such a profound revolutionary upheaval in all spheres that it cannot possibly dispense with philosophical deductions.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-18|18]]&lt;/sup&gt; Hence there can be no final or exhaustive system of knowledge. Philosophy must be developed and refined as knowledge accumulated by different sciences extends. Thus science advances philosophy. And as the philosophy evolved from a higher level of science iS more true and exact, so is the scientific and practical activity following it more successful and fruitful. The noted English physiologist J.B.S. Haldane wrote: “...a good deal of my recently published research has been inspired by my gradually increasing knowledge of dialectical materialism. ...I find dialectical materialism a valuable tool in research…”’.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-19|19]]&lt;/sup&gt; The materialist philosophy thus advances particular sciences. As for idealist philosophy, it does science harm. Commenting on the harmful influence of idealist views on the work of the physicist Ernst Mach, Albert Einstein wrote: “This is an interesting example of the fact that even scholars of audacious spirit and fine instinct can be obstructed in the interpretation of facts by philosophical prejudices.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-20|20]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Hence philosophy is knowledge such as is not found in any other science. Marxism rejects the view&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;which emerged in antiquity and is now advocated by the existentialists—that philosophy has allegedly nothing to do with knowledge of reality, and that by ignoring and despising scientific knowledge philosophy shows man that he should not depend on such knowledge but solely on his inner world in which he is sure to find the answers to his anxious questions about what he must aspire to, what eschew, and what he generally should and should not do.<br /> <br /> There exists another old view that, apart from knowledge of what occurs in nature, society and mind, nothing concerns philosophy.  “To look at things philosophically’ commonly means to judge things with supreme indifference, just looking on and never interfering in anything. If, on the other hand, a person actively pursues his ideals and fights what he believes to be wrong, people would say of him: “He has a practical, not a philosophical, turn of mind. He is a practical person whose ideals have nothing to do with philosophy.”<br /> <br /> This view of philosophy was utterly rejected by Marx, who wrote: ‘The philosophers have only &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;interpreted&lt;/span&gt; the world, in various ways: the point, however, is to &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;change&lt;/span&gt; it.'’&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-21|21]]&lt;/sup&gt; Philosophy does not merely answer the question as to what the world is but also what &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;attitude&lt;/span&gt; we should take towards it, how we should remake it. It is not merely knowledge of what there is but a way of &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;looking at&lt;/span&gt; what there is, a definite view of the world, a world outlook which determines our aims and goals. Philosophy makes the scientific explanation of reality a means of transforming it.<br /> <br /> Here we encounter one more distinction between philosophy and all other sciences. The law, for instance, which states that “...capitalistic accumulation ...constantly produces...  a surplus-population”,&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-22|22]]&lt;/sup&gt; i.e., unemployment, is recognised by science not because Marx and other philosophers consider it just, but because it represents authentic knowledge of capitalism. Every science confines itself to seeking knowledge in its proper field. Objective knowledge does not depend on a scientist’s ideals, likes and dislikes. The questions about what we should aspire to and what attitude we should take towards the world are answered by philosophy. It gives expression to man’s practical attitude to the world, his world outlook. As man is a social being, so is his outlook a social phenomenon, and in class society it expresses the interests of a definite class. The opposition of two currents in philosophy, materialism and idealism, is, now as before, an expression of the class struggle.<br /> <br /> Being either with one or with the other of these two opposite currents constitutes &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;partisanship in philosophy&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> Opponents of Marxism take roughly the fol&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;l&lt;/span&gt;owing line of argument: assuming that philosophy is true knowledge and its doctrines are true inasmuch as their authors have succeeded in learning the truth about the world, it does not matter whether the doctrines are to somebody’s advantage or disadvantage, for in the presence of truth interests are silent. Conversely, assuming that the aim of philosophy is to teach what benefits a certain class, it does not matter whether or not its teachings are true, for in that case they need not conform to truth but to the interest of that class. Therefore, they conclude, the statements “philosophy expresses authentic knowledge’ and “philosophy expresses class interests&amp;quot; are mutually exclusive.<br /> <br /> We must, however, remember that philosophy emerged with the division of society into classes. In class society, in every age the decayed classes which must leave the scene along with the decayed regime under which they have ruled are opposed by other classes which have to crush the old regime and help society ascend to a higher stage. The reactionary classes think in terms of the past, for they fail to see that the existing order has run its course and is no longer serviceable. In a nutshell, they have a perverted view of the state of things. Furthermore, the reactionary classes are vitally interested in having everybody share this view for, so long as it prevails, the masses will believe that the existing order is immutable and will dumbly submit to it.<br /> <br /> The revolutionary classes, on the contrary, are objectively interested in making truth accessible to as many members of society as possible, because so long as the masses believe what the reactionaries tell them it is difficult to rouse them to a struggle against the existing order. It is only after they have learned the truth that they may be victorious in the revolutionary struggle.<br /> <br /> Does this mean that such a role in the life of society may belong to true and false statements bearing merely on what is happening in society? To see whether or not it is so, let us look at the bitter struggle that developed during the Renaissance between the supporters and opponents of Copernicus and his follower, Galileo. The ideological positions of the contending parties expressed antagonistic class interests. Although neither Copernicus nor Galileo ever concerned himself with social and political problems in his writings, many people were burned at the stake for supporting their ideas.  Nor would Copernicus and Galileo themselves have escaped the stake if Copernicus had not died just when his &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;On the Revolutions of the Celestial Bodies&lt;/span&gt; was published in 1543, and if Galileo had not recanted. Nevertheless Galileo had to spend the remaining nine years of his life in confinement imposed on him by the Inquisition for, as the sentence runs, “having held... the doctrine that the Sun is the centre of the terrestrial orbit and does not move westward from the east whereas the Earth does so move….”<br /> <br /> Galileo was condemned because the scientific truths he defended overturned the prevailing unscientific conception of the world. Scientific comprehension of reality makes people approach everything they learn critically, checking it against experience and reason, which helps them learn the truth about what occurs in society. The unscientific world outlook suggests that people should rely neither on science nor on their own experience and intelligence but solely on what their leaders tell them. (“The Fuhrer thinks for you.&amp;quot;) Therefore, even where scientists say nothing against the existing order of things, the knowledge they spread and the scientific outlook seizing the people’s minds helps them see things in their true light; they no longer blindly believe those who unduly extol the established order, and come to understand that the old system is on its way out and must make room for the new. Hence, the scientific world outlook, as it takes hold of the masses, promotes their interests, making them aware of the tasks before them and the way to accomplish them.<br /> <br /> Truth is the ideological weapon of the masses in the struggle against the existing order and reactionary classes which defend it. And falsehood, spread by the reactionary classes, makes the masses impotent and submissive slaves. For this reason the quest for truth, for knowledge, for science is the ideological expression of the class struggle. The materialist solution of the fundamental question of philosophy is the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;true&lt;/span&gt; conception of reality and the idealist solution—a &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;false&lt;/span&gt; one. Hence, the antagonism of the two camps in philosophy has always reflected the antagonism of class interests.  Today too, materialism serves the interest of the proletariat and other progressive classes, whereas idealism serves the capitalist and other exploiting classes.<br /> <br /> Lenin showed that idealism does not, however, spring from class interests alone. The process of cognition itself may breed idealism, as it is a process which “... &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;includes in it&lt;/span&gt; the possibility of the flight of fantasy from life; more than that: the possibility of the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;transformation&lt;/span&gt; (moreover, an unnoticeable transformation, of which man is unaware) of the abstract concept, idea, into a &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;fantasy&lt;/span&gt;...&amp;quot;.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-23|23]]&lt;/sup&gt; Should the assertion that consciousness is primary be all that the idealist doctrines are about&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;in other words, should they be entirely false—their role would be merely reactionary and they would have nothing to offer us. However, in spite of their idealism, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel and other philosophers did, in fact, make significant contributions to man’s quest for true scientific knowledge. Hegel elaborated the dialectical method.  It is a revolutionary method, although Hegel himself did not apply it to nature but only to the development of concepts.<br /> <br /> Whose class interests a philosophical doctrine will serve depends on the doctrine itself, not on its author’s intentions. In 1899, the German biologist Ernst Haeckel published a book, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Die Weltsratsel&lt;/span&gt; (The Riddle of the Universe) in which, by advocating the materialist outlook in natural science, he knocked the bottom out of idealism. For all that he was no revolutionary politically, the bourgeoisie of all countries fiercely turned on Haeckel, while in Russia the entire printing of his book in Russian translation was sentenced by a court to be burned.  Lenin observed that “this popular little book became a weapon in the class struggle”’,&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-24|24]]&lt;/sup&gt; a weapon against the bourgeoisie, despite the author’s bourgeois political views. At the same time, the philosophical writings of Bogdanov (criticised by Lenin in &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Materialism and Empirio-Criticism&lt;/span&gt;), who set out to fight the bourgeoisie on behalf of the proletariat, actually promoted the interests of the former, as their author advocated idealism.<br /> <br /> Marxist-Leninist philosophy is simultaneously the science of laws governing the development of nature, society and thought and the world outlook of the working class, affirming communist ideals and moral principles. In it, elucidation of truth and defence of class interests do not exclude but, on the contrary, necessarily imply each other. That is why the Marxist-Leninist philosophy is an instrument for the revolutionary remaking of society and a method of scientifically examining social phenomena which helps find the correct path towards the historical goals of the working class.<br /> <br /> &lt;span id=&quot;index_split_000.xhtml#calibre_toc_3&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> = &lt;span id=&quot;index_split_000.xhtml#anchor20&quot; class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; =<br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> === 2. Revolution In Philosophy ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. Social and Historical Prerequisites of Marxist Philosophy ====<br /> When capitalism became entrenched in Western Europe, turning millions of peasants into wage workers whose lot was back-breaking toil and appalling poverty, many workers imagined that the source of their misery lay in the machines, in mechanised production, which had replaced manual work. The early 19th century was marked by a spontaneous mass movement of workmen destroying machines as a protest (the Luddites). Soon, however, the workers’ understanding increased and the first class battles were fought between them and their exploiters. The Chartist movement in England in the 1830s and 1840s, the French workers’ uprisings in 1831 and 1834, the weavers’ uprising in Silesia (Germany) in 1844, and subsequent strikes made it clear that a new class had emerged, destined to abolish capitalism and end the era of exploitation of man by man. To effect the drastic change, the proletariat had to understand the laws of society’s development much better, and to see how to employ them much more clearly, than the other revolutionary classes needed to, which carried out less stupendous social reforms. It took new ideo&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;l&lt;/span&gt;ogical equipment, a new world outlook to accomplish tasks unprecedented in history.<br /> <br /> Such were the material, socio-historical prerequisites of Marxist philosophy. Its emergence was prepared ideologically by preceding philosophy, natural science and the social sciences from which Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Frederick Engels (1820-1895) proceeded.<br /> <br /> ==== §2. Ancient Dialectics and Modern Metaphysics ====<br /> One of the greatest achievements of philosophy before the emergence of Marxism was Hegel’s dialectics. What are dialectics? Two thousand five hundred years ago no particular sciences, e.g., physics, geography, botany, and SO on, were yet in existence. There was only one form of knowledge: philosophy (Greek for “love of wisdom&amp;quot;) which embraced everything.  Philosophers concerned themselves with the earth and the sky, things and creatures, society and mind, seeking to grasp everything at once.  Proceeding in this way they could not fail to observe that all things are in state of perpetual motion, that they appear and disappear, are connected in one way or another and marked by inner contradictions. “This primitive, naive but intrinsically correct conception of the world” is commonly called dialectical thinking or the dialectics of the ancients. ‘‘But this conception, correctly as it expresses the general character of the picture of appearances as a whole, does not suffice to explain the details of which this picture is made up, and so long as we do not understand these, we have not a clear idea of the whole picture. In order to understand these details we must detach them from their natural or historical connection and examine each one separately. ..&amp;quot;.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-25|25]]&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> The structure and characteristics of celestial bodies, the Earth, minerals, plants and animals are studied by particular sciences. In antiquity there were no such sciences and knowledge was not specialised. There was pure speculation founded on simple observation without experimental proof.<br /> <br /> As time went on, particular sciences appeared one by one. For more than two thousand years, however, attempts to find out the truth about natural phenomena were more often based on pure speculation than on experimental research. It was not until the 16th-17th centuries that experimental natural science took shape. That epoch saw the emergence of classical mechanics which explained with remarkable accuracy very many terrestrial and astronomical phenomena and was broadly applied in industry. Physics vastly extended its knowledge of heat, light, magnetism and electricity.  The scientific basis of modern astronomy was laid. Voyages around the world and the geographical discoveries made at that time vastly increased men’s knowledge of continents, oceans, seas, mountains, deserts, rivers and lakes.  By the end of the 18th century, botanists and zoologists had studied and described some scores of thousands of plant varieties, and almost twenty thousand animal species. Human anatomy was investigated for the first time.<br /> <br /> Mechanics, however, outpaced all other sciences. Its success in a variety of fields, its experimental verification and mathematical precision inspired in scientists a belief that &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;the laws of mechanics were the key to all phenomena&lt;/span&gt;, of inanimate and animate nature alike.  This &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;mechanistic&lt;/span&gt; view prevailed among scientists in the 17th-18th centuries. From the principle of mechanics that ‘“‘every body remains in a state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled by external forces to change that state’ it was deduced that all motion is due to the application of an external force which compels a body to change its state.<br /> <br /> The natural scientists’ mechanistic views were fully shared by the 18th-century materialist philosophers.<br /> <br /> One thing about the discoveries made in astronomy in the 16th-17th centuries was that there was nothing to tell the astronomers whether the solar system had ever been different from what they observed. On the contrary, from the laws of classical mechanics it followed that the planets had always been moving in the same orbits and would continue in them forever. The geographical discoveries had yielded much new information but no evidence that there had been a time when the Earth’s surface was in a different condition. It followed then that the continents, oceans, mountains, rivers, deserts were just where they had always been.  In other words, the Earth’s surface would always be as it was since time began. Botanical and zoological data concerning many thousands of plant and animal species gave no indication that there had been a time when they did not exist. On the contrary, everything seemed to suggest that although individual plants and animals were born and died, the species went on indefinitely.<br /> <br /> Available scientific data suggested that although everything in nature was in a state of motion, that motion was merely a repetition of the same cycles and forms. And as the forms—being the most essential thing in any part of nature—were immutable, motion engendered nothing new, while nothing essential ever disappeared.<br /> <br /> That deduction was natural to science at that time. Before investigating the relationship &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;between&lt;/span&gt; objects and their action on one another, and so the processes developing in them and the variation they underwent, the scientists needed enough information about the structure of the objects, which, however, they could only gain by abstracting from what actually happened to the objects (from their relationships, interaction and change). When viewed in such terms, the phenomena under examination emerged as a totality of immutable, fixed objects.  The differences and contradictions emerged and were viewed merely as existing between individual objects but never &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;within&lt;/span&gt; them, the latter being considered altogether impossible.<br /> <br /> This approach, which was necessary and effective at the beginning, became customary.  The connections and variations, temporarily disregarded, began to appear unimportant and then simply non-existent. As a result, a scientist engrossed in his particular field discovered in it innumerable characteristics which made it utterly unlike and apparently unconnected with any other sphere of nature.<br /> <br /> Thus the conception was formed that movement was the repetition of the same forms which were always identical, permanent and unchangeable, that the world consisted of ready-made objects which could not be self-contradictory, and that connections between phenomena were superficial and inessential. This view focuses attention on only one aspect of the world, viz., on the inherent repetitiveness of motion and inherent stability of material bodies, and on contradictions &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;between&lt;/span&gt; things. Such a one-sided conception of the world, diametrically different from dialectics, is described as the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;metaphysical method&lt;/span&gt; of thinking or &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;metaphysics&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> Drawing on contemporary scientific knowledge, 18th-century materialist philosophy adhered to the metaphysical method which was then prevalent. Like mechanicism, metaphysics played a progressive role in its day. Scientists amassed vast knowledge about the world by following this method. Yet, the metaphysical conception of motion, interconnection and contradiction is a step backwards, compared with ancient dialectics.<br /> <br /> ==== §3. Hegel and Feuerbach ====<br /> The weak points of 18th-century materialism were seized upon by the idealists who criticised its mechanistic and metaphysical approach. But proceeding from pure speculation and not, as a rule, from natural science, the idealists were unable to advance a more correct scientific interpretation of development, as they themselves largely reasoned on metaphysical lines. The change came with the appearance of Hegel’s doctrine which marked a turning point in the history of dialectics. Marx wrote that Hegel was ‘the first to present its (dialectical—&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Ed.&lt;/span&gt;) general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner”.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-26|26]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Hegel's philosophy greatly influenced his contemporaries. In the ideological struggle which developed in Germany on the eve of the 1848 Revolution both the opponents and supporters of monarchy and religion (Young Hegelians and Old Hegelians respectively) adhered to Hegel's dialectical idealism. Later on, however, they went separate ways.<br /> <br /> One of the Young Hegelians, Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), opposed Hegel’s philosophy, arguing that, like any idealist doctrine, it was actually a philosophical apology for religion.  By showing that religion and idealism were false and moreover played a reactionary role in the life of society, Feuerbach took a consistent materialist stand.<br /> <br /> His defence of materialism and atheism made a tremendous impression. Describing how warmly Marx welcomed the new opinion and how greatly he was influenced by it, Engels wrote: “Enthusiasm was general; we all became Feuerbachians at once.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-27|27]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> In 1839, when Feuerbach became a materialist, Marx was twenty-one and Engels nineteen.  Both were Hegelians, but their militant atheism and revolutionary democratic views made it imminent that they should renounce idealism and adopt a materialist standpoint. Feuerbach’s work was a great encouragement to this transition. Engels wrote that of all the philosophers after Hegel, Feuerbach’s influence on Marx and himself was the greatest. However, it soon became clear to them that, as he shattered Hegel’s idealist philosophy, Feuerbach simultaneously discarded its rational content, dialectics. And thus, although he had advanced far ahead of 18th-century materialism, he still failed to cope with its major shortcomings.<br /> <br /> Then what is the significance of Hegel's dialectics which Feuerbach overlooked and which Marx and Engels thought so highly of and used in evolving dialectical and historical materialism?<br /> <br /> It consists first of all in the teaching that, although there is repetition in movement, nothing&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;either separate objects or the stages and forms of development—is repeated completely.  The world contains no forms which eternally repeat themselves and are immutable. In general, there is nothing eternal in the world except the eternal change of forms and phenomena replacing one another.<br /> <br /> According to Hegel, all is interlinked in the world which is a single whole and every particle of which is involved in an endless multiplicity of relations. This is a very important point, not to be overlooked in scientific research.<br /> <br /> While Hegel’s dialectical method acknowledges that there are contradictions between things, it sees this as only one side of the matter; the other side is much more important, viz., “&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;all things are contradictory in themselves&lt;/span&gt;” and that inner contradiction “is the root of all movement and vitality; it is only insofar as something embodies a contradiction that it moves.”<br /> <br /> Hegel's dialectical method disclosed the unsoundness of the metaphysical view which took into consideration merely the stability of real phenomena and our conceptions of them, and which therefore regarded the world as a totality of ready-made things, and thought as a totality of ready-made concepts. Such a view, Hegel argued, ignores the other, most important, aspect&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;the eternal mutability of everything in the world, which is not a totality of finished things but of processes, connections and relations.<br /> <br /> As he created his method, Hegel was the first to advance, formulate and work out in detail the main laws of dialectics which govern all development. He offered a dialectical interpretation of the most general concepts (categories) which play an exceedingly important role in science and experience. Lastly, Hegel, more amply and correctly than anybody before him, elucidated the complex and contradictory nature not only of thought but of the whole process of knowledge.<br /> <br /> Much as they appreciated it, Marx and Engels nevertheless could not incorporate Hegel's dialectics into their doctrine because it was &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;idealist&lt;/span&gt; and consequently had serious flaws.<br /> <br /> Firstly, Hegel deduced the laws of dialectics not from existence but from consciousness. He maintained that nature and human history must be subject to those laws because everything occurring in nature and society was merely a reflection of consciousness, of the Absolute Idea.  To Marx and Engels, however, it was not “a question of building the laws of dialectics into nature, but of discovering them in it and evolving them from it.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-28|28]]&lt;/sup&gt; Marx and Engels worked out a &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;materialist&lt;/span&gt; dialectic in which the dialectical laws emerge above all as those governing the development of the real world (nature and society), whereas the laws of thought are their peculiar reflection in men’s heads.<br /> <br /> Secondly, although Hegel stated that development was infinite, the Absolute Idea in his philosophical system actually completed its development. Hence Hegel considered his philosophy to be final, all-embracing knowledge, while he considered the society in which it was evolved to be the crowning stage in the development of mankind. But a “system of natural and historical knowledge, embracing everything, and final for all time, is contradiction to the fundamental law of dialectic reasoning&amp;quot;,&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-29|29]]&lt;/sup&gt;   and so is the “final” stage in society’s development. Hegel sacrificed to his idealist system the most important dialectical principle, the principle of development.<br /> <br /> Lastly, being an idealist, Hegel considered it somewhat degrading for the Absolute Idea to be embodied in matter, in nature. He attributed progressive dialectical development to nothing but the ‘conscious idea”, i.e., to men.  As for the “unconscious idea”, i.e., nature, it, according to Hegel, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;does not develop in time&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> It was for this reason that Marx wrote that dialectics with Hegel “is standing on its head.  It must be turned right side up again.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-30|30]]&lt;/sup&gt; It was for Marx and Engels to evolve the materialist dialectical method which is diametrically opposite to Hegel’s idealist dialectics.<br /> <br /> ==== §4. Philosophical Generalisation of New Scientific Discoveries ====<br /> Discriminating use of Feuerbach’s materialist ideas and Hegel’s dialectics is merely one aspect of the philosophical work of Marx and Engels which ensured continuity between their own doctrine and those of their philosophical predecessors. The other aspect of their theoretical work was the summing up of new &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;scientific knowledge&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> In the 19th century, the study of heat, magnetism, electricity and light revealed that even within the pale of physics reducing all to mechanical phenomena was out of the question. It was still less possible with relation to chemistry, botany and zoology. The progress of natural science cut the ground from under the feet of mechanism.<br /> <br /> If Hegel convincingly demonstrated the internally contradictory nature of consciousness, extensive research conducted in the 19th century in the natural and social sciences demonstrated no less convincingly the inherently contradictory nature of many natural and social phenomena.<br /> <br /> In the 1840s, the universal &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;law of conservation and transformation of energy&lt;/span&gt; was discovered, in accordance with which energy neither disappears nor is created anew. This law, which states that mechanical, thermal, electrical, chemical energy is mutually convertible, led to the deduction that all phenomena in the universe are connected in some way, that the &amp;quot;unity of all motion in nature is no longer a philosophical assertion, but a natural-scientific fact&amp;quot;.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-31|31]]&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In the latter half of the 18th century, M. Lomonosov and J. Hutton suggested that the Earth’s surface was quite unlike what it was in the past. In the 19th century, so much evidence was accumulated about how substantially and recurrently the Earth’s appearance used to change that the science of geology was born.  Geologists found that none of the stages of the Earth’s development (e.g., the Archean, Proterozoic, Palaeozoic, Mesozoic, Cainozoic) had been a repetition of any of the previous stages.  The beginning of every new era meant the disappearance of a number of continents, islands, seas, mountains, etc., and the appearance of entirely new geological phenomena, as well as substantial climatic changes.<br /> <br /> In 1755, Kant suggested that the solar system did not exist eternally but had naturally emerged at some time in the past, and he formulated a hypothesis, according to which the solar system originated and developed out of a nebula. The 18th-century scientists, in whose minds metaphysics reigned supreme, remained deaf to the call to stop regarding astronomic phenomena as unchangeable cycles eternally repeating themselves. In 1796, however, Kant’s hypothesis was supported and carried forward by Laplace, and in the middle of the 19th century it was substantiated mathematically. Although in the 20th century the Kant-Laplace hypothesis of the origin of the solar system was supplanted by others, it is now commonly accepted that the solar system appeared at some time in the past as a natural result of the development of matter.<br /> <br /> There emerged comparative anatomy and the physiology of plants and animals, and it was revealed that there is an essential likeness and connection between rather distant species.  In the first half of the 19th century it was discovered that all plants and animals are built of cells which are built more or less on the same pattern and which feed and multiply in roughly the same way, whether they be the cells of a seaweed or a tree, of a minute infusorian or man. This signal discovery put it beyond all doubt that all living things are mutually connected.<br /> <br /> Another new science, palaeontology, established that over hundreds of millions of years many plant and animal species had been replacing one another, some of them dying out and others appearing in their stead. It was found that nothing in nature was eternal, stages of development never repeating themselves but replacing one another in an eternal succession.<br /> <br /> In the mid-19th century the English scientist Charles Darwin discovered the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;law of natural selection&lt;/span&gt; establishing the connection between all living beings and demonstrating that their development was no repetition of the old but the extinction of the old and emergence of the new.<br /> <br /> Thus, as early as the first half of the 19th century natural science began to study the interconnections of objects and changes within and between them, rather than isolated objects; processes, rather than finished things. This led to the discovery of the intrinsically contradictory character of everything in nature and in society.<br /> <br /> The metaphysical mode of thinking thus came into conflict with scientific knowledge which testified to the “universal, all-sided, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;vital&lt;/span&gt; connection of everything with everything...”.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-32|32]]&lt;/sup&gt;   Newly-obtained knowledge has made it clear that &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;nature contains nothing eternal besides the eternal succession of developmental stages, each of which disappears sooner or later to be replaced by an essentially different stage which shares the fate of its predecessors; that the world is not a totality of things but of processes, connections and relations, and that all phenomena are marked by inherent contradictions&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> To draw such conclusions was to subject to a revision the dominant mechanistic and metaphysical views and prejudices which had got hold of scientists and philosophers. It took extraordinary power and boldness of mind to generalise scientific knowledge in terms of philosophy, as Marx and Engels did, and declare that ‘‘in the &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;l&lt;/span&gt;ast resort, nature works dialectically and not metaphysically&amp;quot;.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-33|33]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> ==== §5. The Role of Practice in Human Existence ====<br /> While nature exists independently of man, his entire existence—both physical and spiritual&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;depends on nature. A person lives or dies, and, if he lives, he is happy or miserable, all depending on the external world around him.  That world, acting on man’s sense-organs, produces sensations, emotions and ideas in him.  This was how the pre-Marxian materialists explained the dependence of the spirit on nature, of consciousness on matter.<br /> <br /> Marx was the first to see and expose the onesidedness of that view which suggests that the external world alone is capable of affecting man while all man can do is passively perceive and reflect on the things and events around him.  But can a person merely gaze at things, listen to sounds and reflect and do nothing else? Not unless he is a paralytic unable to move hand or foot, and even then he must be looked after by others who certainly do more than just feel sensations and reflect.<br /> <br /> As Feuerbach quite rightly observed, in order to live, man must satisfy his needs. But Feuerbach went no further than that. Marx, on the other hand, showed that in order to have that without which man cannot live, i.e., food, clothing, shelter, the means of protecting himself from savage beasts, and so on, man has to act on the things round him so as to make them satisfy his needs. Unlike the old materialists’ imaginary man, real man does not merely look on, but acts; he does not passively suffer the influence of the external world but influences it himself. The external world changes man, but man changes the world too. Man’s activity whereby he changes the external world, i.e., nature and society, is called &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;practice&lt;/span&gt;. Practice implies influencing nature in order to gain one’s livelihood (work, production); influencing other people (social or public activity), and influencing nature so as to gain knowledge (scientific experimentation).<br /> <br /> Marx and Engels proved that practice, which the old materialists overlooked, was of immense significance to men.<br /> <br /> 1. Practice as the production of the means of subsistence is the primary condition of human existence. Its significance is clear if only from the fact that man’s survival depends &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;o&lt;/span&gt;n it.<br /> <br /> 2. Animals as well as men have to influence their natural environment to protect themselves against hunger, cold and enemies. There is, however, an essential difference between man’s work and animal behaviour. In order to sustain itself an animal tackles the object directly whereas man tackles objects with the aid of implements he manufactures himself, and forms certain relations with other men. These relations greatly affect man’s behaviour, moulding him as a social being. Work gave rise to human intelligence and transformed the primitive herd into human society with its morals, science and art. In a word, work is what makes us human, it is man’s essence.<br /> <br /> 3. Marx was the first to show that the progress of mankind from the lower to higher stages of civilisation is determined by the progress of commodity production which, in the long run, determines the course of history. Consequently practice has the decisive role in history.<br /> <br /> 4. The old materialists’ error was that while they spoke of man’s dependence on the external world they overlooked the other side of the matter or the dependence of man’s environment on his influence. Men have changed the appearance of the Earth out of all recognition.  Vast forests have been felled, marshes drained, artificial rivers and seas created and soil, climate and the composition of the atmosphere greatly altered and new varieties of plants and animals developed by man. The crops and animals we raise have been bred by man. Our natural environment bears the stamp of men’s practical activity. Men themselves, the relations that have been established among them and the things they have created are all products of this activity. Hence, although it is true that material conditions influence man a great deal, it is also true that these conditions themselves are to a great extent products of the practical activity of generations. Therefore the influence of these conditions on man includes the influence on him of other people’s practice.<br /> <br /> Having thus exposed the unsoundness of contemplative materialism, Marx and Engels showed that practice plays the decisive role in men’s material and intellectual life.<br /> <br /> Until the mid-19th century nobody had managed to supply a materialist explanation of the history of human society. All philosophers—idealists and materialists alike—arrived at an idealist interpretation of society. Yet, by that time the progress of social relationships and the social sciences had prepared enough material for solving the problem. First, however, one had to examine the material thoroughly, draw general conclusions from it, make proper deductions and, overcoming the ingrained views which had dominated society for centuries, take a path yet untrodden by any thinker. That was what Marx did. Having demonstrated the unsoundness of the old materialists’ idealist view on history, Marx, using the latest information provided by the social sciences and subjecting the workings of modern society to a detailed and penetrating examination, was able to offer a &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;materialist explanation of human history&lt;/span&gt;, to be dealt with further on in this book.<br /> <br /> Lenin wrote that Marx was “the founder of &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;modern materialism&lt;/span&gt;, which is immeasurably richer in content and incomparably more consistent than all preceding forms of materialism ...’.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-34|34]]&lt;/sup&gt; The creation of Marxist philosophy sbelind the defeat of mechanism and metaphysics characteristic of the old materialism and the triumph of &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;dialectical&lt;/span&gt; materialism. Contemplation was exposed and the immense role played by &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;practice&lt;/span&gt; elucidated. The idealist view of society was overcome and &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;historical&lt;/span&gt; materialism created. These changes were so extensive as to make the emergence of the Marxist doctrine a real &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;revolution&lt;/span&gt; in philosophy.<br /> <br />  <br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> === 3. &lt;span class=&quot;s-t&quot;&gt;Matter&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. Conception of Matter in Ancient Philosophy ====<br /> A Hindu philosopher, Kapila, who lived 2,500 years ago, reasoned as follows. Nothing is eternal. Yet no thing can spring out of nothing nor can it be reduced to nothing, for when things are destroyed they do not disappear altogether but turn into stuff from which other things are made. Thus Kapila arrives at the conclusion that there exists some material which can be neither created nor destroyed, and of which all things are formed, namely, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;matter&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> Other ancient philosophers similarly arrived at the idea of matter. Early Greek philosophers who lived at about the same time as Kapila sought matter among the bodies immediately observable in nature. Thales regarded water or moisture as the primary stuff or principle of things. Anaximenes identified primary matter with air. Heraclitus held that fire was primary. Empedocles believed that the universe was made up of particles of earth, water, air and fire. Democritus taught that matter consisted of eternal, indestructible and unchangeable bodies, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;atoms&lt;/span&gt;, so small that they cannot be diminished any further (Greek &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;atomos&lt;/span&gt;, indivisible) or seen or touched. Atoms possess hardness, size, shape, weight and motion. Everything consists of atoms arranged in particular ways.  When a particular combination of atoms, a thing, breaks up, the thing is destroyed. Diversity of the real world, according to Democritus, is due to the diversity of atom combinations.  Subtle emanations of atoms, thrown off from the surface of an object, penetrate the sense-organs, producing sensations and then ideas, for which sensations are responsible. Both sensations and ideas are impressions left by the emanations of atoms.<br /> <br /> Thus, Democritus taught that (1) matter is real and exists independently of consciousness; (2) matter is that which produces sensations; (3) sensations and ideas are impressions produced by matter; (4) matter has certain physical properties and is the stuff of which all things are made (it is the ultimate level of nature); (5) matter is immutable: atoms have always been as they are, and they will always be so.<br /> <br /> ==== §2. Revolution in Natural Science. Philosophical Controversy ====<br /> The view that matter consists of atoms which are the immutable, ultimate level of nature governed by the laws of mechanics persisted to the end of the 19th century. In that century, however, the connection between electricity and magnetism was discovered. Shortly afterwards, electromagnetic fields, waves, charges and the electromagnetic nature of light were discovered and investigated, giving rise to electrodynamics, the science concerned with these phenomena. None of them was found to contain atoms. Some people expected that with time atoms would be found, after all, to be the basis of electromagnetic phenomena. Others, who saw that everything could not be reduced to atoms, began to think that along with bodies which consisted of atoms, i.e., along with matter as they understood it, there were natural phenomena of an essentially different kind, such as electromagnetism, which they considered to be immaterial.<br /> <br /> There were others still who held that electromagnetic fields, waves, charges, and so on, were not really natural phenomena but concepts invented by physicists to make it more convenient for them to describe their observations.  These people maintained that, unlike matter composed of atoms&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;the reality of which they never questioned—electromagnetic fields, waves, etc., exist only in mind and not in reality.<br /> <br /> The Austrian physicist Ernst Mach took a different line. He argued that nothing (and not electromagnetism alone) existed outside consciousness. There is nothing but our sensations, he wrote, and to believe in atoms is not a whit better than to believe in witches. This subjective-idealist theory was rejected by all but a few natural scientists.<br /> <br /> At the turn of the 20th century it was found that atoms of certain chemical elements are capable of changing into atoms of other chemical elements (e.g., an atom of radium changes into one of radon and then of lead); that the atom is a system of particles charged with electricity (electrons), and electromagnetic fields; that the mass of electrons, contrary to the laws of classical mechanics, alters with their velocity. That which scientists called matter (atoms) was reduced to electromagnetic phenomena, to what was termed electricity or energy and was regarded as immaterial. After these discoveries, the majority of scientists were inclined to think that matter does not consist of atoms but of electrons. Some scientists, however, who had earlier believed in the existence of atoms but denied the reality of electromagnetic phenomena, now held that since the atom itself presented fields, charges and waves, it meant that there was no matter; there were merely physical concepts. All views that had been commonly accepted in natural science now came under sharp criticism. Natural science reached a crisis.<br /> <br /> The idealists were not slow to see their opportunity and claimed that the new discoveries apparently corroborated the idealist views.<br /> <br /> It was urgently necessary to disprove the new form of idealism, and by drawing philosophical conclusions from the new scientific discoveries, enrich Marxist philosophy and show the way out of the crisis in natural science.  That task was brilliantly carried out by Lenin.<br /> <br /> ==== §3. The New Concept of Matter Elaborated by Lenin ====<br /> In his &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Materialism and Empirio-Criticism&lt;/span&gt; Lenin showed that Mach’s “new” doctrine was actually the old doctrine of Berkeley, altogether inconsistent with science. Lenin wrote that the new discoveries had exposed the unsoundness of metaphysical materialism which held nature (atoms) to be immutable, infinite in extent but finite in depth, and saw everything as mechanical motion. Not only did the new scientific discoveries confirm dialectical materialism but they enabled it to be enriched by the philosophical deductions which Lenin made from them. He conclusively proved that nature is as infinite in depth as in extent that “the electron is as &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;inexhaustible&lt;/span&gt; as the atom, nature is infinite...”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-35|35]]&lt;/sup&gt; , it has no “ultimate&amp;quot; level. Therefore, to declare that matter consisted of electrons rather than atoms would be to retain the metaphysical conception of matter. The whole point was that in the transition from one level of nature to another, deeper level, many properties of the former disappeared, being replaced by other properties, not present at the previous levels. There were no immutable things or properties, no immutable form of motion to which motion at all levels could be reduced.  The electromagnetic structure of the atom was not evidence of its ‘“dematerialisation”’ but of man’s deeper knowledge of the atom. The trouble with physicists was that they knew none but mechanistic and metaphysical materialism.  Therefore they took the collapse of the mechanistic method and metaphysics for the collapse of materialism. ‘“‘Denying the immutability of the elements and of the properties of matter known hitherto, they ended by denying matter.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-36|36]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Natural science, Lenin wrote, “... will overcome all crises, but only by the indispensable replacement of metaphysical materialism by dialectical materialism”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-37|37]]&lt;/sup&gt; and, above all, by the replacement of the narrow concept of matter (embracing the atoms alone) by a broad dialectical concept. Matter is “...&lt;span class=&quot;s-t6&quot;&gt;objective reality&lt;/span&gt; existing independently of the human mind and reflected by it”; “...matter is that which, acting upon our sense-organs, produces sensation”.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-38|38]]&lt;/sup&gt; Such is Lenin’s definition of matter. It comprises three points, viz., (1) matter is that which exists apart from and independently of consciousness; (2) matter is that which produces sensations in us; (3) matter is that which our sensations and consciousness reflect in general.<br /> <br /> All that which produces sensations is real, but not all that is real produces sensations.  Thus, we cannot feel the ultraviolet rays, processes going on in the centre of the sun, or endless other phenomena. Important as the second and third characteristics of matter are, the main thing that distinguishes what is mater.  ial from what is immaterial is that the former exists outside consciousness. Lenin wrote: &amp;quot;...the sole ‘property’ of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;objective reality&lt;/span&gt;, of existing outside the mind.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-39|39]]&lt;/sup&gt; That precisely is the distinguishing feature of Lenin’s conception of matter. For Lenin, not only all that is real objectively exists, but all that objectively exists is real.<br /> <br /> Now you may ask: “Is shadow material? Is the absence of light rays reflected from a surface material?’ But their absence is just as much a reality independent of the mind as their presence is. Both these phenomena are thus equally material. If, besides, we take it into account that the world is no collection of finished things but a totality of processes and relationships, we shall see that the idea that material is corporeal, i.e., the metaphysical materialists’ view, must give way to another, which regards the gravitational field and electromagnetic wave propagation and all kinds of connections existing outside the mind (including social relationships) as material phenomena.  <br /> <br /> Modern scientific discoveries attest that Lenin’s conception of matter is true.<br /> <br /> Early in the 20th century everything in nature was believed to consist either of discontinuous microparticles (substance) or of continuous electromagnetic fields. Both were taken, by and large, to be subject to the same laws which govern the objects possessing mass and velocity or macroobjects which we meet in ordinary experience. It seemed no less obvious that if discontinuous substance (in which case motion occurs along a definite line, receiving a definite impulse at each point of the line) is the opposite of the continuous field (in which case motion consists in wave propagation) then no object can be a substance and a field simultaneously.<br /> <br /> As scientists investigated such fields and particles with a mass of a billion-billionth of a gram, moving almost as fast as light, a wonderful world, the microcosm, opened up before them. In that strange world certain laws of classical mechanics lose their force and are replaced by other laws. Substance and field coincide in the same object and particles do not possess simultaneously a definite impulse and a definite position. In fact, the more definite a particle’s position, the less definite its impulse, and vice versa. When these and other unusual laws of the microcosm were discovered, scientists evolved, in the mid-20th century, a new branch of physics, the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;quantum theory&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> Again, the idealists hastened to take advantage of its unusual character and insisted that quantum objects and processes did not really exist, being merely concepts invented by scientists to explain their experiments. That was, however, rejected by leading physicists. One of the authors of the quantum theory, Louis de Broglie, wrote that whether he studied macro-objects or micro-objects a physicist was sure of their objective existence, for “it is doubtful that he would be able to pursue his research usefully, by abandoning all belief in objective reality”.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-40|40]]&lt;/sup&gt; Einstein pointed out time and again that the certainty of the external world existing independently of the researcher underlay the whole of natural science. Planck and Born, who made significant contributions to quantum theory, held the same view. Concerning micro-particles, Born wrote: “I maintain that we are justified in regarding these particles as real in a sense not essentially different from the usual meaning of the word.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-41|41]]&lt;/sup&gt; As for the ambivalent opinion accepting the reality of things of everyday experience (macrocosmic objects) while denying the reality of microcosmic objects, Born wrote that “there is a continuous transition.... Where does that crude reality, in which the experimentalist lives, end ... and where does the atomistic world, in which the idea of reality is illusion and anathema, begin?  There is, of course, no such border; if we are compelled to attribute reality to the ordinary things of everyday life including scientific instruments and materials used in experimenting, we cannot cease doing so for objects observable only with the help of instruments”.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-42|42]]&lt;/sup&gt; And, Born concludes, quantum theory “calls for new ways of describing the physical world, but not the denial of its reality”.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-43|43]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Such is the view of leading contemporary physicists whose research results have induced them to arrive at certain propositions of dialectical materialism spontaneously, although they do not consciously support Marxist philosophy. Nevertheless, many outstanding modern physicists have consciously accepted dialectical materialism as the only philosophy consistent with modern science. They are P. Langevin, F. Joliot-Curie, J.-P. Vigier, Sakata Shoichi, and others.<br /> <br /> All this confirms Lenin’s prediction that the spirit of materialism, which is inherent in natural science, will enable it to overcome every possible crisis.<br /> <br />  <br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> === 4. Matter and Motion ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. Is There Matter without Motion? ====<br /> To answer this question one must first clearly understand what matter is and what motion is. We have already discussed the nature of matter. As for motion, it was established as early as the 19th century that mechanical motion is merely one form of the motion of matter, which has different, if connected, forms.  Engels evolved the following basic principles of the Marxist conception of the forms of the motion of matter.<br /> <br /> Firstly, the forms of the motion of matter are essentially different, none of them being reducible to another. For example, although chemical reactions play a major role in the processes occurring in the body of an animal and in the formation of species in the anima&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;l &lt;/span&gt; kingdom, it would be quite wrong to attempt to reduce animal life to a chemical form of motion. With the emergence of life, there come into effect biological laws, not operative in inanimate nature; life is a form of motion, essentially different from any other (although it is connected with other forms of motion).<br /> <br /> Secondly, under certain conditions some forms of motion turn into other forms. Thus, at a certain stage in the development of matter and the complication of chemical processes, life appeared as a new form of the motion of matter. At a certain stage in the development of the animal kingdom, man was singled out from it; there emerged a new form of the motion of matter, namely, social processes.<br /> <br /> Thirdly, complex forms of the motion of matter include relatively simple forms, by no means being merely their sum. All chemical reactions necessarily involve electromagnetic and other physical processes, although the de&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;c&lt;/span&gt;isive role here belongs to the laws of chemistry. All vital processes in plants or animals necessarily involve a great number of chemical reactions, though the decisive role is played by biological laws. All social processes necessarily involve biological processes occurring in man. But the decisive role in the social process is undoubtedly played by the laws of the development of society.<br /> <br /> Engels advanced also the important idea that the classification of the forms of the motion of matter underlies the classification of sciences.  The further progress of science has fully confirmed these ideas.<br /> <br /> In the light of modern scientific conceptions, the following groups of forms of the motion of matter may be isolated: (1) the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;physical forms&lt;/span&gt; or change of the position in space, velocity, mass, energy, electrical charge, temperature, volume and other characteristics of real objects; (2) the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;chemical forms&lt;/span&gt; or the conversion of substances, combination and recombination of atoms; (3) the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;biological forms&lt;/span&gt; or life and changes occurring in plants and animals; (4) the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;social forms&lt;/span&gt; or the changes occurring in human society and peculiar to it alone.<br /> <br /> Each of these forms of motion exists objectively, outside the mind, and is a material process. The motion of human feelings, moods and ideas, on the other hand, exists merely in man’s mind. Certainly emotions and ideas do not exist without their material seat, i.e., the brain. “But,” Lenin explained, “‘to say that thought is material is to make a false step, a step towards confusing materialism and idealism.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-44|44]]&lt;/sup&gt; While they are a social phenomenon, emotions and ideas are at the same time spiritual processes, and this distinguishes them from all other social phenomena, which are material processes.<br /> <br /> This shows the one&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;sidedness&lt;/span&gt; of the mechanistic materialists’ view that motion presumably boils down to the movement of bodies in space, wholly explainable by the laws of mechanics, in the process of which bodies never change, always remaining the same. Hence, according to this conception, matter is immutable and motionless. Yet the deeper natural science penetrates into nature’s secrets, the more obvious it becomes that nature contains no immutable objects, and that the motion of matter is not confined to a single form of motion but comprises &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;any kind o&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;f&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt; change at all&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> Then is nothing at rest in the world?<br /> <br /> When lava ejected from a volcano has solidified into rock, it seems to be at rest. Nevertheless, solid rock also undergoes constant change induced by temperature fluctuations, rain, wind, surf, electromagnetic processes, which sooner or later will cause the rock to crumble. Long as its rest may be, it is still of a transient nature. Lastly, the rock moves relative to the sun, just as the Earth does. In mechanics generally, two bodies which are at rest relative to each other are performing identical motions relative to a third body. Therefore every object which is at rest moves. It is only resting in a certain respect. It is clear that rest is a particular instance of motion.<br /> <br /> While rest is finite and relative, motion is infinite and absolute. In other words, it is uncaused and indestructible.<br /> <br /> For this reason, all attempts to interpret the laws of nature so as to show that motion is not indispensable to matter, that matter without motion is possible, have failed. The second law of thermodynamics is a case in point. It reads that in a closed system, in which no energy is received from outside or lost, all forms of energy tend to be converted into heat. As heat can only pass from a hot to a cold body, the temperature of every part of such a system must eventually become exactly the same, and the system must reach thermal balance, when no conversion of one form of energy into another occurs. Regarding the universe as a closed system, the physicists Clausius and Kelvin concluded that in some time all forms of motion except heat would disappear and a balance of heat or the “thermal death” of the universe would set in.<br /> <br /> Yet movement is indestructible in qualitative as well as quantitative terms. Becoming incapable of changing from one form into another, movement would be destroyed in that respect, should a thermal balance be established. Engels wrote that to believe in the “thermal death” of the universe was to believe that movement was not indestructible. Besides, the ‘thermal death” of the universe implies that movement has both an end and a beginning. If there is a point at which movement loses its ability to change into different forms, there must have been a point at which it acquired that ability. One who believes that the universe will reach thermal balance, must also believe that the ‘world clock has to be wound up, then it goes on running until it arrives at a state of equilibrium from which only a miracle can set it going again.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-45|45]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> If nothing but an external impulse, intervention by a preternatural force, i.e., a miracle, can pull the universe out of its impending balance, then, plainly, it could only be by a miracle that it has been put into its present rather restless state. Thus, Engels held, the idea that movement is destructible, which is implied in the theory of “thermal death”, leads to religion quite unavoidably. Indeed, in 1951, Pope Pius XII said: “The farther back we look, the richer we find matter to be in free energy.... Thus everything seems to indicate that the material universe, charged as it was with incredibly vast reserves of energy, received, at a certain point in time, a powerful initial impulse.... Hence, creation in time; and therefore, a Creator; and consequently, God.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-46|46]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> As he criticised the theory of “thermal death”, Engels expressed his confidence that the progress of science would refute it. As early as the 19th century the physicist Ludwig Boltzmann showed that the tendency towards changing all forms of movement into heat in a closed system is the tendency towards the changing of this system from a less probable to a more probable state. However, as was established in the mid-20th century, all states of a system comprising an infinite number of particles are equally probable. Assuming that the universe is a system of an infinite number of particles, one must accept that thermal equilibrium will never be its most probable state.  Nevertheless, in terms of the general theory of relativity, the conditions of the existence of the universe do not remain immutable. Therefore the universe is not a closed system, and even should it comprise a finite number of particles, it still would not reach thermal equilibrium.<br /> <br /> Modern natural science bears out the tenet of dialectical materialism that motion is an intrinsic property of matter, its mode of existence.<br /> <br /> ==== §2. Does Motion Without Matter Exist? ====<br /> Thermodynamics and electromagnetic theory, which emerged in the 19th century and covered a very wide range of natural phenomena, took no account of atoms. (Their connection with the electromagnetic phenomena was yet to be established.) Scientists almost unanimously believed that matter consisted of atoms, while everything else (energy, electromagnetism) was thought to be “energy”, not matter. Wilhelm Ostwald, a German chemist and physicist, reasoned that as thermodynamics and electrodynamics had solved a great number of problems of physics and chemistry, ignoring the existence of atoms, it might be presumed that all other problems of natural science could also be resolved without having to assume that atoms exist. Hence, the assumption was false, and atoms did not exist. Having made that deduction and never doubting that atoms alone were matter, Ostwald concluded that the ‘ultimate’ level of matter was not matter, which did not exist anyway, but motion. Everything in the world consisted of “pure motion.” That gave rise to ‘‘energism”, a philosophical concept according to which the world was based neither on matter nor spirit but on energy, which was identified with motion. Insisting that both materialism and idealism should be discarded and replaced by energism, Ostwald wrote: ‘The simple and natural removal of the old difficulties arising from the antithesis between the concepts of matter and spirit by subordinating both to the concept of energy appears to me to be a great improvement...”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-47|47]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> In his &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Materialism and Empirio-Criticism&lt;/span&gt; Lenin exposed the erroneous nature of this theory.  To assert that both matter and spirit boil down to energy, he pointed out, is to contend that neither matter nor mind exists, and there is only movement. But no scientist has ever denied yet the existence of ideas. And no wonder, for how can one express ideas, while insisting that ideas do not exist? Moreover, the belief that ideas exist and matter does not is an idealist point of view with nothing new in it. Such is Lenin’s first argument against energism.<br /> <br /> His second argument is, briefly, this: &amp;quot;Ostwald endeavoured to avoid this inevitable philosophical alternative (materialism or idealism) by an indefinite use of the word ‘energy’ ” and thought that in that way he ended the contradiction between materialism and idealism. If we designate as energy both movement outside consciousness (physical, chemical, physiological and other processes) and movement inside consciousness (varying sensations, strivings, ideas), “...&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;i&lt;/span&gt;f we ‘subordinate’ both matter and mind to this concept, the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;verbal&lt;/span&gt; annihilation of the antithesis is beyond question...”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-48|48]]&lt;/sup&gt; But, in reality, the question whether mind depends on matter or vice versa remains. So does the irreconcilable conflict between materialism and idealism, which offer opposite answers to this question.<br /> <br /> The discovery of the electromagnetic nature of atoms made it obvious that Ostwald was wrong and, in 1908, he acknowledged that the existence of atoms was beyond question. In the middle of the 20th century, scientists could see atoms for themselves, photographed by an electronic microscope.<br /> <br /> Even so, attempts were made relatively recently to revive the view which Ostwald himself had renounced. In 1948, Bertrand Russell wrote: “It is energy, not matter, that is fundamental in physics’ because “both relativity and quantum theory have had the effect of replacing the old conception of ‘mass’ by that of ‘energy’ &amp;quot;,&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-49|49]]&lt;/sup&gt; and if mass has taken the place of energy, the latter has taken the place of matter, as mass is, indeed, matter. Russell's reference to the theory of relativity here concerns the relationship between energy and mass, discovered by Einstein.<br /> <br /> Even supposing Einstein's discovery did mean that mass was replaced by energy, it does not follow that matter does not exist, since its place has been taken by energy. Its existence is really a question of whether the world contains anything besides ideas, emotions and sensations. The answer to this does not depend on whether real objects have the properties of inertia and gravitation, i.e., mass.<br /> <br /> Besides, Einstein’s discovery does not imply any replacement of mass by energy. If we put a piece of iron on a hot stove, it will get hot as it receives energy from the stove, the latter losing the same amount of energy. According to classical mechanics, the weight of the piece of iron and of the stove does not change&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;their mass remains the same. Einstein’s discovery, however, discards this notion, and implies that when an object transfers its energy to another object, it also transfers a certain amount of mass, while every time mass is transferred from one object to another, some energy is also transferred. Einstein wrote: “...a piece of iron weighs more when red-hot than when cool; radiation ... emitted from the sun contains energy and therefore has mass; the sun and all radiating stars lose mass by emitting radiation.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-50|50]]&lt;/sup&gt; When a piece of iron gets hot from the stove, the mass it thus acquires is practically negligible. But the sun, which radiates huge amounts of energy, is losing mass at a rate of 4,000,000 tons a second.<br /> <br /> So that attempt to revive energism was also unsuccessful. Now, another question arises.  Ideas, sensations and aspirations are not material facts. They exist only in men’s consciousness. Does it not follow, perhaps, that the succession of sensations, ideas, and so on, is motion without matter? In other words, while it is erroneous to think, as the energists do, that any kind of movement represents motion without matter, would it not be correct to say that in some instances, i.e., mental processes, it is a case of motion without matter?<br /> <br /> It is true that conceptions, sensations and aspirations are not material facts. Yet they are always somebody’s conceptions, sensations and aspirations; they cannot exist without man.  And man is not immaterial. Therefore the succession of ideas, emotions, etc., is far from being motion without matter; it takes place in man, a material being. It is the idealists alone who, in the face of all the scientific and practical evidence, maintain that ideas may exist without a material expositor. In fact, however, whether apart from mind or within it, motion without matter is impossible.<br /> <br />  <br /> <br />  <br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> === 5. Space and Time ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. Can Matter Exist Outside Time and Space? ====<br /> Every material object has shape, is three-dimensional, occupies a certain place, is at a definite distance from other objects and at some angle to them. These relations of coexistence of material objects are known as spatial forms and relations or &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;space&lt;/span&gt;. The succession or simultaneous occurrence of material facts, the duration of each and the irreversible character of the succession of phenomena, which has but one dimension, one direction—from past to present—all these relations of material phenomena are called temporal relations or relations in time.<br /> <br /> Can matter exist outside space and time?<br /> <br /> This question can occur only to those who acknowledge the existence of matter. The subjective idealists, who deny the existence of anything apart from mind, hold that space and time exist solely in man’s mind. All those, however, who never question the existence of matter as an objective reality take it for granted that all material phenomena exist in space and time, outside man’s consciousness, just as matter does.<br /> <br /> The question whether matter can exist outside space and time was posed in the 18th century by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;–&lt;/span&gt;1804). He recognised that the objects around us exist apart from mind and independently of it. “...I am just as certainly conscious that there are things external to me...”, he wrote, “as I am that I myself exist....”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-51|51]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Vis-a-vis time and space, Kant argued that, whereas spatial and temporal relations are inherent in things themselves, we can only learn about this through our contact with things, from experience, in the course of which “...objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations, partly rouse our powers of understanding into activity, to compare, to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions... .”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-52|52]]&lt;/sup&gt; Experience is the source of our conception of things. It is impossible to observe all facts of a kind (for example, al&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;l&lt;/span&gt; instances of bodies submerged in liquids).  Therefore, no matter how many facts we have observed, we cannot deduce from that experience any universal rule admitting no exception.  We cannot, for instance, assert that all bodies immersed in a liquid are subject to pressure. We can only draw a partial conclusion from experience since there may be some bodies which do not undergo pressure. Consequently, “if... a judgement carries with it strict and absolute universality, that is, admits of no possible exception, it is not derived from experience...”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-53|53]]&lt;/sup&gt; Our geometrical judgements about space (e.g., that a straight line is the shortest line between two points) are conceived as universal rules admitting of no exceptions.  Our judgements about time are equally assumed to be rules without exceptions. Hence, these judgements have not been derived from experience. And if our judgements about time and space are not founded on experience, then their source is clearly not outside the mind but within it. Consequently, the ideas of space and time are inherent in the mind as forms of contemplation which are present there before any actual contemplation, observation or experience.<br /> <br /> To prove his idea, Kant also adduced the following. Imagine that everything has disappeared: you will see empty space in your mind’s eye. But try to imagine that not only things but the very space they occupied has also disappeared, and you will find it impossible. One can imagine that no events occur.  But it is impossible to imagine that time itself has disappeared. Consequently, the notions of space and time are inherent in the mind and are so firmly fixed in it that, try as it might, it cannot get rid of them. In other words, notions of space and time are built into the mind, and are present there before and regardless of any observation.<br /> <br /> Kant’s contention that our notions of space and time have nothing corresponding to them in the real world, and that they do not indicate actual, objectively existing relations or properties of things but ideal relations existing only in the mind makes him a subjective idealist.  According to his thinking, the notions of space and time are a pair of glasses, as it were, through which we look at things. Outside our consciousness, there is neither time nor space.  Thus, Kant arrives at the conclusion that matter exists apart from time and space.<br /> <br /> Kant is right in saying that universal judgements cannot be derived from experience, from contemplation. Nevertheless, experience is not merely passive contemplation; it also actively influences things, which makes it possible to substantiate judgements of a universal nature.<br /> <br /> Our mathematical judgements of space and time possess, according to Kant, universality not present in other scientific assumptions which Kant himself acknowledged as being derived from experience. But laws discovered in physics, chemistry and other sciences are also of a general character. Contrary to what Kant believed, there is no gulf between geometrical (and, generally, mathematical) and other scientific concepts. We imagine a point, for instance, as a tiny spot on a sheet of paper, a straight line, as a thin thread made taut by a weight hanging from it, and a plane, as the surface of a mirror. Our conceptions of space are visual images reproducing what we saw or felt.<br /> <br /> Evolving concepts of space, geometry singled out some properties and relations of physical objects, neglecting all their other properties and relations. Geometrical figures have neither stuff, colour nor temperature. The spatial characteristics themselves are reflected in geometrical concepts in a rather peculiar way.  In the classical work of the known Greek mathematician, Euclid (about 300 B. C.), a point is defined as something without dimensions, having position only; a line, as having but one dimension, length; a plane surface, as having two dimensions, length and breadth. As well as we may understand it, we cannot picture it.  These notions are represented in the mind by a spot, a thread or a mirror. Yet, although our notions of space are undoubtedly consistent with the actual spatial relations and properties of things, they are also distinct in that geometrical notions, like all other scientific notions, are more exhaustive and accurate than our notions.<br /> <br /> However, geometrical concepts, too, are only approximate reflections of actual spatial relations, being generalisations derived from previous experience. As geometrical concepts take into consideration but a small number of spatial properties and relations of things, disregarding all other properties and relations, one can deduce from the known properties of things hypotheses logically following from them. In sciences founded on experiment, every hypothesis needs to be made more exact and correct as new evidence is obtained. The same holds for geometry whose propositions do not express properties of bodies with absolute exactness, but only approximately and, like all other scientific theories, have to be refined as new knowledge is accumulated.<br /> <br /> The invention of new geometries by N. I. Lobachevsky (in 1826) and G. Riemann (in 1854) showed that geometrical judgements were indeed subject to improvement and correction, and that our judgements about space do not possess “universality admitting of no possible exception’. Thus, the postulate that only one straight line can be drawn through a point in a plane parallel to another straight line in the same plane (or, to put it differently, that there is only one line parallel to the given line through a fixed point) has no effect in Lobachevskian geometry. Meanwhile, physicists have found real objects to which this geometry conforms. In the 20th century, the theory of relativity has introduced even more drastic corrections to our notions of space and time. Clearly, such a fundamental change in our notions and judgements about space and time is due to the further accumulation of experience.<br /> <br /> This offers a most convincing refutation of Kant’s idea that these notions are not rooted in experience and, similarly, of his deduction that they originate in the mind and not in the real world. If the idea that things exist apart from us, which we derive from our contact with . things, reflects their objective existence (and Kant acknowledged it), then the notions of space and time, equally derived from contact with things, also reflect objectively existing spatial and temporal properties and relations of material phenomena.<br /> <br /> Practice, which refutes the idealist conception of space and time, confirms the materialist understanding of them, according to which there are, besides the perception and conception of time and space, also spatial and temporal properties and relations existing outside man’s consciousness. Such relations are inherent in all material phenomena. &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Time and spac&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;e&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt; are universal forms of the existence of matter&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> What is the basis of this materialist view?<br /> <br /> Firstly, perceptions occur independently of man’s will and mind. This, among other things, makes most philosophers, including Kant, acknowledge that perceptions are produced by objects existing outside consciousness.<br /> <br /> Secondly, we derive the most authentic scientific knowledge of nature from research into changes which occur only in space and time.  What would geology be without data on the spatial disposition of the layers of the Earth’s crust, the location of the continents, etc., and the length of the successive geological epochs?  What would remain of electromagnetic theory if we took away the data on the spatial arrangement of the electromagnetic fields and the movement of electromagnetic waves in time and space? Natural science cannot exist without notions of space and time which faithfully reflect the real world.<br /> <br /> Thirdly, the behaviour of animals demonstrates that they coordinate their actions with spatial and temporal relations in nature. Mach himself, who denied that time and space exist outside the mind, admitted that much. He wrote: “...time and space are systems of the sensations of orientation,”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-54|54]]&lt;/sup&gt; providing for biologically expedient reactions of adaptation. This undoubtedly applies to men as well. “If the sensations of time and space can give man a biologically purposive orientation,’ Lenin wrote, “this can only be so on the condition that these sensations reflect an &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;objective reality&lt;/span&gt; outside man: man could never have adapted himself biologically to the environment if his sensations had not given him an &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;objectively correct&lt;/span&gt; idea of it.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-55|55]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Fourthly, man (unlike animals) transforms the environment, adapting it to his own needs.  In doing so, he evolves and clarifies his ideas of space and time. If these ideas were not more or less correct reflections of the objectively existing relations between real things, any attempt to rely on them whilst changing reality would be doomed to failure.<br /> <br /> ==== §2. Do Time and Space Exist Outside Matter? ====<br /> Most philosophers who were convinced of the objective reality of space and time (from ancient philosophers to 18th-century philosophers) held that independently of atoms, there exists a limitless void in which they move; that—as the 17th-century French materialist Gassendi wrote&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;outside atoms there exists only time, which does not depend on things, for whether things exist or not, and whether they move or not, it always flows evenly, being subject to no change. Yet, the great Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B. C.), who recognised the objective reality of space and time, contended that spatial properties and relations were inseparable from things, having no existence outside matter, and that vacuum did not exist.<br /> <br /> In the middle ages, this idea of Aristotle's was thought to mean that “nature abhors a vacuum”. Until the 17th century, they saw a confirmation of this in the operation of a pump, in which liquid moves upwards, overcoming its own weight, to prevent vacuum (a clearance between the level of the liquid in the tube and the piston). The idea that space was inseparable from matter was supported by the eminent 17th-century philosophers Descartes and Leibniz. Arguing that vacuum could not possibly exist, Descartes wrote: “There is...  nothing but matter in the entire Universe&amp;quot;.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-56|56]]&lt;/sup&gt; All adjacent bodies touched, transmitting further pressure or impact which instantaneously spread throughout the universe. Leibniz, too, wrote that “...there is no space in which there is no matter”.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-57|57]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Nevertheless, many scientists considered that vacuum really existed. The founder of classical mechanics, Isaac Newton, was one of them. He believed in the existence of absolute space—an absolutely immovable void, separating celestial bodies from one another; and of absolute time—a flow of continuity existing. separately from matter and not to be changed by any material processes or events. That conception of space and time was predominant in natural science till the beginning of the 20th century.<br /> <br /> Marx and Engels expressed some very important ideas on whether space and time can exist without matter. Engels wrote that the idea of absolute time and space existing apart from and independently of matter was a graphic expression of metaphysical materialism. He criticised that view from the standpoint of dialectical materialism.<br /> <br /> How is a concept formed? From a multiplicity of properties, relations and states of objects we select the most essential, discarding the rest. A concept is indeed a reflection in our consciousness of different things, phenomena and processes in terms of their more substantial characteristics. But the source of concepts which arose long ago may be forgotten, and then the characteristics of a real object which underlie the concept will begin to seem to exist independently. That is what happens to the concepts of space and time which have been formed by separating from real phenomena their relations in space and time. To regard the height, length and breadth of real objects, as well as the simultaneity, succession and duration of real processes, as existing separately from these objects and processes, is equivalent to accepting that viscosity exists somewhere apart from viscous substances, and independently of them, or that reason exists separately from men. “It is the old story,” wrote Engels. “First of all, one makes sensuous things into abstractions and then one wants to know them through the senses, to see time and smell space.... The two forms of existence of matter are naturally nothing without matter, empty concepts, abstractions which exist only in our minds.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-58|58]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> But if it is true that space and time are forms of the existence of matter, it is equally true that they do not exist apart from matter.<br /> <br /> The dialectical interpretation of space and time proposed by Engels clearly pointed in the direction in which the scientific investigation of these forms of existence of matter was to go. And 20th-century physics has indeed followed that direction.<br /> <br /> Drawing on discoveries made at the end of the 19th century, mainly that all interactions occur at a finite velocity, and that the velocity of light is independent of the inertial system to which it is referred, Albert Einstein (1879–1955) evolved the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;theory of relativity&lt;/span&gt;. This theory ended the view that the properties of Space and time were independent of the motions of nearby matter. When asked to explain the gist of his theory in a few words, Einstein said: “They used to think that if all things in the world disappeared, space and time would remain; a&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;n&lt;/span&gt;d in accordance with the theory of relativity, with the disappearance of all things, space and time too must disappear.”<br /> <br /> According to the Special Theory of Relativity, all material objects and processes exist in the integral form of space-time, of which the relations of space and time are different but inseparable aspects. Two events are separated by a space-time interval which is independent of the framework of reference. The time interval between events is but one aspect of their space-time characteristic; it varies depending on the system of reference. So does the space interval, the size of which depends on the reference system.<br /> <br /> According to the General Theory of Relativity, the local properties of both space and time are direct consequences of the existence of nearby matter. In turn, they have a causal influence on the motions of that matter. Let us note that the space-time pattern may change depending on circumstances. Thus in the cosmos it is different from ordinary experience.<br /> <br /> These discoveries have shown that the single absolute space-time form of matter’s existence is expressed in temporal relations and spatial relations which are relative; that not only are space and time inseparable from matter, but their pattern depends on the distribution, movement and interaction of masses of matter and has an impact on them; and that the common characteristics of space-time are expressed in different space-time patterns, depending on the nature and scale of the material phenomena.<br /> <br /> The idealists seek to interpret these discoveries to their own advantage. They contend that the dependence of a body’s length and of the time interval on the frame of reference presumably means that relations of space and time are not inherent in matter at all, but depend entirely on the observer's subjective qualities and reactions. Thus the idealists assert that a body's length and the time interval between events exist merely in our consciousness. Dingle, for instance, claims that this follows from the theory of relativity, which, he alleges, “declines all attempts to assign to matter any properties whatsoever’. ‘“Now this,&amp;quot; commented Max Born, “is a misrepresentation of the theory of relativity, which has never abandoned the attempt to assign properties to matter, but has refined the methods of doing so...”<br /> <br /> To make it clearer, here is the example suggested by Max Born. Let us suppose that we cannot for some reason directly observe a cardboard circle but can see the shadows it casts on some screens placed at different angles to it. All the shadows will be different save that they will all be elliptical. On studying the axes of the elliptical shadows, we shall have enough evidence to show that they have been cast by a circle and to find its radius. The projections of the properties of the object concerned (the cardboard circle) relative to other objects, which play the part of reference systems (the screens), differ. But in each case the real properties of the object concerned (the circle) remain identical. Shadows of different size and shape are relative expressions of the absolute size and shape of the cardboard circle.  Similarly, bodies and time intervals of different length are relative expressions of the absolute length of the space-time interval, which is independent of the reference system. The shadows cast by the circle are as real as the circle and the screens. The different lengths of the bodies and time intervals in different reference systems are as real, as independent of consciousness, as the space-time interval (whose expressions they are) and the corresponding reference systems.<br /> <br /> It is clear that the interpretation given by the new theory to space and time is not only dialectical but also materialistic.<br /> <br /> Such are the philosophical conclusions drawn from the latest achievements of natural science, that they have not only confirmed the dialectical-materialist proposition that space and time are inseparable from each other and from matter, but have also made it possible to refine and enrich that proposition.<br /> <br />  <br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> &lt;span id=&quot;index_split_001.xhtml&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> === 6. Consciousness ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. Consciousness Is a Reflection of the Material World ====<br /> Once there was a patient in a hospital who had lost the use of all his senses except hearing and sight. The doctors noticed that whenever he shut his eyes and covered his ears, he became unconscious. He regained consciousness only when his good sense-organs were functioning.<br /> <br /> Here is a more ordinary case. When sleeping “like the dead’’, without dreams, a dog-tired person loses consciousness. He has neither ideas nor feeling. He does not react to strong light or noise. But if his sense-organs are subjected to some unusually strong stimulation, he will react to it. If, for instance, a shot is fired at close quarters, he will hear the sound.  The sensation will be followed by notions, emotions and, finally, by ideas—he will regain consciousness. This shows that a person who experiences no sensations has neither notions nor thoughts. Thoughts may appear and exist only on the basis of sensations, perceptions and notions, as the result of their being processed.<br /> <br /> What is sensation, what is perception? When touching one thing we feel that it is a sphere, and touching another, we feel that it is a cube, our perceptions reflect the shape of these objects. When we recall how we felt these bodies, we have a representation of them in our mind.  It is clear that representations, just like sense-perceptions, are reflections of different aspects, characteristics and relations of material objects.  Ideas (notions, judgements, conclusions), as we saw, arise, in the final analysis, from sensations and perceptions, which are mental reflections of the external world. Hence, all our ideas are also mental reflections of the external world.<br /> <br /> Every reflection is secondary to what is reflected. Therefore, consciousness is secondary to matter. In denying this, idealists stubbornly oppose the idea that consciousness, thought in particular, is a reflection of the real world.  How do they defend their view?<br /> <br /> We know that to err is human. What does an erroneous idea reflect, which has nothing corresponding to it in the real world? Goblins, brownies or mermaids do not really exist, yet the notions of goblin, brownie and mermaid do. But, say the idealists, if these notions do not reflect anything, then other notions and conceptions equally do not reflect reality.<br /> <br /> Idealists also argue that while such notions as “eight”, ‘the square root of 81”, “a plane”, etc., are commonly accepted to be true, it becomes clear on analysis that there is no such thing as “eight in general’’ in the materia&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;l&lt;/span&gt; world any more than there is a real life “square root of 81’ or any body which has length and breadth but no height. Hence, mathematical notions have no objects to correspond to them and therefore they are not reflections of anything at all.<br /> <br /> The idealists also assert that people have numerous notions of things that ceased to exist long ago. Palaeontology and history entirely comprise ideas of things that existed long ago and disappeared. On the other hand, man is capable of looking into the future. Tsiolkovsky, for example, predicted interplanetary flights at a time when they could only be dreamed of. What reality did his judgements reflect then?<br /> <br /> Let us first take a look at the so-called false notions, such as “mermaid”, for instance. It implies a half-woman half-fish, fond of dancing and singing and given to enticing handsome young fellows to their ruin. Women, fish, dancers, singers and “cruel charmers” indeed exist.  The notion is false merely because it combines things which in reality are separate (woman and fish), and disjoins things which go together in a living being (the trunk is separated from the legs and the fish tail from the fish).  The idea of a mermaid is therefore a reflection of reality, but it is a distorted reflection.<br /> <br /> Certainly no “eight as such” or two-dimensional bodies exist in nature, but then there are no creatures with merely the general characteristics of the bee, eagle or elephant; they are all quite definite, individual animals. The fact, however, that the notion of an animal does not imply every possible characteristic of an elephant, and that the notion of fruit does not imply every possible characteristic of an apple, makes it no less certain that these notions reflect some characteristics of the elephant (and other animals as well), or some characteristics of the apple (and other fruit as well). The peculiar quality of a notion is just that it reflects only some, and not all, characteristics of an object. This also refers to the mathematical notions. The notion “‘eight’ implies merely the quantitative aspect of things, regardless of everything else. The notion “a plane” implies only two dimensions, regardless of the third dimension and all other characteristics of bodies. Yet this one-sidedness, so to speak, of mathematical notions does not alter in the least the fact that they are reflections of properties and relations which really exist.<br /> <br /> Now let us turn to situations where we think of what is no more or what is yet to be. From the metaphysical point of view, the world is a totality of &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;final&lt;/span&gt; things, and so the idea of a thing which does not exist at the moment does not reflect anything. And from the dialectical point of view, the world is a totality of processes, connections and relations, and so ideas reflect processes, connections and relations rather than final things. In its progress from the state in which it was a hundred million years ago to the state in which it is now, the Earth has passed through numerous intermediate stages. Learning the connections between these stages—the laws of geochemistry and geophysics, which exist now too—and starting from the present condition of the Earth, scientists mentally fathom the condition in which it was hundreds of millions of years ago. To quote some other examples. Having grasped the dialectical connections—physical laws which existed in his day too—Tsiolkovsky mentally traced the chain of events which would inevitably, and actually did (when men turned these laws to use), result in space travel.<br /> <br /> The historical process of capitalist society's development, which has resulted in a third of mankind embarking on socialism, also consists of definitely related stages. Having studied their relationships and starting from the state in which society was in the sixties and seventies of the 19th century, Marx mentally grasped the events that were to take place fifty or a hundred years later. In each instance, whether turned to the past or to the future, people’s ideas reflect, above all, the relationships existing at the present moment. So the argument supporting the view that thought is not reflection does not hold water either.<br /> <br /> Thus, “our consciousness is only an image of the external world”, a reflection of it. Material phenomena exist outside us, while their reflections, ‘‘the images of the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;external world&lt;/span&gt;, exist &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;within us&lt;/span&gt;.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-59|59]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Then how does thought relate to the brain?<br /> <br /> Carl Vogt, a 19th-century German scientist, answered this question by saying that thought was related to the brain in much the same way as bile to the liver. But bile is just as material as the liver which produces it. Vogt’s assertion implies that thought is as material as the brain producing it. In other words, consciousness is a variety of matter; it is matter. And matter, as we know, is that which exists outside consciousness. If we assume that consciousness &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;i&lt;/span&gt;s matter, we shall arrive at the statement: “Consciousness is that which exists outside human consciousness.” Now, that obviously makes no sense, This alone shows the absurdity of Vogt’s conclusion, which Engels called &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;vulgar materialism&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> Idealists also reduce the material world to Consciousness. What is the difference, then, between what they say and what Vogt says? It was not by chance that Lenin wrote that “to say that thought is material is to make a false step, a step towards confusing materialism and idealism.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-60|60]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> In the 17th-18th centuries, when they still knew very little about the essential distinctions between organic and inorganic nature and between man and animals, many materialist philosophers held that not only living creatures but inanimate things too were capable of thought or at least of sensation. It followed from this that even a stone was not insensible.  This doctrine, which draws no line between animate and inanimate things, and views transition from inorganic to organic nature not as the emergence of something new but merely as a variation of something old, is known as &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;hylozoism&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> Lenin opposed the metaphysical notion held by hylozoists with the dialectical view that the transition from the inanimate to the animate does not merely involve a variation of old things but also the emergence of something altogether new, of sensation, which “is associated only with definite processes in matter organised in a definite way”,&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-61|61]]&lt;/sup&gt; whereas matter which is not so organised is incapable of sensation. As he rejected both the view equating mind and matter and the view underrating the contrast between them, Lenin stressed that the difference was absolute only within the bounds of the fundamental question of philosophy.<br /> <br /> He insisted that it was not to be conceived metaphysically, as if there were nothing whatsoever in common between matter and consciousness. “...This contrast must not be made ‘excessive’, exaggerated, metaphysical ... the antithesis of matter and mind,” Lenin pointed out, “has absolute significance only within the bounds of ... the fundamental epistemological problem of what is to be regarded as primary and what as secondary. Beyond these bounds the relative character of this antithesis is indubitable.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-62|62]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> ==== §2. Reflection Is a Property of Matter ====<br /> Now what do matter and mind have in common that makes the antithesis between them relative? In answering this question, Lenin suggested that we must “assert that all matter Possesses a property which is essentially akin to sensation, the property of reflection….”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-63|63]]&lt;/sup&gt; The essence of this is that after passing through Some stages, material reflection, which is inherent in all nature, reaches one where it becomes something essentially new, turning into the mind, which, consequently, not merely differs from matter but is also linked with it by reflection, albeit of a highly peculiar nature.  This brilliant idea, put forward by Lenin in 1908, received conclusive scientific confirmation later on, especially in the second and third quarters of this century, thanks to the great strides made by neurophysiology and the emergence of information theory and cybernetics.  If a meteorite falls on to the ground at a speed not exceeding several hundred metres a second, it makes a hole not much larger than its own size. A meteorite which falls at a greater speed, breaking on impact together with the ground it falls on, makes a much larger hole than its own size. But when the speed reaches from two to four kilometres a second, both the meteorite and the ground it touches instantly turn into gas, and a huge crater is formed. Thus the trace left by a meteorite is something like the imprint of its characteristics&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;of its size, shape and composition, the speed of its flight and the angle at which it fell. A meteorite will leave different traces in solid rock and in soft grass-covered ground.  But in either instance, the trace will reproduce the meteorite’s individual features. The trace left by a meteorite is its reflection resulting from its impact on the surface of the Earth.<br /> <br /> It is the same with every reflection. When one material object acts on another, the latter changes in such a way as to reproduce certain characteristics of the former. Reflection takes place when one material phenomenon reproduces the characteristics of another material phenomenon acting on it. Dialectics, which tells us that all things are interconnected, so that “everything affects and is affected by every other thing”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-64|64]]&lt;/sup&gt; , sees interaction in every material process. That this is so follows most conclusively from modern physics which regards all natural processes as different kinds of material interaction. But interaction, the influence of material phenomena on one another, leads, as we saw, to the reflection of these phenomena in one another; and if interaction is inherent in all matter, so is reflection too.<br /> <br /> One most important feature of this relation is that ‘an image cannot exist without the thing imaged, and that the latter exists independently of that which images it.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-65|65]]&lt;/sup&gt; It takes a falling meteorite to leave a trace on the ground; but then a meteorite may exist for a very long time without falling and leaving its trace.<br /> <br /> Reflection consists in the reproduction of peculiar characteristics of the object reflected.  The reverberation of an avalanche in the mountains, for example, is a process of reflection.  The noise of the avalanche is the thing reflected, the mountains are the reflecting objects, and the reverberation is the reflection. Both the noise and reverberation consist of sound waves or air vibrations of a similar pattern. In this instance, the reflection and that which is reflected are of an identical physical nature. That, however, need not always be the case. The main sources of information on the plants of the geologic past are plant fossils preserved in the rocks: leaves, roots, fruits, flowers, etc.  Fossil leaves, for instance, reproduce every single detail of a leaf’s surface. Here, the reflection—a piece of rock—has physically nothing in common with the thing reflected, i.e., a plant.<br /> <br /> Why do we describe both the reverberation of an avalanche and plant fossils as  reflections? What is the connection between these widely different phenomena? It is the likeness between the reflection and the thing reflected. The phrase “reproduction of certain characteristics of the thing reflected” implies one-to-one correspondence between the reflection and its object, i.e., that every element or state and every relation between elements or states of a thing reflecting something corresponds to only one element or state or relation in the thing reflected. Moreover, every reflection is always limited. The impression of a leaf in the rock, for instance, reflects the spatial form of the leaf’s surface but not the cellular or molecular structure of the leaf.<br /> <br /> Depending on the nature of the reflecting thing or process, images may be reproduced in diverse forms. But no matter how different the forms may be, they are identical in content, having the same organisation as the phenomenon reflected.<br /> <br /> Such are some general characteristics of reflection both in organic and inorganic nature.<br /> <br /> ==== §3. From Irritability to Mental Activity ====<br /> Every living organism is characterised above all by &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;metabolism&lt;/span&gt;, i.e., continued interchange of material with its surroundings. Another important characteristic is what we shall term here ‘‘survivability’’, meaning the capacity of a living organism to react to external influences in a way which increases the chances of its survival. Lastly, all living organisms are capable of growth and reproduction.<br /> <br /> Earlier, we mentioned the law stating that all material systems tend to proceed towards greater chaos, developing from complex forms of motion to simple chaotic heat motion of particles. At the same time, the processes of life such as the development of species show the preservation or even increase of order.  The reactions of a grown-up animal are more orderly than those of a newborn. Species of later origin are usually more highly organised compared with those long extinct. The capacity of living bodies to &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;survive&lt;/span&gt; is of great importance to reflection. That is the main requirement which every variation in an organism must satisfy. When a ray of light, penetrating through a chink in the door of a dark cellar, falls on a green plant that has sprouted in the cellar, the stem begins to grow in the direction of the light which helps it obtain the carbon necessary for its growth. When roots strike an obstacle, they curve so as to bypass it.  Plants usually react to external influences rather slowly. But it is not always so. A pumpkin tendril, for instance, begins to curl up five minutes after being touched, and in twenty minutes coils up completely. Insectivorous plants respond even more quickly. And the simplest unicellular animals, like amoebae, infusoria, etc., react to some external stimuli very quickly.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Irritability&lt;/span&gt;—a quality which distinguishes living organisms from dead things, and which consists in a body’s capacity to react to the environment in a way which helps it survive—depends on the structure of the living organism’s body. The latter is such that, on being stimulated, (1) reflects those characteristics of the external phenomena which increase or decrease its chances of persisting in a living state, and (2) transforms the reflections into internal chemical and physical processes, enabling it to effect a response essential to self-preservation. This quality of living organisms emerged in the process of natural selection. Organisms that were built in such a way, that their reactions to the environment provided for their preservation, lived and multiplied, while all others died out. Thus, the structure of the body of a living organism is, in a way, a reflection of the conditions under which it exists.  <br /> <br /> At the basis of the mechanism responsible for transforming external stimuli into responses in plants and the simplest animals (i.e., irritability) are chemical reactions induced in organisms by different stimuli. Let us take, for example, the chain of chemical reactions and corresponding movements with which a Venus’s fly-trap (&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Dionaea muscipula&lt;/span&gt;) responds to a chain of stimuli. As an insect alights on one of the leaves, a chemical reaction starts in the plant, which makes the leaf curl up. In response to the movements of the insect which Naturally tries to get away, a chemical reaction begins, causing the projections along the outer edge of the leaf to overlap, the leaf closing on the insect and pressing against it. In response to the insect’s frantic movements, another chemical reaction sets in—the numerous small bristles on the upper surface of the leaf begin secreting a digestive fluid. The insect’s body is disintegrated and the nutrients are absorbed by the leaf. Two series of events are present here, namely, a series of stimuli and a series of corresponding chemical reactions. As both were repeated thousands of millions of times, they finally became connected in a way which reflects the relationship between the events producing the given reactions. The chemical reaction causing the leaf to curl up began to induce the chemical reaction causing the outer projections on the leaf to bend and overlap, the latter reaction, in its turn, setting off the chemical process by which the digestive fluid is produced. As the reactions are greatly accelerated by enzymes (proteins), they follow one another more quickly than the stimuli, so that the plant gives all three responses (i.e., the leaf curls up, its projections bend and overlap, and the digestive fluid is produced) even to the first stimulus (the insect alighting on the leaf). The first stimulus is the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;signal&lt;/span&gt; that the other two are to follow, and the plant responds in advance. An amoeba in pursuit of prey trying to escape behaves in a similar way.<br /> <br /> As many proteins, acting as catalysts, accelerate chemical reactions in living organisms hundreds and even thousands of millions of times, it is evident that this enormous difference in the rate at which chains of reactions occur in living organisms and the rate at which changes in the environment occur, which are reflected in the reactions, plays a great role in the life of plants and animals. In the more highly organised animals, a special tissue develops whereby an organism’s responses increasingly anticipate external phenomena. It is the nervous system. An anticipatory reflection effected through the nervous system is called a &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;reflex&lt;/span&gt;.  However, we shall discuss reflexes further on.  At this point we shall merely note that modern scientific evidence reveals that changes which are only forthcoming but which are associated with existing facts can be reflected not only by man (as was mentioned earlier) but by the simplest animals and even plants.<br /> <br /> Reflections which appear, are transmitted, stored, processed and retrieved are called &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;information&lt;/span&gt;. Information is the amount of order in the reflecting object reproducing the amount of order in the object reflected, the former being the information carrier and the latter the information source, and is used in the process of control. As every living organism is a self-regulating system, reflection in this case represents information. This cannot be said of inorganic systems, in which self-regulation is not present. Information is transmitted from the regulated part of a living system, which is in immediate contact with the environment and receives stimuli from it, to the regulating part, in which information is stored and transformed into a change by which the organism must respond to the external stimulus in order to survive. This new information is then transmitted from the regulating to the regulated part which, being in direct contact with the environment, responds to the stimulus. Information not only circulates within a living organism but is passed on from generation to generation, thus ensuring transmission of qualities by heredity.<br /> <br /> One of the great scientific discoveries of the 20th century is that heredity operates through &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;molecules&lt;/span&gt;, of which living cells consist.<br /> <br /> Since neither the emergence nor development of plants and animals is possible without natural selection, and thus without heredity, which depends on information transmission (i.e., reflection), the development of species is based entirely on biological reflective processes.<br /> <br /> There is no reason to suppose that in plants, viruses, and the simplest unicellular animals, reflection is accompanied by sensation, still less, by emotion. In their case, only irritability is present but not mental activity, even of the most primitive kind. Rudiments of mental activity are found in more highly organised, multi-celled animals not possessing a backbone (invertebrates). Most of these (insects, shellfish, earthworms) have a centralised nervous system which regulates their responses to stimuli and co-ordinates their movements. Although it is sometimes possible to produce a conditioned reflex in such animals, their behaviour is, on the whole, automatic. Their actions depend on unconditioned reflexes, i.e., responses to specific stimuli, transmitted by heredity. Thus a female spider lays her eggs in a brood-cocoon which she carries about for 15-20 days. She continues to take care of the cocoon even if the eggs are, for some reason, dead. A female spider will stay in the egg-laying posture for as long as it usually takes to lay eggs, even if she does not lay any, and then will clip the edges of the empty cocoon and carry it about just the same. Similar behaviour is found among bees and wasps too.<br /> <br /> How does this essentially differ from irritability?<br /> <br /> We have already mentioned that, with the emergence of life, all phenomena come to be divided from the point of view of their effect on the preservation of life, which may be either good or bad. Reflection in living matter not endowed with mentality consists in the differentiation of phenomena as favourable and unfavourable to life and in the regulation of appropriate responses. Hundreds of millions of years of natural selection have resulted in the emergence of conscious experience. The latter represents reflections of the characteristics of what is going on in the external world, i.e., sensations, on the one hand, and motivations to attain desirable, and avoid harmful, objects, on the other.<br /> <br /> Both sensation and motivation are subjective experiences classed as &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;mental activity&lt;/span&gt;. The subjective nature of experience (mental activity) lies in the fact that a sensation, feeling, etc., is experienced only by a specific individual (subject). Lenin noted this when he wrote that only “the usual &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;human&lt;/span&gt; sensations familiar to all” exist and ridiculed the notion of “&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;f&lt;/span&gt;ictitious sensations, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;nobody&lt;/span&gt;’s sensations,”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-66|66]]&lt;/sup&gt; which stresses the fact that every sensation must be somebody’s sensation. This refers to animals as well. With them, too, sensation is always a sensation experienced by a definite organism and non-existent outside it. We already know that sensations are reflections of external phenomena, for this reason, living beings of the same species, when exposed to the influence of the same external phenomenon, experience similar sensations. When an artist portrays objects as they appear to him, other people, as a rule, recognise their own perceptions in the portrayal. This reveals the content of sensations and notions, which does not depend on the reflecting subject (man), but on the external objects which are reflected. Similar sensations may, of course, be experienced only by beings whose sense-organs, by which the given phenomena are perceived, are similar.<br /> <br /> Mental activity is subjective also because it comprises not only reflections of the properties of external phenomena but also the subject’s attitude to them, the specific motivation.  In lower animals, it is confined to pleasure or pain, attraction or repulsion, while in highly organised beings it includes a wide range of needs and emotions.<br /> <br /> It must, however, be remembered that neither the simplest motivations of a bee nor man’s most complex requirements and emotions are purely subjective. These motivations are reflections of the significance objectively attached, as far as individuals are concerned, to the things towards or away from which the motivation is directed. These mental phenomena, like sensations, have some objective content which is independent of the subject. For this reason, we can have an idea of what others may feel under various circumstances.<br /> <br /> If sensations and motivations changed nothing in the connection between organism and environment, they would have been eliminated in the course of natural selection as useless.  I. M. Sechenov (1829-1905), a Russian physiologist, found that for living beings, sensation was of two-fold significance, serving to differentiate the conditions of an action and to guide the actions appropriate (i.e., expedient or adjustive) to these conditions. The enormous significance of sensation and motivation to the adjustment and behaviour of living organisms was also stressed by Sechenov’s follower, I. P. Pavlov (1849-1936).<br /> <br /> Changes in the environment, brought about by the vital activity of the creatures inhabiting it, depend on the particular features of both the living organisms and environment itself. Simultaneously, the changes which living organisms undergo under the impact of the environment also bear the imprint of the internal organisation of these organisms. The rabbits brought in the 15th century to the tiny Atlantic island of Porto Santo, in the absence of beasts of prey there, changed so much that a new species emerged, half the original size, with different colouring and habits. But if some other animals, e.g., foxes or wolves, had been brought to the island, they would have undergone quite a different sort of change.<br /> <br /> The environment exerts its influence on the animal only through the internal organisation of the latter. In the interrelationship of animals incapable of mental activity and their environment, the animals’ internal organisation plays a comparatively minor part, as compared to the environment. The addition of a new factor, i.e., mental activity (first, sensations and simple motivations and next, with more highly organised animals, perceptions, notions and emotions), essentially alters the interrelation of the organism and the environment. As animals develop a more complex mentality, they begin to influence their surroundings in more complex ways. Pavlov was the first to establish the presence in animals of the so-called &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;orientation reflex&lt;/span&gt;, whereby in any new situation threatening danger, all other kinds of behaviour are inhibited, and the animal performs actions based on the specific situation. When the action producing the needed result is found, this form of behaviour is fixed and conditioned reflex is established.<br /> <br /> As more and more highly organised animals appear, the significance of mental activity as a regulator of behaviour increases and so does the significance of the brain, the organ which controls uninherited forms of behaviour. A frog which has had the cerebral hemispheres excised continues to behave in the same way as before the operation. A pigeon, however, although it can still fly and keep its balance well after a similar operation, cannot properly react to stimuli and would not even feed. As for a dog, such an operation disables it completely. This shows that the brain plays an ever Greater part as the internal organisation of animals becomes more complex.<br /> <br /> ==== §4. Labour, Language and Thought ====<br /> Modern science has established that there is much in common between the nervous and mental activity of man and animals. Certainly, appreciable distinctions between them have also been found to exist. So what are the distinctive traits of human mentality, of &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;consciousness&lt;/span&gt;?<br /> <br /> Scientific data obtained in the 20th century conclusively confirm the truth of the Marxist proposition that man raised himself out of the animal world thanks to labour. Numerous excavations have yielded evidence that stone implements were fashioned back in the palaeolithic period (or the old stone age), when apeman evolved. That led to the transformation of the animal herd into a social community and the emergence of &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;language&lt;/span&gt;. At the close of the palaeolithic period, about a million years ago, primitive man, or Neanderthal man, appeared, Excavations at rock-shelters in which Neanderthalers lived have shown that they made stone adzes and pigmy tools from flint flakes. Later, in the middle palaeolithic period, when they began to hunt large animals together, Neanderthal men learned how to make flint spear tips, daggers, knives, scrapers and bone implements. The body proportions of this species and size of skull are similar to ours. But the vault of the skull is low, and the thigh and lower and upper arm bones are curved.  With the development of labour and implements in the later palaeolithic period, the primitive human herd of the Neanderthalers give way to the primitive communal society of Cro-Magnon men, who do not significantly differ physically from recent man and possess intellect of the simplest kind.<br /> <br /> An animal’s mode of life, habits and mentality are determined by the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;natural&lt;/span&gt; conditions, i.e., by its own nature and by the environment.  Man, however, is a &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;social&lt;/span&gt; being. His mode of life, activity and mentality are almost entirely determined by the kind of society in which he lives. Certainly, the emergence of labour, society and specifically human mentality (consciousness) was accompanied by essential changes in the structure and functions of the brain and nervous system in general, which, in man, have some distinctive qualities, not found in animals.  Still, an infant’s nervous system, though indispensable, is not yet a sufficient condition for Consciousness. The mentality of a child growing up in isolation from human society does not rise above an animal's, and will develop into consciousness only if the child interacts with other people, i.e., society.<br /> <br /> To be able to fashion and use implements and kill large animals, primitive men had to act jointly and circulate information of ever greater variety and scope. The advantage of common effort was two-fold. Not only did it make feasible that which was beyond the possibilities of single individuals, but it enabled the information picked up by single individuals to become accessible to all. Yet, to be accessible to all, information must be equally understandable to all. And, if it is of a multiple nature, then the signal conveying it must clearly be such as to indicate not unique but diverse phenomena that possess, at the same time, such common characteristics as must produce a uniform response in every member of the community. Then what information should such a signal convey? Different individuals may have more or less identical sensuous images and notions of similar things only if they have observed the latter under identical circumstances. If the circumstances of observation appreciably differ, so will the sensuous images differ with different individuals. The signal must, however, be common to a class of things, as well as to all those involved in a common effort. Hence, the information conveyed by a signal is not a sensuous image but a concept, a general idea; and the signal itself is a word by which the idea is expressed. Lenin wrote: “Every word (speech) already &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;u&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;niversalises&lt;/span&gt;....”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-67|67]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> The concept of a tree, for instance, contains no reference to its height, girth, shape, foliage, vertical or horizontal position. To imagine a tree devoid of size, shape and position is impossible, for nobody has ever seen it. Only a word, which is uttered and perceived as a signal reflecting the characteristics common to trees in general, makes the concept possible.  No concepts or ideas could arise without the material phenomenon—a signal which, in the present instance, represents a combination of sounds, i.e., language. “Language is as old as consciousness.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-68|68]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> That concepts cannot be formed even by highest (Anthropoid) apes is obvious enough from the following example. By imitating people, a chimpanzee learned to get bananas surrounded by burning candles. He turned on the tap, filled a mug full of water and extinguished the candles. He could also cross a pond using a raft and pole. Once, when he was brought to the pond, there was a raft with a pole at the bank, while in the middle of the pond there was another raft with some bananas on it. All round the bananas were lighted Candles, and beside them stood the familiar mug. The chimpanzee got on the first raft and reached the other raft. Picking up the mug, he got back to the bank, ran up to the tap, turned it on, filled the mug and hurried back to the pond with it, intending to put out the candles with the tap water. He proved incapable of abstracting from the distinction between water running from the tap and water in the pond and form the image of water as such. Yet even a five-year-old, when it uses one word to describe that which runs from the tap, that which fills a pond and that which falls from the sky as rain, has the notion of water as such.<br /> <br /> Man’s capacity to think is one of the principal qualities distinguishing human consciousness from the mentality of animals.<br /> <br /> An animal pays attention only to such things in its surroundings which relate to the satisfaction of its needs. It is incapable of catching the varied interactions of objects, i.e., of grasping the laws to which the latter are subject.<br /> <br /> It is quite different with man. His ancestors could already use one object (unsuitable for immediate consumption, e.g., a stone) to act on another so as to obtain yet another object, an implement, which equally would not be able to satisfy a biological need. An implement cannot be fashioned from just any kind of stone but only from hard and durable stone, which must also be workable. The fashioning stone, too, must meet certain requirements.  The fashioning requires a specific technique, and the implement must be of a specific shape.  Haphazard strokes and just any shape would be to no purpose. To kill the game, the implement must be applied in a certain way. It is a chain in which every link is connected with its neighbours in a specific manner. So that they could work, our ancestors had to find out about these interconnections and relations.  Consequently, the latter had to be correctly reflected by the mind. Actions, both fruitful and fruitless, were repeated thousands of millions of times, and in the course of hundreds of millennia there gradually began to form the habit of relating the reflections of objects in the mind in the same way as they are related in nature.<br /> <br /> This habit involved not only sporadic phenomena, but also such as occur everywhere and always. For example, “if an object is harder than a second object and the latter is harder than a third, then the first object is harder than the third’. Or, “if an object is inside a second object and the latter is inside a third, then the first object is inside the third’. Thus, man learned to infer the unknown from the known, the unobserved from the observed, and that which is to be from that which is. Thanks to this capacity, engendered by labour, our ancestors arrived at this train of &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;reasoning&lt;/span&gt;: if I bring one kind of stone to bear on another, I Shall obtain an object with which, by using it in a certain way, I shall be able to kill a certain kind of game.<br /> <br /> Animals’ activity consists in their adapting themselves to the environment. In doing so, the former certainly affect the latter. The destruction by starfish of more than 350 square kilometres of the Great Barrier Reef, off the north-east coast of Australia, from 1966 to 1969 is but one example of this. Nevertheless, such changes are unintentional and, as often as not, harmful to the animals that have brought them about. Human activity, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;labour&lt;/span&gt;, on the other hand, consists in man’s adapting nature to himself by completely refashioning things, so as to make nature serve his own needs. This was reflected in the mind by way of a substantial remodelling of perceptions and notions, emergence of concepts, deductions—in short, of &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;ideas&lt;/span&gt;. To conclude, one of the principal qualities differentiating human consciousness from animal mentality, i.e., thought, owes its rise to &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;labour&lt;/span&gt; and &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;language&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> Let us note also that in human labour, unlike animal activity, the creation of a new object, e.g., an implement, is preceded by an image of it. To form such an image merely from the correlation of sense-perceptions and representations is impossible, as sensuous images reflect nothing but the objects previously observed. A new implement is, however, an object previously unobserved.<br /> <br /> Useful information acquired by a generation of animals is transmitted to the next only biologically, being embodied in the genetic code, i.e., by heredity. Hence the extremely slow evolution of animal species other than man. In human society, however, information is passed on from generation to generation with the help of language and is objectified in implements and other articles of material and Spiritual culture. And this enormously speeds up the rate of progress.<br /> <br /> ==== §5. Subject and Object in Consciousness ====<br /> It has been shown by scientists in the Soviet Union and other countries that both the environment and the animal's physical condition, mental experience, reactions and their results, have an effect on the animal as an integral whole, an entity existing at each given point of time. In this entity, according to the observation of Henri Wallon (France), the ‘subjective and objective factors form an indivisible unity.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-69|69]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> As it does not single out either the environment or itself from this situation, the animal does not mentally reflect the relations between itself and the environment. Thus, “...the animal does not ‘&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;relate&lt;/span&gt;’ itself to anything ... for the animal its relation to others does not exist as a relation.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-70|70]]&lt;/sup&gt; Both the animal's orientation activity, aimed at finding the most suitable tactics, and retention of the method hit upon reflect merely the unity of the surroundings, the animal's state, its response and the end result in a definite situation, whereas man, in the process of labour, masters some connections of the external world, and some connections between his own and other workers’ efforts. Ever since our ancestors began to master those connections, the latter were reflected increasingly in man’s mind. The ability to discriminate between the reflections of the environment and of oneself (and so of the relation between oneself and the environment) was especially important in this respect. In its turn, the reflection of the environment became dissected into images of things, people, their actions and relations, the reflection of oneself—into images of one’s own body, its parts and their interactions, and, lastly, into images of one’s own conscious experience. Relations between these images, as they exist in the mind, reflect the relations between their prototypes, as they are in reality. In this way, the animal's mentality is transformed into human mentality, i.e., &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;consciousness&lt;/span&gt;. “Consciousness is at first, of course, merely consciousness concerning the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;immediate&lt;/span&gt; sensuous environment and consciousness of the limited connection with other persons and things outside the individual who is growing self-conscious.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-71|71]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Man owes his capacity to detach himself from the environment to social relations above all. To be able to separate from the situation all that which belongs to him alone and become conscious of himself and his attitude to external existence, man must associate with his fellow-creatures, with whom he establishes relations in the process of labour.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;If&lt;/span&gt; it is true that the consciousness of self and a conscious attitude to the external world is what fundamentally distinguishes human intelligence from the animal’s, it is no less true that man’s capacity to think about his own ideas, sensations, feelings, strivings, etc., is of equal significance. The ideal phenomena that occur in the mind itself are reflected in consciousness as well as what happens in the environment and man’s own body.<br /> <br /> Consciousness is capable of imaging itself, of being a “reflection of a reflection&amp;quot;. As I recall the impression made on me by the snow which covered the top of a mountain I saw from a distance, I think of my own perception.  As I analyse the opinion I have formed of somebody I met yesterday, I think of my own thoughts. As I do it, I am aware that my perception is but an approximate reflection, and the snow may well be not such a pure white as it seemed to me from afar; and I realise that my judgement of the man I met yesterday is only an approximate reflection of what he may prove to be in fact. Man’s consciousness reflects not only relations existing in the external world and relations between himself and the external world, but also the relations between his own sensations, representations and concepts on the one hand, and the things whose reflections and copies all of these are, on the other. Man correlates the mental images he forms and their archetypes as copy and original.<br /> <br /> While acting under the influence of its needs and psychological responses, the animal is not aware Of the latter, as it has no mental capacity of ‘‘self-reflection’’. Man, too, may have motivations (e.g., attraction or repulsion) he is utterly unconscious of, although his behaviour may be greatly influenced by them. Still, man is aware of many of his needs and aspirations as goals which he sets himself and consciously pursues.<br /> <br /> In man, the capacity for reflection, which animals also possess, is carried to a much higher level.<br /> <br /> The formulation of a goal and elaboration of a suitable plan of action proceeds in the aforementioned way, whereby external objects and their relations, the conscious individual and his attitude to the objects are all reflected in the mind. These reflections represent a sort of substitute, or model, of objects and connections. Man can mentally use these substitutes (models) in much the same way as he would handle their material originals, had he to deal with the matter practically. Before taking any practical steps, which may or may not help him achieve his purpose, he can mentally rehearse his actions, as it were, so as to see what their results may be, and select the best plan of action.<br /> <br /> ==== §6. The Highest Known Form of Reflection ====<br /> For all its peculiar character, reflection of the world in the human mind is merely another stage in the development of the forms of reflection existing even before man. Demonstrating that the higher animals’ behaviour shows the simplest forms of disintegration of an unfamiliar object into components (analysis), combination of things and actions to achieve a goal (synthesis), and what Pavlov was later to term orientation activity (a kind of experiment), Engels wrote: “The basic features of the method are the same and lead to the same results in man and animals, so long as both operate or make shift merely with these elementary methods. On the other hand, dialectical thought—precisely because it presupposes investigation of the nature of concepts themselves—is only possible for man....”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-72|72]]&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Thus, before human consciousness had evolved, its moderately developed prerequisites already existed in animals. Animals could form subjective images of the objective world (sensations, perceptions, representations) and have a fairly wide range of feelings long before men appeared. Therefore the separation of subject from object was nothing fortuitous. Man’s mind anticipates reality by years and decades. But anticipatory reflection, though extending over smaller periods, is what other organisms have too. Generally speaking, all characteristics of the human mind, i.e., consciousness, are due to society. But human society did not spring out of nothing either; it developed from the animal herd.<br /> <br /> All these facts must be borne in mind if we are to fathom—as Engels wrote—“the prehistory of the human mind, for tracing the various stages of its development, from the simple protoplasm ... of the lowest organisms right up to the thinking human brain. Without this prehistory, however, the existence of the thinking human brain remains a miracle.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-73|73]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Idealists maintain that consciousness is an inexplicable property of the mysterious immaterial “soul”. However, anthropology, neurophysiology, neuropathology, zoopsychology, and other sciences have shown that this contention has not a leg to stand on. &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Cybernetics&lt;/span&gt; has been particularly effective in disproving the idealist conception of consciousness and  provides scientific evidence in support of the dialectical-materialist view. This science deals with automatic control and communication mechanisms in diverse systems, such as a machine, a complex of machines, an organism, a plant or animal species, man and, finally, society. On the basis of cybernetics, devices have been developed which can receive, store, analyse, retrieve and transmit information. Self-teaching systems, biomedical disease-diagnosing computers, etc., have been developed. Both the theoretical results of cybernetics and results obtained with the aid of computers prove the unity of the reflectory processes in animate and inanimate world, at premental and mental levels, in man’s nervous system and society's economic system.<br /> <br /> All these scientific achievements of the 20th century forcefully confirm Lenin’s idea that, apart from the question as to whether the ideal or the material is primary, “the difference of the ideal from the material is also not unconditional….&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-74|74]]&lt;/sup&gt; For, besides the difference between them, the material and ideal phenomena are similar in that in both there occurs, as the result of the action of some material objects on other material objects, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;reflection&lt;/span&gt; of the former in the latter, the reflection which lies at the very root of matter. Consciousness stands out merely as the highest of the known forms of reflection, as the supreme product of matter, as “a function of that particularly complex fragment of matter called the human brain&amp;quot;.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-75|75]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> === 7. Laws of Materialist Dialectics ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. What Is a Law? ====<br /> In 1911, Ernest Rutherford, a British physicist, calculated how alpha rays would be scattered by an atom of gold, should its nucleus be a point object, and how they would be scattered, should the nucleus be larger than that. Then he exposed a thin foil of gold to the action of alpha rays. The scattering indicated that the atomic nucleus has a diameter of roughly one thousand-millionth of a millimetre, i.e., that the atomic nucleus is a point object.  The discovery worked a revolution in the views on the structure of the atom. No doubt, Rutherford could repeat his experiment as many times as he liked. But his discovery, the connection between his calculations, experiments and conclusions, was absolutely unique. Rutherford could no more re-discover what he had once discovered than be born once again.<br /> <br /> Yet the unconditioned reflex (e.g., the involuntary blinking of the eye when an object ap&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;p&lt;/span&gt;ears suddenly right in front of it) implies a relation repeated many times not only during the lifetime of any one person, but throughout hundreds of generations of men.<br /> <br /> Thus, some relations occur only once and some are repeated. Moreover, they may be essential and inessential. For example, hydrogen and nitrogen combine to make ammonia only at definite pressures and temperatures and in the presence of a catalyst accelerating the reaction. The relation between them is essential to the making of ammonia.<br /> <br /> As for inessential relations, it must be borne in mind that those which may be inessential in one respect may prove essential in some other, and vice versa.<br /> <br /> There may also be chance and necessary relations. How long an animal may live depends on the circumstances of its birth and life. The relation can be multiform. It may be such that the animal will live merely a few hours or days, or it could be such that the animal will live several decades. These are relations which may or may not occur, depending on the circumstances, and, in this sense, we may call them chance relations. But whatever the circumstances of an animal's birth and life, it must die sooner or later. Death is inevitable, and in this sense, the relation between birth and death is a necessary one.<br /> <br /> Different relations are of varying significance to the understanding of all that occurs both outside and within us, as well as to the success of our activities in any field. The most significant are those which are &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;recurring&lt;/span&gt; (i.e., common to many things and processes), essential and &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;necessary&lt;/span&gt;. Such relations are called &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;laws&lt;/span&gt;.  A law is a relation which persists as long as phenomena subject to it persist (regardless of any change they may undergo during that time).<br /> <br /> The laws of physics, chemistry, biology, history, political economy, and all scientific laws in general, are mental reflections of the laws governing the development of nature and society, which themselves are &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;recurring, essential and necessary relations&lt;/span&gt; existing independently of the mind and discovered by men as they investigate nature, society and thought.<br /> <br /> We have already mentioned that, as it draws general conclusions from the findings of particular sciences and from scientific laws concerning separate aspects of reality, dialectical materialism arrives at the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;most general laws&lt;/span&gt;, called the laws of dialectics. Let us see now what they are.<br /> <br /> &lt;span id=&quot;index_split_001.xhtml#calibre_toc_53&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> === §2. The Law of Transition of Quantity into Quality&lt;span id=&quot;index_split_001.xhtml#anchor67&quot; class=&quot;s-t&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;index_split_001.xhtml#anchor68&quot; class=&quot;s-t&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> <br /> The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus (530-470 B. C.), whom Lenin called one of the founders of dialectics, said that &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;everything is always changing and always moving.&lt;/span&gt; This is how he illustrated his idea. When you step into a river for the second time, water has already flowed downstream, so you are actually in different water. Hence, you cannot step into the same river twice. Cratylus, a disciple of Heraclitus, went even further. He said that you cannot step into the same river even once, for even as you are immersed into the water it keeps flowing, and your foot is in different water every instant. Generally, said Cratylus, you cannot make a true statement about anything because even as you are uttering the words the thing you are talking about disappears, giving way to something else. Thus, whatever you may say can only be false.<br /> <br /> At first sight, this statement seems a mere quibble. But a closer examination reveals that it follows naturally from a definite conception of change and motion.<br /> <br /> According to Cratylus, change is the disappearance of the old and appearance of the new.  From this standpoint, an impassable gulf lies between water that flowed downstream a moment ago and that which has taken its place.  How should change appear to a consistent adherent of this view? He should see a fantastic vision like this: a cloud floating before his eyes is displaced in a flash by a spreading oak, a sleeping kitten, a crag, a dancer, and so forth, all coming in quick succession.<br /> <br /> That was, of course, an exaggeration. But the view on change as the fina&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;l&lt;/span&gt; disappearance of some objects and sudden appearance of others essentially implies that every object exists but for a moment, perishing almost as soon as it has appeared. Could anyone say anything about such an object, which would be consistent with its real nature? Certainly not. Were change indeed as Cratylus conceived it, no true statements would be possible at all.<br /> <br /> But it is not so in reality. Although material objects are in a process of change, they do not disappear at once but persist for varying lengths of time. Whereas a cloud’s existence is comparatively short, the age of a cliff runs into millions of years. The mass of water or ice particles we call the cloud does not spring out of nothing; it results from condensation of vapour. Nor does it turn into nothing when it disappears. And so it is whenever anything appears or disappears. Therefore, to think that &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;every&lt;/span&gt; change implies the destruction of one object and the appearance of another can only be erroneous.<br /> <br /> The contrary view is that no changing object disappears. So, for instance, the Ganges, for all the changes it has undergone, is still the same great river of Hindustan as it was hundreds of thousands of years ago, and as it will be hundreds of thousands of years hence.<br /> <br /> Now let us take the view in direct opposition to Cratylus, i.e, that every change is a change in what was, is and will be, and check it against scientific evidence.<br /> <br /> By using a microfilm, the division of a living cell (which in the human body takes from one to two hours) can be observed. As it divides, the cell undergoes a number of vital changes such as the halving of chromosomes, fission of the content of the cell, etc., but the cell still retains its identity. There then comes a point where these gradual changes end. The old cell disappears and two new ones appear.<br /> <br /> It is the same with plants. Buds develop gradually, undergoing changes imperceptible to the eye, and up to a point they are still buds. Then the gradual development is interrupted. The buds break and the tree is suddenly covered with foliage. A seed is a living body in which metabolism and other processes go on all the time, and often for a very long time. Yet, regardless of all these changes, a seed remains a seed until the moment when a leap takes place. The seed coat breaks and the embryo begins to sprout. The seed is replaced by a plant which did not exist until then.<br /> <br /> Consequently, it is erroneous to say that &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;every&lt;/span&gt; change in a plant or an animal implies the disappearance of something that did, and appearance of something that did not, exist before the change. It is, however, equally wrong to say that &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;every&lt;/span&gt; change in plants and animals is merely a change in what did, does and will exist. As a matter of fact, both kinds of changes occur—the change in what existed and continues to exist (it never stops) and the change which represents the destruction of old and appearance of new objects (i.e., a break in continuity, a leap).<br /> <br /> Botanical and zoological evidence proves both Cratylus and those of the diametrically Opposite opinion to be wrong.<br /> <br /> At this point, it is appropriate to recall the processes in inanimate nature already mentioned, which also present a unity of change in the old and the appearance of the new. No matter how one or more particles move about in space, these processes are still mechanical and reversible. But as soon as the number of chaotically moving particles attains a high enough level, a new form of motion appears, viz., heat processes, which are irreversible.<br /> <br /> This holds of society as well. Contrary to the reformists, who claim that capitalism may turn into socialism through a series of gradual changes, the latter merely prepare the ground for socialism which emerges only after a revolution, a break in continuity. Of course, exploitative capitalist society persists from the time the Capitalist productive relations become predominant till the moment they are abolished by a revolution. It undergoes continuous significant changes along with the growth of its productive forces, concentration of capital, etc. Nevertheless, this all serves to aggravate the contradictions inherent in capitalism and intensify the class struggle. Only a break in continuity, a revolutionary upheaval, dislodging the bourgeoisie from government and taking the principal means of production out of their hands, can end capitalism and bring forth a new society based on public ownership, in which power is taken by the working class led by its party, and exploitation of man by man is finally abolished.<br /> <br /> We have already mentioned the valuable contributions to knowledge made by philosophy and the natural and social sciences in the last quarter of the 18th century, and especially the first half of the 19th century. Over that time, the findings of both the individual sciences and philosophy underwent appreciable change. But the middle of the last century was the turning point in mankind’s intellectual progress. Marx and Engels, who had critically refashioned and drawn general philosophical conclusions from knowledge already gained by mankind, evolved a new doctrine, quite different from all previous philosophical theories.<br /> <br /> It was a break in continuity, a revolution in the development of human thought, marked by the appearance of a philosophical doctrine unparalleled by anything in the past.<br /> <br /> It was in exactly the same way that the continuous change in the natural sciences had paved the way for a leap, a revolution in our views on nature.<br /> <br /> Therefore, gradual change, whether in science or society, causes the destruction and disappearance of the old and an abrupt break in continuity, the appearance of the new.<br /> <br /> The disappearance of the old and the appearance of the new are described in philosophy as &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;qualitative changes&lt;/span&gt;. All other changes, whereby different parts or aspects of an object become re-arranged, increase or diminish while the object retains its identity, are described in philosophy as &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;quantitative changes&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> Relative to all the changes suffered, for instance, by an animal during life, birth and death represent qualitative changes. And relative to an animal’s birth and death, all the changes it may undergo during life are quantitative, as all that time it remains itself.<br /> <br /> Qualitative changes may be of two forms: (1) “something did not exist, but now it does”, and (2) “‘something existed but now it does not’. Quantitative changes, on the other hand, are infinitely diverse, e.g., “larger—smaller&amp;quot;, “more—less&amp;quot;, “more often—more seldom”, “faster—slower”, &amp;quot;warmer—colder”, “lighter—heavier”, &amp;quot;worse—better”, &amp;quot;poorer—richer”, and so on.<br /> <br /> Today, you would hardly find anybody sharing Cratylus’ point of view, but there are plenty of people sharing the diametrically opposite, if equally metaphysical, point of view. These people argue that it only seems to us that there occur breaks in the processes going on in the environment and in the mind, and that on thorough examination we must see that things never stop changing. For should a process be interrupted, it could not be resumed without outside assistance any more than a broken eggshell can become whole again, unless somebody comes along and glues its broken edges together.<br /> <br /> Let us, for the moment, agree that change is always continuous. It will appear then that a growing poplar, for example, is in a state of continuous change. The poplar sprout turned into a mature tree continuously, just as the seed turned into a sprout, the flower into fruit and seed, and the bud into a flower. The transformation of a little into big poplar is undoubtedly a continuous change, for, big or little, it is still a poplar. But if the transformation of the seed into the little poplar also is a continuous process, then there must be a diminutive poplar in the seed; and if the transformation of the flower into fruit and seed is a continuous process, then there must be infinitesimal seeds, and so infinitesimal poplars, in the flower. Because, after all, a poplar may change continuously only while it exists, no matter what its size. The changeover from &amp;quot;non-poplar” to “poplar” cannot be continuous because the disappearance of that from which the poplar sprout has formed, i.e., the seed, amounts to a break in its (the poplar’s) development.<br /> <br /> Another argument advanced in support of the metaphysical view that gradual change knows no interruptions is this. All stages of motion are related as cause and effect and are therefore continuous. All motion is therefore continuous. If we accept that there is a break, a gap between stage A and stage B, we must admit that they are not connected, whereby stage B has no cause. Yet to accept that something may exist without cause is to believe in miracles. Hence, leaps or breaks in continuity are impossible.<br /> <br /> To answer this, we must say first of all that interruptions of continuity, leaps, do not occur without any connection with the preceding stage of motion. A leap is always prepared and caused, i.e., causally determined, by previous continuous motion. Thus, the birth of a living being is prepared and caused by the essential changes in the embryo during pregnancy. A social revolution is prepared and caused by sharpening conflict and mounting class struggle. A revolution in science is caused by the accumulation of knowledge.<br /> <br /> On the other hand, the leap itself determines the character of subsequent continuous motion. The character of all vital processes and the rate at which they proceed in the embryo and the newborn are utterly different.<br /> <br /> Diverse aspects of people’s life in society develop after a revolution in a manner quite different from that before the revolution. The trend and rate of the progress of knowledge before and after a revolution in science are altogether different.<br /> <br /> Thus, there is a close connection between a leap and what comes before and after it.  Continuous changes cause a break and that, again, causes continuous change.<br /> <br /> It must be noted that the leap does not occur at random but only when continuous change reaches a limit which is definite for every given process. How exact the moment is for a victorious revolution is sufficiently clear from Lenin’s letter of October 24 (November 6), 1917, which concerns the uprising.  Lenin wrote: “...the matter must be decided without fail this very evening, or this very night. History will not forgive revolutionaries for procrastinating when they could be victorious today (and they certainly will be victorious today), while they risk ... losing everything. ... To delay action is fatal.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-76|76]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Science also becomes ripe for a revolution at quite a definite point. As accumulated knowledge was leading up to the need to create relativity theory, both Poincaré and Langevin, independent of each other, were approaching the discovery. If Einstein, who realised the need for a thorough revision of some physical notions sooner and better than others, had not worked the revolution in science, it would have been brought about&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;perhaps later and differently—by the efforts of other scientists, because it had become absolutely necessary. Einstein himself was actually of that opinion.<br /> <br /> Thus, continuous change develops up to a limit determined by the nature of each process, after which a leap inevitably occurs. The limit beyond which continuous change is interrupted is described in philosophy as the measure.<br /> <br /> And now let us see if a break in continuity does indeed imply a rift between adjacent stages of development, as metaphysicians would have it. Take an animal, a dog, for example.  The changes it undergoes during its life are continuous only with respect to two breaks, &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;i&lt;/span&gt;.e., birth and death. In other respects, however, some breaks, or leaps, occur during the dog’s life as well. The first of them is the attainment of physiological maturity (at eighteen months to two-and-a-half years old). In turn, the changes a puppy undergoes in that period are continuous only with relation to two breaks between which the changes occur, i.e., between birth and physiological maturity. In other respects, there are breaks in that period too. Moreover, if we subject the animal's birth itself to a detailed examination, we shall see that this leap, this break, does not occur instantaneously but is of a certain duration and consists of a succession of continuous changes and leaps.  Each of the latter, lesser leaps, so to speak, consists of still other continuous changes and related leaps, and so on.<br /> <br /> Every continuous change in nature, society and thought is such only with respect to its “own” breaks or leaps. But at a deeper level, continuous change consists of special continua and special leaps. Equally, every leap is such only with respect to its “own” continuous changes. The leap itself has an infinitely complex structure. It comprises continua and leaps, which also comprise continua and leaps, and so on. Change is continuous only with respect to its “own” breaks, its own beginning and ending. But in other respects it contains breaks. In other words, there is no such thing as absolute, “pure&amp;quot; continuity. A leap, or a break, is such only with respect to the change whose continuity is broken by it. In other respects, however, the break itself contains continuous changes. It is not an absolute, “pure” break, but an inexhaustibly complex process, all the stages of which are causally related.<br /> <br /> The dialectical tenet that continuous quantitative changes, upon attaining measure, cause abrupt qualitative changes which in their turn determine the character of the further continuous quantitative changes is called the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;law of transition from quantity to quality and vice versa&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> This law plays an essential role in man’s practical activity. Thus, it is known that engineers and chemists concentrated for a long time on evolving new methods of working diverse materials so as to make them meet the ever growing requirements of industry and everyday life. There came, however, a point where this continuous improvement of the methods of working natural materials, combined with other changes in science and technology, brought about a leap, a qualitative change in that particular sphere. Today, in the 20th century, especially in its latter half, whenever new demands are made on materials, engineers and chemists, rather than try to evolve new methods of processing available materials (which often would not answer the purpose anyway), develop synthetic materials with predesigned properties answering a specific need.<br /> <br /> To quote an example from another sphere.  Guiding themselves by the law of the transition of quantity into quality, revolutionaries reject not only reformism, but the anarchism of adherents of the ultra-left, who fail to realise the utmost importance of continuous development of the revolutionary movement, involving an ever larger proportion of the masses and paving the way for the revolution which will take place, not at the will of a handful of people, but only where and when the necessary conditions mature.<br /> <br /> Thus, to ensure the success of any kind of activity, whether industrial, social or scientific, we must closely observe the processes we have to deal with, not miss the point where the continuous quantitative changes are superseded by a break in continuity, and be able to modify our proceedings accordingly.<br /> <br /> ==== §3. The Law of Negation of the Negation ====<br /> The tender seedling sprouting from an acorn, a mere twig which anything, it seems, can easily destroy, grows, down the centuries, into a monumental tree inspiring awe at its great strength and the complex organisation of its root system, trunk, bark, branches, leaves and flowers.<br /> <br /> How puny, short-lived, fragile and primitive vis-a-vis their organisation and behaviour were the first unicellular animals which originated more than a thousand million years ago, and how much more complex and durable is the anatomy, physiology, psychology and behaviour of recent highly-organised mammals (e.g., dogs or monkeys).<br /> <br /> Similar things may be observed at every turn. The helpless infant becomes a vigorous, intelligent person, an expert capable of tackling tasks of great complexity. And what a vast distance indeed there is between primitive society, almost entirely swayed by the forces of nature, and modern society which makes these forces, including atomic energy, serve man, and creates seas, forests and artificial Earth satellites.  Our far-reaching, all-embracing, fast-advancing knowledge, too, is a far cry from the primitive beliefs of our cave-dwelling ancestors. This progress from lower to higher forms consists, as we have seen already, in an endless succession of stages, essentially distinct from each other.<br /> <br /> How then does one stage change into another?<br /> <br /> Exposure to a temperature of several thousand degrees Centigrade will cause the destruction (negation) of an amoeba. The next stage in its development will not take place, i.e., life will end and will give way to physico-chemical processes of inorganic nature. On the other hand, the method whereby the developmental stages replace one another (the method of negation), which is intrinsic to the amoeba, consists in division (which occurs under specific conditions) resulting in the emergence of two new amoebas in place of the original one.<br /> <br /> An acorn, when consumed by an animal, is destroyed; although its negation contributes to the animal’s further growth, its own intrinsic development ends there. Had it been allowed to proceed stage by stage according to its intrinsic method, it would have turned into the sprout of an oak.<br /> <br /> The succession of developmental stages proceeding in accordance with the laws inherent in the given object (but not such as results from the intervention of external forces destroying the given form of motion) is termed &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;dialectical negation&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> How does dialectical negation work? If you dig the ground under an oak seedling, you will find no acorn there. What has become of it?  Like most green plants, the oak builds its body from the substances it draws from the soil (via its roots) and from the air (through its leaves, which contain chlorophyll). When a new plant is about to emerge, there are yet neither roots nor leaves. The first little green leaves and roots are formed from the material contained in the acorn. The protective outer coating decomposes and has no part in the new plant, but the embryo and the food by which it is surrounded turn into a sprout. No sooner does a tiny root appear than it gets busy extracting from the soil the substances helping to build the plant while the first green parts of the shoot begin at once to assimilate from the air the substances which go to build the body of the sapling. Therefore the plant replacing the acorn contains both the substances that were contained in the acorn and the substances that were not contained in it. The same may be said of the oak which will grow from the sprout. The young oak will be like its parents in many respects, but owing to the unique circumstances under which it has formed and developed, it will not inherit some of the parents’ characteristics, while it will acquire some that the parents did not have. Dialectical negation con&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;s&lt;/span&gt;ists in the fact that something of the stage which is negated is lost, something becomes part of the new, negating, stage (although in a modified form), and something entirely new is added.<br /> <br /> All three elements are also present when a breed of animals disappears and another breed appears in its place.<br /> <br /> In examining an enormous range of plant and animal species which replaced one another over hundreds of millions of years, palaeontologists have not discovered a single instance of re-emergence of an extinct species. In nature, nothing is ever completely repeated. Although later species possess some features of earlier, extinct species, they always lack some of their predecessors’ characteristics while possessing other features absent in their predecessors.<br /> <br /> Scientific evidence utterly disproves the metaphysical view that development amounts to a repetition of identical cycles, always returning to the starting point, i.e., that development moves in a circle. An individual living organism does not develop in a circle. Certainly, when from an acorn there grows an oak of the same kind as its ancestors, that is, in some respects, a return to what already existed. But in some respects the new oak differs from its ancestors.  Indeed, should it be an exact repetition of them and should they, in their turn, have repeated every characteristic of the previous generations, oaks would exist forever. Yet it has been established beyond any possible doubt that there was a time when not only oaks but the species they have replaced did not exist. Some species disappear and other ones appear precisely because every organism, while it inherits much from its parents must also differ from them in some way. As such variations accumulate over long periods, old species are replaced by new.<br /> <br /> When a new stage in society's development comes, it does not mean that all the people, technology and science pertaining to the old formation have disappeared. If it were so, no new stage in society’s development would take place. In order that it can take place, it is necessary (1) to abolish the obsolete social order, together with both the state system which protected it, and the ideology which sanctified it; (2) to make the members of the old society part and parcel of the new society (the role of different classes being essentially changed) and utilise the industrial, technological and scientific advances of the previous stage; and (3) to create, on the basis of progress in science and technology and on the basis of a new ideology, qualitatively new relations of production and a new state system, and raise the productive forces to a new, higher, level.<br /> <br /> Thus, no stages in the process of development are eternal; each stage disappears sooner or later, being negated by each following stage, and so on. Dialectical negation (i.e., a succession of stages of development, proceeding in accordance with the objective laws inherent in a given object or process) does not consist merely in the disappearance of some obsolete features of the stage which is negated, but implies, as well, the retention of some of the features of that stage and emergence of entirely new features which never existed previously.  For these reasons, the succession of developmental stages is progressive. Although no stage is ever completely repeated, some features of earlier stages necessarily recur—although in a different form—at later stages, in consequence of which development proceeds in a spiral. All the above-mentioned peculiarities of development are called the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;law of negation of the negation&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> When, after throwing off the colonialist yoke, a country starts building the new life, its people must certainly abolish all vestiges of oppression, eliminate entirely the sorry aftermath of imperialist rule and sweep out all anti-popular practices and institutions holding back national development. Nevertheless it is certainly necessary to preserve the buildings, enterprises and educational establishments which were constructed under colonialist rule, and place at the service of the people that which formerly served its oppressors. It is necessary to preserve, build up and use for the people's benefit the scientific knowledge acquired under colonialism by a small proportion of the oppressed people. But, apart from that, a people having embarked on independent development must create in the social, public, economic and cultural spheres of their country’s life much that is entirely new, that was never heard of before. In this situation, therefore, all three features comprising the law of negation of the negation can be found.<br /> <br /> ==== §4. The Law of Unity and Conflict of Opposites ====<br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;What causes a thing to move, to develop?  Why does it change?&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> Why, for instance, is that nut rolling along the ground? It has been shaken off the branch by another branch which broke off and fell on it. The branch was broken off by a stone suddenly rolling down the hillside. The stone was tumbled from its place by a landslide which was started by a sudden gust of wind. This sequence could be prolonged indefinitely. Observations of this kind suggested to philosophers the idea which was formulated by Baruch (Benedictus) Spinoza, one of the most prominent materialist philosophers of the 17th century, who wrote that whether a body is in motion or at rest must be determined by another body, whose motion or rest is, in turn, determined by a third body, and that by yet another body, and so on to infinity.<br /> <br /> The proposition that every object both begins to move and stops moving only under the impact of another object is closely associated with the one that opposite properties, characteristics and tendencies, e.g., motion and rest, cannot be combined in the same object at the Same time. A moving object cannot simultaneously be at rest. If it is at rest, it is clear that it is not moving.<br /> <br /> These two propositions must be the sole intelligent explanation of the causes of motion, of development. Such was the conclusion arrived at by nearly all noted philosophers and Scientists of the 17th-18th centuries.<br /> <br /> Indeed, when we try to understand how different objects are organised, examining them “each one by itself, alongside and after each Other,&amp;quot; we, as Engels observes, “do not run up against any contradictions in them. We find certain qualities which are partly common to, partly different from, and even contradictory to each other, but which in the last-mentioned case are distributed among different objects and therefore contain no contradiction within.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-77|77]]&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Naturally enough, when looking into the structure, qualities and specific characteristics of objects, scientists first of all discover contradictions between things rather than within individual things. Nevertheless, when they begin to investigate the processes going on in a body and the connections between it and the external world, they are confronted with an essentially different situation.<br /> <br /> As they are examining a living organism, for instance, paying close attention to what is going on within it, scientists discover that it is continually assimilating substances from the environment and simultaneously excreting substance into it. Furthermore, these diametrically opposite processes are so closely interconnected that it is enough to prevent a living organism from assimilating certain substances from without for excretion to stop at the same moment, while as soon as an organism becomes unable to discharge certain substances into the environment, it stops assimilating substances from it at once.<br /> <br /> An analogous situation can be observed in inorganic nature. As long as the atoms of different chemical elements were regarded alongside each other and people did not realise that atoms of one element can be transformed into those of another, opposite physical and chemical properties appeared to be distributed among the atoms of different elements while no opposites were thought to be present inside the atom itself. Since the beginning of research into radioactivity, which has to do with the transformation of atoms, the situation has changed.  The atomic nucleus, in which almost the whole of the mass of the atom is concentrated, was found to consist of particles carrying a positive charge, viz., protons. Although, as we know, Similarly charged objects repel each other, protons do not fly in different directions but are held together in the nucleus by diametrically opposite forces (so-called nuclear forces) by which the protons are attracted to one another.  These opposites, viz., proton attraction and repulsion, are so intimately interconnected that one does not exist without the other. It is precisely this contradiction, inherent in the atomic nucleus, which causes the transformation of atoms.<br /> <br /> Everybody knows that by sawing a magnetised bar in half, one does not get two separate poles. Each half will be a magnet with a North pole and a South pole. One can divide each piece into two again, and the result will be the same. One certainly may, if he likes, deprive the magnet of its North pole. For this, one must demagnetise the bar. But when one does this, the South pole will disappear simultaneously with the North pole.<br /> <br /> We have already mentioned that a body appears to be either at rest or in motion only as long as we ignore the body’s inner workings and its relationship to the surrounding environment. When we take all that into account, we shall find that every resting body is in motion and every moving body is at rest; that rest and motion simultaneously and inseparably belong to one and the same body.<br /> <br /> The two laws of dialectics generalising our entire knowledge of nature, society and thought, which we have considered here, show that all motion is a unity of inseparable opposites, viz., quantitative and qualitative changes; continuous changes and breaks of continuity; disappearance of the properties of the stage which is negated and the retention of its properties; recurrence and uniqueness; stability and change. Being aware of the self-contradictory nature of all things and events makes it much easier to discover what causes every object to move and change.<br /> <br /> What causes, for instance, the peculiar form of motion we call life?<br /> <br /> An organism lives only as long as metabolism continues, which includes two opposite processes, viz., assimilation (i.e., transformation of food into body substance) and disintegration of body substance and excretion of the products of disintegration. When metabolism stops, life ceases. In any plant or animal, metabolism, as Engels wrote, “does not take place as the result of a process to which it is subjected from without.... On the contrary, life, the metabolism which takes place through nutrition and excretion, is a self-implementing process...&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-78|78]]&lt;/sup&gt; , i.e., a process which is &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;inherent&lt;/span&gt; in a living body.<br /> <br /> Depending on the organism’s age, the work it has performed, its condition and numerous other factors, either constructive metabolism (assimilation) or destructive metabolism (excretion) may be predominant. Even where the two kinds of metabolism are at close enough levels of intensity (which may occur only for a time) the balance between them is not complete but approximate and relative, the opposition between them does not disappear but merely diminishes.<br /> <br /> Thus, life is motion which is not due to any cause external to the organism. The cause that sets the organism in motion is internal. The source of this motion is the interaction of the opposites inherent in it, i.e., assimilation and excretion. Even partial, approximate equilibrium between these opposites is possible only for a limited space of time. They are never so completely balanced as to neutralise each other.  They are always opposed to each other, as long as there is life in general (and so its source&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;the conflict of opposites). Hence, life is self-motion.<br /> <br /> And now let us look at a society in which the means of production are privately owned and which is divided into classes of the exploiters and the exploited. In the absence of the exploited, existence is impossible for the exploiters for whom would they exploit? And where there are no exploiters there can be no exploited. The struggle between these classes wherever private property predominates is the chief source of society’s progress from lower to higher stages, e.g., from slavery to feudalism, from feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism to socialism. Society is not set in motion by some external force. On the contrary, the force responsible for society’s development, i.e., the class struggle, is inherent in society. Therefore, human history is self-motion caused by the conflict of opposite classes in society itself. Even when their forces become more or less balanced, they can still never be completely so.<br /> <br /> It would be a mistake to deny the role of external influences which may further or hinder one form of movement or another. Nevertheless, all movement takes its source from internal contradictions, so that the emergence of new contradictions gives rise to a new form of movement, while with their disappearance it gives place to another form of movement for which other contradictions are responsible.<br /> <br /> Thus every material or spiritual phenomenon or process is a unity of Opposites which inherently belong to it and are inseparable. The source of any object’s movement lies in the interaction (&amp;quot;conflict&amp;quot;) of opposites which are inherent in it. Therefore movement is self-movement. Opposites can attain only partial, relative equilibrium, and that only for a time; they can never become balanced completely. The disparity, the contradiction between them is always present in varying degrees, being as indestructible as motion itself. The unity, the equal effect of opposites, is temporary and relative, whereas their conflict is eternal and absolute. Such are the tenets of materialist dialectics which constitute the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;law of unity and con&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;f&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;lict of opposites&lt;/span&gt;. The significance of this law to dialectics is such that Lenin wrote: “In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the essence of dialectics....&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-79|79]]&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Indeed, both the law of transition from quantity to quality and that of negation of the negation may be regarded as particular instances of the law of the unity and conflict of opposites, which reveals the source of all development.<br /> <br /> The following is an example illustrating the Significance this law has to the working people’s struggle against capitalist oppression.  Advocates of the capitalist system allege that the conflict of internal contradictions, i.e, the class struggle, is not a source of the development of society but an obstacle in its way. According to them, strikes, demonstrations, etc., bring factories to a standstill, and so hold back the development of production and of society at large. They say that only with class peace and co-operation between employers and workers can technology advance and production develop rapidly. In fact, however, in all capitalist countries where the working class is well-organised, its economic struggle compels the capitalists to raise wages, reduce hours and improve conditions in one way or another. The capitalists thus have to improve plant, technologies and organisation of production. But, most important of all, the broader and more vigorous the people’s movement is, the sooner the revolution comes which abolishes capitalist oppression and raises production and the entire life of society to a new stage of development which capitalism cannot attain.<br /> <br />  <br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> === 8. Categories of Materialist Dialectics ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. What Is a Category? ====<br /> The Earth has a satellite, the Moon. Some other planets in the solar system also have satellites, and so do the planets revolving round other stars, besides the Sun. Saturn, for example, has nine satellites, the largest of which is Titan. Being a satellite of Saturn, Titan is thereby one of the satellites of planets in general which revolve round diverse stars. Satellites, in their turn, belong to solid cosmic objects which form merely a part of the cosmic bodies in general. Thus, as we pass from the most narrow to the more and more inclusive of the aforementioned concepts, we shall have a series of concepts in which every following concept is broader than the preceding one, viz.,<br /> <br /> TITAN,<br /> <br /> A SATELLITE OF SATURN,<br /> <br /> A SATELLITE OF A PLANET IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM,<br /> <br /> A SATELLITE OF A PLANET,<br /> <br /> A SOLID COSMIC OBJECT,<br /> <br /> A COSMIC OBJECT,<br /> <br /> A MATERIAL OBJECT,<br /> <br /> MATTER.<br /> <br /> Now let us take another concept, &amp;quot;wheat&amp;quot;.  Wheat is a cereal, and all cereals are covered-seeded plants having one seed leaf, which, along with the plants having two seed leaves, form the class of covered-seeded plants. The latter, along with the naked-seeded plants, belong to the seed plants, which, in their turn, belong to plants (to which seedless plants also belong). In this case, too, we have a series of concepts ranging from the specific to the more general, viz.,<br /> <br /> WHEAT,<br /> <br /> A CEREAL,<br /> <br /> A COVERED-SEEDED PLANT HAVING ONE SEED LEAF,<br /> <br /> A COVERED-SEEDED PLANT,<br /> <br /> AN ORGANISM,<br /> <br /> A SELF-REGULATING SYSTEM,<br /> <br /> A MATERIAL OBJECT,<br /> <br /> MATTER.<br /> <br /> All concepts of material objects (e.g., the oak, the bee, the biplane) are links in similar series, and the series are linked with one another.<br /> <br /> Since wheat is one of the cereals, all the attributes of the latter are included in the concept “wheat&amp;quot;, which implies, besides, the particular attributes of wheat differentiating it from all other cereals. The concept “cereal&amp;quot; implies all the attributes of the covered-seeded plants with one seed leaf, plus those which distinguish cereals from the rest of such plants.<br /> <br /> It is the same with other concepts, the meaning of the more general concepts being implicit in the more restricted concept, while implicit in the latter also are the attributes whereby the given subclass is differentiated from the other subclasses of the class to which it belongs.  Therefore the attributes of an organism are implicit in the concepts of all plants (of which more than half a million species are known) and in the concepts of all animals (of which more than a million species are known). Yet the concept &amp;quot;matter&amp;quot; occupies a special place among the concepts of material objects. Being the most comprehensive, ultimate concept, it is implied in millions of diverse concepts of material objects, animate or inanimate, natural or manmade.<br /> <br /> Matter is not the only ultimate concept embracing a vast multitude of narrower concepts.  Philosophy is concerned with the following ultimate concepts: matter and mind, motion and rest, the general and the particular, substance and phenomenon, quality and quantity, cause and effect, necessity and chance, possibility and reality, content and form, structure and function, and so on. These ultimate concepts are called &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;categories&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> Each category embraces an enormous number of narrower concepts, while all categories combine to embrace all concepts at the command of human thought. And, as the content of a category is included in all the concepts brought under it, the apprehension of diverse phenomena and processes in nature, society and thoughts largely depends on what each category is intended to express.<br /> <br /> The distinction between categories and other concepts was noted even in antiquity, and philosophers have been arguing about it ever since, advancing different doctrines of categories.<br /> <br /> Let us look at Kant’s account of categories.  Kant stresses that each category, as it unites a multitude of narrower concepts, thereby serves to bring together, reduce to order and synthesise our knowledge; therefore categories are exceedingly important to apprehension. The train of thought he pursued is as follows. When they first found a metal that would not oxidize, men formed the concept ‘gold’. The first voyages round the world produced the concept &amp;quot;globe”. Navigators who had reached the Arctic Ocean for the first time, saw huge floating mountains of ice there. Thus, the notion “iceberg&amp;quot; emerged. All ordinary concepts are the result of sense-perception of material things, i.e., they are derived from experience. Therefore they represent knowledge of phenomena of the materia&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;l&lt;/span&gt; world.<br /> <br /> Categories, on the other hand, represent a different form of synthesis. Facing an unfamiliar thing, we immediately start looking for its cause and trying to see what is accidental and what is necessary in it, and so on. All contact with things, all experience necessarily involves these considerations. Even before we know the cause of the given phenomenon, we are sure that it must have a cause, as well as both chance and necessary attributes. Hence, according to Kant, we have the idea of necessity and chance, of cause and effect, in a word, of all categories, prior to contact with material things, i.e., prior to experience. From Kant’s point of view, categories are not derived from experience but are prior to it, are something, in fact, without which human experience would be impossible.<br /> <br /> Kant held that so long as categories—unlike ordinary concepts—are inherent in the mind and are prior to experience, they contain no knowledge about the material world: there is nothing in objective reality corresponding to categories.  All categories—necessity and chance, cause and effect, and so on—are conceived merely in thought. It appears, then, that our major concepts, i.e., categories, do not depend on the material world at all, that thought is independent of matter. Proceeding from this idealist point of view, Kant held that categories do not emerge at all, but have been present in human consciousness ever since man appeared. Neither the number nor essence of the categories ever changes. There are as many categories today as there were thousands of years ago, and we understand them now just as they were understood then. Kant asserted further that as necessity is the opposite of chance, it follows that they are mutually exclusive because in combining them the mind would contradict itself, which is logically impossible. The relation of cause and effect and other categories are equally incompatible, being opposites.<br /> <br /> Let us look into this interpretation of categories which modern idealists are still using in one way or another. In our daily contact with material things, we have to resort to concepts, e.g., a pulley, an engine, a switch, electric current, a television set, industry, cost, efficiency, oxygen, a germ, the nervous system, and so on.  We never derived any of them from experience, having learned them from teachers or books. Moreover, with the exception of discoverers and researchers who may introduce a new concept on the basis of experience, nobody can claim to have derived from experience a concept previously not known. We receive all our concepts from other people. Does it follow from this that these concepts have not been derived from experience but are inherent in the mind and are prior to experience? Certainly not. Even though you and I derived no concepts from experience, others did a very long time ago, and later on still others, drawing on freshly gained experience, amplified, refined and developed them.<br /> <br /> Thus, the fact that the concepts we apply in our daily lives have not been derived by ourselves does not in the least mean that they have been derived by nobody at all. If people use concepts already made, that does not prove their non-empirical origin, i.e., that they have not been acquired from experience.<br /> <br /> Dialectical materialism has weighty proofs of the empirical origin of all categories. If all categories were present in human thought ever Since it began, we should have also found them in the thought processes of primitive tribes. In fact, however, that is not the case. N. N. Miklukho-Maklai (1846-1888), a famous Russian traveller, anthropologist and ethnographer, established, for example, that the Papuans in New Guinea, who were familiar with some categories, e.g., causality, did not know other categories. When bartering their goods, they placed respective items opposite one another, as they did not know how to count. Not only were they ignorant of quantity as such but they had no notion of number. “Counting”, Engels wrote, “requires not only objects that can be counted, but also the ability to exclude all properties of the objects considered except their number—and this ability is the product of a long historical evolution based on experience.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-80|80]]&lt;/sup&gt;   Scientific investigations proved that many primitive tribes lacked both experience and the notion of number, let alone the knowledge of the categories of quantity or matter.<br /> <br /> Secondly, if categories were inherent in the mind, i.e., prior to experience, they would be inherent also in the mind of a little child. As it is, a two-year-old, while possessing a variety of notions, has, nevertheless, no notion of number or quantity. These facts conclusively show that categories, like all other concepts, grow out of men’s experience as it progresses from one stage to another, some of them emerging earlier than others, so that their number is not invariable. Of course, a category takes much longer to arise than does a narrower concept.  Moreover, this process is still carrying on today. The categories of structure and function, for example, emerge after Kant. Our descendants will undoubtedly evolve new categories on the basis of experience yet to be gained.<br /> <br /> Having disproved the idealist point of view that cause and effect, necessity and chance, quality and quantity just do not exist in the material world, and merely our notions of them exist in the mind prior to experience, dialectical materialism has demonstrated that all categories and concepts, “all ideas are taken from experience, are reflections ... of reality.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-81|81]]&lt;/sup&gt; The ultimate concepts are different only in that the characteristics of objective reality they reflect belong not to some but to all things and events.  Hence the great significance of these key concepts to knowledge. Lenin wrote of them: &amp;quot;Man is confronted with a &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;web&lt;/span&gt; of national phenomena... categories are stages of distinguishing, i.e., of cognising the world, focal points in the web, which assist in cognising and mastering it.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-82|82]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Disproving the metaphysical assertions that the categories are invariable both as to content and number, that they have no interconnections, and that opposite categories cannot coexist, dialectical materialism has demonstrated that categories develop, represent a unity of opposites, and that all categories are interconnected, as they reflect different characteristics and aspects of the external world and different processes going on in it. “...If &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;everything&lt;/span&gt; develops,” Lenin wrote, ‘does not that apply also to the most general &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;concepts&lt;/span&gt; and &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;categories&lt;/span&gt; of thought? If not, it means that thinking is not connected with being. If it does, it means that there is a dialectics of cognition which has objective significance.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-83|83]]&lt;/sup&gt; We shall concern ourselves here with only some of the categories of materialist dialectics, viz., cause and effect, and necessity and chance.<br /> <br /> ==== §2. Cause and Effect ====<br /> In the 18th century, many scientists believed that the ability of bodies to burn was due to a special substance, &amp;quot;phlogiston&amp;quot;. The more phlogiston there was in a body, the more readily it burned, and a body that had given off all of its phlogiston could not burn. Phlogiston was invariably the cause of fire; fire was invariably the effect of phlogiston. From that point of view, phlogiston could not be the effect of fire, nor could fire be the cause of phlogiston. Another contemporary view was that heat was caused by a weightless substance, &amp;quot;caloric&amp;quot;. According to that view, a cold body became hot owing to caloric passing into it from a hot body contacting it. Textbooks on chemistry had listed caloric among chemical elements up to the mid-19th century. Caloric was considered to be &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;invariably&lt;/span&gt; the cause of heat, and the latter to be &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;invariably&lt;/span&gt; the effect of caloric. It seemed obvious that no contrary state of things, i.e., that heat phenomena should be the cause of caloric and caloric the effect of heat, was at all possible. All electric phenomena known at that time were ascribed to the action of invisible electrical fluids which produced electric current as they flowed from one body into another. These electrical fluids were believed then to be &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;invariably&lt;/span&gt; the cause of electricity, and electricity to be &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;invariably&lt;/span&gt; the effect of the electric fluids. Such conceptions of heat, electricity and other phenomena gave rise to the idea that once A was the cause of B, it could not possibly be the effect of B. This understanding of the relation of cause and effect boiled down to the undialectical, metaphysical view that opposites (such as cause and effect) cannot coexist in one and the same object.<br /> <br /> The metaphysical understanding of the categories of cause and effect has been upset by the further progress of knowledge which showed that the world is not an assemblage of final things but a totality of processes, connections and relations.<br /> <br /> Today everybody knows that in a hydroelectric station the movement of the water stream is the cause of the electric current produced by the station. And in the case of a machine tool being switched on, the electric current is the cause of its mechanical motion. In the former instance electric current is the effect of mechanical motion; in the latter, it is the cause of mechanical motion. In the diesel locomotive, heat is the cause of the mechanical motion of the locomotive’s driving axles, and simultaneously the mechanical movement of its parts, their friction, causes them to become so hot as to make it necessary to install special cooling devices to prevent a fire. In other words, heat is simultaneously the cause and effect of mechanical motion. If we regard the links in the chain of causality as processes, we shall find that when process A, in acting on process B, causes a change in it, process B, in acting on process A in its turn, also causes changes in it, so that the chain looks like this:<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t7&quot;&gt;A &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t8&quot;&gt;⇌&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t7&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t7&quot;&gt;B&lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> Consequently, every process, as it acts on another process, itself is acted on by the latter, which means that all relationships which exist in nature and society &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;interact&lt;/span&gt;, and that the opposites (cause and effect) are comprised in one and the same thing or event.<br /> <br /> On establishing the cause of a phenomenon, a scientist must necessarily find out what reverse effect the phenomenon has on its cause, which facet of the interaction is predominant and to what extent it is so, and what reasons are responsible for it.<br /> <br /> Influence of the effect on the cause from which it sprang has a particularly significant role in organic nature. When the controlling part of an organism is informed by the part under its control about some change occurring in the surroundings (e.g., the appearance of something of possible food value), it “orders” the controlled part to respond in a specific way (e.g., to try and get hold of the thing). The result may be either fortunate or otherwise. The thing may prove to be edible or obnoxious. The controlled part at once informs the controlling part which issues the next order. In the first instance the order will be to try and consume the thing; in the second, to withdraw as quickly as possible. This process, described as &amp;quot;’feedback’, is widely applied in modern technology, especially in cybernetic devices. Feedback systems, whether natural or manmade, would be impossible if the effect (i.e., the system’s response to the action on it of an external object) were not the cause of its own cause (i.e., if the system’s response failed to cause changes in the external object which has provoked the response).<br /> <br /> Now let us consider the example of a developing nation retarded both economically and culturally after years of colonial misrule. To raise labour efficiency from its low level, such a nation must, quite obviously, push up the cultural and living standards in the first place. An ignorant, underfed worker cannot be very efficient, of course. So, the growth of cultural and living standards is the major cause of the growth of efficiency in a former colonial country.<br /> <br /> Still, if we view the matter from a dialectical standpoint, we shall see that here too cause and effect interact and change places. For, clearly enough, higher cultural and living standards depend above all on higher labour efficiency, or, to put it differently, higher cultural and living standards are the effect of higher efficiency. The growth of labour efficiency is both the cause and the effect of the growth of living and cultural standards, just as the growth of living and cultural standards is both the cause and the effect of higher labour efficiency. In a striving to achieve national prosperity, one should be guided by a dialectical understanding of the categories of cause and effect.<br /> <br /> ====  §3. Necessity and Chance ====<br /> Chance is commonly taken to mean that which might or might not occur, or might occur in any way. Necessity, on the other hand, is understood as that which must occur and cannot but occur.<br /> <br /> What is the interrelation of necessity and chance in the world around us?<br /> <br /> One of the answers to this question may be: There is nothing that necessarily must occur and nothing that might not occur. Anything, any event, however incredible, may occur, and it may occur one way or any other way. From this standpoint, nothing is impossible. There is no such thing as necessity. Everything in the world is the outcome of chance.<br /> <br /> The famous French author of the 16th century Francois Rabelais satirised this view in his book about a giant, Gargantua, who was brought into the world through his mother’s ear. Anticipating that his readers will not believe such a thing possible, Rabelais says that even though such strange nativity has not a semblance of truth in it, still nobody would dispute it that there is nothing impossible to god. And if god wished so, all women would henceforth deliver their babies through their ears.<br /> <br /> Those who deny necessity and believe that anything is possible (so-called &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;indeterminists&lt;/span&gt;) would have to accept that although the stone on which he has just sat down is silent, it could well burst into song presently; that although the dog is a four-legged animal, it is nevertheless quite possible that a dog may have a puppy with twenty legs; that, so far, two by two is four, but it is quite possible that, by tonight, two by two will have become one....<br /> <br /> The mere fact that indeterminists deny necessity and the laws of nature in word only but practically recognise both, is enough to show how vapid their doctrine is. Even the “fathers of the church”, who repeat that, as far as god is concerned, no necessity exists, that everything is possible for him, depart from their indeterminism at every step. Thomas Aquinas, a prominent theologian of the past, nowadays regarded as the principal authority of the Catholic church, had to admit that many spheres of reality were subject to necessity against which god “the omnipotent” himself was powerless.  E.g., god cannot abolish the past or alter the fact that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles or turn untruth into truth, and so on.<br /> <br /> Opposing indeterminism are, among others, adherents of mechanistic determinism. Faith, they maintain, allows any violation of the laws of nature, any miracle. Science, on the other hand, demonstrates that everything is subject to the laws of nature and is ruled by inexorable necessity. Nothing can occur in any other way than it actually does occur. Assuming that an event might occur contrary to the positive law—an event that need not have happened, a chance event&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;that event would be uncaused, i.e., it would be a miracle. And miracles do not happen, nor can they happen. Following this train of thought, Spinoza, the materialist philosopher already referred to, came to the conclusion that &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;nothing occurs by chance in nature, and everything is predetermined&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> This point of view found corroboration in classical mechanics whose laws, which precisely determine the trajectory described by isolated bodies, enabled scientists to predict with striking accuracy where a body moving in space would be at any given point in time.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, when science came to face more complex things than trajectories of individual bodies, it knocked the bottom out of mechanistic determinism.<br /> <br /> Let us turn to the following example. In a society of commodity producers, writes Marx, price is “the exponent of the magnitude of a commodity’s value.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-84|84]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> That is a law. Nevertheless, this law does not predetermine the price offered by each buyer.  In every business transaction price is either higher or lower than cost. To give another example, the ideology of a class is determined by the place occupied by the latter in the given System of relations of production. In feudal times, noblemen regarded serfdom as being in the nature of things. Nevertheless, this law does not predetermine the views held by every single member of a class. Alexander Radishchev, the Decembrists and Alexander Herzen were all noblemen but at the same time were opposed to serfdom.<br /> <br /> In the plant and animal kingdoms we see that no plant or animal lives forever—such is the law of nature. There are also laws which determine the maximum life-span for different &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;s&lt;/span&gt;pecies. Oaks may live to an age of a thousand years, but many things may happen to an individual shoot. It may perish on the second or twentieth or two thousandth day of its life.  There is no law fixing the exact day and hour of the death of, let us say, the tree growing in front of your house. This holds of all plants and animals.<br /> <br /> By accepting that every event is inexorably determined and inevitable, we arrive at fatalism. It was in this way that Vulich, from Lermontov’s &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;A Hero of Our Time&lt;/span&gt;, reasoned when, holding a pistol at his temple, he said: “If I am destined to die this moment, it will happen whether or not I fire; and if I am destined to stay alive today, then I shall stay alive whether or not I press the trigger.” Fatalism so obviously runs counter to ordinary experience that it was rejected even by the most prominent adherents of mechanistic determinism.<br /> <br /> Yet how one is to avoid becoming a fatalist after accepting that everything is inexorably predetermined was something none of them was able to explain, for fatalism necessarily follows from mechanistic determinism.<br /> <br /> The all-important biological law of natural selection does not imply in the least that every creature less fit than others is doomed to sterility and early death or that every better-adjusted creature shall live long and have numerous progeny. A less-adjusted individual may happen to live to the utmost limit possible for its species, or it might die at birth, and so on. The law does not lay down the particular chance with which an individual is to meet.<br /> <br /> It is much the same in inorganic nature.  According to the second law of thermodynamics, already referred to, a closed system tends to proceed towards less orderly forms of motion. In the last quarter of the 19th century, it was established that the law does not hold of every change in such a system, whose several parts may proceed towards either greater disorder or greater order. Increased disorder is, however, much more probable than increased order or greater order. Increased disorder is general direction in which a closed system tends to proceed.<br /> <br /> To quote another example, a soluble substance placed in a liquid at rest is diffused throughout the liquid. If we place a grain of potassium permanganate at the left wall of a vessel containing water, its molecules will begin scattering in the water. After some time, the concentration of the solution will be uniform throughout the vessel. Each molecule of permanganate is jostled by water molecules. If the impulses are sufficiently numerous, the number of impulses pushing permanganate molecules towards the place of smaller concentration (towards the right) will be roughly equal to the number of impulses tending towards the place of greater concentration (towards the left), because the water molecules are in a permanent condition of irregular motion, whereby the number of molecules moving in all directions (if sufficiently great) is approximately the same.  But if each permanganate molecule receives as many impulses to the left as to the right, then what about the law of the uniform distribution of soluble substances, which is possible only provided that many more permanganate molecules move from left to right than from right to left?<br /> <br /> Let us mentally divide the water in the vessel into sections. Within the limits of each section the permanganate molecules will be distributed more or less evenly. But the closer to the left a section is, the more permanganate molecules it contains. Each molecule moves both to the right and to the left at a different rate of probability, but since in any two adjacent sections the one on the left always contains more permanganate molecules than the one on its right, more permanganate molecules cross the line from left to right than from right to left. This will go on until the concentration of permanganate in adjacent sections becomes equal, or, rather, approximately equal, for, to obtain an absolutely uniform solution, the number of molecules of both permanganate and water must be infinite. Yet, although the vessel contains but a finite number of molecules, it is still a very great number.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-85|85]]&lt;/sup&gt; That is why in such experiments, the law takes effect with great precision, deviations being detectable only with the aid of highly sensitive measuring instruments.<br /> <br /> Seeing that indeterminism and mechanistic determinism lack justification, some philosophers choose the “golden mean”, saying that events may be either necessary or accidental: minor events refer to chance, and major—to necessity. Chance events&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;since they do not spring from necessity—are subject to no laws and are, from this standpoint, nothing short of miracles. As for necessary events, they are conceived as inexorably predetermined, so that all we have to do is go fatalist and, washing our hands of it all, dumbly wait for the blows of fate to fall. This “golden mean” attitude, as we see, combines the vices of both aforementioned views and, besides, leaves it up to anyone to categorise some events as miracles and attribute others to doom.<br /> <br /> Obviously, we can neither agree that all events occur by chance nor that all events are inevitable, nor that all events are divided into accidental and necessary. Adherents of these doctrines hold that every event is either absolutely necessary or absolutely fortuitous and that none may be a combination of necessity and chance. In fact, however, every event is a unity of these opposites. How does it come about?<br /> <br /> The examples we have cited show that individual events occurring in the sphere regulated by a certain law essentially differ from one another. Then what about recurrence? And if there is no recurrence, then what happens to the law? Let us look at price formation involving hundreds of thousands of commodities over scores and hundreds of years. We shall see that, barring extraordinary cases in which regular price formation was prevented by unusual circumstances, the price of a commodity was determined, by and large, by its cost. This holds true of other economic laws as well. Each of them, as Engels pointed out, is valid merely as a tendency, an average. This applies equally to nature. Thus, the tendency for the survival of the fittest recurs in hundreds of thousands of plant and animal species.<br /> <br /> That nothing recurs in identically the same Shape either in nature or society has already been mentioned in our discussion of the laws of dialectics. Nevertheless the recurrence of some relationships—which is not absolute but approximate—necessarily takes place. That is exactly how necessity expresses itself.<br /> <br /> Adducing the fact that there is an infinite multitude of possibilities for an isolated event, and that the realisation of one of these possibilities is a deviation from the law, indeterminists say that, so long as an event may deviate from the law to no matter what extent, i.e., contravene it, it means that there simply is no law, and anything whatever may occur. This would be difficult to counter if isolated events could indeed deviate from the law &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;without restriction&lt;/span&gt;.  The point is, however, that while a law allows numerous possibilities for an isolated event, it also sets a limit to them, drawing the line between what is possible and what is not.<br /> <br /> Energy imparted on impact by one molecule to another may vary infinitely. But the law sets a limit beyond which this cannot go. A molecule cannot impart more than its own energy.  Individual events can deviate from the law within certain limits, but no event can be in contradiction with the law. That is impossible.<br /> <br /> Each of the vast number of events whose general result is a law constitutes a deviation from the law in one direction or degree or another, and in that sense it is an accident—but an accident by no means uncaused. In this, the law does not fail but is observed: chance is the form in which necessity finds expression. It is only through chance, if anything, that a law Operates, as it circumscribes the area within which straggling may occur. A law is hard to discover precisely because it expresses itself only in terms of its opposite, i.e., deviations from it, because the universal, necessary, recurrent connection it states reveals itself only in isolated contingent events with variable characteristics.<br /> <br /> &lt;div class=&quot;p-p9&quot;&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;div class=&quot;g-fr&quot;&gt;<br /> <br /> [[File:Pictures/10000000000004630000031AFA5615A6C2A7295C.jpg|class=calibre5]]<br /> <br /> &lt;/div&gt;<br />  <br /> <br /> &lt;/div&gt;<br /> We sometimes come across the following reasoning: with respect to a mass of objects (e.g., molecules in a solution or microparticles in cosmic rays), necessity indeed manifests itself in chance, and the laws are operative on the whole, without determining all that may happen to any one molecule or particle. Yet, in the case of single objects subject to the laws of classical mechanics, pure necessity holds sway, leaving no room for chance. In this instance, the laws are absolutely definitive with respect to each single object. After all, do not the Earth, Mars and other planets repeat absolutely the same movements, exactly defined by the laws of classical mechanics, over thousands of millions of years? Yet, one could think so only as long as measurements were taken with instruments not so very precise. Applying more perfect instruments, 20th-century scientists have established that each revolution of the Earth round its axis is different from the last. The Earth’s movements round the sun are not identical either.<br /> <br /> When examined in detail, the trajectory of any separate object is found to consist of millions of infinitesimal segments, each being a deviation from the regular course. Only their sum conforms to the law. This holds of every individual object. Each of them is the sum of numerous constituents contained in it at a deeper level. In other words, every single object amounts, at a deeper level, to a mass of objects, and the law to which it is subject is the sum of the irregularities occurring in the numerous elements constituting the object. Lenin wrote: “... social science (like science generally) usually deals with &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;mass&lt;/span&gt; phenomena, not with individual cases.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-86|86]]&lt;/sup&gt; So, if the distinction between individual and mass objects is relative, so is the distinction between exact laws and such as formulate a certain general tendency. As Lenin put it, ”... law, every law, is narrow, incomplete, approximate.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-87|87]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> A dialectical approach to the question is essential to technology as well as science. Electrical engineers, above all, are keenly aware of this, because nothing can be achieved in electronics without a dialectical conception of necessity and chance. In fields other than electrical engineering, too, the old mechanistic view will only do to design simple and crude mechanisms. To attempt to build a machine consisting of numerous more or less independent units and requiring a thousand times more accuracy than any high-precision lathe, in the expectation that everything will proceed in strict conformity to the laws, would be absolutely useless, for it would only need the minutest element to fail for the whole system to fail. The more precise and complex a mechanism, the less reliable it is. Thus, in 1962, the 18-million-dollar US rocket launched towards Venus had to be blown up in flight for no other reason than that a hyphen had been omitted from the computer programme. Recently developed devices are so designed that their elements may go wrong or even break down, but the total behaviour of all elements, nevertheless, ensures correct behaviour of the system as a whole.  Systems of high complexity and precision can be made more reliable only given a dialectical conception of the correlation of necessity and chance.<br /> <br /> Quantum mechanics, genetics and cybernetics, which developed in the 20th century, have yielded such strong evidence in support of this approach that the majority of leading scientists today have come to share the dialectical view on necessity and chance.<br /> <br /> To conclude, categories, like all other concepts, are derived from experience and are mental reflections of certain characteristics of the real world. As fresh experience and knowledge are gained, the content of categories is modified and refined. A category reflects the external world correctly only when conceived as a unity of opposites.<br /> <br />  <br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> === 9. Practice, the Root and Yardstick of Knowledge ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. Is the World Cognisable? ====<br /> It is now appropriate to look at the other aspect of the fundamental question of philosophy mentioned at the beginning of this book: Is consciousness capable of truthfully reflecting the material world? Is man capable of discovering the laws governing the development of nature and society, the essential properties and relations of external objects? And if he is, then is his knowledge complete, exhaustive and final or is it only partial? The sum total of the conceptions and doctrines offering answers to these questions constitutes the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;theory of knowledge&lt;/span&gt; or &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;epistemology&lt;/span&gt; (Greek &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;episteme&lt;/span&gt;, knowledge, and &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;logos&lt;/span&gt;, theory, account).<br /> <br /> We are all familiar with a wide variety of things and possess information the validity of which nobody would ever question. We know how to switch on electricity, solder a can, start a machine or look up a ‘phone number in the directory. This store of information tested by ordinary experience seems to put it beyond all possible doubt that our knowledge is true and authentic. Yet, what may at first sight seem absolutely indisputable very often proves untrue. Relying on their experience, men used to consider the Earth to be flat and stationary and believed that the Sun travelled up and down the sky. The notion of the atoms as the ultimate, non-divisible particles of which the universe is composed had persisted in science until the close of the 19th century. Today, however, every schoolchild knows that the Earth is shaped very nearly like a globe and is rotating round the Sun, and that not only are the atoms divisible, but the atomic nuclei too are divisible, being composed of elementary particles.  Such facts make us wonder if what we know is indeed true and indubitable. Suppose we wake up one day to find it was all wrong, as has happened more than once in science as well as everyday life? Is there a trustworthy method of cognition guaranteed against mistakes? Such doubts arose in philosophers’ minds early in antiquity. Whereas the old Greek materialist philosophers Democritus (c. 460-370 B. C.) and Epicurus (341-270 B. C.) were sure that the world is cognisable and our knowledge gives us a true idea of things and events, Cratylus, already referred to above, asserted that the world cannot be cognised because things change too quickly to be known.<br /> <br /> Thus, we find in the history of philosophy arguments both for and against the possibility of knowing the world. Therefore, it is not a question of filing isolated facts but rather of analysing the substance of cognition and ascertaining its main characteristics and objective laws.<br /> <br /> Different philosophical schools exercise different approaches to the problem of the world’s cognisability and offer different solutions. To understand the epistemology of dialectical materialism more thoroughly, one must have at least a general idea of the epistemological conceptions of its forerunners, as dialectical materialism did not spring out of nothing but is the result of a critical comprehension of the epistemological doctrines whose shortcomings and weak points were exposed in the course of history, thanks to the strides made by science, technology and other forms of human activity.  Dialectical materialism has, at the same time, absorbed all that was valuable in the conclusions about the nature, principles and yardsticks of knowledge evolved by the preceding philosophical systems.<br /> <br /> ==== §2. Agnostic Epistemology ====<br /> The doctrine which asserts that it is impossible to know the universe was called agnosticism (Greek &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;agnostos&lt;/span&gt;, unknown, unknowable).  Accepting sense-perceptions to be the source of all knowledge, agnostics reason roughly as follows: so far as our sense-perceptions are consistent with reality, our knowledge is true; but so far as they are not at all like the objects as they are by themselves, outside sense-perception, it is false. But may we compare our perceptions of an object with the object itself? The English philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) had this to say about it: “The mind has never any thing present to it but the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connexion with objects.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-88|88]]&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Clearly, then, we have nothing with which to compare our perceptions, we have no means of verifying whether what they tell us is consistent with reality. Therefore we cannot say if they are true reflections of objects or if they are a fiction. It is possible that there are external objects endowed with the qualities such as we perceive. But it is quite possible also that nothing of the kind really exists. This, in agnostics’ view, is a problem men cannot solve.<br /> <br /> As you may remember, Hume’s predecessor George Berkeley, the subjective idealist, also considered sensations to be the sole source of human knowledge. But while he held that all external objects are merely combinations of sensations, he simultaneously accepted the existence of god, whose being is independent of sensation. Berkeley was inconsistent on this point and contradicted himself as he claimed that the source of sensation (god) exists independently of the latter. Hume differs from Berkeley in following up more consistently the idea that sensations are the sole source of knowledge and denying the existence of god—although he was, of course, an idealist. This aspect of Hume’s agnosticism at first appealed to some scientists because it was spearheaded against theology. Nevertheless, the more clearsighted of them soon saw that agnosticism conflicts with science, for the chief aim of science is to know reality, and consistent agnosticism leads to a denial of the very possibility of knowing the objective world.<br /> <br /> Ordinary experience—whether individual or general—tells us that sensations are indeed the source of our knowledge of the external world.  Most of what we learn in everyday life or in experimental science is based precisely on sense-perceptions. Both materialists and agnostics agree on this point. They begin to differ when it comes to the question of the role of sensations in cognition, and of their origin. The materialists maintain that sensations transmit and process information received by the brain from the environment. The agnostics deny that the material world exists and so deny the possibility of cognition. But that is not all. As they reduce all knowledge to sense-perception, the agnostics are unable to explain how certain ideas and concepts, irreducible to sensuous images and sensations, arise in man’s consciousness and especially in the system of scientific knowledge.<br /> <br /> Agnosticism as an independent trend emerged when experimental natural sciences and mathematics made rapid strides, i.e., it is of recent origin. It coincided in particular with the period of high development of mathematical analysis, higher algebra, and so on. These branches of mathematics employ concepts like infinity, function, the infinitesimal, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;n&lt;/span&gt;-space vector, etc., which cannot be constructed from or reduced to sensations. They are, nonetheless, conclusively established scientific realities, of practical as well as theoretical importance.  This fact spotlighted the deficiencies of agnosticism which was unable to explain the origin and significance of many basic concepts current in modern science.<br /> <br /> ==== §3. Rationalism and Cognition ====<br /> Development of the theory of knowledge was appreciably influenced by philosophical rationalism (Lat. &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;ratio&lt;/span&gt;, reason). Assigning a subordinate role to sense-perceptions, rationalists held that the ultimate goal of cognition, &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;i&lt;/span&gt;.e., the discovery of laws and basic qualities and relationships of objects, can be attained only by reason, on the ground of logical reasoning alone. However, every discourse must have a beginning, a starting point.<br /> <br /> Such a starting point must be provided by certain major premises, “axioms” or “principles&amp;quot; relating to the universe or its individual parts. But where do they spring from? Where do the laws and rules of logic spring from, which enable us gradually to deduce from the principles all valid knowledge? Adherents of religious rationalism believed that divine providence imparts them to philosophers and scientists at its will. Atheist rationalists, on the Other hand, maintained that the principles, axioms and laws may be discovered by thinkers who, by continually training their minds, become capable of conceiving by intuition all the necessary initial judgements which must be clear, definite and indisputable. Human reason is the highest authority, and once it finds no discrepancies in the concepts and theories of its making, there can be no better proof of their validity. This line of reasoning unmistakably reveals the influence of mathematics, especially of geometry. It was no coincidence that Descartes (1596-1650), the French philosopher, one of the founders of rationalism, was also the father of analytic geometry.<br /> <br /> As is known, Euclidean geometry was considered for centuries the model of logical arrangement of scientific material. What many thinkers found especially praiseworthy about Euclidean geometry was that it begins with the postulation of a limited number of axiomatic, i.e., supposedly self-evident, truths, from which, step by step, in accordance with the rules of logic and by rigorous demonstration, theorems are derived one after another. Rationalists, who put it above all that knowledge should be perfectly logical, made the axiomatic method their ideal.<br /> <br /> But, putting divine revelation aside, where do we take axioms from? Why is our intuition capable of furnishing distinct and clear knowledge of the real world, and how can we ascertain the connection between the immediate consequences of the axioms and the material objects, if sense-perceptions should be an unreliable source of information? Rationalism could supply no answer to these questions. It received a severe blow from science in the 19th century, when three mathematicians, Lobachevsky, Riemann and Bolyai, each independently showed that Euclid’s “axiom of parallels” (the fifth postulate of Euclidean geometry) was not self-evident and could be replaced. In the process, non-Euclidean geometries were developed, distinct and at the same time logically consistent.  Recently, especially after the discovery of the theory of relativity and numerous experiments, including those made possible by space flights, it has been shown that non-Euclidean geometries furnish a much clearer and truthful idea of the external world, compared with Euclid’s geometry. Thus the doctrine of rationalism which managed to explain some facts of scientific, above all, mathematical, knowledge, failed to grasp the connection between scientific laws and cognitive activity, on the one hand, and material phenomena, on the other.<br /> <br /> ==== §4. The Theory of Knowledge in Classical Idealism ====<br /> As we saw, neither the agnostics nor the rationalists were able to provide a coherent theory of knowledge. By exaggerating the significance either of sense-perception or of reason and opposing them to each other, they lost sight of the fact that both sensory perception and reason are combined in the act of cognition. For example, a physicist watching (i.e., perceiving by sight) oscillations of the pointer on the scale of the measuring instrument, correlates them with changes in the electromagnetic field. He thus combines in one process logical inference and visual perception. Those, however, who divorce mind from reality and draw the line between the logical and sensuous aspects of the process of cognition oversimplify it, distorting the real, complex nature of cognitive activity.<br /> <br /> Kant, the founder of German classical idealism, attempted to overcome the conflict of agnosticism and rationalism, bringing the theory of knowledge into line with the results of contemporary natural science and mathematics.  The natural sciences rely, of course, on observation and experiments. But, knowledge thus obtained grasps merely the changing and contingent external aspect of things. Behind things as we know them, or “phenomena” in Kant’s language, are concealed objectively existing material things, or “things-in-themselves&amp;quot;.  Things-in-themselves generate phenomena. But between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself there is a gulf. We perceive the former through sensuous experience while the latter may be only apprehended by the mind. The mind itself moulds &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;a priori&lt;/span&gt; categories, i.e., categories not derived from experience. There are twelve categories, including necessity, causality, etc. They play the main part in the formulation of scientific laws. Thus, according to Kant, sense-perception gives us no knowledge of things-in-themselves and leaves it open to question how we know that they exist.<br /> <br /> As was already mentioned, Kant also conceived time and space as &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;a priori&lt;/span&gt; forms of cognition. These serve to bring into a system the empirical knowledge derived from sensuous experience. Kant is, however, unable to explain how and why the categories and other &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;a priori&lt;/span&gt; forms may generally be applied to sense materials and what information the latter supply concerning the things-in-themselves, which are unknowable in principle.<br /> <br /> Kant’s philosophy is self-contradictory. On the one hand, making a concession to natural science, Kant acknowledged the existence of objective things-in-themselves and considered them to be the source of sensations. On the other, striving to pursue consistently the principles of rationalism, he denied that sensations and sense-perceptions provide a truthful enough reflection of the objective world and assigned the decisive role to &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;a priori&lt;/span&gt; forms of cognition. Pointing out this contradiction in Kantian epistemology, the German philosopher Jacobi wrote that there was no entering Kant's Philosophy without the thing-in-itself, but to remain within that philosophy with the thing-in-itself was equally impossible.<br /> <br /> Hegel, the noted German philosopher and exponent of the dialectical method, who strove to overcome the contradictions of Kantian philosophy and make it more consistent, finally rid the theory of knowledge of German Classical idealism of the thing-in-itself, throwing out, in the process, the elements of natural-&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;s&lt;/span&gt;cientific materialism. According to Hegel, human knowledge is continually developing, being driven by internal contradictions. The world is cognisable, but the deeper thought penetrates into the secrets of being, the clearer it becomes that, through the process of cognition, the Absolute Idea reveals its own objective laws in the real world. It turns out that to know the world is to know its spiritual, ideal essence. Although Hegel made a great contribution to the doctrine of the active and dialectical nature of human knowledge, his theory of knowledge was thoroughly idealistic and therefore met with disapproval from experimental natural science. Besides, Hegel was not always abreast of contemporary physics and mathematics, and his conclusions on the laws governing the development of nature were often at odds with the conceptions advanced by the greatest scientists of the 19th century.<br /> <br /> Idealist philosophers failed to evolve a theory of knowledge matching the needs and results of theoretical and experimental natural science.  This was not done by the materialist philosophers either, many of whom were eminent thinkers. Despite the considerable popularity and the influence it exerted on science and culture, pre-Marxian materialism, too, was not free from some shortcomings vis-a-vis the conception of the cognitive process.<br /> <br /> ==== §5. Theory of Knowledge in Metaphysical Materialism ====<br /> In the 17th, 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, natural science pursued its inquiries by mechanistic methods. It was to this that the theory of knowledge evolved by metaphysical materialists owed its main characteristics.<br /> <br /> The crucial principle on which this theory rested was that man is capable of forming a more or less correct idea of and cognising the external world. The basis of knowledge, the means of communication, as it were, between man and reality, are sense-perceptions. The sense-perceptions are images, ‘copies’, mirroring the external world. This view on the significance of sense-perceptions to the process of knowing was not merely expressive of the common-sense attitude naturally shared by every normal person, but was the earmark of contemporary natural science in general. It was this conception of sense-perception that subjective idealists and agnostics attacked with particular vehemence.<br /> <br /> The weak point in the theory of knowledge of metaphysical materialism was that it overemphasised passive contemplation, i.e., observation of objects, with no attempt to change them.  The contemplative character of pre-Marxian materialism was due to the generalisation of the principle current in natural science that the scientist’s role is, above all, to observe nature, not to alter it. This principle fitted that comparatively early stage in the history of experimental science where it accumulated facts, systematising and classifying them. Certainly, over the 17th-19th centuries, experimental methods involving an active influence on things examined kept improving and developing. But, exponents of metaphysical materialism still failed to grasp their full significance. Passive contemplation and underestimation of the active role of cognition were also due to the fact that metaphysical materialists underrated the importance of analysing the objective laws of thought.  And that, Marx noted, was the weakest point of the previous forms of materialism. Metaphysical materialists viewed cognition as passive observation of, rather than active intervention in, nature and society. The fact is, however, that genuine scientific knowledge becomes available only in the course of remaking the world.<br /> <br /> While they acknowledged that our notions and sensations are images of material things and events, metaphysical materialists failed to explain the principles underlying the development of thought. They could not say how and why knowledge underwent change, as  they believed its basic methods and forms to be stable and immutable. It was this that rendered their doctrine vulnerable and incapable of answering many of the questions posed by the development of society and science. It was therefore necessary to evolve a fundamentally different approach to the problems associated with the investigation of men’s cognitive activity. This need was answered by the theory of knowledge advanced by dialectical materialism.<br /> <br /> ==== §6. The Cognitive Process ====<br /> For centuries, men wondered how celestial bodies had originated and what directed their movement, paying particular attention to the Earth’s natural satellite, the Moon. After the telescope was invented and men began to use intricate astronomical instruments, employing astrophotography, radar, etc., they learned a great deal about the Moon. All this information was the result of numerous observations. Even so, until quite recently astronomers and astro-physicists could give no adequate answers as to how the Moon originated, what its invisible side was like, whether the Moon‘s surface was hard or friable, and what was the origin of the lunar craters and “seas&amp;quot;. By obtaining answers to these questions, men would be able to unravel many secrets of nature and form a clearer idea of the history of the solar system. Scientists advanced numerous hypotheses explaining more or less plausibly different facts. On every substantial point, several hypotheses were advanced, and for a long time it could not be decided which of them was correct. The French 19th-century philosopher Auguste Comte, for instance, positively asserted that the reverse side of the Moon would ever remain a mystery to men. Nevertheless, the artificial satellites which made pictures of the Moon’s far side, as well as the exploration of the lunar topography by Moon robots and astronauts who brought back samples of moon rock made it possible to supply exact answers to the above questions.<br /> <br /> In considering this, we must note the following basic points. First, that observation, whether by means of the senses or instruments, is essential to knowing an object. Second, that men can cognise the essential properties of a thing and the laws governing it only by dynamically interacting with the phenomena under investigation.<br /> <br /> To observe external phenomena without intervening in their vital functions, without interacting with the processes examined, is to engage in passive contemplation. We can only derive some information about things and events from this but we learn nothing about their more intimate connections, basic qualities and relations.  Contemplating a tree, we can describe the colour and shape of its leaves, the shape of its crown, the peculiar qualities of its bark, the kind of soil its species prefer, and so on. However, to determine how old a tree is from the number of rings visible in the cross section of its trunk, we have to saw it up. To find out how plant cells are built or how biochemical reactions proceed in them, we have to use a microscope and chemical reagents. We have to create artificial surroundings for the tree or its parts, keeping it in the dark or in an atmosphere devoid of carbon dioxide or planting it in soil artificially deprived of one or another of the nutrients usually present in the soil, and so on.  We shall have to subject the tree to still more complex operations in order to find out the degree of hardness or pliability or the chemical composition of the timber; this means bending, breaking, applying chemicals to different portions of the trunk, the roots, branches and leaves dozens of times. This active interaction with the object is described as experimentation. We learn from the latter what we cannot possibly learn from passive contemplation.<br /> <br /> We thus arrive at the following conclusion: The cognitive act includes (1) the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;object of cognition&lt;/span&gt;; (2) experimentation or man's action on the object performed with the aid of instruments, tools, etc.; and (3) &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;knowledge&lt;/span&gt; as a reflection of the object’s qualities and distinctive properties, discovered during experimentation.<br /> <br /> We can now define the crucial difference between the theory of knowledge of dialectical materialism and those of the previous philosophical systems.<br /> <br /> Whatever those systems were—materialist or idealist&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;they all described the cognitive act as a dichotomy, or two-fold relation, of the objects concerned and knowledge. Experimentation, i.e., man’s active influence on the objects cognised, was disregarded. That is why both the materialist and the idealist philosophers failed to find an effective method to justify their solutions concerning the world’s cognisability. In other words, the previous philosophical systems lacked a yardstick by which their philosophical positions could be verified.<br /> <br /> Dialectical materialism approached theory of knowledge from an entirely different standpoint, shifting the emphasis to the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;material basis&lt;/span&gt; and &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;objective yardstick&lt;/span&gt; of knowledge. Unlike the agnostics and the Kantians, the dialectical materialists affirmed that the world was cognisable. Rather than reason about how far sensations, representations and conceptions are consistent with the things-in-themselves they reflect, dialectical materialism concentrates on finding out how sensations, representations and conceptions appear and how knowledge contained in them enables man to act and find his bearings in the surroundings and so shape them to his needs. Engels wrote: “If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, ... making it serve our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end to the Kantian ungraspable ‘thing-in-itself’.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-89|89]]&lt;/sup&gt; The soft landing and recovery of the lunar probes, the long excursion of the lunar mobile laboratory, the successful manned flights to the Moon all verify our knowledge on the structure of the Moon’s surface. Artificial synthesis of a gene of yeast, accomplished in 1970, substantiates our knowledge of the physicochemical structure of genes, i.e., biological units of heredity.<br /> <br /> Thus the cardinal position of the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge is this: Cognition of the external world stems from experimentation carried out by man with the aid of tools, instruments and other devices. If our knowledge of the most essential properties of the things involved in these experiments helps us to reproduce or produce certain material objects or work certain desirable changes, then it is regarded as valid.<br /> <br /> The experimentation in question is called &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;practice&lt;/span&gt; (Greek &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;praxis&lt;/span&gt;, doing, action). Let us now consider the characteristics and structure of practice, and the part it plays in cognition.<br /> <br /> ==== §7. The Basis and Yardstick of Knowledge ====<br /> Practice is a word of many meanings. For undergraduates to have practice means to receive practical training (e.g., teaching practice) in the authentic working conditions of their chosen profession. For a doctor to have a large practice means to be sought after by patients. Now the philosophical conception of practice has a particular meaning of its own.<br /> <br /> Man is in contact with very many phenomena relating to nature, society and thought. To be able to find his bearings and act in the complex conditions of modern society, for instance, he must know the laws governing the development of society. Obviously, unlike natural objects, social formations, the class struggle, the development of culture cannot be studied with the aid of tools or instruments. Does it not mean perhaps that practice which we have only just described as the basis and yardstick of knowledge fails as soon as we come to more complex cognitive acts?<br /> <br /> Let us not jump to conclusions. As a matter of fact, work and practice in general are social phenomena. In order to carry them out, men have to associate, maintaining some form of self-organisation, exchanging information, storing, passing on and extending experience.  Therefore we shall conceive practice, or, more broadly, social and production practice, as the sum total of processes and actions arising from man‘s purposeful influence upon objects, and shaping the conditions for this activity and its development. In this sense, the class struggle in antagonistic class society is a crucial element of social and production practice, for it springs from the development of productive forces and relations of production, and its progress and results are decisive for the advance of social production. During the class struggle, not only are various political doctrines advanced, but we also see how faithfully they express the interests of particular classes, how far their professed goals are consistent with the society's need to develop, and to what extent their proposed forms and methods of struggle are effective.<br /> <br /> We can now divide man‘s entire activity into two closely associated kinds of activity—objective and subjective. Objective activity embraces the whole of man’s social and production practice, as it is carried on on the basis of laws which are independent of men’s subjective intentions and will. It is impossible, for instance, to forge water with a forging press or drive in nails with a turbo-drill designed for sinking holes in the ground. It is impossible to abolish class struggle in a society which rests on private ownership. In interacting with nature in the process of his productive labour activity, man relies first of all on the objective properties of the things and implements he has to deal with.  Of course, man sets himself a goal consciously and is conscious of his actions, but the main and decisive role belongs to the objective circumstances and the laws to which such actions are subject independently of man’s will and consciousness. The founders of dialectical materialism pointed out that initially the subjective, i.e., cognitive, activity is intertwined with the objective, practical activity. Only at a comparatively later stage of development does it become detached from the latter. In comparing the mode of thinking of a savage and of a child it is easy to see that the simplest habits of thought, the ability to observe and establish similarity or difference result from the handling of material objects. One must not assume, however, that it is enough to appeal to practice to have all the intricate problems of cognition finally solved. The desire to get final, immutable answers to all questions that may arise in science or everyday life is characteristic of the metaphysical approach to knowledge. Some of these answers seem to us indisputable and are indeed worth following within the limited sphere of everyday life, being sound common sense. “Only,” Engels remarks, “sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-90|90]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> The very way in which our knowledge undergoes change depends on the forms of practice. Wherever practice is stable, certain actions tending to be repeated over decades or even centuries, knowledge derived from it similarly appears to be stable and immutable. But as soon as any serious changes occur in practical activity, knowledge associated with them begins to change rapidly. Generally speaking, practice is extremely varied, there is an element of uncertainty in it, it possesses so wide a range of qualities, characteristics and individual features that it is actually impossible for us to know them once and for all. It is this uncertainty, mutability and mobility of practice that is a crucial factor in knowledge. Practice, Lenin said, is so indefinite that it won't let our knowledge ever stand still. But can it, then, be the yardstick of knowledge? We know that by carrying to its utmost limit the assertion about the changeability and mobility of external objects some philosophers arrived at the conclusion that it is impossible to cognise the world because things change more quickly than they can be judged and described. Nevertheless, nothing disproves the idealist view on cognition better than practice, in which actions repeated scores and hundreds of times produce more or less similar results.<br /> <br /> The fact that hundreds of artificial Earth satellites, for example, are moving round the Earth in scheduled orbits, that Moon probes land in a definite spot time and again proves best of all that practice, be it production activity or scientific experiment, serves to discover stable, recurrent characteristics and properties of material things and to derive true knowledge of them.<br /> <br /> Thus, we can draw the following three conclusions: (1) practice is the objective basis of cognition and simultaneously the yardstick showing to what extent knowledge of this or that thing is far-reaching and true; (2) practice is mobile, indefinite and changeable enough to prevent knowledge from freezing up, and is the chief factor in the progress of knowledge; (3) practice is definite enough to separate true from false knowledge, the materialist from the idealist approach, and to affirm the truth of the materialist theory of knowledge.<br /> <br /> ==== §8. Knowledge and Truth ====<br /> Knowing is a process in which subjective operations and procedures of thought are closely linked with objective experiments and forms of activity. Knowledge which is the product of this process bears the imprint of these interrelated aspects. Therefore, it is very important to ascertain what in our knowledge depends on objective, and what on subjective, factors.  Turning to the history of science, we may trace the development, for instance, of our knowledge of the cosmic bodies comprising the solar system, and in particular, the Moon. The rudimentary knowledge preserved since hoary antiquity appears, on closer examination, to consist of two different parts. Some of it depends on the structure of man’s sense-organs (e.g., the eye), on the place from which the observation is made, on the observer's skill, diligence, power of concentration, and so on. And some of it—this is the second part—depends neither on an individual person nor on mankind in general.  The fact that on different days of the month the Moon appears sometimes as a disk and sometimes as a sickle, depends partly on the observers position and partly on the objective position of the Moon and the Sun. However, the Shape of the Moon and the rate at which it revolves round the Earth, or the chemical composition of Moon rocks in no way depend on the observer’s position.<br /> <br /> As the means of observation are improved, Optical telescopes being replaced by radio telescopes, radars, lasers and space laboratories, our knowledge of the Moon is becoming more and more complex and varied. Simultaneously, that part of knowledge which does not depend either on the individual or on mankind in general but is determined by the objective factors accounts for a greater share of our knowledge of the Moon.<br /> <br /> Can we claim, however, that at some stage we have either attained or will attain a level of knowledge at which it will depend a hundred per cent on the objective factors, no longer containing anything dependent on man?<br /> <br /> The nature of the bulk of information available to modern science depends not only on the object investigated but also on the diverse instruments enabling the investigator and the object to interact. Although all such means of obtaining knowledge exist objectively, they are created by men and so must, to some extent, depend on the subjective factor. Moreover, we cannot exclude from the cognitive act the human brain, the nervous system, the observer's skill, capacity, the acuteness of his senses, and so on. Therefore, although that part of knowledge which does not depend on man tends to increase, the subjective element still remains, to a greater or lesser degree. The purpose of science is to increase continually the volume of that part of our knowledge which reflects the basic characteristics, properties and relations of objects and which does not depend on the individual man or mankind in general. Lenin defined this part of knowledge as &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;objective truth&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> It is easy to see from the above example one of the main characteristics of objective truth. It is that objective truth keeps changing, developing and increasing. Ancient philosophers, who gave much attention to astronomy, were fairly well informed about the planets as can be seen from the lunar calendars compiled in the remote past, records of the dark areas found on the bright lunar disk, the ability to calculate the periods of full Moon and to forecast eclipses of the Sun. All these are obvious elements of objective truth. Still, their proportion in the mass of fantastic mythological descriptions of the Moon was exceedingly small. Since the invention of the telescope three and a half centuries ago, the volume of objective information about the Earth’s natural satellite has been growing incessantly.<br /> <br /> We can say that at every single stage in the history of knowledge, objective truth ascended a step higher, ousting the subjective elements more and more. These stages in the development of objective truth are known as &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;relative truth&lt;/span&gt; (or the relative form of objective truth).<br /> <br /> Consequently, objective truth, influenced by Practical activity which keeps developing and becoming more complex, also continually develops and cannot be final, complete and immutable. On the contrary, it appears as a succession of relative truths concerning an object, each Successive stage in the development of truth being fuller and more far-reaching than the Preceding one. Lenin described this process as &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;dialectics of knowledge&lt;/span&gt;. Unlike Kant and his followers who held that the phenomena and the things-in-themselves were divided by a gulf dialectical materialist epistemology regards cognition as a succession of interconnected acts of arriving at relative truths which contain objective information about things, their properties and internal interrelations.<br /> <br /> Can a process like that result in exhaustive, all-embracing knowledge of objects? If we recall that the material world and even individual fragments of it possess a practically endless number of properties, connections and relations, it will be obvious to us that to attain complete and ultimate knowledge embracing every aspect of the thing we study is impossible. This is all the more true as the things round us keep developing and changing, thus taking on new properties and new connections. Living organisms consisting of thousands of millions of interacting cells, economic systems comprising hundreds of enterprises, millions of workers, hundreds of thousands of machines and other tools for manufacturing different goods, are so complex that to know everything about them is impossible.<br /> <br /> Consequently, full, exhaustive knowledge, also described as absolute truth, may be achieved only with respect to very simple objects, with relatively few constituents and connections. We find such objects in mathematics, for example, but even there a great deal of abstraction and restriction is needed to enable one to describe something as ultimate truth.<br /> <br /> But if we say that ultimate truth is unattainable, do we not thereby deny its objectivity?  Does it mean that the agnostics, who deny that the world is cognisable, are right? Such assumptions can hardly find justification. If we approach cognition dialectically, not as something that must have an end, but as incessant extension of our knowledge of the external world, we shall have to agree that the world is cognisable, not in the sense that we may cognise it once and for all, but rather that we can keep adding to and expanding the relative truths available to us, verifying and refining upon them with the help of practical activity.<br /> <br /> Thus, absolute truth and relative truth are, as it were, two forms of objective truth, while absolute truth itself may be regarded as the result of an endless succession of relative truths Superseding one another.<br /> <br /> This ends our brief exposition of the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge. Having Surmounted the metaphysical opposition of sen&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;s&lt;/span&gt;uous and rational knowledge, dialectical materialism posed in a new way, and, moreover, solved in a new way, the question of the world’s Cognisability. Knowledge was discussed for the first time in terms of social and production Practice as the basis and yardstick of the world’s cognisability. It made possible a new understanding of the relationship formed by sense-perception and logical thought in the process of cognitive activity. New light was thrown on a whole range of complex problems associated with the modern forms and methods of scientific knowledge.<br /> <br />  <br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> === 10. The Dialectical Path to Truth ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. Origin of Sensation ====<br /> We have been introduced to the principles of the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge.  Now we shall examine how cognition proceeds, the stages it passes through, how these are connected and the part they play in our knowledge of the real world.<br /> <br /> &amp;quot;... Suddenly ... I saw very clearly a quick and blinding black lightning . . . ,&amp;quot; says one of Kuprin’s characters. “&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;I&lt;/span&gt; still cannot understand the reason for that phenomenon. Was it an error of sight strained by the incessant play of lightning or was it an accidental disposition of the clouds, or was it some peculiarity of that nasty boggy depression?”<br /> <br /> Similar, if not quite so extraordinary, incidents occur to everyone. Our visual, auditory, tactile and other similar impressions usually permit us to adjust, yet often we do not trust them because impressions of this kind may occasionally be deceptive. Often the weather is cold for one person and hot for another. The surface that seems perfectly smooth to one person seems rough to another. Facts of this kind were often cited as evidence that our sense organs are unreliable and the sensations for which they are responsible, far from reflecting the properties of things, generally cannot be used as proof that the real world exists.<br /> <br /> Now what is sensation? How does it depend on the sense organs, and what produces it? In speaking of sensation we have to distinguish between two meanings of this term. Firstly, sensation may mean the interaction of the sense organs and the environment and the material process of transmission of information from one part of the nervous system to another. Secondly, this term is used to describe the result of the above-mentioned process, i.e., the image arising in the brain, which is already a fact of consciousness.<br /> <br /> Take, for example, man’s visual perceptions which supply almost 90 per cent of all the external information he receives.<br /> <br /> Light falling on an object is partly absorbed and partly reflected and so received by the eye.  Light consists of electromagnetic waves of different length, and which of them will be reflected and which absorbed by the object depends on the physicochemical nature of the object’s surface. Hence, the very character of the waves that are reflected already contains unidentified information about the nature of the object. The first conversion of the light rays received by the eye occurs when they are refracted in passing through the transparent covering of the eye.  Then they are focused by the lens of the eye upon the retina. There, in accordance with the laws of geometrical optics, an image of the object is formed. The geometrical image is like one we can see on the opaque glass plate at the back wall of a photographer’s camera. A chemical procedure developed at the close of the 19th century has made it possible to fix the visual image formed on the retina, so that now we know that the image differs in many respects from the object. First, the image is flat (two-dimensional) while all material objects are three-dimensional. Second, it is much smaller than the object and is symmetrically inverted.  Third, the image formed on the retina only shows those details of the object which are big enough. This depends on how the object is lighted, as well as on its size and the distance between it and the eye.<br /> <br /> We can say that the image on the retina is a natural reflection which depends on the physical nature of the object, the eye and the light.  How does it initiate the sensation of vision?  The light waves reaching the retina start complex chemical and biochemical reactions in the cells, which serve, in fact, to code the information received by the eye. Every signal coming from without produces a definite bio-electrical impulse. When these reach the cells of a particular area in the brain, viz., the optic centre, a new transformation takes place there. It is decoding which initiates visual perception.<br /> <br /> Thus the process whereby visual perceptions are produced is of a material nature. It results from the interaction of such material systems as light waves and man’s optic system. It is a highly complex process including a range of successive transformations, whereby some kinds of energy are converted into some other kinds.  Nevertheless in all such transformations the principle is observed that every species of external stimuli is attended by definite and distinctive visual images. That is not all, however. Let us recall, for instance, the fact, already referred to, that all images formed on the retina are inverted. Yet everybody knows from experience that we do not see things upside down. It appears that the brain not only perceives images but actively intervenes in the process of perception. The optic centre in the brain adjusts the images consistently with man’s individual and social experience, on the basis of knowledge derived from social practice. Thus, while knowledge emerges on the basis of sensations, the latter form under the influence of knowledge previously acquired and confirmed by practice.  This is corroborated by the following experiment. A person puts on a contrivance which inverts al&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;l&lt;/span&gt; visible objects. In a dark room, against a black background, a candle is placed on an invisible support, which the person sees inverted, with the wick at the bottom. But when the candle is lighted, it is immediately perceived as being in a normal position. Why? We know from experience that a flame always points upwards, and so the brain automatically corrects the “mistake” of the experimental apparatus.<br /> <br /> Thus we see that visual perceptions, as a fact of consciousness, are far from simple. They must be related to the external world, but they do not simply mirror it. On the one hand, we cannot do without sensations, because with their help we receive sensuous images of the objects around us. On the other hand, we cannot fully rely on sensations as they often produce illusions, erroneous representations, and images conflicting partly or completely with experience and experiment. How do we overcome this contradiction? How far are sense-perceptions to be trusted and what part do they play in cognition?<br /> <br /> Before these questions can be answered, we must find out more exactly the extent to which sensations depend on the external object and on the percipient subject.<br /> <br /> The organs of vision in man and animals are, of course, rather different. This tells on both &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;v&lt;/span&gt;isual sensations and resultant images. Under normal daylight modern man can distinguish several hundred basic colours and hues. At the same time, some animals, e.g., dogs, perceive objects only in black and white, distinguishing them by the intensity of the greys. Bees do not perceive red. They perceive only yellow, blue and violet and also ultraviolet rays. Consequently, other things being equal, one and the same object will be perceived differently by different optic systems, causing different sensations in them.<br /> <br /> Organs of vision, like other sense organs, appeared and developed during biological evolution. They helped living organisms adjust to the environment and were important factors in the struggle for survival. As the conditions of life affecting the different organisms inhabiting the Earth vary a great deal, the sense organs are very diverse. The “ultraviolet” vision of the bee, whose active life occurs in bright sunlight, enables it to receive a maximum of biologically useful information. That kind of vision would not do for rattlesnakes which are nocturnal animals. Therefore in their evolution they developed a special kind of “heat” vision. Snakes have several thousand nerve cells, located in small indentations just below the eyes, capable of perceiving infrared rays. This enables them, in absolute darkness, to hunt warm-blooded animals whose body temperature is at least a few degrees higher than the outside temperature.<br /> <br /> Thus sensation depends on the sense organs as well as on the nature of the object and conditions of perception. A sensation is an image of the objects which produce it. At the same time, it is a subjective image which depends not only on what is perceived and under what conditions, but also on the percipient.<br /> <br /> The cognising brain and the sense organs supplying information to it are not simply objects of external influence. Recognising the active interaction of the subject and object of cognition is the cornerstone of the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge. It is in this interrelation that the sense organs supplement and correct one another making it possible to form the necessary images of the external world we are to live in.<br /> <br /> Unlike animals, whose activity is almost entirely determined by heredity which leaves comparatively little room for the development of individual habits, men have evolved, over hundreds of thousands of years, an immense capacity for adjustment.<br /> <br /> Outside society, the development of specifically human acts, including cognitive acts, proves to be impossible. A little child can perceive different colours and geometrical images of objects, but it develops the idea of distance, size, etc., only in the process of active movement in space, assisted by adults.<br /> <br /> The ability to make out colours, shape and distance is formed as a result of personal experience associated with sustained activity.  However, the character of sensations does not depend on individual experience alone but on culture as a whole, the level of society's development, and the social system to which the individual belongs.<br /> <br /> Thus a comparison of modern and of some historically retarded peoples’ spatial perception of things shows that the latter lack a perception of linear perspective. This fact does not depend on any national or racial characteristics but solely on the level of social production and living and cultural standards at large.<br /> <br /> To sum up. Sensations depend on (1) the properties and particular characteristics of material objects; (2) the conditions under which they act upon the sense organs; (3) the organisation and condition of the perceiving system, including the brain; (4) previous individual experience and knowledge; (5) the cultural level of society; (6) the character of practical activity carried out during perception. Consequently, sensations are images which, besides having the qualities and characteristics of the objects perceived, also bear the imprint of numerous other factors.<br /> <br /> Then how do sensations pass into forms of knowledge which reflect and fix, more or less “purely”, the relations characteristic of real objects?<br /> <br /> ==== §2. The Significance of Language for Cognition ====<br /> When two persons look at or touch the same object or hear the same tune they form certain sensuous images. In order to co-operate in production, in social and home life, people have to inform each other about what they have seen and heard, share their impressions and store and communicate varied knowledge.<br /> <br /> Sensations and the visual images based on them contain a certain amount of information about the surroundings. But we cannot pass &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;o&lt;/span&gt;n sensations, ‘extracting’ them from one head and putting them into another.<br /> <br /> Then how is information transmitted in human society? What means of storing knowledge do men possess? It is language. Language is the means of transmitting and storing knowledge.<br /> <br /> The sense organs enable us to perceive material things. Using telescopes we can look at faraway heavenly bodies. With the aid of an oscillograph or a photographic plate one can see the trace made by an elementary particle.  But we cannot see or touch thought. After all thought is ideal in form. Man’s thought is not only the result of social progress. Mastering the immense wealth of thought, the treasures of science and culture, is a prerequisite of the further progress of mankind and the basis of allround development of the individual. “&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Language&lt;/span&gt;,” Marx and Engels wrote, “is the immediate actuality of thought.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-91|91]]&lt;/sup&gt; They pointed out that thought, which is ideal in nature, finds its sole material expression in language, thanks to which it can be perceived by men. It is just because language is the material vehicle of thought that it is able to play a twofold role, being simultaneously the means of communication and of knowing reality.<br /> <br /> Language is a distinct sign system. Think of what is round you, look at the ordinary household things, look at what you come across in the street and at work, and what will you see?  You will see that the world is full of signs and systems of signs.<br /> <br /> The striped barrier by the railway crossing is not just a pole painted black and white&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;it is a sign telling you to stop. A wedding ring or a white smock are not just a piece of metal or an article of clothing respectively, but signs of being married or belonging to the medical profession. Insofar as things not only serve a useful function in industry or in the home but communicate information, they are signs. Any sensible material object capable of communicating information is a sign. In this sense, signs are some times described as substitutes for other objects. Things other than those created by man can also be signs. The imprint left by a prehistoric reptile in a limestone block or the smoke rising over a distant wood are instances of so-called natural signs. The former is evidence of an extinct animal and the latter of a bonfire or a forest fire. A natural sign is the result of the interaction of two or more material objects, e.g., of the prehistoric animal and calcareous rock. They have a number of disadvantages which make them inconvenient for use in communicating and producing knowledge in human society. They are often impossible to transmit or store or reproduce perfectly (cf. the smoke or the rock just referred to). Besides, the information they communicate is about a single event. To describe a class of animals with the help of natural signs would take a thousand, perhaps a million, such signs. Even so, the description would be incomplete since all impressions left by an animal are bound to leave out of account many of its characteristics, traits, and so on.<br /> <br /> There is a certain likeness between natural and manmade signs based on a similarity between the sign and the thing it stands for, e.g., a portrait, drawing, map or the plan of a machine or a building. These signs do not result from the immediate interaction of different material objects. They are made by people with the aid of implements. They are highly conventionalised. Quite perceptible in a portrait, it becomes paramount in an architectural plan or mechanical diagram. But, however conventionalised, there is a certain similarity between the signs of the kind described (i.e., a diagram of a lathe or a map) and the objects designated.  Soviet cosmonauts who circled the Earth many times confirmed that the continents’ outlines were like their representations on maps. Yet as we pass from a portrait to a map and from that to a technical drawing, the measure of conventionality increases. This makes it possible to designate aggregates rather than individual objects. This reveals an important characteristic of signs, viz., the more conventionalised a sign is, the more general it becomes thus making the number of objects it can designate greater. Nevertheless, the generalising capacity of this kind of sign is limited, because it must, to some extent at least, look like the object designated, in terms of geometrical form or colour or material or whatever.<br /> <br /> One of the distinctive features of human language is that it has none of the limitations of all the other sign systems. In this sense, it is a special sign system. The basic elements of language are words. They are formed from sounds or their combinations and are independent language units. With the emergence of writing systems, people learned to represent words with the help of graphic signs. The sound form, however, has always been the main element in all existing languages.<br /> <br /> Linguistic signs, or words, are material phenomena. They act on our sense organs (the ears) and arouse auditory sensations in us. Yet, unlike other material phenomena, whether natural or manmade, words have no value in themselves but only as a means of producing, communicating and storing information. Words are utterly conventional and can under no circumstances be considered images of material things or events because they reflect neither any of their characteristics nor any of their relations to one another.<br /> <br /> But does it contradict the assertion that language serves to express and communicate knowledge which is, after all, a reflection of reality? Not at all. These notions are not the least contradictory.<br /> <br /> To understand how language and words take part in reflecting reality (although they do not reflect it in themselves), we must consider more closely what words are. We know that the words of any language are conventional. The properties of words as special material phenomena are in no way connected with the phenomena they name. That is why identical objects or groups of objects are represented by different words in different languages. The totalities of things, events, states, mental experiences, social phenomena, etc., designated by a word, form its meaning. This meaning is not inherent in the word as such but is assigned to it depending on how it is used in practice, in human intercourse.  As language develops along with society, words gradually develop new meanings which usually coexist with the old, or they may come to express entirely different notions (e.g., &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;sound&lt;/span&gt;, healthy, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;sound&lt;/span&gt;, noise, and &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;sound&lt;/span&gt;, a surgical instrument) so that it is not always possible to tell the precise meaning of a separate word.<br /> <br /> Unlike other manmade signs, words possess an unlimited capacity for expressing general characteristics and relations between objects, just because they are not images but conventional signs (symbols).<br /> <br /> Every word&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;e.g., &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;building&lt;/span&gt;, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;electron&lt;/span&gt;, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;revolution&lt;/span&gt;, progress—refers to a larger or smaller aggregate of things, rather than to individual things. Emphasising this distinctive quality of words, Lenin wrote that &amp;quot;every word... &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;universalises&lt;/span&gt;….&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-92|92]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Natural signs (impressions or traces) convey the individual, singular characteristics of objects, and so are unsuitable to express general features and relationships. Manmade signs (maps, diagrams, etc.) are conventional and so suitable for unqualified generalisation. The words of a language are fully conventional, their capacity to generalise is infinite, yet one can express in them any information about individual objects. This shows the dialectics of the development of sign systems.<br /> <br /> Now we must see how a finite number of words form an infinite number of linguistic expressions which fix pieces of information. Language does not just consist of words. Every language also contains special rules, i.e., grammar. These rules help people make combinations of signs, i.e., assemble words into sentences. Not every sequence of words is a sentence. So that, “The Earth Sun the round revolves” is not a sentence and carries no information. On the other hand “The Earth revolves round the Sun” is a sentence communicating an astronomical fact. People are often unconscious of grammar rules and use them automatically, acquiring the appropriate habits from education and speech communication.<br /> <br /> Combinability is the thing that makes human language distinct from animal sounds. Animals also use sounds to transmit the simplest information. This ability is for the most part inherited. Even with gregarious animals like some birds, beavers and various mammals the capacity ‘to interact through sounds does not depend on the form of communication. An incubator chicken raised in solitude reacts to the sounds made by hens no worse than the chickens hatched by a hen. Some animals, e.g., dolphins, use several dozen sound signals to express anxiety, to call for aid, indicate the presence of food, challenge an adversary, call for attack.  and so on. Some investigators even talk of a dolphin language.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, neither the dolphins nor any other animals possess language in the sense in which we speak of human language. This is particularly clear from the absence of combinability which enables differentiated sound signals to be assembled into an infinite number of sentences. That is why all information accessible to the animals, which they are capable of passing on to each other, does not go beyond a comparatively limited assortment of sounds.  For this reason, the animals cannot develop the form of intellect which we term human thinking.<br /> <br /> Emphasising the significance of language to the progress of knowledge and thought, Lenin wrote: “The senses show reality; thought and word—the universal.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-93|93]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Language can express the universal in two senses. In the first place, words and sentences do not designate individual objects, properties and relations, but their totalities. In the second place, language is universal. Unlike sensations, words and sentences may be passed on from one person to another without having their sense and meaning distorted. Though some of the individual, subjective points of knowledge are partly lost, everything which is general and essential, and without which community life and common effort are impossible, is retained.<br /> <br /> &lt;span id=&quot;index_split_002.xhtml&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== §3. Abstraction and Concept Formation ====<br /> The process by which we pass from sensation to verbal thinking is described as abstraction, and its results as abstractions or concepts. In ordinary life, an “abstraction” is often used to denote something hazy, vague, incoherent, detached from life. There is some reason for it, too. Some abstract notions, divorced from practical activity, are indeed recondite and of little use in everyday life. However, theory of knowledge is interested above all in far-reaching scientific abstractions without which one simply cannot understand the secrets of nature, bring out the true causes of social progress or formulate scientific laws.<br /> <br /> So, what are scientific abstractions? Where do they spring from? And what distinguishes profound and true from shallow and false abstractions? Many people think abstractions emerge simply as a result of the isolation of common characteristics of things and events, which are reflected in sensations. From this standpoint, minor or dissimilar features are simply neglected, while the features common to the totality are selected and fixed in the abstraction. The process of abstraction does, indeed, imply discarding what is dissimilar and singling out what is general, but that is far from being all.<br /> <br /> Take, for instance, the Scientific abstraction “four-dimensional space&amp;quot;, fundamental to the special theory of relativity which plays a major role in modern physics.<br /> <br /> We already know that real material space is three-dimensional, and our sense organs, under no circumstances, permit us to discover phenomena such as occur in four-dimensional space. However, we often resort to the concepts of one- and two- as well as three-dimensional space.<br /> <br /> It is easy to see that these concepts are abstractions which result from isolating certain properties and characteristics of real bodies. The concept of a sphere (which is three-dimensional), for instance, is formed when we disregard the differences in the size, colour and material of various spheric bodies and isolate their geometric shape alone as their common characteristic. The linear, or one-dimensional concept is also an abstraction, whereby we neglect the size, geometric shape, etc., of bodies and isolate the distance between them as the sole characteristic.  The concept “two-dimensional space” is also an abstraction. Plane geometric figures (e.g., circles, ellipses, trapeziums and triangles) possess only two dimensions.<br /> <br /> These abstractions are more or less connected with sensations—sensuous images of objective things and events. We can imagine a sphere, a quadrangular building site, the line between point A and point B, etc., but to see or touch a four-dimensional cube or sphere or imagine an event occurring in four-dimensional space is something we are unable to do. For all that, not only does multi-dimensional geometry exist but there is also a physical theory describing material events with the aid of the abstraction “four-dimensional space”. From this, it follows that there is something in our concepts, in abstractions, which is not immediately present in sensations and which cannot be derived simply by omitting or selecting certain characteristics of the objective world which are fixed in sensation. Then how does correct abstraction proceed?<br /> <br /> Knowledge is not a mirror reflection of reality. Dialectical materialism, which considers consciousness, thought as secondary, states that once it has emerged, it follows its own laws, being marked by certain specific features. One of them is that the mind is capable of connecting, arranging and unifying elements of sense-perceptions not in the way they are connected or arranged in the immediate sensuous images.  Moreover, as he learned to isolate connections and relations, man improved this capacity, creating and inventing new connections and relations and bringing them together often in the most fanciful ways. That was how mythological and folk-tale monsters of half-men half-horses, ogres, and so on, appeared. Four-dimensional space is the child of scientific imagination. This abstraction was arrived at not by neglecting characteristics of reality but, contrariwise, by magnifying and projecting the old abstractions “two-” and “three-dimensional space.”<br /> <br /> From this, it follows that the process of abstraction is complex, dialectical, contradictory. Along with comparison, isolation of the general and omission of the particular, it involves imagination, the rearrangement of real connections and constituents. It must be noted that this occurs not only with respect to complex abstractions, like “infinity”, “four-dimensional space”, etc., but also with respect to comparatively simple and familiar concepts, like “circle” or “red colour.” We all learn at school that a circle is a plane closed curve, with all its points equidistant from a particular point in the plane, called the centre. The length of line bounding a circle is called the circumference. The abstractions “circle” and “circumference” result from the generalisation of the geometrical properties of familiar things such as a wheel, a round button, the visible disk of the full Moon, and so on. With the aid of modern grinding machines more and more precise disks can be made, with radii differing by no more than thousandths of a millimetre. The discrete structure of solids makes it, however, generally impossible to turn out a disk with absolutely equal radii. Therefore, strictly speaking, no wooden, stone or metal disk actually answers the geometrical description of a circle, and all we can do in practice is continue to improve precision standards. But if we are unable to beat the barrier erected by nature in practice, we can surmount it in imagination by projecting the process begun in practice beyond what is called the threshold and is fundamental to the formation of abstractions, though we are unconscious of it in everyday life. Comparing a poppy, a ripe tomato and blood, we can form the concept of red, Indeed, there are no real objects that are simply red&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;they are always a certain shade of that colour. The concept “red&amp;quot; isolates something general which allows us to apply one name to millions of similarly coloured objects, rather than use a million names.<br /> <br /> Now we can isolate the main stages of abstraction. The first, the formation of the initial totality, consists in isolating a set of things, processes, phenomena, situations, etc. The second, the matching and comparison of the elements of the initial totality, includes two procedures, one to bring out similarity and the other disparity. The purpose of this stage is to isolate certain common properties, connections and relations characteristic of the elements of the given initial totality. The third stage is that of denotation and generalisation. It consists in naming the common characteristic, connection or relation selected at the preceding stage. The given characteristic is invested, so to speak, with linguistic, verbal shape. From this point on, we operate with signs, with all the consequences that this entails. A word or word combination becomes the expositor of the notion. The fourth stage is the threshold and the further determination of content. Certainly, the three last mentioned stages are seldom divided in time and usually proceed simultaneously, interlacing, interacting and supplementing one another.<br /> <br /> By the content of an abstraction, or concept, is meant the sum of characteristics which may be regarded as the definition of the given concept. Let us recall, for example, the definition of a circle. The sum total of all the elements forms the sense of the concept, while the elements themselves form its meaning or, to put it more precisely, its initial meaning.<br /> <br /> In the process of abstraction, we pass from the sensuous form of knowledge to abstract, verbal thinking. This transition is always connected with loss of perceivability. It is sometimes said that concepts may be perceivable and non-perceivable, and that one of the most important distinguishing features of modern science, as compared with classical science, consists in the changeover from perceivable to non-perceivable concepts. In truth, however, all concepts are non-perceivable. It is just that some of them are more ordinary and have a rather simple connection with perceivable, sensory representations, and others are less ordinary, with a long series of intermediate abstractions between them and sensuous images. We can easily call up the image of an acquaintance but we are unable to conceive the image of man as such, who is neither a man nor a woman, neither old nor young, neither a European nor an African.  Man as such is an abstraction which is no more perceivable than four-dimensional space or a mathematical infinity. Certainly, the concept “man” is closer to the sensible material phenomena than the concept “four-dimensional space.”  This explains why the latter is harder to comprehend. Loss of perceivability does not mean, nevertheless, that abstract notions stop being the reflections of reality. Of course, they are not its sensuous images like sensation and representation. It does not, however, follow that they are not images at all. The fact that concepts exist and are expressed by signs was repeatedly used by idealists as a reason for alleging that our notions were as conventional and symbolic as the signs themselves. But the dialectics of verbal thinking consists in the use of conventional signs, i.e., words thus representing the highest form in which reality is reflected.<br /> <br /> Lenin said that our concepts are copies, images of reality. The proof of it is that with the aid of concepts—even the most abstract of them—we are able to recognise, interact with and remake sensible things.<br /> <br /> Now we must answer one more question, about the difference between scientific and unscientific abstractions. After all, in the process of abstraction, men, following their fancy, recombining connections, rejecting some and introducing other elements and relations, also created such concepts as god, mermaid, personal immortality, and so on. At this point, we should recall the yardstick of truth already discussed, i.e., practice. Abstractions do not exist in isolation, unconnected with other products of the mind. A number of specifically related concepts may form another concept, new knowledge, more concrete, more exact and full, giving a more comprehensive description of a thing or event. If immediate or mediate utilisation of these concepts enables us to observe the properties and relations they express, we can say that they correctly reflect the things observed.<br /> <br /> If on the basis of such concepts, having performed the actions prescribed by them, we attain the goal, we may be confident that our abstractions have stood the test of practice and are true and adequate.<br /> <br /> The yardstick of practice again reveals its cognitive significance, this time as a means of appreciating how far-reaching and adequate, how objective and scientific our abstractions are. For this reason, Lenin, as he gave a brief formula of the process of cognition in general, pointed out that it proceeds from living perception to abstract thought and from that to practice which is the start and finish of the total cognitive act. However, the transition from abstractions to practice is not simple. It comprises a number of intermediate steps, the most important of them being modelling and theoretical thought.<br /> <br /> ==== §4. The Model in Cognitive Activity ====<br /> The ultimate aim of cognition is to produce knowledge allowing man to carry on some activity conducive to the satisfaction of his material or spiritual needs. This essentially requires the use of models. Like many other terms widely used in everyday life as well as in science, &amp;quot;model&amp;quot; is a word of many meanings.  One can speak of a new model of a lathe, anew dress model, an artist’s model, and so on. This term acquires a special meaning in the theory of knowledge. Supposing there are two objects, A and B. Object A is the model of object B if (1) A is in some respect simpler, more convenient or easier to study than B; (2) certain features, qualities or peculiarities of A are a reflection of the qualities, peculiarities or habits of B, which are being investigated; (3) in all other respects A is distinct from B (these distinctions may concern material, shape, size, etc.); (4) knowledge derived from the investigation of A may, with some adjustments, be further applied to B to explain one or another of its peculiar features, predict its behaviour, and s&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;o&lt;/span&gt; on.<br /> <br /> If A satisfies these conditions with reference to B, it is a model of B, and so we can use it in place of B with the same result. But why should we use a substitute rather than the object itself? The point is that often we either cannot use it for various reasons, or we can obtain the necessary result more quickly and cheaply with a model. In developing large hydro-engineering installations or complex assemblies, their simplified small-scale models are first made. On the bank of a small artificial pond, they build diminutive electric power stations one-hundredth or one-thousandth the normal size, reproducing all essential characteristics of the installation.  Experimenting with a model, one can weed out mistakes and introduce corrections in the design at comparatively little cost.<br /> <br /> Not all models are, however, simple copies of objects. The algebraic formula x&lt;span class=&quot;s-t9&quot;&gt;2&lt;/span&gt; + y&lt;span class=&quot;s-t9&quot;&gt;2&lt;/span&gt; = z&lt;span class=&quot;s-t9&quot;&gt;2&lt;/span&gt; may be regarded, in a sense, as a model of the geometric circumference. Of course, a drawing on the blackboard is a more palpable representation which can also be viewed as a model, but the formula, without being representational, is, in some respects, better. Mathematical calculation, algebraic in particular, is more exact than measurement with compasses and a ruler can be. Besides, many complex processes generally cannot be visually represented. Such is the behaviour of biological and social systems with their millions and even billions of interacting elements. We cannot possibly have a visual representation of the interaction of all industrial establishments, communications, transport, shipment of raw materials and goods on a national scale, which we must know to be able to plan and scientifically manage the socialist economy. Still, all of it can be represented adequately enough by a system of mathematical equations. These equations will be models of the economic system. By putting in concrete figures instead of certain variables, we can calculate other variables very accurately. Intricate mathematical models are handled by computers.<br /> <br /> Thus, there may be physical models, like mock-ups, simplified copies of things, or sign models, like mathematical equations, conventionalised diagrams, etc. Between these extremes, we find other types of models combining physical and symbolic features in varying proportions, e.g., the ordinary classroom glo&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;b&lt;/span&gt;e.<br /> <br /> One must, however, discriminate between sign models and other sign systems, e.g., language. Words are not images of objects but their significants. Nevertheless, all models (including sign models) are, in a sense, patterns of the phenomena examined.<br /> <br /> What is the relation between abstraction and model-building? How are abstractions and models connected? As follows from the definition, models do not reproduce all characteristics of the object but only such as are essential to the research. Clearly enough, to be able to build or select a model, one should be informed about some properties and connections of the object or process concerned. This information, expressed in special concepts, precedes, therefore, the building of a model. The success of the model, its practical and scientific usefulness, depends on how correctly the abstractions underlying it had been elaborated, and how essential are the characteristics of the phenomena under investigation which they reflect. After the model is made and is used in the laboratory or in production, it helps fill up a gap in knowledge and elaborate new abstractions reflecting hitherto unknown characteristics of the structure and behaviour of the given phenomena.<br /> <br /> The processes of abstraction and model-building are interrelated. The objectification of an abstraction in a model is described as its realisation or materialisation. Before launching the lunar probe &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Lunokhod-1&lt;/span&gt;, scientists collected all available information about lunar topography and the physicochemical structure of the Moon's surface. Working from these data, they built several models of the automatic laboratory and tested them under conditions closely resembling lunar conditions. After the design of the probe was corrected and improved, the real probe was built and launched to the Moon.<br /> <br /> Thus model-building proceeds through several stages. At the first stage, the main abstractions are elaborated, isolating the most essential of the object’s known characteristics. Simultaneously, the aim of the ensuing research is formulated. At the second stage, the model is designed and built. At the third stage, model experiments are conducted. At the fourth stage, the experimental data are applied to the object concerned. However, though important, modelling by itself does not yield the result sought.  Both to build a model and to apply the experimental data to the object, we need scientific theory. The revolutionary doctrine of scientific communism created by Marx and Engels and Darwin's teaching on biological evolution, classical and quantum mechanics, all are scientific theories. Theory is the highest form of cognition, integrating observation and abstraction, model-building and experimentation. Without theory, these important stages of cognition are limited and sterile. It was this that made the founders of dialectical materialism pay such great attention to theoretical thought.<br /> <br /> ==== §5. The Theoretical Level of Knowledge ====<br /> In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus published a new theory on the revolution of celestial bodies, which maintained that the Earth was not the centre of the universe round which the other planets and the Sun revolved. The Copernican theory conflicted with the Earth-centred system of the ancient Greek philosopher and astronomer Ptolemy, which was supported by the church. The Copernican theory not only undermined the prestige of the church and opposed Ptolemy, but appeared to contradict the obvious. Any observer can see that the Earth does not move while the Sun describes a regular arc in the sky, rising in the east and setting in the west. At night, one can see the Moon and planets moving in the sky in their various orbits.  These things were reflected in Ptolemy's doctrine, which was, strictly speaking, not a scientific theory but a description of what was observed. As the observable trajectories described by celestial bodies were highly complex, the geocentric system itself entailed extremely intricate constructions which nevertheless failed to explain some puzzling phenomena.<br /> <br /> The Copernican theory, however, which on the face of it, contradicted the observable facts, produced a momentous change in scientific thought and human culture in general. It explained, simply and accurately, the phenomena under observation, made it possible to predict new phenomena, and broke the ground for modern astronomic research.<br /> <br /> Explanation, prediction and definition of the character of scientific research, experimentation and observation are three cardinal functions of every scientific theory. This is brilliantly illustrated by Marx’s economic theory. Many facts on which Marx based himself in his &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Capital&lt;/span&gt; had been described by other investigators. Bourgeois thinkers were not ignorant of the class struggle, economic and political inequality, exploitation, pauperisation of working people, and so on.  Yet they were unable to explain them from a consistent viewpoint, predict from them the future course of history and define the main direction of revolutionary effort. Marx’s economic theory based on the law of the development of capitalist society formulated by him, alone explained the available facts and, moreover, accurately predicted the main stages and objective laws of the transition from capitalism to the new communist formation, which was subsequently affirmed by the entire process of the world revolutionary movement.<br /> <br /> What, then, makes a theory capable of performing its principal functions? Why can they not be performed merely on the basis of observation, of men’s immediate practical activity?<br /> <br /> We call a theory not just any totality of views but a specifically organised system of correlated scientific laws. Scientific laws, as we know, are reflections of objective laws to which the phenomena under investigation are subject. These phenomena comprise what is often called the substantive part of a theory. Scientific laws reflecting fundamental, stable, recurring and Necessary connections prevailing in the given substantive area, which are logically correlated, form a theory. Thus, Kepler's laws are a theory of planetary motion because they express stable necessary connections inherent in the planets.  Marx’s economic doctrine expounded in &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Capital&lt;/span&gt; also is a theory in the strict sense of the word, as the laws contained in it reflect necessary economic relations and are connected according to the principles of dialectical logic.<br /> <br /> The basic, primary laws of a theory are often called principles or postulates, while in theories expressed in mathematical terms they are called axioms. These primary laws are not logically proved within the given theory, but all other laws are logically deduced from them, and so are considered proved. From this it does not, however, follow that the principles and postulates of a theory are indemonstrable. Nothing is taken on trust in science. The laws which are accepted without logical demonstration within a theory may be demonstrated within another, more general theory. Kepler’s laws, which appeared at first as postulates of the planetary motion theory, were subsequently demonstrated, i.e., deduced from the more general principles of Newton’s celestial mechanics.<br /> <br /> The primary laws of every theory, if they are not deduced from more general principles, are accepted either because their truth immediately follows from practice or experiment or because the final consequences of these laws are consistent with experiment and &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;o&lt;/span&gt;bservation.  The latter is decisive to the evaluation of a theory.<br /> <br /> One should not think that the laws of any science are always obtained by generalising the results of observation. Should it be so, it would be relatively easy to discover new laws. Any trained expert could do it. What makes genuine scientific creative work so difficult is that formulation of a new law or principle often requires ingenuity, imagination and even a departure from the phenomena observed.<br /> <br /> Many recent scientific theories were formulated not in laboratories but at the writing desk in the scientist’s study because the development of new principles calls for complex abstractions and abstract theoretical thinking. Thus, the law of value which states that commodities possessing different useful qualities are exchangeable provided that equal amounts of socially necessary labour went into their making, could not be discovered from simple observation of the market, of isolated transactions. After all, the actual exchange of commodities is influenced by demand, supply and other factors which make the price either higher or lower than the average cost. Marx has to evolve a range of abstract notions, e.g., abstract labour, the amount of socially necessary labour, etc., to be able to rise above the chaotic commodity-money relations prevailing in capitalist society and formulate the law of value. This law, which at first glance appears to contradict obvious facts, made it possible to formulate and deduce a range of other laws of capitalist political economy, such as the laws of surplus value, capitalist profit, primitive accumulation of capital, and so on, which provided the basis for predicting the future of capitalism.<br /> <br /> A scientific theory therefore enables objective phenomena to be explained and predicted because it is a system of laws, not a description of isolated events or fragments of the material world. Laws, therefore, perform a twin function. On the one hand, they are the most far-reaching reflections of the objective, stable connections existing in the substantive part of a science; on the other hand, they appear as logical forms, essential for deducing other laws and so-called final consequences, i.e., statements containing information about individual events and phenomena. A law possesses a high degree of generalisation, being a concentrated reflection of the essential characteristics, basic properties and behaviour of the objects studied.  This is what ensures its particular role in cognition.<br /> <br /> Purposeful human activity of any kind is all the more successful, if it rests firmly on scientific theory. This is of particular significance to the communist transformation of society. It is for this reason that the Soviet Communist Party pays such great attention to developing the theory of scientific communism.<br /> <br /> Starting from the distinctive characteristics of theory and the part it plays in scientific cognition, we can now view the role of abstraction in a new light.<br /> <br /> The laws of every scientific theory are always formulated by abstraction. They do not usually contain evidence of sensible things, as they do not have recourse to sensory representations and images but to the more general and abstract concepts. This poses before every scientist the problem of interpreting abstract laws in terms of observation. In other words, so that the laws and their corollaries should be applicable to sensible things and events and verifiable by experiment and observation, they must be translated, so to speak, from the language of abstractions into the language of sensuous images which we use in describing our sensations and notions. This is the focal point for the problems of the link between conception and sensation, of thought proceeding at different verbal levels, and of the interaction between theoretical and practical activity.<br /> <br /> We have already mentioned several times that the emphasis on practice as the principal source of knowledge and the yardstick of truth is the basis of Marxist epistemology. Nevertheless, the general philosophical question of the connection between thought and practical human activity acquires a particular form with reference to scientific cognition. It is, in fact, the relationship between theory and experiment, between the theoretical and empirical levels of cognition because, whereas scientific theory &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;i&lt;/span&gt;s the highest form of knowing reality, scientific experiment is an essential part of social and production practice, indissolubly linked with the development and improvement of theory.<br /> <br /> ==== §6. The Empirical Level of Cognition ====<br /> The wide use of experiment as a major means of cognition is the main distinguishing mark of modern natural science.<br /> <br /> The scientists and philosophers of the past, drawing on everyday experience, common sense and observation, accumulated, classified and passed on to us many valuable facts touching on diverse aspects of nature. The conjectures and hypotheses put forward by them, e.g., the atomistic hypothesis, continue to surprise us by their depth and keen insight. And yet, the spirit of experimental research was perfectly strange to science both in antiquity and the middle ages.  That was due, on the one hand, to the relatively low level and growth rate of the productive forces and to the widespread predominance (especially in medieval Europe) of philosophical idealism and utmost deference to the church, on the other.<br /> <br /> Rapid development of technology associated with the emergence of the capitalist mode of production, gave a strong impetus to the new trend in scientific research and provided the material conditions and prerequisites for it. The change to experimental science, marking a turn from a passive, contemplative approach to nature to active intervention in its secrets, took place first of all in those branches of science which were more closely related to industry, navigation and weapons production.<br /> <br /> To cross the oceans steering by the stars, build steam-engines and railways, and produce synthetic materials, man had to learn to see nature with his own eyes, not as the Bible saw it. But to be able to do that, he had to revolutionise the very philosophical basis of his view on the world, to surmount idealism which held experiment in contempt and saw the ultimate proof of truth in the dogmas of the church, rather than in scientific evidence. That is why modern natural science was ushered in not only by mathematicians and other scientists but also by materialist philosophers who, following Francis Bacon, proclaimed observation and experiment to be the decisive factors in the cognition of nature.<br /> <br /> The main principle of philosophical materialism in general consists in the recognition of the objective world existing independently of the human mind. Directly following from this is the demand that cognition should concentrate on studying the characteristics and objective laws of this world. Materialists have always held observation, furnishing immediate sensory data, to be the chief method of cognising matter. Nevertheless, as we know, it is not always Possible to explain complex phenomena from observation alone.<br /> <br /> Cognition of the essential properties of the objects investigated and of the laws they obey is often made easier by placing the objects in unusual, often artificial, conditions, by refashioning the surrounding medium with the aid of special devices.<br /> <br /> Experimental natural science emerged in the 17th century. In three centuries it achieved much more than science had achieved previously in almost two millennia. The success was due above all to extensive experimentation. The chief goal of classical experimental scientists was to cognise, to study the properties and laws concealed from the passive observer. Their efforts were a practical refutation of the Kantian thesis that there is an impassable gulf between the thing-in-itself and knowledge. Kant required that the investigator should proceed without introducing any changes in the object, so that it could be cognised in its pure, pristine state, undistorted by the investigator’s interference.<br /> <br /> But is this not a contradiction of the very idea of exper&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;i&lt;/span&gt;ment? Do we not demolish the natural integrity and qualities of things and processes as we pass high-tension current through them, subject them to monstrous pressures, place them in a vacuum and bring their temperature down to almost absolute zero? Certainly, such apprehensions are not altogether groundless. However, as they used instruments which extended the limits of our natural sensitivity and applied complex apparatus, experimental scientists always tried to reduce to a minimum the researcher's influence on the object.<br /> <br /> Historically, this was due to the fact that experimental science could not, right away, undertake complex experiments taking into account the role of the subjective factor. Another reason was that experimental methods developed in natural science in complete isolation from social life. Thirdly, it was determined by the philosophical standpoint shared by the majority of scientists.<br /> <br /> Research was conducted on the lines of spontaneous scientific materialism which&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;like pre-Marxian metaphysical materialism—viewed cognition of the world merely as its explanation.  That approach ignores man’s active, transforming, practical activity which dialectical materialism considers to be the heart of the theory of knowledge.<br /> <br /> The demand for the interaction between the cognising subject and the object to be considered and their interdependence and mutual influence to be reflected in the theoretical picture of the world was formulated by Marx in his &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Theses on Feuerbach&lt;/span&gt; and was later realised in the experimental practice of the recent natural sciences, technology and the social sciences. As quantum mechanics has demonstrated, the nature of the motion of micro-objects is such that the instruments we use in studying them appreciably affect some of their characteristics. Therefore, in quantum mechanics, the condition of the objects of experiment must be described, taking into account the instruments and th&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;e&lt;/span&gt; conditions of the experiment.<br /> <br /> In the subjective idealists’ view, this proves that the object does not exist without the subject, the latter playing the decisive part in the relationship. In point of fact, however, every level of the motion of matter obeys its own objective laws, calling for specific methods of experimental and theoretical research. The probable, statistical motion of elementary particles is objectively marked by uncertainty. Experimenters always have to bear that in mind. As they act on some of the characteristics of the micro-object, they also produce changes in other characteristics, so that a comprehensive picture of the process can be obtained only by taking into consideration the interaction of the experimental apparatus and the micro-objects under investigation. This indicates a deep insight into the objective laws of nature, rather than a subjective caprice.<br /> <br /> In modern technology, the need to examine objects together with the subject acting upon them and cognising their work is associated with the development of supercomplex machines, automatic systems, high-speed electronic computers, space laboratories, complex control systems, and so on. Take, for instance, the experiments connected with Soviet space flights.  The aim of the experiments was not merely to study the parameters of the spaceship and the effect of weightlessness, etc., on the cosmonauts.  The main thing was that these and many other parameters and characteristics were studied in the light of their interaction and interconnection.<br /> <br /> The new type of experiments, where the object is cognised in its interaction with the subject, are extensively conducted on a sociological level as well. Thus, in the course of building communism, we encounter at every step diverse social experiments whereby various forms of organising production and management, education and upbringing, service and city planning are cognised and appreciated. In each case, the cognising individual appears both as the subject and the object of the experiment as he simultaneously acts on and is affected by diverse experimental factors.<br /> <br /> Thus, scientific experiment is a special kind of cognitive activity aimed at acquiring more knowledge of objects and processes in nature and society. It is realised with the aid of special apparatus, instruments and devices, under controlled conditions. The most essential requirements an experiment must satisfy are (1) that the apparatus should ensure the highest standard of precision of measurement and observation possible for the given class of appliances; (2) that the experiment can be repeated (this is essential because obtaining reliable results mostly requires a mass of experimental data allowing for statistical processing, which eliminates the influence of chance occurrences and disturbances); (3) that the experiment should be conducted in conformity with a set of methods worked out beforehand and ensuring control at every stage of the experiment.<br /> <br /> All experiments satisfying the aforementioned requirements and implying not only material objects but also material facilities and conditions are often called material experiments. Besides these, speculative experiments play a considerable role in modern science. A speculative experiment differs from a material experiment in that its objects and apparatus exist solely in the experimenter’s imagination.  A speculative experiment is a sort of a model of a material experiment, meeting all requirements the latter should satisfy, the only difference being that for some reason it cannot technically be carried out in practice.<br /> <br /> According to their purpose, experiments are categorised under the three general headings of &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;discovery&lt;/span&gt;, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;verification&lt;/span&gt; and &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;realisation&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> Experiments seeking to &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;discover&lt;/span&gt; something new are exemplified by Edison’s search for a material suitable for the filament of the incandescent lamp. Almost six thousand experiments were made before the right material was found.  Research of this kind is sometimes described as the trial-and-error method which boils down to trying out a number of variants, the unsuccessful attempts being discarded. However, scientists usually prefer to conduct such experiments not at random but on the basis of a theory or hypothesis, thereby reducing the number of trials and errors to a minimum. The laws established as a result of generalising the data yielded by such experiments are called empirical.<br /> <br /> The second kind of experiments aimed at &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;verification&lt;/span&gt; of something are made with a view to verifying a hypothesis. A hypothesis affirmed by experiment becomes a valid scientific theory while the one refuted by it is discarded and replaced by another. Such tests are of particular importance in choosing one out of a number of hypotheses. We have an example of it in the experimental discovery of new chemical elements. The Russian scientist D. I. Mendeleyev (1834-1907), having discovered that the elements show a periodic variation in most of their properties (the periodic law), hypothetically described some chemical elements not yet discovered in his day. His prediction was justified by subsequent investigation.<br /> <br /> Finally, the third kind of experiments seeking to &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;realise&lt;/span&gt; something are made in order to produce new objects which are then investigated or applied in practice. A few years ago, a group of Soviet scientists led by Academician Flerov synthesised a transuranium element which was named &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Kurchatovium&lt;/span&gt; in honour of the Soviet physicist Kurchatov. This element exists only in laboratory conditions and disintegrates very quickly. Nevertheless, its production, as well as the synthesis of other transuranium elements, is an important experimental achievement, facilitating a deeper study into the structure of substances.<br /> <br /> Thus, experiments may serve as the groundwork of new laws, hypotheses or theories or they may serve to verify them. However, experiments often play both parts simultaneously.  For this reason, our classification is only tentative and should not be regarded as absolute and final.<br /> <br /> Considering the significance of experiment to cognition, Lenin emphasised that experiment is a variety, a part of social and production practice. “An experiment,” he said, “is already practice.” Comparing the structure of experimentation and labour, it is easy to establish their similarity. In both there is an object of practical activity, implements and means whereby this activity is carried out, and, lastly, man. The difference is that the main purpose of labour is to produce material values, objects and conditions to satisfy various needs, whereas knowledge, acquired and accumulated in the process of production, plays a subordinate, albeit significant, part. The main purpose of experiment is, on the other hand, to produce new knowledge. Even so, there is no fundamental difference between scientific experimentation and production activities.<br /> <br /> The foregoing clearly shows the intimate connection between the two levels of knowledge—theoretical and empirical. Higher, theoretical knowledge is embodied in scientific principles, postulates and laws. Empirical knowledge results from immediate observation and experimental evidence.<br /> <br /> Both levels of knowledge supplement each other, and it is only in close unity that they produce a picture of the external world satisfying the requirements of objective truth.  Lenin’s formula, “From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice”, brings out the thoroughly dialectical character of the process of cognition, showing that it develops in a spiral. Empirical knowledge which arises out of living perception, out of scientific experiment, poses to us fresh problems, leading the mind to draw general theoretical conclusions. A scientific hypothesis derived from theoretical research requires experimental verification in the course of which new properties of the objects examined may be discovered. Every loop of the spiral not only reveals fresh relative truths but also provides the prerequisites for further advance. At the same time, the appearance of new forms and types of experimental research puts forward complex epistemological problems concerning the peculiarities of different varieties of theoretica&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;l&lt;/span&gt; and empirical knowledge. This interconnection of philosophical and scientific problems provides the basis for the fruitful co-operation of scientists and philosophers urged by Lenin fifty years ago.<br /> <br /> Investigation of the main problems and principles of the theory of knowledge of dialectical materialism not only reveals its essential difference from all other philosophical systems and demonstrates its perfect agreement with the results and methods of modern science, but also proves that study of this theory is a major condition of mastering Marxism-Leninism.<br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> == Historical Materialism ==<br /> <br /> === 1. The Science of Historical Materialism ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. What Is Historical Materialism? ====<br /> Mankind has existed for many millennia. It has travelled a long and arduous road, full of struggle with the primordial forces of nature, with want, hunger, oppression, devastating epidemics and bloody wars. Thrones crumbled, and mighty kingdoms fell. Civilisations came and went. Some of them vanished utterly, but others left an indelible mark on history. Famous war lords, mighty kings, heroic popular leaders left their names to posterity. But there were millions who remained nameless. They were the ones who made armies strong and kings mighty, whose blood flowed in times of popular unrest.  What part did they play in history? What can guide us through the tangled maze of events that form the body of history?<br /> <br /> Regimes that were, to all appearances, unshakable, were often shaken by popular revolutions. What are these revolutions? Are they disastrous accidents disrupting the regular march of history? Or are they the legitimate outcome of previous history, determining the future course of events? What impels people to rise against powerful forces? Where is the theory able to explain these things in keeping with the authentic historical facts?<br /> <br /> The current age is one of victorious popular revolutions, one in which peoples choose the path they would follow. What scientific theory explains the successes scored by the socialist countries, the mounting working-class movement in the capitalist countries, the liberation of many African, Asian and Latin American countries from colonial oppression, the rapid progress of science and technology, the active involvement of the masses in every part of the world in the making of history? What scientific theory explains, in a word, the very substance of the current epoch?<br /> <br /> No doubt, both present and past history may be explained in various ways. Or it may be left unexplained, and one may simply drift along, from day to day, ignoring theoretical problems.  Yet it is getting harder and harder to live like that, because every person's life, irrespective of his wishes, is becoming more closely linked with the general course of world history. This being so, everyone should obviously be aware of his place in the world and of the relationship between a person’s activities and the processes developing in the modern world.<br /> <br /> Theories seeking to explain society have never been lacking. Many of them are long forgotten. Others sprang up quite recently and time alone will show if they will stay.<br /> <br /> The Marxist-Leninist science of society, historical materialism, is the only social theory which although founded over 125 years ago, has lost none of its vitality and continues to win support.<br /> <br /> Why is it so? It is so because historical materialism answers the questions posed by social history and meets the hopes of the millions. It is so because historical materialism is not a mass of frozen dogmas but a living, creative theory, capable of developing and enriching itself by general conclusions drawn from historical experience.<br /> <br /> Not only does historical materialism explain the past and the present, but it enables us to foresee the future and take an active part in the process of history.<br /> <br /> ==== §2. The Subject Matter of Historical Materialism ====<br /> What sort of science is historical materialism?  What is its subject matter, what does it seek to learn about society? How does it relate to philosophy and the social sciences? Has it already explained every law of history? What does it say about the meaning of history and about man’s destination?<br /> <br /> Let us first see what is the proper subject of historical materialism. Society &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;i&lt;/span&gt;s investigated by many sciences, which is only natural, for society has diverse aspects. All social sciences study one object, viz., the life of society, but they each regard society from a particular angle, e.g., from the angle of economics, population, history, culture, and so on. The subject of a social science is thus one facet of society’s life, isolated for the purpose of investigation from the close-knit unity of interrelated social phenomena. What distinguishes historical materialism from other social sciences in that respect?<br /> <br /> Compared with economic history, economic statistics, industrial economics, the economics of supply and distribution, the theory and history of finance, etc., political economy is a more general science as it elucidates more general characteristics of the economic life of society.<br /> <br /> Civil history is also a general social science, more general, for instance, than demography, the science of population. It seeks to explain particular features of the historical development of individual nations. Historians thus study the most concrete and specific manifestations of the general historical tendency of a nation. The tendency, which comes to light when the historical events are related, obeys the laws of society’s development. But how can we discover these laws?<br /> <br /> The principles of dialectical materialism refer to society as well as to nature. But as it deals with knowledge generalised to the maximum degree, i.e., with the most general laws of nature, society and thought, dialectical materialism has no special reference to society as distinct from nature.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Historical materialism is a philosophical science concerned with the specific laws o&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;f&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt; social development as distinct from the universal laws of being.&lt;/span&gt; The laws of historical materialism do not operate in nature but only in society. And as society is inseparable from men, social laws can manifest themselves only through human activity.<br /> <br /> Historical materialism as a philosophical science considers the general aspects, tendencies and laws of social development. It always keeps in sight the relation of social being and social consciousness, of the object and subject of history. In historical materialism, every problem is examined and explained, taking account of the correlation of the objective and the subjective, of the circumstances and man, conditions and intentions, i.e., of the correlation of social being and social consciousness.<br /> <br /> Now we can state more specifically what historical materialism investigates and why it differs from the other social sciences.<br /> <br /> Firstly, historical materialism studies the general objective laws governing the development of any human society. As these general laws of world history operate variously in different historical epochs or phases of mankind's development, historical materialism investigates the most general phases of world history, socio-economic formations and the objective causes of their appearance and disappearance.<br /> <br /> Secondly, historical materialism always considers the relations between social being and social consciousness. This enables it to explain the laws of history not as the effect of some mysterious forces lording it over men but as the effect of historical laws manifesting themselves through men’s activity, through their struggle to attain their goals which often have nothing in common with the general course of history but which nevertheless stand in organic relation to it. In a word, historical laws appear to the student as the real motive forces of and factors in history, i.e., they appear to him in the shape of the masses and specific historical figures.<br /> <br /> As a philosophical science, historical materialism has no pretensions to being an absolute theory able to explain every puzzle and turn of history, such as the old philosophical science was wont to assume. Every fact and turn of history require all-round scientific explanation while the philosophical elucidation of every fact consists in exercising a correct approach to its investigation, employing correct methods of research, comparing it with the general historical laws and tendencies, and applying to it the criteria of historical progress. Historical materialism provides such a method for investigating and evaluating diverse social phenomena.<br /> <br /> However, historical materialism is more than a method of investigating social phenomena. It has a theory of its own, i.e., a theoretical substance of its own which explains the more general of historical tendencies.<br /> <br /> Historical materialism has found that history proceeds from lower to higher forms of social organisation and that the change to higher forms is inevitable because the old forms become outmoded and stand in the way of further progress. Historical materialism, basing itself on historical evidence, on the long experience of mankind, has proved that a society without exploitation and oppression, based on free labour, is not a dream or utopia, but the result of its intrinsic development, that the transition to such society, i.e., communist society, is as inevitable as transitions of society to higher forms were in the past. This crucial conclusion is supported by historical evidence, economic analysis and the experience of the class struggle.<br /> <br /> The successes scored by the revolutionary working-class movement demonstrate in practice how the progressive historical tendency presses forward.<br /> <br /> The October Revolution in Russia and socialist revolutions in other countries have given this tendency a global dimension and shown the peoples of the world where their future lies.<br /> <br /> Historical materialism does not deal with all questions of the building of socialism and communism. Such questions are the field of &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;scientific communism&lt;/span&gt;. Being a philosophical science, historical materialism is the method of scientific communism, furnishing, in addition to historical and economic justification, also the most general, philosophic, justification of the inevitable change to communism and showing the revolutionary path of society's transition from capitalism to communism. For this reason, historical materialism is inseparable from the theory of scientific communism.<br /> <br /> The organic relation between historical materialism and the theory and practice of the struggle for communism is the expression of the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;partisanship o&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;f&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt; historical materialism&lt;/span&gt; which is the theoretical reflection of the needs and goals of the working class.<br /> <br /> Bourgeois critics of Marxism strive to show that the connection of historical materialism and the interests of the working class and the communist ideas, which is openly proclaimed by Marxist philosophers, presumably indicates the class limitations of the Marxist-Leninist social science. They allege that to produce an authentic scientific theory one must rise above classes since, they insist, a class approach to science results in biased and narrow thinking.<br /> <br /> Is this really so? Can a person living in a class society rise above class interest? In a class society, no one is above class. To live in society and be free from it is impossible. An individual may imagine himself to be free in that sense, but in reality one cannot, in modern society, be free of class interest. The idea of such freedom is a bourgeois illusion, nothing more.<br /> <br /> Every philosopher, artist or writer, whether he intends it or not, always defends and expresses in his work the interests of a particular class.  In this sense everyone shares a party viewpoint whether or not he belongs to a party. This does not mean that the interests of a class can only be supported by its own members. An ideologist’s partisanship depends on what class he supports, rather than on what class he belongs to.<br /> <br /> Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin and Proudhon were most indignant when Marx concluded that they were ideologists of the French petty bourgeoisie, which in their minds was tantamount to calling them “Paris shopkeepers.” Marx explained then that he had not referred to their calling, for that was quite beside the point. What he had meant was who they actually represented, whose interests they objectively reflected and supported.<br /> <br /> Lastly, it must be borne in mind that in an exploitative society, where there is an impassable gulf between mental and manual labour, the classes whose lot is manual labour (workers and peasants) are unable, as a rule, to advance ideologists from their own midst. Their ideologists most often are members of other classes, who have enough time and money to get an education and at the same time are capable of understanding whether history is moving so that they go over from their own class to the progressive social classes. E.g., the 19th-century Revolutionary Democrats in Russia were ideologists of the revolutionary peasantry. None of them, however, was a peasant himself. Herzen was a nobleman by birth, and Chernyshevsky, Belinsky and Dobrolyubov were of the lower middle class. The ideologists of the working class, Marx and Engels were not workingmen themselves, but that did not prevent them from writing consistently on behalf of the working class and promoting its struggle, the aims and methods of which they elaborated scientifically.<br /> <br /> Hence, every thinker is a spokesman of a definite class. Does it make him narrow-minded? The answer cannot be a simple yes or no, for that depends entirely on the class. The bourgeoisie, as a class, has long been brought into conflict with the advancement of history. Today its interests do not merely clash with those of other classes but with the development of society at large. Therefore, a modern bourgeois ideologist, being true to the interests of his class, can’t help giving a garbled picture of society’s development, nor is he capable of producing an authentic scientific theory of society.<br /> <br /> It is fundamentally different with the ideologists of the working class, for the interests of the working class, unlike those of the bourgeoisie, reflect the historical tendency. The working class is a consistently revolutionary class. It has a stake in social progress and so has no need to falsify social history. Moreover, only from the standpoint of the working class, the exponent of social progress, could a genuine scientific theory of social development be produced.  Nor was it by chance that such a theory was evolved by the ideologists of the working class, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.<br /> <br /> Thus, the partisanship of Marxist-Leninist philosophy does not imply that it is limited but that it is scientifically objective.<br /> <br /> Historical materialism is a theoretical generalisation of real human history, a generalisation of the evidence supplied by other social sciences. The scientific dialectical method by which historical materialism investigates the life of society, considering society in the process of its continuous development, implies that historical materialism itself keeps developing as it draws general conclusions from fresh historical experience and the findings of the social sciences.<br /> <br />  <br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> === 2. Materialist Concept of History ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. Emergence of Historical Materialism—a Revolution in the View of Society ====<br /> Men began to ask themselves long ago what force governed the development of society.  Religion and the church told them that they, miserable sinners, were to turn their thoughts to god and hope for his kindness and forgiveness.  God the almighty held their destiny in his hands. “Man proposes, and God disposes”, the church taught. “Be humble, be meek, and trust in the divine providence.”<br /> <br /> Some thinkers rebelled against the authority of the church and appealed to reason. They saw in man’s rational creative activity the mainspring of the historical process.<br /> <br /> You will remember that at the beginning of this book it was mentioned that philosophers, depending on their answer to the fundamental question of philosophy&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;i.e., what is primary, matter or consciousness—divided into two camps in explaining the world in general and elucidating the relation of spirit and nature—materialists and idealists. However, as soon as the pre-Marxian philosophers came to consider society, all of them, materialists and idealists alike, took an idealist attitude. That this attitude should have been shared by Hegel was not surprising, for Hegel was an objective idealist to whom society was a stage in the development of the absolute spirit. But then, the idealist attitude was also shared by philosophers who were part and parcel of the history of materialism.<br /> <br /> Ideologists of the French revolutionary bourgeoisie, the great 18th-century materialists Diderot, Holbach, Helvetius and others, seeking to understand the essence of society's development, maintained that men’s opinions were determined in every age by the predominant social conditions which themselves depended entirely on men’s own volition.<br /> <br /> The last great materialist philosopher before Marx, Ludwig Feuerbach, who passionately criticised idealism and religion, simultaneously held that religion was the groundwork of social history, that its forms determined the face of an age. In Feuerbach’s view, if society was bad, it was because its religion was bad. To make society good, its bad religion (e.g., Christianity) should be replaced by a good religion. With this end in mind, Feuerbach invented a new “perfect religion of love” in the belief that a society founded on such a religion should itself become perfect.<br /> <br /> The idea that society is the outcome of the spirit, or a result of men’s spiritual (religious, political, legal, etc.) activity, held undivided sway in pre-Marxian philosophical, sociological and historical literature. The viewpoint had become a tradition. It pervaded fiction and was generally taken for granted.<br /> <br /> He had to be courageous indeed who not only called the idea in doubt but scientifically proved that it was untenable. It took a combination of scientific genius and supreme personal courage to do it. Karl Marx had both. For the first time in history he showed that before man could indulge in thought, science, philosophy, politics, religion, and so on, he had to eat, drink, to have shelter, and so on. In other words, man had to satisfy his material needs first. This idea, which now, many years after the emergence of Marxism, is considered to be self-evident, worked a revolution in views on society, signifying the birth of a new, materialist conception of history. Although apparently simple, Marx's idea has far-reaching implications. If, to be able to think, man must satisfy his material needs, it means, first of all, that at the basis of history is the production of all those things which go to satisfy man’s material needs, i.e., the production of food, clothing, houses, and so on. Therefore the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;production of material goods is the basis of history&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> The next conclusion: if history is based on the production of material goods, then the decisive role in history belongs to the producers of the material goods, i.e., the working people.<br /> <br /> The significance of the change Marx worked in ideas on society will become clearer if we consider the fact that sociologists before Marx examined at best only the ideological motives of human activity, usually neglecting the economic circumstances, which they treated as a side issue, inessential to history. Before Marx, all thinkers reduced history entirely to the doings of individual personalities, paying no attention to the masses. In their view, history was made not by the people but by heroes towering above the crowd.<br /> <br /> The materialist conception of history formulated by Marx and Engels showed that the people were the history-makers and producers of all material and spiritual values available to society. That was why Lenin wrote: “The discovery of the materialistic conception of history, or more correctly, the consistent continuation and extension of materialism into the domain of social phenomena, removed the two chief shortcomings in earlier historical theories.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-94|94]]&lt;/sup&gt; Marx proved, first, that history is based not on ideas but on material production; and, second, that it is made not by isolated heroes and military leaders but by the masses, the working people above all.<br /> <br /> Human society is a highly complex phenomenon comprising a maze of diverse relations and connections. People work or exploit others, they love, suffer, fight their enemies and die, they pray to god or damn him, and in doing all this they form widely varied relations with each other.<br /> <br /> But history does not boil down to individual actions. It also embraces group and mass action.  Classes and nations fight one another fiercely, to the death; peoples rise against their oppressors; destructive wars and horrible epidemics devastate whole countries.<br /> <br /> This tangled maze of facts and events was extremely puzzling. For thousands of years eminent thinkers who took a keen interest in the destinies of mankind were unable to understand what governed history—this chaos of events and facts. Was it god? Was it the conflict of good and evil? A hero’s or an emperor’s will? Were there, after all, any laws that determined social development? Idealism which dominated the views on society, failed to supply a scientific answer to these questions.<br /> <br /> The materialist conception of history was able to supply such an answer. The conclusion that material production was primary with relation to intellectual activity was in itself enough to suggest that preeminent among all complex social relations—family, religious, class, national, political, legal and others—were those formed by people engaged in material production or directly associated with it, which were primary and definitive.<br /> <br /> Fast thinkers were unable to extricate themselves from the tangle of events and facts because they had no yardstick to help them tell the substantial from the unsubstantial, the principal from the secondary things. Marx was the first to discover such a yardstick. Having selected the relations emerging among people in the process of production, i.e., &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;relations of production&lt;/span&gt;, as principal and crucial to the life of society, Marx was able to apply to social phenomena the common scientific &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;yardstick of recurrence&lt;/span&gt;, without which the laws of social development cannot be discerned.<br /> <br /> As is known, no two countries are the same.  Every country has a different economic level and staple industries, different history, language, national culture, different customs, political institutions, and so on. But does this imply that different countries may have nothing in common? No, it does not. Having formulated the conception of the relations of production and examined them in different countries, each with its own conditions, Marx was able to find that which was common to all countries at the same stage of development (e.g., at the capitalist stage), and to evolve the concept “socio-economic formation” which expressed in a highly generalised form the prevailing situation in all such countries.<br /> <br /> In the preface to the first edition of &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Capital&lt;/span&gt; Marx, addressing German readers, wrote that if, upon reading &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Capital&lt;/span&gt;, which dwells for the most part on the development of capitalism in England, they would say that it had no reference to Germany, they would be quite wrong, as a more developed country merely presented a less developed one with the picture of its immediate future.<br /> <br /> ==== §2. History as an Objective Process ====<br /> By entertaining a materialist conception of history and applying the yardstick of recurrence to society, Marx and Engels were able to discover the laws of social development and interpret human history not as the result of arbitrary individual action, nor as the result of divine activity, but as an objective natural process developing, like nature, independently of men’s intentions.<br /> <br /> Marx and Engels conclusively proved that society proceeds from lower to higher forms, through class contradictions and class struggle, to a classless communist society; and that communism was not a utopia but the necessary product of social development. The founders of Marxism not only showed why communism was inevitable but discovered in the working class the force which was to destroy capitalism and build a communist society. It was proved from the operation of the objective laws governing society's development.<br /> <br /> Some bourgeois philosophers attempted to show that no such thing as social laws generally existed. With this purpose in mind, they advanced a theory to the effect that in society, unlike nature, nothing ever was or could be repeated because every historical occurrence was unique and without parallel.<br /> <br /> Indeed, no historical event occurs twice.  Every social phenomenon, as a sum of individual characteristics, is unique. Let us compare the French bourgeois revolution of the 18th century and the English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century. The French revolution is associated with the storming of the Bastille, the guillotining of the French king and queen, with the names of Robespierre, Danton and Marat, with the common people thronging the streets of Paris, singing the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Marseillaise&lt;/span&gt; and &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Carmagnole&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> The English bourgeois revolution involved the beheading of the king, Cromwell’s dictatorship, and at the end of it all, the bourgeois “glorious revolution”, the compromise between the bourgeoisie and the nobility, and the restoration of monarchy.<br /> <br /> The two events are apparently rather dissimilar. The countries are unlike, and so are the peoples, with their different customs and habits.  But what is the most essential thing about these two events? Is it the songs they sang then in London and Paris? Most probably not. Is it the method by which the respective kings lost their heads? Hardly so. What then is the principal meaning of the two events?<br /> <br /> The English bourgeois revolution set out, above all, to abolish the old feudal system and establish a new, capitalist system. And even though, owing to the compromise between the bourgeoisie and the nobility, this revolution failed to carry out its tasks consistently, it nevertheless cleared the path for capitalism.<br /> <br /> The principal aim of the French bourgeois revolution was to abolish the old feudal regime and establish new, capitalist relations. Hence, these two events have something in common, they have recurring characteristics. Besides, these characteristics were fundamental to both events, while the characteristics that did not recur were inessential to the course of history.  That common factor of the two events was reflected in the concept “bourgeois revolution.”<br /> <br /> Thus, historical events present a unity of the recurrent and the unique. It is usually their most substantial features that recur, while it is the inessential, minor features that are unique and particular and do not recur. But if there is regularity in social phenomena it means that society and history in general obey objective laws.<br /> <br /> An adult member of society finds in it fully formed social relations, relations of production, a state structure, etc. Although he may influence the circumstances to some extent by his activity, he cannot choose them. The laws operating in society are as objective and independent of individual will as are the laws of nature.<br /> <br /> Yet there are some distinctions between the laws of nature and the laws of history. The chief of these distinctions is that the laws of nature not only operate independently of human will and consciousness but are altogether independent of men. For them, man might simply not exist. They were just as effective when there were no people as they are now. Of course, having knowledge of natural laws, man can often accelerate their action or channel it in a direction useful to society.<br /> <br /> Knowing the laws of species formation, man learned to hasten it by artificial selection, producing new strains or races of useful plants and animals in a comparatively short time. But the laws of species formation, by themselves, operate independently of man. Natural selection was effective ever since living creatures had appeared, before man evolved at all. Moreover, man also, as a biological species, is the product of natural selection. Thus, the operation of laws of nature does not in the least require man’s participation.<br /> <br /> It is altogether different with the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;laws of social development&lt;/span&gt;. Although they operate independently of man’s will and mind, they are always realised through men, through human activity. Therefore history is entirely the product of human activity. History is made by men, but they have to make it in accordance with the objective circumstances prevailing during the lifetime of each generation, and not just as their fancy takes them. Thus, human activity is one of the conditions necessary for the laws of history to operate. In fact, it is the main condition.<br /> <br /> Rudolf Stammler, a bourgeois philosopher and one of the early critics of Marxism, maintained, as he tried to prove the &amp;quot;unsoundness’”’ of Marxism, that if under the laws of nature an eclipse of the Sun were to occur, nobody would ever think of setting up a party for the promotion of the eclipse. Then why organise a “&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;p&lt;/span&gt;arty for the promotion of revolution”, if one regards the proletarian revolution as the inevitable effect of the laws of history? Since an eclipse of the Sun occurs without men’s participation, then the revolution, if it is inevitable, will also occur without their participation.<br /> <br /> An eclipse of the Sun, indeed, occurs without men’s intervention. That is true. But human activity is not found among the conditions which lead to an eclipse. Therefore the idea of setting up a ‘’party for the promotion of the eclipse of the Sun”, as Plekhanov justly observed, could only originate in a lunatic asylum.<br /> <br /> A revolution, however, is quite another thing. It is performed by men, there can be no revolution without them. Their activity is the main condition out of the whole sum of circumstances which make the revolution possible. And this being so, then it depends on people, on the degree of their organisation and political understanding and their eagerness to fight for their rights, whether or not the revolution will take place, and how soon. That is why the creation of a party that would purposely and methodically prepare the masses to perform a revolution is necessary and justified.<br /> <br /> So, the laws of social development manifest themselves in men’s activity. Nevertheless, even a fleeting glance at history shows us that as their activity developed people usually pursued goals which did not flow from these laws. The laws of social development were discovered by Marx and Engels only in the mid-19th century, and the masses became familiar with them later still, and not in every country at that. What were people guided by, then? After all, they are not animals but rational beings endowed with the faculty of thought. They consciously pursue certain ends and consciously select the means towards them.  That, however, does not yet imply that people co-ordinate their individual goals with the mainstream of history. This explains why they used to conceive history as a chaotic tangle of human strivings. Somewhere, opposing strivings clashed and cancelled each other out, somewhere else, strivings running in the same direction converged, and somewhere else again more complex combinations of forces emerged.  And the overall historic tendency pressed on through this chaos of chance occurrences, just as necessity in general presses through mass of chance events.<br /> <br /> But this means that history develops spontaneously, that people made history unconsciously, and that produced the false impression that history is made apart from people, without their participation. Under such conditions, human effort was wasted on a vast scale. This, among other things, explains the extremely slow pace of history in the past.<br /> <br /> With the emergence of Marxism and the discovery of the laws governing the development of history, the character of society’s development changes. For the first time, the broadest sections of the people are able to take part consciously in the making of history.  As a result of the proletarian revolution, this possibility becomes a reality. Under the new conditions, the squandering of human effort is reduced to a minimum, as the chaotic clashes of individual intentions are superseded by the people’s single collective will directed at the building of a new, communist society. This single will is expressed in the Communist Party which organises the masses and directs their aspirations towards one goal. This makes social development proceed faster than ever before.<br /> <br /> The profound social changes which occurred in the Soviet Union after the victorious socialist revolution of October 1917 are a case in point. In his speech “The Great October Revolution and Mankind’s Progress”, L. I. Brezhnev said: “Within a historically short period of time, a huge backward country was transformed into a country with a highly developed industry and collectivized agriculture. It now takes only two and a half working days for our industry to produce as much as was produced in the whole of 1913.... Within the lifetime of a single generation, the Soviet land liberated itself completely and for ever from the onerous burden of illiteracy.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-95|95]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> ==== §3. Historical Necessity and Human Activity ====<br /> The following questions may be asked: if social development is governed by laws which are objective but are implemented through men’s activity, what role do men play in history? Are they not slaves of objective necessity? Can man be free? What is implied here is not political freedom, nor so-called civil liberties, but freedom in terms of the relation between man and the objective laws of history. This question was often pondered by eminent thinkers of the past.<br /> <br /> Many of them believed that man’s will was capable of making history. We had seen, however, that this view is unsound, as history proceeds according to objective laws. Others held that man is powerless in the face of historical necessity, being its slave. But is it true that nothing depends on men? Was it not men who produced society’s entire wealth? Was it not men who staged revolutions, sweeping away regimes believed to be unshakable? Inquisitive human thought kept seeking the answers to such questions. The great Dutch materialist philosopher, Spinoza, was the first to approach the correct conception of the relation of necessity and freedom, while Hegel produced its profound definition when he said that &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;freedom was apprehended necessity&lt;/span&gt;. This definition, confining freedom to the domain of knowledge, may be satisfactory to Hegel but not to one who has a materialist conception of history.<br /> <br /> For the first time in the history of science, Marxism approached this question from a standpoint fundamentally different from Hegel's.  We are concerned not only with the problem of freedom with respect to knowledge but, above all, with the problem of the freedom of human activity, of man’s practical freedom. Is it enough for one to apprehend necessity to become free? If one knows that, for certain reasons, an undesirable event is bound to occur and, being able to counteract it, still does nothing but is content with just the knowledge of it, will such knowledge be worth much, and can one be considered free under such circumstances?<br /> <br /> Let us assume that under capitalism all workers know the laws of capitalism’s emergence, development and decay and realise that capitalism must be superseded by socialism.  Will it be enough to end capitalism? Not likely.  The apprehension of necessity is certainly needed to make men really free. Necessity is blind and man is its slave as long as he fails to apprehend it. But even after he has apprehended it, man cannot be free. The knowledge of necessity is but the first requisite of actual freedom. The second is to translate knowledge into action, necessity into practical activity.<br /> <br /> When workers have realised the historical necessity of the destruction of capitalism and the building of communism and proceed to act on this knowledge, capitalism will inevitably collapse and give way to communist society. The Marxist definition of freedom, therefore, is: “Freedom ... consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature, a control founded on knowledge of natural necessity....&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-96|96]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> As we see, Hegel’s idea is not rejected but thoroughly refashioned. Let us look into the Marxist definition of freedom given by Engels.  In its context, “‘control&amp;quot; should on no account be understood to mean man’s arbitrary power over the external world. What it means in fact is that if necessity is not apprehended, man is its slave, but once it has been apprehended, man is its master.<br /> <br /> At the dawn of history, man was controlled by nature and was its slave. As man gained knowledge of the Jaws of nature and built strong productive forces, he released himself more and more from the grip of natural necessity. We mean man not as an individual but as a member of society. Man’s freedom both with respect to historical and to natural necessity depends on the kind of society he lives in. A wrongly organised society, founded on exploitation, makes its members slaves to historical necessity, and simultaneously prevents them from devoting sufficient effort to the remaking of nature. It is entirely different in the case of modern socialist society, rationally organised and developing in a planned fashion. Under socialism, historical necessity has been apprehended and the laws of history are applied in practice.<br /> <br /> Thus the problem of human freedom is a social problem. People can enjoy a full measure of freedom only in a society in which the exploiting classes have been abolished and the productive forces serve to enrich the whole of society rather than a handful of capitalists, and are used for gaining and increasing control over nature. That was why the transition from capitalism to socialism may be described as a leap from the realm of necessity to that of freedom.<br /> <br /> Freedom implies no annihilation of objective necessity. The latter can never disappear. Once man has apprehended objective necessity, it stops being external to him. It becomes the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;intrinsic&lt;/span&gt; content of his convictions. This being So, man can act freely, i.e., in accordance with his own convictions. At the same time, he becomes an instrument of histor&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;ic&lt;/span&gt;al necessity. A fettered revolutionary, driven on foot to forced labour in Siberia, was free with relation to historical necessity, while the armed gendarmes escorting him were its slaves.<br /> <br /> Thus, man becomes actually free once he has gained knowledge of objective necessity and learned to act in full consciousness of what he is doing. The question of men’s practical activity, of their conscious, active, free involvement in the making of history, is not an abstract theoretical problem. It is a practical problem. In a society building socialism and communism, the activity of every person, his creative participation in the effort of the whole people, has a particular meaning. The new society may be built only provided free participation of all members of society. For this reason, it is of paramount importance that every member of society should be informed about the laws of history and should act accordingly.<br /> <br /> Another side of this important question is that history must not be regarded as a fatalistic process whereby people carry out the one and only possible course of events, dictated by historical necessity. Historical necessity manifests itself in different ways, and not necessarily at once.<br /> <br /> History is governed by laws, but its ways are not fatally determined. Their choice is decided in the struggle of social forces, as a result of which one of the possible variants of historical development is determined. And, certainly, reaction may temporarily triumph, the forces of progress may temporarily be defeated. But in the end, the forces of progress get the upper hand, That was what happened in People’s Hungary after World War II.  In this concrete case, historical necessity manifested its ultimate irresistible force.<br /> <br /> ==== §4. Material Conditions of Society ====<br /> The history of every nation develops in a definite place, under definite natural conditions. These natural conditions (otherwise called the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;geographical environment&lt;/span&gt;) vary. The area inhabited by a people may be covered with mountains and forests or it may be a desert or the tundra or it may be fertile. It may be situated in the cold Far North or in the hot South. And of course, the country’s nearness to trade routes and centres of civilisation is crucial. Availability of fertile soil, a mild climate, abundant mineral resources and neighbours who contribute to its historical progress by trade and cultural exchanges give advantages to a country, whereas their shortage puts it in a disadvantageous position.<br /> <br /> Favourable natural conditions may speed up the progress of society while unfavourable conditions may retard it. To get a concrete idea of the role played by natural conditions in the life of society, they must be divided into two groups, viz., &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;the natural resources of the means of subsistence and the natural resources of the means of production&lt;/span&gt;, The presence or absence of the reserves of wild edible plants, game, fish, etc., belong to the first-mentioned group, and minerals, natural communications, natural resources of energy, etc., belong to the second.  At the early stages, when material production was utterly primitive, the natural means of subsistence were of paramount importance, and the natural means of production had no role in the development of society, nor could they have any. At the modern stage, of course, the latter play a decisive part in the life of society.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, the influence of the geographical environment on society does not boil down to the natural means of subsistence and production. Great significance is also attached to the climate, availability of impassable terrain or an insular situation, all of which hinders links with other peoples. Geographical location facilitates or handicaps the protection of national frontiers from enemy attacks. For a long time, natural trade routes played a particularly important part. Large cities and towns were usually built on the banks of navigable rivers. Convenient sea routes were also vital. Running close to different countries, they promoted the development of crafts and trade in coastal areas, and later on of manufactures as well. When the sea routes connecting Europe with Africa and the East lay mainly across the Mediterranean, it promoted the rapid economic growth of Italian sea ports. Afterwards, when the sea routes shifted to the north of Europe and passed through the English Channel, it promoted the economic growth of the Netherlands, Flanders and England.<br /> <br /> Does this mean that the geographical environment determines historical development, as some people used to believe?<br /> <br /> No, the geographical environment cannot determine the development of society, if only because it remains relatively constant over millions of years, while social changes occur within much shorter periods. The natural conditions in France, for example, changed imperceptibly over thousands of years while French society underwent momentous change. The whole of French history, so rich in events, coincides with a period during which the geographical environment hardly changed at all. This holds true of the history of any other country.<br /> <br /> At the dawn of human society, when the productive forces were puny, nature held sway Over man, who had neither knowledge nor any Means of protection against the blind forces of Nature, and who was her slave. Obviously, in those circumstances the influence of the geographical environment on the development of human society was far greater than later on.  As society developed, the productive forces grew and knowledge increased, man gradually escaped from his bondage to the elements. Consequently, with the progress of science and technology, the role of the geographical environment constantly decreases. Moreover, using the results of scientific and technological progress, man has gained the ability to influence nature on an ever-increasing scale. In the circumstances of private ownership and capitalist production in some countries, man’s impact on nature often entails irreparable harm to the environment and is fraught with grave dangers.  For nature is a finely balanced system capable of self-regulation, and depredation of the natural resources upsets it and impairs this capacity for self-regulation.<br /> <br /> Whatever the successes of scientific and technological progress, the effect of the natural environment on society will always be a positive quantity because, no matter how advanced, society will always exist in a specific geographical environment, in a definite set of natural conditions which influence, and will continue to influence, the life of society.<br /> <br /> Well-considered, methodical use of the natural resources under the planned socialist economy and the socialist system based on common ownership open up great possibilities for conserving the environment. In the Soviet Union, for example, there are special laws and agencies concerned with preserving natural resources and protecting the environment.<br /> <br /> Even so, at the present rate of production growth and with increasing urbanisation, individual countries or even groups of countries can do little to prevent irreparable damage to nature. There is an urgent need for an international system of conservation measures involving all, or at least all the industrially advanced, countries.<br /> <br /> In his speech “The Great October Revolution and Mankind’s Progress” L. I. Brezhnev said that among the problems facing mankind “there is the problem of protecting man from the many dangers with which further uncontrolled technological development threatens him, in other words, the conservation of nature.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-97|97]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> The size and density of &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;population&lt;/span&gt; is another standard factor in society’s existence and development. This is obvious since history is made by people, who are its primary requisite.<br /> <br /> The size, growth rate, density and other characteristics of population are essential to society’s development. Without a minimum number of people, society cannot function.  Nevertheless, although different demographic characteristics can influence society's development for better or worse, the population growth, density and composition are not what determines the development of society. For example, the succession of socio-economic formations cannot be explained by population growth.<br /> <br /> Today, when the Earth’s population is increasing at an ever faster rate, and is expected to mount, at the very least, to 6,000 million in the year 2000, bourgeois sociologists and economists are making much of the theory that the population grows in geometrical progression and the means of subsistence increase in arithmetical progression. Hence they view population growth as an eternal evil threatening innumerable calamities, such as famine, wars and &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;so&lt;/span&gt; on.<br /> <br /> However, overpopulation is not a law of nature. It does not appear because there are too many people but is due to the conditions of production under capitalism. Capitalism constantly produces a surplus-population. Economic crises, chronic unemployment, destitution are not at all the effects of overpopulation, but are, indeed, its causes. Bourgeois overpopulation theories are wrong because their authors regard the conditions, which are merely produced by capitalism, as absolute and eternal.<br /> <br /> In reality, the growth of labour productivity, made especially rapid by the technological revolution, provides for an abundance of goods unthought of in the past. However, the progress of science and technology encounters obstacles created by capitalism, whose interests have long come in conflict with the interest of the working people, of the bulk of world population.<br /> <br /> The economic lag in many countries which only recently rid themselves of colonialist exploitation is also due to capitalism which plundered the natural wealth of the colonial countries and so held back their economic progress.  It is because of this capitalist-bred economic lag that in some Asian and African countries, population grows faster than the productive forces. But that will not last. As they develop their economy and adjust birth rates to economic growth, the young independent nations shall achieve economic prosperity.<br /> <br /> Thus, the character of society and its progress, the change from one social system to another, do not depend&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;nor can they depend&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;on either the geographical environment or the growth of population. The latter can only further or hamper social development, being themselves dependent on the mode of material production.<br /> <br /> History develops on the basis of &lt;span class=&quot;s-t10&quot;&gt;material production&lt;/span&gt; which is its determining factor.<br /> <br />  <br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> === 3. Material Production as the Basis of Society’s Existence and Development ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. The Mode of Production of the Material Goods ====<br /> To ensure his subsistence man must provide himself with food, clothing, shelter and so on. He cannot get all these things ready-made from nature. Ever since man raised himself from the animal world, he has used more and more products of nature that need to be processed. Man cannot eat meat raw, it must be cooked first. Even primitive man, before he could wrap himself in an animal's skin, first had to kill the animal, skin it and cure the skin.<br /> <br /> Thus, to subsist, man has to produce material goods from objects found in nature. Material production has always been—and still is—the basis of human existence. As history marches on, production undergoes change and develops its forms and means. It makes up the basis of history. People produced food and clothing, built houses, and so on, in every age.  Stages of social history are differentiated not by &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;what&lt;/span&gt; men produce but by &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;how&lt;/span&gt;, i.e., &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;by what means&lt;/span&gt;, they produce the material goods necessary for subsistence. In other words, historical periods are differentiated, above all, by the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;modes of material production&lt;/span&gt; on which they are founded.<br /> <br /> Thus, at the basis of history are successive modes of material production.<br /> <br /> Every mode of production has two aspects.  One of them expresses man’s relation to nature, i.e., the degree to which he controls it. This aspect of the mode of production constitutes the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;productive forces&lt;/span&gt; of society. The more advanced the productive forces, the greater man’s control over nature, and vice versa. In primitive society, in which the productive forces were hardly developed, nature had control over man.  The further progress of productive forces through the ages has caused this relation to change. In socialist society, which has at its disposal up-to-date technology and is rapidly moving forward along the path of scientific and technological progress, man increasingly controls nature, subjugating its blind forces to the benefit of society.<br /> <br /> The other aspect of the mode of production consists in the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;relations of production&lt;/span&gt;. These express the relations among people, arising in the process of the production of material goods and determined by the level and character of the development of productive forces.<br /> <br /> Both aspects of the mode of production form an indissoluble unity and cannot exist separately since people, in processing various objects, i.e., interacting with nature, associate with other people taking part in the process of production, i.e., interact with one another.<br /> <br /> Besides the production of material goods, another area of material production is the production of man himself. It is performed by the family, whose forms also underwent changes in the course of history, while its influence on the historical process diminished as society developed further.<br /> <br /> Certainly, it would be a mistake to regard the family merely as a link in the system of material production; it also plays a vital role in ethical, legal and other spiritual relations.  The family does not simply carry out the physical reproduction of man. It is a highly important sphere of the education of the new generation.<br /> <br /> For all that, the material functions of the family, associated with the reproduction of man, always were and continue to be essential to society.<br /> <br /> The productive forces of society are the foundation of the historical process.<br /> <br /> ==== §2. Society’s Productive Forces ====<br /> The productive forces include people and the means of labour, i.e., the objects and instruments of labour. But objects of labour themselves must be either obtained or produced by man, and instruments are also results of man’s labour activity. Thus, the productive forces consist of living human labour or of labour already performed and embodied in the objects and instruments of labour.<br /> <br /> All these things become productive forces only if they are part of the process of production. Prospected mineral deposits which are not developed are not a productive force, although they may become one in future. The most up-to-date machine tools, kept under lock and key in the storeroom, are not a productive force; they become one only after being made part of the process of production. This holds of people as well. An able-bodied person who does not work cannot be considered as a productive force. Men and the instruments of labour belong to the productive forces only when associated in the production of material goods.<br /> <br /> It would be a mistake to reduce the productive forces to production technology alone, as some Western scholars do when they give their own, somewhat biased interpretation to Marx’s social doctrine. The instruments of labour by themselves, without man, cannot function productively. Therefore, the productive forces must include man who creates or operates the instruments of labour.<br /> <br /> Thus, society’s productive forces comprise two integral elements, viz., the implements of labour and people possessing industrial skills.<br /> <br /> As a rule, the productive forces develop progressively. The capacity of the instruments of production, such as energy sources, transmission mechanisms, tools, etc., keeps increasing. As a result, the working man also undergoes change: his production experience grows and new occupations appear and develop. In this way, man’s control over the natural properties of things, over the forces of nature, gradually extends. Man produces new objects with new properties not existing in nature. Thus, the level of the productive forces changes. But that is not all, for their character also changes.<br /> <br /> The character of the productive forces coincides, by and large, with the character of labour, and may be individual (private) or collective (social). This differentiation depends on how men employ the implements of labour, whether they do it single-handed or in a group where effort is shared and co-ordinated. The process of labour—whether individual or social—&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;does not depend&lt;/span&gt; on man’s choice. It is determined by the character of the implements of labour and, more specifically, by the instruments of production, the bone and muscle of the production process.<br /> <br /> Indeed, some instruments (practically all handicraftsman’s tools) may and must be employed individually while others can be used only by a group of workers. A machine, for instance, is an instrument of production which can be used only collectively for it requires raw materials, energy, half-finished products, and so on. Besides those who run the machine, it takes dozens, if not thousands, more workers to make it function productively. Ownership has nothing to do with it. Regardless of property relations, labour in mechanised production is collective, social. The steam-engine revolutionised capitalist production just because, by making production a social process, it created the major material precondition of socialism.<br /> <br /> As long as man employed ready-made or primitively worked tools in production, he accumulated elementary knowledge in diverse fields of activity. The progress of production caused science to emerge and develop. Thus, astronomy emerged because people had to determine from the position of the stars and planets the seasons of the year, which was essential to agriculture and animal husbandry. Geometry arose from the needs of land surveying and construction. Geography owes its origin to the development of high-seas navigation and trade. Production does more to promote science than dozens of universities, wrote Engels. Hypotheses advanced on the strength of accumulated knowledge are tested by practice and, if confirmed, become scientific truths.<br /> <br /> When primitive instruments of labour are Superseded by machines, science as a system of knowledge of the external world begins to play a far more important part in the development of production. That is but natural. Mechanised production requires detailed knowledge of the properties of things, of the forces of nature and of how they can be utilised. In turn, such knowledge is applied and embodied in instruments, mechanisms and production technologies. In this way science begins to turn into a direct production force.<br /> <br /> In the 19th century, owing to numerous important scientific discoveries, science played a much greater role in production than ever before. But its role today in the development of productive forces is even greater. As a result of the revolution in science and technology, applied sciences have become part and parcel of the productive forces. More and more scientific discoveries are being made, some of them directly contributing to material production. Scientific information is produced on a vast scale, doubling its volume approximately every ten years. The revolution in science and technology has brought about a situation where production is increasingly becoming a field of the technological application of science, the latter itself appearing as a direct productive force.<br /> <br /> Whereas under capitalism, production as a whole, including the latest results of science, serves to enrich a handful of capitalists, while increasing automation breeds unemployment and causes much misery among working people, under socialism, the progress of science and technology is made to serve the whole of society, all working people. Under socialism, scientific and technological progress has practically no limits and can freely bear its fruits: larger and better-quality output, lighter work, more leisure, and so on.<br /> <br /> The role of science as an immediate productive force is determined not only by its direct effect on the technological standards of production, on the progress of technology. Science also makes an immense contribution to the development of the producers of material goods, to improving their cultural standards and skills, and to perfecting the organisation of production.<br /> <br /> The CPSU takes all necessary measures to promote the revolution in science and technology. As a result, L. I. Brezhnev pointed out in his report ‘“The Great October Revolution and Mankind’s Progress”, &amp;quot;never before has our country possessed such a huge economic, scientific and technical potential as today.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-98|98]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Speaking at the 25th CPSU Congress, L. I. Brezhnev said: “The priority task is still to speed up scientific and technical progress.  Its significance, you will recall, was strongly emphasised at the 24th Congress of the CPSU.  We Communists proceed from the belief that the scientific and technical revolution acquires a true orientation consistent with the interests of man and society only under socialism.<br /> <br /> In turn, the end objectives of the social revolution, the building of a communist society, can only be attained on the basis of accelerated scientific and technical progress.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-99|99]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> The Soviet people is solving the task of combining the technological revolution with socialism, i.e., utilising socialism’s advantages over capitalism in order to ensure the growth of material production and an improvement in the people’s living standards.<br /> <br /> ==== §3. Relations of Production ====<br /> Not every relation formed by people in the process of production is a production relation.  Human relations are complex and many-sided.  Production relations are, above all, economic relations among people who get together for the purpose of producing material values. These relations are of a material character. This is not to say that they are material in the same way as a thing may be material (for they can be neither measured nor weighed), but that they are objective, that is, independent of man’s mind and will. Thus, production relations are economic relations of people engaged in material production, which shape and change independently of people’s consciousness and intentions.<br /> <br /> What are these relations in more specific terms? Basically, all production relations depend on who owns the: means of production.  In fact, the form of ownership of the means of production underlies all economic relations in any kind of society. Property is not a thing, nor is it a relation between man and a thing. It is, in the last resort, an economic relationship established through men’s relation to things, particularly to the means of production.<br /> <br /> Another essential aspect of production relations is the exchange of activities between men engaged in material production. People participate in production in various ways. They “exchange” the results of their efforts. Thus the Capitalists, who own the means of production, play the part of organisers of production while the workers, who sell their labour, are the immediate producers.<br /> <br /> Exchange of the results of human effort is not confined to capitalist society. It occurs in any society because there is always a division of labour, even under the primitive-communal system, where it was, of course, of the simplest kind. In socialist society, too, the results of labour are exchanged between two classes of working people (i.e., workers and farmers), different social strata and groups of professional workers.<br /> <br /> Lastly, production relations are characterised by the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;distribution of output&lt;/span&gt;, Every class receives a part of the national income in a manner and quantity rigidly determined by the prevailing relations of property.<br /> <br /> The chief characteristics of production relations that we have enumerated are inseparably combined in material production. The unity of the three aspects of production relations is as objective as production relations themselves.  It means that production relations can change only as a system of three aspects, none of which can undergo serious qualitative change separately.<br /> <br /> There are several &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;types of production relations&lt;/span&gt; known in history: primitive-communal, slavery, feudal, capitalist and communist. Mankind is marching along a road which ascends from lower to higher forms of production relations. This road may wind or zigzag, for historical development does not proceed in a straight line. In some cases reactionaries managed to halt history. So, after the French bourgeois revolution an attempt was made to restore not only monarchy but feudalism as well. That attempt slowed down the development of France, but it failed all the same. It shows us the objective character of historical development. Despite all obstacles, society still arrives where it should under the objective laws of history.  These laws cannot be repealed. History may at times develop more slowly but sooner or later it will make headway.<br /> <br /> Progressive development of society from lower to higher forms is called &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;social progress&lt;/span&gt;.  It can be of two types. The first, progress in an exploiting, antagonistic society, is achieved at immense sacrifice, which is out of all proportion to the strides actually made. Marx figuratively described this type of historical development as an abominable idol that would drink nectar only from the skulls of the slain.<br /> <br /> The second, progress under socialism, is of an entirely different character, as all classes and sections of society have a stake in it. The development of socialist society proceeds in a planned manner. It is guided and directed by a Communist or a workers’ party. Having cognised the laws to which society is subject, it leads the masses, directing the efforts of all working people towards a single goal and ensuring the best possible results of social development.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;The unity of productive forces and relations of production constitutes the mode of material production&lt;/span&gt;. In every historical epoch a particular mode of production was predominant, the primitive-communal, slavery, feudal and capitalist modes of production succeeding one another.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, in studying history it is easy to observe that at no time did a mode of production exist all by itself. The picture was always complicated because while a new mode of production took shape, some elements of the old mode persisted.<br /> <br /> The current epoch has seen the emergence of the socialist mode of production which is steadily advancing on the capitalist mode of production in the world economy. Socialist integration within the framework of the socialist world economic system, the steady and rapid economic growth of the socialist countries, all foretell the inevitable triumph of the socialist world system in the economic race with capitalism.<br /> <br /> ==== §4. Succession of Modes of Production Is a Law-Governed Process ====<br /> Having discussed what a mode of production is, we can look at how they function and why they supersede one another.<br /> <br /> In the main, we can single out three principal laws to which the mode of production is subject.  They are the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;law of unity&lt;/span&gt;, the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;law of correspondence&lt;/span&gt;, and the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;law of contradiction&lt;/span&gt; between various aspects of the mode of production. These laws expose the workings and development of the modes of material production. And since production activity, in the final analysis, is the foundation on which every other social human activity rests, these laws are of immense social significance.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;The law of the unity of the productive forces and production relations&lt;/span&gt; expresses the organic connection between various aspects of the mode of production. Every mode of production, at any period in its history, necessarily involves a complex interaction of the productive forces and relations of production. The productive forces are the content of material production, and the relations of production are its economic form.  The mode of production exists and functions in society as an integral whole, an active socioeconomic system in which material production, in any of its phases, is embodied in economic phenomena and cannot exist without them. E.g., the capitalist productive forces exist as constant and variable capital, &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;i&lt;/span&gt;.e., as the means of production owned by the capitalist, and as labour which is a commodity bought by the capitalist. The productive forces of capitalism form and function only as long as the economic interaction of labour power and the instruments of labour (which are the major component of the means of production) takes place. Therefore, in society, the productive forces do not exist in a “pure” form but only in their economic form. They can only be separated from their economic form, i.e., from the relations of production, in the imagination, as a theoretical abstraction, to make their analysis more convenient.<br /> <br /> The consequences of the law of unity of the productive forces and relations of production are of great significance to economic practice and development, as well as to the life and development of society in general. If the mode of production exists and functions as an integral whole, then clearly, every appreciable variation of any of its aspects will affect the entire mode of production. Thus, the more social the process of production becomes in modern capitalist enterprise, the more the material prerequisites of the socialist economic system mature in the womb of capitalism. Also, the higher the concentration of production and the centralisation of capital in the modern capitalist economy, the more manifest the economic need for replacing private by common ownership of the means of production. Therefore, it is a matter of replacing the mode of production as a whole.<br /> <br /> Then how do the different aspects of the mode of production interact? For an answer, we must look to the law of correspondence and the law of contradiction between the aspects of the mode of production.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;The law of correspondence between production relations and the level and character of the productive &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;f&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;orces &lt;/span&gt;was discovered by Marx, who drew general conclusions from numerous facts bearing on the economic history of society. To substantiate this law, Marx looked into the history of the division of labour and of the emergence and development of co-operative association, manufacturing and mechanised production. The results of his research are stated in the first volume of his &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Capital&lt;/span&gt;. Here are some of Marx’s judgements on the matter.<br /> <br /> The history of European economic development shows that the need for mass production destroyed the craft guild in which the master workman and his apprentices made a commodity entirely on their own, from beginning to end. The strong point of this method is that the article bears the stamp of the craftsman’s skill. The craftsman’s work in this case is creative, and he himself enjoys a respectable place in the social scale. Yet the craft guilds, typically medieval and preserved nowadays almost exclusively by the goldsmiths, crumbled under the impact of expanding commerce. A craftsman cannot, after all, produce artistically finished articles on a mass scale. Besides, the jealousy with which craftsmen guarded the secrets of the trade greatly hindered the progress of production.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; Division of labour and the introduction of machines ruined the medieval craft guilds.  They were replaced first by co-operative asso&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;c&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;iation in which craftsmen’s work was shared and coordinated. Even this simple innovation was enough to boost enormously labour productivity and profit. On the other hand, the artisan’s work lost its creative quality. Now it was no longer an expression of the craftsman’s art, and the craftsman himself was no longer an artist. Creative work was replaced by monotonous drudgery, each worker performing some elementary operation over and over again. That spelled the birth of what Marx called ‘partial man”: the worker contributes only a part of the article, and his whole life becomes tied to this part, which, incidentally, cannot be marketed as such. Thus, through economic pressures, the craftsman whose art and its secrets had been a source of personal pride started in the co-operative association his slide into totally dependent production that later ended in the factory.  What happens next? Again, under economic pressures, viz., a growing demand for goods and a growing thirst for profit with a view to further investment in profitable enterprise, the machine finds its way into the co-operative association. Inventors of machines had in mind technical improvement of production as well as economic considerations. They sought to make work less arduous, increase labour efficiency and ensure a higher rate of profit. What effect it would have on the economy and society was something the inventors and organisers of production did not trouble their heads about.  &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> Having penetrated the co-operative association, the machine at once alters the character of economic relations among the co-operative artisans. Their former independence, already somewhat curtailed by division of labour, now completely disappears. The machine is not, as a rule, owned by the individual artisan; it is the property of the workshop owner and a means of exploiting the workers. The workers are no longer able to launch production on their own because the instruments of production have become very costly.<br /> <br /> There then appears a system of machines in the workshop and it becomes a real factory.  Yesterday's artisan and workers in the workshop become today’s proletarians. They possess no instruments of production; the sole commodity they own is their labour power and this they sell by hiring themselves out to a private employer. They have to do this in order to make a living for themselves and their families.  By his work, the worker not only covers the production costs but produces surplus value besides. And the capitalist appropriates this surplus value as profit.<br /> <br /> Detailed examination of capitalist production led Marx to the conclusion that every change in production starts with the instruments of labour as men improve them, as they increase the speed of the machines and build up the capacity of the energy sources. New machines require new skills, and this causes change in the worker who handles the instruments of labour or controls machines. Besides mechanising production, men improve the latter by breaking it down into separate operations permanently assigned to separate workers or mechanisms.<br /> <br /> Technical improvements, the further division of labour, development of new skills—in a word, the modification of the productive forces—induce economic change, i.e., an adjustment in the production relations. This is the relationship expressed by the law of the correspondence of production relations with the productive forces, which operates as an economic tendency.  The law imposes no rigid mechanical dependence of production relations on the productive forces. It would therefore be inexact to describe it as a “&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;law of obligatory correspondence&lt;/span&gt;.&amp;quot; The law of correspondence operates as an economic tendency in the modern capitalist economic system as well. But the demands of the law of correspondence run up against the selfish economic ends of the monopolies and cannot be satisfied unless monopoly power is overcome.<br /> <br /> At this point, we inescapably come to the third law regulating material production, the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;law of conflict between different aspects of the mode of production&lt;/span&gt;. Production relations, which correspond to the productive forces only by tendency, are usually in conflict with them. This conflict, inherent in the mode of production, is exactly what makes it develop.<br /> <br /> Where does the conflict spring from and what is it about? How does it develop and how is it resolved? These questions remained a puzzle to social scientists and economists before Marx.  And no wonder. For to answer them one had to get to the bottom of society's economic development and be a revolutionary as well, i.e., to combine an exact economic analysis with a social analysis of the interplay of the class forces and the way social revolutions tend to develop.<br /> <br /> The law of conflict between different aspects of the mode of production is manifested in three main ways. Firstly, the productive forces, as the most mobile element of the mode of production, outstrip (and this is the main tendency in world history) production relations which are usually more conservative and lag behind.  This is obvious because the relations of production change objectively according to the change undergone by the productive forces. This shows once again that the conflict between different aspects of the mode of production is a fundamental attribute of economic development.<br /> <br /> Secondly, at a certain stage, the internal conflict in the mode of production, under the private ownership of the means of production, develops into an antagonism, the productive forces and production relations being embodied in antagonistic social classes. For example, in the capitalist economy, the proletariat is the most important part and the living embodiment of the productive forces while the relations of production (capital, above all) are personified by the capitalists. Therefore the conflict in the mode of production must sooner or later, depending on the maturity of the economic system, be expressed as antagonism and conflict between these classes. The growth of such antagonism in the economic and social spheres inevitably brings about social revolution in bourgeois society.<br /> <br /> The conflict in the mode of production as it develops into antagonism, expressed in class conflict, is the socio-economic precondition of social revolution. The relations of production, having come in conflict with their productive forces, become a drag on economic and social progress. They twist it out of shape and slow down its growth rate. An obvious instance of this is modern state-monopoly capitalism which has distorted the development of material production in favour of militarism, promoting the war industries at the expense of culture and health. Militarisation of the economy is pushing the capitalist world into the abyss of another economic crisis. The capitalist relations of production hamper the development of the productive forces, retarding its growth. Comparison of the economic growth rates in the socialist and the capitalist countries dramatically demonstrates the advantages of the socialist economic system. Economic integration of the socialist countries further enhances these advantages and provides favourable conditions for their realisation.<br /> <br /> Outmoded production relations act as a brake on social and economic progress. Imperialism brings with it unemployment, racial hatred and police outrages, neocolonialism and suppression of democratic freedoms. The headlong chase for profit, attempts to prolong the life of capitalism—which is doomed by history—by aggressive wars and similar means, continuing plunder of the developing countries in the guise of aid, are all expressions of the current capitalist relations of production, of state-monopoly capitalism.<br /> <br /> Lastly, the conflict in the mode of production comes out in the fact that, even after becoming a brake on the progress of industry and society, the relations of production still remain the prime mover of production. We may ask ourselves: What makes material production function in the United States and other state-monopoly countries? It is still the headlong pursuit of profit. Under state-monopoly capitalism the big capitalist corporations can reap, with governments’ assistance, high monopoly profits, instead of average profits.<br /> <br /> As we see, the modern capitalist relations of production have become self-contradictory.  While they are a stupendous roadblock to social progress, these relations of production—of which profit is part—still provide for the further development of the capitalist economic system.  This bears out the conclusion, made by Marxist-Leninists long ago, that capitalism will not collapse of itself. Only united action by all anti-monopoly forces will clear the road for the further progress of history.<br /> <br /> ==== §5. What Is a Socio-Economic Formation ====<br /> The laws of material production operate throughout human history. But world history has gone through a succession of phases, viz., the primitive-communal, slavery, feudal and capitalist systems, and has now entered a socialist and communist phase of development.  These phases, signifying stages in the progress of world history, are called &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;socio-economic formations&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> The concept “‘socio-economic formation” was introduced by Marx and was widely employed by Engels and Lenin. According to Lenin’s definition, a socio-economic formation is an integral social organism.<br /> <br /> The skeleton or economic basis of each formation consists of the relations of production Which are predominant in it. They determine the economic tendencies and the character of the classes common to a particular formation, determining, in the long run, its social system, ideas and institutions.<br /> <br /> The flesh or body of a formation consists of the social classes existing within it, and the institutions they set up to protect their own vital interests. These are not merely the institutions of the ruling class, rooted in and serving the predominant relations of production, but also all other essential social institutions, many of which derive from the inner contradictions of the mode of production. Thus, socialist ideas under capitalism spring from the conflict between the social character of production and private appropriation. The same conflict is ultimately responsible for the emergence of the communist parties of the working class.<br /> <br /> Of key significance to the definition of a socio-economic formation is, however, the relation between its &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;economic basis&lt;/span&gt;, i.e., the predominant relations of production, and the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;superstructure&lt;/span&gt;, i.e., the predominant ideas and institutions. Formations may be rather similar as to their productive forces, but they are always distinguished by the specific character of the basis and superstructure which not only determine the pattern of a formation but, more important still, functionally depend on each other.  The basis produces the superstructure, and the superstructure ministers to the basis. But their functional connection is even more far-reaching. This connection alone makes it possible to see whether a social phenomenon belongs to the basis or to the superstructure. Let us take the state for example. Should we always refer to it as a superstructure? It depends. It cannot properly be called a superstructure in relation to the church, for instance. The state is a superstructure only relative to the predominant relations of production.<br /> <br /> Is the state to be regarded as a superstructure with respect to the productive forces? By no means. There are countries now that achieved more or less similar levels of the productive forces but differ greatly in bases and superstructures. This difference expresses the main contradiction between moribund capitalism, on the one hand, and socialism, which has become the decisive force of progress, on the other.<br /> <br /> All this holds true for the economic phenomena as well. They are of basic character only in case they are related to the ideas and institutions that are determined by these economic phenomena and work for them. But can we call production relations the basis from the point of view of their economic role in relation to the productive forces? The answer is no, because in that case the relations of production do not&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;nor can they—play the part of the basis with reference to the development of the productive forces.<br /> <br /> There are numerous things in society which have too many functions to be referred either to the basis or to the superstructure. Thus, language, the family, machines and the productive forces in general, the natural and technological sciences, the nation, and so on, should be referred neither to the basis nor to the superstructure. Certainly the basis and superstructure influence them a great deal and often turn them to account. But that does not alter the essential fact that they are social phenomena of a particular kind, not to be referred wholly either to the basis or to the superstructure.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; Therefore, although these social phenomena are part of the formation as an integral social organism, they do not serve to distinguish one formation from another. They may be&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;and they usually are—similar or even identical in entirely different formations. Consequently, only phenomena which can be definitely referred to the basis or to the superstructure as belonging distinctly to a formation and stemming ultimately from the mode of production are the distinguishing marks of a formation. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> ==== §6. The Specific Laws of Socio-Economic Formations ====<br /> Then what are the laws whereby the social Organism called the socio-economic formation springs forth, develops, matures and decays?  The laws of material production operate during the existence of a formation. They provide for the continuity of world history, investing it with a progressive general tendency and binding together widely different and even opposite phases of historical development and types of social structures. But do they provide for the emergence, development and collapse of specific social organisms such as socio-economic formations? Certainly not. Nor is it fortuitously that Lenin mentions that each socio-economic formation develops in conformity with certain laws specific to it.<br /> <br /> The &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;economic laws&lt;/span&gt; specific to each formation are the subject of political economy. For example, Marx's &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Capital&lt;/span&gt; is a detailed exposition of the economic laws governing every stage in the development of capitalism. The chief one is the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;law of the production of surplus value&lt;/span&gt;, the latter being seized by the capitalist as average or monopoly profit. Marx thoroughly investigated the operation of this law, tracing its immediate and indirect consequences and the way it interacted with other economic laws, and outlined the social development tendency resulting from this law. Thus, this law has a broad social meaning expressed in the tendency which social development has to pursue under the impact of the economic forces. The law of surplus value shows the position and role of the proletariat in the capitalist economic system, which, in fact, render the proletariat the grave-diggers of capitalism and builders of a new, socialist system. Hence, the proletariat’s world-historic revolutionary role is more profoundly substantiated if viewed from the standpoint of capitalism’s chief economic law. It was for this very reason that Marx said that his &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Capital&lt;/span&gt; was a shell fired at the head of the world bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> However great the social significance of the economic laws of each particular formation, specific &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;social laws&lt;/span&gt;, not immediately invested with economic content, are also essential to the life of a formation. For example, as he summed up historical experience, Marx established the general tendency of the class struggle throughout the period of capitalism. The class struggle between the proletariat and the capitalists inevitably results in the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx’s &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;law of the class struggle under capitalism&lt;/span&gt; has, of course, economic antecedents, yet it does not itself refer to the economic sphere. It is a social law specific to a concrete formation.<br /> <br /> Interaction of the economic and social laws specific to each formation and the common laws of human history determines the destiny of each formation. An all-round examination of the complex interaction of all social and economic forces with reference to the history and maturity of capitalism enabled Marx to arrive at the scientifically-founded conclusion on the communist tendency of world history in the epoch of the capitalist social formation, namely, that, as it goes onward, history must pass from moribund capitalism to communism.<br /> <br /> ==== §7. The Communist Socio-Economic Formation ====<br /> Socialism and communism are two phases or large periods in the life of a society resting on collective ownership of the basic means of production, in which the exploitation of man by man has been abolished. Socialism is the first phase of such a society. It comes into being as a result of the socialist revolution, handing over political power and the national wealth to the working people and giving them access to culture. The toilers become genuine masters of society. As this society moves closer to communism, its development takes new forms.<br /> <br /> Socialism emerges from capitalism or even from some pre-capitalist social system. It cannot build its social and economic framework in the womb of the old society which rests on private ownership of the means of production.  The foundations of the old exploiting society must be destroyed by a social revolution. Communism, on the other hand, develops on its own social and economic base and does not need a social and political revolution or the class struggle to bring it into the world.<br /> <br /> Progress of socialist society to communism is subject to certain objective social laws which extend to the main areas of the life of society comprising men’s economic, social, political, and intellectual activities. As a result of the operation of these laws, the material and technical base of communism is created, socialist relations are transformed into communist social relations, and people attain all-round development. The complex nature of the process of transition from socialism to communism follows from the very numerousness of the objective social laws involved in it. In the economic sphere, for instance, one can single out the high and stable growth rates of production development which is free from crises and unemployment and sufficient for the building of the material and technical base of communism; the growing role of progress in science and technology; integration of the scientific and technological revolution with the advantages of full-fledged socialism; development of socialist into communist labour, work becoming the prime vital requirement of everyone; a steady growth of efficiency; the drawing together of co-operative and public property, and their eventual transformation into communist property; growth of social consumption.<br /> <br /> The laws operating in the socio-political sphere in that period are, to name but a few: the gradual levelling out of living standards in town and country; the steady drawing together of the working class, collective farmers and intellectuals, and obliteration of class and social distinctions; integration of mental and physical work; the greatest possible growth of the social unity of society, the peoples thriving and drawing together still more; the gradual emergence of social uniformity and full social equality of all members of society; development of the socialist state of the whole people into communist public self-administration: the greatest possible unfoldment of socialist democracy; and the gradual refashioning of everyday life on communist principles.<br /> <br /> The changes which the intellectual life of society undergoes in the period of transition from socialism to communism are equally complex.  We shall name merely a few, viz., the inculcation of a new attitude to work; getting rid of private-owner mentality and hangovers of the past; the further growth of socialist culture; all-round development of the individual; and the increasing dependence of the character and rate of social development on the spiritual qualities and constructive efforts of every man and woman.<br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> === 4. Classes and Class Relations ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. What Is a Class? ====<br /> The word “class” derives from the Latin classis, a group called to arms, a division of the people. Tradition ascribes to Servius Tullius, a legendary Roman king (578-534 B. C.), a new division of Roman society into classes or orders.  At that time there appeared in ancient Rome an army into which all free citizens able to carry arms were enrolled. Servius Tullius divided the soldiers into five classes or orders according to their wealth, i.e., their ability to provide their own horses, armour, etc.<br /> <br /> Subsequently, the word “class&amp;quot; was applied to large groups of people into which human Society came to be divided. But can any large group of people be regarded as a class? We are accustomed to apply this term to such large groups as the bourgeoisie, the working class, the peasants. Yet in modern society doctors also form a large group. There are almost 700,000 of them in the Soviet Union alone. Steel workers form a large group too, but are they a class?<br /> <br /> Many scholars tried in vain to define the concept “class”, although the fact that society was divided into classes and that a struggle was going on between them was observed long ago. So, even at the time of the Restoration in France there were historians (Thierry, Guizot, Mignet) who saw in the class struggle the key to French history. Nevertheless, the question what is a class, on what grounds people may be referred to one class or another, was still left open.<br /> <br /> Some investigators claimed that the division into classes rested on the difference in intellectual standards: the more gifted and active, the more apt to command formed the ruling classes; the dull and stolid formed the oppressed classes.  Life and history demonstrated, however, that this was not so at all. There were too many ignorant fools and dolts among the ruling classes, while the oppressed classes advanced from their midst many people of undoubted talent.<br /> <br /> Other people attempted to explain class division by income and property. Indeed, examination of the class structure of any society reveals a glaring disparity in the incomes of those of the ruling and the oppressed class. But the question is why—why this disparity, why is it that the ruling classes are rich and the oppressed poor?<br /> <br /> Lastly, it was said that classes were distinguished by their position in society. Some classes were privileged, others, on the contrary, were underprivileged. But again, the question why it was so was left unanswered.<br /> <br /> The great contribution of the Marxist-Leninist theory is that it has managed to solve this complex problem. Marx and Engels furnished brilliant examples of materialist study of the position of every class and each stratum within it, showing that the class struggle is entirely political. The most comprehensive, profound and complete definition of classes in Marxist-Leninist theory was given by Lenin in his work &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;The Great Beginning&lt;/span&gt;. Lenin writes: “Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-100|100]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> In this definition Lenin points out four distinctive marks differentiating classes, viz., (1) their place in a historically determined system of social production; (2) their relation to the means of production; (3) their role in the social organisation of labour, and (4) the share of social wealth they get and the methods by which they get it.<br /> <br /> The main indication was, in Lenin’s view, the relation of a class to the means of production that establishes a social group as a ruling class enjoying every privilege. Estrangement from the means of production turns a social group into an oppressed class whose lot is destitution and deprivation of rights.<br /> <br /> Lenin’s definition of classes, which sets forth the objective characteristics of a class, cut the ground from under the feet of those who defined classes from an idealist point of view, arbitrarily combining people into classes or, equally arbitrarily, excluding certain groups from concrete classes.<br /> <br /> Secondly, Lenin isolated the fundamental, most typical features of all classes, thus furnishing the guide and key to the class structure of a socio-economic formation, which greatly facilitated the study of class society. In other words, Lenin’s definition of classes is of great theoretical significance to a correct understanding of society.<br /> <br /> Thirdly, Lenin defined classes in an exploiting society as groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another.<br /> <br /> ==== §2. Why Society Split Into Classes ====<br /> Now that we know what a class is, we must look at how classes came about. They emerged long ago, when systems of writing either did not yet exist or were only beginning to develop, so that we have scanty sources on those times.<br /> <br /> Still, numerous scholars who painstakingly collected evidence about the life of ancient peoples in different parts of the world, have gathered enough information for us to trace the general outlines of the historical processes developing in the remote past.<br /> <br /> Excavations of ancient settlements and burial places and the implements, utensils, ornaments, bones of the animals which primitive men hunted, and other relics found by archaeologists help to reconstruct a picture of our remote ancestors, community life, their activities and way of life.<br /> <br /> Although the instruments of labour were very primitive at that time (they were usually made of stone or wood), men got food for themselves with their aid and successfully hunted big, strong beasts. How did they manage to do it?  Men lived in large communities, hunting animals and gathering wild plants together. Without mutual assistance, they could never have survived because they would have been helpless against predators lying in wait for them at every turn.<br /> <br /> Primitive society knew no division into classes, no subjection and oppression, no exploitation. People provided the means of subsistence for themselves by common effort and consumed them also in common.<br /> <br /> Drawing general conclusions from concrete research, Marxism supplies the general picture of society's division into classes. The first class division occurred when the primitive-communal system disintegrated.<br /> <br /> Disintegration of the primitive-communal system and the emergence of class society was a lengthy process which did not occur simultaneously everywhere. According to historical evidence, class society emerged in ancient Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the 3rd millennia B. C.; in India and China, in the 3rd-2nd millennia B. C.; and in Greece and Rome, in the first millennium B. C.<br /> <br /> Economically, class division of society was based on the surplus product which turned, with the passage of time, into private property.<br /> <br /> Under the primitive-communal system, the productive forces—and so labour productivity—were at an extremely low level. What little was produced was almost immediately consumed.<br /> <br /> In those circumstances there was no basis for social inequality. When, as a result of quarrels between clans or their individual members, prisoners were taken, it was a problem what to do with them. To keep them in the community was usually impossible as there was not enough food to go round as it was. Nor could the prisoners be made to work for the community as there were no implements to spare.<br /> <br /> So prisoners of war were either eaten up (while cannibalism was still practised) or allowed to return to their own clans after hostilities were over, or, circumstances permitting, were retained on an equal footing with the rest.<br /> <br /> This continued as long as society did not produce much. But as time went on, implements were improved and labour became more efficient. Finally, production reached a level where man began to produce more than merely his sustenance. There appeared the surplus product, something over and above bare necessity, which had momentous social consequences for mankind, bringing about social inequality.<br /> <br /> The surplus product meant that means had become available for maintaining and employing extra labour. Whereas prisoners of war had earlier been killed, they now came to be prized as a source of wealth.<br /> <br /> Although all this happened very long ago, Similar facts are still observable in our own time among some peoples whose development has been retarded for concrete historical reasons. Thus there is ethnological evidence that the nomad tribe of Masai in East Africa killed their prisoners for want of means to maintain them. However their neighbours, the Wakamba, who engaged in agriculture, were able to use slave labour. As they disposed of the surplus product, they had food and implements to spare for extra labour. Therefore the Wakamba did not kill their prisoners but turned them into slaves.<br /> <br /> War prisoners were not the only source of slave labour. Besides them, the class of slaves was formed of debtors who failed to pay their debts.<br /> <br /> Why, one may ask, did they not share out the surplus product equally among the clan or tribe? Why did social inequality replace the equal distribution of products which had been the rule for millennia? The point is that products are distributed and consumed depending on the way in which they are obtained. The old hunting and fishing peoples procured food for themselves in large groups. Their primitive implements did not allow them to get enough to keep body and soul together single-handed, without their kinsmen’s assistance. Thus, at the early stages of society’s development, social production took shape, and its necessary consequence was social consumption, when the bag was at once equally divided among the members of the group. That was determined in the first place by the economic mode of life of ancient peoples and tribes.<br /> <br /> They had no conception of storing supplies because it was hardly practicable. The meat from the animals they killed spoiled quickly.  Of course, if sold, it could fetch money that could be saved. But at that stage money did not yet exist. Hence, the economic circumstances did not encourage thrift.<br /> <br /> Another reason why they could not accumulate supplies was that as very little was produced, nothing was left over, and there was nothing left to save. Besides, hunting depends on luck. A hunter may kill a large beast today and share with the others, or he may come home empty-handed tomorrow and be given a share of the others’ kill. Plekhanov observed that the custom of sharing is a sort of mutual insurance without which hunting tribes could not possibly go on.<br /> <br /> Thus the collectivist rules of behaviour, customs and traditions of the primitive-communal system stem from the predominance of common ownership.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, even in the context of this primeval collectivism, as more and better implements were made, individual production gradually made headway. In primitive society, weapons, clothing, food, ornaments, etc., had already become personal property. These articles are fitted for personal consumption by their very nature. To handle a spear, a bow or a boomerang with adequate skill, the primitive huntsman had to adapt himself to the individual  article, as well as adjust it to himself.<br /> <br /> The growing use of individual implements told on the standards and customs of social consumption. It may be assumed that by custom the bag was divided depending on each member’s contribution to the success of the hunt.<br /> <br /> Similar customs have been observed among peoples whose development has been retarded.  If the quarry is killed by two men, the skin goes to the man whose arrow struck nearer the heart; the one who strikes the last blow receives the best cut, and so on.<br /> <br /> With the spread of individual-type implements and individual production, the primitive commune began to disintegrate and socia&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;l&lt;/span&gt; inequality set in. As the social division of labour progressed, the primitive commune finally disintegrated and the tribal system was destroyed.<br /> <br /> The first major division of labour was associated with the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;separation of cattle-breeding (pastoral) tribes&lt;/span&gt;. At that stage, the cattle-breeders, provided they had large enough herds, already enjoyed a surplus over their own consumption. Exchange, which was earlier merely accidental and concerned only what was left over by chance, now became regular between pastoral and agricultural tribes. As a result, social wealth increased and more slave labour was used.<br /> <br /> The second major social division of labour occurred when the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;handicrafts separated of&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;f&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;f&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;rom agriculture&lt;/span&gt;. Exchange thus penetrated into the community. Economic inequality increased, and, besides the division into free men and slaves, there appeared distinctions between the rich and the poor.<br /> <br /> As more products were made specially for exchange, the latter became a vital social necessity, rather than a practice among individual producers.<br /> <br /> The next major social division of labour was the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;separation of mental from manual work&lt;/span&gt;, whereby mental work was monopolised by a tiny minority, by the ruling classes which took the management of production and public affairs entirely into their own hands. And hard physical work became the lot of the vast majority.<br /> <br /> Those were the main causes and circumstances underlying the division of human society into large social groups, into hostile classes.  How did the classes form?<br /> <br /> They formed in two ways. Firstly, they formed as there emerged in the clan an exploiting elite initially consisting of the aristocracy, and as impoverished members of the clan were turned into slaves for their debts. Secondly, they derived from the enslavement of war prisoners.<br /> <br /> Let us begin with the first way. How did the exploiting elite come to stand apart from the more or less uniform commune? Primitive men enjoyed approximately equal living conditions while heads of families and communities enjoyed equal social status.<br /> <br /> Common interests were looked after by functionaries under the supervision of society. They were concerned with settling disputes, superintending water reservoirs and religious practice. The functionaries were invested with certain rudimentary powers of government, but by and large they were merely the servants of the community.<br /> <br /> As the productive forces increased and communities joined into larger groupings, the division of labour proceeded further, and special bodies were set up to take care of common interests and settle disputes. These bodies, which acted on behalf of the society as a whole, were isolated from, and might even be hostile to, individual communities, and they gradually became more independent. Eventually, this independence of public offices with relation to society evolved into domination over it. The former servant became master. Individuals who had risen to power merged into whole ruling classes.<br /> <br /> The second way in which classes formed was thus. As production developed, extra labour was required. At first, neither the individual community nor the larger society could provide it. The source of extra labour was found in war.<br /> <br /> Conquerors became aware that it was more expedient to spare the prisoners and make them produce the surplus product. With time, however, community leaders, who had the surplus product in their control, began to enslave their fellow-tribesmen by legal means which they devised.<br /> <br /> Such are the two principal ways in which classes formed. Their common result was slavery which was the first form of exploitation, typical of antiquity. Slave-owning society comprised three classes. The first class—the slave-owners—included the ruling aristocratic elite and later, a larger section of the rich. The second class was composed of freemen—farmers, cattle-breeders and artisans who usually became dependent on slave-owners. The third class was composed of a heterogeneous mass of slaves of different nationalities and languages.<br /> <br /> Thus was society divided into the classes of the exploited and exploiters, the oppressed and their rulers.<br /> <br /> ==== §3. Class Antagonism ====<br /> The history of all antagonistic class societies since the disintegration of the primitive-communal system has been one of the struggle between classes. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, nobleman and serf, capitalist and workman, in short, oppressor and the oppressed, were forever in opposition to each other, Waging an incessant struggle, now secretly, now openly, which ended either in the revolutionary remaking of society or in the destruction of the warring classes.<br /> <br /> It is important in this respect to note the role of the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;working classes in social progress&lt;/span&gt;.  The question has often been posed in the history of social sciences as to the relative worth or even necessity of different classes in society.  This question has no single answer for all ages.  There was a time when the landed aristocracy was a useful and indispensable element of society. Then the bourgeoisie, inexorably produced by history, launched out against the landed aristocracy, smashing its political rule and itself gaining political and economic supremacy. Yet never, ever since classes emerged, has there been a time when society could dispense with the working classes. The names and social position of these classes changed, the slave gave place to the serf, and he to the proletarian, who, although not a bondman, had nothing except his labour power. The history of all antagonistic class formations shows that whatever modifications the leisure classes may undergo, society cannot go on without the class of producers.<br /> <br /> As antagonistic class formations succeeded one another, the forms of exploitation were modified, but the labouring classes ever remained oppressed. The crudest forms of exploitation were practised under slavery. The slave was treated no better than a draught animal.  He was deprived of every right, he could not have a family, and in ancient Greece he could not have a human name, only a nickname.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; In his treatise on agriculture, Varro, the Roman writer living in the 1st century B. C., mentions in a most natural way that agricultural implements are divided into three kinds, namely, the talking kind, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;i&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;.e., the slaves, the kind making inarticulate noises, e.g., &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;o&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;xen, and the mute kind, such as vehicles. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> The class structure of feudal society stems from the following features of the latter. Firstly, the feudal economy was natural, tending to be self-sufficient. Secondly, the means of exploitation under feudalism was binding the peasants to the soil. The feudal lord who owned the land allowed plots of land to the peasants so that they should work for him. To get the surplus product, he had to have on his land peasants who had plots, implements and animals. A peasant who has no plot, no horse, no farm, is not a suitable object of exploitation.  Thirdly, the peasant was personally dependent on the lord. As he had land, he only worked for the landlord under compulsion. The feudal economic system rests on extra-economic compulsion, serfdom, the peasants’ legal dependence on the landlord, and their underprivileged position.  <br /> <br /> Under capitalism. society's class structure underwent a change. The feudal lord and the serf were replaced by the capitalist and the worker. Compared with the slave, who was wholly dependent on the slave-owner, or with the underprivileged serf, the worker is legally free. Nevertheless, his dependence on the capitalist is as great, only its form is different. The worker is deprived of the means of production.  All he has is his labour power, and he may make his living by selling it. The only one who can buy and employ labour in capitalist society is the capitalist. So the worker has nothing for it but to sell himself into bondage to the capitalist.<br /> <br /> Slaves and slave-owners, serfs and landowners, workers and capitalists&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;these are the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;principal classes of three antagonistic class formations&lt;/span&gt;, viz., slavery, feudalism and capitalism. It would, however, be a gross oversimplification to view the class pattern of a formation merely as the relationship of the basic classes, i.e., the classes which express the essence of the dominant relations of production. No “pure” socio-economic formation ever existed, for every formation included some elements of the previous stages of social development, as well as seeds of the future socio-economic formations.  Classes which are associated either with vestiges of earlier production relations or with those which are just beginning to develop are called &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;non-basic&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> Thus in slave-owning society there were nonbasic classes of free citizens preserved from the primitive-communal system, i.e., small peasants and handicraftsmen. As the slave-owning system developed, these social groups disintegrated and joined the ranks of the lumpen proletariat. Under feudalism there were the social strata of artisans and traders organised in guilds and companies. In the later middle ages there began to form the bourgeoisie and the working class which were to become the basic classes of the next socio-economic formation.  In many capitalist countries landlords and peasants continued for a long time as non-basic classes. Prominent among the non-basic classes of capitalist society is the petty bourgeoisie.  Non-basic classes and other social groups join the class struggle on the side of opposite basic classes.<br /> <br /> How irreconcilable the basic interests of the antagonistic classes are is witnessed by countless and incessant class battles, armed revolts and other sharp conflicts which abound in history.<br /> <br /> Slave-owning society was shaken to its foundations by gigantic slave rebellions. The uprisings under Aristonicus in Asia Minor and Spartacus in Rome have gone down in the history of liberation struggles as major landmarks symbolising the slaves’ splendid courage and dedication.<br /> <br /> Many peasant revolts under feudalism also have gone down in the history of liberation struggles. Let us recall the famous Jacquerie in 14th-century France, when Jacques Bonhomme—the contemptuous name by which French seigneurs called peasants—got the feudal lords, from the South of France to Paris, trembling in their boots. We may also recall the German peasants’ uprising in 1525, which Engels regarded as the cornerstone of German history, the famous Russian peasants’ uprisings under Ivan Bolotnikov, Stepan Razin und Yemelian Pugachev.<br /> <br /> Proletarian movements have also left a deep mark on history. The uprising of workers in Lyons (France) in 1830, the weavers’ uprising in Silesia (Germany) in the 1840s, workers’ active participation in the revolutions of 1848, and the Paris Commune, the first socialist revolution—such were the stages of the proletariat’s struggle in the 19th century. These movements showed that the proletariat had become an independent force in society capable of becoming the vanguard of social progress.<br /> <br /> As the class struggle pervades all of the most substantial aspects of social life, it naturally develops in its every major sphere, such as economic, social and intellectual spheres. Having studied vast historical material, Marx and Engels established that in all antagonistic class societies the class struggle develops along three main lines, taking the form of &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;economic, political and ideological&lt;/span&gt; struggle. Each is waged by different classes to protect and defend their interests, but the methods of such defence are, of course, different.<br /> <br /> In the course of the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;economic struggle&lt;/span&gt;, the capitalists guard their profits, going to al&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;l &lt;/span&gt; lengths to multiply them, while the workers fight for human working conditions and social security in illness, disability and old age. Even in this struggle workers develop a sense of solidarity, an awareness of the unity of class interests, and the rudiments of internationalism.<br /> <br /> The workers’ economic struggle, even if it should develop spontaneously, can grow into &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;political struggle&lt;/span&gt;. This occurs where the state with its instruments of power joins the struggle on the side of the ruling class. Dealing with the workers by legal and extra-legal means, unleashing police reprisals and sending regular troops to put down industrial or student unrest and “riots”, the exploiters’ state introduces violence into the struggle, which is, as a rule, armed violence. Then the revolutionary proletariat is obliged to spearhead its struggle against the political machinery of the exploiters’ power, i.e., against the bourgeois state. The first step in the direction of political struggle is the political strike. Let us recall, for instance, the Obukhov defence in Russia in 1901. Such instances of workers’ economic action turning into political struggle are not infrequent in our own times.<br /> <br /> Yet political struggle may be of different kinds, depending on its general line and goals that are being fought for. Policy in the workers’ movement may be of a &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;reformist&lt;/span&gt; (or trade-unionist, as Lenin referred to it) or &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;revolutionary&lt;/span&gt; kind. Reformist policy does not aim at taking society beyond capitalism. It does not affect the basis of property but confines itself to a struggle for improving workers’ living standards and extending their rights within the existing social system. Revolutionary policy, on the contrary, is aimed precisely at overthrowing this system through the proletariat’s struggle. That is why revolutionary policy alon&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;e&lt;/span&gt; furthers the political maturity of the proletariat and the masses led by it. Whereas the workers movement arrives at a reformist policy on its own or under trade union guidance, it must be brought to a revolutionary policy by the party of the working class. Only such a party can raise the political understanding of the proletariat and its allies enough to make them aware that the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production and the conquest of power by the proletariat are urgent goals of the day-to-day political struggle.<br /> <br /> Efforts to elevate the workers’ movement to the level of conscious and well-organised revolutionary political struggle encounter obstacles put up by the right wing of social-democratic parties and within communist parties, by opportunists and revisionists who would revise the fundamental ideas of Marxism-Leninism.  Petty bourgeois and nationalist revolutionists (the leftists in the workers’ movement) are only good at revolutionary phrases, but are useless when it comes to consistent revolutionary policy. True to their adventuristic spirit, they sooner or later lose contact with the masses and either substitute provocations for the revolutionary struggle or swing it towards nationalism, running counter to proletarian internationalism. Therefore, in guiding the workers’ political struggle, Marxist-Leninist parties have to fight on two fronts, both against right-wing opportunism and left “revolutionism.&amp;quot;<br /> <br /> At present, the chief danger the international workers’ movement has to cope with is that of the “left&amp;quot; deviation of which the policy pursued by the leadership of the Communist Party of China is the most notorious expression. Having embarked on nationalism, richly flavoured with Chinese racialism, the CPC leaders have long broken off with Marxism-Leninism.<br /> <br /> It was pointed out at the 25th Congress of the CPSU: “Now it is far too little to say that the Maoist ideology and policy are incompatible with the Marxist-Leninist teaching; they are directly hostile to it.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-101|101]]&lt;/sup&gt; Maoists are seeking to bring about a split in the world communist movement and undermine the unity of the world socialist system.<br /> <br /> Our discussion of the proletariat’s political struggle naturally brings us to &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;ideological&lt;/span&gt; problems. The political and ideological forms of the class struggle are closely interrelated.  Through their ideologists, classes justify their policies, i.e., their aims and goals. Ultimately, any policy stems from material interests, but its theoretical justification (the justification of class aims, goals, strategy and tactics) rests with ideology. Ideology is a sort of political compass.  It may contain illusory ideas, fallacious goals, groundless “grounds”, pipe dreams and vain hopes. All such things are characteristic of the ideology of classes doomed by history and leaving the historical arena.<br /> <br /> There is only one ideology which does not deal in illusions. It is the scientific Marxist-Leninist ideology of the working class. It combines the highest level of scientific objectivity with the maximum proletarian revolutionism.  This is the source of its strength and ever-increasing prestige.<br /> <br /> Scientific socialist ideology is opposed by bourgeois ideology, which springs from capitalism. Some elements of bourgeois ideology persist even under socialism, especially at its initial stages, owing to the fact that consciousness lags behind being, whereby some vestiges of the old linger in the economy, everyday life and social relations, and also owing to the influence of alien views penetrating from the capitalist world.<br /> <br /> For these reasons the 25th Congress of the CPSU stated: &amp;quot;The positive changes in world affairs and the detente create favourable opportunities for the broad spread of socialist ideas. But, on the other hand, the ideological contest between the two systems is becoming ever more acute, and imperialist propaganda ever more subtle.<br /> <br /> “There is no room for neutralism or compromise in the struggle between the two ideologies. Here there is a need for constant political vigilance, active, efficient and convincing propaganda, and timely rebuffs to hostile ideological subversion.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-102|102]]&lt;/sup&gt; Under capitalism, a law operates, according to which all the three forms of the class struggle are objectively bound to grow.<br /> <br /> In every antagonistic formation, the class struggle&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;whether economic, political or ideological—is the driving force of social progress. Its significance increases considerably after the political struggle is joined by the working class, the most revolutionary class in history. It takes part in the revolutionary movement as the exponent of the interests of society at large. This puts the working class in the van of all working people exploited by capitalism.<br /> <br /> ==== §4. Historical Destinies of Classes ====<br /> The Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, and also the socialist revolutions which took place in some countries after World War II, have dramatically confirmed the proletariat’s capacity to realise its ideals and become the ruling class.<br /> <br /> The overthrow of bourgeois domination can be effected only by the working class because its very economic circumstances prepare it for the overthrow, giving it the opportunity and sufficient strength to do it. Capitalist society splits up and scatters the peasantry and other petty-bourgeois strata, whereas it consolidates and organises the proletariat. The proletariat is the only class whose economic role in large-scale production qualifies it for the leadership of all working people, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;exploited&lt;/span&gt; and oppressed by the bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; The bourgeoisie can be overthrown only when the proletariat becomes the ruling class, capable of suppressing the bourgeoisie’s inevitable resistance and organising all working people to build socialism. That was what made Marx insist that the class struggle necessarily results in the &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t12&quot;&gt;dictatorship o&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t12&quot;&gt;f&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t12&quot;&gt; the proletariat&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> Marx, Engels and Lenin were always highly ironic about sundry projects for equalising the classes, bringing about a “harmony of capital and labour.” Exploding these castles in the air, Marx wrote that it was not the logically impossible &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;equalisation of classes&lt;/span&gt; but the historically necessary &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;abolition of classes&lt;/span&gt; which was the true secret of the proletarian movement.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-103|103]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> What does “abolition of classes” mean? How can classes be abolished? Have they not continued for millennia?<br /> <br /> Lenin associated the abolition of classes with the elimination of class distinctions. He wrote: “The abolition of classes means placing all citizens on an &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;equal&lt;/span&gt; footing with regard to the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;means of production&lt;/span&gt; belonging to society as a whole. It means giving all citizens equal opportunities of working on the publicly-owned means of production, on the publicly-owned land, at the publicly-owned factories, and so forth.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-104|104]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Abolition of classes is a lengthy process which occupies a whole historical epoch following a socialist revolution. It passes through a whole range of stages ending in the disappearance of classes. The socialist revolution overthrows the government of the exploiters, which paves the way to the abolition of classes. But however necessary, it is still, in Lenin’s view, not the most difficult task involved in the abolition of classes.<br /> <br /> The next important stage in the process is the period of transition from capitalism to socialism. According to Lenin, two important problems are solved in this period. Firstly, private property is abolished, which puts an end to the capitalist class. Secondly, the individual petty economy based on peasants and artisans is reorganised into a large-scale social economy. On the basis of socialist co-operation, the main class distinctions between workers and peasants are obliterated.<br /> <br /> In the first phase of communist society, socialism, immense efforts are made to overcome the remaining class distinctions. How this proceeds is clear from the recent changes undergone by the class structure of Soviet socialist society. In 1939, wage and salary workers and their families accounted for 52.5 per cent, collective farmers—44.9, and individual farmers and artisans—2.6 per cent. Twenty years later, in 1959, wage and salary workers accounted for 68.3 per cent, collective farmers—31.4 per cent, and individual peasants and artisans—0.3 per cent. In 1976, wage and salary workers accounted for almost 83.6 per cent and collective farmers for about 16.4 per cent.<br /> <br /> In future, as the material and technical base of communism is built and essential distinctions between physical work and brainwork are obliterated, the boundaries between the working class, farmers and intellectuals will vanish. Ail will become members of a classless communist society in which everybody will enjoy full social equality and an equal relation to the means of production, and there will be equal conditions of work and distribution and an equal opportunity for everyone to take part in managing public affairs.<br /> <br />  <br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> === 5. The State ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. The State and the Division of Society Into Classes ====<br /> Bourgeois ideologists would always depict the state as a body responsible for maintaining public order and safeguarding the interests of all classes and social groups alike.<br /> <br /> This point of view is also current in modern bourgeois sociological literature. It is often expressed by the ideologists of the petty-bourgeois strata who seek to represent the modern capitalist state as a body extending equal protection to the rights of capitalists, factory, office and professional workers, farmers, students, and so on. They allege that laws enacted by the modern bourgeois state are equally acceptable to capitalists and workers, to the well-to-do and the poor. This state allegedly makes no distinction between the poor and the rich, between employers and wage workers.  They describe it as the “welfare state” providing for “social harmony,” “universal well-being,” and so forth. Advocates of welfarism try to bolster up their theory with examples.<br /> <br /> Let us suppose, they say, that the workers of a factory have gone on strike. The trade union has put forward reasonable demands for higher wages, better conditions and other improvements. However, should these demands be granted, the employers’ profits will suffer.  For this reason, the negotiations between the strike committee and the employers run into difficulties. Neither side will make concessions, blaming and abusing each other.<br /> <br /> Let us further suppose that in the heat of the quarrel, a management representative loses control of himself, snatches a revolver from his desk and starts shooting at the workers.<br /> <br /> What will happen then? Quite obviously, say the “welfare state&amp;quot; theorists, police will be summoned to the factory. The capitalist who fired at the workers will be arrested and put on trial. The court will sentence him under the laws of the country to whatever he should get for manslaughter or armed assault.<br /> <br /> The description is usually followed by a list of countries and addresses at which similar incidents occurred. The readers are invited to check the facts and make absolutely sure that every word of it is true. The suggestion is that if the state were to safeguard the interests of the employers alone, it would not have punished employers for killing workers—it would have paid no attention. But the facts prove that the bourgeois state protects both the employers and the workers, and that it is committed to class reconciliation and class harmony. So say the advocates of the “welfare state.”<br /> <br /> Some acquaintance with concrete facts showing how the state has evolved will be enough to blow their arguments sky-high.<br /> <br /> First, we must note that the state has not always existed. It did not exist at the primitive-communal stage. Peoples whose development was retarded by concrete historical circumstances and who knew no division into classes had no state either. From this it follows that the state appears when society becomes divided into classes, i.e., with the appearance of exploiters and the exploited.<br /> <br /> In primitive society, people lived in clans, dominated by tradition, customs, the prestige, respect and authority of the elders. At times, authority belonged to women, whose position then was not subordinate and oppressed as it is in antagonistic formations. Yet never under the primitive-communal system do we observe a particular order of people setting themselves over the rest of society as its rulers equipped with a machinery of coercion, such as armed forces, prisons and other enforcement organs.  In a word, under the primitive-communal system, the state proper did not exist.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless, its absence did not disturb the social routine nor result in conflicts upsetting public order or the social system. The primitive-communal system was not threatened with chaos. Although there was no state, there were strong communal links among people, and society functioned normally. The force of custom and the elders’ prestige were quite enough to keep society going without any special enforcement machinery.<br /> <br /> Under the primitive-communal system all people were equal, nobody had any privileges, and the elders received no remuneration for their services. Their reward was universal respect and obedience. Primitive society knew nothing of class conflict and therefore needed no organ of coercion.<br /> <br /> History demonstrates that the state emerged only with society’s division into classes, i.e, into groups of people one of which can systematically appropriate the labour of another or, in other words, exploit it.<br /> <br /> The main and decisive characteristic of a state is public, or political, authority, which is always the dictatorship of the ruling class.  And dictatorship is a form of government relying on force, i.e., producing the legal basis of its own activity.<br /> <br /> Next come the tools or organs of political power, which include the army, the courts, prisons, the police, intelligence and counter-intelligence. The government which controls them is itself an organ of political power.<br /> <br /> Like power itself, its tools are unmistakably of a class nature. Take, for instance, the bourgeois army. So that an army recruited from the people (as it must be, for the time of regular mercenary armies has gone—although, of course, mercenaries are still used by imperialists) could be set over against the people and should, if need be, shoot at the people, soldiers are deprived of political rights, isolated from the people and inculcated with  anti-popular ideas.<br /> <br /> For the organs of power to be able to carry out the will of the ruling class, there must be well-trained officials appreciative of their jobs in the government apparatus. Top government positions are filled exclusively by members of the ruling class. To maintain its apparatus, the state imposes all sorts of taxes on the population. Taxation in the bourgeois state is naturally geared to the interests of the capitalists. The working people have to bear the brunt of it.<br /> <br /> Lastly, another characteristic of the state is division of the population over territorial units, which has superseded the division into tribes and clans. However, neither territory nor population separately are characteristics of the state. This is obvious since the state is not eternal. It emerged at a certain point in history, and it will inevitably wither away. Population and territory, on the other hand, were there before the state appeared and will be there after it has withered away. Only all characteristics taken together enable us to tell whether or not a social formation is a state.<br /> <br /> So, the state arose because some classes felt the need to keep other classes under their own control. It arose from the conflict of these classes and is the tool wielded by the economically dominant class which, with the aid of the state, becomes also dominant politically and acquires, therefore, more means to suppress and exploit the oppressed classes. When society was first divided into classes, special machinery was required to safeguard the privileges of the ruling class. Such machinery for oppressing working people was first found in the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;slave-owning state&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> It gave the slave-owners the power to exploit the slaves. At that time, the communication service maintained by the society and state was undoubtedly poor, and mountains, rivers and seas were enormous obstacles to intercourse.  States therefore often formed within narrow geographical bounds. The state machinery was comparatively primitive, but sufficed to keep slaves in slavery and maintain the foundations of the exploiting social system.<br /> <br /> The state has ever been the organ of oppression of one class by another. Thus, the ancient slave-owning state was the state of slave-owners, serving to keep the slaves in subjection, the feudal state was the nobility’s organ for oppressing serfs and villeins, and the modern bourgeois state is the instrument of exploitation of wage labour by capital. This regularity is clearly traceable throughout human history ever since society split into the antagonistic classes of exploiters and the exploited.<br /> <br /> Were there no states which were above society and relatively independent of the opposing classes? Were there no exceptions from the general rule?<br /> <br /> An example of such an exception is provided by 17th-18th century absolute monarchy which kept the nobility and the bourgeoisie balanced against each other. Another instance is Bonapartism under the first and especially second French empires which set the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. It must be noted, however, that a situation of this kind emerges during particular historical periods when the warring classes reach an equilibrium which allows the state to become relatively independent of both classes and to act, to all appearances, as a go-between for them.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; However, such a situation prevails but for a short time. As the alignment of the class forces becomes more definite and one class triumphs over the other which has to yield its leadership of society, the state machinery must also make its choice. More correctly, it does not choose but is chosen by the class which has established its own domination. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;E&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;.g., the French absolute monarchy of the 17th-18th centuries manoeuvred long enough between the bourgeoisie and the nobility, making concessions alternately to the one or the other. Finally, however, the victorious bourgeoisie took the state machinery into its own hands. Engels wrote: ”...The state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible until such time as a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heap.”&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-105|105]]&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> &lt;span id=&quot;index_split_003.xhtml&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> <br /> ==== §2. Historical Forms of the State ====<br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; We learn from history that the state took numerous forms. Even in the epoch of slavery, in ancient Greece and Rome, advanced countries of their day, we encounter different forms of state. There appeared at that time &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t12&quot;&gt;monarchy&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t12&quot;&gt;republic&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t12&quot;&gt;aristocracy &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;and &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t12&quot;&gt;democracy&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;. Monarchy is rule by a single person. In a republic, all organs of power are elected by the citizens.  Aristocracy is government by a small privileged class. Democracy is people’s power (from the Greek &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t12&quot;&gt;demos&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;the people, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t12&quot;&gt;kratos&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;strength).  Contemporary politicians clearly differentiated between these forms of state. Supporters of one or another of them engaged in a tense political struggle. Yet, whether they were monarchy, republic, aristocracy or democracy, they were all slave-owners’ states. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> As we look at the history of slave-owning society, we see that, for all their different forms of government, the common denominator of a monarchy and a republic was that slaves were not considered citizens enjoying civil rights and duties and, moreover, were regarded as less than human. The state and its law were for the slave-owners who alone were recognised as citizens enjoying full rights.<br /> <br /> Slave-owning republics were organised on different lines. Some republics were aristocratic, some democratic. In an aristocracy, only a small number of privileged slave-owners took part in political life. In a democracy, on the other hand, all citizens (i.e., all barring slaves) played a part. These facts are essential, for only by bearing them in mind can we understand what the state is.<br /> <br /> The slave-owning system was superseded by feudalism, which was also of great significance to the history of the state. Under feudalism, the state began to serve a new ruling class, the nobility. The peasants, then the largest class, were bound to the soil. Only lords and gentlemen enjoyed certain rights, but the peasants had none at all. Their position was little different from that of slaves. Still, the serf had a cottage, in which he lived with his family, and a plot of land on which he was allowed to work part of the time.<br /> <br /> In the middle ages, serfdom predominated.  But even then the state assumed numerous forms and both monarchies and republics could be found, although the latter were less numerous than in the previous period. However, the feudal lords who owned land and serfs controlled the state no matter what form it took. Clearly, neither the slave-owning nor the feudal system, where the majority was ruled by a tiny minority, could do without coercion.<br /> <br /> As under slavery so under feudalism the oppressed classes rose against their exploiters time and again. In medieval Germany, numerous peasant revolts finally developed into a real civil war against the landlords.<br /> <br /> Nevertheless both slaves and serfs were crushed by the state machine for neither had a. historical future and so was incapable of setting up a social system under its own control. The famous Leyden papyrus describes a victorious slaves’ rebellion in ancient Egypt.  But what was the result? The slaves partly replaced the slave-owners, seizing their wealth and turning them into slaves in turn. Thus the foundations of slave-owning society remained just as they had been.<br /> <br /> To maintain and preserve their rule, the landlords had to have a machine for keeping great numbers of people in submission. When a feudal state was a monarchy, it was ruled by a single person; when it was a republic, it was ruled by elected representatives of the nobility. That did not change the essence of the state.<br /> <br /> The next important stage in the development of the state was capitalism. It began to emerge towards the end of the middle ages when, after the discovery of America, world trade expanded, extraction of precious metals increased, gold and silver became means of exchange, and the turnover of money helped to build enormous fortunes.<br /> <br /> Society was reorganised. Its division into lords and serfs was ended. The laws were proclaimed to be the same for everyone. They extended equal protection to all and protected property from those who had none.<br /> <br /> Yet, despite the change, the state continued as a machine helping the capitalists to subjugate the workers and poorest peasants, who were, however, nominally free. The capitalist state promulgated universal suffrage while bourgeois ideologists loudly denied that the state had anything to do with classes, contending that it expressed the will of the people.  All such doctrines merely glossed over the essence of the capitalist state.<br /> <br /> Whatever the shape, so long as it is a bourgeois state, so long as it preserves private ownership of the land, factories and private capital and upholds wage slavery, it remains a tool of the ruling classes for oppressing the masses. The working class has a very clear idea what it must do with this state machine. It must wrench it from the bourgeoisie, break it and replace it with new machinery serving the working class and its allies.<br /> <br /> Thus, our examination of concrete facts bearing on the state’s development through the ages enables us to draw some important conclusions. Firstly, we have seen that the state arises with the appearance of classes. Secondly, the state has always expressed the will and interests of the ruling class. It is a machine for the oppression of one class by another. Lastly, every form of state—and they are rather numerous—must be judged above all in a class context. We must find out which class uses the state to ensure its domination and which classes the state suppresses.<br /> <br /> ==== §3. The Bourgeois State ====<br /> Now, what can we make of the example cited at the beginning of this chapter? The incident during negotiations between the strikers and the employers clearly shows that we are dealing, in this case, with a situation in which the bourgeois state takes the workers’ part. After all, who was punished? A capitalist, a member of the ruling class. Does it not prove that the state can be above classes, reconcile them, smooth over class conflicts?<br /> <br /> The fact is that in this case, the ideologists of the bourgeoisie and advocates of reformism quote the example of an individual capitalist.  The thing to do, however, is to find out the real essence of the bourgeois state, to see whether it serves society as a whole or merely the bourgeoisie. Supposing we assume, for example, that the workers do not negotiate with the employers. The strike committee declares that the factory now belongs to the workers, and the employers are simply told they are no longer wanted. What will happen then?<br /> <br /> Police will arrive in force to deal with the situation. Should the workers prove too much for them, troops will be sent too. The bourgeois state will do everything to show the workers that the principle of private property is unshakable. In practice, the state will defend the interests of the capitalist class as a whole.<br /> <br /> The bourgeois state defends the interests of an individual capitalist insofar as he belongs to the capitalist class. But should an individual employer commit actions detrimental to the capitalist class as a whole, he may be sacrificed.<br /> <br /> In this case, we are dealing with a situation where an individual employer commits actions which may harm the capitalist class as a whole.  One can also imagine the following possibility.  The employer's firing and shooting to death a strike committee member could provoke a storm of indignation among the workers, a spontaneous workers’ rebellion. Such a spontaneous outburst could well infect other factories in the neighbourhood. To suppress the disturbances, troops and police would have to be sent, and, naturally, the capitalists will incur damage as many factories come to a standstill and property is destroyed during clashes between workers and police.<br /> <br /> Lastly, the capitalists would also sustain great moral damage, as the bloody clash with the people would shatter the faith in the “popular” character of the bourgeois state, the belief that the capitalist system, as its ideologists argue, most closely corresponds to “human nature.”  Therefore the capitalist class as a whole and its state may, and often do, sacrifice individual employers and capitalists, if it pays the class as a whole.<br /> <br /> Our everyday experience proves the truth of the Marxist doctrine which regards the bourgeois state as a machine of subjugation used by one class against another, as an instrument of class domination.<br /> <br /> ==== §4. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Its Forms and Development ====<br /> Marx considered his idea that the class struggle inevitably results in the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;dictatorship of the proletariat&lt;/span&gt; to be one of his major contributions to the doctrine of classes and class struggle.<br /> <br /> The idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat was advanced for the first time by Marx and Engels in 1848 in the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Communist Manifesto&lt;/span&gt;, which mentions the “proletariat organised into a ruling class.” As a term, the dictatorship of the proletariat was first used by Marx in his letter to J. Weidemeier of March 5, 1852.<br /> <br /> When they expressed the idea of the historical necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, Marx and Engels could not yet answer the question as to what forms the dictatorship of the proletariat might assume and what was to be done with the old state machinery, for history had as yet supplied no answers. The 1848 revolutions in France, Germany and Austro-Hungary made it clear that the proletariat could hardly use the old, bourgeois state machinery. Moreover, the old state, geared to the exploitation and oppression of the masses, is a strong weapon in the hands of counter-revolutionary forces. Therefore, as they generalised the experience of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, Marx and Engels arrived at the conclusion that the old bourgeois state machine must be smashed in the course of the proletarian revolution and replaced by a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was still not clear what concrete forms the dictatorship of the proletariat could assume. The answer was supplied by the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Paris Commune&lt;/span&gt;, which was the first state form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> Another form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Soviets&lt;/span&gt; appeared in Russia during the revolutionary battles of 1905-1907, and triumphed in 1917.<br /> <br /> Subsequently, world history produced yet another form of the dictatorship of the proletariat-the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;people’s democracy&lt;/span&gt;, which triumphed in some countries after World War II.<br /> <br /> There is no doubt that as the masses in capitalist countries fight for the triumph of the proletarian revolution they will create more forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat which will subsequently be established.<br /> <br /> Demonstrating the historical necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, Marx emphasised that without it the working class could not hold power, suppress bourgeois counterrevolution, reorganise the economy and alter people’s psychology, or go over to communist formation.<br /> <br /> In the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Critique of the Gotha Programme&lt;/span&gt;, Marx showed that between capitalism and socialism (the first phase of communism) there is a &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;transitional period&lt;/span&gt; which cannot be circumvented. The purpose of this period is to extend and complete the socialist revolution and build an entirely different economic system, alter the social structure of society, ridding it of the exploiting classes, rear a new force of intelligentsia, work a revolution in people’s minds, and ensure the triumph of communist ideology.  The political organisation of society during the period of transition to communism must necessarily be the dictatorship of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> How did history bear out the truth of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the inevitable nature of the dictatorship of the proletariat? It is safe to say that the truth of this doctrine has been conclusively confirmed not only by the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia but by the experience of all other socialist revolutions of the 20th century. The sole path leading from capitalism to communism lies through a transitional period, through an epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> The tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a weapon of the socialist revolution are many. They include sustaining and consolidating the political power of the working class; ensuring political guidance of society by the working class and its Marxist political party: suppressing the resistance of the exploiting classes, overthrown but not yet completely abolished; putting an end to economic anarchy; nationalising the principal means of production and organising the economy on socialist lines in keeping with the chief aim of building a communist society; carrying out a cultural revolution.<br /> <br /> Naturally, these tasks have to be carried out in the context of the class struggle against the international bourgeoisie and against the remnants of the overthrown exploiting classes.<br /> <br /> The leading and guiding force of the entire system of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the party of the working class.<br /> <br /> Guided by the experience of the young Soviet Republic, Lenin named following five forms of class struggle: (1) suppression of the overthrown exploiters; (2) civil war; (3) neutralisation of the petty bourgeoisie; (4) utilisation of bourgeois experts; (5) inculcation of a new labour discipline.<br /> <br /> With the exception of civil war which need not necessarily accompany socialist revolution, these forms of class struggle proceeding under the dictatorship of the proletariat have universal significance.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Suppressing the resistance of the overthrown exploiters&lt;/span&gt; is indispensable to the triumph of the socialist revolution. The bourgeoisie will not surrender its power without a struggle but will persistently try to use its political experience against the socialist government of workers and peasants. For this reason, the triumphant march of the socialist revolution is always accompanied by subversion, sabotage and political conspiracies by its enemies. The dictatorship of the proletariat suppresses resistance from the remnants of the overthrown exploiters, providing the requisites of a complete moral and political unity of society. Once it is achieved, the dictatorship of the proletariat need no longer suppress these remnants. Lenin repeatedly pointed out that, important as it was, suppression was not the chief function of the dictatorship of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> A socialist society is one in which there are no irreconcilable differences and no struggle is waged between the workers and the peasants, and between these two classes and the people’s intelligentsia.<br /> <br /> Lenin named &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;civil war&lt;/span&gt; as a form of class struggle in the transitional period. In the case of the young Soviet Republic, it was imposed on working people by the exploiting classes and was a terrible calamity and a great handicap to the people’s progress to socialism. The peoples of China also suffered under the heavy burden of civil war. Bur there was no civil war in the European countries which took the socialist path. Civil war, therefore. is a form of class struggle which need not necessarily occur in all countries.<br /> <br /> Now let us consider the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;neutralisation of the petty bourgeoisie&lt;/span&gt;. This mainly implies the peasantry. It would be a mistake to consider such neutralisation as a line for isolating the petty bourgeoisie politically from the revolution. Actually, it is a question of skilfully paralysing the possible wavering of the broad sections of the petty bourgeoisie (particularly the peasantry) towards counter-revolution, with a view to enlisting the peasants’ participation in the building of socialism. All slogans moved by the Party on the peasant question served this purpose. It was no accident that the triumphant advance of Soviet power was given overwhelming support by the middle peasants everywhere.<br /> <br /> The experience derived by the CPSU from its successful effort in winning the peasants’ support for the socialist revolution is of immense international significance. It is of special importance today to the developing countries and the national liberation movement with its emphasis on the agrarian question.<br /> <br /> The problem of &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;utilisation of bourgeois experts&lt;/span&gt; in the interests of the revolution and socialism was a controversial issue in the young Soviet Republic. Many “‘left&amp;quot; revolutionaries would not hear of it, being morbidly suspicious of all such experts. Nevertheless, life soon proved them wrong. Today, all socialist countries employ old experts. It only has to be ensured that they do not obstruct the country’s political course or serve any anti-socialist ends.<br /> <br /> Last but not least comes the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;inculcation of a new labour discipline&lt;/span&gt;. Lenin considered this form of class struggle particularly significant.  And no wonder, for it has to do with millions summoned by the revolution to smash the old way of life. It is therefore extremely important to direct the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses towards building the new society and to inculcate a new attitude to labour, the state, and discipline.<br /> <br /> A line must be drawn between the expressions of the last-mentioned form of struggle in the period of transition to socialism and that under socialism. Whereas in the transitional period, the ideological struggle inside the country is an acute form of the class struggle, under socialism, when society has attained moral and political unity, the social basis of such acute struggle disappears. There remains, as Lenin wrote, the systematic &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;guidance of all&lt;/span&gt; working people. That, according to Lenin, also is a struggle, but a struggle of a particular sort, the overcoming of definite, albeit entirely different, resistance, and a quite different sort of overcoming.<br /> <br /> Now the struggle is waged no longer between classes or social groups but between integral society and individual exponents of survivals of the past among its members.<br /> <br /> The dictatorship of the proletariat develops along with the whole of society. In conditions of full-fledged socialism it transforms into a &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;state of the whole people&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> Soviet history may be divided into three periods: (1) the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat during the transition from capitalism to socialism; (2) the period of development from the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat to the state of the whole people (1934-1960); and (3) the state of the whole people which is developing, as the building of communism advances, into communist public self-government.<br /> <br /> Concerning the first-mentioned period, one must take note of Lenin’s idea that the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat&lt;/span&gt; lies in constructive, educational and organising activity of the state building socialism for the first time in history.<br /> <br /> The state of proletarian dictatorship begins its transformation into a state of the whole people as soon as the building of socialism is completed. The best documentary proof of this process as it developed in the USSR was the adoption of the 1936 Constitution—the Constitution of triumphant socialism. It gave expression to new principles of democracy, embracing the whole people. Unequal election quotas for workers and peasants were abolished, and universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot was introduced. Development of democracy under socialism is an objective process. Socialism cannot advance unless it extends and improves its democracy.<br /> <br /> The process whereby the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat has developed into the state of the whole people was completed in the early 1960s as the result of the complete and final triumph of socialism in the Soviet Union. The working-class dictatorship in the USSR was not abolished but gradually developed, as socialism advanced, into a state of the whole people. The leading role played by the working class in Soviet society and the state is further developed in the process.<br /> <br /> As the building of communism advances, the state of the whole people undergoes a good deal of change. Article 48 of the Soviet Constitution, adopted in 1977, to give legal expression to the establishment of the state of the whole people in the Soviet Union, proclaims the right of citizens to take part in the administration of the state and society, and in the discussion and adoption of laws and the decisions of national as well as local significance.<br /> <br /> This article is of special importance in that it gives tangibility to the provisions of the Constitution on who has the plenitude of political power, and the right to participate in administering the state and society in the USSR. To declare that political power in a country is vested in the people is not enough. Al&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;l&lt;/span&gt; constitutions have proclaimed it, ever since the time of the Greek city-states. Yet, the fact remains that through the ages it was just as Jean-Jacques Rousseau observed: ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” The purpose of Article 48 of the Soviet Constitution is to name the concrete things which make it possible for the people to take part in administering the state and society. What are these things?<br /> <br /> First of all, it is the people’s right to wield political power. Political power in the USSR is exercised through Soviets of the People’s Deputies which are to be found at every level, from the Supreme Soviet at the head of the country down to the local Soviet of the smallest settlement. What does it look like in terms of numbers? In 1977, there were altogether over two million elected Soviet deputies. Furthermore, every Soviet sets up some standing committees which enlist the assistance of public-minded citizens in carrying out their work. To quote 1977 figures again, there were almost thirty million such activists involved in the Soviets.<br /> <br /> In order to administer effectively the state and society, the working people should not only take part in political decision-making, but also see how decisions are carried out. In the Soviet Union, this is done through a major social institute known as People’s Control. Its bodies, elected by citizens, are to be found at every factory and office, supervising the work of the management. In 1977, the elected bodies of People’s Control comprised nine million citizens.<br /> <br /> Lastly, the people cannot be said to have all political power, unless women take part in administering the state and society. In the Soviet Union, women currently account for 31 and 35 per cent respectively of the deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and Supreme Soviets of the Union Republics, and for 48 per cent of the deputies of the territorial, regional, district, city, town, and village Soviets.<br /> <br />  <br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> === 6. Social Revolution ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. Types of Social Revolution ====<br /> When discussing the material life of society we mentioned that one socio-economic formation usually passes into another only via a social revolution. That does not mean, of course, that we must search history for a ‘slaves’ revolution” which ruined and shattered the slave-owning system. No such revolution actually occurred. Nor did slavery perish at the hands of the slaves, although its foundations had been thoroughly shaken by slaves’ rebellions. Slavery became a blind alley in mankind’s road to progress. It owed its downfall to its disgust for labour which wasted it away.  A society which has no respect for labour, has no future. It was because the slave-owning Rome was rotten to its core that the warlike barbarians conquered it so easily.<br /> <br /> Social revolutions were performed when feudalism had to give way to capitalism, and in the current epoch of people’s transition to socialism; they are accordingly of two types, viz., &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;bourgeois or socialist&lt;/span&gt;. In the first-mentioned case social and political revolutions are spaced in time. As the capitalist economic system forms in the womb of fully-developed feudalism, it comes into conflict with the old feudal superstructure, thus necessitating a political revolution which will crown the social change—already accomplished under feudalism—with a bourgeois superstructure. For this very reason, there is no special period of transition between feudalism and capitalism for it proceeds, as it were, in the bowels of feudal society, so that the bourgeois revolution merely has to put the finishing touches to it by changing authority. This is why purely political bourgeois revolutions are possible, leaving intact the economic and social patterns of society.<br /> <br /> The &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;proletarian revolution&lt;/span&gt; is quite a different thing. In this case, the social revolution does not precede the political revolution but, on the contrary, begins unfolding only after the political revolution has been performed by the proletariat. Whereas the bourgeois revolution ends in seizure of power, the proletarian revolution merely starts with it. Whereas the bourgeois revolution usually has no comprehensive social and economic programme to offer, the proletarian revolution has one, and terminates in the construction of socialism. Whereas progress towards capitalism requires no transitional period, it is indispensable in the changeover to socialism. Lastly, whereas the bourgeois revolution merely substitutes a different form of exploitation, the socialist revolution sets out to rid mankind of all exploitation. That is why the bourgeois revolution does not even mention scrapping the feudal state machinery—the bourgeoisie takes control of the old state machinery and makes it serve its own interests.  To the socialist revolution, on the other hand, demolishing the bourgeois state machinery is the key task essential for establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat.<br /> <br /> Thorough analysis of the history of revolutions enabled the founders of Marxism-Leninism to discover the objective laws governing the progress and consummation of social revolutions. First of all, let it be noted that the fundamental question arising in any revolution-the conquest of power-is resolved by revolutionary violence alone. This is a law of social revolution, particularly effective with respect to the socialist revolution. No ruling class was ever willing, or moved by compunction, to surrender its power to another class. As regards the bourgeoisie, there is ample historical evidence to show that it fights the revolutionary proletariat tooth and nail.<br /> <br /> The founders of Marxism-Leninism have discovered the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;principal law of the social revolution&lt;/span&gt;. As a general rule, a revolution cannot take place in the absence of a &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;revolutionary situation&lt;/span&gt;, i.e., without a national revolutionary crisis which breaks out when the lower classes can no longer bear the old way of life and are ready to overthrow the hateful system even at the cost of their lives, while the upper classes are no longer able to rule in the old way. Ina revolutionary situation, no class or group remains neutral. All social forces join in the struggle either on behalf of or in opposition to the revolution.<br /> <br /> Even so, not every revolutionary situation resolves itself in a revolution. That was what happened in Russia in the early 1860s, when the revolution was baulked by the tsarist reform of 1861. There was another revolutionary situation in Russia in 1914, but its development was interrupted by the outbreak of world war. Consequently, a revolutionary situation is not enough for a revolution to occur. Besides objective social changes, which are the essence of a revolutionary situation, subjective factors must also be present, viz., the revolution needs a leader in the shape of a political party, and it needs a real force in the shape of an alliance of the classes comprising the revolutionary people. Only given these conditions can a revolution be born out of a revolutionary situation and succeed under true and wise leadership.<br /> <br /> Here is Lenin’s classical formulation of the principal law of revolution: “... For a revolution to take place it is not enough for the exploited and oppressed masses to realise the impossibility of living in the old way, and demand changes; for a revolution to take place it is essential that the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the old way. It is only when the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;‘lower classes’ do not want&lt;/span&gt; to live in the old way and the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;‘upper classes’ cannot carry on in the old way&lt;/span&gt; that the revolution can triumph. This truth can be expressed in other words: revolution is impossible without a nation-wide crisis (affecting both the exploited and the exploiters). It follows that, for a revolution to take place, it is essential, first, that the majority of the workers (or at least a majority of the class-conscious, thinking, and politically active workers) should fully realise that revolution is necessary, and that they should be prepared to die for it; second, that the ruling classes should be going through a governmental crisis, which draws even the most backward masses into politics (symptomatic of any genuine revolution is a rapid, tenfold and hundred-fold increase in the size of the working and oppressed masses—hitherto apathetic&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;who are capable of waging the political struggle), weakens the government, and makes it possible for the revolutionaries to rapidly overthrow it.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-106|106]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> ==== §2. How the Dictatorship of the Proletariat Is Established ====<br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;We now come to another important question: Can the dictatorship of the proletariat be established peacefully? This question was posed long ago by the founders of Marxism-Leninism. Marx accepted the possibility of the proletariat taking power in a peaceful way in Britain, the United States &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;and the Scandinavian countries where no strong military or police state apparatus existed in the middle of the 19th century. It must be noted that such a peaceful way of taking power would still be a revolution, and in such a peaceful revolution the conquest of power would still have to be effected by force. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> It is no less important to draw a line between revolutionary violence and the armed method of carrying out a revolution. The former is a necessary attribute of any proletarian revolution while the latter depends on concrete circumstances. Power does not have to be won by the proletariat by force of arms any more than a proletarian revolution needs to be accompanied by civil war. Neither is unavoidable. The dictatorship of the proletariat can, as history attests, be established peacefully, i.e., &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;a socialist revolution can proceed by peaceful methods&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> A theoretical account of this possibility was given by Lenin in 1917, in his April Theses.  Lenin wrote that under dual power which emerged after the February Bourgeois-Democratic Revolution in Russia not only could the socialist revolution advance peacefully under the slogan “All Power to the Soviets”, but it was the only possible path towards the dictatorship of the proletariat under the circumstances.  Lenin indignantly criticised those who, in April 1917, called for an armed insurrection against the Provisional Government, describing them as irresponsible adventurers.<br /> <br /> Some may object that peaceful development of the socialist revolution in Russia was interrupted in July 1917, and the proletariat had, after all, to seize power by arms.<br /> <br /> That is quite true. But, firstly, the socialist revolution in Russia had indeed developed peacefully until July 1917. Secondly, Lenin's theory on the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat by peaceful means was dramatically confirmed by the 1919 revolution in Hungary, where a people’s government was established by peaceful means.<br /> <br /> It may further be argued that peaceful development of the revolution in Russia was due to the unique circumstances of dual power that prevailed in the spring and summer of 1917, and that the Hungarian revolution, too, was performed in singular historical circumstances.  That is true. Even so, who can warrant that circumstances favourable to the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat may not occur in future?<br /> <br /> Today, the programmes of most communist parties in the capitalist world state that in contemporary conditions the peaceful performance of a socialist revolution is a real possibility.  This certainly does not imply any renunciation or revision of the problem of seizing power by force or by military means: the latter may become necessary just as it happened in Russia 1n 1917.<br /> <br /> Thus, there are two ways of solving the problem of power involved in a socialist revolution, an armed way and a peaceful way. Both imply the use of the people’s revolutionary force. Which of them a revolution will take will depend on the circumstances prevailing in the country concerned. Communists consider it their sacred duty to prepare the masses for either contingency. The military path calls for special preparation. The peaceful path is not easy either, the communist party having to help the masses to acquire sufficient political understanding and experience to tackle problems arising in a socialist revolution. Both methods were brilliantly mastered by Lenin's Communist Party in Russia. Both stood the test of history.<br /> <br /> Which method is preferable? The choice depends entirely on the situation. If the possibilities of the peaceful method have been exhausted or, perhaps, are altogether absent, nothing remains but the armed way, which becomes a necessity.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; Should the revolution develop peacefully, does it mean that the bourgeois state machinery need not be demolished? As we mentioned, in the mid-19th century Marx considered that, as an exception from the general rule, that might be the case in Britain, Scandinavia and the United States in which the army and police were not greatly developed. In the epoch of imperialism, Lenin came to the conclusion that in all capitalist countries, the military and police machinery had attained full development.  Therefore, no exceptions should be made, and the rule&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;i.e., the scrapping of the bourgeois state machine&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;should become universal. It should even be smashed in the case of a peaceful revolution. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> Does the peaceful performance of a socialist revolution imply that the parliament and all parliamentary institutions should be retained?  That too is determined by the concrete circumstances. Evidently, in traditionally parliamentary countries there is no pressing need to abolish the parliament either during or after the revolution. The dictatorship of the proletariat can exist and develop quite well as a parliamentary democratic republic as it can now rely on the world socialist system to safeguard it from bourgeois counter-revolution and restoration of capitalism.<br /> <br /> “The Chilean tragedy,” the 25th Congress of the CPSU stated, “has by no means invalidated the communist thesis about the possibility of different ways of revolution, including the peaceful way, if the necessary conditions for it exist. But it has been a forceful reminder that a revolution must know how to defend itself.  It is a lesson in vigilance against present-day fascism and the intrigues of foreign reaction, and a call for greater international solidarity with all those who take the road of freedom and progress.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-107|107]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; Recognition that the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat can be effected peacefully is of immense tacti&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;c&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;al significance in current conditions, serving to extend the scope of the labour and communist movements, increase the political understanding of the masses, and refute the bourgeois slander about the revolutionary movement and revolutionary theory. This thesis, now adopted by the communist parties of bourgeois countries, is a reliable weapon in their ideological struggle against leftist, adventurist trends in the labour movement seeking to push the working class and its party onto the path of adventurism and sectarianism. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; Combined experience in the development of the world socialist system, said L. I. Brezhnev, proves that today the power is still the central problem the revolution has to solve. Transition &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;t&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;o socialism is only possible if the working class and its allies use political power to abolish the rule of exploiters. Socialism can be victorious only if the working class, led by its Party, organises the masses for the building of socialism. It can consolidate its position only where people’s government succeeds in defending the revolution from the internal and external class enemies. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> The significance of social revolutions to human history cannot be overestimated. It was not for nothing that Marx called them &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;locomotives of history&lt;/span&gt;. Revolutions immensely speed up the march of history. They make new social and political forces essential to society’s progressive development mature faster, resolve the contradictions that have been accumulating over the ages, and thereby clear the way for the progress of history. Socialist revolutions play an especially prominent role. They carry out the historic mission of liberating mankind from exploitation, abolishing social antagonism, ending the previously inevitable anarchy of social development, and eliminating all forms of the individual’s estrangement from society and culture. It must be noted in this connection that Marxist-Leninist theory emphasises a key point in revolutionary practice, viz., the creative and constructive nature of socialist revolutions. They close the prehistory of mankind and inaugurate the history of emancipated mankind consciously building a communist society and an entirely different type of civilisation.<br /> <br /> &lt;span id=&quot;index_split_003.xhtml#calibre_toc_5&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> = &lt;span id=&quot;index_split_003.xhtml#anchor171&quot; class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; =<br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> === 7. The Role of the Masses and Individuals in History ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. What Is the People? ====<br /> Society is a complex formation usually comprising diverse classes and social groups, each playing a different role in society’s development.  Under feudalism, for example, the peasants and artisans have to do the hardest jobs—they cultivate the soil, tend the cattle, produce food and clothing, build houses and provide luxuries too.  The nobles, on the other hand, engage in court intrigues, manage political affairs, vie for power among themselves, declare war and conclude peace, shine at balls. Which plays a more important part in history?<br /> <br /> We already know that human history is based on the production of material goods, in which the decisive role belongs to those who are engaged in it, i.e., to working people.<br /> <br /> All material values available to society are created by their work. No doubt, their daily labours are less conspicuous than the doings of kings or generals; nevertheless, they are the real foundation of history.<br /> <br /> A logical materialist view on history consists in recognising the decisive role of material production in society’s development and, consequently, the working people’s key role as the makers of history and the chief force of social development.<br /> <br /> The working people, who are the overwhelming majority, are the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;people&lt;/span&gt;, the masses. However, at different stages in history, a people does not comprise toilers alone. Generally speaking, the social strata constituting the people vary from one age to another. Therefore, to form a correct idea of what a people is, one must examine concrete stages of history.<br /> <br /> In &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;primitive society&lt;/span&gt;, which knew no division into classes and in which everybody had to work, all members of society represented the people. This pattern changes with the division of society into classes and the appearance of toilers and exploiters. The people comes to consist mainly of toilers, but at different historical periods it also includes the exploiting classes. One may say that the conception of the people denotes the social classes and groups jointly tackling progressive tasks facing society.  That was why during the transition from feudalism to capitalism the people included the bourgeoisie, which had an interest in the destruction of feudalism, as well as the toilers, i.e., the peasants, artisans and workingmen.<br /> <br /> History abounds in situations where the people rise up in arms to drive out foreign invaders. At such times, the people’s role as the saviour of the nation becomes particularly prominent. It was so when the Russian people fought to cast off the Tartar yoke, when they resisted the Napoleonic invasion, and in all similar cases.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; The peoples—the Soviet people above all&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;barred the way to Nazism, destroying it and thereby saving world civilisation from the threat of destruction. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> Since in class society the people is composed of different—often opposite—classes, it would be a mistake to consider it as a uniform formation.  Lenin cautioned against using the word (the people) “‘to cover up failure to understand class antagonisms within the people.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-108|108]]&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> Today, in &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;bourgeois countries&lt;/span&gt;, the people is composed of the workers, farmers, progressive intellectuals, the mass of the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie. In many newly-independent countries and those fighting for their emancipation, the people includes appreciable sections of the indigenous bourgeoisie taking part in the struggle for national interests. Nevertheless, not all the bourgeoisie in such countries are part of the people. The so-called “compradore bourgeoisie”, subservient to and collaborating with the colonial powers and betraying the vital interests of their peoples, must be excluded. The compradore bourgeoisie is quite plainly an anti-popular force.<br /> <br /> The situation under socialism is altogether different: the people includes the entire population. This is not surprising because all anti-popular forces have been destroyed and society consists of the friendly classes of workers and peasants which are joined by the working, essentially popular intelligentsia. Thus, as socialism is being built, the social forces are consolidated. An example of such consolidation is provided by the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Soviet people&lt;/span&gt; which has shaped as a new historical entity. Formed of different nationalities, of two friendly classes and the intelligentsia, it is cemented by the unity of its vital interests, political views and moral standards. This unity rules out the possibility of class struggle within the people. That is one of the greatest achievements of socialism in the USSR. The unity of the Soviet people rallying round the CPSU indicates how far developed socialism has advanced along the road to communism.<br /> <br /> ==== §2. The People’s Role in History ====<br /> To comprehend the people’s role in history, one needs to understand how it contributes to society's material and spiritual life.<br /> <br /> We know that the people is the producer of all material wealth, both the means of subsistence and of production being obtained by its efforts. Engels wrote that nature was the mother, and labour the father, of wealth. But whose labour is it? Who works on the objects of labour and remakes nature, compelling the natural properties of things, the forces of nature to serve man and even creating new qualities and forces not found as such in nature? It is men, the working people, who are the most honourable and important on Earth. The people alone creates all material wealth of society by its labour.<br /> <br /> Then, what part does the people&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;the working people above all—play in the system of production? First of all, let us recall that the workers engaged in material production make up a part of the productive forces. They constitute living labour. Without it, dead labour stockpiled in the means of production cannot return to life. Although the character of the productive forces does not depend on men’s choice, it is still the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;working people&lt;/span&gt; who, in conjunction with the instruments of labour (which may be individual or social, based on a division of labour or otherwise, involving simple or complex cooperation) actually &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;determine&lt;/span&gt; the character of production and so of the productive forces in general. And this is an essential characteristic of material production, determining to a great extent the development of society.<br /> <br /> Now let us look at the working people’s role in production relations. It would be incorrect to assume that in economic systems based on exploitation the relations of production are represented merely by the owners of means of production, i.e, by the exploiters, not the workers. No doubt, the most vivid embodiment of capital are the capitalists. Nevertheless, capital in its bourgeois form (unlike usury capital, for instance) exists only insofar as the workers’ labour power is a commodity which the capitalist can buy and which is consumed in the process of production organised on capitalist lines.  Labour power is as essential to the capitalist economy as capital itself. Its owners are the proletarians—a class which has a decisive role in history—and which constitutes, in our own age, the bulk of the people.<br /> <br /> The capitalist mode of production breeds the proletariat and helps it develop into a world revolutionary force. That is the key point of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine.<br /> <br /> Bred by capitalist society, the proletariat is the exponent of new social relations and a force which is to destroy capitalism.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; The proletariat, i.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;e&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;., the main body of working people in capitalist society, is the producer of the material goods essential to that society and of capitalist profit (and with it, of capital's might in general). Simultaneously, it is the exponent of future economic tendencies and embodies the social character of production and other material requisites of the socialist system of economy. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> Marx and Engels, in &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;The Holy Family&lt;/span&gt;, defined the proletariat’s role very exactly. To history.  they wrote, the intentions of an individual or even a class do not matter, even if it is a class as strong as the proletariat; what matters is what the proletariat is and what role it is to play owing to its place in the capitalist economy. The revolutionary role of the proletariat as the grave-digger of capitalism, liberator of society and builder of socialism has objective grounds. The proletariat’s revolutionary character necessarily results from the conditions of its existence, from its place in the capitalist economy, and from the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t12&quot;&gt;Apart &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t12&quot;&gt;f&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t12&quot;&gt;rom being the producer of all material wealth, the people is also the object and subject of history&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;. The history of society is above all the history of the people, and in this sense the people is an object of history. At the same time, history is made by the people. It is the maker of history, its subject. It makes history not by a whim or caprice but in accordance with the objective laws of social development. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> The people is the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;decisive force in all revolutionary change&lt;/span&gt;. Every revolution in history was performed by the people. Even revolutions at the top performed by a narrow group always drew on the people’s discontent with the existing social institutions.<br /> <br /> For many centuries, the exploiting classes tried to keep the people from taking an immediate part in historical development, although they did not always succeed. Inhuman oppression again and again compelled the masses to rise against their overlords. It was not until the victorious proletarian revolution that the masses had become an active constructive force in history. As socialist society progresses, the people’s role as the architect of history, as a force building a communist society, increases.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;The people makes an immense contribution to human spiritual culture&lt;/span&gt;. The people creates language—a method of stating and communicating ideas—in the absence of which there could be no culture of any kind. Apart from making common effort possible, language furnished the foundations from which spiritual culture grew.  It also furnished the source of folklore, the starting point of every national literature. The people has created marvellous songs, dances, sculptures, paintings, buildings. These masterpieces are the sources on which professional writers and poets, painters and sculptors, composers and architects draw. From their labours, the people have amassed a vast store of information about the external world, from which science has grown.<br /> <br /> In primitive society, with brainwork not yet divided from manual work, the people’s role as creators of spiritual culture is obvious. After society divides into classes and brainwork and physical labour become separate, the ruling classes spare no effort to limit the people’s creative effort and, isolating it from spiritual culture, monopolise the latter. That naturally hindered the people’s spiritual activity but never stopped it. The people—that perpetual source of creative talent&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;is the creator of spiritual values in class society too. All prominent figures in the field of spiritual culture always found in folk art an inexhaustible source of ideas and images for their own work.<br /> <br /> ==== §3. The Role of Outstanding Personalities ====<br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt; Thus the people is the decisive force of historical development&lt;/span&gt;. Yet history has preserved numerous records of outstanding personalities.  In the past, historians and social scientists were convinced that great men were the prime-movers of history while the people was an inert mass only brought into motion by them. The entire world history was reduced to the doings of kings, military leaders, politicians, and so on. Books on history, as Plekhanov observed, looked like Lives of Great Men.<br /> <br /> Every class in every epoch had its own ideas about greatness. In the view of the feudal ruling class, great men had to be of noble, preferably royal, blood. Hence all kings, emperors.  and so on, were great. Some rulers were, indeed, people of more than ordinary ability, but they were very few. For the most part, kings and queens were not particularly gifted and ruled merely by hereditary right.<br /> <br /> Capitalism, which swept out feudal privilege, has made wealth the yardstick of greatness.  But does a fortune make one an outstanding personality? Obviously it does not. The proofs are not hard to find, if proof be needed.<br /> <br /> If, however, we put class prejudice aside and take a sober view of history, we shall have to acknowledge that there were a fair number of statesmen, politicians and generals who left their personal mark on some events.<br /> <br /> While it holds that the decisive role in history belongs to the masses, historical materialism is far from denying the prominent role played by great men. Historical materialism only asserts that history is made by the people, not by great men. Some of the latter realised it. In a speech made in 1869, the German “Iron Chancellor” von Bismarck, referring to his friends who extolled his influence on events, said: “My influence on events with which I have had to do is in effect overestimated; but even so nobody has yet expected me &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;to make&lt;/span&gt; history.”<br /> <br /> Outstanding individuals are themselves a product of history, of definite social circumstances which enable such an individual to display his abilities.<br /> <br /> As Plekhanov justly observes, most of Napoleon’s marshals had been strangers to military art before the French bourgeois revolution. One of them had been a fencing master, another an actor, and another a barber. In feudal times nobody would have expected them to make a successful military career. Napoleon himself would have died an obscure general or colonel.<br /> <br /> Of course, in order to play a prominent role, an individual must possess outstanding abilities. Yet abilities as such only potentially make an outstanding personality. This potentiality may be realised only given favourable social relations.<br /> <br /> Men do not pursue their historical activities singly. Social actions are performed by a mass of people. When several classes are involved, one of them usually assumes the leading role.  Thus, in the struggle against feudalism the people was led by the bourgeoisie. In the changed conditions of imperialism the exploited people fighting against the bourgeoisie is led by the proletariat. To ensure success to the struggle, a vanguard must be organised, consisting of the better-aware members of the foremost class, i.e., a political party of this class must be organised. As it functions, this party advances the more experienced and gifted of its members—political leaders.<br /> <br /> To recognise the outstanding role of communist party leaders is to acknowledge their authority, experience and foresightedness. The strength of communist party leaders lies in their close contact with the masses and in their capacity to express and defend the basic interests of working people.<br /> <br /> At the same time, the people is not an anonymous mass, but a vast number of individual personalities, living, active architects of history. Then what is man, and how is he related to society?<br /> <br /> ==== §4. Man Is the Sum of the Social Relations ====<br /> Marxism has introduced an entirely new conception of the social nature of the individual, proceeding from his intimate association with his environment. Of course, attempts to interpret the individual in close association with the Social environment were made before Marx—for instance, by 18th-century materialists. However, the first authentic scientific interpretation of the individual was given in Marxism.<br /> <br /> Marx evolved the classical formula disclosing the social essence of the individual. The human essence, according to Marx, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;is the sum total of the social relations&lt;/span&gt;. This formula shatters abstract anthropologism, whereby both materialists and idealists vainly tried to discover and classify the specific features allegedly inherent in human nature. For the most part, their man was nothing but a copy of the biblical Adam, complete with halo.<br /> <br /> If man is essentially the sum of the social relations, then it is clear that every man is a child of his age, an exponent of its industrial, class, family, national, political, legal, religious and other social relations. Is the individual just a vessel for the social relations? According to the Marxist-Leninist view, it is by no means so.  Man takes an active part in the historical process. As regards outstanding figures, they are the torches kindling others or lighting the way for them. Maxim Gorky thus depicted Danko holding aloft his burning heart to give his people light.<br /> <br /> This social conception of human nature underlies the Marxist approach to the unfolding and fullness of the personality. An individual exists and develops in the context of the social relations, actively asserting himself through them. As to the fullness of personality, this depends on one’s contacts with other people.  The more varied and intensive they are, and the more actively pursued by the individual, the more developed one’s personality will be. We must note at once that these factors should not be regarded as external to the individual. For example, one’s life activity is a personal characteristic, but it has a social meaning.<br /> <br /> At the early stages of social development—e.g., under the communal system&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;the individual was more integrated compared with contemporary man. The reason for this, Marx explains, was that the individual had not yet fully developed his relations, so had not yet put them in opposition to himself as independent social forces. This alienation of the individual from the social forces opposing against him starts at the beginning of civilisation and proceeds, becoming ever more complicated, throughout the history of civilisation, up to developed communist society. What, then, are the stages in this process? The explanation of this problem, too, was given by Marx.<br /> <br /> “The relations of personal dependence (at first entirely primordial) are the first forms of society in which human productivity develops merely to an insignificant extent and at isolated points. Personal independence which is based on &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;objective&lt;/span&gt; dependence is the second major form wherein a system of comprehensive communal metabolism, universal relationships, all-round needs and universal abilities is built for the first time. Free individuality, based on the universal unfoldment of individuals and the subordination of their common collective productivity as their common property, is the third stage.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-109|109]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> These three types of relations between society and the individual are stages in the formation and development of man’s social essence. Capitalism destroys personal relations among men, changing them into relations in the world of things. Things as commodities dominate men and determine their relations. The capitalist division of labour and mechanised production have produced a man able to fulfil partial industrial or social functions but unable to fulfil himself in society as a human being. Communism alone wipes out the products of man’s historical development which cripple his independent personality and moulds an integral and harmonious personality.<br /> <br /> ==== §5. The Individual in Communist Society ====<br /> Now what is an integral and harmonious personality?<br /> <br /> The eminent French utopian Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and other utopian socialists sought to solve the problem of the full and harmonious development of human nature applying the law of varied employment. Indeed, one who has mastered several complex skills becomes a different person, the one-sidedness and disunity of his personality being overcome to some extent.  Fourier hoped that, in this way, the complete personality of the medieval artisan could be revived. That, alas, was but a romantic dream, which very soon crumbled. In the age of mechanised production, changing the proletarian back into the medieval artisan is out of the question. Even were such a reversion at all possible, it would be a step backwards in the historical evolution of both the individual and the relations of society and the individual.<br /> <br /> Consequently, if it does afford some possible development of the individual, varied employment utterly fails to solve the problem of the full and harmonious development of the individual. What, then, is the answer?<br /> <br /> Unable to solve the problem for the whole of the nation, bourgeois sociologists have divided society into a mass of drudges and a creative elite which, they claim, alone can hope to attain harmonious development. Yet, can society afford to make all working people slaves so that a small elite can devote itself exclusively to intellectual endeavour? Can the individual be fully developed in this way? Quite obviously, this is a utopia, but, unlike Fourier’s noble dream, it is a reactionary utopia.<br /> <br /> Then where can we find a realistic programme for the full and harmonious development of human nature? Why does Lenin repeat Fourier’s words that in the society of the future everyone will know how to do everything? Is such a thing possible? Men will certainly continue to professionalise labour. Then what about the development of the individual?<br /> <br /> Man can and must be creative with respect to the things that mainly fill his life. Therefore the key to the problem is not quantity (numerous skills) but quality, i.e, making work creative and man a creator, turning ordinary activity into creative work. Then labour will not be a mere economic necessity but an indispensable need felt by every able-bodied member of society. Then what about man’s all-round development?<br /> <br /> Putting the utopian and elitist approach to the problem aside, man’s versatility should be considered from the viewpoint of his most vital functions. What are they? Man must be creative, highly moral, highly cultured and physically developed. The CPSU Programme formulates all these requirements in the context of the current stage in the building of communism in the USSR. Versatility, from this standpoint, implies that the individual, as far as his activity and conduct are concerned, behaves actively, creatively, as a collectivist, and this gives him the greatest satisfaction. Can it mean, perhaps, the sacrifice of individual interests at the altar of communist duty?<br /> <br /> The communist world outlook and communist duty are of great significance to the moral make-up of the individual. Even so, the programme for the comprehensive development of the individual cannot be considered a simple realisation of communist duty. Anatoly Lunacharsky (the first Commissar of Education) recalls a remark Lenin made in a conversation when it touched on his model attitude to his duties. Lenin said: &amp;quot;Need you tell an apple tree that it does its duty bearing fruit? When communist duty has become ingrained in the individual, it stops being a duty and becomes &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;a&lt;/span&gt; vital need. It will be a vital need for every member of communist society.”<br /> <br />  <br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> === 8. Social Consciousness and Social Being ===<br /> <br /> ==== §1. Forms of Social Consciousness ====<br /> Is it not an oversimplification to say that social consciousness reflects social being? Is not the spiritual life of mankind much too complex to be reduced to this formula? That is how anti-communists usually attack this Marxist proposition. In general, can one bring spiritual culture, multiform as it is, into a system and reduce it to different levels and forms? Let us look at these problems and see if we can isolate the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;principal forms of human spiritual culture&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> The first thing we come up against is the complexity and many-sidedness of this particular sphere of the life of human society. It embraces folk songs, epics, poems of all kinds, numerous literary productions, music, sculptors’ and painters’ works, scientific discoveries and inventions, sayings, and so on. Still, this enormous diversity is neither chaotic nor capricious.  Many scholars long ago expressed the idea that spiritual culture reflects the economic conditions prevailing in society. Marxism alone, however, was able to scientifically formulate this idea.<br /> <br /> The notion of spiritual culture is itself a little vague. For this reason Marxists have replaced it by the more exact notion of social consciousness. In this way, they underline the fact that all products of spiritual culture are the result of the activity of man’s consciousness. And since man is not isolated from others but is connected with society at large, in a great many ways, his conscious life appears as social consciousness, and the aggregate consciousness of the members of the given society.<br /> <br /> Marxism is based on the philosophy of materialism. This means that the question of the relation between mind and matter, between material being and intellectual activity is decided by Marxism in favour of matter, which is considered to be primary, while consciousness is considered to be secondary. With reference to history, the interpretation of this general philosophical principle is that &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;social being is primary and social consciousness secondary&lt;/span&gt;.  This means that social being, i.e., men’s economic activity, material production and the relations formed by people in the process of production are at the basis of men’s spiritual activity. Social consciousness, i.e., the spiritual, ideological life of society, people’s varied views and ideas, political, legal, moral and other doctrines, reflects social being.<br /> <br /> We shall try to examine social consciousness and select its main characteristics. The first thing which strikes us is the policy of different states, the more influential political parties, numerous political conceptions, theories and views. The varied and complex totality of political doctrines, conceptions, programmes, views, ideas constitute the political form of social consciousness.<br /> <br /> Closely linked to it is another form of social consciousness known as &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;law&lt;/span&gt;. It is the sum of principles and rules of human conduct endorsed by the state. Law is the expression of the will of the ruling class and is strictly enforced by the state through its extensive machinery of coercion.<br /> <br /> There are, however, principles of social behaviour which are dictated not necessarily and not only by the state. There are principles of conduct and criteria of good and bad, of right and wrong, which are observed and shared by tradition and are imposed by custom, public opinion and the authority of society as a whole or of a particular group. The totality of such principles of conduct and the ideas of what human conduct ought to be constitute the form of social consciousness known as &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;ethics&lt;/span&gt; or &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;morality&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> An acquaintance with recent publications, paintings, films, plays, etc., is part and parcel of the life of a modern person. Books, pictures, films, plays arouse either pleasurable or negative emotions and stimulate thought. The varied activities comprised in this area of cultural life are the form of social consciousness called art.<br /> <br /> Nor can the life of a modern person be imagined without such a form of social consciousness as science, without scientific notions of the multifarious world around us. We appeal to science and scientists, advocate a scientific approach to the investigation of nature, society and thought, fight against unscientific methods, and proudly state that we live in the age of the scientific and technological revolution. We discussed the role of science in society at some length earlier in this book.<br /> <br /> A particular form of social consciousness which seeks to give us a general conception, a general picture of the world, a knowledge of reality as an integral complex system and furnishes a methodology for studying the world has been named &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;philosophy&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; Philosophy plays an immense role in society.  We only need recall that during the great French revolution the third estate advanced to victory under the slogans put forward by 18&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t13&quot;&gt;th-&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;century materialists and Enlighteners. We may also note that Marxist-Leninist philosophy &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;i&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;s the theoretical basis of communism. This alone attests to the extraordinary significance philosophy has in the life of society. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> Lastly, sermons, divine services, quarrels between supporters of different religious trends, and so on play a certain role in the spiritual life of society. This form of social consciousness is known in Marxist philosophy as &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;religious &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;consciousness&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> These are the main forms of men’s spiritual activity or, to put it differently, the main forms of social consciousness. We shall now examine their association with social being. Since in class society&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;—&lt;/span&gt;such as modern society is—political views hold an important place, we shall start our inquiry with this particular form of social consciousness. Let us begin with an example drawn from history.<br /> <br /> The Ancient Greek biographer Plutarch tells us that Alexander, the son of Philip of Macedon, anxiously followed his father’s military operations. Philip annexed to Macedon one Greek city after another. Some of them capitulated after a long siege and others were taken by storm. As often as not, Philip bribed citizens to open the city gates to him. The successful king liked to say that a donkey laden with gold could take any city.<br /> <br /> With Greece at his feet, Philip was now planning an expedition against Persia. His ambitious son, Alexander, said bitterly that his father would capture all and leave nothing great or illustrious for Alexander to do. Alexander himself dreamed of conquest and saw himself as the builder of a world empire.<br /> <br /> Yet Philip was suddenly assassinated and Alexander got the opportunity to carry out his ambitious plans.<br /> <br /> In 334 B. C., Alexander of Macedon, who was twenty at that time, moved his troops into Asia Minor. For nine years (the campaign lasted till 325 B. C.) the peoples of Asia Minor, Egypt, the Tigris-Euphrates valley, Central Asia and Northern India were plunged into bloody battles.  Alexander executed his plans relentlessly. He showed no mercy to whoever was bold enough to resist him, killing or turning them into slaves.<br /> <br /> Alexander built the empire of his dreams. He destroyed the Persian kingdom and annexed its territories, conquering much of Central Asia and establishing his rule over Egypt. True, the Alexandrian empire did not last. In 325 B. C., Alexander, yielding to the demand of his spent troops, ended his expedition. In 323 B. C. Alexander died of fever. His generals began squabbling for power even before he was buried.  And soon the apparently mighty empire broke up into several kingdoms under Alexander's associates.<br /> <br /> Let us now look at the matter from a different angle, as many historians and social scientists did. Philip of Macedon decided to unite Greece under Macedon, and he carried out his intention. Alexander the Great wanted to create a world empire. Plunging many peoples into bloody war, he created it.<br /> <br /> It seems that a leader gets an idea, proceeds to execute it and finally carries it out. Then the idea comes first and is followed by the action of the masses which causes change in social being.<br /> <br /> Of course, nothing can be simpler than to explain the development of world history from the doings of politicians and the influence of political views and theories. Thus, Plutarch associates the rise of Athens—one of the principal cities of ancient Greece—with the expedient policies of the legendary hero Theseus, and ascribes the foundation of Rome to another legendary hero, Romulus.<br /> <br /> However, on going deeper into world history and examining the causes which actuated the outstanding personalities, such explanations prove utterly superficial. Let us examine the concrete facts associated with the activities of Philip of Macedon and his son, Alexander.<br /> <br /> Philip of Macedon has gone down in history as the king who unified Greece. But what were the circumstances of the unification? Greece was weakened by incessant wars between its city-states. During hostilities, vineyards and orchards were cut down, crops destroyed, cities and villages burned. Internecine wars devastated Greece. Many historians related that villages lay in ruins, blackened stumps were all that was left of olive groves, the fields were overgrown with weeds. That was one reason why Greece was weakened. But there was another reason, which lay in the very essence of slavery. As the internecine wars went on, the number of slaves kept growing and for that reason free artisans and farmers became ruined.  Because slaves were much cheaper to keep, owners of large workshops employing slave labour were able to undersell the farmers and artisans. So small workshops were closed one after another while large shops multiplied. Farmers became ruined and their land was bought up by rich people.<br /> <br /> The masses staged rebellions. History has preserved the memory of an extensive rebellion of the poor in Corinth. The rebels killed the rich in the streets and wrecked their houses. The rich, however, triumphed in the end, ruthlessly suppressing the rebellion. Aristotle relates that the rich took this oath: “I swear to be the people’s eternal enemy and to cause it as much harm as I can.”<br /> <br /> Frequent clashes of the rich and the poor also contributed to the weakening of ancient Greek cities.  Many rich slave-owners were willing to accept the control over slaves and the poor. Therefore they pinned their hopes on the Macedonian kingdom in their neighbourhood, which was waxing stronger.<br /> <br /> All this made it easier for Philip of Macedon to unify Greek cities under the aegis of Macedon.  He took advantage of the fact that ancient Greece had been weakened by the devastating wars between city-states, as well as of the fact that many Greek Slave-owners accepted his rule, prising their wealth more than the independence of their native cities.<br /> <br /> Now let us turn to Philip’s son, Alexander. In his case, too, we find internal causes which lay in the very social being of ancient Greece and determined Alexander’s activities. In the 4th century B. C. it was increasingly felt that the internal sources of slavery in Greece were fizzling out. In order to develop further, slave-owning society had to be constantly supplied with slaves. Most of the free poor in Greece either had been enslaved or served in different armies as mercenary soldiers. Moving into the forefront were other sources providing slaves, viz., wars of conquest, subjugation of neighbouring and distant peoples and their enslavement.<br /> <br /> If we look closely at the progress of hostilities conducted by Alexander, at the development of his military expedition, we shall observe this increasing tendency. Each time he won a battle, a great number of slaves were sent to Greece. For example, after his first triumph over the Persians, Alexander sent 60,000 slaves to Greece. After a second successful battle he sent 90,000 slaves. The number of slaves increased with every city taken.<br /> <br /> Thorough examination of concrete historical evidence, of political leaders’ views and goals shows that consciousness can never be anything else but realised being, and men’s being is the actual process of their life. We have tried to illustrate it by the examples of two prominent political leaders—Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great. This approach to the analysis of different results of spiritual culture shows that in every sphere the results of the activity of consciousness are always a reflection of social being.<br /> <br /> But human culture is exceedingly rich and varied. Let us see whether it is corroborated by examples drawn from other spheres of spiritual culture.<br /> <br /> ==== §2. Social Psychology and Ideology ====<br /> We have considered but one part of man’s intellectual activity, i.e., his political views, political consciousness. It reflects definite aspects of social being, definite social needs. Yet, intellectual activity is highly complex and is not wholly reducible to politics. In human spiritual culture, we can isolate such areas or forms of social consciousness as morality, art, religion, science, philosophy and law. We know from experience that different principles of conduct, imposed by morality, works of art, religious beliefs, philosophical views, rules of conduct prescribed by law, and, lastly, science, play a great role in our life. The question is: Do these forms of social consciousness reflect social being as unavoidably as, we have found, political views do? Does the objective law of the reflection of social being hold equally in their case?<br /> <br /> First of all, we must note that it is quite insufficient to analyse merely the more or less theoretically formalised views such as political conceptions, philosophical doctrines, complex ethical constructions, and so on. In human society, immense significance is attached to men’s moods and feelings. And it is very important to grasp the fact that all ideologies stem from one root, viz., the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;psychology&lt;/span&gt; of the given age, characteristic of this particular age, the totality of its manners, customs, morals, feelings, views, aspirations and ideals.<br /> <br /> Every development stage of the productive forces necessarily presupposes definite human relations in the process of social production or, to put it differently, it presupposes a definite social pattern. The latter, in its turn, affects men’s psychology, their habits, morals, feelings, views, aspirations and ideals which must necessarily become adapted to the prevailing way of life, to the means of gaining a livelihood. &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Society’s psychology&lt;/span&gt; always ultimately matches its economic system, being determined by it.  <br /> <br /> To clarify this idea, let us look at some illustrations from the history of French art and literature. Many art critics quite justly call the outstanding French poet and novelist Victor Hugo, the talented artist Eugéne Delacroix and the brilliant composer Hector Berlioz a romantic trio. Yet, not only did each of them work in a different field of art, but they were in general quite far apart. At least, Hugo did not care for music and Delacroix despised romanticist musicians. Nevertheless, the productions of these men who were so unlike reflected the same social sentiments. Delacroix’s &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Dante and Virgil&lt;/span&gt; is pervaded by the same mood which prompted Hugo to write his &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Hernani&lt;/span&gt; and inspired the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Symphonie Fantastique&lt;/span&gt; of Berlioz.  <br /> <br /> Why should Hugo’s writings, Delacroix’s paintings and Berlioz’ music be psychologically similar? The psychology of French Romanticism will be clear to us only if we regard it as the predominant mood of a concrete class existing in concrete historical circumstances. We shall see why this movement in art, which was essentially bourgeois, should have taken so long to win acceptance from the bourgeoisie.<br /> <br /> The fact was that the contemporary French bourgeoisie failed to understand much of what its own representatives sought to express in literature and art. Nor is such difference of Opinion at all unusual between ideologists and the class whose tastes and aspirations they express. It explains many features of mankind's intellectual and artistic development. In this particular instance, this difference of opinion resulted, incidentally, in the “refined elite” holding the “hidebound bourgeois” in great scorn which still continues to mislead many art historians, who are utterly incapable of understanding the supremely bourgeois character of French Romanticism. This intricate relation, the influence of social being on social psychology and, further, on more clearly defined areas of social consciousness must never be lost sight of.  Unless we pay attention to these interrelations, much in human culture will puzzle us. For instance, in classless primitive society, men’s conception of the world, their tastes, all their habits, customs, feelings, notions, strivings and ideas were directly influenced by their production activities.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; But in a society divided into classes, the immediate impact of economic activities on the spirit and especially on ideology is much less obvious. While Australian aborigines have a dance representing herb-gathering by women, no dance popular among French aristocratic ladies in the 18th century can be linked in any way with production activities because they engaged in none. To be able to understand what the Australian dance is about, it is enough to know what role herb-gathering plays in the life of an Australian tribe. But to see what the minuet is about, it is not enough to be familiar with the 18th-century French economy. The minuet is one of the dances expressive of the psychology of the leisure class. This psychology underlies most of the customs and “polite manners’ of so-called high society. At first sight, the economic life, social being, seems to be ousted in this case by purely psychological factors. That, however, would be a superficia&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;l&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; judgement, for one must not forget that the very emergence of leisure classes in society is the result of its economic development. It means that in this case too, social being retains its predominant significance. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> The ruling class regards the lower strata with profound disdain, so that it becomes distinctly characteristic of its psychology. Medieval French lords, for instance, relished verses representing peasants as most repulsive creatures:<br /> <br /> Villeins are monsters one and all,<br /> <br /> As ugly as anything,<br /> <br /> Standing fifteen foot tall<br /> <br /> And misshapen withal—<br /> <br /> Humpchested and numpbacked.<br /> <br /> The peasants’ social psychology was in an entirely different vein. Indignant at the aristocrats’ arrogance, they sang:<br /> <br /> We are just as human as they,<br /> <br /> And we can suffer just as much as they.<br /> <br /> The peasants asked: “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”<br /> <br /> In a word, each of the two classes looked at things from its own point of view following from its own position in society. The position of classes, their antagonism tinged the psychology—the totality of sentiments and aspirations—of the opposite sides. The more tense the class struggle became, the more it influenced the psychology of the opposite classes. So, one who wants to know the history of ideology in a society divided into classes must reckon with this influence, otherwise much will escape his understanding.<br /> <br /> ==== §3. Morality as a Form of Social Consciousness ====<br /> Now let us turn to morality or ethics which is the totality of diverse principles of conduct imposed by public opinion and the traditions, habits and customs established in society. Everyone knows from experience the great significance attached to these principles on which human conduct depends. We speak of some acts as good and of others as bad. We consider one kind of behaviour to be nice or good and another shabby or bad.<br /> <br /> There is no law that you must say good morning to your friends. If you don’t, you won't be fined for it. Lack of common civility, churlishness or hardness are not punishable offences. Yet everybody would rather be polite, tactful and sympathetic.<br /> <br /> Everyone knows that there is nothing pleasant in being considered rude or conceited or in earning public disapproval. That is why people try to conform—or at least seem to conform—to the commonly accepted principles of conduct or morality.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Morality&lt;/span&gt; is the oldest form of social consciousness. It appeared in primitive society much earlier than art and religion, also very old forms of social consciousness. One may say that morality appeared with the first human community. That is clear because no community, however small it may be, can exist without a system of morals. For this reason, historians have found no people without at least a primitive morality.<br /> <br /> There is evidence of peoples with no philosophy or science, no law and hardly any art.  It is still open to question whether some had or had not religion. But every people had morality of some kind.<br /> <br /> This fact attracted the attention of historians and ideologists long ago. As they tried to explain the origin of morality, some of them ascribed it to god or other divine sources and maintained that morality was fundamentally immutable and in no way connected with what we call the material conditions of men’s life.<br /> <br /> Yet if we turn to the history of moral notions and principles, we shall see that &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;morals change along with living conditions&lt;/span&gt;. They depend on the productive forces and when the relations of production change, morals also change.  <br /> <br /> Collectivistic production relations under the primitive-communal system bred collectivistic habits and traditions and a collectivistic morality. When, however, the productive forces advanced and it became more suitable for the purpose of production that people should privately appropriate some things, i.e., when the relations of production changed, people’s notions also changed. Having private possession of something, which had been considered previously rather unnatural and unusual if not altogether indecent, now was regarded as ordinary and quite consistent with the social interest.  <br /> <br /> From the foregoing we can conclude that people, intentionally or unintentionally, ultimately derive their moral notions from economic practice.  <br /> <br /> When examining &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;S&lt;/span&gt; one must always bear it in mind that the class pattern directly affects morality.<br /> <br /> Thus, if we look at developed capitalist European countries, we shall observe different moral conceptions some of which are rooted in their past history and some in their present mode of life.<br /> <br /> We shall come across, first, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Christian-feudal&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt; morality&lt;/span&gt; inherited from the past and preserving some moral views of the age of feudalism.  This Christian-feudal morality is divided, in the main, into Catholic and Protestant morality, and these are subdivided into a whole range of sects, from the Jesuit Catholic and Orthodox Protestant to liberal enlightener. Alongside such moral conceptions we find &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;modern bourgeois morality&lt;/span&gt;, and next to it &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;proletarian morality&lt;/span&gt; projected into the future.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; In countries following the socialist path, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;i&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;.e., those having built socialist society and those in transition from capitalism to socialism, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t12&quot;&gt;communist morality&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; gains precedence. It is based on collectivist principles stemming from the domination of common ownership which corresponds to the development of modern production. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> Bourgeois ideologists often reproach Marxists for allegedly denying morality, and say that Marxism itself is amoral. Such allegations intentionally or unintentionally distort the essence. of Marxism.<br /> <br /> Marxists deny that there is any eternal morality resting on immutable dogmas. They repudiate all attempts to impose on men a moral dogma of any sort as eternal, final, immutable moral law, under the pretext that the realm of morality has principles of its own which exist forever. Marxists maintain that every moral theory, every totality of principles of conduct is, in the last analysis, the product of society's concrete economic conditions. In class society, morality is always of a class nature: it either justifies the domination of the ruling class or, as soon as the oppressed class becomes strong enough, expresses its indignation against the ruling class.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Communist morality&lt;/span&gt; is the most resolute form of protest against the exploiters’ government.  It expresses the interest of the working class and all working people. Speaking about communist morality at the 3rd Congress of Komsomol, Lenin said that communist morality was that which helped to demolish the old exploiting society and to rally all working people round the proletariat building a new communist society.<br /> <br /> Communist morality helps the proletariat in its efforts to win a happier future for mankind, to build communism. It musters working people against all exploitation, against private ownership which puts in the hands of an individual that which is produced by society’s common effort.<br /> <br /> To sum up. Under the primitive-communal system, with its collectivist principles, morality was also collectivistic. In class society, change in the class pattern told most directly on the moral views of classes and individuals. In socialist society, communist morality begins to develop. In a word, in this sphere of man’s spiritual life, in this form of social consciousness, the rule that change in social being causes change in social consciousness also holds.<br /> <br /> ==== §4. Religion as a Form of Social Consciousness ====<br /> Drawing on Plutarch, we can reconstruct one of ancient Roman’s religious customs. Imagine the sun-flooded streets of ancient Rome. A procession is slowly moving along accompanying a criminal to the place of execution. The armed lictors, full of official importance, step beside the man, while a little way behind citizens follow, exchanging their impressions of the trial and discussing the impending execution.<br /> <br /> The doomed man does not seem to notice anything. He is plunged in thought and already far from the turmoil of life. But what is this sudden commotion? Why are the guards trying to push the man into a by-street? Why is he looking round with a renewed interest in life?<br /> <br /> Another procession is moving towards them surrounding the chair in which a Vestal is carried, a priestess of Vesta, the Roman hearthgoddess. According to Roman custom, a condemned criminal who meets a Vestal on his way to execution is not executed. The Vestal has only to swear that the encounter was unpremeditated.<br /> <br /> Thus, human laws had to give way to what they believed to be divine law. This illustration tells enough about the importance they attached to religion. One could quote numerous examples showing the role religion played in the life of other people, in other countries, in other times.<br /> <br /> Let us recall the crusades conducted in the middle ages. Apparently to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims, thousands of crusaders massacred Muslims. Let us recall the massacre of St. Bartholomew (1572) when 30,000 Huguenots were killed in Paris alone because of religious strife.<br /> <br /> What is religion, which can save a condemned criminal’s life and destroy hundreds of thousands of innocent people? How should revolutionaries approach this important social phenomenon? How are these questions answered in Marxism-Leninism?<br /> <br /> But let us hear first what representatives of religion have to say—the theologians, who are constantly dealing with religious problems and preaching religious principles. How do they define religion?<br /> <br /> Most Christian theologians derive the word “religion” from Latin &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;religio&lt;/span&gt;, reverence, which is connected with &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;religare&lt;/span&gt;, to tie back. From the theological standpoint, religion is the link between man and god. Religion appears as a totality of statutes, dogmas, cults, rites and principles of conduct decreed by god and binding a believer to god.<br /> <br /> A similar view is shared by non-Christian theologians. The Buddhists, for example, believe that religion boils down to the dogma on the attainment of salvation by Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhist religion, to the principles of conduct laid down by Buddha, which promise salvation and subsequent union with Buddha.<br /> <br /> To Muslims, followers of Allah, religion is embodied in the rules and principles of conduct written down by Allah in the sacred book of the Muslims, the Koran, which vouchsafe to the believer communion with Allah and salvation.<br /> <br /> To sum up, theologians hold religion to be a bond between man and god. But first of all it is necessary to &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;prove&lt;/span&gt; that god exists. The point is, however, that there are no means of proving it, nor can there be any.<br /> <br /> Why is this so? To begin with, there were numerous gods whom men used to worship, but then it turned out that these gods did not exist. To mention but a few, they were Bel, Anu, Astarte, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Set, Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Apollo, Athena, Hera, Artemis, Jupiter, Mars, Janus, Vesta. The list is endless.<br /> <br /> Ancient peoples had implicit faith in their gods. When the ancient Greek philosophers Anaxagoras and Socrates dared question the existence of the Olympic gods and deride them, they were made to pay dearly for it. Anaxagoras owed his life to the intervention of Pericles, a leading Athenian statesman. All the same, he was banished from Athens. Socrates was condemned for &amp;quot;neglect of the gods” and died by drinking a cup of hemlock, as was the rule in Athens.<br /> <br /> Christian, Muslim and other theologians are convinced of the importance of religion to mankind because they think that the gods in which they believe really exist. Facts tell us, however, that religious beliefs also played a great role where the objects of worship were clearly mythological, i.e., imaginary. From this it follows that the theological conception of the role played by religion in the life of human society is plainly threadbare. What role does religion actually play?<br /> <br /> First of all, religion is a part of the spiritual culture of mankind. Whatever book on history we take, whether written by a theologian, a bourgeois scholar or a Marxist, we are sure to find a section on religious beliefs in the chapter devoted to the culture of a particular people or the culture of some historical epoch.<br /> <br /> Indeed, we come across religion mostly in connection with culture and those spheres of life which are directly associated with spiritual culture. To be precise, religion is one of the principal forms of social consciousness, one of the major components of men’s intellectual activity, of spiritual world culture. As a form of social consciousness, it is, in a sense, comparable with such important areas of social consciousness as politics, law, morality, art, science and philosophy. After all, social consciousness does not merely reflect reality, social being. It shapes people’s conduct, leading them to act in the way they do. Each form of social consciousness does it in its own way. This equally applies to religion.<br /> <br /> Engels and Lenin did much to elucidate the meaning of religion. We are already familiar with one constituent of the Marxist definition of religion, viz., that &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;religion is a form of social &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;consciousness&lt;/span&gt;. That, however, is not all. Marxism also establishes the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;specific nature of the reflection of the world in religion&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> <br /> While all other forms of social consciousness reflect reality more or less adequately, religion alone is the form of social consciousness which gives a distorted, fantastic picture of the external world. Marx said that religion “is the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;fantastic realisation&lt;/span&gt; of the human essence”, that it is the people’s illusory happiness, a perverted view of a perverted world, “the general theory” of that perverted world, its encyclopaedic compendium, “its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, its universal source of consolation and justification.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-110|110]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; Concerning the particular quality of religion as a distortion of reality, Engels wrote: &amp;quot;All religion...is nothing but a fantastic reflection in men’s minds of those external forces which contro&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;l&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; their daily life, a reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces.&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-111|111]]&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> That is how religion reflects the world. Nevertheless, religion does not boil down to a general world outlook, a general view of the world. It also comprises an emotional, sensuous element, a certain emotional reaction to the world.<br /> <br /> Religion should not be conceived merely as some kind of faith in the world being built on a certain pattern and being ruled by gods or other supernatural forces. Religion is not just a definite interpretation of reality, a peculiar theory of the world, however much distorted.  If it were so, it would have been shattered long ago, for it would be easy to prove that this conception of the world has no foundation in experience and to replace these fantastic notions by a scientific conception of the world.<br /> <br /> But, quite apart from other things, religion is a definite attitude to the world. One who has religious notions of the world conceives of himself as part of this fantastic world with which he associates certain hopes, illusions and expectations. This complex of feelings bred by religion makes the latter extremely tenacious.<br /> <br /> Religious sentiments refer to &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;religious psychology&lt;/span&gt; which is of a dual nature being an expression of helplessness, weakness and fear on the one hand, and of hope on the other, which sometimes grows over into religious protest, ecstasy and fanaticism. Writing of this level of religion, Marx underlined that “&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;religious&lt;/span&gt; distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;protest&lt;/span&gt; against real distress.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-112|112]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Thus in Marxist theory two levels of religion are differentiated, viz., the world-view level and the emotional level. Religious notions and ideas constitute the so-called mythological (or worldview) element of religion—a body of myths dealing with the gods, legendary heroes and all sorts of spirits, with their relation to the world and man, and so on.<br /> <br /> The emotional level of religion—just as its ideological level~represents a twisted, distorted level of human consciousness. Religion distorts not only man’s consciousness, his world outlook, but his feelings, his emotional responses to reality as well.<br /> <br /> It would not, however, be enough to dwell on these two levels of religious consciousness alone. After all, we have stated that the forms of social consciousness influence and shape human conduct. The distorted conception and perception of the world, inherent in religion as a form of social consciousness, compel man to behave in a similarly distorted, perverse, inadequate manner. A believer worships his god in a definite fashion, performing different rites, offering sacrifices and prayers, kneeling, etc.  All this constitutes the ritualistic or cultic aspect of religion.<br /> <br /> Religious activity is not, however, confined to worship. Groups, organisations and associations of believers, the churches adopt a definite attitude towards society and social issues, participating in the life of society, social conflicts, the class struggle, etc. These activities are marked by the religious conception and perception of the world.<br /> <br /> Thus we see that religion is a highly intricate social phenomenon comprising several levels some of which are related to consciousness, and some to practice. These levels are the result of the twisted, distorted, fantastic reflection and conception of reality. That was what led Marx, after evaluating and summing up all aspects of religion, to conclude that religion is “the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;opium&lt;/span&gt; of the people.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-113|113]]&lt;/sup&gt; Lenin regarded this as the key Marxist proposition on religion.<br /> <br /> To sum up. Religion is a form of social consciousness. It is a distorted, fantastic reflection of the natural and social forces dominating men, a reflection in which earthly forces assume non-earthly, supernatural forms. It is a more or less compact body of mythological-philosophical notions, religious psychology and religious ritual.<br /> <br /> ==== §5. Art ====<br /> Speaking about art, Marx observed that its development does not always correspond to the general development of society, with the development of society's material basis, which is the skeleton, as it were, of society's organisation.<br /> <br /> Indeed, an inquiry into the social role of art inevitably poses questions. Why did peoples (e.g., the ancient Greeks) far less advanced than the modern peoples attain such superb heights in art? How can we explain the fact that works of art produced long ago (e.g., under slavery) still continue to bring people aesthetic pleasure? These and other questions require concrete answers.<br /> <br /> First of all it must be understood that the art of a particular age is connected with definite forms of social development. We know that Greek art not only drew on Greek mythology but was rooted in it. And mythology is nothing but &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;folklore&lt;/span&gt; giving an imaginative and fanciful interpretation of nature and the fundamental notions of life.<br /> <br /> But is it possible, in our own age, for anyone to entertain notions of nature and society such as underlay Greek mythology, for instance?  How would Zeus the Thunderer compare with the lightning-conductor? Or the god of commerce, Hermes with the modern banking and credit system? Or the other gods of Olympus, with the modern transportation facilities, machines and especially robots?<br /> <br /> And yet, the marvellous works of ancient Greek art continue to bring us aesthetic pleasure to this day. Why? To the modern man Greek art is, in a sense, the childhood of humanity. An adult person cannot be like a child. Still a child’s ingenuousness has a great fascination for him.<br /> <br /> This is why the childhood of mankind continues to attract us as a peculiar and unique stage of social development. Marx remarked that there were unmannerly children and precocious children. Ancient Greeks were normal children. Therefore the peculiar charm of their art does not conflict with the rather primitive environment from which it sprang. On the contrary, those were the only circumstances in which it could possibly grow, and it is inseparable from them.<br /> <br /> Because it is rich and varied, ancient Greek art does not perhaps make a very lucid example. And yet, even in its case we can trace the effect of the objective law that social being shapes forms of social consciousness appropriate to it, leaving its mark on the very productions of the art of ancient Greece. Let us delve even deeper into history and look at the age in which human relations were much simpler and clearer and the connection with material production was immediately observable.  Will the period of the primitive-communal system supply us with examples corroborating the operation of the objective laws discovered by Marxism?<br /> <br /> First let us see how man’s notions of beauty developed. In different historical epochs different peoples had distinct, often opposing notions of beauty. Things that are considered beautiful in one age could be considered ugly in another. Why? How did notions of beauty form over the ages?<br /> <br /> Scholars studying art in primitive society almost unanimously note that animals’ skins, claws and teeth are greatly valued by primitive peoples as ornaments. It was not that they found their colour and patterns particularly attractive. As he decorated himself with an animal's skin, a tiger’s claws or teeth, a bison’s skin or horns, primitive man was showing others that he was as quick and strong as the beast he had defeated.<br /> <br /> Such conclusions are corroborated by ethnographic evidence concerning the notions of peoples which are still at one or another stage of the primitive-communal system. Students of the life of North American western tribes inform us, for instance, that some tribes like to wear ornaments made from the claws of the grizzly bear, the most savage of the wild beasts found in those parts. The red-skinned warrior believes that the fierceness and courage of the grizzly bear are communicated to him who decks himself with its claws.<br /> <br /> This example confirms conclusion that the aesthetic notions of beauty in the remote past were directly linked with peoples’ production activities and everyday life.<br /> <br /> Let us now consider another example drawn from ethnography. Again, it must be remembered that in a certain respect ethnographic evidence gives us an idea of the primitive-communal epoch. Certainly, no existing tribe whose development has been retarded and which has remained at a certain stage in the primitive-communal system for a variety of historical reasons can be identified with peoples which lived in that epoch. Nevertheless, they have something in common, and these historical analogies enable us to form an idea of how our remote ancestors lived.<br /> <br /> We know, for instance, that women of many African tribes wear iron rings on their arms and legs. Wives of rich men may wear about ten kilograms of such ornaments. From our point of view, this is certainly very uncomfortable, yet the discomfort does not prevent many African women from wearing such “chains” of beauty.<br /> <br /> Why does an African woman like to wear these “chains”? The reason is that they make her appear beautiful to herself and to others.  This results from a rather complex association of ideas. The passion for such ornaments is observed among the tribes which have but recently left behind the Iron Age, i.e., those among which iron is considered a precious metal. And everything precious seems beautiful because it is associated with the idea of wealth.<br /> <br /> Here is another example illustrating the idea of the beautiful current among some African tribes. The Batokas who live in the upper reaches of the river Zambezi consider it ugly for a person not to have removed the upper incisors. Where does this odd notion spring from?  It is also due to a rather complex association of ideas. Batokas part with their upper incisors to imitate the ruminating animals. We may think it a somewhat peculiar desire, but the Batokas are a pastoral tribe with whom cattle spells wealth. Hence the idea that what is dear is beautiful.<br /> <br /> We have quoted examples of various notions of beauty held by some peoples. At first sight, these notions seem to have nothing in common.  But in fact they have. The notions of beauty shared by primitive and retarded peoples reflect certain aspects of their social being, of their mode of life.<br /> <br /> Hunting peoples consider the claws, teeth or skins of the animals they hunt to be beautiful.  What is hard to get is considered beautiful.<br /> <br /> Peoples familiar with wealth and social inequality associate the idea of beauty with wealth and social inequality.<br /> <br /> Pastoral peoples, whose life is most closely connected with cattle, associate their ideas of beauty with the most valuable thing they have, cattle.<br /> <br /> We find further proof of the inherent connection of art and social being in other kinds of art. Thus many African peoples have the keenest sense of rhythm, an oarsman singing in rhythm with the movements of the oars, porters singing in rhythm with their steps, and housewives singing in rhythm with their corn grinders. Basuto women, who wear metal bangles on their arms, which tinkle at every movement, often gather together to grind corn, accompanying the rhythmical movement of their arms by singing. The beat is the main thing in Basuto music, and the more rhythmical a song, the more beautiful it is considered. That was also characteristic of our remote ancestors.<br /> <br /> Why is the beat important? The answer is that primitive men chanted in rhythm with their work, and every kind of work had a chant adapted to its rhythm. As the productive forces advanced, the significance of rhythm in work decreased, although it is not lost altogether.  In some German villages, for instance, every season has particular noises associated with it, and every kind of work similarly has particular music associated with it.<br /> <br /> Generalising these facts, students of primitive art point out the close similarity between the economic conditions of our primitive ancestors and contemporary retarded peoples whose life and art form the subject of ethnography. What makes many works of modern bourgeois art hard to appreciate is the absence of any direct connection between art and the methods of production in civilised society. We must see, however, that this is the result of nothing but the development itself of the social productive forces, which causes the division of social labour between different classes. The fact that society has become more complex, that the connection between art and social being has become more intricate, does not in the least disprove the materialist view of the history of art but, on the contrary, provides fresh and convincing evidence in its support.<br /> <br /> Let us turn to French society in the 18th century. The class nature of this society directly affected the development of French art, and thus the drama. In medieval France, just as in Western Europe at large, the farce was predominant in the theatre. Farces were written and performed for the people. They were an expression of the popular views and sentiments.<br /> <br /> In the reign of Louis XIII, the farce began to decline. It was considered to be only good enough for lackeys and not for persons of refined taste. The farce was supplanted by the tragedy. Yet the French tragedy had nothing to do with the ideas and sentiments of the masses.  It expressed the views, tastes and aspirations of the aristocracy.<br /> <br /> Time passed, and the aristocracy began to decline. The spirit of opposition steadily spread among the bourgeoisie and began to make itself felt in art as well. The growing third estate (the bourgeoisie) was dissatisfied with literature and the theatre which it would like to see more edifying. It was then that the bourgeois drama appeared, contrasting the virtuous bourgeois to the depraved aristocrat.<br /> <br /> Thus, we see that this form of social consciousness, art, is directly affected by the changing life of society, changing social patterns and class relations.<br /> <br /> We could quote more examples to show that other forms of social consciousness also reflect social being. There is, however, no need for it as we have already given many illustrations sufficiently corroborating the objective law governing the development of different forms of social consciousness, which was described in Marxist theory.<br /> <br /> ==== §6. Revolutionary Theory and the Revolutionary Movement ====<br /> In conclusion we shall dwell on one more problem which is essential to the comprehension of the relation of social consciousness and social being. So far, we have stressed that social consciousness reflects social being, and that different products of social consciousness are, to one extent or another, reflections of social being.<br /> <br /> May we conclude from this that social being is merely reflected in social consciousness, as in a mirror? No, such a conclusion would be quite incorrect. Precisely such a position on the passive nature of social consciousness, ideas and the spiritual life of mankind has been ascribed to Marxism by the ideologists of the bourgeoisie, of the classes which are hostile to the working class and working people.<br /> <br /> By establishing the fact that social consciousness depends on social being, that social consciousness reflects social being, Marxist-Leninist theory has by no means belittled the significance of social consciousness.<br /> <br /> Having given a correct definition of social consciousness, Marxist theory also indicates its place in the life of society. One cannot transform society by transforming ideas alone. To make society better, to make life truly human, it is necessary to reorganise social being. And social consciousness plays a highly important part in it. It gives man knowledge of the methods of transforming life. Seizing the masses, social consciousness urges them to work for the transformation of reality. That is why Marx stated that &amp;quot;... theory... becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-114|114]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> &lt;span id=&quot;index_split_003.xhtml#calibre_toc_107&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> === 9. The Ideological Struggle and Human Rights&lt;span id=&quot;index_split_003.xhtml#anchor197&quot; class=&quot;s-t&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;index_split_003.xhtml#anchor198&quot; class=&quot;s-t&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; ===<br /> <br /> In the previous chapters we considered mainly the philosophical problems which make up the theoretical framework of the Marxist world outlook. But, however abstract its propositions, philosophy is never isolated from life. It always performs methodological and ideological functions, helping men to find their bearings in the complex social reality and the battle of ideas.  Dialectical and historical materialism is no exception in this respect. Let us take a look at the battle of ideas in the 20th century and the place of communist and bourgeois ideology in this battle.<br /> <br /> History has witnessed numerous coups, discoveries, wars and revolutions which left their imprint on subsequent developments. But whatever happened, the exploitation of man by man remained, and all development went on within the limits of exploitative society. The working people who performed revolutions saw their hopes crushed as one form of exploitation was replaced by another.<br /> <br /> In these circumstances, historical progress was bought at too dear a price. Marx wrote that the progress of history in antagonistic society was like “that hideous pagan idol, whe would not drink the nectar but from the sculls of the slain.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-115|115]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> The Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia radically altered the course of history, translating into reality the dreams of the best minds of humanity. It destroyed exploiting society and created a new, equitable social system.  The triumph of the Revolution implied the triumph of the progressive new ideology of Marxism-Leninism which became predominant in a huge country occupying one-sixth of the globe.<br /> <br /> ==== §1. Two Ideologies ====<br /> Adversaries of the working class like to say that there would be no ideological struggle if the Communists had not invented it. History, however, testifies to the contrary. It shows that ideological struggle has been going on ever since ideological relations started among men.  It was pursued in different ways and its intensity varied from one historical period to another, but no matter how its forms and pitch might change, it has always been there, expressing the interests of different, and often diametrically so, social classes at all stages in history.<br /> <br /> With the emergence of Marxism, ideological struggle becomes more intense. At a time when communism was yet a mere “spectre haunting Europe”, its founders wrote: “All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-116|116]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> As soon as Marxism emerged, all forces of the old world united against it ignoring their own ideological differences.<br /> <br /> Ideological struggle increased especially after the victorious Great October Socialist Revolution. From then on, the bourgeoisie’s &amp;quot;righteous indignation” at communist ideology went hand in hand with its hatred for the Soviet system, giving rise to a combination of anti-communism and anti-Sovietism.<br /> <br /> Ideological struggle against the Soviet Union has always had an important role to play in the overall political strategy of imperialism.  For some time the imperialists hoped that their military superiority would enable them to get the upper hand in the ideological argument by sheer force of arms. That superiority was, however, but shortlived. As the balance of forces in the world changed, imperialism was faced with a historical situation, quite new to it, in which all expectations to resolve the ideological antagonisms by military means were doomed.  As a result, the global strategy of imperialism had to be thoroughly revised and the ideological struggle, whose outcome is to determine the direction in which history will move, was put in the forefront.<br /> <br /> Hence the theories of “erosion of socialism”, “national communism” (or “regional Eurocommunism&amp;quot;), and so on. Ideologists of imperialism seek above all to discredit Marxism-Leninism and real socialism, and sow discord in the developed socialist society, the world socialist system, and the world communist movement.<br /> <br /> Today socialist ideology is a major factor determining the intellectual climate in the world. Not only is it dominant in the socialist countries, but it also has millions of supporters beyond their boundaries. This undermines the ideological positions of imperialism and causes bourgeois ideology increasingly to lose social support. Viewed from this angle, the development of history over the past sixty years has been marked by a series of setbacks sustained by bourgeois ideology, while Marxism-Leninism has gained new ground.<br /> <br /> ==== §2. Anti-Communism—the Ideological Weapon of Imperialism ====<br /> Even so, it would be wrong and dangerous to underestimate the possibilities of bourgeois ideology. While imperialism’s ideological positions were undermined, the monopoly bourgeoisie and its pundits were looking for new opportunities of counteracting socialism, brainwashing the masses and spreading anti-communism. The ideological stock-in-trade of imperialism was thus modified and updated.<br /> <br /> In the political and military-strategic context imperialism has to reckon with the changed balance of forces in the world and, as it still hopes to crush socialism some day, is compelled to manoeuvre, stepping up ideological subversion against the socialist countries and trying to &amp;quot;bore socialism from within.”<br /> <br /> Adjusting to the new historical situation, bourgeois ideologists have changed their methods of fighting Marxism. In view of the immense popularity of socialist ideas, they can no longer pretend that there is no such thing as Marxism or abuse it to their heart’s content or indulge in vulgar anti-communism. Having to tread more warily, they increasingly turn to Marx, extracting isolated fragments from his works and adapting them to their own ends.  It comes as no surprise that the more the influence of Marxism grows, the more persistent are the attempts to revise it.<br /> <br /> In recent years bourgeois ideology united with revisionism. The mounting activity of revisionism, both right and “‘left&amp;quot;, is supported by imperialism and plays an important part in ideological sabotage against socialism and the world communist movement.<br /> <br /> Anti-communism was and continues to be the chief ideological weapon of imperialist reaction. The anti-communists would like nothing better than to see the socialist system split and become “polycentric&amp;quot; and to see the “erosion of socialism&amp;quot;. They think that growing contacts with the West will cause new value orientations to emerge in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, bringing about a sweeping degeneration of culture in them which will furnish a lever for remaking socialist society in the spirit desirable to the West.<br /> <br /> Anti-communism has become more active in the treatment of problems of political democracy and individual freedom. This has resulted in a campaign over the imaginary violation of human rights in the socialist countries, in which the present US Administration and government bodies in some NATO countries take an active part. In the course of the campaign, pluralistic bourgeois democracy is presented as a model while the inherent vices of capitalism—social inequality, exploitation, inflation and unemployment—are ignored. In spite of bourgeois propaganda, the masses are increasingly aware that socialist democracy alone can ensure freedom from exploitation and give the people a decisive part in government.<br /> <br /> It is significant that even notoriously reactionary writers are beginning to realise that the primitive anti-communism of some years ago with its myths and bankrupt doctrines can no longer help the imperialist countries to work out an effective policy. The article of Prof. A. Dallin of Columbia University “Bias and Blunders in American Studies on the USSR” is of interest in this respect. Prof. Dallin acknowledges that the Americans’ notions about the Soviet Union ever since 1917 have been full of ignorance and incomprehension, and that leading US statesmen and journalists are under the spell of the delusion and prejudice created by their own propaganda machine.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-117|117]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Similar to other forms of bourgeois ideology, anti-communism is not due to some politicians’ ill will, although there is no reason to deny it either. Bourgeois ideology in whatever form is nothing else but a distorted reflection in ideology of real developments occurring in the world and, above all, in the capitalist world. And if we want to understand and explain modern anti-communism, we must turn to capitalist reality in which lie the socio-economic and political roots of contemporary anti-communism.<br /> <br /> ==== §3. The American Realities and Human Rights ====<br /> The crisis of the 1970s has proved again that the socialist system has indisputable advantages over capitalism. It has confirmed the stability of the socialist economy and its inexhaustible capacity for satisfying, unlike capitalism, the fundamental rights and freedoms without which man cannot exist. Modern developments have, undoubtedly, served to increase further the prestige of the existing socialist society in the non-socialist world and enhance the attraction of the historical example set by the peoples having rid themselves of social oppression and exploitation.<br /> <br /> These circumstances by themselves could explain the purpose of the propaganda campaign which is to convince peoples in the non-socialist countries that things are not so bad at all, divert their attention from their own deteriorating economic and social position to the problems of political democracy, and to slander socialism once again in the hope of making it less attractive to peoples of other countries.<br /> <br /> Nor is that all. This bourgeois campaign sets out to undermine the socialist system from within, seeking out malcontents and provoking conflicts in socialist countries. It is also designed to split the international communist movement, setting some communist parties against others under the false slogan of “national”, “regional”, and other brands of communism.<br /> <br /> It is nobody’s secret that this propaganda campaign has intensified after the new administration in Washington came into office, and that from then on certain American officials and government agencies have assumed the unseemly role of leaders and inspirers of this campaign.<br /> <br /> This fact, unprecedented for many years, certainly requires explanation. And it can be explained from the situation which had shaped in the United States by the time the present administration came into office. Yet, the roots of this situation lie in the American political history of the 1960s-1970s.<br /> <br /> The shots in Dallas which killed President J. F. Kennedy rang throughout America, ushering in an era of major political crimes. No doubt, the underlying social causes which led to the degradation of American politics had taken shape earlier and were engendered by the social and the state system.<br /> <br /> It was, however, not only the assassination of a president on whom different social groups pinned their hopes which, incidentally, were never realised, that shocked the United States.  It was also the disgraceful game the US official quarters described as investigation.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; It&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; would be hard now to say exactly what caused the prestige of state authority in the United States to fall—whether it was the assassination itself or the sheer inability of a government spending astronomic sums on maintaining an intelligence service in the country to protect its own prestige and immunity. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> This amazing impotence of authority and absolute impunity of the actual sponsors of the crime, doubtlessly, set off a series of assassinations each of which was declared to be the work of one individual or another. The authorities were not at all abashed by the fact that more and more such “individuals&amp;quot; turned up.  Yet, each assassination as well as stereotyped “inquiry” made opinion increasingly suspicious of the government and doubtful of its ability to protect its citizens and uphold their rights.<br /> <br /> All this coincided with acute racial and national conflicts which aggravated the home situation still more.<br /> <br /> The war in Vietnam, which American journalists now describe as the dirtiest war in American history, was another fact which had disastrous consequences for the home political situation in the United States. Its impact on the domestic scene, although not fully unravelled yet, was immense.<br /> <br /> It was not only that US servicemen were sent to die for what was incompatible with the genuine interests of the American people, which was the cause of mass desertion from the army and the reason why young men of call-up age fled the country.<br /> <br /> Nor was it that thousands of American soldiers involved in massacres in Vietnam received lessons in moral degradation which no people can escape unscathed.<br /> <br /> It was, above all, that the Vietnam war itself was a flagrant violation of American law which states that the US Congress alone may declare war (Section 8, Art. I of the Constitution of the United States). And the US Congress never declared war on Vietnam. The war just went on, swallowing thousands of American lives, while presidents issued orders they had no right to issue under the Constitution.<br /> <br /> Thus for several years while that undeclared war lasted, the US Government gave the people a memorable lesson in violation of law and civil rights.<br /> <br /> Yet, another unconstitutional process was developing during the Vietnam war. It was the concentration of power in the hands of the non-elective White House apparatus. Joseph C.  Harsch wrote in &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;The Christian Science Monitor&lt;/span&gt; of November 11, 1976: &amp;quot;The seizure of the policymaking function by the White House and its concentration in the White House staff has been a process which began slowly and cautiously....<br /> <br /> “... It began growing again under John F. Kennedy, and exploded in the Johnson and Nixon era.”<br /> <br /> Harsch mentioned in the same article that the outsized President’s office numbered 1,831 persons including 61 special assistants to the President.<br /> <br /> The situation in which government of the United States is carried out not by the heads of departments accountable to the Congress, but the White House personnel accountable to the President, is, according to Harsch, causing anxiety to the Congress which, he writes, has “lost its ability to get at and help control policymaking”. It is not accidental that James M.  Naughton wrote in &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;The New York Times&lt;/span&gt; of November 29, 1976, summing up, as it were, the presidencies of Nixon and Ford: “Six years of imperial Presidency and two of executive restraint worked in combination to alter the outlook, change the tone and, to some extent, restructure the shape of the executive branch.”<br /> <br /> The entire process is unconstitutional, whereby the Americans were given a lesson in autocratic disregard of the law for quite a number of years. Prof. Neustadt of Harvard University, whose opinions are often cited by the American press, considers in the light of these circumstances the institute of presidency as a “kingship” in the sense that it makes the Americans react to it emotionally just as other peoples respond to monarchy.&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-118|118]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> Prof. Schlesinger writes in his &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;The Imperial Presidency&lt;/span&gt; (Boston, 1973) that “‘the Presidency has got out of control” (p. X) and is hardly constitutional as it is, and that to keep “a strong President constitutional, in addition to checks and balances incorporated within his own breast” ... “the vigilance of the nation’ is also needed, or the Americans will have an imperial presidency (p. 418). How serious a problem of the “‘crisis of government institutes” in the United States has become is also witnessed by the conference held in Los Angeles in the autumn of 1974 (&lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;The Center Magazine&lt;/span&gt;, Vol. VII, No. 5, 1974, p. 31). The conference discussed the crisis in the contemporary presidency. One of the speakers at the conference was Senator Walter F. Mondale (now Vice-President), who said that it was necessary to raise the prestige of the legislative bodies and “curb any President’s illegal use of the most sensitive law-enforcement agencies of the government: the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Justice, and the Central Intelligence Agency.... They are ... instruments of great potential danger to our constitutional liberties.”<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; Watergate was another important landmark &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;i&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;n the chain of events which have resulted in the “crisis of confidence in the institutes of government” in the United States. The long inquiry, which revealed flagrant violation of elementary rights and liberties, and Nixon's eventual resignation showed once again that arbitrary rule had become routine in American society. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> To this should be added sensational exposures of the violation of civil rights and liberties by the American intelligence service agencies both at home and abroad, and of scandalous instances of corruption and tax dodging by American politicians.<br /> <br /> All this has resulted in a powerful civil rights campaign in the United States spearheaded against race and national discrimination and the war in Vietnam.<br /> <br /> &lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt; In that situation, the American propaganda machine tried to rehabilitate the “American way of life&amp;quot;, “American system of values&amp;quot;, etc., &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;i&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;s-t11&quot;&gt;n connection with the 200th anniversary of American Independence. &lt;/span&gt; <br /> <br /> This campaign was not, however, much of a success, the festivities being overshadowed by the disgrace of the Vietnam war and Watergate. The general trend of American propaganda at the time is well illustrated by an article in &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;The New York Times&lt;/span&gt; devoted to Independence Day (July 4, 1976). It said among other things: “Two years after Watergate and four years after Vietnam, friends who were then ashamed of the United States seem to be saying now that they see America’s better values surviving.” Such was the cold comfort that bourgeois propaganda-mongers offered to the people.<br /> <br /> Add to it a series of scandalous exposures of immorality, corruption and tax dodging on the part of some Congressmen and prominent politicians, which equally attested to the breaches of the law by the powers that be. Obviously enough, in such circumstances the leading American statesmen have no reason to pose as champions of legality, civil rights and freedom.  The campaign “in defence of human rights” in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries is regarded by the present US Administration as a major means of diverting the Americans’ attention from arbitrary rule and illegality in their own country, as well as a means of rehabilitating the American state system both in the eyes of the Americans and world opinion at somebody else’s expense, by harming the peoples whose socialist system provides an effective alternative to capitalism.<br /> <br /> In his speech, “The Great October Revolution and Mankind’s Progress&amp;quot;, L. I. Brezhnev noted that the new Soviet Constitution &amp;quot;gives further convincing proof that concepts of freedom, human rights, democracy and social justice become truly meaningful only under socialism.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-119|119]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br /> ==== §4. Mature Socialism and Human Rights ====<br /> Marx and Engels always viewed socialism as a social system under which free development of every individual is the condition of free development of all, of society at large.  Developed socialist society today gives each of its members a wide range of rights and freedoms. To illustrate, the 1977 Soviet Constitution ensures citizens such rights as the right to work, to housing, to education, the right to enjoy cultural benefits, the right to submit proposals to state bodies and criticise shortcomings in their work, freedom of scientific, technical and artistic work, the right to associate in public organisations, etc.<br /> <br /> The &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;right to work&lt;/span&gt; is ensured by the socialist economic system, steady growth of the productive forces of Soviet society, free vocational and professional training, improvement of skills and training in new trades and professions. The right to work is not a new constitutional right, it was granted to Soviet citizens under the 1936 Constitution. Is it a mere reiteration of the previous Constitution or are there some new points here? Let us look into this question.<br /> <br /> Proclamation of a constitutional right is, of course, a very important thing. That every citizen should have the right to work and to equal pay for equal work, irrespective of social status, race, nationality, religion, sex, etc., is certainly of exceeding importance. No one would deny that the political and legal guarantees of this right are very important. Yet, they can be easily upset by the simple fact that there are not enough jobs in the country. Then labour exchanges will be overcrowded, newspapers will be full of advertisements placed by people looking for work, and there will be hundreds of thousands or even millions jobless.<br /> <br /> In the Soviet Union, the right to work has social and economic, as well as political and legal, guarantees. It means that the socio-economic structure of Soviet society (public ownership of the basic means of production, economic planning, crisis-free economic development) is such that since 1930 there has been no unemployment in the Soviet Union. All labour exchanges there closed in 1930 as nobody wanted them any more.<br /> <br /> However, in order to understand the full implication of the right to work in the Soviet Union it is not enough to know merely one, albeit essential, fact that unemployment was abolished there. The Soviet state provides employment for all of its citizens. The new Soviet Constitution considerably extends the content of the right to work, stating that at the current stage the Soviet state can do much more to provide favourable conditions for its implementation.<br /> <br /> Today the Soviet state not only provides employment for all citizens, but also commits itself to make it possible for citizens to choose their trade or profession in accordance with their inclinations and be trained accordingly.  This is ensured by the wide network of state-run vocational schools with training free of charge. As for those who already have a trade or profession, the state gives them every opportunity to improve their skills or train for another occupation. Practically every enterprise—certainly every medium-sized or large one has numerous programmes for skill improvement and schools, including technical secondary schools, at which one can train in a new trade or greatly improve his qualifications without giving up his job. Many enterprises have technical higher schools. Training is, of course, gratuitous.<br /> <br /> As a result of diverse political, legal, social and economic measures, including the abolition of unemployment, creation of new jobs on a mass scale and free vocational training throughout the country, demand for labour in the Soviet Union exceeds the supply.<br /> <br /> The &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;right to housing&lt;/span&gt; is a new constitutional right not to be confused with the article on the inviolability of the homes of citizens which can be found in nearly every constitution. What does this innovation in constitutional law mean?  Why was this right not mentioned in the previous Soviet Constitution? It was due above all to the fact that the available housing the Soviet Union inherited from the tsarist regime was insufficient. Although the Soviet Government did much even before the war for a fair redistribution of the available housing and launched the construction of new houses for working people, these measures were not yet enough. The Soviet Union lacked the industrial facilities for housing construction. Further, one must consider the fact that during the Second World War great damage was caused to the available housing, insufficient as it was. The Nazi invaders burned to the ground 92,000 villages and destroyed dwellings in 2,500 towns and townships. The Soviet state, naturally, had to spend time and effort to restore the ruined houses. For this reason it was unable for a long time to ensure its citizens the right to housing and had to limit itself to satisfying their elementary requirements in that respect.<br /> <br /> Thanks to the strides made by the developed socialist economy, it recently became possible to launch the construction of houses by industrial methods. Let us see now how available housing has increased in the Soviet Union. The young Soviet state inherited from the tsarist regime altogether 180 million sq m of useful floor space in towns. This figure has by now been exceeded ten times, mounting to 1,860 million sq m. In the last decade alone, 34 million flats were constructed, which means that more than half the population and nearly three-quarters of the urban population live in new flats or houses. Since some people move into new flats and houses, those who remain in the old dwellings are less crowded, so the majority of working people have had their living conditions improved.<br /> <br /> Houses are built in the Soviet Union at an increasing rate. Whereas in forty-odd years, 1917-1959, only about 500 million sq m of floor space in state-owned houses could be built, 545-550 million sq m of floor space will be put into operation during the current five-year period alone (1976-1980). Such is one side of the problem, which is that at the current stage the Soviet state really can provide its citizens with comfortable dwellings.<br /> <br /> The other side of the problem is no less important. Rent in the Soviet Union is the lowest in the world, although it is paid for the use of modern dwellings with all conveniences.  Soviet citizens are astonished to hear foreign visitors complain that rent consumes more than a third of their earnings. In the Soviet Union, rent comes on average to 5-6 per cent of earnings. Since there is no unemployment in the Soviet Union, and labour is in great demand, usually several members of a family have jobs and on this basis rent accounts at most for 2-3 per cent of the aggregate income of an average Soviet family. In many countries, as is known, apartment houses or tenements constitute a profitable industry. The Soviet state, however, has never regarded rent as an item of revenue. Both in the past and at the present time rent in the Soviet Union is expended on the maintenance and preservation of houses.<br /> <br /> The great material possibilities for the construction of new houses and the social measures taken to ensure fair distribution of floor space at low rent thus make a real guarantee of the right of Soviet citizens to housing.<br /> <br /> The &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;right to education&lt;/span&gt; was also granted under the previous Constitution. In this instance, too, the new feature consists in the much greater possibilities that now exist in the Soviet Union for the implementation of the right to education. In the 1930s, when the previous Constitution was adopted, the state could afford only four-year universal compulsory and free education and was just beginning to introduce universal seven-year education.<br /> <br /> At present, the shift to universal free ten-year education has been completed in the Soviet Union. Currently there are more than 167,000 general education schools, 4,300 technical secondary schools, and upwards of 850 higher schools. In 1977, there were altogether more than 99.5 million students in the Soviet Union, 49 million of them attending ten-year secondary schools. The total enrolment in technical secondary schools was in excess of 4.3 million, and at higher schools, five million. Education in the Soviet Union is free, and students of technical secondary and higher schools receive monthly government grants. Adults can get an education without leaving their jobs at any of the numerous night schools and night and correspondence technical secondary and higher schools and courses. Correspondence courses of higher schools and technical secondary schools have more than 1.5 and 1.2 million students respectively.<br /> <br /> The progress made by education in the Soviet Union stems from the development of socialist society, from the change in the life of the country which was launched by the Great October Revolution in 1917. They had built schools, colleges and universities and trained teachers in Russia before the Revolution as well. But they did it at a different rate. &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Public Education&lt;/span&gt;, the official organ of the tsarist Ministry of Education, wrote shortly before the Revolution that it would take 180 years to abolish illiteracy among the male population of Central Russia, and 360 years to abolish it among the female population, also of Central Russia. As for the population of the fringes of the Russian Empire, the journal wrote, it would take 3,500 years to stamp out illiteracy among them.<br /> <br /> Soviet government created an efficient system of public education which dealt with illiteracy within 19 years, and rapidly developed this system further in order to meet the growing cultural requirements of Soviet citizens.  Thus we see that the right to education is not only granted by the Constitution, but is also ensured by the effective education system that has been built under Soviet government.<br /> <br /> The 1977 Soviet Constitution grants citizens of the USSR the &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;right to enjoy cultural benefits&lt;/span&gt;.  This is a new point in a constitutional law and a new constitutional right. It is not the customary article proclaiming the right to education which is to be found in almost all Constitutions round the world. This article goes far beyond mere education. It speaks of the opportunity to enjoy cultural benefits as of the right of every Soviet citizen, and of the guarantees of this right. After all, a well-educated person may remain culturally limited if he has no access to the treasures of culture.<br /> <br /> In the Soviet Union, treasures of national and world culture are accessible to all sections of the population. All museums and libraries are the property of the people, and the state of the whole people looks after their normal functioning and further growth. Before the October Socialist Revolution there were 76,000 libraries and only 180 museums in the country, and now there are 350,000 libraries and about 2,000 museums in the Soviet Union. Both libraries and museums are accessible to all. In tsarist Russia, however, more than two-thirds of the libraries and a great many museums were not open for the working classes. The Hermitage in Leningrad, for instance, which contains treasures putting it on a par with Louvres or the British Museum, was closed to ordinary folk for a long time.<br /> <br /> Not only were there few centres of culture and learning in tsarist Russia, but they were to be found mostly in the areas inhabited by Russians. Under Soviet government much was done to distribute them evenly throughout the country. To illustrate, there is an Academy of Sciences in every Union Republic, whereas previously there was only one Academy of Sciences, in the capital. There were 12 universities in tsarist Russia, situated mainly in the areas populated by Russians. At present, there are as many as 63 universities in the country, including Altai, Far Eastern, Bashkir, Daghestan, Kabardino-Balkarian, Kalmyk, Mari, Mordovian, Chuvash, and Yakut universities. The names alone show that in setting up these universities both territorial and national factors were taken into account, so as to ensure access to the benefits of culture in every area and to every Soviet people.<br /> <br /> Article 47 of the new Soviet Constitution reads: “Citizens of the USSR, in accordance with the aims of building communism, are guaranteed &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;freedom of scientific, technical, and artistic work&lt;/span&gt;. This freedom is ensured by broadening scientific research, encouraging invention and innovation, and developing literature and the arts. The state provides the necessary material conditions for this and support for voluntary societies and unions of workers in the arts, organises introduction of inventions and innovations in production and other spheres of activity.<br /> <br /> “The rights of authors, inventors and innovators are protected by the state.”<br /> <br /> First of all, we should like to call the reader’s attention to the fact that freedom of scientific, technical, and artistic work is guaranteed to citizens “in accordance with the aims of building communism.” Why is the reference to the aims of building communism made in the Constitution? Is it not enough to proclaim a right and define it in purely legal terms? The point is that this is not an ordinary right which only needs to be exactly formulated. It is a right which is simultaneously a part of the main objectives of communist society. Many modern Constitutions grant this right as a mere formality, because today freedom of scientific, technical and artistic work is mentioned as a rule in important political documents. One finds it also in the Constitutions of states which cannot ensure their citizens even the right to education.<br /> <br /> It is altogether different in the case of the Soviet Constitution. One of the major objectives of Soviet home policy is to build a communist society. The aim of communist society with respect to the individual is his all-round, harmonious development. And freedom of creative work is indispensable to the attainment of this aim. It is not enough to open wide the doors of secondary schools and universities and give a person a good education. Conditions must also be provided in which he will be not only a consumer, but also a producer of cultural benefits. And this is possible only when there is real freedom of scientific, technical, and artistic work in society.<br /> <br /> Much has been done in the Soviet Union over sixty years to enable citizens to exercise freedom of creative work. The workingman was barred from cultural benefits for millennia. He could not create them as he was illiterate and deprived. Even his consumption of cultural benefits was limited by the ruling classes to a pittance. Soviet government eliminated this historical injustice. It gave the workingman access to education, thereby giving him the opportunity to acquaint himself with the treasures of world culture. It also provided material conditions for spreading culture among the working people. It set up numerous educational and research centres belonging to the people, nationalised the theatres, art galleries, museums, conservatoires and philharmonic societies, and made them accessible to working people and their children. Freedom of scientific, technical, and artistic work has a solid material foundation in the USSR. It currently has more than 850 higher schools; 350,000 libraries; 135,100 clubs; 154,000 film projecting units; almost 600 theatres; 94 circuses; 214 concert bureaux; about 2,000 museums; 149,000 amateur groups at trade union clubs. The new Soviet Constitution takes account of all this and sets the aim to provide ever better conditions for ensuring freedom of scientific, technical, and artistic work.<br /> <br /> The Western bourgeois press assiduously spreads the fiction that all public organisations except the Communist Party are banned in the Soviet Union. Practice as well as the relevant article of the Soviet Constitution on the right to associate in public organisations convincingly show that the allegation is groundless. Besides Communist Party branches, the Young Communist League and the trade unions, there are unions of writers, artists, actors and journalists, and numerous scientific, technical, medical, defence, athletic and other voluntary societies in the Soviet Union. We lack the space here merely to enumerate all Soviet public organisations. To name but a few, there are eight all-Union associations of workers in the arts, more than twenty all-Union scientific societies, thirty all-Union scientific medical societies, and numerous other public organisations.<br /> <br /> No wonder that there are so many public organisations in the Soviet Union. The life of modern society is complex and varied, and the interests, needs and aspirations of Soviet people are too diverse for any one organisation to cover them all. This explains why the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Government have been working ever since the Great October Socialist Revolution to provide and improve conditions for the function in a of numerous public organisations. It is not fortuitous that the new Soviet Constitution states: “Public organisations are guaranteed conditions for successfully performing the functions defined in their rules.”<br /> <br /> For illustration, let us take the All-Union society Znanie (Knowledge) which unites almost two million lecturers. It has a publishing house of its own, one of the largest in the Soviet Union, which brings out annually more than 400 different brochures and books to a total of over 25 million copies. The Soviet Writers’ Union, too, has everything it needs to carry on active creative work. Its central organ, &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Literary Gazette&lt;/span&gt;, has a large circulation and enjoys great popularity. The Soviet Writers’ Union publishes numerous magazines, viz., &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Novi mir&lt;/span&gt; (New World), &lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;i&lt;/span&gt; (Banner), &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Druzhba narodov&lt;/span&gt; (Peoples’ Friendship), &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Voprosy literatury&lt;/span&gt; (Problems of Literature), &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Yunost&lt;/span&gt; (Youth), &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Koster&lt;/span&gt; (Bonfire), &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Sovetish Heimland&lt;/span&gt; (in Yiddish), &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Soviet Literature&lt;/span&gt; (in English, German, Spanish and Polish), &lt;span class=&quot;s-t5&quot;&gt;Lettres Soviétiques&lt;/span&gt; (in French), and so on. Besides these all-Union magazines, the Soviet Writers’ Union publishes magazines in the Union and autonomous republics, regions and territories.<br /> <br /> Similar facts can be quoted about numerous other public organisations functioning in the Soviet Union. Energetic, creative activity of diverse mass organisations is a feature of Soviet life. The new Soviet Constitution legalises and guarantees this characteristic of developed socialism. Thus practice shatters one of the fictions current in bourgeois propaganda and intended for people who know little or nothing about life in the Soviet Union.<br /> <br /> As we see, even a cursory glance at some of the rights granted and guaranteed under developed socialism shows that the prediction made by Marx and Engels about free development of all members of socialist society has been carried into practice. L. I. Brezhnev said: “The establishment of the principles of social equality and justice is one of the greatest achievements of the October Revolution. We have every right to say that no other society in the world has done or could have done as much for the masses, for the working people, as has been done by socialism! Every Soviet citizen enjoys in full the rights and freedoms enabling him to participate actively in political life. Every Soviet citizen has the possibility to choose a profession according with his inclinations and abilities, and to do work that is useful to his country and people.”&lt;sup&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#footnote-120|120]]&lt;/sup&gt;  <br /> <br />  <br /> <br />  <br /> <br /> == Conclusion ==<br /> The history of philosophical and socio-political thought is a record of hundreds of ideas and theories. Many old philosophers sincerely wished to point out the path to social justice and human happiness, as well as furnish people with knowledge of the world.<br /> <br /> Yet, however sincerely they might try to help people, these philosophers remained alone or at best won a limited following. Whatever schemes for man’s happiness and welfare they devised, neither happiness nor justice materialised.<br /> <br /> When the working class, at whose hands the world was to be transformed, had appeared in the world scene, it became urgently necessary to provide a doctrine showing how this historic mission could be accomplished. This doctrine was Marxism-Leninism which answered the practical questions posed by the class struggle of the proletariat, and not only explained the world but showed how to transform it. This doctrine, advanced in the late 1840s by Marx and Engels and carried forward in the epoch of imperialism by Lenin, has become today the world outlook of hundreds of millions.<br /> <br /> No romantic dreams or illusions, but rather the objective scientific analysis of reality which made it possible to determine goals for the struggle of the oppressed and exploited and the elaboration of concrete forms of this struggle have helped Marxism-Leninism to become an effective instrument for remaking the world.<br /> <br /> The victorious socialist revolutions performed in a number of countries, the construction of socialism and the building of a communist society have become realities due to the fact that this titanic effort on the part of the masses has for its theoretical foundation the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, which is the world outlook of the communist parties.<br /> <br /> Marxist-Leninist philosophy, which was necessitated not only by the class struggle but by the progress of science, provides a truly scientific method of knowing the world and is the theoretical basis of scientifically building the new society.<br /> <br /> Born more than a century and a quarter ago, Marxism-Leninism has been going from strength to strength. It is strong because it is true, because it reflects the world correctly and gets to the root of things. This correct knowledge of the world owes much to Marxist philosophy. It is the profound philosophic justification of all fundamental propositions of Marxism-Leninism that distinguishes it from all previous theoretical conceptions.<br /> <br /> It was no accident that Marx, Engels and Lenin, who were great revolutionaries, politicians and economists and active members of the revolutionary movement, were also great philosophers who paid constant attention to the study and development of philosophy. That enabled them in times of social upheavals to find correct solutions and correctly determine the trend of social developments.<br /> <br /> Through the study of Marxist-Leninist philosophy one can grasp the laws governing the development of the world, to understand, with their help, the intricate processes of social development, and to get a glimpse of the future, to foresee the course of human history.&lt;span id=&quot;index_split_003.xhtml#calibre_toc_8&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;<br /> = Notes =<br /> <br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-1|←1]] ] <br /> : Frederick Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 1972, p. 39.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-2|←2]] ] <br /> : V, I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 287-88.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-3|←3]] ] <br /> : Ibid., Vol. 33, p. 489.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-4|←4]] ] <br /> : The Works of George Berkeley, edited by George Sampson, Vol. I, London, 1908, p. 181.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-5|←5]] ] <br /> : Ibid. , p. 191.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-6|←6]] ] <br /> : The Works of George Berkeley, Vol. 1, p. 373.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-7|←7]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 55.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-8|←8]] ] <br /> : Die Analyse der Empfindungen und das Verhaltnis des Physischen zum Psychischen, von E. Mach, Jena, 1906, pp. 8-9.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-9|←9]] ] <br /> : Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge. Its Scope and Limits, London, 1956, pp. 195-96.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-10|←10]] ] <br /> : See: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Werke, Vol. 6, Berlin, 1843, pp. 45-46.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-11|←11]] ] <br /> : Ibid., Vol. 3, p. 33.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-12|←12]] ] <br /> : Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, London, 1931, p. 70.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-13|←13]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 229.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-14|←14]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 75.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-15|←15]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 90.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-16|←16]] ] <br /> : Ibid.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-17|←17]] ] <br /> : Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Sonnenklarer Bericht an das grohere Publikum tuber das eigentliche Wesen der neuesten Philosophie, Berlin, 1801, p. 197.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-18|←18]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 234.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-19|←19]] ] <br /> : Science and Society, New York, Vol. If, Number 2, Spring 1938, p. 239.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-20|←20]] ] <br /> : Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes in: Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, 1949, Evanston, p. 49.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-21|←21]] ] <br /> : Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Vol. I, Moscow, 1973, p. 15.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-22|←22]] ] <br /> : Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Moscow, 1972, p. 590.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-23|←23]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 372.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-24|←24]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 348.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-25|←25]] ] <br /> : Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring, Moscow, 1977, p. 30.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-26|←26]] ] <br /> : Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 29.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-27|←27]] ] <br /> : Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, On Religion, Moscow, 1972, p. 200.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-28|←28]] ] <br /> : Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring, p. 18.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-29|←29]] ] <br /> : Ibid., p. 35.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-30|←30]] ] <br /> : Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 29.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-31|←31]] ] <br /> : Frederick Engels, Dialectics of Nature, p. 197.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-32|←32]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 146.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-33|←33]] ] <br /> : Frederick Engels, Anti-D&lt;span class=&quot;calibre&quot;&gt;u&lt;/span&gt;hring, p. 33.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-34|←34]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 336.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-35|←35]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 262<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-36|←36]] ] <br /> : Ibid<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-37|←37]] ] <br /> : Ibid., p. 306.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-38|←38]] ] <br /> : Ibid., pp. 261, 146.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-39|←39]] ] <br /> : Ibid., pp. 260-61.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-40|←40]] ] <br /> : Louis de Broglie, Sur les sentiers de la science, Paris, 1960, p. 203.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-41|←41]] ] <br /> : Physics in My Generation. A Selection of Papers by Max Born, London and New York, 1956, p. 160.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-42|←42]] ] <br /> : Ibid., p. 153.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-43|←43]] ] <br /> : Ibid., p. 159.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-44|←44]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 244.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-45|←45]] ] <br /> : Frederick Engels, Dialectics of Nature, p. 285.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-46|←46]] ] <br /> : Paul Labereune, L’origine des Mondes, Paris, 1953, p. 161.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-47|←47]] ] <br /> : Vorlesungen uber Naturphilosophie gehalten von Wilhelm Ostwald, Second edition, Leipzig, 1902, p. VIII.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-48|←48]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, pp. 270-71.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-49|←49]] ] <br /> : Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge. Its Scope and Limits, pp. 309, 39.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-50|←50]] ] <br /> : The Evolution of Physics by Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, Cambridge, 1938, pp. 207-08.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-51|←51]] ] <br /> : Critique of Pure Reason, translated from the German, London, 1930, p. XLI.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-52|←52]] ] <br /> : Ibid., p. 1.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-53|←53]] ] <br /> : Critique of Pure Reason, p. 3.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-54|←54]] ] <br /> : Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung, historischkritisch dargestellt von Ernst Mach, Leipzig, 1897, p.  498.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-55|←55]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 178.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-56|←56]] ] <br /> : Les Principes de la Philosophie, par René Descartes, Rouen, 1706, p. 92.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-57|←57]] ] <br /> : G. W. Leibniz, Ausgewahlte philosophische Schritten, Vol. II, Leipzig, 1915, p. 173.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_000.xhtml#citation-58|←58]] ] <br /> : Frederick Engels, Dialectics of Nature, p. 235.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-59|←59]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, pp. 69, 90.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-60|←60]] ] <br /> : Ibid., p. 244.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-61|←61]] ] <br /> : Ibid., p. 46.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-62|←62]] ] <br /> : Ibid., pp. 245, 147.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-63|←63]] ] <br /> : Ibid., p. 9.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-64|←64]] ] <br /> : Frederick Engels, Dialectics of Nature, p. 178.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-65|←65]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 69.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-66|←66]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 227.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-67|←67]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 274.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-68|←68]] ] <br /> : Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5, Moscow, 1976, p. 44.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-69|←69]] ] <br /> : Henri Wallon, De a l’acte a la pensée, Paris, 1942, Pp. 17.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-70|←70]] ] <br /> : Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 44.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-71|←71]] ] <br /> : &lt;span class=&quot;s-t14&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/span&gt;, p. 42.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-72|←72]] ] <br /> : Frederick Engels, Dialectics of Nature, p. 223.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-73|←73]] ] <br /> : Ibid., p. 197.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-74|←74]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 114.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-75|←75]] ] <br /> : Ibid., Vol. 14, p. 228,<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-76|←76]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 235.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-77|←77]] ] <br /> : Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring, p. 148.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-78|←78]] ] <br /> : &lt;span class=&quot;s-t14&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/span&gt;, p. 104.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-79|←79]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 223.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-80|←80]] ] <br /> : Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring, p. 53.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-81|←81]] ] <br /> : &lt;span class=&quot;s-t14&quot;&gt;Ibid.&lt;/span&gt;, p. 407.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-82|←82]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 93.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-83|←83]] ] <br /> : Ibid., p. 256.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-84|←84]] ] <br /> : Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 p. 104.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-85|←85]] ] <br /> : There are so many molecules in a glass of water that were it possible to mark them and pour the water into the ocean and allow sufficient time for the marked molecules to diffuse through all the oceans and seas, then, scooping up a glass of water from any sea or ocean, we should not fail to find about a hundred marked molecules in the glass.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-86|←86]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 244.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-87|←87]] ] <br /> : Ibid., Vol. 38, p. 151.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-88|←88]] ] <br /> : David Hume, “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” in Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, Vol. II, Dublin, 1779, p. 163.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-89|←89]] ] <br /> : Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, On Religion, p. 204.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-90|←90]] ] <br /> : Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring, p. 32.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-91|←91]] ] <br /> : Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 446.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-92|←92]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 274.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_001.xhtml#citation-93|←93]] ] <br /> : &lt;span class=&quot;s-t14&quot;&gt;Ibid&lt;/span&gt;.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_002.xhtml#citation-94|←94]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 56.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_002.xhtml#citation-95|←95]] ] <br /> : New Times, No. 45, November 1977, p. 5.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_002.xhtml#citation-96|←96]] ] <br /> : Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring, p. 141.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_002.xhtml#citation-97|←97]] ] <br /> : New Times, No. 45, November 1977, Pp. 12.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_002.xhtml#citation-98|←98]] ] <br /> : New Times, No. 45, November 1977, p. 6.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_002.xhtml#citation-99|←99]] ] <br /> : Documents and Resolutions. XXVth Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1976, pp. 56-57.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_002.xhtml#citation-100|←100]] ] <br /> : V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 421.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_002.xhtml#citation-101|←101]] ] <br /> : Documents and Resolutions. XXVth Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1976, p. 14.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_002.xhtml#citation-102|←102]] ] <br /> : Documents and Resolutions. XXVth Congress of the CPSU, pp. 89-90.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_002.xhtml#citation-103|←103]] ] <br /> :   See The General Council of the First International 1868-1870, Moscow, 1966, p. 311.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_002.xhtml#citation-104|←104]] ] <br /> :   V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 20, Pp. 146,<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_002.xhtml#citation-105|←105]] ] <br /> :   Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1973, P. 189.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#citation-106|←106]] ] <br /> :   V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 84-85.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#citation-107|←107]] ] <br /> :   Documents and Resolutions. XXVth Congress of the CPSU, PP. 35-36.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#citation-108|←108]] ] <br /> :   V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 9, pp. 111-112.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#citation-109|←109]] ] <br /> :   Okonomische Manuskripte 1857-1858, Moscow, 1935, pp. 88-90.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#citation-110|←110]] ] <br /> :   K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 174.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#citation-111|←111]] ] <br /> :   F. Engels, Anti-Duhring, p. 374.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#citation-112|←112]] ] <br /> :   K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 174.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#citation-113|←113]] ] <br /> :   See: K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 174.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#citation-114|←114]] ] <br /> :   K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 181.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#citation-115|←115]] ] <br /> :   Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Vol. I, Moscow, 1977, p. 499.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#citation-116|←116]] ] <br /> :   Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 481.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#citation-117|←117]] ] <br /> :   See A. Dallin, “Bias and Blunders in American Studies on the USSR”, Slavic Review, Vol. 32, No. 3, September 1973, pp. 560-76.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#citation-118|←118]] ] <br /> :   See The New York Times, March 28. 1976.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#citation-119|←119]] ] <br /> :   New Times, No. 45, November 1977, p. 6.<br /> ; [&lt;nowiki/&gt;[[#index_split_003.xhtml#citation-120|←120]] ] <br /> :   L. I. Brezhnev, &amp;quot;The Great October Revolution and Mankind’s Progress”, New Times, No. 45, November 1977, p- 6.<br /> [[Category:Library works by Progress Publishers]]<br /> [[Category:Library works about philosophy]]<br /> [[Category:Library documents from the Soviet Union]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:Revolution_in_Laos&diff=75983 2024-09-30T12:46:53Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=Revolution in Laos: Practice and Prospects|image=Revolution in Laos Cover.png|author=Kaysone Phomvihane|publisher=Progress Publishers|published_date=1981|published_location=Moscow|type=Book|source=https://www.marxists.org/archive/kaysone/revolution-in-laos.pdf}}<br /> <br /> == Preface ==<br /> Kaysone Phomvihane, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party and Prime Minister of the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos, was born on December 13, 1920 in Savannaket, Southern Laos. Son of a member of the Lao civil service, he was educated in Hanoi, where he attended a lycée and then the law faculty at Hanoi University.<br /> <br /> In 1942, Kaysone Phomvihane joined in the militant struggle of the Lao people against the French colonialists and the Japanese invaders. In August 1945 he took part in the liberation of Savannaket from the Japanese, and in 1947-1949 he led the war of liberation against the French colonialists in north-east Laos, setting up a people’s army which, on January 20, 1949, became the People’s Liberation Army of Laos (PLAL).<br /> <br /> In 1949, Kaysone Phomvihane became a member of the Communist Party of Indochina.<br /> <br /> At the First Congress of People’s Representatives of Laos (August 13-15, 1950), he was elected to the Central Committee of the Lao Liberation Front (Neo Lao Itsala), and was appointed minister of defence in the government of national resistance.<br /> <br /> At the Second Congress of the Communist Party of Indochina (February 11-19, 1951), it was decided that each country of former French Indochina should form an independent party. On March 22, 1955, the First (Constituent) Congress of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) elected Kaysone Phomvihane to the post of General Secretary of its Central Committee. That same year he was also appointed commander-in-chief of the PLAL.<br /> <br /> Kaysone Phomvihane was also one of the organisers of the Lao Patriotic Front (Neo Lao Haksat), founded on January 6, 1956 by the LPRP. In 1959 he was elected as its CC deputy chairman.<br /> <br /> In February 1972, Kaysone Phomvihane was re-elected General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party at the 2nd Party Congress, and on December 2, 1975, the National Congress of People’s Representatives of Laos, having dismantled the monarchical system, proclaimed the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos and drawn up the programme for socialist development, appointed him prime minister of the PDRL.<br /> <br /> Led by Kaysone Phomvihane, the LPRP successfully resolved the tasks of the national democratic stage of the revolution by creatively applying the principles of Marxism-Leninism within the context of the conditions in Laos. Under his direction, the Central Committee of the LPRP and the government of the PDRL are carrying through the important task of eliminating all traces of colonialism, neocolonialism and the feudal-monarchical system and are laying the foundations of a socialist society bypassing the stage of capitalist development.<br /> <br /> He also devotes much of his time and energy to organising the rebuff to attempts by imperialism and world reaction to encroach upon the revolutionary gains of the Lao people, and to further strengthening the organs of popular power.<br /> <br /> Kaysone Phomvihane has visited the USSR on several occasions. He headed the delegation from the LPRP to the 22nd, 24th and 25th congresses of the CPSU and also the delegations that attended the celebrations to mark the 50th and 60th anniversaries of the Great October Socialist Revolution. His meetings with Leonid Brezhnev on September 6, 1976, May 16, 1977 and September 26, 1979 were major landmarks in the development of fraternal ties and all-round cooperation between the CPSU and the LPRP, between the USSR and the PDRL and between the peoples of both countries,<br /> <br /> After nearly a hundred years of ceaseless struggle against imperialist aggressors, with the last thirty difficult but glorious ones under the wise leadership of our Party, the whole Lao people took power after the national uprising in the historic month of May 1975 that, like a hurricane, swept out the military and political forces of the compradore bourgeoisie, the military bureaucracy, and reactionary feudalists serving American imperialism. On 2 December 1975 the National Congress of People’s Representatives abolished the colonial and feudal regime and inaugurated the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos. This marked the victorious consummation of the national democratic and the beginning of the socialist revolution in our country.<br /> <br /> This was a signal victory unparalleled in the history of our country. Thanks to it the Lao people have rid themselves forever of imperialist and feudal oppression. Since that day, with the country coming out of the sinister shadow of usurpatory rule, the Lao people liberated themselves for the first time in their history from the bonds of slavery, ignorance, and suffering, and became the true masters of their country, their lives and their future. As it says in the Declaration of the National Congress of People’s Representatives of 2 December 1975, this victory “signifies a fundamental change in the destiny of our nation and society, opening a new era of rapid and vigorous progress of our beloved motherland on the road of independence, unity and prosperity, and ensuring the well-being, freedom and happiness of all the ethnic groups for all time.”<br /> <br /> The victory of the revolution in Laos and the victories of the fraternal peoples of Vietnam and Kampuchea make up one common victory of truly historic and epoch-making significance. This great victory signifies the failure of the bitterest counter-offensive of the chief imperialist power against the world revolutionary movement since the Second World War, a reduction of the imperialist and expansion of the socialist sphere, a breaching of the positions of American imperialism in an important part of Southeast Asia, and the breakdown of its global counterrevolutionary strategy. It meant the end of American neocolonialism in Indochina and vividly confirmed that neocolonialism would inevitably die in the rest of the world. This great victory was an important stimulus for the struggle of the progressive nations, substantially changed the global alignment of forces in favour of peace, national independence, democracy and socialism, and gave new impetus to the offensive against imperialism and reaction.<br /> <br /> The victory of our revolution also showed clearly yet again that nowadays it is possible for any nation, however small, to gain victory over imperialist aggressors, as long as it is led by a vanguard—the party of the working class that knows how to apply Marxism-Leninism correctly and creatively to the conditions of the country, and is capable to organise and unite the forces of the nation in conjunction with contemporary revolutionary forces, backed by the socialist system. We assume that the preliminary conclusions drawn from the Party’s experience of applying its strategic line, tactics and revolutionary methods during the long and complicated struggle have practical significance for our revolution at the present stage, that of the consolidation of people’s democracy and transition to socialism, and will possibly also contribute to the rich store of experience of applying Marxism-Leninism in_ the revolutions of liberation today.<br /> <br /> == Part One: The Long Road To Victory ==<br /> The Lao nation has a glorious history of many centuries. Since 1353, when our country was unified by our national hero King Tiao Fangum to become the Kingdom of Lan Xang, the people have had to wage frequent wars to defend their motherland and to fight for national independence against aggression and domination by Siamese and Burmese feudal lords. The most notable events in our history are the victory of Muong Khuc in 1536, during which King Phothisalat defeated armies invading the country under the Ayuthaja (Siamese) king; the victories of our armies under the wise leadership of King Sayasetha, national hero and liberator of the country, in 1563 and 1569 over the powerful invading armies of the Burmese feudal lords; twenty-four years of unbroken struggle at the end of the sixteenth century against the suzerainty of the Burmese feudal lords, during which, in 1579, our king, who was their vassal, was deposed. From the eighteenth century onwards, the power of the feudal lords declined, and the country was split into several parts. Taking advantage of this, Siamese feudal lords invaded and established their sway in the country. But our people did not reconcile themselves to defeat and continued this ceaseless and courageous fight against the invaders. The most remarkable event was the national uprising led by Tiao Anouvong in 1827-1828. Although the uprising was not completely successful, it is an impressive page in the history of our people’s struggle in defence of their motherland, and is impregnated forever in their memory.<br /> <br /> French colonialists invaded Laos at the end of the nineteenth century, and the country found itself under their colonial yoke. Though the aristocratic lords bowed before them, the entire Lao people continued tirelessly to resist the French colonialists throughout the country. Some national actions were very broadly based: the uprising led by Pho Cadouad in the heart of the country in 1901-1902; the armed uprisings in the south under the leadership of Ong Keo and Ong Kommadam, which continued for thirty-six years from 1901 to 1937; the Meo struggle led by Tiao Pha Patchay in 1918-1922 in a number of the northern provinces; the Lu people’s movement in the northern county of Sing that lasted from 1914 to 1918; the movement of the Thais in the province of Sam Neua in 1916, and other uprisings by different national and ethnic groups in various parts of the country. But because of certain historical conditions within the country, and of the international situation, these courageous, heroic uprisings launched by the mass of the people could not be successful. Nevertheless, they are a vivid example of our nation’s tradition of unity, and evidence of its unbending determination.<br /> <br /> In 1917, the Great October Socialist Revolution was carried out under the brilliant guidance of the leader of the world proletariat, Vladimir Lenin. It signified an enormous leap forward in the development of human society and ushered in a new epoch, the epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism on a world scale. The victorious October Revolution was a beacon of liberation not only for the proletariat of capitalist countries, but for all the oppressed peoples of the world. It lit up the way to liberation movements in all the colonial countries, including the national liberation movement in the three countries of Indochina that languished in the grip of the enormous difficulties caused by the cruel repression and perfidious manoeuvres of the imperialist colonialists.<br /> <br /> The truth that emerged from the October Revolution, that “to save the motherland and liberate the nation there is no other path but proletarian revolution”, was brought to Indochina by Ho Chi Minh, that distinguished fighter of the world communist movement. In doing this, he united genuine patriotism with Marxism-Leninism, and linked the revolutionary movement in Indochina with the world revolutionary process. In 1930, the Communist Party of Indochina was founded by Comrade Ho Chi Minh, and marked a turning point in the history of the revolutionary movement of the three countries of Indochina. From that time on-wards, the revolutionary struggle of the Lao people, led by the Marxist-Leninist party, entered a qualitatively new stage under the banner of national democracy. Despite the repressions and persecution of the French colonialists, and later the Japanese militarists, the early Communists, working boldly and selflessly underground, did propaganda work among the people. These comrades laid the foundations for the Party in mines and enterprises, offices and schools, military camps and the police; little by little, they brought together all the patriotic and progressive elements from different sections of the people, organising and raising the masses for the struggle at all levels.<br /> <br /> In 1945 the Soviet Army defeated fascist Germany and Italy and militarist Japan, forcing them to surrender unconditionally and thereby ending the Second World War. The great victory of the Soviet Union and of all the revolutionary and progressive forces of the world led to a considerable number of countries dropping out of the imperialist system. This was a great landmark in the development of the world revolutionary process; socialism went beyond the framework of one country and became a world system, and there was a powerful upsurge of the national liberation movement in the colonies and semi-colonies, and of the workers’ movement in capitalist countries.<br /> <br /> Taking advantage of the extremely favourable conditions created under the influence of the world revolutionary process and the confusion and dismay in the camp of the internal enemies, our Party took well-timed determined action to rouse the masses to the struggle, and, in coordination with the August Revolution of the people of Vietnam, wrested power from the Japanese militarists and French colonialists. On 12 October 1945 the independence of Laos was announced to the world.<br /> <br /> But soon the French colonialists, enlisting the support of American and British imperialists, once more invaded Laos, as well as Vietnam and Kampuchea. A national struggle to resist the French invaders began with the Party at its fore. Here is the situation as it shaped in the country at that time. True to its colonial policy, the French imperialists captured the main towns with the help of an expeditionary corps and Lao mercenaries, clamped down brutally on the people, and restored their rule under an only slightly changed signboard. In 1949 they played out a farce of handing over “independence” to their obedient lackeys and set up a puppet army. They established a so-called Federation of Laos, Vietnam and Kampuchea, run by a High Commissioner and the commander of the army of the French Union.<br /> <br /> As for the national resistance movement, we began our activities surrounded by enemies and with the revolution still only in its infancy. The ranks of skilled cadres and Party members were still small in number and our experience of armed uprising only negligible. Everything had to be started from scratch, relying on our own strength and potential. But on the other hand the struggle was closely allied to that of the other peoples of Indochina. We were all fighting a common enemy under the single leadership of one Party, and in a situation when the world revolutionary process was continuing to grow. Thanks to this the people of Laos were able to combine their struggle with organising, with gradually building up forces, which grew stronger, more mature, and successful.<br /> <br /> Following the line of “prolonged, all-round, nationwide resistance”, the majority of our forces were transferred, after a certain period of fighting in the towns, to rural areas, where a broad propaganda campaign was started by us among the different ethnic groups in order to rouse them for the joint struggle. The partisan movement was developing, and mass political forces and armed people’s detachments were being formed. Particular attention was devoted to setting up support bases of resistance. This was, indeed, considered the central task of the revolution at that particular time.<br /> <br /> Our fighters, cadres and Party members used the method of “armed propaganda”: while hitting the enemy, they carried on propaganda work, forming a mass base and expanding the revolutionary forces in every possible way. As a result support bases were set up in many parts of the country, where we established revolutionary power and formed popular armed forces together with mass organisations. Gradually, stage by stage, suitable methods were applied to do away with feudal and prefeudal forms of exploitation, and an improvement came about in the material and cultural life of the peasant masses; the unity of all the nationalities grew stronger and stronger.<br /> <br /> From the first support bases the resistance movement spread throughout the country. The revolutionary forces kept growing in size and strength. On 20 January 1949 the armed forces of the Free Laos (Lao Itsala) movement, now the Peoples’ Liberation Army of Laos, was established. On 13 August 1950 the first congress of the National Resistance Front passed the decision to set up the Lao Liberation Front (Neo Lao Itsala), adopted the twelve-point political programme of the Front, and inaugurated a resistance government. This was a new step forward in the development of the people’s resistance movement in Laos.<br /> <br /> The victory of the people’s revolution in China and the creation of the People’s Republic of China at the end of 1949 stimulated the resistance movement in the countries of Indochina. In 1950, Operation “Border” of the fraternal Vietnamese armed forces and the people of Vietnam breached the blockade of the French and American imperialists, thereby making it possible for the revolutionary forces in the countries of Indochina to receive direct help from the socialist countries. On 11 March 1951, the United Resistance Front of Laos, Vietnam and Kampuchea was set up on the basis of equality, mutual assistance and respect for each country’s sovereignty to intensify the struggle against French imperialism. This helped to strengthen the unity and cooperation between the armies and peoples of the three countries. In 1953, acting on the above principles, our armed forces, supported by Vietnamese volunteers, launched several successive attacks and liberated large areas in different parts of the country, including areas in the provinces of Sam Neua, Xieng Khouang, Kham Mouane, Attopeu, the Bolovens Plateau, and so on. Later on, in the spring of 1954, we liberated the province of Phongsaly and a large part of the province of Luang Prabang, breaching the enemy front on the river Nam Ou. These operations were timed to coincide with the historic battle fought by the heroic people of Vietnam and their army at Dien Bien Phu.<br /> <br /> Having suffered a crushing defeat on all fronts in Indochina, the French imperialists were compelled to sign the Geneva Agreements of 1954, in which France recognised the independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of Laos, Vietnam and Kampuchea. These agreements granted the revolutionary forces of our country legal status, and recognised the provinces of Sam Neua and Phongsaly as an area of the Pathet Lao forces, thus coming under the direct control of the revolutionary forces of Laos. The victory in the war of resistance against French imperialism was an enormous achievement for the Lao revolution. It precipitated a flood of national feeling throughout the country and opened up broad possibilities for the Party to prepare for a new stage in the revolutionary struggle.<br /> <br /> Soon after the Geneva Agreements had been signed, the American imperialists, who had from the start been interfering in the war in Indochina, hurried to take the place of France and invade our country, reckoning that they could turn it into a new kind of colony and a military base for attacking the socialist countries—first and foremost the Democratic Republic of Vietnam—so as to stem the revolutionary tide in Southeast Asia.<br /> <br /> On 22 March 1955, the People’s Party of Laos (now the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party) was set up, heedful of the new situation and the requirements of the struggle at this new stage. It was the successor to the splendid cause of the Communist Party of Indochina in Laos, taking on the historic task of guiding the people of Laos in their struggle to liberate their motherland, and against the American imperialists. A new period of difficult and intense struggle began—a period of the most remarkable and and triumphant struggle in the history of our people.<br /> <br /> 1954-1963 were years of struggle against the hypocritical counter-revolutionary strategy of the American imperialists and their henchmen, who, alternating two-faced peaceful actions with undisguised counter-revolutionary violence, tried to smash the achievements of the Lao revolution.<br /> <br /> Following the letter of the 1954 Geneva Agreements, all the revolutionary forces of our country were concentrated in the provinces of Sam Neua and Phongsaly at the end of the rainy season of that year. The day this took place became a national holiday—a holiday commemorating the unity of all the nationalities in the country, while these two provinces—the areas where our forces were concentrated— became a beacon of hope to all the people of Laos.<br /> <br /> But the American imperialists were stepping up their interference in Laos and launched feverish preparations for an aggressive neocolonialist war in Indochina. They arbitrarily included Laos, together with South Vietnam and Kampuchea, in the “defence” zone of the aggressive SEATO bloc, which they had set up in September 1954. In Laos itself they put in power the reactionary government of Katay Don Sasorith, reorganised the puppet army, increased their military and economic aid to their hangers-on and began to implement a neocolonialist policy, reckoning that they could break the resistance of the people. The government of Katay Don Sasorith, forced as it was to enter into negotiations with us, deliberately made all kinds of unreasonable demands with the aim of torpedoing the bilateral talks and finding an excuse to provoke civil war in the country. In the middle of 1955, acting on the orders of the American imperialists, it sent two-thirds of their puppet army to the two northern provinces where our forces were concentrated, and at the same time subjected the population of the rest of the country to cruel repression and persecution.<br /> <br /> Weighing up the alignment of forces within the country and the general tendency that events were following in Southeast Asia and the world as a whole, our Party worked out the following policy: to rouse the people for an all-out struggle against the American interventionists and their mercenary lackeys for a peaceful, independent, sovereign, united and prosperous Laos, and gradually and steadily to develop the Lao revolution (from proceedings of the 1st Plenum of the Central Committee of the People’s Party of Laos elected by the First Congress of the PPL). In accordance with these guidelines, our Party raised aloft the banner of peace, neutrality and national concord. It expanded the national united front and (on 6 January 1956) set up the Lao Patriotic Front (Neo Lao Haksat) which gathered together all the patriotic and progressive forces and currents in the country. At the same time, the Party put a great deal of effort into strengthening and enlarging the revolutionary forces, and took urgent measures to strengthen and increase the armed forces. It guided the courageous struggle of the army and the people in the two provinces where the Pathet Lao forces were concentrated in order to defend their inviolability and, at the same time, frustrate the major military offensive of the enemy. Parallel to this, the Party began a broad political struggle, involving in it various sections of the population in the other parts of the country, including Vientiane. Thanks to skilful combination of political, military and diplomatic methods we forced the enemy to assume the defensive, and created confusion in his ranks. Thus were thwarted the evil designs of our enemies, who had set out to destroy the gains made by the people in the resistance period. The American imperialists and their lackeys were forced to sign the Vientiane Agreement of 22 October 1957, and to consent to the formation of the first coalition government in which the Lao Patriotic Front was allotted a worthy place.<br /> <br /> While accepting these conditions, the American imperialists and their lackeys cherished hopes of enticing our forces away from the support bases, cutting the ground from under our feet and then, using other methods, to make short work of the revolutionary forces. They gambled on the coalition government, expecting to lure our Party to a path of purely parliamentary struggle and thus to undermine its revolutionary policy. Besides this, they used various perfidious methods, such as blackmail, bribery and corruption, to sap the authority of the revolution among the people, and to erode, and thereupon isolate and finally destroy, the revolutionary forces. But our enemies miscalculated, being unable to understand and properly appraise the unbending will of our cadres, revolutionary soldiers, and the entire people of Laos; they could not imagine that all their schemes and calculations could be overturned by the just cause of the revolution.<br /> <br /> Holding high the banner of peace, neutrality and national concord, in Vientiane and several other large cities, our Party, through its tireless revolutionary enthusiasm, was able to keep the revolutionary forces intact even though we were still in many ways weaker than the enemy and encountered various difficulties. What is more, we managed to establish direct contact with people from different sections of society in districts then under the control of the enemy, to spread our influence throughout the country, and to launch a struggle of unprecedented scale using all the available legal and semi-legal methods. Taking advantage of the powerful political movement of the masses, the Party forced the coalition government to pass the Constitution of 1957, which contained a number of progressive clauses, concerning, for example, the democratic rights of the people, equal rights of men and women, equality of all nationalities, abolition of the “Kouang lam” system of supplementary requisitions and unlawful taxes, and the use of Lao as the written and spoken official language. All this provided a legal basis for extending the struggle of the masses for peace and social progress. The prestige of the revolution kept rising among different sections of the population, while the extreme right-wing reactionary forces found themselves more and more isolated, divided, and uncertain. This was when a third force appeared on the political stage, gravitating towards peace and neutrality. We established a working relationship with it, which ensured an important victory of the Patriotic Front at the supplementary elections to the National Assembly in May 1958.<br /> <br /> The tactics of “enticing the tiger out of its lair” and the “peaceful reforms” of the American imperialists had failed. Frightened by the way the revolution was developing, they tried to suppress it by armed force. On 18 August 1958, the reactionary Sananikone clique, urged on by the Americans, overthrew the coalition government, denounced the Vientiane Agreement, imprisoned and massacred thousands of our fighters and patriots, blockaded two of our battalions that had been incorporated in the national army with the subsequent intention of wiping them out, and, finally, in July 1959, perfidiously arrested a group of our leaders who had stayed on in Vientiane and continued to work consistently for our just cause defending the lawful status of the revolutionary forces.<br /> <br /> Finding itself in this extremely difficult position, the Party was quick to change its tactics and adopted the principle of combining political with military struggle. On the one hand, we continued to hold high the banner of justice, peace, neutrality and national concord, striving to win public opinion both inside and outside the country to our cause, to disunite the enemy’s ranks and step up the political struggle in the country, and, on the other hand, we supplemented this by actively rousing the masses to armed struggle in order to support the political struggle.<br /> <br /> At the direction of the Party, our second battalion, finding itself encircled by enemies, demonstrated remarkable resourcefulness and bravery to break through the enemy blockade and return to the old revolutionary bases. The salvos it fired announced to the entire people that the Party had decided to take up arms and renew the struggle. Led by the Party organisations, all the peoples of Laos, headed by the Party cadres who had been sent for work among the masses during the first unification of the country, rose everywhere in a single wave and took power in many rural and mountain regions. In response to the appeal of the Party, a mass movement began in the villages and towns against the denunciation of the Vientiane Agreement, against the undisguised violence and repressions, and against the policy of stirring up civil war followed by the American imperialists and their lackeys. This movement took in soldiers and officers of the army and police, as well as the civil servants. The successful escape from prison in May 1960 of the unlawfully arrested leaders of the revolution had far-reaching political consequences at home and abroad. The event inspired the masses to rise up, while throwing the enemy into disarray and uncertainty.<br /> <br /> In these conditions, the American imperialists decided to make use of the services of the extreme right-wing group led by Phoumi Nosavan, which operated as the so-called Committee for the Defence of National Interests, to tighten the persecution and repression of the people and to launch a desperate attack on the revolutionary forces. But these actions provoked nothing but still greater indignation among all sections of the population, created dissatisfaction in the army and police, and even among a certain section of higher civil servants, and helped them to understand the justice of the revolutionary cause. All this finally led to the patriotic coup of 9 August 1960 in Vientiane.<br /> <br /> Taking account of this important development, the Party decided to support the forces that performed the coup, helped them set up a government based on peace, neutrality and national concord, and activate neutralist patriotic forces, established links with them, took part in a joint struggle against the counter-offensive of the enemy, and aided them for some time to hold Vientiane. Thus the Party created conditions in which revolutionary forces could be activated in various areas, and stepped up the nationwide struggle. Then on the crest of powerful political and military upheavals in the country, we combined head-on battles with flanking manoeuvres, and launched a rapid strategic offensive. Catching the enemy unawares, we liberated the important zone of the Plain of Jars—Xieng Khouang on 1 January 1961. Making the fullest possible use of the coalition of revolutionary and progressive patriotic forces, and also of the legal status of the new government, we did our best, on an official footing, to get the maximum assistance from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and other socialist countries. Thanks to this we were able in a brief space of time to strengthen the revolutionary forces in different ways, and particularly the army, to build up military pressure on the enemy coupled with a stepped up political offensive, broaden the network of support bases, and create an unbroken liberated zone stretching from the north to the south and taking in two-thirds of the country inhabited by a third of the population. Fearing a still more crippling defeat, the American imperialists and their lackeys were forced to consent to tripartite talks at Hin Heup and Namone, and then to a new Geneva Conference on Laos. However, they made every effort to drag out the negotiations, and at the beginning of 1962 launched a large counter-offensive in a bid to regain the initiative; for this they concentrated their crack mobile troops at Luang Namtha, including infantry and air force units of the puppet army, with technical support of the Thai army. But our armed forces and the people, using every possible means, inflicted a crushing defeat on the enemy, routed the main forces of the puppet army and frustrated the designs of the American imperialists, who, in order to put pressure on us, had concentrated a force of marines along the Thai coast for deployment to Laos if their adventurist plans paid off. Defeated on many fronts, notably at Luang Namtha, and heavily criticised by progressive public opinion throughout the world, the American imperialists and their henchmen were forced to sign the Geneva Agreements on Laos of 23 July 1962, which were signed by 14 countries. The Agreements officially recognised the provisional coalition government set up a month before on the understanding reached by the three Lao sides in the Plain of Jars. This was a great victory, and one more landmark in the rapid development of the revolutionary forces, and the consolidation of their positions.<br /> <br /> The American imperialists planned to play for time in which to reorganise and renga the puppet army and prepare for a “special war” in Laos, as well as South Vietnam. This is why, immediately after the tripartite coalition government had been set up, they began making demagogic pronouncements and started to persecute progressive elements who wanted strict observance of the Geneva Agreements. They used bribes and handouts to entice some unstable figures in the government of that time and the neutralist armed forces over to their side, in order to destroy the alliance of the progressive patriotic forces, and to isolate the Patriotic Front by means of the insidious “two against one” tactic. On 1 April 1963 they went to the length of foully assassinating Quinim Pholsena, the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the coalition government and leader of the progressive patriotic neutralist forces. By doing this they, in substance, undermined the basis of the coalition government, grossly flouted the Geneva Agreements, and again unleashed hostilities in Laos.<br /> <br /> The period between 1964 and 1973 was a period of struggle against Johnson’s “special war” strategy and Nixon’s subsequent doctrine of “redoubled special war”. During Johnson’s administration, on 17 May 1964, the US Air Force first bombed the liberated areas. During this period, the American authorities put a vast amount of modern armaments at the disposal of the rightist armies in Laos and doubled the strength of the puppet army. Besides, they set up large military units under the command of their henchmen, the fascist clique of Kouprasit-Sananikone, and flooded the country with thousands of their military advisors who actually exercised control over the activity of the Vientiane administration. With a puppet army that was nearly 50,000 strong, dozens of battalions of Thai mercenaries, supported by their own air force, the American imperialists began escalating the war in Laos while at the same time conduct. ing a limited war in South Vietnam, and a war of annihilation in North Vietnam. The “special war” in Laos grew more and more bitter. The first of these military operations was Operation “Sam Sone” (Three Arrows), in which more than 30 battalions took part, aiming to seize the strategically important areas of Vangvieng, Salafukun, Kiukatiam and Miang Sui at the junction of the provinces of Vientiane, Luang Prabang and Xieng Khouang. From the end of 1964 onwards they carried out a few more operations, each one bigger than the last, such as “‘Sonsay 1”, “Sonsay II”, “Mangxon”, and “Khottabong”, treacherously attacking liberated areas in the centre and the south, and the operation “Thanong Kiet” in which they launched dozens of attacks on our positions on the “steel” height of Phoukout, and so on. At the beginning of 1967 using four mobile brigades, the enemy attacked and seized the area of Nam Bac with the secret intention of wiping out the liberated zone in the north of the country.<br /> <br /> Our Party displayed self-possession and composure in this tense situation. Carefully weighing its forces and the forces of its internal and external enemies, seeing that there were weak spots in the so-called “unimaginable might” of the USA, the Party reaffirmed its view that the revolution would inevitably triumph providing good use was made of the nation’s potential, the advantages issuing from military cooperation with the army and people of Vietnam, and the existence of the three revolutionary streams of our time. Hence, the Party chose an offensive strategy and worked out flexible and realistic revolutionary ,methods and ways of struggle. In view of the new situation, it decided to raise the banner of struggle for national liberation and against American imperialism. Under this-banner it united the army and the people to repulse the enemy. At the same time, it extended and rebuilt the liberated areas as a separate state, converting them into a reliable rear for the nationwide struggle. Using its offensive strategy, the Party worked out tactics to pin down and then wipe out the enemy, and based the solution to the Laos question on an alliance of various national forces directed to frustrating the American imperialists’ plans of a local war in Laos. That the strategy and tactics chosen by the Party at this stage of the revolution were correct is demonstrated by the fact that the Patriotic Front mission and units of our army remained in Vientiane after the elimination of the tripartite coalition government, by the adoption of the four-point action programme of the Patriotic Front and the patriotic neutralist forces at the National Conference for Political Coordination in October 1965, and also by the military actions on various fronts.<br /> <br /> In response to the Party’s appeal to unleash the struggle for national liberation and against the American imperialists, the entire nation came into active motion. Parallel to the armed struggle our forces grew, energetic measures were taken to increase production and make us self-sufficient, and intensive building was launched in the liberated areas. Partisan operations were combined with army actions on the fronts, home-made weapons were used alongside modern armaments, the enemy was hit on the ground and in the air. As a result, all enemy attacks were beaten off, and the liberated areas came out intact. At the same time, forays were made to penetrate the rear of the enemy and set up support bases there for the partisan detachments, for extending the struggle in the enemy-controlled zone, and spreading the people’s war to all parts of the country. There were many brilliant initiatives by the people both at the front and in the rear—the movements to destroy enemy secret agents, to redouble security, to set up anti-aircraft defences, to join the army and workers’ detachments, to further the political struggle, to set up bases, to increase production, to combat illiteracy, promote hygiene and medical care, and so on. These movements extended to all parts of the country and involved all segments of the population.<br /> <br /> In January 1968 our troops attacked Nam Bac. During this operation four rightist mobile regiments were destroyed and approximately 5,000 enemy soldiers and officers were put out of action. As a result of this great victory the rightist troops, one of the two main strategic forces which it had cost the American imperialists vast resources to set up, were routed. After this, the army of the right was seized by panic. At the same time, it enabled us to inflict a number of strikes on other fronts and still further extend the territory of the liberated areas. Meanwhile, the “local war” strategy pursued in South Vietnam by the American imperialists suffered total failure as a result of the national offensive launched by the army and the popular uprising that took place during the “Chet” spring holiday of the fraternal people of Vietnam. This threw the Johnson administration into confusion. It was forced to halt the bombing of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and begin negotiations in Paris. To reinforce and broaden the front of national unity in the country, to win the sympathy and support of progressive world opinion and to further isolate the aggressive forces of the American imperialists and their lackeys, a twelve-point political programme was passed at a special Patriotic Front conference on 31 October 1968, concerning a peaceful, independent, neutral, democratic, united and prosperous Laos. This opened the way to a peaceful solution of the Laos question.<br /> <br /> But American imperialism did not want to admit defeat. At the beginning of 1969 the Nixon administration worked out a new aggressive strategy, the essence of which lay in stepping up military pressure and the “special war” in Laos to the limit, in “Vietnamisation” of the war in Vietnam, and escalating the aggressive war in Kampuchea. At the same time, the Nixon administration used various insidious political and diplomatic tricks to try and limit the significance of the struggle of the three peoples of Indochina, to regain the initiative, and to force us to accept conditions favourable for the Americans and their stooges.<br /> <br /> Laos was turned into a testing ground of the Nixon doctrine. In the middle of 1969 the American imperialists and their lackeys began Operation “Kou Kiet” (Retribution) in an attempt to seize the Plain of Jars. Nearly 50 battalions went into battle, including most of the special-purpose crack troops activated by the American imperialists as a shock force, which they maintained and which were under their direct command. Several Thai infantry regiments and artillery battalions took part in the operation. The offensive took place under cover of the American Air Force using strategic B-52 bombers. At the same time, the enemy began an unprecedentedly barbaric and inhuman war of annihilation against large, densely populated areas of the liberated zone in the hope of breaking the people’s resistance to the American imperialists and their lackeys. Those were the most difficult and tense days in the battle of the people and their armed forces. The fight was on for every strip of land, and each success was paid for with the blood and sweat of our soldiers and people.<br /> <br /> As the American imperialists got down to their “reinforced special war” in the framework of the Nixon doctrine, we had to endure tremendous ordeals. However, despite everything, our Party retained its faith in the correctness of its strategy, that of concentrating all resources in the struggle against the American imperialists and their henchmen, mobilising the people and the army to overcome the hardships and to fight the enemy, subordinating the life of people in the liberated zones to the problems of the grim war, extending the struggle in all possible directions in the areas controlled by the enemy, and creating the conditions essential for victory over the enemy. We had carried out an operation in the area of the Plain of Jars—Xieng Khouang in the beginning of 1970, during which a crushing blow was inflicted on the enemy’s special purpose forces. The regions they had previously seized were completely cleared and the enemy was driven back to its lair in the region of Sam Thong-Long Cheng. Thus, the efforts to put the Nixon doctrine into effect in Laos were frustrated. Soon we inflicted a blow on the enemy in the south, in the provinces of Saravane-Attopeu, both of which were almost completely liberated. In addition to these military strikes the Party launched a political offensive, publishing on 6 March 1970 a five-point proposal on settling the Laos problem. There was one more event of extremely great importance at this time—the April 1970 Summit Conference of the Peoples of Indochina. Those attending the conference solemnly confirmed the combat solidarity of the armies and peoples of the three countries, and their determination to wreck the scheme, under the Nixon doctrine, “to fight the. war in Indochina with the hands of the Indochinese”. They reaffirmed the aim of bringing the struggle of the three fraternal countries of Indochina to full victory. The brilliant success of this historic conference raised the fighting solidarity of the three peoples of Indochina to a new level and secured the broad solidarity and massive support of progressive and peaceloving peoples of the world, while causing deep rifts and confusion in the enemy camp, including the ruling circles of the USA. But despite everything, American imperialism continued to rant and rave. To make up for their defeat in Laos, South Vietnam and Kampuchea the Americans decided to go the limit. In February 1971 they massed more than 40,000 Saigon puppet troops and, cooperating with the Vientiane army and Thai mercenaries, under powerful cover of the US Air F orce, mounted an attack unparalleled in scale on the liberated areas in the south of Laos, in the area of Road No 9. They counted on cutting the strategically vital lines of communication between the three countries and on dividing the joint liberated zone.<br /> <br /> With the close cooperation and broad support of the army and people of fraternal Vietnam we fought the enemy tooth and nail for forty-three days in the south of the country and managed to wreck the strategic “Lam Son 719” operation of the Americans and their puppets. Developing our success, we inflicted successive blows on the enemy on other fronts and won important victories. For example, we completely liberated the Bolovens Plateau, and created a favourable strategic situation there. The remarkable victories of our army and people on the war fronts, along with those of the armies and peoples of fraternal Vietnam and Kampuchea in the spring of 1971, inflicted a crushing blow on the Nixon doctrine, demoralised the puppet armies and regimes in Vientiane, Saigon and Phnom Penh, and undermined the aggressive intentions of the American imperialists.<br /> <br /> Developing the political offensive to back up the military operations, the Patriotic Front put forward a number of new proposals on 24 April and 22 June 1971, which added details to the previously advanced five principles for solving the Lao question. In particular, they demanded that the Americans should immediately stop the bombing of the liberated areas, and appealed to the two embattled Lao sides to cease fire on all fronts and begin negotiating the restoration of peace and national concord. But the American imperialists and their stooges were obstinate and went out of their way to delay the talks. Finally, sustaining a series of defeats on various fronts and under pressure of progressive world opinion, and this also in the USA, they were forced to agree, in October 1972, to begin negotiations with us on the basis of our proposals.<br /> <br /> Thus, the struggle for national liberation against American imperialism ended in a great, complete, and convincing victory. The revolutionary forces, hardened by the bitter fighting, especially by the battle against the Nixon doctrine, grew rapidly in size and strength. By now the liberated zone made up four-fifths of the entire territory of our country, including the regions of greatest strategic importance, and embraced more than half the population. Thus it could be characterised as a real state. Economic, cultural and social development was carried out most successfully in the liberated zone, and the first shoots of socialism began to appear. In agriculture the movement for joint land cultivation became widespread, the area under crops increased continuously and production grew and new agricultural techniques were introduced. Traditional crafts were revived, and a number of industrial enterprises were set up to produce certain consumer goods and agricultural implements. The system of communications was extended, a thousand kilometres of new roads were built and a network of state and cooperative shops came into being. The financial and monetary systems were set on a firm and independent foundation. Education and public health made particularly rapid progress, and the mass movement for education and culture became widespread. The movement for hygiene, preventive medicine took in the whole country, including the mountain regions inhabited by national minorities, as did the movement for a progressive way of life.<br /> <br /> With all this going on, the Central Committee of our Party decided to call the Second National Party Congress at the beginning of 1972. After a review of the international and internal situation, the Congress summed up some of the results of the victory of the revolutionary forces, analysed and gave a unanimous evaluation of the nature and peculiarities of Lao society, set various political tasks, and determined the direction and forms of struggle during the people’s national democratic revolution and the direct transition to socialism bypassing capitalism.<br /> <br /> The Second Congress of the Party was a most important event in the political life of all our people, a landmark in the political and organisational development of the Party—the organising and inspiring force behind all the victories of our revolution. The decisions of this historic Congress became a guiding star for the Party, the armed forces and the entire people in their struggle against the country’s enemies, and set the tasks to be carried out by the Lao revolution in the years to come.<br /> <br /> While the peoples of Laos and Kampuchea were achieving their victories, the army and people of fraternal Vietnam mounted a strategic offensive on all the fronts of South Vietnam and repulsed the piratic B-52 raids on Hanoi and Haiphong. It was a Dien Bien Phu in the air, which finished off the Nixon doctrine, which was in its death throes, once and for all. In the face of complete defeat at the hands of the three peoples of Indochina, and for the sake of a so-called “peace with honour”, the American imperialists were forced to sign the Paris Agreements on Vietnam and to agree to withdraw all their armies and the armies of their satellites from South Vietnam. As for Laos, after their crushing defeat on the military, political and diplomatic fronts, the accomplices of the American imperialists had no choice but to sign an agreement on restoring peace and national concord in Laos. It was signed in Vientiane on 21 February 1973, and signified that the long aggressive, neocolonialist war fought by the American imperialists in Laos had ended in their complete and final defeat. In accordance with the agreement, a Provisional Government of National Unity was set up, along with a National Political Coalition Council, in which both sides were represented by an equal number of representatives. The capital of the country Vientiane and the former capital Luang Prabang were neutralised and given special status. All was an enormous historic victory and crowned the eighteen-year-long struggle of our and their henchmen. This victory opened new horizons for bringing the revolution to complete and final victory.<br /> <br /> By mobilising all the forces of the nation, now on the upgrade, the national democratic revolution was carried out on a nationwide scale during the years 1973-1975. This took place in peaceful conditions and in a particular situation: the country was divided into three parts—the liberated areas, areas controlled by the enemy, and neutralised areas. Each of these had its own authority: revolutionary authority, the authority of the Vientiane side, and that of the central coalition.<br /> <br /> After the Vientiane Agreement had been signed, the Party, with its slogan of “peace and national concord”, changed its methods of struggle, laying chief emphasis on a combination of mass political struggle by different sections of the population with legal struggle within the organs of the coalition in order to make the enemy abide strictly by the concluded agreements. To this end our Party strengthened its leading and directing role, and transferred part of its cadres and forces to this sector of the struggle, so as to further the development of the useful features of the various organs of the coalition and make the maximum use of the rights they gave the revolutionary forces. Making skillful use of a rich arsenal of methods, we forced the other side to agree to our demands, and thus created a legal basis for mass struggle. This was how we used the 18-point action programme of the coalition government, the agreement fixing the neutral status of the two cities, etc.<br /> <br /> Using various revolutionary methods, aware of the reactionary and diehard character of our adversaries, and taking into-account the experience of participating in two coalitions, the Party held that the revolutionary violence of the masses was and always had been the basic means of attaining final victory; that the revolutionary strategy must always remain an offensive strategy. This is why the Party considered it its basic task to strengthen and expand the revolutionary forces all round, while at the same time continuing the struggle on the political, legal and diplomatic fronts. With this aim in mind it strengthened the liberated areas in every way, established massive armed and political forces, conducted broad-based agitation and organisational work among different sections of the urban population, carried on propaganda in the army and police of the adversary, cultivated the ability of the masses to employ all forms of struggle from the lowest to the highest, and created new support points and forces of the revolution inside the lair of the enemy.<br /> <br /> Thanks to the Party’s realistic rallying slogans, conscious of the dependable backing of the patriotic forces, and foe gained a legal basis for struggle, various sections of the population in enemy-controlled areas and in the neutralised cities, especially workers, young people and students, who had long conceived a deep hatred for the thoroughly corrupt bureaucratic and military clique, came into motion, becoming more and more deeply and actively involved in the common struggle. Their demands grew constantly—from calling for democratic freedoms, for higher living standards, and for effective measures against corruption, right up to doing away with American “aid” organisations, expulsion of American advisers, dismissal of reactionary officials, and the like. More and more people joined the mass struggle that was developing rapidly and energetically. These included government workers, small traders, petty proprietors, Buddhist monks, servicemen’s families ‘and even some soldiers and officers in the enemy’s army and police. This paved the way for the growth of mass actions in various parts of the country into a movement to take power into their own hands. Specific examples of this are: the courageous action of the Vientiane power station workers, who initially demanded the dismissal of reactionaries from the station, and then took control of it; the unremitting forty-two-day struggle of the peasants and other sections of the population in the Kham Mouane district of Nong Bac, ending in their establishing their own authority over the entire district; the energetic protest movement of young people and students in Vientiane, Pakse, Savannakhet and other cities, demanding that Americans be expelled from the country, mercenary reactionaries be dismissed from authority, and that the neocolonialist education system foisted on them be abolished, etc.; and the insurrection in the 102nd battalion of the Vientiane army, during which the rebellious soldiers and officers, supported by various sections of the population, managed to establish control over the town of Houei Sai. All this showed that it really was possible for the people to gradually take power.<br /> <br /> While a revolutionary situation was taking shape in Laos, the struggle of the fraternal peoples of Vietnam and Kampuchea culminated in a great victory. Of especial significance was the successful strategic offensive launched by the army and people of Vietnam in April 1975. These events created the best possible conditions for our revolution. In view of this unique historical turn of events, our Party decided to call for a general uprising, for a general offensive, and urged the people to take power in the shortest possible time. It was planned to take advantage of the favourable Positions of the revolutionary forces in all three zones and deliver three strategic blows: a mass uprising, military pressure of the revolutionary armed forces, and the demoralisation of the enemy army. Compounded with the legal struggle, this would open up and give full scope to the potential of the entire nation, unleash a decisive struggle, and rain unceasing blows on the enemy in all directions. All forces and means would thus be brought into play to gain decisive ascendancy over the enemy, leading to the abolition of the reactionary state apparatus and its instruments of repression, and putting into effect the Party’s strategic plans. In accordance with the Party’s decisions an in view of the far-reaching changes in the three stormy actions of various sections of the population were begun under guidance of rebel committees in the enemy strongholds. Impressive demonstrations and meetings took place, condemning the crimes committed by the American imperialists and exposing the treacherous nature of the Lao reactionaries. This caused panic and confusion in the enemy camp. At the same time uprisings flared up in many of the enemy military units, which finally saw that the revolutionary cause was the right one. These units broke away from the enemy army and supported the struggle of the masses. Under this massive onslaught of the people and our army American military and civilian personnel, and the reactionary leaders and militarists, were forced to pack their bags in haste and leave the country. The enemy army and police, left leaderless, like a snake without its head, demoralised and disorganised, did not, on the whole, dare to put up any resistance.<br /> <br /> While this was happening, we launched full-scale activity on the legal front, in the organs of the coalition government. It was, for instance, on our initiative that the government passed decisions on reorganising and redistributing responsibilities in the Ministry for Defence, and issued orders for armies to stay where they were, not to resist the people, remove the cruellest of the army commanders from their posts, turn in armaments to the arsenal, participate collectively in seminars, etc. As a result the remaining military and police units were compelled to turn in all their arms and military equipment to the patriotic armed forces and the people.<br /> <br /> The old organs of government power, from provincial down to the lowest echelon fell to pieces one by one. In a few places reactionaries in disguise and political time-servers organised pseudo-uprisings in order to evade the effects of the revolution, or paraded as “progressive patriots” so as to infiltrate the people’s revolutionary committees which had only just been set up. But they were quickly exposed and punished by the people. On 23 August 1975 a mass meeting attended by many thousands took place ‘in Vientiane to mark the establishment of the revolutionary administration in the city and Province of Vientiane. This was the culmination point of the setting up of revolutionary bodies of power at all levels and in all the districts previously under enemy control. Although at this point the coalition government remained nominally in power, the enemy zone had virtually ceased to exist.<br /> <br /> In view of this situation, the National Congress of People’s Representatives, elected by vote at provincial people’s assemblies, convened in Vientiane on 1 December 1975. The Congress accepted the King’s abdication, the resignation of the coalition government, and consented to the dissolution of the National Political Coalition Council. It also unanimously passed a series of historic decisions: on the abolition of the anachronistic monarchical regime and the inauguration of the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos; on the formation of the Supreme People’s Assembly; on the appointment of the President of the country and creation of the Government of the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos, and on the national flag, anthem and official language of the country. All the nationalities of the country, along with our brother countries, and our friends all over the world, received word of the brilliant success of the Congress, which completed its work on 2 December 1975, with deep gratification. This historic event marked the victorious culmination of the people’s national democratic revolution in our country, and opened a splendid new chapter in the history of Laos, in which our people became the true masters of their country and destiny, and“ set out on the radiant road of building socialism under the guidance of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party.<br /> <br /> From the day the, revolutionary flag first began to flutter in the Vientiane sky as a symbol of our people’s right to independence, to the day when it became the flag of the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos, we traversed a difficult path full of ordeals and self-sacrifice. How many selfless. heroes laid down their lives for their country, and how much effort and energy was expended, and blood spilt, by the patriots of Laos for the sake of our glorious victory!<br /> <br /> These were years of glorious struggle in the history of our nation. In all the many centuries of Lao history, the country has never had to undergo such gruelling trials as it did in these thirty years.<br /> <br /> Our ancestors had to withstand the aggression of feudal states at more or less the same level of socio-economic development as our own. But our latter-day enemies were great imperialist powers with a colossal military and economic potential, a century ahead of us in technology and armaments and with a great deal of experience in conducting wars of aggression. The people of Laos, the makers of their history, have never before achieved a victory so splendid, so complete and final as that of today. This victory did not just restore the independence of Laos, an independence that had been flouted for more than two hundred years. It also made our multinational people the genuine master of their country after long years of living in slavery, poverty, backwardness and ignorance. They are masters of a country that is now fully independent, free, and on the road to socialism. In our deeply loved motherland, this victory made the cherished hopes and aspirations of the Lao people come true.<br /> <br /> This magnificent victory was first and foremost a victory of the correct line and wise leadership of our Marxist-Leninist Party, the Party of the Lao working class which alone expresses the interests of all the working people in the country and. of the entire nation, creatively applying the principles of Marxism-Leninism to the specific conditions of the country, our Party correctly determined the revolutionary strategy, tactics and methods of struggle, took up the banner of national democracy, and united all the nationalities of the country in a single national front, based on the alliance of workers and peasants. It managed to combine the armed struggle with the political struggle, to coordinate the actions of the national forces with the three revolutionary streams of our time, made maximum use of the contradictions in the enemy camp to split its ranks and isolate it, gradually forced the adversary to give ground, going from one victory to the next, and, finally, seizing a historically favourable moment, led the revolution to final victory. Thanks to this creative application of the correct line and policy, the LPRP leadership played a decisive role in the final victory of the revolution in our country.<br /> <br /> This great victory was the result of the solid unity of our entire people and the indestructible sense of communion between the army and the people, both of which were filled with determination to rout the aggressor. True to their fine national traditions and under the leadership of the Party, the people of Laos demonstrated unprecedented patriotism, heroism and will power in the course of the revolution. They did not shrink from sacrifices, fighting the enemy while continuing to work, and amassing strength for a long-drawn-out struggle. Their guiding principle, “The more persistent you fight, the stronger you become, and the more quickly you win”, proved to be fully justified. Our army, initially consisting of small partisan detachments armed with antiquated guns and handmade weapons, gradually matured and became strong thanks to the care and attention of the entire people, and fought heroically on all the fronts to which it was directed by the revolution.<br /> <br /> The millions of tons of metal rained upon it by the enemy the army countered with hatred, courage, resourcefulness, and close unity with the people. It parried the enemy’s every blow, and_hit him without mercy. Countless heroic deeds highlight its history, and it covered itself with legendary martial glory. Its many glorious victories and heroic feats further enriched the glowing traditions of joint courageous and irrepressible struggle passed down to us by our ancestors. The brightest and most splendid chapter in the history of Laos had begun.<br /> <br /> This was also a victory for the martial solidarity between our people and the fraternal peoples of Vietnam and Kampuchea, a victory for the unity that reposed on ardent patriotism compounded with genuine proletarian internationalism. Linked by their single colonial past, faced by a common enemy, and brought together by a common hatred and common ideals, the three fraternal nations stood shoulder to. shoulder in their struggle, helping and supporting each other, and creating favourable conditions for each other in fighting the common enemy. The indissoluble and active communion between the peoples of Laos and Vietnam, between our own and the Vietnamese people’s armies, between the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party and the Communist Party of Vietnam, was and will remain one of the decisive reasons for the victory of our revolution both in liberating the motherland and in defending and building up the country in the new stage.<br /> <br /> This great and historic victory was also made possible by the generous help and support of the liberation struggle of the Lao people by the world revolutionary movement and all the progressive forces of the world. In the struggle fought at a time when the three revolutionary streams continually delivered powerful blows on imperialism, our people had the enormous, fine, and effective aid and support of the peoples of the Soviet Union and the other fraternal socialist countries based on the splendid principles of proletarian internationalism. Besides, it had substantial material support and help from some of the liberated states and other friendly countries, and from the movement for peace and democracy, and from all progressive mankind. This tremendous aid and solidarity increased the strength of our people and were a factor of vital importance, ensuring our victory in the long, glorious struggle.<br /> <br /> But the correct and creative leadership provided by the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party was the most important and fundamental of all the factors accounting for the success of the revolution.<br /> <br /> == Part Two: Lessons To Be Drawn From The Victorious Revolution In Laos ==<br /> The great victory of our revolution was not just another affirmation of the immutable truth of the modern age that oppressed and exploited peoples are able to liberate themselves and overcome aggressive imperialism. It also provided some lessons on the application of Marxist-Leninist strategy, tactics and revolutionary methods in conditions of national democratic revolution in small countries at a low economic, cultural and social level.<br /> <br /> Several basic lessons can be drawn from the rich practice of the victorious revolutionary struggle in Laos.<br /> <br /> === 1. THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION. THE ESSENCE OF AND INTERCONNECTION BETWEEN THE TWO FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS OF THE REVOLUTION AND THEIR SOLUTION ===<br /> Many factors play a part in bringing about victory in a revolution, but the most important of all is the correctness of the strategic course charted by the Party. This course must be directed to solving the chief contradictions in the society concerned. At the same time, the policy of developing the revolution must be aligned with the objective laws of the modern age.<br /> <br /> Laos is a country with a colonial past. It endured aggressions of the imperialists and fell under their sway. All our basic national rights were usurped by the imperialists. This is why, from the moment it came into being, first as the Communist Party of Indochina and then as the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, the Party was faced with the immediate task of expelling the nation, and winning independence and freedom of the country to realise the aspirations of all Lao patriots.<br /> <br /> The distinctive feature of colonialism in the the imperialists epoch is that the imperialists enter into collusion with the most reactionary circles in the colonial countries to establish and maintain their domination. In the Past, colonialists ultimately determine the fate of the liberation movement. This is why the revolution to liberate the country must simultaneously be democratic in content. Our Party’s strategic policy was directed precisely to both the national and the democratic objectives, in accordance with the specific features of our country and with the needs of the time. As a political organisation of the working class, following Marxist-Leninist theory, our Party saw that the national and democratic problems were always closely connected with the class problem. In each historical period, the class which represents the most advanced mode of production also represents the nation and has the potential to become its standard-bearer. In Europe, for example, the bourgeoisie at one time represented the most advanced mode of production, and therefore carried the banner of national democracy. It headed the bourgeois revolution and, having overthrown the decayed feudal system, set up the capitalist system based on the principles of bourgeois nationalism and democracy. But after capitalism grew into imperialism, the bourgeoisie began to hinder the development of their nations and took to enslaving other peoples, fully losing their leading historical role. But the working class represents a new, socialist mode of production. From the moment it first comes into being it is the sole class, therefore, capable of uniting and leading all the working people, the entire nation, in the struggle to overthrow capitalism, liberate the nation, build a new, socialist society, and set society and nation on the path of progressive development. The power of the three revolutionary streams of modern times, which began growing in the period of the Great October Socialist Revolution, serves as constant and graphic evidence of the historical role of the working class.<br /> <br /> This truth was also corroborated by events in Laos and all Indochina. Ever since the French colonialists established their domination over our country, different kinds of national movements never ceased to spring up within it, led by different classes and sections of society, including the feudal gentry and tribal chiefs, as well as the bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie, and intelligentsia. All these movements, to a greater or lesser degree, were of a bourgeois national democratic character. But none of these movements could in practice end in victory, since the essence of their struggle and the direction in which they developed did not meet the basic demands of the masses and were at odds with the objective laws of the times. Hence they could not involve all the nation’s forces nor secure international assistance and support against the nation’s enemies.<br /> <br /> The victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, which opened up the way to the liberation of all oppressed people, elicited a lively response of the patriotic movement of our people. And so our Party took shape, the Party of the working class. The first political programme of the Communist Party of Indochina (1930) stated that the first thing to do is to bring about the national democratic revolution and thereupon effect a direct transition to the socialist revolution, bypassing the capitalist stage. This proposition was extended in the political programme passed at the Second Congress of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (1972). The latter says that “once the people’s national democratic revolution has been brought about, the conditions are created on a countrywide scale for the direct transition to socialism bypassing the capitalist stage of development, and for active participation in the struggle for peace, national independence, democracy and socialism throughout the world”.<br /> <br /> It is therefore quite obvious that, right from the beginning, our Party regarded the national liberation revolution in our country as a national democratic revolution that was to be achieved under the leadership of the working class, and that conformed to the principles of proletarian revolution. The tasks of this revolution were not confined to just winning national independence and democracy; the revolution also had to lead the country to socialism and communism. Furthermore, the Party always considered the national democratic revolution in our country a component part of the world revolutionary process.<br /> <br /> The Party’s general policy during the national democratic revolution was consistently revolutionary and profoundly scientific. Suiting the basic goal of the revolution, the Party’s general policy determined its Strategy, tactics, and specific forms and methods of revolutionary struggle. Putting our Party line into practice meant the following: raising the national banner, the banner of democracy under the leadership of the working class and its vanguard, the Marxist-Leninist party; setting up a broad, united national front based on the alliance between the working class and the peasantry under the guidance of the Party; establishing organs of worker-peasant power and a _ worker-peasant army under the leadership of the Party; applying flexible tactics; using various means and forms of struggle to solve all the tasks of the revolution with reliance on the revolutionary violence of the masses, unleashing a struggle to overcome the imperialist aggressors, the feudal gentry and the compradore bourgeoisie; simultaneously preparing the political, economic, cultural and ideological conditions for socialism while bringing about the national democratic revolution; making the best possible use of patriotism and the national forces in close association with proletarian internationalism and the revolutionary forces of our time, and also fulfilling other tasks. All of this ensured the full victory of the national democratic revolution in our country, and presented favourable opportunities for immediate transition to the socialist revolution.<br /> <br /> The general policy of “raising the banner of national democratic revolution under the leadership of the Party of the working class, and heading to socialism” is, as we see it, not merely the right line for the revolution in Laos, but also fully meets the laws governing the development of the struggle for national independence and democracy in the modern epoch.<br /> <br /> Working out the correct general line is extremely important for the fate of the revolution. The Party can lead the revolution to victory only if it works out both a strategic and a specific tactical course of action, taking account of the real situation in the country at each stage of the struggle. The Party analysed the character of Laotian society and the basic contradictions within it, and determined the substance and the basic tasks at all stages of the revolution, along with the aims and the alignment of forces in the revolution at various sectors of the struggle. Moreover, it analysed and evaluated the relations between the classes and the possibilities for demoralising the enemy forces, so as to correctly define the basic tasks and political goals at each stage, and direct the spearhead of the revolutionary struggle at the enemy who is the most dangerous at the particular moment. This meant that the Party had to show a creative and scientific approach to its leadership of the revolution; it needed to know the general laws of the revolution and how it would develop. It also needed a thorough understanding of social practice, in order to provide correct solutions for problems without deviating to “left” or “right”. This was especially important in a country such as ours, where the population is made up of many nationalities and ethnic groups and where there is an insufficiently high level of class differentiation, while the social standing of the classes and different sections of society, and the relations between them, have specific features.<br /> <br /> Before becoming a colony, Laos was a decentralised feudal state made up of several principalities and peopled by many mountain tribes and nationalities. The country had a private, scattered, subsistence type of economy of the early feudal variety. The French colonialists, though they did introduce some elements of capitalist economy in our country, continued by and large to rely on the feudal lords and kept the feudal and prefeudal forms of exploitation. They also supported the reactionary feudal culture in order to consolidate their rule and to oppress the people, notably the peasantry and the working people of different nationalities. To sum up, during this time Laos was in form a colony, and in content a feudal state. Immediately after the French colonialists had been expelled, there began the intrusion of American imperialists. They tried to set up a social basis for neocolonialism in Laos, using the feudal gentry, the nobility, the militarists, and the compradore bourgeoisie, and with their help put together a puppet regime under the guise of independence, in order to implement a neocolonialist policy and make our economy an appendage of their own. At the same time they disseminated their decadent culture to poison our people’s consciousness. During this period, Laos was a new type of colony, a semt-feudal state. Thus for nearly a century the basic contradictions in the country were, first, between the entire Lao nation and the imperialist aggressors, initially the French and then the American, together with their local mercenary accomplices, and, second, between the working people, chiefly peasants of different nationalities, and the compradore bourgeoisie and the feudal lords. Both these contradictions were organically linked and therefore had to be resolved at the same time. Thus, the struggle waged against the imperialists and their stooges was inseparably linked with that waged against the compradore bourgeoisie and the feudal lords. In any case, insofar as imperialism and its henchmen—the compradore bourgeoisie, bureaucracy, militarists and reactionary feudal gentry—were the most hostile and dangerous force, it was against them that the spearhead of the struggle jor national independence had to be directed. Solving one of the contradictions created the conditions for conclusive resolution of the other, and for the liberation of all the working people. In the course of the struggle against the imperialists and their henchmen, it was also essential to gradually settle the fundamental question of the democratic revolution, that of doing away with exploitation and injustice, gradually increasing the role of the working people, especially the peasantry of different nationalities, with the aim of creating the maximum unity of all the forces of the nation, demoralising and isolating the adversary, and concentrating forces against the chief enemy at the particular time.<br /> <br /> Having worked out this strategic line, the Party carried two banners at once for several decades—that of the nation and that of democracy—and correctly determined the link between the two strategic tasks. It was precisely thus that the Party was able to unite and rouse the majority of the population, from all sections of society, for joint struggle against the imperialist aggressors and their reactionary henchmen, and bring it to full and final victory. But this line of strategy was correct and creative not only because it was based on a thorough analysis of the main contradictions in Laotian society, which established the chief contradiction on which to concentrate our basic forces. What also made it correct and creative was that it determined the essence of the tasks of the national democratic revolution, taking account of the special features of the social structure and the level of society achieved.<br /> <br /> Laos is a thinly populated country, but its population consists of many nationalities and ethnic groups. With no central authority it was split up for a very long time into different parts. The sense of national unity was therefore lacking. Besides, the ruling classes and imperialists, particularly the Americans, took advantage of this for their own ends, whipping up the enmity and mistrust that existed between the various nationalities and ethnic groups, and also using such insidious methods as that of planting seeds of reactionary nationalism opposed to the revolution. This is why the essence of our national revolution was not just to drive out the imperialist aggressors and their henchmen, not just to win national independence, but also “to awaken an awareness of national unity, to achieve the equality of all within the framework of the one big family that is the Lao nation, to eradicate the narrow-minded prejudices and enmities between nationalities, and to develop as far as possible the fine traditions and potentials of all for the benefit of liberation and defence of the country” (from the Political Programme adopted by the Second Congress of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, 1972). Such was one of the main ways to unite the entire country into a single whole for the joint struggle against the nation’s enemies. ~ From the very first days of resistance to the colonialists, the Party gave top priority to unifying the different nationalities, viewing it as a strategic matter essential for mobilising the masses, uniting the revolutionary forces, and setting up support bases of resistance. Putting a series of programmes into practice, the Party helped the various nationalities to rid themselves of the feeling of hostility they had previously felt for one another, introduced political equality and in many ways improved the condition of the people. From cultivating a feeling of love for their native place, their nationality and ethnic group, the Party went on to develop a sense of national unity and patriotism among all the nationalities of the country, and to bring out the great potential of each nationality to harness . it to the cause of national liberation. This made it possible for the Party to set up support bases for the revolution in areas settled by different nationalities, to broaden its ranks, establish armed forces, lay a foundation for the Party and forge close solidarity among all the nationalities in the support bases of resistance in various parts of the country. In the period that followed, once liberated areas had been formed and see revolutionary organs of power set up, the conditions arose for our Party to develop economy, culture, education and health care in areas settled by different nationalities, to expand national development, train skilled national personnel, educate a national intelligentsia, create the conditions for a gradual elimination of inequality between various nationalities, exercise their factual equality in all fields and enable each of them to make its own maximum contribution to the great cause of the revolution. While establishing national unity, the Party always kept to the class position of the working class, striving to resolve the national question with good effect and forestalling such harmful tendencies as great-power chauvinism or narrow nationalism.<br /> <br /> Thanks to the Party’s correct policy, the forces of the revolution grew rapidly throughout the country. Each day the power of the solidarity of all the nationalities of the country became more apparent. The intrigues of the enemy, directed at dividing the nationalities, came to nothing. So did the most dangerous and perfidious strategic scheme of the American imperialists, that of using national strife to set up special-purpose troops to counter our revolution. It may be said that the Party’s creative application of the strategy of national revolution in the specific conditions of Laos—that of radically solving the problems of crushing the imperialist aggressors and their henchmen, and of securing the equality of all nationalities in the country— had decisive significance for the complete victory of our people. As regards the fundamental question of the democratic revolution, the Party decided that Laos being an agrarian country where the working peasantry made up the overwhelming majority of the population, democracy primarily and chiefly means democracy for the peasantry, while liberation of the nation primarily and chiefly means liberation of the peasantry. Our agriculture is petty and scattered, extremely backward farming at the mercy of the elements, implements and farming techniques are most primitive and limited. Not only did the multinational peasantry suffer from the feudal and prefeudal forms of exploitation, but also from its total dependence on the whims of nature, and was in the clutches of every kind of superstition and harmful custom. This condemned the peasants to want and suffering, to disease and ignorance, and affected all the clans and tribes. In countries at an advanced stage of feudalism such slogans as “Land Reform”, and “All Land to the Tillers”, are strategic in the national democratic revolution and extremely important in drawing the peasantry into the revolutionary struggle, whereas in Laos the slogan which fully reflected the cherished hopes and urgent needs of the peasants was “Joint Struggle, Growth of Production, Better Material Conditions, and a Higher Level of Culture”, together with the appeal to abolish the various forms of feudal exploitation.<br /> <br /> For this reason the democratic revolution in Laos had to tackle two fundamental tasks: winning democratic rights, abolishing feudal exploitation and developing production, and improving the condition of the peasantry in all respects. The first task was gradually solved as the revolution developed, by means appropriate to the specific relations between the peasants and the feudal gentry in each particular area, and inside each ethnic group, so as to unite the broadest forces and direct the spearhead of the struggle against the most dangerous enemy. The second task was solved before the others, even while the bases of the revolution were being established. In the initial stage the population was helped to increase production, health services and education were established, and the beginnings of a new way of life were cultivated, and so on, to rouse the masses in the provinces and organise them for the joint struggle. Once the liberated areas had been established, the organs of power and the mass revolutionary organisations took part in mobilising the population and stimulating production, in drawing up recommendations and helping with the solution of such varied problems as, for example, the provision of agricultural tools, draught animals, seeds, irrigation schemes, organising the population for joint production, improving agricultural techniques, etc. Measures were also taken to develop culture, education and the health services with the aim of gradually improving the life of the peasantry.<br /> <br /> The Party managed to define and solve these two fundamental problems after studying and drawing the correct conclusions from its great experience of working among the people in different rural areas and among the different nationalities. This, among other things, testifies to the creative treatment of the strategy of national democratic revolution in our country. Thanks to this the peasants of the different nationalities gradually became convinced in the revolutionary cause and began to link their fate to the revolution, resolutely marching with the revolution to its victorious conclusion.<br /> <br /> In the setting of the neocolonialist regime imposed by the Americans, the mercenary ruling clique ruthlessly persecuted the population of the regions under enemy control. Using its privileged position and special rights, it strengthened its hold on the economic life of the country, undermining the pillars of the national economy. This had ruinous consequences for the working people and also for other sections of the population. Thus demands for democratic rights, for an improvement in living standards, and for the abolition of the privileges and advantages of the compradore bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy, militarists and national feudal gentry, were consonant with the aspirations of the majority of the people and had a magnetic attraction for the population in the enemy zone. On a few occasions, these slogans brought the struggle of the masses in the towns to a high revolutionary pitch—especially at the time of the national uprising for the seizure of power in 1975, and played a prominent role in the victory of the revolution.<br /> <br /> The fundamental questions of the national revolution and those of the democratic revolution are closely linked and organically interdependent, insofar as each fundamental question has a national character, on the one hand, and a definite democratic character, on the other. Solving the national question offers the conditions for solving the question of democracy, and vice versa. It would therefore be incorrect to set the “national” before the “democratic” or to attach greater importance to the “national” as compared with the “democratic”.<br /> <br /> At the time when our efforts were concentrated on the struggle against the American aggressors, the compradore bourgeoisie, bureaucracy, militarists and reactionary feudal lords, the “national“ and the “democratic” were equally important for the solution of the most vital problems, because both the plunderers and traitors of the nation, and the most brutal of the people’s oppressors, were targets of the revolution. The slogan “Put back the enemy step after step, destroy the enemy bit by bit, go from one victory to the next” reflected the notion of “stage of struggle” in resolving both problems— the national and the democratic—at each specific period.<br /> <br /> At the same time, insofar as the national and democratic questions are always closely connected with the problem of the class struggle, one must, to solve any concrete problem, make a detailed analysis of the class relations in social practice, in order to avoid a dogmatic mechanical approach, especially in such conditions as those in our country, where the differentiation into classes is insufficiently clear-cut. In any case, the national and democratic problems must, in the final analysis, be essentially dealt with simultaneously. This means that at the same time as liberating the nation and winning independence, all power in the country must immediately go to the people.<br /> <br /> When raising the banner of national democracy, one must be able to differentiate between strategy and tactics, between the fundamental and the immediate questions. But most important of all is that one should never, in no circumstances, forget the class essence of the revolution and of its final aims. In some cases, therefore, for tactical reasons at this or that stage, we did not emphasise the leading role of the Party, did not talk about socialism, but instead focussed attention on peace, neutrality, national concord, coalition government, and the like. But some of the fundamental questions of the people’ national democratic revolution should be tackled immediately. These include making sure that the revolution is led by the Party of the working class, setting up the alliance of workers and peasants, establishing the people’s armed forces and organs of the people’s power under the guidance of the Party, and later, in the course of the revolution, developing and expanding them. At the same time the Party must, in the appropriate conditions, immediately begin to set up an economic and cultural base for people’s democracy as the precondition for the transition to socialism.<br /> <br /> Such are the basic lessons of our Party’s work, drawn from the successful implementation of its policy of national democratic revolution over thirty years. Now, the revolution has entered a new stage, the stage of socialist revolution. The content of the revolutionary tasks has changed accordingly, the banner of national democracy has become that of national independence and socialism. But the lessons drawn from putting the Party’s strategic line into practice remain as important as before, because the essence of the slogan of national democracy, adhered to for thirty years, is the essence of the national democracy of the working class marching to socialism. The political, economic, cultural and ideological preconditions created by the Party under this banner now constitute a sound basis for building a socialist society in our country. Using the accumulated experience in the new conditions, the Party will no doubt achieve victory at this new stage of the revolution too, thanks to its consistent revolutionary character and mastery of Marxist-Leninist science.<br /> <br /> === 2. CREATION OF A LASTING WORKER-PEASANT ALLIANCE UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF THE PARTY ===<br /> The alliance of the working class and the peasantry is one of the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism, one of the essential conditions of any revolution carried out under the leadership of the working class. The peasantry, comprising the overwhelming majority of the people of Laos, is the direct producer of material wealth for society. At the same time, it endures tremendous oppression, and thus constitutes an enormous force with a developed revolutionary character and great potential. This makes it the natural and most trustworthy ally of the working class, the hegemon of revolution. “A people’s revolution”, as Vladimir Lenin said, “one actually sweeping the majority into its stream, could be such only if it embraced both the proletariat and the peasants... Without such an alliance democracy is unstable and socialist transformation is impossible.”&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; This is why the utmost development of the revolutionary potential of the peasantry, under the leadership of the working-class Party, and the creation of a lasting alliance between the working class and the peasantry, constitute one of the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism, and serve as one of the essential conditions for the victory both of the national democratic and the socialist revolution.<br /> <br /> '''1 V, I. Lenin, “The State and Revolution”, Collected Works, Vol. 25, pp. 416-17.'''<br /> <br /> The question of the worker-peasant alliance is of particular significance in Laos. Under the colonial regime and feudal system our agriculture was small-scale and extremely backward, and the peasantry, making up about 90 per cent of the population, lived in poverty and ignorance. Time and again it rose with arms in hand against the colonialists and their henchmen. “The peasantry of our country is a large productive and revolutionary force of society, it is one of the two main forces of the revolution” (Political Programme passed at the 2nd Congress of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, 1972). Although our Party arose in an underdeveloped country with an indistinct differentiation of classes, and with a working class only just coming into being, it was still able to become the sole leader of the revolution and to lead it to full and decisive victory. This victory was of course conditioned by several factors, but the decisive one was that our Party was able to create a lasting alliance between the working class and the peasantry. “All the victories won by the revolution and the growth and development of the revolutionary forces were conditioned by the Party creating and reinforcing the worker-peasant alliance and rousing the peasants to fight for a new life, against the imperialist aggressors and their henchmen, traitors to their country” (Report on the Political Programme of the Party at the 2nd Congress of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, 1972).<br /> <br /> In setting up the alliance of workers and peasants the most important thing is for the working-class party to have the correct political line, enabling it to mobilise the peasants for revolutionary struggle. This line must meet the cherished aspirations and vital interests of the peasants, taking the working-class position into account. The peasantry is one of the major forces of the revolution, but it does not represent any definite mode of production, and for this reason does not have its own independent political line for its own liberation. Only the working class and its vanguard, armed with the scientific revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism, and possessing a firm and consistent revolutionary line, can combine its basic interests with those of the peasantry and of the nation as a whole, and thus correctly define the aims and methods of revolutionary struggle, making it possible to bring about the complete liberation of the nation, and of the peasantry in particular. This is borne out by the many years of struggle in our country, including the 30-yearlong national democratic revolution. While mobilising the peasantry and putting the worker-peasant alliance into practice, our Party never ceased to be aware of the fact that the peasantry has a powerful charge of revolutionary feeling, and that this becomes an enormous force only when the peasantry follows the working class and is under its leadership. The peasantry becomes a powerful detachment of the revolution only if it is together with the working class. The working class was weak in Laos because of the colonial regime and feudal system. The peasantry was the basic productive force of society, and all our revolutionary organisations and forces consisted chiefly of peasants. This is why we would have most certainly been deflected from the right revolutionary path and would have moved away from the principles of Marxism-Leninism and scientific socialism, if we had not, from the very beginning, established the leading role of the working class with regard to the peasantry, and if we had not been guided by the only correct ideology, that of Marxism-Leninism. This is one of the most important conclusions to be drawn from the experience of revolutionary struggle in our country.<br /> <br /> It was precisely because the Party took the standpoint of the working class as its approach that it was able to come to a correct and creative evaluation and solution to the peasant question, a solution’ which corresponded to the general laws of society’s development, and to the specific features of Laos. One should thus consider the question of liberating the peasantry in close connection with that of liberating the nation as a whole. The peasantry in Laos is made up of many different nationalities and ethnic groups, whose relations with one another remain complicated to this day. The nationalities and ethnic groups were oppressed by their own reactionary leaders, and moreover, the imperialists and feudal gentry had cultivated inequality, enmity and hostility between them, carrying out the policy of “divide and rule”. Thus, the struggle against the ruling classes, against their policy of whipping up national strife, the attempts to eradicate the backward notions held by different nationalities, and the continued efforts to strengthen national unity—to put the real equality between the ethnic groups into practice—were not just strategic tasks of the national revolution, but were among those most fundamental issues whose solution helped mobilise and organise the peasantry as one of the basic forces of the revolution under the leadership of the working class, and thus to create the forces necessary for the liberation of the nation and of the peasantry itself.<br /> <br /> The liberation of the peasantry in a colonial, feudal country must usually be accompanied by land reform, the expropriation of feudal property and the implementation of the slogan, “Land to the Tiller”. But agriculture in Laos was subsistence farming, the level of production was extremely low, survivals of prefeudal forms of exploitation were still strong and the peasants, oppressed by feudal gentry and officials, dragged out a miserable existence. Agriculture lacked sufficient basic production components, such as agricultural tools, draught animals, irrigation, farming techniques, etc., which caused the productivity of agriculture to remain low. Thus, although the peasants worked themselves to the bone, and despite the favourable natural conditions, they still could not provide for themselves. Moreover, they were trapped by mysticism, superstition and harmful customs, which made their lives even harder and more depressing, and this ultimately also slowed down production. This is why the liberation of the peasants in Laos required that all forms of prefeudal exploitation and all the privileges and advantages of the local rulers be abolished, on the one hand, and, on the other, that all the potential and forces of the revolution be used to satisfy the elementary requirements of production and to improve the peasants’ lives. It was necessary to establish conditions for expanding production, to introduce the achievements of culture, science and technology into the peasants’ lives, and to gradually improve their material and cultural standards. These were the pressing needs and cherished aspirations of the Lao peasantry. But the peasants could not solve their problems on their own. Only the Party, from its working-class standpoint, could find an all-embracing and scientific solution to the problems of the peasantry in Laos.<br /> <br /> The Party used special methods to mobilise the peasantry and create the alliance between the workers and peasants. A particular feature of the revolution in Laos is that the political struggle, right from the very beginning of the revolution, went hand in hand with armed struggle. Thus, in many localities and ethnic regions, the first contacts between peasants and workers came about through the armed forces and the Party’s propaganda detachments. Our cadres, Party members and soldiers in the armed forces and propaganda detachments combined armed struggle with propaganda work and helped the peasants to improve production and the conditions of life. At the same time, they conducted explicative work, propagating the national and democratic programme of the Party in the rural areas. In turn, the peasantry, once this enlightening and organisational work had been carried out among them, immediately joined the armed revolutionary struggle, i.e. the highest form of revolutionary struggle. The propaganda work done by the armed forces in mobilising the peasantry, and the creation during the armed struggle of an alliance between the workers and the peasants, are important features of the revolution in Laos. Not only did this correspond to the specific features of the revolutionary struggle in Laos, linking the peasants with the armed forces of the Party and helping them to understand the policy and methods of revolutionary struggle. It also led to the formation of a dependable fighting solidarity between the working class and the peasantry, which was tried and cemented in the process of the armed struggle. The political awareness of the entire peasantry of Laos grew in the hard and long-drawn-out struggle by the side of the working class. The peasants understood that their basic needs could only be fully satisfied by first bringing about the complete liberation of the nation. This resulted in the peasants identifying their feelings of patriotism with their understanding of democracy, their national feeling and their class consciousness; tight bonds linked the peasantry with the Party, and the alliance between the workers and peasants became even more enduring.<br /> <br /> In the work with the peasantry and in forming the alliance between the workers and peasants in rural areas, the Party selected creative and specific methods appropriate to the particular features of each area. Thus, in the ethnic mountain areas, where local princes and tribal leaders still had influence over the common toilers, the Party, while appealing directly to the masses, also worked with the local chiefs. We did this to create opportunities for direct contacts with the masses, to rouse and organise the peasantry, and then, relying at this stage on the peasants, to draw the princes and chiefs into the revolution and convince them gradually to stop oppressing and exploiting the peasants. In rural areas controlled by the enemy, the Party started straightaway with propaganda work among the peasant masses. It called upon them to oppose requisitions, the high poll-tax, the press-ganging of men into the army, labour conscription, repression, and to demand democratic rights, abolition of the privileges and special rights of enemy henchmen, and the right to manage their own lives. The level of the demands made in different parts of the country differed according to the alignment of forces in each specific case. The process of developing democracy was carried out in the liberated areas. The revolutionary organs of power mobilised the masses while exercising their leadership and helping them to expand production, improve the conditions of life, and ensured that the working peasants of all the nationalities and ethnic groups had the right to be sole masters of their fate.<br /> <br /> While these methods were being used to form the alliance between the peasants and workers, mass organisations were set up and consolidated under the leadership of the Party, the armed forces continued to grow in size and strength and revolutionary organs of power were established and continually strengthened. The alliance of workers and peasants became one of the most powerful of the Party’s tools in the revolutionary struggle. This explains why, while the national democratic revolution was being brought about, all the organs of the people’s power in the liberated areas, furthering the standpoint of the working class, were able to carry out democractic reforms, to expand production and improve the life of the population, and, in effect, exercised the dictatorship of the workers and peasants under the leadership of the Party. After this revolution was accomplished, the rock-like alliance between the workers and the peasants made it possible for the people’s democratic state, led by the Party, to get down to carrying out the historical tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat. These included realising the socialist revolution and the building of socialism while bypassing the capitalist stage, and putting into practice the cherished dreams of the peasants and of all the working people in the country: liberation from oppression and exploitation, from poverty and ignorce, and achievement of a happy, civilised life.<br /> <br /> === 3. SETTING UP THE UNITED NATIONAL FRONT BASED ON THE WORKER-PEASANT ALLIANCE LED BY THE PARTY ===<br /> The Party’s Political Programme of 1972 stated: “The solid unity of the entire nation is one of the factors determining the fate of our country.” The history of our people, going right back to earliest times, bears this out. During the national democratic revolution the question of uniting all the potential forces into a broad national front based on the worker-peasant alliance and led by the Party with the aim of splitting, isolating and then wiping out the enemy, was one of the strategic issues of decisive importance determining either victory or defeat. Hence, at all stages of the revolution, including the period of struggle to save the country, and against American imperialism, the Party, while following its general strategic line and working for its tactical political goals, continuously put forward a concrete united front policy, doing so m various forms and using the appropriate tactical slogans. This was directed to bringing all the people together, regardless of their social position, nationality and creed, to winning all the patriotic and progressive elements to its side, to neutralising as many of the enemy forces as possible, and thus to focussing the spearhead of the attack on the imperialist aggressors and their stooges.<br /> <br /> At the beginning of the forties, when the Party was working underground among the masses, using the slogan “Fight the French, Expel the Japanese and Win Independence”, the. Alliance for the Independence of Laos, which was one of the forms of the united front acting under the leadership of the Party, managed to unite workers, young people, civil servants and the urban poor (including Vietnamese emigrés living in Laos). It also won the cooperation of the Free Lao Front (Lao Itsala) of the intelligentsia and progressively disposed petty bourgeoisie. With the surrender of militarist Japan, the Party seized the favourable opportunity and called on the people to rise up and take power. On 12 October 1945 Laos was proclaimed an independent state.<br /> <br /> When the French colonialists again invaded the country, the Party set up the Lao Liberation Front (Neo Lao Itsala). The slogan was “People of All Nationalities and All Sections of the Population, Regardless of Class, Social Background, Creed, Sex, and Age, Unite in the Struggle Against the French and for National Independence”. The Lao Liberation Front used this to rouse people of all nationalities and all social backgrounds to fight for national liberation and counter the interventionists. The Front fulfilled its historic role brilliantly, overcoming the French colonialists.<br /> <br /> In the period that followed, suiting the new conditions of the revolutionary struggle and making use of the experience it had accumulated, the Party worked out a new united front policy. Creative and correct application of this policy brought remarkable success. American imperialism, applying its neocolonialist policy, became the chief enemy of the country at this new stage of the struggle. On the one hand, the American imperialists took advantage of the independence and democracy that had been formally declared and resorted to all kinds of insidious political and economic tricks to deceive and cajole the masses. On the other hand, they launched fierce armed attacks directed at destroying the revolutionary forces and unleashing barbaric military operations in our country. The patriotism felt by all the people of Laos who went through the struggle against the French colonialists grew deeper, the revolutionary forces became more battlehardened, and the justice of their cause became more and more obvious. The political prestige of the Party grew constantly, both inside and outside the country.<br /> <br /> In this situation, the Party worked out a new united front policy. Relying as before on the alliance between the working class and the peasants, this new policy was aimed first of all at securing the solid unity of the working people of all nationalities, and simulataneously at an alliance with the neutralist forces and members of the upper strata of society who resented the interference of the American imperialists and the mercenary policy of their puppets. The intention of such an alliance was to split the enemy ranks and isolate and then destroy the principal enemy. Thus the Lao Patriotic Front (Neo Lao Haksat) came into being, succeeding to the cause of the Lao Liberation Front and taking on its historic mission at the basic stage of the revolutionary struggle.<br /> <br /> The Lao Patriotic Front stuck to the letter of the Party’s united front policy for twenty years under the banner of national democracy and the slogan of “Peace, Neutrality, Independence, Democracy, Unity and Prosperity”. This policy was carried forward by flexible and skilful tactics, using different forms of cooperation with other forces ranging from coordinating operations in each specific case to formally organised alliance, from political alliances to military alliances, from joint actions in various mass organisations to cooperation with individual groupings in the very machinery of the central authority. Not only did the united front policy bring together people of all nationalities and ethnic groups from the main sections of society, it also helped draw people over to our side from other social groups, even including some people from the ruling echelon.<br /> <br /> One of the most important results of the Party’s united front policy applied during this period was that tt attracted the intermediary forces to our side and established political and military cooperation with the patriotic neutralist forces, the most progressive section of the intermediary forces. The patriotic neutralist forces came from circles of the intelligentsia, civil servants, students, the national bourgeoisie and Buddhist priests, who wanted a peaceful settlement of the Lao question and were dissatisfied with the interventionist policy of American imperialism, and the policy of the imperialists and their yesmen of whipping up a civil war. Later on the neutralist forces were joined by several figures of the ruling echelons from the officers corps, the so-called parliament and others. There was a particular increase in their numbers after the Patriotic Front published its political programme at the beginning of 1956, setting the slogan of peace, neutrality and national concord. The patriotic neutralist forces took an active part in the struggle of the masses against the American imperialists’ intervention and against the policy of civil war followed by the Americans and the reactionary forces of Laos. They also played an important role in drawing up the Vietiane Agreement of 1957. These forces coordinated their action with ours in the first coalition government on such important questions as the supplementary parliamentary elections, the passing of the Constitution, which included a number of progressive clauses, the promulgation of laws giving the people democratic rights, etc. All this demonstrated the practical cooperation (not formally organised) between the revolutionary and the intermediary forces.<br /> <br /> The perfidious actions of the American imperialists and ultrareactionaries, who used demagogic pretexts to do away with the coalition government and install a fascist dictatorship were resisted energetically by the masses, leading to a deep split in the enemy camp and helping to bring about the progressive coup of August 1960. The work done by our Party brought the intermediary forces to an understanding of our point of view. They agreed that it would not be possible to realise the principle of peace and neutrality until the American imperialists and their reactionary henchmen were defeated and national independence was gained. Thus the struggle of the intermediary forces took the necessary direction, making it even more large-scale, while they themselves became an important political force possessing their own army. The cooperation between the Lao Patriotic Front and the patriotic neutralist forces reached a new level—it became formally organised practical cooperation. Both sides carried out joint actions in accordance with a common programme and under the common leadership provided by the Liaison Committee of the Patriotic Forces, an organ of our coalition. But as far as organisation was concerned, each side remained independent. The next step forward was the transition from political cooperation to political and military cooperation. The armed forces of both sides coordinated their operations and supported each other in the joint regions of the two sides and in regions controlled by one or the other side. They operated according to a jointly worked-out programme, but each preserved its own organisation, leadership and military command. The form that this cooperation took was of tremendous significance in increasing and strengthening the revolutionary forces of the nation and played a very important role in the victory of our revolution during the struggle to save the country from the American imperialists. The cooperation with the intermediary forces enriched the Party by providing it with the valuable experience they had gained in their policy of a united front. It may be summarised as follows.<br /> <br /> In a semi-feudal country suffering from colonial oppression, such as Laos, with an insufficiently clear-cut differentiation into classes and with an as yet poorly developed capitalist class and working class, the intermediary forces play a very important role in all spheres of ‘activity, especially the social and the cultural. The position and interests of these strata were encroached upon by the American imperialists and their stooges. Therefore, they developed patriotic and progressive tendencies and in certain conditions demonstrated their ability to accept the line set by our Party in the national democratic revolution. Thus, with the Party taking the right approach, they were able to act as an accelerating force on the movement of the masses, especially in the towns. Our Party had to fight in every possible way for these forces, and to draw them over to its side in order to expand the progressive people’s movement. Once the solid unity of the working people of all nationalities had been established, one of the Party’s most important tasks of the united front policy was to draw the intermediary forces over to its side, and to establish cooperation with them. This was the outcome of the all-round and correct analysis of the situation that had arisen in the country.<br /> <br /> The act of drawing the intermediary forces over to its side was always one of the strategic features of proletarian revolution. It was of particular significance in the national democratic revolution and was witnessed in many countries. But usually it is a matter of drawing these forces into a united front led by the Party and setting them against the reactionary forces. In Laos cooperation with the intermediary forces had its own specific character. Having evaluated the role and potential of the intermediary forces and the relation of strength between the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces, the Party charted a transitional stage. It recognised the existence of the intermediary forces in the national democratic revolution and viewed them as an independent political force with its own organisation and with regions under its control. What is more, the Party helped them to establish themselves and to develop, and entered into an alliance with them. During the struggle against the ultraright reactionaries who had gone of their own free will into the service of the American imperialists and were counting on making short work of the revolutionary movement, the existence of intermediary forces, initially aiming just for peace and neutrality, was favourable for the revolution because it enabled us to operate “two against one” and isolate the ultraright forces. Even the American imperialists were forced to recognise the danger of such a situation. They therefore tried: immediately, at any price, to bring the intermediary forces under their control. They resorted to bribes, handouts, and all kinds of other methods to try and prevent, these forces from going over to the revolutionary side. After the treacherous actions of the American imperialists had failed, they set out to destroy the intermediary forces. However, making good use of the latter’s progressive tendencies, coupled with the magnetic pull of the revolution in general, we were able to win their confidence and make them long-standing fellow-travellers of the revolution.<br /> <br /> In its alliance with the intermediary forces, our Party always remembered that by virtue of their social position, and under the influence of external factors—the magnetic force of the true cause and the successes of the revolution, on the one hand, and the blandishments, bribes and splitting tactics used by the enemy, on the other—these forces were inclined to waver and vacillate. The intermediary forces are always liable to turn in one of two directions: either to the left, to the path of struggle and closer alliance with the revolutionary forces, or to the right, to the path of compromise, eventually leading to collusion with the forces of reaction and imperialism. The alliance with the intermediary forces thus signified both unification and struggle: it was necessary to undertake active work with them and develop their initiative, but at the same time it was essential to keep up a constant struggle, to frankly expose the mistaken tendencies of these forces, nip in the bud their defeatist sentiments, and protect their ranks from being infiltrated by enemy ideology and hostile elements. Even after a split developed within these forces, the Party continued to maintain its position of cooperation with them. We reinforced our links with the progressive elements and at the same time sharply criticised their right-wing segment for entering into a deal with the American imperialists. Nevertheless, even in this instance we continued as before to stand up for their neutrality and fought for them in an effort to preserve the barrier between them and the forces of the ultraright, to prevent them from forming a bloc with the extreme right, and always leaving them the option of rejoining the revolution. The consistent, high-principled and sincere policy of the Party as regards the united front between the revolutionary and the intermediary forces resulted in the two sides enjoying a close relationship. The intermediary forces gained confidence in the Party and resolve to march with the revolution. Furthermore, in taking this standpoint the Party helped many people on the right-wing of these forces to recognise the true face of American imperialism and its mercenary henchmen, and to perceive the revolution as a just cause. Thus, they were able to make a definite contribution to the victory of our revolution.<br /> <br /> As in the case of solidarity with members of the upper strata of society, a detailed study had to be made of the possible forms of cooperation with the intermediary forces, in order to find the appropriate ones. While the revolutionary forces were still insufficiently strong, cooperation was based on common points of view on such problems as peace and neutrality, and at times just on certain particular, specific questions. This is why the Party followed an individual approach to each side, each group and even to indwiduals, at each specific stage and on specific problems (for instance on the question of consultations between the sides, on that of supplementary parliamentary elections, on the Constitution with progressive clauses, and so on). To have set up an alliance that was not essential to the particular period would only have damaged the all-round cohesion of forces. The struggle which preceded the negotiations on setting up the coalitions is evidence of the enemy’s insistence, each time save the last, that we act with the neutralist forces as one party. Thereby the enemy reckoned on winning more seats in the coalition organs, and also on holding back any further growth of our forces, and restricting the activity of the united front within its own framework.<br /> <br /> As the revolutionary forces became stronger, as their authority grew and the revolution developed, the alliance of the different forces gave rise to more long-term common aims and tasks. To implement these aims it became necessary to find a form of organised alliance with a corresponding programme which would help coordinate the efforts made and the joint actions, while preserving the independence of each side. At the same time, this enabled us to carry out a policy of “both unity and struggle”, indispensable in strengthening and expanding the united front. An even broader united front provided the organisational form necessary for such an alliance. It encompassed not only the Patriotic Front and the patriotic neutralist forces, but also other patriotically-disposed forces and groupings. The Patriotic Front played the basic role in this united front, as a result of which the Party’s leadership in it was assured. This, in particular, demonstrates the creative approach taken by the Party to the united front. All these steps were ultimately directed to uniting all the patriotic and progressive forces and tendencies, and simultaneously to disrupting the ranks of the enemy and maximally isolating him.<br /> <br /> The military alliance was a specific form of cooperation of the various forces of the country. That such an alliance was set up is evidence of the fact that during the national-democratic revolution the armed forces of two different political forces may, in certain conditions, enter into a military alliance to fight the common enemy of the nation. Yet an army is a weapon of force, and each army has its class essence. Thus, this form of cooperation can only exist in a situation where the revolution provides the conditions and opportunities for gradually changing the essence of the army of the allied forces, and for it to become an army serving the people. Here, the questions of paramount importance are to set the aims of the struggle, to create new relations between the army and the people, and between the officers and the soldiers. Of the utmost importance is revolutionary political work in the army of the allied forces, the development of the revolutionary ideology among the fighting men and constant heightening of the consciousness of the ranks, as well as patient explanatory work among the officers. One must never forget that the independence of all the forces in the alliance must at all times be respected. The independence of each side must be based on the unity of aims of the alliance, i.e. the struggle for national independence and for the interests of the people. The experience of cooperation with the army of the neutralist forces confirmed that without the gradual conversion of the army into a revolutionary force, the allied relations between the two armies finally break down. If the class essence of the army of the neutralist forces is not changed it sooner or later becomes a force opposed to the people and the revolution.<br /> <br /> Establishing an alliance with the neutralist forces and drawing other sections of society over to its side was a considerable achievement of our Party, which it accomplished on its own. But it is only one aspect of the Party’s united front activity, a very important, but by no means the most important, aspect of its work. Side by side with the correct line taken by the Party, it was the unity of the working people of all nationalities, based on the alliance between the workers and the peasants, which guaranteed the success of its work in setting up the alliance with the other forces and in drawing them over to the side of the revolution. Without this powerful support, the revolution is not able to draw the intermediate forces and other sections of society over to its side, however flexible its tactics and however dynamic its methods. Conversely, if a united front has a reliable foundation in the shape of an alliance between the workers and peasants, then, despite any disruptive tactics of the enemy or the vacillations and wavering of the ally, especially in a period of complex and intensive struggle, the alliance will nevertheless remain intact. This is why in its work in the united front the Party must never cease to take preventive measures and fight off the deviations to the right which usually express themselves in a weakening of attention to the unity of the basic sections of society and in underestimating the role of the alliance between the working class and the peasantry; in concentrating only on winning the upper strata of society to its side and failing to pay enough attention to the interests of the people; in emphasising only unity and slackening the struggle within the united front for fear of splitting it, and in not daring to increase the level of struggle suiting the course of events. At the same time one should take preventive measures to combat sectarianism and dogmatism—the fear that the united front may become too broad or the level of struggle too high. This tendency usually surfaced after the enemy broke up the coalition or after a split appeared in the ranks of the allied forces.<br /> <br /> These are some of the lessons drawn by the Party from its work in the united front during the revolution. They make it quite clear that establishing a broad united front and a coalition led by the Party and uniting all the forces of the nation to defeat the enemy, is only possible if one is able to lean on the masses on the basis of the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, and only if one is able, on this basis, to analyse the changes occurring at each Stage in the relations between the different sections of society and evaluate any new opportunities in working out flexible and dynamic tactics.<br /> <br /> === 4. REVOLUTIONARY VIOLENCE AND THE COMBINATION OF THE TWO DIFFERENT FORCES AND THE TWO FORMS OF STRUGGLE—ARMED AND POLITICAL—TO DEFEAT THE ENEMY ===<br /> Revolution is a bitter struggle of classes. As Lenin said, “the basic question of every revolution is that of state power”.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; In leading the people to revolution, our Party set the aim of overthrowing the old system and transferring power to the people, in order to build a new society in which the people would be the true masters of its destiny. But the imperialists and the ruling classes never give up power of their own free will. This is why the ultimate aims of the revolution can be achieved only by revolutionary violence. The thirty years that our people spent fighting for the freedom and independence of their country fully confirmed the reactionary essence of the imperialist aggressors and of the local ruling circles who were in their service. Moreover, these thirty years show clearly that revolution with force is the only way for the people to win their right to an independent life.<br /> <br /> '''1 V.I. Lenin, “The Dual Power”, Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 38.'''<br /> <br /> Revolutionary violence is the violence of the masses. The national democratic revolution in Laos was a cause espoused by all patriots and forward-looking people in the country. Thus, the revolutionary violence in Laos was necessarily that of the overwhelming majority of the population, first and foremost that of the working people, who were cruelly exploited. The masses have many ways and means to demonstrate their will and determination to struggle. Generalising the practical experience of the revolutionary struggle, one can say that the violence of the masses takes two forms, those of political and armed struggle, used together and separately. It is thus necessary to set up the means of violence to bring about a revolution, i.e., the political forces of the masses and the armed forces of the people.<br /> <br /> The political forces of the masses are the forces of all the people taking an organised part in the revolution. They include the revolutionary classes and the sections of the population with patriotic tendencies, of all different nationalities, combined in a broad national united front based on the worker-peasant alliance led by the Party. In our country the political forces of the masses included the various mass organisations making up the Laos Patriotic Front—the neutralist patriotic forces in touch with the Patriotic Front and also organisations of the masses in towns controlled by the enemy, i.e. all the organisations influenced by the revolution and supporting the slogans put up by the Party at various stages of the revolution.<br /> <br /> The political forces of the masses served as the basis for the creation of the Party’s revolutionary forces, the source from which we drew our cadres, and the school in which Party members were trained and hardened. It was the political forces of the masses that at all stages of the revolution led the active struggle against the enemy, making good use of many different methods, ranging from struggle for economic interests, for improvements in the standard of life, and for the preservation of cultural values, and up to fighting to secure vitally important political rights. When the revolution became an armed struggle, the political forces of the masses were not just a source from which the people’s armed forces drew strength and reinforcements, but also became an important striking force in their own right. They always combined their efforts with the operations of the armed forces, in order to keep up sustained political as well as military pressure on the enemy. During the unification of the country the political forces of the masses became a local strike force, coordinating their actions with the legal struggle taking place in the various coalition organs, forcing the enemy to fulfil his obligations, and holding in check the enemy’s reactionary measures. At the same time, they provided vital support for the Party whenever it was necessary to alter the course of the struggle to suit new circumstances. In periods when the revolution was on the upgrade, as for instance during the national uprising and the all-out offensive on the enemy, the political forces of the masses always acted as an instrument of violence, and were of decisive importance. Together with the armed forces they undermined the morale and the fighting spirit of the enemy troops. They began by paralysing the reactionary machinery of state, then abolished it altogether, and, taking power themselves, gradually established complete popular sovereignty. As the political forces had such an important strategic role, one of the main tasks of the Party was to mobilise and unite the masses, turning them into a powerful political force of the revolution. Particularly important here was the work of organising the masses. Since the political forces of the masses were an effective means with which to fight the enemy, it was essential to draw the masses into various organisations and thus to increase the strength of the masses in their struggle against the enemy. This also made it possible to carry out educational work to unite the people and also to exercise singleminded leadership of the mass struggle. The work done in organising the masses must conform to the political line of the Party. Leaning on the workers and peasants, who comprise the bulk of the masses, the Party must set up base organisations of the masses and at the same time make skilful and creative use of different forms of organisation to draw the remaining sections of society into the general current of struggle.<br /> <br /> At all stages of the revolution we went first of all to the peasant masses of all nationalities, carrying out propaganda and educational work and transforming them into a firm and reliable political force. It was precisely this force that played an important part in the setting up and maintenance of support bases of the revolution during the mass movement of 1959-1960 to resist the colonialists, and during the longdrawn-out war of the people to save the country from the American aggressors, and also during the national uprising and the general offensive of 1975. While carrying out work among the peasantry, the Party made use of its underground support bases in the towns, leaning on the working class and various other sections of society there, and taking every possible advantage of the available legal opportunities, to bring the urban population into the different organisations and draw them by degrees into the struggle under slogans of the Party. When the national uprising to seize power was at its height, the Party was thus able to fling the vast and powerful political forces representing different sections of the urban and rural population from all areas into the decisive battle. The Party transformed the political forces of the masses into a mighty weapon, which worked with the armed forces to completely destroy the reactionary machinery of state, wipe out the existing regime, and bring the national democratic revolution to complete victory.<br /> <br /> At the same time as it organised the political forces of the masses, the Party worked to set up the people’s armed forces. One feature that distinguishes our revolution is that from the first day to the last it involved armed struggle. Therefore the creation of our country’s armed forces also had a specific character. These armed forces were established on the basis of the political forces of the masses and came into being at the earliest stage of the revolution, at the same time as the mass organisations. To begin with, they were individual groups set up to maintain public order, and small partisan detachments operating in rural areas and set up within the framework of the rural organisations of the masses. At the first stage of the revolution, the most active elements in the different organisations making up the Free Laos Movement joined the partisan detachments, involving themselves both in the legal and illegal political struggle and in the armed struggle (the partisan form). From these initial units, in the course of simultaneous political and armed struggle directed to activating, consolidating, and expanding partisan support bases, the Party created and developed massive armed forces. These armed forces were part of the local mass political forces, and supported the political forces of the masses as a whole.<br /> <br /> As the armed and political forces grew, the Party worked gradually to set up a regular army. At first it comprised units of the local people’s militia, then military units on separate fronts, and finally regular army units which were deployed from one strategically important area to another, depending on the situation. Wherever these regular army units went into action, they bolstered the political forces of the masses, and the stronger the political forces became, the more powerful the armed forces grew as well.<br /> <br /> As these two forces developed, enriching and strengthening each other, our armed forces became the military and political strength of the Party. At all stages of their development—from separate uncoordinated detachments to organised military units—the armed forces carried out two tasks. The first of these was that of destroying the armed forces of the enemy and maintaining the revolutionary support bases, and the second was work among the population, setting up, strengthening and enlarging the revolution’s political base. These tasks were interrelated, with the specific situation determining which of them came first for each subunit of the armed forces.<br /> <br /> The above-mentioned characteristics and role of the armed forces in our country give us grounds to assert that our armed forces were the revolutionary armed forces of the entire Lao people, and first and foremost of the working people, notably the working class and the peasantry, under the direct leadership of the Party. This is why our armed forces were always a reliable bulwark for the Party and the most important instrument of revolutionary force in the armed struggle, as well as a valuable support in the political struggle. At the same time they were an instrument of the dictatorship of revolutionary power, and are now a weapon of the people’s democratic state in combatting internal and external enemies, and in defending the gains of the revolution. They are flesh of the flesh of the working class, and are armed with the Marxist-Leninist teaching. During the process of the revolution the armed forces assumed three different forms: the regular army, the people’s militia, and the partisan units. All three were similarly important in strategic terms; they coordinated their actions in the process of struggle, thus heightening their combat efficiency, and serving as a reliable base for the people’s war in our country.<br /> <br /> In view of this the Party always kept to the principle of ensuring a high political and military capability of the armed forces. It worked unceasingly therefore, to establish and improve four different types of interrelations: relations between the army and the people, between the cadres and the rank-and-file soldiers, between soldiers of different nationalities and ethnic groups in the army, and between our army and the armies of other countries. It worked out the correct correlation between quantity and quality, between organisational and ideological work, between men and weapons. It continuously developed factors of morale and political factors to raise the fighting capacity of the army. It also worked constantly to ensure supplies and arms for the army. At the same time, the Party rigidly followed the policy of both fighting and continuously consolidating and increasing its strength. Despite the need for conducting constant, difficult, costly, and tense warfare for many years, and despite the general backwardness of the country, our armed forces always fulfilled their mission with honour as the instrument of revolutionary violence and the dictatorship of the workers and peasants, and remained wholeheartedly faithful to the Party. They were staunch and courageous in all situations, continued to develop and to accomplish all the tasks set them by the Party at all stages of the revolution—in the period of military operations, the period of the coalitions, and the period of the national uprising and the victorious general offensive of 1975.<br /> <br /> With two strategic forces at its disposal, the Party succeded in correctly combining two forms of struggle—the armed and the political—to accomplish revolution, liberate the country and people, and build a new society. The imperialists and their stooges from the reactionary camp kept resorting to counter-revolutionary force and tried to use various means, military and political among them, to suppress the revolution in our country. To bring the revolution to victory it was thus necessary for the Party not just to follow the right political line, but also to be able to apply the appropriate means and forms of struggle, so as to make maximum use of the revolutionary forces, to inflict blows on the enemy’s most vulnerable spots, and to secure maximally large-scale victories. To fulfil these tasks, the Party combined armed and political struggle. That the methods of struggle selected by the Party were the correct ones, and that they were creatively worked out, is clearly borne out by the thirty years of the victorious struggle of the revolutionary forces.<br /> <br /> After the national uprising of 1945, the French colonialists once again committed an undisguised military intervention in our country and trampled on our national rights and interests. This situation made armed struggle a forced form of struggle in our revolution. But to rally the people for armed struggle, it had been necessary to carry on broad propaganda and educational work, to rouse and organise them, and to involve them in various forms of struggle, from the lowest to the highest. Legal forms of activity were used, as were partisan actions, and various legal and semi-legal forms of political struggle against the repressive activity of the enemy. Then, the struggle took the form of frontal conflict, open warfare to defend their homes, and to strengthen the revolution’s support bases. The combination of armed and political struggle had been used to fight the colonialists, and later it became a regular revolutionary practice in our country. The policy of “general, all-round resistance” the Party adopted in the war of resistance therefore envisaged the combination of armed and political struggle.<br /> <br /> As the revolutionary forces and movement grew, ever new forms of armed and political struggle were worked out, differing in aims and scale. In the course of the revolutionary struggle the role and significance of each of its forms became more precise and effective.<br /> <br /> The initial task of the armed struggle was to bring about the destruction of the enemy armed forces, bit by bit, to help maintain and expand the support bases, to continuously harass the enemy in the rear, and to ensure the conditions for the political basis to be set up and expanded. Later, the tasks gradually increased. Ultimately our armed forces learned to conduct successful military operations against large enemy forces— from the strategic forces of home reaction to the armed forces of American satellites. Their operations confounded all the strategic concepts of our enemies. They defended the liberated areas and established their sovereignty in them. At the same time, they maintained pressure on the enemy, enlarging the liberated areas. The armed and the political struggle supported and supplemented each other. The armed struggle served as an effective support for the political Struggle of the masses and their movement for the right to be the masters of their own country and their own lives. It also provided reliable support for the Party at the negotiating table in the coalition organs, and made it possible to carry out work aimed at demoralising the enemy army. It was particularly important during the third coalition. After our troops had been stationed at strategically important points in the two neutralised cities, and after decisive action had been taken to cut short any enemy sallies, and particularly after the lightning deployment of our troops to the principal towns in enemy-controlled areas, the armed struggle again became a: factor of strategic importance. It enabled us to gain a decisive advantage over the enemy, undermined the fighting spirit of the enemy army, led to a cardinal change in the situation and established the conditions for a decisive uprising of the masses to seize power.<br /> <br /> The political struggle in the period of resistance to the colonialists took the form primarily of demands made by the masses in various parts of the country. These demands concerned problems affecting their vital interests, such as military and labour conscription, persecution and repression, and so on. It developed on still broader scale and in all different forms during the struggle against American imperialism. As a result of the victories on the battle-fields and the pressure our armed forces put on the enemy, and as a result of the combination of the revolutionary violence of the masses with the struggle at the negotiating table and in the coalition organs, the political struggle became one of the most important means of struggle at that time, and yielded splendid results. The enemy was forced to negotiate and to sign agreements favourable for the revolution. In particular, the enemy had to agree to the setting up of coalition organs on our terms and to carry out a number of progressive measures. All this created favourable conditions for a further intensification of the mass revolutionary struggle. This had many consequences: vacillation and division appeared in the enemy ranks, the intermediary forces went over to the side of the revolution, mutinies took place in the enemy army, and part of the enemy forces broke away and formed patriotic neutralist armed forces, which entered into a fighting alliance with the People’s Liberation Army. At the final stage of the struggle to liberate the country from the American imperialists and their stooges, the political struggle of the masses reached high intensity, especially in the towns, which led to a revolutionary situation arising in the country. The “three strategic blows” which we then simultaneously inflicted on the enemy completely destroyed crucially important enemy organs and abolished the entire ruling apparatus. All power in the country was transferred to the people and a people’s democracy was set up. This was accomplished in a very short time and without a bloody civil war.<br /> <br /> The thirty years of our struggle show that the revolution in Laos took different forms in different stages. It began with a national uprising, then passed through two consecutive stages of a long and bitter people’s war, which alternated three times with negotiations and the establishment of coalition governments, and ended with an all-out uprising and general offensive, which led to all power being handed over to the people. The struggle took characteristically different forms at each stage, but the combination of the two basic ones—the political and the armed struggle—was common to them all. The general uprising of 1945 was characterised by joint actions of the masses and their self-defence armed forces, equipped with the most primitive of weapons. During both stages of the people’s war, the main form was that of armed struggle, even though political struggle was also extremely important, especially in the areas controlled by the enemy. It was during the coalitions that the political struggle of the masses came to the fore, combined with legal struggle in the organs of the coalition. At the same time our armed forces were kept ready for action to repulse any armed provocation launched by the enemy and to defend peace. This made the political struggle very effective. In the period that began with the uprising of May 1975, the final stage of the national democratic revolution, both forms of struggle materialised into the “three strategic blows”. The armed struggle manifested itself in the deployment of troops, in their occupying the enemy’s nerve centres and in applying pressure to help the political struggle.<br /> <br /> This goes to show that at each stage of the revolution either the political or the armed form predominated, but that both were the basic forms of the revolutionary struggle in our country, and that both were of decisive importance. The armed struggle was of directly decisive importance in destroying. the enemy armed forces, in frustrating enemy military and political designs, and in setting up favourable conditions for the political struggle. The political struggle was in turn a very important and active means for consolidating and developing the successes of the armed struggle; it brought about a split in the enemy ranks, demoralising, weakening and isolating them, and in conjunction with the armed struggle and the pressure put on the enemy by the armed forces eventually secured the final victory of the revolution. Armed struggle was characteristic of all the stages of our revolution, as the country had to endure two consecutive stages of the long-drawn-out people’s war. Nevertheless, it always went hand in hand with the political struggle. At the final stage, during the general uprising and all-out offensive, the combination of the political struggle of the masses with the powerful pressure applied by the armed forces, was of decisive significance. The moment is, of course, of vital importance. But it would undoubtedly have been impossible to avoid unnecessary bloodshed using just the armed forces and the armed struggle alone. Furthermore, it would have been impossible to have won such a rapid, decisive and complete victory in the May uprising of the historic year 1975. Conversely, the political struggle, although of prime importance at certain stages, could only support and develop the revolutionary offensive thanks to successes of the armed struggle and the pressure of the armed forces. At the highest point of the May uprising, the political struggle did become a colossal force. But if the requisite dislocation of troops and their deployment had not been carried out, which made the enemy lay down arms, it would have been no easy matter to abolish the reactionary government. Thus, the coordination of action by the political and armed forces, and the combination of armed and political struggle, were an indisputable factor in the victorious revolution in Laos.<br /> <br /> There is one more factor of great importance in the leadership of the revolutionary struggle and in the combination of its armed and political forms: the correct choice of form to be used as the main one at the particular stage and timely passage from one form to the other according to the changing situation. Disregard of this factor would have stopped the revolution moving forward, and could even have set back the revolution. During the revolution, the Party passed three times from armed to political and legal struggle, and twice it did the reverse, depending on the place and time. Each time there was a change-over from one form of struggle to the other, the revolution made a qualitative and quantitative leap forward. This was especially marked at the time of the third coalition. When the revolutionary situation came about in the country, our Party took advantage of the historically favourable moment to make a rapid change in the direction of the struggle, and went over from political and legal struggle to several different forms: political struggle of the masses, armed struggle, organising mutinies in the enemy army, and putting pressure on the legal front, so as to bring the national democratic revolution to its victorious end.<br /> <br /> Being able to guide the armed and the political struggle at the same time is one aspect of the art of handling revolutionary methods and is decisively important in developing the revolution. The Party needed a deep understanding of its own position and that of the enemy, it needed ability to correctly evaluate the alignment of forces and the potential of both sides, and it needed skill to make in-depth analysis of the internal and international situation. Only then could it clearly decide which method was to be used, and correctly choose the time for going over from one to the other at each specific stage. But most important of all were the Party’s understanding that revolutionary violence was essential and its mastery of offensive revolutionary strategy. Using one of the two forms of struggle and passing from one form to the other was intended to strengthen the offensive thrust of the revolution and to select the means to raise the revolution to a new level, not to keep it in the same place and far less to set it back. Once it had been decided which form of struggle was to be used, it was necessary to make maximum use of the element of revolutionary violence inherent in it,’ while its other elements were to play a subsidiary role, setting up the conditions for bringing it about but not substituting it. Thus at all stages of the political struggle, even when the legal struggle in the coalition organs was of extreme importance and was essential for that particular period, nevertheless the most gene form of struggle was always the political struggle of the masses, all the other forms of struggle being used maximally as means of stimulating the struggle of the masses.<br /> <br /> The thirty years of continuous revolutionary struggle in our country essentially come down to a process of setting up two different forces, weapons of revolutionary violence, and to the correct and creative combination of the two forms of struggle—the armed and the political. This is the basic lesson to be drawn from our experience of applying revolutionary methods to the specific conditions prevailing in Laos. This lesson was born out in the course of revolutionary practice that our country went through.<br /> <br /> === 5. PRINCIPLED APPLICATION OF THE POLICY OF COMPROMISE ===<br /> A coordinated armed and political struggle involving the use of two forces of revolutionary violence of the masses was the principal method used during the national democratic revolution in our country. But the revolution, being a long and complex struggle, is inevitably forced to overcome the various obstacles set up by the ruling circles to prevent it reaching its ultimate goal. These circles resort to repression, fraud, corruption and other means in their fight against the revolution. These obstacles cannot be overcome immediately. The revolution is therefore compelled to change its methods. In some cases, the offensive against the enemy is conducted openly, while in others in a roundabout way, by means of “necessary compromise”’, so as to consecutively overcome the existing obstacles; gradually change the alignment of forces, and attain superiority which makes it possible to win final victory. In this lies the art of waging the struggle which allows to go from one success to the next. Our Party has used this method in a timely, active and Sagacious manner whilst directing the revolution in our country.<br /> <br /> To go from one success to the next means that at each stage of the revolution, in a specific situation and specific moment, one must correctly and minutely determine the concrete goals in conformity with our realities and those of the enemy, with the situation in our country and on the international scene; it means that one must apply methods of struggle matching the conditions and possibilities of the revolution, so as to attain the set objectives with maximum effect and thus create a possibility for raising the revolution to a still higher level, and to lay a still more solid basis for implementing the ultimate goals of the revolution.<br /> <br /> While moving from one success to the next, towards the final victory of the revolution, we came up against a highly specific problem—the struggle at the conference table and the creation of a coalition government. Taking part in the coalition governments and fighting within the coalition bodies—which were set up three times in different historical conditions and with varying alignments of forces—our Party skilfully used political negotiations, in coordination with other forms of struggle, to consolidate the gains of the revolution and to guide the revolution through the zigzags of this struggle. The well-known Leninist compromise tactics applied in the concrete conditions of the revolution in our country brought us remarkable success.<br /> <br /> The question whether or not a compromise is necessary, and what compromise is principled, has long been a controversial issue in the international communist movement between true Marxists-Leninists, on the one hand, and dogmatists, conservatives and opportunists, on the other. Lenin, the great leader of the proletarian revolution answered this question quite clearly: “The Communists must exert every effort to direct the working-class movement and social development in general along the straightest and shortest road to the victory of Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat on a world-wide scale... We have only to say ... that we recognise only one road, only the direct road, and that we will not permit tacking, conciliatory manoeuvres, or compromising—and it will be a mistake which may cause, and in part has already caused and is causing, very grave prejudice to communism.”’&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> In his work “On Compromises”, Lenin wrote: “The task of a truly revolutionary party is not to declare that it is impossible to renounce all compromises, but to be able, through all compromises, when they are unavoidable, to remain true to its principles, to its class, to its revolutionary purpose, to its task of paving the way for revolution and educating the mass of the people for victory in the revolution.”&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> '''1 V.I, Lenin, “‘Left-Wing’ Communism—an Infantile Disorder”, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 103.'''<br /> <br /> '''2 V.I. Lenin, “On Compromises”, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 305.'''<br /> <br /> After the victorious completion of the struggle against French imperialism, we were confronted by a new trial—the intervention of the US imperialists into the affairs of our country. Using the forces of the puppets in their service, they blocked the revolutionary forces concentrated in two provinces and tried to annihilate them. In these conditions, our Party launched a struggle for starting talks with the enemy in an attempt to support the armed defensive struggle of our forces in the two provinces and the political struggle of the inhabitants of the other ten provinces. When, in that period, we agreed to a coalition, we aimed to repulse the intervention of US imperialism, lift the blockade of the two provinces, and by taking advantage of our legal status to expand the influence of the revolution, to win over new forces, and thus prepare for a new stage in the struggle. In turn, the enemy reckoned, by hiding behind the screen of “national concord”, on splitting our ranks and, using bribes, on winning over some of the people, isolating the rest and thereby absorbing our forces in a peaceful manner.<br /> <br /> The first coalition government was created in 1957 under the slogan of p€ace, neutrality and national concord. Our participation in the first coalition, in addition to the struggle in other fields, proved highly favourable for the revolution. The enemy had miscalculated, for our forces were not only not destroyed, but expanded to spread over the entire country and the mass political movement grew even more to become increasingly strong and active. The struggle of our representatives in the coalition bodies, in coordination with the mass political struggle, forced the coalition government to pass some progressive measures, putting the struggle of the popular masses on more of a legal basis, and new breaches appeared within the enemy ranks. Confronted by the growth of the revolutionary and progressive forces, the enemy overthrew the first coalition government, which had existed for about a year, and turned to a policy of terror and repression. This also compelled us to change the direction of our struggle and turn to armed struggle, combined with political action. Our major subsequent victories, the mighty struggle of the popular masses and the deep breach in the enemy ranks again forced the enemy to come to the conference table. This time our enemies reckoned on slowing down our victorious military offensive and on winning time in which to reorganise and expand their forces for a new military strategy. We, in turn, wanted a useful respite in order, on the one hand, to prevent the intervention of US forces, which were then already being deployed in Thailand and were ready to invade our country, and on the other, to gain time in which to consolidate and make use of the success of the revolution and the growth of its prestige on the international scene, and also to disorganise the enemy ranks still more.<br /> <br /> The second coalition government was set up in 1962. At that time, we still had no decisive advantage over the enemy. Yet, the revolution’s positions and power had become considerably stronger than before, partly because of the emergence of the patriotic neutral forces which had allied themselves to those of the revolution. It is absolutely clear that, in agreeing to set up a second coalition government, the enemy wanted to make use of the respite to prepare a new military strategy in Laos and Vietnam. That is why the second coalition government, existing for less than a year, was also overthrown. After that, for ten years we had to wage a hard and continuous war in the course of which all the strategic designs, military doctrines and strategic forces of US imperialism and its accomplices were crushed one after the other; as a result, the enemy was again compelled to return to the negotiating table, to sign in February 1973 the Vientiane Agreement and to form a third coalition government.<br /> <br /> By the time the third coalition was formed, our authority and political positions were considerably stronger than before; we possessed greater military power, and had liberated regions taking in 80 per cent of the country’s territory and over 50 per cent of its population. Our task was to put an end to any interference or military presence of US imperialists and their satellites and to deflect ultraright reactionary forces so as to turn the coalition government into an instrument for implementing the political programme of. the Patriotic Front, coordinating its activity with that of other revolutionary forces and thereby uplifting .the revolution to a new stage. The two years of struggle that took place within the framework of the third coalition were actually two years of action by all the revolutionary forces simultaneously in three aspects involving legal struggle, mass political struggle and vigorous action by the revolutionary forces, in order to crush the resistance of the reactionaries, unite all the forces, further isolate the enemy and organise and prepare the masses for an uprising, thereby creating the material and moral prerequisites for an uprising aimed at winning power in the whole country.<br /> <br /> From May 1975 onwards, under the pressure of a mass movement accompanied by three strategic blows and the legal struggle inside the coalition bodies, all power in the country gradually passed into the hands of the people, and on December 2, 1975 the third coalition government, set up to prepare the conditions for bringing about an irrevocable downfall of the old system and self-dissolution, submitted its resignation to the National Congress of People’s Representatives.<br /> <br /> The twenty years of national democratic revolution that have elapsed since the day US imperialism began its interference and attempted to establish its neocolonialist sway in our country have demonstrated that our participation in the coalitions was exceedingly important in pinning down enemy action aimed at unleashing a war; it gave us time to consolidate and expand our forces and, most importantly, it created the conditions needed to lift the mass political struggle in the enemy-controlled areas to a higher qualitative stage. Each our participation in the coalition government had increasingly revealed the righteous cause of the revolution, activated the movement of the masses, led to a further growth in the national support given to the revolution and our struggle against the reactionary action of our enemies, and further divided and isolated the enemy ranks. This was because the correct strategy and tactics of our Party met the interests and aspirations of the broad popular masses, and also made it possible to use the contradictions within the enemy camp to split their ranks. This was also because our people were full of patriotism even though they were under the enemy’s yoke, they constantly looked up to the revolution. Numerous intermediary strata of our society, hating the policy of repression, and the war and treachery pursued by the Lao reactionaries, increasingly sided with the revolution. Yet, this is chiefly explained by the fact that the revolution possessed sufficiently strong real power and encompassed various spheres of the struggle. All this forced the enemy to carefully assess their forces each time they intended to use counterrevolutionary violence. In the long run, the correct strategic and tactical line, the struggle of the principal classes, the support from the intermediary strata, and the presence of real revolutionary forces were the principal factors determining the success of our struggle in the coalition bodies.<br /> <br /> To join a coalition is to accept a “necessary compromise”. But the essence of this compromise changed according to the alignment of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces and the historical conditions prevailing in each specific instance. At each particular moment, when determining the possibilities for compromise, the Party must carefully study its own situation, that of the enemy, and of the world, and analyse in detail all the contradictions in the enemy camp so as to use them to further its own interests, and it must also take into account the positive and negative aspects of the international situation in order to determine the degree and nature of the compromise. At such times, the Party must always remember Lenin’s precious recommendations: “The more powerful enemy can be vanquished only by exerting the utmost effort, and by the most thorough, careful, attentive, skilful and obligatory use of any, even the smallest, rift between the enemies, any conflict of interests among the bourgeoisie of the various countries and among the various groups or types of bourgeoisie within the various countries, and also by taking advantage of any, even the smallest, opportunity of winning a mass ally, even though this ally is temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional.’’&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> '''1 V.I. Lenin, “‘Left-Wing’ Communism—an Infantile Disorder”, Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 70-71.'''<br /> <br /> The purpose of our participation and struggle in the coalition was to further accelerate the onward march of the revolution, to create the conditions for moving the revolution to a still higher stage, rather than retaining the status quo or retreating; hence, in agreeing to any sort of coalition, one should not let participation in it lead to any loss in revolutionary-gains or to the containment of the struggle of the popular masses. In distinguishing revolutionary and opportunist compromises, Lenin wrote: “It is entirely a matter of knowing how to apply these tactics in order to raise—not lower—the general level of proletarian class-consciousness, revolutionary spirit, and ability to fight and win.”&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; In the conditions of the revolutionary struggle in Laos and accounting for our experience, this meant preserving the independence of the revolutionary forces including various mass organisations, defending the liberated regions, using all possible means to preserve our armed forces, the principal instrument of revolutionary violence, and ensuring a certain freedom of action for the revolutionary forces and basic democratic rights for the people so as to maintain and develop the offensive gust of the revolution and, in case of need, to turn to other forms of struggle. These were the two essential conditions necessary to ensure a principled compromise in conditions of a revolutionary struggle in our country.<br /> <br /> '''l Ibid., p. 74.'''<br /> <br /> One can make concessions to the enemy in relation, for instance, to the number of people in the government, as well as to the specific posts, qualifications and certain organisational forms accepted both by the enemy and ourselves. However, the coalition should not lead to any reduction in the combat ability of the armed forces or to a lower fighting spirit in the popular masses; neither should it bind the revolutionary forces hand and foot. In joining the first coalition during the blockade, when the positions and forces of the revolution were much weaker than those of the enemy, we agreed to reduce our armed forces and to let them be included within the Lao Royal Army; at the same time, however, as our military units became part of the Royal Army, they retained their independent organisation and, moreover, their reduction made it possible to transfer some of our regular workers and fighters to conduct political work among the masses in various areas of the country, to create a political foundation and make due preparations for the possible resumption of the armed struggle in the period to come. However, despite the fact that formally and nominally our armed forces were now part of the Royal Army, and were reduced in number, the combat efficiency of the revolutionary forces was not actually weakened. On the contrary, once the enemy betrayed the country, the whole of Laos instantly found itself, at the call of the Party, in the throes of a broad massive armed and political struggle.<br /> <br /> The activities in the coalition represented one form of class struggle. Inside the coalition, our aims and those of our adversaries were diametrically opposite. We took part in the coalition to strengthen the influence of the revolution, win over additional forces, expand the offensive, split and isolate the enemy, and together with other forms of struggle, to impel the revolution forwards and thus eventually to transfer all power into the hands of the people. The enemy, on the contrary, took part in the coalition in an attempt to do away with the revolution in some other manner and, if their forces were insufficient, to try at least to slow down its development, limit its scope, and win time for consolidating their forces, to preserve the existing regime, and then start a counter-offensive. The coalition was the result of a struggle involving revolution violence; it showed the actual alignment of forces in the particular conditions, rather than the “good intentions” of the enemy.<br /> <br /> By virtue of the class nature of the struggle during the coalition, the enemy, even though occasionally compelled to take progressive measures in the interests of the popular masses and to give some important posts in the government bodies to the revolutionary forces, nonetheless always left himself the right to actual control over government activities and retained a coercive apparatus so as to overtly and covertly hamper coordinated progressive reforms being put into practice. Hence, we never had any illustons concerning the possibility of fundamentally restructuring the social order by means of a coalition government. If any measure really did prove useful to the revolution and the popular masses, it was solely because of the close coordination of the struggle within the coalition government with the struggle of the popular masses. In certain cases, this still required pressure from the armed forces and even partial armed struggle. Lenin said in this connection: “...Limiting the class struggle to the parliamentary struggle, or regarding the latter as the highest and decisive form, to which all the other forms of struggle are subordinate, is actually desertion to the side of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.””&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> '''1 V.I. Lenin, “The Constituent Assembly Elections and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 272.'''<br /> <br /> During the coalition, legal and semi-legal struggle were closely combined with our Party’s underground, illegal work. The coalition provided broad opportunities for mobilising and politically educating the masses in regions under enemy control. During each coalition, our Party used the possibilities that existed to do legal and semi-legal work through the principal revolutionary organisations and the progressive organisations of the intermediate strata, for example youth and student organisations, to involve tens of thousands of people in the struggle being waged under Party slogans. During the coalition, the mass movement in the areas controlled by the enemy became unprecedented in its scope and took place in very diverse forms. This movement served as a powerful support to the revolution and forced the enemy on to the defensive and disorganised his ranks. However, while power remained in the hands of the enemy, open legal struggle constituted only one, in no way principal, aspect of the Party’s activity. Hence, during the coalition, the Party had to be able to use the open struggle of the popular masses to create the basic forces of the revolution. At the same time, the Party had to be able to preserve these forces, and also the Party organisations, without letting the enemy know this. Moreover, the Party always had to exercise vigilance and be prepared to immediately switch over to working in illegal conditions in case of a changed situation resulting from the enemy’s perfidious actions. The experience of participation in the three coalitions shows that the Party should always struggle against “legalism”, which leads to the forces of the revolution being exposed to the enemy, against the principle of the Party’s underground organisation being violated, against any underestimation of the work done to consolidate the Party and other principal mass organisations, and against the fear of transgressing in case of necessity the limits of the existing law. As for the Party members and regular workers delegated to the coalition bodies, the Party had to constantly remind them of the position and tasks of a revolutionary fighter, to teach them to do their best in every suitable case to rub shoulders with the masses so as to convey to them the voice of the revolution, to teach them to fight tendencies of alienation from the masses and against delusions that the enemy “seeks national concord”, delusions leading to a weakening of the fighting spirit of the popular masses.<br /> <br /> The coalition is just one form of the Party’s struggle in specific conditions; it is not the chief form of revolutionary struggle, however, since it cannot in itself lead to the downfall of the old system. During the coalition, the Party was always fully aware of the fact that in the end, power can only be taken away from the imperialists and their stooges, and transferred to the people through an uprising and revolutionary violence, thus fulfilling the strategic task of the revolution. Therefore, the Party had to be able to join a coalition when such a need arose. But at the same time, it also had to be able to drop out of the coalition as soon as the latter started to get in the way of revolutionary development, particularly when a revolutionary situation arises in the country. Lenin taught that “when legal and illegal, parliamentary and non-parliamentary forms of struggle are combined, it is sometimes useful and even essential to reject parliamentary forms’’.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> '''1 V.I. Lenin, “‘Left-Wing’ Communism—an Infantile Disorder”, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 35.'''<br /> <br /> For instance, during the historic uprising of May 1975, when the revolutionary struggle was on the upsurge, the popular masses came out with the demand:“Down with all reactionaries; no coalition with enemies.” And this was correct, since the coalition government, despite its progressive eighteen-point programme, had become an anachronism. In this situation, further participation in the coalition would only hold back the revolutionary gust of the masses, and would impede further growth of the revolution in which case we would find ourselves trapped by the enemy. On the contrary, we had to support the demands of the masses without delay, to put the forces of revolutionary violence into use to compel the enemy to lay down arms, and to break down the reactionary state machinery together with all its instruments of coercion so as to start immediately on setting up bodies of popular power. That is precisely what our Party did; as a result, it gained complete and final victory in the national democratic revolution on a nationwide scale.<br /> <br /> The experience of the Party’s leadership in the revolutionary struggle in Laos indicates that, no matter how important the participation in the coalition was to the revolutionary cause in our country, it nonetheless remained only a tactical manoeuvre en route towards the strategic goal. The Party had to be able to use the form of a coalition struggle in implementing its policy, aimed at winning victory step by step. Yet, participation in a coalition should be supported by the revolution’s real forces and be closely combined with various forms of struggle involving violence on the part of the popular masses. Only in this case is it possible to raise the revolution to a new and higher stage. In the end, only by using revolutionary violence is it possible to crush .the old social system and take power, thus reaching the revolution’s ultimate goal.<br /> <br /> === 6. SETTING UP AND UTILISING A FAVOURABLE SITUATION FOR MAXIMUM ACTIVISATION OF ALL THE REVOLUTIONARY FORCES TO DRASTICALLY BREAK UP THE REACTIONARY STATE MACHINERY AND WIN COMPLETE VICTORY ===<br /> In our country, the revolution started from naught and gradually accumulated strength. These conditions meant that our Party had to have the skill of directing the revolution, the skill involved in timing the various forms and methods of revolutionary struggle, of attaining success, and marching from one success to the next.<br /> <br /> When certain favourable internal and external conditions were taking shape, our Party momentarily took advantage of this to increase all the revolutionary forces and to raise the revolution to a new stage, bearing in mind the need to achieve maximum success for the revolutionary cause with minimum sacrifices on the part of the people. In this the Party saw not only its duty, but also its political responsibility.<br /> <br /> In our time, a time marking the transition from capitalism to socialism, a time in which a powerful offensive is being launched by the three revoluitonary streams of today, the world is constantly witnessing changes of truly historical significance, which highly favour the development of revolutionary movements in different countries. But could we take advantage of the favourable situation to raise the revolution in our country to a new height? This depended primarily on the efforts of our people, and also on the resoluteness and ability of the Party to act speedily and effectively in such situations.<br /> <br /> Being the leading force behind the revolution, our Party always realised that, on the one hand, energetic action in setting up and developing the subjective factors of the revolution in our country were basic and decisive for the revolution; but, on the other hand, it is also highly essential to be able to create a favourable situation and take advantage of it both in the internal and external plane so as to march from one success to the next and prepare the conditions necessary for the final victory.<br /> <br /> In May 1945, as a result of the great victory of the Soviet Army over fascism, a turn of epochmaking significance took place in the international situation. A mighty upsurge of the revolutionary movement began in Indochina. Despite the fact that at that time the subjective possibilities for a revolution in our country were extremely limited, the Party, taking advantage of the unique historical situation, led the Lao people, in close cooperation with the fraternal peoples of Vietnam and Kampuchea, to the August 1945 Revolution. On October 12, 1945, for the first time after many years of enslavement, the Lao people declared.their country’s independence to the whole world. A new stage in the struggle for national liberation began in Laos.<br /> <br /> In 1959, the US imperialists and their accomplices, who had betrayed the cause of national concord, put a block in the way of the people’s aspiration for peace and independence, and this caused anger and indignation among various sections of the population. In this situation, the Party made correct and well-timed changes in its tactical line, rallied the whole people of the country and roused them to the active struggle, which culminated in the coup of August 1960. The Party immediately took advantage of the situation in the country to rapidly expand the national united front, obtain international support, and to build up the forces of the revolution at an unprecedentedly high rate. As a result, the revolution leapt forward; two-thirds of the country’s territory and half of its population were liberated, and a tripartite coalition government was set up under the terms that we had proposed. All this served as a reliable foundation and stimulus for the further development of the revolution.<br /> <br /> Using these invaluable lessons of revolutionary practice, our Party wisely and creatively solved the problem of setting up a favourable situation and utilising it in the final stage of the national democratic revolution in our country, and carried the revolution to complete and final victory.<br /> <br /> After signing the Vientiane Agreement in February 1973, we were able largely to restrict US interference in Laos. Relying on the increased real forces of the revolution and combining mass political struggle with legal struggle in the coalition bodies and with resolute measures against the adventurous military action perpetrated by the ultraright militant circles, we compelled the enemy to accept and fulfil a number of clauses in the Agreement which were highly favourable to the revolution, including the clause on neutralising Vientiane and Luang Prabang. Up against the increased authority and influence of the revolutionary forces, and faced with the serious defeat of US neocolonialist strategy in Indochina, a deep split occurred within the ranks of Lao reactionaries. The struggle of various social strata, particularly in urban areas, flared up with remarkable vigour, and the intermediary forces continued increasingly to side with’ the revolution. A revolutionary situation had taken shape in the country, and the question of the revolutionary forces taking power became a real one.<br /> <br /> Our Party had always maintained the opinion that one can only come to power through the use of revolutionary violence, not through reforms or changes in the coalition government, since the bourgeois state “cannot be superseded by the proletarian state (the dictatorship of the proletariat) through the process of ‘withering away’, but, as a general rule, only through a violent revolution”’.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> '''1 V.I. Lenin, “The State and Revolution”, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 400.'''<br /> <br /> The question was how to apply tactics involving the use of force so as to take and hold power without starting a new civil war. Several notable events in early 1974-late 1975, such as the capture by workers of the Vientiane Power Station, the uprising of peasants and other sections of society in Nong Bac (Khammouane Province) and establishment of their power there, the action taken by young people and students in Vientiane, Pakse, Savannakhet and other towns, and mutinies in the enemy army in Houei Sai, confirmed the possibility of capturing and retaining power in various districts through the simultaneous action of the masses in the provinces, presure on the part of revolutionary armed forces, mutinies in the enemy army and through presure via the coalition bodies. Moreover, this made it possible for us to contain retaliatory action launched both inside and outside the country. The enemy was still trying to suppress the revolution and was offering desperate resistance to the insurgent masses; however, by skilfully combining various methods and taking suitable steps, we managed to parry the enemy’s countermeasures and prevent new war flaring up in the country. In these conditions, the Party developed the following tactics for taking power: popular uprisings in certain parts of the country and the capture of local government bodies as a precondition for organising a national uprising and capturing power all over the country. In conformity with these tactics and under the direct leadership of the Central Committee, the Party organisations, the army and the people started active, all-round preparations for this uprising: the revolutionary forces in all the three zones were aligned and strengthened; the political and armed forces were consolidated; agitation and propaganda in the enemy army were stepped up; activity in the coalition bodies was increased to compel the enemy to satisfy the legitimate demands of the popular masses and pass laws to serve as the legal foundation for a mass uprising all over the country.<br /> <br /> It was precisely during this period that the great victory of the people of Kampuchea and, particularly, the great and powerful offensive of the army and people of Vietnam in the spring of 1975—completely frustrating the neocolonialist strategy of US imperialism in these two countries—had a powerful influence on the revolutionary process in our country. A unique historical moment that occurs once in a thousand years had come for the people to win power on a nationwide scale.<br /> <br /> The question of a favourable situation and of preparing the forces to meet it has always been of decisive significance for all revolutions. Our Party was fully aware of the combined result of these two factors: only in the presence of forces is it possible to set up and utilise a favourable situation and, vice versa, a favourable situation itself multiplies forces and underlies the emergence of new forces. Hence, a favourable situation ts also a force in itself. As the revolutions in Laos, Vietnam and Kampuchea were closely related and as their geographic position had turned them into a united fighting front, the objective situation which resulted after the complete victory of the revolution in two fraternal countries and particularly in Vietnam had tremendous significance for the revolution in our country. The thunder of victory in Vietnam and Kampuchea announced the imminent and inevitable downfall of all the lackeys of US imperialism in Laos. At the same time, these victories served as a powerful impulse in the struggle of our people and created favourable conditions for swift development of the revolution in our country.<br /> <br /> Lenin, the great leader of the world proletariat, wrote that one must be able to choose the right moment and act resolutely: “History will not forgive revolutionaries for procrastinating when they could be victorious today (and they certainly will be victorious today), while they risk losing much tomorrow, in fact, they risk losing everything.”&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> '''1 V.I. Lenin, “Letter to Central Committee Members”, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 235.'''<br /> <br /> With a good understanding of the important strategic significance of the historical situation and the opportunities it provided us with, our Party—despite the fact that at that time preparations were still incomplete—nevertheless decided to rouse the people in May 1975 in a bid to win power. This historically important decision was based on the premise that the basic conditions ensuring the success of an uprising in our country had at that time already matured. These conditions corresponded to Lenin’s tenets on this question: “1) growth of the revolution on a country-wide scale; 2) the complete moral and political bankruptcy of the old government, for example, the ‘coalition’ government; 3) extreme vacillation in the camp of all middle groups, i.e., those who do not fully support the government, although they did fully support it yesterday.”’&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; The strategic decision of our Party to start an uprising was also based on a correct revolutionary and scientifically-grounded assessment of the revolutionary forces, on a correct estimate of the enemy’s and our own positions and forces, of all the forces in the liberated districts and the forces of the popular masses in districts under enemy control; of the potential for mobilisation in that period and after the uprising had begun; of the effect of partial victories on the victory of the whole movement, and so on. However, the most important factor in taking this strategic decision was alignment of the enemy’s and our own forces. At that time, the enemy army was considerably superior to our armed forces, both in its size and military equipment; moreover, the enemy, who had retained considerable power, still had a large police force and a machinery of coercion both in the capital and provinces. It was therefore essential to reject a simplified approach and avoid being taken in by solely quantitative estimates leading to a failure to give full consideration to the dialectical relationship between material and moral factors, between the strategic situation and the revolutionary forces on the eve of this unique historical moment. At the same time, we had to fight right-wing tendencies and wavering opinions, and also all kinds of views deviating from strict adherence to the policy leading to an uprising. All this was aimed at ensuring the Party’s internal unity with regard to its political line and practical action.<br /> <br /> '''1 V.I. Lenin, “Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?”’, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 134.'''<br /> <br /> Our Party carefully worked out a plan to bring about the general uprising and adopted a decision to that effect. It proceeded from Marx’s tenet, cited by Lenin, that an armed “insurrection is an art quite as much as war”, and one should never play with insurrection.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; The Party drew up a comprehensive analysis of the specific situation in the country and on the international scene, in the enemy camp and in our own, to determine the ways and means to be used to launch a national uprising and general offensive.<br /> <br /> '''1 V.I. Lenin, “Advice of an Onlooker”, Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 179, 180.'''<br /> <br /> Basically, the popular uprising was to begin simultaneously all over the country and, naturally, in the capital and other main political and economic centres, so as to instantly destroy the enemy government bodies. This was confirmed by the experience of the August 1945 uprising.<br /> <br /> By the May 1975 uprising, the enemy army and police, though weaker in morale, was organisationally the same; the intermediary forces, though they on the whole supported the revolution, were to no small extent deceived by reactionary propaganda and were still not fully aware of the perfidious schemes of the enemy, who counted on avoiding the blow of the revolution. At the same time, our preparatory work was not yet complete, the number of regular Party workers who could lead the movement was limited, and a considerable part of our armed forces remained in the liberated districts. Hence, to centralise the leadership and concentrate the political and armed forces so as to achieve success from the very start and, by marching from one success to the next and taking advantage of the chaos and confusion in the enemy camp, to thus crush him by consecutive blows and win complete victory, our Party adopted a decision on unleashing the national uprising and winning power in accordance with a plan that determined ways and methods of action at every stage, involving a number of specific steps and measures.<br /> <br /> To begin with, we were to develop a powerful political movement of the popular masses in the towns, insisting on ridding the country of the US imperialists and on removing the most reactionary Sananikone and Na Champassak cliques from power. At this time this matched the unanimous and insistent desire of all sections of society, both basic and intermediary, and was to serve as a signal for a general uprising; at the same time we were to achieve a strategic transfer of troops to the enemy-controlled areas, to consolidate our forces and occupy key positions in towns, to cow the enemy and put their units directly under our control where they were being deployed, and also to resort to pressure via the coalition government in order to paralyse the enemy army and police.<br /> <br /> After that, we were to rouse the masses to a general uprising in various regions of the country, primarily in the towns, where the enemy’s major forces were concentrated. To that end, we were to use the forces of the popular masses locally, and also the forces transferred from other areas, which were to be supported by the revolutionary armed forces, mutinying enemy army units, and also by legal activity in the various coalition bodies. All this was to crush the enemy, destroy the reactionary ruling machinery in the centre and provinces within the shortest possible time, and to lead to the establishment of bodies of popular revolutionary power.<br /> <br /> Having taken power in the provinces and towns, including both the neutralised towns, we were to immediately convene the National Congress of People’s Representatives, disband the central coalition bodies, abolish the monarchy, and proclaim the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos.<br /> <br /> The subsequent course of events fully confirmed that the decision to win power using an uprising, combining three strategic blows with a legal struggle under the above-mentioned plan, was the correct one and corresponded to the requirements of the moment. :<br /> <br /> The upsurge of the mass movement in May 1975 was manifested in numerous demonstrations involving tens of thousands of people. It compelled the US imperialists and the servile local reactionary leaders, ensconced in the state apparatus and the puppet army, to flee the country. The lightning transfer of our troops to the towns to capture key enemy positions, and also the order to enemy troops to remain in their barracks, not to shoot at the people and to hand over their arms to arsenals, the instructions on collective participation in seminars and other coalition government orders which the enemy had to obey, actually bound him hand and foot, deprived him of all possibilities of resistance and, as a matter of fact, disarmed him. In the provinces, uprisings that blew over the country like a hurricane swept away, one after the other, all the bodies of military and state power in the outlying districts, and also the enemy’s coercive apparatus. By August 1975, all the old bodies of power and the machinery of coercion had been fully liquidated in the provinces and in both the neutralised towns. This was followed by a major political campaign to prepare and hold elections to the people’s councils and to establish bodies of popular power at all levels. Thus the power in the country passed into the hands of the people.<br /> <br /> On the historic day of December 2, 1975, the National Congress of People’s Representatives, expressing the will and the interests of the people of the whole country, accepted the king’s abdication and the self-dissolution of the coalition government, and proclaimed the abolition of the monarchy and the formation of the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos. This marked the victorious culmination of the final stage in the hard and long-drawn-out struggle of our people for national independence and democracy.<br /> <br /> The upsurge of the popular movement, which started in May 1975 and ended in the victory of the revolution, was essentially an armed political uprising of the popular forces, struggling to win power all over the country. This uprising was characterised not only by the broad forces involved, but also by numerous manifestations of the creative spirit of the popular masses, under the perspicacious leadership of the Party.<br /> <br /> The time of the uprising corresponded to the most favourable situation, a revolutionary situation, which, in effect, represents the final phase of a lengthy process of revolutionary struggle, a process consisting of several consecutive stages, each time differing from one another by a correspondingly higher level. The place of the uprising was the whole country, but it first of all began in only several districts; the main forces were concentrated for capturing those key positions where the enemy had real power. The mode of the uprising involved the use of all the revolutionary forces, i.e. action in the three strategic zones combined with legal struggle; a continuous offensive against the enemy aimed at destroying his organisations, crushing his will to resist, and splitting and then routing his forces, without making a new civil war necessary. The aim of the uprising was to break down the entire reactionary state machinery from top to bottom, to do away with its instruments of suppression and violence, to abolish the monarchy and establish popular power in the country. Such were the principal tasks of the national armed political uprising, and such was the path chosen by the Party in its search for a final solution to the power issue at the final stage of the national democratic revolution in our country.<br /> <br /> Yet taking power does not mean taking the existing state machinery and making it serve our objectives. Under the former system, the state machinery in our country was that of the neocolonialist power planted by US imperialism. Specifically, it was not only a huge military-bureaucratic machine with numerous instruments for suppressing and coercing the people by brutal force, but also involved a ramified and carefully developed system of economic, cultural and social institutions for disorganising society, poisoning people’s minds, corrupting the nation, and turning our society into a parasitic society vastly dependent on US imperialism. Hence, the winning of power had to be accompanied by the complete liquidation of the state machinery, the instruments of coercion, the means of propaganda, the system of oppression, and all the other enemy institutions in various spheres of activity from top to bottom.<br /> <br /> We had to destroy not only the well-known official institutes and forces but also covert organisations; we had to resolutely crush those enemies who continued to offer resistance, and to launch an immediate campaign for the mass reeducation of former state officials, servicemen and policemen, in the spirit of the Party policy.<br /> <br /> On top of this, it was necessary to rid the country of the reactionary decadent culture, and also to do away with the economic foundations of the compradore bourgeoisie, thus destroying everything that served to support the US imperialists and their protégés.<br /> <br /> In addition to breaking down the old state machinery, it was necessary to start immediately on setting up the machinery of the new state, which was to be nothing else than the dictatorship of the proletariat, the supreme embodiment of popular power under the Party’s leadership. The new state machinery was assigned the task of fighting internal and external enemies, restructuring the old society and building the new one. Hence, after the victory of the uprising, at the same time as setting up provisional administrative bodies for deciding urgent questions, the Party instantly started work to give the people full power to establish the new state machinery from top to bottom by way of democratic elections. This ensured the popular character of the state and the leading role of the Party in the various bodies of popular democratic power.<br /> <br /> As regards the breaking down of the old state machinery, the situation in our country was unlike that in other countries, since we had a coalition government set up through legal struggle and successful talks. Although the coalition government in our country did have a programme of peace, neutrality and national concord, and did include representatives of the revolutionary forces and members of our Party, it nevertheless remained essentially an instrument of power in the hands of the military-bureaucratic cliques closely connected with US imperialism. Our Party took part in the coalition government out of tactical necessity, always regarding this as one of the numerous forms of revolutionary activity aimed at demoralising and isolating the enemy, and at winning over the intermediary forces. It used this legal form of political struggle together with all other forms.<br /> <br /> It is particularly important that the Party never regarded the coalition government as a government of “class harmony”, let alone as a “transitional” government. In no event was the coalition a “link” in the transition from a neocolonialist to a revolutionary state, even though in some cases and to a certain extent it was an instrument that served the people. Consequently, in the course of the uprising, it was absolutely necessary to break down the entire so-called “coalition” state machinery, without any sympathy or remorse, and to rebuff attempts by the old regime to organise an innocent “ceremony of transfer” of the old state machinery into the hands of the new authorities with the aim of misleading the popular masses. As for the people in the service of the old regime, the revolutionary power was prepared to use them in different capacities, depending on their personal abilities and desires.<br /> <br /> In the final stage of the national democratic revolution, having applied the Party plan for an armed political uprising—a plan that combined three strategic blows with legal struggle—we managed to take power in record time. This magnificent victory confirmed that in the particular historical conditions characterising the contemporary revolutionary process and in the specific situation existing in Indochina and in our country, the Party, in using correct forms and methods to implement its political line, not only possessed all the opportunities for winning power by revolutionary violence, but was also capable of retaining power, without allowing counter-revolutionary forces to unleash a civil war or foreign reactionaries to start an armed intervention.<br /> <br /> The Party’s consistent revolutionary line, manifested at all stages of the struggle, was based on the principle of revolutionary violence as well as on that of an offensive strategy. Both during the war and the short-term respites, both in hard and favourable moments, the Party never retreated from this policy. Lenin emphasised: “Marx did not commit himself, or the future leaders of the socialist revolution, to matters of form, to ways and means of bringing about the revolution.”&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Having taken the situation in the country, in Indochina and the whole world into consideration, the Party developed tactics for advancing from one success to the next, tactics to paralyse the enemy so as to achieve ultimate victory. Such was our Party’s consistently revolutionary method, which it had effectively used during the entire revolution. At all stages of the war, even when it had to resort to decisive military action, our Party continued to use the method of paralysing the enemy, i. e. it only used the number of forces that was essential and only waged the struggle to a certain point, stopping in time to combine it with negotiations, etc. In this way we were able to march from one victory to the next without giving the enemy an opportunity to expand the war beyond definite limits. It was precisely for this reason that at the final stage, when the positions and forces of the revolution were superior to those of the enemy, and when the latter was making desperate efforts to find a way out, we were able to paralyse his activities and start taking power without bloodshed.<br /> <br /> '''1 V, I. Lenin, “‘Left-Wing’ Childishness and the PettyBourgeois Mentality”, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 343.'''<br /> <br /> At an initial stage of the political campaign, it was demanded that the US imperialists be ousted and the most reactionary Sananikone and Na Champassak cliques be removed from power; however the question of breaking down the old state machinery was still not on the agenda. Thus we succeeded in ousting the Americans, who still remained in the country, as well as the most dangerous reactionary leaders, resulting in the enemy finding itself actually beheaded. This was followed up by a speedy transfer of our troops to the main enemy strongpoints. Thanks to these operations, combined with our legal struggle, the enemy army found itself bound hand and foot; it had no time and did not even dare open fire; it was completely paralysed and deprived of all combat efficiency. Meanwhile, local bodies of state power were falling one after the other under the onslaught of the national uprising, though the coalition government still remained intact in the capital. After provincial bodies of revolutionary power had been established, the time came to reorganise the government in the centre. Unexpectedly for the enemy and in accordance with the will and demands of the popular masses, the National Congress of People’s Representatives was convened: the former rulers had no choice but to abdicate.<br /> <br /> Such were the means and methods used by our Party to take power at the final stage of the revolution. They made it possible to exert constant powerful pressure on the enemy, without giving him a chance to foresee our intentions and undertake retaliatory measures. Despite the fact that the enemy had considerable strength, he nevertheless could not counter us with anything, and was finally forced to capitulate and surrender his arms.<br /> <br /> The Party’s correct strategy and wise leadership demonstrated its ability to choose the right moment, to make a quick and well-timed decision to start an uprising, increase all the revolutionary forces and use adequate means and methods, and were some of the major factors in predetermining the brilliant success of the now historic May 1975 uprising. This success should be regarded as the culmination of the thirty-year selfless and bloody struggle of our people. The struggle methods of any revolution should essentially depend on the revolutionary forces actually available.<br /> <br /> While the forces of the revolution are weak, the ruling classes usually respond to the struggle of the popular masses by placing “the bayonet on the agenda”&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. Hence, in the course of a lengthy, hard and intense struggle, we had to simultaneously set up and consolidate the forces of the revolution and gradually take over power first at the lowest stages, at strongpoints, and then start to establish our power in the vast liberated districts. Thus, the positions and forces of the revolution grew steadily stronger, and the positions and forces of the enemy noticeably weaker. Only when the positions and forces of the revolution had grown so strong as to be able to compel the enemy on to the defensive, when the forces of the popular masses had turned into a powerful revolutionary stream and the enemy found himself in a hopeless situation, did he no longer dare resort to armed violence against the revolution, fearing complete annihilation, even though he did continue to resist by other methods and means. Lenin predicted that “in individual cases, by way of exception ... peaceful surrender of power by the bourgeoisie is possible, if it is convinced that resistance is hopeless and if it prefers to save its skin”.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; The final stage of the revolution in our country was characterised precisely by such conditions. Only when the positions and forces of the revolution had become so strong as to be able to smash the enemy to smithereens, only when the enemy found himself paralysed and cornered, did the revolution decide to employ measures appropriate for taking power all over the country, without resorting to a new war.<br /> <br /> '''1 V.I. Lenin, “A Contribution to the History of the Question of the Dictatorship”, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 346.'''<br /> <br /> '''2 V.I. Lenin, “A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economics”, Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 69.'''<br /> <br /> Although we took power by means of revolutionary violence, at the same time preserving peace in the country, this in no way signifies that we shall not resort to force in the future to defend peace.<br /> <br /> The reactionary classes suffered a serious defeat, but this does not mean that they simply agreed to retreat and forever abandoned their intentions to fight the revolution, arms in hand. This has been vividly confirmed by the experience of the four years of our republic, during which we have waged the struggle to preserve peace.<br /> <br /> Therefore, now that we have won power, our duty is to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat with all the available forces, to perfect the instruments of revolutionary violence, to improve vigilance, and to always be prepared to rebuff enemy attempts to sow trouble and start a counter-offensive. Only in this way can we ensure the further peaceful development of the revolution.<br /> <br /> The thirty years of our revolution have witnessed a continuous struggle involving the revolutionary violence of the masses, a struggle waged in various forms. And although in the course of the revolution we had to change our tactics depending on the respective stages of the struggle, to utilise its different forms and methods, and to show flexibility, the fundamental principle of our Party was always that of violent revolution and an offensive strategy. In this lies the “secret” of the past and future victories of our revolutionary struggle.<br /> <br /> === 7. COMBINING ARDENT PATRIOTISM WITH GENUINE PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM ===<br /> We live at a time in history characterised by the transition from capitalism to socialism, a transition that began with the Great October Socialist Revolution. Three revolutionary movements—the socialist system, the national liberation movement and the international labour movement in capitalist countries—have today united into one mighty revolutionary force that has drawn millions of people towards socialism and inspires others in many countries of the world to fight for the cause of national independence, democracy and socialism.<br /> <br /> International imperialism, led by American imperialism, and other reactionary forces are making futile attempts to hold back the revolutionary tide in other countries and to organise a counter-offensive, increasing the oppression and exploitation of their own workers at home. At the same time, the revolutionary movement in each country, being an organic part of the international&lt;sub&gt;1&lt;/sub&gt; revolutionary process, is directly affected&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; by present-day revolutionary movements and itself reinforces them. The working class and working people in all countries are united by common interests and common ideals, bearing the responsibility not only for their own nation but for the revolutionary movement in other countries as well.<br /> <br /> '''1: The original text had a printing error and cut off at &quot;inter&quot; and resuming text with &quot;al&quot; and was determined to be an error and corrected to &quot;international&quot;.'''<br /> <br /> '''2: The original text had a printing error and cut off at &quot;af&quot; and resuming text with the word &quot;by&quot; and was determined to be an error and corrected to &quot;affected&quot;.'''<br /> <br /> On the other hand, as a result of geographical location and historical development, there are certain regions in the world where countries have been closely linked down the centuries. Imperialism and the ruling circles in these countries are pursuing a regional strategy, setting up regional political blocs of various kinds. The revolutionary movements in these countries are closely linked together and affect each other, giving the revolutionary process in that region a distinctive character.<br /> <br /> Lenin pointed out: “Capital is an international force. To vanquish it, an international workers’ alliance, an international workers’ brotherhood, is needed.<br /> <br /> We are opposed to national enmity and discord, to national exclusiveness. We are internationalists.”&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Today, therefore, a Marxist-Leninist party leading the revolution in its own country must not only adopt the correct position and follow the correct line with regard to internal questions in order to lead and organise the people in their revolutionary struggle, but must also adopt the correct international position and see the revolution in its own country within the historical context of the revolutionary movement in that region and throughout the world. In so doing it can take advantage of the three revolutionary forces of the modern world to strengthen itself and achieve victory, while also making an active contribution to the international revolutionary movement, a contribution that is all the more important given the complex situation prevailing in the world today. At the same time, any signs of great-power chauvinism must be resolutely opposed as alien to Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.<br /> <br /> '''1 V.I. Lenin, “Letter to the Workers and Peasants of the Ukraine Apropos of the Victories over Denikin”, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 293.'''<br /> <br /> The revolution in Laos is an integral part of the revolutionary movement in Indochina and throughout the world. The revolution in Laos and the revolutions in Vietnam and Kampuchea are related by historical and geographic factors as well as by deep feelings of revolutionary brotherhood. Living in the same geographical region and united by a similar history of subjugation to a colonial power, our three peoples have always given each other support in the fight to free our homeland from a common enemy, from French colonial power and local reactionary feudal leaders.<br /> <br /> From the moment that comrade Ho Chi Minh, an outstanding leader of the international revolutionary movement, began to spread the doctrine of Marxism-Leninism allied with: genuine patriotism in Indochina and founded the Communist Party of Indochina, the movement for national independence and democracy in these three countries, hitherto lacking cohesion, acquired new strength under the leadership of the party of the working class. Further on, as the revolutionary movement in each country grew in size and strength, each formed its own independent party of the working class, but the peoples of the three countries continued to help and support each other, thus making it possible for each to win its decisive victory almost at the same moment. '<br /> <br /> The imperialists have always regarded Indochina as their sphere of influence, as a single strategic whole, both politically and militarily. During almost a hundred years of French colonial rule, our three countries were artificially divided into five provinces which together made up French Indochina ruled by a Governor-General. When the Japanese invaders replaced the French colonialists, they preserved the previous administrative division of the area, and when the French returned at the end of the Second World War, they continued to see Indochina as a single military sphere of operations.<br /> <br /> The Americans then intervened in the area, replacing colonialism with neocolonialism and setting up their own puppet governments under the guise of “national independence”. However, American imperialism continued to regard Indochina as a strategic whole, a unit within its overall strategy for Southeast Asia. Every move made by the Americans in Laos, Vietnam or Kampuchea was determined by the situation within Indochina as a whole and served a single strategic purpose with regard to that area, although the mode and scale of operation varied in each country. The first bombing raid carried out by the American Air Force over the liberated areas of Laos was closely linked with the war of annihilation the USA unleashed against North Vietnam. Their aim was to intimidate the revolutionary forces in Laos and test the reaction of Vietnam and the other socialist countries. The overthrow of the neutral government in Kampuchea and the arrival there of American and Saigon troops to extend the military operations into that country, was intended both to destroy the revolutionary movement in Kampuchea and hold up the revolution in South Vietnam, while simultaneously threatening our strongholds in Southern Laos. Operation “Lam Son 719” along Highway 9 in Southern Laos aimed at cutting the line of communication linking the three countries, and thus threatening our Southern stronghold.<br /> <br /> All this serves to illustrate the close links that have united the revolutionary movements in our three countries from their inception and through all the ordeals of war. The struggle for a common cause has welded them into one.<br /> <br /> This alliance in struggle has always been a source of unfailing support for our three peoples, guaranteeing the success of the revolutionary movement in each country. Such is the objective truth of the situation.<br /> <br /> Therefore the internationalist policy of our Party was directed first and foremost at strengthening the solidarity and unity in struggle of the three countries of Indochina by linking the interests of the revolution in our own country with those in the other countries of the region and by combining ardent patriotism with proletarian internationalism. Our Party has always taught the people the spirit of self-sacrifice ” in the struggle for revolutionary ideals in our country, while also urging upon them the need to contribute all in our power and make any sacrifice necessary to the revolutionary struggle of our brothers in Vietnam and Kampuchea.<br /> <br /> Our Party has always vigorously opposed the imperialist strategy of ‘divide and rule”. It has rejected all attempts by internal or external enemies to distort the relationship between our peoples, spread discord, and weaken our alliance born of a common history and blood shed for a common cause. As a member of the United Popular Resistance Front of Indochina during the struggle against the French colonialists and then as a member of the alliance against the American neocolonialists, the Party always considered the solidarity and militant alliance of the revolutionary movements as a historical necessity for all three nations, as a strategy essential to the revolution in Laos and as part of the international duty of our people and Party, not only during the long and bitter struggle for national liberation but also during the peaceful development of Laos both now and in the future.<br /> <br /> The militant cooperation of the revolutionary movements and peoples of Laos and Vietnam plays a vital role in the alliance of the peoples of Indochina. It is cooperation formed not only on the basis of the special relationship that binds the two countries but also in the name of national survival, development and prosperity. The long-standing tradition of friendship, solidarity and mutual support that has marked the historical development of our two peoples gave rise, after the formation of the Communist Party of Indochina, to this militant cooperation based on the combination of ardent patriotism and genuine proletarian internationalism. The successful uprising of August 1945 and the subsequent joint struggle against the colonial power marked a new stage in the consolidation of this cooperation that embraced both the political and military spheres. The struggle against American imperialism served to strengthen it still further at every level. The perfect unity of the two parties in their political outlook made it possible for the revolutionary movements in both countries to rely on each other, support and assist each other, share each other’s difficulties and coordinate their activities militarily, politically, economically, diplomatically and otherwise. In defending and consolidating&lt;sub&gt;1&lt;/sub&gt; the revolutionary gains in both countries, our peoples and our armies fought side by side, they shared a common destiny and foiled the aggressive plans of American imperialism, winning total victory in both countries. This comprehensive, close and sincere cooperation between the peoples of Laos and Vietnam is a striking example of proletarian internationalism. It was of enormous importance for the revolutionary struggle in both countries.<br /> <br /> '''1: Original spelling was &quot;consolidationg&quot; and was determined likely to be an error and corrected to &quot;consolidating&quot;.'''<br /> <br /> In Laos, the development of this militant alliance has gone hand in hand with the entire revolutionary struggle and the growth of our revolutionary forces. It caused a radical shift in the balance of power between the opposing forces in our country, creating the conditions necessary for the success of our revolution and its final victory. Our party has always considered this militant alliance to be of particular value and importance. “Events have shown that all our revolutionary victories have been the result of the united effort of our Party and people, supported by the socialist countries and the international movement for peace and democracy. The militant alliance between our Party and the Working People’s Party of Vietnam, our revolution and the revolution in Vietnam, and our people and the people of Vietnam was the basis of these victories” (Survey of the Political Programme, Report to the 2nd National Congress of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, 1972). The decisive victory of the revolution in our countries has given us the opportunity to further strengthen and develop the now unshakeable ties of friendship and militant unity between our peoples. Our Party, together with the fraternal Communist Party of Vietnam, is determined to consolidate and improve the militant solidarity uniting our two countries, to comprehensively develop cooperation in the new situation, to help each other in peaceful endeavour and in defending the national independence of the two countries, to ensure their own prosperity and stability in Indochina and Southeast Asia.<br /> <br /> While developing the ties of solidarity and militant cooperation with the peoples of Vietnam and Kampuchea, our Party has also given its firm support to international solidarity and has sought aid and assistance given voluntarily in the spirit of international friendship, particularly the aid and assistance from the USSR and other socialist countries, in order to combine its own forces with those of the three revolutionary movements of our day and weld them into a force for victory. This is yet another essential element in the foreign policy of our Party, which it has consistently pursued and will continue to pursue in the future.<br /> <br /> In the long and victorious struggle waged by our people against an enemy many times more powerful, in particular American imperialism which possesses enormous material resources and is pursuing a global strategy, the aid and assistance given by fraternal socialist countries, by friendly newly independent nations, by the national liberation movement and by the movement for peace, democracy and social progress, were always a factor essential to the final victory of our people.<br /> <br /> Our struggle, itself an integral part of the world revolutionary process and taking place at an important time in the history of Southeast Asia, the scene of violent revolutionary upheavals and conflict between the forces of revolution and the forces of reaction, is a struggle being waged not only on behalf of the people of Laos, but also on behalf of the revolutionary movement in the region and throughout the world. Each victory won by our revolution encouraged the popular struggle both in Indochina and throughout the world, contributing to the further consolidation of the socialist system. Thus, despite the differences—sometimes serious—in outlook and political approach among the various socialist countries, our Party consistently strove to strengthen the ties of solidarity with socialist countries and with revolutionary and progressive forces throughout the world at every stage of the revolution, including the period of armed resistance against American imperialism. At the same time, our Party continually sought international aid. All revolutionary parties were united with us in our struggle for national liberation against American imperialism. The Soviet Union and other fraternal socialist countries, together with friendly nations, gave us considerable material assistance and moral support, helping us to pursue our struggle through to its victorious conclusion.<br /> <br /> While pursuing its policy of international solidarity, our Party also based itself on the principle of self-reliance of the nation in the maximum development of its internal resources. The Party has placed its faith in the people and their strength, and has been aware of its own historic mission. It has always believed that the revolution is the work of the people, that the revolution in Laos is a task for the people of Laos to be achieved under the leadership of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party. As a result of the experience gained during the long years of revolutionary struggle, our Party has realised that the more we develop the inner strength of the people the more we are in a position of obtain international aid and support, and that this aid and support can only be put to effective use if the forces of the nation are fully mobilised. During the years of revolutionary struggle, the policy of self-reliance pursued by our Party was based on the principle of independence and the creative application of both Marxism-Leninism and the experience of other fraternal parties within the context of the revolutionary conditions prevailing in our country; on the rapid mobilisation and organisation of the people to strengthen the revolutionary forces of the nation; on combining revolutionary struggle with the task of construction, education and training in order to constantly increase our own ability to fulfil any task relating to any sphere of revolutionary activity. Thanks to this policy our forces steadily grew and developed and this, together with the militant alliance of the three peoples of Indochina and international aid, particularly from the socialist countries, enabled us to defeat our enemies.<br /> <br /> The combination of national interests with those of the international revolutionary movement, of the forces of the nation with those of the three revolutionary movements of our day on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism—such is the principle that guides the internationalist policy of our Party, a principle based on the experience of its victorious struggle against internal and external enemies.<br /> <br /> === 8. STRENGTHENING THE LEADING ROLE OF THE PARTY IN ALL SPHERES OF REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITY ===<br /> After a long, selfless and heroic struggle by the people of Laos, organised and inspired at every stage by the Marxist-Leninist party, the national democratic revolution was crowned with total success.<br /> <br /> During the period when our country was ruled by the French colonialists and local feudal leaders, our people rose up more than once to fight for freedom, led by members first of one then another social group. But these uprisings always ended in defeat. The uprisings that occurred at the beginning of the century were led by tribal chiefs who, because of their own class origins and the unfavourable historical circumstances, were unable to formulate the right policy and tactics and thus, despite the heroism displayed by the peasants of these various ethnic groups, the revolts were always crushed.<br /> <br /> The Free Lao Front (Lao Itsala) and other movements that arose among the urban petty-bourgeois intelligentsia during the 1940s were, despite certain influence they exerted, also incapable of achieving liberation, as the leaders, members of the bourgeoisie, could not grasp the laws of social development and proposed a capitalist way which did not meet the aspirations of the age. Therefore they were not able to rally the people to the cause.<br /> <br /> Only our Party (the Communist Party of Indochina and then the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party) has been the true representative of the interests of the working class and all the people of our country, the only party in the country which, knowing and using the objective laws governing the evolution of society, correctly decided upon questions of tactics and strategy at every stage of the revolution. Under the leadership of the Party, the courageous struggle of the Lao people entered a new phase, winning victory after victory until liberation was finally achieved and the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos established on the path to socialism.<br /> <br /> Born of a fusion of the patriotic movement of the Lao people and the doctrine of Marxism-Leninism brought to Indochina by Comrade Ho Chi Minh, our Party is heir to the noble cause of the Communist Party of Indochina and accepted the sacred task of undivided leadership in the revolution at the most difficult period in our national history. Basing its activity on scientific principles, our Party worthily accomplished its mission throughout the years of revolution, winning the affection and trust of the people. Not only did it display an unfailing militancy of spirit, inflexible will and selfless devotion to the interests of its class and the entire people, but also studied and creatively applied Marxism-Leninism and used the experience of fraternal parties in solving revolutionary problems within the context of the specific circumstances prevailing in our country. It led the revolutionary movement surely, steadily and decisively to final victory.<br /> <br /> The long years of revolutionary struggle in Laos clearly reveal that the Party is the fundamental and decisive factor in the victory of our revolution. Without the Party, without its leadership, the revolution could never have achieved such total success. The experience of our Party further underlines the great truth of our era of the worldwide transition from capitalism to socialism. That truth is that the working class is the driving force in the progress of mankind, and the party of the working class, armed with the doctrine of Marxism-Leninism, is the guarantor of victory.<br /> <br /> “The Lao People’s Revolutionary Party,” the 1972 Political Programme of the Party declares, “is the genuine Marxist-Leninist party of the working class, the highly-organised vanguard and the highest form of the organisation of the working class of Laos. The Party unites and leads all national and ethnic groups, the entire people, to the victory of the people’s national democratic revolution, along the path of socialist revolution to build a socialist and communist Laos. The Party dedicates all its energy to the service of the people, the homeland. It has no interests other than those of the working class and the entire people. Therefore the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party is the party of the working class, the party of the workers of all ethnic groups, the party of the entire nation.”<br /> <br /> Given its nature and its aims, our Party is built on the Leninist organisational principles of a working-class party of the new type. The ideological base and guiding principle is Marxism-Leninism combined with genuine patriotism and proletarian internationalism. The Party is organised on the basis of democratic centralism, united politically, ideologically, organisationally and tactically. It rejects any schismatic or factional tendencies. It conducts its activity in close association with the people; criticism and self-criticism are a law of its internal development. These are the organisational principles that our Party upholds and applies in order to maintain its class character and its leading role as a genuinely Marxist-Leninist party.<br /> <br /> Our Party arose in a country whose social development was still at a very low level, whose working class was still in its beginnings and whose population was, and is, divided into numerous ethnic groups. Thus, from the start, our Party faced a difficult and particular problem, that of bringing communist ideology to the people and founding a Marxist-Leninist party in a country where the majority of the people are “not workers who have passed through the school of capitalist factories, but typical representatives of the working and exploited peasant masses who are victims of medieval oppression”.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; It was Comrade Ho Chi Minh who successfully solved this problem and led the people of Indochina from patriotism to Marxism-Leninism. Our Party, in its turn, has led the peoples of the various ethnic groups in our country along the path charted by Comrade Ho Chi Minh, correctly and creatively using the principle of combining patriotism and Marxism-Leninism within the conditions prevailing in our country.<br /> <br /> '''1 V. I. Lenin, “Address to the Second All-Russia Congress of Communist Organisations of the Peoples of the East”, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 161.'''<br /> <br /> Laos is not only a country in which the overwhelming majority of the people are peasants who laboured under colonial, feudal and prefeudal exploitation, but also a country inhabited by many different ethnic groups whose relationships with each other are extremely complex. Therefore, in order to bring Marxism-Leninism to the people, our Party had first of all to arouse feelings of attachment to their home and their village community and the desire for freedom and independence. This was achieved by encouraging them to fight in defence of their village, tribe and their people against the colonialist and imperialist powers, their implacable enemies. In the course of this struggle the Party then taught the peasants the need to unite their forces, the forces of all ethnic groups and tribes, first within the same region and then throughout the country, in order to achieve that unity necessary to defeat a powerful common enemy. Out of this emerged and developed the spirit of national unity, the spirit of patriotism.<br /> <br /> The national liberation struggle in Laos was closely bound up with the struggle of the other peoples of Indochina fighting the same enemy and enjoyed international support, and therefore the Party strove to inculcate, together with patriotism, a sense of international solidarity. Patriotism and genuine proletarian internationalism are thus woven together into a unified whole which forms the moral principle guiding all our people.<br /> <br /> As the revolution progressed, the people came to realise that the achievement of total independence required not only the defeat and expulsion of the colonial power but also the overthrow of the ruling élite in the pay of foreign powers in order to carry through a programme of democratic reform, liquidate feudal and pre-feudal forms of exploitation and build a new society in which the people are the masters of their own destiny, their own country and their own existence. Class consciousness and national consciousness thus fused together and acquired a qualitatively new significance in the minds of revolutionaries and patriots. From love of native home, tribe and people to love of country and proletarian internationalism; from awareness of national interests to awareness of class interests—this is the path our Party has followed in spreading Marxism-Leninism among the people and mobilising them to create a powerful national democratic movement throughout the country. This is the base on which our Party formed and developed and from which it drew its strength to become a powerful organising force capable of fulfilling its role as the vanguard leading the revolution to victory, and to become the ruling party in our country.<br /> <br /> Another feature characterising the revolutionary struggle in Laos is that it has been an armed struggle from the very beginning, and therefore it was the duty of every patriot who joined the movement to take up arms against the enemy, either as a soldier of the revolutionary army or as a member of an armed detachment or the local armed militia, or to participate in the work of organisations assisting the armed forces and to share in the armed struggle in whatever form it took, Moreover, the revolutionary struggle in our country followed very complicated ways, the battle round: the negotiating table being no less bitter than that on the battle-field. The national liberation struggle in our country was, at every stage, a testing ground of discipline and will, which permitted not the slightest weakness or hesitation. It allowed of no failure of will or vacillation, demanding of each member high morale and constant readiness for combat, the willingness to make any sacrifice, including that of life itself, in order to defeat the enemy. The ability to meet such demands revealed the highest level of class consciousness and the correct application of the principles of Marxism-Leninism within the context of the revolutionary struggle in Laos, and thus it was possible to select as Party members those who had distinguished themselves in the long and bitter armed and political struggle in the course of the national democratic revolution. Therefore, although most of the Party members came from the peasant background typical of a backward country, they learned to identify with the working class and firmly upheld the doctrine of Marxism-Leninism.<br /> <br /> The correct and creative application of Marxism-Leninism led to the successful formation of a working-class party of the new type within the conditions existing in our country. Nonetheless, our Party has been deeply conscious of the colonial and semi-feudal hilo of the past, of ethnic and tribal divisions and of the fact that class differentiation is still poorly developed, all factors which affect the party itself. Ideological education and training of Party cadres with the aim of raising the level of class consciousness among Party members and strengthening the role of the Party as the revolutionary vanguard has been therefore a fundamental task that must be constantly pursued. Starting with the basic concepts of patriotism, internationalism, the national liberation and class struggle, our Party also strove to expand its members’ knowledge of the principles of Marxism-Leninism, of the aims and ideals of the Party and of its class approach. It inculcated clear moral values and opposed any signs of a non-proletarian ideology or opportunism. Experience has:taught us that particular attention must be paid to developing in Party cadres and members a firm class-conscious and revolutionary approach in order to counter all vacillation and illusion among some of its members, or uncertainty when distinguishing friend from foe, a tendency that revealed itself when the Party had to pin down the enemy. It also has to oppose unclear and confused ideas, the desire to slacken the struggle and enjoy a respite, which has sometimes appeared in the course of the long and arduous battle for victory. In addition, the Party also has had to fight against signs of narrow-minded nationalism, parochialism, sectarianism and indiscipline that hindered the formation of democratic centralism within the Party. At the same time, much attention was given to developing democracy and collective leadership and to opposing all forms of paternalist, bureaucratic or dictatorial rule.<br /> <br /> The task of strengthening the class character and leading role of the Party goes hand in hand with the task of strengthening the internal unity of the Party, a task the Party considers to be of vital importance. Given that “unity is strength” and the Party the leading core and command centre of the working class, it must be totally united and possessed of a single will. Only then is the Party capable of leading the working class and the entire people to final victory over the enemy and achieving its final aim. However, it must also be remembered that our Party formed and developed in a country whose economy is agricultural and based on scattered, small-scale holdings and where relations between the various regions and ethnic groups are particularly complex. All this has left its mark on the mentality of our Party cadres and members. The Party had to wage a long, complex and arduous struggle against a powerful enemy who resorted to every tactic to divide our forces and undermine the unity of the Party, and therefore maintaining and consolidating internal unity was its abiding concern.<br /> <br /> Although the struggle waged by our People has taken place against a generally favourable international background, there are, nonetheless, difficulties in this respect too. Our Party must, therefore, continue to strengthen its internal unity in order to maintain its independence and pursue its correct course. The internal unity of the Party is both a matter of principle and also a practical necessity of such importance that the entire Party, from the Central Committee to local branches and individual members, must preserve and defend it as they would life itself. The Party has never permitted any signs of schism, factionalism, parochialism, or sectarianism, considering them as inimical to the Party, the revolution and the nation.<br /> <br /> The unity of the Party consists, first and foremost, in absolute political and ideological unity. This means that the Party must be one both in ideological matters and in questions of practical activity, both based on Marxism-Leninism and given concise expression in the programme and statutes of the Party, formulated jointly by the entire Party, and in the political line and tactics pursued by the Party at every stage and defined in the decisions of the Central Committee. This unity is one to which all members give their conscious Consent, accepting in unanimity the ideals, aims and objectives of the Party. It is based on the revolutionary theory and scientific principles of Marxism-Leninism, which must be known and applied by all members. This unity is revealed not just in theoretical knowledge and acceptance of the Principles of the Party but, more importantly, in the daily practical activity of each member, regardless of his position and his duties.<br /> <br /> Political and ideological unity must be reinforced by organisational unity. Without it, political and ideological unity loses any practical meaning and cannot survive. Our Party is a fighting organisation and not a debating club; each member is guaranteed the right, via the Party organisation, to express his opinion on any subject in the interests of the revolution and also&lt;sub&gt;1&lt;/sub&gt; to take part in any discussions or decisions relating to Party activity. But any discussion must lead to a final conclusion or decision that will serve as a basis for united action.<br /> <br /> '''1: Original spelling was &quot;aslo&quot; and was determined likely to be an error and corrected to &quot;also&quot;.'''<br /> <br /> In a military unit preparing for the attack, every soldier may join in discussing the various situations that might arise in the course of the battle but, once the attack has started, he must fight according to the single tactic, according to one plan and under one commander. So also the Party must be formed on the principle of democratic centralism, according to which the individual is subordinate to the organisation, the minority to the majority, the lower organs to the higher organs, and the entire Party is led by the Central Committee. This principle is the organisational base of the Party and ensures its organisational unity, which in turn guarantees its political and ideological unity.<br /> <br /> Criticism and self-criticism is the principle governing the development of the Party and the chief means whereby unity and cohesion are assured. The direction of the revolutionary process requires constant study of the laws underlying revolutionary development in order to reveal the contradictions within it and thus arrive at solutions that promote its further development. In the course of the long, bitter and determined battle against the enemy, the situation is often extremely complex, particularly at moments when revolution is at a turning point.<br /> <br /> The inner truth of such situations is often not immediately apparent and certain aspects of the event seem to contradict its true nature. In such circumstances, judgements may vary due to the different levels of understanding among Party members; some are quick to grasp the essence of the situation, others are slower to do so, while yet others fail entirely to perceive the nature of the problem. As a result, different methods of approach are advocated. In addition, Party cadres and members are affected by various non-proletarian influences arising from such factors as social status, ethnic peculiarities and also the conditions in which the revolutionary struggle in our country is being waged. Therefore the conflict between the progressive and the conservative, the old and the new, the correct and the erroneous is a necessary and continuing process within the Party itself. The comparison and analysis of various ideas and opinions raises the level of consciousness of Party members. All that is correct and positive must be encouraged to develop and all that is erroneous and negative must be subjected to criticism so that differences and contradictions within the Party can be resolved and removed and conscious unity achieved. By this means, the unity of the Party is further consolidated and the consciousness of its members raised to a higher level.<br /> <br /> Our Party does not fear this internal ideological conflict, does not fear criticism and self-criticism. It has experienced many ideological debates, much positive criticism and ideological discussions on topics of immediate concern, particularly at crucial moments in the history of the revolutionary struggle in Laos. The Party has emerged yet more united from each conflict of opinions by which a collective formulation of one correct interpretation has been achieved, although disciplinary measures have occasionally had to be employed. More than once, as a result of machinations by the enemy or sudden changes in the internal or international situation, the position became extremely urgent and complex. In such circumstances, any indecision or lack of unity on the part of the leaders could have had serious consequences for the revolution. However, thanks to strict adherence to the rules and methods of internal debate, the Party was always able to arrive at a unanimous view and lead the revolution resolutely through all the twists and turns of history to ultimate victory.<br /> <br /> The internal unity of the Party must be founded on one united policy and, first and foremost, in accordance with the principle of democratic centralism. It is important, too, that relations marked by good-will and friendliness should be established between cadres and members of the Party. Comradely relations based on the common ideals and aims of the difficult struggle we all share are our most sacred possession as Communists. There have sometimes been instances of disagreement within the Party but in most cases this was due not to differences of opinion over the political line to be followed but rather to lack of good-will and respect between Party members, or to a narrow-minded and prejudiced approach to solving the contradiction. Personal relations must be based on warmth, sincerity, modesty, respect, sympathy and mutual support so that problems can be resolved amicably. On the other hand, there can be no tolerance of parochialism, egoism, suspicion, selfseeking, self-justification, vanity, etc., all remnants of the old society, contradictory to communist morality. Such attitudes undermine comradely relations between Party members and give rise to factions and splinter groups.<br /> <br /> If a comrade does not agree with the Party line on a given question, either because he does not understand the issue or because of personal error or weakness, this must be clearly pointed out, we must openly and uncompromisingly fight on matters of principle, but the comrade in question should be brought to understand that comradeship is the basis of this criticism, so that it will help him make a step forward in his development and cope with the tasks he is entrusted. If necessary, for example if opinion is divided on certain issues whose complexity makes it difficult to arrive immediately at a common decision, then all must work together so that each can arrive at a better understanding of the situation, examine the various points of view from every angle and thus arrive at a unanimous decision. If disciplinary measures have to be taken, they should be always justified and applied in such a way that the comrade being disciplined feels the concern the Party has for him, and can thus correct his mistakes without harbouring bitterness towards the Party or feeling discouraged. Such measures should never be arbitrary, harsh or humiliating, as this will only breed feelings of discontent and alienation which may lead him to commit further, more serious, errors.<br /> <br /> Unity within the Party is a necessary prerequitsite of national and international unity. The Party is the vanguard, the highest organisational form of the working class and the entire people. If the Party lacks unity there can be no unity among the various nationalities and ethnic groups, and even less among all the working people. Our Party succeeded in uniting all the ethnic and social groups within the country into one single national front not only because it followed the correct revolutionary policy and the correct approach to the united front but also, and this is very important, because from the first to the last day of the revolution its cadres and members, drawn from various ethnic and social groups, acted with one will, even though their class affiliation was not always sufficiently distinguishable. Thanks to this unity our Party, although small in number, was able to ensure the unity of the nation and thwart the divisive tactics of the enemy.<br /> <br /> The same is true of international relations. They can only develop fruitfully if the Party is solidly united within, as true international relations are based on the principle of independence for each party and each country. Only the Party united internally and one with its people can defend its independence and win respect for its domestic and foreign policy, and be able to display genuine international solidarity on this basis. Genuine unity within the Party requires correctly regulated relations between Party members. This problem becomes particularly acute in times of disagreement. Only if relations within the Party can be properly resolved is it possible to solve questions relating to its international contacts, and if there is no genuine internal unity there cannot be correctly structured international relations. This is the dialectic link between national and international issues, the truth of which has been revealed by the history of the international communist movement.<br /> <br /> Thanks to a correct policy and creative methods of solving organisational problems, we were able to form a genuine Marxist-Leninist party that corresponds to the social conditions in our country. However, if the role of the Party, essential to all our victories, is to be consolidated, then the leading position of the Party must be maintained and strengthened in every sphere of the struggle and in all circumstances. The revolutionary struggle involves all spheres of human activity, developing continuously and with specific methods of approach corresponding to its different stages. Thus the Party must consistently maintain and strengthen its leading role in all spheres of the struggle—political, military, economic, cultural, diplomatic, etc., in peace and in war, in difficult and in happy circumstances.<br /> <br /> The Party executes its leading role in many ways, but primarily by pursuing its general policy, its political programme and objectives, from its military, strategic and tactical policy at every stage in the struggle down to individual projects in every sphere of social activity. It also fulfils its role by undertaking large-scale political education among various social groups, encouraging sentiments of patriotism, national pride, loyalty to the new order, solidarity with all fraternal nations and progressive elements, total dedication to the struggle against the enemy and to the development of their native land. The Party exercises its guidance through its members who must serve as examples of high personal morality, active participation on the battle-field, at work and in carrying out the decisions and policy of the Party. On assuming power, the leading role of the Party serves to enhance the position and efficiency of those organs that control the state, the economy and other areas of public life, while also increasing the role of the people in the government of the state and society.<br /> <br /> The maintenance and reinforcement of the leading role of the Party therefore requires, first and foremost, a thorough knowledge of the general policy, the programme and decisions of the Party on the part of all its cadres and members and also on the part of wide sections of the workers, and all social groups, so that total unity can be achieved and turned into a powerful political force able to carry through the general policy and political programme of the Party in the concrete situation. Work must also be done in analysing the lessons gained from experience so that the general line and political programmes of the Party can be supplemented and developed in every sphere, including such new spheres as civil administration and economic management, so that the policy of the Party corresponds to the objective laws of social development and revolutionary progress. The organisational structure of the Party must be strengthened and improved at every level. The principle of the comprehensive, centralised and unified leadership of the Party must be implemented in all spheres of activity— political, military, economic, and cultural. The leadership of the Party is essential to success, but it can only be achieved if the Party organisations operate at every level and in every sphere of activity. In short, wherever there is mass activity, the Party organisation must be present to organise and direct it. Only thus can the general line, decisions and policies of the Party be fully and correctly implemented, and only thus is it possible to mobilise and unite all our forces in all spheres and all regions of the country in order to carry through the projects laid down by the Party.<br /> <br /> Of major importance in strengthening and promoting the leading role of the Party is the constant improvement of its organisational structure at every level. The members must be instilled with a sense of class consciousness and appreciation of their leading role; they must be firm in their ideological convictions, and able to organise others in carrying out the Party line. The quality of Party organisation in every field must be constantly improved, -the principle of collective leadership firmly abided by, and criticism and self-criticism developed in order to promote Party unity. In this way, the role of the Party will be continually strengthened and the quality of its membership constantly improved.<br /> <br /> ==== * * * ====<br /> These are some of the basic lessons that have been drawn from the more than 30 years’ heroic struggle by the Lao people under the leadership of the Party. This experience relates to the Marxist-Leninist strategy, tactics and revolutionary methods applied within the conditions prevailing in Laos, a previously colonial, semi-feudal, backward agrarian country with a small population composed of many ethnic groups and lacking both clear class differentiation and a sense of national unity.<br /> <br /> In resolving the questions of revolutionary strategy, tactics and approach, our Party has based itself on the fundamental tenets of Marxism-Leninism, while taking into account the conditions obtaining in Laos, in Indochina and throughout the world. It has also given due and critical consideration to the experience of other fraternal parties. This approach has led to remarkable victories in the revolutionary struggle. Having taken up the banner of national democratic revolution and correctly determined the path to be followed in line with prevailing social conditions, our Party welded together’ the working class and the peasantry into the main revolutionary force, and on this basis it gathered all the ethnic and social groups into a broad front of national unity under the leadership of the Party. Using the concepts of revolutionary violence and offensive strategy, our Party made every effort to create a popular armed and political force. Our Party correctly used the revolutionary approach, combining armed warfare with political, popular warfare with mass uprising, violence with coalition in order to move from victory to victory, division and destruction of the enemy forces till their final collapse and the achievement of total victory. Loyal to the ideals of genuine proletarian internationalism and working together with the people of Vietnam and Kampuchea, our Party strove to obtain international aid, correctly combining national interests with the interests of the world revolutionary movement, national strength with the strength of the three present-day revolutionary movements in order to create a powerful force capable of crushing any and all aggressors.<br /> <br /> Guided by the strategy, tactics and approach described above, the Party led the popular national democratic revolution in Laos to total victory, a victory that opened up a new era in the history of our people, an era of peace, independence, democracy and the transition to socialism. The successful revolution and the experience gained during the long struggle have convinced our people that the true leader of the people and organiser of all revolutionary victories in our country is the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party. Filled with pride and trust in that Party, our people have united under its banner to fight a determined battle. The nation, resolute and staunch, victorious over the imperialist aggressors&lt;sub&gt;1&lt;/sub&gt;, and led by the true party of Marxism-Leninism, will overcome all difficulties, all backwardness and build a happy and flourishing society.<br /> <br /> '''1: Original spelling was &quot;aggresors&quot; and was determined likely to be an error and corrected to &quot;aggressors&quot;.'''<br /> <br /> The national democratic revolution in our country has ended in total victory, but the lessons mentioned above still retain their practical value and importance. Availing itself of that experience in battle which led to national liberation, the Party is convinced that it can solve the revolutionary tasks that now lie before it. We are determined to carry through successfully the glorious mission of defending and developing our country in order to ensure the prosperity of&lt;sub&gt;1&lt;/sub&gt; our beloved native land.<br /> <br /> '''1: &quot;of&quot; was not included in the original and was determined likely to be a printing error and added in.'''<br /> <br /> == Part Three: Building A Peaceful, Independent, United And Prosperous Socialist Laos ==<br /> Only four years have passed since the liberation of our country and the establishment of a popular democratic system of government led by our Party, but many changes have taken place in that short time. We defeated the criminal and malicious plans of the enemy, resolutely defended the independent and correct policy of our Party and preserved the right to national independence and territorial sovereignty. We maintain our position in the front line of socialism in Southeast Asia. Over the years we have become more experienced in the practical side of the socialist revolution and in specifying the objectives of internal and international policy. We have begun the reconstruction of the economy, developed culture and education and devoted all our energies to improving the living conditions of the people.<br /> <br /> Despite many problems to be resolved, we continue to progress confidently in developing and defending our beloved country, for the path to socialism is already open before us. A new and fruitful era has begun in the history of our country—the construction of a peaceful, independent, united, prosperous and socialist Laos.<br /> <br /> === 1. THE TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM IS THE ONLY WAY FORWARD FOR OUR COUNTRY ===<br /> Guided by Marxist-Leninist principles and basing itself on a thorough analysis of the current conditions and the course of revolutionary development in Laos, the 2nd Congress of our Party (1972) defined its paramount task as follows: “The conditions necessary for a direct transition to socialism bypassing the capitalist stage of development must be established.” The Central Committee then gradually elaborated, amended and specified the general policy and the particular tasks of the revolution at the new stage of its development. The general policy adopted by the 2nd Party Congress and the subsequent decisions taken by the plenary sessions of the Central Committee fully meet the objective requirements of revolutionary development in our country -and reflect the deep aspirations of our people. Thus they correspond to the realities of the modern age.<br /> <br /> The experience of the world revolutionary movement over the last 50-odd years, and particularly since the end of the Second World War, clearly revealed the inevitability of the collapse of imperialism and colonialism. The immediate post-war years saw an increasing number of socialist revolutions throughout the world; socialism ceased to be the path followed by just one country and grew into a powerful international system. We have witnessed the enormous achievements of the socialist countries in every sphere, in particular the unparalleled development of the Soviet Union and the tremendous advances in Vietnam, the German Democratic Republic and Cuba, the outposts of socialism in Asia, Europe and Latin America. Socialist community has increased and strengthened, becoming a decisive factor in human progress, the bright promise for the future and cherished dream of progressives throughout the world. Despite the frantic efforts of imperialism and the forces of reaction to undermine, divide and destroy the socialist system, it is obvious that no power, however malicious its plans, can reverse the wheel of history and brake the gathering momentum of socialist revolution. On the contrary, the socialist system continues to grow and expand, as is clearly evidenced by the revolutions in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, South Yemen, Afghanistan and other countries.<br /> <br /> Particularly striking are the achievements of the people of Kampuchea who, under the United Front for National Salvation, within a short period smashed the forces of the reactionary clique of Pol Pot-Jeng Sary and liberated the whole country, saving the people from extinction and establishing Kampuchea on the path to socialism. This yet further illustrates the objective development of history, which no force is powerful enough to check.<br /> <br /> Supported by the socialist system, which continues to develop and expand, the national liberation movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America are also gaining in strength and scope. Having broken the fetters of colonial slavery, they are continuing their bitter struggle to destroy every vestige of colonialism, neocolonialism and the reactionary forces in the service of imperialism in order to win full national independence and achieve social reform in non-capitalist development.<br /> <br /> Inspired by the successes of socialism and faced with the deep and insoluble crisis of capitalism, millions of workers in capitalist countries are waging a vigorous struggle under the slogan, Peace, Democracy: and Social Progress, directing the spearhead of their attack at the reactionary rule of monopoly capital and against the oppressive and aggressive policies of their leaders. This mighty force is carrying the battle against imperialism in its very camp and thus creating conditions necessary for the gradual transition to socialism.<br /> <br /> There is thus a clear distinction between the socialist viewpoint and the various doctrines propounded by opportunists and reactionaries, who strive to distort Marxism-Leninism and deny the historic role played by socialism and, indeed, its very existence. The three revolutionary movements of our day, mentioned earlier, and the broad movement for peace and progress throughout the world are continuing their assault on imperialism and the forces of reaction, forcing them to yield their ground and retreat, sapping their strength and condemning them to isolation. The balance of power between the forces of revolution and of counter-revolution is shifting daily to our advantage, attracting millions irresistibly towards socialism and inspiring progressive people everywhere to continue the struggle for a worldwide transition from capitalism to socialism. This is the main feature of the era we are living through today.<br /> <br /> As Lenin said, “From the democratic revolution we shall at once, and precisely in accordance with the measure of our strength, the strength of the class-conscious and organised proletariat, begin to pass to the socialist revolution. We stand for uninterrupted revolution. We shall not stop half-way.”&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; In the context of modern history, in a country with a low level of socio-economic development but with the working class and peasantry led by a genuine Marxist-Leninist party and conscious of their leading role within the national liberation movement, the victory of the national democratIc revolution will be not only a victory of the people over imperialism and feudalism but also the political victory of the working class over the bourgeoisie inside the country, the victory of a new type of government. The revolutionary power of workers and peasants must not content itself with having won independence and democracy. It must follow the law of revolutionary development and fulfil its historic mission, moving on to the socialist revolution and the building of socialism according to its laws, in order to give a decisive answer to the question, “who will win”, capitalism or socialism, and establish society and the nation on the objective path of modern historical development.<br /> <br /> '''1 V. I. Lenin, “Social-Democracy’s Attitude Towards the Peasant Movement”, Collected Works, Vol. 9, pp. 236-37.'''<br /> <br /> In this historical context, the revolutionary process in our country also comes under the same propositions. Having taken over leadership of the revolutionary process in Laos, our Party carefully considered the objective course of modern development and the aspirations of the people, defining the strategic policy of the revolution as being “to implement the popular national democratic revolution throughout the country in order to then progress towards the socialist revolution and the building of socialism and communism in Laos” (Political Programme adopted by the 2nd Congress of the LPRP, 1972). By adhering firmly to this revolutionary policy and combining the struggle for independence and democracy with the transition to socialism, genuine patriotism with proletarian internationalism, our Party and people have been able constantly to strengthen and expand their strategic positions until the final victory of the popular national democratic revolution and to move directly to the fulfilment of their next task, that of building a peaceful, independent, united and prosperous socialist Laos.<br /> <br /> Our country is now completely united and independent, and the working people are its absolute masters. However, the country has only just emerged from a devastating 30-year war forced upon it by imperialism, a still bears the heavy burden of a colonial and feudal past. Productive forces and relations of production have not undergone any significant change. The capitalist mode of production still prevails in the low-lying regions and cities liberated towards the end of the revolution, and feudal and prefeudal production has survived in large agricultural areas. Socialist production has already started to form, but is still weak and unable to exert any decisive or controlling influence on the national economy as a whole. The attitudes and habits bred of small-scale production are still widespread, nor has it proved possible as yet to finally remove all traces of feudalism and colonialism. Moreover, it must be added that small-scale production continues to generate capitalist and bourgeois trends at every turn.<br /> <br /> Our Party and people are, therefore, faced with extremely urgent and complex problems. The former modes of production must be transformed and new economic relations and division of labour introduced. The material-technical base necessary for economic reconstruction must be laid and the cultural level of the people raised so that our country can advance firmly and rapidly along the road to socialism. This programme corresponds to the laws of modern development and offers the quickest means of removing all vestiges of feudalism and colonialism so that the country can be freed from poverty and underdevelopment, and our society undergo a radical transformation in every sphere of activity, in politics, economy, culture, in national defence and in the living standards of the people. The Party and the people will then be able to fulfil their responsibilities both on the national and international level. tel<br /> <br /> As we are in the front line of socialism in Southeast Asia, a region where imperialism and the forces of reaction are striving unsuccessfully to maintain their position, we must be constantly on our guard, strengthen our defences and be prepared to fight resolutely for our own independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to contribute to stability in our region of the world. This is why the socialist transformation of society and the building of socialism continue to be the most important and decisive tasks facing the revolution in our country today. It is only by carrying through social reform and building socialism that our political and economic potential can develop rapidly enough to strengthen our national security.<br /> <br /> In the battle between the two paths of development—socialist and capitalist—being waged to secure the final triumph of the socialist system, the revolutionary process must inevitably pass through difficult periods and meet with many problems. But we are firmly convinced that our country, under the leadership of the Party and with a popular democratic system of government, will blossom into socialism and our people take their rightful place among the family of socialist nations and on the international scene. We are already accomplishing the historic task of the dictatorship of the proletariat, based on the unshakeable alliance of the workers and peasants and the broad united national front. We also enjoy a considerable support and assistance of the socialist community and the world revolutionary movement, in particular the support of the Vietnamese revolution with which ours is indissolubly linked.<br /> <br /> To our generation has fallen the enormous responsibility and the glorious task of leading the struggle that will answer the question, “who will win”, socialism or capitalism. In answering that question we will lay the foundations of a new era in the history of our country, an era of independence, unity and socialism. We proudly carry the banner of national independence and socialism. Filled with love for our socialist homeland, we are determined to devote all our energies to accomplishing the tasks that have been laid upon us and thus show ourselves worthy of the honour that has befallen us.<br /> <br /> === 2. THE MAIN CONTENT OF THE GENERAL POLICY AND PROGRAMME OF THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION IN LAOS ===<br /> As has already been stated, the transition to socialism is the quickest means of eliminating poverty and backwardness in our country and building a powerful and prosperous society that will fulfil the long-cherished hopes of our people. However, socialism does not build itself, nor arise by accident. It is the fruit of the efforts of millions of people working under the united leadership of the Party and the state, who determine the correct policy and apply the appropriate measures. In order to successfully carry through the socialist revolution and the building of socialism, the 4th Plenum of the Central Committee of the LPRP defined the policy and objectives of the transitional period in our country as follows: “The establishment and consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the right of the working people to be the collective master of the country, together with the simultaneous achievement of three revolutions: revolution in the sphere of production relations, revolution in the sphere of science and technology, and revolution in the sphere of ideology and culture. In this process, the scientific-technological revolution plays the key role, and the cultural-ideological revolution must keep one step ahead of the other two.”<br /> <br /> The dictatorship of the proletariat is the key aspect, the fundamental characteristic of any proletarian revolution. Marx pointed out: “Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Upon seizing power, the working class must immediately establish the dictatorship of the proletariat as its chief weapon in crushing any opposition from the exploiting classes that have just been overthrown, and in defeating any attempt to restore the j whose system. It is also necessary for the re-education of millions of small-scale producers who must be drawn into collective socialist production. Most importantly, our aim in forming, organising and directing the new society and the new economic structure is to create what Lenin described as “a higher type of social organisation of labour compared with capitalism”.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; This is why the establishment and consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat is an objective necessity in the transition to socialism, and in this lies the fundamental difference between the consistently revolutionary ideology of the proletariat and the reformist ideology of opportunists of every kind.<br /> <br /> '''1 Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme”, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Vol. 3, Moscow, 1976, p. 26.'''<br /> <br /> '''2 V.I. Lenin, “A Great Beginning”, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 419.'''<br /> <br /> Now that national independence has been won, the battle against the remaining forces of reaction within the country and the evil designs of imperialism and the forces of international reaction goes on in a rather complex situation. Moreover, our society is still very underdeveloped, lacking nearly all the material means necessary for the building of socialism. The transition to socialism will thus require a long and difficult struggle. We are obliged to counter subversive action from within and without, while at the same time energetically establishing new productive force and new production relations in order to create a new economic structure, a new superstructure and a new individual. Therefore, without the immediate dictatorship of the proletariat, supported by a powerful state apparatus of the new type, based on the worker-peasant alliance led by the working class and including all other working people, now the collective masters of the country, our historic revolutionary mission will not be accomplished.<br /> <br /> The establishment and consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as stated in a resolution adopted by the 4th Plenum of the LPRP Central Committee, requires unswerving adherence to the policy drawn up by the Party for carrying through the socialist revolution in all spheres of state and social activity. The dictatorship of the proletariat must be improved and strengthened in every way so that it can become a powerful and effective means of carrying through the objectives set by the Party and government for this new stage, and for the defence of the country and the new system. The three revolutions must be accelerated in order to transform our scattered and small-scale production into a powerful socialist economy and create the material, technical and cultural base of socialism. The foreign policy of our Party must be correctly implemented, and international solidarity with other socialist countries and progressive elements throughout the world further developed.<br /> <br /> Historical experience has taught our Party that the consolidation of the dictatorship&lt;sub&gt;1&lt;/sub&gt; of the proletariat requires that the policy of the Party with regard to the socialist revolution place major emphasis upon developing and strengthening the right of the working people to be the collective masters of the country. Socialism is the work of the people themselves. Lenin said: “Only if the proletariat and the poor peasants display sufficient class consciousness, devotion to principle, self-sacrifice and perseverance, will the victory of the socialist revolution be assured.”&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> '''1: Original spelling was &quot;dictatoship&quot; and was determined likely to be an error and corrected to &quot;dictatorship&quot;.'''<br /> <br /> '''2 V.I. Lenin, “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government”, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 241.'''<br /> <br /> During the national democratic revolution our Party, convinced that the revolution is the work of the people themselves, insisted on learning from the people and relying on them in accomplishing any of the tasks of the revolution. It was precisely because the Party was able to unite, organise and lead the people that it was able to achieve its mighty task, overcoming all obstacles and difficulties, liberating the country and winning independence to bring freedom to the nation.<br /> <br /> Now the revolution in our country has entered the most radical stage in its development, that of the socialist revolution whose aim is the transformation of the old society into a new society, the small-scale production into a powerful socialist economy, the working people into the true masters of society. Such mighty objectives cannot be finally achieved until the entire people, and particularly the workers and peasants, willingly and knowingly take upon themselves the role of master and display their determination to eliminate all vestiges of the old, exploiter regime, rejecting individualism and the old ideas deriving from small-scale, isolated production, to organise themselves and move towards collective labour, devoting all their energies and abilities to the transformation of society and the building of socialism under the leadership of the Party and the government.<br /> <br /> The resolution of the Central Committee 4th Plenum points out that the implementation and consolidation of the right of the working people to be the collective masters of the country depends, first and foremost, on the formation of a socialist collective system in which the working people are organised around the alliance of workers and peasants under the leadership of the Party. The right of the workers to be the collective masters of the country must be fully implemented in every sphere of activity—political, economic, cultural and social. The people must feel themselves to be the masters throughout the entire country, in every region, in every place of work; masters of society, of nature and of their own existence. This right of the people must become part of the social structure and be given legislative form within the new system. It must be implemented forthwith at every level without exception, together with the process of reform and the establishment of new social relations, the formation of the new socialist individual on the basis of a harmonious combination of social obligations and genuine personal freedom.<br /> <br /> The essence and significance of the three simultaneous revolutions. The three revolutions mentioned earlier, the revolution in the sphere of production relations, in the sphere of science and technology, and in the sphere of ideology and culture, are integral to the development of the socialist revolution, and no country that intends to build socialism can do so without passing through this stage. These three revolutions are closely interconnected, each affecting the development of the other. The new society, the new individual, the new production relations and productive forces cannot be the result of just one of these revolutions but only the combined result of all three together. However, in their dialectic unity, each occupies its own special position, has its own inherent function and, depending upon the conditions in a given country, each has particular tasks and objectives, the purpose of which is to provide the correct solution to the specific problems related to building socialism.<br /> <br /> In our country, the particular task of the revolution is to build socialism starting from small-scale production with elements of natural economy. We have encountered and are still encountering many difficulties of a practical nature. In the first place our economy, weighed down under colonialism and feudalism, is still basically agrarian with scattered individual holdings that, in many places, still use primitive methods of cultivation. Division of labour is limited to the village and even to the family. Exchange and distribution occur only in the lowlands and towns and rely on age-old practices. Most of the people are peasants engaged in subsistence farming, poor, uneducated and a prey to disease. The French colonialists and feudal rulers used the natural wealth and resources of the country to enrich themselves. The 30 years of war unleashed on the country by imperialism, and in particular American imperialism, dealt a devastating blow both to the economy of the country and the living standards of the people. During this period capitalism, commerce among other elements, closely linked with foreign capital, began to develop in some of the cities. The American imperialists flooded the country with dollars and their own unsold produce to support the compradore bourgeoisie, the military bureaucracy and the reactionary feudal lords, with a view to using them to serve their aggressive plans and neocolonialist policies. As a result, many imbibed their ideology and became accustomed to a parasitic, luxurious and dissolute life-style. After the liberation of our country we refused all such “assistance” offered with the aim of enslaving us, and put an end to all forms of compradore activity, but the consequences of the long rule of imperialists and feudal lords will continue to present us with major economic problems for some time to come.<br /> <br /> Building socialism in such circumstances obviously requires a great deal of effort and determination, but we have the strength of the new system and basic conditions favouring the rapid and sure transition to socialism.<br /> <br /> We have vast expanses of arable land, large tracts of forest, considerable and as yet unused sources of hydro-electric power and valuable mineral deposits. Only an insignificant amount of all this wealth has been exploited to the benefit of the — We are only just beginning to organise their utilisation on an ever-increasing scale. Given our small population, manpower is restricted, but our people have always known how to work together, they are industrious and resourceful. We can increase our manpower capacity by rational organisation of labour and by mechanisation and modernisation of production.<br /> <br /> Our country is, moreover, a member of the socialist community and we are, therefore, well placed to develop mutual aid and cooperation with socialist countries and other states in order to avail ourselves of the latest achievements of science and technology and use them to lay the foundations of an independent socialist economy. A decisive factor in the successful development of the socialist revolution in our country is the correct and creative leadership by the Party, combined with the organising and managerial role the state apparatus plays in our economy, and the system of the collective socialist master of the country we are in the process of forming.<br /> <br /> Taking into account the general laws of socialist revolutionary development and the specific conditions in our country, the Party drew up a programme for the simultaneous implementation of the three revolutions, seeing the revolution in the sphere of production relations as the guiding factor, the revolution in the sphere of science and technology as the cornerstone, while the revolution in the sphere of ideology and culture must keep one step ahead of the other two. This process will ensure that profound and radical changes are brought about in the course of the revolution, while the elimination of the old and formation of the new will form the main link in the chain. To start with, the most important task is reform with a view to forming the new. The formation of the new in its turn must encourage reform. In the next stage, however, the main aim will be the formation of the new system, laying the foundation for the new economy, the new culture and the new, socialist individual.<br /> <br /> As for the revolution in the sphere of production relations, our Party considers the most important issue—and one requiring a radical solution—to be that of dismantling the capitalist economic system and ending the exploitation of man by man bound up with that system. We must totally eliminate the system of exploitation by the compradore bourgeoisie and feudal lords, and implement a peaceful programme of reform with regard to capitalist industrial and commercial enterprises. Certain members of private enterprise are to join the ranks of the workers, while the capitalist class, the class of exploiters, is to totally disappear.<br /> <br /> However, given the present economic conditions in our country, the most important task is to transform small-scale, scattered, individual production into collective socialist production, by means of cooperatives. Every assistance must be given to the peasants in forming agricultural and forestry cooperatives, in leading them to adopt the collective system of production, and in the reorganisation of production and the redivision of labour in agriculture and forestry. They must be introduced to new farming techniques in order to increase production, gradually improve their living standards and cultural level and strengthen the alliance of workers and peasants.<br /> <br /> At the same time it is essential that we help the artisans, small traders and small-scale producers to form cooperatives and adopt the collective socialist system of production, totally eliminating all basic forms of capitalist enterprise. Another and equally important aspect of the problem is that our popular democratic state must increase its control over the economy and develop the role of the state sector, state trade in particular, so that the state sector can play the directing role in the economy.<br /> <br /> In the first stage of the transition to socialism, the revolution in the sphere of production relations must bring about a complete change in the system of property ownership, that is, eliminate ` the capitalist economy based on private enterprise and establish socialist ownership in two forms—state and cooperative, thus assuring that socialist production relations occupy the commanding position in the national economy. It must also assist the growth of production and the implementation of the right of the working people to be collective master. Small-scale, scattered, individual production must be transformed into large-scale socialist production and all sources of capitalist development must be removed.<br /> <br /> The revolution in the sphere of production relations is of fundamental and crucial importance, but it cannot of itself lead to the formation of large-scale socialist production and cannot ensure the further development of production relations it brings about. Given the socioeconomic conditions in our country, the transformation of production relations presents difficulties, but the most problematic issue is that of developing new productive forces and increasing productivity. This is why our Party considers that the revolution in the sphere of science and technology plays a key role in the simultaneous development of the three revolutions. Decisive measures must be taken to bring about constant technical improvement and the rapid introduction of the latest developments in science and technology into the production process, in agriculture and forestry in the first place. We must learn to combine traditional skills with the latest techniques at every level in the economy, and gradually progress from the simplest techniques such as irrigation, seed selection, the use of fertilisers, improvement of cultivation, stockbreeding and processing of raw materials, etc., to the latest technological developments. We must also use to the full the existing domestic production and raise it gradually to the level of semi-mechanised and fully mechanised production, while also establishing some enterprises of the new type essential to the economy. Together with this, we must take advantage of the assistance of the socialist countries and international exchange in order to organise production and establish our own means of production, from the simplest to the most advanced equipment for state and cooperative workshops and factories.<br /> <br /> These are the measures that must be taken if we are to satisfy the immediate, present-day requirements of economic development, accelerate labour productivity, gradually replace manual labour by mechanisation and continually improve the material and technical base of socialism. This is how we intend to construct large-scale socialist production in our country. It is obvious, therefore, that given this content, the scientific and technological revolution should be one of our main weapons in the offensive upon poverty and backwardness, in order to achieve the total victory of socialism.<br /> <br /> '''1: Original spelling was &quot;costruct&quot; and was determined likely to be an error and corrected to &quot;construct&quot;.'''<br /> <br /> Together with the revolution in Production science and technology, we must also bring about a revolution in the sphere of ideology and culture, an essential component of the socialist revolution. Its aim is the transformation of the moral, spiritual, cultural and social life of the people and the formation of the new individual having a high level of revolutionary morality and culture, and armed with the latest scientific and technological knowledge. He must also possess the ability to organise and direct society. This will produce a generation of industrial workers, cooperative farmers and socialist intelligentsia that will join the ranks of fighters for socialist revolution and be able to satisfy the growing demands of socialist construction.<br /> <br /> As a result of the policy of obscurantism pursued by the colonialists and feudal rulers over many years, a considerable proportion of the population were illiterate. The ideology of the small producer, various harmful practices and prejudices and the remains of the decadent culture inherited from the old system still linger on. Few of the younger generation have completed their secondary education, the cultural and professional level of many of our white and blue-collar workers is still low, thus unable to meet the requirements of revolutionary development.<br /> <br /> This serves to emphasise the importance of the ideological and cultural revolution in our country. It explains why it must be one step ahead of the other two revolutions. We must make good lost time, avail ourselves of every opportunity and concentrate all our efforts in order to carry through successfully the ideological and political re-education of the people, develop culture, education and health service and draw the people into the new way of life. Particular attention must be paid to educating professional workers and army servicemen, and to ensuring the ideological education of the younger generation. The mass media, art and literature must also be developed according to the general line of our Party so that they can meet the growing demands of socialist construction.<br /> <br /> Our new culture, socialist in content and national in form, must be imbued with the spirit of the Party, the people and socialist realism, participate actively in the transformation and construction of the economy and serve the interests of national security and defence. It must assist the people in building a new life, that is morally upright and rich in cultural and spiritual values, reflecting and extolling the highest moral characteristics of the new individual, characteristics that find their expression in work and in struggle.<br /> <br /> At the same time, we must devote all our energies to eliminating vestiges of the reactionary feudal and colonial ideology and culture, the old psychology and the outworn customs and practices of the old society. The formation of a developed socialist culture and the education of the new, progressive individual is an essential element in the total process of transformation, an effective means of stimulating revolution in the field of production relations, science and technology, all of which will lead the socialist revolution to total victory.<br /> <br /> === 3. SOME QUESTIONS RELATING TO ECONOMIC POLICY AT THE FIRST STAGE OF SOCIALIST CONSTRUCTION IN LAOS ===<br /> The creation in Laos of highly productive socialist economy, based on socialist production relations and large-scale industry, entails the formation of a large-scale national economy equipped with the latest technology, with a well-developed and rationally organised division of social labour, and with a high level of productivity able to promote the continuing expansion of production. This would enable us to generate an increasing amount of material wealth with which to satisfy the growing demands of the population and those of the economy itself. If small-scale production is to be transformed into large-scale production, a well-developed socialist industry is essential. This is the objective law that operates in any country with a backward and poorly developed economy during the transitional period from capitalism to socialism.<br /> <br /> Our country advances to socialism with a national economy still based on small-scale production. Social labour continues to be concentrated mainly in agriculture, in which farming techniques are still primitive. Productivity is extremely low and the commodity exchange between the various regions very limited. However, we also enjoy various advantages. There are vast expanses of arable land and forest, large mineral deposits and considerable supplies of untapped hydro-electric power. Besides, we pursue programmes of economic and technical cooperation and mutual assistance with various countries throughout the world, particularly with socialist countries.<br /> <br /> In order to solve the economic tasks lying before us in the first stage, that is, the accumulation of the resources necessary for industrialisation and improved living standards, our scattered, private agriculture and forestry must be organised on a smoothly-functioning and collective basis. We must concentrate on encouraging local control and assisting local organs and personnel to stimulate the construction and development of the foundations of the national economy. From there we can proceed to the reorganisation of production, redistribution of labour, and then to the formation of a new, rational economic structure in each region and throughout the country. In this way, productivity can be rapidly increased and small-scale production gradually transformed into large-scale socialist production.<br /> <br /> The decisions of the Central Committee 4th and 5th plenums, therefore, confirmed the principal objectives of the general line of the Party, and defined the task of constructing and developing the national economy during the transition to socialism as follows: agriculture and forestry are to serve as the basis for the development of industry; the development of agriculture, forestry and industry are to be balanced rationally at each stage; special attention is to be given to the development of certain essential branches of heavy industry that will promote the further growth of agriculture, forestry and light industry; every effort must be made to stimulate the regional economy in accordance with the unified directives of the state plan in order to create the conditions necessary for the formation of a fully integrated national economy in the near future; economic development is to be closely linked with strengthening and improving national security and defence; mobilisation of a internal forces of the country is the priority. Every effort is to be made, at the same time, to obtain and use effectively all forms of foreign economic and technical assistance and cooperation in building our socialist economy, in order to continually improve the material and cultural level of our people and stimulate the accumulation of the material wealth necessary to accelerate socialist industrialisation.<br /> <br /> This plan elaborated by the Central Committee defines the general direction and appropriate measures for the construction and development of the economy, and is designed to guide all our activities in the first stage of the transition to socialism. If we are to create a rational economic structure and implement a new division of social labour, we must constantly regulate and revise the balance between agriculture and forestry on the one hand and industry on the other, between regional economy and the national economy, production and distribution, accumulation and consumption.<br /> <br /> The Problem of Creating a New Agro-Industrial Structure. Previously, agriculture, forestry and industry functioned independently. The country possessed only a small number of industrial enterprises, geared mainly to war and owned by colonialists and their agents. Our industry depended entirely on foreign capital and raw materials, and most industrial and consumer goods were imported. Our agriculture and forestry have considerable potential, but lacking organisation and industrial support they remained backward, unable to develop. There was no agro-industrial structure and therefore industry also stagnated.<br /> <br /> In order to stimulate the growth of industry and increase the productivity of social labour, industry, agriculture and forestry must be combined together into a balanced whole. Agriculture and forestry are the basis of industrial development and, in its turn, industry serves agriculture and forestry, promoting their rapid development.<br /> <br /> Agriculture and forestry, previously hardly developed, are the two most promising branches of the economy. In the present economic circumstances, the development of the country must start with them. At the first stage, our agriculture and forestry have to cope with a difficult and important task. They must be developed in every way, so as to meet the material demands of the people, provide raw materials for light industry, fulfil the requirements of national security and defence, at supply export commodities against the machinery and equipment necessary for the scientific and technological revolution. The immediate task is to develop, within the next few years, agriculture and forestry to the point where we are self-sufficient in food and do not have to rely on imports.<br /> <br /> We are advantageously placed in this regard, having a tropical climate, large areas of undeveloped arable land and pasture, and forests containing a wide variety of valuable timbers. There should therefore be a comprehensive development of these two branches of the economy, including the cultivation of cereals and industrial crops, animal husbandry and forest conservation and exploitation, etc. Of these the most important is grain production.<br /> <br /> If agriculture and forestry are to become the basis of industrial development, as it is essential they should, then cooperatives must be established as quickly as possible, together with a certain number of state enterprises in both branches. In this endeavour, the condition of the land, the availability of natural resources and the traditional farming methods of the people in each region must be taken into consideration in order to promote the reorganisation of production and the rational use and distribution of manpower and material resources in every district and region according to the overall state plan for the national economy. At the same time, a serious effort must be made to strengthen the material and technical base by providing irrigation systems, rural road networks, transport and communication centres, and machinery. repair stations. The agriculture must be supplied with draught animals and machines, the simple and improved equipment, and the more essential branches and important areas of production must be fully or partly mechanised. Particular attention must also be given to training managers and specialists to work in different branches of the economy.<br /> <br /> Naturally, alongside the development of agriculture and forestry, the process of industrialisation requires that attention be given to the all-round development of industry itself.. However, at the initial stage this cannot be accomplished immediately, as far as we are unable to solve quickly the problem of equipment, raw materials, specialists and skilled work force. Moreover, we must, for the present, concentrate our investment in agriculture and forestry in order to meet the immediate demands of production and consumption, and to build up our industrial base.<br /> <br /> Industry must develop at an increasing rate over the years to come in order to satisfy the requirements of agriculture and forestry and stimulate their continued growth. In achieving this, we must establish a new and balanced economic structure that comprises industry, agriculture and forestry in every province and district. Care must be taken over the organisation, distribution and efficient use of the production capacities at the disposal of central and local government. Small-scale production, including domestic industry, must be encouraged and a certain number of local enterprises established to provide repair services for transport and agricultural machinery, accessories and spare parts, basic tools and equipment such as threshing and winnowing machines, rice scourers, construction and irrigation equipment, facilities for food and timber processing and production of basic consumer goods. At the same time, it is essential to establish a programme of exploration, research and design, preparatory to building certain important state enterprises in mining, chemical, iron-and-steel and hydro-power industries, and strategically important road construction.<br /> <br /> The Present Problem of Structuring the Locally and Centrally Managed Economy. Local and centralised economies are the two components of the national economy. The successful building of socialism requires a comprehensive and well-balanced economic structure comprising industry, agriculture, and forestry achieved by combining local and centralised economic development within an overall plan supervised by the Party and the government.<br /> <br /> In progressing from small-scale, scattered and underdeveloped production to large-scale socialist production using agriculture and forestry as the basis for industrial development, we must start by concentrating our efforts and resources on regional development in order to construct a firm foundation for the centralised economy. This includes the entire process of reorganisation of production and redivision of social labour, the process of centralisation, specialisation and cooperation, first in the provinces and then throughout the entire country. In the present conditions of our country, this manner of restructuring the economy offers a shortcut, for it corresponds to the objective needs of the transitional period, the need associated with transition from small-scale to large, socialist production. At the same time, this should not be viewed as a mere division of functions in running the economy.<br /> <br /> In our country, each province plays a definite and strategic role. Each has particular economic advantages and plays its part in national security and defence. Each has a population of approximately 200-300 thousand over a territory of 10-20 thousand sq km, and has conditions suitable for arable farming and animal husbandry. There are also large supplies of timber, hydroelectric power and valuable minerals in each province. Each has a common border with another country. In such circumstances it: is clear that an integrated economy comprising industry, agriculture and forestry can be created in each province, capable of satisfying the material and cultural needs of the population, assuring security and peace, and contributing to the wealth and power of the nation.<br /> <br /> Under the previous regime, local economic development stagnated in every sphere. The development of various branches of the economy was uncoordinated, the colonial power and ruling élite concerning themselves only with those branches that profited their own interests and exploiting those mineral and timber resources that were located near towns and convenient transportation routes. As for the vast rural areas of the country, here a subsistence economy prevailed, the scale of production limited, in many areas, to the village or even the family. We had a situation in which resources existed but manpower was scarce. Moreover, manpower was not fully utilised—an example of abundance in the midst of poverty. In many places the worker could find work for only 100 days in the year. As a result of this heritage that came down to us from the previous system, our people lived in grinding poverty and for many years our economy stagnated.<br /> <br /> It is therefore absolutely essential that we concentrate all our efforts on establishing and developing local economic systems that utilise the advantages of each province to the full so that each becomes a fully integrated unit politically, militarily, economically and culturally. This also constitutes the first step in the advance to socialism, the aim of which is to transform the old and establish new economic relations, reorganise production and proceed to the redivision of social labour in agriculture and forestry, eliminating natural economy which is still very much in evidence. A new economic structure must be gradually erected in which agriculture, forestry and industry are closely interconnected in each district and province, so that the potential of each province can be harnessed and utilised to the fall in order to stimulate the development of industry and increase labour productivity.<br /> <br /> Using this as our foundation, we will reinforce the alliance between the peasantry and the working class, consolidating national unity. Local organs of government, defence and security will also be strengthened and developed. The increasing strength and power of the provinces will create conditions favourable to the successful construction of the centralised economy.<br /> <br /> However, this emphasis on local development does not involve neglect of the centralised economy, nor does it imply that the local authorities have complete freedom of action. It does not mean that the state and the bodies responsible for directing the economy are abandoning their duties. On the contrary, they must ensure that the resources of the national economy and also the machinery, raw materials and equipment received as aid from abroad are utilised to the maximum in order to promote and develop the local economies. The central bodies must concentrate their activity on the provinces essential to the national economy and supervise the accumulation of resources and materials essential to the local economies. This is their main task in implementing the state plan, a task that also offers each body the opportunity to improve its organisational structure within its own field of activity and thus carry through the preparatory work necessary for establishing a national economy and achieving large-scale national industrialisation.<br /> <br /> In developing and expanding the locally managed economic systems, the immediate aim is to stimulate the growth of agriculture and forestry, together with domestic and light industry. Local road networks and a rational system of commodity distribution and exchange between villages and districts within the province and between provinces are essential to the subsequent formation of a national system of production and marketing. The provinces themselves are directly responsible for carrying through these changes in their area. The ministries must increase their practical control and administration according to the requirements of their sphere of activity, taking into account the degree of administrative authority delegated to the provinces, They are also responsible for coordination in activities of national importance such as civil engineering, transport organisation on major roadways, delivery of goods and equipment, the training of skilled and professional workers, etc., in order to stimulate rapid provincial development. In addition to transforming the provinces into strategic units, the districts must also be developed into economic and planning units rather than being intermediary administrative units as was formerly the case. They will then play an important role in the simultaneous implementation of the three revolutions and serve as the next administrative level, after the village and the cooperative, having the conditions and the means necessary to control and promote activity at the base.<br /> <br /> '''The Problem of organising Proper Commodity Circulation and Distribution.''' The process of economic development in our country and in the fraternal socialist countries has revealed that the rapid development of production, the improvement of social labour efficiency and the transformation of small-scale production into large-scale socialist production require, in addition to the reorganisation of production, the redistribution of manpower and a rational economic structure, the ability to direct the economy properly, that is, the ability to plan, to utilise commodity relations and such economic levers as credit, prices, wages and profit in order to coordinate production, circulation and distribution, production and consumption, and also accumulation and consumption. Firm control over commodity circulation and distribution is, therefore, an essential factor in the process of reproduction.<br /> <br /> Circulation and distribution is the link between intra-sectoral and inter-sectoral production, between production as a whole and consumption, between different branches of the economy and different economic regions within the country, and finally between the national economy and the economy of other countries. In order, therefore, to stimulate production, the new distribution of social labour and the process of extended reproduction and thus increase social accumulation and satisfy the material needs of the population, commodity exchange and distribution must be properly managed, a proper prices policy must be implemented, the purchase and sale of commodities correctly organised and circulation costs reduced to a minimum in order to stimulate economic exchange and satisfy production requirements.<br /> <br /> At present, there is a large discrepancy between our productive capacity and demand. As a result, our Party workers, industrial workers, members of the armed forces and the rest of the population face considerable difficulties in their everyday life. Given the low level of economic development and the devastation produced by a prolonged state of war, the imbalance between production and demand and the difficulties our people face in everyday life constitute a problem that will not be easy to solve. Other factors contributing to this problem are weak economic management that encourages embezzlement and wastage, and inadequate supervision of circulation and distribution.<br /> <br /> We must, therefore, adjust the relationship between initial accumulation aimed at stimulating production, and current consumption aimed at improving the living standards of the population, and this requires that we encourage increased production and economising measures within the consumer section by cutting out all unnecessary expenditure and taking vigorous action against embezzlement and wastage. Only thus can we properly coordinate production and consumption, gradually stabilise our finances, the market, prices and the living standards of the people. We will then be able to economise some of our resources with a view to accumulation and steadily improve living standards.<br /> <br /> However, increased production and economy measures cannot of themselves fully resolve the problem of coordinating production and consumption. There is another and vital problem that requires: solution—that of commodity circulation and distribution which, because of the conditions prevailing in our country, is closely bound up with the problem of production and consumption. Even if production and consumption are balanced, lack of coordination between circulation and distribution will again lead to a discrepancy between them. On the other hand, if a discrepancy exists between production and consumption, the correctly structured system of circulation and distribution will have a beneficial effect in this regard.<br /> <br /> Circulation and distribution can take several forms: distribution of financial resources, wages, prices, credit, etc. In our country, distribution now occurs primarily through trade. Emphasising the importance of trade in the first stage of the transitional period, Lenin said: “At the present moment, in the sphere of activity with which we are dealing, this link is the revival of home trade under proper state regulation (direction). Trade is the ‘link’ in the historical chain of events ... which we, the proletarian government, we, the ruling Communist Party, ‘must grasp with all our might’.”&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Given the importance of trade, Lenin called upon all Bolshevik Party members to learn to trade in a cultured and civilised fashion.<br /> <br /> '''1 V.I. Lenin, “The Importance of Gold Now and After the Complete Victory of Socialism”, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 113.'''<br /> <br /> That is why we must focus our attention not only on the comprehensive development of production but also on trade, both within the country and with other countries. There must be a plan for an accelerated reform of private trade so that it serves production and the daily needs of the population. More importantly, we must make every effort to develop state-controlled trade and various forms of purchasing and marketing cooperatives, to organise the urban and rural market and to reorganise and comprehensively develop circulation and distribution under centralised government control.<br /> <br /> Moreover, as is stated in the resolution adopted by the 3rd Plenum of the Central Committee of the LPRP (1975), in order to supply production and ensure the proper coordination of circulation and distribution it is necessary that “particular attention be paid to developing communications and transport, with priority given to communications”.<br /> <br /> We must avail ourselves to the maximum of all state and private facilities in this sphere, combining traditional and modern, domestic and imported means of transport. The transport system must then be organised and used to convey consumer and producer goods, particularly in mountainous areas, and to supply the needs of security and defence.<br /> <br /> For the reasons: described above, it is now more than ever essential that the Party and the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat take firm control over trade and transport in order to stimulate economic development and thus bring about the reorganisation of production and implement the redivision of social labour. Thereafter we can progress towards the building of a new economic structure that will ensure a new relationship between production and consumption, and thus gradually lead to a stabilisation of financial resources, the market, prices and living standards which will create conditions favourable to the construction and development of the national economy. Every Party worker and member should bear in mind the words of Lenin, who called on us to learn to trade in a “cultured way”, so as to raise the level of trade in the centre and in the regions to enable it to play its part in the programme of socialist reform and the building of socialism, in strengthening the alliance between the working class and the peasantry and in consolidating national unity.<br /> <br /> === 4. MOBILISING ALL THE FORCES OF THE NEW ORDER TO ENSURE THE VICTORY OF THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION ===<br /> The shortest route to equality, prosperity and happiness for all the peoples of our country is the direct transition to socialism bypassing capitalism, chosen by our Party. However, success will involve overcoming numerous difficulties and passing through painful trials as we are setting out along a new path in the history of our people, having little practical experience and starting virtually from nought. We have an enormous revolutionary responsibility to discharge. We need more than ever to strengthen the unity of the people, the unity of all the various ethnic groups, and mobilise all the forces of the nation and the Party while, at the same time, actively seeking international aid and broadening the scope of international cooperation on the basis of the correct, free and independent foreign policy of the Party. All this is of vital importance if we are to unite all the forces of the new order to overcome poverty and achieve economic development and equality for all nationalities and ethnic groups, build a strong and prosperous socialist Laos and make a worthy contribution to the general development of the world revolutionary process.<br /> <br /> In order to mobilise all the forces of the new order it is essential to further strengthen the unity binding together all the nationalities and ethnic groups, working classes and social strata of the nation and raise it to a qualitatively higher level, so that it can serve as the basis for an all-round development of the revolutionary forces, leading to the successful achievement of all the plans and directives of the Party and the state at the new stage.<br /> <br /> Now, as before, the monolithic unity of the peoples of our country is of decisive importance both for the existence of the nation and the cause of the revolution. However, this unity, both as regards its underlying basis and its content, is not static but constantly develops to reach a qualitatively higher level. In accord with the ongoing revolutionary process, the Party must determine the corresponding political line to be followed at that stage and carry through the correct policies in order to concentrate all our forces, further develop the potential of the nation and thus ensure the success of the revolution at each stage.<br /> <br /> During the national liberation struggle, when the main aim was to overthrow the rule of the imperialists and feudal lords and win national independence, equality and freedom for all our peoples, the Party held aloft the banner of independence and democracy and gathered under that banner into one, broad, national united front all the classes and social strata of the nation, including the elders and tribal leaders, regardless of their social origins and political views, on the one condition that they be patriots loyal to the people and determined to fight the imperialists and their minions. The alliance of the workers and the peasants, led by the working class, was the core of this anti-imperialist, anti-feudal front. This correct policy of broad unity created the tremendous national force that led to the victory of the national democratic revolution.<br /> <br /> Now the revolution in our country has entered a new stage of its development, and our task is to defend the gains of the revolution and carry through the building of socialism. This means putting an end to backwardness, ethnic enmity and inequality and establishing a new and just society free of class hostility and ethnic antagonism, free of exploitation. The task of uniting and developing the forces of the nation retains, therefore, all its strategic importance, but it is now more comprehensive in content and deeper and broader in form.<br /> <br /> The unity of the nation, of all the peoples during the socialist revolution is expressed in the close alliance and cooperation of all the industrial and office workers, the working intelligentsia and representatives of all the social strata, including members of the previous ruling circles who have consented to re-education in order to become fully-fledged working members of society. The core of this unity is the indissoluble alliance of the working class and the cooperative peasantry. The aim of the revolutionary struggle is to remove all forms of bourgeois exploitation and parasitism, eliminate all sources of the self-generation of capitalism, suppress any opposition or attempts to revive the remnants of the reactionary forces, defend our national independence and build socialism.<br /> <br /> The unity of the nation and all its nationalities and ethnic groups during the socialist revolution depends on a socialist mode of production based upon economic and cultural community. This will give rise to a common psychology, common views and aspirations embodying the best of each of the peoples of our nation. Unity is revealed in the total coincidence of the aims and ideals of the struggle, in the harmonious combination of national interest and class interest and in equal rights and obligations for all the working people, now the collective masters of the country. This economic equality is the basis of political, cultural and social equality.<br /> <br /> National unity in the period of the socialist revolution must therefore be reinforced by putting it upon the qualitatively new basis described above, carrying through the process of transformation throughout the country and thus increasing the forces of the nation so that they can fulfil the revolutionary tasks that lie before the nation at this stage.<br /> <br /> Strengthening the unity of all the nationalities and ethnic groups is a task of great strategic importance that is decisive for the fate of the revolution in our country. We must, therefore, pay more attention to the national question, regard work with different nationalities and ethnic groups as being of crucial importance and take the national question into account in every sphere of activity. Effective steps must be taken to raise the level of political and ideological work among the various nationalities and ethnic groups and to improve education, cultural facilities, medical services, develop production and raise the living standards for the different national groups. Moreover, particular attention must be given to those national groups who live in remote and backward areas of the country, and to the psychology, aspirations, customs and beliefs of the various nationalities in order to promote their broad unity and draw them into the building of socialism. Care must be taken to include elders, tribal leaders, and clan chiefs in this work and to train Party workers from the various ethnic groups. We must engage fully in this task in order to avail ourselves of the militant spirit of each group and the economic advantages offered by each region in promoting the development of each group, and ensuring that the mountainous regions progress equally with the lowlands in the advance towards socialism.<br /> <br /> The further consolidation of the unity of the revolutionary classes and the various strata of society and the radical revolutionary transformation of the nation are the fundamental and urgent tasks facing the revolution in its present stage. Equally important is the education and mobilisation of the people, together with a continuing improvement in their material and cultural conditions. This will make it possible to gather them into a broad, national, united front and into mass organisations such as trade unions, youth and women’s organisations, etc. In the course of the three revolutions and various labour campaigns, we must redouble our educational and organisational work among the working class and ensure its leading role, making it the genuine master of state enterprises, the main weapon in. the struggle to transform the private capitalist sector. We must draw all blue and white-collar workers and all government employees into the trade-union movement and explain to them the Party line and policy, develop their class consciousness and promote their role as the collective masters of the country so that the trade-union movement becomes a school of socialism.<br /> <br /> The Party and the working class must be active in their educational work among the peasants, uniting them and leading them to socialist collectivisation. The peasants must be assisted in raising their cultural level, in introducing modern scientific methods and equipment into agricultural production and laying the material and technical base of agriculture. This will serve to reinforce the political, economic and cultural alliance of the workers and peasants and thus create the basis for total national unity and the implementation of the right of the working people to be the collective masters of the country. At the same time, educational work must be carried out among the other strata of the urban and rural working population in order to draw them into collective labour and enable them to play their rightful role in the system of socialist collective control.<br /> <br /> In the socialist revolution, the intelligentsia play a particularly vital role. Lenin pointed out the impossibility of building socialism without a revolutionary intelligentsia and without scientific knowledge. The Party must therefore concern itself with the education of the intelligentsia, give them every support, develop their abilities and put their talents and knowledge to appropriate use. Particular care must be taken to prepare members of the intelligentsia from among the working class, the peasants and revolutionaries in order to produce a well-qualified socialist intelligentsia with high moral qualities. We must, at the same time, help the intelligentsia from other strata of society, to train and guide them.<br /> <br /> As for the representatives of the various ethnic groups and religious faiths who are patriotic and progressive in their outlook, and also members of the national bourgeoisie who accept the socialist transformation of society, we are conducting a policy of genuine alliance, and help and support them in every way if they are working for the good of the new order. We are assisting former officers, members of the police force and the previous civil administration who accept re-education and are prepared to devote their energies and talents to their country, and we are creating conditions in which they can fulfil their obligations and enjoy the rights of worthy citizens of their country.<br /> <br /> To increase the power of the new order we must, together with educating, mobilising and uniting all the peoples of the country, also improve and strengthen the state apparatus from top to bottom, at the centre and locally, turning it into a truly effective means of carrying through the policies of the Party, of organising and administering defence, the transformation and construction of the country and of ensuring the right of the people to be the collective masters under the leadership of the Party.<br /> <br /> With regard to strengthening the state apparatus, our aim over the coming years is to reorganise and improve its structure, raise its efficiency in social, economic and cultural administration and increase its role in national security and defence. All the major elements in its structure must be politically united and professionally competent so that Party and government directives are correctly implemented and the right of the people to be the collective masters rigorously observed.<br /> <br /> In order to increase the efficiency of the state apparatus as the instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat, Party workers, administrative personnel and members of the armed forces must be educated in the spirit of political consciousness, patriotism and loyalty to socialism. They must be aware of their sacred duty and great responsibility to their country and people, and of their role as collective masters of the country. A constant battle must also be waged against voluntarism, arrogance, bureaucratism, the abuse of power, a disparaging attitude towards the people, lack of attention to organisational work, and other negative phenomena all of which can still be met with in our government institutions. Our central administration must be compact but highly efficient. Its functions include primarily planning, control of policy implementation, study of prevailing circumstances, execution of foreign policy, training of personnel, etc. The main task of provincial and district administration, which must also be strengthened, is management of production and distribution, organisation of education and health, implementation of measures pertaining to defence and law and order, etc. Local administrative organs, directly in contact with the people, bear immediate responsibility for the life of the people in every sphere. They must be particularly strong and reliable. It is at their level that clashes occur with the enemy, that all the plans and policies of the Party and government are put to the test and that Party workers are tried and tested.<br /> <br /> We must also work unceasingly to establish a scientifically based system of labour and properly planned, realistic work methods in order to constantly improve the quality of work in all branches of the state apparatus. In the years ahead, we must direct all the forces and capacities of the central and provincial organs towards the work at the grass-roots level in order to assist the local organs in successfully carrying out their principal task, that of transforming society and building socialism, so that the needs of local economic development can be met, our defence capability increased, law and order guaranteed and the subversive actions of the enemy curtailed. Subsequently, on the basis of the experience thus gained, labour organisation and work methods must be improved to meet Speaks facing the state apparatus at every level.<br /> <br /> As regards our foreign policy we have, as loyal Marxist-Leninists and supporters of proletarian internationalism, and in accord with the independent and correct policy of our Party, always done everything in our power to contribute to the unity of the socialist community, the national liberation movement and the worldwide movement for peace, democracy and social progress, seeing in this our most important task and a decisive factor in the victory of the revolution in our country. In consequence, our Party has invariably educated the people in the spirit of the noble principles of proletarian internationalism and waged a constant battle against the backward, reactionary views of bourgeois nationalism and the divisive tactics of imperialism and international reaction.<br /> <br /> Now that the revolution has entered a new phase, our great historic task is to turn our poor and backward country into a powerful and prosperous socialist state. All our people must increase their efforts to achieve this goal, develop their sense of independence and sovereignty and promote the noble traditions of international solidarity. They must rely first and foremost upon their own forces in order to become masters of their own destiny, while also actively seeking international aid and developing economic, cultural, scientific and technical cooperation with other countries and, most importantly, with fraternal socialist states, in order to increase their capacity to ensure their own independence and sovereignty and successfully&lt;sub&gt;1&lt;/sub&gt; carry through the building of socialism.<br /> <br /> '''1: Original spelling was &quot;sucessfully&quot; and was determined likely to be an error and corrected to &quot;successfully&quot;.'''<br /> <br /> We are fulfilling our historic mission within an international situation that is generally developing in our favour. However, the forces of imperialism and international reaction continue their stubborn opposition. Uniting their forces in reckless pursuit of their aggressive and expansionistplans and limitless ambitions, they are creating various reactionary alliances and following an interventionist policy that does not shrink from any tactic, however low, discreditable and perfidious, to divide, subvert and defeat the forces of national liberation and socialism, creating thereby further difficulties and tensions in international relations and directly menacing the stability in Southeast Asia and the sovereignty, independence and security of our nation.<br /> <br /> We must, therefore, be vigilant as never before, be able to distinguish truth from falsehood, friend from foe. We must be deeply imbued with genuine patriotism and proletarian internationalism, resolutely defend our national independence and the peaceful labour of our people and do all in our power to fulfil to the last our honourable internationalist duty.<br /> <br /> Our Party is constantly making every effort to strengthen and consolidate the unity and cohesion of the socialist system and the unity of fraternal parties on the basis of the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. The Party believes that the emergence and development of the socialist system following upon the Great October Socialist Revolution is the decisive factor for social progress in the modern age. We totally condemn and resolutely oppose all attempts by opportunists of every kind to divide and subvert the socialist system and to distort and betray the teaching of Marxism-Leninism, the victorious banner of the proletariat and all the oppressed throughout the world. We deeply appreciate and tirelessly promote solidarity with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, particularly the special relations and splendid militant alliance between Laos and Vietnam, seeing in this an essential factor of victory. For this reason our Party is constantly concerned to develop solidarity, all-round cooperation and mutual aid in every sphere with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and other socialist countries in order to defend the gains of the revolution in each country and thwart the subversive plans of imperialism and world reaction.<br /> <br /> We have always placed a high value on solidarity and friendship with the people of China.<br /> <br /> However, we strongly condemn the Chinese government for unleashing a war of aggression against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and thus creating an extremely dangerous situation that threatens the independence of the countries of Indochina, and peace and stability in Southeast Asia and throughout the world. Such activity runs directly counter to the legitimate interests of the Chinese people. There can be no doubt that the Chinese leaders will be condemned both by their own people and the peoples of the world, and be thus unable to avoid total defeat. The people of Laos fully supports the just struggle of the people of Vietnam in defence of their independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. It has demanded that China cease immediately its aggressive war against Vietnam and unconditionally withdraw all Chinese troops from Vietnamese territory.<br /> <br /> We are working to develop ties of friendship and cooperation with all the countries of Southeast Asia on the basis of mutual respect for the national independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of each country, peaceful coexistence and the agreement by each not to allow its territory to be used by any foreign state as a base for direct or indirect aggression or intervention in the affairs of any other country in the area. We want contentious issues to be settled by negotiation in a spirit of equality, mutual understanding and respect. We support the development of economic cooperation and cultural exchange on the basis of equality and mutual advantage in order to assist the development of each country according to its own specific circumstances, and fully support the resolute battle being waged against the subversive and divisive tactics of imperialism and world reaction, a battle waged in the name of peace, independence, neutrality, stability and prosperity in this part of the world.<br /> <br /> We give our firm support to the national liberation struggle being waged by the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America against colonialism, neocolonialism and apartheid. We constantly support the young national states in their struggle to defend and strengthen national independence, and we are promoting cooperation with the non-aligned countries who are fighting for a new international economic order that would guarantee independence, sovereignty, equality and mutual advantage in economic and cultural exchange. We are resolutely opposed to any form of pressure or any divisive and aggressive action on the part of imperialism and world reaction. We warmly applaud the firm attitude, timely help and generous support offered by the Soviet Union, the Republic of Cuba and other fraternal socialist countries to certain African states, who were thus able to effectively oppose the interventionist and subversive actions of imperialism and world reaction and defend their national independence and right to free development.<br /> <br /> We express our deepest sympathy and solidarity with the struggle of all the working people in capitalist&lt;sub&gt;1&lt;/sub&gt; countries for peace, national independence and social progress.<br /> <br /> '''1: Original spelling was &quot;capitaist&quot; and was determined likely to be an error and corrected to &quot;capitalist&quot;.'''<br /> <br /> We are prepared to establish relations with all the countries of the world on the basis of mutual respect for national independence, sovereignty, equality and mutual advantage.<br /> <br /> We are deeply grateful to the fraternal socialist countries and friendly states near and far, to the world movement for peace and social progress and also to international organisations for their economic and technical assistance and cooperation in defending our country and building socialism.<br /> <br /> We are convinced that, thanks to the wise and firm leadership of our Party which is pursuing an independent and correct political course, to the unity of all our peoples and the advantages offered by the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is being constantly strengthened and developed on a new basis, and thanks also to the generous help and support given us by the fraternal socialist countries and friendly states, and broad cooperation with them, the socialist revolution in our country will, despite all the difficulties, end in victory.<br /> <br /> === 5. COMPREHENSIVELY STRENGTHENING THE PARTY TO FULFIL ITS NEW HISTORIC MISSION ===<br /> With the proclamation of the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos, our revolution entered a new stage in its development. The Party came to power and led the nation and the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the fulfilment of their historic mission, that of defending the independence and unity of our nation and building socialism.<br /> <br /> In this new stage the leading role of the Party, a party now in power and bearing full and direct responsibility for the destiny of the working classes and the entire people, is becoming more complex than hitherto. Internal and external factors are now, on the whole, in our favour: we have the tradition of the united, consistent and resolute struggle of the people, the all-round experience gained over the thirty years of the national liberation movement and the period of peaceful construction, and the advantage of an international situation developing generally in favour of the revolution. However, it must be remembered that our country and its population are small, its economy based on a backward agriculture and the working class still few in number. In such circumstances, it is obvious that the task of transforming the old economic relations and creating new ones, of reorganising production and redividing labour in order to turn our small-scale, scattered, private production into a large-scale socialist system of production, presents acute and complex problems. Moreover, our country is in the front line of socialism in the important region of Southeast Asia at a time when the international situation is complicated yet further by the collusion of imperialism and world reaction. Our Party must, therefore, not only develop a correct political line and a scientifically-based revolution programme in accord with the fundamental tenets of Marxism-Leninism and the reality of the situation in our country, but also deal with the vital task of building, strengthening and consolidating the Party politically, ideologically and organisationally so as to promote its leading role in the sphere of politics, economics, military affairs, culture, science, technology, etc. Party leadership must be raised to a higher level so that it is capable of fulfilling its historic mission at this new stage of the revolutionary process.<br /> <br /> For a number of years, particularly after the Second Congress of the LPRP (1972), much was achieved in the process of building the Party. In the political sphere, the greatest success was the correct and creative solution of the political line to be adopted by our Party in the struggle for national independence and against American imperialism, and the line to be followed in international relations. This solution ensured the victory of the national democratic revolution in our country. However, the fact that Laos is in the front line of socialism in Southeast Asia, and the backwardness of her economy and culture, presented us with numerous problems. In these circumstances, basing itself on the general tenets of Marxism-Leninism applied to the specific conditions in our country, and on the wide experience of other fraternal parties, our Party was able from the start to define the basic content of our political line and the revolutionary tasks to be achieved in the new stage of our development. It was also able to develop the programme to be followed and basic measures to be applied in transforming, building and developing our economy and culture, strengthening national defence and security and expanding our international relations. It thus outlined the fundamental solutions to the problems arising during the socialist revolution and achieved total political and ideological unity within its own ranks, in the armed forces and among the people, consolidating the forces of the nation and winning the sympathy and support of fraternal socialist countries and friends throughout the world. All this served to ensure the success of the political line and programme of the Party over the last few years and create a firm foundation for the ideological and organisational development of the Party. It is also a decisive factor in the defence and construction of-our country today.<br /> <br /> However, along with the successes just described, there are also many flaws and defects, of which the most important is the fact that our theoretical work and practical activity in developing the Party are still inadequate as regards the needs, tasks and principles that apply when the Party is governing the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat and striving to implement the socialist revolution. This is revealed in the fact that our ideological work within the Party, the armed forces and among the population has not yet been radically restructured. The struggle to prevent and correct various erroneous ideas and negative phenomena is not yet conducted with sufficient vigour, while the education, retraining and professional improvement of Party workers and members, necessary to equip them for their new tasks, is still lagging behind. Organisational work is still, on the whole, unable to fully ensure the fulfilment of the political tasks set by the Party at the new stage. It should be particularly stressed that our Party workers are often unable to cope with the task of directing the various spheres of activity and the organisation of fulfilment of their duties and that many primary Party organisations are still weak and the ancillary apparatus of the Party committees not yet fully formed. These flaws and defects lower the militant efficiency of the Party and to some extent limit its leading role.<br /> <br /> In order to consolidate the positive aspects of Party organisation and remove its flaws and defects, and thus increase the ‘leading role and militant efficiency of the Party, the organisational task that now faces us is the following: “To improve the Party development and ensure that the Party masters the teaching of Marxism-Leninism and is able to apply it creatively in the conditions prevailing in our country, so as to define correctly the line and policy to be adopted and carry it through successfully. To strengthen our Party politically, ideologically and organisationally so as to reinforce its class nature and promote its leading role as the vanguard of the revolution. It is essential that the Party be the true directing force in the system of dictatorship of the proletariat and that it be able to guide the revolution at the new stage of its development” (from the decisions of the 4th Plenum of the Central Committee of the LPRP, February 1977).<br /> <br /> The experience of the last few years with respect to developing the Party indicates: that we must carry through the important measures laid down in the resolution on organisational work adopted by the 4th Plenum of the Central Committee of our Party (February 1977), and the national conference of the LPRP (January 1978).<br /> <br /> Firstly, the Party must be strengthened politically, ideologically and organisationally. Ideological work must be closely tied in with organisational work and efforts must be made to strengthen the Party in accord with the political line and tasks laid down by it.<br /> <br /> Secondly, building up the Party must be closely linked with the revolutionary movement of the people, who must be mobilised to carry through the major and vital tasks laid down by the Party and the government. The people must be able to criticise and express their opinion about the activity of the Party, which will make it possible to check the work and personal qualities of Party workers and members.<br /> <br /> Thirdly, we must master the methods of Party development under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Moreover, the organisational work of the Party and its increased militant efficiency must be linked to the improvement of the organisation and efficiency of the state apparatus and to greater activity on the part of mass organisations in order to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat and ensure the successful achievement of all the tasks set before us.<br /> <br /> Fourthly, improving personal qualities of Party members must be closely linked to raising the level of primary Party organisations, and the professional quality of Party workers, to the strengthening and improvement of the state apparatus at every level and in every sphere.<br /> <br /> Fifthly, in increasing Party membership, the most important factor must always be the quality of the members; the growth of the Party must be accompanied by its consolidation. The Party must promptly and resolutely exclude from its ranks any members who are politically unreliable or morally dissolute.<br /> <br /> Our Party has elaborated the correct political line, and on this basis directs its own development. This is our great advantage. Our main task at present, however, is to implement this line and achieve concrete results in increasing the leading role and militant efficiency of the Party. The Party must, therefore, solve a series of problems and implement specific measures (with regard to organisational work) as was noted in the resolution on organisational work adopted by the national Party conference. Particular attention must be paid to the following problems.<br /> <br /> The main task of the Party is to further improve the Marxist-Leninist education of Party workers and members and develop in them a proletarian ideological commitment, class consciousness and understanding of the aims and ideals of the Party. Our Party is the party of the working class. Marxism-Leninism is its ideological foundation and the guiding principle of all its activity. The revolutionary line of the Party consists in creatively applying the basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism to the conditions existing in our country, in skilfully combining patriotism with proletarian internationalism.<br /> <br /> Most of our Party workers and members came to Marxism-Leninism via patriotism. They were under the influence of non-proletarian ideas and views, which are manifested in ideological waverings and petty-bourgeois political instability, in the patriarchal views typical of the peasantry and the concepts of caste and clan that are a feature of feudal and prefeudal society. This situation naturally facilitates the infiltration and development in the Party of harmful and reactionary ideas of opportunism, narrow nationalism, sectarianism and great-power chauvinism.<br /> <br /> Our Party is the ruling party, and without a vigorous programme of education and ideological training, strict control on the part of the collective and criticism and help from the people, some of our Party workers and members, including those occupying leading positions, may, as a result of subjective and objective influences, become infected with bureaucratism, administering and arrogance, abuse their position and undergo a process of degeneration. This could then separate the Party from the people and weaken the dictatorship of the proletariat, which would be a major catastrophe for the Party in power.<br /> <br /> Lenin said about the “truly gigantic problems of re-educating, under the proletarian dictatorship, millions of peasants and small proprietors hundreds of thousands of office employees, officials and bourgeois intellectuals, of subordinating them all to the proletarian state and to proletarian leadership, of eradicating their bourgeois is and traditions” and about the need to educate “in a protracted struggle waged on the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat ... the proletarians themselves, who do not abandon their petty-bourgeois prejudices at one stroke ... but only in the course of a long and difficult mass struggle against mass petty-bourgeois influences”’.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;<br /> <br /> '''1 V. I. Lenin, “‘Left-Wing’ Communism—an Infantile Disorder”, Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 116, 115.'''<br /> <br /> The practical experience gained by the Party over many years in leading the revolution and building up the Party, and particularly the experience it has gained since it came to power and began to lead the socialist. revolution, together with the experience of the world communist movement as a whole, clearly demonstrates that if a party neglects or abandons the Marxist-Leninist education of its workers and the development of proletarian consciousness, if it allows petty-bourgeois, peasant and other non-proletarian views to dominate and even replace the proletarian ideology, then that party inevitably commits errors and sooner or later suffers defeat. Not only will it be unable to direct the building of socialism, but will also face the threat of degeneration and a collusion with imperialism, the betrayal of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.<br /> <br /> For this reason, the work of educating and constantly raising the level of proletarian ideological commitment and the struggle to remove all non-proletarian influences is an indispensable and fundamental necessity in building the Party.<br /> <br /> As the revolution develops, its tasks become ever more complex and serious, and it is all the more important that the Party pursue an independent line and exercise leadership in accord with circumstances. The ideological and theoretical training of our Party workers and members must therefore be constantly improved so that they set an example in their work and are able to organise and lead the people in carrying through the socialist revolution.<br /> <br /> This is why we must constantly improve the Marxist-Leninist training of our Party workers and members. The study of the theory, line and policies of the Party must go hand in hand with practical activity in every sphere. At the same time, strict, principled and objective criticism and self-criticism must be developed within the Party, state apparatus and mass organisations in order to strengthen unity of the Party and raise the level of proletarian ideological commitment, revolutionary morality and class consciousness among Party workers and members, so that they will be able to accomplish their work correctly and in accord with the Party line.<br /> <br /> The Political Programme of the Second Congress of the LPRP called for a resolute struggle to be waged against “‘petty-bourgeois ideas, patriarchal peasant psychology, and the influences of feudal, bourgeois and imperialist ideology. These tendencies reveal themselves mainly in a lack of resolution and perseverance in revolutionary activity, unreliability and compromise, over-confidence and fear of difficulties and privations, attempts to shift work and responsibility onto others, lack of confidence in one’s own abilities and those of the people, parasitism, lack of mental concentration, great-power and narrow nationalism, abuse of power, careerism, bureaucratism and administering”.<br /> <br /> At the same time, we must be vigilant and give a resolute rebuff to all signs of harmful, reactionary and opportunist views, combat all kinds of illusion, error, wavering and rightist tendencies favourable to imperialism and world reaction. The independent line of the Party, the purity of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism must be vigorously defended.<br /> <br /> The first and most decisive task in carrying through the directives and policies of the Party is to form, educate and improve a contingent of professionally competent and reliable Party workers.<br /> <br /> Our Party, entering this new stage in the development of the revolution&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, has a fairly large number of Party workers who have been tried and tested in the national democratic revolution. They are our prize possession. However, as a result of the heavy and urgent requirements&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; of national defence and construction, the Party must have at its disposal a sufficient number of reliable Party workers loyal to the Party’s political line in order to be able to raise the level of both the Party and the state apparatus and carry through the immediate and future tasks of the revolution. It must also—and this is crucial—be able to provide worthy successors to the present generation of Party workers at all levels and in every sphere.<br /> <br /> '''1: Original spelling was &quot;revoluiton&quot; and was determined likely to be an error and corrected to &quot;revolution&quot;.'''<br /> <br /> '''2: Original spelling was &quot;reguirements&quot; and was determined likely to be an error and corrected to &quot;requirements&quot;.'''<br /> <br /> Most of our Party workers are products of the popular revolutionary movement; they have been tried and tested during two long and painful wars of resistance and the recent years of peaceful construction and defence of the new order, and have displayed their loyalty to the revolution and their faith in the leadership of the Party. They are exemplary revolutionaries and many of them have fairly quickly improved their qualifications and abilities in various spheres of activity, successfully carrying through the tasks assigned to them.<br /> <br /> However, given the demands of the new situation, our Party workers must not only possess a high level of ideological commitment and developed social consciousness, but also be professionally qualified in such spheres as economics, culture, science and technology, and have the ability to direct the new society and the new economic structure so as to carry through simultaneously the three revolutions in the conditions prevailing in our country and lead it quickly and confidently to socialism. Clearly, we are not yet in a position to meet all these requirements and this explains the errors and miscalculations that have harmed the people and the revolution over recent years. One of the most urgent problems facing us today in building up the Party is therefore to raise the cultural, scientific and technical level of Party workers and improve their administrative and organisational abilities, as well as to give them Marxist-Leninist education, so that, whatever their position or sphere of activity, they have the professional skills necessary to carry through the tasks laid before them.<br /> <br /> As for the organisational structure of the Party, in view of the need to develop the economy, raise the cultural level of the people, strengthen security and defence and expand international relations, our Party and government require sufficient Party workers with a wide range of professional skills for all the spheres of their activity. In particular, there is a need for top-level administrators, research and planning specialists in the fields of economics, culture, science and engineering, skilled workers, etc. At present there are a number of irrationalities in the structural organisation of Party personnel. Many Party and state organs, both. central and local, have a large workforce but efficiency is still low. There are too few engaged in research and economic planning, a shortage of specialists in science and technology, and a lack of administrative personnel and those capable of assuming responsibility for various departments and branches of the economy. Moreover, Party workers are frequently moved, with the result that in many regions local organs and institutions lack workers despite the fact that the movement among the people is fairly strong and there are a large number of experienced Party members and hardened fighters. There is yet another major problem that stems from the fact that after the liberation the sphere of Party leadership grew continually and therefore a large number of new members entered the Party and state organisations to work alongside those who had fought in the war, or were active in liberated regions or behind enemy lines. This is understandable and testifies to the further development of the revolution. However, as certain Party and state organs have not yet fully assimilated the Party policy regarding the guidance of Party personnel and are therefore not implementing it as rigorously as they should, they are not paying sufficient attention to the retraining and promotion of older Party workers and to educating new leading and rank-and-file Party workers. As a result, Party workers’ positive qualities are not used to the full and there is not, as yet, a sufficient degree of solidarity, mutual help and unity between old and new Party workers. In employing and promoting Party personnel and enhancing their qualifications, there is a tendency in some places to concentrate on those who have an engaging manner and who are good writers and fluent speakers, without enquiring deeply enough into their revolutionary convictions. Not enough attention is paid to raising the qualifications of older and experienced Party workers whose educational level is insufficient and who come from worker and peasant families or ethnic minorities. In some cases, managers, office and industrial workers are engaged without any enquiry into their previous record or their political and ideological training. This reveals narrow-mindedness, negligence and irresponsibility in implementing the Party policy on Party workers, and has had many negative consequences which weaken the internal unity of the Party and hinder its activity and leading role.<br /> <br /> In the present situation, at a time when the revolution is gathering momentum and faces serious and complex tasks that make great demands upon it, while the training of our Party workers leaves much to be desired, it is almost impossible to avoid faults and failings mentioned above. Such faults also arose due to an inadequate level of the political and professional training and poor guidance of Party workers, neither of which is sufficient to meet the new tasks facing the Party. It is therefore a matter of urgency that our Party and state organisations at every level should have a fuller grasp of the line and policy of the Party on Party workers, be more fully aware of the tasks of the revolution in this new stage of its development and concentrate all the capacities of Party and state on solving the problem of Party personnel.<br /> <br /> The immediate task facing the Party is to draw up a plan with a view to classifying and rationally distributing available Party workers between those regions recently liberated and those liberated much earlier, between state administration and the sphere of production and circulation, and also among various spheres of activity—military, political, economic and cultural— and among districts, provinces and the centre. It must also establish a plan for the political, professional, cultural and technical training and reeducation of Party workers, for improving organisation and work methods in order to significantly raise the quality and efficiency of Party workers. Only thus will it be possible to meet the requirements of the central task of the Party, and create conditions in which Party workers can gain experience and realise their abilities in the various spheres of work assigned to them.<br /> <br /> The Party and the government must also draw up a long-term programme dealing with the problem of Party personnel, adopt vigorous and urgent measures relating to the professional retraining of experienced Party workers and also direct its attention to the education and training of new Party workers and employees. It must not hesitate to promote to positions of importance those who have the necessary abilities, professional knowledge and moral qualities, and it must also be able to pick out those Party members, Party supporters, and active participants in mass organisations who have given a good account of themselves in the revolutionary struggle and in practical work so as to train them, improve their qualifications and turn them into Party workers. In-service training, using such methods as the sharing of experience and combined study and work, must be used together with short courses, training at school, and study in socialist and other countries. All these measures are aimed at raising the number and quality of our professional workers over a fixed period of time so as to supply all branches and departments with administrative personnel, train up successors to the older generation of Party workers, regulate Party personnel work in accord with the decisions taken by the Party, and strengthen the contingent of Party workers, thus ensuring that the growing requirements of the socialist revolution can be more fully satisfied. Another important problem currently facing us in building up the Party is that of widening the network of primary Party organisations and strengthening the apparatus of Party leadership at every level. Party cells, the primary organisations, are the basic militant units of the Party, implementing its line and policy, linking the Party and the people and also serving to train new Party workers and provide experience for Party members. The stability or weakness of Party cells and primary organisations and the quality of their work has a direct influence on the material and spiritual life of the people, on the general cause of the revolution and the trust of the people in the Party.<br /> <br /> This is why, in building up the Party, we must do everything possible to improve and strengthen their leading role and militant spirit in every respect. We now have primary Party organisations throughout the country, and their activity is closely linked to that of the lower organs of government and economic management. Their main task is to decide upon and implement in their locality the measures necessary to ensure the success of the line and policy of the Party and government and also to carry through the tasks set by higher organs. The activity of the primary Party organisations must be wholly directed at stimulating a mass movement to carry through the three revolutions, strengthening national defence and law and order, ensuring that local organs and the various institutions carry through their work, and thereby also consolidating the Party organisations themselves. The Party cells and primary organisations must always pay great attention to political, ideological and organisational work with a view to mobilising all Party members and the rest of the population to participate in drawing up and implementing the plans and programmes to be pursued by their local organs and respective organisations. They must exercise strict control over the activity of Party workers and members and also give them timely advice on consistently implementing Party policy and state laws.<br /> <br /> At present, the key problem in promoting the leading role and militancy of primary Party organisations is that of raising the political, theoretical, cultural and professional level of all Party workers and members and, in particular, members of Party committees and those occupying important positions within the Party. In addition, the activity of the Party cells and primary organisations must be brought in line with the requirements of the new tasks, able to use to the full all the capacities and potential of the administrative and professional organs and the mass organisations in carrying through the concrete tasks stemming from the general line and policy of the Party.<br /> <br /> It is necessary to ensure that the provisions on governing the activity of Party cells and primary organisations are consistently applied and that their activity is constantly improved. Their work must be made realistic and precise, so as to set an example and be an effective guide to action. The content of meetings of Party groups and primary organisations must be well prepared and deal with the central issues relating to carrying through the line and policy of the Party and the tasks assigned to local organs and institutions, and also with the organisational programme for their implementation. The tasks and specific duties of each Party worker and member must be clearly defined in the resolutions adopted at the meeting. Party organs, Party meetings and daily Party activity should take place in a spirit of unity, trust, enthusiasm and militancy, thus promoting collective leadership and democracy and a keen sense of responsibility in all Party workers and members.<br /> <br /> In the course of the mass movement, those who show conscientiousness, courage and enthusiasm in their work and who are closely linked to the people should be picked out for political and ideological training and prepared for Party membership, and this applies particularly to the best representatives of the working class and working peasantry, members of the armed forces and prominent members of the intelligentsia, who have been tested in the revolutionary struggle. There must be no sectarianism, prejudice or favouritism. Care must be taken not to admit opportunists, who attempt to penetrate the Party in order to set up factions and occupy positions of importance, and also to remove any reactionary elements and spies who strive to infiltrate the Party in order to conduct divisive and subversive activity directed at undermining the revolution. Those who hold views contrary to the political position of the Party, have degenerated or else retained outmoded ideas, and who, despite every effort made to teach and assist them, have failed to progress, have no authority and are unable to lead the people, must also be excluded from the ranks of the Party. Together with the development of primary Party organisations, special care must be taken to improve the Party apparatus, including Party committees and their organs, particularly in the provinces, cities and districts, so that they can effectively direct the work of economic and cultural construction, of strengthening national defence and law and order and the work of the primary Party organisations in implementing the tasks assigned to them.<br /> <br /> In order to promote the role of the Party committee in its locality or organisation, the immediate problem to be resolved is that of increasing the level of its directing activity and of turning the Party committee into a truly collective organ experienced in political work and building up the Party, in mobilising the people, while also possessing the necessary theoretical knowledge and professional training in the spheres of economics, science, technology and culture—in short an organ equipped&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; with all that is necessary to carry through the tasks that it sets for itself or that are set by higher organs.<br /> <br /> '''1: Original spelling was &quot;equippped&quot; and was determined likely to be an error and corrected to &quot;equipped&quot;.'''<br /> <br /> The creative ability and collective intelligence of the Party committee and local Party organisation as a whole must be developed to the full, and conditions be such that each member of the Party committee participates fully in the discussion of the tasks and the plans for their implementation. The personal responsibility of those in important positions and of Party committee members for the work assigned to them must be increased and the principle of collective leadership and individual responsibility within the Party committee must be strictly adhered to. Any signs of authoritarianism, abuse of power, cult of the personality, or lack of respect for the collective must be suppressed, while any tendency to shift all responsibility onto the collective, evade responsibility or deny the necessity to take decisions on matters within one’s own jurisdiction must be firmly countered.<br /> <br /> The Party committees must eliminate insufficiencies and defects in their organisational work, which is at present one of the weak points in our activity. A major immediate problem is the strengthening and improving of Party committee organs—commissions on research and analysis, organisation, propaganda and education, mass mobilisation, the national front, economics, military affairs, etc._without allowing this apparatus to become too cumbersome. Particular attention must be paid to the training of Party workers at all levels, to raising their theoretical and cultural level and professional qualifications so that these organs can be effective in assisting the Party committees to direct the various spheres of activity.<br /> <br /> The Party committees must also take steps to improve their methods of guidance and adapt their work style to the requirements of the new tasks. It is essential that the relationship between the Party as the leading force, the state as the administrative organ and the people as the master be correctly regulated. The rights and sphere of competence of administrative organs need to be widened and the role of public organisations in carrying through specific tasks increased. Moreover, there is a constant need to remain abreast of events, to be one with the people, to undertake research, study and investigation, establish advanced work teams, check work and analyse experience so as to be able to direct and assist local organisations and institutions in carrying through the tasks assigned to them, in implementing the line and policy of the Party and in preventing errors and infringements of principle.<br /> <br /> To sum up, in order to strengthen Party leadership and development at every level on the basis of total unity on matters pertaining to the political line and practical activity of the Party in the period in which the Party is in power, every effort must be made to raise the quality of Party leadership, to link the promotion of Party leadership with the promotion of the right of the working people to be the collective masters and the improvement of the organisational and administrative capacities of the state apparatus. To achieve this, the Party must be strengthened politically, ideologically and organisationally and a number of problems must be solved relating to political line, concrete policies, improvement of the apparatus, determination of the course to be followed, methods of leadership in the new conditions, etc. However, the most important issues, those to which the Party must give its keenest attention, are raising the level of Marxist-Leninist training and proletarian ideological commitment of its workers and members, educating, improving and expanding of Party personnel, accelerating the establishment of primary Party organisations and improving the Party’s governing apparatus at all levels in accord with the new tasks. These are extremely important issues to which the Party must give particular and direct attention in order to raise the level of all Party activity in guiding the revolution and in raising the Party itself to a higher level, so as to ensure the successful achievement of the glorious and historic mission me upon it by the people and the working class.<br /> <br /> On surveying the historic path that we have travelled during the thirty years of the national liberation struggle, we feel a rightful sense of pride in our Party and people and look with growing confidence to the future of our country.<br /> <br /> The few years of the socialist revolution have enabled us to survey with joy the profound and wide-ranging changes that have occurred in every sphere. In carrying out the socialist transformation of the country, our working people have received and confirmed their right to be the collective masters of the country, and this has aroused in the people an unparalleled surge of revolutionary enthusiasm. The mass movements for—amongst other things—agricultural cooperatives, dedicated work, improving the level of education and culture, promoting the new way of life and ensuring security, law and order, are enjoying increasing success. The administrative organs and mass organisations are improving and growing in strength and the people are united more firmly than ever. The forces of the revolution are growing on all sides. More powerful than ever before, they are resolutely countering the plots and intrigues of the imperialists and their lackeys, guaranteeing the defence of the nation and resolutely defending the new order and constructive labour of our people. The international prestige of the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos is growing, and our country is receiving considerable international assistance, particularly from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the USSR and the other socialist countries, in order to defend and develop the nation. The road to socialism lies open before our country. The imperialists and international reaction are vainly resorting to the most perfidious means to frustrate the revolutionary work of our people; for, despite all the difficulties and insufficiences, there is no force that can halt the triumphant progress of our revolution.<br /> <br /> In order to fulfil the historic tasks facing it at this new stage, all our people must work and study hard, consistently pursue the transformation of our small-scale production into large-scale socialist production. All our Party workers and members must strive to develop in themselves the high moral and professional qualities of revolutionaries, struggle to successfully carry through all the policies of the Party and resolutely defend our beloved country in order to complete the building of socialism in our country so that it can worthily play its part in the world revolutionary process and promote peace in Southeast Asia and throughout the wend.<br /> <br /> Long live the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos!<br /> <br /> Long live the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party!<br /> <br /> Long live victorious Marxism-Leninism!<br /> <br /> The work of the people of Laos in defending their country and building socialism will triumph!<br /> [[Category:Library works about Laos]]<br /> [[Category:Library documents from Laos]]</div>

ProleWiki https://prole.wiki/w/index.php?title=Library:What%27s_a_Slum%3F&diff=75982 2024-09-30T12:46:53Z

<p>ProleWiki: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Library work|title=What's a Slum?|author=Michael Parenti|published_date=2014|type=Article|source=https://www.michael-parenti.org/article-whats-a-slum}}<br /> <br /> '''''What's a Slum?''''' is a short article written by [[United States of America|Statesian]] political scientist [[Michael Parenti]], posted on his website in January 2014. It is an excerpt from his autobiography, [[Library:Waiting for Yesterday|''Waiting for Yesterday: Pages from a Street Kid's Life'']], which was published in 2013 by [[Bordighera Press]].<br /> <br /> == Text ==<br /> [[File:Maximumfilesize5mb.png|thumb|400x400px]]<br /> <br /> When I was about thirteen years-old I chanced upon an article in [[Henry Luce]]'s [[Life (magazine)|''Life'']] magazine that described [[East Harlem]] (a [[Manhattan]] working class neighbourhood) as &quot;a slum inhabited by beggar-poor [[Italian Republic|Italians]], [[African Americans|Negroes]], and [[Commonwealth of Puerto Rico|Puerto Ricans]],&quot; words that stung me and wedged in my memory.<br /> <br /> &quot;We live in a slum,&quot; I mournfully reported to my father. &quot;What's a slum?&quot; he asked. He was not familiar with the term. &quot;It's a neighbourhood where everybody is poor and the streets are all run-down and dumpy and dirty and filled with beggars.&quot; &quot;Shut up and show respect for your home,&quot; he replied. Note his choice of words. Poppa was not expressing pride in East Harlem as such. But situated within the neighbourhood was our ''home'', and you didn't want anything reflecting poorly upon family and home.<br /> <br /> On my block, [[118th Street (Manhattan)|118th Street]], there was both ''normal'' poverty and ''extreme'' poverty. But the latter was not readily detectable. For years there was an iceman on the block who did a bustling business. This meant that there were families that did not have refrigerators—including my own. We made do with a window box that held a piece of ice and a bottle of milk and a few other perishables. Eventually we got a second-hand refrigerator.<br /> <br /> Also on 118th Street was an old brownstone that served as a nursery for needy children. One day during my high-school years, I heard the famous writer [[Dorothy Parker]] being interviewed on the radio. (I was already familiar with her name if not her writing.) She was talking about giving aid to the poor children who were cared for in that very same settlement house on 118th Street. &quot;Are they Negro children?&quot; asked the interviewer. &quot;No, I believe they are Italians,&quot; Dorothy Parker answered. The nursery for the needy was just across the street halfway down the block from my house. I often hung around that area yet I had never seen impoverished children being escorted in or out of there; or I never thought anything of it if I had seen any.<br /> <br /> Italian Harlem had its block parties, family links, and numerous face-to-face acquaintances. Still it was not one big ''Gemeinschaft'' (community). It was not an urban village. Many people were unknown to each other even on the same block, even in adjacent buildings. I had to find out about the nursery-for-the-needy from a radio interview with Dorothy Parker. That is almost pure ''Gesellschaft'' (impersonal mass society).<br /> <br /> Contrary to the slur in ''Life'' magazine, I came to realise that, despite the extreme poverty, my neighbourhood was inhabited not by &quot;beggar-poor&quot; derelicts but mostly by hardworking and usually underpaid proletarians, more-or-less sane folks who were the ordinary heroes of the urban landscape. Much the same can be said for the nearby African-American and Puerto Rican communities in Harlem.<br /> <br /> In Italian Harlem (as East Harlem was also called) there could be found people who drove the trucks, taxicabs, trolleys, and buses. They manned the loading docks and the maintenance crews, and practically monopolised [[New York City|New York]]'s building sites as construction workers, carpenters, bricklayers, electricians, roofers, glaziers, housepainters, and plumbers. And when they were not building structures, they were on the wrecking crews that tore them down.<br /> <br /> Other [[Italian Americans]] put in long hours employed in candy stores, grocery stores, and five-and-dime stores, in dress shops, barber shops, butcher shops, and sweatshops; in beauty parlors, ice cream parlors, and pizza parlors; tending bakeries, barrooms, and poolrooms. They were bank clerks, janitors, dry cleaners, and laundresses. They were auto mechanics, machinists, manicurists, hospital workers, and gardeners; ditch diggers and gravediggers, milkmen and mailmen, shoemakers and homemakers, elevator operators and telephone operators, apartment guards and bank guards, night workers and day jobbers. They shined shoes at [[Grand Central Terminal|Grand Central Station]] right next to their Black coworkers, and on the [[Staten Island Ferry]]. And they buffed the shiny lobbies of midtown office buildings.<br /> <br /> They served as waiters and waitresses, cooks and caterers; secretaries and receptionists; garment cutters, tailors, seamstresses, and dress designers; fish vendors, vegetable vendors, peddlers, and truck farmers.<br /> <br /> They worked in insurance offices and post offices. They built the highest skyscrapers and the deepest subway tunnels, and years later their offspring cleaned the subway tracks and the streets and sidewalks of the whole city and collected the garbage, holding the lion's share of jobs in the [[New York City Department of Sanitation|Sanitation Department]].<br /> <br /> These were the people who performed &quot;the work of civilisation&quot; to borrow a phrase from the great [[Economics|economist]] [[Thorstein Veblen]]. (Veblen was actually talking about the unsung unpaid work that ''women'' did all over the world.) The working poor lived out their lives largely unsung and unnoticed. Wherever they toiled, it was almost always to &quot;bring some money home for the family,&quot; that prime unit of survival.<br /> <br /> Tucked away amidst the blue collar ranks of Italian Harlem were the [[Politics|politicos]] who got out the vote in their neighbourhood precincts for the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]]. They were local lawyers and realtors; doctors, dentists, and morticians; professional musicians and many amateur ones, and photographers (mostly for weddings and Holy Confirmations); a few young toughs training to be professional boxers who might end up as downtown bouncers if they were lucky; some union shop stewards and union organisers, a struggling magazine illustrator, a comic book cartoonist, a sculptor, a tall, lovely sixteen year-old girl who was working as a model downtown, young men attending [[City College of New York|City College]] and young women attending [[Hunter College]], and a few aspiring opera students, including a lovely mezzo-soprano who performed with great charm at local events and at high mass at Holy Rosary Church. Then there was an occasional young man going off to the seminary to become a priest, or a young woman preparing to become a nun.<br /> <br /> In sum, ''pace'' Henry Luce and ''Life'' magazine, defamatory labels like &quot;slum&quot; and &quot;beggar poor&quot; can hide a multitude of virtues—not likely to be appreciated by Mr. Luce and his super rich cohorts.<br /> <br /> There is the saying that &quot;the slums are not the problem, they are the solution,&quot; meaning they are the place we dump the marginal and low performing groups. It might do well to remember that the slums are where hard-working underpaid people live and out from which they venture to help keep society afloat.<br /> <br /> [[Category:Library_works_by_Michael_Parenti]]</div>

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